A Sip of Calviccino

Your gentle commentator J. Grump had not darkened the doors of Café Preténse for many months. His free time had been occupied with familial concerns, which included the reading of Protestant dogmatics for proselytization purposes. This particular Saturday saw a lull in the glossing of Reformation ramblings, and he made his way to the old caffeinating hole for a bit of creative writing. The clientele was hipster and millennial as usual, and your pious provocateur noticed that the café’s prices had been hiked during his absence.

“The cost of being pretentious,” I mumbled to myself as I sipped an admittedly subtle cappuccino.

I had left my wife at home to spend the morning with friends, and she told me not to return until I had finished the first draft of a poem. My mind wandered from the rhyming dictionary and I began people-watching. I recognized a minor local Catholic celebrity a few tables down. He had gained a following with his polemic podcast and was talking to someone whose back was turned to me. I thought at first it must be a fan, but then I saw the familiar tail sprawling out behind the chair, and my back stiffened.

The composition of verse suddenly became very engaging, and I hoped to go unnoticed. I had scratched out three lines of doggerel before the horned devil stopped short on his way out the door.

“Why,” he said, “if it isn’t my old friend Mr. Grump!”

I looked up from my notebook with a weary look.

“Hello, Wormwood.”

“Mind if I sit for a moment?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.” He made himself comfortable. “So. What is new in the world of you? Which fresh annoyances are making your life difficult these days?”

“I’m sure you already know. What is new in the distillery?”

“Bother, that old thing. Never get into the family business, I always say. Nothing but complaints from the lowerdowns about the decrease in quality, but I have been able to successfully market Wormwood’s Abyss to the lesser devil-class. What we lack in prestige we make up for in volume, but the damned aristocrats are pushing for a more refined small batch. Recruiting great human souls for such a spirited end is extraordinarily difficult.”

“Is that why you were talking to Prof. Podcaster over there?”

“Indeed.” The devil removed his hat and scratched his horns in consternation. “Perhaps one day I’ll snag him, but he’s a crafty one. Your parish of Tradistanis has a few men and women of potential greatness, but I fear the quality of preaching has plateaued their development.”

“How so?”

He shrugged. “Those priests are trained to expound repetitively about the same spiritual habits. It’s more than the fluff that normal diocesan priests splutter out to their sleepy flocks, but not enough to raise up greatness. The virtues they promote require only a little thought, and souls with undeveloped minds and wills cannot commit great sins. I swear to Styx, I am so tired of tempting people to indulge in phantasmal luxuries.”

“Perhaps a simple and humble faith are what people need,” I said. “Who am I to despise anyone for their weird devotions and clinging to scapulars? I expect the Virgin Mary smiles more on them than on me, sometimes.”

The devil traced an inverted pentagram over his chest in a spasm of superstition at the mention of that name.

“Well, I had hoped for better from you.”

“Oh?”

“Vainglory is not the greatest of sins, but it is not a minor one. Encouraging people to look down on their fellow-man can be a stepping stone to bigger things.”

“Happy to disappoint you, I suppose. Don’t you worry that you’re telling me too much about your plans?”

“Oh. No, we’ll think of something else to do with you. Speaking of which, how’s the extracurricular reading coming along?”

“The Protestant theology of Dr. H? Slower than I had hoped. I would like to be done with it sooner rather than later. I don’t know what is more difficult, reading the blasted book or writing the commentary I promised my family. At least they’re engaging with me on something of substance. Family gatherings where everybody just ignores that I and my wife are the only Catholics in the room were getting so very old.”

“If you want my advice, be sure to respond in fine detail to all of that Calvinist’s arguments. That’s the only way to undo the wily wickedness of old Dr. H.”

“I cannot help but notice your twitching tail.”

“Don’t mind that. Have I ever told you of Dr. H’s arrival in the infernal realms? He lived to see the end of the Great War—one of the causes of the current dearth of greatness, by the way—and spent his last years in worry and doubt over the logic of the Modernists, not over the possibility of Papism. It was not hard to keep him distracted. You’ve seen clearly enough how he responded to those secular intellects with careful reason but to Rome with wrath, and then he added the usual Calvinist corruption of the divine character on top of that. Defamation of the Enemy and willful ignorance make for a fine vintage in the winepress of Dis. In fact, I believe there is a plan to open that particular bottle on the centennial of his death. The look on his face when he arrived…”

At that the wormy devil became lost in a reverie. I glanced down at my notebook and realized I could improve the rhythm of the second line. My scribblings interrupted the other’s thoughts and he packed himself up to go.

“See you on Sunday,” he said. “I need to see how our sermon plans are coming along.” I waved him out.

“Now,” I thought aloud, “what rhymes with ‘absinthe’?”

The Pride of Life

("The Temptation of St Anthony," by Joos van Craesbeeck)

“I know I’m not quite the same kind of Catholic as you anymore,” Thomas said, “but I still believe that we are all in need of some kind of redemption.”

“No one ever said you needed to be exactly the kind of Catholic as me,” I said. “I don’t care if you don’t go to Mass at Tradistan or if you don’t get along with the people there. Even I don’t get along with them half the time.”

“Sorry, I know it’s a touchy subject.”

“More for you than for me, I think. You’ve been hesitant to talk about it.”

We took a short break and sipped our espressos. The crowd at Café Preténse was light, so our theological disagreements were not likely to bother too many people.

“Well, it has also always bothered me that the Tradistani priests don’t care anything about science. They treat it like it’s the plague of the Devil, and they always misrepresent it.”

“What does that have to do with the Church as a whole? You know full well that most Catholics have a nuanced appreciation of scientific research, even though some of us keep a skeptical view of its more dogmatic assertions.”

“That’s why I’m planning on switching parishes. I’m not likely to get the same kind of grief at St. X about a lot of things as I am at Tradistan.”

“I suppose you’re not. You do realize that there are some aspects of Catholic teaching that are universal, quite apart from the ‘science’ stuff? That certain morals are basic teachings everywhere and always, regardless of how wishy-washy the priests may be in the confessional?”

“I don’t think I need to toss out my many years of liberal education because of some priest who failed his basic science courses in college, is all.” Thomas took a larger swallow of his drink and set it down loudly. “Be right back.”

As my friend walked to the back of the café, I took a moment to sigh, and let my eyes wander around the drinking space. I noticed a familiar hat, and cleared my throat loudly and knowingly. The figure in the hat perked up and turned around in a faux-dramatic gesture.

“Hello, Wormwood,” I said.

“Why, Mr. Grump!” replied the vintner of boxed wine for the damned. “It has been a long time, indeed!”

“I don’t suppose you know anything about what’s been eating at my friend Thomas, here? You did once admit that you were hard at work deconstructing Tradistan from within.”

“Little ol’ me?” He hid a grin with his plastic iced coffee cup, but the twitch of his tail gave his mood away. “I suppose I may have pushed him a little here, pulled a little there, but it wasn’t all that hard.”

“No? I have to admit I thought better of his resolve and intellectual honesty when he was received into the Church.”

“Some people don’t need much, and your friend Thomas always had two major flaws: intellectual pride and nostalgia.”

“Intellectual vanity, sure, but nostalgia?”

“He is obsessed with the past, clings desperately to the most emotional times of his life.” He removed his hat and placed it on the table. “Fury at injustice is a powerful hook in the souls of the needy. They cannot fathom new emotional experiences as strong as the righteous indignation they felt in their youth, for instance, and seek out reasons to feel it anew.”

“I suppose we are all attached to the emotions that once burned the most brightly,” I admitted.

The devil continued. “And even when he made his profession of Faith, he only half-submitted his intellect to the mind of your church. His learning has been broad—broader than most—and he was always unwilling to admit that much of that learning might have been in vain.”

“Even if it actually was not.”

“Of course. As usual, it is the pride of the matter that drags him towards Our Father Below, not his errors as such.”

“One can be in error while still being open to correction,” I mused, “and material error can coexist with humility.”

“You needn’t blame me for this.” He put his hand over his heart in a gesture of mock offense. “Your good friend here was never willing to substantially change. It was easy to poison his conversion through his habitual doubt.”

I thought of a sharp retort, but reconsidered. The devil guzzled his iced coffee and scratched his horns while my anger subsided into sadness. “There’s nothing for it but to try to get him outside of himself, to pull him out of his narcissism long enough to see that his perspective might be more fallible than he’s willing to admit.” The absinthe-reeking demon had grown curiously quiet, but his tail moved intentionally, like a large cat on the hunt.

“Well,” he very deliberately took up his hat and stood, “I suppose I must be going. There’s much work to do at the wine press tonight, and Crumplehead simply cannot be trusted to produce the necessary volume. He is too much of a snob, and would have our legions of tempters go thirsty so that a few could refine their palate. Sad, really. Not much of a team player.”

“And here I thought we were still toasting to good taste.”

He tipped his brim slightly. “Until next time, Mr. Grump.”

“Until then.”

I watched him stalk out to the parking lot and heard Thomas walking back. I breathed in, took up my drink, and prepared again to do battle against the pride of life.

Waiting for the Call

A recent visit to Café Preténse with the Little Lady was punctuated by a visit with an old friend who had recently been tossed back into the world by a small-minded women’s religious order. In the course of our conversation, she let slip that another mutual friend of ours—currently married and mother of a cheery little tyke—had undergone months of scruples related to the religious life when she and her then-boyfriend had asked their pastor for advice about proceeding towards marriage. This sorely misguided priest started the process of marriage discernment by asking them both if they had fully discerned against the religious life, rather than getting to know them in their own situations and individual histories. Our mutual friend spent almost half a year tormenting herself about whether or not she had a religious vocation (not for the first time) while her longsuffering man looked on, until she finally allowed him to propose marriage.

The “process of discernment” is a semi-mystical mental torture device that could only exist in a first-world land where youths are encouraged to spend years deciding between too many professional choices instead of taking up the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood at a young age. Young Catholics are told to pray and listen quietly for God’s “calling” to their individual souls, to try and sort out what the Spirit is telling them to do with their lives. The priesthood, socially active religious life, contemplative orders, the married state, and “singleness” are all said to be valid “callings” for the young Catholic.

Baloney, says Mr. J. Grump. Being raised Evangelical Protestant (as I never tire of reminding our longsuffering readers), I was presented with a similar choice by a well-meaning youth pastor in my pre-college years: between a life of “ministry” and mere church-going. The “ministry” was divided into various parts, such as missionary work, pastoral positions, song and dance, and evangelism, although the married life was expected as the norm. I decided early on that I had no interest in a life of “ministry,” since I didn’t want the failure of other people’s spiritual lives to hang on my poor advice.

The American Catholic approach is more sinister, although I could not quite put my finger on the nature of the problem until reading Richard Butler, O.P.’s Religious Vocation: An Unnecessary Mystery (1961). Fr. Butler also had no patience for the baloney of vocational discernment as it exists in common parish life.

The mind of man, however, tends to multiply mysteries unnecessarily. Given the light, he often prefers darkness. Perhaps it is just a natural tendency to intellectual sloth: whatever is difficult to grasp I will dismiss as mystery; a mystery is inexplicable and therefore does not require, since it cannot achieve, thorough understanding…. Religious vocation—the call to follow Christ by observing His counsels [poverty, chastity, and obedience] as well as His commands—is a matter of public revelation. The human response to this divine invitation is a matter of public history. And yet an aura of mystery has beclouded this simple invitation in the popular mind to the point of complication and confusion for both the observer of and the participant in religious life—an established state in which one can achieve, more safely and securely, the common Christian goal of perfection in charity….

The specific crime is that of relegating religious vocation to the realm of Gnosticism, making of it an esoteric private inspiration. At least that is the unmistakable tone of their conversation and propaganda on the subject…. Religious life is not an extra, not a luxury, not a peculiar path for exceptional souls in the pursuit of Christian perfection. It is necessary for the apostolic work of the Church and for the personal salvation of some of its members….

We have to sympathize with the perplexed young soul, pondering an eternal future and seeking a safer route, who is vaguely instructed: “My dear friend, in your heart of hearts, ask yourself if God is not calling you.” The anxious reader of such advice is sent out on a scavenger hunt for a divine communication. His search is bound to be futile. He is not sure, and neither am I, exactly what one’s “heart of hearts” is. He does not know where to look, or, for that matter, what to look for. What is this “call?” How do you get it? And how do you know when you have it? (4-5, 7, 8)

Butler’s observation on the degradation of spiritual advice in these matters eventually delves deeper into St. Thomas Aquinas and the Church Fathers, and there is a great deal of eye-rolling at the scrupulosity of spiritual directors who demand that young people spend months or years asking God and themselves if they “have a vocation.” The solution is actually quite simple: we are all called (vocare) to observe the counsels, but all required to observe the commands. A calling is not a command, and never can be. Not all can make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom. Not all can live without the marriage bed. Not all can submit their will entirely to another. The desire to live the religious life of the three counsels is not one to be excessively deliberated over—“In fact, [St. Thomas] says, don’t seek advice except from those who will encourage you!” (26)—and one desirous of this life should simply seek out the nearest monastery and begin to live the counsels as much as possible until he is accepted into an order. Those who know their own weakness, whether by birth or because of the long-term effects of past sin, should not scruple about marrying or otherwise finding an alternative to a life dedicated solely to the good of the Church.

The term “vocation” in ecclesiastical usage “more directly and properly applies to the divine selection of candidates to the priesthood,” but only in the sense that the candidate for ordination is called by the bishop, “for there is no directly revealed call [from God] to certain individuals to the priesthood, except in extraordinary cases like that of St. Paul” (155).

For my own part, I lost interest in the priesthood during the abuse scandal revelations, and in the religious life after my first exposure to the rapping Franciscans (I imagine this was similar to a person forever swearing off marriage after accidentally seeing his grandparents engage in adult activities). There is little to love in the religious life as it is lived today, aside from the occasional pockets of stubborn traditionalism, and the priesthood is faring much worse. We are ripe for a modern-day Rabelais to satirize our ecclesiastical state.

Mr. Grump and his Little Lady left the Café with concern for our newly-secularized friend, but with some hope that she would still pursue the counsels. The poor judgment of postulant directors notwithstanding, the practice of the counsels is not meant to be easily abandoned by those who earnestly desire it. As Fr. Butler writes elsewhere in his book,

The only impediment to entering religious life considered by St. Jerome was the physical obstacle of a father lying prostrate across the threshold to prevent a child from entering the cloister; and in this case, St. Jerome advised stepping over him to fulfill this holy resolve and get to the convent. (26)

  

Sympathy for the Devil

“You drank the port?” His Traddiness’ eyes widened as the truth sank in. “All of it?”

“I didn’t think you’d miss it,” was my reply. “You entirely forgot about the bottle of F—.”

“You drank that? I’m never leaving a bottle at your house again!”

“Fine, I’ll buy the next bottle of Chartreuse.”

“Darn straight you will!”

“It will be the yellow one, though.”

"What?" His Traddiness snapped.

The little lady sniffed at us and rolled her eyes. The three of us were sitting on the outside patio of Café Preténse, enjoying the last warm spurts of autumn before Texas decided to welcome Old Man Winter.

“You know, Rad,” she said, “you could just buy cheaper wine.”

We both watched as His Traddiness’ face turned a few shades of wine-dark, and laughed through a brief chill wind. I turned towards her and admired the frothy latte that sat so smugly superior to the tea on the other side of the table. I decided to defuse the situation with another bomb.

“Did you hear the most recent about Fr. Facile?”

“No, what did that little pipsqueak do now?”

“Apparently he’s been doubling down on his pseudo-mercy talk. He’s gone almost Full Kasper in his Sunday sermons. The Church is changing, didn’t you know? We are now welcoming the perverts and the homewreckers without exception. Anyone who’s not on board is going to fall behind the March of History.”

“Oh, joy.”

“I wonder how soon before he comes out?”

“Of which closet?”

“Hard to say. Heaven save us from the wicked clerics. You know, I was accosted by a fellow parishioner at Tradistan the other day about needing to pray for our wicked leaders.”

“Not a bad idea,” chimed in the little lady.

“Sure. But mostly I pray for their destruction. That seems like a worthy cause.”

“Not their conversion?” she asked sweetly.

“I suppose I must,” I admitted. “But I draw the line at praying for the repose of the souls of those who died as public enemies of all that is good and holy. This is November, the month we’re supposed to pray for the faithful departed. I don’t feel the need to pray for the faithless.”

“What’s got that bugaboo up your posterior?” asked His Traddiness.

“The lady and I knew a fellow who went to a local Catholic university. By all accounts he was quite the academic and literary modernist, although I know nothing in particular about his spiritual life. He had a young wife, a very young daughter, and another child on the way. He murdered himself in the middle of the night about a year ago.”

“Wow.”

“The worst of it, though, is the sympathy and nostalgia surrounding the whole ordeal. All of his close friends are heartbroken, of course, but they insist on not thinking badly of him. It took me weeks of sorting through Facebook comments to even get a hint that he had taken his own life.”

“To do that to a wife and child!”

“Exactly the point. I don’t deny that he may have had some psychological problems, but surely they cannot have rendered him invincible to the demands of familial justice, nor to the tugging on the heart by the ladies in his life. All his friends say that he doted on his daughter, but I suppose not enough.”

“Remember what Pius the Third said in response to a request that a Requiem Mass be said for the repose of his predecessor, Alexander the Sixth?”

“What’s that?”

“‘It is blasphemous to pray for the damned.’”

Just then a familiar vintner of damned souls walked out of the front door, saw us, and waved.

“How goes the quest to eliminate lukewarmness?” the devil asked, with a tip of his hat to the lady. His horns showed for a moment.

“Making progress one good drink at a time.” I raised mine. “To your utter failure.”

He smiled toothily and walked to his car. I was disappointed to see that it did not sport a darkly humorous customized license plate.

“That wormy bastard wouldn’t know good taste if it hit him in the face,” mused His Traddiness. “Based on the financials going back and forth in his emails, he could easily afford a Rolls but, like most evil men, prefers a Mercedes.” The devil put-putted away in a cloud of noxious green exhaust.

“I wonder sometimes if I should pray for all my ancestors who died outside of the Church,” I said once the fumes had cleared. “A lot of them were Protestants who hated Catholicism. Quite a few others were staunchly non-religious their whole lives. The New-Springtimers say that charity demands prayers for all the dead, except at their funeral Masses, but I have to wonder. Isn’t it reasonable just to assume that those who die in manifest sin are damned, and to cover your bases by praying regularly for all the poor souls? At least that way everyone who can be covered is covered.”

“Wouldn’t you want someone to pray for your soul in particular,” asked the lady, “even if you seemed to die in evil circumstances?”

“It would be nice, but at the expense of public scandal? Perhaps not! In that case I might have to satisfy myself with the scraps that are tossed out commonly to all the purging souls. Better to be in Purgatory and buried in unconsecrated ground than in Hell and buried behind the rectory. In any case, I’ll be planning in my will for private Masses to be said for my soul by some helpful religious orders.”

“You’d better hope those orders hold up their end of the bargain,” she said. “Lots of them are simply dropping all the old charges they held for praying for the dead.”

“That’s a sobering thought. I’d better die in some saintly way! Perhaps the martyrdoms will begin soon, and I can get that done and over with.” She sniffed again at that.

His Traddiness sipped the rest of his tea and began to recite from memory, “In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.”

“And may the devil get his due,” I added.

“Amen.”

Emails from the Abyss

Trying to avoid the swarm of bicyclists at Café Preténse, I waited until the afternoon to hunt for a cappuccino. A few dozen college students had the same idea. I managed to toss my things onto an unoccupied table without anyone noticing before I stepped in line.

“Cappuccino again?” asked the prismatically-coiffed baristi.

“And a croissant.”

“Warmed up?”

“Whatever tastes best.”

“One microwaved croissant for Jay!”

I sat and began waiting for my order to arrive. I was fiddling with some lace-ridden thing meant to be sold in the Liturgical Boutique when His Traddiness walked in. I waved him over.

“Any sign of our devilish friend today, Mr. Grump?”

“Not today,” I said. “It’s mostly the young and chatty this afternoon.”

After putting in his order for a cup of tea and a cupcake, His Radness sat down and opened his laptop.

“So, what came through with the emails?” I could barely contain my excitement. “Anything juicy about how they plan to subvert us from within, exploiting our minor faults in order to keep us distracted from correcting our major sins?”

“It’s rather more banal than that.” He opened his laptop and began clicking away.

“Nuts.”

“There are a lot of spreadsheets, memos, and reports. A lot of numbers and foreign terminology I didn’t understand. Some of it’s written in English, some in Latin, most in the Black Speech, I think.”

“Damn.”

“I didn’t see much that looked like correspondence, either. I don’t think Wormwood is receiving any kind of regular advice from a higher-up demon, anymore.”

“That is disappointing. There’s nothing I like more than a bit of devilish correspondence.”

(source)

“Well, there is— oh, hold on. Here are our drinks.”

The cappuccino was frothy and sweet. The croissant was dry and crispy. His Traddiness informed me that the tea was standard and the cupcake superb. A large table of college kids dressed as hipsters emptied, and we took their spot. As I washed down the last shards of the croissant, I remembered that my companion had something to add.

“Oh yes. There were a couple of epistles worth reading. I had to run them through Google Translator to get most of the meaning, but I think I managed to salvage something useful out of them.”

He turned his laptop around, and I gazed hungrily into the screen. What I read there was only a drop to quench my thirst of curiosity.

My dearest Wormwood, 

What is this dreck you have sent me to drink? When my warden Boarbristle dredged me up out of the Styx to tell me I had received a package from my young nephew, I was excited. Ecstatic, even! “What small token of comfort has my dear, beloved nephew Wormwood seen fit to send me, his poor, unjustly imprisoned uncle in his time of need?” Such did I say to myself. 

There was a bottle within, and a note. Both had been opened, of course. Boarbristle spat into the river and said, “Quite a poor sampling, if you ask me.” I picked it up and saw our family label—oh, what an illustrious product our family distillery has distributed over the centuries—but then I saw that it was such a briefly-matured line! All your note had to tell me was that this liquor was produced from recent acquisitions. 

The smell: atrocious; sour and strong, with no hint of subtlety. The taste: drowning in sweetness in an attempt to overwhelm the bitterness. A hint of despair, laced with wrath, unbalanced with too much passive aggression, watered down with indecision. Are you bottling suburbanites? 

I anticipated more from you. I will drink this as slowly as I can, but only to delay my inevitable submersion. I expect your next bottle to be of better quality. 

Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
[Forwarded and censored as needed by Swinetooth]

“Not quite what I was expecting.” I suddenly realized that my cappuccino was getting cold, and proceeded to sip it.

“There’s another interesting one“—His Traddiness rotated his laptop, clicked a few things, and spun it back—“here.”

I put my espresso down and began to read.

My loyal Crumplehead, 

I trust that production is increasing for the family label, but especially for the Wormwood’s Abyss line. I know that quality has not improved lately, but we do the best we can with the quality of human souls we receive. Gone are the days when we could fill our cups from the outpourings of the trampled grapes of wrath. 

You have qualms about this, I know. But what is a producer to do in times like these? The quality labels have all but vanished because of the scarcity of those souls. We must make the best out of this bloat of tasteless quantity. 

We might start some casks smoked with the insane, for their hallucinogenic properties. I can foresee a time when all of Hell is tipsy with the fumes of perverted banality. We will exchange our stately drinking halls for the craggy wastes, and forget the glorious flavors of yesteryear. Better to be drunk on vapidity than to weep for the subtle vintages of old. 

Still, be certain to store our best, rare souls carefully. There may come a time when we have a large enough hoard that we can produce a truly great spirit fit even for Our Father Below. 

Your wistful taskmaster,
Wormwood

“It seems that the devils are in a poor state,” I concluded.

“But not dying of thirst. It must be hard for them to lower their expectations. Good taste is hard to come by, up here and down there.”

“Speaking of which, I have a bottle of port recommended by M—. Shall we return to your place and partake after a couple of cigars?”

“We shall. Don’t forget that Cubans will be legal soon!”

“Maybe the pope can speed things along. We will smoke the first acquisitions in honor of Franciscus.”

We finished our caffeinated cups and absconded to more stately environs.

Wormwood Proposes a Toast; or, Abyssus Absinthium Invocat

It was another sunny Texas Sunday morning when I last made my way into Café Preténse. The parking lot was far from being full, but a swarm of bicyclists had overrun the sidewalk, and a line of them stretched from the counter almost to the front door. They were talking excitedly from the adrenaline, and overwhelming the café’s usual espresso scent with their own.

By the time I made it to the counter I had almost decided to leave for a Starbucks. Where would I even sit?

“What can I getcha?” asked a college girl with too many colors in her hair.

“Cappuccino, please.”

“For here?”

“Better make it to go,” I said, looking around the building. “Just in case.”

“Name?”

“J.”

“Jay? Jay What?”

“‘J’ as in Joseph.”

“One cappuccino for Joseph.”

“Sure.”

She ran my card, and I wondered if the couches in the back area might have an empty cushion or two.

“Hey, your card says John Grump, not Joseph.”

I took my receipt and pushed my way through spandexed bikers to the back area. It was low-lit and close to the unisex bathrooms, but one teenage girl sat on each of the three couches, all of them talking animatedly. I considered sitting down beside one of the infantile women to make a point, but then I recalled that I actually wanted to read.

This place is getting on my last nerve, I texted to His Traddiness.

Ditch the burnt coffee scene and join me for another glass of Chartreuse, he retorted.

Yellow or green?

Green. I am convinced that this yellow monstrosity was invented by the Franciscans.

After I’m properly caffeinated. We’ll see if I get a seat. Still cranky from the sermon this morning.

Leaving the couches behind, I made my way up front. Every table had an occupant, every padded chair comfortably employed. If nothing cleared before my name was called I would leave and shake the coffee grounds from my sandals. My eyes wandered to and fro, and finally met with those of another customer looking up from his laptop while taking a sip from his mug. He was a devil of one of the lesser orders, and he nodded to indicate I should walk over. I did.

“You looking for a seat?” he said.

“Yes, thanks. You heading out?”

“Not for a while, but I have some space if you want to take the other chair.” There was indeed enough space for my books, my drink, and my self. “I don’t mind sharing a table with a fellow coffee aficionado.” He looked and dressed like Matthew Goode (circa 2008), except for the horns. I decided he was less likely than most of the people in this café to steal my books if I stepped away for a phone call.

“Sure thing. My name’s J.”

“Wormwood.”

“Cappuccino for Jay Grump!” the baristi with the technicolor dreamhair bellowed.

“Be right back.”

When I returned to the table, Wormwood was reading the back matter of my book.

“Occult symbolism in modern poetry? Tsk, tsk. That’s dangerous stuff.”

“Research.”

“Thinking of joining our lower ranks?”

“No, just interested in being able to spot this sort of thing when it appears. I’ve suspected many of these authors of occultism before, but this just confirms it.”

“Hmm, it’s all true enough. We didn’t catch all of them in the end, but plenty have long been drained dry by Our Father Below. Victor’s fateful séance was a real show to remember.”

I took a sip and decided to change the subject. He was beginning to look nostalgic.

“So are you the Wormwood? Of C. S. L— fame?”

He tossed the book in front of me with a flourish. “Guilty as charged! I tell you, the doors that book has opened for me! Slubgob leaked my uncle’s letters to the human world after the two of them had a falling out, and got poor Uncle Screwtape tossed into the Styx for about a century without parole. For my part, I was released from my uncle’s dungeon and allowed back into the Tempter Rolls. If all goes well, I’ll be teaching in the Tempters Training College in no time.”

“You must be busy these days. The world does seem to be falling apart.”

“And isn’t that just delightful? Don’t you just experience a wonderful, sick thrill at the thought of it? Don’t it just make you smile on the inside?”

I glared at him and sipped my drink. It would have been better in a mug than in this waxed paper cup.

“I am busy,” he continued. “I’m part of a team working on your parish. A lot of the usual temptations: sexual deviancies are easy to encourage”—he made an obscene gesture—“as are anger and certain forms of despair. But let me tell you, the best thing to do is to widen divisions and encourage fathers to provoke their children to indignation. Bitterness is rich soil for despondency, rebellion, and apostasy. Tie heavy burdens on the shoulders of the faithful, force them to march through a slough, and then chastise them harshly for complaining. I swear, if I can turn even a third of your waters into wormwood, I will destroy your parish beyond recognition.”

He sat back with a contented look and breathed out a series of perfectly shaped smoke rings, even though he had been puffing on no tobacco. My phone buzzed, and I welcomed the distraction.

Just realized that wormwood is a major ingredient in absinthe, texted His Traddiness. We should try mixing it with more sulfur to see if it brings out that hellish flavour.

“Well, Mr. Wormwood, this has been enlightening.” I replaced the lid on my cup and tried not to look in his eyes. “I should probably head out. I don’t think I’m going to be able to read much with all this commotion.”

“It is downright pandemonious, isn’t it?” He sat up straight. “My goodness, I need to learn to not monologue when I’m talking to prey. I just enjoy the look in their eyes when they see me coming for them, you know? Oh, and do you mind watching my things while I use the facilities?”

I nodded my assent without making eye contact, and he clomped off, his tail trailing just above the ground. Once he was behind locked doors I shifted over to his chair and began skimming through his emails. It was a simple enough matter to set a forwarding email address to all his messages. By the time he returned I was back on my side of the table, stuffing my receipt into the book and skittishly sipping my drink.

“Certain things just take longer when the waters are bitter.” He laughed, and I pretended to laugh with him. He raised his mug. “Well, my amphibious friend, let us toast before you move on to your day’s business.”

“Toast to what?”

“To the elimination of lukewarmness. May the undersexed morons who blunder into online pornography shops be turned into insatiable, defiant adulterers! May the self-hating drunkards who slur the name of The Enemy be turned into inflamed, rebellious, and sober blasphemers! May the flabby video gamers drive their cars over real pedestrians!”

“He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.”

We each took a sip of our now-tepid drinks.

“Catch you next time, Mr. Grump.”

“Until then.”

Back in the car I put the remainder of my mediocre cappuccino in the cup holder and sent His Traddiness one last text before driving:

Much to discuss. Keep an eye on your email. Chartreuse at my place, I’ll buy the cigars.

Abyssus Abyssum Invocat: The Futility of Fr. Facile & Friendship Up in Smoke

"Mercy," Fr. Facile began his sermon, "is not simply the absence of just punishment. Mercy is not simply what happens when a person of esteem deigns to give us something of his world. Mercy, you see, is a very really and proactive part of God's plan for us. Mercy is part of who God is in His love for mankind."

Alright, I thought, this could be quite good or quite bad.

"Think of what we sang at the beginning of the liturgy. The polyeleos repeats 'For his mercy endures for ever,' but that is just an extract of a much larger psalm about mercy. He brought the Israelites out of freedom, and his mercy endures forever. He parted the Red Sea, and his mercy endures forever. He smashed Pharaoh's armies, and his mercy endures forever. God's mercy is part of Who He is and what He imparts of Himself to us. This is what culminated with the Cross!"

This is much better than what I expected! Fr. Facile never gave a bad sermon. Some were quite good and the rest tried very hard to impress, but often fell short by overemphasizing relevance to daily life, at times passing by opportunities to focus on Who God is.

"My friends—and I know this is a controversial topic, which we rarely discuss here at St. Saccharinios—my friends, we witnessed a great act of mercy this past week." Fr. Facile paused for a moment. "God brought the Israelites out of the darkness of slavery. A similar and monumental event in the history of our country happened this past week. A great many people were brought out of darkness when their civil rights were expanded.

"Now, I know we have people with very passionate opinions on both sides, but let us remain calm in discussing this matter. This Supreme Court decision ends the conversation about this subject for our country and it has no influence on the Church."

Alright, I concluded, I know where this is going. The parish was priestless and run by church-ladies, including the notorious Helen Hawkins, prior to Fr. Facile's arrival. It is a divided parish and he is trying to placate both ends.

"The conversation in the Church is on-going...."

Damn.

"....and we need to show more mercy to each other in having that conversation here and everywhere in the Church. We have bishops and even a pope that are receptive to greater mercy. We are obligated to show that same receptivity to mercy. I look on Facebook and see some of the nasty things people write about each other when having this debate. In this debate I find opponents of this new right calling those in favor of it all sorts of mean names and the proponents of the new right in return are quick to call their opponents bigots, although they often are."

Hitting a priest is a reserved sin, I recalled from a catechism class. Still, that would mean a trip to Rome and Fr. Facile could use some fraternal correction.

"We need more mercy, like the mercy of the Cross and the mercy of delivery Egypt from bondage. For His mercy endureth for ever! Oh God, save Thy people and bless Thy inheritance!"

*          *          *

"We can never go to St. Saccharinios again, even 4 holy week," I texted to John Grump. "Meet at Cafe Preténse for breakfast?"

"Cya in 10", indicated the reply.

The clientele of Cafe Preténse

Cafe Preténse appealed to a young crowd of late teen and twenty-somethings still living off their fathers' new money. Patrons frequented the establishment to write their perpetually unpublished novels on MacBooks gifted for Christmas, to have inexpensive morning "dates," and to been seen wearing the latest boat shoes and sun dresses. An improbable assortment of National Geographics, Michael Crichton novels, and an old copy of Debrett sat on the shelves on the bookcase either as decoration or conversation pieces. No two walls were painted the same color. On a red wall sat two dozen examples of abstract bosh priced from $75 to $400 each. A pair of hipsters manned the bar.

"A pot of Earl Grey and a spice scone, please," I asked.

A sign on the counter displayed the words "Authentic European Coffee Shop." I wondered if the proprietor had ever been to Angelina's of Paris or Florian's of Venice.

I found Mr. Grump seated outside off the patio and joined him.

"How was Tradistan today?" I queried.

"Quite a standard low Mass. The sermon raised the question as to whether or not one can become demonically possessed by listening to rock music. One fellow had to be exorcised after hearing the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album once through. Father did not wholly endorse the theory, but warned us that listening to rock was a risk we ought not take. Apparently a recent beata, Blessed Theodora Obscuria of the Hands of Joseph the Worker, had a vision of pagans dancing around a resounding noise kept in rhythm by percussive bangs while a woolly man sang mockingly of heaven. He insisted she had a premonition of a Led Zeppelin concert. "

"That last item makes the rest of it believable. Anything else?'

"There was also the weekly reminder that we aren't allowed to go sedevacantist or Greek Orthodox just because the pope is a bit loose. Other than that, nothing new. How was St. Saccharinios?"

I proceeded to discharge my memory of that horrific sermon and the unambiguous ambiguities contained therein. John barely sipped his cappuccino, listening with intent concern.

"How sad," he commented, finally taking a sip from his cup. "If he was willing to talk like this, he probably gave up inside a long time ago."

After breakfast I produced a Partagás from my jacket and peeled off the upper-most cap. "You know," I began, "I had a friend who went down this road in a rather dreary way. My best friend at university, you know." I struck a match and toasted the cigar. "I met a fellow during my first term at school after a gathering of the College Rabble Rousers. This man, name of Christopher—never Chris, noticed I was wearing a tee shirt advertising a defunct American car maker called Packard.

"'Does your family have one?'

"'No,' I replied. 'But my father had one forty odd years ago.'

"We grabbed dinner and became quite close thereafter. We were both Economics students. He told me his parents were from Armenia, but now lived in San Francisco, having escaped the Red Russians by the width of his father's ever vanishing hairs.

"Every free night I tore him away from those damn computer games he played so we could have dinner. We immersed ourselves in prolix discussions over matters of the day, but never personal matters, at least not for Christopher. He asked why I was a Catholic. I told him for the frightening reason that I really believed it all, which stupefied him."

I held up my burning cigar for John to see. "At some point during the second term Christopher bought a box of these things, imported from Cuba via some shady fellow in Canada we only knew as Matt. One night, after insulting a preacher's daughter at a university dinner, we lit our Habanos and strolled the Arts Quad, the lake, and the plaza.

"He asked me why God should matter in our lives. From a rational perspective, God must exist, but why care. 'Because,' I told him, 'because He cares about us. Whether or not we understand why God cares about us is quite unrelated to the fact He does. He intervenes in our lives personally and has since the time of Abraham. I remember once in high school having a breakdown over the troubles of a friend. No, I won't tell you how, not now, but God very literally intervened in my life. It was because I cared for this person. I learned that God's love isn't a nicety or a Santa Claus doting. It is the emptying of one's self for another entirely. It's what we Catholics believe Christ did for us and what people we called the Saints continued to do since.' His reply was 'I don't understand why people should matter. Their existence is somewhat annoying. Isn't the point just to reproduce and pass on wealth?'"

"Perhaps," John interjected, "you and your catechism could instruct these waiters on the finer points of fear of the Lord, or at least of a bad tip. I am sitting here surrounded by no coffee."

"Right! Well, I went off to study in England the next year and left him in the hands of a mutual friend of our's, Craig Lex. When I next heard from Christopher he told me he was tired of Craig ranting about some Frenchman named 'Lefeber' and the Pius X society, so he bought some cheap Porto and got the runt drunk out of his mind. It was Good Friday, too, he said. He accompanied Craig to the Novus Ordo Good Friday and was feeling better than other people for having gone to Church, so much better that he had no qualms about fibbing to the campus security concerning his under-aged possession of the Porto. Christopher was a good friend and an even better fibber.

"I suggested that the three of us meet in Rome for the break between Hilary and Trinity terms, which coincided with their vacations. Something was different in Christopher at that point. When we went into the Blessed Sacrament chapel in St. Peter's Basilica he asked us how to reverence the exposed Sacrament. I told him that he did not have to as a non-believer, but he insisted. He stared in amazement at the Latin Novus Ordo sung Mass at the throne that evening and gawked through the Lateran cathedral. At dinner he passingly mentioned that his father was out of America on holiday, visiting establishments where the women are 'cheap and clean.' I almost lost my Italian excuse for a steak.

"Later that evening we returned to the Vatican square and shared in some of Christopher's Cubanos. He kept staring at the full moon and repeating that God is good. A couple got engaged, which made him smile. Before boarding the plane back to JFK he hugged me and, perplexingly, thanked me for being a 'good influence'. I started to pray daily for his conversion.

"The next year he went to Oxford and I was back in America. He was received into the Church by a priest on St. Giles Street and soon thereafter adopted an not entirely healthy religious attitude. He could never take a joke at face value, always accosting any humor when the salvation of souls was at stake. At mere mention of the Mass, especially in Latin, his eyes faded into ecstasy. Immediately he wanted to become a monk!"

"I take it," groaned Mr. Grump, "that this story has a point, or, even better, an end?"

"Yes, yes, yes," I said. "We parted after graduation and spoke infrequently. In the Fall he had dropped the 'salvation of souls' angle and returned to the evolutionary produce-and-inherit line. By the Spring of the following year we had fallen out of contact. Then one afternoon, working from my home, he calls me at tells me, 'I've just been released from a hospital. I've gone cold on that whole God thing. You see, I'm a woman.'"

"Damn!" exclaimed John. "You've made me spill my remaining coffee."

"It's a favor, friend. Wool in the Texan summer? Really?

"Regardless, I asked if I had missed something like ambiguous genitalia, XX DNA, or something of the like. He said that I hadn't, that he was simply born with a female brain and that an operation to 'clean out of the basement' would make him a normal and accepted member of society, that 'I won't have to hate myself everyday now.'

"We talked and he confessed that his parents fell out shortly after coming here from Armenia. 'That whole God thing,' he commented, 'made me deal with them a little more, but I cannot go on with a lie. If I don't do this I'll kill myself. I've finally found who I am.'

"I tried talking some gentle sense into him a few days when he was still on an emotional from his great discovery. I pointed out some basic things, like that being a woman entails a physical experience related to brain chemistry, that he could have an incompletely male brain but not an actual female brain. I brought up his family situation, his history of embracing one new lifestyle after another. He didn't care. He asked me if I could 'accept this' and I asked him what that meant. He was a friend and I loved him as a friend, but he didn't care. He wanted affirmation and I wasn't going to give it to him. 'Bugger off,' he told me, 'until you get over your bigot bull$h!+.' That was some time ago and I have no anticipation of hearing from him again. Last I heard he had frozen some sperm with the hope of fabricating a child one day.

"The liberals have taught us the lesson of acceptance and they've taught it well. We don't question anything anymore. Anything different is now just an alternative expression of the same thing. Shacking up, divorce, single parent households, and now gay families are really just as good as straight families, if one ignores the impact on the kids. We can't ask why people are as they are. One theory behind homosexuality blames pre-natal secretions; another claims it's a recessive gene; and yet another, less accepted, says it's the result of nurturing. Even if it were a combination of the three, we still can't do anything about it. I knew a therapist who told me that in twenty years of practicing psychology he had never met a gay man who had a normal relationship with his father. It's only anecdotal, but still pretty significant. The people behind the gay rights movement are not looking for equal treatment. They're looking for personal affirmation that many of them don't get as individuals and they'll remake society to do it. It fools people. It destroys friendships. It destroys love. And it has destroyed a very good friend. Christopher, or 'Eleanor'—as he now likes to be called, was an extreme case. Still, how much of it is really normal?"

My cigar was down to the nub.

"Fr. Facile bought the movement hook, line, and sinker. No use crying about the decline of Western society. I could read Russell Kirk or John Senior for that. Both of them enjoyed anti-technocratic existences. I rather wish I could be a hermit. I wouldn't have to worry about anything other than prayers and maintaining a few books."

"Amazing," John said. "Amazing how indifferent people can be."

"To God?"

"Yes, and to patrons with empty cups. Next week we should meet somewhere else, like Grandoise Grounds. Sad about your friend. People are more and more indifferent to God, too. Trads need to stop talking about abstract ideas of 'truth' and first get people to understand that there is a necessary good in the world beyond their own immediate gratification. Friendships fail for the same reason nowadays. It's not even a conscious selfishness anymore. Broken families are replaced by shiny toys from Silicon Valley or, a baby from a test tube. Whatever fills my emotional vacuum now will do. Your friend's perspective is likely the only one he can imagine."

"But it wasn't always like that," I continued. "Or maybe it was always like that. Perhaps he was sincere once. He once conspired with my girlfriend to have a surprise party for me. He bought me walking stick for my birthday once and a box of cigars just because he thought I might enjoy them. There was goodness there. Now he claims he has never had a good memory of another person, not until he found his true self. Lex orandi lex credendi. How long will he have to behave in his new religion until he is convinced he believes it?"

"I think he'll cave before I get another cup. No coffee here, but plenty of Glenfiddich at my place," John suggested with wry enthusiasm.

"It's not even noon!"

"It will be by the time we pay up and get back to my place."

"Alright, alright. The point stands. The people going down that road are not generally well off. All talk of acceptance and mercy, no care for their actual welfare."

We settled our bills with some wrangling. We picked up our jackets as I snuffed my cigar.

"How many more people," I pondered, "must go up in smoke, either in this world or the one to come, before Churchmen learn their lesson?"

"Best drink it away," assured John. "Come to my place. We'll drink 'til we've had enough, and then just a touch more."

"Isn't that a sin?"

"No, that's being drunk. I'm talking about the Point of Hilarity."

"What's that?"

"It's not yet sloshed and quite happy. It's a Chesterton idea. He might be a saint and he was lubricated all the time!"

"Let's get hilarious!"