Posted on 08/02/2002 11:12:14 AM PDT by NYer
As we Americans watch the exuberant joy of Mexicans at the canonization of Juan Diego, we sense that something is missing in our own affluent culture that the comparatively impoverished Mexicans hold onto tightly. The Mexican experience is of national identity fused with Catholicism. The first Mexican revolutionary against colonial Spanish control was a priest, Padre Hidalgo. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is present everywhere in Mexico. For many Mexicans, Guadalupe is Mexico. There is a similar phenomenon in other Catholic countries: the popularity of Padre, now Saint, Pio of Pietrelcina in Italy comes to mind. Other Catholic countries also experience a fusion of national identity with Catholicism: the Pope's own Poland at the mercy of her neighbors, Ireland in its struggles with the English, Spain in its repulsion of Moslem invaders, and France with Joan of Arc. For Mexicans, Juan Diego represents the birth of their nation at the moment that the native Indian culture became fused with the Spanish Catholic culture. Latin American intellectuals speak of the birth of a new race, a "cosmic race," created out of Indian and Spanish. Unlike the current paragons of political correctness, many Latin Americans do not view Columbus' discovery of America as a tragedy but rather as the point at which a new race and culture were created. For this reason, the traditional Hispanic name, even today, for Columbus Day is the politically incorrect "Dia de la Raza" or "Day of the Race."
Unlike Mexico and the other countries mentioned, the United States is not considered a Catholic country. There is no universal image of a saint that is fused with American national identity. In this spiritual sense, we are the ones who are poor compared to our neighbors to the south. In a reversal of roles that resonates with the Gospels, we as affluent Americans are the needy ones seeking a gift from our economically poorer neighbors. We receive that gift under the Patroness of the Americas, north and south, Our Lady of Guadalupe, so designated by Pius XII in 1945 (Our Sunday Visitor's 2002 Catholic Almanac, p.139). We receive that gift not only because of our geographic proximity to Mexico but also through the Mexican-Americans in our midst. As recently noted by the New York Times (July 30, 2002), the growth of the Latino population in the United States is accelerating in parts of the country not traditionally associated with Hispanics, such as North Carolina or Georgia. And I suspect that Mexican-Americans form the greater part of that growth. As a result, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is likely to crop up more and more in shops, homes, and taxicabs throughout the United States.
So for American Catholics the Virgin of Guadalupe is also our Mother, and Juan Diego is also our saint. Just as Europeans streamed in the Middle Ages to visit the shrine of St. James in Spain, so today Catholics from the United States travel to visit the shrine of Guadalupe in Spanish-speaking Mexico. Just as the medieval pilgrimages to Spain affirmed a common European identity, the devotion of Western Hemisphere Catholics to Guadalupe affirms our identity as Catholics living together in the Americas. In this broader sense of the label American, Juan Diego is an American saint for all Americans, whether living in the United States or Canada or Latin America. John Paul II himself has vigorously promoted this continental unity of the Americas by speaking of "America in the singular" as a way of fostering the unity of Catholics in the Western Hemisphere (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in America, p. 5, Jan. 22, 1999). Fittingly, the Pope ends his apostolic exhortation concerning the Church in America with the invocation: "Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of America, pray for us!" In this light, the canonization of Juan Diego is an event that further fosters the Pope's vision of the Church in America and that gives us a saint close not only to Mexico but also to us.
Then why, pray tell, did you feel compelled to extend your rant to me? I have zero sympathy for anti-Roman Catholicism.
My profoundest apologies. I pinged you because as a member of an ancient liturgical church you have a similar perspective from which you can comment and also assumed (forgive me) that Orthodox tend to be very anti-Catholic. Rest assured I shall ping you no more.
The Faith...quite simple actually. By the way, the "simple minded" Belgian, or Greek or Breton peasant or an Indian of Bolivia or a tribesman in Ghana or Uganda will probably make it to heaven long before those of us who pretend to know will. The Church has always taught that. It is one reason why the Ladder of Divine Ascent shows a bishop pitching head first into the Pit and the Pope is known as "The servant of the servants of God" and the EP as "His Modesty".
So the rednecks aren't among all these wonderful peoples why? Because we're all reincarnations of wicked people from other cultures shut out of Heaven and G-d is punishing us by making us a people everyone else hates and looks down on?
What are you missing? Perhaps humility? You should go back and try again.
Of course. People like me who question why the apparitions of Guadalupe or Knock or Fatima are enthusiastically endorsed while Noah's Flood or the parting of the Red Sea are "myths" are just slopping over with arrogance. We all deserve to go to Hell for being born into the Bible Belt rather than Brittany or Portugal.
I'm sorry, but I'll never be "humble" enough to accept the Raymond Browns, Karl Rahners, and Teilhard de Chardins of the world. If that makes me arrogant then so be it. And by the way, you're hardly a paragon of humility yourself--or perhaps you only seem arrogant from the benighted "redneck" perspective?
Original sin? A desire to stick the church into a box of your own making, instead of a real Catholic faith? Maybe nothing, except a little trouble understanding that everything isn't always about you. More real faith than the Catholics around you? Who knows?
I didn't pick my ancestors or what culture I was born into.
No, and who among us did? You make your own culture, then if the one you were born into is insufficient for your needs. Take the good and leave the bad. Most of us do that, to one degree or another.
Dear Zionist Conspirator,
"If the Juan Diegos and Raymond Browns fit so easily together,..."
I don't think that's what I said.
What I said is that for all their differences, their common baptism unites them more fundamentally than their differences divide them.
That doesn't mean that their common baptism makes them fit together easily at all. That would be to confuse the fundamental spiritual reality with all the more apparent and obvious levels of reality of culture, or psychology, etc.
"...then what was wrong with me? I didn't pick my ancestors or what culture I was born into."
How should I know? Take your pick.
sitetest
My suggestion is that evolution be added to the Nicene Creed since it is so important to you. Traditional Catholic cultures may understand it is implied, but some poor sap like me might come along someday and go through seven kinds of hell.
BTW, as you know, Eastern Orthodox don't believe in original sin, but I doubt you have the "blue state" attitude towards them you do towards rural heartland rednecks.
Boy, where did that idea ever come from?
Dear Zionist Conspirator,
"How ironic that Catholics and Fundamentalists are assumed by so many on all sides of the spectrum to be fundamentally the same thing."
I don't know any Catholics who think that.
sitetest
Unless you've moved recently, I live about 2 hours away from you. Most of the people around me have some of those same "neanderthal, knuckle-dragging beliefs" you do, but they aren't quite as uptight about them and don't assume that everyone else hates them. Why do you suppose that is?
I have no personal brief for evolution or the (kooky, IMO) notion that none of the miracles recorded in Torah really happened, so you're shooting blanks.
And I have plenty of Catholic friends who are ex-Calvinist or ex-CofC ... I really don't think they'd take kindly to being told by you that they don't love the Bible. They're the same folks they were before.
I doubt you have the "blue state" attitude towards them you do towards rural heartland rednecks.
Look, pal, I grew up in a farm town in South Dakota and live in Nashville. It ain't exactly Noo Yawk, now, is it? If I want an attitude toward rural heartland rednecks, I'll pretty much have to look in the mirror to get it.
I don't know any Catholics who think that.
The Catholic attitude towards the rural American heartland is basically the same as that of San Francisco liberals, isn't it?
Go to the upper midwest or the southwest, where the "rural American heartland" and "Catholic country" are one and the same thing. (With honorable mention to the Lutherans.)
Dear Zionist Conspirator,
"The Catholic attitude towards the rural American heartland is basically the same as that of San Francisco liberals, isn't it?"
As generalizations go, this one doesn't even have the advantage of being even modestly accurate.
There's a lot of Catholics in the United States. And even more in the rest of the world. I don't think there is a "Catholic attitude" about the rural American heartland.
I know that my own attitudes generally, Catholic or not, are at some distance from most San Francisco liberals.
sitetest
Because I'm extra sensitive at my culture being the only one in the entire world that is singled out for universal contempt and ridicule even by "conservative" Catholics, while they go into ecstasy at the thought of simple people of other cultures like Juan Diego?
I have no personal brief for evolution or the (kooky, IMO) notion that none of the miracles recorded in Torah really happened, so you're shooting blanks.
Thank you for your support there. Although I believe that rejection of Biblical miracles and episodes in favor of post-Biblical ones is a naturaly outgrowth of the insistence that Biblical rituals were replaced by post-Biblical ones.
And I have plenty of Catholic friends who are ex-Calvinist or ex-CofC ... I really don't think they'd take kindly to being told by you that they don't love the Bible. They're the same folks they were before.
And they haven't been told to get out? Just make sure they never go to a liberal university and look to "their" Church to support them when the profs start tearing the Bible to shreds.
Why don't one of the Catholic publications that are always writing articles on Ukrainians or Chileans or Scottish Highlanders write a story on those people? One would have been greatly appreciated by me some years ago.
Look, pal, I grew up in a farm town in South Dakota and live in Nashville. It ain't exactly Noo Yawk, now, is it? If I want an attitude toward rural heartland rednecks, I'll pretty much have to look in the mirror to get it.
My apologies for my bitter and inappropriate words. But all the Bishops certainly seem typical urban sophisticates.
Dear Zionist Conspirator,
"Just make sure they never go to a liberal university and look to 'their' Church to support them when the profs start tearing the Bible to shreds."
Sorry to hear you ran into that.
I ran into some of that when I was in college at the Catholic University of America. I had a full professor of Catholic theology tell us that the Resurrection was a psychological event in the minds and the hearts of the apostles and disciples.
I differed.
But I've also met plenty of orthodox priests and theologians, including some of the most intelligent, most scholarly, most articulate, and most holy priests I ever knew.
sitetest
What is weird though is that I think maybe Veronica's veil might be a legend, too. No doubt there was a kind woman on the way to Calvary who felt sorry for Jesus did that. I don't know for sure and am not going to know.
So what do I do? I got this beautiful picture of the face and have built my current spiritual life primarily around that and the devotion to the holy face. It isn't the same picture in the Vatican but a very old one. I got a book about a man called Leo DuPont who venerated that picture and was able to work many miracles because of it. It is called the "Holy man of Tours". I'm getting rid of a lot of my catholic books but that one is a keeper.
I got a beautiful antique print on ebay. My friend wanted a copy to give to a priest because he said he wanted one. I did it on my scanner. Then a few weeks ago I took a picture of it with my digital camera, straightened up, retouched the defects and had the camera shop print me 10 copies. I'll send you one if you email me privately.
I would never sell copies, but if anyone else but a couple of my friends here wants one, I would ask to be reimbursed for the $5.95 per print and postage. Actually I take that back. If anyone wants one except the one or two I am saving for friends, you can email me privtately and I will send you one. You can get the litany to the holy face from Tan books. It's called "Handbook of favorite litanies or something like that. I have about 7 left now and nobody seems to want them. I can get more printed up if I need to but Walgreen's only charges $3.95 for 8x10 but I don't know if they do as good a job as the ones I got.
Aren't we funny creatures? I don't worship the picture. At least I try not to. I worship the face of Jesus the high priest in heaven. There is a lovely litany that goes with it and I have it in a beautiful gold frame I got at Walgreen's and light a votive candle in front of it. I have ordered an oil thingy to burn before it like Leo DuPont did, but I can't let it burn all the time like he did because it's a fire hazard.
I burned a candle for the conversion of Russia and the cat jumped up on the mantle and almost knocked it off and could have started a fire. So I don't pray for the conversion of Russia any more.
I had a candle I lit for a priest I liked. It disappeared. It turned out my son and his friend took it and tried to make a pipe bomb out of it. That was years ago when they were teenagers.
I don't know why some things happen the way they do. My son isn't all bad. He was having some serious mental problems with anxiety and thoughts racing. It seems to run in the family. I had a little holy card of St. Dympha lined up on the mantle with my other favorite holy cards. He doesn't know anything at all about Catholic saints because I am a convert, but he grabbed that one and said, "Mom, would you pray for me?". He seems to be doing pretty well, although he could use some xanax now and then.
Sorry, but I don't know many Catholics who single out "redneck" culture for "universal contempt and ridicule". We're more interested in keeping our children from being corrupted by the Satanic culture that permeates our society though the media, and keeping our grandchildren from being aborted. I think that fundamentalist theological attacks against Catholicism deserve a charitable but credible response, not an offer to cuddle. Politically, though, we need to ally ourselves with fundies if we're going to survive. Okay?
And they haven't been told to get out? Just make sure they never go to a liberal university and look to "their" Church to support them when the profs start tearing the Bible to shreds.
Nobody can tell them to get out. The better option is not to go to a liberal university at all.
But all the Bishops certainly seem typical urban sophisticates.
Some are, some aren't. Some are on their way to paving the streets of hell. It has ever been so.
Again, my apologies for pinging you.
First of all, the only Eastern Orthodox I tend to take seriously are the anti-ecumenical, Serafim Rose, orthdoxinfo.com types. They are very anti-Catholic and I am sorry I attributed their attitudes to you.
As to my "western, literal mind" I had my own experience with Eastern Orthodoxy so I am quite familiar with the strain of Orthodox thought that insists that true Orthodoxy was higher critical before higher criticism was cool and that literal interpretation is "rationalistic" (though I know of one online article that disagrees).
But I must maintain my position: any religion that can adapt totem poles from pagan religions and that insists on the literal historicity of post-Biblical miracles has no excuse whatsoever at mythologizing the Biblical ones.
Now, as for your claim about Sheishet Yemei Berei'shit (the hexameron), I must admit my utter astonishment at why so many people who accept every other miracle, Biblical or post-Biblical, stubbornly insist that this is an allegory. Why should the Six Days be any more allegorical than Metushelach's 969 year life span, or the Flood, or the Tower of Babel, or the miracles of Moses or Elijah or Elisha? The one reason for making the hexameron an allegory for evolution is the uniformitarian worldview that insists that the laws of nature are absolutely eternal and unalterable--yet these people have no problem with all the other miracles, each and every one of which violates those same "eternal" and "unalterable" natural laws! Excuse me . . . maybe I was dropped on my head as an infant, but isn't there the tiniest bit of contradiction here? Once any miracle is admitted, what reason could possibly remain to allegorize the Six Day Creation as something that couldn't possibly have happend because it "violated the laws of nature?" And unlike all subsequent miracles (which you accept), the laws of nature did not even exist at the Creation but were themselves in the process of being created! Yet you insist on remaining open to evolution while insisting on the literal truth of every miracle since then???
I guess my mind is simply too western and rationalistic to understand such internal contradictions of thought.
I will agree that the six day creation may be a mere didactic parable if and only if you admit the same of every other Biblical and post-Biblical miracle, including those worked by your Nazarene prophet and the "real presence" brought about by your priests. If you insist on the literal facticity of these, then your rejection of the facticity of the hexameron is simply irrational.
I think that fundamentalist theological attacks against Catholicism deserve a charitable but credible response, not an offer to cuddle. Politically, though, we need to ally ourselves with fundies if we're going to survive. Okay?
During my six years in the Catholic Church I took note of the fact that Catholics seemed to be absolutely paranoid about Fundamentalist missionaries converting them (which is a bit hard to understand if Fundamentalist missionaries are as dumb as their critics say they are). Yet during a lifetime in the Bible Belt I simply didn't have any experience of an anti-Catholic campaign. Sure, they thought Catholicism was wrong, but it was mostly ignored. But in the Church publications available to me during my time in the Catholic Church indicated that Fundamentalist Protestants were the number one threat to Catholicism in the entire universe. I must admit to being unaware of where all these dreadful people are, since the Baptist and CoC's around here aren't exactly training anti-Catholic missionaries.
But at any rate you are missing my point. If the Catholic Church can defend Mary and the Papacy, why can't it defend Scriptural inerrancy or the Six Day Creation or the historicity and authenticity of the Book of Daniel? Why can't it? Please take a moment to answer that question, as well as explaining why for every Catholic defense of Mary and the Papacy in the name of anti-Fundamentalist apologetics there is a Catholic attack on Adam and Eve or Noah's Flood or Jonah's Fish for the same implied reason?
If you insist on debating with me, please take some time to answer those questions.
If the Bible is so freaking "Protestant," why do you use it at all??? Why don't you replace it with medieval writings whose miracles you accept at face value?
Of course not. It doesn't happen much down here, because there simply aren't many Catholics. But go elsewhere, up north or out to California, and there are whole fundie/evangelical churches which are almost 100% ex-Catholic, including the minister, and which get most of their converts from (usually ill-catechized) Catholics. And it's often less about the truth than it is about finding warm Catholic bodies to fill fundie churches and fundie collection plates.
And it's mostly, but not completely, our fault.
We feel about those folks about like your Jewish friends feel about J4J. Surprised? You shouldn't be.
If the Catholic Church can defend Mary and the Papacy, why can't it defend Scriptural inerrancy or the Six Day Creation or the historicity and authenticity of the Book of Daniel?
We don't hold to the literal sense of the Six Day Creation, and really never have. (That doesn't mean it's wrong, just that it's legitimate for a Catholic to believe in it as metaphor or symbol.) As far as inerrancy, it's dogma that the Bible is completely without error in everything it intends to teach. Vatican II said so, flatly.
I can't really answer your question about Daniel; I simply don't know that much about who attacks its historicity and authenticity, or what they say, or anything like that. I'll have to plead ignorance.
Dear Zionist Conspirator,
"But at any rate you are missing my point. If the Catholic Church can defend Mary and the Papacy, why can't it defend Scriptural inerrancy or the Six Day Creation or the historicity and authenticity of the Book of Daniel? Why can't it? Please take a moment to answer that question, as well as explaining why for every Catholic defense of Mary and the Papacy in the name of anti-Fundamentalist apologetics there is a Catholic attack on Adam and Eve or Noah's Flood or Jonah's Fish for the same implied reason?"
Each is a claim, either literally true or not. Each claim rises or falls on its own merits.
The Catholic Church doesn't say that a literal six-day creation can't have happened. However, it isn't necessary to the truth of the Catholic faith that a literal six-day creation did happen.
As for Adam and Eve, actually, Catholic teaching is that there were two literal individuals, Adam and Eve, from whom all human beings are descended. It is binding teaching to which all Catholics are obligated to give their assent. It is binding teaching that they were the first true humans, that they were the first entities with God-created human souls, and that they were sinless prior to taking the forbidden fruit, and that sin and death entered the world through their sin.
sitetest
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