The Future of Marriage

Douglas Kmiec is back in the news for his views on marriage, arguing that the state should completely get out of the marriage business. This is not new to those who saw his appearance on the Colbert Report back in April. Essentially, he seems to be arguing that Catholic moral principles and natural law have no place in public policy. I thought that Colbert did a good job of calling Kmiec out on his compromising of all things Catholic, while claiming to be a voice for Catholics.

For my part, I believe that the state has an abiding interest in supporting the most fundamental unit of society. The Church teaches that marriage is ordered toward the begetting and raising of children. If marriage, as a social institution, fails, it is the next generation that suffers. I shudder to think that my children could reach maturity in a nation where "marriage" has been defined into meaninglessness.

Watch more The Colbert Report videos on AOL Video

Gathering Storm

I am sometimes pessimistic about the future of marriage in America. While I can be certain that what the Catholic Church teaches regarding marriage will not change, I am much less certain that marriage, as understood by the Church, will remain a public institution protected by law.

Apparently, I'm not the only one worried.

Evil Geniuses

Buried near the middle of Odd Hours, by Dean Koontz, is a passage that deserves to be shared.

I have only a few times been in a position to overhear bad men conspiring to commit evil deeds, and on every occasion, they had been pretty much like Joey and Utgard. Those who choose to live criminal lives are not the brightest among us.

This truth inspires a question: If evil geniuses are so rare, why do so many bad people get away with so many crimes against their fellow citizens and, when they become leaders of nations, against humanity?

Edmund Burke provided the answer in 1795: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

I would only add this: It is also essential that good men and women not be educated and propagandized into believing that real evil is a myth and that all malevolent behavior is merely the result of a broken family's or a failed society's shortcomings, amenable to cure by counseling and by the application of new economic theory.

Rack, Shack, and Benny

Today's reading from Daniel, when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into the furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar always reminds me of two things. The first is a song that I was taught in elementary school. It was a public school, yet the two songs that I most remember were explicitly religious: "My Lord's gonna come in the mornin'; my Lord's gonna stay through the night. My Lord's gonna watch over me, and everything's gonna be all right." The other song was a Hannukah song: "Hannukah, oh Hannukah! Come light the mennorah. Let's have a party, we'll all dance the hora!" We would have an assembly in December where the whole school would sing Christmas carols, including Silent Night and Joy to the World.

But the other thing the passage reminds me of is the Veggie Tales story of Rack, Shack, and Benny. More specifically, the Bunny Song sung by Mr. Nezzar. It's catchy. It's viral. If you listen to it, it will be in your head for the rest of the day. I love it!

England's Slide

It's been about a year since Rowan Williams, the (Anglican) Archbishop of Canterbury caused a row by remarking that the imposition of sharia law in England was inevitable. Many people took his remarks to be an endorsement of Islamic law. I think that he was merely looking at the direction the tide was flowing and making a prediction about the future, unless the tide is reversed. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown "quickly distanced himself from the Anglican primate, signalling that British law must be based on British values." Then, to the extent that the population of England has increasingly Moslem values, the British law will reflect that, right minister? Isn't that pretty much what the Archbishop said?

Two items from this week document this slide in British law and policy.

The first is news that Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who produced a film critical of Islam, has been banned from entering England. Note that Mr. Wilders is a member of the Dutch parliament. The reason given for banning him is that he represents a "security risk." It seems that the British government is afraid that if Mr. Wilders enters the country, there could be riots by those who are defining the new British values. John Derbyshire over at The Corner notes that the chief spokesman for the Lebanese group Hizbollah was allowed to enter Britain last May. To the British government, a Dutch film-maker politician is a security risk while the front man for a terrorist orgnanization is not.

The second item concerns an English foster parent. It seems that a 16 year-old Moslem girl, after having been assaulted by a family member, was placed in foster care. While in foster care, she converted to Christianity and was baptized. This was done entirely on the girl's initiative.

'We had a multicultural household and I had no problems helping the young person maintain her faith of birth,’ she said. ‘I have always prided myself in being very professional in what I do. If something works for a young person, whether I agree with it or not, I am happy to support them in that.’

But the girl, whom the foster mother describes as caring and intelligent, defied expectations by choosing not to wear overtly Muslim clothes or to eat Halal food.The girl, whose interest in Christianity had begun at school some
time before her foster placement, also made it clear that she wanted to go to church.

The carer, an Anglican who attends a local evangelical church, aid: ‘I did initially try to discourage her.

‘I offered her alternatives. I offered to find places for her to practise her own religion. I offered to take her to friends or family. But she said to me from the word go, “I am interested and I want to come.” She sort of burst in.’

The British government, it seems, is being somewhat selective in which British values it is going to uphold.

You might be thinking at this point that this is all very interesting, but it's happening over on the other side of the Atlantic, half a world away. It's got nothing to do with us. To which I would suggest that, unless we are vigilant, what happens over there could be a portent of things to come here. Remember that British common law (at least as it used to be practiced) forms the legal foundation for much of the English-speaking world, including the United States. We like to think that the Judeo-Christian values of the majority of U.S. citizens will always protect the freedoms that we enjoy. However, a very vocal and active minority can wield considerable influence in just which (and whose) freedoms are given priority. One person's freedom of speech can be found to interfere with another's "freedom" not to be insulted. When we begin to lose sight of which freedoms are necessary to the funtioning of a free and democratic republic, then we'll begin to follow our dear friends on the other side of the Atlantic into the darkening night.

The Idiossey by Iowahawk

This post is not related to Catholicism in any way (did somebody just sigh in relief?).

Is this man hewn from Olympus,
Sent by Zeus to save our souls?
Or a plastic dashboard Jesus
In a car he can't control?

Will this Adonis save the planet?
Or is he fleecing golden sheep?
Ask another Muse tomorrow,
Hell if I know, it's all Greek to me.

Burma Shave

Iowahawk has written a wonderful parody. If you have twenty minutes to spare, it's well worth a read. There were several lines that had me laughing out loud.

Catholics Come Home

A few weeks back, I posted a video by and information about Catholics Come Home. Tom Peterson of Catholics Come Home was on Marcus Grodi's program, The Journey Home, on EWTN Monday night. You can access video of the most recent Journey Home program here. You can also listen to an audio podcast of the program here. The group is doing good work in calling lapsed Catholics back to the Church and evangelizing to non-Catholics and Catholics alike.

Here is a message and videos from the group.

Mozart by Candlelight

The Lima Symphony Orchestra is coming to town, and they will be presenting a program, Mozart by Candlelight, in our local church. You have to purchase tickets ($20 for adults, $10 for students) to attend the concert, which has some parishioners asking questions.

As far as I am aware, the only directly applicable Canon is 1221: "Entry to a church is to be free and gratuitous during the time of sacred celebrations." In other words, you can't charge a fee for the Liturgy. The commentary adds the following:

This rule, which follows from the right of the faithful to go to a church (c. 1214), applies to all liturgical celebrations. It does not apply at times when no liturgical celebrations are occurring, including special events, such as concerts, held in a church. In some churches of great historic or artisitic value a small fee is charged to tourists. Where that is the case, provision should be made for the free entry, at least for some period each day, of those who wish to pray before the blessed sacrament (cf. c. 937).

Two footnotes are found in the commentary paragraph. The first notes, "A suggestion to make admission to churches free at all times was deliberately rejected in the code revision process." The second notes a letter from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments that suggested admission to concerts should be free, but left the decision to the ordinary.

I believe that this (from the Adoremus website) is probably the letter from the CDWDS. In the case of a church like St. Augustine, I believe that two ordinaries might be involved: the Archbishop of the Cincinnati Archdiocese and head of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood.

Ender's Game

One of the book titles on my daughter's 7th grade reading list was Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. For those who aren't familiar with the story, the basic idea is that in the future, after a war with an alien race, the nations of Earth join together to establish a training facility for children showing promise as military tacticians. They are preparing for the next war and searching for the best and brightest commanders. Ender Wiggins is a boy of exceptional ability.

I read the story first in its original form as a long short story. It was included in an anthalogy of military science fiction. It was a great story, and it deserved all of the attention that it got.

The author either decided or was persuaded to expand the story into a book. In going from short story to book, a lot of filler material had to be added, which I don't think really added anything to the story. If anything, it was a distraction that had to be waded through. Scenes were added that attempted to probe the psychology of the main character. The book was another big success.

Naturally, success builds upon itself. There was a whole series of books spun off from Ender's Game involving other characters and following Ender Wiggins. Some of these books were OK, but none were as good as the original short story. I found myself thinking that the well has been returned to a few too many times. Get some new material, already.

I am thankful that, as Catholics, our Church teaches us that public revelation is complete. There will be no new books added to the canon of scripture. We don't need any more. There won't be a fifth gospel exploring the psychology of Christ or the apostles after the resurrection. There won't be any material added to holy scripture deconstructing and revealing the details of the holy childhood or young adulthood of Jesus. Everything that we need is already there for us.

I am thankful for that.

A People In Darkness

This morning when I read today's gospel, the thought suddenly came very clearly to me: this applies to us.

The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death light has arisen (Matthew 4:16).

I vacilate between thinking that the United States is becoming a godless wasteland and thinking that, for all our faults, most of the U.S. is still a nation with the soul of a church. It sometimes seems to me as though there are two Americas that are on divergent paths. Just today, my wife commented to me that she didn't remember so many homosexual couples being featured on HGTV. We have become numb to the fact that we are surrounded by a decadent culture, and the signs of hope (e.g., values voters from one election cycle) are likely to disappoint.

I have to wonder sometimes whether I'm blinding myself to the horror by hiding in a small town where most people still have strong values. I can say that I am protecting my children from a dangerous world, but the influences still come in the form of cable TV and school reading lists. So we constantly have to monitor what they're watching and interrogate them (that's what it feels like) regarding their school friendships and classroom activities. We tried homeschooling, and came to the realization that we just couldn't do it anymore. I salute those who can.

The segments of the population who do not know God sit in darkness, and even many of those who do know God sit idly by while the darkness encroaches upon them. The shadow of death looms ever larger with the threatened passage of the Freedom of Choice Act and an almost filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I hate to be partisan, but only one of the major parties supports a virtually unlimited "right" to abortion. I can take no comfort in the fact that my fellow Catholics are indistinguishable from the rest of the population with regard to how they vote, divorce, and abort their babies. After years of believing that the culture of death was slowly being eroded (at least with respect to surgical abortion) it appears that it could all be undone with the stroke of a pen.

The annual celebration of Christmas gives us a chance to see a great light. To experience an epiphany, revealing that God loves his human creatures to the point of becoming one of them. The annual March for Life is coming up in just a few short weeks, and I suspect that the pro-life movement will be energized to protect the lives of the innocent unborn. Voters in many states are still willing to defend traditional marriage and want to see it codified in law. There are reasons for hope.

But we must not be blind to the darkness.

Christmas Continues

Christmas is over now . . . or is it? On the day after Christmas, I turned on the radio to a station that had been playing nothing but Christmas music since Thanksgiving. There were no more carols. With temperatures near 65° F today, I expect that many will use this brief respite from Winter to remove their outdoor decorations. The struggle at our home on the day after Christmas is to get all the gifts put away—not to abolish all signs of the holiday (the decorations stay up!), but rather to allow us to walk through the house without stepping on things not meant to be stepped on and to allow the baby to play on the floor without us having to constantly check whether she’s sticking tiny little toy pieces in her mouth. The clutter raises our stress level more than anything!

And yet, thankfully, there are signs that the holiday continues. The kids will still be home from school next week. The week between Christmas and New Years Day (The Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, if you prefer) is always just a little more relaxed, and another extended weekend adds to the holiday feel. Breakfast will include waffles on the new waffle iron, and the kids (especially nine year-old Catherine) will bombard us with steady requests to play family games, half of which unfortunately end in sibling squabbles which leave me grinding my teeth or worse.

And there are hopeful signs outside of our own home. Although the all-Christmas station has returned to their usual fare, I was still able to catch some carols on the country music station out of Dayton. When my daughter Erin was born on January 5th six years ago, I remember seeing a Nativity scene on display at the nurses’ station and giving thanks that someone there understood the season. [UPDATE: There goes my memory again. It seems that Erin was born on the 10th of January rather than the 5th, which means that the Nativity scene at the nurses' station was still up a few days after Epiphany.]

Christmas continues. May the joy of the season when angels proclaimed peace on earth and goodwill to men find a home in our hearts.

What Christmas Is All About

Kiss a Wookie!

This a cappella Star Wars tribute to John Williams has been on my brain for days now.

Not Quite Like Elizabeth

When I saw the headline last week about a 70 year-old woman giving birth, my first impulse was to send a quick email to a friend with 11 children whose mid-forties wife is expecting number 12. Looks like she could have another 25 years of fertility, I was going to say.

But I paused to read the story and found that the conception was not exactly natural. Rather, it took place through invitro fertilization. I feel for those who have not been blessed with children, but I'm certain that it didn't happen this way with Sara, Hannah, or Elizabeth.

I know that much of the world, even those who profess to be Catholics, do not accept the Church's moral position on life issues such as invitro fertilization, contraception, and abortion. I pray that hearts will be softened to see that children are not a "right"; that sex, marriage, and parenthood are intimately connected; and that every human life has inherent dignity.

The Roller Coaster

My eighth grade son's language arts class (back in the day, we called it English) has been reading The Giver, by Lois Lowry. The back jacket for the book gives this description:

Jonas's world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the community.

When Jonas turns twelve, he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now it's time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back.

I tried talking to my son about the book, and what kind of class discussions they have. It seems that in the book, nobody has any feelings. Only certain women are selected to have babies, and then only one or two. There are no thirds. If a woman has twins one of the babies is killed. That got my wife's attention. The people in the book have basically turned their whole life over to central planning. There is no sadness, but there is also no joy.

This sounded to me an awful lot like the premise of a B science fiction movie that I had once watched. All that I could remember about the movie was that Boromir (okay, it was actor Sean Bean, who will always be Boromir to me) died in an early scene. I went to imdb.com and found that the movie I was remembering was Equilibrium. The plot summary from imdb:

In a futuristic world, a strict regime has eliminated war by suppressing emotions: books, art and music are strictly forbidden and feeling is a crime punishable by death. Cleric John Preston (Bale) is a top ranking government agent responsible for destroying those who resist the rules. When he misses a dose of Prozium, a mind-altering drug that hinders emotion, Preston, who has been trained to enforce the strict laws of the new regime, suddenly becomes the only person capable of overthrowing it.

I'll bet you can guess what the moral of both stories ends up being. It's a sentiment that I think was best summed up in Parenthood:

We Are The Catholic Church

Catholics Come Home is an apostolate reaching out to former Catholics, non-practicing Catholics, and non-Catholics. They say that their mission is to create "effective and compassionate media messages and broadcasts them nationally and internationally, in order to inspire, educate and evangelize inactive Catholics and others, and invite them to live a deeper faith in Jesus Christ, in accord with the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church." It sounds like a good cause, and I look forward to seeing some of their advertisements on national media.

This is one of their videos, titled "Epic." At the website, documentation is available for every one of the claims made in the commercial.




(H/T Rich Leonardi)

School Reading List

One morning this week, I noticed a paper that my seventh-grade daughter had brought home from school. All of the students were going to be required to read four books in the next six weeks, and the group of students who read the most books would be rewarded. There was a catch: all of the books had to be from the list. Naturally, I started looking over the list. I only recognized two of the books, and one of them alarmed me: The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman.

There was quite a bit of discussion about Pullman's books last year when a film version of The Golden Compass was released in theaters. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops withdrew an originally favorable review. The Golden Compass is the first book in a trilogy which has been described as The Chronicles of Narnia for atheists. Pullman himself has admitted that in writing the books, he was hoping to introduce children to atheism by denying the existence of God and portraying religion as evil.

I'm finding that the culture war is knocking on my very own door, here in the middle of nowhere! I cannot shirk my responsibilities as a father, and yet my own 13 year-old daughter refuses to understand why I have to insist on knowing what she and her siblings are reading. The battles that I have to fight for the souls of my children are the ones that hurt me the most.

Advertising Christ

My wife, in her life before marriage and motherhood, studied advertising. I remember having conversations with her about it when we were dating, and she would tell me that an advertisement could be memorable, but if you didn’t remember who the advertisement was promoting, it had fundamentally failed in its purpose.

Some fifteen or more years later, I was listening to the radio in an all-too-typical bad mood when an extremely annoying ad came on the air. This was the type of ad that got Billy Crystal’s character in trouble in the movie City Slickers. I turned to my wife and snarled, “That ad makes me not want to shop at Meijer!”

In the interest of full disclosure, I have nothing against Meijer. I think their Thanksgiving ad in which a woman calls the doctor because of something her husband ate (and then runs through a long, long list) is quite clever. We don’t normally shop at Meijer because the nearest one (as far as I know) is in Troy, about 40 miles away.

My point is that name recognition in advertising can work both ways. An annoying ad or a bad experience can drive us away from an enterprise just as surely, or maybe even more so, than a good ad or a pleasant experience.

Are we aware that we are walking, talking advertisements for Christ and his Church? The popular anecdote about St. Francis of Assisi is that he preached the gospel, and when necessary, he used words. One of the biggest impediments to people accepting Catholicism is the apparent contradiction between what the Church teaches and how the members of the Church live their lives. I am as guilty of that as anybody, and on a personal level I find it deeply frustrating.

One of the things that I pray regularly is that I might not be a source of scandal – an obstacle to another person’s faith. Because whatever good things we might say with our lips, it only takes one moment of weakness for another to look at our bad behavior and say, “He makes me not want to be Catholic!”

My Brother, My Captain, My King

The scene of the death of Boromir from The Fellowship of the Ring comes to my mind every year on the occasion of the Feast of Christ the King. This is one of those rare instances where I think the film improved upon the book. Tolkien's account is brief:

Aragorn knelt beside him. Boromir opened his eyes and strove to speak. At last slow words came. "I tried to take the Ring from Frodo," he said. "I am sorry. I have paid." His glance strayed to his fallen enemies; twenty at least lay there. "They have gone: the Halflings: the Orcs have taken them. I think they are not dead. Orcs bound them." He paused and his eyes closed wearily. After a moment he spoke again.

"Farewell, Aragorn! Go to Minas Tirith and save my people! I have failed."

"No!" said Aragorn, taking his hand and kissing his brow. "You have conquered. Few have gained such a victory. Be at peace! Minas Tirith shall not fall!"

Boromir smiled.

"Which way did they go? Was Frodo there?" said Aragorn.

But Boromir did not speak again.

In a moment of weakness, Boromir tried to seize the one power that he thought might save his people, although he had been warned of the folly of thinking that any man could control the power of the ring. He atoned for that failure by sacrificing himself, trying to defend Merry and Pippin, and summoning the rest of the fellowship. Aragorn recognized and respected Boromir's contrition. In the film, Aragorn's self identification with the people of Gondor, elicits the declaration of acceptance and loyalty from Boromir, who had previously regarded Aragorn as an outsider with an illegitimate claim to the throne of Gondor: "I would have followed you, my brother, my captain, my king!"

How often have I failed in weakness to temptation, thinking that I could control a power akin to the ring? Am I doing what I can to atone for those failures, defending my family from the assault of a toxic culture? Have I truly recognized Christ as my brother and King? I cannot help but admit that He deserves much more than I have given Him.