Post for March 31, 2009
Today was the funeral of my sister-in-law’s stepfather. Grandpa David, as my nieces called him, was not a believer, so the service at the funeral home was actually more of a memorial than an actual funeral. Still, lots of people came, and I drove from Montreal for it (just to come back right after to teach my evening course). I was really proud of Tawnia for being such a trooper, and of my niece Chloe for the reading she did at the service. Please pray for the family.
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Post for March 31, 2009
I’ve been having a discussion with a group on friends on the question of exorcism (the topic seems to come up once every so often), so I thought I’d write a bit about it, and in particular, why exorcisms are so rare. I am referring, of course, to what is called a “major” exorcism. Minor exorcisms are done all the time as part of the Church’s liturgical life, and prayers of deliverance are also known as part of spiritual direction and discernment.
The first major reason that exorcisms are generally quite rare is because the potential subject must demonstrate symptoms that a reasonable person would prudently judge cannot be caused by some natural cause. A typical example is preternatural knowledge, such as a person being able to distinguish between blessed and non-blessed objects. There are sometimes dramatic and seeminly compelling symptoms that can be exhibited by a person, but if those symptoms are not preternatural they get far less of a hearing in an exorcism case.
A second major reason is that the subject must be known to not suffer from an active mental illness. Delusional people regularly conclude they are possessed, and then call the Church for an exorcism. Some people think that obliging them can’t do any harm, even if they aren’t possessed. In this respect, they are wrong. If a person believes (wrongly) they are possessed, and then get an exorcism, and then find they aren’t “better”, they can easily come to the conclusion that exorcism is worthless, or the Church is worthless, or that the Devil is more powerful than Jesus. Their later state is worse than the first, as now the door is open to true theological despair.
(Let me point out that reason #2 usually trumps reason #1. In other words, if a mentally ill person also shows preternatural signs, the exorcism will probably still not be authorized. Again, even if the exorcism “worked”, certain symptoms would still be present afterwards because they are related to the illness, not the possession, so the risk of despair is still present.)
Finally, a third major reason why exorcisms are generally quite rare is because the ordinary means of pastoral care already possess a great deal of power. While exorcism is not some sort of magical cure, it isn’t a sacrament either. A healthy relationship with Jesus Christ lived with a healthy prayer life, all the while using the ordinary means of sanctification (such as the sacraments) is usually quite enough. Indeed, in the practice of the Church for minor exorcisms, they are only done for people who aren’t yet baptized. The baptized, on the other hand, have access to much more powerful things like the Eucharist.
I know there are some people who believe that the Church should authorize more exorcisms, and that the failure to do so somehow demonstrates that we have “lost faith” in the existence of the Devil. I will admit that in some cases, this may actually be true. My point was not to get into that debate here, but merely to mention that there are solid reasons why even someone who DOES believe the Devil exists (such as myself) might still want to be cautious. In my experience, those wanting more exorcisms haven’t yet taken into account the reasons given here, and when they do, a more prudent critical sense is developed for these things.
» Filed Under Explaining the faith | 2 Comments
Post for March 30, 2009
I got a new job today: as of a little after noon I am the acting chairperson for the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism. After a period of exemplary service our prior chairperson resigned today, and I got put in her place. The Centre is facing some major challenges ahead, so please pray for me.
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Post for March 28, 2009
Congratulations to the bride and groom, who were married today. While I did not preside their wedding, I did have the honour of preparing them for the celebration, and so I preached the homily and (in addition) scored an invite to the reception. Ah, it felt good to be back in the swing of things. I love weddings!
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Post for March 28, 2009
Yesterday I had a most interesting experience: I was refused entry into the United States at the Champlain border crossing. Or, to be more accurate, my passenger was refused entry, so we had to be processed inside the border services post and then sent back to Canada.
While it sounds kinda dramatic, it wasn’t really. In fact, we did this on the advice of Immigration Canada, and the Americans were totally aware of the situation. Basically, my passenger (a foreign priest) needed a new immigration document. He had applied by mail, but that took months only for it to be refused by mistake. We know it was by mistake because when we consulted the immigration office in Montreal, they confirmed that it should probably not have been refused. Rather than wait another two to four months, they then proposed a procedure some call the “Buffalo shuffle” (not the official name, I assure you). Basically, because immigration officers are allowed to issue papers right at the border and on the spot, the trick is to go into the USA and return immediately into Canada. The danger is that there is no guarantee that the person will be allowed back into Canada, but since it was Immigration that had proposed it I figured they probably had notes regarding his case on file. Besides, we had documentation up the wazoo, so no worries, right?
Well……I’ll admit, I wasn’t too keen on the idea. After all, somebody does need to bring the individual in question to the border, so you get personally involved. But no guts no glory, right? And I’m happy to say that all’s well that ends well. First of all, hats off to the Americans. The border guards were friendly, understanding and professional, explaining exactly what needed to be done; I was impressed! The Canadian side went smoothly as well: we weren’t the first ones to ever do the “Buffalo shuffle”! While it took a couple of hours to be processed, all the necessary paperwork was soon in place. Soon my brother priest had a social insurance number as well, and it now ready to become a taxpayer. Lucky him.
» Filed Under Archdiocese of Montreal | 1 Comment
Post for March 28, 2009
I’ve been collecting photos from my brother priests who did the pilgrimmage to Israel in February. This photo was taken by our guide while we were saying mass in the lower chapel of the Church of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. One of my favourites.
» Filed Under Personal tidbits | 1 Comment
Post for March 20, 2009
I’ve been really busy with work and such, but also with an important teaching project. On Wednesday nights, I teach a course called the Christian Understanding of God. Week 9 of this course was to be a comparative study of the Christian and Islamic understanding of God. And the lecture was two nights ago. Course material here:
As you can imagine, I was a bit concerned about doing this well. I don’t believe that the goal of interfaith dialogue is to create some sort of “mushy middle”, a tertium quid that pretends that fundamental differences don’t exist. They do. But because those differences are so fundamental, it makes it hard for each side to simply *understand* each other. In my opinion, successful dialogue means that side A is able to describe side B in such a way that side B recognizes itself in the description.
So that’s what I was trying to accomplish in my class: a Christian explaining to Christians the Islamic understanding of God in such a way that Muslims would not feel their beliefs were being ridiculed or caricatured, but rather respected (of course with the understanding that the speaker is not a Muslim). And given that I have Muslims in my class, their feedback was important to know if I was on the right track. As it turns out, that feedback was positive. I am open to being corrected, of course, as I want to only share the truth: but in the meantime, I’m happy to share with you the fruits of LOTS of hours of labour.
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Post for March 20, 2009
Some time ago Eric, a faithful reader, posted this comment:
I used your beatitude homily in class (with proper citation, hopefully traffic picks up! But I have to say…all my greek students said ‘makarios’ translates as ‘death’ or something close to it. They asked all their relatives from the ‘old country’ as well…unanimous on the ‘death’ translation.
Funny thing: one of my parishioners, a young woman, told me that her religion teacher (named Eric) handed out info on the Beatitudes, and to her surprise my name was on it…she was very proud. Way to go!
Now regarding the question of makarios = death, I looked it up in both my dictionary of koine Greek and my dictionary of modern Greek. Both agree that “makarios” = “blessed”. (Try it for yourself on this on-line dictionary.) I did notice in my dictionary that there is a similar word that means “deadly”, but it is not the *same* word.
Eric, if your students can enlighten us on this, I’d be much obliged.
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Post for March 4, 2009
I’ve been spending my morning getting ready for week 7 of my course on the Christian Understanding of God. One thing I wondered before going to the Holy Land was how the trip might affect my teaching of this course, or indeed how it might affect my own personal vision of the Christian understanding of God. I’ve come to realise it has.
I’ve been confronted, in a powerful way, by the Christian teaching of the Incarnation. I’ve been confronted, in effect, by kenosis.
Kenosis is the theological idea of the “self-emptying” experienced by the Son of God as part of his Incarnation. Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not cling to that equality, but emptied himself, taking on human nature.
What kenosis does is transform our religion from a myth to a historical claim. “On this particular time, in this particular place, God walked the earth.” Rather than being a fantasy in our heads, it makes a claim to being absolutely *real*.
I’ve known this on a mental level, of course, but I must confess that I now realise how much my own faith was more mythological than really incarnate in the real. After all, I’m a theologian, which means I’m a theorist, and every theory is a kind of abstration. Theologians, like physicists, try and explain reality: we just include God in it. What we come up with a models of reality that help us interact with “real reality”, but we can get so comfortable with our models that a kind of mythological mindset arises. Are we really in a proper relationship with reality? Or are we more in a relationship with the model of reality in our mind?
This first really hit home for me when I visited the ruins of Capernaum. The bottom line was, Jesus lived here. It was not a big town, and he was there for a couple of years at least. We saw the ruins of the old synagogue where Jesus would have taught, and while one might debate whether the synagogue was really there or 10 feet to the left, it didn’t take away from the fact that Jesus walked the same ground upon which I was now standing.
In other words, Jesus was a particular man. He lived in a time and place. Since the birth of Christianty Jesus has been presented as a universal man, and indeed I believe he is, but I think we do this presentation in a way that is sometimes too mythologized (or at least in a way that leaves us susceptible to a mythological mentality). But being in Capernaum meant I was confronted, not with the “universal man”, but with the particular Jesus. Again, the challenge was not to my faith in Jesus, but rather in how much my own mindset has turned the Christian story into a kind of myth, an elaborate religio-scientific theory that needed “figuring out”.
The incarnation is very disturbing. It replaces the universal with the particular.
This hit home for me a second time when I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I will admit I was sceptical at first if the place now called is tomb was really his tomb. After certain archeological explanations offered by our guide, however, I was more open to the possibility that this was really the place where he was laid. And given the limited size of the area, I couldn’t help but think: Gee, he was short.
Jesus was short.
The incarnate word of God was short.
In a mythological view of Christianity, the tallness or shortness of Jesus has little relevance except as perhaps part of an artistic presentation of the man.
But, in the incarnation, the bottom line is he had a particular height. From what I could see, about 5-foot-2 max.
Now you may say to yourself “Come on, Father Tom, what’s the point?” Obviously, I don’t think the question of his height has any Earth-shaking significance. But from my point of view, I was suddenly confronted with a piece of real data that had ABSOLUTELY NO PLACE in my inner understanding of God and Christianty, data that I was unable to brush off as I might otherwise have done BECAUSE I WAS THERE STARING AT THE FUNERAL SLAB.
In other words, I was confronted with how much of my faith perspective had a mythological structure.
As a final point, I think I’ve come to recognize why myths are so seductive: it is because they are so grand. They can embrace anything, and indeed usually embrace everything, covering it all with glory and piety.
Kenosis, and the incarnation, are not grand. They are extremely ordinary.
I feel like I’ve been stripped theologically naked. And the only alternative is to either chase after new myths, or to embrace the incarnation. Or, more accurately, the Incarnate One.
» Filed Under Personal tidbits | 2 Comments
Post for March 4, 2009
I’ve created a special Google newsfeed using their online tools. It searches current news items for the following terms: Pope or church or Vatican or God or Catholic (the order does not matter).
Here is what it pops up.
So now you can stay current with what the pundits are saying about these topics!
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Post for March 4, 2009
The banner picture you see above was taken by the edge of the Sea of Galilee (a.k.a. Lake Tiberias). Just one more souvenir from the trip.
» Filed Under Personal tidbits | 1 Comment
Post for March 4, 2009
I got home Monday evening just exhausted. We had to leave our hotel at 1:30 am to get to Tel Aviv in time for our flight. Wow, is security ever tight! It is easier to enter Israel than to leave it. First, an armed guard entered our bus as we were pulling up to the airport, and the luggage compartments were checked. Then, at the airport itself, I was asked questions for a good 15 minutes about our group by one young woman…followed by another who asked more questions! Then, the X-ray machine (for the bags) followed by a manual check. Each bag got more than one sticker indicating it had been verified by somebody or other. Passport control on the way out involved answering even more questions, and so on. You get the drill.
Our flight left at 5:30 am, and got to Zurich around 9am. I managed to sleep a bit on the plane, but not a whole lot. The Zurich stopover was several hours, but we finally managed to take our next flight for home. Unfortunately heavy head winds meant the flight had to be diverted south, taking us away from the great circle route, and thus extending the trip. Bottom line: by the time we got to Montreal, everyone was cramped and exhausted.
As for Montreal, we arrived home aroud 5pm (midnight Jerusalem time). I spent the evening unpacking and generally tidying up. Sorry I didn’t blog, but I was so tired there was no way my eyes were going to focus on the computer screen.
As for yesterday, well I spent that returning phone calls and emails at work. So much to do!
Finally, regarding the trip itself, I am still processing it. I am sensing it was more significant than I expected, indeed more than I am realising now. More on that later. I’m just glad to be home.
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