Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

"She's not cranky, " said Gabe, "she just senses happiness and snuffs it out." -Elena's child Gabe regarding his mother. She hopes in 20 years her kids will appreciate her.

Most of the world's work is done by people who don't feel very well. - Winston Churchill, via The Corner

What's worse though: me writing this dribble or you reading it? - PigeonPi

The life of the spirit, like that of the body, is inevitably the source of ‘unease.’ The dead alone are in complete repose. --Henri de Lubac, via Terry Teachout.

Stay up until midnight on New Years? Of course ! (When the Y2K scare was on, I spent the night at a chapel that has Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, figuring that if civilization fell apart, that was the best place to be. ) - Donna Marie Lewis of Q-N

As he admits, Hitler's Pope (1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. “I would now argue,” he says, “in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.” - anti-Catholic Catholic John Cornwell from the latest Economist, via NRO's "The Corner"

In my teens I was a liberal Democrat, a practicing Wiccan, and fiercly pro-choice.  Wicca went first when I began a relationship with Christ.  After experiencing an abortion I began looking into the pro-life side.  I found the argument persuasive, and since then have read more and more that has led me to the conclusion that it is wrong to murder the pre-born.  Then I began looking at all sorts of issues more conservatively, especially when I had a family of my own.  I have come from the other side, and am usually unimpressed with the arguments.  I used to use them myself, and have found that most of them don't hold up under scrutiny.  - Ann of "My Homeschool"

For St. Catherine, suffering was simply the means to her double end of proper worship of God and of saving others -- or, more briefly, of loving God and her neighbors. From this, it seems to me that for someone to desire to suffer would be imprudent if suffering would lead to a different end -- say, of becoming a perpetual whiner. At the same time, St. Catherine's example might serve as a challenge to our own love for God and neighbor, if we realize we aren't prepared to suffer for them. - Tom of Disputations

When Our Lady is conceived, our salvation is already in the bud: God's wonderful plan is silently at work, but the event is not even recorded in the Bible. No one noticed. No angels sang over the hills, no shepherds left their flocks to come and see, no wise men followed the stars. And yet the Coming of Christ began with this event we celebrate today… -- Rev. Bradford, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, via Mark of Irish Elk

The traditional understanding of the Holy Spirit really blurs the boundaries between self and God, and so we modern Westerners have a hard time understanding it. So we push it to extremes: either you're your own master, or you're "possessed" by some outside force. So we have, on the one hand, mainstream Christians with a fairly poor sense of the Spirit, and on the other hand charismatics who go for wild stuff. There is certainly some charismatic experience described in the New Testament: visions, dreams, speaking in tongues. But from very early days, the whole church was assumed to be guided by the Spirit, in mundane life as much as in showy spiritual events. So Catholics have, for instance, taken the decisions of the canonical councils to be Spirit-guided and therefore as authoritative as the Bible, even though nobody at these meetings goes into a trance and starts automatic-writing or anything. The Spirit, it is assumed, can work through ordinary thought processes. - Camassia of Camassia

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values. -- Willa Cather

Mary's Immaculate Conception is celebrated 21 days before the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and wouldn't her heart have begun beating on the 21st day after conception? - emailer to Alicia of Fructus Ventris. The answer is yes.

Favorite holiday song: In Dulci Jubilo and Vom Himmel Hoch da Komm Ich Her --Thomas of ER. What, you expected Jingle Bells?

Beatin' a Dead Horse

Politics is stale, more stale & most stale, but the lasting image of the Democratic Convention for me was Michael Moore, profligate liar, sitting next to Jimmy Carter, former POTUS. The coupling had a nightmarish "Where's Waldo?" quality that hasn't faded with time. And it appears to have also resonated with George Will:

When Moore sat in Jimmy Carter's box at the 2004 Democratic convention, voters drew conclusions about the party's sobriety. Liberalism's problem with the Moore-MoveOn faction is similar to conservatism's 1960s embarrassment from the claimed kinship of the John Birch Society, whose leader called President Dwight D. Eisenhower a Kremlin agent.

The reason that Moore is hostile to U.S. power is that he despises the American people from whom the power arises. Moore's assertion that America "is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe" is a corollary of Kuttnerism, the doctrine that "middle America" is viciously ignorant.

Beinart is bravely trying to do for liberalism what another magazine editor -- the National Review's William Buckley -- did for conservatism by excommunicating the Birchers from the conservative movement. But Buckley's task was easier than Beinart's will be because the Birchers were never remotely as central to the Republican base as the Moore-MoveOn faction is to the Democratic base."

My Advice to the White House

Incompetence is objective, not subjective, but my response to it varies to the extent I can say, "gosh, I wouldn't have done that!". (Which reminds me of the definition of religious fanaticism - anyone a bit more fanatical than me.)

So since it's hard to imagine not asking Bernard Kerik whether he had an illegal immigrant problem, I am astonished. But lest I be only a critic here's my proposal to the White House, free of charge:

Go to the Start Menu. Choose Programs - Accessories - Notepad. Type "Things To Remember Before Appointing a Cabinet Member". Type "Ask if any illegal immigrant problems". Create shortcut for desktop. Remember to check desktop before making cabinet selections.

I give and I give.

Meditation by Fr John Breck, via Thomas of ER fame:

We activists, city-people or not, spend most of our time, it seems, trying to produce, trying to accomplish something we and others will consider worthwhile. A "life worth living" – even in the Church – is usually seen as a life of great achievements. We admire and even envy those who rise through the ecclesiastical ranks, or publish an impressive number of books, or make their voice heard with authority in the halls of academia or via web lists and chat rooms. We devote hours, days and years to discovering and realizing our "PIL," our purpose in life. Yet most of us never quite find it, never quite feel satisfied with our lot or what we've done with it. So eventually we burn out from frustration, or get divorced, or seek a transfer: a "geographic cure" that heals nothing. And all the time the message drones in our mind: "God, like other people, will judge us on the basis of our accomplishments." Today's most poignant existential question is not whether "to be," but rather "to do or not to do?" Yet paradoxically, more is accomplished by being than by doing. At least more that's worthwhile.

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

...flowers of the intellect that is. Provocative Derbyshire column:

The irresistible Paul Johnson wrote a piece in the London Spectator the other week about intellectuals. P.J. is the author of a book on this subject, titled Intellectuals, in which he cheerfully eviscerates several of the big names in 19th- and 20th-century deep-browdom: Emerson, Marx, Hemingway, Sartre, and so on...PJ's essay got me thinking...

Novelists? Well, there is of course Tom Wolfe, who says interesting things about matters of public consequence, and weaves big ideas into his novels. I don't know that I'm quite ready to call Tom an intellectual, though. He is a superb observer of humanity, and a skillful entertainer, and for that unusual combination we should be grateful; but the big ideas are borrowed from other people. A U.S. Grade-A intellectual? I don't think so, and I doubt Tom would claim the title for himself. Who else have we got? Jane Smiley? Barbara Kingsolver? Don DeLillo? Let us pass on...quickly.

We are hardly any better served by philosophers and theologians than we are by poets and novelists. It's even hard to come up with candidate names. The only active philosopher I can think of is John Searle; but if you were to ask me whether I have read any of his books, I would have to say what Dr. Johnson used to say when similarly cornered: "I have looked into them." Richard John Neuhaus is, it seems to me, as good a theologian as we have any right to expect in this age, but how many Americans — even educated Americans — have heard of him? And what of Tom Kreitzberg? [Okay, I added that last sentence].

Dr. Ralph McInerny

...on democracy & Alexis de Toqueville :

Morality is not a matter of winning arguments -- no matter how important arguments are. Toqueville saw that the master assumption of democracy is the immortality of the soul. He was as aware as you and I of the difficulty of arguments on behalf of that truth. Acknowledging that, he saw immortality as the great basis of moral responsibility, a basis that had to be recognized if democracy were to survive. He went on to say that the essential thing was that politicians exhibit in their actions their conviction that the soul is immortal. That is, that they are answerable for their deeds to a tribunal higher than any on earth. Toqueville's point is basic: The most powerful argument for morality is virtuous men.

This...

from Paul Elie looks interesting.

Florence King

Hambone says he's 'overdosing on Mariology' so I'll give him a momentary break with this snippet of columnist Florence King, who is so proud of her spinsterhood that when asked to fill out forms that inquire of marital status she writes in "spinster". She is also flat-out hilarious. From "Stet, Damnit!":

VMI's contention that single-sex schools 'celebrate diversity' is the steadfast cave-in sundae: when you defend yourself with the enemy's language, you are apologizing whether you know it or not. Claiming 'humanitarian' reasons for your government's actions avoids the need to apologize for having a national interest.
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The biggest difference between Eleanor [Roosevelt] and Hillary is the sexual climate of their respective First Ladyships. Men and women did not hate each other when Eleanor entered the White House...Respectable matrons and virtuous spinsters did not rend the social fabric with single motherhood and paranoid harassment charges as modern feminists have done, so Eleanor never became a symbol of destructive female sexuality. Hillary has come to power at a time when men are roiling with an entirely justified loathing of women, so our First Symbol should not be surprised if they look at her and think: "Her briefcase sucks forth my soul; her capped teeth are the towers of Illium."
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The 'myth' of the masculine artist and thinker - or any worker - is not myth but fact. Its real name is concentration, and it is achieved by making oneself unavailable to others. He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she.

National Shrine Plug

Got an email concerning the "Grace Notes" post saying that all she can think of is Whoopie Goldberg's rendition in "Sister Act"!

I visited the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in D.C. three or four years ago and bought their choir's Marian CD in the gift shop. On the "Hail Holy Queen" track, when the sopranos come in, well, they sound like the seraphim themselves. It highlights what 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon said last night introducing a segment on an opera diva: "There isn’t a musical instrument on earth that can produce sounds as varied, as beautiful, and as heart-rending as the voice of a woman."

And when you combine great voices with the devotion to Mary, well, it just doesn't get any better than that. You could probably find the CD online somewhere for Christmas giftage purposes.

Quotable

The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power but upon our perception being made finer, so that coming suddenly near us from afar off, for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what there is about us always.

- Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

From Danú CD titled "Bridget Donahue", lyrics written 1882

'Twas in the County Kerry, a little ways from Clare,
Where the boys and girls are merry at the pattern dance so fair;
The town is called Killorglin, a pretty place to view,
But the thing that makes it interesting is my Bridget Donahue.

CHORUS: O Bridget Donahue, I really do love you.
Although I'm in America, to you I will be true.
Then Bridget Donahue, I'll tell you what I'll do --
Just take the name of Patterson, and I'll take Donahue.

Her father is a farmer, and a decent man is he.
He's liked by all the people from Killorglin to Tralee.
And Bridget on a Sunday, when coming home from Mass,
She's admired by all the people. Sure they wait to see her pass.

CHORUS

I sent her home a picture. I did, upon my word:
Not a picture of myself, but a picture of a bird.
It was the Yankee eagle, and says I, "Miss Donahue,
Our eagle's wings are large enough to shelter me and you."

Grace Notes

Is there a more affecting Marian anthem than “Hail Holy Queen”? The first and third lines manifest the sobriety of the earthly Mary & Church; the second and fourth lines are a melting “O Maria” in four held notes, each moving down the scale. The melody of the first four lines suggests the Church Militant, determined and on the march, relentless, not sad though somber in that knowledge. Then in the next four lines the earthly mother of Sorrows is lifted up into Glory, into the ecstasy of Heaven, "Maria" traded for "Regina" presaging the Church's triumph:

Triumph, all ye cherubim,
sing with us, ye seraphim,
heaven and earth resound the hymn:
Salve, salve, salve Regina!

Week in Review

The joy-inducing rituals are music, reading, prayerful prayer, a donut & coffee at my desk, spilt sun in the morn through a McDonald’s window, ingesting the serrated edge’d print of a good novel or tasting the other-scent of a good history book. I always think that I’ll sometime add “my wife’s work party” to the list but in practice it never happens that way. So small battles were won and lost without any sense that ground was gained, smelling of Vietnam.

I think part of the “trick” of suburban life is to use leisure time well. You have to read deeply and experience profound art in order to make the dullness of cocktail parties appealing. You are so deep into the novel that you welcome the banal. I think this is the general theory behind horror movies - you're just so damn glad to be alive afterwards.

Sometimes, though, I have my suspicions about art and architecture in the Christian world. I don’t like to have to lean on something that doesn’t necessary HAVE to be there, or could be taken away. Even the sacraments are optional in the sense that they are dependent on having a priest near or living in a country that doesn’t persecute the Faith. Of course, to deny yourself the goods and helps of art is to tempt God, and though He works outside the sacraments that is not a reason to devalue them.
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Reading "Albion's Seed", about the Puritans, and how they often listened to five or six hours of sermons on Sundays, two or more hours in the morning, again in the afternoon and sometimes at night. The amazing thing about it is that they were in no way bored - to the contrary, they were on the edge of their seats. And Fischer says that this is because they were always on the edge salvation-wise, they were hungry to know "what must I do to be saved?".
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SO what else? Just that Tom Wolfe says that novel-writing is glorified reporting. And he is so right. He said what most writers do is cannibalize their first 25 years of life and then their 2nd novel is about a writer who cannibalized his first 25 years of life and has nothing left to say.

Serving All Your Schadenfreude Needs

Happened across an old film I liked titled My Night at Maud's which unfortunately prompted the '70s sitcom tune And then there's Maude! to endlessly re-play in my head.

First Things

Interesting article by John Sisk:

That splendid poet Wallace Stevens had too much irony to harken to such enthralled simplifiers. Yet after World War II, when the times were clamorous with competing world-savers, he would sometimes wonder if he was sufficiently moved by the big, far-reaching issues. As his biographer Joan Richardson tells us, he once admitted in a letter to a friend that "I am, after all, more moved by the first sounds of the birds on my own street than by the death of a thousand penguins in Antarctica." This was a way of saying that charity begins at home-a heretical position for professional world-savers, who in the interest of the distant penguins will gladly sacrifice anyone's local birds, even at the risk of losing the penguins as well. Stevens' casual remark helps us see how crucial can be the difference between mere world-preservers and virtue-hounded world-savers.