Preserved From Sin

HB: I agree with almost everything Catholics believe in. I could even go along with the Real Presence in the Eucharist. But I can't get over the Mary stuff.
Me: You know Catholics don't worship Mary. What is the problem with her again?
HB: Her sinlessness. If she is perfect, she wouldn't need Christ.
Me: Of course she needed Christ; Christ isn't bound by time; the merits of His sacrifice can be viewed as retroactive.

It was unconvincing, mostly because we could not understand or even contemplate how someone could go without sin - not just acts of commission but of omission - every minute of every day of life. Imagine saying 'yes' to the HS and stopping to help every time you see a motorist on the side of the road. What would a sinless life look like on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute level? Since we are serial sinners, it is hard to conceive of. "You believe it because you have to - because the Church teaches it," he said, which is true as far as it goes but although it is something I have trouble imagining, it's not something I have difficulty with as a spiritual concept. Eve was conceived without sin too. And was sinless for awhile - if sinless for a certain stretch of time, why not a whole life?

I don't see how it takes away from Jesus that Mary was preserved from sin - as if His sacrifice were less. If that were so, wouldn't our sinning today and tomorrow reflect God's greater glory because we need Jesus that "much more"? That would be crazy; sin doesn't reflect God's glory.

I thought the greatest Irishperson...

...was Arthur Guinness? Vote here (link via Mark of Irish Elk, natch).

From the Guinness website:

Arthur founded a dynasty that controlled the Brewery for 227 years. He himself did his bit for posterity by fathering 21 children, although only ten survived. His descendants showed themselves to be equally prolific, ensuring a steady supply of candidates for the top job, all of whom shared his philanthropy, energy and longevity.

Many a girl was advised by her mother to find herself a GUINNESS® man - and by that she didn't just mean a man who liked to drink it.


Arthur and his successors set wages at 10-20% above the local average, guaranteed widow's pensions, gave paid vacations (unheard of, then), provided free medical care, homes, education and a host of other benefits, making a brewery worker quite a catch.The workers received free GUINNESS® stout every day, and in the unlikely event that they didn't want to drink it, they could opt instead to receive an additional "beer allowance" in their pay packet.

In other words, they were paid well to make a drink they were given to drink and also paid well not to drink the drink they'd already been well paid to make. Brilliant.

True....so true

There is a world - I do not say a world in which all scholars live but one at any rate into which all of them sometimes stray, and which some of them seem permanently to inhabit - which is not the world in which I live. In my world, if The Times and The Telegraph both tell one story in somewhat different terms, nobody concludes that one of them must have copied the other, nor that the variations in the story have some esoteric significance. But in that world of which I am speaking this would be taken for granted. There, no story is ever derived from the facts but always from somebody else’s version of the same story. . . . In my world, almost every book, except some of those produced by Government departments, is written by one author. In that world almost every book is produced by a committee, and some of them by a whole series of committees. In my world, if I read that Mr. Churchill, in 1935, said that Europe was heading for a disastrous war, I applaud his foresight.

In that world no prophecy, however vaguely worded, is ever made except after the fact. In my world we say, ‘The first world-war took place in 1914–1918.’ In that world they say, ‘The world-war narrative took shape in the third decade of the twentieth century.’ In my world men and women live for a considerable time - seventy, eighty, even a hundred years - and they are equipped with a thing called memory. In that world (it would appear) they come into being, write a book, and forthwith perish, all in a flash, and it is noted of them with astonishment that they ‘preserve traces of primitive tradition’ about things which happened well within their own adult lifetime.

- A. H. N. Green-Armytage, John Who Saw (1952), via Paul Mankowski, S.J.

Fr. Brown & Gospel of John

Interesting:

Liberals who downplay Jesus’ divinity typically say that John has little reliable data about the actual history of Jesus’ lifetime. Though no fundamentalist, Brown rejected that view: "John is based on a solid tradition of the words and works of Jesus, a tradition that at times is very primitive. Indeed, I believe that often John gives us correct historical information about Jesus that no other Gospel has preserved."

A manuscript fragment from Chapter 18, discovered in 1935, is commonly dated at A.D. 135-150 or, more conservatively, at A.D. 125. (Such approximate dates could vary by plus or minus 25 years.) Since this copy was located in faraway Egypt, the original composition elsewhere would have occurred years before

Brown figured A.D. 100-110 was the latest plausible date for the final version of John. He put the nearly final composition at around A.D. 90 and a preliminary version at around A.D. 70, both using some writings from A.D. 40-60.

(The Chapter 18 manuscript find and scholars’ consensus that John was written in the first century are ignored in the current best seller "Beyond Belief" because author Elaine Pagels prefers to think John came later than the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text early Christianity deemed spurious.)

Tan Man

I've always had a soft spot for Tan Books. From Cruz's Incorruptibles to Fr. Most's Catholic Apologetics Today, Tan is unapologetically impervious to the winds of ecumenical fashion. Tan appeals to my heart, Ignatius Press to my head. Some of their books strike me as a bit lacking in scholarship and/or even-handedness but they always tantalize. Who wouldn't be interested in "An Easy Way To Become A Saint" by: Fr Paul O' Sullivan, O.P.?

The latest catalog lists sales figures. Top seller is easily The Secret of the Rosary at 5.4 million. The low looks to be Julian the Apostate at 1,600 sold.

Some real surprises. I thought St. Therese's "Story of a Soul" would sell more than it's 90,000 even though that is an impressive number. "Purgatory - Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints" reached a whopping 400,000. "Popes Against Modern Errors - 16 Famous Papal Documents" seemed low at 6,000, a book I've been tempted to buy. "Catholic Prophecy - the Coming Chastisement" is at 210,000. Just the other day I was reading "The Glories of Divine Grace" at 13,000. "This is the Faith" has 110,000 sales in just 14 months.

Tried and True Ways to Hide Embarrassing Posts

I feel a bit squeamish about that last post - it seems puerile and juvenile. Following the "out of sight, out of mind" cliche, I'll share ways you too can use banish embarrassing posts. Out, out damn spot!

1) Simply add posts. If you post too much, people aren't going to page all the way to the bottom of the stack and read everything (unless you're me and you're reading Disputations). Most just glance over the top couple posts and click away.

2) Add distracting graphics. Maybe a picture or two. Pictures grab our attention; text cannot compete.



3) Link to a story of religious misdeeds. For some reason, people are fascinated by stories of clerics doing wrong.

4) Abruptly change the subject to an analysis of where Kant and Hegel went wrong.

5) Uh, hey, I just thought: I could just delete the post or not write it in the first place. Hmm....

Men need to take one for the team sometimes...

I think William Luse has the definitive post regarding public breastfeeding. The controversy is not about women, it's really about men. And it's not about men so much as their....willy. Works for me.

Every day I happen to drive by huge billboard (it's only a few miles out of my way - joke!) depicting a woman, naked but for her skin. She's obviously pregnant, and is supporting her belly with one hand and hiding her breasts with her other hand (her hand is large! You can tell they selected the model with some precision). From her belly button protrudes a cigarette, with smoke coming out of it. The message? "If you smoke, your baby smokes".

Obviously there is a public good served here. An anti-smoking message for the pregnant mom. There is also a good served in breastfeeding a baby, providing a baby the best nutritionally, without all the pumps and such. And given the remarkable discreteness now possible in clothing made for breastfeeding, I don't see how that can be a problem unless the woman is an exhibitionist, which, in nursing moms at least, seems pretty rare.

Update: Another definitive post, if that's not oxymoronic.

Create Your Own Punchline

From the NY Post:

Speaking of [General Wesley] Clark, the button-down military man engaged in a 90-minute policy discussion with Madonna in her L.A. home in a bid to mobilize celebrity support. Clark has also wooed the likes of Ben Affleck and J.Lo, Steven Spielberg and Norman Lear.

Mel Gibson, Feminist

Kathyrn Jean Lopez reports on Gibson's Passion and fellow feminist Pope John Paul II.

Don't Try This at Home

Well I've heard the phrase "you gotta dance with the girl that brung ya" but this is ridiculous. Whoa Nellie! Let's hope they wait a few years. A couple rounds with Jose Cuervo would get me on the dance floor, but there ain't enough whiskey in the world for this:

"On the island of Madagascar, people believe that their dead ancestors have the power to bestow fortune or tragedy on the surviving family,'' Lee Martin writes in Turning Bones.

"From May to November, the winter months of Madagascar, people pull the remains of loved ones from their tombs and dance with the corpses in a ceremony known as famadihana, which literally means 'turning of bones.' ''

In Turning Bones, Martin, who teaches creative writing at Ohio State University, steps onto the dance floor with his own dead ancestors. Moving with ease between historical fiction and personal recollection, he breathes life into the generations of Martins who made their way from Kentucky to Ohio and then on to Indiana and Illinois.

Pensively, he wrote.

The air hangs differently during a vacation; it lay impregnated with possibility. The rooms of the house look different; like warm, gentle friends instead of exigencies for exigencies. The fulsome lyrics of the Irish band “the Fenians” resonate during this stopped-time, this time ambered in a fossil that I can turn over and look at and play with.

The rooms hang in a suspended state; the closet is newly cleaned and has an aura of holiness about it. Organizing the roll-top desk today felt like a coporal work of mercy; the interior was bare enough to leave exposed. How long has that been! The outdoor Christmas lights went up, a bulwark against an ever-shortening day.

Catch 22s

Sancta Sanctis is in the liturgical spirit and her enthusiasm is catching. She describes a conundrum though:

The Psalms are like any other prayer: they have to be prayed to be understood. So many people say that they don't see any good in praying the rosary every day and so don't pray. The paradox is that only through praying a daily rosary will they be able to see the good in it. They won't be given the grace until they begin, but they won't begin because they haven't been given the grace. It's a little frustrating.

Indeed. It seems as though we must offer our five loaves and two fishes for them to be multiplied, or at least meet Him halfway. Not long ago I was listening to a priest talk about the healing of Bartimaeus in Mark 10:

46 Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging.

47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"

48 Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"

49 Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." So they called to the blind man, "Cheer up! On your feet! He's calling you."

50 Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

51 "What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him. The blind man said, "Rabbi, I want to see."

52 "Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you." Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

The Dominican friar asks where is the act of faith? And then it hits him. In verse 50, a blind man throws his cloak amid the crowd? Cloaks were valuable possession in biblical times. If he didn't expect to be healed how would he expect to find it?

Enlighten the eyes of our understanding and raise up our minds from the heavy sleep of indolence. Open our mouth and fill it with your praise, that we may be able without distraction to sing and confess that you are God, glorified in all and by all. -Prayer of St. Basil

Cynthia Ozick on John Updike:

            

His is not a social faith. Though ''Lifeguard'' closes with an exhortation to ''be joyful,'' the Kierkegaardian singleness of the God-possessed, quivering among the darker stars, predominates. This singleness, this historyless aloneness, turns up in the essayistic apercus and musings and final exhalations that thread through both plot and plotlessness, alongside the daily vernacular, between, so to speak, the acts...Updike owns the omnivorous faculty of seeing the telltale flame in every mundane gesture. Despite this busy Bruegelian amplitude, the concluding soliloquy of the unsettled young husband in ''The Astronomer,'' who is befuddled by an atheistic sophist, carries a recognizable Updikean signature: ''What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?''

But the past, so defined, is not the same as history. By a lively coincidence, the current publishing season brings us also the early fiction of Saul Bellow, where history infiltrates nearly every thought or movement -- which is perhaps why Bellow has been called our most ''European'' novelist. Among contemporary fiction writers, Updike is the most rootedly American (though of German, not WASP, stock), and the most self-consciously Protestant: the individual in singular engagement with God. The Protestant idea of God, which nurtured and shaped America (at least until Sept. 11, 2001), is the narrowed Lord of persons, not of hosts; he is not conspicuously the Lord of history.

Been reading Bill O'Reilly's new book, in which he talks about God, or the "Deity" as he calls him. The distance implied in the use of that term was noted, I think, by the National Catholic Reporter. O'Reilly isn't of the "God told me to wear a blue tie today" crowd; he's not a "fake it till you make it" kind of guy. Understanding that he may not have come to all the right conclusions, he admits it will be very interesting when he meets St. Peter at the Gates.

Goethe Defends Bloggers?

Ham of Bone has not been sitting at home watching "Average Joe". He's been writing screenplay revisions between draughts of Goethe's biography and offers this:

In "Conversations of Goethe" by Eckermann, Goethe says:

"If at present you treat only small subjects, freshly dashing off what every day offers you, you will generally produce something good, and each day will bring you pleasure."

Later in the book one finds this gem:

"Inferior talents do not enjoy art for its own sake; while at work they have nothing before their eyes but the profit they hope to make when they have done. With such worldly views and tendencies, nothing great was ever yet produced."