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Just a quick post to let y’all know the link to my moblog has joined my other site links in the left margin. Enjoy!

Mohave desert

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Barstow

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On thf road

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Some Christians talk about “secular humanism” as if it were a bad thing.

It’s not.

Well, okay, the “secular” part is bad. It’s a euphemism for atheism, which is very bad.

But humanism — a system of thought that is predicated on the existence of human nature, and that accords value to what is specifically human, to human categories, needs, moral affections, culture, and aspirations — is very good.

God created human nature and invested it with its specific attributes. Isofar as we take what rightly belongs to human nature (as opposed to what is disordered due to the Fall) as a touchstone to how we should live and what we should value, we have a touchstone to truth and wisdom.

The real enemy today is not “secular humanism,” but post-humanism — the doctrine that there is no such thing as human nature except what is culturally constructed, and that we can reconstruct human nature and society in whatever way the prevailing winds of political and academic thought deem most appropriate and correct.

Camille Paglia agrees.

In a recent speech, she described herself as a “secular humanist… a lapsed Catholic and an atheist.” Yet because she is a humanist, she had some trenchant things to say about what she calls the “sickness” and “spiritual emptiness” of modern post-human culture (though she doesn’t use that term) — a point of view she acknowledges puts her in the company of Pope Benedict XVI. She also has some provocative and insightful things to say about art, politics, culture, and spirituality — including what’s wrong with modernist architecture in Catholic churches and what was right about Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.

Excerpts:

I am a secular humanist. I am a lapsed Catholic and an atheist. However, I believe, as much as the new pope, that secular humanism is sick, it is spiritually empty. Part of the problem is that the left has tried to elevate politics… over all other aspects of culture…

What I would say to conservatives is that it’s really incorrect for you to laud the canon and demand for its reintroduction without embracing the other part of the canon in Western culture, and that is the visual arts tradition in the Greco-Roman line … where the nude and where the eroticism of the body are very, very important…

But then to the left, I want to say, you have vandalized art in this period of identity politics, another part of the legacy of the 1960s. Politics began to feel that art was merely a servant of its own agenda on campus. That is when the universities went very seriously astray, when the humanities began to become corrupted, and that’s how they marginalized themselves…

Art lasts… It’s a spiritual resource. But no, no, no — over the last 30 years on American campuses, the idea of the best or the greatest was just thrown out as relative, subjective, based on political considerations and so on.

Identity politics has to go. We’ve got to bring back the idea that all of art belongs to all people. And that we don’t want a situation where young women are being encouraged to read only works by women. What is the end result of that? A lot of bad poetry…

A Catholic in the old style, if you are a Mediterranean-style or Latin Catholic, will see imagery of nudity in your church. But it’s a fact that since the 1950s, American Catholic churches have been Protestantized. They’ve been remodeled. These gory statues are considered tasteless and have been removed to the cellar or donated. The new churches all look like airport waiting stations. Even the visual nurturing of young Catholics has been cut off. That’s why there was so much interesting comment about Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” because he was bringing back all the blood and the guts that were part of the old working-class ethnic view of the story of Christ.

GET THE STORY.

This is either the coolest gross job, or the grossest cool job that I know of. This Fin whale washed up on the beach in Florida and scientists performed a "necropsy" (even the term is gross) to determine how the whale died and it’s condition before. I think it would be fascinating work.
I will let the readers check out the details of the CNN.com. story for themselves.
It was determined that the whale was probably struck by a ship.
The whale’s last thoughts are believed to have been "I wonder if it will be friends with me?"

I found it poetically comforting that today, on the very day that Benedict XVI was installed as Pope, our parish went back to the old custom of using precious (or "noble") metals to administer the Body and Blood of our Lord. I thought, "Of course! How fitting."

In our everyday lives we eat and drink out of glass and ceramic containers all the time. Nothing special about that. Receiving the Body and Precious Blood from vessels made of gold or silver reminds us that this is no ordinary meal, no run-of-the-mill family get-together. Aside from the Mass, when do we expect to eat or drink from silver or gold? It is one of those times when the art of the liturgy is so important. It practically shouts, "this is important!". It is also one of those small particulars in which the recent decades of liturgical experimentation have proved such a failure.

A few months ago kneeling was re-introduced at our Life Teen Mass. There are no more crowds of teens around the altar during the consecration. And now we are receiving the Eucharist from vessels of "noble metals".

Thanks be to God, indeed.

From CNN.com comes another balanced piece about how the new Pope had better change to meet the expectations of a bunch of whining babies the more modernist members of his flock. Balanced, as is fairly typical for CNN, means drawing insights from a broad range of liberals. They lament-

Some experts are skeptical that Benedict will embrace modernity, believing he will instead focus more on internal church changes than on reaching out globally. That said, he remains — by definition — the leader of hundreds of millions of Catholics in most every corner of the world.

That’s nice at the end, there, where they grudgingly admit that he is the Pope.

I think (and hope) that those who expect this Pope to put his finger to the wind to test doctrine will be, not just disappointed, but dismayed. Of all the things for a Pope to embrace, mere "modernity" would be the most fatuous. Modern, by definition, means something that is already fading, already passing away, to make room for something even more modern. What is astonishing about modernity is how blindingly fast it becomes quaint and outmoded. Remember beanbag chairs? Polyester suits? Poodle skirts, for cryin’ out loud?

Mankind needs timeless truths, not the latest fads whipped up by doctrinal fashionistas. I can’t wait for the first encyclical.

In the words of G.K. Chesterton –

"My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday."

First Scary Monster disappeared because he was too, well, scary – then Elmo came along, and now the writers of the Sesame Street have apparently staged an intervention with Cookie Monster and have helped him to confront his addiction to sweets. He has now learned that cookies are a "sometimes" food. How did they accomplish this, I wonder? Did they force his eyelids open and make him watch movies of obese children? Wait, no! Cookie has no eyelids on his googly eyes. Did they quietly send him off to rehab, like an aging rocker?
I readily confess that I watched Sesame Street well into my teen years because there was a fair amount of semi-brilliant comedy on the show. Attention: Jim Henson has left the building.
The brilliance of the early Sesame Street was that it did not take itself too seriously. Sure, help the kids learn to count and spell and all, but throw in a lot of broad, goofy, stupid humor, too,  along with some pratt falls and pie fights. Well, I never actually saw a pie fight (those muppets would be hard to clean) but you get the idea. In those days Bert and Ernie were like Laurel and Hardy, or Abbot and Costello. A great number of their skits had no point at all, except a few minutes of idiotic fun. Ernie was a consumate pest, and Bert the ultimate straight man… er, straight muppet. Think Sponge Bob and Squidward.
PBS, though, has had to deal with the same changes as the Big 3 networks: Increasing competition leading to growing irrelevance. Hardly anyone is watching anymore, and the median age of the average Sesame Street viewer has been dropping over the years. It is now almost exclusively a pre-kindergarten show.
So, goodbye, Cookie. We’ll always have the "rectangle" sketch.
GET THE "HEALTHFUL!" STORY.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the way things are made, the way they look. As a kid I was extremely nearsighted for a while before anyone discovered the fact. The result was that: (A) I had no interest in school, and (B) I developed the habit of examining things really closely, because that was the only way I could see anything. I appreciate artists who can paint in a very impressionistic style, but for me the details are the fun part. Hopefully, the other aspects of the composition are strong as well, so the details are part of a well-balanced whole. Detail is a big part of the beauty of any object. I don’t feel that my job as a Catholic artist is to bring beauty into the world, but to bring attention to what is beautiful in the world.
Now, I said all that to say this: If you have not yet discovered the music of Alison Krauss and Union Station, you owe it to yourself. She and her bandmates, particularly Jerry Douglas, display a rare depth and genius, as well as just pure musicianship; the details of a musical expression that is as meticulously crafted as it is heartfelt. Alison Krauss’s vocal cords should be declared a national treasure, and Jerry Douglas – well, he should be bronzed, or something.
Don’t settle for "interesting".  Life is short. Go straight for beauty.