Fulton Sheen Podcasts



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Feels Like Christmas?



There are the "twelve days of Christmas" but somehow after the octave of Christmas it feels like...ordinary time. The chart above roughly measures my sense of Christmas from 12/1 thru 1/3 using a scale of 1 to 10. The first three dates are discontinuous but you get the idea:

Rating: 1, 5, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 4, 2, 1
Date: 12-1, 12-14, 12-21, 12-22, 12-23, 12-24, 12-25, 12-26, 12-27, 12-28, 12-29, 12-30, 1-1, 1-2, 1-3

Ohio's Greatest Bloggers^TM

I'm sure you've been asking yourself the question: "Who are the top Ohio bloggers?" Well the thought occurred to me too so I spent ten minutes considering the wealth of good bloggers concentrated in this slightly-better-than-average state. In no particular order let's explore a few:
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An Examined Life: a professor at OU, one of Ohio's many fine colleges, Scott Carson goes deep and I'm not talking about OSU's wide receivers. I'm talking deep philosophical questions that only he and the Zippinator can discuss. (Okay, Tom K. and others.)

Ham o' Bone of "Social Engineer": Ham is a longtime writer, firsttime blogger. He devotes most of his energy to the former. My friend blogs very infrequently and for that reason his inclusion on this list will make it appear like what it obviously is: hopelessly biased.

Thomas of ER: the tabasco sauce of Ohio bloggers, Thomas of "Endlessly Rocking" loves to shock us. Spicy and opinionated, he's an intellectual but no pointy-headed intellectual. He finds something to love and hate in every Christian tradition.

My Domestic Church: defender of the Faith in inclement blog climes, Elena offers a daily entree of orthodoxy served up with side dishes such as the one she just recently hooked me up with - nutritiondata.com, a place to register your daily food items and see just how good (or bad) your diet is. In heaven, pizza and chocolate will score high. In heaven, Elena and her bête noire JCecil will lie down next to each other...Er, hey, get your mind out of the gutter! I mean in the sense of the lion lying down next to the lamb. But since both are lions perhaps that analogy doesn't work. Elena certainly proves that something good can come out of Cleveland.

Orthonormal Basis: Patrick is a bright, intellectual-type youth who drank too much on his last birthday. Ohio seems to have a goodly number of intellectual bloggers around, probably because the weather is so bad and there's nothing else to do. I could tell you what his blog title means but then I'd have to kill you.

Right Angle Blog: is one of the more fecund blogs in the blogiverse. In the lead-up to the '06 election debacle, this blog averaged four hundred posts a day. (I exaggerate, therefore I am.) As a source of news about the Ohio Republican Party and a place to vent about the increasingly desultory Dispatch, few are finer.

Ten Reasons: Rich Leonardi speaks sharply of the various and sundry outrages that man (used here in the sense of 'mankind' as he would want it) is heir to, most predictably that of liturgical and catechetical abuse we suffer here in the American church.

Aliens in this World: "Suburban Banshee" is a prolific Dayton blogger who maintains at least two blogs including one that features podcasts. Her tagline should be: "Come for the lovely voice and you'll stay for the edifying message." She definitely has the voice for podcasting.
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My apologies to those I've left off either through invincible ignorance or just ignorance. The blogs above are listed on my left sidebar, or if they're not then they should be. (Such as Banshee's pod blog here, and Right Angle here.)

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Patrick of "Orthonormal Basis" is a California blogger. His aunt is an Ohioan so I mistakenly thought he lived here too. See I told you I spent ten minutes on this.

Old Picture Thursday

The rich Ohio Memory site seems to have enough material to warrant its own feature, hereafter to be called 'Old Picture ---' where '---' is whatever day it happens to be.


The first Ohio state library...note the calm effect of massed dark-hued leather volumes


This peace celebration occurred at the end of WW I. Note the Kaiser Bill detail. I'm guessing that wagon is dragging an effigy of the kaiser atop of a coffin?



How anachronistic is this depiction? Let us count the ways. First, today's parents wouldn't let Santa anywhere near their children's bedrooms. And number two Santa is...(pause for dramatic effect)... smoking!


Here everyone dressed like they did in their old countries. (Click for enlargement porpoises.)

What Is Fear of the Lord?

Great post from Fr. Greg of St. Andrew's Q&A.

We Just Want to See Good Games

Patrick has a fine defense of the current bowl system here.

Jonah Goldberg...

...applies hammer to nail.

One of my favorite scenes from Stripes is when Bill Murray’s girlfriend complains about how he constantly plays Tito Puente albums. Murray responds that, one of these days, “Tito Puente’s gonna be dead, and you’re gonna say, ‘Oh, I’ve been listening to him for years, and I think he’s fabulous.’“

In recent years, the Tito Puente effect has afflicted liberals to a stunning degree. The press corps, the liberal intellectual establishment and the Democratic Party once considered Ronald Reagan a warmongering, senile fascist. Now it’s hard to find a self-described liberal to offer anything but praise. Barry Goldwater has also been Tito Puente-ized. His granddaughter’s recent HBO documentary depicts him as a cuddly-wuddly live-and-let-live sort of guy. Hillary Clinton, James Carville and Al Franken all pony up testimonials about how swell the 1964 GOP nominee was. Younger readers might need to be reminded that the liberal establishment hated Goldwater with such a blinding passion that reason, decency and truthfulness were deemed luxuries his critics couldn’t afford.

A couple weeks ago I posted comments from media types excoriating Bush #41, comments that sounded suspiciously like they could be made about Bush the Younger despite the patently obvious differences between them. It's hard to take the MSM seriously as it is, but it's even harder to do so knowing they can change their tune without even admitting they are changing their tune.

An Oral History of Blogging     --fictional Tuesday; I'm just teasing here

Marsha T. Smith:

It was back in aught-three ['03] when I was reading "The Beat" by James Lileks and I thought: "well, doesn't this beat all? I can write about the mundanities of daily life and not get paid for it!" I knew I had a lot of daily experiences - or vignettes as another blogger fancily called them - and so I started my blog the very next day. I've learned that a lack of exciting experiences is no reason not to write.

TS O'Rama:

I guess my first experience of the possibilities inherent in blogging occurred shortly after receiving what is commonly referred to as "spam". Back in my day "Spam" was an unidentified form of meat, something you had for dinner as a last resort. But beginning in the late '90s it began to refer to unsolicited emails promising drugs, low market rate loans and Russian brides among other things. I was struck by the poetry of many spams, how they had a sort of disconsolate abruptness and non-sequitorness. By stringing and arranging many spam subject lines together, it seemed possible to bring some good out of what most considered a pain. I sent my "spam poetry" to co-workers and friends, but eventually realized that blogging was more efficient than sending poems to long distribution lists.

Jack "Steinway" Rogers:

I write poetry but have found to my utter dismay that my art has not yet been formally published. My first poem was written at the age of ten. It was about marigolds and was written for English class, but I was accused of plagiarism by a fellow student because it was so good. She said I'd copied it out of a book. I didn't know what plagiarism meant at the time but thought it meant the same as 'perjury'. This was about the time of the Clinton-Lewinski scandal and I was especially upset to be lumped with Clinton. Blogging has given my poems a larger audience and allowed me to explore avenues previously unexplored due to the harsh editing and selective process that most publishing houses nefariously engage in.

Sal Minelli:

I'm a liturgical turd. At least that's what my wife calls me. I complain about the abuses of language in the texts of the wretched Novus Ordure. The only problem I have with being labeled a RadTrad is most of my fellow "radicals" are far too obsequient to modern "popes", nor do most of them recognize the real article, Pope Sylvester of Hazard, Kentucky.

Bob and Betsy Reed:

I think the first time we said to each other "we gotta get our own blog" was when Betsy's friend Kathy began posting pictures of her darling cat Alex. [Turns to Besty] Remember that one of Alex 'boxing' their Boxer mix, honey? It was priceless since Alex had been declawed. We were ROTFLMAO (ROTFLOAO?). We knew our Ralphie would give us a lot of blog material, and I don't think our readers are disappointed.

Jonathon Simmons:

I've always been interested in writing. As a child I dreamt, like Johnboy Walton, of seeing my own byline. Blogging has given me that chance and I try not to take it for granted. I post nearly every day. It never gets old to see my name in print below my posts. The daily deadlines and pressure to produce has been a challenge but it's no different than what professional writers go thru every day.

Sean Reynolds:

I'm a political operative working undercover for Bob "ED" Dole. I took up blogging as a way to get my message out since it's a particularly potent form of communication with a potential to penetrate market segments heretofore inaccessible. I call it the little blue pill of the technological age.

My Kind of Weight-loss Program

Sentimentality [concerning the baby Jesus]...is not to be scorned. Others may make neat distinctions between “authentic sentiment” and sentimentality, but these days of Christmas are a time for the suspension of neat distinctions. Sentimentality is all too human, and all too human is what God became. - Richard Neuhaus

Something is wrong with the traditional Western formulations of the doctrine of divine predestination. For fifteen hundred years theologians of the Church—Augustine, John Cassian, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, John Calvin, Luis de Molina, Robert Bellarmine, Jacobus Arminius, Karl Barth—have wrestled with this issue; but none have been unable to offer a resolution that has fully satisfied the sensus fidelium. With the exception of Barth, all have been condemned to circle around one of two poles of the question—absolute predestination or conditioned predestination—with each side anathematizing the other. Why this interminable disagreement?... Edward T. Oakes proposes that the problem begins with the move from a posture of gratitude before God to intellectual speculation on the fate of the unrepentant, either inside or outside the Church...Once we move from our response of gratitude for the blessings we have received in Christ to speculation on “the fate of others who seem to be not so similarly blessed and once the idle workshop of the logical mind gets to humming, the doctrine of predestination begins to cause problems on which theology has again and again run aground” (p. 213). The doctrine of predestination, as expressed in Holy Scripture, is intended to function to edify believers and strengthen them in their hope and perseverance. Yet the doctrine, in its Augustinian formulation, ends up leading people either into fear and despair (what if I’m not one of the elect?) or pride...Recognizing the insoluble problems inherent in the Western formulations of predestination, Christian pastors, both Catholic and Protestant, have generally abandoned the doctrine of predestination in their public preaching...Thomist or Molinist, Calvinist or Arminian, pastors do not publicly proclaim divine election. The doctrine of predestination is now silenced in the preaching of the Church. How far we have moved from the New Testament writers, who delighted in telling their readers that God had chosen them in Christ “before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless” and predestined them “to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” (Eph 1:4-5). - Alvin Kimel of "Pontifications"

I'm the smeller at our house, a blessing and a curse... I'm even called on in forensic cases - "What is this stuff?" - Bill of 'Summa Minutiae' on refrigerator items of dubious freshness

One may well share much of [Mr. Weisberg's] evaluation of the LDS belief system without excluding the possibility of supporting Mitt Romney...First, what would people think of someone who abandoned the religion of his forebears in order to advance his political career? (Mr. Romney is apparently having difficulties enough in explaining some of his political changes.) Second, do we really want to exclude from high office millions of citizens born into a religion whose tenets strike most Americans as bizarre, especially when there is no evidence that those peculiar tenets would have a bearing on their public actions? Third, candidates should be judged on the basis of their character, competence, and public positions. That one was born a Mormon is not evidence of a character flaw. That one remains a Mormon may be evidence of theological naiveté or indifference. But we are not electing the nation’s theologian. And, it should be noted, there are very intelligent Mormons who are doing serious intellectual work to move their tradition toward a closer approximation of Christian orthodoxy, which is a welcome development. - Richard Neuhaus of "First Things"

So let's allow that the Christian can be joyful and glad in his hardships, because he lives now in Christ, and Christ in him, and in the future he will become as He is. Is such supernatural joy and gladness convertible to natural happiness, to the spirit of cheer associated with next week's secular holiday? In the past, when I've thought about such things, I've always been quick to downplay the connection between the spiritual and the physical. You can be both sad and joyful, I've repeated, and everyone agrees that no one is expected to be in a good mood every moment of every day -- all the more so the more we read about the effects of things like diet, sleep, and heredity on brain chemistry. But, having read an essay on "Dominicans and Happiness" by Fr. Paul Murray, OP -- reprinted in his excellent book, The New Wine of Dominican Spirituality: A Drink Called Happiness -- I'm now thinking that I've been underestimating the effect our faith ought to have on our cheerfulness...A cordial manner and a pleasant countenance sound like very minor things in a saint's catalog of virtues; in fact, these are quite likely to be dismissed as merely good secular manners, or even as masks for vices. Surely, though, the mercy God has commanded in the daytime extends to the whole of the persons we meet, and to be cordial and pleasant is to meet a natural desire that only we can meet (no one can be pleasant for you). While fasting might not make many of us more cordial and pleasant, we might ask ourselves whether a little more prayer might be in order. - Tom of Disputations

Karl Barth once said, "It is in the Marian doctrine and the Marian cult that the heresy of the Roman Catholic Church is apparent—that heresy which enables us to understand all the rest. The 'Mother of God' of Roman Catholic dogma is, quite simply, the principle, prototype, and summing-up of the human creature cooperating in its own salvation by making use of its prevenient grace; as such, she is also the principle, prototype, and summing-up of the Church...Thus, that Church in which there is a cult of Mary must be itself understood as at the [First] Vatican Council; is of necessity that Church of man who, by virtue of grace, cooperates with grace." (Dei kirchliche Dogmatik vol. 1 quoted in Henri de Lubac, "The Splendor of the Church")One of the fear and trembling facts about the Catholic Church is that she seems to focus so much on the mother of Jesus Christ that she becomes part of your life. Catholics have to explain to their Protestant brothers and sisters that they do not treat her as a goddess. This is not to say that she is not deified since the saints themselves partake in the divine nature, but that she too is adopted by God, a disciple of God, and a creature...Mary of Nazareth would not have been venerated so much if she was not the mother of God...Mary is the model of the Church, but there is something in her that we the Church cannot be and that is to be the natural mother of Christ. Only hyperdulia is appropriate. That is why even in the future age to come, the Church, Virgin and Mother, will also honor her member. There is hyperdulia even in the new heaven and earth. Where there is (a possible world where) Christ (is) there must be hyperdulia for his mother. - Apolonio of "Thoughts of Apolonio Latar III"

One of the points that becomes so clear about Catholicism as you study history is that in its universality, its complexity and its depth, it's a lot like the world: it takes all kinds. It takes the ritualists to care about points that the rest of us might not even notice. It takes charismatic figures to clear out the fog and point to the radical presence of Jesus right in our midst, in places where we wouldn't expect it, even if the ritual wasn't done correctly today.  It takes the organizers and the solitaries, the bureaucrats and the skeptics who push back against the bureaucrats. It takes the artists and the accountants, the workaholics and the wry, relaxed observers, the conformists and the iconoclasts. - Amy Welborn

I think Chesterton said something like that it takes God to force us to celebrate Holy Days and we wake up and find these are wonderful holidays for us men. - Jim of "Bethune Catholic"

I’m vigorously opposed to drunk driving, but I tip my long neck to this guy: “Police say a man they pulled over for driving drunk continued to swig his beer during his arrest.” - Eric Scheske of "The Daily Eudemon"

Scott Carson at An Examined Life makes the argument (assuming I understand it correctly) that doctrine develops only by applying deductive reasoning to a body of formally revealed facts and principles which were finalized at the time of the Apostles. I'll call this position sola deduction...If all valid doctrines follow from turning the formal crank of deductive reasoning on the raw material of facts and principles established at the time of the Apostles, and doctrines so established are not underdetermined by that deductive reasoning, then the Magisterium can be replaced by a computer. But the situation for sola deduction is even worse than is made clear by Mike's argument, though Mike's argument is in my opinion sufficient for his purposes. If we accept sola deduction on its own terms as a thought experiment, we ultimately (though not trivially) end up with a logical contradiction. An assertion of logic alone is itself quite literally illogical. - Zippy of "Zippy Catholic"

Shocking Michigan Loss...

...yesterday. OSU/USC might've been a very interesting game.

Here's a ticket from an old OSU/MICH game:
 

That Marvelous Dickens

Excerpt from Bleak House:

Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a demon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved, sir. Other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatism or may have taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but the Dedlock family have communicated something exclusive even to the levelling process of dying by dying of their own family gout. It has come down through the illustrious line like the plate, or the pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities. Sir Leicester is perhaps not wholly without an impression, though he has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the aristocracy, "My lords and gentlemen, I have the honour to present to you another Dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout."

Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere, but he thinks, "We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise.

And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold in the midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite picture of my Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with soft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in the green ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield and rode a-hunting with bow and arrow, bear witness to his greatness.

A Vacation Auld Lang Syne

It’s a cold, rainy, windswept day. A planned hike at P. Oaks was abruptly abandoned. My wife wondered, “are we having fun yet?” and asked me the same in so many words. We turned around and our dog looked at us quizzically, staring at us as if with paws on hips. A butchering wind was persuasive and we called him & headed back home. Perhaps it’s fitting, the weather a sharp reminder of reality, the reality of our peaceful vacation’s end. The Romans hated February, making it a short month, but January has to be a contenda'.

These few days were wonderful in their homeopathic, wholistic rest, the sort of rest that could only be achieved by a back ache and being on the cusp of a cold & fever. Sick days are the days the muse can enfold, when I give myself permission to read unserious books like “American Brew” or watch NBC’s “Spanning the World” for the most humorous sports faux paus. This time, as my back improved, I reinvented the library shelves ala William Gladstone, toting books here and there in order to spring precious rosewood space.

The days behind seem idyllic, the high point being lunch in Dublin followed by a deep high-dive into the books at Barnes & Noble’s. My wife ran some errands beforehand and did not rush me when she did come. She set up camp her own self next to my camp, a chair outside the pets & travel sections (though my chair didst inexcusably vanish while I was on a book-hunting expedition). She leisurely chose among books and maps on Spain, her business destination in a mere week. The sun on the way home felt like our birthright, as it matched our vacational mood. The next day dawned just as brightly and I burnt the perfume-wood of errant tree branches after a nap in the green outdoor chair. Time didn’t exactly stop but I felt the healthy cushion of days to follow. The cushion was mostly illusory as it often is; the days went by in a hurry and were half-filled with social obligations and poor weather but it was enough to have a couple days that were peaceful and unhurried with the prospect of more to follow.

Ricky van Shelton...

His version of the gospel song "I Shall Not Be Moved" is arguably the catchiest song ever recorded and more than a decade later I still find it coming to mind now and again. It seems that he's stopped touring rather abruptly, ascribing it to family.

Ford Would Want the Mail Delivered

Everyone loves Gerald Ford but did Reagan get a day of undelivered mail? At this rate, how will the Powers That Be up the ante for, say, a given future president who served longer and had more accomplishments?

The media attention is not a bad thing. It gives history lessons to Generations X & Y and they surely need all the inadvertent history lessons they can get.

I also understand that in a nation so politically polarized the death of a figure admired by the most Democrats and Republicans can only help heal the divide.

But the old saw "the mail must go through" seems anachronistic given how many holidays those fellers get. But then I can't really talk...