Author: SDG

In The Name Of The Force…

Kenobi_3

More and more, churches are turning to gimmicks to draw worshippers. Since popular culture sometimes seems to have a larger following than Christianity these days, the gods of pop culture are pressed into service to entertain Christians bored with Christ. You may have heard, for example, of a Protestant church that organized a "Harry Potter service." Harry Potter may yet make a comeback when the new book is released on July 16, but, in the meantime, behold the "Star Wars service":

"A long time ago in a church, far, far away, [an Anglican] vicar and his flock sang their final hymn to the theme tune of the Star Wars saga. Well, not that long ago, or far away, really. Last week, in fact, in West Yorkshire, a parish church held a special service to mark the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

"It seems that in an increasingly secular Britain, vicars are turning to the Force to keep church attendance figures high, and to attract that crucial youth market.

"Reverend Paul Walker explained that the service was inspired by the children of the Parish, who explored the ideas in the film in their catechism class, The BBC reports.

"Walker said that the service covered the ideas of good and evil, resisting the temptation of the ‘dark side’, and what it means to have the force of God in your life. ‘We wanted a special service to bring these themes together and celebrate the victory of good over evil,’ he added."

GET THE STORY.

Please note the Reverend Walker’s comment, "We wanted a special service to bring these themes together and celebrate the victory of good over evil." Uh huh. Because the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ fails so miserably at accomplishing that, you know. After all, when a feature-length film was made in the United States last year that depicted the last twelve hours of Christ’s life, did anyone bother to go see it?

On Jordan’s Filthy Banks

Your travel tip for the day: If you go the Holy Land, scratch "Swimming in the Jordan" off of your To-Do List:

"The Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptized, is heavily polluted with sewage and is in danger of drying up after decades of conflict and intense agricultural use, environmentalists said on Friday.

[…]

"’The Jordan River will disappear if nothing is done soon. More than half of it is raw sewage and runoff water from agriculture. What keeps the river flowing today is sewage,’ Munqeth Mehyar, chairman of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), an Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian group, told Reuters."

GET THE STORY.

Glad I didn’t know any of this when I went to the Holy Land on pilgrimage in the Jubilee Year 2000. It would have sucked some of the magic out of being sprinkled with Jordan River water while we renewed our baptismal promises.

Guess Who Is Back?

Ivorywp

… The ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought extinct:

"A group of wildlife scientists believe the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct. They say they have made seven firm sightings of the bird in central Arkansas. The landmark find caps a search that began more than 60 years ago, after biologists said North America’s largest woodpecker had become extinct in the United States.

"The large, showy bird is an American legend — it disappeared when the big bottomland forests of North America were logged, and relentless searches have produced only false alarms. Now, in an intensive year-long search in the Cache River and White River national wildlife refuges involving more than 50 experts and field biologists working together as part of the Big Woods Partnership, an ivory-billed male has been captured on video."

GET THE STORY.

For more information on the ivory-bill woodpecker, see this link.

(Nod to a friend who told me of the story. His link to an article on the story had an Evil registration requirement, so I did some poking around to find a non-registration link.)

Not to be a crab about an otherwise interesting wildlife story, but now that this woodpecker has made a comeback, we can expect it to be placed on an endangered species list and have it’s habitat declared off-limits to human beings. Thanks, Woody!

Tuesday Photo Caption

Well. The image that I chose for today’s caption contest was far more provocative of comments than I certainly expected it to be.

Perhaps if I had directly attacked the image of Bill Clinton superimposed over an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (e.g., "How outrageous!"), rather than satirize the image as I did (e.g., "St. Billary of Hope"), my intent would have been better understood. My intent, to make it clear, was not to hold up the image for approval but to inspire more humorous satire.

I don’t think the posting of the image for purposes of taking jabs at it was blasphemous or sacrilegious, or I certainly would not have posted such an image on Jimmy’s blog. It was edgy, yes. It was an example of the religious overtones of American politics, yes. One could even say that such parody skirts poor taste. But poor taste is not the same thing as blasphemy or sacrilege, which are grave matter.

In any event, the image did offend the sensibilities of the readers here at JimmyAkin.org, something that I did not intend and for which I apologize.

Mea culpa.

Let’s Be Careful Out There…

A timely warning from our new Holy Father to kick off the summer travel season:

"Pope Benedict XVI urged motorists Sunday to take care as they embark on their summer holidays, lamenting the ‘tragic’ loss of life on highways from careless drivers.

"Benedict made the appeal in his noontime blessing to thousands of tourists and faithful gathered under a scorching sun in St. Peter’s Square.

"The pope noted that the end of June marks the start of summer holidays, when many Italians head to the seashore or the mountains — and the death toll from highway accidents increases, particularly on weekends.

"Benedict wished everyone a good ‘well-earned’ rest, but he said he also wanted to make an appeal for ‘prudence’ for those who will be traveling.

GET THE STORY.

I’ve very much admired those "The Cafeteria Is Now Closed" bumper stickers that Jimmy and others have mentioned in the week’s following the Pope’s election. But this story makes me think that I should create one for my car that states "The Pope Told You To Slow Down!"

A Person’s A Person

… no matter how small, in the words of the great philosopher Dr. Seuss.

Pope Benedict XVI’s first book published since his election to the papacy, noted in a previous post by Jimmy, will include a defense of the Church’s commitment to fighting for all life, even the lives of those the greater culture deems "insignificant":

"In his first book published since his election as Pope, Benedict XVI rejects the suggestion that the Church has given up its fight for the right to life of the unborn, instead emphasizing that ‘There is no such thing as "small murders."

"’Respect for every single life is an essential condition for anything worthy of being called social life,’ he wrote, as reported by Reuters news. The book, The Europe of Benedict, in the Crisis of Cultures — only available in Italian — is a compilation of three sermons delivered between 1992 and April 2005 by the Pope while he was still Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"’Why don’t we resign ourselves to the fact that we lost [the abortion] battle and dedicate our energies instead to projects where we can find greater social consensus?’ Pope Benedict XVI asks rhetorically. ‘Recognising the sacred nature of human life and its inviolability without any exceptions is not a small problem or something that can be considered part of the pluralism of opinions in modern society,’ he answers."

GET THE STORY.

Now, what I want to know is when the Pope’s new book will be translated into English.

X Marks The Jewels

If you could wander the halls here at Catholic Answers, you’d be amazed at the tidbits you hear around the proverbial water cooler. Just the other day, a colleague told me about a real-life on-going treasure hunt. It sounded like just the thing for a blog post.

According to my colleague’s story, a retired businessman who loves treasure hunts decided to take one million dollars of his own money and create a nationwide treasure hunt. The money was converted into jewels created in the shape of various creatures, the most valuable of which is a spider valued at nearly a half-million dollars. He then had tokens made and hid the tokens throughout the country. He wrote a fairy tale with clues to the locations of the tokens and had the book published. Treasure hunters who follow the clues and find a token can redeem it for the jewel to which it corresponds. A number of families and even classrooms around the country have joined the hunt. Several tokens have been found and their jewels claimed, but a number are still out there … including the spider jewel.

THE TREASURE HUNT.

READ MORE HERE.

What struck me was how wonderful an idea it was for this gentleman to disperse his million dollars this way. Some may complain that he should have given it to charity, but as worthy as charities are and as much as they should be remembered by those with largesse to share, charities are not the only means by which people can be generous with each other. Sometimes it can be a good deed simply to give others pleasure … not to mention the thrill of discovery and the opportunity to spend time with friends and loved ones in the pursuit of a dream.

Roman Catholic “Romanism”

A recent thread, now closed, on the Catholic Answers Forums caught the eye of Protestant apologist James White. One of the Catholic posters said:

"I have a lot of missionaries who come to ‘save me’ from Romanism."

Puzzled, James White responds on his blog:

“Please note: Roman Catholics can refer to ‘Romanism’ all they want. Scott Hahn has done a tape series called ‘Romanism in Romans,’ for example. No one will blink an eye. But, if I use the term ‘Romanism,’ Dave Armstrong will write a 24 page article about it.”

GET THE POST.

Not to mention that the subtitle of Karl Keating’s first book Catholicism and Fundamentalism is The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians."

So. Does James White have a valid point? Are Catholics guilty of a double standard?

No, not really.

In both the quotation of the person White quotes and in the subtitle to Karl’s book, the word Romanism is used in acknowledgment of the manner in which Catholicism is perceived by anti-Catholics. Indeed, Karl’s subtitle makes this acknowledgment explicit with the scare quotes. The Catholic poster is using the word in the same fashion but without the scare quotes.

In the case of Scott Hahn’s tape set, it can be argued that the word Romanism is used in the exact same fashion: As a play on words that is intended to demonstrate that those anti-Catholic Protestants who think the letter to the Romans is exclusively Protestant in its theology would be surprised by how much "Romanism" the apostle Paul spouts. Given Dr. Hahn’s affection for puns, as demonstrated in his many books, it is unsurprising that he would choose to give his tape set on Romans such a title.

The word Romanism can also be used by Catholics in another way: It can sometimes be used as an inside joke between Catholics who know that it is often used in a derogatory fashion by anti-Catholics. Much as some African Americans have adopted for each other (sometimes even as a term of affection!) a certain word that is highly-offensive when non-African Americans use it to refer to African Americans, so some Catholics occasionally use words such as Romanist and Romanism to affectionately tease each other.

But the fact that some Catholics occasionally use otherwise anti-Catholic words to refer to themselves or to their religion does not give license to non-Catholics to presume that the words are any less offensive or anti-Catholic when non-Catholics use such words to refer to Catholics and/or Catholicism. Just as it is common sense that a white person using the "n-word" for a black person is committing a gravely-insulting racial slur, so it should be a no-brainer that a non-Catholic using the word Romanism as a substitute for the word Catholicism is adopting a religious slur.

Language can be a very tricky thing. A sign of the mature use of language is the recognition that certain words or phrases are sometimes appropriate and sometimes inappropriate and that the duty of a polite person is to learn the distinctions and observe them — however puzzling he may personally find such distinctions to be.