Divine Church of Jupiter

Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum.  From the Missale Romanum, " Prayers at the Foot of the Altar"   On Sacrifice Sacrifice appears to be a universal religious instinct and it is found in the "great world religions" generally. In Christianity, it is most closely identified with the sacrifice of Jesus for the sins of the world, renewed or re-presented in the Sacrifice of the Mass, in which, in a typically Baroque understanding, the sacrifice is understood to be to God by God (in the person of his minister, the priest). The ancient pagans, of course, ridiculed these rites as a form of cannibalism in their general disgust at the religion. Here, we will explore the sacrificial impulse in general and the pagan approach in particular. Sacrifice in General Why is the sacrificial impulse so general? The human condition, bounded with uncertainty, is such that, in earlier times, we sought primarily supernatural means to control natural ev...

On Sex    There are few things that religion like regulating more than sexual intercourse. Until as recently as 2003, traditional Christian beliefs framed the law on sex in England and Wales, forbidding such things as buggery (including between males and females) and orgies (at least for homosexual males). The intrusion of a deeply public religion into the sexual realm seems odd - what role does religion have, if any, in regulating this deeply private aspect of personal life? That is the question we must now consider. In the ancient world, such as in Greece, a man ( vir ) had the obligation to father and raise children with his wife. This did not prevent him, however, from contracting what were felt to be more pleasurable and no less honourable sexual relations with other males (usually young men and adolescents) and thus the private and public realms were dictinct and complementary. In Rome, on the other hand, the notion of domination/dominated prevented freemen from en...

On Discipline, or Self-Command "Discipline" has a two-fold sense; as a verb, it refers to the act of disciplining others, or of the application of order, rule and reason to oneself. The noun, "discipline", referring to a shared or collective rule, perhaps does best in uniting both senses, e.g. the discipline of the Rule of St. Benedict is gradually internalised. Its relevance to public life is best summarised by the dictum that no man can be a fit master of others, without being master of himself. In religion, discipline occupies a central place in both the ethical and cultic realms, thus the rite of Mass, for Catholics, is normally (and normatively) celebrated according to a certain rite ( e.g. Missa normativa ) and the Church's discipline constrains clerics and laymen to participate as a matter of the Divine Law, which to disobey deliberately is mortal sin. Christianity, in general, is conspicuous for the importance it gives to formal, public worship in ...

On Work  One of my French students, when I taught literature in France, remarks that the word for work ( travail ) derived from the Latin word for torture. This rather cheeky, if accurate remark conveys an alienation that many of us feel from the toil and burden of the day. Likewise, another young student, who wished to have a financially successful career, regretted the sad fact of the necessity of work. He wanted the money without the work; he wanted to be Blackadder's Comte de Frou-Frou, who wanted other people to work and to give him the money. In most lives, we cannot and we would probably not want to be work-free. We must, in the telling phrase, earn a living and keep a roof over our heads. Indeed, few people who are blessed with prosperous idleness really pursue lives of pure leisure; the time may be given to the gym, or to full-time "Youtubing", or even gaming (which is now a potential full-time job). Even the idlers must fill the hours of the day. Work, then...

On the Gods  On one reading, the gods, to the Divine Church of Jupiter, hardly matter. We do not believe that they literally exist, as most Christian Churches believe in the God of the Bible, or Muslims in Allah. The notion of faith, which is so intrinsic to our sense of religion, had no place in Romans' understanding of their relationships with the gods; for them, the gods were a given and their rites, vows and prayers assumed the form of contract rather than covenant, i.e. they would ask for something in particular and offer a prayer, vow or sacrifice to that end. It was all rather transactional; one did not love the gods anymore than one would love the shopkeeper, or the delivery boy. What value do the gods retain then? The pleasures of ceremony aside, the gods can be interpreted as types in human psychology and behaviour. Their rather strange behaviour, at times, sheds light on the perversity and oddity of man, helping us to arraign and control what are the common shortfal...

On Worship It may seem strange to be a priest to a god in whom one does not believe, but it is merely to acknowledge that worship is not ultimately about gods (whom would surely have no need of worship), but about men, for whom it is a felt necessity. History itself suggests that having an outlet for the psychological need for worship may be safer than simply suppressing it (the reader may feel some similarity with Freudian views about sex). The Sacred:  Imagining and Possibility What is the sacred? The sacred is an opening onto another world, in which we are invited to let the mind wonder and imagine. This is not merely a daydream, but it does not exclude it either. Roman generals and statesmen would consult the auspices before starting a battle against an enemy. Discounting the possibility of the gods answering via the entrails of some beast, it provided an opportunity for the mind to be concentrated and for a part of the decision to be externalised, according to the inter...