Replies to Marlow's Passionate Shepherd (A Poem)

• What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me)
  Leave my freedom to live with thee?
  What thing in nature have I missed?
  I’m an environmentalist.

• Sit on some rocks? Rlly? Alot?
  OMG dude thts not even hot
  You can see sheep if you want, well
  I look for signal for my cell.

• Roses! You are minority!
  But God takes my priority.
  (Sigh in grief, my friend, moan and groan
  Welcome to this lady’s friend zone.)

• A gown made of the finest wool
  Bright white, and light, and yet quite dull
  This is not right for my station
  I crave the latest sensation

• These pleasures will not make me move
  You’ll learn you've got a lot to prove
  You think you can so easily
  Get your grubby hands on me?

…


Perhaps the shepherd swains will sing
For the delight of each morning
Far will the shepherd have to move
In search of things resembling love...

Another Reason to Kill Christian Music

If there is one thing that I am convinced of in Christian music, it is that most songs currently filed under the genre do not deserve the label. The War and the Roses of the Christian Life deserve both the funeral dirges and the drinking songs, the dances and the raps, the classical and the rock songs, the folk songs and yes *sigh* even the country songs.

Amongst the errors of most songs found on such stations as K-Love is that it remains only about a small corner of the life of a person who partakes in the life of the Church. In tagging themselves the "positive and encouraging" station, K-Love not only remains in the image of my mind a face with a plastic grin, but has in my opinion, succeeded in completely undermining the rough strength of a religion which declares war on the self. In short, Christian music, as the label is today, undermines the truth of Christianity.

Fellow Bad Catholic Marc Barnes of Franciscan University says it like this: Christian Music sucks because of five things:

1. Writing a “Christian” song reduces Christianity to a modifying adjective.
2. Music is already Christian.
3. “If you label me you negate me.”
4. As a label, Christianity becomes an excuse for mediocrity.
5. “Christian” music isn't Christian.

These topic sentences of Barnes' exquisite essay/ blog post highlight elements of the modern Christian Music community that he argues are not fit to bear the name of Christ. I myself agree with him. However, I would like to add a sixth reason to kill Christian music.

The Christianity of the Artist does not make the product Christian.

Let me tell you a story:
I was 15 years old and sitting in English 10 Honors listening to far-too-smart 15 year old girls expounding upon the feminist themes found within Sophocles' Antigone. I, being me, reasoned that because a fifth century BC Greek writer wasn't particularly interested in feminist themes, then the feminist themes found in Antigone were not intentional and therefore not relevant to discuss.
Boy did I reason wrong. 

The ensuing storm of protest following my observation ended with my making enemies with half the class, and the teacher literally handing me a paper on the independence of the writing from the writer.

It may have been ugly, but it taught me a lesson: that even the best intentions of any artist can fail to produce a good product. To convey meaning through any art form takes skill, not simply good intentions. Through music none the less.

One of my friend's excuses for modern Christian music is that it was made with good intentions. I counter with this: that good music must take more skill than this. To write a good song is to carve a sculpture, not to paint a hasty sign. Good songs are poems, not snippets of 'encouraging' Bible verses and plastic smiles of guitar strumming. God loves us, to be sure, but to convey the concreteness of that Love takes more than repeating "Oh how He Loves us". It takes Poetry, the successful conveyance of truth through word, like Mumford and Sons' "Lover's Eyes": 

"But do not ask the price I paid,
I must live with my quiet rage,
Tame the ghosts in my head,
That run wild and wish me dead.
Should you shake my ash to the wind
Lord, forget all of my sins
Or let me die where I lie
Neath the curse of my lover's eyes."

Or, for the matter, the ever-present Psalms:

O God my God, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me?
    Far from my salvation are the words of my sins.
O my God, I shall cry by day, and thou wilt not hear:
    and by night, and it shall not be reputed as folly in me.
But thou dwellest in the holy place,
    the praise of Israel.
In thee have our fathers hoped:
    they have hoped, and thou hast delivered them.

 That is my reason for disliking today's 'Christian' music. Carrying of the name Christian may create problems as Mr. Barnes says, but I believe in the end, it is that they carry it ill.

The Medal of St. Benedict (A Prayer)

Crux s. patris Benedicti 

The Cross of our holy father Benedict

Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur! 

May we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death!

Crux sancta sit mihi lux

Let the Holy Cross be my light

Non draco sit mihi dux

Let not the dragon be my guide

Vade retro satana

Step back Satan

Numquam suade mihi vana

Never tempt me with vain things

Sunt mala quae libas

What you offer me is evil

Ipse venena bibas

You drink the poison yourself.

Being a Bad Catholic

To a person not deeply immersed in the Catholic-nerd culture, the tagline of my blog must seem very odd.

Dear non Catholic-nerd, Allow me to explain why I, and the rest of the Church Militant, are bad Catholics.

Besides being a less-than subtle nod to Marc Barnes' excellent blog on Patheos called (you guessed it) BadCatholic, this small two-word label is also a reference to another excellent bad Catholic, and a Theological and Philosophical expression at the heart of the Catholic religion and Catholic Theology.

In the famous interview of Walker Percy by himself (Ok, ok...maybe not so famous), Mr. Percy asked himself what kind of Catholic he considered himself to be. He answered himself, "Bad."
Now, I have not read much Walker Percy, but after reading that, I don't feel like I need much more persuading. It's on my to-do list, folks.

What Mr. Percy was hinting at was not simply a quirky remark. His acknowledgement that he is a "bad" Catholic recognizes what I have seen as a central theme in Catholicism, one that I think not many people really get.

Catholicism, in my experience, is at its heart a gradient of perfection. Where man may be imperfect in many ways, he is measured by the perfection of God. St. Thomas in his famous Summa Theologica (ok, ok, probably not so famous to anyone but a philosophy nerd. Cut me a little slack) says this:

"All created perfections are in God. Hence He is spoken of as universally perfect, because He lacks not" ~Summa Question 1, Article 2

 That phrase: "Universally Perfect" used to describe God--and in doing so, describing also the perfect man, which is Christ--, is also what the word "Catholic" really means:

catholic (adj.) 

... from Church Latin catholicus "universal, general," from Greek katholikos, from phrase kath' holou "on the whole, in general," from kata "about" + genitive of holos "whole" (courtesy of www.etymonline.com / my emphasis)

 Where we normally use the term to describe a whole Church, a church of all nations, to describe a person as Catholic is to describe them as "whole" or "universal", which is to actually describe a person as perfect, for perfection is to be whole.
Using that end, that description, there is only one person in this world that can be described as such: Christ. In being perfect, Christ was whole, Christ was Universally human, perfectly human. And in being so, He can be described as Catholic. And of course, this Catholic Church is assembled around Him. The root word for Church comes from Greek as well:

ecclesiastic (adj. 

...from ekkalein "to call out," from ek "out" (see ex-) + kalein "to call" (Also courtesy of www.etymonline.com)

 So, drawing conclusions, the Catholic Church is a universal calling or gathering of people centered upon somebody that is, in themselves, universally perfect.

Now, this perfection that belongs to Christ is, at its heart, infinite. Think back to Pre-Calc in High School. In a graph, an asymtote that is located at 1 will come as close to 1 as the human mind can comprehend, but yet will never reach 1. It will come to 0.9999999999, but it can never be said to be 1.

This gradient that the line creates is kind of like how holiness is. We, as Catholics, strive to become like Christ, to be truly "universally perfect". Now, as humans, we will never be perfect on our own. We mess up, we fall. But just like that asymtote, we will try to reach that number 1.
So Walker Percy said it right when he said we are Bad Catholics. Anything that is imperfect cannot legitimately be called perfect, just as 0.9999999 cannot be called 1. But as we are in the process of being perfected in this Catholic Church, as we are "called out", we enter into the Catholicism of Christ. Just as the asymtote of the line cannot be called 1, it comes so close that we call it 1 anyway.
Well...that metaphor may be a heresy, I'm not sure.

Anyways, we're not perfect like Christ, so we enter into the Church in order to share in his Perfection, to grow nearer and nearer that 1 in order to eventually become it. Thus are we Bad Catholics: not perfect yet!

Pax! Please comment and correct me where I need it!

Making A Mess/ Pilgrimage

            What World Youth Day impressed on me the most is this: that Saints are messy creatures. The Holy Father, in his address to Argentinian youth at the Cathedral of St. Sebastian famously said this: 

“What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess.”

            Obligingly, we made a mess of Copacabana beach, we made a mess of Rio de Janeiro, and ultimately, we made a mess of ourselves. Pilgrimage does that. (I have been carrying a fierce Brazilian cold for the past three weeks that doesn’t seem to want to leave). Pilgrimages are full of sand, sore feet, and sickness. They are not fun. Now, it is time that I brought the mess home with me.

            That is the nature of a pilgrimage: not only to make a mess, but to do so to reach a destination. We made messes of ourselves getting there and back again. We made messes because the destination was worth it. And World Youth Day, we found, was all the more amazing for the mess.

            But returning home, I find that the nature of a pilgrimage may be to reach a destination, but the object of a pilgrimage is to make us realize that life is simply a bigger, broader pilgrimage, one that is directed towards heaven. And what the Pope has been saying this whole time is that we need to strap on our spiritual hiking boots and get mobile. This has meant many things over the past month or so, whether it be actually giving to the poor, or leading the Rosary when no one would, or making an effort to pray the Liturgy of the Hours once in awhile. It means that I will make an effort to dress nice for Mass, make an effort to go to Confession more often, make an effort; to make a mess of myself for the sake of Him who has made a mess of himself for me. 

            It means that we can do something for Jesus that we never thought to do before, to go places we never thought to go, to become someone we never thought we could. Not, indeed, to travel the world, but to travel the field of Faith, to set out, to do something courageous for once... for Him who has done everything for us. Saints are messy creatures because they have hiked very far to reach their destination. They may be caked with spiritual mud and dust, but they have gotten so far, and they have reached Heaven.

            A few weeks ago, I was talking to our local Deacon after mass, and I was saying how disappointed I was that I did not have the privilege of traveling with anyone from our diocese. He turned and looked me in the eye. He said to me “It was your turn”.

            My friends, my turn is over, now it is yours.

St. Patrick's Rune (A Prayer)

At Tara, in this fateful hour,
I call on Heaven with all its power,
And the Sun with its brightness,
And the Snow with its whiteness,
And the Fire with all the strength it hath,
And the Lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the Winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the Sea with its deepness,
And the Rocks with their steepness,
And the Earth with its starkness.
All these, I place
By God's Almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of Darkness.

On Pilgrimage

During the last few weeks, I have had the privilege of attending World Youth Day 2013, in Rio de Janeiro. I had an amazing time! And lately, people have been asking me a lot about it. Many have never heard of World Youth Day. And while I don't blame them in the least, I find it very hard to describe the whole thing?

What is World Youth Day?

I would love to simply show them pictures and be done with it.
World Youth Day is this:

Photo by: http://thecatholicbeat.sacredheartradio.com

And World Youth Day is this:

Photo by: D. L. Piscoya

But the thing is, pictures are worth a thousand words, but not everybody reads them.

First and foremost, World Youth Day is an extraordinary pilgrimage. And a pilgrimage, my friends, is a tricky dame. It is so very easy, for example, to be a pilgrim, but look like a tourist. Both travel the world, and both carry cameras, and both see the beautiful sights. But the more I was on pilgrimage, the more I found myself meditating on what it is to be a pilgrim. What I discovered is this:

To be a pilgrim is to have a destination.

• Where a tourist says, "Life isn't about the destination, it's about the journey", a pilgrim will always say the opposite. A pilgrimage, such as the famous Camino de Santiago, is more than simply a journey, but a journey to a place, such as The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela,  and it is not the journey that is important, just that the destination is reached. Whatever that destination is, it is a place that is special, a place where the pilgrim in question can echo the words of St. Peter, "It is good for us to be here". My own pilgrimage destination was Rio de Janeiro, which was made special because of the presence of the Holy Father, and of 3.5 million faithful.

To be a pilgrim is to pray.

• Not only does a pilgrim have a destination, but a pilgrim has a purpose. Many pilgrims have a certain favor to ask of God or of a special saint. Many simply want to enrich their prayer life. But the unique thing about a pilgrim is that he or she prays. Where a tourist says "ah", the pilgrim says "amen". In my own experience, what is so incredibly special about being on pilgrimage is that, not only do you get to go see the beautiful churches, but you also get to participate in their beauty. For instance, we celebrated Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in Sao Paulo, Brasil, which happens to rank among the most visited tourist sites in the world. We also had Mass at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Rio, and many other beautiful churches!

Still, with these two definers, the pilgrim seems incomplete. There is nothing too special about going to a certain shrine to pray (of course, there is everything special, but I'll get to that). Why not simply fly in for a day, and fly out? Hence, the third thing that I have found separates a pilgrim from a tourist.

To be a pilgrim is to suffer.

• One of the many things I did on my pilgrimage to Rio was hurt my feet. I wore Vibrams most days, and we walked about 5 miles every day. We suffered rain, crowds, and really, really bad bathrooms. And we do this because we are pilgrims. Because Pilgrims are not simply on a journey to 'find ourselves' or some stupid new age crap. We suffer, we pray, and we get to our destination because we wish to change ourselves. In the fires of suffering, all the shit that we have stored inside ourselves comes to the top (everybody who suffers gets grumpy, you notice), and when it does that, we are able to wipe off the slag.

The purpose of World Youth Day, and the purpose of any pilgrimage, is not only to change yourself, but by changing yourself, to change the world. Here are the words of the Holy Father:

Your young hearts want to build a better world...But one question remains: Where do we start? Whom do we ask to begin this work? Some people once asked Mother Teresa of Calcutta what needed to change in the Church, and which wall should they start with? They asked her, where is the starting point? And she replied, you and I are the starting point! This woman showed determination! She knew where to start. And today I make her words my own and I say to you: shall we begin? Where? With you and me! Each one of you, once again in silence, ask yourself: if I must begin with myself, where exactly do I start? Each one of you, open his or her heart, so that Jesus may tell you where to start.

For me, and I think for all in attendance at World Youth Day, it started with us, and that pilgrimage.

In the end, it turns out that all our lives are pilgrimages, and each little one we take to some shrine or some Catechetical site simply reminds us of that reality: that we pray and suffer our way to the ultimate destination: heaven. And that pilgrimage is always waiting for us. It starts here.