One thing cool about the internet is the international aspect. Last night I posted my YouTube parody video. This morning I am watching Fr. Roderick in the Netherlands as he records live his Daily Breakfast Show on ustream. During the show I see him go over to my blog.
and then plays the audio portion of my video on his show.
Today marks the sixth anniversary of when I started blogging. So once again thanks to my readers for having made blogging so much fun and for the many things I have learned from you and other bloggers.
Speaking of bloggers who inspired me to blog originally. Here I am sitting next to Mark Shea and Amy Welborn whose comment sections on their blogs made me decide to start blogging mysellf. Also in the picture is podcaster/blogger Lisa Hendley.
In the decades immediately following the close of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), we witnessed an alarming deemphasis of doctrinal teaching in religious education in favor of an overly experiential approach. The result of this catechetical malfeasance was a generation-make that two generations-of poorly formed Catholics.
So while the feminists burned their bras and draft-dodgers burned their flags, catechists and pastors burned their Baltimore Catechisms, proclaiming liberation from the rote memorization of doctrinal formulas. But were we better off because of it? What were the fruits of the catechetical novelties of the 60s and 70s? Surely not practicing Catholics who know and love the Catholic faith.
Leon Suprenant goes on with the necessary caveats about memorization without a relationship with Christ and then quotes Church documents on the subject.
Archbishop Dolan tells the story of somebody he grew up with who was saved by the Baltimore Catechism. This man had become seriously drug addicted and the person he was with decided that they might as well just overdose themselves if they had no reason to go on living. That .unless he could come up with any reason to go on living he would just fix up an overdose. After some thought Dolan's school friend replied "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven." This was enough to deter both of them.
Now I wonder how many people's lives were saved by a felt banner?
John Gibson has some fun with a picture from the Call to Action conferences. I haven't blogged about the larger than life puppets used at Mass there since CTA seems to do a good job of parodying themselves without my help.
Carnival of Homeschooling Mother's Day edtion.World of Good.
Clayton reports on the numerous developments happening in the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis.
Feddie reports on the investigation by Senator Grassely in to prosperity gospel type ministries. While this idea is really bad theology it looks like the investigation is not much concerned about any actual wrongdoing.
TOR is giving away downloads of their book each week if you sign up at their site. The books come in PDF, html, and Mobi format. I have read the first two selections they have made available and enjoyed both novels so they are not just giving away stuff from the bottom of the pile. Baen Books has had their free library for awhile and I got introduced to some good authors and I later went on to buy some of their books and it looks like TOR will cause me to do the same.
...But yeah--I guess what's especially strange for me is hearing people who were raised Catholic talk about the Church as if it's a group of people in a room, who may be "supportive" or may be not. When to me, it's the Bride of Christ or it's nothing. If I had to pick a religion based on which people were more awesome, there's just no way I'd be Catholic. If it's a bunch of people in "the bright room called day" of history, why on earth would anyone convert?
If the Catholic Church is just your experience, you should stop. Because that bunch of people has done horrible things. That bunch of people is not a good-enough grounding for ethics.
A reader has a beautiful collection of pictures of Pope Benedict up on flickr. You can view them here.
One of the things I enjoy about reading G.K. Chesterton is that it gives a lie to the idea that the 1960's was some kind of real fault point in thinking and morality when the reality is that the views so exemplified by the sixties were already in full swing for quite a while before. You can read Chesterton as if he was writing today and if if you just replace the names used with people living today it would be as if he was still writing books and columns.
For example I am reading All Things Considered which is a book of essays on various topics. I found one paragraph to be the perfect description of the so-called new atheists.
A man who has lived and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you like. That is Atheism if you like. If mankind has believed in spite of that, it can believe in spite of anything. But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of all the worms who eat him, or the names of all the parts of him that they eat, is to a thoughtful mind somewhat difficult to discover. My chief objection to these semi-scientific revolutionists is that they are not at all revolutionary. They are the party of platitude. They do not shake religion: rather religion seems to shake them.
The sentence "They do not shake religion: rather religion seems to shake them" has to be the perfect description of Hitchens, Dawkins, and others and explains their diatribes much better than simply a defense of atheism.
I also found this line to be pretty funny.
Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed: a passage which some have considered as a prophecy of modern journalism.
One of the things I so enjoy about the Catholic blogosphere is the variety of ways people use to impart the faith. Sites like the B-Movie Catechism wonderfully combine reviews of cheesy movies with the Catechism and a recent blog I have come across is also quite inventive. Fr. Austin Murphy's Jesus Goes to Disney World uses film and other cultural sources to show Christ in the modern world.
There is a lot of creativity in the use of media among Catholics that I find entertaining and informative. The Hands and Feet Show Podcast just came out with their 100th show and so I would like to take the time to highlight this podcast. Seven young adults with occasional guests present the faith in quite an enjoyable manner. Each show contains several main segments that include a quick take on the news, Biblelotion - scripture study, Relationships 2.0, and other segments like the occasional Fr. Bagadonuts. One of my favorite bits that they do is a take off Budweiser's "Real American Heroes" that never fails to crack me up. The banter among this group is fun along with all of the various bits they come up with. What makes the show exceptional is that you have a group of young Catholics living the faith and teaching it with no watering down of doctrine. They have had many excellent shows discussing the faith that presents so-called hot-button issues in a way that brings the Catechism alive in the modern world without compromise. So congrats to the crew of the Hands and Feet show for their great show.
There is an Eastern Catholic Blog awards going on where you are able to make nominations. I will be interested in seeing who the nominations are since I see few Catholic blogs from an Eastern Catholic perspective. Especially interested in their "Funniest blog" category. Our Eastern Catholic brethren get very little press which is one reason why the term Roman Catholic annoys me as an umbrella term since the Church includes 24 Catholic Churches grouped into eight different rites with the Latin Church being the largest.
Librivox is a great site where people volunteer and create audiobooks by reading and reading titles that are available in public domain. In an open source style you might have multiple people all working on different chapters of the book or have just one person do the whole book. I have listened to a number of books via Librivox, but there are some problems with it.
Not all the readers are of the same quality. Unlike Maureen at Maria Lectrix and Julie D with her book podcast you have some people reading of questionable talent. Now I understand this is a free service staffed by people who freely volunteer their time in making this work, but I really wish they would have auditions before volunteers could submit work.
Some of the readers pretty much drive me crazy. There is one woman with a heavy French accent which I have a real hard time understanding and she has done a lot of submissions. Another woman with an accent I can't identify besides being vaguely British speaks in a monotone in a voice so low that a still small voice sounds defining by comparison. Some of the readers make Al Gore sound like a vibrant speaker, especially some of the me. Now by in large most of the readers are quite serviceable from the books I have listened to and a couple sound quite professional. One of them I especially appreciate since he has done a lot of books I like and he usually does the whole book.
Now though I sample listening to the chapters first and if I find some readers who are hard to understand I will use text to voice to record the chapter instead. It is pretty bad when you have to settle for a computer generated voice instead (even though modern ones are quite good.)
But please, Librivox is not a place for people to practice their English or do their best to put you to sleep while reading an action scene.
Fr. Longenecker is running a Cathedral quiz with so far nine examples.
Mulier Fortis tagged me with this meme.
1. When tagged place the name and URL
on your blog.
2. Post rules on your blog.
3. Write 7 non-important things/habit/quirks about yourself.
4. Name 7 of your favourite blogs.
5. Send an email/comment on their blog letting them know they have been
tagged.
What only seven quirks? Well I guess I will pick some book related ones.
Now as to seven of my favorite blogs. Sorry I have too many favorites. So if you want to do this meme consider yourself tagged.
Reading through G.K. Chesterton's Miscellany of Men I came across this:
The truth about Gothic is, first, that
it is alive, and second, that it
is on the march. It is the Church Militant; it is the only
fighting architecture. All its spires are spears at rest; and
all its
stones are
stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear
the arches clash like swords as they crossed each other. The
mighty and numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge
feet of
imperial elephants. The graven foliage wreathed and blew like
banners
going into battle; the silence was deafening with ail the mingled
noises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ
shook up its thunder. The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted
like trumpets
from all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern
in the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed
his wings of brass,
And amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in
the midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight;
the voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of
spears. I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made
that church; and I
knew indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either
hand the trowel and the sword.
I could imagine for the moment that the whole of that house of life had
marched out of the sacred East, alive and interlocked, like an army.
Some Eastern nomad had found it solid and silent in the red
circle of
the desert. He had slept by it as by a world-forgotten
pyramid;
and been woke at midnight by the wings of stone and brass, the tramping
of the tall pillars, the trumpets of the waterspouts. On such
a night
every snake or sea-beast must have turned and twisted in every crypt or
corner of the architecture. And the fiercely coloured saints
marching
eternally in the flamboyant windows would have carried their glorioles
like torches
across dark lands and distant seas; till the whole mountain of music
and
darkness and lights descended roaring on the lonely Lincoln
hill. So
for some hundred and sixty seconds I saw the battle-beauty of the
Gothic; then
the last furniture-van shifted itself away; and I saw only a church
tower
in a quiet English town, round which the English birds were floating.
This helps me to see something that I don't like about modern church architecture in that it seems to me to be a surrender or something defensive. That the Church militant has surrendered to architectural fads that are quite cold and much more like a dead thing than being alive. The L.A. Cathedral is defensive since it looks much more like a concrete bunker than a church alive and on the move proclaiming Christ. That with older forms of sacred architecture a church proudly proclaimed itself as a church directed towards the glory of God while some forms of modern style meekly proclaims I am a church, but I might be a bank or an auditorium.
There is also this nice bit about the need for a creed.
And it is supremely so in the case of
religion. As long as you have a creed, which every one in a
certain group believes or is supposed to believe, then that group will
consist of the old recurring figures of religious history, who can be
appealed to by the creed and judged by it; the saint, the hypocrite,
the brawler, the weak brother.
These people do each other good; or they all join together to do the
hypocrite good,
with heavy and repeated blows. But once break the bond of
doctrine
which alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his
own kind outside the group. The hypocrites will all get
together and
call each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call
themselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker
in a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off
looking for
somebody else with whom to brawl.
The problem with Chesterton is that he is too quotable and you go from page to page thinking I got to remember that.
First off welcome home to the all of the new Catholics who have entered the Catholic Church this Easter! One of the parts of the Easter Vigil I always love is those in R.C.I.A. entering the Church and receiving Communion for the first time. I am always flooded with the emotions of my own entry into the Church and my first Communion received worthily from Fr. Santos, OATH (Oblate Apostles of the Two Hearts). On my way to Communion for the first time is when I first realized that I had literally spent 40 years in the wilderness - the concept which I included in my conversion story.
One of the shifts I am still working on making is the full realization that Easter is the greatest feast in the Church. Christmas usually gets so more more attention and is met with a greater anticipation. Part of the problem is the cultural focus on Christmas with so much emphasis that it is more difficult to fully realize that reality of Easter. Even though I intellectually realize that Easter is the highest Feast and know the reasons for this, I still do not have the same anticipation for Easter as I do for Christmas.
As great as the gift of the Incarnation is, the gift we received of the empty tomb and our subsequent redemption extends the gift of the Incarnation to our redemption. The present we received on his birthday was fully opened and revealed to us upon his death and subsequent resurrection. He left the gift wrapping of his burial shroud behind him in that tomb. He is the gift that keeps on giving. Like Chesterton I joined the Church to get rid of my sins. The first stage of wisdom is knowing you have sins to get rid of. Possibly the second stage of wisdom is knowing you continuously have sins to get rid of and I must say I am quite thankful to God for the gift of confession. The truth is that he who is wisdom himself suffered and died for us to extend the promise he made to the good thief to all of us.
I think it is no surprise that the culture can so embrace Christmas and see Easter as a footnote if anything. Though I am happy that there are no countdowns of shopping days till Easter and that while there is Easter commercialization it is certainly not to the same extent. The basic distillation of Christmas movies is that family is important, and not necessarily that the Holy Family is important. If there were Easter movies the message should be that repentance is important, or actually absolutely crucial. But the message that we have sins that need repenting of in the first place is of course quite frowned upon. If you feel bad about doing something it must be just guilt and the cure is to help you to remove the guilt. To be more accurate the truth is that the culture still believes in sin, it is just that a quite different list has been come up with and a whole bunch of sins have been crossed off. And the ones that are crossed off are suppose to be absolved on the psychiatrist's couch instead. But of course the reaction to Good Friday and Easter is nothing new.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. - 1st Corinthians 1:22-25
A stumbling block indeed as is evidenced by this recent story.
The pastors at this church in Raleigh,
North Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday
school lessons for preschoolers from "First Look," the publisher of the
one to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn't a
mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired
about the oversight. It turns out it was no oversight...
"Easter is a special time in churches," the letter from the publisher
says. "It's a time of celebration and thankfulness. But because of the
graphic nature of the Easter story and the crucifixion specifically, we
need to be careful as we choose what we tell preschoolers about Easter."
Mark Steyn replied to this story.
So now the story ends with the Last Supper - and presumably afterwards Jesus and His friends watch Elmo and then go to bed. That the foundational event of your faith is now excessively "disturbing" is almost too parodic a reductio of the Wimp Christianity of the mainline churches.
Though Jesus' death and his dying for our sins is rather disturbing in that our sins did indeed require this. That at the Agony in the Garden Jesus felt the weight of the sins of the world past, present, and future and that our own sins are heaped upon this weight. That his death wasn't just satisfaction for "those worst of sinners", but was required because of the sins of each and everyone of us. We can't play the Pharisee here thanking God that we are not like others. God is always thinking of us or else we would just stop existing, but I certainly realize that during this agony he was thinking of me and my sins. Not exactly a thought that leads to pride. But if we can't be humbled and thankful thinking about Easter, then we can't be either humble or thankful.
Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed! May you have a blessed Eastertide.
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “Dear
young people, this city of Rome is in your hands. It is up to you to
make it spiritually beautiful with your testimony of a life lived in
the grace of God and far from sin, responding to all that the Holy
Spirit calls you to be, in the Church and the world. In this manner,
you will become visible signs of the grace of Christ’s abundant mercy
that flows from His side, pierced for us on the Cross.” This was the
exhortation given by Pope Benedict XVI to the youth gathered in St.
Peter’s Basilica in the evening on Thursday, March 13. The Holy Father
heard the confessions of several of the young people present, mainly
from the Diocese of Rome, in preparation for the 23rd World Youth Day,
that will be celebrated on Palm Sunday with the theme: “You will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be
my witnesses” (Acts 1:8) and that will culminate in Sydney in the
world-wide encounter in July.
...Recalling one of his own meditations on Pentecost, as Archbishop of
Monaco-Frisinga, the Pope continued, “A human being cannot throw away
his own soul, in a literal sense, because it is the soul that makes him
human... Yet he does have the frightening possibility of being inhuman,
of remaining a person but at the same time selling or losing his own
humanity. The distance between the human person and the inhuman being
is immense, yet it cannot be demonstrated. Likewise, the Holy Spirit
“cannot be seen with the eyes. Whether it enters into a person or not,
it cannot be seen or demonstrated; but it changes and renews all the
perspectives of human life. The Holy Spirit does not change the
exterior situations of life, but the interior...This afternoon, the
Holy Spirit wants to descend into our hearts, to forgive us our sins
and renew us interiorly, filling us with a power that will make us,
like the Apostles, courageous in announcing that ‘Christ has died and
risen!’.”
The Pope later encouraged the young people to prepare themselves well
for their confession, enabling them to experience “true joy, the joy
that derives from the mercy of God, flows into our hearts and
reconciles us to Him.” He told them to “be bearers of this joy,”
offering a testimony with their lives to the fruits of the Spirit.
“Always remember that you are 'temples of the Spirit'. Allow Him to
dwell in you and humbly obey His commands, in order to make your own
contribution to the building of the Church and to discern the type of
vocation to which the Lord calls you.”
Over the years I have used several RSS feed aggregators to manage th large number of feeds I watch. A couple of years ago I switched to online aggregators - first Bloglines and then Google Reader. Every once in a while I will check out a software aggregator when a new one comes out, but never found a free one that I liked. Recently the Mac only NewsFire became free and so I decided to check it out. It has a simple, but effective interface that really makes it very easy to go through feeds. The feature that really sold me is the ability to easily go through new feeds. The space bar is used to advance through the feeds and all aggregators have a shortcut key to do the same. What makes NewsFire better is that if the page you are reading scrolls down you also use the space bar to advance through the document. So you can do all of you reading pretty much only using the space bar. On a partial feed where only a snippet of the feed is used you can just use the Enter key to open the current feed into the browser. I keep NewsFire in a window on one monitor and my web browser in another browser and this make a very effective setup. I was surprised at how fast I could go through reading new items from the 600 plus blogs and other news sources I subscribe to.
Certainly everybody has particular tastes when it comes to aggregators, but for me NewsFire does what I want it to do quite elegantly.
I just watched the fourth season of EWTN's "G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense" and it is excellent as usual. The great thing about a series on Chesterton is that it is about impossible to run out of material and Dale Alquist does such an excellent job of presenting the thinking and writing of G.K. Chesterton.
This year is the 100th anniversary of Orthodoxy and I am current rereading this great book. Though this book should be read on it 100th anniversary and its 101,102,103,... and so on. What I love about Chesterton and especially his book "Orthodoxy" is that he writes in such a way that you see things anew and realize just how off you were in seeing reality. Sure his turns of phrase and effective use of paradox is one of the charms of Chesterton, but it is his ability to let you return to a childhood wonder that hooks you.
I have a question for my knowledgeable readers. Today during Mass at a parish I visited during the Third Scrutiny for the elect of R.C.I.A. the priest did an imposition of hands on each of the elect followed by a women doing the same thing. Now of course the laity doing this is certainly mistaken, I am just wondering if this was appropriate for the priest to do so for the Third Scrutiny?
A reader requests prayers for his nephew, Joseph Gallagher, who is critically ill from cancer. Please pray for him.
World of Good - USMC Canine Rescue Dogs
Jean at Catholic Fire tagged me with the Book Memory meme.
1. Do you associate reading particular books with the places you read them or events of the time you read them?
Pretty much. I can usually remember where I was when I first read a book and the same goes for music and movies. I don't usually tie them to specific events except for perhaps the extremely influential books that helped me out on my way into the Church. "Theology and Sanity", "A Handbook of Christian Apologetics", and "A Father who keeps his promises were prominent books for me during this time.
2. Do you remember the books you read or do they fade quickly? Or do you remember some better than others? How about remember details like character names, not just overall plot?
Fade somewhat quickly. Though the general plot pretty much stays with me. Character names don't stay with me for the most part, but then again I have the same problem remembering names of people in real life. Though this fading is find since it makes rereading a great book much more fun. I also have difficulties remembering titles. This is annoying when it comes to series and if I see a new book in a series I don't quite remember if I had read it or not. Now I keep track of everything I read to avoid this problem.
3. Have you ever forgotten you've read/own a book and borrowed/bought it again?
I once borrowed the same book from the library within a three week period of time. I returned the book the second time around and was surprised when I got a notice for never returning the first book. I of course didn't realize this at the time and my arguing with the librarian that I already returned it turned to embarrassment when she showed me that I had checked it out twice and the books had two different SKUs.
Fr. Philip Powell, OP has a great post on confession advice that starts with:
I. Starting point:
1. Sin. When we sin we abuse a gift from God. Just about every sin we commit can be traced back to a disordered use of some grace we have received from God. Abusing God’s gifts is a dangerous practice b/c it is through the charitable use of our divine gifts for others that God perfects His love us. If you are not using your gifts for the benefit of others then God’s love is not being perfected in you.
2. Forgiveness. When we ask for forgiveness we are not asking God to do something He has not already done. All of our sins are forgiven right now. All of them. Then why go to confession? God gives us forgiveness always, constantly, without ceasing. We go to confession to receive His forgiveness. Let’s say I call you up and tell you that I’ve purchased a nice Easter ham for you at Central Market. It’s a gift from me to you and your family. I give you this ham. For the ham to be a proper gift, you have to go get it. Once you have received the ham, it is a gift. The ham is no less real b/c you haven’t picked it up yet. The ham doesn’t materialize out of thin air when you go to Central Market and ask for it. The ham is just sitting there waiting for you to come ask for. The same is true for God’s forgiveness. Just ask and you will receive.
3. Charity. Once you have received your gift of forgiveness, you need to put it into action as a gift for others. We do not have the option of failing to forgive. We are commanded to love and when we love, we forgive; i.e., You give your gift of divine forgiveness away by forgiving me my sins against you. In this way, you enact your most basic ministry as Christ to me.
His post continues with advice on a number of subjects common to the confessional.
Mulier Fortis tagged me with yet another book meme.
1)
Which book do you irrationally cringe
away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?
Henry Nouwen - Once going to a retreat house I went to their book store
and found books like Hitler's Pope, Gary Wills stuff, a bunch
of dissident garbage plus a lot of books by Henry Nouwen.
Sure it is irrational guilt by associations but there are
lots of books to choose from.
2) If you could bring
three characters to life for a social event
(afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would
they be and what would the event be?
Well the event would obviously be a world cruise since you then would
get to spend the most time with them. Just off the top of my
head the characters would be Gandalf (great to have around for smoke
rings), the noble dark-elf ranger Drizzt Do'Urden,
and Chesterton's Innocent Smith.
3) (Borrowing shamelessly
from the Thursday Next series by Jasper
Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring
novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for a while,
eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you
expect to get you a nice grave?
Well I have no idea what the most boring novel on the planet.
Such a novel wouldn't get much publicity if it was truly
boring. Even badly written and poorly researched novels like
The Da Vinci Code don't commit the sin of being boring. Now
if you have a category of books that would be quite purgatorial than I
think it could be any of Fr. Andrew Greeley's bodice ripper novels.
4) Come on, we’ve all
been there. Which book have you pretended, or at
least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near
it?
I never pretend to read something.
5) You’re interviewing
for the post of Official Book Advisor to some
VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and
why? (If you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead and
personalise the VIP).
Orthodoxy, if he doesn't like it I probably would not have wanted to
work for him anyway.
6) A good fairy comes and
grants you one wish: you will have perfect
reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which
language do you go with?
Too obvious - Latin. Then I could start a new blog with one
of those cool Latin names.
7) A mischievous fairy
comes and says that you must choose one book
that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can
read other books as well). Which book would you pick?
Well I don't know exactly why such a fairy would be labeled
mischievous? If a book isn't worth reading yearly it probably
is not a good book. There are already several books that I read
yearly. Orthodoxy, Everlasting Man, Theology and Sanity, The
Hobbit and the LOTR series. Than there are other books that I seem to
have on two or three year cycles.
8) I know that the book
blogging community, and its various challenges,
have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you
‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new
appreciation for cover art-anything)?
One thing I love about St. Blogs is that book recommendations from
various bloggers has opened me up to multiple books that I would
probably never have read. For some dumb reason I had the idea
that Dean Koontz was a second-rate Stephen King till I heard such good
things about the Brother Odd series and his other books; boy was I
wrong. From fiction to theology I have been introduced to a
bunch of great books.
9) That good fairy is
back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you
your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leather bound? Is it
full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a
few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your
imagination run free.
Well I would like to have a room with a dedicated library with walls of
shelves with leather bound books instead of having satellite libraries
all over the house. Though a dream library would also have
one of those big Print-On-Demand machines so I could dial up any book I
wanted. I would really like the library to have a secret
passage and when you grab the right book opens up to
another library!
Clayton tagged me with the Book
Meme Rules.
1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people
Carthusians and a famous Hall of St. Mary which was filled with tapestries emblazoned with the Virgin's heavenly splendour. At the time of More's visit the city was seized by a particularly severe fit of Mariolotry , with a Franciscan monk preaching the good news that whoever recited "psalterium beatae virginis" (by which he meant the rosary) each day could never be damned.
It is pretty interesting that out of the whole book which I really liked that this meme zeroed in on one series of sentences that I didn't quite agree with. This would be considered Mariolotry if someone strictly believed that this devotional practice on its own outside of Christ would lead someone to be saved. This should be seen as a bit a hyperbole in that everyone who is faithful to praying the Rosary as a devotional practice likely will be saved when there is a conformity of their prayer life to their actions.
Well at least that is a bit more interesting than what was in the second closest book to me "Cocoa programming for Mac OS X."
If anybody want to joint in to this meme in the comment box, fire away.
SF Signal asks several SF authors If you ran Hollywood, what changes would you make? What would stay the same?
John C. Wright has an excellent response which centers around his complaint of "philosophical product placement" a term I find perfect in describing how so many films are ruined.
...Bollywood, movies from India, are more wholesome, more family-friendly, have better song and dance numbers, and notably more attractive actresses. The weft of the Culture of Death hangs over our Hollywood films, which I do not scent from these overseas films. It has been many a year since I have seen a Hollywood film that does not use "philosophical product placement" to thrust one or another particularly annoying little ad for their materialistic, mildly pinko, morally relative, or anti-American world view in my face. We see such things as would make Cicero or Marcus Aurelius blush with anger, not to mention John Adams and Tom Jefferson.
I am not talking about deliberately politicized films whose anti-American bias is bold and clear, like V for Vendetta or Starship Troopers. I am talking about a universal atmosphere. Even lighthearted kiddie fare like Happy Feet or space opera like Revenge of the Sith or epics like Beowulf cannot be told in a straightforward and honest fashion, a story for the sake of a story, but some little message has to be inserted either mocking religion, or sneering at George Bush, or belittling Christianity. I call it "product placement" because it is the intrusion, never where needed, of one extraneous line or extra quip that allows the film-maker to display his political correctness. And we all know that moral relativism and multiculturalism are good right? Because only a Sith would speak in absolutes.
His comments are not all negatives and lists that almost all of the top 20 films are science fiction and fantasy extravaganzas and that the quality of Babylon 5 and the new Battlestar Gallatica match anything else quality wise. He follows up his interview with a post on his blog answering a complaint.
...The first comment in the comments box chides me for not admiring the healthy dissent and vibrancy created by the willingness of mainstream cinema to call into question the core values of the society. Myself, I would retort that this is exactly my complaint: the core values of society are countercultural, and they are expressed with a lockstep uniformity I find both non-vibrant to the point of boring and non-healthy to the point of morbid.
In the past, the values of the culture and the counterculture were at odds, but were not necessarily enemies. The culture prized things like modesty, fidelity, sobriety, and thrift; the counterculture was kept in check until holidays or late nights after work was done, and it was permitted to express itself. The counterculture prizes things like bragging, sexual nonchalance, wild fun, and immediate self-gratification: it is the culture of Just Do It and of Fa-La-La Live For Today. The counterculture expressed itself in off-duty hours and drinking songs in much the same way the culture expressed itself in hymns and austere public monuments. The speeches made at graduation ceremonies are solemn (and forgettable) precisely because they are the most pure expression of the culture: graduation speeches are the last opportunity for the elders of the tribe to impart their wisdom to the next generation, to transmit the values of the culture. The ribald lyrics, mocking altar and crown, that workingmen sing over their mugs of beer at the public house after the children are abed, were an expression of the counterculture.
In terms of religion, the culture believed in things like the Holy Ghost, and the counterculture believed in things like ghost stories. No one wants to hear about saints when they are drinking a pint; but they don't mind hearing about some eerie Oriental spiritualism. It is no coincidence that rock stars and film stars go in for Zen Zoroastrianism or the study of Wiccan Cabalism rather than Rotary Club Episcopalianism.
Since I am current reading the outstanding biography of St. Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd (The Life of Thomas More) it is interesting to make a comparison between this saint and the saint who is celebrated today -- St. Thomas Becket.
Interestingly they were both born within 20 yards of each other but a little over three hundred years apart. Both wore hair shirts under their fine clothing ,though Thomas More started doing this early in his life and Thomas Becket accepted the practice towards the end of their life. They both ended up being Load Chancellor and both ended up being martyred defending the rights of the Church against the King (Henry II, Henry VIII). In both cases this included defending the Primacy of Peter.
Though St. Thomas Becket is truly someone who grew in office. In the U.S. they refer to Supreme Court justices who become more liberal during their time on the court as growing in office, but Thomas Becket truly grew in office since he grew in holiness. No one would have pegged Thomas Becket as someone likely to be martyred earlier in his career. His appointment as the Archbishop of Canterbury was largely a political appointment with Henry II thinking he was stacking this position in his favor. Yet St. Thomas Becket became an ascetic and took his duties seriously and defended the Church against local control of the Church.
It has been reported that Henry II said "Who will rid me of this turbulent (or troublesome ) priest?" or something along that and his command was taken as authority to kill the Archbishop. You do wish there were more troublesome priests/bishops in England today that annoyed politicians.
Since today is the Feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe I think it is a good time to remind people about some of the myths involved with this miraculous image, and yes I do believe this is a miraculous image.
As Catholics we are quite use to unhistorical elements developing in the stories of the saints, especially of the early saints. Though this is something that still happens. Over the years I have compiled some interesting facts that Catholic historian Sandra Miesel has written about some of these items that have developed around the story and image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The following are from what she has written in the past.
Next, the sun, moon, stars, and angel were painted by human hands at some point in the 16th C. They are discoloring and flaking as was seen up close when the tilma was removed from its case for scientific examination in the 1980s. These features bring Mary's iconography in line with medieval Immaculate Conceptions or Assumptions. She used to wear a silly little crown, too, but that was removed in the 1890s.
Can you imagine even thinking of painting on a miraculous image? How could anybody have thought that was a good idea at the time. Surely some artists have giant egos and you must have a pretty good sized one to decide to "improve upon" a miraculous image.
Mulier Fortis tagged me with this meme.
Some people have asked about making available the file I made that converted the Pope's new encyclical Spe Salvi from text to speech. I had processed the file to remove references in parenthesis and footnotes to make it better to listen to.
I have two versions of the file one as an mp3 that was converted using AT&T's Natural Voice Mike and the other in AAC format using the Alex voice the comes with OSX Leopard. Unfortunately I did not have any voices with a slight German accent.
If you want the file you can go here and select the file of your choice
Two years ago I decided to create my own Advent Wreath graphic instead of just using the normal animated gif that I used previously. If you would like it for your own blog you can use the html code below which uses some homepage server space that won't effect the bandwidth for my blog. I will replace the graphic each week so that it correctly shows the number of candles that should be lit. On Christmas I will change it to another graphic I created for Christmastide.
Additionally underneath my Advent graphic on my left side I have created a JavaScript that gives a countdown to Christmas. If you want to do the same thing you can insert this script into your blog template with the following code underneath where you place the graphic. Though WordPress.com users would be out of luck since they don't allow JavaScript.
For a nice early Christmas present Pope Benedict has given his new encyclical Spe Salvi. “SPE SALVI facti sumus”—in hope we were saved.
Update: I had converted the new encyclical to audio and listened to it while I was at work today. Once again I am in pure awe of the writing and intellectual ability of Pope Benedict XVI. With the upcoming Feast of the Incarnation when hope was truly born this encyclical is a wonderful extended meditation of hope. I have never really given extensive reflection on the theological virtue of hope thinking that the theological virtues of love and faith being much meatier. Once again I learn how wrong I was and joyful to have been instructed in the depth of hope and its meaning. The encyclical starts off reflecting on what St. Paul told the Corinthians and expanding it that without God that there is no hope. He later goes on to describe that hope has been transformed from a theological virtue to a pure materialistic concept of hope in progress. His telling of the story of African Saint Josephine Bakhita is quite compelling in the context of this slave finding hope in the true master Jesus Christ who was flogged just as she was.
Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.”
I could probably just keep on quoting more an more from Spe Salvi to the point that I end up posting the whole thing. It will be of no surprise to anybody who is familiar with the Pope's writings that once again he makes extensive use of St. Augustine to good effect. I like that he touches on the concept of "offering up" and that while at times there were exaggerations in this devotion, that there is something essential and helpful contained with it.
The Pope ends this encyclical as he did with his first one with a wonderful Marian meditation and prayer centered on Ave maris stella - Mary Star of the Sea.
Happy Catholic tagged me with the 100 Films Meme from the AFI's top 100.
1) Your favorite five movies that are on the list.
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark
2. It's a Wonderful Life
3. The African Queen
4. The Gold Rush
5. Duck Soup
Though there are several others that depending on my mood could easily be top 5.
2) Five movies on the list you didn't like at all.
Well I pretty much have seen all of them and there aren't any that I didn't like at all. I liked One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest for the most part, though on rewatching it I hated the ending. I use to work for one of the women who played a nurse in the movie. She ran a children's theatre company that my father use to work for and that I spent a lot of time at. I also once sang as part of the choir to the patience at Damish Hospital where part of the movie was filmed.
Mainly I would have quibbles about a movie being in the top 100 in the first place, for example Platooon and Easy Rider. Easy Rider was fine if you watched it in the seventies, but it just doesn't wear well. Some movies you watch when you are younger and think were great at the time just should never be rewatched. Platoon is okay, just not top 100 material or even top 200.
3) Five movies on the list you haven't seen but want to.
1. Amadeus
I have seen all the others on the list.
4) Five movies on the list you haven't seen and have no interest in seeing.
Zero for this category.
5) Your favorite five movies that aren't on the list.
1. The Passion of the Christ
2. A Night at the Opera
3. The Lord of the Rings
4. Braveheart
5. The Haunting of Hill House
A poster promoting a 2006 parish carnival at Hollywood’s Blessed
Sacrament Church has provoked a series of escalating problems – to the point
that some parishioners have asked the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to reign in
their pastor.
Parishioner Larry Bugbee, spokesman for the “Committee of Hundreds of Parishioners
and Friends” of Blessed Sacrament parish, says that their pastor, Fr. Michael
Mandala, S.J., has promoted indecent entertainment at the last two parish carnivals,
which included scantily-clad dancers making sexually suggestive movements in
front of an audience of all ages.
The committee’s foremost complaint is over a poster promoting the 2006 carnival,
which prominently displayed photographs of scantily clad women in suggestive
poses. When a similar poster was circulated for the 2007 carnival, Fr. Mandala
told one parishioner, “It’s not as bad as last year’s.”
...Copies of the 2006 poster have been hand-delivered to Cardinal Roger Mahony,
as well as his Vicar for Clergy, the Clergy Misconduct Oversight Board and the
director of Safeguard the Children for the Archdiocese. In March 2007, a detailed
letter was delivered to the same people, as well as to the Jesuit provincial.
One of the signers of the letter was a former prioress of the Monastery of the
Angels, a cloistered Dominican nun who lives near the parish. Neither Cardinal
Mahony nor anyone else from the Archdiocese has responded to the letter, Bugbee
said.
During the 2006 carnival, parishioner Russell Brown came out of church after
Mass to find several men whistling. He witnessed a female performer shaking her
breasts, then her buttocks onstage.
I just watch Raymond Arroyo interview Andrew T. Miller the composer of the contemporary cantata, The Birth of Christ which will be aired on PBS this season. The clips played were really quite beautiful with a full orchestra, choir, and talented soloists.
You can watch video clips, listen to samples, or find the TV schedule to determine when it will play in your area here..
I find it quite hard to believe the device that Amazon is selling as it's new e-book reader the Kindle. Three years in the making and much delayed and they came up with a device obviously designed by a committee where little interest was paid to people who would want an e-book reader in the first place. Now if I wanted to design an e-book reader that was sure to fail and possibly serve as a tax write off like in The Producers these are some of the features I would include.
Oh wait that is the Kindle.
The e-book revolution has been forecasted to occur for a number of years and a device like this is sure to delay that day or set that back. The first person you have to please with new technology is early adopters who are willing to pay a higher price point for cutting edge technology. Sony's second generation ebook reader uses the same screen as the Kindle, is a hundred dollars less, and allows yo
