Hanique, Part IV

A silence hung between us, and I narrowed my eyes. "What kind of game do you think you are playing here?" I asked.

"No games, Dr. Montgomery," he replied.

"Stop calling me Dr. Montgomery," I said; "that's not my name."

"As you wish," he said. "But it is important that you take all three pills -- not just the white, but also the red and yellow. Can we do that?" His arid face seemed sinister in the light from the window behind his desk, and I wondered what they would do to me if I refused.

"Yes," I said finally and cautiously.

"Good," he said with a brisk smile. He gestured at the professor of mathematics and the professor of biology. "Please take Dr. Montgomery back to his room."

They practically dragged me out of the chair and down the hell. At the door to my office there was some fumbling as the professor of mathematics had to try more than one key to open it. They pushed me inside and locked the door behind me, leaving me, no doubt, to think myself a patient in a madhouse.

But they made a mistake. As they dragged me from the chair in the Dean's office, I caught a good, clear glimpse of the quad outside the Dean's window, and the black helicopter in it. Clearly whoever it was that had stolen the copy of Vision of Two Souls by Catharine of Hanique had also suborned the Dean. The Dean, in turn, being a man of absolutely no imagination, had invented this nonsensical story of the pills.

Also, I had palmed the professor of biology's keys while the professor of mathematics was fumbling around with the door.

I sat down a moment, wondering how best to proceed. My head was aching a bit and I looked for an aspirin, but I could find none in the room and my pocket turned up nothing but some red and yellow buttons that had fallen off my shirt a few days before, which I had forgotten to sew back on. I just threw them in the trash; no time for them now.

Clearly the thing to do is to set out and find this mysterious Hanique and discover what happened to the missing book. It will be dangerous, no doubt; one can hardly expect people who fly around in black helicopters stealing books and bribing Deans to be safe. But that is a true academic life, to purse truth at all costs and regardless of the obstacles. And when I actually retrieve the book and lay bare the mystery! It will vindicate my life's research.

But it is, again, dangerous, so I realized that I needed to leave some record, so that the Dean and his goons in the biology and mathematics departments cannot have the last word. This, my dear reader, is the manuscript you have in hand; I had already started writing it, so it was suitable for leaving an exact and objective record of events as they have happened to me. I will hide it, I think, by the statue of St. Catharine of Bologna. If you read this, I hope that I will have already returned from Hanique with the fruits of my research! But if not, at least someone else knows of the adventure I have had, and perhaps can carry on the pursuit, so that one day the human race may know the mystery of St. Catherine of Boulagnon, which has come to be tied so strangely to the mystery of Hanique.

Sui Juris Churches XV: The Eritrean Catholic Church

(on sui juris churches in general)

Liturgical Family: Alexandrian

Primary Liturgical Language: Ge'ez

Juridical Status: Metropolitan

Approximate Population (to Nearest 10,000): 160,000

Brief History: The relationship of Eritrean Christianity to Ethiopian Christianity has always been complicated by the difficult relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Eritrea was converted to Christianity along with Ethiopia as part of the Kingdom of Aksum, but as Aksum's might waned, the kingdom of Medri Bahri rose; it was a Christian kingdom, and fought off the Adal Sultanate, but it was often in conflict with the Abyssinian Kingdom from which modern-day Ethiopia descends. In 1517 it temporarily became part of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottomans would eventually be driven out, but still remained a major influence until the coming of the Italians at the end of the nineteenth century. This Italian period, which lasted until the British threw the Italians out in 1941, saw the arrival of many Catholic missionaries. In 1930 an Ordinariate was established for Catholics in Eritrea, but it was a Latin Rite Ordinariate. In 1951, the British left, and the Ordinariate for Eritrea was abolished, replaced by an exarchate that was attached to the Ethiopian Catholic Church. In 1959 a separate Latin Rite Vicariate was established for Latin Rite Eritreans, and in 1961, Eritrea's status was raised from an exarchate to an eparchy.

Despite a strong desire for independence, the country was federated with Ethiopia under pressure from the United Nations; Emperor Haile Selassie would then forcibly annex the country in 1962. This led to a decades-long war until Eritrea finally established independence in 1993. In response to the independence, John Paul II reorganized the eparchial structure of the country and abolished the Latin Vicariate (which was, in any case, caring for a dwindling population), thus putting all Latin Rite Catholics under the authority of the Ethiopian Catholic bishops of Eritrea, making the nation the only nation in the world in which all Catholics regardless of rite are under the authority of Eastern Catholic bishops. In 2015, Francis detached the Eritrean eparchies from the Ethiopian Catholic Church and raised the eparchy of Asmara to a Metropolitan Archeparchy.

Notable Monuments: St. Joseph's Cathedral in Asmara.

Notable Saints: St. Justin de Jacobis (July 31); St. Frumentius (October 27); St. Kaleb Elesbaan of Axum (October 27).

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Archeparchy of Asmara and three suffragan eparchies, all in Eritrea. (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church.)

Online Sources and Resources:

http://www.catholicgheez.org/

http://www.eparchyofkeren.com/

http://www.katolsk.no/

http://www.cnewa.org/

Three Wombs

The Syriac fathers view Christ's redemptive work as resulting from his entry into three wombs: the womb of Mary, the waters of the Jordan, and the depths of sheol. (This very concept is affirmed in the Maronite Anaphora for the consecration of baptismal water when the celebrant states, "By your will, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he abided in three places: in a womb of flesh, in the womb of baptism, and in the dark mansions of sheol.")

Seely Joseph Beggiani, Early Syriac Theology, Revised edition, CUA Press (Washington, D.C.: 2014) p. 41.

Hanique, Part III

I stared at him in bewilderment.

"Please sit down," the Dean said. "I always look forward to these talks, Dr. Montgomery." The smile on his face seemed permanently frozen.

I sat down, feeling nervous and edgy.

"I'm glad to have a chance to talk to you," I said. "I have made some recent discoveries that I need to talk to you about. The research may require travel funds."

"Discoveries?" The frozen smile somehow seemed slightly more frozen.

I began with the events of the conference and told him of my research since then.

"And you have drawn conclusions from this?"

"Conclusions?" I said angrily. "Conclusions? Getting conclusions from this evidential mess is impossible. Even to begin to get a hold on this problem, I'll need to go to Hanique myself and...."

"Where is this 'Hanique'?"

I was at a complete loss, suddenly realizing for the first time that I hadn't the faintest notion of where Hanique was located. The only evidence I had that it actually existed at all, and was not a corruption like 'Boulagnon' was usually assumed to be, as the obscure statement of the man at the conference. A man I could not contact, as I did not even know his name.

I was still caught up in the puzzle this presented when the voice of the Dean broke in.

"Dr. Montgomery," he asked, "have you been taking your medications?"

Startled by the odd, and rather insulting, question, I replied indignantly, "I don't take medications; I haven't had anything recently except a few aspirin."

"Aspirin," he said, the frozen smile turning suddenly into a frown. "Do you mean the white pills? You are only taking the white pills?"

"Aspirin are usually white," I replied sarcastically. "But I don't see what business it is of yours what I'm taking or not."

"And the others?"

"What others?"

"The red and the yellow pills," he replied. "What have you been doing with the red and yellow pills?"

"Look," I said. "You're just a Dean. You're not my doctor, so I don't understand why you keep talking about medications."

The frozen smile returned to the his face.

"Dr. Montgomery," the Dean said, "we both know that I am not the Dean."

I stared at him in bewilderment.

to be continued

Fortnightly Book, May 24

The fortnightly book this time around will be Umberto Eco's third novel, The Island of the Day Before. It's unlikely to top The Name of the Rose or Foucault's Pendulum, the only fiction works by Eco that I've read (I've read a large portion of his nonfiction), and a look at critical reviews shows that most people think it hasn't come close, but as it's Eco one can be sure that there will be plenty in the book to like, whatever its shortcomings.

In the 1640s, Roberto della Griva finds himself shipwrecked and cast up, not on a deserted island but on a deserted ship. He's stuck there because although he can see land, he cannot swim. It is thus a Robinsonade with a twist. (Telegraphed by the name of the main character, who is doubly Robin-ish: Robin is a diminutive for Robert and 'Griva' is Catalan for a thrush, of which a robin is one kind; and the robin references are increased by other names, like Wanderdrossel, also a name for a thrush.) It, of course, would not be an Eco novel without also being a treatise on epistemology, and one can see just by glancing through that we have Eco's full toolbox of semiotic quirks and curiosities -- doppelgangers and lists and anachronistic allusions and endlessly many other things.

Marshall Terry, Tom Northway

Introduction

Opening Passage:

When he awoke, a miraculous new dawn was just beginning to come up over the glazed white land and play and dance at his uncurtained window.He lay very still, for a long moment savoring the light, feeling through him the wonder of it. Once asleep, he had slept long and hard. Overslept, like an old fool.

Summary: Tom Northway, living alone on his Ohio farm with his dogs and with the help of his Amish neighbors, wakes up on his ninetieth birthday. It will be an eventful day, and the reader follows him through it. A worry throughout is that his son Ben is coming; Tom expects that Ben will find some way to force him off the farm where he has lived so much of his life.

There is not much story to pack into such a short time, and although almost the whole book is Tom reminiscing about his life, we don't really get a complete sense of that story, either. But the book, as the title might suggest, excels at character study, and that is perhaps the best way of thinking about the story. The Kirkus review for the book was surprisingly critical when it came out:

Marshall Terry (Old Liberty -- 1961) sets down in a low key, with consistency and constancy that does not reach for effects, a simple, modest life. One is left with the sense that perhaps it has been a little too simple to hold the reader's attentiveness.

I'm not sure that this is quite so, although it's easy enough to see why the reviewer might say this. The primary difficulty with the book is that it in some ways is very much like being stuck in a room with a voluble ninety-year-old rambling about his life for 186 pages. But I think this is an analogy that also shows the other side. Such a ramble is not uninteresting in itself; the difficulty with it is that it never quite gets to the point of explicitly binding it all together in a tight bundle -- the linking idea that, on being seen, would suddenly make it obvious that the associations between these different stories are rational is never quite stated, or the key event that would organize everything else into a meaningful whole is never quite reached. It's in trying to capture the whole that we are lost. The details may nonetheless be quite interesting -- and, again, there often is a real logic to the whole thing, that just needs to be sussed out by patience and thought. Tom Northway is an engaging enough character in his own right, and the book, while perhaps a little long for what it is doing, is nonetheless not interminable. You're really just sitting down to get to know Tom; and getting to know someone is not too simple to hold your attention -- it's a considerable part of what your attention seems to exist for in the first place. But it also takes an interest in getting to know Tom in the first place, and a little work and endurance actually to get to know him.

Favorite Passage:

He put a new sheet in the Oliver and began a letter to Ben.

Dear Ben,
You are a damn fool.

He looked at that. Then he wrote:

I love you very much.
Your father,
Thomas Northway (p. 160)

Recommendation: It takes a taste for characters over story, but it was enjoyable, and can be recommended for those who have it.

-------

Quotations are from Marshall Terry, Tom Northway, Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc. (New York: 1968).

Sui Juris Churches XIV: The Ethiopian Catholic Church

(on sui juris churches generally)

Liturgical Family: Alexandrian

Primary Liturgical Language: Ge'ez

Juridical Status: Metropolitan

Approximate Population: Between 200,000 and 400,000.

Brief History: Christianity in Ethiopia is very old, as witnessed by the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts, and beginning in the fourth century, when under the influence of St. Frumentius of Tyre, Emperor Ezana converted, the nation became an officially Christian nation. A large number of Ethiopian bishops, however, rejected the Council of Chalcedon, and for much of its history Ethiopia was essentially Coptic nation in its religious life, although they had different customs and used a different language from the Copts in Egypt.

In the late medieval period, however, Ethiopia came into contact with the West again, through the Portuguese, and tentative steps were taken by the West to reinstate communion. Most of these came to nothing, but Ethiopia was in a state of serious peril from the expansion of Islam, and in the sixteenth century, the Ethiopian Empire and the Adal Sultanate (roughly modern-day Somalia) came into direct and active conflict, with the Sultanate making massive gains in Abyssinian territory. Ethiopia appealed to the Portuguese for help, and the Portuguese came through with massive naval and arms support, turning an inevitable defeat into an Ethiopian victory. But the war left the Empire as well as the Sultanate in a weak and vulnerable state, and thus Ethiopia still depended heavily on the assistance of the Portuguese. This led to increased exposure to Western missionaries.

The missionary activity reached its pinnacle in 1622 when the Emperor Susenyos became Catholic; Rome appointed a Jesuit, Afonso Mendes, to be Patriarch of Ethiopia and Catholicism became the official religion of the Empire. But Mendes and Susenyos acted with a very heavy hand, creating a strong popular reaction to their new reforms, and the Emperor's son, Fasilides, took the side of the populace. When Fasilides took the throne, he began to restrict Catholic activity in his realm, and the Patriarch and a number of other foreign priests were exiled from the country. The union was broken, and for over two centuries the Ethiopians refused to allow Catholic missionaries into the country. These restrictions loosened, very slightly, in the 1830s, so that in 1839 the Apostolic Prefecture of Abyssinia was established and St. Justin de Jacobis began slowly to rebuild the Catholic Church in Ethiopia. One of the things he did was to require priests to celebrate in the Ethiopian Rite. When Emperor Menelik II took the throne, among his many modernizing reforms was to remove the restrictions on Catholic missions, and slow growth continued until the conquest of Ethiopia by Italy in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, after which missionary activity increased, and the number of Latin Rite churches grew.

At the end of World War II, foreigners were expelled, however. This meant that there were a large number of Ethiopian Catholics of Latin Rite with no priests. The duties had to be taken over by Ethiopian priests who had kept their rite on conversion. To handle this complication, the church in Ethiopia was organized into an Apostolic Exarchate in 1951, and Addis Ababa was raised to the status of a Metropolitan see in 1961. There have since developed minor Latin Rite jurisdictions in Ethiopia, but it is still the case that the primary Catholic hierarchy in Ethiopia is Ethiopian Rite.

Notable Monuments: The Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Addis Ababa; the church of Santo Stefano degli Abissini in Vatican City, which is the oldest extant church in Vatican City and the national church of Ethiopia in the diocese of Rome.

Notable Saints: St. Justin de Jacobis (July 31); St. Frumentius (October 27); St. Kaleb Elesbaan of Axum (October 27). (It is perhaps worth noting that St. Kaleb, who has been in the Roman Martyrology since the 16th century, lived during a period in which Ethiopia was not in communion with Rome.) There are also a number of beatified Ethiopians, such as Bl. Ghebre Michael, who may eventually end up on the general calendar.

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: Archeparchy of Addis Ababa and eparchies in Adigrat, Endibir, and Bahir Dar-Dessie. ( (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church.)

Online Sources and Resources:

http://adigratcatholicchurch.org/

http://www.cnewa.org/