{"id":260,"date":"2012-06-28T15:50:27","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T21:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/?p=260"},"modified":"2016-05-02T11:23:11","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:23:11","slug":"anticipating-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2012\/06\/anticipating-heaven.html","title":{"rendered":"Anticipating Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After listening to (and participating in, God help me) the dissonant chorus of response to this morning\u2019s Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act for 6 hours, I need to go Somewhere Completely Else. It\u2019s my contention\u2014though I\u2019ve been called today, so far, morally reprehensible, ignorant, a socialist, and a cricket(!) for holding to it\u2014that the ship of state and the barque of Peter are in no worse state now than before the decision came down, and that Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, was correct in returning this issue to the electorate. The USCCB\u2019s official statement<\/a><\/strong> says all there is to say, but if your dudgeon needs cranking up any higher, you will find more support for it all over the netz than you can ever keep up with. Start here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Me, I\u2019m argued out. And truly weary of explaining, again and again and again, that the individual mandate is not the HHS mandate. And now, that the individual mandate itself is not a tax (though the Court\u2019s majority found that only Congress\u2019s power to levy taxes could render the mandate constitutional). Mandate, schmandate. It\u2019s hard to believe that until recently I just thought a mandate was something I hadn\u2019t had one of in a very, very long time.<\/p>\n

So, on National Federation of Independent Business et al. v<\/em> Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services et al., all I can give you is two, uh, mandates: (1) Don\u2019t despair. It\u2019s what the devil lives for. (2) Don\u2019t go all Crusader on the world\u2019s ass, OK? Irresponsible talk like this<\/a><\/strong> serves no good. Dying a martyr\u2019s death is one thing, but dying in a persecution you\u2019ve deliberately incited with this kind of rabble-rousing is not saintly. It\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Now on to that Somewhere Completely Else, which is St Peter\u2019s Basilica for tomorrow morning\u2019s Papal Mass on the patronal Feast of Sts Peter and Paul. I had the privilege of attending that Mass two years ago when Archbishop Schnurr received the pallium, and though it was awe-inspiring it was also a horrific rugby scrum cum<\/em> death-by-fan-stampede rock concert cum<\/em> being delayed overnight in O\u2019Hare by a blizzard and trying to find somewhere to sleep nightmare. So I never expected to want to go back.<\/p>\n

But then I learned<\/a><\/strong> that at tomorrow\u2019s Mass, the Anglican Choir of Westminster Abbey will, in an historic first, join the Sistine Chapel Choir to make music in sweet harmony. I tell you in all sincerity that I would happily brave the prospect of being run over yet again by a flying wedge of Vatican ninja nuns (man, you think the LCWR crowd is dangerous? try standing between these little habited Jawas and the chance to snap an iPhone photo of the tip of His Holiness\u2019s miter passing by!) to be present when the best of my two liturgical worlds collide.<\/p>\n

The Sistine Chapel Choir was the one thread of saving grace in the chaos of that Mass two years ago. I had not yet heard the conscious call to reversion that I would receive at Assisi a couple of days later, but I had tears in my eyes when I realized that I was singing along with the choir\u2019s soaring chant of the Credo<\/em>, and every word of the Latin, every note of the setting, was right there on my tongue from my days in the Immaculate Heart of Mary Grammar School choir 50 years before. (I think this is why I have had so little trouble with the Third Edition of the Roman Missal\u2019s reversion to \u201cconsubstantial\u201d: consubstantialem Patri<\/em> is mother\u2019s milk to me.)<\/p>\n

But the Sistine Chapel Choir is not the average American Catholic liturgical music experience. Since my reversion, I have been conscious of how much I miss the power and grace and\u2014OK, sue me\u2014quality<\/em> of the music that was part of my weekly worship experience at St Paul\u2019s Episcopal Church in Dayton. I have enough of the 60s in me to love many of the best contemporary Catholic hymns, but they just don\u2019t have the same soul-stirring effect as listening to a Parry anthem or singing \u201cThe King of Love my shepherd is\u201d or \u201cGuide me, O thou great Redeemer.\u201d Even when these Anglican standards work their way into Catholic liturgies, as they occasionally do, the singing is spotty, the accompaniment too lugubriously slow or thinly electronic, and all the best verses are left out. (And yes\u2014perverse and foolish oft I stray<\/em>\u2014as an Episcopalian I used to whine about having to sing all the verses all the time.) I attended a friend\u2019s mother\u2019s funeral on Tuesday\u2014mom was Catholic, friend Episcopalian and chose the hymns, which were painfully destroyed by the Catholic organist and off-key cantor\u2014and had to make a quiet Act of Contrition for how badly I grieved the missing descant on \u201cLift High the Cross.\u201d<\/p>\n

I usually soothe my jones for Anglican hymnody with CDs of the Kings College Choir and repeated viewings of royal weddings and funerals, but I can\u2019t help but long for the celestial beauty that will be echoing through St Peter\u2019s tomorrow. The invitation to the Westminster Abbey Choir comes, we are told, as \u201ca symbol of Christian harmony after centuries of discord.\u201d After a morning of discord that seemed to last centuries, I think that tomorrow\u2019s Christian harmony would be more than symbolic. It would be anticipating heaven, where even the ninja nuns will be stunned into stillness by the singing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After listening to (and participating in, God help me) the dissonant chorus of response to this morning\u2019s Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act for 6 hours, I need to go Somewhere Completely Else. It\u2019s my contention\u2014though I\u2019ve been called today, so far, morally reprehensible, ignorant, a socialist, and a cricket(!) for holding to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[84,88,81,86,85,87],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholicism","tag-aca","tag-feast-of-sts-peter-and-paul","tag-scotus","tag-sistine-chapel-choir","tag-st-peters-basilica","tag-westminster-abbey-choir"],"yoast_head":"\nAnticipating Heaven<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After listening to (and participating in, God help me) the dissonant chorus of response to this morning's Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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