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The Harrowing of Hell

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The phrase in the Apostles Creed he descended into Hell has long troubled Christians. Commonweal has a blog on it with some interesting comments.

The general (although not universal) view is that Christ descended into the limbo of the patriarchs to free all the just who had died before the Crucifixion. Dante is in the tradition.

But Augustine somewhere refers to the common belief in the North African church of his time that by His descent and resurrection Christ emptied Hell.

Hans Urs von Balthasar makes the Descent the cornerstone of his theology, because he sees Christ’s descent into the hell of the damned as the uttermost proof of God’s love. Therefore he also sees the possibility of the hope of universal salvation.

Many disagree with von Balthasar, and I get the impression that some people would be disappointed if all were saved – they take the Elder Brother in the story of the Prodigal Son as their model.

Others think that all good people will be saved. But what about the bad? God’s heart reaches out to the worst sinner.

I don’t know the secrets of the universe. But God has said that He loves all that He has made, and He has promised that He will make all things new and wipe away the tears from every eye.

What does this mean? Can we hope that all will be saved, that sin and death will be utterly defeated and God will reign in and through love over every creature? I do not know. All I can do is look at the Cross and hope and trust in Him.

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A Human Jesus

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As part of my Lenten reading I just finished Patrick Henry Reardon’s The Jesus We Missed: The Surprising Truth about the Humanity of Christ. Publishers choose titles, and the title is a little misleading. Reardon has some escellent insights, but as he would inist, it is nto really new: it is in the Gospels. Russell Moore’s introduction is also a little misleading. Reardon does not concentrate on the brute physicality of Jesus’ existence, such as whether he was sick and suffered the indignities of intestinal flu. Reardon, wisely, does not discuss the intensely emotional question of Jesus’ sexuality – although Jesus grew up and underwent puberty like all human males.

Like a good Antiochan, Reardon, while fully accepting the conciliar dogmas on the two natures of Christ, concentrates on the humanity of Jesus. We are saved by the human acts of a divine person, and Reardon concentrates on the human intentions of the writers of Scripture and on the humanity of Jesus.

Perhaps the most important point that Reardon makes is that to be human is to be in movement, in development. If the Son of God assumed our full humanity, he also assumed the process of development that all human beings undergo. That is, Jesus learned things as we do, by observation, study, and pondering. He also, like the prophets, was given moments of special insight into events and into human thoughts. These do not prove that he was omniscient, in the sense that he knew all things in a quantitative sense (for example, all the stars in the universe, their planets, the movements of each atom and sub-atomic particle from the Big Bang to the End, etc.)  As a Son he knew what the Father wanted him to know, in the way the Father wanted him to know them.

Reardon does not argue this but simply states it as being most congruent with the text – which it certainly is, but of course there is a strong tradition that claims that Jesus was in some sense omniscient. To address that theological tradition would require another book.

Reardon examines the texts to see how Jesus came to a clearer and clearer idea of what his Messianic mission entailed, that is, betrayal and the cross. This came about primarily through a study of the Scriptures.

When I was at Providence College in the 1960s, the Dominicans were totally captivated by the historical-critical approach to Scripture, the four source theory of Genesis, etc. I asked the question which was dismissed as not being worthy of an answer, whether Jesus’ approach to Scripture should not be normative. If we are to put on the mind of Christ, should we not also regard Scripture in the same way he regarded it? Reardon’s answer is yes.

Reardon’s approach also, no doubt inadvertently, bears a resemblance to books from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that also tried to bring out the full humanity – and the masculinity – of Jesus, books such as Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows. Those writers, however, often had a weak grasp of the Messianic mission and of the atonement, and sometimes were on the fringes of orthodoxy, an accusation that cannot be made about Reardon.

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Adolescents and Alcohol

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When I was a graduate student at the University of Virginia 1969-1975, the undergraduate college had a deserved reputation as a party school. Easters, which had begun as a series of genteel dances, had degenerated into a mammoth drunken orgy that attracted debauchees from across the country, until it was finally suppressed. Every year one or two students would die of an alcohol related accident or alcohol poisoning.

My dissertation director, Robert Kellogg, devoted his career there to trying to tone down the drinking culture. He helped found a residential college that provided an alternative atmosphere to the fraternities.

But thinks just got worse and worse, until UVA lacrosse player George Huguely V assaulted his former girl friend, Yeardley Love, and she died. He is on trial for first degree murder.  \

Tricia Bishop has a long article in the Baltimore Sun about the drinking culture at colleges. Why student  think it cool to drink until they pass out is beyond me.

The remarks of Webster, a professor at johns Hopkins Public Health, bear some analysis.

Webster has studied assaults among lovers, particularly lethal violence, and said alcohol is a frequent factor, and a potential, if partial, cause of it — a debated belief in the medical community.

“We know that alcohol abuse impairs judgment, it makes it harder to control one’s impulses in certain circumstances,” Webster said. “So I think it does play a causal role.”

He also believes that alcohol treatment could reduce violent incidents, but adds that he’s part of a minority who thinks that way. It took a long time for such attacks, typically man on woman, to be considered crimes, and women’s rights advocates are reluctant to link abuse to a disease like alcoholism, Webster said.

“When we start to think about diseased people, people with an illness, some of us want to cut them some slack. how can you hold somebody accountable for their disease?” he said. “But I don’t think it’s an either-or scenario. I think you can hold people accountable for their behavior.”

The jury in Huguely’s trial, which will begin deliberation in the case next week, is expected to consider Huguely’s alcohol use when determining whether he intended to kill her. They could find that the alcohol impaired his judgment so much, that he was incapable of the premeditated murder he’s charged with.

He had been drinking almost nonstop the Sunday he went to Love’s apartment, where she too was intoxicated.

Alcoholism, like pedophilia, is regarded as a “disease,” and somehow mitigates or removes responsibility for criminal actions. I dislike the word “disease.” It sounds too much like an infection caused by a pathogen, There are almost certainly physical components and involuntary psychological quirks in both alcoholism and pedophilia, but it think it better to regard them as disorders. It is a disorder to want to drink more alcohol the more one consumes alcohol; it is a disorder to desire to have sex with children.

But a person is responsible for acting on his desires: his desires do not compel him to drink or to have sex with children. They make him want to do these things, but he is not under any compulsion to do so. It is not a tick, like La Tourette’s syndrome.

Does a disordered diminish legal responsibility? I do not see why it should. Almost everyone has a desire to do something he shouldn’t do, whether it is speeding or not paying taxes, but we chose whether to act on our desires.

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Homosexuality, Narcissism, and Machismo

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Is homosexuality itself a psychological disorder? Freud though that homosexuality was a form of narcissism (definitely a disorder), of falling in love with an image of oneself, rather than the opposite sex.

Certainly many homosexuals are narcissists, as are many heterosexuals.

Narcissism is the root of endless evils in the clergy, and I have long thought that having the priest face the people during mass concentrates attention on the priest and feeds narcissism.

Many people, as Father Michael points out, equate homosexuality and effeminacy. This is not true. As an investigator I encountered many non-effeminate homosexuals. One case I had led me to a gay biker bar (that was scary). In another case the gay was a star rugby player. And in another case someone insisted an entire college football team engaged in homosexual orgies (I had some doubts about that).

Many of the abuser of teenage boys were fairly macho, otherwise boys would have shied away from them. This was a good cover. No one could imagine that former military engineer, tall, cowboy- booted Ed Donelan was having sex with his wards at the Casa de los Muchachos.

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And from the Albanian Side of the Family

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(You will no doubt note that this in the Gheg dialect, in which the -t ending is not plural)

A traditional tree in Tirana:

And a different Christmas tree outside Tirana:

“A Christmas tree made of spaghetti sticks in the national park in Tirana December 28 2006. A local restaurant used roughly six million spaghetti sticks building the sixteen meter tree weighing 1 ton.”

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Santa in España

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Señor Rafael Cavero of Madrid is a collector, indeed the foremost collector of Papá Noel (Santa Claus) in all of Spain.

In the door which gives access to the garden of the house in which he has lived more than thirty years, a heap of little men with white beards receives visitors. They hide themselves, climb the balconies, go up the lanterns, laugh. And once you have crossed the threshold of the residence, the spectacle surpasses all expectations. “Lola, my wife, is a fan of the Three Kings, and what she hates most of all in the world, although you won’t believe it, is Santa Claus. At this time of year she is always annoyed and wants to leave the house. For this reason, and in revenge, she installs a nativity scene of gigantic size,” he explained.

A collector of many things, among which are music boxes and masks, his fondness for Santa Claus began by accident. He discovered the oldest piece of his collection at a fair and it pleased him so much that since then he looks for pieces here and there, everywhere in the world, on the internet, in catalogues, in shops…”The last ones which I acquired came from Denmark. And especially the best are those from there and from Norway. They are the most expensive; they cost almost as much as a car! Nevertheless, today many are made in China and the quality is evident. Of those which I possess, many have almost five movements. Others read stories and there are even  those who sing thirty Christmas carols with the voice of Ray Charles.”

The display in the Cavero house involves emptying the living room over three days of intense work (“I do it with two of my daughters, Ana and Piedy, with a guitarist and a carpenter”). Lola’s collection of boxes and porcelain dogs “disappears” in their place there is put up an incredible scene of crystal balls, gnomes, rabbits, and reindeer. And thousands of Santa Clauses in all postures and attitudes: playing the saxophone, getting on a motorcycle, with eyeglasses like Stevie Wonder, soaping up in  a bathtub, swinging, crossing the room at high speed, juggling on the swing, on the stairs…and all this in the middle of a great racket of songs, laughs, and train whistles.

And what does Señor Cavero want from Santa Claus? “That when in Spain almost everything is lost, that the hope in Santa Claus is not lost and to assure the whole world that the Three Kings exist. Ours (i.e., Spanish royalty] are in La Zarazuela [the royal palace], but they have some pages [Spanish politicians?] who leave much to be desired.”

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Nu Ar Det Jul Igen

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When the children were small and less self-conscious, we did this at our house

You may remember the Christmas scene from Fanny and Alexander and here is a modern version.

  • Nu är det jul igen, och nu är det jul igen

Och julen varar väl till påska

Nu är det jul igen, och nu är det jul igen

Och julen varar väl till påska

Men det var inte sant och det var inte sant

För däremellan kommer fasta

Och det var inte sant och det var inte sant

För däremellan kommer fasta

  • Now it’s Christmas again, and now it’s Christmas again

And Christmas lasts well into Easter

Now it’s Christmas again, and now it’s Christmas again

And Christmas lasts well into Easter

But it was not true and it was not true

For in-between will be Lent

And it was not true and it was not true

For in-between will be Lent

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Feminist Language

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Retta Blaney at the National Catholic Reporter doesn’t like the new production of Godspell, but her chief beef is with the language of the King James Version that the script uses:

all the scriptural references featured the “God and men,” “every man who humbles himself” and “nurses a grudge against his brother” viewpoint.

I had this same complaint when I reviewed the 30th anniversary off-Broadway revival in 2000 for NCR. I mentioned this to Schwartz during a telephone interview then and he told me inclusive language “fails as art” and that he has always felt men represented everyone. I told him I had never felt included in the word men. Why would I? I’m not a man. I suggested substitutes like neighbor or brothers and sisters and he said he liked the idea of using neighbor and would speak to the director, Shawn Rozsa. I didn’t revisit that production so I don’t know if the changes were made, but here we are in 2011 for the trumpeted first Broadway revival, and the language is as exclusive as ever.

I have noticed that the New York Times and most journals use man and men to mean all human beings. Man is still current to mean a human being: ”man-eating shark,” “men-working,” “Age of Man” (National Geographic), “Hope in the Age of Man” (New York Times) “A Man-Made World” (The Economist),”The Museum of Man” (San Diego), etc.

If man or men is does cannot in any context include all members of the human race, nor  can men and women, because that phrase des not include children. One would have to say male and female (really awkward) or use an abstraction or a collective noun. As Stephen Schwartz said, it fails as art.

The tortured syntax and plain bad-grammar in many alterations of hymns and biblical translations is a result of a feminist “church speak” that is more artificial than using thee and thou (which were ordinary usage at one point).

One example of feminist syntax is the greeting by priests of “sisters and brothers.” English has what Fowler called cast-iron idioms: Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters. When one alters them, it sounds very odd and unidiomatic.

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Conspiracy at Penn State?

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The university administration certainly conspired to cover up Sandusky’s abuse, but was he also pimping kids to rich pedophile donors?

Probably not, but there is a possibility it could be true.

There are rings and networks of pedophiles. How they network is a great mystery to the agents of the law, but they definitely network and have done so for decades, well before computers, much less the internet, came into being. How do they recognize one another? It is dangerous to reveal to an honest person that you are engaged in sexual activity with children. He might just go to the police – although pedophiles may have an accurate opinion about the general lack of courage in the human species.

Sandusky would be in the ideal position to feed victims to other pedophiles, all the while pretending he was helping the kids associated with his charity. As a psychopath, he would have no qualms about doing it. There are certainly other pedophiles out there. The Rev. Gordon McRae in New Hampshire was sending boys to other pederasts and the Rev. Paul Shanley passed his victims around to other priests in Boston – and mysterious envelopes taped to victims’ bodies contained, I assume, either cash or drugs. There were well-documented rings of abusers in the dioceses of Davenport, Iowa, and El Paso, Texas. The Casa Pia orphanages in Portugal provided victims for pedophiles among the elite.

But did Sandusky do this at Penn State or Second Mile? Did the pedophiles in turn make donations to Penn State or to Second Mile? If this happened, did the university or the charity administration have any inkling of it? The administration has clearly demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice children to maintain the reputation of the football program. How far did this willingness go?

The victims would be the best source of information; I trust that they have been interviewed and the police are following all leads; the governor seems to be wholly behind the investigation even if it leads to the highest places.

Although such a conspiracy would help to explain the events at Penn State, one should not assume in the absence of positive evidence that it exists.  It is simply a working hypothesis, because pedophiles tend to network and use charities as fronts. But Sandusky may well  be a lone criminal.

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More on Justice in Canada and U.S.

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Canada, like some U.S. states, (e.g. Maryland) does not have a statute of limitations on felonies, so child abusers can be prosecuted whenever the evidence comes forward. As far as I can see, the statute of limitations is for the benefit of the administration of the courts. It is difficult to process very old cases and they would tend to tie up the administration of justice. Some people (including canon lawyers) seem to think that if you’ve gotten away with a serious crime for a certain period, in natural justice you should not be prosecuted. I am not sure if they intend to use that defense at the Last Assizes.

Canada is a less violent land than the U.S.  The U.S. is the land of liberty, Canada of good government. My temperament leans to the latter. We lived in Montréal for several years, and it was refreshing to be able to walk all over the city – although there was some drug related crime.

Because it is less violent, Canada needs to use incarceration less than we do to protect the public. It costs c. $60,000 a year to imprison someone, and the drain on public finances is creating a strain. I do not think drug offenders should be locked up, but I suspect that many if not most of the imprisoned drug offenders financed their habits by violent crime. It was easier to nail them on a drug offense than a violent crime.

But Canada has been too influenced by European models and (like Holland and Denmark) has shown laxity in pursuing child pornographers and tends to thinks that pedophiles can be rehabilitated and put back into the community rather than imprisoned. With some very young pedophiles perhaps, but most pedophiles and pederasts are sociopaths who can manipulate the system to get what they want and cannot be trusted except in prison or electronic monitoring.

Unfortunately not all crime can be prevented; attempts to prevent any and all cases of molestation would entail a Big Brother monitoring of the population, and a total loss of the private sphere.

It is odd that people have a greater horror of sexual abuse of children than of homicide. I am not saying they shouldn’t, but I wonder why.

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