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The Bogwash Epistles: Epistle #1

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Music: Moonlight Hall Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

My dear Bogwash,

It is indeed an interesting twist of fate, that on the eve of being assigned your human, the Patient makes a decision to embrace with renewed vigor his dormant childhood faith. It is standard policy here at the Training College to assign to our undergraduates (due to their inexperience) those humans who are generally weak in faith, so this recent development is indeed unfortunate.

But while you received the misfortune to be assigned this particular Patient, you have also been extremely fortunate to receive me as your Tutor. We have been rather short-staffed at the College recently and, as such, I have been told to instruct some of you undergraduates personally. This task is, quite frankly, beneath me…but you and I both know that Our Father Below is unaccustomed to being denied. Regardless, if you follow my expert tutelage, we will swiftly crush your Patient’s newfound devotion to the Enemy. If you do as I say and handle him rightly, we will soon have him returning to his former trajectory towards Our Father’s House Below.

In these preliminary stages of temptation you must concentrate your efforts on coming to understand the Patient. What kind of man is he? What are his weaknesses? And more importantly, is he aware of these weaknesses? The less he knows of them the better! I expect a full report in your next letter.

Although the situation is of some concern, we should not panic. Many Catholics have, at some point, renewed the practice of their faith, but ultimately lasted only for but a brief season.

Your Patient has woken up.  It is your job to gently lull him back to sleep.

Your affectionate mentor,

Professor Slubgob.

The Chronological Qu’ran

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I first encountered Islam about six years ago when I was living in London. After meeting a Muslim for the first time, I decided that I should probably become more familiar with the religion, given that it is followed by 1.6 billion people, approximately 23% of the world’s population.

In my naiveté, I decided to start reading the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam. Oddly enough, I had been given a copy of the Qur’an at my (Catholic) school’s prize-giving about ten years earlier. I dug out my copy and started reading…

I’ll admit that I found the text of Qur’an very dry and I gave up after reading it when I was only about a third of the way through. Jumping straight into the Qur’an is very difficult, particularly if you don’t know much about Islam. It would have been helpful to know, for example, that the chapters (“suwar”) are not placed in chronological order, meaning that as I read sequentially through the chapters, I was jumping between very different periods in Muhammad’s life.

quran

I’ve recently been reflecting on the subject of Islam and have concluded that the need for Christians to be familiar with this religion will only become greater with time. I’ve therefore decided to do more posts on this subject over the coming months. I have already written an introduction to Islam and the odd apologetics post, but in preparation for these upcoming articles, and for the sake of gaining credibility, I have decided to read the Qu’ran from cover-to-cover, but on this occasion I will read the chapters in chronological order.

Below you will see my reading plan, with the chapters arranged in (rough) chronological order. Discerning the exact chronology of the chapters is somewhat difficult for Muslim scholars to discern, particularly give that some chapters even contain verses from different periods. I found several different chronological orderings on the Internet, but I have chosen this one. There were other orderings I found on Christian websites, but in an attempt to limit Christian bias (which I will already bring to the text), I chose to use a chronology from a Muslim website.

My plan is to post some very brief thoughts about the chapters I read each day. I’ve also written a glossary of Islamic terms to make these easier to follow. From time to time, I’ll visit an Imam in San Diego, in order to clarify anything which I have found confusing.

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Liturgy of St. James

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St James Below is the text that we will be studying in JP2 on Thursday. It is an abridged form of the ancient Liturgy of St. James. This version of it comes from around the 4th Century.

This is the oldest Eucharistic liturgy still in use today. It was also the blueprint used for the Liturgy of St. Basil and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, both of which are regularly used among Byzantine Catholics and Eastern Orthodox today. 

Petitions

Priest: Peace be with you.

People: And with your spirit.

Priest: The Lord bless us all, and sanctify us for the…celebration of the divine and pure mysteries…  Amen.

Deacon: In peace let us pray to the Lord. For the peace that is from on high, and for God’s love to man, and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord. For peace in the whole world, for the unity of all the holy churches of God, let us pray to the Lord. For the remission of our sins, and forgiveness of our transgressions, and for our deliverance from all tribulation, wrath, … and distress…, let us pray to the Lord.

Singers: Holy God, holy mighty, holy immortal, have mercy upon us.

Priest: O compassionate and merciful, patient, gracious, and true God…hear us. Deliver us from every temptation of the devil and man… For we are unable to overcome what is opposed to us. But you are able, Lord, to save us… Because you are holy, Lord our God, … we send up the praise and the thrice-holy hymn to you, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and forever, and for all eternity.

People: Amen.

Priest: Peace be with you.

People: And with your spirit.

Singers: Alleluia.

[The liturgy proceeds with readings from the Old and New Testaments]

Deacon: Let us all say: Lord, have mercy.

Lord Almighty, the God of our fathers: We beseech you, hear us. For peace from on high, and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord… For the people standing and waiting for the rich and bountiful mercy that comes from you, we beseech you, be merciful and gracious.

Save your people, O Lord, and bless your inheritance. Visit your world with mercy and compassion. Exalt the horn of Christians by the power of the precious and life-giving cross. We beseech you, most merciful Lord, hear our prayer, and have mercy upon us.

People: Lord, have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

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The existence of God: The Argument From Desire

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There are many topics I’ve wanted to write about but either through lack of time or, more recently, writer’s block, I’ve never quite managed to tackle them. However, today I will begin to scratch a writing itch which I’ve had for some time. Over the next month or so, I will be publishing articles which relate to the classical proofs for the existence of God.

Argument From Desire

A few days ago, I was talking with a friend on Facebook who is a former Catholic. During our discussion, I mentioned a philosphical proof for God, known as the “Argument From Desire”. He asked me to explain it, so I wrote a brief summary of the proof and we spent a little bit of time going back and forth. So, drawing upon this conversation, I thought that this would be good topic with which to begin this series of posts on the philosophical arguments for God…

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My Country Music Confession

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I have a confession.

I like Country Music.

There, I said it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s definitely a stigma attached to Country Music. There is the perception that the music is quite hokey and that every song is about how the singer has lost his woman, his pickup truck, his favourite horse and/or dog.

A while ago, a girl whom I was rather rather sweet on, unashamedly declared that she really liked Country Music. For this, of course, I mercilessly teased her. In fact, that reminds of a joke…

Q. What happens when you play a country song backwards?
A. The guy gets his wife back, his truck back, stops drinking, and his dog comes back to life.

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The Bogwash Epistles: Introduction

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It has been well-known for some time that written exchanges between demons may, on occasion, be intercepted. A well-known collection of such communications was previously compiled and made available to the public back in the 1940’s. A new series of writings has recently come into my own possession. How this came about is not important, but I will be publishing them here over the coming months.

If you are familiar with the previously-released correspondence between Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood, you will no doubt recognize the author’s name on these new letters. They were penned by Screwtape’s “friend”, Slubgob, the head of Hell’s Training College for Demons.

In the years since the publishing of Screwtape’s letters, things in Hell have changed somewhat. Following some “anonymous” complaints about the operation of the Training College, the institution’s study program has received something of shake up. Would-be tempters are now sent “into the field” as part of their final year of training. Under the watchful eye of an experienced Tempter, the students are now assigned a “patient”, a human to tempt, in order to put into practice what they have learnt in the classroom. If a demon is successful, and secures the soul in his charge, he then qualifies for graduation and attains the sought-after rank of “Junior Tempter”.  The letters which will be published here are Slubgob’s instructions to such a trainee, the undergraduate tempter named “Bogwash”.

The collection of Screwtape’s letters was prefixed with a warning and I would like to repeat that same warning here.  Please remember that Satan has always been a liar and a deceiver. Likewise, not everything Slubgob says is true, even from his own twisted, upside-down perspective. Even demons are susceptible to self-deception and they can often be blinded by their hate of all that is good, true and beautiful.

David Bates, San Diego, October 2013.

Getting started with the Early Church Fathers

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A friend recently expressed interest in getting to know the Early Church Fathers so I said that I would put together a brief (hah!) list of resources.

I was first introduced to the Early Church Fathers by Marcellino D’Ambrosio while I was on a retreat in England. He regaled us with some of the many colourful stories from the Early Church, such as the election of St. Ambrose to Bishop of Milan. Since St. Ambrose will be my roommate’s Patron Saint when he’s received into the Church next year I’ll make sure I write about that sometime soon…

Audio Resources

This initial introduction to the Fathers by Dr. D’Ambrosio was later supplemented by the excellent lecture series given by Dr. Lawrence Feingold to the Association of Hebrew Catholics.  Dr. Feingold takes the listener through a tour of the Early Church, focussing upon the issues in that Church, such the call to martyrdom, as the relationship between faith and reason, and the Arian heresy.

Association of Hebrew Catholics

Over time, I have found several other excellent sources for lectures. The Institute of Catholic Culture has an entire section of their website dedicated to the the Early Church, with lectures concerning the Lives of the Apostolic Fathers, The Councils of the Early Church and the desert fathers.

Institute of Catholic Culture

Another excellent resource is one which I recently advertised, the St. Paul Center For Biblical Theology. The website has lot of talks available, including the lives of the Fathers and a short series on Patristics.

St. Paul Center For Biblical Theology

If you would like to get a deeper grounding in Christian history (which is, itself, the story of the Fathers), I highly recommend the extensive series of lectures by Fr. Michael Witt. If you get through the Early Church period, don’t worry! You don’t have to stop there since he also covers Church history up until the present day… 🙂

Mike Aquilina also now has a podcast.

So those are a number of audio resources, but what about books?

Websites

There are several websites which provide a handy concordance for the Fathers, such as ChurchFathers.org.

Books

Mike Aquilina has written a number of very accessible books on the subject and I would particularly recommend his book The Fathers of the Church as it gives a good, brief survey of the Patristic period. If you’re interested in the worship of the Early Church he also has a very readable book entitled The Mass of the Early Christians.

I know a lot of people were first introduced to Patristics through The Four Witnesses by Rod Bennett, which focusses just four Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, Justin and Irenaeus. Likewise, if you would like to focusses more in depth on specific Fathers, Dr. Howell has a great couple of books which focus on Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp.

Fathers of the ChurchMass of the Early ChristiansFour Witnesses

Clement  Ignatius aThe Fathers Know Best

A new excellent reference book came out recently from Jimmy Akin entitled The Fathers Know Best. It is a book which arranges the writings of the Church Fathers by topic. For example, have you ever wanted to know what the Fathers thought about contraception? Well, with Jimmy’s book you can just flip to that topic and read, in chronological order, extracts from the Fathers on that subject.

Ad Fontes!

Finally, I would invite anyone wishing to get to know the Fathers better to actually get down and read the works themselves. I have several works available on this website in my Patristics section, together with MP3 recordings of the text. If you want to see what the Fathers thought about the Gospel readings at Mass each week, I’d suggest consulting the Catena Aurea. For further reading, I would recommend the Ancient Christian Writers series. The translation is excellent and there are a good number of explanatory endnotes.

So there you go! Hopefully that wasn’t too overwhelming! Pick which way works best for you and get stuck in! Get to know your Christian family 🙂

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