Other Blogs

It falls like tears, like wasted years

At Rorate Caeli, there is a very lengthy, very interesting piece about the probability of a unified date for Easter. The author’s assessment: nil. In short, the Church of Rome has long insisted upon the Gregorian calendar for the date for Easter, and the Orthodox churches have long insisted on the Julian calendar. While there have been favorable noises from both the Holy Father and the Ecumenical Patriarch about a unified date for Easter, the Moscow Patriarchate, which does not take orders from the Ecumenical Patriarch, to put it mildly, prefers the retention of the status quo. And if Moscow doesn’t go along, the proposal will be dead in the water in Constantinople—dead in the Bosphorus, as it were. Read the whole thing there.

We add briefly that the talk of a unified Easter seemed to come out of nowhere, and that the mentions we saw were awfully enthusiastic. While ecumenical dialogue is one of the great loves of the Church after Vatican II, it should be noted that very few results are actually achieved. Certainly, enthusiastic joint statements, lengthy joint declarations about shared beliefs and stumbling blocks to full communion, and the like are regularly produced, but, as far as results in the ut unum sint sense, well, that’s another story. And the Rorate Caeli piece shows why: ecumenical dialogue involves not only the Church and her doctrine but also the other institution and its doctrine. In this case, the Orthodox have a long, complex history about their calendar preferences. And a surge of ecumenical enthusiasm is not likely to overcome those preferences.

I was shocked to find what was allowed

Recently, a sharp Catholic woman of our acquaintance inquired whether St. Alphonsus Liguori had held that a parent with the care of children was dispensed from the obligation to hear Mass. Others noted that the great Doctor Zelantissimus addresses the subject in Theologia Moralis III.3.3.5 where he holds, essentially, that mothers who do not have a safe place to leave their infants or who cannot bring their children to church without causing a notable disturbance, are excused from attending Mass. Of course, if there’s a parent with whom the children may safely be left while the other attends Mass, one imagines that the relaxation tightens back up pretty quickly.

This subject has been on our mind over the past few days, given the exchange between Tommy Tighe at Aleteia and Steve Skojec at One Peter Five. Tighe makes the points, not wholly novel, that (1) he knows his kids are messy and distracting and (2) the woman who rebuked him was being un-Christian and thereby missed an opportunity to improve the state of her own soul by rising above the distraction. Or something. He also suggested that, well, he didn’t know what was in that woman’s life that led her to rebuke him. (Maybe she’s infertile! Maybe they’re each other’s crosses to bear! Or something.) Skojec, perhaps predictably, was having none of this, and responded point by point to Tighe. He also updated his post, moderating the snark a little bit, but standing by the substance of his argument. But the thrust of the discussion is this: how do parents deal with potentially loud, usually messy children at Church? (Especially in Forma Extraordinaria parishes, where there are certain norms of conduct that are usually a little more stringent than what’s going on at the “contemporary choir” Mass.)

This is not the first go-round on this debate, either, though this may be the first time that Tighe and Skojec have been the disputants. (We don’t know, though. We are more familiar with Skojec’s commentary on other issues in the Church and we had not heard of Tighe before now. Perhaps we ought to pay more attention.)

And the easy answer, of course, would be to point to St. Alphonsus and say, well, if you can’t leave the children at home safely and if you’re pretty sure that they’re going to cause a major disturbance, then you are excused from hearing Mass. Of course, parents who can watch children in shifts can surely safely leave their children at home. But, as the Holy Father and the Synod of Bishops have reminded us repeatedly in recent months, there are all manner of families that have suffered injuries and no longer have both parents living under the same roof. And, even then, the inquiry is not as straightforward as one might first imagine. That is, whether one can more safely leave children at home than in Alphonsus’s time and whether children are less likely to raise a ruckus than in Alphonsus’s time are open questions—though we suspect, with respect to the latter question, that toddlers’ ruckuses are probably pretty comparable across the years.

But, we wonder to what extent do we owe it to each other to help out? (Cf. Gal. 5:14.) When our acquaintance raised the issue, our first thought was that it would be nice if suitable men and women without children offered to help out. (Suitability is obviously an important criterion in all this, and that cannot be understated.) For example, if a couple without children at home habitually attended the vigil Mass on Saturday night, it would be awfully nice of them to offer to watch their neighbor’s toddler while he heard Mass on Sunday morning. Or vice versa, if an unmarried woman without children habitually heard Mass on Sunday mornings but rarely made plans for Saturday evenings that would conflict with the vigil Mass, she might offer to watch the neighbor’s children while their mother heard the vigil Mass. There are any number of permutations to the arrangement. Such an offer may well obtain graces for the men and women who help out or serve as penitential offerings, in addition to potentially obtaining the Jubilee Indulgence attached by the Holy Father to all the physical and corporal works of mercy during the Year of Mercy.

But more than that, it seems to us that this sort of cooperative childcare arrangement, which, for all we know, happens in almost every parish in Christendom (except, seemingly, our own), is exactly the sort of thing that helps build the sort of community that Rod Dreher has talked about at staggering length in recent years. You know, the so-called Benedict Option. While we disagree with Dreher about some of the particulars of his idea, not the least of which is the fact that you need a priest willing to play along, we certainly do not dispute the basic contention that Christians need to form tighter-knit communities to deal effectively with an increasingly hostile culture. This goes double for traditionally minded Catholics who are usually, to quote Magazine’s 1978 single, shot by both sides. But it seems to us that a sense that the world has moved into another, more aggressive phase in its doomed campaign against Christ and Christ’s Church is probably not the sort of thing that really knits a community together. But a tradition of charity, especially when it takes the form of looking after each other’s children, seems like the sort of thing that just might do the trick.

Of course, justice, whether it’s distributive or commutative, consists of giving each person his due. (E.g., ST IIa IIae q.58 a.1 obj. 1 & co.; q.61 a.2 co.) By those lights, maybe the arrangement we have discussed above isn’t justice—that is, maybe we don’t owe each other this sort of cooperation, though certainly one could find precedents for it throughout the life of the Church and the life of Christendom before things went off the rails—but if it’s charity, it seems like the sort of charity that seems like it would serve the common good of the community tremendously. And, even if one isn’t interested in forming a tight-knit community of Christians in any given setting, it’s the sort of charity that may well make common life a little smoother. Instead of getting shirty with the parent of a rambunctious brood or making comments in a stage whisper about those ill-bred children, it may well be good for the life of the parish to offer politely to sit with the children at home next week while the parent hears Mass. (And to provide one’s references!)

 

If you called your dad, he could stop it all

At the Catholic Herald, Damian Thompson has a very interesting piece about Father Benedict, the cloistered monk of the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in Rome, who is world famous for his great personal devotion to St. Celestine V. We have said—and said and said—that Benedict is the most interesting man in the Church today. Thompson offers a question-and-answer format. A couple of examples:

1. Why did Benedict XVI resign? This is regarded by many commentators as the greatest mystery in recent Church history. Not by me, however. The simple answer to the question is that the Pope felt that, at his age and with his health beginning to give way, he wasn’t up to the job. This isn’t a complete answer, because there are things we can’t know. If you’re looking for a “final straw”, then you can take your pick between the VatiLeaks affair, the machinations of Benedict’s enemies and the pope’s creeping awareness that he was losing his powers of concentration. Maybe he had a fit of despair brought on by the realisation that he’d inherited the papacy too late to implement long-term reforms while firefighting paedophile and financial scandals. If Ratzinger had become pope at 75, these challenges would have been less terrifying. He didn’t because St John Paul II insisted on holding office while incapacitated – the first pontiff to do so for a very long time. Perhaps this persuaded Benedict to take the plunge. I doubt that we shall ever know, so let’s move on.

2) Would Benedict have resigned if he knew Francis would succeed him? Purely hypothetical but interesting. Benedict must have known there was a chance that Cardinal Bergoglio would succeed him. My guess is that when the Argentinian emerged on the balcony the Pope Emeritus was dismayed but concluded that God works in mysterious ways. A more interesting, albeit even more hypothetical, question is whether Benedict would have resigned if he’d known Francis would call a synod that threw open the question of whether divorced and remarried Catholics should receive Communion.

(Emphasis in original.) For longtime observers of Church politics—especially the politics surrounding the Vatileaks I scandal, the Holy Father’s election, and the 2014-2015 Synod—the piece may not contain any bombshells. However, as a source to point people to, the piece is hard to beat.

For our part, the most interesting thing about the Pope Emeritus’s retirement is that he has, seemingly, maintained his silence on matters of pressing concern to the Church. In particular, Benedict is unlikely to have missed the fact that there are those who seek to dismantle many of the accomplishments of John Paul’s reign—accomplishments that he played no small part in, especially from 1981, when he became prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. When the Kasperites and their friends in the Synod secretariat go on about what Familiaris consortio meant or didn’t mean, they apparently forget that John Paul promulgated the exhortation at almost the same time that he named Ratzinger prefect (November 1981). It is likely that the exhortation came up in conversation between John Paul and his closest doctrinal collaborator. And, certainly, the subsequent skirmishes over communion for bigamists involved Ratzinger intimately.

Were we in the Pope Emeritus’s shoes, we would scarcely be able to resist taking to the air to correct certain misstatements and misquotations. But, of course, that is probably why we are not in the Pope Emeritus’s shoes.

I’ll have to go to Las Vegas or Monaco

A little while back, at The Paraphasic, Elliot Milco had a lengthy post on the definition of capitalism. One may be excused for missing the discussions in various places over the last eighteen months, but the question of capitalism is one of the most vexing questions for serious Catholic thinkers. (It should be, anyway.) In the American Church, doctrinal conservatives are usually (not always, but usually) political conservatives. Consequently, Catholic doctrinal conservatives tend to favor the sort of robust—unrestrained?—free-market capitalism favored on the American political right. However, the Church has long been suspicious—since Rerum novarum, in fact—of the sort of robust free-market capitalism that is so popular among conservative American Catholics. This creates tensions, especially since many traditionally minded Catholics reject the conservative political consensus that capitalism is hugely virtuous.

Last month, we noted that the lack of a workable definition of economic liberalism created issues for traditionally minded Catholics in arguing against the robust-free-market positions taken by doctrinally conservative Catholics who have thrown in with American political conservatives. We proposed a definition articulated by the great Canadian Thomist Henri Grenier in his Thomistic Philosophy. Elliot Milco identifies a similar problem with respect to the definition of capitalism, and he sets out to work out a good, functional definition.

It seems clear that the “obvious” definition of Capitalism in the air (i.e. the one which occurs most readily) is something like this: Capitalism is a model of commercial activity in which the maximization of profits is pursued as the primary (or even exclusive) end of business.

(Emphasis in original.) He then examines some of the limitations of this definition and comes up with a slightly restated definition:

Capitalism is a model of commercial activity in which we attempt, through labor, exchange, and other means, to maximize our assets, considered in terms of their exchange value, and pursue this maximization as the primary or even exclusive end of commerce.

(Emphasis in original.) This definition seems to us to be very workable, at least as a starting place when discussing capitalism in the context of the Church’s traditional social teaching.

To understand why Milco’s definition works, even if one thinks that it could be improved, perhaps we had better look at an older definition. Which, of course, means turning to Henri Grenier’s Thomistic Philosophy again. Grenier first gives the definition of capital:

Capital, according to its strict meaning in Economics, is defined: the part of produced wealth reserved or in actual use for new production; v.g., instruments and machines of every kind, the various kinds of primary products required for production, and the whole gamut of economic operations.

In modern usage, any kind of wealth is called capital; and capital is divided into social capital and juridical capital.

Under the heading of social capital come all wealth and material goods of all kinds.

Under the heading of juridical capital come money and things of pecuniary value.

(3 Thomistic Philosophy § 1145, 1º) (italics in original and emphasis supplied). With that in place, Grenier proceeds to define capitalism, though it will be seen that the definition of capitalism follows trivially from the definition of capital.

But before we get there, Grenier distinguishes between a general definition and a pejorative definition of capitalism. This is an interesting move, though how much of a move it actually is remains to be seen. The general definition he gives as:

Capitalism in itself signifies capitalistic production, i.e., production in which all agencies distinct from capital are more or less under the sway of capital. It is an economic system, then, in which capital plays a preponderant role, and in which the function of capital is separate from the function of labor.

(3 Thomistic Philosophy § 1145, 2º) (emphasis supplied). In other words, the general definition of capitalism is an economic system in which either material goods or money (i.e., social or juridical capital) is the key player and separate from labor.

Grenier then gives the pejorative definition:

Capitalism, in its pejorative meaning, may be described: systems of economic and social relations, born of capitalistic production, in which the holders of economic and social capital, and especially of juridical capital, i.e., of money, in their eagerness for excessive profits, play not only a preponderant but an unlawful and abusive role.

(Id.) (emphasis in original). The difference between the pejorative definition and the general definition is not particularly clear; or, to put it less controversially, it is a matter of degree. That is, in the general definition, capitalism is the mode of production in which wealth or money (i.e., social or juridical capital) plays a preponderant role. In the pejorative definition, the holders of wealth or money, “especially” money, exceed their preponderant role and play an unlawful and abusive role. This definition admits of shades of gray, to say the least.

We see that Milco’s definition is more practical. While Grenier is undoubtedly correct in strict terms, he is also undoubtedly abstract. One of the favored accusations of the Actonistas and the other Catholics who uphold the robust free market as a good in and of itself is that the Catholics who hold and follow the Church’s traditional social teaching do not understand economics. (As though that makes a difference.) Grenier’s definition plays into that problem: capitalism is “an economic system . . . in which capital plays a preponderant role, and in which the function of capital is separate from the function of labor.” This definition, while undeniably correct in a strict sense, points toward other, more complicated concepts. At some point, you’ll have to grapple with economic concepts if you want to use Grenier’s definition, just as the political conservatives allege. Milco’s definition, on the other hand, is couched in more practical terms. When people talk about capitalism, they undoubtedly mean more or less what Milco sets forth in his definition.

To put it another way, when people talk about capitalism, they probably do not mean the system in which capital, which is to say wealth of various forms, plays the central role in production. That definition is a little opaque. Certainly, Grenier’s predicate definitions can clear things up, and distinguishing a general and a pejorative definition helps, but, even at that, the definition is still going to be a little stilted. What people talk about when they talk about capitalism is probably more or less what Milco says: “a model of commercial activity in which we attempt, through labor, exchange, and other means, to maximize our assets, considered in terms of their exchange value, and pursue this maximization as the primary or even exclusive end of commerce.” (Emphasis omitted.) So, as we have noted before, when traditionally minded Catholics try to engage with Actonistas or other Catholics who think that the free market is per se good, there’s bound to be trouble.

One interesting aspect of Milco’s definition, which deserves special mention, is that it points out the extent to which modern thinking about capitalism is morally questionable from the get-go. This is to say, the unrestrained profit motive is the primary moral problem with capitalism. Recall that Aquinas addresses the profit motive in IIa IIae q.77 a.4, where he takes up the question, utrum liceat negotiando aliquid charius vendere quam emere, cf. IIa IIae q.77 pr., or whether it is lawful in trading to sell something at a higher price than paid for it. Aquinas draws a careful distinction:

Respondeo dicendum quod ad negotiatores pertinet commutationibus rerum insistere. Ut autem philosophus dicit, in I Polit., duplex est rerum commutatio. Una quidem quasi naturalis et necessaria, per quam scilicet fit commutatio rei ad rem, vel rerum et denariorum, propter necessitatem vitae. Et talis commutatio non proprie pertinet ad negotiatores, sed magis ad oeconomicos vel politicos, qui habent providere vel domui vel civitati de rebus necessariis ad vitam. Alia vero commutationis species est vel denariorum ad denarios, vel quarumcumque rerum ad denarios, non propter res necessarias vitae, sed propter lucrum quaerendum. Et haec quidem negotiatio proprie videtur ad negotiatores pertinere. Secundum philosophum autem, prima commutatio laudabilis est, quia deservit naturali necessitati. Secunda autem iuste vituperatur, quia, quantum est de se, deservit cupiditati lucri, quae terminum nescit sed in infinitum tendit. Et ideo negotiatio, secundum se considerata, quandam turpitudinem habet, inquantum non importat de sui ratione finem honestum vel necessarium. Lucrum tamen, quod est negotiationis finis, etsi in sui ratione non importet aliquid honestum vel necessarium, nihil tamen importat in sui ratione vitiosum vel virtuti contrarium. Unde nihil prohibet lucrum ordinari ad aliquem finem necessarium, vel etiam honestum. Et sic negotiatio licita reddetur. Sicut cum aliquis lucrum moderatum, quod negotiando quaerit, ordinat ad domus suae sustentationem, vel etiam ad subveniendum indigentibus, vel etiam cum aliquis negotiationi intendit propter publicam utilitatem, ne scilicet res necessariae ad vitam patriae desint, et lucrum expetit non quasi finem, sed quasi stipendium laboris.

This translation is the English Dominican translation made available by the Dominican House of Studies website:

 I answer that, A tradesman is one whose business consists in the exchange of things. According to the Philosopher (Polit. i, 3), exchange of things is twofold; one, natural as it were, and necessary, whereby one commodity is exchanged for another, or money taken in exchange for a commodity, in order to satisfy the needs of life. Such like trading, properly speaking, does not belong to tradesmen, but rather to housekeepers or civil servants who have to provide the household or the state with the necessaries of life. The other kind of exchange is either that of money for money, or of any commodity for money, not on account of the necessities of life, but for profit, and this kind of exchange, properly speaking, regards tradesmen, according to the Philosopher (Polit. i, 3). The former kind of exchange is commendable because it supplies a natural need: but the latter is justly deserving of blame, because, considered in itself, it satisfies the greed for gain, which knows no limit and tends to infinity. Hence trading, considered in itself, has a certain debasement attaching thereto, in so far as, by its very nature, it does not imply a virtuous or necessary end. Nevertheless gain which is the end of trading, though not implying, by its nature, anything virtuous or necessary, does not, in itself, connote anything sinful or contrary to virtue: wherefore nothing prevents gain from being directed to some necessary or even virtuous end, and thus trading becomes lawful. Thus, for instance, a man may intend the moderate gain which he seeks to acquire by trading for the upkeep of his household, or for the assistance of the needy: or again, a man may take to trade for some public advantage, for instance, lest his country lack the necessaries of life, and seek gain, not as an end, but as payment for his labor.

It may be worth noting, given the Common Doctor’s repeated citation to Aristotle here, that in his volume of the Blackfriars Summa, Marcus Lefébure, O.P., argued that Aquinas’s position represents a “discreet[] but definite[]” break with Aristotle regarding commercial activity for profit (vol. 38, p. 228, cmt. b). It’s an interesting point that turns on Aristotle’s Politics I, 3, and it seems to us that it is entirely possible that Aquinas softens a hard-line Aristotelian injunction against commerce for profit. On the other hand, Aquinas’s fundamental argument—profit is in se morally neutral, and the morality of profit seeking is determined by its end—is not wholly alien to Aristotle’s point in the Politics. At any rate, one ought to recognize that, while Aquinas brings Aristotle into the debate, it is not at all clear that Aristotle would have reached the same answer as Aquinas.

That aside, without getting too deeply into Aquinas’s argument (or Aristotle’s, for that matter), we think—though we could probably convinced otherwise—that Aquinas intends to separate the small businessman, to use common parlance, from speculators or traders more generally. It is, perhaps, the difference between the proprietor of the corner grocery store and the commodity trader. Aquinas would likely say that the grocer, who is likely supporting his family, probably does not have a moral problem when he makes his modest profit. And, since his modest profit is intended to support his family, he probably could not be blamed for taking that profit seriously and attempting to increase it modestly. But the commodity trader may well have a moral problem when he makes a killing shorting frozen concentrated orange juice based upon a crop forecast. But that’s because the commodity trader views the maximization of profits as his sole (or preeminent) end. If the commodity trader needed millions of dollars to support his family or if he labored mightily and perilously to obtain FCOJ for a grateful nation, then the story might be different.

But what if the grocer runs his store like the commodity trader? What if he sets out to maximize his assets through trading? Certainly, he’s not likely to corner the FCOJ market with Mortimer and Randolph Duke, but he could very well have a fundamentally capitalistic outlook on his business. He could well want gain for gain’s sake, which Aquinas tells us is morally troublesome. This is what we mean when we say that the unrestrained profit motive is the primary moral problem with capitalism.

And Milco’s proposed definition brings this problem to the front of the debate. The definition he proposes certainly captures some essential element of the current, popular thinking on what capitalism means. It just so happens that that current, popular thinking has problems.

Postscript: Elliot Milco had some very kind things to say about Semiduplex very recently. For the most part, we note, this post was written before he made his very generous statements. We do, however, appreciate very much his notice. 

 

More on the Holy Innocents

A little while back, we posted about the feast of the Holy Innocents, including some passing remarks to certain changes in the liturgical aspect of the feast. At New Liturgical Movement, again, Gregory DiPippo has a very long, very interesting piece about many aspects of the feast. A brief selection:

Writing about a century later, William Durandus rejects Sicard’s idea that these customs refer to the Innocents descent to the Limbo of the Fathers, since if that were the case, the same would have to be observed with St John the Baptist. He does agree with Amalarius, citing his words very closely, and then explains that “the songs of joy” (i.e. the Gloria, Te Deum and Alleluia) are sung if the feast falls on Sunday, and always sung on its octave, “to signify the joy which they will receive on the eighth day, that is, in the resurrection. Although they did go down to (the Limbo of the Fathers), nevertheless they will rise with us in glory; for the octaves of feasts are celebrated in memory of the general resurrection, which they signify.” This is exactly the custom prescribed by the Missal of St Pius V and its late medieval antecedents. Durandus also knows of the custom “in many churches” that the dalmatic and tunicle were not worn, but this is not followed by the Tridentine Missal. (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum VII, 42, 11-12)

Go read the whole thing there. (Or save it to read later.)

Supersessionism and the Good Friday prayer

Fr. John Hunwicke has been keeping up a steady series of posts regarding not only the Vatican’s recent theological meditation regarding the Church’s mission to the Jews but also other issues relating to the Church’s relationship with the Jewish faith. One point he has come back to repeatedly is the attempt by the English episcopate (and the German episcopate before them) to get Rome to reconsider Pope Benedict’s Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews. In the 1962 books as issued in 1962, the prayer was different and some folks objected to it, so Benedict sat down and wrote a new prayer for the Forma Extraordinaria. This, too, has drawn criticism.

Today, Fr. Hunwicke points out that there are readings in the Liturgia Horarum that might be considered of a piece with the objectionable prayers in the EF Good Friday liturgy, and he wonders aloud whether the English or German bishops have complained about those, too. (For our part, we wonder if certain passages in the Roman Breviary in 1960 have come in for as much criticism as one prayer in the Good Friday liturgy. We doubt it.) One other perhaps more interesting thing that Fr. Hunwicke has done is to actually listen to Jewish thinkers as they talk about some of these issues. Obviously, the Church can come—and has come, fairly consistently from Pentecost to the present day, in fact—to her own conclusions on the question. However, interfaith dialogue presumes, well, dialogue.

One almost wishes for a return to the good old days (the good old bad old days?) when the disputants would get together and hash these questions out in front of an audience. That’s dialogue. Not ponderous statements or joint declarations written by committees for other committees to read and respond to. And conferences, seminars, workshops, and roundtables to dissect endlessly. (Until it’s time for a new round.) It would be very interesting to hear all sides of this question have a vigorous discussion. With representatives of the major schools of Jewish thought present to offer context and reaction. Rabbi Berger, according to Fr. Hunwicke, raises some interesting parallels that, we suppose, many Catholics simply will not be familiar with. The laity might actually learn something from a vigorous, viva voce debate, too.

News on the Pan-Orthodox Council

Gabriel Sanchez, whose sense of the Orthodox world is much keener than ours, has a brief, interesting comment about the planned Pan-Orthodox Council. In short, Sanchez says that there are now doubts that it will happen at all, or, if it does, it won’t do much:

If one peruses world Orthodoxy news from the last few months, one is likely left with the impression that the forthcoming 2016 Pan-Orthodox Council will either not happen or be rendered meaningless by a lack of global participation if it does. The Council, which some observers see as a power play by the Ecumenical Patriarch (EP), has received — at best — tepid enthusiasm from the Moscow Patriarch (MP), the largest patriarchate in the Orthodox Church today. It is well known that the EP and MP have been at each other’s throats in recent years over the question of primacy, with the comparatively weaker EP asserting by right with the MP quietly, but noticeably, holding to primacy in fact. Given Moscow’s expansive vision of its power and influence as embodied in its “Russian World” ideology, it is extremely doubtful that it would acquiesce to any proceedings which risk compromising its unique — and some might say “central” — position in Eastern Orthodoxy today.

(Emphasis supplied.) Last year, things were much sunnier, indeed.

To get an idea of some of the issues Sanchez talks about—particularly how the Moscow Patriarchate views some of the issues confronting Orthodoxy, such as the Ukraine crisis and relations with Rome—read Edward Pentin’s interview last year with Metropolitan Hilarion, an important figure in the Moscow Patriarchate. (Hilarion’s remarks drew a vigorous rebuttal with respect to his accusations of “Uniatism.”) It seems very reasonable to us to speculate that Moscow will not agree to anything that might run the risk of compromising, as Sanchez says, its status within Orthodoxy. After all, it has captured what it sees as a good position, why give it up?

All of this is interesting, of course, from an observational standpoint. But we think it is even more interesting from the standpoint of Catholic-Orthodox relations. The Holy Father’s close relationship with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has given many people hope for further improvement in Catholic-Orthodox relations. (Both Francis and Bartholomew are deeply concerned with the environment, for one thing.) But any assessment of Catholic-Orthodox relations ignores the Moscow Patriarchate at its own risk. To put it another way: if Moscow can throw a wrench in the Pan-Orthodox Council, then Moscow can throw a wrench in anything.

Read Sanchez’s whole comment—there are other, interesting points he makes.

Quid proficit tantum nefas?

We had it in mind to write a piece on the feast of the Holy Innocents, but then we checked New Liturgical Movement and found that Peter Kwasniewski had written a very fine essay on the feast. He notes,

Thoughts like this often occur to me on the strangely melancholy post-Christmas feast of the Holy Innocents. I say melancholy because, right after Christmas, we have a feast of unspeakable slaughter, bloodthirsty egotism, the ugly shadow of corrupt politics looming over the cradle of Bethlehem, the chill breath of the world against the cheek of humility. I cannot be the only one who winces when the Gospel passage is read out, and thinks of all the ways in which our world has still not let itself be redeemed, is still waging war against the Christ-child, is still scheming to suppress the King of kings.

But then I remind myself why it is a feast and not a day of penance like January 22nd. The Holy Innocents are true martyrs who stood in for Christ: they anticipate in their flesh the scourging, the nails, and the spear by which our salvation was wrought, and by which theirs was completed. What a triumphant victory, to have won without fighting, to have rushed ahead into the mystery of the Cross, without waiting for leave!

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there.

Once upon a time, the feast of the Holy Innocents was a feast with a penitential, mournful character. Guéranger tells us:

In the midst of the joy, which, at this holy time, fills both heaven and earth, the Holy Church of Rome forgets not the lamentations of the Mothers, who beheld their Children cruelly butchered by Herod’s soldiers. She hears the wailing of Rachel, and condoles with her; and, unless it be a Sunday, she suspends on this Feast some of the manifestations of the joy, which inundates her soul during the Octave of her Jesus’ Birth. The Red Vestments of a Martyr’s Day would be too expressive of that stream of infant blood which forbids the Mothers to be comforted, and joyous White would ill suit their poignant grief; she, therefore, vests in Purple, the symbol of mournfulness. [Unless it be a Sunday; in which case, the colour used is Red.] The Gloria in excelsis, the Hymn she loves so passionately during these days, when Angels come down from heaven to sing it – even that must be hushed today: and, in the Holy Sacrifice, she sings no Alleluia. In this, as in everything she does, the Church acts with an exquisite delicacy of feeling. Her Liturgy is a school of refined Christian considerateness.

(Emphasis supplied, but italics in original.) Somewhere along the line, the feast became, well, more festal.

We note also that other aspects of the liturgy have changed significantly. In the books of 1960, the responsories at matins and the little chapters at lauds, vespers, and the little hours were taken from Revelation, primarily chapter 14 regarding the 144,000. Guéranger notes,

The Church shows us, by her choice of this mysterious passage of the Apocalypse, how great a value she sets on Innocence, and what our own esteem of it ought to be. The Holy Innocents follow the Lamb, because they are pure. Personal merits on earth they could not have; but they went rapidly through this world, and its defilements never reached them. Their Purity was not tried, as was St. John’s; but, it is beautified by the blood they shed for the Divine Lamb, and He is pleased with it, and makes them his companions.

(Emphasis supplied.) We wonder if the choice goes beyond that, though. Obviously the office wants us to associate the Holy Innocents with the 144,000 in Revelation 14. The office also alludes to the souls of the martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6. Plainly, the Church takes the occasion of the Holy Innocents’ feast to point to some very obscure passages in Revelation. In the Liturgia Horarum, however, many of the mysterious selections from Revelation have been replaced with selections from Lamentations. Perhaps a little more easily comprehensible, but awfully rough on the mysterious aspects of the feast.