Ex Portus Ostio

The Catholic William F. Buckley Jr. Conference in June was a rousing success for the 120 attendees, who enjoyed spirited and occasionally spirituous discussion (the port after praying the Holy Rosary led by Father Rutler Thursday after supper proved especially popular) in addition to several fine concerts, sailing and other activities, but that is not to say that all approved of the topic chosen for the first Portsmouth Institute.  A number of alumni, faculty and even a monk or two let us know that they found the choice of Bill Buckley as a conference subject troubling and in need of “balance” going forward.  Mr. Peter Steinfels of the New York Times and Fordham University graciously emailed and offered to help provide same, and we enjoyed a pleasant conversation over lunch this autumn.  A Facebook exchange involving two alumni asserted that holding the conference on this aspect of WFB’s life and thought demonstrated that Portsmouth had been “captured by the far right.”  Another alumnus wrote in to deplore Buckley’s “Jansenist” Catholicism as well as his snobbery.  Of all the things that Bill was not, I would have to put Jansenist high on the list.  After all, his (liberal) biographer John Judis entitled his book, William F. Buckley and the Politics of Joy.  As to snobbery, Gary Wills memoir in last Junes Atlantic Monthly effectively repudiated that accusation.  Buckley’s early views on civil rights were also raised, and justly so, however much Bill repudiated and regretted them.  E.J. Dionne’s talk (reprinted in these pages) at dinner on Friday addressed these and other perceived Buckley shortcomings firmly yet gracefully and deserves to be read carefully.  As to the larger question of balance, although it is doubtless true that after a mere six months in existence the Portsmouth Institute is in control of the universe, we were not quite that far along when Bill Buckley died, and the opportunity presented itself to present the first symposium on the often underestimated influence his religion had on the life and work of this Portsmouth parent, uncle, great uncle, Commencement speaker, etc. and, without doubt, one of the most consequential Catholics in public life of the last century. We saw our chances and we took ‘em (had E.J. prematurely departed to where the woodbine twineth I daresay we would have done the same), and our friends can expect us to seize similar opportunities going forward.

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One of the livelier exchanges of the Buckley conference came after Roger Kimball’s presentation in which he highlighted Bill Buckley’s preference for the Tridentine Mass and distaste for the passing of the Pax during Mass.  Dom Matthew Stark, our first abbot, rose to relate that, in his long experience, the Tridentine Mass could just as boring, vulgar, tastelessly celebrated and spiritually unsatisfying as the Novus Ordo, and it was foolish to sentimentalize it.  In regard to the Pax, Thomas Lonergan ’71 made the point that, in so far as this was a custom of the early Christian communities and that local parishes were supposed to function as Christian communities, this practice was reflected continuity with the early Church.  “Besides,” Lonergan added, “I first saw this practiced here.”  Indeed, he did, and the Peace of Christ is still exchanged among the monks and congregation at daily Mass, as it always has been, in the Abbey church

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Which brings us to next June’s conference on Newman and the Intellectual Tradition.  Originally suggested by Dom Damian Kearney, this conference is also timely in so far as Cardinal Newman’s beatification is now thought to be set for September during Pope Benedict XVI’s official visit to England (“official” meaning he will be received as a head of state by Queen Elizabeth II), and the latest word is that the Pope will preside personally over the beatification ceremony.  We have managed to recruit an outstanding roster of speakers on the vast depths of Newman’s life and thought.  Father Ian Ker, Newman’s biographer, will be crossing the pond from Oxford to join us.  Peter Kreeft of Boston College, Paul Griffiths of Duke, and Edward Short, whose book on Newman is forthcoming from Continuum in 2010, will also be speaking.  Deacon John Sullivan of the Boston archdiocese, whose prayers to Cardinal Newman led to a miraculous healing of a severe back condition, has agreed to preach at the Saturday morning Mass.  And we are delighted that the conference will once again be opened by Father George Rutler, whose talk on William F. Buckley (printed herein) last summer contained so many Newman references.  I should have taken that as a sign, but, as usual, I missed it.  In any event the conference proper is June 11-12, but there will be an opening dinner on the 10th and a sung Mass and brunch on the 13th for those who can spare the additional time and are so inclined.  I was rather hoping that this might be the last Newman conference before the beatification, but the Newman Studies Center has adroitly scheduled one for August in Pittsburgh with a solid looking line-up, so we wish them well and welcome them to join us in June in the radiance of Spring on beautiful Narragansett Bay.
 

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Dr. Jeff Mirus of the invaluable www.catholicculture.org makes the following précis of Newman’s “Final Argument” in the Grammar of Assent:

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Teddy Kennedy came to Portsmouth briefly, and, apparently, not very happily during the years that his brother Bob was a student here.  His mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was a longtime oblate of our monastery.  Thus, after the Senator’s death, we were interested to note this item in connection with the announcement that the Kennedy Compound would become a museum:

“Rose wanted to turn the place over to the Benedictine monks before she died,” Benedict Fitzgerald, the late Kennedy matriarch’s personal attorney, told author Ed Klein for his book Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died.  I drew up the legal papers for her on my front porch.  But when Ted found out about it, he ripped the thing in half.  There was no way he was going to have the place turned into a monastery.”  Instead, as news outlets have reported, the Kennedy Compound will be converted into an educational center and museum as a tribute to the late Senator Edward Kennedy.  And so it goes…

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Bishop Tobin of Providence  publicly called another Kennedy, Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, to “conversion and repentance” after the congressman sided with abortion advocates in voting against the Stupak amendment, which bars the use of federal funds from paying for most abortions in the House’s health care reform legislation.  Following the vote, Bishop Tobin issued a public letter to Representative Kennedy in which he ripped the congressman’s statement that “the fact I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.”

“That sentence certainly caught my attention and deserves a public response, lest it go unchallenged and lead others to believe it is true,” wrote Bishop Tobin, “And it raises an important question: What does it mean to be a Catholic?”  Opposition to abortion, of course, is not based on a sectarian doctrine accepted only by the Catholic Church.  “Thou shalt not kill” is a moral imperative written into Mosaic law and advanced separately by Hippocrates long before the Church was established on earth.

After writing the letter and publishing it in the November 12th edition of his diocesan newspaper, Bishop Tobin and Representative Kennedy postponed a meeting they had scheduled to discuss the subject.

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Lest we be perceived as beating up on the Kennedys, at the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola’s fine Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series in New York in November, there was a lovely rendition of the seldom performed British composer Henry Howell’s “Take Him Earth for Cherishing,” originally commissioned to be sung at Washington National Cathedral at a joint American/Canadian service in memory of President John F. Kennedy.  Howells chose as his text a portion of a poem by Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348-c413), a lawyer who retired at the end of his life to a monastic-like existence and also wrote the sacred poem we know today as “Of the Father’s love forgotten.”  “Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing” was powerfully translated by the great Irish medieval scholar Helen Waddell (1889-1965) as follows:

Take him, earth, for cherishing, to thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee, noble even in its ruin.

Once was this a spirit’s dwelling, by the breath of God created.
High the heart that here was beating, Christ the prince of all its living.

Guard him well, the dead I give thee, not unmindful of His creature
Shall He ask it: He who made the symbol of His mystery.

Come the hour God hath appointed to fulfill the hope of men,
Then must thou, in very fashion, then what I give, return again.
Not though an ancient time decaying wear away these bones to sand,
Ashes that a man might measure in the hollow of his hand:

Not though wandering winds and idle, drifting through the empty sky,
Scatter dust was nerve and sinew, is it given to man to die.

Once again the shining road leads to ample Paradise;
Open are the woods again, that the serpent lost for men.

Take, O take him, mightly leader, take again thy servant’s soul.
Grave his name, and pour the fragrant balm upon the icy stone.

Take him, earth, for cherishing, to they tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring Thee, noble even in its ruin.

By the breath of God created.  Chris the prince of all its living.
Take, O take him. Take him, earth, for cherishing.

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Cushing Academy’s decision to “go bookless” was the subject of a Faculty colloquy in mid-October.  Strange to say at a School run by a monastic order whose scriptoria helped preserve civilization through the Dark Ages (as they were called by a less politically correct generation), Cushing’s initiative was not approved of, nor was the undersigned’s suggestion that we go them one better and henceforth teach English composition on Twitter.  This raises the deeper issue of how the multiplying platforms of instant communications technology detract from sustained, concentrated thought and, not incidentally, spirituality.  Dom Paschal Scotti’s article on Ceaseless Prayer in these pages is all the more timely in view of these concerns.  Also highly recommended is Father Paschal’s blog The Looking Glass at www.portsmouthinstitute.org, which is refreshed daily and includes links to myriad articles of interest from an astonishing array of sources touching on questions pertaining to Catholic life in the 21st century.

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Another publication we commend to you is Dom Damian’s exceptionally literate monthly oblate newsletter which can be found in the monastery section of www.portsmouthabbey.org.  If you prefer, it can also be mailed, so write into us with a request for same.  The November number contains an extended essay on the feast of Christ the King, as well as an explanation of the English Congregation of Benedictine’s Dies Memorabilis celebrated each year on November 21st.  The date marks the continuity of the post-Reformation Benedictines with the monks of the abbeys before the suppression by King Henry the Eighth.  This came about through Dom Siegbert Buckley, the last surviving monk of Westminster Abbey, restored briefly by Queen Mary and then suppressed by her Protestant sister, Queen Elizabeth, in 1560.  Dom Siegbert, old, sickly and under house arrest, affiliated to the Abbey of Westminster, in 1607 on November 21st, two English monks from the Cassinese congregation of St. Justina in Padua.  In this way continuity was preserved with the pre-Reformation monastic houses extending back to the 6th century, when, as Dom Damian writes, “Pope Gregory sent Augustine and forty monks to England as missionaries to make angels of the Angles, to quote his pun.”

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On October 13 a letter from Glen John Provost, Bishop of Lake Charles, La., was published in the Wall Street Journal, remembering the great pianist Alicia de Larrocha.  “She was a living witness to what hard work with talent and single-minded devotion could accomplish.  I thank my music teachers who encouraged me first to attend the recital of this gifted lady of the piano, who reminded us of the blessings of beauty.”  When was the last time you heard a bishop write to a secular publication with such a personal, and uplifting message on the arts?  Bishop Provost has renewed a too long dormant apostolate and ought to be widely imitated by his brethren in the prelacy.

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Having said that, we were heartened when recently installed Archbishop Dolan said no more Mr. Nice Guy and took off the gloves after the NY Times refused to print an op-ed he had submitted documenting its anti-Catholic bias, and the USCCB appears to have organized its resources effectively in persuading the writers of the House health bill to remove abortion coverage from millions of insurance policies that consumers would get under the pending legislation, and this despite the Bishops’ longstanding support of expanded health insurance to all Americans.  “It’s difficult emotionally, but there’s no question what we have to do morally,” said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the secretariat of pro-life activities for the USCCB.  “In or view you can’t do something fundamentally evil even for a very good thing.”

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On October 15th, another bishop, Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa issued his first pastoral letter, Ecclesia Semper Reformanda (The Church is Always in Need of Renewal).  Rejecting what Pope Benedict has called “a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” in the interpretation of Vatican II, Bishop Nickless agrees with the Holy Father that the “spirit of Vatican II” must be found only in the letter of the Council documents themselves.  “The so-called ‘spirit” of the Council has no authoritative interpretation.  It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to proceed with the Lord’s work.”

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Speaking of demons, in a recent sermon in the Abbey church Father Paschal told the assembled school the story of Saint Anthony’s retirement to a tomb in Egypt and subsequent combat with ferocious demons until, at last, the roof parted and a great light filled the cave as the Lord made His presence known, and the demons fled.  “Where were you, Lord?” St. Anthony cried.  “Anthony, I was here with you.”

In an earlier sermon last summer Dom Julian told the story of a woman who finally convinced her non-believing husband to drive their six year old son and her to see Padre Pio.  When they got to St. Pio’s church at San Giovanni Rotondo the husband said he would wait for them in the car.  In due course the little boy came out of the church and caught the father’s attention by saying, “Papa, Padre Pio wants to see you too.”  The boy had been mute from birth, and these were the first words he had ever spoken.  The father went in, of course, and was soon thereafter received into the Church.

Another well-loved sermon here at Portsmouth is one of Dom Matthew’s “three minute” homilies at the 8AM Mass on Sundays.  A Cherokee elder tells a young boy that we all have two wolves inside us.  “One is a wolf of honesty, kindness, justice, moderation, selflessness, compassion and love.  The other is a wolf of greed, lust, selfishness, calculation for his own benefit and wickedness.  And these two wolves are forever opposed to one another.”

“Which wolf wins?” the boy asks excitedly.

And the answer? “It depends upon which one you feed.”

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At a recent Faculty Workshop Dr. Blake Billings shared the following passage from the writings of St. Gregory the Great:  “You see, my brothers, I dare not say to you, give up everything.  Yet, if you will, you can give everything up, even while keeping it, provided you handle temporal things in such a way that your whole mind is directed to what is eternal.  A man can use the world as if he were not using it, if he makes external needs minister to the support of his life with allowing them to dominate his soul.”

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Speaking of Peter Kreeft, the following lines are found on his web site:
 

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Maggie Gallagher’s talk (printed herein) brought to mind a paper, Crumbling Foundations:  Why the Family is Crucial to Civilization, which Michael Novak presented at the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton a couple of years back on the threat to the family posed by modern culture. It quoted research that demonstrated people of faith continue to reproduce above the replacement rate while purely secular folks do not.  “This stands to reason since these groups have most clearly separated human sexual activity from generativity, even in theory.”  (Daniel Goldman has cited more up to date statistics on this in First Things recently). And Novak concluded, “The role of a strong, wise and inventive government is a very important one. 

Nevertheless, a still more central and dynamic role in the free society—both in its economy and in its politics of self-government—is played by the family.  If the family unit is allowed to fade into eclipse, it may well prove fatal to our civilization.”  The bishops issued a related pastoral letter on Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan on November 17, which bears reading.  As for Ms. Gallagher, her organization’s work in Maine this November helped repeal a state law that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed, the 31st consecutive state in which gay marriage has lost when put to a vote.

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40 years ago this past summer, in 1969,   I returned from a visit to California where I had attended dozens of concerts at the Fillmore in San Francisco, watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon on a forty foot screen at Disneyland while high in the air on the Moon Ride, a sliver of moon in the night sky shining down on Anaheim. I stopped off at my classmate (and Notre Dame’s longtime PR guru) Michael Garvey’s house in Springfield, Illinois, where we  joined a sit down civil rights demonstration in the Governor’s office in solidarity with the people of downstate Cairo and were promptly ejected by State Police.  When the news of Chappaquidick broke, Hugh Garvey, the proprietor of the estimable Templegate Press, quoted Judge Learned Hand:  “They saith not a Pater Noster there.”  Upon reaching Long Island the following week I asked my parents’ permission to go camping upstate with some friends and to hear “a little music.”  I believe the ticket to Woodstock cost fifteen dollars, and none of us setting out to it had any idea of the monumental event (and mess) it would become.

The Tuesday following the concert’s mud-soaked finale found me getting off the bus at the top of Cory’s Lane and walking down to the Portsmouth Abbey School gates to make up a disastrous 39 in my Math 3 final the previous June.  For the next two weeks I was expertly and elegantly tutored through the course by Dom Geoffrey Chase, lovingly supervised by Math Department head Dom Andrew Jenks, who saw to it that the exam I retook had 105 points in it, just in case I needed the extra insurance.  For those two weeks I lived life on the monastic model, taking all my meals in the refectory, and, along with Dr. Frank Lally (my father’s housemaster and history master in the 1930s, he had left the nursing home in Fall River to which he had retired to live in the monastery, which he found more congenial) attended daily Mass and Vespers.  It was a curious contrast to Woodstock, both counter-cultural life styles, one energized by a search for a new Way, and the other stabilized by fourteen centuries of a seventh century saint’s strict but loving Rule.

I studied Math all morning, then swam in the Bay and ate lunch in silence in the monastery as a book was read aloud by one of the monks.  After twenty minutes of recreation afterward in the calefactory in which conversation ranged from the day’s news to astronomy, archaeology, cartography, eschatology, and the relationship of alchemy to medieval theology, there was Little Hour, another period of prayer.  In the afternoons I had a shorter math tutorial and would be then free to play tennis with Dom Bede and read on my own, often down by the Boat House in my swimming trunks where Dom Damian would be doing the same.  After Vespers and dinner there was another short recreation period, and I got to know a bit of the monks’ life stories.  Father Wilfrid had lived in Greenwich Village near e.e. cummings and danced with Pavlova.  He was now a Grand Dragon—the highest honorific awarded to a herald, and one of the country’s foremost heraldic artists.  Brother Basil had an encyclopedic knowledge of the royal families of Europe and occasionally dashed off to New York to compete in high level bridge tournaments. And so forth…I wanted to know what drew them to that life, and, in a way, I wanted to be drawn to it too.

“Monasticism is a protest,” Abbot Matthew had preached to us the previous Spring, “Not a protest against anything, but a protest for God and the things of God.”

When I left the monastery and walked back up Cory’s Lane to catch the bus back to New York, I wondered if, of all the counter-cultural adventures I’d had that summer of 1969, those two weeks of study and silence at Portsmouth hadn’t been the most amazing of all.  And the words of St. Benedict resonated in my ears:

Seek peace and quiet; be much more of a listener than a talker; listen with reverence; if you must speak, speak the truth from your heart.  In other words, walk in the presence of God under the guidance of the gospel, in order to see him who has called us to his kingdom.  To start with, ask God for the help of his grace; then never give up….

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Ex Portus Ostio (“Out of the Mouth of the Port” is the rather clumsy translation) was for many years a satirical set piece in our School literary magazine, The Raven.  Often employing allegorical language (the better to evade faculty advisor censorship), the anonymous authors would provide a portentous chronicle of recent School events with thinly disguised characters and events often irreverently--and occasionally hilariously-- detailed.  Perhaps today’s students should revive the practice; meanwhile we are appropriating the name for our own purposes here.

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At the Abbey on most Tuesday evenings after Compline, Abbot Caedmon leads a small faculty group in Lectio Divina.  After a brief opening prayer he reads a passage from scripture.  We reflect upon it for sixty seconds and repeat any words or phrases that strike us, for whatever reason.  Then he reads the passage again, and, after another sixty seconds reflection, we offer any thoughts on the passage that might arise.  Then he reads the passage for a third time and, after a minute’s silence, we offer whatever prayer that comes to us.  Then the Abbot reads the passage a final time, and we meditate in silence on it for three minutes.  He then says a brief closing prayer and departs, as do we, in silence.  On a recent night the text was from Psalm 119:
 

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In early Spring we hope to announce the first Portsmouth Fellows, an opportunity for young scholars to pursue a research or writing project of their choosing for four to six weeks in the summer at Portsmouth Abbey.  If the program is approved and funded room and board and a small stipend will be provided, and Fellows will have full access to our School and monastic libraries and access to collections in Newport and Providence close by.  If you are interested please write with a brief description of your proposed project and a cv to Portsmouth Fellows Program, att. James MacGuire, Portsmouth Abbey School, 285 Corys Lane, Portsmouth RI 02871.

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The stunning action by which Pope Benedict eased the way for tradition-minded Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church on October 20 had the stuff of high drama and intrigue about it. In an email to friends who inquired of his views that morning, Father George Rutler wrote, “In 1977, when I was just 32, I gave the keynote address at the St. Louis conference which launched this whole process.  Everything I predicted then has come to pass.  It will be interesting to watch the next developments.”  Father Rutler called the Apostolic Constitution that was announced (though not published) that day “a dramatic slap down of liberal Anglicanism and a total repudiation of the ordination of women, homosexual marriage and the general neglect of doctrine in Anglicanism.  Indeed, it is a final rejection of Anglicanism….I should not be surprised if the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury eventually is received into the Catholic Church, at least when he retires and gets a patent of nobility and a pension.”  (Our own Father Julian remember a visit to Worth Abbey some years ago when he asked a monk there who the cleric on retreat who did not take communion was.  “The Archbishop of Canterbury,” was the answer.
The Vatican issued the relevant Apostolic Constitution codifying the new procedures on November 8th, and the Traditional Anglican Communion’s province in Great Britain voted unanimously to come into communion with Rome under the terms of the new provision. (It is said to be considering establishing a mother house in England, possibly a former monastery that hasn’t witnessed the ordination of a Catholic priest since the Reformation.

This, as they say in the news trade, is a developing story….Stay tuned.

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We are well along into Advent as we go to press, and a lay faculty member who is upon occasion graciously invited into the choir to sing Vespers with the community has contributed this meditation on the season:

The O Antiphons of Advent at Portsmouth Abbey: Christmas Eve

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At Portsmouth Abbey School our 370 young men and women are rooted among ideas and learning in the classical tradition.  Reverence for God and the human person, Respect for learning and order, and Responsibility for the shared experience of community life are the hallmarks of our Mission Statement and the values we strive to live, every day, at our School.  We are blessed with a beautiful situation on the Narragansett Bay, exceptional programs and facilities, record applications and enrollments, and a joyous spirit and atmosphere informed by our 1500 year old Benedictine heritage, which we are committed to preserving.  As 2010 begins what we hope will be an auspicious and blessed year for all of our readers, please commend Portsmouth Abbey School to your families and friends, and join us in prayers for continued vocations to the holy monastic life that has been ongoing here now for ninety years.

JPM