Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

Blunt Commands In The Old Testament

The reader with biblical questions continues:

2. What about God giving commands that seem to our post 9/11
consciousness to be more like those given by Osama Bin Laden: i.e., I
think the prophet Samuel tells Sauls to kill all the women and children
of some town that they are fighting.

The
Church has not yet given guidance as explicit on this question as it
has on the previous one, but it has already recognized that there is a
divine pedagogy in which the children of Israel were led over the
course of time into a fuller and fuller understanding of God’s will.
Thus polygamy was tolerated under the Old Law but is not under the New.
Similarly, divorce was regulated at the time of Moses, strongly
discouraged during the time of the Prophets, and remarriage following
divorce was forbidden under the New Covenant.

In dealing with the commands in the Old Testament that seem
particularly barbarous, the logical approach would involve taking
account of this pedagogy and recognizing that God was gradually leading
his people into a fuller understanding of his will. In earlier times
(when these occurred), he was dealing with a people that had not yet
been fully catechized in his will and who were still heavily influenced
by the warfare practices of the cultures around them (which included
genocide). He was thus dealing with a "blunt instrument" in
moral-cultural terms and this may play a role in the bluntness with
which some of these commands are expressed.

This bluntness undoubtedly plays a role in these commands, but one may see the bluntness playing out in different ways:

1) On one interpretation, God himself may have decided that the
people of Israel were not yet at a stage of moral-religious development
in which they could approach the question in the nuanced manner that we
today can (and must!) approach it. Therefore, he gave them blunt
orders, these being the only kind they could effectively implement.

2) On another interpretation, one might say that God himself gave
more nuanced orders but the consciousness of the prophet or the
biblical author was not sufficiently nuanced to be able to articulate
these orders in a nuanced form. Whatever nuanced motions of grace the
prophet or author may have received, they ended up expressing
themselves in a blunt fashion due to the intellectual condition of
their day.

3) On a third interpretation–which grants the most nuance–one
might say that these accounts are written after the fact and the blunt
commands were not given in the original historical circumstances but
instead were written to symbolically express the unconditional break
with paganism that the children of God must make.

Each of these interpretations has challenges to face. The first one
is hard to square with the absolute goodness of God. If he is
absolutely good, why should he give such blunt commands? Against this
it might be argued that God is the author of life and so it is up to
him when and how one dies. All life is a gift, and if God chooses to
give some people less of it than others and to have them die in
particular ways, that is his choice.

The second interpretation is hard to square with God’s absolute
truthfulness. Since very assertion of sacred Scripture is an assertion
of the Holy Spirit, how could God allow such blunt commands to find
their way into the sacred text? In the case of the historical reporting
of what prophets said, this could be explained. If Samuel issued blunt
commands then the sacred author might accurately report this without
endorsing these commands (at least in an unqualified sense). However,
the same kinds of commands appear in non-historical texts, such as the
books of Moses, where this explanation is not as clearly available.

The third interpretation has the challenge that it is not obvious
(to us) that this is what is going on in the sacred text. However,
despite the fact that the ancients were at a lower level of moral
pedagogy than we are, they were at a remarkably high level of literary
development and thus capable of recognizing the non-literal nature of
many texts that we today tend to take literally (e.g., Genesis 1). This
being the case, the ancient audience reading the biblical text might be
much more able to recognize the symbolic nature of these commands and
that they were not necessarily given in the original historical
circumstances.

Not all ancient readers might have recognized this, but God has
shown that he is willing to write in a way that not all people will
understand.

Further, one might point out that few ancient readers at the time
the texts were written would be in a position to commit wholesale
genocide but all were in a position in which they needed to understand
the decisiveness of the break with paganism that God required.

As indicated, each of these views have challenges to face, though I
suspect that the third interpretation would be the preferred one of the
current pope and most current members of the Magisterium.

Adam, Noah, And Science

A reader offers three questions about the Bible that we will treat in three different posts today. Here we deal with the first one.

He writes:

I have follwed your blog for the past couple of months with interest. Recently, it occurred to me that you might be able to steer me in the right direction on a few questions about the Catholic faith. You should know that I graduated from one of those hyper-orthodox (my term) colleges (Christendom), so I guess I already have a few good theology courses under my belt. Oh yeah, I got a doctorate in philosophy as well. But I don’t know diddly about the Old Testament, and at least a couple of things going on there bug me. They are listed in #1 & 2 below:

1. What if science offers evidence that seems to disprove the story of Noah and/or Adam ?

The Church teaches that the narrative of Gen 1-3 reflects real historical events but also is written in a stylized manner that incorporates symbolic elements. Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity
and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a
succession of six days of divine "work", concluded by the "rest" of the
seventh day.

390
The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a
primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of
man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of
human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first
parents.

The Church does not have a similar contemporary statement on the historicity of the Flood narrative (Gen. 6-9), but it would likely apply the same considerations to it that are applied above to Genesis 1 and 3. In other words: The account should be taken to reflect actual history but to be written in a stylized manner that may incorporates symbolic elements.

With this approach there is considerable latitude of how to understand the accounts. They might contain many historical elements and few symbolic ones or they might be primarily a literary construct built around a core historic nucleus. It is up to the individual interpreter to decide.

In making that determination–to the extent that making a precise determination is necessary–the interpreter would need to draw on all the resources available to him, including the text itself, knowledge of the biblical languages, knowledge of biblical modes of writing (including comparisons to other, non-biblical ancient texts), the understanding of the Church Fathers, subsequent interpreters, and science.

To the extent that science offers evidence that particular elements of the early Genesis narratives were are non-historical, that pushes the interpreter in the direction of viewing more elements of these narratives as symbolic. The Church would hold that some kind of historical nucleus remains, but that is consistent with saying that large amounts of the text are symbolic.

Now, short of the invention of a time machine or at least a form of remote temporal viewing, I know of no evidence that science could offer that would outright proof that particular elements in these narratives are symbolic, but as the amount of scientific evidence offered increases, the more reasonable it is for an interpreter to view particular elements as symbolic.

Hypothetically (and I am not advocating this), an interpreter might conclude that Adam and Eve represent the early human community as a whole. Pius XII strongly discouraged this interpretation in his enecyclical Humani Generis, but did not altogether preclude the possibility that the Magisterium might be open to it in the future, and some members of the Magisterium (such as the German bishops’ conference) have been explicitly open to it in recent years.

Simiarly, one might conclude that the Flood narrative does not deal with a global flood and that Genesis’ language saying that the flood covered the whole of the land is meant more restrictively–e.g., the land with which Scripture is concerned–though there certainly were numerous and at times catastrophic floods in this region and science cannot exclude the idea that one of these serves as the historical nucleus around which the biblical Flood narrative is built.

How Not To Get Published #1

It’s been a while since I did anything in the "About Writing" category in the lefthand margin, but I’m about to do a string of them over the next few days.

Today’s post deals with a really good way not to get published. If you want not to get published, this is definitely a way to accomplish your goal.

Here’s what you do: Start your literary career by writing a book. It can be fiction or non-fiction, but make sure it’s a full-sized book (at least 40,000 words long).

If you do this and you send your literary firstborn off to a normal, professional publisher, I guarantee that you will not get published.

Now what is that?

For the same reason that I shouldn’t begin my musical career by writing a symphony: I don’t know how. I don’t write music, but if I did then a really good way for me not to get my music published would be to start by writing a symphony

On the other hand, if I wanted to get my music published then the thing to do would be to start small, with a simple melody, then try to figure out how to be successful writing longer and longer pieces until I’d worked my way up to symphony-length works.

Same exact dynamic applies to writing and publishing text rather than music. People who want to get published need to start small and build up from there.

Unfortunately, book publishers receive countless manuscripts from people who have never published anything before. These manuscripts go into what is known in the industry as the "slush pile," which is so named because reading these things feels like wading through endless tracks of slush.

Consequently, the job of reading the slush pile is not a highly desirable task in the publishing industry. Therefore, if at all possible it gets ~~inflicted upon~~assigned to assistant editors and even interns. If (and this is a HUGE "if") the slush pile reader finds something promising then he reports it to someone up the chain of command (such as the commissioning editor), who takes a second look at the manuscript to see if its worth pursuing further.

The vast majority of manuscripts in the slush pile are rejected. Sometimes the reader doesn’t even get as far as the manuscript itself before making the decision to reject. There are signals the amateur author can send off with the cover letter (like not having one) that signal that the author simply doesn’t know what he’s doing.

If the reader does get as far as reading the manuscript (and usually he does), he normally discerns–within the first two pages, often the first paragraph, and sometimes even the first sentence–the following things:

This author is an amateur who has never published anything before.
It would require a huge amount of editorial work for the publishing house to get this manuscript up to professional standards.
Our limited resources would be better spent on other manuscripts that require less work.
My boss would never approve this.
I would injure my career here by advancing this manuscript to the next level and thus calling my own judgment into question.

At this point the reader stops reading. He may flip around a little in the manuscript to double-check his judgment, but soon a rejection slip is winging its way toward the author, along with the returned (and mostly unread) copy of the manuscript–IF the author included a self-addressed, adequately-stamped envelope with the original submission. (Otherwise the manuscript goes into the round file.)

The way to avoid the slush pile or at least maximize your chance of getting your manuscript accepted is to start small and hone your skills on shorter published works–articles if you want to write a non-fiction book, short stories if you want to write a novel. Find a periodical that publishes stuff as much as possible like what the book you want to write and publish there. Publish in a sci-fi mag if you want to write sci-fi novels. Publish in a detective mag if you want to write detective novels. Publish in a popular science mag if you want to write popular science books. Publish in an apologetics mag if you want to publish apologetics books.

If the right kind of genre magazine doesn’t exist for the kind of book you want to write, at least start publishing somewhere so that you can start getting a sense of the rules that apply in the publishing industry.

Once you can consistently get your articles or stories published (i.e., you get very few rejection notices any more), you’re ready to try your hand at a book-length work. You also have a track record of prior publications that you can mention (briefly) in your cover letter. Your short pieces may even attract the attention of a commissioning editor who thinks, "Hey, this kid’s pretty good. Wonder if he’s got a book in him? I’ll have to send him a query."

On the other hand, if your goal is not to get published then don’t do any of that. Go for the book first time out.

You’ll thank me.

Seduced By The Dark Side

It has been often commented upon recently that Supreme Court justices who don’t have a firm commitment to originalism tend to slide leftward in their time on the Court.

There have been those who have challenged whether this is really so, but in the case of one justice, it seems undeniable.

Harry S. Blackmun, the author of the majority decision in the infamous case Roe v. Wade, which doomed millions of children to be murdered.

HERE’S HOW THAT HAPPENED.

An interesting thing about this article, for me, was its unintentional comparison to Citizen Kane. I have long regarded Citizen Kane as the classic cinematic portrait of the doomed soul who is so desperate for human love that he will do absolutely anything–no matter how immoral–to obtain it.

In the author’s words:

Roe vs. Wade is the "law of the land" or, as scholar Mark Levin says, the methodical seduction of a chronically insecure man [Harry S. Blackmun] by flattery, of a man who desperately wanted to be loved by all those who adore the New York Times.

In Blackmun’s case, he was terminally afraid of being lost in the shadow of his patron, Chief Justice Warren Burger, who got him his position on the Supreme Court.

Blackmun began voting more and more liberal in order to distinguish himself from Warren, lest they be referred to any longer as "the Minnesota twins" (based on the fact that they were from that state, which was home to a sports team of that name).

He felt compelled to prove himself, to prove that he was his own man, and to receive the adulation of others in his own right.

In the end, Blackmun didn’t even attend Warrent’s funeral.

How black is that?

Cindy Sheehan Is At Home

May she find peace there.

In case you have not been following the secular news, Cindy Sheehan is the mother of a gentleman named Casey Sheehan, who enlisted in the Army at the age of 21 in the year 2000 and became a specialist. After the September 11th Attacks, and the ensuing War on Terror, he re-enlisted for a second hitch. Assigned to fight in Iraq, he volunteered to go on a rescue mission in Sadr City in 2004.

On this mission he was killed. God rest his soul and honor his sacrifice.

Subsequent to this, Specialist Sheehan was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

President Bush met personally with Specialist Sheehan’s parents, Pat and Cindy, to honor their son. This was a rare symbolic event, as a president cannot meet with the grieving parents of most soldiers who have died in a war.

According to the Sheehans’ hometown newspaper:

"We haven’t been happy
with the way the war has been handled," Cindy said. "The president has
changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven
false or an objective reached."

The 10 minutes of face time with the president could have
given the family a chance to vent their frustrations or ask Bush some
of the difficult questions they have been asking themselves, such as
whether Casey’s sacrifice would make the world a safer place.

But in the end, the family decided against such talk,
deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act. In
addition, Pat noted that Bush wasn’t stumping for votes or trying to
gain a political edge for the upcoming election.

"We have a lot of respect for the office of the president, and
I have a new respect for him because he was sincere and he didn’t have
to take the time to meet with us," Pat said.

Sincerity was something Cindy had hoped to find in the meeting. Shortly after Casey died,

Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture.

"I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,"
Cindy said after their meeting. "I know he’s sorry and feels some pain
for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith."

"That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together," Cindy said

That was then.

THIS IS NOW.

Since their meeting with Pres. Bush, Mrs. Sheehan became a shrill political activist, camping out in front of the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, giving interviews to various members of the national media, and demanding a second meeting with Pres. Bush so that she may obtain from him the answers to questions she failed to put to him the first time.

Here are some samples of what she has said. These are taken from a speech she gave August 8 to a group of veterans opposed to the Iraq war:

Then we have this lying <expletive>, George Bush, taking a 5-week vacation in a time of war.
. . . but I’m either gonna be in jail or in a tent in Crawford, waiting until that jerk comes out and tells me why my son died.
So what really gets me is these chickenhawks, who sent our kids to die, without ever serving in a war themselves. They don’t know what it’s all about.
So anyway that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush was speaking after the tragedy of the marines in Ohio, he said a couple things that outraged me.
And I know I don’t look like I’m outraged, I’m always so calm and everything, that’s because if I started hitting something, I wouldn’t stop til it was dead.
And I’m gonna tell them, "You get that evil maniac out here, cuz a Gold Star Mother, somebody who’s blood is on his hands, has some questions for him."
And I’m gonna say, "And you tell me, what the noble cause is that my son died for." And if he even starts to say freedom and democracy’ I’m gonna say, <expletive>.
You’re taking away our freedoms. The Iraqi people aren’t freer, they’re much worse off than before you meddled in their country.
You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine
And if you think I won’t say <expletive> to the President, I say move on, cuz I’ll say what’s on my mind.
What can we do to get him out of power? And I’m gonna say the “I” word. Impeach. And we have to have everybody impeached that lied to the American public, and that’s the executive branch, and any people in congress, and we gotta go all the way down and we might have to go all the way down to the person who picks up the dog<expletive> in Washington because
We can’t let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals. Because they need to go to prison for what they’ve done in this world. We can’t have a pardon. They need to pay for what they’ve done.
And I want them to come after me, because unlike what you’ve been doing with the war resistance, I want to put this frickin’ war on trial. And I want to say, "You give me my son, and I’ll pay your taxes."
It’s up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist. As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you. These maniacs have no authority over us. And they might be able to put our bodies in prison, but they can’t put our spirits in prison.

The most charitable interpretation that one can put on this is that Mrs. Sheehan is so enraged with grief that she is no longer rational when it comes to the subject of a meeting with President Bush. One can put other readings on it, but these would involve charging Mrs. Sheehan with some degree of disingenuity and thus would be less charitable.

Regardless of whether one supports or opposes the current war in Iraq, it simply is not rational to propose in all seriousness that you and the president of the United States have the kind of meeting described in this speech.

If Mrs. Sheehan is not proposing this meeting in all seriousness then she is in some measure disingenuous. If she is proposing it in all seriousness then she is not rational.

Proceeding on the assumption that Mrs. Sheehan is a mother so grief-stricken by the death of her son that she has lost rationality in regard to this subject, what is the charitable response?

The answer, of course, depends on who you are–what relationship you have with Mrs. Sheehan. However, common to all responses should be the idea of doing NOTHING to feed Mrs. Sheehan’s rage and grief or to expose her to the human degradation of having her lapse of reason exposed in public.

To the best of one’s ability, one should encourage Mrs. Sheehan to retire to private life, in which she could best come to terms with her loss, find healing, and get on with life, efforts that would be best assisted by professional counselling.

Viewed from this perspective, it was utterly despicable for various anti-war protestors, politicians, and the news media to EXPLOIT her and her situation by egging her on and shoving cameras and microphones into her face. This cynical, exploitative response merely fed Mrs. Sheehan’s frenzy and exposed a grieving mother to further public degradation through the making of irrational demands.

One of Mrs. Sheehan’s children reportedly did appeal to her to come home to California and be with her family. (Most likely, other family members did so as well, but I have only heard one report.) This was the charitable and compassionate response and seeks to protect and preserve as much dignity as possible for Mrs. Sheehan in her grief.

Mrs. Sheehan’s tragedy was further compounded by the disintegration of her marriage (her husband filed for divorce) and her mother suffering a stroke. Following the latter, Mrs. Sheehan did return home, though she promised to return to her protest.

I hope for her own sake that she doesn’t, at least until such time as she has regained the rationality needed to make reasoned arguments for her point of view and correspondingly reasonable requests. I suspect, though, that the psychological pressures of participating in protest activities are such that, given all that has happened to her thus far, she will find the most healing if she remains in private life.

I hope those around her will be able to embrace her and love her and help her heal in the midst of a now multi-faceted human tragedy of enormous proportions.

I encourage everyone to pray for her and for those around her, that they will be able to help her get through this superhumanly difficult time.

Jokes From Fr. "You Decide!"

There is a priest who I often run into at Mass who always preaches homilies that have exactly the same format (I suspect he is using a homily service). I don’t know his name, so I think of him as Fr. "You Decide!"

The reason is that these are the closing words of each and every one of his homilies. He always starts with a joke, then comes something of a discussion of the biblical text, this builds up to a moral question of some kind that has an obvious answer, and having posed the question he says "You decide!" and walks back to his seat.

(NOTE: These are rhetorical questions. It’s obvious that he means one of the possible answers to be the moral one; it’s just a question of whether you make the decision to be moral.)

Fr. "You Decide!"’s jokes aren’t always that funny, but occasionally he comes up with a really good one. I particuarly liked the following two (with which I have taken slight liberties in the telling):

A couple of hunters are out in the woods and they get lost. When they realize that their situation is hopeless, one says to the other: "Look, we’re going to die out here if we don’t get some help. Let’s fire three shots in the air and see if anyone comes to our rescue." (NOTE FROM JIMMY: This is a bit of actual hunter lore. They teach you in hunter education class to fire three shots in the air as an emergency signal.) So they fire three shots in the air and wait for somebody to come. Nobody does. After a while, they fire three more shots. Again, nobody comes. Finally, the first hunter says, "Well, I guess we better try again." To which the second replies, "Okay, but we’re down to our last three arrows."

This Sunday he told the following joke:

A woman immigrates from Eastern Europe, but upon arriving in America, she discovers that she’s having trouble with her eyes. The people she’s saying with take her to an optometrist, who has her look at an eye chart, which reads "C Z R T J Y L S P D X." "Can you read it?" the eye doctor asks. "Read it!?" say the incredulous lady. "She’s my neighbor!"

Not bad for Sunday homily humor!

Jokes From Fr. “You Decide!”

(NOTE: These are rhetorical questions. It’s obvious that he means one of the possible answers to be the moral one; it’s just a question of whether you make the decision to be moral.)

A couple of hunters are out in the woods and they get lost. When they realize that their situation is hopeless, one says to the other: "Look, we’re going to die out here if we don’t get some help. Let’s fire three shots in the air and see if anyone comes to our rescue." (NOTE FROM JIMMY: This is a bit of actual hunter lore. They teach you in hunter education class to fire three shots in the air as an emergency signal.) So they fire three shots in the air and wait for somebody to come. Nobody does. After a while, they fire three more shots. Again, nobody comes. Finally, the first hunter says, "Well, I guess we better try again." To which the second replies, "Okay, but we’re down to our last three arrows."

This Sunday he told the following joke:

A woman immigrates from Eastern Europe, but upon arriving in America, she discovers that she’s having trouble with her eyes. The people she’s saying with take her to an optometrist, who has her look at an eye chart, which reads "C Z R T J Y L S P D X." "Can you read it?" the eye doctor asks. "Read it!?" say the incredulous lady. "She’s my neighbor!"

Not bad for Sunday homily humor!

In The Middle Of A Million!

Guestblogger Karen writes:

My husband Chris and I just got back from the pilgrimage to World
Youth Day–what we were able to do of it anyway.

We decided that Saturday would be our "practice finding a parking
place and getting around" day. After having driven 6.5 hours just to
get there, we drove another few hours figuring out how to get the
closest to Marienfeld in Cologne.

Sure, there were designated parking areas and shuttle buses, but we
quickly found that we couldn’t access them. It turned out that all
neighboring villages were being completely blocked off, allowing for
only the people who lived there to have access to the roads.

Now I haven’t measured exactly yet, but this left us at a perimeter
that was a 2-hour walk away from our destination, Marienfeld. While
we were caught in traffic, we could see that we were near enough,
because pilgrims were being dropped off by buses in the same areas we
were scoping out.

They would walk by and wave to the cars stuck in the traffic with huge
smiles. This made it impossible to be in a bad mood over the traffic.

We decided to park in a village called Quadrath-Ichendorf, and we
walked as briskly as we could to Marienfeld, just to get an idea of
how fast we could get there in case we came back Sunday (which was our
plan). Like I said, this was a 2-hour walk. When we went through the
village Horrem, pilgrims were everywhere–on bikes, marching down the
streets with guitars and drums and flags.

192 Countries

One of the first things that struck us was the high and friendly
spirit. We walked by signs that said, "Welcome, Pilgrims". Other
kid-pilgrims just kept smiling and waving. Flags were everywhere.
Later I learned that 192 nations were represented. I couldn’t believe
the corners of the Earth these people came from for this, but I was so
glad they did.

Some groups walked and sang their native hymns while a few strummed
their guitars, and the sound was fantastic. I don’t mean those crummy
modern Church-Barney-the-dinosaur "I’m okay, you’re okay" crud songs
or anything pop-sounding. They played serious music.

One group I thought must be from Spain, but they turned out to be from
Brooklyn. They were singing an energetic Spanish-sounding song and
that’s the first time of many I felt just overcome with the magnitude
of this event and the spirit.

It was like I was seeing the whole world in one place, and The World
was HAPPY. Koreans, Africans, Indians, Australians, Canadians, you
name it, they were there. Later I came to know that one million
people were expected to pour in each day.

We followed the stream of people, which eventually (1.5 hours later)
led us to Marienfeld. That’s when I realized what an incomprehensible
number 1 million was, at least when measuring people. The aerial
views that I saw later on television just kept panning and panning,
but there was no end to the people.

Chris and I decided that since it took us so long to get there, we
would stay for the prayer vigil with Pope Benedict, starting at 8:30
PM. It got noticeably darker, which made it difficult to get good
Pope Pics. Also we were very far away, so I had to zoom the best I
could with my camera and be content with the pope looking like a
little blurry ant anyway.

We sat on our little spot while other pilgrims laid the foundation for
their tents (most stayed the night in that field) and ate what little
they could fit in their backpacks. I would feel so sorry for some of
them–they were really roughing it, but they seemed to be having a
great time.

We took numerous videos and pictures–flags waving, nuns walking,
priest-leaders standing out on the road yelling into a cell phone and
waving to whoever in the distance got lost from their group. There
was a side stage way off in the distance, where musicians played and
opera singers sang. Speakers were set up everywhere so we could hear
comfortably.

We didn’t know at the time, but they would have the events for each
language translated on several different radio stations. So if we
wanted to hear the prayers in English, we could have tuned to 95.5 FM
or whatever it was. We did okay, though–knowing German and English
set us ahead of most pilgrims.

Finally about a half an hour beforehand, it was announced that the
Holy Father was on his way to Marienfeld. I suspected he’d have been
on the helicopter above, but he actually arrived in the popemobile. I
sensed he was there because of the crowd, and then saw him on one of
the large screens.

The crowd was WILD. There was (I think) an original World Youth Day
musical composition being played, and everyone who had a flag was
waving them up high. Thousands of flags everywhere. You don’t see
something this powerful anywhere, not even at the Olympics. Although
they waved different flags, they were waving as one people–Catholics.

The flags were more of a "Greetings from…", not a pride point.
Seeing something like this gave us a feeling of being transported into
some ideal world. You just can’t imagine it from watching it on TV.

Papa Benedict blessed all of us, a familiar move, but it’s different
when you’re actually there receiving the blessing. When you get
blessed like that, you feel as if that’s what you’ve wanted all your
life.

Then he went a little ways down the hill where they’d placed a large
bell, and he blessed it and dedicated it to Pope John Paul II, who was
palpably there with us in spirit. I’d even say I felt Peter, the
first pope, there with us! You look at this little dot-pope in front
of you and feel connected to the ages.

Chris and I did cheat a little and try just for a spell, to get
closer. That didn’t help our pictures any, as it became quite dark by
then.

Benedict speaks German very clearly and understandably. Much later I
heard him in English, and his accent is cute as can be. He speaks
what you might call with a stereotypical German accent. "You, zee
youss off zee Verld…" (You, the youth of the world). I wanted to
hear him speak English, maybe because I knew it would be so charming.

One thing of note about Benedict–he smiles constantly. He is as
charmed as you are by him. He is one CUTE pope. I could tell that he
was as overcome as I was. How he still kept it together enough to get
on with things, I don’t know.

Chris and I, thinking that we’d get four hours of sleep and come back
for the Mass on Sunday (at 10:30 AM), decided to head out earlier than
we wanted to, and drive to Heinsberg. We had another 2-hour walk
ahead of us just to get to the car.

About a mile and a half from our car, I, Karen, went completely lame.
I could have walked further if it hadn’t been for my feet, which felt
like knives were stabbing through the heels. Chris had to part with
me at a gas station and go get the car, and pick me up.

Anyway we finally got back to Heinsberg and slept like rocks. My cell
phone woke us up at 5 AM, but Chris and I ached all over.
Unfortunately, we did not make it to the Mass–I particularly was in
real pain and even three Ibuprofen didn’t dull it enough. BUT, we
don’t dwell on this. Not after what we did manage to do!

We watched the Mass on television. With some imagination, we were
"there" again, at the Mass. I had some more "wow" moments watching
it, and I knew that Cologne wasn’t far away anyway.

We packed up and left for home, still feeling somewhat like we only
had one foot on the ground. We still feel like that!