Tag Archives: Christian

November 7, 2012 · 11:23 am

Thank You, Governor and Mrs. Romney

As you might imagine, gentle reader, the avalanche of news of late has kept me away from blogging as often as I would have liked.  It is sometimes difficult to focus on interesting buildings, or discoveries in the art world, or considerations of trends in our culture, when there is so much information and opinion to sift through.  Now that the U.S. elections are over, it is time to get back to work.

However before I do so, I want to express my thanks to Governor and Mrs. Romney for all of the hard work they did to try to put this country back on the right track.  Of course no Presidential campaign goes it alone.  There are many hundreds and thousands of people who did their best, and they deserve many thanks also.

In this particular election, which was not the case for me in the previous one, I am genuinely sorry both for our country and for the Romneys personally that we will not have the chance to have them as President and First Lady.  We will not get to experience their devoted service to others, in response to how they themselves have been blessed – a fact which is well-known to those whom they have helped, and which sense of duty they have embraced all of their lives.  From the time I first got to know about the Romneys, way back in the previous Presidential primary cycle in 2007, I have been struck by what genuinely good people they are, models of both responsible citizenship and human decency.  By now all know how both of them have not only reached out to support those in need, but also to support each other through some very painful times.

Please do not mistake my reading, gentle reader, for I am not suggesting that the Romneys are saints, or some sort of embodiment of human perfection.  They are flawed and imperfect as we all are, because they are real people rather than celebrities created out of whole cloth.  Yet as models of marital/familial devotion, and of the active practice of the tenets of one’s faith, many of us could well do to take a lesson from them both.

The thought occurred to me this morning, as the impact of the election began to sink in more fully, that the example of St. Peter in the 6th chapter of the Gospel of St. John is particularly instructive in this regard, with respect to how one deals with disappointment, adversity, and loss.  This is a section of the Gospels which is often ignored or overlooked by many non-Catholics.  It particularly addresses how we Catholics understand the Eucharist, but it also tells us something about how we are to accept things which seem incredibly difficult or impossible for us.

After Christ tells His disciples that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood, they will not have eternal life, many of them began to leave Him.  ”This teaching is hard,” Jesus’ audience says, and they cannot accept what He has told them.  Jesus then asks the Twelve, those closest to Him, whether they are preparing to leave Him, also.  In response to this question St. Peter – in his inimitably Petrine way – makes a profound statement of  faith.  ”Lord, to whom shall we go? For You alone have the words of eternal life.”

And that is really THE answer, in the end, for there is no other option.  Whatever comes, for those of us who practice the Catholic faith which comes to us from the Apostles (including St. Peter, the first Pope), whatever Providence brings or permits, we must hold fast to Him no matter how harshly the winds blow and the seas foam. And they most assuredly will, as our country appears convinced more than ever to embrace the culture of death.  Yet to do other than cling to Christ is to tie our colors to something floundering in the rocks, and which in the fullness of time is ultimately doomed to failure.

Whatever life holds next for Governor and Mrs. Romney, the last several years have undoubtedly been a tremendous burden and strain for both them and their family, and yet they have handled it all with grace, with hard work, and with love.  I thank them deeply for their service, and I hope that they will continue to work together to do good for their community and their country, as they are able.  May God bless them both.

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March 28, 2012 · 10:46 am

Saul Sells Seashells by the Seashore

A story caught my eye yesterday regarding Boston’s historic Episcopalian Cathedral of St. Paul.  It has been announced that the tympanum of the building, which has remained unfinished since the church was completed in 1820, is to be filled with a sculpture by Philadelphia artist Donald Lipski.  Originally, the tympanum was supposed to feature a sculpture of St. Paul preaching, but this was never realized. So now, instead of honoring its patron, the cathedral has decided to honor…a mollusk.

The planned work represents a cross-section of a chambered nautilus, and will be artistically illuminated at night to highlight the swirls and curves of the piece.  It is admittedly a lovely design, and makes an interesting use of the triangular space available on the facade. However, the rather obvious problem with this sculpture is that it is has nothing to do with St. Paul, let alone with Jesus Christ.

Of course, this is not the position of those who have commissioned the work.  Consider the statement released with the announcement of the selection of this sculpture proposal by the cathedral’s bishop:

We are doing something bold and extraordinary with the front of our cathedral church because what God has given us to share with the world in Jesus Christ is bold and extraordinary. This sculpture is a major contribution to the public art life of Boston, and it is also a profound one, because the simple beauty of it conveys complex symbolism broadly to anyone passing by, while also being deeply Christian in the way it draws us into the mystery and creativity of the Divine. I’m especially proud of our cathedral church for doing the work of Jesus Christ, feeding the hungry and welcoming the stranger, and now our façade will invite everyone into the beauty of that.

In addition, according to the dean of the cathedral, “Lipski’s beautiful and visionary proposal is utterly consistent with St. Paul’s longstanding ministry to invite people into the mystery of Christ and echoes Jesus’ invitation to followers to ‘come and see.’”

As it is, aesthetically there is nothing wrong with the piece.  Imagine how wonderful it would look, for example, above the entrance to a museum of natural history, or a foundation or institution dedicated to science. Architectural purists may well take issue with the placement of a modern sculpture on the facade of an historically significant, 200 year-old Neoclassical building, but at least it is a modern sculpture which is carefully designed to look like what it is meant to represent. That being said, I do not intend to wade into a discussion over whether putting something new on top of something old is de facto a bad idea.

Nor is there anything unusual or untoward about using artistic representations of nature to give greater glory to God in a Christian building. If you visit almost any church you will see architectural and artistic elements that incorporate natural forms. The capitals atop columns may be carved to resemble flowering plants, for example, or there may be mosaics of vines interspersed with depictions of animals covering the floors. From the earliest Christian structures in the days of the Roman Empire, to the Gothic glories of medieval France, to modern buildings such as Gaudí’s Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, nature has traditionally been an important design element in Christian architecture and decoration.

The example of Gaudí, love him or hate him, is rather instructive in this instance. As it happens Gaudí, too, incorporated the nautilus into the design of the Sagrada Familia, as becomes clear when examining the staircases inside of the Basilica’s giant bell towers. And the entire plan of the building is based on a recreation in stone of the mountain of Montserrat, where the abbey-shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat is located. Both the interior and exterior of the church are covered in all sorts of natural forms, from birds and trees, to turtles and snails.

Yet there is one inescapable difference between the Barcelona church and the Boston church: there is no question, when you look at the former, what its purpose is. Every single one of those massive nautilus towers which Gaudí designed is topped by a gigantic cross. All of the entrances to the church are covered in religious imagery, including scenes from the life of Christ, carvings of words spoken by the angels in the Scriptures praising God, or even the words of Jesus Himself, cast into the massive bronze front doors of the Basilica. Gaudí may have loved nature, but as a devout Christian he knew that like man himself, the nautilus is subservient to God.

Now of course, it may be unfair to compare the highly idiosyncratic work of Gaudí to this rather plain structure in Boston. So let us take the Boston building for what it is, as an American interpretation of classical architecture, and ask ourselves whether we can tell, in any way, that this is a church. The answer is quite obviously, “No.” If there were not gold letters across the facade, under the porch, giving the name of the building, one could very understandably be forgiven for thinking that this was a bank, a library, or a government office of some kind.

One of the problems with classical architecture when it is used in a religious setting is that those who choose such a design have to be careful to differentiate their building from secular buildings in the same style. For example, the very classical Holy Trinity Church here in Georgetown has the letters “IHS”, i.e. the monogram for Jesus Christ, in the center of its tympanum, and a large cross on the front of the peak of its pointed roofline, facing the street. The equally classical Madeleine Church in Paris features a sculpture of Jesus rendering the Last Judgment in its tympanum, and its front doors bear bronze sculptures representing the Ten Commandments. Personally I do not care for either of these churches, but at least their respective architects made some effort to indicate what the purpose of each of these buildings is.

And this brings us to the point, which is that this Boston church, or rather its leadership, does not seem to know what its purpose is. It is all very well to want to draw attention to a church by commissioning a work of art for its public face. It is being done in the not-unreasonable hope that people will want to stop and come inside, based on what they see on the outside.

However it is important to keep in mind that a church is first and foremost a place where Christians gather to worship God. It may also provide hospitality, or charity, or other virtues to those who enter its doors, but these are all secondary matters to its construction. When the fundamental nature of a church is overlooked or obscured in some way, particularly in how it presents itself to the viewer’s gaze on first encountering it, then no matter how noble the architecture or how lovely the decoration, the end result is not only a frustration of purpose, but a lost opportunity to witness to the Gospels.

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March 23, 2012 · 12:01 pm

Lenten Friday Reflection: King David the Sinner

We are now a little over a week away from Palm Sunday, and the beginning of Holy Week; Lent is swiftly drawing to a close, and I hope that so far it has been a productive one for all.  Yet there is still time to run, and there is still more to do. And in the interest thereof, I want to direct the reader to one of the “Penitential” Psalms which we often read during Lent, as being very fitting for this season, and what we can learn about the relationship between sin, ourselves, and God from the example of King David.

We are told in the Bible that Pslam 51 was composed by King David, after the Prophet Nathan chastised him for David’s liaison with Bathsheba, and for the evil that came out of it.  More on David later, but first the excerpts of Psalm 51:3-6, 11-14, which I would like us to think about:

Have mercy on me, God, in accord with your merciful love;
in your abundant compassion blot out my transgressions.

Thoroughly wash away my guilt;
and from my sin cleanse me.

For I know my transgressions;
my sin is always before me.

Against you, you alone have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your eyes
So that you are just in your word,
and without reproach in your judgment.

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Turn away your face from my sins;
blot out all my iniquities.

A clean heart create for me, God;
renew within me a steadfast spirit.

Do not drive me from before your face,
nor take from me your holy spirit.

Restore to me the gladness of your salvation;
uphold me with a willing spirit.

Now of course, it is very easy to distance ourselves from these lamentations. We can sit back and say to ourselves, “Well, I’ve never done anything as bad as arrange for the death of the spouse of someone I am in lust with, and since King David really screwed up, of course he would write something like this.” Yet I think that there are larger implications for all of us in this Psalm.

For Catholics, Christianity is a package deal: it is a “both and”, and not an “either or” faith.  The Catholic believes that you cannot claim to accept Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life, and then run around acting like the Devil on Spring Break, and expect to receive a front-row seat in Heaven. To paraphrase St. James, even the Devil knows that Jesus Christ is Lord, but he doesn’t win any merit badges for believing it.

In the Psalm excerpted above, King David clearly understood that belief in God alone is not enough to provide an iron-clad guarantee of salvation. “My sin is before me always”, David tells us, as he expresses his worry that God will abandon him forever, without genuine repentance and amendment. David recognizes that if he does not seek God’s grace to act, and thereby change his behavior and make reparation for what he has done, then neither his belief in God nor his admitting that he has sinned is going to be enough to preserve his relationship with God.

Let us also remember who King David was, for he was not just anybody. David was particularly beloved of God, as we heard last Sunday at mass from the 1st Book of Samuel, and anointed King of Israel by Samuel based on God’s specific command. Moreover, David was also chosen by God to be the ancestor of His Son Jesus Christ, as Christians are very much aware.

In other words, and not to put too fine a point on it, but King David was rather more important in the history of salvation than either you or I. Yet despite the Divine favor which he enjoyed, and despite the knowledge that God was always close to him and protecting him from harm, after he sinned David held a legitimate fear that if he did not repent of his sin and amend his ways, he would be permanently cast out of God’s presence. If David, of all people, could ruin his relationship with God, even though there is no question that he believed in God, and in fact interacted with Him on a regular basis in a very personal and indeed supernatural way, then surely we ought to be a little more cognizant of the fact that the same can happen to us. And as much of an average man as I am, King David’s description of how his sins are always before him is something which very much resonates with me.

However, this does not mean that there is no cause for hope. There is, paradoxically, a strength which comes from recognizing that one has failed, if that recognition is properly acted upon. You and I will no doubt sin countless numbers of times during our respective lifetimes, and we will need to seek God’s forgiveness. We do not deserve His forgiveness, though He gives it freely if we ask for it.

Yet at the same time, He expects us to act upon His gift – not just say “Thanks,” and go back to whatever it was that we were doing that got us into that sinful situation in the first place. As King David clearly understood, and as Christ demonstrated repeatedly throughout in the Gospels, God forgives if we ask for His forgiveness, but He expects us to stop sinning.  He acts, but we must take action as well, through the Grace He provides us to amend our ways when we repent and seek Him out.

With the remaining time that we have during this season of Lent, let us be sure to seek God’s forgiveness, with a firm purpose of amendment to how we live our lives, in order to avoid falling into sin again, and not just assume that we are forgiven because we would like to believe that we are.


“The Prophet Nathan Reproaching King David” by Angelica Kauffman (c. 1797)

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February 24, 2012 · 12:07 pm

Lenten Friday Reflection: Release the Prisoners

The Second Reading for the First Sunday of Lent this weekend is taken from the First Letter of St. Peter; you can read all of this coming Sunday’s readings over at the USCCB website.  In this letter, St. Peter describes how Jesus died for all of our sins, even though He Himself was sinless, so that we might all one day have the hope of eternal life in the presence of God. In this passage which we will hear at mass this weekend, there is an unusual reference that over the centuries has led to some substantial debate among various theologians, commentators, and scholars, where St. Peter describes the actions of Christ: “He also went to preach to the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient.”

For a number of Catholic theologians, including St. Robert Bellarmine, the great Cardinal of the Counter-Reformation, this passage was understood to speak of Christ releasing the souls of those who had sinned and died before His coming, but who were not condemned for eternity. In other words, they were people who at the end of their lives had died genuinely repentant of their sins, but before they had atoned for them, and also before Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection could release them to go to Heaven. They took the view that many Old Testament figures such as Adam and Eve were awaiting Christ’s Passion and Death, so that they might be released from confinement and finally admitted into Heaven.

Strange as this concept may seem to some of my readers, this passage from St. Peter’s letter was once a popular subject in art, as shown below. It was often referred to by various titles, such as “Christ’s Descent into Limbo” or “The Harrowing of Hell”. Nowadays, the subject is rarely depicted artistically, or even talked about. I suspect that it leaves many people feeling a bit perplexed, or even uncomfortable, and therefore they choose to ignore it.

Yet as it happens, every time you pray the Apostles’ Creed, you are referencing this event as described by St. Peter in this letter. The Apostles’ Creed is one of the earliest formal prayers we have, variously dated to the earliest centuries of the Church. In Latin, the relevant portion of the text of the Apostles’ Creed reads: “…passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus, descendit ad ínferos;” the translation in English reads: “…suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, He descended into Hell.”

If we turn to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sections 632-634 address what happened after Christ’s Death but before His Resurrection. The Church teaches that Jesus preached the Gospel to those who had died, in order “to free the just who had gone before Him.” The significance of this is that “the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.”

This then brings St. Peter’s account back around to ourselves, as we come under that category of those “in all times and all places”. Even though those of us reading these words are still alive at the moment, we may find ourselves eventually becoming permanently imprisoned by sin, if we do not do something about it, now. When we give in over and over again to the temptations of this world, to greed, anger, lust, and so on, or we ignore the needs of others for spiritual or material charity on our part, we simply build the walls thicker, and forge the chains around us heavier. In effect, we are creating our own, personalized prison cell in Hell, to which we are condemning ourselves.

We create these places of detention, very often, by thinking, “I’m not such a bad person,” or, “God will forgive me because He is infinitely merciful.” We tell ourselves this at our eternal peril. Christ speaks far more about the dangers of death and damnation in the Gospels than He does about the touchy-feely, happy-clappy, sunshine-day version of the Gospel which many have come to believe.

When God tells us that something is sinful, we do not get to interpret how He will judge us for engaging in that sin: He is God, and we most certainly are not. If you have convinced yourself that engaging in a sinful activity will be forgiven or overlooked by a loving, all-forgiving God, you need to go back and read the many passages in the Gospels where Jesus warns us that there will not only be judgment, but also permanent condemnation, of those who do not repent and change their way of living. He does not tell the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more – but if you do that’s okay, I don’t mind.”

While we are still able to receive Him, Christ can come to release us from our prisons, if we repent and turn to Him to ask for His help. He can break down these prefab infernal holding tanks we find ourselves in, if we let Him, but He will not force us to do so. We have to submit to the Will of God, which may mean doing things that we find difficult or even painful to attempt.

Lent is often likened to a journey. As we set out at the beginning of Lent, we begin the journey to Easter, which will take many weeks. In order to make that journey however, we cannot remain where we are, chained to the walls of our respective jails and going nowhere. If Easter morning finds us still imprisoned by our unrepentant sinfulness, having failed to accompany Christ on His journey to Jerusalem, it will be because we chose to remain where we are, preferring eternal confinement and misery separated from Him because we prefer to live as we want to live, rather than to follow Him as He wants us to do. Let us all pray this Lent that no one reading these pages makes that fatal choice, no matter how difficult it may be for any of us to break out of that prison in which we have confined ourselves.


“Christ’s Descent into Hell” by Andrea da Firenze (1365-1368)
Santa Maria Novella, Florence

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February 22, 2012 · 10:05 am

Lent and The Courtier

I am taking this opportunity to let my readers know about a change to both my posting and my online presence.  There are several things that I will be doing to mark the Christian season of penance and repentance known as Lent, which begins today, and I shall be keeping some of those things to myself.  However, one of the sacrifices I will be making will have an impact on some of you: namely, that I will not be engaging in the use of social media on Fridays in Lent.  This means no Twitter, no Facebook, no Skype, and keeping email exchanges to a bare minimum on those Fridays.

Those who subscribe to or periodically visit this blog will notice that I will be using the Lenten Fridays beginning this Friday, February 24th, and running through Friday, March 30th, to reflect on aspects of Christ’s Passion.  Although Good Friday itself, April 6th, is technically the last Friday in Lent, I will not be blogging, or indeed doing much of anything, on that date at all.  That has always been my policy and indeed, in every job I have ever held, I make it a point to state, at the outset, that I do not do any work on Good Friday.

Of course I realize that for my non-Christian readers, Lenten Friday posts may prove less interesting to you than when I write about secular topics.  However as you are well-aware if you have visited this site before, I am first and foremost a Christian, and a Catholic one at that.  My Faith flavors much of my writing, as indeed it directs my actions.  While I do not use this site to proselytize or engage in apologetics, I do try my best to integrate my Faith into my daily life, albeit committing all sorts of mistakes along the way.  Therefore I would be remiss if I did not take advantage of the opportunity to turn my thoughts to Christ during this liturgical season, and also to share those thoughts with you.

Even if you are not a Christian of any sort, if you are on this site you are presumably interested in Western culture, and how we relate to it in the modern age, for that is an ongoing concern of the Blog of the Courtier project. If that is the case for you, then I would submit that you cannot really understand Western culture unless you have some understanding of Christianity, and particularly of Catholicism. The beliefs and practices of my fellow Catholics over the past two thousand years have shaped innumerable aspects of your life, even if you are not fully aware of how that is the case, from the obvious such as art, architecture, and history, to the not-so-obvious – geography, education, biology, etc.

I am by no means trained in theology beyond any basic level, and I can only write in a very limited way on Lenten matters, so please do not expect any sort of great treatise or series of essays to come out of this series. However, I hope that even if you are not a Christian, you will at least consider reading the Friday Lenten posts on these pages, if only to glean a bit of perspective on how Catholics understand their Faith, and how that understanding colors their view of the world. And of course, if you should have questions about some of the matters I will be writing about, you will have the opportunity to post comments, ask this writer questions privately and directly using the feedback form, or even to engage in conversation with others in the comments section for each blog post.  Hopefully this will prove a fruitful effort for all concerned, and may all of you have a most blessed and holy season of Lent.


Detail from “The Supper at Emmaus” by Diego Velázquez (c. 1620)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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