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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Ethan Haas Was Right! A satisfyingly Mystifying site that makes me wonder what is going to happen tomorrow. Labels: Cool Stuff Choose the City Where the Spice Girls Play Next I'm thinking' "Baghdad". Or maybe Calcutta. Labels: Humor Cynical Politicians Pretend to Care About Honorable Military Hero They Destroyed Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets' blood.' Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets; now fill up what your ancestors measured out! You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna? Labels: Salvation Through Leviathan By Any Means Necessary You know, there is something... what? Weirdly creepy? Passive-aggressive? Soft totalitarian? I'm not sure what... about this  I agree with this blogger. I'd much prefer the image of a Defense Ministry with lions and eagles and claw and arrow and other pointy nasty aggressive stuff than this image that says, "We're going to Mother you even if we have to envelop the whole world in our soft--yet inexorable--embrace. I much prefer being ruled over by tyrants and cronies to being ruled over by People Who Want to Do Me Good. The tyrant's greed can be sated and his vigilance dulled by surfeit. But the Nanny Statist who wants to Do Me Good is urged by his conscience to tyranny. And he never sleeps. No. I don't think Japan is on the brink of world domination. I just think the art is creepy. And art says something. Here, for example, is the uber creepy (and somewhat prophetic) art cooked up in the early days of the Homeland Security department:  Long gone, sadly, is the old gif file with the moving eyeball peeking through the keyhole in an American flag. (I kid you not!). I wish I could find it again. It was priceless. Big Brother will keep you safe! Labels: News of the Weird When I Went to Australia in 2004... I discover it was the happy land of upside down where the Catholics were bad Anglicans and the Anglicans were good Catholics. One of the good Catholic Anglicans I met was Marco Vervoorst, who recently decided to just go ahead and finish the job by becoming Catholic. He's got a new blog!. Welcome into full communion, mate! Labels: Converts, Doings on Other Blogs Memo to Kurds: Don't Trust Presidents Named Bush Unbelievable. And yet, not unbelievable. Not any more. Labels: War Interesting Quote I would like to ask in all seriousness whether Protestantism can be a real answer to anyone for whom Catholicism has never been a real question – whether we still have any real business with the church of the Reformation if in the meantime we have left alone the counterpart with which it struggled. And I would like to issue a warning of the unhappy awakening which might some day follow such detachment. Those who know Catholicism even a little know how deceptive its remoteness and strangeness are, how uncannily close to us it really is, how urgent and vital the questions it puts to us are, and how inherently impossible is the possibility of not listening seriously to those questions once they have been heard. - Karl Barth A perfectly reasonable question. The attempt to locate Protestantism as something besides a reaction to the Catholic faith is ultimately doomed. Of course, that is not *all* Protestantism is. In the intervening five centuries it has gone on to create its own culture, make its own theological discoveries (of truths which are properly part of the Catholic tradition since there is no new revelation). But before it is an attempt to return to the myth of the "pure" New Testament Church, it is an attempt to get rid of the Catholic Church: to exaggerate whatever Catholic truths it prefers, abandon whatever Catholic truth it happens to dislike and add whatever human traditions it wants to add to the deposit of faith. At the end of the day, it must perpetually define itself as "not Catholic" in order to exist--even when it insists it is Catholic--as the ECUSA does while it jettisons one piece of Catholic teaching after another. The moment that protest ends is the moment the Protestant has no reason left not to become Catholic. Labels: Meditations John Brown's Blog Ain't a-Mould'rin' in the Grave He writes: I wanted to let you know about my website, Companion of Jesus, where I just began a series of web videos on Ignatian/Jesuit spirituality, history and contemporary Jesuits. I hope you take a second to look at it. Happy BDay, St. Iggy! You're not Dominican, but you're still okay in my book. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs, PSA New Blog! Sonitus Sanctus is rapidly making a collected archive of all the great Catholic multimedia from around the internet. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs, PSA A reader asks: Do you know of any mp3s or podcasts out there of the rosary (in English or Spanish or Latin, for that matter)? Beats me. Anyone? Labels: Mailbag Interesting piece on a bit of a revival in Ireland Happily, not everybody in Ireland is rushing to ditch their Catholic heritage. Labels: Good News Harry Potter and the Question of Scandal Here are two related letters that fell in my box today: 10 years ago I saw you speak at the Defending the Faith Conference and I have enjoyed your books. I noticed that like your good friend Nancy Cartentier Brown your a Harry Potter Fan and I had a question for you about it. followed by another reader who writes: I ordered a Harry Potter book on eBay yesterday and realized afterward that the seller's other items are occult books. I'm just wanting to know if I should be weary of receiving such a book (I'm not sure if there can be some spiritual harm attached to it, being in the hands of such a shady seller). I'd like to keep the book when I get it, if there's nothing to worry about, since the version I got is collectable and worth money. On the other hand, I don't want damning objects in my home. Anyway, I hope I'm just being superstitious, and would appreciate any advice. I think both these letters touch on something very similar to a pastoral problem that faced the apostle Paul: the problem of eating meat. The difficulty in antiquity was that, if you lived in an urban area and wanted to have a nice meat dish for dinner, the market you bought it at usually got a large supply of slaughter animals from the local temple to Zeus or Artemis or Whoever. That meant you were eating meat which had been ritually dedicated to the worship of a pagan god. This left Christians with exceptionally tender conscience stuck in a quandary: Could you ever eat meat? If you did so, where you somehow participating in pagan worship and defiling yourself? That is what the second post seems to be reflecting. The mere fact that Harry Potter books are *handled* by somebody who is involved in the occult. Paul (and Jesus') answer is clear: don't worry about it. Objects do not damn. Sins damn. Meat that was dedicated to Zeus is meat. If you thank God for it and eat it, you are thanking God, not Zeus. If you thank God for Harry Potter books and they contain no evil ideas that urge you to imitate evil, then mere contact with people who do advocate evil ideas will not "contaminate" them with some sort of malign spiritual power. Similarly, the adage "the abuse does not negate the use" is the apt response to the issues raised by the first letter. Yes, there are people who will use Harry Potter as a springboard for involvement in the occult. Likewise, there are idiots who will use the Lord of the Rings as the basis for involvement in divination and tarot reading. As they say, build an idiot-proof system and they'll build a better idiot. Nothing in this world, including Scripture, is proof against the impulse of some people to turn it to stupid ends. But as my friend Greg Krehbiel has remarked, if somebody seriously turns Harry Potter into an excuse for involvement in the occult, that's a comment, not on Harry Potter, but on the quality of catechesis in that person's life. The key is to have a serious gospel to present--and Harry is becoming more and more obviously about the fact that Rowling is giving us a very sly representation of the gospel. So she's an ally, not an enemy. All that said: it is important to remember Paul's basic advice in all such matters of conscience, which is the law of charity. Paul is adamant that meat cannot defile you. He knows this because his Master taught it. So he insists that those with tender consciences must *not* sit in judgment of those who eat (which is why I insist that Harry Haters must not sit in judgement of those who read the books). At the same time, Paul also insists that those who have the freedom of the gospel not use it to create scandal for their brethren. "Scandal" is a misunderstood word. Most people conflate with "hurt feelings". That's not what it means. Paul couldn't care less if somebody's feelings are hurt that Gentiles don't have to be circumcised. Indeed, he goes out of his way to hurt the feelings of Galatians who are trying to impose their narrow vision on the Gentile believers and tells them he wishes they'd go the whole way and castrate themselves. No, for Paul, "scandal" means "tempting somebody to violate their own conscience". That's the key to eating meat in Paul's letters and to my attitude to Harry Potter Issues. When some Harry Hater clucks his tongue and tells me I'm going to hell and demands I stop speaking well of the books, I laugh in his face. He's got no business trying to dominate my conscience with his scruples. But if, say, some kid felt *tempted* to read the books (innocent as the books are) against the wishes of his parents and felt that, by doing so, he was deliberately doing a wicked thing, I would be guilty of "scandal" in the Pauline sense. That's why Paul could fight fiercely against the circumcision party, yet had Timothy circumcised before going to Jerusalem. He was obeying the law of charity. It's why I make free with my view that Harry is a fine set of books, yet would never read them in front of my nieces and nephews who have been raised to think that to read them is to open a portal to hell. I don't want to tempt them to violate their conscience by disobeying Mom and Dad. Read Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8. These instructions are the common sense Charter of Charity and Liberty in Catholic Pastoral Matters since they were written. Virtually everything the Church has to say about disputable non-essentials from Harry Potter to smoking to dancing to playing card to going to movies (all issues of conscience for various Catholics at various times) is in these chapters. Or if you like the short form, "In essential things: unity; in doubtful things: liberty. In all things, charity." Labels: Harry Potter A reader writes: Our daughter left the Church when she married and is not trying to find fault with everything involved in the faith. Here are some resources that discuss this: Ultimately this, like many questions, comes down to the question of the authority of Sacred Tradition in governing the way we read the Bible. Invariably, what Protestants are doing is not, as they imagine, getting rid of Tradition and reading the Bible without it, but substituting some man-made Tradition that consists of patches and fragments of the Catholic tradition stitched together with various human traditions that have been elevated to divine status. The proof of this is seen in the fact that Protestants constantly rely on Sacred Tradition to tell them what books belong in the Bible. It is seen in fact that while they complain that the word "Purgatory" is not in the Bible, they do not complain that the word "Bible" is not in the Bible. The reason for the Sabbath change is straightforward. The Sabbath was a sign of the Old Covenant. But Jesus has brought a New Covenant and a New Priesthood. So the Church began observing the Sabbath on the day of his resurrection, which established that covenant. You can already see it reflected in Revelation, when John says, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day" (meaning "I was at Mass. It was Sunday"). Can the Church really celebrate a new Sabbath? Yes. Jesus told the apostles "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven." The Church, with apostolic authority, recognized the truth of the New Covenant Jesus had established and hallow the day of his Resurrection as the New Sabbath. Indeed, Jesus *is* the Sabbath rest of God. The day is ultimately just a sign to remind of that fact. All that said, your prayers and your love will be most important of all in bringing your daughter back one of these days. Many times people leave the Church out of hurt or out of love for somebody whose beliefs forces them to feel they must choose. If that is the case with your girl, then love, at least as much as argument, will be vital in restoring her faith. Trust that God is in control, and means to turn this trial into something good for all of you. God bless you for your faithful love to Him and to her! Labels: Mailbag Monday, July 30, 2007
Interesting Continuation of the Discussion on Friendship Happening at Disputations Labels: Doings on Other Blogs The Sort of Feminist That Even Makes Me Want to Be Libertarian Alternatively, it could be that some parents are just criminal idiots. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs Oregon is Too Dangerous a Place to Have This Close to Washington. I say we cut it adrift and float it a safe distance into the Pacific Not their citizens, their rulers. Here is one insane story of Zero Tolerance Idiocy gone wild. Labels: Reasons to Homeschool, Zero Tolerance Insanity Franz Jagerstatter, Who Failed to Appreciate the Doctrine of Creative Destruction for the Greater Good, Will be Beatified Labels: Consequentialism on Parade A reader writes: I lost my job about a month ago and I have no idea what I'm going to do. I'd been unhappy in the position for a long time, and my performance had dwindled to a level that was unacceptable. It was my fault and no one else's. I have to take responsibility for that. I had wanted to leave, but not like this. I'm trained as a librarian, and I have one resume out for a job right now, but I feel pretty out of touch with what's been going on in the profession--in other words, doubtful about my employability. I have a disability and some other health issues, so health insurance is a serious concern for me. My health insurance from my previous job expires in a couple of days, but I've applied to have it extended under the COBRA law. If anybody out there needs a good writer/editor/researcher type guy, let me know. I happen to know one who's available at reasonable rates :) May God grant you a new job and the provision you need to do his will through our Lord Jesus! Labels: Prayer Requests Speaking of Orwellian Language... The Church would lost without actively homosexual priests, according to Gene Robinson. He's also the guy who said "Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the Church and Scripture does not necessarily make it wrong." Whenever I get to feeling down about the Catholic communion, I reflect upon the fact that what is mainstream in the ECUSA still constitutes an isolated example, way out at the end of the bell curve, in the Catholic communion. This seems to fit the historical pattern. When a lunatic enthusiasm sweeps over the culture at large, it get reflected in muted form in the Church. When Calvinism was all the rage outside the Church, Jansenism made inroads inside the Church. But the promise of Jesus was that the Church would drink poison and live. Jansenism did not defeat the Church but did manage to produce some saints with rigorist tendencies that were tamed by the Holy Spirit. These days, the lunacies of PC culture are represented in undiluted form in the ECUSA. Those lunacies are not absent from the catholic communion, but once again the Church appears to be turning the bitter water to sweet. I doubt we will live to see the end of that particular historical process, but I have no doubt that when the absurdities of the ECUSA are dust, the Church will still be here and will continue to decline endorsing Mr. Robinson's theories. The trick, of course, will be to persuade seminaries and bishops to actually live by their own teaching. Labels: Chattering Class Follies A reader writes: Respectfully, Steve is in the recent combox is right. This stuff matters. I don't have a problem with any of this. I must be a bad communicator or something. I have no problem with attempts to remedy liturgical abuse. I have no problem with people who want Eucharistic adoration getting it. Adoring the Eucharist is the greatest single thing a human being can do in their life. Why would I be opposed to that? My beef is with something else--actually, a couple of something Elses. I have a problem with the tendency of some lovers of the Latin Mass to speak as though a reverently celebrated Paul VI Mass is second class--as are those who celebrate it. I also have a problem with those who get so caught up in Liturgy Wars that they forget the purpose of the Liturgy, which is gratitude, not bitterness, frustration, party spirit, and pickiness. You are quite wrong to say that I have been spared Liturgy Wars. On the contrary, I am a refugee. Remember? I live in the Archdiocese of Seattle. I entered the Church during the tenure of Abp. Raymond Hunthausen. I can tell you all about crappy liturgies, stupid homilies, heretical junk from the pulpit and the altar, and all the rest of it. Why do you think I sought out a place where the Mass was celebrated well and the Faith was taught after several years at the Church of St Narcissus, Apostle to the Self-Actualized? However, I am also a survivor of some Extremely Nasty Trads at our parish who made it extremely clear (by means of everything from ridiculous antics during the Liturgy itself, to smear campaigns against holy priests, to threats of physical violence against parishioners, which made extremely clear that those who worshipped in the Paul VI rite were not only second class, but enemies of the True Mass[TM]. A more embittered, nasty, ugly face of the Catholic faith I have never met. It put me off for good on the notion that the cure for what ails the Church is more and more laypeople obsessing over the quest for the Perfect Liturgy. So: knock yourself out in aiming to reform the celebration of Mass. I have nothing against that per se. But I think that a lot of this stuff is tending toward unhealthy factionalism--at least in the discussions I see in cyberspace. My *hope* is that, granted better access to the Latin Mass, people who want it will finally be content. My fear is that, as happened with several folk at Blessed Sacrament, they will form an embittered nucleus of malcontents who will look a gift horse in the mouth, form a Church-within-a-Church and simply train their rage on their brothers and sisters with renewed energy. I really hope that the motto of many Latin Mass folk doesn't become "It's payback time!" But my personal experience with some (though certainly not all) of these folk gives me several reasons for fearing that it could be a significant issue in the coming years. If so, it's going to be the task of the kindly and decent Latin Mass folk to reign in that element. Meanwhile, I'm going to continue worshipping God in the Paul VI rite. For the life of me, I don't see why that should be a problem. Labels: Liturgy stuff, Mailbag My Airline Hell Story is Featured in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram I hope I don't wind up testifying before Congress or something. Still, it was satisfying to be able to make AA's bunker mentality a public issue. What's the fun of being a writer if you can't do something like this now and then. Labels: EvilCorp I agree that there is no place where humans are that the gospel should not be At the same time, I think that there is something fundamentally pathetic and inhuman about the attempt to "create community" as a virtual character. So I do agree that Christians ought to evangelize Second Life. But I think it is a mission that has more the character of the Harrowing of Hell than of a glorious founding of a new apostolic work. Labels: News of the Weird New Blog! Elizabeth is fresh out of college and is working in the pro-life vineyard! Check out her blog! Labels: PSA Reader Christine Thanks You for Your Prayers Thanks be to God for a successful surgery! Labels: Praise report Great Big Debate at Vox Nova It's still too early for me to care very much about Presidential candidates. So far, Ron Paul is my front runner for the Doomed Quixotic ticket. A great spoiler. Not *too* kooky. No advocacy of intrinsic moral evil that I'm aware of. And with enough positives that I would not feel ashamed to look God and my kids in the eye for having voted for him (as I now feel about Bush and would certainly have felt about Kerry). But the season is young and nobody ever lost money underestimating the integrity of a politician. The rumpus over Thompson as the Potential Savior of the GOP seems to me to be premature. But I freely admit I'm not paying all that much attention. So what do I know? Labels: Doings on Other Blogs God Bless Valiant Priests! It takes a remarkable charism to do this kind of work. God bless him and the flock he shepherds. Labels: Praise report Friday, July 27, 2007
"We have a potential presidential candidate who noted to a friend that if he won the presidency the quality of his life would go down, not up." Millennial American Democracy increasingly consists of the agreed-upon fiction that the lower orders choose "representative government" from among a small class of oligarchs with fewer and fewer living connections to them. Sooner or later, it tends to occur to such oligarchs that this elaborate kabuki--conducted purely to pacify the hoi polloi's need to feel included--is an annoying infringement on their time. Labels: Politics The Always Insightful and Brilliant Sherry Weddell on the Network of Friendship That Changed France I grow in conviction that this discussion of Church-as-Family and Church-as-Company-of-Friends is of enormous consequence for the future of the Church. Here are two of the most important notes I've gotten in my comboxes in many moons. First, Colleen writes: This meditation cut really close to the bone. I have been attending Mass exclusively for nearly 10 years in a variety of communities in 4 different states. I have never had a member introduce himself to me, never been greeted by any parishoner (except at the obligatory "peace" which, I think, we all dread), never had the priest say hello or ask me my name on the way out. Then Patty says: Thank you. I don't usually take up valuable space in your comments but I couldn't help myself. Your post hit the nail on the head for me. For several weeks, I have been struggling with the very issue you raise in your post. As a number of people note, there are various lay ecclesial communities such as Communion and Liberation (which I urge everybody to check out). These are small, but growing (something you can help). If you can access one, you should. At the same time, as Sherry notes: The lay movements are great but they are only accessible to less than 1% of lay Catholics in the US. So am I saying, "Give up."? On the contrary, I'm saying it is nonetheless possible, even in very daunting circumstances (such as being an Evangelical convert to the Church in the Archdiocese of Seattle during the tenure of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in the late 1980s) to find and/or create a really nourishing lay Catholic community. As Sherry writes: [W]e can do something about it. Mark has written about exactly this before in his blog as we have over at Intentional Disciples.We can take steps ourselves to offer more at the local level - as we did in Seattle with the Nameless Lay Group. That little charter would be a fine working document for attempting to repeat the experiment we tried--and succeeded with--at Blessed Sacrament. In addition, I would strongly recommend joining the discussion at the Intentional Disciples blog and checking out some of the essays on the Catherine of Siena Institute's (thoroughly orthodox and wonderfully creative) vision of the Parish as a House of Lay Formation. Things don't have to remain as they are. Indeed, I am more and more convinced that they will not and that change for the better is already under way. God is still building his Church in our time. I gotta run, but I hope all y'all will continue the discussion. This is really important stuff. Labels: Good News, Siena Institute The Greatest Threat to the Catholic Church is Catholicity That appears to be the thesis here. Me: My profound lack of interest in liturgical obsessions extends to those who think that this gesture of kindness on the part of the Pope is somehow a menace. The Mass is the Mass is the Mass. If the Church approves it, it's good enough for me. Any Mass where I get to receive our Lord is a gift for rejoicing in, not an ocassion for invoking our Inner Anton Ego and criticizing. Eucharist: It Means "Thanksgiving". Labels: Liturgy stuff The Beeb Might Actually Do Some Real Worthwhile Religious Journalism Operative word: "might". We'll see. It could well devolve into the usual "Dominicans: Monsters of the Inquisition" agitprop. Labels: The Ever-Falling Religious IQ of the Media Rising Generation of Women Reclaiming Their Dignity Screwtape's Ministry of Information Responds. Labels: Praise report Greeley's an odd duck, partly a Yellow Dog Dem and Partly and Old Labor Catholic Who Still Understand the Basics of the Faith Here he is, giving a pretty sound response to the Usual Complaints. Key sentence: "Catholics do not believe in their bishops or priests. They believe in God, of whom the Church is a sacrament." Apostolic succession is secure. The Magisterium is secure. The Sacraments are secure. Those are guarantees from the Spirit. What we need are bishops who are also saints. But, of course, that means that *we* need to be saints since every bishop is born and raised a layman. And we never really meant it to come to *that* now, did we? Labels: The Situation Last Sunday, the German Protestant Church's religious cult specialist called Tom Cruise the "Goebbels of Scientology." I've never understood the appeal. The whole thing just looks like, well, a big dumb science fiction novel by a bad science fiction writer. Labels: News of the Weird Thursday, July 26, 2007
More Voices Raised from Responsible Folk Opposed to the Administration's Vile Orwellian Bullshit Last Friday, the White House issued an executive order attempting to "interpret" Common Article 3 with respect to a controversial CIA interrogation program. The order declares that the CIA program "fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3," provided that its interrogation techniques do not violate existing federal statutes (prohibiting such things as torture, mutilation or maiming) and do not constitute "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency." I can no longer see any good reason why Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and the other schemers and enablers behind this policy could not be convicted of war crimes in the (impossible) event that they were ever tried. Won't happen of course. But committed by any other nation on any of our people and that is exactly what this filth would be called. Labels: Salvation Through Leviathan By Any Means Necessary Urgent Prayer Request! Sts. Luke and Peregrine pray for her! Grant her doctors skill, her body and soul healing, and her family strength and peace through Christ our Lord, Father. Labels: Prayer Requests Charleston Ordains the Biggest Batch of Priests Since 1956 Shout outs to soon-to-be Fr. Michael Cassabon from the House of Cow! Labels: Praise report Speaking of Friendship John Paul seems to have grokked that youth were seeking community via friendship as the old ties of ethnicity and neighborhood which undergird the parish were being eaten away. His World Youth Days were a major effort to help foster that, and they are starting to see a harvest. Labels: Praise report Pope Says a Bunch of Sensible Stuff That Will Make A Bunch of Extremists Mad First, he says the whole "creation vs. evolution" debate is crap, which it is. This will irritate both nutty creationists and dogmatic materialists. Then he reiterates the age old Catholic respect for nature, using a metaphor which will surely get the underwear of wingnuts worried about the Romish New Age Conspiracy into a very tight bunch: “This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness ... than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive,” One can already hear the shrieks from the wingnutosphere as Benedict is indicted for paganism, for worshipping the Earth as a god, etc. Just you wait and see. Labels: The Last Acceptable Prejudice I had an English friend who immensely enjoyed websites that took some manifestly absurd proposition and then threw vast intellectual resources at trying to defend it against all the assaults of common sense He would have loved this: Here's the Catechism saying, just about as clearly as can possibly be said that "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation." Now, here is the fantastically verbose Rerum Novarum, slaughtering trillions of electrons to make the extremely long-winded case for why that plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face teaching does not apply to us when we nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Masterpieces of sophistry. And that's just two posts. There's even more where that came from. Labels: Consequentialism on Parade A really beautiful reflection on Friendship from Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa I've been reflecting a lot on friendship the last few days, so this is timely for me. I particularly like this: It is a mutual attraction and deep understanding between two people, but it does not have a sexual component as does conjugal love. It is a union of two souls, not two bodies. In this sense the ancients said that friendship is to have "one soul in two bodies." It can be a stronger bond than that of family. Family consists in having the same blood in one's veins. In friendship one has the same tastes, ideals, interests. I had dinner the other night with Fr. Bernhard Blankenhorn, my pastor, and another friend of mine. In the course of the conversation, we discussed various things, including the different ways in which cradles and converts relate to the Church. This led on to other reflections. One thing I got thinking about was the way in which Evangelicals seem to be so good at creating community and Catholics so lousy at it. I'm sorry, but I've never chalked that up (as cradles are wont to do) as simply and solely (or even primarily) due to some supposed Evangelical "emotionalism" that stands in negative contrast to the Deep Maturity of Catholics. This excuse may satisfy Catholics in profound denial over the intense loneliness many Catholics feel, but it remains an excuse. The fact is many parishes are crappy at giving their members a living experience of the love of Christ. What got me thinking is that I am very grateful because I *have* been given a living experience of the love of Christ, both as a Protestant and as a Catholic. That experience has taken place, since entering the Church, largely at Blessed Sacrament parish. It's odd really. The parish we went to before Blessed Sacrament was a classic suburban parish, with the trendy nun and the priest who peppered his homilies with all sort of chummy stories and dumbed-down theology. It was chockablock with "community-building" efforts and multicultural this and Aren't We Fabulous That. And it was a deeply lonely place if you didn't happen to belong to the families who had been part of the parish since it was built. Then we went to Blessed Sacrament, where the focus was on the Dominican charism of praising, blessing, and preaching. In other words, it was a parish that was seeking first the kingdom, not Trying To Be a Vibrant Parish. And we thrived. Part of it, I think, is that the parish is, like everything in the Catholic tradition, rooted in a "grace perfecting nature" mode of thought. Parishes presume a pre-existing human community with some stability: the village, town or polis where people are born, live and die and everybody knows each other. With that sort of natural soil you can get a parish which builds on the natural familial relationship to the divine familial relationship of the Body of Christ. But what happens when the parish is placed in a culture like ours that is profoundly mobile and transitory. The soil gets pretty thin. And the attempt to fix the problem often results in things like my old parish: lots of plastic bonhomie and fake glad-handing of the "We are Community!" variety. Real communities don't have to organize rallies to remind people that They Are Community. They are too busy living the communal life, which is about something else and not about itself. The surest way to destroy communal life is to try to make it be about communal life, just as the surest way to kill any hope of conversation is to stare into somebody's eyes and say, "Let's have a really good talk" and the surest way to induce illness is to obsess over your health. Healthy community is a by-product of a life lived toward some other end. And the end toward which the Church is supposed to living is God, not itself. So what about Evangelicals then? Why do they do so much better? Well, they do and they don't. At their best, Evangelicals are freed by not needing to follow a parish model. They do not need to build an ecclesial community on the paradigm of a family, so they often wind up building communities that instead specialize in friendship, which is another form of love. Partly this has to do with the congregational nature of Evangelical communities. Catholic communities tend to be like block parties. Protestant ones tend to be about bringing like-minded people together around a particular set of ideas. That can be fractious, but it can also produce close friendships as people with a common vision speak the essential words, "You too? I though I was the only one!" Friendship can be a love every bit as intense as eros in some ways. Indeed, in our sex-soaked culture it is often identified with eros. And that, in turn, hampers friendships from happening, because there is a sotto voce fear that a close friendship will be identified as somehow homosexual. But real friendship has nothing to do with sex. It is, as Fr. Cantalamessa says, "a union of two souls, not two bodies". To have known true friendship, even once, leaves a mark of gratitude on the heart that cannot be erased. That's why I've been thinking about my experience at Blessed S. God graced me with so many different experiences of love there. Familial love. Real experiences of friendship. Even fatherly love through a priest who had a profound impact on me. I'm still sorting it out. But I think this experience of Church as family and the experience of the Church via friendship is very important. I will have to give it more thought. Labels: Meditations I don't know why, but this cracked me up Caution: a bit of bad language. Hat tip, Darth Beckman Labels: Humor Another Oligarch Wants to Rule Us Yet another rich guy has theories about how to make the rest of us behave. If you want a Nurse-in-Chief, he's your guy. Labels: Politics The Culture That Despises Virginity Feels Increasingly Free to Despise Children Selfish brats come in all ages. Labels: Generation Narcissus, SMACTDVAISYACTDC Heckuva Job, Gonzo! What's wrong with this Administration, summed up in a four word headline. Loyalty uber alles. Labels: Stupid Party From our Worthy Cause Files Dear Friend of Catholic Exchange, Labels: Catholic Exchange Stuff, PSA Nothing Brings out the Khristian Kook Konspiracy Mongers like Harry For a rebuttal of this nonsense, I give you the invaluable Nick Milne. 1. It is worth noting that the site hosting this article hosts others proposing elaborate Jesuit conspiracies aimed at the destruction of America. Once more with feeling: nobody says you have to read or like the books. However, when Khristians insist on telling stupid lies, believing stupid rubbish, and slandering perfectly innocent people because they enjoy the books (not to mention slandering Rowling, who appears to be a perfectly decent human being and a sister in Christ, they are no longer merely having a disagreement about literary taste: they are bearing false witness against their brothers and sisters and committing a sin. Why is it that ignorance and arrogance always seem to be located on the same gene? Labels: Harry Potter Not Something You See Everyday A reader writes: Here is something I thought your readers might enjoy. It's a DIY recording I made of the Schubert Ave Maria at Aspendos in Turkey. The acoustics in this almostly perfectly preserved Roman theater are nothing short of amazing -- a singer's dream. There was no amplification, no digital manipulation, and the only microphone was the little pinhole |
