Around St Blog's: September 2004 Archives

Windows into... something...

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So like I said, I like the image at Jordan's post. (she found it at a Creighton University website.) In the image, Joan is little, defenseless; her expression is frightened, but she does not shrink or cower. Her cheeks are red from the heat of the bonfire. And St Michael towers behind her, protecting her. He touches her lightly on the arms as he comforts her in the flames. His face, his posture, convey calmness and strength. In general, I like images with big strong angels. I don't care for images with girly angels.

So I like this image, but at the same time it has that distinctive "Bridge Building Images" look to it. Bridge Building has some nice images, including images of Saints and Blesseds that I wouldn't have expected them to carry, such as Blessed Jacinta and Francisco, San Pio di Petrelcina, and Ven. Solanus Casey.

But they also have pages and pages of images that just go off the top of the Catholic Light Nut Scale. Bridge Building loves to depict people whose causes have yet to be opened (Fr Mychal Judge) or whose causes are unlikely to be opened anytime soon. They really, really love doing up images in some kind of bobo-romantic Native American style (complete with a disclaimer.) And, of course, who could forget their nut-rageous Lord of the Dance (complete with their reference to the 1963 ditty "Lord of the Dance" as a "medieval English Carol")? Not even Fr. Sibley knew where to start on that one.

Prayers for Terri

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JMH at sotto sotto (which sports a very pretty template) blogs on Terri's predicament and how "gobsmacked" she (J) is at the utter lack (wilful?) of common sense shown by the courts and much of the media covering the case.

Jordan also has a post on Terri today, sharing her reflections on an image of St Michael the Archangel comforting St Joan of Arc:

The saint in the flames is Joan of Arc. I find it especially engaging when comparing it to Terri Schavo's situation. Terri's hands, as well as her loving parent's hands have been effectively chained by the courts. She is helpless. According to the "exit protocol" she will be kept warmer than she needs to (if they remove her feeding and hydration tubes again -- please God no!) in order to speed up dehydration. So she is literally in flames. Yet behind her stands St. Michael; holding her up against the evil and comforting her with God's own comfort.

Today is the feast of the Holy Archangels: Ss. Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael.

St Gabriel brought the news of the Word made Flesh. St Gabriel, please pray that our society be granted a renewed respect for the sanctity of human life and human sexuality.

St Raphael, please pray for Terri's healing -- and for the repentance and healing of those who are trying to kill her.

St Michael, please protect Terri and those who love her from the evil that seeks to destroy her. Protect us in battle!

A Rich Boyhood in the Plain Void

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No, not mine. It's Lileks's memoir.

One reason I get a special kick out of this essay is that my parents shop at the grocery store he mentions toward the end; the flowers for my wedding and for my sister's were from shops in that strip mall.

Thanks to Terry for this link.

The moooooooooooon

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Alicia has this neat widget on her blog -- a little picture of the moon's current phase. (At this writing it is waxing gibbous.)

I thought of it last night. We were out running errands and it was getting dark. Hambet usually isn't out that late, and when he caught sight of the moon he grew very excited: "Look! It's the moooooooon!"

So all that evening we were watching the moooooooon. He was quite delighted when he saw that it was following us, so we talked about that and about how the moooon is very far away. He wanted to know what the moooon is made of -- I told him "rocks" and Daddy told him "cheese." Hambet admonished him: "No, Daddy, the moon is made of ROCKS." He grew very upset when we turned north and he couldn't see the moon any more -- "I have to look at the moon! Where is the moon?! I have to look at the moon!" -- and was just as delighted when we turned south again and he could see it out the window. When we got back home he hopped out of the car and ran out into the driveway so he could stand, stock still, his little face pointed at the sky so he could gaze at the moooooon a little longer.

And it had been a while since I'd taken a good look at the mooooon. How crisp and sharp and chalky-white she looked! Even the horrible light pollution couldn't totally obscure the outlines and shadows of her craters.

And I found myself remembering some lines of a poem -- by Sylvia Plath, of all people. I'm not big on Sylvia, but a few lines from this particular poem had stuck with me, and they came back as I looked up:

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

"Her hood of bone." I just like that metaphor. The rest of the poem ("Edge") doesn't interest me too much -- I don't have much patience for obscure and morbid -- but it's posted in the Extended Entry if you want to read it.

More partying at the Summas'

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It's the Summa Mama's first bloggiversary! Congratulations!

And dear Mr Luse was the one who tipped their odometer over by making comment #2000. I bet he is just going to be impossible to live with now.

Happy Birthday to...

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In Case You Didn't See

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On Dinka's daughter Veronika's page, there is a particulalry sinister looking picture if you scroll all the way down of Veronika and Gorbulas.

So, like, Mark Shea has like all the coolest links today! He has this, y'know, link to this TOTALLY TUBULAR URL that will translate your site into, like, Valley Girl! It sounded, like, so AWESOME! So I totally had to try it out.

Anyway, I thought it was like SO FUNNY because I was like just blogging about the early '80's, you know? when I was like thirteen? and that was so when the Valley Girls were in and we would, like, call our friends up and all plan to wear the same color LEG WARMERS to school? And we would all go to the computer lab and program those totally primitive computers in BASIC, I think they were, like, called Apple 400s or something like that. And the rich smart kids with rich smart parents had Apple IIes at home. So, like, between thinking about the early 80s and seeing this site, you know, it totally brought me back. And now I'm realizing that that was twenty years ago, and I am feeling like SO OLD. Bummer.

So, anyway, I was also just thinking that the Valley Girls are like in California and even though I'm not really sure that like Sacramento is, y'know, like in the Valley, 'cause I'm not sure of like the geography and stuff, and I think it's like in the middle of the state but anyway, wouldn't it be like SO FUNNY if like Jeff Culbreath really talked like this? And like, all that proper stuff on his blog, and all that grammar stuff, like it was all an act? Well, like, not really an act, because he really wrote it, but like if you got on the phone, and like called him, this was how he talked?

But anyway if I wanted to really talk Valley I would have to say something like oh-m' gawd! but I hate like even pretending to type that because I would feel like, scrupulous to the max and I would just feel so bummed about getting into that habit because it is like so grody.

Oh, and, like, one of Mark's commenters has this thing called like the "splendidiser" which like translates your site into this terribly boffo English slang with all these fabulously overused little nuggets of shriekworthy hyperbole. Do run our site throught the Splendidiser -- I particularly like the transformation of the sidecolumn, and how it brought us "the shriekworthy Mighty Barrister" and "St. Marvellous! I say, Josemaria Escriva."

Mark Shea links to this Winfield Myers take on some Garrison Keillor thing. Myers has a nice discussion of Keillor's misquotation of Dante (first put out there by man of letters John F. Kennedy; I particularly liked Myers's line about the "Potemkin Camelot.")

But here's what I want to know:

Keillor lampoons the right as the home of “hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.”

I guess I would be counted among those on "the right;" which one of those am I? I don't doubt the authenticity of the moon landings; I don't drive a Lamborghini; I don't have a hairy back (no matter what Robert might imply). I don't play golf; my husband does, but he's hardly a nihilist. I'm not a tax cheat (though we must be rich, since we got a tax refund.) I would certainly not qualify as one of Newt's "evil spawn", since I first signed on to the vast right-wing conspiracy in (gasp!) 1984.

I guess in Keillor's taxonomy, I'm a fundamentalist bully with a Bible (though "real" fundamentalists would beg to differ.) Maybe I'm an "aggressive dork" (though "contentious geek" might be more on the mark.) I wonder how he would classify the guileless pro-life manicurist I met in Fargo last summer? Keillor's gentle-rhubarb-eating-son-of-Minnesota pose is wearing a little thin with me.

Baby Pictures!

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The bennies of blogdom

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One of the nice things about corresponding with gentlemen bloggers is that when they quote you, they not only say nice things about you but they edit what you wrote into something that makes sense.

"I wonder just how much resources we are putting toward our schools, if we're having to charge such - for many families - out-of-reach tuition (it's no accident, I suspect, that enrollments are declining as tuition increases)."

Perhaps I should clip this and send it to our new parish school, which just opened this fall. There are still openings. Tuition is $6000 a year. (plus "fees", uniforms, etc) No parish discount; same fee for everyone. I think you get $200 off if you have more than one child enrolled.

Confiteor

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Steven Riddle on the love of reading: If I am such an inveterate reader, why do I not read scripture with the avidity with which I approach Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, and others?

I need to ask myself the same question. This past week, I found out that there's a prequel out to a science fiction series that I've enjoyed off and on for years. I read the first book probably around 1982 or 83 (holy cow, this book's been with me for twenty years) and have read it and its sequels through, or at least in snatches, many, many, many times since then. I can recite big chunks of the plot, discuss the characters and their motivation and why I'm glad so-and-so did something. I know the names, the backstory, the fangirl trivia. And all this without any serious study (nothing on the level of the Trekkers, for instance. And no, I've never made a costume.)

So when I found out there was this prequel out, I got really excited. I looked it up online, read the reviews, reserved it at the library, and made a special trip to pick it up. I read it in two days (it's a short book.) I even reserved the original book so I could go back and review my favorite parts, and started scheming to retrieve my old copy from my parents' house.

All this for a novel -- a very entertaining novel, but one that is basically a soap opera with spacecraft and a smattering of allusion (and a pressing need for a stern editor.)

So I can remember the seven planets named in the series. Big deal! So I can remember what Frank Churchill claimed to have borrowed from Miss Bates when Emma and Harriet meet him on the lane, and that Anne Shirley's new dress was brown and had puffed sleeves, and that there is a bust of Queen Victoria at Mole End. How many Psalms do I have committed to memory? Do I know the significance of the different towns and cities mentioned in the New Testament? Can I name all the people who were standing at the foot of the Cross? (Answers: none, no, and only some.)

The reason I remember these weird details from novels is that I've read them with delight over and over again (for the same reason that my little boy has several books committed to memory.) Why don't I read the Bible with the same attention and frequency?

May my Guardian Angel ever remind me to keep my priorities straight when I go to my bookshelf.

Last night over supper, my husband remarked that the secular papers had picked up on something Cardinal Ratzinger had written that apparently said it was okay for Catholics to vote for pro-choice candidates -- for example, this article from the WaPo: (registration)

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's arbiter of doctrinal orthodoxy, has given Roman Catholic voters leeway under certain circumstances to vote for politicians who support abortion rights, U.S. Catholic officials said yesterday.

I hadn't seen it; I generally only consult the Washington Post to find out what Rex and June are up to. Now that I've read the article, it seems to need a touch of something.... perhaps a dash of fisking? (For starters -- "U.S. Catholic officials"? "Officials"? Is the word he's groping for perhaps... bishops, or perhaps their spokesmen?)

But I'll leave that to someone with more talent, or someone who at least has her dinner menu under control. As hubby and I talked, I had a vague recollection that something the Cardinal had written a little while ago had been seized upon by the dissenters so beloved of the papers, spun like crazy, and was probably trickling down in that spun form to the Post. So we got into talking about "proportionate reasons", and what could possibly be as proportionate as abortion (My suggestion: "What if someone ran who was pro-life, and anti-human cloning, and had the right position on stem cells, but was running on some kind of pro-concentration camp platform?")

My husband was still stuck on why in the world the Cardinal would write such a thing, given the political climate and our poor reporting in this country and dismal catechesis. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps the Cardinal just didn't realize how this would further scandalize many weak Catholics in the US.

It really bothered my husband, in that he has had the impression for a while that to some members of the hierarchy, abortion just isn't really a big deal. They would pay lip service to the sinfulness of abortion, but in practice, treated pro-life concerns as just something to wedge in the schedule between shaking hands with the Youth Baseball League and the charity dinner. Something like the recent Voters' Guide released by the bishops' conference, in which abortion is buried in the middle of a whole list of legislative concerns. Yes, health care is important, but the debate on how to make sure people have access to health care is a matter for prudential judgement -- it's not something on the same level as the legal murder of children in the womb.

So dear husband told me, you know, you and the other bloggers really should get on this and you know, it has taken me almost twenty-four hours to recover from my shock that my husband had actually instructed me to blog!

At the same time, I didn't feel up to the task, because I haven't been blogging or following blogs as much lately, and I had this vague sense that someone smarter than me would probably have already covered this.

Well, I am delighted to report that somebody has, in great detail: Mr Jimmy Akin, on
What Ratzinger Said.

For starters, this carefully worded document wasn't intended for a general audience. It was addressed in confidence to Cardinal McCarrick, and was leaked. I wonder by whom?

Labor Day

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Funny how on Labor Day everyone has the day off except a set of people who could really use a day off: retail workers.

I think it's important to remember where we came from (and where we might end up again if we're not attentive.) My husband is from Pittsburgh and Andrew Carnegie's prints are all over that city -- the libraries, the university -- and all that philanthropy was built on the backs of the men who toiled in the steel mills, day and night, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. They never had enough time to go to the library.

Karen Marie has posted some good Labor Day reading, including this excerpt from Rerum Novarum:

45. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.

Isn't depriving the worker of his just wages one of the sins that cries out to heaven for justice?

I got to meet Baby PiusThomas!

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and boy is he a cutie! Mama looks great, and it is so lovely to see how gentle Davey is with his little brother.

Papa Honk promises to try to get some pictures up soon.

Best wishes for a happy babymoon and for lots and lots of SLEEP.

Index Verborum Prohibitorum

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