Time has published an article on the phenomenon of “Helicopter Parents,” which describes the wide-spread practice of over-parenting.  In my opinion, this problem is particularly nefarious as it pertains to boys, as I have mentioned elsewhere.

According to the article there is a new movement called “slow-parenting,” or “free-range parenting,” the latter, an interesting colloquialism that I am not sure I will get used to.  There are all kinds of Phd’s and self-appointed experts who are prepared to convince and train parents to be more laid-back and offer less control and “hovering” over their children.  That is all well and good, except that neither the writer, nor the experts seem to see over-parenting as part of a larger phenomenon of a society that has gone to extremes on so many levels.

The writer notes that parents are recognizing that they are too busy and have too little time to recreate.  It seems to me that such “idle” moments are also the best times to communicate, to open up about things that need to be discussed, to think, to be creative, and of course, to pray.   The Catholic perspective, with the week built around Sunday Mass and the day around the family meal, has much of the practical common sense parents need built right into the philosophy.

Furthermore, larger families and a mom at home, make over-parenting a practical impossibility.  Not even super-mom can over-supervise a large family.  Nor would she want to.  A mom at home with a large brood will be pulling her hair out in no time.   It won’t be long before she chases all the kids out of the house and tells them to go climb a tree.

Time has only printed this article because it is backed up by “research.”  All the writer needed to do was ask his grandmother.

Hat tip to Other Mary.

On the great vigil of Easter in 433, which was also March 25th, Feast of the Annunciation, St. Patrick determined to meet the Celtic chieftains and High King Leoghaire  on their own ground at Tara by and challenge their superstitious and idolatrous druidism.  The pagans were prepared for the messenger of Christ, as their demoniac prophets had divined his presence.au

St. Patrick made his presence known opposite Tara on the summit of the hill of Slane where he kindled the Easter fire.  The druid priests responded by appealing to Leoghaire:  ”O King, live for ever. This fire, which has been lighted in defiance of the royal edict, will blaze for ever in this land unless it be this very night extinguished.”  By order of the king the druids were sent to the hill of Slane to put out Patrick’s fire and slay him, but by miraculous intervention, both the fire and the saint were protected from all harm, much to the consternation of the pagans.

In the morning the saint accompanied by his Christian band formed the Easter procession and proceeded from the fire on the hill of Slane to the Tara.  St. Patrick was arrayed in full episcopal attire.  As he approached the stronghold of Satan, the druid priests made use of their black incantations to cover all the land in darkness, but at his prayers this wile was undone and the sun shown gloriously in the Easter Day.  In the light the druid high priest was then raised off the ground into the heights only to be brought down again by divine power and dashed on the rocks below.

In this way St. Patrick defeated paganism in Ireland and proved to all the cheiftans the truth of the Catholic religion.  Through his great faith and his willingness to risk his life before the minions of Satan, the Saint one the admiration of the King and obtained from him permission to spread the true faith throughout the realm.

Life is always a struggle between light and darkness. It is the story of mankind.  It is the story of Ireland and it is the news of the week:

God bless Dana Rosemary Scallon, a modern day Joan of Arc, who in the past was not afraid of being attacked by the Irish bishops in defense of the right to life.  Read her largely unheeded exhortation to the Irish people:

This is no longer about the politics of right and left, it is about right and wrong. I can no longer stay silent about the wilful betrayal of Ireland’s Constitution.

BTW, the preamble of that constitution reads thus:

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred,

We, the people of Éire,

Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial,

Gratefully remembering their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our Nation,

And seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations,

Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution.

In effect, the Lisbon Treaty offers no protection to the unborn and largely eliminates Ireland’s judicial sovereignty.

What about “acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ”?

Pray for Ireland.  Ask St. Patrick to bring light into the darkness and exorcise the Great Snake from the Emerald Isle.

Or the Theology of the Soapbox

What follows in another one of my long expositions on the Theology of the Body.  I have to give a loud content warning at the outset.  There is some frank talk here about sexuality, or rather, my complaints that there is too much frank talk about such matters.  I would have asked Dawn Eden to publish this one, but she has very courageously retired from blogging.  I have to commend her on her decision; however, it is not without regret on my part.

I again want to let those I disagree with know that my intentions are honorable and I do not question their integrity or commitment to the faith.  I can take my lumps if I deserve them.

In a recent apologia for Christopher West, Father Thomas Loya makes grand assertions:

Christopher West is a bit of a mystic—in the best sense of the word. His work, which seems strange to some, is actually that of a pioneer. And like all pioneers, West is taking a lot of arrows for his courage. In the face of much resistance, West is courageous enough to invite all of us to do just what John Paul II invited us to do: to think and talk in spousal categories.

He goes on to put the author and speaker in good company:

West’s use of this kind of imagery is rooted deeply in the Catholic tradition.  Hence, if we want to condemn West for certain comparisons he makes, then it seems we must condemn a great many saints as well.  St. John Chrysostom told married couples to remember that Christ united himself to the Church “in a spiritual intercourse.”  Teresa of Avila writes of ecstasies she experienced in “nuptial union” with Christ.  St. Bernard of Clairvaux had mystical experiences of nursing at Mary’s breasts. St. Louis de Montfort repeatedly refers to Mary’s milk and breasts as a source of consolation for Christians.  Bishop Fulton Sheen – assuring his audience that he was quoting St. Augustine verbatim – proclaimed that Christ “came to the marriage bed of the Cross, … united himself with the woman [the Church], and consummated the union forever.”  And he didn’t hesitate to share publicly Augustine’s idea that the blood and water from Christ’s side was, as it were, his “spiritual seminal fluid.”  For those with eyes to see, these precious theological jewels are not a cause for scandal.  They make perfect mystical sense; they are beautiful and profoundly healing.

No Mystics or Martyrs

In truth, these “precious theological jewels,” are not a cause for scandal, nor has anyone that I know of been scandalized by them.  This is another straw man argument put forward in defense of Christopher West without addressing any of the real issues that have been raised by those who have problems with his presentation of TOB.

I know very well that there are many people who disagree with my analysis of the West/TOB issue.  I do not claim to have any mystical insight, nor do I believe that anyone who disagrees with me is my persecutor, nor do I know of anyone else on my side of the issue who believes he or she is suffering the slings and arrows of defenders of West.  Considering the influence West already has, I think it would be more productive if these elevations to mystic and martyr were dropped in favor of an effort to engage in a real intellectual discussion of the issues.

I do not know of anyone who has minimized the value of John Paul II’s presentation of the faith in “spousal categories,” nor anyone on my side of the issue who has criticized a saint.  On the contrary, it is West who takes the saints to task for their alleged prudery.  But let me comment on Father Loya’s saint references one by one.

Saintly Eroticism?

The context of St. John Chrysostom’s remark is a discussion about the holiness of marriage insofar as it was denied by heretics who themselves engaged in sexual depravity.  It was not an exhortation to have a holy preoccupation with sex.

St. Theresa of Avila and other mystics, like St. Bernard, often comment on nuptial and erotic imagery of the Song of Songs, but this does not translate into the sexualization of their mystical experiences with Christ or into a constant preoccupation with the natural and holy pleasures of marriage, as I have pointed out elsewhere.  If the contrary is true, I would like to see someone actually make a reasoned argument for the position, rather than simply assert that it is true because saints commented on the Song of Songs.

As for St. Bernard’s mystical experience and St. Louis’s de Monfort’s references to Maria Lactans, are West and Father Loya really suggesting that these experiences and meditations were sexually erotic?  That assertion, quite frankly, would be blasphemous.  If that is not what is meant, I would like to know what the correct interpretation is.  (I have dealt specifically with West’s over-extended and flatly mistaken interpretation of St. Louis, elsewhere.)  If grown men who have a natural and vehement sexual attraction to women find it difficult to have the same regard for a woman’s body as a nursing infant, I do not think this should be faulted them.  Do you?  It is no shame to admit that we are not St. Bernard.

The quote of St. Augustine by Bishop Sheen is conveniently edited to exclude the statement of the saint that Christ came to “a bed of pain, not pleasure.”  Father Loya has done this more than once, as I have learned from Dawn Eden.  In any case, as much as I believe St. Augustine is scapegoated for modern prudery, I can hardly imagine the great doctor of the West preaching and teaching that we ought to have a holy preoccupation with sex.

Since when does nuptial and erotic imagery in the bible and the writings of the saints translate into a constant, marketed, mystic and martyred fascination with sexuality?  Since Christopher West has asserted it and suggested that those who doubt it need to look within themselves and ask why they are uncomfortable with thinking in this way.  And now Loya plays the absolute moral authority card by declaring West mystic and martyr.

Pious Sex Obsession

Let us be clear: The real issue is not whether the Theology of the Body is an important contribution to the Church’s new evangelization, but whether as a single corpus of magisterial teaching it constitutes the new evangelization, and whether its valid interpretation is a mandate for a fascination with the erotic.  I am willing to drop the veiled language only in the sense that we need to make plain that all this revisionist apologetics has become a pious justification for the contemporary obsession with sex.

Loya quotes John Paul II, where he says that “consciousness of the spousal meaning of the body constitutes the fundamental component of human existence the world” (TOB 15:5).  But why are we supposed to believe that this mean that we must keep our minds focused on sex?  And then Loya quotes the Holy Father again in Mulieris Dignitatem, where he says that “the Eucharist is the … sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the Bride” (26).  But why are we to conclude, then, that the pope wants us to think sexual thoughts?  John Paul II’s Theology of the body is so philosophical and dense that “experts” have succeeded in squeezing more out of the text than is warranted because they are very effective apologists and rhetoricians.

Manichaean Bogeyman

Father Loya has his own question which I am happy to answer once he clarifies if for me:  “Could it be that those tainted by a Manichaean suspicion are actually projecting their own issues on to West?”  And who would these persons “tainted by a Manichaean suspicion” be?  Perhaps those who disagree with West, precisely because they disagree with him?  This is a classic example of the fallacy of the complex question.  So who is projecting?

Lest you think I exaggerate, lest you think that we are not being told to shed our inhibitions and get erotic, behold the language of Father Loya’s Holy Week meditation:

So, is your sex life improving? It should for those who have really understood and embraced the season of Lent. We said last time in this column that the season of Lent was great for our sexual lives.  Now it gets even better!

. . . . The events of the week leading up to Christ’s death on the Cross are like a mystical “foreplay.” In fact, Jesus is even stripped naked during this process. What happens on the Cross is not just the death of Christ but the consummation of a mystical marriage between God and His Bride. This is why Christ looks down from the Cross at his mother and calls her “Woman.”  He echoes the name Adam gave to Eve because in this climactic moment, Christ becomes the new Adam and his Mother becomes the new Eve.

. . . . This is why in my church we sing with great exuberance on the days of Pascha (EasterJ “Christ emerges from the tomb like a bridegroom from the bridal chamber and fills the women with great joy!” Wow! Now is that sexual or what!?

Lent is “mystical foreplay”?  And Holy Week the best part of our sex lives?  No, the problem here is not that prudery reacts against something holy, but that common sense reacts against the vulgarization of something holy.

Sex Sells

But we are told this kind of language is necessary because people are deeply wounded in their sexuality and need to be talked to frankly about it.  That is certainly a valid consideration. Good people will have to be free, within measure, to decide for themselves where the line ought to be drawn.  My inclination is not to burden apologists by all kinds of secondary rules about what they may or may not say; however, a good argument does not justify a bad conclusion.  I contend that a holy fascination with sexuality is not in any way mandated by John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

The problem with marketing language designed for our oversexed age, is that it canonizes and intellectualizes the modern sex obsession.  That objections to this are rooted in Manichaeism is a red herring, because the people claimed to be in most need of healing through TOB are those who already have little in the way of sexual inhibitions.  Furthermore, the advance levels of indoctrination into this popularization of TOB are not less explicit, but more explicit.  So the erotic preoccupation really has little if anything to do with apologetical exigencies.

Hermeneutic of Discontinuity

In fact, this sex fascination is based on a hermeneutic of discontinuity and is not a development of doctrine at all, because, as Newman would point out, its “action upon the past” is not “conservative.” That is, on the contrary, it “obscures,” not “illustrates”; corrects, not “corroborates,” “the body of thought from which it proceeds.”  Thus, it is a corruption of doctrine, not a development.  Any recourse to mystic intuitions in support of this kind of speculation or martyrdom when it is opposed just sinks the position further into fallacious argumentation.

I do not oppose this with such vehemence because I dislike West or Loya, or because I am jealous (another really swift argument), but because the assertions I criticize are false.  The topics being discussed are extraordinarily important. The more those who disagree with me call my part of the discussion foul play, the more I am convinced that what they espouse is harmful.

Mystery and Martyrdom

In fact, chastity is a mystic reality, precisely because it is the mystery of martyrdom.  This is the doctrine of marriage, according to St. Paul, which teaches that marriage is a great mystery, precisely because the Bridegroom gave Himself up for the Bride (Eph 5: 32, 25).  As John Paul II states:

The Church is herself in the degree to which she, as body, receives from Christ her head the whole gift of salvation a fruit of Christ’s love and of his giving for the Church: fruit of Christ’s giving to the end.  The gift of self to the Father through obedience to the point of death (see Phil 2:8) is at the same time, according to Ephesians, an act of “giving himself for the Church.”  In this expression, redeeming love transforms itself, I would say, into spousal love: by giving himself for the Church, with the same redeeming act, Christ united himself once and for all with her as Bridegroom to the Bride, as the husband with the wife, giving himself through all that is included once for all in “giving himself” for the Church (TOB 90.6).

“Redeeming love,” “spousal love,” “giving himself,” and “obedience to the point of death,” are all dimensions of the same love, the focus of which is oblative and sacrificial.  Certainly erotic pleasure is related to sacrificial love as receiving is to giving, but even the theological meaning of giving of one’s body in Christian marriage is more about sacrifice than possession, more about selflessness than pleasure.  Christ spousal love is the act of “giving himself” to his bride on the cross in the embrace of death.  The paradox is that the keenest joy and pleasure, even in the marital embrace, is experienced when there is complete selflessness.  The eros God intends for us is gained, not by focusing on it, but on agape.

This primacy of oblative love reveals the full context of St. Augustine’s remark, only selectively quoted by Father Loya:

The heavenly bridegroom left the heavenly chambers, with the presage of the nuptials before him.  He came to the marriage bed of the cross, a bed not of pleasure, but of pain, united himself with the woman, and consummated the union forever.  As it were, the blood and water that came from the side of Christ was the spiritual seminal fluid.

Pope Benedict XVI clarifies this in Deus Caritas Est when he calls the death of Christ on the cross “love in its most radical form,” from which “our definition of love must begin.”  This “act of oblation” is given an “enduring presence” in the Eucharist through which we “are drawn into Jesus act of self-oblation (12, 13).  The pope says:

The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God’s presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus’ self-gift, sharing in his body and blood. The sacramental “mysticism”, grounded in God’s condescension towards us, operates at a radically different level and lifts us to far greater heights than anything that any human mystical elevation could ever accomplish (13).

So yes, the Eucharist is “the sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the Bride,” but this statement is not a pretext for dwelling on the marital embrace.  It is not holy eroticism.  There is far too much in the world today that, a la Dan Brown, turns eroticism into piety and prayer.  This is not the “sacramental mysticism” of the Church, but the “human mystical elevation” of the pagans which the pope criticizes.

Let’s Talk Sex, Not

Lest I be misconstrued, I must refer once again to the context of my remarks, which is in no way determined by an antipathy toward erotic love, or by the machinations of the Manichaean demon.  The fact is that John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is being used by others to justify a fascination with erotic love and the institutionalization of sex talk as the new evangelization.  The pretext for this is the presumption that the absence of this kind of talk and discomfort with it is due to prudery.

Prudery is a problem, as I have attested many times before, but it is simply not true that prior the sexual revolution, Vatican II and John Paul II there was no mainstream corrective offered here in America by prominent Catholics.  Dawn Eden has done some research on this subject and has discovered, for example, that in 1958 Msgr. George A. Kelly edited and published a highly successful and acclaimed manual on marriage that addressed prudery in very explicit terms.

Monsignor Kelly was prominent priest of the Archdiocese of New York, appointed by Cardinal Spellman to be Family Life Director in 1955, and who in 1977 founded the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.  Monsignor Kelly’s Catholic Marriage Manual “sold a quarter-million copies and netted him almost a quarter-million dollars in royalties, every penny of which went to the New York Foundling Hospital.”  It received Cardinal Spellman’s imprimatur, and was highly and widely praised by members of the Catholic media and academia.

Chapter 3 of the manual was written by Bernard J. Pisani, M.D. and entitled “A Catholic Doctor Looks at Marriage.”  There Dr. Pisani addressed prudery in no uncertain terms:

Since sex is God’s creation, it is presumptuous for any creature to call It “dirty” or “vulgar.” Yet misunderstanding of the goodness of sex when its use conforms with God’s law is the cause of many difficulties in marriage. These problems stem from the prevailing point of view of a century ago that the sex act was not “nice” under any circumstances. Sex was something shameful, a necessary evil that should be kept hidden from children as long as possible. Remnants of that puritanical point of view remain. Often a woman in her twenties, who is ready to enter matrimony, has the fixed notion taught by her parents that the act of physical love is an animal function which should be tolerated when necessary but never enjoyed. She has been warned since adolescence about the evils of sexual intercourse. Because of their own misunderstanding her parents were unable to draw the necessary distinction between the improper use of sex outside of marriage and its proper role inside marriage. They regard God’s creation as a necessary evil at best.

What is more noteworthy is that doctor Pisani addressed the question of “mutual climax” at more or less the same time that Karol Wojtyla was delivering his talks in Lublin that included the same notion.  The written work Love and Responsibility did not appear until 1960 and was not published in English until 1981, twenty-three years after American Catholics had the opportunity to read these words of Dr. Pisani:

Since the typical male will reach a climax sooner than his wife unless he controls himself, he should learn to delay the peak of his excitement and to caress and stimulate his wife so that they achieve release in unison.  Young brides especially should realize that the reaching of such an adjustment often requires considerable time. Because the act of sex is such an intimate activity, its enjoyment requires the gradual flowering of mutual understanding and a sense of freedom. The husband must learn to recognize his wife’s reactions at the various preliminary stages and to govern his own impulses accordingly. Satisfactory adjustment in the sense of simultaneous release may require many months or even years to achieve, and perhaps may never be achieved on a regular basis. You will help this adjustment if you discuss your relationship with love, frankness and an understanding of your partner’s fundamental nature and specific responses.

So much for West’s claim that the Holy Father was revolutionary on this point.  And to think this was first put into print in the body-hating, sex-despising U.S. of A.  The popular American interpretation of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body which at heart is a formula to overcome prudery is based on a myth that the Church had no effective means or even the awareness to address the problem.  This is not to say that John Paul’s teaching is not a tremendous contribution, only that the American interpretation is based on a historical falsehood used to justify a hermeneutic of discontinuity.

One thing can be learned from the time in which prudery was being addressed by the Church without the “theological time bomb” that has become a pretext for focusing on the erotic:  It is actually possible to address problems of sexuality and prudery without ripping down all the veils, vulgarizing our catechesis and making sure we train ourselves to look on nakedness without shame.

The Theology of Clothing

In fact, it seems that in 2000 Cardinal Ratzinger might have been offering a corrective when he dealt with the modern liturgical penchant for unveiling everything.  He wrote that “the theology of clothing becomes a theology of the body.”  His use of John Paul’s appellative for this modern corpus of teaching on marriage and sexuality cannot be coincidental.

The context of Cardinal Ratzinger’s remarks on this topic in The Spirit of the Liturgy is his discussion of the meaning of priestly vestments, which signify, in the words of St. Paul, the clothing of our perishable nature in immortality (1 Cor 15:53).  Though the context is different from our immediate concern, it is, in my opinion, at least analogous and validly applied to our topic.  The Holy Father himself makes reference to the Theology of the Body and concludes his discussion with a reference to the clothing of the newly baptized in the white garment, which is “an expression of the purity and beauty of the risen Christ” (220).  It is at least interesting that the new man in Christ, redeemed in body and soul, and incorporated into the body of Christ through Baptism, is not stripped but clothed.  In any case, here is Cardinal Ratzinger at length:

Paul describes the body of this time as an “earthly tent”, which will be taken down, and looks ahead to the house not made with human hands, ‘eternal in the heavens’. He is anxious about the taking down of the tent, anxious about the ‘nakedness’ in which he will then find himself. His hope is to be not “unclothed”, but “further clothed”, to receive the “heavenly house” — the definitive body — as a new garment.

. . . Thus the theology of clothing becomes a theology of the body. . . . The liturgical vestment carries this message in itself.  It is a “further clothing”, not an “unclothing”, and the liturgy guides us on the way to this “further clothing”, on the way to the body’s salvation in the risen body of Jesus Christ, which is the new “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor 5:1).  The Body of Christ, which we receive in the Eucharist, to which we are united in the Eucharist (“one Body with him”, cf. 1 Cor. 6:12-20), saves us from “nakedness”, from the bareness in which we cannot stand before him (218).

Perhaps, the reason why John Paul II never went as far as to say that “sex is liturgical,” not even with qualifying words “in a sense,” (a phrase he often uses in TOB, as Steve Kellmeyer has pointed out) is because of the extremes to which men are inclined to go.  Perhaps it had nothing to do with scandalizing the prudish, but with not encouraging those who are inclined to strip everything down to genitalia and sex acts.

The Reform of the Reform

Is not what the pope has called the “reform of the reform” a measured reaction against the vulgarity by which every boundary and veil has been penetrated and every sanctuary violated.  We no longer even have sanctuaries, we have unveiled, boundariless “worship spaces.”  Even Catholic liturgical orthodoxy is presented to us in such a way that we are forced to watch the Easter Candle copulate with the Baptismal font.  I am not going to mince words here.  I have been criticized for not using “nuptial’ language in reference to this groundless assertion.  When is it ever appropriate or even moral to simulate a sex act in public (or even in private for that matter), let alone during the sacred liturgy?  Never.  We fittingly modify the description of such acts with the word “pornographic.”  It is only the skills of the rhetorician that has allowed this travesty to pass for liturgical interpretation.

Or we are told that the Baldichin covering the altar of sacrifice is a bed canopy, because, by all means we need to think about a man and woman having sex on the altar when the Sacrifice of Christ is being offered during the Holy Mass.  But, in fact, isn’t a bed canopy a kind of veil, a boundary that creates a sacred space in which “liturgy” of marriage takes place and in which the revelation and communion is experienced by the two spouses alone? In fact as we learn from the New Liturgical Movement blog, the Baldichin is traced back to the ancient ciborium mangum, the veils of which were actually drawn closed during parts of the sacred liturgy.  There is no question that the liturgy is replete with “spousal” and “nuptial” imagery, as are the scriptures and the writings of the saints, but I take exception to Father Loya’s hijacking of these terms, by suggesting that healthy Catholics ought to see the erotic everywhere.

In fact, the language of the liturgy envelopes the mysteries we celebrate in a sacred clothing. “Holy” means “other,” and times, places and activities are sacralized (made holy) by setting them apart, not by stripping them naked.   Husbands and wives should absolutely rejoice in each others’ bodies and in their embrace which is blessed and hallowed by the Church.  This is not even an issue.  Furthermore, an exalted view of sexuality should be a means of healing us of the wounds of our disordered sexual lives, but this voyeuristic enthusiasm for nakedness is not the proclamation of the holy, on the contrary is the vulgarization of the holy.

The liturgical boundary most often violated in this age of the sexual revolution and crusade against prudery has been the line that delineates the nave of the Church from the sanctuary, or the congregation from the place of sacrifice.  There used to be an altar rail marking that separation, where the rule was reverence and awe of mystery.  In even earlier times, there was the chancel screen or rood screen which obscured the altar of sacrifice and shrouded it in mystery.  Eamon Duffy, in his monumental The Stripping of the Altars, writes that rood screen in medieval England and the veil which was added to it on the weekdays of Lent, did not, contrary most common assumptions, prevent the faithful from fully participating in the liturgy.  The screen was not a wall, but a window that framed the “liturgical drama.”  In this way, the people where able to penetrate the mystery, and at times the mystery would come to them when the ministers would come out carrying sacred objects, especially, at Easter time, when the priest would carry the Sacred Host itself before the screen (111-112).

The purpose of the veil, Duffy says,

“was to function as a temporary ritual deprivation of the sight of the sacring.  Its symbolic effectiveness derived from the fact that it obscured for a time something which was normally accessible; in the process it heightened the value of the spectacle it temporarily concealed (111).

No one is saying that clothes should not come off at times.  But those who reveal themselves, those to whom they reveal themselves, and the time, place and manner of the revelation need to be sacralized, not vulgarized.  It is interesting to note also that in the tradition of the Roman Rite the tabernacle veil is ordinarily the first sign that the Eucharist is present in the tabernacle.  Our Lord is reposed behind the veil and at the sacred hour and within the sacrificial space He comes to His people.

In the East, this custom of veiling the sanctuary is retained in a fuller form by means of the iconostasis.  In the Syriac Church the sanctuary is still completely veiled.

My point is not to argue for a return to the screen, though I believe the elimination of the altar rail has at the very least sent the wrong signal; my point is merely to say that if marriage and sexuality have, “in a sense,” a liturgical dimension, and if the language of the liturgy is nuptial, then it is simply a non sequitur to claim that unveiling every liturgical and nuptial reality is a virtue.  More to the point perhaps is the suggestion of Cardinal Ratzinger that the Eucharistic Canon ought to return to a more silent form.  Silence is a form of veiling.  It is certainly appropriate  to be silent when to say something would only vulgarize a mystery.  Much can be learned from St. John Chrysostom of this silence, which, as I know all too well, has been ignored in the most sterilely clinical and irreverent ways:

Since this heavenly birth cannot be described, neither does His coming amongst us in these days permit of too curious scrutiny.  Though I know that a Virgin this day gave birth, and I believe that God was begotten before all time, yet the manner of this generation I have learned to venerate in silence and I accept that this is not to be probed too curiously with wordy speech.  For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of Him who works.

In any case the greater availability of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass might contribute something positive to this needed dialogue of silence and sacrality.

Don’t You Dare Touch that Loincloth

West and company want a clear view of everything and they want to talk about it, and talk about it, and talk about it.  Even the loincloth on Our Lord, they have said, is a necessary evil.  We just can’t handle looking at Our Lord’s nakedness, but that is the real shame, they say.  We are told that His nakedness on the Cross is a revelation.

Actually, it is a shameful thing.  When our Lord revealed himself in glory on Mount Tabor, he was not stripped.  It was his face that did shine as the sun, and his garment that became white as snow (Mt 17:2).  He did not reveal his nakedness; He revealed the light emanating from the veil of His clothing.  No, we were the ones who exposed His nakedness.  We, the blasphemers and ingrates, stripped him naked, raised him on a gibbet and mocked him.

There is no question that in this Jesus fulfills the Old Testament typology as the New Adam, who recreates us in the nakedness of the Cross.  But was it without shame?  To recreate us Our Blessed Lord was made a curse for us.  It is a shameful thing to be stripped and crucified before a jeering mob, and a curse to be hung on a tree (Heb 12:2; Gal 3:13).  The typological correspondence doesn’t mean that we should dare to be so bold as to stare at Our Lord’s nakedness.  It means that the nakedness imposed on Him shamefully is the sign of our restoration to grace, and the hope of the redemption of our bodies.  Where does John Paul II tell us that the Theology of the Body means we should be focused on the erotic, even to the point of wishing to strip Our Blessed Savior naked?  This is truly shameful.

Peril and Martyrdom

In 1927 G. K. Chesterton delivered lucid address entitled Culture and the Coming Peril.  “Vulgarity” was the term he used to describe the peril into which culture was falling.  He defined vulgarity in relation to culture as “standardization at a lower standard.”  He said:

The kind of thing that I mean is a certain large and gross familiarity, not always with bad but often with very good things, a familiarity that indicates insensibility to the thing that the man is handling.

It is certainly not to be suggested that Christopher West and company are insensible to the beauty of human sexuality, nor, in many respects, are the points they make to wounded souls without real merit; however, sexuality is of such a nature, like the liturgy, that constant analysis and drummed-up enthusiasm only vacates the mystery and the sacrality, no matter how exalted and good the object of our gaze is proclaimed to be.

I find it more and more difficult to take seriously the proposal that our real problem is Manichaeism.  Not in this age where states are now finding it necessary to institute laws against the sexting of minor children; not in this age of the sterile voyeurism of the Facebook and Twitter culture, in which we have cultivated and refined the art of exhibitionism.  I cannot tell you of all the instances in which I encounter tremendous heartache, useless drama, unproductive preoccupation and morbid self-loathing as a result of “too much information.”

No, the good news about human sexuality does not have to be expressed in more and more sex talk.  The truth is that are not we really afraid of eros.  We are afraid of agape.

Too many men, even Catholic men, define their masculinity in terms of libido, and too many women have either chosen to use their sexuality as a form of manipulation, or have otherwise consented to have foisted upon them a bill of goods that turns sexuality into spirituality.  Yes, the cross and the liturgy are the places where the nuptial realities are consummated, and eros is the gift of that consummation, but we are kidding ourselves if we think we are going to ride our way to holiness on a bed of pleasure.

I here re-post my entry for July 2, 2008 on this the first anniversary of Thom Girard’s passing.  The accident occurred on June 30, but Marc survived into very early in the morning of July 1.  May our good knights rest in peace. I offered Mass for the repose of their souls this morning.

And when the last arrow
Was fitted and was flown,
When the broken shield hung on the breast,
And the hopeless lance was laid in rest,
And the hopeless horn blown,

The King looked up, and what he saw
Was a great light like death,
For Our Lady stood on the standards rent,
As lonely and as innocent
As when between white walls she went
And the lilies of Nazareth.

*******

Thom was one of our finest knights and a first rate example of all I wanted the knights to be: courageous, committed, kind, genuine and loyal.  Mark was his father’s son.

Thom has been the Grand Master of all our encampments, both last year and this year.  He had many years experience as a scout master, but more than that he had really imbibed the Spirit of Lepanto and understood how to communicate it to others.  He really was what I wanted all the knights to be.

Marc was inducted into the Knights at the spring encampment this year, after having been among the squires since we began the Knights several years ago.  When Thom became distressed as he was swimming with his daughter Hanna, Marc, who was swimming with his younger brother Lucas, told his brother to continue to the other side, went to the rescue and saved Hanna’s life and then attempted to save his father also.  Marc died a hero, a true knight.  He was his father’s son.

Please pray for the repose of their souls.  The one consolation I keep returning to is that now we have two knights who, in the words of St. Maximilian, have both hands free.

Thom and  Marc leave behind Carol, wife and mother, Jacqueline, daughter and sister, Adam, son and brother, Lucas, son and brother and little Hanna, daughter and sister.  Please pray for them also.  They are strong, full of faith and hope, but their suffering is hard to imagine.

Thom wrote an elaborate knight’s “ritual” by which we could induct the older boys into the Knights of Lepanto.  We have used it only once, for the induction of Marc back at the Spring Encampment.  I reproduce part of it here.  The words of the “Father” were pronounced by me, but the whole “ritual” was written by Thom.  This was a dialoque between father and son:

The Candidate then kneels before the priest.

Father:  In days gone by, there existed many orders of knighthood which recognized the skill and honor of their members.  In the service of their King, and in the defense of the noble ideals of chivalry, embodied in their Queen, did these orders achieve their exalted ranks. . .You have now been brought face to face with the Order of the Knights of Lepanto and have been adequately impressed with the seriousness of this obligation which you are about to take upon yourself.  As God is our King of Kings and Mary our Queen are you prepared to take the vow of the brotherhood?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I am.

Father:  Guards remove his penance . . .[after the penance is removed]  Will you be loyal to the Catholic Church, the Pope, to the Order of the Knights of Lepanto, and your brother Knights?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  Good Brother, in our company you must not seek lordship or riches, nor honor, nor bodily ease.  You must seek three things:  to renounce and reject the sins of this world; to do the service of Our Lord and Our Lady; and to be poor and penitent according to your means.  Will you promise to God and Our Lady that henceforth, all the days of your life that you will do these things?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  That you will live in chastity according to your means in life?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  That you will uphold the good customs of this house?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  That you will never leave the Order, neither through strength or weakness, niether in worse time or better?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I will.

Father:  In the name of God, of Our Lady, of St. Francis and St. Maximilian Kolbe and of our father Pope Benedict XVI, from its beginning and until its end, we accord you all the benefits of this house.  We promise you bread and water, hardship, work and the poor robe of this house.  Knight of the Patrocinium, bring forth the Great Sword of our order. . . .

Father: [holding the sword as the cross in front of the candidate] Acknowledge this sword, its brightness stands for faith, its point for hope, and its guard for charity.  Remember well that the sword of Chivalry should be drawn only in defense of God, or of those weaker than yourself. Do you acknowledge the values of this sword?

Candidate:  In the name of God, I do.

Father:  [returning the sword] Let the scroll be read.

Herald:  To all who can hear:  Whereas Marc has dedicated himself to high and noble service to God and the Kingdom of Heaven in war and in peace, we are minded to enroll him into the Knights of Lepanto.  We do hereby elevate and affirm Marc for his unique talents soon to be known throughout the world.  To which we set our hands this 24th day of May, as Christ is our King and Mary our Queen.

Thom gave all the speaking roles to the other knights and to myself during the ritual, but all the words were his, and it was all meant for Marc.

When we performed the induction of Mark, I had only had the time to glance at the ritual very quickly.  I had  complete trust that what Thom had come up with would be appropriate.

But when I read the words out loud to Marc:  “as God is our King of Kings and Mary our Queen are you prepared to take the vow of the brotherhood?” I thought to myself, “I hadn’t planned on anyone taking a vow right now.”  And then when I heard myself saying: “Will you promise to God and Our Lady that henceforth, all the days of your life that you will do these things?”  and Marc said yes both times, I thought, “I will have to revise this for next time.”  In any case, I figured that it was all intended in the right spirit, and expressed the Spirit of Lepanto so perfectly, so I said nothing.

Little did I know that Thom and Mark had providentially entered into the Knightly order together and were to seal their promise in this tragic and yet heroic event.  Thom and Marc used exactly the right words and they meant what they said.

Thom will be buried with the Great Sword of our order.  Similar arrangements are being made for Marc as well.  They promised to be true knights of Our Lady, and,

In the name of God, they were.

In doing some research in order to answer a question of a commenter I found this article by Monsignor Cormac Burke, whose book on marriage I highly recommend.  It is an article on St. Augustine and his views concerning marriage and sexuality.  St. Augustine is identified by many–but not by Christopher West, to my knowledge–as the bogeyman of Catholic puritanism because of his negative views of sexuality based on his over-emphasis of original sin.  Monsignor Burke shows that this interpretation of great western doctor is not accurate.  This article is also helpful aid to the understanding of TOB in context.  The Church has always emphasized the inherent goodness of human sexuality.

Here is a quote from St. Augustine:

Let these nuptial blessings be the objects of our love: offspring, fidelity, the un­breakable bond. . . . Let these nuptial blessings be praised in marriage by him who wishes to extol the nuptial institution.

Here is part of Monsignor Burke’s conclusion:

It may well be that earlier in the twentieth century Christians needed to shake off a certain Puritanism in sexual matters, although it should be said that this was a particularly Protestant problem. In any case, it is scarcely the problem fac­ing us today.

In this context, it is interesting to recall how Augustine had first to defend marriage and sexuality against the Manichean tendency to treat them with contempt or ha­tred, and later had to continue to defend them against the Pelagian tendency to treat them as if there were nothing deli­cate or problematic about them.

Insofar as Puritanism or Jansenism contained some semi-Manichean elements, we have moved away from them. Augustine’s firmly held, middle-of-the-road position can warn us of the dangers coming from a neo-Pelagianism, with its false suggestion that nothing is wrong with sex, that there is nothing needing control in sex.

I am just following up on the latest developments of the West controversy in which I have been lately involved (pretty severe content warning).

Christopher West, in the last couple of days has been in the Catholic press–not responding to his critics, mind you.  All he says is public relations as far as I can tell.

In Our Sunday Visitor he is quoted as saying:

“Many good people seem unaware of what the great saints have taught about the mystical dimensions of our sexuality. This is where John Paul II’s theology of the body leads us — into the mystical depths of our creation as male and female, and the call of the two to become ‘one flesh.’

In my latest piece, linked to above, I show how West misconstrues St. Louis de Montfort as supporting some kind of holy fascination with the body of the Blessed Mother.  I do this not by quoting West out of context, but by actually showing from the text of the saint that he says nothing like what West suggests.

Then the National Catholic Register, reports the following:

West’s struggle to stem the confusion reflected a desire to both defend his reputation and to prevent a backlash against the late Pope’s teachings, which have begun to enter the mainstream of Catholic catechetics with the encouragement of Pope Benedict XVI.

It is not clear how accurately this statement reflects the actual views of Christopher West; however, there is no question that West and his supporters claim that he is the authority on TOB and that his assertions are compatible with the views of John Paul II.  The above statement goes so far as to suggest that disagreement with West is tantamount to disagreement with John Paul II.   But from the point of the critics the objections have nothing to do with the Holy Father’s teachings, but with the extrapolations of West.

And this is precisely the point of this post.  West and his supporter are avoiding to deal with the substantive issues raised in the critiques.  They say “The critics should have done it privately.”  “They should quote sources.”  When we quote sources they say  we  “are taking everything out of context.”   They tell us “West has good instincts; trust him.”

Unfortunately, they are making this worse for themselves.  I will do everything in my power to see to it that this remains a gentleman’s disagreement.  But I will not be told I am a prude for disagreeing with Christopher West or that I disagree with him because I have a personal animus.  I find this methodology and “strategic management” tiresome, to put it mildly.

Dawn Eden records some of the wearying methodology employed by West to deal with objections to his presentation in her latest post.  I refer to the incident transcribed by her in my latest contribution on her blog.

Okay, boys, after watching this try not whining for a few days at least.  Make sure no girls are watching, so they don’t see you wiping your eyes.

Via Hot Air.

I was with the AirMaria friars at the Connecticut State Judiciary Committee meeting on Monday and listened to the discussion of the various amendments proposed to S.B. 899, which will being pushed forward to implement the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling mandating same-sex marriage.

The amendments proposed were aimed at guaranteeing religious liberty in terms of preventing any religious minister from being required to solemnize same-sex marriages, in terms of securing the rights of justices of the peace to refuse to solemnized such unions on religious grounds, of preventing religious organizations from being coerced into granting use of their facilities for same-marriage ceremonies and receptions and of preventing the state from indoctrinating children into the homosexual lifestyle against their parents’ wishes. In the end, a toothless amendment was passed unanimously by the committee and subsequently the bill was approved and now will be debated and voted on in the two houses of the state legislature.

I have sat through these debates before when the question of civil unions was rammed through by the legislature. The discussions are tedious. The presumption of the predominantly liberal legislative body is that anyone who is against same-sex marriage or who believes the Christian tradition concerning the moral character of homosexual acts is a bigot and the goal apparently is to codify that in law. God bless the legislators who both voted to protect religious liberty and against letting this horrible piece of legislation out of committee.

Peter Wolfgang, Executive Director of the Family Institute of Connecticut and champion of both traditional marriage and religious liberty , has organized a rally at the State House on April 7th to oppose this attack on religious liberty (listen to his March 6 testimony at the public hearing on S.B. 899):

Earlier this month thousands of concerned citizens converged at the state Capitol on just a few days notice to stop a blatantly unconstitutional attack on religious liberty. The same Committee that launched that attack has now launched another one. Whether it succeeds will depend on the willingness of state residents to put aside “business as usual” and rise up again to make their voices heard.

One week from today, Tuesday, April 7th, the Family Institute of Connecticut will hold a Rally for Religious Liberty on the north steps of the state Capitol in Hartford (overlooking Bushnell Park). The Rally will begin at 10:00 a.m. Following the Rally we will go to Room 1C of the Legislative Office Building, where FIC executive director Peter Wolfgang will discuss what is at stake and how to lobby your legislators.

After the outrageous attack on religious liberty earlier in March by means of the “bishop removal” bill (S.B. 1098) and the tremendous response from the public, including national attention on the situation in Connecticut, Senator McDonald and Representative Lawler, the co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee, have enough confidence in their power to be pushing transgendered rights and assisted suicide bills, and to successfully move S.B. 899 out of the committee. Even after having been censured, they have not at all shown any fear of the electorate.

Catholics of Connecticut and rallied to the defense, when the attack on religious liberty was as blatant as it could possibly be, but S.B. 899 is just another step toward criminalizing all opposition to the homosexual agenda. This has national significance, but the front line is here in Connecticut. There are all kinds of excuses for thinking our efforts make little difference, but we can’t afford those excuses. However that may be, in the face of the consequences of doing little or nothing, such excuses are singularly unmanly.

Every time I go to the State House I am forced to note with admiration how tenacious, persistent and intense the advocates of same-sex marriage are, and how effectively they have gained control over what happens in the legislature, especially with two active homosexuals, McDonald and Lawler, as the co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee.  I have heard before from our side why our opponents have so much an easier time of maintaining the level of attention that they do, and while at this point that might be reasuring that we are doing all we can, but it will be no cause for a peaceful conscience when our religious liberties are gone and opposition to the culture of sodomy has been criminalized.  There is far less difference between S.B. 1098 and 899 than the relative levels of response on the part of Christians would indicate.  The withdrawal of S.B. 1098 is a shallow victory when compared with the ongoing threats to religious liberty.  Complacence is deadly.

I would hope that the Knights of Lepanto give Peter Wolfgang and the Family Institute of Connecticut as much help as possible.

Let’s stick with the practical and necessary. This will make mom proud.

All the instructions are there. A bit on the expensive side, but I bet some ingenuity and mom’s shopping expertise will solve that problem. There are also videos to aid with the construction and some tantalizing demonstrations to keep the boys motivated:

When I posted last I was poking around a little on Anthony Esolen’s page in the Touchstone archives and found an excellent article on the Quest called “The Lovely Dragon of Choice: The Freedom Not to Be Free.” I think I will make it the topic for discussion at tomorrow night’s men’s discussion group meeting in Griswold.

I recommend a careful reading of the piece. It is worth reading twice.

What I took away from it is the way in which the “Dragon of Choice” has insinuated itself, not only into the hearts of those who consciously purvey the culture of death, but also into the hearts of those who wish to be the champions of life. In fact, life itself is a quest full of adventure, something that is dissolved by calculation and cleverness. Esolen pegs “Modern Man,” and by that I mean not the “other guys” but all of us:

Modern man is afraid of the quest, and is not particularly fond of hunger and cliffs, either. He will not see that the very point of an adventure is that you cannot plan it. And to be in quest of the Holy Grail—that is, the mystery of Christ made manifest in our world under the humble appearances of bread and wine—is to be prepared for the appearance, sudden and awful, even on a bare rock and when one’s stomach knots with hunger, of the ineffable God.

The Eucharistic Grail, the object of our yearning and our quest, is not merely what we see, the form of bread and wine, but what we do not see, the substantial presence of Our Blessed Lord’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. But it is even more than that. Eucharistic life is not only participation in the Holy Sacrifice, Communion and Adoration, it is not only a reverent liturgy or high liturgical culture; it is the same self-offering and radical obedience by which Christ submits Himself to sinful men and makes himself vulnerable on our altars, in our tabernacles, on our tongues and in our hands. Our Lord is not clever and calculating in the Eucharist. The altar is the Holy Sepulcher to be defended by Crusaders or defiled by His enemies. The adventure of the Cross is not over for Lord, nor for us.

Esolen, in fact calls it wisdom to throw choice away; he says that our hope lies not in choice, but in being chosen. I think this translates into a real openness to divine providence, which in the context of the culture of life, means openness to children, for example, and in the context of life in general, openness to the hazards of people we do not choose to live with.

Esolen is not denying that it is our particular gift as men, created in the image and likeness of God, to deliberate and choose between various options, but at the real heart of our choices there must be something more than calculation. There must be vision:

We cannot worship the Almighty, nor ought we to try to, without this artistic, willful, playful intelligence, this embrained choosing. Hence the precise symbolisms of color and gesture and matter in a high-church liturgy, or the delicacies of musical meter and pitch and tempo and rhyme in a Baptist revival.

But those same examples of art and liturgy show that this choosing-among, this intelligence, cannot be primary, cannot itself provide the criterion controlling the choice. The elegant painter chooses the red ochre for the stag because he sees something that precedes choice. He has a vision, perhaps, of the power and the vitality of the stag, and wishes to render the stag as red as he is to the hunter’s heart, though it may be redder than he is to the hunter’s eye.

I find Esolen’s insight here fascinating and exhilarating. I am all for a restoration of Catholic Culture, for a whole-hearted and vigorous commitment to the Christianization of the world in which we live. But the more I argue for it, the less I think it has anything to do with calculation and planning.

I am very much interested in creative intuition and the artistic impulse, which are so often driven by egoism and the addiction to self-expression. But despite the valid reasons the morally astute have to hold creative intuition in suspicion, I don’t think culture is served by slavish reliance cultural unity and by planning perfect Catholic communities.

From a Catholic perspective, there is a fundamental and very difficult question to answer at the heart of aesthetics:  What is the relationship between creative inspiration and grace?  Both Domincan and Franciscan schools admit a relative autonomy to the natural order, but not an absolute one.  Franciscans especially tend to see Christ at the heart of every wholesome inspiration.  It cannot exist without the truth, but neither can it exist when it is merely calculated.  Inspiration is inherently a dangerous thing.  And so it must be.  If we take the adventure out of creativity we have given up the quest.

I would like to see the following two paragraphs of Esolen inscribed on every orthodox, traditional door and gate, be it home, church, parish or church organization:

If a group of people get together and choose to form a village, they have formed not a village but a club, a clique. The true village embraces all the romance and adventure of a pirate raid: people next door who insist on keeping chickens; a troop up the street who yell like Huns on furlough; the near genius who drinks too much, who can take your car apart and rebuild it better than it was, but who cannot keep a job; Irish and Italian boys who get into brawls now and who marry each other’s sisters later.

There they are, the crazy lot of them, from the smug churchgoer to the even smugger atheist, thrust into one cranny of a continental crust, forced by the accident of birth not only to put up with each other but also to keep their streets clean, rebuke each other’s children, spike the punch on holidays, and bury each other at the last. When Christ asks us if we loved our neighbors, how many of us modern choosers will be hoping he means those nice people with the good grace to live far away in India, people whom we chose to help, rather than those strange and terrible beings who just happened to live on our block?

Creative intuition is partly about art and culture, but before anything else it is about a more fundamental aesthetic, the social aesthetic of family and community life.  Here more than anywhere else calculation is cancer.  What is needed is wisdom, the wisdom of the Cross.

I mentioned in an earlier post my suspicion with a recent attempt to create a Catholic village. I am more and more suspicious  of cultural solutions that are drawn like pictures to illustrate the approved form of Catholic life and distinguish it from those that are verboten. I am not suggesting we should reinvent the wheel or hold our venerable traditions in suspicion, but I am suggesting that our communities need to embrace the crazy genious, the atheist, the smug churchgoer and all the rest.  We need a real village.  We do not need any more clubs or cliques.

Cultural unity cannot be bought by calculation at the expense of vision.  Will there be dangers?  Of course there will.  Those who take upon themselves the Quest cannot expect otherwise.  As Joan of Arc once said:  “The men will fight and God will give them the victory.” Our Guarantor is God, not man.

I think the fear of “scandal” among some from those who are not “faithful” has become a pretext to become calculating, to become servants of the Dragon of Choice and to stifle the vision necessary to work effectively for a real restoration of Christian culture and for the salvation of souls. If we are really open to the Culture of Life, that is, to large families as God chooses them, then our families within the faith need also to be large. We shouldn’t be so calculated about those we live with and those we do not. The real adventure and quest is full of uncertainty and danger. Where would we be if Christ was calculating about what altars to come down upon and what tabernacles to dwell in? Do we presume that if He was fussy He would choose to dwell in ours?

I think sometimes we presume too much, and decieve ourselves into thinking that we have more figured out than we really have.  And in the end this is just willfulness.  Wisdom is not willfulness.  As Professor Esolen says, it is wonder.

It is to pray, to wait, to obey, to listen, to give over one’s own interfering and noisy choosing, the static of one’s life of half-sleep, that dragon of the noonday hour, in the hope that the wisdom will come. The pagan poets themselves invoke the Muse, and she, note well, is the one who chooses.

Somehow creative intuition and grace need to come together.  I would suggest that our Muse must be the Immaculate.  As St. Maximilian Kolbe says:

She alone must instruct each of us in every instant; She must direct us, transform us into Herself, in such wise that it is no longer we who live, but She in us, just as Jesus lives in Her and the Father in the Son. Let us grant Her permission to do in us and by means of us whatever She desires and She will surely accomplish miracles of grace: we will become saints and great saints.