Rather than follow my usual habit of moving on to a chapter in fiction, I think I must keep on in this autobiographical vein. The interesting news just keeps coming. Just as trouble has a habit of coming in batches, to exercise our endurance, so triumph and success can form a pattern, perhaps to fore-shadow the scheme of unbroken joys that await us in Heaven.
Yesterday my beloved received an E-mail, on her museum computer, which informed her that our diocese, along with the rest of the Catholic churches in western Canada, would be returning to the ancient practise of kneeling for that point in the Mass when the priest performs the rite of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The source was a long-time friend, actually a convert somewhat from our influence, and someone who with her husband, one of the finest liturgical musicians in the country, had finally left this diocese in disgust for the more traditional climate, at least as it then was, of the archdiocese of Vancouver. Yet, to tell the whole truth, this couple wavered when, fourteen years ago, the horrifying practise of standing was first introduced. Burt we were too solid as friends for them to withstand the combination of my growling and the inward prompting of the Holy Spirit, and they, along with one other family of our closest friends and spiritual associates, defied the folly of the bishop, the priests, the nuns and so-called lay leaders, and continued to kneel.
The Browns went a further step. They queried the then bishop - still Emmett Doyle - and were told that the entire Canadian conference had ordered this step. This was a lie, which he later retracted. And we knew, of course, that Vancouver under Archbishop James Carney, a true son of the Pope, would never co-operate with such nonsense. (Carney's "rigours", as they were thought of in this msis-managed zoo, were always a great consolation in those difficult years.) Finally, Martin Brown, former professor of philosophy at Notre Dame of the Nelson and constant student of Church history, put the ultimate cap on the dunce by telling us that standing at the consecration was first introduced by the Anglican, Cranmer, as an attack on the belief in the Real Presence. How much lower could the guilty bishops go?
As I write, it is the 8th of January, 2002, a Tuesday. Monday, a week ago, was the eve of the New Year, and we were scheduled for the 6 p.m. Mass. As, for some years now, I am ordinarily awake for hours before the normal rising time, I usually have a nap at some point in the afternoon. On that afternoon, I had awoken at four, to find myself - this is not uncommon - drowning in a sea of the utmost bitterness. It was of the severity that John of the Cross says cannot continue for too long, otherwise the soul will die. As my principal local prayer intention is at the time for a marriage in grave difficulty, I assumed the bitterness had had to do with this. But later, at Mass, I sensed that the parish priest was somehow connected with this ring of fire, and now one prays, of course, for the half-wits to take the order gracefully. The standing down, altar girls, and inclusive language still to go, and perhaps then can the Church be returned to a degree of normalcy, and the roles of priests and religious redefined along the original lines of dedication, humility, genuine learning, and an automatic deference to the will of Rome.
The relief of the souls in purgatory, the conversion of sinners, the needs of the Church. These are the first line of the contemplative's intentions. So much of the time in this diocese, it seems that only the first category has obtained what I would think of as first rate results, and only God knows where the released spirits held their earthly domicile. (Every other day or so I get a modest vision of soul-lights, rising into Heaven.) More often than I care to think about, these have seemed to be the only regular and proportional result of a life allowed to do little other than pray. No acting, no public singing other than in church and even that for the most part proscribed because the hymn selections, since my wife quit the choir, are abysmal, and the writing is up and running perhaps two days out of the seven. I cannot really complain, as the prayer life of the seventh mansion is in itself infinitely more adventurous and satisfying as any of these other activities, but my temperament is of the kind that likes visible results, and I cannot help but ponder the lack of proportion in the continuing disreputable state of the Church in my own part of the globe.
Will the edict go forth as whispered in the ranks? Will it be obeyed and effected quickly? One of my closest friends says he'll believe it when he sees it. In this diocese, a not unreasonable position. As I write, it is two-and-a-half hours until the Saturday evening mass, the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, so we wait and see.
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And a good thing, too. Not a peep from the pastor. A mistaken source - usually reliable, however - or are they waiting for a so-called appropriate time, such as Lent, not too far away this year? I have had my delights in the possibility of correction, but it did seem, as well, to be too good to be true; so often the Church has to get so awfully worse before it gets better. After the interior life, nothing so preserves the peace of mind of a troubled Catholic as a good knowledge of Church history. In my youth, I studied history much harder and more scientifically than I did music. This was my inspiration. It would seem that God could see what was coming.
He is, of course, immensely fair. As I could not be consoled by the sight of the parishioners kneeling as they should - our two kneeling families sit in the gallery, above their heads - Our Lord chose to put on a bit of a light show at communion time. It happened that the eucharistic ministers ran out of hosts just before it was my turn. As I waited for one of them to collect more hosts from the tabernacle on the altar below the Sacred Heart, my old kneeling spot in the days when it was refreshing rather than disturbing to visit the Cathedral of Mary Immaculate, God began shining some special light on the front of the church. The longer I had to wait, the stronger it grew, and the affection for my person that came with the consumption of the host when it finally arrived was all that one could wish for, although I should say that I do not ordinarily look for any special feelings from communion. Thus God treats those who, like Saint Teresa, would happily die for any one of the essential rites if that were required. Yet I am as a general rule counselled to make no racket about it with the locals. Withdraw, retreat, ignore, punish by silence and lack of active participation, although it is not unknown that we regularly complain to Rome, and I must also admit that I would probably be rather vocal in the newspapers if it were not for the general refusal of such activity by my spiritual advisors. Always to them, and usually to me when I am clear headed, the problems are so incredibly deep as to be solved only by prayer.
The one exception occurred nine years ago, to the month, when a presumptuous late vocation to the priesthood, driven by the psychologisms he had ingested in his former profession, decided to neutralize the genders in the Nicene Creed, and ordered the congregation to follow. There was an enormous blast from me, or rather from the Holy Spirit using my lungs: "We will not! You do not have the authority to do this!" And we did not. The congregation carried on with the Creed as usual. Perhaps the priest had enough sense to know that had he continued in his madness he would have had Elijah storming his altar.
Later in the day, I had to answer the phone. It was a fat nun, known to me by the quality of her voice, although she did not give me her name, ringing up to tell me I had made a food of myself. (Her words) Is it the fat nuns who have been the most aggressive in their rebellions, in every diocese? I think they lead the averages in ours. This woman, fortunately, did not stay here long, although it must be said that most of her views seem to be shared by the sisters left in her wake.
The priest recently died, of cancer. We all knew of his illness, and some of us knew of trouble he had caused after his transfer from the cathedral parish, trouble for better and more orthodox priests. As has often been the case where troublesome souls are concerned, and not just clergy, some time before this man became a priest, while we knew he was studying for our diocese, I had been given a special, very strong, spirit of praying and caring for him, of intending to assist him in every way possible, before his ordination. When I saw the notice of his death, pinned on the vestibule wall for all to see as they entered the cathedral for mass, I could only think of his meeting Christ, and with not a shred of joy in my soul. Regarding my experience at the news of the death of a priest, it seemed radically new and different.
I should add that this priest made a public and defiant reaction to a papal encyclical on birth control, and was ordained by Emmett Doyle. He was also rather quickly made chancellor by the same bishop, who must have known the man also had a drinking problem. But then, as I was to come to learn over the years, Doyle seemed to have a fondness for priests and other fellow ecclesial workers with weaknesses that he could exploit for his own ends.
This is not to say that he was not exploited himself, of course, for the vicious play games of equality with each other, even where it is a bishop who slips to being the mere pawn. The modernistic nuns thrive - and continue to do so - in such a setting, and all too few were the priests who could put them in their place. It is interesting to note that in the neighbouring parish, where Marianne and I took a much needed rest from steady conflict, from the summer of 1988 to the Advent of 1992, driving thirty miles each was of a Sunday morning, the resident pastor had swiftly got rid of the nun he found there on his arrival in 1984, and never allowed another of these creatures into his parish thereafter. He was a missionary, retired from Africa, and he knew from long experience what real sisters were made of. Moreover, a large percentage of his parishioners continued to kneel after the change to standing came into being. He had an interesting observation: "Those who know they are sinners will kneel; those who think they are not will stand."
Who is wiser than an old, real, parish priest?
But now it is Saturday eve again, a fat couple of hours before the mass, and a second answer to this interesting question. God has been quite busy passing some of the best parts of my life before me: memories of the times and places when He has bestowed upon me the sublime touches of His uncreated beauty, the Poetry, as it were, behind the poetry, in just any old place, here and there - Vancouver, Vernon, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Lasqueti Island, Ocean Falls, Terrace, New York, Seattle, my hours in law school or the army or the newspaper business - whenever things were at their best, it was unquestionably He who was at the bottom of the sense of the glory of being, or Being; and He has been most concerned to remind me of the good and orthodox bishops and clergy and religious I knew before I was parachuted into the diocese of Nelson. He always prepares a soul, of course, before a difficult assignment. Did any priest have better clerical contacts and instruction in the seminary than I had between 1958, when I first dipped into the catechism, and 1964, when I left the care of Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Terrace? Had I not sat with the legendary Father Henry Carr, in his office in Saint Mark's UBC, and felt the unmistakable presence of the Holy Spirit descend upon us both as I spoke of my newly discovered love of Thomas Aquinas? Had I not engaged Archbishops Duke and Johnson in a certain degree of useful spiritual encounter, and in fact worked for the great Fergus O'Grady, founder of the lay volunteer programme that built so many Catholic schools in the north of the province, in British Columbia of all places so irreligious or pitifully Protestant in its general culture. (As I write, the provincial government, calling themselves Liberals, have just unreleased the most unLiberal assault on the poor in the history of the party. A spiritual friend of mine has demanded of God the appropriate response, and will no doubt get her way.)
This was, obviously, a good diocese in which to be a layman, if one were inclined to actually believe the Son of God and all He said. A genuine mystic in a collar might have been able to work some improvements, or he might have simply left for lack of decent companionship. But certainly no such thing in habit was domiciled in the diocese of Nelson. The depths of the spiritual life seemed to be entirely in the hands of the laity, and that spiritual life seemed to have been created as much for conflict and contradiction as for harmony, amongst the members of the local Church Visible.
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It is Monday. In the morning, a wonderful-as-usual meeting with my agents and spiritual advisors. In the afternoon, a delightful walk along the city's newest section of the lake-shore path. We have new snow, and a small but welcome allotment of sunshine. Our housekeeper and family medical expert has a useful conversation with one of the few other people in town cognizant of the wisdom of Ayurvedic medicine. But a second week-end liturgy has come and gone, and there has been no mention of kneeling. In the Western Catholic Reporter, however, there was a story of a bishop, unnamed, who had written to Rome to ask if he was permitted to oblige a priest to use altar girls. Rome replied that he was not so allowed.
Somewhere, there is a priest with a head on his shoulders. I wish the Western Catholic had given his name. For such single-mindedness and courage, I might tell him the story of how the present Pope lost a spiritual director who was a veteran of the seventh mansion, back in 1994, because he allowed the altar girl nonsense. Certain headline-oriented journalistic commentators have suggested John Paul II will known to history as John Paul the Great. Those who understand the spiritual life, that is, the very heart of the Church, are for the present at least inclined to think of him as John Paul the Distracted.
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