Tags
"Somme Mud", Battle of Pozières, Credulity, Eucharist, Persevering in Prayer, Pozières Project, Prayer, Will Davies
The Church was full. I was sitting in the back seat, waiting for the Mass to begin. You may well ask what on Earth I was doing there – after all those years since I abandoned the priesthood and later the faith, and naturally stopped going to Mass. It was one of those occasions when for reasons that have nothing to do with faith, you had to be there. As a matter of fact, in this regard, I was far from alone. You see, it was a Memorial Mass for the victims of the Battle of Pozières, in the Somme, where in July-August 1916, the Australian army suffered, in the six-week battle, 23,000 casualities, including 7000 dead. The Mass, and the civil ceremonies that followed, marked the centenary of our most costly victory in the most ferocious and absurd war in human history.
Parishioners were in the minority, but the choir was in full voice. The priest was a senior citizen, still able to sing on key. People paid polite attention to what he was saying and singing, but it seemed to leave even the believers cold. This was especially true of the sermon he preached. Even politicians and government officials would find it difficult to say anything terribly original on such an occasion. But this was a sermon, so the priest could not be content with a call to remember the sacrifice of fallen heroes; he had to say something about God and use the occasion to foster faith. So he spoke about prayer. As he clearly was not a reader of this Blog, he trotted out all the predictable nonsense about praying for the Faithful Departed. Then, in an attempt to break new ground, he started insisting on “persevering in prayer”. I may not have been, and hope I was not, the only one who wondered why one would have to repeat requests for God’s mercy. “Ask and you shall receive.” Period ! Surely once would be enough for a loving Father, who could not possibly have a reason to refuse such a prayer. When I said “no” to my kids for something they wanted, I sometimes (too often !) gave in when they insisted. But surely God does not need to have us pester Him to be merciful to the young men who lost their lives in the Somme mud. (“Somme Mud” is the title of a remarkable book by Australian historian Will Davies, which I highly recommend. Will is the patriot behind the “Pozières Project” : a state-of-the-art French-Australian school which will replace the antiquated, inadequate public school on the ground floor of the Town Hall, built in 1925, as a living monument of the saddest chapter in the history of Australia and of the unbreakable bonds between Australia and France.)
After the sermon the Mass continued with the celebration of the Eucharist, a rite incomprehensible for most of the motley congregation. I am not sure that even the non-atheists present really believed that the white wafer held up by the priest really had become the Body of Christ. But the point of the Mass was to have us end up feeling we had all done our duty by commemorating the sacrifice of young Aussie soldiers, and nobody really thought of the supposed sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, reenacted by the symbolic separation of His body and blood, the bread and the wine. I was perhaps the only one who made the connection, and marvelled at the credulity I once had when I believed it was true.
RIDENDA RELIGIO
Blind Faith: Blind Folly 
While trying to picture you as a “fly on the wall” in the back of the packed church, I can see the wheels churning in your head about the post which most certainly was bubbling away in your brain, and you just dared to dare post. The link between Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and the poor soldiers sacrifice while dying in the mud escaped many in the congregation surely, but not my friend Frank. And the bit about “doing your duty” is another story altogether. Nobody in their right mind would imagine that being slain in the mud in a senseless war has anything to do with duty, but more blind faith and folly of being sacrificial lambs of power-hungry politicians.
PS I’ll be praying for a big check for the school!
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When I saw the title, I first supposed that Frank was at Notre Dame in honour of his fellow octogenarian, “priest forever..”, massacred beside the altar of sacrifice.
It was pleasing to witness the respect shown by the leaders of France, as well as ordinary citizens, attending the Mass.
Disappointingly, Frank used his Mass attendance to mock the “motley” congregation. None of them understood theology like the superior ex student of theology. Perhaps his prayer was “I thank you, God, that I am not like these humble fools. You have given me the intellect to realise that you do not exist. Thank you, my Lord”.
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It would seem that I have no monopoly on “shallow, sneering remarks”.
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It happens that I do better Franck ! Sometimes, when attempting a mass I go to eat the body of Jesus ! In French, this part of the mass is called “communion”, that is to say something that we do with others … I don’t bother with the origin of that symbol ; I just want to show that I agree with the main reason of that mass
I shall not go to masses organized after crazy attacks. I don’t want to listen to priests explaining that the only reaction for catholics is to pray …
As for war’s anniversaries, it is more useful to organize meeting to discuss what was wrong, which mistakes have been committed, etc …
My last travel as I was still in Paris was “Le chemin des Dames” where French officers killed their soldiers officially, for the example, where French soldiers killed officers from behind, etc …
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It is refreshing to have Laroche’s honesty, in contrast to the shallow, sneering remarks of some others.
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Frank’s post was refreshing in its content and honesty – as was Laroche’s.
I suspect that Amy had her tongue firmly in her cheek.
And predictably Lumen was being pointlessly predictable.
The sheer numbers of dead and wounded in the Great War beggar the imagination. Most of those young men were motivated by a “motley” collection of issues of which “God” was probably least significant.
All of us can and should learn something from their naïveté and yes credulity – as well as their sacrifice.
Lest we forget.
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There is a vital point missed by all Frank, Thom and Amy, but alluded to by Laroche.
Why, on such occasions of national commemoration or mourning is the church or cathedral the natural place of gathering?
Why is a civil ceremony in a town hall or like venue relatively cold and lacking something intangibly profound?
Is there something felt, though not explainable by non believers, in the reverential presence in a Catholic church?
Do humans only experience the deep empathy and bond with others through a common brotherhood ? Yet, there is no common human father figure that we all look to. Presidents, emperors, idols do not satisfy.
I wonder what is the object of such unsatisfied human yearnings?
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Get ready for this, Jim : you’re not wrong ! It’s only eight in the morning, but the temptation may be, as when the Apostles began speaking in tongues at Pentecost, to suggest that alcohol is the cause of my unwonted admission. No way ! Gave up the grog six years ago, which meant the end of gin on my cornflakes. (Now don’t disappoint me once again by taking me literally . . .).
When people enter a Town Hall or another public building, the Post Office or a Police Station, they do not speak in hushed tones. Tourists in Notre Dame in Paris have to be reminded by a sign that a church is a place of prayer and that silence should therefore be observed. Polite, civilized people know this instinctively and need no reminder. The very architecture of the edifice, especially if it is Gothic, draws our gaze upward. The height of cathedrals was matter for jealous competition between the Bishops who commissioned them. But few would contest the fact that the craftsmen who built them saw their work, the end of which most of them would never see, as an act of faith. Everything underlines the uniqueness of churches – from the stained glass and statues to the organ and kneelers.
All this expresses “something incredibly (?) profound”. So ? The Church has always been a master of its own marketing : the vestments, the music, the majesty of the soaring walls, the very size and volume of the place, the play of light from the stained glass windows, the flickering votive candles, the Stations of the Cross : everything contributes to making this a very special place, which can create an atmosphere of awe and a feeling of reverence. But only believers, by definition, believe in the God in Whose honor this splendid décor was created.
At the Anzac Memorial Mass I attended, visibly the majority of those attending (the “motley” congregation) were not Catholic and not even Church-goers. The blokes sitting on either side of me were typical of many others, who had no idea what was going on, and could not fathom what was being said and done. As for the décor, one remarked on the seepage stains on the ceiling. I told him that it was just a village church and not a prosperous parish. But they did talk to me in whispers. Apart from that they seemed totally impervious to the venue, bored if not uncomfortable, obliged as they were to see the ceremony through to the end. I can understand your point of view, Jim, and the feeling churches give you. They couldn’t.
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And there are many who are as deeply moved by the majesty of nature where the spectacular geological forms, usually in relatively inaccessible places and hence seen by relatively few, are the work of no craftsmen.
And even smaller numbers are as profoundly moved by what is viewable with a scanning electron microscope (for example) or will be viewable with the soon-to-be-built Thirty Metre Telescope which will throw light (not Lumen’s) on the processes in action in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
A young infant is fascinated with its own fingers.
Stephen Hawking is still fascinated with the mathematics of cosmic evolution.
Some still remain fascinated by myth.
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I can’t say,Thom, if the mathematics of cosmic evolution is a myth or not. What do you think?
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You don’t need to be a Fulbright Scholar or even a half-bright electrical engineer to know that Hawking’s maths has counted more than seven days of creation.
There are a few bright sparks however who claim to have established the wave-length of ultra-violet radiation emitted by self-resurrecting dead bodies.
I feel sure Hawking would be staggered by this revelation.
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The wave length of UV radiation needed to produce the nearest likeness to the image on the Shroud was actually measured by experimental physicists, over 5 years of reviewed research, by a National Environmental Institution.not merely by one theoretical physicist. They concluded that no earthly source of UV energy was powerful enough, nor of such short duration to produce this effect.
Your theoretical physicist champion, is also credited with the ludicrous remark that “If the universe did not exist, it would have to come into existence, due to the law of gravity.” Indeed; so where did this law come from and does a law not require a law maker? Hawking, though brilliant, does come out with such onsenses at times.
Do you place more confidence in the evidence of thorough measurement or untested speculation by a mathematician? Do you understand Hawking’s mathematical conclusion, or merely accept it on blind faith?
What period of creation was speculated by the mathematician? Is his the officially accepted figure? I know that the estimate is frequently modified, and a current major re-evaluation is in progress, due to measurement errors, caused by cosmic dust.
Did the mathematician take the cosmic dust factor into account and was it built into his calculations prior to the measurements that detected it?
It is difficult to believe that a pure mathematician would know anything of newly observed evidence, outside his narrow field.
There are already quite detailed explanation of ,not only the first few hundred million years , but down to the first milliseconds and seconds since the presumed Big bang.
Of course, another pure physicist/mathematician ,of equal caliber was the Catholic priest, Father Le Maître. The great Albert Einstein initially refuted Le Maitre’s Big Bang theory, but later had to acknowledge it. Father Le Maitre, who ‘owns’ the theory had no difficulty in reconciliation with Genesis.
You will recall Fred Hoyle, a physicist more renowned than Stephen Hawking, who solved the problem of the creation of elements of higher atomic number than beryllium.
Theoretical physics concluded that carbon could not possibly form. Again, the experimental physicist, Hoyle had the insight to solve the puzzle.
Of course, if the chain had stopped here, we would have negligible amounts carbon or oxygen, and of course no life; no Hawking, no Thom, just God and the angels.
You will recall that in solving this problem, Hoyle was motivated to go on, together with a theoretical physicist/mathematician, of similar ability to Hawking, to conclude that life could not have possibly occurred randomly. It was this shocking realization that “shook Hoyle’s atheism to the core.”
In conclusion, Hawking may well be staggered by the experimental evidence for the Resurrection(perhaps that is only your hunch), and I expect that his atheism, or semi atheism, would be shaken to the core.
But recently, even more evidence has emerged on the amazing Tilma of O.L.of Guadelupe. Take your pick. Try to attempt to explain either.
I am so glad to have the evidence of emerging scientific investigation to back my beliefs rather than the embarrassing lack of such evidence for atheism.
Laroche wisely observes that Catholic faith provides the greatest good for humanity, even though he does not believe all the doctrines, and scientific evidence is increasingly supporting the catholic faith. Win-win!
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