Tag: Misunderstandings

Trying to Do the Right Thing

confuse  1. to mix up; jumble together; put into disorder  2. to mix up mentally; specifically, a) to bewilder; perplex  b) to embarrass; disconcert: abash  c) to fail to distinguish between; mistake the identity of

The last part of the definition is an important danger signal. It’s about something we often tend to do, and rarely recognize—although lots of folk sayings should warn us:

– separate the wheat from the chaff
– two wrongs don’t make a right
– don’t be misled by appearances
– don’t judge a book by its cover
– action speak louder than words
– all that glitters is not gold
– don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater

When it comes to right and wrong, things can get confusing. We may fail to distinguish between and mistake the identity of what is of God and what is merely human custom.
I learned a little lesson about that a long time ago, when as a young priest I was sent to Puerto Rico to learn to speak Spanish and to understand the challenges of intercultural communication.
There are many differences between North American Catholicism and Latin American Catholicism—different priorities, different popular customs, different cultural values—but the same fundamental faith.
Here’s a very simple example:
When I heard the confessions of children in New York, it was likely that their main sin would be, “I disobeyed” my mother, father, teacher, etc. But I found that in Puerto Rico the main sin of children was more likely to be, “I disrespected” my mother, father, teacher, and the like.

Are they both sins? Is it ever right to disobey or is it always wrong? Is it ever right to disrespect or is it always wrong? Which “sin” appears to be worse? Which is worse? Like many things, the more you think about them, the more confusing they can become.
Take a far more complicated example, a very contentious matter in the United States both politically and religiously, about being “pro-life” or “pro-choice”.
At first it seems simple enough: we should be both! If “pro-life” refers to respecting human life from conception to death, we certainly should try to do that. If “pro-choice” refers to respecting each person’s God-given right to make his or her own free choices, we certainly should try to do that.
But . . .
What to do, if your free choices limit or block mine or someone else’s?
Is it legitimate for me to take the life of another if it’s the only way to defend myself or to defend another or to defend my home, my family, my land, my country?
What about turning the other cheek or Jesus’ praying, as he accepted being crucified, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”?
If I’m a doctor, must I do every possible thing to heal and prolong life even though it seems clear that my patient is dying?
Is there such a thing as a “just war”? And if so, when? Who decides? If I’m raped, must I bear the child? If I’m dying and in great pain, may I decide not to be resuscitated?
What about the execution of criminals?
O to have Solomon’s wisdom! But even he sometimes confused things and made mistakes. Hopefully he learned from them!


7 February 2021

Just Imagine

Imagination usually refers to the ability to create mental images of things that do not yet exist and hypothetical future scenarios that could exist. It’s a vital ingredient of creativity.
Creative imagination is a necessary component of every field of human endeavor and the inspiration for invention and innovation.
What would science, art, philosophy or theology be like without it? Without it, persons, families, societies, and institutions may decline, wither, and lose vitality.
Imagination is fundamentally a good, although we can imagine good things or bad things, good scenarios or bad ones. Imagination can be at the root of great innovations and of great destructions.
But, oh how sad and confining it is not to have a lively imagination, not to be creative nor innovative, not to be inspiring or ground-breaking.
And, in spite of every effort to do so, you can’t ban or control imagination. Nothing is unthinkable, even though many choices, activities, and deeds may be turn out to be inappropriate, regrettable, harmful, or destructive.
In many sectors of life, there have been failed attempts to control information, beliefs, interactions, freedoms, and creativity—they’re often bad and ultimately unsuccessful.
Let’s be a little imaginative in some areas of religious practice . . . and remembering that just because a thing never happened doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t.
– Married clergy: Can priests or ministers be married? Of course? From the beginning of Christianity, married men have been ordained priests in the Eastern churches, both Catholics and Orthodox, There certainly have been married men with leading ministerial roles in many Christian churches for many years.

– Female clergy: Can women be priests? In some branches of Christianity the practice is already well established. Can women be bishops? (Same answer.) Imagine a woman as a cardinal. Why not? A cardinal is a papal elector. Could a woman be pope?
– Sabbath observance: Christians are church-centered in their worship. Observant Jews are home and family centered. Can Christian observance be more like the Jewish? Imagine the head of a family leading a weekly eucharistic (Thanksgiving) ceremony at home.
– Marriage: Marriage involves a mutual choice and bonding of persons and traditionally has to do with having and raising a family. If the choice and bonding don’t exist anymore, does the marriage exist? What does it take for the civil authority to acknowledge that it is over? What should it take for the ecclesiastical authority to do the same? Should they?
– Human sexuality: Is it or should it be restricted to marriage? Is it by nature or should it be limited to acts of mating or procreation? Should sexual bonding be allowed to persons of the same sex? What about same-sex marriage?
– Respect life: Do we respect a right to life of the baby in the womb? When can a war be just? What about assisting suicide? Capital punishment? How do we strike a balance in a divided and pluralistic society? Can morality be legislated?
– Justice issues: Do I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all? Am I or should I be concerned about legislative oversight and support for these values?
Just imagine a little what could, should, shouldn’t, or might happen.


24 January 2021

Righteous

Basically “righteous” is a good word, but it sometimes has the feel of being pretentious or ostentatious. But it really doesn’t mean anything like that. It’s usually defined as:

– Characterized by uprightness or morality.
– Morally right or justifiable.
– Acting in an upright, moral way; virtuous.
– (Slang) absolutely genuine or wonderful.

It comes from the Middle English rightwos, rightwis, from the Old English rihtwis (cf. right & wise).

   The adjective “Right” can mean:

– In accordance with what is good, proper, or just.
– In conformity with fact, reason, truth, or some standard of principle; correct.
– Correct in judgement, opinion, or action.
– Fitting or appropriate; suitable.
– Most convenient, desirable, or favorable.
– Of, relating to, or located on or near the side of a person or thing that is turned toward the east when the subject is facing north (opposed to left).
– In a satisfactory state; in good order.
– Sound, sane, or normal.
– In good health or spirits.
– Principal, front, or upper.
– Of or relating to political conservatives or their beliefs.
– Socially approved, desirable, or influential.
– Formed by or with reference to a perpendicular.
– Straight.
– (Geometry) having an axis perpendicular to the base.
– Genuine; authentic.

The noun “wise”, as used here, is defined as:

– Way of proceeding or considering; manner; fashion (usually used in combination or in certain phrases): otherwise, in any wise, in no wise.

Okay, now that we more or less know what we’re talking about and know what the words may, can, or do mean, I’d like to recommend being righteous.
We’re desperately in need of more righteous men and women in every sense of the word, including political conservatives!
What’s a conservative really? As the name implies, it’s someone who want to conserve—presumably to conserve something of value in the judgement of that person, many persons of like mind, most persons, or everybody.
If we’re true conservatives, of course we want to conserve what is good—and develop and build on it as well. Naturally if it’s not good, we probably want to correct, improve, and better it, if possible—and if not, even start all over and replace it with something better.
You know, words are like weapons. We must always be careful how we handle and use them; it can be very dangerous and even harmful if we fire them off irresponsibly.
I think it’s a good thing to try to be an upright and moral person, virtuous, genuine, just, correct, truthful, sound, sane, of good spirit, principled, conservative, authentic, and all the rest.
In the best sense of the word, it’s good to be righteous. Righteous people are in short supply. Please help!


17 January 2021

Words, Words, Words . . .

The meaning of words and the use of words are constantly shifting, changing, and evolving, for better or for worse.
Remember the 1939 epic movie, “Gone with the Wind”? There was a controversy whether the censors would approve it for general release and showing in movie theatres.
Why? Well, in a climactic scene toward the end, Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gabel) leaves his desperate and distraught wife, Scarlett O’Hara (played by Vivien Leigh), who pleads with him to stay, claiming what will she do without him.
His famous reply was, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!” The use of that last word was prohibited by the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code!
Today the whole issue seems curious. First, because “damn” now is regarded as a fairly common, mild expletive. Second, because censorship of speech or scenes seem archaic—the current practice, in effect, is almost “anything goes.”
One result is that for a modern audience, that final, farewell scene doesn’t have the force, shock, and dramatic impact that it had in 1939. That means that the final impact of the film is substantially different for 2020 viewers.
A similar observation can be made about a lot of our familiar religious language. We use many words that belong to earlier, much earlier, generations and whose original meaning, force, and impact are substantially different—sometimes to the point of being misunderstood or almost unintelligible—for people of our day.
It’s tough to make a lot of our traditional religious language understandable not only because the meaning of the words has shifted but also because the underlying mentality, customs, and values of the people who use these words has changed also.

For example, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225- 1274), after the rediscovery of the works of Aristotle (384-322 BC)—preserved by Iberian Muslim scholars who had translated his works into Arabic—used some of Aristotle’s ideas and concepts to illuminate Christian beliefs.
Thomas’s philosophy and theology in pre-Vatican II days was at the core of seminary formation, and its vocabulary was still in use (Latin words translated from the Arabic, translated from the Greek).
Take two important concepts derived from Aristotelian philosophy: “substance” and “accident”.
For For Aristotle, “substance” referred to the essence of something, usually what we mean by the word we use to name it—e.g., a car may be of any size, shape, color, make, décor, value, or the like, but it still is a “car”.
For Aristotle, “accident” referred to the non-essential or secondary aspects or properties of something—e.g., human beings may be tall, short, dark, light, male, or female, but all are equally human beings.
St. Thomas is famous for his explanation of “transubstantiation,” using these concepts to try to help us understand the mystery of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Martin Luther (1483-1546) called “transubstantiation” a monstrous word for a monstrous idea. To say the least, for him “transubstantiation” was way out-of-date.
We face similar challenges. By now, Luther’s explanations and language are also somewhat out-of-date and bewildering, along with Thomas’s and Aristotle’s.
We’re still believers, but it’s hard to find the right words, understandable words, to explain our beliefs!


20 September 2020

Traduttore, Traditore

traduttore is Italian for “translator”.
traditore is Italian for “traitor”.

It’s a great expression. It sums up so much so concisely and unforgettably. It calls attention to the tremendous challenges of effectively and correctly translating from one language to another.
Within the same language, it’s possible to mistake one word for a similar other (that’s the play on words in the title above).
Every language has words or phrases without an exact one-word-to-one-word equivalent to another. (That’s most of what we mean by “idioms” — and if you mistranslate idioms are you an “idiot”?)
There also can be a translation problem within the same language, since — like all things — languages change, develop, and evolve with the passage of time.
I have a vague childhood memory of a meaningless lyric, “Flat Foot Floozie (with a Floy Floy)”. Now I know it was the title of a 1938 song. “Floozie” was slang then for a sexually promiscuous woman, and “floy floy”, for a venereal disease.
Sometimes you may have had difficulties understanding Shakespeare — he used a lot of contemporary slang, too!
From the ridiculous to the sublime, how about understanding and translating the Bible and other documents of the Church?
Most of the Jewish scriptures (“Old Testament”) were written in Hebrew, but some parts were in Greek.
The Christian scriptures (“New Testament”), as we have them, are in Greek, although many biblical scholars hold that some may have been translated from an Aramaic original.
The early Church spoke, wrote, and prayed in Greek, the common spoken language of the Greek and eastern Roman empires.

Latin, the common language of the Romans, began to be used instead of Greek for church liturgy, law, and official communications from the fifth century.
From ecclesiastical history, we know that many of the early divisions of the one Church were rooted in ethnic, cultural, and, especially, linguistic misunderstandings.
Translating key theological expressions from the Greek into the Latin was challenging and sometimes inadequate. Thanks be to God, in the ecumenical climate of the latter 20th century, most of these linguistic misunderstandings, inadequate translations, and theological controversies have been resolved.
The Church of Rome took over 400 years to switch finally from Greek to the Latin vernacular language.
It took it over 1,500 years to switch entirely from Latin to the various spoken vernacular languages of the modern world.
“Traduttore, traditore” — translation is always challenging. For example:
– Regarding translating the Bible into English, some still favor familiar Elizabethan English usages (e.g., the King James Bible), even if dated, over contemporary English.
– Regarding translating the Mass into English, some favor fidelity to Latin style and structure (i.e. our current text), even if less intelligible to the majority of present-day speakers of English.
The proud construction of that tower, later known as Babel, was really seriously punished by God: “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that no one will understand the speech of another.” (Ge 11:7).


13 September 2020

Darmok

Growing up, I always was an avid reader of all kinds: fairy tales, fantasy, adventure, classics, murder mysteries, westerns, history. Probably my special favorite was science-fiction.
I was always drawn to science and its discoveries, and I really liked good science-fiction—that is, solid speculative projections based on what we already know. (Not fantasy at all.)
That’s why I loved the science-fiction TV series, Star Trek. It was engaging, realistic, had interesting character development, and was fundamentally optimistic about the future.
Many of its plots were almost parables. It was a very value-rooted show, basically imagining how, in spite of human weaknesses, humanity was gradually growing up and getting better and better.
Among its many successor TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation really stood out for me. Although with an entirely new cast of characters, it continued in the same spirit and with the same challenging originality of the first series.
An episode in its fifth year was especially original and challenging: Darmok.
The plot line was unique: The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise encounters an alien civilization and, no matter what, can’t communicate with them.
Their language appears to be unintelligible —it seems to be constructed of historical references to episodes and events of their unknown history and culture.
The two captains meet on a mutually unknown planet, are faced with common deadly threats, and ultimately begin to understand and collaborate with one another, even though the alien captain dies.
The Enterprise Captain Picard discovered why it was so hard to communicate—the aliens spoke entirely with metaphors.

We face a similar challenge in our religious communication. We use metaphors and references to episodes and events in religious history and culture that are becoming less and less familiar to the majority of people of our day. Our religious language can be almost unintelligible.
Here’s an example: St. Paul wrote to the Romans (6:3), “. . . are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” To understand what he means, you need to know that:
– “baptize”, originally a Greek word, means to immerse or bathe.
– John, called the Baptist, preached the need for a spiritual cleansing and renewal in preparation for the coming restoration and establishment of the kingdom of God that was symbolized by a ritual immersion and washing in the Jordan river.
– The early Christians retained a similar symbolic immersion and washing ceremony as part of rite of initiation to celebrate the decision of new recruits who had embraced the teachings of Jesus and wished to become part of the community of his disciples, the church.
– The plunging under water and rising from the immersion anew is also symbolic of Jesus’s having been plunged into death and rising from death anew.
Paul is communicating that a disciple of Jesus symbolically has been washed from and died to a former worldly way of life and now shares in the hope of resurrection to a new and eternal fullness of life.
We’re used to using many such religious metaphors—and we don’t always realize how hard it is for others to understand us!


16 August 2020

How God Sees

Through the words, witness, and personality of St. Paul—and, of course, the power and providence of God—a community of new Christians was founded in the commercial port city of Corinth.
Paul was proud of them—a paternal pride in them as his spiritual children—and was distressed when he learned about their infighting and divisions. In part that provoked his writing a strong letter to them. In a loving rebuke, he reminded them:

Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the worlds to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God. (1 Cor 26-29)

This was one of the great lessons Paul and every devote Jew learned in studying the history of their people.
In that history, the greatest of their kings was David—and yet David was an unlikely candidate for such a role.
1 Sam 16 tells a story of how God, having rejected Saul as king of Israel, sent Samuel to Jesse of Bethlehem to anoint his choice for Saul’s replacement from among his sons.
Jesse introduced them to Samuel in age order, the oldest first.  Each time, Samuel was impressed by what he saw and thought he had the likely candidate, and each time the Lord disagreed: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature . . . God does not see as a mortal, who sees the appearance. The Lord looks into the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7)

Finally Samuel met the youngest, who had been called home from the field where he was tending the sheep. This wasn’t the greatest job, but then the boy was too young to have much experience at anything else.
Samuel may have wrinkled his nose when the grubby teenager appeared, but the Lord said: “There—anoint him, for this is the one!” (1 Sam 16:12)
The shepherd boy became the great shepherd-king of his people. One of his remote descendants was the Good Shepherd—also an unlikely candidate for the great role of Messiah that was his.
We’re no Samuels, you and I. We’re not great prophets with huge destinies in our hands. But, then, in some sense we are, in that God uses each of us as instruments to achieve his purposes—in spite of our often misconstruing his choices and plans!
As Samuel, we are often mislead by appearances when we deal with other people, by externals which are superficial and give little clue as to the nature and possibilities of what’s before our eyes.
We may or may not suspect the depth and quality of another, but in any case we cannot see their heart—meaning, of course, the essence of the person, the power of their love and generosity.
Also, although we ourselves may not be “wise by human standards . . . powerful . . . of noble birth”, God may chose us to “shame the wise . . . shame the strong . . . reduce to nothing those who are something.”
“We” means you, me, and everybody else, no matter how unlikely they may appear.
Only God sees into the heart!


5 July 2020

Holy Places, Practices, People, and Spirit

Our religious language sometimes may sound very curious to others!
We often say that a “Practicing” Catholic goes to “Church” to “hear Mass” on “Sunday” and to “receive” the “Eucharist”.
Here’s a few of the curious things:
– “Practicing” usually means actively working at something and often implies learning how to do something well. (e.g., “Practice makes perfect.”)
– “Church” originally referred to people, the assembly of the believers in God, rather than to the place where they assembled.
– “hear Mass” is an odd old expression. Like attending a play or a concert, it suggests we’re watching and listening to others—actors, artists, or priests—doing something special and meaningful.
– “Sunday”—meaning the “day of the sun”—is a curious name for what Christians consider to be the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week. (Nowadays it often seems more like the last day of the weekend.)
– “receive” means to get, accept, hold, which is an odd verb to use with words like “Eucharist” or “communion,” which refers to being in union with God and/or others.
– “Eucharist” itself means “thanksgiving” —which makes the expression to “receive” the Eucharist especially curious, since thanksgiving isn’t something you get, but something you do.
Because of the Corona virus pandemic, we haven’t been able to go to Church on Sunday (although we may have been able to hear and see Mass on television), and we haven’t been able to receive the Eucharist.
In effect, right now, according to the definition, we’re not “Practicing Catholics”!
The situation is different for Jews. An “Observant” Jew follows the Torah as faithfully as possible, especially as regards the Sabbath Day—the last day of the week, the day of Rest.

The Sabbath is observed and celebrated at home. After Friday ends at sunset and the Sabbath day begins, a family prays together at home with a certain degree of ritual and preparation. No rabbi is needed—the head of the family leads the prayer and ritual.
Of course, Jews may choose also to gather in prayer with others in a synagogue, but there’s no obligation to do so.
When the Jerusalem Temple still existed, the privileged place of contact with the Lord and the place of sacrifice, a faithful Jew (an “observant’ or “practicing” Jew) was obligated to go there to sacrifice only three times a year, for three major feasts.
A Jew doesn’t have to have a special ordination to lead others in prayer or rituals. The Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony that welcomes a young person into adulthood is enough. A Jewish adult can read and proclaim the word of God in the midst of the community of believers.
Maybe we can learn something important from contemporary Jewish practice. The destruction of the Temple didn’t mean the end of Judaism—but it did change Jewish practice and piety.
At least for now, the pandemic and closures have challenged Catholics to a significant shift in their practice and piety.
We traditionally have had an emphasis on holy places and practices, on assembling in churches for sacred rituals led by priests.
Now we’ve been challenged to remember that faith resides in and is nourished by all God’s holy people, that the holy Spirit always is at work among and in each of us, and that we can gather together to give thanks to God—all this, at home!


24 May 2020

Vanishing Clergymen

Fifty-two years ago, two years after the conclusion of Vatican Council II, an article by Msgr. Ivan Illich was published in The Critic magazine. It was entitled “The Vanishing Clergyman”.
Like much of Illich’s reflections, talks, and publications, it was way ahead of its time, almost prophetic. It was also startling, controversial, and criticized by very many of its readers.
It can’t be summarized any more than a few bars of only one of its melodies can summarize a concerto. Illich’s clear, tightly-packed, and well-organized exposition is a meal no slight tasting can fully imagine.
From the moment I first read this article it was unforgettable. Re-reading it now, I marvel at how prescient it was and find new depths of insight and meaning in it.
Some have misunderstood Msgr. Illich, thinking him to be an eccentric genius, a wild man whose biased extremism was destroying the church—but, his thought and his work faithfully echoed the spirit of John XXIII in convoking the second Vatican Council and of Paul VI in reconvening it and patiently and perseveringly guiding its implementation.
A brilliant thinker and reader of the signs of the times, Msgr. Illich had little patience with head-in-the-sand reactions to them. He spared no punches in suggesting courses of action to address them from a prospective of deep faith.
Of course, he also knowingly and intentionally wanted to rattle his readers out of their lethargy and hesitation—e.g., the striking title of his essay (which did focus, in particular, on ministry)
It has taken half a century for many of the analyses, ideas, and proposals he advanced, long treated as marginal and extreme, finally to start becoming matters of serious mainstream consideration.

Here are a few excerpts of his thoughts (their selection reflects my own bias):
– the Church’s institutional bureaucracy is in need of radical structural reform;
– the relationships between sacramental ministry and full-time personnel, between ministry and celibacy, and between ministry and theological education need to be re-examined;
– the post-conciliar growth of the Vatican is leading to an ungovernable bureaucratic maze, overwhelmingly staffed by clerical specialists, members of the aristocracy of the only feudal power left in the Western world;
– in the entire Church, a clergy survives partly because priestly service at the altar is united with clerical power and privilege;
– the Church needs men deeply faithful, living a life of insecurity and risk, free from hierarchical control, working for the eventual “dis-establishment” of the Church from within;
– the era of religious congregations may be over . . . an analogous movement is at work among the clergy;
– an adult layman, ordained to the ministry, will preside over the Christian community of the future. The ministry will be an exercise of leisure rather than a job;
– the current ecclesiastical imagination is still inadequate for defining this new function—the lay priest;
– the union of the clerical state, holy orders, and celibacy in the life of the Church has confused the understanding of their individual realities; (and above all)
– the Spirit, continually re-creating the Church, can be trusted.


9 June 2019

The Medium Is the Message

In his 1964 book on understanding media, Marshall McLuhan coined the now familiar phrase, “The medium is the message.” It means that the nature of the channel through which a message is transmitted can become more important than the meaning or content of the message itself.
With all due respect, this can and often does happen with sacraments.
What is a sacrament? The word is rooted in a Latin translation of the Greek word for mystery, in the original sense of something secret and beyond our full understanding or comprehension.
Take, for instance, the sacrament of Baptism. The rite of baptism historically was fundamentally an initiation ceremony for new Christians. A Christian is someone who has chosen to embrace and live by the teachings of Jesus in union with others of similar commitment (i.e. the Church).
Once the person has decided to make this new life commitment, he or she is welcomed into the Christian community by participating in a ceremonial washing and anointing ritual.
The washing, originally a complete immersion in water, was a public sign of cleansing away an old style of life and emerging into a new one, a “rebirth”.
The anointing with oil evoked being consecrated, publicly and permanently, to a new role in life as a follower of Jesus—and being spiritually strengthened for the challenges of this new life like the athlete anointed before the competition.
But, gradually, gradually the ceremony itself began to overshadow the important life decision and commitment that necessarily preceded it and was celebrated by it. In fact, with the development of infant baptism, the subject of the ceremony did not yet even have the capacity of making a life choice.

Once Baptism came to be seen as necessary for salvation, a very short form of the essential part of the ceremony was used for infants in danger of death—and even for dying adults beyond the possibility of making coherent personal choices.
The medium—the sacramental rite—in some sense became more important than the message—the personal, adult commitment to follow Jesus which the rite celebrated. In fact, it almost became magical in that the correct pouring of water and saying of words themselves were believed to achieve grace and salvation—and were seen as necessary for it.
Take, for another instance, the sacrament of Holy Orders. Fundamentally the rite of ordination is a commissioning ceremony for various ranks of church officers.
It presumes that the participant has discerned and is responding to a call from God and also has been judged qualified and acceptable for special office by the Church—in the sense, once, of the whole Christian community but, now, of only the ordaining bishop and the authorities who recommend the candidate to him.
But, again, gradually the ceremony itself began to overshadow the important life decision, assessments, and commitment that necessarily preceded it and was celebrated by it.
Again, the medium—the rite—was becoming more important than the message. It, too, almost became magical in that ordination itself was conceived as mystically changing and empowering the candidate, even regardless of his qualifications or lack thereof.


26 May 2019