Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Richmond, Virginia
My aunt turned 90 years of age on Saturday. Her husband is likewise turning 90 this year, but all the fanfare was for her. I attended the festivities with beloved kin.
I took my mother to Saint Benedict Church for Mass on Sunday morning. I knew it would be a pretty parish, being in an old part of the city next to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and the Virginia Historical Society. It not only is beautiful, but the Mass was traditional and the cantor and organist were superb.
[The mural is above the altar at St. Benedict. If you sit forward, the Christ is high above with Joseph and Mary below as well as five saints I believe to be Augustine, Gregory the Great, Benedict, Jerome, and Ambrose.]
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Archbishop Charles Chaput speaks out on modern secularism...
'Writing in the 1960s, Richard Weaver, an American scholar and social philosopher, said: "I am absolutely convinced that relativism must eventually lead to a regime of force."
'He was right. There is a kind of "inner logic" that leads relativism to repression.
'This explains the paradox of how Western societies can preach tolerance and diversity while aggressively undermining and penalizing Catholic life. The dogma of tolerance cannot tolerate the Church's belief that some ideas and behaviors should not be tolerated because they dehumanize us. The dogma that all truths are relative cannot allow the thought that some truths might not be.'
The whole speech is here.
Hat tip: Jay Anderson.
'He was right. There is a kind of "inner logic" that leads relativism to repression.
'This explains the paradox of how Western societies can preach tolerance and diversity while aggressively undermining and penalizing Catholic life. The dogma of tolerance cannot tolerate the Church's belief that some ideas and behaviors should not be tolerated because they dehumanize us. The dogma that all truths are relative cannot allow the thought that some truths might not be.'
The whole speech is here.
Hat tip: Jay Anderson.
A good thought...
"If we patiently accept through love all that God allows to happen, then we will begin to taste even here on earth something of the delights the saints experience in heaven. But for this we must serve God willingly and lovingly, seeking to obey the Divine Will rather than to follow our own inclinations and desires. For the perfection of love demands that we desire for ourselves only whatever God wills. Let us implore the good God unceasingly to grant us this grace!"
~~ St. Jane Frances de Chantal
Posted by Karen Edmisten. She has posted quite a bit on homeschooling.
~~ St. Jane Frances de Chantal
Posted by Karen Edmisten. She has posted quite a bit on homeschooling.
The Almost Forgotten Sir Walter Scott
Elena Maria Vidal remembers Scotland's most famous writer of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Russell Kirk was a fan. Scott's Gothic vision of Britain countered the Enlightenment at a crucial time. And as Ms. Vidal would likely agree, the Enlightenment brought more heat than light.
"The Perfect Iranian Storm on the Horizon"
Michael Totten interviews Israeli scholar Jonathan Spyer. It is a rambling but compelling discussion of the Middle East, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, and other places. The whole thing is worth reading. They have the beginning of wisdom because they admit what they don't know.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
More on the tragic effects of China's "one child" policy
China has more than 30,000 forced abortions per day, and the result is a society in which the young men outnumber the young women. It is a formula for violence.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
"Universities: Who Needs 'Em?"
David Warren raises the unraisable issue.
'I do not doubt that the founders of the universities at Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, and so forth meant well. But in light of the experience of the last nine centuries, were they a good idea?
'The modern view is that the question lies beyond asking. But that is one of the problems with the modern view: There are too many questions it can't or won't ask.'
'I do not doubt that the founders of the universities at Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, and so forth meant well. But in light of the experience of the last nine centuries, were they a good idea?
'The modern view is that the question lies beyond asking. But that is one of the problems with the modern view: There are too many questions it can't or won't ask.'
[Photo of Old Library, University of Salamanca.]
Monday, August 23, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Beauty and belief
"In the experience of extraordinary beauty, we are able to grasp a phemomenon that otherwise remain's veiled. What we encounter in such an experience is as overwhelming as a miracle, something we will never get over."
Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar
Has anyone else read Fr. Peter John Cameron's editorial in the August Magnificat which includes the quotation above? He discusses the Transfiguration as a revelation that transforms through its beauty. He says, "What moves us beyond our fatalism is wonder." He also quotes Saint Gregory of Nyssa: "Ideas lead to idols; only wonder leads to knowing."
I have struggled with doubt more as an adult than as a teenager. When I am not teaching, I study and meditate less. My doubts will grow, and then I will see or hear something beautiful and will believe.
Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar
Has anyone else read Fr. Peter John Cameron's editorial in the August Magnificat which includes the quotation above? He discusses the Transfiguration as a revelation that transforms through its beauty. He says, "What moves us beyond our fatalism is wonder." He also quotes Saint Gregory of Nyssa: "Ideas lead to idols; only wonder leads to knowing."
I have struggled with doubt more as an adult than as a teenager. When I am not teaching, I study and meditate less. My doubts will grow, and then I will see or hear something beautiful and will believe.
Friday, August 20, 2010
"Information Overload Is Nothing New: From the Roman Empire to the BlackBerry jam"
When the Sony Walkman appeared on my campus in the 1980s, I immediately saw the impact. However, I never imagined cell phones, Blackberries, I-Phones, etc.
Peggy Noonan describes our current isolation perfectly:
'A lot of people seem here but not here. They're pecking away on a piece of plastic; they've withdrawn from the immediate reality around them and set up temporary camp in a reality that exists in their heads. It involves their own music, their own conversation, whether written or oral. This contributes to the new obliviousness, to the young woman who steps off the curb unaware the police car with blaring siren is barreling down the street.'
The piece goes on to discuss William Powers' Hamlet's Blackberry and the information explosion in the Roman Empire at the time of Lucius Annaeus Seneca:
'Seneca, at the center of it all, struggled with the information glut, and with something else. He became acutely conscious of "the danger of allowing others—not just friends and colleagues but the masses—to exert too much influence on one's thinking." The more connected a society becomes, the greater the chance an individual can become a creature, or even slave, of that connectedness.'
Inspired by Seneca, I'm signing off.
Peggy Noonan describes our current isolation perfectly:
'A lot of people seem here but not here. They're pecking away on a piece of plastic; they've withdrawn from the immediate reality around them and set up temporary camp in a reality that exists in their heads. It involves their own music, their own conversation, whether written or oral. This contributes to the new obliviousness, to the young woman who steps off the curb unaware the police car with blaring siren is barreling down the street.'
The piece goes on to discuss William Powers' Hamlet's Blackberry and the information explosion in the Roman Empire at the time of Lucius Annaeus Seneca:
'Seneca, at the center of it all, struggled with the information glut, and with something else. He became acutely conscious of "the danger of allowing others—not just friends and colleagues but the masses—to exert too much influence on one's thinking." The more connected a society becomes, the greater the chance an individual can become a creature, or even slave, of that connectedness.'
Inspired by Seneca, I'm signing off.
Nearly 500 years since the Protestant Reformation began...
A nice piece in the WSJ by a Lutheran who is taking Martin Luther's 1510 pilgrimage to Rome.
I am, of course, less sympathetic. I'll call it the Great Perpetual Schism.
UPDATE: I sound too harsh again. Martin Luther, as the author notes, was a complex man less Lutheran and more Catholic than many people want to admit.
I am, of course, less sympathetic. I'll call it the Great Perpetual Schism.
UPDATE: I sound too harsh again. Martin Luther, as the author notes, was a complex man less Lutheran and more Catholic than many people want to admit.
Why is there a mosque controversy in Lower Manhattan?
Because we have failed to rebuild anything where the World Trade Center once stood. It remains a black hole in the ground and in our hearts. If the area had been rebuilt, nobody would care. The Anchoress is right.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
How the Dutch put marriage into words...
The Dutch words are burgerlijk huwelijk for civil marriage and kerkelijk huwelijk for church marriage. They fortunately distinguish civil marriage, which is really about property, custody, and inheritance, from sacramental marriage, which is transcendent. Perhaps we Americans are hopeless romantics. We want all marriages to be sacramental, no matter who sanctions them, and we want the property rights to be incidental to the sacrament. Every local judge can tell you, however, that for a secular state, marriage is about property and custody; the sacramental marriage, if it exists, is only revealed when the couple and their children behave themselves for a decade or more.
Here in Dixie, we have an extremely high divorce rate, an egregious rate of out-of-wedlock births, and secular states self-consciously informed by the religious sensibilities of a largely Protestant population which knows less about sacraments than about Chinese food. I find it culturally interesting that Christians who reject authority, tradition, and the Eucharist as the Real Presence will define civil marriage as a "sacrament." Such a definition is legally weak in a culture powerfully influenced by religious separatists, as we are discovering when religious conservatives argue natural law, tradition, and transcendence in our secular courts.
The culture is trending to a live-and-let-live attitude towards homosexuality, just as it has been regarding cohabitation, abortion, artificial contraception, conception by laboratory, and other modern practices. Since Roe v. Wade, our courts have had a tendency to take such social policies out of the hands of elected legislators and bind them as constitutional precedent in the case law. The overturning of Proposition 8 by judicial fiat promises more of the same.
I cannot picture the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversing the District Court. I can imagine Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court creating some legal gobbly-gook to muddy the waters worse than the 9th Circuit could do; therefore, I would prefer that the U.S. Supreme Court leave the issue alone. Let Californians live with their judges and Alabamians live with theirs. (I will bet my house that the U.S. Supreme Court will not review the issue before the November elections.)
We know where this "brave new world" is going. Every town will eventually become a sexual buffet in which the right of one's private parts to a variety of stimulations outweighs every other consideration. The next line of court challenges will involve the age of consent. Right now, we assume that no teenager is capable of making a sensible and reasonable decision to marry young, yet it is only a question of time before your twelve year old has the right to the "pursuit of happiness" with the young divorcee she just met on the internet, male or female. Again, the legislatures will be bypassed by the courts.
But the sun will rise: a sacramental vision of the human soul can transform the culture, even if it has acquiesced to its own death through the constant practice of copulation without any chance of procreation. I have almost no faith that my elected legislators, long emasculated by the courts, will be able to set forth any prudence or wisdom regarding life issues, but I believe in love, and the ultimate love is expressed through sacraments. I will probably not live long enough to see sacramental love transform our culture in a visible way, but I pray for the day.
Here is what Jesus said in Matthew 19. The picture above is of the Wedding at Cana by an unidentified artist. The photo is of Saint Gianna Beretta Molla.
UPDATE: Perhaps I should have said "live and let die" above instead of "live and let live." Also, Roe was built on Griswold v. Connecticut (1964).
Japan and China and the belief in a personal God
Evangelization is difficult in a culture in which the self is subordinated to the greater good of the people. A post in Western Confucian.
Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, and our "spiritual but not religious culture"
Fr. Robert Barron quotes Ellyn vonHuben's discourse of modern America and our desire to have God without any sort of authority, structure, or tradition:
'This vaporization of Christianity has a particularly American history. “The empty prairies and endless skies have bred in us a gnostic magnetism to the uncreated, to the as-yet-to-be, to the conviction that we can begin all things innocently anew, escaping not only the burdens of old Europe but the storied past as well,” states Ralph Wood in Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South.'
'This vaporization of Christianity has a particularly American history. “The empty prairies and endless skies have bred in us a gnostic magnetism to the uncreated, to the as-yet-to-be, to the conviction that we can begin all things innocently anew, escaping not only the burdens of old Europe but the storied past as well,” states Ralph Wood in Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South.'
"Letters to Freya: The Trial of Helmuth James von Moltke"
A striking post about a dissident in Nazi Germany, his judge, and his widow.
An equally striking post about his widow, Freya von Moltke. When he faced the death sentence, he wrote his sons, aged 3 and 6, the following words for posterity:
'...Ever since National Socialism came to power, I have done my best to mitigate the consequences for its victims and to prepare for a change. I was driven to it by my conscience, and, after all, it is a task for a man. From 1933 on, I have therefore had to make material sacrifices and to run personal risks. In all these years Freya, who was the one who suffered most from these sacrifices and who always had to be concerned that I would be arrested, imprisoned, or killed, never hindered me in what I considered necessary, or made it harder in any way. She was always ready to accept everything; she was always ready to make sacrifices if it was necessary. And I tell you: that is much more than I did. For running risks oneself, which one knows, is nothing compared with the readiness to let the person with whom one's life is joined run risks one cannot gauge. And it is much more, too, than the wife of a warrior accepts, for she has no choice; one word from Freya might have held me back from many an undertaking.'
The judge who condemned him, Roland Freisler, died in an Allied bombing raid. He had few mourners.
An equally striking post about his widow, Freya von Moltke. When he faced the death sentence, he wrote his sons, aged 3 and 6, the following words for posterity:
'...Ever since National Socialism came to power, I have done my best to mitigate the consequences for its victims and to prepare for a change. I was driven to it by my conscience, and, after all, it is a task for a man. From 1933 on, I have therefore had to make material sacrifices and to run personal risks. In all these years Freya, who was the one who suffered most from these sacrifices and who always had to be concerned that I would be arrested, imprisoned, or killed, never hindered me in what I considered necessary, or made it harder in any way. She was always ready to accept everything; she was always ready to make sacrifices if it was necessary. And I tell you: that is much more than I did. For running risks oneself, which one knows, is nothing compared with the readiness to let the person with whom one's life is joined run risks one cannot gauge. And it is much more, too, than the wife of a warrior accepts, for she has no choice; one word from Freya might have held me back from many an undertaking.'
The judge who condemned him, Roland Freisler, died in an Allied bombing raid. He had few mourners.
So many laws, so little time, even less prudence.
The acquittal of Rod Blagojevich on 23 of 24 criminal charges shows what two generations of criminalizing stupid behavior can do to the FBI, the U.S. Attorney, and the entire staff of a U.S. Attorney's office. Ever since Al Capone was convicted of federal tax evasion instead of the numerous common law crimes he committed, our federal cops have preferred this approach. Geeks become gangbusters. It's the revenge of the nerds.
Congress has cooperated, and now anyone who handles lots of cash, whether campaigners for elective office, drug dealers, or owners of amusement parks, is subject to investigation or prosecution for depositing it. R.I.C.O., for instance, has been applied to doctors who are trying to short Medicare and to pro-life groups. That is not to say that R.I.C.O. has not been applied to bad guys, but the cases are rarely tried. The criminal sanctions for shady behavior are so high that R.I.C.O. is more commonly used to bludgeon plea bargains and intimidate associates into becoming prosecution witnesses. But those who carry cigarette lighters are not always arsonists, and we have now created hundreds of crimes which require little or no criminal intent for conviction and lots of incentives for minor players to point fingers away from themselves.
In contrast, in my home county, the state prosecutor has tried criminal cases before juries since she passed the bar exam. She started out doing child molestation cases. She rarely needs a CPA to testify to a jury, and her expert witnesses are usually doctors, ballistics experts, and medical examiners. She knows more street cops than accountants, and she has tried more cases before juries than the average U.S. Attorney.
As U.S. citizens, we have a right to ask whether we are getting what we pay for, and the answer is usually no. U.S. Attorneys are often, though not necessarily, among the most politically ambitious people in any state. They manage specialized prosecution teams that unfortunately get little trial experience. Their choices for prosecution are often based upon political priorities, and they are appointed from on high rather than elected. More often than we want to admit, they fail us, sometimes by poor lawyering, and other times by prosecuting laws few jurors are going to find fair.
Congress has cooperated, and now anyone who handles lots of cash, whether campaigners for elective office, drug dealers, or owners of amusement parks, is subject to investigation or prosecution for depositing it. R.I.C.O., for instance, has been applied to doctors who are trying to short Medicare and to pro-life groups. That is not to say that R.I.C.O. has not been applied to bad guys, but the cases are rarely tried. The criminal sanctions for shady behavior are so high that R.I.C.O. is more commonly used to bludgeon plea bargains and intimidate associates into becoming prosecution witnesses. But those who carry cigarette lighters are not always arsonists, and we have now created hundreds of crimes which require little or no criminal intent for conviction and lots of incentives for minor players to point fingers away from themselves.
In contrast, in my home county, the state prosecutor has tried criminal cases before juries since she passed the bar exam. She started out doing child molestation cases. She rarely needs a CPA to testify to a jury, and her expert witnesses are usually doctors, ballistics experts, and medical examiners. She knows more street cops than accountants, and she has tried more cases before juries than the average U.S. Attorney.
As U.S. citizens, we have a right to ask whether we are getting what we pay for, and the answer is usually no. U.S. Attorneys are often, though not necessarily, among the most politically ambitious people in any state. They manage specialized prosecution teams that unfortunately get little trial experience. Their choices for prosecution are often based upon political priorities, and they are appointed from on high rather than elected. More often than we want to admit, they fail us, sometimes by poor lawyering, and other times by prosecuting laws few jurors are going to find fair.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
"Perhaps there is an economic system that can preserve prosperity even in the face of an aging, stagnating population...
but it has not yet been devised."
A post by Western Confucian about Phillip Longman's "Demography and Economic Destiny."
A post by Western Confucian about Phillip Longman's "Demography and Economic Destiny."
Monday, August 16, 2010
Marriage does not need to be reinvented...
Just reaffirmed through example. It would help if our culture did not treat marriage as a declaration of war without allies or possibility of truce.
Elena Maria Vidal links to
Colleen Hammond.
Elena Maria Vidal links to
Colleen Hammond.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Feast of the Assumption, August 15
El Greco's masterpiece is found at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Danny Garland, Jr. has an informative post.
Do Catholics believe in the Rapture? Yes, we believe that Mary the Mother of God has already been raptured. We believe that if we are likewise faithful to Christ, we will be raptured too. Nice piece by Taylor Marshall.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Remembering St. Maximilian Kolbe, August 14
Western Confucian links to the Introitus to Mozart's Requiem.
More on Saint Maximilian Kolbe here.
UPDATE: Nice post by Taylor Marshall.
Donte Stallworth and redemption
I don't keep up with the National Football League, but this story caught my eye. He did not try to avoid responsibility. His first concern was for the dead man's family.
"We Pay Them to Be Rude to Us" (Post No. 3200)
Peggy Noonan strikes a chord and marks some discord regarding the service economy and how we now require too large a percentage of the work force to deal with the public:
'But it [the story of Flight Steward Steven Slater] doesn't strike me as a political story. I think it's a cultural story. American culture is, one way or another, business culture, and our business is service. Once we were a great industrial nation. Now we are a service economy. Which means we are forced to interact with each other, every day, in person and by phone and email. And it's making us all a little mad.
'I'm not sure we've fully noted the social implications of the shift from industry to service. We used to make machines! And steel! But now we're always in touch, in negotiation. We interact so much, we wear each other down. We wear away the superego and get straight to the id, and what we see isn't pretty.
'Here's why. At the same time we were shifting, in the past 30 years, to the more personal economy of service, we were witnessing and took part in a revolution in manners. We tore them down as too fancy, or sexist, or ageist, or revealing of class biases. Just when we needed more than ever the formality and agreed-upon rules of manners to act as guard rails, we threw them aside. And now no one knows how to act anymore.
'The result is that everyone is getting on everyone's nerves.'
The BIG REACTION is on the way, though I don't know when or the form. People only put up with egalitarian manners for so long. Nobody wants to be "old school" or "a throwback", but there are plenty of people who have had enough of others demanding we put up with their bad habits. The exiling of smokers to the loading bays and sidewalks is just the beginning. Being barked at by service personnel and public servants is already drawing plenty of push-back. Legions of exposed bellies, boobs, butts, tattoos, and piercings confirm the reality that life in a nudist colony would be more perdition than paradise. Likewise, I've seen more short pants at church, hats on men and boys in restaurants, and flip-flopped feet in the last decade than in the prior three. In Savannah just a few weeks ago we saw a young lady walking in Lafayette Square with nothing on but a string bikini of about forty square inches and a pair of flip-flops. Perhaps she lost her sundress in a gale.
Inappropriate dress defies the obvious: clothes (or the lack thereof) mean something. They tell us who you are and what you believe in no matter what you think of your first-impression judges. They also tell us how much we want to be with you by telling your terms of being with us. Though it might have been cool to tell your parents, grandparents, preachers, teachers, cops, and neighbors to go to hell in 1968, it is more than old now.
But I predict something broader: the baby-boomers and bourgeois bohemians who police the ethos and set the trends today are going to be appalled when their grandchildren revert to more rigid social codes. Watch hat etiquette, skirt lengths, terms of address, standards of introduction, etc. Propriety won't abolish practicality and flexibility, at least not quickly, but the current generation of pseudo sans culottes has had its day. "The multitude is foolish; but the species is wise." So said Edmund Burke.
UPDATE: This post sounds harsh. Let me assure you that, unlike my grandfather, I don't put on a tie before I eat breakfast. I dress the way most people do around the house, to the park, to summer softball games, and to the grocery store. What I see today is the widespread inability to dress up appropriately for things that deserve more dignity than a softball tournament: e.g., funerals, weddings, Mass, court, and public meetings. (I find it simply amazing that more people cannot see their self-interest in looking their best for court. A necktie can make a felon appear to be an upright citizen.) I also see a general slovenliness by which people force others to look at their sweaty, protruding body parts. It is a form of trespass.
'But it [the story of Flight Steward Steven Slater] doesn't strike me as a political story. I think it's a cultural story. American culture is, one way or another, business culture, and our business is service. Once we were a great industrial nation. Now we are a service economy. Which means we are forced to interact with each other, every day, in person and by phone and email. And it's making us all a little mad.
'I'm not sure we've fully noted the social implications of the shift from industry to service. We used to make machines! And steel! But now we're always in touch, in negotiation. We interact so much, we wear each other down. We wear away the superego and get straight to the id, and what we see isn't pretty.
'Here's why. At the same time we were shifting, in the past 30 years, to the more personal economy of service, we were witnessing and took part in a revolution in manners. We tore them down as too fancy, or sexist, or ageist, or revealing of class biases. Just when we needed more than ever the formality and agreed-upon rules of manners to act as guard rails, we threw them aside. And now no one knows how to act anymore.
'The result is that everyone is getting on everyone's nerves.'
The BIG REACTION is on the way, though I don't know when or the form. People only put up with egalitarian manners for so long. Nobody wants to be "old school" or "a throwback", but there are plenty of people who have had enough of others demanding we put up with their bad habits. The exiling of smokers to the loading bays and sidewalks is just the beginning. Being barked at by service personnel and public servants is already drawing plenty of push-back. Legions of exposed bellies, boobs, butts, tattoos, and piercings confirm the reality that life in a nudist colony would be more perdition than paradise. Likewise, I've seen more short pants at church, hats on men and boys in restaurants, and flip-flopped feet in the last decade than in the prior three. In Savannah just a few weeks ago we saw a young lady walking in Lafayette Square with nothing on but a string bikini of about forty square inches and a pair of flip-flops. Perhaps she lost her sundress in a gale.
Inappropriate dress defies the obvious: clothes (or the lack thereof) mean something. They tell us who you are and what you believe in no matter what you think of your first-impression judges. They also tell us how much we want to be with you by telling your terms of being with us. Though it might have been cool to tell your parents, grandparents, preachers, teachers, cops, and neighbors to go to hell in 1968, it is more than old now.
But I predict something broader: the baby-boomers and bourgeois bohemians who police the ethos and set the trends today are going to be appalled when their grandchildren revert to more rigid social codes. Watch hat etiquette, skirt lengths, terms of address, standards of introduction, etc. Propriety won't abolish practicality and flexibility, at least not quickly, but the current generation of pseudo sans culottes has had its day. "The multitude is foolish; but the species is wise." So said Edmund Burke.
UPDATE: This post sounds harsh. Let me assure you that, unlike my grandfather, I don't put on a tie before I eat breakfast. I dress the way most people do around the house, to the park, to summer softball games, and to the grocery store. What I see today is the widespread inability to dress up appropriately for things that deserve more dignity than a softball tournament: e.g., funerals, weddings, Mass, court, and public meetings. (I find it simply amazing that more people cannot see their self-interest in looking their best for court. A necktie can make a felon appear to be an upright citizen.) I also see a general slovenliness by which people force others to look at their sweaty, protruding body parts. It is a form of trespass.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
"The Allure of Anne Boleyn"
Gareth Russell is working on a book about her, and he makes a good point: Of the great landmarks in English history, only the Reformation had at its center a woman, one still largely unknown to us despite dozens of books and regular spots in movies and television.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
"Prayer and Memory: A Turtle in a Hole"
Pentimento has responded to my meme regarding her three favorite prayers. It is a lovely post in which she reflects on prayer as the means of bringing love to the world, which in her case is through "the disciplined practice of beauty."
The Grotto
My wife and daughter went north to visit relatives. I am dog sitting, house sitting, and working in that order. They visited the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the landscaped paths by Lakes St. Joseph and St. Mary, and the Grotto at the Notre Dame campus yesterday in South Bend.
I love the Notre Dame campus and the Basilica, but something tells me that if marauders worse than Huns overran South Bend and levelled it, holiness and mystery would somehow rise like smoke from the Grotto. Books have been written about the Grotto, and most of them mention Dr. Tom Dooley, a missionary doctor who died of cancer in the Far East in 1961. He wrote Fr. Theodore Hesburgh a letter as he lay dying:
'But when the time comes, like now, then the storm around me does not matter. The winds within me do not matter. Nothing human or earthly can touch me. A wilder storm of peace gathers in my heart. What seems unpossessable I can possess. What seems unfathomable, I fathom. What is unutterable, I utter. Because I can pray. I can communicate. How do people endure anything on earth if they cannot have God?
'I realize the external symbols that surround one when he prays are not important. The stark wooden cross on an altar of boxes in Haiphong with a tortured priest . . . the magnificence of the Sacred Heart Bernini altar. . . . . they are essentially the same. Both are symbols. It is the Something else there that counts.
'But just now. . . and just so many times, how I long for the Grotto. Away from the Grotto Dooley just prays. But at the Grotto, especially now when there must be snow everywhere and the lake is ice glass and that triangular fountain on the left is frozen solid and all the priests are bundled in their too-large too-long old black coats and the students wear snow boots. . . . if I could go to the Grotto now then I think I could sing inside. I could be full of faith and poetry and loveliness and know more beauty, tenderness and compassion.'
I love the Notre Dame campus and the Basilica, but something tells me that if marauders worse than Huns overran South Bend and levelled it, holiness and mystery would somehow rise like smoke from the Grotto. Books have been written about the Grotto, and most of them mention Dr. Tom Dooley, a missionary doctor who died of cancer in the Far East in 1961. He wrote Fr. Theodore Hesburgh a letter as he lay dying:
'But when the time comes, like now, then the storm around me does not matter. The winds within me do not matter. Nothing human or earthly can touch me. A wilder storm of peace gathers in my heart. What seems unpossessable I can possess. What seems unfathomable, I fathom. What is unutterable, I utter. Because I can pray. I can communicate. How do people endure anything on earth if they cannot have God?
'I realize the external symbols that surround one when he prays are not important. The stark wooden cross on an altar of boxes in Haiphong with a tortured priest . . . the magnificence of the Sacred Heart Bernini altar. . . . . they are essentially the same. Both are symbols. It is the Something else there that counts.
'But just now. . . and just so many times, how I long for the Grotto. Away from the Grotto Dooley just prays. But at the Grotto, especially now when there must be snow everywhere and the lake is ice glass and that triangular fountain on the left is frozen solid and all the priests are bundled in their too-large too-long old black coats and the students wear snow boots. . . . if I could go to the Grotto now then I think I could sing inside. I could be full of faith and poetry and loveliness and know more beauty, tenderness and compassion.'
UPDATE: More history of Universitas Dominae Nostrae a Lacu here.
"The End of Courtship"
Elena Maria Vidal writes of the lack of social custom to guide the next generation in building stable relationships, healthy families, and intergenerational commitments.
Our faux egalitarianism hurts the poor the most because they can least afford to make mistakes in marriage and with children.
Our faux egalitarianism hurts the poor the most because they can least afford to make mistakes in marriage and with children.
Japan apologizes for annexing Korea
Western Confucian discusses the apology and the response.
I've never seen a national apology nationally felt by the apologizer or nationally received by the wronged. Whenever I hear one, I think of a good teacher I know who says (when someone is caught red-handed and then expresses remorse), "Don't apologize. Change the behavior!"
I've never seen a national apology nationally felt by the apologizer or nationally received by the wronged. Whenever I hear one, I think of a good teacher I know who says (when someone is caught red-handed and then expresses remorse), "Don't apologize. Change the behavior!"
A trend towards hats...
And the relearning of hat etiquette.
Hats are about hierarchy as well as function. After spurning them for half a century, hat sales (other than ball caps) are beginning to pick up. I used to have to tell male students to take off their hats indoors. They didn't always take it well, though I didn't confiscate them the way the headmaster did. A hat is a symbol of who you are and what you stand for. For this reason, it is long established in English law that striking a man's hat is battery because the hat is an extension of his person.
For this reason, a man who refuses to tip his hat, whether it's Ted Williams refusing to acknowledge the fans, a subject refusing to acknowledge the king, a knight refusing to acknowledge a priest, the living refusing to acknowledge the dead, or a boy refusing to acknowledge his grandmother, commits a faux pas.
I am less interested in fashion as I am in the prospects of an ostensibly egalitarian society giving in to the human need to demonstrate hierarchy as we walk, drive, greet, and meet.
I'm going to ride my bicycle right now (and put on a helmet).
[Above: the always well-dressed Harry Truman in a Stetson.]
A poem for my fellow bloggers
"East Coker" by T.S. Eliot is quoted extensively in one of Monday's posts. The fifth stanza begins:
'So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.'
'So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.'
Monday, August 09, 2010
"Flannery O'Connor Knew Me"
So says the Anchoress:
“She would of been a good woman,” said The Misfit, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
–Flannery O’ Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find
“She would of been a good woman,” said The Misfit, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
–Flannery O’ Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find
"Faith of the Faithless"
Nice reflection by Kyle Cupp:
'[W]hat some Christians call faith may be better called a false certainty or presumption about one’s standing with God. For some faith may act more as a security blanket than as a rigorous response to a revealing God, and I think especially of those public Christians quick to proclaim authoritatively and without a shred of doubt that some historical event, often a tragedy, was an act performed or allowed by God for such and such a purpose. These faithful speak as though they’d received a text message directly from God explaining his ways and purposes and designs, making me wonder whether they have a God’s Voice App on their smartphones.'
'[W]hat some Christians call faith may be better called a false certainty or presumption about one’s standing with God. For some faith may act more as a security blanket than as a rigorous response to a revealing God, and I think especially of those public Christians quick to proclaim authoritatively and without a shred of doubt that some historical event, often a tragedy, was an act performed or allowed by God for such and such a purpose. These faithful speak as though they’d received a text message directly from God explaining his ways and purposes and designs, making me wonder whether they have a God’s Voice App on their smartphones.'
"Who Created God?"
Jeff Miller addresses the doubts of "retired hedge fund titan Robert W. Wilson [who] lost his faith in God years ago, yet he believes in Catholic schools and gave $5.6 million to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York this summer."
Antonio Vivaldi and Ordered Liberty
Mark in Spokane might be the closest thing to my blood-brother in blogging. He is a Kirkite and Burkean in that corner of the country farthest from the land of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. Ordered Liberty is the name of his blog, and it fits what he writes and links better than "Burke to Kirk" fits this blog.
What is linked here is a performance of a Vivaldi piece enhanced with a dance which I presume to be 18th-century in origin. Unfortunately, I am a victim of my era. I was led to believe that dance was whatever wiggle I wanted to do while the music was on. This "free-style" dancing is actually the ultimate form of elitism because it means that only the most young, creative, nimble, rhythmic, and energetic people get to dance at all. There is not a dance for a flatfoot to join. Each generation suffers from the poverty of its own choreography.
"So here I am in a middle way" having missed the big-band era, the Charleston, the Foxtrot, the Waltz, the Minuet, the Square Dance, the Irish jig, the Texas Two-Step, the Hula, and the Virginia Reel. My timing was only good for the Hustle and the Electric Slide, but they mean nothing to my parents or to my daughter (not that I can do either).
Vivaldi (1678-1741) lived in a time when composers (and dancers) were less convinced that they themselves had invented the wheel. Composers, singers, and dancers joined something bigger than themselves, an "ordered liberty." I predict that America will become a better governed and more civil place when we relearn how three generations might practice the same dance and sing the same songs together.
More on Vivaldi here.
I know it's more than about dancing, but T.S. Eliot has this to say in "East Coker" (of which one phrase from the final section is quoted above):
In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
Dancing is the rent we pay for our youth, cultural initiation for the young, and inclusion for the old. If dancing is only to give attention to the talented, it is of very limited cultural value. But dancing is, in a Burkean sense, the rhythm of the community's soul, "dead, living, and yet to be born," not just the living superstars' souls.
[Above: Interned Japanese-Americans do the Virginia Reel during World War II; Pieter Bruegel's The Peasant Dance (16th century), image courtesy of Wikipedia commons.]
What is linked here is a performance of a Vivaldi piece enhanced with a dance which I presume to be 18th-century in origin. Unfortunately, I am a victim of my era. I was led to believe that dance was whatever wiggle I wanted to do while the music was on. This "free-style" dancing is actually the ultimate form of elitism because it means that only the most young, creative, nimble, rhythmic, and energetic people get to dance at all. There is not a dance for a flatfoot to join. Each generation suffers from the poverty of its own choreography.
"So here I am in a middle way" having missed the big-band era, the Charleston, the Foxtrot, the Waltz, the Minuet, the Square Dance, the Irish jig, the Texas Two-Step, the Hula, and the Virginia Reel. My timing was only good for the Hustle and the Electric Slide, but they mean nothing to my parents or to my daughter (not that I can do either).
Vivaldi (1678-1741) lived in a time when composers (and dancers) were less convinced that they themselves had invented the wheel. Composers, singers, and dancers joined something bigger than themselves, an "ordered liberty." I predict that America will become a better governed and more civil place when we relearn how three generations might practice the same dance and sing the same songs together.
More on Vivaldi here.
I know it's more than about dancing, but T.S. Eliot has this to say in "East Coker" (of which one phrase from the final section is quoted above):
In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
Dancing is the rent we pay for our youth, cultural initiation for the young, and inclusion for the old. If dancing is only to give attention to the talented, it is of very limited cultural value. But dancing is, in a Burkean sense, the rhythm of the community's soul, "dead, living, and yet to be born," not just the living superstars' souls.
[Above: Interned Japanese-Americans do the Virginia Reel during World War II; Pieter Bruegel's The Peasant Dance (16th century), image courtesy of Wikipedia commons.]
Belief in God and your response to stress...
According to a study, religious believers handle stress better. Of course, that might simply mean that the belief in God helps us believers in our Darwinian competition with atheists. We ding-a-ling believers survive while the rational and detached atheists fall into the early grave of natural selection. Who said Un-God was fair?
Cool reflections on being hot
Darwin Catholic discusses his home in Texas, its flaws in design, Al Gore, and a book that blames air conditioning for many modern problems.
"It is for freedom that Christ set us free."
"Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1 (NIV).
Jeffrey Steel posts "In Constant Renewal: Experiencing True Freedom as a Catholic." An excerpt:
"The question that is begged is, 'who has the right to make decisions?' As an Anglican, I saw how fraught this system was. The minority, no matter how large, had to submit to the majority. There was no guarantee that the majority would speak 'my' position of freedom. Decisions from others must be accepted so as not to jeopardize the entire system. Everything that happened in one decision-making body could be undone by another. What was liked by one body could be hated by another and hence revoked and a new majority formed. What is this? This is a human church not something that is divine. It is not true freedom but bondage to a political system that is forever changing with the majority. Opinions replace faith and truth and self-made formulas become dogma. For me, there is no freedom in that at all. This system only forced me to be in more bondage to my own opinions and self. As the Holy Father said when he was still in the CDF, 'A self-made church is reduced to the empirical domain and thus, precisely as a dream, comes to nothing.'"
Jeffrey Steel posts "In Constant Renewal: Experiencing True Freedom as a Catholic." An excerpt:
"The question that is begged is, 'who has the right to make decisions?' As an Anglican, I saw how fraught this system was. The minority, no matter how large, had to submit to the majority. There was no guarantee that the majority would speak 'my' position of freedom. Decisions from others must be accepted so as not to jeopardize the entire system. Everything that happened in one decision-making body could be undone by another. What was liked by one body could be hated by another and hence revoked and a new majority formed. What is this? This is a human church not something that is divine. It is not true freedom but bondage to a political system that is forever changing with the majority. Opinions replace faith and truth and self-made formulas become dogma. For me, there is no freedom in that at all. This system only forced me to be in more bondage to my own opinions and self. As the Holy Father said when he was still in the CDF, 'A self-made church is reduced to the empirical domain and thus, precisely as a dream, comes to nothing.'"
Papal infallibility and Mary
Sister Mary Martha takes on both:
'Papal Infallibility in a nutshell: You're playing Scrabble with the Pope and he throws down the word "blotsnefad". Does he win because he's infallible and can make anything true that he wants to be true? No. The Pope is only infallible when he speaks on matters of Dogma and only when he speaks on them "Ex Cathedra" which means, "from the Throne"....
'Important to note here is what a dim bulb poor little Bernadette really was. She was literally dirt poor, living in a hut with practically no education except for the nuns trying to prepare her for her First Holy Communion and that wasn't going well at all. Bernadette was very sickly and missed out on a lot of lessons and could never remember her Catechism. So when the bishop asked Bernadette to find out who this lady was and Bernadette heard the lady's answer, it may as well have been "Blotsnefad" to Bernadette. It was so baffling and nonsensical to her that she said it over and over again from the grotto to the bishop's door. "I Am the Immaculate Conception."
'Even more important to note, for you, dear reader, is that not only had Bernadette never heard these words in her life, she also had no knowledge that the Pope had just declared the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception four years before Bernadette's encounters with the Lady.
'So Mary actually validates Papal Infallibility during her visit to Bernadette. It wasn't the reason for her trip. She was trying, as always, to bring people to Jesus.'
'Papal Infallibility in a nutshell: You're playing Scrabble with the Pope and he throws down the word "blotsnefad". Does he win because he's infallible and can make anything true that he wants to be true? No. The Pope is only infallible when he speaks on matters of Dogma and only when he speaks on them "Ex Cathedra" which means, "from the Throne"....
'Important to note here is what a dim bulb poor little Bernadette really was. She was literally dirt poor, living in a hut with practically no education except for the nuns trying to prepare her for her First Holy Communion and that wasn't going well at all. Bernadette was very sickly and missed out on a lot of lessons and could never remember her Catechism. So when the bishop asked Bernadette to find out who this lady was and Bernadette heard the lady's answer, it may as well have been "Blotsnefad" to Bernadette. It was so baffling and nonsensical to her that she said it over and over again from the grotto to the bishop's door. "I Am the Immaculate Conception."
'Even more important to note, for you, dear reader, is that not only had Bernadette never heard these words in her life, she also had no knowledge that the Pope had just declared the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception four years before Bernadette's encounters with the Lady.
'So Mary actually validates Papal Infallibility during her visit to Bernadette. It wasn't the reason for her trip. She was trying, as always, to bring people to Jesus.'
Was Vatican II a break from tradition?
Fr. Christian Mathis says not really.
'Throughout my ten years as a priest I have heard again and again from the so-called progressive wing of the church that Vatican II was a huge break from tradition and what a breath of fresh air that break was at the time. The only thing that saddens this group is that the council did not go far enough. On the other side of the fence, I have heard repeatedly from those claiming the traditional stance that Vatican II was a huge break from tradition and for that reason we need to rescind most, if not all, of what came about as a result of the council. For all the disputes between these two groups, it seems that one thing they can agree on is this break from tradition. This is where I respectfully disagree. In my time of studying the council documents, I see time and again not a break from tradition, but a connection that flows back to the earliest years of our church.'
'Throughout my ten years as a priest I have heard again and again from the so-called progressive wing of the church that Vatican II was a huge break from tradition and what a breath of fresh air that break was at the time. The only thing that saddens this group is that the council did not go far enough. On the other side of the fence, I have heard repeatedly from those claiming the traditional stance that Vatican II was a huge break from tradition and for that reason we need to rescind most, if not all, of what came about as a result of the council. For all the disputes between these two groups, it seems that one thing they can agree on is this break from tradition. This is where I respectfully disagree. In my time of studying the council documents, I see time and again not a break from tradition, but a connection that flows back to the earliest years of our church.'
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Another convert to Catholicism I didn't know about...
Harold Abrahams, one of the runners featured in Chariots of Fire, which is one of my favorite films of my college years. Because I am skeptical of Wikipedia, here is a British source. (I watched the film today for the first time in more than a decade.)The other British Olympian featured was Eric Liddell, a Scotsman whose heroic life story makes him renowned from Edinburgh to Tianjin. He was a Presbyterian missionary and son and brother of Presbyterian missionaries, and he died in an internment camp in Japanese-occupied China in 1945.
The end of the movie features the hymn, Jerusalem (lyrics by William Blake), which gives me chills whenever I hear it, even if its English millennialist message is not my cause. (Besides being sung in every English school, it is the hymn of the English Socialist Party.) Once my wife and I were in South Bend and decided to go to Vespers at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame. The Vespers closed with the words of the "Magnificat" set to this tune. I wept.
My three favorite devotional prayers...
Amy in Nashville has tagged me to ask my three favorite devotional prayers. I am honored to comment on the topic.
I knew almost nothing about prayer until I became a Catholic, despite a lifetime of Anglican and evangelical Christianity. As I navigated the "no man's land" between Protestantism and Rome, I read the new Catechism cover-to-cover. The best was saved for last, that is, the section on prayer. One of the first principles of prayer comes from the Pater Nostra: We say "Our Father" because no one ever approaches the throne of God alone, and anyone who believes so fools himself.
When a fertility doctor told my wife and me in 1996 that we would not likely have children the natural way and recommended artificial insemination, I was on the verge of making the biggest change of my life through RCIA. We decided that we would not disobey the Church's teachings and would trust God to give us a child if He wished on his terms. Oddly enough, the first time I ever prayed the Rosary with my wife was just before she went to the doctor that fateful day. As we suffered the pains of infertility, which sometimes seemed to be the death of everything but hope each month, I learned to pray the Rosary almost every day.
The Rosary guides us to focus on those mystical intersections of the divine and the human in our Incarnate God and His Mother. To meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary is to know the Trinity, the Eucharist, the Sacraments, the Law, the Prophets, and the relations of God and man, man and woman, and child and the world. To meditate on the Visitation, for instance, is know how God became Man and yet is carried every day by the saints to those in need. The Holy Spirit came to Mary, and Mary brought Jesus to her cousin, to John the Baptist, and to the world. The Visitation is honored and accomplished through every little act of love. Through twenty such mysteries, the Rosary teaches us Who God Is, What He Is, and How We Know Him.
When my mother learned she had cancer in the 1990s, she lived alone. She underwent chemotherapy and lost her capacity to do little more than sit. About that time, the programming line-up of Christian television stations changed on her cable system, and the only Christian programming left during most of the day was EWTN. She had serious problems with several Catholic teachings, in particular, the Church's sacramental authority, the Immaculate Conception, Mary's perpetual virginity, Mary as Queen of Heaven, and the intercession of the saints. The Divine Mercy Chaplet, however, is a Christo-centric prayer that did not arouse those objections, and EWTN schedules the Divine Mercy Chaplet daily. The Divine Mercy Chaplet became her train to the ancient Church, and she was received in full communion at Easter 2001 under the confirmation name of Faustina.
Mom encouraged me to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet, but I seldom did so until one year we started the Divine Mercy Novena around Easter. I do not remember the issue of the time, but we received a little miracle on the ninth day of the Novena, and I learned the power of that prayer. Later I read Witness to Hope, George Weigel's biography of John Paul II, and saw the fruit of the heroic suffering of Polish saints from Stanislaus to Faustina. The message of Divine Mercy could not be more trusting or loving:
Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.
For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
When we were on Hilton Head Island last month on vacation, I was distracted with many things. Call me "Martha." My father, call him "Mary," a Catholic revert almost 85 years old, was not. Each day, though we did not go to daily Mass as is his habit, he read the Magnificat, a monthly missal full of devotions and stories of saints. He reads the Mass scriptures from it because he does not hear well in church. He reads the prayers and the morning and evening devotions. He reads the essays. It takes him much of the day because he falls asleep in his chair as men his age tend to do. (He also does the Liturgy of the Hours, though I have not tried that.) At the end of each month, he stacks the prior month's Magnificat on a shelf in his room. They say you cannot take things with you, but if those Magnificats vanish the day he dies, I won't be surprised.
I rarely pass on anything passed to me on the internet such as a "meme," but I nominate three blogging friends I've never met to share with us their three favorite Catholic devotionals, if they so choose, though I won't be offended if any one of them declines:
Pentimento, the Catholic revert whose love of music almost destroyed her; Elena Maria Vidal, the Carmelite tertiary in "darkest Pennsylvania" who blogs at Tea at Trianon; and Mark in Spokane, the Burkean lawyer who blogs at Ordered Liberty. This is a spiritual exercise and an invitation to mediate, not a writing assignment. Love to all, TQ
Saturday, August 07, 2010
"America Is At Risk of Boiling Over"
Peggy Noonan published an excellent column yesterday, and Rupert Murdoch even let me read it first thing in the morning without being a subscriber. However, I was too busy to post it, even though I recommended it to at least two friends.
'But do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don't act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s the growing gulf between the country's thought leaders, as they're called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.
'But I've never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm. In Washington they don't seem to be looking around and thinking, Hmmm, this nation is in trouble, it needs help. They're thinking something else. I'm not sure they understand the American Dream itself needs a boost, needs encouragement and protection. They don't seem to know or have a sense of the mood of the country.
'And so they make their moves, manipulate this issue and that, and keep things at a high boil. And this at a time when people are already in about as much hot water as they can take.'
She did not say it again explicitly, but she has written about it eloquently, that is, the need for grace in our public life. Civility is born of grace, and grace is lacking on all levels. Manicheism is now the rule of our politics.
(During my hiatus, I didn't post these two columns by Ms. Noonan on Chris Christie and the Tea Party and the power of redemption in Shirley Sherrod. The latter is especially good.)
We are by no means in the Reign of Terror, but if we don't live a little grace we might find ourselves being ruled by someone like Robespierre, who believed that "pity is treason."
Elena Maria Vidal has an interesting post on him:
'Robespierre believed that the Terror was a time of discovering and revealing the enemy within Paris, within France, the enemy that hid in the safety of apparent patriotism. Because he believed that the Revolution was still in progress, and in danger of being sabotaged, he made every attempt to instill in the populace and Convention the urgency of carrying out the Terror. He expanded the traditional list of the Revolution’s enemies to include moderates and “false revolutionaries”. Anyone not in step with the decrees of Robespierre’s committee is said to have been eventually purged from the Convention, and thoroughly hunted in the general population.
'Throughout his Report on the Principles of Political Morality, Robespierre assailed any stalling of action in defence of the Republic. In his thinking, there was not enough that could be done fast enough in defence against enemies at home and abroad. A staunch believer in the teachings of Rousseau, Robespierre believed that it was his duty as a public servant to push the Revolution forward, and that the only rational way to do that was to defend it on all fronts.
'To secure his aims, another ally on the Committee, Georges Couthon, introduced and carried on June 10, 1794, the drastic Law of 22 Prairial. Under this law, the Tribunal became a simple court of condemnation without need of witnesses, and in the next 57 days 1,285 victims were guillotined in Paris.
'In the wake of the unrest caused by this law, Robespierre appeared at the Convention on July 26, 1794 (8th Thermidor, year II, according to the Revolutionary calendar), and delivered a two-hour-long speech. He defended himself against charges of dictatorship and tyranny, and then proceeded to warn of a conspiracy against the Republic. The Convention ordered his arrest the next day.'
Robespierre was guillotined face-up without a trial. He gave no mercy and was given none.
'But do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don't act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s the growing gulf between the country's thought leaders, as they're called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.
'But I've never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm. In Washington they don't seem to be looking around and thinking, Hmmm, this nation is in trouble, it needs help. They're thinking something else. I'm not sure they understand the American Dream itself needs a boost, needs encouragement and protection. They don't seem to know or have a sense of the mood of the country.
'And so they make their moves, manipulate this issue and that, and keep things at a high boil. And this at a time when people are already in about as much hot water as they can take.'
She did not say it again explicitly, but she has written about it eloquently, that is, the need for grace in our public life. Civility is born of grace, and grace is lacking on all levels. Manicheism is now the rule of our politics.
(During my hiatus, I didn't post these two columns by Ms. Noonan on Chris Christie and the Tea Party and the power of redemption in Shirley Sherrod. The latter is especially good.)
We are by no means in the Reign of Terror, but if we don't live a little grace we might find ourselves being ruled by someone like Robespierre, who believed that "pity is treason."
Elena Maria Vidal has an interesting post on him:
'Robespierre believed that the Terror was a time of discovering and revealing the enemy within Paris, within France, the enemy that hid in the safety of apparent patriotism. Because he believed that the Revolution was still in progress, and in danger of being sabotaged, he made every attempt to instill in the populace and Convention the urgency of carrying out the Terror. He expanded the traditional list of the Revolution’s enemies to include moderates and “false revolutionaries”. Anyone not in step with the decrees of Robespierre’s committee is said to have been eventually purged from the Convention, and thoroughly hunted in the general population.
'Throughout his Report on the Principles of Political Morality, Robespierre assailed any stalling of action in defence of the Republic. In his thinking, there was not enough that could be done fast enough in defence against enemies at home and abroad. A staunch believer in the teachings of Rousseau, Robespierre believed that it was his duty as a public servant to push the Revolution forward, and that the only rational way to do that was to defend it on all fronts.
'To secure his aims, another ally on the Committee, Georges Couthon, introduced and carried on June 10, 1794, the drastic Law of 22 Prairial. Under this law, the Tribunal became a simple court of condemnation without need of witnesses, and in the next 57 days 1,285 victims were guillotined in Paris.
'In the wake of the unrest caused by this law, Robespierre appeared at the Convention on July 26, 1794 (8th Thermidor, year II, according to the Revolutionary calendar), and delivered a two-hour-long speech. He defended himself against charges of dictatorship and tyranny, and then proceeded to warn of a conspiracy against the Republic. The Convention ordered his arrest the next day.'
Robespierre was guillotined face-up without a trial. He gave no mercy and was given none.
Friday, August 06, 2010
More about beautiful churches
An excerpt from Fr. Dwight Longenecker:
'So what then, is 'beautiful worship'? Some readers misunderstood my post on beautiful worship to mean extravagant worship. This is not what I meant at all. Costly and extravagant churches are not necessarily beautiful. Witness the costly monstrosity which is the new cathedral in LA. Likewise beautiful churches are not always costly. Many a village church, many a humble chapel, many a simple inner city church is beautiful but poor. What makes a beautiful church are certain principles of beauty, a certain priority of worship, a certain simplicity and dignity, a certain atmosphere of prayer.
'Here are beautiful places of worship I have been to which are not first and foremost architectural and aesthetic wonders: the chapel in the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, the convent chapel where Archbishop Romero was martyred, the church of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, numerous inner city Catholic churches which were humble places of prayer. In each one, however, the priests and the faithful did their best to make their humble churches beautiful.'
[Photo above of Holy Cross Church, Killeshin, Co. Laois, Ireland.]
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Why build beautiful churches?
Fr. Dwight Longenecker:
'In every age people spend money building beautiful temples to their gods. If you want to see what gods a society worships look around for the beautiful buildings. Which buildings in our cities are built with marble, fountains, high ceilings, silver and gold fittings, oriental carpets and fine furnishings? Banks and insurance companies mostly. There you find the temples we have built to our gods. Then look at so many modern Catholic Churches--built on the cheap with tawdry materials, cut corners, shoddy workmanship, poor design by ignorant architects who are working for their own glory trying to 'be creative'. A beautiful, traditional Catholic Church protests against all of that vulgarity and low life with great dignity and power.'
'In every age people spend money building beautiful temples to their gods. If you want to see what gods a society worships look around for the beautiful buildings. Which buildings in our cities are built with marble, fountains, high ceilings, silver and gold fittings, oriental carpets and fine furnishings? Banks and insurance companies mostly. There you find the temples we have built to our gods. Then look at so many modern Catholic Churches--built on the cheap with tawdry materials, cut corners, shoddy workmanship, poor design by ignorant architects who are working for their own glory trying to 'be creative'. A beautiful, traditional Catholic Church protests against all of that vulgarity and low life with great dignity and power.'
[Image above of Saint Paul's Cathedral, Birmingham, Alabama.]
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Scouting in modern times...
Good post by Darwin Catholic. Scouting cannot be all things to all people.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Sunday, August 01, 2010
My beach reading in 2010...
Was about another beach in 1940: Walter Lord's Miracle at Dunkirk.
Lord is an excellent narrative historian, and I have read his stuff since I was a kid. This book is just as good as his others, though it is a bit harder for some to get into unless you are already familiar with the British military in 1940 (back when Bernard Montgomery commanded a single division). Also, this story has no single dramatic turning point, but is a series of crises in which total annihilation was averted by ordinary soldiers and sailors doing extraordinary things.
Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering helped the British especially. Hitler ordered his panzers to halt eight miles shy of Dunkirk when there was little to keep them from capturing the port. The British were a whisker from complete destruction. Goering encouraged the order because he bragged that the Luftwaffe could bomb the British into submission.
Lord tells hundreds of little stories in a tapestry of heroism.
Laura Ingalls Wilder's house
Mansfield, Missouri.
If you don't know the story, she and Almonzo Wilder moved there when droughts, locusts, frosts, and every other kind of crop failure ran them out of Dakota territory. We have never been, but I have read every Little House book to my daughter. They are great stories.
[Photo by Karen Edmisten.]
Cultural and regulatory chaos
Elena Maria Vidal links to this piece by Aaron D. Wolfe. An excerpt:
'The Pill has had a side effect or two on American culture, not the least being the Sexual Revolution. In addition, writes Gardiner Harris in the New York Times, “in regulatory terms, the pill brought about a kind of reformation.”
'Because Team Pincus’s tests on the Puerto Ricans had been “relatively brief,” the FDA had no good reason (other than social pressure) to approve the drug for long-term use. So they slapped an arbitrary two-year limit on prescription durations. But women were so wild for The Pill that they simply asked for it under a different brand, consequences be damned.
'It turned out that Pincus had ignored the evidence presented by his team which indicated that 17 percent of the illiterate women had experienced a host of side effects from chemically altering their otherwise healthy bodies—vomiting, headaches, nausea. (Pincus dismissed the women as hypochondriacs.) Added to that in the early 60’s were increasing reports of pulmonary embolism, congestive heart failure, and pulmonary tuberculosis.'
So much for Uncle Sam's protection of women.
'The Pill has had a side effect or two on American culture, not the least being the Sexual Revolution. In addition, writes Gardiner Harris in the New York Times, “in regulatory terms, the pill brought about a kind of reformation.”
'Because Team Pincus’s tests on the Puerto Ricans had been “relatively brief,” the FDA had no good reason (other than social pressure) to approve the drug for long-term use. So they slapped an arbitrary two-year limit on prescription durations. But women were so wild for The Pill that they simply asked for it under a different brand, consequences be damned.
'It turned out that Pincus had ignored the evidence presented by his team which indicated that 17 percent of the illiterate women had experienced a host of side effects from chemically altering their otherwise healthy bodies—vomiting, headaches, nausea. (Pincus dismissed the women as hypochondriacs.) Added to that in the early 60’s were increasing reports of pulmonary embolism, congestive heart failure, and pulmonary tuberculosis.'
So much for Uncle Sam's protection of women.
I didn't know Christian Bach converted to Catholicism...
Mark in Spokane links to an article and his Adagio.
More here at Catholic Confucian.
It would be great to hear from Pentimento on this.
More here at Catholic Confucian.
It would be great to hear from Pentimento on this.
Young evangelicals converting to Catholicism...
Jeff Miller links to this piece by Jonathan D. Fitzgerald. An excerpt:
'Croslow’s interest in Catholicism began over six years ago when he was a sophomore in high school. At the time, Croslow’s Midwestern evangelical church experienced a crisis that is all too common among evangelical churches: what he describes as “a crisis of spiritual authority.” As a result of experiencing disappointment in his pastor, Croslow began to question everything he had learned from him. This questioning led him to study the historical origins of scripture and then of the Christian church itself. Eventually he concluded that Catholicism in its current form is the closest iteration of the early church fathers’ intentions. He asks, “If Saint Augustine showed up today, could we seriously think that he’d attend a Southern Baptist church in Houston?” The answer, to Croslow, is a resounding “No.”'
'Croslow’s interest in Catholicism began over six years ago when he was a sophomore in high school. At the time, Croslow’s Midwestern evangelical church experienced a crisis that is all too common among evangelical churches: what he describes as “a crisis of spiritual authority.” As a result of experiencing disappointment in his pastor, Croslow began to question everything he had learned from him. This questioning led him to study the historical origins of scripture and then of the Christian church itself. Eventually he concluded that Catholicism in its current form is the closest iteration of the early church fathers’ intentions. He asks, “If Saint Augustine showed up today, could we seriously think that he’d attend a Southern Baptist church in Houston?” The answer, to Croslow, is a resounding “No.”'
Fitzgerald notes that Thomas Howard's conversion was still felt at Gordon College when he was a freshman in 1999. I will simply say that Dr. Howard is a fine witness and a great teacher. Anyone of his grace and stature who converts to Catholicism is going to take more than one person with him. Count me as one of them.
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