Defending Polarization  ...but not propaganda

I received an interesting email today from a gentleman who suggested there needs to be a re-emphasis of style over content in religious institutions and political parties. He equated George Weigel and Garry Wills, calling them "absolutists".

I agree that style needs to be re-emphasized, but only in the service of content. The content in the case of an abortion is a dead child, and we owe that child not only our speaking, but our speaking in a style that is persuasive and will woo and not repel those who are on the fence. That's why I like FFL which doesn't demonize opponents but explains how pro-life is pro-woman, and doesn't make religious arguments (i.e. Truth capital 'T') but broader ones (truth, small 't').

Christ was a polarizer, but he never engaged in untruths, half-truths or propaganda in seeking his end. Just as God uses flawed individuals to effect his will, I believe he can use the flawed - though superior to the alternative - Republican party also. It's the increase in half-truths and propaganda in the parties that is worrisome, not the polarization between them.

Things You Won't Find on Video Meliora...  inspired by Jeff Culbreath

1. Nudity other than in animals.
2. Explanation of the Video Meliora Official Blogroll Policy.
3. Payment amounts required for Spanning the Globe inclusion.
4. Payment schedule for the above.
5. Midway rides.
6. Nigerian scams.
7. Full-assed opinions (all guaranteed 100% half-assed).
8. Examinations of Marxist concepts that can be related to Barthian conclusions.
9. Lyrics to Good Morning Starshine. (whoops!)
10. Stealing ideas for posts from El Camino Real.



Prairie dog naked but for his fur

Fr. Groeschel, National Treasure

Excerpts from his recent thoughts:

One of the hardest of all virtues to acquire is humility. Once you realize you have it, it’s lost. God gave me a little lesson in humility just this week. I never watch my programs on television, in fact I saw one twelve years ago at a rectory, where I was visiting and they had it on. I couldn’t believe that I was such a peculiar looking fellow...
*
Whether you are young or old, as you read this message, think of the day when you will leave this world. Remember it, because that’s the day when you will understand completely the mercy of God, when you will have to put yourself completely at His mercy. You will have to trust God that He will go with you, that Our Blessed Savior will receive you. If you are a Catholic, you have been saying all your life, “Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.” Death is not to be feared; rather it is something to anticipate. If you make death your friend, you will not spend your life being terrified.
*
Sister Mary Anastasia, a wonderful old Carmelite sister from Alhambra, California, just passed away. She was filled with wise observations about life in general, the spiritual life, and everyday life. One of her best remarks is, “If it doesn't’t hurt, it’s not a sacrifice.” When we make up our mind to do things for others, it should be a sacrifice, it should hurt a little bit. I once heard a rabbi say to an audience, “You’re not giving till it hurts. You’re giving till it feels good.”
*
We Catholics, along with a number of other religious denominations, think that God takes care of us first and that other people are rather on the outside, although they might make it to eternal life. These religions are convinced that they are the true religion, as we are convinced that we are the true Church. I am absolutely convinced that we are the true Church because we couldn't’t go on if we were’t. On the other hand, I think our view of God is rather narrow-minded. He loves all His children. He seeks the salvation of all, and Christ came for the salvation of all. It changes your view of reality. This is one of the things that the Pope has tried to stress in his twenty-five years as he worked so hard for ecumenism and received the leaders of so many religious denominations.

Honin' Down the Book List

Steven's post reminded me of a Columbus Dispatch book reviewer's column, in which he said that being a reviewer means reading many books at one time. He remarked how surprisingly easy it was to pick up something that he'd left weeks or months ago.

But Mr. Riddle's post has inspired me to try to re-group and face a reading situation that is dissolute and full of disarray.

I want to read mainly three or four types of books: Fiction which cleanses the palate of "too much journalism" and, if the author is good, provides a bit of beauty. Non-fiction historical, which is time-travel. Non-fiction spiritual such as "Father Joe" and "The Miracle Detective" which attempt to sort out grace from nature. Non-fiction prayerful books, like the marvelous "The Great Means of Salvation and Perfection" by St. Alphonsus Liguori which is a soul food beyond comprehension.

Fictional Friday...old journal entries never die...(aka more pointless fiction)...-written 7/8/00

It was ’79 and Laura was a classmate of mine at the Livery Day School for brilliant pre-pubescent children of vicariously overachieving parents. We had a latte before our first lesson, a droll lecture from an ex-hippie on potential career choices (I thought he spent too much time on School Administrator).

In the cautious Livery system, controversial subjects like religion and politics were never discussed because they weren't considered to be in the "value-added" category. The only reference to things spiritual was how God could best be used to improve productivity. Something about studies proving that meditating on a God-force gives you more energy. When Laura devil-advocated him on the oxymoronic notion of reducing God to servant status he mumbled something like, “don’t let your opinions get in the way of the value the lecture has for you.” Laura seemed satisfied with his response.

During breaks we licked orange Tang crystals and felt the burn. Laura was a smart-aleck as usual; she called all my ideas either “sad” or “deluded”. She had granny glasses and read the poetry of Adrianne Rich. I read Shakespeare, but only Falstaff’s lines. We had nothing in common, as is appropriate for the male and females of the species, marriage being a microcosm of the Jew-Arab conflict only more intractable.

Reference

This is a keeper - scriptural commentaries from St. Thomas. I was just looking for something like this the other day, go figure. Via Thomas o' Endlessly Rocking.

Democracy's Good Side

My take on representative government is you get the government you deserve. We the voters are ultimately responsible. The "Pox on Both Your Houses" is an understandable sentiment this election due to the controversy of the war, but if that attitude is chronic it screams of utopianism. I like that the blame or credit for a government lies with me, to an infinitely small degree, rather than with a monarchy in which you roll the dice. When monarchy is good, it's very good, and when it's bad it's a dictatorship.

In a democracy you get a real sense of interdependence, which I think is precisely what God wants us to feel. In a monarchy, you are dependent on your sovereign. In a democracy, like it or not, I am dependent on the 20-year old down the street who listens to death metal and votes for pro-abort candidates. And there is something very right about that. I should be somewhat dependent on her, because she is my neighbor and potentially a sister in Christ. This interdependence ideally should make me, if only for selfish motives, pray for her.

I like the long-view of Elena of "My Domestic Church", who understands how individuals make a difference within the Church or society even if it not be in our lifetime and even if it not be through converting our opponents but by outlasting them (although converting them should be our goal and not 'let them eat cake'):

It's a matter of mathematics. If Liberal Catholics have embraced a culture of elective sterility, (contraception, same sex unions, some even support abortion etc.) it's only logical that they will have fewer offspring to carry on their liberal causes. Catholics practicing their faith, open to new life will just logically have more children, and raising them with solid Catholic teaching, will produce the next generation of church leaders.

So I don't lose any sleep over my "faith coming crashing down" around me. Because I've done my homework and with each diaper change, each boo boo bandaged, each wet sticky kiss, each heart-to-heart talk with a teenager at midnight over a cup of coco at the kitchen table, I've helped changed the culture and the church. I'm very optimistic about the Catholic Church!

Lying about Lies

Sen. Kerry said last night that he will tell the truth to the American people, implying that George Bush has lied.

Every third word from Michael Moore's lips is "Bush" and every sixth is "liar".

It looks as though the left is going to try to make Bush seem untruthful, which is, ironically, a lie. If you want to make it about incompetence that's one thing, but about lying? This is part of the ongoing effort to destroy the meaning of words. The 9/11 Commission says there is no evidence Bush lied about WMDs. Clinton, Putin, Blair, Chirac all thought Hussein had WMDs, so it can scarcely be called a lie, but I looked up the definition:

1) A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2) Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.

A key word is "deliberately" and a key phrase "meant to deceive". Here's an excerpt from the Moore/O'Reilly debate, an endless tail-chasing on the word 'lie':

O’Reilly: You’ve been calling Bush a liar on weapons of mass destruction, the senate intelligence committee, Lord Butler’s investigation in Britain, and now the 911 Commission have all come out and said there was no lying on the part of President Bush. Plus, Gladimir Putin has said his intelligence told Bush there were weapons of mass destruction. Wanna apologize to the president now or later?

M: He didn’t tell the truth, he said there were weapons of mass destruction.

O: Yeah, but he didn’t lie, he was misinformed by - all of those investigations come to the same conclusion, that’s not a lie.

M: uh huh, so in other words if I told you right now that nothing was going on down here on the stage…

O: That would be a lie because we could see that wasn’t the truth

and on and on and on it went...

Real Courage

Mary has the pluperfect rejoinder to the "I Had an Abortion" t-shirt: the "I Have 4 Children" t-shirt.

Now that is something to be proud of and takes real courage. My mother-in-law had six children in six years (no multiple births). Try that Kate Michelman.

Even marriage takes courage, although far less than having six children. I think back to my bachelorhood, that long-nursed self-sufficiency out of which grew a false sense of heroism, such that I thought marriage do-able. Only a foolish bachelor, ensconsced in his ritual relaxations, would have the confidence to get married. A married man is humble, understands his limitations, and would not be so bold. No wonder it is single men who marry. *grin!*

Angels & Bread

I was thinking the other day about how the angels worshipped Jesus while he was in his human appearance. For humans, Jesus is an impressive figure whether or not his divinity is believed. History is divided into "B.C." and "A.D.", and most honest non-believers will admit the beauty of his ethical teachings and how so thoroughly he understood human nature.

But to angels, whose intellect far exceeds that of humans, Jesus in his human form must've cut a less impressive figure. But still they worshipped him for who he was. That's why the prayer "O God, as once the good angels humbled themselves to adore You appearing before them as a man, may man humbly adore You appearing before us as bread" is such a moving one.

Bush Hatred

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, thinks there are three reasons there is so much polarization and hatred of Bush:

1) Bush lost the popular vote but won the election and the left expected him to govern more in the center.

2) Because many young people feel they "missed out on the anti-war movement during Vietnam and now they get their chance".

And later in the interview he came up with a third one:

3) Because the issues are "life and death - abortion, stem cell...". "We're not dealing with whether to add an extra hundred million to Medicare".

Losing Our Say

Of the three branches of government, the judicial began with the least amount of power, or, more precisely, exercised the least amount of power out of custom and a respect for the words of the Constitution. The executive branch has also increased its power. Which branch has been the loser? The most democratic one.

The scariest grab of power has been the judicial's, which looms with increasing menace. This was recently brought home to me when a half-million Ohioans signed a petition to get a defense of marriage issue on the ballot this November. Ohio law is pretty straightforward: if you get more than 323,000 petititons from 44 of our 88 counties, it goes on the ballot. End of story.

Or not. The legal-wrangling is going on now, and there's a chance it won't end up on the ballot.

One thing lawyers will tell you is that ultimately the wording of a law or statue is somewhat academic. If not meaningless, it's becoming less meaningful all the time. When Clinton asked what the meaning of "is" is, he wasn't kidding. The point is that he who interprets the law can make the words mean whatever he wants them to mean. Scary.

Catherine Crier, a lawyer who wrote a book making the case against lawyers, quotes De Tocqueville who predicted that Americans will eventually lose their liberty to lawyers.

The unborn already have.

Fictional Thursday  ...remember what you paid...

Hannah Cleary wore perfume of rose-honey and planted dogwood blossoms in her sheened hair. It was ’41, just afore the war took our innocence, and we danced till our nerves wore off. She wore out them leather shoes, the shine did fade with the sweat and floor paste. Her hair‘s bob-weave did prance about in the light, liquid as amber. The bands from Nashville, one after another, kept goin’ till the cool dew-hours. My straw hat come off from the dancin’ going on and from lookin' at her smile pert and compact as a sweet little put-together puzzle. She wore toe necklaces of goldenrod, perched there on gentle-feet, little feet-falls of girlishness. She impregnated the silences with quick-drawn breaths and her dimpled gaze swung adoringly from me to her shoes and back, shy as'n if she couldn’t look up for long. When the bluegrass came on, her feet'd divinize and she’d dance like a silly colt and we all’d pretend-gape & then join in. The bluegrass was gas to her fire, and her feet would blur to “Polly, Pretty Polly” or “How Mountain Girls Can Love”. She’d beat that floor, and I reckon such a floor should count itself lucky.

Afterwards we hung the curves of that dark country road, so silent and still, the only sound the crickets and the whistle-tunes of the wind. The mountains loomed like stage props in the distance, melting into benevolent distant guardrails, and it felt as if no matter what we did they’d hold us in, close to their bosomy mountain fastness. The guazy haze of fog enveloped us and made us believe we were immortal.

Journal Entry on Travel...written 4/2/2000

I ache to travel. Real travel, not beach slumming. I ache to throw myself into some other world There is little more delicious to me than the role of unobserved observer, to be able to surreptiously delve into the way another culture handles the human condition.

I ache to drive a rental through the cajun country of southern Louisiana, up and down, east and west, where they begin drinking at 9am and begin dancing at noon. Is the longing to travel inseparable from lust though? Where does the itch to experience the "strange", as a co-worker called it, in women, part from the strange in language & culture? They may be of apiece.

I ache to re-visit Ireland, and travel by bike mile upon precious mile, small town after small town, collecting and comparing them. I long to see old, laconic farmers in their fields and thatch-roofed houses and indigenous pubs. I long to smell the earth, the sky. I long to gaze upon the green-greens stretching out in that idiosyncratic tree-less landscape.

I long to visit Arches National Park and get lost amid the dust-red roads and weird wind-shaped monuments. I long to ride my bike until the sweat and red dust commingle and I am no longer an outsider but an Indian, a native.

I long to visit Iran, the secret society where I am hated just because I'm an American, where the women where veils and the men beards. I long to explore it so I will be able to differentiate what in life is cultural and what is our shared humanity - I long to find the border where culture and politics and religion and race end and our simple basic universal humanness begins, and there is no greater opposite to America than Iran. I long to see Damascus, Syria and touch centuries-old Persian carpets in the Muslim holy places. I long to visit Middle Eastern bazaars and wander the maze-y streets.

I long to eat a big, fat pizza on the terrace of a Zoder Motor Inn room at Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where a mountain stream, as pristine as creation, gurgles with godlike endlessness.

I ache to see new things so I can see the old anew. I ache to re-open these uncurious dead eyes, and give them a small resurrection.

I long to hear Mel & Pam Tillis sing in Branson, Mo. And to hear the original Baldknobbers, the blue-grassy real country group that started Branson - oh I love even their name! The Baldknobbers! It puts me in mind of some reclusive mountain pasture. Now there's a name not driven by a poll!

"I have never been anywhere but sick. In a sense sickeness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow..." - Flannery O'Connor

Chesterton Is Never Boring:

By insisting specially on the immanence of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social indifference - Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation - Christendom. Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself. By insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself. - GKC

Audacious Hope

Conservative NRO writer praises Democrat speech, apparently for good reason. Now there's a man bites dog story!

Myrna Blyth on on what women want

...a new Gallup Poll of women ages 18 and older published in the August Marie Claire notes that today abortion is practically a non-issue for most women. In fact, only six percent of pro-life and three percent of pro-choice women say it will matter when they go to the polls in November.

Actress Ashley Judd...found the polls results "amazing" because she is so "passionate about reproductive rights."

Ashley even confided that she disagrees with her mother, country star Naomi Judd, about the issue and tells Marie Claire readers, "My mother always talks about how she chose not to have an abortion when she was pregnant with Wynonna. But I'm like: Mom, it was illegal at the time." Bet sister Wynonna loves to hear Ashley's views on what Mom should have done. Personally, I'd take a pass on their family's Thanksgiving dinner next year, wouldn't you?

More Good Quotes

"...no one who experiences this difficulty should think that the mystic, with his apparently immediate experiences of divine things, has an easier life. For every true mysticism, however rich it may be in visions and other experiences of God, is subject at least as strictly to the law of the Cross -- that is, of non-experience -- as is the existence of someone apparently forgotten in the desert of secular daily life. Perhaps the mystic has to pass through dry periods that are even more severe. Where this is not the case, where we are offered acquirable techniques to attain a mysticism without bitterness and the humiliations of the Cross, we can be certain that it is not authentically Christian and has no Christian significance. [pp.
44-45]."

--Hans Urs von Balthasar, via Ratzinger Fan Club Blog ... from "Experience God?" New Elucidations Ignatius Press, 1986
__

"The temptation to turn Christianity into a kind of moralism and to concentrate everything on man's moral action has always been great. For man sees himself above all. God remains invisible, untouchable and, therefore, man takes his support mainly from his own action. But if God does not act, if God is not a true agent in history who also enters into my personal life, then what does redemption mean? Of what value is our relationship with Christ, and thus, with the Trinitarian God? I think the temptation to reduce Christianity to the level of a type of moralism is very great even in our own day ... For we are all living in an atmosphere of deism. Our notion of natural laws does not facilitate us in believing in any action of God in our world. It seems that there is no room for God himself to act in human history and in my life. And so we have the idea of God who can no longer enter into this cosmos, made and closed against him. What is left? Our action. And we are the ones who must transform the world. We are the ones who must generate redemption. We are the ones who must create the better world, a new world. And if that is how one thinks, then Christianity is dead." -Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Back!

Ye olde Literariumian returneth, as Florence Kingish as ever.

    Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

We are limited in our lack of imagination. We can not imagine how merciful and how loving God is to us. All of our methaphors and comparisons are insufficient. But we must try. - Jeff Miller of Curt Jester

I take my problems to the Lord on Sunday, I take my blues to the honkytonk. - lyrics to country song by "Pirates of the Mississippi

I've read a lot of comments recently that don't seem to appreciate what it means for Christian forgiveness to be based -- as all things Christian are -- on love. In particular, the "God doesn't forgive unconditionally, so neither should we" sort of argument that I've already looked at betrays a misunderstanding of mercy. If you love someone, you forgive him the reparation that is due you out of love. Love doesn't wait to be asked before it acts, thank God. - Tom of Disputations

Sinners must also endure purgation in order to be in shape for eternal life, which God doesn't forgive (at least not entirely), because He "can't" forgive it, in the sense that He wants us to be the kind of creatures who must endure purgation in order to be in shape for eternal life. It all sounds a bit screwy to me, and it can be mercilessly proof-texted against, but today I think it would hold together and even resolve some standard "justice vs. mercy" problems....Of course, Christian forgiveness happens by grace, and becomes a virtue by practice...And once you've forgiven someone, what's to stop you from unforgiving him later? Nothing, as far as I can see, except grace. Christian forgiveness, then, demands all sorts of prior virtues and is given in an intangible and so-to-speak insecure manner. - Tom of Disputations

I was reading a reprint of an old catechism and it had a chapter entitled, "Our duty to God." It made me realize that our treatment of God is a neglected topic. It even sounds weird to ask "how do you treat God"? ...In terms of our relationship to God 'being good' means fulfilling our duty to God. It's not only about how well we treat others: "I don't steal, lie or cheat so I'm I good guy."...What are our duties to God? What do we owe him? This neat book spells it out like this: A-C-T-S. A is for Adoration C is for Contrition T is for Thanksgiving S is for Supplication - Mary of Ever-New

Another NYT column by Barbara Ehrenreich urged women to stop listening to the cultural ordering of "good" and "bad" reasons for abortions, and just stand up and say they did it for whatever reason. It's hard to imagine, though, that a woman who wrote about how she killed her dog because it got in the way of her lifestyle would win any sympathy. Not because anyone this side of PETA thinks dogs are equal to humans, but because they think dogs are worth something, and that wanton cruelty to animals is immoral and, in some cases, criminal. That seems to be more or less the position that Kerry is taking about the unborn -- that there's an "evolution" (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny?) that winds up with a full person, but it doesn't happen all of a sudden. - Camassia

The Passion of the Christ is not a documentary any more than the Gospel according to St. John is journalism. Like Brother Sun Sister Moon...[these] films are, for good or ill, less concerned with facts than with meanings. They are also intensely personal, the fruits of their respective directors' meditations on Scripture or the life of a great saint. People who quibble about the historical accuracy of the The Passion somehow remind me of skeptics who reject Sacred Scripture because the creation account in Genesis is not scientifically accurate. For the umpteenth time, the creation story is symbolic, emblematic, idiomatic . . . fill in the blank with your adjective of choice. Cosmological books may be dazzling and exciting reads, but they are only about what has happened to the universe; they say nothing about where the universe came from or why humans are such freaks of nature. The Scriptures do, but they cannot be faulted for having been written in a style vastly different from that of a scientific dissertation. Similarly, it is unfair to reject The Passion only for being too much like a Eucharistic celebration than a reconstruction of an historical event. - Sancta Sanctis

The Church is a place where healing takes place, a hospital for the sick. But it is not only men who are waiting for their final redemption, but also the creation itself. When you look at the example of Saints like St.Seraphim, or St. Anthony (so sanctified that wild beasts were not adversarial towards him), you get an idea of how another world is possible. In fact, glimpses of it are seen, here and there, even now. One interesting example in the case of St.Seraphim, was the fellowship he had with wild beasts. The animals did not fear him, nor acted with hostility towards him. He was even known to sit serenely, as a gigantic brown bear approached...but it had no malice, but was his friend, and St. Seraphim would smile and feed the wild animal as if it were a pet. -commenter on a msgboard, on the tension between a world created good but also wounded. - poster on a message board

The loss of joy does not make the world better -- and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the courage and impetus to do good. We have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and be a human being. This results, then, in the courage to rejoice, which in turn becomes commitment to makng sure that other people, too, can rejoice and receive good news. -Cardinal Ratzinger

Will someone explain Ms. Kerry's Clintonian semantics in her Tuesday DNC address where she said America should be a "moral nation" but not a "moralistic" one? - Hambone

I do want to become a saint. I want it for a great many mixed reasons, some good, many bad. But the desire, the longing to know God face to face, is a gift from Him. It is an undeniable grace, and having been given it, I would be less that grateful and less than saintly were I not to act upon it. I act upon it most effectively when I do so least consciously. Self-conscious saints (in the way we understand the term self-consciousness) seem to be an oxymoron. Normally we think of saints as selfless, but I would say rather that they participate in the great Self and this cannot happen if you choose to separate yourself in a self-conscious way. The long and the short of it is, that God grants the longing to be with Him. He will use, I think, almost any motive and turn it to good. - Steven of Flos Carmeli


(art credit: Disputations)

Bourne Supremacy

Saw the above movie over the weekend and really enjoyed it. Sure the car chase scene went on forever and bordered on parody, but what was really fascinating was to be placed in the places the main character goes. From Moscow to Berlin to India. Arm-chair travel with an attitude!

Found this interesting old journal entry from 1999. Pardon the self-indulgence in posting it, but it is interesting how I viewed things then (i.e. Faith not as a supernatural gift but the natural gift of native confidence):

I think I can understand it better now, for the one thing Joe [false name] and Bob [false name] and Ern [false name] all have in common (and you thought there was surely nothing they all had in common? how wrong!) is that they all have rock-hard faith. I mean undentable, diamond-hard faith. Their combined faith’s could not only scratch glass but pierce the devil’s heart. Their faith resides not only in the traditional sense – i.e. faith capitalized as Faith (in God) – but faith in their own visions. Each has a surreal belief in other things - stocks or a girl for example. Is it just their natural inclination to trust?

Joe showed me that he could believe, despite incredible evidences against it, that Susan was the girl for him. Bob believes this particular stock has only one way – no doubt – and though it may not go up, he has the same undoubtable belief in God, and that is infinitely desirable.

It is attractive - how doubt plays no role. Joe is Ern reincarnated – and Bob – all three believe, BELIEVE, that their way is correct, whether it be their vision of God or in self, Bob’s utter belief that this stock is on a highway to heaven, Joe's vision that if you want to do something, you have to do it ‘his way’, aka right.

I wonder if you get one without the other. If Bob or Joe is to believe in God utterly and completely, they have to believe that their way is the only right way. It’s feast or famine.

And another from a few months later...

It seems God made the female form too well, the lush curves but simple design. I obey the laws of nature, I am subject to them as much or more than most. The female form is endlessly, addictingly attractive. I wonder why it seems that God puts these endlessly inviting targets and then asks us to resist them? Do we have the smallest doubt the account in Genesis is true, that of the forbidden fruit, for has human nature not succumbed over and over and over to forbidden fruit? To the endless pursuit of knowledge that turns out to be meaningless? I may uncover her form and find in it nothing that teaches me anything, and yet I am drawn irresistably. In the end it seems God puts these targets here and asks us to choose Him over them. Fasting is choosing God over food. Chastity is choosing God over sex. Martyrdom is choosing God over life. Being continually chaste is a form of suffering, it seems to me, so either suffering is a positive or what sense can you make of it?

The Pope on Beach Attire

There's been a call to modesty in female bathing attire in certain quarters of st. blogdom, and it's a healthy thing. I'm all for the mercy shown by a woman who covers herself and helps us avoid sin. But on the other hand it seems that context and "what we are used to" plays such a big role in lust. That many Islamic men have a fetish for women's ankles (because that's all Muslim women show) leads one to despair or to at least to a focus on the viewer rather than the viewee.

The Holy Father wrote in Love & Responsibility that context is important. "When a person uses a form of dress in accordance with its objective function we cannot claim to see anything immodest in it, even if it involves partial nudity. For example, there is nothing immodest about the use of a bathing costume at a bathing place, but to wear it out in the street or while out for a walk is contrary to the dictates of modesty."

One could say that the function of a bathing suit is to swim, but the real function is to tan, which requires less clothing. One might question the importance of this goal, but there it is. The Pope is saying that context matters, but what I don't understand is that my eyes don't understand context. In other words, mine react to the provocation of skin whether it be on the street or on the beach.

And the Holy Father recognizes this. "Although physical immodesty cannot be identified in a simple way with nakedness as such, it none the less requires a real internal effort to refrain from reacting to the naked body in an immodest way."

It seems that much of it might be what you are used to. If you are used to seeing women in burqas, it doesn't take much to provoke arousal. Since many of us rarely visit a beach...

Various & Sundry

Read O'Connor's short story "Revelation" last night. Riveting. Then went to "The Habit of Being" and read all the commentaries on the story in letters to friends (HOB is well indexed). Speaking of F.O., I've updated the blog thanks to a generous reader.
*
Excellent Amy Welborn column on the problem of evil and the differing attempts to explain it, via working papers.
*
Mario Cuomo's advice to St.Thomas More? "Just tell the king you're personally opposed to divorce."
*
Reading this, one understands why Rod Dreher gets paid to write: "About Teresa Evita Rodham Streisand Lollobrigida Lady MacKerry, my first instinct is: I like this dame. She's an exotic flower, a loose cannon, a firecracker." Too funny.
*
Shades of O'Connor's "she woulda been a good woman if..."? Overheard Laird Hamilton, big wave surfer on Sixty Minutes, (transcript here):

Does Hamilton understand why he needs this danger in his life?

“Probably not. I know that if I scare myself once a day, I'm a better person. And I think everybody would be. I think it's part of actually existing," says Hamilton.

"I think that we've gone so far away from that [physical fear]. A dinosaur was chasing you [in pre-historic times] and wanting to eat you. I think we need [some fear].”

Running the Race

I've been thinking a lot about Steven's candid I want to be a saint post (an antipodal to Garbo's "I vant to be alone"?)

St. Paul likens the Christian journey to a running race and that we must train. And training = pain. (I ran cross-country in HS, and it wasn't a bed of roses.) Studies have shown that long-distance runners deal with pain in two ways: associative and dissociative.

Elite marathoners use associative techniques, which means during a race they constantly monitor themselves and their environment. They monitor their form, stride-length, where their opponents are, whether that twitch in calf is something to be concerned about, etc... They are aware.

Mediocre marathoners use dissociative techniques, which means they try to get their mind off the pain by listening to Beethoven or the theme from Rocky on their headsets. They might think about what they're going to do next week, the vacation next month, a particularly memorable moment in their past, etc...

I was trying to apply this to the spiritual life, with mixed results. Most of us use dissociative techniques, by using distraction to avoid the message God might be sending. I'm not sure associative techniques are that helpful either, because they place the focus on self and on one's performance, rather than on the Other.

So the third way might be the coined term Deociative, which means focusing on God and seeking first his kingdom. Everything one needs to know about the Christian life is contained in the single Gospel scene of Peter attempting to walk on the water but only being able to do so as long as he was focused on Christ.

But Steven asks a good question in wondering why we want to become a saint. Fortunately - Thank God! - He works with impure motives. Steven writes, "He will use, I think, almost any motive and turn it to good." I fear I'm motivated mostly by pain avoidance, but that since the option is to become a saint or be damned, I'd just soon get it over with (i.e. become a saint). It can happen now or later but either way it's gonna hurt. So why procastinate?

Another reason to want to be a saint is that it is where the action is. Just as it is more fun to play sports than to watch them, it's more fun to be in the game. Sometimes we're on the sidelines because we reject God's initiative, preferring the pine time. But Mother Teresa played every snap. Have I exhausted the hard corn sports metaphors yet?

Ultimately, Jeff Miller applies hammer to nailhead with this response:

I see my goal as loving God for God alone. Not for any grace that I might receive, not for the myriad blessing involved in following Christ (and the plentiful crosses). Not for the fear of hell. While I will never receive the purity of this goal in this life if I can slowly crawl forward I will be happy. Maybe the hardest part of this moving forward is trusting in God to bring me forward.

Convention

I watched Clinton's speech yesterday, proving I have latent masochistic tendencies. But the real irony was listening to a MSNBC reporter ask former California Gov. Gray Davis what Kerry must do to win the election. Delicious.

I dedicate the following Seamus Heaney poem to Carter and Clinton and myself sometimes, to all afflicted with I-Am-Always-Rightitis...

Philoctetes.
      Hercules.
            Odysseus.
Heroes. Victims. Gods and human beings.
All throwing shapes, every one of them
Convinced he's in the right, all of them glad
To repeat themselves and their last mistake,
No matter what.

People so deep into
Their own self-pity self-pity buoys them up.
People so staunch and true, they are pillars of truth,
Shining with self-regard like polished stones...
I hate it, I always hated it, I am
A part of it myself.

--Seamus Heaney

Mary of Ever-New posts a moving reflection (go and read the whole thing), including this quote from the Catechism quoting St. Catherine:

"I distribute the virtues quite diversely; I do not give all of them to each person, but some to one, some to others.... I shall give principally charity to one; justice to another; humility to this one, a living faith to that one.... And so I have given many gifts and graces, both spiritual and temporal, with such diversity that I have not given everything to one single person, so that you may be constrained to practice charity towards one another.... I have willed that one should need another and that all should be my ministers in distributing the graces and gifts they have received from me."(St. Catherine of Siena, Dial. I, 7.)

(art credit: Fra Angelico. The Last Judgement. c.1431) via Mary of Ever-New

J. R. R. Tolkien said:

I can recommend this as an exercise: make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children -- from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn -- open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same as a Mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. (It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand -- after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.)

- in a letter to Michael Tolkien - November 1, 1963

Cajun Country

Heading to Louisiana for 4 days in October and hope to find some authentic cajun music. Came across the following link during that search (btw, if you find authentic cajun music via a website, can it really be authentic?).

Experiencing the Cajun culture is like no other. The Acadians of today are a thrifty, hard-working, fun-loving, devout religious folk. They work and play with equal enthusiasm.

The Cajun's pleasure-loving nature expresses itself in the community festivals, dancing and food that are integral parts of bayou life. Cajuns are known for their "joie de vivre" (joy of living), and to add excitement to their food they experiment with herbs, spices and ingredients to create some of the most flavorful dishes that people throughout North America now enjoy.

Latin blood shows through: Cajuns can be quick to anger, quick to laughter, and quick to change from one to the other. The Cajun can still "make do" from the abundant resources around him. And he still wonders sometimes why anyone would want more. And there are subtler aspects: The Cajuns are a tolerant people - perhaps to a fault. They sometimes tolerate a little too much drinking, a little too much dancing, some chicanery in their politics. Some outsiders cluck their tongues and wonder why. The Cajun suggests that some things just aren't worth the trouble to change.

Some cultures sound so Shangri-La, don't they?

Not a parody.

KTC Blogs!

Kathy the Carmelite is reprinting the 1973 autobiography of KGB man-Turned-Defector Sergei Kourdakov, a modern hero of the faith.

Does anyone know how to get the posts to sort in reverse chronological order?

Godspy Articles

The Pope on Hell:

The thought of hell... must not create anxiety or despair, but is a necessary and healthy reminder of freedom within the proclamation that the risen Jesus has conquered Satan, giving us the Spirit of God who makes us cry ‘Abba, Father!’

Interesting Godspy article by a would-be evangelizer.

The Other Mary Poppins

About the book by Pamela Travers from whence the movie came:

PL Travers's Mary Poppins is plain and grave, has airs and graces, is prickly and can be mean, but she is reliable. Her very bareness, her "non-explaining'', is a crucial part of her surrealism and, when magic is around, she becomes almost benign. As the stories progress, she becomes a Seer. She is the most bizarre, most looked-for of literary nannies and it is on the page rather than the screen that she lives. On finishing her third book, one small boy wrote to Travers: "Madam, you have sent Mary Poppins away. Madam, I will never forgive you. You have made the children cry." Michael Banks, watching her figure sweep back up into the sky, presages the feelings of generations of young children as he weeps: "but she is the only person I want in the world". Pamela Travers was never so loved.

Intuiting Goodness

Edifying message by our learned pastor, who will be giving a talk about the Early Church at the Coming Home Network's annual Conference.

Sunday's First Reading concerned how Abraham bargained with God in trying to save Sodom. Abraham asked if there were 50 righteous people would God save the city and God said yes. Same with 40, 30, 20, 10.

Our pastor said that each one of us has a divine spark within us, an "intuition of goodness". And what Abraham was acting on was that intuition of goodness. Our pastor suggested it would've been nice if Abraham would've gone further and not stopped at ten (and thus possibly save Sodom), but the lesson is that Abraham was going deeper and deeper towards that divine spark, which is what we must do in our prayer if it be authentic.

Pope & Council Documents

I've noticed that the Vatican II documents and the writings of this Pope share a spirit of optimism. This goes against the tenor of the times as well as my own temperament, so they act as a kind of balm of Gilead for me.

It's interesting how they manage to thread the difficult path between being too "Up With People" sugary and too "let us count the ways in which we suck" morose.

Viva our Pope!

Praying for the Dead

"You love the dead more than the living," ran a recent allegation, and I must admit it has the ring of truth. Given their state of utter helplessness, my sympathy for the dead is unbounded. Their decisions have been made and now live with the regret full knowledge must reveal.

Man is the most pitiable of creatures. Animals live happy, if ignorant, lives free of anxiety. But if a living man possesses scarce power and control, the soul in Purgatory possesses even less.

New Form of Blogger Comedy?

William Luse rewrites Faulkner for the sensitive types. Very funny:

...(the sisters were twins, born at the same time, but both were, unfortunately, very weight-challenged. It wasn't their fault. It's a genetic thing.They had made up their minds to enter a twelve-step program for poor people who were compelled by class injustice to subsist on diets heavy in starch. Problem was, that couldn't help her at the moment.), the sister, as I was saying (sorry about the unwieldiness - is that a word!? LOL! :~))
*
“He was an independent and highly articulate African-American, I tell you...

Really gives you a sense of time and place, doesn't it? Very (19)90s. I'll have to try to cook me up something similar, although I suspect Bill's already parodied the good stuff. Save something for us next time Bill! LOL! :)

Today's Embarrassing Moment...

...is being mentioned by Steven next to Tom of Disputations and Karen of Anchor Hold. No one ought come to this blog without first going to theirs because they provide answers while I mostly have questions. Albeit I don't always follow my own advice.

Steven offered an interesting perspective here, in wondering what "level of distraction" is good for us. It's something I've wondered too. He writes:

I think early in the Christian journey all legitmate and licit pleasures are good and should be gratefully accepted. However, as we grow in the faith, it seem to me that the things we take pleasure in should also advance. That is, that while we might enjoy light reading at the start of our Christian career, as our lives move into conformity with God, we might move on from this legitimate interest to more profound things. Perhaps Scripture reading replaces some of the light reading we do. Perhaps reading of Christian classics, theology, and other spiritual helps begins to move in.

...so "how fanatical should I become?". I suppose as fanatical as God desires, which is difficult to discern. Where does a wholesome hunger for God end and scrupulousness begin?

Excerpt from 'The Wishing-Caps'
--Rudyard Kipling

Life's all getting and giving,
I've only myself to give.
What shall I do for a living?
I've only one life to live.
End it? I'll not find another.
Spend it? But how shall I best?

Stranger than Fiction


Father Tom Sherman

Interesting story of how General Sherman's son became a Jesuit priest, and how he came to be buried next to kin of the vice president of Confederate States of America.

So many 19th century stories are a potent cocktail of odd coincidences, episodes of madness and deathbed conversions.

George Will on reading:

There have been times when reading was regarded with suspicion. Some among the ancient Greeks regarded the rise of reading as cultural decline: They considered oral dialogue, which involves clarifying questions, more hospitable to truth. But the transition from an oral to a print culture has generally been a transition from a tribal society to a society of self-consciously separated individuals. In Europe that transition alarmed ruling elites, who thought the "crisis of literacy" was that there was too much literacy: Readers had, inconveniently, minds of their own. Reading is inherently private; hence, the reader is beyond state supervision or crowd psychology.

In 1940 a British officer on Dunkirk beach sent London a three-word message: "But if not." It was instantly recognized as from the Book of Daniel. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are commanded to worship a golden image or perish, they defiantly reply: "Our God who we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods."

Britain then still had the cohesion of a common culture of shared reading. That cohesion enabled Britain to stay the hand of Hitler, a fact pertinent to today's new age of barbarism.

A tip o' the Guinness (this blog's sponsor) to the dapper Thomas of Endlessly Rocking, who I finally got a chance to meet. Long o'erdue, we made haste by enjoying some fine fried fish at Ol' Bag of Nails Pub and by solving all the world's problems. He's to the left of me politically but to be always in agreement wouldst be boring.

Varying Opinions

It's always interesting how the same object can provoke equal and opposite reactions in people.

Alan Epstein, who is Jewish and wrote a book about Rome, called the Catholic Church "an institution that is the most successful idea - in the sense of longevity and loyalty - the species has ever produced."

Diarmaid MacCulloch, an atheist, recently mentioned on C-Span that the span of 2,000 years is nothing and the Christian Church is finally reaching adolescence. He hopes that the Church will grow out of the childishness of reactionaries like Mel Gibson & Cardinal Ratzinger.

Sigh.

Reporting...

The Onion sizes up the Democratic Convention schedule

Intriguing Excerpts...
...from the 100 greatest books, via Steven Riddle:

27. CERVANTES. DON QUIXOTE... Cervantes' great, ironical, romantic story is written in a style so noble, so nervous, so humane, so branded with reality, that, as the wise critic has said, the mere touch and impact of it puts courage into our veins. It is not necessary to read every word of this old book. There are tedious passages. But not to have ever opened it; not to have caught the tone, the temper, the terrible courage, the infinite sadness of it, is to have missed being present at one of the “great gestures" of the undying, unconquerable spirit of humanity.

86. GILBERT K. CHESTERTON. ORTHODOXY...Mr. Chesterton has his own peculiar “religion”—a sort of Chelsea Embankment Catholicism, in which, in place of Pontifical Encyclicals, we have Punch and Judy jokes, and in place of Apostolic Doctrine we have umbrellas, lamp-posts, electric-signs and prestidigitating clerics...If we don't become “like little children”; in other words like jovial, middle-aged swashbucklers, and protest our belief in Flying Pigs, Pusses in Boots, Jacks on the top of Beanstalks, Old Women who live in Shoes, Fairies, Fandangos, Prester Johns, and Blue Devils, there is no hope for us...

87. OSCAR WILDE...His supreme art, as he himself well knew, was, after all, the art of conversation. One might even put it that his greatest achievement in life was just the achievement of being brazenly and shamelessly what he naturally was—especially in conversation. To call him a “poseur” with the implication that he pretended or assumed a manner, were just as absurd as to call a tiger striped with the implication that the beast deliberately “put on” that mark of distinction. If it is a pose to enjoy the sensation of one's own spontaneous gestures, Wilde was indeed the worst of pretenders. But the stupid gravity of many generals, judges and archbishops is not more natural to them than his exquisite insolence was to him.

A New View

I'm always grateful when I hear a sermon that presents a very familiar gospel passage in a new way. That happened with this parable:

Jesus said, “Hear then the parable of the sower. When any one hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart; this is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

Now what the priest started to say was something about how fruitfulness is a cooperation (..."between God and man" I finished his thought -- but no!) between the Word and the Holy Spirit, as would be happening at the altar. The Holy Spirit works through the priest as He did with Mary, the Mother of God, and in both cases the fruit is Jesus.

So where is the work of the Spirit in this parable? It is implied by the fact that the Spirit's seven gifts are the antidotes to infertile ground. Thus:

-"When any one hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it..."
...is prevented by the gift of Understanding

-"As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away."
...is prevented by the gift of Fortitude

- "As for what was sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word."
...is remedied by the gift of knowledge, which enables those who have it to "judge the whole spectrum of creatures and objects from a supernatural viewpoint" which is to say a rightly ordered view of created things and money.

The Shock of the Unexpected

The 25-mile bike ride I spoke of in an earlier post was to & from a small town, the home of the private and politically liberal Antioch College.

The quaint college town was lined with bookstores "callllin' my name" as Clarence Carter would've sung. There were four of them, all delightfully mom & pop-ish, all as left-leaning as a punch drunk.

One in particular was memorable. Inside were loads of books about female goddesses, lots of Buddhas and Eastern philosophy books, books like "The Lesbian Body", which suprised me because I didn't know they had a different one!

Bookshops like these often have three or four rooms and so I wandered into a far room that really was the study or office, but I couldn't help taking a peek before exiting. And on the walls, amid posters of winsome mermaids and such were a dozen statues and photos of Our Lady of Gaudalupe. It was a shock but perhaps edifying to see something so familiar and personal to me in a setting so politically and religiously alien.

And I Thought it Was Because of Beer!

Funny line from a co-worker from Ghana, who said that his father used to say "A man's belly grows big so he can stomach all the family problems."

Since it's a rule around our house that no Civil War movie can be missed, I was only in temporary violation when I missed Cold Mountain at the theater. I got the video and am half-way through it. I'm struck by the spiritual parallels.

The bare bones story is that Inman is an idealistic soldier going off to the Civil War when he meets Aida, arriving just as he's leaving. For the briefest moment they imagine a life together and baptize it with a kiss. On that slim hook she promises to wait for the end of the war, presumed to be a month.

Inman's journey parallels our own. He's trying to get home, to somewhere heavenly. The pilgrimage is fraught with dangers - demons in the form of Union & Confederates trying to catch him (he's on the lam), temptations in the form of prostitutes and lonely widows - while having to fend off disbelief in Aida's love given how fragmentary the vision.

The disbelief weakens as he gets closer. He has sacrificed so much to get this far. Meanwhile, Aida is waiting.

For comedic purposes only. Please use as directed...

9-11 Commission Finds Guilt, Guilt, Guilt!
The 9/11 Commission today ruled that several key players lacked omniscience.

"The fact that many in our government could not predict the future accurately is an abomination," said a commission member today.

Additionally, the Commission found out that communication within and between the FBI and CIA was grossly inadequate. They also discovered that dogs chase cats and revealed that the earth revolves around the sun.

When asked about the Commission's findings one member, who declined to be identified, said "Hey, we're a hangin' jury here. If we don't find someone guilty then what'd the taxpayers pay us fer? As for recommendations, I recommend a terrorism czar. It worked with drugs and home security, didn't it?"


Sandy Berger Rues the Day He Bought Socks
Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger admitted today that buying to-the-calf socks that contained pockets was probably a mistake.

"The appearance of it is questionable. I'm a suit and tie guy, I dress pretty well, so wearing tube socks with specially-made pockets in them looks pretty damning. But the truth is I use those pockets for my Pocket Fisherman^TM."

Former President Clinton commented at a recent booksigning. "We're all laughing about it. That wild Sandy getting in trouble again. There is nothing in those charges."

Clinton then winked and said, "of course, if you lie only for yourself what does that say about you? If you can't lie for your friends then-- hey, this is on background, right?"

It was not.


France Stops Air Travel, Declaring U.S. a 'Nincompoop' Nation

In his harshest criticism to date, France President Chirac declared that the U.S. would never be able to fly planes over French territory again, including commercial jets, helicopters, hang-gliders, model airplanes and paper planes.

"No longer will an American plane fly over French soil!" Chirac said in French.

When asked how long, Chirac said "until America stops enforcing U.N. resolutions!"

Project Blog

Whoda thunk it? Sounds like a good, if torturous, idea. The quality of those 3am entries might slip just a bit. "Boy am I tired. Tahhh-erd. Tarred. Tear-d. Ty-erd. T-i-r-e-d. Did I mention I was tired?":

Project Blog is here because we care and because we want to make a difference. On July 24th, bloggers from all around the world will be updating their own blog every 30 minutes for 24 solid hours all in the name of each blogger's favorite charity.

'I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go.’   Spectator cartoon

Reading Takes Work

David Mills on the decline of reading, with reader response.

Sea Change

From Amy this morning:

I'm telling you, this is where we are. For a long time, pro-lifers thought that getting the message out that what abortion is is killing a human being was the bulk of the job we had to do. (Besides giving material and emotional support to women in unexpected pregnancies). But I think a lot of people are beginning to see that for a hard core, this is irrelevant. They know what it is perfectly well, and they don't particularly care, and they aren't interested in any kind of moral analysis as to why it's okay to end the life of a baby in the womb but not outside. I started seeing this fifteen years ago, when I was reading a lot of pro-abortion rights feminist material. These women were not stupid. They knew what was going on in an abortion. They just felt that women's rights took precedence, period. I also started seeing it in college groups to whom I was speaking. Once I addresssed a group, along with the PR person from a local abortion facility. I took the opportunity to push her on how far they performed abortions - up to 24 weeks - and how they did it. She responded coolly, describing dilitation and extraction. A young man sitting nearby murmured "chop-chop" and there was a small swell of laughter from others. Perhaps uncomfortable, but still laughter. And not a bit of outrage in that group.

How chilling is that? The slippery slope from callousness to extreme callousness always applies. Between 1800 and 1860 slavery went from being seen as a "necessary evil", something that even the big plantation owners were sheepish about, to being defended by Calhoun and others as a positive good! The small lie becomes the big one.

One effect of horror is to galvanize. To see the starkness of inhumanity, such as that perpetrated by Stalin, can have the unintended effect of making us want to be more humane. The Crucifix can have a similar impact - I see where my sin leads.

The Priest Who Hears Confessions

Shyly
they'd keep a distance
walking three paces behind
as if I were leading a parade
and they were keeping
       the proper Float distance.

A shame,
really,
twas only their indoor plumbing
I'd seen,
one blockage the same
as another.

True Words

Hernan mentions a positive of blogging: "And -last but not least- another reason: the most interesting (and very different) people who I have known this way."

Very true. You would think that the self-selection that goes on in St. Blog's, i.e. Catholic, literate, etc... would ensure more uniformity, but I'm often surprised at the diversity of personalities, styles and opinions of different bloggers. One could never, ever, confuse Tom Kreitzberg, Steven Riddle and Bill Luse to name a random three. Each is larger than life on the blogging canvas.

*

Went on a 25-mile bike ride with my uncle yesterday. He's a fervent Audubon Society, National Wildlife-subscribing lover of nature. He talked about how different plants and animals not native to Ohio are taking over the landscape and how species are disappearing. We're seeing an homogenizing effect in nature. We see it with race, a good thing, since intermarriage between blacks and whites will ultimately fix what we can't on our own. We see it in gender, as men become more womanly and women more manly. We see it in cities too, where Honolulu is Chicago with a Polynesian accent, and in regions, where the South has lost so much of its unique culture.

So it is reassuring to see the diversity within St. Blog's, a healthy sort of diversity indeed, though we might appear similar to outsiders.

 Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

One of the pictures I took was from the large front porch. I wanted to capture What Flannery Saw. But of course, no one but Flannery could do that. - Amy Welborn, on a visit to Andalusia, home of Flannery O'Connor

I live alone. I have no kin less than a full day's drive away. I'm chronically ill with a disease that is incurable and fatal. Though I am doing all the things I need to do to collect on the "15 to 20 years of medically manageable symptoms", such as taking all my medicines, doing my physical therapy, using my oxygen, and so on, the fact is that I could easily be Called at any time. And the first notice of my passing, when my body finally stops working entirely, is very likely to be a blaring loudspeaker just like the one in the cafeteria this noontime, at some hospital or skilled nursing facility. I hope that when my time comes, and the loudspeakers start hollering about my room, that there is someone who takes pity on me and prays for me. It's on that list of the Things Catholics Do, the Works of Mercy: Pray for both the living and the dead. - Karen Knapp of Anchor Hold

A 'virtual benediction' is the ecclesial equivalent of 'cyber sex'.  One is just as joyless, lifeless, and ridiculous as the other.  If you can't get to a parish for whatever reason, you're better off just praying Scripture and the Office with whatever prostrations, bows, signs of the Cross are proper.  And please, please, please don't get caught up in the illusion that anything on this screen is 'really present' to you. - Thomas of ER   

My country just keeps on suckin' - title of Kathy Shaidle post, who is a Canadian

mmmMMMmmm Krispy-Kreme. i love food porn! - smockmomma on Bill Luse's blog

I think the Church is still discerning what voting and cooperation actually mean and I think they're coming to terms with the fact that it isn't as far from us as we might once though it had been. Also, this is a sign of the struggle against the culture of Death, whereas in the past some of these issues were nonexistant, now we must deal with the ascendant, destructive reality of those who deny God and seek to become gods. - Steven of Flos Carmeli

I'm no intellectual, you understand, but I like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Hemingway, John P. Marquand, Louis Auchincloss, and Simenon. - Bing Crosby, via Terry Teachout's blog

Offering up the sacrifice of my efforts, the time spent, the work done, IN AND OF ITSELF, makes my attempt pleasing to God. He can bring out of it what HE chooses. - MamaT of Summa Mamas

My travels around St. Blog's over the last couple of years have taught me a valuable lesson: I'm not as smart as I thought I was. I don't know as much as I thought I did. I'm not as articulate as I thought I was. The end result has been a reduction in my posting. Certainly, my busy schedule is the main culprit of my lack of posts, but when I do get time, I usually don't post anymore. So how does pride fit into this? Perhaps I'm too concerned that if I post, I will only reveal how truly ignorant I am. When that thought hit me yesterday, it really caused me to pause and think. Certainly blogging can stem from pride, but not blogging can also stem from pride. See how ignorant I am? LOL!!! - Tom of Santificarnos

I look(ed) up the following prayer of Dr. Johnson's (it is in Boswell's Life under the year 1764): "I have now spent fifty-five years in resolving; having, from the earliest time almost that I can remember, been forming schemes of a better life. I have done nothing. The need of doing, therefore, is pressing, since the time of doing is short. O GOD, grant me to resolve aright, and to keep my resolutions, for JESUS CHRIST'S sake. Amen." - Derbyshire of the Corner

This makes me an even more ardent propopent of teaching a certain amount of skepticism early on. It's like push polling. People will call and say, "If you knew that George Bush was accused of molesting children and once was detained for loitering outside a YMCA would that affect your intention to vote for him?" Now, the point is that none of this is true, but enough doubt is introduced by the question that it often affects the decision-maker's choice. - Steven Riddle in an email stressing the importance of skepticism given how so many uncritically accept the "history" in the DaVinci Code.

I'll adopt one of them, or two if you want. - Jane Wangersky, commenting on Amy's blog, on what she would say to the woman who wrote a column in the NY Times who learned she had triplets and wanted only one child. The women had two of her unborn children killed.

There's always a girl, isn't there? I even married mine. Which was, of course, a horrible mistake. When we finally split up in '97 my brothers, my mother, Roy, my best man Robert, and all my other friends, told me to a person that they had agreed the marriage was doomed from the start....And yet, they did nothing to stop me. Now, it's true that you can never talk someone out of getting married if they are, for whatever reason, determined to go through with it. But you can take 'em to Key West and get 'em so drunk that they miss the wedding altogether. - Thomas of ER

Our refutations of the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus will always be an argument from silence, since history doesn’t speak of it at all. Thus, our arguments will always allow people to believe that He really did have sex with “that woman.” - Steve of "Fifth Column"

But as a priest friend of mine once told me and I go back to it as often as it makes me feel better: "The spiritual life is like a pendulum always swinging one way then the other and there's always some time spent hanging straight down in between." - commenter Alexa on "Barefoot & Pregnant" blog

I believe that the tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. I believe in the instinctive use of spondees. I believe in Rossetti and pine-cones; Alighieri and effervescence. I believe in matrigna mia, who left us not too long ago. I believe in my friends. I believe in my enemies. I believe in Ecclesiastes and the Gospels and the Psalms. I believe in the first Epistle of John. I believe in the poetry that Daniel Berrigan wrote, before he became a leftist sloganeer. I believe in construction-workers and carpenters and in people who do things that I can't do. I believe in Mozart and Tracy Chapman and Oscar Wilde and in the invaluably salvific properties of a really good laugh. I believe in dew and frost, forests and deserts, Carretto and Campion, rain and fire, light and darkness, speech and silence. - from Dylan's archives

Too bad I can’t get a copy of the X-ray. I’d like to have put on a T-shirt so people would stop asking me what’s wrong with my leg. I could alternate with a shirt that says, “THIS IS MY BAD LEG - THE GOOD ONE WAS STOLEN BY AN ITINERANT BIBLE SALESMAN” on the front and “HULDA” on the back. - Ellyn of Oblique House

Yin and Yangs

Read books last night about two men at opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum, Hendra's "Father Joe" and Montefiore's "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar". The contrast is edifying. Father Joe is as unselfish and loving as Stalin was selfish and unloving.

Of Father Joe Warrilow, well, too often I appreciate saints for their heroism (St. Perpetua is a favorite) or intellectual prowess (St. Thomas Aquinas). But Father Joe is only about love. He wasn't particularly bright nor particularly heroic, in the sense we are accustomed to.

Stalin was almost a relief after Father Joe since it quit me from thinking about myself, which books about spiritual giants sometimes do in one prone to pride and the desire to avoid pain in the form of Purgatory (i.e. one sees how dauntingly far the journey to holiness is after seeing saints like Fr. Joe).

"Behold the body of the most holy virgin Cecilia whom I myself saw lying incorrupt in her tomb. I have in this marble expressed for thee the same saint in the very same posture of body." - the artist Cicognara

What if William F. Buckley Had a Blog? (a parody)

WFB's recent travels on the talk show circuit reminded me of an old post and inspired a new one:

Went on a Fox News show called "Hannity and Colmes" to promote the new book. Mrs. Buckley suggested afterwards that my oratorical metabolism, uncompensated by gesticular flourishes, seemed phlegmatic compared to masters Hannity and Colmes. She recommended an aperitif in the Green Room before Hardball.

Posted by WFB 6:35pm July 20, 2004

Spent the morning at the NR office followed by lunch at an Indian food restaurant called "Curry in a Hurry" at Lowry's suggestion. Some have questioned handing over the NR reins to someone so young but they forget I began National Review at a younger age. Lowry's choice in restaurants does give me pause though...

Posted by WFB 11:15am July 12, 2004

Received a call from Don King, the fight promoter, regarding a possible allumette-vers le haut between myself and Gore Vidal. I replied in the negative.

Posted by WFB 3:01pm July 11, 2004

The thought of Catholic politicians who openly controvert Church teaching receiving at the communion rail is reminiscent of the bride who, expert in matters carnal and caught in flagrante delicto with the postman, still chooses the whitest white in wedding apparel. The small hypocrisy of the shade of gown pales before the taking of Communion, so the bishops must untangle a twisted skein given the on-going, unrepentent nature of the sin. The bedlamitic uncle in this attic appears to be the fact that John Kerry could not successfuly export his odious views on human life issues but for the enabling votes of millions of Catholics, begging the larger issue of an apparently new thing - the wholesale disregard the majority of Western Catholics have shown towards the Magisterium in their discarding of Humane Vitae and support for pro-choice political candidates.

Posted by WFB 2:12pm July 9, 2004

Michael Oakeshott Quote:

Everybody's young days are a dream, a delightful insanity, a sweet solipsism. Nothing in them has a fixed shape, nothing a fixed price; everything is a possibility, and we live happily on credit. There are no obligations to be observed; there are no accounts to be kept. Nothing is specified in advance; everything is what can be made of it. The world is a mirror in which we seek the reflection of our own desires. The allure of violent emotions is irresistible. When we are young we are not disposed to make concessions to the world; we never feel the balance of a thing in our hands - unless it be a cricket bat. We are not apt to distinguish between our liking and our esteem; urgency is our criterion of importance; and we do not easily understand that what is humdrum need not be despicable. We are impatient of restraint; and we readily believe, like Shelley, that to have contracted a habit is to have failed. These, in my opinion, are among our virtues when we are young; but how remote they are from the disposition appropriate for participating in the style of government I have been describing. Since life is a dream, we argue (with plausible but erroneous logic) that politics must be an encounter of dreams, in which we hope to impose our own. Some unfortunate people, like Pitt (laughably called "the Younger"), are born old, and are eligible to engage in politics almost in their cradles; others, perhaps more fortunate, belie the saying that one is young only once, they never grow up. But these are exceptions. For most there is what Conrad called the "shadow line" which, when we pass it, discloses a solid world of things, each with its fixed shape, each with its own point of balance, each with its price; a world of fact, not poetic image, in which what we have spent on one thing we cannot spend on another; a world inhabited by others besides ourselves who cannot be reduced to mere reflections of our own emotions. And coming to be at home in this commonplace world qualifies us (as no knowledge of "political science" can ever qualify us), if we are so inclined and have nothing better to think about, to engage in what the man of conservative disposition understands to be political activity. --via the Corner

Provoking Sympathy

Here literature's weakness - that, unlike philosophy, it is unsystematic - becomes its great strength. It draws on all our ways of knowing at once: not just the analysis of the outer world, but introspection and intuition as well. We can understand what is going on in the hearts of others because we know what stirs our own hearts, and what could stir them. When a writer imagines his characters' inner drama, his description rings true to us because we have felt similar impulses or imagined analogous situations, and , further, can identify sympathetically with something beyond our ken. We grasp intuitively the complex internal mix: the simultaneous interplay of feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and hopes, of conscious and subliminal impulses - as pity combines with social anxiety, say, or eros or vanity or sudden insight to impel a character to behave as he behaves. Literature is the great school of motivation: it teaches us how, out of the complex welter of impulses churning within us, we make the choices that define us and seal our fate.

-- Myron Magnet, from the preface to the ISI edition of Dickens and the Social Order...via Collected Miscellany

Teasing Tidbit from Terry Teachout

A regular "About Last Night" reader writes:

In general -- and with all exceptions duly noted -- I think your preferences reflect a taste for lightness over heaviness, for charm over depth (as conventionally understood). As I grow older, that is the direction in which my taste is headed. Do you agree that aging has something to do with it?

Very perceptive. But while I think aging may have something to do with it, I think the effects in my case are limited. My taste has always run more or less in those directions: French over German, "comic" (broadly speaking) over tragic, short over long, color over line. In the best of all possible two-kinds-of-people divide, that formulated by Schiller, I tend to opt for "naive" over "sentimental." As Sir Isaiah Berlin explains, "naive" artists are those "who create naturally, who are not troubled by the burden of the tragic disorder of life, who do not seek salvation in art as some people seek personal salvation in religion or Socialism or nationalism." He cited Verdi as the quintessential example of the naive artist of genius. For me, it's Balanchine.

Asking the Saints to Intercede For Us

There is something charismatic about St. Thomas Aquinas apart from the charisma every saint has in being close to God. Something about his sense of order and the sheer comprehensiveness of his writings, and the confidence with which he teaches! Here is a rich vein on why ask the saints to intercede for us:

According to Dionysius (Eccl. Hier. v) the order established by God among things is that "the last should be led to God by those that are midway between."...It is not on account of any defect in God's power that He works by means of second causes, but it is for the perfection of the order of the universe, and the more manifold outpouring of His goodness on things, through His bestowing on them not only the goodness which is proper to them, but also the faculty of causing goodness in others.

Why ask prayers of lesser saints?

Although the greater saints are more acceptable to God than the lesser, it is sometimes profitable to pray to the lesser; and this for five reasons. First, because sometimes one has greater devotion for a lesser saint than for a greater, and the effect of prayer depends very much on one's devotion. Secondly, in order to avoid tediousness, for continual attention to one thing makes a person weary; whereas by praying to different saints, the fervor of our devotion is aroused anew as it were. Thirdly, because it is granted to some saints to exercise their patronage in certain special cases, for instance to Saint Anthony against the fire of hell. Fourthly, that due honor be given by us to all. Fifthly, because the prayers of several sometimes obtain that which would not have been obtained by the prayers of one.

Another Chesterton Excerpt...Everlasting Man

This excerpt is so indisputably true. I can never for the life me understand how anyone can say the Catholic Church is "strict". Have they read the Gospels?

We have all heard people say a hundred times over, for they seem never to tire of saying it, that the Jesus of the New Testament is indeed a most merciful and humane lover of humanity, but that the Church has hidden this human character in repellent dogmas and stiffened it with ecclesiastical terrors till it has taken on an inhuman character. This is, I venture to repeat, very nearly the reverse of the truth. The truth is that it is the image of Christ in the churches that is almost entirely mild and merciful. It is the image of Christ in the Gospels that is a good many other things as well...The Church can reasonably be justified therefore if she turns the most merciful face or aspect towards men; but it is certainly the most merciful aspect that she does turn. And the point is here that it is very much more specially and exclusively merciful than any impression that could be formed by a man merely reading the New Testament for the first time. A man simply taking the words of the story as they stand would form quite another impression; an impression full of mystery and possibly of inconsistency; but certainly not merely an impression of mildness....I have deliberately stressed what seems to be nowadays a neglected side of the New Testament story, but nobody will suppose, I imagine, that it is meant to obscure that side that may truly be called human. That Christ was and is the most merciful of judges and the most sympathetic of friends is a fact of considerably more importance in our own private lives than in anybody's historical speculations.

There's No Business like Show Business

Longtime-readers-first-time-callers will recall the long saga of Ham of Bone, father of four children and three screenplays. We had lunch today, and I'm sure he won't mine this reportage as long as I spell his name right. (Bone, correct me if I'm wrong.)

"IT is dead to me and I am dead to IT," he began*.

I didn't know quite how to respond to this dramatic declaration, although I admired its clarity. I probably could've said something like IT might be dead to you, but it's providing a paycheck, which is nothing to sneeze at. But where's the poetry in that? How much more Wildean to say, "IT is dead to me."

Of course he is not quitting his job, but has discovered a new way of expressing his desperation: a self-financed movie. The idea is to convert his screenplay 'Cheapskate' (the main characters being Bone and myself) into a movie for as inexpensively as $10,000.

Sounds like a good idea. He has prodigious amount of energy and $10,000 is only six month's worth of savings for Bone. The one negative is he wants me to play myself, because I'll work cheaply (i.e. for free).

* - (IT stands for information technology, which is his field of expertise. I offered him a book on job burnout but he's too burned out to read it.)

Reading Like It's 1999

It takes discipline to read on a sunny Sunday afternoon and not fall prey to the honey-do list. I did succumb to Thompson water-sealing the new mailbox, which took all of ten minutes but made my wife happy. Nice bang for the buck there. She knows Saturdays are fair game where work around the house is concerned but expects nothing from me on Sundays.

I recall fondly how Peggy Noonan tried to put the best spin on negligent housekeeping by calling spiderwebs "Irish lace" and by saying the reason the Irish don't keep their houses pristine was because who has time to clean when there is Joyce and Yeats to read? Amen to that.

So I'm proud to report I was up to the challenge of not doing much work around the house Sunday. I read till I could read no mo'. As can be discerned from recent bloggings, I re-read parts of the Pope's "Love & Responsibility" and Chesterton's "Everlasting Man". Then there was also an Updike piece in the New Yorker, which led me inexorably to the book "John Updike and Religion".

After that a dollop of Victor Hanson's "Soul of Battle". He's now on to Patton, and I made a mental note to read Shelby Foote's thoughts on Sherman in his Civil War narrative.

Channel-fipping led me to a Discovery show on the fall of Rome, which eventually led to a few chapters of Epstein's "As the Romans Do: An American Family's Italian Odyssey".

Finally, Tony Hendra's "Father Joe" rounded out the elixir.

I guess reports of my book monogamy are greatly exaggerated. So many books, so little time.

Take Me Out to the Convention

Ham of Bone, writing under a psuedonym, cracks me up.

More DVC

Steven Riddle emailed me with a counterpoint that I could've/should've anticipated. He said that there's nothing sinister about Brown's sales because:

"I would point out that... Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy and others routinely sell this well or perhaps a bit better. Further, I would point out that the errors in Crichton are every bit as profound, pernicious, and irritating at those in the DaVinci Code, but they don't happen to reflect on religion."

This is true, but I think that errors regarding religion are more catastrophic than errors in science since the former involves the soul, the latter the body. But Steven makes a good point on the ability of fluff to have large sales.

The only answer I have to that is that, whatever their merits, Crichton & Clancy & others are living off the fame of their past books. They are a name brand now and could put out anything and it would sell. The key is their FIRST book, their break-out book. DVC is Brown's break-out book and there is something in a breakout book that might say something about a culture...

Keeping an Eye on Fast Food ...so you don't have to

Sign of the Apocalypse: Burger King now has a Low Carb Menu. Oy vey.

Sign of the Apocalypse II: McDonald's new oven-roasted sandwiches aren't bad (I asked for a sample of the Grilled Reuben and they gave me some). The Cobb Chicken salad isn't bad either. This from someone who used to eat at McDonald's (other than breakfast) once or twice a year.

Equal Time for Pullman

Though I dislike DVC for personal reasons (i.e. relatives have been disturbed by its 'history') the Pullman stuff is worse. Christopher of Ratzinger Fan Club Blog provides a round-up on Phillip Pullman.

War & Peace...a Chesterton Excerpt

G.K. writes about how Christ does not offer platitudes (like the earthly philosophers that some in the Jesus Seminar are wont to compare Him to), but paradoxes. Chesterton makes the point that it gives Christ's teaching a universal application and helps disprove those who say his teaching came out of his culture. Here is one on peace and war, from the perspective of someone reading the NT for the first time:

He would find several paradoxes in favour of peace. He would find several ideals of non-resistance, which taken as they stand would be rather too pacific for any pacifist. He would be told in one passage to treat a robber not with passive resistance, but rather with positive and enthusiastic encouragement, if the terms be taken literally; heaping up gifts upon the man who had stolen goods.

But he would not find a word of all that obvious rhetoric against war which has filled countless books and odes and orations; not a word about the wickedness of war, the wastefulness of war, the appalling scale of the slaughter in war and all the rest of the familiar frenzy; indeed not a word about war at all. There is nothing that throws any particular light on Christ's attitude towards organised warfare, except that he seems to have been rather fond of Roman soldiers...

There is nothing that wants the rarest sort of wisdom so much as to see, let us say, that the citizen is higher than the slave and yet that the soul is infinitely higher than the citizen or the city. It is not by any means a faculty that commonly belongs to these simplifiers of the Gospel; those who insist on what they call a simple morality and others call a sentimental morality. It is not at all covered by those who are content to tell everybody to remain at peace. On the contrary, there is a very striking example of it in the apparent inconsistency between Christ's sayings about peace and about a sword. It is precisely this power which perceives that while a good peace is better than a good war, even a good war is better than a bad peace.

Where We Find Ourselves

My oversimplified and perhaps flawed view of the pre-Vatican II era (after all, I wasn't even alive during it) is that you didn't do (fill-in-the-blank) because the Church said so. Vatican II tried to offer why, to give reasons for our observances and to emphasize the positive over the negative, as exemplified by the lack of anathemas in the Council documents.

Similarly, Pope John Paul II emphasizes God's love, his mercy, and consistently sees in man a grandeur that comes from a deep faith. I think that this passage from the Pope's Love & Responsibility speaks volumes about how the Church has changed:

For man is a being internally constructed that the promptings of carnal desire do not disappear merely because they are contained by willpower, although superficially they appear to do so; for them to disappear completely a man must know 'why' he is containing them. It may be said that the prohibition is self-justifying: 'why not?' - 'because I must not' - but this does not solve the problem satisfactorily...Only when the will is confronted by a value which fully explains the necessity for containing impulses aroused by carnal desire and sensuality. Only as this value gradually takes possession of the mind and the will does the will become calm and free itself from a characteristic sense of loss.

Doesn't our recent history mirror in some micro way the differences of emphasis in the Testaments? Wasn't the OT (and pre-Vatican II) mostly about telling you that you'll do this because...God or the Church said so? And the NT (and the Vatican II documents) reminded us why? (i.e. Love, i.e. Christ, i.e. because God so loved the world that he sent His only son.).

It seems as though a "hard ass" method was employed pre-Vatican II, while a more "here's why" way was employed post-Vatican II. But is it any wonder that the Church struggles with where to draw the line respect to dissident theologians or how strict to make the fasts when, in our own lives, we have so much difficulty determining whether we are too easy on ourselves or too hard? It'll be fascinating to see where we go from here.

Pre-Scripture-tion

Oh, print the Psalms
and plant them like flags
in the ground of your soul!
Apply your patch of Scripture
like the ex-smokers do
and sing them in the shower
read them on the subway
so that Christ may get inside.

Be Not Afraid

...from the Pope's "Crossing the Threshold of Hope":

Of what should we not be afraid? We should not fear the truth about ourselves. One day Peter became aware of this and with particular energy he said to Jesus: "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man" (Lk 5:8).

Peter was not the only one who was aware of this truth. Every man has learned it. Every successor to Peter has learned it. I learned it very well. Every one of us is indebted to Peter for what he said on that day: "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." Christ answered him: "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men" (Lk 5:10). Do not be afraid of men!

Do not be afraid of God's mystery; do not be afraid of His love; and do not be afraid of man's weakness or of his grandeur! Man does not cease to be great, not even in his weakness. Do not be afraid of being witnesses to the dignity of every human being, from the moment of conception until death.

Beauty Going, going...?
 
I think it was Walter Kerr in The Decline of Pleasure who said that the capacity to enjoy poetry decreases as you age.  If this is true, then I wonder if it also holds true with civilizations, for ours is one who no longer appreciates poetry.

Poetry is to fiction as fiction is to non-fiction - the former is more beautiful than the latter and the latter is beautiful just for beauty's sake.  In a utilitarian age where bodies are used as a means to ends it's perhaps not surprising that non-fiction is prized because it's more useful than fiction, and fiction more useful than poetry.  So withers a whole category of books.   

Poetry might be the "canary in the coalmine" signalling the decline and fall of good fiction.  (Note to Bone: if you're going to write that novel, best do it soon.)  Newsweek reported recently that fiction book buying was down 14% last year and literary fiction - the kind that often tries to be beautiful - is down the most.

CS Lewis on Beauty & Desire (from Pilgrim's Regress)

There is a particular mystery about the object of this Desire. Inexperienced people suppose, when they feel it, that they know what they are desiring. Thus if it comes to a child while he is looking at a far off hillside he at once thinks "if only I am there"; if it comes when he is remembering some event in the past, he thinks "if only I could go back to those days". If it comes (a little later) while he is reading a "romantic" tale or poem of "perilous seas and faerie lands forlorn," he thinks he is wishing that such places really existed and that he could reach them...

Every one of thse supposed objects for the Desire is inadequate to it. An easy experiment will show that by going to the far hillside you will get either nothing, or else a recurrence of the same desire which sent you thither.  And once grant your fairy, your enchanted forest, your satyr, faun, wood-nymph and well of immortality real, and amidst all the scientific, social and practical interest which the discovery would awake, the Sweet Desire would have disappeared...

This hunger is better than any other fullness; this poverty better than all other wealth. And thus it comes about, that if the desire is long absent, it may itself be desired, and that new desiring becomes a new instance of the original desire, though the subject may not at once recognize the fact and thus cries out for his lost youth of soul at the very moment in which he is being rejuvenated. This sounds complicated, but it is simple when we live it. "Oh to feel as I did then!" we cry; not noticing that even while we say the words the very feeling whose loss we lament is rising again in all its old bitter-sweetness.

Interesting review of Hans-Hermann Hoppe: "Democracy, The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order":

I value what I can have now more than what I cannot have for some extended period of time. But if I valued only what I can have now, I would spend all I have right now and never save. The more I value things NOW, the higher my rate of time reference. The more I can put off consumption, the lower my rate of time preference. Keep this distinction in mind as we proceed.

The reason monarchy is better than democracy is because a king will possess a lower rate of time preference by definition; he wishes to maximize the future capital value of his realm for himself and his heirs. His policies, if he is wise, will protect his kingdom from unrest and ultimately revolution; he will tax as little as possible, he will be eager to enlist his citizens in programs that build up the long-term health and wealth of the state. Historically, for example, as Hoppe shows those horrible old monarchies have taxed up to a huge eight percent. Democracies, however, are ruled by a cadre with a very high rate of time preference. They wish always to maximize the immediate return they get from government. (Think pay – and reelection – and pork to assure the latter.) The distant future is a time for them when they will all be dead, and few envision their own heirs as being part of the government apparatus in that distant future. Thus NOW is the watchword. What can we get NOW – myself and my family? And the situation is, if anything, worse with the mass of voters. Give us all we can get now, and we don’t care where it comes from. Grab it from those richer folks. The payola (government handouts) flies around. Taxes rise and rise. As I noted above, the going rate in the U.S. today flutters around 50 percent, and it is worse in some other nations.

Author Hoppe is no mere Enlightenment rationalist, no disciple of Voltaire & Co. who would erase religion and undermine the family. His contention: "[C]onservatives today must be antistatist libertarians and, equally important . . . libertarians must be conservatives.” Defining libertarianism, Hoppe disposes of those self-styled “libertarians” who are really libertines, hedonists, and wreckers of society. Defining conservatism, Hoppe rules out in a brief paragraph the “conservative” who would merely preserve the “existing order.” The term “conservative” can only meaningfully refer, he says, to “someone who believes in the existence of a natural order, a natural state of affairs which corresponds to the nature of things, of nature and man.” What might be some features of the natural order Hoppe appeals to? Listen to this:

“Within the realm of the humanities, including the social sciences, a conservative recognizes families (fathers, mothers, children, grandchildren,) and households based on private property and in cooperation with a community of other households as the most fundamental, natural, essential, ancient, and indispensable social units. Moreover, the family household also represents the model of the social order at large. Just as hierarchical order exists in a family, so is there a hierarchical order within a community of families – of apprentices, servants, and masters, vassals, knights, lords, overlords, and even kings – tied together by an elaborate and intricate system of kinship relations; and of children, parents, priests, bishops, cardinals, patriarchs or popes, and finally the transcendent God. Of the two layers of authority, the earthly physical power of parents, lords, and kings is naturally subordinate and subject to control by the ultimate intellectual-spiritual authority of fathers, priest, bishops, and ultimately God.”

 You didn’t expect to read anything like that in an “anarcho-capitalist” text, did you?

Mark Brumely is less than impressed by Hahn's defenders at Catholic Answers.

Has anybody heard Scott Hahn's Shem=Melchizedek thesis and how he can take that position and avoid being a young earther? If you have some info, email me and I'll post it and you'll be read by tens of people! Practically famous!

Fr. Benedict Groeschel talks about the great need of theologians who are also psychologists.  And he's right but that applies to science in general; part of the problem is there are so few people who are fluent in science and theology.

The Da Vinci Code & the movie Titanic

Prompted by Steve's brilliant post, I'm trying to think of just why the book is as popular as it is.  Where is it now - seven million sold?
 
Perhaps the treatment of sex in The Da Vinci Code was just a component of its success, albeit the largest share.  Perhaps the reason it hit gold is because it's like the movie Titanic - it crosses demographic groups.  Titanic was the "perfect storm" as far as drawing diverse audiences.  It was a love story, adventure story and historical drama all in one.  Women tended to go for the love story, men for the adventure and unlikely movie-goers like me wanted to see the recreation on screen of a historical event.   
 
The DaVinci Code is another perfect storm of cross-pollination. There is the strong draw of a book that treats sex as holy (luring mostly women), you have the skulldugery of secret societies and conspiracy theories (mostly men),  you have the depiction of the early Church (of interest to Christians and seekers),  and you have the art (gay men - just a joke!).
 
So the problem is collateral damage.  Some innocently read it for the art or sex and came away disturbed by the history because most Christians have zero knowledge of Church history. But on the other hand, Steve of Fifth Column makes the point: "Our refutations of the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus will always be an argument from silence, since history doesn’t speak of it at all. Thus, our arguments will always allow people to believe that He really did have sex with 'that woman.'" Interesting. I wonder if the Da Vinci Code debunker books are only preaching to the choir? It may not be reassuring to someone to simply say, "we have no evidence of that".
 
UPDATE:  Steven Riddle thinks we protest too much: "We attack the high-profile fluff and the Harry Potters of the world, meanwhile Philip Pullman's insidious work endangers the souls of a great many young readers with nary a comment."
 
This is true, Pullman's stuff is pure evil.  But I don't think it's either/or.  I never, ever understood the hair-pulling over Harry Potter, which I thought a harmless, moral movie. Pullman's stuff is far worse than Brown's, but it doesn't have as big an audience either.   Seven million copies sold of The Da Vinci Code, it can't be just because it's fun and fluff, can it? There are surely plenty of fluff books involving conspiracies out there. Why should this one sell so well? 

On the Da Vinci Code

Steve at the Fifth Column has an impressive and unique perspective on why the DaVinci Code has sold like hot cakes. Any book that sells that well must have something in it that appeals on a more "subterranean" level. It must speak to some unfulfilled need. He asks why Dan Brown's previous book "Angels and Demons" wasn't a hit (answer: it depicted sex in the typical male fantasy kind of way):

Now, turn to The Da Vinci Code. The number of beautiful women in the book is reduced to one. Langdon, of course, beds her in the novel’s final chapters, but he does so only after having protested for the whole of the book – and despite several instances of strong male opposition - that sex is sacred, sex is holy and women should be treated like goddesses. Now, why should that make the difference in sales? Because 70% to 80% of book-buyers in the United States are women and women are tired of the male version of sex: sex as fast food and women as inflatable dolls.In short, The Da Vinci Code phenomenon actually proves what the Holy Father has been saying for the last thirty years. Dan Brown is, in his own way, preaching the Theology of the Body and he’s getting better response than any Catholic has yet received.
 
But none of the historical “facts” he brings forward are the issue. Sex is the issue. Sex is holy. Dan Brown proves that sex is holy by asserting that Jesus had sex. Brown wants to demonstrate the divinity of sex. He knows most readers will walk away from the novel believing that Christ is God, no matter what foolish things he says in the novel. He wants to use our attachment to Christ’s divinity in order to connect Christ’s divinity to sex. If God had sex, then it must be divine.

Whatever the reason the book is selling, I know from anecdotal evidence (my aunt and a friend of my father's) that it's the "history" - pretend history - that is disturbing them and their faith in the Church. They may read it for it's resonance with The Theology of the Body, but what they are getting from it is that one can't trust the early Church or the bible that came from it.

Sonnet 40 - Oh, Yes! They Love Through All This World Of Ours!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XL

Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth.
I have heard love talked in my early youth,
And since, not so long back but that the flowers
Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours
Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth
For any weeping. Polypheme's white tooth
Slips on the nut if, after frequent showers,
The shell is over-smooth,—and not so much
Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate
Or else to oblivion. But thou art not such
A lover, my Beloved! thou canst wait
Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to touch,
And think it soon when others cry 'Too late.'

Hudson Review on Hating America:

The endlessly reiterated claim that George W. Bush “squandered” Western Europe’s post-9/11 sympathy is nonsense. The sympathy was a blip; the anti-Americanism is chronic...It sometimes seems to me a miracle, frankly, that America has any friends at all in some parts of Western Europe, given the news media’s relentless anti-Americanism. There is no question that the chief obstacle to improved understanding and harmony between the U.S. and Western Europe is the Western European media establishment. It is an obstacle that must somehow be overcome, for Western civilization is under siege, and America and Europe need each other, perhaps more than ever. More sane, sensible European books along the lines of Revel’s L’obsession anti-américaine and Bromark and Herbjørnsrud’s Frykten for Amerika can help.

It's not true that Saddam Hussein has been asked to keynote the Democratic Convention.  Just not so.

Going, going....

I'd been fighting the temptation to buy "The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A Spiritual Life" by Ralph McInerny from Thomas of ER's Robin Hood books and lo and behold I find it sold out. All for the best, since it would probably sit on my shelf instead of being profitably read by some soul. Tis an especial responsibility with rare out-of-print books to actually read them...Hmm...I should pull out Orchard's "Catholic commentary on Holy Scripture".

Ben Stein:

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.



The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists...Now you have my idea of a real hero. We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human...I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can,
It is knowing that God will

Crisis Story on Marriage

Fascinating article in Crisis magazine on why some orthodox and faithful-to-the-Magisterium Catholics are getting divorced. The numbers may be small, perhaps 5-10 percent of those who have 'made an effort to know, study or follow Church teachings', but Dr. Phillip Mango, a psychoanalyst at St. Michael's Institute in Manhattan says that Catholoic marriages are hurting and Tom Hoopes tries to explain why:

Catholics can sometimes convince themselves that they aren't part of the same culture as the rest of the world. But we're all part of the culture of immediate gratification that doesn't consider long-term consequences. We're all individualistic rather than communal.

But what about the Faith? Shouldn't faith steel the assenting Catholic against the culture? In fact, it's the other way around. Faith needs a culture to stay strong. Worse, a self-righteous faith can lull Catholics into a false sense of security, a new Phariseeism convinced that intellectual assent to the right doctrines - not our humility and God's mercy - is what saves us.

Fr. Brunetta said that for many couples, "an overly intellectual approach diminishes the mytery that marriage is supposed to be...If we've got it all figured out ahead of time, we might end up fighting against what our married life is [experientially] teaching us."...

I must confess, I was surprised by the story assignment when I was asked to investigate reports that a surprising number of young, on-fire, faithful Catholics were divorcing.

But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that my surprise was part of the problem. After all, from the beginning, marriage has always been the center of a great battle. No one should blithely expect that he's in a special class that is somehow spiritually protected.

Marriage was Satan's first target in the Garden of Eden, and it was one of his preferred fields of battle through the Old Testament. The British schism in the Protestant Reformation began when a committed Catholic, Henry VIII, wanted to divorce his wife...

Church of the Masses Excerpts from a Talk Given to Seminarians

Entertainment as ‘the work between the work’ – to provide calisthenics for the soul. To stretch them so they don’t have to sin. Because Frodo lost his hand at Mordor, you won’t have to.

“The Church that marries the spirit of the age is a widow in the next generation.” (Dean William Inge)

(We need to remember that even the immensely climactic moment of the reforms of Vatican II, are still just a moment in ecclesial history. In watching the backlash against the changes of the last forty years, I can’t help wonder with a little exhausted breathlessness, exactly what will survive. There has been so much damn suffering, I hope something makes it.)

Seminarians Need Arts and Entertainment for Their Own Spiritual Growth
a) They need more beauty because more renunciation will be required of them. Arts can achieve a “storing up” of intimate encounters with God. They will need to bank these moments for the future. Since leaving the nuns, it has seemed to me at times ruthlessly unfair how beautiful the liturgies were in the Motherhouse…It made the real world outside seem like a vast desert of liturgical ugliness. Sometimes, I look around at the other lay sheep in church and wonder, “Why are you people coming here?” But I think it is as “unfair” as the fact the apostles had three lovely, intimate years with Jesus – tromping around fields and villages, sitting by late-night fires, sharing untold meals and prayers, before they had to all go live and die for Him.

Blogs of the Masses

This is one of those times when there's a bit too much to take in. Too much fecundity. Too many good blogs saying too many interesting things. You've probably already seen them, but let's recap:

Barbara blogs in a whole other league. Much food for thought in that post, and much that I have saved off. She says more before 9am than I say all day.

Professional writers like her who blog honestly - i.e. are not overly protective of their reputations - are the creme de la creme of the blogging world. They tend to have read more and thought more and can deliver it better to boot.

Not that I've a mind to quit blogging, though, since I'm allergic to the view that anyone but the highly qualified should do anything (admittedly I do have a conflict-of-interest). But life is a participatory sport. God thinks more of love than efficiency, given the trouble He goes to in order to effect our conversions.

Another post that interested me was right chere, over at Thomas of Endlessly Rockin' who sez: "I suppose it's clear by now that I don't really flinch from saying that God has his way with all of us. It's just that we trust that his way is, you know, radically good."

It isn't a concern for abstract 'divine sovereignty' that moves Augustine, but an eschatological vision of personhood whole and restored so that one simply cannot sin any longer because one is possessed by the God who inspired one's infinite desire for him in the first place, a desire that was for so long just flailing about, coming to rest on this or that penultimate good and thus coming to grief because temporary, finite things, however good, cannot satisfy such a longing. Thus every thought of God is inspired by God, every desire for God wells up because he first desired his beloved - and thus Augustine's dark and terrible notion of reprobation stands in complete contradiction to his wonderful, truly good teaching on predestination. Wherever we wander with our divided wills and our despair at desire unfulfilled, God in Christ is already there, and he will have us. -Thomas of ER

Various & Sundry

Is Enbrethiliel pregnant!? That's what I thought when I saw the headline "First Day of the Second Trimester"...
-
Anglophilic Derbyshire on Irishman Yeats
-
Great post from The Dawn Patrol on the folly of settling for respect.
-
Excerpt from a letter from St. Therese of Lisieux:

Set your mind at rest: He whom you have chosen as your Spouse possesses certainly every perfection that can be desired; but, if I may dare to say it, He has at the same time one great infirmity: He is blind! And there is a science which He knows not, that of calculation. These two points which would be most lamentable in an earthly spouse, renders ours infinitely lovable. Were He to consider our sins and reckon with them, do you not think that in the face of all these sins He would cast us back into nothingness? But no, His love for us makes Him absolutely blind!

And Now For the Defense

Steven has a nice defense of blogging here. For Mr. Riddle - whose taste in poetry and literature is impeccable - to defend blogging is meaningful:

"Blogging may not be high art; however, I believe it a valuable and important enterprise. It deserves more respect that the outside gives and and more respect than many of us give it...There seems to be a sufficient understanding of the limits of the medium, but only a very poor understanding of its virtues. And there are a great many of them."

Bill White, who is a fine writer, defends likewise. Hear, hear!

I blog for many reasons. Partially for purposes of exhibitionism (beats streakin'!). Partially to improve my writing. And partially for altruistic reasons since I figure if something occurred to me or was interesting to me it might be to some other struggling Christian, although don't tell my left hand. Cynics might see blogging as a ponzi-scheme where there is a tit-for-tat: "you hit my site and I'll hit yours." But there is a thrill in the very personal nature of blogs. And I've learned an awful lot. That can't be all bad, although my "first readers" - i.e. my parents - are less fond of my writing saying it has become less humorous and more "intellectual". Don't know if that's good or bad.

About Last Night

Our green Schwarzwald brims with fireflies...I'm sipping a St. Pauli Girl "special dark" while reading the elegiac prose of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath: "How will we know it's us without our past?"

...Tiki torches of citronella abut the back patio but provide more in the way of ambience than mosquito-protection. The quiet is restful, with only the sounds of nature in the background. It's like we're out camping without the hassle of a dragging the pop-up camper all over creation. Simplicity itself - our own backyard.

    Spanning the Proverbial Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

I was talking with the nurses at the hospital the other day, and we were discussing how different expectant moms are now than they were 20 years ago. Then, many moms were willing to bear pain to protect their babies from drugs, and it was sometimes difficult to help them through labor. Now, most come in wanting and expecting a painless childbirth, and even for the easiest of labors they want all the drugs available...I just had 2 post-abortive women tell me that they don't feel guilty about their abortions (though they grieve for themselves that they won't be mother to that child) because by aborting the child they saved the child from pain. - Alicia of Fructus Ventris

Seems I'm not only boring, but smug and complacent as well. Who knew? I have been so without the sense of fellow feeling as to... to... read! The brute beasts in the farthest jungles have more kindness! But their judgments fall on my deaf ears and affect me not, for I'm afraid my heart is a stony, dead thing, impervious to even the most violent of sorrows. But for you, dear, misguided reader, there is still time. Get thee a Gameboy, download some porn, go see Michael Moore's latest, all to cleanse yourself. And while you so indulge in witless purgation, cast a cold eye on me, for whom all is lost, and give thanks you have avoided my fate. - Thomas of Endlessly Rocking, responding to a NYT article that castigated readers.

But one thing that has disturbed me has been the number of people who, at bottom, don't seem to really believe in grace or mercy. People, in fact, who habitually tend to regard mercy as weakness and charity as stupid softness. I shouldn't be shocked, of course. I'm the one that continually says that it is the Church's teaching on mercy, not sex, that is the most offensive and obnoxious item in its entire corpus of teaching. At the same time, we constantly hear demands for "holy priests". Great souled priests full of wise counsel and abundant pastoral mercies. People like "Father Joe", the Benedictine who saved Tony Hendra's soul and who brought a rather sleazy creature of the 60s back to a serious practice of the Faith after he had been nabbed making out with a married woman and then spent the next couple decades indulging himself in the normal plethora of Baby Boomer indulgences. There have been a number of raves about this book, and for good reason. - Mark Shea

Attempting to lead people in an intellectual manner without the glue of social interaction invariably has its risks. At the end of the day, I'd rather argue with someone face to face than over e-mail. I'd also rather argue with someone who trusts me (and whom I trust) than with a stranger, since both sides will treat the discussion with charity. Lask of honesty and trust can lead to sophistry and lies on the part of the speaker and stubborness on the part of the interlocutor. ... Let us not accept the mistrust and dishonesty that has caused public political discourse in this country to turn into shouting matches. Let us speak truly, with confidence and not hubris, while at once being open to the possibility that our friends here are correct and can lead us to the Truth. - Alexander on Mark Shea's blog.

The essence of blogs - publishing one's unedited and immediate thoughts and comments to a wide range of people - is somewhat at odds with humility. - commenter Ellen Hughes on Mark Shea's blog

I'm an evangelical who has managed to make it to London, and have a feeling that Rome is my final stop, if you follow my drift...One of things that I love about Rome is the Pope. It's hard to describe the respect - affection?! - I have for him. My friends think I'm nuts (and on the road to heresy, of course), but "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" was the most Christian modern book I've ever read. - commenter on Mark Shea's blog

"People are complex," as they say, and complexity makes for both good story-telling and fruitful meditation. How can honor and nobility co-exist with a willingness to kill to preserve slavery? That's an important question without a simple answer. - Tom of Disputations

My hometown of Chico, California, is possibly home to a miraculous weeping image of the Blessed Virgin Mary. While I'm not exactly a chaser of miracles and apparitions, I have no reason to doubt it. The Virgin weeps: we should be worried if she didn't. - Jeff of El Camino Real

First, resist the impulse to buy into the myth of self-righteous dissent. This has a long tradition in both our culture and its Christian circles. With both Jesus Christ and Martin Luther as handy patron saints, self-righteous dissenters imagine themselves the glorious would-be saviors of a rotten and God-forsaken establishment. Though this is sometimes the case, it is rarely so (in fact, it is less the case with even Jesus and Luther than many think). This mentality is responsible for a lot more broken institutions and abused individuals than revivals and redemptions. It feeds pessimism and cynicism among the dissenters and fear and intimidation among the institutions. This is, not least, because it assumes that God is behind you and has abandoned them. Don't go there — not yet, anyway, not as long as there is even a remote chance that (a) the Spirit still dwells and works there and (b) you might need some correction. - Telford on Camassia's blog

But when Your Sweetness added in your letter that you will continue to importune me until I write that it has been revealed to me that your sins have been forgiven, you demanded a thing both difficult and useless. Difficult certainly, because I am unworthy of having a revelation made to me; and useless as well, because you must not become secure about your sins, except when on the last day of your life you shall be able no longer to bewail those same sins. - St. Gregory via Bill of Summa (non)Minutiae

St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, had an IQ of over 200. This is evident from the scientific analysis of his writings in which he stated that the more Catholic knowledge a human intellect acquires about the science of God, the more perfectly he is able to love Him. In this way, God created our souls. He gave our souls two spiritual faculties - intellect and will. The object of the intellect is truth, and the object of the will is good. These two faculties of the human soul enable a person to know the true good and to choose it with the assistance of God's grace. God made us in such a way that we cannot choose what we do not know, and we need God's divine assistance to know the true good in order to choose it. - Rev. L. A. Stelter, preface to St. Alphonsus De Liguori's "The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection"

A slogan for Planned Parenthood, 'Keeping Minorities - Minorities'. - Jeff Miller

ABC News’ must-read The Note says some political reporters are desperately looking for Democrats who voted for Gore in 2000 but are voting for Bush in ’04. They’re having no trouble finding disillusioned Republicans but 9/11 Democrats? It’s easier to find a marriage counselor who is giving Britney’s marriage the thumbs-up. So look over here, Google: I’m a Democrat who plans to vote for Bush. Interview me! - Phil A. of philalbinus.com

are you telling me they have to eat one of my grandbabies and then we'll talk? - Smock's grandma's comment after finding out the alligator on her property was protected

Back in the Saddle Again

Well Hambone's long unemployment odyssey has ended and reality is setting in. From unpaid screenwriter to paid computer programmer, what a long strange trip it's been. You can hear his synapses crashing all the way to Pastakala, Ohio as he segues from the right-brain to the left.

There is a gallows humor. "I'm only two bad decisions from insanity" says he, and I can relate.

Ideas got bounced around at lunch, the first of which was that he buy a banquet hall and rent it out on the weekends for wedding receptions and such.

The second idea was more to my liking. A radio show! Yes, Bone and I will rhapsodize on the issues be they political or economic or religious, presumably for an audience of twelve. One problem is that we lack the arresting bass voice of a Rush Limbaugh or Paul Harvey. Bone began speaking in a low voice. I realized this idea was a non-starter.

The third option was to combine households and thus cut the number of needed wage earners. He said that it used to be that families would house three generations and have one wage-earner. Now we're going in the opposite direction in having two wage earners per nuclear family...So stayed tuned to find out who draws the short straw and becomes the one wage-earner! And stayed tuned (if you've got the time) for signs of maturity in us ridiculously spoiled folks!

"Those who run toward the Lord will never lack space"

Moving letter & response concerning a rationalist in love with a fideist, via the Parish Hall.

Quotable

"The person who is ignorant of one of the testaments of the bible hobbles to Christ on one foot." - St. Augustine

Least He's Honest

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas admits the elite media wants Bush to lose and will do what they can to accomplish that. That's like saying Wile E. Coyote wanted Road Runner to lose.

In other news, for so long I've associated Planned Parenthood apparatchiks with public readings that I was astonished to see a picture of a Christian doing a reading on another blog. I guess I should get out more.

Takes TT tests, Doesn't Take TT Tests...

I came up with a 57 on the lengthy Terry Teachout index. If nothing else I am surprised someone else likes "To Have and To Hold" better than "Casablanca".

Books on the Beach

Funny Guardian article on unbreakable rules on what books you and your bibliophile spouse should take on vacation:

1. Do not allow him to take any books that are more than 600 pages long. Men toil under the misapprehension that, on holiday, they really will read That Big Book, even though it has been gathering dust on a shelf at home for, ooh, only eight years. If you do let him take it, trouble will follow. Either he'll get sick of it and start stealing your books or he'll plough stubbornly on and you'll have to listen to his sighing over the whir of the cicadas. (The only exception to this rule is The Diary of Samuel Pepys, which could never be long enough.)

2. No girlish whimsy. You will never get him to open Georgette Heyer, so play fair and leave Regency Buck and The Grand Sophy at home.

3. The same goes for detective novels. Actually, I do know one boy who likes to read Dorothy L Sayers on the beach, but he is a prince among men and, I'm afraid, the exception who proves the rule.

4. There are many books that he might like but which you definitely won't, and must therefore be banned: anything by Paul Auster; sci-fi by Philip K Dick; anything involving Nearly Falling Off a Mountain; all 'cyber-punk' (whatever that is); Titus Groan; business books. Then again, if he wants to pack any of the above, ditch him and go away with a Carol Shields-loving girlfriend instead.

5. Pretty much everything else is up for discussion. However, even once your books are chosen, there is still etiquette to be observed. As you lie side by side under the azure sky, there should be no excessive chortling or disgruntled moaning from either of you. And try not to get suntan lotion on the hardbacks, girls. I like it when I open an old book and it smells headily of Ambre Solaire. But men like their books to be virginal and pristine. If you leave oily smears on the dustjacket of his Updike, he is not going to be happy.

Honest post from Sean Johnson:

About three months ago, I had a fairly popular blog filled with thoughts about God and the meaning of life. It was intended to be a discussion of my character flaws, the idea being that by writing about them I'd reflect and be compelled to change.

The thing backfired....

I do not believe that God provides us with gifts for the sole purpose to see if we'll be willing to give them up for the sake of serving Him. I believe that when we utilize our gifts to our full potential, we are serving Him.

Buckley for President

WFB is questioned by the NYT.

Reading Spam So You Don't Have To



I'm always on the lookout for "interesting spam", to coin an oxymoron. Precious few appear but today there were two. One went:

I trust my Father. He gave me everything. chimpanzee

I guess that one speaks for itself, a sort of truthful haiku appended by the absurdist "chimpanzee". It's almost Dali-like in its statement of truth through a surrealist lens. (The inside advertised for computer software, in case you wondered.)

The second one went:

Looking to find sex and not necessarily love? chronic

This one bespeaks tragedy. Instead of the rightly-ordered "Looking to find love and not necessarily sex?" there is a complete reversal. But the little word "chronic" is suggestive. Chronic indeed is he who seeks sex without love, a chronic itch without satisfaction or end.

Differences

I not only find the opposite sex fascinating in a purely physical way but also in the more subtle difference in brain circuitry. Now, psychology major Camassia once said that sexual differences aren't monolithic, in the sense that we all have a combination of male/female characteristics, and she's obviously right.

But it’s interesting to me that Mr. Akin would write an article that intimates that fathers (i.e. men) are in general more likely to basically suck it up and not be constantly looking for welfare handouts from God in the form of unnecessary consolations and assurances. That sounds vaguely familiar in the political sphere, where men are more likely to vote for the Republican (ala the famous gender gap).

The temptation is to make too much of it, I suppose. But it is interesting to see whether men are more inclined towards the justice end of things and women towards the mercy side. I don't know that that's true, and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence to refute it, but if so then men would be less likely to think that Hell is mostly empty.

Blessed Uncertainty

See a gem of a post over at Bill's Summa Minutiae. I must hie me to the Fathers. St. Therese of Lisieux isn't an early Father, but possesses a similar wisdom:

"I have asked God to send me a beautiful dream to console me when you are gone," said a novice to St. Therese.

"Ah! that is a thing I should never do - ask for consolation!...Since you wish to be like me you well know that I say:

     "Oh fear not, Lord, that I shall waken Thee:
     I await in peace th' eternal shore..."

"It is so sweet to serve the good God in the dark night of trial; we have this life only in which to live by faith."

    Special Edition of Spanning the Proverbial Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

After the talent show, we headed for the grotto. -blogger at Basia Me, Catholica Sum

It sounded to me that [love] was the kind of test you'd have to die in order to pass. - William Luse of Apologia, from a chapter of his nascent novel.

Blogs have this terrible tendency to allow people to publish before the world whatever happens to pop into their heads. People also tend to conduct themselves in blog exchanges as if they were engaged in a private discussion or in semi-private venting, instead what they're really doing--conversing or arguing in front of everybody. - Mark Brumley of Insight...hey I resemble that remark!

The confessional is a wonderful invention! It's there as a constant open door to a new life with Christ. We (myself included) need to take a deeper look at our life and ask the Holy Spirit to root out any and all traces of stubbornness, uncharitable thoughts, and rebellion against our Mother the Church and Christ our brother. - Mary of "Ever New"

I generally expect to find discernible levels of guff in most everything written in the popular Catholic press that contrasts "masculine" and "feminine" aspects within the Church. I think people get carried away with those terms. Once you say, "This is masculine, and that is feminine," all sorts of wide, level roads open up before you. Most of them don't have "Now Leaving Reason" signs posted. - Tom of Disputations

Lane Core Jr. asks "Why is it important to have Catholics in public life if, once there, they're no different from anybody else?" Unfortunately most modern politicians who advertise themselves as Catholics are martyrs in reverse. The word martyr means witness and regardless of the mindless justifications that come out of their mouths their actions are anything but a witness to the faith. - Jeff Miller of Curt Jester

Scripture was written by human beings for human beings. Would we not expect to find in such a work evidence of a process of perfection in understanding of God and in charity toward others? If the Bible presented an unchanging view of God and others -- that, to my mind, would be a puzzle demanding an explanation. What we should do with these changes, I suppose, is try to effect them in our own lives. - commenter Tom of Disputations on Camassia's blog

I suppose from my readings of various saints, some who had visions of Purgatory, I have a horror of the place. I do not want to go there (although, between Hell and Purgatory, of course, I'd go with the latter). And something else I've gleaned from the saints: merits cannot be gained in Purgatory. We can only gain merits in this life; once we die, it's over. And the merits we gain (purely through the grace of Christ, of course) contribute to the glory and the joy we experience in Heaven. It's clear that saints attain varying degrees of perfection, and those who have made the most out of their lives on earth are the ones who enjoy the most inconceivable joys in Heaven. I suppose I really want to be one of those saints--and I can't be if I settle for second best, if you know what I mean. One last thing that motivates me: St. Paul commands us in 1 Corinthians 9:24: "Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win." Thus, we are commanded to run, not so as to win second or third prize, but so as to *win* first prize. Which means we are to strive with all of our might to do and be the best we possibly can here on earth. - commenter on Bob's "Trousered Ape" blog

In your life there are people that you admire and you respect and naturally you place them on a pedestal and when you meet them, sometimes you're disappointed, because you've built them up so high they can't possibly meet your expectations. Buckley was everything and more. He was exactly what I wanted him to be, and more so and he's remained a close friend and, I might even say a colleague...without Bill Buckley bucking the odds, alone, back in the 50s, who knows where all this conservatism would be today. - Rush Limbaugh on William F. Buckley, who helped steer conservatism away from anti-Semitism and atheistic Randism

Stigmatized: What the modernist World's Fair pavilion architect responsible for the sanctuary of the new Padre Pio church, the world's second largest, ought to be. - Mark of Irish Elk

And here I am led to say, what seems to me, as far as it is reverent to conjecture it, the fault of the holy Apostle St. Thomas. He said that he would not believe that our Lord had risen, unless he actually saw Him. What! is there not more than one way of arriving at faith in Christ? ...I say that, when he was so slow to believe, his fault lay in thinking he had a right to be fastidious, and to pick and choose by what arguments he would be convinced, instead of asking himself whether he had not enough to convince him already; just as if, forsooth, it were a great matter to his Lord that he should believe, and no matter at all to himself. And therefore it was, that, while Christ so graciously granted him the kind of proof he desired, He said to him for our sakes: "Because thou hath seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed." - Bld. Ven. Cardinal Newman on St. Thomas, via - you guessed it - Donna Marie Lewis

and Scripture

I must have known and not
known both at once.
I must have needed
to see this love set down in
black and white
to realize it was millennia
old.
To force me to pay attention,
life needed poetry.

--Rachel Hadas

From here.

Ideological Soulmates Under the Skin

Goldberg has an interesting column up, looking at the positive side of the culture wars, which is that we're going to divide anyway so better issues than race/ethnicity/gender:

[T]he more educated you are, the more partisan and ideological you are likely to be. High-school graduates are more likely to vote across party lines than college grads. And education does not track only with becoming more liberal. If you're a conservative with a college education you become more conservative. If you're a liberal, ditto...

[I]n his book, On Paradise Drive, [David] Brooks compiles a massive amount of evidence that Americans are self-segregating ideologically and politically — by county, by school, by state, by church, etc. David Brooks thinks this sort of polarization and self-segregation is bad.

There's also a very good side to all of this polarization. Critics of identity politics — and I am most certainly one of them — tend to focus almost exclusively on the separations, divides, clashes and chasms such politics create between groups. Blacks vs. whites, rich vs. poor, South vs. North, Springfieldians vs. Shelbyvillians, and so on. What they rarely look at is the unity such "identitarian" movements create...

"Manifestations of ethnic intolerance today tend to decrease in proportion as ideological intolerance increases. In sharp contrast, both bigotries used to increase together," wrote Peter Viereck in 1955. What Viereck noticed was that radical "right-wing" anti-Communist groups were reaching out to blacks and Jews (those quotation marks around “right-wing” are necessary for reasons we'll get into another day). The same thing, of course, had already been taking place on the other side since Communists believe in class-loyalty and all that gibberish. In other words, pro-Communists and anti-Communists alike welcomed rich and poor, Jew and gentile, black and white into their respective ranks — so long as the applicant in question agreed on the "big issue."

Viereck called this dynamic "transtolerance," a terrible word that perfectly describes what is happening in America today. For example, there is no more philo-Semitic group in America than evangelical Christians. Indeed, they love observant Jews more than most Jews do. Why? Because the Right side of the culture war wants "traditionalists" of all stripes in its corner. Similarly, the American Right loves blacks — right-wing blacks that is.

We see this in the ghettoized communities Brooks is so adept at chronicling. I sincerely doubt there are very many affluent "red state" counties in America that wouldn't love to have a socially conservative black stockbroker move into their community...As Viereck noticed, we have something new in American history: Ideological movements used to reinforce racial, ethnic, or class bigotries. For the last 50 years they've increasingly transcended them. This is an upside of living in an ideological age — or a downside, depending on how you see things. And those who bemoan the current polarization need to ask themselves whether polarization isn't the natural order of things. And, if it is — and I think it is — isn't this sort of polarization preferable to most of the other options?

Link or Whim (get it?*)

Washington Times review of Pearce's book on Oscar Wilde...

A chapter from a book I liked is here - Philip Trower's "Turmoil & Truth: The Historical Roots of the Modern Crisis in the Catholic Church".

I've always wondered why formerly Catholic strongholds like Boston, San Francisco, and New York are so liberal, for lack of a better term. Is it because "high churches" like Anglicans, Episcopalian and Catholic tend to appreciate beauty more and therefore attract more artists? And don't artists tend to be more avant garde and less appreciative of tradition since they are seeking to create something new? Now how's that for a swag?

A recent post by Mark on Garry Wills led me to this from Richard John Neuhaus on Wills' "Papal Sin":

At points, however, Mr. Wills seems to obscure the clarity of his central argument. For example, he quotes Evelyn Waugh, who, when asked how he could be a Christian and still be such a mean fellow, answered, “Just think how much worse I would be if I were not a Christian.” Wills writes, “In the same way, as bad as the papacy has been all through its history, just think how much worse things would have been without it.” This, coming toward the end of his summation, will, I expect, be a surprise and puzzlement to the jurors. Everything that has gone before suggests the conclusion that things would have been much better if there had never been a papacy. Perhaps aware of the apparent contradiction, Mr. Wills explains that the great contribution of the papacy is that—despite itself, so to speak—it preserved the creed. He says, “The papacy did not formulate the creed containing these truths; but it has been essential in preserving them, while heretics ‘selected’ this or that item from the creed.”

But will not the jurors unavoidably ask how the papacy preserved the creed if not by the exercise of a teaching authority that the prosecution says the papacy does not rightly possess? The earlier popes are condemned—with the honorable exception of John XXIII—and the defendants are in the dock precisely because they disagree with the prosecution on this key point. According to Mr. Wills, those who are “living Vatican II” claim the right to form their own opinions and act according to their own consciences in matters of faith and morals, tolerating no interference by the papacy or Magisterium. Are they not “selecting” what they want to believe, and therefore at least in danger of becoming heretics? Why was the papacy necessary to preserving the creed in the past but is not now? It seems a pity that Mr. Wills does not address these and other questions that are inevitably raised by his argument.

* riff on 'sink or swim'. hey, hey, remember what you paid.

Vote For the Party with the Most Confetti

Is there a sadder spectacle than seeing a candidate get a bump in the polls just for picking a VP candidate? Or more pathetically, receiving a post-convention bounce? Bush is expected to be 10-15 points down after the Democrat convention, which is amazing because conventions are designed to make no news! And news - in the form of a strong policy stand - should sway voters, right?

No, apparently 10-15% of the electorate are influenced by helium balloons and gaseous speeches served with pomp and platitudes. It's sad. This election might ultimately be decided by people who are impressed by Botox treatments and nice hair. Will we see Kerry "pull a Gore" and kiss Theresa? If he tries, will she swing her purse at him ala Ruth Buzzi? Stay tuned sports fans!

Of Human Bondage

I've been thinking more about work these days and how fortunate I am, especially after reading a July 4th article about a Mexican immigrant who owns a small grocery mart but can't afford to hire anyone. He secured a $15,000 loan recently to keep the place afloat and works 12 hours a day seven days a week. Let me say that again slowly. 12 a day, 7 a week. He tries to take one day off every three months. Wow.

I quoted Wilde who anticipated the Distributists with a line about how machine-like jobs make machines of us and how art is the proper job of man. In this he seemed to intuit that work was made for man, not man for work, as the Catechism teaches, although the Catechism makes no distinctions between jobs (more on that later). John Adams famously said that he must study politics and war so that "my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

So Adams understood that what the generations should bequeath was not so much wealth, but wealth in the form of liberty to study porcelain instead of politics. Or wealth in the form of being able to choose your job instead of having a job choose you. But studying painting, poetry and music doesn't much sound like work to me.

My friend 'Hambone' and I hash and re-hash the subject of work and the one given in our hashing and re-hashing is that it is to avoided at all costs. (Unless it's writing.) There's a reason a job is called a "j-o-b", see the OT. But I'm pondering work and how my view of it appears to painfully dissonate with the Catechism's. Which means that my view is wrong. Ouch. The Catechism is far less disdainful of work than I:

"Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another. Hence work is a duty: "If any one will not work, let him not eat."...[Work] can be redemptive. ..Work can be a means of sanctification and a way of animating earthly realities with the Spirit of Christ...Love for the poor is even one of the motives for the duty of working so as to 'be able to give to those in need.'"

The Catechism doesn't appear to be a big fan of early retirement. Although I have plans to do volunteer work and write during retirement, I'm not sure God would be impressed.

So tying up Adams and Wilde and the CCC I guess we can all agree that work was made for man. But work seems to be such an all-encompassing term given that my job is unbearably easier than that Mexican immigrant's. And yet my work is painful compared to a porcelain-appreciator, as Adams would have. We Americans are living off the capital of a system that works extremely well, and that seems to be part of a natural evolution in an industrial society. The evolution begins, like in Japan and South Korea, with low-wage industrial crap jobs. They "pay their dues" in a sense, as the U.S. did around the turn of the 20th century. Economic growth explodes and the children of those low-wage earners in Japan and Korea have reaped quite a harvest, a harvest not of their making but a harvest nonetheless. But it is hard for a nation to help the Third World avoid the dues-paying. It's hard if not impossible for America to use her great wealth to will Third World nations into the global economy. I believe in giving to charities which help poorer countries although I wonder if it may only be prolonging their pain by putting them between a rock and a hard place - neither fully industrialized nor neither fully agriculturalized. It seems misery lies in the in-between, like wars that are fought tenderly enough to afford no resolution. Paul Theroux in his book on Africa makes the point that he suspects many Africans would be better off doing subsidence farming but have now lost those skills due to reliance on aid and/or a semi-move to an industrial society.

Haben Sie Deutsch?

Alas I'm paying the price for not keeping the German I learned in high school because this blog looks increasingly interesting though cryptic as the day is long.

Consider the first two books on Scipio's reading list: "J. Updike: Hare heart" & "J. Maritain: The farmer of the Garonne". Nice.

(The Maritain-Updike combo reminded me of how C.S. Lewis struggled to find a middle way or via media between Thomas Aquinas and DH Lawrence: "Thomas Aquinas and DH Lawrence do not divide the universe between them" wrote Lewis. He was looking for a something between Aquinas's syllogisms and Lawrence with his materialistic and sensual psychoses.)

And then there's this post, in which Scipio says:

I admit it frankly: I was not ever on one catholic day and get, I become the older, also ever less desire. But finally I do not see myself also as "Christian of age and a responsible thinking" (president H.J. Meyer), but as a "bad catholic" (Walker Percy).

My personal catholic day had I yesterday afternoon on the balcony with the reading of "four large holy ones", a book of walter Nigg (note: Oekumene!) over Franz of Assisi, Jeanne d'Arc, Franz of Sales and Teresa of Avila. There can be experienced, what constitutes Christian its, as God love and God love look, as loyalty can be lived and lived to a Charisma and a transmission - should.

This morning I saw then the Debattierer Hans Kueng and Karl Lehmann in that to local newspaper - and see: they looked like frogs. Quak, quak, quak.

Not sure what he meant but I'd like to know...

* * *

Update: I asked and unexpectedly received! Scipio provides the English translation:

Celestial Katholikentag (Catholic Assembly)

I freely admit: I've never visited a Katholikentag and don't feel more
inclined to, the older I get. But then, I am not a "grown-up and responsible
Christian" (H.J. Meyer, chair of the Central Committee of the German
Catholics), but a "bad catholic" (Walker Percy).

I celebrated my personal Katholikentag yesterday afternoon when sitting on
the balcony and reading "Four Great Saint", a book of reformed theologian
Walter Nigg (Beware of Ecumenism!) on Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc,
Francis de Sales and Teresa de Avavila. With them, you may experience, what
being a Christian really is, what God's Love and Love for God looks like,
how you may live true to your charisma and your mission - and how it should
be lived.

This morning I noticed debaters Hans Kueng and Karl Lehmann in our local
newspaper - and behold: They looked like frogs. Quak, quak, quak..

Road to the White House

Heard curmudgeon and Southern eccentric Forrest McDonald (he writes in the nude - beware of paper cuts?) on C-Span's marvelous "In-Depth" program. McDonald is a historian who has some interesting views and was spot-on when he said that with the exception of Ronald Reagan those seeking the office of President over the past generation have been seeking the office just for its own sake. Not to really do anything, just so they could say they were President. Kerry's (as well as Gore's) flip-flopping on the issues makes that nails-on-chalkboard obvious, so I wrote a song (to tune of Green Acres):

D.C. is the place for me.
power politics is the life for me.
pride spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep your Senate, the White House I'll abide.

Penn Ave is where I'd rather stay.
I get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore an Air Force One view,
Dah-ling I love you but give me my retinue

...soak the rich!
...moan and bitch!
...Chirac
...Bangkok

History shows that there's always a reaction against the previous occupier of a head of government. For example, successor popes often have different strengths and an opposite temperament from the pope before him. In some ways JPII was very much the opposite of Paul VI, for example. Kerry, being indecisive, is different enough from Bush in that sense to make that "quality" attractive to many voters. What is sad to me (sad only in the sense that one might be my president) is how terrible the Democratic candidates have been the last few years.

Conservatives have, on the whole, been pretty fortunate since 1980. First there was Ronald Reagan's miraculous journey to the White House. He wrested the party from East Coast elites before even being able to face an incumbent president. It's also easy to forget how narrowly he beat Carter. Then too conservatives can be glad that Clinton was reined in by a Republican Congress beginning in '94. The thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is Bush Sr's disastrous pick of Souter for the Supreme Court. But Bush was an Eastern elite who was never really a conservative. Reagan had to make him VP to placate the Rockefeller Republicans in '80. So I think the country has generally leaned to the left of our leadership since '80 and so in that sense we've been lucky.

Small World Dep't

Saw a guy today wearing a Cardinal Ratzinger fan club sweatshirt.

It Ain't Heavy, It's My Bookbag

Been too long since we played "why's my bookbag so damn heavy?". My new strategy to just read two to three books at a time has paid off although there are constant temptations. It's difficult to read a book that constantly mentions other books, as Pearce does in CSL & the Catholic Church and not sin. So most of the book list that follows are accidental tourists since I'm concentrating on Pearce and Steinbeck and Hanson.

CSL and the Catholic Church - Pearce
The Pilgrim's Regress - CS Lewis
LOTR - Tolkien
The Name of the Rose - Eco
The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection - de Liguori
Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
Father Joe - Hendra
Letters to a Young Catholic - Weigel (library book)
Soul of Battle - Victor David Hanson
Crisis of Faith, Crisis of Love - Keating

Interesting Comment on Mark Shea's Blog

For what it’s worth, I think that this host’s tone is in general better than some others and especially more reasoned and charitable than the inhabitants of comments boxes all throughout blogdom, where I have discerned a culture of rabid dissention. I think that the medium itself is part of the problem…enforced brevity, the comparative seriousness of the written word, a lack of relationship, on and on. I do see where blogs have a tendency to angry up my blood, which kind of makes it difficult to be the peace of Christ. Religion, ideology & politics…there’s the hotbed. The observation that we’re up “against the Prince of this World and the Father of Lies” may be true, but I think that it still (even if it’s not personal) sets up a mindset of if I can only prove my point in this little box, the world will be saved…and a pox on any other with a different perspective. People constantly end up misunderstanding each other likely because they don’t know one another from Adam, and I know I rarely like to make any comments because I’m not all that keen on anyone unnecessarily getting down by back.
mcmlxix | Email | Homepage |

Thomas Sowell Article

Hear, hear!:

Those who are constantly looking for the "root causes" of poverty, of crime, and of other national and international problems act as if prosperity and law-abiding behavior were so natural that it is their absence that has to be explained. But a casual glance around the world today, or back through history, would dispel any notion that good things just happen naturally, much less inevitably.

The United States of America is the exception, not the rule. Our national birthday on the Fourth of July is an appropriate time to ask what has made American society one to which people are fleeing from other societies around the world.

Once we realize that America is an exception, we might even have a sense of gratitude for having been born here, even if gratitude has become un-cool in many quarters. At the very least, we might develop some concern for seeing that whatever has made this country better off is not lost or discarded...

To be for or against "change" in general is childish. Everything depends on the specifics. To be for generic "change" is to say that what we have is so bad that any change is likely to be for the better.

Such a pose may make some people feel superior to others who find much that is worth preserving in our values, traditions and institutions. The status quo is never sacrosanct but its very existence proves that it is viable, as seductive theoretical alternatives may not turn out to be.

Most Americans take our values, traditions and institutions so much for granted that they find it hard to realize how much all these things are under constant attack in our schools, our colleges, and in much of the press, the movies and literature.

There are all sorts of financial, ideological, and psychic rewards for undermining American society and its values. Unless some of us realize the existence of this culture war, and the high stakes in it, we can lose what cost those Americans before us so much to win and preserve.

Relieved?

Well babies in wombs across the nation today were relieved to hear that Sen. Kerry believes life begins at conception.

Or maybe they weren't.

If anything, the Senator does illustrate, as we all do in one form or another, the uselessness of words without deeds.

Dispatch Article

...reviews linguist Geoffrey Nunberg's book on politics and words:

Nunberg understands the quandary in his pursuit: Do words shape reality or does reality shape words?

Tracking the dangers of public doublespeak has become an academic tradition ever since Randall Decker put George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language in his widely used and imitated freshman reader.

(It's on your shelf somewhere. Look next to Jonathan Livingston Seagull .)

Orwell's point was that sloppy language abets political evils. Time conspired with irony to turn Orwellian into an adjective used to describe practically everything Orwell warned us against.

Nunberg rightly understands that modern marketing has corrupted language beyond Orwell's darkest dreams.

When I worked for a corporation, I was treated to a one-day group-think session in which the presenter turned the organization chart upside down. My boss was now my "coach.'' He "supported'' me. Then after we signed the "mission statement,'' I went back to reality when my coach dressed me down for missing a "milestone'' (Read: deadline. Read: no merit pay.)

Once Nunberg evokes Orwell, his focus and its limitations become clear.

The problem with public language is not just that words can be misused, intentionally or not; it's that nobody seems to think language matters.

--Rich Elias

Ain't it the truth!

Lead 'graphs of an article that purports to be about how hard catch-and-release is on fish:

While the fortunate manage to sneak through existence with a smile and a "what, me worry?'' disposition, science continues to push modern life closer to being a grim affair among the conscience stricken, the responsible and the careful.

Among the latter, the more that's revealed, the tighter become the moral binds. Pleasures such as tobacco, owning and shooting guns, sunlight, backyard bonfires, bacon and eggs, city water and carbohydrates have been transformed by knowledge into insidious toxins to be utilized at one's risk lest they bring self-destruction and in some cases, adding the moral dimension, victimize innocent bystanders.

This, rightly, is called progress and probably worth the price in blissful ignorance lost. It has been going on since Eden.

--Dave Golowenski

Woodsy Thoughts

A cabin in the woods. Nice Christmas gift from my wife's in-laws, 'eh? We decided to use it this weekend but felt the lack of fireworks. Like many things, you only appreciate them when you can't see them.

I sit by a gravel path and watch the sun shine on it and wonder how long I can look at it profitably. Seemingly forever. What atavatistic chord does it chime? It leads not to bombast - to conquer this blessed earth - but to rest, such as that felt on the Quixote quest to meet Thomas Merton (post-humously) amid the hills of Gethsemani. Or the rest found in reading the pointless (?-I did not finish it) meanderings in "Rembrance of Things Past".

Our neighbor was sent by God to annoy us and thus develop charity. Their dogs bark like banshees should we dare step outside. I sense they have "territorial issues" with us, thinking that their turf ends somewhere in our living room. So sitting atop this bald knob amid the rangy hills of SE Ohio engenders a sense of privacy. Stray thoughts like "would Walton's Mountain be the same if it were called Walton's Flat Half-Acre"? Deep thoughts, in other words.

The air is fresh here and scented with a thousand forest aromas, like Willa Cather's soup: "a soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup." As well in this forest, where these Appalachians look askance at Rocky Mountain newness. 57 varieties of sun and shade dapple the grounds and we'd take our leave reluctantly but for one horrible fact: there is no air-conditioning!

Happy Feast of St. Thomas

Blessings to the patron saint of all you Thomas's out there (and we know who we are).

The July Magnficat has an edifying article on the apostle worth checking out.

Caption Contest

here! ...Rejected captions include:

1) "You sunk my battleship!"
2) "Hey, wait, I forgot my tie."
3) "The South Beach diet really works!"

A Midsummer Night's Dream

So it’s summer and the livin’ is easy. That’s what the adverts say and I have no reason to doubt. It hasn’t rained in two weeks and it’s as if the drier the ground gets the more Arizona-like grows the sky. Clouds puff and obstruct but not enough to cause trouble, especially given the long days. Folks are all out walking about and I can’t blame them. I race on foot a six-year old on bike and my thighs burn from the effort but there are smiles all around.

I'm numbed by exercise in this midsummer, sparked by tremendously, untouchably beautiful days. You can’t get your arms around days this beautiful. The effusiveness of leaves and trunks on the maples, the close-cropped grass that surfs over the edge of our new patio, the uber-greens of the firs and pines and maiden-hair grasses lap and frame this world. The sun gilds and imprimaturs every leaf and needle; they shine like mint silver and beckon unbearably in their tangibleness.

And then dusk finally comes only to be glorified by far-flung fireflies delightfully stochastic in their sensibilities. I get a camera and the three-second delay is laughingly ineffective. I can no more predict their flashes than God’s, so now I own a lot of pictures of an empty backyard.

And if this prose is laughably over the top I'm only imitating full-flung nature who risks her own over-the-top-ness. Just trying to keep up with her. And though her charms are passing, other bright moments aren't. Eucharistic Adoration on Thursday and I read but forty words of St. Alphonsus Liguori and it was the balm of Gilead! The mere explication of the necessity of prayer and how it is the answer to everything lends a golden sense of confidence. How sweet the reminder.

So the weather is other-worldly. My wife describes the moon as golden and I thought it poetic license until I saw it. I looked at it with wonder and a similar sense as the Mantle rookie at baseball card shows. It was time for bed and I had to get up early so I looked at it like the tourists look out of the 25-cent timed telescopes atop the Empire State Building. This moon wasn’t gauzy or yellow or halved. It was full and golden, a big glob of a moon on the horizon, fat as our own lives.

Flannery O'Connor & Abu Ghraib

Fascinating essay on Abu Ghraib (thanks to a reader for the heads-up). Perhaps it will also go a way towards lessening the shock of the MacFarlane divorce? Some excerpts:

Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor would have considered the images of the prison scandal grotesque, but not in what she called "the pejorative sense"—of just plain images of ugliness and ignorance. For O'Connor—whose characters are some of the most memorable grotesqueries in American literature—the grotesque makes visible hidden "discrepancies" between character and belief. Such images "connect or combine or embody two points; one is a point in the concrete and the other is a point not visible to the naked eye."

Pride sets us against each other, and, most important, against God. To cure us of it, God allows us to sin. Again, St. Thomas: "the gravity of sins of pride is shown by the fact that God allows man to fall into other sins in order to heal him from pride."...

For O'Connor, God's providence was realized not despite our sins, but through them. Removing sin from life—or fiction—meant essentially cutting yourself off from the possibility of grace. Life—or literature, becomes either sentimental or obscene, and while "preferring the former, and being more of an authority on the latter," the Catholic reader fails to see their similarity. "He forgets," she continues, that:

"sentimentality is an excess, a distortion of sentiment usually in the direction of an overemphasis on innocence and that innocence whenever it is overemphasized in the ordinary human condition, tends by some natural law to become its opposite... Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite."

The opposite of innocence? Abu Ghraib, maybe?

(Speaking of interesting posts, here's another, one by Mark Shea.)

Have a happy 4th!


Art by Stan Street

Louisiana Saturday Night

chorus:

    Hey you get down the fiddle and you get down the bow
    Kick off your shoes and throw 'em on the flo'
    Dance in the kitchen 'til the morning light,
    Louisiana Saturday night!

Waiting in the front yard sitting on a log,
Single shot rifle and a one eyed dog.
Yonder come the kinfolk, in the moonlight
Louisiana Saturday night!

My brother Bill and my other brother Jack,
Belly full o' beer and a possum in a sack.
Fifteen kids in the front porch light,
Louisana Saturday night!

Kinfolk leave and the kids get fed,
Me an' my woman gonna sneak off to bed.
We'll have a little fun when we turn off the light,
Louisiana Saturday night!

"Courage, child, your sins are forgiven"

The story of the paralytic in the beginning of Matthew 9 had a different meaning for me when I was a kid. Jesus, in my childhood experience, seemed to have no difficulty forgiving sins (there was Confession after all) but more "trouble" with illnesses.

But for the people of the time it was the opposite. They knew of his miracles and knew he could heal but didn't believe he was God and had the right to forgive sins. I didn't have that background information when I was a kid, so I was impatient for the cure. I didn't fully connect the forgiving of sins with the cost (i.e..the Cross) and so was unimpressed with the first part of the healing. I was thinking, "if I was that paralytic, I'd be like 'hey I'm looking for a cure, not forgiveness of my sins'". But that was wrong on several levels.

First because sins are worse than illnesses and the forgiveness of them better than any cure. Forgiven sins lead to eternal life, healings to a prolonged earthly life.

But what really gets me is that I think the paralytic had the right order! I think he longed for forgiveness most. There was a horrible "double-whammy" operating at that time in the prevalent opinion that your illness was caused by your sin. So not only did he have to live with paralysis but also with the knowledge that he was a reprobate. But he was restored when Jesus read his heart and responded with the loveliest of all phrases: "Courage, child, your sins are forgiven."

More Flannery

An email correspondent named Steven (though not Riddle) provided plenteous more Flannery quotes, so that blog was updated today.

New drinking terms...

Those wacky kids...

13 stepper n. someone attending Alcoholics Anonymous (usually mandated by the state) while still maintaining a drinking lifestyle; the thirteenth step is forgetting the previous twelve steps.
beereft adj. bereft of beer.
treading lager v. eschewing liquor for beer in hopes of not getting too drunk.
AWOG adj. Absent Without Saying Goodbye. Slipping out of a bar or party without telling your friends.
Canadian n. bar staff slang for a non-tipper.
Monet v. someone who appears attractive from across the bar, but less so up close.
pal tax n. the act of covertly ordering a drink on a friend’s tab.

Links

Via Steven Riddle, disturbing report about how "Made in China" is often synonymous with "Made by Slaves". Very, very incriminating for those, like myself, who buy from Walmart and tend not to look at the tags.

Even a defender of Walmart, Jay Nordlinger, could only concede: "And, yes, the company is a heavy importer of foreign goods, including from China. This is a noteworthy development, as Wal-Mart started out with a "Made in America" theme. It was quasi-protectionist. Now the Wal-Mart theme is, "Made Anywhere, So What?" A company vice president told Business Week, "The mindset around here is, we're agents for our customers." Critics who never breathe a word about Laogai, in other circumstances, get all human-rightsy when discussion turns to Wal-Mart. (Laogai is the Chinese gulag.)"

That's Nordlinger's defense? Weak. Who cares about the critics. (Here is Walmart's take.) More blogging on the subject here and here and here.

*

Commentary on the NY Times piece saying that readers are boring.

Slouching towards blogdom?

Hilarious. Via Jeffrey Lloyd though I think Curt Jester must be responsible.

It's happening to Judiasm too.

A Hundred Miles

I grew up in Cincinnati and now live in Columbus and it amazes me how different the two cities are despite being only about a hundred miles away.

Cincinnati is more cosmopolitan and interesting; her radio hosts more talented, funny and innovative. Columbus is in general more uptight and less relaxed and has the reputation of being a "cow town". Cincinnati is more like Boston than Peoria.

Recently pehaps we've seen both the upsides and downsides of the different attitudes. The inherent cautiousness of Columbus is seen in a bishop more wary of moving priests with sexual problems. Certainly now that the dust of the Crisis has settled, his reputation is a hundred times better than Cincinnati's bishop. Coincidence? Perhaps.

The downside might be a lack of boldness and a small incident occurred a couple weeks ago might illustrate that. During a homily, the pastor of a Cincinnati church asked people to sign a petition that seeks to get an initiative on the Ohio ballot to prevent a change in the definition of marriage. Afterwards we signed in the vestibule. But I remember thinking: can you do this? Whether allowed or not, I thought that our cautious bishop would never allow something like this, for fear of 501 3C problems.