New Blog

I've got a new blog. I have really enjoyed blogging, but I want to go beyond the scope of a Catholic blog. The Church is incredibly important to me, but I want to be accessible to a wider audience.

My new blog is http://this-liberal.blogspot.com. There is an explanation of the name on the new blog. Enjoy.

On Fasting (on Feasts)

I was in a group last night discussing appropriate eating behavior on solemnities of the Church. I was recalling how in times past I would eat gloriously on solemnities. Such behavior certainly accented the importance of the day in a physical sense. I could feel the celebration.

Whimsey tendered the observation that it may even be our canonical duty to eat thus on the Church's feasts. I pointed out the behavior of the early Caphuchin Franciscans, who in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would fast on Our Lady's feast days. Dialogue ensued which would have prevented the enjoyment of an evening out with friends, and I offered to blog about the issue as a way of postponing the conversation. (I'm such a nice guy.)

I will say this, which is often what I say to my pacifist friends: the only rule in the Church is love. No action or lack of an action is prohibited in and of itself by the Church. It is always the motivation for an action that is condemned. This has direct bearing on St. Paul's caution in 1 Corinthians regarding meat sacrificed to idols. It is not our action that is condemned or not, but our motivation.

The Capuchins had a track-record of extreme penance and I think many of their actions were appropriate responses to a Christian culture that had grown lax. It is the spirit of St. Francis to go to extremes in penance for the purpose of public edification. For them, this was an action of love that couldn't help but redound to the edification of their neighbors. There is a story in which a cardinal was going to the house of the Capuchins on December 8th to notify them that they were to disband. The friars had fallen out of favor with local ecclesiastical officials. When the cardinal arrived at their house, they were on their knees around the table eating bread. The cardinal promptly went home, without notifying them of anything.

So what bearing does this have on us now? I think part of the great mystery of the Church is the process of discernment at each moment. We can accept guidance with a clear conscience. But mature faith demands that we discern the motivations for our actions. We can feast and sin, or we can fast and sin. We should not let our responses to the Church's feasts be merely dictated by convention. Why are we doing it? We can join the company of Epicurus or the company of Bishop Jansen. Our goal is to be in the company of Jesus.

I think it is appropriate, and normal, to mark the solemnities of the Church with bodacious meals. Make reparation for Jansenism with a second piece of cheesecake. But do it with gusto, and do it because you love Jesus. And if you choose to love Jesus in another way, don't bitch at me while I'm enjoying my cheesecake.

Everybody's Foxy Sometimes

Whimsey's post last week on Norma Rae reminded me of how foxy Sally Fields was in Norma Rae. It got me thinking about beauty and perception, and about how everybody is foxy sometimes.

I remember having a conversation with a friend once about a mutual acquaintance. I was of the opinion that she was beautiful, while he made the point of saying, "Yeah, but she's not a knockout or anything." I thought about it, and in a way, he was right. She wasn't going to set a thousand ships asail or anything. But I felt like there was a disconnect in our ideas of what beautiful was.

I have often found myself able to find beauty in just about any person that I meet. Does that degrade the idea of beauty? Maybe. It's not that everyone is equally attractive. I think that there are objective measures of beauty, and that some women (and men) are beautiful in an objective sense.

I don't really know where this is going. Maybe I just wanted to point out what a fox Sally Fields was in Norma Rae.

Books I Would Like to Write

I Was Raised by a Barbarian Warrior: A Memoir

Right Into the Sh*tter: The Course of Culture in the United States

Seven Storeys, and I'm Just Coming Out of the Basement

Orthodoxy, Renewal, and the 21st-Century Church

On Race and Culture

There was a great section in Father Neuhaus's Public Square this month on the state of racism in America. Here is a link to his commentary:

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0609/public.html#3

It's a review of a book called White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement (HarperCollins). I find this issue terribly fascinating. I was just telling someone the other day, with some embarrassment, that The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of my favorite books. The embarrassment was due to my awareness that this is a very strange book for a thirty-year old white guy to list as one of his favorites.

The thing about the book is that it is the only book that I have ever read that has something intelligent to say about inter-race relationships in the United States. Thematically, I think Mr. X's most important point is that it's not about holding hands and passing laws and holding press conferences. It's about what you really think, deep in your heart, when no one is looking. And Mr. X knows that more often than not, we are lying about what we really feel. The book just screams, "Tell me what you really think!"

People tend to lie about what is really going on in their heart. It is often part of our human broken-ness that just wants to focus on the superficial and hide the truth. When you are focused on the guilt you are feeling about a certain prejudice or inclination, the temptation is just to deny that it is there. Then it can never really change. And that is what pissed Malcolm X off to no end.
Malcolm X wanted a separate state for blacks. No one has seriously considered this idea for a long time; maybe since Mr. X. I'm not proposing that as a good idea, but I can understand where he was coming from. He just didn't trust us. I can't say that I blame him.

Ending racism is not the work of bureaucracy. It is the work of individuals and it has to take place in the heart, in that secret place where no one else can see. And it begins with honesty. And there isn't much of that going around these days.

NPR Drives Me Crazy

You know, it's a good thing we have National Public Radio. It's really a great forum for the nation's views. And since it's a public institution, we can always rely on their impartiality and fairness.

Lately, NPR has had me pulling my hair out. Well, only for short periods of time. Relly just until I change the station. I basically look at NPR as a running paid political announcement for the Democratic Party. It's a paid political announcement because we are all paying for it with our tax dollars. Even the news on the half-hour is so politically charged that I can barely make it through sometimes.

My remedy for NPR's political asymetry has been to withdraw my attention as much as possible. As with so many other segments of society (especially here in MA), there is no capacity for conversation. The mere suggestion that certain groups are biased unleashes such a wave of indignation that they are rendered incapable of rationale discourse. The only viable action is to wipe your hands and try to talk to coherent people instead.

My expectation is that they will continue on the path of political and cultural short-sightedness and eventually fall into the ditch of irrelevance. So passes National Public Radio, the unfortunate child of media universalism.

God as Logos, Allah as Will

An excellent interview on Zenit with Father James Schall, a Jesuit from Georgetown. The topic highlights the fundamental underlying theme that the Pope was adressing in his Regensburg address. The interview can be found here:

http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=95902

Something that fascinates me is that modernism and "radical" Islam have this in common, that they both reject reason. I know it's a children's book and all, but I am brought back to The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis, where Islam and modernism (under fictional guises) unite against the Truth at the End. As strange as it may seem, I think that there is a thread there to be followed concerning the relationship between men like Usama bin Laden and men like Bill Clinton.

From The Path to Rome

This is a reflection from Belloc's aforementioned book. He is musing on the reasons why it is so congenial for a man to attend Mass daily. This is his fourth reason:

And the most important cause of this feeling of satisfaction is that you are doing what the human race has done for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. This is a matter of such moment that I am astonished people hear of it so little. Whatever is buried right into our blood from immemorial habit that we must be certain to do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown man or woman can really be very happy for long−−but I mean reasonably happy), and, what is more important, decent and secure of our souls. Thus one should from time to time hunt animals, or at the very least shoot at a mark; one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one's food−−and especially deeply upon great feast−days; one should go on the water from time to time; and one should dance on occasions; and one should sing in chorus. For all these things man has done since God put him into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with a soul. Similarly some teacher or ranter or other, whose name I forget, said lately one very wise thing at least, which was that every man should do a little work with his hands.

I concur entirely.