End of an Era

Our charismatic Dominican friar is leaving, going to become pastor at a church in Kentucky. I knew he wouldn’t be with us forever; he occasionally gave intimations of his mortality. He’s very overweight, he once mentioned in a sermon he dreamed he had a heart attack and died.

I grew to acquire a proprietary feeling towards him. He was always there, available on Wednesday nights for a seeming endless stream of bible studies or RICA classes. I didn’t go as often as I wanted, but it was a comfort to know he was there. He was an inexhaustible resource. He was opinionated and imbued with a different world view. It was from him I first learned the Enlightenment was ill-named.

Every hot August he’d dress in this eighth century Celtic warrior uniform, holding a spear, playing dress-up at the annual Dublin fest. I loved him for it. The innocence. The love of all things Irish. The strength of his convictions. The sense of honor, humor, chivalry and masculinity, the latter too rare today.

Every St. Patrick’s Day parade he'd march in that outfit while bagpipes played, “Risin’ of the Moon” and the sight and sound would send chills thru every beating heart. Past midnight, at the Hibernian party, he’d be singing some stirring Irish anthem. He had the aura of celebrity about him.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw him. I was taking an Irish language course at a local Catholic college. In the middle of class he rushes in in these strange Dominican robes, gigantic rosary at his hip like a Colt on a gunslinger.

I shamefully admit to be initially off-put by his enormous girth and beard. He sat forward in the tiny chair the classroom afforded and eagerly responded in Irish to queries, showing off I thought. I didn’t know then that in an earlier life he’d graduated Summa Cum Laude with a biology degree and later became a lawyer. His vocation was late in coming, although he's still relatively young, maybe late 40s.

Ah, but a beacon can’t be hid, and he is a beacon. He gathered a small coterie of followers, perhaps thirty or forty who went to every lecture, every bible study, every Theology on Tap. Many went to RCIA classes year after year just to hear the charismatic preacher and to wait for his fascinating digressions (which came early and often). He made you want to be better, and he felt a sense of responsibility for your improvement such that you would let him down if you weren’t better. The Holy Father triggers similar feelings.

I bought the good padre's series of tapes on the Catechism, so at least I’ll always have those. Obviously this will be tough on him. Change is difficult and this is a big one. He asks we pray for him.

Shane McGowan

Watched a sad documentary on the former lead singer of the Pogues, the brilliant lyricist who wrote “Fairytale of New York”:

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew

Toothless and seemingly lobotomized by drink, his wife seemed like a care-giver to a retarded person. She laughed at his incoherent gags and jokes and it was painful to watch, painful because it juxtaposed by interviews when he was young and sane and coherent and full of potential. But at the same time inspiring given his wife's unconditional love. Now he lurches from bar to bar, followed by cameras over period of months. So sad that his lyricism and sublime voice were purchased at the cost of so many brain cells. Art is a jealous god, more taking than giving.

He read of the sacrament of Baptism as if cherishing the box score of a Dodger's World Series win, savoring every detail, one victory won, one gift given, one great advantage, like a sprinter admiring his splendid fast-twitch muscles. Would that he ponder the Giver instead of the Gift.

Mastication is Normal judges books by their covers. Amazing how the internet fills a niche.

I much agree with her on the physical beauty of Steinbeck's "East of Eden":

The centennial editions have beautiful covers that hark back to an earlier era of design, featuring restrained typography and gorgeous woodcuts. I’m not so keen on the title treatment, but that’s quibbling....Even the paperback edition’s pages have those wonderful rough edges of classic hardback editions, for that old-time flavor.

Vast Auden Excerpt on Poetry & Sexual Love:

Why should so much poetry be written about sexual love and so little about eating--which is just as pleasurable and never lets you down--or about family affection, or about the love of mathematics? Sexual love has, in very acute form, the double impress of nature and spirit and is therefore ideally representative of our human condition. The weak self that desires to be strong is hungry. The lonely self desires to be attached. The spirit desires to be free and unattached, and not at the mercy of natural appetite. It also desires to be important, and that conflicts with its desire for freedom. The weak self wants other things to exist so it may encroach on them, the lonely self wants other existences to hold on to, in extreme cases to be absorbed in. But the spirit wants to be only "I," wants its attachment to other things to be its free choice. Consciousness plays the least part in the pleasure of eating, but it plays some--that's why we recognize gluttony as a sin. But the element of consciousness is so small that gluttony is a staple only of comedy--for example, the story of the man who gives up a beautiful girl to marry an ugly woman who happens to be a good cook. His choice can't involve difficulty, for eating is a comparatively innocent occupation. It also has a generalized object of desire: it doesn't make very much difference what the food is. It is comic to see an individual overcome by something general. Take the man who is conversing very elaborately, very beautifully, on matters of the highest spiritual nature. Suddenly, when no one is looking, he snatches a cake. As in all natural humor, though, the amusement to be derived from this sort of situation, where the individual comes in contact with the universal, is limited. For example, there's a party. Everyone is waiting expectantly for the great writer to put in an appearance. He enters. Instead of producing illuminating conversation, the first thing he does is ask where the bathroom is. At the other extreme, the passion for mathematics, though it can be in selected persons quite as intense as any love affair, is too spiritual. But because mathematicians are still obstinately people, you can still get a mild comic effect from the contrast between their interest and their human situation: for instance, the absent-minded professor who forgets the day of his wedding.

Sexual love has both nature and spirit and the desire for personal choice. The desire begins with the individual object but ends in bed where things are generalized. I think that there's a good American story to illustrate this point. A man is on a visit to Chicago. He enters a restaurant. Yes, he sees a very beautiful girl in the restaurant, exquisitely beautiful, ravishingly beautiful. Yes, she is friendly, she smiles at him, she talks to him. Yes, her conversation is very witty, she is very agreeable, she is immensely entertaining. They go to the opera. Yes, she is very intelligent, she has a fine appreciation of the beautiful things in life, is keenly aware of values. They go to a night club. Yes, she is a wonderful sport, she enters wholeheartedly into the spirit of things. Later, yes, she responds beautifully to his love-making, is very understanding, says she loves him too. In the taxi, yes, her kisses are thrilling. And after that? After that it was like it is in Cincinnati. You see, any description of the sex act must be pornographic. To an outsider, to a child watching, it looks like eating. There is no realization that individuals are concerned. But they are, even at the last, though the fact may be not be evident. The nature of the act is that we must not remain self-conscious, it is destroyed if we do. Of course, to the child the act is comic, but it is not to the adult because he knows that spirit is involved. Literature makes people fornicating self-conscious and so violates the nature of the experience.

Why is love so peculiarly the subject of lyric poetry? War and work are dealt with dramatically, not lyrically. You often get people writing poetry when they fall in love who are not moved by their other equally important experiences to do any writing about them. It isn't at all because love poetry has any practical value. No one was ever seduced by a beautiful poem, though a bad one may be effective on occasion. Work and war are less subjective, they can be imposed on one for pragmatic reasons. Of course, subjective reasons, the combative instinct, loving your work, may enter in, but you always advance pragmatic, causal reasons--I have to defend my country, I have to earn my living. Now, these reasons are never advanced in love. The sex drive is enough, and reasons are always inadequate. It is an entirely personal affair, it is my love. It is a matter of necessity, I can't help myself. Duty does not enter into falling in love, though it may later enter into love itself.

Falling in love is the discovery of what "I exist" means. Now here we see the difference between essence and existence. I can readily imagine other people's feelings by analogy with my own, but I cannot readily imagine other people's existence by analogy with my own. My feelings, desires, etc., can be objects of my knowledge and hence I can imagine what other people feel. My existence cannot become an object of knowledge, and hence while, if I have the necessary histrionic imagination and talent I can act the part of another in such a way that I deceive his best friends, I can never imagine what it would be like to be that other person but must always remain pretending to be him. Falling in love is an intense interest in the existence of another person. That existence is not alone an object of knowledge, nor is it exclusively a goal of desire. That is why people write under these circumstances as they do not at other times. They are confronted with the question, "What is existence?" and with a tension between nature and spirit...

--W.H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare

Interesting quote from yesterday's Magnificat:

Wisdom begins when we stop wanting to fight the reality of the present as if it should not exist, and start to accept it as it is.

Our hearts must be filled with hope and they must be impatient, but our hope and impatience must be based on the reality of the now. It is in this reality of the moment that Jesus will speak to us, that the Spirit will give himself to us.

It is only when we learn not to fear, but to trust in God's love, to surrender ourselves, that we learn to relax. God likes relaxed children. He doesn't want us to strive to be perfect. He wants us to be confident that he will give us strength.

--Jean Vanier

Spectator Cartoon


‘One day, all of these will be Harry Potter books.’

Taking the "unexplained" out of the phrase "unexplained weight gain"

Bill O'Reilly was recently chastized by a letter-writer who chided him for being unsympathetic to overweight (weight-challenged?) Americans. The writer said that O'Reilly didn't understand the phenomenon of "unexplained weight gain", a phrase I'd never heard before. I always crudely thought that weight was the result of too many calories chasing too little activity.

The combination of our inactivity, the plentitude of bad food and our tendency to mask negative emotions with food makes weight gain in Americans not surprising at all. (Personally, my favored euphemism for being overweight is "big-boned").

That having been said, I understand that women have a more difficult time losing weight than men do (due to having a lower percentage of muscle, which decreases metabolism) and that metabolisms slow as we age, but I consider a tumor to be an unexplained weight gain rather than something we have at least some control over. From a practical viewpoint, the pains we have to go to be at a 'right weight' are for most people not worth the trouble it takes to stay there, IMHO.

I commented on Irish Elk concerning gay priests:

I echo Andrew Greeley who worries about the cumulative effect of so many gay priests. I don't think it's prudential to be ordaining more priests with homosexual inclinations for awhile. It is similar to the immigration problem - immigrants are a great boon when arriving in managable groups and learning English. Just as there is too much temptation to not learn English when your whole town is Spanish, there's too much temptation not to remain chaste (or to not assent to Church teaching) when your priest friends are all gay.

I Did Not Know That...

"NFP" is derived from the Latin phrase 'haec jocatus sum, per jocum dixi' roughly translated as "male so horny".

Also from Nat'l Review

David Klinghoffer reviewed a book by Rodney Stark examining the role of monotheism on culture titled "For the Glory of God". Stark "writes as a sociologist and historian, not a theologian, and is careful to say nothing about his own faith except that he is not a Catholic." That last remark is presumably to fend off those who think him biased, given the credit he gives to the Church.

Some excerpts from the review:

."...[Isaac Newton] regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty."

A 'cryptogram set by the Almighty.' That is a beautiful thought, rightly depicting science and religion as twinned disciplines, both seeking to find out God's secrets.
_______________________________

As a final instance of what religion has wrought in the West, Stark gives us an economically rendered history of anti-slavery activism....As an advocate of total abolitionism, the Catholic Church was far ahead of everyone. 'In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas deduced that slavery was a sin, and a series of popes upheld his position, beginining in 1435 and culminating in three major pronouncements against slavery by Pope Paul III in 1537'.
________________________________

The very last sentence in his book is intriguing: 'In these ways, at least, Western civilization really was God-given.'...the point is that Scripture gives its readers the key to understanding how the world works. In this sense it's a blueprint. If you understand the bible, you understand the world. A corollary is that the civilization that possesses such a key is bound to flourish beyond the advancements of rival cultures. It's no coincidence that Biblical civilization developed as it did. Happily for those other cultures, the key can be duplicated. The fortune enjoyed by Christians and Jews is fully transferable. If Rodney Stark is right, it would follow that introducing the Bible to other peoples is indeed to impart a gift. Whether others are ready to accept the gift is another question.

From latest Nat'l Review

Excerpt of poem Summer Storm:

There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won't stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.

--DANA GIOLA

Good post on the importance of prayer from the Pew Lady

Mailbag Wednesday

Mailbag xxxxxx, where xxxxx=the day of the week, is one of the most rare Video, Meliora... features because of a dearth of email. But today we find ourselves with some bon mots worth quoting. Mailbag XXXX can now hold its head high next to Fictional Friday, Verweile Doch, Poetry Thursday and other regular features.

First, a reader named "leila" wrote suggesting I call her "for any pricing needs for home remodeling". Delapuente Irving wrote to say she lost 50 pounds in 3 months. Hawkins_Brittney3 made some unfortunate x-rated comments unsuitable for a family blog.

Fortunately there were others!

Bone received his first kinda/sorta fan mail. Kathy the Carmelite writes: I can't WAIT!! Who should play the Bone? Is there a love interest? Somehow I see a Debra Barone-type woman as the foil for all the cheapness.

The Debra Barone character needs to be able to roll her eyes a lot, place hands on hips and say with her actions "I can't believe I married this guy".

Not sure who might play 'da bone'. Will run it by him!

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Another emailer commented on my post about a certain commenter. Preserving his privacy, I'll offer my reply:

How to debate civily on the 'net is an interesting thing. It's rarely done well because those moved to comment do so usually because they are married to their opinion and consider it and themselves of one substance. A sort of homoousious if you will. And that leads to people defending not the truth but themselves. Not that I'm any better. "I'm no hero, that's understood." - (name that Springsteen song).

*

Having had eight children, Jeanne of God's country (i.e. Ohio) writes with authority:

How we raise our kids is how they will perceive God. At the first sign of difficulty, if they don't have experience in how to deal with those things, then they will see God as a cash cow always ready to give what they ask for. Not so. Now we have to have books written about "Why do bad things happen to good people". We never had to ask that question many years ago. Bad things always happened to good people, that was the way of the world then, and they learned faith to pull themselves through. No one thinks they need God now and don't realize they need him more to fill that hole.

If you make a kid pray beyond what he's capable as a kid, it will "spoil" him wrongly. But he needs to pray. Walk that fine line.

Update to Bone Update

Talked to Bone and he says that the production company in question is well-known in the industry and has produced and released dozens of movies. They specialize in resurrecting dead franchises (that is they deal in sequels to sequels). Since Bone's script is a sequel, it looks tailor made. They are cheap to produce, they don't bring in a lot of money, but they would give him a foot in the screenwriting door.

He's 35 pages into a second screenplay about an extremely frugal guy. "Autobiographical?", he answered of course! This is going to be a killer script and something I'd like to be writing because it writes itself! I mean he gets to write about the modern corporation - like the time at our old company we had to go into a room and paint ourselves to discover our inner something or other. Or the time we played this "interaction exercise" that involved squatting and allowing someone else to sit on our lap to "build trust" (I'm not sure why having a young woman you don't know sitting on your lap builds trust, but then I'm not paid the big bucks). It's Dilbert on the large screen. Plus he gets to write about his sublime cheapness, like the "urine only" toilet he's infamous for. Finally I figure prominently (too prominently!) in that I'll be one of the characters in it, the staunch Catholic to his devout Protestant. A veritable fertile crescent of material!