By the intercession of the dead monk skulls.

When I was on a Foreign Study Program in Greece in 2002 we went to Meteora, one of the coolest monasteries ever. We wore long skirts so as not to offend the Greek Orthodox monks. They have a room filled with dead monk skulls. It seemed strange at the time, but maybe not as weird as the tiny petrified body of a little boy that's on display at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Washington DC. What's the deal with the dead people (or pieces of dead people!) on display for public veneration? What's the deal with relics?

Assuming there's an afterlife (which we do), then what happens when I die? I leave my body behind, right? I don't need it anymore, right? Well... sort of. But it's still my body even though it's going to rot away. And I will still need it. But don't worry, it will be restored in a miraculous way during the resurrection of the dead. No biggie. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and restored him to earthly life even after Martha said, although not in these words, "ummmm... he's been dead for four days. Are you sure you wanna go in there? It's gonna be super stinky." My body is me. It's not just a possession that I own, like my old t-shirt that can be thrown away if I die. Angels may be pure spirit but humans are spirit and body so if I'm going to have a human life after death (instead of one of those creepy ghost lives like in Hades/Sheol) then, at some point, I need my body back! When Jesus was resurrected he let the Apostles poke at him and eat with him so they could make sure he was a living person and not a ghost. A living human being has a body.

So at the end of the world my rotten body, or my cremated body, or my disintegrated body, or my fill-in-the-blank body will be restored and become my 'glorified' body. What happens in the meantime? It's still my body even though it's no longer animated because it's separated from my soul. Sure, in some sense it doesn't matter what happens to it because it'll get patched up later. But it should be respected because it's still part of me.

And--brace yourselves!--my body is a holy object. (Although certainly not as holy as it should be.) When a person is Baptized, he or she becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, meaning that God comes to live within him or her. Fr. Dale says that when he's celebrating a funeral, he bows to the body while incensing it. Not because he's worshiping the body but because God is still at home in that body. Grace is God's life within us, i.e. the presence of God. A special grace is attached to any object, like a rosary, that has been blessed. When the blessed object is no longer usable it gets either burned or buried so that it won't be defiled. The same thing is done with bodies.

The more we're freed from sin the more 'space' there is for God to live within us (cause God doesn't fraternize with sin). So a holy person, or a holy person's body, will be more strongly steeped in God's grace--hence, the seemingly superstitious practice of venerating relics. The relic is venerated; God, present within the relic, is worshiped. Idol worship? No! Neither the relic nor the person it came from is being worshiped. As usual, God is being worshiped. No surprise there.

What about praying to St. Anthony, for example, in the presence of his relic? Praying in the presence of his relic reminds me that he is still alive and that the spirit world is closer than I realize. And, because his body is still his, I'm in the same room with him and we're praying together! Just like praying in the same room with my friend Jeremy is different from texting to ask him to pray for me. But again, the most important thing about a relic is the presence of God. And if I know this person is a Saint then I know that he is full of grace, because that's one of the conditions of being in Heaven.

A first order relic is an actual piece of the body of a Saint. Lots of churches have sarcophagi to display the bodies of Saints, and sometimes small pieces of tissue are removed to make relics for other churches, like the piece of petrified flesh at the Shrine of St. Anthony in Ellicott City. Sometimes the bones of a Saint are dug up to make relics--there's a tradition of embedding the relic of a Saint in every altar. But just like every other fun thing, sometimes people go overboard. After Catherine of Siena died her body was kept in Rome until her head was smuggled out by some people of Siena. They felt sure that she would rather be kept at home but doubted that they could smuggle the entire body.

A second order relic is something that was owned by the Saint, usually a piece of clothing. The presence of God within the Saint sanctifies his or her clothing and possessions so that they carry a special grace, just like the blessed rosary. Remember that Luke 8:40-48 tells of a woman who is instantly healed after touching the cloak of Jesus. Her faith was strong enough that just touching his garment was enough.

A third order, or higher, relic is a piece of cloth that was touched to a second or third order relic and now retains some extra grace. These minor relics can be bought and sold. In the YouTube video Blessing of Cloth for St. Anthony Relics, Fr. Richard Jacob touches a large cloth to the reliquary of the major relic of St. Anthony, his petrified flesh, in Ellicott City.

But just remember, it's all fun and games until someone desecrates a body!

Our Father is younger than we.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

 --GK Chesterton

George Takei did it wrong.

Please! if you're going to bother making a written argument (or written inflammatory statements?) then 1.) think and 2.) proofread.

We all think that some of the George Takei Facebook posts are funny. I personally found this one very amusing to the point of LOLing. But if he, or whoever made this, is trying to show support for gay marriage then perhaps he needs an editor.

I admit the original quote is witty. But then the "graphic designer", through conscious or subconscious sabotage, added a seemingly innocent set of quotation marks and became my inspiration for all future posts. I agree with George. Rather than using the misnomer, gay marriage, as if it's an actual type of marriage, I will from now on refer to it as "marriage" to make it clear that I'm not referring to sacramental marriage. Thanks George!

I can't blame the second post on George but the logic is obviously flawed. First of all, clearly this post is not meant to provide a well-reasoned statement.  I think a more likely motive is to make all religious people seem irrational and of the opinion that everyone in the world, regardless of their personal beliefs, should be required to follow the teachings of fill-in-the-blank religion. Maybe the implication is that such people claim all sin should be illegal, in which case we should all get ready for our incarceration! But we could make equally reasonable FB flair that says: CLAIMING THAT SOMEONE ELSE MISSING MASS ON A HOLY DAY OF OBLIGATION IS AGAINST YOUR RELIGION IS LIKE BEING ANGRY AT SOMEONE FOR EATING A DONUT BECAUSE YOU'RE ON A DIET. Hahaha, that one's funny too!!! We could teach the catechism this way!

But even if my thinking were muddled enough to mistakenly claim that someone else's marriage is against my religion, a simple statement does not imply anger. Unless we're talking about a specific angry person, then claiming that someone else's marriage is against your religion is not like being angry at someone for eating a doughnut because you're on a diet. If I, a Catholic, say that gay marriage (oops, I mean "marriage") is against Islam is that a display of anger? Probably not. So a more logical statement would be CLAIMING THAT SOMEONE ELSE'S MARRIAGE IS AGAINST YOUR RELIGION IS LIKE CLAIMING THAT DOUGHNUTS ARE AGAINST THE ATKIN'S DIET.

Sadly, we seem to have forgotten that it's possible to disagree without anger or hatred.

And I'm not an expert theologian, but I don't know about marriage and civil ceremonies being against any religion. The post is mistakenly equating marriage with homosexual sex. So if we correct that mistake we're left with:

CLAIMING THAT HOMOSEXUAL SEX IS AGAINST YOUR RELIGION IS LIKE CLAIMING THAT DOUGHNUTS ARE AGAINST THE ATKIN'S DIET.

But wait wait wait.... I know we've all heard the cliche "that's against my religion!" but it makes no sense in this situation. Communism is against my religion, if I'm living under a Communist regime and can't lawfully practice my religion. But is being a sinner against my religion? You see.... at least in my Church, we have this thing called Confession through which you can receive something called absolution. But this sacrament is only available to sinners... so I'm gonna say no. So in order to make any sense of this thing we have to change it to:

CLAIMING THAT YOUR RELIGION TEACHES THAT HOMOSEXUAL SEX IS A SIN IS LIKE CLAIMING THAT THE ATKIN'S DIET DOES NOT ALLOW EATING DOUGHNUTS.

Well yes. I can certainly agree with that.

I think we should try to remember that noting the existence of religious bigotry and homophobia is not an argument supporting gay marriage, just like being grossed out by gay sex is not an argument against it. It says nothing about the actual issue, which is the fundamental question, "what is marriage?" and "how should it be legislated?" 

Must we continue to dehumanize each other by insisting that every person opposed to gay marriage is a homophobe? I'm not saying that homophobes don't exist. But I do believe that it's possible to disagree with a person without being afraid of their view. Let's say my husband wants to paint our house blue but I think that all houses should be painted white and I feel that our Home Owner's Association should uphold their rule that all houses in the community will be painted white. Does that make me a chromophobe?

So, for the sake of my own sanity, I'm going to help these people out a little bit. The following are some actual arguments. I don't agree with them, but at least they address the actual issue of marriage legislation and the definition of marriage. Of course they should still be backed up with thinking and proofreading.

1.) Romantic love, sexual attraction, and economic interdependence are each, on their own, sufficient conditions for marriage.

2.) Morals are relative so any legislation must be based on something else.

So George, here are Calvin and Hobbes doing it right:

Aurora: A New Witness to God

(Aurora Borealis, Frederic Edwin Church, 1865 at Smithsonian Art)

First saw the Northern Lights. My eye was caught by beams of light and dark very like the crown of horny rays the sun makes behind a cloud. At first I thought of silvery cloud until I saw that these were more luminous and did not dim the clearness of the stars in the Bear. They rose slightly radiating thrown out from the earthline. Then I saw soft pulses of light one after another rise and pass upwards arched in shape but waveringly and with the arch broken. They seemed to float, not following the warp of the sphere as falling stars look to do but free though concentrical with it. This busy working of nature wholly independent of the earth and seeming to go on in a strain of time not reckoned by our reckoning of days and years but simpler and as if correcting the preoccupation of the world by being preoccupied with and appealing to and dated to the day of judgment was like a new witness to God and filled me with delightful fear.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins, Journal Excerpt September 24, 1870

Convo with my sexually active Imaginary Friend.

On Friday a couple of real life friends and I went to the Rally for Religious Liberty in Baltimore. (Let's all take this moment to laugh about Eddie Izzard's plan for a Reason Rally. "HAHAHAHAHA!!! That's right, you sheep!! Only a STUPID IDIOT could believe in God. Baaaaaaaa!!!" Atheists are so funny.) It got me thinking--without the use of reason, of course, because I threw that out with my conversion--about the HHS mandate and why I think it's such a bad thing. The following is the conversation I had with my sexually active Imaginary Friend (IF) who so generously offered her undivided attention.

IF: so after reading your last post it seems like you think that everything you and your church think is a sin should be illegal, right?

Me: no, no, no, that's not what I meant at all! I don't think sodomy or oral sex or masturbation or anything like that should be illegal. If every sin were against the law, sooner or later we'd all be in jail.

IF: then why are you so upset about the HHS mandate? You don't think the use of contraceptives should be illegal?

Me: no! even Pope John Paul 2 acknowledged that some women have medical reasons to take what we refer to as the birth control pill for hormone therapy. There is nothing wrong with using a drug for serious medical reasons. And although the Church says that using condoms or undergoing voluntary non-medical sterilization is wrong, nobody is trying to make these things illegal. The Pope might not think you should be having sex in the first place, but nobody thinks you should be thrown in jail for it.

Me: things get more complicated when we talk about using the birth control pill for contraceptive reasons because studies show that it can work as an abortifacient, which means conception may have taken place but the egg was then flushed from the woman's system, making birth control pills similar to the morning after pill. If you believe that life starts at conception then you see this as an abortion and the killing of a baby. But regardless of when you think life begins, it's clear that terminating a pregnancy even at the earliest moment quenches the potential life that began to exist at the moment of conception.

Me: But the point is that nobody should be forced to help another person do something immoral.

IF: but, what if we think you're being dumb in saying that women shouldn't use contraceptives? Why should we have to go along with it?

Me: well, what if? What if I think it's dumb that Judaism doesn't allow people to eat pork products. What if the government were to mandate that all cafeterias must sell pork? And refuse to make an exception for Jewish organizations that employ non-Jews or even serve non-Jews?

IF: but the Obama administration made an accommodation!

Me: the accommodation allowed the organizations to fund the unconscionable services indirectly rather than directly by forcing insurance companies to pay for the service. That's still unconscionable. What if we told our Jewish friends from the above example that they would have to provide pork in their cafeteria but they could contract out to a non-Jewish company? That's more insulting than it is a reasonable solution.

IF: but what about all the non-Catholics working for Catholic organizations?

Me: as one of my friends said, "would you accept a job with PETA and expect them to hand out free hamburgers?"

IF: but come on, we're not talking about pork and hamburgers here. We're talking about women's health. That's more serious.

Me: It is a matter of women's health! Birth control pills are actually dangerous to a woman's health, from side effects that I've experienced firsthand including rampant UTIs and deterioration of vision and increased blood pressure to more serious effects including blood clots and cancer, not to mention the fact that many women have a hard time regaining fertility after long term use. But that's beside the point.

Me: as a woman there are many things that are more important to me than being able to have consequenceless sex. Like being able to see! For example, the government could choose to mandate that I have access to free contact lenses. That would be awesome. And nobody thinks wearing contact lenses is immoral. If we can't cover everything, why insist on covering something that some people feel is immoral?

IF: yeah, but you don't need contact lenses. You could just wear your glasses. Women need contraceptives.

Me: I can see better with my contacts than with my glasses! And besides, women can use Natural Family Planning which, admittedly, requires some level of self control but has been shown to be as effective as the pill--and has no side effects!!

IF: but Obama says that the money women spend on contraceptives is money that could be spent on groceries or rent.

Me: So Obama feels that poor women are so addicted to sex that they would rather be evicted or stop eating than abstain from sexual relations? I find that offensive. And is it really that hard to find cheap or free contraceptives without this mandate? Surely it's not only in academia where we're having free condoms thrown at us from every direction? I was under the impression that women can get free birth control and morning after pills from clinics like Obama's beloved Planned Parenthood.

IF: I don't see why you're making such a big deal out of this. It's hardly going to effect anybody.

Me: It's a huge deal! As soon as the government forces one group, not matter how small, to do something that they believe is morally wrong then we can never use that argument against unjust laws. At the Rally for Religious Liberty, Ambassador Alan Keyes gave the example of pre-Civil War laws requiring anyone who has knowledge of the whereabouts of an escaped slave to take action to return that slave to his or her owner. People disobeyed that law for the same reason that many organizations will disobey the mandate, because following it violated their consciences. It's not just a Catholic problem. Many Protestant Pastors and Rabbis participated in the rallies. This is the sort of precedent that should make even a secular atheist nervous. And that is why the case of HHS vs. Florida will be heard by the Supreme Court this week.

IF: Well. My birth control pills are more important to me than your conscience.

Me: Sigh. You and Obama have made that abundantly clear.

Do words have meaning?

The gloating of liberal Marylanders over Governor O'Malley's epic cave to political pressure regarding gay marriage has forced me to turn the brain back on for some thinking.

A while back I watched a documentary called For the Bible Tells Me So, which questioned whether or not the Bible says anything about committed homosexual relationships. The conclusion was either no or probably not. However, I've since graduated from amateur documentary-level theology to the "I would believe anything this man ever said even though I don't have to" theology of Blessed John Paul II. His seductively beautiful Theology of the Body paints the picture of the human family with father, mother and child as the image of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit. Essentially, the love between the Father and the Son and between the father and the mother is so intense that it is procreative and personified by the Spirit and the child respectively.

Thus Christian theology insists that the link between human sexuality and fertility should not be severed as it has been by the use of birth control and by homosexual relationships. From the image of the Trinity comes the definition of the Sacrament of Marriage. So it should be obvious why a Catholic would say that the proposed gay marriage is a radical redefinition of marriage in that it no longer has anything to do with procreation. I know! Such intolerant bigotry to insist that words have meaning. By the way, when I use the term Catholic here, I mean someone who believes what the Church teaches, rather than those who claim to be devout Catholics and yet apparently don't believe the moral and theological teachings.

Now I know that the push for gay marriage comes from a place of love. But rather than providing a means of acknowledging a loving relationship between adults, which by itself doesn't constitute marriage, the goal of gay marriage is to legitimize gay relationships. Often when women feel that we are being denied the respect we deserve in a male-dominated environment, we strive to be one of the guys. But we soon face the consequences of jamming ourselves into a male mold rather than insisting our femininity be recognized and respected. Today, it seems we feel that jamming gay people into the straight person mold will somehow make homosexuality more palatable. On the one hand, same sex couples are being told to embrace their homosexuality, while on the other hand they are being told that they need to be more like heterosexual couples in order for their union to be acceptable. Unfortunately, there will be sad consequences because such an approach does not respect the dignity of same sex attracted persons and further degrades the integrity of the family. As someone who was raised by my mother and grandmother, I can tell you that two moms will never make a dad.

If marriage is to be founded solely on feelings of love between two individuals and, in particular, on sexual love, then limiting the redefinition of marriage to gays is a great hypocrisy. If gay marriage is okay then why not polygamy? And why can't I marry my brother like the monarchs used to? When incest exists between two consenting adults should it be contractualized through marriage? I cannot think of a reason for supporting gay marriage that would not also apply to a happy, incestuous couple. And, based on the current logic, if anyone thinks that brother and sister shouldn't be married then he or she is apparently an intolerant bigot, because it's their civil right! Might Cardinal O'Brien be right in saying that we experience "intolerance behind the mask of tolerance"?

The redefinition of marriage strips the word of any definitive meaning. Maybe we feel that it's okay to redefine marriage because we no longer feel that heterosexual marriage has meaning. Maybe we feel that it's just an optional civil contract between two cohabiting adults. In which case, shouldn't we reclaim the true definition of marriage rather than continue the process of rendering it meaningless?

Saturday with MC Sisters, Jeremy and FrC.

Last Saturday I went to the Missionaries of Charity (MC) house in Baltimore (they're the Mother Teresa nuns*) to meet my friend Jeremy before heading to the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen (CMOQ). Jeremy suggested I come to the MC morning mass and help make breakfast, so I got up at 4:30 to make it in time for the 6:30 mass. The building is in a not-so-good part of town but I figured any murderers would be sleeping in on Saturday like everybody else.

Probably because of their vow of poverty, the chapel is decorated more like a dorm room than a typical chapel, with sparkly curtains and clip-outs. There were a few old pews and some chairs for guests and the Sisters kneel on the floor. I was last in the Communion line and got to make an awkward scene when the priest ran out of communion wafers and we all waited while he got another from the tabernacle. This was the first time I took communion directly on my tongue. Usually I take it in my hand. I opened my mouth like I do at the doctor's office, hoping I didn't have bad breath or any spittle in there, and waited while one of the Sisters held some mirrored plate thingy under my chin. This is a safeguard to catch Jesus in case the priest and I somehow manage to flip the consecrated host out of my mouth, which is not outside of the realm of possibility with me. But fortunately it landed on my tongue and stayed there.

It turns out that two girls regularly volunteer to make breakfast on Saturdays so I was out of a job. Instead I chatted with some of the guys who live there. The sisters board and care for sick, poor people with nowhere else to go. One of the guys was telling me about the bedridden African American resident named Barry White and he got a kick out of the fact that, "I have a friend who's a white girl and her name is Carrie Black!" Later I got put to work sweeping and mopping floors. Before we left, the head Sister gave me some awesome Mother Teresa prayer cards.

After driving in circles and spending 20 minutes for what should have been a 5 minute trip to buy the nuns some ginger, we spent a couple of hours at a sandwich shop talking about catholicky things and probably drawing all kinds of attention. I especially wondered what that guy must be thinking who interrupted our conversation to get some napkins. Knowing my conversations with Jeremy it was probably about the Holy Spirit and/or demons.

Eventually we made it to CMOQ which is an amazingly beautiful cathedral with statues of various saints. We knelt in front of St. John Vianney and prayed for about an hour, asking him to pray for various intentions for the church and priests. We asked so much of poor John Vianney that we decided we should perform a penance and both thought that giving up coffee might be good. This is something that I needed to give up anyway. I'll be giving about a zillion presentations within the next two months and misguided people are always trying to help by finding me a laser pointer, which makes it impossible to hide the nervous trembling. I don't need to go supplementing that with coffee jitters! Jeremy suggested no-coffee Tuesdays and Fridays, the days that people traditionally meditate on the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary, but I figured I should be able to live without coffee. We'll see how that works next time I have to sit through an hour-long seminar talk.

On the way in to CMOQ, I had rashly proclaimed that there must be a pelican icon somewhere in this church and felt very smug when Jeremy found it. This is a popular image in Christian art based on a legend that the mother pelican will pierce her chest with her beak to feed her babies blood during times of famine. Halfway through our time there, someone came in for organ practice so our prayers were drowned out by ridiculously loud, repetitious organ music to the point that Jeremy said "how can he practice for so long?" and we decided it was our cue to leave.

After CMOQ, I called FrC. Amazingly he had a couple of hours available which is unheard of so, since he's one of my favorite people in the world, I stopped by to visit. We decided this was a good time to enroll me in the Brown Scapular Confraternity, but first I waited in the church while FrC ran off to get a jacket because he was convinced I was too cold. He came out with a huge black leather jacket that fit me pretty much how one of my jackets would fit a baby. My hands were completely lost in the sleeves. I hope the Virgin Mary liked my new look! Then FrC made what could have been a five minute formality into a half hour beautiful and prayerful ceremony which almost made me cry several times. When we were done he hugged me and said he's so proud of me so, of course, as soon as I left I totally cried in the privacy of my own car. Sigh, so much for my stoic exterior!

*Note: Consecrated women who are not fully-cloistered monastics are referred to as Religious Sisters rather than nuns, but most people are more familiar with the term nun.