Never Let a Crisis Go Unused

FROM THE PASTOR

by Fr. George W. Rutler
June 7, 2009

During the persecution of Christians in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman prefect Rusticus was frustrated by the serene equanimity of the Christian convert Justin, a Platonic philosopher. The Romans considered Christianity a superstitio parva (a perverse superstition) and classified its morality as immodica (immoderate) for, among other things, refusing to abort the unborn and “expose” the newly born. Bereft of rational arguments against Christians, Nero blamed them for burning Rome, as some would blame the Jews for the bubonic plague. The demagogic policy, updated by Lenin and made a political craft in our day, was “never let a crisis go unused.”

Every great cause attracts its sociopaths who cloak their pathology in the mantel of righteousness. It is always wrong to do something intrinsically evil, no matter how good the desired end may be. If Jesus admonished St. Peter for cutting off a man’s ear in an instance of self-defense, the principle of proportionality is much stronger when an individual wildly appropriates to himself the right to kill in cold blood. When an outlaw destroys life in the name of human dignity, however depraved and macabre the target, the raucous contradiction gives cynics a chance to exploit the crime. This is the manner of hypocritical Pharisaism, as opposed to the venerable Pharisees whose righteousness Our Lord said should be exceeded by his disciples. The debased Pharisees gave themselves a bad name because they cynically postured as scandalized in order to haul themselves onto a shaky moral platform higher than their opponents.

I cite the case of a man gone off the edge who committed murder in Kansas in the name of the sacredness of life. Impatient with rational voices, he said: “These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!” He was rightly called a “misguided fanatic” but opportunists exploited the crisis to blame their political opponents. On the other hand, some deluded people actually defended and praised the murderer.

The Kansas killing to which I refer was the Pottawatomie Massacre; Abraham Lincoln used the term “misguided fanatic”; the opportunists were Southern slaveholders; and those who praised the maverick killer included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The “inventor of American terrorism” was John Brown, whose body “lies a-mouldering in the grave.” A more prudent abolitionist, Julia Ward Howe, transposed the lyrics of the old song into a hymn of Christ who “is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” The sane diction of authentic confessors of faith, as opposed to the demented, was very like what Justin patiently told Rusticus: “We hope to suffer torment for the sake of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and so be saved. For this will bring us salvation and confidence as we stand before the more terrible and universal judgment-seat of Our Lord and Saviour.”

Defining Lady and Gentleman

FROM THE PASTOR
by Fr. George W. Rutler
May 17, 2009

The ordination of new priests for our archdiocese last week was accompanied by delightful receptions well suited for the month of May. Graceful conviviality is becoming as rare in our coarsened culture as when the pagan Romans were astonished by the celebratory “refrigeria” of the Christians, free of the vulgarity and cruelty which the post-republican empire had come to equate with fun.

Loss of reverence for innocent life corrupts the manners which were the signature of the classical ages and whose exchange for gaudy excess was the emblem of their decadence. The way people dress and speak and treat one another signals their self-perception. When civility is disdained as bourgeois, the servant is deprived of his royal dignity as a child of God and the king is absolved of his duty to revere those he governs.

Cardinal Newman defined the gentleman, and by inference the lady, in cadences which have become almost as incomprehensible as the terms gentleman and lady themselves. “It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain.” He speaks of moral care for the consciences of others. The gentleman puts others at ease and “makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring.” He does not slander or gossip, treats his enemy as a potential friend and is “merciful to the absurd.”

This is not the low discourse of modern politics and journalism. So annually we now have the perfect storm of barbarism in the White House Correspondents Dinner. Each year it gets worse, and this year a woman, hired as a comedienne, failed in the useful role of court jester, wishing on those “traitors” she did not like sickness and worse. The highest officials of our land joined in the harsh laughter and added sexual innuendoes. Like the Vandals who ridiculed the noble Romans senators, they mocked abstinence from vice and dissected virtue as weakness. The cynicism matched Oscar Wilde saying that a gentleman is one who never inflicts pain unintentionally. Drawing on the fifth century “Psychomachia” of Prudentius, mediaeval writers charted kindness among the “heavenly virtues” to cure envy, which is a motive for cruelty, and pride, which is the alchemy of disdain. Newman knew, like St. Paul, that classical kindness is only aesthetical moral furniture without the love of the Holy Spirit (cf. 2 Cor. 6:6). But he also knew that uncourtly behavior courts blaspheming the Holy Spirit. When journalists approve the rants of poor breeding as “just comedy” and its victims as “fair game,” they approve the sadism of Petronius and the vulgarity of Rabelais. They shift from Mark Twain, who could disagree without being disagreeable, to Fellini who relished degradation. For all his populism, Dickens was a rank snob when he said the term “American gentleman” was a self-contradiction. We should not want to prove him right.

Painting: The Romans of the Decadence, 1847 by Thomas Couture 1815-1879

Coincidence = Providence

FROM THE PASTOR
by Fr. George W. Rutler
May 10, 2009

On April 30, Monsignor William F. Guido died peacefully and his soul was committed to Christ the High Priest. He was the third pastor of the Church of Our Saviour, having previously been an associate pastor at the Church of Our Lady of Victory in the financial district. By coincidence, I succeeded him in that parish, never thinking that someday I would succeed him as pastor here. By another coincidence, our new archbishop, having offered Mass here on May 1 for the Sisters of Life, also offered Monsignor Guido’s funeral Mass the next morning. You know my strong view that the word “coincidence” is a vague shorthand for providence. God works all things according to his design and, to the degree that we cooperate with his plans, he makes all things well with us.

As we pray for Monsignor Guido’s soul, we also give thanks for all his efforts in his year here to maintain and prosper this parish when it was burdened with heavy debts. We also give thanks that exactly one week after Monsignor Guido’s burial, Vincent Druding of this parish was called to the Sacred Priesthood. Monsignor Guido was born in 1918. Vincent Druding was born sixty years later. I was born halfway between both. So the priestly line goes on from the Resurrection when Our Saviour breathed on the Apostles in the Upper Room, giving them authority to forgive sins.

Whatever age a man is chronologically, when the priestly stole is placed on his shoulders he becomes 2000 as he is united to the office of Christ the Priest. And however old a priest is chronologically when he dies, he is as young as the youthful Apostle John who recognized the Voice from the shore and said, “It is the Lord!” That is what every priest says each day when he raises the Blessed Sacrament at the altar.

On this Fifth Sunday of Easter, having been ordained in the Cathedral of Saint Patrick the previous day, Vincent offers Mass for the first time on his own, having concelebrated yesterday with the archbishop. To the Eucharistic thanksgiving, we offer our own prayers of thanksgiving for our first parishioner to be ordained a priest for the archdiocese, and for all the young men of our parish now heeding the call of Christ to do the same. Christ asked his first Apostles, “Have you caught anything?” When they cast their nets into the deep (“duc in altum”) their catch was great. So we pray it will be for Vincent, whom we now call Father Druding, and for all the priests who obey God’s command. A nineteenth century hymn recalls what began many centuries ago:

God of the prophets! Bless the prophets’ sons,
Elijah’s mantle o’er Elisha cast;
Each age its solemn task may claim but once;
Make each one nobler, stronger, than the last.

---

Queens' Roots

Saint Nuno Alvares Pereira 1360-1431

FROM THE PASTOR

by Fr. George W. Rutler

May 3, 2009

Nuno Alvares Pereira, born in 1360, was a descendant of Charlemagne and, by the marriage of his daughter to a son of the King of Portugal, became ancestor to many shapers of history, including Catherine of Aragon and Mary Tudor. One of his descendants was Catherine of Bragança who became Queen Consort of England by her marriage to Charles II and in whose honor our city’s Borough of Queens was named. She also popularized tea-drinking in England. With his friend Henry the Navigator, Nuno began the “Age of Exploration” and took the Gospel to Africa. Columbus might never have sailed without the patronage of Nuno’s descendant Queen Isabella. The assassination of another descendant, Archduke Ferdinand, triggered World War I and changed the world again.

On April 26, Pope Benedict XVI, having recognized the miraculous cure of a blind woman by Nuno’s intercession, declared him a saint, 578 years after his death in the same year that Joan of Arc was burned. Saint Nuno consecrated his life to the Blessed Virgin, whom we crown with flowers in the month of May because she was granted to us as our mother by her Son when he was crowned with thorns. Nuno engraved the name of Mary on the sword he wielded to protect the people of his land. He secured Portuguese independence from the Kingdom of Castile in battles against tremendous odds: Atoleiros, Aljubarrota, and Valverde. Under a banner emblazoned with Our Lady and St. George, he would stop in the middle of the fighting to fall on his knees in prayer, as once when his 6,000 troops were being attacked by a force of more than 30,000.

Like Wellington and all true soldiers, he knew that “save for a battle lost, nothing is so tragic as a battle won.” Called “the Peacemaker,” he nursed his wounded enemies and refused the spoils of battle. When his wife died, he distributed his wealth to his comrades in arms and orphans, and became a Carmelite monk. When former foes came to see “Fra Nuno of St. Mary” in his monastery, he showed them his armor beneath his religious habit and warned them he was ready to mount his steed again if anyone harmed the innocent. Sir Galahad was of legend; Nuno was the perfect knight in fact. He died on Easter Day as a priest was reading Our Lord’s words from the Cross: “Behold your Mother.” His epitaph said:

“Here lies that famous Nuno, the Constable, founder of the House of Bragança, excellent general, blessed monk, who during his life on earth so ardently desired the Kingdom of Heaven that after his death, he merited the eternal company of the Saints. His worldly honors were countless, but he turned his back on them. He was a great Prince, but he made himself a humble monk. He founded, built and endowed this church in which his body rests.”

"...whosoever shall deny me before men..."

FROM THE PASTOR
by Fr. George W. Rutler
April 26, 2009

Saint John was the only Apostle to remain with the Blessed Mother at the Crucifixion, and seared into his mind was the name of Jesus at the top of the cross. The Apostle was always reluctant to mention his own name. In his humility all that mattered was that he was loved by the Lord. When we receive our names in baptism, they radiate the Holy Name, for every Christian is a spark of the Saviour. We should say the Holy Name with reverence, and make reparation when we hear thoughtless people use it as a curse. They do not know its power, but Satan does, and that is why he wants us to twist it if he cannot blot it out.

In the fifteenth century St. Bernardine of Siena went from town to town preaching, holding a banner emblazoned with the letters IHS, which are the first Greek letters of “Jesus.” It was most effective in getting people’s attention and Bernardine now is the patron saint of advertisers. In response to humbugs who accused the saint of making the acronym a kind of magical device, Pope Martin V told him to put a small cross over the letters, to make clear that this was the name of the Crucified One.

Young John survived all the Apostles and, grown old and still remembering how the Master had called them “teknia”—“little children”—the night before the Crucifixion, he used the same word: “Little children, I write to you because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake” (1 John 2:12). After Pentecost, with John standing next to him, Peter healed a crippled man by invoking the name of Jesus, which was better than “silver and gold” of which he had none. John and Peter were put on trial for this and Peter boldly declared, “There is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

In the spiritual combat of our generation, Satan would tempt timorous Christians to esteem other names as greater than Jesus. Recently a Catholic university covered the letters IHS at the request of politicians, so that the Holy Name would not be seen by the cameras at a public event. When the powers that be were finished, and the letters uncovered again, so also was the weakness of the university exposed. “But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in Heaven” (Matt. 10:33). St. Peter had no money, but he had the name of Jesus. Any institution ashamed of that name, will find that its golden endowment is tarnished and its silver adds up to just thirty pieces.

Ashamed of Jesus! That dear Friend
On whom my hopes of Heaven depend!
No; when I blush, be this my shame
That I no more revere His Name.

Photo: IHS monogram, on top of the main altar of the Gesù, Rome, Italy