Simone Weil on capital 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, 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), in Simone Weil:  an anthology, ed. Siân Miles (London:  Virago, 1986), 93-94.

"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).

Oratio, Feast of St. Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church, 17 September

"Deus, fons vitae, qui sanctam Hildegardem, virginem, prophetico spiritu imbuisti, fac nos, quaesumus, eius exemplo et intercessione, vias tuas scire et in huius saeculi caligine lucis tuae claritatem cognoscere. Per Dominum."

O God, source of life, who steeped Saint Hildegard in the prophetic Spirit, cause us, we pray, by her example and intercession, to know your ways [(vias tuas scire > Scivias)] and in the darkness of our [(huius, of this)] time to know the brightness of your light.  Through [our] Lord [Jesus Christ your Son, who, etc.].

     Prayer for the Feast of St. Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church, 17 September, translation mine (as I wasn't seeing this offhand in any of my apps).  Image:  RomkeHoekstra, Wikimedia Commons.


Church of England:

"Most glorious and holy God, whose servant Hildegard, strong in the faith, was caught up in the vision of your heavenly courts:  by the breath of your Spirit open our eyes to glimpse your glory and our lips to sing your praises with all the angels; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who". Etc.

Episcopal Church:

"God of all times and seasons:  Give us grace that we, after the example of thy servant Hildegard, may both know and make known the joy and jubilation of being part of thy creation, and show forth thy glory not only with our lips but in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who".  Etc.

"Changes of habit"

     "In the summer of 1538 the order was put out for former regulars to remove habits or face the capital punishment of felons. Anecdotally, Cromwell met Alexander Barclay – formerly a monk, now a friar – at a bookstall by St Paul’s and told him that if he did not take off his habit he would be hanged, 'for example to all other'. Beyond London and the vicegerent’s gaze, it proved more difficult to prevent. Sir Piers Edgcumbe caught up with two Plymouth Franciscans still clothed as friars. 'Wolde [they] by them new hobyts or naye?', he challenged them. 'They bowthe sayed that they wolde not for a yere or tow and by that tyme perchance ther wylbe aouther change and then oure olde hobyts wyll serve agayne.' One Sir Robert Elys, resolutely uncooperative, was 'carried hym to the joyell [gaol]', declaring, 'he trustyd within tow yeris he mought weer his clothyng  agayne . . . [and] that he had red in a pronunsticacion that ther shulde be a kyng in yglond that shulde do gret wrong to his comynaltie to ther semyng and that within tow yeris after he shulde take gret repentance for the same.'"

      James G. Clark, The dissolution of the monasteries:  a new history (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2021), chap. 9 ("Changes of habit").  Image:  Wikimedia Commons.