Religion – Mysteries and Manners

The Chosen and Eyewitness Testimony

December 14, 2021

I watched The Chosen Christmas special episode this past Sunday. Although I could have done without the long musical intro, and setting aside evangelical vs. Catholic understandings of Mary’s experiences of the virgin birth (for a Catholic perspective, see here), I wanted to note something I really love that this series does in this episode, as well as in the first episode of season 2: the writers try to imagine not only the experiences of the first followers of Jesus when they met him and followed him during his ministry; they also try to imagine what it might have looked like for these disciples after the death, resurrection, and ascension, as they began translating their experiences of Jesus into written accounts that later would be gathered into the New Testament Scriptures. It’s something that we do not consider enough.

For me, the best part of the Christmas episode was the way in which the writers imagined how details of the Christmas story came down to us. There is a beautiful focus on the Magnificat (Lk: 1:46-55) and Mary and Joseph’s encounters with the “messengers” (Lk: 1:26-48; Mt: 1:18-24) and the fact that Jesus, like a spotless lamb set aside by shepherds for sacrifice in the Temple, was “wrapped in swaddling clothes” by his mother (Lk: 2:7). These are details which, if we believe them to be accurate in any meaningful sense, must have been reported to the evangelist Luke ultimately by Mary herself.

The Chosen writers have Mary Magdalene come to visit the mother of the Lord shortly before she dies to be given the privilege of carefully writing down the words of the Magnificat and delivering them to Luke on Our Lady’s behalf.

Obviously, we have no way of knowing if this is how the information was transmitted to Luke, and perhaps this scenario is not very likely, but there is nevertheless something very beautiful about the show emphasizing Mary Magdalene’s role as “apostle to the apostles” even years after the resurrection and her initial announcement to them of the good news (cf. Mark 16:9-11, Matthew 28:1-10, Luke 24:10-11, John 20:1-18).

It is clear to me, regardless, that there must have been a special relationship between Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene — as they were profoundly united together by witnessing the suffering of Jesus and standing beneath his cross as he died (John 19:25). In the episode, Mary Magdalene movingly calls Mary “Mother,” and the mother of Jesus says that Mary Magdalene has always been “like a daughter” to her. Mary Magdalene’s role as one of the very first witnesses of the resurrection would also, no doubt, have united her in a special way to Mother Mary, who accompanied the apostles “and some women” in prayer in the Upper Room as they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 1:13-14).

The traditional site of the Upper Room on Mt Zion in Jerusalem

Unfortunately, much of the scholarship on these questions since the 19th century (and a disheartening view into a lot of Catholic seminary formation) is well summarized by Father Casey Cole, OFM on his Youtube video here. He critiques the show because it imagines the apostles John and Matthew taking notes on their experiences with Jesus: “[the creators] treat the Gospels as if they were eye-witness accounts, written down as they were happening,” he says, disapprovingly. Such an approach, he contends, causes scripture “to be treated as nothing more than a literal, entirely straightforward account of events.” Clearly, he is thinking about sola scriptura and un-nuanced views of the inerrancy of scripture here. But he also proffers the common view that the Gospel writers were primarily “theologians”, not historians, interested in portraying Jesus according to the needs of their “faith communities”—and not very interested with factual accuracy at all.

I’m always puzzled by this thesis, as if people 2,000 years ago were so unlike people today that they were mysteriously un-curious about facts. What the Chosen series does well is to help us imagine these people as if they were real human beings, and consider how they might respond to the amazing events they experienced.

The evangelist Luke himself, at the beginning of his Gospel, actually claims to be transmitting the accounts of eyewitnesses and seems rather intent on accuracy:

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received. (Luke 1:1-4)

Anglican priest and theologian Richard Bauckham, in his brilliant and well-researched work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, offers a corrective view on the origin of the Gospels. Here’s a taste, but if you’re interested in this topic I highly recommend diving into the whole work:

The full reality of Jesus as he historically was is not, of course, accessible to us. The world itself could not contain the books that would be needed to record even all that was empirically observable about Jesus, as the closing verse of the Gospel of John puts it. Like any other part of history, the Jesus who lived in first-century Palestine is knowable only through the evidence that has survived. We could therefore use the phrase “the historical Jesus” to mean, not all that Jesus was, but Jesus insofar as his historical reality is accessible to us. But here we reach the crucial methodological problem. For Christian faith this Jesus, the earthly Jesus as we can know him, is the Jesus of the canonical Gospels, Jesus as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John recount and portray him. There are difficulties, of course, in the fact that these four accounts of Jesus differ, but there is no doubt that the Jesus of the church’s faith through the centuries has been a Jesus found in these Gospels. That means that Christian faith has trusted these texts. Christian faith has trusted that in these texts we encounter the real Jesus, and it is hard to see how Christian faith and theology can work with a radically distrusting attitude to the Gospels.
Yet everything changes when historians suspect that these texts may be hiding the real Jesus from us, at best because they give us the historical Jesus filtered through the spectacles of early Christian faith, at worst because much of what they tell us is a Jesus constructed by the needs and interests of various groups in the early church. Then that phrase “the historical Jesus” comes to mean, not the Jesus of the Gospels, but the allegedly real Jesus behind the Gospels, the Jesus the historian must reconstruct by subjecting the Gospels to ruthlessly objective (so it is claimed) scrutiny. It is essential to realize that this is not just treating the Gospels as historical evidence. It is the application of a methodological skepticism that must test every aspect of the evidence so that what the historian establishes is not believable because the Gospels tell us it is, but because the historian has independently verified it. The result of such work is inevitably not one historical Jesus, but many.
[…]
All history — meaning all that historians write, all historiography — is an inextricable combination of fact and interpretation, the empirically observable and the intuited or constructed meaning. […]
I suggest that we need to recover the sense in which the Gospels are testimony. This does not mean that they are testimony rather than history. It means that the kind of historiography they are is testimony. An irreducible feature of testimony as a form of human utterance is that it asks to be trusted. This need not mean that it asks to be trusted uncritically, but it does mean that testimony should not be treated as credible only to the extent that it can be independently verified. There can be good reasons for trusting or distrusting a witness, but these are precisely reasons for trusting or distrusting. Trusting testimony is not an irrational act of faith that leaves critical rationality aside; it is, on the contrary, the rationally appropriate way of responding to authentic testimony. Gospels understood as testimony are the entirely appropriate means of access to the historical reality of Jesus. It is true that a powerful trend in the modern development of critical historical philosophy and method finds trusting testimony a stumbling-block in the way of the historian’s autonomous access to truth that she or he can verify independently. But it is also a rather neglected fact that all history, like all knowledge, relies on testimony. In the case of some kinds of historical event this is especially true, indeed obvious. In the last chapter we shall consider a remarkable modern instance, the Holocaust, where testimony is indispensable for adequate historical access to the events. We need to recognize that, historically speaking, testimony is a unique and uniquely valuable means of access to historical reality.
from Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Chapter 1

For a more direct rebuttal of Father Cole’s take, see Catholic apologist Trent Horn’s response here.

Why does our view of the Gospels as transmission of eyewitness testimony matter? It matters for much the same reason that going to specific places in the Holy Land does. The reason the ancient Church preserved these places and wrote these Gospels is because it was convinced that something utterly unthinkable actually happened. Christianity is not a literary story, or vague theological reflection cobbled together by the needs of various “faith communities.” It is a testimony about real events, or it is nothing. To appropriate Flannery O’Connor’s famous quip on the Eucharist, “if it’s just a symbol, then to hell with it.”

I appreciate that The Chosen show takes the historicity of the Gospels seriously, and as a work of art helps us enter imaginatively into the lives of these people. It seems to really embody St. Ignatius’ teaching on imaginative prayer. We are human, so abstract ideas are not enough to nourish faith. God himself, having made us, knew this and took on flesh and bones to meet us in our poverty. We need to set aside abstracting the Gospel stories into oblivion in order to meet him in his.

Divine Art: “Something we can hold in our hands and love”

December 9, 2019

The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe features prominently in the beginning of Willa Cather’s sparse and beautiful novel Death Comes for the Archbishop, a story based on the lives and friendship of two French Catholic missionary priests in the southwest. Today is the feast day of Saint Juan Diego, so it seems like a good time to return to a fascinating scene and discussion in the novel that explores the miracle he experienced.

Father Latour, later the “archbishop” of the novel’s title, is a fictionalized version of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy and, like his historical counterpart, is contemplative and intellectual. He and his more emotive friend Father Joseph Vaillant (who is based on Joseph Machebeuf, eventually the first bishop of Denver) have an interesting conversation in the opening part of the book. Both of them have just listened to a young priest retelling the story of the miracle of Juan Diego’s tilma and the roses. Both friends are deeply moved when they hear of how Our Lady converted millions to Christianity in the matter of a few years, as they, too, are in mission territory in the vast expanses of the new archdiocese of Santa Fe.

Latour later observes to his friend, reflecting on Juan Diego’s experience of the apparition and the image on his cloak,

Where there is great love, there are always miracles…. [They] seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. (50)

It is a beautiful and thought-provoking interpretation. Indeed, Cather ends first part of the novel with his words, as if to emphasize that everything else that comes afterward in the novel should be considered in these terms. Latour’s description suggests something of the miraculousness of the every day– if we could only see and hear “what is there about us always”. It makes me think of a favorite epigram of Emily Dickinson: “Not revelation–tis–that waits / But our unfurnished eyes.”

And yet… there is something distinctly modern in Latour’s interpretation of miracles too, as if they are more a matter of adjusting one’s internal, subjective perspective than bumping into something unexplainable in external, objective reality. His words are particularly strange when you consider the story itself; what is the miracle of Our Lady’s appearance to Juan Diego if not an instance of “faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off”?

Taken too far, Latour’s characterization of miracles might move us toward Thomas Jefferson’s famous rather ribboned version of the bible.

But setting aside for the moment its possible problematic theological implications, I think his description is an important interpretive key to the novel. There’s another way Cather might be inviting us to conceive of Latour’s words here, especially when you consider them alongside his friend Father Vaillant’s very different description of the event.

Vaillant, moved almost to tears by the story, says fervently, “The miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love” (50).

In my senior thesis in college, in which I focused a lot on this scene, I summarized the differences in the two friends’ descriptions of miracles this way:

The bishop locates miracles as occurring within interior human perception, whereas Father Joseph locates them as occurring in nature, in the external world. Father Latour seems to define miracles as a process—of refinement, clarification or sharpening; but Father Joseph seems to define miracles almost as objects: indeed, they seem rather unsettlingly personal and tangible—they can be touched, even held “in our hands.” Miracles, for Father Joseph, are interventions into nature. But Father Latour distances his definition from the idea of divine intrusion, of “faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off,” and places it instead within the context of corrected human perception. And of course, one cannot hold that in one’s hands!

Or can one?

Now, I think there is a way in which these views might be harmonized–or at least brought much closer together. What if we considered them as different descriptions not just of miracles, but of art?

I mean, one could argue that miracles themselves are a kind of special divine art. All of nature is divine art, of course, but when God intervenes in nature He’s making a rather unique statement. So maybe there is a kind of analogous connection there.

But I think there is also textual justification for looking at these two definitions as descriptions of art. The conversation between Latour and Vaillant occurs in the context of the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and that story’s miracle explicitly involves a work of art: the image on Juan Diego’s tilma, which we are told looks “exactly as She had appeared to him on the hillside” (49). The mantle, especially in its strange properties and marvelous preservation over hundreds of years, becomes a kind of “miraculous portrait” that we can “hold in our hands and love.”

Maybe in this scene, Cather is suggesting that art (literature in particular?) can achieve two things: it “refines” the reader’s interior perceptions, our ability to see the world as it truly is, and it offers us a kind of tangible object of wonder and beauty to hold and to treasure. The first description concerns what art does for us, the second more what art is in itself.

Why does any of this matter?

I think these two “roles” of art are often in tension with one another. They are like two poles that pull the artist in different directions. On the one hand, art should be about “refining perceptions”—that is, correcting our vision, or even challenging our assumptions about what art is and can be. I think (in my very inexperienced opinion) that a lot of modern art (and literature) likes to push boundaries for this very reason. Contemporary art is very much about changing the way we see things, perhaps especially art itself.

On the other hand, art should also be about creating “something we can hold in our hands and love”— that is, something grasp-able, accessible, that moves us with its beauty. This kind of art is more content with being something beautiful than with engaging in mind- and category-bending acrobatics.

I think my favorite examples of art, both literary and visual, do both of these things, but I think I am drawn much more to the Father Vaillant side. Theologically, I’m also more drawn to his view of miracles. They are real, they are out there, they aren’t just in my head, they happen.

But as Father Latour points out, we do need the “eyes and the ears” to perceive them, and this takes the healing of our perceptions. “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear” (Mk 4:9).

“Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” (Luke 10:23-24)

*San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin* by Raul Beroza

More on The Church

November 16, 2014

Cardinal Sean O’Malley gave quite the interview on 60 minutes.

Here is one of the most interesting parts:

In an interview with “60 Minutes” on CBS that producers said took more than a year for them to persuade him to do, O’Malley seemed troubled by reporter Norah O’Donnell’s question as to whether the exclusion of women from the Church hierarchy was “immoral.”

O’Malley paused, then said, “Christ would never ask us to do something immoral. It’s a matter of vocation and what God has given to us.”

“Not everyone needs to be ordained to have an important role in the life of the Church,” he said. “Women run Catholic charities, Catholic schools …. They have other very important roles. A priest can’t be a mother. The tradition in the Church is that we ordain men.

“If I were founding a church, I’d love to have women priests,” O’Malley said. “But Christ founded it, and what he has given us is something different.”

Source: The Deacon’s Bench

I think O’Malley’s words perfectly reflect what I was trying to express in my last post.

Although some conservatives may be alarmed by his honesty – “I’d love to have women priests” – his view is actually a really beautiful example of faithfulness, and really expresses a view of the Church as a divine institution – not made or controlled by us.

We may like a lot of things to be different. And certainly there are many things we not only have the ability to change but the responsibility to change in the Church — starting, of course, with our own hearts.

But Cardinal O’Malley reminds us that the Church belongs to Christ. And we cannot manipulate what He has given us as revealed doctrine, even with the best of intentions.

A friend of mine, noting the rather somber tone at the end of my last post, reminded me of Pope Emeritus Benedict’s words at his final General Audience that seem particularly relevant to this discussion:

I have felt like St. Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: the Lord has given us many days of sunshine and gentle breeze, days in which the catch has been abundant; [then] there have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the Church it has ever been – and the Lord seemed to sleep. Nevertheless, I always knew that the Lord is in the barque, that the barque of the Church is not mine, not ours, but His – and He shall not let her sink. It is He, who steers her: to be sure, he does so also through men of His choosing, for He desired that it be so. This was and is a certainty that nothing can tarnish. It is for this reason, that today my heart is filled with gratitude to God, for never did He leave me or the Church without His consolation, His light, His love.

Source: Vatican News

I think Pope Benedict has it right.

I encourage you to read (or reread) the entire text of his last General Audience.

christ-asleep-in-his-boat-jules-joseph-meynier — “Christ Asleep in His Boat” by Jules Joseph Meynier source: fineartamerica.com

The Church: Two Views

November 14, 2014

I’ve had a lot of interesting (and sometimes intense) conversations of late about the Synod, the Church’s teaching on moral (usually sexual) matters. Shouldn’t the Church allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion? When is the Church going to allow women to become priests? How can the Church say gay people can’t get married when we all know they cannot help who they are and how they feel? Isn’t Natural Family Planning really, at bottom, another form of contraception?

And it has become clear to me that the real issue, the real question, goes much deeper than many people suppose.

These questions of doctrine really, at the deepest level, boil down to a single question:

What is the Church?

The more “liberal” (I’m sorry for the useful but loaded political term) people tend to believe that lots of Church teachings should change. They believe this because they believe these teachings are not only outdated, but also wrong. For them, the Church changing its teaching would be a sign that those old men in the Vatican were finally listening to the Holy Spirit. Doctrine changing would not be at all catastrophic to their view of what the Church is.

The more “conservative” people, on the other hand, believe that Church teaching should not change because it cannot be changed. It helps that many of them also happen to agree with a lot of these teachings anyway, and wouldn’t want to see them changed even if they *could* be. For them, the Church changing its teaching would be a sign that… well… the Church is not the Church. In other words, doctrine changing would be catastrophic to their view of what the Church is.

Liberal Catholics and Conservative Catholics continually talk past one another because they are operating under completely different definitions of the Church.

Liberal Catholics think of the Church as a huge group of people, followers of Christ, who are shepherded, taught and sometimes oppressed by the hierarchy. The hierarchy are men who can make mistakes – sometimes big mistakes, even about doctrine. History, culture, and sin can cloud human judgment. According to this view, changing Church teaching on marriage, communion, the priesthood, etc. would be a sign that the Holy Spirit is breathing new life into the Church. Welcoming as many people as possible into the group of Christ’s followers is kind of the idea. Doctrine changing is a big deal only in the sense that the Church would finally be catching up with the times.

Accordingly, many liberal theologians try to find instances in history in which Church teaching has changed in the past, in order to prove that since it has happened before, there is no good reason why it should not happen again. (Eg: They usually cite teachings like limbo, the infusion of the human soul after conception, the Assumption, etc. as examples of important teachings that have changed.)

Conservative Catholics, on the other hand, think of the Church as a divine institution. It consists of people – sinners and saints a like – but it also has a mysterious divine element – The Holy Spirit – which works through it in very specific ways. Doctrine is therefore something that cannot change because it is safeguarded by the Holy Spirit (and established by God). Human beings did not make up the doctrine, and therefore they have no power to change it.

Accordingly, many conservative theologians go to great lengths to prove that although doctrine has developed (Newman) it has not changed – the apple tree grows stronger and taller and wider and more fruitful, but it doesn’t decide one day to turn into an oak tree instead. They emphasize the distinction between a discipline (a practice that can be changed with no theological catastrophe – e.g.: married priests) and a doctrine (a divine teaching that, if it were changed, would call the whole nature of the Church into question – e.g.: women priests).

At bottom, that’s why lots of people have been freaking out about the Synod.

Some liberals are hoping Church teaching might finally change under Pope Francis. They see this as a step toward justice and a movement of the Spirit. Finally, the Church they belong to will no longer be so embarrassingly judgmental. The Church will catch up with the times.

Some conservatives are afraid Church teaching just might change under Pope Francis. And if so, what then? “To whom shall we go?” The gates of hell will have prevailed, despite what Christ said. And then we shall know that the Holy Spirit, despite what we had hoped, had never really been guiding the Church to begin with.

Other conservatives are afraid that although Church teaching will not change because “the gates of hell cannot prevail against it”, that there still may be catastrophic schism in the Church because bishops will fall into teaching heresy. That has certainly happened before. The Arian heresy involved all sorts of confusion, and at one point a huge number of bishops taught it as doctrine. You think the Church is divided now? Just wait, they say.

So when Catholics argue about moral teachings of the Church, what’s really going on is a battle over the nature of the Church itself. Can her teaching change, or can it not?

And if it does, is the Church what she claims to be at all?

When the Answer Exceeds the Question

October 4, 2014

I was so excited to begin Unit 2 with my kids today.

We have finally (!) wrapped up our unit on essay writing (although of course I’ll make them continually write essays all year long) and are ready to begin a unit on mythology.

Last year, I got two weeks into the Mythology Unit before I realized that most of my kids can’t read.

Well, they can sound out letters on a page. They can read tweets and Facebook statuses and text messages.

Some of them can even read Harry Potter and the Hunger Games and Nicholas Sparks.

But ask them to tackle something hefty and meaningful, and all of a sudden, it’s “This is boring” and “I don’t get it” and “Why can’t Shakespeare talk normal?” and “I give up.”

So yeah. They don’t know how to really read.

Therefore I’ve decided, this year, to spend Unit 2 teaching them. The Unit is entitled, simply: “Mythology and Reading Strategies.”

So we started class with a bell work on “Explain the word ‘myth’ in your own words” and a discussion on how our modern (mis)understanding says that myths are basically “made-up stories”. Myths are untrue – which is why we have shows like “Mythbusters.”

And then we read an excerpt from Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in which she blows our modern conceptions to smithereens and defines myth very differently: myth is a type of “early science” (Hamilton, Mythology 10). It is an attempt to answer inescapable human questions: Where did we come from? Why is there suffering? How did the universe begin?

Of course, today, as I pointed out, science tries to answer these questions too. Where did we come from? Evolution. Why is there suffering? Psychology. (Well, anyway, psychology is the branch of science that largely tries to tackle that question.) How did the universe begin? The big bang. Et cetera.

So, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th period seemed to be pretty interested in all this. And then 6th period came in – my biggest class, and the class that has the largest number of struggling students.

Let me briefly inform you about how my 6th hour struggled with simple directions today, to give you some context for the real point of this blog entry:

Me: “Okay, today our table of contents is going to look a little bit different. Please write down our new Unit Title and objective…”

Student 1: “Wait, what? Where do I write this?”

Me: Raises hand as a reminder.

Student 1, raising hand: “I don’t get it. Where do I write this?”

Students 2, 3, 4, annoyed: “She said in the Table of Contents, Bryan!!”

Student 5: “Wait, Ms. Shea, I… [ raises hand, continues talking ]”

Me: “Jacob, please raise your hand.”

Student 5: Raises hand. Waits for me to call on him. Then: “Ms. Shea, where do I put the date?”

Student 6: “Yeah, aren’t we supposed to…”

Me: Raises hand to remind student 6 to please shut up.

Student 6: Raises hand.

Me: “Yes, Amy?”

Student 6: “Aren’t we supposed to put ‘2.1’ somewhere? Like, next to the thing? I’m so confused!” Panics.

Me, Employing Attention Procedure: “Everyone back to me please in 3… 2… 1… slant. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. I know these directions are a little bit different than usual. Please just copy down the unit title and the objective. Do not worry about the date or the number.”

Student 5: “But…!”

Me: Shakes head, hand to lips, indicating that now is not the time for questions.

Student 1: Raises hand.

Me: Shakes head again, indicating that now is not the time for questions.

Class: Finally begins to write down Unit Title and Unit Objective. Some hands still flutter into the air. Ms. Shea shakes her head, points at the smart board, and considers whether or not she should get a new job.

(Shea, “Classroom Struggles” vol. 358)

You get the idea.

Basically, by the time we got around to discussing Edith Hamilton’s definition of myth, after going to the library and checking out our books, we only had a few minutes left in class. I was feeling very frustrated and confused, because I was wondering what had possessed these kids today, and why they had forgotten every single procedure I had taught them and rehearsed with them over and over again at the beginning of the year.

Well, I guess we’ll just practice more on Monday.

As the Chaos drew to a close, one student in the back of the room raised his hand as the rest of his peers labored to finish writing down Hamilton’s definition of myth.

“Yes, Ryan?” I said.

“So, Ms. Shea. I don’t mean to be contrary or anything, but I’m just wondering.”

“Go ahead, Ryan,” I said, hopeful that possibly some real thinking had been provoked by this debacle of a lesson.

“We’re saying that all myths – like the Greek gods and stuff – are ways to explain mysteries in nature. But we know that the Greek gods aren’t real. So… um… how do we know that Christianity isn’t just another myth?”

My 6th hour class, being what it is, let out a loud and scandalized “Ohhhhhhhh!”

I smiled, trying to hide my inner panic. It was a great question. Ryan actually had done some real thinking, and I was proud of him. But the bell was about to ring. There was so much to say. I mean, people have written books on that very question. But there was no time.

“Everyone,” I said, “Let’s give snaps to Ryan for asking a great question. Ryan -” I looked at him directly, as the class applauded him, “- that is a wonderful question and I’m so glad you asked. We will be tackling that question during this unit. Make sure you bring it up again on Monday.”

Another hand shot up in the air, this time from our village atheist. Let’s call him Thomas.

Encouraged by Ryan’s success, he asked innocently, “So, Ms. Shea, since now we know all those other myths have been proven false, won’t there be a time in the future when our science and our Christianity is proven false?”

My 6th hour, being what it is, delightedly chanted “Ohhhhhhhhh!” and “You can’t say that Thomas!” and “He’s so right!” and “Shhhhh! What’s she gonna say?”

“Everybody, back to me please in 3, 2, and 1… Thank you.” A hush fell on the room. All eyes were on me.

I glanced at the clock. The second hand had almost reached twelve.

“Thomas, you have asked a very good question too. We have to confront these questions in this unit…”

The bell rang.

Too late.

The thing is, Ryan’s question would take volumes to answer. And I am afraid that if I tried to answer it in front of that class (who, you remember, struggles with copying down unit titles), I would only confuse most of them more. But if I do not address the question at all with them, those that bother to think about it might believe there is no answer, or that I don’t care to give it, or whatever.

Thomas’ question comes from a slightly different place and more likely demonstrates more misunderstandings than it generates. Still, it should be addressed fairly.

I feel like handing Ryan a copy of At the Origin of the Christian Claim by Father Guissani and giving Thomas Mere Christianity by Lewis.

Ironically, both of these books are far above their reading levels right now.

But I guess I have planned to teach them reading strategies during this unit…

Eliade, as quoted by Guisanni, says, “In the archaic world the myth alone is real. It tells of manifestations of the only indubitable reality – the sacred” (Guissani, At the Origins of the Christian Claim 23).

Julien Ries, quoted in the same book, observes that “A myth is a story which is true, sacred, and exemplary, which has a specific meaning and which entails repetition[…]” (Ibid).

C. S. Lewis says, “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The Old Myth of the dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history” (“Myth Become Fact”).

And further:

Christians also need to be reminded . . . that what became Fact was a Myth, that it carries with it into the world of Fact all the properties of a myth. God is more than a god, not less; Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. . . . We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic . . . shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight . . . (Ibid, 67)

carav10 — “Doubting Thomas” by Caravaggio

“Who is Christianity?”

August 30, 2014

First week of school: check.

I was so tired today that I gave in to exhaustion and went to bed at 7:30.

7:30!

And then, three hours later, I woke up and started thinking about my week. It’s keeping me awake and I thought I’d write it out, because sometimes that helps.

So this was the bell work I posted for all my kids today:

We were finishing up our lesson on Growth and Fixed Mindsets, which I use at the beginning of the year to set the tone of the class and help the kids think about themselves and their learning in new ways. We then reference it and reflect on it throughout the rest of the year.

Our new (and awesome) principal has been encouraging us to incorporate a “Faith Connection” into our lessons more explicitly and purposefully, and so this bell work was my attempt this week as a way to wrap things up right before they took their quiz on Mindsets.

I guess I knew ahead of time that the phrase “human dignity” might cause some issues for some of the kids. And, indeed, throughout the day different students raised their hands to ask me what the phrase meant. So I was already kind of breaking the cardinal rule of bell work: that it should be straight-forward enough that all students can do it without extra direction from the teacher. (This does not mean bell work cannot be rigorous, but that it’s not usually the best place to introduce new words or phrases.) So I anticipated the issue by encouraging students to raise their hands if they were confused or had any questions.

But during my first class of the day, one of my new foreign exchange students from Korea came bustling into the room a solid minute after the tardy bell rang.

The rest of the class looked up, but having been pretty well trained by now to understand that bell work was silent work time, they got on with their writing without commenting. She excused herself and asked me anxiously if this meant she was going to receive a detention (since she had been tardy earlier this week as well), and I said yes. She accepted that consequence with grace, sat down, and began to work.

A moment later her hand went up and she called my name again: “Excuse me, Mrs. Ms. Shea?” (I have not corrected her yet on how to say my name, but I need to next week.)

I went over to her desk and knelt beside her, encouraging her to lower her voice by whispering her name.

She looked up at the projector screen, her eyes wide. “Mrs. Ms. Shea,” she whispered, loudly. “Who is ‘Christianity’?”

I felt many eyes look up from papers around the room and fix themselves on me.

Who is Christianity?

I looked up at the projector screen briefly, confused by her confusion. I swallowed and whispered, “Christianity is a religion.”

“Oh!” she nodded, but not comprehending.

“Do you have a religion at your home? A faith you believe in?” I was still whispering, and relieved that the other students seem to have reluctantly returned to their writing.

“No,” she said, smiling. “No religion!”

I looked up at the projector screen again, the incomprehensible word looking more incomprehensible by the second.

“That’s okay,” I said, grasping for words and speaking slowly–as much as for my sake as for hers. “Christianity is a religion… a belief, we have here at this school. A big part of it is being loving to others… being good to others.” I searched her face for comprehension, and saw some of my words made sense. “For now, I want you to answer the question this way: How does ‘Growth Mindset’ relate to being a good person?”

“Oh, yes! Yes! Thank you, Mrs. Ms. Shea.”

I stood up and stretched bell work time by an extra minute so she could jot something down. I glanced at two of the other foreign exchange students in the class and wondered if they had had the same question, but had been too nervous to ask me.

Who is Christianity?

“Christianity” is a proper noun. She saw the capital letter. She thought it was a person’s name.

Who is Christianity?

She was right. It is a person. Jesus is Christianity.

And John the Baptist, too, whose memorial of martyrdom is today. And Edith Stein and Saint Kateri and Saint Paul, the apostles, and John Paul II, and the old gentleman at the Senior Support Center, and the Gentiles, and the Jews, and the Iraqis being brutally persecuted right now, and the religious sisters, my students, my family… a thousand faces flashed through my mind.

Who is Christianity?

But how could I explain all of that in a matter of seconds? I had not even mentioned His name to her. I had said, “It is a religion.” And suddenly it seemed small wonder to me that either she had not heard the word “religion” before or that she had, but only in some remote context like, “Some people on the other side of the world have ‘religions'”… along with political parties and horoscopes and economies and special holidays and other vague things that people in other countries “have.”

Who is Christianity?

I had only a few seconds to contemplate my clumsy answer before the timer went off and it was time to start class.

“Pens and pencils down please,” I said automatically. “It’s okay if you are not 100% finished with your bell work… Please stand for prayer.”

We stood up, faced the Crucifix on the wall, and made the sign of the Cross.

Work and Leisure

July 8, 2014

1. Work (or the Lack Thereof)

I was really moved by this article by Peter Greene called “The Hard Part”:

They never tell you in teacher school, and it’s rarely discussed elsewhere. It is never, ever portrayed in movies and tv shows about teaching. Teachers rarely bring it up around non-teachers for fear it will make us look weak or inadequate.

[…]

The hard part of teaching is coming to grips with this:

There is never enough.

There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.

(Greene, “The Hard Part”)

Go read it if you are a teacher or a student or have ever been either.

Really, anyone who has struggled with that frantic sense of “never enough” will sympathize.

Greene does a lovely job of describing the “never enough” that many teachers struggle with – but he does so in a way that does not descend into complaining. Instead, he indirectly shares his love for his students and his work. Ora et labora.

But I especially appreciated this:

As a teacher, you can see what a perfect job in your classroom would look like. You know all the assignments you should be giving. You know all the feedback you should be providing your students. You know all the individual crafting that should provide for each individual’s instruction. You know all the material you should be covering. You know all the ways in which, when the teachable moment emerges (unannounced as always), you can greet it with a smile and drop everything to make it grow and blossom.

You know all this, but you can also do the math. 110 papers about the view of death in American Romantic writing times 15 minutes to respond with thoughtful written comments equals — wait! what?! That CAN’T be right!

(Ibid)

Yeah. Do that math.

Although this past year of teaching was far easier than the previous ones (and they tell me they do get easier), I frequently woke up having had nightmares about failed lessons and crazy students and not knowing where my next class was and losing the essays and ruining students’ chances at college and NO MANAGEMENT. NONE.

It’s summer vacation, and I just had another bad dream two nights ago. It was the one where the bell had already rung and I couldn’t find my classroom and for some reason I had no idea what I was supposed to teach.

So basically it was really nice to wake up. Summer vacation is a gift.

But, well… it’s kind of boring.

sherlock-bored — source: badbooksgoodtimes.com

Seriously though. I miss being in the classroom. I miss scanning the desks and faces constantly to make sure all is well. I miss teasing them. I miss being teased. I miss trying to get someone to really wrestle with an idea and not take the easy way out. I miss my student Vincent* waving at me in the hallway every 7th period as he attempts to spend as much little time in the class down the hall, and I miss telling him to get back to class.

And then I thought to myself: what do you want?

Um, a perfect medium of being busy and productive but not stressed out. Ever.

Okay, not very likely to happen.

But there’s something amiss here. Why must I be busy but not too busy? Why must I be busy at all? Why are so many people — so many of my friends and acquaintances — happier being busy? Why do we dread “down-time”? Why are we confused about what to do with unstructured hours?

Why is it hard to rest sometimes?

2. Leisure (or the Lack Thereof)

In Leisure: The Basis of Culture Josef Pieper argues the following:

Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.

Isn’t that true?

I have friends who love making to-do lists. Sometimes this group also includes me. We all know how good it feels to cross something off of those lists.

When someone asks you, “So what did you do this weekend?” don’t you feel a little ashamed if the first response (promptly suppressed) that pops into your head is “well… nothing?”

How many times have I heard: “Well, at least I did something productive today!”

How many times have I said those words myself?

Why?

Pieper says we are “trying to justify our existence” by our work. But we will never rest until we are really “one with ourselves.”

Even Greene’s article suggests this lack-of-oneness:

But every day is still educational triage. You will pick and choose your battles, and you will always be at best bothered, at worst haunted, by the things you know you should have done but didn’t. (Greene)

In teaching, specifically, one is constantly striving after perfection when perfection isn’t ever possible. Do you throw up your hands and give in? Do you keep your nose to the grindstone? It’s like that really annoying Zeno’s Paradox I learned in math class about how if you walk halfway across a room, and then walk half that distance, and then half that distance, and on and on… you will always be moving closer to the wall but you will never actually reach it.

Teaching is kind of like that. The better you get, the more you notice the distance left between you and the wall.

Hm. Teaching and work and leisure. Education and work and leisure.

What is leisure, anyway?

Pieper says:

Leisure is a form of that stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear. […] Leisure is the disposition of receptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion — in the real. (Pieper, 31)

Another paradox, of course, is that you can’t really “work on” being better at leisure. Or perhaps it’s not a paradox but a full contradiction. You cannot “work at” leisure, because if you are working, then you are not at leisure. Leisure, according to Pieper, seems to be more something that happens to you than something you yourself bring about. It is a gift.

One last, very interesting thought:

For, when we consider the foundations of Western European culture (is it, perhaps, too rash to assume that our re-building will in fact be carried out in a “Western” spirit? Indeed, this and no other is the very assumption that is at issue today), one of these foundations is leisure. We can read it in the first chapter of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. And the very history of the meaning of the word bears a similar message. The Greek word for leisure (σχολή) is the origin of Latin scola, German Schule, English school. The names for the institutions of education and learning mean “leisure.” (Pieper, 3-4)

Yes, that’s right.

The word for leisure is where we get the word for school.

Catholicism and Censorship Part I

June 16, 2014

Q: Why is it that when I am on vacation and have more time to write, I don’t write at all?

A 1: When I’m teaching, I’m thinking. When I’m thinking, I usually have something to say about it eventually.

A 2: I thrive on being busy / I have not mastered the art of leisure.

Well, here goes. One thing I have been planning to write about for a long time is censorship.

Also known as: which books are appropriate to teach in Catholic schools? How do we determine “appropriateness”?

This question came to my attention this past year when a parent strongly objected to teaching Homer’s Iliad in another teacher’s class because of some “vulgar language” contained in the translation.

As in, the parent demanded that The Iliad be taken completely off the reading list.

My guess is that this request came from ignorance and fear than rational concern, but it certainly got me thinking again.

The question had arisen earlier as well during my job interview. I was asked which books I would be unwilling to teach in a Catholic school, and was strongly pushed toward excluding anything by Toni Morrison.

I am no fan of Morrison, but quite honestly, if I were asked to teach one of her books, I would not have any moral qualms doing so.

Here is my abbreviated answer, in which I replied in as measured a tone as I could muster:

“Well, my usual approach is to be unafraid of controversial literature. I believe all works can be studied with a Catholic perspective, even if the work itself challenges Church teaching. Especially at the high school level, students are being bombarded constantly by anti-Christian propaganda. Sheltering them from this is very unwise. It would be far better to teach them how to encounter and wrestle with such texts.”

This of course is not to say that ALL texts are appropriate for secondary school.

This is also not to say that all texts merit serious reading at all. There is plenty of trash out there that we can rule out.

The real question arises, I believe, when you are confronted with a work of literary merit that rather obstinately challenges Church teaching or, worse, advocates an anti-Catholic worldview.

It’s difficult (and, I believe, rather unhelpful) to talk about this question too abstractly. So, what books do you think are especially relevant to this question in terms of the Catholic high school classroom?

Loving the Bride of Christ

April 29, 2014

2011043216catherine_of_siena_1_inside — source: catholic.org

This article by Carl E. Olsen puts a lot of things into perspective.

There are so many people on both “sides” of the aisle who have abandoned the Church for one reason or another. Or they try to make the Church be something she is not. They deny everything before Vatican 2, or they deny everything including and after Vatican 2, or they take this teaching and leave the other one out, or they take one pope and leave another one out…

I think we all have this temptation sometimes.

Catherine of Siena is a wonderful example of someone who loved the Church despite it’s sinfulness and was faithful to Christ. And even toward her attitude toward the Church was humble and loving.

And people, she lived in WAY worse times than we do now:

Catherine lived during a time of pessimism and cynicism. Barbara Tuchman, in her historical narrative A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, described the period as “a time of turmoil, diminished expectations, loss of confidence in institutions, and feelings of helplessness at forces beyond human control.” The popes lived in exile in Avignon between 1309 and 1377, only returning to Rome after Catherine went personally to the papal court and pleaded with Gregory XI. Monasteries and convents in Europe were decimated by the Plague, and in order to re-populate them unsuitable candidates were often accepted. The secular literature at the time described clerical celibacy as a joke. By the time Catherine died in 1380, the Church was in schism with the election of an anti-pope, Clement VII. (“Lessons from St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor and Daughter of the Church”)

I have not read much of her writings (or, more accurately, dictations) but I’ve been convinced. I need to read her. I think she will help me be a better Christian:

Among various causes of the Church’s sinfulness, Catherine identifies one in particular: a love for the “outer rind” instead of the marrow, i.e., a preoccupation with surface instead of inner realities. Learned people, particularly the clergy, may know much about God, the Church, and Scripture, and yet not be in a love-union with God. The eternal Father tells her that such people “neither see nor understand anything but the outer crust, the letter of Scripture. They receive it without relish” and “approach this Bride [the Church] merely for her outer shell, that is, for her temporal substance, while she is quite empty of any who seek her marrow.” (Ibid)

Whoah.

Pope Saint John XXIII and Pope Saint John Paul II, pray for us.

I think Flannery O’Connor is a kindred spirit of Catherine’s (and in my own private, unofficial and utterly ad cathedram opinion) also a saint. They are soul sisters:

“…the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. ” (Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being)

Holy Thursday

April 17, 2014

Christ Washing Peter's Feet, Ford Madox Brown — “Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet,” by Ford Madox Brown

Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. (“Ei tauta oidate, makarioi este, ean poiēte auta.”)

[…]

Whenever I hear this reading proclaimed on Holy Thursday, I never fail to think how different Christian churches would be if, in addition to our weekly celebrations of the Eucharist we celebrated the Footwashing. It may sound crazy, and it would be terribly complicated to arrange every Sunday—all those basins of waters and towels and shoes and socks!

But imagine the symbolism if every week the presider laid aside his vestments and got down on his hands and knees to scrub the feet of his parishioners. What a reminder it would be to all of us—priests included—that this is what Christ asked us to do in addition to the celebration of the Eucharist. After all, what he says about the Eucharist, “Do this in memory of me” at the Last Supper in the Synoptics, he also says about the footwashing in John: “If you know these things, are you blessed if you do them.”

Seen every Sunday, over and over, the washing of the feet might help us see how power is more intimately linked to service. (Fr. James Martin, SJ, Jesus: A Pilgrimage