Filed under: Uncategorized
“Beautiful” is not the right word – “beautiful” is cheap, overused, like the pair of degraded work shoes I used to wear as a server at Serrano’s and dishwasher at D’Agastino’s (hazy film over the black, cracking leather; soles flapping like the gaping jaws of a retarded mutt; the not-so-faint smell of rotting food and grime). No, “beautiful” says nothing but “I’m not creative at all and I don’t have anything remarkable to say about you. You are not special, just as your adjective is one that could be applied to the most mundane and wretched of women.” That’s not what one says to one’s bride, the flesh of one’s flesh, the ever-present bastion of love in one’s home. If I could say a word about Kelli, if I could reach down inside myself in the blood and guts and membranes and see what in God’s name would come up, it might be warmth. A strange translucent type of warmth – an ardent glow which, solid like an avocado at its center, is surrounded by fluffed feathers. Yes, warmth. Every time she stares across the dinner table, woefully aware of my glaring and habitual shortcomings (I am, sadly, very far from perfection), and every time she grins and strokes my now shorter hair while we lay together – I feel it. “Fieri sentio et excrucior”. “I feel it happen and am crucified.”
Maybe it’s why I married her. I found no other woman who, in spite of all the hassle of life-with-Ryan, can exude a glow and a warmth. Not like a womb. Nothing so strange or encapsulating, nothing so smothering. But more like the stove-top that warmed me as a child, waking up violently shivering in our blue rent-house which always managed to stay colder inside than it was outside (those times were colder, though, it seems – the puddles in the driveway would ice overnight. That just doesn’t happen anymore, I suppose). I imagine this tremendous heat comes about like a sort of friction with grace – not a bad friction, as you might try to limit in a combustion engine – but the result of a wisp of grace lighting a candle in a dark room, and beginning to spin a sewing wheel. That kind of heat, that kind of friction. Not just a material heat – the whirring of molecules – but a pulsating friction of grace dripping into her bones and flowing into me from her.
I suppose, truth be told, that I’ll spend the rest of my life making silly postulations about why Kelli makes me happy, why to her and her alone of all creatures I said non nisi te – “no one unless you.” Mark this down as one of my first: its her gracious friction, the smallest little ember which the Spirit softly brings to bright glowing in her. I feel her warmth, am crucified by it, and go out a better man.
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve graced these pages with my quasi-intelligent musings on virtue, Christ, or less important aspects of modern life. My absence has not been due to any laxity on my part, considering that I have now received the sacrament of Matrimony and am also looking for gainful employment. Sadly, such life alterations leave little time for aesthetic pursuits, although the Matrimony brings blissful, gracious pursuits of its own — building a home and life together, learning to pray as a husband and pray for my wife [even the words! The words themselves tingle sliding from the tongue of my mind!], becoming a righteous and godly man through the joyful, mundane grace of this sacrament. Writing, sadly, takes a backseat to such things. Still, it is my hope that, having drawn closer to the good life, in which Kelli and My material needs are met, we may both allow greater freedom to our intellectual and creative pursuits.
I have decided, at long last, to begin writing more in print rather than online. Having desired one for some time, I am going to save up for a typewriter — I cannot handwrite for long, and computers are far too untrustworthy to contain one’s work. Thus, I’m opting for the best of both worlds — print copies that I can just type out. I hope to write fiction and non-fiction, and have already started on a story centering around one particular Southerner’s peculiar harrassment by his other parishioners in the confessional and his subsequent desire for total loneliness. I hope for more stories, though, and for a great habitus for writing. Also, I’m hoping to take Dr. Madden’s short story class in the Spring, as he is a reknowned writer and teacher (see: David Madden on amazon). Writing has often been a part of my life, even from my earliest years (I wrote in elementary quite a bit, and in middle school — I slowed in high school to a glacial pace). I’m often intimidated by other, more profficient writers — even like my friend, Brian. Some people seem to have a greater…knack for the art of writing. I am, however, enheartened by two nascent heroes of mine: Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy. O’Connor didn’t really begin her writing career until college, and Percy didn’t begin writing fiction until his 40’s (after a somewhat unsucessful career in non-fiction — nobody read his works, and what good’s a work that no one reads?). Late-bloomers can be great writers as well — this is my hope.
I will write soon about marriage and orthodoxy, I hope.
When asks to write about the dispute over teaching children grammar or not, what the latent ideologies are present in each argument, I wrote this. Not my usual religious fare, but I hope you like it:
There is a sentence which has traveled through history and arrived at my own computer, and I feel it would best describe the modern attitude toward grammar. Emperor Sigismund at the Council of Constance was corrected for a minor mistake in his Latin grammar. He then replied: ego sum rex Romanarum et super grammaticam (“I am the king of the Romans and am above grammar”) (Cohen 394). Now, I am no king and I don’t know any Romans personally, but it seems that Sigismund’s idea of grammar has been transmitted through history to the modern classroom: some are the quiet clerk correcting the minor mistake, while others are the “King of Romans” who won’t be bothered by petty grammatical errors.
Today, there are two major schools of thought on this matter: prescriptive and descriptive, and both it seems have a valid point. The prescriptive grammarian attests that the English language ought to reflect Latin and Greek in its rule-syntax, because Latin and Greek are the preeminent languages of the religion, philosophy, science – essentially, the civilized world (Yule 74). These teachers stress proper usage of various grammatical categories, proper structure, and never ending sentences with a preposition. The latter school, the descriptive (or transformational) school, rather seeks to describe language as it is – that is, as it comes from the mouths of speakers themselves. Throughout the mid-to-later parts of the 20th century, this became a very popular method of teaching grammar (Glencoe 1). Both have their latent ideologies: the prescriptivist as one who sees knowledge is primarily transferred via master to student, while the descriptivist as one who desires creativity and individuality in a learner.
Nevertheless, it seems that neither method takes into account the entirety of language and grammar. In fact, the first step would be to agree upon a definition of grammar itself. Among the definitions listed in a British Government “Critical Review” of SAT grammar requirements were “the set of formal patterns which speakers of a language use automatically to construct and construe larger meanings”, “the scientific study of the formal patters of language,” and “a study of the rules governing how one ought to speak or write” (Wyse 411-12). Moreover, one would have to reconcile the various views not only of teaching grammar but of understanding grammar itself (including structural, generative, transformation, functional, etc.) (Wyse 412). Clearly, this cuts to the heart of a tremendous issue: how to help man understand and utilize his language more artfully.
Many feel that the only solution is a disciplined grammatical understanding. Marie Rackham, a retired public school teacher, sternly protests the loss of grammar in the school, remarking that “life is easier when you’re disciplined” – especially grammatically. In the face of opponents decrying the prescriptivist method as one which “stifles creativity,” she interjects that grammar is not the memorization of rules, but the “technique of English.” She wryly points out the irony of master’s-degree carrying educators condemn the teaching of grammar while they themselves could not have received a degree without it. She echoes the sentiment of many who support teaching Standard English in schools: it is meant not to stifle but to enable. While a student may not need to know what a determiner is on a day-to-day basis, his knowledge of concrete and abstract nouns could serve him well in his writing. This sentiment of grammar-as-enabling was stated as far back as 1937, when teachers remarked that students without a solid grammatical understanding were finding it harder and harder to learn Latin (Cohen 393).
This position does not seem to negate the amazing productivity and creativity of human language. Rather, its proponents see it as putting a paintbrush in the hand of a painter, or giving a book of Sonnets to a budding poet – grammar is a tool and not an end in itself. Still, Glencoe, a leading educational resource for teachers, stresses the importance of integration in the descriptivist and prescriptivist methods. The most important thing to remember, they stress, is that teaching be “tailor-made” to the students. Students are “expected to function with both,” utilizing each as he needs, and they should be enabled to do so by their teachers.
Walker Percy, novelist and little-known semioticist, once remarked about a strange phenomenon in human language. Oftentimes, the symbol for a given object will begin to obscure the object itself, such that when one sees a robin, one doesn’t see the robin right before one’s eyes, but a sort of prototypal robin in one’s mind. In the same way, teachers seem to allow their theories of pedagogy concerning grammar to cloud the most important issue of all: that their students become masters of English, able to understand the rules enough to write a brilliant dissertation but not so bound by them as to lose sight of the flux and creativity of spoken and written language. Whatever the ideologies buried within the grammar-teaching may be, the most important aspect is that students learn the “technique of English” for themselves.
A question entered my mind as we were discussing “The History of Sexuality” by Michel Foucault in my Modern Criticism class. Our teacher was answering my question about the necessity of Foucault’s formulation of power. Essentially, power is not centralized, but has become a process, by which “force relations” operate within a specific framework or “strategy.” Thus, it is neither centralized nor law-centered, but is essentially diffuse (a point made by Spinoza previously, as my teacher pointed out). “Power is everywhere” and yet localized. And even “points of resistance” function within the bounds of the over-arching “strategy” of discourse, as toothpicks dropped into a bathtub might only make minor tears.
“Discourse transmits power” (although it also can lead to resistance), and this power is seen in discursive situations of all kinds: the confessor to penitent, parent to child, state to citizen, etc. Power is not transferred tangibly, nor is it lost in any sense — it is, in a sense, Monistic, because it exists at “innumerable points” and in countless “relations.” These points revolve around a particular “strategic objective,” or paradigm, which dictates their “tactical efficacy,” or ability to get something done.
To be honest, Foucault’s formulation of power does seem to be a fair observation of the ebb and flow of power in every day discourse, with its assertions and concessions. But the question I jotted down quickly in my paperback copy was “does prosylitization make humility impossible?”
And so I ask, in light of Foucault’s understanding of power as being chiefly extant in “force relations” between individuals in relation to an over-arching paradigm, can we remain humble and yet evangelize? When we attempt to evangelize, we immediately introduce a discourse of have and have-not; “I have the truth, and you do not.” Or, “I understand the truth we both know, while you do not.” This relation seems to have an intrinsic element of power over powerless, and yet, I think this may be a superficial assessment. Many respond as though this were the case, however, when approached by a religious individual. The common response is something like “who are you to tell me that? What right do you have? How is it that you have the truth?” We almost instanteously react as though a “force relation” was being instituted without our knowledge — I know I’ve reacted this way in response to some rather persistent Jehovah’s Witnesses (who actually came to my home). This same reaction is clearly seen in the audience of St. Matthew, who purports to show the Jews just how their Scriptures are fulfilled in Christ. This reaction to perceived condescension, this revulsion at the institution of an involutnary relation, is a ubiquitous response in the West (I cannot speak for the Orient). Nevertheless, does this mean that the Have cannot be humble in relation to the Have-Not?
I don’t believe this is so. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, humility of a true and virtuous sort is willful “self-abasement” based on a man’s awareness of his own limitations. Thomas Merton wrote in “New Seeds of Contemplation” that true humility was equal to true self-knowledge. It is by no means humble for a man to lie about himself — this “false humility” which feigns perpetual inability is neither Christian nor sane. Christ was never so humble that he couldn’t practice his carpentry. In the same respect, it can never be humble for one to feign a lack of knowledge. If I know Latin, it is not humble for me to say that I’ve no knowledge of Latin, being too dumb to acquire it. This is lying, and is a perversion of an otherwise crowning virtue. It is humble (honest) to tell you that I can teach you Latin, but not physics.
Having giving a cursive definition of humility, we can see that the evangelist is in no wise forced into pride by his institution of a “force relation” with another. While it does presume a sense of power, this power does not take a negative form, but a very positive form, as the one who loans you $20 has the power. Love, and subsequently humility, presumes an inequal distribution coupled with a desire to make it more equal. In the case of religious truth, which a religious individual would consider a great Good (leading to the greatest Good), it is not prideful for him to suppose that he holds a valuable good which he wants to diffuse to the masses. One would certainly not accuse Louis Pasteur of pride if he wanted every dairy farmer to understand and utilize Pasteurization!
Therefore, while the evanglist-evangelical does involve a transmission or surfacing of power in the context of a discursive relationship, it does follow that such a relationship would be necessarily negative or, in terms of virtues, prideful. In fact, a humble individual, being intimately acquainted with the truth of his own limitations, is in a much better position to transfer truth to other individuals. The individual who sees his own lack and the lack of his brother, and yet believes that he has the good which slakes that lack, would do his best to diffuse it as widely as possible. And in no sense does this involve an abuse of a “force relation” or pride.
[This is where the joy of having a blog really comes in handy -- because, I didn't really plan to write all this. But because I have a medium, I can follow these thoughts as far as I wish and be as absolutely nebulous and abstract as I so desire. Where else could someone write so badly? Because if I didn't make a firm decision to risk failure, that is, write poorly, I would never write at all. As Chesterton said, "anything worth doing is worth doing poorly."]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: a canticle for leibowitz, anarchism, John XXIII, nuclear war, Pacem in Terris, thrice
“Man has the right the live” — John XXIII, Pacem in Terris
In “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” mankind has committed the unpardonable sin, the “Flame Deluge,” leaving “a billion corpses” lying dead, unmourned and unburied — men, through nuclear arms, obliterated nearly all of creation and all of culture. The book itself traces about 2000 years of history through the eyes of The Albertian Order of Saint Lebowitz. St. Leibowitz is a 20th century physicist who survives the nuclear war, becomes an ordained priest after his wife dies, and spends his life organizing collections of the “memorabilia” (written documents of all kinds) during the “Simplification.” While the book stresses the importance of the Church in the preservation of culture in a newly barbarian world, a deeper message perhaps comes through — the incredible, impossible madness of man.
One particular Abbot of the Order of St. Leibowitz, incensed at man’s insistent inclination toward destruction, cries out to God:
“Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?”
One can’t help but feel this way when one considers the mountains of caked blood and flesh which buried the earth in the past 100 years. What could bring man to obliterate his brother so senselessly, so maddeningly?
Last semester I was quite involved in studying peace and conflict — the history of war, the history of weaponry, the reasons for war, the inside and out of nuclear war, etc. I had to leave it for a while, because it became somewhat of an obsession for me, such that it began to encroach upon my spiritual life. But, to this day, I’m not convinced that encroachment wasn’t necessary. When we consider that there are enough nuclear weapons on earth to destroy it entirely seven times over, why aren’t more of us concerned?
My guess is that, for most of us, its not real. Abstractly there are these machines out there somewhere which, if utilized, would nullify a lot of other abstractions (namely, the people we can’t see). It seems that we — myself included — have a hard time going to our knees over abstractions. I can’t truly fathom what it must be like to be huddled in my living room, as the birds of hell drop bombs of fire on everyone I love. I can’t imagine a city, at once bustling, at once destroyed, peopled only by shadows and men with their flesh dangling from their bones as they walk. Can we imagine this? A billion hands furled in the dirt? A billion mouths melted shut, or two billion eyes turned to water?
Dustin Kensrue (one of my favorite Catholic artists) wrote a sonnet entitled “The Flame Deluge” (he presumably read “A Canticle for Leibowitz”), in which the final couplet is this:
Who will stand to greet the blinding light?
Its lonely when there’s no one left to fight.
I think about this often, and I consider what drove the world to madness in the 20th century. No doubt that it was a mad thirst for power, a demonic thirst slaked by blood — but afterwards. What drove us mad? Had man ever had to cope with the death of a billion of his brothers? Had man ever been asked to see so much horror, and yet remain good? It is no wonder that so little faith remains in man. It is a wonder that he remains complicit with the cause of his madness — or at least, its material cause.
In fact, this might be a situation in which the anarchist — or rather, the radical personalist — has the ethical upper-hand. Who could obey a power which, in the same breath, constantly threatens entire nations with destruction? How could such a power be just? Such a power’s existence would be a “contravention to the moral order.” The Christian anarchist says “Let the nation be dissolved, only do not strike the masses with fire.” There is never a moral justification for the purposeful incineration of nations. Not the preservation of one’s own nation, one’s own family, one’s own life. A nation which purports to be Christian would, in my mind, lay down its life on the altar of its brother’s madness as a prayer to the Lord.
But still, the idea boils down to personal responsibility doesn’t it? We take the easy way out — we say “nothing will stop them unless we stop them — unless we bomb their hospitals and schools, unless we poison their land and raid their homes, unless we make them burn until they surrender.” But this is the way of the coward, not the way of the Christian. The Christian is, above all, too brave for nuclear weaponry, or conventional means of destruction. He is noble and hopeful, he has the whole host of Heaven in his defense, the Creator Omnis is His Father. What has he to fear?
Before all else, the Christian is called to something more noble and courageous than war — he is called to be a witness and a pilgrim, a sane man in a world of wolves. He does not threaten men and women and children with death, but dies to himself in order to save them. This is the only sanity that remains, in an age of atomic power — the white martyrdom of the saints themselves, instead of the cup of wrath which man forces himself to drink. Only the sane man could stand amongst the barbarians and profess: man has a right to live.
The Catholic Worker, February 1939, 1, 4.
Summary: (DOC #340) Describes the ordeal of trying to find a bed for a two and a half year old child on a cold Winter night and the indignity they faced at the hands of the police. Finally, she gives her and her daughter Tamar’s beds to the boy and his father.
Day After Day
It was nineteen above zero and Herbert Joyce had just hitch-hiked from West Virginia. Herbert is two and a half years old. With him was his father, twenty-five, a glass blower. His mother had deserted him when he was six months old.
Herbert was looking for a bed for the night. He had a woolen overall suit on, and no sweater underneath, and tiny galoshes on his tired feet. When he arrived at the Catholic Worker office at supper time he was very hungry indeed.
Nobody knew what to do about the baby and I was out at a meeting and didn’t get back until after eight. By the time I came home he was fast asleep on his father’s shoulder. They were just waiting.
The top floor front at 115 Mott Street was full to the doors. Ten men slept there and there was no room for a father and child. The rear house was full, every bed taken and every room as full as could be. There was the dining room table of course, but he might roll off that. There were the offices, but one office already had a bed put up in that and there were no other beds to put up in the other offices, nor any blankets. And it was nineteen above. Not as cold as it was to get, but still cold enough.
Crowded or not crowded, Mott Street is scarcely a place for a baby two and a half years old. Unheated at night, oil stoves during the day, no hot water, no bath, no privacy. The two top floors were occupied by women, some of them nervously incapable of work, physically shattered by hardship and insecurity. Not fit company for a baby. And one certainly didn’t want to put him in with a lot of men, unemployed, of all ages.
Organized Agencies
So first we tried the McMahon Temporary Shelter for Children. No, that was filled up and besides it was quarantined for scarlet fever. There was the St. Barnabas Shelter over on Mulberry Street, also temporary, so we tried them and the matron there told us there was a bed. We walked the ten or twelve blocks to get there and found that there had been a mistake. They were quarantined there too, with dysentery. We should try the Foundling, they said.
During this time there had been a policeman who had been assisting us in our search, very friendly and sympathetic, anxious to help us though he assured us that New York wanted no transients, least of all transients with babies.
Foundling Hospital
Once before the Founding Hospital had helped us when Margaret, an old friend of The Catholic Worker, had gone to the hospital with arthritis. The hospital had taken in the baby and afterwards boarded it out. So we went with confidence to the Foundling Hospital. There was a subway right at the door of St. Barnabas which let us out practically at the door of the Foundling, so the journey was not so bad. But once there we had to wait and be questioned. By this time it was after nine.
The nurse in charge took our names, the details in regard to the baby, the father, the mother, our interest in the case.
“How long would we wish the baby kept,” she asked.
“A few weeks, until we could find a place to board the baby so the father could find work,” we told her. The Catholic Worker could put up the father, but it was the baby that needed special care.
The nurse left to speak to the sister in charge and came back with word that we were to go around the corner to the police station on 67th Street. I don’t remember what she said, but my understanding was that this was a formality to be gone through, and being quite used to the ways of charity organizations and the efficiency which demanded that the recipient of charity be made to go through as many inquiries and as much red tape as possible regardless of the immediate need, we remained patient. After all the baby was asleep. The father might be tired of carrying the sleeping young one–all the way from West Virginia where he should have remained, of course, and lived on the ten dollars a month the relief allowed him, but he had to put up with it. Everyone was only too happy the baby was not awake and crying.
Police Courtesy
So we went to the station house, bare, drab and inhospitable. It was some time before the desk seargent could give us any attention. He had to talk to a landlord who was having trouble with drain pipes or something. A man of property worthy of attention. He had to talk to another policeman about getting a woman drug addict over to Bellevue. He seemed to be stalling, meditating over our case for a while when he had finished these two cases. Finally he called the Foundling. We heard his end of the conversation but not the other.
“What do you want me to do about it?” he wanted to know. “Oh, you want me to investigate! Well I don’t blame you, they look fishy to me.”
This was hard to understand. Mr. Joyce might have looked fishy and so might I, but after all, it was hard to see what there was fishy about the baby who needed a bed
We were questioned some more. We were taken upstairs and questioned some more. We sat in a room with a detective who was fingerprinting some men, next to a room were some women being held, and the questions went on. Perhaps we were not technically being held by the police, but in effect we were. We were questioned separately and together.
It was suggested that I had been wandering around the country with Mr. Joyce and the baby. This contribution to the case was made by the detective who alternately sneered at us and at the Catholic Charities who had not taken care of the case though he donated his money to them. He remarked on this many times.
What had complicated the whole case was that Bernard had come to us in California, to our Los Angeles headquarters when his wife had deserted him. Thereafter much red tape which took days the baby was taken care of for a time and finally Bernard was sent back to West Virginia.
Ugly Distortion
The fact that we had been concerned in his case before made the police confident that we were partners in his delinquency in running away from his ten-dollar a month allowance in West Virginia. They distorted the story in their ugly imaginations and insinuations until it looked as though the charges were to be made against us of vagrancy, adultery, kidnapping and a few other sins and crimes. During the long hours we sat in the police station — and we were there until after midnight,–the only response to the problem presented Lieutenant Walsh was sneers and suspicion. The detective upstairs was even worse.
Finally after hours of pondering on the part of Lieutenant Walsh an ambulance doctor walked in, much to our surprise. He picked up the sleeping child, much to our alarm and astonishment, examined the baby who refused to wake up, and then handed him back to us. “Nothing wrong with that baby,” he said. We knew that before.
The interne was from the Flower Hospital, and being just a plain man he had a simple solution. “I’ll say the baby is an undiagnosed case and bring him over to the hospital,” he said. “He’ll at least have a bed for the night.”
“Then I’ll have to arrest the father for vagrancy just to see that he doesn’t desert him,” the police decided. “And tomorrow the case will come up in the courts and they’ll both be shipped back to West Virginia. We have enough problems of our own.”
But this didn’t seem any solution for us, so this idea was abandoned.
And then finally, after these hours of pondering, the great police department of the City of New York gave up. We had to take the baby back to Mott Street to find a bed for him there. The only contribution to our problem was that we were escorted back in the patrol wagon, and I am not yet decided whether we had this escort out of a desire for our comfort or in order that the police might find out whether we really had a House of Hospitality.
In the wagon, our escort policeman was most sympathetic.
“It’s a hard, cruel world,” he said sadly.
We agreed.
“You’ve done wrong, young man, but still I can sympathize with your wanting to keep the child with you.”
We were glad for his sympathy.
He was a kindly man and he gave Bernard a dollar for the baby.
He helped us out, carefully escorted us to the rear tenement which we call home, and even insisted upon going upstairs. By this time I had decided on a solution. It would have saved us lots of time and worry if I had decided on it before.
We put the baby and the young father in my room where there are two single beds, and we woke up Teresa, aged twelve, and she and I went to a neighbor’s apartment to sleep on the floor. (Our friend had one blanket on her bed that night and we had two, one under and one over us.) The next day we sent Bernard and Herbert, the baby, down to the farm at Easton to save them from being shipped back to West Virginia.
“I’m not a bum,” Bernard had said sadly that evening. “I worked for three years in West Virginia until I got laid off, and when I went to California I went because I had a job there which lasted a year. This last summer I worked six months, and I’m looking for work now. But I want to keep my baby.
taken from: http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/daytext.cfm?TextID=340
——
Filed under: Uncategorized
Even after 2 years (3 years counting my discernment), I’m still insecure about my faith. I still get nervous that I’ve missed some historical or theological point, and that I’m headed down the wrong path.
I guess my thoughts are — if this is true, then why do so many reject it? How is it that so many great Christians are in rebellion to the Holy Church founded by Christ? And why doesn’t God boom down correction from Heaven?
These are foolish questions and should probably remain unanswered. Or better yet, they are answered in Kreeft’s “Ecumenism without Compromise.”
After these doubts, though, I’m strengthened by my peers in the faith and by the Eucharist.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Living in Louisiana, we get a lot of mosquitos and, subsequently, mosquito hawks too. The latter hover and buzz around the house, hopping across walls and ridding your home of the pesky public enemy #1. Oftentimes, my dog Jackie — a gimp-legged catahoula cur with a severe underbite — will lunge after these mosquito hawks chomping at their tasty little wings and long slender legs. But, when she catches them — I mean *really* gets a hold of one — she doesn’t know what to do with it. She stares at it, licks it once or twice, and moves on to licking her nether-regions.
I submit this as an analogy for my own intellectual activity. Sometimes I feel, much like Jackie, that as soon as I’ve caught an idea, it immediately loses appeal. It’s the freshness, the chase, the uncertainty and adventure of ideas that attracts me. But, when I’ve lost interest, they’re like dead little mosquito hawks still twitching on the rug.
But that’s where the analogy ends.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I just wanted to post this, partly for my own records, and partly for your benefit (taken from newadvent.org):
Letter of Bishop Ignatius of Antioch to the Philedelphians
Introduction
Ignatius, who is also Theophorus, to the Church of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ which is in Philadelphia, in Asia, to her that hath found mercy and is established in the unity of God, and rejoiceth continually in the suffering of our Lord, and in his resurrection, being fully assured in all mercy, whom I salute in the blood of Jesus Christ, who is an eternal and abiding joy, especially if they be in unity with the bishop, and with the presbyters and deacons who are with him, who have been made manifest according to the will of Jesus Christ, whom his own will hath confirmed and settled by his Holy Spirit.
CHAPTER 1
I have known that your bishop, not of himself nor through men, hath acquired the ministry that belongeth to the common good, nor yet according to vainglory, but by the love of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ; at whose modesty I am ashamed; who, though he is silent, hath more power than they who speak vain things; for he is in harmony with the commandments, as the lyre with its strings.
Wherefore my soul deemeth happy his disposition towards God, knowing that it is virtuous and perfect, even his constancy and gentleness in all the moderation of the living God.
CHAPTER 2
Being, therefore, children of light and truth, avoid division and evil teachings; but where the shepherd is, there do ye follow as sheep.
For many wolves, which seem worthy of belief, lead captive by evil pleasure them who were running the godly race. But in your unity they shall find no opportunity.
CHAPTER 3
Abstain from evil herbage, which Jesus Christ doth not cultivate, because it is not the planting of the Father. Not that I have found division among you, but thorough purity.
For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ, these are with the bishop; and as many as have repented, and have entered into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall be of God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ.
Be not deceived, my brethren; if any one followeth a schismatic, he doth not inherit the kingdom of God; if any man walketh in an alien opinion, he agreeth not with the passion of Christ.
CHAPTER 4
Be diligent, therefore, to use one eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup, for union with his blood; one altar, even as there is one bishop, together with the presbytery and the deacons, who are my fellow-servants, to the end that whatever ye do, ye may do it according unto God.
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Tony Blair, sketchy Catholic extraordinaire, has demonstrated this week how little he learned in RCIA:
Tony Blair: Pope must rethink ‘entrenched’ views on gaysFormer Prime Minister Tony Blair has made the case for a rethink on conservative religious attitudes to homosexuals. Read our story in The Times today. In an interview with the gay magazine Attitude, Tony Blair says he wants to urge religious figures everywhere, including the Pope, to reinterpret their religious texts to see them as metaphorical, not literal. He predicts that in time this will make all religious groups accept gay people as equals. He also believes there is a change of heart taking place in evangelicalism, with many younger evangeliclas becoming pro-gay, that the issue with evangelicals and Catholics is ‘generational’. We already knew the Blair family did not abide by the Church’s teaching on contraception and it seems Blair’s conversion has not changed this. Interesting that many converts become more conservative than those born to a faith or denomination, but Tony Blair has stuck by his liberal principles.
Read on for some extracts:
Speaking to reporter Johann Hari, Mr Blair says:
‘I think that for all religions, the challenge is how do you extract the essential values of the faith from a vast accumulation of doctrine and practice? For many people, the reason for their religious faith is less to do with the doctrine and practice, and more to do with the values like love of God and love of your
neighbour…. For many people in the world of religion, they have found they’re facing the same challenge as everybody else is in changing times, when it comes to the role of women, the issues to do with sexuality, and so on. But the problem within the institutions of organised religion as opposed, for example, to those in politics, is that those attitudes get mixed up with those of doctrine. For something that is religious in nature, it can be far harder for them to break with the past. They’re hard – they’re really difficult. Because people are debating – what is the word of God? If something is expressed in a particular way in the Bible or the Koran or elsewhere, can you possibly contemplate a process of modernisation where attitudes change over time? But my own view is that it’s better to have these views debated within religious circles than to pretend that they don’t exist.’On evangelicals and gays, he says:
‘It’s interesting, because in my Faith Foundation I have a lot of links with some of the evangelical groups in the US and elsewhere, and, actually, I think there is a generational shift that is happening there. If you talk to the older generation, yes, you will still get a lot of pushback, and parts of the Bible quoted, and so on. But actually, if you look at the younger generation of evangelicals, this is increasingly for them something that they wish to be out of – at least in terms of having their position confined to being anti-gay.’
US Pastor Rick Warren is on the board of his foundation. Blair believes that how the debate is conducted is important.
‘When you’ve got people who are conducting the debate in a reasonable way, then you find that you do start to soften people’s attitudes and then you open them up to the possibility of change and you open them up to the possibility of reconsideration. Whereas, if you just shout at them, then what you find is that people go back into their shell again. But that’s always been my view about politics, which is that if you actually think you’re right, you should have some confidence in your ability to persuade.’
He was asked about the Pope’s view that homosexuality tends towards intrinsic moral evil.
‘Again, there is a huge generational difference here. And there’s probably that same fear amongst religious leaders that if you concede ground on an issue like this, because attitudes and thinking evolve over time, where does that end? You’d start having to rethink many, many things. Now, my view is that rethinking is good, so let’s carry on rethinking. Actually, we need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith. So some of these things can then result in a very broad area of issues being up for discussion.’
He couldn’t say if there would ever be a pro-gay Pope.
‘Look, there are many good and great things the Catholic Church does, and there are many fantastic things this Pope stands for, but I think what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic Church, particularly a well-attended one, on any Sunday here and did a poll of the congregation, you’d be surprised at how liberal-minded people were. ….. On many issues, I think the leaders of the Church and the Church will be in complete agreement. But I think on some of these issues, if you went and asked the congregation, I think you’d find that their faith is not to be found in those types of entrenched attitudes. If you asked “what makes you religious?” and “what does your faith mean to you?” they would immediately go into compassion, solidarity, relieving suffering. I would be really surprised if they went to “actually, it’s to do with believing homosexuality is wrong” or “it’s to do with believing this part of the ritual or doctrine should be done in this particular way”.’
Who does this guy think he is? You can’t become Catholic and then tell the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ, what he ought to do. When you become Catholic, you literally profess to believe “all that the Holy Catholic Church teaches as revealed by God, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived.” You DON’T profess to believe whatever happens to coincide with your own particular fancies. Blair may have become Catholic nominally, but he remains a pagan and a politician at heart.
Whether the laity in Britain and the US are poorly-catechised is no doubt, having been weened on the effeminate koom-bie-yah priests of the sixties and seventies who were too busy getting married, consecrating pizzas, and adulterating with nuns to teach their flock the Truth. Nevertheless, he has publicly disregarded the Church’s moral teachings on contraception and just war (entered war in Iraq in direction opposition to Benedict), and now has flagrantly denied the Church’s historical and biblical teaching on homosexuality (which he deems “generational” — one supposes this is true, considering it has been “generational” since before the Incarnation). If I were his bishop — and it’s a certainty that I am not — I would withhold the Body and Blood from this man, excommunicate him, and send the message to the world that Christ’s teachings are non-negotiable, Rome has spoken, case closed.
Politicians who refuse to bend the knee to Christ and His Church really burn me up. grrr
[With the Pope's stellar meeting with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi looming in the public conscientiousness, one wonders -- nay, one hopes -- for a similar reaction from the Holy Father]
