Inspired by The Bad Catholic's Guide to the Good Life, here's a song to the tune of "Highway to Hell":

Livin' easy, lovin's hard,
Season ticket on a one-way ride,
Askin' graces, spiritual retard,
Livin' still with too much pride,
Have some reason, have some rhyme,
Ain't much I would rather do
Goin' on, this earthly time,
My friends are gonna be there too..
Yeah...

[Chorus]
I'm on the highway to Purgatory!
On the highway to Purgatory!
Highway to Purgatory!
I'm on the highway to Purgatory!

Different Tastes

Movie reviewers are useful when they warn you of stinkers and alert you to gems. And so I try to find reviewers whose tastes I share, even though it's pretty unimportant since I see maybe six or eight movies a year. But I've found my perfect anti-reviewer, my exact opposite: Terry Teachout. He reminds me of Jim Cramer, the stock guy. I bought some e-commerce stocks in '00 on his recommendation. You know what happened.

Our tastes (Teachout's & mine) are perfectly opposite even in books - he writes that he is "one of those unfortunate folk who are allergic to most of the Major American Novelists who came of age in the Fifties. Roth, Bellow, Mailer, Updike - all leave me cold...". I like Updike and some of Bellow and Roth. But the kicker was when he wrote that he liked the film "High Fidelity" much more than the book. I read the book and loved it. I suffered through the film last night for my wife's sake.

I was flipping through the channels last night and came across The Human Stain, a movie of another book I'd read, and Teachout's main problem with the movie was that he couldn't see Anthony Hopkins in the lead role of someone who is half black but passes for white. And I'm thinking "geesh. That's the main problem? Didn't Shakespeare have women play men's roles in his plays? Can't you suspend disbelief a bit easier?" Teachout also was a big fan of Sideways.

I passed on The Human Stain but thought that Teachout should work out great. All I have to do is see movies he doesn't like and don't see the ones he does. Except he just quit reviewing for Crisis. Darn.

Advent the Foundation of the Spiritual Life?

"Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life."

- Simone Weil

Sixty Minutes...

...had a surreal piece Sunday about McMansions. If ever you needed proof that enough is never enough, this is it.

Safer is perfect for a story like this one because he has those large eyebrows he can arch in surprise, and there was plenty to be surprised about. Like the shocking statement of a couple who moved from a 4,000 sq ft house to an 11,000 square foot house and who said it felt big in the beginning but now it feels about right. If they had to do it over though they'd add some space here and there and...

From National Review

Jonah Goldberg wonders if some liberal issues are cover towards the goal of one-world statism:

Marxism’s half-life has been amazing. Outside of our finest universities, pretty much no one believes in the junk, and yet it hangs over the intellectual and political landscape like background radiation...Of course, Republicans increasingly speak the language of values rather than solely in economic terms. And it is a sign of Marxism’s enduring appeal that liberals view this as fundamentally illegitimate. The proper role of government is to reflect the policy ambitions of the Left, they insist: How dare you make this about flags, gays, patriotism, crime, and all that jazz, when what we should really be talking about is expanding social welfare, shrinking inequality, and punishing the wealthy for the amusement of the poor? Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? is a perfect example of the enduring stubbornness of the Marxist stain. This school of thought says, in effect, that middle-class Republicans are idiots for voting on cultural issues at a huge cost to their own bottom line. That analysis has been debunked in these pages more than once. But it is worth noting again that, no matter the bombast, it always boils down to the old Marxist doctrine of “false consciousness”: Those who disagree with the Left about the political implications of their economic interests suffer from a kind of dementia or brainwashing.

Here’s an idea, though. What if all this talk of economic determinism were merely a current advancing the real motivations of the Left, the intellectual tide now having receded far enough for us to see clearly what those motivations are? Liberals like Frank charge that conservatives use gay marriage and abortion to get tax cuts and corporate giveaways. Well, what if the real story is that liberals use the minimum wage and universal health care to get something nearer and dearer to their hearts? [Email me for whole article.]

Irish Song Wednesday

There's a chipper tune I've lately grown attached to: the Australian bush song Road to Gungadai. The tune is a toe-tapper and it doesn't matter that I don't know what it means:

Oh we started out from Roto, when the sheds had all cut out
We'd whips and whips of money as we meant to push about;
So we humped our blueys serenely and made for Sydney town,
With a three-spot check between us as wanted knocking down.
cho: And we camped at Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai,
The road to Gundagai, five miles from Boonabri;
And we camped at Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai.

Well, we struck the Murumbidgee near the Yanco in a week,
And passed through old Narrandera, and crossed the Burnett Creek;
And we never stopped at Wagga, for we'd Sydney in our eye,
And we camped at Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai.

Well, I've seen a lot of girls, my lads, and drunk a lot of beer,
And I've met with some of both as has left me pretty queer.
But for beer to knock you sideways and for girls to make you cry,
You should camp at Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai.

Well, we chucked our flamin' wags off and we walked into the bar
And we called for rum and raspberry and a shilling each cigar;
But the girl that served the poison, she winked at Bill and I,
So we camped at Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai.

In a week the spree was over, and our check was all knocked down,
So we shouldered our Matildas and we turned our backs on town.
And the girls stood us a nobblers as we sadly said goodbye,
And we tramped from Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai.

Yes we tramped from Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai,
The road to Gundagai, five miles from Boonabri;
And we tramped from Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai.

I like the air of mystery songs these type of songs have. All those completely foreign place names. And flamin' wags!? This is a song of mysterious phrases, like Meredith's "frostdire were-light". Like "Hush me buichall" in "Risin' of the Moon".

Behold He Makes All Things New

The title is one of my favorite lines from "The Passion of the Christ" and also seemed an apt one for quotes below from the Pope's "Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith". (Though they are ruthlessly ripped from context and shorn of nuance and explanation.) While not explicitly about the Eucharist, he sees a parallel in 1 Cor 5:6-8:

"The absence of leaven becomes a sign of the new start: being a Christian is portrayed as a continuing celebration on the basis of the new life...The whole passage makes it impressively clear that the Eucharist is much more than liturgy and rite, yet it also makes clear, on the other hand, that Christian life is more than just moral striving..."
_

The way of talking of the Church as the body of Christ is more than just some term that might be taken from the social pattern of the ancient world to compare a concrete body with a body consisting of many people...The Eucharist takes us out of ourselves and into him, so that we can say, with Paul, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

Equal Time

O'er at Trousered Ape, Bob defends blogging, responding to Jonathon Last's rather critical First Things article.

Various & Sundry

Kevin Jones sings a bluesy hymn.
-
Johnny Cash wrote a novel about St. Paul!? Whoda thunk it. And here's an excellent Touchstone piece via Eric. And here's a song of his I can't get out of my head...There's a guy who joined our parish not too long ago and he thinks I'm smart and I've not disabused him of that yet. He's surprised to meet a "smart Christian". I think similarly part of the appeal of a Johnny Cash is that he's a "man's man" who was a serious Christian.

Well you can tell there ain't much in the hopper when I post something like this!:

Blogger Strikes Over Poor Pay / Culbreath-Luse Absence  
- Protest goes unnoticed -

LOGAN,Oh - Blogger TS O'Rama withheld all posts yesterday in protest over low pay, unsatisfactory benefits, and declining post production from Jeff "Hallowed but Postless Ground" Culbreath and Bill "No Apologia for Lack of Posts" Luse.

O'Rama cited no pay and no benefits as part of the reason, but said the catalyst was that Culbreath & Luse weren't reading his blog nor posting to theirs.

"See the black armband with the number 3 with the angel wing in the upper right corner of my blog? That's my tribute to Luse & Culbreath. They're like Dale Earnhardts to me. Well, if I was a NASCAR/Earnhardt fan."

When told another difference is they aren't dead he said, "That's thankfully very true. Actually, when I image searched for black arm bands that's the first one that came up. And one bright spot is Steven Riddle is still posting."

There have been no reports of concern over the strike. One fellow St. Blogger had to be told of it, replying: "A one day strike? That's like calling two hours without food a 'fast'. I hadn't noticed to be quite honest."

Other bloggers joining the strike appear to be Thomas P. Kreitzberg of Disputations and Roz N. Bag (she likes baseball) of Exultet / In Dwelling, though their lack of posting could be merely coincidental. There were no black armbands on their templates as of Wednesday morning.

Complementary Flavors

Alicia made an comment on another blog that rings true:

I think that by nature and learning women focus on process and men on outcome/accomplishment - and that is one of the many reasons why God gave us humanity in these two complementary flavors.

My wife and I were recently remodelling the kitchen and she was more attuned to the aesthetics while I was to outcome (i.e. "will this work ergonometrically?").

George Will and Cokie Roberts on ABC's "This Week" seem examples of this male/female difference. Cokie is interested that we get along. Cooperate. It's who is at the table of power that is important rather than the resulting usage of that power. And for George Will the accomplishment is important - it's not whether you cooperated that's important, but whether you reduced the sum of misery in the world (no matter who gets hurt in the process).

Both styles can be deadly. Men are tempted to use a bad means to a good end and that leads to the demonic. (Will is a bad example of this though, since he's extremely principled.) And women can increase the sum of misery in the world since as Flannery O'Connor said "when you govern by tenderness, tenderness leads to the gas chamber." Both outcome and process are obviously important.

You've Probably...

...already seen this since he gets a lot more traffic, but Jeff Miller went the extra mile and transcribed an interview with Peggy Noonan on her new book about Pope John Paul II. Thanks Jeff!

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. - G.K. Chesterton, via Eric of "The Daily Eudemon"

Fr. John O'Holohan S.J. reminded us yesterday morning that we are on a pilgrimage. Pilgrims know their destination, prepare for the journey, and embark-and then they can and do enjoy the journey (telling stories and singing songs with their traveling companions). In the same way, we (as Catholics) should know our destination and should be prepared-have our bags packed as it were (even if we know not the day or the hour); then we can enjoy the journey with our companions.... - Bethune Catholic

I think that by nature and learning women focus on process and men on outcome/accomplishment - and that is one of the many reasons why God gave us humanity in these two complementary flavors. - Alicia of Fructus Ventris

I confess that I really have no idea what might be the best and most moral strategy to confront homelessness, or crime, or militant Islam, or any other of a dozen major current issues....I confess that I will probably still argue passionately with anyone who advances strong opinions on one of those subjects.- Patrick of Orthonormal

The dream of blending divinity with humanity, of breaking out of the limitations of a creature - this dream, which persists through all the history of mankind and in hidden ways, in profane versions, is dreamed anew even within the atheistic ideologies of our time, just as it is in the drunken excess of a world without God,--this dream is here fulfilled [in the Eucharist]. Man's Promethean attempts to break out of his limitations himself, to build with his own capacities the tower by which he may mount up to divinity, always necessarily end in collapse and disappointment - indeed, in despair. This blending, this union, has become possible because God came down in Christ, took upon himself the limitations of human existence, suffering them to the end, and in the infinite love of the Crucified One opened up the door to infinity. The real end of creation, its underlying purpose - and conversely that of human existence as willed by the Creator - is this very union, "that God may be all in all." - Pope Benedict on reception of the Eucharist

But I have this dreadful feeling that it is not enough. There will be more to come. This suffering is so mild and my sin so great. My heart is so hardened, I know this will not be enough to change me. I look forward to the pain and feel repulsed by it at the same time. I feel God is far too merciful. I feel like I need chastisement, but I fear it. I am relieved by the lack of trials, but feel unloved because of them all at the same time, like the undisciplined child who feels unloved because his parents let him do whatever he wants. - from a Massachusetts blogger...St. Therese, pray for her and us

YOU HAD ME AT "BOOKS" - ironically titled "Happy Catholic" post which quoted Catholic Ragemonkey calling books superior to their film equivalents

I really love his writing in the way that I love Bill Luse's - honest and not always pretty. - Alicia of "Fructus Ventris"

"Deferred Success" - That's on something called the Global Language Monitor's top ten list of politically correct phrases. It's pc-speak for "failure". They don't list my very favourite. During the latest outbreak of looting which made the news a couple of months ago, a certain forum for pipers took to referring to the folks engaging in such unauthorized commerce as "undocumented shoppers". Wonderful. - John of "The Inn at the End of the World"

I, for one, have never really understood the angst of "oh, no, I'm blogging too much" OR of "oh, no, I'm blogging too little." Seems to me the answer is to post when you have something to say (even if it's silly, like most of what I have to say), don't post when you don't....I don't get the big old distinction between blogging and real life (a la Mr. Culbreath). It's simply a part of my real life. You are not less real to me simply because I cannot see you. All that hearkening back to "the good old days"--well, what about people who carried on correspondences (never seeing each other) for YEARS and years back in them olden days? Seems to me we've focused too much on the form of technology we're using to do that. - MamaT of Summa Mamas

I don't think Jeff draws a distinction between blogging and real life. My impression is that he thinks that most of the time (not all of it) spent on the computer is time better spent chopping wood, hugging his kids, or kissing the back of wife's neck. You're no less real to me either because I can't see you, but there is a sense of completion to be found in the flesh (don't take that the wrong way). And I would like to see you. Every married woman is a creature some man gave everything up for. - Bill of Apologia, responding to MamaT

...A sea so deep that the light of a raging sun will freeze in the offing and wash up here as this frostdire were-light, shuddering, not really illuminating anything. It made me want to bless the dim scarf of light overhead that now seemed like a mother's arm, holding us back from a still greater darkness. And then again, there is nothing fearful in the stars with their eyebeams of Chartres-blue cathedral light, when you remember that the whole universe lies like a little hazelnut in Christ's hand. - Meredith of "Basia Me, Catholica Sum"

Flannery in Spanish

Even through the fracturing lens of Babelfish, it's interesting to note the cover photo and comments of the Spanish edition of the Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. See the helpful bracketed comments in red that correct the politically correct published version.

Matthew's Infancy Narrative Historical?

I was surprised that in this MSNBC piece Scott Hahn refers to Matthew's infancy narrative as a parable given that in the Ignatius Study Bible, he and Curtis Mitch argue for it being historical, saying "That Matthew gathers obscure texts to interpret Jesus' infancy suggests that history is controlling his story, not the OT...In summary, Matthew's Infancy Narrative is both theological and historical."

Salvation Controversies

Concerning the salvation question, (which became especially onerous since the age of the Occamists when the sovereignty of God became more the focus than the goodness of God), perhaps it can be said we are like Peter walking on the water. If we take our glance off Christ and think of the danger of the crashing waves (i.e. hell) we fail. If we take our glance off Christ and think of how easy this is we fail. We can only succeed if we love him and we can only love him when we are looking at Him.

I really like one of the lines in Psalm 22:

"All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted".

In other words, the reason to stand in awe of God is not his strength or glory or beauty but his ability to "not abhor the affliction of the afflicted". That is us, in our Original Sin-flawed human nature. And in a physical way those of us afflicted by sickness, AIDS, cancer. And that is how we must see others. And boy that's not natural. Who doesn't recoil at another's grievous sin or another's ravaged, physically-destroyed body? And we have to not abhor or despise each other's afflictions, because God does not abhor or despise ours.

Selective Amnesia?

Howard Fineman, Newsweek's paragon of fairness (insert sarcasm), declares on IMUS that the problem was not the war so much as the way Bush sold the war. Fineman said that Bush could've made a more truthful and complex justification for the war by saying that Hussein, sitting on the world's second biggest oil supply, would siphon off more and more "protection money" to the Osama bin Laden's of the world. But he said that would be a clear case of preemptive war and you can't sell a preemptive war. (And going to war because Hussein had WMDs would not be preemptive?!)

But I followed along and nodded my head until it occurred to me: What the heck is he talking about? What about resolutions like 1441 that demanded Saddam Hussein allow weapons instructors in the country? What about the fact that there were conditions to the ending of the Gulf War? It's as if history began in the day the Iraq war began. The long story of Hussein's flouting the UN resolutions and enjoying his palaces while his people starved due to economic sanctions was simply forgotten as though it were dust in the Arabian wind.

It reminds me of how the "conventional wisdom" is now that Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for adultery in the Oval Office. There is absolutely no mention of the fact that Clinton was given numerous opportunities to avoid perjuring himself and he took no avail. There were huge signs held by congressmen all along the parade route that said: "You can tell the truth now and all will be forgiven!". But the Clinton story was just like Hussein in that personal responsiblity was never the issue. It's that awful Kenneth Starr and that awful George Bush who are at fault.

But the maddening thing about Fineman and the like is that they never even throw out an occasional, "well, Hussein did throw the weapons inspectors out. He did violate the ceasefire." Perhaps, to be fair, I simply lack mercy. Prosecutors don't have to prosecute. They choose all the time not to, in fact. You could argue this was a technicality. What do Al Capone, Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein have in common? They were all gotten on a "technicality": Capone on tax evasion, Clinton on perjury and Hussein on violating a ceasefire.

Thomas of Endlessly Rocking comes out looking good. He argued with me back in '02 or '03 that whether or not we could fight morally-speaking, should we fight is the question. He said that it would only mint new terrorists and that this war is exactly what the terrorists want. I thought that was a possibility at the time but said that evil-doers - like Hussein - have power in this world. We must react to them. But events on the ground have power too, and events on the ground say that we still can't secure the road to the Baghdad aiport.

Dark Side of the 'Net

Every once in awhile I think: "Surely I can see naked breasts and not lust!" but I am proven wrong. I have to flee temptation. I think in my case though there's something about past sins having longterm natural consequences.

I recently wrote a parody (and lost it!) concerning how one middle-aged woman considered her Christian ministry was to forward those sugary emails that end with: "You have two choices. 1) You can delete this email or 2) You can forward it to ten friends". In my parody, she sends it to thousands of strangers a day by guessing at email addresses. But I wanted a picture. So I went to Google Images and picked a rather plain, old-fashioned female name and was blown away by the nudity that resulted. Porn is so pervasive. There is no way you can block something like that since you can't scan a jpeg for boobs.

Bookmarkable

The Seditious Catechist provides a fine list Scriptural resources.

The Church and the Market

...is a book from Thomas Woods that came out earlier this year. The first review, by a Steve Jackson, makes an interesting read:

Professor Thomas Woods is an interesting author: a traditionalist Catholic who is also a supporter of the free market economy....The book ends with a strong critique of distributism, which seeks a larger distribution of private property in the hands of workers. Chesterton and Belloc, among others, advocated distributism. Many traditionally minded Catholics see distributism as a "third way" between capitalism and socialism. But as Prof. Woods points out, the only institution which has the power to redistribute property on a massive scale is the state.

Fried Chicken Tender Salad

I've had a lifelong love affair with food.

My first diary, written at the age of nine, mostly recounts what we had for dinner. There are rhapsodies there that sound foreign to my current palate: "Oh cereal night! I love cereal nights!". (But some things haven't changed. Pizza is, was, and presumably always will be one of the four food groups.)

As a freshman in college, my first English composition concerned the joys of McDonald's Quarter Pounders, equating them with filet mignon. Like the rap music fan who believes Beethoven was no better than P. Diddy, I inadvertently argued for the relativization of values, in this case the food values. My English professor turned out to be a gourmand (later he brought in sushi for the class to "enjoy"), so I received a C. It began to dawn on me that I was writing for an audience of one and if you don't please that audience...

So what does all this have to do with the price of gasoline in Ohio? Well today I was at the cafeteria gathering up chicken tenders for my salad. I love fried chicken salad. This is actually the second time I've written about it, which must be some sort of blog record. And this post occurred to me as I observed the tender takers. The rulz are you get three tenders, which tend to vary in size. Here on the types of folks you might see at the make-your-own-salad counter:

The Jesuitical Tender Picker - he picks tenders which appear to the naked eye to be an accidental conglomeration of two tenders. He defines "tender" as one piece, even if it is actually two conjoined like Siamese twins.

The Rich Man Tender Picker - the rich man simply buys his way out of the problem. Extra tenders can be had for 85 cents a piece.

The Sane Tender Picker - the sane one simply takes the three pieces most easily accessible.

The Saintly Tender Picker - picks the smallest ones in order that those behind him might have larger ones.

The Uplift of Being Noticed

My sister-in-law is involved in the production of the annual Alcoholics Anonymous's production of "A Christmas Carol". Many of the actors are recovering alcoholics and most are good at acting - at least to my untrained, naked eye. They spend a lot of time rehearsing and I get the sense that all the energy that once went into drinking and becoming the butt of stories at the local bar now goes into drinking Pepsi and telling other people's stories on a stage. There might be something of the ham in these folks, a desire for attention that is partially satisfied by the existence of this theatre troup.

MSNBC's head ham is Chris Matthews, and he recently said that he quit drinking eleven years ago just "when you started to hear about me." He explained that being noticed lessened his need for the uplift of spirits. Did he trade a drug for a drug? Does blogging serve a similar desire for attention?

God & a General

Watched the DVD "Gods And Generals", a film which consists mostly of interminable battle scenes punctuated by Robert Duval as General Lee uttering profundities from behind a fake mane-like beard. Apparently the idea was to do a Civil War movie in real time. After viewing this film I have 50% less desire to see an actual Civil War re-enactment.

The best part of it revolves around the story of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Jackson was a devout Christian and in the special features part of the disc a biographer gives surprising emphasis to his spirituality (though perhaps not so surprising given how religion was the guiding force in his life). The documentary mentions reasons why he became a Presbyterian rather than a Catholic. One was that Jackson was an informal man who had a natural dislike of hierarchy and thus responded to the more "democratic" Presbyterian church. The other reason was the doctrine of predestination. He found this a very comforting doctrine since he was surrounded by death from a very young age and it seemed everyone he grew close to died. Instructed that everyone's death has been preordained from the beginning of the world, he felt fearless on the battlefield.

Pope Benedict's Bible Study

Parts of the Pope's Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion read like a bible study! Very rich. On 1 Cor 6:12-19:

According to this text, receiving the Eucharist means blending one's existence, closely analogical, spiritually, to what happens when man and wife become one on the physical-mental-spiritual plane. The dream of blending divinity with humanity, of breaking out of the limitations of a creature - this dream, which persists through all the history of mankind and in hidden ways, in profane versions, is dreamed anew even within the atheistic ideologies of our time, just as it is in the drunken excess of a world without God,--this dream is here fulfilled. Man's Promethean attempts to break out of his limitations himself, to build with his own capacities the tower by which he may mount up to divinity, always necessarily end in collapse and disappointment - indeed, in despair.

This blending, this union, has become possible because God came down in Christ, took upon himself the limitations of human existence, suffering them to the end, and in the infinite love of the Crucified One opened up the door to infinity. The real end of creation, its underlying purpose - and conversely that of human existence as willed by the Creator - is this very union, "that God may be all in all."

To Error Is Human

A small group of us were talking to the Byzantine priest after Liturgy today and the name Thomas Merton came up, who, while obviously a far greater soul than I, seemed to have somewhat lost his way in his later years. The padre agreed but ascribed it to the times and to the fact that pioneers, which Merton was to some extent (which he elaborated on), often are seen as off the path only in hindsight. The nature of pioneering is that you're going to provide good things and less good things but that doesn't invalidate the value of theological pioneering. The Church is like the master of the household in Matthew 13:5 who "brings out of his treasure what is old and what is new." As Fr. George Haydock puts it in his scripture notes:

"It is the perfection of Angels never to err; it is a human imperfection to fall into error, but a diabolical crime to so love our error, as to divide the Church by schism, or to leave it by heresy: this love of self is the most dangerous idolatry."

And that certainly could not be said of Thomas Merton.

Random Thoughts

Today's gospel wake-up call includes these words of our Lord: "So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn." In light of Peter's subsequent denial the inclusion "cockcrow" seems non-concidental. If non-concidental, it gives a greater "ouch".
__

"The greatest graces are but subjects of alarm, unless our life correspond with them." - Rev. George Haydock

Journal Excerptables

“Win an argument lose a soul" said Bishop Sheen, but I've never not tried to win an argument and I’m no better at throwing arguments than Homer Simpson is at resisting a Krispy Kreme. I've found myself simply avoiding controversial aspects concerning religion at family gatherings. First, do no harm.

***

I must’ve hit the wrong combination of keys ‘cuz that awful Office Assistant has visited my Word document. He (she?) is in the form of a paper clip and darned if I’m not having a hard time right-clicking him to oblivion. Those hang-dog eyes. Maybe I’ll keep him around like a pet while I’m writing.

Uh-oh, the bastard is starting to wear out his welcome. He just got this distracting yellow light bulb over his head. I click it and it says that "Word can finish words for you". Why doesn't he mind his own bidness? Maybe I like typing! Go back to sleep doggie, I mean clippie.

***

Been reading a pleasant mix of books. “Sin Killer” by Larry McMurtry, Chesterton’s biography of Francis, "1916: A Novel of Irish Rebellion" and “Separated at Birth”, concerning the two Koreas. Want to get back to the Jeff Davis bio and finish that one this decade.

From the Monthly EWTN Newsletter...

Deacon Bill Steltemier writes:

The clarity and intensity of Mother Angelica's faith has always boggled my mind. What she believes in faith is as real to her as something that she holds in her own hand. As a matter of fact, it is more real. Anyone who has seen Mother pray understands what I mean...I remember a story Mother once told about King Louis of France. A servant came to tell him of a Eucharistic miracle that had just taken place. The holy King reverently acknowledged this miracle but was not as impressed as the servant had expected. When questioned on the matter, the King explained that he had attended Mass that very morning and he too saw Jesus Christ in the flesh..for he saw the Sacred Host, which faith tells us is truly the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. For King Louis, faith and reality were totally united. He did not need external manifestations of the reality he gazed upon with faith's eye. He knew what he believed was true. How awesome!

We are all called upon to share this marvelous faith. Christmas is a wonderful time to allow God to work on refining our faith. For passers by, the babe that lay in the manger looked like every other newborn child. A poor lad wrapped in swaddling clothes...is that what we see? Yes. Yet we know that poor lad is God indeed, the Word made Flesh, our Savior! To think of Bethlehem is to be animated with wonder, when we look with the eyes of our faith, when we ponder with the heart of a child. Perhaps the question we ought to ask ourselves this Christmas is: "Is my faith strong enough to see the Babe of Bethlehem and say 'Behold the Lamb of God?"

Around the Globe

"She must think what the court tells her to think."
_

Diary vs. Blog?
_

Joseph Bottum recently asked on C-Span whether the American ideal of land ownership is reflected even in cemeteries where we "claim" a plot of land even after our death. I can see that, but the recent popularity of cremation and mausoleums has struck me as not wanting to be reminded of death. In a youth-worshipping society wouldn't visible markers of a cemetery be unwelcome? Cemeteries also remind us to pray for the dead which presumes a belief in Purgatory.
_

I'm relieved that I wasn't the only one bowled over by Walk the Line since I was thinking I must be getting soft in my middle age or something. Via The Daily Eudemon. (Also here's the USCCB review.)

St. Catherine of Alexandria Feast Today

I recall reading a book of anti-Catholic polemic from John Adams's library back in September when I was in Boston. And one of the author's main points seemed to be his discomforture, to put it mildly, with saints who were apparently of legendary status. How could you trust the Roman church if they had fake saints on their calendar?

As if answering these seventeenth century critics posthumously, the Second Vatican Council eliminated many of the old saints on the liturgical calendar in order to make room for new ones. According to the Magnificant, "saints Christopher, Valentine, Linus, Maurice, Edward the Confessor and saints like Catherine were eliminated...and yet St. Catherine remains a potent female figure, so much so that she was recently reinstated on the liturgical calendar."

The author of the Magnificat article is not burdened with historicity concerns. He commented on a rich medieval panel painting of St. Catherine from medieval times that too often the "stories and symbols of a rich Catholic heritage drift slowly into obscurity." I guess you might say great art covers a multitude of historical exaggerations.

Traveling Down the Road...

...I encountered a car driven by a strict constructionist with respect to the interpretation of road signs. 35 mph was thirty-five miles per hour.

Hit Me Like a Freight Train...

...the new movie "Walk the Line" that is. I tend to have low expectations of movies but this one, the story of Johnny & June Cash, was superior. If Hollywood can't make anything original it certainly can do biographies.

Joachin Phoenix as Cash portrayed the singer as utterly abject in his love for June. She was country gentry, he was poor country coupled with a weakness for drugs and alcohol and his father's withheld love. And besides raw talent he had a couple other things going for him: one, a lack of pride that made him beg for her, and dogged determination in the face of her refusals. You might say he received the grace of final perserverance because June eventually said 'yes' and married him. They were married 35 years; he died just four months after she did.

That Adam Sandler Beer

My sister-in-law phones my wife. She's bringing drinks to the party and is thoughtfully inquiring as to my taste in beverages. As reported by my wife:

"What kind of beer does Tom like?"

"He likes dark beers."

"Oh, like Adam Sandler beer?"

"Adam Sandler!? Oh [breaks up laughing] you mean John Adams beer."

Now that's comedy! Who knew Adam Sandler is only two degrees of separation from this brewmeister?

Comedic Plumbers in High Demand

My wife wants me to talk to a plumber even though I don't know nuthin' about plumbing other than when you hit a silver lever waste products magically disappear. Maureen Dowd recently said that women like men who are funny since they are more attracted by what comes to them by the ear. Unfortunately it seems like my wife is more interested in my household repair skills than my comedic skills. I take this as a coded message to try to increase my comedic skills.

The Mystery that is Dick Cheney

There's nobody more puzzling, or arguably disappointing, in the Bush Administration than Dick Cheney. And while for a long time he got a ridiculously unfair rap as if he were still on Haliburton's payroll, word on the street is that Cheney has fallen in to the President's disfavor for the obvious reason: Iraq.

Back in 2000 Cheney seemed the adult at the party. He was the cool, fatherly figure who had a black belt in self-control. He didn't seem to let emotions get in the way of decision-making. If anger makes you stupid, it seemed you could count on him to not get angry to the point of stupidity. In the vice-presidential debate there were not a few who thought: "I wish he was the presidential candidate."

Appearances often deceive, but personal virtues can manifest themselves and carry over into policy-making. The crucial thing for public figures at that high a level must do is to not make it personal, not make it about themeselves. And Cheney seemed to have that quality, although he was sorely tested by a mainstream media that thinks irresponsibility is more responsibility than right and more right than privilege. The fact that he didn't strike back, and took all the unfairness was in his favor. But then he told a Senator to go "f--- himself", which suggested there was anger there that could be affecting his decision-making.

Maybe this that would place too much emphasis on the personal virtues. What were/are Cheney's core values? One of the marvelous things about Ronald Reagan was that his core value was his Christianity which was attended by the marvelous self-control and understanding that this wasn't about himself. To paraphrase Archie Bunker - "Mister we could use a man like Ronald Reagan again..."

Even those who know Cheney for years ask about what happened: “The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney,” Brent Scowcroft said recently in the New Yorker. “I consider Cheney a good friend—I’ve known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore.”

I asked for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I had asked for,
but eveything that I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered;
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

--Unknown Confederate soldier

Thankful I Am For Last Weekend Too



Well last weekend in the Appalachian hills was remarkably restorative. I marvel at it myself, heady in my still extant restfulness. An '04 Christmas gift from mom & dad, the just-a-bit over 24 hour excursion was well-spent at least in the earthly sense, which I'll re-live now for re-experiential porpoises.

oh, but we landed on that wind-bitten hill about 4pm, in time for a first hike - just a half-hour or so, to scout around and admire and begin to inculcate the view. It's still ritual at this point.

After, we watched one of the VHS tapes lying around, a movie titled “Fifteen Minutes” starring Robert DeNiro. Cotton candy for the brain. I slept and slept and slept. Ten hours till a new man. And in that morning the sun streamed in like a champion. The window over the bed beheld a wild expanse of woods. (Oh the woods gave up their leaves so soon! It feels a personal betrayal. Let but a few break convention!) The sliding glass doors held a picture book view from ten feet above the ground while the small circular hottub on the deck sat like a future promise.

Our dog Obi was chompin’ at the bit, knowing that hikes were in the offing. We lit out like a couple Huck Finns, but the hike was short-lived. I’d had visions of our ’01 visit to Hocking, my first blog post, this same time of year, this same lucky sun-warmth, when we contemplatively-read while sipping sophisticated coffee in the unrepeatable ten a.m. light. There is nothing more civilized than reading while sipping from a warm mug of coffee on a sylvan November morning. Nothing.

So Obi and I circled back and we ensconsced in the beauty of the little cabin, her pine boards full of dark ciricular knots that looked like areolas. I read with the leisure of a man with time to quaff, like a man with nothing but cold pints ahead. From an array of twenty books I picked up “1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion” and read long, like a wide receiver heading downfield. Slipped into the near recliner and read like the wind, then later slipped into the hottub with a cigar and the view.

My body temperature warmed enough to sit out on the front porch and I thought how much I love country front porches. I sit out on the back porch a lot at home, but there is something about a front porch. The feeling of home ownership (or rental-ship) and of holding down the fort. Or maybe it’s just the better furniture and the different view; the simple creature comfort of a bench and a stool for my feet.



Soon it was noon-thirty and the Buckeye-Michigan game was imminent. If I was to hike it’d have to be now. Tanned, rested and ready, I headed out into the whiskey-still brill sunshine, Obi at the leash. We gaped at the view, the view of a house on the far hill standing as a castle in the mist. There is something in long views that is deeply affective. I gazed at roads that itched to be traveled as we walked down long Berry Road. Obi saw bucks top-heavy with antlers but we couldn't catch them; I made the token effort for his sake.

Back at the cabin, having missed the first quarter, I had a couple St. Pauli Girls during the Great Game. And great it was, one of the best games we'd seen all year. Steph came home from shopping with lunch from the Amish restaurant and food up until now had seemed a nuisance - I had my first real meal at two-something. Broasted chicken and mashed potatoes…yumm! The game went down to the wire but took with it our mini-vacation. We celebrated the Buckeye win with a hike in the dying light along the property, catching views of far houses sitting in their Little-House-On-The-Prairie dignity.

The sun went down, as it daily will, and we packed up and headed back home. But the memories of that big white-curtained window with the view of sun-clad trees resonated and lingered like the words of an Oirish novel.

A Quick Thought

The JCecil/Elena embroglio would seem to be a sort of a text book case on how it's not good for those with opposite viewpoints to tangle. My working theory is that people are influenced not by their opposites but by those who are just a tad to the right or left of themselves, or a tad more religious or less religious. Degrees, by degrees we are bid. I recall the blogger at Sancta Sanctis saying that Andrew Greeley, of all people, softened the ground of her eventual conversion.

I recall, in hindsight with some hilarity, offering a Marian piece Greeley had written to a staunch Calvinist friend of my wife's. This friend of hers thought that the Roman church was the Whore of Babylon and that the world would end (backed up with a complex and intricate study of the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel) on December 31st, 2002. What was funny was that I had, in complete innocence, thought that Greeley's piece would "speak to her". Instead it only reinforced her anti-Catholicism. I heard back from my wife that there was a lot of "ahh ha'ing!". I presume she probably kept it as exhibit A of the bankruptedness of Roman church.

But what is unintentionally funny is that she, armed with her meticulous thirty pages pointing to the day of the end of the Last Age, and me, armed with my Greeley defense of Marian piety, thought we would influence each other. Perhaps we did, by making each the more extreme.

Today is the feast of Pope St. Clement...

... martryed in 101 A.D.. I didn't realize that his letters to the Corinthians were read in churches and nearly included in the canon of Scripture. "Both St. Paul in 1 Corinthians and St. Clement here in 1 Clement are writing to the same city-church (within 35-40 years of each other); and that both these scriptures were read side-by-side by this church -- both being considered Divinely-inspired by the Corinthians for 300 years!" (from here) And according to this: "The Coptic-Arabic Church include with the canonical Scriptures the Apostolic Constitutions and the Clementine Epistles". Here are St. Clement's own words to the Corinthians:

"Let every one," says the saint, "be subject to another, according to the order in which he is placed by the gift of God. Let not the strong man neglect the care of the weak; let the weak see that he reverence the strong. Let the rich man distribute to the necessity of the poor, and let the poor bless God who give :h him one to supply his want. Let the wise man show forth his wisdom, not in words, but in good works. Let him that is humble, never speak of himself, or make show of his actions. Let him that is pure in the flesh, not grow proud of it, knowing that it was another who gave him the gift of continence. They who are great cannot yet subsist without those that are little; nor the little without the great. In our body, the head without the feet is nothing; neither the feet without the head. And the smallest members of our body are yet both necessary and useful to the whole." Thus the saint teaches that the lowest in the church may be the greatest before God, if they are most faithful in the discharge of their respective duties.

Nail. Hammer. Head.

Amy seems to make the rest of us superfluous on these issues. I'm reduced to a blathering, "what she says". She writes:

The problem is not, in simple terms, the homosexual priest. The problem is priests who don't believe what the Catholic Church teaches on sexuality, who don't preach it, who don't witness to it in the confessional, and who don't live it in their private lives...I have never understood the appeal of the Catholic priesthood for the actively gay man who doesn't give a flip about Church teaching on this score. If you want to serve others, go into social work or psychology or something. But if you don't believe it, and don't live it...why are you here?
...
Oh, and word to the self-identified "gay priests" who are all over NPR today. To right off the bat self-identify as "gay" is to indicate, pretty clearly, that something else other than Christ is at the center of your life. If your priest got up in the pulpit and proclaimed "I am a heterosexual priest," wouldn't you go, uh...okay.

Here's a parody for your non-edification.

Happy Birthday KTC

Where have all the bloggers gone,
long time passing?
Where have all the bloggers gone,
long time away...

Remembering past bloggers: Dylan of Tenebrae, Chris of "Maine Catholic", Mark of "Minute Particulars", Gerard of "Blog for Lovers", Michelle of "And Then?" and Kathy of Gospel Minefield.

Update: In a rare email, KTC says "I am not dead!" Certainly reports of her demise are premature, though this post spoke only of her blogging demise.

Confiteor Meme



I'd hoped I was going to skate on this one, but smockmama got me. (Although it feels like Bill Luse already confessed for me. Good to see that semi- prefix. Bill's keypad to God's ear.) Without further ado!:

I confess...to telling telemarketers that my wife's deaf and won't be able to hear them

I confess...to telling telemarketers that I don't take telemarketer calls while in the act of taking a telemarketer's call

I confess...that "The Office" is my favorite TV show

I confess...to not knowing much of the Latin in the "Lamb of God" and fake singing the rest

I confess....that I answer memes sometimes because it gives me a feeling of superiority to those who are too cool to answer memes

I confess...to using the workplace printer to print personal stuff (which I've resolved to do no more)

I confess...to wanting to live out in the country but for some wrong reasons, i.e. peace, lack of neighbors and noise, lack of interruptions, etc...

I confess...that parts of the gospels are scarier than any horror movie

I confess...to being unsure where to draw the line between the "ick" of too much personal information proffered to strangers on the 'Net and too little, i.e. in the form of lacking humanity (i.e. Mr. Spock)

I confess...that although hard work purportedly never killed anyone, I normally don't take any chances

I confess...to dismissive, condescending thoughts towards liberal Catholic bloggers/writers

I hereby meme Andrew Sullivan, Jonah Goldberg and Richard Neuhaus. Yeah, I won't be holding my breath...

Various & Sundry

If'n you're like me, you like book reviews. Even better if they're authored by someone you know, if only virtually. Here are Dom's.

A few other miscellaneous thoughts...first, I was recently chagrined to learn (via Kimball's book) that Erich Fromm, author of The Art of Loving (which my dear wife read as an act of love), turned out to be an old fool when it came to embracing '60s politics. Sigh. Growing older seems an exercise in constantly being surprised at how those you looked up to turned out to be idiots. Exhibit A might well be Bill Moyers, although Lileks points out another. Our best and brightest are darn determined to make those of us holding down the middle of the Bell Curve look smart.

So I was poking around amazon.com, suffering from a rare, near fatal, case of delayed book purchasing ("My name is TSO and I've gone 45 days without buying a book." Okay, not literally true but darn close. I had to buy from Requiem books - I simply can't resist a mom 'n pop organization.) So I came across this, and using that wonderful "Search Inside This Book" feature I found just four references to Christ, one of them as a swear word, one as in "Jesus Christ Superstar", two others as basically punchlines to a jokes. There were similar references to "Catholic", all derogatory. Now you could say, "what did you expect?" since it's not a religion book. And the author is Jewish after all. But still it seemed to show the poverty of a Britannica education.

What else? Oh a couple tidbits: from The Corner and a review from Julie of Happy Catholic fame. I was also amused to see Steven mention himself as my number one fan, not something for which there is a lot of competition but I did enjoy seeing it in faux print like that. He also never nuisance-emails so don't believe a word of that.

After the first two Hail Mary’s, my brother joined me, saying the second half of each prayer. The words of his prayers were slurred and hard to decipher. I just began the next prayer when he stopped. We kept going despite several interruptions. After the rosary I said some other prayers and then I sang, "Come Holy Ghost." My brother smiled and he wept a little. I stopped singing and he said, "Don't stop." So I sang again and then he said sweetly, "I can smell incense." Oh! How wonderful the Lord is! "Did you know," I said, " that the fragrance of incense is a sign of the presence of Christ?" This time the Lord was calling my brother –and me – to the kind of faith that surrenders all things. It is a gift to be truly helpless because at that level of helplessness we have no one to turn to except God Almighty and to be in his presence. - Mary Herboth, at the beside of her dying brother

She told me that the monastery had saved her life; that her life fell apart completely eighteen months ago; that she had been a school teacher but was somehow forced to leave her job; that she had spent much of her time since this mysterious catastrophe at the monastery, attending services, staying at the retreat house, trying to find God and to put her life back together again....Her life fell apart. And where do you go when your life falls apart? When your heart is pierced with an impossible grief? You turn to the Cross and make tracks for a monastery...The Christians of the world don't have time for you, or else they are too unforgiving. - Jeff of "Hallowed Ground"

I may longer go where I want to go. I may no longer do what I want to do. I may no longer say what I want to say....Yet ever since the moment of profession I have known a freedom like I have never known before. - Br. James Dominic Brent, OP, on joining the Dominicans. Via Disputations

If you think government is primarily a matter of putting “good people” in leadership, you’re not going to properly limit their powers. - Camassia

While Father McBrien claims the middle-of-the-road, Father Rolheiser takes the label-transcending approach of Jim Wallis - "The importance of what's being said here stuck me recently as I read an interview in Sojourners magazine. A young woman, an Episcopalian priest, was being interviewed. She had just published a book with a very strong message challenging us all to be more respectful of nature and was about to set off on a book-promotion tour." Thus the trees that went into the book, Soujourners, and the Catholic Herald did not die in vain. - Terrence Berres of "The Provincial Emails"

I was downstairs putting the finishing touches on dinner (meat loaf, winter squash, vege pasta with artichoke pesto, and home made refried beans). John was upstairs finishing reading something on the computer. He called out to me, "Hey, have you been over to Video Meliora today?" me: "not yet - why?" him: "You're mentioned in the same sentence as Amy Welborn. And it comes from an article in First Things." Since I was downstairs, I grabbed the print edition of First Things out of todays mail pile and proceeded to read God on the Internet by Jonathan V. Last. It's an interesting article, and I was somewhat bemused to have been the first blog actually mentioned by name. Blogging midwives are somewhat of an anomaly anyhow (last time I googled it I only found 4 of us) and a Catholic midwife blog is probably hen's teeth. - Alicia of "Fructus Ventris"

A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue--which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands. - William F. Buckley

"One of his contemporaries recalls that John would frequently scrape his knuckles against the wall while he was conversing with others so that he could keep his attention on the matter at hand and not allow himself to become rapt in prayer." Oh what a gift--to have to distract myself to keep me OUT of prayer. - Steven of "Flos Carmeli" concerning St. John of the Cross

A Dominican priest of our common aquiantance has a theory that the doctrinal and theological sophistication of a Christian sect is inversely proportional to the strictness of its moral codes on drinking. It does seem to be a pretty accurate predictor. In vino veritas and all that. - commenter Marc on Disputations

I confess...to holding back on this blog because I just don't feel like dealing with the comments. - Amy Welborn

Outside the Earth There is No Life... and Outside the Church There is No Salvation? The answer, of course, is simple: [Astronauts] didn't leave the earth; they just brought it with them. While they slept and walked on the moon, they were eating earth's food and breathing earth's air. Everything they had came from back home. So when we say 'outside the earth there is no life,' we are saying that all of the means for survival are found on this planet. And when we say 'outside the Church there is no salvation,' we mean that all of the means of salvation -- doctrines, sacraments, and so on -- are found here, uncorrupted by error. Some of these means can exist outside the visible bounds of the Church. For example, Protestants have most of the Bible, along with two of the seven sacraments. Nevertheless, these things are like the food and water on the Space Shuttle: they're life-giving, but they came from a place where they're far richer, more abundant and complete. - Kevin Knight via Rich Leonardi

I'm #1700 in the ecosystem with 129 unique links ... look out Flos Carmeli, with 130! Drat! I just gave you an extra link! - Speculative Catholic

Let me share with you a moment a list of my own discontents: I didn't beat Mary Shelley to the publishing punch, I haven't published my first novel or first book of poetry, I'm not as wildly popular as Stephen King and Michael Crichton, I'm not as cool and as obscure as James Joyce, I don't have the voice of William Faulkner, I can't express the joy of Gerard Manley Hopkins, I am not living on St. John, or better yet my own Carribean island, I didn't achieve sanctity and sainthood at the age of 24, I didn't write the new Summa, I haven't discovered a new form of prayer, I haven't uncovered a new Catholic Doctrine, heck, I haven't even been able to come up with a new sin. If I were of a mind to, I could wander around and recite Ecclesiastes all day long, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." "There is nothing new under the sun." And boy is the latter true--particularly when it come to discontents--none of them are new--only new to us. - Steven Riddle

Various

Well I have a lot of blog ideas, the only problem being they aren't all that edifying. But as John Denver sang: "Some days are diamonds, some days are stones". (Can you believe he he had the cahoonies to release that lyric as a single? I'm in awe of the man.)

Anyway, I'll lump all of these in one post for reasons that are obvious. First off, many men have the problem of lust. Well, instead of imagining women with their clothes off, go one step further. That should take away lust. (I did warn you about this post didn't I?)

Driving around the city I saw "I'm a proud parent of an honor roll student" bumper sticker and I thought of a few less likely stickers:

"I'm the proud parent of an honor roll student at a declining public school!"

"I'm the proud parent of a Pig Latinist!"

"I'm the proud parent of a honor roll student taking advantage of grade inflation."

"My son always dresses for gym class"

Where's that rimshot? Oh yeah.

Heaven

I recall the scent of slow-down
unlogged, unblogged time,
time for which no account would be held
though not to be confused with no-account time
...and the golden crowns fell like leaves.

It was a whiskey river sun
zenith’d, Atlas shrugging
'lucky you' casting joy
minting glints as Adam's
youth and graceful arc
returned at last.

He jests at scars that ne'er felt a meme

Alicia has meme'd me...

1. Write three things for which we are grateful to God for in this past liturgical year.
* for the glimpses of Love
* the solace of the community of saints
* our new pope

2. Write three ways in which we hope to improve our relationship with God in this coming liturgical year.
* less distracted prayer
* attitude of service
* openness to Transcendence

3. I pass this on to St. Blog's at large

Fictional Monday

Hank Keller grew up in a Roman Catholic home where devotion to the Blessed Mother was in the very air they breathed. He felt especially close to her because he was especially close to his own mother. A mama's boy he was, so the inclination was natural.

He said the rosary through fierce distractions, some so annoying that he would clench the beads in self-disgust and tears would form: "I will not be lukewarm!" he muttered, "anything but lukewarm!"

Years passed and he went away to school and his relationship with the Virgin seemed to alter. She seemed less his mother than his chaste girlfriend and he purchased a small picture of a fresh-faced Mary, looking not unlike the girl next door. They would go together through this relentless storm of adolescence, this constant struggle for acceptance.

Time passed and the gap between his experiences and that of his friends widened. He remembers asking, with some bitterness, why she did so little to help him. "Do you even appreciate what I'm doing? A virgin when everyone else is having sex?" The silence seemed deafening, impervious as he was to the irony, or perhaps he couldn't listen for the blood that beat at his temples. Battles were won but mostly lost.

He came back to her, but this time his perception was not one of girlfriend or mother but of wonderment at the great esteem all the great figures of Christendom paid her. "Who are you Mary?" he asked instead of "Who are you for me?". He took down his old picture of Mary's sweet, Western, girl-next-door face and hung the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This seemed of more historical value, more of who Mary is, a way to get closer to who she is if not in body then in spirit.

Roger Kimball's The Long March

..is a systematic take-down of the '60s radicalism and its longterm effects. His style and argumentation remind me of Dr. Blosser's. Towards the end of the book he mentions NY Times columnist David Brooks, red state ambassador to the blue states. But as a defender of the reds Brooks certainly leaves a lot to be desired. Kimball writes that Brooks praises faintly:

According to him, the bourgeois doesn't want to bother with "grand abstractions," he is "never heroic" and "has no gradeur," he "never seem[s] to look up from the quotidian concerns to grapple with great truths or profound moral issues."...

What Brooks neglects is the fact that what conservatives have traditionally championed are bourgeois values not bourgeois vices. And those values are rooted deeply in God-fearing Protestant ethic that emphasizes church, community, country, family and moral honor. The bourgeois ethic is not a form of Romanticism, true enough; its ideal is moderation, not excess. There is a deep sense in which Schumpeter was right that "capitalist civilization is rationalistic and 'anti-heroic'." But that does not mean that bourgeois capitalism need embrace the vacuous, feel-good, "I've-got-mine" philosophy that Brooks apparently wants us to embrace. "Anti-heroism" need not exclude passionate commitments or steadfast loyalty to transcendent values. Irving Kristol once wrote that "if you believe that a comfortable life is not necessarily the same thing as a good life, or even a meaningful life, then it will occur to you that efficiency is a means, not an end in itself."

Another interesting passage:

One sign of [conservative defeat in the culture wars] is that one hears considerably less about those battles today than in the early and mid-1990s. That is partly because, as Robert Novak notes in his book Completing the Revolution, "moral issues tend to exhaust people over time." Controversies that only yesterday sparked urgent debate today seem, for many strangely beside the point.

He also culled a marvelous quip:

"The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity...is often untruthful." - GK Chesterton

Cashier Roulette

One of the more challenging daily activities is deciding which cafeteria line to choose. Oh, the mental calculations required! With just one sweeping glance I must choose between four or five cashiers, each having two queues. I need instantly calculate the number of people in each line (adjusting for the line the cashier is currently serving), the number of men in the line (men are quicker because we don't have purses), and the speed of cashier - all in a fraction of a second! Then you have to be alert for another cashier line opening.

Of course you say I could just pick a line and wait. And there is some truth in that. For even if we all had personal cashiers, the problem with instant gratification is that it just isn't quick enough...

Food for the Race

  The well-balanced spiritual diet includes many essential vitamins and minerals...

The Rosary... for strong teeth and bones. Stiffens spines and improves cartilage tissue by sinking the Mysteries into your marrow.

Prayer in general...provides oxygen, vital to life and pulmonary function; without prayer/0² death occurs.

The Eucharist... for strengthened immune system, packs His white blood cells that our spiritual wounds may heal. The taste of the Other offers bliss and provides energy for doing good works.

Confession...for fiber. Don't let those poisons accumulate in your colon! Purge them with Confession. And in the case of serious sin, Confession is the stomach pump that saves lives.

Scripture reading...builds capillaries, softens hard hearts, improves truth function.

Picture graphic via www.seton.net

Sermon Notes

The sermon from Luke at the Byzantine liturgy was about a man who was given many blessings but was called a "fool" by our Lord for his life was required of him that very day:

"Some gospel readings scare me. Today's scares me.

The farmer in this reading wanted an early retirement. That's all.

All of us in here our blessed. If we want to be like God, theosis, then we have to act like God. And God gives his blessings away.

We are meant to give away our blessings. We cannot keep them. As soon as we receive them we must get rid of them.

Did God keep his blessing to himself? No he gave us his greatest blessing, his Son.
Does God give us only part of his Holy Spirit? No he gives us the full Spirit.

Jesus taught us this out of love, not to threaten. He is warning us of danger."

Thoreau & Today's Homily

The story told at the homily was of two priests who went to a restaurant for breakfast. The owner stopped by several times. The younger priest read the newspaper, and barely listened to the owner, while the older priest listened intently and spoke with him. After the meal, the owner said it was "on the house" even though the younger priest tried to offer him money. Afterwards, the older priest said the younger stole a meal from the restauranteur. "How so?" asked the younger, "I tried to pay but he would not let me."

"He did not want money. He wanted to be listened to and for you to talk to him." It was not what he did that was sinful, but what he failed to do.

When I was a young adult I had the unfortunate habit (in effect, if not knowingly doing so) of treating literature as canonical if it "spoke to me". In other words, instead of trying to become what Scripture said I should become, I treasured works that explained me to me as I already was. (I'm sure that was clear). One example is Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in Walden that "we meet at too frequent intervals" and give each other only the "stale bread that is ourselves". He went to the woods perhaps in order to ensure he'd meet others at less frequent intervals or, more charitably, to gather wisdom that he might have more to give. That passage resonated, as did his recommendation that we have a "large margin to life" (though it would seem that most saints live off slim margins of free time).

So, to answer Thoreau's first point, there's no reason to think that God can't make something of what seems to promise to be a mundane encounter. We've all experienced times when we think we have nothing to offer someone - and yet we do - or they have nothing to offer us - and yet they do. But that utilitarian view is beside the point. Even if nothing meaningful seems to occur, our conscience, unlike the young priest's, is clear and our openness is itself an act of obedience.

“.. and I will raise you up on the last day”   - By Mary Herboth

Two and a half months ago, my brother was brought to the hospital near death. His daughter had come up from California to visit him in his rustic Mt. Hood cabin when she found him in a frightening state. He was ashen and lethargic. She urged him to go with her to the hospital and he agreed. The doctors discovered that his blood sugar level was over 600. A few more points, they warned, and he would have been in a coma. He went home thinking that he had become a diabetic like our Dad. The days that followed were dreadful. Not because of sugar-restrictions and needles in the finger but because of violent stomach cramps and vomiting that would not stop. We soon found out that this was more than diabetes or a terrible stomach flu. My brother was diagnosed with incurable and aggressive pancreatic cancer. The doctor simply said, “We don’t cure this” and let him know that most people in this condition live for less than three months. He went back to Mom and Dad's with a new bed and an arm full of medical supplies. We all began to pray for wisdom and strength.

Recently, my brother was moved from my parent’s house to a hospice care facility because his condition was getting worse. Two weeks ago they told us that he had 2-3 days to live. At the time that was good news. It meant that the suffering was about to come to an end. But, God had other plans. My brother continues to live and we keep holding on to the knowledge that life is good. However, I must admit that it’s not easy to understand the meaning of suffering when it is happening to someone you love. His body has been reduced to skin and bones, his face is caved in, his tongue and lips are cracked from dehydration, his belly and lower back are swollen from the cancer and he is often in tears from the heartache of dying in front of people he loves. Every day the medical staff increases his medication in an effort to keep up with the pain but most of the time the pain is ahead of the race.

Despite this grim picture there is always hope - there is always grace. For example, God granted me the grace to be with my brother on the day the doctor told him he had only 2-3 days to live. After the doctor left, I told my brother, "I'm going to miss you" and he said, "I'm going to miss you too." I replied, "No you won’t! You're not going to miss me because you will be with Christ and the Blessed Mother." I smiled but he started to cry. He said, "I'm not ready to meet her. I love her so much and I don't want to offend her." He told me that he didn't feel worthy to meet Christ because of some things he had done in his life. I told him that we could take care of that. That he could prepare his soul to meet Christ and the saints by confessing his sins and receiving the Eucharist. On hearing this he cried out "I want that." I held his hand and we talked a little while about God's love and mercy and how wonderful it will be in heaven. The next day a priest came to visit and to administer the sacraments. My heart was light and I kept thinking about Christ’s promise, “If you eat my body and drink my blood you will have life within you and I will raise you up on the last day.” That's what I wanted for my brother and I thanked God for drawing near and for bringing him into a deeper more pure relationship with Him.

Another incredible moment was the day that they moved him to hospice. That first day was very difficult. With a new staff of doctors and nurses it took a while to get everything squared away. He suffered quite a bit that first night because his meds were not adequate and the machine that delivered the meds was not working properly. All night he was in pain, moaning and crying in agony. I cried too - as you can imagine. I thought of Mary during the passion. I wondered how she coped with the suffering. I turned to her for consolation.

Everyone was doing all they could to keep him comfortable but nothing worked for very long. At one point I felt so completely helpless. I didn't know what to do so I started to pray the rosary. It was Wednesday so we meditated on the Glorious Mysteries. After the first two Hail Mary’s, my brother joined me, saying the second half of each prayer. The words of his prayers were slurred and hard to decipher. I just began the next prayer when he stopped. We kept going despite several interruptions. After the rosary I said some other prayers and then I sang, "Come Holy Ghost." My brother smiled and he wept a little. I stopped singing and he said, "Don't stop." So I sang again and then he said sweetly, "I can smell incense." Oh! How wonderful the Lord is! "Did you know," I said, " that the fragrance of incense is a sign of the presence of Christ?" This time the Lord was calling my brother –and me – to the kind of faith that surrenders all things. It is a gift to be truly helpless because at that level of helplessness we have no one to turn to except God Almighty and to be in his presence.

The next morning the doctors were able to find a way to get him comfortable. He actually made some progress and did things that they said he'd never do again - like eat some peach pie! Instead of dying, he had 3-4 "good days" where he was able to have visitors and stroll around the pleasant grounds. He even made it to Mass with the other patients. To receive communion in the context of the Liturgy was another wonderful gift because before this illness my brother had been out of full communion with the Church. He had, however, been growing in his love for God for some time. He often prayed, read spiritual works and taught his friends to say “I love you, God” 100 times a day.

There have been many times during this trial that I have thought that this illness was my brother’s reward for his sincere search for God and the meaning of love. When he became ill, he started the steps toward complete reconciliation. Early on he was annointed with oil and within the first few weeks he recieved general absolution and communion. Then he had the conviciton to confess particular sins and now God provided a whole liturgy - a whole Easter!

Although it breaks my heart to witness the ravages of cancer I can't help but thank God for his goodness and mercy. I'm thankful for the opportunity to share in his passion. Even my brother recognizes that. One time he told me that when he is having the most pain he doesn't ask God to take it away but he tells God "Thank you. I love you." You wouldn't believe all the things he tells the doctors and nurses. When they ask him how he's doing he always tells them about God's love and mercy. He tells them again and again how much he believes in God and everlasting life. They often look at him with amazement. When they see his pain and suffering they can't imagine why he has faith and I can’t imagine him not having it.

Update: Sunday morning, on the feast of Christ the King, Mary's brother passed away. May he rest in God's peace.

From Percy MacKaye, the poet-in-residence at my alma mater during the 1920s:

The Automobile
    By Percy MacKaye  (1875-1956)

Fluid the world flowed under us: the hills
        Billow on billow of umbrageous green
        Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen
One rapturous instant, blind with flash of rills
And silver-rising storms and dewy stills
       Of dripping boulders, till the dim ravine
       Drowned us again in leafage, whose serene
Coverts grew loud with our tumultuous wills.

Then all of Nature's old amazement seemed
        Sudden to ask us: "Is this also Man?
        This plunging, volant, land-amphibian
What Plato mused and Paracelsus dreamed?
        Reply!" And piercing us with ancient scan,
The shrill, primeval hawk gazed down -- and screamed.

Thoughts While Watching O'Reilly's Show

O'Reilly mentions to Sen. Schumer that "when the Iraqi democracy is flourishing and they have large oil revenues maybe they'll give back some of the money we spent".

Uh bartender, I'll have what he's having. O'Reilly's not usually this naive. There are so many ifs in there, not to mention the fact that the average lifespan of a nation's gratitude is shorter than that of the fruitfly. (Exhibit A: Kuwait). In the immortal words of a '70s song" "dream on, dream on, dream until your dreams come true...". Speaking of Iraq, NPRs Diana Rehm asked why can't we honor Iraq's unbearable urge to split (i.e. into three countries Shiite, Sunni & Kurdish)? Indeed why not? After all, Iraq was a originally an arbitrary construction anyway, cobbled together after the first World War. All of this angst over the pre-war intelligence regarding WMDs seems misplaced; the true intelligence nightmare was not knowing how difficult nation-building is. Now that we should've known.

But back to the Factor.

Sen. Schumer says "80 million? That's nothing. We spend that before breakfast in Washington"

And that's something to brag about?

Sex on TV segment

One of the things that is so hilariously blatant about FOX is that sexual content on TV is shown over and over, often in slow motion, while discussing the evils of sexual content on tv. Nothing like soft core porn to accompany your outrage over soft core porn right Bill?

First Things Article on Godbloggers

Alicia & Amy got a mention as did others (via Spec Catholic):

Godbloggers hail from all walks of life, from professional writers such as Domenico Bettinelli, Eve Tushnet, and Dawn Eden to laymen with day jobs: Emily Peterson and Annie Banno, for instance, at the blog After Abortion, or Marc, a UNIX administrator, who runs the blog Thickness.

...
Another concern is how the Internet is demystifying religion. One of Joseph de Maistre’s pet theories was that the authority of the Church depended in large part on mystery. Blogger Mickey Kaus recently wondered if the notion of mysterious silence on the part of religious institutions has become outmoded: “If you were a respected authority you used to be able to get away with maintaining a meaningful silence. Now you’ve got to be blogging in your own ‘unique voice’ about every little thing that comes up, or else some ambitious lesser authority who posts more frequently will steal your flock.”

Happy 80th to Bill Buckley (er, one week early)


Link:

We were all chuckling about something bone-headed the Soviet spokesman had pronounced earlier in the day, I don’t remember the exact reference. But I do recall Bill saying “You know I’ll almost miss them when we win.” Being of the lugubrious Whittaker Chambers sensibility (Chambers thought he had left the winning for the losing side), I was startled. Only later did I recognize this confidence as a form of faith. In Reagan, it was called optimism. But it was more than that. It was a spiritual strength and it was one important though perhaps underappreciated reason Bill Buckley was and is a great leader.

— Mona Charen

For You Narnia Fans...

Ross Douthat defends C.S. Lewis's use of allegory:

I think that Noah has to be right, almost definitionally, to prefer non-allegorical stories to allegories. So how to escape the contradiction?

Well, here's one theory - that for the most part Narnia actually isn't an allegory, but rather an explicitly Christian fairy tale (like The Snow Queen) that happens to include, as one of its characters, the second person of the Trinity.

And an arresting/interesting comment found in the ensuing comment thread:

Very few people claim to understand quantum mechanics or how their furnaces work who don't actually understand quantum mechanics or how their furnaces work. Christianity is very different. No body of thought about anything has such a enormous gap between what people think they know about it and what they actually do know about it as Christianity. It's not just secular intellectuals either, even if he has read lots of papal encyclicals, the religion on display at AndrewSullivan.com is pretty much unique to Andrew Sullivan, and Mr. Sullivan seems blissfully unaware of it.

Notes on Msgr. Lane's Talk on the Passion of the Lord:

Christians have struggled with the Crucifixion since the very beginning, going back to the account of the men on the road to Emmaus. "What does this mean?". Some early Christian thinkers came up with a legalistic view, that humans errored and it makes sense that only God can appease God. But that's horrible. What kind of God sends His Son to die in order to appease Himself?

Another way to look at it is to recall that we are made in the image and likeness of God which is reflected in human freedom. Freedom is what makes us human and able to relate to God in a one-to-one in a friendship relationship rather than a dependent, destructive way. Look at families where a parent watches every thing the child does and forces obedience - that child is not free and ultimately bears a hatred towards his parents.

God intended Jesus as a gift. He said as it were, "go down and give yourself to them, put yourself in their hands." Gift, not appeasement. It is human nature to be threatened by holiness since we have constructed a world and are comfortable with it as it is. Look at the simple matter of going to Mass on Sunday and how many do not avail themselves?

Read the language describing moment of Christ's death. It is the triumph of chaos. It is the only way the Hebrew writers, who could not use an abstraction, could describe nihilism, nothingness. The darkness descending over the abyss, the wind over it, recalls Genesis before the creation of the world. The world was ending. God was dying in a very real sense, not just the more trivial sense in which Jesus was just giving up a body that was a lot of trouble anyway. But Mary and John at the foot of the Cross held the world together, kept the chaos from completely abolishing existence for the three days before the Resurrection. In some mysterious way. Mary, a symbol of the Church, and John a symbol of the priesthood, saved the world. Did they know it? No. They were at the cross out of love for the son and their friend. The giving of the Holy Spirit created a new world, re-enacting the story in Genesis. And now the Church and the sacraments through the ministry of the priesthood keep the world in existence before the Second Coming. We are in a sense re-enacting the interval between the death of Christ and his Resurrection, awaiting his Second Coming as Mary and John awaited His Resurrection. Christians are keeping the world in existence.

And so why can't it be over now? Because of human freedom. He asks us to come, little by little, inviting us to come closer. It is fraught with failure and we experience it in our human relations. Love is existential, experiential, you can't learn it from a definition of a book, even Scripture. It has to be made concrete, in the harshness of saying 'yes' amid the chaos, as Mary and John did at the foot of the Cross. A relationship with God is not behavioral, moral in the sense of "I'm a good person". It is relational, an invitation and beckoning to come nearer.

Poetry Wednesday

I like Heidi Lynn Staples's quirky poetry and wordplay. She'll title a blog post "maid public" when speaking of getting a mention or creatively scribe a post like "O my bloggerissimo, each sentence writ a cage in which to hide or a draft on which to glide?".

Here's an interview and a poem, the latter being the sort I'd write if I could write poetry:

Reddening Devout of the House

o let's go for our sun say drive,
land wet a honking foil'll gleamingly geese.
you'll thrive on the thrive
wilding an ode. i'll sway to your pleased,
roil down the window to let din the air hive,
the wind singing kin the sheaves.

o hours unsay we're alive;
yet, flare now we're trill flung, full of be leaves –
you sway thru me, derive
mulch perfect there hums. yes, let's conceive
a bay of be. o throes mortis and heat,
true lush here and roaring, we'll cleave

sun to beech copper, arrive
as dei parts, swilling wills of weave.

Written after noting that every poet's website is accompanied by leftwing ideology...

A Conservative Poet
   (- and other oxymorons)

"A bloggin' poet I shall be!"
I said to all who wouldst read me
I called up Local 53
and asked what they would need to see.

They said I wasn't qualified,
They said George Bush I deified,
For Politics they reified
I was a con they neo-fied.

I felt as lonely as a cloud
a rightwing poet yet unbowed
chastened, yes, but still not cowed
I could not be a Maureen Dowd.

So to eyries I did repair
to ply the trade without a care
my porridge seemed a meagre fare,
did Politics myself ensare?

Interesting...

...link via Tom of Disputations:

Very often when people are thinking or speaking about the spirituality of the Dominican Order there is a tendency, with respect to a phrase such as "sober intoxication," for example, to give more weight to the adjective "sober" than to the noun "intoxication." It is an understandable tendency and, in respect of the work of many Dominican authors, often a wise one. The adjective "sober" sits particularly well with the work of someone like St Thomas Aquinas, or with that of his contemporary, Humbert of Romans, or with the work of the later scholastics. But if one is considering the life and work of other Dominicans, such as the exuberant and generous preacher, Blessed Jordan of Saxony, or the irrepressible Italian mystic, St Catherine of Siena, or the colourful and intensely devout German friar, Blessed Henry Suso, or the great and daring thinker and visionary, Meister Eckhart, then clearly the word "sober," for all its sane, and sharply qualifying wisdom, will need to have placed – and close beside it – the noun "intoxication."
...
Towards the end of his remarkable study, Enthusiasm, Ronald Knox writes : "Men [and women] will not live without vision; that moral we do well to carry away with us from contemplating, in so many strange forms, the record of the visionaries. If we are content with the humdrum, the second-best, the hand-over-hand, it will not be forgiven us."

Charlotte Simmons

Ham o' Bone posts far too infrequently. His passionate review of Tom Wolfe's "I am Charlotte Simmons" is here. Some background info (if he doesn't mind?): Ham grew up in an extremely rural area of North Carolina and raised in a strict semi-fundamentalist Christian home, so there must be especial resonance for him in Charlotte's story:

Wolfe does a realistic job portraying the immaturity of coddled youth as they are released into an environment where there is ample tinder for whatever fire of passion they want to start. Whether it be activism, alcoholism, sexual antics, or even saying the F-word as often as one likes, the university setting is an ideal one for them. Is it any wonder that conservative Christian universities are seeing widespread growth in enrollments?...Instead of encouraging sublimation of primal desires as a cornerstone of society, boomers have passed on to their children the notion that giving full expression to one's desires is the highest plane of fulfillment. Incredibly, Wolfe recognizes this as can be deduced from the excerpt that follows:

"The man sitting across from him, the butterball grotesquely squeezed into a dark gray sweater, was of another sort entirely, despite the fact that they were both Jewish and agreed on practically every public issue of the day. Both believed passionately in protecting minorities, particularly African Americans, as well as Jews. Both regarded Israel as the most important nation on earth, although neither was tempted to live there. Both instinctively sided with the underdog; police violence really got them steamed. Both were firm believers in diversity and multiculturalism in colleges. Both believed in abortion, not so much because they thought anyone they knew might want an abortion as because legalizing it helped put an exhausted and dysfunctional Christendom and its weird, hidebound religious restraints in their place. For the same reason, both believed in gay rights, women's rights, transgender rights, fox, bear, wolf, swordfish, halibut, ozone, wetland, and hardwood rights, gun control, contemporary art, and the Democratic Party. Both were against hunting and, for that matter, woods, fields, mountain trails, rock climbing, sailing, fishing, and the outdoors in general, except for golf courses and the beach."

Paisley's Not Just a Tie Pattern

Well I'm rooting for ol' Brad Paisley, not for success in awards or music but in his personal and spiritual life. He's Mr. Stealth Evangelizer; his songs are suffused with a Christian sensibility though shy of the point at which you turn people off. Sort of miraculous if'n you ask me.

So natch I've been hoping he continues on the Christian path despite women throwing themselves at his feet, literally, and success throwing buckets of money at him, figuratively. He hasn't been married long and his wife, sitting next to him at the CMA award ceremonies, is pretty and you could see her nipples. That can't be a good sign can it? I'm just sayin'. (I can't believe I just said "I'm just sayin'").

I was glad to see "Whisperin'" Bill Anderson win an award. He's apparently a buddy of Brad's, as shown by their hugging and by the fact that Anderson's on some of Paisley's CDs in an ongoing spaghetti western with Dolly Parton that, natch, includes a lot of double entendres of the predictable sort. I like Paisley's loyalty to the "old guard" like Bill Anderson & Little Jimmy Dickens. If money and women and fame are like a tsunami to the Faith, I remind myself that with God all things are possible.

Funny...

...cartoon here.

Silliness

There's a statue of St. Patrick in St. Patrick's that looks as though the saint is holding the St. Joseph edition of the New American Bible. The page edges have that same pink/pale red color. Which reminded me of how Pope Benedict is holding one of my books on the cover of another of my books.

So I thought how cool would it be to see figures of the past holding some of my favorite books of the present? After all, we're all in communion and connected!


Lincoln displays his personal copy of "A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture"



      
St. Thérèse reads my blog!               St. Francis shows off the good book.



          
A national treasure reads a national treasure and Mother T likes Lickona

May they forgive me :-)

(By the way, found a sample of Mother Teresa's handwriting here.)

The reason that I get up daily to read the Bible at 4 AM is that both world and self seem less relevant, and are less insistent on my attention, at that hour. The words of scripture then speak to that part of me that is able to resonate sympathetically, through less static, with more clarity. Hopefully, every day, a tiny bit, through God's grace, I am changed.

- commenter Rob on Disputations

The sexual abuse issue is a whole other matter, but with regards to the abusive treatment of orphans, unwed mothers, and the native people, I think this was influenced by the eugenics movement. It was common for people in the early/mid 20th century to attribute what they saw as social and moral weakness to genetics. Many of these religious had themselves overcome poor backgrounds, and believed that mortifications were necessary to develop sufficiently spiritually to overcome one's biological destiny. Now, we all know that some of them got a little too into it, but I do believe that their motives were good, just flawed. It's not fair to attack or punish them for being simple people of their times. Many a belt and a paddle was used in families of that era, as well. It's just the way things were. They would "beat the devil outta ya!" We, too, are products of our own era. Just look around. The results are not impressive. If we ever get around to following what Vatican II recommended, we might then be able to blame the Council for our woes. Until then, it's about planks in our eyes vs. splinters in theirs.

- Regina f. on Amy's blog, with regard to past abuses and why the "good old days" often weren't

You can neither know what chastity is nor observe chastity unless you first know poverty and have observed poverty. And you can neither know what is obedience and practice obedience unless you know and have practiced chastity. Now, do you see why the biggest problem of the Church today is lack of Chastity and lack of obedience? Because there is no spirit of Poverty.

- blogger at "gloria olivae"

As I continued to take the little pill daily for another three years, it became harder and harder to swallow. I grew uneasy with the minuscule chance—be it one in a million of millions—that my womb might turn away a cluster of 128 or 256 cells knitted together in the image of God. This sense of discomfort never evolved into an absolute dogma: I still wouldn't say that taking contraceptives is a sin. But I questioned the assumptions I found underneath my pill popping. What did my daily habit say about my faith in the One who reduced himself first to a cell, then two, then 128, then 256 and more, then to a defenseless baby—and whose door is always open for helpless intruders like me? Could the little pill have stood for more than just a chance to get a fiscally responsible life before opening it up to stinky diapers? Could Mircette have changed not just the hormonal makeup of my cells, but also what cannot be seen under a microscope? Could it have served as one more safety lock on the door not just to my womb, but also to my figure, my marriage, my home, my career, my gym routine? God is in these details.

- Agnieszka Tennant via Amy's blog

Someone has said of [the poet Ted] Hughes: "I just find him a bit . . . ach, it's difficult to quantify but the best word I can think of is 'macho.'" Hughes was macho. And he felt at home in Spain. How very, very interesting... Of Coolidge and Alcott, however, we can repeat what Hughes observed of Plath: "[Their] schooling had somehow neglected Spain," and if they had seen it at all, they probably would have "Clutched back towards college America" in panic, too. Women writers vastly prefer France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and even Italy. Yet literary men seem to love Spain. Ted Hughes says he felt at home there. Colm Toibin spent Holy Week in Seville and then took part in the walking pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Ernest Hemmingway tried to learn the art of bullfighting. George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War and Grahame Greene, who covered it for an English newspaper, later wrote an English novel about it. What is the deal?

- Sancta Sanctis (forgive me, but I'm tired of trying to spell Enbrethilell, Christina!)

It is cheeky, dare we say edgy, but friends...that is Roman Catholicism. This is a faith in which spiritual practices include, not just cool, relaxed silent prayer sitting on you floor cushion with your lovely garden in view and your herbal tea brewing, but also the extremes: jamming crowns of thorns on your head, physically consuming relics, putting the head of a holy woman on display, and levitating. We define edgy. We live right on the thin edge of good taste. The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living expresses that holistic and mostly healthy Catholicity, where, as the authors say, the worst things in life are recycled and turned into the best. It's heartfelt, satirical, and, we can't neglect to say, accurate in its presentation of the faith. It's part of this body of Catholic literature that's growing, I'm happy to say, which books like Lickona's Swimming with Scapulars, Judge's God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Scott's Catholic Passion also represent: books that get this one important thing about Catholicism: It's all about connections. It's all about looking at God's earth and the creatures he's made, and the stuff he's inspired those creatures to make, and seeing the possibility and promise of God at work in all of it. No divisions, no dualism, just a faith that's holistic, joyous but honest and bracing in the face of suffering.

- Amy Welborn, on the book "The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living", which, among other things, suggests celebrating Reformation Sunday by selling indulgences and (via Curt Jester) 'if Jesus was Jewish, why does he have a Puerto Rican name?'. (Ed. note: no payments changed hands for this plug.)

I’ve been reading Luke Timothy Johnson’s commentary on Romans and he argues that for Paul sin is not necesarily about being a “bad person,” but is about our fundamental attitude toward God. In other words, the opposite of sin isn’t virtue but faith - i.e. trusting in God, recognizing our dependence on God, accepting our lives as a gift, etc. Not trusting in God leads to trying to secure our own existence and worth ourselves, which leads to all kinds of vices (”sins” plural - cf. Romans 1).

- commenter on Camassia's blog

[insert clever description here]

- Robert of HokiePundit, allowing the reader to mentally complete his blog template

It ain't that, Jeff. It's age...You can try the Holy Father's cure, but, if that doesn't work, try mine: drink lots of German beer, British ale, and the occasional Guiness. They help me forget that I have a bad memory.

- Bill Luse, on Jeff Culbreath's concern that electronic communcations are hurting his memory

The phrase “all of us are fundamentally good”, like “children are born innocent”, is one of those lines whose Christian validity depends on how far you take it. To the extent that everyone is a child of God, it’s true. But what to make of those “aberrant” bad people? Where does their evil come from? To what extent do “good” people share a responsibility for it?...It seems to me that one reason this subject is so difficult is that it involves a rather delicate balancing act. On the one hand, overemphasizing the goodness of people can fail to deal effectively with their badness. On the other hand, overemphasizing people’s depravity can make loving your neighbor nearly impossible. Justification by faith alone can turn salvation into an arbitrary business, detached from moral behavior; justification by works alone sets people with the unbearable task of saving themselves. I think that the “good, but fallen” definition of humanity is an attempt to carve out the middle space.

- Camassia

Fulton Sheen & Our Lady of Guadalupe

The one great consistency in approved Marian apparations is that appearances are scrupulously given to children or the poor and innocent. There's quite a message in that. In the earthly realm, America has far more power and wealth compared to Mexico. But in the spiritual realm, Mexicans are rightly proud of their patroness and ours by adoption.

I was thinking about this in conjunction with the memorial of Fulton J. Sheen's death next month. He made a simple but fervent request of God: that he die on a Marian feast day. And that his prayer didn't seem to be answered always bothered me, surely disproportionately. One could take it as a sign of the holiness of God - a positive thing, a way to say that we can always get closer to God and that perhaps Fulton Sheen's time of purgation was lessened by his experience of being on his deathbed and seeing the great Marian day of December 8th pass by.

But one could also take it that the Church made up where Fulton Sheen lacked. December 9th, the day after Mary's great feast and the date of the bishop's death, is the feast now of Juan Diego, the humble Mexican peasant who received the Marian vision. Perhaps the powerful American prelate's prayer was answered posthumously.

One of the interesting things about the image of Our Lady of Gualalupe is its teaching potential. Though she looks glorified, with stars and rays of sun coming from her as was predicted in Rev. 12, she is no goddess. Her hands are folded in supplication, her posture indicating that she is interceding for us at the throne of the God.

Award Shows, Politics and Cleavage

Well I hear tonight is the CMA (Country Music Association) Award show. My forecast: well-coiffed hair, low cut dresses and rock music. I nostalgically recall a time when the men wore hats and the women covered their bosoms. But the surprising thing is not that I can recall such a time but that it was so recent. We're talking the early '90s.

Garth Brooks ruined country music because he brought two things it couldn't afford - money and pop music. Money and popularity corrupt, which is why I blame the disaster that is the Ohio Republican party on the Democrats. If the Dems didn't suck utterly, we wouldn't have had one party rule for the past fifteen years and one-party rule leads to corruption as surely as bubble-wrap leads to popping sounds. Same with the national party come to think of it. In a two-party landscape, a party can suck, but we can't afford for it to suck for a prolonged period of time. (That's not to excuse the Republicans, it's just that one-party rule is like watching someone walk a tightrope - you're not surprised by an accident.)

But back to country music. It was the early 90s and the most lascivious CMA performance was Patty Loveless's "That Kind of Girl", which, I don't have to tell you, would be considered tame now. The irony is that the music was traditional* and promised stability. Randy Travis sang of "forever" and you couldn't help thinking the genre would stay so, at least long enough to outlive my goldfish. History should've told me otherwise. I didn't start listening until around 1990, but I've since heard that the '80s were glitzy - think "Rhinestone Cowboy" - so it's always been a moving target. I just didn't think it moved so fast.

George Strait is an interesting case. He always moves with the times while keeping his stuff about 1/3rd more traditional by volume. He seems to keep this quasi-religious balance between pleasing himself and pleasing the audience, though some of his audience (read: me) would be pleased if he pleased himself. Was it video or professionalism that killed the radio star?

* - i.e. heavy on fiddle, steel guitar, light on the drums, pro-family & pro-God, etc..

Weekend Anecdote

I'm a bit chagrined that I completely missed the comedy potential inherent in Jeff Culbreath's hiatus notice. It seemed completely unfunny to me, mostly because Jeff is one of my favorites. He's worried about his memory but I worry he's forgetting us. (rimshot.) But Bill Luse vented and humorously so. I'm surprised he got that much material out of that.

I mentioned to him (Bill) about an anecdote that happened over the weekend. He'd said he'd sure be a bloggin' that and now I'm thinking he'd do a better job of it but here goes:

I was out jogging in a local park, near the end of my run when up ahead I see two people who, having heard my 200+ lbs rumbling like a runaway freight train, frantically start pulling up their pants.

My first thought was that it was probably two guys because I'd read about Columbus parks being used as trysts for gays. I slowed to a walk to give them time, but as I got closer I saw that it was a guy and a girl and they couldn't have been more than 17 or 18, though I'm getting less reliable on ages as I age. Of course my next thought had to be fought off vigorously - i.e. that I shouldn't have quit runnin'. That ol' bugbear concupisence is nothing if not reliable. The second thought was imagining that maybe I'd caused coitus interuptus and prevented the tragedy of an abortion. But then I considered that they might've had the kid and I prevented a life. Or, far more likely, neither. But the world is indeed pregnant with possibilities...it felt like a scene from Capra's movie.

Was that from The Onion?

Mr. Curley of Bethune Catholic reports that in order to qualify for jury duty, he is required to answer some 45+ questions including:

17. What are your hobbies, special interests, recreational pastimes and other spare-time activities, including sports?
18. What magazines and newspapers do you regularly read?
20. What social, political, civic, religious, and other organizations do you belong to or are you assoicated with?
22. Have you displayed any bumper stickers on you automobile in the last twelve months? If yes, please list each bumper sticker.

Now that's parody. When they say "jury of your peers", they really mean it. Right down to the bumper sticker you sport, the brand of coffee you drink and whether you like fly-fishing too. After all, a robbery suspect has a right to tried by a fellow Field & Stream reader. Worse, this is South Carolina, for heaven's sake. I didn't think nonsense was fashionable there yet. Here are a few more questions future surveys will surely include (rimshot*!):

1) Boxers or briefs?
2) Blondes or brunettes?
3) If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be and why?
4) Do you squeeze the last bit out of your toothpaste tube?
5) Let's just say, hypothetically, there's this Hispanic male, 28 years old, wears a beret of some sort, who was accused of holding up a liquor store. Do you feel favorable towards him? Why or why not? Let's say there's damning surveilance tape from the liquor store. Would you be inclined to convict him?

Who's on trial? It appears that Mr. Curley is guilty until proven innocent. The ability to reason is apparently less important than the ability to vote the way a prosecutor or defense attorney wants you to._________________________________________

"Of the professions it may be said that the soldiers are becoming too popular, parsons too lazy, physicians too mercenary, and lawyers too powerful."

So said Charles Colton(1780-1832), which was said long before today's more powerful courts. Back then,

...the Supreme Court was just learning how to exercise its great power under Marberry v. Madison. In this 1803 decision the Court gave itself the right to determine if a law was Constitutional (or Unconstitutional). Later in 1954 the Supreme Court in Cooper v. Aaron simply stated that the "Constitution says what we say it says". Recently the Supreme Court in Missouri v. Jenkins allowed a local Federal judge to not only take over the Kansas City school system but also to double local property taxes against the expressed will of the taxpayers who had voted against this tax increase, a vote which was required by Missouri Law. Taxation without representation had thus returned to America. - (from Legal Ethics and Reform website)

* -ht:TB

More from Scott McDermott's "Charles Carroll of Carrollton":

According to the Saxon myth, the English constitution was born among the Gothic tribes described by Tacitus. There Germanic tribesmen had supposedly elected their kings, as well as a witenagemot, or parliament...Modern historians portray Saxon society as a primitive feudalism, not a nascent republic. In fact, warrior chieftains lived off the labor of peasants. Constitutional government originated in Christendom, not among the pre-Christian goths.

The most influential exponent of the Saxon myth in America was Thomas Jefferson, who called Tacitus "the first writer in the world." Jefferson always preferred Rapin's [pro Saxon myth] history to Hume's.

John Adams, on the other hand, had no time for Saxon reveries. It is true that he could never bring himself to accept dogmatic Christianity. "An incarnate God!!!" he once exclaimed. "An eternal, self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient, author of this stupendous universe, suffering on a cross!!! My soul starts with horror at this idea, and it has stupefied the Christian world." But Adams saw clearly that the basis of politics had to be the natural law. English liberties were nothing other than these "rights of nature" which were "antecedent to all earthly government."

...Essentially, the revolutionaries were rediscovering the Catholic political tradition, based in natural law, with its emphasis on the common good, corporatism, hierarchy, subsidiarity, and popular sovereignty. Because most of the founding fathers came from unorthodox religious backgrounds, they distorted the concept of natural law, generally in the direction of individualism. Americans still live with the consequences of these distortions. Nevertheless, the American reinvention of Catholic political thought - for such it was - is a great achievement. The United States created the first government in history of the world that is explicitly based in natural law.

Juxtaposing Two Recent Reads

From Charles Carroll, Catholic signer of Declaration of Independence:

"A man of common sense...is well convinced, or ought to be, of the emptiness of that passion (which exists nowhere but in romance). If he marries, he will marry from affection, from esteem, and from a sense of merit in his wife."

From WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes (via Hokie Pundit):

"I'm a firm believer that when you fall in love with somebody, you can't control that."

Parallel Universes

From here, via Ham o' Bone:

I responded with sheer incredulity. "How can you think such a thing! Homosexuals have more rights in this country than ever. And I don't know a single Christian who wants to have you exterminated."...I went away from that discussion with my head spinning, just as sometimes happens at the university reading group. How can people who inhabit the same society have such different perceptions? More ominously, what have we evangelicals done to make Good News—the very meaning of the word evangelical—sound like such a threat?
__

Reflecting on our conversation, I remembered a remark by [C.S.] Lewis, who drew a distinction between communicating with a society that hears the gospel for the first time and one that has embraced and then largely rejected it. A person must court a virgin differently than a divorcée, said Lewis. One welcomes the charming words; the other needs a demonstration of love to overcome inbuilt skepticism.

I thought, too, how tempting it can be—and how distracting from our primary mission—to devote so many efforts to rehabilitating society at large, especially when these efforts demonize the opposition. (After all, neither Jesus nor Paul showed much concern about cleaning up the degenerate Roman Empire.) As history has proven, especially in times when church and state closely mingle, it is possible for the church to gain a nation and in the process lose the kingdom.

St. Jerome on Today's Gospel

Regarding the parable of the five talents...

Calling together the Apostles, He gave them the Gospel doctrine, to one more, to another less, not as of His own bounty or scanting, but as meeting the capacity of the receivers, as the Apostle says [marg. note 1 Cor 3:2], that he fed with milk those that were unable to take solid food. In the five, two, and one talent, we recognise the diversity of gifts wherewith we have been entrusted.

Also, by this which this servant dared to say, “Thou reapest where thou sowedst not,” we understand that the Lord accepts the good life of the Gentiles and of the Philosophers.

To him who has faith, and a right will in the Lord, even if he come in aught short in deed as being man, shall be given by the merciful Judge; but he who has not faith, shall lose even the other virtues which he seems to have naturally. And He says carefully, “From him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have,” for whatsoever is without faith in Christ ought not to be imputed to him who uses it amiss, but to Him who gives the goods of nature even to a wicked servant.

UPDATE: Another meditation from Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.

The More Things Change...

Written over two thousand years ago but fresh as today's headlines:

If, charmed by their beauty, they have taken things for gods,
let them know how much the Lord of these excels them,
since the very Author of beauty has created them.
And if they have been impressed by their power and energy,
let them deduce from these how much mightier is he that has formed them,
since through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures
we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author.

- Wisdom 13:1-9

HT: Elena & Wisdom 13:1-9.

(FYI: This is obviously not a real photo, but do see Einstein's curiosity about the Eucharist.)

Larsen's Book

I'm tempted to get Deborah Larsen's The Tulip and the Pope if only because I ought to try to understand why so many in their '50s and '60s seem so bitter towards the Church. I put my name in at the library for it. A correspondent put it perfectly: "I have full and complete confidence, that had I been fifteen years older, I would have been making felt banners and singing Carey Landry songs with great enthusiasm.. Context means a lot."

Another correspondent, Steven Riddle, mentioned that that convent sounds like "one those examples where the intent is good but the means quite poor...To my mind that is training in the inhuman and inhumane. Saint John of the Cross walked through the fields and enjoyed nature. To me, the proper means of detachment is total focus on Jesus Christ. Then, very naturally things will drop away. As it is described there it makes prayer as much a sweat-producing exercise in self-domination as it is a way of spending time with God...Sounds to me too much focus on detachment as end rather than means or even consequence."

Speculative Catholic...

...is on a roll. On death before the Fall, a topic of interest to me, and who doesn't appreciate a board game?

New study confirms...

Monkeys Choose Blogging Over Cocaine, Sex

BOSTON, MA-- A study from Havard University confirmed that rhesus monkeys will choose to blog instead of having sex or ingesting drugs.



The monkeys were allowed to choose between blogging about the issues of the day* or an intravenous injection of cocaine via lever pressing. A choice trial was available every 15 minutes continuously for 8 days. The animals chose blogging almost exclusively, which resulted in high whine intake, decreased cocaine intake, weight loss, and marked behavioral toxicity. The study provides evidence of the addictive properties of blogging.

* - such as the likelihood a thousand of them could in fact reproduce Shakespeare's works

My Proof-text is Bigger than your Proof-text
- and a rare mea culpa from mea

It was unfair of me to quote Luther out of context recently, as if the sum of all his teaching was that "good works are to be devoutly avoided".

Mea culpa. That was heedlessly insensitive and unfair.

Luther was often angry, often righteously so, but anger, like sin, can make you stupid and I assume he was the latter at that moment. I briefly checked amazon.com out of curiosity to see if Luther's sermons are in print somewhere should I be motivated to read him within context. I didn't see any.

Proof-texting is an interesting thing. The early Reformers quoted Augustine out of context though Augustine himself approved of the practice with respect to Holy Scripture:

All things that are read in the Holy Scriptures, we must hear with great attention to our instruction and salvation; but those things especially must be committed to memory that serve to confute heretics; whose deceit cease not to circumvent or ensare all the weaker sort and more negligent persons.

But perhaps I am quoting him out of context. (Rimshot!)

Former Calvinist Dr. Howell at the CHN Conference said that it seemed it took two doctrinal degrees, masters, etc...just to get to the point of asking the right questions with regard to justification and salvation. I'll take his word for it. My degree is in comedy. (Hey that rhymes! I must be a poet despite not being aware of being one!)

Excerpts of Poems by Richard Eberhardt

Hard-headed cranial materialists,
I praise your excellence as mechanics,
You believe in this world, none other,
Your physics never heard of metaphysics.

Bands of the bank books, insured
Against everything but pride and arrogance,
You are the fathers of countless progeny
Begotten in the belief your height is might.

*

from Ben Franklin

But not to me. Ben the practical,
You do not answer
The deepest questions, nor mine.
Your Americanism

Is not spiritual, thus you
are limited to inventions
Which please the quotidian
But reject the soul.

*

Old Memory

Once when I was young I bicycled
From Cork to Bantry Bay. I was in Ireland,
Young, vigorous, in love with life and Ireland.
I took a room for the night, was ushered

Up cavernous steps to a high, small chamber
Without light but a candle in the dark.
I saw the bleeding heart of Jesus, the only
Sight. Fear seized me in this foreign place.

I was pierced with recognition, heart-shatter,
Terrified, and hoped to lose consciousness.

Recap

"I will survive" - Gloria Gaynor

Well, the corporate re-education program is o'er and I've been assimilated. I know I've been beating this subject dead in this blog but...

Actually it was better than I thought. It's much harder to be cynical when the leaders are not pay-for-play consultants but actual fellow employees with "real" jobs and who really believe in what they're doing.

A couple of thoughts occurred during the talks. One was this emphasis on our mission statement. With multi-culturalism, the need for some sort of "foundation document" that ties everyone together has grown exponentially. Our company has acquired other companies with different corporate cultures. "And what ties us together?" he asked. "I dunno," we all said. "Our mission statement! Our values!" he exclaimed. Sounded like it's our company's catechism or constitution. The U.S. Constitution is not less important as we become more multi-cultural but more important. It's what binds us. The collapse of mainline religions, those without catechisms or clear doctrine, suggest that if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything.

Another rather dramatic moment was when our host broke down and fought off tears when he told us about the time he came home from work wasn't present to his four-year old daughter. He was preoccupied and angry about work. "Daddy, why aren't you playing?" and ran away. He made a vow to "be here now" and spend at least thirty minutes with her every night. One of the negative things about Barbara Walters and Maury Povich and all those shows where tears are used to sell soap and other consumer products, it makes it very hard not to be cynical. I was ashamed of my cynicism, especially when the scene in "Broadcast News" flashed back to me.

The other leader said she thought it was remarkable that after breaks we were always back on time. But it really isn't all that surprising. The penalty for being late was to either tell a joke or dance in front of everyone (they had fast music available, which they played during the breaks). To tell a crowd of mostly actuaries that they'd have to dance or tell a joke if they were late ensured righteous behavior. It'd be like telling a stripper she has to spend a day in the convent.

It Has That Sort of Action Flick Feel...

That is, the titanic struggle between Gov. Schwarzeneggar and his ungovernable constituents. But don't take my word for it-- liberal commentator Fareed Zacharia on ABC's This Week said the Golden State is ungovernable, due mostly to referendum mania. I'm not an Arnold fan, but I feel a measure of sympathy. The man has met his match.

While on the subject of politics, punishment-as-a-deterrent took another severe hit. If Clinton and Martha Stewart weren't enough to deter a bright guy like Lewis Libby from lying to the Feds then...

Porn for Bibliophiles

Here

...and a stack from my shelves.

Update: More here from Bill White!

And another of mine here and here.

Indulging in Indulgences

I'm naturally repelled, as most moderns, by the notion of indulgences. They smack too much of superstition and mercy and we're uncomfortable with both. They sound too mechnical and too powerful and too easy. Why would God give mere humans power? Next thing you know He'd say something about binding and loosing...Woops. Oh, yeah, Matthew 16.

There is little that is more exhilarating than imagining my aunt has just arrived in Heaven, perhaps due to my prayers, and that she will in turn be a special advocate for me. What an inexpressibly consoling doctrine. That we, so utterly poor here on earth, can help someone even poorer than ourselves (hence the 'poor souls') is startlingly beautiful. What is more attractive than learning we can loose someone from Purgatory into the arms of the Heavenly Father by a plenary indulgence (one which, by the way, He wittingly arranged I stumble into yesterday)? And what better way for God to illustrate our mutual dependence?

It all points to the highly distilled, atomic-like power of the Church, which is derived only by Christ's identification of her as His Body.

St. Francis and Muslims

I'm going to have to move this up the reading queue. Here is an anecdote I'd never heard before from an interview with Robert Spencer in Our Sunday Visitor's TCA:

Christian history is full of saints and martyrs who have made the attempt [to evangelize Muslims]. Most notable, of course, is St. Francis of Assisi, who, during the Fifth Crusade (1218-1221), ventured behind enemy lines and issued this challenge to the Sultan Malek al-Kamil ("Perfect King"): "Light a great fire. Let your priests and mine enter it, and you will see by what happens which of our two religions is the more saintly and true."

When the Sultan told Francis that he didn't think his "priests" would go for that idea, Francis offered to jump in alone. The Sultan declined to take Francis up on his challenge. Impressed by his zeal, however, he gave him safe passage back to the Christian lines.

That story reveals not only the depth of Francis' faith, but the tenacity of Muslims in resisting evangelization...Christian outreach to Muslims has accordingly focused more on charitable works than on open evangelization.

Dog Bites Man

Predictable as the day is long. Was there any chance the History Channel's presentation of the Crusades would be anything other than relentlessly p.c.? Na baby na:

Though it points out that both cross and crescent were used to justify atrocities, the program subscribes to the politically correct position that Christians were the chief aggressors; that the Crusades were instigated by churchmen primarily motivated by greed, ambition and fanaticism; and that the Crusaders themselves -- known by the catchall phrase "the Franks" -- were, for the most part, a rapacious pack of xenophobic, blood-lusting brutes, whipped into a frenzy and unleashed to plunder "the peak of Islamic civilization." And while mention is given to faith as the dominant influence in the medieval worldview, scant time is spent addressing the spiritual dimension of the Crusades.

This misconception shades much of the first evening which describes Pope Urban II's rallying call in 1095 for a crusade to recapture the Holy Land as a masterfully conceived "plan to get the Catholic Church back on the political map" and "a cunningly crafted piece of religious spin." In doing so, it goes on to argue that Urban, happy to rid Europe of rowdy knights, effectively gave Christian armies "the blessing of God" to "ignore" the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" as long as the victims were "infidels."

In contrast, the Muslims are -- with noted exceptions -- more flatteringly described as prudent, tolerant and magnanimous and were only defending their highly enlightened, though politically fractious, culture. Downplayed, of course, is the fact that many of the cities being "defended" were themselves acquired by conquest (some Christian since apostolic times).

PostWatch asks: "How does an educated person write a review of the latest Crusades special without ever mentioning how the Muslims happened to occupy Greater Metropolitan Jerusalem?" I'm guessing the Muslims achieved that through tolerance, prudence and magnanimous behavior.

There's Never a Good Time to Have a Bad Day

For you schadenfreude addicts out there I've got a gusher for you: Tonight is "Interaction Day Eve", when the ghosts and goblins of Interaction Days past rise from the tomb of Phil Crosby, the patron saint of corporate re-education programs.

And while it be of trivial importance (though worse than a root canal), I will face it as did my ancestors did the eve of the Battle of the Boyne (er, well, they wouldn't be my ancestors in a direct line sort of way since they all died; Ham o' Bone says that all his ancestors survived the War o' Northern Aggression by ducking it, hiding out in caves in North Carolina. I wonder whether Darwin actually meant "survival of the 'coward-est'"...but I digress).

There's an Interaction Day Eve tradition where children don suits and ties and go around the neighborhood scaring people by saying, "transform visionary infomediaries!" or "brother, can you paradigm?" in return for a donation to the Chamber of Commerce or "Up With People!" It gives one the shivers.

Interaction Day gives no quarter. You start an hour earlier than normal, during the heart of rush hour, and it's at a location that must be 'coptered into unless you leave at the crack of dawn. But who needs sleep or coffee! Sleep and Starbucks are for the bourgeois, for those who worship comfort and clear-spoken English! Did I just say the word "English"? An gaeilge!!

On this eve of the battle I'm leafing through the literature looking for inspiration while hoping for a different result. The Lord Earl of Tyrconnell, loyal to the Catholic King James II, controlled most of the island of Kinsale.

It was fought on July the 1st, 1690 at a river bend four miles west of Drogheda. A flanking maneuever - it's always a flanking maneuver isn't it? - left James' army vulnerable. I see no immediate parallel in fighting Interaction Day since it appears inviolable and unflankable. Calling in sick is beyond the pale, something no good Irishman would do unless he had too much of the drink and was unable...

(a moment's pardon)

Ahhh...Jameson goes down easy doesn't it?

No that is unthinkable, well, not unthinkable because I just thought of it. Call it plain wrong. I wouldn't be able to look my teammates in the eye the next day. Three other gallant souls face the same test tomorrow, all of them whining and complaining and similarly inconsolable.

Nay, in some way I long for Interaction Day. I long for it to be over, tis true, but I long for the satisfaction of knowing I endured to the finish. But to anticipate purgation's end before it's even begun is to prolong it. An insight of profundity is always keep your eye on the present moment.

Pep talk's over. I won't shoot till I see the whites of their business shirts. As Scarlett O'Hara said, "I can shoot straight, if I don't have to shoot too far."

Give an Inch..?

Cardinal Dulles recently said of the Second Vatican Council, "the true spirit of the council is to be found in, and not apart from, the letter" of the council texts. And: "When rightly interpreted the documents of Vatican II can still be a powerful source of renewal for the Church."

True words. I hate to say it but the openness and good intentions of the Council participants remind me of something discussed at the conference last weekend. Like the Franciscans before him, Luther wanted to simplify things, eliminate needless ritual and go back to the simple gospel --which sounds much like the intention of Vatican II. But Luther soon realized that the more he preached "his gospel", the worst the people behaved. "The German people are seven times worse since the Reformation," he declared. But the Council documents are textually quite different than Luther's preaching (for example, Luther said that "good works are to be devoutly avoided") and will surely bear good fruit in the long run.

Ahh...Remember When the Air Was Clean and You Didn't Cringe at the Term 'Diversity'?

Eric Scheske posts his and Russell Kirk's thoughts on diversity.

Hey, I Resemble that Remark!

Dr. Johnson said:

"The continual multiplication of books not only distracts choice, but disappoints enquiry. To him that has moderately stored his mind with images, few writers afford any novelty; or what little they have to add to the common stock of learning, is so buried in the mass of general notions, that, like silver mingled with the ore of lead, it is too little to pay for the labour of separation; and he that has often been deceived by the promise of a title, at last grows weary of examining, and is tempted to consider all as equally fallacious."

More from my notes...

...from the CHN Conference. Former Calvinist Dr. Kenneth Howell said that:

..the primary difference between Calvinists and Catholics is that Calivinists believe man and God are in competition for glory and that the more glory and honor to things and men, the less honor you give to God. Therefore the Eucharist limits God's glory and power and all images should be destroyed.

Calvin was half-right. Men do see themselves in competition, but God does not. God is not interested in taking glory away from man but exalting him. "His joy is in exalting us, honoring us, and saving us" said St. Charles Borromeo, a profound awareness from a selfless saint that escaped John Calvin.

In the past I've been able to sympathize with Christians who are skeptical of tradition, but what always has left me shaking my head are self-described "bible-believers" who don't believe Christ's clear words as presented in the gospel of John chapter 6. But now I wonder if perhaps it is less a refusal to be obedient to His words than a lack of belief that He could love us that much.

If someone says “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants to be happy!”, the initial reaction is likely to be positive and primarily emotional rather than intellectual. On the other hand, if someone says “Moral theology is proof that God loves us and wants to be happy!”, the initial reaction is much less likely to be positive. We’re more likely to look for loopholes, excuses and exclusions. We look at morality more as if it’s a tax to be paid at the minimum rate absolutely necessary than as the gift that it is. - Gregg of "Vita Brevis"

Since the Summa Theologica is the summation of all things theological, we thought that Summa Mamas would sort of be the summation of all things Mamalogical--we covered the gamut in spirituality from charismatic (Smock) to quiet and mystic (SpecialK) to the frozen chosen (me!)...But we all shared a love of our Lord and Savior. A love of his Church. And a deep and abiding love for each other. Still do. Always will. - MamaT on how the Summa Mamas got their name

[Fr. McBrien asks] "Whom should the Church raise up for the emulation of the overwhelming majority of its members, who are lay, married, parents, and grandparents, and who are in no realistic danger of being martyred for the faith?" Somewhere along the way, the idea of learning from experiences different from our own has been lost. I've read reports of controversies about suburban high school literature classes reading novels about suburban high school students. Some parents objected to the sexual content. I'd object to the parochialism. Father McBrien serves as a spokesman for the increased parochialism of the post-Vatican II Church. -Terrence Berres

I have oft repeated to my children that I want prayers and Masses for my soul when I die, (no cancer or humane society donations...). I have also taken the oldest ones aside and asked them to talk to the priest who will be celebrating my funeral Mass, to emphasize with him that I don't want any sermon or eulogy saying how I am now at peace in the bosom of our Lord. Please tell this priest, I plead, to preach on death, judgement, and especially purgatory. - JCurley of "Bethune Catholic"

The desire to understand Jesus' inner life is perfectly ...understandable. It is an astonishing mystery. But it is also not the point. Jesus did not come among us to be perfectly understood, for that is not the point of any relationship anyway. Of course we want to know, to "get" our beloved, but in the end, while love may seek understanding, it is not dependent on it. If God were perfectly understandable then, guess what? He wouldn't be God anymore. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that the determination to "understand" and explicate what Jesus' inner life was like brings us to the point where we risk turning from the Gospels. Jesus there is attractive, off-putting, clear as a bell and incomprehensible, all at the same time. The point is not to intellectually understand how Jesus' humanity and divinity were experienced by him, but how he is experienced by us, and to let ourselves be challenged, taught and led. To get off on this particular tangent really strikes me as a detour. As I put down [Anne Rice's] Christ the Lord, I had the same thought as I did when reading through the dreadful Joshua opus by Girzone (and let me say, I'll take Rice's efforts over Girzone's anyday, if I had to pick)...the Gospels are better. Let's stick to those. - Amy Welborn

What the "tipping point" for (re)joining the Church is so mysterious. As Wade points out above, Walker Percy (and some characters) find the survival of the Jews to be a sign to the world. It is fascinating to see what gives a person enough "illative" proof (John Henry Cardinal Newman) to come to the Catholic Church. Illative, I take it Newman meant, is inferential evidence that by itself isn't sufficient, but taken en masse leads one to the "therefore". For me, the monks at Holy Cross Abbey (OSCO) were part of the "illative" evidence. Then came authors like Percy, Merton, Girard, Bailie and most the British Catholic authors (Waugh, Knox, et al). - commenter on Amy's blog

Science has proven that there are chemicals released in the brain of the nursing mother to give her a sense of wellbeing. If I nurse AND say the rosary, even if just in my mind, I can almost hit THE ZONE! I wonder if this is what people who practice meditation feel? It’s better than a Calgon moment. - Elena of "My Domestic Church"

From the days of the early struggles with Gnostics, Christians [have walked] a sometimes delicate tightrope between saying that the physical world expresses the will of its good Creator, and that it’s fallen and distorted by sin. The latter accounts for the fact that the Bible clearly regards some inborn qualities as flaws, which is why Jesus heals the congenitally blind, deaf and lame. Still, that is a different magnitude of flaw than what transsexuals are claiming. After all, we don’t generally hear blind people say that they’re sighted people trapped in blind bodies. Gender is more fundamental to the identity than simply having a malfunctioning body part...the question remains whether it’s the body or the mind that actually has the problem. Another interesting feature of the pro-transsexual argument is that it assumes the supremacy of the mind, and that only the mind perceives the true reality. The body therefore has to be subject to, and shaped by, the mind. (That’s another thing it has in common with Manicheism, come to think of it.)...But does the body have a vote on reality, as the mind does? - Camassia

My thinking is that if we are not "in" the world, then how is the world supposed to see any example of what a different way of life can be? I'll never forget my shock back in my agnostic days at learning of a devout Baptist friend who advised about the sexy lingerie that her husband liked her to wear. But that showed me that my friend's marriage was just as "normal" as anything I could expect from anyone. Which was refreshing compared to what the media says about religious people. - Julie of Happy Catholic

What price do those of us estranged from the left or the right (or, in my case, from both) pay? Are cynicism and surrender the only two routes of escape from alienation? Why is it [Maureen Dowd] can't see that Thanksgiving dinner in equivalently progressive precints would be just as alienating to members of her family? And why do so many of us wear our alienation as a badge of honor? - commenter on Amy Welborn's blog

The most important point is not to let distraction stop you from talking to God. If you want to, make them the topic of conversation some time. But continue to talk, continue to spend time with the Beloved. For, as in any relationship, time spent increases the bond of love and understanding and makes us more amenable to the ways of the One who is Loved. - Steven Riddle

Madonna U

Met a young man at the conference touting Madonna University in Michigan, where tuition is a reasonable $7,500 a year. It's heartening to see such ventures and I hope they're able to survive. They began only five years ago and currently have only twenty-five students. But it's good to see a more affordable alternative to some of the more well-known Catholic universities.

More CHN...

At the end of Scott Hahn's talk he made a comparison that was very much "outside the box" (if you'll forgive that phrase).

He talked about how not long after the University of Notre Dame was founded, a fire destroyed the campus. The founder came back and wasn't discouraged but declared this was merely Our Lady telling them that they hadn't thought big enough. And so, in the smoking ruins he helped build a bigger, bolder university. Eventually the larger dome went up, and it was painted gold.

Similarly, when we see the ruins of the present day church, especially in Europe, instead of thinking the goal is to build an exact replica of what was lost, perhaps God wants to build something even grander!

State of the Day Address

In summary: excellent.

The good padre outside St. Mary's smiled, remarking on the beauty of the day, and he wasn't just making conversation. The weather has a greater affect on our mood than we might want.

I'm doubly blessed - or cursed - in being an American with Irish blood, for the road calls, that allure of movement and its marvelous sensation of progress: "One last power drive" sang Springsteen. The sign says "DAYTON 33" and the trees are afire, or wearing festive auburn wigs, and the hills kiss the horizon.

I fill the tank and fly by the silos and small towns of the rural flatlands. I recall a high school teacher telling us that elderly men on their death beds often crave sex, and though I'm not exactly sure how that differs from any man at any age at any time, I can see it by way of this analogy -- on that last pristine fall day you want to get out of the house and travel to parts unknown. The man nearing death has a fervent impulse to create life.

As a kid I felt nothing but a priggish loathing for fall's chill and unnaturally cloudless days. I had the attitude, "if it 'twere done, best it be done quickly". I refused handouts. But now I'm sanguine with celebrating what's being offered at this late date and I feel the giddiness of the martyr. (Not that I would know!)

A final thought: Isn't it odd that some of the most innocent and cheerful songs heard outside of church are those of Irish rebellion, when the fiddle chirps just before a bloody war?

Msgr. Frank Lane...

... lives up to his given name. As he spoke at the CHN conference you could hear a pin drop. Afterwards Marcus Grodi calling him "mesmerizing". (Grodi has good taste in conference speakers btw.) Regarding politicians espousing views contrary to Church teaching, Fr. Lane said the word "catholic" has become a brand, a marketing tool, so you're not going to stop them from identifying themselves as such, be they Francis Kissling or some "Catholic" hospitals.

During the Q & A, Lane mentioned that a big problem with the Catholic school system is that teachers were educated in secular universities and often pass on that secular worldview. He told of one Catholic school teacher having no problem handing out to her students an issue of Scholastica magazine that featured and praised Margaret Sanger - we apparently need a Catholic teacher's college. He also mentioned homeschooling. I get such a vicarious thrill over homeschoolers that it ought to be illicit. They are fighting the system, going against the stream, and resisting the mass brainwashing of secular education.

One woman asked what to tell your child when he asks about the goodness of creation including the fact that animals eat each other. And the Msgr. said that one of the great gifts to the Church has been St. Francis and St. Bonaventure who in their writings suggest that human sin affected the order of creation. Fr. Lane said it's "too much of a shortcut" to say that Original Sin caused animals to eat each other, but he said that it's certainly worth pondering the connection between the natural world and man's sin. He said that in Genesis we name the animals, a mark of ownership and dominion. We were in some sense responsible for them. So our connection to the natural world is not as separate as we might imagine.

Scott Hahn Notes from the Coming Home Conference

A broad overview of his broad overview:

William of Occam was the first to question the “via antiqua” of Augustine and Aquinas, which is that God loves us and knows us and that laws are for our benefit. William of Occam said that that limits God’s power, and that God’s laws arise from his will, not his intellect. God could’ve made murder a positive good, as a necessity for salvation. “Abba” became “Allah”. Occam said that “God could’ve crucified a donkey to atone for our sins.”

Corrupt popes then made sense. Power and law are threats to us, because they are arbitrary. Then Machiavelli came along and said “the end justifieds the means”. Why? Because God does. We are imitators of God. If, after all, God does the arbitrary to achieve his ends then why shouldn’t we?

Luther studied the nominalists. He once said, “I’m nothing if not an Occamist.” It’s popular to think of Luther’s scrupulosity as a problem of personality, a psychological thing, but Hahn sees it as possibly a theological distortion. If God is arbitrary and you never know what he’ll ask or do, then how do you know if you’re in a right relationship with such a despotic figure?

Luther chose faith as the attribute God (arbitrarily) chose that we would need to be saved. Not love or honor, but faith, and “thank God it’s that easy” was Luther’s sentiment. God not a father figure. And the Calvinistic theology of predestination again shows this arbitrary nature of God that was in vogue.

Of course the Church hasn’t been immune and is suffering along with everybody else. This image of law as limiting our freedom is in the water now, it’s in the air. The concept of mortal sin leads to the “via moderna”, the modern way, in that it makes us more slave than child, making us aim to avoid punishment rather than love. Pope John Paul II said, “Sin affects our intellect by exchanging a vision of God as Father to one as master.” That God's laws are for our personal fulfillment is mostly foreign to us because the last seven centuries have made law the opposite of freedom and personal fulfillment.

In the 1300s the revolution was intellectual. William of Occam and others. In the 1400s came the cultural revolution. Universities started becoming secularized and downplaying theology. Art became about nature rather than God. Nothing wrong with that at all, but to emphasize a lesser truth at that time was indicative of an agenda. In the 1500s there was a theological revolution. Papal authority discarded. In the 1600s there was a philosophical revolution. Truth claims were considered private, reason now trumps faith. Philosophers were greater than theologians, universities greater than seminaries, because reason was considered more important than faith. In the 1700s there were political revolutions. We’ll serve no monarch. French Revolution pushed state over church. Social contract now completely secular. We had a contract, not a convenant with our leaders. In the 1800s the scientific revolution of Darwin, Marx and Freud, all emphasizing power, with Freud attacking the father figure saying we must uproot paternity. By the 1900s there was the breakdown of marriage, the sexual revolution, the right to abortion. The social contract was extended to marriage; marriage became a breakable contract instead of an unbreakable covenant. And how can one deny homosexuals the right to marry if law is arbitrary anyway? If we’re suspicious of God, we’re going to be all the more of popes and priests and fathers. We see all power as suspect.

And yet the Creed got it right. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty…”. “Father” precedes “almighty”.

Hahn recommends a book on this subject by Protestant author Arthur Holmes called "Fact, Values and God".

Thoughts During the Coming Home Conference

Perhaps the most popular American Catholic lay person today is Scott Hahn. His books are all top the Catholic bestseller lists. Why? I think one is that he is filling the need of helping Catholic laity study the Scriptures. Two is that his convenantal theology is about God as father, not as master.

I think the “sin” most St. Bloggers make, myself definitely included, is to recognize that modernity has an obedience problem while failing to address the root of it. We make the incorrect assumption that everyone knows that God knows and loves them. The root of the problem is seeing God more as master than father. It seems sort of a lost cause to go around trying to fraternally correct people without addressing that cause. Laws and morality makes no sense without a sense that God loves us. The real sin of Adam and Eve was entertaining in their thoughts that God could not be trusted and that he did not have their best interests in mind. Once they didn’t trust God, the jig was up and eating the forbidden fruit was a given.

The conservative mistake is to emphasize morality outside of its proper context of God’s love. The liberal mistake is to suggest God’s love means he’s not interested in law. For the liberal, power and love are mutually exclusive. For example, the Pope is loving only if he divests his power to bishops and laity, and the Church loves women only if it makes them priests and popes. Modernity rejects that the Church, or even God, seeks their best interests. (By the way, for what it’s worth, I think the late Gerard and Steven Riddle have been particularly good at emphasizing God’s love without sliding into heterodoxy.)

More NRODT:

Fr. George Rutler on George Weigel's new book on Pope Benedict:

The kind of reader who checks out the last pages of Agatha Christie first may start with Weigel’s end chapters on reform of the episcopate and curial structures. If the response of many bishops to the scandals of the present time resembles the beclouded French bishops before 1789, it is in part because bureaucracy and legalism lack Ratzinger’s perception of man: “If there is no longer any obligation to which he can and must reason in freedom, then there is no longer any realm of freedom at all . . . Morality is not man’s prison but rather the divine element in him.”

...He sees anything but Augustinian realism in the Second Desk of the Vatican State Department’s idealist analysis of much of the world scene, especially the United Nations. If necessary in a fallen world, diplomacy is dangerous work: Only one of the twelve apostles was a diplomat, with fatal consequences. Catholic wisdom is ill served if it adopts the voice of a naïve governess calling for a nanny state, indulging a sort of Jesse Jackson doggerel in portentous-sounding calls for “the force of law rather than the law of force.”

From NRODT

SHIPWRECK

Like the weary sailor, the refugee
from wreck and storm, who escapes half-dead,
and then, in terror, shudders with dread
at the very mention of the name of the “sea”;
who swears he’ll never sail again, who raves
he’ll stay at home, even on the calmest days,
but then, in time, forgets his fearful ways,
and seeks, again, his fortune above the waves;
I, too, have barely escaped the storms that revolve
around you, my love, traveling far away,
vowing to avoid another catastrophe,
but I can’t, the thought of you breaks my resolve,
and so, I return to where, on that fateful day,
I nearly drowned in your tempestuous sea.

— LUIS DE CAMÕES
translated by William Baer

__



Via Mark of Cowpi, this was painted by Carol E. Napoli. It appears on the cover of Michael Dubriel's "How to Get the Most Out of the Eucharist".

Note to self: listen to these lectures.

Spam Title Poetry

Re: Of eat be burgeon version

(Actual, unretouched spam subject header)

Friday with Charles

Steven Riddle prompted me to revisit Charles Carroll of Carrollton (the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence - see interview with author here).

Some entertaining nuggets from last night's read:

The senior Carroll warned [his bachelor son] that unless "your wife be virtuous, sensible, good natured, complaisant, complying & of a cheerful disposition, you will not find the married state a happy one. Next to these, family & fortune come under consideration."

Carrollton took his father's advice seriously, to the point of doubting that he would ever meet a suitable bride....He had never met any Catholic women to suit him. "I have never been in love," Carrollton said, "& hope I never shall be."

Again [his father] had to change course. "What, not one cheerful, sensible, virtuous, good-natured woman in ten thousand? Pray, how many cheerful, sensible, virtuous good-natured men do you reckon in a like number. To do the sex justice," the Squire observed, "I believe they outnumber us in good qualities."

The elder Carroll had recommended that his son seek a wife "bred in a monastery". Tune in next Friday to find out who Charles marries.

Developing...

Scott's Talk

Caught a bit of Scott Hahn on EWTN, and he mentioned reading the soberly-titled book Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas. Said that Aquinas saw history as a long story of God fathering his people that did not end with the last apostle. Indeed, Aquinas saw a providential pattern in the heresies that came afterwards, and in how they provoked further illumination of the mysteries of Christ - another example of God making something good from bad. And here I thought "providential heresies" was oxymornic.

The guest on the show was a Dr. Glenn Olsen, a professor of history at the University of Utah, and he said that many doctrines to us are nearly incomprehensible due to our culture. An example he brings up is infant Baptism. Baptizing infants was perfectly graspable for most of our history because we understood that we were a community and that godparents and parents would complete the child's baptism. Now, after the Enlightenment we have a individualistic and rationalistic view of the faith, and our understanding of baptizing children has weakened. We think of ourselves autonomous decision-making units (to contradict that, Olsen says 'we are our parents and we are our culture'), and we've lost the sense of faith being anything other than a cognitive process.

Grazing the Blog-Meadows

Ross Douthat sounds like Jeff Culbreath (see STG):

Far from making religion and politics less intertwined, I suspect that the age of ecumenism, do-it-yourself-theology and all the rest will lead to a world in which people increasingly define their religion by their politics, and little else. Instead of Catholic Christians and Reformed Christians, we'll have (indeed, we already have) liberal Christians and conservative Christians, with their religious differences defined almost entirely by their prior commitments on all the culture war issues. Which, no matter how much you care about the culture war, is a pretty disquieting way of looking at religious faith.

Others appreciate faith so long as it doesn't impact politics -- Richard John Neuhaus on John Claggett Danforth:

John Danforth is an ordained Episcopal priest and a good and decent man. It is a pity that he is letting himself be used in this way. Or maybe this is what he really believes. If so, he is more than a little confused. He calls for “people of faith” to involve themselves in politics, but then seems to add the proviso that they must be people who share his understanding of faith. Or, if they have a different understanding, they should not let their faith impinge on their politics.

Riveting read from Basia Me:

"Abena and her sisters will save the world. Peg should have longed to kiss her beaten feet."

Smart, Christian Presidents

...and others

There's a new book out with a blurb that goes:

A compelling case that Woodrow Wilson was America's worst president and an unmitigated disaster for the world. In a learned exposition of the Law of Unintended Consequences, Jim Powell shows how U.S. intervention into World War I strengthened the hand of Soviet Communism and led directly to the rise of Hitler and World War II. Wilson's War exposes how America's court historians have misled the public for generations.

-- Thomas J. DiLorenzo, author of The Real Lincoln

I've never liked Wilson but that might be overkill. Or at least it seems like it's blaming Wilson for a lot of things that he had no control over, just as many lamely blame the U.S. for arming Osama when he was fighting the Soviets. It's hard to hold someone personally responsible for not being omniscient. But of course I haven't read the book yet.

Regardless, I got to thinking about this. If Wilson was that bad, why was someone who was - by most accounts - a devout Christian, and - by all accounts - a brilliant intellect, so dismal as president? Shouldn't the exercise of biblical principles, mired as they are in the ultimate Reality, positively influence the course of events? No, because issues like knowledge of economics, history and management style are crucial and intellectuals often suck on these issues (i.e. Karl Marx). Grace builds on nature and if nature is lacking...

I wondered if there was any connection between brains, Christianity and being a good president. (This is all way above my paygrade and I'm sort of winging this as I go along - in case you couldn't tell). Below is one of the most biased graphs you'll ever see on the 'net (and that is sayin' something!). First, I can't see into presidential souls so my rating on how devout a Christian is subjective. And the rating as to how smart they thought they were, or were in fact, is also extremely subjective. And finally, how good a president they were is also subjective. If we adjusted for the amount of possible error each variable might have in this chart, well, it would be off the charts. But this is a blog, it ain't a history book.



Notation: The redder the initials, the worse he was as president. The bluer, the better. Pale blue or pale red lean towards the respective extremes.

Presidential codes: GW = George Washington, JA = John Adams, GWB = George W. Bush, WW=Woodrow Wilson, TJ = Thomas Jefferson, BC = Bill Clinton, AL = Abraham Lincoln, HT = Harry Truman, RR = Ronald Reagan, JC = Jimmy Carter

That's not much data to go on but I think it shows what Amy Welborn said not too long ago: if you think you're smart, even if you are smart, it can be a huge detriment in your ability to govern effectively. The bottom half of the chart has more blue than the top half. It's too early to judge GWB. I consider George Washington to be our greatest president, so if his initials don't look blue enough sue the chart-maker (doh! - me).

Notes from Our Pastor's Lecture on the Incarnation

From last night:

Jesus solved the Ishmael/Isaac problem. The Jewish prophets and kings were never the first-born. This wasn't surprising; for Arabs of Semitic descent it's the first born son that matters, for the Jews it was the God-chosen legitmate son. This was an argument they'd had down the centuries - did Ishamel receive the promises due the first-born or was his not being born of Sarah and thus outside God's promise with Abraham negate those? Jesus's birth solved this by not either/or but and/both. Jesus was both the first-born and the legitmate son of God. God Himself became our ancestor and so it was not necessary to choose between Ishmael and Isaac [a far better deal]. We now have access to divinity, divinity within our bloodline. Sin is a rejection of our heritage, of our patrimony, of who we are. The Incarnation was something completely unexpected, unprayed for, unasked for. A completely unmerited gift.

Shelby Steele on Black and White Shame

Link:

[H]istorical fairness--of the sort that resolves history's injustices--is an idealism that now plagues black America by making black responsibility seem an injustice.

[...]

Of course, shame is made worse, even unbearable, when there is a witness, the eye of an "other" who is only too happy to use our shame against us. Whites and blacks often play the "other" for each other in this way, each race seeking a bit of redemption and power in the other's shame. And both races live with the permanent anxiety of being held to account for their shames by the other race. So, there is a reflex in both races that reaches for narratives to explain shame away and, thus, disarm the "other."

[...]

But, in fact, racism has receded in American life because whites, at long last, took greater responsibility for making it recede despite the shame they endured. And wasn't it the certainty of shame, as much as anything else, that had kept them rationalizing their racism for so long, looking to the supposed inferiority of blacks to justify an evil?...

And our open acknowledgment of our underdevelopment will clearly give whites a power of witness over us. It will mean that whites can hold us accountable for overcoming inferiority as we hold them to accountable for overcoming racism. They will be able to openly shame us when we are not fully at war with our underdevelopment, just as Bill Bennett was shamed for no more than giving a false impression of racism. If this prospect feels terrifying to many blacks, we have to remember that whites witness and judge us anyway, just as we have witnessed and judged their shame for so long. Mutual witness will go on no matter what balances of power we strike. It is best to be open, and allow the "other's" witness to inspire rather than shame.

Augustine & the Derb

Derbyshire wants the word "Roman" inserted before references to the Catholic church.

Apparently there were lots of churches calling themselves Catholic in St. Augustine's day. The great saint said if you ask a person on the street where the "Catholic Church" they'll invariably point to the Roman church.

Speaking of Mother Teresa...

I recall a discussion with an agnostic years ago in which he said that there is no such thing as altruism, that people who do good do so simply for their own reward. But I'm (occasionally) wary of solipsistic thinking that suggests because I can or can't do something, no one else can or does. (For example: If I can get a job, everyone else ought to be able to.) I told him maybe, just maybe, Mother Teresa is different than you or I, just as there are natural variations in everything else.

But now I think that he was actually making the Christian's point, that "human altruism" is an oxymoron. I don't think less of the saints; I think more of God. (Is it a zero-sum game?) I think that maybe what my correspondent called atruism we call grace and that it cannot be manufactured. Christ said, after all, that "only God is good".

Groeschel on Mother Teresa

Heard Fr. Benedict Groeschel talk a bit about Blessed Mother Teresa on EWTN. He mentioned how shocking it was when (in her cause for sainthood) her letters to her spiritual advisor were made public. And how in them she struggled in darkness, how she said her prayers went up but seemed to descend back to her as "sharp knives". How chilling that imagery. Fr. Groeschel said this was God making her soul very powerful.

He said that he saw her a few weeks before her death and that she was a "changed person, bubbly and happy and joyous where before she'd always been rather serious and somber." And he said he told the priest he was with afterwards that "'she will be going home soon. Her work is done. She's purified her soul of all self-seeking and selfishness. She is ready for the joys of heaven.'"

Reminds me of how St. Thomas Aquinas, surely a serious and somber sort, received a vision of God near the end of his life. He too was ready for the joys of heaven. If the Summa seemed unfinished, God said otherwise.

Spanning the Globe

The communion of the saints. How shall I explain it to you? You know what blood transfusions can do for the body? Well, that's what the communion of saints does for the soul.

- St. Josemaria Escriva via "Sancta Sanctis"

John Paul taught that the mark of original sin was the loss of the apprehension of God as Father. When a culture is dominated by original sin and gives in to the abandonment of God, they don't get nothing--they get the apprehension of God as Master. This applies to believers and atheists alike. The great 19th Century atheists were all working very hard to not believe in God. They weren't at all working to disbelieve in Loki, Apollo or Quetzlcoatl. But instead of banishing God, they simply succeeded in approaching him as Master and Oppressor. We're in increasingly the same bind today.

- Mark Shea

Being raised Lutheran, the last day of October wasn’t just Halloween. The bigger focus at church and school was on certain events of the 16th century [Reformation Day]...Folks often get quite upset that the Church doesn’t take sterner positions against one faction or another. I suggest that the Church has learned from the experience of long ago and is thus loathe to contribute to a multiplication of schism.

- Gregg of "Vita Brevis"

When people advance their moral viewpoints in the public square, they are not imposing anything on anyone. They are proposing. That’s what citizens do in a democracy—we propose, we give reasons, we vote. It’s a very strange doctrine that would silence only religiously grounded moral viewpoints. And it’s very unhealthy for democracy when the courts—without clear constitutional warrant—deprive citizens of the opportunity to have a say in setting the conditions under which we live, work, and raise our children.

- potential SCOTUS candidate Mary Ann Glendon (via Mark of Irish Elk)

In a democracy, everyone is supposed to have an opinion on everything. And everyone does, it seems - or if they don't, they're ready to form one instantly. When I was eighteen, I had an opinion on the minimum wage. Today, at age thirty-nine and with a bachelor's degree in economics under my belt, I have no opinion on the minimum wage. Like most Americans, I went about things backwards. I formed all kinds of opinions on things I knew nothing about very early in life - and now I face the uncomfortable task of having to renounce many of these. The world, of course, confuses opinion with conviction. We Catholics must hold the revealed truths of the Faith (and their many corollaries) with unwavering ferocity. Yet the world isn't going to cooperate: we're expected to be indifferentists when it comes to religion but fierce partisans when it comes to sports or economics or SUVs. T.S. Eliot was right when he said "The world is soft where the Church is hard, and the world is hard where the Church is soft."

- Jeff of "Hallowed Ground"

There are some out there who believe that the Catholic youth of today are yearning for it to be 1955 again. Trust me. They're not. However, what leads some to believe that is the fact that young people's reaction to liturgy, especially music, is very hard to pin down. They will complain all day about liturgical music being boring and old-fashioned, but then you haul out the Praise music, the Haugen/Hass opus, whatever, and they look at you and say Lame. Seriously...The best part of the evening was the singing of a very simple Veni Creator Spiritus chant, over and over. It's not just my prejudice showing here, either - the kids' response to that was definitely the loudest and most sustained. Why? Because the Luv Latin? No...because it was simple, evocative chant, Taize like.

- Amy Welborn

My reaction to this thought shows me that I am not so inclined to hope for Universal Salvation if I must do something about it for those who I think probably don't deserve it. Or probably better said, for those who fall low on my list of people I would like to serve in any way...I have determined who is worthy and who is unworthy of the prayers for release from purgatory. I decide, I judge. Lord, spare me from my own judgment. God alone knows who is "worthy" or who requires anything whatsoever, and it is He who decides how the trinkets we call prayers and suffrages are used in the economy of salvation. I am not allowed that liberty.

- Steven of "Flos Carmeli" on his distaste for praying for Hitler

Ok, If friends are people we hold things in common with, how does that figure with now-a-days youth wanting to be unique? If we all strive to be different from the rest does that not alienate us? But let us look at this from a different angle, by doing something we are an example to others and that shapes (consciously or no) the people around us, Man being a social being and all. So does that mean striving to be different is futile and worthless? Perhaps strive to be good 'cause not only is that different (for the time being) but when people follow your example you are leading them to being a better human being. Always remember that we Catholics are CALLED to be examples of the faith as pillars of virtue.

- Thomas of "Forced reports"

Penny wise and spiritually foolish, I skipped morning Mass just about every day this week. All in the interest of getting to my desk early and getting some work done before the phones start ringing. Professionally speaking, it was the right thing to do....but heaven knows that the tough days are the ones that need to be started in the Presence of the Lord. Even on the not so crazy days, it helps me to put it all into perspective...Every day is (and I mean this in the most reverent way I can express) a double bill of The Passion of the Christ and Office Space.

- Ellyn of Obhouse

I've been involved in on-line discussions on Catholicism for nearly fifteen years. In all that time, anger has been a ubiquitous feature. I am not, let me be clear, speaking of anger at abortion or child abuse, or at indifference to these grave evils. I am speaking of anger -- of sullenness and ill-will, and of hatred and derision directed at fellow Catholics -- over things like hymn selection, and whether a priest says "Good morning" at the beginning of Mass. Faced with this anger, I have at times joined in; at others, reacted with an equal and opposite anger. Often I am still bemused and befuddled by it. Long ago, I learned it was best to ignore it whenever possible... We are, of course, obliged to pray for our enemies, an obligation that would seem to extend to those who aren't our enemies so much as people we flat don't like. It is, I find, a very liberating experience -- animosity and anger being what we're liberated from -- to simply pray that God give them the graces they need to fulfill God's will for them, without reminding God what His will for them is.

- Thomas of Disputations

In 2000, I had a very carefully worked-out rationale for voting for Bush. Well, it actually wasn't that hard, considering how evil the national Democratic party is, but really...Here's my thinking: I've worked for several school principals in my life. The worst principals were those who were the book-smartest and probably made the best grades in school. The best principal I ever worked for was a man who was, by his own admittance, a C-student in school...he understood his own limitations and was not afraid to admit them. He knew that he had weaknesses - so he surrounded himself with people who compensated for that, was not afraid of giving them power and responsibility, because he knew they shared his general vision. The "smart" people tended to be insecure egomaniacs who, more than anything, dreaded being around someone smarter or more competant than they were, so they instead surrounded themselves with syncophants and dolts. And they were terrible administrators. So, with that great wisdom, I voted for GWB and defended him, fairly confident that even though I knew full well he wasn't a small-government guy or even a guy with many specific thoughts on governance, period, I thought...well, he's probably generally okay, and he will doubtless surround himself with good people. We'll be okay. And we probably are.

- Amy Welborn

i don't get people who don't get toy dogs; they're cuddly, protective and loyal. heck, as long as you're armed, she's a better watch dog than any butch dog could ever be, and that's the truth.

- smock mama

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother...

(well, okay, he is sorta heavy)

Elena writes of a progressive Catholic:

"I am slowly changing my mind about debating with liberals. It is truly a lost cause. I am really going to have to get some divine inspiration to ever go there again."

I'm interested by this in part because I recall going back and forth with a liberal agnostic, and despite my being convinced I'd "won" the argument, or at least had given her something to think about, she ended up far more liberal and agnostic than she was before I'd put my two cents. And that pattern was repeated a couple of times before I realized that apparently I wasn't adhering to the Hippocratic oath : "First, do no harm". That political and religious discussions change no one's mind is fine and dandy, but if they can actually turn the listener more firmly against your view then I had to re-examine things and try to shut the heck up. (Always difficult for those of Irish heritage btw.)

The liberal mentioned above, from my distant perspective, seems more firmly devoted to his pet issues as ever. As does "Just War" Sully on Tom's blog. And R. of Haloscan seems, on the surface at least, completely unaffected by any of Tom's wisdom. (But then neither do I. Pot, kettle..)

I don't know what the answer is. That's why I'm asking the question. I read somewhere how Mother Angelica spent a lifetime telling people what they didn't want to hear and finding years later they changed their minds. Patience is a virtue I hear.

Video Meliora...

I've been tagged by MamaT of Summa Mamas on how my blog title came to be.

I don't recall exactly, other than it fit several criteria: one, purposely pretentious for purposes of parody (oh accidental alliteration! bestill my heart!), two, its opacity, three, so darn personally relevant.

I started blogging back in antiquity, back when you had to walk ten miles to school in the snow. This was before "St. Blog's" even. And the thing I couldn't have imagined was the degree of interaction possible in a medium (writing) that seemed as solitary as a monk's. I certainly didn't take it seriously and am not sure how serious to take it now.

But other non-writers seemed to be taking it seriously so I wanted some ridiculously long, almost comic, title. In a foreign language definitely. I have a bias towards opacity. As a lover of mystery, I like trapdoors and hidden passages. Wouldn't it be fun to have a wall of books that when a certain book is removed you find it open into a secret passage to - where? A secret library of course.

And finally the sentiments in the title certainly fit. The ridiculousness of my human condition is doing what is contrary to my best interests. And St. Paul said the same thing so it's even got a biblical resonance.

Since it's November, I'll tag Song of November.

Song I Can't Get Out of My Mind

Some people think deep thoughts while in the shower. I think of song lyrics:

Roll out A-lit-o, we'll have a liter of fun
Roll out A-lit-o, we've got the Dems on the run
Zing boom tararrel, ring out a song of good cheer
Now's the time to roll out Alito, for the gang's all here!