Here's a funny line from an email that is surely something a melancholic would say: "Like I needed 107 questions to verify that I am one melancholy baby?"
A quote from Goethe on beggars who promise to pray for the rich, via this First Things post comparing Catlicks & Protestants:
When one is in the right mood, it is really touching to see someone who, despite a direct relationship with the highest being, is unable to entreat for himself a reasonable improvement in his own condition, but nevertheless believes himself able to be the patron of another, making an appearance before God, accompanied by his many clients, with his supplications.He meant it financially, but taking it spiritually - welcome to my world Goethe!
I must say I am cheered when Christianity co-opts something pagan and “baptizes” it. Normally it works the other way. Our universities started out Christian and then became throughly paganized. So it always does my heart good to think we won one – that if a pagan Roman who worshipped Jupiter would come back today and find a priest wearing his robes, well, that would just shock him and he’d say, “hey, doesn’t anybody worship Jupiter anymore?”. One cherishes small victories. My mother's annoyed by priestly robes since they were apparently just borrowed from pagan Rome, and she would prefer they wear their black suit with white RC collar. Which, truth be told, I do think looks sharper from a purely sartorial viewpoint.
But I say it’s nice to say that Christians notched that victory. Especially now that we’re losing a lot. We’ve not only lost marriage as a sacrament but we’ve also lost it as an institution. Which isn’t too surprising actually. If it’s not sacred, then it’s a piece of paper. If it’s a piece of paper then why do it? A sacrament promises invisible grace. Help from God. With faith, it makes it worth doing simply for what you’ll get out of it. Same thing with the Eucharist. If it’s really Jesus, then people will go to Communion because it’s in their interest – they’re getting something out of it. In churches where it is merely a memorial, only a remembrance, it becomes infrequently received (monthly or a couple times of year) and it becomes de-emphasized. Jesus knew human nature well enough to know that if you tie a reward to something, people will be more likely to do it. The Eucharist today, if taken seriously, would draw people in. As it did Scott Hahn as told in "Rome Sweet Home".
Many long to strip religion of mystery when mystery is the very thing people are starved for. The reason the occult and New Age and obscure Jewish mysticism are so popular - and Catholicism not - is partly because now nuns dress like everybody else and the Mass is said in English and there’s no incense or bells and everything is just so….predictable. We were born to seek mysticism in religious rituals. It’s the way God made us, or at least some of us - like C.S. Lewis anyway. To deny that is to cause people to seek it elsewhere, where they will be harmed instead of helped.
I'm really going to have to be on my best blog behavior these days. No more spam poetry or self-indulgent fiction. At least not this week. It looks like this blog has made a real, live, Catholic diocese website. All it will take is one person from Wichita to complain and I'll be taken off. (Dad & I argued over which of us had the biggest bruise of all-time; I said the one I'm getting still getting over is obviously the larger. I'd post a picture of it but unfortunately it's in a place that can't be published on a blog linked by a Catholic diocese. With greater responsiblity comes greater responsibility. Something like that.) But I'm impressed by the Wichita diocese because ours, by comparison, is so milquetoast. Ours would never link to a "controversial" organization like Karl Keating's or, thank God, Commonweal, let alone bloggers. I think we link to the Vatican and a couple very innocuous sites like the NAB bible. While on this subject of blog self-consciousness, I'd like to thank Elena for this undeserved award.
I know a couple where the female is a progressive and the male a traditionalist. (Not my wife & me by the way.) And I always thought that she drew blood when she said of her husband: “Would you have believed in Jesus if you were around then?” It’s the classic way to make the traditionalist fall back on his heels, the accusation that “you only believe because your parents believed”. But today I thought about how easily that can be turned around on its head. He could respond to her: “if you were a believer during Jesus’ public ministry, would you have still believed as he was dying and in the period before the Resurrection?”. Or: “Would you have believed in Jesus in 50AD or 90AD when false Messiahs appeared? Would you have believed in Menahem ben Judah or Theudas or Simon bar Kokhba, all said to be Jewish “messiahs” after Jesus?"
As Ham o' Bone famously once said, "there's too much hate in the anti-hate crowd." Edwards calls Coulter a she-devil before sayingCoulter engages in hateful language. Meanwhile Republican nominees don't touch Ann Coulter but Dems line up to see the hater at Daily Kos. It's a standard past double, heading towards triple.
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