Other

…But yeah–I guess what’s especially strange for me is hearing people who were raised Catholic talk about the Church as if it’s a group of people in a room, who may be "supportive" or may be not. When to me, it’s the Bride of Christ or it’s nothing. If I had to pick a religion based on which people were more awesome, there’s just no way I’d be Catholic. If it’s a bunch of people in "the bright room called day" of history, why on earth would anyone convert?

If the Catholic Church is just your experience, you should stop. Because that bunch of people has done horrible things. That bunch of people is not a good-enough grounding for ethics.

A reader has a beautiful collection of pictures of Pope Benedict up on flickr. You can view them here.

One of the things I enjoy about reading G.K. Chesterton is that it gives a lie to the idea that the 1960’s was some kind of real fault point in thinking and morality when the reality is that the views so exemplified by the sixties were already in full swing for quite a while before. You can read Chesterton as if he was writing today and if if you just replace the names used with people living today it would be as if he was still writing books and columns.

For example I am reading All Things Considered which is a book of essays on various topics. I found one paragraph to be the perfect description of the so-called new atheists.

A man who has lived
and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you like. That is Atheism if you like. If mankind has believed in spite of that, it can believe in spite of
anything. But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of all the worms who eat him, or the names of all the parts of him that they eat, is
to a thoughtful mind somewhat difficult to discover. My chief objection to these semi-scientific revolutionists is that they are not at all revolutionary. They are the party of
platitude. They do not shake religion: rather religion seems to shake them.

The sentence "They do not shake religion: rather religion seems to shake them" has to be the perfect description of Hitchens, Dawkins, and others and explains their diatribes much better than simply a defense of atheism.

I also found this line to be pretty funny.

Blessed are they who have not seen and yet
have believed: a passage which some have considered as a prophecy of modern journalism.

One of the things I so enjoy about the Catholic blogosphere is the variety of ways people use to impart the faith. Sites like the B-Movie Catechism wonderfully combine reviews of cheesy movies with the Catechism and a recent blog I have come across is also quite inventive. Fr. Austin Murphy’s Jesus Goes to Disney World uses film and other cultural sources to show Christ in the modern world.

There is a lot of creativity in the use of media among Catholics that I find entertaining and informative. The Hands and Feet Show Podcast just came out with their 100th show and so I would like to take the time to highlight this podcast. Seven young adults with occasional guests present the faith in quite an enjoyable manner. Each show contains several main segments that include a quick take on the news, Biblelotion – scripture study, Relationships 2.0, and other segments like the occasional Fr. Bagadonuts. One of my favorite bits that they do is a take off Budweiser’s "Real American Heroes" that never fails to crack me up. The banter among this group is fun along with all of the various bits they come up with. What makes the show exceptional is that you have a group of young Catholics living the faith and teaching it with no watering down of doctrine. They have had many excellent shows discussing the faith that presents so-called hot-button issues in a way that brings the Catechism alive in the modern world without compromise. So congrats to the crew of the Hands and Feet show for their great show.

There is an Eastern Catholic Blog awards going on where you are able to make nominations. I will be interested in seeing who the nominations are since I see few Catholic blogs from an Eastern Catholic perspective. Especially interested in their "Funniest blog" category. Our Eastern Catholic brethren get very little press which is one reason why the term Roman Catholic annoys me as an umbrella term since the Church includes 24 Catholic Churches grouped into eight different rites with the Latin Church being the largest.

Mulier Fortis tagged
href=”http://mulier-fortis.blogspot.com/2008/04/and-another-meme.html”>me
with this meme.

1. When tagged place the name and URL
on your blog.
2. Post rules on your blog.
3. Write 7 non-important things/habit/quirks about yourself.
4. Name 7 of your favourite blogs.
5. Send an email/comment on their blog letting them know they have been
tagged.

What only seven quirks? Well I guess I
will pick some book related ones.

• I use a portable iPod stereo so I can listen to books while
  shaving and taking a shower.
• I made a custom book stand that I use in my bathroom
  (a.k.a. library) and I bet I have read more books in bathrooms than
  many people have read in their whole life.  In fact I think I
  have read more books in chow lines aboard ships than many people have
  read in their lives.
• I get author centric.  If I find a new author I
  really like I read everything I can from their catalog and read a bunch
  of their books in a row.
• I usually have three books going at once.  One to
  listen to on my iPod while working/driving, a novel, and some
  spiritual reading. And of course there is the Liturgy of the Hours.
• Because that is not enough reading I also subscribe to
  podcast novels not to mention numerous podcasts.
• Currently my aggregator has 476 RSS feeds and about 80
  percent of them are Catholic blogs.   I remember when I could
  read all the Catholic blogs during lunch, but that was six years ago.
• I hate getting rid of books even if I have run out of room
  to store them. Books are friends and you don’t dump your friends.

Now as to seven of my favorite blogs.  Sorry I have too many
favorites.  So if you want to do this meme consider yourself
tagged.

me with this meme. 1. When tagged place the name and URL on your blog. 2. Post rules on your blog. 3. Write 7 non-important things/habit/quirks about yourself. 4. Name 7 of your favourite blogs. 5. Send an" data-image="" data-button="">

Librivox is a great site where
people volunteer and create audiobooks by reading and reading titles
that are available in public domain.  In an open source style
you might have multiple people all working on different chapters of the
book or have just one person do the whole book.  I have
listened to a number of books via Librivox, but there are some problems
with it.

Not all the readers are of the same
quality.  Unlike Maureen at Maria
Lectrix and Julie D with her
book podcast you have some people reading of questionable
talent.  Now I understand this is a free service staffed by
people who freely volunteer their time in making this work, but I
really wish they would have auditions before volunteers could submit
work.

Some of the readers pretty much drive me
crazy.  There is one woman with a heavy French accent which I
have a real hard time understanding and she has done a lot of
submissions.  Another woman with an accent I can’t identify
besides being vaguely British speaks in a monotone in a voice so low
that a still small voice  sounds defining by comparison. Some
of the readers make Al Gore sound like a vibrant speaker, especially
some of the me. Now by in large most of the readers are quite
serviceable from the books I have listened to and a couple sound quite
professional. One of them I especially appreciate since he has done a
lot of books I like and he usually does the whole book. 

Now though I sample listening to the
chapters first and if I find some readers who are hard to understand I
will use text to voice to record the chapter instead.  It is
pretty bad when you have to settle for a computer generated voice
instead (even though modern ones are quite good.)

But please, Librivox is not a place for
people to practice their English or do their best to put you to sleep
while reading an action scene.

 Fr. Longenecker is running a Cathedral
quiz with so far nine examples.

Reading through G.K. Chesterton’s
Miscellany
of Men I came across this:

The truth about Gothic is, first, that
it is alive, and second, that it
is on the march.  It is the Church Militant; it is the only
fighting architecture.  All its spires are spears at rest; and
all its
stones are
stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear
the arches clash like swords as they crossed each other.  The
mighty and numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge
feet of
imperial elephants.  The graven foliage wreathed and blew like
banners
going into battle; the silence was deafening with ail the mingled
noises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ
shook up its thunder.  The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted
like trumpets
from all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern
in the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed
his wings of brass,

And amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in
the midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight;
the voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of
spears.  I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made
that church; and I
knew indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either
hand the trowel and the sword.

I could imagine for the moment that the whole of that house of life had
marched out of the sacred East, alive and interlocked, like an army.
 Some Eastern nomad had found it solid and silent in the red
circle of
the desert.  He had slept by it as by a world-forgotten
pyramid;
and been woke at midnight by the wings of stone and brass, the tramping
of the tall pillars, the trumpets of the waterspouts.  On such
a night
every snake or sea-beast must have turned and twisted in every crypt or
corner of the architecture.  And the fiercely coloured saints
marching
eternally in the flamboyant windows would have carried their glorioles
like torches
across dark lands and distant seas; till the whole mountain of music
and
darkness and lights descended roaring on the lonely Lincoln
hill.  So
for some hundred and sixty seconds I saw the battle-beauty of the
Gothic; then
the last furniture-van shifted itself away; and I saw only a church
tower
in a quiet English town, round which the English birds were floating.

This helps me to see something that I
don’t like about modern church architecture in that it seems to me to
be a surrender or something defensive.  That the Church
militant has surrendered to architectural fads that are quite cold and
much more like a dead thing than being alive.  The L.A.
Cathedral is defensive since it looks much more like a concrete bunker
than a church alive and on the move proclaiming Christ.  That
with older forms of sacred architecture a church proudly proclaimed
itself as a church directed towards the glory of God while some forms
of modern style meekly proclaims I am a church, but I might be a bank
or an auditorium. 

There is also this nice bit about the need
for a creed.

And it is supremely so in the case of
religion.  As long as you have a creed, which every one in a
certain group believes or is supposed to believe, then that group will
consist of the old recurring figures of religious history, who can be
appealed to by the creed and judged by it; the saint, the hypocrite,
the brawler, the weak brother. 
These people do each other good; or they all join together to do the
hypocrite good,
with heavy and repeated blows.  But once break the bond of
doctrine
which alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his
own kind outside the group.  The hypocrites will all get
together and
call each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call
themselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker
in a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off
looking for
somebody else with whom to brawl.

The problem with Chesterton is that he is
too quotable and you go from page to page thinking I got to remember
that.

First off welcome home to the all of the
new Catholics who have entered the Catholic Church this Easter! One of
the parts of the Easter Vigil I always love is those in R.C.I.A.
entering the Church and receiving Communion for the first time.
 I am always flooded with the emotions of my own entry into
the Church and my first Communion received worthily from  Fr.
Santos, OATH (Oblate Apostles of the Two Hearts). On my way to
Communion for the first time is when I first realized that I had
literally spent 40 years in the wilderness – the concept which I
included in my conversion story.

One of the shifts I am still working on
making is the full realization that Easter is the greatest feast in the
Church.  Christmas usually gets so more more attention and is
met with a greater anticipation.  Part of the problem is the
cultural focus on Christmas with so much emphasis that it is more
difficult to fully realize that reality of Easter.  Even
though I intellectually realize that Easter is the highest Feast and
know the reasons for this, I still do not have the same anticipation
for Easter as I do for Christmas. 

As great as the gift of the Incarnation
is, the gift we received of the empty tomb and our subsequent
redemption extends the gift of the Incarnation to our redemption.  The present we received on his
birthday was fully opened and revealed to us upon his death and
subsequent resurrection.  He left the gift wrapping of his
burial shroud behind him in that tomb. He is the gift that keeps on
giving.  Like Chesterton I joined the Church to get rid of my
sins.  The first stage of wisdom is knowing you have sins to
get rid of.  Possibly the second stage of wisdom is knowing
you continuously have sins to get rid of and I must say I am quite
thankful to God for the gift of confession.  The truth is that
he who is wisdom himself suffered and died for us to extend the promise
he made to the good thief to all of us.  

I think it is no surprise that the culture
can so embrace Christmas and see Easter as a footnote if anything.
 Though I am happy that there are no countdowns of shopping
days till Easter and that while there is Easter commercialization it is
certainly not to the same extent.  The basic distillation of
Christmas movies is that family is important, and not necessarily that
the Holy Family is important.  If there were Easter movies the
message should be that repentance is important, or actually absolutely
crucial. But the message that we have sins that need repenting of in
the first place is of course quite frowned upon. If you feel bad about
doing something it must be just guilt and the cure is to help you to
remove the guilt. To be more accurate the truth is that the culture
still believes in sin, it is just that a quite different list has been
come up with and a whole bunch of sins have been crossed off. And the
ones that are crossed off are suppose to be absolved on the
psychiatrist’s couch instead. But of course the reaction to Good Friday
and Easter is nothing new.

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek
wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to
Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both
Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of
God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the
weakness of God is stronger than men.  – 1st Corinthians
1:22-25

A stumbling block indeed as is evidenced
by this recent story.

The pastors at this church in Raleigh,
North Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday
school lessons for preschoolers from “First Look,” the publisher of the
one to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn’t a
mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired
about the oversight. It turns out it was no oversight…

“Easter is a special time in churches,” the letter from the publisher
says. “It’s a time of celebration and thankfulness. But because of the
graphic nature of the Easter story and the crucifixion specifically, we
need to be careful as we choose what we tell preschoolers about Easter.”

Mark Steyn replied to this story.

So now the story ends with the Last
Supper
– and presumably afterwards Jesus and His friends watch Elmo and then
go to bed. That the foundational event of your faith is now excessively
“disturbing” is almost too parodic a reductio of the Wimp Christianity
of the mainline churches.

Though Jesus’ death and his dying for our
sins is rather disturbing in that our sins did indeed require this.
 That at the Agony in the Garden Jesus felt the weight of the
sins of the world past, present, and future and that our own sins are
heaped upon this weight.  That his death wasn’t just
satisfaction for “those worst of sinners”, but was required because of
the sins of each and everyone of us.  We can’t play the
Pharisee here thanking God that we are not like others.  God
is always thinking of us or else we would just stop existing, but I
certainly realize that during this agony he was thinking of me and my
sins.  Not exactly a thought that leads to pride.
 But if we can’t be humbled and thankful thinking about
Easter, then we can’t be either humble or thankful.

Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed! May you
have a blessed Eastertide.