"'How is it possible to have an innate attraction to something that is merely a social construct?'"

       Abigail Favale, The genesis of gender:  a Christian theology (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 2022), 123.

"Behold, my anger and my wrath"

Israel Museum, Jerusalem

"As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I do not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. . . ."

     Jer 7:16-18a RSV.

Two spirits

     "What then was the berdaches’ religious role on contact with the Spaniards?  Rather than being prophetic politicos, the berdaches seem to have held a role best described as sacrificial.  The stage for this discussion may be set by an insightful, but to date unreplicated statement of Las Casas, who claims that natives in the Tierra Firme thought the gods were pleased if young boys were prettified as girls before they were sacrificed.  Sacrifice appears close to the surface in much that touches on the berdache in religion.  As we shall see in the Andes, mid-sixteenth-century berdaches were ceremonially and sacrificially raped by big men during temple services, while the nineteenth-century Peublo Americans still practiced something similar on their berdaches during corn festivals.  In such instances, the berdaches appear to have been sacrifices to the deities, and, in my view, this practice is at one with the sexual sacrifice accorded the Peruvian god Pachacama [(Pachacámac)], which seems to have consisted in bent-over subjects at prayer presenting their hindquarters for anal penetration to the god, that is, to his priests."

     Richard C. Trexler, "Gender subordination and political hierarchy in pre-Hispanic America," chap. 2 in Infamous desire:  male homosexuality in colonial Latin America, ed. Pete Sigal (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2003), 77-78 (70-101).  See also 80 and 95n35.  According to the 2nd 2005 edition of the Encyclopedia of religion, sv Inca religion (and other entries), Pachamama was at least sometimes (?) Pachacámac's consort.  (But I need to do a lot of further reading!)
 

The late medieval origin of the fairy tradition

      "It may be argued, therefore, that the concept of fairies which prevailed in early modern Britain formed between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the fourteenth representing the decisive period in its gestation.  By 1400 it had become a stock component of most types of literature, across the island, and was also an established feature of popular belief, certainly in England and probably elsewhere.  Although it drew on older images and ideas, its appearance was a distinctively late medieval phenomenon. . . .
     "If these suggestions are correct, then the fairy kingdom was as much a late medieval development as the concept of the satanic conspiracy of witches, and may (almost certainly) join the wandering nocturnal hosts of the dead and (possibly) the nocturnal retinue of the Lady, as products of the Middle Ages rather than survivals from the ancient world.  In this case, Carlo Ginzberg’s idea that the British fairy queen and the Continental Lady and wandering dead were all surviving fragments of the same prehistoric ‘substratum’ of pagan shamanism is no longer tenable."

     Ronald Hutton, The witch:  a history of fear, from ancient times to the present (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2017), chap. 8, subsection "Where do fairies come from?"
     Cf. Francis Young, Twilight of the godlings:  the shadowy origins of Britain's supernatural beings (Cambridge University Press, ), as reviewed by George Morris in "Fairies," Times literary supplement no. 6275 (July 7, 2023):  24, underscoring mine:

"the fairies are not survivals from a pagan pantheon, but something more complex.
     "The pre-Christian religions of Britain had a clear role for 'godlings', but their place in the Christian cosmos of angels, demons and a single deity was ambiguous.  Not being the objects of worship, they usually didn't need to be demoted or demonized, so often escaped the direct condemnation of Christian authorities.  Far from being in conflict with Christianity, . . . fairies were 'non-Christian artefacts of a Christian culture', filling the same cultural niche as the minor deities of paganism without being direct survivals of the old religion.  Ideas about Roman religion were interpreted through Christian authorities, and the place of godlings in a Christian world was worked out through scriptural references to giants, fallen angels and monstrous beings.
     "Rather than thinking about fairies as survivals, . . . we might consider them as being more like the ship of Theseus, changing over time, but accruing layers of cultural and historical meaning."

Make it possible for me to see them, live with them

"Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre.  Per."

O God, who have commanded us to honor father and mother, kindly have mercy on the souls of my father and mother, forgive their sins, and make [it possible for] me to see them in the joy of eternal splendor.  Through.

"Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque cum illis in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac vivere.  Per."

O God, who have commanded us to honor father and mother, kindly have mercy on the souls of my father and mother, forgive their sins, and make [it possible for] me to live with them in the joy of eternal splendor.  Through.

     Two forms of the Oratio pro patris et matris, Orationes pro defunctis, Officium defunctorum (Mass for the dead), late medieval/early modern Sarum missal (if not also other uses), translations mine.  Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae eccleslae Sarum, ed. Dickinson (Burntisland:  E Prelo de Pitsligo, 1861-1883), 873*.  Note:  these are Corpus orationum no. 1903, where the earliest of the 17 sources listed is the 11th-century Missale Drummondiense (Drummond Missal, London, British Library, C 35 i II (but unless it's only a fragment, this implies, rather, Morgan Library MS M.627 ("or early 12th century"); G. H. Forbes, ed., The ancient Irish missal in the possession of the Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, Drummond Castle, Perthshire (Edinburgh:  1882), p. 37).  I was put onto this by the dedication to Eamon Duffy's The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2005 [1992]), though I should have noticed it also in the third typical edition of the current Missale Romanum, under Masses for the Dead, IV. Various Prayers for the Dead, 11. For the Priest's Parents (Saint Paul Daily Missal:  Sunday and Weekday Masses . . . (2012), pp. 2596-2597):

Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer patri et matri "(parentibus nostris), eorumque peccata dimitte, meque (nosque) eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre.  Per" etc.

"O God, who commanded us to honor father and mother, have mercy in your compassion on my father and mother (our parents), forgive them their sins, and bring me (us) to see them one day in the gladness of eternal glory.  Through" etc.

"Not that hit nowe is full of woundes and plages, or nowe deede"

John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln,
as depicted in his Missal, British Library

"Yonder it lyes, yonder is hys bodye, in yonder tombe, in yonder sepulchre.  Lett us goo thidre, lett us wepe with these Maryes, lett us turne and wynde thys bodye of Christe, lett us turne it thys wayes and that wayes, to and froo, and pytussely beholde hit.  And what shall we fynde.  We shall fynde a bloody bodye, a body full of plages and woundes.  Not that hit nowe is full of woundes and plages, or nowe deede:  but y[e]t thowe oughtest nowe as the tyme of the yere falleth, with the churche to remembere this body.  Howe it was for the broken, howe it was for the rente and torn, howe bloody it was, howe full of plages, and howe it was wounded.  And in recollection and remembrance thereof, wepe and lament, for it was doon for the."

Yonder it lies, yonder is his body, in yonder tomb, in yonder sepulchre.  Let us go thither, let us weep with these Marys, let us turn and wend this body of Christ, let us turn it this way and that way, to and fro, and piteously behold it.  And what shall we find?  We shall find a bloody body, a body full of [blow-inflicted] sores and wounds.  Not that it now is full of wounds and sores, or now dead:  but yet thou oughtest now as the time of the year falleth, with the church to remember this body.  How it was for thee broken, howe it was for thee rent and torn, how bloody it was, how full of sores, and how it was wounded.  And in recollection and remembrance thereof, weep and lament, for it was done for thee.

     John Longland, A Sermond made be fore the kynge 1535, RSTC 16795.5, sig. R4, as quoted on p. 36 of Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2005 [1992]), 36.

"God does not command the impossible"

"God . . . does not command what is impossible; rather, by his commandment, he warns you to do what you can and to ask for what you cannot."

"non . . . deus inpossibilia iubet, sed iubendo admonet et facere quod possis et petere quod non possis."

     St. Augustine, De natura et gratia (415) xliii.50, trans. Roland J. Teske, WSA I/23, 250.  =CSEL 60, 270 ll. 20-22.  Cf. Council of Trent VI.11 (ed. Tanner, vol. 2, p. 675):  "God does not command the impossible, but by commanding he instructs you both to do what you can and to pray for what you cannot, and he gives his aid to enable you; for his commandments are not heavy, his yoke is sweet and his burden light."
     Yet if (for example) Pascal was right about "the [supposedly] Augustinian doctrine of the double abandonment [(double délaissement)] of the just by God" (who may withhold first the grace to pray and then, as a consequence of the failure to pray, the grace to keep the commandments), then we are as dependent on an inscrutable grace for the ability to ask (pray) as on an inscrutable grace for the ability to act (keep the commandments).  See Martine Pécharman, "Les écrits sur la grâce, ou de la bonne manière d’être Augustinien," Seventeenth-century French studies 35, no. 2 (December 2013):  110-115 (106-115), which seems to imply (?) that Pascal was going beyond Trent in insisting upon this interpretation, but was nonetheless "doing the work of a theologian" (115) thereby.  For Pascal, to insist that God sometimes does grant the just the grace to keep the commandments was to oppose the Manichaeans and Lutherans, but to insist that God is free to withhold the grace to pray was to oppose the Pelagians.