(Giotto, "Palm Sunday.")This makes me reflect on a short but intense period of my own life — I was 12 — when the monster-selling 1970s Christian apocalyptic book “The Late, Great Planet Earth” fell into my hands. I was a kid who read the newspaper constantly, and brooded over what I saw there. The year was 1979. Iranian militants held American hostages. Inflation ripped through the US economy. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Always, talk of nuclear war with the USSR. I well remember on Saturday morning driving back across a field with my dad, coming home from the hunting camp, looking up at the sky and thinking, “A Soviet ICBM could explode right up there 19 minutes from now, and we would all be dead.” It shook me up. [...]I burned brightly with that stuff for about a year and a half, then burned out, and was done with religion for what turned out to have been years. The prophecies “Late, Great” made turned out to be false, mostly, but over the years, I’ve come to judge myself less harshly for falling under its sway. I think that’s because I have more sympathy for human weakness in emotional crisis, and the desperate need to discover (or to impose) meaning on chaos. But at the same time, reflecting on that experience has made me more aware, and skeptical, of my own susceptibility to apocalyptic themes in public discourse. The thing is, there really are apocalypses! Not big-A Apocalypses — though as a Christian, I believe that history will culminate one day in an End, though it may be thousands of years from now; nobody knows the date — but small ones. The Apocalypse is the end of the world; small-a apocalypses are the end of a world. The end of the Roman Empire in the West was an apocalypse. The Fall of Constantinople was another. Bolshevism and Nazism were both apocalyptic political cults that brought about real apocalypses for their victims and their victims’ cultures. If I were a pious Arab Muslim living in the Middle East at this time in history, I could well imagine that I would look to apocalyptic prophecies and figures (e.g., the Dajjal) from my own tradition to explain the losses and traumas wracking my culture and civilization, and to give consolation that All Will Be Well in God’s Good Time.
As Kermode, Gray, and others point out, apocalypticism (and utopianism, it’s sister) is by no means only a religious phenomenon. As I said, Bolshevism and Nazism were secular political forms. Today, you will find few more apocalyptic secularists than those whose minds are seized by the prospect of a global warming apocalypse. (But, remember: just because they’re terrified of it in ways many of us don’t understand doesn’t mean it’s not real; perhaps they see something the rest of us don’t).
Some critics of apocalypse enthusiasts accuse them of taking pleasure in the prospect of the damnation of unbelievers. Many no doubt do, but I think this idea is misleading. When I was part of that Late, Great mindset and culture, I didn’t know anybody who relished the thought of sinners falling into the hands of the Antichrist, and suffering horribly. Surely some did, but not as many as you may think. To reiterate, the consolation offered by the Late, Great vision was rather this: 1) it offered an explanation for hard-to-understand, scary events in the world; 2) it assured you that none of this was random, that as chaotic as things seemed, God was actually in control, and things were unfolding according to His plan; and 3) as awful as things were getting, God was going to rapture His people off the planet before the worst happened.
Catholics have a tendency to look askance at small-a "apocalyptic" prophecies, particularly those from other traditions. Sure, you can meet a Catholic who has gotten caught up in the "Left Behind" and Rapture notions, or who has read something like The Late, Great Planet Earth, just as you can meet Catholics silly enough to take The DaVinci Code seriously. But before we Catholics get all superior about people who think that one day half of our neighbors will just disappear and the rest of us will have to muddle through the End Times (or the Nearly End Times, etc.) we should remember that Catholics have plenty of small-a "apocalyptic" stuff of our own to contend with.
Take, for example, the Three Days of Darkness.
This prophecy, which all of its adherents insist comes straight from the visions of reputable saints and blesseds, supposedly warns of a coming trial during which darkness will fall over the whole earth, and the only light will come from blessed beeswax candles (but they must be 100% pure beeswax, possibly from some approved source, or else they won't work when the Darkness comes). The power of Hell will be unleashed upon the world, and all humans except for the chosen with their candles will die in unspeakable torment as demons roam free to torture and destroy. The ordinary rules of Christian love apparently get suspended as the faithful are warned not to open a door or even a window, not even if they hear their own parents or children screaming for mercy and salvation outside, because either they're really hearing demons, or else they're being tested--for if their parents and children are outside, then God has chosen to smite them, and opening a door or window to let them come in will result in the immediate deaths of all the saintly and holy gathered in the home.
Mark Shea mentions such prophecies here and here, among his various writings. I find his take quite sane and sensible. To me, it's entirely possible that saints and mystics have had various disturbing visions of the End Times, but when those visions are somehow twisted into becoming specific survivalist instructions for a tiny handful of Catholics that include God's secret commands to purchase and store particular kinds of blessed candles and to be prepared to resign one's nearest and dearest to the unleashed powers of Hell in order to save themselves so that they can be among the ruling class of some new age of perfection which will last until the real End Times, the prophecy has gone from being something of possible spiritual benefit to being something that encourages people in the worst sorts of prideful faults and errors.
Interestingly enough, the Three Days of Darkness prophecy now has a sedevacantist twist: some of the words of the mystics who have had visions of darkness and a chastisement for the Earth include a mystical "reordering" of the Church, when St. Peter (and possibly also St. Paul) will come down from Heaven and personally select the new Pope for the tiny fragment of humanity that had their blessed candles ready and were in the state of grace, thus surviving the terrible trials. Some sedevacantist groups appear to see this part of the prophecy or message as a vindication of their present belief that there hasn't been a true pope for decades now, and that God will first plunge the world into terrible torment, killing off at least two-thirds of humanity, and then select a new pope who will condemn Vatican II and everything that came from that council, praising only the faithful remnant who managed to keep the True Faith intact without a pope since the death of the last true pope (Pius XII for some, but various "secret pope" contenders for others).
So why do people fall for this stuff? I asked that question at Rod's blog, and a poster countered by asking the same question about Christianity in general. But there's a big difference, to me, between believing that Jesus Christ is Who He says He is, and further that He founded a particular Church to safeguard His teachings (since He knows quite well how prone human beings are either to putting words in God's mouth on the one hand or to turning God's free and open revelations into gnostic or esoteric knowledge meant only to benefit a handful of "insiders" on the other) and believing that every vision every mystic, saint, or (in some cases) charlatan has had amounts to some sort of special insight, some literal truth into how to survive when God smites the Earth one of these days. In fact, if we really believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, it's easy to test these prophetic words and secret visions, because Jesus Christ would not instruct us to forget charity, or store up candles in secret without telling our neighbors, or keep our doors firmly shut in the faces of loved ones--or even strangers, for that matter--if the world were truly being smashed with all the power of Hell.
If our faith is in Him, we need not chase after the Rapture, or pine for the Three Days of Darkness, or secretly hope to survive the Tribulation. All we need to do is take up our cross and follow Him if we would be saved.
On St. Patrick's Day I had the pleasure of speaking to about 350 Catholics who gathered together to attend a conference put on by New Ways Ministry, which is an effort to support the LGBT community in the Catholic Church. The women and men I spoke to included nuns and priests, children who had come out and parents who wanted to be supportive. Two female priests gave me special blessing and I left the meeting inspired by the devotion of those who attended. [...]Ah, yes. You see, you poor pew-sitting Catholic dolt, the Church used to teach that women were the devil's gateway, that railroads were evil, that cursing your parents or sleeping with a menstruating woman were crimes punishable by death; but now, in these enlightened days, the Church no longer teaches any of that, so she can clearly change her teaching that fornication, sodomy, masturbation (whether solo or mutual), and other homosexual sex acts are gravely morally evil, because the only reason the Church teaches any of that is to keep the gays down the way that women were once kept down by the misogynistic Bible, and to keep the macho men who fill the Church's pews every Sunday appeased in their knee-jerk homophobia.
A few years ago, I read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations, and to me the biggest revelation was how misogynistic it was. That made me realize that the Catholic Church was on to something when it allowed only educated priests to read the Bible. My mother's generation was prohibited from reading the Bible, and when I told my grandmother that my father used to read the Bible to us, she was shocked, "Catholics don't read the Bible," she said. The Church figured that people could take passages out of context and come to unwarranted conclusions. This changed after Vatican II and now Catholic parishes offer Bible study classes. [..]Happily, that has now changed. Women have entered schools of theology and can now show that Jesus was one of the first great feminists. Mary Magdalene is no longer thought of as a prostitute but as the "apostle to the apostles." Gays, though, are still excluded.
Progressive Christian and Jewish believers have accepted gay rights. Theologians now argue that verses in Leviticus that call for the killing of men who sleep with men apply only to a particular historical moment. The death penalty no longer applies to people who divorce, curse their parents, or sleep with women during their period -- rules that are also in Leviticus. [...]
Contrary to conservative propaganda, though, the Vatican is not immovable. It has a long history of changing position to follow new understandings of society and morality. Usury is no longer a sin. Women are no longer considered "the devil's gateway." Railroads are no longer cursed as the work of the devil, and teaching that there is such a doctrine as "freedom of conscience" does not merit censure, as it did for John Courtney Murray in the 1950s: In fact, Vatican II now recognizes "freedom of conscience." Pope John Paul II apologized for the Church's treatment of women and its persecution of Galileo. Sex between husband and a wife is no longer just for procreation but has value in itself.
I would like to put forward the proposition, repugnant to most English teachers, that fiction, if it is going to be taught in the high schools, should be taught as a subject and as a subject with a history. The total effect of a novel depends not only on its innate impact, but upon the experience, literary and otherwise, with which it is approached. No child needs to be assigned Hersey or Steinbeck until he is familiar with a certain amount of the best work of Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, the early James, and Crane, and he does not need to be assigned these until he has been introduced to some of the better English novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.My oldest daughter decided not to read The Hunger Games at this time because she's still reading the literature of the past, and because thus far the more violent or gory books or plays (such as Macbeth) have been more difficult for her to get through than, say, Barchester Towers, which she recently raced through. Knowing her own relatively small capacity for literature with dark, angsty, violent themes and plots helped her make a smart decision about whether her interest in all the movie hype was enough to make the books worth reading, or whether their scenes and themes of gladiatorial combat and teens killing other teens was going to detract from any good lessons or values in the stories.
The fact that these works do not present him with the realities of his own time is all to the good. He is surrounded by the realities of his own time, and he has no perspective whatever from which to view them. Like the college student who wrote in her paper on Lincoln that he went to the movies and got shot, many students go to college unaware that the world was not made yesterday; their studies began with the present and dipped backward occasionally when it seemed necessary or unavoidable. (Flannery O'Connor, Total Effect and the Eighth Grade)
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A Facebook privacy policy revision intended to make the site's methods more transparent is instead kicking up a fresh firestorm.
Facebook posted a draft version of its revised terms on March 15 and gave the site's users a one-week comment period to weigh in with questions and suggestions. The changes include many semantic tweaks, like stripping the word "privacy" out of Facebook's "privacy policy," which is now called a "data use policy."[...]
Facebook's current policy says: "When you use an application, your content and information is shared with the application." Its proposed revision amends that line to: "When you or others who can see your content and information use an application, your content and information is shared with the application."
The idea that apps your friends install can access your information disturbed many of Facebook's commenters. As one put it: "Strongly disagree -- why should I be dragged into apps my friends are involved with?"
You already are. Facebook's current terms allow apps to tap into all of the information that the app's users have access to, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told CNNMoney. [Links in original--E.M.]
Honest question: if Facebook's name more accurately reflected the kind of business it really is--if it had been called something like "Internet Advertising/Marketing Data Collection Service" or something along those lines, would any of us have ever signed up in the first place?
I'm sure that some people still would have done so because they or their families and friends find the quick "information dump" style of Facebook communication convenient and time-saving in their busy lifestyles. Other people would still have signed up for the fun and games, the quick and easy connections with the people they haven't seen since high school, and so on. But I think that many of us would have stayed away, and many more would have joined only hesitantly and with careful control over the friends they accepted, the types of apps they used, and the level and kind of personal, shopping, and lifestyle information they shared not only with their friends and families but with third-party advertisers who pay Facebook a ton of money to have the kind of targeted consumer access that previous generations of advertisers could only have dreamed about.
Instead, many people are only really realizing long after the fact that social networks such as Facebook exist to sell them: their information, their habits, their shopping choices, their lifestyles, and anything else that can be turned over for a profit, that is, to the highest bidders.
Maybe in this age in which that kind of data is ubiquitous and easily collected by people lots scarier than mere advertisers, it's a bit silly to worry about overexposure on Facebook. But then again, maybe it's still a good idea to step back and decide, from time to time, whether the social networks we use are taking much, much more than they are giving, and whether our use of them is still a good thing. And maybe it's time for me to get around to requesting that account deletion...
Let’s overlook the logical fallacy and abuse of the English language in the phrase “solo relationship” for the absurdity is evident enough; and it you don’t see it, I have a square circle to sell you. Let’s also overlook the bizarre non-sequitur that single “marriages” would somehow result in a lower “divorce” rate. For as absurd as the notion of self-”marriage” is, the notion of divorcing one’s own self is even more absurd. Where would one go from oneself?
But absurd is the word for the whole strange redefinition of marriage movement. The secular world, having sown in the wind, now reaps the whirlwind. If something as outlandish as two men together can be called “marriage,” who is to say that any other part of the definition cannot be tampered with? Why should marriage be between only two? Here come the polygamists. And apparently too, here come the soloists like Ms (Mrs?) Schweigert. And while we’re at it, who is to say marriage has to be between two humans? Bring on the bestiality advocates as well as those who would like to effect marriages between their pets.
Absurd? Sure! But so is two men getting “married.” And I would wonder how advocates of homosexual “marriage” would be able to answer Ms. (Mrs?) Schweigert’s (s’ ??) salvo, as well as the silly conclusions of the reporter? Are they not hoisted on the petard of their own “logic?” For if something as basic as sexual identity can be removed from the definition of marriage, who is to say that duality, and even humanity, cannot be removed? Can the homosexual community and advocates of homosexual “marriage” really say such things as polygamy and bestiality are a bridge too far? Why? On what basis?
And if you think the bestiality example goes too far, you can consider the recent story of the woman who "married" a building:
Just when you think there’s nothing new under the sun, Occupy Seattle protestor Babylonia Aivaz, a Duke University graduate, married an abandoned warehouse at 10th and Union Street in Seattle.
Yes: I said “married.” The bride, radiant in a white wedding gown, posed beside a bulldozer as fellow occupiers swayed to the strains of Bill Withers’ 1972 hit “Lean On Me” strummed by a ukelele.
The wedding, Aivaz’ friends report, was a lesbian wedding because the warehouse, like Aivaz, is “female.”
Granted, the wedding of the "solo bride" and the "warehouse wedding" aren't valid marriages according to civil law, which, for now, still requires (even in states that permit gay "marriage") that there be two human parties to a marriage contract.
For now.
Here's the question, though: why?
If marriage has nothing to do with children or reproduction, if marriage is not the union of one man and one woman, if marriage is all about someone's idea of romantic love, why should marriage require two human participants--and also require that the two aren't related to each other?
If all of our old marriage laws and customs were based on religious ideas which should no longer have anything to do with how people conduct themselves in our modern society, why should marriage forbid the union of close family members? Why can't a father marry his son or daughter, or a mother her son or daughter? Why can't two brothers or two sisters or a brother and a sister get married? Are you some kind of a hater, that you would look at their deep love for each other and tell them that for some vague reason having to do with the stability of society or the integrity of the family they should be forbidden to marry?
And why shouldn't bigger groups be allowed to marry, too? We know that people are actively practicing polygamy in this country; they just can't legally get married to each other. Isn't that bigoted and hateful, and bad for the children of their multiple unions?
And who are we to tell Babylonia Aivaz she can't have a lesbian marriage to her favorite warehouse? Sure, in our anthropomorphic biases we think a warehouse (like animals) can't consent, but isn't that just the residue of our speciesism acting like there's something special about human beings that inanimate objects can't possibly have? If Aviaz says she loves the warehouse and believes the warehouse loves her, is it hurting anyone to go with it, and to let her celebrate that love, and collect tax breaks and benefits just like any married couple?
Consent's not even an issue with Nadine Schweigert, who clearly consented to marry herself, exchanging a ring with her "inner groom." Who says marriage must involve two of anyone or anything? Can't a woman love herself enough to want to spend the rest of her life with herself? She can even have and raise children alone (though she already has a son from a previous relationship). Shouldn't the happy Ms.--Mrs?--Schweigert get the same exact tax breaks, privileges, and benefits as any two married people--or are we just haters who can't stand to recognize single people and rejoice in their solo happiness?
Once we start redefining marriage, where do we stop? It should be obvious that if we think that two men can be "married" or two women "married," there's nothing really special about marriage that would limit it to two people; in fact, in plenty of ages past polygamy was openly and proudly practiced, so if anything, that ought to be next on the agenda. If rendering the very word "marriage" a meaningless joke and destroying the family, the culture, and society is the end-game of the pro-gay "marriage" advocates, I'd say we're well on our way. After all, what reason--other than bigoted hatred--can be given to stop marriage from meaning whatever anyone wants it to mean, even people like Schweigert and Aviaz?
No. Either you embrace the polygamous group, the incestuous "marriage," the solo "marriage," and the warehouse "marriage," or you're just a hater. Because if the gay rights group has taught us anything, it has taught us that refusing to accept someone else's totally twisted views of reality is the same thing as hate.
The sad thing to me is that I noticed this particularly occurring in some regions of the Catholic blogosphere, this apparent shunning of the non-elect commenter. It didn't seem to come up much in secular blogs I read, though, as I said, perhaps I simply haven't noticed it before.
Now, I know that not every comment can be responded to, and that especially if someone's merely agreeing with the blogger and/or making a simple statement, the comment may not receive further notice. But this was something different: people who were clearly trying to join a conversation in progress were being treated like interlopers who didn't "belong" and who therefore were being rude to attempt to join in this private clique of wise Catholics who don't have time to be bothered with the less-privileged, average, everyday sort of readers who comment less frequently and thus haven't established their bona fides.
Maybe I just happened to hit a few blogs on a few bad days; maybe the blogs in question are usually more welcoming than they seemed to be. I certainly hope so. Because deciding ahead of time that some readers don't belong in the exclusive little blog-admiration club and rejecting their words, giving them the Combox Cold Shoulder so that they'll feel discouraged and perhaps stop reading or participating at all, isn't really the sort of behavior that makes us Catholics look very Christian.
And if I've ever been guilty of that sort of behavior myself, I heartily apologize. Perhaps I don't always have time to respond to comments, but I can work a bit harder on making time, especially to answer direct questions or comments where the person commenting clearly wishes to engage me in discussion.
The Mercatornet piece goes on to discuss some strategies for cutting down on the number of no-fault divorces; I think, though, that it might not be a bad idea to take a new look at the idea of covenant marriage laws, which permit people to decide up front whether or not to enter a marriage in which divorce will be an easy out. Ultimately, however, I would be in favor of ending no-fault divorce completely, both because of my religious beliefs about what marriage ought to be and because as a woman I can't fail to recognize that no-fault divorce has been an unmitigated disaster for women and children. Temporary unhappiness as a reason to end what was supposed to be a lifelong commitment of love and fidelity makes no sense; and yet for that reason many marriages end, many homes break apart, and many children are irrevocably hurt in a way that will have repercussions for them throughout their lives. It's time to end the insanity of the no-fault divorce laws; if we're serious about wanting to preserve the sanctity of marriage, that's the place where we need to start.Among those who support the traditional concept of marriage there has been plenty of rhetoric in defence of the concept, but little has been done to come up with practical measures to shore up the institution. Now one organisation – the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada – is trying to change that with the report “Finding fault with no-fault divorce”. The report seeks not only to analyse the damage done by easy divorce, but to make concrete proposals to help rescue marriage.
On easy divorce, it says:
The shift from “fault” to “no-fault” divorce ultimately created a dynamic whereby one unhappy spouse who wanted out - for any reason or no reason at all - could unilaterally do so simply by moving out, be it two months or two years in. The end result is that we speak idealistic words (“till death do us part”) on our wedding days, knowing full well that when the going gets tough, we can - and do - get going.
In most countries that have adopted no-fault divorce, marriages have been failing at a disturbing rate. In Canada, for instance, it is estimated that around 40 percent of marriages that took place in the year 2008 will have ended in divorce by 2035. In Australia the rate is around one in three. But there is a glimmer of hope for the newly wed. The IMFC report highlights the fact that in most failing marriages, at least one of the partners will be in favour of trying to salvage the marriage. It also points out that around 85 to 90 per cent of divorces are in the category of “low-conflict divorce” and that among these, two out of three “unhappily married adults” who manage to avoid divorce or separation end up describing themselves as “happily married” five years later.
Given these facts, the report argues that taking steps to save marriages should be considered as “at least as viable an option” as proceeding with divorce. This view is supported by the Institute for American Values, which argues that “unhappy marriages are less common than unhappy spouses”. This is because its own research indicates that three out of four “unhappily married adults” are married to someone who is happy with the marriage. The IMFC concludes: “If divorce is pushed by one unhappy spouse, whose partner is happy - which, in a low conflict marriage means they have just as great a chance of being happily married five years later – then unilateral divorce simply makes it easy for the one unhappy partner to leave without explanation or negotiation.”
Jesus, my Lord, my God, my all!A few minutes before the Mass began, Ms. Johnson came into the sacristy with another woman whom she announced as her “lover." Her revelation was completely unsolicited. As I attempted to follow Ms. Johnson, her lover stood in our narrow sacristy physically blocking my pathway to the door. I politely asked her to move and she refused.Read the rest here.
I understand and agree it is the policy of the archdiocese to assume good faith when a Catholic presents himself for communion; like most priests I am not at all eager to withhold communion. But the ideal cannot always be achieved in life.
In the past ten days, many Catholics have referenced Canon 915 in regard to this specific circumstance. There are other reasons for denying communion which neither meet the threshold of Canon 915 or have any explicit connection to the discipline stated in that canon.
If a Quaker, a Lutheran or a Buddhist, desiring communion had introduced himself as such, before Mass, a priest would be obligated to withhold communion. If someone had shown up in my sacristy drunk, or high on drugs, no communion would have been possible either. If a Catholic, divorced and remarried (without an annulment) would make that known in my sacristy, they too according to Catholic doctrine, would be impeded from receiving communion. This has nothing to do with Canon 915. Ms. Johnson’s circumstances are precisely one of those relations which impede her access to communion according to Catholic teaching. Ms. Johnson was a guest in our parish, not the arbitrer of how sacraments are dispensed in the Catholic Church.
During the two eulogies (nearly 25 minutes long), I quietly slipped for some minutes into the sacristy lavatory to recover from the migraine that was coming on. I never walked out on Mrs. Loetta Johnson’s funeral and the liturgy was carried out with the same reverence and care that I celebrate every Mass. I finished the Mass and accompanied the body of the deceased in formal procession to the hearse, which was headed to the cemetery. I am subject to occasional severe migraines, and because the pain at that point was becoming disabling, I communicated to our funeral director that I was incapacitated and he arranged one of my brother priests to be present at the cemetery to preside over the rite of burial.
There is not, and never has been, the slightest doubt but that a Catholic woman living a lesbian lifestyle should not approach for holy Communion, per Canon 916. One so approaching risks receiving the Eucharist to her own condemnation. 1 Corinthians XI: 27. But, once any Catholic approaches for the public reception of holy Communion, a different norm controls the situation, namely, Canon 915. The only question in this case is, and has always been, whether the centuries-old criteria for withholding holy Communion from a member of the faithful were satisfied at the time this woman approached this minister. Unless all of those criteria were satisfied at that time, then, no matter what moral offense the woman might have committed by approaching for the Sacrament in her state (for which action she would be accountable before God), the minister of holy Communion acted illicitly. Period. End of paragraph.So my question, which I formulated as I was replying to a commenter under an earlier post, is this:
For many Catholics — notably those responsible for backing the film financially and promoting it in Catholic circles — the failure of “There Be Dragons” was particularly disappointing.
Their intentions, after all, had been noble: to make a first-rate film about Opus Dei founder St. JosemarÃa Escrivá. They’d also gone out of their way to hire a respected director, Roland Joffé, and a professional cast and crew. Once the film was made, they promoted it widely among Catholics, screening pre-release versions at Catholic conferences throughout 2010, and calling in the Catholic public relations firm, The Maximus Group, to pack theaters on opening night.
But it wasn’t enough. Not for Hollywood, which barely noticed the film’s release. And not for Catholics: Few saw it and fewer liked it.
The reason it wasn’t enough? Because the film didn’t tell a good story. As reviewers described it, the production value was high but the script was convoluted and the directing heavy-handed. It didn’t matter how true or Catholic the content was. The way the content was conveyed was less than compelling, so the content was as well. [...]
The list of reasons why Catholic media rarely measures up goes on. There’s the reticence on the part of responsible Christians to make the risky investments that art requires. There’s the shortage of first rate film and communications programs at Catholic universities, the decades of Catholic internecine squabbling which has kept much of the Church’s energies directed inward rather than outward, the distrust of Hollywood and tools of social media, as well as what Vogt and Gan characterize as “false humility” on the part of Catholics.
“It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the Christian message is powerful and compelling enough to stand on its own, that we don’t have to worry about how we present it,” Vogt said.
“The beauty and power of what we have to say can blind us to the importance of the medium,” seconded Gan.
While I was still nodding vigorously (heck, while I was still shouting "Amen!") at that one, I found this piece by Simcha Fisher discussing Stimpson's essay. Simcha talks about the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the character Dobbs, and says:
That’s the kind of guy he is: he keeps coming back and coming back. He can’t let go. Contrast this foreshadowing of his fatal flaw with the final scene, in which Dobbs and Curtain laugh hysterically as tens of thousands of dollars worth of gold dust go swirling away on the wind, back to the mountain.
This, my friends, is what we call “detachment”—a fine Christian virtue, and one worth instilling. Can’t teach it any better than that—but of course teaching isn’t what John Huston set out to do. He set out to tell a story.
Can you imagine if a typical earnestly gooey Christian producer wanted to send a message about greed and corruption and detachment? I suppose there have been plenty of these types of movies, probably mostly around Christmas time: “. . And now I’ve learned that what I really wanted most of all was right here, all along.”
This is sort of what Curtin learns, except that director John Huston made sure someone had to get shot before those peach groves and their faithful mistress became available for Curtin to pursue. Because when someone gets shot, it makes a better story; and when you tell a better story, people listen to what you have to say.
I think what my brother and I are missing is the sense of reverent anticipation that used to precede Sunday mass when, in the spare minutes before the processional, people used to kneel and collect themselves; they gathered their thoughts, remembered an intention, let go of what was frivolous and finally sighed a big, cleansing, quieting breath in preparation for the great prayer of the mass. If people spoke at all, they whispered; they were reverently aware of Christ present in the tabernacle and considerate of their neighbors at prayer.She goes on to make an interesting comparison to the silence she witnessed at a friend's yoga class; read the whole post here.
Perhaps it is different where you worship, but in my parish—and I would count mine as one of the “quieter” and “more reverent” in our area—that sort of preparation is nearly impossible. The choir and musicians are noisily setting up, talking and laughing. The people in the pews—of all ages—are “being community” with such a boisterous disregard for time or place that a priest recently halted his robing to stride out from the sacristy and call, “excuse me! This is not a movie theater; it’s not Grand Central Station. Have a little consideration, please. There might actually be a couple of people here who are, you know . . . praying.”
Before beginning his homily, Father apologized for the intemperate tone, but his point was valid. We used to have a sense of “sacred spaces,” wherein one behaved differently than everywhere else. The lobby or narthex of a church was for chatting; once you entered the nave, you quieted down. You spritzed yourself with holy water, bowed to the altar and then shut the pie-hole to get ready for mass. The closer you sat to the sanctuary (and the tabernacle) the less you tried to speak at all, but if you did, it was in a hushed voice.
Is our lack of decorum connected to the words we use? It is true that we are more reverent before an altar, where something is sacrificed, than we are before a “table” where dinner is served, if we’re lucky enough to still eat as a family. We are inclined to whisper in a church, but not in a “gathering space,” but I don’t think this is a mere question of words and naming. I suspect our rambunctious behavior at church is of a piece with the coarsening, and self-centeredness of our society as a whole. There are no places, anymore, and no occasions, where we are invited—and expected—to behave differently than we do the rest of the time, and we’ve brought our “casual Friday” attitude into church, too.
A Wisconsin lawmaker has proposed legislation that would require the state to officially declare single parenting as child abuse.Republican Senator Glenn Grothman presented Senate Bill 507 which would require the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize that non-marital parenthood is a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.The bill would also require educational and public awareness campaigns to emphasize that not being married is abusive and neglectful of children, and to underscore "the role of fathers in the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect."Rick Ungar, blogging at Forbes, has this to say:
Apparently, no longer content with suggesting that single parents (most of whom were not always single) are only out to bilk the government when deciding to have children, Grothman has decided that these same evil doers are more responsible for child abuse and child neglect than, say, alcoholics, people with mental health issues, married couples who engage in domestic violence, unemployment and the other causes cited as material contributors to child abuse.
I say that Grothman believes single-parenthood to be more responsible because I don’t see him proposing that these other causes be specifically included in his legislation.
To be fair, data reveals that there are more incidents of child abuse in households with only one parent than in households with two parents. But the data does not indicate that this factor is somehow more responsible for child abuse than the other factors listed above so, again, why single this factor out to include in the state’s statutes and not the others? [Emphasis added--E.M.]
You see, even if it's true that single parenthood is a contributing factor to bad outcomes for children, including a greater risk for child abuse (and child sexual abuse, something I've pointed out here before), it's not quite-quite to say so, especially in a government document.
More and more I'm becoming convinced that we really do have a national religion of Sex Without Consequences. That's the only reason I can think of to keep quiet about the fact that in general children do better when they are being raised by a mom and a dad who are in a stable marriage to each other--because it conflicts with the national religion's core belief, which is that people have the right to have sex with any consenting partner, regardless of the consequences.
Sure, there are single parents who are in the situation through no fault of their own: the death of a spouse, a divorce that only one partner wanted, even spousal abandonment. But as the number of never-married parents and children born out of wedlock continues to rise, we may get to the point where we have to face the fact that children in these situations do not do as well as their counterparts in stable families with a mother and a father who are married to each other; or, in the name of political correctness, we can continue to ignore the unpleasant and harsh realities, and blame everything but the cultural breakdown and the decline of marriage for the negative results that impact children.
And part of ignoring the harsh reality is continuing to label as "harsh" the people who point out the reality, something the culture warriors on the left are getting increasingly good at doing.
