✣ Highlights from the week online
Reason as well as faith drove the crusades At Catholic World Report, Timothy Lusch welcomed a recent book, How to Plan a Crusade, by Christopher Tyerman of Oxford University. “The crusades have frequently been portrayed as ultimate symbols of of the power of credulity … the blind leading the deluded,” Tyerman writes in his introduction, adding: “What follows argues that in almost all respects this image is false.” Tyerman’s book, which exhaustively details how crusades were planned, motivated and organised, “is a unique achievement, and one that forcefully corrects the astigmatic perception that the crusades were irrational, reactionary, and born of ignorant fanaticism.” It shows that the rural peasantry, far from living in “murky ignorance”, knew much about national and international politics; that recruitment drives relied on reason, not mere emotion or fanaticism; and that the military efforts – which were attempts to re-conquer formerly Christian lands – had to be carried out with a meticulous eye for detail. The many meanings of holy water At The Catholic Thing, Michael Pakaluk said that many of his friends could testify to the usefulness of blessed water. “They were troubled at night by twisted dreams, for instance – and after they began sprinkling holy water on the bed each night, and said a Hail Mary or three, the problem vanished and never returned. Something my own life experiences tend to corroborate.” Holy water is attractive to children and adults alike. And as “we get holy water freely – we need only bring a bottle to the church and fill it – it teaches that the most precious things in life have no price. They are freely given by God, if we simply look for them in the right place.” There is, Pakaluk concluded, “a catechism contained in holy water. Alternatively, we can say that the true Church would, of course, have devised it.” Or that the existence of holy water “is almost on its own a reason to become a Catholic”. Why do we close our eyes to pray? At Catholic Exchange, Stephen Beale dived into history, to find the origin of a custom so normal we are hardly aware of it: closing one’s eyes to pray. “One online encyclopedia says the practice can be traced back to what the proper decorum was for being in the presence of a king in the ancient world.” But two full-length histories of prayer, and scriptural evidence, does not resolve the question. However, saints from at least the 16th century recommended closing one’s eye in prayer: St Ignatius explicitly, St Teresa and St Francis de Sales by implication. It is, in any case, a “salutary practice” which, among other things, “reminds us that we encounter God in the ‘inner room’ of our souls” and “allows us to contemplate Christ in His humanity in the absence of an icon or statue”.
