~ The Feast of the Immaculate Conception ~

The Solemnity of Mary, on January 1st, feels like an attempt to "baptize" a secular holiday, with limited success. College football games tend to predominate the landscape. And the Assumption falls in the middle of August when many are on vacations or just going, or just getting back. Say it with me: Distractions! But today we can lustily sing "Hail Holy Queen" with as little distraction as our poor human nature allows.

There's something wonderful about the timing, always in the beginning of Advent. The latest Word Among Us quotes Francis Carvajal:

"The spirit of Advent largely consists in living close to our Lady during the time she is carrying Jesus in her womb."

The Assumption is not as surprising as the Immaculate Conception. The preservation of Mary from Original Sin is, well, quite original post-Fall. There had been others possibly assumed into Heaven (Enoch and Elijah come to mind) but no one born post-Adam & Eve without the taint of sin. This is something to celebrate and savor and all the more so because of Mary's response to her wealth. Speaking of Mary's Magnificat, Joyce Rupp writes,

"In her canticle of praise, Mary acknowledges she is special in God's eyes, but she does not consider herself better than others. On the contrary, Mary continues her prayerful song by focusing on the mercy and compassion of God. "

Update: Philokalia Republic quotes Balthasar "Denial of the Immaculate Conception, then, is the very apogee of the Pelagian heresy!"

Interesting Perspective on Russia's Collapse

From The Corner:

Re: True Believers [Mark Krikorian]

Andrew and Roman are right, of course, that communism really did serve as a substitute religion in the Soviet Union (remember also "Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live!"). And I agree that this faith died, probably in the 1970s, but that's the point — Christianity died in Europe and communism, after it killed Christianity in Russia, itself died, probably in the 1970s, leaving people believing in nothing and sapping the Soviet state of what legitimacy it had (other than the fading memory of winning the "Great Patriotic War"). In other words, the fall of the Soviet Union didn't create a spiritual void in the hearts of Russians — it was the other way around.

As for vodka, the Reds themselves saw in the 1980s that it was becoming an increasingly serious social problem — remember that the first "reformist" initiative that Gorbachev undertook was to limit the amount of vodka a person could buy at any one time at the government liquor stores.

Maestro...Strike up the Band  

To the tune "Rudolph":

You know Jordan and Hamilton,
O'Connor and Eagleberger,
Simpson and Meese and
Panetta and Perry,
but do you recall
the most famous Iraq Study Group Member of all?

Baker, the red-nosed wise man
had a very large forehead.
And if you ever saw it,
you would even say it glows.

All of the other insiders
used to laugh and call him names.
They never let poor Jimmy
join in any wise man games.

Then one foggy Iraq war
W came to say:
“James there with your head so bright,
won't you guide this wreck tonight?”

But Baker had no answers,
No dramatic touchdown pass,
Ne'er were hopes so risen,
only to fade so fast!

_______

Thank you, may you have another?

To the tune "Lookin' For Love":

Looking for a democracy in all the wrong places
Looking for liberty in too many faces
Searching their eyes, looking for traces
Of what.. I'm dreaming of...
Hopin' to find a friend and an ally
God bless the day I discover
Another heart, lookin' for democracy.

Hussein came a'knockin' at a trap door,
He was so brutal I figured they'd want something more.
I thought he was packin', he flaunted the rules
I made a bet and threw the jewels...

No more looking for democracy in all the wrong places
Looking for freedom in too many faces
Searching your eyes, looking for traces
Of what.. I'm dreaming of...
Now that I've found no friends or cover
God bless the day I discover
Another heart, lookin' for democracy.

Excerpt of a poem found on First Things:

Faint, the Little Matchgirl, falling,
Strikes a match to ward off winter,
Sees it blaze like phoenix feathers,
Green and gold and Hope’s bright whiteness—
Like a dying moth, it flutters.

Mary rides; her heart still flutters,
Though she does not know of snowflakes
Save a star whose wondrous whiteness
Blazes forth to stop man’s falling,
Heralds Hope like angel feathers
Left within her lap last winter.

Hope still flutters, icons falling,
Six-vaned snowflakes, Heaven’s feathers,
Stars of whiteness lighting winter.

—Kevin Andrew Murphy

Effective Ad

A French tourism agency has a new ad up on Yahoo Mail, and it certainly caught my attention:



I went out to Franceguide.com to see what else was there, picture-wise:

 

Those Heartless Conservatives



The liberal line on conservatism is that it's heartless and lacks emotion, but anyone who's read the life of Russell Kirk, one of the founding paleoconservatives, knows that he was the opposite of heartless and emotionless. He once let a beggar live in his house for an extended period of time - how many liberal giants have? Conservatism might sometimes actually be the product of TOO much heart and emotion because of its intense suspicion of change. Why the suspicion? Can you say "French Revolution"? Or Communism? Experience has shown that throwing out the old verities is often the recipe for more pain and suffering.

What liberalism has but conservatism lacks is a moving, emotional story. With liberalism you can write wonderful stories about how this injustice was righted or that person was saved from poverty by a welfare check. But with conservatism, it's harder to write an emotional story about the person who wouldn't have been able to feed his family but for, say, the economic climate fostered by a government not screwing things up. Suffering avoided by conservative governance is not a story; suffering ameliorated by government is a story.

Concerning the conservation of human life, it's becoming more difficult for liberals to play the emotion card, that being strictly of the pain of the mother. Whereas before the child in the womb was mute and invisible, we can now see the child via ultrasounds and improved technology. Suddenly the reluctant mother's pain and inconvenience at bearing a child is not the only reality. We still can't write a moving account of what would've been for a child who was killed in the womb, but we can at least show a picture of what they looked like at the time of their death.

From The Corner:

A doctor, an architect and a lawyer debate whose is the oldest profession.

"Medicine," said the doctor, "is the oldest profession. After all did not God cause a sleep to fall upon Adam at which point he removed a rib and fashioned it into Eve? Was this not the first operation with anesthetic. Therefore, medicine is the oldest profession."

"Not so fast," replied the architect, "What about a week earlier? God created the heavens and earth from primordial choas. This was clearly a giangantic act of design, therefore architecture is the oldest profession."

"Wait," said the lawyer, "Who do you think made primordial choas?"

Today's Parody...
____

Leftist Actor Threatens to Leave Earth for Mars

HOLLYWOOD,CA -- Actor Alec Baldwon said Tuesday that if Earth doesn't get its act together soon then he might move to Mars.

"I'm extremely disappointed with the Earth. Humanity, hurricanes and global warming to name three. If things don't improve with the '08 election I'm moving to Mars."

When told that Mars was uninhabitable, Baldwon said that he hadn't focused so much on the alternatives to Earth but was merely saying that Earth had to improve - or else.

"I'm not into the whole lesser of two evil calculation. That's just not me. But having said that, I think the proven incompetency of Earth is a worse evil than the unproven incompetency of Mars."

Dr. Stephen J. Phillips of the Brookings Institute says that Baldwon's threatened flight will become commonplace as globalization proceeds.

"As we globalize, people will no longer be able to scapegoat the U.S. as much. For many on the Left the Earth itself will become 'the new America', and death preferable to life."
____

Russia's Collapse

Stanley Kurtz asks: has atheism killed Russia? A round-up of thoughts on the subject:

Link:

In the “Life of the Moscow Starets Fr. Aleksei Mechev”, now a saint, the Nun Juliania wrote about the “collapse and the demise of Church life”, about the “religious coolness, indifference, the absence of Christian love, an overall detachment and a burrowing into the narrow circle of personal or family interests” which was taking place in Russia at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. “The life of the Church, with all the wealth of its spiritual treasures, with all its beauty and faithfulness to the proper Divine services, flowed like a weak, hardly noticeable little stream, of little interest not only to the lay folk but to the pastors of the Church as well,” observed Mother Juliania, making exceptions only for the monasteries. The contemporary theologian Hegumen [now Bishop] Hilarion Alfeyev likewise bears witness to this: the majority of believers came to Church and made their confession once a year – during Great Lent. Such was the crisis of Church life.

Link:

According to Lev Gudkov, a sociologist who heads the department of social and political studies at the Yuri Levada Center, creationism signals a desire to reject anything associated with Soviet times: "It is definitely a post-Soviet, exaggerated, insistence on pre-Soviet traditional views. This is observed mostly among young people and among the elderly. We discern an overall tendency towards imitational traditionalism that emerged as a reaction to the vacuum of ideas and beliefs that followed the disintegration of Soviet ideology."

Link:

....the most difficult thing to understand about the present situation in Russia is what he calls the mentality of the people. Only this, he insists, will explain where the country will go. Naumov is convinced that the mentality of the people is conditioned by their exhaustion, not their frustrations or expectations. It is shaped by a past, which, as much as they try to escape it, has taught them patience and providential self-protection. Despite the flood of foreign goods, democratic vistas urged on by advertising, and dreams of quick money, it is a psychology of scarcity, frugality, making do, and self-effacement.

Link:

In nearly all of his major writings, Solzhenitsyn appeals to the indispensability of the spiritual qualities of “repentance” and “self-limitation” for a truly balanced individual and collective life...He is not, however, unduly sanguine about the prospects for these virtues in the contemporary scene. As he writes in November 1916, “In the life of nations, even more than in private life, the rule is that concessions and self-limitation are ridiculed as naïve and stupid.” Solzhenitsyn thus has no illusions about repentance and self-limitation becoming the explicit and unchallenged foundation of free political life.

Link:

Pearce: Do you believe that the West is in the same blind alley and also has nowhere to go?

Solzhenitsyn: Over the last twelve years I have stopped viewing Russia as something very distinct from the West. Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word "modernity" if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China. With the exception of those areas we should not use the words "the West" but the word "modernity". The modern world. And yes, then I would say that there are ills that are characteristic, that have plagued the West for a long time and now Russia has quickly adopted them also.

Pearce: What is the present position of Christianity in Russia?

Solzhenitsyn: After the permission was freely given for people to practise their faith the number of Christianity's adherents has grown. Many under an atheistic press, a vice grip, had forgotten their faith so there is now something of a return to Christianity yet simultaneously there is a decay of values which accompanies the rise of consumer society. It is a simultaneous process.

Ham Gets Some Backup

I was talking to Hambone of Soc Engineer recently and he was underwhelmed by the latest Bond, saying that this Bond was unrecognizable from past Bonds. He also said there's an obvious homoerotic component. I hadn't thought of that when I was watching it, but in hindsight the naked torture scene did seem a bit much. Still, I was perhaps a little skeptical. But not so after this Church of the Masses review:

When I was in film school, my radical feminist lesbian professors were quite adament that we all leave Northwestern with a keen sense of what they called "the male gaze" in cinema. The "Male Gaze" is a fundamentally skewed-with-patriarchy way of seeing the world and especially women that, my professors contended, was predicable of pretty much all of classic Hollywood cinema. They used to endlessly dissect camera angles and lighting in shots to reveal cues of the male desire to dominate and dehumanize women. A lot of times I thought my professors were nuts and paranoid. But every now and then they had a point.

Well, I gotta say, there is something icky in Casino Royale that feels very much like what we could call "the homosexual gaze." The women in the film, first of all, spend much of the film very ioconically made up - shall we say, like Liza Minelli or a Marilyn impersonator?

'Dear Joseph'

The Anglican blogger at "Stand Firm" imagines a Schori letter to Pope Benedict. The "Thanksgiving Day" was a nice touch, making the point of Schori's American provincialism. Elsewhere, this too is telling:



Dwight Longenecker writes:

It would be wonderful if a good number of disenchanted Anglicans would consider seriously the pastoral provision and the opportunities made available by the Anglican Usage as being pioneered by Eric Bergman in Scranton. There really are fresh ways forward that would allow them to bring the riches of the Anglican tradition into full communion with the Catholic Church.

Best Movie I've Seen in Awhile

I very much concur with this positive review of Stranger than Fiction. The film does perpetuate the lie that premarital sex is a positive good, but sadly that's not unusual. I don't want to give away the ending, so I'll type the rest of this review in invisible ink (which won't be invisible if you're reading an XML feed).

*** SPOILER ALERT *** (highlight the white text below to view):

Hollywood sees redemption as passé. Corny and syrupy. Just as the Resurrection is embarrassing for Jesus Seminar scholars, happy endings are for Hollywood screenwriters. Nihilism and tragedies are hot, happy endings and resurrections not. So how to deal? To admit mediocrity up front? Dustin Hoffman's character, the lit crit in the movie, says the writer's new, happy ending made the book only "average". He saw the author's re-writing as resulting in the loss of a poetic, lasting, tragic work of art.

But in the end the author determined it was more important to bring joy. She argued that she never intended the character have foreknowledge of his death and the joy he brought to others made her keep the character around.

Not surprisingly, real-life screenwriter Nicolosi hated it. This might be one of the cases where if you're too familiar with film-making, many films are ruined for you. Reminds me how many Scriptural scholars find no joy in Scripture, getting hung-up on technical details while missing the whole point.

I liked the Christ parallels. Ferrel knowingly gives his life for a child. Beforehand he goes to Hoffman and says, basically, "is there any way this cup can pass?". Hoffman replies in the negative and explains the poetry of it, the rightness of it and how the book will last forever. Ferrel's character acccepts this and sacrifices himself for the child and the art - and yet he does not die but lives. Sound familiar?

Hearing God's Callings

"Why does God have to be so elusive about communicating our callings?"

How much do these repeated acts of love–flowing out from the papacy now for over thirty years–matter? Do they make a small dent in a hardened, modernized world? Do they re-shape everything? Are they beautiful but ultimately quixotic? My opinion tends to vacillate among those three choices, but more and more lately, I’ve been tending to think they re-shape everything. - Eric Scheske of "The Daily Eudemon" on the papal visit

If you don't go through the whole bible at one time or another, you miss so much context! A Maronite priest I know refers to the scriptures as a "seamless garment". - commenter on Disputations

Many elite thinkers on the theological left have learned how to surround their beliefs in a kind of nuanced theological fog that serves as a protective barrier. Insiders know what the symbolic word clusters mean, but this strategy prevents many people in the pews — the kind of ordinary people who write checks — from understanding what is going on. There are exceptions, of course, such as the retired Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong of Newark, who never used a fly swatter when a baseball bat would do. - blogger at "Get Religion"

Knowing you'll have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations. -- Vladimir Nabokov

We labored at those kayak paddles like galley slaves. If we craved ease, why did we act so? It was not ease we sought at all, but action that we wanted. Action for it's own sake, because the idea of destination was slipping away from us...I believed completely that the wilderness heals, if only because it is one of the few places on earth that simply leaves you alone to be yourself. - David Smith in "The Healing Journey"

Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry -- for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone. Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. - H.L. Mencken via Rich Leonardi

Yes, in fact I am so baffled by it that I think that it might be Uncle Screwtape's cleverest trick. Lewis is very good at understanding sin, and that is the strength of The Screwtape Letters. However, he is completely lost as to what to do about it, as is evidenced by his utter bafflement as to sacramental grace and his death extra ecclesia. So, yes, if you need to glean insights on the nature of sin, Lewis is invaluable...I went from being a Stalinist dialectical materialist to the logical next step of libertarian dialectical materialist (still believe in class struggle, but figure out which class is actually going to win in that model). It was reading Thomas Aquinas (first via Umberto Eco) that I came to the conclusion that God existed. At that point it boiled down to Mohammedanism, Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy. But it is a long story... - Erik Keilholtz commenting on Happy Catholic on C.S. Lewis' failure to convert and then his own conversion

Christmas is not the day the Son of God began to share our life. It is the day He began to share our death. From the moment of birth, we are dying, cell by cell. Most of the cells are replaced, and in childhood at least, many more are born, but it is at birth that we begin to die. If Jesus Christ was true man, as well as true God, as the Church confesses, then at His birth He began to experience physical death. On Good Friday, He would experience it to the full, and on Easter He would conquer it for us forever...On Christmas we prepare for Good Friday, and thus for Easter. That is what we will be celebrating.- Henry Dieterich of "A Plumbline in the Wind"

Tonight, I have nothing to do. After tonight? Social, service, or family obligations nine out of the next ten days... But I will prevail! By the power of Norman Vincent Peale positive thinking, a few pale ales, and–in a pinch–a chemical lobotomy, I will make it through...A reader wrote yesterday, asking if I give up beer for Lent. The answer is “no,” and the reason is pretty obvious: I can’t be hungover on Mondays. (For my non-Catholic readers: Sundays aren’t included in the traditional Lenten fast, so Lenten sacrifices are normally indulged on Sundays.) - Eric of "The Daily Eudemon"

My one and only experience with beer, or with much of any alcohol, came during a trip to Victoria British Columbia to meet with participants in the International Echinoderm Conference. - Steven Riddle, via email. This struck me as funny: those partyin' Echinodermers!

When our attention is directed toward physical illness, it is natural to think of the effects of the sacrament [of Annointing] in terms of physical healing. Sacraments, however, are celebrations of faith, expressions of who we are before God. This understanding of sacrament, together with the realization that we are more than our physical body, has led us to look again at the effects of the Sacrament of Anointing... The Second Vatican Council has reminded us: 'The purpose of the sacraments is to make people holy, to build up the Body of Christ and finally to give worship to God'. The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick accomplishes this by helping us gain insight into the religious meaning of human suffering." - Fr. Greg of "St Andrew's Q&A"

There's a Monty Python sketch that depicts the World War II-era British army using a "killer joke" against the Germans - a joke that literally destroys everyone who hears it. I think of faith as being the opposite: a joke that, when you're in on it, makes you alive, while everyone who's not in on it decays...Faith, like humor, is all about having a sense of the absurd - and feeling deep inside that the people who puff themselves up are the very people who need to come down a notch or three. Especially if that "people" is one's self. - Dawn Eden in her book "The Thrill of the Chaste"

Sounds Eucharistic...

Excerpt from Selected Writings of Friedrich von Hugel:

All the finest recent psychology, indeed also the deepest epistemology, show us, and insist upon, how we, poor human beings, at least in this life, never begin (or in the long run keep up) the apprehension of things spiritual except on occasion of the awakedness and stimulation of the senses. That is, there is no such thing as an exclusively spiritual awakening to, or apprehension of, spiritual realities. This, to my mind, is already decisive against all purely spiritual, entirely mystical, quite non-historical, quite non-successive religion.

Next, religiously, the human soul, upon the whole, in the long run, in its richest developments, certainly, I think, requires not a half-way house for it on its way to God, but God himself to come down to it, not half-way but the whole way. To put it in the most homely way: surely the infant does not feel its mother's breast a 'half-way house', a queer artificial intermezzo between itself and its mother; but the infant feels that breast as the self-giving of that mother, as a self-compression, a touching condescension for bringing the mother's own life to the infant, and thus gradually to raise this infant to the mother's strength and stature. St. Augustine, surely, surely, had got this point right, in spite of the great attractions which quite certainly a purely spiritual religion possessed for wide stretches of his mind.