While Emptying Desk Drawers...

I found this article by Nuala Ni Dhomnhaill encouraging the resuscitation of the Irish language. Now that's a fine Quixotian project that spits into the wind of our utilitarian age. Here's a tasty excerpt describing things beyond the "ego envelope":


Full story here, here and here.

NY Times, Christianity, & Capitalism

I blogged earlier wondering why the NY Times is so hypocritical when it comes to a willingness to offend Christian sensibilities versus Muslim.

Calling the NY Times Marxist is name-calling, but they do lean towards the socialistic side of things, which might help explain their antipathy to Christianity - see this illuminating passage from Blankley's book "The West's Last Chance":

The alleged role of Christianity in deadening the pain of capitalist oppression was forever immortalized in the truly beautiful words of Karl Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness."...

Karl Marx, as he does so often, brilliantly diagnoses the relationship of forces, but gets the underlying fundamentals exactly wrong. He argues that people seek religion to give them comfort from the pain caused by capitalism. Get rid of capitalism, enact socialism, and the pain will end; then people won't need religion.

The idea became the central tenet of progressive thought in Europe (and elsewhere)...during which time most progressive, educated Europeans bought into Marx's proposition (whether they knew he was the author or not). Christianity's affiliation with reactionary monarchy and cruel capitalism gave it a bad odor. Smart, sophisticated people - or people who wanted to think of themselves as smart and sophisticated, and who does not? - said they were not taken in by the "old lies" of capitalism and Christianity.

But in 1989, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the contradiction inherent in Marx's system of analysis was revealed: It is socialism, not capitalism, that causes the greater pain for humanity....For the first time in 150 years Christianity is unyoked from its bondage to...despised capitalism. Christianity can now begin again to be considered on its own merits.

From Tony Blankley, "The West's Last Chance":

It's also going to hit the pocketbook, so look for lean times ahead:

Eventually it will dawn on Western leaders and public opinion that it would be safer to keep some distance between the West and Islam. Everything from Internet connections to immigration, to tourism, to business, to trade will be more carefully controlled, if not partially disconnected. Each restraint on the free flow of people, material, and words will act to marginally damage our economies.

Globalization expert Martin Wolf estimates that US incomes are $1 trillion per year higher due to the country's increased integration with the world economy since 1945." That amounts to almost 10% of GDP, or $10,000 per household per year.

If such open trade were interrupted, it could mean that the net assets for the average American family might be reduced by more than $200,000 over the next 20 years...

There's a Bad Moon on the Rise

For the pessimist, the current Islamic situation is what Hershey, Pennsylvania is to the chocoholic: the "Mecca" of their addiction.

It's really that bad folks, and it's going to get worse.

It seems to have of late reached some sort of critical mass since two very different priests in central Ohio mentioned it over the weekend, and I don't recall a local Catholic priest ever mentioning Islam or Muslims in a sermon before. (Terrorists, yes. Al Qaida, yes. But never the religion and its adherents.) Our Byzantine pastor says, "Please pray for the Muslims. God loves them too. And we Eastern Christians have much to offer since we lived side-by-side with them for centuries, mostly peacefully."

Our RC pastor says that

"you can tell a lot about a religion by what happens when you show disrespect towards their founder. Christians wear crucifixes and crosses, an emblem of the disrespect shown to their founder. We remember it and we identify ourselves as the cause of it, or at least we should."

He went on to say that the Resurrection was proof that God is more powerful than our sin. Islamists don't have that proof so they are mired in a religion that

"still thinks the way to overcome sin is through power, through violence. Thus they take up arms against those who would insult the Prophet Mohammed."

UPDATE: In going over the archives, it appears I was wrong about no priest giving a sermon dealing with Islam. See this:

Our pastor gave a sermon on the Feast of the Ascension...the gist of it is how Christianity differs from, say, Islam. Christ, naturally. But also there is a core
difference in the concept of God. We don't much understand the Trinity, he
says, so we don't emphasize it. But the idea is that Three Persons are so in
love that their boundaries become blurred. The concept of the Trinity is of
a "relational" God. He said that anytime we begin to view God as being other
than relational, we end up in tyranny, with a desire to force our views on
others.

The "Why?" of the Violence After the Danish Cartoons

Excellent overview of how it came to happen that Danish cartoons led to violence.

The gist of it is a familiar one: Middle Eastern governments either hate the West (like Iran) or they'll work with the West (like Saudi Arabia), but if they choose the latter course they have to placate their radicalized citzenry by using things like the cartoons as symbolic way of showing their Islamic bone fides. Do read the whole thing, but here's a quote on how one imam changed his mind:

The wave swept many in the region. Sheik Muhammad Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it.

"For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important," Sheik Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus in Christian countries. "I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries."

Then, he started to hear that ambassadors of Arab countries had tried to meet with the prime minister of Denmark and had been snubbed, and he began to feel differently.

"It started to seem that this way of thinking was an insult to us," he said. "It is fine to say, 'This is our freedom, this is our way of thinking.' But we began to believe that their freedom was something that hurts us."

To All The Books...   (to tune "To All The Girls I've Loved Before" )

To all the books I've read before
Who travelled in and out my door
I'm glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the books I've loved before

To all the pages I once caressed
And may I say I've held the best
For helping me to grow
I owe a lot I know
To all the books I've loved before

The winds of lit are always blowing
And every time I try to stay
The winds of writ continue blowing
And they just carry me away

To all the books that've grown on me
Who filled my days with ecstasy
They live within my heart
I'll always be a part
Of all the books I've loved before

The Weekend, We Hardly Knew Ye

"I ain't missin' you at all..." - Waite

Time stops for no man, but slows at least during the long Sunday read and this Sunday's read was no exception. A few stray comments:

Tony Blankley's book "The West's Last Chance" - shock and awe indeed, your advice is to "short the world" and pray for the conversion of Europe

Bill Buckley's sailing book - more lyric please, less minutiae, although your minutiae is better than most people's non-minutiae

Bowles' Henry the VIII - cherry-picked this for the final moments of this awful wife-killing king, wondering if redemption peaked out amid the ruins. None to the naked eye. Then read the snippets concerning Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More.

Jenkins' Churchill - Dear Winston, a few days before the WW I and you were worrying about the far-flung provinces of Ireland. Soon the empire was over, 700,000 British soldiers dead, and the world's soul, in the words of Orwell, was dead though it didn't know it yet. And you, famous seer of the Second World War, didn't see it coming. Why?

The Tale of Two Eulogies

In 1914, the year one of my great-grandparents died, most American Catholics would've considered the gospel account of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes as just that - a miracle. Christ, the God man, creating ex nihilo. From which wonder and amazement would naturally flow.

But now many American Catholics turn a blind eye to the miraculous. Perhaps embarrassed by accounts like that in an age of science or else they see them as designed not to provoke wonder but to produce more visible results. Americans are outcome-oriented, results-oriented. And the result God is interested in is not wonder or amazement but an individual's improvement in virtue. Unselfishness. Sharing. And thus the story morphed into a tale about how Jesus inspired the crowd to share the food they had on them.

I think the different interpretations, if you even call the latter an "interpretation", perfectly illustrate the difference between two eulogies I've recently read as a result of my little family history project. I post this with trepidation, wondering where the line is between expressing my feelings and showing disrespect and/or judgment towards the dead. As Sandy (you still reading this blog Sandy?) often says, "just because something is true doesn't mean you have to say it."

But both subjects were exemplary people and that is precisely why the difference between the eulogies is so interesting. Two highly-respected family members die, one in 1914 and one some eighty years later. By virtue of their virtue, we can eliminate a variable (to the extent you can judge that from afar). How we praise them becomes a cultural conceit. Or, indirectly, an expression of doctrinal belief.

Perhaps I have merely a bias for what is old, but I feel more comfortable with the language of the 1914 version. In that version faith in God is emphasized. In the later version the person's love of family and altruism is emphasized. The deceased in the latter is often quoted as having advised "always think of others first and you will find happiness." That strikes me as Pelagian, though perhaps I'm merely challenged by it since I'm still working on that think of others first thing, or shall I put it God isn't finished with me yet. In the ten page remembrance of the soul recently departed there is only one mention of God, that coming at the end when all are asked to say the deceased's favorite prayer, from which the recently departed had drawn great strength. God seems almost superfluous in the equation.

Perhaps this is all a matter of style since a deeply lived faith doesn't necessarily mean a lot of words. I think it was St. Francis who said, "Preach the gospel. If necessary, use words." "Only love is credible" wrote Balthasar. But in the other one page summary I have of the older eulogy there are lines like: "He passed away fortified with the last sacraments of the Church". You would simply never hear that now. Instead of "he passed away in the bosom of the Church" you'll likely hear "he passed away in the arms of his family". Or compare "he always thought of his family first" to "he always thought of God first".

Of course, it could be worse. Try this on for size: "He passed away in the afterglow of a Browns victory, just as he would've wanted."

From a Cincinnati area church...

Tánic sam slán sóer...

Whew…oh, but beer – a Spaten Optimator - tastes good, massaging overtaxed dendrites. Took multiple trips to the downtown Columbus library to meet new ancestors. There were names retrieved that no one currently alive in our family - and therefore on earth - has ever heard of. Joseph, born 1901, may you rest in peace. It feels a sort of small victory over death since death's mission is obliteration and forgetfulness.

It was as poetry to learn of two sisters to William C. Sr., born two years apart with pleasingly antique names: Bridget and Maria. Maria C. Bridget C. What male heart doesn't melt in the foundries of a Maria and a Bridget?  "Maria, say it loud and there's music playing...."  Ah, but they are the stuff of legends, long-lost relatives a stone's throw from Eire. How much closer the shore? I have sea fever, and the thirst to get to the Irish Sea is so palpable that I can taste the brackish air as I strain towards the enigmatic Patrick C. and his Irish pappy who took the pap of an Oirish mother before the famine went and ruined it all. I pine for the Clan Na Gael days of sweet insensibility, pre-psychology, before television and films and self-awareness made keening laughable. Back, to the point where English fades and the tongue of the Gaels resurges, back to the fiery furnace that purifies, back to the time you could still smelt the turf burnin’ and see the clocháns where the monks lived, who burned their prayers heavenward with scents so fragrant with otherness and asceticism and purity that they went straight to God, making their way through the obstacles and marshes that we place in the way, expecting He part Red Seas of our own making...

In those dusty books and ancient photographs everything is important. There is no such thing as minutiae where the dead are concerned. Their lives - finite as a breath! - were too short for that. Where they worked, how they worshipped, the shape of their language - it's all definitionally interesting. Reading of the dead gives me a sharpened sense of my own mortality and the brevity I have on this puzzling sphere. The company that employees me tries mightily to ensure we have a “sense of urgency” but how can we not, on this earth when time seems to gather speed and when the grave and the account we must give before the Judgment Seat rushes towards us?

It’s impossible for me to see any of the lives of my ancestors as waste, even the most drunken ne’er do wells, because they contributed to the very fact that I’m alive. He drank, he was lazy, he lived serially off his animal highs. And he had a child - my grandfather. What could I possibly say against him? Who am I to judge!? His life is as a miracle to me. Still, I am not the judge.

Faith & Reason

I quoted Fra' Lawrence Lew O.P. last week and said he should have a blog. Well, turns out he does, and has an excellent post up about St. Thomas and Muslims.(Found via Julie.) I love this quote from the Angelic Doctor: "So with unbelievers we are obliged to have recourse to pure reasoning, to which everyone can give their assent. But reason is feeble in treating of divine matters." Ain't that the truth. More Aquinas:

"It is difficult to argue against errors. First of all, we know too little about the troubling ideas of different opponents, so we can't begin our argument (as we should) by examining what they really feel in order to critically rejoin their false conclusions. The doctors of early times knew the doctrines of the pagans, since they had once themselves been pagans (or had at least lived among them) and were acquainted with how they thought.

Further, we can't have recourse in dialogue with the Muslims or pagans to the same authorities to support our arguments. With the Jews, we can bring the Old Testament to bear; with heretics, the New Testament. But unbelievers do not accept these books. So with unbelievers we are obliged to have recourse to pure reasoning, to which everyone can give their assent. But reason is feeble in treating of divine matters.

In dealing with reasonable truths, we can convince our opponent through rational arguments; but in treating of God's revelation, our investigations have to go beyond the toil of reasoning. We should not seek to convince others concerning revelation by reasonable arguments, but reason only to resolve objections to the faith by showing that they do not contradict the faith.

Fra continues, "Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., summarises the arguments put forward in Aquinas' Summa contra Gentiles to explain that unlike some religions,"

"we [Christians] should not put our trust in either forced assent under threat of weapons or in the seduction of earthly rewards. Rather, the decisive witness to the gospel is that, without any extraordinary signs, the world should be led to believe, by the example of ordinary and unsophisticated people, in a truth so difficult to believe, to hope for so noble a destiny, and to live a life so demanding. The example of wise figures from the past, their passion for truth and their committed quest for their true destiny, reassure us in our own quest. They are a symbol of our privilege to live with faith in the word of God."

Ponderables

If Solomon was so wise, why did he go astray? God, being faithful, did not withdraw the gift of wisdom yet still Solomon acted in an obviously unwise manner by showing fealty to strange gods in order to please his wives. There is apparently a distinction between wisdom and obedience to God even though you would think that obedience to God is the very cornerstone of wisdom. I guess it goes back to free will, since the wisdom God gave Solomon did not impinge on his ability to choose to do wrong.

What's also odd in this story is there seems a recapitulation of Adam's sin - that of allowing his wife to sway him to the point of compromising his principles. Since Christ was the new Adam who did not sin, was he similarly tempted by a woman to compromise his principles? Not really, because in this case the new Eve was a handmaiden of the Lord, not a handmaiden to her own desires or of strange gods. But Jesus was tempted by Satan, whose ability to tempt would exceed any mortal woman.

Parody...

...blog updated. Because it's probably better to laugh than to cry?

The Middle Class Just Ain't Cool   ...there are just too many of us

On O'Reilly's show Jim Pinkerton of Newsday was asked why the NY Times is so blatantly hypocritical in their support of anti-Christian art while disdaining its anti-Islamic equivalent. (Examples were duly given.)

And Pinkerton said something I hadn't heard before. He said that the Times simply doesn't like the American middle class. Pretty much hates it. And I think that sounds more credible than O'Reilly's assertion that they are anti-Christian. If they are anti-Christian it's not because of Christ or the gospels but because they associate contemporary Christianity with the bourgeois middle class. The yahoos. Reminds me how co-worker once told me how he hates what he calls "the herd". I said the herd is sometimes right and he blew a gasket: "the herd is stupid!" he fumed. And the middle class is the herd of the American nation. You have a few elites and a few poor but most of us live in the middle.

But if tomorrow the American middle class suddenly became Buddhist and Hollywood - and the heads of the New York publishing houses - became Christian, who would doubt that the Times would be far more solicitous towards Christianity? I think the whole Da Vinci Code brouhaha and anecdotal evidence suggests that many people are simply bored by orthodox Christianity, despite never having really tried it. (If you really try it you can't find it boring.) How else to explain the fascination with apocryphal gospels? They are different. I recall buying Augustine's "City of God" at a Border's bookstore and the cashier giving me an "attaboy" because I was buying something the Vatican had suppressed. St. Augustine suppressed by the Catholic Church? As they say, you can't make it up. But the gospels apparently don't have any forbidden allure, made up or otherwise.

By definition news is new. There is a bias for reporters to be interested in what is new not what is old. And the apocryphals are new or at least "more" new than the familiar names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Throw a Thomas in there and people raise an eyebrow. Perhaps that is why. Or perhaps it all comes down to what is cool - and sadly the NY Times has never escaped that high school mentality.

Ranking the Popularity of Books

One of the uses of library thing is to gauge the popularity of an author's books within his own oeuvre. Perhaps too anecdotal now, it will get increasingly accurate. One problem is that it is biased towards recently released books - for Paul Theroux, "Dark Star Safari" is listed as having the most copies though I'm sure that's not his biggest seller. I could just look at the amazon.com rankings but I think they are more a snapshot of recent sales rather than total sales over time.

Randy Wayne White:

Sanibel Flats (A Doc Ford Novel) 9 copies
Captiva 5 copies
The Man Who Invented Florida (A Doc Ford Novel) 4 copies
The Heat Islands : A Doc Ford Novel (A Doc Ford Novel) 4 copies

Pope John Paul II:

Crossing the Threshold of Hope 32 copies
Love and Responsibility 14 copies
The Splendor of Truth: Encyclical Letter of John Paul II 8 copies
Fides et Ratio / On the Relationship between Faith and Reaso… 7 copies
The Theology of the Body According to John Paul II: Human Lo… 7 copies
The theology of the body : human love in the divine plan 6 copies