Wardour Chapel

Recently, the New Liturgical Movement website ran a few posts about Wardour Chapel, a place with a fascinating history. New Wardour Castle was the home of the Arundells, a family of recusants in Wiltshire, and features a fairly large neo-classical chapel that has room for a congregation of about 300.

What is most interesting about Wardour Chapel is that it dates from the period of English history when Catholics were not actively persecuted anymore (so there are no priest holes at Wardour) but were still not allowed to erect freestanding churches. The Arundell family, then, built a chapel in their home between the bedrooms and the laundry room. The family also opened the chapel up to the local Catholics in Wiltshire.

Here are two photographs of the interior. The first focuses on the altar, and the second shows more of the interior.





The chapel is also renowned for its collection of fine antique vestments, including this (I believe) 15th-century chasuble.



More photographs can be found here.

The New Liturgical Movement's posts can be found here, here, here, and here.

The Lion of Münster

Today is the feast day of Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen, who died on this day 65 years ago. Cardinal von Galen, who earned the epithet "the lion of Münster" for his courage in speaking out against Nazi atrocities during World War II, is of special importance to me personally since I spent a year after college in Münster teaching at a high school named in his honor.

Clemens August Graf von Galen was born in 1878 into a prominent Westphalian family. (The word Graf in his name is a title of nobility roughly equivalent to a count or an earl.) One of his ancestors, Christoph Bernhard von Galen, was the bishop of Münster during the Thirty Years' War. While some historians have doubted Christoph Bernhard von Galen's personal piety, none have ever doubted his determination; it took all his resolve to free the area around Münster from foreign occupying troops. Cardinal von Galen inherited that same fighting spirit, but also a great deal more piety.

Despite this noble lineage, the young Clemens August von Galen did not seem destined for greatness. He was never more than an average student, and not particularly gifted in public speaking either. As von Galen himself later remarked about the first sermon he preached to a church full of farmers on a hot summer morning, when he finally looked up at the end he saw that he had put everyone to sleep. Later, as a parish priest in Berlin, when von Galen noticed that Eugenio Pacelli, the papal nuncio to Germany (who later became Pope Pius XII), was sitting in the congregation, he began to stutter and was barely able to finish his sermon.

Moreover, what would later be recognized as his tremendous courage in the face of Nazi persecution was in his youth mere stubbornness. Indeed, even as he grew older, this stubborn streak stayed with him. Josef Pieper, writing many years later, recalled that as a struggling young academic he did not much care for von Galen because the churchman could never admit to being wrong. Not much had changed since the days when his teachers complained that young Clemens thought he possessed the charism of infallibility.

Von Galen's initial assignments as a priest, then, corresponded to his modest abilities and his personal flaws. His first assignment after being ordained in 1904 was to serve as a personal chaplain to an auxiliary bishop of Münster who happened to be his uncle. Von Galen seems to have come into his own, though, after he was reassigned to Berlin in 1906, where he worked in several parishes that served the Catholic "diaspora," those workers from all over Germany who had moved for the sake of factory jobs to Berlin, the heart of Protestant Prussia. He spent his last nine years in Berlin as the pastor of St. Matthias.

After 23 years in the capital, von Galen was finally recalled to his beloved Westphalia in 1929 and made pastor of St. Lambert's in Münster, the most prestigious church in the city after the cathedral. Four years later, von Galen was elected bishop of Münster. This almost never happened, though, in part because of his stubbornness and brusque manners. The nuncio in Germany who had succeeded Pacelli regarded von Galen as unsuitable for the position because of his "schoolmaster's" tone.

Von Galen was consecrated bishop in 1933, a fateful year in German history. Although he was always a nationalist in his politics and even initially expressed cautious optimism that the new regime might solve some of the problems of the Weimar era, he nevertheless soon became a leading critic of Nazi totalitarianism. He revered the Vaterland, but never excessively; indeed, it is the distinction between patriotism and idolatry of the state that lies at the heart of his witness. From the beginning of his episcopate, he was an outspoken critic of the Nazis, and probably was one of the German bishops who assisted Pius XI in the drafting of Mit brennender Sorge, the encyclical that called on German Catholics to reject Nazi race ideology. Likewise, von Galen was a stout opponent of Nazi eugenics and euthanasia programs. Finally, von Galen always insisted on the liberty of the Church and on the government's need to work for justice: "Justice is the foundation of all states."

Von Galen is most famous today for four sermons he preached as bishop. He delivered the first sermon in 1936, after consecrating a new altar in Xanten. In this sermon (pp. 9-15), he reminded his flock of the example set by the patron saint of their church, St. Victor, who, though a loyal and courageous soldier in the Roman army, suffered martyrdom for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods. He then used the example of St. Victor to strengthen his flock's resolve in the face of the summary imprisonment without trial of several German clergymen.

While von Galen early on recognized the threat the Nazis posed to the Church and to all Germany, it was only in the summer of 1941, when Hitler's power had not yet begun to fade after the failed invasion of Russia, that he delivered his three most powerful sermons, all blistering attacks on the Nazi regime. On July 13, he returned to the parish church of St. Lambert's, where he denounced the Nazis for their attack on the religious orders in his diocese (pp. 17-26). He began the sermon with the announcement that the Gestapo had recently confiscated the Jesuits' residences and expelled them from the province, and then done the same to a group of missionary nuns. After delivering the bad news, though, von Galen condemned the Gestapo for the injustices it committed. He ended the sermon with an appeal to justice and a prayer "for our German people and fatherland and for its leader," the same way he would end his next sermon.

On July 20, 1941, he preached at the Überwasserkirche in Münster, denouncing the Gestapo's continued persecution of the Church (pp. 27-36). It was in this sermon that he compared contemporary Christians to an anvil that stood firm against the Nazi hammer (pp. 32-33):

Become hard! Remain firm! At this moment we are the anvil rather than the hammer. Other men, mostly strangers and renegades, are hammering us, seeking by violent means to bend our nation, ourselves and our young people aside from their straight relationship with God. We are the anvil and not the hammer. But ask the blacksmith and hear what he says: the object which is forged on the anvil receives its form not alone from the hammer but also from the anvil. The anvil cannot and need not strike back: it must only be firm, only hard! If it is sufficiently tough and firm and hard the anvil usually lasts longer than the hammer. However hard the hammer strikes, the anvil stands quietly and firmly in place and will long continue to shape the objects forged upon it.

The anvil represents those who are unjustly imprisoned, those who are driven out and banished for no fault of their own. God will support them, that they may not lose the form and attitude of Christian firmness, when the hammer of persecution strikes its harsh blows and inflicts unmerited wounds on them.

Those who could remember the bishop as a stammering young chaplain hardly believed that he could speak with such eloquence.

Finally, on August 3, once again preaching in St. Lambert's, von Galen denounced the Nazi euthanasia programs (pp. 37-48), exposing the abominable efforts to eliminate "unproductive members of the national community," those who in the Nazis' eyes were "unworthy to live." This time, sensing perhaps that no appeal to justice would move the Gestapo or Hitler to relent in their persecution of the Church and their murdering of innocent human beings, von Galen, instead of ending with a prayer for "our German people and fatherland and for its leader," asked his flock: "Did the Son of God in his omniscience on that day see only Jerusalem and its people? Did he weep only over Jerusalem?. . .Did he also weep over us? Over Münster?"

In response, the Nazis, instead of arresting Bishop von Galen, arrested and harassed many priests and religious orders in his diocese, a fact that weighed heavily on his conscience, as he survived the war when some of his own priests did not. (This suppression of religious orders as retaliation for the bishops' public criticism of the Nazis is not unlike what happened in the Netherlands, where it resulted in the martyrdom of Edith Stein.) After the war, in February 1946, in recognition of his courage, von Galen was made a cardinal by Pius XII in Rome. He returned from the consistory in triumph to the ruins of his cathedral in Münster on March 16, 1946, but died only six days later of a burst appendix. He is buried in a side chapel of the cathedral. He was beatified in 2005.

Credits:
The picture was taken by Gustav Albers and comes from the diocesan archives of Münster.
The original German version of these four sermons can be found here.

Happy Solemnity of St. Joseph!

Joseph, son of David, you are the just man who blossoms like the lily,
the prudent steward whom the Lord placed over His household.
The Incarnate Word was pleased to dwell in your home;
by your prayers, may we love and serve Him always. Amen.


As the watermark indicates, today's image comes from Orthodox Images Iconography and Fine Art Reproductions. So go peruse their website; there's some great stuff!

St. Patrick's Day

It's time once more for a little music in honor of St. Patrick's Day, just as in 2009 and 2010. This year's post is dedicated to a wonderful little instrument: the concertina.

The concertina is a type of squeezebox. To those who are unfamiliar with the concertina, it could probably best be described as a mini-accordion: it is smaller both in size and in sound. Unlike most types of accordion, the concertina has buttons rather than a keyboard. The typical Anglo concertina, which is the type most widely used in Irish music, has 30 buttons, 15 on each side. Each button plays one note at a time, but the note produced when the player pushes the bellows in is a different note from that produced when the player pulls the bellows out. It is possible to push more than one button at a time, which gives the player the ability to produce chords.

The concertina has never been as popular in Irish music as the accordion, and until recently it was confined mainly to County Clare. For whatever reason, as well, the concertina was very popular among women. One of the most important concertina-players before the folk revival of the 1970's was Mrs. Crotty of Kilrush. While not much of her music was recorded, her legacy lives on in the playing of her nephew Michael Tubridy, one of the original members of the Chieftains, who, though best known for his flute playing, could also knock out a tune on the concertina.



Another good concertina player is Mary McNamara of Tulla. Her slow, steady pace in the next video (as well as in this video) is typical of the County Clare style.



Two other fine female concertina players today are Ernestine Healy and Niamh Ni Charra.

Probably the best known concertina player over the last thirty years, though, is Noel Hill, also from County Clare.



Finally, the concertina tends to be played solo; for whatever reason, it has not featured prominently in many bands. One exception to that statement is Niall Vallely's Buille, which in the next set manages to combine Irish traditional music with jazz influences, all with the concertina up front and center.

Assisi

Seven years ago I visited Assisi on two different occasions, separated by a couple months. This Italian hill town is a curious place, one that everyone said was somehow magical. A bit of a skeptic at heart, I was ready to be disappointed. Instead, I was captivated. This poem captures just a little of what Assisi and its most famous citizen are about. Having discovered a devotion to my patroness, Clare, in the years since I visited Assisi, I would love to return some day.


Assisi
by Robert Cording

Even in February the buses came and climbed the hill,
The Umbrian light an angel's wing in cloud,

Glowing from some unknowable source in an Italian painting.
No wonder some gave a life's savings to see St. Francis's

City of pink stone. No wonder we couldn't help loving
Those arching crypts, blue and storied as a child's heaven.

What we want to remember, we do. How he could keep on giving
His one robe, unashamed by love. How his love never failed

The sick, the poor, the criminal. Even a war in Arezzo
Simply disappeared, like rain into sunlight, St. Francis

Undoing the daily harm no one could ever alter in his life.
The demons said to be in all of us laid down their weapons,

Taken by such tenderness. Everyone was forgiven in Giotto's picture.
Saint Francis went on, unable to sleep, so many blessings

Still needed to be given. He walked all the way to Mt. La Verna.
When we close our eyes, we can see him hold out his hands.

The wounds bleed into them and into his body, the marks
Of another life. From then on, he grew thinner until he was

Gone, his love absolute. At least once, some one saw him
Come back, robed in light. Giotto would have us believe

It was only a dream of what we cannot stop imagining.
We came back all winter; listening to the monks tell his story

Until word for word, we could repeat it.



Picture from Famous Wonders.

Bureaucracy: Isn't It Strange?

Has it ever struck you as just a little strange that the world today is governed by bureaucracies, in other words, that modern nations are run out of offices? For that is what the word literally means: rule from an office. According to dictionary.com, the word is first attested in French in the 18th century, and was coined by physiocrat Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759). Gournay presumably coined the word to name a phenomenon that had not yet been named. In other words, bureaucracy was a mode of governance that was relatively new in the world and had yet to be described.

But, since when were we ruled by a race of pale-faced men who spend their days sitting behind desks? In days of yore, kings held court and did justice for the common man in the open air. And they didn't get bogged down in technical details either, because it must have been difficult to keep track of files when a gust of wind could blow all the papers away at any moment. For example, according to Jean de Joinville, St. Louis

after hearing Mass, went to the wood of Vincennes, where he would sit down with his back against an oak, and make us all sit round him. Those who had any suit to present could come to speak to him without hindrance from an usher or any other person. The king would address them directly, and ask: "Is there anyone here who has a case to be settled?" Those who had one would stand up. Then he would say: "Keep silent all of you, and you shall be heard in turn, one after the other."

(Quoted in Antonin Scalia, "The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules," 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175 (1989))

Besides doing justice for their subjects, many kings were renowned for their martial prowess. William the Conqueror earned his epithet at the Battle of Hastings. Richard the Lionheart wasn't going to stare all day at some dusty parchments when he could be fighting the infidel in the Holy Land. Frederick Barbarossa died a rather inglorious death--drowning in a stream on his way to the Holy Land during the Third Crusade--but he had already spent a considerable part of his reign on the battlefield.

Not only did medieval kings act this way, this was how they were expected to act, as reflected in popular tales from the Middle Ages. The King Arthur stories tell us of knights errant who delighted in rescuing damsels in distress, not in negotiating legal settlements with villains and knaves. The closest King Arthur himself ever came to becoming a bureaucrat was when he sat down once in a while with his wisest counselors at the Round Table to discuss some pressing matter. Once that was done, he was free to return to the jousting tournament or the banquet hall.

The average medieval court, of course, was not Camelot, and real medieval kings were supposed to take care of their fair share of administrative duties, but which most of them seem to have avoided by going out hunting. For example, relatively soon after the Norman invasion, the kings of England found themselves so overwhelmed by these mundane tasks that they had to delegate them to others. Over time, the Lord Chancellor became in effect England's chief justice and "keeper of the king's conscience." The Exchequer was assigned the duty of collecting revenue for the royal household. Nevertheless, these medieval bureaucracies were nowhere near as large as their modern equivalents. Moreover, the stories that have come down to us always show the ideal ruler as either a man of action or a man of wisdom, or in a really ideal word as both: a wise warrior. They never portray the king as a pencil-pusher, or even as the pencil-pushers' boss. And this ideal had some basis in reality.

What would happen if a contemporary American or European ruler tried to act more like a medieval king? The effect would not necessarily be that which he intended. For instance, were most Americans really impressed by George W. Bush when he landed a Navy jet on an aircraft carrier (or rather sat in the cockpit while a real pilot landed it for him)? Would we respect Barack Obama more if, after playing a pick-up basketball game (no jousting permitted), he took a seat on the White House lawn and listened to federal inmates' petitions for habeas corpus? Do we fear Vladimir Putin because he likes to be photographed shirtless while horseback riding? Did Benito Mussolini inspire awe in his people, or his enemies, because he liked to ski shirtless?

My guess is that most people just laugh at these examples because they're somehow ridiculous. Nowadays we expect our highest-ranking government officials to act less like kings and more like business executives. First of all, they need to keep their clothes on. Second, their chief domestic concern is usually the national economy, such as ensuring job growth and overseeing government entitlement programs. Indeed, when presidents go to economic summits or visit foreign leaders, they could almost be seen as traveling salesmen drumming up interest in their product, or in this case their country (albeit traveling salesmen with huge expense accounts and bodyguards). Third, while they may retain power as the "commander in chief," they usually have little or no military background; most senators or cabinet secretaries, I suspect, are not accomplished sword-fighters.

There was obviously a significant shift that took place, from the earlier conception of the ruler as a wise warrior to that of the ruler as a business executive at the head of a vast bureaucracy, but I don't know anything about the causes and ultimate importance of this shift. I apologize for not giving any answers here, but I do have two questions, which are probably better than any answers I could offer:

1. When and why did this shift from the king as man of action and wisdom to the president as business executive take place? My hunch is that this modern preference for business executives as national leaders is simply one aspect of the transition from feudalism to mercantilism (and beyond).

2. Have we lost something importance with this shift? Granted that some administration will always be necessary, it nevertheless seems that the world has lost some of its romance. Many people, for instance, who work primarily in an office still itch at the opportunity to get out.

So, next time you see a picture of Vladimir Putin strutting his stuff, ask yourself: Is he simply a misunderstood soul trying to revive medieval kingship? Or, is he just a peacock?

Crafting a National Epic

America has no national epic. Nor mythology. Nor even a novel of particular distinction (hence the reason every author can aspire to write the Great American Novel). J. R. R. Tolkien was concerned that Britain had a similar lack of national mythology, so to rectify the problem he created Middle Earth, cobbling together pieces of Anglo-Saxon mythology, adding bits of English history and dashes from Roman, Celtic and other mythologies, and then giving the whole thing the original touch of a single author. If one were to undertake such a project for the United States, where would you begin?

In a previous thought experiment, involving the boys of St. Boniface College, I asked if America has a canon. The result included Homer, the Bible, and the works of Shakespeare, among other things. But none of those were written by Americans, you might say. Right you are. The curious thing about the United States is that it is overwhelmingly a nation of immigrants. So we should expect that our deep cultural roots run beyond our own shores. Indeed, even the Roman epic, the Aeneid, locates Roman origins in the Greek world, though it also draws upon elements of more local Italic history. It seems to me an American epic should draw on our indigenous pre-Columbian history, the history of the colonies and United States themselves, and the literary heritage of our primary parent cultures in Europe.

In addition to the works named above, where might an author of a great American mythological epic look? Virgil looked to Homer, so why don't we take a look at some other national epics? I turned to the Wikipedia page on the matter.

First there are the ancient roots: Homer, Virgil and Scripture. All these are fairly well known to most educated folks.

But then I started looked at more modern works. The great works of England are not so obscure: Beowulf, the Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost and Shakespeare. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) is not nearly so widespread, though known to students of early English history.

But the national epics (or contenders for that title) of the other British nations are lesser-known. For Scotland, John Barbour's The Brus - about Robert the Bruce and Scotland's fight for independence throughout the Middle Ages - and James Macpherson's Ossian cycle - a retelling/translation of Scottish mythology (pictured above left) - are the leading contenders. I'd never heard of either, but both look like fun (at least if I can get through the old Scottish of The Brus). Ireland's Táin Bó Cúailnge - the story of an ancient raid to steal a magic bull (pictured below right) - I have never read, but I remember shelving it at the city library; does that count? Of course some would argue that James Joyce' stream-of-consciousness Ulysses is the real national epic of Ireland these days. The mythical Mabinogion of Wales I am familiar with, but only because of some poking into Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles.

And what of the Germans, that largest ancestral group in America. I started to read the Nibelungenlied - the story of the hero Siegfried, his murder and subsequent avenging by his wife - one break, but did not finish. I have never picked up Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, nor am I sure I want to; Romantic though I be, I'm not sure I want to read about the the sturm und drang of an angst-ridden young man.

Or what of the Norse, the bold folk who were the first Europeans to come to the New World? I think I own a copy of the Eddas somewhere, but I have never read it.

I was as lost among the various works that have tried to be or have been held up as some sort of American national work: Joel Barlow's Columbiad? Never heard of it. It doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page! Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass? It may be a collection of poems, but could make great source material for an epic writer. Alas, I confess I've never read it. Several works I read in part or whole in high school: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I enjoyed; To Kill a Mockingbird was all right (though hardly epic, but perhaps I need to read it again) and I hated The Grapes of Wrath. I never made it through Moby-Dick (a second attempt may be in order) and I have never even picked up The Great Gatsby or Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. But at least we've all heard of these.

So what does all this mean? Let me suggest several possibilities:

1. The epic, or at least the national epic, is dead. If people cared more we would have at least heard of these. In fact, if people cared, we'd already have one, right? But although England has several great contenders for the title, I think Tolkien was right that none of them quite synthesized England and its habits in the way that the Aeneid did for Rome. Work remained to be done, as evidenced by the run-away success of Middle Earth.
2. I have a lot of reading to do when I retire. Some day if I find myself independently wealthy and feeling inspired, perhaps I'll start writing that American epic. In fact, I might start sooner.
3. Perhaps we all have a lot of reading to do. This may have been an imperfect catalog of our roots as Americans, but was something of the sort. If we are so cut off from our own heritage we are culturally adrift, a dangerous thing.