Our pastor mentioned that people think the devil is an old-fashioned concept “but I can assure you he is real”. He urged us to direct much of the anger we feel at people and their politics to the devil and demons. It does seem a way to get out from under the trap of hating evil-doers by hating the devil’s success with them.
In the meantime the over/under on when the number of genders exceeds the number of Christian denominations is 2024. Being a pessimist I'll take the under. For awhile post-Christian America was like Wile E Coyote suspended in air, still running and defying spiritual gravity, but now we're falling fast.
But I’m cheered that St Pio is still active and honestly likes Americans* (no accounting for taste, says the current pope). Listened to a fascinating podcast with Bishop Barron interviewing actor Shia LaBeouf who was an atheist and nearly suicidal until he experienced a conversion and is playing St. Pio in a biopic.
In the conversation LeBeouf says the Latin Mass affects him deeply because it "didn't feel like they were trying to sell me a car." Wow, what a line. “It activates something in me that makes me feel like I found something...it feels like a special thing that you found and you protect it and you hold it and it’s yours. When someone’s selling me on something it somehow kills my aptitude for it and my suspension of disbelief and my yearnings to root for it.”
Barron mentioned that Joseph Campbell, the analyzer of mythologies, said the greatest problem with the new Mass was that it was more like a “cooking demonstration”, i.e. a well-lit table with various cups and saucers.
Barron added that “part of the symbolism of incense is it blocks our vision, the smoke gets in the way, but that’s appropriate around sacred things. If everything’s wide open to view and under bright light that’s by definition not sacred, in a way.”
LBeouf said, “You don’t want to be exclusive either, which is what Latin Mass feels like sometimes, feels like I have to know Latin to experience it. However I would also say there are certain situations where I don’t need to learn the words, which is what I feel when I watch a Padre Pio mass. I know what’s going on and feel it deeply and it almost feels more powerful than when I know every single word because it takes me out of the realm of the intellectual and puts me squarely in the realm of the feeling and beauty.”
Later he says, “my problem with atheism was that I found it’s not rational, because if you go deep enough you get to the Big Bang and then you’re screwed again. You have to account for it somehow which puts you back into a belief situation.”
There's no avoiding belief, to paraphrase Chesterton.
* - see the book "Padre Pio and America".
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