Bleak House Excerpt

Mr. Skimpole strikes again:

He had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, “Now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money — in my expansive intentions — if you only knew it!” And really (he said) he meant it to that degree, that he thought it much the same as doing it. If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance, to put in the doctor’s hand, he would have put them in the doctor’s hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it — if his will were genuine and real: which it was — it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.

“It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,” said Mr Skimpole, “but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me, he wants that little bill. It’s a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man’s nature, that he always calls it a ‘little’ bill — to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I reply to the butcher, ‘My good friend, if you knew it you are paid. You haven’t had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You are paid. I mean it.’”

“But, suppose,” said my Guardian, laughing, “he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it?”

“My dear Jarndyce,” he returned, “you surprise me. You take the butcher’s position. A butcher I once dealt with, occupied that very ground. Says he, ‘sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound?’ ‘Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound, my honest friend?’ said I, naturally amazed by the question. ‘I like spring lamb!’ This was so far convincing. ‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!’ ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I have not got the money. You couldn’t really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!’ He had not a word. There was an end of the subject.”

“Did he take no legal proceedings?” inquired my Guardian.

“Yes, he took legal proceedings,” said Mr Skimpole. “But in that, he was influenced by passion; not by reason...

Week in Review

Well, here in Lake Troublebegone it was a quiet week. We took down the European ash with sadness, though it was damaged by Japanese beetles. Besides, the Ash Borer cometh, or so says the liberal media. And - besides squared - I had planted it too near the house some six years ago and so this fate was unescapable. The gaping hole in our 'scape is jarring but I expect it will allow more late day sun to visit the back porch. One can scarcely comprehend the gift of a chain saw without having spent years with a hack saw. My, but I felt like the Terminator! Technology gives one the illusion of power.
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We did the annual bike ride this week, this one 23 miles from Cedarville to beautiful South Charleston & back in 97 degree heat. We survived; it really wasn’t so bad because there was a breeze and we did have the a/c’d stop in SoCharles. Delightful small town, and I didst gape at the Floyd-ish barber shop complete with old timers who could pass for Civil War veterans. The Presbyterian church was very old and had that typically large expanse of beautiful wood inside (built when wood was cheap and plentiful). Attendance numbers were on the wall: twenty-eight visitors last Sunday, forty-six a year ago Sunday. Andy Griffith numbers.

Cristina Nehring Rips Erica Jong's Latest

...from the Atlantic:

It is amazing only for its meanspiritedness, its tedium, its awkward prose, and its stunning self-absorption. Literature can bear a great deal of self-absorption, but Jong may well have overshot the mark. Literary aspiration, at the end of the day, is a limited plot device. Especially in the absence of literary talent. Muses—like men—tend to eschew those who chase them exclusively; single-minded pursuit frightens as often as it flatters them.

Update: Obligatory disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting that Jong was unfairly ripped. I would not read her books if they were the last ones on earth.

Gays are Traditionalists?

Liability Disclaimer: If you are easily offended by generalizations, stereotyping or leaps of logic, feel free to skip this post.

I know it's true - because I saw it on The Colbert Report - that across this nation homosexual men are involved in something called gentrification, a process by which modern housing tracts are passed over in preference for Victorian era houses after which the new owner paints them and garnishes with an English garden. Assumption numero uno is that gay men have very high artistic sensibilities. You can see this even in their clothing. No gay man has ever donned mismatched socks or worn a plaid shirt with plaid pants. Never happened. Assumption two is that if you choose to live in a old Victorian houses with baroque-like fixtures, awnings, and general folderol, you are voting with your wallet. You are saying, "Modernism, I flee thee and all your pomps and works!" Based on assumptions one and two we can know with absolute certainty that past architecture is better than present architecture. Assumption three is that good art and architecture come from a culture that values beauty. Cultures that appreciate beauty (see Balthasar) are religious cultures. Ergo, gay men are actually religious traditionalists, presumably frustrated Catholics if they aren't already. (Of course, I think everyone who isn't Catholic is a frustrated Catholic.)

Evangelization via Exercise-Induced Near Comas

...and why I don't care if RJN is a snob (and I'm not saying he is one)

As I get older I've noticed that by all objective measures I'm becoming less fit. This means that it takes an amazingly small amount of exercise to reach the goal of blissful brainlessness, that point at which you forget everything around you. This sometimes happens while I'm reading a book while doing the StairMaster, or as I call it, the ScareMaster.

I was apparently reading Richard J. Neuhaus's Catholic Matters because yesterday I noticed the book was missing. A quick check of various rooms revealed no book. I looked in the bedroom, the kitchen, the car. I looked in the bathroom, the basement, the bar! (That rhyme was for Bill Luse since he seems to get such disproportionate pleasure out of 'em. :-)

But there was no need to panic as I'd knew it was probably at the fitness center. And sure enough I asked the gal there and she asked the title and I told her and she said she was wondering when someone could claim it. She took me to the office space shared by the four exercise professionals.

One of them looks a bit like Bern Luse, a cute girl-next-door type who is probably a good Christian girl since the posted bio/pics of the workers says she went to a Christian college. And here this Catlick book was front and center, there to keep her and her three mates company should they become curious. That can't be bad, given the amount of downtime they have while they're waiting for exercise appointments or just waiting to lock of the gym...Call it inadvertent evangelization. It's what I'm best at.

Speaking of Neuhaus (and we were), I recall a recent post that sounded a tad pretentious, beginning as it did with: "After dinner, the evening before that conference in Vienna a while back, Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn took George Weigel and me on a private tour of the episcopal palace." And yet I can't begrudge the sort of pretentiousness I detect in a Neuhaus or a Weigel because they are serving the sort of role, as ambassadors to secular society, that William F. Buckley did as a political conservative to the liberal intelligentsia. Buckley affected some of that "smarter than thou" pose because conservatives were considered unenlightened troglodytes back then and still are in some quarters. Buckley was effective in making conservatism respectable to many elites.

Christians today are considered the new troglodytes. You can see that reflected by the term atheists give themselves, "brights", and by the reputation Christians have as being science-phobic. Neuhaus and Weigel show that you can be intelligent and well-informed and still be a Christian: faith and reason.

Romantic Love & God's Love

The classic line in the literature of romance novels is "our eyes met across a crowded room". A cliché but as is usually the case with clichés it reveals a great truth in the way we see love else it wouldn't have become overused.

That line compactly expresses a chief truth about romantic love: exclusivity. "Across" suggests a geographical distance was overcome, while "crowded" suggests you were picked from among many. "Our eyes met across an empty room" shows little exclusivity or effort on the couple's part. The same goes for: "our eyes met because you were the closest one to me in a crowded room".

God understands that's the way we think of love so he condescended to speak to us that way over the course of salvation history. Adam knew his specialness; out of all the animals on the earth God singled him out. Then God singled out a family (Noah), a clan (Abraham), a nation (David's kingdom) until with Christ every single person is the object of God's eyes "across a crowded room". We still may not have a good understanding it but in reading the Scriptures we can see God's clear attempt to communicate that great Truth to us.

Aug 3 - St. Peter Julian Eymard (1811-1868)

From here: "Peter Julian coped with poverty, his father's initial opposition to Peter's vocation, serious illness, a Jansenistic striving for inner perfection and the difficulties of getting diocesan and later papal approval for his new religious community. His years as a Marist, including service as a provincial leader, saw the deepening of his eucharistic devotion, especially through his preaching of Forty Hours in many parishes. Inspired at first by the idea of reparation for indifference to the Eucharist, Peter Julian was eventually attracted to a more positive spirituality of Christ-centered love...In every century, sin has been painfully real in the life of the Church. It is easy to give in to despair, to speak so strongly of human failings that people may forget the immense and self-sacrificing love of Jesus, as his death on the cross and his gift of the Eucharist make evident. Peter Julian knew that the Eucharist was key to helping Catholics live out their Baptism and preach by word and example the Good News of Jesus Christ."

"Three years prior to his death, Fr. Eymard made a long retreat in Rome. During this retreat, he was powerfully struck by the force of Christ's love within him - a love he felt taking over his whole person." - (Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament.

"Father Eymard lived at the same time in history as the saint we celebrate tomorrow, August 4--St. John Vianney. The two men were friends and each highly admired the other. Father Vianney said that Father Eymard was a saint and added, 'Adoration by priests! How fine! I will pray for Father Eymard's work every day.'" (Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Society)

Aug 3 - Anniversary of Flannery O'Connor's Death

Amy reminds us that today is the 42nd anniversary of the death of Flannery O'Connor. The neglected FOC blog has been updated.

There is Nothing Like a Meme

...nothing in the world,
There is nothing you can dream,
That is anything like a meme.

(sing to South Pacific tune "There is Nothing Like a Dame")

I was laying low till Steven nominated me for this meme and I shan't refuse someone who is in difficult straits (his wife is out of town). (And speaking of books, I won one!):

1. One book that changed your life: It's difficult to establish with certainty what about us is "us" and what is us as a result of biblio influences either positive or negative. In other words, do some books resonate with us because they are already reflecting "who we are" or do they influence and change us to what we've now become? Outside the obvious choice of the bible, I would guess Conrad Richter's A Light in the Forest.

2. One book that you've read more than once:
Hovanessian's The Circle Dancers

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
Oh, except for the Bible, Dinesen's "Out of Africa" or Boswell's Life of Johnson.

4.One book that made you laugh:
Garrison Keillor's "The Book of Guys". Oh and Loh's "A Year in Van Nuys". I guess I'm not following the instructions.

5. One book that made you cry:
Hmm...I can't really recall. Maybe "Bright Lights, Big City" or "Romeo & Juliet"? I'm not a big fiction reader actually. I suppose I would've shed a fear tears over "The Da Vinci Code" for its reputation as being full o' bad writing.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
Hasn't everything already been said? I guess a history of my ancestors, obviously of limited interest.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Steven hit the nail on the head with The Kinsey Report. I'd add The Communist Manifesto. Closer to home, I'd say Garry Wills' and/or McBrien's stuff.

8. Two books you're currently reading:
Philbrick's Mayflower, Luse's The Last Good Woman

9. One book you've been meaning to read:
The Psychology of the Saints by Henri Joly

If you want to do this, then by the powers invested in me consider yourself tapped.

Quotes Recently Happened Across

These paragraphs concerning Nixon's prolongation of the Vietnam war from Jeffrey Hart's book on NR are chilling:

More cold-blooded was "Vietnamization," training the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) to fight largely on its own after American withdrawal. Neither Nixon nor Kissinger believed this could work: the ARVN was only a mask for incremental withdrawal, and consequent "Vietnamization" under Hanoi. This would make it look as if the ARVN had lost the war, not the United States. Nixon and Kissinger were more interested in post-Vietnam great-power politics than in South Vietnam.

The Nixon and Kissinger plan [for Vietnam] entailed the death of 20,552 American soldiers between 1969 and 1972. How much American "prestige" had been preserved by this maneuver remains hard to prove. A nation with a large nuclear arsenal probably has enough prestige.

Elsewhere:

The Puritans believed that the identity of the Saints had long since been determined by God....No one could be entirely sure as to who was one of the elect, and yet, if a person was saved, he or she naturally lived a godly life. As a result, the Puritans were constantly comparing their own actions to those of others, since their conduct might indicate whether or not they were saved. Underlying this compulsive quest for reassurance was a person's conscience, which one divine described as "the voice of God in man."

-Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower"

And Jurgens via Bill White:

In 415 A.D., Cassian, now a priest, founded two monasteries at Marseilles, one for men and the other for women; and there, until his death about twenty years later, he ruled his monasteries as abbot.

It was in these monasteries at Marseilles and with Cassian as its father that Semi-Pelagianism was born. Originally the Semi-Pelagians were called Massilians after their origins at Marseilles; and if we fall into the very common error of regarding Semi-Pelagianism as no more than a kind of diluted Pelagianism we will never understand John Cassian. As a Semi-Pelagian, he held no brief at all with the Pelagians. The latter he condemned roundly. He regarded Pelagianism as the mother of Nestorianism, which he termed Pelagianism's "pupil and imitator," because, while Pelagianism taught that man could by his own efforts and without God's help achieve righteousness, Nestorianism taught that the Man Jesus, by the virtuous conduct of his life, came himself to deserve union with the Divine Majesty.

If the latter notion seems very similar to the rather common idea of our own times to the effect that Christ only came gradually to realize that he was God and perhaps was not fully aware of it until He was hanging on the cross---is this the same as saying that His divinity was only gradually actualized and that perhaps it was not fully actualized until He was hanging on the cross?---possibly it is because Nestorianism is not nearly so dead an issue as some suppose, and there is an effective revival of it among some "Catholic" theologians even today. Heresies never die; they just change their names. I cannot recall any modern heresy that is really new; nor do I know of any ancient heresy that has been slain outright. Catholic doctrine is so entirely cohesive that if only one thread of it is cut the whole unravels. Heresy, at least within a limited number of theological categories, seems to bear a similar stamp of cohesion, so that if a man fall into only one, he is soon forced to all, even the seemingly diametrically opposed.

The Semi-Pelagians roundly denied that they were Pelagians; but they still thought that sometimes God bestows grace because, even before grace, man's natural goodness might bring him to turn first to God.

--William Jurgens, Faith of the Early Fathers Vol III, via Bill of Summa Minutiae

"The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent"

Is prudence the forgotten virtue? Ross Douthat says it well:

Yet it’s also true that there are moral obligations involved in war making besides the obligation to only make war in a righteous cause—and one of the most pressing, with apologies to Lionel Trilling, is the moral obligation to be intelligent. And this is where I sense—based on reports like this one and this one, from sources with no anti-Zionist axes to grind—that Israel has gone dramatically astray in this campaign. It’s not that they don’t have the right to pursue Hezbollah into Lebanon, to attack the terrorist group’s infrastructure and impose a cost on those who harbor terrorists, even if the pursuit of these objectives puts innocents at risk. But they also have the duty, when the stakes are so high and so many lives hang in the balance, to avoid taking large-scale military action unless they have a high degree of confidence in the operation’s ultimate success. And thus far I’ve seen very little to justify such confidence.

Douthat goes on to say that while the Iraq war probably met Just War criteria, it too was an exercise in a lack of prudence. I just knew if I shopped long enough I could find someone with much intellectual firepower who agreed with me.

Update: Bottum rebuts.

Quick Hits

There's a intranet site featuring interviews with co-workers and one guy answers the query "what's the last good book you've read?" with:

Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Italian Cookbook. I can't cook but damn Giada is hot!

A little research proves his assertion correct. Even a complete non-cook like myself might be tempted to tune in once to see this Rome native.
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My schadenfreude has wilted under the heat. I couldn't much relate to Smock's funny lil' Texas poem. Until now.
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Get yer Pope John Paul II random quote generator here while supplies last. ...at Fish Eaters via Terrence Berres.
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A beer blessing.
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She just loves to shock us. So said Dave Letterman of pop queen Madonna, and Bill Luse has the same tendency on his blogorhythm (though the comparisons between him and Mz. Conebrassiere end when it comes to talent as Bill obviously has far more). I thank Zippy for his indulgence of our comment box indulgences.
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It's kind of fun seeing a Trad sympathetic to Israel. Not as rare as a pro-Bush ACLU member, but still. This guy helps break down the labels we all tend to inflict on ourselves and others.
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A Walker Percy retrospective, via Korretiv.

Mideast  

At the family gathering Sunday an outlaw-twice-removed (husband of sister of my sister-in-law's intended) said a true thing. He said that in the history of warfare there has been no answer to guerrilla war. Guerrilla fighters always have the upper hand. And so says Lowry in today's NR:

This is one of the greatest asymmetries of asymmetric warfare. For a guerrilla force, worse is always better, even though the worse comes at its instigation. It seeks a widening gyre of death and destruction. “Promoting disorder is a legitimate objective for the insurgent,” David Galula writes in his classic study of insurgency warfare. “Moreover, disorder — the normal state of nature — is cheap to create and very costly to prevent.”

He goes on to say that "it is easier...to destabilize a weak government than it is to bolster one". Defeat and destruction seems thus part of the human condition since the scales are so uneven. A few suicide bombers killed 3,000 Americans. It seems hopeless. And yet last night I was watching Fr. Benedict Groeschel speak of the sanctity of Fr. Solanus, whose cause for canonization continues. And when you hear of all the miracles he worked during his lifetime (St. Pio as well) they seemed almost routine, almost as if that is the way the world should work. Miracles are not a part of the natural order, but it seems as though if we were all saints miracles would be the natural order.

One saint who toiled much in a cause that seemed hopeless was Blessed Mother Teresa. And now that Lebanon's situation reminds me of her daily prayer: "What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway."

I guess the good news is that I will never suffer the fate of Terry Schiavo.  As long as I am sitting upright, my daughter will consider me not only alive and well, but capable of doing the shopping. "Gee Mom, I'm sorry you feel bad.  Is there anything here I could make you for dinner?" Sorry.  I just wanted to see how it sounded. - Karen Hall of "Some Have Hats"

As it is, creation is good not because that's the way God put it together, but because the God who put it together is good. When "God looked at everything He had made," He didn't declare it very good, as though establishing a sort of divine positive law; "He found it very good." But if it's the goodness (in fact, the perfection) of the Creator that determines how we ought to respond to creation, it's by no means incidental to how we ought to respond to sub-creation that the sub-creators are imperfectly good...We give God the benefit of the doubt, so to speak, regarding mosquitoes and such, not because He is the Creator, but because He is all good. Nothing similar follows for sub-creators. - Tom of Disputations

In the overall Western experience, state controlled education is the exception. In ancient times that exception was Sparta. It was also an early precedent for anti-family ideology. As classical scholar E. B. Castle says: "In Sparta and Athens... we are confronted with two highly contrasted educational ideals which can be easily recognized in educational practice today" (Ancient Education and Today). To put this in context, consider what the Greek chronicler Plutarch tells about the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus (c. 800 BC):

Lycurgus was of a persuasion that children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole commonwealth.... [N]or was it lawful, indeed, for the father himself to breed up the children after his own fancy; but as soon as they were seven years old they were to be enrolled in certain companies and classes, where they all lived under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and taking their play together.

Lycurgus wanted to control education so strictly as to regulate marriage. Children were subject to harsh discipline and exercise. Eugenics (and homosexuality) was even more arduously pursued in Sparta than the rest of pagan Greece. Spartan women were scorned by other nations for their aggressive, unfeminine behavior, while boys learned to be deceitful and ruthless to outsiders, even as they displayed automaton-like loyalty to their own. Presaging militaristic Prussia and Hitler's Reich, Spartans lived only for the state which, in turn, existed only for war. In key respects, the structure of Sparta's totalitarian education is indistinguishable from the aims of the left-liberal establishment. - Matthew M. Anger via Jim Curley

It is hubristic--pretending to know with some certain what objective artistic merit is. I've seen Zippy throw the term around and then actively support the burning of all Picassos; I've come to suspect that he has no better idea than I do of what this objectivity looks like.- Steven Riddle

The problem with the article (and with much radtrad anti-semitism) is that it never actually defines 'Jew' or 'Jewish': thus it can label revolutionary leaders as 'Jewish Bolsheviks', although not one of the Communist leaders were anything but contemptuous of their ancestral religion. It's precisely the same approach (which I grew up with, actually, being born to non-practising Jewish parents) which leads modern Jews to see Hitler and his party as 'Christian'. It never distinguishes between background and belief, between ethnicity and practice. - commenter on Mark Shea's blog, via Terrence Berres

From the point of view of Christians, the Jews are indeed the chosen people, and Gnostics hate that because they hate history. History is free, meaning that it is the arena of human freedom and responsibility. Creation is a free act of God, and being created in the image of God is being created in freedom, and one has to freely accept that freedom & the responsibility that goes with it. Gnostics, like pagans generally, believe that freedom is irrational and history is meaningless. They can't stand the idea that God is free, that he has freely chosen the Jews, that through them he has taught us that human responsibilty matters- in fact, that everything matters. Gnostics (and a great modern example is Yale University's Harold Bloom- Omens of the Millenium) cannot accept that the evil in the world comes from free human actions under the judgment of God. Their attitude is: It's not my fault- it's the Demi-urge's fault, it's the government's fault, it's that people are not enlightened, etc. So they seek one of two solutions: either they escape from history through various mystical practices, or they attempt to stifle freedom by the imposition of some kind of totalitarianism. - emailer to Jonah Goldberg of "The Corner"

His prose, and the mind-numbingly solipsistic 'vision' it manifests, is such that only an adolescent could love it...I mean, just consider - Emerson found the Unitarians too restrictive, too traditionalist, too authoritarian. I think that's all we need to know. - Tom of Endlessly Rocking

I can't help but love Ann Coulter...Please. Don't splutter at me that she's a reckless bomb thrower. Of course she is! So was Lenny Bruce, who famously remarked of LBJ "Where's Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him?" But you know what? Bruce could be funny and perceptive, as when he remarked that the Catholic Church is the only "The Church". And Coulter's damn funny and perceptive too. Which is why she drives her ideological opponents crazy. Do I look to her for political wisdom and guidance? Of course not! But I do look at her as a fine political satirist and usually find myself laughing at her remarks, even when I know they are not what you would call accurate policy statements. - Mark Shea

I discovered a toad in the yard the other day and the kids took a great liking to him. Gus captured him from the vicinity of the lawn mower and brought him to Terri's garden. He stayed there all night and was "invited" to swim in the kiddie pool the next day. He absolutely loved this and we were completely captivated by his athletic prowess. We found a nice little log (complete with tasty bugs) to float in the kiddie pool and he was in froggie heaven....We named him Blog. - blogger at "Studeo"

I learned from watching this [St. Ignatius] movie -- told in a completely linear fashion -- that my problem in structuring the same store becomes quite vivid when dramatized.  The first third of the story makes for great drama.  And then he gets holy. Wonderful for the world.  Bad for drama.  And the reason that no one has ever made a good movie about the life of St. Ignatius.  Imagine the ad campaign:  "You'll be on the edge of your seat as Ignatius writes the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus!"  Almost as exciting to watch as the year he spent in a cave.  But that's my problem, not yours.  Set the Tivo and make sure you have some microwave movie popcorn on hand.  The last 2/3 of this movie is not boring.....if you think of it as a comedy. In its defense, Sr. Anne has always said that she felt that even though it was thoroughly bad and corny, there must be something of St. Ignatius' spirit in this silly movie, because of the way it had moved her -- in spite of itself -- when she saw it for the first time. - Karen Hall on 1951 movie, "Loyola, the Soldier Saint"

Update: Zippy responds to being quoted above:

And although when I suggested the Picasso bonfire I was being ironic in the face of an aesthetic all-or-nothingism, his more vulgar works probably really should be burned.

St. Alphonsus De Liguori - August 1
 

"Heavenly Father, your servant, St. Alphonsus, was most zealous to proclaim your abundant love and mercy shown in the Pascal Mystery of Your Divine Son and continued through the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Through his intercession, I beg that, like him, I may be entirely submissive to your holy will, have a fervent love for Jesus Christ, and, by constant prayer, especially through Mary, Mother of your Son, persevere in that love till the end of my life. May I join with him in praising you with your Son and the Holy Spirit for all eternity. AMEN."