Comm. Omnium Fidelium Defunctorum

Today is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, more colloquially known as All Souls' Day. All Souls’ Day this year is particularly fitting. This year alone, I have had sad privilege to attend three funerals, two of which were just in the last two weeks. All three deceased were people whom I knew fairly well in my earlier childhood but haven’t seen much over the last fifteen years.

The first was my great-uncle Danny, 82, my paternal grandfather’s youngest brother and last of the male children of his family to pass on. Uncle Danny was a devout Catholic all of his life but sadly succumbed, as so many of the pre-Vatican II generation, to the Novus Ordo mentality. No mention of Purgatory or prayers for his soul were to be found when he passed. His Mass card at the Funeral Home did not even have a religious picture on it. How sad!

The second to die this year was the Larry, 93, the father of my god-father. Not a blood relative, Larry and his family were close friends to ours well before and during my earlier lifetime. Just the same as with Uncle Danny, Larry was a devout Catholic, Knight of Columbus, and very well respected in the Catholic establishment of the section of the Bronx from which we all came. And just as with Uncle Danny, no mention of Purgatory, but at least his Mass Card was religious in nature.

Lastly, my Aunt Fortune, having battled a rare brain disease, succumbed to it at the age of 49. She was my Aunt by marriage to my Uncle Mike, my mother’s brother. Having been raised a good Catholic girl in and around the Tristate area of NYC, she (along with my uncle and cousin) moved to a small town in upstate NY well away from her social support. My mother’s family was never particularly devout, save for my great-grandmother, and the Catholic dioceses in upstate NY have had a long history of some of the worst liberal bishops. It is no wonder to me that Fortune found little support in the disastrous Albany Diocese and left the Church for the devoted and "doctrinally purer" Baptists. She died without the graces of Confession, Extreme Unction, and Holy Viaticum. Her funeral was a Baptist service in which she was essentially canonized and her body was cremated and not buried.

All three of these folks need our prayers. If they received the grace of God’s mercy and are in Purgatory, please pray for them.

Preparatio Anni Novi

I like to refer to the time following the Feast of Christ the King and the First Sunday of Advent as a preparation period for the new liturgical year. This week alone, being that Christ the King fell at its earliest possible date of Oct 25 leaving an entire week until All Saints, features a rare week of almost all Ferial Days with the exception of Wednesday for the Second Class Feast of Sts. Simon & Jude. Being that the liturgical calendar is so devoid of feasts in the interim (like the Novus Ordo is for 50 out of 52 weeks), I thought this would be a great week to establish some voluntary penitential observances (except on Wednesday) to be capped with the observance of the traditional fast and abstinence for the Vigil of All Saints (sadly suppressed as a liturgical observation in the 1955 excisions) and publicly sung First Vespers of All Saints at my church.

My wife jokingly calls what I am doing an "Anti-Octave" to which I responded, "There do exist penitential octaves of sorts (e.g. Sapientiatide from Dec 17 - Dec 24, Holy Week) even if they are not actually refered to as octaves." But I appreciate her humor since it was meant to convey that an Octave is usually understood as a joyful celebration of a feast for eight days; hence the term "Anti-Octave" to convey an eight day period of penance instead of feasting.

More about Vigils. Both Tuesday and Saturday of this week were traditional vigils, those of Sts. Simon & Jude and All Saints, respectively. Both were of the lowest rank (i.e. Simple) of vigils. In my personal restoration of certain elements of the older observances, I have reincorporated the liturgical observations of such vigils as fourth class vigils in praying the Office, drawing upon older Breviaries for the proper elements thereof.

Looking ahead, Advent is but five weeks away. The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions usually observe a six-week period for Advent as opposed to the four weeks in the West. Advent being my favorite liturgical season, I always lament its brevity. So, with this in mind and the Christ the King/All Saints interim "Octave" of penance, I thought I would gradually build up a preparatory period, a sort of "Septuagesima" to preceed Advent. All days of the fourth class between now and then will be penitential observances. Additionally, all weekdays, except any First and Second Class Feasts, will be penitential beginning the second week before Advent. I plan to do some extra spiritual reading, especially topics having to do with the practice of virtues and eschatological exegeses. I am really determined to eradicate ever more diligently the abomination which is the secular "Christmas" season, set to begin soon if not already, but such eradication begins by personal purification and penance to make reparation for the perversions of and/or lack of regard for our religious festivals.

A good friend of mine at my parish just began a men's group affiliated with the Miles Christi. I am not all that familiar with the Miles Christi, but the charism revolves around personal spiritual growth, theological and doctrinal discussions, and evangelization to the world at large. In short, it seems to be spiritually focused, as opposed to the more "secular" nature of other Catholic men's organizations. Having been to the first meeting, I feel recharged to some degree to dust off, proverbially, many of the spiritual ideals to which I had been more faithful back in my SSPX days. Now is a great time to refocus on spiritual growth because I am afraid that the laxity which I lament in general honestly starts with a lamentation in the mirror.

As the Epistle to the Romans from the First Sunday of Advent states, "Jam est tempus nos de somno surgere, dies autem appropinquavit, abjiciamus ergo opera tenebrarum...nunc salus nostra proprior quam cum credidimus..." Already it is time for us to rise from sleep...but the day has arrived, let us therefore cast off the works of darkness...for our salvation is nearer than when we believed...Now let us begin a personal advent in expecation of the season of Advent.

Vita Liturgica

It seems quite evident that my pastor has been drinking from the same well-spring I have concerning the Liturgical Ethos. He plans to discuss in his sermons over some period of time the concept of living the Liturgical Year and all the details which go into that necessary endeavor. Not to plagiarize or steal someone else's fire, but I had kind of planned to steer this blog along the same way. Be that as it may, I think I may "steal" some of what he has to say, giving credit to the proper source of course, as we go along.

So, I'll conclude this post with what I believe to have been his thesis statement during his 20 minute sermon yesterday, and I paraphrase, "We must have a Liturgical Spirituality in addition to and concurrent with a Devotional Spirituality". Think of what this means; for too long, and very much due to the persecution of Anglo-Irish Catholics who, in turn, dominated the Catholic hierarchy and culture in the US, devotionalism (e.g. the Rosary to the exclusion of praying the Mass, prayers to saints, any praying we do outside the context of Mass and the Office) has reigned supreme, and the sense of Liturgy in terms of spirituality and formal communal worship by which we order our lives has suffered. Now is a good time as any to restore the proper balance between the two, as both are good, but the Liturgy is the highest form of prayer.

Brevissima verba

I have a whole host of pressing topics about which to discuss, but I am still mulling through my thoughts. These are mostly of a liturgical nature, so stay tuned.

I did, however, want to briefly mention that we are now in the month of October (yes, John, thanks for stating the obvious); October is liturgically the month in which both books of Maccabees are read at Office of Matins each day. The passages contained therein never cease to interest me, and the parallels to the Hellenistic occupation of Israel compared to our present age is astounding. Would that we had the ideals, fortitude, and wherewithal to purge our society from its present evils, spiritual, mental, and physical, as did the holy Maccabees of old.

Lastly, I wanted to quickly mention that one of my Latin classes is a course in Ecclesiastical Latin. Not even when I went through a Latin regimen in the SSPX was there ever a Latin class specifically devoted to Church Latin; that was something you absorbed peripherally from going to Mass and the Office if you so chose to absorb it. So, I'm pretty excited about having my two, very bright students, start delving into the Vulgate and other Liturgical texts keeping the themes concurrent to the progression of the Liturgical Year. Hence, they have assignments this month to translate tracts from Maccabees and also from the Liturgy of Christ the King.

Compendium Parobolum de Rebus Scholasticis

To conclude my series of posts concerning anti-intellectualism, I want again to focus on our arguably most important task towards the eradication of anti-intellectualism, namely, the proper education of our children, especially those who will be the next generation of traditional Catholics.

Firstly, however, I shall sum up what I have written thus far concerning anti-intellectualism:

1. While it may have always been around, it was fostered, incubated, and projected onto society via the free reign of Protestantism in the US. Both the Quakers and Puritans contributed towards its dominance on this society, although the Puritans retained a more Catholic sense of scholastic endeavor.

2. The fledgling and mostly poor Catholic immigrants who came from some of the more intellectually astute Catholic countries of Europe largely integrated and assimilated into US culture, thereby absorbing anti-intellectual tendencies, most notably in how the Catholic Parochial School system did not endeavor (from an overall perspective) to foster the higher scholasticism of Catholic Europe, but were content to follow the same pattern (i.e. parallel) of the Protestant public schools in terms of their purpose and academic scope.

3. Catholics, to a significant extent nowadays, of both the modernist and traditionalist stripes, through little to no fault of their own, see little value in academic rigor just as long as the Catechism is learned (traditionalist) or the children are taught what they "need to know" for material well-being (modernist). This latter view is likewise shared by society at large via the public schools.

4. Modern education and "un-schooling" are two sides of the same anti-intellectual "coin". We need to recover the academic regimen of a classical Catholic scholasticism en masse.

5. Anti-intellectualism is manifested in many ways including dismissiveness of intellectual pursuits and trumping up only what is practical and necessary for everyday, mundane concerns.

6. 99% of Colleges no longer are centers of scholasticism. We should avoid them, except for true colleges which offer both a Catholic and truly scholastic pursuit. Catholics should, nevertheless, always strive toward higher learning throughout their entire lives, whether or not a formal college experience is available, and this holds true regardless of what we do to earn a living (i.e. the "Both And" philosophy).

With all these in mind, our children need to be BOTH reared in the knowledge and fear of the Lord AND classically educated via academic rigor. All of us have a vocation, be it religious or married or single. All of us have a Duty of State at any given point of our lives. Children who are still under the care of their parents and are not of the proper age to support themselves in life, are by definition, students, i.e. all children's Duty of State is to study, to learn and be properly educated. This last point has, sadly, not been known nor emphasized in recent years, but I would say the SSPX has done a great service in promoting this truth (the SSPX has taken great efforts to establish schools wherever they go).

Proper education prepares our children for whatever they may eventually be or do in life. There is a despicable error floating around by which some parents are hindering, actively or passively, their children for any academic achievement because the only important thing that they learn is how to perform domestic duties (i.e. girls are only going to be wives/mothers or nuns) or trades/practical skills (i.e. boys are only going to be husbands/fathers or priests). This is so wrong. Firstly, religious vocations in particular require scholastic endeavor; nuns and priests have to be teachers of the Faith. Secondly, it doesn't matter if our children grow up solely to be domestics with both parents working the land, proper education is still necessary. We do a great disservice, albeit a crime, if we as parents allow our children to remain ignorant and grow up to become what will be a Catholic under-class. No! We cannot let this happen. We need an educated class (if we are to speak in terms of class); we need a scholastic generation to keep, defend, and promote the Faith to future generations and to the growing population of pagans. We need an intellectual body to transform society away from its political and economic errors and to build a Catholic civilization. We need all these things. Both and.

Let us not artificially limit our children, we as a literate generation have a great opportunity to raise an even more literate and faithful generation. We have the opportunity to produce another generation with the likes of Sts. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Ambrose, Albert the Great, et. al. Let's do it. Let's eradicate this disease of anti-intellectualism. Let us, once and for all, drive a stake through the Protestant ethic of what is good only for the here and now, and let us recover a Catholic society, wherein the Church is vibrant and the culture is educated and Catholicized.

Doing all of these things we can realize the ideal of a true aristocracy. The Greek adjective aristoi means "the best"; hence, aristocracy means a rule by the best of a society. Rather than focusing on restoring an aristocracy in the political or economic sense (which is laudable too), we should foster a society wherein aristoi are truly present. We do not need wealth or privilege to be aristocratic; we need only a proper education readily available to all to build the Catholic civilization yet to come.

Intellectus Major: Collegium aut Opus?

At long last, I shall now discuss, to the best of my ability and articulation, the matter of higher education, namely that of the subject of College/University and whether or not we should place value and/or necessity in patronizing such institutions and why. The short answer of this author is yes and no; this is not exactly a simple question, and therefore, cannot receive a simple answer.

Firstly, let us define what is higher education and what is its purpose according to the modern paradigm. College has become, with very few exceptions, for all intents and purposes, a vocational school to TRAIN people for the skills needed in the white-collar workforce. It purports to introduce its students to the cultivation of the liberal arts, critical thinking, and some level of cultural sophistication. The reality is that college is now simply an extension of the public highschool (even among private colleges), an extension of the same flawed Deweyist model by which subjectivism runs rampant and the search for truth is not the goal. In the case of most college students, the subjectivism takes on the dimension of what is needed to get a piece of paper in order to get a good-paying job, despite the fact that that nice paycheck may never even materialize. Many years ago, any line of work would not have included higher education as a necessary avenue to be hired. Lawyers and accountants became so by working as apprentices at a firm. Trades of course, had and still have, vocational TRAINING schools. Unfortunately, nearly all colleges have become vocational TRAINING schools. The key difference to note is Training vs. Education. Nearly all institutions of learning in this day and age are focused on skills training from Kindergarten through Graduate School and never truly on education (practicality vs. scholasticism).

Now, let us define what the true nature and purpose of higher education is. All disciplines lead man to the true sciences of philosophy and theology. Colleges, as established during the High Middle Ages, were centers for clerics and theologians to delve deeper into those true sciences. In fact, until the late 19th. century, there was always one "major" or curriculum which any college student pursued, and that was essentially a liberal arts education oriented ultimately to the study of theology. This is the ultimate and final end of a classical education. This is what is truly meant by the word education (Latin: educare = to lead out (of ignorance to knowlegde/truth)).

Therefore, modern colleges should be avoided if the goal of the person is simply to be trained in a trade or profession. Society ought to recover apprenticeships and offer the possibility for one to work for his living as soon as he has reached a level of maturity and physical condition (which need not necessarily be 18) to take on such responsibilities. Not all of us all called to be tradesmen; not all of us are called to be professionals; let us, therefore, not trump one (blue collar) over the other (white collar). Each has been given certain talents and abilities and should use these effectively to make his living. When discussing the matter of earning a living, higher education should not even weigh into the equation.

On the other hand, I steadfastly propose that more people, besides the clerical class of the Middle Ages, should, in fact, pursue true higher education. As a more literate people and as literate Catholics, having knowledge of "books and letters" behooves us to study over the course of our entire lives those disciplines which direct us toward philosophy and theology. And this is irrelevant and irrespective of what we do in life to support our sustenance. Whether we are farmers, plumbers, lawyers, or accountants, we ought to utilize the furthest extent possible of our natural intelligence to pursue higher learning. Higher learning need not be confined to a formal university setting, but if we can find those rare institutions which still have a true higher education, we should be patronizing them. If we can't go to college because of monetary or other impediments, let us all adopt a course of higher learning anyway in our homes and among our acquaintenances. Let us not simply accept life as a mundane existence solely oriented to the practical needs of the day. We must not neglect our spiritual and mental sustenance. This is what is meant by scholasticism.

I contend that all are philosophical by nature, that we as man are naturally directed to the contemplation of the cosmos and the divine and the purpose of life, etc. Modern education has systematically destroyed this our natural philosophical state by eradicating a natural intellectual pedagogy which all young children possess. Classical education for children and a life long pursuit of true higher education for all according to his ability.

That all being said, I wish I had this clear understanding of what the purpose of college is 12 years ago. Had I known then what I know now, I would have pursued a doctorate in classical languages which could have led me to any number of Catholic scholastic endeavors. Doing so would not have ruled out the possibility of earning a practical living in addition to my scholastic pursuit. There is no reason why I couldn't have been, say, a self-employed plumber or electrician (which I would have learned from a skilled tradesman) at the same time as writing a doctoral thesis on the theological profundities of Greek words and grammar in the New Testament. My philosophy is a "Both And" not an "Either Or" approach to life.

Intermissio et varii cogitationes

Yours truly has been, shall we say, a grouch lately. My grouchiness is a recurring them in the ebbs and flows of life. It's certainly not new to my turning 30. Recently, I've been a grouch in the sense of grinding various axes to the stone in terms of the overarching cultural and political transformations which I would like to see become reality. I make no excuses for the views I hold; I believe them to be sound and correct based on Catholic social principles. I also concede that a properly educated and devout Catholic can also come to some different conclusions about monarchy vs. democracy et al. than I do. So be it. Above all except the Faith, though, it is the culture which matters. No serious Catholic can deny that we need a Catholic-infused culture and a transformation from modern ways beckons to effect a Catholic culture. Then we can fix the politics.

Aside from this, some personal thoughts and reflections:

But, I am still a grouch. Hey, I'm opinionated, passionate, and often "over the top" more so in the way in which I present my arguments rather than the arguments per se. I am not a good debater; my strength lies in the written word not the spoken. I occasionally stutter, can't think quickly, and often do not have the right words to say at the moment. I am a melancholic with a 33% mixture of choleric (hence, my opinionatedness) by temperament, an introvert, hypersensitive, a person who takes everything "to heart" and dwells and re-thinks upon every thought or action, good or bad, inflicted upon me. I am a perfectionist, an "all or nothing" guy, scheduled, orderly, full of the need for exactitude. See why I went into Accounting? Even more, see why learning a logical language like Latin was/is so appealing?

There is nothing wrong with being any of those qualities just mentioned. For most of my life, I have been told, "John, you're too serious; John, you're too sensitive; John, you take everything to heart; or John, you need to let things go." I don't let things go; I can't because I am innately wired to dwell on everything. These sayings from people were never helpful to me nor will they ever be. However, what would be extremely helpful is if people in general would recognize that it is alright for someone to be sensitive or shy or introverted or serious or pensive. I have an incessant need to receive affirmation and praise; I become angry and hurt when the opposite occurs (e.g. anti-intellectual forces work against my passion for intellectual discourse). Yes, it may be prideful; but there is also some legitimate need there to receive affirmation beyond the pride aspect. At least 20% of the population is considered to be "hypersensitive" - why then does society want to squash them? It's the American way. Yes, being sensitive and pensive goes against the "American ethic of always doing and acting". Enough said.

Three months ago, I wrote a short autobiography just before my 30th. birthday. I add the above sentiments to that discourse. I also would add that I see a lot of the above qualities in my son and I am honestly worried sick about how I am going to deal with that and how I can even possibly guide him in life. I can't simply tell him to be like me, because I know of the flaws and pain of growing up as a sensitive child. I am hopeful that by his doing something like playing Rugby with some other boys at church, that he is adapting well. I never liked to play sports (except bowling) as a kid; I was never good at them and honestly I was never interested in them. I would rather do esoteric things like read train maps or later learn the rubrics of the Breviary. I do not want to project myself onto him, but I know my son is never going to be the "rough around the edges" typical boy. I know he is sensitive and I know that he exhibits a quieter and more refined nature than most boys would. It's scary being a parent sometimes.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and putting up with my personal afflictions. The melancholic finds much solace in sharing deep and personal thoughts, and I have nothing to hide.