Guinness Tested, Obi Approved


~ Obi, in better form and on a sunnier day ~

Took our dog Obi swimming at the lake, one of those activities that “look better on paper”, which is to say it was a large pain in the butt. First, the weather was downright cold, the wind whipping off the water as if to emphasize the lack of sun. Looks like the whole week is crashing weather-wise, an unfortunate turn of events, but one that can be partially solved by books and beer since they're impervious to the natural deflation a cloudy day brings.

Second, Obi was always looking for trouble, never content to merely sit & enjoy the whipping wind and chill temps. He scoured the landscape not for its natural beauty but for potential targets to chase after. I had a Guinness to warm me up, and it occurred to me that Minnesotans drinking great quantities of alcohol would be better off just moving to Florida. Garrison Keillor boasts of the toughness of stalwart Minnesota-winter tested souls but how much of their heroism is due to the golden lager? Enquiring minds want to know.

Obi's swimming talents leave much to be desired. “Whale on the beach” was a derisive chant boys used to yell at generously fleshed young women during Spring Break, but Obi looked far more the part on this particular beach. His fur was slick and black as an oil spill and he flopped about out in the water in a way that would be humorous if I wasn't worried about him drowning. He's fastidious too. It’s funny that he won’t swim in just any particular body of water. This one is cleaner and clearer than average so I guess it met the Obi test.

Matthew 23:27-32

Back when I was a kid we'd occasionally play the game of trying to decide which family members, if they'd lived at the time of Jesus, would've clung to the Jewish traditions rather than accepting the Messiah who acted in unexpected ways.

The thinking is that the more conservative members would've clung to the Jewish traditions and scoffed at Christ as another miracle-worker in a long line of miracle workers.

But I think this has a few problems. One is that it denies the power of grace. It says that we are first creatures of our predilections and innate tendencies rather than children of God capable of being "surprised by truth". It seems unduly mechanistic, as if we're all robots.

Second, to insist that we would've followed Christ at that time is to show ourselves, ironically, as Pharisees. In today's Gospel reading Jesus says to the scribes & Pharisees:

And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets' blood.' Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets.

In claiming they were different from their fathers, the Pharisees were inadvertently saying that they were there fathers.

Attitude Adjustment for Bad Attitudes



Do you suffer from a huge sense of entitlement? Do minor irritations beset you? Well, fortunately there's a helpful Attitude Adjuster: Simply say the sorrow mysteries of the rosary, meditating on the Passion, and watch your sense of entitlement and irritation disappear! (Rinse & repeat if necessary.)

Visited...

...an old seminary in Western Ohio (aka "God's Country"; along OH-274, every third house had a Marian statue out front). Click to enlarge:


They don't build 'em like this anymore.


Oil painting of St. Joan of Arc in the library. (Pardon the light fixture reflection.)


Land, spreadin' out so far & wide! Keep Columbus just gimme that countryside.


Some fourteen adjoining altars; a necessity in pre-Vatican II days when priests didn't concelebrate.


Two of them.


Assumption window

Yikes

Vaunted British health care system often forgets about...oh, a little thing like food.

If Britain can't adequately fund their health care system now then I shudder to think what it'll be like in 2015 when there are many more elderly and the West's current economic bliss is over (due to $200-a-barrel oil).

As the reluctant monk said on the way to his desert cell, "It's not the heat, it's the humility." - joke via Bill White

Miz MacDonald [is] the sort who looks at a deformed baby and concludes that a just God would not allow the innocent to suffer; ergo there is no God. Such a mind is more impressed by suffering than by existence, and offers thereby an inadvertant insult to the sufferer's very being. Rather than behold the child while exclaiming, "Look at that! He's here! Isn't that amazing?" he wonders instead if he should be here at all.... The person more impressed by suffering than by existence is very much like that other who will not enter a Church because of the preponderance of hypocrites within. Both are reaching a very certain conclusion over a very dubious point: that the presence of evil in the world stakes a larger claim on our attention than the presence of good. The former outweighs the latter. The sinner disproves the saint. The tsunami discredits the previous day's sunset, and both disallow the feeding of the five thousand. The MacDonalds of the world make a similar demand as the doubting Thomas: "mete out punishment and reward according to our just desserts, and then I will believe." And in claiming that God (if He exists) could have stopped the tsunami but chose not to, she is really asking for a world in which there is no evil, a world that would never have required a Christ to walk upon it, in which Christmas and Easter are never celebrated. - Bill Luse of "Apologia"

We've been on a 24 jag lately, catching up on old episodes via DVD. It's just a glorified soap opera like ER, but it's entertaining and (unintentionally?) funny - when Jack Bauer needs to take a nap, he just dies for a while then comes back to life. 'Assuming it's all over' is a recurring motif, and one preached against in 24's comic-book manner. Someone loses hope in an impossible situation and based on the available information, assumes everything's over, death is around the corner, so he'll end the situation - suicide, kill someone else, give up. Inevitably, help is already on the way, or initial information was wrong, or someone proved stronger and braver than anticipated; the initial hopelessness is shown to be unfounded. Repeatedly, decisions for death are shown to be based on an unreasonable loss of hope. There's a worthwhile kernel of truth in 24. - Bill White of "Summa Minutiae"

Look at what I do each day and ask, "How does that give Him honor?" And the truth is, it does not. Day by day I find my ways to avoid being a friend to Him here below and in his heavenly home. But He doesn't care. I come straggling along, and He is leaping with joy to see me. He leaves the party of the Saints to bring me in. Every time. Every single time. I am transformed, I am broken and renewed. Every time. What grace--words fail, so St. Teresa may speak for me. And while I grieve for my sins and for my treatment of Him, I rejoice in knowing how He loves me nevertheless. - Steven Riddle of "Flos Carmeli"

The history of the Church is one of growth, reform and creativity. Don't let anyone ever tell you anything different. Sometimes it can seem confusing, even in the modern age in which new movements are popping up all the time, old religious orders are dying, struggling and trying to reform. How do we discern the Spirit in all of that? - a frequent question over the past few decades and one used to excuse quite a lot. It seems to me to be fairly simple. If the reform, creativity or newness is focused on losing more of ourselves so that we might serve those most in need - that's a good sign. But if the "reform" is all about us, our personal fulfillment, us finding a satisfying place in the Church - not so great. Perhaps in need of a tweak or a nudge in another, more sacrificial direction in which our own "need" to find ourselves or "live our full potential" is laid at the feet of the poor. - Amy Welborn

The judgement of God is much, much harsher on priests than on lay-people. As a priest myself I am consoled that it must be even worse for bishops. "To those who are given much ...". Saint Theresa of Avila said somewhere, "The road hell is paved with the skulls of priests". One of us must have annoyed her terribly. The thing is, even the ordinarily good amongst us can do so much damage. Fast, pray, do penance, give alms to the poor, keep vigil for priests, their souls are your hands. - commenter Fr. Raymond on "Curt Jester"

It is always so fascinating to me how seemingly esoteric arguments can, indeed, have profound implications. It's what people sometimes don't understand about discussions about Jesus' divine and human nature. Certainly, there is a point at which it all gets too much and we must ultimately admit how limited our knowledge is, but there is quite often a rather profound point at stake. - Amy of "Open Book"

"All the versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle being kept up in the early eleventh century record his death, while MS C adds an express acknowledgement of his sanctity: 'Her wæs Olaf cing ofslagen on Norwegon of his agenum folce [ond] wæs syððan halig,' 'In this year [1030] king Óláfr was killed in Norway by his own people, and was afterwards holy.'" A lot of us, I think, sort of plan on being "syððan halig," though I don't know how many of us will be working miracles. - Disputations

Short Takes on Recent News Items

Beware of anyone who is referred to by the media with three names. John Mark Karr is the latest, but see John Wayne Gacy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, etc...
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Anyone else experiencing media whiplash? Patsy Ramsey did it they said. Patsy is vindicated! Patsy did it they say.
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I'm not big into government spending but I could make an exception for a study trying to figure out how New Orleans Mayor Nagin got himself re-elected.
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I'd also be in favor of a gov't study into what the guy who brought dynamite on a plane was thinking.

Monday in Review

…or the improbable occasion of a day off. Freedom abhors a vacuum, so I went about my tasks of exercise, laundry, prayer, blogging, reading twenty pages of Philbrick’s Mayflower, tidying the house, picking up some KFC, taking a nap, etc.., all of which added up to an inordinate amount of time. So here it is – quittin’ time, 4:30-ish, and the opening to a punchlineless joke comes to mind: “a Beck, a Spaten and a Guinness walked into a bar…”. It feels odd to drink to gospel songs, in this case Randy Travis’s versions, but man cannot live on Irish music alone.

Watched some of last night’s Emmy’s and it occurred to me how much more favorably disposed to television I am than movies. Conan O’Brien did an opening skit that took us through all of our favorites (24, House, The Office, My Name is Earl & To Catch a Predator) and it seems I must applaud the American people for their good taste in television shows. I doubt I would much like the top ten novels or top ten movies, but the top ten television shows, assuming the aforementioned are among them, are eminently watchable.

Speaking of novels, I’m relieved I was able to forego the temptation to buy Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl at the bookstore Friday. It’s the kind of frothy novel replete with obscure references that are pleasingly foreign, in the sense of this Hernan Gonzalez-inspired post. But I suspect a shallowness in the end.

It rained all morning and most of the afternoon as if in a pent-up penance for the continuously dry weather we’ve had this August. The cloudiness lingers as if observing a proper amount of grief after a death. It is amazing how the sun makes the landscape shimmer. I'm looking forward to a photojournalistic jaunt to an obscure side street of an obscure street, one I visited two weeks ago. But alas the weather prohibits that as the sun is a chief player in that production.
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Tantalizingly they lay at the edge of my cerebellum, at least that’s where I imagine they lay given that’s the only part of the brain my brain can recall. I’m speaking of childhood memories, and they seem necessary to retrieve now since otherwise they’ll be irretrievable until the Second Coming. They lay on the cusp of memory and are of greater import for their scarcity. The mundane family gathering of 1978 would seem thrilling to me now, if I could go as an adult, and so I imagine that the family gathering at which I am constantly attending now, in 2006, could possibly be of interest to the teens attending future ones in, say, 2036.

The thing I've noticed about pre-marital family gatherings is that distinctions between blood relations and non-blood relations were obscured at best. In other words, I saw no difference between family members who married into the family and "regular" family members. To my eyes, the in-laws perfectly melded into the gatherings and in fact some of my favorites were in-laws (or out-laws, depending on terminology). As a child there was no recognition that my Aunt Betty might be "taking one for the team" more so than Aunt Sally, who was a family member by blood.

After marriage I’ve become more aware of the differences for reasons I’m unsure of. I suppose it’s like if you’re an American in Europe you develop a more keen eye for differences between Americans and Europeans; similarly if you spend much time with in-laws you develop a keener than normal eye for differences between your family and it’s traditions and subliminalities and other families. It’s a truism that you no one remembers their childhood as anything other than normal because it’s all you know. That said, it should be said that I have been blessed with wonderful in-laws. But with your own brothers and sisters there's a synchronicity, the same beat or timing, the same wavelength, the same ease of communication.

Yet that's now. Then, back in the '70s, I recall talking rapturously of baseball cards with an in-law at a family gathering and it occurs to me now that he, as an outsider, was more (naturally) willing to spend time with a mere kid since we were both, in a sense, outsiders. I, by nature of being a kid, and he by nature of his out-law status. So too should I be open to the kids of my wife's family members.

Does Size Matter?

It seems elites are entering the blogging (anti-)profession, which I'm in favor of as long as they're "good" elites like Richard Neuhaus or Jody Bottum or Edward Oakes. I'm definitely elitist about my elitists.

But I must take exception to the utilitarianism and unseemly attention paid to numbers as expressed by Oakes here:

Mechanisms that tell the bloggers how many souls visit their sites each day must be, I would imagine, rather mortifying for most of these cyber-opinionators.

Au contaire, my shock at having twenty or thirty consistent readers three months or so into the blogging game shocked me and left me giddy. I suppose everyone has a different number of visitors that would make blogging 'worth it', probably ranging from 1 to 10000. Why should numbers matter? I used to send Ham o' Bone a weekly "journal du jour" and if he were the only reader of this blog then I suppose this would continue in that capacity.

Middle of Detroit

From Detroitblog, shades of WP's Love in the Ruins:

"Today, the neighborhood is post-apocalyptic, having passed through the worst standard stages of neighborhood decline: falling housing values, longtime residents moving to the suburbs, crumbling properties converted to rentals, a growth of criminal activity, abandonment by anyone who can afford to leave, and finally the disappearance of the houses themselves.

Now it’s the realm of crickets and meadows, where besides the dope dealers, the hookers, and the walking dead ambling past empty fields, are regular but poor people who have to live surrounded by decay and misery, in a neighborhood most others are too scared to drive through, surrounded by grinding poverty and the dregs of society, the only world they know, utterly unaware that a normal, safe neighborhood once stood here but was wiped off the face of the earth."

John Leonard never left. He's "watched his block thin out, one house at a time, leaving his house surrounded by grassy fields that bear the loud song of crickets. And he prefers that it stay that way, opting for the empty fields over potentially rowdy neighbors.

'I kind of like this spot,' he said as he sat in the shade of his front porch on a sunny day. “If they ever started building down there I would be upset, ‘cause this is peaceful here now, this little area here. Nobody to bother you, no noise, quiet. But if somebody moves in down there, people’s out of control now, did you know that? No respect, no nothing, it’s just wide open. In my day, people had respect for one another. People don’t respect you no more. It’s dog eat dog.”

Fine Homily..

..from Fr. L today. He said that many churches dismiss today's reading where St. Paul says that wives should be submissive to their husbands, but that refusal to wrestle with controversial Scriptural passages is the way that leads to the likes of a Anglican Bishop Spong and those who in their pride and arrogance make Scripture mean whatever they want it to mean. Besides which, to ascribe this passage as some kind of patriarchical oppression in 1st century culture is to miss the point.

Father said that Paul, in quoting Genesis, recognized two become one flesh in marriage. That means that instead of seeing marriage as two separate individuals in a power struggle, marriage is to be seen as what the bible says. He said it's unfortunate that Revelation has come to mean, for so many, as an imposition of something alien to human experience. God has spoken both in the Old and New Testament that our relationship with God is a marriage covenant and that whether we are in a joyful marriage or divorced or never been married we can understand this because even when frustrated, we know that our deepest desire is for intimacy and to be loved.

He said in reference to a recent gospel reading from John 6 that it would've been helpful if instead of having spent a couple centuries trying to determine what the Eucharist is, it would've been better to emphasize how it relates to something within human experience - marriage. Paul is not calling the flesh bad, as if we can all do whatever we want with our bodies since it's only the spirit that matters. Rather, he said, one could look at flesh as meaning the culture, and how the culture tells us things that are completely opposed to God's revelation.

The Israeli Conscience

Best Islamic Terrorist Recruiting Tools:

Israeli aggressiveness

Israeli peacefulness

Critics of Israel's use of power ought to read this MSNBC article. Based on biased media coverage elsewhere one would think Israel was heartless with respect to civilian casualties. Quite the contrary:

On Sept. 6, a year later, when Israel had the chance to destroy the Hamas leadership, security officials clashed profoundly over the algebra of assassination. Two officials who have been called Israel's leaders in combating terrorism took opposite sides. Avi Dichter, then the head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, pushed for an all-out assault against the Hamas gathering. "They're the terrorist dream team," Dichter argued.

But for Yaalon, military chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, the Talmudic precept, "If he comes to kill you, kill him first," conflicted with a Biblical commandment, "Thou shall not kill."
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Barak also secretly asked Daniel Reisner, a legal adviser to Arab-Israeli peace talks, to determine whether targeted killings were legal. Reisner agonized for six weeks. "It was a feeling of -- what on Earth has happened?" Reisner recalled. "Instead of two states living amicably side by side, I have to write opinions on how and when we kill each other."

Reisner concluded it was legal, with six conditions: that arrest is impossible; that targets are combatants; that senior cabinet members approve each attack; that civilian casualties are minimized; that operations are limited to areas not under Israeli control; and that targets are identified as a future threat. Unlike prison sentences, targeted killing cannot be meted out as punishment for past behavior, Reisner said. In 2002, a military panel established that targeting cannot be for revenge, but only for deterrence. A panelist said it took six months and 20 meetings to reach that conclusion.

"It's not an eye for an eye," Dichter said.

Impressive. They're not living by the old law of an eye for an eye but it would seem that some in the Israeli cabinent are more Christian than most Christians as far as that goes. But it makes sense. A civilian population once nearly wiped from the face of the earth would naturally be more concerned about civilian casualties, much the way the poor often have the most sympathy for other poor.

The calculus of it is predictable: Israel exercises retraint or makes overtures of peace, her enemies are emboldened, attribute Israel's weakness to Allah and strike, and in return more hardliners come into power in Israel. The last decade has shown that one-sided Israeli efforts to achieve peace are more likely to lead to a worse war than to peace. But war also only leads to more war. So perhaps the best one can hope for is a low-level 'steady-state' war there, at least until the Islamic schools and mosques that sow and grow hatred stop doing so.

From Word Among Us meditation:

Looking at the world with the eyes of faith, we will see power in the sunrise. We will see faithfulness as flowers bloom and crops ripen. Pets and wild animals will hold our rapt attention. We will notice, as if for the first time, the beauty of children playing as well as the awesome lines of wisdom in an older person’s face. The commonplace will give way to the wondrous, all because our hearts are made new by the power of the Holy Spirit.

How ordinary life can seem at times! How quickly we can fall into a world-weary mindset! We may think that our faith just can’t get enlivened any more. But that is altogether contrary to God’s plan for us. Just as his love is never ending and always new, so does God want to reveal himself anew in each moment.

Russian Missionary

Complaints about seasonal change pale beside the trials of missionaries in Siberia. Mary of the old "Ever New" blog writes:

I'm writing to you today to share a simple story of a missionary priest in Russia and to ask for your help. I need the help of fellow Catholics that may be willing to help out a friend in need. I have a friend, Fr. John Gibbons, who is a Franciscan missionary priest in Russia who needs our generosity.

Fr. John is living east of Siberia and is the only priest within a hundred miles. In fact, He is one of only a few Catholic priests in Russia at all. His work is not glamorous. He does not work with orphans or any other group that would invoke our deepest sympathies. He is a humble parish priest doing what parish priests are doing all around the world every day: he says Mass, hears confession, and shares in the life of those he pastors. The only difference is that he is doing it in place where priests were forbidden for so long that the Catholic faith was almost destroyed. Now he is starting again to answer the call of the Lord to preach and to baptize to the ends of the earth.

He arrived in Russia three years ago but has been in his parish for one year. His rectory is very small and very poor - so poor, in fact, that I feel that it is a shame to see our priests - or any human being - living in such conditions. He has no indoor plumbing, he uses an outhouse, gets water a block away, and he chops wood for heat. This is especially a sacrifice in a place where the temperature is below zero six months of the year...Fr. John is in the United States right now to renew his visa and to raise awareness of the mission Church in Russia. He is here "to beg", as he says, "like a good Franciscan." When I heard the story of my long-time friend and saw the photos of his life I was moved to help. I made a decision to do two things 1) to share his story and 2) to simple ask every Catholic that I know to offer $10 for this mission.

Fr. John's site is here.

What a Difference a Hyphen Makes

Secret-Agent blogspot

SecretAgent blogspot

An Elegy for Summer & Various Happenings

 It’s getting tough to deny the obvious, that summer is waning. Time to suck it up and buck up. We’re as far now from the summer equinox as we were in mid-April and we’re working backwards. Soon twill be March.

The beauty of the landscape tugs; it still “hurts so good” given its fleetingness. Yet I fly into this time of year with confidence. Yes it's late in the season. Yes my wife's bound for Europe, exacerbating the problem. But we’re going to make the best of it and she gave me the best send-off any husband could ask for: excellent pizza at Bellacino’s and a trip to Nirvana (the nearby bookstore), among other things. I never really experienced homesickness at home until two weeks ago when she left for her first week, and so expectations are not high for this one, but then the purpose of life is not to collect pleasurable experiences.

“No child left behind” goes the President’s slogan but upon entering a bookstore it seems my motto is leave no book behind. This visit was more expensive than planned: Adam Nichols’ “The Thought of Benedict XVI” for one. The no-brainer was “Thank You For Not Smoking” by Christopher Buckley since I so loved his “No Way to Treat a First Lady” and the former was his big hit. Also picked up a bio of Lou Gehrig, “Luckiest Man” by Jonathon Eig, on the theory that anyone with a disease named after him who calls himself lucky is deserving of study.

We breakfasted this morning on the verandah, not really but I just liked the sound of that. Back patio. We got Anne’d just as we’d begun to pray. One can scarcely not be neighborly on the cusp of prayer which is probably why the bible says we should pray always. Anne had anecdotes to share and there was no harm done – no O'Rama's were hurt during this Anne-ing. We consumed our McDonald's takeout as she talked about the other neighbors and as we provided grist for news for other neighbors.
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I’m struck by the ingenuity of of one Deedleschnitzel, our cat who never misses an opportunity. I’m watering the garden and ‘schnitzel appears out of nowhere only to strike a statuesque pose beside the shed wall. He looks up the wall as if eyein' a locust he'd like to torture. I look back later and he’s still there. What is it? I look more closely and his tongue is out, capturing each slow drop from a leak off the hose that is mounted high against the shed wall. Schnitzel has a nose for water and a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Later he lies against the asphalt pavement, paws beneath his ears, his tail dovetailing left. Occasionally he’ll lift his head from the ground in sudden alertness. An opportunist he is.
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I’m in the midst of a delicious read, Philbrick’s story of the Mayflower. As a child the story couldn’t have bored me more thoroughly (which, incidentally, is why one should never throw away a book – you never know what may interest or re-interest you in the future). What I recalled from grade school went thusly: Puritans land, have tough time, brrrr! it’s cold here!, Indians help, maize, Thanksgiving dinner sans Lions game.

But since then I’ve visited Boston & Plymouth Rock and have grown in knowledge and respect for the Puritan's Christianity. Indirectly my near-obssesion with Founding Father John Adams also led me to a greater interest in the subject. Historical interests often lead backwards – my interest in WWII naturally led to WWI since that war was the starter fluid for the Second. Interest in the Revolutionary War period leads inexorably to interest in the pre-Revolutionary period which leads to England which leads to… It’s almost like a genealogy study.
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Got home earlier than normal Friday and so I slept/read in the hammock. Is not the hammock the most ingenious invention known to man? The blood flows down away from abused limbs, effecting a kind of weightlessness. And our location is dear, a command center far enough away from the patio to afford a different view and “quality of day” shade-wise, while easily accessible from the driveway. It’s a hidey-hole. Poplars act as hammock-bearers, gentle, leafy slaves are they. Norway pines lend privacy and in the distance the grand maples spread their fecundity across the sky. The beauty is breathtaking and it’s mysterious why I don’t more often attribute it to God in gratitude rather than let the gift obscure the giver.

No doubt this is Last Hurrah time. The smell of Fall is in the air, the dryness and premature leaf litter but, paradoxically, also the faint scent of the sea. Yes I can smell the ocean from landlocked Ohio, perhaps a phantom limb’d memory of our visit in April, but every gust of wind brings the scent of the coast line, the boundary between not land and water but summer & fall. If I squint hard enough, the trees look like masts and the the leaves like sails...

Good God

The startling thing about Heather MacDonald's worldview, as relayed by Bill Luse here, is the assumption that the end point in discerning God's justice is human death. God shows His hand then. But isn't that like judging a judge in mid-trial, before he's even made a judgment? Or like complaining that a book's ending doesn't make sense even though you're half-way through it? Her degree of surety that there is no afterlife is surprising given that even within nature things are constantly perishing only to experience rebirth in form of plant or butterfly or flower... And yet she can't believe in an afterlife because that would impede her ability to sentence Him. You can't, after all, judge someone until all the facts are in. She seems quite comfortable all the facts are in, like a man who thinks a dog sniffing the sidewalk is acting silly just because he can't smell anything. It doesnt seem to occur to him the dog might have a better sense of smell.

Christ said that those who give up houses, wives, or children for the Kingdom would receive a hundredfold in the age to come. That speaks directly to the concerns of justice, recouped in the next life.

But her argument appears to rest solely on WYSIWYG: "What you see is what you get". And yet even that has profound implications if we consider the galaxies and galaxies and the wonder of it all. Is it really a stretch to attribute all of this to a benevolent God? Would a malicious or capricious one logically have the patience, aptitude and integrity to produce the tremendous order and beauty of natural life, the predictability of the planets' orbits? It would seem to at least give the Heathers of the world pause.

Updated ...

...the parody blog with a spoof about Nigerian scammers forming a union.

419 Scammers

I just received one of those Nigerian scammer emails & it contained the typical line "with nobody to claim it". (Only the amount changes; this time there is $15,000,000.00. Funny how they always write it all out often with the cents showing. I suppose all those zeroes are meant to catch the eye.)

So I was trying to think of lyrics to a Nigerian scammer song, one with the refrain "with nobody there to claim it". The tune would be based on Barnicle Bill the Sailor since the oft-repeated line, "said Barnicle the Sailor", syllabically matches "with nobody there to claim it".

Who's that sending me an email?
Who's that sending me an email?
Who's that sending me an email?
said the fair young maiden!

"FROM THE DESK OF DR,CHARLES BOSIE",
A widowed queen with lots of money,
with nobody there to claim it!

"Pertains to wit, next of kin I seek
for the queen well she died this week
with nobody there to claim it!"

"$15,000,000.00, not a penny less,
please send phone and your address,
for nobody's there to claim it!"

"Yours for a mere processing fee
the queen was rich you plainly see
and nobody's there to claim it!"

Next week: On tap is "What Do You Do With an Email Scammer?" to the tune "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?"

Brush With Greatness

J. Potter at Korretiv explains in a meme:

In college, I reread The Moviegoer and Love in the Ruins for classes with the great Percy scholar, John Desmond, wrote one college paper comparing The Moviegoer with Eudora Welty's Optimist's Daughter and another one comparing The Moviegoer with Dostoevsky's Brother's Karamazov.

Without consulting me, my dad sent the latter essay to Percy and got a letter back which read, in part: "Jonathan's piece is quite superior. I enjoyed it. Needless to say, any writer enjoys getting classed with Dostoevsky -- but apart from this, it still is a very sharp paper." Holy shit! That was a great birthday present; thanks, Dad!

The whole post is well worth reading, including a snippet of cummings:

Paris; this April sunset completely utters
utters serenely silently a cathedral
before whose upward lean magnificent face
the streets turn young with rain ...

Anglican Common Prayer No More?

An Episcopalian lesbian priest suggests the reason the southern hemisphere folks are hard for her to understand might be because of prayer books:

The point is that the guiding principal of our Anglican liturgy has done its work. "Lex orendi, lex credendi." "We pray what we believe." And, we have come to know what we believe by what we pray.
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What did YOU do with all your 1928 prayer books when we made the switch way back in 1979? I'm willing to bet that some of you sent yours to places in the southern hemisphere.

A History of Christians & Government in Thirty Minutes or Less

King Clovis

Historians who are generalists, rather than specialists, possess a certain charisma because understanding the grand sweep of the past correctly is so helpful to understanding the present. I listened to one such generalist, Msgr. Lane, via the miracle of modern technology: a CD offered here.(Note: errors that follow in the paraphrase are mine, not Msgr. Lane's.) The topic was secularism in the Church, and how it's been a long, constant struggle. I can't begin to do justice to the thirty minute talk and the nuances contained therein, but I'll try. He said the Reformation is commonly blamed for secularism in the Church but that was not what the Reformers intended. Government was intended to be of, by and for Christians for it was a Christian society. What the Reformers could never have imagined was a "failure of Christianity". They wouldn't imagine, for example, a Christian leader like Jesse Jackson. (Jackson called abortion "a genocide" but later began supporting a woman's right to choose after the state weighed in - instead of the state taking its cues from Christian society, Christians take their cues from the state.) It was assumed in a thoroughly Christian society there would be no cleavage between the government and religion, and that layman could lead better than clergy. But eventually civil governments were saying things like "we don't care what you believe as long as you give deference to us". And groups began splitting off, such as the spiritual forebears of today's Amish. Many other groups split, such as the Lutheran pietists.

Monsignor began with the 5th century and the Frankish King Clovis. The men who would fight for Clovis did so on the assumption that he was a more than a man, a "superman", part god. It was said his grandfather was conceived via "a sea monster which could change shapes while swimming". Men would not die for the merely human.

Well Clovis married Clotilda, a devout Christian, and she begged him to convert. From Catholic Encyclopedia:

Clotilda, who was a Catholic, and very pious, won the consent of Clovis to the baptism of their son, and then urged that he himself embrace the Catholic Faith. He deliberated for a long time. Finally, during a battle against the Alemanni--which without apparent reason has been called the battle of Tolbiac (Zulpich)--seeing his troops on the point of yielding, he invoked the aid of Clotilda's God, promised to become a Christian if only victory should be granted him. He conquered and, true to his word was baptized at Reims by St. Remigius, bishop of that city.

Msgr. Lane mentions that this rejection of paganism and his semi-god status made Clovis merely a man in the eyes of his men. He was not "superhuman". Under what grounds would he have the right to rule? He explained to his soldiers about Saul in the Hebrew scriptures. Saul was annointed by God and that annointing made him different, something that changed him and made him more. So Clovis would be annointed King and the majority of his soldiers became Christians.

Monsignor goes on to describe the centuries ahead and the abuses in the Church. He said that to this day the problem is unresolved and that we should beg God for insight. He said that almost every reform in the Church has come from the bottom up rather than top down. He said it was very unfortunate that the word 'beseech' and synonyms were removed from the liturgy, because however you want to say it we must beg God for His help and renewal.

Quotable

Within our own land, at the same time, sometimes in great poverty, in second-class citizenship and in the midst of other limitations, we Catholics were universally accredited with being lighthearted Christians. Now we appear to have become the grim ones, marked by an air of deadly earnestness and an appalling absence of the light touch. We seem almost overcome by the problems that face the world, the Church, and any Catholic alive and at work today.

- John Cardinal Wright, foreward to Illustrissimi

Suburban Banshee visits popular devotions.

I Regret That I Have But One Liver to Give to My City

Heard on MSNBC today that the results of the "Most Drunken Cities" are in:

First was Milwaukee, second Minneapolis, third Columbus and fourth was Boston.

I have a hunch that Ohio State greatly increased our score.

Home is...

Steven Riddle makes a plaintive cry:

Our homes are important--but I have discovered during the extended absence of this summer that home is not a place or a building, it is the gathering of the people you love deeply. My home is wherever Linda and Samuel are.

I can recently relate. If you'll permit the maudlinity, here's an journal exerpt:

S. is gone for the week and the barometric pressure of the household fell immediately and precipitiously. Her absence felt like a hole to be filled but the weather made it worse – it is too good not to be shared. I felt better during Monday night’s rainstorm than Sunday’s mint day. She's one of the pillars of the household and our dog knows it too; I like to think he thinks he’s helping keep the ceiling in place. German shepherds like "having jobs" after all.

All Hail the Court!

Blogging often means not knowing what the heck you're talking about but talking about it anyway, and as a blogger I hereby exercise my right to do so (if it pleases the court). With that caveat, and with the caveat that I am not a lawyer but have watched at least five episodes of Law & Order, I will proceed with reckless abandonment.

I was reading this post from Elena concerning the MacFarlane legal proceedings and my question is: Why didn't Bai's lawyer have a counter-expert refute the findings of the court-appointed psychologist? You can easily find an expert who will testify as to the benefits of homeschooling and breastfeeding.

Ok, perhaps that counselor wasn't allowed to, given the phrase "court-appointed". But re: The trial court noted that it was well aware that Husband “is autocratic, egotistical, narcissistic and manipulative.” The irony is killing: you want to know the truly "autocratic, egotistical, and manipulating" force in America? It's the Court itself! The justice system makes Bud look like a piker. 1.5 million dead babies a year testify.

Her case reminds me how there's a huge difference (in terms of punishment meted out) between a crime committed against a police office and a crime committed against a civilian. You do the latter, you're in SERIOUS trouble, much bigger trouble. They take care of their own.* Similarly, if you offend the Court (which Bai apparently did) then you're really in trouble. And Bai paid a heavy, heavy price.

Our parish priest mentioned that back in the crazy, hazy mid-'70s, his bishop instructed him that he had a "moral obligation to support the decisions of the Supreme Court". As the saying goes, you can't make it up...

* - as did the bishops when they shuttled molesting priests around? Is the downside of a close-knit community greater corruption? Louisiana, a predominantly Catholic state, has had more than its fair share of political corruption during America's history. Is cronyism the especial Catholic sin because it thrives in a society more other-reliant than self-reliance? Does the "cult of individualism" of Protestant America at least have the salutary effect of less corruption since people are less likely to engage in quid-pro-quo if they're staunch individualists?

Another Way to Look At It

On Matthew 5:28:

The Pope [John Paul II] acknowledges that Christ's words about lust are severe. But he asks, are we to fear the severity of these words, or rather have confidence in their power to save us? These words have power to save us because the one who speaks them is the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn 1:29). Most people see in Christ's words only a condemnation. Do we forget that Christ came into the world not to condemn but to save (see John 3:17)?

Christ's words about lust call us to "enter our full image". As part of the heritage of original sin, lust obscures in each of us God's original, beautiful plan for sexual love - but it hasn't snuffed it out. The Pope insists that the heritage of our hearts is deeper than lust, and if we're honest with ourselves, we still desire what is deeper. If the human heart is a deep well, it's true that murky waters abound. But if we press through the mud and the mire, at the bottom of the well we don't find grime and sludge. We find a spring that, when activated, gradually fills the well to overflowing with pure, living water. This spring is the "deeper heritage" of our hearts. John Paul II proclaims that the words of Christ reactivate that deeper heritage, giving it real power in our lives.

- Christopher West, "Theology of the Body for Beginners"

Matthews's New Pal

Chris & Alan
Sitting in a tree,
K-i-s-s-i-n-g...

What's it take to have liberal stalwart MSNBC's Chris Matthews love a Republican? Have that Republican run in a three-candidate race in Connecticut where he might just siphon off enough votes to bring down Joe Lieberman.

So yes, any time there is a Republican with no chance of winning and a competitive independent in a three-person senatorial race, you can count on the ardor and affection of Chris Matthews. That combination of events happen about as frequently as Haley's Comet but...

By all accounts Republican Alan Schlesinger is an abysmal candidate and has polling numbers in the teens, but he somehow was deemed worthy of nearly a half-hour of MSNBC airtime (admittedly, watched by tens, but still).

Meanwhile there's great concern and consternation on the part of the media that Schlesinger has been spurned by his own party. Somehow it's shocking (I'm shocked! say like in Casablanca) that Bush isn't racing down to endorse and prop up a candidate polling 16%. And yet, by definition, the president is a political animal. And yet the media's not supposed to be a political animal. Something stinketh at 30 Rock.

Bill O'Reilly admits he's the equivalent of an op ed writer and also that he's a "Traditionalist". Has Matthews ever admitted being an editorialist and not an "impartial news analyst" (oxymoron alert!)?

Becoming Competent at Spotting Cultural Competency & Incompetency

The latest buzzwordian phrase seems to be "cultural competency", which supposedly means "sharpening skills to build relationships across differences". Concerning this, a friend writes:

The latest buzz - "cultural competency" - has insinuated itself into my mind. If there is cultural competency, that implies the existence of cultural incompetency. How do you know if you are culturally competent ? Do such things as an extensive familiarity with Seinfeld episodes count ? Do I have to like pizza and hot dogs ? Is there a test I can take ?

Good questions all. Tis a beautifully buzzword-ish phrase, isn't it? I'll check the ol' checklist:

1) Is it alliterative? Yes
2) Is it richly multisyllabic? Does it sound impressive said aloud? - Yes, yes
3) Does it make little sense on its own? Yes
4) Does the phrase include the word "competency"? Yes!

Bingo! I see a very bright future for this phrase. Another friend responded with his typical incandescent brilliance:

I can better understand examples of cultural competency if I had an example, such as:

Winning at Trivial Pursuit by knowing that The Skipper's real full name was Jonas Grumby, or that a giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal, or that an octopus has two hearts, or that the two Spanish words uttered by Roberto Duran when Sugar Ray kicked his ass were "no mas"

Singing the "Oy-vey Maria" at a Jewish-Catholic wedding.

If some agar scored high on the apgar.

Examples of cultural incompetency would include:

A Sherpa guide with really good hiking boots and a map.

Vanilla Ice

An Amish dude who leaves his high paying high pressure Silicon Valley tech job while talking on his cellphone on a con call with the venture capital guys and the new product developers, and texting on his Blackberry with his admin to deliver flowers to his mistress and order an anniversary gift for his wife, takes care not to ruffle his full Armani ensemble as he gets into his BMW, takes a call on his personal cell to arrange for a suitable temp to replace his nanny who is really on a leave of absence to prepare a harrassment lawsuit against him, and thinks to himself "ah, thou hast a simple life, dostn't thou?"

I've been reading Andrew Bostom's compendium on Muslim jihad through the millennia....For a break, I picked up the memoirs of Confederate Colonel John Mosby, the "Gray Ghost", perhaps America's most successful guerilla fighter...[W]hat I considered on reading the first chapters of Col. Mosby's memoirs is that I've always respected the good men on the "other side", but have somehow conceived a disdain for them because of the side for which they fought. But after reading Dr. Bostom's accounts of truly inhuman warfare, I rather like these men, Col Mosby, Gen'ls Lee & Longstreet, all those who fought honorably and well. They may have chosen the wrong side (I carefully refrain from saying they did choose the wrong side) but once they chose it, they fought for their homes and people in the best way men can fight, and I'll honor them for that. Perhaps we can learn from these good Americans in our thousand-year struggle against Islam. - Bill of "Summa Minutiae"

In the unlikely event that I become a saint, I promise to intercede on behalf of anyone who buries a statue of me upside-down and then retrieves it after success. I believe I would find it quite touching. I appreciate interesting, personal devotions like the one in question. I expect the Saints find them every bit as touching as I find my daughter's drawings. This sort of devotion emphasizes that the Saints are real living people, not intercession machines with specific access protocols...An act is superstitious if it is thought to be efficacious in itself, as opposed to being a particular devotion to ask for the intercession of a particular saint. But that is true of any ordinary devotional act, such as praying before an icon: it can be superstitious depending upon disposition, but with the right disposition it has merit. Praying before an icon with the proper disposition is efficacious (in the same way that buying me a beer is efficacious in getting my favors). It seems to me that condemning this practice as superstitious in itself, independent of the disposition of the practitioner, is a mild form of iconoclasm. - Zippy Catholic on the practice of burying a St. Joseph statue upside down in hopes of selling your house

Beauty is essential in spiritual formation. Beauty is not beauty without truth and goodness--it is "as an Angel of Light" whose heart is complete darkness. The most beautiful image in the world that denies God only seems beautiful--it is a seed of darkness. This is probably similar to what Savonarola taught the people of his day, only he made the mistake of assuming that anything suggestive of the beauty of the human form was somehow tainted and evil. There are the Venus de Milo La Primavera and La Trionofo di Aphrodite, all of which portray the female body in its splendor without necessarily provoking the prurient. When one approaches works like The Naked Maja and such like, the question becomes more nebulous, and for some of us none of these images in any amount is licit. That is the individual way and path. Nevertheless, it is part of spiritual formation to dwell upon the beautiful because it bypasses the eternal censor and tells us something that mere intellect cannot tell us about God. God cannot be apprehended, much less embraced by intellect alone but only through the union of intellect and emotion that make up the mind of the person. Certainly our sense feed the mind, but it is ultimately the mind that is the primary gatekeeper and the spirit within us that says, "Let it be done unto me," to God. And these things may only happen when we have surrendered all to God. - Steven Riddle, setting off scores of Google image searches for "The Naked Maja"

At that age, I might have been interested in exploring the Eight Beeratitudes. - Terrence Berres on the "Theology on Tap" series aimed a college students

Before I read [The Brothers Karamazov]... I didn't even believe that fiction had anything to say that couldn't be said better in nonfiction; I thought of novels as mere entertainment. The Brothers K transformed me from the kid who already knew everything to the young man who wanted to understand everything for the first time. - Patrick of "Orthonormal Basis"

True freedom is not found by seeking to develop the powers of the self without limit, for the human person is not made for autonomy but for true relatedness in love and obedience; and this also entails the acceptance of limits as a necessary part of what it means to be human. . . Apart from this, the quest for justice becomes self-destructive since it is of the very essence of fallen human nature that each of us overestimates what is due to the self and underestimates what is due to the other. - Lesslie Newbigin via blogger at "Historical Catholic"

I am not exactly a fascist. I am not exactly not a fascist either, but I am not a member of any fascist party, and I differ from fascism on the role of the church and on the treatment of archaeological sites. So I see eye-to-eye with bonafide fascists quite a bit. So, naturally, the offense I take to the "islamo-fascist" term is that it presumes that one is talking about Mohammedans when one is talking about those who practice "islam." As I have argued before, true Islam is the Catholic Church and true Muslims are Catholics. Those who follow Mohammed are Mohammedans, not Muslims. Now, since my own differences with fascism tend to be about the role of the Church (my own authoritarianism is really Franquismo), when it comes down to it "Islamo-fascist" is me. Except, why mix Arabic into it?... Why not Romano-fascists? Except that is quite redundant, as there is no fascism without fasces, and they didn't come from Dublin. So we could go with Catholo-fascists. Or Franquistas. Or Keilholtzisti.... - Erik of "Erik's Rants & Recipes", because it's not every day you hear the phrase "I am not exactly a fascist."

I'll take his critique of sending checks seriously if one is ever returned uncashed. - Terrence Berres, on German Diaz's comment that "Sometimes people send a check and think that's helping; we want them to get involved here, that's what changes minds and hearts." (Mr. Berres spends a week or two every year in South America on mission, lest ye think he only writes checks.)

Yesterday, during a viewing of [The Empire Strikes Back], I found about three different heresies glinting menacingly in Yoda's instructions to Luke. If I had more time, I'd tackle each one for at least a paragraph . . . but I'm afraid that I'll just have to refer to St. Augustine of Hippo's writings on Manichaeism and Pelagianism for now. Suffice it to say that there are eons of difference between a truism and a truth. A truism goes with the flow of the universe and as such may be a very good thing to know, if one wants to get on properly. On the other hand, a truth defies the universe, so much so that one who believes the truth may find himself at war with the whole cosmos...While there are some true things which seem a very part of the fabric of the universe, there are also other true things which, to borrow an expression of Pope Paul VI, are in the universe, but not of the universe. The Incarnation was not something natural; it came from somewhere beyond all we can fathom of space and time, daring us to believe in it, but almost unconcerned in the event that we would not. Anyone can take two tablets of Yoda's bland instruction a day and be perfectly well, even perfectly civil, for the rest of his days--just as we see those with a daily intake of Buddha's, Confucius' and even Krishna's instructions getting on. Yet there is no such peace for those who would follow the commandments of the One Whose Kingdom is not of this world; for He came not to bring peace, but to bring a sword. How much more glorious would have been the Jedi light sabre, if its lone wielder--not just any lone wielder, but the inimitable Luke Skywalker--had defied not merely an Empire, but an entire universe. - Enbrethiliel of Sancta Sanctis

Yet you came and were not turned away. You, too, found room before the manger. Your gifts were not needed but they were accepted and put carefully by, for they were brought with love. In that new order of charity that had just come to life, there was room for you, too. You were not lower in the eyes of the holy family than the ox or ass. "You are my especial patrons," said Helena, "and patrons of all latecomers, of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents." - concerning the Magi, in Evelyn Waugh's "Helena"

Pius and Pious Aren't That Far Away

St. Pius X brings out the Trad in all of us, as well as making us more P.O.D. (an acronym I believe means "pious and overly devotional").

Among the slew of excellent posts today, Karen Knapp gets credit for referring to nose-picking during a post on a saint. That certainly kept me alert and awake.

Elsewhere I also thought this and this and this were all very good. It was certainly an embarrassment of riches.

Very Quirky Links...

Armor of God PJ's
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Celebrities against Terrorists

Whoda thunk it?

...via Aliens in this World.

The Word Among Us...

...takes a different view of the young man sad at Christ's words to him:

But when Jesus told him to sell his possessions, give to the poor, and follow him, the man went away sad. We might conclude that he was sad because he simply couldn’t give it all up and follow Jesus. But perhaps we are jumping to conclusions. Maybe he was sad because he knew how hard it would be to take this final step. Maybe he foresaw the struggle that lay ahead, and the thought of another struggle was sobering. But that doesn’t mean he walked away from it. For all we know, he drew another deep breath, set his mind and will to the task, and came through victorious.

Why this speculation? Because a little sadness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Don’t worry if the call seems hard at times. And by all means, don’t discount yourself if you find that you don’t want to give up everything for Jesus. For one thing, you are in very good company. So take heart and persevere. Trust that when Jesus does win out, you’ll be far happier than you ever were before.

Aug. 21 - St. Pope Pius X - One of My Favorite Saints

The Modernist Fighter I really, really like this saintly shepherd, or shepherdly saint. He was "pastoral" before pastoral became a dirty word. He was a saint for the underdog, the little guy, for the struggling sinner, for the unsophisticated, and for the young. He echoed his Master's saying, "Let the little children come to Me" by moving up the age at which children could first go to Holy Communion. He also encouraged more frequent reception of the Eucharist, teaching that instead of thinking you have to be perfect in order to receive the Perfect, you receive the Perfect in order to eventually become perfect.

"St. Earnhardt"

Recently I saw a window decal of Dale Earnhardt with a halo, and below it the script: "Because God Needed a Driver".

That sentiment sounds so banal although I try to put the best spin on it and consider it the piety of those with a simple, trusting faith. God doesn't need anything, let alone a driver, and I've always had trouble with the idea that God micro-manages events like deaths, as if he's up there constantly changing the natural course of existence. And yet of course I'm a hypocrite because I secretly hope that my own death will be micro-managed (at least in the sense of being in the state of grace at that time).

It rubs me the wrong way I guess because it seems like such a banal representation of things: 1) that there will be driving in Heaven 2) that God "needs" 3) that Earnhardt is a saint 4) that Earnhardt's death was the direct result of God's action.

I've always had a hard time picturing Heaven as merely a new earth with glorified bodies. There's a tension in this because if one sees Heaven as completely otherworldly then it becomes a rejection of God's good and desirable creation. If it's mostly just earth - coupled with the ability to bi-locate and meet fascinating people like Albert Einstein and St. Francis in between choir practice - then it becomes a glorified cocktail party. The best I can picture it, when I can at all, is it's the feeling of gratitude and love that wells up occasionally during prayer. Only in Heaven that'll be continuous.

A Post to be Named Later

I'd developed a nice little post, in need only of a little seasoning and editing, but our GM traded it to the Los Angeles Bloggers for $32,000 and a post to be named later.
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-- POST WOULD'VE GONE HERE ---

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This post will be updated at an unspecified date in the future with a post to be named later. Thanks for your patience.

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Update: Terrence Berres speaks the truth: "Just watch, it'll lead them to a pennant."

Memories...

Distances seemed much greater when I was a kid. A trip from Ohio to Kentucky was to us what a trip to Florida is to today’s kids since we took a car and they take a plane. And I recall a long-ago Easter - or was it just spring? - when we traveled to our uncle and aunt's house.

They'd shocked the family by moving, and not just outside the city limits but to another state. They were practically pioneers in the '70s since people then didn't move much then. They lived in Louisville and of the trip - the only one I recall we made there to see them - I recall two things (subject to memory's imperfections):

1) Learning from a cousin how to perform a proper baseball wind-up. I practiced it constantly thereafter, which I suppose is the baseball fan’s equivalent of the rock afficiando's “air guitar”. I practiced it even in my 4th grade class during those times we were wandering aimlessly around the classroom for reasons not immediately apparent. There was a fine pleasure in it and I felt that my motions (both the runner's-on and the bases-empty version) exactly mimicked a major leaguer's. In my mind's eye the imaginary ball traveled at speeds up to 90 miles per hour.

2) Trips to far away destinations like Louisville slowed you down and in that slowness came a kind of frozenness of time helpful to memory. There was a blinding morning sun on the way there and Tanya Tucker's “Delta Dawn” played on the radio. Was it really dawn or was I just imagining that in hindsight due to the name of the song? I suppose it’s the very irretrievability of memories that makes them more compelling than they really are.

Fine Art Friday

Inspired by MamaT's fine offering today I poked around a bit:


Roger Muhl

I like hers better but like this well enough. The phantom-like mountains in the background remind me of those seen while driving on the interstates near the Tennessee/North Carolina border.

Various & Sundry

Worthwhile thoughts of Ross Douthat on utilitarianism.
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I did not know that the cause for the canonization of Pope Paul VI has been underway for awhile:

Few have perceived the intensity of Paul VI's relation with the Lord. Suffice it to read the collection of prayers entitled: "Paul VI: Prayers to Christ," to realize their intensity. Pope Montini, who many regard as a sophisticated and distant intellectual, lived with an intense and enthusiastic love for Christ. One must begin from here in order to understand the fabric of his life.

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Beautiful first reading from today's Mass. Scripture has charms that soothe the savage beast.

Aug 18 - St. Daig Maccairaill, d. 586 A.D.

St. Daig's monastery at Iniskeen, Ireland

From catholic.org: Monastic founder and bishop, also called Dagaeus and Daganus. He was the son of Cayrill and a disciple of St. Finian. Daig Maccairaill founded a monastery at Iniskeen, Ireland. He is called “one of the Three Master Craftsman of Ireland.”

Another..

...snippet from a courtroom scene in Christopher Buckley's No Way to Treat a First Lady helps explain why some believe Bush was behind 9/11:

She knew there was no merit to Boyce's stunning allegation, and that was why it scared her. It was so outrageous, so unbelievable, that one-third of the jury would believe it. People believe unbelievable things because it's self-flattering to think that you are intellectually daring enough to accept what others find preposterous.

Though the 2002 book then dates itself with a reference to the Sox:

It's why people believe in UFOs, assassination conspiracies, certain religions, and the possibility that the Boston Red Sox will someday win the World Series.

With War: Timing is Everything?

Like many around the stblogisphere, I've been thinking about wars just and unjust and have the obligatory mixed emotions which change hourly. World War II is generally considered a "good war" but it's hard to imagine it happening without the "bad war" of WWI, an unimaginably outrageous, unnecessary and brutal war. Times have changed; we've gotten softer and more self-indulgent and that seems to have its benefits - at least when the timing is right*. For example, one could wish for a lot more softness and spinelessness out of Europe in, oh say, 1914. In one of his novels Christopher Buckley humorously outlines the accomplishments of the Baby Boom generation:

"Disco, junk bonds, silicone implants, colorized movies, the whole concept of stress as a philosophical justification for self-indulgence."

But in 1939 or 1941 to have been soft would've insured that the German language would be the world language of 2006, along with all the concommitant horrors that would've attended that and I'm not just talking about the sound of phlegm moving while making guttural Germanic consonant sounds. Yet sometimes I think things are getting better since at least the world condemns civilian deaths (at least when caused by Israeli or American soliders), where it didn't seem to back in the mid-decades of the 20th century. That is progress.

Meanwhile Christianity Today reviews a couple interesting books on the theological differences that helped incite the Civil War. But that war seemed to be fought over a greater principle (be it states' rights or slavery) than the First World War. More interesting to me would be a study of how despite the lack of theological disagreements Christian Europe managed to find herself engaged in carnage on that scale, although some say use of the Christian adjective, at least among the educated elites, is questionable.

* - Which, of course, is the problem. It gives pacifists ample ammunition (ha) since so many wars (i.e. Civil & First WW) weren't expected to last long or have a fraction of the casualties they did.

Sometimes It's Hard to be a Voter

It's tough being a voter these days. The semi-adult party, the GOP, is having a mid-life crisis and is out driving a lobbyist's car while chugging taxpayer-supplied whiskey. And yet you take a sniff of the other party only to catch the awful scent of offal, making our current system awfully close to a no-party system, or at least one with no good choices. The Democrats seem congenitally unable to grow up, as shown by rumblings to impeach George Bush if they win the House. Like schoolchildren the Democrats say, "you impeached ours, so we'll impeach yours!" Nothing quite says "juvenile" like worrying about impeaching a president over non-existent crimes while there's a war going on.

Some Dems recognize this and at least have the good sense to keep a low profile. But it's obvious that an impeachment scenerio makes it harder for his Republican to vote for a Democrat, should it come to that. It's very hard to bench your college running backs or receivers when all the replacements are whiney, overweight intramural players. The best way for Democrats to get elected is to have plans and ideas, as unlikely as that may be. The second best way is to simply do nothing. The worst way is to put their time and energy into a possible impeachment. From NR:

Will Democrats attempt to impeach George W. Bush if they win control of the House of Representatives? They don’t want you to think so. In May, when many people speculated that impeachment was at the heart of the Democratic agenda, a concerned Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent out word that it was “off the table.” But now, we have in our hands a 350-page “investigative report” on the Bush administration’s alleged “wrongdoing” entitled “The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance.” Written under the supervision of Democratic representative John Conyers, the report is, in effect, a road map for impeachment. To back up his claim that the Bush administration may have violated “26 laws and regulations,” Conyers relies on such authorities as the left-wing conspiracy website RawStory.com, the left-wing anti-war sites DemocracyRising.us and AfterDowningStreet.org, the left-wing magazines The Nation and Mother Jones, and New York Times columnists Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, and Frank Rich. Conyers’s case is, to put it charitably, somewhat fanciful. Of course, none of this would be terribly noteworthy were not Conyers the man who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee — the panel that would initiate any impeachment action — should Democrats win in November. Nancy Pelosi may claim that impeachment is off the table. “The Constitution in Crisis” proves otherwise.

Ahnold Not So Tough

It was interesting to see what would happen when an irresistable force (Arnold Schwarzenegger) met an immovable object (the voters of California - who like their cake and Edith too, meaning gov't spending minus the consequences). And it seems, predictably in hindsight, the immovable object has won (after all, the object never has to be re-elected). So just as the Gingrich Congress crashed and burned when it was blamed for the gov't shutdown of '98, so too have his constituents whipped ol' Arnold into shape. From the latest NR:

Behold the new Arnold, a man bearing little resemblance to the revolutionary who toppled Gov. Gray Davis just three years ago. He’s politically compliant, eager to please, and anxious to avoid a fight. One might say . . . a girlie man. Schwarzenegger has, in the parlance of the Left, “grown.” So has California’s government. In June, the governor signed a $131 billion budget, up 8.4 percent from the year before. Schwarzenegger’s spending plan is 30 percent larger than the one Davis approved in 2003, just before being ousted as a reckless spender.

Say What?

Via here:

Castlerea derives its name from a castle which stood on the banks of the river Suck, at the point where it joins the river Cloonard.

   
(Left) - the river Suck does not suck; (Right) - Non-sucky ancient Irish warriors cross the river Suck

Mr. Luse's Book

(Note: Jeff C., I hope I don't inadvertently post a spoiler. Don't read this post. Or anyone else reading Luse's book.)

Just finished Bill's The Last Good Woman last night and it's still reasonating. I got the odd sense, while reading it that it was good I was reading fiction instead of writing it even though given a block of time the default always seems to be the latter. There was an essential rightness in reading given the virtuosity of Luse's luminous prose. I hope fiction never goes the way of poetry, whereby everyone writes it but no one reads it.

There is a sudden relaxation of duty in reading things that you feel need to be said - even if you didn't know or had forgotten they needed to be said - and Luse hits all the sore spots, our need for clarity, a "good death", what we choose to fixate on, entering into the suffering of others, and love.

I found the irresolution of the narrator concerning his love interest particularly believable. The sort of on-again/off-again torture of one who cannot commit is something most of us have experienced both in our spiritual and temporal lives. There are those huge hinge moments on which large decisions are made, and I can recall with utter clarity a few of those. The way it is resolved was particularly pleasing to me, both in its helplessness and its physicality, a simple hug, as the way the Eucharist can tug us back when we feel estranged from Christ and words seem ineffective. Luse was able to bring it all off deftly, without a hint of cloyness or triteness.

Saint o' the Day

Today we remember St. Hiero, an Irish martyr and missionary to Holland, where he was killed in 885:

The Irish monk and evangelist Hiero was martyred in the Netherlands (Benedictines, Encyclopaedia). In art, Saint Hiero is portrayed as a monk with a hawk and sword (Roeder). He is invoked to find lost articles (Roeder).

Amsterdam today

Precious little seems to be internet-available concerning this obscure saint, but it was good to learn what I could about him given my newfound interest in this country of "dams" - Amsterdam and Rotterdam - since my wife happens to be there right now. She says the people are very friendly and accommodating. Found this also:

The fleet, the sea-faring capability of the Dutch is sometimes referred to as "Holland's Glory." But there is a hidden Holland's Glory—the people who contributed by their holy lives to the spiritual welfare of the Dutch people—those whose lives I have written about in this booklet. I was particularly moved by the deep faith of the Martyrs of Gorkum who met their eternal reward by steadfastly holding on to their belief, their faith, in the Real Presence.

The Mother of All Christians

As you probably can tell, my enthusiasm for Our Lady has lately been rekindled, for a variety of reasons though all emanating from God's grace.

One is that it's slowly dawned on me that to whom much has been given, from them many others will receive. In other words there's no such thing as a "grace hoarder" - God gives to those who in turn will give. And as Mary was the supreme recipient of God's grace she is also the supreme giver of that grace. (What should be patently obvious is that she is not the generator of grace. A cursory reading of the gospels makes that obvious.)

Second, Donal Foley's book "Understanding Medjugorje" was impactful.(Did I really just use that word?) What he tears down with one hand (by discouraging Medjugorje) he builds with the other (Fatima). And with Fatima, if it was good enough for Pope John Paul II and Ricardo Montalban then it's good enough for me. (Well, JPII anyway.)

Third, it all makes perfect sense. Why should I be subject only to the first Eve's disobedience and not also be heir to the new Eve's obedience? I did nothing to deserve the taint of Original Sin and nor did I do anything to deserve God's grace. And while all Christians are comfortable with Mary being the fleshy mother of Jesus - the conduit from which Christ's body flowed - there is squeamishness about she being a conduit of Christ's grace. Part of that might be due to a lingering Gnosticism that doesn't fully accept God as creator of both flesh and spirit. Or maybe some, deep down, consider Mary relatively unimportant because if she'd have refused her role, God would've found another way to get Jesus born. Presumably He'd have found someone else - though that's hardly biblical since the scary part of the biblical message is that actions have consequences. Did we not learn that with the first Eve and the tragic ensuing history of death and sin? So if we thus devalue Mary's initial fiat we may devalue her subsequent role. Yet, as the saying goes, "no Mary, no Jesus; know Mary, know Jesus."

UPDATE: "Fatima, the shrine with rich corinthian leather?" - Terrence Berres comments.

More About Mary...

Suburban Banshee is hopeful. This Rock also has a cover story on overcoming undue fear of Mary's role in salvation history. And Joshua of Western Confucian reports that he was handed a rosary by a nun on his first Korean RCIA class and has been saying it ever since: "I am firmly convinced that it was Our Lady who led me to and helped me grow in the Faith her Son established...During the past eighteen months, I have seen Our Lady's intercessary work in our daughter's medical treatment, most notably under her title of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal."

Parody Blog Updated...

...after reading the UN is upset with the US:

Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy on Aids, said President George Bush's $15 billion Emergency Plan for HIV/Aids was too focused on promoting abstinence...

The Bush administration backs an "ABC" plan to fight Aids: Abstinence until marriage; Being faithful to one sexual partner; and if those conditions are not practised, the use of Condoms.

Interesting

Jonah Goldberg says envy is behind more angst than we realize. Also here.

Various & Sundry

Lingers that fresh July, the days spent frisking the tail of the kite-sun while ‘80s songs burned off an iPod cuff as I attended gardenly duties. The songs, stolen between plantings, spurted with the shock of nostalgic surprise. Lingers too the bike ride to Mexico, or the local Mexican grocery whichever came first. On the same ride I later didst gape at the local historic district, like it was Colonial Williamsburg or the Smithsonian, for that church, that school really existed and were once filled with the now dead, in a culture long dead, filled with odd music and books and general foreignness -- all in a place so near.

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Sea Monkeys!
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Via the brilliant Camassia, a New Yorker piece on writer's block.

...many of the writers of that [19th] century, or at least the novelists, were monsters of productivity. Scott, Balzac, Hugo, Dickens, Trollope: these men published as if they couldn’t stop, and they were proud of it...In former times, too, art forthrightly answered the audience’s emotional needs: tell me a story, sing me a song. Modernism, in refusing to do that duty, may have a lot to answer for in the development of artistic neurosis. If art wasn’t going to address the audience’s basic needs, then presumably it was doing something finer, more mysterious...

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"Catholic guilt" is something of a cliche but we come by it honesty I suppose, via our mother religion. My roommate post-college was Jewish and he said "Jewish guilt" was redundant. Recently I felt it keenly while soaking in 1 Corinthians 4 whereby Paul explains how he was thought of as scum and had not a creature comfort to save his life, so persecuted and poor was he. Of course, guilt is probably more universal than I give credit. An Episocopalian minister writes: “My children have always maintained that I need a minimum of two weeks – preferably four – as a vacation. They say that it takes the first 5 days of my vacation before I’m absolutely convinced that it’s okay with God that I’m not working. It takes the next five days for me to finally relax. I have discovered that they are absolutely correct. And, very, very wise.”
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As Mark Shea would say, new blog!.
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The good neighbor across the street, steady as the day is long, meticulously cleans his car. I clean my car every other year and he does every weekend. I’m impressed by his work ethic, which I have trouble putting together with his penchant for marijuana. I thought that stuff was supposed to make you mellow and lazy? (I’ve never tried it, and thank God, because I’m mellow and lazy enough.) He spends 95% of the summer in his driveway and front yard, not a bad place to spend 95% of your summer. I generally spend 95% in the backyard except when I’m shooting baskets. We are most scrupulous in waving; I’ve never not caught his eye as I drive off in a car or on bike and he’ll wave even if he almost wrecks his riding mower. Same here of course--not breaking the streak of waving to the neighbor takes priority over double-checking for coming traffic. I like his flower boxes under his windows. Very European.

Fictional Tuesday

I lost my self-absorption yesterday at 3pm. Or was it 2pm? It might've been 4 if I count that 3:58ish thought when I passed a mirror and wondered if I was losing hair. Not that I'm losing hair, mind you, it's just that it looks a little thinner than I remember it. Although I could be losing my memory too.

Wait a second - let me ask Jerry.

"Jerry, when did I lose my self-absorption?"

"Uh, I dunno, this morning?"

"Nevermind!"

He's obviously too self-absorbed to have noticed my sudden lack of self-absorption.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Did I mention that I'm thrilled that I no longer focus on me, myself and I? In fact, I'm quite absorbed with how non-self-absorbed I am. In the past I constantly monitored my actions and reactions but now I only monitor whether I'm monitoring my actions and reactions. This is far more helpful, don't you think?

Mary's a Uniter, Not a Divider

When I was younger & dumber I thought that the way to Christian unity was to de-emphasize the Blessed Mother, to hide her in the back of the closet so as not to offend, much as the apostles tried to avoid scandalizing potential Jewish converts who thought some things were unlawful when they really weren't.

Arrogantly, I thought that this "was the way Mary would want it," nevermind that Our Lady was never much interested in the way she would want things but the way God would. And nevermind that the Orthodox and other Eastern Christians have a strong devotion to Our Lady. Nevermind Lourdes and Fatima. Nevermind the Marian piety so evident in nearly every modern saint or near-saint I admire, including St. Pio, Fulton Sheen, Pope John Paul II. It's like God was trying to tell me something.

I'm sympathetic to the "scandal of mediation" but I've become convinced that's the way God desires it. When I was younger I was upset with God for not simply appearing to everyone individually, ala St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Yet he wants to use human instruments, including His mother. Which means that He will use Mary not to divide Christendom (which she never did in the first place of course; reformers such as Martin Luther were very devoted to her) but a way to bring Christendom together again. The big mistake is to assume our strategies will bring about unity. That will have to come from God and will likely come about in an unpredictable fashion.

When you get to be my age you start worrying about Heaven, and you hope like Hell you get there. - George H.W. Bush, to Jon Meacham

[Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict] once observed that "in a certain way the priest has become too important. Those attending Mass must always be looking at him. In reality, he is not nearly that important." He then went on to link this over-importance to the feminist conviction that women need to be priests. When our parish priest ended the practice of First Communicants standing around the altar during the consecration, he told the assembled parents, "They are not on display." He might have added, "And neither am I." - Rich Leonardi of "Ten Reasons"

This is a blog, so I feel oblogated to write something.- Bill of Apologia

I'm not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it's very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically...I'd also say it's necessary for my ministry. - Pope Benedict XVI

One book that changed your life: The Screwtape Letters (C. S. Lewis). I had read it once when I was a boy, without apparent effect. As I grew older, I became a sort of outward Catholic - never missed Mass, always received Communion, but never prayed or went to Confession, or let my belief (what was left of it - thanks be to God, there was always at least a trace there) affect my actions. When I was 18 and home from college for Christmas break, I idly picked up a copy at the library. By the time I finished it, I knew where I was, where I was headed, and what I had to do about it. I had been given back my faith....One book that made you cry: I don't cry easily, but what does set me off is what J. R. R. Tolkien called the "eucatastrophe", the sudden breaking of the clouds or lifting of oppression. The moment in The Return of the King, as Faramir and Eowyn are together in the Houses of Healing, when the Shadow rises up enormously, and then dissolves, and the Eagle comes proclaiming the final defeat of Sauron, is one such. - Bob of "Trousered Ape"

Three lights flashing, an airplane lumbers across the field of pinpoint white stars. The warmth of the summer night fills my lungs with each breath. If only I smoked or drank or took interest in women other than my wife I could be standing here in my boxers in my screened porch cradling a world weary scotch, or stirring my Sangria with a finger, or puffing away on my little black filterless Belgians, or lightly rolling my Ybor City mock Cuban between thumb and forefinger, or stroking the taut but silky smooth stomach and lower breasts of this week's love while waiting for my dog to do his business. But I'm not. - Steven Riddle

Memes that penalize the prolix. - Peony of "Pansy & Peony" on the word-limiting "You're On Notice" Colbert meme

Christianity, considered as a moral system, is made up of two elements, beauty and severity; whenever either is indulged to the loss or disparagement of the other, evil ensues. - commenter on Disputations

The truth is that songs where you sing the blues are in some ways subverting your true sorrow, simply by setting it apart from you and putting it into some kind of order. - Suburban Banshee

Bl. Jordan of Saxony records the death of St. Dominic..."Behold," [St. Dominic] said, "up to this hour the grace of God has kept my flesh unsullied; yet I confess to not escaping the fault that talks with young women affected my heart more than conversations with those who were older." (A Spaniard to the end. And a true Christian, appreciative of the physical order yet striving for perfect charity toward all.) - Tom of Disputations

In terms of auguring the future, both referents are ominous: A pope unable to halt mass slaughter, and a saint who found a route for the church to survive the fall of the Roman Empire. - commenter on article mentioning how Benedict XVI chose his name based on both St. Benedict and Benedict XV

Peace prevails at the Our Lady Of Consolation shrine In Carey, Ohio even as the Street Preachers Fellowship again shows up to protest the Assumption Eve procession...I attended the English Mass but it must have been more than a bit ironic to hear the din of the street preacher’s comments during the Chaldean Mass. The Chaledans say their Mass in Aramaic, the ancient language of Jesus. Can you imagine a group of fundamentalists, whose primary doctrine concerning such topics as the rapture and salvation that comes from the 19th or 20th century, lecturing a group whose traditions and language go back to the Apostolic era? The Assumption of Mary was one of the earliest traditions of the Middle Eastern Church. - David Hartline of "Catholic Report"

"During the election cycle in 2004, our Catholic values were whittled down to four or five issues that were nonnegotiable," said Eric McFadden, Ohio field director for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. "We want to bring other issues into the discussion." I 'ain't buying it...Success isn't likely to be as simple as adding a handful of "other issues" to the four or five nonnegotiables -- much less replacing them, which is probably the real aim. The appeal to the nonnegotiables worked because, well, they are nonnegotiable relatively speaking. Most educated Catholics know there's a profound difference between a law that permits a child to be butchered in his mother's womb and one that permits an employer to pay someone $5.85 an hour versus $7.15. There are also the related issues of identity and authenticity...They've lectured conservatives about a mile-high wall of separation between Church and State and spoken of politically-minded Christians in conspiratorial terms. Learning that they now take religion seriously, on its own terms, is a bit like learning that Britney Spears next record is "The Greatest Hits of Chant and Polyphony." - Rich Leonardi of "Ten Reasons"

There was something strange about the movie [World Trade Center], and I couldn't put my finger on it.  Then I realized:  As far as I can remember, it never mentions the cause of the 9/11 attacks: Islam. Specifically, those forms of Islam most closely aligned to the teachings of Mohammed.  It's like a Holocaust movie without the Nazis.  It's not just this movie.  With notable exceptions, the silence about the true nature of Mohammed and Islam is deafening...Bad solutions will be proposed -- "the spread of democracy" will continue to replace "the spread of the Gospel" as our evangelical mandate.  And we'll continue to be surprised when this democratic movement strengthens the fists of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian Shiites at the expense of Maronite and Chaldean Christians and other good people. Jesus Christ is the answer.  In the coming years, the task of Christians will be to talk more often and intimately with Him, so the world can hear His voice in ours more clearly. - Kevin Knight of "New Advent" blog

McGowan asks: "Why do we regret losing what we don't really want? Why do we long for a way of life we wouldn't return to: an austerity that was sustained by penury, not by anyone's wish for it to be so?" Perhaps, he suggests, "we miss the intimacy of a society where neighbors depended upon one another, needed one another." - Rick Grant review of book by Joe McGowan

The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now, as it was twenty years ago. Though I hold, as you know, a process of development in Apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not supersede the Fathers, but explains and completes them. And, in particular, as regards our teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin, with the Fathers I am content; --- and to the subject of that teaching I mean to address myself at once. I do so, because you say, as I myself have said in former years, that "That vast system as to the Blessed Virgin ... to all of us has been the special crux of the Roman system." - Venerable Cardinal Newman, via Bill White

Aug. 15 - the Assumption of the Blessed Mother

From an Eastern Christian leaflet (via Byzantine Seminary Press):

On November 1, 1950, Pope Piux XII solemnly proclaimed the centuries-long belief that the "Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of Her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." This solemn proclamation of the dogma of Mary's Assumption into Heaven fittingly describes this crowning event in the life of the Most Holy Mother of God, whose liturgical veneration originated in the East.



In his Homily on the Dormition, St. John Damascene makes the Tomb of Mary talk: 'Now the Angels keep watch over me. Now the divine grace dwells in me. I have become a well of healing for the sick, a defense against demons, a refuge to those who fly to me. Draw near in faith, you people, and you will receive grace in streams.'

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Something from Jimmy Akin and more humor here:

Hardon & Eden (not a law firm) on St. Maximilian Kolbe

Powerful meditation on the radical Marianism of St. Maximilian Kolbe from Fr. John Hardon. "Behold your mother" Jesus said, and that truth is more than most of us can comprehend.
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From the linked bio of St. Maximilian, a quote from the holy man: "I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both." That is unspeakably impressive isn't it? To ask for both? I'd probably ask if there were any tinfoil crowns available.
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Dawn Eden testifies:

I was firmly opposed to the idea of addressing prayers to saints, as I believed the dead had better things to do than pray for the living, and I particularly resented the standard, seemingly preprogrammed line that my Catholic friends gave me about it: "Think of it as though you were asking a friend to pray for you."

Big difference, I thought. My friends are alive.

But there are no atheists in foxholes. I had a strong feeling that I needed all the friends I could get, and the lack of a mortal coil didn't seem strong enough grounds for exclusion.

My friend recommended one of the patron saints of journalists, who shall remain nameless because I looked him up in the Patron Saints Index when I got home and, well, I'm sure he was saintly and all, but he seemed dull. There was nothing about him that made me feel any connection with him. But I did notice something interesting about the Patron Saints Index; its patron-saint categories were hyperlinked. I clicked on "journalism" out of curiosity.

That's how I found Maximilian Kolbe.

Several things about Kolbe's life touched me deeply, especially his early acceptance of the crown of martyrdom; his spreading the faith by founding and publishing newspapers and magazines; and his writing articles against abortion. It fascinated me that he was both a patron saint of journalists and of the pro-life movement. Most of all, I was struck by the sacrifice of his death at Auschwitz. The Nazis killed him after he offered to die in the place of a prisoner who had a wife and family. The prisoner whose life Kolbe saved was present when John Paul II canonized him.

I didn't know the first thing about praying through saints, so I just started talking to Kolbe as though he were a living person whom I was asking to pray for me. It came very naturally. Although a storm was gathering around me at my job, as I prayed I immediately began to feel a sense of peace.

My main objection to praying through saints had been that such prayer would inevitably direct one away from God. While I can't speak for others, I discovered that for myself, the case turned out to be the opposite.

The Other

I was standing in the cafeteria line behind a black woman, probably in her late 20s. She animatedly talked with a gal behind her and later to another girl in front of her. She wore exquisite jeweled glasses, with the sort of tiny lenses that are fashionable these days. Her hair was beautifully coiffed, straight and black with reddish highlights. She had a glitzy, bling-y wedding ring with lots of encrusted diamonds encrystalled like snow and a matching glittery wristwatch. Long dappled earrings hung from her ears, and the overall effect was one of supremely meticulous care. She reminded me of our sharply-dressed vice president, who I've seen maybe five times but who came up the ranks as a salesman and exudes tremendous energy, enthusiasm and an unwilting smile.

It's sort of fascinating for me, who has not their energy or their attention to sartorial detail. Of the black girl, I thought about all the time and attention that goes into her appearance; she must have the discipline to get up pretty early in the morning. And of our VP, he's simply the most likable guy you'd ever meet. Aware of his reputation, he said at a meeting last week that "yes, I am like this 24/7". There is no downtime for him; he is always extremely talkative and outgoing. But he does see himself in dualistic terms. There's another person inside, a Mr. Hyde to this Dr. Jeckyll, a quiet more withdrawn individual and he said he never lets the other guy out though then he contradicted that and said some of his staff "have unfortunately seen that guy".

Can there be downtime for these type of folks? Like finely-tuned athletes, can they let themselves go without an erosion of their social skills and energy level? Inertia being what it is, it's hard to switch in and out of active and less active modes and so it's almost like they choose, in a kind of paradoxical lethargy, to stay only in the active mode.

Aug 14 - St. Maximillian Kolbe

Before Mother Angelica there was...(from Kolbenet): Father Kolbe's Use of Technology Father Kolbe planned to start a printing house where information could be mass produced and sent to millions of people. However, he had only half of the necessary funds. He trusted the Immaculata to help, praying that she would supply them with the needed funds to complete the work and print their publications. During his prayer before a statue of the Blessed Mother, he noticed an envelope. On the envelope, it said, "For you, Immaculata." Inside, the exact amount needed to complete the project. Father Kolbe and the other priests developed a monthly magazine with a circulation of over 1 million, and a daily newspaper with a circulation of 230,000, as well as countless catechetical and devotional tracts. The friars used the latest printing and administrative technologies to print and distribute their publications. Father Kolbe also started a radio station and planned to build a motion picture studio. All of this was used to teach and spread the Catholic faith and to teach the whole world about the Church.

Talking Chinese

I was slap-happy from a tiring hike when I called the local Chinese restaurant.

"I'll have wor su gai and also a small broccoli to go," I said.

There was a language barrier, she speaking very little English, so I braced myself for the difficulties ahead. I don't usually order anything but wor su gai, but when I do I make life difficult for myself.

"Yes wor su gai. What kinda broccoli?"

My mind momentarily froze as I was not expecting this question. Carrot-broccoli? Tomato-broccoli? Isn't broccoli plain old broccoli? But then came a moment of inspiration that at least would buy me time.

"Steamed broccoli!" I said, surprised I was able to come up with that. That did buy me some time as she seemed happy with my response. But that happiness was only momentary.

"Ah pino source?" she approximately said, and I could tell it was a question by the rise in her voice at the end. This, I sighed, would demand a "yes" or "no".

"Yes," I guessed.

"$3.50, ah pino source broccoli."

I was worried by her new information. That was too cheap a price. It seemed I might've agreed to only getting the broccoli and not getting the Wor su Gai. So I tried again.

"That's broccoli AND a wor su gai, right?"

"Ah (indescipherable) pino source and wor su gai?"

I thought I'd take a step back and relay the order again under the mistaken notion that "saying more words" will make things better when often they only obfuscate the core issue. I also thought there was a slight chance in that indescipherable part that there was new confusion as to whether I wanted steamed or fried rice.

"I just wanted an order of wor su gai with fried rice, and small broccoli, just, you know, a cup size, because I haven't been eating all that well lately and I thought it'd be nice to have a vegetable because they say eating vegetables is good for your health and--"

"Ah pino source?"

I gave up.

"Yes, that's it, thanks!"

So I got to the Chinese place and she was wearing a shirt that said something like, "Don't piss me off" and yet she had the brightest smile I'd ever seen on her.

"Wor su gai and broccoli, right?"

"Right," I smiled back.

I get home and find out what she meant by "pino source". There was some sort of additional sauce for the broccoli, a pine sauce? No matter what you call it it was tasty, and the broccoli was bettter for it.

Weekend Scribblings ...  letting no thought go unsaid since 2001

On the cusp of weekend greatness and the books on the table hold a gallon's worth of sun, spent lavish on a gallant summer 'noon before the anticipation of a German dark. Inexorably the late surfeit of news and politics and baseball leads to a fiction, and Luse's book fit the bill admirably.

This was weather that one simply accepts one cannot live up to, like a suitor too splendid. There aren't enough hours in the day and that very thought haunts the hours left. The tomatoes are ripe-to-the-pluck and I pick one and it sings with juice, even as the mother plant's leaves droop from a lack of rainfall. But you can see she's husbanded her water in her fruit.
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Gary Gallagher, a Civil War historian, was on C-Span's stellar "In Depth" program this week. He's certainly seems intent on wringing the romance from the Confederacy, and to my lights gives generally short shrift to Thomas J. Jackson. (Gen'l Lee is everyone's darling, but I think Stonewall Jackson was the most interesting figure in the Confederacy.) Gallagher says that he thinks most of the romance associated with the South is due to the perception of their being an underdog, which Gallagher says was never true since the South could've won the war ("the American Revolution was a more difficult victory than a Southern one would've been"). He also says the Lost Cause writers were successful in promulgating more of a states rights perspective rather than slavery as the cause; Gallagher says flatly "no slavery issue, no secession". He goes on:

"The attraction of the Confederacy is something I've thought a great deal about and I can use myself as an example. I was much drawn to the Confederacy as a young boy; I think partly because I read Confederate accounts before I read Union accounts, but there was more than that going on. I think the Lost Cause writers did there work very well...They presented the best case for the Confederacy and one thing they did was push slavery out of the picture. They knew that Lee was their best card to play. They focused on Lee, and understandably so. They tended to paint Lee as a sort of knightly figure as opposed to Grant, who is a hard-eyed realist, a more modern man. Now that's not accurate either - Lee was a very modern soldier within a 19th century context."

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What does it say that some flowers flourish in full sun and others in half-sun and others in shade? All flowers need sun, but their individual requirements different greatly. Could it be a metaphor for the amount of clarity we need from God? Or, alternatively, could it be a metaphor for the amount of suffering we require? Some of us can perhaps stand very little darkness without losing our fragrance, while others require a certain amount of darkness for peak color?

Found Links

Oh so cringe-worthy!

Baseball and Faith

Are Liberals More Creative than Conservatives?

This Weak - a rantasaurus rex

or "old fogey-ism" rears its ugly head

The differences between the ol' This Week with David Brinkley and the new This Week with George Stephanapolis are stark. The show now has more lard than a state fair winning hog. For example, if I wanted to watch another television show, I'd watch that other television show, yet every week there are recycled clips in the "Sunday Funnies" showing Jon Stewart or David Letterman cracking on the President. There's also always a celebrity interview - a singer or actor or athlete - and that's worth about what you'd expect it to be worth.


Far more edible parts than "This Week".

So the 45 minute program (after commercials) is now down to about 35 minutes of actual content. Of the 35, George S. devotes about half to politicians saying what they've already said in the morning newspaper or which you could predict with near 90% certainty given the foreknowledge of their name and party. So now we're down to about 15 watchable minutes - the infamous "Roundtable", which features the sort of elite political opinion you can't find anywhere else - oh, other than on every other cable channel and in most newspapers. The fact that there are no social conservates on the panel is thus not surprising. And while panels vary, generally only a third of discussion is worth listening to.

The nice thing is I can watch this version of This Week in just about five minutes! :)

The Sensualists

'Tis sometimes said that men need the “smells and bells” of the old-style Latin and Eastern Rite liturgies (which both drew, or draw, more men). And I was skeptical. I wondered why men should be different from women in this regard. I have difficulty imagining outside my experience which is surely why many women have trouble realizing the extent to which men are more prone to lust than they are. But in my imagination the “smells and bells” were a kind of materialism, and I figured men were less materialistic then women as evidenced by our lack of interest in “dust collectibles” or other visual stimuli such as clothes, shoes or a new dining room table (‘why don’t we wait till next year?’ I say) .

And yet…it occurs that there is a deep truth in the claim. It is men who are disproportionately led to sensualism, to seeking feelings of comfort in such worldly things as - but not limited to - sex, food, and alcohol. It is men who have the reputation of being not able to bear pain, for example. “The way to a man’s heart is through is stomach” wouldn’t have become a bromide if there wasn’t a kernel of truth. It also seems that alcoholics are disproportionately men and as far as the sex drive the difference is obvious. It seems men are sensualists but God can and does use the senses to get through to us. Therefore it’s no surprise that it seems predominately men who complain most bitterly about the lack of “sense” in the current liturgy, and that a publication like New Oxford Review would be published and written by men.

The Theology of Beer Labels



I love the classic Beck's Dark label but St. Pauli Girl's has much to recommend it too. It's sort of the yin and yang of beer labels. One is a clean, well-lighted place (masculine), the other baroque and beautiful (feminine). Beck's has clean lines and straightforwardness, while St. Pauli Girl has an attractive curvative and warmth.

Beck's has no picture, only text -- the Aquinas of beers. St. Pauli Girl is personal, there's a picture, and the wandering swirl of the title suggests more of an Augustinian perspective given St. Augustine's more circuitous path to God.

Suspicious Superstitions

I wonder if superstition, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Or to paraphrase Tom of Disputations concerning religious fanaticism, a superstition is 'anything I wouldn’t do'. For secularists, all religion is a superstition. In their eyes all Christians are in the same group, so we can all enjoy a kind of solidarity and ecumenism in that. For many Protestants, the sacraments are superstitions, embarrassments to be discarded to the extent possible (though even Baptists hold on to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, humbly acknowledging what some of them might see as 'Christ’s superstitions’).

Catholics? Well, we naturally look back on past Catholics with condescension. In "Catholic Matters" Richard Neuhaus writes: ”In the thirteenth century, 'age of faith' peasants contrived to purloin the consecrated host to apply as a poultice on the sores of sick cattle. A gross superstition, no doubt, but at least it is interesting.” Since Neuhaus has forgotten more theology than I know, I am going where I ought not dare tread, but given that the consecrated host is Christ himself and given that one woman in the gospel according to Matthew dared touch his garment to be healed, it doesn’t seem too big a stretch to want to hope for the same healing of animals who were the family’s livelihood.

With superstition it appears that pattern itself is an anathema. The woman who touched the Lord’s garment was not superstitious, but if there was a second woman who did so later then we would assume she was obviously acting out of superstition. We moderns would assume the first lady acted out of a "purer" - a more "creative" - faith, even though in actuality both could've been acting out of a deep trust in God.

I’ve heard it said that superstitions are those things we do that we think will “tie God’s hand”, to “force” him to do our will. But I don’t know that the 13th century peasants were attempting to force God’s hand anymore than when we say a simple prayer we are attempting to force him to do our will. Or, in the case of sacraments, to merely expect what Jesus himself promised. It doesn’t hurt to ask and sometimes that asking might take a shape other than quickly said prayers, such as sacraments, pilgrimages, fasting, rosaries, novenas or what not. The Catechism says that God will condescend to help help us even in material matters:

Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer.

Perhaps those goods might even include the healing of sick cattle, given that the health of 13th century peasants might've been dependent on the health of their cattle. Of course if the consecrated host was stolen or acquired illegally, expecting it be helpful would be a base superstition.

Happy St. Attracta Day!

Just Discovered...

...CNS humorist Dan Morris, who had a funny column in the latest diocesan newspaper in which he imagines how various prominent Catholics would answer the question "why DID the chicken cross the road?" Some are predictable, such as John Kerry's "Although I personally reject the need for the chicken to cross the road, and have voted many times to support ways for it to stay on this side of the road, it is the chicken's constitutional and court-upheld right to cross the road." He pokes at George Weigel for intellectual WFBish pretentiousness. Fr. Ronald Rolheiser's was good: "We all feel vulnerable in an unspoken way when we think about the chicken crossing the road. We intuitively sense its inner fears, uncertainty and lack of clear direction - even though it might outwardly appear casual and confident."

But my favorite is Sister Joan Chittister's:

As I ponder the chicken crossing the road, I myself am crossing the North American continent in a jetliner headed to a remote retreat center in another country from which I will make observations about how dim are the lights of average American Catholics on international issues. I will no doubt encounter scraggly chickens and mud roads. I will write about them.

Why Study Theology?     -this post goes out to SR

Came across the following yesterday from Dr. Leo Madden, professor at Ohio Dominican University, in the diocesan newspaper. He begins with a rather large caveat:

On its own, getting a degree in theology will not make you more generous or spiritual. In fact, there is a grave danger that the study of theology might lead a person to think that study alone is enough for the forgiveness of one's sins or the growth of the spiritual life in contact with God.

Later:

What do we mean by "Theology?" The traditional definition...is "Faith Seeking Understanding." The starting point for the study of theology, then, is "Faith," taken in two meanings. "Faith" is the content of the Christian message and tradition, so theology is the study of that content. "Faith" is also the personal response of God's offer of salvation, so the study of theology assumes a personal engagement and commitment to the God who saves us.

By definition, then, theology is an effort of the mind to come to an understanding of the foundations and many component parts of the Christian faith.
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What does this study of theology offer? It offers a fuller picture of the story of the Catholic Faith, so that we see that the Faith is not just something that we affirm but is a place where we live.

It offers explanations to the many questions about the Faith that naturally comes to our minds.

It explains why Catholics think a certain way, pray a certain way, view a moral issue a certain way, celebrate liturgies a certain way.

For those Catholics who are involved in religious dialogue with other Christians or with people of other faiths, it provides the means for explaining the whole of the Catholic Faith and how the separate parts of it connect.

All in all, the study of theology prepares a person for service in the Catholic community, so that the theologian can help other people to grow in their faith.

Well...

...as you can see my pledge to "drink & pray" instead of pontificating on the contentious issues of the day was short-lived. Ah well. But thank God for Britain's work in stopping today's terrorist plot. Scary. And while on the subject, I received this from Ann Coulter via email (sent to millions):

As some of us have been trying to tell you, Democrats don't oppose the war on terrorism because they hate Bush: They hate Bush because he is fighting the war on terrorism. They would hate him for fighting terrorists even if he had a "D" after his name. They would hate Bernie Sanders if he were fighting a war on terrorism. In the past three decades, there have been more legitimate sightings of Big Foot than of "Scoop Jackson Democrats."

Color me skeptical. Most of the BMMIS ('Bush Made Me Insane Syndrome') victims seem to have been Bush-haters long before 9/11. No doubt W's first "mistake" was not winning the 2000 election by a wider margin. It's hard to underestimate the anger of the Left for Bush after what they considered a "stolen" election.

Personal Exhibits - admittedly anecdotal - but here you go. I received the following email - before the election - from a college student (October 2000):

Let me just say that I can't sleep at night b cause people like you live in this country. I shake in fear because I know that you are going to elect that pleasantly disposed Simpleton-George W. Bush- as President.

In June of 2001 a co-worker sent me this Joe Conason piece:

Knocking the wind out of a self-righteous windbag is always healthy fun, especially when the windbag happens to be an authority figure like the president of the United States. Sometimes, however, the impulse to deflate also injures innocent bystanders such as Jenna and Barbara Bush -- whose moralizing pappy must be mortified by their recent booze busts. Unfortunately for the Bushes, their fellow citizens have a right to know that the first family will be held to the same rules imposed on the rest of us. The necessity for a single standard is greater still when those rules were imposed by the president himself. Yet conservative commentators, in a sudden display of tender concern for victims of tabloid journalism, are urging reporters to stop picking on the Bush twins.

Can you feel the love? Two weeks after 9/11 another co-worker was already greatly disturbed at Bush's security measures:

If we're really at war (which I still find inherently debatable since we don't even really know who we're at war with yet), then why wouldn't we immediately revoke all student visas and work visas for all non-Americans (or maybe just those from the country/group that we're at war against)? Doesn't it seem odd that our government's first desire is to increase its ability to spy on its citizens (and visitors) ... e.g., more than it wants to get potential terrorists out of the country?

In late September 2001, Mark Stehl in the UK Telegraph wrote this (which was obviously well before Iraq):

So, as bipartisan "unity" begins to fray and the peace vigils multiply, Bush will need the support of the uncomplicatedly patriotic types you find in towns such as Warren, New Hampshire...

Which suggests the post 9/11 "honeymoon" that Bush experienced lasted about as long as most actual honeymoons - a week or two - and which also suggests that most had an animus against him long before Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Thoughtful Steven Riddle

Apparently Krzysztof Kieslowski (say five times fast!) did a series of ten films for Polish Television in 1987. Twelve people in the United States have seen these films, and Steven Riddle is one of them. But what is excellent is that he took great pains to execute a "SPOILER ALERT" before and after the said spoiler. That is admirably conscientious.

I mean it's one thing to warn people haphazardly that you're going to give the ending away to Pirates of the Dead Man's Pearl or whatever it's called. But to so painstakingly and thoroughly mark the spoiler passage on a film that will be seen by as many people as there are ACLU Christians? That's thoughtful.

Sex & War Redux

This ties in with the previous post regarding how we allow those who started down the path of error a free pass. I suppose the blame game is the height of irrevelancy, but fairness prompts it. To be honest, I have mixed emotions. Was Nixon or Johnson more culpable for the Vietnam War given that Nixon sacrificed 20,000 soliders even though Johnson had already proved the war was unwinnable (given war with China was unthinkable)? With LBJ you can always say "he didn't know how it would turn out".

Although it's not a great analogy, the Church sort of recognizes the principle that it's the initial perpetrator that is most culpable. The anathemnas of Trent concerned Martin Luther and the heretics, not the local Lutheran living next door today. They simply followed the errors of their spiritual father.

Meanwhile George H.W. Bush seems to have become a secular saint while his son is seen as the demonic spawn -- but I say that's unfair. Historians will have a clearer eye on the ball. The abrupt coitus interruptus of the Gulf War, leaving Hussein in power, set the stage. What do I know? Little. But I've never been convinced that anyone should have "known" Hussein was essentially harmless, given that he'd started two wars and was responsible for one to three million deaths during those wars.

Pope John Paul II had almost apocalyptic forebodings about the Gulf War. And it appeared like that war ended without his fears materializing. Now however it seems possible that the Gulf War led to this more dangerous war which might lead to...? Who knows, maybe JPII will be proven right.

Sex & Death

I was pondering the parallels between the sexual revolution and the targeting-of-civilians revolution. In both there seems a slippery slope and in both it seems the last person or group to abuse the principle gets a disproportionate share of the blame. Homosexual activists are currently the focus of conservative wrath but they are merely the last to come around to break a principle long since broken. It's predictable (Pope Paul VI did in fact) that when you divorce sex from procreation you'll open the door wide open to the regularization of porn and aberrant & marriageless sex, which of course we're seeing now.

The use of the atomic bomb seems another classic example of the slippery slope, this time with respect to the principle of not targeting civilians. Germany in WWI began it first, which shocked everyone. (One professor calls that war a constant experience of "the shock of the new"). During WWII Germany began bombing London and other cities and the Allies retailiated by laying waste to Dresden and others in Germany. This is not to excuse Truman's decision, but his predecessor (the now sainted FDR) was targeting civilians in the same numbers as the atomic bomb only accomplishing the same end over a couple weeks instead of one day. It's hard to see why FDR isn't as guilty at least in principle. Certainly it was FDR who began the whole program and the purpose wasn't to build peaceful nuclear power plants.

Listening to the WWI tapes, you get a sense of how Germany pioneered every horrible thing during that war. Targeting civilians? Germany. Poison gas? Germany. And so it is sad that the U.S. is forever linked to the first use of the atomic bomb and sadder that so many Japanese civilians died. Some seem to emphasize that many of the Japanese who died were Christians, but I'm not sure of the relevancy given that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God, not just Christians.

Aug. 9 - St. Nathy (6th Century) & a Sligo Saint & Poet

In addition to Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, today is the remembrance of St. Nathy: Nathy is surnamed Cruimthir (the priest). He was born at Luighne, Sligo, Ireland and became a disciple of St. Finnian of Clonnard, who made him a bishop.

"The impression...which his works produced on the minds of his contemporaries has been handed down in the tribute which the successive writers that mention the name of Nathy never fail to pay to his extraordinary sanctity. Other Irish saints are noted for characteristic virtues: Columbkille, for love of churches; Finnian of Clonard, for zeal in teaching; Brendan for pious voyages; Columbanus and others, for missionary activity; but the patron of Achonry shines chiefly by preeminent sanctity. It is a great distinction."  --Archdeacon Terence O'Rorke, writing on Saint Nathy

There is also a personal connection as I have ancestors who came from Sligo during An Gorta Mor, or The Great Hunger, in 1847. The Catholic Encyclopedia sheds a bit of additional light on this saint who, concerning which, one site said: "Unlike his master, Nathy, who has never found a biographer, St. Fechin has had his life written by several persons." :

The village of Achonry occupies a very picturesque situation in the south of the County Sligo. Here St. Finian, who died in 552, established a church and monastery on some land given him by the prince of the Clann Chonnaire. Over this he placed Nathi O Hara, who had been his pupil in the famous school of Clonard and is always spoken of in the annals as Cruimthir-Nathi, i.e. the Priest Nathi. In a short time the monastery and its head acquired a remarkable reputation, and a diocese was formed (c. 560) of which Nathi is reputed to have been the first bishop...He is the patron of the diocese, and his feast is celebrated on 9 August. His successors made use of his monastery-church as their cathedral, and traces of it may still be seen. The diocese was formerly sometimes called Leyney from one of its largest and most important baronies, or perhaps because it was coextensive with what is still known as the barony of Leyney.

___________________

Another hugely popular saint from Sligo is St. Attracta, whose feast is just two days hence:

It is possible that Attracta worked for Christianity in Connacht before Brigid arrived on the scene. She founded a Convent in Killaraght in Sligo and another in Roscommon. The Hospice which she established Near Lough Gara endured for one thousand years.


Lough Gara

There are many stories and legends about Attracta handed down through the ages, It is difficult to know which is fact and which is fancy. The following one tells of Attracta's encounter with the King of Connacht. The King carried away some hostages from the area known as Leyney, And held them in his strongholds. Soon their friends liberated them,but the King of Connacht and his troops followed them and came upon them at Killaraght, Surrounded them on the land side,leaving no room to escape, except through the Lake which was impassable. However, Attracta,who lived in her Convent on the Shore of Lough Gara, came to their rescue by opening a passage for them through the waters of Lough Gara. Immediately the waters of the lake divided and the people of Leyney marched through to the opposite shore.

___________________

The Irish poet Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn (Tadhg Dall) was born in the same town as St. Nathy, though about a thousand years later, in 1550. A savor of his verse:

TO MÓR, DAUGHTER OF BRIAN BALLACH
By Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn

A Mhór cuimhnigh an comann,
Gá dtám dhó, a dhearc fhochondonn?
Ní budh cás réidhiughadh roinn
Ór fhás d'éiliughadh eadroinn.

Translated:

Ah Mór, remember the affection, but in
brief, thou eye with the hue of springing
corn, there will be no difficulty in clearing
away the charges which have sundered us.

Richard O'Connor in The German-Americans...

..writes of the German work ethic and English sloth:

In writing to the Crown authorities back home, Captain [James] Smith himself, like the other Englishmen in his colony, often characterized the Germans and Poles as "damned Dutch," collectively, because of their sturdy sense of independence and their refusal to wait hand and foot on the "gentlemen" of the colony. When it was proposed that reinforcements be sent to Jamestown, however, he beseeched the authorities to send him "thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardiners, fisher men, blacksmiths, masons and diggers up of trees' roots" from Germany and Poland rather than a thousand Englishmen of the type he had been burdened with. In contrast to the sober-minded and industrious Germans and Poles, Captain Smith wrote in his history of the colonization of Jamestown, the English with him were "Adventurers that never did know what a day's work was".

Geesh, where does that leave the Irish?

Andrew Greeley in The Jesus Myth:

We can see that many of the religious ideas and movements in Jesus' time have their counterpart in our own day. The Sadducees, the corrupt, politically minded heirs of the ancient church, were an Establishment. The Pharisees were liberal reformers filled with self-righteousness and zeal.
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Even the "situationalists" or the "contextualists" end up almost necessarily with some new form of systematic morality, though usually one which takes a more benign view of sexual aberrations than the older systems-- a view which is in its turn often rooted in a simpleminded misunderstanding of psychoanalysis...[The Beatitudes have] little to do with the sloppy sentimentality of those contextualists who are bent on justifying premarital sex at any cost.

Interesting comments in view of the Episcopalian mess...

Fictional Tuesday: a Dialogue

"God did too good a job designing women," Jack said to his friend Jake.

"So you want to sue God for, uh, not malpractice but 'welpractice'?"

"Maybe. Or maybe not. But it's interesting that an attractive female induces an almost religious awe in men. Immediate dilation of pupils, sudden increased production of saliva, a lift or drop of head one might associate with awe or reverence."

"Or maybe just the loss of all brain function."

"Ha, very funny. But if there is that in nature, then there is a supernatural equivalent."

"Right, the theory being similar to the one that proposes mortal sin exists because gravity exists. God doesn't impinge on our free will to physically jump off buildings and kill ourselves, nor does he impinge on our free will to spiritually choose fatal sin."

"Yes, like that. There are hundreds of parallels between the visible and invisible world. Though why, at least in the drive for spiritual health rather than physical reproduction, is the visible equivalent so knee-jerk easier than the supernatural?"

"Au contraire. It doesn't have to be. Look at Fr. Solanus, who's up for sainthood. Spent his whole day praying. Constantly dilated pupils and increased saliva and awe of a different sort. Three a.m. and Fr. Groeschel caught him in spiritual ecstasy."

"How many Solanus's are there? It's not exactly hard-wired."

"Well maybe not as much as we'd prefer. Without Original Sin nothing makes much sense."

"Original sin seems to have affected the supernatural more than the natural."

"Oh I don't know. Death would seem a rather dramatic physical sign of Original Sin."

St. Dominic

Many posts at Tom of Disputations, including an excellent one on the death of St. Dominic as recorded by Blessed Jordan.

Searching for other St. Dominic tributes, the Catholic search engine rained down loads of hits. I especially liked this one.

August 8 - St. Ellidius, 7th century Welsh Saint

Hirnant   View from St. Illogan tower in Cornwall, England

Today is known primarily as the feast of St. Dominic of course, and rightly so, but it's also the memorial of St Ellidius, also called St. Illog, an obscure saint to be sure. Catholic Online calls him the "patron saint of Himant, Powys, Wales, and of a church in the Scilly Isles of England." Another site refers to him as: A Celtic saint originating, like the better known St Melangell, in Ireland. Only two other churches, in Cornwall and Brittany, are patronised by him. He has a holy well named after him which bubbles out of the hillside high above Hirnant. And from here: In ancient times it was customary to dedicate churches to saints with whom a church had in some way been associated. Illogan is a Celtic personal name found both in Cornwall and Brittany, and Illogan is the name of a Celtic saint known both in Montgomeryshire and Brittany.

"Boderlogan, a farm in Wendron, Cornwall, was spelt Bod-elugan in 1316, which means "the house of Illogan". A Saint Ilog is the patron saint of Hirnant in Powys, Wales, and the name occurs in several forms in that parish. When William of Worcester visited the Dominican Friary of Truro in 1378 he was told that the body of the saint was enshrined in Illogan Church, the original reference in Latin being Sanctus Illugham de Cornubia jacet prope Redruth, prope villam Truroburgh ."

Here is an art work from the time of St. Illog, a 7th century Welsh burial stone: (Enlarge) "The Bodvoc stone originally stood on one of a line of Bronze Age cairns on Margam Mountain. The inscription reads: 'BODVOCI HIC IACIT FILIVS CATOTIGIRNI PRONEPUS ETERNALI VEDOMAVI' ([The stone] of Bodvoc. Here he lies, son of Cattegern [or Cattegirn], and great-grandson of Eternalis Vedomavus). Eternalis was presumably a local ruler.'"

Quick Hits

Cool Jesus via Scipio...And a funny On Notice list from Mr. White. (Sounds like a potential punch line: "Polyester!")

As a Catholic from the Coal Regions of Pennsylvania, I'm disappointed that Mel's blood alcohol level was so low. I was hoping he'd spin the excuse that he had a flashback and thought the cop was out to get Danny Glover's family or something. - commenter on Amy's blog via Jeff

The notion that “now we know the true Mel Gibson” is the flip side of the modern religion of the self, where the dream of being true to “who you really are” tends to mean, in practice, being true to whatever desires or compulsions you happen to feel at any particular moment. This is great news for those whose desires—a new car, say, or perhaps a new spouse—happen to be considered commendable by the prevailing orthodoxies of the age. But it’s bad news for people like Gibson, whose compulsions are still counted as sinful—because if your compulsions are your “core” and “who you really are,” then how can you escape them? The good news, for Gibson, is that his own religion doesn’t approach things this way. - Ross Douthat

I believe in "Search and Rescue" by Patrick Madrid there is a line that goes something like this: You have to get used to the fact that it may not be YOU or YOUR WORDS and arguments that convert or bring back that loved one to the Faith. It seems to always to come down to prayer. And yet we want to do it ourselves, with our own words and writings. Sure God will use these-but often not for our intended purposes or audience. - Jim Curley of "Bethune Catholic"

It would be a mistake to think that St. John of the Cross [claims] as a scientific fact that cerebral memory resides in the soul. We are talking about real memory — how the soul knows itself, and that sort of thing. Obviously, the theology of the body view would be that neurological processes and the soul are intimately intertwined and were made to work together, but that ultimately the soul can remember when the body cannot (due to damage or death). Same thing with understanding and the will. Equally obviously, this is something that can be reasoned about but not scientifically tested. However, it’s true that “sin makes you stupid” because it clouds your understanding and narrows your view, and certainly the sins on your soul weaken your will and make it harder to resist further sin. The same narrowing is likely true of memory; we call things to mind based on our character, and attitudes of the moment; and we tend to forget what’s inconvenient to remember. --Maria Lectrix

Si Dios quisiera... Lectura de algunas páginas de Ana Catalina Emmerich: "¡Ah! ¡Qué hermosa, qué santa podría ser nuestra vida si Dios lo quisiera!" Una entrada del diario de León Bloy, 23/Feb/1901. La última frase es una de las varias suyas que se me han quedado prendidas en el alma (¡y hace tantos años!), como una de esas melodías pegadizas. Casi una jaculatoria. Bien veo que en cierto sentido es absurda —¡cómo Dios no va a quererlo!— pero... así es la cosa. - Hernan of "Esperando Nacer"

Could someone versed in the Mideast explain why the Christian leadership there seems to see its interest as lying in the defeat of Israel? How would Christians fare better were the Holy Land under the submission of Syria, Al Qaeda and a nuclear-armed Iran?...Problem is, looking to any Catholic or Melkite bishop in the area for an accurate reading of the situation vis a vis Israel seems like relying on the Cuban news media for information on Castro's current health. For some reason – politics; a concern for the preservation and safey of their followers; an inclination to appeasement; ingrained dhimmitude; outright anti-Semitism; or any combination thereof – the Christian hierarchy of the Mideast seems about as reliable as Reuters as a point of reference. - Mark of "Irish Elk"

There are few things that say “summer” to me the way the fair does. While there are subtle differences between, say, the county fair and the state fair, they both give me the youthful feeling of hope and time running out. They both make me recall the days when I could eat endless sno-cones and shredded chicken sandwiches on the five bucks my dad gave me when he dropped me off at the gate in the early morning cool...The fair is best remembered with funnel cakes in your nostrils and dust between your toes, sweat seeping down your back and weariness tugging at your eyes. The fair is days of intensity, summing up years of work, hours of effort. - Sarah of "Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering"

Sir Thomas More privately talked in his garden with his daughter Margaret, and amongst his other sayings, said: "Meg, I have borne a long time with thy husband; I have reasoned and argued with him in those points of religion, and still given to him my poor fatherly counsel; but I perceive none of all this able to call him home; and therefore, Meg, I will no longer argue nor dispute with him, but will clean give him over, and get me another while to God and pray for him." - Harpsfield, "The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More" via J. Curley

The Lord’s death, unlike that of other men, was not a debt paid for pleasure but rather a challenge thrown in the face of pleasure itself. --St. Maximus the Confessor

On the way home I was stopped at a traffic light where there was a woman claiming to be a homeless veteran holding up a sign asking for money....I must have been looking sheepish/guilty and/or tired/weary. (How's that--three word pairs in a row? To quote a one-time hero, "I meant to do that.") She said to me, "Honey, you got to smile--it just cain't be that bad." That did, in fact, make me smile. She continued collecting money, and I must have returned to whatever ruminations I was in because she was back and said. 'Come on, smile. What's that pink ball doing on your antenna?" (We have a pink Minnie Mouse/Cinderella's Castle ornament on the antenna--Linda's Idea--used to be stars and stripes Mickey.) And of course the silliness of the antenna bob made me smile again along with embarrassment at being offered encouragement by one who certainly had no reason to be encouraged, God love her.- Steven Riddle of "Flos Carmeli"

The essential key for the new evangelization-for practicing Catholics, as well as for slack and lapsed Catholics, and for non-Catholics-is the restoration of sacred music, especially Gregorian Chant, to sunday Mass - Francis Cardinal Arinze

Everything therefore in the modern means of social communication which arouses men's baser passions and encourages low moral standards, as well as every obscenity in the written word and every form of indecency on the stage and screen, should be condemned publicly and unanimously by all those who have at heart the advance of civilization and the safeguarding of the outstanding values of the human spirit. It is quite absurd to defend this kind of depravity in the name of art or culture or by pleading the liberty which may be allowed in this field by the public authorities. - Pope Paul VI, via Zippy

Chris is our resident pro-pacifist propagandist prone to parroting papal pronouncements to prop up his position. - Bill of "Apologia"

We take no position on Scripture or theology or morals. We are just Episcopalians. —Donna Bott, Episcopal Voices of Central Florida, via "Pontifications"

International Blogger's All-Star Team  !

Today Video Meliora..etc....sequor pays homage to a slew of talented bloggers who live beyond the shores of the good ole USA. You might call this the "Olympics of Blogging" though since I follow on a regular basis a very limited number of international blogs (despite the nomenaclature "Spanning the Globe") the results will be skewed. I am, after all, very provincial. So I welcome any comments concerning sins of commission or omission; it's possible that some of my regular reads are those I've assumed blog from "the States" when they in fact blog from elsewhere.

During the announcement of these all-stars, please furnish that country's national anthemn in your mind. Hold all applause until the end. Without further ado!

1st Base- Batting first and representing the Philippines is Enbrethiliel of Sancta Sanctis.

Enbrethiliel is a brainy blogger who combines a love of literature and Catholicism with a keen appreciation of pop culture. One of her greatest influences has been G.K. Chesterton, whom she refers to affectionately as "Uncle Gilbert". Her wacky and bodiless sidekick Antony leads her into many madcap adventures, including cajoling her, after many months, to add comments and an email address to her blog. She writes better English than 99.99% of native English writers.

Left Field- Representing Germany in left is Scipio of Credo ut Intelligam.

Scipio's existence belies the myth that the last orthodox Catholic in Germany was Herr Ratzinger, who'd left for Rome decades before. Scipio blogs auf Deutsch, meaning 'in German', and occasionally posts English song lyrics or quotes from American blogs, which are about the only posts I can read unaided by Babelfish. He also has an excellent sense of humor, thus refuting another myth.

Center Field- Representing Argentina in center is the great Hernan of Esperando Nacer.

Hernan began blogging way back in May of 2002, one of the earliest stars of the online world. It's difficult to think of a more intellectual blogger; he has an intense interest in the life and writings of Leon Bloy and Simone Weil. He makes me wish I knew Spanish.

2nd Base- Batting clean-up and representing Heaven is Flannery of If Flannery Had a Blog...

Flannery O'Connor was called up from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant in 1965. Word is that she is extremely happy about the deal - to the point of saying something about "eye has not seen, nor ear heard" how good it is there. (And you thought donning the Yankee pinstripes was cool.)

Right Field- Representing The United States of America is Amy Welborn of Open Book.

Amy is obviously no stranger to any of us and has been blogging since 1989...no seriously, she is the blog mother of many of us and in the words of Mark Shea a "national treasure". I would second that remark and am proud to see her representing my country.

3rd Base- Representing Australia is Steve of Speculative Catholic.

As a fellow sufferer of a slow-loading webpage, I can sympathize with Steve's slow-loading old blog. But moving to blogspot has changed that though it seems he's now put the blog on hiatus. His recent denunciation of the term "paddy wagons" was appreciated by many of Irish extraction. *burp*, I'll drink to that!

Catcher- Representing Spain is Robert Duncan of the Pelican Press

Robert has a nose for news and comes to us from the city of Madrid. He previously blogged at Santificarnos. It is hot there in Madrid in August. Stifling. And while not at work he lacks air conditioning: "I think the only people in Madrid in August are either idiots, tourists - or people too broke to go anywhere to escape the heat...I find myself being so lethargic that I can't be bothered to change the television from Cartoon Network. I've got to get up the energy and press that button ..." Now that's hot. I'll never complain about the Midwest.

Shortstop- Representing South Korea is Josue Snyder of The Western Confucian.

Josue's blog may well be the only place to find pictures of Miss Korea next to a post speculating on the sainthood of Flannery O'Connor. While I seldom see eye-to-eye with this blogger (who is always sharply critical of the U.S.), politics ain't everything.

Pitcher - Representing Canada and pitching, Kathy Shaidle of Relapsed Catholic.

Kathy is an extremely talented right-hander and not afraid of the brush-back pitch. She is moving up the chart as one of the world's most popular blogging talents, and features a razor sharp wit that has been banned in eight countries.

Coach- Albertus Mimimus. For more international players, see his excellent sidebar list which segregates blogger by country.

It's Goin' Around

Annoyances:



via Amy. Just jokin' about ol' Rodgers.

The Times They Are a' Changin'

I can recall an age when there were no post-mortem surveys after business meetings. We walked ten miles through the snow to get to them and we liked them, or at least reassured ourselves that it would "put hair on our chest" (well, the men anyway). But given how everything is measured now I suppose it was inevitable even meetings would be monitored for effectiveness. (Since when were meetings effective? I must've missed that announcement.)

Here's my actual survey. It was sent to a "regular person" so don't worry, the "suits" won't see the smart-aleck answer to question 4:

1. What did you think about the first XYZ meeting for 2006?

It thought it was surprisingly good.

2. What did you like best about the meeting?

John's presentation and honest manner of speaking.

3. What information would you like to see included in future meetings?

Can’t think of anything in particular.

4. Which individuals would you most like to hear from in future meetings?

I suppose if the field is unlimited I would say the President of the U.S. and/or the Pope.

5. What suggestions do you have to improve future meetings?

Eliminate presentations that are deadly boring, like the one that included charts and houses and pictures. No offense meant personally to the giver of that presentation because she was working with extremely dry subject material.

Beating a Dead Horse But...

Everything that could be said has been said already about Monsieur Gibson's troubles, but I'm a bit skeptical of the in vino veritatis line ("in wine, truth"). Wine depresses reason, and anti-semitism is unreasonable. Given the anti-semitism of his father one would expect that when a relaxant like alcohol is imbibed one might fall back into old patterns and ways of thinking. For someone with Gibson's background, it takes reason to overcome the old patterns of thinking, and alcohol, like sleep, undermines reason.

Kathy Shaidle said recently - concerning conspiracy theorists in general and "Bush-Orchestrated-9/11" believers in particular - that alcohol and depression tend to act as accelerants for those prone to conspiracy theories. Gibson's anti-semitism is a conspiracy theory.

Dog 'n Butterfly

See the dog and butterfly
Up in the air, he liked to fly
The dog and butterfly, below she had to try...

Those '70s Hymns

I never thought I'd enjoy Neuhaus's Catholic Matters this much. I thought reading it would be an exercise in deja vu, old ground revisted. And yet it's a really fine read due in great part to his writing ability.

Neuhaus tells of a banner in one church that said "God is Other People" and how one theologian told him there should be a comma between "other" and "people". Funny and true. While the banner seems to promote pantheism, perhaps some of the '70s emphasis on our relations to other people was understandable given that the two great Commandments are love God and love others and it's easier to love a Perfect Being than imperfect beings. (Though Christ did say the one was like the other, suggesting there isn't much of a gulf and they can't be separated.)

Neuhaus mocks the hymns of the 70s, and rightly so. Kumbaya My Lord and James Taylor songs are not exactly rich in emphasizing the truths of the Faith. Many of the songs were also, musically-speaking, abysmal by artistic standards. But were they really so theologically suspect? Neuhaus refers to them as celebrations of self, songs where we pat ourselves on the back and reflect on our goodness. I never had that experience. I saw them more as challenges.

I went through the songs of my (mis)spent liturgical youth and tested them not for cloyness but the soundness of the lyrics. One that Neuhaus might consider a "patting ourselves on the back" song is They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love but I beg to differ. I thought it a haunting, challenging song because I wondered if I could be identified as a Christian by my love. I suspected not and I can't be the only one to have thought that song was less an exercise in self-congratulation than an exercise in "you'd better love because this it's supposed to be". Perhaps this song leads to Pelagian impulses by attempting to get to the end (our sanctification) by ignoring the means (Christ), though God has done his part with gifts of grace for the baptized Christian so if there's a gulf between our behavior and the gospel standard one can say it's not for a want of grace.

Certainly the old "To be alive / and feelin' free / and to have everyone in my family / to be alive"... is hard to defend given the generally content-free lyrics. But there were also songs like, "All that I am / all that I do / all that I ever have / I offer now to you. Take and sanctify these gifts / for your honor Lord. Knowing that I love and serve You / is enough reward..."

This seems relatively harmless to me. "Knowing that I love and serve you" could be seen as self-congratulatory but again I don't know how you could take it thus if you have any idea what God asks of us (i.e. death to self). It emphasizes what our true goal should be and how what is important is God's opinion, not man's.

Another song: "Take our bread, we ask you take our hearts, we love you take our lives, O Father we are yours, we are yours. Your holy people standing washed in your blood. Spirit-filled yet hungry we await your food / We are poor but we've brought ourselves the best we could / we are yours / we are yours."

This song is one of the more anti-Pelagian of the '70s songs. It recognizes our dependence on God and our own poverty. It refers to us being holy but only because we were washed in His Blood.

And another: "Sons of God, Hear his holy word / Gather round / the table of the Lord / Eat his body / drink his blood / and we'll sing a song of love / Allelu-Allelu-Allelu-Alleluia. Brothers, sisters, we are one / and our lives have just begun / in the Spirit we are one / we can live forever."

I see this as innocuous and theologically sound. Of course now it's terribly dated by the word sons. That song must've had a short shelf life given the eventual liturgical distaste for anything male!
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Update: Terrence Berres writes: "At the ceremony in the participatory improv period piece Tony n' Tina's Wedding a nun hands out a mimeographed "Sons of God" and starts it with her pitch pipe." Isn't there something inherently funny about the line "[she] starts it with her pitch pipe"?

A Fictional Foray Into Book-Tasting

...with much borrowing from Wines Northwest's Tasting Notes Digest...

I recall attending a book-tasting in 1970 at the Ohio Bibliothetique and experiencing the bouquet of an 1887 Dickens, Great Expectations I believe, before sampling the rich flavor of an ’06 Kipling. The words had been strained in oak barrels for over twenty years and thus carried with them a strong hint of that flavor.

Path to Rome is another handcrafted book, a labor of love for author Hilaire Belloc and it shows. Rich aromas of cherry and plum mingle with toasty oak. The palate is firm but flavorful with black fruits, spice and nuances of barrel toast. The finish is long and fruity with ample tannins to pair with hearty prose and rich doctrines. Aromas of herbs mingle with enticing cherry and berry notes as these tempting pages open up in a cloth binding. The palate is cherry and black fruits and is well structured with toasty oak playing a background role.

Of Percy’s The Moviegoer? The spine is spicy black cherry with floral nuances and lingering hints of lavender and earth. The palate is delicate, with ample acidity with silky tannins yielding an expressive finish. On breathing, the book reveals interesting and complex aromas that one might associate with an aged vintage Tolstoy or a fine Greene. A good contemplative sipper with mild-to medium-flavored cheeses...

________________

And a dash of what I see before me:

A Stack of Aromatics

Books meld in pleasing colors,
the pirate yellow of Clemente,
the gold & scarlet flourish of Catholic Matters,
the earth tones of Earthly Powers
the green and burnt sienna of Dandelion Wine.

Various &/or Sundry

Registration of classes, Freshman year. Ah but it clings. It’s one of those rare engraved, not penciled in, memories. I image it a foretaste of Heaven as it mimics the graduation from one state of life (high school) to a far more advanced - at least in my anticipation - (college). Which reminds me of the iconic poster of John Belushi from Animal House that shows him wearing a shirt that says, in a minimalism that speaks volumes, “College”. For the high-schooler on the cusp of college, the next life was when everyone suddenly became better, holier in a way. It wasn’t about dominating others through status but a collaboration of the elect.
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I recall always washing my car while listening to longtime Reds announcer and HOF’er Marty Brennaman calling the game. Washing the car itself was punitive and listening to the game itself boring, but putting them together resulted in a sort of productive bliss.
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They say at the end of your life you’ll never regret the hours you didn’t spend at the office, but that seems to presume a lack of Purgatory. If many Americans work too hard, couldn't many, including myself, work harder? At other times my regrets fall along the lines of “am I drinking enough beer?”. (Allow me, as R. Ricardo once said, to “’splain myself’.) Readers of William F. Buckley’s plasterings of sea, as I have, cannot help but feel a tinge of envy at those hours. One might also consider the great quantities of alcohol one’s father/grandfather/ancestors drank and feel a kind of inadequacy. They worked harder, no doubt, and drank more. I’m not sure to what extent those facts are related but there is a rough justice in it. Still, it is an absurdity for the average blogger to be spending time attempting to solve or come to an opinion with regards to the Middle East crisis. That is a madness. Better to be drinking or praying.
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Tis the Irishfest and I’m loathe to give up the awe that twas once found in a jig or reel and so we go --- but afterward classical music acts as a kind of tonic. What is this need for complexity? Have I so soon “outgrown” the simple? Have I lost the winsome “otherness” of celtic music and now seek, ala Dreher, a novel otherness? I must admit to feeling solidarity with Nuala O’Faolain’s mother, who spent all of her time ‘drinking & reading’. I do surprisingly little of either, given my druthers, but then I suppose there’s a reason Walter Kerr wrote a book called, “The Decline of Pleasure”...

Nail, Hammer, Head

Terrence Berres via email:

(Of course, I think everyone who isn't Catholic is a frustrated Catholic.)

And everyone who is Catholic, as well?

True on so many levels...

Bleak House Excerpt

Mr. Skimpole strikes again:

He had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, “Now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money — in my expansive intentions — if you only knew it!” And really (he said) he meant it to that degree, that he thought it much the same as doing it. If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance, to put in the doctor’s hand, he would have put them in the doctor’s hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it — if his will were genuine and real: which it was — it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.

“It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,” said Mr Skimpole, “but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me, he wants that little bill. It’s a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man’s nature, that he always calls it a ‘little’ bill — to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I reply to the butcher, ‘My good friend, if you knew it you are paid. You haven’t had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You are paid. I mean it.’”

“But, suppose,” said my Guardian, laughing, “he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it?”

“My dear Jarndyce,” he returned, “you surprise me. You take the butcher’s position. A butcher I once dealt with, occupied that very ground. Says he, ‘sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound?’ ‘Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound, my honest friend?’ said I, naturally amazed by the question. ‘I like spring lamb!’ This was so far convincing. ‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!’ ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I have not got the money. You couldn’t really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!’ He had not a word. There was an end of the subject.”

“Did he take no legal proceedings?” inquired my Guardian.

“Yes, he took legal proceedings,” said Mr Skimpole. “But in that, he was influenced by passion; not by reason...

Week in Review

Well, here in Lake Troublebegone it was a quiet week. We took down the European ash with sadness, though it was damaged by Japanese beetles. Besides, the Ash Borer cometh, or so says the liberal media. And - besides squared - I had planted it too near the house some six years ago and so this fate was unescapable. The gaping hole in our 'scape is jarring but I expect it will allow more late day sun to visit the back porch. One can scarcely comprehend the gift of a chain saw without having spent years with a hack saw. My, but I felt like the Terminator! Technology gives one the illusion of power.
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We did the annual bike ride this week, this one 23 miles from Cedarville to beautiful South Charleston & back in 97 degree heat. We survived; it really wasn’t so bad because there was a breeze and we did have the a/c’d stop in SoCharles. Delightful small town, and I didst gape at the Floyd-ish barber shop complete with old timers who could pass for Civil War veterans. The Presbyterian church was very old and had that typically large expanse of beautiful wood inside (built when wood was cheap and plentiful). Attendance numbers were on the wall: twenty-eight visitors last Sunday, forty-six a year ago Sunday. Andy Griffith numbers.

Cristina Nehring Rips Erica Jong's Latest

...from the Atlantic:

It is amazing only for its meanspiritedness, its tedium, its awkward prose, and its stunning self-absorption. Literature can bear a great deal of self-absorption, but Jong may well have overshot the mark. Literary aspiration, at the end of the day, is a limited plot device. Especially in the absence of literary talent. Muses—like men—tend to eschew those who chase them exclusively; single-minded pursuit frightens as often as it flatters them.

Update: Obligatory disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting that Jong was unfairly ripped. I would not read her books if they were the last ones on earth.

Gays are Traditionalists?

Liability Disclaimer: If you are easily offended by generalizations, stereotyping or leaps of logic, feel free to skip this post.

I know it's true - because I saw it on The Colbert Report - that across this nation homosexual men are involved in something called gentrification, a process by which modern housing tracts are passed over in preference for Victorian era houses after which the new owner paints them and garnishes with an English garden. Assumption numero uno is that gay men have very high artistic sensibilities. You can see this even in their clothing. No gay man has ever donned mismatched socks or worn a plaid shirt with plaid pants. Never happened. Assumption two is that if you choose to live in a old Victorian houses with baroque-like fixtures, awnings, and general folderol, you are voting with your wallet. You are saying, "Modernism, I flee thee and all your pomps and works!" Based on assumptions one and two we can know with absolute certainty that past architecture is better than present architecture. Assumption three is that good art and architecture come from a culture that values beauty. Cultures that appreciate beauty (see Balthasar) are religious cultures. Ergo, gay men are actually religious traditionalists, presumably frustrated Catholics if they aren't already. (Of course, I think everyone who isn't Catholic is a frustrated Catholic.)

Evangelization via Exercise-Induced Near Comas

...and why I don't care if RJN is a snob (and I'm not saying he is one)

As I get older I've noticed that by all objective measures I'm becoming less fit. This means that it takes an amazingly small amount of exercise to reach the goal of blissful brainlessness, that point at which you forget everything around you. This sometimes happens while I'm reading a book while doing the StairMaster, or as I call it, the ScareMaster.

I was apparently reading Richard J. Neuhaus's Catholic Matters because yesterday I noticed the book was missing. A quick check of various rooms revealed no book. I looked in the bedroom, the kitchen, the car. I looked in the bathroom, the basement, the bar! (That rhyme was for Bill Luse since he seems to get such disproportionate pleasure out of 'em. :-)

But there was no need to panic as I'd knew it was probably at the fitness center. And sure enough I asked the gal there and she asked the title and I told her and she said she was wondering when someone could claim it. She took me to the office space shared by the four exercise professionals.

One of them looks a bit like Bern Luse, a cute girl-next-door type who is probably a good Christian girl since the posted bio/pics of the workers says she went to a Christian college. And here this Catlick book was front and center, there to keep her and her three mates company should they become curious. That can't be bad, given the amount of downtime they have while they're waiting for exercise appointments or just waiting to lock of the gym...Call it inadvertent evangelization. It's what I'm best at.

Speaking of Neuhaus (and we were), I recall a recent post that sounded a tad pretentious, beginning as it did with: "After dinner, the evening before that conference in Vienna a while back, Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn took George Weigel and me on a private tour of the episcopal palace." And yet I can't begrudge the sort of pretentiousness I detect in a Neuhaus or a Weigel because they are serving the sort of role, as ambassadors to secular society, that William F. Buckley did as a political conservative to the liberal intelligentsia. Buckley affected some of that "smarter than thou" pose because conservatives were considered unenlightened troglodytes back then and still are in some quarters. Buckley was effective in making conservatism respectable to many elites.

Christians today are considered the new troglodytes. You can see that reflected by the term atheists give themselves, "brights", and by the reputation Christians have as being science-phobic. Neuhaus and Weigel show that you can be intelligent and well-informed and still be a Christian: faith and reason.

Romantic Love & God's Love

The classic line in the literature of romance novels is "our eyes met across a crowded room". A cliché but as is usually the case with clichés it reveals a great truth in the way we see love else it wouldn't have become overused.

That line compactly expresses a chief truth about romantic love: exclusivity. "Across" suggests a geographical distance was overcome, while "crowded" suggests you were picked from among many. "Our eyes met across an empty room" shows little exclusivity or effort on the couple's part. The same goes for: "our eyes met because you were the closest one to me in a crowded room".

God understands that's the way we think of love so he condescended to speak to us that way over the course of salvation history. Adam knew his specialness; out of all the animals on the earth God singled him out. Then God singled out a family (Noah), a clan (Abraham), a nation (David's kingdom) until with Christ every single person is the object of God's eyes "across a crowded room". We still may not have a good understanding it but in reading the Scriptures we can see God's clear attempt to communicate that great Truth to us.

Aug 3 - St. Peter Julian Eymard (1811-1868)

From here: "Peter Julian coped with poverty, his father's initial opposition to Peter's vocation, serious illness, a Jansenistic striving for inner perfection and the difficulties of getting diocesan and later papal approval for his new religious community. His years as a Marist, including service as a provincial leader, saw the deepening of his eucharistic devotion, especially through his preaching of Forty Hours in many parishes. Inspired at first by the idea of reparation for indifference to the Eucharist, Peter Julian was eventually attracted to a more positive spirituality of Christ-centered love...In every century, sin has been painfully real in the life of the Church. It is easy to give in to despair, to speak so strongly of human failings that people may forget the immense and self-sacrificing love of Jesus, as his death on the cross and his gift of the Eucharist make evident. Peter Julian knew that the Eucharist was key to helping Catholics live out their Baptism and preach by word and example the Good News of Jesus Christ."

"Three years prior to his death, Fr. Eymard made a long retreat in Rome. During this retreat, he was powerfully struck by the force of Christ's love within him - a love he felt taking over his whole person." - (Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament.

"Father Eymard lived at the same time in history as the saint we celebrate tomorrow, August 4--St. John Vianney. The two men were friends and each highly admired the other. Father Vianney said that Father Eymard was a saint and added, 'Adoration by priests! How fine! I will pray for Father Eymard's work every day.'" (Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Society)

Aug 3 - Anniversary of Flannery O'Connor's Death

Amy reminds us that today is the 42nd anniversary of the death of Flannery O'Connor. The neglected FOC blog has been updated.

There is Nothing Like a Meme

...nothing in the world,
There is nothing you can dream,
That is anything like a meme.

(sing to South Pacific tune "There is Nothing Like a Dame")

I was laying low till Steven nominated me for this meme and I shan't refuse someone who is in difficult straits (his wife is out of town). (And speaking of books, I won one!):

1. One book that changed your life: It's difficult to establish with certainty what about us is "us" and what is us as a result of biblio influences either positive or negative. In other words, do some books resonate with us because they are already reflecting "who we are" or do they influence and change us to what we've now become? Outside the obvious choice of the bible, I would guess Conrad Richter's A Light in the Forest.

2. One book that you've read more than once:
Hovanessian's The Circle Dancers

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
Oh, except for the Bible, Dinesen's "Out of Africa" or Boswell's Life of Johnson.

4.One book that made you laugh:
Garrison Keillor's "The Book of Guys". Oh and Loh's "A Year in Van Nuys". I guess I'm not following the instructions.

5. One book that made you cry:
Hmm...I can't really recall. Maybe "Bright Lights, Big City" or "Romeo & Juliet"? I'm not a big fiction reader actually. I suppose I would've shed a fear tears over "The Da Vinci Code" for its reputation as being full o' bad writing.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
Hasn't everything already been said? I guess a history of my ancestors, obviously of limited interest.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Steven hit the nail on the head with The Kinsey Report. I'd add The Communist Manifesto. Closer to home, I'd say Garry Wills' and/or McBrien's stuff.

8. Two books you're currently reading:
Philbrick's Mayflower, Luse's The Last Good Woman

9. One book you've been meaning to read:
The Psychology of the Saints by Henri Joly

If you want to do this, then by the powers invested in me consider yourself tapped.

Quotes Recently Happened Across

These paragraphs concerning Nixon's prolongation of the Vietnam war from Jeffrey Hart's book on NR are chilling:

More cold-blooded was "Vietnamization," training the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) to fight largely on its own after American withdrawal. Neither Nixon nor Kissinger believed this could work: the ARVN was only a mask for incremental withdrawal, and consequent "Vietnamization" under Hanoi. This would make it look as if the ARVN had lost the war, not the United States. Nixon and Kissinger were more interested in post-Vietnam great-power politics than in South Vietnam.

The Nixon and Kissinger plan [for Vietnam] entailed the death of 20,552 American soldiers between 1969 and 1972. How much American "prestige" had been preserved by this maneuver remains hard to prove. A nation with a large nuclear arsenal probably has enough prestige.

Elsewhere:

The Puritans believed that the identity of the Saints had long since been determined by God....No one could be entirely sure as to who was one of the elect, and yet, if a person was saved, he or she naturally lived a godly life. As a result, the Puritans were constantly comparing their own actions to those of others, since their conduct might indicate whether or not they were saved. Underlying this compulsive quest for reassurance was a person's conscience, which one divine described as "the voice of God in man."

-Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower"

And Jurgens via Bill White:

In 415 A.D., Cassian, now a priest, founded two monasteries at Marseilles, one for men and the other for women; and there, until his death about twenty years later, he ruled his monasteries as abbot.

It was in these monasteries at Marseilles and with Cassian as its father that Semi-Pelagianism was born. Originally the Semi-Pelagians were called Massilians after their origins at Marseilles; and if we fall into the very common error of regarding Semi-Pelagianism as no more than a kind of diluted Pelagianism we will never understand John Cassian. As a Semi-Pelagian, he held no brief at all with the Pelagians. The latter he condemned roundly. He regarded Pelagianism as the mother of Nestorianism, which he termed Pelagianism's "pupil and imitator," because, while Pelagianism taught that man could by his own efforts and without God's help achieve righteousness, Nestorianism taught that the Man Jesus, by the virtuous conduct of his life, came himself to deserve union with the Divine Majesty.

If the latter notion seems very similar to the rather common idea of our own times to the effect that Christ only came gradually to realize that he was God and perhaps was not fully aware of it until He was hanging on the cross---is this the same as saying that His divinity was only gradually actualized and that perhaps it was not fully actualized until He was hanging on the cross?---possibly it is because Nestorianism is not nearly so dead an issue as some suppose, and there is an effective revival of it among some "Catholic" theologians even today. Heresies never die; they just change their names. I cannot recall any modern heresy that is really new; nor do I know of any ancient heresy that has been slain outright. Catholic doctrine is so entirely cohesive that if only one thread of it is cut the whole unravels. Heresy, at least within a limited number of theological categories, seems to bear a similar stamp of cohesion, so that if a man fall into only one, he is soon forced to all, even the seemingly diametrically opposed.

The Semi-Pelagians roundly denied that they were Pelagians; but they still thought that sometimes God bestows grace because, even before grace, man's natural goodness might bring him to turn first to God.

--William Jurgens, Faith of the Early Fathers Vol III, via Bill of Summa Minutiae

"The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent"

Is prudence the forgotten virtue? Ross Douthat says it well:

Yet it’s also true that there are moral obligations involved in war making besides the obligation to only make war in a righteous cause—and one of the most pressing, with apologies to Lionel Trilling, is the moral obligation to be intelligent. And this is where I sense—based on reports like this one and this one, from sources with no anti-Zionist axes to grind—that Israel has gone dramatically astray in this campaign. It’s not that they don’t have the right to pursue Hezbollah into Lebanon, to attack the terrorist group’s infrastructure and impose a cost on those who harbor terrorists, even if the pursuit of these objectives puts innocents at risk. But they also have the duty, when the stakes are so high and so many lives hang in the balance, to avoid taking large-scale military action unless they have a high degree of confidence in the operation’s ultimate success. And thus far I’ve seen very little to justify such confidence.

Douthat goes on to say that while the Iraq war probably met Just War criteria, it too was an exercise in a lack of prudence. I just knew if I shopped long enough I could find someone with much intellectual firepower who agreed with me.

Update: Bottum rebuts.

Quick Hits

There's a intranet site featuring interviews with co-workers and one guy answers the query "what's the last good book you've read?" with:

Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Italian Cookbook. I can't cook but damn Giada is hot!

A little research proves his assertion correct. Even a complete non-cook like myself might be tempted to tune in once to see this Rome native.
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My schadenfreude has wilted under the heat. I couldn't much relate to Smock's funny lil' Texas poem. Until now.
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Get yer Pope John Paul II random quote generator here while supplies last. ...at Fish Eaters via Terrence Berres.
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A beer blessing.
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She just loves to shock us. So said Dave Letterman of pop queen Madonna, and Bill Luse has the same tendency on his blogorhythm (though the comparisons between him and Mz. Conebrassiere end when it comes to talent as Bill obviously has far more). I thank Zippy for his indulgence of our comment box indulgences.
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It's kind of fun seeing a Trad sympathetic to Israel. Not as rare as a pro-Bush ACLU member, but still. This guy helps break down the labels we all tend to inflict on ourselves and others.
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A Walker Percy retrospective, via Korretiv.

Mideast  

At the family gathering Sunday an outlaw-twice-removed (husband of sister of my sister-in-law's intended) said a true thing. He said that in the history of warfare there has been no answer to guerrilla war. Guerrilla fighters always have the upper hand. And so says Lowry in today's NR:

This is one of the greatest asymmetries of asymmetric warfare. For a guerrilla force, worse is always better, even though the worse comes at its instigation. It seeks a widening gyre of death and destruction. “Promoting disorder is a legitimate objective for the insurgent,” David Galula writes in his classic study of insurgency warfare. “Moreover, disorder — the normal state of nature — is cheap to create and very costly to prevent.”

He goes on to say that "it is easier...to destabilize a weak government than it is to bolster one". Defeat and destruction seems thus part of the human condition since the scales are so uneven. A few suicide bombers killed 3,000 Americans. It seems hopeless. And yet last night I was watching Fr. Benedict Groeschel speak of the sanctity of Fr. Solanus, whose cause for canonization continues. And when you hear of all the miracles he worked during his lifetime (St. Pio as well) they seemed almost routine, almost as if that is the way the world should work. Miracles are not a part of the natural order, but it seems as though if we were all saints miracles would be the natural order.

One saint who toiled much in a cause that seemed hopeless was Blessed Mother Teresa. And now that Lebanon's situation reminds me of her daily prayer: "What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway."

I guess the good news is that I will never suffer the fate of Terry Schiavo.  As long as I am sitting upright, my daughter will consider me not only alive and well, but capable of doing the shopping. "Gee Mom, I'm sorry you feel bad.  Is there anything here I could make you for dinner?" Sorry.  I just wanted to see how it sounded. - Karen Hall of "Some Have Hats"

As it is, creation is good not because that's the way God put it together, but because the God who put it together is good. When "God looked at everything He had made," He didn't declare it very good, as though establishing a sort of divine positive law; "He found it very good." But if it's the goodness (in fact, the perfection) of the Creator that determines how we ought to respond to creation, it's by no means incidental to how we ought to respond to sub-creation that the sub-creators are imperfectly good...We give God the benefit of the doubt, so to speak, regarding mosquitoes and such, not because He is the Creator, but because He is all good. Nothing similar follows for sub-creators. - Tom of Disputations

In the overall Western experience, state controlled education is the exception. In ancient times that exception was Sparta. It was also an early precedent for anti-family ideology. As classical scholar E. B. Castle says: "In Sparta and Athens... we are confronted with two highly contrasted educational ideals which can be easily recognized in educational practice today" (Ancient Education and Today). To put this in context, consider what the Greek chronicler Plutarch tells about the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus (c. 800 BC):

Lycurgus was of a persuasion that children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole commonwealth.... [N]or was it lawful, indeed, for the father himself to breed up the children after his own fancy; but as soon as they were seven years old they were to be enrolled in certain companies and classes, where they all lived under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and taking their play together.

Lycurgus wanted to control education so strictly as to regulate marriage. Children were subject to harsh discipline and exercise. Eugenics (and homosexuality) was even more arduously pursued in Sparta than the rest of pagan Greece. Spartan women were scorned by other nations for their aggressive, unfeminine behavior, while boys learned to be deceitful and ruthless to outsiders, even as they displayed automaton-like loyalty to their own. Presaging militaristic Prussia and Hitler's Reich, Spartans lived only for the state which, in turn, existed only for war. In key respects, the structure of Sparta's totalitarian education is indistinguishable from the aims of the left-liberal establishment. - Matthew M. Anger via Jim Curley

It is hubristic--pretending to know with some certain what objective artistic merit is. I've seen Zippy throw the term around and then actively support the burning of all Picassos; I've come to suspect that he has no better idea than I do of what this objectivity looks like.- Steven Riddle

The problem with the article (and with much radtrad anti-semitism) is that it never actually defines 'Jew' or 'Jewish': thus it can label revolutionary leaders as 'Jewish Bolsheviks', although not one of the Communist leaders were anything but contemptuous of their ancestral religion. It's precisely the same approach (which I grew up with, actually, being born to non-practising Jewish parents) which leads modern Jews to see Hitler and his party as 'Christian'. It never distinguishes between background and belief, between ethnicity and practice. - commenter on Mark Shea's blog, via Terrence Berres

From the point of view of Christians, the Jews are indeed the chosen people, and Gnostics hate that because they hate history. History is free, meaning that it is the arena of human freedom and responsibility. Creation is a free act of God, and being created in the image of God is being created in freedom, and one has to freely accept that freedom & the responsibility that goes with it. Gnostics, like pagans generally, believe that freedom is irrational and history is meaningless. They can't stand the idea that God is free, that he has freely chosen the Jews, that through them he has taught us that human responsibilty matters- in fact, that everything matters. Gnostics (and a great modern example is Yale University's Harold Bloom- Omens of the Millenium) cannot accept that the evil in the world comes from free human actions under the judgment of God. Their attitude is: It's not my fault- it's the Demi-urge's fault, it's the government's fault, it's that people are not enlightened, etc. So they seek one of two solutions: either they escape from history through various mystical practices, or they attempt to stifle freedom by the imposition of some kind of totalitarianism. - emailer to Jonah Goldberg of "The Corner"

His prose, and the mind-numbingly solipsistic 'vision' it manifests, is such that only an adolescent could love it...I mean, just consider - Emerson found the Unitarians too restrictive, too traditionalist, too authoritarian. I think that's all we need to know. - Tom of Endlessly Rocking

I can't help but love Ann Coulter...Please. Don't splutter at me that she's a reckless bomb thrower. Of course she is! So was Lenny Bruce, who famously remarked of LBJ "Where's Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him?" But you know what? Bruce could be funny and perceptive, as when he remarked that the Catholic Church is the only "The Church". And Coulter's damn funny and perceptive too. Which is why she drives her ideological opponents crazy. Do I look to her for political wisdom and guidance? Of course not! But I do look at her as a fine political satirist and usually find myself laughing at her remarks, even when I know they are not what you would call accurate policy statements. - Mark Shea

I discovered a toad in the yard the other day and the kids took a great liking to him. Gus captured him from the vicinity of the lawn mower and brought him to Terri's garden. He stayed there all night and was "invited" to swim in the kiddie pool the next day. He absolutely loved this and we were completely captivated by his athletic prowess. We found a nice little log (complete with tasty bugs) to float in the kiddie pool and he was in froggie heaven....We named him Blog. - blogger at "Studeo"

I learned from watching this [St. Ignatius] movie -- told in a completely linear fashion -- that my problem in structuring the same store becomes quite vivid when dramatized.  The first third of the story makes for great drama.  And then he gets holy. Wonderful for the world.  Bad for drama.  And the reason that no one has ever made a good movie about the life of St. Ignatius.  Imagine the ad campaign:  "You'll be on the edge of your seat as Ignatius writes the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus!"  Almost as exciting to watch as the year he spent in a cave.  But that's my problem, not yours.  Set the Tivo and make sure you have some microwave movie popcorn on hand.  The last 2/3 of this movie is not boring.....if you think of it as a comedy. In its defense, Sr. Anne has always said that she felt that even though it was thoroughly bad and corny, there must be something of St. Ignatius' spirit in this silly movie, because of the way it had moved her -- in spite of itself -- when she saw it for the first time. - Karen Hall on 1951 movie, "Loyola, the Soldier Saint"

Update: Zippy responds to being quoted above:

And although when I suggested the Picasso bonfire I was being ironic in the face of an aesthetic all-or-nothingism, his more vulgar works probably really should be burned.

St. Alphonsus De Liguori - August 1
 

"Heavenly Father, your servant, St. Alphonsus, was most zealous to proclaim your abundant love and mercy shown in the Pascal Mystery of Your Divine Son and continued through the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Through his intercession, I beg that, like him, I may be entirely submissive to your holy will, have a fervent love for Jesus Christ, and, by constant prayer, especially through Mary, Mother of your Son, persevere in that love till the end of my life. May I join with him in praising you with your Son and the Holy Spirit for all eternity. AMEN."