From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
You have a lot of stuff about chess on your Catholic blog. But chess is not a Catholic game. It was condemned by the Church. Why do you have so much about something that was condemned? Even if you say that it isn’t condemned now, it was. If it was, there must be something wrong with it.
Such blinkered rigidity. Such backwardism. Such small-group ideology.
It is widely known that THE Council … Lateran IV of 1215 condemned clerics playing games of chance like chess along with watching mimes, hanging out in taverns, and wearing pointed shoes.
Let’s be clear about this. Chess is not a game of chance. It was a game of chance waaaay back when dice were used in the game. Because of the dice, chess was considered a game of hazard, which were forbidden. However, dice are not used in chess now. Hence, chess is not a now a game of hazard, so the canon doesn’t apply.
“But Father! But Father!”, defenders of the Letter of the Council will reply, “You are a denier of Lateran IV! You must immediately renounce chess and all its empty promises, because YOU HATE LATERAN IV!”
Nay, rather, I respond, I am deeply imbued with the SPIRIT of Lateran IV. I do NOT wear shoes with pointed toes. I detest mimes, as one does. I loiter not in taverns. I don’t play games of chance. Well… I do play cribbage once in a while.
That canon was clearly penned by someone bound in rigid cultural taboos which viewed chess as something ugly and unacceptable, fearing it because there were laws against it. Card. Kasper would tell them that while we can’t say that the Fourth Lateran Council was “wrong”, today it has to be read through lived experience. Expecting clerics not to play chess is an impossible ideal. There must be discernment.
There must not only be discernment, there must be accompaniment. Clerical chess players are misunderstood. Those backwardist taboo mongers shouldn’t tell us what to do! Chess playing priests could wind up being the most marginalized group in the Church if this Lateran IV canon is implemented without dialogue and discernment. Chess playing priests should be at least tolerated if not accepted. There are new ways of viewing chess now. It is a game that is played and also not a game that is played, and playing can be understood as something not vertical or horizontal, but rather tangential and parabolic, divaricated and typifying.
Furthermore, we must also be open to variants, which are also viewed through the lens of taboo: 3-way and 4-way chess… even duck chess!
Embracing the Spirit of Lateran IV, when clerical chess games spontaneously spring up, clerical chess players should be praised, not as a pair of opponents, but as spontaneous individuals seeking to find their way in the tangles of the 64 square.
St. Teresa of Avila, Patroness of Chess Players, pray for us.
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Why were games of chance forbidden?
Because of various superstitions and pagan practices that used to surround such games. Games of chance are really games of statistical probability – if you know the maths, you can mitigate against loss and maximize win conditions.
However, most people don’t understand the maths, and the results were seen as being influenced by the “gods” or hampered by malevolent spirits — so they were really exercises in who could offer the most appropriate sacrifice/oaths or ward off / appease interfering spirits. (They were (and still are) a great way for those that knew the maths to fleece those that did not know the maths – leading to all sorts of chains of sin.)
Modern games of chance are largely stripped of these superstitions but every time one blows on the dice before they roll those bones, one is harkening back to those ancient superstitious practices.
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Anyway, more chess is needed, as well as generally more games that stretch one’s mental capacity or games that create a narrative story amongst a group of players for an evening.
Quaeritur:
As chess players are in a relationship, albeit that of opponents, does Fiducia Supplicans now permit them a blessing?
Lurker 59 says: Because of various superstitions and pagan practices
Maybe it was because players knifed each other or bashed their opponent’s head in.
No, no, no, no Chess Accompaniment ?!
Can the chess board be blessed together with the dice or must they be blessed separately?
This seems an appropriate time to drop the following chess-related dialogue into the comments…
Spock: I’ll have you checkmated your next move.
Kirk: [chuckles] Have I ever mentioned you play an irritating game of chess, Mr. Spock?
Spock: Irritating? Ah, yes… one of your Earth emotions.
[Kirk checkmates Spock]
Kirk: Certain you don’t know what irritation is?
Spock: The fact one of my ancestors married a human female…
Kirk: Terrible, having bad blood like that.
Live Long and Prosper, Spirit of Lateran IV!
Dice were used? Interesting…
Lurker 59,
Years ago a young man was coming to work for Meyer Lansky, a long time big cheese in La Cosa Nostra. Lansky asked whether the young gambled. When the answer was no, Lansky said “Good, because you can’t win.”
In the mid 80s I did consulting work in IT with the Summa Corporation, which then owned casinos in Las Vegas. They had a system which kept the names, etc. of those who opened an account with them. Of relevance was whether the person was a good gambler. How was that judged? A good gambler loses his average bet every hour.
BTW, I know a West Point ’54 grad whom I once asked whether he had known a fellow cadet named Lansky. He answered. “Yeah, Paul, he’s a good guy.” When I asked whether he knew who Paul’s father was, he said, “Sure, he was a Big Time Operator.”
To say the least.
Let’s see. We have Eucharistic liturgy designed to be acceptable by those who thinks it’s only a symbol. We have priests in prison for diddlying with young adolescent altar boys. We have ex priests who not only deny thr Incarnation but also the existence of God. Now we have a pope who is trying to mitigate a sin that calls. to heaven for vengeance
I could go on . . .
And we have people worried about whether chess is an immoral game.
… but do you have gilded spurs??
Wasn’t chess in 1215 technically a different game because the bishop and queen didn’t have their modern moves yet?
Let’s take a look at Pool. My Dad was a pool shark. When I thought I had progressed in my skill at pool (hahaha). I challenged Dad to a game. One ball in, next I scratched. He then cleared the table, calling each ball and pocket. Pool is about Physics. I ask a good friend who has 3 PHD’s if he can play pool? He said he understands the physics but doesnt’t have the skill.
So, now I’m wondering if Chess Boxing would be categorized as a game of chance . . .
“Card. Kasper would tell them that while we can’t say that the Fourth Lateran Council was “wrong”, today it has to be read through lived experience. Expecting clerics not to play chess is an impossible ideal. There must be discernment.
There must not only be discernment, there must be accompaniment.“
What about choosing to play chess because of your inviolable conscience through the internal forum, Father?
Come to think of it, any brave souls out there willing to submit a set of dubia to the Holy Father regarding clerics playing chess in light of the Spirit of Lateran IV?
It is always a rather important thing to distinguish between the Church teaching and the Church legislating.
(So much so that in at least one occasion, the very same document, Sacrosanctum concilium from Vatican II, is nothing short of excellent when it comes to teaching, but sloppily-done and at the least tone-wise on the verge of self-contradiction when it comes to legislating. But I digress.)
So, setting aside the precise meaning of “the whole of Lent is of a penitential character” of the 1960s legislation now in force, but if in the year 1959 I had eaten a steak, beans and mashed potatoes for my one meal on Tuesday of the first week of Lent, I’d be all fine, and I might even be commended for both keeping my strength, and for reserving yet more penitential sorts of meals for yet more penitential days (such as the Ember Day that immediately follows). If I had done the same thing in the Middle Ages, I might possibly been fixed to a pillory and bombarded with foul eggs (tomatoes had not yet been introduced to Catholic countries). Well, what is the difference? The difference is that the Church, who has a claim to obedience, did demand abstaining from meat on that day then but would cease to do so later.
Gambling has for a long time been forbidden by the state’s authority, so much so that in the mind of many people it has become synonymous with a very very sinful lifestyle, much more so than much more sinful things (the decent have their faults to, and those seem to often include a tendency to easily find faults with the habits of the lower classes). Taken just by itself, gambling is of course no sin at all, though thereby squandering money needed for one’s duties towards oneself and one’s family is.
The paragraph 2413 of the Catechism-of-the-Catholic-Church is not terribly long, but no, we do need this much amount of detail, we cannot make it even more simple.
Now what the Church did say is that the State, when it forbade gambling, was within the limits of its power (just as it is, now, probably within the limits of its power when it forbids the recreational use of hemp-derived drugs), and so has to be obeyed. I actually wondered for a bid why. Sure, in itself for this very reason: The state says so, it has to be obeyed; but why didn’t the Church more loudly say, “but that ban would not be necessary; please, dear State, it’s better to grant freedom”? Maybe because of the reasons the dear Lurker59 mentions. Very insightful.
And then of course, clergymen specifically should not set a bad example.
Nowadays, chess is not gambling, and even gambling would not be forbidden. The situation is rather different on both those counts.
– Would (actual) gambling now, when the State does no longer outlaw it, fall under the category “perfectly fine for layfolk, but incompatible with a clerical lifestyle”, such as “hanging out in taverns” from the list here? That might be more debatable…
but the very rule that certain pastimes quite acceptable in general are not acceptable for clerics was itself a piece of legislation. Ecclesial legislation, this time, and as far as I see this too has been lifted. Other than a rigid and unthinking “no chess”, it does of course fall under “might still be a good idea”… but it is not a work of spiritual mercy to admonish others to follow something that is merely a good idea or the yet-better option.
When I was a small boy my Dad and I played chess all the time. It was our Father and son bonding. To us it was a great game, no mystical deities, no Pachamama statues anywhere, honest! I am now 70 and I’m glad for these great memories from growing up! I would love to play chess but the problem is its hard to find anyone who knows how to play.
It seems like with the Catholic church in a current state of crash and burn arguing the morality of a chess game is like demanding one last drink for the road from the Bartender on the Titanic as the ship sinks.
In my personal email signature I used to have this line:
“ He who is cruel and calumnious has the character of a cat.” I found it in the appendix to CS Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, where he presents many statements from around the world throughout the last 2 or 3 thousand years that show the contents of the Natural Law are common across cultures. After she saw it, a secretary in the Bishop’s office got really upset with me because it was from, I believe a Hindu source. (I had included CS Lewis’s source in my signature line.) The email in question was a weekly announcement of a local Latin Mass sent to hundreds of people interested in the Vetus Ordo, but no one else ever complained. I was flabbergasted because it is a statement condemning cruelty and really has no spiritural content. (Ever see a domesticated cat play with a baby squirrel or bird? It is an awful sight.)
I wish I could have responded as brilliantly as you, but we did at that time have a very good Bishop and the now late Bishop emeritus was one of our rotating celebrants. So I just begged her to realize I was not recommending the worship of Hindu dieties. But she insisted I was on dangerous ground.
Perhaps the bishops at the time of Lateran IV were involved in a conspiracy – both on and off the board!
Is +McButterpants a chess player? Maybe he and +Noble can have an ecumenical game.
One might refrain from eating captured chocolate chess pieces during Lent – just sayin’.
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More seriously, I wonder if anyone has catalogued the chess pieces which are relics on account of their being known to have been played with by Saints?
Yes, chess is moral.
Prospero approves the betrothal of Prince Ferdinand to his daughter Miranda, but warns the couple to stay chaste before the wedding. So they play chess. It is all very sweet and innocent
Alice goes through the looking glass and joins a game of human chess, eventually becoming a queen. Despite some minor perils, this is clearly a suitable activity for a young girl.
Another young girl, Phiona, living in a Kampala slum discovers chess, and finds purpose in life.
I’m an indifferent player myself and haven’t played for years. But I will defend the morality of the game with my last breath.
I greatly enjoyed Murray Head’s “One Night in Bangkok” wherein he professed his chastity and… patriotism or something, with a rather prickly attitude.
Honored to be hanging out in your saloon, Fr. Z.