Month: January 2006

Follow The Money

Earlier I discussed the money tracking service of WheresGeorge.Com. It was meant as a lark by a bunch of friends, but now it’s being put to a serious purpose.

How’s that?

Well, dollar bills don’t just walk around the countryside.

Not unless it’s the walking money from the planet Ventura in the Legion of Super-Heroes, I mean.

Here on Earth, dollar bills go places because they are carried by people.

That means that if you can track the money, you can–kinda, sorta–track the people. The motions of money tell you something about the motions of people.

Which is why the serial numbers of bills can be used to catch criminals.

How else might such a "follow the money" approach be used?

How could it be put into the service of SCIENCE?

Well, how about this: If you understand more about the casual, random connections that people make as they move around then it could tell you something about things that people carry around with them and exchange with other people . . . like dollar bills . . . or germs.

And that is what some scientists are doing.

They’re using the Where’s George money tracking system to model human travel and interactions as a way of producing better models of DISEASE PROPAGATION.

GET THE STORY.

And, of course, if we have better models of disease propagation then we can better predict what diseases will do and come up with better strategies for fighting them.

YEE-HAW!

Go! Humans!

Fight! Those! Germs!

(Mr. Monk will be pleased.)

(Agent Mulder may not be.)

What’s This?

BpathA flight path of a UFO tracked by the Air Force in the 1950s?

Good guess!

But wrong.

In actuality, it’s the track path of a one dollar bill that was first picked up by the system on March 15, 2002 in Dayton, Ohio and then tracked through fourteen additional sightings.

It was most recently sighted on March 26, 2005 in Rudyard, Michigan.

It travelled (at least) 4,191 miles in 3 Yrs, 12 Days, 17 Hrs, 25 Mins at an average of 3.8 Miles per day.

How was it tracked?

By a secret government transmitter placed in all paper money since the 1950s that needs to be reported to Agent Fox Mulder of the X-Files?

Good guess!

But wrong.

It was tracked through a free, volunteer web service known as WheresGeorge.Com, which a bunch of friends who thought it would be a hoot to set up a site that lets people track the movements of the money in their wallets.

(Fox Mulder might still think they were agents of the shadow government, though.)

Here’s how it works: They set up a database that allowed people to enter the serial numbers of the dollar bills in their pockets, along with the zip code of where they are. Many then wrote "Where’s George.Com" on the bills and spent them. When the bills later came into the possession of others, they saw the note, logged in to Where’s George.Com, and entered a new bill sighting, allowing the bill to be tracked. Users also could leave notes about how the bill came into their possession.

The above bill, for example, was once received as part of a tip at a Sonic restaurant, given in change at a McDonalds and a Jack In The Box. This bill has a rather–er–colorful history, as it was also received in winnings at a racetrack and then found on the floor of something called the Penthouse Key Club in Dallas (I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t sound wholesome).

This bill is something of a superstar, not for those reasons, but because it’s the most sighted bill currently on file.

READ ITS PROFILE HERE.

If you’re interested,

TRACK YOUR OWN CURRENCY AT WHERESGEORGE.COM.

If you’re Canadian,

TRACK YOUR CURRENCY AT WHERESWILLY.COM.

Vatican Slams Intelligent Design?

NOT!

Yes, yes. I know that you read headlines like

VATICAN SLAMS INTELLIGENT DESIGN

from know-nothing MSM sources.

The basis of these stories is a recent piece that appeared in L’Osservatore Romano that did slam intelligent design.

But there’s a problem.

L’Osservatore Romano is not Acta Apostolica Sedis. The latter, as its Latin name indicates, is a chronicle of the Acts of the Apostolic See. L’Osservatore Romano does not have the same status, nor do articles it prints.

John Allen clarifies:

One question that a number of American media outlets asked me this week: Is the L’Osservatore article an official Vatican statement?

The quick answer is "no," but as always with quick answers, things are a bit more complicated. The article was not issued by a Vatican dicastery or approved by the pope, and while L’Osservatore is informally known as the "Vatican newspaper," technically only the items in the "Nostre Informazioni" box amount to official Vatican releases. Yet the contents of the paper reflect attitudes and judgments at high levels, and in that sense provide a window onto what at least some Vatican officials are thinking [SOURCE].

The real story here is that churchmen are split on the subject of evolution. Some, such as Cardinal Schonborn, make the point that the Christian faith is incompatible with purely naturalistic conceptions of evolution. Others, like the author of the piece in L’Osservatore Romano, at least appear more open to purely naturalistic conceptions.

How this all shakes out we will have to wait and see. I suspect that PART of the dispute between the parties may turn out to be semantic. (But only part.)

However that may be, in neither case can such reports be accurately represented as "Rome’s" or "the Vatican’s" or "the Catholic Church’s" position on this matter.

NONE of them are official.

So the headlines you saw screaming "Church Opposes Evolution" after Schonborn’s essay in the NYT came out were inaccurate, and the new ones screaming "Church Opposes Intelligent Design" after the L’Osservatore Romano piece are inaccurate.

The reason for the inaccuracy, of course, is obvious.

The people writing the headlines are too dangerously unqualified to keep their jobs.

The Truce of 2005?

Truces are good things. Right?

I mean, "Blessed are the peacemakers" and all that.

Well, while peace is desirable and to be worked toward–as the Church has pointed out so often in recent times–a mere absence of conflict is not sufficient for the kind of peace that is worth having.

Said another way: Some truces are wrong.

Like "the Truce of 1968," in which Pope Paul VI attempted to settle things down after numerous theologians rebelled against the teaching of Humanae Vitae. Rather than disciplining the malefactors, he let them get away with their dissent, and we have been suffering from the effects of that ever since.

Who know? He may have signed Europe’s death warrant by confirming it in its downward population growth death spiral.

Now Fr. Richard John Neuhaus worries that we may be facing a new, equally disastrous truce–the "Truce of 2005."

He sees this truce as potentially as decisive for Benedict XVI’s papacy as the Truce of 1968 was for Paul VI’s papacy.

He writes:

And so it is that we are faced with what may be a defining test of the pontificate of Benedict XVI. As all who know him can attest, he is in personal relations a gentle man and averse to unpleasantness. He cannot relish the prospect of a direct confrontation with major institutions such as the Society of Jesus. Early on in his pontificate, John Paul II made an effort to bring the Jesuits into closer alignment with church teaching and authority, and ended up with little to show for it. As is his custom, the father general of the society, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, remains publicly aloof.

With this pope, as with all popes, there is the fear of schism. That was a great fear in 1968. . . .

In 1968, an effort was made to hold accountable those who are solemnly vowed to the service of the Church. And then Rome caved. We are still living with the unhappy consequences of the Truce of 1968. Of course the Church will survive. We have Our Lord’s promise on that. But no one who cares about this pontificate and the integrity of the Church’s ministry can contemplate with equanimity the consequences of a Truce of 2005.

What is this prospective, fearful Truce of 2005?

GET THE STORY.

B16 On Islam’s Capacity To Change

You may be aware of a story that has been floating around the blogosphere/MSM regarding comments allegedly made by B16 to the effect that Islam is incapable of changing and its to the modern world.

The story is based on comments made by Fr. Joseph Fessio to Hugh Hewitt on his radio show.

In some places folks have been making a lot out of this,

SUCH AS HERE.

But before people go off half-cocked on this one, they need to read a very important clarification of his remarks issued by Fr. Fessio in response to the article I just linked.

READ IT HERE.

(CHT: Insight scoop.)

UPDATE: MORE HERE FROM SANDRO MAGISTER. (Thanks to the reader who e-mailed!)

Fulfilling One’s Sunday Obligation

A reader writes:

My wife went to confession this
past Sunday.  Our church provides confession before mass and it runs up
to communion.  While in line for confession, she said she wasn’t able
to concentrate on the readings, then by the time she came out of the
confessional, she had missed the end of the gospel.  She then
considered not receiving communion because she felt she did not
complete her Sunday obligation of mass.  She finally decided to receive
communion, but on the drive home she thought that she may have
committed a sin by receiving communion.  She ended up going to another
mass later that evening, but that didn’t calm her fears.  Is
there anything I can tell her or do to help her?

Yes. Let’s split this question in two.

First: Did your wife sin by receiving Communion when she hadn’t been able to participate in part of the liturgy of the word?

NO!

Y’know why? Because YOU DON’T HAVE TO PARTICIPATE IN MASS IN ORDER
TO RECEIVE COMMUNION. That’s why there are Communion services. That’s
why the Church’s documents EXPLICITLY note that it’s licit to receive
Communion even if you just happen to be walking through a church when
Communion is being distributed.

How much or how little of the Mass you attend when you receive
Communion the first time during a day has NOTHING to do with whether
you can receive Communion. You don’t even have to be at Mass at all!
You may be receiving in a Communion service (as is the case, for
example, with the sick who are receiving Communion in the hospital).

(NOTE: This applies to the FIRST time you receive Communion on a
given day. If you want to receive twice then canon law provides that
the SECOND time you receive that you need to do so in the context of a
Mass that you are attending.)

Since this was the first time (I assume) that your wife had received Communion that day, there was NO SIN AT ALL committed.

Receiving Communion and fulfilling one’s Sunday obligation are TWO SEPARATE ISSUES.

Now let’s deal with the second question: Did your wife fulfill her Sunday obligation?

Yes.

Not only because she went to Mass later in the day but ALSO because
her participation in the first Mass was sufficient to satisfy the
requirements of canon law.

Here’s why:

The Church HASN’T specified precisely how much or what parts of the
Mass one needs to attend in order to fulfill one’s Sunday obligation.
Obviously, it needs to be a significant part of the Mass, but the
Church has not offered us an explicit formula for figuring this out.

That means that it is reasonable to look to the historic practice of
the Church for help in figuring out this question. When we do that, we
find that the situation your wife was in is VERY COMMON in Church
history. Before the liturgy was revised, it was VERY COMMON to have
confessions being heard during the liturgy of the word (which was then
called the "Mass of the catechumens," separate from the liturgy of the
Eucharist or "Mass of the faithfu") and–y’know what?–they DIDN’T stop
confessions during the gospel so people could hear it. Nor did the
Church tell people they had to go to another Mass if they didn’t hear
the gospel.

A common stream of opinion prior to the reform of the liturgy was
that you satisfied your Sunday obligation AS LONG AS YOU HEARD THE MASS
FROM THE OFFERTORY NEAR THE BEGINNING OF THE LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST
OR "MASS OF THE FAITHFUL." In other words, YOU COULD MISS THE ENTIRE
LITURGY OF THE WORD OR "MASS OF THE CATECHUMENS" AND STILL FULFILL YOUR
SUNDAY OBLIGATION.

I can quote this point from MULTIPLE pre-Concililiar moral theologies if necessary.

That being the case, we then ask: Do the Church’s documents indicate that MORE than this is required today?

No.

They don’t.

In fact, as I’ve mentioned, canon law does not indicate anything at
all regarding how much of the Mass we need to attend in order to
satisfy our Sunday obligation, which also tells us something else: THEY
DON’T WANT US SCRUPULING ABOUT THIS POINT. If they wanted us to scruple
about it, they would have told us more precisely what is required.

As long as we’re making a basic effort to do our part and attending
Mass–and ESPECIALLY if we attend Mass from the Offertory onwards,
which was commonly considered sufficient in the past–then we have done
that.

Now maybe she might have doubts about this.

Okay, then in comes our old friend, Canon 14 of the Code of Canon Law, which provides that in cases of a doubt of law then the law does not bind.

Given the lack of guidance on this question and the presence of the
pre-Conciliar history of regarding hearing Mass from the Offertory
onward as sufficient we AT LEAST have a doubt of whether the law
requires us to attend any particular part of the liturgy of the Word in
order to fulfill our Sunday obligation.

We therefore have a doubt of law, and the law does not bind unless and until Rome clarifies it.

Until then the faithful are not obligated to hear any part of the
liturgy of the word in order to fulfill their Sunday obligation.

That may surprise some folks, but that’s what canon law indicates
given the doubt of law situation that unambiguously exists in this case.

If your wife couldn’t concentrate on certain readings (which
wouldn’t have counted prior to the reform of the liturgy, anyway) or
didn’t hear the gospel then she CLEARLY fulfilled her obligation under
the old law and, since the new law doesn’t specify and has the
provision regarding a doubt of law not binding then she CLEARLY
fulfilled her Sunday obligation by attending the part of Mass that she
did.

So: It was praiseworthy for your wife to go to the lengths she did
to attend another Mass, but it was not required by the law and she did
not sin. Her Sunday obligation was fulfilled (TWICE!) and she should
not scruple on this point.

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Encyclical MP3

HERE’S THE NEW ENCYCLICAL–DEUS CARITAS EST–IN MP3 FORMAT.

It’s about 17 meg in size and takes just over and hour and a half to listen to.

This is just a rough-n-ready adaptation of the encyclical to audio format. I didn’t have time to do a lot of tweaking to smooth things out, so there may be infelicities here and there. I did tweak a few things, though.

(Y’know, we’re really living in the future now. B16 issues an encyclical and in an incredibly short space of time it’s flashed all over the globe electronically and then in a couple of minutes–much less time that it takes to read it aloud–it’s read by an artificial voice and flashed back across the globe for anyone who wants to listen to it. B16’s predecessor B15 would have been stunned at this unimaginability. "These are the days of miracle and wonder.")

For this version of the file, I tried to remove listening distractions by stripping out the section numbers, footnotes, and scripture citations in parentheses (e.g., "1 Jn 1:4").

I also tried to tweak the artificial voice’s pronunciation of certain key Greek and Latin words in the encyclical (agape, caritas), but when the text uses a longer phrase in Latin, the results may not always be felicitous.

As a tip to how to use this mp3, you may want to have the encyclical on the screen in front of you–or a print copy–as you listen to the mp3. I often find that this dual audio/visual reinforcement makes it easier for me to assimilate texts. The voice pulls me along so I don’t get bogged down and distracted, and the visual reading experience helps me focus on what the voice is saying.

DOWNLOAD THE TEXT OF THE ENCYCLICAL HERE.

It’s also available HERE (.doc) and HERE [WARNING! Evil file format! (.pdf)]

Special thanks to the folks at ReapTeam.Org for hosting the mp3.

PLEASE CHECK OUT THEIR SITE.

Fear Of Going To Hell

A reader writes:

My wife has been having some problems lately with her fear of going to hell.  She has explained to me that she thinks she is going to hell because she doesn’t do any good deeds, and when she remembers some good deeds, she makes her self believe that it wasn’t with the proper intent.  She has been driving herself crazy with this lately.  Is there anything that I can say to her or anything I can do to calm her fears?

The first thing to recognize is that your wife is going through a period of scrupulosity, which is a disordered fear that one is sinning or in danger of going to hell. This is not uncommon. Many people go through periods of this at least once in their lives. Sometimes it is due to a need for a bit of extra theological education. When that is the case then once the person gets the additional education the problem begins to abate. In other cases the problem is related to additional causes (one common contributing cause being Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, though this is not simply the same thing as scrupulosity). In these cases the problem may be longer lasting but is still treatable.

Let’s assume that your wife’s case is one of the short-term ones that is produced by a need for a bit of extra theological info. If so, it should be easily to address. If it is longer lasting, I suggest that you get in touch with an organization like Scrupulous Anonymous, though I wouldn’t recommend that right now. (It could make the situation more difficult by raising additional BASELESS fears that OTHER PEOPLE worry about that would need to be addressed. Go to them if the problem persists for a significant time after addressing her immediate concerns.)

To address the issue that your wife has raised regarding good works, there are certain things she needs to understand. Feel free to have her read this (assuming she won’t get mad).

The first thing that she needs to understand is that the thing that gets us to heaven is our receiving and remaining in God’s grace. We receive God’s grace when we turn to him and accept his offer of grace, particularly through the sacraments. When your wife makes a good confession, she thus receives God’s grace and is put in a state of grace.

That’s the first half of the equation.

The second half is remaining in a state of grace. The only way to not do this is to commit a mortal sin. Unless you commit a mortal sin, you remain in God’s grace.

Good works, therefore, are not of themselves necessary to remain in a state of grace. They may help you stay in a state of grace by building good habits that steer you away from sin, but a lack of good works IS  NOT A MORTAL SIN. If you are a baptized baby and you die before you are capable of doing good works, you don’t have any, but that doesn’t keep you out of heaven. Similarly, if you’re an adult convert and you get baptized and then run over by a bus so that you don’t have a chance to do good works, you don’t get kept out of heaven.

The key to going to heaven is our reception of and remaining in God’s grace. It’s his grace that gets us to heaven.

Good works are a natural outgrowth of his grace working in our hearts, and he rewards us for cooperating with his grace in doing good works, but the thing that would keep us out of heaven is mortal sin, not having an insufficient number of good works.

She should therefore put this worry out of her mind.

That, OF ITSELF, takes care of her parallel worry about doing good works with the right intention.

She ALSO does not need to worry about that because of a simple fact: Humans have mixed intentions. This is something Pope Benedict has written about in the past, before his election, and it’s an obvious fact of human experience. The fact that we have mixed motives does not prevent us from pleasing God by the good works we do.

It doesn’t matter if you’re doing a good work for multiple reasons. As long as ONE REASON is that you want to please God then–to the extent that that was a motive–your act is supernaturally good and will receive a supernatural reward.

In other words: As long as a desire to please God is in there somewhere–amid all your many mixed motives–then the act still has something in it that does please God.

Now here’s a new twist: Humans also have virtual intentions. A virtual intention is an intention that you aren’t thinking about at the moment.

Let’s take an example: Suppose that you and your wife have a son and that one day your son’s life is engandered by a raging river. Your wife is there and can save him by snatching him out of the river. She plunges into the river and grabs him out, saving his life.

Why did she do this?

Certainly, at least in part, because she loves him and didn’t want him to die. That undoubtedly a prominent motive of hers, which probably dwarfs other motives that she might have.

But now ask this: Was she even thinking about her love for your son at the moment she rescues him?

Probably not.

I’d wager that the word "love" didn’t even cross her mind. She didn’t take time to think "I love my son; therefore I want to rescue him." She was too busy actually rescuing him!

This shows that her love for her son–which is probably the DOMINANT motive in the rescue–was something that wasn’t articulated in her mind at the moment of her act. In other words, it was a virtual motive rather than an explicit motive.

We have virtual intentions like this all the time. In fact, one of the most common in the lives of Christians is the intent to do things to please God.

Almost all Christians–and all who take their faith seriously and strive to live as God wants–have at least a virtual intent to do good things to please God. We may not be thinking about God at the moment we do a particular good act, just like your wife didn’t think about love when she was rescuing her son in the example, but it’s still in there, motivating us to do good.

Your wife undoubtedly already has this motive, but just to reassure herself, she should sit down and say to herself: "Y’know. I want to please God. I want to direct all the good acts I do in the future to please him."

If she does that then–unless she explicitly changes her mind and decides (firmly) that she doesn’t want to please God–then she still has it as a virtual intention. (And even if she did have such a thought flit across her mind, all she’d need to do is re-initialize her intent to please God by a new act of the will.)

And that’s enough.

Our works are pleasing to God–at least in some manner–as long as we have at least a VIRTUAL intention of pleasing him when we do them–an intention that every serious Christian has.

So that’s one more reason your wife doesn’t need to worry about this.

Hope this helps!

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