Month: February 2009

Geneva & Rome, part 1

SDG here with a belated follow-up on my mystery photo post — and a bunch of photos.

First, as I acknowledged in the combox, the two mystery photos show me in Geneva and Rome, posing with large statuary representations of John Calvin (among others) and St. Peter — an echo of my faith journey from the Calvinist milieu of my upbringing to the Catholic faith I hold today.

But what else do Geneva and Rome have in common? After all, I wasn’t there as a Tiber-swimming pilgrim first and foremost. As I mentioned in the combox, the trip was movie related — and the specific connection was mentioned in earlier comments. In fact, Geneva and Rome are both important settings in … Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, the movie version of which opens in May.

Earlier this month, I was one of a number of journalists from around the world that converged in Switzerland and Italy to view settings from the story and to interview the filmmakers, among other things. We also saw some excerpts from the as-yet-unfinished film.

In connection with the trip, I’ll be writing a piece for Christianity Today magazine on anti-Catholicism in Hollywood. I’ll also be reporting on all things Dan Brown in a number of Catholic venues, both print and radio.

In Geneva we visited CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (official site | Wikipedia), a particle physics laboratory that figures in Angels & Demons. (The bad guys steal about a gram of anti-matter from CERN in order to blow up the Vatican. (How plausible is this? Short answer: CERN does make anti-matter, in infinitessimal quantities — a few atoms at a time — which are almost instantly annihilated. They can’t store anti-matter for any length of time, and even if they could it would take something like 10 million years for them to make enough for a bomb. A gram of anti-matter would, however, cause a lot of damage if annihilated all at once. For more, see CERN’s highly entertaining and informative Angels & Demons FAQ.)

We got to go down into the Large Hadron Collider, or rather the ATLAS project, a ginormous detector that measures particle collisions in the LHC. How ginormous? There’s about as much metal in ATLAS as in the Eiffel Tower. This photo is only a tiny portion of what I could see from where I was standing, and what I could see was only a tiny portion of the whole.

The LHC is really big too: it occupies a big, circular, underground tunnel with a circumference of about 17 miles. (Why underground? Because above ground there’s all houses and roads and stuff and it’s hard to build a 17-mile circular tube somewhere where people can live close enough to work on it.)

We also got to talk to some of the scientists who work at CERN. (Favorite quote: “If Dan Brown got the Vatican as wrong as he got CERN, we [at CERN] have a lot less to complain about.”) To my surprise, I discovered that I knew two of them: An online friend from Arts & Faith named Jeff emailed me just before my flight from the US to let me know that he lives in Geneva and works at CERN, and when I got there I was approached by a Decent Films reader with whom I’d corresponded in the past, and who conducted our tour of ATLAS.

I also got a tour from Jeff of a lot of the CERN campus that wasn’t on the A&D tour, which included (or excluded, if you follow me) most of CERN except for the big exhibit dome and ATLAS. (Jeff tells me how lucky I am to have seen ATLAS — like many CERN folks on different projects, even he hasn’t seen it, and soon CERN will be closing ATLAS permanently to visitors without formal radiation training.)

Ironically, Jeff and I lived in the same state for a couple of years in the 1990s, Pennsylvania. How strange that we had to travel a quarter of the way around the globe for our paths to converge at such an unlikely location.

Anyway, I’ll post more pictures of Geneva later, and I’ll talk more about covering Angels & Demons in Rome. For now, I’ll just jump to posting some photos from my time in Rome. (You know what they say about pictures and words!)

Continue reading “Geneva & Rome, part 1”

Soups Re-Redux

In the combox down yonder, a reader writes:

"The law of abstinence forbids the use of meat, but not of eggs, the products of milk or condiments made of animal fat."

The phrase "use of meat" includes soups made from meat (no matter how you slice it). By adding "use of" they included both meat chunks on a plate, in a soup, soup that "used" a meat bone, broth, and probably smoking meat under a potato to try to imbibe the flavor into it. They thus clarified by eliminate superfluous language.

Either way, you can go without the flavor of steak for a day.

I appreciate the reader's attention to detail, but this is an artifact of the translation into English. The translator (whoever it may have been) is using an uncommon English idiom to translate what is more straightforward in the Latin, which is:

III. § 1. Abstinentiae lex vetat carne vesci, non autem ovis, lacticiniis et quibuslibet condimentis etiam ex adipe animalium. [SOURCE]

NOTE: I've corrected a typo in the Latin passage just given. The word "vesci" is incorrectly given in the source document as "vesei" (not a real word in Latin), no doubt due to a scanning error that didn't get caught.

Here is the parallel passage from the 1917 Code of Canon Law:

Can. 1250. Abstinentiae lex vetat carne iureque ex carne vesci, non autem ovis, lacticiniis et quibuslibet condimentis etiam ex adipe animalium. [SOURCE]

As you can see, the fundamental structure of the phrase is the same:

Abstinentiae lex vetat carne . . . vesci

The law of abstinence forbids (one) to feed . . . on meat.

The infinitive "vesci" means "to feed/eat/enjoy." It doesn't carry the same thought that the English translator's employment of "the use of" does. That's just a stilted translation.

"Vesci" is also exactly the same word that appeared in the prior law (the 1917 Code), notwithstanding the scanner error.

What has changed is that the phrase "iureque ex carne" ("and soup from meat") has been dropped.

Hence the previous answer stands: The new law repeated the previous law except for the soup phrase in what it prohibited. Thus "soup from meat" is no longer forbidden.


Good try, though! Thanks for paying attention to detail!

Welcome to Lent

Between my father's recent death and my own recent battle with a cold, I haven't posted much (thanks to Tim J and SGD, who have!), but with today being the beginning of Lent, it's appropriate for me to put up the posts relating to the Annual Lent Fight (which hasn't been so much of a fight in recent years, since we've been rigorously documenting claims regarding Lent from the official canonical and liturgical sources).

Here goes:

GENERAL INFORMATION:

Mystery photos: Where in the world is SDG?

Actually, where I am isn't a mystery — I'm back, and said so in a combox yesterday. So the question is, where have I been for the last week?

To answer that, let's play mystery photos! And to keep things fun, let's adjust the rules a little.

Below are two photos of me in two different locations, both taken with my iPhone by passing strangers. I should think the second location will more likely be recognized by JA.o readers than the first, but in any case, if you flat-out know the location in either photo, don't spoil it right away by identifying it in the combox. Just say "I know where photo B was taken" or "I know where you are in both shots." (Honor system! If you say you know, you get credit.)

If you don't know the location in one or both photos, feel free to offer whatever guesses or insights you may have (e.g., "The large figure(s) in photo [X] might be/is clearly…" or "The background in photo B suggests that…").

Two small hints. I already gave one (the second location will more likely be recognized by JA.o readers than the first). Here's another: Many JA.o readers will know specifics about my faith journey that resonate in an interesting way with the locations of the two photos, shown below in chronological order. (I said they were small hints!)

Next week, I'll post more about my trip.

“Christian-ese” Redux

(Attention: this piece has been Cross-Posted (at Old World Swine) to double your reading pleasure!

Reader Louise has asked in relation to this previous post;

"But what about the Christian pop music, and the hat with IHS on it? Are
these things bad now? So that we have to beg God's forgiveness for this
"rot"?"

A fair question, and one difficult – or rather impossible – to answer directly. I'm certainly not interested in even beginning to say "Well, you shouldn't listen to this, but I think it's okay to listen to that…"
or "wearing Christian symbols on clothing is a compromise with the
consumer culture, and is therefore bad". Everything depends on the
individual's determination (or lack of same) to live a life radically
committed to the Gospel.

It comes down to a matter of
perspective. Is our faith just "part of a well-rounded life", or is it
the organizing principle that gives meaning to everything else? The
question might be framed this way; if not for the ICTHUS emblem on the
car, or the IHS hat, or the bible verse t-shirt, how would your
neighbors, your friends, your community recognize your lifestyle as
especially Christian? If these things didn't exist, what is it about you that would make people know you were a committed follower of Christ?

Keep
in mind that in saying "God forgive us" for these kinds of things, I am
praying mostly for myself, having been in a position to contribute to
the mess by designing Christian t-shirts and other knick-knacks for
several years. The horror, for me, would be that anyone could truly
say, "You can always tell a Christian because they have little bible
verses on their knick-knacks".

Yes, I do think we need to ask
God's forgiveness for the extent of the compromises we have made with
the prevailing consumer culture (mostly without even thinking), and we
need to look hard at our relationship to the wider culture, but much of
the responsibility lies with Christian artisans of every stripe to dig
deeper, reach higher and not settle for mediocrity by merely putting a
Christian spin on a material culture. This might mean having to work a
lot harder, it might mean walking away from a job opportunity. It might
mean lots of things.

Catholic artisans in particular have a rich and ancient tradition of excellence to build on… we should ask ourselves, where is today's Pieta? Chartres Cathedral? Mass in C minor? Crucifixion of St. Peter? If we don't create the masterpieces of our age, who will? (…and again, I'm mainly talking to myself, here)

I
don't want to be guilty of making the perfect the enemy of the good,
but from my perspective it looks much more likely in our culture that
the good has been seriously undermined by the "good enough". Am I being
a little hard-nosed about it? Yeah, maybe.

I was once much more
involved in Christian Retail, which meant getting a good look behind
the scenes at how Christian products are developed for the mass market
(a process which, like the making of laws and sausages, one might not
really want to see). Part of this involved attending a massive
Christian products convention in Dallas one year. I have to say, the
reality of the sheer amount of money flying around, the slick
marketing, the celebrity culture, opportunism, etc… I found
disturbing. I heard a reliable report that one Captain of Christian
Industry took some visiting manufacturers (atheist foreigners, which is
not their fault) out to a strip club. Why? Because they would like him,
they would feel like they were buddies, they would be impressed, they
would be easier to work with.

But for every lap dance proffered
at such a gathering , there are a hundred very expensive steak dinners,
rental limos, pricey gift bags and the like. It is (I believe)
fundamentally a culture of materialism, with a Christian gloss. This is
not to say it is this way in every single case, only to say that I
found a disturbing materialist atmosphere prevalent in that Christian
marketplace. Were there good points, as well? Sure, and I could name
some for which I was grateful. But the overall tenor of the thing
was… creepy.

I tried to imagine Jesus walking the aisles of the
cavernous convention floor, and decided pretty quickly that had he been
there in person, he would have slipped out quietly and would likely as
not have been talking to the homeless guy at the roadside who we passed
on the way in. I, myself, couldn't leave without breaking a lot of
commitments. I consider that I "left" that place over the next several
years.

On Speaking Christian-ese

The Aesthetic Elevator
discusses the problem of a ghetto-ized Christianity that cloaks its
message in jargon and nomenclature, and inspires some thoughts.

The job of the Christian in most cases, it seems to me, is to live a counter-cultural life in the midst of
the prevailing culture. That's what "counter-cultural" means. If we
live off to ourselves in some forgotten corner of the world, we may
live any way we like, but we can't really live counter-culturally
without some culture around us to be counter to.

One can't "swim against the current" in a stock pond.

Some – a few – are
called to withdraw somewhat from the surrounding culture, the better to
cultivate holiness, contemplative prayer and study, but most of us are
not. We are called to live a Christian life (which will always be
counter-cultural, if we're doing it right) as a sign and a light to
those who know us. The problem is, like so many missionaries of times
past, the Church in America has long ago "gone native". We are
influenced by the modern materialist, consumer culture far more than we influence it.

We need to admit that.

The
solution isn't as simple as living like a monk among more jaded and
cosmopolitan peers (though one could do worse, for a start). If we are
to communicate with the culture, we do need to understand the culture
and speak the language, to some extent. I think the Protestant
evangelical churches in America got into in deep trouble when they
failed for a long time to notice that they were trying to express
Norman Rockwell sentiments in King James English to a jaded, post-modern
world that wasn't listening.

One thing I learned from all the
time I spent in school is that a great instructor is one who
understands his subject so thoroughly that he can explain it to almost
anyone, using language that they can understand. Those with a
shallower knowledge of their field, or who just don't care enough to
meet people where they are (by re-casting the fundamentals in common
language) may be competent enough to get by, but they will never be
great teachers.

Of course, sometimes, the cure is worse
than the disease. When the Catholic Church tried to make some
adjustments to contemporary Western culture by making Latin optional
and opening up the liturgy a bit, all post-modern hell broke loose. As
a result, the liturgy in many instances wasn't reformed, but deformed
and made alternately insipid, silly or shocking (or shockingly silly,
etc…). Many Catholic priests, religious, musicians, lay teachers and
others fell all over themselves trying to demonstrate how hip and
current they were, which ironically had the effect of making them
appear desperate and pathetically out of touch, like a middle-aged
chaperone trying to crunk with the kids at the prom.

They might
have done well to remember (if based only on their own experience of
life) that one of the Cardinal Sins of human relationships (whether
wooing a lover or easing into a friendship) is trying too hard.

So
there is a fine line we have to walk. Speaking as an artist who has
(formerly) designed my share of consumer junk for the "Christian
Market", doing the same things the world does and sticking a Bible
verse at the bottom isn't going to cut it. Christian music that is
indistinguishable from pop music (only not quite as interesting and
with tweaked lyrics) isn't the answer.

We need to speak to the culture in precisely the places where the culture fails (which entails not just knowledge of the culture, but understanding of the culture… seeing its strengths and weaknesses). A dull culture needs the bracing blast of real beauty (like the spray
of an ocean wave), not more dullness with an ICTHUS stamped on it. God
forgive his people for peddling such rot in the name of His Son.

A shallow culture longs for depth.
In a consumer culture, people need us to demonstrate the beauty of
living simply. In a frantic and media distracted culture, the world
needs us to model the peace of Christ. An ambitious culture needs
to see what it's like to live in joyful humility. A world of weakened, shallow and
broken relationships needs us to be walking examples of love and
concern for everyone we meet.

All this means making ourselves
vulnerable, and allowing ourselves – setting ourselves up – to be
inconvenienced. It also means not being afraid to be thought a
little… odd (call it eccentric if it makes you feel better). There is
in this kind of life no guarantee of success in an earthly sense. Don't
hold your breath waiting for respect and approval from the broader
culture. As our Lord made clear to those first disciples whom he called
away from their nets, He has bigger fish for us to fry.

(visit Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine)

Recurring dreams

SDG here. In my previous post I noted that my new review of Coraline begins with comments about something I’ve often told my children to reassure them after a bad dream. One thing I’ve said, again and again, is that the dream is all gone now and they don’t have to worry about getting back into it again — they won’t, I promise.

To this, someone commented below: “That’s a promise you can’t keep.”

Now, I’m convinced that, in fact, I’m right that they cannot and will not get back into the same dream again, for reasons I’ll explain. I would never, ever say something like that to my child unless I were convinced it was the truth. (Strictly speaking, though, it’s true that I can’t “keep” that promise, and I’m not sure the word “promise” is technically used correctly here. Properly speaking, a promise is ordinarily a commitment about future behavior; I’m not sure you can “promise” that something is true, though the word does get used that way.)

Semantics aside, I’m convinced that fears (or hopes) about getting back into a particular dream after waking up from it are either entirely misplaced, or at least almost entirely so. In fact, I’m pretty skeptical about the whole notion of recurring dreams. Either it doesn’t happen at all — whatever we may think we have experienced — or at least is much less common than people think. And I’m very skeptical that the process of waking up from a dream and then going back to sleep could ever produce a continuation of the same narrative.

Now, obviously general themes and motifs recur over time: flying, floating and fantasy dreams; anxiety dreams (being naked in a public place, missing or being unprepared for class, unable to find documents, clothing, children, parents, etc.); physiological dreams (needing to find a bathroom, standing in the cold, etc.); etc. We may also dream more than once of meeting someone who has died, etc.

In any greater specificity than that, though, I’m skeptical about the perception of recurring dreams. My belief is this. When people think they’ve had a specific dream before — not just general themes, but the same narrative — that sense of deja vu is mistaken. What really happens is that the dream itself creates a sense of deja vu, either because you really play through the same scenario more than once in a single dream, or else you play through the scenario anticipating what will happen, since of course what will happen is a function of what’s happening in your own head. (In either case the sense of recurrence may carry with it the option of revising the events.)

I used to believe that as a child I had a recurring nightmare about being sucked by rushing wind from my bed and down the stairs to the living room where there was a monster under the coffee table. Looking back, I’m willing to bet that I only had the dream once — but I anticipated the whole dream so clearly that I thought it happened to me again and again.

Even so, as skeptical as I am about recurring dreams in general, I just flat-out don’t believe at all that the process of waking up and going back to sleep can ever produce a continuation of the same narrative. If you’re anxious about something and you have an anxiety dream, you might fall asleep again and have a different anxiety dream, but not more of the same. Likewise, if you wake up from a wonderful flying dream and try to fall back asleep, you will not, alas, wind up flying again. Some other night, maybe.

Many times I’ve said to my children, “Trust me, the dream won’t come back. Let’s see if I’m right. When you wake up in the morning, tell me if the dream comes back.” So far it never has. And, Incidentally, I’ve talked this over with at least one Catholic mental health professional and a number of other people, and I’m convinced I’m onto something. So I’m willing to stake my moral certitude that I’m right for the sake of my child’s reassurance.

Now, what I would never tell a kid is that they won’t have a different nightmare — another dream just as bad as the first one. That’s obviously a live possibility, but strangely at the moment they aren’t worried about that. They’re worried about that dream: that monster, that scary scenario. In their minds, it’s out there waiting for them, like a real place they could find their way back to. I don’t believe it. Once they wake up, it’s gone. So I reassure them, and it works, and so far I’ve never, ever had a kid report that the dream came back.

Now, of course, it’s quite possible that some readers may write in the combox about their experiences with recurring dreams. Of course I can’t rebut what people feel sure has happened to them. But I remain skeptical.

Scary

What do you tell kids when they wake up in the middle of the night with a nightmare? Especially if they prayed not to have one and did anyway?

My new review of Coraline, opening today in theaters, opens (rather unconventionally) with one way I’ve tried to deal with that question.

The question “What is the point of nightmares?” seems to me related to the question “What is the point of scary stories?” Why are many fairy tales scary, and why do we tell them to our children? Why do many people like scary movies?

Jimmy has touched on this question before, in posts on imagination and imaginative play. (Any other posts I should link to here? Let me know.)

My Decent Films essay on horror, the grostesque and the macabre goes more into it, as does my review of The Wizard of Oz. (I’ve previously linked to some other relevant pieces here, notably an essay on Terence Fisher).

A number of creepy films I admire are animated: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Monster House. (Much as I love Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., I wish they had taken the figure of the monster in imagination more seriously and tried to suss out what monster psychology would really be like, the way they did so brilliantly with Toys in Toy Story and Toy Story 2.)

Today, add Coraline to that list.