And Sometimes Tea

Good news

2012-01-31T18:47:00.004-06:00

I think it's about time we had some good news around here:

A major breast-cancer charity has cut off support for Planned Parenthood because of controversy over abortion and the group’s standing as a provider of generalized women’s health services. Planned Parenthood accused Susan G. Komen for the Cure of giving in to political pressure.

“We are alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure. Our greatest desire is for Komen to reconsider this policy and recommit to the partnership on which so many women count,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement. [...]
The Susan G. Komen Foundation did not return an immediate request for comment. According to the Associated Press, Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said that the charity cut off ties with Planned Parenthood because it is under investigation by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., concerning the possible improper spending of federal funds on abortions.

I'm totally for free and/or low cost mammograms for poor women. I'm totally against letting Planned Parenthood have the cash to do that sort of thing, because of the obnoxiousness of Planned Parenthood's overall agenda, because Planned Parenthood is up to its dirty eyeballs in abortion funding, and because Planned Parenthood clinics alone are responsible for roughly three hundred thousand of America's annual 1.2 million feticides (that's "abortions" for those of you unfamiliar with the term).

There are better ways to make sure that poor women have access to breast cancer screenings, and I think the pro-life community has an opportunity to step up to the plate to make that happen. In the meantime, perhaps the best thing the pro-life community can do is publicize this important decision by the Komen foundation, and show our support for their actions.

UPDATE: Seconds after I hit the "post" button, I received this link from a reader giving more details about this news. :)

In America, there's no such thing as a virtuous woman

2012-01-30T17:15:00.004-06:00

I'm battling a little cold today, and am not really up to the task of writing a whole blog post from scratch. But I wanted to share a few points here that I left in a comment box at Rod Dreher's blog last week; the post was this one, but I warn you that posts move so quickly off the main page at that blog that you probably won't get any responses if you comment over there.

In any case, what I wanted to share were these points I wrote regarding the HHS contraception mandate and my own views of artificial contraception as a woman:

1. Fertility is not an illness.
2. Pregnancy is not a disease.
3. It is not necessary to render women chemically sterile to make them free. In fact, all this does is make them more available to men who don’t have to commit to them or take any responsibility for their actions.
4. Promiscuity, unmarried sex, contraceptive sex–these things are not freedom. They are dead ends for women and soul-killers for men.
5. If the only principle America stands for is that everybody has the right to as much consequence-and-morality-free sex as possible, then America stands for nothing. It will be replaced by some society and culture which still thinks of sex as sacred and children as blessings, probably sooner than we think, at which point all of the hand-wringing in the world about how contraception is just the bestest stuff ever and those meanies in the Church won’t hand it out for free at First Communions and Sunday Mass and in the confessional etc. is going to seem pretty stupid.

To expand on the above combox comment of mine, I think we should recognize that what the HHS mandate says to American women is this: Look, we know there's no such thing as a virtuous woman in America anymore. In fact, we've redefined the whole idea of virtue so that modesty, chastity, and sexual morality have nothing to do with it. These days in our enlightened nation, a virtuous woman is one who is lasciviously and rampantly promiscuous before marriage and, should she actually marry, concerned primarily with being sexually available to her mate every single day of her life in spite of that pesky natural fertility of hers. It is therefore imperative that we in this nation wage an all-out chemical warfare against the natural fertility of human women because that natural fertility leads to unplanned voters and unwanted constituents and citizens.

Moreover, we think that women are stupid, lacking in self-control, unable to understand and appreciate their natural fertility and work with it instead of attacking it and rendering it, and themselves, at least temporarily sterile, and otherwise incapable of thinking for themselves. So we will mandate that it is the job of their employers (and how creepy is this, really?) to buy them birth control pills and devices, abortifacient pills, and to pay for them to be sterilized. Because the American Primary Value of sex without consequences only works if women are willing to participate in their own objectification, to embrace the mandates of contraceptive imperialism, to be brainwashed into believing that their healthy, natural fertility is an illness or a disease in need of "treatment," and to accept the new idea of virtue which means that women have a positive duty to make themselves both sexually available and incapable of pregnancy until or unless some man agrees that he'd actually like to be a father.

The HHS mandate tells us Catholic women that our Church is oppressing us because the Church don't agree with their worldview. Well, I am proud to reject theirs, which is so demeaning and dehumanizing to women that it's hard to know where to start.

Happy Birthday, Bookgirl!

2012-01-28T10:24:00.004-06:00

Today our beloved Bookgirl turns 15! I can't believe it--they're all growing up so fast!

Bookgirl is, as her name suggests, a lover of books and reading. She's also a very talented artist who loves to draw and create art! She shares her talents with us all, and even made each of us a drawing to celebrate her birthday today.

As I have for the past few years now, I will turn this blog post over to Bookgirl herself:

Hi! Bookgirl here. Wow, I can't believe I'm turning 15! It seems like the past year has just gone by so fast. As has been said, I love to read. I'm always on the lookout for anything new and interesting in books. I especially enjoy fantasy, which I often incorporate into my own art.
I am also a big fan of the Japanese Manga styles, which is what I base most of my drawings on.

As I am a bit shy still about writing on the blog, this post will be short. But I will add two of my own sketches to the post. I am steadily improving and hope to continue to do so in the next year.

No time to blog today...

2012-01-27T19:58:00.001-06:00

...but there will be a post tomorrow!

A birthday post. For (and by) our own Bookgirl.

Stay tuned! :)

It's torture when they do it

2012-01-26T19:20:00.003-06:00

(Cross-posted at Coalition for Clarity.)

The medical group Doctors without Borders is leaving detention facilities in Libya over allegations that they were being used to facilitate the continued torture of prisoners:

Medicins San Frontieres pulled its staff out of detention facilities in a Libyan city yesterday after witnessing more than 100 cases of torture against inmates by the revolutionaries that overthrew Col Muammar Gaddafi.

MSF said it was withdrawing staff because it was effectively keeping prisoners alive so that authorities could continue to torture them. [...]
Christopher Stokes, the General Director of MSF, said the scale of torture in two detention centres in the city of Misurata was accelerating despite repeated pleas from the organisation for mistreatment to stop.
Some of the 115 inmates among the 1,500 strong prison population that MSF staff treated after torture were beaten so badly they could not stand, had suffered kidney failure and bore signs of electric shock.
Hundreds of prisoners, many of them black Africans, also told the organisation of suffering torture.
Mr Stokes said MSF medics feared that their work could be used to sustain the process of torturing prisoners. "When you patch people up and then they get taken back to be tortured again in the same evening, you become part of the process," he said.
"We have protested and in some cases they have said they will stop but in other cases they say it happens everywhere, like Abu Ghraib. If anything, the number of cases has been accelerating."

Poor Mr. Stokes appears not to realize that it's not fair to bring up Abu Ghraib in this context. The prisoners at Abu Ghraib were only being subject to enhanced interrogation, enhanced detainment, and enhanced violation of human dignity. It's perfectly obvious that these prisoners in Libya are actually being tortured, because it's always torture when someone other than Americans is doing it.

You see, what matters is not whether rubber hoses, electric shocks, beatings, cold cells, waterboarding or some similar method is employed. What matters is whose hands are on the other end of the rubber hose, the electric switches, the sticks or rods, the climate control settings or the flood of merciless water poured out to cause controlled drownings. If those hands belong to citizens of any nation in the world aside from the United States of America, then what we're talking about is clearly torture. But if those instruments are being employed by patriotic Americans keeping America and her allies safe from terrorism, then all of a sudden we just don't quite know what we're describing. Prisoner discomfort? Enhanced interrogation? A little splash of water on the face--quite nice, actually, considering that the prisoner may still be dripping salty perspiration into open wounds from the last bout of Congressional-approved enhanced chatting with a hostile detainee he just endured...er, experienced. In any case, it's not torture, because good red-blooded patriotic Americans don't torture people.

It's amazing to me how clear it is that torture is what is being alleged and what is being described in detention centers in Libya, when nobody could quite seem to see it happening in our detention centers, under our watch. Such loyal, patriotic myopia is also quite good in noticing specks and even planks protruding from the eyes of citizens of other nations, while utterly ignoring that our straining to see these things and avoid seeing our own similar defects has made us morally blind.

I won't miss Starbucks at all

2012-01-25T17:29:00.006-06:00

As you may already know, Washington State is the newest state trying hard to pass a new law that will ~~legally define all Catholics as bigots~~ legalize so-called gay marriage. I lived in Washington State back when I was in high school, and the real surprise here is that Washington State hasn't managed to do this long before now, being all cool and hip and trendy and totally in love with how cool and hip and trendy they are. I mean, Iowa--Iowa!--beat them to sodomite marriage. Hard to believe--really, now, does Iowa even have tofu or a Subaru dealer? Shocking.

And just as it's not surprising that Washington State would be rushing to be one of the cool kids by ~~declaring that marriage has nothing to do with reproduction and that children don't need a mother and a father, one of each~~ insisting that two men are a husband and wife and two women are a husband and wife just exactly like a man and a woman are a husband and wife, it's also not surprising that corporate sponsors of state-approved sodomite relationships are eagerly signing up to show their support for the whole business. Microsoft and Nike apparently want you, Christian and Catholic Americans, to know that while they'll grudgingly sell you their products you are bigoted and evil for thinking that marriage actually means something other than a fabulous party and tax breaks; and now Starbucks has signed on:

Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) said in a statement Tuesday that it was "proud to join other leading Northwest employers in support of Washington state legislation recognizing marriage equality for same-sex couples."

"This important legislation is aligned with Starbucks' business practices and upholds our belief in the equal treatment of partners," the statement read.

Last year, Starbucks was among a group of 70 businesses and organizations that filed a brief in federal court opposing the Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts the definition of marriage to that between a man and a woman.

Because, you know, nothing reminds people so much of perverted sexual morality and the rush to deconstruct marriage like a cup of overpriced mediocre coffee.

To be honest, I think it's abysmally stupid for corporations to take positions on hot-button political issues. This is because I think most giant corporations are run by people who would sell one-way tickets to Hell to orphaned third-world refugees if the return on investment were good enough; they're not exactly shining moral guides. Having a corporate goody-two-shoes lecture me about how my Catholicism makes me an evil bigot unfit to live and work in this nation is sort of like having a celebrity lecture me about environmentalism and my "footprint" right before she jets off for her fifth vacation so far this year. Sorry; can't hear you over the blaring hypocrisy.

Luckily, I've pretty much kicked the coffee habit, and rarely drink it anymore; even more luckily, there is apparently no one in the entire Starbucks corporate world who knows how to make a decent cup of tea. So I won't miss Starbucks at all. Other Catholics and those Christians who share our view that holding to the notion that marriage is a man and a woman is not only not bigoted, but a sane and rational viewpoint expressing what humans have thought for centuries now, and that having to add the adjective "traditional" in front of the noun "marriage" so that people will know we aren't referring to sterile unions of same-sex pairs ought to be wholly unnecessary may wish to consider whether or not they want to continue to purchase their daily caffeine fix from people who think they are nasty bigots and that their religious views make them haters.

Because this isn't about equality at all--it is, and always has been, about pushing religion out of the public square. It may--just barely--be tolerated for a church to preach that sodomy is intrinsically evil. But it won't, very soon now, be possible to live as though you think that's actually true. And people who sell us computers, tennis shoes, and coffee apparently think they have the right to define Catholicism as bigotry and Catholics as bigots for embracing and accepting our faith's deeply held teachings--that's what they mean by "tolerance."

An Immodest Proposal

2012-01-24T17:22:00.004-06:00

[This post is satire, in case the title didn't give it away.]

You have, by now, read about the slight kerfuffle between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church; the Obama administration wants to force Catholics to pay for birth control, abortifacients, and sterilizations for its employees, while the Catholic Church holds to the quaint view that people who are bound and determined to go to Hell ought to pay for their tickets themselves.

Of course, the Obama administration thinks that fertility is an illness, pregnancy a disease and babies a punishment, so it's not that surprising that they think of sex rendered purposefully sterile as healthy. In fact, I think that most of modern America thinks of sex as an activity somewhere in between a mildly athletic sport, sort of like golf, and a cheap alternative to professional adult entertainment--to which it is probably inferior but less expensive and more accessible.

That being the view modern Americans have of sex, it then follows quite naturally that the government would be concerned that people should have access to contraceptive sex rather than the other sort, which leads to unwanted constituents and unplanned voters. Just as the government wants its citizens to have phone service, Internet access, and cable television, then, the government also wants its citizens to have contraceptive sex, and views any sort of morality issues about sex in general or contraception in particular as being somewhat on a par with the moral concerns of those weirdos who don't own TVs and have never seen a Kardashian.

Having decided that contraceptive sex is "healthy," then, the government wishes to force health insurance plans to cover contraception and to force churches to pay for such plans, even when the Church in question has clearly stated moral principles which say that sex isn't just for entertainment and that contraceptive sex is intrinsically evil. In our diverse nation, there's just no room for the kind of diversity that calls evil, evil and good, good; we only like it the other way around, because the other way around lets people screw each other without ending up becoming parents.

Since, however, it is clear that the government of the United States of America in the year 2012 is ready to stand up and fight for the principle that people have the right to sex without consequences, the question becomes: why are contraceptives not freely available in every store, over the counter? Why should a woman have to have the inconvenience of interrupting her work schedule to visit a doctor to get her stash of anti-child pills? Why should a shy, blushing teenage girl who has only had sex with six or seven guys so far have to sneak out to a clinic for her Depo-Provera (tm) shot? Why shouldn't all of these things be available at the local Walmart (tm) in the aisle with the condoms, or at the pharmacy counter like the annual flu shots? And why shouldn't they be available for purchase with cash, tax credits, or even food stamps, if they're so terribly important to our nation's committment to the ability of all people everywhere to have as much sex as they want without getting pregnant? Why should health insurance be involved at all?

Do we make people use health insurance to buy golf balls or pay for cable TV? Of course not. So why should we make people use health insurance for contraceptive sex, when it's the one and only form of sex our nation finds good, virtuous, moral, noble, chaste, holy and wise?

Imagine the outcry if men had to visit doctors to get condom prescriptions and then had to use health insurance to pay for the visit and to get the condoms. Why, there would probably be marches on Washington, as men demanded the right to latex, available when and wherever they want to buy it. If my local big-box store can sell (yes, this is a real thing) a "date night" condom pack which comes with vouchers for free movie tickets (I guess the idea that the girl only owed you sex if you paid for the movie tickets is antiquated these days), then why in the ninth circle of Hell can't we just throw boxes of birth control pills up there right next to these products?

Sure, if we make contraception that available, we'll have to realize that children as young as eleven or twelve might buy it. So? We send teaching materials into the classrooms of children that young to make sure they know correctly how to masturbate as well as perform oral, vaginal, and anal sex, so it's a bit naive of us to expect that they'll magically wait until they're eighteen or so before trying out any of that stuff. Again, it's clear: America stands for contraceptive sex, and if you need contraception at eleven in order to fool around with your science report buddy without getting pregnant, then it's your constitutional right to be able to get it without Mom or Dad finding out. And, sure, you can already get it for free at most Planned Parenthood outlets, but maybe it's easier for you to pick it up when you're buying school supplies--so, again, why not?

The only liberty America really stands for any more is sexual libertinism. So maybe the government can avoid this showdown with people of faith by admitting that making women go to the doctor for their "I'm sexually available without consequences!" drugs and devices is an old-fashioned idea that needs to go away. The War on Fertility won't be won by forcing Catholics to pay for other people's contraceptives; the War on Fertility will be won when you can pick up your birth control pills in the aisle next to the soap opera magazines or condoms or other cheap symptoms of a culture that is rotting from the inside.

Less than perfect mothers

2012-01-23T15:46:00.004-06:00

As the March for Life takes place today, as President Obama declares that abortion is necessary so our daughters have the same freedom to fulfill their dreams as our sons (because apparently embracing rampant sexual immorality and the ability to kill one's offspring is essential in order to be just like a man), I'd like to share some words from a reader, words which I think are both true and hopeful:

But then we have to move on to the reality that we are, in many cases, not offering women in crisis pregnancy situations much help. That gets all caught up in moralizing and the politics of welfare, etc. While, like you, I believe a child is best nurtured in a loving home with biological parents, I also think that current conservative positions harden us against the people who most need us. That is a concern. If I may be so crude, screw how a baby got there - we have to offer every child the best our society can, even if their life is imperfect. I mean, we don't think it's okay to abort children with Downs, so why would we cut off support for the children of less than perfect mothers?

It's a conundrum, isn't it?

It is, but it's one that we have to face.

I know there are many pro-life volunteers out there who do work in crisis pregnancy centers offering non-judgmental support, love, and practical help to women who are faced with an unexpected pregnancy. But there are--and it must be said--groups of people who are "Randian Conservatives" whose attitude towards unwed mothers is: "Hey, they got themselves into trouble by making bad decisions. It's not society's job to pick up the pieces when the baby-daddy moves in with someone younger and hotter (and maybe less fertile). Why should my hard-earned money go to bail out someone who didn't have the self-control to keep from having sex in the first place?"

I would say that most of these people, while technically opposed to abortion, have a ways to go before reaching what the religious view of being "pro-life" actually is. (So, to be fair, do some religious-minded conservatives, who fail to embrace the fulness of their churches' teachings on the intrinsic dignity of all human beings.) Sadly, these voices are sometimes rather loud in the conservative sector, drowning out those who say what my reader has said above: the time to debate morality and virtue and public policy is before conception, but once the baby is there in her mother's womb, it's time to put those issues on the back burner and just offer help.

One of the side effects of the embrace of abortion is that women who are in less than perfect situations are often left alone when they accept an unplanned pregnancy. Their post-abortive friends may walk away, unable to face the reality of a better choice. Their parents may pressure them to abort and then wash their hands of the situation should the woman's choice be to give birth instead. The child's father may offer to pay for the "procedure" and to drive his girlfriend home afterwards, but may get angry when these generous offers are rejected and then dump her; he may even become violent, since her choice is one that leaves him financially on the hook for the next 18 years--and why should he have to pay for what he never wanted? Why should a little casual bed-hopping cost him so much, when society says the most he should have to cover is about $500 paid to his child's legal killer?

And here's where the cost of tribalism may come into play: the young woman knows perfectly well that there are such things as crisis pregnancy centers, that there are places she can go where she will be helped to have this baby and to decide whether to raise her or give her up for adoption, that there are people who will give her the welcome and love she so desperately needs right now--but she may be afraid of them, afraid they will judge and condemn her, afraid they will see her as a welfare-mom wannabe or a promiscuous or "loose" woman, afraid that they are what a few media caricatures of pro-life people have made her think of them all. She may read comments on Internet news stories or hear a bit of talk radio and come away convinced that all people who oppose abortion think that people like her, unwed mothers, are a drain on society, a burden and an expense. Her own thoughts about abortion may even still be ambiguous, in a state of flux: she doesn't want one herself, but she's not ready to say that nobody should have one, not yet--and especially not if saying so makes her one of those pro-life people she's secretly rather afraid of.

What I wish I could say to women in that situation is this:

So, you're in a situation where you may be a less than perfect mother. I only know of one perfect mother, and after all, her Son was perfect, too. The rest of us are all less than perfect mothers. We don't always know what we're doing, we're not always the models of patience and joyful motherhood we'd like to be, we're sometimes tired or frustrated or at our wits' ends with our little (and not so little) bundles of joy. None of us is capable of doing this alone--and to the extent that some of us may really promote the idea of celibacy before marriage, it's because we know from our own experiences that it's not an accident that parents come in sets of two.

But just because you didn't live up to that ideal doesn't mean it's our business to scold (that's between you and God, and perhaps your pastor or spiritual adviser if you have one). We also know that it takes two to tango, and that the man who participated in the creation of this baby has plenty to answer for. Society makes it much easier for him--and then society holds out the evil of abortion to you as if it's something good, something that lets you, too, walk away from this baby and pretend she never existed. You know better, and many post-abortive women will tell you that you never forget her existence, or the day you let them kill her.

So we do want you to choose life for your baby, because we think that you, as a woman, deserve better than the false promise of abortion. You deserve better than being told to deny your very nature and shut off all compassion for the little one you may have had a name for years ago, when you dreamed of starting a family. Your dreams may have been different, but then our dreams and our realities aren't usually a perfect match. It's okay to be less than perfect in this; you know that life also tends to get better than we ever think it will in our darkest hours.

Maybe you already know you want this baby to live; you just haven't figured out the "hows." How will you finish school? How will you keep working? How will you arrange your life, in the face of this new reality? How will you ponder adoption, or know if giving up your baby to a loving couple is the right decision?

We have a "how" for you, too, and it's this: How can we help?

Can we help you with insurance and doctor appointments? Can we help you approach your employer to adjust your hours or the type of work you're doing? Can we help you find someone to be there for your birthing classes who will be with you when you go into the hospital to deliver this baby? Can we provide counseling? Can we arrange for you to meet with people qualified to help you consider raising the baby yourself vs. placing her for adoption? Do you need a place to live? Do you need basic things like food, maternity clothing, and supplies for the baby?

I know that many crisis pregnancy centers can provide access to all of these services and more. The diocese where I live offers the Gabriel Project, which includes many services directly to women in crisis pregnancies, as well as referrals to crisis pregnancy centers in the diocese.

As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and mourn the deaths of fifty-three million American children, let's realize that abortion is horrible for women, that it is destructive, that it is dehumanizing, and that it is the last thing women need in order to be equal to men--in fact, it's downright insulting to women to say that we need abortion in order to fulfill our dreams.

Choose goodness and life, not evil and death

2012-01-22T05:29:00.011-06:00

Today is January 22, 2012, the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. If you are the sort of person who thinks that it's a grand and glorious thing for a woman to have the right to choose to pay a hired killer to rip her baby apart in her womb and suction out the pieces, I imagine you're going to celebrate today. (Here's a hint: don't bake a "deathday" cake; there's no room on any cake ever baked to put 53 million candles, one for each American 39 years old and younger who is not here today because his or her mother chose to pay an abortionist to end his or her life instead of allowing him or her to be born. Though I have to admit: if you're committed to legalized abortion on demand, you'd probably enjoy the symbolism behind snuffing out all of those candles.)

Now, I don't believe that most people who think of themselves in some sort of vague way as being "pro-choice" really celebrate abortion (though there are some who do). But I also think that most people who think of themselves in a vague sort of way as "pro-choice" don't really think about what they mean when they speak of "choice" in the context of abortion.

The wonderful Jill Stanek is hosting a blog event today to counteract all the baby-killing celebrating that will be going on in the pro-death world in honor of the 53 million women who chose to pay someone to kill their own flesh and blood. Jill's event is called, "Ask Them What They Mean by Choice?" because so many "pro-choice" people will go on and on today about "women's rights" and "reproductive freedom" and "personal liberty" and "the right to choose," and they will conveniently avoid words like "kill," "death," "feticide," "baby-killing" and similar words that define what abortion really is.

In fact, a simple definition of abortion might read as follows: an act which directly and intentionally kills an innocent human being at any point between conception and the completion of birth. "Pro-choice" people will rarely define abortion this way, though, preferring to leave the "innocent human being" part out of the equation. The human being in question doesn't count because she is small and totally dependent on her mother for a period of no more than nine months. Why, say "pro-choice" people, should any woman have to put up with nine whole months' worth of the inconveniences of pregnancy just to give another human being the chance to continue to live and to be?

Abortion is the choice to be selfish. Abortion is the choice to be afraid. Abortion is the choice to be abused by a boyfriend or pressured by one's parents. Abortion is the choice to turn away from the helpless person who needs you because you can't handle that reality of her existence and her need for you, her mother. Abortion is the choice to end that human being's life forever.

It's so tragically sad that women have become convinced that children are the enemy, that children are impossible, that a child will end their freedom or autonomy or happiness. Children give so, so much more than they ask for in return; any parent will tell you this. But abortion has been sold to women because some people think that women, in order to be free, must be like men: capable of meaningless sexual exploits complete with the ability to walk away from any responsibilities or consequences of their actions.

I'd like to end this post with a couple of images. First, this is what they--the abortion supporters-mean by choice:

And this is is a picture of someone who chose to embrace God's will for her, a will that included marriage and nine children:

The woman I'm talking about here is the one seated next to the arm of the bench on the left (as you look at the picture), the smiling woman in the blue skirt. She is the mother of nine of the people in that photo; the other person, the silver-haired gentleman seated by the arm of the other bench, is the father. They are my mother and my father, and their choices for good, for love, for self-sacrifice, for life, are so completely opposite from the cold and selfish choice to abort the very person one has participated in creating that I can't even use the same words to describe such different choices. Because one is a choice for goodness and life, and the other is the choice for evil and for death.

And that woman in the picture, my mother? Today's her birthday. Happy birthday, Mom! Thanks for being a witness and an example of the incomparable goodness of choosing life!

Comments are closed.

Like veils; marching through law

2012-01-20T16:48:00.005-06:00

As I mentioned in the update to the post below, Mark Shea quite reasonably explains away my tortured tearing at Canon 216:

This, by the way, explains both Italian drivers and the bizarre phenomenon of Americans who stop at stop signs in the middle of the Mojave desert when there is nobody around for a hundred miles. The Latin conception of law is articulated well in Pirates of the Caribbean: “It’s not really a code. More like a guideline.” The Anglo conception is “It’s not a good idea. It’s the law!”
Canon law is emphatically Latin. We Americans are emphatically Anglo. So we encounter this loosey goosey application of law and are driven mad trying to obey every jot and tittle when the Church often takes a much more casual approach. Canon law is there to maintain a semblance of order in the vast herd of cats that is the Catholic Church. Now and then it gets updated (last time was in 1983, long before the Internet) to reflect reality. Canon 216 simply did not envision the possibility of 50 million people starting blogs called “Catholic Cats and Wacky Videos”. Dioceses simply do not have the capacity to police stuff like that. And, in any case, it is deeply counter to the Catholic spirit to even *try* to police stuff like that. The Church is fond of eccentrics, free associations among members, and people who wear their faith on their sleeve. So there is almost no interest in running around trying to tell people to stop calling themselves Catholic. What then prompts a diocese to (on very rare occasions) enforce canon 216? Basically, if you make a big and loud enough spectacle of yourself saying things that make the Church look bad or ridiculous. Bob Sungenis achieved this with his anti-semitic rants (and to his credit, semi-obeyed his bishop) by changing “Catholic Apologetics International to Bellarmine Theological Forum, the better to continue with his anti-semitic rants and quack science. The National Catholic Reporter and Catholics for a Free Choice have likewise achieved this dubious form of notice, but have simply ignored the command of their bishop to stop using “Catholic” in their names. Not too shocking since we already know their reputation of contempt for the Magisterium when it inconveniences them.

See, now, this makes sense.

I was approaching the notion of canon law as if canon law is sort of like the Catechism: basic Catholic "stuff" that Catholics should do their best to understand, appreciate, and, where applicable, follow. Mark's explanation makes canon law seem (and, like all analogies, this is imperfect) like the rules of an organization which club presidents are supposed to impose and enforce, but actually there's a rule in there reminding everybody that the club president has quite a bit of statutory leeway and there are some rules which are mandatory and binding, but others which the club president can choose when, how, and even whether to enforce in regard to individual members.

So it seems to me when it comes to really important canons (and I'm not even going to try to find an example because I'll probably get it wrong) the club president--bishop--can't just ignore the canon and do whatever he wants (and I suppose that there are canons which spell that sort of thing out, too). But when it comes to other canons dealing with areas where the bishop's prudential judgment has a lot of scope, the bishop can choose to apply the canon strictly to anyone to whom it technically applies, or he can choose to apply it when the people to whom it ought to apply make trouble (as in Mark's examples) or, I suppose, he could choose not to mention it at all for some sufficient pastoral reason.

Which means that my definitely Anglo view of things which said that if using the word "Catholic" is wrong without approval then it's wrong for everybody who uses it and the bishop, to correct the situation, ought to inform everybody and set up a hotline in the chancery for every bookstore, blog, website, small business, etc. in his territory to check in and get approval or rename their enterprise posthaste was erroneous precisely because I made the assumption that laws are things which everyone can know about and everyone can--and, indeed, must--follow. Certainly in secular American law you can't tell a judge, "Oh, sorry, I didn't know about that law, and in any case, surely it doesn't apply to me?" because there's a deep understanding behind the American legal system that the law always applies equally to everybody and ignorance of a law is no defense when one is found to have broken it; where the judge gets to act like "club president" is not in enforcing the law, but in handing down the sentence (in which case he might quite reasonably let somebody off with little or no punishment for breaking some small and recently enacted law that the offender clearly didn't know about).

The difference appears to be that lots of individual Catholics might technically be in violation of lots of canon laws, but that technical violation isn't (again, apparently) really important and isn't held against them unless the bishop says it is. So there doesn't appear to be any positive obligation on the part of every Catholic bookstore in America with the name "Catholic" in its title to check in with the appropriate chancery and get approval for using "Catholic" in its name. There is, however, a negative obligation (if I can use such clunky phrasing) for a Catholic bookstore which is caught selling and promoting as good anti-Catholic materials or pagan materials etc. either to stop selling these things or stop calling themselves Catholic, should the bishop be made aware of the situation.

Of course, if a Catholic bookstore were told it could no longer call itself "Catholic Books and Gifts" because they carried books by people the bishop disapproved of such as Mother Angelica or Scott Hahn, while across town the people running "Catholic Gifts, Books, and More" had a large framed photo of the bishop posing happily with the owner next to the piles of books on the enneagram and the racks of liturgical dancewear, the first bookstore might have a legitimate complaint. I honestly believe that this is how the supporters of Michael Voris--and, again, I'm not one, and have watched a total of about two minutes of one of his videos and otherwise know nothing about him--see the situation. On the other hand, the people in the chancery may see it as if the first bookstore were selling nothing but racks of books detailing how Protestants, non-Christians, communion-in-the-handers, and anybody who has ever sung a Marty Haugen song are going to Hell, none of which (naturally) carry imprimaturs.

But is my view here of canon law even beginning to approach the correct view? It struck me today that it probably is more correct than my former view, for a reason I can sum up in a word: veils.

From sometime in the late 1960s until the present Code of Canon Law was promulgated in 1983, women were technically still under the obligation to cover their heads in church. I was born in the late 1960s, and turned 15 in 1983, and yet I only recall wearing some sort of hat or veil to Mass a handful of times: a few childhood Easters, my First Communion, and so on. And while I can't remember the earliest years, of course, I don't ever remember seeing my mother wear a hat or veil to church, either. In fact, I don't remember seeing women cover their heads at all in those years (though I might have missed a hat or two).

Granted that the post-conciliar years were confusing ones, and granted that many women may have been erroneously told that they no longer needed to cover their heads in church by well-meaning officials who thought that was the case. But still, for a period of at least fifteen years before the change in the law became an official one, women were mainly not covering their heads. Were they all, objectively anyway, sinning, or at least in serious violation of canon law?

The way it seems now, if a bishop had specifically and directly told the women in his diocese that they had to cover their heads in church, then yes. But otherwise, no. And it seems to me that in any case the bishop would probably not have directly ordered the women in his jurisdiction to cover their heads in church, but would have ordered the pastors in his diocese to do so, following the proper chain of command, so to speak, unless the situation was very grave and in need of immediate correction.

So did each individual woman have some sort of positive obligation to call her chancery and find out once and for all if she were required to cover her head in church? Not if the principle outlined in the case of tiny Catholic enterprises calling themselves "Catholic" applies. So long as she wasn't show up to Mass creating scandal by wearing a hat designed to honor a demon or something, she was probably never going to hear from the bishop one way or another about it, unless the Code of 1983 had gone out of its way to inform women that fashion changes notwithstanding they were still obligated to cover their heads in church, complete with a canon or two about what the local authorities should do about the situation--and it didn't, so we're not, and they didn't have to do a thing.

And though my somewhat legalistic mind finds this all extraordinarily hard to grasp, I think I'm getting there. Your patience as I've pondered this all out loud has been greatly appreciated.

Leave "Catholic" for the experts

2012-01-19T18:02:00.005-06:00

Mark Shea points out that Ed Peters is writing about the Michael Voris/Real One True Church Founded by Christ for the Salvation of Mankind Which I Cannot Name For Canonical Reasons TV situation; Mark has checked with his chancery about the name of his own blog, Catholic and Enjoying It, and been told, essentially, not to worry as the chancery has better things to do than become the Archdiocese of Seattle's Catholic Blogosphere Canon 216 Enforcers.

Of course, Mark then quotes Dr. Peters (.pdf here) as follows:

I don’t know how many small initiatives by Catholics use the word “Catholic” in their title nor, of those that do, how many have no authorization for it. Let’s assume, lots. If the Voris/RCTV matter is a wake-up call against slapping the label “Catholic” on every activity carried on by Catholics, fine by me. But, as a practical matter, I doubt that ecclesiastical authority is going to see grandma’s blog, “Catholic Cookies and Milk”, wherein she recounts what’s being read by the parish book club and how much her cats hate the snow, as topping their to-do list. If, later, though, CC&M morphs into a multi-million dollar broadcast operation self-appointed to expose lies and falsehoods among Catholics and throughout the world, I might reconsider.

Did we all get that? So long as Catholics in America use the word "Catholic" without express ecclesiastical permission to describe endeavors which are trivial, unimportant, not particularly educational, and not particularly representative of the faith in any terribly noticeable way, they might be technically in violation of Canon 216, but it's unlikely that they'll get into any trouble for it. But if Catholics in America wish to use the word "Catholic" to identify themselves as followers of Jesus Christ and His Church in some mission, apostolate, or other faith-filled activity which they have begun out of zeal for the Lord, they'd better think of Canon 216 as some sort of combination between a business license and a franchise permission, and haunt the chancery until someone gives them permission to use "Catholic" in their name--and they'd darned well better get that permission in writing. Now, the problem is that chanceries being chanceries they've got a snowball's chance in Dallol, Ethiopia of actually getting that permission should the endeavor in question be the slightest bit more orthodox than the USCCB; and if the endeavor also looks as though it might be profitable, there's simply no chance at all--unless, of course, the chancery in question is located in Lincoln, Nebraska, or one of a relatively small number of other dioceses in America, in which case you've got a shot.

Just so we're all clear.

Of course, there's an abysmally simple solution to this problem: don't call yourself a Catholic. Oh, sure, in casual conversation you're probably safe, and so long as And Sometimes Tea doesn't turn into a multimillion dollar broadcast operation any time soon (ha!) I can probably leave up my "About Me" bit in the sidebar despite the renegade, non-Canon-216 approved identification of the blog author as a Catholic (perhaps by adding a prominent disclaimer that I don't speak for the Church, have never spoken for the Church, and that any similarity between anything I might ever say or write and actual Church teaching is purely coincidental, and indeed, totally inexplicable given the rotten catechesis dished out to my generation). Come up with names for blogs or similar endeavors such as "Liturgical Year Cooking" or "Real Live Rosary Renegades" and you'll be just fine; bury your Catholic identity as much as possible in any public works or activities, and you'll never have to worry about running afoul of Canon 216 or any similar law or policy.

Otherwise, we should leave the word "Catholic" alone, secure in the knowledge that it's being protected by our bishops in the proper exercise of their ecclesiastical authority. Why, just look at the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which does not only have ecclesiastical approval for the use of the word "Catholic" in its name, but also has the full support of the USCCB for its charitable activities of community organizing, empowerment, and the funding of left-wing political activities! Of course, a few grumpy people keep complaining that the CCHD is funding stuff that, you know, really isn't Catholic. Stuff like an immigrants' rights group/CCHD grant recipient getting caught handing out condoms quite likely bought and paid for with Catholic money--which, it's quite fair to say, the Catholic officials at the Catholic Campaign for Human Development might never have noticed had it not been for a concerned group of people whose religion I cannot mention for canonical reasons who issued a report mentioning this agency (along with 54 other agencies engaged in practices contrary to Catholic teaching while still receiving largesse from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development) and its violations.

But we can trust the Catholic Campaign for Human Development to remain fully, devotedly Catholic, right? Why, they demonstrated their Catholic values by loudly dismissing the complaints the group already mentioned made about the other 54 agencies for such things as promoting gay rights and signing statements of support for Planned Parenthood. These shining gems of Canon-216 Catholicity assured the rest of us that the research American Life League did was outdated research and merely Internet research and thus not accurate (except for the condom bit, which was devastatingly and provably accurate) and that ALL is motivated by their hatred of Democrats, immigrants, and the poor and marginalized (except for unborn poor immigrant marginalized Democrats, of course). Which is not rash judgment unbecoming to a Canon 216 Follower for excellent reasons that will occur to me sometime after someone orders hot chocolate and electric blankets in this geographic location.

No, the Catholic Campaign of Human Development stands as one scintillating example of why lowly small-potatoes followers of Christ would be better off naming their endeavors directly in His honor. Leave the name "Catholic" for the experts, who prove to us time and time again that they know what they're doing.

UPDATE: Mark Shea addresses my concerns on his blog, and does so in a way that makes total sense to me. More on that later, the good Lord and this stupid migraine willing (yes, I've been having them a bit frequently; yes, our weather has been going like this: 52-68-52-77, which last is today's forecasted high, which explains things).

The January blahs

2012-01-18T19:20:00.004-06:00

I've been suffering from a case of the January Blahs lately. Have you?

It's not really a case of post-Christmas stagnation, or of winter weather; I find a lot of the commercial Christmas hoopla over-the-top and exhausting anyway, and I can't really complain about the weather since we've been drifting between the 50s and the 70s around here (and, no, I'm not talking about the music in Church--at least, not today).

It's not a case of ordinary boredom, either. The truth is, I have tons of things to do, which is why I'm blogging later and later each day. It's just that the creative, fun things I really want to do get squeezed into the cracks and edges of my time, while the mounds of laundry seem to loom larger than ever (note to self: the laundry basket is not encouraging laundry reproduction; it's just that fleece takes up more room than, say, cotton tee-shirts and thus the basket appears to be full faster and faster at this time of year).

So what I really think is behind the January blahs is that all the pre-Christmas chore shirking has finally caught up with me right at the time when my mind has cleared enough from gingerbread and sugarplums to want to focus on my creative writing projects. And there simply aren't enough hours in the day.

Of course, one thing that has contributed to my present case of January Blahs is a dearth of bloggable news. Don't get me wrong: I realize that we've had a major cruise ship disaster and reams of political spats to read about--but when all is said and done, I don't feel extraordinarily inspired to write about these things just now. Maybe it's the lack of time, or maybe I should just put up a blog badge that reads "I'd rather be writing children's science fiction of no discernible value!" Or something.

Some other Catholic bloggers are doing their best in these dull days to keep the fires burning. One has a take on how a captain abandoning ship is just like abortion; another explores the question of whether night owls are morally inferior to morning birds; still another wades into dangerous territory as he discusses a campaign to end the practice of people of one faith spitting on people of another. I appreciate all these efforts, and am glad that not all Catholic bloggers are as stuck in blah-dom as I am this week.

But I think one reason I'm struggling to write about anything is that as I read the news this week so far, my reaction has been: "Hmmm. I'm not surprised." For instance:

Captain of wrecked cruise ship is now running around saying that he tripped and fell into the lifeboat: not surprised. (But maybe Pat Archbold's comparison of this guy to men who participate in abortion's not all that off, after all.)
Congress wants sweeping controls over the Internet in the name of stopping piracy: not surprised.
Paula Deen has diabetes. Sorry for her, but: not surprised. (Hint: butter is not a side-dish.)
Sports news reported by Rob Lowe turns out to be literally untrue. Grinning, but: not surprised.
Reporters including a Princeton University grad and a Harvard University grad warn the American public that Harvard Law/Harvard Business School grad Mitt Romney may be too rich to be president: not surprised.
The TSA continues its fine record of terrorizing elderly ladies in one airport while missing a gun in another: definitely not surprised. (Note: TSA, it's not the 80-year-olds you need to worry about, but the 65-year-old pistol-packin' Texan who forgot she had her gun with her--could happen to anybody around here, though.)

One of these days I'm sure I'll read something in the news that actually does surprise me, and then the January blahs will slip away like a Texas snowfall. Either that, or we'll be gearing up for the annual "My way of doing Lent is perfect and spiritual and yours is seriously lacking in Christian charity and the sort of heroic self-sacrifice that gets Catholic bloggers admired and voted for in blog contests" fights, which, I admit, tend to perk me up for all the wrong reasons. :)

Life unworthy of life?

2012-01-17T16:40:00.005-06:00

I read this story just a little while ago; the mother of a disabled child was told the child did not qualify for a kidney transplant because of mental retardation:

He says about three more sentences when something sparks in my brain. First it is hazy, foggy, like I am swimming under water. I actually shake my head a little to clear it. And then my brain focuses on what he just said.

I put my hand up. “Stop talking for a minute. Did you just say that Amelia shouldn’t have the transplant done because she is mentally retarded. I am confused. Did you really just say that?”

The tears. Oh, the damn tears. Where did they come from? Niagara Falls. All at once. There was no warning. I couldn’t stop them. There were no tissues in conference room so I use my sleeve and my hands and I keep wiping telling myself to stop it.

I point to the paper and he lets me rant a minute. I can’t stop pointing to the paper. “This phrase. This word. This is why she can’t have the transplant done.”

“Yes.”

I begin to shake. My whole body trembles and he begins to tell me how she will never be able to get on the waiting list because she is mentally retarded.

Fortunately, this story is attracting national attention:

Amelia "Mia" Rivera has Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, a complex genetic disorder that causes mental and physical impairments, and her family said that the 3-year-old will die if she does not get a kidney in the next six months to a year.
Mia's mother Chrissy Rivera has said the family is willing to donate a live organ, but Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has reportedly told her that they will not recommend transplantation for the toddler because of her disabilities.
Rivera blogged about her daughter's plight last Friday, and now more than 20,000 online supporters from 15 states are petitioning the hospital to give the toddler the kidney they say she needs to survive.
"I didn't think it was going to be an issue," said Rivera, a 35-year-old high school English teacher from southern New Jersey who has two other children, aged 11 and 6.
When the family went to CHOP last week to discuss the transplant, Rivera said she "thought we were just finding out how transplant works and how we could be a donor."
"But then, I was told we couldn't because she was mentally retarded," she said. "Those were the exact words on a piece of paper."

The hospital says it can't comment on patient cases.

I know there are sometimes situations in which a patient doesn't qualify for a transplant--but those situations are usually based on the patient's own needs and interests. If a patient is unlikely to survive transplant surgery or can't tolerate immunosuppressive medications, for instance, it is quite likely that the patient's doctor will tell him or her that a transplant is not an option.

But in this case--if you read Mrs. Rivera's blog--you will see that the child's nephrology doctor told the Riveras that they had six months to a year before their daughter would need a kidney transplant. Apparently, no one said anything about little Amelia having some underlying health condition that would make a transplant impossible until the parents met with the transplant team, at which point they were told that her mental retardation made her ineligible--not, according to Mrs. Rivera, that there was some physical impairment that would hinder the surgery or make it unlikely to be successful.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not all that surprised by this. Angered, yes, but not all that surprised.

I've heard stories time and time again from parents of children who are disabled about how callously, negatively, unkindly and coldly they are treated by medical professionals--not all, certainly, but enough to place a barrier of distrust between parents of children with disabilities and their doctors. A certain percentage of American doctors seem to have absorbed the phrase that originated in Nazi Germany: Lebensunwertes Leben, or "Life unworthy of life." They see no merit at all in the life of a child who will probably die young, who is physically and/or mentally impaired, who may never reach--in that ugly phrase--his or her "full human potential" (and I'd like anyone to demonstrate who, exactly, has done so?). They may start out by counseling parents somewhat kindly, especially if the child's condition is diagnosed in utero--but let the parents show a bias for life for their child, and they will often grow increasingly hostile. Once the child is actually born, the attitude is often: well, you selfishly chose for this child to experience suffering and a less-than-perfect life, so don't come running to us when he or she is ill or needs help; the sooner he or she dies of some natural cause or progression of the disability, the better for everyone.

Like I said, there are heroic doctors and nurses who reject this attitude with horror, but that doesn't mitigate the suffering inflicted upon the families of the disabled by those who display this attitude--and, sometimes, open contempt--to the parents. In addition to the ordinary difficulties and struggles of raising and caring for a child with disabilities is added this crushing weight of derision, this tendency to view the child as being somehow unworthy of life, of medical resources, and of transplants that should go to "normal" kids--even if, as in the Rivera's case, the family is offering to find a donor kidney from among Amelia's own relatives.

Long ago, I took a class at a Catholic college in which we discussed life issues, and I recall the teacher saying that the "choice" of abortion would quickly become an obligation for some women, from society's viewpoint. I thought at the time that this was a bit farfetched, as pro-life as I was and still am. How could the pro-abortion side, so enamored of "a woman's right to choose" to have her child slaughtered in utero, stand idly by should women be pressured or coerced to do so? But the subtle coercion that is out there takes many forms, from the daughter who is told she'll be thrown out of the house to the woman with disabilities ordered by a judge to abort to the pervasive attitude out there that children with disabilities don't deserve to be born and should die as quickly as possible. All it takes is the belief that there is such a thing as "life unworthy of life" for these things to happen, and we are much further along that path now than I ever thought we would be in my lifetime.

UPDATE: It appears that the hospital is reconsidering (hat tip: Mark Shea). Good! If no parent ever has to hear again that their child isn't a candidate for surgery or transplant solely because of a mental disability or cognitive impairment, then little Amelia and her parents have done a great thing for those with disabilities by raising awareness of these sorts of policies.

Whom would you vote for if the election were tomorrow?

2012-01-16T22:24:00.004-06:00

Sorry for the late posting; I've been battling a migraine today that has made it even more difficult than usual for me to be coherent. :)

Did you watch the South Carolina debate tonight? Me neither. But I did read some of Rod Dreher's liveblogging of it:

UPDATE.9: Great line from the Economist’s live blog:

This is Jon Huntsman’s best debate by far.

UPDATE.10: Romney had a couple of good zingers against Gingrich on the Super PAC thing, forcing Gingrich to admit that Romney can’t do what he wants him to do, and for calling Gingrich’s anti-Romney Super PAC ad “the biggest hoax since Bigfoot.” I still don’t understand why Romney is not tearing into Gingrich about that ad, unless he figures that he’s got more to lose by drawing attention to it.

UPDATE.11: So, who won? Well, look, it was depressing. But aren’t all these debates depressing? I’d say Gingrich had the best night, followed closely by Santorum. Romney, bland and robotic, for the most part. Biggest disappointment was Ron Paul. As for Perry, well, he’s a cartoon, ain’t he? He’s dragging bottom in the polls, and seems to exist now to throw bloody chunks of flesh into the crowd for effect. I must say that I thought Newt was over after Iowa, but to give him credit, he’s kept this thing alive. True, he’s something like 11 points behind Romney in South Carolina, but after tonight’s savaging of Romney by both Santorum and Gingrich, it’s conceivable that Gingrich might pull off an upset — but only if the Santorum vote coalesces behind him. To be fair, Santorum had a pretty good night too; conceivably the anti-Romney vote could coalesce behind him. Tonight’s debate did not clarify who the anti-Romney will be, however. There’s one more debate in South Carolina, two days before the January 21 vote. That showdown is going to be decisive. [Links and emphases in original--E.M.]

If you did watch the debate--what do you think? Does Rod have it about right? Or is somebody already shaping up as the one who is going to give Romney a run for his money?

Okay, unscientific reader poll time: if the general election were going to be held tomorrow, whom would you vote for? Gingrich? Paul? Perry? Romney? Santorum? Obama? Or a dq3 candidate/none of the above? Explain who and why in the comment box, please.

Anonymous commenters--please remember to use a nickname!

Random Mommy Bloggish Links Post

2012-01-13T20:52:00.004-06:00

I'm afraid I'm out of time and out of notions for today's blog post. Thus, I hope that you will forgive me if I lapse into "mommy-blog" mode for just a bit; I'm sure it won't last (sadly). So, without further ado:

Random Mommy-Bloggish Links

1. We had some company this week, and I wanted to make homemade rolls to serve with dinner. Alas, my best homemade roll recipe is time-intensive with lost of on-the-clock, last minute stuff to do: so much time for prep, so much time for the first rise, so much time for the punching down and shaping of rolls, so much time for the second rise, and then so much for the baking. Fine for a day when I've got a slow-cooker soup going, but not so fine when I'm cooking other food for guests.

Enter: this awesome recipe. I agree with the commenters that you should probably decrease the water by 1/2 cup, because otherwise you end up adding some additional flour. But I've never used a refrigerated yeast roll dough recipe that ended up being so much like ordinary yeast rolls in terms of taste, texture, ease of shaping, etc. Best of all--once it starts rising in the fridge (and it needs at least eight hours) you have tons of time to deal with the roll shaping, second rise, and baking part.

2. I loved this Forbes article titled 9 Common Myths about Clearing Clutter. The "myth" I'm most susceptible to: number 3:

“I need to run out and buy some inventive storage containers.” See #1. I love cunning containers as much as anyone, but I’ve found that if I get rid of everything I don’t need, I often don’t need a container at all.

Yes, yes. I can't tell you how many times I've thought that the key to dealing with the clutter can be found at this place, instead of by being realistic about the stuff I don't use and don't need and just getting rid of it. What about you? Any of these nine myths your particular stumbling-block to a good clearing-out?

3. I have to admit to both a grin and a grimace as I read this piece. The author details ten types of moms that other moms should just avoid. I've got an 11th type: the mom of a fourteen-month-old who thinks she's already got all the other moms out there pegged. My advice: lighten up. Sure, there are truly toxic moms out there, but unless you know the substance-abuse mom, or the in-and-out-of-jail mom, or the will-drop-all-her-kids-at-your-house-at-the-slightest-encouragement mom, or the thinks-it's-cute-that-her-kids-are-destructive-bullies mom, you probably haven't got all that much to worry about.

4. January is the month where, everywhere you turn, you see weight-loss articles and tips. Which is why it was--interesting--to read that most models are now 23% slimmer than average women (compared to 8% slimmer twenty years ago) and that while plus-sized models used to wear sizes 12 to 18, today's plus-sized models wear sizes 6 to 14. Yes, all you skinny size-six ladies out there: you can dream of a plus-sized modeling career! I know that obesity in America is a serious problem, but I can't help but wonder, as someone who has struggled with yo-yo dieting and other unhealthy habits in my life, whether the fashion industry's constant refusal to accept that normal women do not look like skin-covered skeletons isn't a contributor to the problem. I mean, if size 6 is "plus-sized," why bother to try to be thin?

5. I think Pat Archbold deserves some thanks for his post about hating it when he's with men who are ogling the women around them. Even if I'm sort of late mentioning it.

I wonder, though, whether some men who would totally agree with Pat and who go out of their way to avoid objectifying women don't, sometimes, fall prey to a different sort of sexist (if you'll forgive the word) behavior?

When I first started commenting on blogs back in the dark ages when everything was DOS and computer games didn't have pictures (okay, okay, it wasn't that long ago), I timidly ventured forth into this strange wilderness and...chose a nice, non-gender-specific nickname because I wasn't crazy enough to dream of putting my real name and identity out on this newfangled World Wide Web business. Eventually, of course, I got more comfortable and started using my real name on my opinions--and something strange happened, in particular to the men I used to engage in discussion with the most on a handful of blogs. Some of them didn't treat me any differently; some of them no longer addressed me at all; and some of them who used to write things like, "That's a really good point, but I disagree with X," now would write things like, "Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not going to waste my time instructing you in the basic knowledge you'd have to have before any conversation with you could be profitable." There was a definite ghost of the phrase "silly woman" hovering over that last.

I've heard from other women who've had similar experiences: comment as "Interested" or "Packers Fan" or "XYZZY" and you'll be treated one way by the self-identified male commenters on some blogs and forums--but create a new identity as "Dolly" or "Mrs. Q" or "Felicia" and suddenly some of the men will treat you entirely differently. Not all, but some.

Are they the same men who ogle women and otherwise dehumanize them? Or is this more subtle sexism more widespread, affecting some men who are chivalrous and honorable in their ordinary dealings with women? I can't help but wonder.

That's it for today! I'll resume my usual cantankerous church-and-state-and-culture-centric blogging on Monday, Good Lord willing!

UPDATE: I clicked away from writing this post and found another good mommy-bloggish thing to share! Here's why your home will never look like one featured on TV or in a magazine. Good to know!

Shepherds and the art of cat-herding; three brief points

2012-01-12T15:54:00.004-06:00

I only have time for a brief(ish) post today, but I didn't want to let this post by Msgr. Pope, linked to by Dr. Peters in my comment boxes, pass by without remark:

Cardinal George in his recent ad limina visit to Rome summed up the difficulty the bishops face here in America in the following way:

The Church’s mission is threatened internally by divisions which paralyze her ability to act forcefully and decisively.

On the left, the Church’s teachings on sexual morality and the nature of the ordained priesthood and that the Church herself are publicly opposed, as are the bishops who preach and defend these teachings.

On the right, the Church’s teachings might be accepted. But the bishops who do not govern exactly and to the last detail in the way expected, are publicly opposed.

The Church is thus an arena of ideological warfare, rather than a way of discipleship, shepherded by bishops. And so, the Church’s ability to evangelize is diminished. Cardinal Francis George, May 28 2011 Ad Limina Visit.

In other words, trying to lead Catholics is like herding cats. And our descent into ideology stabs unity in the heart and gravely wounds our ability to impact our culture in any real effective and unified way. Consider that there are as many as 70 million Catholics in the U.S. Were we really together on any one topic, we would be a force to reckoned with. But we are not, and are thus largely ineffective as a force for positive change.

And it is always easy to say “It’s that other slob who is responsible for the disunity.” But as Cardinal George notes, the bishop’s aren’t getting much support from any sector of the Church. [All emphases in original--E.M.]

As I said above, I don't have time to delve into this in quite the depth that I'd like to, but I do want to make just a few remarks:

1. I find it disturbing that Cdl. George would conflate actual disobedience to the Magisterium with quite possibly legitimate criticism of prudential matters including Church governance. To put it in the most extreme example possible, there is a huge difference between a congregation defying its pastor and "voting" to "ordain" a woman, and a congregation complaining to the bishop because the pastor refused to listen to highly qualified lay people, hired substandard contractors to build a parish hall, and then openly chastised those who pointed out that almost immediately after the construction the flooring was already failing and certain other construction issues were arising--for their "disobedience" in criticizing the pastor (that second situation actually happened at a parish I'm aware of). One's legitimate obedience to and respect for one's pastor does not require one to suspend disbelief and pretend that one's pastor is a skilled general contractor when that is obviously not the case! And to see these sorts of complaints as exactly the same thing as dissent about abortion, homosexual acts, contraception etc. is--to me--part of the problem.

2. Respect is a two-way street, and it is highly disrespectful of the laity to refer to them as "cats" who are resisting being "herded." We are, in a perfectly legitimate Biblical metaphor the depths of which have yet to be fully plumbed, sheep in need of shepherds--but the truth is that every bishop should see his flock as individual children of God with priceless immortal souls every one of which his excellency will be called to account before God in his individual judgment one day. I once had a wonderful pastor who would say this of his parish--that he was responsible for our souls, and that if by his actions or negligence he was complicit in either failing to see that we were falling away from God and His Church, or actively driving us away from them, he would tremble to face our Lord on the day of his own death. How inspiring such a statement is, especially when, as it was in my pastor's case, it is backed up by a life of exemplary personal habits of prayer and sacrifice and constant service! How much respect could be restored for the bishops of America if each of them would truly take this same sentiment to heart!

3. The biggest barrier to the kind of automatic obedience, trust, and respect Catholics ought to have for our bishops is, perhaps, the one thing that both should be addressed and is nearly impossible to address: our bishops are strangers to us, for the most part. Sure, in some smaller dioceses, or paradoxically in some larger archdioceses where several auxiliary bishops serve, Catholics may find their bishops approachable, willing and able to spend time in conversation, happy to be involved in the lives of the people in their flocks, and eager to reply to legitimate concerns when these arise. I have, alas, never lived in such a diocese. At this point, I'm truly grateful that my bishop writes a blog (as a priest once said when I admitted to reading it, "It's a great way to know if the bishop is in town or not!") because I can at least read his thoughts and ideas on matters. But if I needed to bring up a problem, I would just look on the diocesan website for the appropriate chancery official and send the letter directly to him or her; there might not be any greater chance of anything happening, but I'd at least be saving the bishop's secretary the task of figuring out who should receive my letter, since the only person who never would, under most circumstances, is the bishop himself. This is not--let me be clear!--the bishop's fault. I can't imagine how he manages to do the half of what he does. It is simply impossible for him to be present to everyone in the diocese, to be father and friend to each Catholic in this large flock. And I imagine this is true for most Catholics in America--yet without any sort of personal relationship to go on, how easy it is to fall into attitudes of suspicion and distrust on both sides! Is it surprising that some bishops cringe when Mr. Average Lay Person approaches, sure that he's going to receive an angry tirade of complaints none of which are really important, only to be deeply surprised and even shocked when Mr. Average Lay Person, the parish finance committee chair, perhaps, is polite, respectful, and hates (and this one is totally hypothetical--I want to be clear) that he has the unpleasant duty of sharing with the bishop the hotel receipts his pastor and the parish secretary racked up on their shared vacation (which, even if platonic, violates the diocese's strict policy against such things)?

I'm not sure what the solutions here are. Prayer, of course. But then?

The first casualty of betrayal

2012-01-11T18:19:00.003-06:00

I am not picking on noted canon lawyer Dr. Ed Peters. Really. It's just that twice in the last two weeks he's posted something I want to comment about, and he doesn't have comments on his blog.

What I want to comment on today is a part of his most recent post; specifically, this part:

Speaking more generally, now, I often explain and defend in my blog legitimate exercises of ecclesiastical authority. I do this because we live in an age that distrusts exercises of authority in general and ecclesiastical authority in particular. Even within the Church, exercises of ecclesiastical authority are often suspect, nay guilty, till proven otherwise. Part of me understands that suspicion, at least when it arises from ‘the right’: I grew up with happy-clappy catechesis, suffered through clown Masses, watched the devastation wrought on religious life, mourned the closing of one Catholic school after another, etc, etc, etc. In short, I grew up waiting for somebody to do something besides, as Fr. Z so wonderfully put it, blowing more happy gas. And I was often disappointed.

But, by the grace of God, I never let my disappointment ossify into distrust. As a result, I do not cling to my opinions about how things should be done in the Church (however sound my views might be) in the face of legitimate ecclesiastical determinations otherwise. I know all about Canon 212 § 3. It’s Canon 223 I’m concerned with now.

Widespread, knee-jerk distrust of ecclesiastical authority is perhaps the most crippling legacy left to the John Paul II generation of Church leaders by the past. This distrust is, of course, unfair to that new generation—who have done nothing to deserve it—but it is also increasingly incongruous to them. They didn’t grow up with the wackiness that many of us remember, and so they don’t understand the animus that is often directed by some otherwise orthodox Catholics against Church leaders just because they happen to be, well, leaders in the Church. Occasionally, when I see a solid young priest or seminarian suffer such prejudice, I call him aside and explain what things were like back in the day, and why patience is called for in this case or that. He listens, nods his head, and says, “Yes, I see what you mean, it must have been terrible. Well, time to get over it.” These guys are great.

Now, I read the whole post, and you can too, but even if you don't read it I can assure you that it's missing one very important phrase. See if you can find it...I knew you could! That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the phrase this post is missing is:

The Scandal.

We can't--we just can't--talk about the widespread distrust Catholics have for ecclesial authorities in 2012, ten years after The Scandal first broke here in America, and just gloss over the fact that the reason for the pervasive distrust of bishops and chanceries stems not just from happy-clappy Masses, not just from systematic liturgical wreckovation, not just from the closing of parishes or schools, not just from poor catechesis, terrible music, and dodgy homilies. The reason many Catholics find it almost impossibly hard to trust their bishops or their diocesan chancery offices is because for a lengthy amount of time the main response of many noted Catholic bishops and chancery officials to serious and credible allegations of child sexual abuse was to move the offending priest somewhere else in the hopes that, no longer exposed to those particular bad children, the priest would live as a model of holiness, or something. Oh, and to chastise the victim, the parents, the concerned observers whether clergy or lay, etc. for bringing the matter up in the first place.

Carol at The Tenth Crusade (HT: Joe H. in the comments under the previous post), from the Boston epicenter of the Scandal earthquake, puts it this way:

This is what it was like before:

Catholics who called the Chancery to report corruption, crimes, were 'listened to'.

When the listening was over, that was the end of their actions on the matter. Naive people who are 'listened to' inside of the Catholic Church feel a tremendous sense of relief. They did the right thing. It is implied in the listening that the people they told will then 'do something' about it.

But, they don't. They only veil it or shuffle it.

Some whistleblowers returned to a Chancery to insist something be done about it.

That's when they did something.

They used money, 'obedience', a sob story, to get people of good will to be silent.

If the whisteblower wasn't satisfied with those offers, they would circle the wagons to slander him or her as a whackadoo. They were bullied, threatened, shunned.

The priest being reported was protected. Some of them honored with public statements from the Archdiocese saying what a swell guy he was. Sometimes, they roasted them with honors.

You know what has changed from the above?

Not a thing.

In my opinion, the whole dynamic is worse than it ever was.

She then goes on to make some rather good points about the recent revelations regarding the Bishop Zavala matter, points along the lines of how the heck does a Catholic bishop carry on the sort of affair with a woman that results in two children without anybody noticing? Sure, there are some married men who manage to do the same sort of thing, but within the Church this is supposed to be the age of accountability and transparency, right?

Now, within the offices of various dioceses, within the chanceries, among the bishops I think it's fair to say that there's a certain feeling of frustration with people like Carol. The Scandal--well, that was ten years ago! And it's been adequately addressed! By making lay Catholics attend endless classes proving they're not criminals and can be trusted around children! And priests have to take similar classes! So what more does the laity, who can never seem to be satisfied anymore, want???

The problem with this attitude, as any parent knows, is that just because someone apologizes for his or her egregious offenses, reforms, and promises to live a blameless life forevermore, it takes a good bit of time to restore the broken trust that is the first casualty of betrayal. Ten years is a blink of the eye in Church years, and I would say that until the "Circle the wagons!" first response of Church officials and employees stops being the knee-jerk reaction to any sort of criticism, we've still got a very long way to go.

It's like the teenager who, caught violating his curfew in order to drink stolen beer at a friend's house before driving home under the influence, complains bitterly to his friends that his parents still don't trust him. "Come on!" he rants. "That was a whole month ago!" (since a month in teenager years is not unlike ten years in Church years). The parents still love their son, despite the disappointment, and they really do wish the best for him as time goes on. But the time to hand him the car keys, let alone leave him in charge of the house while they go away for a weekend, is very, very far off.

Hope for the future of homiletics

2012-01-10T17:33:00.006-06:00

It should be said that any Catholic blogger approaches with extreme trepidation the writing of a post which may even have the appearance of the mildest sort of criticism of anything that Father Zuhlsdorf has written. But my favorite poet has written something apropos regarding fools rushing in and angels fearing to tread, and I'm certainly not an angel.

Besides, this post has been nagging at me since I read it yesterday:

A reader writes asking about “bad homilies”:
Every once in a while, you get a real clunker, one that isn’t just theologically weak, but turns what should be a feast into over microwaved junk. What is the proper response?

You want to know what to do?

Get down on your knees and pray for the priest who gave it.

Fast.

Do penance for his intention.

Be happy you have a priest when many – many – don’t.

That is what you do.

There is more in the same vein here.

Now, I want to begin by saying this as clearly as possible: I do not disagree with Father Z.

Let me say that again: I do not disagree with Father Z...

...if, and ONLY if, by "clunker" and "over-microwaved junk" the original letter-writer is not referring to heretical or borderline-blasphemous homilies, but only weak, silly, or poor ones.

If the letter writer was referring to heretical or blasphemous homilies, then--and note well--I still do not disagree with Father Z. The first course of action should still be to get on your knees.

The only slight mild sort-of disagreement I would have at that point would be to say that the matter ought to rest there--which, again, I will say to be clear, is not something Fr. Z. has actually said, so I don't know if you can even properly call it a disagreement.

I think that pastors, vicars general, vicars of priests, and bishops have the right to be informed when a priest under their jurisdiction is regularly delivering homilies in which the priest's regular attempts at theological creativity strays into actual heresy.

"But, Red! But, Red!" some of you might say at this point. "How is a lay person supposed to be qualified to recognize homiletic heresy, as opposed to a bad day or really unfortunate phrasing or a fine point of theology which the lay person himself might not fully understand?"

Simple. First, note my use of the word "regularly." A one-off situation in which a priest slips up should be viewed with the utmost charity; we have all experienced what some call "foot-in-mouth" disease.

Second, any lay person can double-check, using both online and offline sources, some homiletic statement or theme that seems too odd to be Catholic. Is it true, what Father said, that the Church teaches Mary didn't suffer the loss of her virginity even though she gave birth? Um, yes, actually. Is it true, what Father said, that Mary was only the mother of Jesus in His human nature and should not really be called the Mother of God? Um, no, of course not.

Some might wonder whether heresy actually crops up in homilies these days. Sure, maybe back in the bad old 1970s, but now? Alas, here are some things I've actually heard at Masses much more recently than that:

Mary was an ignorant peasant girl who never really understood anything the Angel told her.
Mary and Joseph had a normal married life and had other children together; the Church just doesn't want to admit that, because, you know, sex and all.
It's perfectly fine to refer to God as "She." I've heard this in several forms, ranging from the idea that since God is genderless He didn't really choose to present Himself using male pronouns to an apparent belief that one of the Persons of the Holy Trinity is a woman, or at least ought to be.
From a deacon who was also a guardian ad litem: if he'd been assigned Mary and Joseph as a case, he would have assigned Jesus a social worker because of their poverty and lack of decent transportation, their homelessness, and the fact that the Child didn't have a car seat. (Now that was an interesting Christmas Mass homily, let me tell you.)
On All Souls' Day a few years ago, the priest saying Mass got so heated during his homily in which he ranted that the Church was wrong, wrong, wrong to view All Souls' Day as a penitential day and mandate violet vestments when we should be celebrating because all of our loved ones are now in heaven with God--that he tore off those vestments and said the rest of Mass in his white cassock.

There could be more, but to be honest I've developed a habit of a sort of protective tune-out when homilies start getting too, too strange; I figure that in terms of sinfulness, I'm caught between the Scylla of not paying full attention to the homily and the Charybdis of percolating to a boiling point of unholy wrath in the middle of Mass. I suppose I could use the homily as the opportunity to pray for the priest when this sort of thing happens, except that the one thing that will really get you noticed is any attempt to pray during Mass, as that is the one thing that must never happen.

Bottom line: if you are complaining about homilies just because they are sort of canned, or dull, or weak, or repetitive--follow Father Z.'s excellent advice. I've known priests who speak in a nearly-inaudible monotone about nothing I can ever remember; I've known priests who use repetitive catchphrases so much that when those start cropping up I have to fight to stay with the homily, because the temptation is to think I've already heard this one; I even know a dear, kind, fully orthodox, marvelously reverent priest whose Masses are a delight to God and man, and yet whose homilies--I must be honest--are so lengthy, so tangential, so lacking in a coherent theme, and so strangely organized that I keep expecting Nicholas Cage to show up in them. :) But to complain about any of these sorts of things, ever, really would smack of the sort of lay ingratitude that I suspect Father Z. is addressing; thankful prayers are much more appropriate.

However, if you are complaining about homilies that betray, to be as charitable as possible, a woeful and concerning lack of understanding on the part of the homilist regarding some key teaching of the Catholic faith, it may--may!--be both just and right to write a letter to the appropriate authority. The letter should be kind, and short, and to the point. You should not be surprised or disappointed if you never hear back, or if the only thing you receive in reply is a letter which reads something like this:

Dear Lay Person,
Thank you for your concerns about Father Whosis's ministry and service at St. Whatsit Parish. St. Whatsit Parish is deeply blessed to have the ministry and service of Father Whosis, who sets a tremendously important example for us all of ministry and service. We hope that you will agree that the ministry and service of Father Whosis to St. Whatsit Parish are tremendously important.
Sincerely, etc.

Which, translated into common speech, means: "Dear Spoiled Catholic Brat: Quit your sniveling. Sincerely, etc."

Still, if enough concerned letters about Father Whosis are received, someone may realize that something more important than Spoiled Catholic Brat syndrome is going on, and may investigate--which is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and all that.

I have great hope for the future of Catholic homiletics, however. It's not because of the reform of the reform, though that helps. It's not because of the new Mass translation, though that will likely help too. It's not even because of the influx of well-trained former Anglican priests who are coming into the Church, though the absolute best homilist I have ever known, bar none, is a former Anglican, now Catholic priest who serves in our diocese.

No, my hope for the end of the lightly-heretical homily rests elsewhere. In a word: YouTube. Priests who used to delight in Dan Brown-esque dabblings and "new" ideas (which actually date back to the Arians, the Albigensians, or the Manicheans, among others) now must fear that any yokel parishioner with an iPhone and a YouTube channel can, with one recording, get him in the kind of ecclesial hot water that no priest ever really wants to face. And should the video go viral...! The horror.

So our children may never hear, from the pulpit anyway, random speculations about whether the Trinity exists, or whether Jesus thought St. John the Baptist might be the Messiah for a while, or whether the early Church hated and feared women and that's why we don't have female priests--all because of YouTube. For which I am truly thankful.

UPDATE: I "borrowed" (ahem) the Nicholas Cage line from the brilliantly funny Bad Banana; the original line Bad Banana wrote was that his day was so awful, he kept looking around to see if Nicholas Cage was in it. :)

When it comes right down to it

2012-01-09T15:24:00.003-06:00

Pope Benedict XVI says that gay marriage is one of several threats to humanity's future:

The pope made some of his strongest comments against gay marriage in a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican in which he touched on some economic and social issues facing the world today.
He told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of children needed proper "settings" and that "pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman."
"This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself," he said.
The Vatican and Catholic officials around the world have protested against moves to legalize gay marriage in Europe and other developed parts of the world.

I was rather pleased with the Reuters article for getting so much of the following right:

The Roman Catholic Church, which has some 1.3 billion members worldwide, teaches that while homosexual tendencies are not sinful, homosexual acts are, and that children should grow up in a traditional family with a mother and a father.
"The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and states; hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue," Benedict told the diplomats.

Let's just look at that one sentence's main points again: the Church teaches that homosexual tendencies are not sinful; that homosexual acts are sinful; and that children should grow up in a traditional family with a mother and a father.

Those should really be the talking points of every Catholic on gay marriage. This is what our faith teaches us, and it's really very much in line with our Catholic understanding of the value of respecting human persons and their innate dignity regardless of sin on the one hand, and protecting the most vulnerable members of society on the other.

The Catholic opposition to gay marriage is not because Catholics think that people who live an active same-sex lifestyle should be shunned and excluded from some kind of modern human social structure. It is because we think that marriage is an ancient human social structure that means something at its core which can't be replicated by a same-sex union. That core meaning has always related to children and what is best for them. It is best for children that marriage continues to mean the union of a man and a woman both of whom are at least capable of the act of sexual intercourse. Whether or not the conception of a child can or does occur is not the point; the point is that the act is intrinsically ordered toward the sexual unity of two different-gendered people, which sexual unity is the only thing that can actually bring about children in a morally sound way which protects the dignity of the child as well as that of his or her parents. Manufacturing children in a laboratory is just as affronting to their dignity as requiring them to pretend that two "dads" are the same thing as having a mom as well as a dad, or that two "moms" are the same thing as having a dad as well as a mom--they are not the same thing and never will be.

Two men can live together and have a sexual relationship; two woman can live together and have a sexual relationship; a man and a woman who aren't married and/or who can't validly be married (such as a father and daughter) can live together and have a sexual relationship--but none of these arrangements are morally good arrangements in which to raise a child. This is why they don't deserve to be called marriage--because, quite simply, they aren't. The red herrings about infertile couples marrying (as if a test of fertility ought to be required of engaged couples) or about elderly couples marrying (as if being elderly automatically causes them to lack the gender complementarity and ability to engage in the physical union of sexual intercourse) are red herrings precisely because either of these couples are still quite legitimately husband and wife, and could act as a mother and a father to a child--perhaps an adopted child, or perhaps a grandchild they find themselves raising in the second case.

No matter how hard they try, two men can't be husband and wife to each other or mother and father to a child they are raising. Two women can't be husband and wife to each other or mother and father to a child they are raising. And if a cohabitating opposite-sex couple isn't free to marry, then they can't really be husband and wife to each other, either, and can only act as a facsimile of fatherhood and motherhood to any child they might bring into the world--and this example should show us how bad that might be for the child or children.

That example also shows us that those within the Church aren't immune from sin. But you won't see people parading around with signs demanding the right of concubine marriage for supposedly "celibate" bishops--because sinful arrangements, whatever they might be, just aren't marriage, when it comes right down to it.

Post at Coalition for Clarity

2012-01-09T15:09:00.002-06:00

Just a quick note for those who are interested: I have posted, over at Coalition for Clarity, a brief summary of each remaining Republican candidate's positions on things like torture/enhanced interrogation, Guantanamo, and related matters.

If I forgot anybody do let me know. :)

Just as disheartening as ever

2012-01-06T18:20:00.003-06:00

The other day, my friend Larry D. who blogs at Acts of the Apostasy, wrote about a very unusual situation: a woman married to a permanent deacon in the diocese of Detroit used her dying husband's hand as the "container" for the holy water which she poured on her grandson's head as she said the words of baptism.

Larry was, understandably, shocked and upset by this.

But, as Dr. Edward Peters assures us all, there is nothing to worry about here, except Larry's intemperate language and lack of charity toward an unfortunate widow. Oh, sure, the baptism was illicit, but it was valid (if it took place as described). The publication of the story in the diocesan seminary's magazine, and the further placement of that story online on the diocesan seminary's website, does not in any way mean that the Archdiocese of Detroit is in the habit of condoning and celebrating illicit baptisms. In fact, as Dr. Peters lectures us:

1. Christ made sacraments powerful things, and baptism, in light of its ability to be conferred by virtually anyone, is perhaps the most powerful of all. But when Christ instituted Baptism, He surely knew it would be misadministered countless times. Such misuses should spur correction, not insult.

2. This baptism was not the last act of an AOD deacon (it was the act of a woman watching her husband die), and so the episode reveals absolutely nothing about the quality of the education that the deacon received at Sacred Heart Major Seminary nor about the sacramental policy of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Claims to the contrary are recklessly false.

3. The larger the organization or group, the more members there will be who can do something (wittingly or otherwise) to embarrass that community. That’s always been true, of course, but our electronic information age gives instant prominence to the bizarre, casting it as representative of the whole, when it is no such thing. It’s time people start remembering that.

4. The internet has one huge advantage over print media: the internet reaches people instantly, while print requires time. The Mosaic editorial statement that, as a matter of fact, will address the grandma baptism story won’t appear for two more months; in the meantime, this sad episode will be used by some as another stick with which to beat a local Church.

What else can I say? Personally, I support using the internet more forcefully to defend the Church against her cyberspace detractors. Not that every misrepresentation can be corrected or every thrust parried, of course—there are far too many to deal with—but at least some sort of qualified, reasonable, fact-based response should, I think, be made to such attacks when circumstances allow.

With that, we can all breathe a huge sigh of relief, and go back to worrying about much graver matters, like the matter of whether or not every single married Catholic deacon and married Catholic priest (especially given the new Anglican ordinariate) is required, ought to be required, should be required, or must be required to observe canon law by refusing henceforth to pay the marriage debt to his wife.

Priorities, people.

I should note that Larry is being the good guy, here; he removed the language that offended Dr. Peters (though I don't find the abbreviation for the phrase "Whither the Ferret-badger?" all that offensive, myself) and has apologized for jumping to the non-expert conclusion that a) this baptism was a bit shady and b) the fact that an account of it appeared in a print magazine published by the diocesan seminary implied that the diocese didn't really have a problem with it. Larry is a better person than I am; I can only suppose that since this story was not originally flung out into that lawless, Wild West atmosphere that is the Internet but instead appeared in one of those slowly-produced and (ordinarily) carefully edited expert-type publications, the only charitable conclusion to be reached is that the magazine's editor or editors had a really, really bad day when they previewed that selection prior to inserting it into their publication, and totally missed the bit about the illicit baptism. Just skimming, you know, the way editors do.

I am not so good. In fact, I'm a bit tired of this sort of thing. I started getting tired of it when I brought to a long-ago pastor's attention the little matter of a visiting priest ad-libbing his way so much through the consecration that it was hard to tell if a valid consecration had occurred, and received a reply in which, while my concerns were held to be just, my lack of the proper spirit of thankfulness and gratitude for this visiting priest's ministry and generosity in saying Mass at our parish were heartily deplored. I continued being tired of it when that same pastor refused to listen to the choir's valid and legitimate concerns about a new choir director; that time, I just left the parish to go elsewhere, because I knew that we were just disposable lay volunteers in that pastor's eyes. I've continued to be tired of it when I've read of scandals and horror stories, of lay people treated like dirt for raising honest and just questions about parish life, sacramental preparation, and other important issues. I've been tired of it when I've seen the faith of good people destroyed by the shrugging lack of concern and near-violent apathy emanating from the penumbras and porticos of chancery buildings all across this country of ours; and now I'm rather tired of hearing someone like Larry, who clearly loves his Church, tarred with the "cyberspace detractors of the Church" brush merely for pointing out what should be glaringly, blindingly obvious: that forty plus years of horrible catechesis and liturgical dysfunction and clerical scandals have created a situation in which it's simply, sadly, not all that surprising to turn the pages of some official American Catholic publication and read a positive account of an illicitly administered baptism.

Not all that surprising. But just as disheartening as ever.

Big Brother: A Twit?

2012-01-05T18:19:00.002-06:00

I bookmarked this before Christmas, but I still think it's interesting enough to share, if you haven't seen it already:

An online privacy group is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security accusing it of not releasing records from the agency's covert surveillance of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.
The DHS creates accounts solely to monitor social media sites and establish a system of records of the information gathered. The agency does not post information, seek to connect with other users, accept invitations to connect or interact with others according to a statement on their website.
The agency scans social media sites for a list of words that include "dirty bomb," "hostage," "exercise," "task force," "explosion," "lockdown," "riot," "nuclear threat," "brown out," "meth lab," "cain and abel" and "brute forcing." [...]
Former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett said this initiative is nothing new.
"One of the biggest overlooked areas of the federal government when it comes to crime and terrorism is diligently searching public source information," said Garrett.
Garrett said the DHS can see online information that's not available to the public as long as they have legal authority, in the form of a search warrant, to do so. But often people leave private information open to the public.
"People today are very open about their thoughts and feelings on a number of different topics. It amazes me the amount of information people will write about themselves online. There's a false security about the anonymity of sitting in front of a computer screen and saying things you wouldn't say in public or in front of your parents or your spouse," said Garrett.

Well, I'm glad I'm off Facebook, and have never had a Twitter account.

Kidding, kidding. Sort of.

What disturbs me about this sort of thing is that otherwise intelligent people might see this and shrug. Who cares? The government is spying on us all the time. Most of us have left a trail of public records out there, and we know when we sign up for social media that the person reading our posts might be a government agent. So long as we don't post anything weird, and we're not actually criminals, we should be fine, right? We have nothing to hide.

While all of that is true, the idea that a little light government snooping is the price we should all be prepared to pay in order to interact with each other on social networks is galling to me as an American. As I wrote in my post about quitting Facebook, it is deeply disturbing to think that a company can hand over, without my knowledge, information that it once required at least a court order for someone to get. It's even more disturbing to realize that writing a Facebook post or a Tweet about two biblical characters (see the list above) can suddenly attract the attention of the United States Government.

It is noxious to the idea of freedom that one's government is totally free to spy upon one anytime one makes a statement which is not really intended to be completely public, but rather to be shared with one's circle of friends and acquaintances alone. Of course, one can decide not to accept friends or followers with suspiciously government-sounding names who never actually post anything; but can one really trust all of one's other friends and followers to act with similar savvy?

The only possible election outcome

2012-01-04T17:46:00.008-06:00

It's interesting to see how two very different prominent Catholic bloggers are writing about Iowa, the day after. First, here's Father Zuhlsdorf:

The results of the Iowa Caucuses were incredibly close, a virtual tie: Romney by 8 votes… .000065%.

I have friends who have opined that they may opt out of the voting process in this election cycle.

That is a really bad idea.

The stakes of the 2012 election are high.

Your votes count.

As wearisome as the process is, stay engaged with the issues and candidates.

Votes matter. [Emphasis in original--E.M.]

Read the rest, and the comments, here.

Next, here's Mark Shea:

Suddenly, the Iowa caucuses, after not mattering at all when Paul looked like he might win, matter a great deal and show us the Wisdom of the Voters. Neocons are particularly enthused with Santorum, who promises to ignore the Pope and the catechism on that whole pre-emptive war thing, as well as re-establish torture as a fundamental American value (in keeping with the disproportionately large enthusiasm for torture so-called “conservative” Catholics have in defiance of the teaching of Holy Church). Indeed, the damp-handed Orwellian from Pennsylvania has actually had the temerity to tell Vietnam torture victim John McCain that he doesn’t understand torture as well as he does. [All links in original--E.M.]

Mark goes on, in his post with the restrained and subtle title "Empty Suit and War/Torture Enthusiast Win Iowa!" to remark about how odd it is that few people can be found who are actually enthusiastic about the (up to now, anyway) presumed frontrunner, Mitt Romney. I don't think it's odd; I think it's one of the only signs of sanity left in the Republican Party. Alas, that sign is immediately contradicted by the reality that none of the candidates have been able to inspire much more than lukewarm enthusiasm among the voters.

I mean, those of us who have been accustomed in the past to voting for Republicans are used to the rallying cry of "Hold your nose and vote for X!" when it comes time for the general election. I can't, though, for the life of me remember this rallying cry being so prevalent during the primary season. "Hold your nose and vote for one of these clowns, because even though they're all deeply flawed and have no real ideas and would (with one possible exception) have signed NDAA 2012 right alongside the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania to say nothing of declaring preemptive war on any nation that has threateningly large amounts of oil and approving of super-duper enhanced interrogation which is not torture for reasons that are deeply personally linguistic, they're all we've got!" is not exactly the most inspiring Republican message I've ever heard. (Too wordy, for one thing.)

Republicans, and those of their friends who while not actually being members of the party still tend to share some of their ideals, may be forgiven for having hoped that the present election cycle might have produced an actual leader, instead of a group which is clearly still trying to play one on TV. But then again, in our age of Obama, where substance quite obviously didn't matter to the electorate so long as the right things were read with the right sort of inflection off of the right brand of Teleprompter, promising all the right sorts of goodies and government freebies to the masses while reassuring the 1% that they would only be called upon to talk about sacrifice, but not actually to do any of it themselves, perhaps the Republican field could be forgiven for thinking that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity" was some sort of election-year motto, a rule to live by, a principle to emulate themselves.

And so I read things like what the good Father Z. has written with a sort of perplexity. How much will one's vote really count when a nose-holding selection of some person C.S. Lewis would have unhesitatingly referred to as a man (and I can say that, as Bachmann has dropped out) without a chest is the only possible outcome of this election?

How's the new comments policy working for you?

2012-01-03T17:14:00.004-06:00

A belated Happy New Year to my readers! My head decided to ring in the new year with a two-day migraine that just ended at midnight last night, so I'm a little late getting out here.

I'm planning to do some real posting later on this week, but for today, I just wanted to revisit the new commenting policy. I think there's still some misunderstanding about it all, as evidenced by this recent comment from a reader:

Exactly. This is your place, and you can decide what you want to do with it. As I will decide if I want to continue reading you after observing the implementation of your new policy.

I've disagreed with you in the past, and it's unfair to "shut my mike off" when you allow other who probably agree with you to continue.

I'm going to say this again, because I think it's important to say it: I will not and do not withhold comments simply because the commenter doesn't agree with me. I will withhold comments under the following conditions only:

1. The commenter is unnecessarily rude or uncivil to me or to other commenters/readers.
2. The commenter continues to post anonymously, without even a nickname, after having been asked to supply a nickname.
3. The commenter is using a post merely to advance his/her own agenda which is not even tangentially related to the post, to spam, or to otherwise manipulate the commenting system.

If your comment doesn't show up and you're sure you didn't violate 1-3, above, please DO contact me! I have no control over which comments end up in Blogger's spam folder, and though I try to check it periodically, I don't always get to it in a timely manner.

Now: here's an example of a comment I did NOT approve. I'm sharing it here so that those of you who may have wondered about my institution of moderated comments can see the sort of thing that's been cropping up lately. Ordinarily, under the old system, I'd just remove these when I saw them--but in the meantime my readers might have seen them, too. However, since I'm a night owl and these sorts of drive-by commenters tend to post at night, I'd bet I've been able to catch quite a few before my readers ever saw them. This little gem was posted on Christmas Day, by the way, by an anonymous commenter who left no nickname:

thank you for taking time from your busy day of purging homos from your comments and fretting that somewhere a woman is using birth control to wish us a Merry Christmas

It's fairly mild, of its kind; the writer stays away from profanity and doesn't write pages of stuff about how evil I am or how wicked my readers are, but I share it here as an example: if you don't post stupidity like this, I'll probably approve your comment, even if we disagree about everything under the sun.

From my perspective, the new commenting policy has already done some good. I've seen readers who were hesitant to post comments before decide to do so, or to comment more frequently. I've seen a marked drop in the comments of the type I shared just above. And I don't have to worry that the first thing I'll have to do in the morning is scrape gunk out of a comment box, whether it's gunk of the "Please to be very nice posting!" variety with a link (which Blogger still sometimes doesn't recognize as spam) or whether it's gunk of the "Hope you rot in the hell I don't believe exists," sort, which is amusingly illogical but also, frankly, tiresome.

How is it working for you? Do you find yourself hesitating to comment knowing that your comment will have to be approved--or is it easier to say what you want knowing that attackers won't be able to spring out from the shadows? Let me know!

Happy Birthday, Kitten!

2011-12-31T10:05:00.003-06:00

Today our oldest daughter, nicknamed "Kitten" on this blog, turns sixteen. 16!!! I can't believe it; it seems like yesterday, or last week sometime, that Thad and I were discovering that the doctor was going to induce my labor nearly a month early and our grand parenting adventure was going to start much sooner than we had anticipated. ;)

Kitten is a wonderful girl--smart, sweet, kind, responsible, competent in millions of ways, talented, artistic--I could go on and on. Today's birthday celebration included a shoe-shopping trip--her choice, and a reminder to me that these girls of mine are growing up so very fast.

As has been our tradition for the last few years, I will now turn the blog over to Kitten herself, so that she can say hello:

Hi! Kitten here. Wow: sixteen already. I can't believe how fast the year has flown by. This past year has been full of fun surprises and hard (school) work.

We started the celebration a little early by stopping yesterday at one of my favorite pet shops and looking at the animals there (that's right, Kitten, you were only looking at all those adorable cats. Just keep telling yourself that our two cats are plenty.) Today we went shoe shopping, and I bought two pairs of awesome high heels! I'm already taller than Mom, and the shoes make it even better. :) We also stopped in at yet another pet store and saw this sweet guy. I hope he finds a good family soon!

We went out for an early birthday dinner, and afterwards picked up ice cream to go with my cute birthday cake. We plan to enjoy the rest of this evening celebrating my birthday and New Year's Eve all in one.

Happy New Year to all my mom's blog readers!

--Kitten :)

That "New Translation" cookie recipe...UPDATED

2011-12-28T14:18:00.005-06:00

(For the UPDATE, see below.)

I'll be resuming regular blogging, God willing, on Monday, Jan. 2--but come on, you didn't think I'd manage to be quiet for a whole week, did you? :)

I hope all of my readers had wonderful Christmases; I certainly did, as did my loved ones. God is good.

Now to business: most of you have probably already seen the "New Translation Christmas Cookie Recipe" which originated on Commonweal's blog and was posted in this version by Msgr. Pope just the other day:

Christmas Cookie Recipe
(Revised Translation)

Serves: You and many.

Having procured one chalice butter, 2/3 chalice sugar, cream these ingredients, that by their commingling, you may begin to make the dough.

In a similar way, the butter is having been made commingled, with the sugar, beat in one egg.

Gather these dry ingredients to yourself, which you have received, so that, having combined them, you may add them to the dough which you have already begun to make: 2 1/2 chalices sifted all-purpose flour. 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Make the precious dough with your venerable hands.

Into the refrigerator graciously place the dough, so that it, having been chilled for the duration of 3 or 4 hours, before the rolling and the the cutting of the cookies.

When, in the fullness of time, you are a ready to bake these spotless cookies, these delicious cookies, these Christmas cookies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Rolling out the dough and taking up the cookie cutter or stencil of your own choosing, fashion the cookies into forms that are pleasing.

Sprinkle colorful adornments of the cookies like the dewfall.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cookies have jut begun to attain to the brownness that is graciously granted them by the oven’s heat.

May these cookies be found acceptable in your sight, and be borne to a place of refreshment at your table whereon they may be served with milk, hot chocolate, or with your spirits.

Now, I can enjoy the lighthearted spirit of joking good humor offered here as well as anybody. And because I appreciate this good clean fun for what it is, I'd like to offer, in the same spirit, the original 1970s version of this cookie recipe, before it was translated as you see above. I can't say where I got this version, but Larry D's friend Sister Patricia Owens O'Flannary, OP might possibly have been involved:

Winter Holiday Cookie Recipe
(Original Version)

Serves: All.

Get some butter, margarine, or other oil-like substance of your choice. Also get some sugar or other sweetener. (Note: exact amounts are patriarchal and legalistic! It's up to each person to decide how much of these ingredients to use!)

Mix them together, apologizing to each for inflicting this oppression on them; use the opportunity to reflect on injustice.

Now add an egg, unless you are a vegan and you'd be offended. Stir the egg in vigorously but don't "beat" it, because "beating" is violent and wrong.

In another dish, preferably an earthenware bowl of no particular design that is by its sheer ugliness authentic and real, mix some flour and salt. Add this, with some cruelty-free vanilla, to the butter/sugar/egg, or margarine/sugar substitute/no egg, or whatever you've done so far.

Make sure everyone has a chance to stir the dough so that all will feel welcome. Then chill the dough in the refrigerator for a time, and ponder the coldness of the old, rigid way of making cookies compared to this new enlightened approach.

Bake the cookies in a reasonably hot oven. You can, if you like, use cookie cutters, but free-form dough shapes are more compelling and tell their own stories, while cookie cutters impose dull uniformity and inflexible shapes on the dough, which is really sad when you think about it.

The cookies are done when you feel like they're done! Serve them to groups of people sitting in circles on the ground, because we don't want to get all formal or anything.

That certainly casts a light on the new translation version, doesn't it? ;)

UPDATE: A brilliant commenter at Msgr. Pope suggested a Marty Haugen version of the Cookie Recipe. I'm glad to comply. I don't think I'll need to tell you what tune to hum this little ditty to:

The Singing Cookie Recipe Song

Here in this place, the oven's preheating,
Now is our hunger banished away,
See in this space, the mixer is whirring,
Making us snacks for to brighten the day.

Gather them in, the sugar and butter
Gather them in, the eggs and the flour;
Wash and prepare each cute cookie cutter
Have them at hand for the time and the hour.

We are the young--and baking's a mystery,
We are the old--we've done this before,
Careful, say moms throughout human history:
Sugar's a mess to clean up from the floor.

Gather them in, the salt and vanilla
Gather them in, the rest as you know;
Add soda too, but just a scintilla,
Stir it and make it to form a soft dough.

Here you must chill the dough till it's ready:
Here you must roll and cut--the next phase--
Here you must bake, with hands that are steady,
All of the shapes in the oven on trays.

Give us to eat the golden-brown cookies
Give us to drink some milk with them, too,
Nourish us well, the chefs and the rookies
Make everybody clean up when we're through.

:)

Just us Catholics

2011-12-23T17:28:00.003-06:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all of my readers an early Merry Christmas--or, for you sticklers, a happy last couple days of Advent!

Kidding, kidding.

Well, sort of. Actually I had a funny dream last night, and even though there is statistically nothing less interesting to other people than other people's dreams, I'm going to share it anyway, because it's my blog and I can, so there.

I dreamed I was in a church hall--it was sort of my parish, and sort of not, the way dreams are. A dear friend was hosting a children's craft activity, and I was sort of helping, which is funny considering that I'm the least crafty person in the world. There were random side plots going on too, but they're not important. Anyway, as the craft activity finished, an irate woman came marching up to my friend and me. Here she thought, she said, that two homeschooling Catholic moms could be trusted not to undermine her efforts to raise her children as True Catholics. Yet here we were letting them do Christmas crafts before Christmas--and, to make things worse, in a church where the altar had already been decorated for Christmas, even though it was not yet December 24, let alone late afternoon on December 24, which is when, as every real Catholic knows, it is only appropriate to begin decorating for Christmas! How dare we! and so on.

In vain did I try to explain to her that my poor pastor, with two churches to look after, could hardly wait until December 24 to put up the Christmas decorations in both churches; in vain did I try to explain that our mission Church did not as yet have daily Mass and so no one would see (and be affronted by) the Christmas decorations before the Christmas Mass; in vain did I try to get her to be reasonable about it. She was just Offended, with a capital O.

I woke up and chuckled at the dream--but then, being me, I thought about it. Was it really all that farfetched? Isn't it true, sadly so, that we really have become that polarized in our expressions of the Catholic faith here in America in the year 2011?

Go to one Catholic blog, and you'll learn that True Catholics will only support Candidate A for president. At another blog, you'll learn that True Catholics will never, ever vote for A but might possibly vote for B. A third blog denounces B as the Catholic choice and sneers at any Catholic naive enough to support B, when C is still in the race...

Or, at one Catholic blog, you'll learn that the EF Mass is the only choice for a Real Catholic; at another, the OF; at still another, the OF but only the former translation; at yet another...

Or, at one Catholic blog you'll learn that parish religious ed. must be supported by all right-thinking Catholics; at another, than Catholic schools are the only way to raise decent kids; at a third, that homeschooling is the only morally correct choice...

Or, at one Catholic blog you'll hear that shorts and jeans are fine for Mass; at another, that the biggest issue facing Catholics today is immodesty in dress; at another, that women who fail to adopt the sola skirtura as their way of life are failing to follow the Blessed Mother and are prideful and indecent; at still another, that veils are still actually mandatory for Mass and the evil modernist pseudo-church has suppressed this truth...

Maybe my dream's not so funny. And maybe we've got a long way to go, just inside the Church, just us Catholics, before "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men" isn't an impossible ideal.

So, whether you will attend Midnight Mass in Latin or the five p.m. vigil with guitars, whether you will dress for Christmas Mass in velvet and lace or a suit or in slacks and a warm sweater, whether you are at Mass every Sunday or not quite, whether your children are eagerly joining you in the parish choir (as mine are) or are being dragged unwillingly to Mass for Grandma's sake, whether your house has been decorated like the North Pole since Thanksgiving or whether you've draped a suspiciously tree-shaped lump in the living room in swaths of purple fabric until after Midnight Mass, whether you will vote for Gingrich or Paul or Santorum or even Obama (though I hope not because of his anti-life policies, but despite them): I wish all of my Catholic brothers and sisters a most Merry and Blessed Christmas.

And I wish the same for my Christian brothers and sisters in the Christian family.

And the same for my non-Christian brothers and sisters, in the family of believers, as fellow children of God.

And the same for my non-believer brothers and sisters, in the human family, because from my perspective we still have the same Father.

Merry Christmas, and God bless us, every one!

You know it's almost Christmas...

2011-12-22T13:35:00.002-06:00

...when a blogger writes a post about why she wears the veil to Mass, and another blogger links to and expands on that post, and as of this writing, neither post has attracted the humdrum hundred comments such posts generally attract.

This, despite the fact that the first post was posted on Dec. 15.

And that it was linked to on New Advent.

My thoughts on the wearing of a veil are well known, of course, but I wanted to give those of my readers who aren't swamped in last-minute preparations for the upcoming Holy Day a chance to visit these blogs if they like. Or talk about veils here, if you want. I'm winding things down here, and will probably put up the last pre-Christmas post Friday and then take roughly a week off (give or take), but I will try to check in on comments periodically.

Cultural laments from other blogs

2011-12-21T16:56:00.002-06:00

Today, you need to go and read a few other blogger's posts. Trust me: this will be worth your time.

First up, my friend Magister Christianus, who has written an eloquent post about what it's like to be a serious Christian teaching in a public high school:

As I walked the halls of the public high school where I teach Latin, returning to my room after submitting six failures from Latin I to the guidance office, I felt the weight of an elephant on my chest and burning tears around the rims of my eyes. It was not the six failures that produced these sensations, but they contributed to a cumulative, crushing effect. Perhaps it was that one of our students was raped on her way home earlier this week. Perhaps it was the cheating scandal that has rocked our school, involving a young man who photographed with his phone a final exam and sold it to students. This same young man was discovered to have stolen multiple tests and quizzes from another teacher during the teacher's absence. Perhaps it was a colleague's discovery that a student had gotten onto his computer and changed grades. Perhaps it the sadness I have felt for some time and that hit critical mass yesterday over a former student who is a friend on Facebook. This student, who must be in her late twenties by now, was a dark, edgy girl as I recall her. Now, she works at a local bar, and the vast majority of her body not covered by clothing is decked out in tattoos. I do not want to know what a former student looks like under her clothes. She friended me a long time ago, and I accepted, but now I see frequent updates of her in all manner of undress at her work, which seems to promote such appearance. I am praying the Lord will draw her to Him and out of the life she is living. [...]

Yet today as I walked the halls, I felt oppression. My school is above average in academic, athletic, and artistic/musical achievements. We have the awards and statistics to prove it. We are, however, feeling the crushing weight of the immorality and despair that seems to be sweeping the nation, if not the world. I found myself wanting to get out, to leave, to do anything but bear the burden of this weight.

And then I thought of Mother Teresa and of Jesus. How long did Mother Teresa work in the slums? What oppression did her soul suffer? What weight of sin did our Lord have to carry in the moral sinkhole of the 1st century Roman empire? In the garden of Gethsemane, He asked our Father, "Let this cup pass from me," but added in His typical, faithful way, "nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done."

Go and read the whole thing here.

The thing is, culture matters. When you have a nation that scorns chastity, shuns morality, and decides that the only virtue is pleasing one's own self, that is reflected in our youth, and wreaks a terrible human toll.

Next up: I don't agree completely with Patrick Archbold here, but this is a pretty thought-provoking piece of writing:

Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence. I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is. But some things were different in the back then. First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue. And that combination of beauty and innocence is what I define as pretty.

By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact. That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.

Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different. When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way and consequently men view them differently as well.

As I said, pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable. [...]

Our problem is that society doesn’t value innocence anymore, real or imagined. Nobody aspires to innocence anymore. Nobody wants to be thought of as innocent, the good girl. They want to be hot, not pretty.

I agree with most of what Patrick is saying--but I would point out that in its day, prettiness was also something of a commodity. Pretty, after all, is a quality of the young--and only of some of them. Plenty of virtuous, modest, well-behaved girls in former ages were never pretty, and the plain, the too-fat or too-thin, the freckled or harsh-featured girls often missed out on those chivalrous impulses men had for the young and attractive, as did those women too old to be considered "pretty." I would, instead, speak of a different kind of female beauty, the kind of beauty that doesn't have to be "pretty" to inspire. Like this, for instance.

Last, but not least, Rod Dreher has written the customer service rant par excellence:

I no longer fear Hell, for I have spent two days dealing with AT&T customer service.

Honest, I cannot remember the last time I was so angry. It was the kind of experience that makes you think this must be a movie, or the Soviet Union. And it’s still not over! How are these people still in business? [...]
Well, the deadline came and went, and no phone service, and no Internet. I phoned AT&T myself. It took four minutes and 56 seconds of navigating through the automated customer service system before I finally got put through to a human being. And off we went again. It was as if the entire set of conversations Julie had had the day before had never occurred! After 45 minutes or longer on the phone with this particular person, and getting absolutely nowhere, my head was throbbing, and I lost my temper. I asked to be put through to a supervisor … and was transferred back to the automated system, at the very beginning.

I really do lack the words to describe how incandescently angry I was at this point. I had to give the phone to my wife to handle from that point on. I heard her say the words, “What do you mean it won’t be on till Friday?! That is unacceptable. You all have had over a month to make this work!”

I took the phone at that point. At least 30 minutes later, and three different customer service representatives (“Sir, I don’t know why they transferred you to me; this is not my area”), I reached the end of the line. The man told me there was nothing to be done. He said if it didn’t come on by midnight, that I should call this particular number. I realized there really was nothing else I could do at that point. There was no one left to talk to. He told me he lacked the authority to transfer me to a supervisor. I believe he was lying, but at that point, all I was capable of was screaming. (Julie had already asked me to go to the back of the house to carry on these conversations, because I was frightening the children). I gave up.

Read the whole thing here.

Of course, the real problem is that we now live in a culture that values low-cost goods and services and high returns for the stockholder over such old-fashioned notions as quality, customer service, and standing by one's words or promises. These days, an overseas customer service person can assure the irate American on the other end of the phone that tomorrow or the next day the problem will be fixed--and then, to all extents and purposes, the irate American ceases to exist, as far as the ironically-named customer service specialist is concerned. It is not the job of the customer service person to waste company resources and drain stockholder value by actually, you know, fixing the problem. And when the even-more-irate American customer calls back tomorrow, well, maybe he'll call at a different time and someone in a different country will answer the call; the odds are against getting the same person twice, especially given the automated maze at the beginning of the system.

I'm not (of course) the only person out there who writes cultural laments, and I'm glad to have this opportunity to share three really good ones with all of you!

Worst Christmas children's shows?

2011-12-20T22:44:00.004-06:00

Once again, I'm posting extremely late in the day. Why are vacations full of everything but free time, I wonder? :)

Online movie ticket site Fandango held a poll to determine the top ten worst Christmas movies. Here's their list:

1. SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS 23%

2. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 16%

3. JINGLE ALL THE WAY 10%

4. JACK FROST 9%

5. SANTA WITH MUSCLES 5%

6. ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS 5%

7. HOME ALONE 3 4%

8. DECK THE HALLS 4%

9. SURVIVING CHRISTMAS 3%

10. CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS 3%

Now, I don't think this list is anywhere near comprehensive enough. Where are the claymation titles? Where is this recent holiday monstrosity starring Hallmark's (tm) characters Hoops (tm) and Yoyo (tm)?

Of course, this list isn't really a list of horrible children's Christmas entertainment, whether movies or TV, so I guess I can give this poll a pass for not including such things. But now that I've brought it up, here's the question of the day: what is the all-time worst children's Christmas feature you've ever seen, and why?

Oh, and because Mark Shea has been ruthlessly running it all week, we'll take the Star Wars Holiday Special out of the list right from the get-go. We'll concede that that is in a special category of awful all its own. But other than that one, which gets your top vote for worst, most annoying, most obnoxious, most dreadful, most dreary, or just plain most horrible children's Christmas feature?

My vote is for The Year Without a Santa Claus, which I thought was just--weird--when I saw it as a kid (though some of the songs, alas, stayed in one's head). But I know some people love that one, so...what's your vote?

The Christmas dinner dilemma

2011-12-19T23:23:00.001-06:00

I'm posting this as a bleg to my readers: do any of you find Christmas dinner to be a sort of dilemma?

Picture the typical Catholic family on Christmas day. The whole family has gone to Mass (or, at least, those family members who did not contract a dreaded right-before-Christmas virus or something) either the night before, or at midnight, or fairly early Christmas morning. The wonders under the tree have been unwrapped and explored, removed from frustrating packaging, had batteries added or been assembled; the family has then enjoyed a Christmas breakfast ranging from the simple and ordinary to the elaborate and extreme. Now, the youngest family members are down for a Christmas midday nap; the next youngest are playing with their Christmas toys; the next youngest are settling in for a good Christmas squabble until Dad notices, and so on. Everyone is relaxed, Christmas music plays softly--and Mom heads for the kitchen to get preparations underway for Christmas dinner.

So far, so good, right? But unless Mom is an enthusiastic cook who dreams up and plans her Christmas dinner with joy, what happens next can vary a lot...and so can Mom's mood and her enjoyment of Christmas.

One of the problems for us Americans is that we've had Thanksgiving a month before. Some families find it extremely important for Christmas dinner to be Thanksgiving Mark II, complete with turkey, dressing, cranberries, traditional sides, fine china and glassware, and all the panoply of the Thanksgiving meal, with, perhaps, a few unique Christmas touches (such as, perhaps, a real Christmas pudding, though that is not something I've ever tasted myself). Other desserts may be anything from the much-maligned yet under-appreciated fruitcake to the same sorts of pies one might serve at Thanksgiving; and the whole scene is supposed to convey the rosy glow of a Norman Rockwell painting.

But I have to be honest: I find the idea of cooking what is essentially a second Thanksgiving dinner a month after Thanksgiving rather difficult. On Thanksgiving Day the cook or cooks have the whole day to prepare and cook the meal; on Christmas Day the cook has considerably less time, and unless he or she absolutely loves cooking a huge meal and finds it a relaxing and enjoyable hobby to do so he or she is possibly going to be a bit cranky by the time the family troops in to eat. And, let's face it: preparing what is essentially the same "Holiday Meal" twice in a month is a bit boring. Sure, you could change the main course from a turkey to a ham or vice versa, and you can tinker with the sides and desserts a bit, but you're essentially doing the exact same sort of cooking.

Now, I know that lots of people skip the "Second Thanksgiving" type of Christmas dinner. There are all sorts of other meals that individual families embrace as their own family tradition. For instance, my sister's late mother-in-law reportedly made Christmas a day for a deli spread (which would be great in Texas in years when it's 70 degrees at Christmas). Around here, it's traditional for some people to order tamales for Christmas (or for New Year's). Many cultures have traditional Christmas foods which are very far from what is customary in our culture.

So, my bleg is this: I'd like to hear from readers who have Christmas food traditions that go beyond a second round of Thanksgiving fare. What do you cook and serve? Is it a family custom, a cultural tradition, or some combination? Is Christmas a day to pull out all the stops and go gourmet, or is it a day for a sort of glorified snacking?

Share recipes, if you like! I'm hoping to get some new ideas, having done everything from a fairly traditional Christmas dinner to some decidedly non-traditional choices in years past.

I'm posting this rather late, but I'll check in for comments first thing tomorrow. :)

Schlocky songs of the retail season

2011-12-16T18:40:00.005-06:00

I saw the above comic at XKCD, and it made me laugh in that rueful way that we Gen-X types tend to laugh about the cultural dominance of the Baby Boom generation. It's funny because it's true.

What's also true is that there's only one religious song on the "Baby Boom" chart area, and only two on the whole chart. Which is one of the reasons that being bombarded with so-called "Christmas music" on radio stations, in stores, and in public places from about the end of October until noon on Christmas Day is so deeply, deeply annoying.

It's not that I want to be racing through some ugly ShopMartGoGetBuyStore while being serenaded by religious songs, either; in fact, there's little in life that's more jarring than doing some Christmas shopping while hearing some electronically-enhanced minimally talented pop star jazzing up Silent Night or something similar. To focus in on the Babe of Bethlehem is to realize with a sickening sense of shock that our culture is absolutely mad in its consumerist frenzy which just happens to coincide with that holiday Christians call Christmas.

At least it's the secular songs that most often get parodied in commercials, particularly car commercials. No, I don't want to celebrate "Happy Honda (tm) Days," and no, I don't think the current Nissan (tm) sale is "The Most Wonderful Sale of the Year." But it would be a heck of a lot more offensive if someone started singing "O Come, All Ye Shoppers," "What Deal is This?" or "Savings We Have Seen on High," or some such stupidity.

There are nine more days left of Advent, which means nine more days of being surrounded by the verbal equivalent of cheap tinsel. After that, when the Christian world actually begins celebrating the Christmas season, the stores will be busily dealing with Christmas returns and gearing up for the next big retail holiday, the January Clearance/pre-Valentine's Day Sale. But at least we won't be bombarded with special schlocky songs during that retail season; at least, we'll only be bombarded with the usual schlocky songs that stores play for our ceaseless torment.

Gung-ho for Gingrich?

2011-12-15T18:28:00.004-06:00

As the last debate of the Republican primary gets underway later tonight, I find myself primarily thinking something along the lines of "Newt Gingrich? Really?" and speculating that if Gingrich is, indeed, the nominee, the Obama camp is going to party like it's 1999 (the year Gingrich resigned from the House of Representatives, for those of my readers too young to remember).

It's not that I can't understand why in a field of shining mediocrity someone like Gingrich would stand out to some Republican voters. What, really, are the other choices? Romney the perpetually underwhelming, whose strong conservative credentials date back all of five minutes or so in election timing (and not even that, to critics of Massachusetts' health care system and easy-imposition of gay marriage under his watch)? Rick Perry of Trans-Texas-Corridor and "hang-em-high" fame? Ron Paul, who tends to make enough sense to make our ruling class deeply uncomfortable, but who is not without problems of his own? Darling of many Catholics Rick Santorum, who looks like the clear moral choice until you start checking his record on torture ("enhanced interrogation") and wondering why he's bashing the bishops on immigration? Michele Bachmann or Jon Huntsman, neither of whom have had what you might call traction since this whole thing started?

Against such a field of glittering inadequacy, Newt Gingrich stands out with a near-presidential aura. He can, after all, speak well (and he doesn't need a teleprompter). He is a Catholic convert and a family man (provided you focus only on his single recent valid marriage and not on the two earlier ones whose endings involved adultery). He says all of the right sort of red-meat/Red State things to all of the right sorts of people. And he's perfectly able to bash Washington insiders with a straight face, despite having been one for much of his own adult life.

What I find amazing is that some of the same people who are currently gung-ho for Gingrich had all sorts of complaints about the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue--complaints about his being more style than substance, complaints about his being essentially a good speech maker but little else, complaints about his having no new ideas and no serious plan to implement the hope and change he was talking about, and so on. But ask any of them what Gingrich's qualifications for the presidency are, and they'll talk about the long-ago Contract with America (that didn't quite pan out as expected); ask them what Gingrich's new ideas are, or how he plans to lead in a time of economic and political uncertainty, and you'll find it rather hard to get a substantive answer from many of Gingrich's self-declared supporters. The only idea seems to be that in an age of Twitter soundbites and marketing disguised as campaigning, Gingrich could beat Obama in what would probably prove to be a highly entertaining political campaign; we'll get around to defining what Gingrich is actually for or what he wants to do that's really substantially any different from what Romney or anybody else wants, once he's the nominee.

You would think that people would have had enough of four years of strong personality but erratic leadership in the White House, but you would probably be wrong. The narrative seems to be, "Sure, he's an unstable egotist with a tendency to grandstand, but he's our unstable egotist with a tendency to grandstand." Which is, alas, not all that reassuring.

Changes

2011-12-14T18:58:00.004-06:00

Well, I'm back.

First of all, I want to express my deep gratitude to those of you who have sent me messages of encouragement and kindness "behind the scenes," so to speak. All of your emails, phone calls, etc. were very, very much appreciated. I know that I have a terrific set of regular readers and commenters, and I'm extremely grateful for that fact.

Which brings me to my second point: I've been disturbed a few times lately, culminating in the thread below a recent post, by the incursion of some newer and mainly anonymous commenters who seem to be generating more heat than light. Some of you in contacting me privately admitted that my comment boxes aren't friendly places, that in trying to maintain an atmosphere of free, easy conversation I've unwittingly made my blog a place where a few verbal bullies can shout down everyone else--while technically not violating my rules regarding civility or against obscenity. And that bothers me, because I'd rather have more of my regular readers feel as though they can chime in without having to worry that they or their ideas are going to be attacked or ridiculed by those whose facility with writing is such that they can disguise an attack as a merely rational question or point.

But knowing that this is the case, I have to address it. And though I've avoided making this particular decision for a long, long time, I think the time has come for me to implement moderated comments--which is the biggest change you will see in the days ahead.

I've got to be honest, here. I hate moderated comments. They seem to stifle conversation; they put commenters at the mercy of the blogger's often-varied schedule; they can create misunderstandings of the "why didn't you approve my perfectly innocent comment?" variety, and they can be a headache for both the blogger and his or her readers in a host of other ways.

However, I've reached the point in my blogging life where I just can't see a way around this. I want this blog to be a place where most readers feel perfectly safe in leaving comments, and that can't happen so long as verbal bullies can show up and leave drive-by postings which I may not see for hours. Even when someone has really crossed the line, and I delete his or her comment, the original commenter to whom they were responding may already have seen it, have been hurt by it, and possibly even wondered why on earth I let the hurtful comment stand. My only other option would be to ban all anonymous comments--and yet some of my most valued readers and commenters technically post "anonymously," though they are courteous enough to sign a name or nickname to each comment so we know to whom we're talking. So that option is out, as far as I'm concerned.

Moderated comments it is, then. I ask all of you for patience as I implement this major change.

There are a few minor changes as well. The most important of those is that I've taken the nearly-unprecedented step of deleting the post that caused all the trouble last week (I think I've only deleted a post once or twice before, and that was back in early blogging days when I just wasn't satisfied with something, long before I had regular readers and commenters). There's just no reason to leave it up right now. In future when I post anything at all about chastity, virtue, or sexual morality, I will remember that few people, including few self-described Christians, actually believe in any of those concepts any more, and will either leave comments closed or stay out of any combox battles that develop. I'm just going to have to take a Matthew 7:6 approach to discussions of chastity and sexual morality in the future.

I'm also deleting and rearranging some sidebar items (which won't matter to those of you who read this blog in a reader). There's no special reason for that; I'm just in a clutter-purging mood in my real life and it's carried over to the blog. My pledge not to vote for Republicans (I already don't vote for Democrats), my link to the big Legion post, etc. can still be found by searching my blog, but I have far too many items in my sidebar these days (and some, like the countdown clock for the new Mass translation, are, blessedly, out of date!).

Another minor change is that blogging may occasionally be a bit more sporadic and less news-driven than it has been in the past. While I still find myself most comfortable with a five-day posting schedule, there are times when I run out of time in a day and feel as though I should choose between tossing up a post anyway, regardless of quality, or skipping it altogether--and sometimes skipping it is clearly the better option. :)

Blogging will be especially sporadic, and possibly non-existent, during Christmas week, though as always I reserve the right to change my mind about that.

One final thing: at this time I formally place this blog, and all who enter to read it, under the protection of St. Michael the Archangel:

Sancte Michael Archangele,
defende nos in proelio.
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis,
Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute, in infernum detrude.
Amen.

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

Comments--moderated--are open again.

Taking a blog break

2011-12-08T17:36:00.001-06:00

I was planning to write my Pantone "Color of the Year" post today--a lighthearted, silly bit of fluff that I do every year.

But after the ridiculousness that took place in a recent comment box, I'm done blogging for the time being.

Blog will reopen when I feel like it. If I feel like it.

Comments are closed.

Postless

2011-12-06T22:32:00.003-06:00

No post today.

Dentist appointment.

Enough said.

People like us

2011-12-05T18:40:00.010-06:00

I received the loveliest email from a reader yesterday; with the reader's kind permission, I share some of it with all of you:

I passed the local PP abortion clinic yesterday morning. There is a crisis pregnancy clinic less than half a block away. Yesterday morning a group was praying outside PP - which as far as I know doesn't offer its "services" on weekends. I pulled over and made the Asian sign of greeting - hands together as in prayer, smiled and waved. They weren't certain what I was going to do - I presume they are used to some hostility as well as some friendliness.

Once they decided I was a "friendly" they gave the sweetest, warmest smiles. I really can't believe I used to view pro-life witnesses with such hostility and suspicion. I feel like I've crawled out from under some rock. Imagine raging at people who want to protect babies.

Thank you for your part in lifting that veil of illusion. Buddhist practice, which includes a chant for the happiness of all beings, including specifically "those born and to be born" also played a role.

Offering women only the choice to kill their babies is a pathetic comment on our society. Or a comment on our pathetic society. Whichever or both!

First of all: Deo Gratias!

Secondly, I think that what my reader points out here is very important; one aspect of our pathetic society is that we tend to demonize those with whom we disagree. It's not enough for us to have sometimes deep philosophical differences; we have to convince ourselves that the one on the other side of an argument is really The Other, as in, the one with whom we have nothing to do.

I've been guilty of that myself in the past, and I most sincerely apologize for it. Christ taught His followers again and again that we are to see The Other as our neighbor, and then to love that neighbor as we love ourselves. This does not mean that we will always agree about things; it also doesn't mean that we are obligated to accept our neighbors' viewpoints or ideas when we do disagree. We just have to accept our neighbor in his or her intrinsic being as someone like ourselves, with the full worth of every son and daughter of the King Whom we await.

If we want to end the horror of abortion, if we want to stand against torture and the capricious use of the death penalty, if we want to work for a society of renewed morality, greater integrity, and a stronger sense of both justice and mercy for all, we have to start by remembering that the people on the opposite sides of any of these issues are people like us. For those of us who are Christians this means recalling that each of them is created, like us, in the image and likeness of God, called to the same noble destiny of eternal happiness with Him that we are. It means refusing to see them as monsters or demons. It means praying for them as earnestly, when they fall, as we would pray for one of our own family, and as we hope for our own salvation.

It means that the command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves is linked inextricably to the command to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, souls and strengths. And it means that we have to love all of our neighbors; perhaps we must love most those who annoy or irritate or frustrate or confound us the most.

My reader learned that the people praying for babies weren't really enemies, and the people praying outside that clinic learned that my reader was a friend. Imagine the good we could do if we could all learn this about each other; if we could keep that thought uppermost in our minds as we interact daily with The Others, only to find that they are our neighbors and friends.

Santa essay, for those who want to fight about it

2011-12-02T18:09:00.007-06:00

I've had quite a few people searching this week for an old blog post of mine.

Actually, it was originally published as an essay at the Dallas Morning News; it may still be available in their archives, but I'm suspecting you might have to have a subscription to access it now.

Since 'tis the season, though, I thought I'd make it easy for those who are looking for it:

In my house tonight, the children will be waiting for St. Nicholas with eager joy. Not all Christian parents would be happy with this situation.

Some have decided that whether you call him Santa Claus or St. Nick, the Christmas Eve night caller is not welcome in their homes. The real St. Nicholas, they say, was a holy bishop about whom little is known. This jolly fellow surrounded with legends of secret generosity or stories of elves and reindeer is really just a fib. And Christians don't lie to their children.

Are we lying to our children, with our ancient stories and cherished poems of a kindly saint who loves all children and hears their whispered wishes and dreams? Not at all – we are telling them the truth. It's just that some truths can't be found in scholarly lectures or discovered in dry books of facts. When we teach our wide-eyed little ones the legend of St. Nicholas, we are teaching them essential lessons about faith, hope and unconditional love. When we sit by glowing embers to share with them our December stories, we instruct them in such virtues as generosity, patience and the sort of kindness that expects no reward.

And they are able to learn these things from us because for a few short weeks every year, we find it possible to enter the world of make-believe. We fill our homes with songs and stories, and turn ordinary rooms into glittering palaces. The everyday world is swept away.

Read the whole essay here.

I'm happy to report that my children suffered no damage from our sharing the mythical aspects of the St. Nicholas story with them, and even appreciated the whole thing when it was time for them to move beyond it.

I'm happy to share another blogger's experience of the same thing, and to point out that we need a bit more pretending around childhood, instead of the stern realism that wants five-year-olds taught the mechanics not only of sexual intercourse but of various perverse sex acts as well.

I'm happy to insist that we don't have to start the reading of every fairy tale or the playing of every princess DVD by sitting with our children and saying, "Now, you understand that this isn't true, right? That it's just a story? That there have never been dragons to be killed or enchanted princesses to be awakened with a kiss? I wouldn't want you going around and believing in any of this," even if they do, in fact, believe in a magical land full of princes in disguise and noble deeds and heroic chivalry until they're old enough to realize that the world of childhood enchantment wasn't strictly true--but that it ought to be.

And I'm happy to wish, as his feast day draws nearer, that all of my readers will welcome St. Nicholas, whether he visits their home and children or not--and that those who choose not to continue this charming tradition will not stigmatize the rest of us as evil liars bent on fraud and diabolical deceit--because we all know that the hallmark of the evil one is stepping back and letting a holy saint in Heaven take the lion's share of the credit for parental generosity and gifts of love once a year, right?

Um, not.

What do Catholic men want to talk about?

2011-12-01T22:35:00.005-06:00

Patrick Archbold says that girl Catholic bloggers get all the fun:

Girls get all the good topics. By good, I mean the kind that lead to lady cat fights in the comboxes, ya know, good. Guys just don’t have this kind of well from which to draw from. I think some examples are in order.

Breast feeding. Girls can go there, guys can’t even drive by the neighborhood. I am even uncomfortable writing the word. But female Catholic bloggers always have the breast feeding font from which to draw material. I realize in retrospect that the wording in the previous sentence was probably ill-conceived, but you get the point. Whether you are pro, con, indifferent, a BF nazi, an anti-BF nazi, or any combination thereof depending on your hormone balance, you have a ready made BF post just ready to pump out. Ok, ill-conceived again, but still. Guys just do not have anything comparable guaranteed to fire up the crowds.

Modesty. This is a great topic that is almost completely off limits for Catholic dudes. Let’s face it, if I write a 1000 word post on the proper placing of hemlines so as to look feminine yet not unduly tempt anyone, several things can happen and all of them are bad. Many involve restraining orders. But girls can simply write “I think that shorts on women are ....” and voila, instant and vicious combox mud-wrestling by women in Laura Ingalls dresses. You just can’t buy that kind of clean fun. But no. Guys can’t write about modesty because we don’t get it and if we do get it, it just proves we are insensitive or pervs, or worse, an insensitive perv or something…

Read the rest here.

I posted a reply to Pat on the website, but the Register's comment form is being a bit twitchy and wants to moderate what I wrote (probably because it's a bit lengthy, and not because of my history of being critical over there). While I'm waiting for my comment to show up, I thought I'd just share what I wrote over here--because that's another way to get a post done when it's nearly 11 pm CST and one hasn't blogged yet:

Oh, come now, Patrick. I'll grant you that as a non-girly yet female blogger I get to have the catfight topics *and* the geopolitical ones. But I've never seen a fight break out over modesty or nursing that comes even close to the fights that break out regarding these topics:

-whether or not torture is ever permitted (and whether waterboarding counts);
-whether the death penalty ought to be banned, even if the Pope says so;
-whether the GOP is still the great Catholic hope against abortion even if Romney the Perennially Uninspiring is the nominee

And in addition, here's some "manly Catholic guy" topics that will probably get some conversations going:

-whether signing your children up for organized sports is a required act of Catholic manliness or a form of insanity;
-whether or not Real Men smoke, and if so, what (so far, the voting among men seems to this way: pipes and/or cigars, Truly Catholic and Manly; cigarettes or illegal substances, just stupid)
-whether you should let your sons be altar servers if girls get to do it;
-guns in the house: yes or no?
-the exact level of housework/chores a man can do before he risks losing his masculinity;
-whether or not Real Catholic Men use NFP

Those are just for starters, of course; next time you get stuck at 11:30 and are falling back on the boring yet geopolitical, just drop me an email, and I'll be happy to help! Especially since the modesty/nursing/endearing children stuff is DONE TO DEATH, and I'd love to see a good male-combox wrestling match over any of the male-friendly topics listed above or probably about a dozen others. :)

I have no idea whether or not Pat will ever take me up on my offer--and I do have a few more topics to suggest. But right now, I'd like to hear from my male readers, especially my Catholic ones: what topics pertaining specifically to lay male Catholics and their struggles to live the faith in today's world would you like to see bloggers address? Are there any that you think have been addressed either a) never or b) so rarely that it seems like never?

Because I think the reason female Catholic bloggers bring up nursing and modesty and cute things our kids do and educational struggles and those sorts of topics are not just to generate traffic and links, but because women do seem to want to talk about these things. Since I'm not a mommy blogger, I don't tend to blog about these topics all that often (and I've learned to stay out of actual, bona fide catfights). But is it true that men don't have similar topics they'd like to discuss, or is it simply the case that men's topics get short shrift in the Catholic blogosphere? What, exactly, do Catholic men want to talk about? I'd be happy to help host some of those conversations, too, even if I am a girl and all.

Is there still a place for Catholic print magazines?

2011-11-30T17:46:00.006-06:00

Over at the National Catholic Register, Tim Drake points out that the Catholic publishing world continues to grow smaller:

Come 2012, Catholic readers will have fewer print publications to choose from. Economic changes that have rocked the publishing world in general continue to whittle away at the Catholic publishing universe, resulting in additional shrinkage and consolidation.

As of January 2012, Ignatius Press will no longer be publishing Catholic World Report or Homiletic & Pastoral Review in print. Similar to the changes made to Crisis magazine, both publications will continue to be available online only.

Today, publisher Bayard Inc. announced that it will cease publishing Faith and Family magazine, which it acquired from the Legionaries of Christ earlier this year. Faith and Family was acquired by Bayard not long after EWTN acquired the National Catholic Register from the Legionaries of Christ. Instead of continuing to publish Faith and Family, Bayard is re-booting Catholic Digest, with editor Danielle Bean, as more of a faith and family periodical.

In other Catholic publishing news, Sophia Institute Press acquired the Catholic website Catholic Exchange in November. In 2008, Sophia became the publishing arm of Merrimack, NH-based Thomas More College, and later became the publishing arm of Atlanta’s Holy Spirit College.

It should be noted, of course, that Catholic magazines aren't disappearing entirely. Catholic World Report and Homiletic and Pastoral Review, two excellent publications that are content driven, timely, and focused on important world and theological matters will continue in an online format, as Tim Drake points out.

Is there still a place in the world for Catholic print magazines? Magazine publishers, like newspaper publishers, are starting to ask themselves the hard questions. Many of us saw and smiled at this video of a baby who thinks that a magazine is simply a broken iPad whose buttons and links are irrevocably broken:

but did we stop to think about the larger issue?

When I'm looking at a magazine--yes, even a Catholic one like Faith and Family (or perhaps especially a Catholic one) I'm aware of, and annoyed by, the commercialism. Not only are there ads frequently dispersed throughout the magazine, but there are also so-called "articles" which are simply lists of products to buy, complete with helpful price and store information in case your home is sorely lacking in these items. It's bad enough to encounter this in a secular magazine (which I usually only see in a doctor's or dentist's office), but it's somehow even more jarring to see these things in Catholic publications--sometimes juxtaposed, with no conscious irony, opposite reflections about poverty of spirit or calls to simplify our lives in accordance with the Gospel.

And yet like anyone who has ever been paid to write anything, I know that advertising is the lifeblood of the publishing business. The fact that websites can offer their content for free comes from the reality that it is the advertisers, not, by and large, the subscribers who pay for content. The old paid-subscription/paid-issue model which used to work both for magazines and newspapers is dying; having introduced consumers to the idea of content that is free (bordered by advertising space that is valuable), the publishing world finds it increasingly hard to sell the notion that you ought to be paying for ad-riddled content.

There's the crux of the matter, too. When I click on a popular blog or webzine site, I know that there will be ads. I also know that the content comes to me for free because there are ads, and so instead of being annoyed by the ads (provided they're not the invasive sort) or frustrated by some sort of hidden "shop-shop-shop!" context, I'm mildly grateful that the advertisers are making it possible for me, and others, to read an assortment of interesting writers on a variety of topics. I sometimes even click a link or two.

All of this makes it harder and harder for magazines to compete--which means they have to sell more and more ad space, and dedicate more and more of their glossy real estate to the process of selling you things. This has been a difficult enough task for secular publications, but how long can a Catholic magazine endure when it preaches "Blessed are the poor in spirit!" on, say, page 24, and then features a lovely selection of beatitude-inscribed kitchen towels on page 25 (buy now! All of your truly Catholic friends have these! Only $39.99!)?

There may still be a place in the world for Catholic print magazines. All print publications are having to adjust their models, their expectations, and their revenue projections, and Catholic publications are no exception. Still, it's hard for me to imagine how Catholic magazines will endure when the children who think magazines are just broken iPads grow up and become adult consumers.

No blog post today...

2011-11-29T11:25:00.000-06:00

...my fingers are tired. :)

(And I'd like to congratulate my friend Ed, who beat me to the winner's circle this year!)

2011's Top 10 Feminine Gifts; or, an attempt at humor

2011-11-28T15:13:00.003-06:00

When Taylor Marshall posted his "Top 10 Manly Gifts..." list last year, I went on a bit of a redheaded rant about it all.

This year, Taylor has posted...the same list. The same exact items. Only two (or three, depending on how you look at it) of which are less than $50.00. (Yes, the pipe by itself is $39.99, but Taylor specifically suggests that you buy the carcinogens to go with it, and I'm assuming that will add a bit to the price; there are also two of the four knives technically below $50, but one of them is only less than $50 if you don't buy it new, apparently.) The rest range in price from $50 to $200--but at least they aren't "lame" like ties or polo shirts.

I think I covered my objections to this sort of thing pretty well last year; I also wrote the following:

Now, I have a feeling that if I were to write a blog post titled "Top Ten Truly Feminine Gifts for your Wife or Mother" and include a $130 handbag, a $140 bottle of perfume, or a $200 bracelet, and then list four more gifts in the seventy dollar and up price range while insinuating that the "usual" gifts of music cds, scarves or gloves or slippers, or perhaps a festive Tupperware (tm) set were "lame" or "generic"--well, I think that gentlemen readers would, quite rightly, cry foul. It is not, after all, very difficult to buy one's spouse a truly "manly" or "womanly" gift if one's gift budget permits the purchasing of a couple of rather expensive items. It is much more difficult to accomplish the same thing on one income and after having purchased gifts for one's children and relatives and co-workers; it is much more difficult to come up with satisfactory presents for one's husband--or one's wife--when money is tight and the budget for indulgences is severely limited.

Rather than write another rant about Taylor's list this year, I think it would be more fun to take my own suggestion from last year, and write my own list. Since, however, my attempts at humor are sometimes not all that easy to spot (my fault, alas), I thought I would try to avoid misunderstanding by first saying this:

The part of this post written in red, below, is meant to be humorous. I do not think there is, or ought to be, a top 10 list of Feminine Gifts for your wives, daughters, mothers, grandmothers (or other women who embrace True Femininity while rejecting the masculinizing influences of the modern world). In fact, I think that women, like men, are quite different in their likes and tastes, and that there's no one right perfect pre-1960s way of being truly feminine that somehow defines femininity in a way that no other female way of living does. But for the sake of humor, we'll pretend that I do think exactly that for a moment, so that I can create a fitting counterpart for Taylor's list.

2011's Top 10 Feminine Gifts for your Wife, Daughter, Mother or Grandmother***

As every feminine Catholic woman knows, but (alas!) many manly Catholic men do not, the kinds of gifts you give the lady in your life are mostly just okay--if that. Many men seem to think that shopping, being a frivolous, trivial, female sort of activity (heaven only knows how much time the little woman wastes each week in the grocery store!), is not expected of men, and thus they feel put upon as Christmas draws near--must they really extinguish that manly pipe sometime before evening on December 24th and drag their manly-boot-clad feet into some glittering department store long enough to purchase whatever perfume is pre-wrapped at the fragrance counter?

Sadly, most women won't actually tell you what they want for Christmas, either out of that mind-game stuff girls like (e.g., if he really loves me he should pay enough attention to me to know what I like!) or because she is too distracted by the silly non-essentials of the season to have time to make a list. But when Christmas is over and she's back for her regular visits to the beauty salon, let her have something more to say to the question, "So what did he give you for Christmas?" than a sigh, a pout of those pretty lips, and the admission that you once again went for pre-wrapped perfume, or a pair of gloves, or an electronic gizmo that you actually wanted for yourself.

But how can you manly men know what the fragile little creatures around you actually want for Christmas? Well, here's a list that ought to be foolproof, and if it's not, chances are your woman is a closet feminist, or something:

10) A companion to the men's gift suggestion to the old-school shaving brushes (and a little cheaper, too, gentlemen!), may I suggest an old-school beauty brush set like this $95 Giorgio Armani one from Neiman Marcus? Now, maybe your wife or mother will insist she doesn't need such a thing--the cheap, plastic throwaway brushes that come with the inexpensive makeup she buys with the family budget in mind do just fine--but don't believe her. What truly feminine woman wouldn't want to create, as the ad copy on these brushes says, that perfectly airbrushed look? And think how dainty and feminine and spoiled she'll feel as she applies her makeup with these little trinkets, designed, with their shiny silver case, to appeal to her girly side.

9) Alas, there just isn't a counterpart to the men's suggestion of a pipe and tobacco; truly feminine women shunned even the jeweled cigarette holders. Still, we women have our addictions, and chocolate is one of them. There are many fine gourmet chocolate shops available online as well as what you may have in the local area--perhaps you already know what her favorites are? If not, this box of sixteen handmade gourmet chocolate mice might make her scream, but in a good way--none of that jumping on a chair business to go with it. At $48, it probably will cost you what your pipe and tobacco cost her (except for the worry that you'll die of cancer, but we're not counting those costs today).

8) Nothing says "I'm a truly feminine woman" like a pair of high heels, right? And if she can buy you boots--number 8 on Taylor Marshall's list--then surely you can figure out how to buy her high heels (I'm thinking this is one time that a gift certificate might work). Although the top brands will be much more expensive than your manly boots, she should still be able to find a nice pair of heels for between $95 and $135 (the price of the boots). To make the gift extra special, go shopping with her so she can ask your opinion as to whether the heels she's selecting give her that desired feminine effect.

7) Why not buy a Kindle for her, too? For both men and women, though, I'd spring for the slightly more expensive model that doesn't come with ads, as the $79 version does. There's nothing particularly manly or feminine about having to sit through commercials before you read a book. :)

6) The chances are good that the women in your life already have nice Bibles (she's probably still treasuring the one someone gave the two of you as a wedding gift, even if it's an inferior translation; women are so foolishly sentimental that way). To fit with her busy lifestyle as wife and mother, why not buy her a copy of Shorter Christian Prayer (about $12 at Amazon)? Customer reviews even say it fits well in a purse. :)

5) I love that Taylor suggests one homemade gift, even if Mom has to go searching hardware stores in the middle of the Christmas season to be able to make the truly manly rosary. Mom doesn't need a rosary, though; she has dozens. What she needs from her manly man is nearly always going to be: shelving. Whether she wants you to build shelves, buy shelves and put them together, or mount a single shelf somewhere in the house, if you want your wife to swoon this Christmas, tell her you'd like to give her a homemade gift: and then ask her what kind of shelving she most desperately needs. (Of course, this only works for the truly helpless feminine type (like me) and not for women who can, and do, design and install their own shelving.)

4) Alas, women don't need guns. Unfortunately for you men, the phrase "feminine protection" doesn't mean a pink-handled Glock. But Taylor says that every man should own at least one gun, and I say that every woman should own at least one LBD, or "little black dress." This, again, may be a gift certificate situation, as the dress will likely need to be selected personally by the woman who's going to wear it; the basic black dress for a matronly grandmother will be very different from the one needed by the girl who is being really attractive in a modest, vintage sort of way to all the gun-toting prospective manly Catholic future husbands out there. As you can see from the link, the price of such a dress is comparable to the price of a firearm.

3) While you're brewing your own beer, your wife, mother or daughter could be making her own candles! She likes candles, right? What could be more retro and feminine than a house full of homemade romantic candlelight, especially after you've installed the shelves that make it possible for her to keep the candles out of the toddler's reach? This kit seems like a good deal at $64, considering all the candles you can make before you have to buy more supplies.

2) Chances are your wife doesn't need a $200 luxury kitchen appliance to go with your meat smoker (unless she's making do with an inferior mixer and could use this one). But if her kitchen is already good to go, put that money where she'll really appreciate it: into a really nice bag, the sort she wouldn't buy for herself. Perhaps she likes designer names or styles (the more modestly-priced ones, that is); perhaps she'd be more interested in this leather organizer ($199) or this English leather book tote ($159).

1) Taylor's last category is knives, ranging in price from about $30 to about $75. Now, some women like knives, too, but we're focusing on Top Feminine Gifts here, remember? And what could be more feminine than pearls? You could get anything from delicate earrings (if her ears are pierced) to an eye-popping 100 inch strand to a gold-clasped bracelet--all you have to do is determine what kind of jewelry she wears most often or what she most wishes to have to complete that truly feminine look she so desires.

So there you go. You now have no excuse to buy your wife a pre-wrapped perfume gift, a pair of gloves, etc. Well, except that you might not be able to afford these little feminine luxuries, or your wife might be a totally different kind of person who doesn't want any of this stuff and doesn't see any of it as bestowing on her some sort of retro-feminine "cred" among people who go for that sort of thing...

***This part of the post is humor. I have not been compensated in any way to link to these items, I don't own them, and I don't mean to imply any product endorsement. E.M.

Okay. The humor part is over.

Perhaps the best advice I can give to men and women at Christmas is: don't buy "manly" or "feminine" gifts, and don't take advice from people who make lists. Instead, think for a minute about your wife, your mother, your grandmother; your husband, your father, your grandfather, and so on. Think of them as individual human beings, with individual tastes, likes, dislikes. Within your budget, think of a way to give them something that shows that you care about them as human beings, if that is possible to do; and if it's not, if they really don't need things, perhaps the gift of time or some service is a better gift after all.

New Translation Open Thread!!!

2011-11-26T17:55:00.004-06:00

Tomorrow morning, God willing, I will get to experience the new translation of the Roman Missal in English at Mass, at 8:30 a.m. I will be sleepy enough to have to think about "And with your spirit," I'm sure!

I've been watching my countdown widget on the sidebar all week. :) And cheering. :) ;)

But for some of you, even here in America, the new translation has already begun! I speak, of course, of those of you who attended a Vigil Mass for the First Sunday of Advent.

And as Sundays are busy for us, what with Mass and choir practice and all, I may not get back to the blog in time to post the appropriate words of thankfulness and joy--but I wanted to give my readers a place to do so if they wish.

So: what did you see? What did you hear? How did the congregation seem to take it? Any thoughts?

Vigil Mass attendees, go right ahead and start! The rest of us can add our comments tomorrow through the day, and I'll leave this up on top for a good part of the day Monday as well, so that those who don't read blogs on the weekend can chime in.

[And for those of my readers, my friends and my family members who attend the Extraordinary Form Mass: I know, I know, I get it. Nothing changed for you. We're happy for you! But today we're really happy for ourselves, as well, so--rejoice with us, that the coin of good translation turned out to be hiding in a crevice in the floor instead of gone for good.]

:)

UPDATE: God sure has a sense of humor. After years of waiting for this change, I woke up not feeling well and we ended up at the 10:00 Mass at our sister parish where the music is always...interesting...

But despite that, I couldn't stop smiling at the beauty of the prayers Father was saying, especially the Eucharistic Prayer. There were a few minor slip-ups on the part of the congregation, but everyone seemed willing to learn--the pew cards were definitely in use!

For the congregation, I honestly think that nobody really minded "consubstantial" or "I believe" or "visible and invisible," etc. If John and Mary Catholic are having any trouble at all, it's remembering not to blurt out "and also with you," reflexively. Of course, as the jokes go, Catholics will say "and also with you" in reply to "May the force be with you," or to a priest muttering "There's something wrong with this microphone," and in similar situations, so it may take a while for us to retrain ourselves.

Thanksgiving Blog Break

2011-11-22T13:42:00.003-06:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all of my readers a most happy Thanksgiving! I have blogged through Thanksgiving week before, but let's face it: hardly anyone is sitting around reading blogs right now, and that's a good thing.

As always when I say I'm taking a break, there's no guarantee that a post or so won't pop up. :) But my intention is to resume blogging on the Monday after Thanksgiving, when all you Cyber Monday shoppers will be out there anyway.

I was reading a piece on Thanksgiving horror stories the other day; the piece itself is kind of dull, but some of the stories in the comments were hilarious (of course, this being Yahoo, some of them were also obscene and some were--better left unmentioned). Here are two of my favorites, bad grammar, spelling and all, from the comment section:

Have you ever set something on top of the car, then drive off...then when you get where your going and reach for it ...you know you messed up...left it on top of car and drove off..well....I've lost a lot of phones that way in the past...but only one fully cooked turkey..

My friends deep fried a turkey. They removed the turkey and brought it inside to check if it was cooked through. It was! So they carved it and started eating dinner. The fryer never got turned off. The front porch went up in flames and because they were hunters, guns and ammunition started to blow up! Fortunately, everyone got our unharmed...except the house itself and all their belongings. NOT a good way to enjoy the holiday...nevermind having to make the call to the landlord!

If you want to share a Thanksgiving horror story of your own, the comment box is open and available!

Liveblogging from the Council of Jerusalem

2011-11-21T17:34:00.004-06:00

I know that during Thanksgiving Week some people don't have time to read blogs. Some of them are too busy helping major retailers try to turn Thanksgiving Day into yet another "Sale-A-Bration" as we've already done with Memorial Day, Labor Day, Independence Day, and half a dozen other American holidays which were once important occasions for Americans to gather their families and friends and pause for a moment of thanks and reflection and are now a chance to sell cars, mattresses, and consumer electronics. For which I am not thankful. But I digress; most of my readers are probably busy in normal ways, involving planning the Thanksgiving Menu or the Thanksgiving Road Trip to see relatives or picking out the Thanksgiving Fight Topic to engage in with said relatives--is there anything like the holidays?

But even if you're busy, take a moment to read this (hat tip: Deacon Kandra):

Again, to be expected. What does trouble me, however, are those serious, orthodox Catholics who simply cannot take yes for an answer. Nobody and nothing is Catholic enough, good enough or perhaps bitter and dark enough to satisfy them. You know the types. The love is really deep; so deep you could dig for days and never find it. Every politician should be excommunicated, anyone not completely against abortion is “pro-death” and I positively despise the people in the pews next to me.

They prefer the bunker to the banquet, the ghetto to the get-together. They are defined by how much pain they claim to have, believe that the remnant of the remnant is all that can save us, and the remnant of the remnant is them — or maybe on a good day the handful of people who are their equally strident Facebook friends. Odd as it may seen, they blog and use the Internet a lot, largely because they don’t trust the mainstream media, which for them means everyone in journalism apart from their favourite right-winger, who usually loses them when he inevitably doesn’t follow the line on something or other.

No archbishop, however devout and courageous, is ever quite conservative enough for them and always part of a cabal or a conspiracy, and no Catholic activist or author ever quite sufficiently pure. They claim to believe in Church authority, but constantly bash Catholic leaders; they claim to love Jesus, but they seldom turn the other cheek or love their friends, let alone their enemies; they see glasses, and chalices, half empty when they’re half full; and, extremely worrying this, they receive the body of Christ with numerous complaints and vendettas against their fellow worshippers.

Now, every time something like this gets posted, comments tend to take a "yes, but..." tone: yes, but orthodox believers really have suffered; yes, but this or that bishop really is a heretic, yes, but the very mention of Latin sends ordinary-seeming parishioners into a spittle-and-foam-flecked frenzy of anger; yes, but unveiled women and pantsuited nuns really are signs of the Apocalypse, and so on. (Side note: why does everybody always blame the nuns? One generation of Catholics blamed ruler-wielding habit wearers for ruining their faith, and then the next generation griped about the pantsuit brigade. Maybe the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our nuns but in ourselves...)

The problem with the "yes, but" attitude is that most people who say that sort of thing are actually quite reasonable traditional-leaning Catholics. They are not the people shouting "Get a spine!" to Bishop Olmstead--Bishop Olmstead!! They are not the people who think that Michael Voris is too liberal. They are not the people who opine that those Catholics who attend the Novus Ordo can be saved, but mainly because of their ignorance (though, alas, I didn't see a pixel fight break out over whether that ignorance is really invincible, given the availability of kindly trads who can set us Ordinary Form types straight about the problems). And they are not the people--I can't provide links this second, but these discussions exist--who say that women are risking Hell for wearing slacks or not 'veiling,' or who say that every child commits a mortal sin if he/she disobeys his/her parents even in small matters provided the child is at least seven years old, or who say that natural family planning is as evil as contraception, or who condone torture as being all but commanded by God, and so on.

In fact, if one of the various radtrad blogs or forums had existed in the first century, I think the posts might have gone something like this:

I'm liveblogging from the so-called Council of Jerusalem. You all already know how unhappy I am with the name; isn't a "council" something the pagans do? Anyway, so far Peter the Fisherman is all over the place, like he expects to run the whole show. Paul's not here, yet, though. We'll see what happens when he gets here.

Update: Paul's here! Woo! Now we can get this party started.

Update 2: I'm already getting nervous. The anti-Moses sentiment is much, much stronger than I would have thought from these guys. They can't all be pushovers, right? Right? Sigh.

Update 3: Brace yourselves, people: we've got some earthshaking news. I mean it--you're not going to believe this one: the Gentile converts are not allowed to...wait for it...eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols. Or blood. Or meat that's been strangled.

Really? Really??

One would have thought that even Gentiles drawn to Our Lord and Savior could have figured out that bit on their own. I mean, it's so...so...bloody obvious (pardon the pun). But apparently we've gathered the Twelve (or should I say the Eleven? No, I know, not the time or place to get into the radical innovation of replacing the guy God kicked out--like this one will turn out any better, because mere mortals are better judges of character or something--but like I said, not the time) to sit around and discuss the blindingly obvious. Are they even going to get to the big one, the circumcision debate, or will they punt?

Update 4: Another earthshaking announcement: the Gentiles are to refrain from fornication and sexual immorality. Good grief, people, we needed a whole stinkin' council for this?

Update 5: I have good news and bad news.

The good news is, the Twelve (Eleven!) finally stopped playing around and got to the burning question: whether or not the Gentile males have the obligation to follow the beautiful and immemorial sign of the covenant of God Himself and be circumcised, or whether they can essentially keep their pagan bodies while claiming to have faithful hearts.

The bad news is--they don't have to be circumcised.

I am stunned--STUNNED--by this.

Look, if they're not going to conform to all of God's Law, whole and entire, which Our Lord Himself said he wasn't going to abolish, why bother conforming to any of it? What's next--fertility rites in the places of worship (well, except for the no immorality rule, which would sort of turn most fertility rites into something pretty deadly dull. And no, I don't speak from experience)?

So much for expecting the leaders Christ chose for us to be guided by Him in these decisions. I think we can all see pretty clearly now that that was a fool's dream. Some of us already thought it was, frankly--because Paul really ought to be in charge; he's one of US. Or so we thought.

But Paul was only here as a sort of observer, apparently. I'm pretty sure he didn't get to vote, or whatever they did to decide this. The thing that's really disappointing me about Paul is that he's going along with it. Something about obedience and the Holy Spirit, or something. Well, all I can say is that there may have been a Spirit at this council, but it wasn't holy. They should have done an exorcism before they got started.

So the 'nuclear option' some of us have discussed--well, I'll be clear, I've been against it. But now it's looking more and more like something we might have to consider. Paul's out as our leader, though. I could try one of the Jameses, maybe or his brother John--but they're not as much 'sons of thunder' as they used to be. All this love and forgiveness crap, instead of calling down fire and brimstone on the unfaithful (heck yah!).

Comments are closed until I get back, which may take a while. I've got a wagon wheel to fix, and I'm out of time until after the Sabbath (which, yes, I still keep, and have kept ever since I converted to Jewish Christianity from my pagan roots--what is it about "immemorial" that's confusing you people?).

A King but not the kingdom

2011-11-18T18:09:00.005-06:00

Rod Dreher's been writing some interesting stuff lately about religion, faith, belief, religious orthodoxy, churches, and the subjective experience of faith to the believer. The latest, and lengthy, installment is here.

I hope to get into the discussion once it gets going (and while I realize how necessary moderated comments are anymore for most public blogs, I have to say the one thing I dislike about Rod's new blog is the whole moderated comments situation; true, comments seem to get approved reasonably quickly, but there's enough of a lag that the more conversational style of Rod's older blogs is sometimes missing). But in the meantime, I wanted to take a look at a section of the post that I honestly found rather stunning (and this excerpt itself is a bit long, I'm afraid):

I bring this up not to argue about Catholicism vs. Orthodoxy, but to illuminate how subjective considerations inevitably affect the choices we make. If you are reading this in a small town in Nevada, the mother of three children and without a spiritual home, and the nearest Orthodox church is 500 miles away, I would question whether or not you should even investigate Eastern Orthodoxy. I say that because I truly and deeply believe that to be redeemed is not to hold the correct ideas, but to submit to the Holy Spirit, and to be changed from within, to become more Christ-like. It’s hard to do that alone, and even harder to help your kids do that alone. What does it avail you to unite with the truest form of Christianity (as I believe Orthodoxy to be) if you will be all alone in the practice of it? You may be called to do this, but I would wonder if your growth in holiness would proceed more within the Baptist church (if a good one was close to you) or within the Orthodox church, which does not exist in a manifest form near you? As I see it, it’s better to know Jesus imperfectly than to not know Him at all. How you unite yourself to a Baptist (or Catholic, or Presbyterian) church when you believe that the Orthodox Church contains the fullness of truth is a difficult problem.

Anyway, this is what I was trying to get at with the “subjectivity” of religious truth — and why I am a lot more open to the view that religion is what people do, not the ideas in their head. Again, I deny that it’s an “either/or” — it’s really a “both/and”. My point is simply that religious claims belong to an order of truth that can only be truly known not by being affirmed in one’s mind, but also must be inwardly appropriated with enough passion to make them change one’s life. This is what Bellah means when he says if you want to know what people believe, look at what they do, not what they say they believe.

There is Scriptural validation for that position. This is also what Thomas Merton was getting at when he said that he thought wrongly that he was truly converted to Catholicism because his intellect was converted. He learned later that until and unless the will is converted, all conversions will be precarious. That’s an important insight, and it speaks directly to the “truth is subjectivity” point.

What’s more, Jesus did not set out a religious system. He gave us a narrative to show us how to behave. He was Truth Incarnate. To unite yourself to Truth required an act of subjective will. You had to love Him. You still do. Rationality, and religious systems, are only true and good if they point to Him, and open the doors to Him. The Church is not an end, but only a means to an end. If you believe in the Orthodox faith, you will agree that the Orthodox way is the way Christ intended to Him, the most efficacious way. If you believe in the Catholic faith, then likewise. And so forth. To believe this is not to deny that people can’t find their way to unity with God through other forms of the Christian faith, and under certain conditions, in other faiths. But it is to recognize, as I think we must, that even forms of the faith that know the way to the Truth imperfectly nevertheless have some connection to it, which is to say, to Him. [Emphasis in original--E.M.]

Why do I find this stunning? Because after discussing orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and in the midst of making a somewhat valid initially if ultimately (I truly believe) misleading point about the role of the subjective in the ability of the believer to grasp and encounter religious truth, Rod makes the amazing statement: "What’s more, Jesus did not set out a religious system. He gave us a narrative to show us how to behave."

Neither Rod's Church, the Orthodox, nor my Catholic Church, teach or believe that Jesus did not set out a religious system--that is, that He did not found a Church. Now, perhaps I'm misunderstanding Rod, or his phrase is unclear; but what does "set out a religious system" mean if it does not mean "found a Church?"

Belief that Christ is God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and (as Rod says) Truth Incarnate means that we believe that He knew exactly what He was doing when He selected the Apostles, told them at the Last Supper to "Do this in remembrance of Me," gave them the great commission to make disciples of all men, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and so on. It also means we believe, for those of us who are Catholic, that Jesus saw fully what the infant Church would make of such things as Apostolic succession and that Gospel phrase, "Thou art Peter, and on this Rock I will build My Church." It's not really possible for those of us who belong to the Catholic Church to see these words as merely parts of a narrative about how we are to behave without reducing them to such minimal importance that Christ might as well not have said them at all.

I realize that Protestants don't see things this way. But (if my Protestant readers will be patient with me for a moment) their view, generally, of what the Church is was formed in an essentially negative way. With the Catholic Church fully present in their lives, the early Protestants decided that their notion of Christ's church was, in a very true sense, whatever the Catholic Church was not. Protestant ecclesiology was, I think, in an important way, meant as a negation of Catholic ecclesiology in its earliest formation. So if the Catholic Church said that Christ meant to found a visible Church to which Christians were meant to unite themselves not merely spiritually but sacramentally and actually (as in, accepting Church discipline about such various things as fasting and Sunday Mass attendance), the Protestants in negating those concepts eventually came to see the Christian church as more an invisible and spiritual community of those who had accepted Jesus Christ and His Word.

I know I'm being extraordinarily general here; I don't mean for this post to get into the many various differences in the way different Protestant denominations have developed a theology of the church, but only to point out that Rod's words I cited above, while not particularly startling if voiced by a Protestant, are absolutely shocking when spoken by someone who was Catholic for a decade and is now Orthodox--again, unless I'm completely misunderstanding what he means.

Why? Well, to look at how the Catholic Church sees this, take a look at this portion of Archbishop Dolan's address to the USCCB from just four days ago:

You and I believe with all our heart and soul that Christ and His Church are one.
That truth has been passed on to us from our predecessors, the apostles, especially St. Paul, who learned that equation on the Road to Damascus, who teaches so tenderly that the Church is the bride of Christ, that the Church is the body of Christ, that Christ and His Church are one.

That truth has been defended by bishops before us, sometimes and yet even today, at the cost of “dungeon, fire, and sword.”
That truth — that He, Christ, and she, His Church, are one — moistens our eyes and puts a lump in our throat as we whisper with De Lubac, “For what would I ever know of Him, without her?”

The whole thing is worth reading, but I want to point to one more section:

Perhaps, brethren, our most pressing pastoral challenge today is to reclaim that truth, to restore the luster, the credibility, the beauty of the Church “ever ancient, ever new,” renewing her as the face of Jesus, just as He is the face of God. Maybe our most urgent pastoral priority is to lead our people to see, meet, hear and embrace anew Jesus in and through His Church.

Because, as the chilling statistics we cannot ignore tell us, fewer and fewer of our beloved people -- to say nothing about those outside the household of the faith -- are convinced that Jesus and His Church are one. As Father Ronald Rolheiser wonders, we may be living in a post-ecclesial era, as people seem to prefer
a King but not the kingdom,
a shepherd with no flock,
to believe without belonging,
a spiritual family with God as my father, as long as I’m
the only child,
“spirituality” without religion
faith without the faithful
Christ without His Church.
So they drift from her, get mad at the Church, grow lax, join another, or just give it all up.

If this does not cause us pastors to shudder, I do not know what will.

Jesus and His Church are one. It does matter, then; it matters terribly what Church one belongs to. That doesn't mean that I don't fully respect my Protestant Christian brothers and sisters wherever they are on the journey of faith; it doesn't mean dragging out erroneous ideas of what extra ecclesiam nullam salus meant; it doesn't mean that it's my job as a lay person to hurl condemnations and anathemas at every non-Catholic Christian. But it does mean that, were I the fictional woman in Nevada Rod is talking about in the excerpt above, I would be risking my eternal soul to be convinced that the Catholic Church was the Church founded by Christ for the salvation of men and yet choose to remain outside of her (even if the nearest Catholic parish really were hundreds of miles away). To join the Baptist church instead, even if only for the Bible study and spiritual fellowship, would smack of religious indifferentism, and would likely lead one away from the Catholic Church in the long run.

It matters, because Christ and His Church are one. If you seek to follow the King but demand to remain outside His kingdom, in what sense do you really seek to know Him--let alone to love Him and serve Him?

Thanksgiving and the Modified Stationary Panic

2011-11-17T20:31:00.003-06:00

The blog post I was planning for tonight will have to wait. I keep getting sidetracked.

And it doesn't help that I finally realized that Thanksgiving is actually next week. As in, one week from today.

If this were a Typical Professional Catholic Mommy Blog (tm) that terrifying statement would be followed by a soothing virtual chuckle about how busy we all get this time of year, and then either a profound yet down-to-earth reminder of the fact that Advent's impending arrival is way more important theologically than Thanksgiving (important though that is! Thanks! Prayers! Eucharistic Themes! Family! Food! Love! Children! Tradition! Food! Joy! Peace! Laughter! Carbs--and did we mention the Food?!) or a poignant yet down-to-earth reflection on how coveting some Williams Sonoma (tm) turkey platter while making do once again with our slightly chipped discount store version is really a parallel to how God makes do with our faults, failings, and imperfections while holding in His mind the image of our future perfect selves (not in a grammatical sense) when, transformed by grace, we will be guests at the Eternal Heavenly Banquet, and nobody will ask us to carve the turkey or make us sit at the kids' table, though even the kids' table will be awesome in Heaven. 'Cause, you know, it's Heaven--and is it too early to sample the Thanksgiving wine?

Alas, this is not a Typical Professional Catholic Mommy Blog (tm). So instead of the sort of thing I described above, you will get my pre-Thanksgiving version of the Modified Stationary Panic (with apologies, once again, to Patrick F. McManus). As I wrote in the blog post referenced above:

I've actually been working on perfecting what humor writer Patrick F. McManus called, in one of his side-splitting books, the "Modified Stationary Panic." The Modified Stationary Panic is supposed to be for people lost in the woods; they modify their initial desire to panic by running wildly about and getting even more lost by, instead, doing all the shrieking, wild gesticulating, hyperventilating, and other panic-induced activities while running in place. All the panic, none of the coming to one's senses in another part of the state park--or even in another state, depending on your speed, stride, and level of panic.

The pre-Thanksgiving version of the Modified Stationary Panic, or MSP, involves avoiding running off to Canada (where the silly people--no offense to my Canadian readers--have Thanksgiving even earlier, on the second Monday in October) when one realizes that one hasn't even begun to plan out one's Thanksgiving menu yet, and instead doing all the panicking and flailing while seated in front of one's computer monitor. The level of panic may be ascertained by looking at what's actually showing on the computer monitor:

Panic Level Low: Mom is reading opinion blogs, with an occasional peek at the Betty Crocker website;
Panic Level Guarded: Mom is reading cooking blogs, with an occasional peek at the Food Network website;
Panic Level Elevated: Mom is not reading any blogs, and is pretending that the Science of Cooking website counts as science class for the eighth grader;
Panic Level High: Mom is reading all the sites already mentioned plus Epicurious, clicking back and forth so fast that she sounds like some sort of weak yet deranged woodpecker;
Panic Level Severe: Mom is slumped in her chair, staring blankly at the Martha Stewart Website's Thanksgiving pages and wondering if anybody actually ever does any of this stuff...

How does one deal with the pre-Thanksgiving Modified Stationary Panic? Don't ask me; I'm somewhere between "Guarded" and "Elevated" right now, with occasional surges when I think about the fact that I have yet to nail down side dishes and should make my pre-Thanksgiving grocery list by tomorrow at the latest. And here's the really funny part: we're not having company this year. Yes, all the panic and stress I'm already feeling is merely the level produced by the Quiet Thanksgiving at Home with the Immediate Family (my husband has some work obligations, so we're keeping it simple. At least in theory).

Which is why this blog post of Rod Dreher's nearly made me break out in hives; I can't even pretend that I could entertain twelve interesting people, six of them technically zombies, for a faultless and elegant dinner party in which good food, perfectly selected wines, and scintillating conversation was the order of the day; the fictional scenario was enough to make me gasp in horror (and not at the idea of entertaining dead people, either; at least they wouldn't be overly critical about the dull food and the total lack of anything approaching decor). I tried for a bit to push away the feelings of the incompetent hostess and pretend that I was just going to get to meet these hypothetical people, but it didn't work; all I could think about was filling my small house with brilliant or interesting or fascinating people, all of whom would get absolutely nothing out of the experience, not even a good meal.

At least I'm not actually having a huge dinner party for important and fascinating types. And when it comes to Quiet Family Thanksgivings, I'm the worst critic in the room--my husband and children are very loving and accepting. But the sort of Modified Stationary Panic that would be induced by Rod's fictional scenario really would have me running away to Canada.

It's pretty pathetic

2011-11-16T17:46:00.004-06:00

Some good news on the local pro-life front:

Abortion practitioner Neal Adam Poch has quit doing abortions at a Fort Worth, Texas Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and local pro-life advocates say a new pro-life law the state legislature approved is the reason why.

Jeff Williams, the coordinator for 40 Days for Life in the large northern Texas city says Poch quit his post as a Planned Parenthood abortion practitioner on Saturday. He credits the new law requiring abortion practitioners to give women considering an abortion the opportunity to see the ultrasound they perform beforehand with prompting Poch to stop doing abortions.
“The abortionist that has been performing abortions at Planned Parenthood is 75 years old and he lives in Tyler, Texas,” Williams said. “For about 13 years he has driven from Tyler to Fort Worth weekly to perform abortions. With the new requirements of the law, his work load has nearly doubled in having to perform the ultrasounds on Wednesdays and Thursday morning early enough in the day to allow for 24 hours before they kill the babies on abortion days. With the significant increase in workload, the abortionist was unwilling to put forth the additional effort to continue killing babies in Fort Worth.”
“Dr. Neal Adam Poch has performed his last abortion,” he said. “And although Planned Parenthood will likely replace him, it is most likely that there will be no abortions at Planned Parenthood in Fort Worth this week. And that is an answer to many of our prayers.” [...]
Williams says Poch didn’t stop doing abortions because he had a change of heart on abortion, but said, “He quit because of the inconvenience pressed upon him by a change in the law.”

For those who don't know this area, Fort Worth and Tyler are about 130 miles apart--a two hour drive and then some, on most days, given traffic conditions. For a 75-year-old doctor to drive this distance weekly just to kill babies at the local abortion mill is rather disgusting, if you ask me, and so I'm glad that the new law inconveniences him enough to make him quit.

I'd be happier if this man were to realize the horror of what he's been doing, of course. But if there's a lapse in services for a while at this local abortion mill, meaning that babies won't die there until Planned Parenthood can find a replacement who doesn't mind showing women their tiny unborn children's heartbeats before he rips those children to pieces and gets rid of their bodies as "medical waste" at their request, then the Texas law is doing exactly what it should be doing, in my opinion.

And if abortionists in Texas get so tired of having women change their minds after seeing that amazing little beating human heart on the ultrasound screen that they all end up quitting, so much the better. For all the rhetoric about "choice" which tries to make it seem as though having an abortion has no more moral aspect than choosing an ice cream flavor or a pair of shoes, it's pretty pathetic that a clinic in a decent-sized Texas city was counting on an elderly man to drive two hours in order to meet the demands of the "right to choose to have my unborn child killed and disposed of" crowd.

Shadowy turkeys

2011-11-15T19:16:00.003-06:00

Sorry for the late blogging; I've been busy, and no, it's not with National Novel Writing Month, because I never even start the day's novel writing until after I've written the day's blog post. :)

But I'm not too busy to be outraged by this, from Detroit:

A handful of retailers recently announced they would open late on Thanksgiving Thursday for Black Friday shoppers, but serious bargain shoppers just landed the biggest fish of them all: Walmart.

Opening the pages of its Black Friday ads for Facebook and Twitter fans, Walmart announced it will open earlier than ever before — at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving — for hardcore shoppers. So if you’re looking to save on electronics and toys, prepare to push away from the dinner table and hit the road.

Also opening early, at midnight on Thanksgiving, are Target, Macy’s and Kohl’s. Great Lakes Crossing in Auburn Hills will open at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving while Tanger Outlets in West Branch and Howell open at 10 p.m.

I'm glad to know that retail workers are fighting back, and I fully support their efforts:

As more retailers try to turn Thanksgiving Thursday into Black Friday — some employees are fighting back.
More than 80,000 people signed an online petition on change.org asking retail giant Target to reverse its decision to open its doors on Thanksgiving Day — and allow workers to spend the holiday with family and friends. [...]
The campaign was launched by Anthony Hardwick, a Target employee from Omaha, Nebraska, following news that the company’s management had moved the standard Black Friday opening time from 5 a.m. on Friday to midnight on Thanksgiving. The new opening time will require employees to arrive at work by 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.

“All Americans should be able to break bread with loved ones on Thanksgiving,” said Hardwick, who works as a part-time parking attendant at a Target store in Omaha, in a press release from change.org. ”With the midnight opening, employees like myself will have to leave for work right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. We don’t mind hard work, but cutting into our holidays is a step too far.”

“If Target doesn’t reverse its decision and allow associates to spend Thanksgiving holidays with their family, they might suffer from a fast-growing consumer backlash,” Hardwick added.

Will they? After Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and Kohl’s announced plan to open at midnight on Thanksgiving – the biggest fish of them all — Walmart — decided to go even further and open at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

Think about that: employees at Walmart might have to be at work by eight or nine p.m. on Thanksgiving Day to get ready for the big Black Friday rush (or should we start calling it Black Thursday, and decorate for the holiday with shadowy turkeys or something?) That means they can't linger at the Thanksgiving table, they can't stick around for a late dessert and coffee when all that turkey-induced tryptophan wears off, they can't travel over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house (unless Grandmother lives close to the shopping centers); in a word, they can't enjoy a whole day off on Thanksgiving Day. Are the descendents of Ebeneezer Scrooge lurking in the corporate offices of Walmart, Target, Macy's, Best Buy and Kohl's?

Look: I know perfectly well that lots of people have to work on Thanksgiving, and on other holidays as well--police officers, firefighters, doctors and nurses, military personnel, hotel workers, pharmacy technicians, even some restaurant workers (because not everyone has family to go to, and because all the other workers I listed above might well need a cup of coffee and a sandwich to get through the dreary work hours). But we know that those people are at work for really good reasons: to keep people safe, to help those in need, to care for the sick and the hurt, to attend to the real and basic needs of travelers and others, all of which are acts of charity.

But forcing retail store workers, many of them paid only minimum wage, to leave their families during the Thanksgiving feast so they can prepare to be trampled even earlier than usual by bargain-crazed lunatics drunk on consumption and filled with greed, competitiveness, and a level of hostility usually seen only on the battlefield doesn't even begin to be justifiable on the grounds of charity or human decency. In fact, it's just the opposite; it's a decision by the multinationalist corporate owners to pander to the worst qualities of present-day Americans--and if they were doing it on purpose to hasten America's downfall they could hardly have planned a better strategy.

In fact, I'm pretty sure our multinationalists would like to do away with the whole notion of pausing for a day in November to give thanks with our families for the blessings of liberty and life in this nation, because for one whole day people aren't out there putting themselves first, indulging in mindless shopping and spending, propping up our consumer economy with selfish and thoughtless consumption; instead, they are, mostly, enjoying a home-cooked meal with family and friends, and remembering that life is about more than acquisition. Which makes the whole day a shameful waste, from the perspectives of the presidents and CEOs of the companies listed in the article.

And I, for one, won't be shopping for Christmas gifts at any of those stores this Christmas. Because life is about more than acquisition, and the shadowy turkeys who want us to forget that don't deserve a dime of my money.

A non-post

2011-11-14T21:26:00.001-06:00

Sorry for the lack of blogging today. We've had a busy day, and now I'm battling another stupid Monday migraine.

Back tomorrow. Good Lord willin' and all.

:)

The seven percent

2011-11-11T18:27:00.002-06:00

If you take the current population of America and figure out how many American veterans there are (a little over 22 million), you can discover that the percentage of Americans living today who are veterans of our military is approximately seven percent.

Some calculations I've seen put the percentage slightly higher, either by adding active-duty personnel or by subtracting non-veterans below 18; but seven percent is about right for a general calculation. ABC puts it this way:

According to the 2010 Census, the population of the United States is 308,745,538. Including active duty, national guard and reserves, the population of Americans in uniform is 2,317,761, meaning that less than1 percent, .75 percent to be exact, of the country's population is a member of the military.
While only a fraction of a percent of the country's population is currently serving, 7 percent of the population is veterans. There are 22,658,000 veterans in america today, just 8 percent of which are female.

I am blessed to live in a family in which three people represent that 7 percent: my husband and his mother and father are all Air Force veterans. I am grateful to them and to all veterans for their service to our country; the OWS protesters, who like to call themselves the ninety-nine percent, could learn a lot about duty, honor, responsibility, hard work and sacrifice from the seven percent.

Happy Veterans Day to all veterans, all active-duty military, and all of their families--and God bless!

We all need to put the victims first

2011-11-10T17:50:00.003-06:00

Joe Carter over at First Things is saying what a lot of people are thinking in regard to the Penn State child sex abuse scandal:

For the past few days I’ve been trying, without success, to make sense of the disgusting spectacle at Penn State. My reaction can be summed up in one word: inexplicable. The actions of Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Mike McQueary, the rioting Penn State students—all of it is inexplicable. I tell myself that it must be an anomalous event, for I can’t bear the idea that it may be symptomatic of our larger culture. [...]
If you are the kind of person that can leave a child to be brutalized than you have lost your humanity. May God have mercy on your soul.

And if you’re a student at Penn State who is more upset about a coach being fired than a child being raped then please make that opinion as broadly known as possible (rioting is a good means of communicating your viewpoint). Your peculiar take on moral priorities needs to be made public so that the rest of us can avoid coming into contact with you in the future. [Link in original--E.M.]

There have been so many things written about this, that I don't want to add to the verbal clutter. Still, there are a few things that need to be said.

First, yes, the Penn State situation is proof that the culture of child sexual abuse and the coverup of such abuse does not exist solely in churches, let alone solely in the Catholic Church. The truth is that most institutions reflexively try to protect their image when they find out that someone they have trusted, someone whose fall would shame the institution, has been committing serious crimes, especially the crime of child sexual abuse. This is morally outrageous.

Second, child abusers, pedophiles especially, know very well that institutions have a horror of being exposed as a place where someone in a trusted position was getting away with the sexual abuse of children. On the occasions, however rare, when pedophiles are careless enough to get caught--even caught so graphically as Jerry Sandusky is alleged to have been caught--the pedophile will use institutional horror and fear of exposure to his benefit. These people are lifelong manipulators, and children aren't the only ones they manipulate.

Third, the first and second points do not in any way exonerate specific Catholic authorities, most especially bishops, in situations where they knew that children were at risk from a pedophile priest and did not take sufficient action--or, sometimes, any action--to protect the victims. We are not wrong to expect people of faith to act differently from mere secular authorities when children are at risk. We are not wrong, in fact, to demand that they do.

Fourth, we all need to put the victims first. To that end, I ask the following questions, expecting no answers, of course, but just asking readers to reflect on them:

Have you, yourself, or someone who is close to you, ever been tempted to the sexual abuse of a child--or acted on such a temptation?
If so, have you (or the person close to you) sought the appropriate help or been turned in to the proper authorities?
Have you or someone close to you ever been sexually abused? Did the abuse happen when the victim was a child? Is the abuser still at large, and still putting children at risk?
Have you ever encountered a victim of child sexual abuse? If the victim was still a child, did you report the abuse? If the victim is now an adult, did you listen respectfully, avoid blaming him/her for the abuse, and do whatever you could to help him/her locate help if needed?
Have you ever been dismissive toward those coming forward to talk about abuse? Have you, especially if the accused abuser was someone in your immediate or extended family, "tribe," school, church, etc., been inclined to believe the abuse did not happen, or acted as though the story was a fabrication without any evidence supporting that notion?
Have you shared the popular, and thoroughly deplorable, cultural opinion (which I saw displayed recently on a secular news website's comment thread) that boys who speak out about being sexually abused by older female authority figures (teachers, etc.) are not really victims at all but are "lucky" to have had such experiences? On the other hand, have you been inclined to dismiss the abuse of girls by older men as something almost "normal" and nothing much for a girl to get over?
Have you, in any other way, enabled a culture of the cover-up and dismissal of the sexual abuse of children as "no big deal," something that did not need to be opposed with strength and conviction?

Like I said above, I don't think these are questions demanding immediate or public answers--just quiet, thoughtful reflection.

Something else worth thinking about: this article:

If the allegations are true, this much is clear: They’re all at fault. McQueary knew exactly what he witnessed and didn't call 911. (Why hasn't he been fired yet?) The others either knew and are covering it up, or didn't ask the right questions.
Here’s what isn’t clear: At least six men could have called 911. Not one did. Why?
It starts with the obvious: “People don’t want to be pulled into conflicts with others,” says Roy Lubit, M.D., Ph.D., a forensic psychiatrist in New York who treats victims of sexual abuse. “They especially want to avoid potentially difficult situations in the future, like going to court. So they tell themselves it’s not their business, or they cannot be sure what is going on, or convince themselves that someone else will take care of it.”
But this situation is more complicated than that. “Organizations are also very self-protective,” adds Dr. Lubit. “The number-one rule is, Don’t embarrass the organization. Whistle blowers are often treated very badly.”

Read the rest here.

I can't help but wonder: what does it say about our society that this is true?

Trusting and testing

2011-11-09T18:15:00.004-06:00

I don't watch reality TV, so it was from other sources that I learned that the Duggar family is expecting their twentieth child. The only thing I have to say directly to the Duggars is that this is certainly their business and their decision, and that I wish Mrs. Duggar what I would wish any expectant mother: a healthy pregnancy and a safe and happy delivery.

So: why write about this at all? Well, there's one thing about the reaction I've seen to this news on the Catholic blogosphere that bothers me just a bit. Granted, the reaction of secular commenters is far worse, with the nasty jokes and the pro-sex, anti-baby slant; but I think this is an instance where for me, as a Catholic, it's more important to address one not-so-great Catholic reaction than to take the easy target of the totally wrongheaded secular one.

The reaction I'm talking about is this: someone will mention some prudential concerns they have for the Duggars, in a thoughtful way--concerns about Mrs. Duggar's age, the scary situation that developed with her last pregnancy and the medically-intensive birth of the tiny preemie (number 19) who, by the grace of God, is doing well, and that sort of thing. And someone else will "slap down" the first commenter with a withering observation something like this: "The Duggars are trusting God. That's all that matters."

Well, certainly we should all trust God. And we all hope that in their private decision making as a couple, trust in God was part of the Duggar's conversation, though none of us is, or should be, privy to such private discussions that take place between married couples. But to step away from the specific and to the more general, as I insist on doing, I must object to the notion that totally ignoring maternal health concerns even when these might be significant (and I'm not saying they definitely are in the Duggar's case, mind) is always and everywhere the same thing as trusting God.

Sometimes, it might be. But sometimes, ignoring serious or significant maternal health concerns is no different from testing God, not trusting Him.

I don't want to make this too personal, but long time readers know my own situation. Were my husband and I to ignore that situation and demand to have more children (and, yes, for any new readers, we do use NFP and have never used artificial contraception), we would be testing God's ability to provide us with certain specific things we would need in order for a happy outcome (including, perhaps, a medicine that might not even exist); or we would be rushing to embrace a potential maternal martyrdom that might not, in fact, be God's perfect will for my three daughters who sort of still need me around.

Now, that is our best and most reasoned prudential decision, and it was not made easily or lightly. Another couple in some similar situation might make a different prudential decision--but that is why the Church leaves such decisions to couples who have just reasons to postpone pregnancy. The guidance of good pastors, the wisdom of serious spiritual advisers, the shared experiences of others can all be helpful, but in the end, decisions about having a baby or postponing pregnancy must be made by the couple together.

And provided the couple seeks to think with the mind of the Church on these questions and only uses means of fertility regulation which remain open to life, all of these decisions are about trusting God. I'm going to repeat that: all of these decisions are about trusting God.

Do I trust God to give me medical advisers who have good information about the risks of further pregnancy for someone who has had my experiences? Yes, I do. Do I trust God to "override" NFP if He knows that some new medicine will not only increase a baby's chances for survival, but also keep me from ending up in the hospital for months? Yes, I do. Do I trust God in His wise choice of a spouse for me, who balances my more emotional longings for a new baby with the reality of our situation? Yes, I do.

In these, and thousands of other ways, we trust God, who planned our family before we ever met--and we are no different from those other faithful Catholic spouses who use natural means of family planning to help them make prudent and loving decisions about when to try for a new little one, and when to say, however reluctantly, that the time is not right, or that it may never be right again.

And the family of many who discovers with a holy joy and a holy fear that their wise and prudent openness to life has been answered with another little blessing is also trusting God, as the Duggars may certainly be doing.

But the woman who is led or forced by her community, Catholic, Evangelical, or otherwise, to believe that seeking through moral means to postpone pregnancy in the presence of just reasons is somehow the same thing as not trusting God is being spiritually abused. And if those just reasons include a serious threat to her physical or emotional health that is being waved aside as if her just concern about this threat is the same thing as a moral weakness, a display of unrighteous selfishness, or some such thing--then she is being abused in ways that go beyond the spiritual, in my firmly-held belief: because no one should be forced to put the Lord our God to the test.

Iterum iterumque

2011-11-08T19:06:00.004-06:00

As articles about the new Mass translation go, this one, from the AP, isn't all bad--but it's not all good, either:

Each Sunday for decades, Roman Catholic priests have offered the blessing — "Lord be with you." And each Sunday, parishioners would respond, "And also with you."
Until this month.

Come Nov. 27, the response will be, "And with your spirit." And so will begin a small revolution in a tradition-rich faith.
At the end of the month, parishes in English-speaking countries will begin to use a new translation of the Roman Missal, the ritual text of prayers and instructions for celebrating Mass. International committees of specialists worked under a Vatican directive to hew close to the Latin, sparking often bitter protests by English speakers over phrasing and readability. After years of revisions negotiated by bishops' conferences and the Holy See, dioceses are preparing anxious clergy and parishioners for the rollout, one of the biggest changes in Catholic worship in generations. [...]
Many clergy are upset by the new language, calling it awkward and hard to understand. The Rev. Tom Iwanowski, pastor of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Oradell and New Milford, N.J., turned to the section of the new missal that calls funeral rites, "the fraternal offices of burial."

"How can I say those words? It doesn't make sense," said Iwanowski, who has been a priest for 36 years. "It separates religion from real life."

In the new translation, in the Nicene Creed, the phrase "one in Being with the Father," will change to "consubstantial with the Father." When a priest prays over the Holy Communion bread and wine, he will ask God for blessings "by sending down your spirit upon them like the dewfall."

There are a lot of things that could be said about this sort of complaining, and most of them have been said already; I find it interesting that it's mainly priests of a certain age who are upset with the new translation, while younger priests don't seem to have as many difficulties. But what I really notice here is that two of the main complaints people seem to have are cropping up over and over again--iterum iterumque, as it might be put in Latin.

"And with your spirit." "Consubstantial."

Of all of the many changes made to the heretofore poor and unsatisfactory English translation of the Roman Missal, why are these two small bits brought up again and again as problematic or unwieldy?

I think that these two parts are being brought up because they are symbolic of what the former translators tried to change about the Mass in English, and are a clear sign that their view of what translation should be has indeed been rejected in the present age.

There is simply no way to get around it. Those responsible for the English translation of the Mass had an agenda to strip away not only the sacredness of the language used at Mass by English-speaking people, but also to downplay scriptural references, loosen the connection between the English translation and the Latin original, and impose a dull, mundane, banal, trivial and trite language of prayer upon the English-speaking world. This is not, of course, how they saw it: they saw their work as making the Mass more relevant, more ordinary, more easily accessible to modern man.

And so they translated Et cum spiritu tuo as "And also with you," when it clearly meant no such thing. And they imposed the clunky, grammatically awkward, theologically inaccurate phrase "one in being" for the closer (if still not completely theologically precise, according to some, though that's far outside any area of expertise I might have) perfectly good English word "consubstantial."

These two changes were only two of the many made, but I think the reason so much of the resistance is centering around these two is that these are two that will be easily seen by the people and understood for what they are: a firm reminder that the words prayed at Mass do matter, and that the careful, accurate expression of theological and spiritual concepts is far more important than creating a sort of lounge-hall/tearoom environment where people can shuffle in wearing sweats and tee-shirts, relaxing in the laid-back gathering space and shooting the breeze with their neighbors until Father processes in to some seventies-inspired tune or other to begin the Mass with the important unofficial Rite of Asking All the Visitors to Stand and Tell us Where They're From so we can Clap for Them, followed by some joking folksiness on Father's part, followed by the loosely-interpreted Introductory Rite, followed by the Rite of Dismissing the Children so They Can go Color Things...

The new translation will not be an immediate cure for the problems many people experience at Sunday Masses in the English-speaking world. But it is a huge step in the right direction; the new formality, theological depth, scriptural references, and sacred nature of the language we will pray at Mass will make the innovations, the clapping, the tyrannically-imposed folksy-down-home atmosphere, and similar abominations seem significantly out of place when compared to the words being said and sung. I think that those who like the status quo know this quite well, which is why, given the opportunity to complain about the new translations, they keep harping on "And with your spirit," and "consubstantial." Iterum iterumque, so to speak.

A nice time-out in the cry room

2011-11-07T19:42:00.005-06:00

Forgive the missed post Friday and the lateness of this one; I'm still battling this stupid virus. (And, Larry D, don't ask me about my word count for Nanowrimo. I tend to get even more feverish just thinking about how far behind I am...) :)

I'll have to beg your forgiveness for one more thing: I know I promised to try not to wade into Father Zuhlsdorf's comment boxes, even when I click over from New Advent to read a post he's written as sometimes happens. But, like I said, I'm still sick, and found myself doing a bit of mindless clicking instead of what I was supposed to be doing (word count! word count!).

It seemed harmless, though; Father Z. had shared a cute story about an overzealous usher telling a woman her son's toy car wasn't permitted in the LATIN MASS, about which Father wrote:

I think I would have been tempted to respond, “And what part of LATIN MASS gives you permission to walk around church, ignoring the sacred action and reprimanding mothers?”

Ushers.

Without having been there, it is hard to know what to say. But it strikes me that the usher was on pretty shaky ground. Sure, all children at LATIN MASS should look just like the sweet little darlings in the pastel artwork depicting young ones praying head-bowed, pink hands together at their bedsides as a guardian angel hovers over them. That’s what all children at LATIN MASS should be like.

In the meantime, on my planet when little Stupor Mundi is making too much noise, and how much is too much and I am not at all sure, then attentive parents – used to their prodigy’s din at home – takes the diminutive treasure out.

That isn’t always possible and children can be obstreperous. Even at the LATIN MASS! Do be sensitive to noise levels. You might be used to the noise your child makes. Others are not.

Which seems quite wise and sensible to me, striking that balance that I think most parents would agree with: try to take a noisy child out of church when it is necessary, use quiet measures to keep the child quiet in church when possible, and use common sense to try to ascertain when the quiet measures (books, soft toys, etc.) no longer work and the trip out to the back is needed.

And, sure, as we've discussed here, the biggest problem occurs when a child is prolongedly and miserably noisy and parents seem clueless about both the rising decibel level and the rate at which the child is becoming a distraction even to the saintly great-grandmother of 97 (age and number of great-grandchildren) who is known to be the most patient person in the entire parish and is nearly stone-deaf anyway: what do we do when that happens? Fortunately, that situation is relatively rare; what happens more often is that parents experience a few moments of what we might call the betrayal of the power of positive thinking, in which their fierce hope that Johnny will quiet down in a second is so badly ruined--and then they still have to face the Walk of Shame to the vestibule well after everybody thought they'd be taking it.

Since I know, though, that the opinions of seasoned parents tend sometimes to clash a bit with the opinions of seasoned non-parents and the opinions of long-ago seasoned parents who are sure that nobody in their generation ever heard of coddling a child so much as to actually bring him to Mass, I thought the comment box would be...entertaining.

Unfortunately, some of it was scary.

Here are some bits and pieces of actual comments over there. I won't link to each comment this time, but you can read the thread yourself if you like (though as of this posting it's already up to 135 comments):

...I don’t get it. Parents are so darn tolerant these days. Kids just run the roost. When I was little, even very little, I was required to do as I was told, and if I was told to sit quietly, that’s what I did. If I disobeyed…well, heaven help me. I would have got a severe and immediate slap-down, fully approved of by any other adult witness in the vicinity. The very idea of indulging a kid with food or toys, or even books would have been off the map. Trust me, if properly trained and handled, even the youngest and most disruptive kid can sit quietly for an hour, if only the parent is serious about making them...

... The youngest is a boy, 22 months old. He is silent during the whole Mass (usually a Low Mass, lasting 50-70 minutes, but has also has been to a ~115 minute High Mass)...Before that his mother or I had to take him out of Mass every time he made a sound. We used the time as an opportunity to teach an invaluable, and infallible lesson — outside the church there is discomfort, pain, damnation, and Hell — ONLY INSIDE the Church is there peace and the opportunity for salvation. It hurt him when we had to take him outside. Thus in only 16 months, he learned to not make a peep at Mass. No toys, books, or food were involved...

...I have five children. The oldest is seven. My wife is in the choir. If one of my children misbehaves I beat them. They learn real quick that they need to sit and be quiet. If parents pray the Rosary as a family and discipline children during Rosary, expecting them to be at best behavior, this doesn’t become a problem at Mass....

...The idea that you should appease ill mannered children in church with talk, toys and food, is not just stupid, its EVIL. Quit kidding yourselves. You are in denial. You are NOT being good parents...Contrary to the New Age sycophants here, applying some firm discipline with the back of the hand, or as they grow older, a good leather belt, will not warp your little terrorist into hating Mass or leaving the Church. Quite the opposite, it will instill the necessary FEAR in the developing child...

And then, from a non-parent, this truly lovely--and I mean that--comment:

I have nieces and nephews who have stopped attending mass with their spouses and children because the have felt that their young children were not welcomed thanks to sneers from their fellow parishioners and over zealous ushers. I have no children of my own, but I have 13 siblings 67 nieces and nephews and 43 great nieces and nephews. Many of them have gotten out of the habit of attending Mass on Sunday (or have even attended more “family friendly” evangelical churches)as they failed to go when their children were babies and toddlers.
Now I might be foolish but when my church prepares babies and their families for baptism they are held up on the alter and introduced to the congregation a week or two prior to their baptism. I thought we welcomed them into our community. I think of them as ‘my/our” children in Christ. I enjoy seeing them in the pews with their families on Sunday. I enjoy watching them grow week by week, month by month, year by year. Sure they can be disruptive at times (What family member isn’t? Families are like that.), but nothing on earth brings me closer in heart to Jesus Christ than having the eyes of a small baby on his/her mother’s shoulder in the pew in front of me locking those eyes on me and then smiling…it is like Christ Himself has acknowledged my presents before Him. Without these children the Catholic Church has no future. I think ushers should default to Jesus Christ on this issue…It is His church after all. We are no more welcomed and no more invited than the small children. I think He may even favor them.

I'm really glad that the commenter who wrote the above took the time to do it. It helps a lot to know that the "Beat the little children until they learn that CHURCH is about SUFFERING!" crowd is not really representative of Father Z.'s readers. That group, I think, needs a nice time-out in the cry room until they can stifle their more violent impulses toward toddlers.

Bishop Vann on the new English translation of the Roman Missal

2011-11-03T17:34:00.003-05:00

Well, I've been too sick to blog.

But Bishop Vann of our diocese here in Fort Worth has something I want to link to instead: a nice discussion of what's coming:

When the Second Vatican Council provided for wider usage of the vernacular in the Sacred Liturgy, it also envisioned that the initial translations would be reviewed and changed after a time of practical experience using it in the Liturgy. The publication of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal in Latin in 2000 was seen by the Church as the time for this review. Also, in March of 2001, the 5^th instruction on vernacular translation of the Roman Liturgy, Liturgiam Authenticam, was issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. This new instruction on translation recognized that various vernacular translations of liturgical texts were in need of improvement through correction or a new draft. This is when the new English translation of the Roman Missal began.

Liturgiam Authenticam mandated a method of translation called ‘formal equivalency’. This method of translation requires that the texts be translated without omissions, as close to the original Latin syntax as possible and doctrinally precise, using language that preserves the dignity and beauty of the original text. This method of translation is very different from the method used by the translators of the current Missal. The translators of the 1970 Missal following the 1969 instruction Comme le Prevoit used a method called ‘dynamic equivalency’ for their translation which allowed translators to render the text more freely, in a sense to re-imagine the text in the common language of the people. This method allowed for the paraphrasing of texts and removing those parts of the text that were considered to be superfluous. In many instances, with this method of translation, much of the richness of the language present in the Latin liturgy was literally lost in translation.

However, using Liturgiam Authenticam as the basis for this new translation of the texts we pray in the Mass, we will be praying in English, in some ways for the first time, the ancient texts that Church has prayed for hundreds of years. This new translation reflects the dignity and noble simplicity of the original Latin. The English used in the translation is not the language of everyday speech, but the elevated language of great poetry and prose, language that is worthy of the worship of Almighty God. The translation, because of its closeness to the original Latin, reflects more precisely the doctrine of the Church, sometimes using words which, while part of the patrimony of the Church, are unfamiliar to our ears. The new translation of the Roman Missal will also more closely connect the English used in the Roman Missal to what is already being prayed in the majority of European languages, including Spanish. [All emphases added: E.M.]

Go and read the whole thing here--and may I take this opportunity to thank Bishop Vann for such a clear reflection on what we're about to do, and why we're going to do it!

The Mosh Pit Lunge of Peace: not peaceful

2011-11-02T14:26:00.004-05:00

I went to bed last night with a nagging cough.

I woke up today with a worse one, and though I keep wanting to believe that it's just allergies, I suspect that I've caught a mild cold.

Which is no big deal, of course. Except the cough is deep enough to be reminding me of the stupid bronchitis I had all summer; I'm supposed to sing a solo on Sunday (Faure's Pie Jesu) which might very well not happen now, and I'm well aware of the fact that I spent most of last winter drifting from virus to virus. And the winter before. And...

I know, I know. I need to boost my immune system. Trust me, I'm working on that.

But I'm having a little problem right now with a little thing we do each Sunday at Mass known as the Sign of Peace.

I have no problem with exchanging a Sign of Peace in theory. Turning and bowing the head to each neighbor, as is done in some countries, seems to me to be a lovely and symbolic gesture of reconciliation with one's fellow men.

In practice, though, I have two problems with it. One is the awkward location of this liturgical moment, just after the consecration and the Our Father, just before the Agnus Dei and the reception of Holy Communion. Even if the Sign of Peace involved nothing but the mild bow I describe above, it would detract a bit too much, in my laywoman's opinion, from the focus on the presence of our Lord Who is with us Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist. I think it ought to be moved to the beginning of Mass, especially if it involved the polite bowing thing.

But that brings me to problem two: here in America there is no mild head bowing, no mere polite gesture toward the two people one is standing closest to. No, the Sign of Peace is more like the Mosh Pit Lunge of Peace, in which people three rows apart will fling themselves across empty pew space (or, worse, across other parishioners) in order to shake hands with every single person they can possible reach in the interlude before the choir starts singing the "Lamb of God."

And heaven help the choir, should they be--as we, alas, are--not secluded in a nice choir loft in the back of the church, but sort of off-to-the-side/frontish (and believe me, we've tried to figure out a way to move, but our tiny mission parish wasn't built to accommodate a choir and we barely fit where we are). Lately it has seemed like an unofficial Wandering Contagion Committee made up of people who themselves or whose children are noticeably, demonstrably, palpably ill with nasty colds has formed a rotating schedule to a) sit as close to the choir as possible and b) leap across the aisle to shake hands with each and every choir member, even though we're getting ready to sing that Agnus Dei and sort of need to be paying attention just then. It's as though a group of people got together and decided, "Hey! The choir's being standoffish! Do you notice that they almost never leave their seats and go looking for people to shake hands with--they just stand there, acknowledge each other with a smile or so, and then turn to look at the director! They're missing out on the whole Great Mosh Pit Lunge of Peace--we have to help them feel included!

Do us a favor, O Fellow Parishioners: don't.come.over.and.shake.our.hands.

If there are one or two excessively friendly, excessively hand-shakey choir members (and there might be; I'm just saying) they will come to you. They will also jump and hurry back to their places as the music for the "Lamb of God" starts--but that's their business. Some of us like to be standing with music open and ready so we can come in strong on the first note.

And if you are sick, or your sweet children (and I mean that) are blowing their noses and coughing all through Mass as you help them with Kleenex (tm) or your sleeve or the back of your hand, please, please, please don't lunge across the aisle to shake hands because you think the choir's being standoffish, or out of habit, or whatever. My voice is my instrument, and a cold "breaks" it for at least a week. We only have three sopranos (one of whom is not available every Sunday); if you share too many illnesses with the singers you could easily wipe out a whole section of our little choir.

Of course, if you or your children are sick, you shouldn't be shaking anybody's hands at Mass. Jimmy Akin has been saying so for years, and I totally agree. The elderly, the medically fragile, the very young should be our primary concern; the Mosh Pit Lunge of Peace doesn't take precedence over simple charity.

Now, I know that readers are probably dying to point out to me that I shouldn't assume I've picked up this most recent bug at Mass. It is cold and flu season, after all, and I could just as easily have acquired my most recent mild virus just about anywhere--the grocery store, any other place where I've run errands, family gatherings, etc. True enough.

But when I find myself tensing as the Sign of Peace approaches at Mass, when I find myself reaching (discreetly or otherwise) for hand sanitizer after shaking hands with somebody who has stopped coughing into his hand just long enough to shove that hand in my direction, when I find myself thinking vastly non-peaceful and uncharitable thoughts in the very moment of all moments when I should be trying my hardest to be focused on our Lord, all I can do is admit my own weakness and the fact that the Sign of Peace itself has, ironically enough, become a near occasion of sin for me.

And I'm sure that's not what the Church has ever wanted it to be.

Blogging will probably not be light

2011-11-01T21:14:00.003-05:00

Happy All Saint's Day!

Happy first day of National Novel Writing Month 2011! My friend Larry D has more about that, if you're interested.

I wrote the first draft of the book I'm hoping to self-publish back in 2006. Last year I wrote most of the sequel, which I just finished Sunday night (well, technically it was Monday morning, but who cares?), and this year I'm starting on the third book of the series.

In between 2006 and last year, I wrote drafts of three other children's/young adult sci-fi or fantasy novels, only one of which may eventually see the light of day (well, maybe the other two will, too, someday, but they both need work).

Blogging may be light for the next few days. Or it may not; the first time I ever substitute-hosted for Rod Dreher back at his old Crunchy Cons blog I was also writing this blog and writing my second Nanowrimo novel--so this should be comparatively easy, right? :)

Zombies and humans and souls, oh my!

2011-10-31T15:46:00.003-05:00

We will be celebrating All Hallow's Eve tonight not by engaging in the sacred and deeply spiritual mystical practice of dressing up like cartoon characters and getting free candy, but by attending an All Saint's Day vigil Mass. I know, I know: spoilsports! But the vigil Mass time works best for us this year, we have three teens who stopped being young enough to trick-or-treat ages ago, and for once we are foregoing the great gift of Aunt Charlotte's pumpkin cake roll and rocking All Saint's Eve party. :) (And the fact that she was still willing to have us over with a tiny newborn to care for and a baptism party just over a week ago shows how utterly amazing she is.)

So my blogging time is limited today, but I wouldn't have wanted you to miss this amazing blog post by David Meyer, who takes the zombie football I threw and runs it into the end zone:

Here is my take: Like all good sci-fi, horror movies have the ability to distill the meaning of life into precious small spaces. What do you take from your giant house when you flee it from attacking zombies? Family pictures and guns to protect your loved ones, of course. What do you do when a little girl is alone in the woods with zombies? Risk everything to find her, of course. What these human instinctual responses in the viewer tell us is that we are human, and being human is more than eating and breathing. Being human is about what you love, and what you were created to do. And unfortunately, many people seem to think they were created to pursue personal peace and affluence instead of walk toward their creator. Zombie movies make these choices clear. The Walking Dead even makes a point of having a scientist show a film of the brain activity of someone dying and coming back as a zombie. We see that only the "instinct" part of the brain stem is active. There is never any doubt by anyone in the show that these people are not human. They are dispatched with bloody abandon and indifference by the dozens. There is more pity taken on animals in the show than the zombies.

The message is loud and clear.

So loud in fact that my guess is that many fans of the show never notice it because it is plain obvious to them, although in their daily lives they might easily deny it. The message is that human beings are a special creation of a loving creator, and that we are made in His image and likeness. We are not the sum of our parts, or merely a central nervous system to be pleasured. One human life is worth every single zombie life even though they are made of the exact same physical material. So lets think about it: if they are made of the same material and one can be slaughtered with less care than a pig, while the other is a precious life worth risking everything to save... what is the difference other than an eternal soul? And what does modern man scream to fulfill in all his depraved abuses of himself more than his soul? In this way, zombie movies are some of the most "christian" themed movies around. What other movie will the viewer always find himself making the correct choice with the characters-- to do the human thing. If only we all could pretend we lived in a zombie Apocalypse in our day to day lives, perhaps we would live the gospel each day.

David has grasped a breathtakingly essential point about zombie fiction: if human beings really were merely animated meat suits, then there would be no moral difference between killing zombies and killing human beings--and, as a corollary, we could kill human beings without remorse or pity simply because they were in the way. The history of the atheistic regimes of the twentieth century shows us what that looks like--what it looks like when a society arises to whom human beings are merely interchangeable animated future corpses, and which treats people as if they have no intrinsic human worth.

But if humans have intrinsic worth--if they are not mere walking bodies, if they are more than merely well-evolved animals--where does that worth come from? If the people we once loved who have died are not merely decomposing flesh, if they, the essential selves, still exist, then where and what are they, and why are they still alive? For Christians who believe in the soul, these questions can be pondered with placidity, gratitude, even joy. For anyone who does not believe in an immaterial and immortal human soul which makes us look like our Creator, though, these questions can only be rather grim to think about.

At Mass tonight I will be happy to be in the company of those who have fought the good fight, finished the course, and won the race. Those friends of God who now live in His presence, especially the ones the Church has declared to be in Heaven, celebrate with us here as we ourselves move toward the inevitable day when we will see God face to face. It is a good and glorious thing that we are not merely well-organized clumps of organic matter heading swiftly toward eternal oblivion, after all.

A very brief music-related post

2011-10-28T15:36:00.004-05:00

On his blog, my husband Thad shared this video from German music group anstatt blumen. Fair warning: I don't know what the German lyrics actually mean. :) But the video is, as Thad says, a really neat example of how to shoot a music video of a live performance:

What do you think?

Some atheists

2011-10-27T16:38:00.003-05:00

It seems to happen every time I mistakenly scroll down to the comments below a certain type of news story. True, it would be better never to look at comments below a news article in the first place, as news article commenters tend to be...interesting sorts...but there's a certain type of article that seems to set up a rather bizarre chain reaction, as follows:

First, the article itself will tell about some fairly sad or tragic news event (which covers just about everything except weight loss articles, something new everyone should be worried about dying from articles, political articles, and economic and/or science news the reporter obviously didn't understand but wrote a provocative, hard-hitting piece about anyway articles). Then, in the comments, some person will employ prayerful and/or Christian language directed at the person or people impacted by the tragedy, of the "Prayers going out to the Smith family," or "God bless the people of Rabid Squirrel Junction as they dig out from underneath the volcano" variety, or something like that.

The next chain in our reaction is equally predictable: some disciple of New Atheism will show up to trash the person who prayed, prayers in general, tragedies in general (often handing out "Darwin Awards" to the deceased), and any human being who actually tries to find any transcendent meaning in life whatsoever.

Fortunately, these sorts of comments resemble Hobbes' description of the life of man, in that most of them are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and (thankfully) short. Unfortunately, they tend to act upon the assembled virtual crowd like a catalyst, and the commenters will turn from pretending to comment on the article to their own pet faith-related subjects; they all have their own axes to grind, their own agendas to push, their own views of God and man to propound--and all of this delights the sort of self-avowed atheist who shows up in these sorts of comment threads, because he can now engage in the sort of argument where sooner or later he can showcase his brilliance and high-minded intellectualism by a copious use of the phrases "sky-daddy" and "flying spaghetti monster."

Now, just as the typical Christian ought not be lumped in with the most extreme stereotypes, so ought not the sky-daddy-dude who delights in irrelevant comment and Christian-trolling be mistaken for a typical atheist. It would be unfair and counter-productive to ask an intelligent, thoughtful, rational, civil atheist to explain all these atheists who show up not just in comment boxes below news stories, but in comment boxes below all sorts of Christian writings, theological debates, etc. to make essentially the same snotty sky-daddy remarks. It is not at all polite to assume that just because someone is an atheist, he must also be rude to people of faith, unwilling to engage in philosophical discussions, or uninterested in questions about virtue. It is unkind to suppose that all atheists believe in the same thing; they only agree that they don't believe in God--and not all of them are united as to which God they don't believe in, so to speak. It behooves Christians who enter discussions, online or in real life, with atheists to remember all of this.

Of course, it is true that many atheists have no problem lumping all Christians, or "Christianists" as some of them may sometimes say, together. They may think all Christians are sola scriptura types, that all Christians shun the theory of evolution, that all Christians dislike science generally, that all Christians would like to impose a theocracy on the United States, and so on. They may even assume all of these things, and when told otherwise by a specific Christian, they may demand answers for those Christians who do believe any of these things, just as if a Christian were to ask them to defend the overuse of the flying spaghetti monster even if they think it's stupid, too, and have never brought it up in an argument.

But that doesn't mean we should turn around and treat them the same way. "Do unto others," and all that, you know.

There may not be zombies

2011-10-26T18:57:00.003-05:00

As you probably guessed from yesterday's post, I'm rather fond of science fiction--of most imaginative fiction, honestly. I like alternate universes and interesting timelines and sci-fi tech stuff; I enjoy some fantasy settings and stories (but not all), and have a sneaking fondness for the quirky, the campy, and the fun in all those things.

I have not, however, had a similar fondness for the horror genre. Some early horror, like Dracula and Frankenstein, sure, but the modern iterations in which people go off into the woods on the slightest pretext and are then chased around by axe-wielding psychopaths, flesh-eating aliens, or axe-wielding flesh-eating alien psychopaths who are secretly also werewolves or something have not, by and large, appealed to me. The gore, the blood, the violence, the inherent stupidity that always makes some idiot go off completely alone after being warned by his friends, the creepy old dude who shows up and gives that sort of warning, and an entire film industry not to do anything so blatantly foolish--none of that is really entertaining, as far as I'm concerned.

Which is why it's puzzling to me that I'm so much enjoying AMC's zombie drama, The Walking Dead.

Of course, The Walking Dead is not typical horror-movie/horror-TV fare. It is extremely well-written Southern Gothic horror, so much so that I told Thad yesterday that my question before as to who on earth would publish Flannery O'Connor today had an answer: AMC would. If "publish" is still the right word; "produce" works better, of course.

And when I say that I'm "enjoying" The Walking Dead, I have to qualify that statement just slightly. I'm not enjoying it in the same way that I recently enjoyed this quirky, fun British sci-fi show (no, it's not the one you think it is). The Walking Dead is much darker, much heavier, much more serious than the sort of TV I usually watch, primarily because I think of TV as mind candy and a chance to shut off the part of my brain that wants to analyze everything to death, not as something to stimulate that part to the point where I lie awake until nearly 5 a.m. drawing parallels in my brain between what I've just seen on the one hand, and dozens of unrelated bits of literature on the other. Which is what happened to me last night, after I'd finished watching the first two episodes of season 2 of TWD.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have to give Thad credit for getting me interested in TWD in the first place, and for being willing to "preview" each episode for me so that I can be warned in time not to view the most graphically violent or gory scenes. I don't have an extremely high tolerance for on-screen bludgeoning or beheading, for instance, and as there's quite a lot of that in a zombie show I appreciate Thad's willingness to tell me when to shut my eyes for a minute. To be honest, I doubt very much that I could watch the show without that.

But what, then, makes The Walking Dead worth watching? If the violence is too much for me personally, why watch it at all?

I think that the story that is being told shows signs of being ultimately positive and hopeful. It's hard to be sure at this point, but I'll just share a couple of unrelated moments from the first two episodes of this season to back up the notion--spoiler alert, though I don't plan to spend a lot of time covering plot points:

The unlikely group of survivors from the first season, already down several members after last season, exhausted, hopeless, and out of options, are fleeing Atlanta in the wake of the destruction of the CDC, where they had hoped for answers, or at least for safety. They come upon a "traffic jam" of abandoned cars, many of them still holding dead and decaying bodies which have gone past the "zombie" point, if they ever were zombies. But there are no signs of life, or of "walkers" (the "z" word isn't really used in this series). While trying to figure out a way through the cars, the group begins to salvage usable goods from the cars. One character expresses discomfort at the prospect. "This is a graveyard," she says--and the words are jarring, because were it not for the unnatural stillness and silence of the cars on the road, we could be looking at any urban highway in the midst of any ordinary traffic jam.

A "herd" (as one character tags them) of "walkers" approaches, and the terrified group hides, most of them under cars. Just as you think the worst is over, one of the two children in the group, a little girl, is seen by the zombies and ends up fleeing from the highway into that perennial horror-story set scene, the woods. Things don't then proceed in normal horror-story fashion; the girl is saved from the pursuing zombies, but she herself goes missing, and must be searched for the next day.

So daylight finds most of the group searching in the walker-infested woods for the little girl. Standard, right? Except that the girl's name is Sophia--wisdom--and the search takes the group to a Baptist church (which inexplicably has an absolutely lovely crucifix in it). Interesting, I think. A handful of "walkers" are in the church, but when they have been dispatched two separate characters address the figure of Christ on the cross--the missing girl's mother, who begs for mercy for her child, and the main character, Rick, who admits that he's not much of a believer but asks for a sign. Moments later his only child, a little boy, is shot by a hunter who is trying to bring down a deer--but the hunter comes from a group hiding in a farmhouse, and the farmhouse's owner seems to be a doctor, and despite various perils which many characters are still in the boy is clinging to life as the second episode ends--but the little girl is still lost.

The undercurrents of faith, of family, of the impact of our decisions, of the need for guidance and direction and the ability to take leaps of faith--these are the things I find interesting and intriguing about this show so far. And while I never underestimate the ability of television producers to start out with something with incredible potential and end up with something laughable and trite, there seems to be something more than the usual fare being offered here.

One thing Thad and I talked about yesterday was the reason why post-apocalyptic scenarios like the aftermath of a zombie virus remain such compelling settings for these kinds of stories. I pointed out that we in the comfortable first world forget how for so many of the seven billion people on this planet, a daily struggle for basic survival is simply the way of life. Sure, there may not be zombies, but there are wars (including those which steal children to serve as soldiers), famines, oppression, unimaginably excruciating daily toil, shortages of basic necessities like water or medicine--deprivations and hardships and suffering and loss beyond most of our experiences, and beyond even most of our imaginations.

It's almost as though in order for us even to begin to touch base with the reality of life for so many, with such a universal human experience of the uncertainty of existence and the constant presence of things like fear and pain, we have to wipe away all the material clutter we've accumulated; we have to envision a world so destroyed that our pretenses at safety and stability no longer mean anything; we have to recognize our glorified caves and technological voodoo for what it all really is, and what it's all really worth, against the brevity and coldness and harshness of life at its most basic level. In such a fictional setting, we can see and value the mere works of human hands for what they are--and when we place them in the balance scale against the certainty of death, we can finally know them for their true worth.

And yet, the characters in The Walking Dead have not quite stopped hoping. Like the third-world farmer who is barely managing to feed his family, like the child soldier who hides behind a granite countenance the memories of better days and the hope of freedom, these fictional characters illustrate how powerful a quality is the hope that rises in the human spirit, when the man himself no longer cherishes the illusion that he himself is powerful. This O'Connorian paradox is the sort of thing that draws me to the show, and I hope that, by the time The Walking Dead reaches an eventual conclusion as all human endeavors do (though as of this writing it has been renewed for a third season already), this and other elements of meaning will have received the exploration and treatment within the story that they deserve.

20 Things I Learned from Sci-Fi TV and Movies

2011-10-25T19:17:00.005-05:00

Yesterday's blog post was serious. Today's won't be. Fair warning for those who dislike humor and frivolity. :)

Last week, I followed this link from New Advent to a really funny list titled "50 Things I Learned from the Movies." Some of the gems include:

9. The more a man and a woman hate each other, the more likely they will fall in love.

10. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.

11. Cars that crash will almost always burst into flames.

12. A cup of black coffee or a splash of cold water in the face is enough to render the most inebriated person stone cold sober.

13. If you try hard enough, you can outrun an explosion.

That last had me in tears, because I always have something to say about people who can outrun flaming fireballs and not even be the tiniest bit crispy afterward--or, rather, about people who film that particular absurdity.

There were one or two science fiction related items on that list, but it occurred to me that the strange, interesting, fun, campy world of television and movie science fiction could really use its own list. I've been working on it, and here are my not-particularly-original observations in no special order:

20 Things I Learned from Sci-Fi TV and Movies

1. The internal clocks of every spaceship in any given galaxy/universe are always perfectly synchronized, such that you will never contact some other ship millions of miles away and inadvertently awaken the ship's captain in the middle of the night.

2. It is always possible for one ship to contact another that is millions of miles away; it is, however, frequently impossible for a ship to contact members of its own crew who are on the planet below them.

3. It is ordinarily acceptable for spaceships either never to need refueling or to run out of fuel at dramatically appropriate moments; it is not ordinarily acceptable for spaceships to need boring, routine refueling.

4. A spaceship the size of a small city will somehow carry enough water on board, or generate enough water, for all tens of thousands of crew members to shower daily. If waterless showers are ever brought up in conversation, nobody will like the idea.

5. Despite traveling many times the speed of light, spaceships will rarely arrive at their home port before they left it.

6. All time-travelers speak, read, and write modern English.

7. If one of a group of people is a time-traveler from the future sent back to prevent a catastrophe, this person will tell anybody else other than the person ultimately responsible for the catastrophe what they are doing there, until it is too late. There is never a good reason for this reticence.

8. By the time that time travel is possible, evolution has removed anybody who would think it would be fun or amusing to go back in time and mess things up just for the hell of it.

9. In any give group of people from the next century, it is more likely that one of them will secretly be a humanoid alien or robot than that one of them will--secretly or openly--be a Christian.

10. Futuristic energy weapons rarely if ever need recharging. The one exception will be when the hero or heroes are being pursued by villains and must hide because they can't fight.

11. Futuristic and/or space traveling heroes often have to hide from villains in places that shun technology or have not yet made contact with space and/or time travelers.

12. At least one person in the hiding place will turn out to be both extremely attractive and surprisingly good with technology, leading to and existential and/or romantic crisis.

13. Future science labs are staffed by two types of people: men who are geeky, nerdy, socially inept, yet somehow oddly charming, and women who could have (even if they didn't) supported their various doctoral careers while modeling, but who subdue their glamor under white lab coats, intimidatingly brilliant minds, and (frequently) unattractive glasses.

14. If one of those women is accidentally locked in the science lab with one of the nerds during a major crisis, her glasses will get broken, her lab coat will have to be used to block the toxic fumes or something from coming in under the door, and the oddly charming geek who is trapped with her will suddenly realize that she is a total babe.

15. Oddly charming science nerds have magical abilities when it comes to technology. They can overcome all issues of computer compatibility, password protection or data security, damage to the system including structural damage to the mainframe or servers, viruses and malicious attacks, insufficient power, and so on in a matter of seconds. They can also integrate a piece of unknown alien technology with their present operating systems in remarkably short lapses of time.

16. Despite their magical abilities, geeky computer guys will complain vociferously about being asked to do any of the above, leading viewers to wonder what their actual job involves other than hanging around accident prone labs with science babes.

17. No matter how brilliant the science nerds are, there will always be at least one instance where an ordinary person, possibly a military man, will know more than they do about some point of basic science--because people capable of dramatic feats of higher physics frequently forget everything they know about gravity, or thermodynamics, or simple chemical reactions.

18. In the future, the military teams that accompany science teams to fantastic planets will welcome having the chain of command repeatedly violated either by the scientists or by their civilian leaders--at least, they never seem to have a problem with it.

19. In a universe in which it is possible for artificial planets to be built, it is also still possible for weapons to jam or for spaceships' engines to overheat.

20. Despite the vacuum of space, dramatic visual fireworks, clouds of smoke, etc. are not only possible, but likely, during any major starship battle.

Those are just a few simple observations. Feel free to add your own list in the comment box or on your blog!

It's time for it to stop

2011-10-24T19:28:00.003-05:00

You may have already seen Kevin O'Brien's fantastic piece on the Bishop Finn situation; if not, I highly recommend reading the whole thing. After detailing the independent report commissioned by the diocese itself of what happened, Kevin says:

Now, Bishop Naumann makes a passioned defense of his brother bishop, and points out that many in the Kansas City media are viciously pro-abortion and will stop at nothing to destroy the Catholic Church. Bishop Naumann, I'm sure this is true.
And many lay folk have pointed out to me that Bishop Finn is orthodox in his teaching and has boldly attacked pornography, for example. I'm sure that this is true as well.

But have we come to a stage where we are so desperate for orthodox bishops that we turn a blind eye to their other shortcomings? Are we so defensive against our own sins that we refuse to acknowledge where we fall shy of virtue, simply because other sinners are pointing our failures out to us?

And how do we expect to turn the hearts of the pro-abortion zealots in the Kansas City media if we don't even have the gumption to protect a two-year-old girl who's being victimized while asleep by one of our priests? Why on earth would they listen to us about the evils of killing unborn babies when we won't even do anything to protect a sleeping two-year-old from a predator?

Because, my friends, it comes down to this.

Bishop Finn and his Vicar General knew that children under their care had been exploited and abused. Bishop Finn and his Vicar General did nothing to identify or protect those children. Instead, and incredibly, when the story finally broke, Bishop Finn and his Vicar General instructed that the parish of St. Patrick's hold listening sessions at which parents were asked to write down one "hurt" and one "hope". [...]
What would you say to these parents? Or better yet, if Fr. Ratigan had taken pictures of your sleeping two-year-old girl and removed her diapers to take a spy-pen snapshot of her vagina and her bare butt for use on his computer, and perhaps molested her and the diocese never bothered to tell you this, and never bothered to warn you not to let this man back in your house, or reach out to make sure you and your daughter got the help you needed (all the while the beg letters for the annual diocesan appeal kept coming in the mail) ... what would you put down on the "hurt" card? What would you "share" as your "hope" during the listening session while somewhere a man we call father masturbates to a picture of your sleeping two-year-old?

Powerful questions, those.

I saw a ringing defense of Bishop Finn and kudos to Bishop Naumann on another blog (which I won't link to) and, frankly, I was sickened by it. Like most lay Catholics, I have no more patience for the excuses made on behalf of bishops who were so derelict in their duty while children were being put at risk. I've heard people say such incredible things this time around as the following:

there were only pictures, so it's not as though actual children were being hurt.
Bishop Finn is only being targeted because he is orthodox.
The real villain, if there is one, is Msgr. Murphy who never told the bishop that more than one picture, and that one fairly innocent, existed (which is not true, but some believe it).
it's not the diocese's fault that their decision to give Fr. Ratigan's computer to Fr. Ratigan's brother led to the computer's being destroyed--how would the diocese ever have guessed that anyone would do that?
if there were any real evidence of wrongdoing on the bishop's part, he'd be charged with more than a misdemeanor.
(my personal favorite) the evil liberal media is gunning for the Church, and will stop at nothing in the pursuit of this diabolical agenda.

No. No, and no, and no.

It is 2011, not 1998. Every single bishop in every single diocese in America knows how terrible the Scandal has been, how hurt by it lay Catholics, good priests and religious, and entire dioceses have been--to say nothing of the actual victims of abuse. Yet when Bishop Finn was informed of the situation involving Fr. Ratigan it is clear by his actions that his overwhelming concern was to protect Fr. Ratigan. If you read the independent report (.pdf) you will see that, as Kevin O'Brien highlights, the diocese failed to turn over the evidence of child pornography to the police (describing only one picture to one off-duty police officer), failed to inform or protect children or families, failed to correct the impression that the whole situation involving Fr. Ratigan's removal was due to the dislike and hostility of the school principal, failed to inform the retreat house where he was sent why he was being sent there or warning them to keep him away from children--this, despite the fact that school retreats were held there!--and failed in dozens of other ways to do what was their clear duty in light of the existence of the photos. And I firmly believe that Bishop Finn is morally responsible for that failure, even if he refused to look at the photos or to hear more accurate descriptions of them, as some people have suggested.

That is why I don't share the opinion held by, apparently, so many Catholics that this is nothing more than an attack on the Church. Whether Bishop Finn is found guilty of the charge against him or not, there is nothing at all unjust about the indictment. Our clergy are not above the law, and we can't, on the one hand, insist on bishops' primacy over their dioceses and then, on the other, insist that it's not their fault if they fail to take obvious and minimal actions to protect children from predatory priests. The laity, especially children, deserve that protection--but too often, and yet again in Kansas City, we have seen that the whole machinery of a bishop and his chancery springs into defense of the predatory priest, leaving the children and their parents to fend for themselves.

It is wrong. It is unjust. It is the antithesis of true Christian behavior. And it's time for it to stop.

Women and weight loss

2011-10-21T17:03:00.003-05:00

I've been having an interesting conversation with Sam McDonald over at Rod Dreher's blog on the issue of weight loss. I think, for now, I've given up. :)

Sam is a firm believer in the notion that weight gain or loss is totally explained by the "calories in minus calories burned equals either weight or loss" formula. People get fat by overeating and not exercising, and people lose weight by cutting calories (drastically, if necessary; Sam has written before about existing on an 800 calorie per day regimen) and increasing exercise.

I am not a disbeliever in thermodynamics, of course. But I think that the "weight loss formula" is a handy shortcut in our understanding, in sort of the same way that "water is H20" formula is a handy shortcut in our understanding, or that "a-e-i-o-u are the vowels" is a handy shortcut in our understanding (should we talk about "sometimes 'y' and 'w,' or shouldn't we?).

As I told Sam, I gained weight not by scarfing whole cakes and buckets of fried chicken, but by three rather close-together pregnancies. Over a decade later I'm still carrying about 20 extra pounds. Sometimes I will gain a few more pounds, sometimes I will lose a few, but sustainable long-term significant weight loss still eludes me. To Sam, this is just proof that I haven't figured out the perfect amount of exercise I need daily and the perfect amount of calories to cut. Once I do that, the pound a week drop I'd like to have will happen as if by magic; the fact that I have done that sort of thing many times in the last decade just proves that I haven't done enough.

I brought up the metabolism issue and the fact that many women will put on ten or fifteen pounds in their forties even if their diets and exercise regimens remain exactly the same, but somehow I get the impression that Sam may believe that women's bodies work exactly like men's when it comes to weight gain or loss--and that all men's bodies work like clockwork: eat more than you burn and you gain, eat less than you burn and you lose.

I've recently started to lose a little weight, but that's where things get mysterious to me. When I try really hard to ramp up the exercise and eat less, I tend to...maintain my present weight. When, as this week, I have multiple migraines, quit worrying, eat what I want when I want, skip exercise because I'm already in pain and even drink a few Cokes (tm) because as cheap yet effective migraine medicine goes it's hard to beat a combo of sugar and caffeine, I should either barely cling to maintenance or gain weight, right?

Well, that's where it gets weird, because I weighed myself today and found out I've lost a little over two pounds this week.

How did that happen? Where did they go? And, more importantly, how can I keep them from finding me again? :)

I'm not convinced that thermodynamics explains it all. I think that hormones including female hormones and stress hormones etc. play a role. I think that the effect on metabolism of drastic calorie reduction is going to vary widely based on the person's original metabolism. I think that many of the things we mistakenly do to try to lose weight, such as stress about it, fuss about it, fixate on it, weigh and measure every calorie, and so on actually end up being detrimental to the process. And I think that the science of the human body is still developing, and that one day we'll understand the role of genetics, metabolism, and individual health in a way we don't now.

And, yes, the thermodynamic equation still matters; you can't exceed your body's daily caloric requirements every day for years and not gain weight; and if you figure out a safe and sustainable way to lower calorie intake and increase calorie burn you may see modest results, such as the loss of ten or fifteen percent of your body weight. But that's a far cry from believing that the only reason we can't all achieve some ideal weight is that we're all too gluttonous and lazy to try.

A very short blog post

2011-10-20T17:47:00.002-05:00

Considering the Republican presidential candidate field, I can only say one thing: never were so many so uninspired by so few.

Exhibit A: Herman Cain and Rick Santorum in a slap fight over abortion.

Exhibit B: Romney, who seems still to remain a heartbeat away from the candidacy, defending himself from controversy about...his religion. Though he doesn't actually like to talk about it.

Exhibit C: Romney and Perry display mature, rational, united conservatism by...palpably not liking each other.

Has there ever been such an uninspiring Republican field? Oh, wait; yes.

Before offering Sister the tweezers

2011-10-19T17:21:00.006-05:00

Blog posts about children misbehaving at Mass seem to be a perennial favorite in the Catholic blogosphere. This one will probably be no exception:

About halfway through the Eucharistic prayer, the priest simply stopped and stared in the direction of the screaming for what felt like an hour but was probably about 15 seconds. It was pretty clear to those of us in the front that he was being pushed to his limit. This priest (who is not the pastor) is a peaceful, kind, loving, compassionate guy, a really good priest. Anyway, the parents of this baby did not take the hint, so the screaming continued right along with the rest of the Eucharistic prayer and into the Our Father. At that point the priest grimaced and stood by silently as the rest of us continued to pray.

I leaned over to my husband and said, "I think father is going to lose it." And that was just about when he did. As we approached the Sign of Peace, he stopped again and pleaded with them amid the screaming: "Will you please take the baby out of the church? Please?" Talk about an awkward moment. I couldn't see what was going on behind me but I felt myself holding my breath as I waited to see what happened next. I guess the family finally got the message and headed out to the Gathering Space, or, more likely, out of the church. Perhaps for good.

The blogger goes on to take a reasonably balanced view of this sort of thing, pointing out that while, on the one hand, babies will be babies, on the other, we need adults to be adults and to recognize when their children have passed the line into becoming a full-blown disruption. She is also clear that what was going on was a full-throated screaming meltdown that persisted through the Eucharistic Prayer, not a normal sort of whimpering or fussing that you might expect.

Still, as can be expected, the commenters took varying views of the situation, ranging from the calls to be as charitable as possible to parents wrestling with little ones, to discussions of how the ushers/pastor/etc. deal with similar things at their parish. One poster, a religious sister, made a rather nice comment coming from a non-parent; that is, she advised a sense of humor, a reminder that Jesus was used to crowds, and a call for everybody to be willing to "power through" such situations when they arise.

And for her pains, Sister got this comment:

Thank you for the post. Your mind is a perfect example of the Smoke of Satan that has entered the Sanctuary; in short it's selfishness. It's a selfishness led by priests who during the Mass have turned their backs on the Lord Crucified. Priests and nuns are blinded not by some spiritual act of the Devil, but by their own choice to turn their gaze away from the Lord's Sacrifice. All who turn away from His Sacrifice eventually fall in love with themselves, their gaze merely points to the objects of desire.

Your, "I mean, come on. No one could hear me or the program", when compared to how you see a child screaming during the Mass can not make this more clear.

Your "I felt this is what a crowd around Jesus would have been like" is not at all relevant and is filled with ignorance. The reverence, honor, and love of the Mass by the Early Church is clearly documented by Church and secular history. This is especially so for the Eucharistic prayer of the Mass. In the early Church the Eucharistic prayer was known as "the Secret", and attendance was allowed by only those who believed. {I am not saying the Church should return to such a rule}. The Early Church held the Mass as Sacred, Solemn, and Holy. The Mass is the Prayer of the Church. It was held by the Christian's of the Early Church as such, and never has the Church taught or accepted the Mass as a "crowd" event for chattel.

You are correct that "peace and quiet" is not part of the liturgical norms. But neither is cacophony. Your questions shows your grave ignorance and selfishness regarding your concern for the Mass. The Rubric's and GRIM are filled with language that makes such distinctions; so much so it is hard to believe your ignorance is not really willful selfishness for your own spiritual desires and happiness.

So Sister, "I mean, come on", "power through", stop focusing on your selfish desires that make you happy for a while. Start focusing on the Lord whom you devoted yourself to and stop "laughing a little" when the world turns the Sacrifice to your husband into a meal at a buffet restaurant.

Momento mori, Christ took a bull-whip to those who sat in the temple as if it was a place for crowds.

This sort of thing is the reason that I find rad-tradism totally poisonous. And let me just say, for the record, that I know more than one regular E.F. Mass attendee who would completely agree.

The conversation at the blog, note, was about children, their tendency to melt down, the proper way to handle such things at Mass, and the occasional need for a priest, deacon, team of ushers etc. to have an action plan by which the sometimes-clueless parents of a banshee-impersonating toddler will gently and kindly be asked if, perhaps, Snookums mightn't be soothed in the crying room, vestibule, or secret soundproof nuclear bunker (kidding, kidding). It was not about how Christ would have driven the parents and screaming toddler out of His Holy Mass with a bull-whip if necessary so that the sensibilities of people who most emphatically don't need people (especially in Church!!!!) can be preserved in acrylic facsimiles of amber (because real amber is sort of oozing and full of icky impurities).

To such a person, a nun who counsels lighthearted smiles of understanding in these situations is the walking embodiment of the Smoke of Satan for failing to understand how terribly offended God is by the presence of less-than-perfect people at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

None of this is to say that parents whose children could serve as tornado warning systems shouldn't be reminded that there are options, should the small human tornado siren go off during Mass. But the sort of person who sits in judgment on the soul of a professed religious and feels competent to declare that she is willfully selfish and ignorant might just want to check his own eye for the jutting plank before offering Sister the tweezers for that little mote.

UPDATE: The commenter removed his comment castigating Sister, and, apparently, all of his comments. Interesting.

A two-way street

2011-10-18T17:17:00.005-05:00

I sometimes think that the gravest danger to the Christian duty to treat people afflicted with same-sex desires with the respect and dignity owed to them as children of God is going to come, not from traditional--and true--Church teachings about the grave moral evil of every homosexual sex act, but from the repeated and coercive attempts to force society to view homosexual acts as morally benign.

Case in point:

A Connecticut high school musical causes a public walkout after two men in the cast kissed during the performance.
It happened during the “Zanna Don’t!” musical at Hartford Public High School last Friday.

“There are always circumstances (in organizing these programs) under which the values of the student or their family come into play,” said Adam Johnson, principal of the Government and Law Academy at the high school, told CBS Connecticut.

He added that many students expressed a desire to skip the show due to the subject matter.

“It’s a balancing act of individual values and the expectations of the school … (and) it was interesting, actually, seeing the apprehension,” Johnson explained. [...]
During the show, two men in the cast share a brief kiss — a lip lock that became a great point of contention.
“There was a public walkout by a bunch of students (when the kiss happened) … mostly male,” Johnson said. “It was visually evident (due to the jerseys the team was wearing) that a lot of football players got up and walked out. It was almost a symbolic kind of thing.”

Reportedly, the school began receiving a great number of phone calls. The dean of students was even allegedly paid a visit by a Bible-wielding parent that spoke about homosexuals in an unflattering manner.

Oh, heavens. A Bible-wielding parent! Who dared to speak of homosexuals in an unflattering manner! In Connecticut! You can almost sense the hysteria.

The tone-deaf school officials go on to display their complete ignorance over the reason for the push-back by some students and parents to yet-another attempt to force acceptance of homosexual activity as normal:

And with Spirit Day – a holiday during which celebrants promote awareness and widespread acceptance of the LGBTQ community – coming up on Oct. 20, the timing seemed perfect.

“Through humor … and music, we’re able to address uncomfortable topics and very serious issues for many,” Provenzano said.

“Most change that comes about does require a certain amount of movement through the uncomfortable – the change process can be a bit messy and disruptive,” Ted Carroll, president of Leadership Greater Hartford, told CBS Connecticut.

After the performance, a talk back session was held to promote a dialog between students, administrators and moderators, and materials were handed out for those seeking more information about issues that affect the LGBTQ community.

Here's a hint: when students start walking out of school plays that promote same-sex sexual activity, maybe students haven't bought into this whole "change process" thing. Maybe, just maybe, they're even getting a bit tired of being told on a near-constant basis that while it's just fine to make fun of "Bible-wielders," it's never okay to point out that, quite likely, more than 95% of the student body is heterosexual and doesn't really find same-sex kissing all that entertaining.

I think that the efforts of educators to force school kids from elementary grades on up to ponder their sexuality, question their orientation, eradicate heteronormativity, support gay "marriage" and other idiocies, and wallow in the notion that every bad thing that has ever happened to any same-sex attracted person has been the fault of insensitive bigots who just won't accept him/her for who he/she really is may quite likely backfire. After all, some critics of the DARE program say that this effort to reduce drug abuse has led to greater drug use; and anybody who has ever been around actual children knows how often a program to get them to stop doing something (bullying, drug use, etc.) will actually make them want to do more of it.

And that would be a bad thing, because even if someone is severely tempted to commit gravely evil homosexual sex acts, he or she is still a child of God and deserves to be treated like one. That doesn't mean that we lie to the same-sex attracted members of our society and tell them that there's nothing at all wrong with perversion; if we really care about them, we won't spread such a damaging lie that will not only kill their souls, but will also quite likely damage their bodies and shorten their lifespans. But it does mean that we avoid actual bullying and dehumanizing acts and speech, and teach our children to do the same.

It is, however, a two-way street. If same-sex attracted people can't understand that a play shown to children as young as 13 or so which features a same-sex kissing scene is dehumanizing to the heterosexual majority who doesn't need to have such conduct shoved in their faces at every opportunity, then the chance we all have to learn to respect each other seems to be fading.

Dereliction of duty

2011-10-17T17:40:00.003-05:00

If you haven't been reading Rod Dreher's posts on the ugly situation involving Bishop Finn, Fr. Shawn Ratigan, and the diocese's mishandling of child porn found on Fr. Ratigan's computer, you really should be. Here are some of the posts so far:

Why Bishop Finn deserves indictment

Forgiveness as enabling behavior

What I wish every bishop would get

I left a lengthy comment beneath the first post. It had to do with this situation. Essentially, I learned a long time ago that many pastors (to say nothing of bishops) have an "us vs. them" mentality when it comes to the laity, and that even when the laity are completely right about something, some in the clergy--some, not all--will batten down the hatches and build a wall of resentment that their judgment was ever challenged. Failing to understand the clergy sex-abuse scandal in the light of that truth will make many scratch their heads and wonder how any human being could fail to react with outrage over child-porn photos on a priest's computer; but for far too long, bishops, pastors, and others went into "us vs. them" mode in these situations and saw their primary duty as the duty to protect the accused priest, not to protect the laity or the innocent children.

I can't say whether that was Bishop Finn's motive or mentality here, of course. But what I can say is that there is something deeply, drastically, horrifically wrong when in this day and age a diocese finds pornographic pictures of young girls on a priest's computer in December and doesn't get around to making any official notification of same to the police until May. Yes, others saw the pictures, and there are questions about why some of them didn't also notify police, and why they're not mentioned in the indictment. Fair questions, all of them. But either bishops are in charge of their priests and have the ultimate responsibility for them, or they don't. If the first is true, then we need to stop making excuses when bishops fail to act against clergy sex abusers. If the second is true, then there's no real need for a hierarchy at all.

I, of course, think the first is true. I think these situations involve, especially in the present age when the past realities about not knowing much about pedophilia, etc., no longer apply, a serious and grave dereliction of duty on the part of bishops. Christ appointed them to be the spiritual fathers of their dioceses, not enablers and protectors of those handful of priests who get up to criminal activities including the sexual abuse of children. By focusing on the latter, bishops are abandoning not only the laity, but every good and faithful priest as well, to the status of spiritual orphans.

The mind-bending self-absorption of adults

2011-10-13T12:33:00.002-05:00

Don't miss this, from The Deacon's Bench: the Detacho dollhouse so preschoolers can play with divorced parent-dolls who go from happy to sad, from kissing to unable to kiss (due to the amazing power of magnets which can be turned to repel the dolls when Mommy and Daddy are frowning at each other!), and from an intact family unit to new groups of non-related adults and step-children who have to get along together in the newly arranged divorce-houses. Isn't that special?

No word on when the gay "marriage" option with same-sex partners will be available, but I imagine it's coming soon. At present, the biggest issue with the same-sex houses is probably whether there's a separate little apartment for the two daddies to entertain their extra boyfriends or not.

And, of course, there will have to be the "single-parent-by-choice" model, with a group of rotating partners all of whom want to kiss mommy or daddy, but only for a little while, and who don't split up the house when they leave; they just take their own baggage and/or electronics with them when they go.

I'm pretty sick of a culture in which the mind-bending self-absorption of adults who should know better wreaks havoc and suffering on the lives of children. The "Detacho" dollhouse ought to be called "Children's Hell-on-Earth," but then self-indulgent ex-spouses wouldn't buy it in their sick belief that the children will cope just fine with the shattering of the family, would they?

Marriage in the modern world

2011-10-12T18:41:00.003-05:00

There are two great posts out there today about love, marriage, and the alternatives thereto (which is how one English lit. professor of mine once described, with unerring accuracy, the plots of most British novels). The first comes from Rod Dreher:

I wish I could say I finished Kate Bolick’s superlong Atlantic article on reaching middle age as an uneasily unmarried woman, but I didn’t. It was way, way too rambly. Nevertheless, I highly recommend diving in and sticking with it as long as you can, because it raises a number of challenging questions about the way we live today. [...]

She made a hash of her own marriage prospects because she believed in the emotivist, consumerist idea that maintaining autonomy and maximal choice was critical to the good life. It is inconceivable to many Americans today that true freedom comes through limiting your freedom by committing to a worthwhile discipline, which entails self-giving and self-denial. It is a paradox of life, one recognized by Christianity, that by giving up your life, you gain it — but only, of course, if you give it up for something worth the sacrifice. In a way, Bolick is a more sophisticated version of JD Samson, the lesbian punk rocker I wrote about the other day who penned the HuffPo essay howling against the unfairness of life because she took advantage of her liberty to live exactly as she wanted to, and failed to get rich by so doing. Have cake and eat too juvenilia. [Link in original--E.M.]

In other words, women have been sold a big lie about having it all--but when they wake up and realize as they approach 40 that their prospects are shrinking and the idea of eventual wedded bliss on the horizon is looking like a mirage, they end up blaming not the culture's big push toward the triumph of individual autonomy over every other way of living, but something external, such as economics, the shortage of men with M.B.A's and six-figure incomes who actually want to marry 39-year-0lds, or some other such thing that has nothing to do with the sad, even tragic, choices they themselves have made during the course of their lives.

Continuing on this topic, Jennifer Fulwiler writes about how silly some marriage customs have become in a world full of cohabitating couples:

All this week I’ve been thinking about weddings. My husband and I recently celebrated our anniversary, and then Hallie Lord is hosting a little online party where bloggers are writing about their honeymoons. Reading through the stories of all these Catholic weddings and the ensuing celebrations reminded me of something I haven’t thought about much since my own nuptials: Many of our cherished wedding traditions make no sense with the new, secular understanding of marriage.

I was an atheist when I got married, and I held a common secular view of marriage: It’s simply a public statement that two people are going to stay together for the long term. That’s it. Quite a few of my friends got married around the same time I did, and we all shared this view. I don’t think any of us thought that our understanding of the institution of marriage was that much of a departure from that of the millenia-old Judeo-Christian tradition. Sure, some of us were atheists, but it was basically the same old thing, just without the God stuff. However, when we actually sat down to plan our big days, and started asking ourselves why we were doing all of this stuff, we were startled by what we found: Almost none of the time-honored traditions, practiced for generations by our forebearers, made sense anymore.

Jennifer goes on to list five specific customs that no longer make sense: honeymoons (because the couple is already living together and thus doesn't need time to adjust to life together), bachelor/bachelorette parties (because the couple is continuing their relationship, not beginning it), wedding registries (because the couple already has all of the stuff they need), dad walking daughter down the aisle, and "till death do us part," because neither of those really means anything in a postmodern world. In fact, there's really no need to have a wedding at all; the couple isn't changing anything, they don't promise anything they can't get out of later, and the only people who benefit are the Wedding Industrial Complex and the divorce lawyers.

Again, the glorification of the autonomous individual is at the root of what is wrong with marriage in the modern world. Without the concept of sacrificial love that subjugates the self to the beloved other, marriage means little. Selfish hedonism may be good for some things, but it's hardly the best basis on which to begin a family. And the modern people who forgot this would rather blame anything else but the exaltation of the Self for the failure of marriage.