The Analects, Books XIII-XV

Book XIII

Book XIII is largely on the subject of government, and, as usual, Master Kong's approach to it is in terms of moral authority; the rulers and ministers acting properly leads to the people acting properly (13.6, 13.10, 13.11, 13.12, 13.13). At 13.3 we get the famous passage about rectification of names, which Master Kong gives as his answer to the question of what the most important thing in administering a government is. Zilu is baffled by this, but Master Kong dismisses his bafflement. Names must be right for what is said to be intelligible; the intelligibility of what is said is required for accomplishing things effectively. One needs to accomplish things effectively in order for rites and music to work as they should (cp. 13.5). Rites and music, of course, are the primary instruments of moral authority in government, since they set examples and teach the skills involved in imitating those examples (cp. 13.4; 13.6). The coercive power of the state to punish is peripheral to the cultivation of rites and music, being used to correct only those whom rites and music have not helped. If rites and music are not working as they should, then, punishments are not being applied as they should be, and the people will suffer for it. This correction of names, however, is not a mere matter of words. (13.15 seems to imply well enough that words alone do not suffice.) It is a matter of viewing and describing things correctly, so that things can be communicated correctly. Government is a matter of communication. Without correct communication, there can be no correct government.

The reason Confucius puts such emphasis on moral authority in government is the same reason Plato does: because the primary activity of government is not force but education and its prerequisites (13.9). Even military power is primarily a matter of education (13.29-30). The great enemy of all good government is people thinking that they can simply decide as a matter of will what things are and whether they count as good or bad; this will mean, among other things that people poorly suited for government will be given the powers of government, that people will not have a clear path to follow, and that rulers and ministers will not take proper advice. All of these are issues that regularly come up in Master Kong's discussion of government. If people treat moral matters as matters of mere will, they cannot have reasonable priorities. We see this in Master Kong's biting remarks about a system of government in which sons are expected to inform on their fathers (13.18) and his contemptuous dismissal of those currently in government (13.20).

Book XIV

In addition to the more abstract method of profiles, a significant feature of Confucian pedagogy is reflection on ancient deeds. Much of Book XIV is concerned with this. At 14.5 we get a discussion of the superiority of moral influence over strength or military skill, in the form of a comparison of great heroes. There is some discussion of matters related to the powerful Duke Huan (e.g., 14.15), particularly of his advisor Guan Zhong (14.9; 14.16; 14.17). Duke Huan was the ruler of Qi at one of its major military high points. Guan Zhong was one of his prime ministers, and is often credited with a considerable portion of the greatness of Qi in his day; one of the things Master Kong is doing is analyzing his success as a statesman.

A particularly interesting analect is 14.19, in which Master Kong argues that even if a ruler does not follow the Tao, his work may be maintained by sufficiently competent ministers. We also get a variety of analects that give us a different picture of Master Kong, including his occasional mistreatment by others (14.25; 14.32, in which he is not addressed respectfully; 14.39) and some rather sharp criticisms of others (14.43; 14.44).

Book XV

Book XV is notable for having a number of especially striking aphoristic sayings by Master Kong. I will just note a few of them.

The Master said: 'Not to talk with people although they can be talked with is to waste people. To talk with people although they can't be talked with is to waste words. A man of understanding does not waste people, but he also does not waste words. (15.8)

The Master said: 'If a man avoids thinking about distant matters he will certainly have worries close at hand.' (15.12)

The Master said: 'I can do nothing at all for someone who does not say "what shall I do about this, what shall I do about this?"' (15.16)

Zigong asked: 'Is there a single word such that one could practice it throughout one's life?' The Master said: 'Reciprocity, perhaps? Do not inflict on others what you yourself would not wish done to you. (15.24)

The Master said: 'If one commits an error and does not reform, this is what is meant by an error.' (15.30)

The Master said: 'In words the purpose is simply to get one's point across.' (15.41)

One of the other analects in this book has had an especially important history; in 15.3, Confucius denies that is the sort of thing that remembers many things that he has studied, saying that instead he strings everything together with "one thing". He does not specify, but there appears to be a long tradition, mentioned by several commentators, of linking this analect with 4.15, which makes the "one thing" the thread of loyalty and reciprocity (and notably both loyalty and reciprocity are clarified in this book).

A number of analects here also have to deal with words and their proper role (15.6; 15.8; 15.11; 15.17; 15.22; 15.23; 15.24; 15.25; 15.27; 15.40; 15.41). This issue of language comes up too often to be plausibly ascribed to coincidence.

to be continued

Saint Noble-Strength

Today is the Feast of St. Etheldreda, whose name was in the original Anglo-Saxon, Aethelthryth, and whose name is also the original for the common name Audrey. She was born into the Wuffing dynasty of East Anglia as one of four daughters of King Onna of East Anglia who became saints. Early on she made a vow of perpetual virginity, but, as princesses often are, she was married off for political reasons to Tondberct of South Gyrwe. He seems to have been a decent man, though, because she convinced him to respect her vow. He died a few years later, and she retired to the Isle of Ely, which her husband had given her as a wedding gift, to build an abbey. (Ely at the time was basically a patch of dry ground in the middle of very marshy fenland.) However, she was married off again, this time to Ecgfrith of Northumbria. She was less than pleased with this state of affairs, and after considerable argument managed to convince Ecgfrith to let her become a nun. According to some stories, Ecgfrith attempted to get St. Wilfrith, the bishop of York, to persuade her to give up her vow, and St. Wilfrith's refusal became a factor in the intense feud that developed between the bishop and the king. Regardless, she retired to the Abbey of Ely again. Aethelthryth's abbey would last for almost two hundred years before it was destroyed in 870 by Danish Vikings.

The Venerable Bede wrote a hymn in her honor.

The English word 'tawdry' comes from St. Etheldreda's name; there was a fair in Ely that sold cloth goods, among which was an inexpensive neck ornament, St. Audrey's lace, shortened eventually to tawdry lace. 'Tawdry', of course, preserves the cheapness of the ornament rather than its saintly origin.

The Defective Concept of the 'Introduction to Philosophy' Course

There is an interesting exercise that I think is valuable for every philosophy professor at some point in his or her career to try: try to pin down exactly what an 'Introduction to Philosophy' course is, using the different standards to which we actually hold such courses. What can easily be found when one does this is that Intro courses are in reality jumbles. If you were to take typical Department-mandated objectives for Intro courses and design a course specifically to meet those objectives, then another standard, like the typical prerequisite structure of a philosophy major, and design a course specifically to contribute in an optimal way to preparing for the courses for which it is a prerequisite, then another standard, like actually introducing people to philosophy, and design a course specifically with that in view -- if, I say, you were to do this through all the different standards to which Introduction to Philosophy courses are held, I think you would quickly find that none of the courses would obviously be the same course.

There are a number of different functions an 'Introduction to Philosophy' course could have. It could be the kind of course that used to be called Philosophical Encyclopedia, which was basically what the title says: it was a tour of philosophy, involving a very brief historical survey, a look at some of the major positions of some of the major philosophical disciplines, and, often, a guide to students as to what might be worth reading on their own. Nothing about the course particularly required that students do philosophy, beyond what was required to follow the basic ideas in very broad outline, but it wasn't intended to do so: it was intended, like a logic course, to give students basic tools (distinctions, classifications, general concepts required for historical comparison), and perhaps also to give them a sense of where they might head next. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to have a course for. There's a perfectly straightforward sense in which, done properly, it would be a solid and useful 'Introduction to Philosophy' course. Intro courses tend not to fulfill this function particularly well, but if you look at a lot of course objectives for them, it's pretty clear that they are, at least in principle, supposed to fulfill it.

Another possible approach might be to treat it as a course in philosophical writing. That there is often a need for something like such a course is usually quite obvious to those who have to grade student papers. Philosophical writing takes certain skills of analysis and organization, and it is really not fair to students to expect that they will already have them or will just pick them up on the fly or will somehow gain them through 'feedback' from the professor, particularly since assignments and feedback are often not particularly well designed for doing this. (I could write another post entirely about peculiarities and defects in how people seem to think of and handle feedback to students, and the difficult problems of doing 'feedback' in a way that could seriously be considered useful for students themselves.) But most Intro courses are not set up with a focus on writing.

A different kind of approach might be to focus on philosophy majors, making the Intro course a gateway to the major. It is quite clear that Intro courses are often treated as fulfilling this function. To fulfill this function properly, however, the course should set students up to succeed in future philosophy courses. This is arguably the function that Intro courses usually fulfill best, but I would argue that they often don't fulfill it very well, either, not so much from lack of trying as from the limits on our ability to anticipate what students would actually find useful in future courses. Philosophy is an immense field; in one way or another it covers everything. And if you start asking specific questions about how these courses set students up for success, you often find that there is no obvious answer to the question. If, for instance, the Intro course is supposed to set up for courses like Ancient Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, and so forth, why don't more Intro courses have extensive discussion of actual Stoic and Neoplatonist figures and ideas? If it is supposed to prepare for courses more focused on analytic-style problems, Philosophy of Mind, for instance, why don't more Intro courses have a significant logic component? There are lots that don't.

Many philosophy professors really want their Intro courses to be introductions to doing philosophy. Ich habe nicht die Absicht die Philosophie zu lehren sondern philosophiren zu lehren. But if you look at course descriptions, course objectives, prerequisite structures, and the like, it's often less than clear how these fit with how teachers often go about trying to get their students to think through philosophical issues in philosophical ways.

The list, of course, could be extended indefinitely, using things like actual methods of evaluating teaching, or departmental policies, or even the practical fact that Intro courses tend to function as 'advertising' by which departments recruit philosophy majors in the first place. The real point here, of course, is that it's difficult for Intro to be a good introduction because there are so many conflicting ways to be an introduction, all of which are on the table and none of which are easy to exclude given all the standard pressures that go into designing and teaching an Intro course in the first place. If you go through all the course objectives, department policies, things that come up in the evaluation process that professors need to show that they do in order to have a proper evaluation portfolio, there is too much expectation put on the table. No matter what anyone does, something is going to be shortchanged. You can get some amusing confirmations of this if you get a bunch of philosophy professors together to talk about Intro courses; they rarely have the same idea of what an Introduction to Philosophy course should be and are often aghast at how other philosophy professors run their Intro courses, despite the fact that those others can virtually always justify their approaches by one of the jillion different standards on the table.

Ideally, I think, there would be an Intro course qua Philosophical Encyclopedia, and an Intro course qua Philosophical Writing, and an Intro course qua teacher and students trying to think through philosophical questions together, and so forth. There's no obvious reason why all of this should be stuffed into the same course; when you try to do it, it's easy for one to crowd out the others. The problem, of course, is how to make something like this practicable given common administrative expectations and the sheer inertia in how faculty tend to handle basic courses in the first place.

Vinculae Variae

* "The History Blog" has an interesting post on the church scribes and networks that were used to give the Magna Carta a wide distribution.

* MrD on climate change.

* Elmar Kremer in a podcast on classical theism at "Wireless Philosophy"

* The history of hushpuppies.

* A hairdresser has recently begun to overturn certain assumptions of archeologists and historians about how the Egyptians did their hair.

* Flannery O'Connor is currently on a US postage stamp.

* Rebecca Stark on Susanna Wesley and Aristotle.

* Catherine Nielsen on Augustine on the elusiveness of complete self-knowledge.

* The priest who invented the bulletproof vest.

* John Farrell on Christopher Lee

* Michael Zheltov, The Moment of Eucharistic Consecration in Byzantine Thought

* Early Indo-European Online has an interesting series of language lessons.

* Online Syriac-Aramaic language lessons.

* An interesting essay on sedevacantism, by Michael Davies, at "Radical Catholic"

* Eran Tal, Measurement in Science, at the SEP

* The Deconstructor in the Darkness at "speculum criticum traditionis"

Fortnightly Book, June 21

As some of you may know, a portion of the Fortnightly Book series consists of reading through the books I inherited from my grandparents; I do read others, as occasion suggests them, but the series was started so that I could read through the inherited books, and about half of them have tended to come from that group. There are a few multi-volume works in the batch, however, that I've not really known how to do in this kind of series. I did do Les Miserables, which was pretty intensive reading. But the most obviously problematic example is Richard Burton's edition of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, three thick volumes totaling somewhere around 4000 pages. I do read a lot, and I read quickly, but I also do many other things, including some rather time-consuming research, and I am also always reading more than one book at a time. I do not think I can manage that much in two weeks, or even in one of the stretched three-week 'fortnights' I take when I am especially busy.

So what I've decided to do is simply break it up. After all it's an endless series of tales, and seems quite suited to being taken partwise. (I also don't think I will go straight through; I will intersperse other books, and I just intend to get all three done by the end of the year.) Thus the next fortnightly book is the first of the three volumes in the Heritage Press edition, which is in its turn the equivalent of a Volumes I and II of the Limited Editions edition of which the Heritage Press edition is essentially the cheaper version. (The full Richard Burton edition was originally published in ten volumes; I don't know how far this Heritage Press volume takes us in the original ten volume series, nor in the later but more widely read sixteen volume edition.) This volume is 1334 pages long and takes us up to the 271st night of Shahrázád's ingenious use of cliffhangers and stories withing stories to prevent her husband from actually going through with his plan of killing her the next morning.

There is no one version of the One Thousand and One Nights; we have the frame story about Shahrázád (more often spelled 'Scheherazade') in quite a few manuscripts, but the actual stories told are not all the same. And, somewhat ironically, the single most famous tale, that of Aladdin and his lamp, is not one of Shahrézéd's tales in any manuscript at all: it first becomes associated with the Nights in the first European edition, because Antoine Galland published his version of the Nights together with several other tales he had discovered. Likewise, the ending is not exactly the same in all of them, although in all of them it is a happy ending. Thus there are lots of different versions of the Nights. Burton's, if I understand correctly, draws from one of the relatively late Egyptian versions (the one sometimes known as the Macnaghten version), which bulked up the tales to guarantee that there would actually be at least 1001 nights; the original title seems to have been a figure of speech, and a lot of the manuscripts have less than three hundred distinct stories.

The Heritage Press volume I will be reading is one of the handsomer books in my possession, with an ivory-colored linen spine stamped in gold leaf and a tangerine cover-papers printed in gold and black. It has a thousand and one drawings by Valenti Angelo.

Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

Introduction

Opening Passage:

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, th box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

Summary: The Phantom of the Opera sits squarely in the Mystery genre of stories, but it has a number of twists that together combine to make it unique.

(1) It is set up as a historical mystery. By this I mean more than a mystery taking place in a past time. The narrator is laying out his solution to a mystery that occurred some thirty years before. Thus it requires piecing together in the way a historian pieces together a historical narrative. While there are other historical mystery works -- Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time is probably the most famous, although it's one I haven't read -- this is not a common route to take in mystery writing, I imagine because it is difficult to maintain immediacy.

(2) While there are several murders in the course of the story, none of them is the primary crime to be unraveled. That is the disappearance of Christine Daaé. And even that is a secondary issue; none of the crimes is the central mystery of the work.

(3) The story continually plays up the fantastic and supernatural in its descriptions -- and then undoes them by uncovering entirely natural and often mechanistic explanations of them. While this in itself is not at all uncommon, I don't think there's any other major mystery tale that does it on anything like the scale on which this book does it. There are layers and layers and layers of it. The great danger of this kind of approach is Scooby-Doo-ism, in which the story builds up a heavily fantastic appearance whose discovered explanation is a banal and wholly inadequate non-fantastic explanation, a just-so story that is little more than glib handwaving. Phantom avoids this, I think, by heavily drawing on aspects of the world that we take to be natural but nonetheless still highly suggestive: trapdoors, strange torture machines, underground lakes, secret passages behind mirrors, Orientalism, and the like. And, more important than this, it links them up in such a way that the natural solution often gets you immediately into something even more fantastic-seeming, so you don't really have time to question the adequacy of the explanation, and even if you did, the fact that the natural solutions so often bring more fantastic elements with them underlines the fact that they aren't the complete explanation.

There are occasionally stories that do approach this level of complexity in the interplay between fantastic and natural: the novels of Tim Powers. But Powers's movement is in entirely the other direction, because rather than giving us the apparently fantastic and showing us an elaborate natural explanation, he shows us the apparently natural and gives us an elaborately fantastic explanation. But the level of complexity being similar, I think one could very well say that Phantom's closest cousin is something like Declare.

(4) The story works very hard to paint the Opera Ghost both as a monster and as someone to be pitied, and merges the two surprisingly well.

Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room spawned an entire subgenre of imitators, the locked-room mysteries. But The Phantom of the Opera, while far more famous, has no such imitators, and part of this, I think, is that it is inimitable -- there are so many unique features that are so essential to the story that if you pick them apart you get an entirely different kind of story. The combination of this with lush description and careful characterization certainly puts The Phantom of the Opera in the top tier of the greatest mystery stories ever written.

Favorite Passage:

And turning to his audience M. Mifroid delivered a little lecture on police methods.

"I don't know for a moment whether M. le Comte de Chagny has really carried Christine Daaé off or not... but I want to know and I believe that, at this moment, no one is more anxious to inform us than his brother....And now he is flying in pursuit of him. He is my chief auxiliary! This, gentlemen, is the art of the police, which is believed to be so complicated and which, nevertheless, appears so simple as soon as you see that it consists in getting your work done by people who have nothing to do with the police."

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

Locus Focus

The Lake Beneath the Paris Opera House
The Phantom of the Opera
by Gaston Leroux

At last, César raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and César stopped. The darkness had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkenss; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!


The Palais Garnier or Paris Opera House is almost the most striking character of The Phantom of the Opera, and I almost picked this city-unto-itself as the place to focus on. But, if you really think about it, the place that really dominates the story is the lake five stories below.

Apparently the idea of a lake or river beneath it was a common rumor the day; they had had considerable difficulty drying the foundations, so the architect built big cisterns and a small waterway to help reduce the amount of groundwater linking into the cellars. But the notion of a lake beneath the extraordinarily elaborate and expensive building is just too striking an idea to miss. I mean, seriously, what would your reaction be if you learned that there was a passageway somewhere in the building you're now in that leads to an underground lake? That can take an already interesting building and make it amazing.

And the Opera House in the story has to be the Opera House with the lake, even if it is more legend than history, because this story is about secrets, and nothing so perfectly captures this as the lake itself.

But perhaps 'secret' is not quite the right word. Given the size of the Opera House, it would not be surprising if even an entire lake were secret, in much the same way that even the managers did not know that the Opera House had its own stables, despite knowing that their productions regularly used horses. But Christine already knew that the lake and its boat existed, although she had never seen them before. In this way it is like the Opera Ghost: it's perhaps not correct to call him a secret, because everyone talks about him. But that's different from really coming across him, just as knowing that a lake is under the building is different from actually finding it. Things may be known about without being known. So what would be a word for something that's not really secret and yet is somehow elusive? I don't know if there is a word in English for it, but perhaps 'mystery' is close.

And that fits in another way, because Gaston Leroux is very much a mystery writer, and his narrator is piecing together a historical mystery out of newspaper evidence and written and oral anecdotes.

The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daaé, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side.
The mysterious character of the lake lies not in its being unknown but in its being known and yet suggestive of much more than one knows. Perhaps we could say that while the lake is not a secret, it is a lake that seems to hold secrets, and in this case certainly does. In a real sense, the story of The Phantom of the Opera is not that of the Opera Ghost but of the Opera House, which holds many mysteries: the Opera Ghost is just the mystery whose secrets hold the key to uncovering so many other secrets. And all of those secrets come together on the lake far below the surface.

There's Much Afoot in Heaven and Earth This Year

The Rainy Summer
by Alice Meynell

There’s much afoot in heaven and earth this year;
The winds hunt up the sun, hunt up the moon,
Trouble the dubious dawn, hasten the drear
Height of a threatening noon.

No breath of boughs, no breath of leaves, of fronds,
May linger or grow warm; the trees are loud;
The forest, rooted, tosses in her bonds,
And strains against the cloud.

No scents may pause within the garden-fold;
The rifled flowers are cold as ocean-shells;
Bees, humming in the storm, carry their cold
Wild honey to cold cells.

Word & Question (Poem Draft)

So this is an entry for Enbrethiliel's Word & Question Game, in which people send in a word and a question, and then they get mixed up and sent out to different people as poem prompts. I confess I hadn't the faintest idea what to do with the word. Had I been fancy-fancy I would have done something with the original bundok, but mixing in Tagalog and answering the question and using the word 'boondocks' all at once is a bit beyond my minor poetic powers. I also had the difficulty that 'boondocks' is a word that almost demands a poem with sharp edges, but the words for answering the question kept settling down in less spiky ways, giving the whole, I think something of a discordant tone. But I might eventually do something with the last bit of it.

Word: Boondocks
Question: Have we been here before?

The streams through hollow hills,
cold and softly shushing in the night,
like roads through giant's halls
not yet touched by dawning of the light;
yes, some have known these things,
though never televised.

I saw upon the screen
a thousand stars at night;
and heard the screech-owl's scream
and recorded catbird's note.

Dust and bur beneath bare soles,
a fish fresh-caught from by the quay,
sunset setting down its seal
upon the letter of the day:
you cannot learn these things
from what is televised.

The illusion that one knows:
that is the city life;
knowing about, as from the news,
but not here with hate and love.

In the boondocks one learns one's will,
for better or for worse,
and, too, one's limits like a wall,
and how to stay the course,
and the presence of the thing
that stays untelevised.

In a box of walls with pride
we account us worldly-wise
who've never in dust prayed
or felt the world's own ways.

We walked, both you and I,
down a road as yet unpaved;
it was known, I know not why,
and yet unknown, like life unproved;

we walked where only deer
knew the paths that came and went,
felt what wonder we could dare,
and the pull of aching want,

we walked upon the leaves
falling on the forest floor,
knew them like old loves,
though we were never here before,

and felt the shock, the sheer surprise,
of what goes untelevised.

Thursday Virtue: Observantia

Tucked away and easy to miss in Aquinas's many discussions of virtue is the virtue of observantia (2-2.102), closely related to pietas and, like pietas, a potential part or auxiliary virtue of justice. We might indeed, given things that Aquinas says about it, regard observantia as a potential part of pietas.

Pietas is giving direct and indirect honor to our parents, to whom we owe a moral debt; that is, we honor our parents directly for bringing us into the world, and we honor them indirectly by giving honor to their family and to their patria or homeland. But there are ways in which we may be related to others who are not our parents that are in some way or other analogous to the way we are related to our parents. In one case, that of God, the relation is more fundamental and complete than that of our relation to our parents, and this concerns the virtue of religio; in other cases, the relation is looser, and it is these that are the concern of observantia, which is the virtue of giving proper honor to those in positions of dignity or excellence. Like many of Aquinas's basic definitions of potential parts of justice, the definition is derived from Cicero.

In order to develop this idea, Aquinas uses the notion of pater; since observantia is analogy-based, nothing much turns on whether we read it in its specific meaning of 'father' or its generic meaning of 'parent', but the same word in relation to piety has to be understood as including, not excluding, our mothers, so it is certainly more appropriate here to think of it in terms of 'parent'. A parent is a principle of generation, upbringing, and learning, and of whatever is relevant to the completion of a human life (pater est principium et generationis et educationis et disciplinae, et omnium quae ad perfectionem humanae vitae pertinent). Just as a parent shares in a particular way the nature of a principle, which God has in a complete way, so too certain other people share in a particular way the nature that a parent has in a complete way. We see this in our tendency to extend respect given to parents to other people under limited conditions, because they have a similar sort of charge, but over a narrow field. Aquinas specifically mentions the prince of a city (for civil matters), the dux or general (for military matters), and the teacher (for learning). But there are many, very many, more ways in which one may involve something like this notion of a parent.

Aquinas identifies two major acts associated with observantia: honor and worship (cultus). Honor is recognition of an excellence; worship is deference in which one obeys someone worthy of honor or repays benefits received from them in some appropriate way. Worship in this sense thus adds to honor the notion of decent action between human beings. But there are a lots of different kinds of things we call 'honor' and 'worship', not all of which are relevant to observantia itself. Thus, for instance, if you are a soldier giving obedience and showing respect to your general, you have a well-defined obligation of obedience. This makes that kind of honor a matter of justice in the strict sense, not of a virtue like observantia that deals with less-defined matters and can only be regarded as justice in a broad sense. Thus the kinds of honor and worship that are relevant to observantia arise when there is not any precise action that we have to do given our position in society. Thus one might show respect to a teacher even though one is not that teacher's student, because the role of 'teacher' is itself something that has an excellence with respect to the common good of society. Likewise, one might show respect to a mother even though you are not related to her in any determinable way at all, because motherhood is itself an excellence, given its importance to the healthy functioning of society. And, of course, since there is no precise obligation, one would tend to render such respect on a sliding scale, with those who fulfill these roles with the greatest and clearest virtue being given the greatest honor. If anyone were to ask why we do this given that we don't strictly have to do so, we would say that we do it because, despite not being strictly required by our position, it is nonetheless a good thing to do.

One of the things that makes observantia interesting as a virtue is that it is a particularly promising locus for comparison between Western philosophy and Chinese philosophy, since it has many analogies to the Confucian conception of good social relations. Like the Confucian idea, observantia in society at large is derivative from pietas toward our parents, which serves as a kind of foundation for it.

Sui Juris Churches XXI: The Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church

(on sui juris churches in general)

Liturgical Family: Byzantine

Primary Liturgical Language: Bulgarian

Juridical Status: Apostolic Exarchate

Approximate Population: Roughly 10,000 to 11,000

Brief History: Bulgarians had long had a dream of autocephaly; relations between Christians in Bulgaria and Constantinople were always more than slightly complicated. In the nineteenth century, a politician named Dragan Tsankov began to suggest that this might be practically accomplished by communion with Rome along the lines of the Ruthenian Unions. This seems to have met pockets of the population that were already interested in the idea. In 1859, a group of people in Kukush (modern Kilkis) sent a letter to the Pope desiring union under the condition that they would be able to keep their rites and elect their own bishops; and in the next year Tsankov and a number of other intellectuals gave a similar letter to the Apostolic Vicar in Constantinople. Pius IX did not hesitate; he accepted the offers and in 1861 named Joseph Sokolsky, one of Tsankov's delegation, their archbishop. Unfortunately, Sokolsky's appointment had relatively little effect, because the Russians, worried about what a Bulgarian Uniate Church might do to their influence in Bulgaria, kidnapped him a few months later and threw him in prison. The Bulgarians uniting with Rome had no real religious leader until 1863, when Raphael Popov, who had been a deacon while in Tsankov's delegation, was elected bishop.

The movement for union spread, slowly, but the wind was taken out of its sails when the Ottoman Empire itself pressed for an Orthodox Bulgarian Exarchate. That process took a while, but as the Patriarchate in Constantinople made more and more concessions in that direction, the Bulgarians received a measure of ecclesial independence that removed one of the obvious reasons for becoming Catholic.

In 1874, another group in Kukush added its stream to the mix when the Orthodox Bishop of Kukush himself, Nil Izorov, joined communion with Rome. Izorov had been involved in the development of the Bulgarian Exarchate, but in the process of contributing he came to the conclusion that Bulgarian communities in Macedonia were deliberately being left out. His attempts to force a more explicit confrontation on this issue were not appreciated, and the Patriarchate pressured the Exarchate to recall him, which it eventually did. The recall was taken by Bulgarians in Macedonia as a clear sign that Izorov had been right, and several of these Bulgarian communities began actively insisting that the Exarchate give them their own eparchy under Izorov. The Exarchate refused, so they tried to become Anglican. But the British at the British Consulate were wary about getting involved in this kind of politics, so that went nowhere as well. Well, third time's the charm; they approached Rome, and Rome had none of the political qualms of the others. Izorov would become the head of the small Bulgarian Uniate community after the death of Popov, but in 1895 would return to the Orthodox Church. This would actually be a constant problem in the early history of the Bulgarian Catholic Church, as a number of priests and bishops would waver back and forth between being Catholic and being Orthodox.

The Bulgarian Catholic communities in Macedonia would be in for difficult days during the Balkan Wars and the First World War, as they were caught in the middle of several different, and very intense, political struggles. Kukush would be burned by the Greeks; the Turks began a genocide of Bulgarians in Thrace. Bulgarians fled in massive numbers to Bulgaria, which, unfortunately, did not have the resources to handle them. The situation would devastate the Bulgarian Catholic Church in its original homelands, but enough survivors congregated in Bulgaria that in 1925 the Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria, Angelo Rancalli, began to press for a reorganization, and in the next year Rome established the Apostolic Exarchate of Sofia to take care of them.

Unfortunately, Bulgaria had been invaded by the Soviets toward the end of World War II (thus switching Bulgaria from an Axis nation to an Allied nation), and that meant that the Communists were in control of Bulgaria. Fortunately the persecution of the Catholic Church in Bulgaria was much less severe than it was in many other places; the Church was never officially suppressed, although there were executions early on and it was subject to the usual long list of restrictions. Even these were said to have been more lightly enforced after Angelo Rancalli became Pope John XXIII.

In 1989 the Communist regime lost power, and since that time the Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church has slowly managed to regain its confiscated property and expand.

Notable Saints: As a Byzantine Rite church, the Bulgarian Greek Catholics have a number of Byzantine Calendar saints on their calendar. In addition, there are a number of Greek Catholic martyrs under the Communist regime who might someday be beatified or canonized; I believe that Bl. Kamen Vitchev is the only one who has been beatified so far. Given his close association with both Latin and Greek Rite churches in Bulgaria, having devoted nearly a decade of his career to Bulgarian Catholics, John XXIII (October 11) could probably be added to the list.

Notable Religious Institutes: One of the longstanding religious orders is the Holy Eucharist Sisters, whose active involvement in the Bulgarian Greek Church goes back almost to the beginning. The Byzantine Discalced Carmelites, while small, are also relatively active.

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: One Apostolic Exarchate in Bulgaria.

Online Sources and Resources:

http://www.cnewa.org/

http://www.katolsk.no/

http://www.kae-bg.org/

The Analects, Books XI-XII

Book XI

Book XI can be seen as giving more information about Confucius's school, in the sense of his teaching and how he interacted with his students. We get some indication of the major subjects discussed and considered important (11.3), for instance: virtuous conduct, speech, administration, culture and learning.

We also get a better sense of Yan Hui, Master Kong's greatest student, who unfortunately died relatively young. He was one of the students who excelled at virtuous conduct (11.3), and was the one student Master Kong considered genuinely fond of learning (11.7). (You will remember that 'fond of learning' was a key summary phrase 1.14.) Master Kong lamented his death deeply (11.9; 11.10), but honored him not with showy externals but with proper regard for the rites (11.8; 11.11). The famous comment at 11.12 about ghosts and death is often treated alone, but I wonder if it should be included with the loosely group comments concerned with Yan Hui's death: here too, Master Kong takes our proper concern in the face of death to be simply good and appropriate behavior. We also get a poignantly ironic anecdote about him from an important time in Master Kong's life (11.21).

We also see a number of other interactions between Confucius and his more extreme students. We have a rare, if limited, defense of Zilu (=Zhong You) (11.15), who is often presented as the primary instance of the what-not-to-do student: no matter how small it may be, his genuine progress is not to be despised. We have a sharp criticism of Ziyou (=Ran You, = Ran Qiu) (11.17), one of the most important students, and some remarkably strong criticisms (11.18) of various students, although not attributed Master Kong himself. A very interesting anecdote shows Master Kong giving opposite advice to Ran You and to Zhong You alike, in which he gives them opposing advice, thus tailoring his teaching to the personality of each (11.20), and another in which he assesses their weaknesses and merits (11.22).

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the long anecdote in which Confucius asks four of his students, Zilu, Ran You, Gongxi Hua, and Zeng Xi, what their ambition is. Zilu and Ran You we have by this point met in spades. Zeng Xi was the father of Master Zeng, whose reflections we got in Book I. Gongxi Hua was praised by Master Kong in Book V for his familiarity with ritual. Each of the students gives their description of the life they would like to live if someone were to shower reward on their merits. After Zeng Xi gives his own scenario, which involved a very simple life, Confucius affirms the excellence of that ambition. Afterward, Zeng Xi asks him what the difference is, and the difference is that the other three's ambitions were equivalent to wanting extraordinary power in a state.

Book XII

Book XII opens and closes with ren, humanity to oneself and others. The first three analects consist of students asking about ren and getting different answers from Master Kong. The first answer (12.1), given to Yan Hui, is to subdue oneself and return to li (ritual or appropriate behavior); as Yan Hui is Master Kong's best and most virtuous student, this answer seems to give us something like the most complete or adequate understanding of how to cultivate humanity. The second answer (12.2), to Zhonggong (=Ran Yong), focuses on practical tasks rather than general practical principles, giving several maxims the following of which would in some way require subduing oneself and conforming to ritual, including a maxim of reciprocity ("Do not impose on others what you would not like yourself"). The third answer (12.3), to Sima Niu, is simply to hesitate in talking; Sima Niu is baffled by the answer, but Master Kong says that achieving ren is difficult and, recognizing that, one could hardly avoid hesitating to talk about. Part of what seems to be going on here is Confucius's standard practice of tailoring his teaching to the student. Yan Hui, as the most virtuous of the students, does not require particular tasks to follow; even when he asks for clarification, Master Kong stays at a general level. Zhonggong gets more pragmatic advice, presumably because he needs it. And with Sima Niu the advice ultimately boils down to insisting on treating ren with the seriousness it deserves, using an external behavior as a sign of this internal disposition. (Sima Niu also seems to have had a reputation among Confucius's students for talking, so it could very well that there is an implicit criticism here.)

With its consideration of humaneness, the chapter interweaves discussions of government (12.4, 12.7, 12.9, 12.10, 12.11, 12.14, 12.17, 12.19, 12.20, 12.21) and the noble person or gentleman (12.4, 12.5, 12.8, 12.16, 12.19, 12.24). The interweaving is so thorough it does not seem to be wholly accidental. While it may be dangerous to impose too rigorous a pattern on the book, there does seem to be a sort of unified thematic tapestry here. All of these matters -- humanity, government, nobility -- are interlinked in Confucian thought. One of their key elements is captured in the last three analects of the book, which bring us back to the ren discussed in the first three analects. Asked what ren is, Master Kong says it is to love others, and to understand is to understand others (12.22). The primary actions of all the major ideas discussed in this book are other-directed. This leads to a comment by Master Kong about friends (12.23) and another comment by Master Zeng linking culture, friendship, and the noble person (12.24).

to be continued

Brushing Up on Languages

One of the things I am doing this summer is brushing up on languages. Something I came across that has turned out to be quite useful is Duolingo, which is free and actually quite effective. Each Duolingo course aims to cover roughly the same ground as about a year at the college-level, and does so mostly by drilling dressed up as a game. It's especially good for a refresher. I started the French course on June 1, and am about two-thirds of the way done, and have found it reasonably good at stitching up patches in my memory. I liked it enough that I've also been taking the Bokmal (Norwegian) course, to see how useful it would be for learning a language almost from scratch (I knew a few words and phrases of Norwegian, but that's about it), and while this is obviously a much slower process than simply using it to review, it seems to be reasonably effective. I started the Bokmal at the same time as the French and I am about ten percent of the way through; but already can handle basic and generic sentences, at least, like Mange lærere leser bøker, "Many teachers read books". I'll be starting the Spanish tree a little later this month, also for a review, and the German tree (my German proficiency would be somewhere between my Norwegian and my French proficiency, since it's more advanced than nothing, but very patchy) a little later.

The languages they currently have are: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Esperanto, Turkish, Norwegian, Ukrainian. There are several others that are in the process of being developed. There will eventually be a Vietnamese course available, so probably this fall I'll start using it for my on-again-off-again Vietnamese study. The courses are all crowdsourced, which means you occasionally run into odd translations, but this hasn't been a serious issue.

To brush up on Latin, I've been using some of Evan der Millner's YouTube videos, particularly his Latin in Latin course (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV). He summarizes his approach here.

There are other online resources, of course, like this Norwegian mini-course that I'll be starting next week, as well as standard offline book approaches (e.g., I'm currently reading through Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata), but I've found these to be both reasonably accessible and useful. So what online language resources have you found useful?

First Principle of Wise Government

The first principle of every wise government is to tend towards the substantial good and not to waste its power in collecting the accidents and thus diminishing it. Thus for example, a commander who should prefer collecting the spoils left upon the battle-field, to pursuing the enemy and completing his rout, would manifestly lose precious time; his tactics would be quite opposed to the principle of the greatest celerity.

[Rosmini, Theodicy, volume 2, 363-364.]

With this established, we can immediately determine the first of all rules of good government, that is, the first criterion for evaluating the means for governing any society whatever. This first rule and criterion is indubitably the following: That which constitutes the existence or substance of a society is to be preserved and strengthened, even at the cost of having to neglect that which forms its accidental refinement.

When this self-evident rule is applied to civil society, it becomes the first norm of sound politics.

In the same way we can also deduce the greatest errors in government. They are those by which the government of a society loses sight of all that constitutes the subsistence of the society because of its excessive concern for the society’s progress towards accidental perfection.

[Rosmini, Philosophy of Politics, Volume 1, Chapter 1]

Poem a Day XIV

Gold and Green

A tree is rooted in the earth,
an earthy thing, a mattered thing,
but spreads its branches to the sky,
and drinks the sun, and grows in light.
How strange the one who with a smirk
insists the sun is but a fruit,
or that it cannot be at all
because it is not formed by tree.

So look, O man! For in the dawn
that shines through branches richly green,
a gold that lightens with a fire
is seen, beyond the earthy tree.

Old English Wisdom

Those of you on Twitter may like the Old English Wisdom feed, which tweets Anglo-Saxon proverbs, precepts, and advice:

Se anweald næfre ne biþ god, buton se god sie þe hine hæbbe. Power is never good, unless the one who possesses it is good. #OEBoethius

— Old English Wisdom (@OEWisdom) June 10, 2015

Ne deah eall soþ asæd ne eall sar ætwiten. It does no good to tell all truths or blame all wrongs. #DurhamProverbs

— Old English Wisdom (@OEWisdom) June 13, 2015

It is run by the same person who runs the excellent A Clerk of Oxford blog.

Poem a Day XIII

The Lap-Donkey

True talent is not formed by force;
sheer will is not the path of grace.
A foolish man will rush the course
and end up flat upon his face.
An ass saw a lapdog favored well;
he his master wished to please.
"What is the secret of its spell,
that He will stroke and pet and tease?
This pup does nothing save to sit
and sing with yips as easy-pie;
so I will do the same as it
and get my favor by and by."
And so the clumsy donkey fool
jumped on his master's lap with haste
and brayed and sprayed with donkey drool;
it was not to his master's taste.
So hear the moral, heed its point,
for we all try to be all things
and bend good sense all out of joint,
like a donkey in your lap who sings.

Sui Juris Churches XX: The Chaldean Catholic Church

(on sui juris churches in general)

Liturgical Family: Chaldean

Primary Liturgical Language: Syriac (Christian Aramaic)

Juridical Status: Patriarchal

Approximate Population: Somewhere in the vicinity of 500,000. Due to the situation in Iraq, it is difficult to be more precise.

Brief History: Two major 'superpowers' were entangled in the early days of Christianity: the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire. The refusal of a large number of Persian Christians to accept the Council of Ephesus led to a slow splitting of Christians in the Persian Empire, from the those in the Roman Empire. The Persian Empire eventually became Muslim, and eventually the Ottoman Empire arose, but the Church of the East continued. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, it underwent a highly contentious internal argument. The problem arose in the fifteenth century, when the Catholicos of the Church of the East, Shemʿon IV Basidi, made the Catholicate hereditary: it was to be passed on from uncle to nephew. The dangers of this are obvious; it was difficult to guarantee that there would be any successor at all, and it subjected the position to all the problems of any ordinary blood sucession system. Mixing dynastic politics with ecclesiastical politics has never been a recipe for stability (as the history of the Church of the East has shown in spades). A sufficiently strong and popular Catholicos could certainly handle such problems, but the system was not particularly designed to guarantee strong and popular Catholicoi. Things came to a head in the reign of Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb, who managed to infuriate pretty much everybody; in 1552 the Church of the East underwent its most serious schism ever.

The rebel bishops elected Yohannan Sulaqa as their new Catholicos. There was a problem, however: while there were a lot of bishops in the rebellion, there were no metropolitan bishops. He could not be consecrated without one. Thus a fateful step was taken: Yohannan Sulaqa and a delegation approached Franciscan missionaries and asked for a letter of introduction to Pope Julius III. The Pope seems to have been rather startled at the hereditary succession of Catholicoi, and Sulaqa was willing to make a profession of faith. Thus in 1553 Sulaqa became Shimun VIII, and recognized by the Pope as patriarch of Mosul and Assyria, although he quickly came to be known as Patriarch of the Chaldeans (probably following the usage of the Council of Florence); all of his section of the Church of the East entered into communion with Rome. His reign was relatively short, however, because the Ottoman government tended not to like religious groups in the Ottoman Empire seeking Western backing. He was arrested in 1555 and apparently tortured and executed.

This line of the Chaldean Patriarchate lasted until 1600, when Shimun IX Dinkha decided to reintroduce the principle of hereditary succession again. This was absolutely unacceptable to Rome, and the Shimun line continued, no longer Catholic. It in fact became the patriarchal line of what is now known as the Assyrian Church of the East, and only ended in 1975. There were thus two Churches of the East at this point, the older one whose patriarchal line is usually called the Eliya line, and the one that had arisen from the schism of 1552, governed by the Shimun line of patriarchs.

However, in the seventeenth century the bishop of Amid, whose name was Yousip, entered into communion with Rome. Amid was in communion with the Eliya line, and the patriarch at that time was less than amused. He went personally to Amid and had Yousip imprisoned. Yousip was able to raise the money to pay a ransom and was freed; he fled to Rome, but he returned a few years later, and the Ottoman government eventually recognized him as independent. In 1681 Rome recognized him with the somewhat obscure title of 'Patriarch of the Chaldean Nation Deprived of Its Patriarch'. The resulting church was small and kept in line by the Ottoman government by the tried-and-true Islamic method of preventing religious groups from expanding: very heavy taxation.

In the 1770, Rome began corresponding with the Church of the East lines that were not in communion with it. The result was that Eliya XII Denkha, whose see was in Alqosh, made a Catholic profession of faith in 1771. Eliya XII Denkha, however, had created a problem that could not immediately be resolved. The Eliya line was hereditary, and his nephew Ishoʿyahb was originally designated his heir; however, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Eliya XII chose to switch heirs, and made his nephew Yohannan Hormizd successor. Both nephews had made a profession of Catholic faith. Ishoʿyahb became Eliya XIII, without initial opposition from Yohannan, but as soon as he was recognized by the Ottoman government, he broke communion with Rome. The bishops who still wanted to be Catholic gathered and elected another to be Patriarch; but he refused. So they fell back on Yohannan, who had been active in opposing his cousin. Thus Yohannan VIII Hormizd was elected Patriarch in 1780, and his supporters managed to get him recognition from the Ottoman government.

Rome faced a significant puzzle. It was absolutely opposed to hereditary succession, and recognizing Yohannan could be seen as condoning it. There was also the complication that there was already a Chaldean line in communion with Rome, and how the two would relate was an uncertain question. On the other hand, the attractions of another Chaldean line in communion with Rome were obvious and considerable. It seriously considered refusing recognition, but in the end Rome did what it usually does when faced with complicated political problems: it temporized. It recognized Yohannan as archbishop of Mosul and named him administrator for the Chaldean patriarchate. Thus not Patriarch, but not completely a non-Patriarch, either. Like much of Rome's temporizing, this would cause some serious headaches down the road, but it may also have given enough time for the Chaldean communion with Rome to be consolidated.

Problems began to arise between Yohannan Hormizd and Rome. In 1796, a group of Malabar Christians arrived asking for a bishop, something that they usually received from the Church of the East; Hormizd attempted to get the go-ahead from Rome, but could not get a reply since Rome was at that point under occupation by the French. So he went ahead and did it; word got back to Rome, and Rome demanded that he account for it. His explanation was accepted, and the possibility of naming him patriarch came up again, but opponents of Yohannan managed to raise questions about his orthodoxy, leading Rome to delay again. In the meantime, his cousin died, leaving Yohannan the sole heir of the Eliya line.

Over the next several years, Hormizd would end up opposing various projects on which Rome looked with favor, to such an extent that in 1812 Rome suspended him. Yohannan vehemently opposed the suspension, leading to constant struggle among Chaldean Catholics, which did not endear him any further in the eyes of Rome. However, Rome in the meantime continued to investigate, and in 1826, he was absolved he was absolved of any wrongdoing; Rome, however, wanted him to retire. The ever-active Yohannan was not the retiring kind, and he absolutely refused. However, he had managed to develop certain allies, and in 1830, Rome made him Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans. Yohannan was 74 years old.

There was, remember, another Chaldean line. Joseph IV Timotheus Lazar Hindi had been Patriarch of the Chaldean Nation Deprived of Its Patriarch beginning in 1757. He was worn down by it, and resigned in 1780, appointing his nephew, Augustine Hindi. Needless to say, Rome was less than pleased with this action, and Lazar Hindi decided to withdraw his resignation. He would eventually have to flee the Ottoman authorities because of tax debts -- remember, the Ottoman authorities were taxing the Amid Chaldeans very heavily. This was in the 1790s, and Rome decided to appoint Yohannan administrator of that line of Chaldeans, as well. Lazar Hindi vehemently objected, as did many of the Amid Chaldeans, so Rome rescinded the appointment, and Augustine Hindi in 1802 was appointed administrator for that Chaldean group, a few years after the death of Lazar Hindi. During Yohannan's suspension, Augustine Hindi was appointed apostolic delegate for the entire Patriarchate of Babylon of the Chaldeans. In 1804, Augustine Hindi began calling himself the Patriarch, and was widely recognized as Patriarch. This was never officially given, but it may well have been the case that Augustine thought it had. In any case, it had the effect of uniting the Chaldean lines in communion with Rome under a popular leader, which is what Rome clearly had been hoping for all along, and may be a reason why Rome never protested the action.

Augustine died in 1827, so when Rome finally (and by every indication reluctantly) named Hormizd Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, it was a united Chaldean church; Alqosh and Amid Chaldeans were both part of it, the Eliya and Josephite lines both terminated in it, and the only Chaldean branch outside was that schismatic Shimun line.

As Yohannan's death clearly approached, Rome took steps to make sure that the hereditary principle of succession would not rise again; in particular, it named on its own authority who would be Yohannan's successor: Nicholas Zayʿa. It ended up being an error; the Chaldean metropolitan bishops were irritated at not having even been consulted, and the only thing that prevented them from electing their own patriarch was that they could not come to agreement on who it should be. Zayʿa ended up being able to do very little effectively, and he resigned in 1846.

His successor, Joseph Audo, had been one of the most active opponents of both Hormizd and Zayʿa, and he would clash with Rome even more intensely at times than Hormizd had; he was, however, strong enough to put things in order in the Chaldean Catholic Church, and under his hand it flourished. Audo also attended the First Vatican Council, where he was one of the major figures in the party opposed to definition of papal infallibility, and, after the Council, he was the very last Eastern patriarch to accept it. All of his actions irritated Pius IX so much that Pius IX devoted an entire encyclical to criticizing him. But he would never actually push Rome to the furthest limit, and seems to have been respected by the Roman Curia, albeit sometimes grudgingly.

The twentieth century would bring stormy times for Chaldean Catholics. Significant parts of the Church were swept away in the aftermath of World War I in what has often been called the Assyrian Genocide. In 1933 many Chaldean Catholics would die in the Simele Massacre in Iraq, and persecutions continued to pop at various intervals. The American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, however, would end up being perhaps the greatest disaster for the church. Chaldean Catholics became visible and easy targets for Muslim extremist groups, and they have been more recently hunted down in the expansion of ISIS. Chaldean Christians had been the primary inhabitants of the Nineveh Plains around Mosul for literally over a millenium; many of them have been forced to flee for their lives and the lives of their families. Chaldean Catholics are a significant portion of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have had to flee Iraq in the past twelve years. And the clergy in Iraq face daily risks. Their bishops and priests have often been kidnapped for ransom or murdered. The Chaldean Catholic Church is in a state of extraordinary crisis. How things will turn out, no one can say.

Notable Monuments: Church of Mary Mother of Sorrows in Baghdad, Iraq.

Notable Saints: The Chaldean Catholic Church has a number of Persian saints on its calendar from the Church of the East calendar, such as St. Shim’un Bar Sabba’e, St. Qardagh, St. Sultan Mahdokt, St. Pithyon, and St. Jacob the Mutilated. In addition, there is a large crowd of martyrs, some of whom might at some point be beatified or canonized and placed on the general calendar.

Notable Religious Institutes: Antonian Order of Saint Ormizda of the Chaldeans; Congregation of the Chaldean Daughters of Mary Immaculate.

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Patriarchate of Babylon of the Chaldeans; nine archeparchies in Iraq (5), Iran (3), and Turkey (1); eleven eparchies around the world, including in Lebanon, Canada, the United States, and Oceania; and two patriarchal territories. (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church. As the Chaldean Catholic diaspora has been expanding at a prodigious rate, this is likely to become even more true of Chaldean Catholics in the future.)

Online Sources and Resources:

http://kaldu.org/

http://saint-adday.com/

http://www.cnewa.org/

Poem a Day XII

West Wind

The West Wind travels with speed,
calm and unhurried by need,
stirring pedestrian reed,
and yet itself is unmoved.

Christopher Lee (1922-2015)

Christopher Lee died last Sunday at the age of 93. He did extensive work for Royal Air Force Intelligence in World War II, helped track down Nazi war criminals at the end of the war, and then got into acting. It was a tough market, so he mostly only got bit parts until he broke through in Hammer horror films. He became most famous for playing Dracula, although he often did not like it. He was the first choice of Ian Fleming (to whom he was related) for playing Dr. No, but didn't get that part; he did, however, get to play a Bond villain in The Man with the Golden Gun. He was getting tired of only being offered horror roles, however, so he decamped for America in 1977.

He is most famous recently, of course, for playing Saruman. Apparently he was a Tolkien fan; he was the only person in the production of the Lord of the Rings movies to have ever met Tolkien personally, and he claimed that he read The Lord of the Rings every year. He had wanted to play Gandalf, but, alas, his age was a problem, and so he took the role of Saruman, which involved less action and horseback-riding. But he was often like that; he voiced King Haggard in the animated version of The Last Unicorn and apparently showed up on the first day with the book in hand, having underlined all the speaking parts of King Haggard that he was going to insist should make it into the movie.

He also had a reasonably successful heavy metal music career late in life. The following, I think, captures some of his best work in this regard:



Rhapsody of Fire, with Christopher Lee, "The Magic of the Wizard's Dream",

Angels are calling
From divine lost crystal realms,
Riding from heaven
For the magic of the wizard's dream.

Thursday Vice: Odium

The Latin word odium is usually translated as 'hatred', but there is no exact English word corresponding to what Aquinas means when he talks about the vice of odium (2-2.34). It could be called 'hatred', but it is not a matter simply of disliking someone. Odium is disposition arising from both envy and wrath, so understanding what it is requires taking into account the essential features of each. And envy and wrath are both terrible vices, because they both, in different ways, treat good as evil; so you know from that alone that their progeny will be a terrible thing.

Since both wrath and envy treat the good of another as bad, there has to be some notion under which they can do so -- it is not possible to treat something one recognizes as good, simply speaking, as if it were evil. The notion under which wrath (ira) views the good of another is as a provocation due to its inconvenience for oneself. Excessive anger, on its own, is a vice, but it is not the vice of wrath; wrath is a tendency to attack the good in others, or the good of others, as if the good itself were a provocation, because their good is difficult for you in some way. Our proper attitude when someone has something good, or does something good, or receives something good, should be gladness at the good. But sometimes another person's good is not easy for us to be glad about; perhaps it takes away the possibility of getting what we were hoping to get, or introduces new problems for us. When we fail to handle this kind of situation properly, we are in danger of developing the vice of wrath: it is drive for vindication not against evil but against good.

Envy (invidia) is even more insidious. It is the vice in which the good of another is seen as a bad thing because it is not yours. In almost authors who discuss it, it is almost universally considered among the worse possible vices one can have. Its actions are spiteful and destructive, and generally the destruction is mutual: envious people will even harm themselves if it would prevent someone else from getting good or enjoying it.

Both wrath and envy are capital vices (the acts of these vices we often call the seven deadly sins). Capital vices are not necessarily the worse sins, although envy and wrath are quite serious on their own. Gluttony, for instance, is a relatively minor vice just considered in itself. But what makes a vice a capital vice, a chief vice, is that it is rarely on its own. Vices that are not corrected breed other vices, and capital vices are vices that are in just the right places in our personalities to breed lots of other vices. Thus wrath and envy, although quite serious on their own, are capital vices because the actions they motivate lead to the development of many other vices. The vice of odium or hatred grows naturally out of both, but especially from envy, whose connection to hatred Aquinas is getting from things Gregory the Great says in the Moralia. Wrath disposes us to odium, but it can never directly spill over into it, because wrath is limited by its very nature: it is a drive for vindication, and thus by its nature has to limit itself to the notion of 'righting a wrong', where the wrong is, in this case, a good. Odium does not limit itself; it gets this from envy, of which it is the ultimate daughter vice. Envy tends toward the spiteful, the malicious, the petty, the destructive; odium is what you get when these things actually develop in full.

Odium is thus a terrible vice. It is not a capital vice, however, because it does not particularly tend to breed vices. The reason for this, however, emphasizes how terrible it is: odium doesn't breed other vices because it is an end-of-the-line vice, a vice you get when the monstrous vice of envy has already become especially monstrous.

It is important in all of this to remember that vices and sins are not the same. Sins are actions; vices are stable dispositions of character, when sins become second nature. The vice of odium is not particularly easy to develop; but you can engage in the sins of hatred associated with odium even without having the vice -- indulging such sins is one way to get the vice associated with them.

Every vice opposes some virtue in some way, because vices are corruptions of things of which virtues are excellences. The virtue odium opposes, according to Aquinas, is charity. Now, charity is an immensely powerful virtue capable of many different acts (of which the primary are love, joy, peace, and mercy). Odium is the vice opposed to charity insofar as it is exercised in its most proper act, namely, love, and therefore has the same structure as the love that proceeds from charity. Charity is expressed most directly in love of God and love neighbor, so odium is expressed in odium Dei and odium proximi -- as they are usually translated, hatred of God and hatred of neighbor.

Odium Dei is a somewhat tricky idea. God is Goodness Itself, and considered precisely as such cannot be hated. But God can be hated under certain ideas in which God can be presented as bad. Aquinas gives two examples: God as prohibitor of sins and God as inflicter of penalties (peccatorum prohibitor et poenarum inflictor). This is not a mere matter of disliking a prohibition or punishment; it carries over to the source of the prohibition and punishment. Odium Dei is the worst sin. All sins can be treated as being aversions to God as Goodness Itself; but odium Dei is the most pure form of this kind of aversion.

Odium proximi is likewise not just any kind of dislike of someone. It is very far from disliking someone because of their faults. It involves instead hatred of their nature and grace (natura et gratia), both of which are good in themselves. As Aquinas notes, goods that our neighbor has received from God cannot really and truly conflict with our own good, so we should love the good of another. Sins against other human beings can be judged either in terms of the disorder involved in the sinner or in terms of the harm against others involved in the act. Seen in this light, there are sins much worse than odium proximi in terms of harm caused -- murder, for instance -- because, while odium might result in external action, its action never has to be more than internal, and internal sins harm others least. However, the disorder involved in odium is so great that no other sin against our neighbor can be as bad -- no matter how harmful an action is, it can derive from odium. With regard to sins of neighbor, Aquinas says, odium proximi est ultimum in progressu peccati: hatred of neighbor is the furthest point in the development of sin.

Poem a Day XI

St. Barnabas

On Cyprus shores did Barnabas
set down his knee to pray.
Perhaps his mind in memory
went back to mother's touch;
her loving calling of his name,
'Joseph', through the still air.
Or perhaps of a newer name,
giving comfort and hope,
a son of the true Paraclete.
Perhaps it was of Paul,
perhaps of Sergius Paulus,
or of a life's circle,
ending where it had once begun.
But on Cyprus shores Barnabas
set down his knee to pray.

On Cyprus shores did Barnabas
beneath carob-tree kneel,
in his hand a script of good news
by publican written.
In Rome and Alexandria,
In Milan, in Cyprus,
in Antioch, Pamphylia,
in Lycaonia,
throughout all of Pisidia,
the word spoke with his voice.
All human words will fail and fade,
to silence someday fall;
one Word alone endures always
to bring comfort and hope.
Thus on Cyprus shores Barnabas
beneath carob-tree knelt.

On Cyprus shores did Barnabas
kneel down to pray and die.

The Moral Grandeur of Humility

We are finite, and the object of morality is infinite (the essence of being). We have, therefore, continually to strive hard to overcome our limitation by reaching out to the infinite. Now, this effort of a finite being to measure itself with the infinite, is extremely irksome; because it entails, as it were, a disruption of itself, breaking down in a certain way the limits within which created beings are inclosed. And since these limits are natural to it, the result is that it loves them, and is naturally loth to pass beyond them, from a feeling that by thus allowing itself to fall into, and be absorbed by, the infinite, its individuality would be lost, and in a manner annihilated. Hence the moral grandeur of the act of Christian HUMILITY, or the continual annihilation of oneself before the Infinite Being.

Bl. Antonio Rosmini, Theodicy, Volume 2, p. 216. I'm not completely certain, but I suspect a bit of Bérulle in the background, directly or indirectly; Oratorian spirituality placed a heavy emphasis on the importance of anéantissement or annihilatio before God; if so, Malebranche is possibly the channel for it, since Malebranche, of course, is an Oratorian, and Rosmini is quite familiar with his work.

Rosmini also goes on to make an interesting connection to Indian philosophy, quoting the Manava-dharma-sastra (Laws of Manu), saying that it tries to ontologize this basic moral idea; while he thinks, of course, that this is an error, he says that it is also "a truth in disguise".

Poem a Day X

Lovers of the Sunset

They who love the sunset are all lovers true and right;
the only gold they treasure is the gold of dying light
as the sun dips down its head like a bull for sacrifice.
Yea, who can love more purely than who loves the light that dies?

The children of the sunrise burst with splendor in the dawn;
they have no fear or trembling when the battle-lines are drawn.
But the lovers of the sunset fight with all, for never-again.
Yea, who can fight more truly than who fights for glory slain?

The brothers of the noon will always make their joyful vows,
the mothers of the midnight in their shadows dream and drowse,
but the lovers of the sunset dance on sure and splendid feet.
Yea, who can dance more truly than who knows the light is sweet?

The Analects, Books VII-X

Book VII

Book VII continues with the method of profiles, but focuses more on Confucius himself. As always, the profile is built up by several different means, rather than only one. In this way we get a rounded view of the kind of teacher he was.

(1) What Master Kong did. At several points we get merely a brief statement of how Master Kong organized his life. He was relaxed during his leisure time (7.4); restrained in eating when around mourners (7.9); careful not to mix mourning and singing (7.10). He took care in matters involving fasting, war, and illness (7.13). He used the standard pronunciation rather than his own dialect in ritual and related contexts (7.18). He did not talk about "prodigies, force, disorders, or spirits" (7.21), but he took as the subjects of his teaching "culture, conduct, loyalty, and good faith" (7.25). He expressed his approach even in matters like fishing and archery (7.27) or singing (7.32). In all things he acted moderately (7.38).

(2) What Master Kong said of himself. He characterizes his approach as one of admiration of antiquity (7.1; 7.20). This is an attitude of perpetual discovery and teaching, and thus not one that can grow dull (7.2; 7.22; cp. 7.28); it is also an attitude of perpetual self-improvement (7.3). He will teach anyone, however poor (7.7; cp. 7.24, 7.29) and for himself, money is not itself especially important (7.12; 7.16). He expects his students, however, to use what he says as a starting-point for their own thought rather than simply stopping at his own words (7.8). He himself does not pretend to have reached the goal he seeks (7.17; 7.33; 7.34).

In addition, we get general comments that perhaps can be taken as reflecting on him as a teacher, perhaps as clarifying his goals (7.6; 7.26; 7.30; 7.37).

My favorite part of this book, though, is the story of the Minister of Crime of Chen (7.31). Asked by the Minister whether the Duke of Zhao understood appropriate action or rites (li), he affirms that he does, but later, talking to one of his students, remarks in his usual way about an obvious violation of the rites by the Duke of Zhao in the matter of marriage, saying that if he understood the rites, everyone does. However, word gets back, and Confucius wryly remarks, "I am fortunate. If I have faults, other people are certain to be aware of them."

Book VIII

Much of Book VIII seems to be concerned with the high standards of public service. It takes an appropriate balance and moderation (8.2, 8.10, 8.16), requires eliminating arrogance from oneself (8.11), and a focus on the Way (8.13). If we do not fill a given office, it is not our task to plan what it should do (8.14). The ancients provide proper role models in this task (8.1, 8.18, 8.19, 8.20, 8.21).

Book IX

We return to the profile of Confucius.

(1) What Master Kong did. He rarely spoke of profit, fate, or ren (9.1). He avoided presumption, over-certainty, inflexibility, and arrogance (9.4). He always showed respect to those in mourning, those engaging in proper ceremony, and the blind (9.10).

(2) What Master Kong said of himself. He fulfilled his ritual obligations by regard for the spirit of the rite (9.3). He is not one of the genuinely noble because his circumstances have not given him focus (9.6) and his many accomplishments are the result of not having been tried in office (9.7). He has, essentially, failed in his work (9.9). The reason for this seems to be expressed in the tale of the jade box (9.13): you should put your talents to work, but one can only wait for the appropriate opportunity to do so. One continues the work anyway, because that is what is in one's power (cp. 9.19), but sometimes, as with the early death of Confucius's best student, Hui, things simply intervene before you can complete it (9.21). He does not have true understanding, but if a question is raised, he does whatever he can to think it through (9.8).

A particularly interesting passage (9.24) perhaps perfectly sums up the scholar's path as presented in The Analects. It is not enough to concur with exemplary sayings, which anyone can do; one must use them in self-improvement. It is not enough to be pleased with benefits, which anyone can do; one must ask what they are being given for. This is essential to being someone who can genuinely learn.

Book X

Book X has a greater obvious coherence than most of the other sections of the work. Itfocuses heavily on acting in accordance with the rites. We get a detailed description of how Confucius approached various ritual situations (10.1-10.4), then an extended description of the noble man's approach to rites in general (10.5-10.6), before returning to smaller comments on how Confucius approached various ritual situations (10.7-10.19). (The final sayings in the book, 10.20-10.21, are garbled and nobody knows exactly what the original was supposed to say.)

There are several notable points. Master Kong was more concerned for people than for horses, despite the expense of the latter (10.11; cp. 10.16), and he was careful to act appropriately toward a ruler (10.12-10.14). When participating in temple rites, he asked questions so that he might understand everything (10.15).

to be continued

Grace Purifies Sin

Today is the Feast of St. Ephrem the Syrian, Doctor of the Church. I thought that the following was a remarkable passage (from his Hymns on Virginity, no. 46), worth some serious reflection:

Liberty persuaded Adam to scorn his honor
when he wished to become god while he was a creature.
Grace purifies sin.
God came, made himself man to save humanity from perdition.
Behold the Son who purified the sin of the servant
and made him divine as he desired.

[Quoted in Seely Joseph Beggiani, Early Syriac Theology, Revised Edition, CUA Press (Washington, DC: 2014) 77-78.]

Poem a Day IX

Joy

No moment blessed by joy can ever wholly die,
for joy is of love, and love does not cry
except tears of joy; it is sun against night,
and flows across heaven, splendid in flight,
with flurry of glory and grace in its rush.
As dawn with its warmth resounds in the hush,
as brightness with brilliance falls like the rain,
the world is made new, and fertile with grain:
so, too, in joy's spring do not expect snow,
nor fury of tempest in storms that will blow,
but newness, and greenness, a verdure of youth,
that stands, as unconquered as unending truth.

Sui Juris Churches XIX: The Syriac Catholic Church

(on sui juris churches in general)

Liturgical Family: Antiochene

Primary Liturgical Language: Syriac (Christian Aramaic)

Juridical Status: Patriarchal

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

Brief History: A broadly pro-Rome party had existed in the Syrian Orthodox Church since the Crusades; in the seventeenth century a significant number began entering communion with Rome, in part due to the influence of Jesuit and Carmelite missionaries and in part due to the influence of the Maronites. In 1656 they decided to elect their own Patriarch, Andrew Akijan. Akijan himself, interestingly, seems to have been somewhat ambivalent about his election, and worried about whether the rites used by the Syrian Orthodox were acceptable; he was also bothered by the fact that he only had the faculties for the Maronite rite. He also seems to have been bothered by the sheer amount of opposition he faced. Rome supplied the authority to use a rite different from that of the Maronites, but it could not resolve the opposition. Akijan fled to Lebanon and was only reluctantly persuaded to return. However, his doing so led to a slow increase in the number of bishops and priests received into communion with Rome.

On its own this might not have done much, but in 1662, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate fell vacant, and the Synod elected Akijan as Patriarch in Aleppo. Even the Ottoman government, always wary of Western influence among churches in its territory, recognized him as such. Ironically, Rome had already opposed any such maneuver and was slower to give its own recognition; it only did so because the things was already accomplished and there was little to be done about it. Likewise, the anti-union party could do very little about the matter; Akijan was backed by both the Ottomans and the French, so active opposition, while it occasionally occurred, was politically perilous.

Akijan died, however, in 1677, and after his death Abdul Masih was elected, in part with support of the pro-Catholic party. However, Abdul Masih broke communion with Rome immediately, and thus the pro-Catholic party elected Gregory Peter Shahbaddin, his nephew. The Ottomans played each side against the other as it suited them politically; Shahbaddin was deposed and then re-installed several times. A few months after he was recognized for the fifth time by the Turks, Shahbaddin and quite a few others in the Catholic party were arrested, beaten, and imprisoned. Shahbaddin died in prison in 1702; the exact circumstances are not clear, but it is commonly thought that he was poisoned. The bishops elected a new Patriarch, who was confirmed by Rome, but he refused the title. The church continued, but without a Patriarch until the 1780s.

In 1781, several bishops of the pro-Catholic party got together to elect a Patriarch, and they chose Michael Jarweh. Jarweh was closely tied with the Melkites, and had attempted to convince both of his predecessors to unite with Rome. This had resulted in an imprisonment and then a series of flights to escape his opponents. Rome eventually confirmed this in 1783, and the Syriac Catholic Church again had a Patriarch. This did not go well in Aleppo, though, and Jarweh had to flee to Lebanon, where, helped by Maronites, he eventually located his See at the monastery of Al-Sharfah.

Times would not be easy. The French government had done an extraordinary amount to alleviate the persecution of Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, but this all came to an end with the French Revolution, and persecution picked up again in a massive way. In the 1830s, however, Ottoman government found itself in a weak position, and the French began pressing the cause of Catholics again. Rome was able to negotiate the official recognition of the Armenian Catholics. The advantages were mutual: official recognition would alleviate the persecution, and it would also mean that Catholics in Ottoman territory would no longer be attending Latin churches, a constant worry for the Ottomans, who constantly attempted to reduce foreign influence on those residing in their territory. Other Catholics pressed for similar recognition, and the Syriac Catholic Church received it in 1843. This made it possible for the Patriarchal See to shift to Mardin.

The church began to grow and expand. But dark days were around the corner. After World War I, the Turks began a massive persecution of Christians through their territory. The most brutal of these persecutions is what is usually known as the Armenian Genocide, but the Armenians were not the only group to be targeted; Christians of all kinds were attacked, and while the Syriac Catholic Church did not undergo quite the decimation that the Armenian Catholic Church did, it was a brutal time. The Patriarchal See was moved to Beirut. It has since been slowly growing.

Notable Saints: There are a number of victims of the Assyrian Genocide, like Blessed Flavianus Michael Malki, who have a good chance of being raised to the universal calendar.

Notable Monuments: The Cathedral of Our Lady of Annunciation in Beirut; the Monastery of Al-Sharfeh (or Al-Charfet); the church of Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome.

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Patriarchal See in Beirut; two metropolitan archeparchies in Syria; four archeparchies in Syria and Iraq; three eparchies in Lebanon, Egypt, and North America; an apostolic exarchate in Venezuela; three patriarchal exarchates and a patriarchal territory. (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.cnewa.org/

http://www.syriaccatholicchurch.com/

http://syr-cath.org/

Poem a Day VIII

Lunacy

The moon is maddening with its light --
O moon, I beg you, madden me! --
and casting shadows through the night

upon the cresting sands of shore,
now battered by the rumbling roar
of night, that tumbles like the sea.

In shadows, dark as depth of cave,
I'll dwell as though at hearth and home,
and dip my fingers in the foam
which moonlight sends upon the wave!

Fortnightly Book, June 7

After Eco, I want something a little less involved and faster-paced, so I am going with something by Gaston Leroux. Leroux's two most famous works are The Mystery of the Yellow Room, the most famous locked-room mystery novel of all time, and The Phantom of the Opera. The second will be the next fortnightly book.

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra was originally serialized in 1909 and 1910; it is based on both the history and legend of the actual Paris Opera House, although, of course, with plenty of literary license thrown in. Its popularity was quite extensive, but it became world famous with the 1925 production of the silent movie, The Phantom of the Opera. Multiple other adaptations followed, of varying quality. In 1986, of course, we got the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

Looking around, it looks like there were two classic radio adaptations, from Lux Radio Theater and CBS Mystery Theater, so I might compare them if I have the time.

Poem a Day VII

Cold and Empty Rooms

I walked through cold and empty rooms.
The dust was in the air, and sunlight chill
at times would pierce with ray the stuffy gloom
and slide across the floor to touch the wall,
as all the little flecks like drunkards wheeled,
like dancing debutantes at silent ball.

My footsteps echoed, muffled, in the calm;
I walked through cold and empty rooms.
I felt like ancient monk in fast and alm
preparing prayer in the vesper gloam
each breath writ in the air like chanted neume
that rises from the pilgrim seeking home.

Through endless rooms I wandered, dreading doom,
as cold took up my breath like sudden smoke.
I walked through cold and empty rooms,
through endless doors, as though some heavy yoke
were on my shoulders, as though disaster loomed.
To give my heart some strength I softly spoke.

"See how these quiet rooms, this endless maze,
with boundless silence waits in tranquil sloom
and does not count the years, or months, or days,
as if I could for lifetimes through it roam."
I walked through cold and empty rooms;
they did not hear, nor care for what I'd say.

As cemetery sounds seem fraught with sense,
as heavy seems the air once stained with crime,
I felt a weight invisible, immense:
The footfall soft seemed like some drum of doom,
the ruthless, steady metronome of time:
I walked through cold and empty rooms.