Faith Filled Friday: All Saints Day at St. Rita Parish

We had a wonderful All Saints Day evening Mass at my parish, St. Rita of Cascia Church on Staten Island, NY.  Our pastor, Fr. Eugene is a great collector of relics, and he had received permission to display a goodly amount throughout the church.  Cardinal Timothy Dolan, our Archbishop, came by to celebrate the All Saints Day Mass and bless the relic cabinets.  It was a wonderful Mass.  Everything, the service, the incense, the music, the choir, the entrance and closing processions, the homily.  Cardinal Dolan has a great sense of humor.  It was one of the most perfect Masses I have ever attended.

First the entrance procession.

 

Now there are nine relic cabinets throughout the church, each having a dozen or more relics inside.  Here what the cabinets look like.

 

Besides the reliquary of a particular saint, a small statue of that saint might also be beside it.  I’m going to give you a few pictures of saints that are dear to me, mostly saints from the Dominican Order.  The date in the plaque is their feast day.

Let’s start with St. Dominic de Guzman, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Martin de Porres..

 

Saints Patrick and Frances of Assisi

Saint Augustine of Hippo and his mother St. Monica, displayed together.

And for my son, St. Matthew the Evangelist.

One cabinet has only three reliquaries in it, but they are of the upmost importance.  They are from the life of Jesus Christ.

If you can’t read the plaques, they identify “From the Wood of the Cross of Our Lord,” “Relics from the Crib, Rock of the Agony, Column of Flagellation, Lance, and Tomb of Our Lord,” and “From the Holy Seamless Tunic of Our Lord.”

Here are some pictures from the Mass.

Finally, one with the Cardinal blessing one of the cabinets.

All you holy men and women pray for us!

Baseball and Religion by Cardinal Timothy Dolan

Earlier this week Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of NY had a splendid article in the NY Post  comparing religion and baseball.  The occasion of course was the coinciding of the start of the baseball season and with the holidays of Easter and Passover.  Let me quote it extensively with my commentary.  Here’s Cardinal Dolan.

 

For Jews and Christians, the arrival of spring allows us to observe the towering feasts of Passover and Easter, and the season of the year closely mirrors the religious seasons as well.

 

With spring comes light, warmth, the renewal of nature, fresh growth, and the end of the chill and darkness of winter. With Passover and Easter come God’s deliverance from sin, death and oppression, the promise of new life and revival. And with spring comes another potent force in our culture: baseball!

 

As Vin Scully, the boy from the Bronx and alumnus of Fordham, the legendary baseball announcer – – whose life I was just honored to celebrate with a Memorial Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral – – used to comment, “Nothing tells us spring is here more than the sound of the crack of the bat, the ball hitting the leather of the glove, or landing with a plop on the green grass sodden with a soft April rain.”

Vin Scully is possibly the greatest announcer in baseball’s history.  Sixty-seven years he served as the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, but also announced many World Series games.  He lived to Ninety-Four and was a devout Catholic throughout his entire life.  It’s not a surprise Dolan would mention him.  His Eminence continues.

 

Many have commented on the parallels between religion and baseball, which is good to recall now that our Mets and Yankees have returned, and we celebrate the “high holy days” for Jews and Christians.

 

Both have a keen sense of ritual and tradition, reminding the player, the fan, and the believer that we’re part of something beyond us, something that fascinated generations before us.

 

We hold up heroes, whose prowess was inspirational, whether Moses and David, Mary and Joseph, and the saints of Catholicism, or the Babe and Lou, the Scooter

and the Yankee Clipper, Mantle and Maris, Seaver and Koosman, Jeter and Judge: Rules are important for both baseball and religion. People of faith call this “morality,” as we too have foul lines, a strike zone, and a judgement “safe” or “out.” (Okay, you can “steal” on the field, but not in religion!) Both also count on trained and fair umpires – – read rabbis and priests – – to call “fair or foul.”

I’ve seen a number of similarities drawn between Catholicism and baseball, but I never saw anyone mention the baseball “saint” parallel.  The “Yankee Clipper” is a nickname for Joe DiMaggio, which I think is particularly apt to be referred to as a saint.  Recall the Simon and Garfunkel song, “Mrs. Robinson,” with the lyric, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio/A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”  St. Joe DiMaggio!  

The article goes on.

 

Then there’s the sense of timelessness, as neither baseball, Judaism, nor Catholicism keep a clock. It’s as if we’re part of the eternal, lifted from the hum-drum schedule of ordinary life, absorbed into an event that has no dependence upon the wristwatch. For that reason, both also require a sense of patience and anticipatory waiting, as we look

forward to an ultimate victory.

 

Team play is essential to both. In the sport, a dazzling pitcher will still confess his dependence upon stellar fielding and productive batters. So, Jews and Catholics form communities, teams, as we depend upon one another for prayer, support and encouragement when we may be in a slump, good example.

Both of those, the timelessness and the interconnected fabric, are great parallels.

 

Religion and baseball both have errors. People of belief call them sins. They hurt us and the team, and can end up in defeat.

I never thought about errors as sins!  That’s funny.

 

Judaism and Catholicism both have a start and a finish, which happen to be the same place. We Catholics, and our fellow Christian brothers and sisters, rejoice that Jesus, our Savior, has conquered death itself, as He rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday. As George Carlin famously noted in his skit comparing baseball and football, the batter starts at home plate and yearns to score by returning there; the believer comes from God and is invited to return to Him for all eternity.

 

The two – – religion and baseball – – rely on hope. For people of faith, we hold fast to God coming through, for our repentance, His mercy, and a second chance. And for baseball, well, there is always the next inning, tomorrow, the rally, or even, as Brooklyn Dodger fans famously repeated, “Wait ‘til next year!” the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus would agree with Yogi, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

 

On and on I could go – – as both baseball and religion at times do! – – but you understand: baseball, religion, springtime . . . all similar.

 

See you at Yankee Stadium or Citi field; or, even better, at the synagogue or the parish church!

Superb!  Cardinal Dolan missed one last similarity, which I think refers more specifically to Catholicism than to current Judaism or most Protestantism.  Baseball and Catholicism both have a strong sense of liturgy, a ritual which governs the life of worship and the ceremony of baseball.  The liturgy for Catholics is of course the Mass:

“At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 47).

We perform the ritual every day in devotion to our Lord, but within the Mass there are interior rituals as well: the Introductory Rite, the Liturgy of the Word, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and the dismissal.  In baseball we perform the ritual of pitching and hitting.  Each inning is a new set of rituals, each batter starts a new ritual, and each pitch is a ritual in itself.  Baseball is the most Catholic of games!

Personal Note: My Temporary Promise as a Lay Dominican

Last week on Friday, March 25^th, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, at a special Mass at St. Catherine of Siena Church in uptown Manhattan, on the same day Pope Francis consecrated Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart ofMary, I committed my temporary promise—sometimes referred to as the first promise—as a member of the Lay Dominicans. 

Of course many people have a number of questions.  What are the Lay Dominicans?  What does a first promise commit to?  How many more promises are there?  My wife who is Jewish has absolutely no idea what this is about.  So when I came home, she asked, “So what do I call you now, Father?”  LOL.  No I will not be a priest.  My religious name is Br. John Catherine of Siena.  And it’s not just non Catholics that don’t understand.  Even experienced Catholics, while they usually understand religious orders, have no understanding of Lay Orders.  About six or seven months ago I posted a very detailed understanding of religious and lay orders, especially of the Dominican branch.  I think it’s worthwhile to read it if you only have some or no knowledge of religious and lay orders.    

So just like religious order of the Dominicans, the Lay Order has the same gradations of profession: postulant, novice, first promise, and final promise.  From postulant to novice is a minimum of six months; from novice to first promise is a minimum of a year; from first promise to final promise is a minimum of three years.  Because of Covid, which interrupted my progression by two years, it was three years when I was received as a novice.

Let me post the part of the Mass which performed the ceremony of the first promise.  I’ll also make indistinguishable the names so as to protect privacy over the internet.  The Mass was a normal Mass for the Solemnity feast day with the ceremony inserted after the Gospel reading.  Some terms here up front.  The Candidate is me; the Lay Leader is the leader of our Lay Dominican chapter, who in this case was the Vice President of the chapter (the president could not make it), and the Celebrant is the presiding priest who performed the Mass, Fr. Joseph Allen, O.P. 

 

GOSPEL:                                                  Lk: 1:26-38  

 

ALL SIT (except for the Candidate and Lay Leader)

 

EXAMINATION:

            Lay Leader approaches the altar with Novice.

            Lay Leader: What do you seek?

            Candidate: God’s mercy and yours.
            All: Thanks be to God.

Return to seats

HOMILY

After the Homily, only the Candidate approaches with a candle in hand.  The celebrant will light the candle from the altar candle.

PRIEST:  Dearly Beloved brother, you have been
            consecrated to God by water and the spirit; are

            you resolved to be more closely bound to Christ

            and the service of the Church by a new title of

            profession of evangelical life?

Candidate: I am, with God’s help and yours.

PRIEST:  Are you resolved, to walk in the newness of life according to the apostolic concept proposed by St. Dominic, as announcers of the Gospel following in the footsteps of your Savior?

Candidate: I am, with God’s help and yours.

PRIEST:  Are you resolved, as you serve God and

neighbor, to be of one mind with the Church, and, as members of the Order, to share in its apostolic mission by prayer, study, and preaching, according to your lay state in life?

 

Candidate: I am, with God’s help and yours.

PRIEST:  May the Lord who has begun this good work, bring it to completion.

 

ALL:  Amen.

INVOCATION OF DIVINE GRACE

 

PRIEST:   Beloved brother, let us pray to God the
Father, that he may kindly pour out upon this son of his, who He has called to a fuller following of Christ, the grace of His blessing. In His loving kindness, may He confirm him in his holy intent.

LET US PRAY:  Look down, we beseech You, O

Lord, on this son, who today professes with a repentant heart the life of the gospel. Grant that the grace of Baptism, which he wishes to strengthen by new bonds, may take full effect in him, so that, strengthened by the aid of the Holy Spirit, he may render due worship to your majesty and spread the reign of Christ with apostolic zeal.

PRIEST:  We ask this through Christ our Lord.

 

ALL:  Amen.
 

              You may extinguish the candle. 

Lay Leader rises and sits in the chair especially prepared for the temporary promise.

 

The Candidate kneels before the Lay Leader:

 

Candidate:  To the honor of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and of Blessed Mary the Virgin, and Saint Dominic, I, M----, in your presence, A----, Vice President of the Fraternity of St. Catherine of Siena, and Father Joseph Allen, the Religious Assistant, in place of the Master of the Order of Friar Preachers, promise that I will live according to the Rule of the Lay Fraternities of Saint Dominic for three years.

 

Lay Leader rises and gives the candidate a fraternal kiss of peace, side to side of each cheek.

 

Lay Leader:  By your acceptance into the Order, you have been admitted to participation in the spiritual goods of the whole Dominican Family.

The candidate approaches the Lay Leader to receive the book of the Gospel.

 

Lay Leader:  Receive the Gospel of Peace; may it be in your heart and in your mouth, so that as you witness to it with your manner of living and proclaim it faithfully, you may become the salt of the earth and the light of the world, for the honor of God and the salvation of souls.

Newly Professed - Candidate:  Amen.

Here are some pictures from the ceremony.  First the Examination in fron to the Lay Leader and Celebrant.

 

And then interrogated by the Celebrant.

 

You can see me wearing the little white Dominican scapular.  If you look back to the first picture above, the Lay Leader is wearing the full scapular which I will be receiving on Final Promise.  Now the lighting of the blessed candle.

And professing my promise before the Lay Leader.

 

 

Being handed a New Testament after my profession.

 

And some final pictures after Mass.

 

From there, the Mass concluded in its normal fashion.  At the end of the Mass we read the consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Pope Francis asked every Catholic Church in the world to read at Mass that day.  The church was so lovely.  I took some pictures and will have to create a blog post as a photo essay.

It was a beautiful ceremony.  To have it on the Feast of the Annunciation, to have the ceremony at a Church named after my beloved patroness, St. Catherine of Siena, and on the day of the Consecration of Russia and Ukraine was a grace upon grace.  I felt so very blessed.

Notable Quote: It is Truly Right and Just to Give Thanks

Today is the great American holiday of Thanksgiving.  It’s not a religious holiday, and yet it is religious.  It is a day to thank God for all the blessings he has given us.  Since all religions I think thank God in some way and since we have many religions in the United States living side by side, this is a perfect American holiday.  One that we can all share.

But we Catholics know gratitude to the Lord in a special way.  Every Mass as part of the Eucharistic Prayer we offer God our thanks.  This exchange which leads to the Eucharistic Prayer should be familiar to Catholics.

 

Priest:  The Lord be with you.  

People:  And with your spirit.

 

Priest:  Lift up your hearts.  

People:  We lift them up to the Lord.

 

Priest:  Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.  

People:  It is right and just.

The bold is my emphasis to highlight the formal gratitude to the Lord.  And then the priest goes into one of several Eucharistic Prayer choices, but each at the beginning recapitulate the words of the rightness and justness of being thankful.  I’ll just quote the opening of Eucharistic Prayer II, again my emphasis:

 

“It is truly right and just, our duty and salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy, through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, your Word through whom you made all things, whom you sent as our Savior and Redeemer, incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin. Fulfilling your will and gaining for you a holy people, he stretched out his hands as he endured his Passion, so as to break the bonds of death and manifest the resurrection…”

It goes on, but part of our liturgical prayer is a formal thanksgiving to the Father most holy.  As a liturgy it is repeated as a sacred rite.

And so in our “liturgical” calendar as Americans, we have this day to give thanks for all our blessings, personal and national, to the creator God of our understanding.  It is right and just and our duty to give thanks.  It is the sacred rite we come to every year, repeated with friends and family gathered together at our table of blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Catholics: A Novel by Brian Moore, Post #4

This is the fourth and final in a series of posts on the Brian Moore novel, Catholics: A Novel.  The first post can be found here.   

The second post here.   

The third post here. 

 

 

My Comment:

This is in Part 2 but I'll post it here since it's relevant to this discussion. When the Abbot and Kinsella are discussing the dangers of the TV documentary, this exchange ensued:

 

”A program in the wrong hands, about this subject, could be made to look like the first stirrings of a Catholic counterrevolution.”

 

“Ah, now begging your pardon, Father Kinsella, I find that very far-fetched.”

 

“Far-fetched? To the enemies of the church, won’t it seem that you have acted in direct contradiction to the counsels of Vatican IV?”

Notice Kinsella fears the “Catholic counterrevolution” and characterizes those that would seize on the issue as “enemies of the church.” So the enemies of the church are the counterrevolutionaries, which are people inside the church! And the monks, such as Fr. Manus and Matthew and the Irish on the mainland, could easily be the formation of the counterrevolution. Then how despicable is the Abbot’s mollifying of the monks at the end where he undermines any coalescence of a counterrevolution? Of course, I’m using the word “despicable” because it’s from my point of view, but frankly I have no idea where Brian Moore falls on this because he’s made such amess of the inherent logic of the novel.

By the way, it shows the counterrevolution is the natural opposition to a dystopian situation. It's just that Moore never follows through on it.

Irene Replied:

Manny wrote: "This is in Part 2 but I'll post it here since it's relevant to this discussion. When the Abbot and Kinsella are discussing the dangers of the TV documentary, this exchange ensued:

A program in the..."
I read that exchange a bit differently. I saw the "enemies of the Church" as outside the Church structure. They are those who would only learn of the tension between the traditional rituals and the revised rituals by a secular TV show. They would seize on that and use it against the Church. Presumably, those in Church leadership would not need a TV show in the secular world to learn of this debate. In fact, they already know that is why Fr. Kinsella is there. The abbot rejects that perception. He does not accept the claim that what is happening would be seized on as counter revolutionary by the "enemies of the Church" My reading is that he does not see the actions of the monastery as counter revolutionary. Are the monks mounting a counter revolution or are they simply ministering to the people who come to the monastery seeking spirituality? Are they trying to reform the Church or are they responding to the immediate ministerial needs before them? Yes, they are keeping the Latin Mass and oricular confession alive. But I did not see any evidence that they are trying to reverse Vatican IV on a more grand scale. Certainly, the monks' safe guarding of the tradition could have a revolutionary impact over time. By keeping something alive, they may be planting the seeds of a revolution. But, I don't see any indication that the abbot or the monks are intentionally mounting a revolution to roll back the changes of Vatican IV in the universal Church.

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "I read that exchange a bit differently. I saw the "enemies of the Church" as outside the Church structure. "

That's possible, but the antecedent of "enemies of the church" seems like it's referring back to "counterrevolutionaries." Perhaps in casual conversation it might be construed as that, but any counterrevolutionary would certainly qualify as an enemy of the church, especially in this militaristic context of this new church. On balance I think you're right. There are no current counterrevolutionaries.

But who are these enemies of the church? They could easily be within the church as without. Everything the forces that Kinsella has been working against seems like he's addressing issues within the church.

 

Irene Replied:

Who are the "enemies of the Church"? They are not specifically named. But they could be any force that wants to see its demise. Of course, one could argue that the very changes that the institution is implementing to make the Church more palitable, less offensive, less prone to attack by "enemies" are the very forces that is destroying it. But, as I read that exchange, I thought that Moore was alluding to Church schism and the way secular and outside voices exploited any sign of disunity in the church to discredit the entire Church. Certainly in the early 70s, there was a great deal of public division among Catholics as the liturgical changes of Vatican II were implemented. And the secular prognostigators were forecasting a schism that would end the Catholic Church in a way that the Protestant Reformation did not do. Of course, those predictions were not true. Outsiders could not understand that descent has always existed in the Church as it does in any passionate family. But like any family, we also don't want our family fights to become the next headline either. I don't see any specific group or action being named as "counter revolutionary" in that exchange. Rather I see the fear that "enemies of the Church" will regard the perceived tension as an act of counter revolution.I don't see Kinsella calling the monks "counter revolutionaries" but cautioning that the enemies may perceive their celebration of the Latin mass as counter revolutionary. Schism has been a major cause of concern from the 1st Letter to the Corinthians to the present. The unity of the Body of Christ has always been a primary goal. Maybe this is part of the tension that Moore wants the reader to consider, sins against the unity of the Body of Christ vs sins against orthodoxy.

 

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "Who are the "enemies of the Church"? They are not specifically named. But they could be any force that wants to see its demise. Of course, one could argue that the very changes that the institution is implementing to make the Church more palitable, less offensive, less prone to attack by "enemies" are the very forces that is destroying it. But, as I read that exchange, I thought that Moore was alluding to Church schism and the way secular and outside voices exploited any sign of disunity in the church to discredit the entire Church."

I guess it's vague enough for "the enemies" to be either or both, within and without. Everything is so vague in this novel that one can create any line of thought he wishes.

Yes, Irene, his Lourdes experience is at the heart of his "null." Like everything else in this novel, and including your observation of Hartman, it is woefully underdeveloped. Moore spends pages and pages on the helicopter ride, the boat ride that never happened, the blackberry jam, and a whole lot of meaningless details and he doesn't develop what should be key elements to the novel.

For instance, is Hartman part of the forces of the dystopia or the resistance? And don't say neither, because then it won't fit.

 

Irene Replied to My Comment:

I don't read this as a dystopian battle between the evil institutional Church and the good traditionalist monks. So, I can't answer that question because it does not fit into the way I read this story. Too bad Moore is dead and we can't hear his intent.

 

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "I don't read this as a dystopian battle between the evil institutional Church and the good traditionalist monks. So, I can't answer that question because it does not fit into the way I read this st..."

Well, I guess I can read the Divine Comedy as some sort of Buddhist adventure story but I would be wrong. There is no way to read this novel where the future Catholic world envisions this:

- Priest’s collar and black shirt replaced by military style uniform.
- No praying of the rosary.
- No private confessions, but a group act of contrition.
- No Latin Mass but vernacular.
- Facing the congregation rather than God.
- No Pope but a “Father General”? Is that correct or is Father General head of the Albanisean Order?
- No Rome as center of the Church but Amsterdam being the place of the World Ecumen Council.
- The “interpenetration” between Christianity and Buddhism.
- No traditional church hierarchy but military ranks.
- No transubstantiation but symbolic act.
- Church service similar to a “bingo game.”
- No religious grace before meals but an ecumenical grace.
- No sign of the cross.
- Lourdes is no longer in operation. One would assume all miracle visitation sites are closed.
- No distinction between mortal and venial sins.
- No prayers.
- Christianity without God or faith.
- Clerical dress for priests is optional.
- The sacrifice of the Mass is not a miracle but merely a ritual.

and not see it as a dystopian world, especially given the military allusion that suggest a jackbooted attempt to enforcement if the Abbot chose the other way. That Christianity can only survive if it gets rid of God is clearly an Orwellian doublespeak.

The problem is not your reading, the problem is Moore. He set up incompatible lines of thought, completely under developed everything, and published it. Anyone can read all sorts of things in this. You are ignoring the parts of the book that doesn't fit your reading while grasping onto the parts that do.

 

Joseph Commented:

I have to side with Irene on this one. Dystopian novels have the society at large as the bad guy and its systems. What Moore gives us is kind of a microcosm of what we now call the Liturgy Wars and I think his aim is more to point out the condition of the Church in 1972. It so happens that many of those elements are still current, and thus this novel does present a parable about how we live the Faith when what we have known for centuries upon centuries changes. I find the final scene with the monks gathered in the chapel praying the Our Father to be indicative of how many responded to the changes of the early 70s and how many still have to respond when they cannot find a parish to their personal liking in terms of liturgy or preaching. The conflict is certainly between Faith and non-Faith and it reaches into the institutional Church, but that is a conflict which is fought every day in the hearts of millions of believers around the world and I think that's what the novel, in the end, is getting at.

 

My Reply to Joseph:

No, no, no.  On a dystopia there is absolutely no question.  Definition from Wikipedia:

 

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopia or simply anti-utopia) is a fictional community or society that is undesirable or frightening…Dystopias are often characterized by rampant fear or distress, tyrannical governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society.

And further down:

 

Dystopias typically reflect contemporary sociopolitical realities and extrapolate worst-case scenarios as warnings for necessary social change or caution. Dystopian fictions invariably reflect the concerns and fears of their creators' contemporaneous culture.

The Catholic Church is acting as a dystopian society and Moore has extrapolated the worst fears that came out of the Vatican II changes. 

This has all the earmarks of a dystopia.  It is set in the future, Vatican IV.  If it’s not a dystopia, why does he set it in the future?  Why is all of Catholicism changed so dramatically already?  No debate, no transition.  And from every character outside the governing structure, we see no one who wants it.  But more importantly, why are all the changes so distasteful?  Every single one is put in a bad light.  Every beloved tradition is extirpated.  There is no moral equivalence.  All the sympathy in the novel are against the governing church.  Look at all the folk (akin to the hobbits of Lord of the Rings) who go to the traditional Mass offered by the monks.  Where is there one good word for the Church and for Kinsella and what he represents?  Show me.  Show me one good word, one positive detail for the governing church.  For crying out loud, Kinsella wears a military uniform instead of priestly garb.  Look at the treatment Kinsella gets by the good earthy folk in Ireland.  He’s made out into an elitist.  He’s contrasted with Padraig who treats him to this.

 

The boatman abruptly let go of the bollard and took up his oars. Kinsella, irritated, reached down and caught hold of the curragh’s stern.

 

“Let go of that.” “I tell you, I am Father Kinsella. The abbot is expecting me.”

 

Padraig, the boatman, let go of one oar, seized up a steel rowlock from beneath it and, swift as a biting dog, struck the knuckles that held the curragh’s stern. With a gasp of pain, Kinsella drew his hand back. The rowlock snapped into its hole, the oar in it, and, with two swift strokes, the boatman swung the curragh out of reach.

That rap on the knuckles is exactly the respect he is paid by the good general folk.  That rap represents the attitude you’re supposed to have toward Kinsella. 

There is no moral equivalence presented anywhere.  No such detail or characterization occurs to characterize the monks or the general Irish folk who go to the old Mass and want the traditions.  None that I find.  Whatever conclusion you want to draw about the Abbot or the ending, it has to be within the context of a dystopia.  On that there is no ambiguity.  On that it is clear.

I’ll say it again here because I don’t want it forgotten: Show me one good detail, one positive word for the governing church anywhere in the novel?  Show me.

 

Joseph Replied:

I don't think there is one. But, by the same token, I don't think there is one for the monks on Muck either. They're not presented as the heroic stalwarts of say, Fr. Percy from Lord of the World, more like a curiosity or a museum piece, and the people they serve are shown more as backwards yokels than principled resistors. The Abbot says it himself in Part 2, "We tried the new way, people didn't like it, so we went back." That's not really something done because they saw the shortcomings of the Vatican IV liturgy, although they did do that, but more like, "We need to find a way to reach these people who have left," and that's the solution they came up with. I find this to be more of a satire than a dystopia, really. Moore has kind of caricatured the two camps in the liturgy wars and presented us with the outlines of the continuing back and forth rather than with a solution. I think he's trying to point out the short comings of the demystification while at the same time noting that just because someone is traditional, it doesn't mean that they have deep faith behind that either.

 

My Reply to Joseph:

Joseph Said: I don't think there is one. But, by the same token, I don't think there is one for the monks on Muck either. They're not presented as the heroic stalwarts of say, Fr. Percy from Lord of the World, more like a curiosity or a museum piece

I would have to disagree.  I think Frs. Matthew and Manus are presented as heroic.  Brian Moore’s characterization is definitely two dimensional, but I don’t think he has the skill to pull off what Hugh Benson did with Lord of the World.  First, everything in Moore’s novel is woefully underdeveloped.  Just look at how much space Fr. Percy is given in Lord of the World.  And Benson was a better novelist.

Joseph Said:  and the people they serve are shown more as backwards yokels than principled resistors.

I can see how you might see that, but I think you’re missing how the Irish see their identity, especially in literature.  The Irish see the peasantry as deeply part of their identity.  Think of the John Wayne in his movie The Quiet Man.  Think of the appearance of Our Lady of Knock and the peasants she appeared to.  William Butler Yeats glorified the peasantry in his poetry.  Read over this article from Irish Studies, “Identity and the Literary Revival.”  I’ll quote two key paragraphs.

 

Both Yeats’s Cathleen Ni Houlihan and Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and The Stars open with domestic scenes which hint at both plays’ agenda.  Co-founder of the Gaelic League and president National Literary Society Douglas Hyde initiated the ‘stranger in the country kitchen’ motif with his play The Twisting of the Rope in 1901.[1]  This motif uses the “cottage on stage” as a “temple of Irish domesticity, the sacred origin, the mystery of mysteries – within it the Irish are themselves.”[2]  In contrast to the tradition of melodrama, Literary Revival plays sought to present the ‘real’ Irish as opposed to demeaning stereotypes.  They succeeded, however, only in constructing an undifferentiated peasantry.  Despite the diversity in portrayals, all these authors contributed to the process of “turning the peasants into a single figure of literary art…the ‘aestheticizing’ of the Irish country people.”[3]  One generalization has been replaced by another.

 

Yeats and Lady Gregory use the peasantry to define the true spirit of the nation.  When called by Cathleen, a thinly veiled representation of the nation, Ireland’s young men put aside selfish temporal interests to fight and die for her.  The volk are united by a spiritual connection which drives them to self-sacrifice.  This mythologizing of the peasantry reflected Yeats’s own struggle to develop a uniquely Irish literary style: “What distinguished Irish from English writers was a complex national identity, and in searching for that identity Irish writers turned, as if naturally, to the people they imagined to be most distinctively and authentically Irish: the peasants.”[4]  This Anglo-Irish Ascendancy depiction of the peasantry as a primitive, spiritual people blankets over social, economic, and religious differences.  It also expresses many of his individual beliefs.  The peasants counter urban bourgeois commercialism.  Yet Yeats was not alone in using the peasantry as a vehicle for his own ideology: “To speak about the peasant was always to speak about something beyond actual rural life.”[5]

 

In addition, Moore has the monks perform the Mass outdoors using a large rock as an altar.  That’s right out of Irish folklore where when the British tried to shut down Catholicism and the priests moved the Mass outdoors using boulders as altars for secret Masses.  In fact if I remember correctly there was a priest who was shot dead performing such an outdoor Mass and as I think legend goes was shot dead the very moment he held the host up to God.  And the passion for the Mass as dramatized in the novel echoes the Irish identity as the people who saved civilization in the Dark Ages through Catholicism.  In fact the name Padraig, is the Gaelic version of Patrick.  It’s where they get the diminutive “Paddy” from.  Paddy is not actually from Patrick.  Moore uses the most Irish version of the most Irish identity name.  Something else I just thought of, Kinsella is coming to Ireland to tell them how to worship much like the British came to Ireland to do the same. And he brings a similar threat of force.  Moore is wrapping the peasants in Irish motherhood, apple pie, and the national anthem.  No I don’t think you’re supposed to see them as yokels but as the good Irish devout who are going to save civilization again. 

Joseph Said: I find this to be more of a satire than a dystopia, really. Moore has kind of caricatured the two camps in the liturgy wars and presented us with the outlines of the continuing back and forth rather than with a solution. I think he's trying to point out the short comings of the demystification while at the same time noting that just because someone is traditional, it doesn't mean that they have deep faith behind that either.

Yes, but I think that speaks to his skill.  All the characters are two dimensional, the situation is underdeveloped, and the logic of the novel is ambiguous at best and incoherent at worst.

Let me take a crack at what I think Moore meant by this novel, and mind you that this is partially speculation because of the flaws I just mentioned.

That there is a dystopia that has imposed this heresy upon the Catholic world is unquestionable.  That there is a resistance in the Irish people I think is pretty certain as well.  Everything follows from those assumptions.  The questions that follow are (1) why does the Abbot capitulate, and (2) what does Moore wish to imply by the prayer ending?

Why does the Abbot capitulate?  (1) He has a personal interest in not rocking the boat.  He wants to be buried with the other Abbots and that will consummate his career in the history of the Abbey.  (2) He doesn’t really believe, so it doesn’t really matter to him, and so given the choice between fighting the Church or fighting his monks, he sees the monks as the ones he can mollify.  Plus he has authority over them.  He’s pusillanimous, and that’s his least resistance.  (3) He sees fighting the Church as a losing effort, and so doesn’t see its practicality.

What does Moore wish to imply by the prayer ending?  Here is where it gets speculative.  Here are three possibilities.

(1) If Moore is attempting to bring the theme of atheism to the fore, then he is ending with an appeasement to the “Christianity without God.”  The prayer becomes a kneeling before the “null” that the Abbot sees, and the monks become appeased and are mollified, and it’s all meaningless anyway because there is no God and it doesn’t really matter and the novel is so titled “Catholics” from an outsider perspective because this is all Catholic hooey anyway.  That would be the cynical possibility.

(2) Prayer will be the reinforcement that will either strengthen the monks to persevere in the face of what could be a long term persecution or a petition to God to change the state of the Church, much like after the destruction of the first temple and through faith and prayer the second temple was eventually built, and so will Catholicism.  It could be seen as the start of re-civilizing the world again, and in this case re-civilizing the Church herself.  That would be the idealistic possibility.

(3) It could be a way to purely mollify the monks and get over the hump.  That would be the utilitarian possibility.

There are other possibilities too, none of which are satisfactory.  You can read whatever you so wish into the ending, and that’s a pretty crappy way to end a novel.  This indeterminate ending stems directly from the novel’s moral ambiguity. 

 

My Goodreads Review:  

This novel is junk. It's sensationalism. It has more holes than a sieve. It was put together because its original premise (a Catholic dystopia of a secularized and militarized church) titillates. Brian Moore puts forth two incompatible lines of thought: an immoral dystopia and a central figure who has no belief when he is presented as the center of the resistance, and then the author leaves the ending in a sort of undetermined state, probably because the author himself is an atheist. Once the author has established the dystopia, the story line cannot tolerate moral ambiguity, and yet we are left with moral ambiguity. In addition, the novel is woefully underdeveloped, the characters are not much more than cartoon figures, the author violates a basic story-telling craft, such as holding back the critical detail of the central character’s personality until two thirds of the novel, and the novel then ends in a whimper. Bottom line: Don’t bother.