Questions. . .
1). What's the deal with kissing a priest's hands?
As demonstration of respect and reverence for the priesthood some people will kiss a priest's hands rather than give him the more customary handshake. There is nothing weird or wrong about doing this. Kissing hands is largely a custom limited to historically Catholics countries like Italy, Poland, Mexico, etc. When I've celebrated Mass in Hispanic parishes, many of the older parishioners will greet me at the door with a hand kiss. The first time this happened I was a little surprised! It is quite humbling. Priests in the U.S. do not have the mystery surrounding them that they do in other parts of the world. This is both good and bad. It's good b/c too often "mystery" can go to the priest's head and he begins to think of himself as the object of reverence. It's bad b/c the priesthood is not a function but a vocation, not a job/career but an identity. Losing the mystery of the priesthood tends to reduce the priesthood to just another category of parochial employee. It seems to me that hand kissing is perfectly acceptable so long as both the Kissed and the Kisser know that it is the priesthood being reverenced and not the priest. Perhaps the best test of this would be to ask yourself (the Kisser): would I kiss the hands of a priest I do not respect/like as a person? If the answer is no, then I would say you should probably refrain. . .of course, kissing his hands may be a way for you to overcome your aversion to him. But I'm not sure this is the best motivation. I would hope that a priest who has his hands kissed would receive this sign of reverence humbly and not try to discourage it. By and large, I think American, Canadian, and western European priests would be uncomfortable with it. But, properly understood, there's really no reason to be. I understand that the practice is more common in the eastern churches, but my knowledge of eastern Christians customs is very limited.
2). Is it ever OK to lie?
I get this question a lot. Most of the time people are wanting to know if it is OK to lie in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings, or spare them some sort of "hard truth." Aquinas provides the classical Catholic analysis of the question. He teaches that lying is always a sin. As a sin, lying is subject to the same moral evaluation that we afford other sins. Is the object of the act evil? Is the act itself freely willed? Is the act intended? As moral agents we are constantly seeking the Good. Everything we do we do to achieve this end--goodness. Frequently, we are mistaken about whether or not a particular act takes us closer to the Good. Sometimes, we know this act will not get us closer. In the case of lying, we must know that we are speaking a falsehood (object). We must be competent to will ourselves to speak the falsehood (i.e. free, not mentally or emotionally incapacitated). And we must intend to deceive by freely willing to speak the falsehood. All three conditions must be met in order for there to be a sin committed when speaking a falsehood. Circumstances can mitigate the degree of culpability (guilt) for the sin. The classic example is lying to the Nazis about the Jews you have hidden in your basement. Yes, it is a sin to lie to the Nazis and save the lives of the Jews you have hidden. Your guilt here is mitigated by duress. Some would argue that you are not free. But this is a dangerous interpretation of Aquinas' conditions b/c just about any situation where you want to spare someone hurt could be considered a limit on freedom. So, lying is never OK. But there are degrees of culpability in different circumstances.
3). In the post below, "Sacrificial service vs. being a doormat," I tried to distinguish the difference between serving others in a truly Christian fashion and simply allowing others to abuse your good will. Ultimately, this distinction is going to be lived out in the individual conscience of the servant: am I serving for the greater glory of God, or am I serving for some other, lesser reason? Commenters noted that women are often culturally conditioned to feel guilty when they fail to serve "as they ought." Not being a woman, I'll have to assume that this is true. Guilt serves an important role in our conscience. Understood in a healthy way, guilt alerts us to possible violations of conscience. When guilt is imposed from an outside force (culture, spouses, etc.), it limits freedom and becomes coercive. I can't speak to individual cases without spending a lot of time on the details involved, but generally speaking, our Christian service must be freely given--without any kind of coercion--in order for it to be sacrificial service. Think of the difference between making a donation and paying a tax. Who feels good about writing the IRS a check? Who doesn't feel good about writing a check for a favorite charity? The difference is the degree of freedom involved. If you know that you are "serving" out of a sense of imposed guilt, then I would say that you are not serving freely. Knowing that you are serving out of guilt is the tricky part. That requires some spiritual direction. It's not something that I can tease out in general terms.
4). What's the big deal with the new English translations of the Mass? Why the constant delay?
In my experience, people rarely argue over the Real Issue at Hand. We tend to choose what I'll call "ciphers," or symbols that allow us to reduce a larger problem into smaller, manageable bits. At stake in the Liturgy Wars is the soul of the Church. Who are we? What are we about? It's a question of Catholic identity in this postmodern age. But the problem of Catholic identity is cultural, social, economic, religious, legal, etc. In other words, it's HUGE. And as such, largely unmanageable. So, we pick smaller battles to fight the larger war. The Translation Battles have to do with what sort of language will use to pray together. Both sides of the battle know that language shapes attitudes and influences beliefs. Both sides know that the kind of language we use in prayer together shapes our view of God and our relationship to Him. Some will go so far as to say that language-use is the only reality we have direct contact with. Control language-use, control reality. This is the philosophical base for the P.C. movement, i.e., if we can change how people speak, we can change the reality they live in. The Translation Battle is really about how will we come to understand ourselves as Catholics in the next few decades. One side wants us to maintain a "marketplace diction" so as to emphasize your communal nature as a Church. The point of this language is to bring God down to us and have us share together in His immanent presence. The other side wants us to use a more "sacred diction" so as to emphasize the transcendence of God beyond His creation and elevate us up to Him. Both sides have very distinct ideas about what counts as a language of prayer. The recently approved translations favor the "sacred diction" side of the battle. This side will point out that the "marketplace diction" of the last 30 years has desacralized the liturgy to the point where Mass is really nothing more than a sort of community picnic to which God is invited but whose presence is not really all that important. Mass is about us. The other side argues that the "sacred diction" will alienate Catholics from their everyday experience of God, leaving them in a fog of complicated concepts and tortured syntax. Faithful translations of Latin prayers introduces a vaguely foreign feel into the English and will make people feel spiritually queasy. This side fears that "sacred diction" is a way of reimposing an unhealthy distinction between priestly prayer and the ordinary prayer of the people. It's important here, I think, to understand that these differences are not merely a matter of taste. The issues are very real and the concerns are legitimate. Though I favor "sacred diction," there is a danger of the Mass becoming incomprehensible to the average Catholic. Mass is about God. But prayer doesn't change God. It changes us. And for it to do so, we must be able to understand it. Sacred language can be clear, beautiful, and transcendent without being unnecessarily complex. We'll have to wait and see how the new text actually works. The delay? Well, Vatican Two mandated that each bishops' conference is responsible for the translations in its major language. Once a translation is done, it goes to the Vatican for approval. The Vatican can send it back with requests for corrections. This is an arduous process requiring years of hard work and negotiation. As we have seen, it only takes a handful of bishops to gum up the works! We've been waiting for an approved English translation of the ordination rite for almost 25 years now.
More later. . .
