St. Cyril of Jerusalem

St. Cyril is a relatively new discoveree for me, aided and abetted by one Kathy of Gospel Minefield. His 4th century words seem to come to life:

"Keep this faith ever by your side to help you on your way and close your ears and have nothing to do with any other, even if I myself should change my allegiance and preach another faith to you or an angel of darkness be transformed into an angel of light to lead you into error...

There Goes My Life

Nice country song illustrates death to self as the way to life.

Interesting article on Garrison Keillor.

Another Belloc Excerpt

With that wish came in a puzzling thought, very proper to a pilgrimage, which was: 'What do men mean by the desire to be dissolved and to enjoy the spirit free and without attachments?' That many men have so desired there can be no doubt, and the best men, whose holiness one recognizes at once, tell us that the joys of the soul are incomparably higher than those of the living man. In India, moreover, there are great numbers of men who do the most fantastic things with the object of thus unprisoning the soul, and Milton talks of the same thing with evident conviction, and the Saints all praise it in chorus. But what is it? For my part I cannot understand so much as the meaning of the words, for every pleasure I know comes from an intimate union between my body and my very human mind, which last receives, confirms, revives, and can summon up again what my body has experienced. Of pleasures, however, in which my senses have had no part I know nothing, so I have determined to take them upon trust and see whether they could make the matter clearer in Rome.

Lightning Round

Read excellent article about sloth here, if not too tired. Link via Bill of Random Notes.

It ne'er gets old.

Best blog award. (But decidedly untrue of Mark's instructive Minute Particulars.)

Here is Belloc answering an imagined book/blog critic in his magisterial "Path to Rome":
"LECTOR. Pray dwell less on your religion, and—

AUCTOR. Pray take books as you find them, and treat travel as travel. For you, when you go to a foreign country, see nothing but what you expect to see. But I am astonished at a thousand accidents, and always find things twenty-fold as great as I supposed they would be, and far more curious; the whole covered by a strange light of adventure. And that is the peculiar value of this book. "

Pondering Aloud

One of the things about blogging that naturally occurs is that there are any number of people who know more than us as well as any number who know less.

The problem is that we do not know what we do not know (reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon in which the boss asks for a list of all the unknowns). Not only is there an unequal distribution of correct vision, but there are important things we must make decisions concerning that no one knows, because the Lord hasn't told us. We look through the glass darkly.

But need this be a recipe for paralysis? Should we fail to offer an opinion or vision on the assumption that our opinion or vision may be flawed (absent some private revelation)?

"Ideological Conservatism", "Non-Ideological Liberalism" and Other Oxymorons

Joe Perez says that "spirituality focuses the attention on the inner life, personal growth, and living from the heart and soul rather than simply the head and mouth. It's less ideological and more driven by a psychological and mystical attitude towards life. This is a liberal religious perspective that's not easy to fit into blogging, so there are fewer folks doing so."

But I don't see liberals as more into spirituality than conservatives; there are plenty of interiorly-focused orthodox bloggers who post prayers and religious icons and snippets of sermons and there is nothing more mystical than believing in the Real Presence. It's mystical to believe that Church doctrine is protected from error. And it's not true that liberals aren't ideological; it's as a backlash to their ideologies that conservatives appear ideological. Orthodoxy should be non-ideological since it's supposed to be about what we've received rather than generated ourselves. The fact that conservatives are against ordaining women, for example, isn't ideological but obedience to the Holy See (and the Pope might say that he is restrained by the example Jesus provided, among other things).

Personally, I don't see the great mystery behind the presence of so many conservative blogs. Orthodoxy is the Zeitgeist of the age. If the internet was big in the 1960s, does anyone doubt that St. Blog's would look like a liberal's damp dream? It simply reflects the fact that conservatism and orthodoxy are fashionable now (partially as a result of a backlash to what obviously didn't work in the '60s and '70s).

True conservatism is supposed to be an absence of ideology, something we should strive for even while rarely attaining it. Of politics Tony Blankley wrote, "The concept of radical conservatism ought to seem oxymoronic. Only a generation ago, conservatives could credibly argue that conservatism constituted the absence of ideology. Conservatives used to argue that liberalism (even 19th century non-socialist liberalism) was fatally flawed because it exalted contemporary created ideas over the long-evolving institutional wisdom of our civilization. It is a measure of the success of modern, ideological conservatism that the phrase radical conservatism seems to make sense. And it is a substantial part of The American Conservative's mission to try to yank back the conservative designation from a movement that has morphed from Bill Buckley's Catholic, principled conservatism into a collection of radical ambitions and schemes -- some of which may be vitally needed, but arguably are not conservative."

Around the World in Eighty Blogs!

Thomas is back...I hope he won't mind if I don't change my template just yet.

Most Ironical Spam Subject Headers
    (all are actual subject headers, found in today's spam catch)

-- "info" (odds are good this spam will contain no useful info)
-- "My friend" (a spammer is to a friend what an axe murderer is to Mother Teresa)
-- "crucial herball clinic" ('crucial herbal clinic' is an oxymoron)
-- "Become popular finally" (like you Mr. Spammer?)
-- "buy origanal looking Rolex watches" (like the way you spell 'original'?)
-- "u wont regret" (I already have)
-- "Fwd: You have to check this out!"
-- "as seen on Dateline"

Least Ironic
"" ([i.e. no subject header])

Mysteries Without End

My wife has a very close friend who is a professional court-goer. At least that's what it seems. After a bitter divorce, she's been fighting to keep custody of her now eight-year old child for seeming ever.

She's recently asked my wife to take off work and fly to Chicago to show support by showing the judge that someone is friend enough to take off work and fly to Chicago and show her support.

This interests me on several levels. One is how to determine what is reasonable and what is unreasonable in a friend's request. My wife asked me and I said lamely that only she could make that determination. Would a whole week be reasonable? Would taking three vacation days be reasonable? Bone and Cal and I error on the side of hardly making requests at all, which I think is a typical "guy thing" (asking-directions-as-a-sign-of-weakness syndrome). Men don't make demands because they are more likely to fall prey to the cult of self-reliance and because part of the joy of having a male friend, as opposed to a wife, is the former doesn't make demands and the latter makes a plethora of demands. (My wife excluded, of course.)

So there's that.

The second level of interest for me is why "support" in the form of a warm body is necessary. Personally I'd be a lot more inclined to go if she'd said, "I want you to go because I don't want to go through this alone" rather than this b-s about impressing a judge.

I can scarcely comprehend that we have a system where you can lose custody of your child unless you drag a friend four hundred miles away to court. I can't comprehend that my wife's friend has been a bad enough mother (which she most certainly hasn't) that my wife's presence could be decisive. The whole thing smacks of mystery; why can't the court can't make up its mind? Their custody battles drag on longer than most death penalty cases.

I should mention that both my wife's friend and her ex-husband are exceptionally high income-earners and together have spent close to the gross national product of Bolivia on attorney fees.

Dane-geld?

Derbyshire posted Kipling's verse in response to the Spain elections.

    Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts
The only good thing about reading The DaVinci Code I can think of is that it isn't Atlas Shrugged. - Tom of Disputations

If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators. - William Hazlitt

A possible tip-off may have been the uniqueness of millionaires shopping at Wal-Mart. - Michelle of "And Then?" on news that a Georgia woman tried to use a fake $1 million bill to buy $1,675 worth of merchandise at Wal-Mart.

"When the idea of 'rational sufficiency' first reared its head clearly in a Christian society, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Christian soul felt an immediate shock of horror, as faced with the concupiscence of the mind which was the completion of original sin." -- Henry Card. DeLubac.... DeLubac was talking about the slight theological aberrations which encouraged the subsequent 15th century heresy of Louvain theologian Michel du Bay who basically claimed that unfallen man could reach beatitude without the assistance of grace. The whole book is a study of how late Medieval theologians are in part responsible for the genesis of philosophies which made atheism plausible for the first time in history. Well, that's actually a "byproduct" of the study, which is about a more technical issue in the nature / grace debate and the havoc it caused when handled incorrectly. It's the kind of book that makes you want to run screaming from the practice of theology, lest you screw something up and generate a monstrous ideology. DeLubac shows how many brilliant men with good intentions ended up having a hand, most unwittingly, in some devasting intellectual movements. -Old Oligarch

I have to say that I had a rather benign, albeit irritated attitude towards the novel until I started really researching some things - like the art. I saw that almost everything Brown says about Leonardo and his art is wrong, with the truth easily found in 5 minutes of Googling, and, for more substantive evidence, in 15 minutes in the library. Wrong - not just interpreted an a unique way - but simply wrong. I was actually rather shocked. Stupidity? Brazen? Cojones? I can't judge, that's for sure, but....no wonder he's no longer giving interviews. - Amy Welborn

Churches traditionally have often overdone it on the guilt so there's kind of a backlash in the more liberal denominations. But guilt is part of being human, unless you're a sociopath. Martin Luther wrote that the realization that God forgives you is what inspires good works to begin with. Otherwise they become an onerous task, because you're never going to be perfect at them. - Camassia

I once heard the great philosopher Alistair MacIntyre say of one of JP II's encyclicals on moral thought, "Veritatis Splendor," that it was the deepest and most subtle philosophical meditation on truth since Kierkegaard. - Michael Novak on NRO

The real reasons are far more sinister: first, html software is specifically designed to block caring, other-oriented language that is respectful of the marginalized. Second, blogging manuals are kept in a locked archive in the Vatican. Third, the wimples worn by women religious were designed by male hierarchs to impede their peripheral vision so they couldn't find the "enter" key on their laptops. The consequences are inevitable. -- Diogenes, via Domenico Bettinelli, via Don of Mixolydian Mode answering Commonweal's query on why there are so few liberal religious sister's blogs

Fr. Whitt argued against a carrot-and-stick understanding of the prayer, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." Forgiveness that is conditional, he said, isn't forgiveness. God doesn't say, "I'll forgive you if you forgive these others," which is more of a taunt than an expression of mercy. Rather, our failure to forgive is one of the things we need to be forgiven, and only the forgiving can receive the forgiveness God bestows on everyone. -Tom of Disputations

President Bush is not a Roman Catholic. I thought that was common knowledge but a few of my fellow bloggers in St. Blog's Parish seem to feel that George W. should hold to the same Catholic ideology and moral beliefs that they do! (It's interesting that the "progressives" hold George W to these standards unconsciously, while at the same time exempting themselves from Catholic beliefs winillynill as they choose..) --Elena of "My Domestic Church"

A Nation Under Lawyers? - title of post by William of "The Catholic Book Collector"

About the works and salvation thing...it's like this... Somehow my 8 and 10 year olds had never jumped rope before so they each got one for Christmas. When they first tried it they swung the rope around with such force that it slammed into the ground a second after they had jumped. They both seemed to take this approach at first and they both failed many times. Finally, after trying to give them tips I showed them how to swing the rope in more relaxed way. When they tried it - it worked! They had to learn to cooperate with the physics. I think our efforts work best when we let grace do it job. :) -MaryH at Ever New

When the Faith is restored, the Holy Office will shut "St. Blogs" down. -Sulpicius Severus of the Catacombs

For Aquinas, "the Son is not punished by the Father, but tormented by men; and it is not his suffering in and by itself that makes satisfaction but the loving obedience with which he endures the suffering inflicted on him." -Fr. Terry on Camassia's blog

I lost my innocence by attending school. It doesn't matter that it was a Catholic School or that my mother was sending me there at great expense. The school and its environment choked out of me the early innocence and pure faith that I had had as a young child and I didn't get that faith back until I was in my 30s and then after great difficulty and hardship....You just can't be immersed in your equally immature peer group that long without losing that innocence. Couple that with dissident and heretical teachings i.e. "It's Ok to have sex outside of marriage as long as you are committed to each other." (uh right. A brother at my Catholic High School told me that one in religion class one day,) and you have the recipe for cynicism. And this is why we chose to homeschool folks. -Elena of "My Domestic Church"

Special St. Patrick's Day Edition

Limerick
I once had a box full o' spam
interspersed with emails from Pam
I deleted too much
without meaning such
and now I'm in a bit o' a jam!


Foreign Leaders Support This Blog!
Mary McAleese, President of Ireland : "Mo sheacht ngrá thú!"
Cicero: "I applaud any blog that quotes my countryman Ovid."
Boutrous Boutrous Gali: "From a long-named man to a long-named blog - I salute you!"
Vladimir Putin: "Nyet!" (translated meaning, "I read him daily between my morning vodka and afternoon briefing on American progress tracing Saddam's oil contracts..")

....But of course you can't please everyone.....

Jacques Chirac: "It is not true that I profited from Mr. O'Rama in the 'Oil for Blog Posts' program."
Gerhard Schroeder: "I feel about him the way I feel about flat American bier."
Prime Minister Chretien: "I prefer Ono's blog."


O Tommy Boy

...the pipes, the pipes are callin'....from glen to glen and to the streets downtown....for I must go to Veteran's Memorial and drink a Guinness...

Oh to be a piper on St. Patrick's Day.

According, therefore, to the measure of one's faith in the Trinity, one should proceed without holding back from danger to make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, to spread God's name everywhere with confidence and without fear, in order to leave behind, after my death, foundations for my brethren and sons whom I baptized in the Lord in so many thousands.

Tidbits from Ronald Witherup's "Bible Companion" ...which will probably strike my readers, who are far more theologically astute than me, as obvious

The danger is that we will try to force the OT into a preconceived Christian mold that does an injustice to it. It is unacceptable, for example, to think of the God of the OT as a vengeful God whereas the God of the NT is all loving. God is often portrayed in the OT as incredibly patient and understanding despite Israel's stubbornness and failings, and the NT contains many references to judgment and eternal punishment that must be placed into the total picture of its message...There is a back-forth flow between them that will remain somewhat mysterious, yet we will be able to appreciate both testaments uniquely for what they say about God and God's relationship with humanity.

*
Because God's message applies to all times, and not simply to our own, the interpretation of any passage in a given era might be different from previous or later interpretations.

*
The Bible basically provides a means measure the quality and direction of our lives....The canon provides a moral measure of how we stack up against God's expectations.

*
In each instance [of the OT], the covenant [creation, Noah's, Abraham's, Moses', David's] is violated by people. They sin, and God threatens and punishes. But a few good souls always remain with whom God can begin again. And so the pattern continues...until the NT era.

With the coming of Jesus Christ, Christians believe that God has changed the pattern. The NT perspective on salvation history is that in Jesus Christ God has acted definitively with a "new covenant" that can never end. Now, because Jesus' obedience to God's will was perfect, there can be no other covenants. There is no longer need for the pattern to continue in exactly the same fashion. Instead, salvation has been assured in the person of Jesus Christ. But those who believe in him are expected to live out salvation by lives that reflect it. The NT thus does not envision a lad back view of salvation history as if God has done it all, with the result that we human beings need do nothing else.

I've struggled with this concept of differences between different eras, but, of course, God can do anything he wants. To be born in this era of grace, I'm sure Martha would say, is a good thing, and ought to lead to a greater spirit of thankfulness and praise. Everything I've learned from God I've had to re-learn. Many times.

Novak on John Paul the Great

I once heard the great philosopher Alistair MacIntyre say of one of JP II's encyclicals on moral thought, "Veritatis Splendor," that it was the deepest and most subtle philosophical meditation on truth since Kierkegaard. "Centesimus Annus" is the greatest work among all papal letters on the free society, cultural, economic, and political; add his companion encyclicals, "Laborem Exercens" and "Sollicitudo Rei Socialis," and you have the most distinguished body of reflections on the social and economic order produced by any religious body in any time. His path-breaking discourses on the theology of the human body may be the so far least noted of the bombshells he has left for future generations to unpack.

A priest friend of mine who is no admirer of Pope John Paul II at all, ...told me some years ago that he prayed every day that the pope will go soon to the heavenly destination he has devoutly longed for. My priest friend describes himself as a progressive Catholic, and the church of his romantic dreams he describes as the "Vatican II church." Every day that John Paul II's clear memory of Vatican II, at which as a young bishop (then archbishop) he was a leader, replaces those romantic illusions with a more accurate and rigorous reading, my priest friend dies a little.

"Father Dick," I want to tell him, "It's okay. You're not losing an illusion, you're gaining a more vigorous reality. Buck up! Look at what the world has gained these last 25-plus years! Promise you, he's not likely to live more than 17 more years, when he reaches 100."

Then I imagine 100,000 Poles singing in unison: "Stolat! Stolat! May you live 100 years!"