Immaculate Conception

(For religion and psychology nerds only)

If you want to wander into the labyrinthine ways of Catholic dogma, today is your day. December 8th marks the solemnity (first class festival) of the Immaculate Conception. People commonly confuse this idea with the Virgin Birth of Jesus or his own conception by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin, celebrated on March 25th. But this day and dogma, to be concrete, is about the moment when the Virgin Mary's parents --Joachim and Anne, below-- conceived her.  Among other things, it is about the first act of sexual intercourse in history (below)  which did not produce a child stained and limited by Original Sin.

Joachim & Anna "embracing" at the Golden Gate

according to the Protoevangelium of James.

Following me so far?

This belief has a long and complex history, as you might imagine. St Thomas Aquinas, among others, did not favor it. Part of the sibling rivalry between Dominicans and Franciscans. The Franciscans eventually won the argument, as noted by Gerard Manley Hopkins in his praise of Friar Minor Duns Scotus, "who fired France for Mary without spot."

Thomas was afraid that understanding Mary as free from sin long before the Passion of Christ occurred would reduce the necessity and universality of his atonement. And the Gospels give some grounds for wondering if she was really on board with Jesus' mission (Mk 3.32ff and parallels). By the time that Rome declared it a dogma of the faith in 1854, the argument was long over. The Church eventually decided that her exceptional status was proleptic, that is, although the effect happened in time before the cause, it was nonetheless an effect of that cause. See what I mean by labyrinthine?

The Collect of the day:

Deus, qui per immaculatam Virginis Conceptionem
dignum Filio tuo habitaculum praeparasti,
quaesumus, ut, qui ex morte eiusdem Filii tui praevisa,
eam ab omni labe praeservasti,
nos quoque mundos, eius intercessione,
ad te pervenire concedas.

O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
prepared a worthy dwelling for your Son,
grant, we pray,
that, as you preserved her from every stain
by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw,
so, through her intercession,
we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence.

Part of the psychological interest for me is that one of the themes driving this belief is that Jesus as the New Adam (a la St Paul) also had a companion New Eve...his mother*. Both of them re-instantiate the paradisiac state of unfallen humanity, principally by being created (in her case) and incarnated (in his) in a state of unbroken communion with God, never knowing a time without grace. From the point of view of what Jung called "the empirical man", man as we know him, these two, precisely because of their sinlessness, seem inhuman to us. But from the divine point of view of salvation-history, they are the first authentic humans since Adam and Eve. It's the rest of us who, because children of the Fall, are the inauthentic humanoids.

Goya's Virgin of the Immaculate Conception

As for the date, which conveniently falls in Advent, it was arrived at by counting back nine months from the much earlier feast (6th/7th centuries) of the Virgin's own birth, September 8th in both Western and Eastern churches. Which may have its origins in the Byzantine New Year or the rededication of a Jerusalem church in honor of St. Anne.

Why some people think I am a pointy-headed intellectual, I'll never know.
_______________________

*Unless I am mistaken --hardly possible here on Ex Cathedra :) -- while the incest taboo twixt mother and son is universal among humans, incest is not at all uncommon in the mythic worlds of the gods. Kinship libido drives both the mythic aspects of Christianity as a whole (Father and Son/Hero) and Catholicism in particular (Son/Lover and Mother).

Although Muhammad's Quran makes a mistake in describing the Trinity as Father, Mother and Son, since Muhammad's knowledge of Christianity came from the 7th century variety as popularly preached and practiced, it is an understandable error. One of the reasons the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, has long been overshadowed by the Virgin Mother, ironically**, in Catholicism, it is because in functional and devotional terms, she largely replaced Him. An actual human woman is, I suppose, more attractive than a metaphorical dove, fire and wind. Liberation theologian Leondardo Boff even suggested that she was the the Holy Spirit's incarnation.

**Luke 1.35

Read globally, posted locally

I will be taking down my RevolverMap widget, the revolving globe in the left column. The widget used to let me know which posts were being accessed, which was very interesting. Now they only give the place and time. So I am bidding RM farewell. It was fun.

It's been up for over 6 months and has clocked over 20,000 visits to ExCathedra since then. Two-thirds come from the USofA, but a total of 150 countries have had readers...or if I check the old stats, lookers. My "naked men" entries are more popular than my insightful opinions and deathless prose. The penis, it turns out, is mightier than the pen.

Most informative site was the French colony of Reunion...never heard of it...a volcanic island off the east coast of Madagascar, population 800K. Did you know that in 2005-06 over a quarter of the population was felled by a mosquito-born disease, chikungunya, which provides two days of high fever, followed by intense longer-lasting joint pain? Or that this island has had the most intense rainfall ever record on the planet...6 feet of rain in a 24 hour period in 1952...and in 2007, 13 feet in 72 hours?


Anyhow, here's a cumulative shot of the sources for ExCath hits.

Against nature

As a favor to a local friend, whose atavistic ways include subscribing to the tree-killing local newspaper, The SF Chronicle, I read the aforementioned publication this morning. Some interesting stuff here and there. Could it be true that between 1930 and 1940 San Francisco's population only increased by 142?

But one story, from Massachusetts, made me shake my head. A close high school football game was decided by post-game officials in favor of the supposedly losing team because the quarterback who took the last "winning" touchdown raised his arm.

Raised his arm? I'm thinking, "What did he do? Did he make the Nazi salute? Did he give the other team the finger?"

No, Ex Cathedra, neither of these rude gestures did he make. His crime was that he raised his arm as a sign of victory. He broke the rule, says the article, against "celebrating."

Young men, playing football...I repeat, young men, playing football...may not "celebrate" on the field.


(For Ex Cathedra's reactions and responses, fill in this blank. You know the drill. _____________________________________________________________________________!!!)

Mormons and Christians, again.

If Mormons (the Church of Latter Day Saints) are to be considered Christians despite their major departures from historic Christianity, what about the Moonies (The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity)?

Apart from their different 19th and 20th century foundings, Mormons and Moonies do have striking similarities. Both religions' founders, Joseph Smith and Sun Myung-Moon, claimed special revelations which called them to complete Christ's derailed/unfinished work by (re-)founding the Church, both penned a post-Biblical scriptural corpus (Smith's Book of Mormon, Doctrines and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price and Moon's Divine Principle), and both center their morphings of Christianity around marriage as the condition for salvation*. Both reject the Trinity: Smith's physical Heavenly Father, who was once just a man himself and grew into Godhood,  joins an (unnamed) Heavenly Mother to produce the spirit children who eventually become incarnate in human bodies, while Moon asserts that the incorporeal Father joins with the female Holy Spirit to jointly parent the souls of the redeemed human race. Both groups avoid using the Cross in their religious imagery.

Even the ultraliberal National Council of Churches declared the Moonies non-Christians.

If by both historical standards and by contemporary count, 95% of Christian churches have taken the Incarnation of Christ as Divine/Human Son of God, plus the recognition of the sole Deity as a communion of Three --Father, Son, Spirit--- as fundamentals, once you break those central and linked beliefs, how do you maintain that your religion is still Christian rather than post-Christian?

Once your roots in the previous faith matrix are transcended sufficiently, you get a new religion. Which is why Christians aren't Jews. And Mormons and Moonies aren't Christians.

____________________

*Another somewhat similar post-Christian church is the New Church of Emmanuel Swedenborg, who influenced William Blake and Carl Jung. Once again, a seer of special revelations far outside the historic Church, a large quasi-scriptural corpus and a special interest in marriage as the vehicle of salvation.

 

 Swedenborgian sanctury in Pennsylvania

For Christology, the NC holds that the One God Jehovah became Jesus Christ. No Trinity. Mormons hold that the Old Testament God Jehovah is Jesus Christ in the New, with the separate Old Testament God Elohim (which the orthodox take as a synonym) as his Father, but they are separate "personages" with physical bodies.

And then there's the once very visible but now dwindling Christian Science Church. Again, post-Christian. No Trinity, no Incarnation. A post-Biblical text from a New Thought founder(ess) who resurrects the lost doctrine and reality of a spiritual Christ. Here, marriage, while honored, plays no central role in the mythology, which is entirely focused on mind-based healing.

Every time you turn around

there's a new "human right".

Now The Global Council of The Crips and The Bloods, aka, The United Nations, in cooperation with its groovy NGO partners, is promoting a new "right of the peoples to peace." It's part of a larger project about "the right of peoples to international solidarity."

A right to this, a right to that. Star Trek is beginning to look reactionary by comparison, even though its sound more and more like the old Soviet Union.

Standing in solidary with all the peace-loving peoples of the world....

Religious, not spiritual, contd

Fifteenth century image of the Madonna in Otranto Cathedral, backed by the skulls of Italian Catholics beheaded by the Ottoman Muslims for refusing to accept The Religion of Peace. The image in situ here.

Taiwan Church

A Catholic church in Taiwan, all the standard images Sinified...Holy Trinity as three Sages, all-Chinese saints and angels and Last Supper (with chopsticks!), Tabernacle in pagoda house style. And this shot of the outside. Notable absence of a crucifix.

On another site, more outside view and, at bottom right, God the Father creating the world in seven days...Christ carrying the cross...and a row of saints...


*A curmudgeonly note. Christianity regularly permits or encourages the translation of the religion's images into local styles. We have a totally Chinese set of images here. We have African Jesus' etc.
None of which have a speck of historical truth to them. But they're OK. I wonder what would happen if, for example,  American Buddhists (who are almost all White, and largely Jewish) were to set up images of Buddha and his disciples, etc as Caucasians? Racist! Racist!

Saturday Night Lie

Ok, that was a little cheap.

But this video of SNL mocking Obama's powerlessness --he's #11 in the country-- also shows the jump-out-at-you oddity of how this President, and only this President is portrayed. The actor looks like him but makes no attempt whatever to sound like him. If you heard this as an audio and did not know who it was, you'd never imagine it was Barry Hussein O.

Because I am not clean of heart, I conclude that it is fear of being accused of racism --having a white actor in lightskinnedblackface also mock O's cadences and phrasing-- that prevents this character --for the first time in the ancient history of this satirical comedy show-- from being actually imitated. He is merely indicated.

And from the unclean heart, I say, "Cowards and liars."

Advent

My favorite time of the liturgical year, the four weeks before Christmas. Although it starts out with images of the Second Coming, these soon give way to memories of the First. You find yourself looking forward to something that has already happened. Although in the mythic world, it is always happening.

 Isaiah                     The pregnant Virgin         John the Baptist

Quieter, contemplative, mixed with the early darkness and the silent chill of December dusk. It is a time suited best to echoes. Focused not on possession but on expectation. John the Baptist. The prophecies of Isaiah. The old responsory Aspiciens a longe, Gazing from afar... And Rorate caeli..."Shower down, O heavens, from above and let the clouds pour forth the Just One; let the earth be opened and blossom forth a Savior." 

The Advent wreath, one light lit each week --a gift, like the Christmas tree, from the Germans.

I was always much more of an Advent Christian than an Easter Christian. All this matches, and has always matched, a deep corner in my Northern soul.

Minor quirk or telling symptom

Visiting some of the Catholic blogs, where the culture war is fought out over things like the language of the liturgy, I recall an old wrinkle --among the number I now have!-- about words, onr that used to bother me and still does.

At the heart of the Catholic culture wars is a struggle over whether to interpret the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960's in major continuity with what went before (the generally conservative position) or as a discontinuous break with the past, a kind of catch-up with the Reformation and the inauguration of a new kind of Catholicism, what one old wag used to call "the Church Effervescent."

Back in the day*, I had my own mix of preferences about that. I was very much in favor of the new liturgy, but did not see why it had to mean the erasure of the old, especially its music and its sense of sacredness, both of which I missed. When it came to a choice between three a capella voices chanting in the style and language of Pope Gregory the Great or three women caterwauling lounge-act lovesongs to Jesus with guitars, it was a no brainer. Which I usually lost. But, of course, I also hoped that Christianity's strictures on same-sex love, inherited from Judaism, would change. That, too, I lost.

A groovy and reformed Call To Action Eucharist, with puppets and greyhaired ladies.

But part of establishing any new cultural regime is control of language. Our current PC masters have been astoundingly successful at that. Well, in the Church, there was also a kind of battle over words: interpreting old words in new words. For example, words like "Vespers" or "Compline", "Magnificat" or "Confiteor" were considered by the New Guard as distant and elitist. So they became "Evening Prayer" and "Night Prayer", "The Song of Mary" and the "I Confess".  Memorable only because so forgettable. The general linguistic tone seemed to be aimed at talking down to people as if they were uncultured eighth-graders.**

On the other hand, words which served the populist agenda became de rigueur (sic). It was groovy to speak of the "Eucharist" instead of "Mass", to describe what used to be called "converts" who were once "taking instruction" as "catechumens, participating in the rites of the Christian initiation of adults". While holding on to generics like "Evening Prayer", specialists signalled each other by speaking about "mystagogy" and "catechesis", "collegiality" and "inculturation".

As with all cultural wars, it was about using language to establish a new ruling class. But the Vatican and the conservatives outlasted and outmaneuvered the once-young-now-oldfogey Catholic Red Guard and the current re-translation project is aimed at re-establishing continuity over novelty. Though it appears petty on the surface, the howling and foot-stamping of the liberals over the re-translated Mass means that they get the message.

A Mass which St Gregory the Great would recognize, even in English. In Louisiana.

Nevertheless, it still astonishes (and offends) me how some of these groovy Catholics easily contemplate abandoning the Church over something like a translation. From the orthodox point of view, I am just as bad and worse, but in my own eyes, at least, I parted ways over an irreconcilable difference of substance, not style. It was a very costly decision for me, so when I see the threats to leave over participles and pronouns, I can't help but think that these folks' attachment was pretty thin to begin with. An indication of what liberal Catholicism's "exhausted project" can eventually produce.

Anglo-Saxons (and I include the Irish for cultural reasons only) like to pride ourselves on our directness and honesty; Italians, on the contrary, find such carelessness with information naive at best. So while the AS world, America especially, wants to get things out into the open in a transparent process, the Mediterraneans --rolling their eyes at the children***-- hold that saying one thing in public to protect an important project in private is mere common sense. The liberals are right to suspect that this is part of a roll-back of 60's enthusiasm and faux-Reformationism. The ancient Roman gene in Catholicism asserting itself.

This past year the Vatican made some changes to canon law. One was to increase penalties for clerical abuse of minors. The other was to strengthen the excommunications for those attempting female ordination. Both were announced... in the very same document. A very good example of Romanità.  While feminists shrieked --as they often do-- that this implied a moral equivalence between pederasts and womenpriests, the Vatican calmly explained through their teeth that this was mere coincidence, of course, and, despite the gravity of both issues,  no comparison was implied. Yeah, right. Tell me another one, Padre Guido.

Anyhow, that's my bit of post-Catholic catholicizing for the moment. I have to get ready for Vespers.


*One of the many lingo bits from Black English that so often become part of common speech.

**Real 8th graders have their own quite complex ways of speaking, always learning new phrases; if you read the comic books aimed at 12 year olds, you'd see a level of English higher than that enshrined in the now-defunct 1972 RC American liturgy.

*** I lived in Rome during the denoument of the Nixon presidency. I remember being quizzed by an incredulous old Italian priest if it were really true that the head of the whole country was being forced to resign in public disgrace just because he had (quite naturally) tried to discomfit his political enemies. He was head-shakingly astonished. I believe he muttered, as he walked away, "Pazzi anglosassoni!"