"It is a rare thing to come across a man of sixty, living on the threshold of a great change, who had already come to regard a unique culture and a unique political institution as replaceable, in theory at least."
Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: a biography (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1967), 266. A bit later, though, Brown takes Augustine to task for having deliberately forgotten "that a culture requires a framework of rules and organized teaching" (268).
Thursday, June 23, 2011
"steeped too long in too few books"
"We cannot help noticing the extent to which the 'Divine eloquence' of God is the eloquence of a Late Roman writer. For no one else would have made such a cult of veiling his meaning. Such a man lived among fellow-connoisseurs, who had been steeped too long in too few books. He no longer needed to be explicit: only hidden meanings, rare and difficult words and elaborate circumlocutions, could save his readers from boredom, from fastidium, from that loss of interest in the obvious, that afflicts the overcultured man. He would believe (with André Gide, among others) that the sheer difficulty of a work of literature made it more valuable—a sinister way of thinking in an age when educated men tended to form a caste, rebuffing the outsider by their possession of the ancient authors. Above all, the narrow canon of acknowledged classics had been charged with a halo of 'Wisdom': an intellectual agility quite alien to modern man, would have to be deployed constantly to extract the inexhaustible treasure that, it was felt, must lie hidden in so cramped a quarry."
Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: a biography (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1967), 259-260. Unfortunately, I can't think otherwise than with Augustine here: "such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that, even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else, from boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and with talents greater than I possess, I would still be making progress in discovering their treasures" (263, citing Ep. 137.3).
Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: a biography (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1967), 259-260. Unfortunately, I can't think otherwise than with Augustine here: "such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that, even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else, from boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and with talents greater than I possess, I would still be making progress in discovering their treasures" (263, citing Ep. 137.3).
St. Thomas Aquinas on those "who never take the sacrament, and yet receive its effect on account of the devotion they have to [it], which [sacrament] they have in wish or desire."
"Fault in the recipient can be an obstacle to the effect of the sacrament, for instance, if he receives the sacrament for outward show without his heart being prepared: he receives the sacrament, but not its effect, that is, the grace of the Holy Spirit, for 'the Holy Spirit of instruction shuns all pretense' (Wis 1:5). Conversely, there are others who never take the sacrament and yet receive its effect from their devotion or desire."
Or, more literally, "on account of the devotion that they have to the sacrament, which [sacrament] they have in wish or desire [(propter devotionem quam habent ad sacramentum, quod habent in voto, sive desiderio)]":
"Impeditur etiam effectus sacramenti per culpam recipientis, puta, si fictus accedat, et non corde parato ad suscipiendum sacramentum. Talis enim licet sacramentum suscipiat, effectum tamen sacramenti, idest gratiam spiritus sancti, non recipit, quia, ut dicitur Sap. I, 5: spiritus sanctus disciplinae effugiet fictum. E contrario autem sunt alii qui nunquam recipiunt sacramentum, qui tamen effectum sacramenti suscipiunt propter devotionem quam habent ad sacramentum, quod habent in voto, sive desiderio."
Saint Thomas Aquinas, De articulis fidei 2, as trans. in Saint Thomas Aquinas: theological texts, ed. Thomas Gilby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 351, via Adoration: eucharistic texts and prayers throughout church history, ed. Daniel P. Guernsey (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1999), 64. The Latin is from vol. 1 of the Opuscula theologica ed. Verardo & Spiazzi (Turin: Marietti, 1954) by way of Corpus Thomisticum.
Or, more literally, "on account of the devotion that they have to the sacrament, which [sacrament] they have in wish or desire [(propter devotionem quam habent ad sacramentum, quod habent in voto, sive desiderio)]":
"Impeditur etiam effectus sacramenti per culpam recipientis, puta, si fictus accedat, et non corde parato ad suscipiendum sacramentum. Talis enim licet sacramentum suscipiat, effectum tamen sacramenti, idest gratiam spiritus sancti, non recipit, quia, ut dicitur Sap. I, 5: spiritus sanctus disciplinae effugiet fictum. E contrario autem sunt alii qui nunquam recipiunt sacramentum, qui tamen effectum sacramenti suscipiunt propter devotionem quam habent ad sacramentum, quod habent in voto, sive desiderio."
Saint Thomas Aquinas, De articulis fidei 2, as trans. in Saint Thomas Aquinas: theological texts, ed. Thomas Gilby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 351, via Adoration: eucharistic texts and prayers throughout church history, ed. Daniel P. Guernsey (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1999), 64. The Latin is from vol. 1 of the Opuscula theologica ed. Verardo & Spiazzi (Turin: Marietti, 1954) by way of Corpus Thomisticum.
"even when it didn't raise its practice to its preaching, it never lowered its preaching to its practice."
"No matter how morally bad the Church had gotten in the Renaissance, it never taught heresy. I was impressed with its very hypocrisy: even when it didn't raise its practice to its preaching, it never lowered its preaching to its practice. Hypocrisy, someone said, is the tribute vice pays to virtue."
Peter Kreeft, "Hauled aboard the ark: the spiritual journey of Peter Kreeft." From "Hauled aboard the ark," in Spiritual journeys: twenty-seven men and women share their faith experiences, ed. Robert Baram (Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media, 1987), 174-175 (165-178). But is this true (of the Church, at least)? I must read Noonan and others on the Church that (supposedly) can and cannot change.
Peter Kreeft, "Hauled aboard the ark: the spiritual journey of Peter Kreeft." From "Hauled aboard the ark," in Spiritual journeys: twenty-seven men and women share their faith experiences, ed. Robert Baram (Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media, 1987), 174-175 (165-178). But is this true (of the Church, at least)? I must read Noonan and others on the Church that (supposedly) can and cannot change.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Through him you give us all these gifts. You fill them with life and goodness, you bless them and make them holy.
Per quem haec ómnia, Dómine, semper bona creas, sanctíficas, vivíficas, benedícis, et praestas nobis.
Through him you give us all these gifts. You fill them with life and goodness, you bless them and make them holy.
Through whom
you continue to make all these good things, O Lord;
you sanctify them, fill them with life,
bless them, and bestow them upon us.
Through whom you are always creating, sanctifying, vivifying, blessing, and presenting to us all these good things, O Lord.
Through whom you create, sanctify, vivify, bless, and present to us all these always good things, O Lord.
Eucharistic Prayer I, or the Roman canon, as reproduced here in Latin, here in 2nd-edition ICEL English, and here in 3rd-edition ICEL English. The last two renditions are mine. Of these the second is only grammatically permissable.
I must confess to feeling that though the English of the 3rd edition is closer to the original, that of the 2nd is somewhat superior as poetry.
Through him you give us all these gifts. You fill them with life and goodness, you bless them and make them holy.
Through whom
you continue to make all these good things, O Lord;
you sanctify them, fill them with life,
bless them, and bestow them upon us.
Through whom you are always creating, sanctifying, vivifying, blessing, and presenting to us all these good things, O Lord.
Through whom you create, sanctify, vivify, bless, and present to us all these always good things, O Lord.
Eucharistic Prayer I, or the Roman canon, as reproduced here in Latin, here in 2nd-edition ICEL English, and here in 3rd-edition ICEL English. The last two renditions are mine. Of these the second is only grammatically permissable.
I must confess to feeling that though the English of the 3rd edition is closer to the original, that of the 2nd is somewhat superior as poetry.
Snyder on Longerich on the Holocaust
"Killing was not the original technique of the Final Solution, but it was the technique whose efficacy Himmler proved. [Peter] Longerich's magnificent biography of Himmler reveals him navigating among different policies of destruction, finding ways to match Hitler's immediate needs with German's practical possibilities. The grand 'positive solution' of a racially ennobling war gave way to the total 'negative solution' of the planned destruction of the people defined as the chief enemy, the Jews.
"Historians of Germany have pushed the date of the crucial decision to eliminate all Jews later and later, until it seems that it could go no further. They debate whether the critical moment was June 1941 (which few now believe), or October 1941, or December 1941. Longerich calmly pushes through late 1941 and January 1942, the month of the Wannsee Conference, without recording a moment from which the Holocaust as total extermination was inevitable. He believes that there was in fact no crucial moment when Hitler decided, or communicated his decision, to kill all Jews under German control. In his view, 'we should abandon the notion that it is historically meaningful to try to filter the wealth of available historical material and pick out a single decision' that led to the Holocaust. . . .
"It was only in the summer of 1942, Longerich maintains, that mass killing was finally understood as the realization of the Final Solution, rather than as an extensively violent preliminary to some later program of slave labor and deportation to the lands of a conquered USSR. To see mass killing as itself the Final Solution was, in Longerich's view, to abandon the prospect of any military victory over the USSR in the near future. . . .
"The emerging image of a Holocaust resulting from political motives denies Longerich's readers the expected moment of doom at the bottom of a descending narrative arc. More obstinately than almost all other historians, Longerich resists the temptation to insert a novelistic climax into the history of the extermination of the Jews."
So what were the decisive factors? 1) "the Führer and his ideology" as coupled with 2) "The political style of Hitler and other Nazi leaders", which "was to issue general guidelines and to expect subordinates to find the ways to realize them", to act "as creative conformists" in pragmatic response to 3) "Germany's practical possibilities" at any given point in an ever-shifting historical situation. "Hitler achieved his racist ends" by "requir[ing] of the Germans not just obedience but initiative," such that "the pattern of creative conformity established before 1939 enabled bloody escalation during the war."
Timothy Snyder, "A new approach to the Holocaust," The New York review of books 58, no. 11 (June 23, 2011): 54-56. Longerich's two books Holocaust: the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 [1998]), and Heinrich Himmler: Biographie (Berlin: Siedler, 2008), get the lion's share of the attention in this review.
"Historians of Germany have pushed the date of the crucial decision to eliminate all Jews later and later, until it seems that it could go no further. They debate whether the critical moment was June 1941 (which few now believe), or October 1941, or December 1941. Longerich calmly pushes through late 1941 and January 1942, the month of the Wannsee Conference, without recording a moment from which the Holocaust as total extermination was inevitable. He believes that there was in fact no crucial moment when Hitler decided, or communicated his decision, to kill all Jews under German control. In his view, 'we should abandon the notion that it is historically meaningful to try to filter the wealth of available historical material and pick out a single decision' that led to the Holocaust. . . .
"It was only in the summer of 1942, Longerich maintains, that mass killing was finally understood as the realization of the Final Solution, rather than as an extensively violent preliminary to some later program of slave labor and deportation to the lands of a conquered USSR. To see mass killing as itself the Final Solution was, in Longerich's view, to abandon the prospect of any military victory over the USSR in the near future. . . .
"The emerging image of a Holocaust resulting from political motives denies Longerich's readers the expected moment of doom at the bottom of a descending narrative arc. More obstinately than almost all other historians, Longerich resists the temptation to insert a novelistic climax into the history of the extermination of the Jews."
So what were the decisive factors? 1) "the Führer and his ideology" as coupled with 2) "The political style of Hitler and other Nazi leaders", which "was to issue general guidelines and to expect subordinates to find the ways to realize them", to act "as creative conformists" in pragmatic response to 3) "Germany's practical possibilities" at any given point in an ever-shifting historical situation. "Hitler achieved his racist ends" by "requir[ing] of the Germans not just obedience but initiative," such that "the pattern of creative conformity established before 1939 enabled bloody escalation during the war."
Timothy Snyder, "A new approach to the Holocaust," The New York review of books 58, no. 11 (June 23, 2011): 54-56. Longerich's two books Holocaust: the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 [1998]), and Heinrich Himmler: Biographie (Berlin: Siedler, 2008), get the lion's share of the attention in this review.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
"pardoning a fornicator is worse than pardoning a murderer"
Ha! Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid. 'Tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one.
Angelo, in Shakespeare's Measure for measure II.4, ll.41-48, as interpreted by Frank Kermode in Shakespeare's language (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000), 160 ff., as filtered through Charles Rosen, "The revelations of Frank Kermode," The New York review of books 58, no. 10 (June 9, 2011): 36 (34-36).
To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid. 'Tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one.
Angelo, in Shakespeare's Measure for measure II.4, ll.41-48, as interpreted by Frank Kermode in Shakespeare's language (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000), 160 ff., as filtered through Charles Rosen, "The revelations of Frank Kermode," The New York review of books 58, no. 10 (June 9, 2011): 36 (34-36).
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