'Round the 'Sphere

Dominican Students have penned articles here, including this on parents and piety:

St. Thomas Aquinas likens the reality that exists between a parent and child to that between God and His human creature. This is no empty metaphor: there is a real similarity! In the Saint’s language, “Man is debtor chiefly to his parents… after God.” St. Thomas actually teaches that, after God, it is to our parents (and country) that we must first and foremost give thanks for our existence. Evidently, there is a parallel between the way one shows devotion or thanksgiving to one’s parents and the same to God.

When love is authentic and selfless it erupts beyond sentiment and thought. Chances are that if I’m a little clumsy in showing love for my mom, I’m also a little lax in showing a duly thankful response to God’s call. Spirituality is, after all, a kind of morality: desiring what is good involves doing good.      - Br. Bruno M. Shah, O.P.

Lenten Thoughts from a homeschooling mom.

The Why of Fasting

Food and drink are one of the great treasures of our lives. They are blessings God obviously wants us to enjoy intensely. One of the great motives for fasting, therefore is the one we find most often in the Scriptures. It is a way of responding to God's persistent flirting to get our attention, of telling God we're really serious about what we pray for, whether the prayer is praise and worship, asking some favor, giving thanks or any other intention.

Some relatively recent and excellent books about fasting are on the market. One of them is Fasting Rediscovered, by Paulist Father Thomas Ryan. He tells how in the Old Testament God falls over himself to convince his people that he is there to give them what they need; they respond by telling God in this way how urgent are their wants.

Father Ryan describes how his father used to ride his bicycle around the block where his mother lived, hoping to get a glimpse of her through the window. Our sense of God, he says, must be like what his mother felt. She knew he was out there circling, watching, hoping. When she went to the window, she knew he would know her, would listen to her concerns and would make a loving response. As Father Ryan says: "Fasting is sending God a message. He's very good about answering his mail."
- Rev. J. Dietzen

Excellent Parody from Nobis Quoque:

"I need a belief system that serves my needs right away."

Our dog Obi's...

... magazine cover, via here, via Elena. Dang, but is technology rife with the possibility of comedy or what? You gotta love it. We didn't have those sorts of comedic props when I was a kid. We didn't have these amazing production values! The only way to tell a joke then was to tell a joke, or we had to walk three miles to the store in order to get construction paper & Playdough.

I also did a fasting joke but the true comedic potential of this tool remains largely untapped.

"Anyone who is not a fool at Carnival is foolish for the rest of the year." - quote via ThereseZ of Exultet

Today's feast requires that we all be chairitable to the Pope. - Curt Jester, on the Feast of the Chair of Peter

Someone (I forget who) once said that most writers have one story to tell; they're just very good at telling it in different ways. This is largely true of [Flannery] O'Connor, who writes from the perspective (the Christian one) "that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost," and whose characters are all brought to some point of desperation at which their vanity is laid low, and the illusions of their lives laid to rest. In "Good Country People" a Bible salesman steals a girl's artificial leg, without which her artificial ugliness has not a leg to stand on. In "Revelation" a woman is made to see that the aristocracy of God's favor is not at all what she imagined. - Bill Luse

As with so many heresies, Monotheletism strikes at the Incarnation, without which we're all pretty much just Shriners...We know that having a human will perfectly subject to God's will doesn't mean never feeling distress. It doesn't even mean always desiring, of one's own volition, what God desires, though of course it does mean always choosing what He desires. We are not called to agree with God, but to obey Him. But obedience is the road to perfection, and the more we obey God, the more our human wills become, not merely subject to His, but genuinely like His. - Tom of Disputations

"To change our hearts is to learn to love things that we do not naturally love." This is the core of the ongoing Christian vocation. In this simple sentence Newman speaks of detachment without ever once uttering the scary word. We must learn to love what we do not by nature love--to do so, we must unlearn our entanglement with the world, the flesh, and the devil. - Steven of Flos Carmeli

During the three years of our Lord's public ministry, He never wasted an opportunity to pour out His compassion to those who trusted in Him. He healed the sick and fed the hungry who came to Him (though he barely batted an eyelash in the direction of those who only wanted signs and spectacles), because the sight of their sufferings moved Him so deeply. Yet these acts of mercy were not His main purpose; I daresay He only gave in because we pleaded like little children and He loved us too much to resist. All these miracles were only for the short term. Even the boy he raised from the dead and restored to an inconsolable mother was still to die again--was still dust destined to return to dust. He must have known, as He explained to the Samaritan woman, that quick fixes--even His own quick fixes--would only leave people thirsty again. He must have also been aware, with every sufferer He gave succour to, that there were millions more in the world who could not get close to Him and whom He could not reach because of His human limitations. Of course, what is impossible for Man is possible for God: at the end of our Lord's three-year ministry, He offered Himself as a once and for all sacrifice--in an overwhelming outpouring that would never need to be repeated or renewed--in order to extend His mercy to every last poor, banished child of Eve. - E. of Sancta Sanctis

He who loves the most is always the weakest. He who loves the least is always the strongest. - Author unknown, via Cowpi

It’s not really surprising that the national pro-life groups can’t keep tight control of the movement. Down at the roots, the grass is on fire. After all the careful work writers in journals like FIRST THINGS have done to set in motion the analysis by which Roe can be chipped away, it’s hard to see the South Dakota legislation as anything except a tactical error. But it’s also hard to blame the lawmakers who pushed it through. As the governor said, “Many people will never believe this will not work unless it’s tried.” And the hunger for something to happen—oh, yes, anyone who is opposed to abortion knows that feeling well. - J. Bottum of "First Things"

I can't figure out what granola has to do with the permanent things. - Bill of Apologia

I'm giving everyone a hard time on this because -- well, that's what I do. - Tom of Disputations

What we saw this past week in the Islamic demonstrations over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad was another vivid depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ, and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery. If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7). “He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3). - John Piper, via Eric of "The Daily Eudemon"

I haven't read the book, but the title has to be in the running for the most arrogant title ever. - commenter on Amy's blog concerning the Garry Wills book "What Jesus Meant"

If you abandon prayer, you may at first live on spiritual reserves and, after that, by cheating. - St. Josemaria Escrivá via Roz of Exultet

Does History Matter?

Article from Joseph Pearce:

The truth will set us free. So says Christ. If this is so, which of course it is, it follows that falsehood will enslave us. Falsehood in history prevents us from understanding our past and, in consequence, our present...

If we don’t know why things happened, history remains devoid of meaning; it makes no sense. As such, historians must have knowledge of the history of belief. They must know what people believed when they did the things that they did in order to know why they acted as they did. They must have empathy with the great ideas that shaped human history, even if they don’t have sympathy with them.

This issue was addressed with great lucidity by Hilaire Belloc, perhaps the most important historian of the twentieth century (with the possible exception of Christopher Dawson):

"The worst fault in [writing] history . . . is the fault of not knowing what the spiritual state of those whom one describes really was. Gibbon and his master Voltaire, the very best of reading, are for that reason bad writers of history. To pass through the tremendous history of the Trinitarian dispute from which our civilization arose and to treat it as a farce is not history. To write the story of the sixteenth century in England and to make of either the Protestant or the Catholic a grotesque is to miss history altogether" (A Conversation with an Angel and Other Essays, Jonathan Cape, 166–7).

Clearly frustrated at this supercilious approach toward the past that blinded many historians, Belloc offers a practical example of its effects upon scholarship:

"There is an enormous book called volume 1 of A Cambridge History of the Middle Ages. It is 759 pages in length of close print. . . . It does not mention the Mass once. That is as though you were to write a history of the Jewish dispersion without mentioning the synagogue or of the British empire without mentioning the city of London or the Navy" (Letters from Hilaire Belloc, Hollis and Carter, 75).

...It is, for instance, almost chilling that Belloc wrote of the lifting of the Muslim siege of Vienna "on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history—September 11, 1683" (The Great Heresies, Sheed and Ward, 85). It is a date that Christendom has forgotten, to its shame, but the militants of Islam apparently had remembered. "It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent" (ibid., 87). These words, written more than sixty years ago, went unheeded. Today they resound like the death-knell of Europe.

"Being a Tightwad Led me to the Catholic Church"

Katolik Shinja's unusual conversion story!

Lenten Country & Western Song

Billy Dean's 1990s hit isn't a bad song for Lent, especially with the metanoian spirit in the phrase "don't like what I'm becoming":

Gonna hold who needs holdin'
Mend what needs mendin'
Walk what needs walkin'
Though it means an extra mile
Pray what needs prayin'
Say what needs sayin'
Cause we're only here for a little while

Today I stood singin' songs and sayin' Amen
Saying goodbye to an old friend who seemed so young
He spent his life workin' hard to chase a dollar
Putting off until tomorrow the things he should have done
Made me start thinking "What's the hurry, why the runnin'?
I don't like what I'm becoming, gonna change my style
Take my time and I take it all for granted "
Cause we're only here for a little while

Gonna hold who needs holdin'
Mend what needs mendin'
Walk what needs walkin'
Though it means an extra mile
Pray what needs prayin'
Say what needs sayin'
Cause we're only here for a little while

Journal Excerptables

Lent nears and I look forward to the opportunity to read Neuhaus’s “Death on a Friday Afternoon” as well as a book on the seven last words of Christ published by The Word Among Us (though someday I must read Fulton J. Sheen’s version). Will watch The Passion of the Christ again too -- sometimes you just need the excuse/permission to do things, as if watching TPOTC at any other time of year is strangely out-of-season.

Serving at bingo has been a way to break the inertia in a small way. It's about serving others, constantly attending to their cries of “Instant, Instant!” which refers to the term “instant winning tickets” but also to the expectations in terms of speed of delivery of those tickets. There is much diversity in terms of clientele. I heard recently of a study that said that criminals tend to be ugly, which, translated, means that they probably didn't receive the love and acceptance that the more atttactive get, with the result in the lashing out of anti-social behavior. The tyranny of lookism is worse than we think.

Went to Barb the barber. She tells me that it’s amazing how much people tell her while under the influence of her clippers and humming razors. They confide in her like they do a bartender. I say that instead of torturing terrorists we should get them a drink and a haircut and they’ll spill all in the truth serum of relaxation. The most drunken I normally feel is after getting a haircut like this, and during the walk home the light bends and Naughten Street in downtown Columbus becomes Main Street, Hamilton, Ohio circa 1972 and packed with memories that lay elusively just on the cusp of recall. The cars on that sun-streamed street morph from SUVs to Chevy Impalas but I ruin it by pulling out the Columbus paper I have in my coat pocket and reading about Ken Blackwell’s race for governor. The mirage is instantly broken and I recognize anew that politics is the perfect anti-reverie.

The cruise last month interrupted my grim single-minded determination to knock down the pins of winter’s bowling alley. There’s no question that it felt like cheating, like a parole of sun and thick inked books while fellow prisoners were left behind. I feel pangs of guilt since Ham o’ Bone couldn’t do the same, though that’s surely false regret since he could easily go, financially speaking, if he wanted to. Still, there are those who can’t afford it and that rankles. Meanwhile Amy Welborn goes to Rome, something more fitting and worthy.

I'm In the Money...

And to think I almost deleted this email (italics mine):

Dear Winner,

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the World-Wide-Web Internet compensation promotion programs held on the 7th of February, 2006 and it is aimed at compensating frequent Internet explorers all over the world.

Mighty kind of you.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:TK60019341 with serial number:SR70870169BA2006,batch number:ACW70163GLD, lottery reference number:32166LR and drew lucky numbers: 7-21-27-36-37-43 which consequently won in the first category. You are therefore entitled to the sum of US$500,000.00 (FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLAR)

You are entitled to the title F-R-A-U-D with reference number FIBBER with batch number BYTEME. Please keep for your records.

Due to the mix up of some numbers and email addresses, we ask that you keep your winning information confidential until your claim has been processed and your money remitted to you in cash, certified cheque or into your provided bank account. This is part of our security protocols to avoid unwarranted abuse of this program by those selfish participants-attempting to take advantage of others.

Mum's the word! Nobody here but us crickets. I'm appalled that someone would be taking advantage of others.

The State, Economics, & the Church

I've blogged in the past about The Church Confronts Modernity. The book is densely packed with thoughts worth quoting. I'm now on the chapter about economics (btw, see this Terrence Berres post on the controversy swirling around the holy, socialist (Communist seems too harsh) Dorothy Day).

One nugget suggests Thomists are from Mars, Augustinians from Venus:

It is of considerable significance that St. Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics should have rejected the the theory of the state held, for example, by St. Augustine - namely, that the state came into existence as a result of original sin. Aquinas denied that the state was merely a necessary evil, arguing instead that even had man not fallen from his original state, government would still be both necessary and just. It is significant that this came to be the dominant view within the Church, since a philosophy that placed the origins of the state in the consequences of human iniquity was much less likely to emphasize the state's positive role of securing the common good.

Manishevitz

The blogger at Sancta Sanctis is amazingly talented. On the heels of In Hac Lacrimarum Valle, she has an another excellent post up, this one on the Catholic/Protestant satire contained in Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels. I think she's getting a little too good at this blogging thing, writing at a professional level like that... :-) And speaking of professionals (i.e. those who get paid to pontificate in their real job), professor Bill Luse has a meaty post on the symbolism in Flannery O'Connor's writing.

Tertullian

It's ironic that the great 2nd century Church father and coiner of the oxymoron "Credo quia absurdum" would himself become something of an oxymoron - a heretic who started out as a staunch defender of orthodoxy:

Heresies, [Tertullian] begins, must not astonish us, for they were prophesied. Heretics urge the text, "Seek and ye shall find", but this was not said to Christians; we have a rule of faith to be accepted without question. "Let curiosity give place to faith and vain glory make way for salvation", so Tertullian parodies a line of Cicero's. The heretics argue out of Scripture; but, first, we are forbidden to consort with a heretic after one rebuke has been delivered, and secondly, disputation results only in blasphemy on the one side and indignation on the other, while the listener goes away more puzzled than he came. The real question is, "To whom does the Faith belong? Whose are the Scriptures? By whom, through whom, when and to whom has been handed down the discipline by which we are Christians? The answer is plain: Christ sent His apostles, who founded churches in each city, from which the others have borrowed the tradition of the Faith and the seed of doctrine and daily borrow in order to become churches; so that they also are Apostolic in that they are the offspring of the Apostolic churches. All are that one Church which the Apostles founded, so long as peace and intercommunion are observed. Therefore the testimony to the truth is this: We communicate with the apostolic Churches".

He thought some sins - such as murder, apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and fornication - were unforgivable after Baptism, and in his fervor for the Faith he presumably considered himself more Catholic than the bishop. Interestingly, he formed his opinions before the Church condemned them, so he came to his rigorism and Montanism honestly but could not let them go, in the way all of us tend to form opinions and then fall madly in love with them. I wonder if there isn't a parallel in the recent Church. By the mid 1960s it was widely assumed the prohibition against artificial birth control would be relaxed and by the early '68 many clerics and theologians had already hardened their opinion. So when the encyclical Humane Vitae came out it was, for them, too late.

Randomized Thoughts

Sunday morning I ask my wife: "I've been reading the paper for twenty years and I still can't answer a pretty basic question. Ohio University is raising tuition six percent. Why does public higher education, year-in-year-out, go up faster than the rate of inflation? Aren't professor salaries relatively in line with inflation? Why is this information so hard to come by?"

She answers: "It's like The Wizard of Oz."

"Uh?"

"They don't want you to see behind the curtain."

~
Saw two movies over the weekend that reminded me that there are good things on television but that they are very difficult to find given three hundred plus channels. The first was a documentary of a Miami high school football player named Taurean Charles called Year of the Bull. Fascinating look at a different world. And the other was "The Inn at the Sixth Happiness", starring the lovely Ingrid Berman, which is based on the true story of a Christian missionary to China. The character played by Berman shows what real proselytization is. As an aside, she taught the children English through the song "This Old Man" which reminded me of how we were taught German through songs and now they are nearly the only German phrases I remember:

"Mein Hut es hat drei Ecke,
drei Ecke hat mein Hut,
und hat mein Hut kein Ecke,
es war nicht mein Hut!"

~

In "Consider the Lobster" David Foster Wallace writes, "In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote."

~
In earlier version of films about the sinking of the Titanic, the ending came with the hope and consolation of God, in the form of the band playing "Nearer, My God" and a priest leading the doomed passengers in prayers. In James Cameron's incarnation, the hope of human love has eclipsed God, in the form of imagining the two main charactes reuniting some day (though that is in line with the hope of resurrection). Similarly, in the movie "The Perfect Storm", God is not invoked by the doomed fishermen but human love is, and predictably not between married couples but in a boy "newly in love", which seems to be the principle way love can be projected believably to modern audiences who tend to confuse love with sex.

Still, concerning the fisherman in The Perfect Storm, who thinks of God when first feeling the pulse of fear? Saints, yes, but those of lesser faith? Belloc writes comically of a small boat in rough seas in "Hills and the Sea":

"Then in despair I prayed to the boat itself (since nothing else could hear me), "Oh, Boat," for so I was taught the vocative, "bear me safe round this corner, and I will scatter wine over your decks." She heard me and rounded the point...

~

I most remember Don Knotts, R.I.P., for saying that he didn't mind being remembered as Barney Fife, the television character on The Andy Griffith Show. What an example of humility! How many actors can you think of who wouldn't mind being remembered as a television sitcom character, let alone one so nebbish and un-suave?

~

Of a fellow parishioner, who is three years into a four year Byzantine Catholic deaconate program, I asked what he's learned: "How much I don't know." I was taken aback though perhaps his response proves the worth of his education.

Pope Says Respect Other Religions

This is something I needed to hear because respecting other religions - not just Islam but cults like Scientology and other irrational belief systems - is not something I'm good at. I'd always figured that disrespect of a religion was fine, while not the disrespecting the holders of those beliefs. That is, to separate the dignity of the person from the indignity of their belief.

Yet the Pope says that

It is necessary and urgent that religions and their symbols be respected, and that the faithful not be subjected to provocations injuring their outlook and religious feelings.

Obviously this comes in context of the clash between Islam and the West, but the word choice of the Pope was interesting and challenging. I sometimes think with pity how the ancient Hebrews had to make do without the Incarnation and with their incomplete Revelation but then I realize that - duh! - I "look thru the glass darkly" and not just with respect to those in Heaven, where the gulf is astonishing, but with respect to those who are farther along the path of righteousness here on earth. I know this intellectually but it sinks in with difficulty because I assume individuals of another creed "should know better", just as saints could easily think that I ought see more clearly and could if I wanted.

I posted the following on Steven Riddle's blog, an excerpt from one of the documents of Vatican II, but it ought hang next to my computer:

Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and even religious matters. In fact, the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through such courtesy and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them.

This love and good will, to be sure, must in no way render us indifferent to truth and goodness. Indeed love itself impels the disciples of Christ to speak the saving truth to all men. But it is necessary to distinguish between error, which always merits repudiation, and the person in error, who never loses the dignity of being a person even when he is flawed by false or inadequate religious notions. God alone is the judge and searcher of hearts; for that reason He forbids us to make judgments about the internal guilt of anyone.

Since all men possess a rational soul and are created in God's likeness, since they have the same nature and origin, have been redeemed by Christ and enjoy the same divine calling and destiny, the basic equality of all must receive increasingly greater recognition.

Malcolm Gladwell Has A Blog...   and a few old parodies re-posted

It's kind of odd that someone as young and hip and (presumably) computer-literate as Gladwell just began blogging. You'd think he'd have done so before now if only for the purpose of plugging his books.

This prompted a reverie - what if that ol' warhorse John Updike started a blog? Unthinkable yes. Though he's certainly prolific enough. Which reminded me of parodies of writers doing blogs. First Updike's blog:

Sept. 22, 2005: I held this morning's NY Times with a gathering anger, the serrate-edged white pages garlanded with those ads of models, all svelte with their ring-appointed mid-drifts, slices of skin endlessly beguiling and faithful to the long evolutionary line of tricks women have used to overcome a man's fear of rejection, a display meant to marry pistil and stamen. Amid the skin and sex and perfume my attention had ratcheted, quite perversely, upon a news item concerning a farm subsidy bill. This, I decided, would make a fine blog post, as the career politicians in Washington have again proven...

It's less unthinkable with Bill Buckley, whose sailing book Atlantic High is sort of bloggish.

Many "blogs" display a disdain for civil discourse and, to the extent they say anything at all, say it rather coarsely. This ensilage of words in great quantities not only reflects the current zeitgeist but promotes imprecisions such as the use of the word 'blue' when 'cerulean' is obviously meant. I intend to ensile my thoughts here as the spirit moves...
Posted by WFB 10:32am May 4

Professor Galbraith upbraided me yesterday for my suggestion that our sojourns to Geneva be shortened to six weeks. He chided thusly: 'Oh it's to be Denmark on Tuesday, Belgium on Wednesday, eh?'"
Posted by WFB 2:35pm May 6

Rich and the kids seem to be doing well at NRO. Rich informs me that he and Mr. Dreher have to shave now and no longer get carded regularly when purchasing alcohol. Jonah, like the Beatles, appears to be in his 'dark phase', probably due to his recent marriage to Yoko. I've been told that even serious people are compulsively reading 'The Corner'. Would it be uncharitable to suggest that they could find a better use for their time?
Posted by WFB 6:28pm May 5

Went on a Fox News show called "Hannity and Colmes" to promote the new book. Pat (Mrs. Buckley) suggested afterwards that my oratorical metabolism, uncompensated by gesticular flourishes, seemed phlegmatic compared to masters Hannity and Colmes. She recommended an aperitif in the Green Room before the next Hardball.
Posted by WFB 6:35pm July 20

Spent the morning at the NR office followed by lunch at an Indian food restaurant called "Curry in a Hurry" at Lowry's suggestion. Some have questioned handing over the NR reins to someone so young but they forget I started National Review at a younger age. Lowry's choice in restaurants does give me pause though...
Posted by WFB 11:15am July 12

Received a call from Don King, the fight promoter, regarding a possible allumette-vers le haut between myself and Gore Vidal. I replied in the negative of course.
Posted by WFB 3:01pm July 11

The thought of Catholic politicians who openly controvert Church teaching receiving at the communion rail is reminiscent of the bride who, expert in matters carnal and caught in flagrante delicto with the postman, still chooses the most achromatic white in wedding apparel.
Posted by WFB 2:12pm July 9

The late Shelby Foote:

My publisher suggested I start this "blog", an odd-sounding word and something surely intended only for Yankees and narcissists. Random House said I could increase book sales and interest in the Civil War. I don't know about that but I do wonder what my friend WP would say about this phenomenon.
Posted by Foote 4:01am March 1

I see much time has elapsed since my last post. I was re-reading Proust, as you ought be doing instead of reading this blog. To paraphrase the words of the son of Revolutionary War hero "Light Horse" Harry Lee, "It is well my blog is so terrible -- lest you should grow too fond of it."
Posted by Foote 7:21pm July 16

Bill Clinton:

The seeds of this "Hillary for 2008" blog were sewn during the last days of my Administration, during which America had the largest economic boom since the 1950s with poverty rates falling dramatically due to my job creation efforts. In fact, you may not know this, but you all would have free health care right now except for a Republican Congress that forced me to perjure myself and spend time pondering the definition of "is" when I could've been pondering how to make your life better...but I digress. I plan on being honest in this blog, just as I was honest with the American people during my time in office - a time that was cruelly truncated due to a (right-wing conspiracy?) Constitional Amendment that limits presidents to just two terms.

I will honestly say that I have in the past embarrassed my wife Hillary and that I owe her. I owe her big time. And so this blog is my small way of supporting her, of letting you in on how smart and honest and hard-working she is, like the time I was sitting in the Oval Office, working on a solution to global warming, when... Well, we'll get to that next post. Let me give you my solution to global warming. First...
Posted by Top Dog 3:08pm Feb 24

Country Song Lyrics to Van Zant's "Help Somebody"

Heard this morning:

I never let a cowboy make the coffee
yeah that's what Granny always said to my Grandad
and he'd say never tell a joke
that ain't that funny more than once
and if you wanna hear God laugh,
tell Him your plans.

CHORUS:
Don't get too high on a bottle,
and get right with the Man.
fight your fights,
find your grace,
and all the things that you can change
and help somebody if you can.

Now Granny said sonny
stick to your gun if you believe in something
no matter what
cause it's better to be hated for who you are
Than loved for someone you're not.
She was 5 feet of concrete
New York born and raised on a slick city street.
She'll stare you down, stand her ground,
still kickin' and screamin' at 93
I remember how frail she looked
in that hospital bed
taking her last few breaths of life
and smiling as she said

Don't get too high on a bottle,
just a little sip e'vry now and then,
fight your fights,
find your grace,
and all the things you can change
and help somebody if you can,
and get right with the Man

Felix Culpa



Mary Herboth of the old "Ever New" blog sent a picture of her son Jordan, who is in the first year of his novitiate. She mentioned the low resolution and how it came out blurry, but it has a pleasingly otherworldly quality about it, doesn't it? (Hence the title of this post.) Jordan, called out of the world, can more fully pray one of St. Alphonsus De Liguori's most beautiful Marian prayers:

'My most beloved, most lovely, and most loving queen, I always thank my Lord and thee, who has not only drawn me, out of the world, but also called me to live in this Congregation, where a special devotion is practiced to thee. Accept of me then, my mother, to serve thee. Among so many of thy beloved sons, do not scorn to let me serve thee also, miserable though I am. Thou after God shalt always be my hope and my love. In all my wants, in all my tribulations and temptations, I will always have recourse to thee; thou shalt be my refuge, my consolation. I am unwilling that any one except God and thee should comfort me in my combats, in the sadness and tediousness of this life. For thy service I renounce all the kingdoms of the whole world...Thou are the mother of perseverance; obtain for me to be faithful to thee until death.'

Update:Mary writes on Secret Agent Man's blog:

He thought about changing his name to "Br. Leo" when he entered the novitiate after a saint (the one he chose for his confirmation name) but decided against it when he found out that there is a "St. Jordan." Everyone, please remember to pray for all the young men and women in formation - they need our spiritual love and support... so many are so young!

A Few Satirical Entries

...that somehow didn't make the satirical blog. Not sure why they were sitting in the draft folder. (And comedy is a terrible thing to waste.)

Jack Chick Torn Over Brown's "DaVinci Code"

JOHNSON CITY, TN--Comic book evanglist Jack Chick said he can't make up his mind about Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code".

"I love the anti-Catholicism. Brown's a man after my own heart when it comes to that whiff of Whore of Babylon stuff. But I'm troubled by his saying Jesus was married to Mary Magdalan. There's no Scripture to back that up. Reading that book is like eating ice cream with a manure topping. I just have mixed emotions..."

Benedict XVI Hires PR Firm to Overcome Rottweiler Image

VATICAN CITY--The Washington Post has learned that Pope Benedict XVI has retained the services of the prestigious public relations firm Liebowitz & Associates to counter falling poll numbers among American Catholics.

The firm's head, Edgar Liebowitz, will personally handle the case and has guaranteed a certain number of column inches, air time, sound bites, Web hits, and at least one feature in an influential journal. He also hopes to win the Pope a Nobel Prize.

Mr. Liebowitz plans to effect greater customer awareness of Catholicism (referred to as "branding") as well as a specific number of converts within a specific timeframe.

I's So Confuzed...

See Rich Leonardi's post.

Is it just me or does it seem like you need a detective agency to figure out if your donation goes from your local United Way to Planned Un-Parenthood? A listing of the 77 agencies of United Way. No listing of PP.

But meanwhile, over at Planned Parenthood's Central Ohio site:

Did you know that Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio is one of the largest recipients of United Way donor designation dollars in Franklin County?

I did not. So, is this a case where you can still designate P.P. but if you just give to the general fund none of your dollars go towards it?

Update: This looks reassuring.

Update 2: Devious, that ol' United Way. There are so many good charities in that basket but Gregg the Obscure found an obscure one - www.firstlink.org - which funnels money to the Columbus Health Dep't which in turn gives to PP. What I couldn't understand was how PP could've withstood the tremendous funding cut that UW would've represented (PP used to be a main agency in United Way). Looks like they still get funding, if roundabout.

Taking a page...

...out of Disputations' book, I thought I'd react to Dreher's manifesto with my response in italics:

A Crunchy Con Manifesto    By Rod Dreher

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

This is elitism, not conservatism. (Not that there's anything wrong with elitism except that you can't defend democracy at the same time since the notion that the herd can't see clearly flies in the face of the democratic principle that the herd usually gets it right.)

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.

How does one categorize a thing as large as "modern conservatism"? Do you merely look at the President and Congress or have you polled all those who call themselves conservative? And couldn't you substitute "modernity" for "modern conservatism"?

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

Uh, like, has anyone missed Enron in the news? Anyone who works in the business world knows that business is to be treated with skepticism, so this feels like a non-sequitor. But I'll grant the possibility that this hasn't sunk in yet.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

Indeed, this is/was a huge blind spot for the current Administration, and everyone with a three-digit IQ now understands this. Even uber-rationalist David Brooks got the memo. Mentioning this now is like telling the farmer that his horses are clearly out of the barn long after they'd escaped from the barn.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.

Yes, I don't know how this differs from the classical notion of conservatism, which has the root word "conserve". Not controversial unless one wants to subordinate man to nature, as if man should no longer be the steward of creation but its servant.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

Again, this is a mantra of conservatism, at least Russell Kirk 101 conservatism. How you implement the encouragement of the small, local, old and particular would be the interesting point here.

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

Indeed, this is a point well taken.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

Yes but how that relates to politics I'm unsure, unless you're seriously in favor of government censorship of Britney Spears.

9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”

The conservative party is already at the forefront of attempting to preserve the family. Banning gay marriage and attempting to outlaw abortion are two examples.

10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives.

Of course. The conservative party is the party of personal responsibility, which is another way of saying the government can't save you. This is another non-sequitor. Something can be important and yet not be the most important thing.

Since I'm already beating this subject dead, I'll quote Rich Leonardi, who understands that the devil is in the details:

Don't most of us recognize and register our opposition to this [material] crassness, albeit perhaps less emphatically and sans granola, by catechizing our children? ("Pushing back against the culture" -- to use Flannery O'Connor's phrase -- and all that.)

I do hope that there isn't some sort of predictable policy agenda associated with "crunchy conservatism." Otherwise, it runs the risk of being a Catholic variation of the elusive "third way." For example, a year or two ago, a Catholic civil war erupted over the subject of Texas' CHIP, a state assistance program designed to provide healthcare to the working poor. It was more or less taken for granted that the "right" Catholic position was support for the program. Anyone who dared oppose it or pointed out its flaws was heckled as "putting his party before his faith" or "wedded to a hoary ideology."

Crunchy Cons...

I'm kind of scratching my head over this Crunchy Con stuff. I haven't read the book, but I'm thinking what's the point? I sent an article that Dreher wrote a while back to a left/liberal co-worker (though he doesn't like labels), and my co-worker responded with this zinger (proving that even so-called conservatives and liberals can see eye-to-eye occasionally):

Finally got to read this. Cute. It's amazing to me that there are people who are this concerned with conforming to behaviors that keep them in accord with an arbitrary category that they have placed themselves in.

Let's see, if I think of myself as a moderate suburban traditionalist with leanings toward libertarianism, what brand of beer can I allow myself to drink without slipping into some other ideology ? And what if I like a different brand, do I have to vote against the school levy ? But if I think about this very long that makes me too bookish with a deconstructionist bent and once I figure out what brand of beer I can permit myself to drink, what's next on the list ? Or can I even drink beer at all...

Update: It looks like Jonah Goldberg is similarly discombobulated.

Saddam Had WMDs?

The conventional wisdom, which is often wrong, insists that Saddam had no WMDs. But on O'Reilly's show Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney said otherwise, claiming that the recently released Hussein tapes show he did during the '90s. McInerney thinks Saddam allowed the Russians to move them to Syria and that the reason the Bush administration isn't talking this up is because they see Russia as crucial in the war on terror and are looking forward not backward. Normally I'd think this unlikely, but the Bush Administration is so inept at defending itself that it actually seems plausible. More here.

Another interesting comment was made by a Brit a couple weeks ago (I've forgotten his name). He said that Blair wanted to go into Iraq but didn't want the de-Bathification that Bush insisted on (i.e. no nation-building). He wanted simply to remove Saddam and his sons & immediate cabinent and that's it. Tony Blair looks like a genius now, as if he alone found the elusive middle way between irresponsible negligence (i.e. allowing Hussein to make and use WMDs despite the Gulf War ceasefire agreement) and chaos (i.e. now).

Call Me Easily Amused...

...but not late for dinner. Terrence Berres (who emailed me: "athletes should give 110% to avoid cliches like the plague") remarks on the change of his diocesan newspaper from The Catholic Herald to Our Catholic Herald. Now there's your democracy in action boys and girls! No top-down organization there, at least when it comes to names.

I love things like that. Like when my hometown of Hamilton, Ohio re-named itself Hamilton!, Ohio in order to increase tourism. There's a sort of naive innocence in those who actually think those things work. You can see them around a board table and their eyes light up: "You know, we could change the name!"

The Herald's substitution of the personal pronoun reminds me how when I go to McDonald's fine restaurants I'll sometimes say, perversely, "I'll have your Quarter Pounder with Cheese" as if the cashier feels a sense of ownership. (And while on the subject of McDonald's, here are a few ways to have more fun during your drive-thru visit: Pronounce "filet of fish" as "fill-ett o' fish". Roll your r's when asking for a breakfast burrito. And when they ask you how many creams for your coffee, say "2.5".) Anyway, Terrence B. writes,

I suppose that this blog might serve as something of a journal of semi-pro manipulations by parish and archdiocesan staff. They do seem to often forget to close the cover, and we see the gears turning and stripping...

Perusing other postings, I could vicariously appreciate Patrick's smittenness with ice dancer Elene Gedevanishvili. Having watched all of thirty minutes of the Games, it's possible I'm giving these Olympics short shrift...

~
Speaking of Russians, heard Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture this morning on the way to work, a piece I'd hadn't heard in years, and was struck again by the climactic ending. Ravel's Bolero is supposed to be erotic but I think the 1812 Overture could give it a run for its money.
~
The writer at Simply Wait writes of the best places to write:

I once considered moving back to the mother country, where undoubtedly the writerly impulse slipped into my genes as stealthily as my melancholic temperament or my fondness for black beer. Yes, I could go back to Ireland, the country my malnourished ancestors fled, rent a little cottage in the countryside, drink Guiness and wait for the golden river of prose to start flowing.

And if the prose doesn't flow, there's always that black river of Guinness...

Clichés

Novelist David Foster Wallace reads sports biographies despite constant disappointment over their banality. He wonders why athletes of genius are so incapable of describing their art, wondering if they are "stupid and shallow" or "somehow natively wise and profound, enlightened in the childlike way some saints and monks are enlightened.":

How can great athletes shut off the Iago-like voice of the self? How can they bypass the head and simply and superbly act? How, at the critical moment, can they invoke for themselves a cliché as trite as "One ball at a time" or "Gotta concentrate here," and mean it, and then do it? Maybe it's because, for top athletes, clichés present themselves not as trite but simply as true, or perhaps not even as declarative expressions with qualities like depth or triteness or falsehood or truth but as simple imperatives that are either useful or not and, if useful, to be invoked and obeyed and that's all there is to it.    (--from "Consider the Lobster")

David Brooks of the NY Times...

...has belatedly discovered that culture trumps economics and actually seems disappointed that human beings are more than automatons seeking the dollar:

Once, not that long ago, economics was the queen of the social sciences. Human beings were assumed to be profit-maximizing creatures, tending toward reasonableness....

As the world has become richer and better educated, religion hasn't withered; it has become stronger and more fundamentalist. Nationalism and tribalism haven't faded away. Instead, transnational institutions such as the United Nations and the European Union are weak and in crisis.

Communications technology hasn't brought people closer together; it has led to greater cultural segmentation, across the world and even within the United States.

All of this has thrown a certain materialistic vision into crisis. We now know that global economic and technological forces do not gradually erode local cultures and values. Instead, cultures and values shape economic development.

What I Learned During My Ancestor Project

I've collected and re-sewn posts of what I learned while doing my little ancestral study, which is chiefly that over the past century as the sacraments have been de-emphasized the popularity of a kind of semi-Pelagianism has increased. Link here.

Image from the....

...latest Columbus Dispatch:



Full image here

Diagnosis versus Cure

Steven Riddle has that rare gift of encouragement. He is not blind to reality yet exudes hopefulness. I think most of us appear more interested in diagnosis than in cure simply because, at least in the spiritual life, there is more complexity in diagnosis and we love complexity. There are a million ways we or the Church can stumble but only one way we or the Church can go right: Christ.

It seems a shame but is not surprising that St. James is remembered for the diagnosis - "faith without works is dead" - rather than the Cure, which he gives a few lines later: "Give in to God, then; resist the devil, and he will run away from you. The nearer you go to God, the nearer he will come to you."

This is cool...

Here's a site that allows you to search some 600+ Catholic blogs for a given search term. Tim Harrison is apparently the creator. (HT: Dom)

When I was visiting Westfield Monastery, I told Sister that prostitution is a lot like an addiction. And like many addictions, the struggle to not slide back into that addiction when things in life get rough is an on-going battle. Even now it is something I struggle with as the days pass and I’m still not working, and the University folk can’t get their act together and get things up and running for this degree I was supposed to start working on this week. I could log onto Craig’s List this minute and be turning tricks in an hour if I slipped and “took that first drink” as the metaphor goes. The only thing that keeps me on the straight and narrow is going to Confession and confessing the temptation. But there is a certain grace here as well, because it is in these moments of weakness that I am reminded once again that God uses his servants to give me strength. Each time I face a priest in the confessional and bring up the topic of prostitution, I brace myself for the condemnation. I’m still waiting though. The only thing I’ve received is love, empathy and compassion, things I find I’m completely unable to brace myself for and so they end up breaking me apart in ways that I cannot predict. But through God’s grace and mercy, I am reknit and each time the sutures that hold me together feel stronger and more secure. - Jennifer of "Confessions of a Wayward Catholic"

If there is one thing that I can give my children that I, for whatever reason, didn't have in my childhood, it will be a love for and regular practice of the Sacrament of Penance. I do not want them, as I did, to fear and avoid it, and spend many years without it. - Bob of "Trousered Ape"

I don't much like the idea of Rome "negotiating" with the SSPX as if it were just another political faction to be appeased. This political approach is to be contrasted with actually taking SSPX arguments seriously and making a place for Tradition for its own sake. But neither do I like the idea of Rome acceding to a list of demands (for that is the perception) presented by bishops who still refuse obedience - no matter how justified that refusal might be. When the SSPX bishops are regularized, they should return with a proper attitude of submission - an attitude which isn't likely to follow a political victory after negotiating favorable terms with the Holy See. It's just bad psychology. Better, in my opinion, for Rome to free the traditional rite from the arbitrary suppression of hostile bishops, eliminate the abuses which have universally followed the Novus Ordo, impose a strictly orthodox interpretation of the Council, and possibly lift the excommunication of Lefebvre alone, quite apart from any overt efforts to reconcile the SSPX. Then let the SSPX bishops - those who are still Catholic, anyway - return on their own initiative, with bowed neck and bended knee, to the filial obedience that is their heart's true desire. - Jeff C. of "Hallowed Ground"

- Roamin' Roman

She concludes, "I'd rather have real history." And this is what is so sad and so maddening about this phenomenon - isn't it? As millions are determined to find Leonardo's codes, they miss Leonardo's art and real brilliance. As tourists look for where Robert Langdon stood, they miss Caravaggio. As Jesus' royal bloodline and marriage are analyzed, 'Blessed are the poor' is ignored. And as to that last point - no wonder The Da Vinci Code is popular. The DVC Jesus goes down a whole lot easier then that other one, doesn't he? - Amy Welborn

I'm not sure what I think about this whole BLOG phenomenon, but I thought I'd give it a try. The title of my BLOG comes from the book of Jeremiah, where he complains, "You duped me, Lord, and I let myself be duped!" Few lines from Scripture better describe the mystery of a religious vocation. God called, and I answered, but, man, I didn't know what I was in for! It's difficult, but wonderful. - seminarian blogger at "You Duped Me Lord"

I recently decided against buying Benedictine Daily Prayer...it's all-inclusive, all the time: new Grail inclusive Psalms and the NRSV. On further reflection, perhaps this new fad of gender-inclusive and number-challenged language is our new vulgate - the vulgar language of the masses parallel to that which Jerome, that agonizingly tasteful Ciceronian, used in his translation of the scriptures. - Bill of Summa Minutiae

Indulgences are fully appreciated only in the context of Penance: personal sinfulness, societal sinfulness, the need for saving grace, sacramental absolution, the importance of works of penance and satisfaction, a realization that hell and damnation are concrete possibilities, etc. Where consciousness of these realities is weak or absent, an indulgence looks at best like cheap grace and at worst like a useless exercise. - commenter on Amy's blog

But then, the angel Gabriel came to me and said, “Hail, Full of Vainglory! The Lord still kind of likes you in spite of your miserable self, and He still wishes to bestow abundant graces upon you even though you don’t deserve squat. But He kind of likes your brother Der Tommissar too, and wishes to bestow grace upon him. It would be an act of charity for you to help Brother Tom to place last, so that he may be first.” I said, “How can this be, for I am not linked to by Amy Welborn or Mark Shea? Gabriel said, “The holy little Therese will come down upon thee and beat thee with roses and then varied endorsements will arise....And I said, “Behold, I am the moron of the Lord, let the Lord’s will be done.” Then the angel departed. - Rick Lugari of De Civitate Dei

Beer taster (I was never hired, but I showed up for work anyway.) - Ham o' Bone of Social Engineer, in a 4-meme on one of his four occupations

When he said, "In the world you will have troubles, but BE OF GOOD CHEER, I have overcome the world," Jesus was letting us in on the joke. More than that, he was telling us that he was the head writer. The situation may be unbearable, but the way out has already been provided for and so, a Christian can always look forward to Heaven and see the resolution to his problems which only Jesus can provide. This is why Jesus gives his followers permission to laugh at hopeless situations. Jesus is the Way and has given us that hope that the apparent contradiction is, after all, not so real as the world would have us believe because this is not the real world, after all. That "imaginary" heaven of the pagans or atheists is the real one. So, just as humor involves moving between a real and an imaginary world, just so, the Christian moves also between a real and an imaginary world, except, "this" vale of tears, the atheist's real world is, in fact, the imaginary, transient one. And Jesus says to every Christian at Baptism, "Surprise". This is why Christians should be of good cheer. - Donald Casadonte via Disputations

Various & Sundry...

1) I'm enjoying Masterpiece Theatre's Bleak House, though with all the cognitive dissonance one would expect to see in a conservative enjoying publically funded television.

2) This just in: It appears reports of winter's demise were premature.

3) I suppose, for someone who hasn't been robbed, the closest experience to highway robbery is one of those speed traps where a lack of signs fail to notify you of a decreased speed limit. But, on the other hand, it goes for the good cause of feeding policeman families.

4) Many a romance begins by projecting all virtue upon your potential spouse while being blind to flaws. A milder case of this seems to adhere to politicians, where I apparently see virtues in Bush that others don't, and contrarily see nothing good in a Kerry or Clinton where others do.

5) A good thing about the St. Blog Awards is the introduction of new bloggers. A bad thing is that by allowing multiple votes you allow those with the most time on their hands to unduly impact the results.

6) A priest on the gospel of Mark where Jesus says "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod": "That is, beware of lawlessness - Herod - and lawFULLness - the Pharisees."

7) If love = sacrifice and sacrifice = suffering, then doesn't love = suffering?

8) Shopping, for the male, is akin to death. The Kubler-Ross' Five stages of death and dying applied to shopping:

Denial and isolation: "This is not happening to me. My clothes are not threadbare and there is food in the pantry."

Anger: "I'm so angry at myself for not going to Sam's Club last time and buying in bulk!"

Bargaining: "Please, just don't allow these jeans to rip any further and I'll shop next weekend."

Depression: "I can't bear this. I have to go shopping."

Acceptance: "I'm ready. to. go. shopping."

"Moderate" Muslims?

Mansoor Ijaz, who is quite open in his dismay over the violence, says there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim:

The second truth — one that the West needs to come to grips with — is that there is no such human persona as a "moderate Muslim." You either believe in the oneness of God or you don't. You either believe in the teachings of his prophet or you don't. You either learn those teachings and apply them to the circumstances of life in the country you have chosen to live in, or you shouldn't live there.

Resurrection & Eucharist

One of the small mysteries of the Eastern rite liturgy is why the priest obscures the view of the altar during the words of Institution. Well, now the truth can be told: because the Eucharist is the Resurrection, and who witnessesd the moment of Resurrection? That's right, no one.

Michael Dubruiel talks about the Eucharist and the Resurrection in his book "The How-To Book of the Mass":

The priest will break off a small piece of the Eucharistic bread and drop it into the chalice that contains the Precious Blood of Jesus while he says a prayer silently. This is called the co-mingling of the bread and wine. It is a small act, but rich in symbolism. First, it symbolizes the Resurrection of our Lord. At the consecration our Lord came to the bread and wine separately - this is my Body, this is my Blood; symbolic of His death on the cross. Now the two are joined.

The Night Our Tivo Died   (to tune 'The Night Chicago Died')

In the chill of a winter night
In the land of the dollar bill
When the drives of our Tivo died
And we talk about it still

When the tube said "Pogue Mahone"
for the tv had no tone
And when I called in for a fix
it'd be weeks without our kicks.

I heard my mama cry
I heard her pray the night my Tivo died
Brother what a night it really was
Brother what a fight it really was
Glory be!

I heard my mama cry
I heard her pray the night my Tivo died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed!

And the sound of the silence rang
Through the house at the town's west side
And there was nothing to do but read
when Tivo up and died.

But then shouting in the street
And the sound of running feet
As a crowd in unison said
"Our Tivo is dead!"...

The High Cost of Sin & Unforgiveness

Kate Michelman. Hugh Hefner. What do they have in common? Besides both being advocates for policies that cause great societal harm, in the past both were greatly sinned against.

In the beginning Hefner was happily married and wanted nothing more than a normal family life. That is, until he found out his wife was cheating on him and the marriage ended. Greatly despondent, he came out of the experience much changed and began to preach a gospel of hedonism, seeking sexual satisfaction without commitment or responsibility.

Kate Michelman was married with three children and any sort of activism was the last thing on her mind. But then her husband abandoned her, leaving with her with three children and one on the way. She decided to end the life of the child in her womb, vowing "never to be humiliated again" and became a leader in pro-abortion movement.

So both were sinned against, and both would not forgive those who hurt them. And we - all of us - live with the repercussions today, showing again that no sin is private, including the sin of refusing to forgive.

Eucharistic Thoughts

Pondering the Last Supper I'm grateful that Christ made us a part of that event by virtue of our participation in the Eucharist. It fulfils the mutual longing between God and man without robbing us of our free will, which a more demonstrable display of his power might. We seek God with intensity and sometimes think ourselves unrequited, causing laughter in Heaven since exactly the opposite is true. God wants us far more than we want Him. And the Eucharist - by virtue of God remaining hidden - facilitates this togetherness without compromising our future good and glorification. Why should his hiddenness be for our future good? Because it builds faith. And why should building faith be for our good? That question looks at it backwards. God is good, therefore nothing other than good can come from Him.

When I was a kid I recall being bummed that Jesus ascended to Heaven - why couldn't he have stayed here where we so obviously need him? I thought that his Ascension was for his and His Father's good, though at our expense. A zero-sum game. False! There is no "at our expense" when it comes to God! In some mysterious way, the Ascension and the hiddenness of God both express a desire on His part to be with us in a more fruitful way. The Eucharist is a particularly ingenious method to build faith, exercise obedience, and provide a conduit of His grace that doesn't impinge on our free will. All at the same time!

Get Ready...

...for a new sport to be added to the 2010 Games - the sport of Olympic Curling...iron!



Young athlete in training...

Week in Review  - a stream o' conscious post on the week just past

Ahhh...but I can close my eyes and still feel the cruise-sun full on my face and the dispensation that allowed the reading of something as sweet and cotton-candyish as Jack McKeon’s autobiography...

My boss Rick is a character, especially at an office where we all compete for the Most Milquetoast Award. He’s of a perpetually sunny disposition and has large eyes that have a tendency to roll about in his head when he laughs, which is often. He tells me of his appearance at a slot machine tournament in Las Vegas. They take you to the machines in groups of twelve, and he almost got in a fight with someone when he mistakenly took the chair at their slot. He said that you have three or four minutes and you press a button as fast as you can. He said it felt ridiculous. There was even someone there cam-recording the whole thing. He just looked around and thought to himself, ‘look at all these ridiculous people constantly pressing a button’ and then he realized he was doing the same thing. He ended coming in fourth despite the distraction of looking around at his fellow players on the strength of hitting a decent jackpot at the end. He goes often to Vegas and Tahoe and when a co-worker told him he might have a gambling problem, he took it seriously: “I’m taking the month of February off to prove I don’t have a problem,” he told me but then added, “but I chose it because it has the fewest days!”. He may have a problem.

I told him I’d like to have experienced the slot tourney just so I could write about it, which befuddled him since he wondered why would I want to write about it, so I added it “I mean just for the experience of it”. It’s funny to see the expression of those who find out I write; they all can’t imagine I would do so. I learned I’m a blockhead (which you already knew): MamaT quoted Samuel Johnson as saying only a blockhead would write without getting paid. There’s a lot of truth in that. If there’s one thing we learned over the past election cycle is how little impact even paid writers have on the national discourse. Look at the pounding Bush took from editorial writers just before the ’04 election and how he won it handily. The Frank Rich’s and Mo Dowd’s of the world have much less power than they think. They say don’t fight with those who buy ink by the barrel but Bush did and lived to tell about it.

I’m really impressed by Rick Lugari’s website. I think it’s called City of God or something and the tone and design is pitch-perfect. He’s stopped blogging, or resumed briefly to support somebody in the blog awards. But what he’s doing there is attractive. If I could be more like another blogger, I’d be more like the comic Lugari or maybe Bill of Summa Minutiae, who confers a sense of well-being with posts about obscure books collecting dust in old libraries. Blogging about the issues of the day is important but a skill I don’t have because I’m not an expert on them, and given my hit numbers, no reason to be.

Lent is coming, and it seems by the end it’s like I’m struggling for air. I fly through the first two or three weeks, effervescent and enthusiastic, going to extra services and going the extra mile, but by Good Fiday I’m pretty much out of gas and spiritually numb at the very time I’d like to be most keen. Perhaps that's as it should be, though I'd like a different approach this year. Not less difficult, but maybe differently difficult?

What else? Well, we’ve got the whiphand on winter, she’s declining and shows it by how late it stays light now. It feels a bit of a hollow victory, like fighting Frazier when he was past his prime. I mean, come on, this was winter? When I was a kid we had real winters, like the blizzard of ’78. I have to say this was the most pansy-ass’d winter of all time. We had one tough month I guess. But I’m not complaining! I could live with these sorts of Gentle Ben winters where nobody gets hurt...

For lovers of beautiful churches. Breathtaking.

Fictional Friday

They say that the past is a foreign country, which makes reading it a particularly frugal form of travel. But reading about one's own ancestors imbues it with a richer dimension because to see the rogues and heroes of your own line brings home the knowledge that the potential for good or bad lies within you. It also brings out the dreamy...(fade to dream sequence)

   I was born two miles from the Irish Sea, where oft we'd catch salmon and sell it at the markets at Killybegs, Howth, Castletownbere, Rossaveal, Greencastle, Dunmore East, Dingle, Skibbereen, Kilmore Quay, Clogherhead and others along the coast. We’d smoke aged seawood in leeward winds and run-sail in our parent’s crude dingys. I’d stare at the agate sea until my mind was blank and the waves became as music. We would go to Mass at the church built in stones ten centuries old and dream of the Hill of Tara and hero Patrick’s burning the Druid altars. Sometimes the Sheridan girl would come with us, named like every other Eirean girl for the Blessed Mother. So fair she was that the Blessed Mother herself might be jealous, such be the beauty of this black haired Iberian. In the daily toil, we did the work man was meant to do – we free’d our mind from mental hardships and strife by dint of sheer effort. Work all day with your body and your mind become oddly satisfied...

Good George Weigel Column:

Second, the Pope suggests that the image of God in a culture will have a profound effect on that culture's image of man. The fundamental orientation of a culture is not derived from its family patterns, its way of doing politics, or its method of allocating goods and services. Rather, cultures take their basic direction from what they worship: from the way in which a culture imagines the divine, thinks of the divine (if it imagines that the divine can be "thought"), and relates to the divine. To believe in and worship a God who is love "all the way through" (as Thomas More puts it in A Man for All Seasons) gives Christian cultures a distinctive view of the human enterprise in all its dimensions. Which brings us to a third point Benedict makes, if briefly: warped ideas of God lead to warped ideas of the human, warped understandings of human relationships, and, ultimately, warped politics. When Pope Benedict speaks of "a world in which the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence," it is not difficult to imagine at least one of the primary reference points. That the Pope has jihadist Islam in mind here is also suggested by his address to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican on January 9, when he spoke of a danger that had been "rightly" described as a "clash of civilizations".

Ponderous

Read this link from Amy, and one commenter said, "Shaken? It makes a good headline but seems a bit melodramatic. By definition, religious faith requires some voluntary suspension of disbelief."

The post reminded me how in the past I've always been very supportive of Christian fundamentalists who take a literal view of Genesis (i.e. the earth was made in 7 literal days and dinosaur bones were tossed about to test our faith) because I'd always thought it's better to error on the side of credulity than incredulity. But that doesn't take into account the scandal to the Christianity that ensues in the minds of unbelievers. They are apt to tar the Christian religion as incompatible with science. For example, the agnostic who wrote "Under the Banner of Heaven" said that Mormons are unfairly targeted as being irrational merely because their irrationality has occurred in recent times, when these things can be documented.

Of course we all give scandal in other ways, so I should be far more concerned with my own scandal-giving.

Tortured by the Torture of Another

Watching all these episodes of 24 gives me the willies. If torture was an abstraction before, it's all too real on this simulated show. If I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy before, that sentiment has been brought home far more viscerally.

Which reminds me of the First Law of American Sympathy (which is just after the Law of Thermondynamics in its certainty) - what is on television is definitionally that which provokes pity. Example 1: as soon as the devastation of Katrina was not regularly on television, donations began drying up.

24 shows torture regularly and shows it even when the viewer is aware the victim is innocent. In some ways this is worse than suffering caused by a serial killer or a natural disaster since we can write off both of those to forces beyond our control - i.e. nature or insanity. But on 24, it's the good guys, in full control of their faculties, who are doing the near killing.

Torture makes me think, naturally enough, of suffering. Which reminds me of a Zippy comment on Disputations. He cautioned, "be careful what you pray for." I'm not sure how to read this except in the context of bringing unexpected woe and suffering upon yourself in a desire for greatness. An example of not being careful would presumably be the mother of the Son of Thunder, who blithely asked Christ that her sons be given seats at his right and left and Jesus says, "can they drink of the cup?". The cup of suffering.

What fascinates me is how the crucial aspect of whole-heartedness with respect to God squares with the seeming half-heartedness of cautiousness during prayer, since whole-heartedness has a sort of heedlessness, a kind of drunkenness about it. Perhaps it is merely the difference is between volunteering for suffering and being willing to endure it if it is thrust upon you. Since you can't be courageous without fear (bravery requires it, otherwise you are simply reckless) I’m obviously not saying that fear automatically taints whole-heartedness.

There’s a certain inevitably to facing the question, though preferably without an accompanying morbidity. (DNA is not destiny, but the Irish are morbid and sentimental.) I tend to alternate between the positions of “God suffered so you don’t have to” (i.e. "by his stripes, you were healed") and “God suffered, so why shouldn’t you?” (or "There’s no Easter without a Good Friday"). The fact that others are similarly afflicted is oddly consoling - I suppose the anticipation of suffering is a kind suffering, surely not meritorious (?) but at least there's some togetherness. Perhaps the reason the suffering are in such a better position spiritually is their lives are already misery, they are used to it and there is no inertia to overcome. Resistance or disinclination to motion, action, or change is not their problem, because change is seen as an unalloyed good. They can look forward to its relief, in this world or the next. On the other hand...from this link:

St Paul says, "this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4: 17). But as Balthasar readily concedes in the fifth volume of the Theo-Drama, "To someone who is really suffering, Paul's words on the relationship between earthly suffering and heavenly joy are hardly to be endured." And yet, with St. Paul, and based on his own theology of Holy Saturday, Balthasar will go on to claim that suffering is something good. In a modern utilitarian world, whose ethic is largely based on a pleasure-pain calculus, such words will provoke outrage. But Scripture does not flinch from boasting of suffering. "I consider that the sufferings of this present age", says St. Paul, "are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Romans 8: 18)

Update: See this on the divine comedy.

The Rosary: It's Not Just For Catholics Anymore

Michael Poterman, who isn't Catholic, calls it a "marvelous form of contemplative prayer" in the latest dead tree National Review:

[This is a] specifically Catholic form of devotion that deserves a lot more attention from other branches of the Christian community...Owing to the repeated prayers, it has been viewed with great suspicion by Protestants anxious to avoid the “vain repetitions” Jesus warned against (Matt. 6:7). But the repetitions are actually a great aid to contemplation: “Changing the rhythm of one’s life, freeing the mind to move in a different way, involves slowing down the tempo of thought, entering a stalled state.” The idea is not to wear out the divine Hearer with a rote recitation, but to calm the mind of the one who is praying — and thus enable him to focus on the Bible scenes being meditated upon. I would add another consideration: The chief impediment to prayer is distraction, and the rosary helps solve this problem by building the distraction into the prayer itself. If the mind wanders from the mysteries, it can wander to the repeated prayers — and vice versa. To wander away from the prayer entirely requires more than the usual amount of mental agility.

Another objection frequently raised to the rosary is that the prayer most frequently repeated within it is addressed not to God, but to Mary. Is this not idolatrous on its face? Wills ably explains that this asking for Mary’s help is not idolatrous; it is, he writes, merely “to rely on our fellow member of the mystical body of Christ.” It is standard practice among Evangelicals to ask our fellow church members to pray for us; the Hail Mary simply extends this practice to the woman who was the Church’s first member. (Anyone whose theological conscience absolutely forbids addressing in prayer — of any kind — a non-Divine person can replace the Hail Mary with another short prayer, e.g., “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” What’s essential for this form of devotion is to preserve its two-track structure.)

In 2002, Pope John Paul II expressed the hope that the rosary could become “an aid and . . . not a hindrance to ecumenism.”

Happened Across...

..this review contra "The Miracle Detective", which attempted to explore the authenticity of the visions at Medjugorje:

Similarly, much apparently impressive medical evidence is put forward in support of the visionaries, but the crucial point, that supernatural visitations cannot be determined by scientific methods, has not been grasped by Sullivan. There is no way that a genuine seer can be scientifically detected with 100% accuracy, any more than a consecrated host can be differentiated from an unconsecrated host scientifically. Discernment is an essentially spiritual process, and while scientific tests may be able to uncover cases involving mental illness or hallucination, they are incapable of determining whether or not a person is a genuine seer—or a fraudster for that matter. Only the Church can give us a degree of moral certainty about these things.

Sympathy for Dick Cheney

Not much to say on the Dick Cheney story other than he could've handled the press and reporting of it better. I don't find it all that persuasive that he wanted to wait to report it, pending the condition of the shooting victim. After all, Whittington's condition is still pending. Yet I'm amazed by the Beltway fire storm. It's as though all the hate that has smouldered for years within the White House press corps has been lit by the match of this accidental shooting. For most liberals and much of the press Dick Cheney is, literally, the devil.

So I was going to re-write the lyrics of the Rolling Stones' song Sympathy for the Devil ("Please allow me to introduce myself / I’m a man of wealth and taste / I’ve been around for a long, long time / Served in the House and Dep't of Defense"... "I was there when Lincoln died / made damn sure Booth did the deed") when I realized that it wouldn't read as parody. You can't shock and awe when the Left has already shocked and awed us with its fierce hatred of Bush & Cheney.

What's in HIS Bookbag?

Bill of Summa Minutiae links to someone who writes:

At first I was excited to hear that the Monumenta Germaniae Historica was available for free on the Internet. No more traipsing to the library and lugging home those heavy tomes containing Venantius Fortunatus, Symmachus, Sedulius Scottus, and all the rest.

Uh, yeah, ol' Symmachus. He's a pal of mine too. And Sedulisu Scottus? Why that ol' rascal and I are on such good terms I call him "the Sed man".

This Post...

...is dedicated to Elena, Rich, Thomas, Suburban Bansheee, Ham, Jeanine, former Buckeye Steven and all you other proud Ohioans out there. From Henry Howe:

A song most widely sung is that entitled “The Hills of Ohio” by Alexander Auld. He was born in Milton, Pa., and came to Ohio in 1822, when a child of six years...The words are not original with Mr. Auld, but were set to music and largely sung by emigrants in the early years of this century.

THE HILLS OF OHIO  ...From “The Key of the West” by Alex. Auld.

1. The hills of Ohio, how sweetly they rise,
In the beauty of nature to blend with the skies;

When fair azure outline, and tall ancient trees,
Ohio, my country, I love thee for these.

2. The homes of Ohio, free fortuned, and fair,
Full many hearts treasure a sister’s love there;

E’en more than they hill-sides or streamlets they please,
Ohio, my country, I love thee for these.

3. God shield thee, Ohio, dear land of my birth,
And thy children that wander afar o’re the earth;

My country thou art, where’er my lot’s cast,
Take thou to they bosom my ashes at last.

Today, Feb. 15...

...is the feast of Blessed Claude de la Colombiere. He is best known for his devotion to the Sacred Heart, via St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. From one site:

It was after this revelation that St. Margaret Mary was to meet and be guided by the great Jesuit priest, St. Claude de la Colombiere.(d.1682) He would be the first, after St. Margaret Mary, to respond to these requests of the Sacred Heart. Our Blessed Lord, in speaking to Sister Margaret Mary, even called him His "perfect friend."

And part of the revelation:

Revealing to me His Divine Heart, He said: 'Behold this heart, which has loved men so much, that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify to them its love and in return I receive from the greater number nothing but ingratitude by reason of their irreverence and sacrileges and by the coldness and contempt which they show me in this sacrament of love.'

Random Thoughts

MamaT thanked me for STG'ing the quote via Terrence Berres which highlighted our Christian duty to get enough sleep. I'm hoping for a similar duty to drink beer, though I'm not holding my breath.

~ (official delimiter of the 2006 Olympic Games)

In a negative review of Randall Sullivan's "The Miracle Detective", the reviewer said that Sullivan's prose is self-absorbed and hence it's not surprising it would appeal to a self-absorbed generation. But if you're self-absorbed why do you appreciate other's self-absorption? Isn't that "other-absorption"? *grin*

~
The explosion of Catholic blogs is amazing. I can't read but a fraction, which means that STG grows ridiculously non-representative of the whole. One of the more attention-getting names on that list is You Duped Me Lord, the blog of a seminarian who writes, "Thanks to all who nominated You Duped Me Lord (and me -- am I my blog, is my blog myself?) for Best Blog by a Seminarian."

~
Ralph McInerny writes about his writing life in the latest issue of First Things. He begins, "It is the rare reader of fiction who does not at some time or other consider becoming a writer."

Fiction only? I think it affects all avid readers. After all, sometimes you can put more fact in fiction. Carlos Eire, author of "Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy" said that he can say many things in fiction that he wouldn't dare in non-fiction.

But self-expression isn't the point, which is easy to forget but which McInerny reminds us. He says the plot is a story's soul and "producing a well-made story is all that counts." (Score one for Ham o' Bone!)

Ohio, Say It Loud And There's Music Playing...

A thoughtful reader sent along the link of a genealogy site on which I found the following. Written in 1888 by Henry Howe:

Poetry and song ever appeal to the imagination, and so helped its quick settlement. Great things always require them—as war and religion. All soldiers, even savages, have their war songs, and the only religionists among us who have not song are those calm, sweet-tempered people, “the Friends,” and they are fast melting; soon will vanish entirely, when the “thees” and “thous” will be heard no more in the land. A single verse drops in here as a matter of history. It is from one of the songs that was sung at the East at the end of some game where kissing - never to be a lost art - was going on between young people, who later largely became fathers and mothers out here in the Ohio-land:

“Arise, my true love, and present me your
hand,
And we’ll march in procession for a far distant
land:
Where the girls will card and spin,
And the boys will plough and sow,
And we’ll settle on the banks of the pleasant
Ohio.”

Suppose an unsavory name had been given to the great river, and then applied to the State. It might have retarded its settlement for years. Say the name of a certain river now in Vermont—“Onion.” Who would have sung its praises? What kind of emigrants would have been attracted, and by what name after they got here would they have been called? As it was, the pioneers were the brightest, bravest, most cheery young people of the East, and their children inheriting their exuberance and pluck, fill the land with hope and song.

My high-school educated grandparents not only had these [KJV] bibles, but they read them--every day of their lives. I had occasion to go and stay with my grandmother to help her around the house and get her to appointments while my grandfather was in the hospital recovering from surgery. During times in the hospital waiting room, when she wasn't lifting the spirits of other visitors, she was rapt in her Bible. One time my Grandpa S was saying something about the Blessed Virgin (this upon learning that I had wholeheartedly joined the Catholic Church) and my grandmother quoted chapter and verse. Grandpa, "There's nothing so great about Mary." Grandma, "Now, Oscar (her pet name for him) you know it says right there in the Good Book itself, 'Hail thou that art highly favored, Blessed art thou among women. . .'Cain't see any way around that making her special. The good book says so." For any occasion their first recourse was the rich treasury of scripture that they had read, memorized, internalized, and to some degree lived. Both of my grandfathers could give long, and I pleased to say that subsequent research revealed, largely correct talks about the historical background of the books of the Bible, and understood clearly what is often unclear to me in Paul's letters. - Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli

When folks from my local church gather for an evening meal or adult education class, we usually close with Compline...This service is helping me to understand sleep as part of faithfulness. For it is sheer hypocrisy to pray with my community for a peaceful night and a perfect end if I know I am going home to put in three or four more hours answering email. Sleep more: this may seem a curious answer to the question of what Christians can do for the common good. - Lauren F. Winner, via Terrence Berres

As is so often the case these days, there seems to be a great divide in discourse on this issue [on the cartoons & Muslim violence]. And the divide is not between various opinions, but between the realities that people take into account as they're forming their opinions and responses. A parallel situation might be the situation down on the US-Mexico border. In the debate, some seem to persist in the paradigm that all we are talking about here is huddled masses yearning to be free, but the deeper reality is that we're dealing with drug and people-smuggling cartels, increasingly heavily armed. That calls for more than statements about the human right to support one's family.... I can't begin to really sort out this issue, but I can hope for more honesty. Religious leaders who comment on this need to take more into account than their concerns about blasphemy in general. They need to admit that the destructive, hateful forces at work in some elements of Islam, and that those forces are no friend of Christianity or Judaism.  The old, safe paradigm is collapsing...which is another way of saying - it's not safe any more. - Amy Welborn

There is the awful necessity of playing teacher when I'd rather be here, unordained preacher of unvarnished truth; add to that many student papers in need of grading by the light of melting, midnight tapers, not to mention the book in urgent need of revising, and an article, too, against my protests the editor advising that, on our pilgrims' way to the land of milk and honey, the ignoble but pressing need yet remains: to make money. - William Luse of Apologia

We really need another Eucharistic Miracle just like the ones which occured in Lanciano (I think there is a video by the Church on this) etc... The world needs another Miracle to come to Christ and Catholics need the miracle to strenghten their faith which is constantly being attacked... God willing, may a Eucharistic Miracle come soon. - commenter on "Curt Jester"

Calling for Eucharistic miracles is an easy way out. Taking as certain what my Savior said in John chapter 6 should preclude any need for extraordinary signs, He can neither deceive nor be deceived. This generation gets only one sign-the sign of Jonah. I hold my Eucharistic Lord in my hands every day when I preside at Eucharist. His guarantee is enough for me. - Fr. Dave on "Curt Jester", responding to previous commenter

Two books stand out in my mind from that time of my life [as a child] - one was a Louisa May Alcott book in which a rosary is mentioned (prompting me to ask my mom "what's a rosary?") and the other was a biography of Saint Dominic (I read my way through the whole row of Vision Books lives of the saints!) in which I learned the words 'heretic' and 'heresy' - and once again, that mysterious thing, a rosary. - Alicia of "Fructus Ventris", who grew up Anglican

There is an elegance to nature that all can recognize, even those who do not recognize the intelligence that created it. When materialistic scientists say there is "no need for God" in whatever mechanism they're studying, we should consider that a compliment. After all, there's no need for a watchmaker inside a well-made watch; the fact that it works without the watchmaker constantly tinkering with it is what we mean when we say it's "well-made." As created by God, you might say, Nature comes well stocked with natural causes. - Tom of Disputations

The things I thought were so important -- because of the effort I put into them -- have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered. - Thomas Merton

The weirdest, and perhaps most frightening part comes when you encounter what strikes you as some rather good passages...and you have no memory of writing them! You think...well, perhaps the editor really cleaned this up. You look back at your original manuscript - no, it was your work. Why is that frightening? Because you recognize that your best work comes from some place within that is beyond your control, that somehow, in the mysterious mix of skill, memory, intuition and the muse...this evocative little passage emerged. And you have no idea how it happened. And no assurance that it can ever happen again. - Amy Welborn on writing

It took me a long time to get into the rhythm of meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary while praying the decades. I didn't know them all by heart and for a while it seemed like an ancient form of stressful Windows multitasking. But it comes more easily now, and frequently the Lord bestows little insights about his nature out of nowhere while I'm praying. - Roz of Exultet

I have also learned that God wants not only our minds (because this is what I tend to give Him), but also our hearts. Song helps us to give our hearts. This also why the restoration of singing together-whether hymns or folk songs-is important to the restoration of a Christian culture. People need to know how to give their whole being. Music helps us do this. People resist. Singing makes them self-conscious. But this is exactly why it needs to be done-to thrust aside the self in order to give your entire self in song... - J Curley of "Bethune Catholic"

A Meme a Day...  keeps the doctor at bay

Via Eric Scheske:

Four Jobs I’ve Had  (not including present)
Paperboy
McDonald's "associate"
Long John Silver fry cook
Park supervisor

Four Movies I Watch Over and Over Again
Secret of Roan Inish
Groundhog Day
Mary Poppins
Three Amigos

Four Places I’ve Lived
Cincinnati (a suburb)
Columbus
the local bookstore
in the past

Four TV Shows I Watch
24
Without a Trace
Daisy Does America
The Office

Four Websites I Visit Daily   (besides fellow bloggers)
Open Book
Drudge
ProLifeSearch.com
Library Thing (well, once a week is more accurate)

Four Places I’d like to be right now (Besides Heaven)
Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula
Rome
Orkney Islands U.K.
Southern Germany

By the power invested in me, should you decide to accept it, I hereby meme Ham o' Bone, Trousered Ape, Bizarre Beth, and Gregg the Obscure.

While Emptying Desk Drawers...

I found this article by Nuala Ni Dhomnhaill encouraging the resuscitation of the Irish language. Now that's a fine Quixotian project that spits into the wind of our utilitarian age. Here's a tasty excerpt describing things beyond the "ego envelope":


Full story here, here and here.

NY Times, Christianity, & Capitalism

I blogged earlier wondering why the NY Times is so hypocritical when it comes to a willingness to offend Christian sensibilities versus Muslim.

Calling the NY Times Marxist is name-calling, but they do lean towards the socialistic side of things, which might help explain their antipathy to Christianity - see this illuminating passage from Blankley's book "The West's Last Chance":

The alleged role of Christianity in deadening the pain of capitalist oppression was forever immortalized in the truly beautiful words of Karl Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness."...

Karl Marx, as he does so often, brilliantly diagnoses the relationship of forces, but gets the underlying fundamentals exactly wrong. He argues that people seek religion to give them comfort from the pain caused by capitalism. Get rid of capitalism, enact socialism, and the pain will end; then people won't need religion.

The idea became the central tenet of progressive thought in Europe (and elsewhere)...during which time most progressive, educated Europeans bought into Marx's proposition (whether they knew he was the author or not). Christianity's affiliation with reactionary monarchy and cruel capitalism gave it a bad odor. Smart, sophisticated people - or people who wanted to think of themselves as smart and sophisticated, and who does not? - said they were not taken in by the "old lies" of capitalism and Christianity.

But in 1989, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the contradiction inherent in Marx's system of analysis was revealed: It is socialism, not capitalism, that causes the greater pain for humanity....For the first time in 150 years Christianity is unyoked from its bondage to...despised capitalism. Christianity can now begin again to be considered on its own merits.

From Tony Blankley, "The West's Last Chance":

It's also going to hit the pocketbook, so look for lean times ahead:

Eventually it will dawn on Western leaders and public opinion that it would be safer to keep some distance between the West and Islam. Everything from Internet connections to immigration, to tourism, to business, to trade will be more carefully controlled, if not partially disconnected. Each restraint on the free flow of people, material, and words will act to marginally damage our economies.

Globalization expert Martin Wolf estimates that US incomes are $1 trillion per year higher due to the country's increased integration with the world economy since 1945." That amounts to almost 10% of GDP, or $10,000 per household per year.

If such open trade were interrupted, it could mean that the net assets for the average American family might be reduced by more than $200,000 over the next 20 years...

There's a Bad Moon on the Rise

For the pessimist, the current Islamic situation is what Hershey, Pennsylvania is to the chocoholic: the "Mecca" of their addiction.

It's really that bad folks, and it's going to get worse.

It seems to have of late reached some sort of critical mass since two very different priests in central Ohio mentioned it over the weekend, and I don't recall a local Catholic priest ever mentioning Islam or Muslims in a sermon before. (Terrorists, yes. Al Qaida, yes. But never the religion and its adherents.) Our Byzantine pastor says, "Please pray for the Muslims. God loves them too. And we Eastern Christians have much to offer since we lived side-by-side with them for centuries, mostly peacefully."

Our RC pastor says that

"you can tell a lot about a religion by what happens when you show disrespect towards their founder. Christians wear crucifixes and crosses, an emblem of the disrespect shown to their founder. We remember it and we identify ourselves as the cause of it, or at least we should."

He went on to say that the Resurrection was proof that God is more powerful than our sin. Islamists don't have that proof so they are mired in a religion that

"still thinks the way to overcome sin is through power, through violence. Thus they take up arms against those who would insult the Prophet Mohammed."

UPDATE: In going over the archives, it appears I was wrong about no priest giving a sermon dealing with Islam. See this:

Our pastor gave a sermon on the Feast of the Ascension...the gist of it is how Christianity differs from, say, Islam. Christ, naturally. But also there is a core
difference in the concept of God. We don't much understand the Trinity, he
says, so we don't emphasize it. But the idea is that Three Persons are so in
love that their boundaries become blurred. The concept of the Trinity is of
a "relational" God. He said that anytime we begin to view God as being other
than relational, we end up in tyranny, with a desire to force our views on
others.

The "Why?" of the Violence After the Danish Cartoons

Excellent overview of how it came to happen that Danish cartoons led to violence.

The gist of it is a familiar one: Middle Eastern governments either hate the West (like Iran) or they'll work with the West (like Saudi Arabia), but if they choose the latter course they have to placate their radicalized citzenry by using things like the cartoons as symbolic way of showing their Islamic bone fides. Do read the whole thing, but here's a quote on how one imam changed his mind:

The wave swept many in the region. Sheik Muhammad Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it.

"For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important," Sheik Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus in Christian countries. "I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries."

Then, he started to hear that ambassadors of Arab countries had tried to meet with the prime minister of Denmark and had been snubbed, and he began to feel differently.

"It started to seem that this way of thinking was an insult to us," he said. "It is fine to say, 'This is our freedom, this is our way of thinking.' But we began to believe that their freedom was something that hurts us."

To All The Books...   (to tune "To All The Girls I've Loved Before" )

To all the books I've read before
Who travelled in and out my door
I'm glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the books I've loved before

To all the pages I once caressed
And may I say I've held the best
For helping me to grow
I owe a lot I know
To all the books I've loved before

The winds of lit are always blowing
And every time I try to stay
The winds of writ continue blowing
And they just carry me away

To all the books that've grown on me
Who filled my days with ecstasy
They live within my heart
I'll always be a part
Of all the books I've loved before

The Weekend, We Hardly Knew Ye

"I ain't missin' you at all..." - Waite

Time stops for no man, but slows at least during the long Sunday read and this Sunday's read was no exception. A few stray comments:

Tony Blankley's book "The West's Last Chance" - shock and awe indeed, your advice is to "short the world" and pray for the conversion of Europe

Bill Buckley's sailing book - more lyric please, less minutiae, although your minutiae is better than most people's non-minutiae

Bowles' Henry the VIII - cherry-picked this for the final moments of this awful wife-killing king, wondering if redemption peaked out amid the ruins. None to the naked eye. Then read the snippets concerning Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More.

Jenkins' Churchill - Dear Winston, a few days before the WW I and you were worrying about the far-flung provinces of Ireland. Soon the empire was over, 700,000 British soldiers dead, and the world's soul, in the words of Orwell, was dead though it didn't know it yet. And you, famous seer of the Second World War, didn't see it coming. Why?

The Tale of Two Eulogies

In 1914, the year one of my great-grandparents died, most American Catholics would've considered the gospel account of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes as just that - a miracle. Christ, the God man, creating ex nihilo. From which wonder and amazement would naturally flow.

But now many American Catholics turn a blind eye to the miraculous. Perhaps embarrassed by accounts like that in an age of science or else they see them as designed not to provoke wonder but to produce more visible results. Americans are outcome-oriented, results-oriented. And the result God is interested in is not wonder or amazement but an individual's improvement in virtue. Unselfishness. Sharing. And thus the story morphed into a tale about how Jesus inspired the crowd to share the food they had on them.

I think the different interpretations, if you even call the latter an "interpretation", perfectly illustrate the difference between two eulogies I've recently read as a result of my little family history project. I post this with trepidation, wondering where the line is between expressing my feelings and showing disrespect and/or judgment towards the dead. As Sandy (you still reading this blog Sandy?) often says, "just because something is true doesn't mean you have to say it."

But both subjects were exemplary people and that is precisely why the difference between the eulogies is so interesting. Two highly-respected family members die, one in 1914 and one some eighty years later. By virtue of their virtue, we can eliminate a variable (to the extent you can judge that from afar). How we praise them becomes a cultural conceit. Or, indirectly, an expression of doctrinal belief.

Perhaps I have merely a bias for what is old, but I feel more comfortable with the language of the 1914 version. In that version faith in God is emphasized. In the later version the person's love of family and altruism is emphasized. The deceased in the latter is often quoted as having advised "always think of others first and you will find happiness." That strikes me as Pelagian, though perhaps I'm merely challenged by it since I'm still working on that think of others first thing, or shall I put it God isn't finished with me yet. In the ten page remembrance of the soul recently departed there is only one mention of God, that coming at the end when all are asked to say the deceased's favorite prayer, from which the recently departed had drawn great strength. God seems almost superfluous in the equation.

Perhaps this is all a matter of style since a deeply lived faith doesn't necessarily mean a lot of words. I think it was St. Francis who said, "Preach the gospel. If necessary, use words." "Only love is credible" wrote Balthasar. But in the other one page summary I have of the older eulogy there are lines like: "He passed away fortified with the last sacraments of the Church". You would simply never hear that now. Instead of "he passed away in the bosom of the Church" you'll likely hear "he passed away in the arms of his family". Or compare "he always thought of his family first" to "he always thought of God first".

Of course, it could be worse. Try this on for size: "He passed away in the afterglow of a Browns victory, just as he would've wanted."

From a Cincinnati area church...

Tánic sam slán sóer...

Whew…oh, but beer – a Spaten Optimator - tastes good, massaging overtaxed dendrites. Took multiple trips to the downtown Columbus library to meet new ancestors. There were names retrieved that no one currently alive in our family - and therefore on earth - has ever heard of. Joseph, born 1901, may you rest in peace. It feels a sort of small victory over death since death's mission is obliteration and forgetfulness.

It was as poetry to learn of two sisters to William C. Sr., born two years apart with pleasingly antique names: Bridget and Maria. Maria C. Bridget C. What male heart doesn't melt in the foundries of a Maria and a Bridget?  "Maria, say it loud and there's music playing...."  Ah, but they are the stuff of legends, long-lost relatives a stone's throw from Eire. How much closer the shore? I have sea fever, and the thirst to get to the Irish Sea is so palpable that I can taste the brackish air as I strain towards the enigmatic Patrick C. and his Irish pappy who took the pap of an Oirish mother before the famine went and ruined it all. I pine for the Clan Na Gael days of sweet insensibility, pre-psychology, before television and films and self-awareness made keening laughable. Back, to the point where English fades and the tongue of the Gaels resurges, back to the fiery furnace that purifies, back to the time you could still smelt the turf burnin’ and see the clocháns where the monks lived, who burned their prayers heavenward with scents so fragrant with otherness and asceticism and purity that they went straight to God, making their way through the obstacles and marshes that we place in the way, expecting He part Red Seas of our own making...

In those dusty books and ancient photographs everything is important. There is no such thing as minutiae where the dead are concerned. Their lives - finite as a breath! - were too short for that. Where they worked, how they worshipped, the shape of their language - it's all definitionally interesting. Reading of the dead gives me a sharpened sense of my own mortality and the brevity I have on this puzzling sphere. The company that employees me tries mightily to ensure we have a “sense of urgency” but how can we not, on this earth when time seems to gather speed and when the grave and the account we must give before the Judgment Seat rushes towards us?

It’s impossible for me to see any of the lives of my ancestors as waste, even the most drunken ne’er do wells, because they contributed to the very fact that I’m alive. He drank, he was lazy, he lived serially off his animal highs. And he had a child - my grandfather. What could I possibly say against him? Who am I to judge!? His life is as a miracle to me. Still, I am not the judge.

Faith & Reason

I quoted Fra' Lawrence Lew O.P. last week and said he should have a blog. Well, turns out he does, and has an excellent post up about St. Thomas and Muslims.(Found via Julie.) I love this quote from the Angelic Doctor: "So with unbelievers we are obliged to have recourse to pure reasoning, to which everyone can give their assent. But reason is feeble in treating of divine matters." Ain't that the truth. More Aquinas:

"It is difficult to argue against errors. First of all, we know too little about the troubling ideas of different opponents, so we can't begin our argument (as we should) by examining what they really feel in order to critically rejoin their false conclusions. The doctors of early times knew the doctrines of the pagans, since they had once themselves been pagans (or had at least lived among them) and were acquainted with how they thought.

Further, we can't have recourse in dialogue with the Muslims or pagans to the same authorities to support our arguments. With the Jews, we can bring the Old Testament to bear; with heretics, the New Testament. But unbelievers do not accept these books. So with unbelievers we are obliged to have recourse to pure reasoning, to which everyone can give their assent. But reason is feeble in treating of divine matters.

In dealing with reasonable truths, we can convince our opponent through rational arguments; but in treating of God's revelation, our investigations have to go beyond the toil of reasoning. We should not seek to convince others concerning revelation by reasonable arguments, but reason only to resolve objections to the faith by showing that they do not contradict the faith.

Fra continues, "Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., summarises the arguments put forward in Aquinas' Summa contra Gentiles to explain that unlike some religions,"

"we [Christians] should not put our trust in either forced assent under threat of weapons or in the seduction of earthly rewards. Rather, the decisive witness to the gospel is that, without any extraordinary signs, the world should be led to believe, by the example of ordinary and unsophisticated people, in a truth so difficult to believe, to hope for so noble a destiny, and to live a life so demanding. The example of wise figures from the past, their passion for truth and their committed quest for their true destiny, reassure us in our own quest. They are a symbol of our privilege to live with faith in the word of God."

Ponderables

If Solomon was so wise, why did he go astray? God, being faithful, did not withdraw the gift of wisdom yet still Solomon acted in an obviously unwise manner by showing fealty to strange gods in order to please his wives. There is apparently a distinction between wisdom and obedience to God even though you would think that obedience to God is the very cornerstone of wisdom. I guess it goes back to free will, since the wisdom God gave Solomon did not impinge on his ability to choose to do wrong.

What's also odd in this story is there seems a recapitulation of Adam's sin - that of allowing his wife to sway him to the point of compromising his principles. Since Christ was the new Adam who did not sin, was he similarly tempted by a woman to compromise his principles? Not really, because in this case the new Eve was a handmaiden of the Lord, not a handmaiden to her own desires or of strange gods. But Jesus was tempted by Satan, whose ability to tempt would exceed any mortal woman.

Parody...

...blog updated. Because it's probably better to laugh than to cry?

The Middle Class Just Ain't Cool   ...there are just too many of us

On O'Reilly's show Jim Pinkerton of Newsday was asked why the NY Times is so blatantly hypocritical in their support of anti-Christian art while disdaining its anti-Islamic equivalent. (Examples were duly given.)

And Pinkerton said something I hadn't heard before. He said that the Times simply doesn't like the American middle class. Pretty much hates it. And I think that sounds more credible than O'Reilly's assertion that they are anti-Christian. If they are anti-Christian it's not because of Christ or the gospels but because they associate contemporary Christianity with the bourgeois middle class. The yahoos. Reminds me how co-worker once told me how he hates what he calls "the herd". I said the herd is sometimes right and he blew a gasket: "the herd is stupid!" he fumed. And the middle class is the herd of the American nation. You have a few elites and a few poor but most of us live in the middle.

But if tomorrow the American middle class suddenly became Buddhist and Hollywood - and the heads of the New York publishing houses - became Christian, who would doubt that the Times would be far more solicitous towards Christianity? I think the whole Da Vinci Code brouhaha and anecdotal evidence suggests that many people are simply bored by orthodox Christianity, despite never having really tried it. (If you really try it you can't find it boring.) How else to explain the fascination with apocryphal gospels? They are different. I recall buying Augustine's "City of God" at a Border's bookstore and the cashier giving me an "attaboy" because I was buying something the Vatican had suppressed. St. Augustine suppressed by the Catholic Church? As they say, you can't make it up. But the gospels apparently don't have any forbidden allure, made up or otherwise.

By definition news is new. There is a bias for reporters to be interested in what is new not what is old. And the apocryphals are new or at least "more" new than the familiar names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Throw a Thomas in there and people raise an eyebrow. Perhaps that is why. Or perhaps it all comes down to what is cool - and sadly the NY Times has never escaped that high school mentality.

Ranking the Popularity of Books

One of the uses of library thing is to gauge the popularity of an author's books within his own oeuvre. Perhaps too anecdotal now, it will get increasingly accurate. One problem is that it is biased towards recently released books - for Paul Theroux, "Dark Star Safari" is listed as having the most copies though I'm sure that's not his biggest seller. I could just look at the amazon.com rankings but I think they are more a snapshot of recent sales rather than total sales over time.

Randy Wayne White:

Sanibel Flats (A Doc Ford Novel) 9 copies
Captiva 5 copies
The Man Who Invented Florida (A Doc Ford Novel) 4 copies
The Heat Islands : A Doc Ford Novel (A Doc Ford Novel) 4 copies

Pope John Paul II:

Crossing the Threshold of Hope 32 copies
Love and Responsibility 14 copies
The Splendor of Truth: Encyclical Letter of John Paul II 8 copies
Fides et Ratio / On the Relationship between Faith and Reaso… 7 copies
The Theology of the Body According to John Paul II: Human Lo… 7 copies
The theology of the body : human love in the divine plan 6 copies

Interested in Rural Acreage?

Some buying tips.

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'Vator Talk

Riding the elevator. Woman in her mid-to-late twenties is carrying an open package of Lean Cusine that she'd apparently just microwaved in the cafeteria downstairs. She's also holding a Notre Dame mug. I think: that Lean Cusine looks so bad.

"That looks good," says another elevator rider, pointing to her Lean Cusine.

"Yeah it's not bad. I can't complain."

I think: I would.

"I'm on Atkins."

"Oh really? My dad's on Atkins. He'll go on and off it."

The contraction "he'll" sounds like "hill" and between that and other words I realize she's southern. Funny, ND's a national school and all, but don't associate it with our friends in the south.

Predictable Crises in a Blogger's Life

A fellow blogger is contemplating giving up blogging. The reason appears to be mainly a nagging feeling of not being read, and/or because they are simply repeating themself. Blogging can feel like writing into a void. But that can actually be freeing because then you can post something silly and off-the-wall.

I found his complaint about repeating himself a truism. I repeat myself. I repeat myself. (See, I just did.) There's only so much we can say, and we bring out our bag of personal insights that we've gathered over the years and air them and then...re-air them...and re-air...

I think the reason to blog is for the love of it. Before blogging, my writing consisted mostly of trip logs, diaristic entries and wisecracking emails to co-workers. I suppose that is the "core competency" of this blog (unlike Crystal's). Perhaps it's best to write what we would write if no one was watching.

Part of the warmth of the particular blogowner who is thinking of leaving is simply knowing that he or she is there and posting. It's like how the Pope says that sometimes just one's presence makes the difference quite apart from what you do or say. Sometimes I get a feeling of "all's right with the world" when a blogger I like posts, whether or not I find that post all that interesting.

It might also be interesting to consider what characteristics allow a blog to "wear well" over time, and whether personality plays a role. Perhaps it's an idiosyncratic thing. Or maybe it depends on style, or simply whether they post a high percentage of posts you like.

Restless Soul Syndrome

You've probably heard of restless legs syndrome but are you aware of the soul equivalent?











Photo above of a restless soul in action


What is Restless Soul Syndrome?

Restless soul syndrome (RSS) is a common spiritual disorder characterized by unpleasant sensations of having gone too long without prayer, Scripture and/or Sacrament. The relief of RSS is found in these remedies and in loving God and neighbor. Movement towards God always provides temporary relief from the discomfort of the God-starved.

Is there any cure?

Only Heaven.

Differentiating Justice & Vengeance

There are good arguments for the cessation of the death penalty but the weakest, it seems to me, is equating its very existence with a thirst for vengeance. One can easily imagine a society dispassionately choosing to assign death as the punishment for murder since there's obviously logic to it.

I think it was Chesterton who said that children long for justice and adults for mercy - about which there's a temptation to say that's because children are innocent and are more sinned against than sinning and adults tend to be manipulative and shady and more sinning than sinned against. Certainly the most innocent among us, unborn children murdered in abortion, are the most sinned against. One might think it's in the self-interest of the guilty to want mercy and for the innocent to long for justice. Which is why the figure of the innocent Christ forgiving his enemies is so startling and foreign to us. Thinking of our enemies as patients in need of healing rather enemies to be destroyed is difficult, to put it mildly.

The Pope recently made casual reference to Rev 6:10 in which the martyrs thirst for justice:

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"

Taking a book of the bible out of context isn't smart, let alone a passage from a book, but that sounded out of tune with the vision of mercy presented in the New Testament. (Full disclosure: as one not suffering persecution I cannot imagine what they went through and therefore can't imagine the solace the Book of Revelation was for them.) So I went to the scriptural commentaries, which fleshed out this difference between vengeance and justness:

The Navarre commentary has it:

The martyrs' song is a clamour for justice: our Lord refers to it in the Gospel (Lk 18:7) and it echoes the aboriginal lament raised at Abel's death. What the martyrs say seems to be at odds with Christ's prayer on the cross and Stephen's on the eve of his martyrdom but there is really no contradiction. "This prayer of the martyrs", St. Thomas says, "is nothing other than their desire to obtain resurrection of the body and to share in the inheritance of those who will be saved, and their recognition of God's justice in punishing evildoers."

From the Jerome biblical commentary

This cry does not express a desire for vengeance, which would not be in accord with the teaching of Christ (Lk 6:27f.). The marytrs call for the securing of justice. God would not be just, nor the Lord of history, if he did not punish injustice. The context and the recollections of the OT show that the souls are imploring God rather than Christ.

From Haydock's Commentary:

These holy souls, who had been slain for the word of God, do not beg the Almighty to revenge their blood, through any hatred to their enemies, but through the great zeal which they were animated, to see justice of God manifested: that by this severity they might be moved to fear him, and be converted to him. Thus in Scripture we often read of the prophets beseeching the Almighty to fill their enemies with confusion, to humble them, etc...

Ebola vs. Christ

The dead body swells in
sinister gesticulations bringing
death even after its demise.

The live body swells in
generous benedictions bringing
life even after its demise.

So intent
on spreading pathogen
the organs burst
the blood spurts
from every orifice comes death.

So intent
on spreading health
the organs burst
the Blood spurts
from every orifice comes life.

"And he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit"

For where the breath of a victim
brought death
the breath of a Victim
gave life.

The Walk to St. Pat's: 1870 compared to 2002

(FYI: This is more of personal interest than meant for public interest.)

new

old



1870s St. Patrick's

Was Job Right?

A meaty post, this was too long for Spanning but too good not to share.

[Pope] Benedict tackles, among many other things, a question that I've come to again and again (with varying degrees of understanding): the relation between eros and agape. My journals tackle it again and again: is the one to be abandoned for the other? Are they distinct, and can they add to each other? How do they, how should they, intertwine in our human loves? In our love for God? Of course, Benedict goes and writes exactly what I've been trying to grasp this whole time...Barbara was so impressed by the introduction that she asked to bring a copy of it to her Quaker Meeting. What a Pope we are blessed to have! - Patrick of "Orthonormal Basis"

“Are all forms of love basically one?” Benedict’s answer is in the affirmative. Although Anders Nygren is not mentioned, the argument is clearly counter to his pitting of eros against agape, which had an enormous influence in the twentieth century. Nor is C.S. Lewis mentioned, but Benedict’s argument is at important points at odds with Lewis’ famous description of the “four loves.” All love is one because the Trinitarian God is one, and God is love. - Fr. Neuhaus of "First Things"

“…it takes a real pastor,” Buttrick continued, “To go into a family where someone has just been promoted to presidency of the local bank and say, Mary, I’ve just gotten the news of your promotion. So I rushed right over knowing that this promotion is placing you in an extremely vulnerable position, as far as your soul is concerned. I wanted to come over and stand beside you during this time of potential temptation. Could we pray?” - Camassia

And, yes, I do realize this is an SSPX site. The last time I cited one of their pages I received a couple of warnings on the dangers of schism. Duly noted. If you are worried that your computer will acquire the schism virus upon accessing an SSPX page, consider this your warning. Oddly enough, no one has ever cautioned me about my rather numerous references to the Book of Common Prayer. Is a puzzlement. - John of "Inn at the End of the World"

Whatever one may say about Monsignor Lefebvre's obedience or prudence, if it weren't for him it's very unlikely that the approved traditionalist movement would even exist. Two thoughts do concern me, though. First, there are elements within the Society of Saint Pius X that are very much on the fringe and hold to ideas and methodologies that seem to have more to do with Jansenism than with Catholicism, a narrow-minded and very un-catholic approach to the world and to the Church at large. Bishop Williamson seems to be of that ilk, and I don't relish the idea of that sort being turned loose upon us. Second, I would not like to see the SSPXers coming to dominate the traditionalist movement as it already exists. - Fr. Jim of "Dappled Things"

I remember a time a few years ago when I was vexed by anger and depression and simply avoiding one particular blog really helped; • The recent anger and depression seem to hit me roughly in proportion to the frequency of my reading a particular blog; so • That blog is now off-limits. -Gregg the Obscure

Have you noticed how the first phrase of the first verse of the first Psalm sets up the essential story of salvation history from Adam to Christ? Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum...Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly... - Bill of "Summa Minutiae"

While walking through the forest, you notice the quiet. But when you stop and listen for 10 minutes, you suddenly realize it is not so quiet. (Ever notice that the longer you look at stars, the more stars you see?) There are many noises that even your quiet walking disguises. I wonder if this is like prayer.... In our prayer, how often are we paying attention? Just like in the forest, maybe a true silence will help us hear what God is trying to tell us-if we would only listen! He is speaking, but we are too busy with our distractions-and often don't even know it. - JCurley of "Bethune Catholic"

I think all this other talk about what magesterium is fallible, and which is infallible is just another way of looking for the loopholes. It makes a person bound by to "the law" (which I find incredibly ironic since liberal "progressive" sorts frequently speak with great disdain for any laws or rules, and yet they want all the behaviors that they favor to be written down, codified and pronounced ex cathedra!) That's not something that interests me at all. I don't want to be looking for how to slip through and barely live my Catholic faith...Instead I want to live it my Catholic Faith, live it fully and live it now!! - Elena of "My Domestic Church"

My own take on the whole thing is closer to Hugh Hewitt's, The Anchoress, and Catholic Outsider. The Catholic Outsider specifically said: "I still believe Catholics should not show fear to Islamic fanaticism, but neither enthusiasm on any kind of religion bashing." It seems to me that some have gone so far into saying that bashing of Moslems is a God given right. Telling the truth with charity is what we are called to do. Prudence is a major component in telling the truth. This does not mean that we have to deny that Islam is a heresy or that both historically and currently that it has mainly relied on the sword and not reason and apologetics to gain followers. Whether the Danish newspaper should have published the editorial cartoons is a matter of prudence, though the government should not be involved in their decision at all. - Curt Jester

This is the single most common objection to the Faith today, for 'today' worships not God but equality. It fears being right where others are wrong more than it fears being wrong. It worships democracy and resents the fact that God is an absolute monarch. It has changed the meaning of the word honor from being respected because you are superior in some way to being accepted because you are not superior in any way but just like us. The one unanswerable insult, the absolutely worst name you can possibly call a person in today's society, is 'fanatic' especially 'religious fanatic'. If you confess at a fashionable cocktail party that you are plotting to overthrow the government, or that you are a PLO terrorist or a KGB spy, or that you molest porcupines or bite bats' heads off, you will soon attract a buzzing, fascinated, sympathetic circle of listeners. But if you confess that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, you will find yourself suddenly alone, with a distinct chill in the air. - Peter Kreeft, via Rich Leonardi

Apparently we still believe in Purgatory. One would never have known it by attending the funeral I played for the other day. Not only was there no mention whatsoever of Purgatory but the assumption behind every word was that good ol' Bob went directly to heaven immediately he drew his last breath. A sort of parochial canonisation ceremony. No jiggery-pokery about investigation of his life or number of miracles for beatification like poor old Padre Pio had to undergo. And just to make sure there was no doubt at all of Bob's final destination, we enjoyed that popular liturgical wheeze in which the third Eucharistic prayer is used so that "Bob" can be inserted as the saint-of-the-day. I wonder if they've done him any favour by "celebrating his life" and leaving prayer for his soul to anyone who still remembers and happens yet to believe the doctrine. - John at "Inn at the End of the World"

Fr. L. drew us into a discussion of free will and predestination after saying that the very short take on Job is "why do bad things happen to good people?" Is it random? Is it because God is smiting you? Does God have a plan for your life? If so, just how specifically does He work in our daily lives? Well, of course, there's no concrete, provable answer to that. It is all opinion and interpretation depending on many factors in each person's viewpoint. I realized that one of the reasons I have never really taken to Job's story is that, in many ways, it is like reading a blog with too many arguing commenters. Everyone spends a lot of time fervently advancing their arguments but there often is no concrete answer because the question is too theoretical...It is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. And that is basically what we are left with in the end of Job ... as life and God are mysteries that none of us can truly comprehend. The big revelation for me was when Fr. L. pointed out that Job and his friends are, at least in part, arguing from the basis that all good things come from God who rewards you for your righteousness. So when those good things are taken away, you must have done something wrong. That is a way of thinking that is all too easy for any of us to fall into in daily life, much less when total disaster hits as it did for Job. What we forget is that all good things come from God and we are not owed any of them. Which all made for an interesting discussion. -Julie of "Happy Catholic"

March 17, 1857 at a Farm in Western Ohio

The scarcity principle being what it is, I long to know more about my family history simply because there's so little of it. Most of my great-grandparents are only names on paper, reduced from flesh and blood to the carved characters on a tombstone.

So I went about it the old-fashioned way, I went to the local library. Googling proves remarkably ineffective when you're talking about folks who have been dead for a hundred years or more.

My great-great grandfather's story is my favorite. He escaped the potato blight in Ireland and bought eighty acres in Western Ohio for $100. (That's about $2,100 today.) The land was so wild he had to mark the barks of trees when he went somewhere to avoid getting lost - which means he had to clear that land in order to farm it. He had saved the money from working for a year and a half on the Miami-Erie canal, hard labor indeed. Forty years later oil was discovered and five wells went up. From poverty to minor Jed Clampett status in one lifetime, definitely the American story.

Being a "Settler" means it was difficult to attend Mass. You had to either travel great distances or hope for a missionary priest to visit. One did, a Fr. Henneberry, who was born in Ireland in 1830. He celebrated Mass at my great-great grandfather's house on St. Patrick's Day, 1857. There's something neat about the definitive. I know definitively (more or less - I wasn't there) that the priest pictured below was at a certain place at a certain time. I don't know why it would make a difference, but somehow it does. It's like praying for someone in which you imagine where they are this instant in time, doing whatever they are doing, and asking God they receive a blessing at that moment. It makes the prayer come alive.

Fr. Henneberry was a traveling missionary. He ended up in far-flung places like South Africa and New Zealand. And he put the "zeal" in New Zealand. When politicians there voted for compulsory secular education he didn't mince words: "If you have Catholic faith and Catholic hearts within you, you will never give a vote to any of these infidels, whom Almighty God will send to hell some day for leading a whole generation away from religion."


Fr. Henneberry

Where Charity and Love Don't Prevail...

I think the worst thing about blogging for me is the presence of comment boxes. They are tantalizing little incendiary devices that incinerate any restraint and charitable thoughts I might've possessed before entering them. Caution: You're about to enter a no charity zone!

I resolve to comment less frequently. I find myself offering some ridiculous opinion or other, disagreeing when I don't really disagree merely for the pleasure of being contrary, or desiring to bat down another commenter merely because I find them unlovable. Or else, nearly as bad, playing the sage when the foolscap fits far more comfortably and is more in line with what God sees. (Besides, as Steven Riddle recently reminded me, "a laugh to start the morning is a greater gift than you can imagine.")

The Next Controversy

'Twas a seemingly uncomplicated email. I suggested today a happy hour for "next Tuesday or Wednesday". But Ham o' Bone called for clarification, thinking that the adjective 'next', which strictly speaking means that which is closest to, might've referred to Tuesday/Wed Feb. 7/8 instead of the 14th/15th.

The very presence of the adjective "next" implies that we're not talking this Tuesday, since I would've said "How about Tuesday or Wednesday?". Language seeks ease of use first, like water seeking the lowest ground. When language is utilitarian, it's also economical. "Next Tuesday" is a fruitful shortening of the phrase "Tuesday of next week".

I suggested that 98 out of 100 people would know that referring to "next Tuesday" on a Monday means the Tuesday of the following week. Bone suggested it was closer to 50/50. (This brouhaha reminds me of the infamous "'Bobber Beer Test", published for posterity in Lamentations & Exaggerations and available at no bookstore near you.)

So I went to pick up lunch and while I was gone found a funny answering machine message, roughly paraphrased here:

Hey 'bobber, 'bobber here. I talked about our conversation with Elizabeth* (* - his wife, name changed to protect the innocent).

She thought I was an idiot for even suggesting what I suggested. She agrees with you totally. Matter of fact she goes [imitates her voice:] "If you're going to refer to the Tuesday of this week then you'll say "this Tuesday". Everybody knows that when you say "next Tuesday" you mean Tuesday of next week." [End imitation] Oy vey, what has happened to our English language? I agree "this tuesday" does mean [click of someone picking up a phone] this coming Tuesday but--

[Elizabeth breaks in.] "Tom, he's an idiot."

"Hey I'm leaving a message hon."

"What can I say he's an idiot."

"Oy vey...talk to you later."

Another Atlantic High Quote:

He remains one of the very few people I feel I could approach in the spirit with which then-Monsignor Fulton Sheen once approached Heywood Broun, a total stranger, on the telephone. ("I would like to talk to you, Mr. Broun." "What about?" the famous iconoclast asked gruffly. "Your immortal soul," Monsignor Sheen answered, a few months before receiving Broun back into the church.)

William F. Buckley Imagines Purgatory & Heaven:

From his sea adventure Atlantic High, where the "cooler" is the time of purgation:

To be sure, it is axiomatic to this fantasy that I have been judged and, after sitting it out in the cooler for a few millennia, admitted. What then happens, surely, is that the people there, while not losing their flavor, manage somehow to lose that about them which once made them -- human. They are transfigured, by the central energy; and so you find sweetness that does not cloy, argument that does not vex, humor that does not lacerate, work that does not tire. The oxymoronization of life, the use of which word may jeopardize my chances of making it to Heaven.

...But it is part of the rules that you cannot succeed in describing that fantasy: For it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. I understand this to mean that a No Trespassing sign has gone up for the fantasist, and I for one intend to observe it.

Cartoon Violence

There's something ironic about Muslims responding with violence to cartoons that criticize Islam as violent. Or perhaps the word I'm looking for is predictable. The cartoons exploit the Muslim world's Achilles' Heel - their intolerance of criticism of their religion & prophet. My initial reaction was that it is good for European newspapers to help Muslims "exercise" tolerance, although, of course, I'm hypocritically not in favor of anyone exploiting my Achilles Heels in order that my soft tissue be exercised. And it's hard to dispute the Vatican Press Office's assertion that "a reading of history shows that wounds that exist in the life of peoples are not cured this way." Islam will be fixed by Muslims, not from the outside.

So the cartoons are probably less a strengthening of a weakness than a pouring of salt on a wound, although the temptation is to feel that this was bound to happen sooner or later so we might as well get it over with. Newspaper editors worship the First Amendment and Muslims near-worship the Prophet Mohammed so this train wreck was all too obvious. Were the cartoons disrespectful? When is humor not? (See WFB's comment below about Heaven being the place where 'humor does not lacerate'.) Let sleeping dogs lie, they say, but Islamo-fascism is already awake and biting. But there are degrees of "biting" and I wonder how smart it is to needlessly antagonize biting dogs by poking sticks at them.

Tony Blankley in his book "The West's Last Chance" imagined a scenerio in which Muslims began rioting outside European museums because of the depiction of naked females in art, but it seems the real incite to violence is criticism of Islam. And there is a surprising diversity of opinion. The respected blogger Hugh Hewitt came down against the cartoons, as does Robert Duncan of Spero News. Amy and Rock (here and here) have interesting posts up. Mark Shea has also come out against the cartoons.

Dust-Jacket Photos of Writers

Link:

"It's about math, but the writing is passionate and beautiful," Larbalestier says, "and I kept trying to reconcile the smug picture of the author with the elegance of the text."
__

Ettlinger...has photographed more than 600 writers since 1983. She's aware of the incongruities of the process. "They're being photographed because of their intellect, their inner life, and here they have to do these things involving their appearance. It seems like a big contradiction," she says.

O'Rama's French Toast^TM

I recently expanded my culinary rolodex. It previously consisted of Campbell's soup and cereal, but now includes something I'll call "french toast", which, not coincidentally, is what everyone else calls it too.


your results may vary

Ingredients:

three farm fresh eggs (no city eggs, please)

three pieces of bread that are at least 75% free of mold

milk

1 lb of butter

Cooking Procedure
Step one is the most difficult part, as it usually is. ("The distance doesn't matter; only the first step is difficult." --- Mme du Deffand.) You need to remove the inside part of the egg from its shell. Egg shells are not part of the recipe because they are more bland than mushrooms though, come to think of it, more crunchy.

Mix the egg insides in bowl. Add milk to taste (I've noticed all recipes include 'to taste' but don't actually taste this now, because it will taste bad. Trust me on that. It needs to be cooked first).

Ladle the admixture generously on the bread. Allow it to soak, like the hands in the old Palmolive dishwashing liquid commercials. Place bread in a skillet and cook for two to eight minutes, depending on when they're done. Then slather with pound of butter. Bon appetit!

In Christopher Buckley's book...

..."No Way to Treat a First Lady", there's a spoof of those ridiculous surveys they give to potential jury members (as Jim Curley reported awhile back):

The two of them had prepared a juror's questionnaire extensive even by their standards. It consisted of eight hundred questions. Number 11: Did you vote for President MacMann? Number 636: Are you regular at bowel movements? During his years at the CIA, Pinky had discovered that defectors and moles - switchers of allegiance - tended to be constipated.

Fictional Friday

Often a quick glance at the printed characters induced a small fever. A momentary flash and he was off to work, the quick kiss that would leave him unsatisfied, like R. Montague beneath the balcony, but which also gave him hope and something oddly material. He could put the words in his pocket, figuratively speaking, and pull them out anytime, morning, noon, or night. When the taste of gall reached his lips it could be replaced with the taste of the morning wine. He was suspicious though, suspicious that he liked the wine for what it did for him rather than for the wine itself. But how could he separate the one from the other? How could he say "I like the wine because it is good, not because it makes me feel good," as if goodness could be anything other than itself? Yet he wanted to like the wine for its own sake and not because of the feelings it produced.

He grew attached to the book, the one that contained the sweet words, holding it reverently when he read it and trying to preserve its pristine condition, careful as he placed it in his jeans's back pocket, worried for its corners. He understood it as a lifeline, a totem that made him glow when it was on him. He could feel it burn in his back pocket and he felt about it in the way a person who can scarcely breathe appreciates a respirator. Scripture was the antidote to his own ridiculousness.



His years were divided into those in which he lopsidedly emphasized the Liturgy of the Word and those in which he lopsidely emphasized the Liturgy of the Eucharist. When he was young, he bore impatiently the readings that were obvious prologue for he was interested in miracles and not instruction and adults always had a way of burying the lede. He was used to having things happen without effort on his part, the way food magically appeared every night on the dinner table.

Years later he grew up and got a job and came to the conclusion that nothing got done unless he did it himself. He gorged on Scripture but saw Communion as an adjunct, far too magical for a budding rationalist. He was an American, which is to say practical, and believed that you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and there didn't seem to be much practically gained by ingesting what looked and tasted like bread and wine.

But he was grateful, when it suddenly happened, that the words pointed to the Word and the Word back to the words, and he consumed both as the Maker intended. He felt like Someone understood him, understood him better than he did himself, understood that he was body and soul. And he thought how odd it was that the ancients who'd constructed the Mass as a reflecting pool seemed to know what they were doing. He wondered: What else were they right about?

"Weidemann, Weidemann Beer...

...brewed with family pride for over one hundred years."



So went the jingle. But Weidemann is no longer brewed with pride, family or otherwise, as it went out of business before I started drinking beer. Which I think is a shame since my father and his father drank that beer (along with Burger and Hudepohl) and now I'll never know the pleasure (or lack thereof, since they apparently weren't great beers).

Even Ohio Breweriana has nothing on it. But someone on an internet message board remembers:

When I was a young fart, many moons ago, I lived in Cincinnati. Believe it or not, it was a big commercial beer-making town long ago, before beer became Big Business...I won't be able to come with all of the names, but some of them were Burger Beer, Hudepohl Beer, Weidemann Beer, you get the idea.

The only nice thing I can think to say about them was this: when you went to a Reds game, you could find on a hot summers day a vendor who would cry out:

"Get moody with a Hude (pronounced HOO-de) - just raise your hand, and I will be by your side"...

If You're Going to Have Earmarks, Why Not This One?

Well I see Boehner took the nod over Roy "Earmarks R Us" Blunt. Definitely an upgrade, though Boehner's no Shadegg. But Tim Russert made good sense when he asked why the heck couldn't one of those earmarks been for something like this instead of that?

vs.

Quote from Noonan's JPII Book

Peggy Noonan writes that the most moving scene for her in The Passion of the Christ (which happened to be the most moving scene for me also) was where Jesus said to Mary, during the walk to Calvary, "see, I make all things new.":

"What choked me up was thinking of Jesus. And thinking of how we all want to be new again, and how we can be if we rely on him; but it's so hard. While we believe deep in our hearts, we do not believe, or else we'd be new again." - Peggy Noonan

An Outsider's View of America

French writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy toured American and followed in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville. Roger Scruton reviews the resulting book, American Vertigo, in NR:

Like Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One, or Martin Amis in The Moronic Inferno, Lévy is drawn to the grotesqueries of the democratic culture — the gated communities where only retired geriatrics are allowed to own a house; the Mormon project for the redemption of mankind through genealogical research; the glassy-smiled lap dancers who offer vicarious sex while carefully ensuring that no pleasure, affection, or excitement could conceivably attach to it; the big Gospel churches where God is packaged and branded to suit the needs of every client; and the prisons, which were for Lévy, as they had been for Tocqueville, his first port of call...

As Lévy puts the point, America is obese, growing outwards not only in the bodies of its citizens, but in its heartless cities, its crowded prisons, its overflowing churches, its landscape-devouring shopping malls, its ever-expanding roads, plazas, car parks, its “mausoleum of merchandise, the funeral accumulation of false goods and non-desires” — in short, its fearful spilling of noise, needs, and niceness into every available space. America lacks poise, elegance, style, discretion. It has none of the self-irony with which the French contemplate the distasteful facts of human appetite, and therefore refuses to find them distasteful. It is, in short, a real democracy, in which ordinary people can put their ordinariness on display and not feel disgraced by it.
____

It is not Lévy’s fault that his book has been made to stand beside Tocqueville’s, and of course it suffers from the comparison. Lévy is flippant and frothy where Tocqueville is sober and deep. Lévy lacks the quality that Dr. Johnson called “bottom” and his interest in day-to-day realities is too easily eclipsed by his appetite for the ludicrous. There is another America than the one described in this book — the America of volunteer groups, neighborliness, and little platoons. But that America makes no effective backdrop to the observing bohemian, and therefore defies Lévy’s self-centered style. It was this other America that Tocqueville saw, and that he recognized for what it is — a new start for mankind.

Quick Vignettes

On the drive to work I saw a big van with the yellow caution stickers and the verbiage "A Blind Man Drives This Van". Well, I thought, you don't see this everyday. And of course thus distracted I almost didn't see the guy in front of me who stopped while trying to change lanes. Now who's the blind driver?
_

I'm on the elevator with three young women. Two are Chinese and speaking it. The other is Indian. Unlike most European languages, where you can make out a word here or there, Chinese is completely impenetrable. The Indian girl, whose language I would not understand, looks over her shoulder at me and we smile at each other, as if sharing in our mutual incomprehension.

Pondering Deus Charitas Est

"When I speak of peace, they want war." - Psalm 120:7

How can you have a Catlick blog and not mention the first encyclical of a new pope? You can't. So here goes.

First, isn't it nice that the Pope is re-claiming the word love from its use and abuse and tainted association with "free love" and anything-goes philosophy? Discipline with love is godly but rare as a hothouse flower. Few combine the two as readily as this pope who already had his discipline bones fides before this love encyclical. (St. Blog's errors on the side of discipline - there is more enthusiasm for correction than charity in most comment boxes - while the hippy fringe appreciate love without discipline.) As Fra Lawrence Lew, OP commented:

I think some people are disappointed that he has not 'cracked down' on dissidents etc but this is precisely what is winning over the 'liberals'. The role of the Holy Father is to unite the Church and this he does very well by focusing on Christian charity.

I think one can't go far wrong as a Christian, if one concentrates on charity and I think the saint who is made holy in charity transcends all barriers and speaks across divides and ideologies. If this Pope calls more Christians to this, we would advance the mission of the Church and restore the Church to greater unity, thus addressing our missio ad gentes and our internal ecclesial dynamics.

As Balthasar said: "Only love is credible"!

Amen. He ought to have a blog.


Here are some passages that struck me in the encyclical:

...there is a certain relationship between love and the Divine: love promises infinity, eternity—a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence.

Many views of Heaven seem ersatz. Harps and clouds and walking through walls. It would all get old after, say, a few hundred years. I like that the Pope portrays Heaven as far more than meeting folks and being able to drink beer without a hangover.

Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility.

I liked the word "compenetrate". I can envision this with respect to the incorruptibility of some of the saints. The spirit has so compenetrated that even their bodies are affected.

God's passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.

Marvelous. This is Divine Mercy. This is exactly what gives us the impetus to boast about our God. To be just is human. To be merciful is divine.

The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its real-ism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment.

A potent passage. The typical way we, or I, think of the relationship between love of God and love of neighbor is to fill up on God in order to spend this fuel on neighbor. A common imagery, but it has the side effect of creating a temptation to "hoard" God's fuel. This passage points out that serving one's neighbor is not a spending of fuel but in some way gives you fuel, gives you the fuel to re-encounter the Eucharist Lord with greater realism and depth.

Note to self...

...print this link on pietism and capitalism.

The Thrilla in Manila: Culture vs Politics

I think the quote below bears repeating, because Iraq appears to be testing whether politics or religion & culture will trump in the shaping of their nation. George Will, a few years ago, wrote:

Sen Pat Moynihan said: "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself." ....The issue is the second half of Moynihan's formulation -- our ability to wield political power to produce the requisite cultural change in a place such as Iraq. Time was, this question would have separated conservatives from liberals. Nowadays it separates conservatives from neoconservatives.

Condoleezza Rice, a political scientist, believes there is scholarly evidence that democratic institutions do not merely spring from a hospitable culture, but that they also can help create such a culture. She is correct; they can. They did so in the young American republic. But it would be reassuring to see more evidence that the administration is being empirical, believing that this can happen in some places, as opposed to ideological, believing that it must happen everywhere it is tried....In "On Liberty", John Stuart Mill said, "It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say" that the doctrine of limited, democratic government "is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties." One hundred forty-five years later it obviously is necessary to say that.

Ron Chernow's magnificent new biography of Alexander Hamilton begins with these of his subject's words: "I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be." That is the core of conservatism.

I'm Annoyed That I'm Annoyed...

NR has an excellent article in the lastest issue on what went wrong with the Republicans in Congress regarding the pathetic lack of fiscal restraint.

I'm not sure why pork spending bothers me so much. Perhaps the brazenness of it, but it's really small change in the big picture. It's not that high a percentage of the budget. I guess it's more what it symbolizes. I recall back in the '80s there was a lot of grumbling about foreign aid. And I thought, "what's the big deal? It's a tiny portion of the budget." But foreign aid, whether boondoggle or not, seemed more appealing than these "bridges to nowhere" we're currently building.

Social security. Health care. Medicare. Alternatives to oil. Rebuilding from Katrina. AIDS in Africa. The war in Iraq. Those are the issues to think about. And yet I'm disproportionately interested in, and annoyed by, the coming election of Roy "Earmarks R Us" Blunt as House leader. From Rich Lowry:

Who would have predicted that ten years after taking Congress and promising to clean it up, Republicans would be rocked by their own set of scandals, including the abuse of earmarks for contributors? Actually, it was predictable, given the typical course of revolutions — a burst of energy, followed by a period of consolidation — and the inevitable temptations of power. “I always thought that we would lose the majority in 2002,” says an architect of the 1994 takeover. “I thought we would have an eight-year run. The fact is it’s not good for either party to control the place for too long. You do get an institutional mindset.”...No one who knows him thinks Tom DeLay is venal. But that can’t be said for now-notorious members of his team. One of them is going to jail (Michael Scanlon), and two others could yet be implicated in criminal activity (Tony Rudy and Ed Buckham).

It is often remarked that there is no committed constituency for limited government. Certainly, government programs like farm subsidies have more intense and organized supporters than detractors. But there is at least a diffuse constituency for limited government — they are called conservatives. If they realize that wholesale cuts in government won’t be forthcoming, that doesn’t mean they have to sit still for discretionary spending growing at 10 percent a year, for thousands of special-interest earmarks, and for a new entitlement being hoisted on top of an already out-of-control entitlement state. If all this is combined with gross insider self-dealing, conservatives have cause to recoil in disgust, and they have done so.

...But among conservatives in Washington there is a sense that the House GOP needs a broad renewal, and no one seems to know how it will happen. Elections to replace DeLay seem likely to promote whip Roy Blunt up one slot, so the leadership will be, as Stephen Moore has put it in the Wall Street Journal, the DeLay team without DeLay. Whatever is the next new thing in national conservative politics probably won’t emanate from the House. For veterans of the 1994 revolution one word comes up again and again as they survey this scene: “sad.”

Nomination

I think there should be a category Blogger Most Coming Out of His or Her Shell - for which I would nominate the blogtress at Sancta Sanctis. She started out slowly, only posting very POD things. She wouldn't put her email address on her site. Her site had no comments. Over time, she became more and more comfortable to the point of admitting she liked movies such as the euphoniously named "Hellboy", "Terminator" and "Robo-Cop". Beneath the veil of a contemplative lurked the heart of someone attuned to pop culture. And over time, she added her email address and opened up comments. But she's still very POD.

A runner up might well be the Kelly Clark of Pew Lady fame. Kelly started out posting witty essays on her website very infrequently. Begun in Feb of '02, Kelly was able to resist the daily blog lure until July of '05, which is, in blog years, many lifetimes.

Update: I completely forgot about Zippy. Zippy was an obscure commenter on Disputations, ridicuously smart, always trenchant and about getting to the root of the thing. Zippy had no blog. Then one day Zippy got a blog. And then one day Zippy told us all sorts of things, like how many people made millions working for him. Here again we see how blogging induces disclosure, confessional medium that it is.