Our own Venerable TSO writes
One of the things that fascinates is the diversity among St. Blog's and the different approaches taken. There are intensely personal blogs and less so. My temptation is to think of those bloggers who never met a personal pronoun as minor saints. Certainly Donna Marie Lewis is the Cal Ripken of bloggers when it comes to that. A possible drinking game is to pick a month in her archives and take a drink every time she posted about Ven. Newman or St. Philip Neri. And I admire her for it because it's difficult to imagine saying things that Cardinal Newman didn't say better. Video meliora... Still, I'm not sure it's necessary to give up the personal even though narcissism is to blogs what hot air is to popcorn. The way I look at it writing is a form of therapy and much cheaper than a $100 an hour analyst.
And I too much admire Ms Lewis's blog, not entirely for lack of personal pronouns, but for many of the good things she posts. Being the Anti-Lewis and the master of personal pronouns, I feel called upon to expostulate and deliver orotund wisdom about the felicity of doing so. But the reality is that I learn from the mistakes I make. I learn from the mistakes others make. Venerables and Saints are too distant and unapproachable to me until I know where they failed. So I gladly parade my failures for everyone to see that they might say, "Well, at least I'm not like that Pharisee over there." Or perhaps one soul somewhere might better recognize the Devil's Snare I got entangled in and dose it with about 20 billion lumens of SonLight.
But I will continue to make know to the world my many failings and foibles in hopes that everyone might garner from them some sense of "Receive Hope All Ye Who Enter--I've Been There, Done That, And Come Back to Tell You ALL to Stay Away." Yep--TSO is right--cheap therapy.
According to a comment on Gerard 's blog
I am very sad to report that Gerard Bugge, my mother Sheila Pritchard's long-time friend and tenant, passed away peacefully last night at his home in Maryland.
Please pray for the repose of his soul. He is the ethereal Godfather of many of us.
Whatever one might conclude from Mr. JCecil3s varius arguments about Kerry, he hit the nail right on the head so far as the dedication to pro-life of the present administration. It strikes me as window-dressing. If they stand idly by and allow Arlen Specter to chair the judiciary committee, we are very close to "all is for nought." Specter, as you know, has as much as promised that there will be a pro-abortion litmus test for Supreme Court Judges. Under those circumstances, doesn't much matter what the rhetoric was all about. It appears that the republican dedication to the pro-life cause is a public face. It ends once the family begins its conversation.
I'm cautiously optimistic.
With all of the "bad news"--the Spectre of Specter and such like--the elevation of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada to the seat of Senate Minority Leader vacated by Tom Daschle sounds like wonderfully good news. He sounds like fiscal democrat (we can debate the merits of that elsewhere) but a social republican. NPR reported that he is pro-life (what that means in their parlance might require some investigation) and anti-gun-control (not one of my favorite positions). But if Mr. Reid can begin to work with Republicans on some of these issues we might be in a very good place on life issues.
He did say that he didn't think much of the elevation of Clarence Thomas to Chief Justice, but that he would be much more sanguine about Scalia. I'm not keen on Scalia since he announced himself a better interpreter of Church doctrine than our current pope. But from what I've seen of his decisions, they seem well-reasoned and usually on "our" side.
Anyway, it's wait and see time.
I was speaking with a friend the other night and we were talking about the world of "golden age" mysteries. I commented that Rex Stout had some great characters but really terrible plots--murky, muddy, and nearly indecipherable. Agatha Christie is kind of the reverse--some of the most clever plots around, but other than the detectives (and even there, they are more a mass of peculiarities rather than full blown characters) paper thin characterizations. They suited her purpose--Agatha Christie wrote magnificent scenarios for a game of Clue. Now keep in mind, I hold both writers in very high regard as far as sheer entertainment goes.
He commented that Dorothy Sayers was the best of the lot. And I added "And the worst." He wondered what I meant. Dorothy Sayers is by far the most inconsistent of the Golden Age writers. If you started reading at the first novel Whose Body it is entirely possible you would not consider ever picking up another. If you had the misfortune to pick up Gaudy Night a windy, winding, tortuous nonbook of a book, you might fling in across the room and pronounce anathema on Dorothy Sayers. If you were to pick up (I forget which it is, because I nearly abandoned my Sayers career at these two books) Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club or Cloud of Witnesses you would likely be appalled at the sheer classist bigotry that permeates the whole.
But were you to do any of these things, you would have deprived yourself of the extreme pleasures of the best crafted of the books. For Dorothy Sayers is unique. There is no voice like hers, nor any plots, nor story development to match. Five Red Herrings is a magnificent example of the art. My friend said that if was often criticized for its strict reliance of railway tables. But when seen as an extension of and response to the enormously popular Freeman Willis Crofts, one can hardly fault the work, which is in every way superior to Mr. Crofts's very best exploits. And how many people out there read Crofts' any more (myself excluded). The delights of Murder Must Advertise of the sheer virtuosity of The Nine Tailors in which we learn more about ringing the changes than you ever thought you wanted to know. Strong Poison, though by now a cliché of the mystery industry unites Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey and it is an elegant, and if you haven't been exposed to the gimmick, wonderful little study in plotting and a variant of the "locked room murder." In which only one person could possibly have done it because of circumstances.
The overly contrived Busman's Honeymoon still has moments of brilliance. And even though the means of the murder is so highly unlikely as to nearly break the back of this work, still, it somehow works. It took is rather a locked room murder--a genre better exploited and completely explored by John Dickson Carr and his pseudonym Carter Dickson (of whom more later as he based both of his detectives on G.K. Chesterton.)
But Sayers is not to be missed for her wonderful mysteries. Nor should one overlook some of the great and sometimes acerbic religious writings. I don't recall the book, but in one essay she writes of new Calendar days for the Church and includes among them "Derogation days." Her translation of Dante, an exercise undertaken like much of her work, in a futile attempt to show the world that women could be as good as men at classics (it's true, it's just that her work did not show it to the people of the time.) is rather tiresome and plodding.
But Mind of the Maker and many of her other works are well worth our attention today. The disintegration she chronicled in the Anglican Church of her time has continued to our own day and resulted in the debacle of Gene Robinson's Episcopacy.
But her brilliance and her contribution to the wealth of the Golden Age are themselves sufficient reason to spend some time with Dorothy Sayers. But for Heaven's sake, please start with one of the novels of the middle period (excepting Gaudy Night) if you wish to continue reading and enjoying this remarkable writer.
I heard the remarkably vacuous remarks of the recipient of National Book Award distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters. "I never dreamed my books would be the object of censorship."
How idiotic, how robotic, can one set of remarks get? Judy Blume has never been censored. No government agency has ever prevented the pressing of ink to paper in her name (though heaven knows, arts and letters would be better off had one done so.) Judy Blume has been the object of boycotts. Well-deserved completely self-earned boycotts. It is the solemn responsibility of all parent to carefully patrol and circumscribe the reading of their children. It is a necessary function of protecting childhood innocence and of nurturing one's child with the appropriate set of values and ideals.
Censorship is a government prohibition of the distribution of material. And don't get me wrong, I am not at all certain that I oppose all censorship. I don't think the news should be able to report details of murders or lavish loving attention of the lives of serial killers while said serial killers are fighting their convictions. Censorship comes from a government agency with the power to repress--and I do think that some "expressions" are imminently worthy of repression. The problem becomes, of course, who decides what those might be--but that's an argument for another day.
Judy Blume's books have been taken off the shelf because she is a substandard hack writer (some of her very early works are pretty good) who peddles adolescent smut under the guise of talking about "real issues of the day." Parent have told schools to remove these books from the library. It is not the school that has taken it upon itself to remove the works--but the pressure of boycotts. This is not censorship--this is the free market in action. If your ideas are repugnant to the free market, then expect that they will be rejected. Go get yourself published by a vanity press and stand on the street corners distributing your work. It isn't censorship.
Nor is the rejection of sacrilege, blasphemy, and other sundry invasions of personal space perpetrated by talentless people whose sole ambition is to produce enough "shock" to make their half-brained "works-of-art" worth purchasing.
Let's get it straight--censorship stems from authority. If a press refuses to print your book because it won't sell, if people refuse to buy it and even protest it because it is trash--that is not censorship. If the government says that it may not be printed--you've been censored and under our current federal guidelines you have a right to complain.
But I've said it more the once and will say it again in the future. Any person may have the right to freedom of expression (whatever that means) under our constitution. No one has a right to an audience
I share this bit of correspondence I wrote to a blog-friend:
I realize that one of the reasons I obsess about certain things (homosexual civil unions and war) is that they represent very theoretical very distant things that I'm never likely to do anything about to really sin anyway. It effectively takes my mind off of the more pressing sins that I commit by the dozen without giving it two thoughts. I can agonize at length about the theory and never really have to put it into practice, whereas if I did that for real temptations, I might be provoked to change.
Horrors!
But to give myself credit as well--one of the reason for obsession is to come to terms with Church teaching as it really is, not as I would have it be. Sometimes I have to hit my head against that stone over and over again before I can crack open my mind enough to let in a new conception or a new nuance. Ah, to be like Bernadette. But then Jesus warned us, "To whom much is given, much is expected in return."
This started as a response to Jack's comment below, but I thought it was worth making a full post of.
Thank you. Last night it dawned upon me what my objection to so-called "just war" actually is. The name "just war" makes it sound as though we are taking an intrinsically evil action and trying to make it good.
I think your point is what I state elsewhere somewhat differently. Just war does not magically take evil and make it good, rather it states doctrinally that there are times when a natural evil must be engaged in to prevent an even greater evil. When that must happen the evil of the action is not imputed to the actor as a sin. Thus the evil is always (on the part of those fighting justly) malum and, assuming it is conducted according to jus bellum not corporately culpum. That is not to say that no one sins in the course of the war. But you get my drift. I had always been thrown by the name of the doctrine. In fact it is really a "lesser of two evils doctrine" that is a principled application of a form of double-effect.
I might differ with you on the justness or unjustness of some of the conflicts you mention--that's a different issue and really a moot issue. It little matters how I view the issue, it is how the Lord views the issue that is the essence.
That said, I think it is important to note that there is still room and necessity for the individual in conscience to conclude that any participation in the destruction of human life (whether or not it is labeled "just") is, in fact, a matter of sin. These people are called pacifists and in some ways I believe they have chosen the better part, IF they truly live it out. While it may be just to defend oneself and one's country, it may be more noble and more persuasive to refuse to take someone else's life. I liken it to the Maccabbean brothers who one after another refused to eat pork and died for it.
But this is a matter for the individual conscience, and if the individual is persuaded that it is forbidden to kill for any reason whatsoever, then to kill would be a sin, just war or otherwise.
I think it is the balance between the pacifist voices and those not so inclined that need to try to inform any decision regarding war. What seems to happen too often is that the pacifist voice is dismissed as "cowardly" or shirking duty. I suppose it is possible, but I also think that it is equally possible that pacifists are speaking out of conscientious convictions every bit as deep and as driving as any imperative to war.
The extreme of pacifist doctrine leaves us in a very untenable position in a fallen world. People will always cause aggression and grievous harm to one another. So long as that is the case, we must have means in place to prevent atrocities like the Holocaust or Pol Pot's monstrous reign. And what do we do about Rwanda and Somalia if we must rely completely on non-combative means? Pacifists hold out the very real hope that prayer and virtuous living will change the world. I agree with them, it will. However, it will only change a fallen world, not redeem it utterly. I think we need to stay away from the dangers of neo-Rousseauian thinking. We are not noble savages. Rather the opposite, we are wonderful, fatally flawed creations--we will never create a Utopia and we will never stop war.
That however doesn't mean we oughtn't to try and that those so inclined ought not to argue against every instance of aggression. We need the properly informed, conscientious counterbalance to our wayward tendencies.
Listening to NPR this morning I have a new book for my book list. (If any generous donors in St. Blogs feel moved to get it for me, I won't object--(just joking--it's the ONLY thing on my Christmas list so far)).
Stephen Greenblatt was being interviewed. I don't know if he won or if he is a nominee for the National Book Award for Biography. The book: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. It is a biography of sorts, trying to peek behind the scenes of the works and ferret out little details of this most secretive man's life.
Greenblatt's ultimate conclusion is that Shakespeare was very good at hiding much of his personal life because he had much to hide. Greenblatt infers that Shakespeare was a crypto-Catholic. He says there are "hints" hidden in the works (I don't know how true this is likely to be, but it certainly is intriguing.) I haven't read the entire book, but in the interview he mentions one thing in particular. At the end of Midsummernight's Dream the Faery troup circles round and sprinkles the marriage bed with field dew Greenblatt likens this to a Catholic practice of sprinkling the marriage bed with holy water.
There are other intriguing aspects that arose in the course of the interview. This sounds like a winner. I'm looking forward to it.
I love it when people volunteer information that is really none of my business and give me an insight into part of life I have never really given serious consideration to before.
Our priests make some serious sacrifices in their lives (many of which we are already aware of) to be of service to God. Father Jim lets us in on another one Thanks Father Jim, a real insight that vastly increases my already great esteem for the life of sacrifice lived by our Clergy.
I love when I get new visitors and commenters. As a result I found Down to Piraeus, an interesting site with a somewhat political perspective on things. Go and enjoy.
from "Not Quite a Perfect Fit"
Frederica Mathewes-GreenIt may be right to die, but it is never right to kill. Christians are called to be something different in the world, a new thing the wearied, bloodied globe had never seen: people who love their enemies. When we twist hot metal around the body of a boy in a jeep, we are not showing him love.
I learned to keep my mouth shut about this in pro-life circles. I would unfailingly be told that refraining from killing was impractical; people would explain to me that of course Jesus didn't mean it literally. (What else did he not mean literally? Was he just kidding about sexual morality, too? This genre of Biblical interpretation reminded me uneasily of the bland, self-serving liberals in my previous denomination.) I was told that principled non-violence was self-indulgent, impractical, and fell short of the noble heights of courage that only war can call forth. The reasoning seemed to be that it took more courage to stand before your enemy holding a gun than it took to stand there empty-handed.
via Verbum Ipsum
There has been a spate of people taking pictures of themselves and posting them to apologize to the world for the election of George Bush. Well, I'm not sorry and I disavow any such apologies made on my behalf.
On this matter two things: first, get over it. (1) It simply isn't the world's business who we elect in our government. I care very little for what someone in France thinks about who we elected, just as I hope that someone in France gives very little consideration to my thoughts about their candidates for government. I don't live there, I don't have any insight. I'm neither entitled nor equipped for an opinion. (2) Even were it a matter in which world opinion weighs in--we've had worse, we will have worse again. I'm not thrilled with the election of George Bush--but overall I regard it as the lesser of two evils--and all of this pandering to world opinion simply reinforces that view.
But the more important matter I wish to emphasize is a continuation of yesterday's post. What can we do about it? I'm not falling all over myself that Bush was reelected. I have to admit to a huge sigh of relief, but that's because I don't particularly care for change. Bush's policy decisions seem at times questionable, but every time I think that I remind myself that I do not sit in the oval office day to day, nor do I have access to the information that flows through that office every day. I don't know what his motives are or were, nor can I guess at any number of unclear actions or meanings. What's more, that really isn't my concern. My concern is to function as a good citizen of the United States, critiquing and petitioning the government as necessary, but supporting my country first and foremost, no matter what my opinion of any given individual. I endured 8 years of Clinton with the attitude of "respect the office, if not the man." The least I can say of Bush is that I have not been forced back to that gambit. Some things that have happened have been distasteful, and perhaps unnecessary. But the reality is that neither I know, nor does the world for all its second-guessing.
So what can I do? I can pray. As Marion pointed out yesterday, slightly jumping the gun on what I was going to say but never got around to, the essence of the virtuous Christian life lies in prayer. We cannot attain virtue through sheer strength of will. As Paul tells us, "I do the things I would not do, I do not do the things I would do, and I have no strength in me." Jesus tells us , 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." So it is with us. All the willpower in the world will not keep us from sliding eternally backwards. That is not because we are bad, but because we are fundamentally flawed. In some the flaws seem less of an obstruction. (See Tom's post (Disputations) yesterday about St. Catherine of Siena.) We call these people Saints. For the rest of us, it's a case of the Red Queen's race. We run just as fast as we can to stay in the same place. Our will must be aligned with what God desires from us--no question; however, that in itself is insufficient. We must be strengthened, daily, by grace. Without grace we are characters in a Shakespearian tragedy--marked by a fatal flaw--each individually wrapped and bound up in our weakness and on the express freight for Hell. For one it will be pride, for another envy, for a third lust--but the destination is ultimately the same--slavery to sin and death.
Only through grace, transmitted through the sacraments, and through the strengthening that comes through regular prayer and time spent with God, can we hope to change our ways. To use another metaphor, grace is the corrective lens in our flawed Hubble telescope. Grace sharply focuses our attention on the contiguous but not full tangible Kingdom of God--that Kingdom which is right at hand. And grace strengthens the will which is further strengthened by time in prayer--abiding with God.
Prayer is a source of continual replenishment of grace. Prayer is ultimately the one road out of the terrible place we live without it. We are weak, paralyzed, dying, and we do not know it. Grace shines a light on our pitiful condition, and in so doing, makes it possible for us to change.
Prayer opens the soul to receive grace which heals it. Prayer also opens the spirit to hearing what God has to say and to acting on it.
So if you're upset with the election, if you're annoyed with our limited selection of candidates, if you think everything is going to Hell in a handbasket--you have a recourse. Live a virtuous life--contribute to the public good your own private good. And the best way to do this is through constant prayer and through the life of grace in the sacraments.
There are no private actions, there are no private sins. Everything we do affects the world around us in substantive ways. The sooner we start acting on this knowledge and understanding, the sooner we will be able to stop complaining about the poor platforms offered us. If enough Christians are sufficiently discontented to really pray and live lives that lead to good, there will be a change in the system. That's not to say that we will achieve Utopia--that's impossible, but we will make life somewhat better here for more of the people around us. We will do so not through our strength but through the love of God which strengthens all our thoughts and actions. More than that, the Love of God which strengthens our very being--such a love makes us more real than the world we set out to oppose--because it situates us in the very heart of reality.
Please pray for Dylan.
Please pray for two friends who have started businesses and who are actively seeking clients and buyers. May God grant them success, and more importantly, may their work spread the love of God and the Kingdom of His grace everywhere throughout the world.
Please pray for one who does not know which way to turn or which way to go in the matter of her marriage, that God tells her gently and lovingly how to resolve all of the issues.
Sometimes we feel impotent in the face of political and social realities. There does not seem to be anything we can do about the situation around us. And yet, there is--live virtuously. From Lowery's book again, this moment of hope: "For instance, a Christian living virtuously will have an effect on human history, and numerous Christians living virtuously will have a massive effect."
Withou raising a single protest sign, without signing petitions, without marching on Washington, a simple virtuous life can change the lives of people about whom we know little to nothing. This is part of the need for the sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation. Because if it is true that the virtuous life manifests the kingdom of Heaven on Earth, a life less than virtuous rends the fabric of eternity. Even if our sins are secret, lived out in silence, "victimless" as it were, still, they have deep and abiding effects on the world around us. If we fail in virtue, even though no one but the Lord knows about it, we still harm those around us. This failure takes its toll on the entire world. Our society is in the dire straights it is in because we have chosen individually not to live virtuously. In some cases the choices have been made in invincible ignorance, in other in deliberate defiance. But most of the time, we think that what we do privately has little or no meaning to the world at large. After all our constitution guarentees us a right to privacy doesn't it? (In fact, no, but that is beside the point.) Even if it does, there is no privacy in the Kingdom of God. Every act is a public act with public consequences, even if we cannot see the source. If everyone secretly empties their chamberpots into the gutters on the streets of the City, the effluent will still stink even if we do not know the entirety of the source.
So the next time you think in despair, "What can I do about this or that terrible thing?" recall that the first thing is to live virtuously and to pray always. In doing these things we take the first steps in allowing God to lead us to correct the present situation. We shouldn't stop there, but it is a place to start because living virtuously allows us to hear more clearly what we really can do to stop the present horror.
in thirty words or less, care of Mark Lowery.
from Living the Good Life
Mark LoweryIt is essential to grasp the Christian conception of history found in Scripture and tradition, and heavily influenced by St. Augustine's understanding as put forth in his classic work
Certainly all humans live within history. But the best way to improve the world is by an awareness--a membership in--another "city" or "kingdom" far more important: the kingdom of God or the city of God. Those who follow Christ and have grace in their hearts are citizens of this city--and as we'll see later, non-Christians can have some connection to his city. (The "charter of this city is the beatitudes--see CCC 1716-24.) Members of the Church, then, have a dual citizenship, in both the city of God and in the historical, political order. As Gaudium et Spes 43 notes: "This council exhorts Christians, as citizens of two cities, to strive to discharge their earthly duties conscientiously and in response to the Gospel spirit."
Two points here--one germane and one professional.
We straddle two kingdoms, one of which we see "as in a glass darkly." Too often we live out our lives with the notion of WYSIWYG. And yet, it is precisely what you do NOT see that is what we end up getting. We see the kingdom of God rarely, but it does emerge if we are looking. It comes out in small ways and in large. For example, it may emerge in the smile of someone greeting us as we come into work. It certainly does emerge in the Eucharistic celebration, if we are paying attention.
Now to my other point, a trivial one, but one that niggles at me. (And you'll note that it takes up the majority of this post.) Who the heck edits these books? What's with this insane jumble of grammatical oddities:
t is essential to grasp the Christian conception of history found in Scripture and tradition, and heavily influenced by St. Augustine's understanding as put forth in his classic work
Why a colon? Then, as the colon is not terminal punctuation, why the capital letter following. And who is paying attention to sequence. Note this: But the best way to improve the world is by an awareness--a membership in--another "city" or "kingdom" far more important: the kingdom of God or the city of God..
Why construct the sentence so that you mention city or kingdom and then reverse the order after a colon (which should be an m-dash).
I'm sorry to bend your ear with this kind of thing, but more and more recently I'm noticing that editors are not doing their jobs. House styles are collapsing in the reign of the Stephen King and Michael Crichton, who have grown too big to be "edited." For example, has anyone read the bloated version of Stephen King's The Stand? Here is the strongest possible evidence that good editors know what they are doing and that the author's original conception is not always the best way to do things. I think Lowery's book is likely to be very helpful in sorting out a great many matters, and it does not pretend to be a handbook of style and grammar. Yet, to quote Tevye, "Would it spoil some grand eternal plan, if it were edited well?" Sorry, tirade ended. Back to sleep mode.
I find myself in a doldrums. Nothing really appeals, nothing really calls out to be read. An unusual state for me.
Nevertheless, I am reading Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, which was recently made into a film by Stephen Frey, the name of which eludes me. Vile Bodies is very evidently a successor (I won't say sequel) to Decline and Fall and is as amusing in a mordant way. What can one say of a book that actually has someone die from an accident ensuing from swinging from a chandelier? We have the same bloated aristocracy, one of whom runs a brothel in Argentina, the same purposeless, pointless young people leading lives that are frankly appalling in their waste. In other words, Evelyn Waugh.
I'm also rereading Wilfrid Stinissen's magnificent Nourished by the Word which is a guide for Catholics on how to use the Bible for prayer.
Anna Karenina boils away in bits and pieces at home during my leisure time and Mark Lowery's Living the Good Life.
I think after this I'll spend some time with the Classics, perhaps even the most despised classics of all--Thomas Hardy--I'm thinking a visit with Eustacia Vye in Far from the Madding Crowd might be in order. On the other hand, Great Expectations also appeals at this season--a visit with Mrs. Haversham is never out of order. Or perhaps Villette or one of the lesser known Brontë sister's oeuvre. Or perhaps something else entirely by the time I get there.