Sounds of the Season

My boyfriend prefers not to listen to Christmas music before Christmas Eve; he thinks that songs about Christmas should be reserved for Christmas proper. But, I cannot help myself. I love the carols, the canticles, even electronic jazz piano versions of classic favorites. This music is our common holiday language. How many songs (beyond such bar favorites as “I Will Survive” or “Livin’ on a Prayer”) do so many people know by heart and are willing to sing loudly and without self-consciousness in a room full of people?

There are many fantastic songs of the season, secular and religious, and my favorites are the ones that are thick with theology (especially in their rarely sung third or fourth verses): The First Noel; The Holy and the Ivy; Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming; Joy to the World. Sometimes these songs carry an instructive air; they tell us what we believe. Other times they are solemn and devotional, allowing for us to retreat inside ourselves and examine our own notions of what it means that God was born human. This music to me is a method of meditation, a reminder of the constant presence of something, of a faith in a miraculous, wonderful, and downright unbelievable event. The music takes us there. It takes us to the annunciation, to the manger, to epiphany and the coming of the wise men. The best songs even take us into the hearts of the kings, the shepherds, the angels, the holy family.

J. Chris Moore, in a gorgeous choral arrangement of Four Canticles for Christmas reminds us of the humble and glorious first moments of the Christ child’s life. Listening to the fourth canticle, “The Worlds Rejoice”, I am left speechless by its precise and reverential description of the wonder of the birth:

The night softly envelops her as she sits quietly.
Angels whisper their delight. The leaves create a lullaby.
The earth holds her breath.
A child.
Peace has come to a troubled place.
And the worlds rejoice.

Music is a kind of poetry, able to capture in the harmonious combination of words and notes what cannot be captured by words alone. And perhaps these songs are not the most historically accurate; perhaps they often represent older theological ideas or take literary license with biblical passages. But they are a holiday ritual, and singing them is a type of homage paid to the wonderful, to the miraculous, to the mysterious.

Rebecca Curtin is dreaming of a warm Christmas, and can’t wait to hop a flight from Boston to spend the holidays with her family in San Diego. Her Christmas music playlist is already programmed on her iPod for the long plane ride.

Catholic Charities & Prop. 8

Like so many Americans, I owe a lot to Catholic Charities, the oldest and most active Catholic social service network in the country. Twenty years ago Catholic Charities of the Diocese of San Diego, California arranged the adoption of my younger brother. I remember the day he was brought home from the hospital as one of the happiest days of my life.

Over the past several months, groups in favor of California’s Proposition 8 – the proposition banning gay marriage in the state – ran ads exploiting the 2006 closure of Catholic Charities’ adoption agency in Massachusetts after anti-discrimination laws required that an agency receiving money from the state (which Catholic Charities does) could not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation against any married couple seeking to adopt. Catholic Charities of Massachusetts found itself caught between its desire to assist all adoptions (especially those of hard to place foster children) and the Vatican’s prohibition of adoption by same-sex couples. The California ads argued (evidently effectively) that the only way to prevent a similar end to Catholic Charities’ adoption agencies in California was to nip the equal right to marriage in the bud.

In the midst of the passage of Proposition 8 and ongoing public outage, I have been pondering the role Catholicism has played and should play in this controversy. One option for a Catholic like me – who supports both the universal right (rite) of marriage and the good and necessary role of Catholic Charities’ adoption agencies – is to continue to fight against propositions like 8, and in the event of their defeat, hope for the privatization of Catholic adoptions. The adoption service could then continue separately from the state and in line with the wishes of the Vatican.

However, a private Catholic adoption service that defines marriage solely along official church lines still perpetuates a form of discrimination. As a Catholic I often feel myself caught in the murky tide-water between the official stance of the Vatican and what I believe I am called to do as a follower of Christ. I feel caught not because I believe I should do what the Church tells me, but because of the good the Church does do. A church should not have to choose between religious freedom and good works, but the Church must also be open to changes in the hearts and minds of all its members such as those demonstrated by the resounding cry of outrage over the passage of Proposition 8. Rather than abandon adoption work or shuffle adoptions by LGBT couples discreetly to other agencies when the Church finds its values compromised, perhaps it is the values themselves that must be reexamined. Maybe then will we as one Catholic church, gay and straight prospective parents together, truly be able to extend our arms to the needy – especially when it is homes for children that we seek.

Rebecca Curtin lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and works for the English Department at Harvard University. She always misses California, despite its political liberal/conservative split-personality.