Chris has another interesting poll here concerning Medjugorje.
Last week's favorite gospel came out:
*John (41.2%)
*Luke (41.2%)
*Matthew (11.8%)
*Mark (5.9%)
December 07, 2003
Groundhog Day - Religious Film
From NY Times article:
From NY Times article:
A NEW movie series from the Museum of Modern Art, "The Hidden God: Film and Faith," features some pretty brooding stuff. There's a 1955 Danish movie about a man who thinks he is Jesus Christ, an Ingmar Bergman pastiche about a tormented pastor, a Roberto Rossellini movie about monks. These are, of course, the "intellectual with a capital I" films that audiences might expect at a religious-theme retrospective organized by a major museum. Subtitles and all that fancy stuff.
With one exception. On Thursday, the opening-night feature at the Gramercy Theater, where the series is being presented, was "Groundhog Day," the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray as a sarcastic television weatherman forced by a twist of fate and magic to relive one day of his life, Feb. 2, over and over.
Since its debut a decade ago, the film has become a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in "Groundhog Day" a reflection of their own spiritual messages. Curators of the series, polling some 35 critics in the literary, religious and film worlds to suggest films with religious interpretations, found that "Groundhog Day" came up so many times that there was actually a squabble over who would write about it in the retrospective's catalog.
Lady from the Region of Light
I thought this was interesting - regarding the story of St. Juan Diego, whose feast day approaches:
I thought this was interesting - regarding the story of St. Juan Diego, whose feast day approaches:
If you pronouce Cuauhtlatoahtzin, Tenochititlan, Tecuauhtlacuepeuh correctly, you are speaking Nahuatl, the ancient Aztec language of Mexico. Translated they mean:- Sr. Juliana D' Amato, O.P.
Cuauhtlatoahtzin - "the eagle who speaks"
His Christian name - Juan Dieo
Tenochititlan - Mexico City
Tecuauhtlacuepeuh - "She who comes flying from the 'Region of Light' like an 'Eagle of Fire.' This was to become "The Virgin of Guadalupe."
Who was this lady, [the bishop of Juan Diego] wanted to know. Juan Diego said she was Tecuauhtlacuepeuh. To the bishop, it sounded like "Guadalupe." The bishop knew of a Madonna venerated in Spain under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe so he called this Lady by the same name, "Nuestra Senora La Virgen de Guadalupe."
Byzantine Characters
The tiny Byzantine parish I attend has many more interesting characters than the big suburban parish I also frequent.
There is one gentleman, in his late 40s/early 50s, who never takes off his Fedora hat or suit jacket. He looks exactly like someone transplanted from the 1940s. Two other fellows, most obviously gay, are regular, devout attendees. Judge not, I remind myself.
I recall once, as I was walking out of church, striking up a conversation with a lady who Steven Riddle said he knew. "Hello - do you know Steven Riddle?" I said, only to realize that she was in mid-breastfeed (I know Bill Luse is saying, 'not that subject AGAIN O'Rama!'). I didn't know what the etiquette was/is on talking to a woman while breast-feeding but since I shouldn't have been talking in church anyway I moved on rapidly.
One time I was asked by an usher to wield the long-handled baskets at the offertory. I didn't know what I was doing but he said "follow what I do". I followed him and did the bows where he did, but while moving down the aisle, for some reason I felt the need to smile maniacally and thank people as they donated, as if they were chipping in towards my personal book budget. The next time I was asked to do it I was able to do it with greater decorum. Small victories, ya know.
The tiny Byzantine parish I attend has many more interesting characters than the big suburban parish I also frequent.
There is one gentleman, in his late 40s/early 50s, who never takes off his Fedora hat or suit jacket. He looks exactly like someone transplanted from the 1940s. Two other fellows, most obviously gay, are regular, devout attendees. Judge not, I remind myself.
I recall once, as I was walking out of church, striking up a conversation with a lady who Steven Riddle said he knew. "Hello - do you know Steven Riddle?" I said, only to realize that she was in mid-breastfeed (I know Bill Luse is saying, 'not that subject AGAIN O'Rama!'). I didn't know what the etiquette was/is on talking to a woman while breast-feeding but since I shouldn't have been talking in church anyway I moved on rapidly.
One time I was asked by an usher to wield the long-handled baskets at the offertory. I didn't know what I was doing but he said "follow what I do". I followed him and did the bows where he did, but while moving down the aisle, for some reason I felt the need to smile maniacally and thank people as they donated, as if they were chipping in towards my personal book budget. The next time I was asked to do it I was able to do it with greater decorum. Small victories, ya know.
Hernan Gonzalez has decided to close down his blog (hopefully just for the Argentinian summer). Go and read his whole post, which has a ring of poetry about it ('we go away, just'), perhaps augmented by the lens of Babelfish. If you don't, here is an excerpt:
Beunos. We go away, just. Today it is the last day of "photos of the apocalypse". It is not that it has tired me nor bored me, nor that it is not happened to me what to post (rather on the contrary). The decision comes sudden flight by labor subjects (a short term project that, if it leaves, it would clear to me just a short time that I have; and that already me is clearing it); and the summer, good opportunity comes to take (the one that writes and those that reads) vacations. Perhaps within some short time (past the summer, for example) it returns by these worlds; I do not believe that it retakes this blog, of all ways, perhaps something similar, but nonequal. We will see.His blog productivity - 'blogtivity' - has been impressive. 1500 posts! I shudder to think how much I have posted since I suspect the investment would not be commensurate with the rewards, both for self and the reader. Hernan's a good one; I wish him a vacation full of the good reading and good thinking and that he share the fruits.
It has been something more of a year and means, about a 1500 posts, and 80 "numbers" (weeks). When I began, it did not dream that this was going to march to this rate. Memory that the first days worried to me to point subjects to post something every day, and thought that in just a short time was going I to have left without that to say. It was the other way around; as blog was taking form, it went away turning a placentera custom (and something addictive); lately, the subjects (and the rough drafts of posts) to me were accumulated, and was sorry not to have more time to write.
It is necessary to also say, something that thought recently: the abundant production - almost three posts per day, sharps, is not little... - must to the dissatisfaction largely: sometimes I reread last post, do not like too much, seem me a little idiot and she gives a little me shame, I imagine to a then visitor who enters the page for the first time and finds "that"... and I hurry to post some other thing (generally more impersonal) for "commanding" post of doubtful taste more down. The last week I saw, with surprise, that to TSO it happens to him exactly the same).
In any case, by more modest than it has been the result, the truth is that I am very contented of it to have done. Personally, it has served to me (story this in case there is some other...) to learn some things (not only in terms to sharpen the expression: also by that of which to teach is the best way to learn). Blog finished at first being something different from the imagined thing; but it is that to do it changed it to me some ideas. And - last but not least- there am good well-known people by this means.
December 06, 2003
Hans Küng - traditionalist?
I found this amusing, if a bit like shooting barrelled fish. Written in Spanish (thru the lens of Babelfish), via the reader.
I found this amusing, if a bit like shooting barrelled fish. Written in Spanish (thru the lens of Babelfish), via the reader.
...a clear sign of traditionalistic mentality is its rigidity, its resistance to change to itself, its refusal to rectify. Küng is a good example of it. He never thinks that the Church has recognized sufficient faults of the Christians of the past, but never recognizes himself as having been mistaken in something; he requests dialogue, but he thinks outside as if infallible; he denounces the 'inquisitorial climate' in the Church, but adopts a condemnatory tone of the discrepant one. Thank heavens it was the theologian Ratzinger and not Küng who arrived at the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith. Otherwise, authoritarianism would be something more than a temptation.
December 05, 2003
The Saga of Mike Corkins
Baseball cards were the Ur-books for me. They were the breasts at which I nursed, portable and potable, able to comfort the rational side with sublime columns of agate statistics and nourish the artistic side with photographs that were minor works of art. There is my '72 Topps Frank Robinson, a moment frozen in time, his swing arrested, his blue spring training jacket billowing in the wind. How could you feel homesick after looking at smiling Frank?
I say homesick because I went to Camp Campbell Guard for a week at the age of 8, the first time I’d ever been away from home. It was a Darwinian hell, like prison but without the rape. Think Midwestern equivalent of a British boarding school. I toted that black box of baseball cards - in the shape of a pirate’s chest – to camp and examined them whenever we were releasted to our bunks. I brought the same cards and chest to a party a couple years a later.
What was it that made knowledge, even trivial knowledge such as Davey Johnson’s batting average in ’73, so gratifying? Why did the long list of type in the Sunday newspaper, that long column titled “MAJOR LEAGUE AVERAGES” send a shiver of delight from 1972 to around 1983? How many a Sunday was spent perusing the list, memorizing the list and delighting in the news that Manny Mota was hitting a purplish .362? Why did St. Bernard so dismiss knowledge acquired merely for the sake of curiosity?
My first card were collected in 1970. I recall the very first pack, bought at United Dairy Farmers, purchased for my friend and me by his dad. His dad unlocked the secrets of the flip side of the card - what a batting average was, how it could be calculated from hits and at bats; he showed us the columns from which the average could be derived and how to calculate it. We were only seven years old, precocious but not ready for long division.
We dismissed him as he droned on about the division, assuring him we got it. Giddily we compared all the averages to see who was best. It was one of mine – Mike Corkins from the San Diego Padres. He hit something like .472! My friend was jealous. I’m not sure who found out first, but we’ll remember to our dying day the shock of finding out that Mike Corkins wasn’t the best. He was the worst. He was a pitcher, and that last column wasn’t his batting average but his E.R.A., and it was 4.72, not .472 (we learned decimals points mattered). And unlike batting average, the lower the ERA the better.
Preversely, that card became one of our most esteemed. Due to sentimental value, Corkins would demand an intra-trade value far higher than his numbers would indicate. Years later we had an English teacher who collected baseball cards and who looked exactly like Mike Corkins. We brought and showed him “his” card and to this day the card has a double-sentiment attached – reminding us of a favorite English teacher and our first great error.
Baseball cards were the Ur-books for me. They were the breasts at which I nursed, portable and potable, able to comfort the rational side with sublime columns of agate statistics and nourish the artistic side with photographs that were minor works of art. There is my '72 Topps Frank Robinson, a moment frozen in time, his swing arrested, his blue spring training jacket billowing in the wind. How could you feel homesick after looking at smiling Frank?
I say homesick because I went to Camp Campbell Guard for a week at the age of 8, the first time I’d ever been away from home. It was a Darwinian hell, like prison but without the rape. Think Midwestern equivalent of a British boarding school. I toted that black box of baseball cards - in the shape of a pirate’s chest – to camp and examined them whenever we were releasted to our bunks. I brought the same cards and chest to a party a couple years a later.
What was it that made knowledge, even trivial knowledge such as Davey Johnson’s batting average in ’73, so gratifying? Why did the long list of type in the Sunday newspaper, that long column titled “MAJOR LEAGUE AVERAGES” send a shiver of delight from 1972 to around 1983? How many a Sunday was spent perusing the list, memorizing the list and delighting in the news that Manny Mota was hitting a purplish .362? Why did St. Bernard so dismiss knowledge acquired merely for the sake of curiosity?
My first card were collected in 1970. I recall the very first pack, bought at United Dairy Farmers, purchased for my friend and me by his dad. His dad unlocked the secrets of the flip side of the card - what a batting average was, how it could be calculated from hits and at bats; he showed us the columns from which the average could be derived and how to calculate it. We were only seven years old, precocious but not ready for long division.
We dismissed him as he droned on about the division, assuring him we got it. Giddily we compared all the averages to see who was best. It was one of mine – Mike Corkins from the San Diego Padres. He hit something like .472! My friend was jealous. I’m not sure who found out first, but we’ll remember to our dying day the shock of finding out that Mike Corkins wasn’t the best. He was the worst. He was a pitcher, and that last column wasn’t his batting average but his E.R.A., and it was 4.72, not .472 (we learned decimals points mattered). And unlike batting average, the lower the ERA the better.
Preversely, that card became one of our most esteemed. Due to sentimental value, Corkins would demand an intra-trade value far higher than his numbers would indicate. Years later we had an English teacher who collected baseball cards and who looked exactly like Mike Corkins. We brought and showed him “his” card and to this day the card has a double-sentiment attached – reminding us of a favorite English teacher and our first great error.
More Updikean
...here in Christianity Today:
...here in Christianity Today:
Updike is literary heir to Nathaniel Hawthorne, that grim fabulist of the Civil War era. Hawthorne asks what happens when a people try to establish theocracy, enforcing Old Testament law in Old Testament ways. Would such faith transform the community and its members, or deform it and them? Hawthorne critiques the Puritans on the grounds of their own theology: those who condemn never fully recognize their own fallen condition. We always sabotage our own best intentions, Hawthorne implies, and never so much as when those intentions are rooted in dogmatism driven by fanaticism.
What does this have to do with Updike, born three generations after Hawthorne, and exploring themes that on the surface seem a thousand generations removed from him? Simply this: Updike answers the flip side of Hawthorne's questions. Updike sets most of his novels in a contemporary American culture that has thrown off its Puritanism with a vengeance (though a residue remains). His characters inhabit a world with at most a saccharine coating of Christian faith and deeply eroded ethics.
If Hawthorne portrayed a world in which Christianity had become rigid and tyrannical, Updike portrays one in which it has shriveled to slogans and sentimentality. And do people in his world fare better?
No.
Spam Names
I have renewed respect for authors after seeing how hard it apparently is to come up with good fictional names. Sheesh. Here is a sampling from today's spam catch:
Valerie England
Millicent Eldridge
Vincent Rose
Bradly Daniels
Marcie Melvin
Rodger Woodard
Trenton Pike
Wilmer Laird
Roger Delong
Ernesto Burger
I don't know what I'm expecting, but a lot of these names seem weak. Millicent? Ernesto Burger? What's a Wilmer? If spam is graffitti, then is it asking too much for it to be a bit more artful? Don't they feel a shred of responsibility when they send something out to 1.2 billion people? ...:)
I have renewed respect for authors after seeing how hard it apparently is to come up with good fictional names. Sheesh. Here is a sampling from today's spam catch:
Valerie England
Millicent Eldridge
Vincent Rose
Bradly Daniels
Marcie Melvin
Rodger Woodard
Trenton Pike
Wilmer Laird
Roger Delong
Ernesto Burger
I don't know what I'm expecting, but a lot of these names seem weak. Millicent? Ernesto Burger? What's a Wilmer? If spam is graffitti, then is it asking too much for it to be a bit more artful? Don't they feel a shred of responsibility when they send something out to 1.2 billion people? ...:)
Supernatural 24-7
One of the characteristics of Catholicism is its supernaturalism. Every minute of every day a miracle is occuring on an altar somewhere in the world - the changing of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. But one of my unfortunate tendencies is to sometimes want to "naturalize" religion. This is seen also in the tendency of some biblical scholars to want to explain away some of Jesus' miracles - such as the feeding of the 5,000 - in non-miraculous terms.
It is a constant temptation, in the quotidian of daily life, especially post-conversion or post-vows. The member of a religious order who makes vows of poverty, chastity and obedience (sounds suspiciously like marriage vows :)) - has reached that point via supernatural means - i.e. via God. The monk or sister has, in this situation, walked a little ways on water. They cannot then simply rely on their natural gifts or they will sink. Their life, like the married's life, need be a constant reliance on supernatural means.
One of the characteristics of Catholicism is its supernaturalism. Every minute of every day a miracle is occuring on an altar somewhere in the world - the changing of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. But one of my unfortunate tendencies is to sometimes want to "naturalize" religion. This is seen also in the tendency of some biblical scholars to want to explain away some of Jesus' miracles - such as the feeding of the 5,000 - in non-miraculous terms.
It is a constant temptation, in the quotidian of daily life, especially post-conversion or post-vows. The member of a religious order who makes vows of poverty, chastity and obedience (sounds suspiciously like marriage vows :)) - has reached that point via supernatural means - i.e. via God. The monk or sister has, in this situation, walked a little ways on water. They cannot then simply rely on their natural gifts or they will sink. Their life, like the married's life, need be a constant reliance on supernatural means.
December 04, 2003
Heavy Trafficking in Stereotypes
I've been lately going through old Word documents looking at some of the genealogy research I did - I wanted to better understand my ancestors by learning what others thought of their cultures. Since I'm a politically-incorrect kind of guy, I thought I'd post the fruits of this "research". I'd gathered them before I had a blog, so they are mostly unattributed.
I've been lately going through old Word documents looking at some of the genealogy research I did - I wanted to better understand my ancestors by learning what others thought of their cultures. Since I'm a politically-incorrect kind of guy, I thought I'd post the fruits of this "research". I'd gathered them before I had a blog, so they are mostly unattributed.
The Germans
The Germans make everything difficult, both for themselves and for everyone else. - German poet Goethe
The Germans have intellectual pretensions, refusing to restrict themselves to pragmatic and utilitarian goals, but seek to find the secrets of the universe and to solve the riddle of man's relationship to God.
Germans push every good thing to the point where it becomes a bad one, that inimitable combination of tactlessness and sensitivity, of arrogance and subservience.
The difference between northern Germany and southern Germany is dramatic - Southern Germany is tender, intimate, full, warm. The Northern people are blase, superficial, industrial-minded.
The Irish
Perhaps the most common attribute of the Irish personality is its highly developed sensibility, which is alert and susceptible to its environment. The Irish personalithy is variable and very responsive to calls made on it, so that it can spring from inactivity to excitement or from sadness to gaiety in a few minutes. This vivacious temprament is Mediterranean in character, rather than north European, and it is puzzling to the English. It is associated with other characteristics of the Mediterranean such as talkativeness. Irish alertness combined with social awareness makes the Irish especially curious. The alertness and vivacity, combined with their developed imagination, often leads to restlessness and some personal dissatisfaction. An Irishman will frequently want to be somewhere else or even someone else. This is intensified by a tendency to romanticize situations or destinations not connected with himself, by making them appear more glamourous or attractive. A positive aspect of the Irish personality is personal objectivity. Without any warning an Irishman will reveal in a few quick words an ability to look at himself with the eye of an outsider - an ability rare among Anglo-saxons.
Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts
Christ is coming, the Prince of peace! To prepare for his Nativity means to reawaken in ourselves and in the world the hope for peace. First of all, peace in hearts, which is built by putting down the weapons of rancor, of revenge and of every form of egoism. - Pope John Paul II (via Disputations)
Von Balthasar appealed to me more right from the day I first read him. Sort of the Emmaus experience, mutatis mutandis. Often reading him my heart would burn within. Von Balthasar opened up the Scriptures as no other theologian has ever done for me. He opened up vistas into the vast Catholic heritage, and introduced me to some of the great saints. It is due to his book on Saint Therese of Lisieux that I fell in love with her. - Gerard of Blog for Lovers
Christians in particular are apt to mischaracterize a mystery as a problem. God's Revelation is not a code to be deciphered; whatever fits inside my head is finite, and if Revelation is anything, it's not finite. ...A failure to accept mystery is, to my mind, one of the primary errors of Open Theism, which seems quite proud of the fact of resolving the "problem" of free will by stripping God of His perfection. - Tom of Disputations
Men are sex-driven hominoids with a brain tagging along for the ride to serve the occasionally useful purposes of making money and performing manual labor. None ever came willingly to civilization unless dragged there by a woman – his befuddled brain balancing the bane against the blessing, the agony of her victory against the ecstasy of her teat – or by a religious conversion. Of this latter group some are even serious about it, wearing hairshirts or disappearing into the desert or behind tall walls. But the rest of us take the old man everywhere we go, even to church. When we made the profession of faith, there were two guys standing there, one who wants to be a saint and one who misses the bad old days; one who wants to love one woman and another who is impressed by numbers; one who wants to be a good man and one who would be a man about town; one who is serious about humility, but who can't stop taking himself seriously. In short, our brains may be narrowly focused, but expansive enough to be of two minds on at least one issue. - William Luse of Apologia, on the issue of public breastfeeding.
It has become increasingly apparent to me that the extent to which you trust church tradition is really the central question of Christianity. It's an even more basic question than whether you trust the Bible, because the Bible is itself part of church tradition. Catholics and Orthodox see the whole thing as one unbroken chain; Martin Luther (and, I'm guessing, Calvin) had no quarrel with the first thousand years or so, but thought things went astray after that; more radical types have tried to recover the spirit of apostolic times, or their own personal encounters with God, and regard that whole history as born of human error and political interests.... And yet everyone relies to some extent on the old texts, because what else do we have? Yet if you don't really trust those who wrote them or compiled them, it can lead to some odd readings. As often seems to be the case, I can see both sides here...Either way we have the problem of knowing God through human limitations, always a tricky business even in the best circumstances. --Camassia
Brevity, traditionally, has been a sign of a good confession, along with honesty and humility. You're not going to confession because you feel bad; you're going to confession because you did some bad things... I find that monthly confession is an excellent practice. When I was researching medieval confraternities for my dissertation, I found an Italian confraternity rule from the 14th century that recommended the practice with the analogy, "In the world, men shave or change their shirts once a month..."- Henry of A Plumbline in the Wind
'Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), the prototypical modern Democratic presidential candidate, was handed the hot potato in a recent Democratic debate. The question was, "Do you have a faith, and would you invoke the name of God when discussing a policy?" Edwards, a longtime Methodist, responded like an artful dodger: "My religion does not inform my public policy, but it does inform my values."' Makes sense, that would mean that his public policy has no value. --Jeff of Curt Jester
For the last hundred years or so, there has been a concerted effort to sever women from femininity in the name of feminism. The major social and technological factors that have made this even remotely possible have been contraception, abortion, and bottle feeding... The wide spread acceptance of bottle feeding was what originally made it possible for women to become a part of the industrial work force...Because we are fallen, we have come to see breasts as primarily sex toys for slavering men, rather than seeing that their sexuality derives from their nurturing function. When we separated the meanings of sexuality from each other, when soi-disant 'feminism' advocated the masculinizing of women, we created the situation where the very thought of a child suckling on the breast gets the 'ick' response, but the thought of feeding a child chemical soup from a plastic container through an artificial nipple does not. --Alicia of Fructus Ventris
When I was first given the desire to bring souls to God, I also felt, at the same time, the fear that I would not bring them closer to God at all but instead turn them into little clones of myself. I see that kind of thing happen all the time, usually in the Evangelical churches: new converts are recreated in their pastors' images and likenesses. Personality cults are scary. Antony taught me to pray, "Jesus, do not let them be like me. Let them be like You." Having several versions of a mere person is neither catholic nor Catholic. We are called to be Christ figures. - Enbrethiliel of Sancta Sanctis
As medieval Homer would say, d'oheth! - Robert of Hokie Pundit
Christ is coming, the Prince of peace! To prepare for his Nativity means to reawaken in ourselves and in the world the hope for peace. First of all, peace in hearts, which is built by putting down the weapons of rancor, of revenge and of every form of egoism. - Pope John Paul II (via Disputations)
Von Balthasar appealed to me more right from the day I first read him. Sort of the Emmaus experience, mutatis mutandis. Often reading him my heart would burn within. Von Balthasar opened up the Scriptures as no other theologian has ever done for me. He opened up vistas into the vast Catholic heritage, and introduced me to some of the great saints. It is due to his book on Saint Therese of Lisieux that I fell in love with her. - Gerard of Blog for Lovers
Christians in particular are apt to mischaracterize a mystery as a problem. God's Revelation is not a code to be deciphered; whatever fits inside my head is finite, and if Revelation is anything, it's not finite. ...A failure to accept mystery is, to my mind, one of the primary errors of Open Theism, which seems quite proud of the fact of resolving the "problem" of free will by stripping God of His perfection. - Tom of Disputations
Men are sex-driven hominoids with a brain tagging along for the ride to serve the occasionally useful purposes of making money and performing manual labor. None ever came willingly to civilization unless dragged there by a woman – his befuddled brain balancing the bane against the blessing, the agony of her victory against the ecstasy of her teat – or by a religious conversion. Of this latter group some are even serious about it, wearing hairshirts or disappearing into the desert or behind tall walls. But the rest of us take the old man everywhere we go, even to church. When we made the profession of faith, there were two guys standing there, one who wants to be a saint and one who misses the bad old days; one who wants to love one woman and another who is impressed by numbers; one who wants to be a good man and one who would be a man about town; one who is serious about humility, but who can't stop taking himself seriously. In short, our brains may be narrowly focused, but expansive enough to be of two minds on at least one issue. - William Luse of Apologia, on the issue of public breastfeeding.
It has become increasingly apparent to me that the extent to which you trust church tradition is really the central question of Christianity. It's an even more basic question than whether you trust the Bible, because the Bible is itself part of church tradition. Catholics and Orthodox see the whole thing as one unbroken chain; Martin Luther (and, I'm guessing, Calvin) had no quarrel with the first thousand years or so, but thought things went astray after that; more radical types have tried to recover the spirit of apostolic times, or their own personal encounters with God, and regard that whole history as born of human error and political interests.... And yet everyone relies to some extent on the old texts, because what else do we have? Yet if you don't really trust those who wrote them or compiled them, it can lead to some odd readings. As often seems to be the case, I can see both sides here...Either way we have the problem of knowing God through human limitations, always a tricky business even in the best circumstances. --Camassia
Brevity, traditionally, has been a sign of a good confession, along with honesty and humility. You're not going to confession because you feel bad; you're going to confession because you did some bad things... I find that monthly confession is an excellent practice. When I was researching medieval confraternities for my dissertation, I found an Italian confraternity rule from the 14th century that recommended the practice with the analogy, "In the world, men shave or change their shirts once a month..."- Henry of A Plumbline in the Wind
'Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), the prototypical modern Democratic presidential candidate, was handed the hot potato in a recent Democratic debate. The question was, "Do you have a faith, and would you invoke the name of God when discussing a policy?" Edwards, a longtime Methodist, responded like an artful dodger: "My religion does not inform my public policy, but it does inform my values."' Makes sense, that would mean that his public policy has no value. --Jeff of Curt Jester
For the last hundred years or so, there has been a concerted effort to sever women from femininity in the name of feminism. The major social and technological factors that have made this even remotely possible have been contraception, abortion, and bottle feeding... The wide spread acceptance of bottle feeding was what originally made it possible for women to become a part of the industrial work force...Because we are fallen, we have come to see breasts as primarily sex toys for slavering men, rather than seeing that their sexuality derives from their nurturing function. When we separated the meanings of sexuality from each other, when soi-disant 'feminism' advocated the masculinizing of women, we created the situation where the very thought of a child suckling on the breast gets the 'ick' response, but the thought of feeding a child chemical soup from a plastic container through an artificial nipple does not. --Alicia of Fructus Ventris
When I was first given the desire to bring souls to God, I also felt, at the same time, the fear that I would not bring them closer to God at all but instead turn them into little clones of myself. I see that kind of thing happen all the time, usually in the Evangelical churches: new converts are recreated in their pastors' images and likenesses. Personality cults are scary. Antony taught me to pray, "Jesus, do not let them be like me. Let them be like You." Having several versions of a mere person is neither catholic nor Catholic. We are called to be Christ figures. - Enbrethiliel of Sancta Sanctis
As medieval Homer would say, d'oheth! - Robert of Hokie Pundit
December 03, 2003
Ubiquitous Grace
Artwork of Darrell Tank:
The infusion and communication of grace is itself a wonder of the highest order, and greater than all other wonders. But why does it not excite our wonder and admiration? It is only because it is invisible to our bodily vision and occurs, not rarely and exceptionally, but universally, and according to fixed laws. These two circumstances should make it more precious in our eyes.--Fr. Matthias J. Sheeben
It is not visible because it is a wonder wrought in the soul and not in the body. We cannot see it because we cannot see God, with whom we are united by it. As God would not be the infinitely great God if we could see Him with our bodily eyes, so grace would not be so great and admirable if it were visible to us.
If, moreover, grace is given according to a universal and fixed law, so that we may acquire it by our ordinary actions, this only reveals still more the infinite love and power of God. For God is so liberal that He accomplishes this great work, not at rare intervals, on extraordinary occasions, and through a few of His greatest servants only, as He does with other miracles; rather, He connects it with our most ordinary actions and lets it disappear, as it were, in the circle of our own daily activity. O Lord, should we appreciate it less because Thou grantest it to all and at all times and with the greatest readiness?
Artwork of Darrell Tank:
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