Nanquan Cuts the Cat

Book of Serenity, Case 9; Gateless Barrier, Case 14; Blue Cliff Record, Cases 63 & 64

May 13th, 2026. 

At least nine Jesuits have been authorized to teach the koan curriculum, which is by far the largest representation of any specific religious order among Zen teachers, but there haven’t been any Jesuit commentaries on the koans. Today, the opening of Parliament in the UK began with a ceremonial search of the Palace of Westminster's basement, a nod to the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which is also known as the Jesuit Treason. I will take the occasion to write a thoroughly Jesuitical* commentary.

The Koan:

The priest Nanquan found monks of the eastern and western halls arguing about a cat. He held up the cat and said, “Everyone! If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” No one could say a word, so Nanquan cut the cat in two.

That evening, Zhaozhou returned from outside and Nanquan told him what happened. 

Zhaozhou removed a sandal from his foot, put it on his head, and walked out. Nanquan said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been spared.”

A Jesuit Commentary: 

1. Equivocation

In my view, this is one of the most consequential koans in the curriculum. Outside of the No koan, I’ve spent more time wrestling with this case than any other that I’ve tackled.

How did this koan earn a place in three of the collections? 

It’s no plate of milk. Many Zen students are repulsed. It even seems to condone violating the first grave precept. The title is “Nanchuan Cuts the Cat,” not “Nanchuan Plays with the Idea of Killing a Cat.” It doesn’t settle the moral question of cat killing; that’s not the point. But it doesn’t evade murder and death either: Nanchuan actually kills a helpless, innocent cat who has no say in the matter. We don’t know if it was a cute little house kitty or a nasty old street cat, but for sure, there was splattered blood and two halves of a dead cat. 

Most introspection begins with an inner battle. I am no opponent of grandmother Zen. I normally give myself plenty of room for fluid inquiry. However, I will begin this commentary by focusing on another aspect of the story: its language. The request for a response becomes a demand: “If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” I have a say in the matter, a word, or maybe even several. All we know with certainty is that some monks, probably with too much time on their hands, got into an argument about a cat—a few words, a question, perhaps an insult, perhaps a confused answer or no answer, anger, then silence searching for an appropriate response, and finally a dire consequence. It’s easier to leave the koan’s argument without form and content, but (at least in my experience), koans don’t work like that. We fill them with our shadows.

In 2009, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival produced a play by one of my Jesuit classmates. Father Bill Cain’s “Equivocation” was very well received, as I would expect. Bill is a talented, inventive writer and committed Christian. However, I’m not going to borrow much other than the title and the predicament: the setting is England during the reign of James the First; the situation is the plight of the Jesuits who were sent to minister to Roman Catholics in a militantly Protestant country, and the martyrdom of 34 saints and 149 blesseds, even one bearing my surname, Blessed William Ireland, S.J. They were part of a larger movement of “recusant” English Catholics, waiting, hiding and organizing the reestablishment of religion under the Pope. They were divided over tactics; they were hunted down; many were arrested; many would die, and ultimately, they would fail.

The title “Equivocation*” refers to a contemporaneous manual that outlined a highly controversial defense strategy for Roman Catholics to survive the "bloody questions." The Jesuit missionaries were coached, and in turn coached others to use ambiguous language or a "mental reservation," misleading answers that would not reveal the identities of their fellow Catholics. As scrupulous religious people, they had to sort out the moral consequences of lying. Priests had the additional burden of guarding the seal of confession. If anyone refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy, recognizing Elizabeth I, and subsequently James I, as the head of the church, they became “recusants,” and faced severe penalties—fines, property confiscation, and imprisonment. It could include high treason, the punishment for which was horrific: execution by being hanged, drawn, and quartered*.

We do not know the author of “Equivocation,*” though there is a definite Jesuit turn to the argument. In fact, this is the origin of the less-than-flattering definition of “Jesuitical” to mean someone who practices crafty, deceitful, intricate arguments designed to mislead, dissemble, or dodge direct answers. We know that a copy of the treatise was found among Father Henry Garnet’s books, the Jesuit superior in England, when he was arrested after the failed Gunpowder Plot, also known as the Jesuit Treason of 1605. It was used against him in his trial. 

Garnet was a very refined, highly educated priest, a trained musician, and an unlikely leader of a terrorist plot to kill the King, a large number of nobles, and MP’s. Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated to this day with fireworks and the burning of effigies of the man caught guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder in the basement of the House of Parliament. Fawkes and Garnet knew one another. Garnet had been seen meeting with Fawkes. Garnet claimed that he’d been trying to persuade Fawkes to find a nonviolent tactic for finding accommodation for Roman Catholics. 

We don’t know for certain whether or not any Jesuit actually plotted the terrorist attack, though I think it’s highly likely. Shakespeare knew about it and had an opinion. In Act 2, Scene 3 of Macbeth, the drunken porter, acting as hell’s gatekeeper, welcomes a parade of condemned souls into the castle, including an “equivocator that could swear in both scales against either scale,” . . .  the "open and broad lying and forswearing." 

When Garnet defended himself, his words seemed to match the circumstances, but canceled out other words. The Privy Council used the handbook that outlined this type of argument, “Equivication,” as evidence to condemn Garnet. The resulting action was swift. He was executed on 3 May 1606, three days after the verdict. Toothless grannies pushed to the front row at his public execution with clean napkins to mop up the martyr’s blood as a talisman. 

These events happened more than 400 years ago. How could they enter my life in a real way if I didn’t share something with the martyrs? I have no enthusiasm for converting the Church of England. In fact, I’m quite sympathetic towards the beauty of the language and form of its liturgy. There is a high probability that I am related to Blessed William Ireland, but it still feels worlds away. 

When my teacher gave me the koan, the cat’s dark shadow began to appear very slowly in my own life — the fight between the monks became the execution of Jesuits who had been trained at the English College in Rome or Douai. Yet it became personal. We sang the same Te Deum that the 16th-century Jesuits sang when they learned of a Jesuit’s execution in London. We celebrated their feast days. We’d heard stories of their torture and death, which were presented as heroic qualities we should emulate.

___________

Notes: 

*Although many Jesuits of other eras might have entertained the idea that a consistent spiritual and moral tone might be identified as “Jesuitical,” I am afraid that I only use the term to refer to my 11 years in the Society of Jesus. I’ve worked with the koan under a teacher’s guidance on at least 4 occasions without any access to anyone’s commentary. This last time was quite different; connections with my Jesuit training kept me company. At times, it became very difficult. What follows are field notes from that exploration.

Equivocation is a critically acclaimed 2009 play written by American Jesuit priest and playwright Bill Cain. The play premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The definition of equivocation is “the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication.”

*Michel Foucault uses a brutal public execution involving drawing and quartering in the opening pages of Chapter 1, "The Body of the Condemned," in his seminal 1975 book, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. While the traditional English sentence was precisely "hanged, drawn, and quartered," Foucault specifically details the French variation of the punishment inflicted upon the regicide Robert-François Damiens in 1757. Damiens was condemned for attempting to assassinate King Louis XV.

Tempest in a Teapot!

At one time, for some odd reasons which you can probably guess, I became obsessed with several ultra-conservative offshoots of the Roman Catholic Church. I wrote about having dinner with a bishop in the Old Catholic Church in America after I left the Jesuits in the mid-70s. I also wrote about Benedict’s problem when he lifted the excommunication of the neo-Nazi SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson in 2009. However, just because my attention has drifted and I am no longer devilishly obsessed does not mean others need follow my change of heart. 

The dates of the birth and death of Jesus are only estimates, so why nail your operation to one specific day out of the 738,000 days (or over 2,028 years) since the birth of Jesus? The SSPX seem to have arbitrarily pulled December 4, 1563 out of the hat — the closing of the final session of the Council of Trent, or perhaps it was July 18, 1870, during the First Vatican Council in the constitution Pastor Aeternus, when Pius 9 got what he wanted —  the word of the Pope reverberates in Heaven, or perhaps August 20, 1914 when Pius 10 left us, and the war against Modernism in limbo, but with the final design of the fiddle back Chasuble etched in fashion history. Find an auspicious date. Start a real religion. Cement your creed in time.

While there is no official or exact count for all Christian denominations worldwide, sociologists and researchers (such as the Center for the Study of Global Christianity) estimate that there are over 45,000 distinct Christian denominations or sects worldwide. How to choose our enemy? One criterion might be that they believe something that differs from what you and your peeps believe. That’s a popular choice. Another might be the size of their army. 

I find SSPX a bit of an outlier for a Papal enemies list. I think it is their history, having been courted by Pope Benedict for special treatment. I had some fun with AI, the Devil’s workshop. Let’s run the numbers.

 

In the photo, Alfonso de Galarreta, Bishop of the Society of Saint Pius X, ordains four new bishops without Vatican approval. The SSPX has approximately 1,500 formal members (including bishops, priests, seminarians, brothers, and sisters). Additionally, the traditionalist Catholic society claims a global following of roughly 500,000 to 1 million lay adherents. Robust numbers compared to what follows.

By contrast, the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht—through its global federation, the Union of Utrecht—has far fewer members worldwide, ranging from 58,800 to 115,000. They also question the authority of the Pope, though on slightly different grounds than the SSPX, but they’re ancient history, having stepped out of the Roman fold at the end of Vatican I, October 20, 1870, when the question of infallibility was settled, according to mainstream Roman ecclesial history.

The Palmarian Catholic Church is an independent traditionalist sect not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. They have their own popes (the current one is Pope Peter III) who reside in the town of El Palmar de Troya in the Andalusia region of southern Spain. After the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978, Clemente Domínguez claimed that he had been mystically crowned Pope of the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ and was to reign as Pope Gregory XVII from El Palmar de Troya. There are an estimated 500 to 1,500 Palmarian Catholics worldwide today. Small change. Piddling army.

The origins of the Palmarians as a distinct body can be traced to the alleged Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Palmar in Andalusia, Spain, beginning in 1968. Two men became particularly associated with this movement over time: Clemente Domínguez y Gómez and Manuel Alonso Corral. The former was known as a charismatic visionary and seer, while the latter was the intellectual éminence grise. The messages of these visions were filled with traditionalist Catholic pushback to the liberalising changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council and alleged a Masonic infiltration of the Roman Catholic Church.

But don’t think that heretical “Catholic” churches don’t have legs. Arianism survived the Council of Nicaea and the fall of Rome. It flourished as the state religion, with its own churches and bishops, across the Germanic kingdoms, including the Vandals in North Africa, the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths and Lombards in Italy, and the Burgundians, who lived in the Rhineland as well as what is now southern France. The photo shows the mosaic ceiling from the ruins of an Arian Church in Ravenna, Italy. Believers numbered in the hundreds of thousands to millions, but these churches died out by the 9th century, without Roman pushback. Still, five or six hundred years is a good run.

Some modern groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, hold theological views similar to Arianism, teaching that Jesus is a created being subordinate to God rather than part of a coequal Trinity. There are approximately 9.2 million active "publishers" across more than 240 countries and territories. The denomination defines membership based strictly on active participation in its formal preaching work, rather than self-identification or simple.

Photograph by Henry Lithgow

Supporters of Smiling Cardinal Raymond Burke include the 13,500-member Sovereign Military Order of Malta, but attendance at his “faithful apostolates” such as Michigan’s Call to Holiness Conference fluctuates wildly.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a worldwide baptised membership of more than 23.6 million people. I included the Seventh-day Adventists because they were founded on William Miller’s prediction that Jesus Christ would return to Earth on October 22, 1844, the biblical Day of Atonement for that year. When that didn’t happen, they called it the "Great Disappointment," and turned their attention to the prophecy of Ellen Gould White, became teetotaling vegetarians, and started to keep the Sabbath. That became a formula for success. 

Another American startup, Mary Baker Eddy’s Church of Christ, Scientist, does not publish its membership numbers. The church's Manual specifically instructs members not to divulge these figures. However, demographic surveys estimate worldwide membership to range from 100,000 to 420,000. 

I totally support praying in whatever language a church, a nation, or an individual prefers. The Roman Church seems to concur and would probably support Latin if SSPX didn’t carry so much doctrinal baggage. The Esperanto Eucharistic liturgy (Meso in Esperanto) has been officially approved by the Vatican for use in Catholic churches and has been available since the mid-1990s. Good luck finding a church or a linguistically able priest. 

To summarise my research:

SSPX: 500,000 to 1 million

The Old Catholic Church of Utrecht: 58,800 to 115,000

The Palmarian Catholic Church: 500 to 1,500

The Arian Churches between 325 and cc 800 C.E.: several hundred thousand to millions

Jehovah’s Witnesses: 9.2 million 

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta: 13,500

The Seventh-day Adventist Church: 23.6 million

The Church of Christ, Scientist: 100,000 to 420,000

Conclusion: for strength in numbers and longevity, have a full Ecumenical Council declare your founder anathema, avoid large real estate investments in Andalucia, and Pope Leo is wasting a lot of time on the SSPX bishop ordination. 

But take heart, the seminaries of the SSPX might preserve the correct use of the gerundive, as in quod erat demonstrandum, for several more generations, but as a serious faith movement, they’re toast, a curious anachronism that will die out for lack of fashion sense as long as no one feeds their publicity addiction. That’s what they crave, confusing words with faith, devotion, and prayer. 

I know, I can hear someone out there whispering, “Then why did you waste your time writing two pages against SSPX if they’ll be as out of fashion as blue suede shoes in a few years?” Because it was fun.

Let this sink in America, I dare ya.

Blood sport is next.

Thumbs up or thumbs down.

Caesar Donny will not be in the lineup himself but will, I’m sure, offer gratuitous, racist remarks about Michelle Obama. 

250 years of democracy, and we are reduced to this?

This took place at the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

• 
  

The grass on the Ellipse has been completely destroyed. Coupled with the demolished East Wing, it's a total disaster. 

 

 

Benedict's retrograde problem with a neo-Nazi bishop

Originally published August 17th, 2009, in my blog “Spiritually Incorrect.” 

Father Tom Reese is a well-spoken man and well-trained in theology, but an objective critic he is not. His first loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church has blinded him to the atrocious behavior that is being condoned by lifting the excommunication of neo-Nazi Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Pius X. He states the problem with Benedict’s papacy is that his organization does not have a modern PR office that would break the news of rehabilitating four Pius X bishops, including Williamson, to the world, the liberals in his own church and the worldwide Jewish community. No PR Vatican Secretariat, no matter how up-to-date and informed, could ever make a case for this blunder.

Any self-respecting PR person would say, Benedict, you are the Pope, damn-it, and you have chosen the wrong issue and the wrong message. Emphasize your organization's core mission and make it the centerpiece of your actions. The backward-looking vision of the Society of Pius X has a man like Williamson in charge of their priestly formation. It is a distorted faith that does real harm to people who struggle to alleviate the suffering in the world. Jesus did not say, go to the Pharisee and try to make peace before he goes off and starts a rival sect. He began condemnations of their theology with the words: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees!”

I understand the awkward position in which Benedict finds himself, perhaps not to the extent that Reese understands it, but I can follow an argument. The Roman Church has argued that the form of consecration ensures that its bishops inherit their authority from the original 12 Apostles of Jesus. And by “form,” Roman Catholics mean that the correct words, prayers, and ritual actions for consecrating a new bishop are uttered and performed by a bishop who has been initiated, or ordained, in the same manner. So the Pius X bishops are really bishops according to doctrine, as are, I might add, all the bishops of the old Catholic Church, who are still quite numerous in Germany and have at least four bishops in the US. I met one. The problem, according to Reese, is what Benedict is to do with these bishops so that they do not become loose cannons (my words).

I would bet pennies to dollars that not one in a thousand Catholics knows or cares about the doctrine of the apostolic succession as understood by the hierarchy, and by extension, only one in a thousand would pay any attention to the Pius X bishops when they opened their mouths. These intricacies only interest an extremely small group of scholars, liturgists, linguists, and canon lawyers, and are absolute trivia to most faithful Christians who look to their bishops, and especially the bishop of Rome, to be faithful servants of the Word of God and the Teaching of Jesus. For example, according to the rite composed under Pius XII, the consecrating bishop must use the words: “Complete in Your priest the fullness of Your ministry, and adorned in the raiment of all glory, sanctify him with the dew of heavenly anointing.” I am not going to dispute the beauty of the language, but the fact that this prayer was uttered when the excommunicated bishops were consecrated somehow necessitated a bow to the position that the Nazis did not murder more than 6 million Jews, dissidents, gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled is a horrendous distortion of the values that people should expect from any religious authority.

Is there a way that Benedict could have rid himself and the Church of these troublesome bishops? Of course. He could have simply let their movement die off or become a small fringe group of fanatics—a sensible option. Or if he felt that he had to take some action, following Fr. Reese’s argument, he could have declared them heretics and schismatics. But I fear that he has far too much sympathy for their position. And that is the danger. The conditions on our small planet are far too fragile to allow any hate mongers the publicity they crave.

And so I am still left with the question: where did Benedict get this dumb idea in the first place? I say it is because the leadership of the Church has lost sight of its mission. It has become so remote and isolated that its main concern is defending and legitimizing its authority rather than spreading the message Jesus taught. Sadly, this is the result of Benedict’s looking back to Pius IX and the 1st Vatican Council, and burdening the message of the Gospel with distracting arguments about liturgical propriety, the validity of holy orders, and the ordination of bishops. That view will just focus our attention on the human weaknesses and failings of the followers of Jesus, rather than the simple and direct way that He spoke to us.

3 comments:

John Sumser said...

Very clean and well put. The church has lost its way in a fairly short time. To be futzing around with folks like this simply cements the views of the unchurched. We all left because they were more interested in who was in charge than the flock itself. Shepherds are supposed to shepherd, not spend their time pursuing the vanities of position.

Thanks, Ken

4:01 PM

Kilian Fritsch said...

By the logic of consecration, would not the women consecrated as priests and bishops, beginning with the Danube consecration, be considered validly ordained and consecrated?

2:52 AM

Ken said...

I say yes, of course. I am not a canon lawyer, but I'm sure that the P2 Benedict cabal will find one to refute me. However, I think that the women priests and bishops of the Episcopal and Anglican communions would also qualify, as they have had Old Catholic bishops join in their rites of consecration for years.

2:58 AM

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