Devotionalism and Private Revelation

The problems of epistemology are never so deep as when one is arguing with a fellow Catholic about his favorite devotion or pet doctrinal theory. In such moments one enters the bleak cloud of unknowing, its murky haze made all the more opaque by your opponent’s statements of certainty and your own opposing certainty of his ignorance. By faith we have an actual certainty of those doctrines revealed by God through Christ and the Apostles, that public revelation which is preserved, curated, and crystalized by the Church throughout this age. Those with itching feet who wish to roam beyond the clear-lit space of orthodoxy without first fully understanding what has been illuminated often resort to mystical visions and so-called private revelations to defend their doctrinal theories.

Far be it from me to speak ill of Catholic mysticism. It is a particular ladder that some may climb to seek union with God ever more closely in this life, but there is no doubt that this state of life can have its perilous excesses. Visions and ecstasies are common enough, but their origins or sources of inspiration are not always clear. Often a mystic will form visions from a combination of theology, sacred history (traditional or popular), and his own imagination; there is not necessarily any divine intervention involved. Many spiritual teachers have recommended against seeking visions or any sensible consolations if one desires perfection, and the greatest mystics are doubtless those who never received a single vision in this life.

Nonetheless, Catholic history is dense with mystical visionaries of wildly varying legitimacy. Dante’s poetic masterwork is framed as a vision-tour of the afterlife, which was a popular form of moral instruction in the high Middle Ages; monks would sometimes speak of the great grace granted to them to see the terrors of Hell and Purgatory so that they might thereby avoid such punishments themselves. In England, Margery Kempe was a married woman who bullied her husband into a celibate marriage and wrote about her many visions and dialogues with Christ in between her heresy trials. Anne Catherine Emmerich on the other hand was a proper nun but had her visions recorded by a novelist and collector of fairy tales. Even the book of St. John’s Apocalypse was considered ambiguously canonical for centuries because of its bizarre content and debated authorship.

If the accounts of visionaries are not to be considered as divine revelations demanding assent by the rest of the faithful, but also not to be considered outright as false when approved by ecclesiastical authorities, they must necessarily fall into an odd middle-place in the body of spiritual writings. They may be read for edification by the faithful much in the way that the visions were intended originally for the edification of the visionary, but they may never be treated as sources of doctrine. Rather, they are judged by the standard of doctrine already given to the Church.

John of the Cross observes that “despite the many occasions on which Saint Paul preached the Gospel, which he said that he had heard, not of men, but of God, he could not be satisfied until he had gone to consult with Saint Peter and the Apostles, saying: Ne forte in vacuum currerem, aut cucurrissem” (Ascent of Mt. Carmel II.xxii.12). If even the Apostle Paul, who had been brought up to the third heaven and seen secrets not shown to other men, should be concerned about leaning too heavily on his own private revelation, how much more ought the rest of us to fear straying from the solid ground of public revelation!

Devotionalism: Pilgrimages

At the root of the pilgrimage is the desire to heal the breach between God and man. After the expulsion from Eden we are “here” and God is “there” and we must somehow find out way back into his presence. Man cannot make his own way unassisted back to the Divine, but because God has already made a pilgrimage to meet man, man can travel that same path to his creator.

Indeed, God’s pilgrimages to meet sinful man were numerous even before that Great Pilgrimage of the Incarnation, when the Word of God leapt down from his royal throne in Heaven to Earth. He came down to make a covenant with Abram, to wrestle with Israel, to speak to Moses face to face, to touch the lips of Isaias with a burning coal, and to speak to Ezechiel from his cherubic chariot.

The pilgrimages of man towards God are also of many types and examples. Abram left his father’s idolatry for a foreign land at God’s invitation. Joseph was his family’s savior when he brought them to Egypt. Moses led his nation to the borders of the promised land, a type of Heaven. Locations of ancient theophanies became pilgrimage sites to the Hebrews, since they were places God had graced with his presence. The annual pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple to celebrate the Passover symbolized man traveling to the mountain of God’s dwelling to beg his mercy.

The Christian era made no great modification to this religious instinct. The destinations for pilgrimages increased because devotion to the martyrs meant visiting their graves to beg their intercession, and the locations of the God-Man’s life and death were of great interest. God became a pilgrim among us, and man could model his own pilgrimage on the life of Christ (“because I go to the Father”). Churches were built all over the Holy Land and elsewhere to house the relics of martyrs. Rome was a site of pilgrimage first because it was where Sts. Peter and Paul were slain by Nero, not because it was the seat of the pope. One motivation for the Crusades was to make safe the way of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Throughout the Middle Ages shrines all over Europe were popular pilgrimage destinations. A properly-made pilgrimage could even reconcile sinners to the Church, according to some customs.

In our own day the practice of making a real pilgrimage is much rarer than it once was. The biographical account of Hilaire Belloc’s pilgrimage in The Path to Rome, complete with a solemn vow of intention, is charming to the modern reader for its archaism but is not taken very seriously as a form of devotional piety. The Camino de Santiago remains popular, but arguably more so for young adults “backpacking across Europe” than for the pious Catholic. Many ancient pilgrimage destinations have been transformed into tourist attractions and have lost the air of seriousness that attracts the true devotee.

The Stations of the Cross were formulated in order to make the experience of pilgrimage through the Via Dolorosa available to those unable to visit Jerusalem in person. As travel to the Holy Land became increasingly dangerous the Stations became more formalized and canonically regulated. As imperfect as many Stations-centered devotional booklets can be, the desire to imitate Christ’s own pilgrimage among us even unto his death remains central.

Many sites remain for those still inclined to make a true pilgrimage. Even North America hosts sites like Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City and a variety of shrines in Canada and the United States. In spite of multiple rounds of iconoclasm since the Reformation, Europe is not lacking in destinations. I personally made a pilgrimage to Rome a year after my reception into the Church with the intention of assisting at Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in thanksgiving for my conversion. The religious experience of Rome is still, as in Martin Luther’s day, a mixed bag of wondrous and debasing, but we will probably never be entirely free of simony and apathy.

In a day when travel is more effortless than it has ever been, pilgrimage may be a corrective not only for our troubled spirits but for our overtaxed, modernized minds. The broadway leads to destruction, but the slow and narrow path is the way to salvation.

Devotionalism: On Limiting the Divine

(source)

At the behest of a good friend of mine I have started a read-through of the entire Bible. Despite my Protestant roots, there are still some books of Holy Writ I have never completed, mainly due to the repetition and bookkeeping style of some of the sacred texts. Audiobooks are a great way to push through even the monotony of the Mosaic law and the literal numbering of the book of Numbers. I have not read the early books of the Bible since my conversion. It is a return to a landscape I used to know quite well, but has become strange and new from the distance of neglect.

In spite of my many concerns and skepticism about the historical-critical reading so popular among Bible scholars of the last two centuries, occasionally I can see their point. The two accounts of Abimelech king of Gerara nearly having his way with another man’s wife because her husband was hiding the marriage could be harmonized more easily if both accounts were about the same married couple, but the first is about Abraham and Sara, and the second about Isaac and Rebecca (Genesis chapters 20 and 26, respectively). The thought that the same trick was played twice on the same man is not impossible, but it is so darkly humorous that one cannot blame the scholars too much for attempting to retain a modicum of seriousness.

The genealogies between Eden and Abraham are treated with the same apparent level of historical veracity, which makes the harmonization of Scripture and paleoanthropology difficult. While I am not opposed to a more spiritual or allegorical reading of the Old Testament like St. Augustine’s, I also do not know that the authorial intent is anywhere along those lines. A scholar of ancient Hebrew texts I do not pretend to be, but unlike many other restless minds I do not care to worry myself to death or fabricate conspiracies over every difficulty.

But what comes through more strongly than I had remembered is the personality of God. The “God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” is no deistic Prime Mover. He is not even an interloper in the stories of the Patriarchs. Rather, he is the protagonist throughout, with occasional digressions into the lives of his creatures. Even with the acknowledgement that the inspired writers used anthropomorphic language to describe the wishes and actions of the Divine, they were still inspired to do so by God himself.

He creates the universe apparently only to have made something good. He takes pity on Adam and gives him a mate. He is greatly disappointed in their trespass. He is disgusted by the self-destruction of mankind. He lets Abraham speak to him almost as if to an equal. He wrestles with Jacob and lets him gain the upper hand. He pours out judgment not only on Pharaoh but on his devil-gods, using the opportunity to show his wonders to his chosen people. He wishes to speak intimately with his people in the wilderness and is offended when they tell Moses to do it for them. He slays whomever makes a graven image of himself, since they were all too afraid to see him as he is. He tells Israel that he would not chasten them if he did not love them so much.

The interpretation of the Canticle of Canticles as the untamed love of God for his people did not appear in a vacuum. It is a reasonable extrapolation from the earlier books of Hebrew Scripture.

Likewise, the popular and theological characterizations of Our Lord in the Christian era take many cues from the “God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” St. Paul witnessed the risen Christ already glorified in the celestial realms, but the evangelists wrote from the perspective of those who knew Jesus, as it were, before he was cool. The Christ of the Gospels vacillates between aristocratic aloofness, angry table-turning, and tender compassion. One might say that the Catholic devotional instinct has become a method of focusing on that third aspect of the Divine Countenance in the hopes that the first might be ignored and the second avoided.

This is why devotions like the Sacred Heart, Divine Mercy, and many of those centered on Mary are so often narrowly tender and ignorant of the more difficult aspects of God’s interaction with man. The Novus Ordo practice of canonizing the deceased at his funeral is an outgrowth of this blind focus on love and compassion. Perhaps no one can bear the fulness of what has been revealed of the Divine Personality without a special outpouring of grace, but one suspects that few are even very willing to try.

We cannot force God to shine only his kindly countenance upon us simply because we desire it. He is the lover, we are the beloved. Sometimes he is aloof, sometimes angry, sometimes tender, and sometimes even absent. “In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not.” How do we find God when he is distant, when his tender compassion seems very far from us?

We go on a pilgrimage. (Next up: Pilgrimages as devotion.)

Devotionalism: Its Relation to Religion

Proper devotion, as noted by the Thomistic reference in the previous installment, is tied intrinsically to the practice of religion. While a particular devotion might have grass roots it must have a close relation to the religious practice of the Church if it can be considered a Catholic devotion. There is little necessary in the way of a formal process of ecclesiastical approval; indeed, aside from recognition in the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum or outright condemnation there is little to stand in the way of a devotion from developing however its devotees wish.

In an age when the faithful were more attuned to the movements and rhythms of Tradition, one could more easily trust the common instinct as sensus fidelium. The iconoclastic movement of the Counter-Reformation shifted devotionalism to a clergy-approved process, but the modern age has seen even priests turning skeptic. Devotionals tend to be split between extreme populist practices (consecrations to St. Joseph, various novenas, private revelations) and those safely approved and promulgated (Divine Mercy chaplets, miraculous medals).

The practices of religious orders were the source of most popular devotions. From the formal prayer of the psalter or breviary has sprung the Rosary, books of hours, little offices, parochial vespers, and many more. Every popular form of scapular comes from a religious habit. Consecrations to Christ and Mary take the form of quasi-religious vows. The admonition to have a “rule of life” is a derivation of the strict order of monastic living.

The ancient practice of pilgrimage developed in a multitude of ways from its roots in the Jewish Passover, and devotions like the Stations of the Cross and “round-the-block” processions are simplified extrapolations from its basic principles. So too are derived the various labyrinths of medieval cathedrals.

The kalendar found popular expression in the dedication of months to saints and Christological aspects, usually tied into a particular feast found in that month. The same is often applied to the days of the week, but to far more questionable effect.

When devotions move away from their roots they begin to take on lives of their own. The Rosary gains a fourth set of mysteries and loses all symbolic connection to the 150 psalms. The brown scapular is handed out like candy by everyone but the Carmelites and becomes a garment of superstition. The vigil is disconnected from its complex roots in the Roman Rite and Breviary, and becomes a way to escape going to Mass on Sunday mornings. Unless it maintains strong roots in Tradition, devotionalism slips into rigid atomization and restless novelty.

Devotionalism: An Introduction

It was nearly a year ago, I think, that His Traddiness requested I start a series on devotionalism in the Church, as much for my own edification as for that of our readers. My discomfort with popular devotions began during my early movements toward the Church out of my schismatic beginnings and never entirely disappeared. Even that most benign devotional, the Rosary, was soaked with such an overwhelming perfume of sickly sweetness that it took over a year before I felt comfortable praying it without suspicion.

My background in Neo-Reformed spirituality subsumed the entire spiritual life within the prayerful, careful study of Holy Writ. Exegesis upon the literal meaning of the sacred texts was simultaneously the closest intimacy with the Divine Mind. Sentimentality was rarely permitted except when meditating on the comfort provided by God’s preservation of the elect forever in a state of salvation. Even the traditionally Calvinist hymns were triumphalist and overwhelmed by the awe inspired by divinity. Christ was seen as judge or as a means to the end of justification and atonement, rarely as a person capable of giving or desiring charitable passions.

The effeminate paintings of the Savior that spread like mold across the walls of our parishes only further the divide between the old world and the new. It is difficult to take icons that resemble the “bearded ladies” of outmoded circuses seriously, and pastel-drenched images of the Blessed Virgin and the multitude of saints only compound the difficulties.

Even worse are the devotionals that demand certain emotional outpourings of which not all people are capable—at least not at all times nor on command—and which create scruples when the devotee fails to correctly conjure them up. The texts used for the Stations of the Cross at a local parish during Lent, for example, insist on a very particular emotional state of mind in those reading the responses and add further problems by surprising the laity with statements that, on a literal level, amount to solemn vows.

This demand for emotional conformity has found its way into the liturgy of the New Mass as normally celebrated. Anyone in the pews who does not appear to be emoting in lockstep with the cantor and peace-givers is either shunned or chided from the pulpit. Individuals are commonly offended if you show a disinterest in their peculiar devotions or decline the offer of a plastic sacramental.

My own spirituality has been—understandably, I hope—somewhat reactionary and similar to what it was in my “Young, Restless, and Reformed” days: studious, technically theological, and suspicious of emotionality. It is easy for someone like this to lose track of the liturgical year, to have to be reminded of traditional fasts, feasts, and vigils. (Indeed, when one kalendar is being used by most Catholics, another by most traditionalists, and yet another by a minority of Roman Rite historians, it is difficult to feel vitally connected to a sense of annual ritual.) When I read of the spiritual practices found in ancient Catholic nations, I admire them with a touch of jealousy, but with little sense that I can participate in anything noticeably similar.

But while I have written skeptically about some devotions in the past, I am far from denying their efficacy for many souls, and farther still from suggesting a prohibition on any but those based on pure fabrications (see nearly everything I have written about St. Joseph to date). I also recognize that my spirituality of study is not profitable for all, and that it is wrought with its own dangers. The primal admonition that faith without works is dead rings true as well; one feels a deep need to participate in the pilgrimages, fasts, vespers, and processions of old, even if their forms must be recreated from scratch in the modern world. Something that once would have seemed commonplace, like making and keeping a vow of pilgrimage, is now itself seen as devotional nonsense by church ladies who gush lovingly over images of Divine Mercy Jesus.

“Devotion,” Aquinas writes, “is an act of the will to the effect that man surrenders himself readily to the service of God.” He argues also that devotion is tied intrinsically to the practice of religion, and is not something that normally stands alone as a simple act of charity. The privatization of devotion is a real danger in our increasingly atomistic world, as is the imposition of the devotional whims of the few upon the many.

The intent of this series is to look afresh at devotions in the Catholic life, especially those old and discarded: the pilgrimages, the processions, the sponsorship of mystery plays by guilds, and so forth. Can they be revived? Would the attempt be a foolish bit of antiquarianism? Let us hope not.

The Eastern Church Five Years On, Part IV: Devotions & Liturgy

Devotion has a near limitless applicability to the Christian life. One might even say that it is the general spirit of living the Christian life, doing what is beyond the written requirement of law. In Christian terms one can be devoted to figures of inspirational sanctity or dedicated intercessors for one's causes. One may find reason for devotion to a past event or minor revelation that succors one's sufferings or spiritual ailments in modern times. Devotion to feasts and their anticipation is one of the most ancient Christian devotions, most visible in novenas and the great vigils of the ancient rite. In the last millennium pilgrimage was the highest level of devotion, it being a metaphor for the greater pilgrimage from detachment on earth to meeting God in heaven. Today various types of private prayer dominate devotion, especially rosaries and chaplets. Devotion is everywhere, and after five years, going on six as of this writing, I now think that the place of devotion is one of the most noble problems in the Roman liturgy.

Devotion—an expression of love of God and His saints in the Christian life outside the essential functions of the Eucharist and the Office—is an essential part of Catholicism, if only because it is done out of desire rather than command, which reflects a spiritual maturity and an intimacy with the Divine. More often than not, contemporary devotion means kneeling near a statue in a church and saying the Divine Mercy chaplet or thumbing through the Sorrowful Mysteries on one's rosary at home. It reflects a systemic approach to private prayer and meditation. Alone, this is a reduction of past people's broader, fervent idea of devotion. In context, however, the emphasis on devotion in an atomistic, modern, post-Reformation society has elicited deleterious effects on the Roman liturgy and was one of the principal movers in its gradual disassembly.

The basic concept of devotion and its practice persists East and West. A person enters a church, goes to a corner with a holy image, lights a a candle, shoves a dollar into the box, and acts for God to intervene for the good in someone's life. Popularly, novenas once occupied an evening slot at most Latin parishes and continue as a means of private prayer; the Ascension is often called the beginning of a novena running into Pentecost, mimicking the oriental process of anticipating great feasts. More dramatically, pilgrimage to holy places in Jerusalem, Rome, Egypt, and the sights of Marian miracles, for the fulfillment of promises and the remission of sins, remains a congruity between the the Greek and Latin traditions. What differs practically, however, is that much of Latin devotional piety is based on the chiliastic premonitions associated with private apparition and their accompanying semi-salvific promises; the Miracle of the Sun may have been seen by 70,000 people, but the bestowing to Saint Simon Stock of the Brown Scapular, a common "get out of purgatory free" card, has far less reliable origins. Such complete promises of salvation shift the focus of devotion from God to the promise itself, from the mysteries of God to the bare minimum to fulfill vicariously living out a full religious life. Consequently, Marian feasts inspired by new devotional titles proliferated (Holy Family, Apparition of the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Queenship feast, Immaculate Heart, the Holy Name, the September feast of the Seven Sorrows, the Maternity of Mary—which is not Christmas, and more local feasts). As local feasts these would be harmless. On the General Roman Kalendar they break up the seasonal rhythm of the liturgy and alter the attention of the seasons from the reliving of Christ's life to scattered pieties observed by the few.

Hail O Virgin and
Bride Ever Pure!

By contrast, this writer found the Greek liturgy to be a revelation not in that it ignored devotionalistic piety, but that it found a seamless manner of integrating it into the Eucharistic and hourly rites without diluting them. Byzantine etiquette for entering a church prescribes reverencing the icon on the icon stand in front of the iconostasis. Few things say "Byzantine" like an icon, but they did not always occupy a place of prominence in the official Greek worship. The faithful took to using and, often, abusing the sanctity of icons, leading to their banishment from churches by a superstitious emperor only to return as a tell-tale sign of one's orthodoxy. Years after the Sunday of Orthodoxy the Byzantine Church had hung icons about the screen around the altar and gestured to the Virgin and Our Lord at their mentions and the conclusion of litanies; icons were placed in the center of churches during Liturgies in honor the depicted saint; and icons were the ticket for a place aboard the processions commemorating that first Sunday of Orthodoxy. Prayer before icons and their place in the corner of one's home did not prevent them also from becoming an innate part of Constantinopolitan worship.

The greatest devotional treasure in the public worship of the Greek liturgy, however, is the Akathist to the Theotokos sung during Great Lent. This year the Annunciation will fall on Palm Sunday; last year it was on Good Friday. While the Latin Church often transfers the feasts until after Low Sunday, the Eastern tradition holds the feast to be of such great importance that it is immobile. Saint Gabriel's words to the Mother of God were initially welcomed—so theorize liturgical historians—as sung sermons or plays during the Fast, both meant to instruct and to inspire devotion.

Over time this devotion became "liturgized" and even integrated into the Liturgy itself. Although not fundamentally part of the Liturgy in the sense that the Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Office are, Greek rite monasteries customarily sing the Akathist to the Mother of God during Great Compline on the Lenten Fridays prior to the feast. In practice, when parishes sing the Akathist as a stand alone service they add the traditional beginning of the Hours, with the priest's blessing, the Trisagion, and the singing of a psalm (50). Then follow the Odes, the Chants, and finally the reverence of the icon of the Virgin. Although not an Hour, it possesses all the structure of an hour and a layman attending for the first time could simply treat it like assisting at Vespers and the kissing of an image, two things he already knows how to do. In an entirely familiar way he can hear the echoes of the angel's words to the Virgin and contemplate her fiat until he hears those words spoken during the Gospel of the feast itself.

Like Patristics, the act of liturgizing devotion is not something foreign to Latin Catholicism or outside its tradition, but it is something that has fallen by the wayside and which the so-called "Traditionalists" seemingly have no interest in reviving. How did the Roman rite mirroring this seemingly Hellenic adaptation of devotions into public worship? Have you ever seen a side altar?

Mass at the altar of St Gregory the Great in St Peter's, Rome
source: CatholicHeritage.blogspot.com

Side altars have a fascinating history that is probably worth its own original research (beyond my scholarly pay scale), but at the height of their use they represented the strongest assimilation of lay piety into the common parish's liturgy. Originally venues for monks to celebrate Requiem Masses for deceased benefactors or for votive Masses by monks unassigned to the conventual Mass, side altars quickly permeated parishes in the Middle Ages, being built and financially maintained by lay associations. Guilds under a certain patronage or town magistrates interested in their own local saints would pay for the construction of altars and shrines within their own parish churches and hire priests, approved by the local ordinary, to maintain services at these altars. A "Massing priest", who did not have the faculties to hear Confessions or administer Baptism that the pastor possessed, would provide the requisite Office and Mass proper to the shrine on a daily basis. At the "Jesus altar" he would sing the Office and high Mass of the Five Wounds of Christ every day but Sunday using the Missal and vestments provided by his benefactors; the guild or lay association owned those, not the priest or the parish. Saturdays of Our Lady originated in this fashion. On more solemn occasions, like funerals, guilds would join the priest in singing the full Office of the Dead the night before a Requiem, calling it the Dirige after the opening words of the Mattins psalm (and the origin of the word "dirge").

More anciently, the Roman gallery of great martyrs inspired the people of the Eternal City to keep vigil the night prior to feasts at the church which housed the relics of the day's saint or at least which was under his or her patronage. Over time this praxis became recognized as the "stational churches" for Papal Masses, noted in Missals printed prior to the 1960s. Over time the acts of devotion during these stational Masses augmented into great events in their own right, like the carrying of an image of Christ from the Lateran into Santa Maria Maggiore during Lauds for the Assumption. To this day Masses are said for stational feasts and for the days of Lent at their old locations, although only sparingly by the Pope himself.

One wonders what might have happened if not for the Reformation and erection of the SCR in 1588, which stunted the natural process of adapting the traditional liturgy for the needs of those who heard it and whose beneficence enabled it. Might the Corpus Christi or Candlemas mystery plays of York have somehow become liturgical acts along of the same lines as the akathist to the Theotokos? Or might the hymnody from those plays have found place in the liturgy as they did in popular culture? Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament in the form of Benediction did become a quasi-part of the liturgy. Whatever might have happened did not come to pass, which leaves it to us today, in the process of recuperating liturgical tradition, to recover the proper place of devotion as part of the Roman rite's "stuff." Far be it from importing an Eastern perspective into the Latin Church, the Greek tradition cleaned the lens for looking at our Roman inheritance.

Casual Thoughts on Divine Mercy

Pictured: Doe-eyed mystic.

Recent times have seen a bit of backlash against the JP2-Approved "Divine Mercy" devotion and feast. Last year, Hilary White wrote an extensive hit piece on the What's Up with Francischurch? blog, and a few days ago the equally irascible Maureen Mullarkey expressed her disgust with the phenomenon. My interest in anything related to plenary indulgences has waned considerably as the Holy Father's monthly prayer intentions have become increasingly absurd, and while I have a grudging respect for the "Sacred Heart" movement, I find the prospect of reading Sr. Maria Faustina Kowalska's diary to be even less attractive than the prospect of reading Stephenie Meyer's memoirs.

But aesthetic problems aside, the implications of the Divine Mercy Sunday devotion are somewhat troubling. If taken literally, the devotional practice is said to grant graces much greater than that of a plenary indulgence, graces greater than all the Sacraments except for Baptism, at the rank of a second Baptism. Gone is the usual indulgence requirement of complete detachment from sin; now we're in the dispensation of the New Pentecost, I suppose.

Still, what do I know? I cannot say I understand how P. John Paul's 1993 canonization of Sr. Kowalska and the creation of her Divine Mercy feast in 2000 deals with the apparently severe problems of her character and theology, so much as it sweeps them under the rug. The endless chattering of JP2 2.0 about "mercy" is the logical endgame of mercy without penance.

One of the tragedies of the spiritual life used to be the soiling of one's baptismal garments. Rare was even the saint who never soiled that primordial purity with mortal sin. The stains of sin were difficult to wash out, and the loving desire for self-purification was a great drive for those wishing to please God and his Mother. Now this has been replaced with a yearly return to baptismal purity with little effort on the sinner's part, like Hera at Kanathos. But maybe this is what we require in these dark times? Maybe the Catholic faithful are so far lost in ignorance and apathy that God is reaching down into the depths to pull us up into his good graces. Maybe we have been trained so long to hate penance and perfection that Christ is outpouring his mercy in such a way that he is willing even for that to be abused by preachers, so long as it is received.

There is also a liturgical tragedy, for the old celebration of the Octave Day of Easter in its various forms (Low Sunday, White Sunday, Quasimodo Sunday, Pascha Clausum, etc.) has been lost. Like so many other octaves on the Roman kalendar, the Octave of Easter has been manipulated, though at least not eliminated. I cannot help but think that Karol Wojtyła was inspired by national loyalty rather than careful reasoning when he promoted Faustina's cultus and devotions to universal status.

Still, what do I know? On Low Sunday this year I thankfully heard a sermon that spoke of Jesus and Easter, with only a passing mention of the Divine Mercy stuff. Maybe one day I will dip into Sr. Kowalska's diary and present commentary on a few choice passages, but until then I have more interesting books to read.

Jesus' secretary "in this life and the next," pray for us!

Mary as Mother?

"Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it."

The first major book of Marian spirituality I read as a Catholic was St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort’s (d. 1716) True Devotion to Mary, a popular if hyperbolic work that set the stage of much Marian devotionalism to follow. Fr. de Montfort’s approach was to see Mary as a Lady in a sort of courtly or chivalric sense, as the mistress and commander of her loyal knights, who were to see themselves as her slaves: 

Moreover, if, as I have said, the Blessed Virgin is the Queen and Sovereign of heaven and earth, does she not then have as many subjects and slaves as there are creatures? (I.2.1)

This is all fair enough, and fairly straightforward, even if the courtly language is far removed from our modern frame of reference. Mary is Queen much as Jesus is King, and it is the duty of all subjects to pledge their allegiance to their proper rulers.

Contrast this with the approach of St. Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori (d. 1787) and his Glories of Mary, which heavily emphasized the role of Mary as the Christian’s spiritual mother rather than ruler. The title Mater Ecclesiae appeared only rarely before the 1700s, and it gained serious purchase in the twentieth century with the Vatican Council and recent popes. Bp. de’ Liguori’s language adjusts to his maternal focus:

O most tender Mary, most loving Mother! This is just what you desire. You want us to become children and call out to you in every danger. For you long to help and save us, as you have saved all your children who had recourse to you. (I.2)

While the call to become like little children is of course derived from the dominican aphorism of Matthew’s Gospel, its application within Marian devotionalism is rather more sentimental than one expects was originally intended. Popular Marian spirituality has followed St. Alphonsus over St. Louis, and we may very well be the poorer for it.

Icons and statuary of Our Lady used to be more dignified than they have become. Early icons depicted her both with great humility and great nobility, whether she be holding the infant Christ on her lap or bowing before Christ Pantocrator. The humanizing elements of post-medieval painters increased her tenderness, but it was during the Counter Reformation and in the mass production of devotional figurines that Mary became more fully sentimental. Gone was the sturdy matron of patristic times, and here was the soft, doe-eyed young mother always offering a hug. The more exalted eastern iconography of Mary is alien to western Marian devotees, and it’s no mistake that the only oriental icon that has garnered popularity in the west is “Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” showing as it does Mary in a mildly comforting role.

Subjection to the Queen of Heaven need not be dripping with tender emotion. If that were required, how many people would find it impossible to bend the knee to the New Eve! Better, I think, to stir up feelings of awe and wonder at her holiness and exaltation. As the ancient akathist hymn sings:

It is truly meet to bless you, Theotokos, ever blessed and most pure, the Mother of our God. More honorable than the Cherubim, more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, without corruption you gave birth to God the Word. True Theotokos, we magnify you!

c. AD 600

Yes, Jesus Loves You

(Albrecht Dürer)

Today’s feast of Marguerite-Marie Alacoque is a reminder for most Tradistanis of the Sacred Heart Devotion, something which, while an occasionally troublesome example of Catholic devotionalism, serves at the very least to remind us of that ancient truth of God’s love first revealed in the Pentateuch:

From heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might teach thee. And upon earth he shewed thee his exceeding great fire, and thou didst hear his words out of the midst of the fire, because he loved thy fathers. (Deut. 4)

Throughout the Hebrew dispensation, this truth was reiterated by the prophets:

“For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. Since thou becamest honourable in my eyes, thou art glorious. I have loved thee, and I will give men for thee, and people for thy life.” (Isa. 43)

And the Lord said to me: “Go yet again, and love a woman beloved of her friend, and an adulteress; as the Lord loveth the children of Israel, and they look to strange gods.” (Hos. 3)

“I have loved you,” saith the Lord. And you have said, “Wherein hast thou loved us?” “Was not Esau brother to Jacob,” saith the Lord, “and I have loved Jacob, but have hated Esau?” (Mal. 1)

A greater revelation of God’s love for his people came with the Incarnation and with the ministry of Christ:

And Jesus looking on him, loved him. (Mk. 10)

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children as the bird doth her brood under her wings, and thou wouldest not?” (Lk. 13)

The Jews therefore said, “Behold how he loved him.” (Jn. 11)

“As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love.” (Jn. 15)

Marguerite-Marie’s visions were of Christ enrobed in fiery splendor, much as he appears in the Apocalypse and at the Transfiguration. He is here surrounded by seraphim, and his heart is described as a “sun” issuing forth rays she fears will burn her to ash. But where the scriptural assurances of God’s love are passionate but brief, Marguerite-Marie writes endlessly about the emotions and thoughts that spring up at the fresh revelation of Christ’s heart, “burning with thirst for the salvation of sinners.” For the average Catholic, a simple re-reading of the Gospels is likely to be more invigorating to the virtue of charity than the French nun’s emotional roller coaster.

I have to think, though, that St. Marguerite-Marie’s visions were indeed a revelation to the Counter-Reformation cultural Catholicism of her time. The Church was heavily focused on tightening regulations and preventing more losses to Protestantism and secular movements, and in such times it is too easy to lose sight of the offer of friendship that God extends to all men.

As to the general practice of the Sacred Heart devotion, I do not have much to add beyond what His Traddiness has written before. The following short book on the supposed promises of Christ to St. Marguerite-Marie is very useful in gaining perspective on the devotion, and for dissuading people from getting too carried away.



A blessed feast to you all!

Joseph Resurgent?

Back in May of this year, The Remnant organized a pilgrimage to La Salette, advertised specifically as an apparition site of St. Joachim’s son-in-law. A few weeks ago, a blog story about approved contemporary apparitions of St. Joseph made the rounds. Pope Francis won’t shut up about Joseph, even praising the sainted carpenter’s homeschooling skills. Some male friends of mine recently bought a house and placed it under St. Joseph’s patronage. And so on.

Why does the stepfather of Our Lord, particularly the fraudulently youthful version of him, appear to be regaining popularity? While I have no objection to the veneration of anyone raised to the altars, the devotionalism surrounding Joseph is awkward and anti-intellectually sentimental. What is it about New St. Joseph that attracts the adoration of men’s groups and doe-eyed mystics?

Pictured: Doe-Eyed Mystic

Firstly, I think the “Joseph the Worker” angle is very appealing to the modern man who finds it difficult to orient himself in the increasingly inhuman Western workplace. Opus Dei’s spirituality is too intense to appeal to everyone, but a more generic devotion to Joseph as a workman is attractive to those repulsed by Hispanic spirituality.

Secondly, New St. Joseph is palatable to young Catholic men trying to regain a sense of masculinity in a culture besieged by feminists and perverts. This version of Joseph serves as an ideal for young men looking for virtuous examples of saints living in the world as husbands and fathers.

Thirdly, the hatred of old age and idolization of youth continues apace. As Romano Amerio expounded upon in Iota Unum, the unthoughtful exuberance of youth is glorified in the modern world, while the calm wisdom of the elderly is belittled. The Hebrew proverb that said “Old age is a crown of dignity” has been forgotten, and the Church continues to idolize the young with its annual World Youth Day summer camps.

Fourthly, the Holy Family devotion is still a beacon of hope for those Catholics stuck in desperately poor family conditions, and this devotion falls apart without New Joseph at its head. As Catholic prelates continue to allow the Catholic doctrines of the family to burn while they light cigars on the flames, expect to hear much more from them about how devotion to the Holy Family can patch up everything.

St. Joseph, king of the road trips, pray for us!

Considering the Scapular (Part III)

Elijah bemoans the devotional wasteland of the modern Church. (Washington Allston)

You can find a scapular for every occasion. There’s one for increasing the theological virtues (red), one for honoring the Passion (black), one for ransoming captives (white), one for devotion to St. Joseph (gold and violet), one for avoiding Hell (brown), one for converting sinners (blue), and one for converting unbelievers (green). Each one is adapted loosely from the habit of a different religious order, but you can always skip all those complications and just get yourself enrolled in a package-deal scapular.

(source)

Now, Mr. Grump is not especially well-versed in the theology of sacramentals. He knows that piously crossing oneself with holy water can expiate one of venial sin, but that’s about it. He wears a cross and has what he considers a healthy amount of religious art displayed in his home. He carries around a miraculous medal in his wallet, although he can’t quite remember how it got there. For the most part, his brown scapular sits in a desk drawer along with a few other Catholic trinket-y items that he is still deciding what to do with. He doesn’t believe much in outsourcing his spiritual life to jewelry, but he keeps them around on the theory that there is much more going on around him in terms of spiritual warfare than he knows, and prefers to keep certain weapons handy even if he isn’t certain how useful they actually are.

Except for Chartreuse, which he is certain is blessed by monks to be a sacramental of the highest order, and is probably one of the seven spirits which sit before the throne of God (Apoc. 1.4).

The credulity given to certain promises around the brown scapular borders far too often on outright superstition. Even so, one must admit that the spiritual practices of average Catholics before the Counter-Reformation would be considered superstitious today. They had a vivid perspective of life as a constant warfare between angels and devils, between witches and priests, between cursed objects and blessed sacramentals. We tend today to lean in the opposite direction of incredulity towards stories of the supernatural. We are picky about which miracle stories we believe—why do we disbelieve that St. Denis carried his own decapitated head for miles, but believe that Christ raised Lazarus from the dead?

I, for one, find no reason to think that the Blessed Virgin did not promise eternal salvation to those Catholic religious who faithfully kept the rules of their orders, symbolized by the faithful wearing of their orders’ habits. The counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience were given to us to make salvation more certain, and religious orders were founded to make the practice of the counsels more practical. Why wouldn’t Mary step in occasionally to assure Catholics in those orders that they were on the right track to ensuring their own salvation?

But therein lies the problem. The further away the popular devotion of scapular-wearing gets from the religious orders that originated these scapulars, the more similar it becomes to superstition. One need not become even a Third-Order Carmelite in order to “receive the graces” of the brown scapular, anymore. The scapular need not even be a scapular, but can now be a medal, destroying the one physical tie it had to a religious habit.

Stories of even worldly Catholics being saved from physical harm by wearing this scapular proliferate in its popular literature—a priest is saved from a bullet wound during Mass by the scapular, an enrollee stops a violent storm by throwing his scapular into the waves, a woman attempting suicide is unable to sink whilst wearing her scapular, etc.—and while I am not so incredulous as to doubt the reality of spiritual warfare spilling over into the material realm, one notices that the subject matter of these stories tends towards the sensational rather than the sober. Even Pius XII warned the Carmelites against presumption when considering Mary’s promise: “But not for this reason, however, may they who wear the Scapular think that they can gain eternal salvation while remaining slothful and negligent of spirit, for the Apostle warns us: ‘In fear and trembling shall you work out your salvation.’”

Crank up the heat, he's about to be canonized!

Wearing a brown scapular without any concern for the Carmelite order seems also to be yet another example of the disintegration of religious life in the Church. The scandals of unchastity, avarice, and plain disobedience in religious life are bad enough without also removing the devotional items they created from their possession. Those poor monks need all the help they can get. Carmelite spirituality leaves me cold (I do admire some of St. John of the Cross’s writings from an abstracted distance), but it is a help for many souls, and there is something perverse about recommending the order’s scapular without requiring any unique part of its spiritual life.

Every time a Catholic with some attachment to my parish dies, the question of whether or not he died wearing his scapular immediately arises. Better to ask if he died with the sacraments and with a clear contrition for his sins. How well did he fight off the final temptations of the Devil? How firmly did he hold to the Faith as the angel of death drew nearer? Wearing the scapular until death may indicate a love for Mary, or it may indicate presumption. No doubt she can work many miracles through her sacramentals, but should we insist that she will, even for obstinate sinners?

St. Joseph, patron of a holy death, pray for us!

Considering the Scapular (Part II)

There is an interesting find—if you follow the footnote trail in the relevant Wikipedia articles—of a July 1904 article in the old Irish Ecclesiastical Record about “The Origin of the Scapular: A Criticism,” by Fr. Herbert Thurston, SJ. Responding to an earlier article in the same publication by Fr. Benedict Zimmerman, OCD, he casts a skeptical gaze on the stories about the vision of St. Simon Stock and the promises given by the Blessed Virgin to those who wear the scapular.

The vision of the brown scapular is supposedly retold by one Peter Swanyngton, St. Simon’s companion, secretary, and confessor. Fr. Thurston notes discrepancies in Peter’s purported letter, pointing out its internal dating errors and the fact that Peter apparently did not know which pope he and Simon personally visited (cf. ibid. 60-2). As he summarizes the problems:

The document professes to be what it is not; it is grossly inaccurate in names and dates; it was first heard of three hundred years after the death of its supposed author; it was brought to light by a person who was very far from being unbiassed or disinterested; it was never submitted to any kind of expert criticism; it disappeared unaccountably when its publication was demanded. That Father [John] Chéron [in the mid-1600s] deliberately sat himself down to forge a purely fictitious document I do not suggest; but that having come across some sort of account a century or more older than his time, he chose to assume that it was a contemporary narrative, attributed it to Swanyngton, and manipulated it in accordance with this idea, seems to me in the highest degree probable. (64)

Thurston also points out that Carmelite breviaries published before Chéron’s time made no mention of the scapular vision in their notes about a major Carmelite Marian feast (65).

Later he is reasonably skeptical about the claim of promises made during the vision of St. Simon:

But what is still more noteworthy, in the version which Father Zimmerman believes to be Sibert [de Beka]’s highly decorated elaboration of the primitive record, our Lady is made to promise salvation to him to dies in the habit, ‘if only he be worthy’ [emphasis in original]. (‘In hoc quisquis morietur, modo eo dignus, æternum non sentiet ignem.’) The promise in Swanyngton is absolutely without condition. Are we asked to believe that of these two accounts, both supposed to be mediæval, the cautious and qualified form belongs to the later accretions of the legend, while the unconditional promise is to be regarded as authentic and primitive? This must surely be considered a very exceptional inversion of the usual order. (68-9)

The similarity of the legendary vision of St. Simon to visions given to other medieval orders is also noted:

The annals of most religious Orders contain some similar tradition, generally founded on an apparition, more or less vaguely attested, and promising salvation to all who persevere in the Order until death. Father Zimmerman says that such a tradition existed among the Benedictines, the most ancient of cenobites. Analogous revelations are also piously credited among many of the more modern Orders, such as, for instance, the Society of Jesus. It is to be noted then, that if, in the fourteenth century such a privilege was believed to attach to the Carmelite habit, it was in no sort of way the exclusive prerogative of the Carmelites. (69)

If we are to extend credulity to the story of St. Simon Stock’s vision of his order’s habit, surely the same could be extended to similar visions of other orders. Might it not be said that any Catholic who faithfully lives the spiritual rule of any good religious order will be assured of salvation? That is why the Counsels are given to us, after all.

It should also be pointed out that Fr. Thurston wrote a couple of follow-up articles to his 1904 article in 1911. “The Scapular Tradition and Its Defenders” is a response to a few articles by Fr. James Rushe defending the popular devotion to the scapular and some of the odder Carmelite traditions, like their belief that the Prophet Elias literally founded their order. He closes his response with the observation that “we cannot but regret that the world at large should be invited to draw the inference that intellectual honesty in historical matters is not on the whole encouraged by the ascetical Orders of the Church.”

The other, “A Recent Confirmation of the Scapular Tradition,” Fr. Thurston responds to a certain Père Marie-Joseph du Sacré Cœur who had attacked Fr. Zimmerman as being himself a skeptic and historicist, for Fr. Zed had admitted more about the historical instability of the Carmelite claims than his superiors approved. Thurston notes that Zimmerman had been since deposed from the office of historiographer of the Carmelite order, and so quotes a private letter from Zimmerman himself to dismantle Père Marie-Joseph’s claims about the origins of the separate scapular.

(I note briefly and with some mild amusement that Montague Summers attacked Thurston at some length in his introduction to the 1928 edition of The Malleus Maleficarum, writing of him that “Tender miracles of healing wrought at some old sanctuary, the records of some hidden life of holiness secretly lived amongst us in the cloister or the home, these things seem to provoke Fr. Thurston to such a pitch of annoyance that he cannot refrain from venting his utmost spleen. The obsession is morbid” (xxviii). Perhaps it is so, or perhaps Summers wished to bury Thurston under the suspicion of Modernism. I observe also that in 1933 Thurston wrote a short complaint titled Superstition.)

Whether or not Fr. Thurston’s analysis is devastating against the popular beliefs of the brown scapular is beyond my own abilities to judge. It is one of the few scholarly critiques of this sacramental, which was viciously opposed by the Carmelite order, and apparently quite thoroughly ignored by the Church at large. Devotional literature is by nature non-academic; that is no fault as such, but it is not sufficient that books meant for a broad readership should be the only ones readily available.

Considerations on the cultural ramifications of the scapular to come...

Considering the Scapular (Part I)

source: Wikimedia

The brown scapular is not a sacramental used only by Carmelites and rad trads, but can be found in pockets of devotionalism throughout the Catholic landscape. It is not difficult to find families obsessed with collecting medals, scapulars, rosaries, and other such items. When this sort of thing gets out of control, it turns into a sort of folk superstition, where concerned Catholic mothers fearfully insist that their children not leave the house without wearing their protective trinkets. There are worse errors to fall into, but it’s easy for a Catholic to obsess about an object whilst ignoring the more essential things of holiness, penance, and liturgical prayer.

As much as its promoters deny that they encourage the wearing of the brown scapular as a good luck charm or “Get Out of Hell Free” card, it’s undeniable that the beliefs surrounding the scapular lend themselves to such presumption. For many, even the basic minimums of praying the Little Office daily and engaging in the Carmelite spiritual life in order to receive the graces of the sacramental are not sufficiently explained.

In my attempts to research the brown scapular, it was difficult to find any scholarly and historical literature. Most of it is devotional, meant for credulous laymen rather than critical thinkers. While devotional literature has its place, it is not a sufficient replacement for theological analysis. To that end, I here provide some brief analyses of a few relevant and apparently “official” texts. (In a future post I will look more into the historical facts of scapular’s origins.)

Scapular Catechesis (Morello)

The following is excerpted from Fr. Sam Anthony Morello’s Q&A catechesis in The Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: Catechesis and Ritual, published in 2000. (Reproduced online here.) A few relevant points are highlighted in bold.

What is the relationship of the Carmelite Order to the Brown Scapular? 

The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is the habit of the Carmelite Order. For the religious members of the Order it takes the form of two long, undecorated panels of brown cloth joined at the shoulders and falling, one to the front and one to the back. For the laity it takes the form of a two smaller pieces of brown or dark cloth, preferably plain, joined over the shoulder by ribbons, and falling, one to the back, the other to the front. As the Order’s habit, the scapular signifies some degree of affiliation to the Carmelites.[...] 

The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is the common habit of all branches of the Carmelite Family and a sign of unity of that family. For that reason the Scapular Confraternity and similar associations of the faithful centering around this sacramental belong not to any one branch of Carmel but to the entire Carmelite family. Thus, there is only one common public association of the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. 

If a person wears the scapular, but has no formal association to the Order, does that person still gain the benefits associated with the scapular? 

A person who wears the scapular and practices the spirituality of the Carmelite Order has an affiliation, loose as it may be, to the Carmelite family and so shares in the graces traditionally associated with the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. However, simply to wear the scapular without accepting the responsibilities attached to it would be to reduce this precious sacramental to the status of a charm or good-luck piece.

This catechism insists on the intrinsic connection between the wearing of the brown scapular and an affiliation with the Carmelite Order and submission to Carmelite spirituality. This scapular is not a universally generic sign of Marian piety or devotion, but a sign of affiliation or confraternity with Carmel.

Fr. Morello also has this to say about the so-called Sabbatine Privilege:

What is the official status of the Sabbatine Privilege? 

Historical research has shown that the alleged fourteenth-century appearance of the Blessed Mother to Pope John XXII is without historical foundation. As a matter of fact, in the year 1613 the Holy See determined that the decree establishing the “Sabbatine Privilege” was unfounded and the Church admonished the Carmelite Order not to preach this doctrine. Unfortunately, the Order did not always comply with this directive of the Holy See. 

At the time the Carmelites were instructed to stop mentioning the “Sabbatine Privilege” the Holy See acknowledged that the faithful may devoutly believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary by her continuous intercession, merciful prayers, merits, and special protection will assist the souls of deceased brothers and sisters and members of the confraternity, especially on Saturday, the day which the church dedicates to the Blessed Virgin.

Thus the Sabbatine Privilege would appear to be confirmed as a pious legend with no firm basis in history.

750th Anniversary Letter (Chalmers & Maccise)

A 2001 letter from Frs. Joseph Chalmers (Prior General) and Camilo Maccise (Superior General) on the 750th anniversary of the brown scapular also insists on its peculiarly Carmelite nature:

The Scapular is essentially a “habit”. Those who receive it are aggregated or associated in varying degrees with Carmel that is dedicated to the service of Our Lady for the good of the whole Church.[…] Our tradition shows the firmest conviction that the habit and the Scapular have no salvific effect unless we see their meaning as Mary’s habit which affiliates us to the Carmelite Family, and we live according to her example. (28, 30)

Oddly, they also speak of the Carmelite habit as if it is reducible to a Marian habit. The letter goes on at some length to describe the Marian aspects of Carmelite spirituality, which is all well and good, but one might fear that it is at the expense of ignoring the order’s more ancient spiritual influence of the desert prophets of old, especially St. Elijah. The Second Eve’s life on earth was not exactly an eremitical one.

Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (CDW)

The Congregation for Divine Worship released an updated Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy in 2001, which includes the following section on the brown scapular:

The Brown Scapular and other Scapulars 

205. The history of Marian piety also includes “devotion” to various scapulars, the most common of which is devotion to the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Its use is truly universal and, undoubtedly, it is one of those pious practices which the Council described as “recommended by the Magisterium throughout the centuries.” 

The Scapular of Mount Carmel is a reduced form of the religious habit of the Order of the Friars of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel. Its use is very diffuse and often independent of the life and spirituality of the Carmelite family.[…] 

The imposition of the Scapular should be celebrated with “the seriousness of its origins. It should not be improvised. The Scapular should be imposed following a period of preparation during which the faithful are made aware of the nature and ends of the association they are about to join and of the obligations they assume.”

The assertion that use of the brown scapular is “truly universal” is questionable, especially in our implicitly universalistic age. There is also the strange contrast between the blithe observation of the scapular’s practical independence from Carmel, and the so-called seriousness of the obligations it entails. One could reasonably ask how a reduced Carmelite habit could be treated seriously when it drops all substantial ties to Carmel.

More to come...

Narrow and Stifling

Sleepy St. Joseph, pray for us!

I have no intention of commenting extensively on the recent papal exhortation, nor even on reading the thing. It would get in the way of me completing Augustine’s City of God, for one thing. If you’re looking for extensive thoughts on the matter, Mr. Skojec has been providing birds-eye view commentary, and Mr. Bear is examining the document in excruciating detail.

Perusing the document quickly drives one to exhaustion. It has that almost hypnotic effect so indicative of intentionally non-offensive yet passive aggressive rhetoric. It either lulls the reader to sleep or drives him mad.

But I digress. After about half an hour of bored reading, I started running text searches, and my running obsession with St. Joseph paid off in spades. Here is a fascinating little selection from the middle of the document:

No family can be fruitful if it sees itself as overly different or “set apart”. To avoid this risk, we should remember that Jesus’ own family, so full of grace and wisdom, did not appear unusual or different from others. That is why people found it hard to acknowledge Jesus’ wisdom: “Where did this man get all this? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mk 6:2-3). “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” (Mt 13:55). These questions make it clear that theirs was an ordinary family, close to others, a normal part of the community. Jesus did not grow up in a narrow and stifling relationship with Mary and Joseph, but readily interacted with the wider family, the relatives of his parents and their friends. This explains how, on returning from Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph could imagine for a whole day that the twelve-year-old Jesus was somewhere in the caravan, listening to people’s stories and sharing their concerns: “Supposing him to be in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey” (Lk 2:44). Still, some Christian families, whether because of the language they use, the way they act or treat others, or their constant harping on the same two or three issues, end up being seen as remote and not really a part of the community. Even their relatives feel looked down upon or judged by them. (Amoris Laetitia 182)

Jesus listening to people’s stories
and sharing their concerns.

The reader is left to his own conclusion about what sort of families are being described as “constant[ly] harping on the same two or three issues.” It’s a vague accusation easily used as a weapon against any family the reader does not like because of some real or perceived assumption of moral high ground. (Maybe a family in which the parents have remained married for fifty years in spite of difficulties is “looking down” on their divorced and adulterous cousins.)

The really interesting language is used to describe what is in fact the popular idea of the Holy Family, in which the threesome of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph make up a kind of self-sufficient unit like an “Earthly Trinity.” P. Francis calls such a small unit “narrow and stifling.”

And he is right! A distorted devotional ideal of the Holy Family is indeed narrow and stifling, and earlier beliefs about the widowed St. Joseph’s children from a previous marriage and the so-called Holy Kinship are great antidotes to this narrowing devotional crutch.

Let us take this opportunity to move past the propagandist devotionalism of the past, and venerate the relatives of Our Lord as tradition tells us they actually were!

“Even their relatives feel looked down upon or judged by them.”

Josephology Part 13: The Propaganda Machine

(Bartolomé Esteban Murillo)

Late Medieval Sources

Before I detail the uses made of St. Joseph in the Counter Reformation period, I want to look back briefly at the pre-Tridentine attempts to kick-start Josephite devotion. The following quotations are from Charlene Villaseñor Black’s Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire (Princeton University Press, 2006), which I will also be referencing somewhat obliquely throughout this post.

After centuries of such obscurity, the cult of St. Joseph rose to prominence in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. In Italy, St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) preached sermons praising Joseph’s special privileges (derived from having lived with Jesus and Mary) and asserted that Joseph was next to the Virgin in importance in the pantheon of saints. Perhaps the most significant figure to promote devotion to Joseph was Jean Gerson [died 1429], chancellor of Notre Dame and the University of Paris. At the Council of Constance in 1416, Gerson urged the institution of a feast day honoring the Betrothal of Mary and Joseph, for which he wrote an office. In a sermon delivered on the birthday of the Virgin Mary, he extolled Joseph as Christ’s earthly father. His three thousand-line Latin poem, the Josephina, laid the foundations of modern Josephine theology.... 

Whereas Joseph had previously been regarded as a subsidiary figure, old and unimportant, they asserted that, as the head of the Holy Family, the saint had to have been young and robust in order to support, protect, and exercise authority over Mary and Jesus. Gerson further proposed that, like the Virgin, Joseph was assumed into heaven after his death. (23-24)

As far as I know, Bernardino and Gerson are the first theologians to posit Joseph’s bodily assumption. In 1522, shortly before the Council of Trent, the Milanese Dominican Isidoro de Isolani wrote his Summa de donis sancti Joseph (Summa of the Gifts of St. Joseph), which had a strong Gersonian influence, also positing an assumption among other things. After the quasi-iconoclastic movements of the Counter Reformation wiped the slate clean on Josephite hagiography, Bernardino and Gerson were dusted off and further exploited by the Molanusian reformers.

The other great promoter of Josephite devotion was St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), who was healed of paralysis by St. Joseph’s intercession. Her influence on the Carmelite order ensured that the new Josephite devotion would be spread wherever Carmelites held sway; most especially in the Hispanic world, but also through evangelist-saints like Francis de Sales (1567-1622) who found inspiration in Teresa’s writings.

Propaganda for the Family

(Bartolomé Esteban Murillo)

How did the new version of St. Joseph find such purchase in the Catholic world? Largely because of the rising devotion to the Holy Family, and its ties to preaching about the importance of family life. Treated often as second-class citizens in a kingdom ruled by eunuchs, the married laity of Catholic Europe were happy to see an emphasis placed on the Holy Family. The Tridentine Fathers understood that marriage was in a particular crisis, so in addition to requiring an ecclesiastical witness to all ceremonies, the Council’s reformers preached heavily on the exaltation of the sacramental married state.

(Philippe de Champagne)

Rather than pulling from the examples of married saints from Scripture and Tradition (many of whom found their cults demoted if not demolished by the Counter Reformation), the Holy Family devotion was developed as a teaching tool for the married, with St. Joseph as its newly-reimagined moral and spiritual leader. Artists were encouraged to paint the Betrothal of the Virgin to St. Joseph; depictions of the everyday life of the Holy Family, especially in Joseph’s workshop, became popular; and the traditional images of Christ Enthroned on Mary were quietly being replaced with paintings of Joseph holding and playing with the Christ Child.

(Jeroni Jacint Espinosa)

Joseph was portrayed as the perfect model for husbands and fathers: young, hard-working, chaste, paternal, affectionate to his wife and child, and faithful. Surely young men in the married state need such examples, and Joseph was reinvented to suit that need. Mary’s wifely role was emphasized, as well: maternal, chaste, obedient, supportive, and prayerful. Even Jesus’ role as a good child was elaborated: obedient, hard-working, submissive to his elders, and playful.

Most of these things may have been true about the household in Nazareth, but there is no doubt that the newer elaborations are imaginative and based on no traditions. Indeed, what few ancient traditions there are about the Holy Family suggest an imperfect harmony at best. The Holy Family of popular devotion was carefully crafted by the Counter Reformers to suit a particular need, and artistic depictions were often stringently censored to that end.

(Mafra National Palace, Portugal)

It was important to show Joseph at his workbench, usually teaching the young Jesus how to work wood at the same time. The Spanish Empire reportedly had a difficult time dealing with a lazy populace, and promoting St. Joseph the Worker helped encourage men stuck in low-class labor to see work as a form a prayer. This aspect of Josephite devotion finds modern perpetuation in the teachings of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer through Opus Dei, and it was also exploited by Pius XII by instituting the May 1 feast.

(Gaspar Miguel de Berrío)

The royal lineage of Joseph, as a descendant of King David, was frequently brought to mind as a way of exalting his worth. He was a patriarch, a prince, heir to the throne of David. Some new devotionals suggested that the Holy Family lived in intentional poverty, since Joseph had given all of his royal inheritance to the poor. The Coronation of St. Joseph was a popular artistic theme in Spain and Mexico, mirroring very closely the Coronation of Mary.

(José Cortés de Alcocer)

More questionable than Joseph’s royalty was the emerging iconographic subgenre of the Earthly Trinity, which mirrored the three members of the Holy Family with representations of the Trinity in Heaven. Even the Spanish Inquisition found this subgenre semi-blasphemous, but surely it was the fullest expression of this unjustified exaltation of the spouse of Mary, and what artist could resist painting a mirror image of threes? It lent itself to a kind of symmetry rarely seen since the old iconography died away.

Effects of Fabricated Devotion

(artist unknown)

The rise of devotional propaganda was serving a real need in the Church. Family life was in chaos, and pastors wanted a focused example for preaching and commissioning art, something that could appeal to the poor as well as the rich. It must have seemed like a useful shortcut to have one condensed example of familial piety with the Holy Family, and clerics everywhere attempted to spread this devotion among the families they were trying to save.

Meanwhile, the old cults were shrinking and dying, often with the assistance of newly-scrupulous clergy who wanted nothing that smelled of fiction or imagination in Catholic devotion. John the Baptist, previously invoked in defense of marriage, was forgotten as Joseph took his place as the highest saint below Mary. The parents of the Virgin, Sts. Joachim and Anne, were diminishing as theologians questioned their historicity. Many of the saints once invoked against unhappy marriages—Monica, Helena, Henry and Cunegundes, Gengulphus, Rita—were falling by the wayside.

It’s an unfortunate fact that shortcuts lead to problems down the road. A hastily-built house may fall apart one day because of the shortcuts taken by the builders. A concocted devotion founded on speculative fabrications will not inspire a lasting change in the Church. The more St. Joseph is forced into a superhuman mold, the more it feels like fantasy, and one even more fantastic than the golden legends of old. We shouldn’t reshape saints simply based on a perceived need in the life of the Church.

And really, doesn’t the more ancient belief in Joseph’s pre-Marian marriage with children make him more relatable to married men today? A neat and tidy household with only one child seems more like the marriages of the workaholic, compulsive, fecundophobic neo-pagans of today, and less like the messy, crowded families traditionally promoted by the Church.

Next time, we will move further into modern times, and look at recent papal writings and proclamations about St. Joseph.

St. Joseph, lover of large families, pray for us!