It steals among us, creeps into our daily cares,
That whisper in the whirlwind you always knew was there.
However high the walls, how indifferent we are to hear,
Beauty comes, insidious in its mercy, and lodges in the ear,
From there to spread its glory, hold prisoner our dead
resolve.
Now we are free and large enough to attend on God.
Others will say I dream. But no, I have heard the familiar
Music of my soul rising to splendid and abundant life.
Comments
Wilhelmsen is reduced to clinging because, he says, "the Puritan heresies smashed this Christmas of ours." The Puritans could abide no such embrace of fecundity. "Did not sin come into the world through a woman?" They effectively outlawed Christmas; no mass, no feasting, no plum puddings... "Cotton Mather denounced Christmas in sermon after sermon, and the General Court of Massachusetts levied its stamp of disapproval of the popish holiday by enacting, democratically, a statute 'for preventing disorders' (i.e., fun) on that Day."
"But in this ghastly simulacrum of civilization that we call the twentieth century, where all honor is forgotten, there are still children in the high plains of Castille who are romping now through cobbled streets covered in snow, the night bitter and cold under a sky swept clean of clouds. And they are singing, these children: Dark Mary, Our Lovely, please hurry and give birth to Your Son, because tonight is the Good Night."
Here is a story of a sinful woman, sister Angelica, who is placed by her family in a convent after she has had an illicit birth. For seven years her family does not contact her, and one day she is visited by her aunt, who wishes her to sign some legal papers. Angelica's sister is to be married, and the nun must now sign a document renouncing her claim to her inheritance. Angelica, her heart warmed by memories of her son, mentions the unmentionable: Is my boy’s hair still yellow, are his lips still like rubies? The aunt condemns her and coldly discloses that her child, for seven years Angelica’s spiritual raft, had died two years earlier. Angelica is an herbalist; she has just provided a successful herbal cure for one of the sick nuns. In her grief, she wanders into the forest and makes a death posset of herbs, which she takes. Now, it must be understood that suicide, despair without hope, is the sin that CANNOT be forgiven. Before she dies, Angelica begs the Virgin Mary for mercy and intersession. Puccini’s Mary steps on stage directly from the 12th century: She is the QUEEN of heaven. In the 12th century, and for some years beyond, if you were of the Queen’s party – if you were HER man or HER woman – nothing would be denied to you. In one early mystery play, Satan, who appears as God’s counselor, the tester of men, storms Heaven and lays before God his just complaint: If the mother of God is allowed to proceed recklessly in this manner, she will, sooner or later, overthrow all the laws of Heaven and earth; she plows laws under her feet for those who petition her in the name of her Son. THIS virgin now steps into Puccini’s operatic frame. In answer to Angelica’s prayer that she be allowed to see her son in Heaven, a miracle occurs. Mary appears holding in her arms Angelica’s son, whose hair is golden and whose lips are red as rubies. The Virgin, herself a mother whose Son was tortured and murdered LAWFULLY, hands the child to its mother in a welcoming sign that her prayers have opened the doors of Heaven to her, a sinner spurned by all. The other nuns witness the miracle and rejoice at the throne of Mercy beneath the feet of Mary.
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It seems to me true, as asserted by Catholic convert,Willmoore Kendall, that the Constitution was consistent in its ends with Catholic/Aristotlian tradition. But, it seems to me also true, as Catholic M.E. Bradford claimed, that the Civil War was won by the neo-Puritans, purveyors of what Bradford called "the heresy of equality." It wouldn't have been so bad if they could have stopped there, but their "truth" just marches on and on "...trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored..." When I was a kid in government elementary school right here in the Nutmeg State we celebrated Christmas with singing. Memory fails, but I think even Miss Hartstein's 1964 fourth grade classroom was decorated.
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Bill would allow Christmas to be celebrated in public schools
Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, calls it the three-reindeer rule.
Basically, he said, schools can have a nativity scene representing the birth of Jesus as long as they put a menorah and a couple of reindeer or snowmen in it. The idea is to represent more than one religion as well as a secular symbol.
“I want people to know it’s perfectly OK to say ‘Merry Christmas’ and have a Christmas pageant or a Christmas dance,”
I wrote about him here: http://donpesci.blogspot.com/2007/01/american-lives-flight-of-orestes.html
From the founding to roughly 1950's, the policy of the U.S. government towards churches was accompodationist and in conformity to a historically correct reading of the First Amendment, which holds that government may not assist in the establishment of a national church or prohibit the free exercise of religion.
That has now changed. According to a new and advanced non-accompdationist constitutional interpretation, the establishment clause has swallowed up the free exercise clause in the First Amendment. Even the Deist Jefferson would not have permitted such bastardization. See here: http://donpesci.blogspot.com/2014/01/cuomo-catholics-need-not-apply.html#more
This sort sort of anarchic constitutional thought would not have been possible in a Republic that valued its Judeo-Christian faith. Here, as always, politics follows in the rut of culture.
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion
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Buckley's teacher, Kendall, also correct in opposition to the Bill of Rights, but especially against the First Amendment. There was no open society tradition in America, and obviously none in Puritan Connecticut. Water under the bridge. But, the real problem was the Civil War, and the amendment(s) to the Constitution jammed through subsequently. In particular, for purposes of consideration of "freedom of religion" in the states (which had previously been rightly considered logically prior to the Federal union), the important change, the fundamental transformation, if you will, was the imposition of "due process" on the states.
Even then, we would have been ok. "Due process" relatively innocuous if the Harvard Law School guys hadn't gotten into the act with the incorporation doctrine, if they hadn't decided pushing the states around in the interest of open society theory could be fun (at least by Cambridge standards). Constitutionally, it had been perfectly ok previously to pray in school, have images of Jesus at City Hall, or even have an "established" church because the first amendment by its terms applied only to the Feds. Robert Bork was right; down with "substantive due process" and down with "incorporation."
But, sorry to cling so bitterly out of season, or at least so incongruously with the tone of your post. Merry Christmas.
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Prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and the development of the incorporation doctrine, the Supreme Court in 1833 held in Barron v. Baltimore that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal, but not any state governments. Even years after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) still held that the First and Second Amendment did not apply to state governments. However, beginning in the 1920s, a series of United States Supreme Court decisions interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to "incorporate" most portions of the Bill of Rights, making these portions, for the first time, enforceable against the state governments.
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The legislative branch would have the power to negate state laws if they were deemed incompatible with the articles of union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Plan