Fr. Martin Chase, S.J., Skaldic Jesuit

A Jesuit Scholar Looks Between the Lines
Martin Chase, S.J., is an expert in skaldic poetry.
By Janet Sassi

The first thing one notices inside the Dealy Hall office of Martin Chase, S.J., Ph.D., are tiny squares of refracted light dancing on the walls, spectral reflections filtered through a small, pear-shaped prism hanging from a string in his window.

“It was a gift from my mother,” Father Chase says, “on the day that I took my vows.”

The symbolism attached to his mother’s gift, which is reflective and also multifaceted, turned out to be a good match. Father Chase, an assistant professor of English, loves the English language, whether it is “Old, Middle or Modern,” and teaching it is his primary passion. But, come summer, Father Chase will head to Iceland and Denmark as part of grant-funded research project to pursue another passion: the scholarly study of skaldic poetry.

Skaldic poetry is Old Norse and Scandinavian verse written by the skalds, or court poets, from the days of the Vikings through the 14th century. The skalds were employed by courts and kings to memorialize their achievements through oral and, later, written rhyme. Only a modest amount of the poetry exists, and Father Chase is one of a few dozen scholars working on compiling a new edition and translation of all the surviving skaldic poetry, which will be published both online and as a nine-volume collection.

“Everyone asks me if I have a Scandinavian connection,” says Father Chase, who has taught English language and medieval studies courses at Fordham since 1999. “I don’t. I’m just very interested in the evolution of languages. The further back you go in history, the closer the languages are, so Old Norse is surprisingly quite similar to Old English; they’re both Germanic in origin.”

Father Chase’s fascination with studying the poetry of the skalds lies in its complexity. Because it started out as an oral tradition, skaldic poetry has a fixed count of six syllables per line and eight lines per stanza. Like Latin and German, it applies declensions, so that the subject-verb-object order in today’s English is not necessary to construct a sentence. The poetry also employs a system of alliteration that links every two lines, and, unlike most conventional poetry, it positions rhymes in the middle, not the end, of lines.

And then there are the kennings, or metaphors, which employ a great deal of obscure wordplay and require much reflection. The sea might be “the whale’s road” or “the path of a ship,” making it, Father Chase says, “notoriously difficult to interpret—and correspondingly rewarding to ponder.”

“These images can get really complicated and involved, so that sometimes even scholars debate about what is actually being talked about in the poem,” he says. “To me, each stanza is like a Chinese box that contains another, that contains another. The deeper that one delves into the stanza, the more it expands in meaning and significance.”

For the last three summers, Father Chase has been editing one of the most famous post-Christian skaldic verses (referred to as the “Norse Divine Comedy”), a 14th-century poem called Lilja. He transcribed nine of the 20 existing manuscripts. The book will be published in the winter by the Belgium-based Brepols Press. This summer, his work in Reykjavik and in Copenhagen will focus on how post-Christian, Latin poetry from England influenced the later skaldic works.

“After the conversion to Christianity in Iceland, the poetry becomes quite different; poets started breaking their older traditions,” Father Chase says. “The problem with much of the scholarly interpretation is that once people figured out how the [poetry] schemes worked, they got this idea that it had to be exactly one way, and if it was not, well, they’d alter it so that it would rhyme better.”

Although technology has made many of the manuscripts available online—a development that pleases Father Chase and many other scholars—there are times, he says, when studying the physical manuscript is necessary.

“The more I look at the original manuscripts, the more I see that the really good poets were adjusting and bending the rules, like Shakespeare would bend the meter and break the rules all over the place, which was his poetic genius,” Father Chase says. “In later [skaldic] poetry, you see a lot of influence from Latin poetry, especially from psalms and hymns and the special rhythms they used.”

He hopes that his rhythmic scavenger hunt through the manuscripts will yield a better understanding of how meter evolved in the post-conversion poetry, and, possibly, uncover any modern biases in the translations.

The intellectual challenge of working with such an esoteric form of poetry is rewarding, he says, but the poetry also sheds light on more universal questions. To Father Chase, who is working with a faculty committee revising the University’s core curriculum, all poetry reveals a part of what it means to be human.

“Obviously students need to know concrete things, like math and the sciences,” he says. “But I think that humanities in general are really important to study because they make us humane, and any kind of poetry, even skaldic poetry, deals with transcendence. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare.”

Father Chase, who converted to Catholicism and who last fall celebrated his 25th anniversary in the Society of Jesus, is convinced that there is a spiritual dimension to the study of poetry.

“I am interested, as a priest, that people realize there is more than meets the eye, more than what’s material—that they have an inner life and so does everyone else,” he says. “If one can respect that, one can grow.”


Links
Original article (here)
Skaldic Poetry (here) and (here)

America Magazine, "Gets the thumbs down" From CatholicCulture.com

Warning, Warning, Danger Will Robinson!

America, the National Catholic Weekly

DESCRIPTION
This is the official home page of America, a weekly "Catholic" magazine published by the Jesuits. It contains news, analysis, opinion, commentary on the Sunday Scripture readings, and reviews of books, films, and TV. America Press, Inc., the publisher of America magazine, also sponsors a Catholic book of the month club specializing in theology and spirituality.
The site itself contains selected articles from the current issue and a complete archive of past issues. There are many articles on this site, and many of them should be read only with extreme caution. Some of the authors and material directly oppose or undermine the Church's teachings and authority.

STRENGTHS
None Reported.
WEAKNESSES·
Example(s)Many articles which directly undermine the Church's authority (Fidelity)
Example(s)Questionable Book of the Month Club selections (Fidelity)
Example(s)Links to New Age retreats (Fidelity)

MORE INFORMATION

Website Established: 01/01/98
America Press, Inc.
106 West 56th Street
New York, NY 10019-3803
USA
212-581-4640
212- 399-3596 (fax)
webmaster@americamagazine.org


Link
Original article (here)

Lukas Niederberger, Former Swiss Cheese Jesuit

"New-Age" (ex) Jesuit-priest Lukas Niederberger a cheesy Swiss "Mass" with plenty of holes.
12. Juli 2007, 11:33 A cheesy Swiss "Mass"
Switzerland (kath.net/http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com)

Lukas Niederberger a priest who just left the Jesuit order and the priesthood - he'd been running New age seminars at a Catholic "learning annex" In an interview, Niederberger talked about the motivation behind his leaving the order and the priesthood: a woman and a "move to the right" within the Church. He was not planning a wedding, however. He apparently still has his job at the "Catholic" institute. He also said that the Church was "massively moving back in time". As an example he stated the protests regarding a Jesuit "Mass" with all kinds of silliness.

Here some details of said "Mass". The final vows of Jesuit Franz-Xaver Hiestand were the reason for a festive Mass in Lucerne, featuring about a dozen Jesuits and the Provincial of the Swiss Jesuits. Many, shall we say, "irregularities" occurred. They altered the Credo, for example, and in rather pitiful manner at that. Here their terribly meaningful statement of faith:

We believe in God who walks with us on all paths. Who carries us when our feet get tired. Who takes us by the hand when thorns constrict us.We believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, who lived and suffered for us. Who died and rose for us. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the voice within us which becomes loud when we lose sight of God's trace. Which points us to the door in the wall. We believe in the holy Catholic Church, in the forgiveness of sins, in peace on Earth, for which to work makes sense and in a fulfillment of life beyond our life.

The Eucharistic prayer was modified, too - Oscar Romero was named among the saints along with liberation theologian Rutilio Grande, S.J.. The people in charge of the Jesuit church announced that from now on they'd have a "meditative Eucharistic celebration" that will, from time to time, also contain modern and "experimental" passages.

Link to the original Swiss (kath.net/http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com) article (here)

"Leave The Guitar At Home!" Say's Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J.

"Motu Proprio" is Latin for "many posts"

So said TS at the blog with the long Latin name starting with Video.

I just watched EWTN discussion of Summorum Pontificum and it was quite good. One part of it was really funny and I feel almost sorry for the person who called in.

Caller: My question is that I am a guitarist and I have been serving at the Mass for 27 odd years and I can remember the old Mass as a child. My question is how can I as a guitarist fit in in the Latin Mass.

Raymond Arroyo: Fr. Kenneth Baker I will let you take a shot at that one.

Fr. Baker: I can say well get a nice missal with Latin on one side and English on the other and attend it, but don't bring your guitar. Because a guitar is not a liturgical instrument for the Traditional Latin Mass. It's the organ or various kinds of musicians. The guitar doesn't fit into that. It's not part of the ritual. I think it is important to realize that the Mass of Blessed John XXIII it's all set exactly how it is suppose to be done. That is people have to learn that when they receive Communion that they have to kneel to receive Communion, they have to receive Communion on the tongue and things like that. There are no altar girls allowed for the Latin Mass and these are the rules and this is the Mass that has been authorized. People are so far removed from it that many of them don't realize these things and it's why it is going to take time. I think it is going to take ten years for this thing to really come back, it will start really slow. The Pope himself says most priests don't know this and they are not familiar with the liturgy, therefore it is not going to be very common to begin with. But I think it is going to grow as time goes by one of our parishioners told me that he and his wife decided last night the difference between ordinary and extraordinary that Americans like things that are extraordinary and therefore the Latin Mass will attract a lot of people because it is now considered to be extraordinary. I thought that was interesting.

Hat Tip
The Curt Jestor (here)

The Lunatic Fringe

From the Companions Website

Welcome to a unique website for former members of the Society of Jesus as well as those who share our interests. We are a group formed more than 20 years ago among individuals from the California and Oregon provinces. Presently we include members from other provinces now living on the West Coast. We meet annually on a February weekend to make and renew friendships and discuss the impact of our Jesuit lives and activities.

Now let me translate.
A group of screwball, dissident trouble makers, meddling in the Roman Catholic Church.

Links
Companions (here)

Fr. Thomas Reese S.J. "No Latin Mass For Him"

From CWN
If only St. Athanasisus had a pollster

Posted by: Diogenes - Today 8:48 AM ET USA

The ubiquitous Father Tom Reese, formerly of America, naturally has some sound-bites prepared about the motu proprio. A few highlights:

If the pope issues a Motu proprio allowing the use of the Tridentine mass without the local bishop’s permission, he is basically saying that he does not trust the pastoral judgment of the bishops.
Hmmm. You said it, Tom. I didn't.


Other than embarrassing the bishops and pastors who have opposed wider use of the Tridentine mass, the Motu proprio will probably have little effect since public opinion polls show overwhelming support for the new liturgy among Catholics.
Opinion polls. Ah. The Tridentine Mass won't win the New Hampshire primary. Enough said. By the way Father Reese thinks that this issue has "more to do with power and politics than Latin and liturgy." But I guess you knew that by now.

Links
Original article (here)

Fr. Stephen V. Sundborg, S.J., Diversity Jesuit

Fr. Sunderburg in a recent editorial spends time talking about diversity. Fr. Sunderburg just hired an Islamo-Episcopalian Priestess

Religious diversity: Can we talk?
By Stephen V. Sundborg
Special to The Times

Across America today, more and more people are learning how to talk with one another about diversity. Much of the conversation centers on gender, age and culture, as there is a recognition that it is critical for us to examine our assumptions about people who are different from us as a first step toward establishing common ground. Yet, despite the progress we have made in embracing diversity issues at the workplace, we still sidestep religious diversity.

I believe we are extraordinarily ill-prepared to talk with one another about our religious and spiritual beliefs and practices and to tell one another how they impact our actions, careers, vocations, decisions, affiliations, commitments, relationships and elections.

Our religious differences are like tectonic plates that move us toward or away from one another, causing us to grind against one another and, once in a while, build up the pressure, heat and friction that cause a volcanic eruption in our civic life.

We have seen how bipartisan citizenship has been diminished in this country by harsh political polarization, which, at root, is a religiously based polarization. Globally, we recognize that while the major wars of the 21st century have been and will be fueled by economic, political, humanitarian and cultural causes, they are ignited by religious differences. We cannot prevent war unless we learn to talk with and understand one another religiously.

Let me suggest two things that I believe keep us from publicly bridging our religious diversity, and then deal with the more thorny issue of fundamentalism.

First, we have adopted and internalized a false sense of the proper meaning of the separation of church and state in our country. Our Founding Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters — and the second half of both of those pairs are important here — created a necessary separation of church and state in our national life, not because they thought religion should not impact public life, but because they knew it would impact public life to the extent that they needed to keep any single religious persuasion from taking over or trumping all others.

Instead of envisioning a state free from religious inspiration, advocacy, motivation and commitment, they wanted a free space so that all religions and persons of religious motivation and those of none could freely and publicly bring their full selves, including their religious selves, to public debate and decision-making.

Today, a popularized, false notion of the separation of church and state in America has unfortunately led not only to polarized politics over the issue of religion in the public square but even to what I would call a separation of church and state within ourselves personally. This has led us to do the impossible of separating our public lives from our private religious depths and inspirations.

I strongly believe that we can begin to overcome this false separation of church and state, the separation in ourselves, if we begin to talk from within our religious diversity.

The second obstacle to engaging one another within our religious diversity is that most of what separates us from one another is not belief or religious practice, but the cloud of culture all religions create around themselves. There is a Catholic culture, a Protestant culture, an Anglican culture, a Jewish culture, a Muslim culture. All religions create these thick cultures from ritual, customs and tradition. They are not the religion; they are its cloud, its skirt, its exterior, not its interior.

The cultures are hard to penetrate and are often mistaken for the real thing rather than the wrapping. We need more neutral space to talk about what the heart of religion is rather than its cultural wrapping.

A more troubling thing for all of us in seeking to dialogue from our religious diversity is the issue of fundamentalism, which is found in all religions. To me, fundamentalism is getting stuck halfway down the well of your religion's deeper beliefs and aspirations. It might mean getting stuck in a passage of religious text rather than going all the way to what that text points to as the mystery of God, life, death, human reality and vocation.

Fundamentalism is a problem for religious dialogue not because it is deeply religious, but because it is "halfway religion" that cannot talk from the deeper, truer places where all religion should and can take us. On their deepest and truest levels, all religions impel and command their adherents to engage with others, love, appreciate and work with them, whatever their religion or no religion.

Is not the ultimate Catholic "fundamentalist" a Roman Catholic Priest? Words mean things and definitions are sometimes fluid editorials.

Links
Original article (here)
Islamo-Episcipalian Priestess (here)

Techno

Seattle University Hires Islomo-Episcopalian Priestess

The Rt. Rev. Vincent W. Warner, bishop of the Diocese of Olympia in Seattle, said he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim but praised Wolf’s action as a compromise.

“It’s a good way to have a time-out and provide an opportunity for Ann to continue to teach ... and at the same time take a look at her relationship both with the Episcopal church and the Christian faith and Islam,” Warner said.

Redding is scheduled to start teaching part time as a visiting assistant professor at Jesuit-run Seattle University this fall but, under Wolf’s decision, is barred from teaching, preaching or working at any Episcopal church or institution during the next year.

In a front-page article last month in The Times, she said she had been a practicing Muslim for 15 months after being profoundly moved by an introduction to Islamic prayer.

She has maintained that she did not violate any of her baptismal or ordination vows.

“Since entering Islam,” she said, “I have been, by my own estimation, a better teacher, a better preacher and a better Christian.”

Links
Original article (here)