Silent Music

In a strange twist of events, I've moved to Indianapolis to teach a one room high-school, and I live in the basement of my employer's home. Since, on the advice of St. Thomas to his Brother John, you must "love to be in your room frequently, if you wish to be led to the wine cellar," I must make my new room lovable. How to do it, and how to unlock the door to the wine cellar? Well, I consider the chief circumstance: but for the occasional rumble of household machines, the basement of the Brill family is beautifully quiet. I figured the time was right to stop playing recorded music, a thing which has grown to dominate my various physical homes and even my mental order. I would devote my room to true spiritual silence. But alas for the flesh! I found after just a day I couldn't stand the vacancy.

So I bethought to myself, "self, wither mayest thou look for a music in concorde with the spirit of silence?" Then I remembered the plainchant of Gregory the Great which filled the monasteries of Western Europe. And indeed, after enjoying a few days of chant, testing whether I might hold to the firm principle of silence with the aid of this ancient artifact, I found that it had no addictive power, and yet it played a marvelous peace upon my soul. So I settled that chant, a capella developments of it as but no more complex than the music of Palestrina, and absolute quiet would compose the auditory architecture of my room.

In this experiment, I have discovered two curious properties of plainchant:
1) Through rooms and floors which are generally quiet, the music carries a clear and satisfactory sound much further than does other music at a similar volume. In other words, one never knows discomfort when listening to the distant sound of chant. But the distant sound of any other music drives me mad. I can't ignore it completely, but I can't piece it together either.
2) Plainchant is retiring. It hides in the background of almost any other noise.

At least two interesting conclusions follow.
1) Plainchant requires a special place, set apart for its purposes. A man may feast on the rewards of plainchant only if he cultivates his home diligently and thoughtfully.
2) Plainchant is fundamentally at odds with a world of machines.

The central function of plainchant is, of course, worship, which is the heir of the mind of God and the elder brother of philosophical contemplation. It is not clear to me whether the background playing of plainchant, however well it orders the mind in the habit of contemplation, contributes anything to a habit of worshipfulness, but it seems possible, since contemplation is so closely related to worship. And I assert the possibility that an engineered pattern of silence irrigates a place with a sanctifying grace. All men everywhere have found this. The Orient has found this, and practised it with fervour (though the Buddhists take this practice too far, and so commit both idolatry and intellectual error.) Since Christians inherit the special blessing of God, let them all the more so labour to engineer their homes and their churches with silence, let them pray that the Holy Spirit may irrigate with his grace, and let them look for aid in their labours to the singers of silent music.

And while they're at it, smash the machines.

Belloc Wednesday - The Shotgun Approach to European History

From Belloc's Europe and the Faith, New York, The Paulist Press, 1930.
The book has a motto appended: 'sine auctoritate nulla vita'
The introductory chapter is entitled 'The Catholic Conscience of History'
The introductory paragraph made me laugh in admiration:

"I say the Catholic "conscience" of history - I say "conscience" - that is, an intimate knowledge through identity: the intuition of a thing which is one with the knower - I do not say "The Catholic Aspect of History." This talk of "aspects" is modern and therefore part of a decline: it is false, and therefore ephemeral: I will not stoop to it. I will rather do homage to truth and say that there is no such thing as a Catholic "aspect" of European history. There is a Protestant aspect, a Jewish aspect, a Mohammedan aspect, a Japanese aspect, and so forth. For all of these look on Europe from without. The Catholic sees Europe from within. There is no more a Catholic "aspect" of European history than there is a man's "aspect" of himself.

[But I must carry on recording his bold and glorious riposte]

Sophistry does indeed pretend that there is even a man's "aspect" of himself. In nothing does false philosophy prove itself more false. For a man's way of perceiving himself (when he does so honestly and afer a cleansing examination of his mind) is in line with his Creator's, and therefore with reality: he sees from within.

Let me pursue this metaphor. Man has in him conscience, which is the voice of God. Not only des he know by this that the outer world is real, but also that his own personality is real.

When a man, although flattered by the voice of another, yet says within himself, "I am a mean fellow," he has hold of reality. When a man, though maligned of the world, says to himself of himself, "My purpose was just," he has hold of reality. He knows himself, for he is himself. A man does not know an infinite amount about himself. But the finite amount he does know is all in the map; it is all part of what is really there. What he does not know about himself would, did he know it, fit in with what he does know about himself. There are indeed "aspects" of a man for all others except these two, himself and God Who made him. These two, when they regard him, see him as he is; all other minds have their several views of him; and these indeed are "aspects," each of which is false, while all differ. But a man's view of himself is not an "aspect:" it is a comprehension.

Now then, so it is with us who are of the Faith and the great story of Europe. A Catholic as he reads that story does not grope at it from without, he understands it from within. He cannot understand it altogether because he is a finite being; but he is also that which he has to understand. The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith."

A Latin Mass

After reading John Senior's Restoration of Christian Culture this morning, where he insists that only communities and persons dedicated to work, prayer, and self-sacrifice will effect the named restoration, and defends his claim through excerpts mostly of the writings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, I thought it would be fitting to worship this Sunday in the old way. I found a High Latin mass being celebrated in east Arlington. Until they raise enough money for a church of their own, they are borrowing the sanctuary of a Discalced Carmelite nunnery - so that was perfect, since SS. Teresa and John were the male and female reformers of the Carmelites in the 16th century.

The nunnery is off the beaten track, up a small drive on the edge of an old stretch of development along a large road that used to be a major highway into Dallas. It is absolutely serene, almost a paradise in the midst of this humid sparse climate, surrounded like a fortification by perfectly kept, tightly aligned, deepbrown wooden stakes, and guarded by a large gate with an angel perched on each white pillar. The gardens are full of statuary and sweet-smelling trees. The sanctuary is just as carefully and beautifully designed. There is nothing there of industrial life. There are modern materials, but all is put to the service of a true architecture; itself crafted better to serve the cloistered contemplative vocation of the women who spend their lives there.

The priest gave a discursive homily on the Catholic doctrines on indulgences. Some of it very strange, and I wonder whether he described it quite right, because some of it sounded as if it contradicted what little I've read in Aquinas. However, the imaginative background of the doctrines struck me as it had never done before, despite all I've supposedly learned about the body of Christ being one, and each being spiritually tied to each. There is an economy in the body of Christ, where good and evil are shared and felt between one Christian and another, not only in a general, formless sense which only has meaning in devotional rhetoric, but in a concrete sense. The disorder left on the soul by sin, even after repentance and forgiveness, calls out for redress. Scars must be healed. It is possible, according to these doctrines, that God has granted that the good work of one is effective to heal not only his own scars, but the scars of another, and that the recipient of such love is himself enabled to raise up his own prayers for the first. In the midst of this economy, the pope is able to open the storehouses of Christ's grace at his discretion, to the end that certain souls are blessed, and also that the whole community of the church is spurred to greater devotion. The church, in this light, is a spiritual princedom.

What most lifted my spirit, apart from the beautiful voices of the male choir and the people all singing the latin prayers, was the LIFE. Half the communicants must have been under the age of twenty-five, and hardly a missal in sight, they all knew the ancient words. Such life has many taproots, one of which is a sound theology of the family, a subject perhaps fitting for a future post....