Perspective

Enigma, Alan Turing, and Blade Runner

2012-01-28T20:35:00.000-08:00

- Scott and Winslet

I picked up a movie at the library - Enigma - a 2001 film starring Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, and Jeremy Northam, with a script by Tom Stoppard. It's about the Enigma code-breakers of Bletchley Park during World War II.

In 1943 amid the largest convoy deployment from the US to Britain, cryptanalyst Tom Jericho [Dougray Scott] returns to Bletchley Park to help find the code to the U-Boats' Enigma communications. On finding a cypher containing highly classified information, hidden by a former lover who has gone missing, he attempts to solve the code while working on cracking the German U-Boat code against a background of subterfuge, spies and the Katyn massacre.

The film was co-produced by Mick Jagger, who provided funding for the film, as well as access to his own Enigma machine. It was shot in England, Scotland and the Netherlands. Critical reviews were largely positive, although there was criticism of the largely fictional storyline which does not mention the real codebreaker Alan Turing, nor give due credit to the Polish cryptanalysis foundation on which subsequent British codebreaking was dependent for its successes - Wikipedia

You can read Roger Ebert's three star review of the film here.The trailer ....

The movie seemed just so-so to me, though Kate Winslet was good, and Dougray Scott did his best as a disturbed and out-of-place working-class genius who'd just had a nervous breakdown. I think it was a mistake to leave Alan Turing left out of the story. Scott's character was based on Turing, but apparently the makers of the movie wanted the main character to have a heterosexual romance, so they created a "Turing-like" character instead.

I have a 2009 post about Turing, in which I wrote ...

I saw that Alan Turing was in the news today - UK gov't apologizes to gay codebreaker Alan Turing

Science dope that I am, I only know who Turing is from watching science fiction tv/movies .... stuff about his Turing test, which gives a guideline for assessing whether one is communicating with a machine or a person. Turing proposed his test in an article for Mind in 1950 - Computing Machinery and Intelligence - in which he claimed that an appropriately programmed computer could think. One of the most well known objections to that theory was the Chinese Room, a thought experiment by John Searle.

In the Chinese Room experiment, Searle gives two scenarios - in one, hidden in a room is a computer which has been programmed to accept input Chinese characters and to respond with other Chinese characters that its programming deems appropriate. It can do this well enough to fool the person outside the room, who is inputting the characters and reading the responses, into believing that he's conversing with a person who understands Chinese. This computer would pass the Turing test. Searle then asks us to imagine another scenario in which not a computer but a man sits hidden in the room, receiving the queries in Chinese and, using the programming instructions, then creating appropriate Chinese responses - the man would also pass the Turing test.

Neither the man nor the computer, however, understand Chinese but are only able to simulate understanding due to their programming. Searle argues that without understanding, neither the computer (nor the man) are thinking.

According to what little I've read, many think that the Chinese Room thought experiment doesn't disprove the Turing test. I wish I could explain why not, but to be honest, though I find this stuff interesting it's pretty much all Greek to me. I like better the Voight-Kampff empathy test in Blade Runner for assessing whether or not someone's a machine - remember the tortoise in the desert? :) ....

Stuff seen today

2012-01-27T20:39:00.000-08:00

* From Open Culture, a video about the song, "Here Comes The Sun" ... Dhani Harrison, the son of the late guitarist, returns to the recording studio (presumably at Abbey Road) with George Martin, the Beatles’ legendary producer, and Martin’s son Giles. Together, they play with the mix of “Here Comes the Sun,” and then the wondrous little moment of discovery happens. They stumble upon the long lost guitar solo that never made the final cut ...

* Hah! Take that, dopey complimentarianism! .... Get Over It: Men and Women Are from the Same Planet

* A post by Daniel P. Horan, OFM, at Dating God - Why I Do Not Support the (so-called) March for Life (h/t to Bilgrimage)

* An article on conscience at NCR by Santa Clara University's David DeCosse - Bishops' conscience model makes light of practical reason

* What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology

* Andrew Brown has a post about the women bishops situation in the UK - The Church of England's fudge on female bishops is breathtaking

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

2012-01-26T21:16:00.000-08:00

I can still remember what I first said upon being diagnosed with Stargardt disease that summer after graduating college ... "I won't be able to read books anymore!"

As it turned out, I can still read books, though it's hard - I have to use magnification and even then I have to guess at most of the words. It's a slow and frustrating process, which is why I hardly ever read any actual books anymore. I eventually gave up reading fiction completely because the stories just couldn't flow. But then I began listening to books instead of trying to read them. It took me a while to get used to that, but once I did, the stories resumed flowing.

The downside of listening to audio books, though, is that they're more expensive than print books (saying you can even find the book you want in audio). For instance, you can buy Storm Front by Jim Butcher in paperback for $9.99, but if you want it in audio, it will cost you $39.99 ... ouch!

So I try to find the books I want at the public library. My library doesn't have a lot of audio books, but fortunately one can use a process via computer, link+, that lets one get books that are at nearby libraries if your library doesn't have them. This too can be frustrating as you have to pounce on these books quickly before anyone at their home library puts a hold on them, as they have priority. There are a few link+ audio books I've been lying in wait for ..... Kraken by China Miéville, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, Before I go to Sleep by S. J. Watson, The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen ... someday :)

But meanwhile, I did just capture one link+ audio book I'd been waiting for for a while - Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Hope it turns out to be good!

Holocaust Memorial Day.

2012-01-26T19:18:00.000-08:00

Rowan Williams speaks about Holocaust Memorial Day .....

I'd also like to recommend a movie I posted about last year .... A Tree Fell in the Forest

If you care about the environment ...

2012-01-25T19:03:00.000-08:00

don't vote for a Repiblican.

Here's a bit from a news story I saw yesterday ...

In GOP contest, environmentalists see cause for alarm as candidates show signs of shift

[...] The candidates have called for fewer environmental regulations, questioned whether global warming is a hoax and criticized the agency that implements and enforces clean air and water regulations.

“A cycle ago, there were people who actually believed in solving some of these problems,” said Navin Nayak of the League of Conservation Voters. “Now we’re faced with a slate that doesn’t even believe in basic science.”

The candidates, of course, dispute such a characterization. But their stances have generally grown more conservative. And even when they haven’t, they often offer positions that aren’t in line with conservationists.

—Romney heralded the passage of stricter limits on carbon emissions in 2005 when he was governor of Massachusetts but last year said it was a mistake. He previously agreed with the scientific consensus on global warming and humans’ contribution to it but now says “we don’t know what’s causing climate change.”

—Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich supported tougher environmental regulation early in his congressional career and appeared in a 2008 TV spot with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pleading for action on climate change. Now he’s says appearing with the San Francisco liberal was “the dumbest thing I’ve done in the last couple of years” and is calling for lifting restrictions on offshore drilling and branding the Environmental Protection Agency a “job killer” that must be replaced.

—Texas Rep. Ron Paul said during his 2008 campaign that “human activity probably does play a role” in global warming. Now he calls the science on manmade global warming a “hoax.”

—Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum shows fewer signs of a shift on such issues. He has called for more drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and doubts research that points to a human role in global warming, calling it “junk science.”

An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found about $2.8 million in campaign donations were made by those in the energy and natural resources sector, according to Federal Elections Commission data, with about 84 percent of it going to Republicans.

Meantime, the EPA, which is responsible for policing environmental rules, has been singled out for Republican criticism this campaign season. Paul has called for its outright elimination as part of his plan to drastically curtail the federal government. Romney has said it’s “out of control.” Santorum has railed against the EPA’s limits on mercury from coal-fired power plants. And Gingrich has called for overhauling the EPA, saying it should be converted to an “environmental solutions agency.” .....

Australia at the movies

2012-01-25T14:28:00.000-08:00

Today's Australia Day - I wouldn't have known of not for Dina's post at Jerusalem Hills Daily Photo :) I've never been to Australia and all I know of it comes from movies and books and stuff on tv, but still it's made an impression and I thought I'd mention some of the Australian-related movies I've rented or seen on tv ....

- On the Beach ...
a post-apocalyptic drama film based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the same name. The film features Gregory Peck (USS Sawfish captain Dwight Lionel Towers), Ava Gardner (Moira Davidson), Fred Astaire (scientist Julian—John in the novel—Osborne) and Anthony Perkins (Royal Australian Navy lieutenant Peter Holmes). It was directed by Stanley Kramer, who won the 1960 BAFTA for best director. Ernest Gold won the 1960 Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Score.

- Walkabout ...
is a 1971 film set in Australia, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg (credited as Lucien John) and David Gulpilil. Edward Bond wrote the screenplay, which is loosely based on the novel Walkabout by James Vance Marshall. Walkabout premiered in competition at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.

- The Last Wave ...
a 1977 Australian film directed by Peter Weir. It is about a white Australian lawyer whose seemingly normal life is disrupted after he takes on a murder case for Aborigine defendants. He discovers that he shares a strange and unexplained mystical connection to the small group of local Australian Aborigines accused of the crime.

- Mad Max ...
a 1979 Australian dystopian action film directed by George Miller and revised by Miller and Byron Kennedy over the original script by James McCausland. The film stars Mel Gibson, who was unknown at the time. Its narrative based around the traditional western genre, Mad Max tells a story of breakdown of society, love and revenge.

- Breaker Morant ....
a 1980 Australian film about the court martial of Breaker Morant, directed by Bruce Beresford and starring British actor Edward Woodward as Harry "Breaker" Morant. The all-Australian supporting cast features Bryan Brown, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, and Jack Thompson.

- Gallipoli ...
a 1981 Australian film, directed by Peter Weir and starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee, about several young men from rural Western Australia who enlist in the Australian Army during the First World War. They are sent to Turkey, where they take part in the Gallipoli Campaign.

The Man from Snowy River .....
is a 1982 Australian drama film based on the Banjo Paterson poem The Man from Snowy River.

- The Thorn Birds (TV miniseries). OK, not really a movie, but how can I leave it out? :) ....
a television mini-series broadcast on ABC between 27 and 30 March 1983 ... based on a novel by Colleen McCullough. Set primarily on Drogheda, a fictional sheep station in the Australian outback, the story focuses on three generations of the Cleary Family and spans the years 1920 to 1962.

Rabbit-Proof Fence ...
a 2002 Australian drama film directed by Phillip Noyce based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. It is based on a true story concerning the author's mother, as well as two other mixed-race Aboriginal girls, who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, to return to their Aboriginal families, after having been placed there in 1931.

Stuff I saw today ...

2012-01-23T22:44:00.000-08:00

* Time-lapse seasons at Yosemite National Park ....

* In the UK, bishops have what the US bishops can only dream of (thank God!) - voting seats in the nation's legislature ... yep, we're talking spiritual lordship. There's an interesting post by Andrew Brown on how that seems to work - This welfare bill has united bishops like never before

* Given all the media coverage of the Personal Ordinariates (Anglicans/Episcopalians switching to Catholicism), I was interested to see a post at the Episcopal Cafe that puts all this into perspective ....

[...] Thus far, 100 priests and fewer than 1,400 people in 22 church communities have expressed an interest in the ordinariate. Gather them all in Washington National Cathedral, and the place isn’t half full. Only six of these 22 communities have more than 70 members .....

According to the 2004 U. S. Congregational Life Survey—which I believe is the most recent one available—11.7 percent of Episcopalians were formerly Roman Catholic. The Episcopal Church had slightly fewer than 2,248,000 members in 2004, indicating that not quite 263,000 of its members were former Catholics .... there are currently some 228,000 former Roman Catholics in the Episcopal Church ...

The stories on the ordinariate also report that as many as 100 priests—many of whom may be Episcopalians—have also applied to join the ordinariate. Is this evidence that the Catholic Church is winning priests from the Episcopal tradition? It reads that way, unless one knows, thanks to the Church Pension Group, that 432 living Episcopal priests have been received from the Roman Catholic Church ...

* Saw a photo of Preikestolen ... Preikestolen or Prekestolen, also known by the English translations of Preacher's Pulpit or Pulpit Rock, and by the old local name Hyvlatonnå (“the carpenter-plane’s blade”), is a massive cliff 604 metres (1982 feet) above Lysefjorden, opposite the Kjerag plateau, in Forsand, Ryfylke, Norway. The top of the cliff is approximately 25 by 25 metres (82 by 82 feet) square, almost flat, and is a famous tourist attraction in Norway ...

Jesus says goodbye to his mom

2012-01-22T19:35:00.000-08:00

- my copy of the Spiritual Exercises

It's week 19 in Creighton University's online Spiritual Exercises retreat in everyday life, which deals with Jesus leaving Nazareth to get baptized. Though the NT doesn't discuss Jesus actually leaving his mother and his home to set out on his public life, Ignatius of Loyola mentions it ... After He took leave of His blessed Mother, Christ our Lord went from Nazareth to the River Jordan where St. John the Baptist was.

One thing I liked about the movie Jesus was that it showed a close relationship between Jesus and his mother. In the film, after Joseph dies, Jesus just doesn't know what to do with himself and his mother is the one who encourages him to leave home. He doesn't want to at first, and when he and his mother say goodbye, it's touching and kind of sad. To see this part in the video below, start watching at about 6 minutes, 57 seconds in: Joseph has died and Jesus is in the family's workshop, grieving ....

Data's Day

2012-01-20T20:16:00.000-08:00

When at the library I picked up some Star Trek: the Next Generation DVDs and tonight's episode was Data's Day. Data was my favorite character of that show because of his gentle nature (I know, programmed, but still) and I named my cat Data after him :) ...

In this episode, Data makes a recording of a day's events to send to a scientist, and his day consists of taking part in a wedding, taking care of his cat Spot, using Sherlock Holmesian reasoning (once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth) to discover that a Vulcan ambassador is really a Romulan, and learning how to dance from Dr. Crusher (the actors playing Data and Crusher did their own dancing in the episode) ....

Get down :)

2012-01-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

Dirty dancing: dung beetles get down to walk the line

Contraception saves lives

2012-01-19T15:46:00.000-08:00

This from US Catholic ... Higher rates of abortion and unsafe abortion in the developing world: How should the pro-life movement respond?

Today's news that abortion rates are higher and abortions themselves exponentially more unsafe in countries where the procedure is illegal should provoke reflection in the pro-life movement ... .... Around 47,000 women died due to complications from unsafe abortions in 2008, with more than 8 million experiencing serious complications, according to a Time magazine blog. The 2008 numbers suggested that 86 percent of abortions occurred in the developing world, where abortion is either illegal, unsafe, or both ...

One difference between the developed and developing worlds seems to be access to modern methods of contraception (methods controlled by women) ...

The pro-life movement in the United States, and the U.S. bishops, have largely focused on changing laws governing abortion, as Scott Alessi reported in our January issue. But key to reducing abortions must also be preventing unintended pregnancies, especially giving women the power to decide when to conceive (and when not to). If being pro-life means being pro-women and pro-children already born in addition to being pro-unborn life, then perhaps it is time to focus equally on giving women power to decide when to get pregnant in the first place. Catholic teaching may be opposed to most forms of modern contraception, but in this case, perhaps it is better to choose the lesser of two evils--or at least this evidence seems to point in that direction.

Further reading - Unsafe abortions rise as contraceptive funding is cut (New Scientist) ...

Global abortion rates have stopped falling, ending a period of rapid decline that began in 1995. However, the proportion of abortions that are dangerous continues to rise. Paradoxically, morally conservative US restrictions on foreign aid may have promoted the abortions they sought to restrict ......

Internet censorship

2012-01-18T14:36:00.000-08:00

I never realized how much I rely on Wikipedia until last night when it shut down to protest Internet censorship. It looks like these online protests are bearing fruit .... Web Protests Piracy Bills, and Senators Change Course

For more information ... What Is SOPA Anyway? A Guide to Understanding the Online Piracy Bill

The Monk and the Fish ...

2012-01-17T22:03:00.000-08:00

by Michael Dudok de Wit

In the news

2012-01-17T20:51:00.000-08:00

There's an article on the negotiations between the Vatican and the SSPX at Vatican Insider .... Fellay’s second response. I find it incredible that the Vatican is bending over backwards to get these creepy characters back into communion with the rest of us. As was mentioned in a 2009 Tablet editorial, Not yet back in the fold ......

[...] But not far below the surface of the Lefebvrist movement have lurked some rather more disturbing views, not only its commitment to an ancien-régime style of Counter-Reformation Catholicism, but also to a virulent brand of Catholic anti-Semitism which has a long and disgraceful history, particularly in France (where the movement is strongest).

Bishop Williamson's recent remarks [denying the Holocaust] have to be read in that context. The Lefebvrists reject, for instance, the teaching of the Vatican II decree Nostra Aetate, including its key repudiation of the charge of "deicide" (literally god-killing, because of the supposed Jewish role in the death of Jesus). Lifting the excommunication of someone like Williamson, while he is still publicly propagating his bigoted opinions, sends an appalling signal to the world in general and to Jews in particular. To say of these opinions that they are "totally unacceptable", as the Bishops of England and Wales did in a statement this week, hardly does justice to them. They are evil ....

Occupy the Vatican

2012-01-16T21:55:00.000-08:00

There have been a number of posts by Fordham theology professor Tom Beaudoin at America magazine's blog about the Occupy movement, and while I've seen stuff about the Occupy movement and St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and articles about the Occupy movement and the Trinity Wall Street church in New York, I wondered what would happen if there was ever an Occupy situation at a Catholic church. Today I saw that an attempt to set up a protest camp at the Vatican was stopped by riot police ....

Vatican protesters evicted by police

[...] While the activists outside St Paul's received a mixed reaction from the Church of England, Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said the Holy See had no doubts about removing the demonstrators before they set up home in St Peter's. "Considering the actions undertaken and the language used, these Indignados evidently wanted to use the piazza in an improper way, not in keeping with the spirit of the place and it was therefore considered just and opportune to move them out with the co-operation of the police," he said.

Jeffrey John and discrimination

2012-01-16T19:51:00.000-08:00

Iin the US, the Supreme Court case on discrimination and ministerial exception. In the UK there's been news about Anglican priest and Dean of St Albans, Jeffrey John (I have some posts on him here and here and here), and a possible lawsuit against the Chuch of England under the Equality Act of 2010.

Here's the beginning of a post at Andrew Brown's blog on the subject .....

Jeffrey John is an extremely intelligent man who will never be a bishop in England. That much is clear. So why should he threaten a legal action that he is vanishingly unlikely to win, to force the church not to discriminate against him? The only possible answer seems to be that he wants to expose the fact of this discrimination. But I can't believe in that one, either, if for no other reason that he has quite fiercely guarded his private life for the last 20 years, and any court case would make that more difficult.

Besides, he would still lose. Last year the Church of England published a legal opinion that makes it quite clear that it believes it is legal to discriminate against John, not because he is gay, since he is also celibate, but because he is not in the least bit ashamed of being gay. That is what sticks in the craw of the conservative evangelicals who oppose him. They have moved on from supposing that it is absolutely wrong to be gay. They now believe that it is OK to be gay providing that you are very unhappy about it.

No one any longer pretends that the Church of England is not full of gay clergy, some of whom are bishops. And – while I may be wrong – I don't think that anyone any longer believes that they can be driven out by natural wastage, if no new gay men or lesbians ever enter any theological college.

But the toxic legacy remains of Rowan Williams' bad judgment and worse conduct eight years ago when he first proposed his then friend, John, as a bishop. He got into a battle that he could not afford to lose, but which he was not prepared to fight to win ......

Videos

2012-01-15T18:53:00.000-08:00

Remember the show about a retreat, The Big Silence? Here's the first episode for those interested ...

Here's a video about a retreat on prayer given by NT scholar Felix Just SJ (Catholic Resources) ...

Here's a video from Duke University NT scholar Mark Goodacre (NT Blog) - would Jesus tweet? :) ......

Randall Balmer, Episcopal priest, editor at Christianity Today, and professor of religious history at Columbia University, gives us 2 mins on the separation of church and state ...

A Jesuit in The Mission ...

2012-01-14T21:04:00.000-08:00

Jeremy Irons now plays a pope ....

This week's DVD rental was the first few episodes of the 2011 tv series The Borgias. As Wikipedia notes ....

The series is based on the Borgia family, an Italian dynasty of Spanish origin, and stars Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI with François Arnaud as Cesare, Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia, David Oakes as Juan and Aidan Alexander as Gioffre Borgia, respectively. Derek Jacobi and Colm Feore also star as Cardinals Orsini and della Rovere (the future Pope Julius II.

The series takes place during an interesting period, with rival powerful families and conflicts between Italy and France (see Prince of Foxes). The scary Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola (bonfire of the vanities) lived at the time too and was burned as a heretic by order of the Borgia pope.

Despite this, I don't know if I'll watch the rest of the series. It's just depressing to see the accepted level of corruption that was so pervasive in the church at this time, with Rodrigo Borgia/Pope Alexander VI leading the pack in that corruption .... as a churchman he had mistresses and children (and pretty awful children :), he bribed and threatened his way into the papacy, and he continued his rotten behavior in multitudinous ways while pope. The story of the Borgias is one of power, wealth, and the frailty of human nature ... all it would take to keep me interested in the story would be one person about whom I could care, but I haven't seen such a person yet.

Today at the grocery store ...

2012-01-14T18:58:00.000-08:00

Terminator TV

2012-01-12T20:05:00.000-08:00

I checked out the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles at the library, a 2008 science fiction tv series that continues the story of the Terminator movies, picking up with what's happening to Sarah Connor and her fifteen year old son John just after Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

At the beginning of the television series, a T-888 using the name Cromartie is sent back to the time following Terminator 2: Judgment Day to kill John. Cameron, a Terminator that John sent back from 2027 to protect his earlier self, leaps forward in time with John and Sarah to 2007 jumping over the year in which Sarah would have died. Now wanted fugitives with the fear of pending cancer playing on Sarah's mind, they must also face the reality that other enemies from the future could be after them. - Wikipedia

Yes, the time-travel storyline is complicated if you haven't watched the four movies in the series first. I liked the first movie best though it seems a little dated ....

- Sarah and Kyle make explosives in the first Terminator movie

I liked the second movie ok, the third not so much, and I have a past post on the fourth movie. For those who care, there's a summery of the storyline of the four movies in that post.

- Sam Worthington as a terminator in Terminator Salvation

I've so far only watched the first episode of the tv series, but I don't find it very compelling so far. If you're interested in seeing what it's like, episodes of the tv series can be watched online at TheWB.com

It's ok to discriminate ...

2012-01-11T20:38:00.001-08:00

... if you're a church.

The supreme court (with a majority of Catholics on the bench) has voted unanimously that religious institutions don't have to worry about discriminating against the disabled in the workplace .....

Supreme Court: Discrimination laws do not protect certain employees of religious groups

[...] "The interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is undoubtedly important,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court. “But so too is the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith, and carry out their mission.” When those principles are in conflict, Roberts said, “the First Amendment has struck the balance for us.”

The ruling came in the case of Cheryl Perich, a teacher who complained that Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Redford, Mich., violated the Americans With Disabilities Act in 2005 when it fired her after she received a narcolepsy diagnosis .....

I think this sucks :( I know the arguments for "religious liberty" but i find it's so disheartening to see institutions that should have the highest of ethical standards and the greatest wish to help the disadvantaged instead use their power to claim exceptions to hard won civil rights.

For those interested, there's a past article on the issues in the case here - Is Religion Above the Law? by Stanley Fish

Bob's your uncle

2012-01-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my sister sent me a link to a National Geographic photo of Hatfield House ... the photo is here. The photo was so neat I thought I'd look up Hatfield House at wikipedia ....

Hatfield House is a country house set in a large park, the Great Park, on the eastern side of the town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. The present Jacobean house was built in 1611 by Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury and Chief Minister to King James I .... The Queen Elizabeth Oak on the grounds of the estate is said to be the location where Elizabeth was told she was Queen following Mary's death. In November 1558, Elizabeth held her first Council of State in the Great Hall ...

I remembered Robert Cecil from various movies about Queen Elizabeth, like Anonymous ....

But little did I know that the expression, Bob's your uncle, so ubiquitous I've even heard it used on Stargate :), was in reference to another and later Cecil, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury .......

The British phrase 'Bob's your uncle' is thought to have derived from Robert Cecil's appointment of his nephew, Arthur Balfour, as Minister for Ireland.

You can see more of Hatfield House at the website

Jesus' conversion experience?

2012-01-10T16:48:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting post at Thinking Anglicans by Joe Cassidy, Principal, St Chad’s College - Was Jesus faking it?. Some of the comments to the post are pretty interesting too. Here's just the beginning of it ....

Was Jesus faking it?

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’s baptism is almost the start of the whole story. Brief, to the point, Jesus is baptised and he is the (only) one who sees the heavens open; he’s the one who hears the voice, ‘You are my son, the beloved’. Matthew, having done Theology 101, isn’t all that crazy about Jesus being baptised, and he depicts Jesus as virtually going through the motions ‘to fulfil all righteousness’. In Luke, again it is Jesus who hears the words addressed to him — though this time it is after his baptism, while he was praying: a sort of prayer experience. In John, it is the Baptist who attests to Jesus’s baptism.

All those differences aside, I’ve long wondered why Jesus queued up that day to be baptised. If Matthew is correct, how did he feel being the only one not repenting of anything? Or do we take the other accounts at face value? He got baptised: live with it.

Thirty years ago I wrote a brief article suggesting that Jesus could well have felt guilt for social sin, as anachronistic as it was to use that term in that context. But if he is as incarnate as we believe him to be, he would have been the product of a particular culture with all its insights and biases, some of which hurt people (Mark 7.27). He would have had to participate in an unjust socio-economic system - what other option did he have? And, without wishing to psychoanalyse him, he might naturally have felt, as a good Jew, a collective responsibility for the sin of his people. There were reasons to be in that queue .....

Depression survivors

2012-01-10T00:17:00.000-08:00

I have a problem with depression, so I was interested to see this - The fight goes on - in the links at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Here's the beginning of it ....

If you follow me on twitter you already know that I’ve been battling off one of the most severe bouts of depression I’ve ever had. Yesterday it started to pass, and for the first time in weeks I cried with relief instead of with hopelessness. Depression can be crippling, and deadly. I’m lucky that it’s a rare thing for me, and that I have a support system to lean on. I’m lucky that I’ve learned that depression lies to you, and that you should never listen to it, in spite of how persuasive it is at the time.

When cancer sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we laud their bravery. We call them survivors. Because they are.

When depression sufferers fight, recover and go into remission we seldom even know, simply because so many suffer in the dark…ashamed to admit something they see as a personal weakness…afraid that people will worry, and more afraid that they won’t. We find ourselves unable to do anything but cling to the couch and force ourselves to breathe .........

Scottish independence

2012-01-09T19:36:00.000-08:00

In the news ... Renewed Sparring Over Scottish Independence Movement ...

The smoldering issue of Scottish independence has ignited again, this time in a political context that appears to give Scottish nationalists at least an outside chance of gaining popular support for the end of Scotland’s constitutional ties with Britain in a referendum among Scottish voters within the next two or three years. The political alignment in Scotland in the wake of the outright victory in last year’s election by the Scottish National Party, a group that has campaigned for independence since the 1930s, has created an unmatched opportunity to press the case for an end to the union ....

Though some of my ancestors came from Scotland via Ireland, I'm not all that knowledgeable about Scotland. Thanks to medieval history classes, I can tell you about William Wallace and Mary Queen of Scots, but not much else (unless we count Highlander :), so I looked the subject up, and this is what I understand of it ...

Though there are Scottish members of the UK parliament, Scotland only got its own Scottish Parliament in 1998 as part of the Scotland Act, - the British Queen picks its First Minister, and the parliament can only make decisions about non-reserved matters. But the Scottish National Party, the party that wants Scottish independence, won the 2011 Scottish General Election and so wants to hold a referendum on independence, hoping to become a Commonwealth realm like Canada,. But the UK maintains that the Scottish parliament's referendum for independence wouldn't be binding on the UK under the Scotland Act.

I know there could be reasons for Scotland wishing to remain part of the UK, but I think the decision of whether to be independent or not should be Scotland's alone. I guess we'll see what happens.

The Republicans

2012-01-08T18:32:00.000-08:00

I haven't been paying attention to Republican candidates. I guess this is because I cannot imagine a scenario where I'd vote for a Republican, given a living/breathing candidate who's a Democrat - the basic Republican stance on the economy, education, health care, the environment, energy, entitlements, gay rights, women's rights, the military ... eek!

Having said this, I do have a past post about Mitt Romney ... Mitt's speech on Mormonism ... but I'd not vote for him. I've seen the ocassional post in blogdom about Gingrich or about Santorum, probably because they identify as Catholic ... the posts have been negative and I agree with the posts that these two are not vote-worthy either.

Recently, I saw an interesting post at A Thinking Reed about Ron Paul and his non-intervention foreign policy stance - Foreign policy and the Golden Rule. Here's a video of Paul giving a speech in congress which exemplifies his beliefs on the subject. But though I might find some of Paul's ideas interesting, I'd never vote for him .... he's too much a schizophrenic mix of beliefs, most of which I don't share.

So I'll go on ignoring these guys. Even if by some chance it seems the Democratic candidate will likely lose, I'm not sure I could justify voting for one of the Republicans .... the lesser of evils is still evil ;)

Francis X. Clooney SJ on the Epiphany

2012-01-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

- detail, Adoration of the Magi

Fr. Clooney has a post at America magazine's blog on ecumenism ....

[...] Finally, this Sunday, January 8, we celebrate the feast of Epiphany .... The story of the three wise visitors from the East .... We do not know what they think the meaning of this child is, but we see no effort — by Mary or Joseph, or by the Evangelist — to convert the visitors, or to get them to give up their own religion. They come in peace, following their own religious instincts, weave their way through the intrareligious tensions of the scene, and leave to assimilate what they have learned, in their own way. Whatever else we discuss in the Church this year, let’s honor this feast by recognizing a key fact about the way the world is today, and taking seriously the interreligious dimension of every aspect of being Christian, being Catholic today ...

Absent friends

2012-01-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

Sorry to see that MadPriest's cat has died - A POETIC TRIBUTE TO HENRY THE CAT. It reminded me of Kermit, who died three years ago at age 18. Some of my older photos of her ....

Kermit sitting by my very first computer, the ancient Macintosh Color Classic :) ...

Kermit (below) and her mother, Grendel (above her) ...

With a toy ...

Her green eyes look a little spooky here ...

I miss Kermit ...

Cardinals

2012-01-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

- cardinals, Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Jesuit Thomas Reese has a post at In All Things about the pope choosing some new cardinals. I was interested that one of the choices is a Jesuit and one is NY archbishop Timothy Dolan.

The choice of the Jesuit, Karl Joseph Becker SJ, is a little surprising because Ignatius seemed to be against Jesuits becoming bishops, and cardinals usually must be bishops before becoming cardinals ....

Jesuit priests at the time of their solemn and final profession in the Society of Jesus promise: I will never strive or ambition, not even indirectly, to be chosen or promoted to any prelacy or dignity in or outside the Society; and I will do my best never to consent to my election unless I am forced to do so by obedience to him who can order me under penalty of sin (Constitutions S.J., Part X, N°6 [817]). Yet because of various reasons and in different circumstances—for example, need of a bishop in an area where the Church has still to be developed, recognition of a theologian's outstanting contribution to theological reflection, etc.—several Jesuits have been made bishops or even cardinals. In such cases they remain only nominally Jesuit, as they lose active and passive voice within the Order and are no longer under the obedience of the Superior General. - Wikipedia

But the choice of Timothy Dolan is not surprising - it's depressing. He seems to be liked very much, though as far as I can see, his one claim to worthiness seems to be that he's jovial. The mean-spiritedness with which he's battled gay rights is well-known (Gay Marriage: New York, not North Korea), he's a signatory of the Manhattan Declaration, his dealings with the sex abuse problem have been checkered, and he's no friend to the future possibility of married priests or women's ordination. This from his past interview on 60 Minutes ...

[...] But if you think Dolan plans to push for changes in those doctrines and beliefs, think again: despite the jolly open demeanor, he's about as conservative as they come ........

"I don't wanna see changes in the church when it comes to celibacy or women priests or our clear teaching about the sanctity of human life and the unity of marriage between one man and one woman forever. I'd love to see changes in the church in the very area that you're hinting at over and over again, in the perception of the church as some shrill scold. We need to change that," Dolan said.

Dolan says he wants people to celebrate the beauty, charity and timelessness of the church, and not focus so much on what the church prohibits. "Instead of being hung up on these headline issues, let's get back to where the church is at her best," he told Safer.

"But the headline issues are where people are living their lives. And an awful lot feel that the church is going down the wrong road," Safer said.

"Yeah, I guess, you got two different world views there," Dolan replied.

"And you ain't gonna change," Safer remarked.

"I'm in one world. You're in the other," Dolan replied, laughing. "I'm glad you're visitin'."

In other words, he's a perfect choice for cardinal, from Benedict's point of view ... the college of cardinals elects new popes and thus the present pope can more or less stack the deck of the future in his ideological favor :(

The Debt

2012-01-04T19:19:00.000-08:00

- Rachel views photos of Vogel's victims

This week's movie rental was The Debt (rated R), a 2011 thriller starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and was directed by John Madden. It's a remake of the 2007 Israeli film of the same name by Assaf Bernstein, and tells a story that takes place both in the past (1965) and in the present (1997).

In the present, Rachel (Mirren), her now ex-husband Stefan (Wilkinson), and their friend David (Hinds), are middle-aged Israeli former-agents whose past feat of capturing and killing a Nazi war criminal, Dieter Vogel (The Surgeon of Birkenau), in East Berlin in 1965 has been publicized by a book written by Rachel and Stefan's daughter. When they find out that the truth may soon be revealed to all -- that the Nazi wasn't killed by them but escaped -- David commits suicide, and Rachel sets out to find Vogel.

- David

At first the timelines are interspersed, but the middle of the movie takes place in 1965 .... the meeting of Rachel (Chastain) and David (Worthington) and Stefan (Csokas) in East Berlin for the operation, the pretense of a marriage between "German" couple Rachel and David, Rachel becoming the patient of the now gynocologist Vogel, the Nazi's capture, his escape, and the agents' decision to lie about what had happened.

- the older Rachel

I thought the movie good but also disturbing. The disturbing part wasn't unexpected .... the scenes of the photos of the Nazi's victims contrasting spookily with the photos of his patients on his doctor-office wall, the awful toll of the switching of roles when the agents become the captors and the Nazi their prisoner, the crushing responsibility the agents feel to bring Vogel back alive so he can admit his crimes to the world. I think very few of us can understand the effects on individuals of having been victims (or the relatives of victims) of something like the Holocaust, but the film does try to illustrate this through the characters, especially the character of David, the only surviving member of his family.

The story reminded me of Adolf Eichmann, who'd escaped after the war to Argentina with the help of Catholic Bishop Hudal and his ratline, and who was eventually captured by Israeli agents and put on trial.

I recommend the film - it may be too violent for some and the ending was a little too convenient, but the scenes in Tel Aviv and Berlin were interesting, the acting was good, and the story escaped being a routine thriller with its emphasis on the characters and the question of what's the ethical response to an evil that can barely be understood, much less compensated for. Here's The New York Times review of the film - Heroic Past Erodes in Present. And here's the trailer ..

What would Jesus do ...

2012-01-03T23:47:00.000-08:00

at a wedding?

Reading a paper on poet GM Hopkins by Philip Endean SJ ... How Should Hopkins Critics Use Ignatian Texts? I came to a part where Fr. Endean writes of the transforming immediacy that imaginative contemplation of gospel stories can have (as opposed to the analyzing of those same stories) ....

To illustrate what I mean, let me take an example. A Martzian ‘poem of meditation’ on the marriage feast at Cana would probably turn on some rather conventional Marian piety, or else on how Jesus’s arrival in the world transforms our watery situation, invigorating us with the heady new wine of the Kingdom. Something notably different happened, however, when an experienced retreat giver asked a rather driven and earnest young man to contemplate this scene during a retreat:

(The man in question) had a vivid imagination and had seen tables heaped with food set out beneath a blue sky. The guests were dancing, and it was a scene of great merriment. ‘Did you see Christ?’ I asked. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘Christ was sitting upright on a straight-backed chair, clothed in a white robe, a staff in his hand, a crown of thorns on his head, looking disapproving‘ “

Ignatian prayer aims at fostering an interaction between the gospel and a person’s life-situation — an interaction going beyond general statements, whether profound or platitudinous. Through this experience, and through subsequent reﬂection on it, the young man in question was helped to see that his fundamental operative understanding of God had been sub-Christian. Moreover, he was empowered to change, to grow towards something more authentic ...

Reading about the wedding at Cana and the disapproving Jesus of the above contemplation, I was reminded of the movie Jesus ... there's a scene of the wedding at Cana and the Jesus of the movie doesn't sit in a chair, glowering at the revelers: instead he dances the night away, and it's his disciples who are disapproving :) Start watching the clip below at about 2 minutes in ....

The path ...

2012-01-02T14:21:00.001-08:00

to my backyard, filled with oak and pecan tree leaves - for Our World Tuesday.

Movies and books of 2011

2011-12-30T19:13:00.001-08:00

Some movies and books I've posted about this year (in no special order) .....

movies

Shakespeare in Love

Rebecca

Shutter Island

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The Rite

Secretariat

Tron: Legacy

Agora

Body of Lies

Shadowlands

The Next Three Days

Unstoppable

Spartacus

Enemy at the Gates

Mercury Rising

Brainstorm

Source Code

Season of the Witch

Black Hawk Down

State of Play

Oceans

The Conspirator

Helen of Troy

Thor

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The Bishop's Wife

Books

Karl Rahner and Ignatian Spirituality by Philip Endean SJ

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

The City & the City by China Miéville

The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva

In the Woods by Tana French

Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper by Ben Witherington

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Blackout by Connie Willis

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

Clothes make the man ...

2011-12-30T17:31:00.001-08:00

and woman, to misquote Mark Twain.

Still watching episodes of JAG. It's challenging because I'm an anti-war pacifist who finds the romanticizing of the military creepy at best, but still I'm finding the series interesting and it reminds me of my grandfather, who was career military.

Last night's episode was a fictionalized account of the almost court-martial of a real-life fighter pilot, Martha McSally, who contested the Department of Defense's rule that service women must wear body-covering abayas when off base in Saudi Arabia. She brought a suit against the DOD and the policy was changed in 2002. It's strange - I don't remember any of this from the news then, but now, with the recent furor over burqa banning in some European countries, it seemed worth noting (for more on how I feel about burqas - Andrew Brown and myself on the burqa ban). Anyway, here's a short segment from 60 Minutes on McSally ...

Cardinal George and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

2011-12-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

Saw today a post by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, a professor and past president of the Chicago Theological Seminary and a minister of the United Church of Christ, in which she invited Cardinal George to join her and the Chicago Theological Seminary’s Pride group in the 2012 Chicago Gay Pride parade. The whole thing is worth a read, but here's part of what she wrote ....

Cardinal George, you’re wrong about Chicago Gay Pride

Chicago Gay Pride is a deeply spiritual event, combining a celebration of the diversity of humanity with a zest for life lived truthfully. Chicago Gay Pride is one of the largest such parades in the U.S., and it is listed on the city of Chicago’s official tourism Web site. Many, many Chicagoans are proud of their Pride Parade.

As a Chicagoan who is proud of Chicago Pride, therefore, I was very distressed to hear the Catholic Cardinal of Chicago, Francis George, make statementsto FOX Chicago Sunday, intimating that this wonderful Chicago event could become comparable to demonstrations by the Klu Klux Klan against Catholicism .........

Today I have written a letter to Cardinal George’s office, asking him if he will be my guest and march with the Chicago Theological Seminary’s Pride group in the 2012 Chicago Gay Pride parade.

This is a serious invitation. First, I make it in full confidence that the cardinal would be welcome in the Seminary’s Pride group. The United Church of Christ, to which our school is related, has as it’s motto, “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” We practice what we like to call a “radical welcome” and that includes the cardinal. We have had many fine Catholic students over the years.

Second, I would like to invite the cardinal because I have become an ally of the LGBTQ community and it has been an incredible spiritual and theological journey for me. I would like to share with him a small part of how important this journey can be for Christian leaders as well as parishioners ..........

Cardinal George has now attempted to walk back his hurtful comments, indicating the comparison was only “parade-parade” not “people and people.” It’s a start, but it’s far from enough.

Thus, my invitation stands, because more change is needed in the Catholic church, and truly in all churches, so that the “people and people” comparison is not merely descriptive, but a positive and even spiritually enlightening one.

Join us in Chicago Theological Seminary group at Pride, 2012, Cardinal George. I promise you it will help with your ministry.

Coffee at the cathedral :)

2011-12-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

Though I've been to San Francisco, I've never been to a church there. If I could go now, I'd visit Grace Cathedral. It's not a Catholic church, it's Episcopal, probably the most famous church in the city, and I think the only one with a Peet's kiosk :) I've visited the website often ... they host a lot of music and interesting speakers there like NT Wright, Garry Wills, Marcus Borg, Guy Consolmagno (see Forum videos from Grace Cathedral here). The present Dean of the cathedral is a Brit, a woman, and a pretty impressive person - Jane Alison Shaw

Wikipedia writes of the cathedral ...

The cathedral has become an international pilgrimage center for church-goers and visitors alike, famed for its mosaics by De Rosen, a replica of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, two labyrinths, varied stained glass windows, Keith Haring AIDS Chapel altarpiece, and medieval and contemporary furnishings, as well as its 44 bell carillon, three organs, and choirs.

There's an interesting story about the doors (see above) to the cathedral. This, from Wikipedia .....

The cathedral entrance has an impressive pair of doors, often called the Ghiberti doors. They are a copy of the doors of the Florence Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti, also dubbed Gates of Paradise. It has been said that they had been removed from a Renaissance church in Florence, but it is now known that during World War II the Nazi occupation government had ordered the doors to be removed from the church (to protect them from bombing and maybe to give Hermann Göring a chance to add them to his collection) and that they had been hidden in a disused railway tunnel and that reproductions had been made. The philanthropist Charles D. Field bought these replicas, and they were then shipped to San Francisco and installed on the newly-completed church in time for its official dedication in 1964.

The cathedral also has a neat indoor labyrinth modeled on the one at Chartres ...

Interestingly, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon there in 1965 (see more about this at the cathedral's website here). Here's the first of two videos of MLK at Grace Cathedral ...

Coventry Carol

2011-12-28T16:31:00.000-08:00

The Civentry Carol , about the Massacre of the Innocents, performed by Collegium Vocale Gent, conducted by Peter Dijkstra.

Pot kettle black

2011-12-28T14:59:00.000-08:00

When I read of Christian exhortations against turf war in the Holy Land, I can't help but think of the pot calling the kettle black ..... Rival Clergymen Clash at Bethlehem ...

(BETHLEHEM, West Bank) — The annual cleaning of one of Christianity's holiest churches deteriorated into a brawl between rival clergy Wednesday, as dozens of monks feuding over sacred space at the Church of the Nativity battled each other with brooms until police intervened. The ancient church, built over the traditional site of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, is shared by three Christian denominations — Roman Catholics, Armenians and Greek Orthodox. Wednesday's fight erupted between Greek and Armenian clergy, with both sides accusing each other of encroaching on parts of the church to which they lay claim .....

- the silver star, placed where Jesus is thought to have been born, beneath the altar in the Grotto of the Nativity - Church of the Nativity

Fully Human, Fully Divine

2011-12-27T14:59:00.000-08:00

There's a post at America magazine's blog about what sounds like an interesting book - Fully Human, Fully Divine: An Interactive Christology by Michael Casey, a Trappist monk in Australia. Here's a bit from the post ...

[...] Casey's study alternates chapters between his treatment of segments of Mark's gospel (the baptism; the temptation; Jesus' exorcisms; Jesus as teacher; Jesus the Sower; Nature miracles; Jesus with the Syro-Phoenician woman; the transfiguration; Gethsemane; the cross and the empty tomb) with parallel chapters, drawing on the wisdom and spirituality of the great monastic writers, such as Julian of Norwich, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Cassian, Isaac of Stella, Gregory the Great. As Casey knows: " Outward observance, however holy, cannot take the place of personal encounter with the living God." .....

Casey follows the Greek Fathers' tradition in asserting that God became human so that we might also take on elements of his divinity. As he says in one remarkable throw away line: " Christianity is not a matter of being good but becoming God." Yet, as in Jesus the human and the divine commingled, so for us, too, " we are divinized to the extent that nothing of our humanity is denied, despised or ignored, when nothing of what makes us human is lost or left behind." ...

High Christology ... low Christology ... I'm not sure where I stand, but before I made that online retreat I had thought of Jesus as 99.9% divine - didn't imagine he was ever happy/sad or that he could suffer, much less that he could be surprised or change his mind. My experiences in the retreat blew that version of Jesus away. It's a strange tension trying to keep Jesus vulnerably human and at the same time God and it makes me very uncomfortable, but maybe that's ok.

I remember that when the movie Jesus came out some religious groups criticized it for showing a Jesus that was too human, and it does show a Jesus who tells jokes, dances, gets angry, falls in love, feels sad, but then he also does miracles. Here's a clip from it that begins with Jesus just meeting Peter and helping him catch fish ....

Scruffy

2011-12-27T14:35:00.000-08:00

My neighbor's cat Scruffy napping in the sun ...

Starshine

2011-12-26T22:38:00.000-08:00

This song was playing on the muzak today at Whole Foods and it's been in my head ever since :) ....

Popcorn and a movie

2011-12-25T16:41:00.000-08:00

- Watson and Holmes

Today I went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which stars Robert Downey, Jr. as the Arthur Conan Doyle character of Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as his buddy, Dr. Watson. The basic plot .... Watson gets married and Holmes travels through Europe with the help of his brother (Stephen Fry) and a Gypsy/Roma (Noomi Rapace) and the reluctant Watson to foil (by sacrificing himself ala The Final Problem) an evil plot hatched by Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris).

- the movie's version of Reichenbach Falls where Holmes plunges to his death (or does he? :)

I liked this second of the new Sherlock Holmes series better than the first. I've read most of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories and Downey just didn't seem very Holmes-like to me in the first film, but he's starting to grow on me and of course Jude Law is just always good. I guess once I gave up on the movies being a good representation of the books it was easier to appreciate them, and so I do recommend this one. Roger Ebert liked it too, giving it three and a half out of four stars in his review. Here's a trailer ....

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T13:31:00.001-08:00

Mice In The Hay - Leslie Norris

out of the lamplight
whispering worshipping
the mice in the hay

timid eyes pearl-bright
whispering worshipping
whisking quick and away

they were there that night
whispering worshipping
smaller than snowflakes are

quietly made their way
whispering worshipping
close to the manger

yes they were afraid
whispering worshipping
as the journey was made

from a dark corner
whispering worshipping
scuttling together

But He smiled to see them
whispering worshipping
there in the lamplight

stretched out His hand to them
they saw the baby King
hurried back out of sight
whispering worshipping

John Milbank video

2011-12-23T20:25:00.001-08:00

Here's a video discussion fron the University of Nottingham with John Milbank on Henri de Lubac, a Vatican II era French Jesuit and theologian.

The Hobbit

2011-12-22T20:26:00.000-08:00

I saw this at the Christian Science Monitor - 'The Hobbit' trailer: 5 signs that Peter Jackson is back to his best - about the upcoming movie, The Hobbit. Here's the trailer mentioned ....

I first read the book when I was a teen and liked it very much. I hope I like the movie as much as LOTR, though I don't see how I can without Aragorn being in it :)

Numb3rs

2011-12-22T16:14:00.000-08:00

- blue jay in my yard

From Scientific American, a podcast for the human exceptionalists out there :) .... Pigeons Can Follow Abstract Number Counting Rules

As a NYT story states ...

By now, the intelligence of birds is well known. Alex the African gray parrot had great verbal skills. Scrub jays, which hide caches of seeds and other food, have remarkable memories. And New Caledonian crows make and use tools in ways that would put the average home plumber to shame. Pigeons, it turns out, are no slouches either. It was known that they could count. But all sorts of animals, including bees, can count. Pigeons have now shown that they can learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability which until now had been demonstrated only in primates.

A movie angel

2011-12-20T18:57:00.000-08:00

- Dudley

A Christmas movie I just watched was The Bishop's Wife. It was made in 1947 and starred Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young. It tells the story of a bishop, Henry (Niven), who becomes obsessed with building a new cathedral to the point that he's compromising his ethics, his marriage is suffering, and he's miserable. He prays to God for help and an angel, Dudley (Grant), is sent to assist, but not in the way he expects.

Here's a clip which shows Dudley (the angel in disguise) telling the bishop's daughter a story about David and an angel ....

And here's a bit about the plot from Wikipedia ....

Everyone, except for Henry, is charmed by the newcomer [the angel], even the non-religious Professor Wutheridge (Monty Woolley). Dudley persuades the wealthy parishioners, particularly Mrs. Hamilton (Gladys Cooper), to contribute the needed funds, but not to build the cathedral. He helps Mrs. Hamilton decide to give her money to feed and clothe the needy — much to Henry's chagrin. He also redecorates the Broghams' Christmas tree in two seconds, saves an old church by restoring interest in the boys' choir, and arranges for the typewriter to automatically type Henry's new sermon - which Dudley dictates without Henry's knowledge.

When Dudley spends time cheering up Julia, there is an unexpected development: Dudley finds himself strongly attracted to her. Sensing this, Henry becomes jealous and anxious for his unwelcome guest to finish and depart. Eventually, he stands up to the angel. With his mission completed and knowing that Julia loves her husband, Dudley leaves, promising never to return. All memory of him is erased, and on Christmas Eve at midnight, Henry delivers the sermon that he believes he has written.

- Dudley and Henry

I really liked Dudley - he cared about every person he came across, no matter what their station or attitude or age - as he told the bishop, "Remember, we are interested even in the lowliest sparrow". Here's the sermon, written by the angel, that Henry preached ....

Tonight I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking.

Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child's cry, a blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven't forgotten that night down the centuries. We celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts.

But especially with gifts. You give me a book, I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer and Uncle Henry can do with a new pipe. For we forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled, all that is, except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger. Its his birthday we're celebrating. Don't let us ever forget that.

Let us ask ourselves what He would wish for most. And then, let each put in his share, loving kindness, warm hearts, and a stretched out hand of tolerance. All the shinning gifts that make peace on earth.

I recommend the movie! You can rent it, of course, or you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, as I did.

Happy Hanukkah

2011-12-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

I saw this video at Bilgrimage and thought I'd post it too. It' the 2010 Hanukkah song "Candlelight" by the Maccabeats, an a cappella group from Yeshiva University ......

Make we joy now in this fest

2011-12-19T20:27:00.000-08:00

Sung by The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers ...

Make we joy now in this fest

Make we joy now in this fest
In quo Christus natus est. Eya! [in which Christ is born. Eya!]

A Patre Unigenitus [The only begotten of the Father]
Is through a maiden come to us.
Sing we of him and say 'Welcome!
Veni, Redemptor gencium.' [Come, Redeemer of the peoples]

Make we joy now in this fest
In quo Christus natus est. Eya!

Agnoscat omne seculum [Let every age perceive]
A bright star made three kings to come
Him for to seek with their presents,
Verbum supernum prodiens. [the high Word coming forth]

Make we joy now in this fest
In quo Christus natus est. Eya!

A solis ortus cardine [From the rising of the sun]
So mighty a Lord is none as he,
And to our kind he hath him knit
Adam parens quod polluit. [which our parent, Adam, defiled]

Make we joy now in this fest
In quo Christus natus est. Eya!

Maria ventre concepit, [Mary conceived in her womb,]
The Holy Ghost was aye her with.
Of her in Bethlem born his is,
Consors Paterni luminis. [sharing the light of his Father]

Make we joy now in this fest
In quo Christus natus est. Eya!

O Lux beata Trinitas! [O Light of the Holy Trinity!]
He lay between an ox and ass,
Beside his mother-maiden free:
Gloria tibi Domine! [Glory to thee, O Lord!]

Make we joy now in this fest
In quo Christus natus est. Eya!

— Anonymous, fifteenth century

Edward Fesser on the multiverse

2011-12-18T20:03:00.000-08:00

A while ago I had a post about the multiverse ... Keith Ward and Brian Greene ... and I saw today that Edward Fesser has a post about Greene and the multiverse too ... Greene on Nozick on nothing. It's interesting reading for those like me who wonder about how God and the idea of the best of all possible worlds can be integrated with the idea of an infinite number of universes. Here's a bit from Fesser's post ...

On the Ultimate Multiverse theory, all possible universes exist, including a universe consisting of nothing. To the questions “Why does this universe exist rather than some other?” and “Why does any universe at all exist rather than nothing?”, the Ultimate Multiverse theory responds: “There is no ‘rather than’ about it. This universe and every other possible universe all exist; indeed, this universe and a universe consisting of nothing both exist. So there is no special explanation of our universe required, because it isn’t in the first place only one of many possibilities to have been actualized.” (It should be added that neither Nozick nor Greene actually endorses this theory; they merely float it as a possibility. David Lewis famously did defend a similar view, though.) ...

And for those interested, here again is an interview with Brian Greene about the multiverse ...

Why are atheists so disliked?

2011-12-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

I've seen a few articles in the religious blogosphere about Christopher Hitchen's death, usually about his atheism, sometimes comparing him to Richard Dawkins and finding him a bit less hate-worthy. It made me think about why atheists are so disliked by Christians ..... it's hard not to stumble over the many articles and books reviling them.

Maybe part of the reason is that believers think atheists have no moral center. I can say, though, as a former atheist, that I have pretty much the same ethics now that I had before: I was and I still am anti-war, I did and still do give to charity, I did and still do try to do the right thing, to be compassionate and fair and honest.

Maybe another reason believers dislike atheists is that atheists are seen as critical of belief in God, but while there are fundamentalist atheists who like to argue (just as there are fundamentalist Christians who like to argue), I think most atheists are critical of the same things in religion that many believers are also critical of: the discontinuity between religious ideals and the way religious institutions often operate.

I saw a post today at the NYT's philosophy blog that talks about why atheists are so disliked. Here's just the beginning of the post ....

Good Minus God
By LOUISE M. ANTONY

I was heartened to learn recently that atheists are no longer the most reviled group in the United States: according to the political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell, we’ve been overtaken by the Tea Party. But even as I was high-fiving my fellow apostates (“We’re number two! We’re number two!”), I was wondering anew: why do so many people dislike atheists?

I gather that many people believe that atheism implies nihilism — that rejecting God means rejecting morality. A person who denies God, they reason, must be, if not actively evil, at least indifferent to considerations of right and wrong. After all, doesn’t the dictionary list “wicked” as a synonym for “godless?” And isn’t it true, as Dostoevsky said, that “if God is dead, everything is permitted”?

Well, actually — no, it’s not. (And for the record, Dostoevsky never said it was.) Atheism does not entail that anything goes .......

O Adonai

2011-12-17T18:40:00.000-08:00

O Antiphon for tomorrow

By Healey Willan , Advent Carols & Lessons service (2002), sung by Vancouver's Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Rupert Lang, director.

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

Indiana Jones and the missal translation

2011-12-16T19:47:00.000-08:00

- Indy helps his father drink from the cup of a carpenter, the holy grail

I've been checking old movies out of the library and the latest is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. When I got to the part where the bad guy so disastrouslyy chooses what he believes is the holy grail - a jewel-studded gold chalice, instead of a simple ceramic cup - I was reminded of the cup to chalice change in the new missal and couldn't help thinking Vox Clara had 'chosen poorly' :) but I'm getting ahead of myself. As we all know .....

Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. is asked by the wealthy Walter Donovan to help him find the holy grail ...

through the use of a tablet which describes where the grail lies ....

and a manuscript which describes the knight who guards the grail.

Indy agrees to help so that he can find his father, a medieval scholar and the original investigator, now missing.

With the aid of his dad's grail notebook ...

Indy is able to decipher the clues in a stained glass window in Venice ....

and eventually finds his dad and the location of the grail (actually Al Khazneh in the city of Petra).

There Indy and Walter Donovan vie to choose the true grail from a host of options. Donovan chooses an elaborate gilded chalice, saying that it's truly the cup of the king of kings .....

But, as the knight guarding the grail comments after Donovan is horribly vaporized upon drinking from his chalice, "He has chosen poorly." Indy instead chooses a simple ceramic cup, one that would have belonged to a carpenter ....

and he and his father drink from it, gaining eternal life :)

Photos

2011-12-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

The yellow-billed magpies are getting less scared of me and I got a couple of photos of them today. I didn't realize until I saw the photos that they have blue feathers as well as black and white - I can't actually see them very well with my own eyes. I'm trying to like the magpies - they're special in that central California is the only place in the world that they exist - but I must admit that I think of them as 'the naughty birds' because they descend upon the peanuts like a flock of feathered locusts :)

A test and a video

2011-12-15T18:48:00.000-08:00

At the NYT's philosophy blog there's a link to a morality test that asks you questions and then rates and compares your answers with others. I did it and found the results kind of disturbing: I seem to be rigid (absolutism vs relativism) but in odd ways, like I'm very less likely than others to make moral distinctions between in-group and out-group people. Given this, Thomas Aquinas, who was ok with killing heretics and didn't see an obligation to turn in criminal relatives, would be considered much less rigid than I, who would want to treat heretics and relatives the same :). I wonder how people come to believe what they do about morality?

I saw a video a while ago that mentioned five moral touchstones - care/harm, fairness/reciprocity, in-group loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity - and how these interact with our beliefs. I'm not sure how well the test mentioned above or the categorizing done in the video below really correspond to reality - people actually seem to have the capacity (I think) to be all over the map in morality and valuation - but anyway, here's the video for those who might be interested ...

"Miracles"

2011-12-14T22:33:00.000-08:00

Hallelujah Chorus, the Roches ...

Still watching episodes of JAG and tonight's episode, Miracles, had an Irish Catholic priest, a postulator from the Vatican, as a character ... Fr. Harry O'Rourke (James Patrick Stuart). The episode told of a Marine on trial for trying to kill his wife, who claimed that he instead was able to save her because of a miracle, the intercession of an already beatified Chaplain - the postulator was there investigating whether a miracle had truly occurred. I remember being slightly shocked when I first saw this episode years ago because the priest character was a fan of The Roches and because he smoked ciggies like a fiend - I didn't know many priests back then :)

The priest was put on the stand at the trial and gave some interesting info about how miracles are investigated. The prosecutor was especially critical in his cross examination: his baby daughter had died not long before and he couldn't understand why a miracle would be vouchsafed to save the Marine's wife but not to save his own child (good question!). In the end, the Marine was found guilty, but the priest had decided anyway that the miracle was probably legit. Harm asked him if the Chaplain, then, was going to be made a saint. The priest replied that he should check back with him in about 100 years because that's how long such things take (a fact soon belied by the quicky canonization of Josemaría Escrivá ).

I don't really know where I stand on the subject of miracles. I do want to believe in them, I guess - no Jefferson bible for me - but I don't understand why, if miracles are indeed done, they only happen sometimes and only to some people.

An interesting aside: the actor who played the priest is the son of Chad of Chad and Jeremy ....

7 posts from 5 years past

2011-12-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here are a few of my old posts from 2006 -

1) - Hell and Hans Urs von Balthasar

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

I've been thinking about hell lately. That's what I get for watching the 1998 movie What Dreams May Come. The visual effects are outstanding but I found the storyline disturbing. The basic plot, from Ebert's review ...

... Chris and Annie (Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra) have a Cute Meet when their boats collide on a Swiss lake. They marry. They have two children. They are happy. Then both of the children are killed in an accident. Annie has a breakdown, Chris nurses her through, art works as therapy, they are somehow patching their lives back together--and then Chris is killed. The film follows him into the next world, and creates it with visuals that seem borrowed from his own memories and imagination .... There is a guide in the next world named Albert ..... Heaven, in one sense, means becoming who you want to be. And hell? "Hell is for those who don't know they're dead,'' says Albert .... Many of those in hell are guilty of the greatest sin against God, which is despair: They believe they are beyond hope. After the death of her children and husband, Annie has despaired, killed herself and gone to hell.

I hate the idea that hell may exist, that Jesus mentions it in the Gospels, that being in despair (suicide) can send you there. Most modern theologians and preachers I've read make a case for hell being not God's choice but man's ... that people go to hell of their own volition, following a desire to be apart from God. This explinarion doesn't work for me, though it's preferable to some others ... here's a tidbit from an article cited below by David Watts - ... we can be sure that, even in His righteous hatred, God loves the damned. How is God's love for them shown? In their agony not being even greater. They are not suffering as much as they deserve, according to the saints. And one of the reasons God ended their earthly probation when He did was, no doubt, to stop them from adding sin to sin and hence clocking up more severe punishment. The damned may not thank God for all this, but we can. ... holy mackerel!

A theologian who spent some time thnking about hell was one-time Jesuit, Hans Urs von Balthasar. Let's read some bits from an article in First Things by Avery Cardinal Dulles on Balthasar and Hell ...

As we know from the Gospels, Jesus spoke many times about hell ... He describes the fate of the damned under a great variety of metaphors: everlasting fire, outer darkness, tormenting thirst, a gnawing worm, and weeping and gnashing of teeth ....

Among the Greek Fathers, Irenaeus, Basil, and Cyril of Jerusalem are typical in interpreting passages such as Matthew 22:14 as meaning that the majority will be consigned to hell. St. John Chrysostom, an outstanding doctor of the Eastern tradition, was particularly pessimistic: “Among thousands of people there are not a hundred who will arrive at their salvation, and I am not even certain of that number, so much perversity is there among the young and so much negligence among the old.”

Augustine may be taken as representative of the Western Fathers. In his controversy with the Donatist Cresconius, Augustine draws upon Matthew and the Book of Revelation to prove that the number of the elect is large, but he grants that their number is exceeded by that of the lost ....

... Thomas Aquinas, who may stand as the leading representative, teaches clearly in the Summa Theologiae that God reprobates some persons. A little later he declares that only God knows the number of the elect. But Thomas gives reasons for thinking that their number is relatively small ....

About the middle of the twentieth century, there seems to be a break in the tradition. Since then a number of influential theologians have favored the view that all human beings may or do eventually attain salvation ....

Karl Rahner, another representative of the more liberal trend, holds for the possibility that no one ever goes to hell. We have no clear revelation, he says, to the effect that some are actually lost .... Rahner therefore believes that universal salvation is a possibility.

The most sophisticated theological argument against the conviction that some human beings in fact go to hell has been proposed by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?” He rejects the ideas that hell will be emptied at the end of time and that the damned souls and demons will be reconciled with God. He also avoids asserting as a fact that everyone will be saved. But he does say that we have a right and even a duty to hope for the salvation of all, because it is not impossible that even the worst sinners may be moved by God’s grace to repent before they die ....

... a number of theologians remain opposed. In a supplement to his book, Balthasar himself reports that one reviewer accused him of supporting “the salvation optimism that is rampant today and is both thoughtless and a temptation to thoughtlessness.” At an international videoconference organized by the Holy See’s Congregation for the Clergy last November, Jean Galot, with an apparent reference to Balthasar, said that the hypothesis of hell as a mere possibility “removes all effectiveness from the warnings issued by Jesus, repeatedly expressed in the Gospels.” At the same conference Father Michael F. Hull of New York contended that Balthasar’s theory is “tantamount to a rejection of the doctrine of hell and a denial of man’s free will.” In this country Fr. Regis Scanlon, O.F.M. Cap., accused Balthasar of being a Hegelian relativist who “smuggles into the heart of the Catholic a serious doubt about the truth of the Catholic faith.” Scanlon himself takes it to be Catholic teaching that some persons, at least Judas, are in fact eternally lost. This article set off an epic controversy between two Catholic editors, Richard John Neuhaus and Dale Vree, both of whom came to Catholic Christianity as adults ....

It is unfair and incorrect to accuse either Balthasar or Neuhaus of teaching that no one goes to hell. They grant that it is probable that some or even many do go there, but they assert, on the ground that God is capable of bringing any sinner to repentance, that we have a right to hope and pray that all will be saved ...

It's Balthasar's hope that all might be saved, and I like that ... Origen believed even Satan would be saved (an interesting book on the subject of universal salvation is The Inescapable Love of God by Thomas Talbott). But my hope is that we won't need to be saved - that hell does not even exist.

Dulles mentions some of the articles below on the discussion over Balthasar's theory of hell ...

Fr. Regis Scanlon's article, originally in the New Oxford Review, blasting Balthasar's view on hell - The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar

Richard John Neuhaus' article in First Things, defending Balthasar against Scanlon - Will All Be Saved?

Dale Vree's article in the New Oxford Review, answering Neuhaus - If Everyone is Saved ...

There's more of the guys above :-) but perhaps the next one to read would be found in the New Oxford Review by Janet Holl Madigan In Defense of Richard John Neuhaus

And let's not forget David Watt's article, originally in the New Oxford Review, against Balthasar's view - Is Hell Closed Up & Boarded Over?

*****

2) - David Bentley Hart and Voltaire

- Voltaire

As I wrote in an earlier post, I've been reading David Bentley Hart's theodicy book, The Doors of the Sea. I've come to a place where Hart mentions Vlotaire and his poem about the disaster of All Saints' Day, 1755, in Lisbon. That event affected not only Voltaire, but many thinkers of the Enlightenment, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, and drove a stake through the heart of the theodicy arguments of the day. Here's just a tiny bit of Voltaire's poem ...

"But how conceive a God supremely good,
Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,
Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?
What eye can pierce the depth of his designs?
From that all-perfect Being came not ill:
And came it from no other, for he ’s lord:
Yet it exists. O stern and numbing truth!
O wondrous mingling of diversities!
A God came down to lift our stricken race:
He visited the earth, and changed it not!
One sophist says he had not power to change;
“He had,” another cries, “but willed it not:
In time he will, no doubt.” And, while they prate,
The hidden thunders, belched from underground,
Fling wide the ruins of a hundred towns
Across the smiling face of Portugal."

And here's a bit about the earthquake that inspired it ...

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake took place on November 1, 1755, at 9:40 in the morning. It was one of the most destructive and deadly earthquakes in history, killing between 60,000 and 100,000 people. The quake was followed by a tsunami and fire, resulting in the near-total destruction of Lisbon. The earthquake accentuated political tensions in Portugal and profoundly disrupted the country's eighteenth-century colonial ambitions .... Geologists today estimate the Lisbon earthquake approached magnitude 9 on the Richter scale...

- engraving of the earthquake in Lisbon in 1755

The earthquake shook much more than cities and buildings. Lisbon was the capital of a devout Catholic country, with a history of investments in the church and evangelism in the colonies. Moreover, the catastrophe struck on a Catholic holiday and destroyed almost every important church. For eighteenth-century theology and philosophy, this manifestation of the anger of God was difficult to explain.

- the ruined Convento de Carmo, destroyed in 1755 by the earthquake.

The earthquake strongly influenced many thinkers of the European Enlightenment. Many contemporary philosophers mentioned or alluded to the earthquake in their writings, notably Voltaire in Candide and in his Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne ("Poem on the Lisbon disaster"). The arbitrariness of survival motivated Voltaire's Candide and its satire of the idea that this was the "best of all possible worlds"; as Theodor Adorno wrote, "[t]he earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz" (Negative Dialectics 361). In the later twentieth century, following Adorno, the 1755 earthquake has sometimes been compared to the Holocaust as a catastrophe so tremendous as to have a transformative impact on European culture and philosophy ....
- Wikipedia

David Hart lines up the arguments against a God both good and all powerful - Voltaire's poem is an example of the best of these - and though Hart feels these arguments sometimes speak of a God he barely recognises, he does not dismiss them lightly, but writes ...

"... there are even certain respects in which arguments of this sort should command not only the attention of Christians, but some measure of their sympathy - not pity, that is to say, not a patronizing longanimity, but sympathy in the proper sense of kindred feeling. After all, at the heart of all such unbelief lies an undoubtedly authentic moral horror before the sheer extravagance of worldly misery, a kind of rage for justice, a refusal of easy comfort, and an unwillingness to be reconciled to evil that no one who believes this to be a fallen world should want to disparage ..."

That is one thing I like very much about Hart's book ... he doesn't try to reconcile the reader with evil - doesn't try to make suffering acceptable or understandable. I guess I'd rather find no redemptive meaning in my own suffering than think God had anything to do with it.

******

3) - Unbinding the Gay Conscience

One of the online articles of Fr. James Alison's that especially touched me was Unbinding the Gay Conscience, given as a talk in 2002. Though it's written particularly for gays, I think it can be useful to others as well, for many of us find ourselves in "double-binds" ... the double-bind of feeling that one can't both be themselves and also be loved is one I particularly struggle with. Below are some bits snipped from the article, but to do it justice, you should read the whole thing ... it's worth it ....

****************************

Unbinding the Gay Conscience

Some of you may have known Benjamin O’Sullivan, a Benedictine monk of Ampleforth Abbey who killed himself early in 1996 .... I felt that his death was brought about because this extremely attractive, apparently self-confident, effervescent young man had been unable to stand up as an ordinary gay man to the voice of the lynch mob. And the reason was because he was bound in his conscience ... the person caught in the trap looks at the world through fear-coloured spectacles, and fear darkens rather than illumines what it projects. But this gives a hint of what I mean by a bound conscience: the sort of person who can’t stand up and be what they are ...

Now I would like to examine the binding and the unbinding. What does it look like? The first step is to look at what being ‘bound’ means. A bound conscience is one which cannot go this way or that, forward or backwards, is paralysed, scandalized. In that sense it is a form of living death, and those afflicted by it are living dead, and many of us are or have been such people. For example: we are familiar with the notion of a ‘double-bind’ or a ‘Catch 22 situation’. A bound conscience is a sense of being formed by a double-bind or a series of double binds ....

What I would like to suggest is that in all these cases we are dealing with a self that has been formed by being given contradictory desires without being given any ability to discern where they might appropriately be applied. In other words, two instructions are received as on the same level as each other, pointing in two different directions at once, and the result is paralysis. This is what σκάνδαλον - skandalon - refers to in the New Testament - scandal, or stumbling block. Someone who is scandalised is someone who is paralysed into an inability to move. And the undoing of σκάνδαλα - skandala – which means the unbinding of double binds that do not allow people to be, is what the Gospel is supposed to be about.

I want to make it quite clear that we are dealing with something very basic and central to the Gospel here. It is perfectly possible to present the Gospel in such a way that it is a sort of double-bind. Any sort of presentation of the Christian faith which says, ‘I love you but I do not love you’, or ‘I don’t love you as you are, but if you become someone different I will love you’, is in fact preaching a double-bind, a stumbling block, a pathway to paralysis.

Let’s imagine the conversation between a false god and the self:

False god: I want to love you, but I can’t love you as you are, because you are sinful and objectively disordered.

Self: Well, what then must I do to be loved?

False god: You must become someone different.

Self: I’m up for it, show me how.

False god: Love isn’t something that can be earned, it just is.

Self: Well then how do I become the sort of person who can be loved?

False god: If I were you I would start somewhere else.

Self: That’s a great help. How do I start somewhere else?

False god: You can’t, because even starting off for somewhere else starts from you, and you can’t be loved.

Self: Well if I can’t start off from somewhere else, and I can’t start off from where I am, what can I do?

False god: Give up on the love thing; just obey and be paralysed.

That’s how powerful it is to receive our sense of self, our identity, our desire, in imitation of, through the regard of, eyes which give us a mixed message, a double bind.

Now if the Gospel means anything at all it means that the Good News about God is unambivalent, that there are no ‘if’s and ‘but’s in God - God’s love is unconditional. And this means, above all, that there are no double-binds in God. That God desires that our desire should flow free, life-giving and untrammeled, because it is in that flow of desire that we are called into being.

Well, if that is the case, imagine then what might be a conversation between the Unambivalently loving God and the self:

Unambivalently loving God: I love you.

Self: but I’m full of shit, how can you love me?

Unambivalently loving God: I love you.

Self: but you can’t love me, I’m part of all this muck.

Unambivalently loving God: it’s you that I love.

Self: how can it be me that you love when I’ve been involved in bad relationships, dark rooms, machinations against other people?

Unambivalently loving God: it’s you that I love.

Self: But ...

Unambivalently loving God: it’s you that I love.

Self: But ...

Unambivalently loving God: it’s you that I love.

Self: OK then, so are you just going to leave me in the shit?

Unambivalently loving God: Because I love you, you are relaxing into my love and you will find yourself becoming loveable, indeed becoming someone that you will scarcely recognise.

Self: Hadn’t I better do something to get all ready for this becoming loveable?

Unambivalently loving God: Only if you haven’t yet got it that it’s I who do the work and you who get to shine. Because I love you, you are relaxing into being loved and will find yourself doing loveable things because you are loved.

Self: I think I could go along with this.

Or to put it in a nutshell, when faced with the standard Irish joke about ,’How do I get to Dublin?’, and being told ‘If I were you I wouldn’t start from here’, the Gospel response, that is to say the regard of Christ, tells us: ‘I will come with you starting from where you are’ ....

I would like to dwell a little more on the effects on us of this regard, the one which looks at us and says, ‘I love you, and as you discover yourself loved you will find yourself becoming something else’. I want to say something apparently rather banal here, but I think it is rather important. I think that we would be wise to send the word ‘love’ to the laundry and use the word ‘like’ instead. I say this for the following reason. You have probably met people, as I have, who tell us that they love gay people, and that is why they are so keen to change us. In other words their ‘love’ does not include the word ‘like’. It means something like: ‘I feel that in obedience to God’s love for sinners I must stop you being who you are’.

But in fact the word ‘like’ is rather more difficult to twist into a lie than the word ‘love’, because we know when someone likes us. We can tell because they enjoy being with us, alongside us, want to share our time and company. Well, what I would like to suggest is that if our understanding of love does not include liking, or at least being prepared to learn to like, then there’s a good chance that we’re talking about the sort of love that can slip a double-bind over us, that is really saying to us, ‘My love for you means that I will like you if you become someone else’.

Well, it seems to me that the doctrine of the incarnation of Our Lord, the image of God coming among us as the likeness of humans8, is a strong statement that the divine regard is one of liking us, here and now, as we are. Glad to be with us. And this means that the one who looks at us with love is not just looking at us with a penetrating and inscrutable gaze of utter otherness, but is looking at us with the delight of one who enjoys our company, who wants to be one with us, to share in something with us. Sure, as we learn to relax into that being loved we are going to find that we are quite different from what we thought we were, and that our patterns of desire will become quite different, which is what it means to find that the Holy Spirit has come to dwell in us in and through the reformation of our desire. But the regard does not first knock down so as then to build up, as we so often imagine it, rather as though Jesus was a sergeant-major whose job it is to give hell to the recruits and make them feel awful so that later, after they’ve lost their identities, they’ll start to feel good new identities as soldiers, and then they’ll discover he has a heart of gold.

No, our faith is that the eyes of God that are in Christ, and thus the divine regard through which we can receive new being, are eyes that like us, from alongside, at the same level as us. Which means, do not control us, do not try to ‘know better than us’ who we are, but want to participate in a discovery with us of who we are to become ....

****************************

There's more to the article, so read it all if you have the time and the interest (link).

Read more of Fr. Alison's work at James Alison Theology .... there's also an article on Pentecost by him at the Tablet - The Wild Ride.

*******

4) - St. Margaret Mary and the X-Files

Sometimes it seems like everything I know, I learned from the X-Files :-) ... for instance, the identity of St. Margaret Mary. Saint Marguerite Marie Alacoque (1647-1690) was a French Catholic nun, who entered the Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial at the age of twenty-four. She was a mystic, practiced a number of mortifications, and had many visions, the most well known being that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In this vision, Jesus showed her his heart, burning with divine love, and told her to establish a feast in honor of his Sacred Heart.

One of the first to believe in and support Margaret Mary's vision of the Sacred Heart was a young Jesuit, her spiritual director, St. Claude de la Colombière SJ. and it was the Jesuit Order that later helped establish the devotion of the Sacred Heart. Below is a prayer by Claude, translation by John Veltri SJ ...

Act Of Hope And Confidence In God

My God, I believe most firmly
that you watch over all who hope in you,
and that we can want for nothing
when we rely upon you in all things.
Therefore I am resolved for the future ... to cast all my cares upon you
People may deprive me of possessions and status.
Sickness may take my strength from me. I may even jeopardize our
relationship by sin; but my trust shall never leave me.
I will preserve it to the last moment of my life,
and the powers of hell shall seek in vain to grab it from me.
Let others seek happiness in their wealth and in their talents.
Let them trust in the purity of their lives,
in the number of their activities, in the intensity of their prayer;
as for me, my confidence in you fills me with hope.
You are my divine protector. In you alone do I hope.
I am assured, therefore, of my eternal happiness,
for I firmly hope in it and all my hope is in you.
"In you, O Loving God, have I hoped: let me never be confounded."
I know too well that I am weak and changeable.
I know the power of temptation against the strongest virtue.
I have seen stars fall and foundations of my world crack.
These things do not alarm me.
While I hope in you, I am sheltered from all misfortune,
and I am sure that my trust shall endure,
for I rely upon you to sustain this unfailing hope.
Finally, I know that my confidence cannot exceed your generosity,
and that I shall never receive less than I have hoped for from you.
Therefore I hope that you will sustain me against the ways
in which I deceive myself.
I hope that you will protect me against the deceitful attacks
of the evil one. I hope you will cause my weakness
to triumph over every hostile force.
I hope that you will never cease to love me
and that I shall love you unceasingly.
"In you, O God, I have hoped, let me never be confounded."

***

PHILLIP PADGETT (to Agent Scully) : I often come here to look at this painting. It's called "My Divine Heart" after the miracle of Saint Margaret Mary. Do you know the story... The revelation of the Sacred Heart? Christ came to Margaret Mary his heart so inflamed with love that it was no longer able to contain its burning flames of charity. Margaret Mary... so filled with divine love herself, asked the Lord to take her heart... and so he did placing it alongside his until it burned with the flames of his passion. Then he restored it to Margaret Mary sealing her wound with the touch of his blessed hand.
- Milagro episode - Inside the X-Files

- My Divine Heart

********

5) - Kermit

Kermit likes her birthday toy :-)

*******

6 - It's All Greek to Me

I really like Greek history, I guess because it reminds me of happy times at college ... Greek art, Greek philosophy ... my boyfriend buying me Greek coins with Athena's owl on them, my sister and I spending afternoons pouring over our green-covered copy of Plato's Republic :-)

A post on Paula's blog made me think about Greek history in general and the battle of Thermopylae in particular.

The description of the battle can be read in Herodotus' twenty-second logos: Thermopylae... a nice online translation with modern commentary. But you can also read the long-story-short version at Wikipedia, which writes, in part, ...

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army in a mountain pass. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persian advance for three days. Leonidas, the Spartan King commanding the army, held up the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. The resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable opportunity to make battle preparations and decisively defeat the Persians at the battles of Salamis. The final blow was delivered at Plataea, ending the Persian invasion of Greece and marking the rise of the Athenian Empire as a political and cultural world power. The performance of the defenders at the battle of Thermopylae is often used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment and good use of terrain to maximize an army's potential, as well as a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds.

There have been a number of films, books and even poems about the battle ... one of the most recent efforts is a graphic novel, Frank Miller's "300", from which is being made a 2007 film with the same title. The movie, which stars Scottish actor Gerard Butler as Spartan King Leonidas, will use a digital backlot technique, in which actors do their thing in front of a blue screen, with the locations added on later by computer. I'm not a big fan of this technique (the film Sin City is an example) but on the other hand, after seeing how traditionally made movies like Troy and Alexander have turned out, well ... :-)

I'm a peace-nik, so it's odd for me to be so interested in a military battle, but I think it's that I'm intrigued not by the fighting, but by the human qualities shown through the fighting ... courage, self-sacrifice, and perhaps even more, a defiance in the face of assured defeat. Such defiance can be found in the words spoken by Leonidas to Xerxes, when the Persian king offered to spare the Greeks if they'd surrender their weapons ...

Come and get them.

******

7) - Steve Irwin has died

I was just looking at Google news before going to bed and saw a headline that saddened me - ‘Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin dies.

Although his career has at times been somewhat controversial, I've been a long time fan of Stevee Irwin's. It was his show that gave me an interest in and appreciation of the wildlife of Australia, New Zealand and environs ... sea snakes, wombats, a shy platypus, a Tasmanian devil, komodo dragons. His show introduced me to the Dingo fence, to the International Venom and Toxin Database, the Galápagos Islands.

Here's part of the news story ...

Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition, police said. He was 44. Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when the accident occurred ...

Irwin is famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchcry “Crikey!” in his television program “Crocodile Hunter,” which was first broadcast in Australia in 1992 and has aired around the world on the Discovery channel ... Irwin was also seen as a vocal critic of wildlife hunts in Australia. The federal government recently dropped plans to allow crocodile safaris for wealthy tourists in the Northern Territory following his vehement objections ... He is survived by his American wife Terri, from Oregon, and their daughter Bindi Sue, 8, and son Bob, who will turn 3 in December.

Rats

2011-12-11T19:26:00.000-08:00

- little rat in my yard

Sometimes the prevalence of human exceptionalism gets me down - I just listened to a Philosophy Bites podcast about animal minds in which Tim Crane, a philosophy professor at Cambridge, opines that animals don't think like we think, don't think about what we think about. Descartes thought animals didn't think at all, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas thought only humans had "rational souls", and the assertion so often made is that only humans have the ability to reflect .... I've got to say, I've met a number of people who don't seem to be able to reflect, and anyway, how can we possibly know for sure that some animals cannot reflect? Just wondering - do philosophers (or for that matter, theologians) ever read science journals? Research is showing more and more evidence that animals and people are more alike than different. In the news today, for instance .... Rats Show Empathy, By Freeing Trapped Companions.

Saint John the Baptist

2011-12-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

- by Taddeo Crivelli, Italian, Ferrara, about 1469, Tempera colors, gold paint, gold leaf, and ink on parchment, 4 1/4 x 3 1/8 in., MS. LUDWIG IX 13, FOL. 154V - the Getty Museum

Here's another manuscript illustration by him, from Wikiipedia ....

- from the Borso Bible, now in the Biblioteca Estense

A couple of paintings I saw today ...

2011-12-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

- Easter Morning, Edward Burne-Jones

- The Knight of the Holy Grail, Frederick Judd Waugh

In the news

2011-12-08T19:11:00.000-08:00

Should Nuns Take the Pill for Health Reasons?

It appears studies have shown nuns who've never been pregnant have a higher risk of reproductive cancers, and this risk can be reduced by the use of birth control pills. What I found interesting was the response of Sister Mary Ann Walsh, Director of Media Relations of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ...“They’re presuming the church has some kind of authority over the medical care of nuns, which it doesn’t,” Walsh told ABC News. “A nun goes to a doctor for her medical care, and if that medical care requires a certain kind of medicine then that medicine is prescribed.”

The church doesn't want victims of human trafficking to be given even referrals for full reproductive care, doesn't want government health care to pay for women's birth control pills, doesn't want AIDS patients to use condoms to protect against spreading disease, doesn't want to fill student pill prescriptions at Catholic colleges. But if a nun wants contraceptives, the church has no authority over her medical care - that's between her and her doctor?

Hmmmm ...

2011-12-07T20:37:00.000-08:00

The government warehouse containing the Ark of the Covenant ....

Inside Amazon.com .....

Blackout

2011-12-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

- Balliol College

My latest book from the library is the science fiction novel Blackout by Connie Willis. The novel, set in 2060, is the first of a two-part story (the second part is All Clear) which won the 2010 Nebula Award, the 2011 Locus Award, and the 2011 Hugo Award. It tells of Oxford University (Balliol College) history students who time-travel to the WWII era. Here's a bit of a review of Blackout in The Washington Post ....

Book review: Michael Dirda reviews 'Blackout' by Connie Willis

[...] "Blackout" plunges the reader right into the middle of three key happenings of 1940: the rescue of the British troops from Dunkirk, the evacuation of children to rural villages and country houses, and the life of ordinary Londoners during the Blitz. Every detail rings true, with the kind of authority that only intense research can bring. Still, all of Willis's knowledge is subsumed in her bravura storytelling: "Blackout" is, by turns, witty, suspenseful, harrowing and occasionally comic to the point of slapstick.

By the year 2060, time travel has been perfected. At Oxford young historians don't merely study the past in books, they actually travel back to various time periods to collect data, observe and learn. To do this, they enter a force field -- described as a kind of shimmering net -- and are transported to their selected era, wearing appropriate dress and often with implanted knowledge essential for blending in. The drop site is carefully selected, so that no one detects the arrival of the historian; if the drop or its shimmer can be seen by "contemps," it will not open. To return to 2060 Oxford, the student needs to be at his or her arrival point at certain prearranged times. Should the historian fail to report in, or if anything seems to have gone wrong, Oxford will send a retrieval team.

Of course, nothing serious can really go wrong. Oh, there's been the occasional bit of "slippage," in which a historian is deposited in the past a few minutes, or at most a few hours, earlier or later than intended. And there was that mix-up -- recounted in Willis's "Doomsday Book" (1992) -- that left the main character, Kivrin Engle, stranded in the middle of the Black Death. But by its very nature, time travel won't allow historians to be present at key "divergence points," when their actions or even their mere presence might affect the outcome of world-shattering events, such as the Battle of Waterloo.

Hah ........

I'm still at the beginning but I like the book so far. It's a little different than Doomsday Book, which I read recently -- it has some of Willis' more comedic storytelling (I've not read any of her 'funny' books) mixed in with the drama, which I find that a bit disconcerting -- but it is a pretty interesting read. Another science fiction novel that tells of WWII bombing, but of Dresden, is Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (I posted about it here).

Photos from the yard today

2011-12-05T14:28:00.000-08:00

- a little oak titmouse and a black oil sunflower seed ...

- the navel oranges are turning orange ...

Belgium

2011-12-04T21:45:00.000-08:00

Belgian Catholic reformers want laypeople to run parishes that have no priests ...

More than 6,000 Belgian Catholics have signed a manifesto urging their bishops to let lay people celebrate Sunday services in parishes left without priests due to a severe shortage of vocations in the Church. More than 200 priests are among signatories of the manifesto launched two weeks ago in Flanders, the traditionally Catholic Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, one of the organisers told Reuters. The initiative echoed a grass-roots movement in Austria, where 2,000 Catholics — including 361 priests — called in June for lay-led Masses and the ordination of married men and women to maintain parishes that no longer have a priest. ...

I think this is a good thing - wish I believed this would make the Vatican change its policy, but doubtless they'll stonewall as usual. But speaking of Belgium, it's one place I've actually been :) (If it's Tuesday: part 2). Unfortunately, I didn't see much of Belgium on my one trip, so I looked at some Wikipedia pages for churches there: here are a few of them ....

- St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral

- Church of Saint Jacques-sur-Coudenberg

- Liège Cathedral

- Kapellekerk

The meek shall inherit the land

2011-12-04T19:50:00.000-08:00

- one of the meek :) a shy little rat living in my yard

I thought I'd give Robert's psalm challenge another try. Psalm 37 has a line in it (as Dina also noted) that's in the Beatitudes as well ... Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5). The psalm challenge really is a challenge for me because many of the psalms express intentions I'm not sure I'm comfortable with ... the bad guys getting their due ... but of course this is true for much in the gospels as well - Luke's version of the Beatitudes has four 'blessed are those' but also four 'woe unto you' verses too. I'm not sure what to make of this: do these verses mean that God rewards and punishes people in real time - then why do some good people suffer and some not so good people prosper - or do they mean that people will be rewarded/punished after death - on that score, I keep hoping God rehabilitates even the bad guys.

But anyway, here is the psalm, with the line I chose for my photo in bold ....

Psalm 37 (NRSV trans)

1 - Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers,
2 - for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb.
3 - Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
4 - Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 - Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.
6 - He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday.
7 - Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices.
8 - Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil.
9 - For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.
10 - Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there.
11 - But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.
12 - The wicked plot against the righteous, and gnash their teeth at them;
13 - but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that their day is coming.
14 - The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to kill those who walk uprightly;
15 - their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.
16 - Better is a little that the righteous person has than the abundance of many wicked.
17 - For the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous.
18 - The Lord knows the days of the blameless, and their heritage will abide forever;
19 - they are not put to shame in evil times, in the days of famine they have abundance.
20 - But the wicked perish, and the enemies of the Lord are like the glory of the pastures; they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.
21 - The wicked borrow, and do not pay back, but the righteous are generous and keep giving;
22 - for those blessed by the Lord shall inherit the land, but those cursed by him shall be cut off.
23 - Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way;
24 - though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.
25 - I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.
26 - They are ever giving liberally and lending, and their children become a blessing.
27 - Depart from evil, and do good; so you shall abide forever.
28 - For the Lord loves justice; he will not forsake his faithful ones. The righteous shall be kept safe forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off.
29 - The righteous shall inherit the land, and live in it forever.
30 - The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom, and their tongues speak justice.
31 - The law of their God is in their hearts; their steps do not slip.
32 - The wicked watch for the righteous, and seek to kill them.
33 - The Lord will not abandon them to their power, or let them be condemned when they are brought to trial.
34 - Wait for the Lord, and keep to his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on the destruction of the wicked.
35 - I have seen the wicked oppressing, and towering like a cedar of Lebanon.
36 - Again I passed by, and they were no more; though I sought them, they could not be found.
37 - Mark the blameless, and behold the upright, for there is posterity for the peaceable.
38 - But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the posterity of the wicked shall be cut off.
39 - The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord; he is their refuge in the time of trouble.
40 - The Lord helps them and rescues them; he rescues them from the wicked, and saves them, because they take refuge in him.

Some more music ...

2011-12-02T20:46:00.000-08:00

at Glenstal Abbey.

World AIDS Day

2011-12-01T23:07:00.000-08:00

Some of my past posts that touch on AIDS ....

Maybe the church should get out of the medical business - 6/1/11

The Red Queen Hypothesis, FBOs, and the pope on condoms - 11/23/10

The pope on condoms and a feminist theology blog - 11/20/10

Aids, theological truth, practical reality- 2/11/10

Women and AIDS - 12/1/09

Bishop Kevin Dowling - 3/18/09

World AIDs Day - 12/1/08

Pharmaceutical Giants vs the Poor - 5/9/07

The Trinity - 8/30/06

Browsing

2011-12-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

- The Angel of the Waters

Sometimes I browse art/architecture at Getty Photos. Here's some of what I saw today ...

The statue pictured above, part of the Bethesda Terrace fountain in Central Park, is of the angel at the pool of Bethesda in John's gospel. It was designed by Emma Stebbins, one of the first American women sculptors.

Another thing that caught my attention was Tréguier Cathedral in Brittany ....

It has this head of St. Yves - eeek! I don't think I'll ever like the idea of relics ;) .....

Stephen Colbert on the new missal and physics

2011-11-30T22:10:00.000-08:00

- Neil deGrasse Tyson on Stargete Atlantis

There's mention of Stephen Colbert on the missal translation at Pray Tell.

Instead I've posted below a Colbert interview with physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I really only know about him (and Brian Greene) because of Stargate Atlantis episodes :) Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared (with Bill Nye) in the episode Brainstorm. Here Tyson and Nye give fellow physicist Rodney McKay a hard time ......

And here's the Colbert interview with Tyson .....

Very windy today

2011-11-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

- leaves flying off the trees! This bluejay didn't seem disturbed, though ...

The neverending story

2011-11-30T20:01:00.000-08:00

As new allegations of widespread sex abuse and cover-up emerge in Ireland, the pope tells US bishops visiting the Vatican that the church should be held up as an example of how to deal with sex abuse. Unbelievable.

From an editorial on this in The Philly Post ....

[...] The pope is right that all of society’s institutions—not just the Catholic Church—must be held to “exacting” standards in their response to sex abuse of children. He correctly called pedophilia a “scourge.” But then the pope had the gall to hold up the church as an example for how to confront the problem.

“It is my hope that the Church’s conscientious efforts to confront this reality will help the broader community to recognize the causes, true extent and devastating consequences of sexual abuse, and to respond effectively to this scourge which affects every level of society,” he said.

If other institutions follow the church’s lead regarding the handling of sex abuse by priests, well, then heaven help us all. David Clohessy, head of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said: “No public figure talks more about child safety but does little to actually make children safer than Pope Benedict.”

Of course, one can’t help but feel the pope’s recent comments were timed to coincide with the sex-abuse scandal at Penn State. In a sense he was saying: “See, the church isn’t the only institution with a pedophile problem.” At Penn State, former defensive football coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been charged with sexually abusing eight boys over a number of years. Some have said the two scandals are similar because of the cover-up that reached the top echelon of two esteemed institutions.

But that is also where the similarities end. Unlike the Catholic Church, Penn State has taken swift and decisive action, with more likely to come. Days after Sandusky’s indictment, university president Graham Spanier was forced out and legendary coach Joe Paterno was fired. Granted the university, like the church, initially did its best to cover up the abuse. But unlike the church, once the allegations came to light there were no excuses or denials or efforts to blame the media by the university trustees. Instead there has been real accountability ...

Mark Twain and Data

2011-11-29T22:51:00.000-08:00

- Mark Twain in the lab of Nikola Tesla, spring of 1894

Happy birthday to Mark Twain. When I think of Twain, I always see the Star Trek version of him in the episode Time's Arrow :) ...

I especially liked this episode - Data had so many moments that made me laugh, like when he was in San Francisco at the time of Mark Twain and kept explaining his oddness to the locals as a consequence of his Frenchness :) Some of the moments were touching too, like when he realized that he was going to cease to exist sometime in the future - he was actually relieved. He and Geordi talked about it in Ten Forward ....

LAFORGE: So, do you want to talk about it?

DATA: Are you referring to the foreknowledge of my death?

LAFORGE: Yeah.

DATA: I have no particular desire to discuss the matter. Do you need to talk about it?

LAFORGE: Yeah.

DATA: Why?

LAFORGE: Data, this has got to bother you a little.

DATA: On the contrary. I find it rather comforting.

LAFORGE: Comforting?

DATA: I have often wondered about my own mortality as I have seen others around me age. Until now it has been theoretically possible that I would live an unlimited period of time. And although some might find this attractive, to me it only reinforces the fact that I am artificial.

LAFORGE: I never knew how tough this must be for you.

DATA: Tough? As in difficult?

LAFORGE: Knowing that you would outlive all your friends.

DATA: I expected to make new friends.

LAFORGE: True.

DATA: And then to outlive them as well.

LAFORGE: Now that you know that you might not?

DATA: It provides a sense of completion to my future. In a way, I am not that different from anyone else. I can now look forward to death.

- Data, Geordi, Counselor Troi, Mark Twain

Advent: the waiting is the hardest part

2011-11-29T15:12:00.000-08:00

A few days ago it was my mother's birthday and my sister and I were talking about her, about how it seemed like we were always anxiously awaiting her. When we were small she used to leave us places alone and go off for long periods of time. My sister said, "Remember how we watched for every car, hoping the next one would be hers, how we worried she wasn't coming back?" I was reminded of that when I saw this photo today that expressed Advent waiting (h/t Bilgrimage).

I don't think I've ever understood Advent - everyone seems to revel in the waiting. Maybe it's the difference between waiting for someone you believe might never come, and anticipating someone you know is coming? Or maybe I still don't understand. I'm listening to an audio Advent retreat by Larry Gillick SJ - hope it will help me figure it out. The retreat starts out with a prayer and a poem by David Whyte ...

Sometimes
- David Whyte

Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions that have no right
to go away.

Keith Ward and Brian Greene

2011-11-28T10:49:00.000-08:00

Still reading Timeline and thinking about alternate time-lines, parallel universes. One of the few to discuss God and parallel universes or the multiverse is Keith Ward, as in his Tablet article, The Quantum Leap, and his Gresham College lecture, Cosmology and Creation, and he also discusses the subject in his book The Big Questions in Science and Religion.

And here's an interview with Brian Greene about parallel universes ...

Sarlat-la-Canéda

2011-11-27T21:49:00.001-08:00

- Chapel of St. Benedict, Sarlat-la-Canéda

I'm rereading an old favorite book - Timeline by Michael Crichton. It's about time-travel back to the middle ages, and one of the towns mentioned is Sarlat-la-Canéda, which also showed up in the movie made of the novel.

- interior, Sarlat Cathedral

Here's a bit about the town from Wikipedia ...

Sarlat-la-Canéda (Occitan: Sarlat e La Canedat), or simply Sarlat, is a commune in the Dordogne department in Aquitaine ... Sarlat is a medieval town that developed around a large Benedictine abbey of Carolingian origin. The medieval Sarlat Cathedral is dedicated to Saint Sacerdos ... Sarlat has remained preserved and one of the towns most representative of 14th century France.

- in the town

On my one trip to Europe, we only got to visit Paris while we were in France - wish we could have seen more.

- the river running through Dordogne

Psalm 36

2011-11-27T18:52:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd try a photo for the psalm challenge for psalm 36 mentioned at Jerusalem Hills daily photo. Here's the psalm with the line I'm addressing with my photo in bold .....

Psalm 36 (New International Version)

For the director of music. Of David the servant of the LORD.

1 I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before their eyes.
2 In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin.
3 The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful; they fail to act wisely or do good.
4 Even on their beds they plot evil; they commit themselves to a sinful course and do not reject what is wrong.
5 Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.
6 Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, LORD, preserve both people and animals.

7 How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8 They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.
9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.
10 Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart.
11 May the foot of the proud not come against me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.
12 See how the evildoers lie fallen—thrown down, not able to rise!

The photos is of my four cats, now deceased. It's overexposed because the sun was so bright that day, but it almost seems in a way like they're looking toward the beatific vision.

Heythrop College and UC Davis

2011-11-26T19:11:00.000-08:00

- Heythrop College

Given the recent pepper-spraying at nearby UC Davis and the past tuition protests in the UK, I've been thinking about college, so when I saw philosophy professor Stephen Law's post about Heythrop College, I thought I'd mention it. First, from Wikipedia ...

Heythrop College is the specialist philosophy and theology constituent college of the University of London situated in Kensington Square .... It was founded in 1614 by the Jesuits in Leuven, Belgium, then moved in 1624 to Liège. During the wars surrounding the French Revolution, the college moved to Britain - philosophy was taught at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire and theology in St. Beuno's [The Big Silence] in North Wales. In 1926, the colleges came together in Heythrop Hall, Oxfordshire, then moved to London in 1970. It became a college of the University in 1971, and moved to its current Kensington location in 1993 .... The college also runs the Heythrop Journal ...

The college is Jesuit, but as Professor Law, an atheist, notes in his post ...

Heythrop is a Jesuit foundation (in fact it's the oldest college of the University of London, being founded by the Jesuits in 1614, though one of the most recent member colleges of the University). However, despite it's religious foundation, it is highly diverse in its' membership. I'm there, for goodness sake. And I'm made to feel very welcome too. The student body is no more "religious" than at other London colleges, and the staff have all sorts of views on the subject. There's no religious agenda at all. We just ask that you think and question with an open mind.

And apparently, Keith Ward is there too :) ...

But our greatest strength is in Philosophy of Religion. We have Professor's Keith Ward and John Cottingham working in this area as part of Heythrop's Centre for The Philosophy of Religion.

I don't really understand how tuition works in the UK - is it true that at one time all the universities were run by the state but now they've all become what we in the US would call private, and this is what the fee protests are about? For perspective (and if I've figured it our correctly) it looks like a year's fees for an undergrad at Heythrop would be about $5,000, while a year's tuition at UC Davis, a state run university, would be about $13,000, and weirdly, to go to a private school like Stanford, would be about the same as Davis. No wonder the Davis students were protesting fee hikes! As this news story states ... by the year 2015, UC students will be expected to pay $22,000 a year.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T16:48:00.000-08:00

I spent Thanksgiving at my sister's -- we had the traditional (vegetarian) meal ... pizza :) They just bought this home and it's the first home my sister and her husband have ever bought - I've never bought one - so it feels strange, but in a good way. I gave them this little bunny sundial as a moving-in gift ...

Rainy here, but we went outside after pizza. The neighbor's cat gave us the eye :) ...

Here's a corner of their backyard with an old apricot tree ...

And we walked to a nearby park to look at the leaves ....

Happy Thanksgiving everybody :)

Waltzing Matilda

2011-11-24T00:32:00.000-08:00

One reason I haven't posted much about movies lately is that I've been using my netflix disks to watch episodes of JAG. Tonight was one I especially liked - in it the character of Australian Lieutenant Commander Michael "Mic" Brumby leaves the show,. In the story, he's sent to East Timor and his fellow workers sing him off - it's made kind of sad because in real life, the actor died not long after.

Jesus in The Speed of Dark

2011-11-23T21:19:00.000-08:00

Still listening to The Speed of Dark. In the part I listened to tonight, Lou has gone to church, where the gospel reading is about the blind man at the pool who was asked by Jesus if he wanted to be healed. Lou has been trying to decide if he should undergo a treatment that will make him "normal" instead of autistic, and when he hears this reading he's struck by what Jesus' question seems to imply ....

I believe in God the Father, maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things seen and unseen ... And I believe in his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who actually in the flesh asked that question of the man by the pool. The man that perhaps -- the story does not say -- had gone there because people were tired of him being sick and disabled, who perhaps had been content to lie down all day, but he got in the way. What would Jesus have done if the man had said, "No. I don't want to be healed. I am quite content as I am." If he had said, "There is nothing wrong with me, but my relatives and neighbors insisted I come." .... Jesus might still think the man needed to be able to get up and walk. Maybe God thinks I would be better if I weren't autistic. Maybe God wants me to take the treatment. I am cold suddenly. Here I have felt accepted, accepted by God, accepted by the priest and the people, or mot of them. God does not spurn the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed, the crazy. That is what I have been taught and what I believe, but what if I am wrong? What if God wants me to be something other than I am?

- The Pool of Bethesda, Robert Bateman

More of The Speed of Dark

2011-11-22T20:12:00.000-08:00

The main character in The Speed of Dark, an autistic, practices fencing to this music ...

It [fencing] is like some kinds of dance, a pattern of movement, except for not having music. I sort through the music I remember, trying to find the right music for this dance .... Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy ... perfect for the feline prowl that is Simon circling me, looking for an opening, and for my intense concentration. I never thought I could dance before -- it was a social thing, and I always got stiff and clumsy. Now -- with a blade in hand -- it feels right to move to the internal music.

Two homilies and the Cerulean Warbler

2011-11-22T17:17:00.000-08:00

- a Cerulean Warbler

Here are two homilies I really liked for last Sunday: one by Fr. Philip Endean SJ - Christ the King 2011: an Englishman preaches in Bunker Hill at Pray Tell; and another by Deacon Denny - Don't You Miss Him - at Brief Notes Dot Com.

And though it may seem unrelated, my sister sent me this page from National Geographic which stated something sad about the bird pictured above ...Neotropical migratory birds from warblers to sparrows are declining at alarming rates—rates that are not sustainable. Unless our culture sees these creatures as necessary, they will vanish into history, remembered only by photographs and paintings.

The Italian Secretary

2011-11-21T19:06:00.000-08:00

- Holyrood Palace

My latest book from the library is The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes by Caleb Carr (The Alienist). I really like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, and of the books written by other authors about Holmes, this one is the best I've read - Carr really seems to do a good job of capturing Holmes' personality.

The plot involves a message to Holmes from his brother Mycroft, asking him to investigate some mysterious killings in Scotland near Holyrood Palace where, three hundred years earlier, David Rizzio, the Italian secretary of Mary Queen of Scots, was brutally murdered.

- The Murder of Rizzio by John Opie

I'm finding the book enjoyable, especially as I recently checked out from the library Mary, Queen of Scots, a 1971 film starring Vanessa Redgrave (Queen Mary), Glenda Jackson (Queen Elizabeth I), Timothy Dalton (Mary's husband, Lord Darnley), and Ian Holm (Mary's Italian secretary). The plot, from Wikipedia ...

Following the death of her husband Francis II of France, Mary, Queen of Scots (Vanessa Redgrave) returns to her native land. As in neighbouring England, the Protestant faith has been embraced by many nobles of Scotland; in addition, the Catholic Mary has to deal with her half-brother James Stewart, Lord Moray's (Patrick McGoohan) ambitions for rule .....

Fearing that Mary has ambitions for England's throne, Elizabeth I of England (Glenda Jackson) ... sends the younger, dashing but weak Lord Darnley (Timothy Dalton), from a powerful Catholic family. As she expected, Mary becomes enamoured of Darnley and chooses him for marriage. Lord Moray, a Protestant, opposes the marriage, but Mary proceeds ....... The situation deteriorates as Mary frequently consults with the Italian courtier David Riccio (Ian Holm) .... A group of Scottish lords persuade Darnley to help get rid of Riccio, whom they murder in Mary's presence ...

- Redgrave and Dalton

As we all know, things end badly for Mary - she's eventually executed by Queen Elizabeth. The movie was interesting, if sad - Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars in his review.

So, the book by Carr is a fun read - I recommend it for Sherlock Holmes fans.

St. Mary's, Glasgow

2011-11-21T00:50:00.000-08:00

Visited What's in Kelvin's Head today - an interesting post on the Scottish Episcopal Church and same-sex marriage. What a difference between Kelvin's church and mine, where the US Bishops are gearing up to crush same-sex marriage in the name of religious liberty,. Here's a bit of the post from St. Mary's Cathedral blog ....

Diocesan Discussions

[...] Anyway, we were there this afternoon to talk about the possibility of allowing Civil Partnerships in religious premises and the possibility of allowing same-sex couples to enter into marriage in some form or another. It was an excellent discussion – really helpful all round .... Of those who spoke, a couple of people were against opening up marriage to same-sex couples. Most who spoke seemed to be broadly in favour. Some were passionately so. Some remained in thoughtful silence listening to what was going on and clearly still in a place where their minds were not made up .......

I found myself feeling quite moved by the discussion. Firstly that it was happening at all and that it happened so well. We had a great meeting listening to one another, respectful of one another and caring about one another. Secondly that I was hearing members of the church, not activists or policy-wonks or politicians or attention seekers like me, but ordinary church members, arguing passionately for same-sex marriage.

When you grow up never hearing any positive word ever spoken in church (or anywhere, come to think about it) about being gay and have a suspicion that it might affect you, it does something to you that is hard to describe to other people. It can lead to barrenness of expectation. It leads many people never to grow in grace or faith or hope or love. Similarly I struggle to explain what it feels like now on odd occasions when people whose voices have not previously been heard begin to speak with authority and passion about their own sons, daughters, brothers and sisters and their relationships. I find it hard to put into language. Indeed, it moves me beyond words to realise that it isn’t me who is out on a limb arguing for something that people don’t understand and don’t believe I’ll never see. It is real and round the corner and supported by people whom I should never underestimate.

I can’t really describe what that feels like to sit amongst all that but along with others I can taste something in the air. It is the sweet taste of longed-for change that is coming more quickly than most people ever thought possible.

25 books every Christian should read

2011-11-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

Lee has a recent post mentioning a list of "25 books every Christian should read", bolding the ones he himself has read and asterisking the ones he's read part of. I thought I'd give this a try myself, also putting in bold the ones I've read and giving an asterisk to those I've read bits of. Sadly, I haven't read all that many on the list and some I'd not even heard of .....

1. On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius
2. Confessions, St. Augustine
3. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Various (*)
4. The Rule of St. Benedict, St. Benedict
5. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
6. The Cloud of Unknowing, Anonymous (*)
7. Revelations of Divine Love (Showings), Julian of Norwich (*)
8. The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis
9. The Philokalia, Various
10. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin
11. The Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila
12. Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross
13. Pensees, Blaise Pascal
14. The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan
15. The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence
16. A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, William Law
17. The Way of a Pilgrim, Unknown Author
18. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (*)
19. Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton
20. The Poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins (*)
21. The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (*)
22. A Testament of Devotion, Thomas R. Kelly
23. The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
24. Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
25. The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri J.M. Nouwen

I'd also add to the list ....

The autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola ... it's pretty short and can be found online and downloaded at places like this - link. I'm not sure, but I think sometimes some non-Catholics may be wary of reading anything by Ignatius as he's so often portrayed as an anti-reformation saint, but what I've read by him has been about spirituality, about experiencing God, not about religious politics. I'd also add Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises (which can be found online too), but it isn't exactly a reading book but more a retreat manual .... I made the mistake of just starting to read it and the meditation on hell scared my socks off :)

Nick Cave and Bach

2011-11-18T20:15:00.000-08:00

I'm still listening to The Speed of Dark, and in the bit tonight, the main character, an autistic, is listening to Bach's Sheep may safely graze ...

Who knew Nick Cave had written lyrics for this? :)

Sheep May Safely Graze

Sheep may safely graze
All the wolves have been rounded up and put to bed
Sheep may safely graze
There are only days of happiness up ahead
Sheep may safely graze, my boy
All the crocodiles have been hunted from your dreams

Sheep may savely graze
Wooly lambs are gamboling by the streams
Sheep may safely graze
All the lost children will be found in time
Sheep may safely graze, my boy
Close your eyes, your daddy is by your side

And if by chance you wake at night
The hollow sorrow that lingers
And you grab at the tails of your dreams
But they scuttle through your fingers

All you can hear outside
Is the roar of a city being raised
It’s just the powers that be
Making it safe to graze

Sheep may safely graze
The bluebirds have chased the vultures from the sky
Sheep may safely graze
The day is merely gone now and closed its eyes
Sheep may safely graze, my boy
All the fishes are leaping into the nets

Sheep may safely graze
This, my darling, is as good as it gets
Sheep may safely graze
All the lost children will be found in time
Sheep may safely graze, my boy
Close your eyes, your daddy is by your side

If you shouldn’t wake tomorrow
The fences are all torn down
The woods are full of howling beasts
And there ain’t nobody around

And everything seems foreign
To your little ways
That’s just the gods above
Making it save to graze

The fox has its hole
The bird has its nest
But the son of man has no place
To lay his head and rest

The common good in a pluralistic society

2011-11-18T19:45:00.000-08:00

There's a post at dotCommonweal about religious liberty and some interesting comments to the post were made by Lisa Fullam, a professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley (and she's also a veterinarian :). The subject she commented on was whether it curtails religious liberty to require Catholic hospitals/clinics to provide contraceptives ....

[...] The USCCB itself estimates that something like 94% of sexually active Catholics of reproductive age use some form of birth control forbidden in Catholic teaching. That question is settled, at least in the minds of the Catholic faithful. For the bishops to make a big fuss over having to provide what they know their people use anyway, which is regarded as morally unproblematic–or even a matter of right–to many other people of good will is, well, quaint. The teaching on this matter has not been received by Catholics or others. To require separate insurance policies for Catholic institutions is a misguided attempt to have people think that, in fact, the RC teaching against birth control has moral sway over the consciences of the faithful. They’d do better just to stay quiet on that one ........

[S]hould publicly funded health plans not cover blood transfusion because the JW’s find it immoral? Should no hospital care at all be publicly funded because Christian Scientists believe that what is experienced as illness is in fact a deficit of prayer and study of their holy books? How about Scientology and anti-depressants–do they get to veto any coverage in public plans because of their different understanding of psychiatric illness? In sum–if religions get to veto aspects of publicly funded health care, whose religious sensibilities count? In a pluralistic society, public arguments must be framed in ways that appeal beyond one’s own religious circle, and refusing to pay for contraception simply doesn’t meet that standard, IMO. In fact, the arguments don’t even work inside the Catholic circle, on this one .......

My point is that the bishops not only have not made an argument about the evil of contraception that resonates with the consciences of most Americans, but in fact they have not made an argument that convinces even most Catholics. (And as I mentioned, this is not a do-or-die issue–for most people, funding their own contraceptives is not impossible.) Why not say “OK, we’ll fund it, but Catholics won’t use it”? Why make this divisive stance a hallmark of protection of conscience? Since the bishops don’t seem to have made any convincing arguments even to believers, contraception comes to be seen, rightly or wrongly, as merely a matter of religious discipline, not natural law. And we argue for the rights of religious groups to make their own religious discipline into law at substantial peril. Again–if we go down that road, whose religious convictions count, and why? ....

The Speed of Dark, continued

2011-11-15T22:06:00.000-08:00

I'm still listening to The Speed of Dark, the story about an autistic. It's touching me. Here's where I amo now ...

What I wish is that I could go out and look up at the stars. My parents took me camping in the south-west. I remember lying there and seeing all the beautiful patterns, patterns that went on and on forever. I would like to see the stars again. They made me feel calm when I was a child. They showed me an ordered universe, a patterned universe, in which I could be a small part of a large pattern. When my parents told me how long the light had traveled to reach my eyes - hundreds, thousands of years - I felt comforted, though I could not say why. I cannot see the stars from here ...

USCCB meeting

2011-11-15T19:52:00.000-08:00

In the news - Bishops Open ‘Religious Liberty’ Drive ...

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops opened a new front in their fight against abortion and same-sex marriage on Monday, recasting their opposition as a struggle for “religious liberty” against a government and a culture that are infringing on the church’s rights.

As I've opined in past posts, the bishops' creative re-definition of the expression 'religious liberty' seems disingenuous - it bears no resemblance to the definition spoken of at Vatican II by those like John Courtney Murray SJ.

While I and many others believe the church's stance on women and gays/lesbians is wrong, in truth there has been no hampering of the church's religious liberty concerning these issues: the church is free to believe and to teach that women shouldn't use contraceptives or have abortions. The church is free to believe and to teach that gays/lesbians are objectively disordered and can't be trusted to marry or adopt. The church is free to run women's health clinics and human trafficking charities that do not even mention, much less give out or perform, contraceptives or abortions. The church is free to refuse to marry gays/lesbians in the church, free to refuse to allow gays/lesbians to adopt children from Catholic agencies. There is just one thing that the church cannot do in reference to these issues -- it cannot take and use US tax dollars to discriminate.

There's a post on the USCCB meeting at dotCommonweal - some of the comments to the post are pretty interesting.

Photos from the yard today

2011-11-14T15:12:00.000-08:00

- the strawberry plant's leaves are turning ...

- pyracantha berries ...

- the loquat tree is flowering: see the bee? ...

- the magnolia tree ....

The Speed of Dark

2011-11-12T18:27:00.000-08:00

A book I'm just beginning is the science fiction novel The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, which won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2003. I've been wanting to read it since I saw a post about it at Catholic Sensibility - On My Bookshelf: The Speed of Dark - but the library has just one audio copy and that through link+ so I finally gave up and bought it. Here's the blurb from Publishers Weekly about the book ....

"If I had not been what I am, what would I have been?" wonders Lou Arrendale, the autistic hero of Moon's compelling exploration of the concept of "normalcy" and what might happen when medical science attains the knowledge to "cure" adult autism. Arrendale narrates most of this book in a poignant earnestness that verges on the philosophical and showcases Moon's gift for characterization. The occasional third-person interjections from supporting characters are almost intrusive, although they supply needed data regarding subplots. At 35, Arrendale is a bioinformatics specialist who has a gift for pattern analysis and an ability to function well in both "normal" and "autistic" worlds. When the pharmaceutical company he works for recommends that all the autistic employees on staff undergo an experimental procedure that will basically alter their brains, his neatly ordered world shatters. All his life he has been taught "act normal, and you will be normal enough" - something that has enabled him to survive, but as he struggles to decide what to do, the violent behavior of a "normal friend" puts him in danger and rocks his faith in the normal world. He struggles to decide whether the treatment will help or destroy his sense of self. Is autism a disease or just another way of being? He is haunted by the "speed of dark" as he proceeds with his mesmerizing quest for self - "Not knowing arrives before knowing; the future arrives before the present. From this moment, past and future are the same in different directions, but I am going that way and not this way.... When I get there, the speed of light and the speed of dark will be the same." His decision will touch even the most jaded "normal."

You can listen to an audio sample of The Speed of Dark here

I'm just at the beginning of the book but already it's raising questions ...what's normal .... how important is it to be among the normal ... if you want to be normal does that mean you're self-loathing .... if you don't care about being normal does that mean you're in denial or instead that you accept yourself ... can you remain yourself or will you lose yourself if you change to normal ... what if you can't change?

Some news on married priests

2011-11-11T19:40:00.000-08:00

Melkite Catholic Church to Ordain Married Men to the Priesthood in the US

[...] On first glance, some might view the Melkite Church as merely following in the same vein as that of the Anglican Ordinariate. However, the key difference with the Anglican Ordinariate in the Catholic Church, which allows for some former married Anglican priests to join the Catholic Church and be ordained to the Order of Deacon and then to the priesthood, is that it is viewed as an exception.

The Melkite Greek catholic Church is simply reaffirming the ancient practice in Eastern Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox, of choosing married AND celibate men for both the order of deacons and the Priesthood. Those chosen for the Episcopacy remain celibate. The practice had been curtailed in the United States.Bishop Nicholas is announcing his intention, after study and preparation, to make the practice normative in the United States.This is not an act of "dissent" of any sort. Rather, a resumption of an ancient practice.

Controversy is likely to arise over this announcement on a few counts. First, the Vatican's Congregation for Eastern Churches has not changed its approach to limiting the priesthood to celibate men as the norm, even in the Eastern Church, in the United States. There were a few past exceptions to the norm, but these have not been an indication of a new process for allowing married men to enter seminary formation on a normative basis. Whether or not this announcement will bring a reaction from the Congregation is unclear ..... As to a reaction from the Vatican regarding this announcement from the American Melkite Catholic Church, none has been heard yet.

I think this is a good thing - wish I could say I thought it would make the Vatican re-think its policy on married priests but that seems unlikely. Anyway,this story made me think of Vatican II, celibacy, and Maximos IV Sayegh, past Patriarch of the The Melkite Church at the Council. Celibacy was never really discussed at Vatican II ....

On October 13 [1965], François Marty, archbishop of Rheims, presented the text On the Ministry and Life of Presbyters .... Two days earlier, however, celibacy, the most explosive issue related to the subject, was authoritatively removed from the agenda by Paul VI.

The matter had come up in an oblique way in 1962 under Pope John XXIII. On June 16 the Central Preparatory Commission discussed a short schema On Lapsed Priests ... not about celibacy as such but about measures to be taken to address a situation every bishop had to face: priests walking out the door .... Should a post-factum dispensation from celibacy be granted to such men? If so, how and on what grounds was that to be done?

The overwhelming consensus in the commission was that the council should not address the issue .... The matter should be left to the discretion of the Holy See .... But three years later, in 1965, the situation had changed somewhat. Bishops, still a small minority, were talking about the advisability of a modification of the discipline, at least for some regions. When in October the discussion On the Ministry and Life of Priests drew near, some Brazilian bishops hoped to introduce the matter on the floor .... This is the situation that prompted Paul VI to intervene to withhold celibacy from the agenda .....

The clergy of the Eastern churches in communion with the Holy See lived under a different discipline, and their bishops tended to take a dim view of the Latin practice. Well before October 11 it became known that Maximos IV intended to deliver a speech on the matter, and he would surely do so in his usual forthright and forceful style. Because of the pope's order, Maximos did not deliver his speech, but along with a covering letter he sent a copy of it to Paul on October 13 ..... What Happened at Vatican II, John O'Malley SJ, pp. 270-272

You can read what Maximos had written about celibacy to the pope here in chapter 8 of The Melkite Church at the Council, Discourses and Memoranda of Patriarch Maximos IV and of the Hierarchs of His Church at the Second Vatican Council: Introduction by Archimandrite Robert F. Taft ( link). Here's how it begins ...

Neither Scripture nor Tradition, especially the Tradition of the first centuries, considers celibacy as an indispensable condition for the priesthood, a condition sine qua non. The early text of the schema affirmed that “even among the first Apostles, a few were married.” The new text preferred to omit this mention, as if by omitting it we could change the truth of history. It is unnecessary to recall that Saint Peter and most of the Apostles and the first disciples were married. Those who today in the Eastern Church are likewise married deserve all our support ...

Welcome to Sarajevo

2011-11-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

This week's movie was from the library - Welcome to Sarajevo. The 1997 British film starred Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, and Goran Višnjić, and was based on the book Natasha's Story by Michael Nicholson. It's about a couple of reporters covering the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of whom takes a Bosnian child home with him.

I was interested in the subject given my past post about the Sarajevo Haggadah, and about the pope talking up the questionable saint Aloysius Stepinac on his trip to Croatia.

A trailer ...

And here's the beginning of a review of the movie from The New York Times ....

Dangers And Jitters Of Life in Sarajevo

Unlike more exotic and elliptical films that have tried to depict the chaos of war in the former Yugoslavia, such as ''Before the Rain'' and ''Underground,'' Michael Winterbottom's ''Welcome to Sarajevo'' tackles its subject head on. Set in 1992 and based on a memoir by an English journalist, Michael Nicholson, ''Welcome to Sarajevo'' plunges directly into pandemonium.

Peril and jitters are everywhere as Mr. Winterbottom presents a gonzo guided tour of life under fire. Yet this film, for all its apparent immediacy, winds up less affecting than a more poetic or roundabout approach might be.

In part, that happens because the film walks a thin line between flippancy and passion. War correspondents surely do the same as a way of hanging on to their sanity, but the film's apparent detachment is strong and cavalier enough to create a chill. So does its way of intermingling real images of wartime with patently manufactured ones, as when Marisa Tomei, very much the actress, turns up as a relief worker helping orphaned children. The near-documentary feeling of much of the film is undercut by such intrusively dramatic touches ....

The Dead Sea and the Sundarbans

2011-11-09T18:47:00.000-08:00

- the Dead Sea

Dina has a post about the Dead Sea and the Swiss-based New7Wonders of Nature poll. There are 28 finalists from which to choose and the voting ends on the 11th of this month. I visited the site and voted for the Dead Sea and six other places (you get seven votes), one of which I hadn't previously known about: the Sundarbans .....

the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world ... The forest lies in the vast delta on the Bay of Bengal formed by the super confluence of the Padma, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers across Saiyan southern Bangladesh. The seasonally-flooded Sundarbans freshwater swamp forests lie inland from the mangrove forests on the coastal fringe ... The Sundarbans provides a unique ecosystem and a rich wildlife habitat .... Fishing Cats, Macaques, wild boars, Common Grey Mongooses, Foxes, Jungle Cats, Flying Foxes, Pangolins, and spotted deer are also found in abundance in the Sundarbans ... The forest is also rich in bird life, with 170 species ... The endangered species that live within the Sundarbans are Royal Bengal Tigers, Estuarine Crocodile, River Terrapins (Batagur baska), Olive Ridley Turtles, Gangetic dolphin, Ground Turtles, Hawks Bill Turtles and King Crabs (Horse shoe) .....

Here are some of the creatures that live in the Sundarbans ....

- Mudskipper

- Oriental small-clawed otter

- Royal Bengal tiger

And this improbable little bird, the Blue-eared Kingfisher - they have read feet :) ....

Some stuff

2011-11-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

Read JD Crossan's latest post on The Search for the Historical Paul.

Listen to a talk by Keith Ward at the Virginia Theological Seminary

Neuroscientist David Eagleman talks about how we perceive time ....

JC Murray SJ and the victims of human trafficking

2011-11-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

Something strange is happening to the expression "religious freedom/liberty". It used to mean, believe it or not, that civil governments did not have an obligation to officially recognize the church and support it. Yep, there was a time when Pius IX actually said "The state must recognize [the Catholic Church] as supreme and submit to its influence. . . . The power of the state must be at its disposal and all who do not conform to its requirements must be compelled or punished. . . . Freedom of conscience and cult is madness." It was against this mindset that John Courtney Murray SJ worked, and for a long time he was very unpopular in the church because of that. Here's a bit from a 2008 article at US Catholic, Catholic dissent -- When wrong turns out to be right .....

Beginning in 1950 Father John Courtney Murray, a Jesuit theologian, argued that the old tradition must yield. In a series of articles in Theological Studies magazine and in public appearances, he contended that the state should not be the tool of the church and has no business carrying out the church's will. Rather, he said, the civil government's single yet profound obligation is to insure the freedom of all its citizens, especially their religious freedom.

"Every man has a right to religious freedom," he wrote, a right that is based on the dignity of the human person and is therefore to be formally recognized . . . and protected by constitutional law. . . . So great is this dignity that not even God can take it away." ......

The reaction was vehement and instantaneous. The two most influential U.S. Catholic theologians of the day, Fathers Joseph Fenton and Francis Connell, called Murray's argument "destructive, scandalous, and heretical" and engaged in lengthy, published refutations, especially in the American Ecclesiastical Review. Wrote Fenton, "The state is obligated to worship God according to the one religion [God] has established. This is so obviously a part of Catholic doctrine that no theologian has any excuse to call it into question." ...

Murray stuck to his guns and eventually he became a major drafter of the the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Human Freedom.

But how things have changed. I see everywhere the church complaining about a loss of religious freedom and liberty, but by this they don't mean what JC Murray and the Council meant, they mean instead the opposite - a loss of Catholic influence on civil society, the inability to force everyone else to follow Catholic teaching, and the latest instance is their losing of a government contract to serve victims of human trafficking. The church says they lost the contract because of anti-Catholicism, that their religious liberty is being stepped on, but I think that assertion is not only untrue but disingenuous.

Here's a bit from a post by Susan Brooks Thistletwaite, a minister and professor at the Chicago Theological Seminary. It's a very informative post, but long, so though it's worth reading in full, here's just part of the beginning of it ....

*********

What about the women? Sex trafficking victims need comprehensive health services

The main issue in dealing with those who have been subject to human trafficking, “a form of modern-day slavery” that often includes sexual exploitation, is what is in the best interest of the victims. All victims of trafficking clearly need health care services to recover. Women and girls who have been victimized by sex trafficking must be given comprehensive health services, and that includes reproductive services. But this is more than health care; it is the restoration of a woman or girl’s human dignity, the right to determine what will happen to her body and how in terms of reproduction.

Yet, in the recent controversy over the Department of Health and Human Service’s decision in late September to end funding to the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services, a program to help these victims of trafficking, the issue is framed as “Obama versus the Catholic Church,” and cast as an issue of religious liberty.

[...]

Women and girls victimized in this sex trafficking system need health care; that is beyond dispute. But what they also need is a restoration of respect for them as people capable of ethical decision-making where their bodies, minds, and spirits are concerned. Reproductive services, including contraception and legal abortion, are part of that restoration for them, to choose or not to choose as part of their journey toward wholeness.

There was “no reason given” by the Department of Health and Human Services for non-renewal of the grant to the Catholic agency, yet it has been interpreted through the written instructions by HSS to groups requesting grants through the Trafficking Victims Protection Act that “strong preference” will be given to organizations that offer referrals for the “full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care” to mean the Catholic group “could have been denied funding under those instructions because of the Church’s opposition to abortion and contraception.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit in 2009 against the contract, saying it was unconstitutional because the bishops would not refer pregnant sex-trafficking victims for abortions, applauded the Obama administration decision to deny the grant. Brigitte Amiri, an ACLU lawyer, told Bloomberg: “We applaud the federal government for recognizing that trafficking victims need reproductive-health series and making awards based on those needs. This has little to do with religion and everything to do with what the trafficking victims need.”

In September 2009, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the ACLU lawsuit is “without merit and an affront to religious liberty.”

Those seem to me to be the parameters of the debate. Is this an issue of “religious liberty,” or “what the trafficking victims need”?

Religious liberty is not the freedom to impose one’s religious views on others. We must ask, “when does religious liberty shift from the freedom to practice one’s faith to the imposition of that faith on a diverse public?” .........

*******

Starship Troopers

2011-11-07T18:45:00.000-08:00

Another book I've been reading from the library is Starship Troopers, a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, which won the Hugo Award in 1960. I read it once before when I was a teen and I remember feeling guilty because it was a pro-military and socially/politically conservative story and then, as now, I was a liberal peacenik :) but when I saw an audio version at the library, I thought I'd re-read it. Here's a bit about it from Wikipedia ...

The first-person narrative is about a young soldier from the Philippines named Juan "Johnnie" Rico and his exploits in the Mobile Infantry, a futuristic military unit equipped with powered armor. Rico's military career progresses from recruit to non-commissioned officer and finally to officer against the backdrop of an interstellar war between mankind and an arachnoid species known as "the Bugs". Through Rico's eyes, Heinlein examines moral and philosophical aspects of suffrage, civic virtue, the necessities of war and capital punishment, and the nature of juvenile delinquency .... The novel has attracted controversy and criticism for its social and political themes, which some critics claim promote fascism and militarism. Starship Troopers has been adapted into several films and games, with the most widely known being the 1997 film of the same name by Paul Verhoeven.

The book kind of reminds me of another science fiction novel, The Forever War, but it's very different too. The Forever War was written in 1974 by someone who'd served in the army during the Vietnam war and it's fairly anti-military, but Starship Troopers was written in 1959 by someone who's served in the navy during peacetime and it's fairly pro-military. As Wikipedia states, The Forever War has ... been considered to be a critical response to Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. There was lot of controversy inside and outside of the science fiction community about the militarism and possible fascism in the book - if interested, you can read more about that at the Wikipedia page.

Do I recommend the book? Well, it may be dated and agenda-driven, but if you like old science fiction or Heillein you might like this :)

Thucydides and 58 priests

2011-11-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

So Thucydides had the Athenians (the strong) say to the Melians (the weak) in his History of the Peloponnesian War.

I was reminded of this today when I saw a post at Bilgrimage mentioning Cardinal Bernard Law's 80th birthday party (in the news - Clerics live it up in Vatican for Law’s 80th).

A little about Law from Wikipedia ...

Cardinal Law became the first individual shown to have actively participated in the cover-up of child molestation. Despite substantial amounts of documentation that demonstrated his deep involvement with covering up the molestation of thousands of children, Law refused to step down as Archbishop of Boston. After he left Boston, there remained a significant number of undisclosed priests in the Boston area who confessed to molesting boys, and who continue to work as priests. Some have criticized Law for perpetuating this situation by declining to disclose the names of priests accused of sexual abuse during his tenure as Archbishop. The Archdiocese closed sixty-five parishes before Cardinal Law stepped down from service .... In May 2004, John Paul II appointed Law to a post in Rome, putting him in charge of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, with the title of Archpriest.

In reference to Law stepping down, I recently saw mention of a document signed by 58 priests that helped bring this to pass ....

58 Priests Ask Boston Cardinal to Step Down in Abuse Scandal

In a display of defiance, 58 priests from the Boston Archdiocese have sent a letter to Cardinal Bernard Law, demanding that he resign.

"While this is obviously a difficult request, we believe in our hearts that this is a necessary step that must be taken if healing is to come to the archdiocese," the letter stated. "The priests and people of Boston have lost confidence in you as their spiritual leader."

The three-paragraph letter was hand-delivered late Monday to Law's mansion in Brighton, where the nation's fourth-largest archdiocese has its headquarters. Law is in Rome, holding meetings at the Vatican about the clerical sexual abuse crisis roiling the church in Boston and around the country.

Archdiocese spokeswoman Donna M. Morrissey said Tuesday that she could not say whether Law had read the letter, but added that "a letter between brother priests and their bishop would be reviewed carefully."

Stephen Pope, chair of the theology department at Boston College, called the priests' letter "as close to rebellion as you can get."

"This is something they never do," he added. "Even for one priest to speak up against a bishop is unheard of, but to have so many."

[....]

The intensity of the nearly yearlong clerical abuse crisis escalated in Boston in the last week as a flood of once-confidential church documents described abuses by priests ranging from rape to drug use to fathering children with married women.

Files released late Monday contained a notation that one priest, Father William Scanlan, "fools around with kids." Scanlan was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in his parish in 1997, but no criminal charges were filed. He was most recently assigned to work in San Jose, but his current whereabouts are unknown.

Public outrage also mounted as financial advisors authorized the archdiocese to file for bankruptcy rather than settle close to 500 lawsuits brought by sexual abuse victims.

That development, combined with the other problems, prompted almost 10% of Boston's active-duty priests to take the bold step of calling for their cardinal to step down .....

So much angst and effort expended to get Law to step down and he goes on to a promotion in Rome. I don't understand how the Vatican and the pope don't get what this kind of thing says about the church. Maybe they do get it but they just don't care ... the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Trinity College Choir, Wake, O Wake!

2011-11-05T21:03:00.000-07:00

- The Wise and Foolish Virgins by Burne-Jones

I find the gospel reading for tomorrow, the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, kind of scary, but it has inspired a lot of art, and music too. Here below is the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, singing Wake, O Wake! (Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme) ...