The Vatican Space Program
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of the most cheerful feasts in the Church’s calendar. Because it comes in high summer, the Assumption is a harvest festival. Throughout Eastern Europe, peasant girls collect bouquets and bring them to the church for blessings on this day. In Polish villages parishes organize parades, each led by a carefully-vetted “virgin,” carrying flowers through the streets to the church. In England, people used to take their medicinal herbs in “Assumption bundles” to the church for a special blessing—the medieval equivalent of getting F.D.A. approval. This marked their belief in a quaint legend—that all flowers had lost their scent and herbs their healing powers, at Adam’s fall, only to be restored after Mary’s Assumption, when her tomb was found without her body, but full of flowers. Perhaps in honor of this legend, pious gardeners named hundreds of flowers after Our Lady. Some names, such as Ladyslippers (Our Lady’s Slippers) and Marigolds (Mary’s Gold) still survive in popular usage. Others are kept alive by enthusiasts, such the Mary Gardens movement. Most edible flowers also bear Marian names.
Medieval theologians speculated that since Mary was spared Original Sin, we can see in her fate what would have happened to each of us if man had not fallen: We’d have lived out a long, respectable life, then at the end been assumed into heaven—without a painful death, ugly decay, and a long prep baking in the divine microwave we call Purgatory. (The other theory, that we would have just kept breeding and not dying until the whole planet was as thickly peopled as Hong Kong does not bear thinking about.)
Although it does not appear in the Bible, we have evidence of belief in the Assumption of Mary dating back to the early Church: liturgies sung to commemorate it, icons depicting it, and most persuasively of all, the fact that there’s no place on earth that even claims to be Mary’s tomb. No relics of Mary’s body, real or spurious, are out there in church altars, museums, or e-bay bid rooms—unlike the countless pieces of lesser saints. This tells us something. If anyone, anywhere, had the slightest claim to knowing where Mary was buried, you can bet he would have published it to the skies—and set up a souvenir stand right beside it. It would be the most profitable pilgrimage site on earth. This very absence of lucrative tourist business surrounding the burial site of Our Lady is the most decisive argument that she wasn’t buried at all.
The Assumption is not something invented by Pope Pius XII in 1950, the year when he infallibly declared it a dogma of the Catholic Church. Nor was he introducing some pious innovation to the core of the Catholic faith, indulging the excessive piety of Marian Catholics, or even—as C.G. Jung suggested—“restoring the feminine principle to the Godhead.” No, the pope was doing something much more important: He was beating the Russians into space. (When Yuri Gegarin, the first cosmonaut in space, returned to earth, Soviet journalists were quick to ask him if he had seen Heaven or any evidence of God. His answer in the negative was widely used in Soviet anti-religious propaganda.)
Think about it. Communism was not then the quaintly rusting (if blood-stained) hulk that collapsed in 1989. Ruling more than half the world—thanks to its victory in China—and commanding the sympathies of intellectuals throughout the West, the Communist regime in the Soviet Union possessed a new arsenal of nuclear weapons, a vast technical and research apparatus, and a widely accepted claim to being the most rational political philosophy. The slogan used throughout the Soviet Union for its practice of Marxist theory was “scientific Communism.” Millions really believed that Communism, for all its flaws, marked the final liberation of man from all the superstitions and structures that had oppressed him—the crowning glory of the Western progressive tradition. As if to dramatize this superiority, the Soviet leaders were determined to lead the West in aerospace technology—to place the first satellites, and then the first men, into space. By 1950, the technical apparatus was already in place for the Soviet’s stunning 1957 Sputnik launch, which terrified Americans with the thought that Russian scientists and engineers were more advanced—and that weapons could not be far behind.
By contrast, the Church in 1950 was seen as a bulwark of reactionary politics, bizarre beliefs and backward practices, headed for the “dustbin of history.” The Church appeared as an enemy of science, a negative force holding back the progress of man towards self-development and fulfillment. (Something to do with Galileo.)
Pius XII was no idiot. In fact, he was an almost obsessive student of science. Whenever a group of beekeepers, opticians, or gynecologists held their convention in Rome—and swung by the Vatican to get an eyeful of art and a blessing—Pius wouldn’t let them out until he’d given them a learned talk about the divine significance of pollen, glaucoma, or spermacides. So Pius knew his astronomy.
He could see the progress of Soviet technology, and the preliminary steps towards space exploration. It is our considered opinion—and we’re breaking new theological ground here, so hold your breath—that Pius XII saw the Assumption as the Vatican space program.
What better way to trump the scientific pretensions of atheistic Communism than to demonstrate that the Vatican possessed a superior technology, a simpler and more elegant way to enter the heavens—and that its first pioneer in space had ventured there 1900 years before?
This interpretation of the mystery was inspired by meditation upon an image of the Assumption drawn by some well-meaning nun in the 1950s, and which appeared in an encyclopedia of kitsch: It depicted a streamlined, aerodynamic Mary shooting up from the ground, leaving vapor trails as she passed. No doubt, the art critic dryly observed, this work was an attempt to make this curious ancient doctrine understandable by connecting it to the contemporary interest in space exploration. We think that nun was onto something. And Pius XII was way ahead of his time; he beat the Sputnik program by seven years!
CELEBRATE: To mark this new way of seeing the mystery of Mary’s Assumption, we suggest you throw a NASA-themed party on the feast day. Combine some of the traditional trappings and treats of this summer holiday with the sleek, freeze-dried nutriments created by American scientists to feed our pioneers in space. Hang the house with flowers, yes, and pictures of Mary—but also with images of the various Apollo missions, space shuttles, and astronauts. See The Space Store for a wide array of party favors and foods eminently suited to celebrating the Feast of the Assumption:
• Space Candles: An astronaut, stars, space shuttle and planet, each 1.5 to 2 inches tall
• NASA flags and decals to post around the house, beside images of the Blessed Mother
• Astronaut Balloon: A three-foot long inflatable spaceman. (If only there were helium-filled images of Our Lady—but give us time….)
• Party cups, napkins, and plates adorned with the Space Shuttle
• Space Party Invitations, which read: “It’s going to be an out-of-this-world celebration! For: Star-Date: Earth-Time: Where: (Planet Earth).” Just add a few words about the Assumption, so your guests make the connection
• Party Horns shaped like the shuttle.
Add to the mix whatever movie posters and icons you have collected from Star Trek, Star Wars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as many small, glow-in-the-dark statues of Mary as you can find. Plug in a few black light bulbs, and the effect is genuinely stunning… (my pastor was stunned).
John Zmirak is author of The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Good Living.
Recipes by Denise Matychowiak
Food:
NASA’s Own Freeze-Dried Kosher Tomato Basil Soup. Make your first course easy—and ethnically appropriate—by serving up the soup that NASA concocted under strict rabbinical supervision.
Rocket (Arugula) ala Virgin, The spicy vegetable sautéed in ever-virgin olive oil. What could be more appropriate to the feast? Serve on NASA plates.
Yiouvetsi Lamb with Orzo Pasta A savory, garlicky Greek dish which has been served for centuries on this feast day.
Simnel Cake. (See Recipe.) This rich cake was traditionally made for medieval Mothers’ Day.
NASA Ice Cream Sandwiches, Freeze Dried Strawberries, and Freeze Dried Apple Wedges. Makes dessert easy—and thematic.
Drink:
Assumption Tang Punch, best served with a small, aerodynamic plastic statue of Mary floating, as if in a splash-down capsule.
Food:
Simnel Cake
This cake was traditionally made for “Mothering Sunday,” a holiday in mid-Lent when servants would be sent home to visit their families—bringing along this rich, satisfying dessert. It’s perfect for any Marian holiday.
Frangipane:
6 ounces sliced almonds
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons almond extract
4 large eggs
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup flour
Pulse almonds and sugar in food processor until they form a fine powder. Add almond extract. Add 1egg, process until smooth.
Add butter in small pieces until completely mixed. Add remaining eggs, one at a time. Add flour. Process until just combined.
Cake:
1/2 cup mixed, diced, candied fruits
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cognac
5 large eggs
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup sifted flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Sauce:
2 ounces rum
1 cup orange juice
1/3 cup powdered sugar
Combine candied fruit, raisins, lemon rind, vanilla and cognac in bowl. Allow to sit 20 minutes. Butter and flour an 8” spring form pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Beat eggs with sugar in bowl. Set eggs and sugar over pot of warm water—not boiling—until mixture is slightly warmer than room temperature.
Whip egg mixture in mixer until cool and tripled in volume (the eggs will be at ribbon stage). Fold in flour in four additions, being careful not to deflate eggs. Gently fold in melted butter and fruit.
Pour three quarters of frangipane into spring form pan. Top with cake mixture. Cook for 20 minutes, then add remaining frangipane. Cook 45 minutes, then check to see if cake has browned. If so, cover with foil. Cook an additional 15-30 minutes, until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely and remove from pan. Combine sauce ingredients, brush on cake. Serve garnished with fresh flowers.
Comments
I’d never turn down a chance to attend an Assumption party, but I do find the flippant acceptance of the idea that Mary was sinless to be a bit much. The Apostle Paul taught that ALL have sinned.
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Worth noting that there cannot be extraterrestrials because Jesus came to save all. His mother was “THE Immaculate Conception.”
So there cannot have been another Immaculate Conception elsewhere, and so there was no Jesus elsewhere either.
quod erat demonstrandum
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Richard Nixon would have disagreed. In a spasm of American-style paganism, Nixon declared the Moon Landing of 1969 to have been “the most important event since the Creation”, and as one wag said, Nixon had thereby “promptly put Jesus Christ in his place.”
But more seriously, the ridiculous motto of the X-Files, “the truth is out there”, is what ought to go into the dustbin of history. The truth is in here, “the Kingdom of God is within you”, and although it’s physically possible to go “out there”, there’s nothing out there, and Hell is infinitely empty space.
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1. Matt Swartz: Mary was in need of the grace of Baptismal Regeneration just like everyone else save Our Lord. Just as this grace normally and normatively is communicated to us by, in, and through Baptism, so this Baptismal Grace was communicated to her at her conception. So the real issue isn’t the universality of original sin, but rather, What happens in Baptism? For some Christians of the “decisionist” stamp, the answer is “nothing”—I’m thinking here of contemporary Particular Baptists. I can’t say how they reconcile this with Romans 6:3-4, the completion of this Baptismal idea to include resurrection in Ephesians and Colossians, and the debate with Nicodemus in John 3.
2. At last THE Great Pope is named: Pius XII—maybe even greater than Leo XIII. It’s too early decide about Benedict XVI, however much I like what I see.
3. I am a shade concerned that Mr. Zmirak has trivialized this sacred day by metamorphing it into the cultural of hedomist entertainment. Entertainment—a way to distract oneself from boredom and angst—is not joy. He is also confusing Mass Cuture (produced by hucksters and politicians for consumption) with folk culture. Let’s have the joy first, and then let the folk express their joy in various ways.
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Mr Sundcliff, I see your point, but my impression was that Zmirak was taking an oblique swipe at the cult of scientism.
He’s a descendant of Jonathan Swift’s people, you know, not always lent to literal intperetations… ;-)
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With some of the Mass Culture I’ve seen, I’m glad I’m going to a Tridentine rite (for the actual mass, there is an Assumption church on the way which I’ll visit, and maybe see if the liturgy doesn’t look like it will be worse than the above NASA themed party).
For those in the Detroit area, I can heartily recommend Assumption Grotto today.
Time is also subject to God’s will - The “Last Supper” was the first eucharist, but it was a pulling back of the offering which would occur the next day. And it is also how any old-testament offering had effect. So at the moment of her creation, Mary - by virtue of the Cross - was saved from Original Sin.
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This is a great send-up of proclivities that
exist within the Catholic Chururch here in America;
the kitschy icons made in tribute to popular culture
(saw a statue os Jesus as baseball player in a
bookstore recently), the conflation of American
Exceptionalism with the Faith, and the scientism that
John mentions earlier. Great stuff.
Self-deprecating humor is a sign of sanity and
a sure-fire way to insure humility. More please.
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I worked the parking detail at Assumption Grotto
this morning to noon. The lots are full and the best
decision might be to take the shuttle bus from
St. Veronica’s on Teoppfer, just north of 8 Mile in
Eastpointe. St. Veronica’s is only about 2 miles
north of Grotto.
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Accounts of Mary’s baptism are not forthcoming, Mr. Cundiff.
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Matt Swartz: Mary received at her conception the Grace that we receive normally and normatively at Baptism—the removal of original sin. Baptism confers grace, and a grace of a specific kind: Sanctifying Grace; the same grace can be conferred by means other than Baptism. Baptism, for us, is just the normal and normative way.
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To Sid: You said, “Mary was in need of the grace of Baptismal Regeneration just like everyone else save Our Lord. Just as this grace normally and normatively is communicated to us by, in, and through Baptism, so this Baptismal Grace was communicated to her at her conception.” This is not what the Catholic Church teaches. She teaches: “The Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from original sin in view of the merits of her Divine Son, and this privilege is called her Immaculate Conception...From the first moment of her conception the Blessed Virgin was preserved from all stain of original sin. She was conceived and born without original sin.” From whom did you learn that Mary was in need of Baptismal regeneration?
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To Matt Swartz: If you have any understanding, then you must know that Jesus Christ was sinless. Since He took His human nature from Mary, our Blessed Mother, she must have been sinless since her very conception. You might have given us the book, chapter, and verse in which St. Paul taught that all have sinned, and thus the context in which it was said.
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To TZ: I attend the Tridentine Mass at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Richmond, MI. It is a Traditional Catholic Parish unstained by the novelties of Vatican II and post Vatican II reform.
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Bro Meng: We’re not really in disagreement. My language may not be precise. The Grace that REMOVES the stain of original sin from us in Baptism is the Grace that WITHHELD that stain altogether from Mary;—that is to say, the Grace won by the Redemption, the winning of which was anticipated by Almighty God with respect to Mary.
Theology is a a tough trade, I’ll grant you.
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Sid, please give me the source (authority) of your exposition regarding the Immaculate Conception. I’ve been a Catholic all my life and in none of my education or studies have I ever heard the explanation you have imparted to us. Dr. Ludwig Ott, the eminent theologian, in his book, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, does not mention it. None of the Fathers of the Church, to my knowledge mention it. Neither do those Popes who have expounded this doctrine. All agree that Mary was preserved from original sin by a special grace of God merited by Christ. It was extra-sacramental. Forgive my importuning, but I am curious.
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“Mary was preserved from original sin by a special grace of God merited by Christ. Emphasis added, and that’s my point. It was, of course formally extra sacramental. I wonder if we would get into big trouble indeed if we were to argue that Mary would have merited her own redemption.
Ott’s useful. Get Denzinger.
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St. Josaphat, Detroit, MI is the only approved Tridentine Mass in the Archdiocese of Detroit. St. Josesph’s in Richard is SSPX.
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“Theology is a a tough trade, I’ll grant you.”
Gimme that old Zarathustra
They don’t make gods like they used to
I’m a Zarathustra booster,
He’s good enough for me;
Gimme that old Aphrodite
And I’ll bite and rip her nightie
She can be a little flighty
But she’s good enough for me;
Gimme that old...time...religion…
(Sorry, couldn’t resist chucking that in...)
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PS, I hope Zmirak won’t think me out of line if I crack another joke about the “Immaculate Deception”: Catholic girls who claim to be virgins because they define “having sex” the same way Bill Clinton did?
Not that I personally have anything against extramarital sex per se; that makes me a bad Catholic but not a hypocrite, and that’s why I probably belong in the Anglican Church after all, as I do have reservations about some Vatican teachings (although I think Pope Benedict and his predecessor John Paul have been the two most intellectually AND morally ingenious world leaders of the past 30 years) - so, I won’t be a hypocrite about my deviations from strictly defined Catholic doctrines and laws. (Although, on the other hand, as far as the Eucharist is concerned, I do profess, “hoc est corpus” without reservation - but to me, THAT truth is separable from unreserved agreement with the Vatican. But I’ll refrain from converting to Anglicanism unless and until I’m formally excommunicated - and the bit of Protestant in me would react to (a very unlikely) excommunication by saying, “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders.” But methinks Pope Benedict will not require that of me...)
ANYway:
However, my refusal to be hypocritical about Catholicism does warrant some license for me to point out the hypocrisies of other nominal Catholics.
And comparing the legions of Catholic girls who are “promiscuous virgins” who define “having sex” in Bill Clinton’s dishonest terms, that’s just a peccadillo compared to professed Catholics who publicly promote illegal wars contrary to the Pope’s advice.
At least the Catholic “promiscuous virgins” make love, not war. Giuliani would be less objectionable if we knew he would stick to the former.
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To Harry Wisniewski: Was your father’s name Ed? Does your mom still go to Mass at St. Joseph’s in Richmond?
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To John Ball: If you are just trying to be ludricous,then, I guess, there may be room for your derision among the avant-garde (you know those mental midgets who have got nothing better to do, but criticize, fornicate, or sodomize each other),today, although, I don’t accept it, because your type of derision is an insult to human dignity; and moreove,it is an insult to God. Take your shit and find hole to bury yourself.
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Mr. Ball,
I might have laughed at your comment if the context were different, but here I find that it was rather off-color, especially the day after a Virgin Mary feast.
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@John Ball
Having a sense of humor can be handicap sometimes,
isn’t it?
Next time put some emoticons in your comments so that
people will see that you are having fun, even when
commenting on a very funny article.
Either that or put a big sing
THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY, CHOWDERHEADS!!!!
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Adriana,
Please don’t misinterpret this as “stalking”, but, Adriana, I adore you.
I fell “in love” with you in an abstract internet way, when you said, “chowderheads” in your above comment. Whoever is the main man in your life, is a very, very lucky man. :-) (And the main Lady in my life agrees with me about this...)
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@John Ball:
Do not make your wife jealous. Just say that I am a
fellow John Lukacs fan.
Sadly there is no man in my life, though many Internet
buddies, like you (I used to know a neocon buddy who
was a lot of fun, but some comments that he made about
Irak chilled me - basically that it was a good thing
to bring democracy to Iraq, and if the iraquis could
not handle it, they deserved to have their country
destroyed. That’s when I decided he was a sociopath,
and there is no percentange in getting emotionally
involved with those).
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It looks like I’m going to have to explain the above joke about “old time religion.”
Zarathustra was a very primitive kind of god, and Aphrodite was an amoral pagan goddess, and the revelations of Christ and Mary are infinite improvements upon them.
Therefore, Christianity is really not “old time religion”, but something wonderfully new.
There’s nothing “avant garde” about that, except in the abstract sense of Christianity having been a miraculous “advance” over paganism - and furthermore, the new cult of scientism is very primitive in its own way.
Get it now?
Now Mr Meng, you can take YOUR shit into your hole. One thing Christ abhorred was vicious sanctimony.
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And one more thing: Isn’t a Church - not an internet forum - the proper place for demonstrations of solemn reverence?
I’m all for revering Mary solemnly, but is this blog really the place to do it? If you think cracking jokes on or around the Feast of Assumption is inappropriate on the internet, then you’re really confused about
the difference between the secular and the sacred.
No one here has been insulting the Church or Mary - and Zmirak and I have both been defending them. But if you want to revere Mary in a truly sacred place, take it to sanctified ground - take it to a Church - because the internet is not holy ground, to say the least.
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Harry Wisniewski, as for SSPX, they are an acceptable place to go to Mass, ask the Holy See, and, I might add that there has never been anything called an “approved Tridentine Mass”, just thoes the Archdiocese didn’t prevent from taking place.
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