This Post Is Brought to You by the Letters K and P

Whilst reading the Gospel of Matthew in Greek this afternoon, I wrote down nine words to memorize.

pēchus - cubit
krinon - lily
kribanos - earthen vessel, pot, pan
karphos - a dry particle, dry stalk
klauthmos - a weeping, wailing
peran - on the other side of, across
potapos - from what country?
embrimaomai - snort with rage, be indignant
ktaomai - possess
pēra - wallet, scrip, knapsack

(For those that are unaware, I make a check mark in my dictionary by each word that I look up. Three check marks mean a flashcard.)

The significance of this clustering I read to our readers.

Bonus points for those who can identify the chapters. Hint: karphos. Negative points for those who were going to correct me and suggest I write kappa and pi.

Late Is Better than Never

This past Thursday's Gospel, John 8:51-59 (Douay-Rheims):

⁵¹ Amen, amen I say to you: If any man keep my word, he shall not see death for ever. ⁵² The Jews therefore said: Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest: If any man keep my word, he shall not taste death for ever. ⁵³ Art thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? and the prophets are dead. Whom dost thou make thyself? ⁵⁴ Jesus answered: If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say that he is your God. ⁵⁵ And you have not known him, but I know him. And if I shall say that I know him not, I shall be like to you, a liar. But I do know him, and do keep his word. ⁵⁶ Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and was glad. ⁵⁷ The Jews therefore said to him: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am. ⁵⁹ They took up stones therefore to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.

Chesterton's take from The Everlasting Man:

Above all, would not such a new reader of the New Testament stumble over something that would startle him much more than it startles us? I have here more than once attempted the rather impossible task of reversing time and the method; and in fancy looking forward to the facts instead of backward through the memories. So I have imagined the monster that man might have seemed at first to the mere nature around him. We should have a worse shock if we really imagined the nature of Christ named for the first time. What should we feel at the first whisper of a certain suggestion about a certain man? Certainly it is not for us to blame anybody who should find that first wild whisper merely impious and insane. On the contrary, stumbling on that rock of scandal is the first step. Stark staring incredulity is a far more loyal tribute to that truth than a modernist metaphysic would make it out merely a matter of degree. It were better to rend our robes with a great cry against blasphemy, like Caiaphas in the judgment, or to lay hold of the man as a maniac possessed of devils like the kinsmen and the crowd, than to stand stupidly debating fine shades of pantheism in the presence of so catastrophic a claim. There is more of the wisdom that is one with surprise in any simple person full of the sensitiveness of simplicity, who should expect the grass to wither and the birds to drop dead out of the air when a strolling carpenter's apprentice said calmly and almost carelessly like one looking over his shoulder: 'Before Abraham was, I am.'

Happy Holy Week, y'all.

C'est La Vie . . .

Degenerations: a fairly new Quebecois song. To this novice reader of French, the translation is basically good, except for the "drunken notions" part. The French is:

pour calmé tes envie de hold-uper la caissière tu lis des livres qui parle de simplicité volontaire

Which we should read as:

In order to calm you desire of holding up the bank-teller, you read books which describe voluntary simplicity.

The lack of religion in the song is interesting, if predictable. One can't very well remove Catholicism from Quebec's past though. The band, Mes Aieux, is fervently pro-abortion (also predictable), despite the lyrics:

And then you my little girl, you constantly switch partners
Whenever you make a mistake, you correct it by aborting.
But some mornings you wake weeping,
When you have dreamed of a big table surrounded by children.

One is probably meant to read these lines as a critique of the culture, rather than of the practise iteself (regrettable, maybe necessary). Still, the lyrics pack quite a punch, and I don't know if one can get the inferences the band desires unless you know their own ideology.  Of course, the cultural critique only goes so far. What is one to do with the last verse?  It continues the theme of isolation but the action it offers is more symbolic: as our ancestors did, we still can dance. Rather gloomy.

A sidenote. The full song has two minute instrumental section at the end. I wonder why the music video didn't include it with the girl dancing with some older folks in traditional costume. Too happy maybe? Or is there some socialist law about music videos not going over 3:15 in Canada?

Newsflash!

Also via Amy:



Thirty-six Jesuit ordinations. Yowza. A different era. The country has changed in other ways too. Dulles' conversion from mainline Protestant to Catholic wouldn't cause much of stir now. How big a deal would even W converting be for the majority of the country?

A Christmas Message

From that Pope guy (via Amy Welborn):

That which John calls in Greek "ho logos," translated in Latin "Verbum" and in Italian, "il Verbo" (the Word), also means "the Meaning." Therefore, we can understand John's expression in this way: the "eternal Meaning" of the world has made himself tangible to our senses and our intelligence. Now we can touch him and contemplate him (cf. 1 John 1:1). The "Meaning" that has become flesh is not simply a general idea inscribed in the world; it is a "word" directed to us. The Logos knows us, calls us, guides us. It is not a universal law, in which we fulfill some role, but rather it is a Person who is interested in each individual person: It is the living Son of God, who has become man in Bethlehem.

To many people, and in some way to all of us, this seems too beautiful to be true. In effect, here it is reaffirmed for us: Yes, there is meaning, and this meaning is not an impotent protest against the absurd. The Meaning is powerful: It is God. A good God, who is not to be confused with some lofty and distant power, to which it is impossible to ever arrive, but rather a God who has made himself close to us and to our neighbor, who has time for each one of us and who has come to stay with us.

Thus the question spontaneously arises: How is such a thing possible? Is it worthy of God to become a child? To try to open one's heart to this truth that enlightens all of human existence, it is necessary to yield the mind and recognize the limits of our intelligence. In the cave at Bethlehem, God shows himself to us as a humble "infant" to overcome our pride. Perhaps we would have submitted more easily before power, before pride; but he does not want our submission. He appeals, rather, to our heart and to our free decision to accept his love. He has made himself little to free us from this human pretension of greatness that arises from pride; he has incarnated himself freely to make us truly free, free to love him.

Dear brothers and sisters, Christmas is a privileged opportunity to meditate on the meaning and value of our existence. Approaching this solemnity helps us to reflect, on one hand, about the drama of history in which men, wounded by sin, are permanently seeking happiness and a satisfactory meaning to life and death; on the other hand, it exhorts us to meditate on the merciful goodness of God, who has gone out to meet man to communicate to him directly the Truth that saves, and make him participate in his friendship and his life.

Let us prepare for Christmas, therefore, with humility and simplicity, readying ourselves to receive the gift of light, joy and peace that irradiates from this mystery. Let us welcome the nativity of Christ as an event capable of today renewing our existence. May the encounter with the Child Jesus make us people who do not think only of ourselves, but rather open to the expectations and necessities of our brothers. In this way we too become testimonies of the light that Christmas radiates over the humanity of the third millennium. Let us ask most holy Mary, the tabernacle of the incarnate Word, and St. Joseph, silent witness of the events of salvation, to communicate to us the sentiments they had while they awaited the birth of Jesus, so that we can prepare ourselves to celebrate in a holy way the coming Christmas, in the joy of faith and enlivened by the determination of a sincere conversion.

Merry Christmas!

I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means . . .

From a truly, absolutely, utterly fabulous op-ed in the Washington post by Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity College:

Of course, church leaders, including institutional presidents, also expect Catholic colleges and universities to manifest clear respect for the church and its moral teachings across the spectrum of issues in human life and moral conduct. How we manage that expectation within our respective communities of diverse scholars and students exercising their free-speech rights is at the white-hot center of many controversies. Controversy itself is sometimes the most fruitful way to teach about our faith.

The critics would have us ban plays, speakers, student clubs, faculty members and alumni guests whose words or deeds run contrary to the most orthodox interpretation of Catholic teaching . . .

Truly, absolutely, utterly fabulous in its willful misinterpretation of Church teaching. Hi oh!

Low-hanging fruit first. That last sentence I quoted is a doozy. We'll ignore the the first part since it manifestly isn't true and dwell upon the predicate. Does Ms. McGuire have another way of interpreting the faith? By orthodox she obviously means "hard-line" or some such. Kind of clumsy to give the game up though, isn't it? I mean, doesn't everyone claim to be an orthodox Catholic? If you don't think your views are consistent with the "real" Catholicism, why on earth would you call yourself Catholic?

If we can now backtrack to the full initial paragraph. Have you ever heard a more weak-kneed support for the Catholic Church?* Can't a school like, oh, say, Cornell "show respect" for Catholic doctrine? So, the Church claims to offer the most the accurate means of learning the truth of existence and meaning of living a human life. Ms. McGuire will take that as one among many factors before embarking on a course of action. Lovely.

Notice the skill with which our fearless leader inserts "free speech rights" into the equation. A Catholic school is a private entity. There are no free speech rights. Nor should there be. The government of the United States is not in the business of regulating speech in private schools, or businesses for that matter (Same thing. Oh, snap!). However, some sort of professed allegiance to the first amendment, does provide excellent cover.**

*I don't think I want to know if the the answer is "yes."

**I'm guessing that Ms. McGuire would not tolerate (nor should she) a professor shilling of the KKK on one of her surely august quads.

Wisconsin gripes

Ahh Springtime. As we all know, Spring brings us longer days, the sounds of birds chirping, and eight to fifteen inches of snow.

Wait a second! Eight to fifteen inches of snow? Unfortunately, yes. The National Weather Service has issued a 'Why Would You Live in Wisconsin, Dummy' Warning advising against travel of any sort.

I figured there would be more snow before the end of the season, but I foolishly believed that the worst of it would be over. Silly me.

Incidentally, this is the second time the snow has crushed my plans to attend religious services. (We got sixteen inches on Ash Wednesday a few weeks ago.)

In other news, Notre Dame won its first round NCAA basketball game, beating George Mason 68-50. Alas, I wasn't able to watch it because Wisconsin was playing at the same time. Tomorrow the Irish will play Washington State in a crucial 4-5 seed matchup. Again, alas, I won't be able to watch it because Marquette will be playing at the same time.

I hate you, Wisconsin.

Still the Man

GKC on pride and humility, from Orthodoxy:

In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny -- all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of one's self, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go -- as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, qua man, can be valueless. Here, again in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

If I Were a Heathen . . .

Not the best fit anymore (The world has changed a bit since GK was in his heyday), but I think the poem is at the very least applicable to Al Gore and Co. The third illustration is my favorite.

Good Question

What is man, that you ask so much of him,
and that you set your mind upon him,
Visit him every morning,
and test him every moment?
-Job 7: 17-18

Open Book, RIP

Well, Amy's finally done it. At least, allegedly, though I can't see her going back full time. It really is sad in it's heyday (and even past it) Open Book was the best Catholic blog around. Her "Theory of Everything Posts" were just fantastic, and maybe not gone for good? Here's hoping someone will the void soon.

God Is Great

Harvey Mansfield has a good column in the Weekly Standard where he takes on those (Hitchens, Dawkins, et al.) who insist that religion is the bane of human society. The conclusion:

Is there an atheist alternative to tyranny? Is there such a thing as a non religious principle, replacing God, that is truly transcendent and not a tool of our passions? One can think of such a principle, something like Kant's categorical imperative that requires each person, without appealing to God, to act only on a universal idea, not one that favors himself or promotes his own interest over others. But how does this work in practice? Has Germany, the country of Kant, been a paragon of justice in the world since Kant fashioned his theory? More pointedly, has not the atheist totalitarianism of the twentieth century, with its universal pretensions, proved to be the worst tyranny mankind has ever seen?

There was an Epicurean atheism in the ancient world quite different from ours today. That atheism also uncovered tyranny behind the mask of religion, but it was content to point out the power of injustice. Injustice in this view was the way of the world, and there was no remedy for it. The only recourse for a reasonable person was to stay out of politics and live a life of pleasure, seeking calm, watching storms of the sea from ashore, and suppressing one's indignation at injustice.

Today's atheism rejects this serene attitude and goes on the attack. In its criticisms of God it claims to be more moral than religion. But it cannot do this without becoming just as heated, thus just as susceptible to fanaticism, as religion. Today's atheism shows the power of our desire for justice, a fact underestimated by the Epicurean pleasure-lovers. But it ignores the power of injustice, which was the Epicurean insight. Atheists today angrily hold religion to a standard of justice that the most advanced thinkers of our time, the postmoderns, have declared to be impossible. Some of those postmoderns, indeed, are so disgusted with the optimism of atheism that, with a shrug of their shoulders, they propose returning to the relative sanity of religion.

It is not religion that makes men fanatics; it is the power of the human desire for justice, so often partisan and perverted. That fanatical desire can be found in both religion and atheism. In the contest between religion and atheism, the strength of religion is to recognize two apparently contrary forces in the human soul: the power of injustice and the power, nonetheless, of our desire for justice. The stubborn existence of injustice reminds us that man is not God, while the demand for justice reminds us that we wish for the divine. Religion tries to join these two forces together.

The weakness of atheism, however, is to take account of only one of them, the fact of injustice in the case of Epicurean atheism or the desire for justice in our Enlightenment atheism. I conclude that philosophy today--and science too--need not only to tolerate and respect religion, but also to learn from it.

It's a bit funny to hear Mansfield call on postmoderns for support. Other than that, I like the division of Atheists into Crusaders and Epicurans. A damn good polemic, if I may say so myself. Also true.

Bummer

The Wisconsin State Journal retracted their "Protestants in Hell" headline. I guess I'm going to have to share heaven with those WASP-y jerks after all.

There Are No Protestants in Heaven

But then there are no Protestants in hell either. Only Catholics in both. This is not to say that we each go to our respective afterlives, but that where the Catholicism differs from the rest of Christianity in matters of belief, it is the rest of Christianity that is wrong. How ridiculous! Why that would mean that the Catholic Church actually means what it says it means. This now peculiar stance was one the mark of a serious religion. Martin Luther his 95 Theses onto the door frame because he kinda-sorta-maybe thought he was onto something. Anyway there you go. Here's the press release from the Vatican, within which is the document in question. As it notes, it's not like there's anything new here. The Catholic Church has always claimed to be THE church founded by Christ and the most perfect (not completely perfect) means of salvation.

Pope: Protestants Going to Hell

That was the title of an article in yesterday's Wisconsin State Journal on the release of the Vatican's document reasserting the primacy of the Roman Catholic church.

How woefully ignorant of the editing staff of the WSJ. The story was an AP piece, but they chose to use that title. (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran the same story under a different title.)

If they actually bothered to read the document, it would be fairly clear that the pope isn't asserting that all protestants are going to hell. But I suppose that's too much to ask of a major newspaper with a staff numbering in the hundreds.

Big Jim, any thoughts on this?

The suburbs rule

The complaints Penalver raises against suburban living apply just as much, if not more so, to rural living. Living on a farm makes one even more dependent on the car and "isolates" people even more from one another. Surely we don't all need to live in squalid cities to observe Catholic Social Teaching?

While I agree with his environmental criticism, the communitarian and justice aspects are just silly. The poor are unquestionably more burdened in the city, where the cost of living is usually significantly higher. As for separating people from one another, I'd rather wave to my neighbor living 500 feet away than be afraid to make eye contact with the guy in the apartment next door.

At this point in my life, I can't even imagine trying to raise a family in urban Milwaukee.

Living in Sin

I find myself reflexively disagreeing with the Eduardo Penalver (at the very least in spirit if not in fact); however, there's little to disagree with in his condemnation of suburban living:

But, aside from perceptions of authenticity, I also think there's a moral case to be made against suburban living on grounds of justice, community, and the environment. I think all three objections revolve around the car-dependence that suburban patterns of development literally mandate. Car-dependence separates people from one another, isolates the very young and very old, burdens the poor and harms the environment. The justice and communitarian objections to the suburban lifestyle resonate strongly with traditional themes of CST. The environment, on the other hand, has been something of an ugly stepchild within CST. The Church has had things to say about the environment from time to time, though, and I think (or at least hope) it will have much more to say about it in the future.

CST = Catholic Social Teaching.

Yes, I live in the suburbs both at home and at school.

Funny Man

Opening line of Fr. Leo's homily today:

Well, there's no easier way to commit heresy than to talk about the trinity, so today I'm just going to tell a story.

And he did.

Have a happy and blessed Easter.

Peace to the Hizzay

Well the Apostolic Exhortation's out and I must say, I feel exhorted already, although I've only had time to skim it in the baldest fashion.

One paragraph in particular caught my eye.

Even so, during the Synod of Bishops there was discussion about the appropriateness of greater restraint in this gesture, which can be exaggerated and cause a certain distraction in the assembly just before the reception of Communion. It should be kept in mind that nothing is lost when the sign of peace is marked by a sobriety which preserves the proper spirit of the celebration, as, for example, when it is restricted to one's immediate neighbours (150).

Bracing stuff for one who's waged a lonely war against the excesses of the sign of peace as celebrated at Notre Dame. Hugging absolutely everyone you may have met in the chapel while discussing your weekend is perhaps less than respectful of the body and blood of Christ physically present on the altar.

Here's footnote 150:

150) Taking into account ancient and venerable customs and the wishes expressed by the Synod Fathers, I have asked the competent curial offices to study the possibility of moving the sign of peace to another place, such as before the presentation of the gifts at the altar. To do so would also serve as a significant reminder of the Lord's insistence that we be reconciled with others before offering our gifts to God (cf. Mt 5:23 ff.); cf. Propositio 23.

Way to go Benny. He may have to stick around for a few more years.