Hymnals, Pt. 3: "Thee We Adore"

What with all the whining in that last post, you might very well walk away with the idea that old Fr. Anonymous is one of those clerics with a constitutional objection to novelty, of the sort who in Victorian times encouraged their parish children to chant "If it's new, it isn't true."

On the contrary, your humble blogger takes an almost childlike pleasure in new things: the smell of a dealer-fresh automobile, the latest issue of Detective Comics, kittens. And of course that sunrise thing he writes about, despite seeing it so rarely. Thus also with hymns. We live in an age when a great many new hymns are written, and some of them make us very happy. To be sure, there are plenty of recent hymns for which we do not care, but that would be true in any age, if only because of Sturgeon's Law.

In fact, all this blather about hymnody has reminded us of two things: first, that writing (or translating) hymns is very demanding work, requiring the skills of both a poet and a theologian, not to say some acquaintance with music; and second, that editing a hymnal is no less demanding, in its own way. Editors are required to make a long series of decisions -- what hymns to include or exclude, what textual variants to choose or blend, what emendations to make in diction, and on and on down to the order in which the hymns appear in the bound volume. (And all that is before they come to the question of which tune to prescribe for a given hymn, given the number that can be sung to the same melodies. One of the faithful once remarked that "there are really only six hymns," and she wasn't far wrong.)

It is a tough job, and no editor has much hope of pleasing everybody.

We were moved to think about all this by the simplest thing: choosing our own parish hymn for this coming Sunday, Easter 3. Given the powerful Eucharistic message of the Emmaus story, we were for some days settled upon Adoro te devote, attributed (with some uncertainty) to Thomas Aquinas, and generally known in English as Thee We Adore. It's a beautiful song, and when you slur the words a bit it sounds like the proper name of Preschooler Anonymous.

But which version? We Lutherans have two hymnal versions readily available to us. One from the SBH and the Lutheran Book of Worship is by James Woodford (1820-1885). Another, printed in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, is attributed to Woodford "and Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1885)," followed by the dreaded "alt." So which to choose? The first has been in regular use since the 1950s, and is well-known to many people. The other has contributions from one of the best known poets of his generation. We may not care for Hopkins, but we are snobs, so that's a very tempting option. And the two versions are noticeably different:

Woodford	Woodford and Hopkins
Thee we adore, O hidden Savior, thee, who in thy sacrament art pleased to be; both flesh and spirit in thy presence fail, yet here thy presence we devoutly hail.	Thee we adore, O Savior, God most true, thy glory clothed in bread and wine anew; our hearts to thee in true devotion bow, in humble awe, we hail thy presence now.
O blest memorial of our dying Lord, who living bread to us shall here afford: oh, may our souls forever feed on thee, and thou, O Christ, forever precious be.	O true remembrance of Christ crucified, the bread of life to us for whom he died; lend us this life then; feed and feast our mind, be thou the sweetness we were meant to find.
Fountain of goodness, Jesus, Lord and God: cleanse us, unclean, with thy most cleansing blood; increase our faith and love, that we may know the hope and peace which from thy presence flow.	Fountain of goodness, Jesus, Lord and God, cleanse us, O Christ, with thy most cleansing blood: increase our faith and love, that we may know the hope and peace which from thy presence flow.
O Christ, whom now beneath a veil we see: may what we thirst for soon our portion be, to gaze on thee unveiled, and see thy face, the vision of thy glory, and thy grace. Amen	Jesus, by faith we see thee here below; send us, we pray thee, what we thirst for so: someday to gaze upon thy face in light, blest evermore with thy full glory's sight. Amen.

(We should mention that the second version is surely copyrighted by Ausgburg-Fortress, and the first one may be as well.)

All this made us wonder what Hopkins actually wrote, and it isn't much like the Lutheran hymnal version. We found a text here and a more complete one here. His try -- and we say this as mortal enemies of The Windhover -- is quite good:

Godhead here in hiding, whom I adore,

masked by these bare shadows,

shape and nothing more,

see, lord, at thy service low

lies here a heart

lost, all lost in wonder

at the God thou art.

Seeing, touching, tasting

are in thee deceived;

how says trusty hearing?

That shall be believed;

what God’s Son hath told me,

take for truth I do;

truth himself speaks truly,

or there’s nothing true.

On the cross thy Godhead

made no sign to men;

here thy very manhood steals

from human ken;

both are my confession,

both are my belief;

and I pray the prayer

of the dying thief.

I am not like Thomas,

wounds I cannot see,

but can plainly call thee

Lord and God as he;

this faith each day deeper

be my holding of,

daily make me harder hope

and dearer love.

O thou our reminder

of Christ crucified,

living Bread, the life of us

for whom he died,

lend this life to me then;

feed and feast my mind,

there be thou the sweetness

man was meant to find.

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;
Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what Thy bosom ran
Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Jesu, whom I look at

shrouded here below,

I beseech thee send me

what I long for so,

some day to gaze on thee

face to face in light

and be blest for ever

with thy glory’s sight.

It's really very good as poetry, although we're not sure it begs to be sung. Nor are we sure that the ELW editors have done favors for anybody by merging the two. If, indeed, that is what they have done. Is it our imagination, or does the the version that ELW attributes to Woodford and Hopkins look very much as though it were written by neither one? Hopkins, in particular, is responsible only for a few lines mutilated in the final stanza. Perhaps some editor was simply trying to be humble, but that "alt." seems significant enough to justify naming a third author.

Now, there is another problem, at least for those of us lacking proper library access. Here on the web, you can find another translation -- also good -- which some people attribute to Hopkins. It appeared in the Monastic Diurnal in 1932, and Episcopalian hymnals in 1940 and 1982

But how do Woodford, Hopkins, or the curious ELW mashup compare with the Latin original? Funny you should ask, because (as we learn from Fr. Edward McNamara at Zenit, who incidentally seems to mis-attribute the Monastic Diurnal version to Hopkins) there are two distinct Latin versions, equally well-attested. They differ principally in the opening -- "hidden truth" is the reading of the so-called critical edition, and "hidden God" that of the popular one.

ELW, for reasons we cannot easily guess, chose to split the difference -- "God most true" is present in the Eucharist, but latens, normally translated as "hidden, concealed, secret, lurking" becomes "clothed."

So the poor hymnal editor is faced with some difficult decisions. There are several fine renderings already used in current hymnals, not to mention two distinct base texts. Which to choose? Only rarely are all the stanzas included -- the poor pelican, editors surely assume, would confuse those dummies in the pew who can't even handle "thee," "thou" or "veil." So again, which to choose? And even of those stanzas that are sung, several are may contain images or language that will stop pewsitters in their proverbial tracks. What, they may ask after service, does Christ's Godly head steal from a human named Ken? So, finally, which to dumb down? Yes, an editor has many difficult decisions to make.

And yet, as those of you who struggled through Part 1 already gather, we are irritated by this entire process, and all its implicit assumptions. Why not sing the songs as their authors intended them to be sung, or else write new ones which please you more?

Better yet, and we intend no sarcasm whatsoever, why don't they commission some new hymns and translations of classic texts, deliberately written in what is called "global" or "simple" English, the grade-school style of the Good News and CEV Bibles? We have used these translations ourselves, and to good effect -- but they are emphatically not appropriate for a room full of educated native speakers. The creation of a "simple" hymnal might be a great boon to some congregations, while leaving others free to enjoy the pleasures of complexity in language and thought.

We understand the argument -- frequently made by those who work for publishing houses -- that these songs are not the property of their authors, but of the church which uses them for its own purposes. It is, on its face, and setting aside copyright concerns, a reasonable argument. But we have also seen that argument made ad nauseam through increasingly idiosyncratic renderings of the liturgy and psalter. These days, its implications frighten us. What began as a typical conviction of the modern liturgical movement -- that worship was the work of the gathered assembly, not a slavish imitation of some past model -- has become a license for chaos masquerading as concern.

Hymnals, Pt. 2: "The Great Hymn Massacre"

(This is meant as a footnote to Part 1, and a bit of an introduction to Part 3.)

In the 1730s, printer's apprentices in Paris rounded up all the stray cats they could find, put them on trial and convicted them of witchcraft. Then, with what appears to have been a great deal of joy, they beat them to death. because the cats were fed and even pampered by the printers, and the apprentices were not, the historian Robert Darnton has, famously, interpreted the "Great Cat Massacre" as a form of worker's protest.

We wonder what Darnton would make of the Great Hymn Massacre, which had taken place barely a century earlier, at the urging of Pope Urban VIII.

To make a long story short, Latin hymnody can be said to have begun with St. Ambrose, in the fourth century, to have developed gradually and ultimately to have exploded in the later Middle Ages. Ever conservative, the Roman rite was slow to accept the use of hymns; they seem to have worked their way in the side door, first coming to be established in other liturgical traditions, and especially in monastic communities. Still, even Rome will eventually recognize a good idea, and so by the 12th century (if not sooner), Latin hymns had taken their place in the Daily Office.

Of course, many of the hymns that the Roman rite inherited were old -- 800 years for the oldest -- and in a language that had changed significantly. During those centuries, Latin had gradually dissipated, transforming itself into a family of local vernaculars. And in the course of that dissipation, Latin had changed a great deal: pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar (in practice, if not in theory) all changed. So too did preferences in poetic meter, which gradually shifted from quantity to stress-accent. Not to mention the new love of rhyme. It was, and would long remain, the most commonly spoken and written of all second languages; but the Latin of Mortis, portis, fractis fortis was quite different from that of an Horatian ode.

It was inevitable, then, that the Renaissance revival of pagan antiquity would look askance at medieval Latin, and so it did. Adrian Fortescue describes two phases of this askance-looking:

First, there were the hymns written by humanistically-educated scholars. Of these, Fortescue says dismissively,

There came the time when no one could conceive anything but the classical metres and classical language. So they wrote frigid imitations of classical lyrics. It is the time when people thought it effective to call heaven Olympus, to apply pagan language to God and his saints. There is nothing to be done with this stuff but to glance at it, shudder, and pass on. ....

Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries people still wrote Latin hymns. They had become by now like the Latin verse of Oxford Dons, correct enough according to the rules (it seems as if their writers are conscious that correctness is all they can offer), correct, too, in sentiment, with here and there an ingenious little trick of ideas, an apt parallel or a clever inversion. But there is not a trace left of the feeling of Ambrose and Prudentius, not a spark of the fire nor a ray of the grace of old hymns.

Indeed, we may not hope for real Latin poetry any more, because Latin is now a dead language to all of us. However well a man may read, write, or even speak Latin now, it is always a foreign language to him, acquired artificially. It is no one's mother tongue. Does a man ever write real poetry in an acquired language ?

(Mind you, Fortescue never had a chance to read Nabokov.)  But he saves his real anger for Urban the VIII and his Jesuit hatchet men:
In a fatal moment [Urban, the former Maffeo Barbarini] saw that the hymns do not all conform to the rules of classical prosody. Attempts to reform them had been made before, but so far they had been  spared. Urban VIII was destined to succeed in destroying them. He appointed four Jesuits to reform the hymns,  so that they should no longer offend Renaissance ears.
 
The four Jesuits were Famiano Strada, Tarquinio Galluzzi, Mathias Sarbiewski, Girolamo Petrucci. These four, in that faithful obedience to the Holy See which is  the glory of their Society, with a patient care that one cannot help admiring, set to work to destroy every hymn in the office.

Perhaps this is an overstatement.  We aren't deeply enough versed in the matter to say.  But we have most certainly noticed, lately, that when we investigate the history of a great medieval hymn, there are typically two versions available:  the original, and the version mucked with by Urban's team.  Even a Latinist of the most limited ability can see that the originals are generally better, if by "better" we mean more exciting to read.  If by "better" one were to mean more regular in their classical meter and diction, then Urban would win.  But why would one?

For those who wish to examine this in more detail, Shawn Tribe offers a brief essay here at NLM. Perhaps it will suffice to observe that those religious communities which had the power to resist Urban's reforms did so -- including the Vatican basilica itself. Tribe's best line is lifted from one of Urban's contemporaries: Accessit Latinitas, recessit pietas -- Latin came in, piety went out.

For those of us who don't use a lot of Latin hymns in everyday worship, this may seem like trivia. And it more or less is. But many of us use use hymns -- many hymns -- that are translated from Latin originals, and from time to time we may want to investigate which "original" serves as the base text.

But this incident does raise some more abstract questions for modern worship leaders. Over nearly four centuries, Urban has been derided for his "improvements" to the inherited treasury of beloved hymns. By his own standards, the inverted commas are unnecessary: regularizing the meter and diction was an improvement. He and his team genuinely thought that they were making the hymnal better, by cutting it to pieces, rewriting it and angering the people who used and loved the hymns. Angering them, we note, so badly that even when the revised hymnal was recommended by the pope, those who could reject it did so.

So if you were the editor of a hymnal, would you learn a lesson from this? Not, apparently, if you were the brains behind the New Century Hymnal, the New English Hymnal, the Lutheran Book of Worship, or any of a dozen others published since the 1970s. As for the translation teams at ICET and so forth, it appears that they have been even less eager to learn. They have continued Urban's work, but on a larger scale -- involving many more hymns, and more dramatic changes in diction. And while they have done a great deal to advance their theological positions, with some of which we at the Egg are prone to agree, it is at least arguable that they have also alienated a significant portion of their original constituencies.

And then the questions for actual day-to-day leaders: Where do we stand? And where do the faithful stand? Some of us, to be sure, genuinely prefer the revised hymns. We find them easier to sing, more natural in their language and more contemporary in their theology. Others do not. Both sides, however, may do well to consider the needs of their congregations.

At the very least, we wish that somebody -- and ideally one of the large denominational publishing houses -- would make available, at a reasonable price, a hymnal containing songs that have not been altered, and that reflect the intention of their authors and translators. (We also wish that ELW had included among its ten versions of Holy Communion one -- one -- using the archaic English that still signals "church" many churchgoers. ) The sort of thinking reflected by this strategy might go a long way toward closing the rift that often seems to have grown up between denominational leaders and their memberships.

Finally, there is the most abstract of all questions: How will some social historian of the 2300s write up the First and Second Great Hymn Massacres? Was the first, under Urban VIII, truly a matter of snobbish classicism and nothing more, or does it reveal a deeper tension between the papal court and the communities which lay on the very fringes of papal power? And who won? Then, in the same vein, what is really going on in this endless mucking about with modern hymnals? What does it say that the mucking has intensified as the churches doing it have begun to dwindle? Do the editors truly not hear the howls of outrage that they routinely cause, or do they simply not care? And in either case, then if not, why not?

Hymnals, Pt. 1: "On Mucking"

One of life's little nuisances is the abbreviation "(alt.)" when it appears, in parentheses, beside the name of a poet whose work appears in a hymnal. This is one of the ways that editors say, in effect, "Look here: rather than simply let you sing the hymn as written, we have mucked about with it. Hope you weren't overly attached to the original."

Why do they do it? The reasons are various, but these seem to be the chief ones, listed in ascending order of evil:

(1) An attempt to improve the poetry qua poetry, by smoothing over rough meter or ill-considered syntax. Among translations, this is often by mixing versions by different translators. John Mason Neale was a brilliant translator, but we will not tell you that on a particular verse or image he cannot be excelled by, say, Edward Caswall.

To be honest, this "improvement" isn't so very wicked, and may even result in better hymns. (Poetic syntax can certainly be a problem. A friend recalls visiting a parish which proudly displayed a banner, handcrafted by its children, featuring this from A Mighty Fortress : "On earth, he has no equal." Our friend remarks, "I didn't know how to tell them that this is about the Devil.") Yet, on the other hand, the Great Hymn Massacre (in Part 2) was just such an effort.

(2) An attempt to make archaic language comprehensible to modern people. This, of course, assumes that modern people are too blooming stupid to recall the meaning of "thee" or "thou," something which is not the case in our experience. Far worse, it may result in the sweeping aside of Biblical imagery deemed "obscure" to the modern churchgoer.

(3) An attempt to change to change the poem's meaning, so that it reflects the theological biases not of its author, but of its editor. This is the most mischievous of all, and it takes several forms:

(a) Abbreviation. Many hymns are so very long that all their stanzas cannot easily be printed in a hymnal, especially given the perverse obligation that some worship leaders feel to play, sing, or require to be sung every word that they see before them. The Stabat Mater has 20 stanzas, and they form a coherent whole; but five is ample for congregational use, unless one intends to structure one's entire devotion around it. (O Sacred Head is no piker, with 11 stanzas -- of which only four appear in either the LBW or ELW).

Abbreviation may be a necessary evil, but it is still an evil. By printing dismembered hymns, the editors deprive congregations of the ability to perceive the author's full intention. They also make it more difficult for worship leaders who may be so inclined to use the full text -- for example, to actually structure one's Good Friday observance around the Stabat Mater or O Sacred Head.

(b) Selection. Worse yet, the decision to chop out stanzas inevitably urges the question of which stanzas -- and which images -- shall go or stay. This is typically guided by the theological views of the editors. For example, we once noticed that when printing The Church's One Foundation, Baptist hymnals omit the lines about "each new-born soldier of the Crucified," for fear that it will confuse the antipaedobaptist faith. Likewise, the newest Lutheran hymnal, ELW, omits the bit about "conquering ranks," perhaps from squeamishness about making Jesus' humblest sheep remember their coreligionists' role in two wars for world conquest.

Mind you, Lift High is practically a test case in mucking-about. As written, in 1887, it was apparently quite different from the rewritten version that first saw print in a 1916 hymnal. We're not sure of the differences, because all our good reference books are packed away. But in modern hymnals, even the re-written version is rarely printed whole; of twelve brief stanzas, five or six are usually printed.

Sadly, this means that congregations rarely have the chance to offer this prayer: "Set up your throne, that earth's despair may cease / beneath the shadow of its healing peace," much less the frighteningly universalist line about "thy Cross which doth for all atone." Maybe Rob Bell's people can sing that one.

(c) Substitution. This, to be sure, is where the mischief is worst -- where sins of omission become sins of commission, and where images and ideas for which the editor does not care are simply replaced with others more fashionable. A lot of substitution is made in quest of gender-neutrality, about which one feels however one feels. We will only observe that a hesitance to call Jesus "Lord" is theologically problematic in the extreme. But that is by no means all, nor even the worst, of it.

A popular GIA hymnal changes a key line in Amazing Grace from "that saved a wretch like me" to "that saved and set me free." Oy. Need we observe that this undermines the entire narrative upon which the hymn is built? From a Pauline story of personal confession and restoration, it is transformed into an Exodus story of passive deliverance from one external power to another. Never mind the backstory, of John Newton's own wretchedness as a slave-trader, nor the fact that the words the editors have changed are among the most famous in all of English hymnody.

Mind you, it does not pay to be overly alarmist about such matters. For example, we can imagine some pastor -- okay, one particular pastor, a fellow with whom we once worked who is given to perpetual lamentation over the decadence of his church -- holding his head in his hands and crying that ELW has changed "O Wondrous Type, O Vision Fair" to "O Wondrous Image, Vision Fair." We can practically hear him going on about how, by removing the word type, the editors have betrayed a central commitment of patristic and medieval Biblical exegesis.

But he'd be mistaken. In fact, the Latin hymn Coelestis formam gloriae isn't explicitly typological to begin with. Neale introduces the word in his 1854 translation, which was not originally the one found in most hymnals: "A type of those bright rays on high ...." It was the 1861 hymnal editors who mucked about with Neale, and produced the compound version most of us know.

Still and all, we do not support this mucking about. If you don't like the hymn, don't sing it. If you do like it, but not all, sing the parts you like. But the custom of chopping hymns up, selectively rewriting them, and leaving out the bits that bother you (but which may be somebody's favorite) strikes us us unmannerly, a poor way to treat the poets and translators who have done their best and produced something to which they, often at least, have been proud to affix their names.

Now, not all editors have the good manners to indicate that they have thus mucked, and we are grateful to those who have worked on our Lutheran hymnals over the generations for choosing the path of manners. We only wish that they wouldn't choose it quite so often.

Shakespeare, As Always

... got there first:

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.

This is in reference to the treasonous thane of Cawdor -- not Macbeth, but the one before him. And in fact Malcolm's point is that this fellow died a dignified and repentant death. So that part is different.

Still, it does get right to what we were thinking yesterday, about the late You-Know-bin-Who.

In Which We Lose Our Minds

Remember all those stories about tech startups in the 90s? The rented room full of ambitious young guys, working hundred-hour weeks, living on delivery pizza and Diet Coke?

That's pretty much what mission development work is like, except that the startup guys were twentysomethings with youth to burn, while we're graying and fiftyish with a little back trouble. And, of course, they stood some chance of becoming billionaires, while we're judiciously stocking up on Alpo for our retirement years.

Still, we work pretty hard these days. And in our spare time, such as it is, we are plugging away at that Latin/English breviary. And then, a few days ago, we had an ... episode, in which fatigue, a troublesome cold, and too much time spent exploring 12th-century devotional poetry all came together in a single weird moment. Here is is, but we don't expect you to watch the whole thing. In fact, it may be unwatchable:

Yes, that's right. We made a cartoon version of Matins, at least through the Benedictus. We would have finished it, except for some technical difficulties. It was going to be in Latin, because, really, one sees so few Latin cartoons these days. But it turns out that those cartoon characters pronounce Latin even more porly than they do English. So we settled for the faux-Jacobean of the Service Book and Hymnal.

Mother Anonymous is giving us the fish-eye right now. We think she's waiting until we're asleep before she calls the men in the white coats. But that's okay; we aren;t actually planning to sleep. Bwah-hah-hah.

The Only Good Terrorist

Okay, deep breath. We cannot, honestly, rejoice at any man's death. It diminishes us, because we are involved -- that is Donne's word -- in mankind. Still, when the man in question attacked our home and murdered our friends, with no goal other than to inspire fear and create unrest, it is hard for us to keep from smiling a tight, grim smile when the bell begins to toll.

So when we awoke this morning and learned that Osama bin Laden was dead, we shed no tears. He was an evil man, who brought shame to his nation, his family and his faith.

We have no idea whether bin Laden's death will deal any spiritual blow to al Qaeda, shaking the confidence of its leaders or making them doubt their course. We are inclined to think not. It will surely deal them no operational blow. Honestly, al Qaeda has long been less of an organization and more of an "-ism."

Should he have lived to stand trial? Perhaps that would have been for the best. Nobody should claim this criminal as a martyr. We would have liked to see him in the dock at the Hague, and best of all to imagine him spending his life in prison. If we had our way, it would have been Spandau, for all the symbolic resonance.

And yet, even if that would have been the better course, we can't find ourselves complaining too very much. This outcome gives us a certain ... we will not call it pleasure, but ... satisfaction.

What's Up With Turkey?

Two news reports from Turkey today, each unsettling in its own way:

(1) There was this unfinished statue celebrating a restoration of relations with Armenia. The Turks are in the process of tearing it apart, piece by piece. Symbolic, right?

Here's the meat of the story, from Radio Free Europe:

During a January visit to the site, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the monument as a "monstrosity” that overshadows a nearby Islamic shrine.

"This looked like a message to the nationalists,” [the sculptor] said. "They'll now say, ‘See, Erdogan is good, he is a nationalist, let's vote for him.'”

The demolition has prompted strong criticism from some opponents of Erdogan's government and prominent Turkish artists. One of them, Bedri Baykam, was stabbed and hospitalized last week immediately after attending a meeting that discussed actions in support of the statue.

And then this, via i09:

(2) William S. Burroughs's 1966 novel The Soft Machine was recently published in Turkish. The book, along with its publisher Sel, is now under investigation by something called the Turkish Prime Minister's Council for Protecting Minors from Explicit Publications, which accuses it of "incompliance with moral norms" and -- get this -- "hurting people's moral feelings."

We're sure all that sounds less creepily Stalinist in Turkish, but it is a reminder of how the great 20th-century tyrannies routinely generated ponderously long names for bureaucracies and police agencies designed to regulate and prosecute absurd crimes. (Hurting people's feelings? Glenn Beck hurt our feelings every moment he spent on the air. For that matter, so did the guy who invented Jar-Jar Binks. Can we sue for damages?)

We don't know what is most galling in the Burroughs story, but here are our leading gall-ers: (a) the chilling effect that an "investigation" like this will inevitably have on free speech; (b) the ludicrous pretense that the author, or any publisher, would intend The Soft Machine to be read by children; (c) the fact that this means people are still taking Burroughs seriously. Come on, people, that stuff is unreadable. Can't we just canonize the guy, so that nobody reads him anymore? It worked wonders for D.H. Lawrence.

In both stories, however, there is one unifying theme, which galls any reasonable person: the government setting itself up as an art critic, and then -- as what else could it do? -- judging art by political rather than artistic standards. And here we thought that this sort of nonsense was the exclusive preserve of the Commies and the Republicans.

Hunchback Sunday

If there were one expression in general church-use for which we had no love, it would be the phoney verb "to process." (Procede, people. Procede.) But if there were a second such expression, it would surely be "Low Sunday."

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church helpfully suggests that the day now formally known as Dominica in Octava Paschae seu Dom. II Paschae gains its common English monicker "in contrast to the 'high' feast of Easter Sunday itself." We suppose this is the natural derivation, but we can't be sure.

Many pastors of our acquaintance interpret the words as a reference to attendance at worship, which too often declines precipitously from one week to the next. And many more speak, often in muted tones, of their own subjective experience between one Sunday and the next -- of the emotional and physical deflation that follows the marathon Triduum and the exuberant trumpet-blast of Easter morning. It is hardly surprising that so many of us should experience a mild depression or, in Fr. A.'s own customary case, a sudden cold.

One also hears suggestions that that "Low" is a corruption of Laudes, from the sequence Laudes salvatori voce. If so, the English is corrupt indeed, although this etymology would make the thing less disagreeable.

But still: Low Sunday? No. First, because it is Sunday, and every Sunday is the day of the Resurrection. Every Sunday is Easter. And second, because this particular Sunday is no anti-climax. It is the next step in a splendid and too-frequently overlooked marathon, the great Fifty Days of Easter.

Easter Sunday itself is many things. Yes, it is the central feast of the Christian faith, the celebration of the mystery which gives meaning to all of history both before and since. But, let's be honest, it is also the day that ladies show off their new hats. It is the day that children are customarily hepped up on sugar, and indoctrinated into the strange zoology of an egg-bearing rabbit.

But the Second Sunday of Easter? No more hats. No more eggs or jelly beans. No lamb roasting in the oven for family dinner. Anybody who makes it to church is free to concentrate completely upon the unfolding of the Resurrection story, which in in our lectionary now turns to poor no-longer-doubting Thomas, the patron saint of the post-Enlightenment age. This is a great moment for preaching, and teaching; for reflection upon baptism, upon mission, and upon the dialectic between faith and unbelief which is so important to the modern world.

Before the modern revisions, the proper Latin name for this day was Dominica in albis [deponendis], meaning roughly "the Sunday when white baptismal robes [are set aside]." This is okay, in the sense that it connects the celebration of Easter to the sacrament of baptism. But it is a little weak, insofar as it suggests that, Bright Week now concluded, we are to set aside those baptismal robes and return to desacralized existence. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But, fortunately, the tradition offers us another and superior nickname for next Sunday: Quasi modo geniti, from the first words of the Introit: "Like newborn babes, desire the true milk of the Word." This, completing a week of mystagogical preaching to the newly baptized (well, in theory), is a reminder to all Christians of who we truly are: newborn babes, longing for sustenance.

Of course, there are some difficulties. One is Victor Hugo and his hunchback. Another is the absence from most churches, and even most service books, both of introits and of their Latin names. But these can be overcome, if one is both determined and a little tricky. And why not, in the service of so great a cause as not calling any Sunday Low?

Wash Those Feet!

Before he was the frazzled leader of a crumbling communion, Rowan Williams was one heck of a fine theologian, and we will bet a pretty effective pastor as well. And he still is.

Per David Buehler, who got it from Krista Tippett, comes this:

[Speaking to a BBC program,] Rowan Williams said a return to the medieval tradition when monarchs ritually washed the feet of the poor would serve to remind politicians and bankers what should be the purpose of their wealth and power. ...

''What about having a new law that made all Cabinet members and leaders of political parties, editors of national papers and the hundred most successful financiers in the UK spend a couple of hours every year serving dinners in a primary school on a council estate, or cleaning bathrooms in a residential home?'' he suggested.

An idea for next year.

Socialism on the Internet!

False alarm. Just more rodeo-clown nuttiness.

Per Talking Points Memo, conservative activist (and lousy historian) David Barton went on a radio show to talk about (meaning "attack and defame") the idea of internet neutrality. No surprise there; Republicans generally don't like the idea, which they seem to consider a restraint on trade or an intrusion of the government into property rights. You know, like zoning laws.

What amuses and appalls us is that, rather than phrase this as a question of economics, or even of civil rights (that is, the civil rights of corporations, which our Supreme Court has shown itself ready to defend), Barton decided to go the crazy Manichaean route, and present internet neutrality as a question of Christian morality:

It is a principle of free market. That's a Biblical principle, that's a historical principle. We have all these quotes from Ben Franklin and Jefferson and Washington and others on free market and how important that is to maintain. That is part of the reason we have prosperity. This is what the Pilgrims brought in, the Puritans brought in, this is free market mentality. Net Neutrality sounds really good, but it is socialism on the Internet.

Okay, let's rephrase that. He didn't choose Christian morality over against civil rights or economics; he smooshed them together in one breathtakingly complex, and breathtakingly ludicrous, paragraph.

Sigh. The free market is a Biblical principal? Supported by such devout exegetes as Franklin and Jefferson? The mind boggles.

Anyway, if you are looking for some Christian socialism on the internet, click here.

Non Moriar, Sed Vivam

If you are preaching come Sunday, and can tear yourself away from a comparison of atonement theories, you might spend a moment on Psalm 118.

In our sacristy here in Romania, there is a picture of Luther -- one of those unconvincing 19th century illustrations, that makes him look both handsome and heroic, even in his funny cap. And underneath is the verse in question: Non moriar, sed vivam, et narrabo opera Domini. One also sees it, not infrequently, incorporated into Luther's seal.

Here's why, according to William Johnston's website. During the fateful spring and summer of 1530, Luther was under the imperial ban, and subject to arrest if captured. Naturally, he could not attend the Diet of Augsburg. Instead, he stayed at the Coburg castle, and as Johnson writes:

Luther became very depressed and believed his end was near. In this state, Luther sent a letter to a friend, the famous German composer Ludwig [Senfl], asking that he send him a polyphonic version of a favorite antiphon, In pace in id ipsum. Stenfl did not send that song until later ... but he immediately sent Luther a copy of his motet on the 17th verse of the 118th Psalm: Non moriar sed vivam (I will not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord). The text and music had an incredible effect on Luther. He wrote those words on the wall of his room and came back to the fight with a renewed spirit (Nettl, 21-25). Luther later arranged Non moriar himself as a motet (Nettl, 60).

He is citing Paul Netti, Luther and Music (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1948).

We're no fans of graffitti, but there are worse things for a preacher to write on the walls of his or her bedroom. Not least as Easter Sunday approaches.

Tu Nobis, Victor Rex, Miserere

A couple of weeks ago, after Vespers, we heard an Orthodox priest answering questions from his parishioners. They were a young and engaged crowd, posing some good questions. In response to one, asking him to compare Orthodoxy with Latin Christianity, the priest averred in the politest way possible that he had some doubts about the West's reliance on using the language of the courtroom to describe the majesty of God's work. Ah, yes, we thought; and here comes Aulen versus Anselm.

According to its website, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America includes twelve congregations named Christus Victor. This is an unusual name, and seems to be as distinctively Lutheran as Gustavus Adolphus. We've never heard of a Christus Victor Presbyterian Church, and doubt we ever will.

The oldest of the ELCA's Christus Victors was organized in 1947, the newest in 1988, but most date from the 1960s and 1970s. Now consider the publication dates of Gustav Aulen's influential study of the atonement, Christus Victor: Swedish in 1930; English in 1931 -- and the first American publication in 1969. It seems reasonable to conclude that the idea of giving this curious name was prompted by the gradually increasing prominence of the theory Aulen describes, and which he attributes in various forms to many Fathers and much of the Orthodox world.

Now, we in the West (and, frankly, we at the Egg) generally default to a juridical, Anselmian model of the Atonement. You know: We were (and are) guilty, but Jesus paid the penalty, and therefore the Father treats us all as if we were innocent. There are more sophisticated ways of putting that, but you get the idea. This has been a part of our ecclesiastical culture for so long that it simply seems right, at the most basic learned-it-in-Sunday-School level.

To be brutally honest, it sometimes seems that American Christianity, at least, has a higher regard for the theory of vicarious substitutionary atonement than it does for the doctrine of the Trinity. If true, this ought to give us all pause.

Anyway, we mention this because, thinking about his sermons over the past few years, Father A. sees that the Christus Victor model has assumed a surprisingly important position. Hardly a week goes by anymore in which he does not use some expression on the order of "for our sake, Christ has defeated sin, death and hell." We fully expect to say something along these lines come Sunday, and hope that you will as well. It's an important part of the story.

On the other hand, it may not be the whole or sufficient story. In the wake of the Rob Bell tempest in a teapot, Christianity Today has recently published an editorial warning that when Protestants start to talk about the Atonement as a victory rather than a substitution, they are generally soft-pedaling the reality of sin, and opening the door to universalism (which, for CT, is the Devil). Maybe sometimes. But probably not. A quick review of our own victory-besotted sermons shows that we are quite happy to talk about sin, the uglier and more personal the better. Without that, "the victory over sin death and hell" loses its meaning.

It seems to us that the two models in question, victory and substitution, are held in an admirable tension -- a Lathropean juxtaposition, if you will -- by the traditions of the church. Consider the great (and fairly late, and thoroughly Western) Easter hymn, Victiamae Paschali. It begins, obviously, with the image of Jesus as a sacrifice: "Christians to the paschal victim." And it ends with the title of this post: "Victorious King, thy mercy show."

Holy Week of Destruction!

Some guy tried to burn down the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. He is described as "disturbed," which hardly seems necessary. We take for granted that anybody who tries to burn down a cathedral is disturbed in some fashion.

Two things jump out at us from the initial coverage. First, and fortunately, nobody was injured. Fifteen hundred people had to leave the premises, but that was just a precaution. Scary, no doubt, but nothing more. Enjoy your trip to Catalonia, everybody.

Second, though, is this: the fire started in the sacristy, when the arsonist took a lighter to some vestments. What was this disturbed guy doing in the sacristy?

And third, coming on top of a hammer-and-chisel attack on a painting by some "Catholic" activists in France: Happy Holy Week, everybody! Yikes.

Things We Don't Like

#1: Andres Serrano's "Immersion (Piss Christ)," a well-known photograph of a crucifix soaked in blood and immersed, as the title suggests with admirable clarity, in urine. Call us old-fashioned, but we like poetry that rhymes, and pictures painted with oil. If one must pretend that photographs are art, we suggest tasteful black-and-white studies of either a mountain range or a naked lady.

#2: The trio of thugs who took a hammer to "(Immersion) Piss Christ" yesterday, while it was on display in Avignon. Defacing art, even bad art, is generally conceded to be bad form. We disapprove in the strongest possible fashion. And while rassling with a museum guard -- another mark of exceptionally poor taste -- these particular thugs also damaged a neighboring picture. Of a nun praying.

The AP headline, at least the one running on HuffPo, claims that this was the work of "Catholics." The story doesn't offer immediate substantiation of this claim, since it doesn't identify the vandals. However, it does say this:

Young far-right Christian activists from the General Alliance Against Racism and for the Respect of the French and Christian Identity is taking the Collection Lambert to court Wednesday to try to have the crucifix photograph removed from the exhibit. The group denounced the photograph on its Web site, saying it "insults and injures Christians at the heart of their faith."

It certainly seems possible, even likely, that some of these folks decided not to wait for the law to act -- or, more likely, for the law to ignore their pathetic whinging.

So who are they? Formed in 1984, the AGRIF is a French right-wing organization, devoted to what the French Wikipedia calls "catholicisme traditionaliste." As readers surely know, this phrase is a bit tricky; it can cover anything from us at the Egg to Pope Benedict to the sedevacantist fantasies of Mel Gibson's dad. We don't know enough about it to say whether their professed Catholicism is Roman, Old, or Lefebrist.

Anyway, let's be clear about the theology. Since Latin Christianity, at least, denies that images have any particular spiritual power, apart from the wisdom they may convey or the faith they may inspire, it is simply mistaken to claim that an unfortunate representation of Jesus "injures Christians at the heart of their faith." Were that true, our religion would long ago have been destroyed by tacky Jesus art, of which there has been no shortage lo these thousand years. What in fact injures Christians is cruelty to the poor and the weak, persecution of the innocent, and the willful violation of just laws, especially when those things are done in our name.

So, the Avignonese brownshirts don't really get it about Christianity. But wait. There is one religion whose adherents seem to feel that every misrepresentation of its great hero is an assault on the faith, and a crime worthy of vigilante justice. Not Christianity, but some other world religion, with a permanent hate-on for Salman Rushdie and Danish cheese products. Hmmm. Which one are we thinking of?

Got it, AGRIF? If you are looking for a religion that will support and encourage your vandalism and assault, please leave Christianity, which does not, and make common cause with the one which is already taking over your country.

The New Face of Opus Dei?

We admit it: we've always had a soft spot for Madonna. In the beginning, it was easy enough to explain. We're about the same age, so her first rush of fame coincided with our misspent youth. Her public persona, at least, was all sex with a little religion thrown in. It's kind of Eggy, or would be if she had sung a few more madrigals.

Over the years, that soft spot has become ever-more difficult to justify, and in fact we don't recall actually hearing any of her music after ... well, "Music." We had hoped she would just retire and become a Garbo-style legend, quietly breeding horses in the Midlands and dribbling her fortune out to worthy causes. But she's a shade too narcissistic for that. So even as we have tried to look away, she has remained there, on the margins of our consciousness, a living reminder of our dubious youthful taste. As Hamlet says, "Ex-nymphette, in thine aging biceps are all my sins remembered."

Anyway, the latest word is that she has moved away from Kabbalah and started spending time with Opus Dei, the personal prelature that is not a cult, is not a crypto-fascist boot camp, and is not as bad as people make it sound. It couldn't be.

On balance, we consider this good news. We liked her better as a tortured Catholic.

Still, we have to wonder what she is looking for. A return to her heritage? We hope so. A chance to mingle with the fans? Given the number of gay men said to be in some seminaries, quite possibly. Some bald albino assassins for her next video? One never knows.

Dept. of No Surprise: Rodeo Clowns Division

"Donald Trump is a joke." That's what political analyst Charlie Cook says in The Atlantic. He is shocked and appalled that the short-fingered vulgarian is tied for first in polls of Republican voters. Needless to say, we agree with Crist's shock. We have been referring to most of the current crop of would-be-candidates as rodeo clowns. They're the entertainment that makes the crowd laugh while the serious contenders are bracing for the bullride.

Cook also likes the clown image, suggesting that rather than "send in the clowns," the intellectually serious GOP voters must be humming a song about getting rid of them. That, of course, assumes that any serious GOP voters remain in the party. Cook's best line:

Anyone assuming that the reality-show host's interest in running for president is just another one of his publicity stunts would not likely be wrong. But what does it say about the Republican Party or, for that matter, the American people that this guy gets a second glance? Could a Jersey Shore personality be far behind? Legitimate Republican candidates have to wonder whether they'll be sharing a stage in the early debates with characters straight out of the bar scene in Star Wars.

Okay, we're just going to say what we're all thinking: Sarah Palin in a Princess Leia slave outfit, and Newt as Jabba the Hutt. You know the campaign poster is coming, don't you?

Dept. of No Surprise: Gerontology Division

The world's oldest man died this week. So did the world's oldest marathon runner (maybe). We can't claim to be surprised. They were really old.

Raised in poverty, married once, a railroad man and a Shriner, 114-year-old Walter Breuning sounds like a decent guy. (Although he hailed from the cold flat northern states, he doesn't seem to have been a Lutheran. For the record, though, we do live to some astonishing ages.). The BBC says he was "passionate about ending [the wars] in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Breuning was also a lucky guy, in many ways and especially with regard to military service. He signed up during World War I, but was never called for duty. He was too old for WWII.

Also dead this week: Buster Martin, who claimed to be 104. He ran the London Marathon in 2008, but didn't make the Guiness book because he couldn't verify his age. The guy might have been a mere 94 at the time.

Intercontinental Ballistic Missal: A Primer

It seems that, after what the Times calls "thirty years of labor, intrigue and infighting," the new translation of the Roman Missal for use in English-speaking regions has been approved, and will be coming to a parish near you in November.

The story in a nutshell: (a) the new version is closer to the original Latin; (b) and not many people appreciate Latin syntax these days.

The new translation has already been subject to considerable attack, notably by the Association of Catholic Priests -- which, nota bene, represents about 10% of the Catholic priests in Ireland. They accuse it of being theologically questionable and possibly sexist, as well as, and above all, full of bad English. Meanwhile, the traditionalist blogospere has embraced it as a "correct" translation, although, in all honesty, their enthusiasm is necessarily limited for anything that is not in God's own Latin.

Indeed, to read the publicity on both sides, one would might leave with the sense that this was some bitter defeat for the "liberals" and an equally exhilarating victory for the "conservatives." And it's not as though there isn't a germ of truth to that interpretation. But, and we sincerely hope most readers already grasp the point, ecclesiastical debates rarely boil down to anything so simple. If pushed, most sober citizens will acknowledge that the matters in question in a project like this have little to do with the usual tired markers of ecclesiastical partisanship: genital theology, abortion, child molestation, inclusive language, social welfare, religious freedom, the salvation of the Jews, or human perfectibility.

The questions that translators, bishops and ultimately pastors grapple with, when preparing and introducing liturgical texts, are much less exciting to the average secular newspaper reader. For example: How shall we balance the desire for clear communication, even to the undereducated, with that for fidelity to the original text? Does "fidelity" mean what translators call "dynamic equivalence," i.e., getting the idea across, or "verbal equivalence," i.e., getting the idea across with words and sentence structures which correspond closely to those of the original? How important is the use of words (such as "consubstantial") with a history of technical use in theology, but little currency in common speech? Is there, or should there be, a distinctive idiom for liturgical language, the sort of thing that is sometime called "hieratic English"? Critically, what constitutes "beauty" in English prose?

As you can imagine, these meaty matters will never interest the newspapers. But we hope that they interest Egg readers, most of whom have at least a passing concern for truth, beauty, and worship.

The arguments over the new translation do touch, directly, upon the intentions of Vatican II and, indirectly, upon some questions of ecumenism, both of which might possibly interest an outsider, and to both of which we shall come momentarily.

For those who would like to delve a little deeper, here are some basic resources:

• A timeline, from the PrayTell blog;
• Liturgiam Authenticam, the 2001 document which lays out current Vatican guidelines for translations;
• Sample comparisons of the old and new versions, from the USCCB;
• The Times overview, 11 April 2011;
• A letter from Anthony Ruff, a Benedictine monk at St. John's, Collegeville, decrying the missal (at the ACP site).

Here is a sample comparison of the current and forthcoming translations, borrowed from the USCCB:

Prayers at the Preparation of the Gifts	CURRENT Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life. Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink. Lord God, we ask you to receive us and be pleased with the sacrifice we offer you with humble and contrite hearts. Lord, wash away my iniquity; cleanse me from my sin.	FORTHCOMING Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life. Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodnesswe have received the wine we offer you: fruit of the vine and work of human hands it will become our spiritual drink. With humble spirit and contrite heart may we be accepted by you, O Lord, and may our sacrifice in your sight this day be pleasing to you, Lord God. Wash me, O Lord, from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
Orate, fratres	Pray, brethren, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.	Pray, brethren (brothers and sisters), that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.

Yes, the new translation is syntactically clumsier. Perhaps now the Vatican will rethink its use of Google Translator in place of native speakers. (We tease, for pity's sake.)

But, in all honesty, we are not comparing Shakespeare to Dryden. Neither of these translations is a testimony to the grandeur and nuance of the English tongue. On the other hand, neither is so wretched that it makes you want to cry. Frankly, each has its own charms. So in the end, we're willing to call it even-steven, and move on.

We suggested that the new missal touches on the legacy of the Second Vatican Council, and here's why. In the heady years which followed the council, its authority was claimed for an immense number of changes in Roman Catholic life and practice, and most especially in worship. For many people, it is these changes -- few of which were actually called for by the council's own documents -- which constitute the "legacy." But at the same time, there was a movement to separate the council proper from some of the things that were done in its name. Hence we have John Paul II, making quite clear his position that Vatican II meant to encourage neither a blurring of the lines between Roman Catholicism and its Protestant dialogue partners, nor the propagation of Marxism disguised as theology by even the best-intentioned of Jesuits. And, now, we have Benedict XVI, who has made no less clear his position that the council fathers never meant to jettison, nor even marginalize, the role of the Latin language in the Latin Church -- much less to encourage goofy experimentation with the sacred liturgy.

In that sense, then, this missal is one important part of the half-century-old struggle to discern and define (dare we say control?) the meaning of Vatican II. Yes, there are plenty of people, not all of them in the press, who would like to reduce this to a simple case of liberals-versus-conservatives, but it is far more than that. It is a slow process of reckoning not only with one council, but with modernity itself.

This is one of the ecumenical aspects of the new missal. Those of us outside the Roman communion have our own versions of the struggle with modernity, sometimes quite different -- but never entirely so. The other is less abstract. In the last half of the 20th century, and especially the last quarter, there was a certain degree of convergence among Christian liturgies, particularly among the Roman, Lutheran and Anglican families. In matters of translation, the emblematic organization was the International Consultation on English Texts, which gave us most of the stolid, wooden liturgical language to which we have become accustomed. It's successor organizations, the (Protestant) ELLC and (Roman Catholic) ICEL, have since continued doing the same dirty work.

Lately, however, the paths seem to have diverged into a yellow wood. For the past ten years, Roman liturgical translation has sounded a retreat, of which the new missal is the first major product. Much of Protestantism, on the other hand, has continued its ... well, advance is not the best word for it. Have you seen the ELW psalter?

So the question is whether, assuming that Roman Catholic liturgiology continues its present course, Protestantism will continue in the direction set during the 1970s, or make some sort of corresponding course correction. Not, we hasten to add, toward the Douay-Rheims style of ultramontane bad English. We could do better, much better, by simply reclaiming Cranmer and King James. And, to what looks daily more like their credit, some Protestants never gave up either one.

We Would Argue

... and in fact, by gum, we shall.

A few months ago, we stumbled across the following passage in an otherwise excellent article on Hans Urs von Balthazar:

Balthasar ... asks that scholars no longer draw on his work Mysterium Paschale in order to portray his theology. He calls this work "a quickly written work," which was only an "attempt to pave the way for the more daring teachings of Adrienne von Speyr." Balthasar's demands notwithstanding, I will consult his Mysterium Paschale for my purposes: first of all, because I am analyzing Balthasar's own work; and second, because the ideas present in this work can also be found in other places in Balthasar' vast theological ouevre. I would argue that his theology has not fundamentally changed since he wrote this work.*

No such argument followed.

"Well lack-a-day," we wailed. "Under what circumstances would you make this argument? Because it seems to us that when you are debating the explicit self-representation of your subject himself, you have the perfect opportunity. Not to mention the obligation. And if you aren't going to make the argument now, buddy, you probably won't ever make it. So why pretend?"

We certainly don't mind examining any and all of an author's published works. The guy did publish them, after all. But to make the somewhat bold claim that the author in question doesn't know what he is talking about, and not follow that claim up with some evidence, strikes us as on the cheap side. Or so we would argue, did we not think that the expression "I would argue" were an execrable bit of cant which should be sliced entire out of the English language, and especially out of academic writing.

Pardon our lapse into irritable pedantry, if indeed there is any other kind, but for many years now, the expression "I would argue" has stuck in our craw. We first heard it, or anyway noticed its use in a formal context, from a teaching assistant in seminary. He was a doctoral candidate in Old Testament, a pleasant enough guy, but one who did not strike us as likely to set the academy afire. We thought at once, and continue to think, that this expression is a cheap academic trick, used to give improbable claims the sheen of probability.

We are not master grammarians, but we take this to to be what is sometimes called the unreal conditional. As we understand it, the form properly requires a protasis, a preliminary "if" clause, which is implicit in its use as jargon: "If I had the time and inclination, I would argue that you are full of bollocks." That sort of thing. Despite the lack of a protasis, there's nothing grammatically wrong about the phrase, mind you. Our concern isn't about grammar but meaning. Being unreal -- counterfactual -- this form presumes that the conditions do not exist. So "I would argue," in any sort of supposedly reasoned discourse, seems to imply that the speaker is prepared to make a case, but in fact is used to avoid making the case in question.

In other words, it is a bluff. It is a sign of intellectual laziness, on the part both of writers who use it and of readers who do not demand demonstrations. So call their bluff! When people from whom we expect better try to brush aside those details in which the Devil is known to hide, let us shine a bit of light into the recesses. When they say, in that cavalier fashion, "I would argue," let us ask them when and -- more to the point -- how they would argue. And until then, let us not be quick to believe them

________________________________________________________

*Steffen Lossel, "A Plain Account of Christian Salvation," Pro Ecclesa 13:2, Spring 2004, 150n. We emphasize the fact that, despite our crankiness about a footnote, this is an otherwise excellent essay.

Sctatch That Last Post

Well, maybe not scratch, exactly. But, mere moments after writing about how America will eventually need to rein in military spending along with all the other kinds, which is still true, we stumbled across the video below, courtesy of Danger Room. It reminded us of how much we really love exotic weapons systems. Bottom line: the Navy actually has a laser weapon. A working laser weapon that can burn up a Zodiac.

Hey, Somali pirates. You ready for us to go all Captain Kirk on you?

The Eagle, Uh, Let's Say "Sits"

Just to keep it clean. Add a letter, though, and you have the age-old military slang for payday. We imagine other federal employees also use the phrase from time to time. And the good news is that they can use it again on the fifteenth of this month, because the government shutdown has been averted.

We call this "good news" with some trepidation. It is good because it means that the decent and hard-working people who actually run things like the State Department, the Army and -- also important come the 15th -- the IRS can feed their families this month. It is also good, we suppose, because it spares the US, and especially its two governing political parties, some embarrassment. But then again, we're not sure that our parties deserve to be spared any embarrassment.

It's hard to know just what has been going on during these eleventh-hour negotiations. In this Times article, Harry Reid denies that things went to the last minute for the sake of drama; but "allies" of John Boehner accuse him of doing just that. Once the negotiations got to within a couple of billion dollars -- chicken feed at this level -- Reid declared that any deal was being held up by Republican intransigence on the social-policy riders; Boehner swore that "there is only one reason we don't have an agreement yet, and that is spending." Who is lying? Your guess is as good as ours.

But here's the scary-as-heck bottom line: it doesn't really matter. By which we do not mean that the truth doesn't matter -- it always does -- but rather that, at least apart from the social policy questions, this agreement doesn't matter. Because they are cutting $38 billion. Out of a $3.7 trillion budget proposal. As a reminder to the math-impaired, that is just over one percent of the total.

Yes, folks. Our fearless leaders were going to embarrass the nation, and impair its operations, for the sake of a few days worth of operating expenses. They are idiots.

Sure, the Republicans were asking for closer to $61 billion in cuts, so maybe a week.

This is nonsense. The 2008 budget deficit was $455 billion, and -- because a lot of our actual spending is outside the formal budget -- the national debt increased by $1,o17 billion. Just to break even, we need to close a trillion-plus dollar gap. Instead, our leaders are threatening to shut down the government over a few percents of that. The Economist has been all over this lately, referring to both the White House and Congressional budget proposals as "risible" and "mendacious." (Also, of the Republicans in particular, "a joke, and a cruel one.")

And here's something else the Economist said, almost in passing, a few weeks back: some of those cuts will have to come from the military. Not all, mind you. Realistically, not even most. The world is not, to put it mildly, a safe place. But to hear politicians talk (and especially the Republican ones), you would think we were still living in an age when we could afford to just give the brass a free pass. Or when it made sense to spend, as we do now, roughly as much on defense than every other nation in the world combined. (Off a GDP of roughly one-fifth of the world.) As the Atlantic put it recently, commenting on the trillion-dollar F-35 fighter plane program, even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a champion of the aircraft, voiced his frustration: "The culture of endless money that has taken hold must be replaced by a culture of restraint."

The facts are these. Officially, military spending is about 20% of the federal budget. But that figure does not include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been paid for with special appropriations. Nor does it include veterans' health benefits and retirement, which are generous by most standards. Add it all up, and the War Resters' League (okay, not the most objective resource) estimates that 54% of our actual income taxes go to the military, both past and present. We at the Egg love and honor those guys, but ... come on. Fifty-four percent?

So, huzzah. We saved ourselves the equivalent of a few days' expenses. If we'd saved every penny that any of these heroes asked for, it would have amounted to almost exactly the cost of our last aircraft carrier -- the one we named for George Bush.

We Do It Oooooourrrr Way

In matters of worship, our habitual preference here at the Egg is for signs and symbols which are shared across ecumenical subdivisions, especially so when those things have the imprimatur of a long or noteworthy tradition. So, for example, we prefer alb to talar, weekly to occasional Eucharist, and a chalice to those despicable shot-glasses.

We take no position on yeast, as it seems that there are perfectly good arguments (and histories) on both sides.

And as readers who put up with our occasional rant about worship have probably gathered, we find that Lutheran worship, for all its wonderful-and-wretched diversity of practice, has generally gravitated toward the preservation (or, at least, restoration) of the central -- and ecumenical -- symbols. Especially since the Common Service, and comparable restorative gestures among the European churches, our worship life has tended away from sectarian distinctiveness. This is a very good thing.

But it leaves us wondering: What, in the conduct of worship and especially of the Mass, is distinctively Lutheran? What is it that, if you were to walk into a strange church on Sunday, would identify it for you as a community loyal to the Augsburg Confession? Beyond the frequent singing of A Mighty Fortress, we mean.

Our first thought was the Brief Order, but its is close enough to the Roman penitential rite, at least in structure. Here were our first thoughts on the subject:

• The Kyrie. And Greco-Latinizing generally. Ever since the Service Book and Hymnal, many of us have used a "kyrie" based loosely on the offertory ektene in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. This is one of the numerous eastward tips of the hat (like the Eucharistic prayer beginning "Holy art thou ..." and the Vespers litany) made by Luther D. Reed and Eugene Brand, and there is nothing inherently wrong with any of them. But they do seem odd in a Western service. Incidentally, our parish has been using the Latin Kyrie from With One Voice and found it quite satisfactory.
• Singing the Nunc dimittis after communion. Most people sing it at Vespers or Compline.
• Historically, the very strange prohibition against self-communion by pastors. Although not presently on the books, at least in the ELCA, it has a long, long history among Lutherans. And, as Toivo Harjunpaa make clear, among absolutely nobody else. This must be one of the weirdest, dumbest and least ecumenical innovations ever to take root in the Reformation traditions. It is right up there with, and may well surpass, south-facing celebration in Anglicanism.

There are surely some other distinctives, but none come immediately to mind. We don't mean hymns, or homiletical emphases. We mean structural elements, especially of the Sunday service. Any thoughts, readers?