October 2005 – Page 2

And Now A Word From My Pastor

Y’know those "From the pastor’s desk" items that they run in Sunday bulletins? Whether in Protestant churches or Catholic churches, I’ve always found those to be largely . . . what’s the right term? "A waste of space"? No, that’s probably too strong. "Useless"? No, sounds too negative. How about: "Of rather limited value." Yeah, that’ll do.

We’ll, here’s one that’s actually GOOD!

It appeared in this last Sunday’s bulletin at the parish I live in:

FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK The word is out–this is supposed to be a really nasty FLU SEASON. I prefer to have healthy parishioners, and as such, support any of you who prefer to shy away from the handshake/hug as a sign of peace, as well as holding hands during the Our Father. As a courtes to your fellow parishioners, I do encorage you to offer a gentle nod, a friendly smile and the words "Peace be with you" at the appropriate time. Laurie has suggested also that we catch sneezes or coughs in the crooks of our elbows rather than in our hands, helping to contain any germs on our own clothing–the less airborne, shared actvity the better!

YES!

A voice of sanity!

Only thing I’d tweak is that people who are contagious SHOULD NOT BE AT MASS AT ALL.

Banning Teen Bloggers

In a story that has been making waves throughout St. Blog’s Parish, one Catholic high school has decided that enough’s enough and it is going to crack down on its students … by banning students from blogging, not just on school computers on school time but even from the comfort and privacy of the kids’ own homes.

"When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites like Myspace.com and Xanga.com, it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one area Catholic school principal.

"It’s an open invitation to predators and an activity Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

"Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

"In the arena of unregulated online communities, which has largely escaped the reach of schools, Pope John appears to be breaking new ground. While public and private schools routinely block access to non-educational Web sites on school computers, Pope John’s order seeks to reach into students’homes.

"’I don’t see this as censorship,’ McHugh said this week. ‘I believe we are teaching common civility, courtesy and respect.’"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to the Curt Jester for the link.)

Dawn Eden of the Dawn Patrol has a post requesting opinion. Although I am not (yet) a parent or a Catholic school educator, here’s mine:

The policy stinks.

As others have pointed out, it is unenforceable, usurps parental authority within the parents’ own home, and does nothing to teach teens responsible use of the Internet. A letter to parents outlining the dangers; a rule forbidding blogging on school computers on school time; a policy disallowing students to name the school, school employees, or fellow students in an identifiable fashion on their privately-maintained blogs; and a student assembly to teach the students safe Internet habits may well have been far more effective.

That said.

If I were a parent of a student, I would require my child to obey the policy.

Catholics are not supposed to be rugged individualists with a me-the-Pope-and-Jesus worldview (although some American Catholics unfortunately appear to be formed by such a quasi-Protestant worldview). They are members of a larger community that inculcates the virtue of obedience to legitimate authority, religious and civil, in all things but those that are inherently sinful. Children should learn that while growing up may free them from that obedience to parents that is proper to childhood, it does not free them from the requirement of obedience to lawful authority. Practicing the virtue by obeying their parochial school’s authority can prepare them for the obedience they may one day have to give to a bishop or religious superior.

Legitimate authority may make prudentially unwise decisions. Granted. But parents who place the value of their child’s freedom to express himself on the Internet while under parental supervision over and above the value of teaching their child the virtue of Christian obedience — even when it’s difficult to be obedient to a prudentially unwise rule — do their child no favors. Far better, IMHO, to express to the school one’s displeasure with the policy while refraining from bad-mouthing the school to the child and requiring the child to follow the policy while it’s in effect.

JIMMY ADDS: Much of what I am about to say would be moot because I am a strong advocate of homeschooling and would not plan to put my children in an outside-of-the-home school, but here goes. . . .

I concur with everything Michelle said about the badness of the policy, and I respect her opinion regarding how she would handle the issue in her family. That’s a matter of parental choice. In my case, I would do things differently. Since the school has no legitimate authority over what the child does at home (that’s the parents’ domain), I would use the situation as an opportunity to teach the child the difference between obedience to legitimate authority (mine) and resistance to illegitimate authority (the school’s telling him what he can and can’t do on the Internet at home). I would therefore require my child to ignore the policy. (I would also explore taking action against the school, such as having recourse to the diocese.)

If the child wants to blog that would be fine with me–AND we’d have to face the issue of blogging anonymously to avoid the school policy–BUT no posts would go up without prior parental authorization of them (which would be a household rule irrespective of the school’s policy). If left unsupervised, kids say things that they shouldn’t, and in the electronic age they need to learn what is acceptable to say on the Net and what is not. In the process of parental reviewing and approving of posts, the child would learn the difference (gossip about classmates and teachers being things that fall into the unacceptable category).

Breaking News: Miers Withdraws!

It’s already been noted in the combox below, but I thought it deserved its own post:

HARRIET MIERS WITHDRAWS.

Follow-up memo to Jeb: This does not mean that you don’t still need to pick up the phone and call your brother. He needs to understand, in no uncertain terms, that his next nomination has to be in the Scalia-Thomas mold.

Even another Roberts — as vast an improvement as that would be over another Miers — isn’t remotely going to cut it at this point.

More to follow…

GET THE STORY.

“That’s Mojave. That’s Where I Was Born.”

While I’m linking places I’ve seen in my travels to sci-fi, lemme mention a connection to the Mojave Desert, whose southern edge I skirted on my recent road trip.

To the left is a frame from the original pilot for Star Trek. The pilot was called "The Cage" and did not feature Jim Kirk as captain of the Enteriprise. Instead, the ship was captained by Christopher Pike (played by Jeffrey Hunter).

NBC liked the pilot, but not enough to pick up the show. So they took the unusual step of ordering a second pilot, for which they gave Gene Roddenberry a lot of "notes" (directives for what to do differently).

Among the notes were that Roddenberry needed to LOSE the Number One character (an emotionless female HUMAN first officer played by Majel Berrett, later Nurse Chapel, later Majel Berrett-Roddenberry, later Lwaxana Troi and the Federation Computer Voice) AND he needed to lose the pointy-eared character Spock.

Roddenberry sacrificed the first in order to save the second.

Whether he also needed to lose Jeffrey Hunter as Christopher Pike or whether left for other reasons, I dunno.

But in the original pilot we were treated to an interesting story that was significantly similar to . . . and significantly different from . . . later incarnations of Trek.

(The footage from "The Cage" was also later almost all used in the Star Trek two-parter "The Menagerie"–the one featuring a horribly disfigured Captain Pike [now played by Sean Kenney] in a wheelchair)

In "The Cage," Captain Pike is captured by aliens who can read his mind and give him any fantasy he wants. They’re doing this to try to get him to hook up with a human female they also have so that the two can become the progenitors of a new race on their dying planet.

In one scene (pictured above), they give Pike a fantasy of going back to Earth, where he is married to the captive human cutie and lives in his home town of Mojave (mo-HAH-vee), California.

Upon seeing the ultra-futuristic sci-fi city, Pike declares:

I used to ride through here when I was a kid. Not as pretty as some of the parks around the big cities, but. . . . That’s Mojave. That’s where I was born.

Later, his imaginary wifey remarks:

They say that in the olden days all this was a desert–just blowing sand and cactus.

That’s a pretty good clue that we’re talking about a not-yet-built city in the Mojave Desert, which has been terraformed into being like a more garden-like part of Terra.

But there are a couple of problems:

1) The Mojave Desert ain’t just a bunch of dunes. Like many deserts, it doesn’t fit the typical sand dune model that we have in mind from TV and the movies. Instead, much of it is filled with scrub and there isn’t a sand dune in sight, as my recent post showed.

But this is somewhat soluble since there IS a section of the Mojave Desert that is filled with sand dunes. It’s called the Kelso Dunes (below), and is presumably where Captain Pike’s hometown was built. (Obviously a serious blow was done to LEAVE-IT-ALONE-AT-ALL-COSTS!-environmentalism between now and then. Maybe World War III did that.)

But there’s also a second problem:

2) THERE ALREADY IS A MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA!

It’s near Tehachapi.

I mean, it’s not a BIG town–in 2000 the town only has 3,800 inhabitants–but then Captian Pike indicated that his Mojave was a smaller place.

It also seems to be in at least a semi-desert area, though I have no indication that there are sand dunes there.

So either this Mojave doesn’t exist in the Star Trek universe or it ceased to exist between now and Captian Pike’s time (maybe World War III did that) or it’s been renamed–or something!–and a new Mojave has been built in the Mojave Desert, as the pilot implies.

In any event, the real world Mojave is about three and a half hours north of San Diego.

Maybe someday, I’ll go there, too.

RIP: Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks, the quiet seamstress who sparked the civil rights movement by refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white man, died Monday at the age of 92. (As an aside, beyond the issues of racial bigotry, which are heinous in and of themselves and which I do not intend to trivialize, I’ve wondered if that white man’s mama dressed him down for expecting a lady to give him her seat.)

"[Congressman John] Conyers [D-MI], who first met Parks during the early days of the civil rights struggle, recalled Monday that she worked on his original congressional staff when he first was elected to the House of Representatives in 1964.

"’I think that she, as the mother of the new civil rights movement, has left an impact not just on the nation, but on the world,’ he told CNN in a telephone interview. ‘She was a real apostle of the nonviolence movement.’

"He remembered her as someone who never raised her voice — an eloquent voice of the civil rights movement."

"’You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene — just a very special person,’ he said, adding that ‘there was only one’ Rosa Parks."

GET THE STORY.

While reading through this section of Parks’ obituary, I was struck by the Marian tone of the piece. Parks was a motherly figure to the movement and offered a presence that gave the cause a mantle of quiet dignity and courage. Interesting, isn’t it, how great paradigm shifts in history are often ushered in by women? Men may take the lead in fighting the battle, but the "incarnation" of the moment often enough enters history through a woman.

May Rosa Parks rest in peace and may perpetual light shine upon her through Christ our Lord, as mediated by Mary his most holy Mother.

Jeb, Call Your Brother NOW!

It’s time for an intervention in the Bush family.

I know that, as governor of Florida, you are very concerned about the troubles your state is in as a result of Hurricane Wilma. You have a lot of troubles on your plate right now, and our prayers are with you and the Floridians who are suffering from this natural disaster.

But there is another matter that you and other family members must attend to. The Bushes are a political family that seeks to be one of the premier families of American politics, like the Kennedies used to be. But your brother, the president, is rapidly destroying the family’s chances of continuing to play a leading role in American politics.

Your father, it must be admitted, is not fondly remembered. He was elected in order to continue the conservative vision of Ronald Reagan but instead he is judged to be as a mediocre successor who made glaring mistakes that have permanently tarnished his reputation. Chief among these were raising taxes, failing to deal with Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War, and appointing the walking abomination of David Souter to the Supreme Court.

Your brother is in the process of making parallel mistakes.

Though he was smart enough to pass tax cuts that have stimulated the economy, his flagrant and unconstrained government spending is likely to eradicate the good done by lowering taxes.

The current Iraq War is, as you know, a real political albatross. Your brother’s intentions may have been good and going to war may have been the right decision at the time, but the failure to find WMDs and the ongoing insurgency have given your opponents all the resources they need to use this war as a colossal embarrasment to your brother.

Now we come to the Harriet Miers situation.

As you know, it’s a catastrophic mess that was created when your brother went against the advice of his advisors and picked a stealth nominee who also plays into the cronyism charges to which your brother is vulnerable. The problems with Harriet Miers are so numerous that I can’t possibly go into them now, but the important point is that your brother has totally welshed on his promise to appoint justices like Scalia and Thomas.

He has stabbed the conservative movement in the back at a moment that should have been the culmination of thirty years of intense effort to take back the Court from the justices who have been usurping the democratic process in this nation and imposing their own values on the land.

Your father is ill-remembered for his "Read my lips: No new taxes" promise, which the then broke. Your brother is now in the process of similarly destroying his own reputation with conservatives by breaking his promise to appoint justices like Scalia and Thomas.

For further background on the scope of the disaster, please read

THIS ARTICLE BY JUDGE BORK

AND THIS ARTICLE BY THE WASHINGTON POST ON MIERS’ JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY

AND THIS ARTICLE (FROM YESTERDAY) BY ROD DREHER ON HOW YOUR BROTHER HAS REPEATEDLY BETRAYED THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AND NOW THE CHICKENS ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST.

I mean, you read these things and it’s simply flabbergasting. The incoherence and inconsistency of Miers’ views cries out for explanation, and the likely explanations are not good ones. One of my blog readers insightfully commented:

When she sent back the pro-life questionnaire, she was running for
political office as a conservative in a conservative city. I think
political exigencies are enough to explain it, especially considering
the paucity of other evidence as to her being pro-life (like church
attendance and paying the minimum to attend a pro-life dinner once).
Choosing between the quesionnaire filled out while running for office
and the speech given while not running for office, I give the speech
more weight, especially since it is at a later date after the election
of Bill Clinton and after the Casey decision. At best, she plays to the
crowd she’s with and that is a very bad thing for a prospective justice to do.

Before reading that article, I thought she was probably O’Connor II
with fewer qualifications. Now I think she’s as likely to turn out to
be Harry Blackmun in a dress, both in terms of mediocrity and in terms
of judicial philosophy.

Blackmun in a dress is very possibly correct! She may actually be worse than Souter!

The longer her nomination remains in place, the worse things are for your brother. His bridges to his base get more burned with every day that goes by. It’s time for a swift and dramatic course correction.

This is not only for purposes of salvaging your brother’s reputation and his ability to accomplish anything in his remaining three years in office, it’s also for purposes of protecting the family’s legacy and political future.

I mean, your father was something that conservatives had to overlook in nominating your brother for the presidency. "Yeah, we know the first Bush was bad–a phony conservative–but this one is better–he’s a real conservative" was the message.

Now it looks like that is not the case and that your brother is a phony conservative, too.

Frankly, I don’t care what his personal views are as long as he delivers where it counts, and where it counts is the Supreme Court.

So let me tell you what will happen if the Miers nomination goes forward and (God forbid) she gets on the Supreme Court and turns out to be anything other than a firm originalist: Conservatives will not trust your family with the chance to run for the presidency again.

The first President Bush was a "fool me once" situation, and the second President Bush is turning into a "fool me twice"situation. There will be no third President Bush.

The message that will be driven home to the conservative base is: "You can’t trust the Bushes. They’re phony conservatives who will lie to get into office and then stab you in the back by breaking their most important campaign promises. They’re Big Government big spenders, they’ll get you into bungled wars in the Middle East, and they’ll put walking disasters on the Supreme Court. You simply can’t trust them. Find someone else."

Now, as a Bush, you presumably have a much more positive image of your family than this, but this is the image of your family that will be confirmed in the minds of the conservative base if things are put right in a hurry.

Your brother being notoriously stubborn, though, means that he may dig in his heels and resist putting things right.

That’s where you (and other family members) come in.

For the sake of your brother, the sake of your family, and the sake of the nation, it is time for an intervention in the Bush family.

Please, Jeb, pick up the phone.

A One-Way Trip To Boot Hill

Today–October 26–back in 1881, the gunfight at the O.K. corral occurred.

It’s the most famous gunfight in the history of the Old West, and it took all of thirty seconds. (During which thirty shots were fired.)

It’s also a source of enduring controversy.

The battle pitted Wyatt Earp (pictured), along with his brothers Morgan and Virgil, together with the dentist Doc Holliday, against the Clanton brothers, the McLaury brothers, and Billy Claiborne.

When the battle was over, the McLaury Brothers and one of the Clantons lay dead. They are now buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery.

The gunfight remains a source of controversy because of disputes about who fired first, who was justified, and whether the fight should have taken place at all.

It went on to be the stuff of film and legend.

Wyatt Earp himself moved around the southwest and ended up in Hollywood, where he came to know various stars of Westerns, including a young John Wayne, who based his portrayal of lawmen on Earp.

What history will ultimately decide about the story remains to be seen. In the meantime,

GET THE STORY.

NOTE FROM 2005: I am SO kicking myself! Dang it! I just undertook a trip to Arizona and wanted to go to Tombstone, where the gunfight occurred, but I thought I’d wait until whatever historical commemoration of the event that the local community has. I visited the town’s web site in preparation for my trip, but it said nothing about the anniversary. I had NO idea that it was just FOUR DAYS after I’d been in the state! I would have totally changed my itinerary to be there for that! Consarnit! Next year, I tell you!!!

Propositions 1-4

HERE’S THE FIRST FOUR OF THE BISHOPS’ PROPOSITIONS FROM THE SYNOD ON THE EUCHARIST.

Proposition 1 basically does two things: It formally gives the pope certain synod-related documents for his reflection and it asks him to produce "a document on the sublime mystery of the Eucharist in the life and mission of the Church."

Proposition 2 praises the liturgical reform following Vatican II. It goes on, however, to note:

Abuses were verified in the past [i.e., following the liturgical reform]; they are not even lacking today,
although they have diminished greatly.

This is an interesting statement. From what I can tell, it’s true. I wasn’t a Catholic back in the 1970s and 1980s, but my understanding is that liturgical abuses were MUCH worse back in the wild and wooly days following the reform. Folks were doing things that are virtually unheard of today, like reading passages from Jonathan Livingston Seagull in place of the gospel and such.

I can verify that, in the thirteen years I’ve been Catholic, the celebration of the liturgy HAS improved. There are still abuses, still things that really rankle, but they’re better than they were before. The release of the new GIRM did a lot to improve things, as has the steady hand that Rome has been exercising the last number of years in liturgical matters. Cardinal Arinze is definitely the right guy to have at the helm of the CDW right now for helping to guide the celebration of the liturgy in a continued positive direction.

No, compliance is not what it needs to be. Yes, there is still much improvement to be made. But the number of outright, flagrant abuses is down–at least in this country.

The second proposition goes on to say that the abuses don’t mean that the liturgical reform was bad or not a valid decision but that they call for greater attention to the way liturgy is celebrated, with the goal of fostering the "actuosa participatio" of the faithful–which is a technical term meaning that the faithful should pay attention and absorb what is going on at Mass.

Propositions 3 and 4 begin a section on the theology of the Eucharist. Now, I must confess that this is a style of writing that does not natively appeal to me. I don’t know why, whenever there is a document like this, the pastors of the Church feel the need to recapitulate the whole theology of whatever subject they’re dealing with.
They seldom say anything new in this part of the document, and it’s at this point that my eyes start to glaze over and I find it a long hard slog to get through to the interesting developments.

I recognize that there can be a catechetical value to such material and that people need to be reminded of the basic beliefs of the faith, but this was written as a private document for the pope, and of all people the present pope is least in need of such basic catechesis.

I think, instead, that what they’re trying to do is offer to the pope suggestions for the themes they want him to hit in the apostolic exhortation–as well as trying to show their appreciation for the Eucharist by celebrating it through the recapitulation of its theology in a meditative manner.

My own lack of appreciation for this style of writing I therefore take as revealing myself to have a more practical rather than meditative bent. Instead of wanting to meditate on the recapitulation, I find myself wanting them to cut to the chase. So this may say more about me than anything else.

My commentary on propositions of this nature is thus likely to be rather sparse.

Proposition 3 stresses the novelty of what Jesus did in instituting the Eucharist, as well as a number of other themes.

Proposition 4 stresses that the Eucharist is both a gift from God and a right of the faithful–that is, it is a gift to which God has given the faithful a right that the pastors of the Church must strive to accomodate so that the faithful can partake of the gift God wishes them to have.

More as more propositions become available in English.

A-Slippin’ An’ A-Slidin’ With His New Shoes On

In the Doc Watson bluegrass classic "Way Downtown," there’s a stanza that goes:

It was late last night when Willie came home
I heard him a-rappin’ on the door
He’s a-slippin’ an’ a-slidin’ with his new shoes on
Mamma said Willie don’t you rap no more

The line in blue may not be overly meaningful to a lot of folks today since they don’t wear shoes with leather soles, but it’s instantly intelligible if you do.

The reason is that when you buy leather-soled shoes, the leather at first is slick. It’s cured in a way that toughens it up to serve as . . . well . . . shoe leather, and the process makes it quite smooth. As a result, when you first put on a new pair of leather-soled shoes, you really have to watch your step because you’ll go slipping and sliding if you’re not careful.

It takes a day or two of walking around (particularly on asphalt and rough concrete) to get the bottoms of your shoes scuffed up enough that the slipperiness goes away. After that, you’re all set.

(Until you wear through the shoe leather and it’s time to get your shoes re-soled.)

I was put in mind of all this because on my Arizona trip my boots finally wore out. I’d already had them re-soled, and the leather on the sides had cracked where my little toe is. I’d had that patched, but on the AZ trip I hiked around so much that the patches broke and the leather ruptured in a way that made it impossible ot patch them again without the patch being obvious.

So it was time for new boots.

It had been for a while anyway, and I’d planned on getting some new ones before the Catholic Answers cruise in a couple of weeks (wouldn’t do to be going to fancy dress dinners with worn out boots!), so I went out yesterday after work and bought some.

As a result, today I was in the period where I was a-slippin’ an’ a-sliding with my new boots on.

But that’ll be over by tomorrow at the latest.

Oh, and here’s a picture for any who are curious (figgered I’d better explain them or I’d get questions when I post the next footfall mystery photo).

A Pope Of Surprises

B16 is such a cool dude. His papacy, thus far, is shaping up as a series of refreshing surprises. He’s marking his own course as pope, either breaking with papal tradition or restoring old papal traditions that have lapsed, and thus far I’ve been really delighted with the direction he has been moving things.

F’rinstance:

Following the recent Synod on the Eucharist, B16 did something unprecedented. Now, he’d already done some unprecedented things in terms of how the synod ran–allowing bishops to have "open mike" time for three minute speeches, for example, to better foster discussion amongst them–but at the close of the synod he did something really amazing.

He released the document of private recommendations that the bishops gave him regarding the Eucharist.

Y’see, normally each synod draws up a list of recommendations that are given privately to the pope. At the first few synods, that was ALL that happened. The pope got the recommendations and that was it. Then, after the Synod on Evangelization, Paul VI decided to write an apostolic exhortation (the one now known as Evangelii nuntiandi), and that became a new papal tradition. At the end of each synod the bishops would turn in their private advice to the pope and then he’d write an apostolic exhortation based on the private advice.

But this time B16 has made that private advice public.

YEE-HAW! KEWL!

There were rumors that this might be ALL that B16 would do–that he might just release the advice and not follow up with an apostolic exhortation (despite the fact that point #1 in the advice was to ask him to write an apostolic exhortation). That’s apparently not going to be what happens. B16 has announced that he plans on offering further elaboration on the points raised by the bishops in the exhortation, so we should be getting one.

But having the advice in hand at this stage gives us a greater insight into what the pope is likely to say in the exhortation. He will go beyond what they said, offering his own personal thoughts, but we still have an unprecedented insight into what the final document will be like.

Unfortunately, the complete text of the advice is only out in Italian right now.

Fortunately, Zenit is releasing it in English in a series of parts over the next few days (or that seems to be the plan).

The advice consists of fifty numbered "propositions" (though they’re really short passages rather than single propositions), and I’ll be taking the opportunity to comment on them as they’re released.

More later.