The Holy Father has written a new apostolic letter for the induction of the Year of Faith. The Year of Faith will start on 11 October 2012, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. As always this is well-worth reading as is everything from our catechist-Pope.
Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life
His new book looks at the use of humor in the spiritual life and how laughter and joy are components of it. He specifically did not set out to write the book totally from a theological point of view, but it is not without some theological points. Instead he has focused on several areas and questions involving these subjects. While humor and laugher can have expressions in joy, joy is something much deeper than simple mirth and a resulting happiness. I really like that he included St. Thomas Aquinas definition of joy as “happiness in God”. This is an important distinction to make in a book of this type.
Throughout the book he tells many humorous stories and many religious jokes. As you would expect when it comes to humor in the saints you see the roll call you would expect such as the famous lines of St. Lawrence and St. Teresa of Avila along with some funny quips of modern popes. I especially liked the quote about humor and mirth he provided from one of Pope Benedict’s books*. St. Thomas More was a man who could be quite funny on the way to getting his head chopped off. The quote in the book is “I pray you, I pray you, Mr Lieutenant, see me safe up and for my coming down, I can shift for myself” Though my favorite of his is since his beard was grown during his imprisonment that said it was completely innocent of any crime, and did not deserve the axe. Most of the examples his gives are certainly ones I would have chosen for inclusion in a book of this type. Though I am surprised he didn’t reference Blessed Miguel Pro a fellow Jesuit who was not only a practical joker, but quite a funny guy who was also fearless in death.
Another subject he addresses early on is humor in regards to Jesus. We have “Jesus wept”, but not “Jesus laughed.” I know that Jesus does have a great sense of humor, after all he made me Catholic. His discussion on this subject is mostly worthwhile and makes many points I would make myself. Mostly we don’t see Jesus’ sense of humor in that we can easily forget how what he said would have affected those he preached to. Absurdity and hyperbole is a playful use of language these were certainly tools that Jesus used in his preaching. The absurdity of giving a snake instead of a fish to your son is striking and also playful. The same goes for the calling of St. Bartholomew with “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile” which plays on the story of Jacob/Israel and I also think the mysterious reference to calling him when he was under a fig tree had some humor involved lost to us. This whole section was quite good except for a caveat I will get to later.
I would also share with Fr. Martin a critique of so much Catholic art that seems to be missing the joy of the saints. He mentions the quote attributed to but not confirmed to have come from St. Teresa of Avila “From silly devotions and from sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us.” Unfortunately not much has changed on this front. One of my favorite parts of The Passion of the Christ was the scene with Jesus and Mary and their back and forth playfulness. This seemed to ring so true to me. Catholic statues of Mary seem to focus on her suffering and none of her joy. There is certainly a place for the fact of Mary’s sorrows for the sword that pierces her heart, but I would like to see more joyful ones with her holding the infant Jesus. Though attempts such as the infamous “Jesus laughing” poster show possibly a misstep in the right direction.
This is a book that provides a good look at this subject and provides much humor along the way. He is adept at telling humorous stories of his own life along with collection humorous quotes of others. This book also does not confine itself only to Catholics as he quotes from a wide range of people in other faiths as it touches on the subject. His writing style allows him to poke fun at himself while opening up a subject to a wider audience.
Now on to my caveats. While I pretty much liked both of Fr Martin’s books that I have read they also tingle my Spidey theological senses at times. For example in the chapter on humor in Jesus he references one person in regards to why there is no specific humor from Jesus in the Gospel. The theory was it was possibly redacted and that we just can’t know for sure if it was or wasn’t. He passes on this with no comment. This is pretty much Jesus Seminar territory or where some groups go in saying the early Church redacted what they didn’t agree with. This idea has so many problems that I was quite annoyed that it was mentioned without any comment. Another thing that annoyed me was the reference to the Virgin Mary and a common question in regard to Mary’s “How can this be” and Zachariah’s doubt and subsequent muteness until the birth of John the Baptist. He first contrasts the seeming reaction and then in the footnote gives a humorous explanation. If he was just setting up a joke fine, but there is no actual comparison since a doubt is totally different than a question asked with faith. You can totally believe something is going to occur and still wonder about the mechanism of how it was going to happen without doubting. I also could have done without the numerous quotes from Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. While the quotes themselves were not problematic, other readers might want to read more from this author and not know parts of his works were in part deemed ‘incompatible with the Catholic faith’ by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Okay maybe my Spidey theological senses are tweaked a bit high for a book of this type, but what is annoying for me might be annoying for others.
My complaints are fairly minor and overall there was much to like about this book both in the writing and the content. I can easily recommend this as a good book on the subject and this is an area that receives very little attention. It reminds me of the tagline of Creative Minority Report “We laugh because we believe”.
*”I believe [God ] has a great sense of humor. Sometimes he gives you something like a nudge and says “Don’t take yourself so seriously!” Humor is in fact an essential element in the mirth of creation. We can see how, in many matters in our lives, God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly; to see the funny side of it; to get down off our pedestal and not to forget our sense of fun.” Pope Benedict XVI “God and the World”
It showed up in a letter from HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to advise the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Office of Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) that it would not receive a grant to continue its services for victims of human trafficking.
Instead the grant was given to a company that is not fully operational and is still hiring despite what is demanded of the contract. Not only that it appears that the people who received the contract are in no way prepared to receive it or in any way provide a smooth transition.
Apparently HHS rules about the benefits of experience and cost effectiveness can be waived. So can rules about being fully operational by a certain date. What can’t be waived is the new, albeit unwritten rule of HHS, the ABC rule – Anybody But Catholics.
We’ve seen this at the state level where Catholics are being excluded from adoption services and the same principals are being applied at the Federal level. A religious test of conformance to accepting homosexuality, contraception, abortion, etc is now a criteria in government. Liberal Christians and secular groups are fine – others need not apply.
In related news:
There was some just criticism of President Bush’s faith based office partly on what would happen with the office in a later administration. President Obama gave the Reductio ad absurdum when he appointed a self-proclaimed “spiritual activist, pastor and lesbian” Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson to the Faith Based office.
I think none of my readers will be shocked to find out that she has has written what Thomas Peter calls a “600-word screed against Catholic teaching (and Archbishop Dolan in particular)” in the Huffington Post.
The thrust of her letter is that her church does great good and the Catholic Church a slave to evil dogma does great harm. We have a government official writing “Bishop Dolan, hit the restart button on the Gospel.” and –
“…like most threatening letters, [Arch]bishop [Dolan]‘s words actually pulled back the curtain on the hierarchy’s not-so-veiled efforts to impose Catholic dogma on all U.S. citizens.
Though what could you expect from an article headlined “Should DOMA Dogma Be Law?”.
Like most bigots she knows not what she rails against and does not make any distinctions. Technically I believe marriage between a man and a woman is part of the Natural Law and not directly part of divine revelation. Divine revelation including Sacred Scripture and Tradition of course supports the Natural Law but marriage is certainly not a Catholic dogma as she means it. While the Catholic Church is the greatest defender of marriage, this view of marriage is certainly not specific to only the Catholic Church.
But the word “dogma”is red meat for liberals as they dogmatically state that only the Church is dogmatic. As G.K. Chesterton said “There are two kinds of people: those who accept dogmas and know it and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.” Though the dogma referenced is in the general and not the technical sense.
Dr. Thursday brings to our attention that fact that this year’s Advent will consist of 28 days – a full four weeks. He goes on to explain why 28 is a perfect number.
Carl Olson takes a look at some of the coverage of Steve Jobs death and also takes a look at his commencement address at Stanford University in 2005. I have heard and seen references to this speech multiple times cited as a great speech full of wisdom. Truly as Carl shows the speech was so cliche-ridden and vapid it shines a light on secular hope and what people can think of as substantive.
Carl, a lifetime Mac user, post is well worth reading as it contrasts the coverage full of “eulogistic words.”
You hear lots of complaints about the varying quality of homilies. Though this is to be expected with the variance in the abilities of preachers. Certainly though in this day and age we don’t just have to get all the catechesis for the readings from the homilist. Instead of complaining we can look at all the resources available now concerning homiletics and the readings.
For example I have long been a fan of Fr. Robert Barron’s Word on Fire podcast which covers the Sunday readings. iTunes link
New on the scene is the The Sacred Page podcast from Michael Barber and friends. Not only does this podcast cover the weekly readings but other subjects concerning biblical theology. I’ve quite enjoyed this podcast.
So even if you have a gifted homilist the readings can be enriched from multiple viewpoints.
Visited a parish were they are taking a very positive catechetical approach to the new translation. Before the Mass started they sang the new Gloria and announced it as such. As part of the priest’s homily he covered some of the changes in the new translation.
I really liked the approach that he took in that he started by making some humorous points and then going more in depth into why the new translation was needed. The initial points were “words matter” and that precision in meaning is important. He also made some great points regarding how so much of the new translation is more biblical along with conforming more closely to the Latin. He also explained why following the Latin more closely is important as he addressed the universality of the Church and how the Mass is not the property of any country or culture. His specific catechesis on specific instances of the new translation were also spot-on such as explaining why using “incarnate” instead of “born” was more than just a word choice and the theological significance of it.
I really appreciated this positive approach and the effort they are putting into preparing people for the change. Change, even positive change, often results in ruffling of feathers, I suspect their will be less ruffling in this parish. It takes more than just bulletin inserts and pew cards to prepare people.
Lifetime Apple user Domenico Bettinelli writes on the subject of Steve Jobs’ death.
I’m not going to write a hagiography of Jobs here or canonize him. I’m sure he was flawed and had his failings. But you can’t deny that he’s changed the world as we know it. In the past 30 years, he has completely changed four major industries: computers, telephones, music, and animated movies. And his influence has extended deeply into dozens of others.
While much has been written on the subject of his passing and the effect he had I want to add a Catholic take. The Catholic blogosphere has done fairly well with the pro-life aspect being that Steve Jobs was adopted. Umberto Eco had the famous essay “Mac is Catholic, DOS is Protestant” which I will expand upon. Eco also saw Windows more like “an Anglican-style schism.”
For the majority of my life the world of Apple was not one I paid any attention to much cared about. If anything I was a common Apple-bigot full of inaccurate opinions about Apple computers. I was also an early adopter of MP3s and the first players that came out and went through various makes and models. In addition I started listening to podcast early on and getting those podcasts on my mp3 player was a daily chore. It took some overcoming of bias to take a serious look at the iPod and so in 2005 I bough my first Apple product. Two years later I bought my first Mac.
Now as someone who makes a living writing Windows based software this was a bit like heresy to me. But there were serious reasons I moved into the Apple ecosphere other than just “new and shiny!”.
By all accounts Steve Jobs seems to have been not only a perfectionist, but a visionary in the area of design. In the past these qualities did not always mesh well with what was the state-of-the-art in hardware at the time. Many companies talk about user experience, but Steve Jobs really did seem to see that as an overriding focus.
So what are the Catholic aspects I see? It is Apple’s design philosophy that really drew me in. For one they talk about the philosophy of UI design and create specific guidelines such as the “Human Interface Guidelines.” There is a canonical aspect to how software designers and programmers are to write user interfaces. So often I find that when it comes to form and function one side of the equation is more represented than the other. For the human person aesthetics are not something that is just to be an afterthought. We have lost so much beauty for example when we design churches more like auditoriums than places of worship. The considerations seem to be more to the physical than with having beauty help your spirit rise up in worship. When it comes to hardware and software this is also quite evident. Sure a skin or a gloss might be added to something at the end of production, but it is something grafted on and not a coherent whole of form and function. There is something almost Gnostic about so much design. In Gnosticism the body is evil and the spirit is good and in design Gnosticism the material aspects are all that really matters.
What I discovered with Apple products and the Apple software development community is that they have a very Catholic both/and as a philosophy. Form and function both drive the end product. The attention to detail in their products is at a level I had never seen before. Sure they might constantly tempt us with the latest model, but there is no planned obsolescence built into their products. I never kept a computer longer than the Mac I am typing this on. Yet it still looks as aesthetically pleasing as the day I bought it and has not experienced any of the problems I have had before involving parts going bad or pieces of the case coming off. Apple’s attention to detail is what drove them to add a speaker to the iPod just so you could hear an audio click with you pressed on the classic iPod’s click wheel.
This type of attention to detail is also found on the software side where again how the user interacts with the program is given great importance. As a long-time geek I worked with hundreds of programs with confusing and/or ugly interfaces. Sure the underlying program might have done it’s job quite well, but again as human persons we should expect more than just function as in an atheistic materialist way. Though things have improved in the Windows world as the importance of design has become more prevalent and tools like WPF and Silverlight helping to focus on that.
Apples products are certainly a team effort, but it is quite evident that Steve Jobs set the bar when it came to sweating the details so we don’t have to. His leadership brought a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy to a world leader in consumer electronics it is today. It takes more than leadership to bring this about, it took having a vision and a philosophy and imparting it as a part of the DNA of the company. As Catholics there is much we can learn from this. Are attitudes should always take in account the whole of the human person. Each individual is the intended target of the Gospel and when the world of Catholic art and literature is substandard it is no surprise that so are the results.
There is much talk about how the Catholic faith “baptized” various things and brought them into use within the faith. Apple did not create the first personal computer, mp3 player, GUI, tablet, or phone – yet they took each to a new level. Again as Catholic we need to do the same with all the tools at hand looking for opportunities to spread the Gospel with the highest levels of professionalism.
Link: Good article on Steve Jobs at the National Catholic Register
Tom at Disputations posts How to overcome envy over the depth and beauty of other people’s blogposts
There are several effective methods. Here is a non-exhaustive list:
- Convert envy to zeal. “Boy howdy, I’ll write a blog post of my own, with this as my model and exemplar!”
- Convert envy to pride. “I’ve got to admit, I can really spot a deep and beautiful blogpost when I see one.”
- Convert envy to vainglory. “This, clearly, is the pearl produced by my comment on that post back on June 26.”
- Convert envy to sloth. “You know, I bet if… say, when do the Brewers play?”
- Avoid envy altogether. “I don’t read that blog anymore.”
I would add:
- Convert envy to contention. “Wow those beautiful and thoughtful blogposts take too long to read, I’ll just unsubscribe from that *#&$# blog.”
- Convert envy to greed. “I’ll just link to that excellent blog and comment on it in the hope of getting a link back to increase my Google Adsense revenue.”
- Downgrade envy to jealousy. “I really admire the writing and wish them well, but why are they picked up to write for the National Catholic Register and Patheos?
A novel approach by Associated Press reporter Tom Breen.
My father is a journalist, though, and it was his influence that steered me toward news. After college, I was working at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., at the time the most recent sex abuse scandals began to break in Boston. Partly because I had some Catholic bric-a-brac on my desk, my editor assumed I actually knew something about the church, and so I was assigned to cover a few local stories related to the scandal.
I quickly realized that I didn’t know anything about Catholicism, and so to avoid embarrassing myself and the paper I resolved to learn what I could. In addition to reading everything I could get my hands on, I started pitching stories on religious topics that had nothing to do with the abuse scandal, hoping to bring myself up to speed.
I call this a novel approach considering how bad much of religion coverage is which is full of ignorance and axes to grind. The full story is well worth reading as found at GetReligion.
Tom Breen reminds of a former AP reporter Matt Baglio whose coverage of exorcism led him tow write the book The Rite which later resulted in the movie of the same name. He truly worked to cover the story with an investigative eye and ended up writing a informative and theologically concise book.