It's Halloween. Go ahead and have fun.

Halloween.  Short for All Hallow's Eve, or the vigil of All Saints Day.  Perhaps more transparently in Christmas Eve and the Easter vigil, celebrating a holiday the night before is certainly not some inherent mockery of the holiday.  If you lived in Detroit, you'd recognize that devil's night was the night was the night before.

Don't sweat any real or alleged pagan roots of the holiday.  Some trappings of Easter and Christmas are pagan too, and people know not to get upset because bunnies and evergreens are innocuous.

Heck, "Harvest festivals" are more pagan than Halloween; firstly because paganism isn't identical with satanism, it is--as Mark Shea puts it--mankind trying to reach the divine via imagination, which is informed by such larger-than-man phenomena as the changing of seasons; secondly because there's a world of difference between offering thanks or appeasement to Ceres and making a celebration out of "where, O Death, is thy sting?" But either way, pagans have harvests and contemplate their eternal destiny as much as Christians, and that doesn't make them satanic, it just makes them human.

We have nothing to fear from or on the holiday itself because death has been conquered.  All the macabre imagery is there to remind us that death (and yes, evil) are not to be feared.  The devil hates laughter and not being taken seriously; what better way to thwart his two-pronged attack of being either feared as some God-rivalling eater of souls or a human abstraction we don't need God's help to fight, than by acknowledging such a thing is real and then not giving it power over you?

To be fair, I'm not advocating glutting yourself on gorn, or saying the opportunity to dress up a something naughty is justification to do something particularly immodest (there was a comedian whose show I caught part of one time who had a routine that went something like "'What are you supposed to be dressed up as?' 'A witch.'  'Yeah, if she was a hooker.'" If you remember who it was, let me know in the comments); and I'm not saying it's a good idea to use ouija boards this one night of the year.  Like I've said, the devil is real.

He's real, but he only has the power you and God allow him to have.  Dressing up like a zombie is not opening yourself up to the demonic; that is a superstitious attitude, or at least a scrupulous one.  If you can't stomach it in one sense or another, I'm not saying you have to, but feel free to dress up as a saint, or a robot, or a Rubik's Cube (or a skeleton--everybody's got one).  It's not some imitation-is-the-highest-form-of-flattery thing; that completely misses the point:  it's a parody.  "It looks to me like something bad"--either a costume or the practice--"therefore the worst possible interpretation must be true" is the same argument I face from iconoclasts about veneration of the saints, and it's wrong when they make it, too.

Also, ah loves meh some canday.

News penetrability of the pro-choice side of things

I was driving to the East Coast this week for business when I caught part (alas, not all; I would have loved to hear the whole thing) of a show where Abby Johnson, pro-life activist and former Planned Parenthood employee, was a guest on an upstate New York NPR radio station.

The show's host, whose name I didn't catch, reminded would-be callers to keep things respectful, and so the one call I heard was from a guy who was quite civil but seemed very concerned that Abby Johnson might be willing to relegate poorer women seeking abortions in an era after Roe v. Wade were overturned (since richer women could more easily travel to other abortion-friendly countries) to resorting to the much defamed back alley abortions.

Johnson pointed out that the statistics on back alley abortions before 1973 were grossly inflated, as had been admitted by the former abortionist (who also had had a change of heart) who inflated the statistics.  She then gave the example of a woman--her name was given, but I don't remember it and the Google results are sketchy, so if you know please post it in the comments--who went in for an abortion to a clinic, and afterwards continued to hemorrhage for four hours while the clinic didn't call for an ambulance, and the woman died from blood loss waiting at the clinic.  Following that up with the example of Kermit Gosnell, Johnson pointed out that illegal back-alley clinics don't get much worse than what he was doing.

The show's host then said that she thought she might have to go into the other room to help her sound engineer pick his jaw up off the floor.

It made me wonder:  why?  Did he not know this kind of thing went on?  Did he just not follow the abortion issue very closely, or did he only pay attention to information sources that believe that women dying of complications from abortion distracts from the "true and consistent compassion" message?

I pray it's the latter.  But either way, there's a lot of ignorance to be overcome.

More hot air

So Democrats are all cranky about Republicans trying to starve the federal budget in order to stop Obamacare before it gets entrenched in American society.  They’re talking like Republicans are hostage takers who shouldn’t be appeased, for fear of what they’ll demand next time.

I suppose, also, that the Republicans were asking for it.  When the bill was being discussed, the Democrats would say things like “you’ll have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” and would get responses like “I hope they’ll change the things I disagree with, but I’m voting for it anyway.”

It’s more than a little silly, since we’ve had budgetary crises resolved after the government shut down on more than one occasion in recent history with no collapse of civilization or explosion of galaxies, but I am concerned about the elevation of the threat language (see also the recent abrupt introduction of “war on women” talk regarding the Vatican’s longstanding and unchanging teachings on abortion and contraception), about how the landscape has apparently changed from conservatives and liberals being neighbors who could negotiate with each other over differences of opinion on how to achieve goals held in common, to viewing each other as alien powers incapable of dialog who each could only hope to modify the other's behavior.

That’s what alarms me.  Talk isn’t just transparently manipulative and senile to the hypocrisy of the speaker, it’s hostile:  we talk about Islamist terrorist groups this way.  What’s next? 

The crowding out of childhood

As Mark Shea says, show me a culture that despises virginity, and I'll show you a culture that despises children.

Case #1:  Montana 14-year old Cherice Moralez is raped the first of several times by a teacher at her school, 35 years her senior.  The kind of person who had loved life and living, her mood deteriorated along with her grades, and within a month of her 17th birthday, she kills herself.  The judge, asserting that Moralez was equally in control of the situation along with her attacker, handed down a sentence of 30 days.  The age of consent in Montana is 14.  
I've heard of precocious juveniles accused of heinous crimes being tried as adults, but this is the first time I've heard of it for the victim of a crime.  The purpose of consent laws are in part to protect children who are not quite as mature as they think, from adults who think they are more mature than they are, and from adults who may be deterred by the force of law and to prosecutes adults who aren't, who would defend themselves with arguments like "She seemed older/more mature" or "she wanted to."  I wonder what this judge had in mind...you know, having actually gone to law school and all that.
Case #2:  Miley Cyrus does an obscene reprisal of a twerking video she made several months ago, showing the whole world that, just like all those girls before her who used to star in Disney sitcoms, she's not some wholesome tween anymore (if she ever was).  
Granted, she hasn't been a teen star in a while, but Hannah Montana is still her claim to fame.  I get that being typecast can kill a career, but it's not like we haven't seen this to varying degrees before (remember Fergie and Britney Spears).  In fact, working against the relatively wholesome model for the girls of America by doing something outlandish is almost a cottage industry for Disney girls, so it's sort of typecasting in itself.  Maybe the reason they keep trying harder and pushing the envelope younger and younger is audiences (the creepy old guys and the media peddlers, anyway) can always say"Yeah, we were titillatingly scandalized when we forgot that your predecessor had achieved her majority by the time she pulled a stunt like this; what are you going to offer us?"
She didn't even look that good.  She's not an unattractive woman, but they way she was done up?  Lots of skin contrasted to her androgynous mid-80s styling (which wasn't even a good look in the 80s) and uncomfortable facial expressions.  What kind of reaction is that supposed to elicit?
Case #3:  Creepy back-to-school ad campaign from some clothing store that will remain nameless because I've blocked it out.  The one where they show not just tweens but even kids with single-digit ages worrying about what kind of impression they want to make.  I’m not sure it’s bad to depict kids knowing they have some influence over how others perceive them, but it is strange to me to see kids that young being--no, acting--so savvy, and I am sure it’s not good that it’s teaching kids “other people’s opinions of me are worth worrying over,” even if it weren't just as leverage to get kids to manipulate their parents into buying them all the clothes the popular kids are going to be wearing.  Okay, others' opinions are important to the extent that you have to deal with other people, but nine year olds creating and projecting an image that you can put a label on?  That they can demand on the grounds that it will help them be more successful and likable than their parents were?  Come on.  They should hardly be recognizing it when their older siblings do that.

Prayer request

For my brother in law, and his family; for his job and his relationship with my sister.

The job he had for most of their marriage was not a well paying one, but they were saving money on day care by him going in to work very early and then coming home shortly before my sister would leave for the closing shift at her store, sort of a tag team arrangement.  After a few years it was starting to wear on all of them, with my niece's demeanor changing and my sister getting stress related illnesses.

Finally, last year a former boss of his asked him to apply for a position with his new company, one that sounded like it was created with him in mind.  It wasn't everything he hoped, but it was something he seemed well enough suited for him, and they had to make some kind of change, so my sister quit her job and they moved across the country.

A few months later it comes out that his boss seems to have adopted a "sink or swim" policy; he's leaving my brother in law to figure things out on his own, on the grounds that he'll learn it better, but it's to the point where he can hardly get ahold of his boss, and when he e-mails him, his boss waits until he leaves his desk and then leaves a note for him.

He's not the only one who feels this way; one of his other coworkers feels adrift and suspects their boss likes to travel on business to avoid whatever's going on at home or at least the home office, and has trouble delegating.

I've had bosses who had their own struggles at work before.  In the worst case, it cost me my job and then it cost him his (I can't blame him entirely, I wasn't quite ready for a job like that, but some timely mentoring might have made the difference).  So let's pray for his boss, too.

And this is weighing on the family as well.  Their kids--I'm back on my niece and nephew again--are doing better now than when he and my sister were doing the tag-team job thing where they're only all together about twenty minutes a day, but now my sister is home with the kids instead of being the breadwinner, which she's growing into, but my brother in law isn't used to having to shoulder all the financial responsibility alone.  I'm sure there's more going on that I'm just not hearing about, too.

Please pray, also, that he comes back to the church.  He's nominally Catholic but is pretty lukewarm; she goes to church every Sunday, but goes alone.

Abortion, the battle from on the ground

You sometimes see me post an example of something ludicrous and alarming and say "this is what we're up against."  These posts, while highlighting specific examples of whatever the issue at hand is, tend to have an abstract angle to them; a pro-choice politician may be saying what he personally believes, but being a politician his actions will tend to affect people more conceptually than personally.

I mentioned my un-PC coworker a few days ago.  In the conversation he was having with some of his other coworkers who are pretty liberal (I'm currently residing in a very blue state, so we're all soaking in it), the talk somehow turned to abortion.  My coworker said that, while he is perfectly happy with prevention, he won't countenance abortion especially when used solely as birth control.

I think he used the word "pro-abortion" at this point, because one of the others denied being pro-abortion, but rather was pro-choice...and that if she had a twelve year old daughter who was molested by some guy and ended up pregnant, the first thing she would do would be to drive her to an abortion clinic.

"So she doesn't get a choice."
"No!  At that age she's not mature enough to understand the consequences."
"What if she doesn't want the abortion?  Would you at least discuss it with her?"
"No.  She's not capable yet of making an informed decision."

Okay, she's a minor and the parent gets the last word on medical decisions; even the law agrees with this, except when the situation is reversed.  But the hypothetical daughter is 12, not an idiot; she's going to have an opinion, despite having been raised by an "I'll choose who has abortions in this household" mother, it might not be the same, and she's at least going to want to feel like her feelings and preferences are being considered before they're overruled.

This; this is really what we're up against.  People who have listened to the rhetoric and already made up their minds, who don't believe in Choice as a virtue and civic right to be protected so much as they believe abortion is just a means to some other end, who are going to vote for politicians and laws that will let them pursue those other ends without inconvenience.

This is the battle we have to fight:  not just beating with rhetoric the sin-darkened intellects of talking heads who themselves may only be using the abortion issue to achieve some other end, but breathing on the embers of conscience in the people who both who are on the fence or see abortion as a necessary evil, and those who have inclined themselves to using the last resort of abortion so cavalierly that it is the first resort.

We have to win hearts.  You can get a little traction by winning arguments, at least trying to plant seeds, but it's such a charged topic, like evangelization itself, that if you come after them with logical guns a-blazing, they'll retreat into emotional counterarguments that you can't touch.  The woman who said she would choose abortion for her underage daughter no matter what walked out of the room before I could add anything to the suggestion that her daughter's feelings should be considered whether or not her own choice would be.  The topic might come up again and I might have another chance to play the "kindler, gentler conservative" next to my other coworker, but it might not.

But I'm still curious:  if someone says "I'm not pro-abortion, I'm pro-choice," what does he think someone admitting to being pro-abortion would say differently?  That he just wanted to kill babies for the sake of killing?

As a nation, we turned a corner yesterday.

I'm not sure which bothers me more, the fact that SCOTUS decided that no one has any business opposing gay marriage in California when Californian legislators can't be bothered to defend traditional marriage, or the fact that POTUS has merely promised that he would refrain from trying to bring to heel any dissenting groups.

I concede to painting with an overly broad brush.  I just had to read the verbiage about California residents not having standing to oppose the overturn of Proposition 8 several times before I gave up trying to see how the logic was not actually applied in reverse.  Would people with same-sex attraction be permitted to participate in the debate if they opposed gay marriage, or would they also be told that they don't have a right to promote their opinions or reasoned arguments because they're on the wrong side of history?  How tidy:  you're on the winning team or you're not allowed to play.

As for the president, well, I've seen him promise not to abuse his power in the past.  One time, he even said he wasn't going to get into the whole gay marriage thing.  Now he's reassuring Christians that they will be able to indulge their own bigotry undisturbed in private.  Of course, he won't be able to stamp out every last vestige of orthodox morality, that's too vast and tedious a task to bother with, but there are terms for an announcement like this.  In sparring, it's called a telegraph.  In literature, it's foreshadowing.  In naval warfare, it's a shot across the bow.  

I do think it's true that there's a supernatural conspiracy here, and possibly not a human one on top of it; and thus I agree that ultimately gay marriage is a vehicle to persecute the Church.  What scares me on this matter is I cannot imagine the circumstances in which homosexuals will be thrown under the bus when (that is, how) they cease to be useful to that end.

I wish people had some perspective.  Gay people have never been banned from marriage; they just don't have the right to marry absolutely anyone they wish.  This prohibition is in place for all of us.  Romance literature is chockablock with stories about unrequited or thwarted love.

"Why, Ed, don't you want people to marry whomever they love?"

Setting aside the question of whether the person they love loves them back and wants to be married, the government has no truck with whom someone does or does not love.  Marriage is to provide a stable environment for raising children, and well-raised children make for a healthy nation, so the government is wise to promote that.

Stray into emotional territory, and you open the door wide to abuse.  I promise you, there is nothing the government can do in applying itself to the emotional domain that is not going to be abusive.

Finally, an anecdote illustrating the "ruthless narcissism" Mark Shea describes comprising this whole movement.

I have a coworker who is terribly fond of using politically incorrect humor. He loves talking about cooking meat and killing animals in front of one of our technicians who is an on-again, off-again vegan; he talks in front of his female coworkers about how he orders his wife to do this and orders her not to do that, and how women shouldn't be allowed to do various things; when talking to one of our black technicians, he often refers to "your kind." He doesn't mean a word of it and he doesn't offend any of the people he teases (trust me, they dish it right back). But this morning, he was asked if he had talked to the sole admitted lesbian in the office. She's a sweetheart, but he said "What, are you crazy?  I'm not stupid!"

Some people just want to mind their own lives, and when they do it really is nobody's business, but it

Take a lesson from Evangelicals, abortion clinic bombers, and Phil Plait:  you're not going to prick consciences and win hearts and minds by being a jerk.  For every George Takei there are ten Andrew Sullivans, and the Sullivans are undoing whatever progress was being made by the no-big-deal desensitization plan.  Granted, a lot of progress has been made on that front, judging from prime time TV and the nigh-complete failure of everyone to articulate the fact that the Boy Scout thing from a few weeks ago now means that sexuality has to be discussed openly with ten year old boys instead of leaving the sensitive topic to be broached at a discreet time.

This ain't exactly Gandhi's M.O.  Don't pretend it's even close.

A little perspective on the privacy issue

I've heard more than one person say "Well, I've got nothing to hide, so I don't care what the NSA does."

This scares me as much as the proverbial government official saying "Well, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."  While in the latter case you have a threat from an authority figure hidden in a reassuring deflection, in the former, you have a civilian acquiescing to the encroachment of the police state because they are not exercising any forethought.

It amazes me sometimes how people see things like this and never consider what might go wrong.  It doesn't affect them now, so that's the end of the story, until they're shocked down the road that someone let something bad happen.  Haven't they noticed anything in human history?

You know, I don't have a lot to hide, either, but my concern isn't that the NSA was probably already doing something clandestine under the ECHELON protocols, or that the NSA might be doing something good with its burgeoning powers now.  My concern is that if it's out in the open and appears to enjoy the benefit of being legal, if unpopular, it is going to embolden and empower the government universally to do more of the same.

Whether or not abuses have happened in the past or are happening now, it creates vast new opportunities and temptations for abuses to happen in the future.  This isn't exactly new legal ground we're covering; there are already laws curtailing the actions of government forces precisely in order to minimize the damage to society, whether or not there is foresight to anticipate specific problems.

After all, we don't have the Fourth Amendment simply because Madison said "What if..." and Jefferson responded "Well, just in case...."  The Bill of Rights was largely inspired from abuses that really did happen that the Founders wanted to prevent from being repeated.

Post hoc procrastination roundup

I haven't had much time to write lately, as you might surmise. I'd try to jot down a few thoughts at work while on break, to e-mail myself later, but I never seemed to get around to checking my e-mail for this account and cleaning the prose up.  I'm taking some time now, though, and what with it being so far after the fact on some of these issues, I'm just going to take some pot shots at several of them at once.

Pope Francis: I like his style.  I think Benedict was more my speed, I think we would have benefited from having someone in charge who made a point of focusing on things like orthodoxy and liturgy, but God knows better than I do and it's not like I really have a problem with the preferential option for the poor. My only worry would have been if people would see Francis give an inch on social justice and then take a mile in the direction we're already headed.  But, maybe someone who doesn't give the first impression of "Oh, he's that kind of Catholic because he's politically conservative," which tended to be the [mis]understanding by modern pundits of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, would seem less threatening to people who....aren't politically conservative.  Apparently it's the right time to show that you can help the needy and still stand for something more foundational than the endless advance of novel civil rights.  Plus, it gives the old Jesuit conspiracy theorists lots of fodder to play with it, and we're one step closer to being done with the silliness of the alleged prophecy of Malachy.  Also, it was interesting to see early and frequent criticism from people who are ignorant of the College of Cardinals or at least ignorant of the limits of their understanding of the Church; after hearing and reading comments from both Catholics and non-Catholics like “There was no one of intellectual stature after Ratzinger,” “John Paul packed the College full of yes-men,” "The only thing we have to look forward to is a papacy of mediocrity, because there is no one to choose from other than lousy bureaucrats” and “I don’t like him; it was a political move, he’s just the first pope from Latin America,” I know I can sleep easily knowing he's already made all the right enemies.

The IRS scandal: Sure, maybe Republicans did much the same under Dubya. I don't know why it wouldn't have gotten more press; I'm still inclined to believe that reporting is more honest during Republican administrations because reporters are happier to air the GOP's dirty laundry, but whether it was just covered up better or they just focused more on warrentless wiretaps, it's happening now; as Mark Shea says, Obama voters, own this.

The Boy Scout decision to accept openly gay boys:  I don't think it was a mistake to be accepting, but I think getting drawn into the debate to where they felt they had to say something one way or the other was a mistake.  I don't know how much has changed since I was active in Scouts, but no, we didn't really talk about girls or sex much at all, what with busy doing boy stuff and camping and learning about good citizenship and character.  There was one boy I know of who came out of the closet in college, and I don't know if he was hiding it the whole time or hadn't quite figured it out for himself yet (my tangential knowledge suggests this was common, especially so before homosexuality got normalized), but it just didn't matter, and while most of the guys in my patrol probably would have been more scandalized if he'd said something to us when he was SPL, we still would have been a bit off-put if other guys just started talking about what he liked about girls.  It's just not the place for it, and that is the whole pitfall. If there's someone who can help a confused kid, great; I think that's why the national council ruled the way it did. But it introduces sexuality explicitly where it should never have been in the first place. On top of that, how are they going to handle all the gay Eagle Scouts when they hit their 18th birthday? It's one thing when all the concerned parties in a scandal are minors, but how long is the fear of gay ephebophilia going to withstand the pressure of youths who want to have their sexuality approved--and behind them, the pressure of real gay predators who have just been waiting for this target-rich environment to expose itself?  And I'm kind of surprised the LDS Church didn't kick up more of a fuss, what with Scouting being a huge component in its youth program for boys; for years, the Mormons provided the backbone in resisting encroachment by the gay agenda.  Again, just to summarize, I don't think gay boys should be kicked out of Scouting--a concrete, masculine but otherwise asexual environment is probably the most healthful place for a confused youth; but Scouting should never have gone down this road.  There's no way to answer "Have you stopped beating your wife?" without sounding guilty, and there's no way to address the issue without introducing it into Scouting culture.

Meh, I thought this was going to be brief, but it's late and I'm tired and I have to work today, so if I think of anything else worth going over old ground for, you'll be the first to know.

So, Gosnell's guilty...

...and what little I’ve heard from the pro-choice side is in the vein of “Well, of course we need to make sure women have access to safe abortions.”

This really makes me think someone hasn’t been paying attention.  They used to say “safe, legal, and rare,” but really all that was being pushed was “legal.”  Gosnell might be an epitome but he’s not the only one.  I’ve known pro-life people who voted straight ticket pro-choice because they believed that all the other social policies advocated by pro-choice political candidates would lead to lower demand for abortion in the long run; meanwhile, pro-choice politicians end up compromising with other politicians who may have different goals and who may actually have a lot of the same values but want to follow a different path to the same goal.  The only thing clung to and promoted, the only thing there isn’t room for compromise on—come on, nobody really wants to perpetuate poverty, but there is a plethora of opinions on how to alleviate it—is access to the procedure.  So the wagons are circled around abortion clinics and the media are mute on the topic of badly run clinics, for fear of handing ammunition to the pro-life movement.

Well, folks, you shot yourself in the foot with that very ammunition, and no amount of “Pro-lifers made us resort to this” whining is going to change that.  You talk safety and then refuse to take steps that might even bring you a few allies from the pro-life movement in at least helping to ensure that expectant mothers were treated well, lest the disconnect between respect for women and the abortion culture become undeniably overt—maybe it doesn’t have to be the case that bosses fire pregnant employees for deciding to go to term, or that domineering boyfriends and husbands will insist on not becoming fathers but stay in relationships with women who are willing to become mothers; but all to often, it is the case.  More abortion isn't the answer.  If it's a symptom of greater societal ills, then we need to cure the greater ills; we need to put a bandage on whatever abortion purports to cure in the meantime, but in taking a stand at abortion, you gather the rhetorical points of choosing lesser goods over greater ones, and you win poster children like Kermit Gosnell.

Might as well put a briefcase nuke in the hands of every person on the planet, on the grounds that MAD worked for the US and the USSR, so it's got to work for individuals as well.  A few people set 'em off anyway?  Get more into the field, so we can really make our point that more violence means less violence; all this carnage is just a blip.  Still more?  It's not you, it's them; it should work, and we're not going to stop until they stop.  We just need to clap for Tinkerbell harder.

I wonder maybe if Moloch is really in the service of Mammon these days.  Help build up a controversy, recruit desperate people, offer them an escape to the nightmare of motherhood, and then...start cutting costs.  High school dropouts are a lot cheaper than certified anesthetists, and frightened and unsure expectant mothers have low sales resistance, even to snake oil.  

Fortieth day of Lent

Doctor Leo the Great's seventy-second lecture, on the Resurrection (complete)

It's Holy Saturday.  Meditate on the Harrowing of Hell.

Easter Vigil begins in the evening.  Meditate also on the extended readings for the night's liturgy, which summarize the history of salvation.

Thirty-ninth day of Lent

Doctor Leo the Great's forty-ninth sermon, on Lent (complete)

It's Good Friday,  a day of fasting and abstinence.  Go to the Stations today if you haven't been able to before now.  If possible, meditate on the necessity of the Crucifixion at the Hour of Mercy.

Thirty-eighth day of Lent

Doctor Leo the Great's twenty-first lecture, on the Nativity (complete)

It's Maundy Thursday.  Today will be the last mass before Easter.  Some churches will also have Washing of the Feet.  You may also find one where the Seven Churches Visitation is practiced.

Thirty-seventh day of Lent

Doctor Leo the Great's twenty-eighth letter (complete)

Pope Leo I was the first to be called "the Great."  This letter, also called "The Tome," helped to resolve the controversy over the two natures of Christ at the Council of Chalcedon (which in turn brought the Monophysite heresy, easily confused with Miaphysitism, to schism).

Thirty-sixth day of Lent

Doctor Ambrose on the Mysteries (chapters 5-9)

Thirty-fifth day of Lent

Doctor Ambrose on the Mysteries (chapters 1-4)

Ambrose of Milan was an influential Christian writer who, like others of his era, faced an uphill battle against the Arians.  He once advised Augustine of Hippo to follow the liturgical norms of whatever locale where he happened to find himself (like the Sabbath, liturgy was made for man, not man for the liturgy):  "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

Sixth Sunday of Lent

No required reading today.  Feast when the Church feasts, fast when the Church fasts.

However, if you want to keep your momentum, I might recommend Book Five of Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, although this treatise is a little long in parts.

Holy Week starts today.  Make sure you get to confession and pray the Stations of the Cross, if you haven't done so yet!

Thirty-fourth day of Lent

Doctor Cyril's twenty-third catechetical lecture

Thirty-third day of Lent

Doctor Cyril's twenty-second catechetical lecture

Thirty-second day of Lent

Doctor Cyril's twenty-first catechetical lecture

Thirty-first day of Lent

Doctor Cyril's twentieth catechetical lecture

Thirtieth day of Lent

Doctor Cyril's nineteenth catechetical lecture

St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote (or spoke and later his words were committed to paper) twenty-three known lectures intended for new converts.  Along with a prologue, they can be found here.  The first eighteen are  intended for the season of Lent for catachumens; the final five are meant to be read to the newly baptized during the octave of Easter.

Twenty-ninth day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 81-94

Fifth Sunday of Lent

No required reading today.  Feast when the Church feasts, fast when the Church fasts.

However, if you want to keep your momentum, I might recommend Book Four of Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, although this treatise is a little long in parts.

Twenty-eighth day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 71-80

Twenty-seventh day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 61-70

I know, I know, it's kind of long, but two more days and we're off to Saint Cyril.

Twenty-sixth day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 51-60

Twenty-fifth day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 41-50

Twenty-fourth day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 31-40

Twenty-third day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 21-30

Fourth Sunday of Lent

No required reading today.  Feast when the Church feasts, fast when the Church fasts.

However, if you want to keep your momentum, I might recommend Book Three of Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, although this treatise is a little long in parts.

Twenty-second day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 11-20

Twenty-first day of Lent

Doctor Athanasius on the Life of St. Anthony, chapters 1-10

Athanasius is known, amongst other things, in the Eastern Church as the "Father of Orthodoxy."  He had an important role at the Council of Nicea.  The Athanasian Creed seems more to be named after him than written by him.

This Saint Anthony is St. Anthony the Great, Desert Father.

Twentieth day of Lent

St. Cyprian on the Unity of the Church, sections 19-27

Nineteenth day of Lent

St. Cyprian on the Unity of the Church, sections 10-18

Eighteenth day of Lent

St. Cyprian on the Unity of the Church, sections 1-9

Seventeeth day of Lent

St. Justin Martyr's first Apology, chapters 60-68

Third Sunday of Lent

No required reading today.  Feast when the Church feasts, fast when the Church fasts.

However, if you want to keep your momentum, I might recommend Book Two of Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, although this treatise is a little long in parts.

Sixteenth day of Lent

St. Justin Martyr's first Apology, chapters 48-59

Fifteenth day of Lent

St. Justin Martyr's first Apology, chapters 36-47

Fourteenth day of Lent

St. Justin Martyr's first Apology, chapters 24-35

Thirteenth day of Lent

St. Justin Martyr's first Apology, chapters 12-23

Twelfth day of Lent

St. Justin Martyr's first Apology, chapters 1-11

Raised a Gentile, Justin sought the tutelage of several Greek schools of philosophy before finding that Christianity best answered his hunger for God.

Eleventh day of Lent

St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to Polycarp

Polycarp, as you've seen by now, was mentioned by Ignatius in his letters to the Magnesians and the Ephesians.

Second Sunday of Lent

No required reading today.  Feast when the Church feasts, fast when the Church fasts.

However, if you want to keep your momentum, I might recommend Book One of Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, although this treatise is a little long in parts.

Tenth day of Lent

St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Smyrnaeans

Much of this letter is spent answering the Docetist heresy, which denied the Incarnation.  It is also the first known use of the term "Catholic Church," but with a lack of explanation, suggesting the term was already in common use.

Ninth day of Lent

St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Philadelphians

Another of the seven letters written by Ignatius.

This is the Philadelphia in western Turkey and mentioned as one of the seven churches in Revelation, not the city in eastern Pennsylvania, which was called Shackamaxon at the time if it was there to be inhabited by the Lenape that far back.

There's your random trivia for the day.

Eighth day of Lent

St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Romans

Another of the seven letters written by Ignatius.

Seventh day of Lent

St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Trallians (complete)

Another of his seven letters.

Sixth day of Lent

St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Magnesians (complete)

Another of the seven letters written by Ignatius.

Pious tradition holds that Ignatius was the child mentioned in Mark 9:35.

Fifth day of Lent

St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Ephesians (complete)

Ignatius, another student of John the Evangelist, was made the third bishop of Antioch by Peter.

This is one of seven letters written by Ignatius on his way to Rome and martyrdom.

First Sunday of Lent

No required reading today.  Feast when the Church feasts, fast when the Church fasts.

However, if you want to keep your momentum, I might recommend the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians.

Clement of Rome was the fourth pope, following Linus and Cletus after Peter.

Fourth day of Lent

Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians (complete)

Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna, a contemporary of Irenaeus, and a disciple of John the Evangelist.

Third day of Lent

Epistle to Diognetus, chapters 7-12

All known copies of this document were made from a 13th century manuscript after damage caused the loss of two lines from the middle of the text.  The last two chapters are possibly additions from later in the second century or possibly early in the third century.

Second day of Lent

Epistle to Diognetus, chapters 1-6

An anonymous apologetic ("Mathetes" is not the author's true name but a word that means "disciple") from the late second century.

First Day of Lent

The Didache (complete)

The Didache is one of the oldest non-canon documents of Christianity.  Written in the late first century AD, it is thought by some to be the constitution of the Council of Jerusalem mentioned in Acts 15.  Thought lost, it was rediscovered in the late 19th century in Constantinople.

40 days of patristics for Lent

Since many bloggers largely stay offline for Lent, I thought I would try something different.  Lent is a good time to pray and meditate by turning to Christian writings that have already stood the test of time, but I don't mean to go against that.  Since I normally don't write very much (except when I really get going), and not all that well, I wanted to provide something worthwhile for people whose Lenten penances do not include avoiding the Blogosphere, to try facilitating some Patristic reading that everybody should at least develop some passing familiarity with.  Also, I compiled all the stuff I'm going to be posting over the next six weeks in advance, and I didn't personally have to write any of it, so it keeps this from becoming a chore for me as well.

When I was in grad school, someone turned me on to the Lenten Fathers devotion.  Over the course of the 40 days of Lent (Sundays excluded--they're feast days), with an average of 10-15 minutes of reading a day, you will have read some of the most influential documents of ten writers from the Patristic era.

Starting tomorrow, I will post links to the various Patristic writings from this reading plan at ChurchYear.net  I'd post the whole texts but I'm not entirely clear on the intellectual property rules for particular translations of documents in the public domain.  Most of them are short enough you can read the entire thing in one sitting, but for the longer ones I will link the whole document each day from New Advent, and list the chapters prescribed by ChurchYear.net for each day's reading because I don't know of a way to create links that navigate to specific locations inside a document that doesn't already have anchor tags where I'd want them.  If you know how, please let me know.

Since Sundays aren't included, in order to help keep in the habit of reading and reflecting every day, I have included additional Patristic documents to keep things consistent.  Some of them get a little long, but since Sundays are a day of rest, maybe you'll have more time for reading, anyway.

Prayer request

So, I took a new job back in July, moved across three states to do it.  I wasn't sure that I'd like it a lot, but it was a good career move.  The guy who interviewed me warned me that the hours would be long, which gave me some pause, but assured me that dedication and hard work were well rewarded.  So, I took the chance.

Things were okay at first.  I hadn't quite been trained on enough of my new responsibilities to fill the 60-72 hour work week by the end of my second month, but that didn't matter because they thrust me into a supervisory position.  My boss wasn't thrilled with losing me, and he was sympathetic because in every way except the most abstract I had no qualifications for the job or for the department I was now on loan to ("they figure," my boss said, "you're smart enough, you can figure it out"), but neither of us really had a say in the matter.

I don't want to go into details now about the corporate climate; suffice it to say our management was accurately described in an online review of the company as having "comic-book villain personalities."

So here's my concern.  I left my last job for a lot of the reasons I don't like my current job.  I know it's not like this everywhere, but this seems to be endemic to the industry, if not to American business in general.  It's making me think that engineering isn't what I'm supposed to do for the rest of my life, if I can't go somewhere that isn't going to make me sick.

I ask, then, for your prayers:  that for now I continue to get by, and that I may discern what the rest of my career should be, and succeed in whatever that is.

Never pass up an opportunity to float some propaganda

I haven't been following the tragedy in Newtown, CT very closely; I can't quite bring myself to stare it in the face and I'm reluctant to desensitize myself with another media frenzy.  Instead I want to talk briefly about the media.

As you've noticed, the events of last Friday have provided a great opportunity to bring a long neglected national debate back to the forefront:  gun control.  I tend to see the debate from one side of the argument that you will probably be able to guess easily if you don't already know, but I don't want to talk about gun control itself right now.

I read part of an article this morning that focused on how the gun debate has awakened in the wake of the Newtown shooting.  It attempted to sum up the debate in a few sentences that, for lack of an eidetic memory, I will paraphrase:

Advocates of less restrictive gun laws point to states that have more widespread gun ownership and claim that there is a lower incidence of violent crime.  Gun control advocates disagree, however, and say that jurisdictions with tight gun laws have records of lower gun violence.

Both sides of the debate could be right, because they're talking about two different things.  Through either sloppy or dishonest reporting, the reader is left to wonder which side is going to massage the data better.

Read the paraphrased paragraph over again.  Advocates of gun ownership say violent crime is lower where law-abiding citizens are not prevented from defending themselves with guns.  Advocates of gun control say gun violence is lower where there are fewer guns on the books.

Violent crime ≠ gun violence.  A crime could be committed violently with guns, knives, baseball bats, binder twine, a roll of quarters, or bare fists.  Gun control only attempts to take one class of tools out of the hands of criminals.

Today I'm not going to argue about whether gun control would be fruitful or not.  I only want to draw attention to the fact that honest and informed dialog is not going to be possible if we're not going to hold our sources of information up to better scrutiny.  This instance happened to be obvious to me because I've had practice looking for cases where my political opponents try to have a debate on their grounds under their terms and treat any sign of skepticism as an act of bad faith or ill will.  There have been other instances when I've been let down by sources I thought were more trustworthy (I know, trust not in princes and all that...), and I'm sure yet others that I haven't become aware of.

I strive to be more perceptive.  I don't know if I'm any better at it than anyone else, but I'm better than I used to be.  I encourage everyone to do the same, to challenge their own suppositions from time to time.

A coworker of mine mentioned a few weeks ago, "I don't like FOX News.  They lie."

Honey, lying news outlets are the only game in town, including the networks and publications that tell you FOX is not to be trusted.  Best get used to checking your own facts.

"If marriage is opened to anyone who wants it...so what?"

A chilling exchange crossed the forums at ISCA recently.  A user posited the question "If we opened marriage up to everyone, so what?  What are the things that would go bad in society if this happened?"

These are not unreasonable questions.  Too often the most common argument made is the "appeal to squick," the notion that if something seems gross, there's something wrong with it.  True or not, it's a subjective and emotional standard that can't stand on its own.  It was the discussion that followed that was bothersome.  Paraphrased nuggets of wisdom from the "discussion:"

"Who cares?"  "Are we supposed to clutch our pearls and say 'land sakes, God a'mighty' while all these terrible things happen?"  "If there's some species-ending occurrence like not enough people preferring to couple with adult humans, instead preferring animals or machines or children, so what?"  "Only adults have legal standing and the ability to sign contracts, so the line is drawn at polygamy and gay marriage; anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot."

It's these last two that bother me.  I don't know what kind of idiot it would take to realize that people are already pushing beyond plural and gay marriage, beyond the line Mark Shea describes as "consent as the sole criterion of the good."  Sure, statues and children and dolphins can't sign contracts legally, but children at least have the ability to do so, and machines could be programmed to do so, as long as we're maintaining the facade of mutual consent.

If you want to blur the line between what's accepted now and what you want accepted, start on the fuzzy cases:  machines programmed to do what you already want, children who might be precocious enough to be emancipated or who might just be brought before a judge more sympathetic to the head of the local chapter of NAMBLA than to the well-being of children.  If you can throw the matter of consent into question, you really don't have to stop there.

"Oh, but plural marriage isn't illegal--bigamy as an instance of fraud and adultery/cohabitation laws being excepted--it's just not legally recognized," it was said.  Um, no.  Legally recognizing these arrangements is the whole point.  There are already people who do these things and it is decreasingly held in check by the forces of shame and law.  If it weren't unhealthful we'd already have more than the alleged hundreds or thousands of people practicing these things successfully.

And if "species-ending occurrence" doesn't strike you as a bad thing, how can, or why should, anyone else explain that any of the problems that are less dire than suigenocide are both problems and real possibilities?  If you want to have a thorough discussion, more power to you, but do you honestly think the burden of proof is not on the people saying "What could it hurt?"  If you really want to be honest, you should be calling to heel your allies who are making bad arguments that you already understand well enough to counter on behalf of your rhetorical opponents.

"Well, even two-person marriages don't always last forever, so what's it matter if larger ones don't, either?"

The fact that polygamous arrangements are not more successful than normal marriages is beside the point.  The point is that they are less successful.  Between nuclear families and plural marriage you have millions of people who cheat in secret; or who start seeing someone new before breaking it off with the current significant other, because they know it's not going to last long if they're open and honest with everybody about it; or who do so with the knowledge and toleration of the other party because they have some other compelling reason to keep up appearances.

Again I am compelled to remind my reader of boiling a frog in a pot of water.  If all it takes for evil to succeed is good men doing nothing, then all it takes to get good men to do nothing is trick them to make a thousand trivial compromises while evil hides in plain sight.  We see it on TV, we see it in our communities, we see it at work:  something unpleasant happens, people shrug and say "Well, it's just the times we live in; who can mount a crusade against a swarm of gnats, let alone this?" and everyone gets used to things being worse than they should be, without quite being able to explain what's wrong.

ISCA seems, more than most places I've been on the Internet, intolerant of the slippery slope argument. I think it is because back in the heyday of BBSes, it was not uncommon to find debaters who committed the classical slippery slope fallacy.  Whether it is a fallacy, or a bad argument, in contemporary usage depends on the circumstances, much as the appeal to authority does:  while an appeal to authority is valid if one can accurately cite the position of a legitimate expert, the slippery slope is valid if one can demonstrate the progression from making the first trivial compromise to reaching the state that the debater warns against.  While one can still sometimes have interesting discussions there, this propensity for assuming that arguments they don't like are badly framed arguments really makes me question the value of coming there to mine for post fodder.  Maybe it's a good intellectual barometer for the state of society, but there's not much room these days for new or unpopular ideas.

I wonder if there's a good theology on tap that runs during the winter around here somewhere.

The wasted vote

I don't recall if I posted on this topic before, but if so, it's worth revisiting, especially this time of the year.

Many people talk about how they would like to vote third party because they dislike the major party candidates, or how they would like to vote for one of the two main party candidates; but they won't, because they feel they would be wasting their votes.  Others just decide to vote for the one they think will win, rather than the one they want to win.

I ask:  What would make their vote well spent, instead?

I say there is no such thing as a wasted vote; or, they're all wasted.

The vast majority of time, elections aren't close enough that any individual's vote is going to make a difference.  How is your one vote for a candidate who loses by a hundred thousand any more wasted than the one vote cast for a candidate who wins by a hundred thousand?

What would your vote accomplish either way?

What return do you get for casting your vote one way or another?  A clear conscience for throwing in with the lesser of two evils instead of with an actual good?  Is someone at least paying you?

Not that I have anything against people who vote tactically, but even in that sense, the sense of voting to increase the probability of successfully electing someone who isn't as bad as the alternative in any particular election, there's still the fact that you're making an unnecessary contribution to the polling statistics, at the expense of sending a message about the kind of person you really think should be in charge.  That may be more of a waste than anything, if you do nothing else for the next four years.

The best thing to do, really, is to try to stay current on political happenings, vote in primaries when you can, and do your homework so you can vote meaningfully in local and state elections, because that's where national-level politicians get started.  Maybe someday you'll find, say, pro-life Democrats who don't capitulate on abortion when they go to Washington because they finally see how much support they have inside their party.  Maybe someday you'll find activists and journalists hoisted by their own petards as they try harder and harder to paint the Tea Party as racists and imperialists every time one gets elected on a sane and traditional platform.

Or maybe that's not your thing, but whatever you believe, if you don't help the right people get started in politics, you'll always only be choosing between a candidate you don't like and a candidate you don't want.

"Conservatives have spent the last 40 years trying to convince people that the mainstream media is somewhere left of center...and it's paid off."

Well yeah, of course it has, with all the help the conservatives' political opponents have provided.

You want examples?  Look at the last presidential campaign.  In the preceding eight years, W hardly got away with anything without being denied the benefit of the doubt.  The Iraq war was just over its first hump when people started complaining about the lack of an exit strategy (not that it's bad to have one, but it's weird to focus on that while skipping right over things like, say, a victory strategy; maybe the armchair generals thought a successful first wave was just how wars work in the post-Vietnam era).  Then a freshman congressman from Chicago, with hardly anything to his voting record, shows up; and not only is treated like the Second Coming, almost no one is heard saying "Um, that's a little beyond enthusiastic, isn't it?  Can we talk about what he plans on doing instead of how he's going to usher in the Age of Aquarius?  Who is lucid or sane enough for us to be quoting seriously, who goes around talking about Obama like he's the übermensch?"

And I know it's not exactly the same thing, but it's related, so while we're discussing bias, we should also talk about slant.  Things where articles give equal time but one side enjoys the application of euphemisms or more favorable adjectives.  Things where articles are objective in content but give more air or screen time or column space to one side than to another.  Things where articles are pretty well balanced but giving one side an apparently decisive but premature last word.  Things where biased experts are brought in to analyze a situation and fall short of reasonable efforts to keep his preferences out of the discussion.

But let's also talk about media magnates who visit journalism schools and tell students that not only is true objectivity impossible, leftist bias is preferable--even an obligation.  Let's talk about the folks in the media who apparently missed those lectures and insist that they and theirs are capable of rising above it all.  Let's talk about industry language standards that clearly favor one side, to the tune of using "pro-choice" for the side that favors abortion while using "anti-choice" for the side that considers it to be the worst of murders.  Let's talk about how Fox news doesn't just seem conservative, but seems predominantly conservative against the bulk of the rest of the media.

I can only conclude that they have some radically different definition of "bias" from the rest of us.  I wonder what they have in mind when they use the word.  I wonder what they think we're talking about, when we use it.

But biased or not, I don't put a lot of stock in the mass media as a stand-alone source of predigested news.  They're ignorant or sloppy enough at reporting on the topics that I understand well, that I'm inclined to think they perform about as well in reporting on other topics I'm less equipped to judge.  That doesn't leave much worth watching except the weather and traffic.  Oh, and sports, I guess.

Charismatic...Catholic...New Age?

My mom once mentioned a faith healer she had wanted to go see at the annual state Catholic charismatic conference he was supposed to be attending somewhere near her home this past summer.  I told her I was also interested in going; I've been trying to be more open to different kinds of prayer, since my prayer life tends to be more rote and...I don't know, insensate?  Less seasoned with personally significant or just personal phenomena.  Anyway, that and I hoped to provide some grounding for my mom whose interest in a visibly fruitful prayer life after having grown up on the cusp of Vatican II sometimes leaves her open to gauging activity of the Holy Spirit by emotional impact.  So we've got things to learn from each other.


Well, she encouraged me to look this healer up online, so I did.  The first Google hit I got was a discussion about whether he was on the level or not, so it seemed as good a place to start as any.  I looked at a few more, some which were enthusiastically supportive, others which were cautious because some of his language and healing techniques (he had been a physician but now does full-time prayer healing and some unorthodox/experimental medical practices I don't want to get sidetracked on) bear similarities to Eastern philosophy and contain occasional references to Eastern religious figures, still others which were pretty well against this man's work because of its Eastern appearances.   


What was funny was that this first web site was cautiously skeptical, based largely on conversations with a Catholic acquaintance of the author of the web site, but all the criticisms were against Catholic doctrine and culture.


Repeated denials that the man with the alleged gift of healing had anything to do with the healing of the Catholic acquaintance, that Jesus did not need him and could have healed him from the prayers of anyone else, such as the site's author (who may or may not have offered any).  Reminders that we don't need healers, we need Jesus (do we even need doctors, then?  Are we to despise certain tools Jesus may deign to use other than a grace of spontaneous recovery of health?).  "Alarm bells" going off at this healer's admission to using the rosary and chaplet of Divine Mercy frequently during his healing services.  Frequent "corrections" to the healed man talking about the work of his priest, and dismay at the man's cancer coming back, as if no sola fideist ever died.  Sorrow over his alleged misconception that he would have to go to purgatory, with the author's own misconceptions being clear in claiming that the doctrine of purgatory was proof in the lack of faith in the completeness of Christ's suffering (or rather, in the owner's thorough ignorance of Colossians 1:24) "that the RCC invented in the 800 years after Christ's death"--not sure how the RCC differed from the Eastern or Oriental or other Occidental rites back then, or if it wasn't until the ninth century that questions of purgatory presumably first arose.  Saying it is a lie that Rome is the one Church and [the pope, anyway] the successor of Peter, even though most ecclesial communities find it more fruitful to attempt to trivialize these claims than to attempt to show the claims are simply, willfully, false.  Regretting that this person, being Catholic, isn't even aware of his savior (a claim I find odd every time I hear it; we don't use "personal relationship with Jesus" language as much, although talk and writing about the Eucharist is pretty clearly that, and if he wasn't up for correcting the simple factual errors about purgatory and the role of the priest or the Church then he probably wouldn't have been well-equipped to cut through the Evangelical jargon either, but I hear this "you don't know Him" stuff so much it makes me wonder how stupid they must think we are for praying to some blue-robed Mother while the Son to whom she is a mother we never think about--who's the guy on the cross supposed to be, anyway, if not Jesus?).  Regretting that, in their zeal to show him the truly-true Gospel before Time Ran Out and he finally succumbed to cancer, they may have been blunt to the point of alienating; this is another curious feature I sometimes observe, one that smacks to me of a belief in the inadequacy and narrowness of the Cross, that if someone can't be pressed into reciting a trite formula before the buzzer on his life goes off, then there's no hope.  But maybe being overzealous and then recognizing the share in culpability for the harm done by belligerent proselytizing is better than saying "Well, we logistically haven't been able to evangelize to absolutely everybody in the world, so God must be okay with sending all those pagans to hell, and so who am I to have a problem with what God wants?" which I have also seen.


What was perhaps funnier was a comment left by a reader who laments that we Catholics never do discernment of the supernatural, that it's all the same and must all come from God, and so we never know if we're being deceived by satanic healings.


You know what?  Satan might heal (maybe wouldn't, but for the sake of the argument), but he couldn't if God didn't allow it.  Satan couldn't act, or exist, if God didn't allow it.  God allows things because in the end they will glorify Him.  I don't find a sorting logic of "Direct from God is good, anything that appears to be mediated by the saints or angels is from the devil" to be particularly discerning.  It attributes too much native power to hell and too little shared power to current and would-be saints.  You know what?  Okay, God did the healing, but you had the charity to ask God to heal.  God gave you the charity too, but He also gave you the free will to exercise it--the opportunity to let Him act through you.  Scrupling to deny that crosses the line from humility into denial of facts, and woe to he who calls good evil.  You've got a problem with free will?  Then you've got a lot of non-Calvinists to preach to than just the Catholics (which makes me wonder, on a tangent, what or when doctrinal differences qualify as fundamental and gross, or just negligible differences of interpretation betwixt brethren).


But I'm getting off track.  All these criticisms of Catholics' various apparently inferior charisms, but nothing about what should alarm them:


No qualms about mentioning Buddha alongside Jesus and the saints who worked through the power of love.  No fears about the similarities between Eastern pantheistic-medical practices and this healer's allegedly unorthodox medical practices.  No alarm raised at the descriptions of God as an Energy or a field like for one of the four fundamental forces of nature.


Here is a guy with cancer putting himself in the care of a guy potentially attempting to harness the powers of Eastern mysticism, and you're worried that he lacks some familiarity with Christ gained by reciting a rote verse?  Christ hasn't been present in this world the way you and I are for two thousand years; I would venture that none of us is really adequately familiarized with Him.  Worry first about whether the doctor has a predilection for conflating God and The Force.  

I read a few other silly-creepy articles from this mailing list that will beat the Church and modern culture with any stick they can find, and I'm leaning again more in the direction of unsubscribing from their list and ignoring them.  On the one hand, they still make some correct criticisms of certain movements that are popular because they're comforting, such as the prosperity gospel, but judging from my moderate exposure to Joel Osteen, it may be fruitful for a discerning soul to take some of his "the Lord will reward you for behaving rightly" lessons in a metaphorical mode rather than in a materialistic one, and I think the outfit running this mailing list tends to err a little too scrupulously on the side of cutting out things that could be good because they might also be bad.

I don't want to encourage anyone to sin, nor to put them in the near occasion of sin, but sometimes there should be room for prudential judgment and a consideration for the individual's disposition and temperament.

Anyway, on the other hand, they pull some stuff that is so...inbred...that I can't even bring myself to make fun of it.  I can hardly say to myself with a straight face "Well, maybe someone should answer those charges, for the benefit of the anonymous reader who might read them and fail to find the sane rebuttal."

I mentioned a few days ago a few examples, the most egregious I think being the usual smack about the Vatican trying to establish a one-world government (which I have never seen an argument against, except on the grounds that the Antichrist also seems to want such a thing--certainly not a reason to embrace it, but not compelling on its face to the sober minded, either) after that silly article by an obscure department in Rome about global banking.

Somewhat more recently than the message where they criticized that occurrence, they had another article on the proper way to pray.  This sounds like it should be good, but keep in mind this is also coming from some folks who said we shouldn't pray to the Holy Spirit, because it's not Biblical; that we should only pray to the Father, through the Son.  I'm surprised they're Trinitarian at all, after the theological reasoning I saw there.

Anyway, they started by listing a bunch of spiritual practices known around the world, including the Divine Office, Zen mediation, reiki, centering prayer, and a few other things I can't remember at the moment.  The rosary was probably on there, too, and I think those crop labyrinths that show up outside of harmless harvest festival milieux.  Pretty disparate collection, but they then asserted that what all these practices have in common is that they're forms of contemplative prayer, and that they're unbiblical.

Huh?

Um...no.  Not at all.

Of course eastern mystical practices are unbiblical, even if you don't want to go as far as saying they're fundamentally incompatible with Christianity.  But none of these things in itself is contemplative prayer.  Contemplation is a form of prayer that is only a gift from God, perhaps best understood as a special kind of mediation that might occur during one of these other forms of prayer, but it's not something someone can simply sit down and do, like praying rote or praying extemporaneously.  Granted, grasping natural contemplation is an expected fruit of lectio divina, but infused contemplation is not something we can achieve, and thus not something we can resist, except by refusal to cooperate with grace--and that, being the definition of sin, no honest Christian would endorse).

Naturally I can't say God would never bestow the gift of contemplation on a pagan, I've seen too many pagans act in what I would have called Christian charity  to believe that God would refuse to work in their lives, so maybe there is a common thread after all, but honestly, all the things they mentioned are otherwise unrelated.  The rosary?  Mediation on the life of Christ, through the eyes of Mary.  The Divine Office?  Largely psalms of praise.  Reiki?  Some kind of pagan healing technology, of sorts.  Eastern meditation?  Perhaps the closest thing to Christian mediation on the surface, but geared more towards detachment and emptiness than towards calming the self and trying to listen to God, to just spend time with Him.

No, how they say we should pray is to say our praises and petitions, and then search the Scriptures for an answer.

This is not a bad thing, but it puzzles me that anyone would think this is a well rounded way to live.  I would lament if I were of the majority of Christians in history who could not read to study the Bible, or could not afford a Bible to read or the time to read it.

I wonder how they would react if, in poring over Lamentations or Revelation, they received a gift of a moment of spiritual communion in the very sense they said we should not pursue.  It is not seemly to pursue glories, but God is well known for giving us what we don't want because it's good for us.

Above and beyond, our Lord did give us instructions on how to pray, and it was not "praise and beseech, then search the Scriptures."  It was "Pray like this:  Our Father, Who art in heaven; hallowed be Thy Name.  They kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

You can follow that exactly or use it as a guide or template for all your prayer, but it far from supports the position of folks like I'm talking about who try too hard to be pure and correct.  Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, guys.

I don't often like visiting web sites that feature philosophies I strongly disagree with

Usually they're so rich with content I disagree with, I'd burn up the remainder of my soul trying to beat the host and his supporters with arguments about the truth of the Church and what all.  I don't want to do that, and don't like it when I feel myself so inclined, because what I should be doing is trying to convert them and win them over with love, instead of turning it into a fight.  Sometimes I'll visit a few, but I try not to comment or anything so I don't get too caught up in it.

I do get one mass e-mailing from some outfit that warns about some conspiracy between Rome and the UN creating a world government (a refreshing change from both being part of the same Jesuit plot although sometimes they go there, too), but they have a mix of silly stuff that doesn't bother me too much yet (I may get my fill after a few more missives like what I've received lately, though) and criticisms of the culture I actually agree with, so I can stomach the few nuggets of bigotry and misplaced paranoia, turn them into post fodder.  Although recently they attempted to Biblically deconstruct the "Catholics Come Home" ad campaign; they did such a grade school job on that "maybe a world bank wouldn't be a bad idea, eh?" article from whichever Vatican dicastery that it would have killed any faith I might have still had in their ability to exegete weightier subjects like the Bible itself.  You've probably seen the type; they talk about being among the mere tens of thousands of true Christians, write off all ecumenism as false ecumenism and put out articles and DVDs about how the "Bible Church" cannot "merge" with Rome, get it right on isolated topics like prosperity theology (I wish a few of them had the historical memory to attack residual liberation theology, but maybe the Jesus-Marxists are too far out there to show up on their radar), and then spend a great deal of effort going around debunking the messages of specific Protestant celebrities along side Masonry and Rome and other bogeymen.

I read an editorial by Richard Dawkins from last fall, though, that really made me want to add my drop to the bucket of challengers to his comfortable misconceptions.  I won't go into all of it, because I'm lazy and because his caricatures are only convincing to people who want to have an exotic, bureaucratic boogeyman to rage against.  The supporters in his combox, however, were perhaps more alarming.

Dawkins was talking about how the Church--the Latin Rite, at least--was a viable contender for the title of greatest evil force in the world, something like that.  Gave "examples" by referring to the teachings on chastity as lies about condoms that kill Africans with AIDS.  I wanted to go all Robert Louis Stevenson and point out that, even though federal monies sometimes make their way to Catholic hospitals in the US, the Church (and other religious groups) actually have boots on the ground trying to help the people who have AIDS now and are starving and in poverty now, instead of issuing shrill criticisms from his comfortably distant laptop computer.  But I doubt I have the charism to prick his conscience, if no other opponent of his has managed to do so, either.  Time to pray for him and for patience and humility for myself along the way.

Naturally the defenders of the Faith made their various and sundry contributions and efforts, and Dawkins' fan club chimed in with insults, compliments to his clarity of thought I found oddly uniform, and eerily disconnected as well as brazen affronts to all things Catholic, such as suspicion about Benedict's sexuality, the tenacious delusion that Benedict really was a Nazi sympathizer, and my personal favorite, an assertion that Rome had active agents involved in African genocide, supported only by a link to catholic-hierarchy.org, to the page listing nothing but the bishops of Rwanda.

That was all.  Merely pointing out that there are bishops in a country that currently experiences genocide and expecting others to assume there's a deliberate connection.  You know what's also in Rwanda, buddy?  Trees and water.  Maybe they're also contributing factors.  You know who else had a genocide?  Germany in World War Two.  You know what else Germany had?  Sauerkraut and beer.  Maybe they're also contributing factors.  You know what else?  Rome has bishops for every square inch of land; most of them occupy their territories but some only have virtual or potential jurisdiction, like Timothy P. Broglio for the American military or whoever indirectly responsible for Antarctica whom my Google-fu is failing to identify.  Do you really think any attempt to assign contributing factors to these fellows would in any way be fruitful or meaningful?

I mean, this is what we're up against.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

“I don’t think a college student in Colorado Springs should have to choose between textbooks or the preventive care she needs.”

This from our president, to which and to whom I respond:

If this college student were spending so much on "preventive care" that she can't afford her books, she's having way too much sex to have time to study, let alone make it to class or do homework and take exams.  She'd be expelled for academic failure and have no further need of her books by spring break.

“We worked with Catholic hospitals and universities to find a solution that protects both religious liberty and a woman’s health,” he went on, but apparently this work did not come to fruition: “We’ve made sure churches and other houses of worship don’t have to provide or pay for it.”

Too bad for Americans with traditional religious values and beliefs that you couldn't find a solution that protects religious institutions other than churches, such as the aforementioned Catholic hospitals and universities.  

Need proof that the MSM has a liberal bias?

I submit that the following evidence is representative, if perhaps a bit inflammatory; abortion is the example I give, and I recognize that the lines between Life and Choice are not drawn perfectly down the middle aisle.

The Bad Catholic has two posts with videos from the March for Life.

Mark Shea has more posts than I could hope to write, but in his defense, it's kind of his job.

Shameless Popery...well, you get the idea.


If you don't care to follow the links, each shows how the March for Life, attended by hundreds of thousands of pro-life demonstrators, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade was anything but news, but the relatively scant counter-protesters got disproportionate coverage, with interviews focusing on asking Planned Parenthood executives questions that suggest the underrealized utopia that consequence-free sex was supposed to usher in was mainly due to logistical difficulties.

And yes, I realize that I'm just rolling a few Catholic blogs.  But hey, the hard work's already been done, and sometimes being fair and balanced, so to speak, means presenting something with bias opposite to the usual so a lucid mind can consider the merits of both sides; and like I said, I consider this to be a representative, if dramatic, example.

You know, just to mix it up a bit, I'm going to link a couple gems from the Zombietime blog (which may not be suitable for those with delicate sensibilities):

• Taxonomy of a Fraud
• The Red Cross Ambulance Incident

There are some other articles there that go into more detail.  For those not in the know, Zombie is a photographer in the San Francisco area who, despite not being particularly conservative, finds much blog fodder in the incoherence of the fringe Left and the intellectual bankruptcy of its alleged elites.

A man had two sons.
He came to the first and said,
'Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.'
He said in reply, 'I will not, '
but afterwards changed his mind and went.
The man came to the other son and gave the same order.
He said in reply, 'Yes, sir, 'but did not go.
Which of the two did his father's will?"
They answered, "The first."
Jesus said to them, "Amen."

This gospel passage, where the vintner hires workers in the morning and at midday and in the evening and pays them all the same, tells us amongst other things that whether we come early or late to the party, there is no partial reward upon admission to heaven.
I think this makes a reasonable contribution to the argument that we don't gain heaven through our own efforts; if God is not fair, then at least He is generous, and whenever you accept His invitation to the vineyard, at the end of the day you'll receive the day's wages.
Then, though, we are presented with the question Jesus posed to the chief priests and elders in another passage (which are actually mass readings a week apart for year A, I think).  Here's another vintner, one with two sons he tells to go work in his vineyard.  One says he won't do the work, but relents; the other makes an obeisant sign and then reneges.  Which one did his father's will?  In terms of the analogy, which one would enter the kingdom of heaven? The one who did his father's will.  Not the one who said he would.
I would hope that this episode would serve as a counterpoint to certain schools of thought that look at the parable as a proof text (one of several, I should say) for easy and irrevocable salvation bought by the recitation of a verbal formula.  When asked to explain someone who invites Jesus into his heart and at some subsequent point in his life seems to succumb to temptation and embraces malice and hedonism until the end of his life, the only possible answer given is "He must never have gotten saved in the first place."
It's very easy for the next thought to be "but that would never happen to me; I meant it in my heart when I asked Jesus to become my personal Lord and Savior."  
Savvy:  Christians are offered every same temptation as pagans and other unbelievers.  Committing sin remains a very real possibility for the duration of every person's mortal life.  An adulterer may reasonably expect his life to be destroyed by vices other than alcoholism or rage, but if he says "I'm turning over a new leaf, so help me God!" and then completely doesn't, then maybe he never meant it...or maybe it's just not that simple.
After all, not all who cry "Lord, Lord!" will be saved.  God will do everything to bring you to paradise except force you to go.  If you make a habit of making promises you don't keep (which is what the disobedient son did), your promises will come to naught; they won't fool God, and they won't fool you.  If you make a habit of breaking promises to do the will of God, you won't find yourself inclined to do or submit to His will for long.
In the first parable, even the people hired at the end of the day worked that last hour.  The vintner did not pay them in advance.
Okay, okay; some will say "He's saved despite the evils he commits" and others even "Christ's blood has it covered so those aren't really sins."  To the former I say one who endeavors to reject the graces of living a good life will not be disposed to accept the grace of salvation, no matter when either is offered; and to the latter I say a pardoned debt extinguishes deficit expenditures without defining them away.  To the former I say thus does presumption endanger the soul of the lazy believer, and to the latter I say you have no dog in this fight from the very beginning of it.
But again, while we are not expected or required or able to achieve the sanctity of heaven by our own efforts, we are expected to make hay during whatever sunshine still remains in the day.  Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said we are called to be faithful, not to be successful.  We are not called to earn justification and righteousness, we are only called to do the work.
Just as Paul said "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her," it is to husbands given the responsibility of dying for their wives; it does not then follow that no man who fails to consummate martyrdom for his wife has failed as a husband.  He is called to that duty, not required to execute it in the extreme in every case.

Prayer after communion

Lord, I praise You and thank You for coming to us in this sacrament You have given to us, by which we may approach You.  I pray that I receive You to my salvation and sanctification, and not to my condemnation; and that You suffer me never to be farther from You than I am at this moment.



Since it is sometimes said that the Father can resist no request made to Him at the time of communion, I sometimes make petitions in the following form (I try not to dwell on them too much; focus should be more on communion during communion, so to speak, and there are other times to offer petitions):

Heavenly Father, for the breaking of Your Son's Body and the shedding of His Blood, I pray for X.

If I receive under both species, I split it up and pray through the Body and through the Blood when I receive each, respectively.