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Journeyman
A Journal for the Inquiring Christian
Vol. 1, No. 3, March 2002
The Month(s)
Overview: - Harry Potter vs. Frodo
- On Church Fasts
- Orneriness in Lent
- In this issue
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 The advantage of publishing an ezine is that you don't have a print schedule. The disadvantage of publishing an ezine is that you don't have a print schedule.
Having suffered through crowded masses on Christmas Day, I wonder if the church shouldn't hand out passes for seating on some randomly selected Sunday during Advent. On the one hand, it doesn't seem fair for the regulars to be left out by C&E Christians. On the other hand, I'm certainly glad they go to church at least then. (If only they heard something to wake them from their stupor!)
Over the last few months we've been treated to two very interesting movies: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and The Fellowship of the Ring. It seems that Smart People are compelled to Comment Importantly on their similarities and differences. Since I am not a Smart Person, I will simply say that I enjoyed them both.
Well .... Maybe I'll say more than that. First, I find the knee-jerk, rabid anti-Harry Potter stuff very ... knee-jerk and rabid. The Potter books simply aren't as bad as all that. Sure, the main idea of the book is that certain kids are being trained to be witches and wizards, and that kind of stuff is condemned by God, so I'm sensitive to the "you wouldn't like a movie about a school for adultery and fornication" complaint. No, I would not. But that specific complaint is mitigated somewhat by the fact that these children are, in fact, witches and wizards. (Unlike weirdoes in the real world who are just playing a damnably stupid religious game.) If you've got powers like that it makes sense that you'd need to learn to control them. So it's perfectly reasonable to interpret the whole Harry Potter thing as an alternate technology story.
My main complaint with Harry Potter is the lack of moral vision. The school doesn't seem to care whether these kids use their powers for good or evil. You get the idea that Slitherin house is full of nasty, cruel, vindictive snots — and that's perfectly okay. To each his own. Let a thousand weeds go to seed (and blow into the neighbor's yard). Hogwart's function is just to teach technique and so forth so the little kiddies can go out and do their thing, whether that's good or bad.
The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, paints a beautiful picture of a moral universe. And since others have taken up that topic far better than I can do, I bow to their eloquence and refer the reader to Touchstone's special issue on Tolkien.
It's traditional for many Christians to practice some form of mortification during Lent. Often it's a limited form of fasting, like giving up coffee, or candy. As with any other devotion, we get more benefit if we know the reason for it, so here are a few words of explanation.
There are two basic purposes to fasting: to break the world's hold on us, and to free up our resources to give to the poor. St. John tell us not to love the world or the things in the world, and that loving the world is inconsistent with loving God. (1 John 2:15) St. James goes even further by saying that to make friends with the world is to make an enemy of God. (James 4:4) St. Paul illustrates this with the sad story of Demas who, "having loved this present world," deserted him (2 Tim. 4:10). He also speaks of those whose end will be destruction, "whose god is their appetite." (Phil. 3:19)
Love of the world is deadly to the soul, but fasting weans us of this mis-directed love. Like David, we must learn to humble our souls with fasting. (Ps. 35:13) And so we see that fasting is actually a form of freedom because it breaks our bondage to appetites that would enslave us.
The other positive benefit of fasting is the good our fast can do for others. What we deny to ourselves we can give to those in need. (See Is. 58:6-7) For example, by giving up the gourmet cup of coffee on the way to the office, or the movie on Friday night, we have extra money to share with the poor. This turns the sacrifice of Lent into an extra blessing, for, as our Lord said, "it is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20:35)
This Lent we should all consider where the world might be trying to get us in its clutches — TV, food, drink — and, in consecrating that area of our life to God, let's consider how we might create an opportunity to serve others.
Justice Scalia recently took the Roman Catholic Church to task for ignoring Catholic tradition in support of the death penalty to run off on its own little Europeanish moral crusade. Hurrah for Justice Scalia! You can read his comments here
The Big News in the Roman Catholic Church recently is the scandalous cover-up of pedophilia and other crimes in the Boston archdiocese. Whenever these cases come out I wonder where the fathers are. Anyone who messed with one of my children would be signing his own death warrant — and I don't give one fig what the law says about that.
It may be that many of these victims don't have fathers. One special report on the news intimated that pedophiles prey on fatherless children. In other cases, the complacency of the biological fathers is inexcusable, but understandable. The law doesn't fulfill its obligation in such cases, and it prevents private citizens from filling in the gaps.
The complacency of the spiritual fathers, however, is both inexcusable and inexplicable.
There can be no waffling on this issue. The men who committed crimes must answer for their crimes. The men who covered up those crimes must be defrocked, deposed, and subject to whatever civil and canonical penalties apply. Men who put children in the reach of pedophiles should be transferred to Mars in a Cuban space ship.
The ecumenically involved Catholic will invariably face this question: "How can the Roman Catholic Church claim to be the true church when it allows these kinds of things"? As difficult as it is to swallow, Scripture is clear that the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that pulls in all kinds of fish; a field with both wheat and tares. Israel was still Israel even when Mannasseh reigned, and Corinth was the church of God despite problems that make Cardinal Law and his Boston archdiocese look tame.
This is not to make excuses. I want the offenders hanged. But until the final consummation of the kingdom the church will be full of sinners.
Back to Lent a moment. My ongoing mortification — that is, suffering through sappy Catholic music — continues in Lent with a new twist. We're singing a piece with a Latin refrain.
There may have been a time when mandatory Latin was wise: to keep Christendom united, and so forth. Medieval Europe may have been fragmented by a vernacular liturgy, and a weakened Europe would have been very disappointing. Our western heritage may have been Moslem law.
But I feel no warm and cozy nostalgia for a Latin mass, or even a Latin refrain. As far as I'm concerned it might as well be in Elvish. So while the rest of the parish sings "parce domine," I sing the English translation.
If you're looking for more review and comment on the news, I publish a daily feature complete with kitchen prose and gutter rhymes.
In this issue
Tracey Rich has the distinct honor of sending our first Letter to the Editor.
The first feature article in this issue is my review and comment on Cardinal Dulles' A Church to Believe In. I'm also very pleased to include some interesting reactions to the essay from an Orthodox priest, a Reformed Protestant, and a traditionally minded Catholic.
Just for the record, Fr. Gregory is a long-time and dear friend. We grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same elementary, junior high, high school and college.
Jeff Culbreath does us good service by raging against an unspoken, nearly universal assumption in our culture: egalitarianism. C.S. Lewis said that the value of old books is that they get us out of our cultural assumptions and help us to see things a little more objectively. Mr. Culbreath's essay can do the same.
Steven Badal offers some biblical perspective on almsgiving and how by giving to the poor we lend to the Lord, and since the Lord will be no man's debtor, He will repay the favor.
Running a world-wide operation like this requires a lot of resources, and to get global coverage on events I employ a series of stringers from different locales. One of my agents happened upon a golden opportunity just this past month and was good enough to get me the copy in time for the deadline. As a man of the world and a risk-taker, he has to deal with the raw side of life from time to time, and this assignment almost cost him his life.
But on the plane ride he had a chance to review those twin literary masterpieces, The System of Dr. Rooster and Mr. Crowhill and The Fall of the House of Crowhill — recently dusted off and reformatted for ease of reading.
Of course this is a low-budget operation, so I have to economize by sharing the expense of my series of world-wide agents. They're independent contractors and work for other outfits from time to time, depending on where the money is. But we share and share alike, as the circumstances warrant, and this month I noted an interesting bulletin in the pool. It seems that the Irish are at it again.
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