Our Lady is the boast of humanity but humanity has another boast as well: we are able to receive the Eucharist. Angels adore what we would receive, another case of God blessing the lowly. The pastor at the Dominican church downtown went so far as to smiling to say that they are "jealous". Imagine the archangel Michael being jealous of us! Only God could make that possible.  | Survived another bingo last night and co-worker Kim asked that I give her this blog's URL, so presumably my Sitemeter will feel another tick. She said, and I concur, that she'll never quite get over the sight of bingo players simultaneously taking oxygen while smoking a cigarette (and while operating a dauber). You don't see that every day. Fortunately there were fewer smokers than normal so our odds of devloping bingo-related lung cancer were at least slightly diminished. I promised Kim I'd link to a few prior bingoistic posts, so, in no particular order, here's one, here's another, here's another and another and one more. |
They get on me wanna know Hank
Why do you blog?
Why do write prose?
Why must you post every thought that occurs?
Stop and think it over
Put yourself in my position
If I write poems and blog all night long
It's a family tradition.
When fall is good, it is very good.Dr. Imbert counts 321 stigmatics in whom there is every reason to believe in a Divine action. He believes that others would be found by consulting the libraries of Germany, Spain, and Italy. In this list there are 41 men.Somehow I'm not surprised that there are more women than men stigmatics. Men make up less than thirteen percent of that list. It's always seemed to me that women have a greater natural capacity for holiness given that they understand receptivity to a greater extent and tend to be more sympathetic. Stereotypes, yes, but at the foot of the Cross men were strangely absent, with the exception of John. No wonder he was the disciple Jesus loved. New Advent continues:
The sufferings may be considered the essential part of visible stigmata; the substance of this grace consists of pity for Christ, participation in His sufferings, sorrows, and for the same end--the expiation of the sins unceasingly committed in the world. If the sufferings were absent, the wounds would be but an empty symbol, theatrical representation, conducing to pride.Some background from Louis Bouyer's Introduction to Spirituality:
Another step was taken with St. Peter Damien and his whole era (11th century). The religious soul then came to concentrate on the cross, no longer as the instrument of our liberation or as a testimony of love, but as a particularly impressive example of suffering deliberately accepted, even sought out. New mortifications of a directly punitive character, such as scourgings, came to be practiced in this spirit.Bouyer goes on to describe the greater excellence of an asceticism of compassion to that of reparation.
Thus the way opened out by the Irish monks led, toward the end of the Middle Ages, to an asceticism of compassion. Certain forms of Franciscanism, centered more on the stigmata of St. Francis than on his own spirituality, led in this direction. The theory was formulated clearly for the first time by the Dominican mystic of the fourteenth century, Henry Suso. The objective the ascetic had in view was no longer so much to fight and overcome the power of sin through Christ and by His power; it was rather to suffer with Him, as if to bring some alleviation to His suffering by taking a part of it on oneself.
The beauty and especially the generosity of this ideal are beyond dispute. But it is also beyond dispute that this ideal tended to be formulated in a sentimental context far removed from the sobriety of primitive Christianity or of monasticism, and not in accordance with the lines of a sane theology.
What we have just said is still more true when we go from the asceticism of compassion to that of reparation. This made its appearance in the modern forms of devotion to the Sacred Heart more or less directly inspired by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
They criticize to me that I mix two words that correspond to different concepts: theism and deism. It is truth. The certain thing is that —damn artifices of the rhetoric, that they try to abrillantar to the speech and they do not do more than to grow dark— if the word "theism" were most suitable for the context, the other was lent better to the analogy (Papa/papista = Dios/deÃsta). Fault pisses.And then:
That it cannot or does not have say that "God is over the Good"... it is a thing. To say however that "the religious sphere is over the ethical sphere", is another thing; probably true, or defensible.It's long been my perception that we Christians have more of an obedience problem than Muslims. I wonder if part of it is that, for Muslims, God can command irrationalities and therefore they are less likely to ask, "but is this a good thing?". For suicide bombers there is obedience without love or goodness, but love and goodness are not the point since God is beyond categories. Obedience uber alles. Christians can go to the other extreme and simply make a judgment that no one goes to Hell because God is good, and Goodness would not populate Hell.
 |  |
What is a haiku?
Is it like karaoke?
Thank the Japanese.
___
Flos Carmeli posts
Invites us to versify
haiku mania!
___
Turned off Notre Dame
Far behind Michigan State
Luck of the Irish.
___
Back in the sixties
France gamed the superpowers
One now; it's galling.
___
Zippy for Congress!
No evil of two lessers
Scrupulous Catholic.
___
Last haiku or else
I'll be a monkey's uncle
Blame it on Riddle.
"The method he uses to live with himself is to make a clear and precise argument that this was something that others had done to him and not that he had done to himself,” Leon Panetta said. “Because of his brainpower, he can create a logic for anything. But deep down he would be such a good person if he could just accept the fact that he screwed up and made mistakes, and move on.”
"You know, Walker [Percy] had extremely eclectic taste in popular culture. He was very big on The Incredible Hulk tv show. He and Eudora Welty got into a chat about that once; they were both Hulk followers." --Walker Percy Remembered - by David Harwell
I never ate paste.A worthy epitaph: "I never ate paste."
Kindergarten memories
abound as fall comes.
The paste eater, she
chewed erasers in first grade.
Bad pencil lendee…
Kindergartens too
exist in a fallen world.
In schools and in homes.
 | Frank Rega writes, in Padre Pio and America:Some might say that Padre Pio is now gone. However, in his old age, when people had expressed their apprehensions about his approaching death, Padre Pio would reply gruffly yet playfully:"Silly person, I will be here in your midst, more than before. Come visit my tomb. Before, in order to speak to me, you had to wait. Then, it is I who will be waiting there. Come to my tomb and you will receive more than you did before!"Padre Pio frequently stated, "In the tomb I will be more alive than ever!" And when one of his collaborators ventured the opinion that, with so many persons to pray for, the Padre must simply lump everyone together in one big kettle or cauldron, Padre Pio responded:"In a cauldron is where I am going to throw you! I remember them and I call them one by one, and count their hairs, and then some." |
"My daughters, we must resign ourselves to what we have inherited from our ancestors Adam and Eve. Self-love never dies before we do, but it will accompany us to the tomb. Dear God, my daughters, what unhappiness this is for us poor children of Eve! We must always feel the sensitive assaults of the passions, as long as we are in this miserable exile. But what of it? Should we perhaps become discouraged and renounce the life of heaven? No, most beloved daughters, let us take heart. It is sufficient for us not to consent with our deliberate will; deliberate, firm and sustained."
Some may feel an affinity with his humble beginnings, or be drawn by the wondrous miracle stories, or be fascinated by the stigmata. And how can a 'practical' American not be astounded at the cloistered monk who build one of the greatest hospitals in Europe, in what was then a backward area of southern Italy?
Of recent date, I've been typing in older poetry--poetry from 1980, at present. And I have to admit to being occasionally astounded by a line or two the gleams out from the mass of rubbish that surrounds it. There is some good poetry hidden under the pretension of youth, just waiting to be dug out.That's how I feel about many books, although with the difference that what surrounds the gleams is not rubbish (and it's likely Steven was being hyperbolic anyway). But, for me at least, Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear it Away was worth reading for the ending. There's one chapter in Meehan's Two Towers that resonated in a life-changing way. There are a few paragraphs in Scott Hahn's Rome Sweet Home that had a profound impact back in the '90s when I was finding my way back. A single line or two in a biography of Pope St. Pius X impacted. Those books all contained nuggets that lingered way past the normal "expiration date" of biblio memory.
"That's what we would say," she replied. "But that's not what they think. The Muslims haven't evolved as far as we have. They're 600 years behind us."Cue Fr. Rob's interlocutor's song:
"And we have to point out that what those Muslims think is wrong and is unworthy of God," I said. "It's not OK that they're '600 years behind us.' The civilized world has a right to criticize Islam."
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!
Flannery ÓConnor said it takes to certain kind of stupidity to be to good fiction writer- the kind of stupidity that requires you to stare AT something before you begin to understand it.
Imagining Don Imus Interviewing President of Iran
Imus: "The President of Iran is on the phone. Welcome to the program Mr. President."
POI: "Thank you for having me."
Imus: "So what's the deal? Are you crazy? Are you just plain nuts?"
POI: "What do you mean sir?"
Chuck: "Don--"
Imus: "First, I have to tell you that I see everything in terms of how it'll affect me, and the show...Do you know how hard it is to get comedy material out of a war, if you in fact start one with Israel or America?"
Chuck: "I-man please, you're treating the President of Iran with dis-"
POI: "I will not take such insults from an American pig!"
Imus: "Pig? If America is the Great Satan then don't I at least rate a demon? Or is a pig worse than a demon for you people?"
Bernie: [makes pig noise in background]
POI: "You are lower than cow dung. You are the son of a motherless goat."
Imus: "George Bush and the criminals in his Administration did you the biggest favor any country has ever done for another country by getting rid of your worst enemy, Saddam Hussein, and this is how you want to thank us? By funding that terrorist nightmare Hezbollah and making a-bombs and sending long letters to a man who can't read, and in general making a constant nuisance of yourself? You should be ashamed of yourself you ungrateful bastard! I oughta send David Gregory over there and have him start hounding you at your press conferences instead of Bush at his. Maybe if Gregory stops dancing on The Today Show he'll find the time to open a can of whupass on your ass."
Kristol, Wolfowitz Welcome Neo NeoconThe pop singer Madonna and her antics are pathetic and don't shock me, but I am still surprised by those with decent language skills who are capable of such cluelessness.
ROME, ITALY-- In an elaborate but secret ceremony, members of an American delegation that included Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz showed Pope Benedict the "neocon handshake" and formally accepted him as one of their own...
Ich trage meine Sonnenbrille nachts,Song 2, perhaps a bit easier:
also können ich Dose also ich Sie aufpassen,
dann zu spinnen atmen Ihre Geschichtelinien
und ich trage meine Sonnenbrille nachts,
also können ich Dose also ich die Anblicke
in meinen Augen verfolgen Während sie mich betrügt,
den es meine Sicherheit hat sie erhielt Steuerung von mir schneidet,
ich zu ihr mich drehe und sagen Sie...
OH- Mickey, sind Sie so feinAnd finally, this last song isn't an '80s song but is an old standard and this time isn't in German but Russian!
Sie sind, also fein, brennen Sie meinen Verstand, he Mickey, he Mickey durch
OH- Mickey, sind Sie so fein
Sie sind, also fein, brennen Sie meinen Verstand, he Mickey, he Mickey durch
OH- Mickey, sind Sie so fein
Sie sind, also fein, brennen Sie meinen Verstand, he Mickey... durch
| | |
But I think this is a tough one because how can the Pope apologize when he's, not in every statement but in most statements, infallible?So we got from:
"When the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church..."to:
"he can't apologize because he's infallible in most statements"in one easy jump. But to be misunderstood is to be human. Turnips are never misunderstood. Chesterton wrote:
Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.A refresher link:
Notice that the boundaries of papal infallibility are carefully delineated. And on reflection the limitations make perfect sense. Infallibility does not adhere to the man, else he would be infallible in everything he says. Nor does infallibility adhere to the office, for the same reason. Rather, the gift of infallibility must adhere to the exercise of the office. Note, for example, that a king may write letters to his various officials discussing possible legislation and even give public statements concerning his intentions, but it is only his official promulgations that actually become the law of the land. Similarly, the pope may carry on private correspondence, speak or write as a private teacher, or even make certain public pronouncements without invoking the authority of his office. No one, for example, looks to a book like Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II as an infallible dogmatic pronouncement. It is a product of the pope in his capacity as a private Catholic theologian, not as the Vicar of Christ. And infallibility is not impeccability.Likewise, George (I assume he's a Greek Orthodox Christian) ought have no problem in principle to infallibility:
We should note at the outset that infallibility per se should present no problem to non-Catholic Christians. All Christians who seek to remain faithful to the earliest historical expressions of the Christian faith—such as the Nicene and Athanasian creeds—believe in the principle of infallibility. All believe that God uses fallible and sinful men to communicate His truth infallibly. Evangelical Protestants staunchly defend the notion that God used fallible men to speak His truth in the written Word. So the all-too-common jibes about the impossibility of mere men speaking infallibly or objections that sinful popes cannot possibly be the bearers of God’s infallible truth show a lack of reflection and fairness.
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing."- Fulton J. Sheen
In contrast to their predecessors and their contemporaries, who believed in the immanence of many gods, the ancient Hebrews gave to the world the idea of one transcendent God for all men. On the whole, the Catholic answers as to whether God is transcendent or immanent, whether man should be guided by law or gospel, the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount, the particular or the general calling, and all the other dichotomies that divided the right from the left wing of the Reformation, the Puritans from the Quakers, would have been both, of course - but each in its proper place and proportion. Whereas the Catholic God was transcendent in the tradition of the Old Testament, He was also immanent, according to the doctrine of the real presence at the Mass, as well as at other holy times and places, which were carefully controlled and ritualized by the church.
___
Thus, the Catholic doctrine of limited transcendence and immanence lies between the Calvinist and Quaker alternatives, between Puritan anxiety, on the one hand, and Quaker peace of mind, on the other. The Catholic avoided both the extreme transcendental position of the Calvinists and Puritans (and the danger of emotionally sterile Deism) and the ubiquitous immanence (close to pantheism) of the Quaker position.
The average medieval layman took his imperfection and essential sinfulness for granted and led a more or less satisfying, sacramental religious life, confident of salvation in the hereafter. Sin was no real problem when the sacraments provided a regular cycle of mystical relationships with God. The medieval tendency toward mysticism and emotionalism, then, was closer to the religious values of the Quakers than to those of the Calvinists and Puritans.
Coptic Pope Shenouda III said in published remarks that he didn't hear Benedict's exact words but that "any remarks which offend Islam and Muslims are against the teachings of Christ."Wow. You can't make that up. Surprising also that the Coptic Pope won't even read it in context. Man, if you can't get a fellow Christian leader to read your stuff, who can you? Certainly not the NY Times...
It was certainly not considered necessary that all the books of the New Testament should have been written by members of the Twelve Apostles. How would Paul have crept in? More attractive is the suggestion of Karl Rahner that the books of the New Testament are the foundation documents of the Church, expressing in writing the Church's own self-definition. They are normative in the Church's existence in the exactly same way as the Twelve themselves were orginally normative, representing the authentic oral tradition of Jesus.--The Story of the Bible, Henry Wansbrough
"We dedicate and consecrate the memory of God's benefits with solemnities on solemn appointed days, lest in process of time they might creep into ungrateful and unkind oblivion...Christian people celebrate the memories of martyrs with religious solemnity, both to move themselves to an imitation of their virtues, and that they may be partakers of their merits, helped by their prayers."
I think it's fair to say we now know how elite opinion in the 1930s would have reacted had the Pope condemned Nazism in the terms the world of 2006 requires. He would have been condemned in turn for being dangerously provocative.Another commenter had a good point:
We appease radical Islam today in much the same way we once appeased Nazism. We think now, as we thought then, that it is better not to bait the beast.
The NYT is one of the chief prosecutors in the case against 'Hitler's Pope'. But today, when we have a Pope willing to give a quote, 600 years old, that is sharply critical of those who use violence to spread religion, the NYT goes on the warpath again demanding apologies.
Perhaps we can expect the NYT of 2056, when it has learned that Appeasment 2006 is no more fruitful than Appeasement 1936, to condemn the current Popes for their mealy-mouthedness and for hiding behind criticisms of six centuries vintage.
Three questions for the Times:
1. Has the editorialist actually read the whole speech?
2. If a party believes itself to have been insulted, have they in fact been insulted?
3. Is it now the rule that any discussion of Islam must abjure intellectually provocative statements?
 | From here: This feast dates back to the 12th century. It was especially promoted by the Cistercians and the Servites, so much so that in the 14th and 15th centuries it was widely celebrated throughout the Catholic Church. In 1482 the feast was added to the Missal under the title of "Our Lady of Compassion." Pope Benedict XIII added it to the Roman Calendar in 1727 on the Friday before Palm Sunday. In 1913, Pope Pius X fixed the date on September 15. The title "Our Lady of Sorrows" focuses on Mary's intense suffering during the passion and death of Christ.Elsewhere: It was installed in the liturgical calendar by the local [Cologne, Germany] bishops as an expiatory act, to make reparation to God and to Our Lady for the heresy of iconoclasts who adhered to the errors of Jan Hus. |
Perhaps someone will say: “Had she not known before that he would not die?” Undoubtedly. “Did she not expect him to rise again at once?” Surely. “And still she grieved over her crucified Son?” Intensely. Who are you and what is the source of your wisdom that you are more surprised at the compassion of Mary than at the passion of Mary’s Son? For if he could die in body, could she not die with him in spirit? He died in body through a love greater than anyone had known. She died in spirit through a love unlike any other since his.
The figure in the Gospels does indeed utter in words of almost heart-breaking beauty his pity for our broken hearts. But they are very far from being the only sort of words he utters. Nevertheless they are almost the only kind of words that the Church in its popular imagery ever represents him as uttering. That popular imagery is inspired by a perfectly sound popular instinct. The mass of the poor are broken, and the mass of the people are poor, and for the mass of mankind the main thing is to carry the conviction of the incredible compassion of God."Poor" is a key word above, and by poor I assume he means not just financially poor but spiritually poor. If so, this well connects with what our retreat master recently said in emphasizing the need to really believe God loves us. "All I ask of you is forever to remember Me as loving you," said Father quoting a song. We expect much more of ourselves - after all, that is basic Catechism 101 stuff - and yet how many of us do that well?
The three big killer regimes of the 20th century — Hitler’s Reich, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Mao’s Red China, which slaughtered (at least) 120 million between them — were all stridently secular and anti-religious. So were most of the minor killer-regimes, like Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
It is also significant that the origins of modern genocide are secular. Holy Russia had always permitted a degree of violent anti-Semitism but it was the increasingly secularized czarist state of the 1880s that systematized the pogroms. This was echoed, from about 1909, by the secular Young Turks regime in Turkey, which introduced genocide against the Armenians then and, on a much larger scale, in 1915; this was followed by similar genocide against the Greek minority under the secular dictator Kamal Ataturk. There was a re-echo in Soviet Russia, where Stalin employed race-removal and genocidal policies from the late 1920s...Even the kind of anti-Semitic and anti-white genocide advocated by the present Iranian regime is only superficially Islamic: Its fundamental drive is secular power-politics.
The lesson of the 20th century, in my view, is that humanity, even with religious restraints, is a force for horror as well as progress. Without them, its turpitude knows no bounds. I recall the somber words of the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner: “If ever belief in God disappears, and the image of God is eradicated from human minds, we will become nothing more than incredibly clever apes — and the ultimate fate of humanity will be too horrible to contemplate.”
"That's gotta hurt!" - line from Ham of Bone screenplay
"Just shake it off." - my dad
 | <--not me, but an actor simulating my reaction to being left out. A much, much older actor I might add. Not that there's anything wrong with old age, as many of my best friends are older. |
Elegy for Pluto(Where's Waldo: did you spot the Springsteen lyric above?)
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
we hardly knew ye
when ye were reclassified
to prove that science corrects;
for tis a ‘umble Uriah Heep
most scientists project.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
in that hemi-powered glaze
you now cause Riddle more toil
(his blog has no boil)
proving even distant planets
have their orbits.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
you were small but had panache
a dash of hossenpepper like Bluto
without the hate of Hirohito.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
how could we get to know you?
You were cold, climactically-challenged
visible only in the far reaches of classrooms
to those who sat on the far right side.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
you lacked others' celestial glories
the heat of Mercury, allure of Venus
so often ignored
yet you never demeaned us.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
they called you a planet
but now they cry null
they've cast you aside
like cheap doggerel.
________________
Digby Baltzell uses the history of Philadelphia and Boston as very real examples of two types of leadership. In Boston, the "Boston Brahmin" elites formed a strong upper class that was not tolerant, certainly, but took responsibility for community life and exercised a tremendous influence on American culture, politics, arts, and science. In Philadelphia, the "Proper Philadelphians" were charming, tolerant--and deeply irresponsible, abandoning any role in governing the city and making it by common agreement the worst run city in the United States. When Philadelphia needed a mover and shaker, it imported some one from outside, like Ben Franklin...I checked out Atwood's other reviews and discovered Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Minister's Wooing. It looks likewise interesting:
Baltzell's final point is that in the wake of the sixties, which he compares to the English civil war (1640-1660) environment that spawned the Quakers and released "a host of self-righteous seekers" on the land," American leadership has moved much closer to the nakedly plutocratic and irresponsible leadership model found in Philadelphia. And along with this change in the upper class has grown egalitarianism, openness to immigrants, cynicism, leadership gridlock, and social tolerance. The irony of communal utopianism producing results exactly opposite of what was intended would not have surprised de Tocqueville, Baltzell's great mentor in sociology.
Mrs. Stowe contrasts the culturally spare and logocentric world of early New England with the visual opulence which she inhabited in genteel America of the mid-nineteenth century. How to relate the insular New England Christianity of her childhood to the Christianity of Raphael, and the great cathedrals of Europe she visited as an adult? This theme is introduced both in her narrative voice (St. Augustine's Enchiridion of Faith, Love, and Hope is cited without name at the novel's turning point) and in the character of Mme de Frontignac, a French aristocratic woman in an unhappy marriage. She introduces the New England matrons to the feminine beauty of France yet finds balm for her wounds in the severe virtues of Protestant New England. Clothe the chaste Protestant New England spirit in a elegant French Catholic gentility, Mrs. Stowe seems to be saying.
The theological groundwork is made more explicit in Oldtown Folks, but briefly, Mrs. Stowe believed that Jonathan Edwards, with his impossibly high standards for Christian life and his revivalist focus on a dramatic conversion experience, knocked the motherly old Puritan consensus exemplified by Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana off kilter and created almost unbearable tensions in many New Englanders.
