Altars and relics

"Thus in the train of the impious heresy of the defamers of Christians, many other impieties appeared.  Just as those heretics removed the sight of venerable icons from the church, they also abandoned other customs, which should now be renewed and which should be in vigour in virtue of both written and unwritten legislation.  Therefore we decree that in venerable churches [(σεπτοὶ ναοὶ | venerabilis templa)] consecrated without relics of the holy martyrs, the installation of relics should take place along with the usual prayers.  And if in future any bishop is found out consecrating a church without relics, let him be deposed as someone who has flouted the ecclesiastical traditions."

     Second Council of Nicaea (787), Canon 7, as trans. Tanner (vol. 1, p. 144-145).

     1596:  "In 1596 Church law required a sepulcher for every altar" (NCE2 1, 315).

     Current and former rites for the dedication of an altar    

     Corpus juris canonici 

     Code of canon law (Codex juris canonici (1982- )), Can. 1237 §2:  "The ancient tradition of placing relics of martyrs or other saints under a fixed altar is to be preserved, according to the norms given in the liturgical books [(Antiqua traditio Martyrum aliorumve Sanctorum reliquias sub altari fixo condendi servetur, iuxta normas in libris liturgicis traditas)]."

Simone Weil on (indirectly) pacifism (or, at least, the French pacifists of the 1930s)

     "Indirect mechanism of a crime.
     "My criminal error, before 1939, concerning pacifist circles and their activity, was due to incapacity caused by the devastation of physical pain for so many years.  Being in no state to observe their action at close quarters by meeting and talking with them, I failed to detect their propensity for treason.  But I could easily have reflected that the state I was in disqualified me from serious responsibilities and made it obligatory to refrain from them.  What prevented me from seeing this was the sin of laziness, the temptation of inertia.  I desired so intensely to refrain from that sort of responsibility that I dared not consider impartially the legitimate reasons for refraining; like a seminary pupil tortured by violent carnal desires who dare not so much as look at a woman.
     "I had so often succumbed to laziness and intertia in small things that when I was faced with something important I felt I must blindly resist the temptation of inertia—instead of coolly examining the possible advantages and disadvantages of action or inaction.
     "Thus the weakness of not writing a letter, or not making my bed one day when I felt tired, by accumulating in the course of many days, finally led me to the sin of criminal negligence towards my country."

          Simone Weil, "London notebook, 1943," in First and last notebooks, trans. Richard Rees, (London:  Oxford University Press, 1970), 345-346.

Simone Weil on (capital) punishment

      "Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.  There are two kinds of punishment, disciplinary and penal. . . . [T]he most indispensable punishment for the soul is [the latter,] that inflicted for crime.  By committing crime, a man places himself, of his own accord, outside the chain of eternal obligations that bind every human being to every other one.  Punishment alone can weld him back again; fully so, if accompanied by consent on his part; otherwise only partially so.  Just as the only way of showing respect for somebody suffering from hunger is to give him something to eat, so the only way of showing respect for somebody who has placed himself outside the law is to reinstate him inside the law but subjecting him to the punishment ordained by the law. . . .
     "So that this need may be satisfied, it is above all necessary that. . . . punishment . . . be an honor.  It must not only wipe out the stigma of the crime, but must be regarded as a supplementary form of education, compelling a devotion to the public good.  The severity of the punishment must also be in keeping with the kind of obligation which has been violated, and not with the interests of public security. . . .
     ". . . Punishment only takes place where the hardship is accompanied at some time or other, by a feeling of justice.  Just as the musician awakens the sense of beauty in us by sounds, so the penal system should know how to awaken the sense of justice in the criminal by the infliction of pain, or even, if need be, of death. . . .  [P]unishment is a method of getting justice into the soul of the criminal by bodily suffering."

     Simone Weil, The need for roots:  prelude to a declaration of duties toward mankind, trans. Arthur Wills (New York:  G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1952), 21-22 ("The needs of the soul. Punishment").

"God has power to deliver from evil only the eternal part of the soul of those who have made real and direct contact with him.  The rest of the soul, and the entire soul of whoever has not received the grace of real and direct contact with God, is at the mercy of men's caprice and the hazards of circumstance.
     "Therefore is is for men to see that men are preserved from harm.
     "When harm is done to a man, real evil enters into him; not merely pain and suffering, but the actual horror of evil. . . .
     "Nevertheless, eternal wisdom does not abandon the soul entirely to the mercy of chance and men's caprice.  The harm inflicted on a man by a wound from outside sharpens his thirst for the good and thus there automatically arises the possibility of a cure.  If the wound is deep, the thirst is for good in its purest form.  The part of the soul which cries 'Why am I being hurt?' is on the deepest level and even in the most corrupt of men it remains from earliest infancy perfectly intact and totally innocent.
     "To maintain justice and preserve men from all harm means first of all to prevent harm being done to them.  For those to whom harm has been done, it means to efface the material consequences by putting them in a place where the wound, if it is not too deep, may be cured naturally by a spell of well-being.  But for those in whom the wound is a laceration of the soul it means further, and above all, to offer them good in its purest form to assuage their thirst.
     "Sometimes it may be necessary to inflict harm in order to stimulate this thirst before assuaging it, and that is what punishment is for.  Men who are so estranged from the good that they seek to spread evil everywhere can only be reintegrated with the good by having harm inflicted upon them.  This must be done until the completely innocent part of their soul awakens with the surprised cry 'Why am I being hurt?'  The innocent part of the criminal's soul must then be fed to make it grow until it becomes able to judge and condemn his past crimes and at last, by the help of grace, to forgive them.  With this the punishment is completed; the criminal has been reintegrated with the good and should be publicly and solemnly reintegrated with society.
     "That is what punishment is.  Even capital punishment [(la peine capitale)], although it excludes reintegration with society in the literal sense, should be the same thing.  Punishment is solely a method of procuring pure good for men who do not desire it.  The art of punishing is the art of awakening in a criminal, by pain or even death, the desire for pure good."

     Simone Weil, "Human personality" (1942/1943), a translation of "Collectivité—personne—impersonnel droit—justice" ("Le personne et le sacré"), and sometimes entitled "Beyond personalism," in Écrits de Londres et dernières lettres (Paris:  Gallimard, 1957), 38-40.  From Simone Weil:  an anthology, ed. Siân Miles (London:  Virago, 1986), 93-94.


     "Apart from death, man’s punishment in Genesis consists solely of imposed submission.  Work and death; passivity of woman in love and child-birth.
     "Work is something resembling death.  It is submission to matter.
     "But beauty is a snare of God’s to obtain our consent to the obedience to which he constrains us.
     "Human punishment ought to imitate God’s method.
     "Reduce the criminal to obedience by constraint, while offering him enticements which will one day win his consent.
     "It is always a failure if a guilty man dies without ever having once felt that his condemnation was his greatest good fortune.
     "Physical and moral pain are things which overwhelm the soul; surely we ought not to refrain from making use of them?  Why let such precious gifts of God run to waste?  But to pervert their use is appalling.
     "If one judges a criminal to be incurable, one has no right to punish him; one ought only to prevent him from doing harm.  The infliction of punishment is a declaration of faith that in the depths of the guilty there is a grain of pure good.
     "To punish without that faith is to do evil for evil’s sake."

     Simone Weil, "London notebook, 1943," in First and last notebooks, trans. Richard Rees, (London:  Oxford University Press, 1970), 345.

"one day they will be our co-heirs[,] just as here below they are our guardians and trustees"

"O God, Who in thine unspeakable Providence hast been pleased to give thine holy Angels charge over us, to keep us, mercifully grant unto our prayers, that we be both ever fenced by their wardship here, and everlastingly blessed by their fellowship hereafter. Through".

"O God, who in your unfathomable providence are pleased to send your holy Angels to guard us, hear our supplication as we cry to you, that we may always be defended by their protection and rejoice eternally in their company. Through".

"God our Father, in your loving providence you send your holy angels to watch over us.  Hear our prayers, defend us always by their protection and let us share your life with them forever.  We ask this through".

"Deus, qui ineffabili providentia sanctos Angelos tuos ad nostram custodiam mittere dignaris: largire supplicibus tuis; et eorum semper protectione defendi, et aeterna societate gaudere. Per".

     Prayer for 2 October, Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels.  Headline from Sermon 12.3.6-8 on Ps 91 by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a reading for the day from, presumably, the foundation of the feast on 13 September 1670.  Image.

Pseudo C. S. Lewis

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
"You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream."
Etc.

     The phrase "never too old" does not occur in any of the many books of his reproduced in searchable full-text (e.g.  html) at fadedpage.com, nor could I get it to occur in any of the three volumes of his Collected letters, as searchable via public library eVersions.  It isn’t referenced in The quotable Lewis (1989) or The C. S. Lewis index (1995) either, and some (e.g. here and here) have long claimed that it can’t be found in him.  More importantly, The Quote Investigator says the same.  Conversely, it does appear in The misquotable C. S. Lewis (2018).  Etc.

"every [(toute)] avoidable error"-in-"print" must be punished, with "prison or hard labor" if necessary

     "The need of truth is more sacred than any other need. . . .  One feels afraid to read when once one has realized the quantity and the monstrousness [(l’énormité)] of the material falsehoods shamelessly paraded, even in the books of the most reputable authors.  Thereafter one reads as though one were drinking from a contaminated well.
     "There are men who work eight hours a day and make the immense effort of reading in the evenings so as to acquire knowledge.  It is impossible for them to go and verify their sources in the big libraries.  They have to take the books on trust.  One has no right to give them spurious provender [(à manger du faux)].  What sense is there in pleading that authors act in good faith?  They don’t have to do physical labor for eight hours a day.  Society provides for their sustenance so that they may have the leisure and give themselves the trouble to avoid error. . . ."
     "A few straightforward measures of public salubrity would protect the population from offenses against the truth [(les atteintes à la vérité)].
     "The first would be to set up, with such protection in view, special courts enjoying the highest prestige, composed of judges specially selected and trained.  They would be responsible for publicly condemning any avoidable error [(toute erreur evitable)] , and would be able to sentence to prison or hard labor for repeated commission of the offense, aggravated by proven dishonesty of intention.
     ". . . .
     "Under this system, anybody, no matter who, discovering an avoidable error [(une erreur évitable)] in a printed text or radio broadcast, would be entitled to bring an action before these courts."

     Simone Weil, The need for roots:  prelude to a declaration of duties toward mankind, trans. Arthur Wills (New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952), 37-39 (Part one, Truth).  French from L’enracinement:  prelude à une declaration des devoirs enverse l’être humain, Collection Espoir (Paris:  Gallimard, 1949), 38-40.
     Who, then, should be prosecuted for this eminently avoidable error?  The translator?  Or someone else further on down the chain?  "All the more reason why it is disgraceful to tolerate the existence of newspapers on which, as everybody knows, not one of the collaborators would be able to stop [(y demeurer, to remain!)], unless he were prepared from time to time to tamper knowingly with the truth" (38).
     Cf. Geoffrey Hill on the metaphysical significance of inaccuracy.

Nos. two and three of Baumstark's "celebrated" "laws of liturgical development" ("criteria . . . of relative [liturgical] age")

"a [liturgical] text is [1] the more ancient the less influenced by the Bible and [2] the more recent the more symmetrical.  What is more, . . . the tendency towards symmetry is felt before the influence of the Bible, for there are many cases in which the symmetry, itself clearly secondary, has been destroyed by the more and more invasive impact [(action . . . envahissante)] of biblical language."

     Anton Baumstark, Liturgie comparée:  principes et méthodes pour l'étude historique des liturgies chrétiennes (Chevetogne, Belgium: Editions de Chevetogne, 1953 [1939]), 67, citing (his student) Fritz Hamm and (subsequently) Hieronymus Engberding (translation mine).  "celebrated" from Haquin, André Haquin, "Un prière eucharistique valide, sans paroles de consécration?: L’anaphore Syrienne d’Addaï et Mari," Revue théologique de Louvain 37, no. 4 (2006): 536n8 (532-544).  This struck me at first as counter-intuitive, but makes sense in the light of the presence of liturgy in Scripture itself (67-68).