First Thoughts » Nathaniel Peters

Pope Francis and the Primacy of Grace

Nathaniel Peters — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:00:28 +0000

One of the greatest theological diseases we find in contemporary Catholicism is pelagianism, the notion that we’re all basically good people whose moral improvement and salvation is the result of our good actions. In this mindset, God’s grace becomes less consequential because it’s less necessary. At its heart, Christianity is about doing good things.

Throughout history, great theologians have combated pelagianism: Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and, in our own time, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Benedict XVI. They have reminded us that, at its heart, Christianity is a love story in which God seeks us out and draws us closer to himself. The first move belongs to God, and any real good we do is a gift from him, enshrouded with his own love. In this understanding, God’s grace has the primacy and priority.

In his homily for the Chrism Mass yesterday, Pope Francis underscored this, calling out implicit pelagianism by name:

It is not in soul-searching or constant introspection that we encounter the Lord: self-help courses can be useful in life, but to live by going from one course to another, from one method to another, leads us to become pelagians and to minimize the power of grace, which comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to others, giving what little ointment we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all.

As we hear God’s call to evangelize and serve, we do so mindful that we are responding to a gift received. We are no longer our own, and we no longer operate by our own powers. But the more we respond, by grace, to the grace that we have been given, the more grace grows in us, making us more and more alive.

On Wednesday, in his General Audience, the pope drove the point home further. He reminds us that God’s grace seeks us out before we seek him out, that God’s love and action are prior to our own:

God did not wait for us to go to Him, but He moved towards us, without calculation, without measures. This is how God is: He is always the first, He moves towards us. . . .

God always thinks with mercy: do not forget this. God always thinks with mercy: our merciful Father. God thinks like a father who awaits the return of his child and goes to meet him, sees him coming when he is still far away . . . What does this mean? That each and every day he went out to see if his son was coming home. This is our merciful Father. It is the sign that he was waiting for him from the terrace of his house; God thinks like the Samaritan that does not approach the victim to commiserate with him, or look the other way, but to rescue him without asking for anything in return, without asking if he was Jew, if he was pagan, a Samaritan, rich or poor: he does not ask anything—he does not ask these things, he asks for nothing. He goes to his aid: This is how God thinks. God thinks like the shepherd who gives his life to defend and save his sheep.

Let us approach Holy Week, then, mindful that we approach a God who first approached us, a Father whose exquisite mercy we need desperately, who gives us abundantly that mercy and grace without which we can do nothing of everlasting importance.

Music for Holy Week: In Monte Oliveti

Nathaniel Peters — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:00:20 +0000

Maundy Thursday, like Palm Sunday, begins in joy and ends in sorrow. The music of Maundy Thursday usually recounts the events of the Last Supper, the foot-washing, the discourses found in the Gospel of John, the betrayal, and Jesus’ arrest. Orlando di Lasso’s “In Monte Oliveti” focuses with sad beauty on the solitary time when Jesus prayed alone in the garden, overcome by the horror of what he was about to take on, yet full of that humble abandonment and receptivity that lie at the heart of all the Christian mysteries.

In monte Oliveti ad patrem oravit:
Pater si fieri potest transeat a me calix iste.
Spiritus quidem promptus est caro autem infirma.
Fiat voluntas tua.
Verumtamen non sicut ego volo, sed sicut tu vis.
Fiat voluntas tua.

On the Mount of Olives he prayed to his Father:
“Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Let your will be done.
Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will,
Let your will be done.”

A Good Time to Be Catholic

Nathaniel Peters — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:42:47 +0000

Sandro Magister writes:

It is a widespread opinion, confirmed by numerous testimonies, that the intention of electing pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio grew substantially among the cardinals on the morning of Saturday, March 9, when the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires spoke at the second to last of the congregations – covered by secrecy – that preceded the conclave.

Now the notes he used have become public. They show Francis’ first priority, one that made him favorable in the eyes of his colleagues: evangelization.

1) Evangelizing implies apostolic zeal. Evangelizing presupposes in the Church the “parresia” of coming out from itself. The Church is called to come out from itself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographical, but also existential: those of the mystery of sin, of suffering, of injustice, those of ignorance and of the absence of faith, those of thought, those of every form of misery. . . .

4) Thinking of the next Pope: a man who, through the contemplation of Jesus Christ and the adoration of Jesus Christ, may help the Church to go out from itself toward the existential peripheries, that may help it to be the fecund mother who lives “by the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.”

The age of evangelical Catholicism has come indeed. For all the problems we face in the Church and in the world, it’s a very good time to be Catholic.

Music for Lent: Woefully Arrayed

Nathaniel Peters — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:00:37 +0000

William Cornysh served as a court composer to Henry VIII. While he wrote liturgical works, he also set the poem “Woefully Arrayed” to music for domestic use and private devotion. The music and words are well worth pondering as the Passion approaches. This recording comes from the excellent young ensemble Stile Antico and their new CD Passion & Resurrection.

Woefully arrayed
My blood, man for thee ran, it may not be nayed;
My body, blo and wan;
Woefully arrayed.

Behold me, I pray thee
with all thy whole reason
and be not hard-hearted,
and for this encheason,
sith I for thy soul sake
was slain in good season,
Beguiled and betrayed
by Judas’ false treason,
unkindly entreated,
with sharp cord sore freted,
the Jews me threated,
they mowed, they grinned,
they scorned me,
condem’d to death as thou may’st see;
Woefully arrayed.

Thus naked am I nailed.
O man, for thy sake;
I love thee, then love me,
why sleepst thou, awake,
remember my tender heartroot for thee brake;
with pains my veins constrained to crake;
thus tugged to and fro,
thus wrapped all in woe,
whereas never man was so entreated,
thus in most cruel wise
was like a lamb offer’d in sacrifice;
Woefully arrayed.

Of sharp thom I have worn
a crown on my head.
So pained, so strained, so rueful, so red,
thus bobbed, thus robbed,
thus for thy love dead;
unfeigned, not deigned,
my blood for to shed,
my feet and handes sore
the sturdy nailes bore;
what might I suffer more,
than I have done, O man, for thee?
Come when thou list, welcome to me!
Woefully arrayed.

Washing the Feet of Sinners

Nathaniel Peters — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:06:16 +0000

“Hate the sin, love the sinner.” Christians use the phrase so often because it captures so well one of the foundational principles of our faith. Usually we think it means loving those whose actions we think are wrong, but not in gravest sense: He is sleeping around, she says nasty things about people; he doesn’t pay his employees enough, she is arrogant—but we love them despite it.

What about the most horrifying sins, though? Today it was announced that Pope Francis will celebrate the Mass for Holy Thursday not at St. Peter’s, before thousands of pilgrims, but at a juvenile prison, in keeping with his custom as archbishop of Buenos Aires. Many times we think of juvenile criminals as good kids in a bad system: If they’d grown up in a better place, with more money, with parents who loved them, they would have turned out differently. In many cases, that is, no doubt, true. But, Simcha Fisher notes, sometimes the people in juvenile prisons are rapists who thought they could get away with it. Sometimes there is no excuse good enough for their deeds.

We do not know the names of the prisoners whose feet Pope Francis will wash and kiss in a week’s time. Nor do we know why they are in prison. But, wherever they are that night, Christians will keep in mind the one who ate with tax collectors and sinners, some of whom, no doubt, did deeply wicked things. They will remember the man who washed the feet of those who would soon abandon him, and, in one case, betray him with a kiss. It used to be that those received into the pope’s presence bent down and kissed his foot. Now the pope bends down and kisses the feet of prisoners.

Hate the sin, love the sinner. Many times it means looking beyond the faults of those around us, or loving those being punished for crimes they unthinkingly committed. It is staggering, almost horrifying, to think that it might mean washing the feet of murderers and rapists as well.

Downton Abbey: The Source Critical Approach

Nathaniel Peters — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:43:51 +0000

Many fans of the TV series Downton Abbey may have wondered about the source of the turns and twists of plot, the historical inaccuracy and stunning anachronisms, the clashing strains of progressivism and traditionalism all present in the show. Just as with the apparent contradictions in Scripture, it turns out that good source criticism can lead us beyond the traditional construct of a single author to a deeper understanding of the historical Jesus or, in this case, Downton. Betsy Childs of Beeson Divinity School blazes the trail:

Readers familiar with the period drama Downton Abbey will have encountered it in final form as broadcast by PBS to an American audience. It is widely assumed that the screenplay for the mini-series was written by one Julian Fellowes of Dorset. This mistaken assumption, though promiscuously propagated by the press, evinces a lack of sufficient attention paid to the uneven, at times contradictory, nature of the narrative. It is patently obvious to this author and to those of a critical ilk that the so-called Downton Abbey storyline is the product of multiple authors with several different aims. . . .

This author proposes that there are at least three redactors behind the wildly popular series. These three authors do not, by any means, correspond to the three distinct seasons. These authors each redacted an original body of material, though it is unclear whether the alterations took place successively or simultaneously. We will call these authors the Aristocrat, the Moralist, and the Progressive.

Benedict’s Sartorial Legacy

Nathaniel Peters — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:18:15 +0000

In perhaps the most unexpected commentary on Benedict XVI’s legacy, the U.K.’s liberal Guardian has a fashion column on the significance of Benedict’s sartorial and liturgical choices. And they get it exactly right:

The root of his need to rediscover some of the more traditional, even baroque, elements of papal dressing can be traced back to the great liturgy gear-change of 1965, when the phase known as Vatican II, a period of modernisation aimed at reconnecting the Vatican to Catholics worldwide, came to an end. . . .

This meant the dumping of all tassels, trimmings and most decoration on vestments. Highly theatrical robes were considered too outre. Out went anything that made church leaders look like Cardinal Richelieu. As a priest friend of mine puts it: “The Church processed into the second Vatican council in cloth of gold and watered silk, and shambled out of the other end in drip-dry horse blankets and polyester.” Pope Paul VI even sold off the papal tiara, a three-tiered, egg-shaped adornment that made our imperial state crown look like something from Lidl.

Benedict’s desire to recapture the Church’s traditional liturgy and doctrine goes hand in hand with what he wore as pope. On his election in 2005, he wore Ming the Merciless-style vestments left over from John Paul’s administration, and after getting rid of his first master of ceremonies, Piero Marini, who had subjected him to a sort of blue dust-sheet for his first papal mass in Austria, he turned to Guido Marini (no relation) – an MC who understood the power of tradition. At a time of global economic uncertainty, and with the Church struggling to retain its flock in an increasingly secularised world, reinforcing tradition and underlining the continuity of ritual was a bold and, Benedict felt, necessary direction. . . .

[Benedict's] love of gothic vestments was about more than basic vanity; beauty and dignity reflect the splendour and mystery of liturgy. To Benedict this is God-focused rather than community-centred, as was favoured by the 1968 generation.

The bonus line comes right at the end with a wager on the next pope:

Fashion outsider? The magnificent former archbishop of St Louis, the American Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. An appearance by him is the Catholic equivalent of a Broadway musical.

Refocusing Conservatism

Nathaniel Peters — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 15:31:42 +0000

In the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Brooks calls on conservatives to care about the poor, and to make the public argument that what they believe and work for is good for the poor:

The answer is to make improving the lives of vulnerable people the primary focus of authentically conservative policies. For example, the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents deserve better schools.

Defending a healthy culture of family, community and work does not mean imposing an alien “bourgeois” morality on others. It is to recognize what people need to be happy and successful—and what is most missing today in the lives of too many poor people.

By making the vulnerable a primary focus, conservatives will be better able to confront some common blind spots. Corporate cronyism should be decried as every bit as noxious as statism, because it unfairly rewards the powerful and well-connected at the expense of ordinary citizens. Entrepreneurship should not to be extolled as a path to accumulating wealth but as a celebration of everyday men and women who want to build their own lives, whether they start a business and make a lot of money or not. And conservatives should instinctively welcome the immigrants who want to earn their success in America.

Fruits of the Glorious Revolution: The Funeral Music of Mary II

Nathaniel Peters — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:40:15 +0000

Sally Thomas recently noted this piece from Purcell’s funeral music for Queen Mary II. It sets an appropriately penitential air for the coming weeks.

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts;
shut not thy merciful ears unto our pray’rs;
but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty.

O holy and most merciful Saviour,
thou most worthy Judge eternal,
suffer us not, at our last hour,
for any pains of death, to fall from thee. Amen.

Setting the Record Straight on Benedict and the Sex-Abuse Scandals

Nathaniel Peters — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:15:16 +0000

One question that has always surrounded Benedict’s tenure as pope has been that of the sex-abuse scandals. In their assessment of his papacy, even otherwise friendly commentators, such as Ross Douthat, have said that he did not do enough to combat abuse, punish wrong-doers, and console victims.

In an interview with John L. Allen Jr., Fr. Hans Zollner, S.J., Vice-Rector of the Gregorian University, head of its Institute of Psychology, and a member of the “Round Table on Child Abuse” created by the German federal government, sets the record straight. He also describes the complexity of dealing with sexual abuse in various cultures and the steps that the Catholic Church is taking in Rome and around the globe.

Now that Benedict XVI is stepping down, how do you evaluate his legacy on the sexual abuse scandals?

Based on what I know personally, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he was the first person, and the most determined person, to take on what he called the ‘open wound’ in the body of the church, meaning the sexual abuse of minors by clergy. He came to know about a number of cases, and the intensity of the wounds inflicted on victims. He became aware of what priests had done to minors, and to vulnerable adults. As a result, he became more and more convinced that it has to be tackled, and at various levels he started to deal with it – the canonical level, the ecclesial, and the personal.

Benedict XVI is the first pope who has met with and listened to abuse victims, who has apologized, and who has written about the problem both in his letter to Irish bishops and in the book Light of the World.

One very important step was to concentrate all the legal and administrative procedures at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Another was to appoint a very intelligent, practical and dedicated man as Promoter of Justice.

You’re talking about Monsignor Charles Scicluna, now Bishop Scicluna in Malta?

Yes, Monsignor Scicluna, who was in that job for ten years. Now he’s appointed Father Robert Oliver [of the Boston archdiocese], which shows his resolution to go on – to do justice to the victims, to hold abusers within the church accountable, and to whatever can be done to promote prevention.

We had enormous support for the symposium on abuse last February by all the heads of the major offices in the Roman Curia – the Doctrine of the Faith, Propaganda Fide, Bishops, Education, the Secretariat of State. The Secretary of State wrote a letter to participants in which he quotes the pope. If you understand how Rome functions, all this could not have happened if there wasn’t a placet from above.

Other voices notwithstanding, and despite the bad image some people have created of the pope both as prefect and as Holy Father, he has been the most determined person to take this on. He’s been very encouraging for many people, including ourselves, to really face the issues and to try to do whatever can done to make sure that this evil within the church is acknowledged and is avoided as much as possible in the future.