IC/OC Ministry and Spiritual Adventurism

I’ve been thinking a lot in recent weeks about Independent Catholic identity and what it means to be a priest in this movement. I suppose that’s inevitable given my leave of absence and the questions I hope to resolve with it, and recent posts have reflected that concern.

So when I read this post by Derek warning against spiritual adventurism on the part of Episcopal clergy, I naturally thought about our own churches, especially when I came to this sentence:

The Book of Common Prayer is, among other things, a defense for laity against spiritual adventurism on the part of the clergy.

I would also add that it can protect a clergy person from themselves, too.

Now, the BCP doesn’t and can’t play those roles in our movement. (Nor do the contemporary Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours and Missal, the pre-Conciliar Breviary and Missal, or the various Eastern rites and usages found in our parishes.) Liturgical diversity is a strong point of our movement, and (if I can toot our horn a little) a special charism of the jurisdiction I’m privileged to serve in. But we have other practices that help center us when we use them.

The kind of mostly-clerical spiritual adventurism Derek describes is something we suffer from as much as or more than the Episcopal Church. I can say that in part because I’ve given in to it myself frequently. For me it has taken the form of a couple of related searches — the search for the final answers about my vocation, and the search for the “perfect” liturgy. I’ve found — and I believe other IC/OC clergy have found — that this adventurism can derail a search for God in all God’s beauty and grace in favor of a search for something contingent, something less than God.

Both the searches I’m talking about in my personal life are on some level good. Discernment of vocation is a lifelong process, and listening for the voice of God at each stage of one’s life is holy and necessary. Likewise, familiarity with several expressions of the liturgy of the Church can be wonderful both personally and for one’s ability to minister to all comers — something that is especially important for IC/OC clergy and laity who minister on the margins to all who need God’s grace.

But looking for final answers or the perfect liturgy leads to trouble. It has meant that I have jumped from book to book as I’ve gotten bored, rarely striving to really pray once I’ve learned the words by heart. And it has meant I’ve gotten myself too wrapped up in what my priestly life would look like six months or a year down the road to see the need for my ministry in the here and now. More generally, most of us in the movement know how common it is for folks to jump jurisdictions, jump to Rome and back or to other churches and back, change the rite used for public liturgies on a wild and unstable basis, and so forth. It’s bad for the clergy and communities involved.

I like Derek’s Benedictine emphasis on obedience, stability, and conversion of life. We have to foster an ethos in our movement of “blooming where you’re planted”, as my bishop puts it, not worrying about where the grass might be greener but recognizing that God lets us experience amazing, beautiful, wonderful things in exchange for the challenges of being an IC/OC leader. We get to minister in places and situations where no one else can — whether that means agreeing last-minute to include a wedding in the parish Corpus Christi celebration because a mainstream minister flaked out (true story!) or hearing an airport or train-station confession from someone who hasn’t confessed in years because they feel marginalized or left out.

I want to stress that being called back to the center of what we are about as a movement is good for all involved, however hard it may be at times. Just as the Anglican Communion balances its significant doctrinal freedom with a strong shared liturgical tradition, we must balance our many freedoms with commitments that can anchor us to our central vocations as Independent Catholic Christians. While we have the freedom to go from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, we must clearly discern the vocations of our various jurisdictions and make them fertile soil for everyone who shares that vocation, encouraging them to stay and flourish. While we get to be adaptable to circumstances, we should do everything we can to encourage one another to see the deeper commitments we’ve made that do not change so quickly.

In my opinion, this means recognizing that we are not just churches that harbor fugitives from misguided ecclesiastical justice, who get to fold up shop when our old churches get a tiny bit better. It means we stop obsessing about quality control when our saints and blesseds were by and large seen as colossal screw-ups by people who didn’t understand what our foremothers’ and forefathers’ vocations were. It means we stop oscillating between chasing recognition from mainstream churches and making vicious attacks on them.

None of what I’ve written above is very original. We all know and talk about this stuff, and certainly I’ve been taught all of it over and over by people I’m blessed to have in my life, who remind me of our shared call every time I wander. But the above is not the everyday narrative we experience in our movement. The conversations on mailing lists, on blogs, and at gatherings tend to center on exactly those problematic points I’ve identified. It’s gossiping about who left which jurisdiction for where, and letting that eat away at our own commitments to our bishop and those we serve. It’s laying out grand plans for ecclesiastical unions — whether with other tiny IC/OC jurisdictions or with the mainstream churches. It’s worrying about how we can build an Independent Catholic empire instead of how we can answer God’s call at this moment in this place.

I repent of my self-centered wandering. I re-commit myself to supporting my sisters and brothers in their lives as IC/OC bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and lay people. I am passionate about helping our sisters and brothers in other churches from a position of confidence in who I am and what we are, not from a position of doubt about what our movement is worth to God’s Kingdom. Will you join me?

Denominationalism and the IC/OC movement

Alexis has a post up about the commitment of Independent Catholic leaders to our tradition, suggesting that IC/OC priests and lay leaders should sever their ties to and end their activity with other denominations as a show of commitment to the Independent movement.

I disagree pretty strongly, for a number of reasons.

First, I very much agree with the idea that only by committing ourselves deeply to the faith and running programs that demand a lot from all orders of ministry (including the lay order) will we as Christians be an attractive group to join. However, what Alexis is talking about is more symbolic than anything. We are living in an age where people are sick to death of denominationalism for its own sake. I doubt anyone much cares or questions my commitment to Independent Catholicism because I hang out with Anglicans locally and worship with them. It would be far stranger if I threw over my local parish in favor of the couple of seemingly pretty flaky IC clergy in my area (who seem not to have ministries that are more than websites and have never returned emails or calls). We are not going to get far as a movement by refusing to cooperate with other churches — that is going to look like meaningless territorialism, not a commitment to our own movement.

Second, other churches are not a “false safety net” — they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. We have a lot to teach them, and they have much to teach us. Every moment I spend with non-IC/OC Christians is one where I can teach them about the beauty of tiny, incarnational communities focused on hospitality and fellowship. I can show them what the results of organic priestly formation look like. When it comes to Roman Catholics, perhaps I can give them a glimpse of how good the fruits of a wider kind of discernment of vocation can be, giving them a sense of how their crisis of vocations might be solved.

Likewise, I can see just how grace-filled the ministries of institutional churches are when I work with those folks, fighting the tendency in our movement to speak ill of the work of other ministers simply because they’re paid or have ready access to a building and denominational support. I can be formed by the better-developed liturgy and catechesis of those churches (because let’s face it, that’s a place where we simply have to borrow — our homegrown liturgies and educational programs are often not well-developed). This kind of cross-pollination is critically important. Turning it down so we can sit in our corner and “show our commitment” by being alone is cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Finally, I can personally speak to how spiritually dangerous it is to cut oneself off from non-IC/OC local community if there isn’t an IC/OC parish nearby. After my church plant here failed, I spent months saying Mass alone and wishing people would show up, feeling like I was a traitor to the movement if I worshiped with other Christians in the meantime. The last thing I think we should be doing is encouraging clergy and lay leaders to isolate themselves until their communities are successful.

That’s not to say that I disdain the idea that sacrifice is involved in a call to leadership in the Independent Catholic movement. I have an article coming out in The Gabriel that says just that. It can be a hard cross to bear, and we have to figure out how to encourage one another in that.

We have to figure out a way to be both/and, not either/or. There are communities in our movement that do this well, living a life that is graciously ecumenical and relentlessly seeks unity in the Body of Christ while standing firm in our IC/OC distinctives. We can look to their example sometimes, but it is difficult. Every situation is different.

I’m certain, however, that enforcing a standard of purity or decrying the efforts of leaders who are stuck in the middle trying to make it work is not the solution — unless we believe that part of the solution is driving good, faithful people out of our movement on grounds of purity and ecclesiastical identity politics.

Where is Christianity 201?

Derek has a post up about Christian formation, and as usually the comments are really illuminating. This one, from Joe Rawls, caught my eye:

This might be another sign that to survive as Christian communities with any real integrity, we’ll have to design our programs on the assumption that people will show up most Sundays instead of once every 2 months, even if that comes off as seeming “non-inclusive” (a word I’m coming to really despise through its fetishization by the TEC powers that be). I mean, if you’re really serious about eating, do you think 2 or 3 times a day is excessive or burdensome?

I had lunch with a friend and colleague in DC on Saturday afternoon, and this was something we talked about. If seekers like the first bits they hear about God’s love and grace but there’s no follow-up that suggests you can change your life and that the community loves you and expects you to be a part of something big and transformational, why go to church? Worship, fellowship, and formation ultimately have to demand a commitment, because the very fact of that mutual commitment is immensely attractive to people who are unchurched or just becoming Christians.

We need to get over the impulse to make everything a dumbed-down Christianity 101 — no one majors in a subject unless the advanced courses fascinate them. So our advanced formation and discipleship, the stuff we lifelong or long-time Christians struggle with and by the grace of God will eventually triumph in, have to be robust, rich, and life-giving to attract people to return to the Church or explore the life of Christian faith for the first time.

Prayers requested

Work has picked up significantly in the last few months (a good sign, for those hoping for an economic recovery sometime before the eschaton), so my posting has obviously dropped off. I’m getting back into a rhythm with working and reading, so I should have some things to share more frequently in coming weeks.

I do have some non-blog news, though. I am taking a leave of absence from the practice of the priesthood for a period of one year. I will essentially be living as a layperson, trying to resolve some difficult vocational issues that have been hounding me for some time. Hopefully I’ll have some clarity at the end of that year! Anyhow, please keep me — and all the people in my church community who have helped and are helping me in this discernment — in your prayers. I could definitely use them.

Returning the archives

I’ve finally gotten around to restoring the archives of Even the Devils Believe — they’re now available here, on this site. You can search for posts in the box on the right, or dig through the categories. A few posts may disappear as I read through stuff and find things that aren’t really of any enduring interest, but it’s all there — with comments — for now.

Folks with a mania for consistency/clean links on their own blogs can just substitute http://stmonica.wordpress.com for my old URL in all links to posts and they will still be correct.

I may also restore some select stuff from the heyday of Progressive Protestant…we’ll see how that goes.

Sermon, Good Friday

He is risen!

Hope you are all having a blessed Easter afternoon. I promised a few folks I would share the text of the sermon I preached on Friday — it’s below:

Isaiah 52:7–53:12
Hebrews 10:11–25
John 18–19

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

We come to the foot of the Cross tonight to look upon a man broken, betrayed, mocked and spit on, naked, executed for made-up crimes. In human terms, he does not amount to much. On Sundays throughout the year, we come here to encounter a very different Jesus—a triumphant Jesus who effortlessly defeats the dark powers of the world, a tender and caring Jesus like the one in the image above the altar who can take away our pain and suffering and transform them into something life-giving, a wise and knowing Jesus who turns away our doubts and fears before we can even express them.

But if we look at Jesus crucified, we are not naturally drawn to him as we are to these other images of our Lord. He does not give us the reassurance and safety we want. Instead, he shines a light on all the things about our lives we want to forget. His trial reminds us of all the times we have been swept up into a crowd judging someone else and finding them wanting. His mocking and torture at the hands of Roman soldiers bring to mind our own hardness of heart, when we have mocked others or stood by when they were mistreated. His dying for us, abandoned and alone on the cross save for his mother and a few close disciples, unsettles us and reveals that our self-assurance, our belief that we deserve to be saved and have our sins wiped away because of our own merits, is hollow.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

Although we do not deserve the sacrifices Jesus made on our behalf, he nevertheless gives himself up to heal us, to unite us to God. In fact, the words of tonight’s collect bring Jesus’ death into sharp focus; he was not merely willing to die for us, but to be betrayed for us. On some level, we understand sacrificing one’s life for something worthwhile. But he is not dying to save innocent people or advance some deserving cause. The people he spent his adult life teaching in the ways of the Kingdom of God scatter to the four winds. Judas turns him over to the authorities to be killed. Peter disowns him.

It is difficult to understand why someone might be willing to be betrayed for the benefit of their betrayers. This is more than martyrdom. In fact, John’s Gospel leaves open the possibility that Judas himself may be saved by Jesus’ death and resurrection; as Jesus is being arrested, he says, “Of those whom you gave me I lost not one.” This willingness to suffer betrayal draws us into the heart of the mystery of the Passion—God’s love is so great that he comes down, becomes human, and suffers betrayal and death for the good of a creation that turns away from him.
 
When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall prosper.

We do not contemplate these mysteries alone, however. As we pass through the curtain of Jesus’ flesh, dying to the world through our baptism and our experience of the death and resurrection of our Savior, we see that God has made us capable, through that baptism, of perfection, capable of creating loving community and doing acts of kindness for those we love and for our enemies. I love the phrase Paul uses in our Epistle reading tonight to talk about what we are called to do as Church: “to provoke one another to love and good deeds.”

The forces that tempt us to do what we hate, what we know is wrong, those forces are very strong. They drive us to fear, anger, and disunity. Those temptations are well known in the Anglican Communion; indeed, the troubles of this Communion have dominated the news for several years now. Certain commentators would like to give the impression that schism and dissension are the special challenge of Anglican Christians. In fact, during this Lent we have seen growing disunity among Eastern Orthodox Christians in the United States, and the Easter season may see a complete break in communion between the Orthodox Church in America and the Ecumenical Patriarch. The temptation to be suspicious of one another and search out what is wrong about our brothers and sisters in order to judge them is universal. It pervades even the Church in its many branches and communions.

But the power of Jesus Christ to heal division and make each and every one of us his children is stronger. The broken, betrayed, and dying Jesus we see tonight is the same Jesus who triumphs over sin, disunity, and death. We must look to the words of Isaiah to understand just how powerful this broken, seemingly powerless God on the Cross really is:

Just as there were many who were astonished at him—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals—so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him;

The Cross that we come to venerate tonight reminds us that the power that motivates our hope and liberates us from sin and death is not earthly might and authority. The true power in this world is God become man, mocked, crucified on a cross, pointing out a way of humility and self-sacrifice where love and unity can prevail. It is a startling kind of power, as Isaiah reminds us. It defies understanding how the bleeding and broken body of a carpenter can save the world. And yet, “kings shall shut their mouths because of him.” The powers of this world, the kinds of authority and might that make more sense to us, find themselves silent and weak next to the power of our crucified Lord.

In the face of our temptation to hate one another and hurt one another, we will do as the Apostle Paul says. We will “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering…not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” We will cling to one another and encourage one another because Jesus Christ defeated earthly powers and humbled kings by his death on the Cross. Because of that Cross we have reason to hope that all of creation will be unified with God. Because of that Cross we have new life.

Thanks be to God.

Sermon, 3 Lent Year B

A sermon preached at St Joseph’s Episcopal Church, Durham:

John 2:13–22

Dan Ariely, a professor at the business school at Duke, presents the following thought experiment in his book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions:

Imagine you are at your mother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, sharing in a sumptuous meal. The turkey is roasted to a golden brown; the stuffing is homemade and exactly the way you like it. The sweet potatoes are crowned with marshmallows, and pumpkin pie sits on the sideboard for dessert. After dinner, you loosen your belt and sip a glass of wine. Gazing fondly at your mother, you rise to your feet and pull out your wallet. “Mom, for all the love you’ve put into this, how much do I owe you?” you ask. “Do you think a hundred dollars will do it? No, let me give you two hundred!” Everyone looks at you aghast, and you realize you may be spending next Thanksgiving in front of the TV with a frozen meal.

What is going on is a disconnect between the values of two very different communities. Much of our secular life is spent in a market-based community. We see advertisements everywhere we look – in magazines, on the sides of buses, on the Web, even on our clothing. My generation, the millennials, has been referred to as the most over-marketed generation in history. All of us are taught to measure worth in terms of how much we earn and what we possess.

The family is, or should be, a very different kind of community. For all its imperfections, families are meant to be places where our self-worth is absolute. We are loved and valued simply for being what we are – the daughters and sons of our parents, the sisters and brothers of our siblings. Trying to pay for the benefits of these relationships is unexpected and offensive because the market is not supposed to operate in these communities – love has no price.

A similar disconnect seems to drive Jesus’ righteous anger in the temple in today’s Gospel reading. The actions of the money-changers are largely grounded in the Law of Moses: they exchange secular Roman money bearing the face of Caesar for coins minted by an authority independent of the Empire, made of silver and bearing no image. Scholars debate just what may have angered Jesus about this arrangement – some hypothesize the money-changers engaged in price gouging, while others suspect they were engaging in trade in the wrong part of the temple complex. Holy Scripture does not give us any details to confirm these hypotheses.

But Jesus does use the language of the family in driving the moneychangers out of the temple, which is telling. He says to the sellers of pigeons as they pack up their cages, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” He reminds them that the temple is a place for prayer, that is, a place for healing and renewing the relationship of God’s people to God. He also invokes the language of his body, telling those gathered that though they may destroy the temple, his body, he will build it up again.

What Jesus Christ intends for us as members of his Body is not an ordinary secular economy, but an economy of grace, where the typical relationships of lender and debtor or buyer and seller are turned on their head. The money-changers do not need to engage in overtly dishonest commerce to deserve Jesus’ wrath. The very idea of connecting service in the temple with a secular structure of debt and commercial exchange causes Jesus to drive them out. The economy of the money-changers seeks to find the right price for the goods available. The economy of grace instead recalls Mary’s words in the Magnificat: “He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”

The economy intended by Jesus is one in which need or lack does not put anyone in an inferior position of begging or being in debt. In fact, those who are in need are blessed by God. They are God’s beloved and have a rightful claim on the resources of the rest of God’s children to fill their need. Those who possess things in excess of their need are not put in a superior position of lender or charitable giver. Instead, their excess is a sign to them that they are in debt to God’s world and to God’s daughters and sons who are in need.

In the words of the theologian Kathryn Tanner, Christians who possess more than they need seek to make those who lack into “rivals in our own gifts”, giving not because we want to impoverish ourselves, but because we want our sisters and brothers to enjoy all the blessings that we do. God’s creation is truly great, and it is intended for all God’s daughters and sons equally.

This economy is rooted in God’s own giving and receiving. In Tanner’s words, “God’s giving does not humiliate us or work to keep us in an inferior’s position of debt.” God does not seek to take away our selfhood by making us slavishly dependent on him. God gives profligately so that we may give to others and not just serve God but also enjoy God, as the Westminster catechism puts it.

In times of earthly abundance, it is easy for us to believe that we are living in this kind of gracious economy when we are not. When most people can count on a strong bank account balance, lots of credit, and home equity to shore up net worth, we give to others knowing we’ll get it back, and we ask for help knowing we can pay our debts. Because our own lives are good, we believe we are giving graciously only because it costs us so little in earthly terms, and we ignore the poorest among us only because so many around us are affluent.

The current global recession has caused real grief and pain for billions of people. That pain is not the work of God; it is the work of the evil one. But as the tide of wealth created in the last bubble recedes, we have the opportunity not simply to do more with less, but to relate to one another in a truly grace-filled way, giving with no hope of receiving anything in return, and receiving help with grace, not accumulating debts to others but freely receiving what God intends for all of us.

We do not make these movements alone, however, as individual Christians. This economy has repercussions on the Church itself. Local communities of the Church of Jesus Christ take steps to live into this economy of grace by everyday acts of discipleship. The Church is itself a community of need and abundance—a family of those who need physical support and a place to sleep, of those who need a loving hug or handshake or a family to share holidays with. It is a place where people gather and discern world-changing gifts given to them by God, which they can share with one another, and where we bring our excess to share with our sisters and brothers. The food that covers our tables at potlucks, the love we share at the Peace each Sunday, even the gaps we leave open in budgets and on committees, hoping the Spirit will bring time, treasure, and physical hands and feet to close them, are all signs that we are discerning a path into the economy of grace marked out by Jesus.

As we move through Lent, we inevitably look toward certain events in Holy Week to frame our journey through the season. Often we think of Jesus’ Passion on Good Friday and recall our own sins, or we look forward to the Resurrection and think of our own salvation from death and the devil.

Reading today’s Gospel, which calls us to think about the economy of God’s kingdom, where the poor are blessed and the rich are in debt to those in need, we should think of the Maundy, when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Jesus, who is God and created the world and everything in it, bent down and washed the feet of his disciples, even the feet of Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would betray him. He who possesses all of Creation became a servant to his creatures.

In our Baptism, the Spirit of God descended on us and befriended our very flesh. She empowers our hands and feet to move with new purpose and gives us space to grow into the life shown to us by Jesus Christ on earth. As we approach Maundy Thursday, when Mother R and Deacon M will wash the feet of this family, we must prepare ourselves to go out in service with clean feet, becoming the hands of God, giving from the gifts he has given us and receiving graciously those things that are offered to us in our lack.

Thanks be to God.

Links to family blogs

I didn’t realize it’d been about two months since I posted last, but it seems I really have been away that long. The last couple of months have been busy, though in a very good way. I’ve got a lot going on at work, which is a nice change from the market-induced slowdown that lasted much of last year.

I intend to get back to a roughly weekly posting schedule — to start off, I wanted to link to a couple of blogs written by folks in my local church community. The first, de pauperum, is maintained by two of my brothers who form the backbone of the Daily Office ministry at the parish. The ministry has led our whole community into greater openness toward our homeless neighbors — giving and receiving in new relationships with them. JR and Colin have devoted the blog to stories and theological reflections coming out of that ministry.

Second, there is Street and Altar, a parish-wide effort. I’m putting together a post for that blog, which I’ll crosspost here when it goes up.

I’m also preaching at St Joe’s next Sunday, so I’ll make sure to get my homily posted once I preach it. More soon…

Stability in an unstable world

I’m currently in another city for work and will be commuting back and forth for a few weeks, and that has me thinking about stability and Christian life. I take it that while Christian spirituality takes numerous forms, some eremetical, some itinerant, at the end of the day, most local Christian communities and their members need stability and rootedness to foster continuing growth into all manner of Christian vocations.

So as I’m hundreds of miles from home, typing this post on my BlackBerry, I wonder how someone like me — typical of my age group, ethnicity, and profession, and therefore a fairly typical member for most mainline, Anglican and Indie Catholic communities — can stay rooted and not let distance and constantly shifting secular schedules and priorities throw me off my game as a Christian.

At the parish/local association level, I think the following are very important in fostering this:

* A mini lay/ordained chapter of canons in every parish, praying the Office and ideally celebrating the Eucharist daily. Could be very tiny, but it’s an important driver for keeping everyone’s daily focus on the parish and for the parish daily presenting its face to the world (esp. homeless neighbors).
* A larger group of “oblates” who cannot make it to the parish daily but celebrates the Divine Office in the home or on the commute to work. Even folks who simply pray Compline every night or do one of the daytime hours at lunch help keep the Office and daily spiritual exercise at the center.
* Opportunities like Bible study, music program/choir, book study groups, etc. so those who spirituality is not quite so relentlessly liturgical can also live in the parish day-to-day rather than just Sunday-to-Sunday.
* A catechesis/re-catechesis program that focuses on and demonstrates the fruits of the above.

Being part of some of these programs on the local and jurisdictional level is really helpful for me, but I know I still flake out on Christian discipline when away from home, and it doesn’t address the reality of a populace that is constantly moving from place to place every few years.

I confess I don’t have any good answers there. Our Traditional Liturgy Apostolate’s Mon. night phone vespers has been helpful for me. I’m still connected when I travel at least half the time, and moving to another city or state wouldn’t affect that community much. Affinity groups through email lists and Facebook are helpful, too, although the communities there are typically less close-knit than those that pray together. Ideally, structures should develop at the diocesan/jurisdictional/denominational level to foster praying communities in addition to and alongside parishes that can sustain common life over frequent travel and permanent moves. I don’t know how that happens, however — and sadly, the virtue of stability, so important for sustaining growth in one’s vocation in most cases, will suffer until we can come up with structures that work for our newly hyper-mobile society.

A quick update

A number of people have noted that I haven’t written on the blog in quite a while, so I thought I would offer a quick update until I can regroup and write something a little more substantive!

* First, in the past few weeks I got news that I’ve been accepted to two of the four graduate programs I applied to (not in theology — they’re work-related). I decided to stay in North Carolina and attend Duke.

* A little less close to home, Fr Richard John Neuhaus of First Things died recently. I found him frustrating most of the time I read him and believe he was deeply wrong on some critical issues (not least the war in Iraq), but it cannot be denied that reading his journal was almost always an intellectually stimulating experience. I am saying the Office of the Dead for him tomorrow.

* I unexpectedly began to put together materials for chanting the Office using the 1979 BCP over Christmas break. The Psalter is nearly done, and I’m hoping a complete draft of a book with Psalter, canticles, ordinary for all four offices, and some other materials will be done around summer. I’ve done the work in such a way that developing a matching antiphonary will be possible, if time allows — more on all that later.

* Finally, later this month the Traditional Liturgy Apostolate will be holding its first gathering in St. Louis. We will be singing the Office from the Monastic Diurnal and celebrating Mass on Saturday and Sunday. I’m delighted it is coming together — if you’d like to join us for some or all of it, please drop me an email and I can give you details.

Peace!