Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



November 25, 2010

PJ Harvey and St. Catherine Chapel In Abbotsbury

St. Catherine's Chapel in Abbotsbury
 
One of my favorite female musical artists, PJ Harvey, once visited St Catherine's Chapel in Abbotsbury, England (she grew up and lived nearby) which has a wonderful acoustic quality and decided to record a song there. The chapel is situated on a hill, as are most chapels to St. Catherine (Katherine) in the West, probably in reference to her shrine on Mount Sinai. It dates to the 13th or 14th century, but it is probably built on the ruins of an earlier Christian church, which was probably built over pagan ruins.

Her album Is This Desire? (EMI 1998) has a track "The Wind", inspired by her thoughts about the lonely, forgotten Saint - the chapel no longer functions and St. Catherine was abandoned and removed by the Catholic Church from its official list of Saints in the 1960's because they believed there was no historical credibility to her tale. The song ends in a prayer for a husband for St Catherine to appease her loneliness, a touching reversal of the usual invocation of unmarried girls who go there to pray for a husband. Read about the chapel here and see the video below, which transposes the ancient city of Alexandria with modern New York City, PJ's current home.



The lyrics are:

Catherine liked high places, 
High up on the hills 
A place for making noises 
Like whales 
Noises like the whales 
Here she built a chapel 
Her image on the wall 
A place where she could rest 
A place where she could wash and listen to the wind blow 
She dreamt of childrens' voices 
And torture on the wheel 
Patron saint of nothing 
A woman of the hills 
She once was a lady 
Of pleasure and high-born 
A lady of the city 
But now she sits and moans 
And listens to the wind blow 
I see her in her chapel 
High up on the hill 
She must be so lonely 
Oh Mother, can't we give 
A husband to our Catherine 
A handsome one, a dear 
A rich one for the lady 
Someone to listen with 
 
 
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