Answers to Quick Quiz

1-G, 2-B, 3-F, 4-H, 5-A, 6-E, 7-C, 8-D

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Also, Parody is Therapy updated...

Things That May You Say 'What'? (or our weekly Curmudgeon-in-Training Post)

The Columbus Dispatch reprinted a Wall Street Journal article with the headline "Spiritual activities make us happiest".

I figured by spiritual activities they meant prayer, volunteer work, bible reading, etc...

But spiritual activities are defined therein as exercising, visiting friends, listening to music, fishing, attending church, reading a book, sitting a cafe or going to a party.

The word "spiritual" has really got watered-down if it means going to a party.

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I live in a typical suburb, neither too rich nor too poor. And it was interesting to recently see how many employees have been hired who are not teachers but whose job seems to be handling troubled students. (There are six principals for the local high school - in my day we had one principal, and we liked it!)

Here is a partial breakdown from a local blog:

82 Intervention Specialists including...:

*17 "gifted" instructors & 19 psychologists (Does not include 33 Guidance Counselors)

*17 "gifted" teachers & 40 Reading Recovery/Title reading teachers

*13 Kindergarten Intervention teachers KINDERGARTEN????

It's interesting how over the years the mission of "school" has expanded. Now it includes elaborate sports programs and psychologists, and probably sports psychologists. :-)

Meandering Dream Reverie & a Wiliam F. Buckley Anecdote

I woke from a dream, one I've had in the past, which seems indicative of why I've never been able to write plot. Even in my dreams I'm recycling. My excuse for posting this is that man is a social animal and thus we influence each other and it was Steven Riddle's posting of his dream which encourages it, though admittedly his post was redeemed by theological musings. But without delay:

"C'mon. It'll get the blud flown."

That was the gist of the answering machine message from a fellow Korean war vet recruiting for the annual Burgundy Regatta, named for a founder with a penchant for red wine.

It was like a reunion of twenty-five Charles Bukowski's and I feared for my life while on Boomer's sickle though it was a familiar enough ritual. We'd gather in the basement of Trenchant's Drugs. I'd hitch a ride on Boomer's motorbike, and we'd fan out to smuggle shooters to the non-ambulatory. Then we'd head to Morey's and drink till the "blud" flowed or coagulated, whichever came first.

But to completely switch gears, Steven's post got me thinking, as did something else I saw recently - that of a blog of an apostate - a term that sounds harsh if descriptive, a believer turned atheist. A young man of pyrotechnic philosophic reading, he is trying to enter the sheepfold (that is, Truth) but not through the gate. He reminds me of how one has to be a little child to enter the Kingdom for it does haunt, in the back of my head, that there could be something in his reading that would much challenge, even, rob me of my faith. This is partially a fear of the unknown: you don't know what you don't know, of course. The unknown is usually worse than the known. But then there's the consolation that nothing outside us can rob us of that gift (although one doesn't want to necessarily test it either). Then too, I'm reminded of a priest friend of the late William F. Buckley who consoled WFB over a young apostate. The priest said that all the young lose their faith for a time. "I didn't!" Buckley said, his face incredulous at the very thought.

It is ironic that the Middle Ages are seen as so bloodthirsty when they could only fight about 40 days a year due to the requirements of manpower needed to maintain agriculture. CS Lewis made the chilling observation that if war is sometimes just, then peace is sometimes sinful. - - Kyro Lantsberger at "Chesterton and Friends"

What it is that fetches them [to Lourdes] is I think quite simply stated, namely a reinforced conviction that the Lord God loves His creatures, healthy or infirm; that they — we — must understand the nature of love, which is salvific its powers; and that although we are free to attempt to divine God's purpose, we will never succeed in doing so. The reason is that we cannot know (the manifest contradictions are too disturbing) what is the purpose behind particular phenomena and therefore must make do with only the grandest plan of God, which treats with eternal salvation. Our burden is to keep the faith: to do this (the grammar of ascent) requires the discipline of submission, some assurance that those who are stricken can, even so, be happy; and that the greatest tonic of all is divine love, which is nourished by human love, even as human love is nourished by divine love.- William F. Buckley via Kathryn Lopez

I have come to the realization....that I have strongly Jansenist tendencies. Too long in the camp of those who unthinkingly wander down the aisle at Communion, without regard for worthiness or the probability of sacrilege in the unprepared heart, I found myself committing an equal and opposite sin or sacrilege: refraining too eagerly. Though Augustinian predestination holds no appeal for me whatsoever, much about the Jansenist view of our sinful nature appeals. GK Chesterson's famous bit about reading the daily paper to confirm the doctrine of original sin seems mere inches from the Jansenist worldview, only needing to be updated to viewing the web every day, and even reading a fair number of Catholic blogs. There's a line in the song "Grace" by Phil Wyckam that says "I need a voice that's louder than mine!" and that sort of sums it up: the necessity of grace; the roughness of our sinful nature; and a strong propensity for vacillation between a libertine and scrupulous worldview...Stressing the importance of approaching the Sacrament worthily is good too. And yet...St. Pius X advocated, contra Jansenism, frequent, even daily reception, and wanted First Communion to be as early as possible. So we have modern day, would-be Jansenists like me, and we have an almost Protestant view of Eucharist as symbol, not substance (or Transsubstance), both present in the Church, and both busily judging others...There has to be a place where Jansenism is condenmed but people remain serious, and take worthiness seriously, but also where people are open to God's Grace and calling, open to the sudden recognition of perfect contrition. - blogger at Kairos

my favorite quote is just a little before yours:

"And what is hell? Can you tell me that"

"A pit full of fire."

"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"

"No, sir."

"What must you do to avoid it"

I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: "I must keep in good health and not die."

I think that is a very realistic passage. It is just the sort of practical reply that a child would make. - commenter quoting from and commenting on "Jane Eyre" on Darwin Catholic blog

Did manage to attend a poetry reading....Had my fifteen month old daughter [with me and] stepped outside at 45 minutes into a 2.5 hour reading. Felt sure the coos and burbles were the utmost distraction. Skulked out and felt certain that we'd been blacklisted from the local scene by our mother/toddler duet. Despaired over to a local cafe/bar to await lift home and felt sure the universe was having a laugh at my expense when the menu read:

"wide range of deserts available"

Even sent note to host of event... to apologize for the disruption. Only to learn that in fact, we were fine. Someone else was causing a ruckus that did give host reason for frustrated look. But 'twasn't us. Lesson: Toddlers can attend poetry readings, given stickers and puzzles. And mothers can lose their minds, given inherent paranoia, and still be welcomed back. - new mom at "Mildred's Umbrella"

Oh, you miss that old man when you are here! You feel the presence of his absence. The souvenir shops know. They sell framed pictures and ceramic plates of the pope: John Paul. Is there no Benedict? There is. A photo of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger being embraced by . . . John Paul. It's now on my desk in New York. They have their hands on each other's shoulders and look in each other's eyes. A joyful image. They loved each other and were comrades.

When I was writing a book about John Paul, I'd ask those who'd met him or saw him go by: What did you think, or say? And they'd be startled and say, "I don't know, I was crying."

John Paul made you burst into tears. Benedict makes you think. It is more pleasurable to weep, but at the moment, perhaps it is more important to think. - Peggy Noonan

The narrow way between
the Oyster House and the Bell-in-Hand
is paved with cobbles that knew
and shaped the first streets here.
I step on the same stones that bore
the weight of independence; that
carried those who planned
to tan the sea with British tea. - Excerpt of Steven Riddle poem

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn’t thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to “be black” despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn’t this hatred more rhetorical than real? But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one’s blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America’s television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred. - Shelby Steele on Barack Obama and his pastor problem

I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ... - Mickey Kaus via Terrence Berres

The [papal] trip begins in Washington, and the White House has announced that the pope and the president will "continue their dialogue on the interplay of faith and reason." (This prompted a long-suffering Bush supporter to say, "I'm seeing the collision of matter and antimatter.")- Peggy Noonan

Sing like Neil Diamond...

"He's Comin' to America!....Today!"

Pray for Sancta Sanctis

Book Recommendation

I've lately been reading Fr. Francis Randolph's Pardon & Peace: A Sinner's Guide to Confession and it is uncommonly well-written: clear, concise and very interesting. The chapter (or partial chapter) on indulgences - an honest, brief historical account - is the best thing I've seen written on the subject. I'd never heard of the author before, so I was thinking as I was reading it: "wow, where did he come from?".

An excerpt that mentions the title of this blog (though obviously not referring to my blog):

Ultimately, Pelagianism empties the Christian gospel of all content...and, I think, can be shown to be illogical in some of its connections and unworkable in practice.

For a start, the basic premise that we can control our own behavior is disproved by our own everyday experience. "Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor", sang the pagan poet (Ovid, Metapmorphoses 7:19), neatly translated by St. Paul as "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Rom 7:19).

The Great American Catholic Quiz

Match column A with Catlick personality in Column B:

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1) Extremely articulate TV/radio guy 2) Extremely articulate radio guy 3) Droppin' his g's is his thang 4) Your other Jewish mother 5) Germanic in tone and style 6) Like the late Heston, has the voice of Moses    7) Mark Shea called her a national treasure 8) The Catlick Larry King, only more interesting

A) Karl Keating B) Jerry Usher C) Amy Welborn D) Al Kresta E) Fr. John Corapi F) Jimmy Akin G) Raymond Arryo H) Rosalind Moss

Answers tomorrow!

OBAMA AS ICARUS

"Don't fly too close to the elites," they said,
as the media fashioned his wings,
"Don't fly too close to the hicks," they said,
"if you want to be one of the kings!"

But heady the elation
at a 'Frisco celebration,
when he said the hicks were bitter,
and: "they need a babysitter!"

Still his arms did flap
- aft' that fateful day,
but bit-by-bit his myth
began to melt away.

Author, Author

I just noticed Library Things has a gallery of the pictures of authors whose books you own. Pretty cool:

Ms and Ns

Death at a Crosswalk

The shocking news this week is the death of a crosswalk guard, who saved an 8-year old’s life by either shielding him or pushing him out of the way of the driver of a dump truck that hadn’t seen either of them.

Like most tragedies, this required an unlikely series of events. One is that the driver would not see them in the crosswalk despite the yellow lights and signs and the fact that the guard was carrying a stop sign of some sort. Then too you have to have the crosswalk guard and the child not judge that the truck wasn’t going to stop, not to be able to escape until it was too late. It must be hard to tell that a vehicle is not going to stop, especially if, as is reported, he wasn’t speeding and was going under 20mph. You probably can’t imagine that he can’t see you.

One thing is certain: the law of physics doesn’t obey any right-of-way laws. A 150-lb person is no match for a 2 or 3 ton vehicle, be they in a crosswalk or not.

A half-dozen years ago it was early on a Sunday morning and I anticipated very light traffic on the normally busy road that leads out of our annex. I was making a left turn and so looked briefly to the left, then a bit longer to the right. Nothing. The roads were clear as day as I pulled out into the intersection.

*smash*

Out of nowhere a car to my left hit me just below the driver’s panel. Fortunately no one was hurt and I apologized profusely to the driver. The driver’s wife was extremely angry but the driver much less so. “This car is six months’ old,” he said, “and this is the second time its been in a major accident that wasn’t my fault.”

Later I went back to the scene of the accident and tried to figure out how I could’ve missed that car. Obviously I should’ve looked left again (left-right-left as is taught). (I'd looked left while in the intersection, which is like putting on a condom after sex.) The car seemed blended with the environment; a perfect color tan. I thought if it had been red… Excuses...But I didn’t see the car and couldn’t replay the tape. And based on that experience I have sympathy for the driver of the dump truck that hit them. How heavy the guilt must feel.

The driver looked haggard, slovenly, like he was permanently in just-trying-to-get-thru-the-day mode. He was an overweight 40-yr old who was the picture of someone whose life was slightly out of control. Years of watching COPS on FOX has led me to the conclusion that having a cigarette when you're in trouble is not a sign of insouciance but nervousness. They reach for their cigarettes for comfort.

May he find and experience forgiveness and may God bring something good out of something so bad.

The Salvation Controversy

Sometimes the blog comments in a thread are better than the original post, and I think this was reflected in a dead tree equivalent: in this case, the tasty Correspondence section of the May First Things (not online yet) in response to this article authored by Avery Cardinal Dulles.

The original article, I think, intends to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" with regard to the issue of salvation and as such is unsatisfying. We seek the truth in order to escape the lens of our own prejudices and yet in this instance those who are comfortable will likely assume all statements of comfort are meant for them, and those afflicted will assume all afflicting statements are for them. To the extent something contains seeming contradictions we will likely affirm in them what we already have a tendency to affirm.

The letters in response, by comparison, are models of clarity and conviction even if they don't illuminate the answer to the controversy so much as illuminate the first principles.

I think the principles in regard to answering "Who will be saved?" include the attempt to look at what has been revealed to us (including from Scriptural, Patristic, & Magisterial sources) and go where the data leads you. This seems an intrinsically holy, self-effacing way to go about it.

Another method is also holy and self-effacing albeit the opposite of the previous method. It recognizes that Truth transcends the confines of Scripture and Tradition. Wherever Truth is found, God is found. So some operate on the assumption that a holy, merciful, loving God is incompatible with a God in which those who don't know Christ go to hell. This method is subject to abuse but is necessary because God does limit Himself to goodness after all, and at least since William of Occam, that attribute of God can't be taken for granted.

A third method is to see the salvation issue merely as a means to an end: the truth of how many are saved is not important except the impact it has on personal behavior of Christians. Here truth is not sought for its own sake but as a means to the end.

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I recall a Baptist preacher trying to remove works from the salvation equation by saying "how many works is enough? One, two, twenty-five, three-thousand?". But that sort of line-drawing is present in his "faith alone" theory since faith is a continuum. You could say "how much faith is enough? Mere intellect assent? Enough to have felt it once but never thereafter? Enough to pray occasionally? Enough to die for Him?"

There's also the pious sentiment that "only God reads hearts, so only He knows who is saved" but I would argue it's exactly the opposite. Only God knows Himself, and so only He knows who is saved. It wouldn't matter if we could read hearts because we wouldn't know where to draw that line between saved and unsaved. It's not heart-reading that matters, but the line between Judgment and Mercy (is there one? or will they 'kiss'?), and only God knows where to draw it. Man would have to know God and man doesn't: I'll quote a mystic saint (St. Faustina) in support:

I asked Jesus why the Angels had been punished as soon as they had sinned. I heard a voice: Because of their profound knowledge of God. No person on earth, even though a great saint, has such knowledge of God as an Angel has.

As a priest on EWTN's forum once wrote with regard to the issue:

Your salvation is in the hands of God. You are asked to place your faith and hope in that God, who alone knows your eternal destiny and whom alone you can totally trust. Thus, there can be no greater certainty than that in your faith and hope in God saving you. And remember that the faith and hope are themselves also gifts from God. There is no purely human knowledge of one's eternal destiny that can contain the infinitely greater certainty contained in your faith and hope through Christ our Lord.

Tragic

A local crossing guard was killed today. How sad. If you might say a prayer for her soul it would be appreciated.

Two Generals

On Thomas J. Jackson, from the Columbus Dispatch:

Historian Bevin Alexander is a Virginian but doesn’t count himself among William Faulkner’s unvanquished Southerners — despite the title of his new book: How the South Could Have Won the Civil War...

“To use an old Southern phrase, we are well shut of our selfish aristocrats, who tried until the last to hold on to the unpaid labor of slaves so as to get and keep their wealth.

“The elimination of slavery and the aristocrats who fed on it was a glorious and long-overdue advance.”

The advance, Alexander posits, could easily have been delayed or thwarted had the Confederates done one simple thing: listened to Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

Robert E. Lee gets most of the accolades when historians gauge the brilliance (or lack thereof) of Civil War generals North and South. But to Alexander, the only true genius, the only visionary general, was Jackson.

The advent of the minie ball rifle — accurate to a quarter-mile, four times farther than the musket — created what Alexander calls “a new kind of war,” one that called on new tactics to replace those perfected during the Napoleonic Wars.

Jackson,not Lee, understood this, imploring Confederate President Jefferson Davis to wage war on the civilian population of the North on the one hand and beseeching Lee to outflank Union forces on the other.

Even three brutal years into the war, Lee was ignoring Jackson’s advice; witness the folly of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.

The textbook for the new kind of war was laid out by Jackson in his masterly Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862, characterized by skilled deception and troop movement.

...In Alexander’s estimation, “War is fundamentally a struggle between two intellects rather than a conflict of masses.” And Jackson was a great general because “great generals avoid battles whenever they can.”

But avoidance is unheroic, and stealth in war unmanly.

“Our language reflects how strongly we feel about this — ‘stab in the back,’ ‘backbiter’ and ‘blindsiding’ are all pejorative terms,” Alexander writes. “Reflecting the human tendency to be direct rather than devious or circuitous, most generals throughout history have been unsubtle warriors who attacked the enemy right in front of them.”

Unfortunately, Jackson was a reluctant chronicler of his theories about warfare, and they mostly died with him after the battle of Chancellorsville.

Lest we think too harshly of our Civil War generals, it is important to remember that half a century later, during World War I, the preferred method of battle was the frontal attack.

The warriors had learned little from America’s bloodiest confrontation.

And, an excerpt of poem about Ulysses S. Grant in National Review titled "GENERAL GRANT":

It is not hard to admire him.
There is always something in Grant
that speaks of simple dignity
along the lines of Rembrandt’s self-portraits,
without the overtones of glory
that the champions of Southern history
seek so avidly for their heroes:
The shattered petals,
the blood across the peach blossoms — Shiloh,
where modern war
broke upon the world.
They are part of the reason.
So is the grinding, war-weary attrition,
dragged from the Wilderness
to the siege of Petersburg,
taking all summer and winter,
into the spring.

To find no glory in any of it is to
overspeak the truth,
as is the invocation of duty,
self-sacrifice and commitment,
as an explanation, complete.

On any canvas worthy of the paint
there is no such thing;
although at the distance
of almost a century and a half,
I would be remiss
in not siding with those
who call him
America’s greatest soldier.

Much of the rest is elusive,
and as far from his impressive resting place
as is the ribbon of a distant river
disappearing into a distant forest.

— WILLIAM W. RUNYEON

Evolving Views of Christ's Baptism

I'd long been interested in the "pyrotechnics" associated with the Baptism of Jesus, such as the dove appearing and the Father's voice saying, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased. Listen to Him."

This seemed like too much fuss. Why would the Father say to the Son that He was proud of him, pleased by him, at that moment? This was not an especially service-oriented, like healing someone. Nor was it self-sacrificial in the way that the Crucifixion. So why was the Father pleased by the Son in such a seemingly minor act?

My evolving view is not "either/or" but "and/all three" of the following:

1980s: My view was limited such that the supernatural events occurred only in order to encourage us to be baptized too. The Father was attaching great significance to this event so that we would believe in the efficacy of Baptism of the New Covenant (and thus by extension all the sacraments). What happened to Jesus at his baptism in a visible way would happen to us invisibly during our Baptism.

1990s: Over time I began seeing the Father's approbation due to Christ humbling himself, that the Father was pleased because Jesus was fulfilling all righteousness as an example to us. As John the Baptist said, the baptism should be the other way around, and so how pleased the Father was by this show of humility.

2000s: I began to see it as symbolic of much more. The reason the Father was so pleased by this act was that it meant Jesus, who had no need for baptism since he hadn't sinned, was making the decision to take on our sins. This was something that would lead to Calvary, the ultimate sacrifice and ultimate act of love, and so no wonder the Father was pleased!