Pomp and Circumstance
SDG here.
Yesterday I gave a commencement address for my parish school’s eighth-grade graduation.
I don’t remember the commencement address from my own eighth-grade graduation, but I remember my high-school commencement address. It was lame. The speaker got up there and basically admitted that she had no idea what to say, but then luckily she saw Dead Poet’s Society, so she wanted to tell us carpe diem, “Seize the day.” Good thing for that movie.
Anyway, I tried to come up with something I thought might be meaningful and relevant to students of that age, based on my experiences teaching CCD to seventh and eighth graders. I have no idea what they thought of it or whether they’ll remember it any better than I remember mine (darn, that would have been a good lead-in), but for what it’s worth, here’s what I said.
Class of 2008:
I’d like to tell you about a dream.
In this dream, you find yourself in a room with two adults. One is early 20s, a recent college graduate, living on his own (or her own), an apartment, a car. Maybe more or less where you might see yourself in ten years. Maybe your parents hope so too.
The other is older, a manager or director. It’s a job interview. And the older person is saying something to the younger one like, “This is a very responsible position. You need to be able to work on your own, without a lot of direction.”
And then a strange thing happens. The job applicant turns to you and says uncertainly, “How well do I work on my own?”
And you think, “Why ask me? I’m graduating 8th grade, going into high school. I’m not applying for the job.”
Or suppose the interviewer says, “This position requires excellent oral and written communication skills, or a good head for numbers,” or whatever it is. And then he turns to you and asks, “How well do you do in those subjects?” And again you wonder what’s going on.
Maybe you’ve played simulation computer games like Sim City or Theme Park where the lives of the characters depend on decisions you make. What if you were playing a game like that and you found out the decisions you were making were actually affecting real people, real families with children, even?
You might think, I’m not ready for that kind of responsibility. And yet the fact is that the decisions you make right now, that you will make tomorrow and next month and next year, really do have that kind of influence. Job interviews in the real world really do depend on your decisions. That twentysomething’s fate really is in your hands right now.
Some of you have probably figured out who it is. It’s you, ten years from now.
Aesthetic Escalator
Hey, Tim Jones, here. The following is a post I just put up at my blog, but I thought Jimmy’s readers might find of interest;
I’m going to hurriedly try to respond to some recent art posts over at
The Aesthetic Elevator, even though I can’t give them the time and
thought they deserve, right now.
First, on the art of Guy Kemper
(pictured); Here’s the long and short, for me; this represents
precisely the problem with a lot of contemporary Catholic liturgical
art, and more broadly with non-representational art… the question is
this; where couldn’t this art function just as well as it does
here (the Catholic Memorial at Ground Zero)? It would be as much at
home in the entryway to a shopping mall, or a high school, or in one of
our new, featureless contemporary church buildings. It is art devoid of
communication. It’s called "Rise". It could be called anything.
It does do one thing admirably well; it breaks up the enervating
monotony of rectangles that make up the space. It beats looking out on
the parking lot. Let’s be honest, modern architecture doesn’t make use
of repeated rectangles because the rectangle is a shape the meaning of
which we just never get tired of exploring. Rectangles are cheap and
plentiful, and curves cost money. Look at the granite slab tub at the
left. A baptismal font, or a water feature with coi fish? Generic
acoustic ceiling tiles (how daring!) and floor tiles just like I have
in my bathroom. Look, I know the architect is dealing with a limited
budget, as well as building codes, so a lot of this is simply
fore-ordained and out of his/her control. Our culture just makes dull
buildings, that’s all. In this context, the artwork is a
welcome relief from the assembly-line blankness of the space. It is
aesthetically pleasing (competently composed and harmonious) and gives
the eye something to do for a few seconds. In that sense, it performs a
function. That’s setting the bar awfully low, but there you go. Kemper
doesn’t need me to like his art… he is successful and there are
plenty of people who love this sort of thing. It functions as a
placeholder for the idea of a piece of art, and it offends (could
offend) no one.
This is the kind of art that I hope the Vatican’s Council for
Catholic Culture studiously avoids in it’s search for new talent, which
TAE notes here.
Moving on…
TAE has some thoughts
on the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue having some thoughts about the
art of some college student, who further has some novel thoughts
regarding the proper use of rosaries and other devotional items…
"Whoa, lad! That crucifix doesn’t go there!" (think Robert Mapplethorpe).
TAE makes one good point; nine times out of ten, pounding the table
about stuff like this only draws attention to it. In that sense, I
would rather that "Shoutin’ Bill" would just let things be. His heart
is in the right place, but I look forward to seeing him on the news
probably about as much as thoughtful evangelicals look forward to
seeing Jerry Falwell.
That said, how anyone could mistake the art for anything but plain,
bigoted hate speech is beyond me. The paintings are calculated to
disgust and offend, and yet TAE manages only;
"I can’t help but think he could have approached his canvases in a more deft manner."
Deft manner? Does anyone really hold out the possibility that the
artist has some genuine, thoughtful critique of the Catholic Church,
but (poor boy) chose an unfortunate way to express it? Is anyone naive
enough to suppose that the artist seethes with loathing for Catholics,
but generally thinks highly of other Christians? Do you figure that he
quite approves of Pentecostals, for instance? Yeah, and rosaries might
fly out my butt.
Let’s imagine a college art exhibit critical of gay marriage that
made it’s point by pornographically lampooning Matthew Shepard and
Harvey Milk. How many hours would it be be open before someone was
fired? Yet, this art is no different. Some adolescent wanted attention,
and his fawning professors (with the help of the Catholic League) have
obliged.
Finally, in his post on Donahue, TAE says;
Referring back to Donahue’s criticisms, perhaps he believes his own
denomination to be Divine and infallible as an institution. I’ve known
of Catholics with this attitude, although I don’t sense it’s a
prevailing conviction. If I may be so bold, this would in fact be a
naive belief, and I don’t understand how anyone could presently think
so highly of the Catholic Church in light of the recent scandals that —
unfortunately — plagued this enduring institution. No part of the Body
of Christ can say with a straight face that they or their particular
congregation has not made certain gross missteps along the way…"
This
will require another post to address, but in brief, it (unsurprisingly)
reflects what seems to be an incomplete and overly simplistic view of
what the Catholic Church believes on the subject(s)… very similar to
what I thought Catholics believed… before I became one!
A good year for family films?
SDG here.
The last couple of years haven’t produced a lot of good family films.
Take last year. The best bets from 2007 were Ratatouille, In the Shadow of the Moon and Mr. Bean’s Holiday. After that it went downhill pretty quick.
Walden Media released a couple of okay films, Bridge to Terabithia and The Water Horse. National Treasure: Book of Secrets was diverting, and lots of people liked Enchanted, although Mrs. Decent Films’ minority report on that one has gotten a lot of positive feedback).
Then what? A string of utterly forgettable fare: Shrek the Third, Happily N’Ever Ever, Bee Movie, etc.
2006 wasn’t much better. The year’s best films, Akeelah and the Bee and Lassie, hardly made a ripple. Cars was the closest thing to a disappointment from Pixar since, like, A Bug’s Life. A few others were worth catching once: Monster House, Over the Hedge, Flushed Away and even Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (mostly for Scrat’s brilliant slapstick). After that, though, forget it.
2008, though, looks like it could be shaping up to be a better year for family films than either of the last two years, at least for quality.
It started with The Spiderwick Chronicles, a strong family thriller with goblins attacking a troubled family, which dealt with a number of daunting themes — divorce, parental abandonment, death — in surprisingly effective ways. (I’ll be reviewing it soon for the DVD release.)
Then Blue Sky Studios produced their best film to date, the delightful and gratifyingly pro-life Horton Hears a Who.
This weekend, DreamWorks Animation releases the charming, entertaining Kung Fu Panda. I seem to be in the critical mainstream in enjoying the film, though I may be among a comparative minority who, not having been bowled over by the Shrek films (1 2 3), thinks this may be DreamWorks Animation’s best CGI cartoon to date (beating out Over the Hedge, Shark Tale and Madagascar as well as the Shrek flicks).
(Note: This is not to say Kung Fu Panda is DreamWorks Animation’s best animated film — only that it is possibly (IMO) their best computer-animated film. The Prince of Egypt remains their masterpiece, and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas is the best animated swashbuckler of all time.)
The year’s most anticipated release, of course, is Pixar’s WALL*E, coming out later this month. I’ve seen advance footage from this one, and, well, let’s just say my anticipation is through the roof. If it meets my expectations, this film could power 2008 to the best family-film year since, like, 2004 and 2005 combined.
Prince Caspian, not a great film, is still a good ride. And Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is Indy’s most family-friendly outing since, like, 1981 (this being the first Indy film since the original without some sort of bedroom scene).
What else? A little off the beaten path, Son of Rambow is a flawed but endearing film that might be okay for families with older kids (the story is about two young British schoolboys in the 1980s who set out to create a homemade sequel to First Blood).
And the year’s not over.
Looking further ahead, I’m getting no vibes on 20th Century’s Space Chimps, but I’m more intrigued by Fly Me to the Moon, a Belgian English-language cartoon about houseflies stowing aboard the Apollo 11. (Neil Armstrong voices himself?! He couldn’t be bothered to participate in In the Shadow of the Moon, but he turns out for this?)
Then there’s City of Ember, a Walden Media adaptation from the director of Monster House — and the first Walden film to set off my spider-sense in a good way since, like, Holes. (I liked Because of Winn-Dixie, but I didn’t get the same vibe from it… and I’ve been ambivalent about the Narnia films.) One of Walden’s problems in recent years has always been not having the right creative team. Could this break the pattern?
What else? Could The Clone Wars possibly be worth catching? The PG-rated Brandon Fraser Journey to the Center of the Earth could be fun (I missed an early screening due to a conflict). Disney tries another home-grown CGI cartoon, yawn (Bolt). For Harry fans, December will bring The Half-Blood Prince.
Of course, not all the news has been good. Speed Racer anyone? We saw another tepid VeggieTales movie (The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything). And, yikes, DreamWorks is releasing a Madagascar sequel.
On the other hand, there are no fantasy films this year selling atheism to children, and that’s a good thing.
One way to stack up the year against other recent years is to compare this year’s films with recent counterparts.
Horton Hears a Who easily beats Blue Sky’s most recent efforts, Ice Age 2 and Robots. Kung Fu Panda stands taller than DreamWorks’ previous Shrek the Third and Over the Hedge.
Spiderwick beats out Bridge to Terabithia (or Monster House, whichever you prefer). And I probably liked Prince Caspian better than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
I’m looking forward to comparing City of Ember to The Golden Compass. And how will WALL*E stack up to Ratatouille and Cars? I have a hunch it may compare favorably indeed.
GET MY KUNG FU PANDA REVIEW. EDIT: Link fixed!
Is Laura RoslinHillary Clinton Being Advised By Cylons?
New CDF Document! New CDF Document!
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is not normally tasked with adding provisions to canon law, but under the direction of the pope, it can do whatever he wants it to.
And it has.
A new CDF document provides a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication for those who attempt to ordain women and for those women who receive such attempted ordinations.
TEXT:
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith General Decree
On the delict of attempted sacred ordination of a woman
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in virtue of the special faculty granted to it by the Supreme Authority of the Church (cf. Can. 30, Code of Canon Law), in order to safeguard the nature and validity of the sacrament of Holy Orders, decreed, in the Ordinary Session of December 19, 2007:
In accordance with what is disposed by Can. 1378 of the Code of Canon Law, he who shall have attempted to confer holy orders on a woman, as well as the woman who may have attempted to receive Holy Orders, incurs in a latae sententiae excommunication, reserved to the Apostolic See.
If he who shall have attempted to confer Holy Orders on a woman or if the woman who shall have attempted to received Holy Orders is a faithful bound to the Code of Canons of the Oriental Churches, he is to be punished with the major excommunication, whose remission remains reserved to the Apostolic See, in accordance with can. 1443 of the same Code (cf. can. 1423, Code of Canons of the Oriental Churches).
The present decree enters in force immediately after its publication in L’Osservatore Romano.
William Cardinal Levada
Prefect
Angelo Amato, s.d.b.
Titular Archbishop of Sila
Secretary
First, HERE’S CANON 1378 IN THE CIC.
And HERE’S CANON 1443 OF THE CCEO.
Now, SOME COMMENTARY BY ED PETERS.
Finally, a few thoughts of my own:
It’s interesting, as Ed points out, that the Holy See has gone in the direction of creating a new latae sententiae penalty rather than continuing the trend of abolishing them.
On the part of bishops there may be something of a preference for latae sententiae penalties in that they do not require the bishop to himself take the action of imposing a canonical penalty on one of his subjects–an action that is bound to be portrayed in terms of the harsh disciplinarian stereotype in the popular press. It is much easier for a bishop to say "So-and-so has excommunicated himself/herself by these actions" than "I hereby excommunicate so-and-so for these actions."
I think that in this case, though, there may be an additional and perhaps more fundamental reason for the penalty (at least in the Latin rite) being a latae sententiae one: These ordinations frequently occur in secret.
That’s how they got started, after all: If the claims of the original group of female ordinands are to be believed, they found a Catholic bishop somewhere who was willing to perform the initial ordinations. That man’s identity has not been revealed.
And subsequent to that event, some of these women have simulated ordination in secret or at least without their identities initially being known to their bishops.
The use of a latae sententiae penalty in this case sends a signal that simply keeping the identities of the parties a secret will not keep them from suffering excommunication. You can’t tell yourself, if you are a bishop or a prospective ordinand, "I’m free of canonical penalties as long as nobody knows I did this so that no penalties can be imposed on me."
Instead, the latae sententiae penalty in this case says, "The Church takes this crime so seriously that it provides for excommunication even when the parties, or even the fact, of the crime are unknown."
The same can be said of all the other latae sententiae penalties, such as the excommunication provided for abortion.
One might still question whether we should have latae sententiae penalties in the Latin rite, but I think that the reason for this one is more than just a desire to get bishops "off the hook" for having to impose a penalty. It’s a sign of the Church’s particularly strong desire to alert those who attempt these ordinations to the gravity of their actions.
Since the current decree is not retroactive, it will not touch those who have previously attempted these ordinations (including the original bishop, assuming that there was one), but it does send the signal going forward to all who would participate in them.
Of Raiders and Crystal Skulls
Why RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is the greatest action–adventure film in history.
Why INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is worth catching.
Eight years ago, before Decent Films existed, I jotted down a few quick sentences on Raiders as part of a list of 35 or so movies I particularly liked and recommended. Those sentences wound up on the first version of Decent Films, and have remained on the site ever since… until yesterday, when I finally posted a full-length review. I hope to get around to writing up Temple of Doom and Last Crusade sometime soon… I’ll have to see how it goes.
Incidentally, it occurs to me that as an "action–adventure film," Raiders straddles two overlapping but distinct genres: Not all adventure films are action films, and not all action films are adventure films.
For instance, consider Star Wars and Die Hard. Star Wars is a classic adventure story, but I wouldn’t call it an "action film." Likewise, Die Hard is one of the pinnacles of action moviemaking, but I wouldn’t call it "adventure."
Raiders, on the other hand, is clearly both action and adventure. That’s part of the reason that, while all three are four-star classics in my book (though Die Hard in particular certainly isn’t for everyone), Raiders would probably make my personal all-time top 10 list, if I ever drew one up, while Star Wars and Die Hard wouldn’t. (They’d probably make the top 100, though.)
Sacramental Marriage
When is a marriage sacramental?
This is a question that is subject to significant confusion. For a start, some individuals use the word "sacramental" when they mean "valid." In other words, they are under the impression that any marriage that is not sacramental is invalid.
This is not the case. Many people have marriages that are valid in the eyes of God, yet these marriages are not sacramental.
Why?
Because marriage as a sacrament can exist only between two baptized persons. Therefore, if either or both persons are not baptized then their marriage is not a sacrament. That doesn’t mean that it’s invalid. It’s just not a sacrament.
But what about marriages between the baptized? What makes their marriages sacramental? Is it the act of getting married itself that results in the sacrament or, as I’ve heard more than one person suggest recently, is it the act of consummation that makes a marriage between the baptized sacramental?
The answer is found in the Code of Canon Law.
Canon 1055 states:
Can. 1055 §1. The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized.
§2. For this reason, a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament.
This means that as soon as the matrimonial contract comes into existence between two baptized persons, they have a sacramental marriage. The moment of sacramentality does not wait upon consummation or anything else.
We can show this, for example, by reading a few additional canons:
Can. 1061 §1. A valid marriage between the baptized is called ratum tantum [established only] if it has not been consummated; it is called ratum et consummatum [established and consummated] if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh.
So there are two kinds of valid–and thus sacramental–marriages between the baptized: those that are established but unconsummated (ratum tantum) and those that are established and consummated (ratum et consummatum). Hence consummation is not necessary for validity or, between the baptized, for sacramentality.
If that’s the case, what does happen at consummation?
Can. 1141 A marriage that is ratum et consummatum can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death.
Can. 1142 For a just cause, the Roman Pontiff can dissolve a non-consummated marriage between baptized persons or between a baptized party and a non-baptized party at the request of both parties or of one of them, even if the other party is unwilling.
It is consummation that makes valid sacramental marriages indissoluble. Prior to that point, even valid sacramental marriages can be dissolved, as can marriages in which a baptized person is validly but non-sacramentally married to an unbaptized person.
These cases are referred to colloquially as "Petrine privilege" cases, since they involve the action of the Roman Pontiff. (So-called "Pauline privilege" cases involve two unbaptized persons are do not require the intervention of the pope.)
So, to sum up, here are the types of valid marriages that can exist:
- Non-sacramental marriages between unbaptized persons
- Non-sacramental marriages between a baptized person and an unbaptized person
- Sacramental marriages (i.e., between two baptized persons) that are unconsummated
- Sacramental marriages (i.e., between two baptized persons) that are consummated
The last of these categories is intrinsically indissoluble. The first three categories are at least potentially dissoluble.
Hope this clarifies matters.
This Can’t Be Right…
… everyone knows that only Christians burn witches.
The story brings up another interesting element that is often ignored
in looking at better known witch hunts through history… that the
accusers often had a personal beef with the accused. It was not always
a case of hysterical superstition run wild, sometimes it was more
likely just a case of vendetta. Like in the post-war years, if you
wanted to ruin someone, you just started a rumor that they were a
communist sympathizer. No evidence necessary.
Faith. Hope. Cha…
I just know I’ve heard that somewhere before…
