Snakes on a Plane

By Anthony Mazzone

"Christianity would not have enemies if it were not an enemy to their vices."

- J. Massillon (1663-1742)

The Rossinian Moment

Unless I really know what I’m talking about, I prefer to keep my mouth shut.

That’s enough to keep me quiet most of the time, but lately I’ve been further reduced to an almost Carthusian-like silence. That’s because I’m constantly finding myself in the midst of a Rossinian moment. Let me explain.

Most have at least heard of the Italian composer Giochino Rossini (1792- 1868), or of his opera The Barber of Seville. Probably everyone would recognize his theme, William Tell Overture. Rossini seems to have been something of an epicure, not given to hard work if he could avoid it. He was certainly among those people for whom payment in advance removes all incentive to performance. The story goes that an impresario who had been foolish enough to pay ahead of time for a new opera finally had no other option than to shut the composer up in his villa on meager rations. Within 24 hours the overture to Otello was delivered from the window, signed by a chastened

~ See Snakes on a Plane/ Page 6

Snakes on a Plane

A. Mazzone/ Continued from Page 1 composer, " senza macheroni"! I’m only thinking of this because there comes a time in many of Rossini’s operas when the characters stop what they are doing, look around in amazement, and pronounce themselves absolutely flabbergasted by some new discovery or twist in the plot. Traditional Catholics know exactly how this is. In these absurd times, when girls can be altar boys and prelates can be potty-mouthed, when free speech is banned from college campuses, it feels like we are all stuck in a never-ending state of stupefaction: Rossinian moments.

I’m sure each of us could produce endless examples, but allow me just one. The other day I was looking at a rack of CD’s in the back of a nearby parish church. One of these is an introduction to the Theology of the Body, extolled on the cover as the "revolutionary theological work of Pope John Paul II." You got that right: the word "revolutionary" is actually used as a term of praise by a Catholic firm that otherwise takes pride in its orthodoxy.

What’s going on here? The idea of a theology being "revolutionary" should make any Catholic head for the hills.

After all, it wasn’t long ago that certain prelates were praised "for the purity of their doctrine." Today that would stand as nothing less than an indictment, an indication of "rigidity" if not mental illness.

The Catholic Church is the safe Inn to which our Lord the Good Samaritan has carried wounded humanity. But it continues in a state of accelerating decomposition. To Traditionalists, at least, it’s obvious that this crisis is not limited to liturgy or even governance, but is a deeper one of purpose and identity. Unfortunately, the faithful members of the Church, too, are further divided into tribes: mainstream Novus Ordo, Reformers of the Reform, traditionalists who hold to the 1962 Roman Missal and those who hold to the 1920 Roman Missal with or without the changes in the 1950’s. Can’t we just pray together? Hell’s bells, we can no longer even say the rosary together.

Some Catholics will insist on publicly reciting the Luminous Mysteries because they are new, while others resist for basically the same reason.

Switching realms, it sometimes looks as if Christians have lost every battle in the sphere of public life and morality. Oh, if we only had one more Republican Congressman, one more conservative Supreme Court Justice, we will be able to turn things around! I’m sorry, but what ails us as a country simply isn’t curable by politics. The political scientist Harold Lasswell has defined politics as being about "who gets what, when, how." While this is not an Aristotlelian definition, I think it is true.

The point I am making is that you are not alone in feeling you are riding a roller coaster in Bizzaro World.

Things have been wrong for so long that we are forgetting what is normal.

It is not normal for laymen to parse the spontaneous utterances of a Pope to divine their implications, much as Roman augurs read the flights of birds.

It is not normal that the liturgy is, among Catholics, not an expression of unity but a constant cause of strife and division.

Dioceses that had been lost to the Muslim conquests or had otherwise ceased to be functional have long been characterized as being in partibus infidelium, "in the realm of the unbelievers." We are all living in partibus infidelium now. We can’t escape the fact that any contemporary defender of the mos maiorum ("the way of the ancestors") is by definition a heretic regarding the naturalistic dogmas of the day.

Some Thoughts of Consolation

Liberals to the right of us, Socialists to the left of us, Modernists all around us: into the valley of post-Christian apocalypse we ride. With madness feeding on craziness how do we speak to one another of sanity? How do we maintain harmony of soul? Regain the stability of order that provides ballast through the tribulations of life?

What did the saints, who lived in roughly similar times, do? Boethius for example, was a late Roman statesman and philosopher who was unjustly imprisoned and later executed by King Theodoric the Great. He didn’t spend his time in prison lamenting his lot but wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, where he tells us: "Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future."

Thomas More, imprisoned in the Tower, wrote a Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, wherein he serenely suggests "The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest." St. Paul, far from fretting during his imprisonment in Rome, wrote the Books of Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, and Philippians to encourage and hearten nascent groups of Christians.

I am in a country," wrote St. Francis Xavier from Japan to his brethren in Europe, "Where I am in want of all the conveniences of life. But nevertheless, I feel so much interior consolation, that there is danger of my losing my sight through weeping with joy."

Let’s remind ourselves that God, from all eternity, has chosen precisely this moment in history for each one of us to be alive. There is nothing arbitrary in this. Now it’s our turn to respond to the demands of our time as the saints taught us to do: by remaining stubborn rosarycounters and rigid restorationists, and doing so not only with hope but with high spirits.

"You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds.... What you cannot turn to good, you must at least make as little bad as you can." -St. Thomas More This puts me in mind of the Western Rebellion that Michael Davies wrote about some years ago. Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, completed the first Book of Common Prayer at the end of 1548. The Act of Uniformity of 1549 mandated its use, while the Chantries Act, among other things, denounced "vain opinions of purgatory and masses." The response was a massive armed uprising that began in Cornwall and spread to the rest of the West. The Cornishmen took up arms to "keep the old and ancient religion as

Continued Next Page

Christ Triumphant over Sin and Death, PP Rubens, 1615-22