Culture – Page 109

Qualify This!

Michelle here.

If you read carefully through the questions-and-answers by staff apologists on the Catholic Answers Forums, you’ll notice that we use a lot of qualifiers. Especially when dealing with issues of moral culpability, we try very hard not to use absolutes. While it is possible to state definitively whether or not a particular action is grave matter, it is not possible for the apologists to discern any inquirer’s personal culpability because culpability for grave matter depends on knowledge and consent, two things I am not remotely qualified to discern. So we use qualifiers. We use may, could, perhaps, possible, might, etc. It becomes habitual. So habitual that I find it leaks into other forms of writing I do, such as this blog.

In what was supposed to be a "throwaway" post that turned into a major brouhaha over Martin Luther, I wrote:

"If you’re trying to think of the perfect gift for Luther, might I suggest obtaining a partial or plenary indulgence for his soul? Wherever Luther is now, I’m sure he now knows the value of an indulgence."

GET THE POST.

You may be horrified to learn that this innocuous bit of humor has brought me to the attention of the Universal Inquisition. Well, the Sacred Weblog of the Universal Inquisition at any rate, where I am exposed as a neo-Catholic (gasp!). The Inquisitor General, who describes his blog (one hopes with tongue in cheek) as "the weblog for the office of the Inquisitor General, scourge of heretics, archenemy of modernity, and protector of all things traditional" writes:

"Jimmy Akin’s blog has mentioned Luther’s birthday and given us this mildly humorous comment:

‘If you’re trying to think of the perfect gift for Luther, might I suggest obtaining a partial or plenary indulgence for his soul? Wherever Luther is now, I’m sure he now knows the value of an indulgence.’

"Of course, our only quibble is with the ‘wherever’ part. Luther is almost certainly in Hell*, and we have no qualms about saying it, unlike our neo-Catholic fellow bloggers.

"* Note the words ‘almost certainly.’"

GET THE POST.

While I did not intend to write with qualifiers in a humor bit, I note with amusement that it has become a bit of a modus operandi. And, frankly, that’s fine with me. (It’s primarily artistic writing, such as fiction, where qualifiers may be a problem.) In the case now being scrutinized, my qualifier wherever is an acknowledgement that it is not given to us to know where Luther is right now or whether an indulgence may help him, but that we can know that he does now know the value of an indulgence. Even if the indulgence cannot be used for his sake because he is in heaven or hell, God can use the indulgence for the sake of a suffering soul who can benefit. If Luther’s in purgatory, God can use the indulgence for his sake. In any case, the indulgence is of benefit and value to someone.

But, in the spirit of the Universal Inquisition, let’s look at the Inquisitor General’s use of qualification. Apparently, he desperately wants to say flat-out that Luther is in hell and thus separate himself from those Awful Neo-Catholics who refuse to make such a judgment. Despite assertions to the contrary, he does have qualms about saying it flat-out and so he highlights and explains his qualification so that he cannot be accused of casting Luther into hell. I submit to the Universal Inquisition that this isn’t a case of acknowledging that judgment belongs only to God but a case of Cover Your Tracks.

Note: The Wikipedia article on neo-Catholicism was down when I tried to check it. I can’t wait to try again later and find out all about neo-Catholicism.

Update: Link to the Inquisitor General’s post added. Apologies for the oversight.

Blue Meanies?

There’s a new biography of the Beatles–a THOUSAND PAGE BIOGRAPHY–and in it the Fab Four don’t come across as all that "Fab."

Except maybe for Ringo.

According to Time Magazine’s reviewer:

The Fab Four hated the silly, lovable mop-top image they created, and
on that score alone they would probably love Spitz’s book. He marshals
a staggering mass of research in support of the conclusion, broadly
speaking, that Lennon was a drug-addled, attention-hungry rageoholic
who picked fights and cheated on his wife; Paul McCartney was a smarmy,
manipulative charmer; and George Harrison was dour and sour. Before you
lose faith entirely, it turns out Ringo really was just a lovable
goofball.

Well, at least there was one lovable goofball!

Or maybe more than one.

I haven’t read the book–or studied their lives in detail–so I really can’t say.

GET THE STORY.

Growing Up Potter

What’s it like to grow up as Harry Potter?

I don’ t know. And in fact nobody knows since Harry Potter is a fictional character.

But one kid has an unusual insight on the matter–Daniel Radcliffe–the kid who plays Harry Potter in the movies.

Time Magazine has a story about him and the other kids playing in the Potter films.

Reading the article makes for an interesting insight into the world of child actors.

The fact that the Harry Potter movies are so successful has kept the kids locked in an unusual sociological bubble for years, with years yet to go (apparently–unless they re-cast the parts).

Personally, I’m disturbed by some of the things child actors go through. I often see scenes in movies and TV shows where I find myself thinking, "I really hope they got the child actor off the set before they filmed what’s going on in this shot"–or realizing that they clearly DIDN’T.

I couldn’t imagine allowing a child of mine to grow up in the entertainment biz, and especially not becoming a central player in a franchise like Harry Potter. I’d want my kids to have much more normal experiences growing up. Even with precautions taken (like only letting the kids film for four hours a day), I’m afraid that the experience would fundamentally warp them as adults. After all, former child stars don’t have a very successful track record as a whole.

GET THE STORY.

Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt

Over the weekend, I read Anne Rice‘s new book Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. Not being much of a fan of goth-horror, I hadn’t read a novel of hers since having read some of The Witching Hour many moons ago. Since reports of her reversion to Catholicism started filling the press, I’ve been eager to read this new book.

The book is not an easy read. Rice tries to write from the point of view of a seven-year-old who just happens to be God Almighty, so between the seven-year-old’s voice and trying to juggle the different modes of Christ’s knowledge, the book is not a spine-tingling page-turner. I give Rice high points for working hard to be orthodox, but I think she would have had an easier time accomplishing her task if she had not attempted to tell the story in the first-person point of view of Christ himself. Perhaps it would have been simpler to have written from the point of view of James, our Lord’s "brother" and depicted here as a thirteen-year-old, either in the first- or third-person.

Rice draws liberally on apocryphal stories told of Christ’s childhood struggles with his divinity. Mentioned are the apocryphal gospels tales of Christ bringing to life clay birds and resurrecting a child he had accidentally killed through his childish inability to control his divine power. While the incidents in the apocrypha are apocryphal, I appreciated Rice’s attempt to show Christ as fully God and fully human. Fully God in that he had divine power; fully human in that he was a child who may, in his childhood, have had to learn how to control it.

Whatever you make of the theological implications and whether Rice was completely theologically-correct, she asks interesting "What if?" questions while still trying to remain faithful to orthodoxy. I would much rather read an honest fictional imagining of our Lord that leaves open the possibility of an orthodox Christian understanding of him than a clearly anti-Christian screed like Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code.

Rice does make some interesting small choices within her story. She uses the older tradition of Joseph being an older (but not elderly) widower who is James’ father by his first marriage, but incorporates the later tradition of extended relations among the Lord’s "brothers" by making the other "brothers" and "sisters" Jesus’ cousins. As a personal preference, not a matter of doctrine, I prefer the later idea of a virginal Joseph because it makes the Holy Family an earthly, human image of the divine reality of the Trinity, but Rice’s picture is just as possible and within legitimate Catholic opinion.

One of the smaller choices I disliked was the idea that Jesus was taught to call Joseph by his name, rather than to call him "Father." Rice presumably chooses this for theological reasons and for dramatic purpose, and it is within the realm of acceptable opinion. Still, I prefer to believe that Jesus called Joseph Abba. It seems to me to fit better within the Catholic understanding of the sacramental understanding of creation. Human beings, because they are made in the image and likeness of God, can be physical, tangible images of divine reality.

All told, I’m glad I read this book. It’s not perfect by any means, either theologically or as fiction, but it is a solid piece of work that goes far in furthering Rice’s goal to take on the challenge of writing a novel about the Jesus of the Gospels instead of a Jesus of popular agenda. I hope that this book is the start in a series about Christ’s life. I would like to see how Rice’s development of Christ’s story matures.

The Mound. . . . Found!

During his life, H. P. Lovecraft was an impoverished writer who at times made ends meet by "revising" (*cough*ghostwriting*cough*) stories for more literarily-challenged authors.

One of them was Zealia Bishop (nee Reed).

She hired Lovecraft to do a number of stories for her based on minimal premises or plot synopses that she provided for him. Unfortunately, she didn’t pay Lovecraft in a timely manner, and he foreswore working for her.

One of the stories he wrote for her–The Mound–is regarded as one of Lovecraft’s best. In it, as in only two other stories (At The Mountains Of Madness, The Shadow Out Of Time), he envisions an entire non-human civilization. Most remarkably, in The Mound we actually get the narrative of a human character who lives in the eldritch society for some time–rather than just an after-the-fact summary of what the culture was like.

Though much of the tale deals with a hidden, underground civilization, The Mound is set in the town of Binger, Oklahoma. Binger ("Bing-er")–unlike Arkham and other Lovecraft locations–is a real town, just over 60 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, and it is located in the Oklahoma mound country.

The title of the story refers to one of the Indian mounds in Caddo County, Oklahoma. Specifically, it refers to a mound that Zealia Bishop mentioned to Lovecraft in her premise for the story:

There is an Indian mound near here, which is haunted by a headless ghost. Sometimes it is a woman (S. T Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 467).

Pretty thin for a story premise, huh! It’s also one that Lovecraft found really dull–just another ghost story. So he made up a whole non-human civilization and a 25,000-word novella was an explanation for the premise.

In the story, Lovecraft describes the location of "the mound" this way:

[It was] a huge, lone mound or small hill that rose above the plain about a third of a
mile west of the village—a mound which some thought a product of Nature, but
which others believed to be a burial-place or ceremonial dais constructed by
prehistoric tribes. This mound, the villagers said, was constantly haunted by,
two Indian figures which appeared in alternation; an old man who paced back and
forth along the top from dawn till dusk, regardless of the weather and with only
brief intervals of disappearance, and a squaw who took his place at night with a
blue-flamed torch that glimmered quite continuously till morning. When the moon
was bright the squaw’s peculiar figure could be seen fairly plainly, and over
half the villagers agreed that the apparition was headless.

Now, if you look on GPS/topographical maps of the area around Binger, Oklahoma–like the excellent Delorme Oklahoma guide–you’ll see that ther AIN’T NO mound a third of a mile west of Binger. Lovecraft made that detail up.

BUT!

If you call the officials in Binger (as I did) to track down what Bishop may have been talking about, it’s easy enough to figure out the mystery.

It turns out that there is indeed a mound in Caddo County, where Binger is located, that is reputed to be haunted by ghosts. It’s name is . . . (are you ready?) . . . "GHOST MOUND" (Dum! Dum! Dum!).

Ghost Mound is more than a third of a mile west of Binger (as well as a bit north-see map to the left). It’s also not the only death-related mound in the county. There is also "Dead Woman Mound"–so named because a local found the body of a dead woman there an buried her at the site. Dead Woman Mound, though, is located father north from Binger, and as far as I know does not have ghost legends associated with it. The best evidence I have is that Zealia Bishop was referring to Ghost Mound, with perhaps an admixture of information about Dead Woman Mound.

The thing, though, is that these mounds are real. They really exist. And folks have been visiting them since Lovecraft’s time. In fact, of late they’ve been using GPS devices to go there. Here are the coordinates:

GHOST MOUND: Lat.
35.4025, Long.
-98.61306.
DEAD WOMAN MOUND: Lat.
35.47583, Long. -98.50444.

If I’ve read the sattelite maps correctly, this (left) is a picture of Ghost Mound.

I plan to find out for myself, though.

Y’see, I have friends in Oklahoma City, and the next time I go visit them, I plan to stop off on the way and visit Ghost Mound (and Dead Woman Mound).

Hopefully, I won’t get dragged down to the blue-litten realm of K’n-yan!

If I do, DON’T COME AFTER ME! Spare the world and unguessable horror and LEAVE THE MOUND ALONE!

Monologue Of The Messiah

I’m very much looking forward to Anne Rice’s new novel.

Instead of being an interview with a vampire, though, this novel will be a monologue by the Messiah.

In other words: It’s a story told in first-person narration by Jesus Christ.

In the hands of many authors, that kind of story could be an anti-Christian disaster, but Rice is–or has become–a believer. She’s reverted to the Catholic Church, ended her vampire chronicles, and dedicated her future writing to serving God.

Currently she has planned a trilogy of books on the life of Christ, told from his point of view.

That’s a prospect that–as an author–gives me the willies.

It’s the literary equivalent of climing Mount Everest. How on earth do you pull that off? The potential pitfalls associated with such a project are mind boggling! Even if you get the theology right, striking the right tone and style for first person narration by Jesus is nearly unimaginable–especially for something as long as a novel (and certianly for a trilogy!).

That’s one reason I’m interested in reading the first volume, which is about to be released: I want to see how she tackles so daunting a task.

The book is titled Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and will be released November 1.

In the meantime . . .

READ AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ABOUT RICE AND THE BOOK.

PRE-ORDER THE BOOK VIA AMAZON.

or wait for it to be released on AUDIBLE.COM on November 1.

Incidentally, Rice has moved from her native New Orleans to La Jolla (lah HOY-yah), California, which is here in the greater San Diego area. I wonder if I’ll ever bump into her as a result of interaction with the local Catholic community. That’d be cool.

How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV

HERE’S A REALLY INTERESTING ARTICLE ON THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION.

The author argues that broadcast TV is in for a major shakeup in the wake of broadband technology.

It’s certain that the Internet is going to change the way television operates–that’s been obvious for some time–but what isn’t clear is what the resulting TV landscape will look like.

At some point we’re going to be downloading TV programs. There are already experiments inthat direction: There’s suppose to be a scaled-down tie-in for the program 24 that you’ll be able to download onto your cellphone. Apple is talking about a video iPod. But these are just experiments.

What has to happen is for someone to come up with an economically viable model–or set of models–for how to pay for TV content to be produced in the age of downloads.

That’s where the above-linked articles comes in. The author speculates on how the economics of TV will work in the future.

Among his predictions:

Broadcast TV will go back to being a live medium covering things like news and sports as non-live television programs (e.g., sitcoms and dramas) shift to downloadable distribution.
Downloaded TV shows will not have the equivalent of commercials. There will be no interruptions in the show for commercial breaks.
Instead, the advertising will be embedded in the show itself–like the station-identification "bugs" that currently appear in the corner of your TV screen (or, though he doesn’t mention this, through product placement).
(If I read him correctly) Shows will move back toward having a single sponsor instead of a host of different advertisers.
The audience will continue to not pay directly for TV content.

These are interesting ideas, as is the way he fleshes out how it all might work, though I’m dubious about his last prediction. I think that audiences WILL be willing to pay for content. We’re already paying for cable service and for DVDs we buy and for TiVo boxes that cut out the commercials for us.

I suspect that, as the download TV market develops, there will be people who will be willing to pay the producers of the shows in order to get advertising-free versions of the broadcasts, just as is now happening via DVDs. A model may emerge where you can either download the free version of the show, which has embedded advertising, or pay a fee to access an advertising-free version of the show.

I suspect that the latter will at least be experimented with as the market matures.

Now, what role does Battlestar Galactica play in this series of developments? For that you’ll have to

GET THE STORY.

Writing With Style

Here on the blog y’all get to see me writing with at least a measure of style. My editor and I have an understanding, and if I want to plot an "ain’t" or a "y’all" or a "YEE-HAW!" into a sentence, I can and he won’t "correct" me.

I occasionally cut loose with a full-blown fisk (though it requires me to have found a REALLY stupid story to use as a base for the fisk. If the story isn’t stupid enough, the fisk won’t be that funny.)

When I write for most publications, though, I have to write in a very SERIOUS manner.

That doesn’t stop me from appreciating those who write with a lot of style. I just don’t get a chance to put much stylish stuff in print, myself.

There are certain people who I’ve discovered on the Net who write in such an interesting manner that I’ll go out of my way to read their material, just to admire their creative use of language. Even if I don’t agree with what they’re saying, I still admire how they say it.

Peggy Noonan is one. Mickey Kaus is another. LILEKS HAD A REALLY GOOD ONE HERE.

And then there’s Mark Steyn. He’s always a treat in terms of how he uses words. For example, consider the following paragraph in which he describes listening to a National Public Radio story that talked about Muslim terrorists in Russia without identifying them–till the last word of the story–as Muslims:

When the NPR report started, I was driving on the vast open plains of I-91 in Vermont and reckoned, just to make things interesting, I’ll add another five miles to the speed for every minute that goes by without mentioning Islam. But I couldn’t get the needle to go above 130, and the vibrations caused the passenger-side wing-mirror to drop off. And then, right at the end, having conducted a perfect interview that managed to go into great depth about everything except who these guys were and what they were fighting over, the Russian academic dude had to go and spoil it all by saying somethin’ stupid like "republics which are mostly . . . Muslim." He mumbled the last word, but nevertheless the NPR gal leapt in to thank him and move smoothly on to some poll showing that the Dems are going to sweep the 2006 midterms because Bush has the worst numbers since numbers were invented.

Now see! That’s good writing! I’d love to do stuff like that, only people take you SO seriously when you’re an apologist and expect you to be SO prim and proper and "charitable" and literal all the time.

It’s enough to make you stamp your foot sometimes.

ANYWAY, READ THE REST OF STEYN’S PIECE TO SEE WHAT OTHER NIFTY WRITING TRICKS HE PULLS.

Hysterical Criticism, Part 2

My last post was an obvious (I hope) attempt to parody some of the excesses of Higher Criticism and it’s devotees.

Now I would like to tell you how I wound up posting such a piece.

As I was in the final stages of the painting that I featured in the aforementioned post (Copper Pot), I ended up thinking a good bit about just how literally I should render a few things, like the pattern on the china.

It occured to me that this process could be analagous to writing, and I thought how it might apply to the Gospels particularly.

There at least a couple of big mistakes one could make about the painting. One would be to think that it was a complete fabrication, a product solely of the imagination. This might lead to absurdities like finding all kinds of hidden meanings where there are none, like the Higher Critic of my parody piece.

The other extreme would be to assume that it was like a photograph, and that even the smallest details were a verbatim reproduction, an exact copy of concrete reality. This might lead to equal absurdities, like if someone were to ask me where they could buy the particular china pattern on the little dishes.

In this particular painting, I simplified and muted the pattern on the china in order that it not draw undue attention in the overall composition. So, in a sense, I did fudge a bit, but that’s my job. Certain shadows are deepened, certain colors are amplified, edges are blurred or sharpened. If I blur the edge of a pear, I doubt anyone would accuse me of asserting that pears are fuzzy, or would assume that I need new glasses.

The truth is that it is a painting, a work of art representing real things, but crafted in such a way as to emphasize certain aspects of reality while downplaying others. All the items depicted are real and could be identified by anyone who bothered to rummage through all the junk in my studio (I love flea markets).

I find reality endlessly fascinating and full of surprises. I strive to be faithful to reality, but not obsessed with minute, photographic detail.

BIG RED DISCLAIMER – Unlike Jimmy or Michelle, I am not an apologist. I am not a Bible or a literary scholar. I do not claim to know how the Gospels were written, let alone how Plenary Inspiration would work. I am just an artist speculating wildly on how it might have been. If I venture into heresy or nonsense, I am counting on Jimmy and his readers to put me straight.

Based on my experience as an artist, and applying what I know about the creative process to the Gospel writers, I think that I might venture to make a few assertions;

1) The Gospel accounts are faithful representations of real events, but this does not mean that we should expect the same level of detail or attention to exact chronology that we might find in, say, a modern legal document. The writers were concerned primarily that people understand Who Jesus is and what He did, and not with the minutiae of his daily life. We know that Hebrew writers (as well as their audience) were less concerned with the sequence of events than with the substance and meaning of events.

2) The Gospel writers made full use of their human creative faculties (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) to emphasize certain aspects of Jesus’ life and message, while downplaying others. For instance, Jesus’ life as a youth simply doesn’t figure as prominently into the proclamation of the Gospel as His passion and death. The writers wanted to present all that was essential, with little extraneous material. Deciding what to include is the first creative step. Some gospel writers included more, some less, but all are faithful representations of real words and events.

3) Being, in some measure, free in setting down the events of Jesus’ life, the Gospel writers may have used different creative or poetic methods to emphasize certain aspects of His teaching. Placing Him in different settings, or at various times, the writers may have symbolically emphasized the substance of His teaching. We needn’t insist, for instance, that the Sermon on the Mount really happened on a mountain or hill. It may have, but it is not essential. Neither could we call this a "mistake" or an "error" any more than my changing the china pattern in my painting was an error. It was a creative choice that placed the non-essential at the service of the truly essential. Both the hyper-literal and the ultra-liberal interpretations would be wrong. The china dish is real, but the pattern is simplified. The pattern is not the essence of the dish, as it would continue to be a dish even with no pattern at all.

In an age before cameras, if I were asked to make a visual record of some object or person, I like to think that I could take some artistic license without being accused of lying or making a mistake, especially if I enjoyed plenary inspiration. We can trust that God guided the process, and that the creative input of the Gospel writers only served to draw out and clarify the essential truth of the historical events depicted.

JIMMY ADDS: Tim, if the painting thing doesn’t work out, you should try apologetics!

Hysterical Criticism

Whodathunkit? While walking downstairs with the painting at left, I suddenly encountered a wormhole in the space-time continuum (located in one of our kitchen cabinets), and the painting was sucked in before I could stop it! Fortunately, I was able to reach in and find it again, but when I pulled the painting out, the following analysis of the painting came out with it, apparently written by some future historian.

Go figger…

"The first thing we must learn about this artwork is who painted it, and this will give us a deeper understanding of the piece.
It is signed T.Jones in the lower left corner, and has been traditionally accepted as the work of Timothy Jones, an obscure, mid-level painter of the early twenty-first century, who signed his work in the same way.

We now know, of course, that this is very unlikely. There are a number of pieces signed T. Jones in existence, and they differ widely in style and content. This painting does not resemble the large, abstract pieces that are also attributed to T. Jones, so most modern scolars no longer accept that this is an original T. Jones work.
Who, then, painted it? Most modern scholars agree that it was the product of several artists, over a period of time. Perhaps it was based on a sketch by T. Jones, but the painting we now see was revised and developed within the Jonesian community, and reflects their concerns at the time.

We may notice that the handling of paint, the brushstrokes, vary throughout the piece. In some areas the paint is applied thinly, in others it is more thickly textured. Some areas seem more expressive and energetic, while others are more controlled and realistic. Clearly this was executed by more than one artist.

The painting appears to be a straightforward rendering of items that might be found around the artist’s studio, but if we look more deeply, we can see that it is profoundly symbolic. We should not make the mistake of thinking that these are necessarily real objects being depicted. In fact, whether these objects really existed or not is irrelevant. What is important is the deeper meaning of the image.

We see depicted a small copper pot, surrounded by some fruit, two glass bottles and two small china dishes. All rest on a simple white cloth, atop a wooden table or plank.

The vessels at the left of the painting (the copper pot and larger china dish) are full of fruit, overflowing with the "fruit of the spirit" that comes from life in Christ. In contrast, the vessels at right are empty, barren. What separates these two groupings, these two ways of life? We see a clump of grapes, representing the "grapes of wrath" that divide us. The "empty vessels" are separated from the others by issues like anger, resentment and judgemental attitudes.

It helps to know that at this period in history the Church in the U.S. was torn between progressive forces on the one hand, and opressive patriarchal forces on the other, and this painting clearly reflects that struggle. The piece calls us all to understand that we are all the same, standing together on the pure, white cloth of love, resting on the sturdy tabletop of the Primacy of Conscience. The deeper meaning of this painting, then (as with all great art), is – Be Nice.

Standing at the center is the copper pot, old and dented, but filled with fruit. this represents the church as a whole, overcoming the ancient and prejudiced ideas of the past to find the living fruit of justice.
Yeah,.. justice.

Or maybe, freedom.

Whatever.

In any case, we could continue to find deeper meanings to this seemingly simple painting, but space does not allow us to discuss all that we might find. Just remember, the important thing about any work of art is what it means to you."