Ireland We Hardly Know Ye
Shelby Foote once wrote concerning James Joyce that if the "Jesuitical strain" is improperly administrated it results in its direct opposite - a militant pagan.
So it's so sad to see that the country of Ireland is going the way of Joyce. Mass attendence in the Emerald Isle is in a free fall and is now below 50%. CNN reported that the President of Ireland couldn't muster a national day of mourning for the Pope due to concerns about effects on the businesses. How ironic is that? A Pope that spoke out against materialism is failed to be honored because of the effect on the bottom line. And this from a country called the "Celtic Tiger" for its strong economy. It seems the relationship of faith to wealth is so knee-jerk inversely proportional that it makes you want to despair. It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious. The landscape in Ireland may be beautiful, but the people are losing what made them beautiful. This is one tourist who is losing his desire to return.
April 08, 2005
JPII's Day
"Regrets..I've had a few..."...I feel sheepish that I watched the Holy Father's funeral on tape this morning instead of getting up at 4am to watch it live as apparently some did. But am more regretting I didn't see the Pope in '99 when he came to St. Louis. Sometimes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is not an exaggeration.
Saw Jacques Chirac sitting near President Bush and I reacted as most of the world probably did - with revulsion towards either one or the other (I'm sure you can guess which for me). But then I realized how proper the Pope be a peacemaker in death and how great a thing for Clinton, the Bushes and Chirac and company to be there. I feel closer to JPII now than when he was alive here on earth. He seems more accessible now, and well he is.
Have been making my way through the backlog of papal television programming. Was disappointed by Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" which was totally outclassed (for once) by George Stephanopoulos's "This Week". "This Week" devoted a decent portion of the broadcast to clips from the Pope's trips to America and how wonderful it was to hear him - it's like going back in time and listening to St. Paul speaking to the Corinthians. I wish there were a DVD available of all his American talks.
"Regrets..I've had a few..."...I feel sheepish that I watched the Holy Father's funeral on tape this morning instead of getting up at 4am to watch it live as apparently some did. But am more regretting I didn't see the Pope in '99 when he came to St. Louis. Sometimes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is not an exaggeration.
Saw Jacques Chirac sitting near President Bush and I reacted as most of the world probably did - with revulsion towards either one or the other (I'm sure you can guess which for me). But then I realized how proper the Pope be a peacemaker in death and how great a thing for Clinton, the Bushes and Chirac and company to be there. I feel closer to JPII now than when he was alive here on earth. He seems more accessible now, and well he is.
Have been making my way through the backlog of papal television programming. Was disappointed by Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" which was totally outclassed (for once) by George Stephanopoulos's "This Week". "This Week" devoted a decent portion of the broadcast to clips from the Pope's trips to America and how wonderful it was to hear him - it's like going back in time and listening to St. Paul speaking to the Corinthians. I wish there were a DVD available of all his American talks.
April 07, 2005
Hmmm...
Some commentators are laying the problems such as the lack of Mass attendance in America and Europe at the pope's door.
But how "on the hook" can/should a pope be for such things? We all have free will. Could he have forced us to go to church even though coercing didn't fit easily with his respect for personhood? And I'm not sure coercing worked very well when it involved attempting to extract a pledge of loyalty to the Magisterium from professors at Catholic universities (as was done in Ex Corde Ecclesiae). Where there's a will to be unfaithful, there's a way. Unfortunately.
I'm not saying he couldn't or shouldn't have done anything differently. But at the same time I ponder our Lord's difficulties with respect to his own people. And how He wondered if there would even be faith in the world when he comes again.
Some commentators are laying the problems such as the lack of Mass attendance in America and Europe at the pope's door.
But how "on the hook" can/should a pope be for such things? We all have free will. Could he have forced us to go to church even though coercing didn't fit easily with his respect for personhood? And I'm not sure coercing worked very well when it involved attempting to extract a pledge of loyalty to the Magisterium from professors at Catholic universities (as was done in Ex Corde Ecclesiae). Where there's a will to be unfaithful, there's a way. Unfortunately.
I'm not saying he couldn't or shouldn't have done anything differently. But at the same time I ponder our Lord's difficulties with respect to his own people. And how He wondered if there would even be faith in the world when he comes again.
Prudential Faith
One of the things interesting in the Pope's final days and in his last will and testament, released today, is how he personally struggled with the tension between the virtue of prudence and faith. That seems a tough line to decipher - am I presuming upon God or am I simply allowing his will be done? The Pope had to discern God's will and trust that he would not become mentally incapicated, lapse into a coma for a long period, or in some other way fail to function as pope without a successor. Perhaps contingencies were made, but when and if he had to resign was on his mind. It'll surely continue to be a thorny issue for popes as we go forward, in part due to modern medicine making deaths and declines more lengthy than in the past.
One of the things interesting in the Pope's final days and in his last will and testament, released today, is how he personally struggled with the tension between the virtue of prudence and faith. That seems a tough line to decipher - am I presuming upon God or am I simply allowing his will be done? The Pope had to discern God's will and trust that he would not become mentally incapicated, lapse into a coma for a long period, or in some other way fail to function as pope without a successor. Perhaps contingencies were made, but when and if he had to resign was on his mind. It'll surely continue to be a thorny issue for popes as we go forward, in part due to modern medicine making deaths and declines more lengthy than in the past.
High-larity Ensues
Watched NBC's "The Office" last night and it was hilarious. The original British show was funny too, if a bit darker & more bitter. Last night's episode shows the manager delegating the choosing of a health care plan to an employee. This employee asks other employees write down the medical conditions they want covered, anonymously, and some of the illnesses included: "Count Choculitis" & "inverted penis". Just laugh out funny, especially in the delivery.
Watched NBC's "The Office" last night and it was hilarious. The original British show was funny too, if a bit darker & more bitter. Last night's episode shows the manager delegating the choosing of a health care plan to an employee. This employee asks other employees write down the medical conditions they want covered, anonymously, and some of the illnesses included: "Count Choculitis" & "inverted penis". Just laugh out funny, especially in the delivery.
April 06, 2005
Excerptable
I once received a flame email from a fellow St. Blogger who obviously considers herself an elitist, and who longed to instruct me whether I wanted to be instructed or not. She'd disapproved of a quiz I'd written about books and said that I was a middlebrow and that basically I should know my place. And it stung as the truth often does. But I recently read something in Myles Connolly's "Mr. Blue" that was interesting and somewhat consoling in regards to posing:
I once received a flame email from a fellow St. Blogger who obviously considers herself an elitist, and who longed to instruct me whether I wanted to be instructed or not. She'd disapproved of a quiz I'd written about books and said that I was a middlebrow and that basically I should know my place. And it stung as the truth often does. But I recently read something in Myles Connolly's "Mr. Blue" that was interesting and somewhat consoling in regards to posing:
Most of us like to pose. And most of us when we pose are found out. And most of us, accordingly, suffer. Yet there is something to be said for posing. All poses reveal imagination. Some reveal vanity, to be sure, and some reveal humility. Every poseur does not deserve the black name of hypocrite. We meet a man who is playing at being hero or saint. The man may be tired of himself. He may know in his heart that he is not so good or great as he might be. His pose is an attempt at nobility. We laugh at him. But we are laughing at ourselves. It is because most of us are such poseurs to ourselves that we so readily find a poseur out.
The Sweet Taste of Powerlessness
The beautiful thing about the coming election - the election of a new pope - is we don't have to do a thing a single thing except pray. We don't have to knock on doors to persuade people to vote for our candidate, or donate money to a campaign, or endure misleading television ads, or write letters to the editor. The College of Cardinals are immune to pressure of Sixty Minutes. The Holy Spirit even more so, who will take care of it all. It feels so....restful.
And what of those who worry that the Church will split if the new pontiff doesn't allow women or married priests or gay marriage? Then, que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. I'm going down with the barque! There's nothing so heady as a lost cause, especially one in which we know the cause is not lost but has already been won!
The beautiful thing about the coming election - the election of a new pope - is we don't have to do a thing a single thing except pray. We don't have to knock on doors to persuade people to vote for our candidate, or donate money to a campaign, or endure misleading television ads, or write letters to the editor. The College of Cardinals are immune to pressure of Sixty Minutes. The Holy Spirit even more so, who will take care of it all. It feels so....restful.
And what of those who worry that the Church will split if the new pontiff doesn't allow women or married priests or gay marriage? Then, que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. I'm going down with the barque! There's nothing so heady as a lost cause, especially one in which we know the cause is not lost but has already been won!
Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of PostsFor at least a couple more weeks, we're all sedevacantists. As of this afternoon, the chair of Peter really is vacant.- John of "The Inn at the End of the World"
[The Pope's] magnificent encyclicals are beautiful minglings of heart and head knowledge, heart and head love. As a result they are not always satisfying to those who demand a rigorous logic in their approach to theology--there is entirely too much reliance upon metaphor and analogy for their comfort. Further, they tend to be disconcerting to those who want to love without thinking about it; the Pope demands a certain intellectual rigor to be understood. His actions, many of them criticized during his reign show the same dichotomy. There are a great many who criticized the liturgy for the canonization of St. Juan Diego because so many native dancers and rituals were incorporated into the Mass. And yet, it is the heart that became briefly ascendant there with the consent of the head acknowledging the individual differences in cultures. - Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli
He took office when I was about eight, and to me he was always just there, like the Empire State Building. - Camassia, on the pope
Americans make up something like 6 percent of the Roman Catholics on the planet, so what our polls say is not all that significant. If the Church reacts to those statistics at all (and I wish the Church would), it will be to explain to the afore-mentioned Episcopalians that they are Episcopalians. Seriously. -Karen Hall of "Some Have Hats"
With our tradition in Chicago of dead people voting, one wag said that the entire Communion of Saints would be voting in the next Papal election. - commenter on Amy's blog
When I was a Protestant, John Paul II helped to give me a hunger for Catholicism. As a Lutheran (WELS) Sunday School teacher, I once believed that the pope was the Antichrist. But then I saw John Paul II on television during his visit to Denver, heard him give a beautiful Christian homily, and concluded that if the pope was really the Antichrist, he wasn't a very good one. - Jeff Culbreath of Hallowed Ground
Girl Disappointed in Love
--Karol Wotyla, Bishop of Krakow
With mercury we measure pain
as we measure the heat of bodies and air;
but this is not how to discover our limits--
you think you are the center of things.
If you could only grasp that you are not:
the center is He,
and He, too, finds no love---
why don't you see?
The human heart--what is it for?
Cosmic temperature. Heart. Mercury.
- via Steven Riddle
Much of the coverage we are seeing on the cable networks has been wonderful, and much of it is very good, still. But we are seeing, now, little things, like Chris Matthews screaming at a young priest that celibacy is (basically) stupid (how come Buddhists never have to deal with that crap? Everyone calls them enlightened! ). - the Anchoress
What a perfect group of people for me to be with when Mama T got the sad call that the pope had died. We were in a restaurant but it was as if we were in a soundproof bubble. Nothing else existed except the four of us and our shared, mingled sadness and joy. Tears flowed and we clasped hands and shared prayer together for our pope and our church. What an odd "coincidence" for us to be together to share that moment ... as if I believed in coincidence. In fact, my husband has said three times that he still can't believe how odd it was that I was with those St. Blog's parishioners at that time (and he doesn't repeat himself like that). - Julie of Happy Catholic
Just saw Chris Matthews on MSBNC - bawling again. Is there a reporter on television who cries as much as Chris? He's such a sloppy, sentimental Irishman! :-) I can say that, being a sloppy, sentimental Irish woman! - the blogger at Anchoress
Saul Bellow Died
I loved Ravelstein, his last novel. From the Times:
I loved Ravelstein, his last novel. From the Times:
Throughout Mr. Bellow's life, his approach to his art was that of an alien newly arrived on earth: "I've never seen the world before. Now I was seeing it, and it's a beautiful, marvelous gift. Enchanting reality! And when the end came, I was told by the cleverest people I knew that it would all vanish. I'm not absolutely convinced of that..."
Sigh
Watched Sixty Minutes from Sunday night and our friend Rev. Richard McBrien was front and center. So was a guy from the Catholic liberal America magazine ("Commonweal" got a mention too).
Oh it was artfully done. Nothing too outrageous. McBrien is so jocular he could sell ice to Eskimos. And 90% of Catholics don't know America from Crisis from Touchstone. And the scene where McBrien chides Morley Safer for being too pious is classic Sixty Minutes. The innocent reporter surprised by an insider. Well-done, at least as theatre.
The unmistakable sense in the segment called "The Priests of John Paul" was that these young priests for Pope John Paul are cultic and scary, and it featured a seminarian who, not surprisingly, was neither photogenic nor articulate. And the emphasis was how radical the Pope's (and these seminarian's) beliefs were, rather than how radical modernity's ideas are.
But could you imagine an alternate universe where Sixty Minutes does a story on the large numbers of homosexuals running the seminaries (known coloquially as the "lavendar mafia") and depicting them as cultic and scary to those in the pews? I certainly can't. No way.
Of course the story of Christianity in the world is that if you're doing it right you're going to be ridiculed. Or misrepresented. Or, heaven help us, worse.
Watched Sixty Minutes from Sunday night and our friend Rev. Richard McBrien was front and center. So was a guy from the Catholic liberal America magazine ("Commonweal" got a mention too).
Oh it was artfully done. Nothing too outrageous. McBrien is so jocular he could sell ice to Eskimos. And 90% of Catholics don't know America from Crisis from Touchstone. And the scene where McBrien chides Morley Safer for being too pious is classic Sixty Minutes. The innocent reporter surprised by an insider. Well-done, at least as theatre.
The unmistakable sense in the segment called "The Priests of John Paul" was that these young priests for Pope John Paul are cultic and scary, and it featured a seminarian who, not surprisingly, was neither photogenic nor articulate. And the emphasis was how radical the Pope's (and these seminarian's) beliefs were, rather than how radical modernity's ideas are.
But could you imagine an alternate universe where Sixty Minutes does a story on the large numbers of homosexuals running the seminaries (known coloquially as the "lavendar mafia") and depicting them as cultic and scary to those in the pews? I certainly can't. No way.
Of course the story of Christianity in the world is that if you're doing it right you're going to be ridiculed. Or misrepresented. Or, heaven help us, worse.
April 05, 2005
Is é Íosa an Bheatha [Jesus is the Life]
There is something elegiac, almost atavistic about a picture of a shepherd being carried by the flock. It shakes us out of our complacency and wakes us from our sloth.
It's also heartbreaking to see he who is so strong made weak, and weakness is never made more visible than in death.
The scene reminds me of how Christ died that we might live, how he became man that we may become as God. This sense of taking another's role reminds me of a beautiful Irish tune that goes:
There is something elegiac, almost atavistic about a picture of a shepherd being carried by the flock. It shakes us out of our complacency and wakes us from our sloth.
It's also heartbreaking to see he who is so strong made weak, and weakness is never made more visible than in death.
The scene reminds me of how Christ died that we might live, how he became man that we may become as God. This sense of taking another's role reminds me of a beautiful Irish tune that goes:
O Bridget Donahue, I really do love you,
Although I'm in America, to you I will be true;
And Bridget Donahue, I'll tell you what we'll do --
Just take the name of Patterson, and I'll take Donahue.
Memories of the Washington Administration
I recently won a Blogspot contest that granted me a meeting with our first President. After some initial pleasantries, here is what transpired:
I recently won a Blogspot contest that granted me a meeting with our first President. After some initial pleasantries, here is what transpired:
GW: Why do you write in dis...'blog? (Ed. Note: why do I want to make heem zound French?)
Me: Purely for love of the adverb.
GW: Dr. Johnson suggests using adverbs sparingly.
Me: Sparingly indeed. So, what is your general (pun intended, gotta keep it hoppin' here Mr. President) opinion of the direction our nation is going?
GW: Not good. Most of us up here are frankly appalled at the power of the judicial branch. There was no intention at the founding for the Judicial branch to decide moral issues any more than we wanted King George to do so. The court has substituted a jury of nine kings for what was a jury of one. In our time the Supreme Court would've found slavery unconstitutional which might've caused a civil war and in our weakened state allowed Great Britain to resume her rule over us. Mr. Jefferson was asked to remove his clause about freedom applying to the slaves too for precisely that concern. Regardless, the Judicial branch has no more right to determine moral virtues than the eldest of Jesse's sons had right to claim Samuel's annointing.
Me: Right on, Mr. President. Thank you for your time.
Various & Sundry
I want to get personalized license plates that say "if you have personalized plates then you have too much money" but I'm having trouble fitting it into seven letters.
__
Alex Sanchez must've missed the news lately. And that happens. Does he know we're in Iraq?
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The Cincinnati Reds are in first place.
__
Sigh. Boy we wish we were too (created by Jeff Miller).
I want to get personalized license plates that say "if you have personalized plates then you have too much money" but I'm having trouble fitting it into seven letters.
__
Alex Sanchez must've missed the news lately. And that happens. Does he know we're in Iraq?
__
The Cincinnati Reds are in first place.
__
Sigh. Boy we wish we were too (created by Jeff Miller).
April 04, 2005
Personal Impressions II
The pope coverage was oceanic and it bothered me that I couldn’t be everywhere at once; I constantly felt like I might be missing something. But I didn’t. I “got it”. I got the simple, stark beauty of God taking him in such a telling way: following on the heels of the first Holy Week he couldn’t attend after a long illness that somehow felt exactly long enough*, and just after the vigil Mass of the Divine Mercy, the beloved feast he gave the Universal Church and which, like much of what he gave us, we ignored. (How many parishes celebrate it the way it should?) The ending was storybook, a touch of “The Natural”, God's gentle probing of the wounds which so wound us today: our death-fear of suffering and our strange allergy to Divine Mercy. Yet subtly but surely He poured out a teaching medicine in the end of our pope's life.
The networks all went to live coverage beginning Friday night because the Vatican had admitted the gravity of the Holy Father’s situation. That never happens. The Vatican always puts a mild face on papal illnesses and never cries wolf. So the news divisions kicked into overdrive. But the Pope stubbornly lived on into the wee hours of Saturday morning and the on-air types wondered whether he’d already died and the Vatican was waiting till morning for greater publicity. Maybe God and not the Vatican was arranging greater publicity because Saturday morning came Rome time and there was no announcement. Then Saturday morning New York time and there was no announcement.
There was the oddity that he was dying and he wasn’t going to hospital and I felt cheered by it, by his desire to die at home (or at least in his papal apartment) and there was the sense that he navigated well over the rough terrain: avoiding both the mountains of dehumanizing medical procedures that prolong life by a matter of hours but also the valley culture of death that would deny a brain-damaged woman a feeding tube.
Finally, around 3:30pm I heard the news on the radio while going to pick up some food and I'd wished I could have heard it when it happened. I wanted to turn around and head back home immediately to see if I could pick up the announcement via Tivo (which automatically tapes the previous thirty minutes). But that wasn't what was important. What was was a bishop speaking for us all when he said that "we all feel like orphans now". I'd lost the earthly Papa who was looking out for my spiritual welfare an ocean away.
* - His suffering was long enough to get the attention of the least attentive while at the same time showing his resiliancy and endurance. Like a fighter who got knocked down over and over, he kept getting up.
The pope coverage was oceanic and it bothered me that I couldn’t be everywhere at once; I constantly felt like I might be missing something. But I didn’t. I “got it”. I got the simple, stark beauty of God taking him in such a telling way: following on the heels of the first Holy Week he couldn’t attend after a long illness that somehow felt exactly long enough*, and just after the vigil Mass of the Divine Mercy, the beloved feast he gave the Universal Church and which, like much of what he gave us, we ignored. (How many parishes celebrate it the way it should?) The ending was storybook, a touch of “The Natural”, God's gentle probing of the wounds which so wound us today: our death-fear of suffering and our strange allergy to Divine Mercy. Yet subtly but surely He poured out a teaching medicine in the end of our pope's life.
The networks all went to live coverage beginning Friday night because the Vatican had admitted the gravity of the Holy Father’s situation. That never happens. The Vatican always puts a mild face on papal illnesses and never cries wolf. So the news divisions kicked into overdrive. But the Pope stubbornly lived on into the wee hours of Saturday morning and the on-air types wondered whether he’d already died and the Vatican was waiting till morning for greater publicity. Maybe God and not the Vatican was arranging greater publicity because Saturday morning came Rome time and there was no announcement. Then Saturday morning New York time and there was no announcement.
There was the oddity that he was dying and he wasn’t going to hospital and I felt cheered by it, by his desire to die at home (or at least in his papal apartment) and there was the sense that he navigated well over the rough terrain: avoiding both the mountains of dehumanizing medical procedures that prolong life by a matter of hours but also the valley culture of death that would deny a brain-damaged woman a feeding tube.
Finally, around 3:30pm I heard the news on the radio while going to pick up some food and I'd wished I could have heard it when it happened. I wanted to turn around and head back home immediately to see if I could pick up the announcement via Tivo (which automatically tapes the previous thirty minutes). But that wasn't what was important. What was was a bishop speaking for us all when he said that "we all feel like orphans now". I'd lost the earthly Papa who was looking out for my spiritual welfare an ocean away.
* - His suffering was long enough to get the attention of the least attentive while at the same time showing his resiliancy and endurance. Like a fighter who got knocked down over and over, he kept getting up.
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