Treasures Of The Anglican Patrimony: Introduction

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI responded to the "repeated" and "insistent" requests of groups of Anglicans "to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately," with the promulgation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus. The document provides for the erection of "Personal Ordinariates" around the world in which former Anglicans may enter the full communion of the Catholic Church, while still retaining what is good, true, and beautiful in the "patrimony" of historic Anglicanism.

Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston:
The Principal Church of the American Ordinariate

As the Holy Father says, the first and most important goal of this scheme was "to guarantee the unity of the episcopate and to preside over and safeguard the universal communion of all the Churches." As Fr. Z rightly likes to remind us so frequently, "Benedict is the Pope of Christian Unity." The reconciliation of what the Catechism calls the Church's "separated brethren," is of primary importance to the Holy Father because "every division among the baptized in Jesus Christ wounds that which the Church is and that for which the Church exists; in fact, 'such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages that most holy cause, the preaching the Gospel to every creature.'"

But, this was not the only goal. The Constitution says that the Holy See has also acted "so as to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared." That last phrase is key. Soon after the promulgation of Anglicanorum coetibus many in the Church began to speak of Benedict's apparent plan for the "mutual enrichment" of various liturgical uses within the Latin Rite. Especially they point to the 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that cleared the way for wider celebration of what that document termed the Extraordinary Form. But this also applies to the Anglican Use, most of whom are bringing with them a particular reverance and dedication to the Sacred Liturgy, amongst other things, which it seems the Holy Father would like to exert a "gravitational pull," to use Fr. Z's phrase, on the celebration of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Use.

 

The Westminster Abbey Choir at St. Peter's in Rome

Since then many have attempted to examine the nature of the Anglican Patrimony to which the Holy Father is referring, to determine what it is the Ordinariates are bringing to the Church, and why His Holiness is so enamoured of it. (So enamoured, in fact, that he issued a personal invitation to the Choir of Westminster Abbey to sing at St. Peter's for, not just any feast, but the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul! I find it astounding that this event went by largely unnoticed. It wasn't that long ago the English were still hanging, drawing and quartering Catholics after all.) Several laudable articles have been produced, including this one by one of the Episcopal Vicars of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham himself, Monsignor Andrew Burnham, this one by Shawn Tribe of New Liturgical Movement, and one by Dr. James Patrick of the Walsingham Society in four parts: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.

 

While all of these efforts are certainly commendable, I like the notion that an essential part of the Anglican Patrimony is what's been referred to as the peculiar Anglican "ethos," and this can be very hard to pin down. It can be difficult to explain to a Roman Catholic exactly what it is about Anglicanism, especially Anglican liturgy, which is so beautiful. Nevertheless, this is an extermely important task. If the Holy Father's goal of mutual enrichment is to be realized, those in the Ordinariate must take it upon themselves to bring the gift of their Anglican heritage and traditions to the wider Church.

 

I think perhaps the best way to come to an understanding of the Anglican Patrimony is to experience it firsthand. So, in an attempt to contribute something in that vein, here beginneth a new series on PopSophia entitled "Treasures of the Anglican Patrimony," in which I shall present particular (especially liturgical) elements of our tradition and provide cursory examinations of the same.

 

First Up: The Prayer of Humble Access

Gothic Art

Gothic art is said to originate with the Church of Saint Denis in Paris. Clearly, though, this Church represents only a kind of symbolic beginning, the true origin of the Gothic being impossible to pin down as it developed organically out of the Romanesque. In fact, the movement was so organic that it was only centuries after it replaced Romanesque as the preferred style across Europe (especially in the North and West) that it was even given a name. 16th-century Renaissance artists who sought a return to the more strictly Classical rejected the Gothic as a "barbaric" corruption of the "purity" of more Classical forms. The term "Gothic" is, then, retrospective and pejorative, being a reference to the violent Sack of Rome by the Gothic barbarians.

In one sense, these Renaissance artists were correct. Gothic is a kind of "corruption" of Classical purity and simplicity. The Gothic is, I would argue, a legitimate development of Classical art via the Romanesque. While similar development can be seen in all the artistic media, it's most clearly seen in the two styles' monumental architecture. For instance, let's compare these two arcades, one from the Pantheon in Rome, and one from Notre-Dame de Paris:

Both have columns with bases, shafts, and capitals, supporting an architrave and entablature with similar detailing, atop which sits a cornice. Even though in the former this all supports a pediment and in the latter the structure continues upward, the only significant difference between the two arcades is that in the Gothic example the columns can be skinnier, and in exchange more numerous, as a result of the arches which distribute the weight amongst them. (This is one of the ways in which Gothic architecture is able to feel so light and airy. By splitting the weight up amongst a larger number of thin columns, one prevents the heavy clunkiness of a small number of immense columns.)

Nevertheless, development though it is, it is true the Gothic accumulates and innovates forms which "corrupt" Classical purity. Let's look at a reconstruction of the Parthenon's facade verses that of Cologne Cathedral:

I've chosen the Parthenon specifically because it's of the Doric Order rather than the more ornate Ionic or Corinthian to illustrate my point more forcefully. Even though the proportions of the two buildings are similar, this may be hard to recognize simply because of all the decoration glued onto the Gothic facade. Where Classical architecture was largely content to leave its structure as it was, for the most part adding only what was necessary to hold the roof up in a beautiful and orderly manner, the Gothic feels compelled (almost obsessively) to slap on as much ornamentation as the underlying bones of the structure can hold up.

I said the Renaissance was right to call this development a corruption. The trouble is, the Renaissance was incorrect in rejecting it. What the Gothic did was take the Classical (and true) notions of form (function), beauty (proportion), and truth (honesty of construction), and capitalized on them to create something both imminently Classical. The Gothic "baptizes" the good in pagan art which was attained by human reason, by adding the supernatural, the heavenly, the grace of Christ. Gone is the reticent austerity of Classical architecture, a building can now be a Sacrament of Truth, a material vehicle for the transmission of God's Life to us.

By virtue of the God made Man, things which were formerly unreachable, purely spiritual realities, are now accessible in and through the material world. Wood, stone, and glass are no longer mere tools to hold a roof up, but great mysteries that point to God's participation in the World. Suddenly they contain within them, analogically, hints of Christ's ongoing interaction with us. A wooden beam now calls to mind the Wood on which hung the Savior of the World. A stone, the Rock on (or out of) which Christ builds his Church. Glass, the heroes of our faith, the saintly intercessors, through whom Heaven's Light falls on the faithful. A Church building can become, quite literally, Heaven on Earth:

Why Red Letter Bibles Are Dumb

In 1901, Louis Klopsch published the first Bible in which those words "universally accepted as the utterances of our Lord and Saviour" were printed in red—the first "red letter Bible." They've been extremely popular ever since, especially amongst Protestants. Here's the problem with red letter bibles: nothing in the Bible is more or less important than anything else. It's all the Word of God, not just the stuff presented as quotations of Jesus.

Even though the Gospels are eyewitness accounts, and we believe the Apostles were given a special grace to be able to recall all of Jesus' teachings and recount them faithfully (cf. John 14:26), the Gospels aren't word-for-word, moment-by-moment, exact histories of what happened. The Gospels are history, yes, but the Apostles didn't conceive of history in the same way we do. I'm not suggesting that what they say happened didn't happen. I am saying that they're not, nor were they ever intended to be, perfectly factually accurate accounts with exact quotations.

To say that everything the Bible says is the Word of God and absolutely true is not to say that every part of it should be interpreted in the same way. Obviously the Gospels aren't the same kind of literature as 1 Corinthians or Revelation. Different books and sections of the Bible have to be interpreted in light of how they were intended to be read.

For example, when John says that angels in heaven are singing (cf. Rev. 5:8-13) he clearly doesn't mean that literally, because it's not possible. The angels are purely spiritual beings, they have no bodies. A being without vocal cords can't sing. What John is saying is something like: "the angels declare the glory of God and worship him." In order to get this idea across, he likens it to human songs of praise. In other words, it's a metaphor. It's still absolutely and undeniably true. But it's true metaphorically, not literally.

This principle must be extended out over the entirety of Scripture. The question is, How do we determine which parts should be interpreted in which way? Well, there are several answers. First, the Church, carrying on the Apostolic Witness to Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit is custodian to the truth of the Word of God, of which Scripture is the special, written testimony. Second, theologians determine how we must interpret particular passages of Scripture in light of what we know to be true about God and Christ. Third, bible scholars, archaeologists and the like are always coming up with new information about the people and times which produced Holy Scripture, giving us new insight into their culture and, as a result, literature.

To be sure, there are portions of Scripture which it's less crucial to read than others. Someone once suggested a new Christian read the New Testament twice before he ever read the Old Testament. Obviously, every last ceremonial precept in Leviticus and Deuteronomy don't need to be memorized to get the idea. Nevertheless, we ought not to treat the "words of Jesus" in the Gospels as exact quotations. Nor should we devalue the rest of Scripture as any less authoritative (when interpreted properly).

The Top Ten Creatures I Can't Buy A Good God Created, Part Four

In Part One of this series, we saw that there is an ultimate standard of beauty, namely God, and many of the (so-called) creatures on this planet don't exactly conform to that standard. In Part Two, we looked at the group of animals I ranked at #10, what I called, "screwed up mammals." We talked about how Mankind and Nature have, since the beginning, been wedded to one another as husband and wife. When Man sinned, he brought punishment down upon not only himself, but also the natural world in which he lived. In Part Three, we looked at birds and reptiles, together making up group #9. We also saw how Satan (the Serpent) and his demons have been waging a war with God for the universe since before it was even made.

Well, coming in at #8...

Brontosaurus,

Stegosaurus,

Velociraptor,

Spinosaurus,

and, of course, Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Lizard King.

That's right, dinosaurs. And yes, all of those are pictures from Jurassic Park. Tempted as I am to put them lower down on the list on account of their sheer size and ferocity, reptilian as they are, they're rightly included here, just below the other lizards.

Some of you are probably whining about me having included Brontosaurus. After all, it's a friendly plant-eater. Gentle giant and all. Here's the thing, he may not want to eat you, which is a plus. The downside is he'll squash you without even noticing, and that makes him not so great.

We talked last time about Tolkien's creation myth in The Silmarillion. In it, Melkor (his fallen angel) sings his own dissonant tune in contrast to the one of God's design being sung by the other angels and bringing about the creation of the universe. Later, as the angels are shaping the world, Melkor is present to march across the earth, knocking down mountains just as they are raised up, and filling up valleys just as they are hollowed out.

This idea is quite similar to Medieval Cosmology, which has the angels "moving the spheres." We Moderns  laugh at this idea. Before we do, though, we should think about what it was the Medievals really meant. Did they mean the angels literally caused the stars and planets to move across the sky? Yes, they did. But how did they go about this? Were the angels just supposed to be some kind of divine mechanism, actually pushing the planets around on their tracks? No. They were lords of their spheres, which for a Medieval meant they were their spheres. That is to say, their respective domains were intrinsically and essentially bound up in their very being.

We touched on this idea already when we spoke about the way in which the "dominion" of Mankind over creation has been traditionally understood. The Medievals saw the world as one big hierarchy, God at the top, the raw elements at the bottom, Mankind "a little lower than the angels," (Heb. 2:7). Now, we might conceive of this kind of system as being some kind of an arbitrary arrangement imposed on Creation by the Will of God. While it's true the Order in the world has its origin in God, it is not arbitrary. On the contrary, it comes about as a result of the very essences of things. From top to bottom, different beings participate more or less completely in God's own Being.

More than that, though, each being in the Grand Hierarchy, is actually dependent on the class of beings above him for his own existence. This is the sense in which Scripture refers to Man as the king of Creation. It is too easy today to see the effects that the neglect of this Divine calling can cause. This principle obviously extends to Man's political and social machinations as well, thus, Medieval Feudalism and social class system. As we have seen, Mankind was given this kind of hierarchical "dominion" over all the Earth. But what about the rest of Creation?

In Classical Mythology, Athena, for example, is not merely the Queen of Wisdom, she is Wisdom, Wisdom Incarnate, personified. The same is true of the other gods: Hephaestus is Craftsmanship; Aphrodite, Desire; Hera, Womanhood; Ares, Strife; and so on. The traditional view is that this is quite true in the angels. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his question on the angels' government of Creation quotes St. Gregory the Great as saying that "in this visible world, nothing takes place without the agency of the invisible creature." As Man's material body is caused to be and act by his immaterial soul, so the material world is caused to be and move by the immaterial world, which is the Angels, and God above all.

For example, we now know that planets move as a result of the gravitational force exerted on them by the Sun. This is unquestionably true. Is it impossible that there could be more going on with gravity than a lifeless force? Couldn't there be an angel, perhaps a Virtue, who is the supernatural, spiritual, divinely ordained, cause of this force in the material world--that member of God's Divine Order responsible for maintaining the operation of this cause throughout the universe? I would argue that this is not only possible, but, at the very least, probable. Let's call him Gravitas, and thank God for his continued ministrations.

Just as Melkor was present, from the beginning, to do his best to mar and corrupt the creation of Tolkien's God, so Satan was present from the beginning of our universe to inject his evil into it. As God's Creation was issuing into existence from his mind (at the Big Bang) through the mediation of the angels in their various "spheres" of influence, Satan worked to screw up as much as he could. How else could a universe have been produced which includes things like darkness and death? Contrariety itself?

A quick reminder, though, lest we stray into Mani's territory, that Satan too is a creature. There is no ultimate and universal principle of evil that coexists alongside God as universal good. Evil does not exist. It is the absence of existence. Satan didn't make anything; he merely corrupted what God created. As such, Satan is the ultimate evil, but only in that he is the least like God; he is still like God in part, because he exists.

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part Four: Modernity

As we saw in the last post and the post on the Middle Ages' perspective, Humorism and the traditional view of the temperaments had become a part of the European consciousness. Modernity started out no different. To quote again from David Keirsey's Please Understand Me II:

"When William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood in 1628, he argued that blood was simply the most sovereign of the four humors, and he came to look on the Sanguine temperament with special favor. And philosophers of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, Bruno in Italy, Hume in Scotland, Voltaire and Rousseau in France, Kant in Germany, took the idea of four humors as a matter of course, as part of the air they breathed.

"19th-century novelists, from Jane Austen and the Brontës to George Eliot and Tolstoy, had these four patterns of human attitude and action clearly in mind when they framed their characters. In War and Peace, for example, Tolstoy divides the members of a lodge of Freemasons into what he described as 'four classes' of character: some looking for social 'connections' and opportunities, some interested in the lodge's 'external form and ceremony,' some seeking a 'fully understood path for themselves,' and some occupied exclusively with 'the scientific secrets of the order.'

"Even some early 20th-century writers demonstrated detailed knowledge of the roots of temperament and character theory. D.H. Lawrence not only saw human nature as organized around 'four poles of dynamic consciousness,' but he actually described a ruddy, sanguine character in his novel Sons and Lovers (1913) as Paracelsus' Salamander," (24-25).

As medicine progressed, though, the rupture the Modern Age sought to establish between it and the traditions of the past affected even Humorism, and it came to be disregarded as a legitimate scientific theory. While a staunch supporter of the central role of tradition in all things, this was, of course, a good thing, as the advances in the physical sciences and anatomy have proven that Humorism, strictly speaking, is false.

Since Galen in AD 190, the medicinal and psychological elements in the traditional theory had remained wedded to one another. It was the balance of the bodily fluids which caused the differences in behavior and personality. As such, when medicine disproved the existence of the humors, it assumed it had also disproved the existence of the temperaments. In essence, they threw the baby out with the bath water:

"In the behavioral sciences what had been the prevailing current of thought for centuries—that temperament determines character—gradually decreased to a tiny trickle in the latter part of the 19th century, owing mainly to the ideas of two men, Sigmund Freud and Ivan Pavlov. Freud reduced mankind to mere animal, nothing more than a creature of blind instinct. Similarly, Pavlov reduced mankind, not to animal, but to machine, its actions nothing more than mechanical response to environmental stimulation. And the 20th century was nearly swept away by these two new theories," (Ibid. 25).

There were some, however, who developed theories of behavior along similar lines to the personalogical elements of Ancient thought. Erich Adickes, working in 1905 without knowledge of the traditional temperaments, "said that mankind could be divided into four 'world views'—Innovative, Traditional, Doctrinaire, and Skeptical," (Ibid.). Adickes' "Innovatives" clearly correspond to Plato's creative and productive Artisans; his "Traditionals" to Plato's duty-, history-, and rule-obsessed Guardians; his "Dogmatics" or "Doctrinaires" to Plato's ethical and harmony-oriented Idealists; and his "Skeptics" or "Agnostics" to Plato's intellectual, theory-minded Rationals.

Not long after Adickes' work, Eduard Spränger "wrote of four 'value attitudes' which distinguish one personality from another—Artistic, Economic, Religious, and Theoretic," (Ibid.) Spränger, like Aristotle before him, was driving at people's motivations, what they seek out and admire. Obviously Artisans value the "aesthetic;" the "economic" is synonymous with the Guardians' "property," as is the "religious" with Idealists' "morality" and the "theoretic" with "rationality."

A few years later Ernst Kretschmer took a slightly different approach and "proposed that both normal and abnormal behavior can be understood in terms of four 'character styles' similar to those of Adickes and Spränger—Hypomanic, Depressive, Hyperesthetic, and Anesthetic," (Ibid.) These four are more obviously correlated to Galen's Temperaments than Plato's, "hypomanic" meaning emotional and excitable, "depression" recalling melancholy, "hyperesthetic" meaning passionate and ambitious, and "anesthetic" meaning generally emotionless and self-content.

"Rudolph Dreikurs, a disciple of Alfred Adler, pointed out in 1947 what he called four 'mistaken goals' which different kinds of people pursue when their self-esteem declines too far for safety—Retaliation, Service, Recognition, and Power. Also in 1947 Eric Fromm, looking at both negative and positive sides of personality, as did Kretschmer, attributed four different 'orientations' to the four styles—Exploitative, Hoarding, Receptive, and Marketing," (Ibid.)

This last group of four "orientations" may seem out of place, but if we consider "exploitation" in terms of a person who sets out to experience as much as possible, seeking sensation, then it starts to sound an awful lot like Aristotle's Hedonics. Likewise, "hoarding" can be thought of as property-acquisition and "reception" as submission of oneself in favor of harmony. According to Fromm, a "marketer" is a person who knows very little of emotion and social matters and so focuses more on a theoretical and strategic understanding of them and less on actually experiencing them, much like a "logical" and "calculating" Rational would do.

We can now add the following additions to the chart:

Next up: Carl Jung reinvents the wheel.

Why "CE" And "BCE" Make No Sense

In the year AD 525, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus calculated a set of tables laying out several of the future dates of Easter. The dates on previous such tables were notated in the customary manner, anno Diocletiani, or "in the year of Diocletian," counting forward from the first date of that Roman Emperor's reign.

Though many Christians had begun to use anno martyrum, or "in the year of the martyrs," as a result of Diocletian having ordered the last major Christian persecution, Dionysius thought it less than desirable to reckon years on a Christian calendar in reference to such a man. As such, he invented a new system, anno Domini, or "in the year of the Lord," counting forward from the date of Christ's Incarnation and providing an explicit conversion from Years of Diocletian to Years of Our Lord.

The practice became widespread in Europe when, in 731, the Venerable Bede used it in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, gradually gaining more and more traction over the succeeding centuries. We now know that Dionysius' calculations were somewhat mistaken and Christ was most likely born a year or two before 1 BC. Nevertheless, the Gregorian calendar, using such a system, has proved so accurate and become so standard, that no one dare change it.

Until now. The BBC is the latest in a string of respected institutions and publishers to reject AD and BC in favor of the "religiously neutral" CE and BCE ("Common Era" and "Before the Common Era").

But wait, because the reckoning of years from the traditional date of Christ's birth is so universal, it would be all but impossible to attempt to force an actual change in the system of dating. Instead, to try and avoid an explicit reference to Christ, they just changed the terminology. The thing is, though, they're still counting from Jesus' birth; they're just trying to pretend they aren't.

My thinking is, if you're really going to try to entirely excise religion from the public sphere, you should do it right. Devise a completely new dating system and impose it on everyone carte blanche. Maybe they'll react the way the French did when the revolutionaries tried the same thing, maybe they won't. Don't know if you don't try.

Is it really so offensive, though? Yes, it refers to Christ, but it's not like putting AD or BC before a date means you think he's God like we do or came back from the dead. They're not even religious terms anymore. They've been so utterly and completely absorbed into Western culture that the majority of people don't even know what they stand for.

Just relax. You won the battle for academia, and you're winning the battle for the West. You don't have to rub it in.

The Top Ten Creatures I Can't Buy A Good God Created, Part Three

Last post we discovered that we contributed to the downfall of Nature when we sinned in the Garden. We also realized that, because fangs and poison and death and other bad stuff seem to have been around before us, they must be due to some other evil influence on the world.

There can only be one answer to who that could be, seeing as, before us, there's only one other source of evil: the Devil and his fallen angels. But why should the Devil have anything to do with God's Creation?

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien recounts his creation myth, called the "Ainulindalë," meaning, "Music of the Ainur." The Ainur ("Holy Ones") are Middle Earth's angels, beings of pure spirit, issuing out of the mind of God before time itself. Together, they perceive God's plan for Creation, and begin to sing their respective parts in harmony with one another, which causes the universe, in all its splendor, to jump into being.

Granted this is a work of fiction, but what Tolkien has done is to synthesize two seemingly contradictory myths of creation, the classical and the Judeo-Christian. God is still the Creator of the universe, and exterior to it, as in Genesis, but his creative act is performed through others, each of which has a domain which they create in accordance with the will of God, and later rule on his behalf. In the end, then, there are Ainur of the sky, and sea, and craftsmanship, and so on, just as in the pagan pantheons.

All of this is to say that God's act of Creation needn't be direct in order for it to be his. It is entirely consonant with Christian theology and what we know from the Book of Genesis for God to have created via the angels, whom he has given charge over the disparate categories of Being.

C.S. Lewis picks up on this idea in his Space Trilogy, when he has different angels (he calls them "eldila") as the caretakers of the various planets in the Solar System. The hero discovers that the rest of the universe refers to Earth as "the silent planet" because Lucifer its caretaker, and when he rebelled against God, he cut us all off with him.

In Tolkien, this notion of the fallen angel occurs when Melkor decides to rebel against the will of God for Creation and begins singing his own, discordant tune, and thus bringing a level of disorder and chaos to the things being made. I think something similar happened at the beginning of time, the Devil doing his best to mess things up even as God and the angels were creating the universe. "Really?" Really:

Last time we saw pictures of messed-up mammals. Today we're obviously looking at birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Technically speaking, I would put birds in between mammals and reptiles, but since they're basically just slightly less terrifying, slightly more highly-evolved reptiles anyway, I decided to include them here.

More than just this list of horrible animals, we see in Genesis that things had already gone wrong long before Mankind showed up. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This verse is likely more of a title than a verse. Oftentimes Jewish literature begins with a short summary of the story it will tell in detail. The story really begins with Genesis 1:2: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep."

"Formlessness," "void," "darkness," does that sound like the work of God to you? It seems to me that Satan was there from the beginning, trying to corrupt everything as best he could. The story of history, then, turns out to have been a rescue mission from the beginning, God fighting a war with the Devil for Creation, in order that he might fashion a world fit for his Son to inhabit, and thus undergo the ultimate act of redemption on behalf of the fallen universe.

UPDATE: Part Four to be found here.

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part Three - Christianity

Given the fact that Galen actually comes after Irenaeus, speaking strictly chronologically, I should have included the following Christian thought in the Classical post. However, seeing as the advent of Christianity is in itself the advent of the Medieval Age (i.e., of the Medieval Synthesis of Classical and Christian thought), it seemed most appropriately included in the previous post, but it ended up running long, so here we are.

Writing about the year 180, St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons says the following concerning the canon of Scripture:

"It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the 'pillar and ground' (1 Tim. 3:15) of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh," (Adversus Haereses III.11.8).

The number four has carried symbolic meaning throughout Western history (as all numbers do). Dino Marcantonio did a fantastic article outlining the significance of the number four and the quincunx in art and architecture. In the chapter entitled "The Numbers Game" in Why Do Catholics Do That?, Dr. Kevin Johnson says this of the number four:

"[The number 4] carries the connotation of...stability.... There are four seasons to a year and, in classical thought, four elements that make up the material universe (fire, water, earth, and air). Four evangelists told the whole story of Christ and everything we need for salvation. The Church divides Advent into four weeks, marked with four candles, because with the coming of Christ the cycle of times is brought to completeness. Sometimes the halo shown on Christ's head contains a four-armed cross, but that's not a reference to the Passion. It means that Christ, uniquely, is a complete being, God as well as a man," (262).

There is a symbolic dimension to the fact that the foundational symbol of our faith is the four-armed cross. In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton compares the fundamental image of Christianity to that of Buddhism, the circle:

"Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers," (50).

A horizontal line (or horizontality itself) refers to the horizon, to the boundary between heaven and earth that humanity can never cross. A vertical line (verticality itself) is symbolic of the path the Sun traces across the Sky, and the direction of the heavenly in general. The Cross is, then, the intersection of the earthly and the heavenly, the union of God and Man in Christ, who, by virtue of his action on the Cross, brings that union to us all. This is why traditionally-designed church buildings always feature two elements most prominently: a long, horizontal path that represents Man's journey to union with God, and lofty heights that represent the descent of God to Man. At "the crossing" the vertical dimension opens out onto a horizontal one, and the two intersect visually at the altar, the tabernacle of the "God with us," which (even from the sky) radiates out in the four cardinal directions, encompassing all there is.

Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where the blue line represents the architectural horizon, the
farthest point Man can reach in his long journey to God (the green line), except that God, in his
mercy, has deigned himself to descend to Man in Man's own flesh via the Cross (the red line).

Irenaeus goes on to correlate masterfully the four Gospels with the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4 as well as to four chief characteristics of Christ himself. The Gospel according to Matthew corresponds to the Man, because it emphasizes Christ's humanity, especially by beginning with his genealogy; Mark corresponds to the Lion, because it emphasizes Christ's divine kingship; Luke corresponds to the Bull, because in it Christ is presented as the servant and the sacrificial offering on behalf of sin; and John corresponds to the Eagle, because its clarity of vision pierces the highest things.

Though not explicit in Irenaeus, these groups of four can be correlated to the four temperaments quite easily. If we compare them in terms of Plato's societal roles, his Guardians are like the Bulls of the community, solemnly bearing the burden for the greater good; Plato's Artisans are the courageous and outgoing (Sanguine) Lions; Plato's Idealists are the passionately ethical, harmony-oriented Men; and Plato's Rationals are the intellectual, head-in-the-clouds Eagles.

Interestingly, though Irenaeus himself doesn't draw the connection between Plato's temperaments and the Four Evangelists, he does adopt Plato's system, giving the four temperaments his own labels, which are more behaviorally and less role-oriented: Artisans he calls "spontaneous;" Guardians, "historical;" Idealists, "spiritual;" and Rationals, "scholarly."

So, we have a few new things to add to our chart:

Stay tuned for the next post in this series which will look at how Modernity dealt with the question of temperament.

Of Rood Screens

The chancel screen at Westminster Abbey. It might say

something about the state of the Church of England that

they erect a temporary altar here and cut the church in half

so it doesn't seem so cavernous when no one shows up.

In a great many churches there is a screen, or at least a beam, dividing the nave (where the people do their thing) from the chancel (where the ministers do their thing). A lot of the time this screen is all the average parishioner would be able to see. At King's College Cambridge the rood screen is actually a wall 6 feet thick. You may have noticed at the Royal Wedding that the screen at Westminster Abbey is so thick one passes under it via tunnel and the orchestra camp out on top. It even has a gate in it.

There is something to be said for this separation of the average Joe from the most sacred action being performed up front. Wait a second, you might say, isn't it important for all of us to see what's going on and be a part of it? Isn't Church all about coming together and being a community? Doesn't "liturgy" mean "work of the people"? Yes, but that is exactly what it means: work of the people, not you, or me, or anybody else considered singly. Worship is the eternal work of God's People, the Church Universal, enacted here and now by her ministers, not us.

We laypersons play a part in this action of worship, but in a very different way. We are participants insofar as we are members of the Universal Church, and it is the action of the Church which is being undertaken. In other words, our participation in the worship of the Church doesn't depend on us doing anything; it depends on us being something: namely, a baptized Christian. The sacred ministers, on the other hand, (those in Holy Orders) are they that actually perform the work, if only on behalf of all of us (the Church on earth and in heaven). Nevertheless, it is only they which can do so, never us, for they are the only ones who, by virtue of their Ordinations, have been given the ability to stand on behalf of the Church Universal. I can only act as an individual.

This is why the Sacrament of Holy Orders has the name it does. Because by bestowing on individual men the ability to act on behalf of the whole Church, it creates order out of chaos. And that is how St. Paul tells us we must worship: "decently and in order," (1 Cor. 14:40).

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part Two - Medieval Times

When we left off in Part One, Aristotle had just defined our four temperaments in terms of what makes them happy. Subsequently, Humorism and its corresponding Personology was quietly incorporated into the corpus of Western thought. To again quote David Keirsey's account in Please Understand Me II:

"We see Geoffrey Chaucer (in 1380) describing a Doctor of Physic as knowing 'the cause of every malady, And where they were from, and of what humour.' [...] Shakespeare points out dozens of times what he called the 'spirit of humours' in his enormous gallery of characters: a soldier's sanguine appetite or a Countess's sorrowful melancholy a lover's impassioned choler or a physician's phlegmatic detachment. Moreover, Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson developed a whole style of play he called the 'Comedy of Humors,' creating his characters according to a formula he articulated in 1599: 'Some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers In their confluctions, all to run one way,'" (23-24).

The work of Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Galen persisted throughout the Middle Ages without any substantive contributions until we come to the Renaissance physician Paracelsus:

"[Paracelsus] proposed four totem spirits which symbolized four personality styles, and which ran parallel to the temperament types of Galen and the character types of Plato. Paracelsus characterized human beings as 'Salamanders,' impulsive and changeable; as 'Gnomes,' industrious and guarded; as 'Nymphs,' inspired and passionate; and as 'Sylphs,' curious and calm," (24).

Paracelsus was kind of a strange fellow, happily intermixing traditonal science and philosophy with the occult and alchemy. But that wasn't really uncommon in those days, as we know from the most famous Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. Nevertheless, his contribution to the topic at hand is not without merit, adding one more level of clarity to our understanding of the four temperaments. Nodding to Aristotle's "sources of happiness," Paracelsus calls his Sylphs "curious," indicating that they seek knowledge and rational understanding. Likewise he refers to his Gnomes as "industrious," in that they seek material goods. He refers to Plato's intuitive Idealists when he calls his Nymphs "inspired."

Interestingly, though, his Salamanders, which correspond to Plato's Artisans, he calls "changeable," rather than "sensitive" or something of that sort. But isn't that what it means to be sensitive? To allow oneself to conform to the world around oneself? That's part of what makes an artist an artist. He is better able to receive impressions from things in the world, seeing them more clearly and deeply, and thus able to recreate them more completely and beautifully. Likewise, by choosing Slyphs (which are similar to Angels) to represent Rationals, more than referring to their rationalistic and logical tendencies, he has indicated that they are more spiritual and abstract, more "head in the clouds" in general, than other types.

While not explicit in Keirsey's works, a correlation can also be seen in the four Feudal Castes. Plato's Guardians becoming the Peasant/Soldier class, Artisans becoming the Merchant/Craftsman class, Idealists corresponding to the Clergy, and Rationals to the Nobility, seeing as they were the only ones with access to education and the ones Plato wanted to run the kingdom. Maybe the Medieval World would have fared better in the long run had its leaders actually been intelligent philosopher-kings. Of course, these castes likewise correspond to the four French suits of cards that originated in the Middle Ages and the numbers 1 through 4.

Even more interestingly, though not traditional as far as the West is concerned, the Middle Ages in India saw the rise of the Bhakti movement, which emphasized a personal and loving God and required our reciprocal devotion and service. The Bhakti movement distinguished four "yogas," or paths of salvation, that one can follow in order to devote oneself rightly to God, and which correspond well with the four temperaments we've been outlining.

Combine everything we've looked at so far and we can put together a new chart:

Next up: What Christianity has to say on the topic.

UPDATE: Great Commentary On Papal Infallibility

À la the last post's dealings with the Catholic doctrine of Papal Infallibility, I highly recommend The Sacred Page's running treatment of the subject:

Part 1

Part 2

Head on over and check it out. It's simple, thoughtful, and concise.

UPDATE: Part 2a and Part 3 have been added recently.

The Top Ten Creatures I Can't Buy A Good God Created, Part Two

The world isn't the way it's supposed to be. Let's look at childbirth by way of example. The first commandment God gave us, way back in Gen. 1:22 was to "be fruitful and multiply." We should remember that God's commandments are not arbitrary. That is to say, moral imperatives are not dictated down from on high for no reason. On the contrary, morality stems from Nature and Being itself. In other words, when Scripture tells us God has commanded us to do something, it is not because that's what God wants, it's because that's what God is, or because that's what we are.

It is of God's very essence (and therefore ours as well) to bring forth life. This is why doing so is an explicit commandment in Scripture. This idea is perfectly consonant with what modern science tells us. Procreation is the earliest and most fundamental aim of evolutionary development, the most basic reason for our existence. The pagan philosopher Aristotle said the same thing almost 2400 years ago when he named the propagation of the species as the ultimate telos (end, goal) toward which all life tends. All of this is to say that, if the world were the way it was supposed to be, childbirth would be the easiest, most natural thing in the world. Unfortunately, like so many other things, it's one of the biggest struggles in life: "in pain you shall bring forth children," (Gen. 3:16).

But it wasn't just humanity that was harmed by our sin: "cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life," (Gen. 3:17). For example:

the star-nosed mole,

this mutant dog thing,

possums,

and cat lady. Messed up as they are, as mammals (and marsupials), this group of horrifying creatures (along with those we saw in Part One) are actually the least horrifying of all.

After God finished his work of creation, he entrusted all of it to Man: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth," (Gen. 1:26).

Much has been made of the word "dominion." What the Hebrew writers of this passage would have meant, and what Western Christians would have understood it to mean until relatively recently, was not a "master/slave" relationship but something more like a "husband/wife" relationship. St. Paul explains Christian marriage in a similar fashion, saying, "Wives, be subject to your husbands," (Eph. 5:22). Of course, he balances this verse with the complementary commandment to husbands, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," (Eph. 5:25). The relationship is one of self-gift, each living for the other. In the same way, Man is lord of creation in the same way Christ is Lord of us, by sacrificing himself for it. It is a lordship of love and self-gift, our "dominion" is that of the servant, the caretaker, the Lover.

As Man fell, so fell the World. Our sin could not help but affect our most intimate companion, Nature itself. Scripture confirms this when it prophesies that the New Creation will be quite different from the one we currently inhabit:

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord," (Isa. 11:6-9).

If the recreated order after the Parousia is perfect, and in it lions don't eat antelope, it must not be perfect for lions to eat antelope. We saw last post that all this ugliness can't have come from God. Where, then, did it come from? Us. By our sin, evil entered the world and corrupted the operation of Nature. Suddenly only the fittest can survive and things with fangs and claws and venom start popping up. But wait, the fossil record teaches us that fangs, claws, and venom predate Man. It turns out, then, that we just complicated matters and death and destruction entered into the world another way.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Part Three to be found here.

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part One - The Ancients

In the middle of the last century, Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katherine Briggs dusted off a copy of Carl Jung's 1923 work Psychological Types and began developing a questionnaire based on it designed to "sort" people into one of sixteen possible personality types called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Neither the work of Mrs. Myers nor Carl Jung was particularly revolutionary, however. They stand at the near end of a long tradition of personality "sorting" that can be traced back to the beginning of Western Civilization. This post will be the first in a short series tracing the development of that tradition.

In his book Please Understand Me II, David Keirsey recounts the early history of "personology" thusly:

"It was the Roman physician Galen who, developing the ideas of Hippocrates, proposed (around 190 AD) that it is neither the stars nor the gods that determine what we want and what we do; rather, it is the balance of our bodily fluids, the four 'humors,' as they were called. If our blood predominates Galen called us 'Sanguine' or eagerly optimistic in temperament; if our black bile or gall predominates, then we are 'Melancholic' or doleful in temperament; if our yellow bile predominates, then we are 'Choleric' or passionate in temperament; and if our phlegm predominates, then we are 'Phlegmatic' or calm in temperament," (23).

An artist's unflattering rendition of the Four Temperaments.

Of course, we all know how the application of Galen's theory of Humorism worked out when applied medicinally. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the personological element has merit, technically unrelated to bodily fluids as it may be. If you think about it, it's probably pretty easy to sort everybody you know into one of Galen's four temperaments. Try replacing his terms with some more familiar ones: "Sanguine" with "cheerful," "Melancholic" with "broody," "Choleric" with "excitable," and "Phlegmatic" with "calm."

"Nearly six hundred years before Galen, Plato had written in The Republic of four kinds of character which clearly corresponded with the four temperaments attributed to Hippocrates. Plato was more interested in the individual's contribution to the social order than in underlying temperament, and so he named the Sanguine temperament the iconic (artisan) character, endowed with artistic sense, and playing an art-making role in society. He named the Melancholic temperament the pistic (guardian) character, endowed with common sense, and playing a caretaking role in society. He named the Choleric temperament the noetic (idealist) character, endowed with intuitive sensibility, and playing a moral role in society. And he named the Phlegmatic temperament the dianoetic (rational) character, endowed with reasoning ability, and laying the role of logical investigator in society," (Ibid.).

The Greek words Plato has used here to identify the driving forces behind Hippocrates' four temperaments can be translated as follows: icon = "image", pistis = "trust", noein = "insight", and dianoia = "reason". In other words, if you're Sanguine, you're driven by imagery (iconography) and will likely be drawn to the arts, crafts (such as carpentry or masonry), and creativity in general; if you're Melancholic, you're driven by honor, duty, and trust in others and society, and you'll likely be drawn to traditional leadership (guardian) roles; if you're Choleric, you're driven by intuition and insight and will likely be drawn to activities involving ethics, relationships, and establishing harmony; and if you're Phlegmatic, you're driven by cold and calm reason, and you'll likely be drawn to logical, mathematical fields.

"A generation [after Plato], Aristotle defined character in terms of happiness, and not, as his mentor Plato had done, in terms of virtue. Aristotle argued that there are four sources of happiness: 'The mass of men,' he said, find happiness either in 'sensual pleasure' (hedone) or in 'acquiring assets' (propraietari), while some few find happiness either in exercising their 'moral virtue' (ethikos) or in a life of 'logical investigation' (dialogike)," (Ibid.).

 Not surprisingly, the categories we have thus far established (humors, temperaments, drives, societal roles, sources of happiness) were eventually seen as corresponding to other groups of four like the seasons, the major organs, and the four elements. After a brief survey of the Classical temperaments, then, we end up with the following chart:

Next up: the Medieval World's contributions.

Great Commentary On Papal Infallibility

À la the last post's dealings with the Catholic doctrine of Papal Infallibility, I highly recommend The Sacred Page's running treatment of the subject:

Part One

Part Two

Head on over and check it out. It's simple, thoughtful, and concise.

Why Natural Family Planning Isn't Contraception

There are those who would suggest that Natural Family Planning (NFP) is really just Catholic contraception. A loophole by which the Popes can avoid the ridiculous number of babies without having to embarrass themselves and admit they were wrong.

Yes, that is the Pope in a Santa hat.

One of the most common points of misunderstanding when it comes to Catholic doctrine is that of Papal Infallibility. Contrary to popular belief Papal Infallibility does not mean that whatever the Pope says might as well issue from the mouth of God. In fact, the Pope is only infallible when he solemnly proclaims something which the Church has always believed to be true. That is to say, it is primarily the Church (as present in Scripture and Tradition) which is infallible, the Pope is only infallible insofar as he operates as the Church's spokesman, which he is empowered to do by virtue of his office. In other words, the Church has always believed and taught that contraception is objectively evil. The Pope can no more overturn this teaching than he could proclaim that Jesus is no longer the Second Person of the Trinity.

Why, then, does NFP not qualify as contraception? After all, used correctly, it's just as effective in preventing pregnancy as the pill (99%) and more effective than condoms. In order to answer this question it will be necessary to examine the Church's rationale for outlawing contraception in the first place.

Holy Matrimony, the sacramental union of a man and woman with one another, is one of the most sacred institutions there is. Scripture itself teaches us that this is so because Christian Marriage symbolizes "the union that is betwixt Christ and his Church," to quote the English Prayer Book. Like the union of Christ with his Church, the marital union is always in effect. There are, however, regular occasions of special solemnity at which the union is consummated in a special way. For the Church it is the Holy Eucharist, which the Book of Revelation refers to as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). It is at the Eucharist that Christ and the Church come together in love. This is one of the reasons why in many churches there is a canopy over the altar:

The baldacchino at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

It is the canopy over the marriage bed upon which Christ and his Beloved consummate their union.

Contraception hinders the completeness of the union between husband and wife. Certain types of contraception put up a physical barrier between their union. Others put up a chemical barrier. When contraception is used, it is as if the husband and wife are saying to one another, "I love you. I want to be one with you, just, not completely. I'm gonna hold this piece of myself back from you, because it's inconvenient."

The loving union between husband and wife is meant to result in a new life (cf. Gen. 1:22). If you think about it, this makes all the sense in the world. It is the union of Christ with his Church that brings new life to the world, for that is what grace is, new life: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation," (2 Cor. 5:17). Due to the natural cycles of fertility and infertility the marital embrace will not always result in conception. This is really beside the point. The Church doesn't say that marriage should only be consummated with the express intent to conceive. It does say that the couple must be open to life, which is to say, marriage shouldn't be done halfway. You've gotta mean it.

The substantive difference between NFP and contraception is NFP doesn't throw up a barrier between husband and wife. While capitalizing on the natural cycles of fertility and infertility in order to run the family responsibly, it still allows for the complete union, body and soul, of man and woman to be enacted.