Little Faith

Today's Gospel (Mt 17:14-20) contains some of the most mis-applied words of Christ in the whole Bible, and begs for a canonical reading within the context of everything else that the Bible contains. In the passage, the disciples are unable to cast out a demon and ask our Lord why. "Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

I know a woman who has lupus. Other members of her Pentecostal community have told her that if she just had enough faith, she wouldn't be sick. I know a man with hemophilia. He was told by a Catholic "evangelist" that if he asked to be healed with sufficient faith, that he would be healed. She still has lupus, and he still has hemophilia. I don't think that necessarily says anything about their faith or lack thereof.

There are counterexamples within the Bible indicating that those who read the passage this way are misinterpreting the text. Consider St. Paul. He wrote to the Corinthians, "Therefore, that I might not become too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an Angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, be he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.'" (2 Cor 7-9)

Job was full of faith, and he was blessed by God with family and possessions. But God stripped them away. He loses his property and his children, and his body is stricken with disease. Yet, Job remains faithful.

Jesus himself offers the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, in which the faithful Lazarus dies as a diseased beggar (Luke 16:19-29).

So, while today's gospel does indeed emphasize the need for and the power of faith, it should not be read in isolation from the rest of the Bible. God wants us to accomplish great things, and we must trust that he will not abandon us. As St. Paul says in Romans 8:31, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" But God often chooses to work through weakness. His ways are not our ways, and we can't always understand what He's up to. If what we ask for isn't part of his plan, we won't get what we ask for. On the other hand, if our will is attuned to his and we have faith, then nothing can stop us.

Lex Credendi

Ever since earlier this year, when Pope Benedict XVI smoothed the path for Anglicans unhappy with the trajectory of their denomination to return to full communion with Rome, there has a been a steady trickle of stories about impending conversions. The latest story involves 15 Anglican bishops who acknowledge that many Anglicans appear ready to make the jump. For all those who come back across the Tiber I say, welcome home. We’re happy to have you back. However, there are some things that you’ll need to check at the door.

What bothers me is the possibility that this is all due solely to proposals by the Church of England to ordain women as bishops. These people stuck with the Anglicans through acceptance of contraception, divorce and remarriage, homosexual marriage, female priests, and openly homosexual priests and bishops, but female bishops are just too much for them? They didn’t have any problem rejecting papal authority or the invalidity of their ordinations or clerical celibacy before, but all that changes when a woman is named bishop?

Now, however, they can come home to Rome and still worship according to the Anglican rites and the Book of Common Prayer. Does that trump all of the doctrinal difficulties? There is a commonly cited Latin phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi, which is often translated as the law of prayer is the law of belief. For these converts, the orandi part is not changing. Is the credendi?

What I fear is that the new Catholics will have come for the wrong reasons. Rather than running to the bride of Christ, the will have been running away from some corrupted simulacrum of her. Rather than shedding their old, erroneous beliefs, they will try to bring them along. “Yes,” they will say, “I’m Catholic now, but I don’t really believe all of that medieval stuff.”

I sincerely hope that I’m wrong, and that we really do see an influx of souls entering into full communion, even if they do retain an attachment to the Book of Common Prayer.

Jonah's Idioms

I generally enjoy the writing of Jonah Goldberg of National Review and the American Enterprise Institute. He usually manages to mix irreverence with clear thinking in a humorous way that incorporates lots of elements of popular culture. He is also capable, when he wants to, of writing very seriously. I’m just now finally getting around to finishing his great book, Liberal Fascism.

A few years ago, Jonah wrote a column, The Tyranny of the Clichés, in which he argued that many members of the commentariat over-use the cliché. It has, he wrote, become a substitute for argument, and those who resort to them are taking a dangerous short-cut. I’m paraphrasing here, and it’s always possible that I’ve misunderstood what he was actually saying. We shouldn’t always assume that a cliché is true.

If clichés are subject to abuse, then surely metaphors and idioms are as well.

I’ve noticed that certain idioms seem to be getting used with increasing frequency by Mr. Goldberg. This was acceptable when the recurring term was “feckless crapweasel,” a phrase that was practically synonymous with those upon whom Jonah was heaping his duly-earned scorn. But he’s sprinkling other phrases into his columns that, frankly, are distracting me from whatever point it is that he’s trying to make. If another commentating is making an argument (or an assertion without an argument) based on faulty logic, it’s “nonsense on stilts.” If people are getting excited over what Jonah considers to be a minor matter, they’re “getting their dresses over their heads” over something that’s “not worth going to the mattresses” over. On the other hand, if Jonah thinks it is important, he’ll fight “hammer and tongs.”

I don’t mind idioms or memes. I use them myself, because they often evoke a complicated idea in a few brief words. But they only work for a targeted audience which is able to recognize and follow the reference. Since I write for myself, I don’t have to worry about whether anybody else can understand what I’m saying. As long as I understand it, my target audience is satisfied. Jonah’s audience, on the other hand, is huge, and just because he might know what he’s saying doesn’t mean that his audience does. And that’s just annoying.

The Zombie Within

Way back in my formative days, a zombie was a 2 HD undead creature easily turned by a mid-level cleric. If you understand that sentence AND you read my blog, then either you weren’t as damaged by the experiences of your formative years as many people warned or you picked up a helm of opposite alignment somewhere along the way. Since those years, zombies have arguably seen even more success in the popular culture than even vampires (which were also undead, but much harder to turn). All those other undead (skeletons, ghouls, ghasts, ghosts, specters, wraiths, and especially liches) must be terribly envious (at least the ones that can think).

Zombies have become so popular in film that they now have their own genre. The slow-moving, dim-witted animated corpses with a hunger for brains weren’t menacing enough, so Hollywood turned them into viral monsters, sometimes with the ability to jump and climb walls (I’m thinking here of Resident Evil and I Am Legend zombies). What is common to zombie movies is the massed horde nature of the zombie attack. No matter how many you drop, they just keep coming, threatening to overrun the entire planet and wipe out the human race. Discussions abound (seriously!) on how to survive the zombie apocalypse and defeat the zombie horde.

I am a zombie…

Whoa! Put down the shotgun! I’m only speaking metaphorically. Sort of.

St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him though baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father , we too may live a new life.” You know what I’m talking about: it’s the whole death to self and life in Christ thing. The zombie part comes in when my self won’t stay dead. Just like the worst of the horror movie villains (Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers – take your pick) I just won’t stay dead.

Every time I think I’ve finally put a stake through the heart of my selfish desires (I know, the stake through the heart isn’t zombies, it’s vampires) and can live happily every after as a good Christian, the beast that is me comes roaring back to life. I have discovered that the second rule of zombie combat is iterative. For the uninitiated, the second rule is double tap: if you shoot the monster, and it falls apparently dead at your feet, you don’t go over and poke it with your toe, and you definitely don’t drop the gun to embrace the helpless woman you’ve been protecting – you put another slug in it. The iterative part is that you can never stop putting slugs into it. If you understood the 2 HD zombie that I started the post with, then you’ll also understand that this is like the classic troll – it regenerates.

So maybe I’m really a troll.

Wait just a second, though. I said that the common element in the zombie movie genre was the massed attack by a horde. I’m not going to suggest anything like multiple personalities, but certainly there is a figurative horde of vices, sins, and imperfections that have to be dispatched one at a time, and sometimes it seems like there’s some double-teaming going on. You drop the zombie to your right, forget to double tap before turning to engage the zombie on your left, and before you know it, the zombie you thought was slain is on your back, trying to gnaw through your skull to the tasty brains within.

Oh, how I wish that it didn’t have to be this way. I wish that I could just nuke it from orbit (to switch metaphors yet again) and just incinerate the whole horde. I wish I could just set the fundamental option switch to “Christ” and live happily ever after rather than having to continually modulate frequencies ala Geordi La Forge. I don’t know whether everybody’s an undead troll at heart, or just me.

What I do know is that, although I might be splattered with zombie juice and occasionally lose my footing, I haven’t forgotten that I’m still human, and that my humanity has been redeemed by a perfect atoning sacrifice. A sacramental armory assures that I won’t run out of ammo, so that battle will continue as long as I have the will to fight.

Bring on the zombies!

Don't Do That!

Over at the First Thoughts blog, Joe Carter posted on Friday an admittedly subjective list of things a man should never do. I am guilty of some of them.

I admit that I enjoy playing video games. After a long day in the cubicle, it can be remarkably soothing to sit down to a good first-person shooter. It is necessary, however, to set time limits, because the temptation is always there to play just a little longer in order to complete the next objective. The real fun, as noted by one of Joe’s commenters, comes from playing with my kids. Split-screen co-operative or head-to-head play is a blast. I find these interactions to be much more enjoyable than board games.

I am also guilty of cutting my own hair, although I am at a complete loss as to why that’s on the list. I cut my own hair because (a) it saves money, and (b) nobody else does it right. This just might be the one thing that I can do for myself with more satisfaction in the result that if I had paid someone else to do it. Where is the shame in that?

As for the first item: I reluctantly agree. Ultimately, it’s hard to come up with any good that can come from it. It ranks right up there with watching television – including sports broadcasts.

Wearing the Collar

The Catholic Education Resource Center has posted an article that originally appeared in the June 1995 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review concerning the wearing (or not wearing, as the case may be) of clerical clothing by priests. After quoting the relevant sections of the 1994 Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests, the authors (a monsignor and a priest) give 23 reasons why a priest should wear his collar. They then provide and rebut 14 common arguments against wearing the collar.

To priests who always wear the Roman collar we say: keep it up! To those who do not we say: take stock of the value which this seemingly insignificant piece of vesture possesses. Be aware that the priestly work you now do will not suffer but will be enhanced when you dress according to the venerable custom of the Church.

(H/T: Rich Leonardi)

Corapi in Cincy

A few people have asked me what I thought of Fr. John Corapi’s event in Cincinnati on Saturday. I don’t doubt that they expect me to say that it was great. The fact is, though, that I was disappointed. I fear that the man has become a rock star, throwing red meat to receptive audiences for the price of admission. From the moment he walked out on stage with a beard that was much too dark, I couldn’t help but think that something just wasn’t right. We were seated close enough to the stage that we didn’t need to rely on the jumbo-tron video displays, but his bald head and his black goatee kept making me think of his resemblance to Vladimir Lenin.

Fr. Corapi has evolved. In the older programs shown on EWTN, he is often seen wearing a gray habit, and as he speaks, you can see a twinkle in his eye. There was no twinkle in the eye of the hard man that spoke at the Cintas Center on Saturday. The gray habit was long ago replaced by a pressed black suit and French cuffs.

During the course of the day, we learned that Fr. Corapi owns a home in northwest Montana which he paid for with a million-dollar lawsuit settlement. He drives a fast car with lots of horsepower and keeps a loaded .45 in the glove compartment. He also rides a fat boy Harley Davidson motorcycle, owns a boat of unspecified size, and vacations in Key West. He works out six times a week, twice with a female physical trainer, and has lost seventy pounds and increased his strength by a hundred percent in the past year. The weight loss prompted him, at his charitable best, to donate two large bags of “fat clothes” to the local Salvation Army. I can only assume that the donated clothes did not consist of old habits and clericals. I don’t know why he chose to share these personal bits of information, but they did nothing to enhance his credibility as a witness to the gospel.

The four talks that he gave during the course of the day (which will probably be available for purchase at the discount rate of $99 from his website in a week or two) were based on the social teaching of the Catholic Church. He did touch on most of the principles of that teaching. Much of what he said, however, amounted to prudential judgments, and, while I agree with most of those judgments, he presented them as being what the Church teaches. It would have been great material at a TEA party event, but this was hardly billed as a political rally.

The crowd was enthusiastic, leaping to it’s feet whenever Corapi took the stage and cheering whenever he spoke of the disincentives of socialism and when he referred to the government in Washington as “the big drug dealer.” He seems to be fond of St. Paul’s exhortation in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” Completely unmentioned was the practice of the early Christians, as related in Acts 2:44-45, “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.”

At one point, he recounted a meeting with Mother Teresa of Calcutta shortly before she died. She described to him all of her poverty, frailty, and dependence upon others. Then she described how God had established her order in over 500 houses and, through them, touched the lives of tens of thousands of dying and forgotten people in Calcutta alone. “Go”, she said, “and do the same!” Fr. Corapi seems to believe that he’s doing that through his preaching and his production company, but I can’t help but think that maybe he missed the point.

Unaffiliation

Patrick Madrid doesn’t seem to be holding anything back in expressing his disgust with the duplicitous life of Fr. Maciel, the posthumously disgraced founder of the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi. I can remember attending a Regnum Christi retreat or conference around the year 2000 when Mr. Madrid was in attendance. Having recently published his second or third Surprised by Truth volume and having appeared on EWTN, he was a bit of a celebrity. The Legionary priest who was going to give him spiritual direction joked that Patrick was going to convert him and put his story in the next book. I relate this anecdote only to point out that Patrick hasn’t always been a critic of the Maciel legacy. Like many of us, he was, at least for a while, fooled by appearances.

The veil was torn, however, and now the whole Maciel affair constitutes a festering wound on the Body of Christ.

Accusations of misconduct by Maciel had been present for many years, but could not be proven. In the absence of indisputable evidence and in light of the apparent good fruits produced by the order and the movement that Maciel had founded, the accusations against him were dismissed as calumnies – baseless charges leveled by enemies of the gospel. The problem is, at least some of the allegations now appear to have been true, and it was the defenders of Maciel who were calumniating his accusers.

A year after Maciel’s death in 2008, it was revealed that he had lived a double life and had fathered at least one child. All those who had previously been encouraged to look to him as an example of holiness and tireless devotion to Christ were thrown into a state of spiritual turmoil and forced to re-evaluate everything that they thought they knew about their service to the Church through the Legion or Regnum Christi and everything upon which Maciel had left his mark. Some within the movement insisted that the approval of the order’s constitution by the Holy See was imbued with a degree of infallibility and that, as flawed a man as Maciel was, the Holy Spirit could still work through him to produce a great gift for the Church. Last year, the Vatican conducted an Apostolic Visitation of the Legionaries of Christ. A statement released by the Vatican at the conclusion of the Visitation noted that Maciel’s was “a life devoid of scruple and of genuine religious sentiment.”

I’ll leave it to others far more clear-thinking than I am to discuss what the future might hold for the Legionaries and Regnum Christi. George Weigel seems, to me, to be among the most lucid commentators on that front. However, over the last few weeks it became increasingly obvious to me that I needed to decide what, if anything, I would do. I found that I could not read the phrases “Maciel” or “Legionaries of Christ” or “Regnum Christi” without flinching.

The gospel reading from a few weeks ago was Matthew 7:15-20. When I read it, I was stunned into reflection upon the current mess. “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” Is this not an apt description of Maciel? “By their fruit you will recognize them.” When rotten fruit was presented to us, we denied it. We denied that it was rotten, or claimed that it came from some other tree. Then we pointed to the fruit that was still on the tree and claimed that it was beautiful and good to eat. Such good fruit couldn’t possibly come from a bad tree, could it? But Our Lord continues, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”

So there you have it. If I were speaking to any other person, I would advise him to steer clear of any fruit from a bad tree. It isn’t necessary. There are plenty of good trees to pick from, so why take a chance? Are you going to trust yourself to discern the goodness of the fruit when you and so many others were wrong about the tree?

So what stopped me? It can only be the thing that brought me into the Regnum Christi movement to begin with – the individual persons with whom I share a common theological perspective and a desire to see an authentic gospel proclaimed. They are my friends, and I want them to remain so. I very much enjoy our discussions, and I feared that if I were to leave the movement I would find myself – alone. (Except for my dear wife, of course, who is shackled to me for better or worse.) I already feel like an alien in my parish, and if I had to give this up, I would be completely on my own, or so it seemed.

What attracted me to the movement is not unique to the movement, but was largely borrowed from other sources and packaged together as a collection of best-practices. There is no other group in our area, as far as I am aware, that offers the kind of interaction that occurs at our Encounters (in which we reflect upon the Gospel and discuss a case of life) and Study Circles (currently Jesus of Nazareth, by Pope Benedict XVI) or the spiritual depth of the retreats (other retreats that I’ve attended have been distressingly shallow). However, I could not ignore the counsel of Christ. Whatever apostolic zeal I once had has already been greatly eroded by the scandal, and I didn’t see how it could return if I remained within a movement founded under such circumstances. There will forever be a cloud of uncertainty and doubt over the order and movement, thanks to the actions of the one who was called Nuestro Padre.

And so, what began with a letter requesting incorporation into the Regnum Christi Movement ends with a blog post announcing that I cannot, in good conscience, remain a member. I harbor no ill will toward other members, whom I still consider friends. Nor do I think any less of them for coming to a different conclusion than I regarding their own future in the Movement. Many of them have experienced the Movement as a vocation. I never have. I hope that they can understand and respect my decision.

Slinging Mud

My wife and I are going down to Cincinnati tomorrow for a conference being given by Fr. John Corapi, and somebody responsible for pulling off the even (the promoter?) is slinging mud. Is it too much to ask for a little class, charity, and authenticity from those claiming to be Catholic paragons?

Note that I am disappointed that it is virtually impossible to get material featuring Fr. Corapi without paying for it. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been spoiled by Catholic media outlets on the web that do not charge for their content, or at least offer some content free of charge (Mt 10:8).

The Rocks at the End of the Lake

Joseph Bottum, in Drifting Toward the Rocks, finds an interesting metaphor for life, and a lesson regarding complacence, in a trip to the lake with his daughter.

Then the man on the inner tube awoke with a shout as the rocks brushed his feet—sitting up suddenly, too hard and too fast, so the inner tube squirted out to flip up in the air behind him and dump him with a splash into the shallow water. I think it must have been painful—those broken stones down at the end of the lake are sharp—and he yowled, scrambling along on hands and knees after the inner tube, trying to stand up and stumbling each time as the rocks sliced at his tender feet, before he finally caught up with the spinning tube and surged across it, belly first, puffing like a loud and startled walrus.

Read the whole thing.

Allegorical Samaritans

The gospel for this Sunday (15th Sunday of Ordinary Time) was the Parable of the Good Samaritan. By happy coincidence, I just happened to be re-reading Chapter Seven: The Message of the Parables from Pope Benedict's book, Jesus of Nazareth. The Holy Father argues that we can't rule out reading the parables in an allegorical sense and we can't limit the meaning of the parable to just one salient point. He then goes on to give a more in-depth consideration to three parables, one of which is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In an allegorical sense and Christological focus, the wounded man is humanity, and the Samaritan is Christ.

God himself, who for us is foreign and distant, has set out to take care of his wounded creature. God, though so remote from us, has made himself our neighbor in Jesus Christ. He pours oil and wine into our wounds, a gesture seen as an image of the healing gift of the sacraments, and he brings us to the inn, the Church, in which he arranges our care and also pays a deposit for the cost of that care.

It just so happened as well that our celebrant at mass today was a visiting Comboni missionary who spoke about the missions in Africa. Africa was also a subject of reflection in Benedict's comments on the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

The topical relevance of the parable is evident. When we transpose it into the dimensions of world society, we see how the peoples of Africa, lying robbed and plundered, matter to us. Then we see how deeply they are our neighbors; that our lifestyle, the history in which we are involved, has plundered them and continues to do so. This is true above all in the sense that we have wounded their souls. Instead of giving them God, the God who has come close to us in Christ, which would have integrated and brought to completion all that is precious and great in their own traditions, we have given them the cynicism of a world without God in which all that counts is power and profit, a world that destroys moral standards so that corruption and unscrupulous will to power are taken for granted. And that applies not only to Africa.

Atheists Don't Have No Songs

I stumbled upon this little gem over at the First Thoughts blog, and thought it was amusing enough to share. There is a line that goes "Catholics dress up for mass and listen to Gregorian chants / Atheists just take a pass, watch football in their underpants." Alas, they give us Catholics too much credit. Around here, most Catholics (or at least those in white collar professions) dress less formally for mass than they do Monday through Friday for work, and I think that I would have to drive at least 45 minutes to reach a parish that uses Gregorian chant.

The atheists, though, have rock and roll.



H/T Joseph Bottum

Hosea

The non-Gospel readings from the Lectionary this week have been from the book of the prophet Hosea. Many years ago, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, did a series on the Old Testament Prophets for EWTN, and like so many other EWTN programs, the audio is available in MP3 format. In four of the episodes (Hosea’s Marriage; Hosea Puts Israel on Trial; Sins of the Past, Sins of the Future; and Yaweh’s Tender Love), Fr. Pacwa discusses Hosea – its context, its historical references, and its application to us today.

I encourage you to give it a listen to enhance your appreciation of this week’s readings.

A Blogger's Aphorism

I was listening to a segment of Uncommon Knowledge this morning when I heard something remarkable (and hence, I am going to remark upon it). Guests Mark Steyn and Rob Long were discussing Ronald Reagan with host Peter Robinson. As President, Reagan made substantial hand-written revisions to the speeches that were prepared for him. Before becoming President, Reagan wrote his own speeches, and it is evident in his collection of letters that he devoted considerable thought to developing a coherent philosophical world view.

Rob Long, at one point, utters an aphorism: "How do I know what I think until I see what I write?" This aphorism, more than anything, sums up very handily why I bother with this blog.

An Island of Western Civilization

It’s always nice to see one of your own views expressed by somebody that lots of other people actually pay attention to. I have, in the past, expressed (even if only to my dear wife) some of the rough similarities between the modern state of Israel and the Crusader Kingdoms of the 12th and 13th centuries. Israel is, as the Crusader Kingdoms were, a relatively small island of western civilization surrounded by a sea of Middle Eastern Islam. The Crusader Kingdoms lasted a few generations before falling to the armies of Saladin. The state of Israel hasn’t been around that long yet.

Ross Douthat pointed to some of those same similarities recently in a column (“Israel and Outremer”) for the New York Times, although he prefers to use the French term Outremer. It was nice to be able to read his words and think to myself, “Yeah, I already though of that.” Now if only I could think of a way to communicate it as clearly as he does. Please note that, by most accounts, the eventual demise of the Crusader Kingdoms was not entirely unprovoked. The only provocation required of Israel, it would seem, is its existence.

Gnip-Gnop Snap

One of my most vivid childhood memories of my father is, sad to say, not a happy one. Nevertheless, I find in it a measure of my dad's love and the pressure that he must have felt in providing for us.

I was the baby of the family, with three older sisters, the closest of whom was nearly six years older than I was (and am - she will always be nearly six years older than I). For Christmas one year when I was a child somewhere under ten (I might have been five, or I might have been eight - the memory's not clear on the age), we received a Gnip-Gnop game. Gnip-Gnop is, of course, ping-pong spelled backwards. The game was basically a plastic box with a transparent top. A divider with three holes separated the box into two sides, each of which had three paddles for launching the ping-pong balls within the box toward the divider. The point of the game was, I think, to get all of the balls onto the other player's side of the box. As you can probably predict, the game pretty much amounted to two players pounding furiously on their paddles, and it must have made a terrible racket.

My dad, a carpenter by trade, worked hard, especially in the summer. Construction opportunities often dried up in the winter, leaving him under-employed. He would try to make up for it by working longer hours and additional independent jobs during the summer. His only relaxation would come in the evening after dinner, when he could read the newspaper and watch the news or listen to his beloved Reds on the radio.

In the evening of my memory, Dad was trying to relax on the couch. It must have been in the latter half of the 1970s, when the U.S. economy and the whole world seemed to be going to hell. And it must have been shortly after Christmas, when Dad wasn't making much money and he and Mom were pinching every penny to pay their bills and support their family. My sister and I were on the floor, pounding away on the Gnip-Gnop when Dad just snapped. He got up from the couch, walked over to where we were, and kicked the Gnip-Gnop against the wall, leaving me and my sister stunned.

I don't remember what happened next - whether Dad returned to the couch or left the room - but I don't think that any words were spoken.

Why, you might be wondering, would I bring up a memory like this on Fathers Day, and even claim that it is evidence of the depth of a father's love? First, because this is the only memory of this kind that I have. Second, Dad's anger and frustration was directed at the game, not at us kids. Third, the timing and circumstances of the event, in retrospect, make what happened understandable, if not excusable.

In today's gospel reading, Jesus tells his disciples that they must take up their crosses daily. As I drove to mass with my daughters this morning, I reflected that I good homily point for today would be the way in which fathers are called daily to take up their crosses and deny themselves for the sake of their families. I saw my parents do that, and Jesus never said that the cross would be easy. It's not. As a salaried engineer, I've never faced the kind of shortages that confronted Dad nearly every winter, and yet I still find myself pressured by feelings of inadequacy when the bills come due. I don't do it as well as my own dad did. I've snapped at my kids many times, and I can only hope that those aren't the times that form lasting memories for my children. It is in fatherhood that I've truly come to appreciate my own father.

Happy Fathers Day!

Elisha's Oxen

For some strange reason, I used to hear or read 1 Kings 19:19-21 and picture poor Elisha in a field by himself behind a plow pulled by a team of twelve oxen. Every time I heard the passage, I would think to myself, "That's a lot of oxen to be pulling a plow!" Now it seems clear to me that Elisha was out there with at least eleven other guys, each pushing a plow that was being pulled by a pair of oxen yoked together. Elisha, as the son of the owner of the field, was not only supervising the others, he was working alongside them.



The thought that Elisha would slaughter a whole team of twelve oxen always seemed exorbitant and, yes, a little wasteful, especially with property that probably was not his, but his father's. However, in my new understanding, when he slaughtered his yoke of oxen, it was one twelfth of the total that his father had commited to the working of the field, and the people that ate from the sacrifice were the servants that he was supervising.

Swagger Wagon

Toyota has a creative advertising series for their Siena minivan. I even saw one that featured Victoria Stillwell (the dog trainer) that aired on Animal Planet. I have mixed feelings about the Siena family. The mom and dad seem very obnoxious and self-centered, but I still thought that the video below was hilarious.

With the backing of Toyota, the productin values in this parody video are excellent. I wonder whether there's anything like it for the Chevy Express 3500 (15-passenger) van club.

Swagger Wagon

The Unbearable Cross

Please let me apologize now, for I'm about to get curmudgeonly for the second straight post.

I must have unreasonable expectations because, like Rich Leonardi, I tend to have preconceived notions regarding how priests ought to dress, and I prefer that my priest look like a priest. Unfortunately, I've grown accustomed to picking up our diocesan newspaper to see pictures of priests and religious who are indistinguishable from any common lay person (or even a mild-mannered atheist). A few years ago, I underwent a personality profile for the Archdiocese. I had to drive down to Cincinnati to meet with a Franciscan priest to discuss the results. I went to an office in a commercial park, where I met a man with short cropped hair who was dressing in loafers, khaki pants, and a polo shirt. I never would have guessed he was a priest if I hadn't been told before hand.

Is there a persecution going on, about which I am totally unaware? This isn't Elizabethan England or Soviet Russia. I've never worn a Roman collar - is it really so uncomfortable that men who are eager to take up their cross and earn the privilege to wear it now can't take it off fast enough?

Fr. Charles Conner records many programs on Church history for EWTN. I clearly remember one program on St. Charles Borromeo. When he became a bishop and was placed in his diocese, he found that the formation and conduct of his clergy was badly in need of reform. Among the faults listed was a fondness for secular clothing.

It doesn't seem like that long ago when vocations offices were including the simplicity of the wardrobe among the benefits of choosing the priesthood as a career (maybe that career option focus was part of the problem). As a priest, you'll never have to think about what you're going to wear! Unless, that is, you're off-duty. In that case, you'll need one closet for your clericals and another for your "normal" clothes. Fortunately, you won't have to share your closet with anybody else!

There is a T-Mobile commercial that asks what it's customers want. It shows a priest standing in front of a sausage stand. "Unlimited texting," he says. "Why, you think we don't text? We do." The commercial works because you can see that he's a priest, even though he's not engaged in any kind of priestly duty. Remove the collar, and the scene falls apart.

In the film Saint Ralph, there is a young Salesian priest who, before becoming a priest, was an olympic runner. When Ralph wants to know why he gave up running, he says it is because Salesians don't run - they'd look silly doing it in cassocks. The young man loved running, but he saw his vocation to the priesthood as being far greater in value. (Note: it's been years since I've seen this movie, and it's possible that I'm misremembering the scene.)

As I said, I'm probably being completely unreasonable in suggesting that priests ought to dress in a way that identifies them as priests. But what do the bishops of the United States say?

Complementary Norm: The National Conference of Catholic Bishops, in accord with the prescriptions of canon 284, hereby decrees that without prejudice to the provisions of canon 288, clerics are to dress in conformity with their sacred calling.

In liturgical rites, clerics shall wear the vesture prescribed in the proper liturgical books. Outside liturgical functions, a black suit and Roman collar are the usual attire for priests. The use of the cassock is at the discretion of the cleric.

In the case of religious clerics, the determinations of their proper institutes or societies are to be observed with regard to wearing the religious habit.

Canon 288 exempts permanent deacons from the clerical dress requirements of canon 284. The national norm cited above was promulgated on November 1, 1999, with an effective date one month later. The norm was signed by the President of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops as well as the General Secretary, who at the time was Reverend Monsignor Dennis M. Schnurr. Schnurr is now the Archbishop of Cincinnati. That's him, in the photo below, on the right with Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk.

Corpus Christi 2010

So how was your Corpus Christi celebration? Mine was, sadly, about what I’ve come to expect.

The celebration of Corpus Christi was established by Pope Urban IV via papal bull on September 8, 1264. It was to be celebrated annually on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. The feast was further ratified by Urban’s successor, Pope Clement V and at the General Council of Vienne in 1311. Corpus Christi was explicitly established to extol the love of Our Savior as expressed in the Holy Eucharist. In many places, the celebration was transferred from the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to the second Sunday after Pentecost, and in modern times, the name was changed to The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ to emphasize that both the body and the blood are present in the Eucharist.

Clearly, the emphasis is Eucharistic – the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament and the love with which Our Lord gave us that enduring presence for our food.

Good liturgy not only makes present to us and allows us to participate in the sacred mysteries, it also, through the many signs incorporated into the rite, edifies us. Immersion in good liturgy is a form of catechesis.

I have to preface my statements of disappointment by noting that I attended mass on Saturday evening because I wanted to run in a 10K on Sunday morning. It is possible, though I have my doubts, that the Sunday masses were different.

In lieu of Psalm 110, which is intimately tied to the first reading story of Melchizedek’s offering of bread and wine, our “sung Psalm response” was based on Psalm 40 (“Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will”). Not that there’s anything wrong with Psalm 40, but it doesn’t have the same clear connection to the readings.

The wonderful sequence before the Gospel was completely omitted. The missal even allows for a shorter form of the sequence, but even that was apparently too much for our celebrant. I raved about the sequence last year (when I attended at a different parish) and used it as an opportunity for catechizing my own children.

The closest we came to hearing a homiletic word about the Eucharist was a blessing of the (Extraordinary) Ministers of Communion. There was next to no emphasis on the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Rather, the emphasis was placed on our generosity and sharing (yes, there was even a suggestion that the multiplication of the loaves might have been a “miracle” of getting people to share what they had brought, rather than a foreshadowing of the generous outpouring of God’s grace in the Eucharist) and relaxing (because Jesus had the people sit down) with one another.

No processions. No hint of Thomistic theology regarding the Eucharist. Was it valid? Sure. Did it satisfy my Sunday commitment? Of course. Was I edified or inspired? Eh, not so much.

Bartimaeus and Me

Reading the story of Bartimaeus is, for me at least, an occasion for introspection. I am Bartimaeus, but without his depth of faith. Bartimaeus is the blind man that Jesus encounters outside of Jericho. The story is related in the 10th chapter of the gospel of Mark, and was read this past Thursday.

Bartimaeus was sitting and begging when he heard that Jesus was passing by. I might be sitting in my cubicle at work or, worse, sitting at home idling time away in front of the television or playing games on the computer.

Bartimaeus recognized who Jesus was and called out to him. I like to think that I know who Jesus is, ut am I willing to call out to him, or is there an element of the Pelagian heresy in my personality. There is a part of me that thinks I should be able to overcome my faults on my own, as if the grace of God is wasted upon me because I don’t exercise the self-discipline, discernment, and docility to take advantage of it. What keeps one from calling out as Bartimaeus did? Is it some vague desire to appear respectable and self-sufficient? That’s not working out so well for me.

Those accompanying Jesus tried to quite Bartimaeus, but he only called out louder. Bartimaeus did not fear becoming a spectacle, and he persisted in the face of discouragement. Too often, I am turned away by the slightest resistance.

Jesus hears Bartimaeus and has his followers call him. The same people who were telling him to be quiet now tell him to cheer up because he is being called. It’s true, sadly, that members of the Church can be obstacles to reaching Christ, and yet He still chooses to act through them. Jesus could have called to Bartimaeus himself. He did not. As frustrating as our interaction with the Church might sometimes be, it is through His Church that He desires that we be saved.

Bartimaeus is already way ahead of where I would be. Now he jumps up and rushes to Jesus. There is no hesitation and no caution. I, on the other hand, am overly cautious, always wanting to preserve the option to go back, to minimize the risk. Were I in the place of Bartimaeus, I would be debating with myself about whether to call out in the first place, and would only reach a decision after the opportunity had passed and Jesus was out of earshot.

When Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants, Bartimaeus asks simply for sight – the healing of his infirmity. If only we all might know what it is that keeps us from the Kingdom, the rush unhesitatingly to Jesus to seek the cure. I think that I have some idea of where my greatest failures of virtue lie, and I think that I’ve asked in prayer to be relieved of these defects. That they remain whispers into my Pelagian heart that the fault lies with me, and therefore it’s up to me to bring about the change. I’m left precariously balanced between despairing of my own weakness and trusting that God’s mercy and grace can overcome it.

“Your faith has healed you,” Jesus tells him. I do believe Lord, increase my faith! I ask not for my own sake, but that your name might be glorified. I ask for the sake of my wife, my children, and all to whom I might be a source of scandal and an obstacle to closer communion with you. Fill me with a healthy hatred for the things that keep me from rushing to you and, like Bartimaeus, following you along the road.

Random Observations

A few random observations:

1. The older I get, the more my knees hurt after I run. At this rate, I'll be crippled by the time I'm 60.

2. Why is it that I'm always at least a day behind in any novena that I attempt?

3. Yahoo recently featured photos of 51 Miss America hopefuls (sorry, can't find a link). All of the pictures were "safe", yet not one gave any hint of clothing. In other words, every one looked like a head shot of a naked woman. Why?

4. There's a lot of Obama fear out there. Otherwise sensible people think that President Obama is going to destroy the United States. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, I take comfort in the man's executive incompetence. Even though his goal might be a post-American world without a super-power, he just doesn't have the organizational skill to make it happen. He will (and is!) certainly make a mess of things, and the clean-up will be long and painful, but it's not the end of the world.

5. The questions that need to be answered regarding the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: What caused the explosion? Was it the same failure that caused the malfunction of the cutoff device, or was it a separate, coincident failure? Was the failure (failures?) a design flaw or operator error? Are other rigs at risk? What could have been done to prevent this, and how do we ensure that it won't happen again? Did anybody act in a criminally negligent manner? And, of course, how do we recover and contain the leak?

6. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty is broken. As the club of nuclear-capable countries grows, where, when, and by whom will the first use be seen?

A Woman In Labor

My seventh child was born on Thursday. I now have two sons, sixteen years apart, with five girls in between. Michael and his mother came home yesterday

As sometimes happens when I try to follow along with what the Church is reading in the Lectionary, I read the wrong gospel. I didn't realize that it was the Feast day of St. Matthias, and so I read the gospel for Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter (John 16:20-23). It turned out to be rather appropriate.

When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. (John 16:21)

I asked my recently delivered wife if she could elaborate upon the verse for me. She just smiled and said, "Yeah, that's the way it is."

Attack of the Speculators

Bloomberg Businessweek reports on the $962 billion bailout (er, “loan package”) approved by the 16 nations that use the euro in an attempt to restore confidence in the common currency. Most of us ordinary people think that the euro is in trouble because of the incredible amounts of debt taken on by certain countries, especially Greece. Fortunately, we have reporters at Businessweek to set us straight:

Jolted into action by last week’s slide in the currency and soaring bond yields in Portugal and Spain, the 16 euro nations agreed to offer financial assistance worth as much as 750 billion euros ($962 billion) to countries under attack from speculators. The European Central Bank will counter “severe tensions” in “certain” markets by purchasing government and private debt.

Silly us. It’s not the debt that’s the problem, it’s the “speculators” who are “attacking” the currency. It seems entirely more reasonable to me to conclude that investors are making rational decisions to hedge against a looming catastrophe.

Bullets and Grenades

The Knights of Columbus Veritas series includes a booklet entitled “Becoming a Real Man of God,” written by Fr. Roger Landry. Fr. Landry also has a book which covers the same ground. [UPDATE 5/12: The book that I was thinking of was written by Fr. Larry Richards, not Fr. Roger Landry.] I don’t know which came first, that is, whether the book is an expanded form of the booklet or the booklet is a condensed form of the book. The booklet is available as a convenient podcast that can be listened to on any mp3 player.

At one point, Fr. Landry offers a very brief reflection on 1 John 3:16,18:

In marriage preparation, I often ask would-be grooms whether they love their fiancé enough to take a bullet for her. Never has one said no. Then I ask whether his answer would be the same if the bullet took one of the following forms: being abstinent before marriage; giving up smoking if she asks; being on time if his is habitually late; cleaning up after himself better; patiently telling her what happened that day at work if she requests it; learning the faith better to help pass it on to her more completely; or making the time and the priority to pray with her. These are the types of grenades on which many men refuse to dive. But these gifts of oneself are so much more valuable than almost any material gift one could give, and they are a far greater sign of real love than any ring could symbolize.

Yes, we men are called to a heroic level of virtue to which few of us rise. It is not so much that we refuse to throw ourselves on that particular grenade. It is more that the threat is cumulative and chronic rather than acute. The damage is done gradually rather than all at once. Further, the grenade is always there – it never goes off, and it never goes away. That, and not necessarily a selfish disregard for his beloved, is why many men do not react to the threats that Fr. Landry presents.

Exciting Times

I don’t usually offer my opinions on the secular news stories, but these are exciting times, and I mean that entirely euphemistically.

I am astonished by the public reaction to the law in Arizona that empowers state and local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration law. It’s not fascist to tell cops that if they think someone is here illegally, then can check their status and actually enforce the law. The issue for most of us who support the measure is not hostility to aliens (not ET – Stephen Hawking says we should be afraid of ET). Rather, the issue is national security and control of the borders. I don’t mind letting them in, as long as they use the gate and tell us who they are. I borders and citizenship don’t mean anything, the I guess I can go ahead and jump the fence to swim in my neighbor’s pool. I would like to see the criminal violence being executed by the Mexican drug cartels stay on their side of the border. Ideally, of course, the federal government would be securing the border, but they don’t seem to be too interested in performing that function. Lest anyone argue that I’m being partisan, I thought that the Bush administration did an equally lousy job of securing our borders and ports in the long aftermath of 9/11/01.

Not entirely unrelated is news that we’ve again gotten very lucky. We’ve been extremely fortunate that the Christmas Day panty-bomb and the Times Square car bomb were both duds that failed to go off. This is going to lull us into a false sense of invulnerability. We know that the enemy knows how to make bombs. We also had both of the bombers on our intelligence radar, and yet both came within a hair’s breadth of wreaking carnage on American soil. They also came here legally, and, in the case of the Times Square bomber, even obtained citizenship. If we have no border enforcement, then we can’t even hope to catch the incompetent terrorists at the gate, let alone those who are clever and shrewd. I was born in 1969, so I have no memory of 1968, when radical groups like the Weather Underground were planting bombs across the country that actually blew up. I don’t want to experience it myself.

Finally, after a year-and-a-half, it feels as though the other shoe is about to drop on the world economy, this time as the result of unsustainable government debt. Europe, specifically Greece, is leading the way. We hear that a bailout of Greece is required because all of the European nations are tied together through a common currency, and if Greece slips over the edge, all of the European nations that use the euro will be pulled down into the yawning chasm of devaluation. The problem is that the Greeks don’t care. They continue to demand that their government keep spending money on them that the government just doesn’t have. A bailout will only allow continued deficit spending, delaying the inevitable. Where Greece is going, Spain, Portugal, and the UK are headed. My sense (God, please let me be wrong!) is that Europe is about to implode, and what will be left when the dust clears is anybody’s guess.

Habitual deficit spending is a problem. Americans recently observed Cinco de Mayo, which commemorates an inconsequential victory of the Mexican army over the French army in 1862 (we Americans were a little busy killing each other at the time). Although the Mexicans won the battle, the French went on to overthrow the Mexican government and install a puppet emperor, who was likewise overthrown a few years later. The French did this because the Mexicans defaulted on their loans. We’ve got rampant deficit spending of our own, much of it financed by foreign powers like China. In our own country, California and New York are blazing a trail toward default, and the federal government appears unable to control spending. Our government will raise taxes before it cuts spending, then will feign confusion when the economy slips back into recession. Their response will be even more spending – ever higher deficits that will accelerate it down the path to collapse.

Exciting times indeed!

Don't Wake Me

My wife and I recently found ourselves out on the town with a half hour to kill before we needed to meet her parents for a dinner date, so we went to a local bookstore to browse for a bit. Having distinctly different tastes in books, she went her way and I went mine. I found myself standing in front of the history titles. I couldn’t put my finger on the reason, but as I stood there, I could feel my mood crashing.

I’ve grown up in an age of exceptional prosperity and security. Even with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads, it was always a theoretical possibility that never really touched us. It never happened. Because it’s all I’ve ever known, I tend to assume that such peace is normal. Reviewing history books suggests that the assumption is not a safe one to make. I find it hard these days to maintain a sense of optimism for the future. It feels as though we are waking up from a delightful nap and re-entering history. I’d rather go back to sleep, thank you very much.

The Limits of Pacifism

It’s stories like this one that lead me to occasionally question just how much I would be willing to tolerate in the name of peace. God placed limits on the legitimate vengeance of the ancient Jews. “An eye for an eye” meant that the response had to be proportional to the offense. It was an explicit repudiation of the philosophy espoused by Sean Connery’s character in The Untouchables: “If he puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue!”

Jesus came along and seemed to reject even the proportional response, exhorting his followers to “turn the other cheek” and “pray for your enemies.” All well and good, as long as all that your enemy wants to do is give you a wicked cross-face. However, in the face of what happened to this barber in Pakistan (follow the link above for details), I think that I might “aim to misbehave” in the fashion of Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

It’s one thing to let somebody knock your head around a bit. It’s another thing entirely when they intend to break both of your legs and gang-rape you. Now imagine that it’s not you, but someone you love (a parent, a spouse, or a child) that’s on the receiving end. Still feel like pacifism is the answer?

Yes, vengeance belongs to the Lord; but in such a circumstance, I would try awfully hard to be His tool.

The Marriage Market

In the May 2010 issue of First Things, there is an article (available on-line to subscribers only, for now) by Timothy Reichert that attempts to look at the effects of contraceptive technologies in socio-economic terms. Reichert argues that what was at one time a single mating market with roughly equal participation by men and women has since divided into two separate markets. The sex market is dominated by an over-representation of men and scarcity of women, whereas the opposite condition holds true in the marriage market. The relative over-abundance of women in the marriage market means that women have a disadvantageous bargaining position and therefore end up with lower quality marriages and spouses than in the past, when only one market existed. In other words, they are forced to settle for what they can get. From this, he concludes that contraception is bad for women.

I thoroughly agree that contraception is bad for women and for society, but Reichert’s socio-economic argument doesn’t come anywhere close to proving it. I would offer the counter argument that men who choose to vacate the marriage market in favor of the sex market would not have been the most stable husbands and fathers, and therefore removing them from the marriage market is a good thing. While the total population of men in the marriage market might be smaller, a larger proportion of that population would be fit for fatherhood. Further, that means that a man seeking marriage would have an improved bargaining position and, therefore, would not need to settle for a wife of lower quality. This is a good thing for the man who wants to raise a family.

While my wife might have had to settle for a husband who was only worth 50 cents to her dollar, my one dollar got me a two dollar wife!

Say What?

Sometimes, all I can do is shake my head and admit that I just don’t understand. That happens to me a lot when I try to read the Gospel of John. It’s not the entire gospel, mind you, just the extended discourses, where Jesus seems to say the same thin in slightly different ways five different times. Even after all of that, I’m still left scratching my head and asking myself, “What did he just say?”

Take, for instance, John 12:44-50. It’s the gospel reading from the Lectionary for Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter (today). There’s something there about belief, something about judgment, and something having to do with equivalence between Jesus and God the Father, but for the life of me, I can’t make mush sense of what He’s saying. I know that whatever it is, it has to fit in with the rest of scripture and with what the Church has infallibly taught through the ages. So the passage can’t possible be saying that as long as long as I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, none of my other sins matter. Belief carries with it some moral imperative, and we cannot know just what calculus God will apply at the Judgment when he separates the sheep from the goats.

I read passages like this, and I think, “It’s no wonder your disciples didn’t understand what you were saying to them.” I live in a post-Pentecost world. I’ve received the Holy Spirit through Baptism and Confirmation, and I don’t understand!

It’s almost enough to make me want to go and read Newman’s essay on the development of doctrine to see how the Church itself had to work through all of this.

My Addiction

I think I have a food addiction. The first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning is breakfast. I can’t go more than a couple of hours without craving the stuff. I routinely snack on sunflower seeds at my desk. In the post-lunch afternoon, attempting to abstain leads to severe drowsiness. I have to further admit that it isn’t just food. Almost every day, I drink a pot of coffee in the morning and a half pot in the afternoon. If I’m in an exceptional mood (good or bad), the afternoon coffee is replaced by a massive 44 ounce Mt. Dew from the soda fountain at whichever gas station is the most convenient.

I’m a mess, and it’s a condition that I know is not sustainable. Sooner or later, it will catch up with me. I don’t want to be like the guy in my office who, every day at lunch time, pulls out his carrots and celery and yogurt. I see that, and it makes me want to cry.

It seems like it should be so easy to just tell myself to exercise some self-discipline. My dirty little secret, though, is that I have next to no self-discipline. It’s kind of like saying that the first step to being a saint is choosing not to sin. It sounds so easy, and yet I still find myself crawling back to the confessional with the same list of transgressions again and again.

So, I’m out of the closet, so to speak. Even though I can run a 5K, that 40 extra pounds that I’m carrying around makes it a lot harder than it has to be. I need to make a change.

I’m not writing solely in physical terms, here. Over the last couple of years, I’ve discerned that my body and my spirit are united through my person. I don’t mean for that to sound mystical. What I mean is that where I’ve discovered a weakness of the will affecting my physical body, there’s usually an analogous weakness of the will that affects my spiritual life. I cannot remain a self-indulgent glutton physically while expecting to make any progress toward holiness, and by holiness I mean the kind of communion with God that was intended by our Creator. Unlike an angel, the human person has both body and spirit.

Having recognized the need for change, the next question is how to go about it. Do I quit cold-turkey, or wean myself gradually? I don’t know that the absolutist, cold-turkey approach could be maintained. It might work for alcoholics, but food is kind of fundamental to life. I’m going to go for the gradual wean, with a goal of management. I suspect that will be easier on those around me. My wife was relieved, this past Lent, to learn that I wasn’t giving up coffee, and it wasn’t because she drinks the stuff. I’m not sure about the spiritual analogy, though. It just won’t do to say, “I’m not going to stop sinning, I’m just going to sin less.” Yet, I think most spiritual directors would agree that trying to erase all of one’s faults at once is a recipe for failure. Pick the most glaring, they would say, and focus on that one.

The man that I am is not the man that I want to be. That’s not meant to be a statement of self-loathing. Rather, it is a recognition that I am far from perfect, and that improvement is possible and desired. I hope that I never reach a state where I think that improvement either is not possible or is not desired. The transformation that I’m looking for won’t take place without effort, and the sooner I begin, the better off I (and hopefully, those around me) will be.

I Got Forkus Prime!

Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say, echoing her patroness St. Therese of Liseux, that the secret of sanctitiy was not to be found in the doing of great things, but rather in the doing of little things with great love. I think that a corollary might be that the secret of joy is found not in rejoicing at the great momentous occasions, but rather in finding reasons to rejoice in the daily mundane occasions. It is the kind of sentiment that G. K. Chesterton wrote about in Orthodoxy:

It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship onto the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved from a wreck.

Any item that we handle during the day can be a source of joy and gratitude, some things even more so than others. I have a particular example in mind.

We have many forks in our silverware drawer. Most are inexpensive stamped steel. There is one fork, however, that stands out as having superior quality. From the heft, to the material, to it’s curvaceous form, that fork is definitely the elite of the fork drawer. I’ve taken to calling it Forkus Prime.

Forkus Prime has the uncanny ability to brighten my day. When I make my morning breakfast (not to be confused with afternoon breakfast or evening breakfast) and reach for a utensil, I receive a mini-burst of joy when I find Forkus Prime waiting for me. Moreover, I find that the joy persists beyond the moment. Even in the face of a grouchy, pregnant wife, my mood is elevated because “I got Forkus Prime!” It is amazine how I can be affected by such a simple thing.

I have considered splurging for a whole drawer full of Forkus Primes. I suspect, however, that the mini-burst of joy would become severely diluted. In plenty, I would find it exceedingly difficult to achieve Chesterton’s ideal of rejoicing in all things as though they were the only thing saved from the shipwreck. It is much better to play the lottery every time I reach into the drawer in the hope of finding the occasional Easter egg, however humble it might be.

I admit that I still have a long way to go. The ideal would be to rejoice in all the forks, not just Forkus Prime, and not just the forks, but the eggs, toast, and plate as well. I can sometimes accomplish this, provided that I’m already in a reasonably good mood.

Only Forkus Prime, however, has succeeded in changing my foul mood to fair, and for that I am thankful.

Channeling Chesterton

In the May 2010 issue of First Things, David Hart writes a review of the recently published 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. Predictably enough for a contributor to First Things, Hart is unimpressed by the arguments submitted by the new atheists for their disbelief. There was at least one paragraph that I particularly liked, in which Hart almost seems to be channeling G. K. Chesterton:

The principal source of my melancholy, however, is my firm conviction that today’s most obstreperous infidels lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefather in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that they are not skeptics at all and have purchased their atheism cheaply, with the sort of boorish arrogance that might make a man believe himself a great strategist because his tanks overwhelmed a town of unarmed peasants, or a great lover because he can afford the price of admission to a brothel. So long as one can choose one’s conquests in advance, taking always the paths of least resistance, one can always imagine oneself a Napoleon or a Casanova (and even better: the one without a Waterloo, the other without the clap).

Nuclear Dreams

Nuclear power has been getting renewed interest lately as a carbon-free source of energy. I agree that a nuke plant will (or should) produce energy without any atmospheric emissions. If you're worried about global warming and the greenhouse effects of carbon dioxide, then nuclear power should look pretty attractive.

I have some experience in dealing with spent nuclear fuel. It is some seriously radioactive stuff. It has to be handled and transported in big, expensive, and heavily shielded containers. It is commonly stored in large pools of water, for both shielding and cooling purposes. I don't believe that nuclear power will ever be implemented on a large scale in the United States because no political agreement can be reached on how to deal with the spent fuel.

The last best hope of the nuclear industry was going to be the storage facility under Yucca Mountain. That facility, which would concentrate the nation's spent nuclear fuel in one safe location rather than distributed across the country, was all but abandoned after environmental impact statements could only guarantee that there would be no leaks for 10,000 years. Instead, we end up with fuel stored in distributed pools that have a much higher chance of leakage.

Dreams of a nuclear future will remain nothing more than dreams until somebody solves the problem of spent fuel storage.

Red Letters

I have a friend who, when discussing the Bible, often refers to the words in red. Some publishers print the gospels using red ink for all of the words that are a direct quotation of Jesus. My friend believes that the words in red deserve special attention.

The gospel passage for Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter is John 3:16-21. I don't own a red letter Bible, but my Revised Standard Version published by Ignatius Press does not indicate that the passage is a quotation. I had always assumed, therefore, that it was inspired commentary by the evangelist John. However, my New International Version published by the International Bible Society (it was a gift) treats it as a continuation of the direct quote in John 3:10-15.

So, depending on which Bible you happen to pick up, the often-cited John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.") might or might not be written in red. It makes no difference to me, but for some, like my friend, it does matter. But how? Whether red or not, the words are inspired and inerrant, and even the words attributed to Jesus are subject to interpretation by translators working from manuscripts in a language other than that which was spoken. The words were spoken in Aramaic, the oldest manuscripts are in Greek, and we typically read them in English.

It might be interesting to argue over where the closing quote belongs, but I think that it's ultimately irrelevant.

Barriers to Faith

There was another conclusion drawn from that Knights of Columbus/Marist poll highlighted in April's Columbia upon which I would like to comment. Catholic millenials, while more likely than their peers to believe in God, are less likely to attend religious services.

These statistics raist important questions relevant to evangelization. For instance, what does it mean to say that faith is an important part of young Americans' lives, while they are nonetheless dissatisfied with their experience of religious institutions? What form must Christian witness take among priests and the lay faithful if young people are looking for spiritual answers, but don't think they can find them by going to church?

It is not without a sadness that I admit to sharing, to some degree, the sentiment of the millenials toward the institutional Church. I love the Church, which is the Body of Christ. It is a great tragedy that our experience of the Church often becomes an obstacle rather than a conduit to a grace-filled life of communion with God.

I have read many beautiful words about the liturgy. I have no doubt that every mass is a sublime mystery that affords us the opportunity to participate in the paschal sacrifice of Christ - his suffering, death, and resurrection - in a real and efficacious way. We are united with the entire Church - militant, suffering, and triumphant - in praising the Father with the Son through the Holy Spirit. I believe this to be true, but it's so hard to see past my own distractions and the mundane ordinariness of the liturgies as they are often celebrated. The glorious reality is hidden behind so many layers of humdrum and sloppy ritual that I have to keep reminding myself why I'm there and hoping that the grace penetrates through all of those layers. Only rarely is the liturgy of our common experience as edifying as it should be or could be.

Scandals in the Church come and go. The long Lent of 2002 was a painful period, and I had hoped that the blood-letting, however severe, would be quick. Yet here we are, eight years later, and sordid details from the disordered lives of figures representing the face of the Church to the world continue to surface. The Church, as a human institution, failed utterly in its moral responsibility. Bishops and diocesan officials have been revealed to be very capable of making erroneous judgments. Formerly revered figures like Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, have been exposed as frauds. The fact that even such authoritative and holy a figure as Pope John Paul II were misled leads to what Patrick Madrid has dubbed "the Maciel Effect." When no endorsement can be trusted, the only logical stance that remains is skepticism toward everything.

The barriers to faith seem to grown higher day by day.

Millenials and Marriage

The April issue of Columbia magazine features a report on a poll recently conducted by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion and sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. The poll focused on the moral and religious attitudes of the Millenial Generation, defined as those who came of age around the year 2000 and are currently between the ages of 18 and 29.

The poll results reveal that millenials place a high value on spirituality, marriage and family. Their top two long-term priorities are growing closer to God and getting married. However, they seem awfully confused about how to get there. It's as if, finding themselves in Columbus and wanting to go to Cincinnati, they happily bought a ticket to Cleveland.

I say this because, while millenials value marriage, they don't value sex. Sex and marriage, in the millenial view, don't have anything to do with one another. No only that, they also fail to see that sex and any moral dimension at all.

Millenials are less likely than previous generations to judge issues related to sexual morality, such as premarital sex, same-sex marriage and same-sec relationships, as morally wrong. And Catholic millenials - along with other Catholics - even more commonly consider these as either morally acceptable or not moral issues at all.

Denying that sex and marriage go together does nothing to change the truth consistently proclaimed by the Church, whether in the language of Paul VI (procreative and unitive aspects) or John Paul II (total self-donation). The millenials seem blissfully unaware that their attitudes toward sexual relations undermines their chances of ever achieving what they claim are their top priorities. Every mile that they travel toward Cleveland takes them farther away from Cincinnati.

Grrr!

I am really irritated today. First, I write my first blog post in a week, and the whole thing disappears somewhere into Blogger. Then, I find that our school's social studies program is teaching our children that an indulgence is "an official pardon for a sin given by the pope in return for money." Three times on their review sheet, they have to repeat this erroneous definition!

Since this is a history class, I'll quote from a history book, John Vidmar's The Catholic Church Through the Ages:

Finally and most famously, there was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence is the remision of the temporal punishment due to a forgiven sin, granted by the church, and effective before God. With each act of confession and absolution, a penance was (and is) attached which requires the penitent to make some sort of "atonement" for his sins. In the early church and right up to the late Middle Ages, these penances could be physical and public: e.g., standing outside a church each Sunday for a number of weeks or years, having certain privileges and rights revoked, going on pilgrimage (to local shrines for lesser sins, or distant and more prestigious shrines for greater sins). Increasingly, as these penances disappeared, the notion of getting souls out of purgatory gained ground. And this could be done by donating money to charity and for Masses to be said on behalf of the deceased. Chantry chapels appeared, at which priests did nothing more than say Masses all day for various intentions. One papal official wrote: "The Lord desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should pay and live."

Some preachers used indulgences as part of their act. The most notorious of these preachers was the German Dominican Johannes Tetzel. Most bishops in Germany did not permit him to come into their dioceses, such was his reputation for an almost circus-like performance. But Albrecht and the diocese of Mainz were out of money, and so Tetzel was invited to preach a new indulgence - for the building of the new St. Peter's in Rome on the condition that half the money went to the diocese of Mainz. This drove Luther over the edge.

Note: the indulgence does not forgive the sin. The indulgence reduces the temporal punishment for sin. The Church, through the power of binding and loosing granted by Christ to the apostles and recounted in the Bible, has the authority to grant indulgences. It is not necessary to donate money to the Church in order to get an indulgence.

Parenthood - To Do or To Be?

Is parenthood a matter of what you do or a matter of what you are? If being a mom or a dad is an active verb, then parenting can be reduced to a skill set, and one is a parent whenever the skill set is accessed. As soon as the kids are gone, accoding to this mode of thinking, I no longer have to worry about being Dad. I can just be Kurt.

Although it might not be put that way, the attitude seems frightfully common, and I strongly believe that it’s a bunch of bunk. Parenthood is a state of being. If you have children, you are a parent. You can drop your babies off with a hired caregiver and drive away, but that doesn’t change your state as a parent. Becoming a parent carries with it an ontological changes not unlike the kind of change associated with vocations to priesthood or married life, albeit in the natural order rather than sacramentally.

My wife has a friend who provides childcare out of her home. She related that a mother had recently called her and asked if she could drop her children off for the afternoon. “I need a break from being a mom,” she explained. This thinking is wrong because even after she drops the kids, she’s still a mom, and to act otherwise is a betrayal of her responsibilities. I understand the difficulties. She can say that the kids are driving her batty, and she needs an afternoon of peace to regroup, but she can no more pretend to not be a mom than she can pretend to not be a wife. That is to say, she can pretend, but it will only be pretend, and it will not be without consequences.

There are at least two reasons this is so, both of which are subjective. The first is internal to the individual (i.e., how he or she sees himself or herself), the second is external to the individual (i.e., how other, especially the children, see the individual). The first involves, potentially, the weakening of the moral imperatives of parenthood. The second revolves around the dilution of parental moral authority.

I’ll leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks.

The Ghosts in the Vials

A New Zealand couple recently sold at auction two vials that they claimed contained the souls of a pair of ghosts exorcised from their house. Like many, my first reaction was to dismiss their claims as superstitious foolishness, but consider a pair of cultural markers.

The first is Nintendo’s popular Zelda video game franchise. In The Ocarina of Time, there are ghosts called poes that come out at night time on the field of Hyrule. If Link (the hero of the story) defeats a poe, he can capture it in a glass jar and sell it to an old woman in the village. It sounds an awful lot like our New Zealand couple, and maybe they got the idea from Nintendo, but I wonder where the Nintendo game developers came up with the idea.

The idea of capturing souls was a central plot element in Dean Koontz’s book, Forever Odd, the second in his Odd Thomas series. Odd Thomas, for those unfamiliar with the character, has a gift: he can see the spirits of dead people who, for whatever reason, have not moved on from this world. In Forever Odd, the antagonist is an occultist who has discovered Odd’s (Odd is the heroes first name; Thomas is his surname) gift and wants to possess it. She proposes to do this by capturing his soul in a stone that, she says, already contains thirty other souls. This would be done through a dark voodoo rite to capture his ti bon ange. Presumably, the process is similar to that used to make zombies.

I’d love to be able to shrug all this stuff off as so much hokum, but is it? All my life, I’ve heard exorcists warning about the dangers of trying to communicate with spirits, and the New Zealand couple claim that their two haunting ghosts (an old man thought to be a former resident of the house and a powerful and disruptive little girl) “turned up after the couple experimented with a Ouija board.” Even the Bible relates that Saul visited a witch who summoned the spirit of the prophet Samuel. When we profess in the Nicene Creed our belief that God created all things, seen and unseen, we are stating our belief in a supernatural reality inhabited by spirits – angels and demons and perhaps ghosts and disembodied souls.

We have not been told that it doesn’t exist; we have been told to avoid it, because it is dangerous. Folks who play with fire eventually end up getting burned, and in this case, the burning can be eternal. Remove the Ouija board from the story of that New Zealand couple, and there would be no haunting, no need for an exorcism, no auction and no buyer. As for the buyer, I don’t want to know what he or she has planned for the ghosts in the vials.

Old Man's War

This post is not about the John Scalzi book, which I read and enjoyed very much. Rather, it’s about one man’s struggle to defend his castle against invasion by a foreign species.

My sisters (the local ones) and I got together on Sunday to celebrate Dad’s 83rd birthday. I think that it’s fair to say, and I don’t think that he would disagree, that he is an old man. For years, he has fought an on-going war against the neighborhood squirrels. It has become customary for his grandchildren to give him squirrel-themed gifts, as a way of poking fun at his single-minded crusade.

Dad has never been a hunter. His war is strictly defensive in nature. If the squirrels leave him alone, he’s content to leave them alone. He is convinced, however, that the squirrels are boarding his home via the power lines and squatting in his attic. They are mounting an invasion, and they must be repelled. He has deployed live traps, not out of humanitarian concerns – he will not extend the rights of the Geneva Convention to his furry-tailed rivals – but rather because a rifle enfilade in town would alarm the neighbors and invite an unwelcomed visit from the local constabulary.

There have been times, as in any war, when mistakes have been made. He has learned the hard way that a ground-based live trap is as likely to catch a skunk as it is a squirrel. Any squirrel that is so unfortunate as to be captured (and let’s face it, they wouldn’t have been caught if they weren’t guilty) cannot look forward to a prisoner exchange. In this war, Dad doesn’t take prisoners – they are permanently removed from the conflict with what I am certain the old man considers swift justice.

The war continues. The squirrels keep recruiting new troops to send on their raids. Their supply of reinforcements at times seems limitless. The old man, on the other hand, has just grown another year older. Eventually, the commander’s baton will have to be passed on to a new general. Either that, or the rodent menace will finally have its victory.

Kings and Princes

I’ve been reading the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles lately, and I am struck by how quickly and thoroughly the People of God slip from faithfulness to apostasy. A cursory survey of the history of heresy should be enough to convince ourselves that we, as Catholics, are not immune to the same temptations.

As rulers, sons don’t necessarily follow their fathers. Hezekiah was King fo Judah at the time when the northern tribes of Israel were conquered by Assyria and sent into exile. He was faithful and true to God. The scripture says of him, “Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses. And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook” (2 Kings 18:5-7a).

How is it, then, that his son turned out so rotten? “Hezekiah rested with his fathers. And Manasseh his son succeeded him as king . . . He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nation s the Lord had driven out before the Israelites . . . He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshipped them . . . He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking him to anger” (2 Kings 20:21, 21:2, 3b, 6). Manasseh led the people of Judah astray. In doing these things, was he out in front of the people, or was he reflecting the will of his constituency? Does it matter? Is it really an excuse to say before God that you’re just giving the people what they want? Isn’t that the excuse that Aaron tried to give in building the golden calf?

The point that I’m drawing from all of this is two-fold. First, no matter how I live my life, my kids are going to have to make their own choices. While I can hope and pray that they grow up to be righteous adults, they might disappoint me and choose to swim in the cultural soup of the world. God will judge them; it’s out of my hands. Conversely, even though I might be a worm’s turd, my kids might turn out well, as Manasseh’s grandson, Josiah, did.

The second point that I’m drawing is that I can’t count on the prevailing culture to keep me honest. The fact that I live in an area that is predominantly Catholic doesn’t mean that I can assume that the cultural morals are always going to be based upon and informed by Catholic principles. Manasseh worshipped idols in the Jerusalem temple. We cannot assume that everything condoned by our local parish is spiritually good and healthy and pleasing to God. Rather, we must always return to the trustworthy sources: Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium.

30% More Beef

Burger King has been running radio advertisements for their new Steakhouse Burgers. Their big selling point appears to be that their burger has 30% more beef than McDonald's 1/3 pound Angus burger. Who, I asked myself, needs 30% more beef than 1/3 pound in their hamburger?

Then I saw a television advertisement, and now I gotta have one! I haven't given in to the craving yet, because the nearest BK is thirty miles away. Apparently, though, I am the guy that needs 30% more beef.