Doctrine versus Miracle

Padre Vaillant comes out with some good ones:

Doctrine is well enough for the wise, Jean; but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.

Father Joseph Vaillant in Willa Cather's Death Comes to the Archbishop is talking about the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Jean is the bishop.  I think this quote is a meditation.  I changed it to suit my thoughts and feelings: "Doctrine is well enough for the scholarly, but the miracle is something to hold in your heart."  

A Priest's Day

Here is the book review I promised on Monday, for Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather.  She really gets into the nitty-gritty and better, the soul, of a priest.  It's hard to believe that she isn't Catholic.  How could she write so emphatically about the life of Jean Marie Latour, the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico?

Her story starts at the Bishops' arrival in America.  It ends at his deathbed.  In between, we meet all walks of life, all religions, all the blessings and hardships.  The physical landscape of the country is described to contrast and sometimes to explain the land's inhabitants.  The difficulties of a mission are insurmountable but a start has to begin.  Even the priest's innermost feelings of loneliness, despair, hopes, etc. are described.

I recommend this book to all.  Much of the duties and liturgical ceremonies are still in practice, so it's not outdated.   Good read.

It's the Culture

What's the difference between then and now?  Most think technological differences, but I contend it's cultural differences.  And there lies the devil.

I am reading or rereading (I can't believe I haven't read this before.) Willa Cather's Death Comes for The Archbishop.  I find the life of our early Catholic missionaries fascinating, heroic and inspiring.e

The Archbishop asks her friend, his classmate, his best priest, to be his vicar.  He wanted Father Vaillant to help him administer to the diocese.  Father Vaillant argued against this proposal, vehemently.  He wanted to "hunt for lost Catholics."

...I want to go from house to house...They are full of devotion and faith and it has nothing to feed upon but the most mistaken superstitions.  They remember their prayers wrong...They are like seeds, full of germination but with no moisture...

I am not writing a book review, now, because I'm only halfway through the book.  But how the character, Father Vaillant describes his people reminded me of people today.  They don't remember right.  They have nothing to feed upon BUT it's by choice, not circumstances.  Today's Catholics don't want devotions; they choice to distance itself from religion.  What's the difference?

Both people are starved for faith, but today's people choose not to partake of the feast set before them.