The Difficult Mix of Religion and Politics, Part II

In Festa Die Omnium Sanctorum

This post is to respond to a comment left on my previous post on this subject by Abu Daoud:

I will say though that IMHO the command for social justice need not and should not be accomplished through governments (the earthly city) but through the City of God and her instrument here--the Church.
When we ask the government to accomplish the duties of the church we harm both.

Mr. Daoud has hit on an excellent point, and given me the opportunity to say what I would have liked to say in my previous post, but which I couldn't fit in anywhere because of the train of thought within it.

My own (idealistic) self-styled political views would come under the heading of "Christian Libertarianism." That is to say, I would propose that we reform our system of government and society along two lines. First, the civil, secular government should be constructed along a strictly libertarian point of view, i.e. it should be extremely limited in its powers and functions to those which are strictly necessary to the civil, secular government, namely, providing for the national defense (a power which is reserved under natural law to the civil, secular government; it is unjust for either the Church or any private citizen to declare a war, the authority for which, under the just war doctrine, is strictly reserved to the lawful body of the government) and for a system of domestic criminal and civil law, with attendant courts; and, I would argue (though there is no ground in natural law for the necessity of such a governmental function per se), the provision of a national, civil infrastructure, e.g. providing for an interstate highway, and the regulation of such industries as air-traffic control and for the public utilities.

The civil, secular government should not engage in the provision of social welfare programs, which would include taking care of the sick, aged, and poor, as well as providing for education and emergency relief (things to which a great portion of our modern governmental bureaucracy tends). Such services should, in my idealistic opinion, be left to social organs other than the state, namely, to the Church.

The reason for this (drastic, some would say) redefinition of the responsibilities of government and society is based on the fundamental fact that any action of a civil government is, by its very nature, coercive. The civil government is supported in its duties and actions by means of taxes, and taxes are obligatory, not voluntary. This is, of course, as it should be; according to the natural law, the civil government has the right to collect taxes in order to carry out its responsibilities. Furthermore, the responsibilities of national defense, domestic security and law, and (I would argue) domestic infrastructure are placed upon the civil government by natural law—and we as citizens are, therefore, obliged by the natural law to support that government, even if we do not want to.

The functions of social welfare are not, however, incumbent upon the civil government because they are actions which spring not from the necessary obligation of natural law but from the gracious act of charity. (N.B. I say that they spring not from the necessary obligations of natural law, but not that they do not follow logically from it; indeed, as must be recognized from history, acts of charity are not limited to Judeo-Christian societies, and must, therefore, arise within societies acting only according to the bounds of natural law; furthermore, any shrewd observer of the natural law will note that acts of charity so become the well-being of a society that they must be at least somehow founded within the natural law—but such an observation does not prove, nor can it, I believe, that they are necessary obligations, but only prudent deductions, of the natural law.) By its very nature, the gracious act of charity cannot be coerced, else it ceases to be an act of charity—this is, of course, at the very heart of the Christian notion of charity (I use here the term "charity" in its root sense coming from the Latin caritas , the equivalent to the Greek αγάπη, which are the words used by Christianity to describe the love of God—see my post from Maundy Thursday of this year, Deus Caritas Est). It is this nature of a gracious act of charity that requires that it originate not in the edict of a civil government but from the hearts of the individuals who make up society. Furthermore, it is not for the civil government to direct these acts; rather, this authority falls to the Church. Acts of charity are most abundantly given and most thoroughly realized as acts of the spirit moved by love, and they fall, therefore, within the providence of the Church. This fact should be no clearer to us than today, the Feast of All Saints, in which the Saints of the Church stand before as most perfect examples of charitable actors.

The Gospel today is of the Beatitudes, and the homily preached by the Bishop of Münster, Dr. Reinhard Lettmann, focused on the Seven Acts of Corporal Mercy, namely, to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the imprisoned, and bury the dead (cf. Matt. 25:31-46). The point behind the Gospel reading and the Bishop's homily is that, as we celebrate today the saints of the Church, we are called most strenuously to imitate them, to carry out the implied command of the Beatitudes, and to live according the life of charity that characterizes a Servant of God. The Gospel calls on us all to be saints, and it is in the act of charity, that is, the life of love for God and neighbor, that we become the blessed Servants of God.

Furthermore, it is clear from the Seven Acts of Corporal Mercy and from the Beatitudes that the social ministry of the Church is the social welfare we enumerated before. The task of caring for the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and the naked, the sick and imprisoned, the poor and the oppressed: this is the ministry of the Church. There is no organization on Earth better suited to carry out this charism than the Church, and it is because the Church operates not according to the rights and responsibilities of the natural law (though she does no contradict them, either), but according to the graces of the divine law. This is why I have referred to acts for the social welfare as gracious acts of charity, for ultimately, they are enacted not by human ingenuity but by the grace of God working in us.

It should come as no surprise that the socio-political philosophy that I have here laid out reflects my study of the Middle Ages. As a medievalist, I can recognize the benefits of a medieval system in which the responsibilities of social welfare were left in the hands of the Church. No doubt, some of my readers are already reaching for the mouse to post a comment along the lines of, "You would have us return to the Middle Ages?" The answer to this question is both yes and no. I would not have us return to the Middle Ages if by that one means a return to a society in which the vast majority lived lives of painful poverty, whereas a tiny minority, enjoying the labor of those poor, lived a life of enriched pleasure. I would contend, however, that such a characterization of the Middle Ages, while perhaps a fair picture of the social conditions of the time, fails to recognize many features of the Middle Ages; the reality is far more complex. I would argue that a return to the Middle Ages is exactly the kind of thing our world needs, if by it one means a world in which the intellectual tradition recognized not the opposition but both the compatibility and necessary interdependency of faith and reason; a world in which belief in the supernatural power of God was held in esteem rather than derision; above all, a world in which charity was the greatest virtue (cf. I Cor. 13:13), as opposed to the accumulation of capital or the fight for the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

Do I recognize that the relationship between civil government and the Church was not often ideal in the Middle Ages? Do I recognize that for most of the Middle Ages, as indeed for most of human history, the powerful have exploited the weak and trampled over them? Of course I do; any student of history and of the human condition sees that, from the dawn of man even unto today, nothing has been more constant than the injustices that have left the vast majority of humans oppressed by the powers of wealth and opportunity that have exploited them for the benefit not of the poor but of the rich.

It is part of the Christian project to recognize this and to fight against the injustice wherever it is to be found. But, unlike modern political theories like Marxism, and unlike such "politco-theological" systems as liberation theology (which, when it allows politics to trump the Gospel, is an abhorrence to the Church), the Christian is called by the Gospel to fight this injustice not by the means of power recognized by this world, not by violence and strength of arms, nor by playing the political game. No, the Christian is called to shun the powers of this world as the very weaknesses of the flesh, and to put on the true armor of light and love, the true strength of God found in humility and charity. St. Paul calls it the folly of the Cross: this world laughs at the Church, scorns her and holds her in derision, for she preaches the Cross, the ultimate sign in secular eyes of weakness. What strength is there, the world says, in a man, broken and beaten, who dies a most ignominious death? What kind of God is this who suffers a most humiliating and non-heroic death, for Christ died not in glorious battle but as a common criminal?

The answer calls from across two millenia, and the reality of victory is revealed to us in the lives of the saints: the martyrs who suffered as did their Lord; the confessors who were ready to do so; the hermits who rejected the pleasures of this world in order to find true happiness in purest poverty; the religious whose vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are assailed by the world as the ridiculous abjurations of crazy people. And it is in the saints that we discover, finally, the key to putting together our new socio-political system of Christian Libertarianism.

We realize when we gaze upon their example that the way forward is in establishing a society in which every single member understands that he or she is called from womb to grave to be a saint. The way forward is for us to engender a revolution, not in the organs of state but in the very hearts of every individual member of society. It will not be a political revolution, nor even primarily a social one, but rather a spiritual revolution to transform the Zeitgeist from one that worships the almighty dollar and administers to the wealthy and successful to one that worships the Almighty God and administers to the poor and oppressed.

Finally, we must recognize that in this revolution we do not speak in terms of classes of society, nor of this section or that interest group. Rather, in this revolution, we speak of individuals, for we must recognize that far outstripping the importance of society as a blanket organ is the importance of the individual dignity of each human soul. The time has come to stop looking at society from the top down and seeing it is a collection of the masses—no more talk of "the American people", of "the working class", of "the bourgeoisie". No, we talk now of "the individual human being that is Nathaniel Campbell" and "the individual human being that is Abu Daoud", for it is the work of the individual soul that glorifies God. There is but one blanket grouping of humanity that remains important, and that is the Church, the Body of Christ, the Communion of Saints into which we each enter when we partake of the Eucharist, for the great common factor to every human being is the love God showed in creating him, which love we are therefore commanded to give to each other: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." (John 13:24).

The Difficult Mix of Religion and Politics

In yesterday’s New York Times’ Sunday Magazine there appeared a lengthy article by David Kirkpatrick that examined the current crisis among the nation’s evangelicals and “religious right.” Kirkpatrick describes how the original vanguard of the religious right movement (Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, etc.) is fading, and that the evangelical Protestantism stands at a bit of a crossroads today; will they follow the conservative (both theologically and politically) route of the last generation, or is the future face of the religious right in fact the religious middle or slightly left?

Kirkpatrick documents the fact that among many evangelicals, the key issues of abortion and gay marriage are no longer just the key issues; he quotes Bill Hybels, one of the leading evangelical pastors of today, as saying, “We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world.” Or as Rev. Gene Carlson put it, “There is this sense that the personal Gospel is what evangelicals believe and the social Gospel is what liberal Christians believe, and, you know, there is only one Gospel that has both social and personal dimensions to it.”

The split between liberal mainline protestants and conservative evangelicals goes back a century, when it was crystallized by the fight over evolution. As Kirkpatrick seems to demonstrate, a new split may be forming among the evangelical community, a split between those who seem to dictate that “Evangelical Christian” = “conservative Republican”, and those who see beyond the political label to realize that neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party has a monopoly on representing the Gospel.

The growing inner conflict amongst the evangelical community has also opened the eyes of the Democrats. As Kirkpatrick points out, all three of the leading Democratic candidates for president (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards) have talked about their personal Christian faith more on this campaign trail than has a Democrat since Jimmy Carter, the evangelical who, or so it is perceived, turned his back on the evangelical community when he got to Washington (because of his support for abortion rights, among other issues). (And I should note as an aside that, despite Barack Obama’s being a baptized Christian, Kirkpatrick quotes Kayla Nickel, a member of the evangelical parish Westlink in Witchita as saying, “Obama sounds too much like Osama. When he says his name, I am like, ‘I am not voting for a Muslim!’ ” Her statement thus confirms what I’ve been saying for more than a year now, that whatever his politics (he could out-do Jerry Falwell and it would still be true), some people will still vote against him for the very fact that his name rhymes with “Iraq Osama”; a sad fact indeed, but a pertinent one).

The problem facing the evangelical community is, oddly enough, one with which the Catholic community has long had to deal. Catholics in our country (and, despite my denomination as an Anglican Catholic, what I write here, though based mainly on the experiences of Roman Catholics, is nevertheless applicable to all Catholics, since the few matters on which we disagree are not pertinent to the topic at hand) have historically voted Democrat, first because the Democrats were the party of the immigrants and minorities at a time when Roman Catholics (mainly Irish and Italian immigrants) were heavily discriminated against; and later because the Democratic platform stood for social justice with a social conscience, echoing the emphasis that Holy Mother Church has placed in the last century on the social message of the Gospel (though they might not want to admit it, the Democratic platform has often, if only unconsciously, echoed Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, to which we will return below).

What has long irked Catholic politicians, however, is that the Democratic Party has often stood for things less than Catholic, and in those situations, the Republicans have often come through—I am thinking, of course, most especially about the issue of abortion. Before we continue, I should make it clear that Holy Mother Church always has and always will be opposed to abortion; it is not a matter of doctrine that is flexible (as has been, for example, the Church’s doctrines on usury), but rather a dogmatic statement of the value of human life that is absolutely central to the Christian message. The Church cannot now nor can it ever declare abortion to be anything but the sin of murder, and herein lies one of the key points of the entire argument: the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The Magisterium is the teaching authority of the Church, granted her by divine revelation and the institution of her authority, invested in the Apostles by Christ in the Gospel. In other words, it is the authority by which the Church can teach the Truth.

The Truth is not something the Church, or anyone, can change. It is a permanent standard of what is reality, infinitely perdurable and infinitely unchanging. Unfortunately for those of us who live in the real world, however, very rarely do the decisions of our daily lives line up clearly with this Truth. This is never more so the case than in politics. Ask any politician, and he will probably agree that his party also seeks the truth—but in the political sphere, we speak of truth with a lowercase “t”.

Sometimes, we discover that the Truth aligns with the platform of the Republican Party—take abortion again as a capital example. Other times, it would seem to align with the Democratic Party—as when Christ proclaims the mission of social justice, to care for the sick and poor (as the Church has formally phrased it—and in a nice line of alliterative pentameter—“the preferential option for the poor”). Instead of identifying the Christian Truth with political truths, it might be better for us to do the reverse: a pro-life politician holds a view which coincides with the Truth, as does a pro-social justice politician.

A case in point is Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, which became the quintessential statement of the modern Church on the “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor” (its subtitle), and the Gospel’s intention therefore. While Leo categorically condemned the unbridled competition of pure capitalism as socially unjust and therefore uncharitable (for the political pundits that are keeping score, that’s +1 to the Democrats), he also decried the violence inherent in the system of class struggle that Marxists seemed so intent on perpetuating:

The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. (Paragraph 20)

The political pundits should now remove that point from the Democratic column (and yes, I recognize that Marxist theory and the Democratic platform are not to be confused, but I ask you, when was the last time you heard a Teamsters negotiator praise the natural harmony between capital and labor?).

This dichotomy that has vexed Catholics for so many years seems finally to have caught up with the evangelicals. Abortion and gay marriage are important issues, yes, but the Gospel is about so much more than that, and Christ’s call to holiness is bound up with the entire message of the Gospel, not just bits and pieces (for the danger of a piecemeal reading of Scripture, just ask the Pharisees).

The problem, of course, is that both sides seem to engage in just such a piecemeal reading of Scripture. The Republican Party (and this is what is leading many evangelicals to reconsider their unwavering allegiance to it) has often of late skimmed over the social duties expressed in the Gospel. The issue of the justice of the war in Iraq is complex and certainly won’t be solved here, but the fact remains that warfare, the intentional destruction of human life (even if that life be guilty), is in some fundamental aspect morally wrong; even the most just of wars using the strictest of interpretations of just war theory still inflict a violence that is unsettlingly contrary to the principal message of the Gospel. Likewise, the Republican Party’s standard support of capital punishment, though technically justifiable under Christian notions of justice, seems to lend an unsettling appearance of hypocrisy to its pro-life message. The Catholics have this one figured out—even though it’s a nice political catch phrase, Sen. Sam Brownback’s “pro-life / whole-life” position is remarkably and refreshingly cogent: a Catholic Christian expression of respect for life at it’s every stage, from the moment of conception to a person’s last (natural) breath. Furthermore, most Catholics, and an increasing number of evangelicals, take the Party to task for its seemingly obstinate refusal to consider social programs that help the poor, the hungry, the AIDS-afflicted, the oppressed, etc.

Lest we should think that the Republican Party has left the Gospel behind, however, we must turn our attention to the often even more egregious piecemeal approach of the Democrats. Christ’s Gospel is all well and good for them when they want to oppose war and the death penalty and want to establish programs of social justice to help the helpless among us. But then they conveniently leave Scripture at the door when it comes to abortion (after all, they will help the helpless only if the helpless have already been born) and the promotion of lascivious lifestyles, whether they be heterosexual, homosexual, or anywhere in between.

Then there are issues in which neither side seems to support true Christian belief. The most significant of these are views on homosexuality. Democratic acceptance not only of homosexuals but of the homosexual lifestyle runs counter to a true understanding of sexuality. When the Catholic Faith expresses an opposition to the actively homosexual lifestyle (just as it expresses an opposition to the actively heterosexual lifestyle out of wedlock), it does so out of the ideals of compassion and charity. The Catholic understanding of the actively homosexual lifestyle is that it, as a state of sin, is harmful to its practitioner, for, in perverting the sexual act, it demeans and damages the order created by God and it harms the practitioner’s own sexual understanding. Therefore, the Catholic faith opposes that lifestyle out of a desire to help those who feel inclined to commit such a sin to refrain from it.

The Republicans, however, fare little better, for while preaching against homosexual acts, they go too far and preach against homosexuals themselves; Republican opinion is, quite frankly, founded more on homophobia than anything else. We must remember that it is not the state of being homosexual, whether secretly or openly, that is condemned as a sin; rather, it is the active, voluntary commission of the homosexual act that is a sin. Furthermore, the Catholic Faith calls upon its believers to practice their opposition to this sin in a compassionate, charitable manner. Any person whose opposition to homosexual acts is expressed without the love of God in his heart is not then a believer of the Catholic Faith.

Of course, from a truly Christian perspective, far more grievous than any support our modern society gives to homosexual acts is the support it gives to the perversion of heterosexual acts; the real epidemic is the general promiscuity that has followed in the wake of the sexual revolution, homosexual and heterosexual alike. As the Church teaches, a full understanding of one’s sexuality can only come through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, by whom and with whom and in whom all things were made and are, therefore, understood (this is the notion that sexuality, like all things, is “sacramental” in nature). In this context, one comes to understand that one’s sexuality is not some independent department of the self; rather, sexuality is inextricably bound up in the whole being of body and soul. Modern notions of sexuality on both sides of the fence present a sexuality that is missing its greatest context: Christ.

Voters, as good Christians, are obligated by their faith to vote for men and women who will uphold the message of the Gospel. This is why we had such a mess in the 2004 election over Catholic bishops telling their flocks it would be wrong to support a Catholic politician who supported abortion (i.e. John Kerry). The problem, of course, is reconciling the Truth with political parties that stand for only parts of it.

This reconciliation, between a Truth that must guide completely our lives and a political system in which nobody seems to stand for that Truth, will not be an easy one to effect. We are faced with a slate of candidates for the presidency who seem to wander every day farther from it. Rudy Giuliani supports abortion rights and is a lapsed Catholic multiple times divorced, and yet appears to be the best bet the Republicans have against the Democrats. All three leading Democratic candidates support abortion, and Hillary Clinton, at least, has shown repeatedly that she is not in the least bit dismayed by the moral licentiousness that permeates our culture (just check out her husband, whom President Gerald Ford, according to a recent book, called a “sex-addict”).

I thought I had found somebody that would work—the aforementioned Sen. Sam Brownback, who seemed to be step-for-step with the Church in his understanding of how to live a good Christian life in a flawed and sinful world, but his campaign never found traction (as the Sunday Magazine article points out, the man who should have been the darling of the religious right got left out on the front stoop by them; though Kirkpatrick attributes this to their desire to back a candidate with a greater chance for success, I think the reason for the religious right’s aversion to Sen. Brownback is at least partially attributable to that old anti-Catholic prejudice), and he has officially bowed out of the race.

The problem for me, of course, is that it would be near anathema to support a candidate who supports abortion; I am too strongly tied to my respect and love for the dignity of all human life to vote for men and women who disregard it so blatantly. Yet, that leaves me in the arms of a handful of Republican candidates whose anti-homosexual rhetoric is more homophobic than it is charitable and who seem to pay little attention to the Gospel’s imperative to care for the poor with a charitable heart (though they have their good intentions, it is hard to perceive just how their views on foreign aid and immigration mesh with the “preferential option for the poor”, a theological principle of action founded in Christian love and charity).

What is necessary, above all, is to breed in ourselves a renewed respect for the dignity of all people. When our society can find in Christian love the hallmark of humanity, then we shall be able to overcome this quagmire in which we languish. When we as individuals find our every action motivated by love of God and neighbor, then we shall find that the choice between one evil and another has been resolved, for there will be only one choice then. When we ultimately can submit ourselves wholly to the Will of God, then we shall discover that we need not think long and hard about our compromises, for only then will the Will of God—of Love—remain. The choice today between Republican and Democrat may not be clear, but the choice today between God and the world is. I do not yet know how I will vote a year from now, but what I do know is that I shall pray every day hence for the God’s guidance for me and for all of the men and women who govern our country.

Settling into a routine...

I apologize for the paucity of my posts over the last few weeks; a combination of factors has led to it. First, I've been busy getting into the swing of the semester (I have just finished the second week of classes) and getting established in my research; and second, I have found myself faced with my own personal expectation that when I write a post, it should be lengthy and detailed, and that it should live up to the eloquence of some of my previous missives. I have decided, however, to free myself from such obligations, and to simply write whenever and whatever should be of immediate pertinence.

Unlike my previous posts, which have been written from either an Internet Cafe or from the university's computer lab, I am writing to you now while sitting at my desk in the offices of the Seminar for Latin Philology of the Middle Ages and Modern Era. This is, perhaps, one of the more important developments of the last few weeks; I did not expect that when I sat down to first meet with my adviser two and half weeks ago that she would, at the end of the meeting, hand me a set of keys and lead me to my office. Earlier this week, the Seminar's resident technology guru, Prof. Lesser, finally got the internet connection working, and so here I sit.

The use of this office has, and will be, however, a God-send to the work I am going to be doing this year, because it gives me (1) a place to seclude myself and get work done; (2) a place to keep all of my books, notebooks, and other research materials; and (3) access to the Seminar's fabulous library, where many of the books reside that I will need and that one is not allowed to take out of the normal university library. As some of you will probably note, it seems that my life is starting to be defined as a series of workplaces that I colonize (see my post from Thursday, October 2, 2006).

So far, my "research" has been limited to lots of reading--though I surmise that that will be the name of the tune for much of the year to come. It finally dawned on me about a week and half ago that one of the great opportunities this year affords me is simply to spend lots of time reading. Accordingly, I've spent several hours combing through the university library's catalogue finding books (preferably in English) that both intrigue me and will serve me well on my journey as a medieval scholar. Though I'm currently finishing up a book on the Crusades that I brought with me (I bought it at the beginning of the summer with a Barnes and Noble gift card given to me for graduation, but never got around to it), next on my list are several books from the library on medieval apocalypticism, two of them by the renowned scholar Bernie McGinn.

I'm also taking a couple of classes: one, which meets on Monday mornings, is a reading class of St. Bernard of Clairvaux's "How to Be Pope Manual" to Pope Eugenius III, De Consideratione ad Eugenium Papam (Pope Eugenius was one of Bernard's students before he was elected to the papacy); and two classes on Thursday, a lecture class on what the Germans call "Bibeldichtung", a genre of literature that is based on the Bible, the most famous example in the English language being John Milton's Paradise Lost; and a class on palaeography. I was going to take class on Friday afternoons that I thought focused on Saints and Relics in the Middle Ages, but after talking with the professor, it turns out it is an introductory class in studying medieval history, and I have decided not to take it, since it would be elementary (and a waste of time, as it meets for 3 and half hours on Friday afternoon!).

So I'm going to settle in for another relaxing weekend with some more good books, and I promise to try to post more frequently.

We're going to the WORLD SERIES!!!!!

I must take this time out of my routine here in Germany to do a happy dance, smile like I'm drunk, and proclaim, "THE COLORADO ROCKIES ARE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!!!!"

Since I tend not to be at my most eloquent or intelligent when speaking about sports, I will let espn.com's Jayson Stark say it for me:

"Clearly, they had to believe, or they couldn't have done this, right? Couldn't have become the fifth team in the last 70 years to go 21-1 in any stretch of any season. Couldn't have become the first team to do that in the middle of one of these mad charges to, and through, October. Couldn't have become the second team in history (along with just the 1976 Big Red Machine) to sweep its first two postseason series in any given October. Couldn't have become the fifth team of all time to make it from last place one year to the World Series the next. Couldn't have become the sixth team in history to fall nine games under .500 and still climb out of that canyon to make it to the World Series. And, finally, couldn't have become the first team ever to find itself two games out of a playoff spot with two games to play and somehow survive to scramble into the World Series. That didn't really happen. Did it? That wasn't really possible. Was it?"

So to all of my friends in Boston (more likely) or Cleveland (less likely), I will not apologize for hoping that we demolish you next week. We haven't played Cleveland this year, but we did take 2 of 3 from the Red Sox in June, so....after the last month, anything's possible, right?

In the House of the Pope

To my avid readers (a presumptuous adjective, but for which I ought not be faulted, I think), I apologize for the lengthy pause between my last post and this, for I had hoped to make once-a-week a standard. Unfortunately, it has taken me until today, because of many hoops of a bureaucratic nature too mundane and too numerous to recall here, to be able to access the internet wirelessly from my own laptop through the university's network. For the last two weeks, therefore, I have contented myself with snippets of the Internet bought a few cents at a time in an Internet Cafe across from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), and that was no place for me to write to this blog (else it would have been a rather more expensive affair than it already was).

The major story I wish to relate today happened a week ago, but I think will be well worth the delay. Our story begins, however, not in Münster but in Boston, where the dear Prof. Michael Resler, head of Boston College's German Department, and the dearer still secretary of that department, Agnes Farkas, have long kept detailed records of anyone living in Germany at any time with any connection to Boston College (I think Agnes is far more to be thanked for this, but it is Prof. Resler who actually sent the email). Accordingly, Prof. Resler was able to put in touch three Boston College alumni spanning several generations who all, it just so happens, now live in Münster: myself; Jennifer Burkart, a former Boston College Fulbrighter to Germany from the 1990's , now living in the Münster area with her German husband, Jörg; and Dr. Bill Hoye, BC Class of 1965, a recently retired member of the Theology faculty at the Universität-Münster, living with his German wife, Holle Frank. (From left to right: me, Jennifer, and Dr. Hoye).

As she had maintained contact with Prof. Resler (who even a decade ago was rather enthusiastic about sending Eagles to Germany on the State Department's dime), he sent Dr. Hoyes's and my contact information to Jennifer, and after her introductions, Dr. Hoye and his wife graciously invited the lot of us to their house for dinner last Thursday evening.

So, round about 7:15 (after a bit of panic earlier that Jennifer's email might have said that they would pick me up at 17:15 (5:15pm) as opposed to 7:15pm in the American style), Jennifer and Jörg pulled up in the rain to the bus stop outside our dorms where I was waiting, and we were off to Bill and Holle's house near the university's botanic gardens.

After introductions were made, we were ushered into their living room, where discussion in a mixture of English and German, accompanied with some nice port and excellent olives, was joined. Dr. Hoye, it turned out, had traveled to Europe after finishing at B.C. to pursue various graduate studies in theology, his focus being on medieval scholastic thought. After meeting and marrying Holle, they settled down in Münster, where he taught for many years. Though recently retired, he is nevertheless teaching a course this semester (for the fun of it) on St. Thomas Aquinas. Jennifer, on the other hand, met Jörg during her Fulbright year in Trier, and they later settled down in Münster, where she has just started a new job teaching Business English in the Economics Department of the Katholische Hochschule (Catholic College) here in Münster.

We were now invited to the dining room, where the delightful conversation continued over an excellent salad of shrimp, tomatoes, and bell peppers (you will discover that my praise for Holle's cooking will abound), and then a main course of roast beef, roasted potatoes, and a tasty recipe of creamed spinach (sorry Mom, I didn't happen to ask her secret). Jörg, it seems, works as a computer programmer, while Dr. Hoye's wife, Holle, has had a long and successful career as an artist. She is an amazing photographer, and has recently taken up video art, which she has successfully combined with her recent discovery of the phenomenon of YouTube.

The discussion turned to family, and both Jennifer and Dr. Hoye offered interesting anecdotes of life an ocean apart from the rest of their family. Bill and Holle are looking to travel to the United States for several months after the New Year so that he can work on his next book (in English) on eschatology. They would like to be in Massachusetts, as it would be near to much of his family, but have been having bad luck so far finding a place--they had hoped to rent a house on the cape.

The fortuitous intersection of our three lives took another interesting tangent when I asked Jennifer about her Fulbright work. It turns out that she, too, had written a Scholar of the College project her senior year at B.C., in the field of art history. Her focus was on the miniatures in a manuscript of the Carolingian renaissance, the time around the 9th-century reign of Charlemagne. It was the topic of the art of the Carolingian renaissance that had led her, then, to do a Fulbright year in Trier. Unfortunately, she did not enjoy her topic nearly as much as I do mine, and has left the world of medieval art history far behind her.

The others were prompted to inquire as to my own project, and I gave my spiel, now well-honed from having to repeat it so many times. One aspect that I had neglected, though, was that I had mentioned in my project proposal an interest in the traditionally strained relationship between the Germans and the Papacy as a wider historical trend, with the interesting note that a German pope as we have now puts the tensions of the past into a new light. As I hadn't yet had the opportunity to ask many Germans about their feelings about Pope Benedict, f.k.a. Joseph Ratzinger, I put the question to Holle, whose reaction to the announcement of Ratzinger's election stands in stark contrast to many of the Jesuits at Boston College: she felt several minutes of pure, ecstatic joy, which was only later mitigated by here concerns (shared by many Germans) about his less-than-liberal tendencies. She pointed out, however, that he seems to have brought the German mindset of environmentalism with him, as the Vatican has recently started to support several "green" projects in various parts of Eastern Europe (where the environmental damage wrought by the Soviet Union was formidable).

Our conversation about the Pope also led to what was perhaps my favorite tale of the evening. Holle recalled attending several lectures given by then Prof. Ratzinger during his time as a member of the theological faculty here in Münster (1962-5, I believe it was). She could not let us leave, however, without noting another feature of the Pope's stay in this city. At some point during his tenure here, his apartment underwent several months of renovations, and the landlord graciously offered a spare room in his own house to the future Pontiff for the duration of the work. That house was later bought by none other than Bille Hoye and Holle Frank, who took it upon herself to do the research, comb the records, and establish that indeed, Joseph Ratzinger lived in the room just above our heads as we sat at the dinner table, for a period of several months in the 1960's.

The conversation could have gone on and on as first we indulged in some ice cream cake and then in some fine Lindt chocolates, but alas, the evening had to come to an end, as the Burkarts both had to go to work the next day. After the now-customary exchange of email addresses, and the taking of the photo you see above, we bid our farewells, and laid plans also for another get-together round Thanksgiving time.

My recollections today could go one, but I must bring this post to an end as I've still some preparing to do. You see, I am traveling to Munich tomorrow to join a gathering of some of the Boston College German Fulbrighters at the last weekend of the Oktoberfest. I promise pictures and stories (though I shall have to be judicious in which ones I share here :-) on my return.

The Dalai Lama Came Today

Here I am, in Germany. Finally. I have decided to revive my use of this blog (to which I have seldom posted of late) as a general means of communicating my experiences to you, my faithful reader, as I make my way through the next 10 months as a Fulbright student at the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität in Münster. Here will be collected anecdotes of various kinds, updates on this or that, and my thoughts (as you should have been able to expect) on the goings on--here, in the world at large, and at home (for I continue to receive The Heights via email every Monday and Thursday: so you should also expect a diatribe from time to time on the decline and fall (since I am no longer there) of Boston College, or conversely its rise to ever greater things from the generation to come).

I arrived on Monday morning, jetlagged (a condition that seems to persist even to today), and found my way with 2 massive bags (though not that massive, since they were, in fact, lighter than the bags that I packed when I left for Boston a year ago to start my senior year) from the airport in Frankfurt to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), thence to Göttingen, a city in central Germany where the Fulbright Commission put us up in a Best Western (yes, the same) for two days of invaluable orientation. On the train, I specifically noted that I should relate two observations, both of which are connected to the fact that the train car I was in (standing the whole way, as there were no unreserved seats left) was more than half filled with a school group of what I believe in America are termed "tweens", girls so chatty and wrapped up in their own nascent adolescent concerns that if a world were to exist oustide of their sphere of being, it certainly would be of little importance:
1. The group was accompanied by 2 teachers, one man and one woman. The man, though the physical resemblance would end at "glasses and a beard", nevertheless bore a striking mental resemblance to my father, for when he once was walking up and down the aisle checking on his students, a smile graced his face as I have seen any number of times on the visage of my own father as he gazes upon his students--enveloped perhaps in their own little world, but little spheres of budding curiosity and learning and life all the same.
2. The particular group of 4 girls who sat directly in front of where I stood those two hours did, at one point in the journey, have an argument concerning the proper pronunciation of the word "Lufthansa". Three of them seem rather bemused that one insisted on pronouncing it "Luf-thansa", for the proper German pronunciation syllabifies the word according to its component words, "Luft" and "Hansa" (so "Luft-hansa"). This poor girl, however, had fallen prey of the same tendency that governs the American pronunciation of the term, namely, to maximize the onset of the middle syllable, thus moving the "t" sound from the first syllable into the second. All of which did pass through my mind, at which point I realized that the lingustics class that I took last year from Prof. Michael Connolly had completely ruined me for life, as I know he well intended.

We return, then, to the Orientation. I'm sure that all would agree that by the far the best part of the entire orientation experience (apart from the lengthy, oft stupefying yet invaluable information sessions that answered such important questions as "How do we get paid?") was getting to meet the other Fulbrighters and query them on their respective projects - indeed, for that endeavour I wish we'd had another day, for I didn't get to talk to everybody. Of particular interest to me was that the Fulbright Commission seems to have been on a medieval women kick this year, for in addition to my project on the 13th century reception of the apocalyptic works of the 12th century abbess and visionary, St. Hildegard von Bingen (of whom you will hear quite enough in the course of this year), two women have also been given grants to study female medieval authors. The one, who is working on her doctoral dissertation at Northwestern (and who is very well acquainted with several of the profs with whom I hope to start working next year at the University of Notre Dame), will be in Munich investigating apocalyptic writing of the 14th and 15th centuries - a few centuries after my time, but a project to which Hildegard is fundamental. The other, finishing her masters work at Tufts, is working (also in Munich) on several chronicles written by German nuns of the 13th and 14th century - again, past my time but yet very much bound up with the after-history of Hildegard. I had been looking for an excuse to return to Munich anyway (I loved the city when I lived there for 2 months almost 2 years ago), so now I have it - I imagine we all shall visit several times before the year is up to collate and talk shop.

Alas, Wednesday morning the fun had to come to an end, and I had to make an uncomfortably early exist from Göttingen (the train left at 7:45) in order to get to Münster in time to get the paperwork for my dorm room in order (the offices of the Studentenwerk--their equivalent to an Office of Residential Life--are only open Tuesday through Thursday, 9am-12pm; such is the way of most every German office that one should need to visit). A few taxi rides later (I accidentally went to the wrong building on my first try), I had succeeded in securing a room for the next year. It's a single room with a bed, desk, shelves, closet, refrigerator, and sink, and their are common bathrooms and a common kitchen on each floor. Perhaps not the greatest of accomodations, but at only €190 a month, I'll take it.

After settling into my room, I've spent the last few days wandering around the city, my philosophy being that the best way to learn your way around is to get a map, get yourself intentionally lost, and then find your way home. A misunderstanding concerning the bus routes meant that I had to walk most of the way home on Wesdnesday night, but all in all, I'm really starting to get a good feel for the place--and my dorm is only about 3.5 kilometers outside the city center.

I would call it a city on the small side of medium--larger certainly than was Eichstätt, but not nearly so large as was Munich. It has a beautiful inner city jampacked with an assortment of now-to-be-expected medieval, baroque, and 19th century buildings, their ground floors now filled, as with any modern city, mostly with high-end fashion and other boutiques far out of the reach of my pocketbook; it's own share of impressively outfitted churches (enough to fulfill my pentient for "church-hopping") with the standard array of architectural styles and enough Masses per day to accomodate most any schedule; and a delightful greenbelt that runs the permeter (the remains of the mote and ramparts that surrounded it in less collegial times), through which I have not yet had the pleasure to stroll but to which I eagerly look forward.

Finally, I made my way today into the heart of the university (as with most German universities, its campus is indistinguishable in most places from the city), which is to be found on the grounds of the great baroque Schloß, or palace, that was built there when a nobleman still ruled these parts--a wonderful walk now through many acres of manicured gardens. Now that impressive building houses various offices of the university, including, in a side building off to the north, the International Office, where I stopped this morning to clear up a few things, most especially the fact that, according to the Letter of Admission from the university, I was registered as a woman. Not a problem, said the very kind Frau Bobke, who then called up Herr Friedmann (off their version of an Office of Student Services) and, after a telephone conversation that happened too fast for me to follow, she whisked me to his office (in the great palace itself--the interior unfortunately no longer matching the baroque majesty of the exterior), where he not only was able to change my gender in their computer system but also was able to complete all the other paperwork to get me officially matriculated, a process that, had I not inquired, would have taken until the 10th of October to complete. Along with the matriculation number that I now possess come several delightful benefits: a semester pass for the bus system; a catalogue of courses (so that I can finally figure out what I'm going to take); and a username and password (which should come in the mail next week) for the university's computer centers--a relief from having to pay for access at an internet cafe.

And that brings me to the title of this post: it would seem (or so the signs said, and the heavy press and police presence would confirm) that the Dalai Lama is visiting this very university today. As a commentary on the experience thus far or to come, perhaps it should serve as a reminder of two things: (1) fascinating and unexpected things await me, and (2) as exciting as this week has been for me, there are far more important things going on in the world. A dichotomy to make a medievalist proud, both uplifting and humbling, both energizing and subduing.

So there it all stands: less than week down, and many chores already complete. Time now, I think, to go the bookstore, find something suitable to wile away the weekend, and settle down on a nice bench in a park somewhere.

Der arme Heinrich

As many of you know, I have been laboring this year on my Senior Thesis, a translation and commentary of the 12th-century German poem, Der arme Heinrich, by Hartmann von Aue. I have completed this task, and if you would like to read the finished work, you can download the file in PDF here (right click and select "Save Link As").

Happy reading, and I would love to hear feedback from any of you.

Deus Caritas Est

A Treatise on Love

“Above all things I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many-splendoured thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!” Trite lyrics to cliché love songs, strung together by the character Christian in the 2001 musical film Moulin Rouge! The word “love,” in modern American society, at least, is ubiquitous. Not only can I love my wife (if I had one), my mother, and my friends, but I can also love your outfit and shoes, that song they just played on the radio, this bumper sticker, the new and trendy restaurant downtown, “The OC,” Google, and pizza. What is love? When I tell my wife, “I love you,” do I mean the same thing as when I say, “I love pizza?” Is, as Mary Beth Bonacci calls it, “pizza-love” the same as “wife-love?”

The problem, from a purely semantic point of view, is that the English vocabulary is deficient: pizza-love is most certainly different from wife-love, yet in English they are both “love.” So, I must reach back to a more ancient language to begin to make sense of “love.” The ancient Greeks had several different words for “love:” first, there was ἔρως, the desirous love that Plato and Aristotle would place among the animalistic passions, used primarily of the sexual passion, but broadened in time to include the object of desire and the god of love. Second, there was στέργηθρον, the love which is the bond between a parent and his child. Then there was φιλία, perhaps the most versatile of the ancient Greek words for love; its basic meaning is the affection between friends, or simply, friendship; however, this bond became so universal that for the pre-Socratic philosophers, it came to mean the natural force which unites discordant elements and movements. In addition, there was εὔνοια, benevolence, goodwill, and favour; Aristotle, however, makes it a point to distinguish between φιλία and εὔνοια, such that the former is the bond with close acquaintances, while the latter is the more universal characteristic of goodwill.

So we return to our problem of the English word “love.” When I would say that I love my wife, I mean, at least in the immediate, ἔρως; when I say that I love my mother, I mean στέργηθρον; when I say that I love my friend, I mean φιλία; and when I say that I love all mankind, I mean εὔνοια. It would seem, however, that I really ought not to speak of pizza-love; that is, I ought not to speak of love of material things as “love,” or rather, I ought to distinguish, perhaps, between “love” and “Love.” When I speak of “Love,” I speak of a human connection. I cannot have a human connection with pizza, or with bumper stickers or shoes or Google; I can only have a human connection with other humans, and I can only speak of Love in regards to them and to that connection.

There is, however, one other Greek word that we need to examine: ἀγάπη. This noun was seldom used by the ancient Greeks, though its root verb, ἀγαπάω, a word ranging in meaning from “show affection,” to “be fond of,” to “be content with,” (and when demonstrating desire, never in a sexual sense), was often used. However, with the advent of Christianity and Koine Greek, the noun comes to play a very important role, for it signifies the Love between God and man, and, by extension, the Love between man and man as brothers in Christ. Furthermore, it became the name of the “Love-feast,” that is, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. It is this word that St. Paul uses when he speaks of Love in the 13^th chapter of his 1^st Epistle to the Corinthians:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and yet have not Love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing. Love is patient, Love is kind; Love envieth not; Love vaunteth not itself, is not proud; Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth Faith, Hope, Love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love.

Love is, therefore, not just a connection between men, but a connection also between man and God. In fact, the first connection is between man and God, and thence springs the connection between man and man. What is the nature of this connection? How did it come to be, and how is it sustained? For these answers, we must look back to the beginning, in which God created the Heavens and the Earth. In the beginning, God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And so man was made in the image and likeness of God: therein was the connection, and thereby was it established. Therein lies also the inherent dignity of all mankind. Every man, because he is made in the image and likeness of God, is more beautiful, more hounourable and dignified, more noble and good, than anything else in all of creation; furthermore, there is nothing that any man can do to take away that inherent dignity.

Yet, man did not obey God, and he gave in to the temptation of the serpent, and so the connection was broken, though his inherent dignity as a Child of God, made in His image and likeness, was never diminished. Yet, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord, to suffer death upon the Cross for the redemption of the world, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And so was the connection renewed, and it was done out of Love.

This week, we commemorate and celebrate the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ: this week, we commemorate and celebrate the renewal of that connection, and, as our friend Ryan Connors once reminded us, we must recall that it is Love that we celebrate this week. It is a celebration of God's immeasurable Love for us, a Love that humbled itself to wash the feet of its disciples; a Love that established a new commandment, that we should love as He loved us, and established a new covenant, that all who shall eat of the bread of His body and drink from the cup of His blood shall be saved; a Love that went to Calvary, that bore the lash and nail and cross, and died; and a Love that rose again from the dead, that was and is stronger than death itself. That is the Love of Him who loved us first and loves us all still today.

So we come to the final mystery of Love, the ultimate understanding of its essence: not only does God love us, not only does he show us Love and connect to us with Love, but he is Love. God is Love and Love is God, utterly and completely. So we sing on Maundy Thursday, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est, for God is caritas, He is amor. This is the one, ultimate, eternal, and absolute Truth, whence springs all truth. He who accepts Love into his life, he who defines himself by Love and binds his will to act only in accordance with Love, has accepted Christ into his life and has bound his will to the Will of God, even if he has never heard a single word of the Gospel.

Furthermore, we must understand that, because we are made in the image and likeness of God, so too do we partake in being Love. The entities that we call our “spirits” and the realm that we call the “spiritual” are entirely enveloped in Love: they are made of Love, they are sustained by Love, and they emanate Love. Yet, this reality extends also to our frail humanity, for this, too, is divine. When Christ was made incarnate, he took on the full nature of man. Hence, He reveals both the great truth of God's Love for us and what it means to be human. Only when we look upon Him can we fully understand both who God is, i.e. what Love is, and who we are called to be. When William Blake looked into the face of God, he was frightened; when I look into it, I see only Love, shining upon us all.

Love is the defining element of all creation. It is the creative force, it is the sustaining force, it is the renewing force. Schiller was wrong: it is Liebe, not Freude, that is the wondrous spark divine, and where Love's gentle wing resides shall there be a brotherhood of men. Henry van Dyke was right when he was inspired to write his hymn to Beethoven’s theme: “Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, – All who live in Love are thine; Teach us how to love each other, Lift us to the joy divine…Father-Love is reigning o’er us, Brother-Love binds man to man.”

Love is the foundation of all existence, and yet the greatest mystery of all. We all know Love within the deepest recesses of our hearts, for the recesses themselves were fashioned from it. Yet the sublime heights and profound depths of its majesty infinitely surpass the farthest reaches of human understanding. Ἀγάπη is everything, and every other sense of “Love” – ἔρως, στέργηθρον, φιλία, εὔνοια – is subsumed in it and then from it reborn. Every man is bound to every other by the liberating fetters of Love, tasked by our common identity as Children of God to love each other as He loves us. Each of us then delves deeper into the folds of Love when we express each other type of Love first founded in ἀγάπη. We ratchet tighter the chains of ἔρως with our wives, of στέργηθρον with our parents and children, of φιλία with our friends, and as each tether of Love is drawn in, our freedom grows ever greater. Our human nature is utterly enslaved to the power of Love: first, we were made in the image and likeness of Love, and then Love took on our very flesh and blood, and sacrificed that flesh and blood in the most profound act of Love, that in binding our souls to His, Love might free us from the depths of despair and set us high up in the heavens, in this empyrean, the mystical delight of which enthralls my entire heart, soul, mind, and strength.

+ In Christ,

Nathaniel Martin Campbell

On the Maundy Thursday, Anno Domini MVII

[Note: this treatise was first conceived during Holy Week 2005, almost a full year before the publication of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est, which I commend to you all as a study of this topic that far exceeds anything I could produce.]

Who's Rich and Who's Poor?

Republicans usually are painted by their opponents as so pro-business and pro-capitalism that, in worshiping the almighty Dollar, they lord it over the poor, screwing them over time and again. Yet, according to figures recently released by CNNMoney.com, the five states in the Union with the highest annual per capita income are Connecticut ($55,536), New Jersey ($51,605), Massachusetts ($51,297), Maryland ($49,324), and New York ($47,176), all five of which are "blue" states, i.e. they tend to vote Democrat.

On the other hand, the six states with the lowest annual per capita income are Mississippi ($29,582), Arkansas ($31,145), West Virginia ($31,198), Utah ($32,249), Kentucky ($32,673), and South Carolina ($32,790), all six of which are "red" states, i.e. they tend to vote Republican.

Furthermore, the campaign fundraising numbers for the first quarter of 2007 were just released, showing that Hillary Clinton raised a record-shattering $26 million in just three months, with Barack Obama just a hairsbreadth behind at $25 million (that's right - a combined total of over $50 million).

So the real question is, which is really the party of the rich fat cats and which is really the party of the poorer people?

DaH ll. 855-1048: Then went she where did sleep her lord.

Her parents, though yet distressed, are nevertheless won over by the child's wondrous pleas, and she runs early in the morning to greet Sir Heinrich with the news--which, as you can guess, he takes with his own distress. But soon he, too, is won over to the cause, and he prepares the girl for the journey to Salerno. If you are interested, the full Middle High German text can be found here, and an online knowledge database can also be found here.

Once again, any and all feedback is requested and welcomed.

Introduction & lines 1-132
Lines 133-162
Lines 163-232
Lines 233-348
Lines 349-458
Lines 459-542
Lines 543-662
Lines 663-854

855 And when they saw their daughter’s pace
So rushing on to death’s embrace,
And that she with such wisdom spoke
And human bounds of conduct broke,
Together they began to see
860 That wisdom and this reasoned plea
Could ne’er the tongue of children’s speech
Produce or demonstrate or preach.
They did confess that th’ Holy Ghost
Was of her speech the author most,
865 Who also helped Saint Nicholas,
When in the cradle laid he was,
And to him holy wisdom taught
So that he turned to God and brought
His child-like goodness innocent.
870 Their hearts bethought and minds hath kenned,
That they would ne’er nor should they her
From that discourage or deter,
Which burden on herself she’d laid:
From God was come her reason’s aid.
875 With grief their body frigid grew,
When farmer and his wife, the two,
Sat on the bed together, so
That they forgetful were in woe
From of their child love’s charity
880 Of speech and reason’s clarity.
And in that very hour’s spell
Could neither of them speak or tell
A single word, their tongues gone slack.
The spasms then began to rack
885 The mother from her sorrow’s care.
Thus sat the two together there,
Of joy denied, by pain aggrieved,
Until they then by thought perceived,
What use to them was sorrow’s ache:
890 If one could not yet from her take
Her will and her intent away,
Then for them would no goodness pay
As that they not it her refuse,
For surely they could never lose,
895 In better way their daughter leave.
Should they it with ill will receive,
It would bring them with their master
A great amount of displeasure,
And nothing else thereby would find.
900 In willing manner well-inclined
They both then gave assent by voice
That at her plan they did rejoice.

Then joy the maiden pure did take.
When scarcely come was morning’s break,
905 Then went she where did sleep her lord.
Calléd to him his bride adored,
She spoke: “My lord, asleep are ye?”
“Not I, my bride, now tell to me,
How art thou early so this day?”
910 “My lord, beset me doth dismay
And sorrow at your malady.”
He spoke: “My bride, it paineth thee:
This dost thou well me witness cite,
And God shall for it thee requite.
915 But for it can no aid appear.”
“But verily, o lord my dear,
There shall quite well for you be aid.
Since such are matters with you laid,
That help to you can one convey,
920 I’ll let you wait not e’en a day.
My lord, this have ye yet us told,
If ye should have a maiden bold,
Who gladly would death undergo,
She would to you good health bestow.
925 I will by God that virgin be:
Your life hath greater use than me.”
Then did her lord her very much
Give thanks for her intention’s touch,
And filled his eyes around their lid
930 From sorrow’s pain in secret hid.
He spoke: “My bride, indeed is death
Yet not a soft distressing breath,
As hast thou thought in mind unmoved.
Thou hast quite well to me this proved,
935 That if thou couldst, thou wouldst help me.
That is for me enough from thee.
I recognize thy purpose sweet:
Thy will is pure, thy mettle meet.
I ought from thee no more exact.
940 Thou canst for me this not enact,
Of which thou hast here spoken late.
The faith, with which thou dost me rate,
Shall God to thee reward provide.
This would my countrymen deride,
945 Whate’er from this time forth of cure
I should upon myself secure
And which for me should nothing gain,
But as it yet hath been in vain.
My bride, thou doest as children
950 Who are of hasty mind and ken:
Whate’er should come into their mind,
Be't evil or a goodness kind,
They are all quickly to it spurred,
And then regret it afterward.
955 My bride, so also doest thou.
This plan hath thine intention now:
But if one would ‘t from thee collect
So that one should then it perfect,
Then thou wilt yet regret of it.”
960 That she should still bethink a bit
And better yet, beseeched he her.
He spoke: “Thy mother and father,
They cannot well without thee go.
I, too, should not demand their woe,
965 Who have their grace e’er giv’n to me.
Whate’er the two have counseled thee,
So do, my bride belov'd and mild.”
And thereupon at this he smiled,
For little then could he infer,
970 What yet was later to occur.

So spoke the noble man to her.
Her father then and her mother
Did speak: “O lord, our master dear,
Ye have us greatly and sincere
975 Shown friendship and with honour graced:
This would not well be used—a waste—
If we with good you not repay.
Our daughter’s of intention’s way
That she will death for you endure.
980 This we allow her well and sure,
980a So hath she our approval earned.
980b She hath her thought not shortly turned:
This day today, it is the third,
That ceaselessly her plea was spurred,
So that for it we gave her leave.
Now she hath it from us received.
985 Now let through her God health bestow:
We for your sake will her forego.”
Then as his bride did offer him
Her death against his sickness grim,
And one did see her earnestness,
990 There was there suff’ring’s sad distress
And aspect sorrowed and in pain.
And then diverse depression’s strain
Arose among them, grief’s degree,
Between the child and them, the three.
995 Her father and her mother dear
Here hoisted many weeping tear:
Them weeping caused great many woes
For their dear daughter’s death's repose.
Now, too, her lord began to weigh
1000 And further think in such a way
On this, the child’s devotion true,
And misery besieged him, too,
That he began to weep severe,
And doubted much, of this unclear,
1005 Whether it better were begun
Or if it should be left undone.
From fear the maid, too, wept her plaint:
She though his courage lost and faint.
So were they all of joy denied.
1010 The plan of none could none abide.

At last their lord then fixèd firm
His mind, poor Heinrich the infirm,
And then began he to express
To them, the three, his thankfulness
1015 For loyalty and good bestowed,
(The maid—her spirits overflowed,
That gladly in the plan he shared),
And for Salerno he prepared
As fast as he could see to it.
1020 Whate’er, too, did the maid befit
Made ready was at quickened pitch:
A pretty mare and clothing rich,
With which she ne’er before had dressed.
‘Twas ermine, samite, sable best,
1025 Indeed the best that one could find,
The raiment of the maiden kind.

Now who could tell in full extent
The heartache and the cruel lament,
The mother’s shocking, sharp duress,
1030 And, too, the father’s deep distress?
It would indeed for them have been
A wretched, woeful parting keen,
When they had let their dear child go
Away to death, yet healthy so,
1035 And then to see her nevermore,
Except that softened was their sore
Distress by God’s pure goodness kind,
From which indeed the heart and mind
Came to the child so young to know,
1040 That gladly would she death’s way go.
And it had come without their say:
Therefore from them was put away
Ev’ry distress and sorrow’s plea,
For otherwise would wondrous be,
1045 That broken not were they in heart.
To joy was turned their troubled part,
So that they suffered no distress
Then at their daughter’s death’s oppress.

Contra Resurrectionem Iesu: James Cameron and the Continued Attack on Christianity

It seems that James Cameron has found something bigger than the Titanic: apparently, he's found the REAL tomb of Jesus, from which He was never resurrected and in which He was buried with his wife, Mary Magdalene. In fact, Cameron is so convinced that he's going to do a documentary showing once and for all that the largest religion on Earth is, in fact, a complete fabrication. (Click here for a good critique of the argument by Dr. Ben Witherington; also, a humorous take can be found here.)

But why should we expect anything less? The claims of Christianity have been under sustained attack for years by secularists, and this is just their latest gambit to try debunk it (one wonders when they'll start to understand that Christianity isn't exactly dying out). After the monstrous atrocities that the last century saw on account of anti-Semitism, Western society has at least tried its best to rid itself of that particular evil. Yet, anti-Christian sentiments are alive and well, fanned it seems from every corner of the liberal intelligentsia.

What's funny is that, while such anti-Christian fervor is rigidly protected and promoted by elements in Western society like the ACLU, any sentiment against Muslims that even begins to match its intensity is immediately decried as ranging from "insensitive" to outright "bigotry". Imagine if James Cameron tried to produce a film claiming to have archaeological evidence that Mohammed didn't really write the Qu'ran: the Islamic world would erupt in violence and chaos in comparison with which last year's ruckus over some Danish cartoons would pale. And the cries of outrage would not just be limited to Muslims; I can already see editorials in The New York Times decrying Cameron's blatant (and even bigoted) anti-Muslim views (compare, for example, the reaction to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ).

Yet, this latest, dare-I-say bigoted attack against Christianity will pass by, and if we're lucky, The New York Times will relegate their praise of the documentary's merits to the Arts and Entertainment section.

Ne Obliviscaris: Alma Shippy and the Racial Integration that Nobody Noticed

I just came across this wonderful story on CNN.com about a young man in 1952 named Alma Shippy, who became the first black man ever to attend Warren Wilson Junior College in Swannanoa, North Carolina — and he did it without a court order, without armed escorts, without mass protests and violence. It's a story that tells us a lot about what really matters when it comes to tearing down the hateful barriers of racism that divide our country. It was no militant march on Warren Wilson's campus that integrated it, no students striking and taking over the college's buildings, no rallies met by police with attack dogs and fire hoses. Instead, it was the realization by the administrators of the school that it was Alma's shared humanity as a creature of God and not his skin color that dignified him, and it was the compassion of the school's students that they realized how much they really had in common with this unassuming young man. Alma Shippy should be an example to us all: he didn't walk around wearing his race on his sleeve and demanding reparations for the discrimination he had faced in life. Rather, he quietly but confidently taught in the Sunday school at his local parish and let the Truth of God's Word and Love, by which all men are made equal and set free, live in his heart, shunning the bitter enmity engendered by racism's deprecation in favor of the peace that comes with accepting Christ's message.

SWANNANOA, North Carolina (AP) -- There is no monument to Alma Shippy.

No plaque describes how, in 1952, the shy teenager packed a bag of clothes, caught a ride in a friend's pickup truck and walked into history on the campus of Warren Wilson Junior College.

It's an obscure vignette in civil rights history. Shippy not only was Warren Wilson's first black student, but one of the few to attend any segregated college or junior college by invitation -- and not by court order and armed escort.

A core of Shippy's family and friends -- some of whom paved his way and some whose path was paved by him -- want wider attention for what they see as a bright moment of brotherhood in one of the South's darkest eras.

"There were no dogs, no guns. He didn't have to be shot at. There was nobody that was beaten up, nobody died because he came here," says Rodney Lytle, a 1974 Warren Wilson graduate and now the school's multicultural adviser. "And that -- that story -- that is beautiful!"

And it didn't happen by chance.

Shippy's presence was the culmination of a decade of work by leaders of Warren H. Wilson Vocational Junior College and Associated Schools, created in 1942 from the merger and expansion of two high schools run by the Presbyterian Church.

Arthur Bannerman, born in Africa to Presbyterian missionaries, was named the school's new president. With new Dean Henry Jensen, he opened the school's doors to a variety of outsiders, starting with two Japanese-American girls from an internment camp in Arizona.

They were missionaries, says Warren Wilson graduate Marvin Lail, with a philosophy of "not just telling you but showing you."

Bannerman began writing to church-connected schools for blacks, seeking a student who might want to come to Warren Wilson. It wasn't until the spring of 1952 that the men learned of Alma Shippy, a 17-year-old who had befriended some Warren Wilson students in local churches where he helped teach Sunday school and Bible classes.

Lail, then 16 years old, was deputized to walk across the Swannanoa Valley to Buckeye Cove -- "truly on the other side of the tracks" -- where Shippy lived with his grandmother, Ludie White. He invited Shippy to speak at the campus evening prayer service.

Jensen watched Shippy's brief address, and afterward joined Lail in asking whether he might like to attend Warren Wilson. Then, as now, students help with their expenses by working at the school. Shippy, who had no money for college, said yes.

"I think he was really taken aback that white men or peers -- I was just a boy -- would come and invite him to a white college," Lail said.

There was a hurdle: The college had one dormitory for male students and Shippy would have to live there. Jensen called a meeting of the 55 Sunderland Hall residents.

Jensen "was a very smart man and was a good speaker and (said), 'We're going to integrate the college and we want it to be sooner rather than later, because it's coming down the road and everything will be integrated,"' Lail recalled.

Listening was Billy Edd Wheeler, about to start his final year at Warren Wilson. He was brilliant and athletic, a popular campus leader who later became an award-winning country music songwriter.

But he knew what it meant to be a misfit -- born poor and illegitimate in a West Virginia coal camp and sent to Warren Wilson four years earlier to appease an unloving stepfather. The question of accepting this stranger struck at his heart.

"I had that ingrained in me, that I could never be better than anybody else," Wheeler said. "I think that was part of it, being able to empathize."

Lail, too, was moved by a childhood spent in the company of black sharecroppers on his family's farm who cared for him as his mother began a slide into mental illness.

"They were very good to me, fed me. I thought, 'Why do we treat these people so bad?"' he said. "I thought, 'This should be changed."'

The vote was 54-1 to accept Shippy. He began classes at Warren Wilson Junior College in the fall of 1952.

Support from classmates

After the first few days, his presence drew little attention on a campus that already housed students from China, Cuba, Europe and South America, Wheeler said.

"It sort of settled into just a routine of life and you didn't think much about it," Wheeler said. "But for the people here in the valley, it was a pretty big deal."

At night, the college phone rang through to Bannerman's home. His 11-year-old daughter, Mary -- now Wheeler's wife -- fielded a couple of calls offering the traditional slur for whites who befriended blacks.

It was "scary, and proud," she recalled. "I can wear that badge of honor."

Classmates did, too. Shippy later told the Asheville Citizen-Times about going to an ice cream parlor in the Swannanoa community with a group of students.

"They sat me in the middle of the booth and that just did not work," he recalled in a 1994 interview. "(The manager) said, 'We can't serve you. You can get it to go and take it outside.' I had a hard time convincing the students not to tear up the place."

Instead, they all left.

The college tried to downplay Shippy's presence. Bannerman was friends with the editor of the Asheville newspaper and asked him to keep it quiet "for safety, for Alma's safety and the students' safety," Mary Bannerman Wheeler said.

The first newspaper story about the school's integration appeared in September 1955. By then, Warren Wilson had five black students and its first black graduate, Georgia Powell, who had earned her associate's degree that spring. And by then, Shippy was long gone; he left after one year, to make some money for his family, his brother Michael said.

He joined the Army, then moved to Indiana, where he married and fathered two girls. Except for occasional correspondence with a few friends, Shippy vanished from Warren Wilson life until 1987.

Reconnecting with campus

Then, his marriage over, he returned to the Swannanoa Valley to care for his aging grandmother, going to work at a state-run long term care facility. He again became active in his church and enthusiastically backed local youth sports teams, sitting behind the umpire at Little League games so he could cheer for both sides.

That's where Rodney Lytle first encountered the stranger who had a silent, but major impact on his life. A friend nudged him and pointed to Shippy. "He's one of you," she said.

Lytle was confused. He had two cousins who attended Warren Wilson in 1959 and knew blacks had gone there for years, well before it became a four-year college in 1967, well before he met his wife there, earned his degree, got his job.

But he had never seen this older man or heard the name Alma Shippy. He walked over and struck up a conversation, "and from that moment on we were friends."

Lytle became Shippy's champion, determined not only to commemorate his accomplishment, but to help him live a more comfortable life.

Though Warren Wilson had long required students to complete service projects to graduate, no one had done anything to help its first black alumnus.

A pair of students organized a crew to fix Shippy's house. In 1994, the college included Shippy in the centennial celebration of its original farm school. And eight years later, on the 50th anniversary of his enrollment, the board of trustees passed a proclamation honoring Shippy, Bannerman, Lail, Jensen and all those involved.

Shippy had prepared a three-page speech, but when he stood to read it, the pages rattled in his shaking hands, Lytle said. He took his seat again and began to cry.

"I can't say anything," he told Lytle. "I'm overwhelmed."

In early December, his friends gathered once more, crowding into the college chapel for a memorial service, a few days after Shippy's death at 72. They are determined that it will not be the last time the school marks his memory.

One former classmate has proposed a scholarship in Shippy's name. Shippy's family, Lytle and other college officials are discussing a permanent memorial -- a marker, or perhaps a tree outside Sunderland Hall -- for Shippy and all those who welcomed him into their lives not because of a court order, but as a matter of fairness and faith.

"This group of people at Warren Wilson College was open-minded and willing to accept Alma not as a colored guy, like they called us then," Michael Shippy said. "They accepted him as a man."

Advenerunt nobis dies poenitentiae ad redimenda peccata, ad salvandas animas

In diem cinerum Anno Domini MMVII

Today, we begin again our annual journey of fasting and prayer, to prepare ourselves for the ultimate mysteries of the life of Christ. Today our foreheads are anointed with the sign of the cross, fashioned with the black dust of ashes. Today is a day of confession, a day of penitence, and a day of mortality. We confess today our sins to God, the sins which every single one of us has committed, abundantly and grievously, against Him and against our neighbors, against His Love and against the love we owe to Him and our neighbors, against His Grace which we he has so mercifully sent to us but that we have so brazenly rejected. In donning today the ashes, the sign of penitence, the sign of our profound poverty as sinful human beings, we approach the altar of God, marked in our contrition. It is a penance that we owe to God, “for the fierce anger of the Lord is not turned back from us,” (Jeremiah 4:8). Therefore, “O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes,” (Jeremiah 6:26), and “O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved!” (Jeremiah 4:14). Finally, today is a day of our mortality. Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris— Remember, Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return. Indeed, today we remember that we men are mortal, destined to quit this tired life. All too soon will our bodies turn to ash, and so with ash do we anoint ourselves, recalling also that these frail bodies perched on the razor’s edge between life and death are not our own, nor is the life with which we animate them, but that we have this life only by the grace of the Creator.

Our confession today is also the confession of the death of Christ. We take the ashes today in the form of the cross, professing thereby that it was Jesus Christ who hung from the Cross, and that it was our very sins that nailed Him to that tree. We lay ourselves penitent, as did the Magdalene, before His feet, and as we anoint ourselves with the filthy ashes and dust of the earth, so we anoint Him with the ointment from the precious jar. We remember today that, as man is mortal, so, too, Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered death on that Cross. His body lay, stiff and lifeless, in the frigid tomb, as, too, shall our bodies at the end of our mortal toil.

Yet, today is also a day for the remission of sins, a day for the salvation of souls. This confession we make, this penitence we perform, this mortality of which we are so starkly reminded, are not the end of this day. No, they are but the beginning, for we confess our sins and repent of them, that God might have mercy upon our souls, quia multum misericors est dimittere peccati nostri Deus noster— because Our God is much merciful to remit our sins. We recall also that, though it is our sins that pin Our Lord to the Noble Tree, it is yet His Love by which three days thence He burst the door of that dark tomb, leaving it empty for all the world to see that by death He had destroyed death and returned unto us eternal life. Indeed, humiliated by our own wretchedness, we shall yet be lifted up: we know that Our Redeemer liveth, and that at the latter day he shall stand upon the earth. So, too, we know that our own mortal bodies, though they shall now wither in death, yet shall they, too, be raised up at the latter day. The ashes we wear today as a sign of our own mortality have yet been sprinkled with that Holy Water in which we were baptized, in which we have already died to sin and been reborn, indelibly marked with the sign of the Risen Christ.

As mournfully as we walk through the valley of tears when, penitent and lowly, our heads receive that mark, we yet approach today the altar not once, but twice. When we come again to the Lord’s Table, we come to receive His True Body and True Blood, not dead but immanently alive, the bread and wine become the immortal flesh of the God-Made-Man. Even as is come to us today the day of penitence, so, too, is come to us today, as is come every day in the Eucharist, the day-spring from on high, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet in the way of peace.

The Peace of the Lord be with you all, my dear readers, and take heart today that, though we are unworthy that the Lord should come under our roofs, yet he has spoken the Word that our souls might be healed.

Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum

That's right - they've done it again. After the smash-hit success of Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis (Peter Needham's brilliant translation of the first book in the Harry Potter series), and of Ἃρειος Ποτὴρ καὶ ἡ φιλοσόφου λίθος (Andrew Wilson's equally brilliant, though far more difficult, Greek translation), comes Needham's attempt at the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The Times offers a review that borders on the droll, though nonetheless reminds us how wonderful it is to be able to read Harry Potter in the language that he's really meant for - Latin. (For those of you who don't know, this is a specialty of mine, having written [and rewritten with successive books] my expansive high school senior thesis on the classical connections, both linguistic and literary, in Rowling's spectacular creation).

Now, when I sit down at the beginning of the summer to reread all 6 books in advance of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the 7th and final book, on July 21, I can read the first two in my preferred language.