19 August 2009

Mocking the Obama-icon

This vid drew my attention as a literary theorist.

One staple of literary criticism is the process of digging out the symbols, signs, icons, and idols of an author/text and subjecting them to "a reading." In my time in grad school, the favored kinds of readings to do were Marxist, feminist, and deconstructive--all of these offered (and still do) perfectly legit methods of getting at an interpretation of a text. No one method is fool-proof or absolute (the $5 academic word is "totalizing"). We were encouraged and sometimes even required to mix it up a bit and produce Marxist-feminist, or feminist-deconstructive, etc. readings that revealed all sorts of literary goodness in the text, or rather, revealed the reader's meta-narrative assumptions about how literary texts are produced and consumed (ahem).

Anyway, this vid does an excellent job of deconstructing the (in)famous Obama-icon we see popping up on all sorts of government propaganda. The critic here makes a simple point: at no other time in American history have we seen a President of the U.S. "branded" in the way that Obama is being branded. He notes that the Obama-icon has replaced the presidential seal in many venues and has even been displayed overlaid on the presidential seal to suggest the dissolution of the presidency and the ascendenacy of The One.

This would be scary if Americans were not so marketing-savvy. We get it. Political icons only work if they manage to sublimate themselves as signs; that is, if they become part of the semiotic landscape, disappearing so as to stand up for something more substantial. Political icons as brand labels fail precisely because they mark out an impermanent personality, a changeable, compromising agenda, and the political ambitions of a narcissist.

The American flag, the presidential seal, the blind-folded statue of justice, "We the People. . ." all stand for enduring principles and ideals. The Obama-icon stands for nothing more than the political ambitions of a Chicago bureaucrat who happens to occupy the White House for a time. Obama is not America. Neither was Bush, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter, or any of the others. All of these men served a larger agenda, a bigger principle. The Obama-icon and its attached ideology makes one wonder if The One serves the same ideals.

The critic in this vid correctly predicts that the Obama-icon will backfire on The One. Perpetual campaign mode is no way to run a country. Already the "O" icon is being lampooned. And the one thing a serious narcissist* cannot tolerate is ridicule.

*There's nothing special about Obama's narcissism. Anyone entering politics has to be something of a narcissist.

The red-herrings of the LCWR

Meeting recently in New Orleans, the LCWR issued a statement on the upcoming theological assessment by the CDF. Among the predictable "pearl clutching" exclamations of indignation are two charges against the Vatican's probe that are meant to serve as red herrings. Both these charges are made under the general charge of "lack of transparency":

1). Why can't we see the report itself?

2). Who's paying for this investigation?

The first charge sets up an ominous specter of secretive Vatican-doings. You can almost hear the dark, foreboding music in the background as the sisters furrow their collective brow. The second charge plants the idea that the investigation is being bankrolled by some nefarious right-wing group, implying that the investigation would not be taking place if this group had not paid the Vatican to do it.

Why are these charges red-herrings? How do they attempt to distract readers? The LCWR is either teaching with the Catholic Church, or it isn't. They are either leading their associated nuns and sisters in the apostolic faith, or they aren't. The investigation is set to determine whether or not these women religious--vowed to serve the Church--are, in fact, serving the Church honestly or using their vast resources and influence to undermine the Catholic faith. Having access to the reports will not change nearly forty-years of public statements supporting women's ordination, same-sex marriage, feminist political ideology, etc. Knowing who (if anyone) is paying for the investigation will not change these public statements either. Basically, these charges by the LCWR are analogous to a reckless driver charging the police officer who stops him with reckless driving himself. How else did you catch me, Officer? You must have been speeding too! The officer's speeding in no way mitigates the recklessness of the indignate driver.

Here's what the LCWR is really afraid of:

From the Instrumentum Laboris (this is not the CDF document but the working instrument for the assessment of the quality of life for the sisters, a separate investigation: "If any sister wishes to express her opinion about some aspect of her religious institute, she may do so freely and briefly, in writing and with signature, specifically identifying her institute by title and location. In order to respect each sister’s freedom of conscience, any sister may send her written comments directly and confidentially to Mother Mary Clare Millea at the Apostolic Visitation Office (PO Box 4328, Hamden, CT, 06514); or by fax: (203-287-5467) by November 1, 2009."

Why is this scary? The LCWR knows what many of us know about the "sisters in the convents." They do not support the neo-pagan/eco-feminist agenda of their leadership conference, but often find themselves intimidated into silence. By allowing individual sisters to write to Mother Clare (the lead investigator for this assessment), the Vatican is encouraging sisters to express themselves outside the tightly controlled, ideologically pure agenda of the LCWR. In other words, this move undermines the power of the LCWR to manage the message. The last thing the leadership of any self-proclaimed revolutionary movement wants is public criticism from those they claim to represent. How often do "people's revolutions" end up in the hands of elitist demagogues?

My own experience with nuns and sisters with regard to both assessments is telling. I've yet to run across a "sister in the convent" who understands the reasons for these assessments. When I describe the stated reasons, they are often shocked and saddened to hear what the LCWR has been spewing against the Church in their name. All they hear about the assessments comes from the LCWR.

It it vitally important for Catholics to understand that the CDF's theological assessement of the LCWR is NOT an investigation into the theological opinions of individual sisters or congregations. The leadership conference itself is being assessed; that is, the focus of the assessement is on the public statements of conference speakers, conference resolutions, and projects funded by the conference to determine whether or not these adhere to basic Church teaching. In its forty-year history, the LCWR has publicly supported women's ordination; overturning the Church's teaching on same-sex morality; and seriously questioned the unique and final role of Christ in salvation history (i.e., Christ may not be the only way to God, leading some to hold that other religions can lead to salvation on their own terms). These three areas of dissent have been marked for special attention by the CDF.

This bears repeating: any negative conclusion made by the CDF with regard to its investigation accures to the LCWR itself. . .NOT to individual sisters or congregations; meaning, if the CDF concludes that the LCWR has been deficient in teaching the Catholic faith, this should not be understood as a condemnation of any one sister or congregation. Investigations into the work of individual theologians is an entirely different process that sometimes takes up to ten years or more.

I am being so adamant about this distinction b/c I fear that faithful Catholics may conclude that a negative evaluation of the LCWR by the CDF means that all (or even most) American religious women are involved in dissident activity. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am confident that the overwhelming majority of our sisters are doing exactly what they vowed to do: serve the Church. The "non serviam" that the LCWR often proclaims to the Church should not be extended to most sisters.

Please offer prayers and fasts for the LCWR, the CDF, Mother Clare, and especially for the innocent sisters and nuns who are being subjected to this investigation through no fault of their own. Also, encourage individual sisters to write to Mother Clare and express themselves freely.

H/T: Ignatius Insight

18 August 2009

Sample pages of my prayer book

WooHoo!!!

Liguori Publications has sample pages of my prayer book up for view.

Go here and then buy one!


By the way, all royalties from the sell of this book go to my province.

(Please link to the sample pages if you have a blog)

The joker behind the Joker

You really gotta love how politics produces the best ironies in the world!

Remember that Obama-Joker poster that popped up in L.A. with "socialism" as a caption?

Remember how the NYT, CNN, WaPo, LAT, and just about every other Old Media parrot machine assured us that whoever created the poster was obviously an angry, white, Republican racist?

Remember how the above mentioned parrots squawked about how denying the blatant racism of the poster is itself a form of racism?

Remember how you reacted when you discovered that the poster's creator is a left-liberal Palestinian-American Democrat?

I do! I laughed. Hard.

17 August 2009

Caffeine Quotes

"Liberalism that is not anchored in natural law, that has no framework of values by which to identify the true and the good -- a liberalism at the mercy of relativism -- is bound to become illiberal." And illiberality always serves those with the most money and guns.

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Speaking of illiberal irrationality. . . "If you kill an unborn child, the legal response depends upon the mother's perspective. If she wanted to bear the child, then you're a killer, liable to criminal prosecution. If she didn't want to bear the child, and you're properly licensed to do the killing, then you're engaged in a legitimate form of commerce, and deserve proper payment."

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A chilling wind blows from the north. . . "As President Obama and his Democrat-controlled Congress try to force healthcare reform on an American population largely pleased with the current system, our neighbors to the north are actually considering improving their structure by -- wait for it!!! -- welcoming additional competition from private insurers."

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Compassion in the service of a lie is not compassionate: "To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, 'rejoices in the truth' (1 Cor 13:6)." (Pope Benedict XVI)

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"It's 'debate' now, not 'conversation,' because the wrong people are doing the talking. The real conversation is what those people who aren't talking would say." In the Church, progressives call conversation "dialogue." This is code for "keep them talking while we make the changes we want to make so that when we're done we can claim that our unwarranted changes are now the status quo." Cf. the Episcopal Church, Spirits of VC2, ad nau.

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"For whatever reason, the Obama administration has acted as if those hagiographical comparisons to FDR were apt. It let its liberal allies from the coasts drive the agenda and write the key bills, and it's played straw man semantic games to marginalize the opposition [. . .] write bills that excite the left, infuriate the right, and scare the center; insist on speedy passage through the Congress; and use budget reconciliation to ram it through in case the expected super majority did not emerge. This might have flown during FDR's 100 Days. But this is not 1933 and Barack Obama is no Franklin Roosevelt." Hey, Rahm! Where'd you put my mandate?!

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"'We believe that there are important differences among the college majors in world views and overall philosophies of life....,' they write. '[O]ur results suggest that postmodernism, rather than science, is the bĂȘte noir -- the strongest antagonist -- of religiosity.'" Told ya.

Young Catholics are really Protestants

NCReporter has an article up on a recent survey of younger Catholics and their attitudes about the Church. It's a sad story.

Here's the saddest part:

While a "sizeable minority" of young Catholics, estimated at about 20 percent, are deeply religious, attending Mass and confession regularly and thinking of themselves as "orthodox," most are less rigid in their observance ["rigid" is NCR-speak for what the Church calls "faithful"]. "As long as they believe in God, Jesus' Incarnation and Resurrection, and Mary as the Mother of God and as long as they do whatever they can to love their neighbor, they do not feel obliged to attend Mass every week, go to Confession every year or even marry in the church," according to American Catholics.

So, in other words, a majority of young Catholics in this survey have identified themselves as Protestants. . .with a little Marian stuff thrown in for flavor. Following the Protestant pattern of mimicking the zeitgeist of the dominant culture, these folks also have a decidedly consumerist philosophy about where they attend Mass (when they do) and what they choose to believe (if anything).

Since the whole goal of the "Spirit of Vatican Two" cadre is the Americanization and Protestantization of the Roman Catholic Church, the NCR crew is crowing about this. Lots of work to to. . .lots of work!

Of Mice and Friars. . .

I wrote to a friend recently, "So goes the plans of mice and friars. . ."

Sometimes the itinerant life of a friar is exciting. Lots of travel (naturally), new places and faces, new challenges.

And sometimes all that excitement, travel, etc. is just headache-worthy.

My fall plans have changed a bit. I will be leaving Irving this Thursday to drive to MS for a visit with the parents. Then I am off to live in Houston until time to return to Rome on October 3rd.

Why the delay in returning to the Eternal City? Along with my thesis director and the dean, I've decided to move my comps and thesis defense to Jan 2010. I'm not so worried about completing the thesis or passing the comps. It's the French translation exam that's worrying me. If I failed the exam, I wouldn't graduate in time to teach this fall. This would leave the department a prof short and the class I was scheduled to teach untaught. Since the undergrad program is based on a progression of courses, the spring courses based on this untaught fall course would be hampered. The students would be left without a key step in their program.

So, I'll finish in Jan 2010 and start up my Roman teaching career then!

P.S. The shipping address for the WISH LIST has been changed to reflect this movement of the Spirit! And recently updated. . . :-)


16 August 2009

Moving around at Mass

Every time I teach Western Theological Tradition at U.D., I am newly impressed with the Catholic tradition of sacramental theology. Where else can you find a solid understanding of how rational creatures can worship their Creator without becoming either materialist-pagans or Platonic spiritualists?

Most Catholics intuitively "get" the use of material things in worship--bread, wine, candles, incense, color, music, etc. What is often not so well understood is the use of gesture and movement--sign of the cross, standing/kneeling, processing, etc.

We've all heard the jokes about "Catholic calisthenics." Up, down, kneel, sit, stand, cross, up, down. Why do we spend so much time moving around? On a recent visit to my parents' community church, I was struck by the fact that we stood at the beginning to sing a hymn and then sat for the rest of the service. The only movement was reaching for the hymnal. They passed a communion tray and a collection plate; other than this simple, utilitarian movement, we sat right where we were for the whole hour. Do I need to contrast this with the typical Catholic Mass? I don't think so.

Why do we move around so much? There are lots of good liturgical reasons for doing so. And there are lots of anthropological reasons as well. But I think the most important reasons are deeply personal--not "personal" as in "me and mine" but personal as in "for the person."

Each of us is a Body/Soul together in an intimate relationship that we call personhood--the state of being a person, whole and entire, created in the image and likeness of God. For the Christian, the goal in this life is to be justified before God through the saving merits of Christ's sacrificial death and then grow in holiness by doing His work with the help of His grace. We are justified by faith and sanctified in works. Both our initial justification and our subsequent sanctification happens because we receive the graces He offers to us.

So, how do we receive grace? Typically, we think of "receiving grace" as little more than having grace given to us. But this only part of the story. God can give us grace all day long. We never have to receive it. His grace is not truly graceful until we take it in as a gift.; that is, His grace only becomes effective for us when we say yes to Him. If we understand grace to be a spiritual energy boost, then we may find ourselves verging toward the Platonic side of the faith and coming to believe that we are only valuable as persons in so far as we are souls. This threatens to ignore the body. When we ignore the body's job in perfecting us as persons, we ignore a basic tenet of the faith, namely, our responsibility to be living signs of Christ for others.

Moving around during the Mass reminds us that we are embodied souls seduced by a loving God to return to Him. The journey of return (the reditus) is graced by God and made by each of us as whole persons. . .not merely as souls on a trip to heaven or as bodies working toward earthly perfection. Liturgical gesture, posture, movement is meant to keep us "in the body" even as we soak up the soulful benefits of the Eucharist.

I've argued in class that our current secular obsession with gym bodies, health food, vitamins, etc. is a postmodern form of the Albigensian heresy St Dominic fought against. While the Albigensians held that the body is evil and the soul good, postmodern Albigensians reverse this and hold that only the body matters. If the soul comes into play at all, it is relegated to a subordinate role as a kind of "peace of mind" or "inner relaxation." What's important is that I feel good; meaning, my body is healthy as an organic machine. Though physical health is vital to the person, spiritual health is not achieved through diet and exercise. Spiritual health requires recognizing and striving for a transcendent purpose, a goal well-beyond the impermanent things of the material world.

Ideally, for Christians, we do not seek a balance of body and soul. We seek a total intergration in the holy person. "Balance" implies a shared purpose, a separate but equal goal of each half of Me. Not so. During the Mass, we pray silently while kneeling. We process up for communion while singing. The priest prays with hands raised; he bows during his private prayer; he blesses with words and the sign of the cross. Each physical act is done with spiritual intent, purpose. There are no "halves" to unite. No parts to bring together.

Imagine for a moment a Mass where there is no gesture. No movement. Everyone remains absolutely still and the Mass is read out loud. Or. . .imagine a Mass with no words, only gesture and movement. What would we think upon exiting the Church after Masses like these? I imagine we would think that we not been to Mass at all, that we have been sorely cheated of what we need as persons to grow in holiness!

15 August 2009

Simple Profession


Please pray for our brothers making simple profession this morning in Irving!
Friars Peter Damian Marie Harris, Tan Leo-Hyacinth Do, Joseph Dominic Velazquez,
and Joseph Marie Dussouy

CONGRATS!

On hooligans and cookies

Had a great time last night with MightyMom, Subvet, and the Hooligans--who were not all THAT hooliganish. . .exceedingly cute but not too hooliganish! I am still going to argue that two year olds are capable of absorbing sufficient nutrition through the skin while eating. That's the only explanation for why the Littlest Hooligan is still alive and thriving.

BTW, Subvet, just to let you know. . .most of the cookies made it back to the priory. . .most, well, OK. . .half. :-)



14 August 2009

What happens after we die?

Heather Barrett, OP attended the Lay Dominican retreat last Saturday. She writes to ask: "One question has occurred to me. One thing mentioned at the retreat is that human persons are body and soul, integrated. Which I understand. But it makes me wonder what happens to us when we die and the body and soul separate. Who are we when in that state of separation? Are we still 'ourselves'?"

My attempt at an answer. . .

Human persons are body/soul. The best way to understand "person" is "substantial relationship," that is, a relationship that defines a substance (what a thing is). Without This Body, I am not Philip. Without This Soul, I am not Philip. And unless This Body and This Soul are in a substantial relationship, I am not a person.

We define death as the separation of the soul from the body. The soul is immortal. The body is not. At death, I will cease to be a person. I will cease being Philip. According to Catholic teaching, Benedictus Deus, my soul will be immediately judged and accordingly disposed--heaven, hell, purgatory.

Now things get murky. What about the body that was once in substantial relationship with my soul, making me Philip? Well, that body undergoes the natural process of decomposition. And awaits its resurrection.

If we understand the resurrection of the body as a future historical event, something will happen that will transform that body into a suitable element for a renewal of the substantial relationship with my soul, and I will once again be a person. If we understand the resurrection of the body to be an event that is always, already occurring from all-eternity, then something else happens to the body, and I am me wherever I find myself "after" death.

Here's the problem: we tend to think of the resurrection of the body in terms of future conditionals b/c we are embodied souls while still living, meaning as physical beings we experience the world as a continuous sequence of events located in space and measured in duration by time. However, at death, we are no longer embodied souls, so we do not experience space-time at all. This could mean that what we call the resurrection of body is an immediate consequence of death.

But my body is still physically present in the grave. So, what does it mean to say that my body is resurrected at the moment of death? I have no idea. The Church points to Christ's transfiguration as his promise of what happens to us at death. It is entirely unclear to me what transfiguration means for us.

We talk about a future resurrection of the body b/c it makes the most sense to us as embodied souls, i.e. as rational animals that live in space-time. What immortal life after death and the resurrection looks like is a Mystery.

Hope that helps a little. . .


12 August 2009

Congress: "chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic"

My poor brain is leaking. . .

First, the NYT publishes an entire piece about the Catholic Church and never once mentions sexual scandal, or quotes a reliable dissident harpy like Richard McBrien or the roldex-ready media star, Tom Reese, SJ, or even hints that American Catholics disagree with the Pope on contraception or women "priests." Amazing enough, right?

Now, Salon's own Camile Paglia, that odd-ball liberal, has spanked B.O. for his health-care revolution and called on Madam "Let the Nazis Eat Cake" Pelosi to resign over her condemnation of the citizentry's free expression of legitimate political dissent.

I fully expect CNN and MSNBC to renounce their P.R. contracts with the White House and start reporting as real journalists again! Why not? Apparently, miracles are swirling all around us!

From Paglia:

[. . .] Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

Case in point: the administration's grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton's megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.

But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

[. . .]

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.

As with the massive boondoggle of the stimulus package, which Obama foolishly let Congress turn into a pork rut, too much has been attempted all at once; focused, targeted initiatives would, instead, have won wide public support. How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.

Read the whole jaw-dropping article.

11 August 2009

Someone didn't get the anti-Catholic memo at NYT

From the otherwise despicable NYT, "New nuns and Priests Seen Opting for Tradition":

A new study of Roman Catholic nuns and priests in the United States shows that an aging, predominantly white generation is being succeeded by a smaller group of more racially and ethnically diverse recruits who are attracted to the religious orders that practice traditional prayer rituals and wear habits. [Yes, you read that correctly: the orders that have spent decades shoving their leftist versions of diversity, difference, and tolerance down the throat of the Church aren't attracting the majority of minority vocations. . .oh the irony!]

They are the generation defined by the Second Vatican Council, of the 1960s, which modernized the church and many of its religious orders [of course, VC2 did nothing of the sort]. Many nuns gave up their habits, moved out of convents, earned higher educational degrees and went to work in the professions and in community service [and some of them chose to become radical Earth-worshiping neo-pagan feminists]. The study confirms what has long been suspected: that these more modern religious orders are attracting the fewest new members.

[. . .]

“We’ve heard anecdotally that the youngest people coming to religious life are distinctive, and they really are,” said Sister Mary Bendyna, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. “They’re more attracted to a traditional style of religious life, where there is community living, common prayer, having Mass together, praying the Liturgy of the Hours together. They are much more likely to say fidelity to the church is important to them. And they really are looking for communities where members wear habits.” [Of course! Who wants to spend the time, energy, and money joining a football team that refuses to wear football uniforms and never plays the game?]

Of the new priests and nuns who recently joined religious orders, two-thirds chose orders that wear a habit all the time or regularly during prayer or ministry, the study found. [This is all fine by me, so long as these new recruits understand that the habit will not magically transform them into holy people.]

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This is a remarkably well-written article from the NYT. Not one snide remark from the writer. Not one lonely bellow from a dying dinosaur assuring us that the Spirit of Vatican Two will bring a "New Church" into being. Nothing really negative about the Church at all. . .not even a closing question about how many of these recruits will turn into child-molsters! Truly, truly remarkable.

The Road I hope we never travel

If you've not read Cormac McCarthy's The Road yet, do it! You might want to wait for a cold, cloudy day. . .or maybe not. My lit class starts discussion of this novel today. When I first read it two years ago I had no idea what to make of the form, the language, the message. . .it is at once lyrical, epic, post-apocalyptic, and down right tear-jerky. Now, that's hard to pull off in a 240 page novel!

The novel tells the story of a father and son traveling to a sea-shore in a post-apocalyptic world. Everything is dead but a few humans. . .and some of those are cannibals. The father is obsessed with survival and the son with remaining human. Therein lies the central but subtle conflict of the book.

Here's a sample paragraph.

The land was gullied and eroded and barren. The bones of dead creatures sprawled in the washes. Middens of anonymous trash. Farmhouses in the fields scoured of their paint and the clapboards spooned and sprung from the wallstuds. All of it shadowless and without feature. The road descended through a jungle of dead kudzu. A marsh where the dead reeds lay over the water. Beyond the edge of the fields the sullen haze hung over the earth and sky alike. By late afternoon it had begun to snow and they went on with the tarp over them and the wet snow hissing on the plastic.

Also, keep a dictionary handy. McCarthy is meriless with his arcane vocabulary.

While waiting on the miracle of caffeine. . .

Wandering around waiting for the Caffeine to Kick-in. . .

Like everyone else, I've been following the health-care "debate" on CNN and Fox. And, like most everyone else, I'm not exactly excited about the prospects of having our health insurance run by the same government that gave us $20,000 hammers and the IRS. My personal stake in the debate isn't all that clear b/c most religious participate in some form of health-care trust fund that negotiate fees with doctors and super-pharmacies like Medco. Essentially, we have a "self-pay" system. What B.O.'s plan would do to/for us is beyond me. Shawn Tully of CNNFortune has an interesting article posted entitled, "5 Key Freedoms You'll Lose in Health Care Reform." One thing that bothers me about the rhetoric on this issue is the way the phrase "health care reform" is used almost exclusively by the MSM as an equivalent for B.O.'s plan. You will hear from B.O. supporters that opponents of B.O.'s reforms are opponents of all reform. This is simply false. I keep thinking to myself: "We are the country that invented the A-bomb, the personal computer, the internet, etc. . .surely we are smart enough to reform health insurance w/o socializing health care!" I say, "UNLEASH the Dogs of Invention!" (Hmmmm. . . think the caffeine just kicked in. . .)

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Quick insurance story. . .when I worked as the Team Leader of an adolescent psych hospital, I was frequently called "up front" to access teens for admission. When the admissions people handed me the paperwork, they stuck a sticky-note on the forms that indicated the family's insurance. This told me immediately what questions to ask. If the note indicated that the teen had private insurance provided by his/her parents' employer, the questions were fairly routine and the standards of admissions were very low. However, if the note indicated that the teen was covered under the public option provided by the state, admission was almost an impossibility. The potential patient had to be demonstrably suicidal and even then he/she would only be admitted for three day acute care. . .the very minimum sort of observation and med evaluation. Public option patients were prescribed older, less effective drugs b/c they were cheaper and rarely received more than one evaluation from the staff shrink. Even though we were all statist liberals on staff, we knew that public option insurance was not the way to go.

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A couple of generous Book Benefactors sent me Pierre-Marie Emonet's three volume set on Aquinas' philosophy of being. I highly recommend these books. They are at once poetic, philosophically astute, and accessible. Having recently taught large sections of my Dominican brother's (in)famous Summa, I am reminded (again) that his contribution to Catholic philosophy, theology, and spirituality is beyond measure. Most Catholics would find the Summa to be plodding and overly rigid in style. It is. But it was meant to be textbook for first year grad students and it most definitely reads like one. Aquinas' literary talents are better displayed in his biblical ccommentaries and hymns. He was a medieval multi-tasking machine!

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Other excellent books on Aquinas: Fr. Paul Philibert's English translation of Fr. M-D. Chenu's book, Aquinas and His Role in Theology; Fr. Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master; Fr. Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (this is essential reading for seminarians); Fr. Tom O'Meara, Thomas Aquinas, Theologian; and Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrell's two volume set, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Timothy McDermott's Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation is worth it for those who want to read Aquinas himself but find the standard translation too much to bear.

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Down the rabbit-hole. . .several readers have written to ask me to comment on the controversy raging around B.O. birth certificate and the question of his nationality. Now, I love good conspiracy theories! They appeal to my literary love for the beauty of putting all the pieces together to form a coherent worldview. My distaste for B.O.'s policies is no secret. But the idea that he made it to the White House w/o someone uncovering his foreign nationality seems a bit too much to swallow. I find it almost impossible to believe that the Clintion Machine didn't find out about this and expose it. Of course, if B.O. wants to see an end to the speculation, all he has to do is disclose his birth certificate. You have to wonder why anyone would spend $900,000 in legal fees to keep a harmless birth certificate locked away!

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Well, time to re-read a few Flannery O'Connor stories for class. . .not to mention a chapter or two of John Clavin's The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Yes, I get to explain Calvin's theology of predestination this morning. Just what any good Dominican hopes to do as the sun rises on another day. . .

Another book? Fall plans...

Just a "Thank You" to everyone who took the time to comment on my homily for this past Sunday, "We must pray for death."

As always, your feedback helped me to understand a bit better what I am doing and not doing as a preacher. I truly appreciate your honestly and your willingness to share your stories of personal suffering and struggle.

Many of you have suggested that this homily could serve as the basis for a book-length mediation on surrender, suffering, and death. This is certainly a possibility. I am considering a couple of other book proposals right now, but this is quickly rising to the top of my list.

My plans for the fall have recently changed rather dramatically! I am not going to be teaching at the Angelicum come October. Teaching will begin in Feb 2010. This is actually good news, because I will not be rushed to finish the thesis, take oral/written comps, and pass the French translation exam--all before the first week of Oct.

This means that I will not have to return to Rome until sometime in late Sept or early Oct. Where I will be staying while in the U.S. until then is still up in the air. Also, this delay means that I will have the time in the fall to pursue a creative project along with my usual studies and writing. . .truly, I have to have something creative going on while I am reading and writing about the philosophy of science. The field is fascinating, but my right-side dominate brain can only handle so much analytical logic and dry scientific argument!

So, as I contemplate another book proposal, please pray for me!

Fr. Philip


09 August 2009

We must pray for death

[NB. I welcome feedback on my all homilies. . .I am particularly interested in hearing what readers think of this one. . .feedback from Mass goers this morning was positive, but people rarely tell you in person if your homily bombed. Also, I would really appreciate hearing from deacons/priests/bishops who might read this piece. . .]

19th Sunday OT: 1 Kings 19.4-8; Eph 4.30-5.2; John 6.41-51
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

Elijah, the prophet of God, prays for death: “This is enough, O Lord! Take my life. . .” How thick, how deep must your despair be to pray for death? How heavy must your desperation be before you can no longer lift it? When do you cry to God: this is enough! Here and now, I am exhausted, weary beyond living. Elijah killed 450 prophets of Baal. For this reason, he confesses to his Lord, “. . .I am no better than my fathers. Take my life.” Elijah challenges Baal's prophets to a contest of power. He pits the real power of the Lord against the demonic power of the Canaanite god. Baal loses. And so do his prophets. Elijah marches the demon's priests to the River Kishon and cuts their throats. Fleeing the wrath of Jezebel for killing her prophets, Elijah goes into the desert and there he discovers—among the stones and sage brush—that he no longer wants to live. “This is enough, O Lord. Take my life. . .” Elijah, prophet of God, touched by His hand to speak His Word, despairs because he has murdered 450 men. What weight do you lift and carry? How thick and deep is the mire you must wade through? At what point do you surrender to God in anguish, walk into the desert, and pray for death? When you balance on the sharp point of desperation, poised to ask God to take your life, remember this: “When the afflicted call out, the Lord hears, and from all their distress He saves them! Taste and see the goodness of the Lord!”

To varying degrees and in different ways, all of us have discovered in one sort of desert or another that we are tired, exhausted beyond going another step. Overwhelmed by studies, financial stresses, marital strife, family feuds, personal sin, physical illness, we have all felt abandoned, stranded. We might say that it is nothing more than our lot in life to rejoice when our blessings are multiplied and cry when the well runs dry. These deserts look familiar. We've been here before and doubting not one whit, we know we will visit them again. We hope and keep on; we pray and trust in God. This is what we do, we who live near the cross. But there are those times when the desert seems endless and only death will bring rescue. We find hope in dying. And so, we cry out to God: “Take my life, O Lord!” Is this the prayer we should pray when we find ourselves broken and bleeding in the deserts of despair? It is. There is none better.

The witness of scripture pokes at us to remember that our God provides. Beaten down and hunted by Jezebel, exhausted by his prayer, Elijah falls asleep under the broom tree. An angel comes to him twice with food and drink, ordering him to wake up and eat: “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!” Elijah obeys. Strengthened by the angelic supper, he walks for forty days and nights; he walks to God on Mt. Horeb. The Lord provides. Jesus reminds the Jews who are murmuring about his teaching that their ancestors wandered around in the desert for forty years, surviving on angelic food. Though they died as we all do, and despite their constant despairing, they survived as a people to arrive in the land promised to them by God. As always, the Lord provides. Paul reminds the Ephesians (and us) that Christ handed himself over “as a sacrificial offering to God” for us, thus giving us access to the Father's bounty, eternal access to only food and drink we will ever need to survive. Paul writes, “. . .you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Therefore, “. . .be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.” We always have before us the feast of mercy. The Lord provides. So, wake up! And eat!

What are we promised, and what is provided? Even the slightest glance at scripture, even the most cursory perusal of our Christian history will reveal that following Christ on pilgrimage to the cross is no picnic. To paraphrase Lynn Anderson, “He never promised us a rose garden.” Sure, Christ promised us a garden alright. But it's the Garden of Gethsemane. Betrayal, blood, and a sacrificial death. He also promised us persecution, trial, conviction, and exile. He promised us nothing more than what he himself received as the Messiah. A life of hardship as a witness and the authority of the Word. The burdens of preaching mercy and the rewards of telling the truth. An ignoble death on a cross and a glorious resurrection from the tomb. What he promises, he provides. All that he provides is given from His Father's treasury. Food and drink on the way. The peace of reconciliation. A Father's love for His children. And an eternal life lived in worship before the throne.

All of this is given freely to us. But we must freely receive all that is given. Elijah flees into the desert, seeking his freedom from Jezebel's wrath. The former slaves of Egypt flee into the desert, seeking their freedom from Pharaoh's whip. The men and women of Ephesus flee into the desert of repentance and conversion, seeking their freedom from the slavery of sin. Each time we flee into a desert to despair, we are fleeing from the worries, the burdens of living day-to-day the promises we have made to follow Christ to the cross. Our lives are not made easier by baptism and the Eucharist. Our anxieties are not made simpler through prayer and fasting. Our pains, our sufferings are not relieved by the saints or the Blessed Mother. Our lives, anxieties, our pain and sufferings are made sacrificial by the promises of Christ and all that he provides. We are not made less human by striving to be Christ-like. We are not brought to physical and psychological bliss by walking the way of sorrows. We are not promised lives free of betrayal, blood, injury, and death. By striving to be Christ-like, by walking behind our Lord on the way of sorrows, we are all but guaranteeing that we will suffer for his sake. And so, the most fervent prayer we can pray along this Christian path is: “This is enough, O Lord! Take my life. . .!” Surrender and receive, give up and feast. Surrender your life and receive God's blessing. Give up your suffering and feast on the bread of heaven.

What Christ promises, he provides. He says to those behind him, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Exhausted under a tree and running for your life; pitiful and despairing, wandering lost in a desert; chained to sin, wallowing in disobedience, yet seeking mercy. . .where do you find yourself? Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you exhausted? Spent? Do you need to be rescued? Cry out then, “Take my life, O Lord. . .” Pray for death. Pray for the death of Self. Pray for the death of “bitterness, fury, anger, reviling, and malice.” Pray for the death of whatever it is in you that obstructs your path to Christ; pray that it “be removed from you. . .So [you may] be [an] imitator of God, as [a] beloved child[], and live in love, as Christ loves us.” Remember and never forget: “When the afflicted call out, the Lord hears, and from all their distress He saves them! Taste and see the goodness of the Lord!” The bread come down from heaven, Christ himself, is our promised food and our provision for eternal life.

08 August 2009

Knowing nothing but the crucified Christ

Solemnity of Saint Dominic: 1 Cor 2.1-10; Luke 9.57-62
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

While “knowing nothing” and without the “sublimity of words or wisdom,” what does a preacher proclaim when he proclaims “the mystery of God”? And if this proclamation is preached out of “weakness and fear and trembling” without “persuasive words of wisdom,” from where does the demonstrative “spirit and power” of the preaching come? Paul writes to the church in Corinth, claiming that he preached to them so that their “faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. . .not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. Rather,” he insists, “we speak God's wisdom, mysterious, hidden. . .” If contemporary Dominican preachers speak God's wisdom, without “sublimity of words” or the wisdom of this age, while “knowing nothing,” from where we do draw the “spirit and power” we need to prepare eyes and ears to see and hear His saving words and loving deeds? Paul, recklessly but not without hope, sets before us a demanding quest: to know nothing “except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” What does it take, what must we do to grow ignorant of this world's wisdom and flourish in God's?

While on a journey with his disciples, Jesus is approached three times by those who would join his traveling school of wisdom. Each time the prospective student would declare his intention to become a student of the Master. The first intended disciple says that he will follow Jesus wherever he goes. Jesus replies, “. . .the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” The second is told “Follow me,” but he needs to bury his father before committing to the life of a preacher. The third says that he too wants to follow Jesus, but that he wants to say goodbye to his family first. Jesus, knowing what lies ahead for anyone who follows him, issues these potential preachers a warning: you may follow me wherever I go, but there is no place for rest, and if you follow, you must do so absolutely, without condition, doing nothing—not even burying the dead or saying farewell to family—putting nothing and no one before the preaching of the gospel. Let the dead bury the dead, never looking back at what you have left behind.

God's wisdom, revealed in Christ, and him crucified, is this: to follow Jesus as a preacher of the Good News is to abandon all attachments to the burdens of this world, to throw off the yoke of man's wisdom, and do nothing else but proclaim God's marvelous deeds to all nations. Paul could have said that he knows nothing except Jesus and leave it at that. Instead, he says that he knows nothing except Jesus. . .and him crucified, nailed hands and feet to his cross, abandoned to death. The vows we take as Dominican preachers are not meant simply to regulate belief and behavior, what we think and how we act. Our vows—even when imperfectly lived—are meant to make us into the sorts of men and women who are eager to seek out crucifixion, to run after Christ along his way to Golgotha, all the while proclaiming the Lord's mercy and love to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. Will you long to stop along the way to say farewell to family, or feel the obligation to bury your dead, or look over your shoulder to see what you have left behind? Of course. And not only will we long to cultivate and harvest these worldly attachments, we will do so, sometimes with great fanfare and expense. Thank God then that there is more than just one of us walking the path in this gospel adventure! Paul says that “we speak God's wisdom.” We use our strengths. We perfect our weaknesses. With Christ and one another, we live this reckless life of gospel preaching.

From where do we draw the “spirit and power” to proclaim God's marvelous deeds to all nations? Even as we empty ourselves out on the cross of Christ, we are filled with a purer sort of knowing: we are, whole and entire, the sons and daughters of a loving God, the Father of a preaching family, the only source of anything and everything we will ever need.


07 August 2009

Faith, Science, & the Contemporary Catholic


Faith, Science & the Contemporary Catholic
(A Retreat for the Dominican Laity of Dallas/Irving, TX)


Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP, PhD (retreat leader)

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Saturday August 8, 2009
9.00am-3.30pm (three 45 min conferences w/meditation periods)
Mass & Morning Prayer
Breakfast & Lunch

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St. Albert the Great Priory
3150 Vince Hagan St
Irving, TX 75062


Leave a comment if you are interested


All are welcomed to attend!

05 August 2009

Faulkner's Homeric epics?

A literary question/observation. . .

My American literature class finished up reading and discussing Wm. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying this afternoon.

I argued that the novel could be read as a sort of Homeric epic. I doubt this is original to me given the libraries stuffed full of Faulkner scholarship, but the idea struck me as worthy of mention to my students. We found a few Homeric moments along the way, including the whole notion of the misadventurous quest to Jefferson to bury Addie, the mother.

One scene in particularly got my Homeric attention. Addie Bundren's coffin is inside a barn. Her allegedly mentally unstable son, Darl, sets the barn on fire. Jewel, her son by Preacher Whitfield, races inside the barn to save his horse. He returns to rescue Addie in her coffin. Faulkner describes Jewel coming out of the barn "riding" the coffin like a horse. The scene is filled with heroics, swirling masses of sparks, and our hero is set alight in his nightshirt. The whole scene reminds me of the funeral games in Homer's epics. . .heroes, funeral pyres, horses, etc.

Thoughts?

On Used Books & Thank You notes

A note on books received since mid-June. . .

I've rec'd a few books here in the U.S. since I left Rome on June 13th.

I am really good about sending Thank You notes. . .so, if you haven't rec'd one from me two possibilities for this come to mind:

1). I haven't rec'd the book yet.

2). I have rec'd your book, but it didn't come with a return address on the invoice.

Possibility #2 happens if you bought the book used and had the bookstore ship it to me. They rarely put the buyer's name and address on their invoices.

Also, used bookstores sometimes take three times as long to ship books. However, Used Book are perfectly fine with me. When I read a book for class or for research, I really use it--marginal notes, dog-eared pages, cracked spines, the works!

So, don't be afraid that I will think less of a Used Book. . .I welcome them as laborers from the fields!

P.S. A third possibility just occurred to me. . .you bought the book just before I left Rome and it was shipped to me there.

Coffee Cup Browsing...

Women religious in the U.S. have rec'd the Instrumentum laboris for their apostolic visitation. Note: this is NOT the doctrinal assessment of the CDF. Both the visitation and the assessment need to be wary of allowing the LCWR to conflate "being women religious" with "being feminists." The two are not identical. My guess is that 99% of women religious in the U.S. have no idea what the feminists who run the LCWR are doing in their name.

Occasionally--nay, rarely!--Shea gets it right. Even a stopped clock and all that. . .

Will Obamacare use your tax money to pay for abortions? Of course.

This happens to me all the time!

Highly disconcerting photoshopped pics of fathers and sons

Neurotic poets. . .but I repeat myself.

A moving, graphic representation of Italian bureaucracy. . .on a good day.

Several galleries of beautiful fractals

04 August 2009

Obama Book Bail Out fail...

Howdy, Readers!

My Obama Book Bail-Out check hasn't arrived yet! I filled out all 3,689 pages of paperwork, sent my cash "contribution" to ACORN and the Black Panthers, and signed the contract in blood, so what's the problem???

Anyway, browse the recently updated WISH LIST and help a friar fill out his dissertation library! [NB. Amazon has revamped the "look" of their Wish Lists. Still can't list books permanently in order of priority. . .]

:-)

Fr. Philip, OP

P.S. The BP has stabilized. Now I have to stop eating like an American before I end up as a screen shot on CNN for one those elitist lefty homilies about "The Obese."

03 August 2009

Some stuff from over there...

If you have ever wondered what the historical-critical method does to scripture, I commend to you this parody: "New Directions in Pooh Studies." It is frightening acccurate! (H/T: New Advent)

That Pustule of Warted Face-Follicles, Mark Shea, whines incessantly b/c HancAquam has outranked him. . .again! BAWAHAHAHA!

McBrien wails and gnashes over the CDF's doctrinal assessment of U.S. religious women. Note that all of the critiques of this assessment consistently fail to charitably summarize the reasons for the evaluation, preferring instead to couch the visitation in terms of "the evil hierarchy is trying to put the sisters back in their habits and into kitchen." There are perfectly good, debatable reasons for the assessment. Hint: the assessment is about rampant theological dissent on dogmatic and doctrinal issues, neo-pagan/Wiccan liturgies, feminist ideology, and outright scandal.

This is what happens when Citizens are made Wards of the State by the State for their own good. . .in this case, when the State is made your doctor. . .for your own good.

The so-called "Fairness Doctrine" in action. . .

Scary proof that Obama is the anti-Christ. . .not really. . .but the coincidences are fascinating. Remember: the anti-Christ is a spirit of rebellion not a person and as such flows through human history. Many different people have embodied the spirit of the anti-Christ. "Anti-Christ" means "against Christ" and describes a spiritual philosophy. It is not a proper name.

I think took the name of the game a little too far! :-)

Hey, can't say you were not warned. . .

Secularism: Kant's mistake?

from an article by Fr. Anthony Carroll, SJ on Fr. George Tyrrell, SJ's modernism:

Chief among the opponents of the medieval system of thought who would cause concern for the Church at the time of the modernist crisis was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant asserted that medieval and early modern thought had failed to question the appropriate limits of human reason and so had become tangled up in interminable confusions. His critical philosophy would famously deny the capacity of reason to come to know God, in order to make room for faith. For Kant, God could not be affirmed through our sensory perceptions but could be a postulate of practical reason that would ground our moral action.

Without intending to do so, Kant removed questions about God from modern philosophical discourse, creating what we now think of as "secularism"--the notion that religious belief is intensely (and only) private. From this we have inherited the false idea that religious belief has no proper role to play in public discourse.

Kant's insistence on locating the ground of our moral action in God was quickly undermined by British analytical moral philosophers (G.E. Moore, A.J. Ayer), leaving us with a purely emotive ethics: moral judgments are really just statements about emotional states and personal preferences, e.g. "Adultery is wrong" = "I don't like adultery."

Secular orthodoxy continues to affirm the purely emotive/personal nature of moral judgments, excluding from consideration any appeal to objective standards of ethical behavior. Thus we have the near hegemony of "personal autonomy" in medical ethics.

Carroll points out that transcendental Thomists (Tyrrell, Rahner) attempt to incorporate Kant's basic philosophical insights into traditional Catholic theology in an effort to retake the rational battleground for God. The success/failure of this project is still under debate.

02 August 2009

Losing your mind to Christ

18th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

Have you ever lost your mind and wondered where you put it? Have you ever changed your mind and wondered if you are now another person? Ever have something on your mind and wondered if the weight of it was showing up on the bathroom scale? According to Plato, the human mind is a reflection of the Nous, the One Mind, corrupted by the body. Aristotle argued that the mind is that faculty of the soul that reasons. Aquinas and most of the scholastics propose that the mind apprehends reality as it is and understands that reality according to the nature of the divinely informed human intellect. Empiricists tell us that our minds are sensation collectors, blank slates that scoop up impressions from the world; Rationalists that the mind is best understood as a repository for those innate ideas that make it possible for us to think. Kant puts these two theories together and concludes that the mind orders sense experience using ideas that already exist in the mind. Most contemporary philosophers have more or less accepted that the mind is simply the work of the brain and that when we use “mind-terms” to describe mental activities and states (happiness, confusion, insight), we are really just talking about neuro-chemical activity in the brain. All of these theories tell us what the mind is; how it works with memory, perception, learning, and will; how we use it, and how we lose it. So when Paul writes to the Ephesians, “I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; that is not how you learned Christ...,” we much ask: have we learned Christ, or do we live as the Gentiles do in the “futility of their minds”?

By the third time I attempted college algebra—having dropped it twice out of abject fear—I concluded that my brain was not wired to comprehend the occult lore of math. To my mind, geometry is an ancient magical system for plotting an eternity of suffering. Calculus is a demonic wisdom that tricks us into giving our souls to the Devil. Confronted by the squiggly gibberish of numbers in formulas, my mind freezes in fear and then flees to poetry where nothing can hurt me, or make me hurt myself or others. I failed to learn math as a kid, and now, as an adult, I will not put on the mind of math because such a renovation project seems to me be utterly futile, hopelessly empty of promise or prize. So, along with all the number-challenged souls in the world I rejoice to hear Paul say, “...truth is in Jesus...” Alleluia! This truth is the one truth I do not fear. Though I seek this truth, there is some question about whether or not I have learned it. This is a judgment to be made at the conclusion of this world, the Mother of All Final Exams. I hope Professor Jesus allows us all a crib sheet!

Desperate to witness signs of wonder and learn the mysteries of salvation, crowds follow Jesus around throwing questions at him like paparazzi after Britney Spears. On occasion, Jesus obliges the crowds by healing the blind, the demonically possessed, and even the dead. He teaches his Father's mercy and calls all to repentance and a new way of living life toward a glorious end in heaven. He even demonstrates his command of math by multiplying five loaves of bread and two fish into enough food for five thousand. Impressed but unfulfilled, the crowds demand more and wait on the next miracle to confirm their faith. Jesus tells them that they are asking him to teach the wrong lesson: “...you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” They are lead by the stomach not the mind; hunger-pains brings them to Christ not the pains of ignorance. Though the bread they eat fills the belly, it does not fill the soul. Therefore, Professor Jesus concludes, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life...”

What do you hunger for, thirst for? What do you need to see, to learn, to feel before you can say that you are filled-up, completely satisfied? If you were in one of those crowds following Jesus around, what one gift would you beg him for; what one question would you ask him? You might say, “I only desire to do the work of God!” Do you know what that work is for you? Have you read the job description for being a good Christian? Have you learned Jesus as your one truth, putting “away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and [been renewed] in the spirit of your minds”? If you have, then you have done the work of God. Jesus says, “ This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” First, believe; then think, feel, act, be always out of this belief in Christ and your life will be a sign to others that you have “put on the new self, [and have been] created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” You will be a sign of hope to all those who seek the truth that Christ is the truth they seek.

Though we have a long, long history of exploring the philosophical, scientific, and theological nature of the human mind, we do not need an empiricist or rationalist or materialist theory of consciousness in order to comprehend and live the mind of Christ. We do not need a clear and distinct idea about the structure of memory or perception, or a fulsome argument for the nature of thinking or the workings of emotion and will. If mind is simply the neuro-chemical activity of the brain, fine. Do your dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine belong to Christ? If mind is the rational faculty of the soul that allows us to abstract ideas from sense experience, fine. Does your reason belong to Christ? Do you see and hear and touch Christ first? And if mind is a reflection of the One Mind corrupted by the body, so be it. Are you receiving God's graces to perfect your body and elevate your mind? If not, Paul reminds you, “...you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.” For Paul, the Gentile mind reaches for knowledge and understanding without first having grasped Christ. This is utterly futile because “truth is in Jesus.”

You might be the one in the crowd who yells out to Jesus, “OK! The truth is in you. What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?” Jesus says to you, to all of us, “What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert...it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.” You look to the sky. Glance around at the ground. Your stomach rumbles a bit. “Well, sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus smiles. This is the perfect set-up, the best of all segues. He takes the moment in hand, pauses just long enough to build an arc of anticipation, and then teaches the crowd, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” Never hunger. Never thirst. First, believe; then think, feel, act, be always out of this belief in Christ and your life here and now will be a reflection of your promised life at the foot of the throne. You will be the only sign any of us will need to believe, the only miracle any of us will ask for.

Have you learned Christ? If so, then be Christ for us! If not, then let the Body and Blood you take this morning be your food and drink for the pilgrimage to heaven. Receive him as you would a rescuer come to take you from the wilderness. He will bring you to a far holier land.

01 August 2009

Where's your dancer?

[NB. This is my last daily homily preached to the sisters here in Fort Worth. I am headed back to the priory in Irving later today. . .]

St Alphonus Liguori: Lv 25.1; 8-17; Matt 14.1-12
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur

Herod hands us a warning —the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Surely, Herod has no idea that this grisly gift to a dancer would serve as a caution twenty centuries down the road. Fearing the anger of the people, he sets aside his own anger at John and enjoys his birthday party. He enjoys it a little too much; so much, in fact, that he foolishly vows to grant the party's exceptional dancer whatever she might wish. At the prompting of her mother—Herod's illegitimate wife—the young woman asks for John's head. For us, twenty-first century Christians, the girl's naivete produces a first-century warning: those in power will not tolerate prophets who speak the truth, especially if the truth spoken risks stinging an unruly conscience and rousing an unjustly ruled people. We are duly warned. But if Christians cannot or will not speak the truth to those who rule, who will? Can we afford to tolerate rulers who will not hear the truth spoken? Are we ready to surrender our heads to the court dancer?

John discovered the hard way that princes and kings do not like God's grubby spokesmen spouting off about truth, justice, and the holy way. Out of fear, Herod allows John to live despite John's harangues against his royal adultery. Watching the daily tracking polls, Herod no doubt sees John's popularity as a prophet of God, a man worthy of the job given to him. Focus groups indicate to the king that beheading John for speaking out would be a very dangerous move poll numbers; so, he refrains. Instead of the calling the axeman, Herod funds a political action committee and begins oppositional research. The negative ads were poised to air the day the dancing girl moved seductively onto the scene. She's the game-changer. In what will become one of history's most notorious political gaffes, Herod promises her the world. She wants and gets John's head. For the next several months nothing else is discussed in media. How will Plattergate play out at the polls? Has Herod hurt himself with the religious demographic? Was the whole affair a set-up by Herod's zealous opponents to embarrass him?

Among the witnesses that day were John's disciples. They collect his body and bury it. Then they tell Jesus that his herald is dead. Hearing this, Jesus goes alone to a deserted place. Does Jesus think that John was foolish to admonish Herod? Would Jesus have advised John to resist speaking the truth to his king? Maybe the better way here is the path of quiet persuasion through earnest dialogue and common ground engagement. After all, the truth is so harsh, so dramatically uncompromising, and impractical. Surely, our Lord would have coached John to be more tolerant, less judgmental, more willing to see both sides of the issue for the sake of staying at the political table. And then there's the whole beheading episode. There's a message for us from our rulers: tell me the truth, and I get your head. What compromise won't get me, the axe will cut away. Negotiate away the truth or die.

Are we ready to surrender our heads to the court dancer? A grim question! One we can hope and pray we never have to answer. Of course, the question will never be put to any of us in exactly those terms. We'll be asked a much more subtle question: are you willing to stop being so stubborn about all those moral and religious issues if we allow you to participate in the democratic process? If not, chop! You're out. Your head won't be on a platter, but your voice will be muffled under the weight of lawsuits and judicial injunctions. If we fall, we fall to the tax-man not the axe-man.

So, what do we do? Negotiate? Engage on “common ground”? Get what we can and thank our secular betters for the scrapes? We are as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, so we could. But too often gentle doves forget that they must sometimes be wise serpents. Fortunately, we are political animals only for a while. The life we have been chosen for and have received is the life of truth lived on the way to an eternal life. There is nothing to fear in speaking the truth, nothing and no one to tremble before when absolute moral virtue needs our voices to be heard. We have been warned. True. But we have also been promised. Warned by a king. Promised by The King. Promised to his Father. The beauty of this promise is that we have already been beheaded, died, buried, and made ready to rise again. Why would we fear the wrath of a king when we truly belong to The King? Besides, who told you that being a prophet was an easy road to fame and riches? Welcome to the Platter! Where's your dancer?

No Class




A picture is worth a thousand words. . .or a couple of dropped points in the polls.


H/T: American Thinker

The Return of. . .Coffee Cup Browsing!

2009-10 is the Year for Priests (pssst. . .I hear priests really like books. . .) :-)

For all your Catholic philosophy needs. . .which are many, I'm sure. . .

Gerald Collins, "Jesus Our Priest" (Caution: Jebbie site, so keep your Summa close by!)

Jesus Beads. . .(not that he is envious of the rosary, of course)

Ever wonder how the Church figures out which Sunday will be Easter Sunday. . .?

Ten Great Existential movies. . .yes, their existence preceded their essenses

The basic idea of HancAquam. . .

Wise Sayings
recycled for the cynic

Bar Stool Economics: the American tax system

Great political cartoons

An extremely biased definition of a political liberal

Hmmmmm. . .I know I'm supposed to scowl at this. . .

Finally, a website made for Coffee Cup Browsing!

30 July 2009

Hell is good for you!

17th Week OT (Th): Ex 40.16-21, 34-8; Matt 13.47-53
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur

Setting aside for the moment a few ugly episodes and outrageous characters from the Order's history, it is safe to say that Dominicans have a well-deserved reputation for preferring to teach folks into heaven rather than scaring them away from Hell. We would rather persuade than cajole, influence rather than frighten. Generally speaking, it is better to touch a rational soul with the Light of Christ than it is to scare the snot out of a sinner with ghastly visions of Hell. But sometimes the rational soul of a sinner might need to be shown a scene or two of eternal life without God—just a brief glimpse into exactly what never-ending torment looks like. Doesn't a soul twisted in folly, unable to choose the Good and come to God, doesn't a soul so injured deserve the mercy of wisdom's most immediate remedy? Jesus, the Master Philosopher, knows that even a mind deeply dedicated to right reason but steeped in sin may need a hot-shock, a whack upside the head in order to see through foolish to wisdom. The “fiery furnace” he refers to so often in Matthew's gospel is just that jolt of reality we sometimes need. It's not pretty, but it sure is helpful.

As helpful as images of Hell may be, we tend to shy away from preaching about eternal damnation these days. Too 1950's. Too fundamentalist. Very “pre-Vatican Two”—whatever that means. But if we are going to preach the gospel, there is simply no way to avoid the subject given the lectionary readings! These last two weeks alone Jesus has separated the goats from the sheep; pulled the weeds from among the flowers; culled the good fish from the bad; and his angels have set the midden-heap of pruned branches ablaze. The wicked and the righteous are well and truly labeled, properly queued up, and ready to receive their eternal itineraries. So, let's not mince words; let's study the truth as Jesus presents it to us: make a choice—goat or sheep, flower or weed, good fish or bad, fertile soil or barren dirt. All you need to do is make the right choice. The consequences of making the wrong choice are—shall we say—extremely unpleasant! In the best sense, the choices before us really are just this stark and the consequences of our choices just this easy to discern. Few of us, however, experience the choices in such stark terms.

So why is Jesus presenting the choices in such glaring black and white terms? Why the threat of eternal punishment in the fiery furnace for making the wrong choice? Jesus is a Master Philosopher and a Master Psychologist. Think about how Jesus preaches and teaches. He uses parables, scriptural allusions, conversation, examples, even miracles. Sometimes he interrogates and cajoles. Rarely does he argue like a Greek philosopher or a Pharisee. The people in the crowds respond to him b/c he sparks to life their intuitions about what is true and good and beautiful about being well-loved creatures. He knows that his very presence jump-starts that nagging desire for God that we are born with and strive to satisfy in this life. And he knows that without God's help we will consistently fail to reach high enough when reaching for our happiness. Settling for imitation happiness, faux-joy—this might impress the neighbors, but it takes the real-deal to enter the kingdom. And if Jesus has to scare the snot out of us to get us to pay attention to our eternal choices, then get the hankie ready—here comes the scare!

If you were frightened into the faith, you might not be particularly proud of the fact. It would be more embarrassing, however, to remain faithful out of fear, to remain a believer because the fiery furnace looms large in the imagination. The threat of the furnace is meant to scald a foolish soul into seeing the light of reason, to awake a sleepy desire for God. Clearly, Hell is a very real option for anyone who chooses to live without God for eternity. But Hell is not the be-all and end-all of the gospel. Once the furnace-option has been rejected and we have joined the flowers, the sheep, the good fish, and the fertile soil, Hell might linger as a whiff of smoke to remind us of our wise choice, but the daily life of a Christian is not dominated by the fear of an already and always defeated enemy. We chose to receive the extravagant graces poured out from the cross and the empty tomb. Though the heat of the furnace may have turned us from its punishing flames, setting us on the right course, we stay the course for Christ b/c nothing else, no one else can bring us home. For us, no one else is home.

29 July 2009

From mourning to belief

St Martha: Ex 34.29-35; John 11.19-27
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur

In the presence of the people, Moses veils his face, shielding them from God's radiance even while sharing with them the Lord's commands; in the presence of the Lord himself, Martha unveils her face, revealing her grief to Jesus even while confessing her belief in him. Moses must hide God's brilliance so that the people will hear what the Lord has to say. Martha must show Jesus her mourning so that he will ask of her, “Do you believe?” Both Moses and Martha see the Lord face-to-face. Both hear him and converse with him. Moses speaks with God for the sake of His people. Martha speaks with Jesus for the sake of her deceased brother, Lazarus. Moses is the anointed prophet of God and leader of His people. Martha is sister to Mary; friend to Jesus; and no one has anointed her to be a prophet or herald, yet she believes that Jesus is the promised one to come; she proclaims his arrival among us; and names him, she names him Christ, the Messiah. What Moses must hide so that others might see, Martha announces so that all may hear.

If you have ever mourned, you know how wholly consuming the pain can be. The gravity of loss drags against every offer of comfort, or and possibility of relief. Nothing, no one can lift the ruinous pressure that squeezes your guts and chokes your heart. There is nothing to see behind you anymore and nothing of promise for tomorrow. There is only more defeat in the futile hours that circle around. . .again and again. Martha and Mary mourn the death of Lazarus, their brother. They do not grieve alone—neighbors, friends, family visit with them. Martha goes out to meet Jesus on his way. Finding him, she says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. . .” She “says” this? Or does she scream it? Is she accusing Jesus of neglect? Is she merely disappointed in him, or just annoyed? Do you hear grief in her voice? “Lord, if you had been here. . .” If only, you had been here. . .

What we could easily take to be Martha's accusation against Jesus, quickly turns into something else entirely: “...my brother would not have died [had you been here, Lord]. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” From accusatory outburst to faith-filled profession, Martha moves from being a grieving sister to speaking as a holy prophet of God. Jesus assures her that Lazarus will rise. And Martha, in tone that could put steel in the weakest stomach, answers, “I know he will rise. . .” The strength of her conviction almost overshadows Jesus' moment of glory: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. . .” We can safely assume that Jesus never sputtered when he spoke, but it is not too much to imagine that he may have been both a little surprised and greatly pleased by Martha's faith. Nonetheless, he must ask. . .

Do you believe this? Do you believe that if you believe in Christ Jesus, you will never die, and if you die, you will live again? Martha says in answer to this question, “I have come to believe. . .” In other words, not always fully convinced of your name or mission, over time I have found belief, arrived at faith, been convicted in the spirit that you are the Christ. Martha is our prophet of progressing belief, of unfolding faith. She is our patron saint of those who Come to Believe despite their anger, their grief; despite all the evidence and argument against believing; over the objections of family, friends, colleagues; and, overriding disappointment and accusation, come to know that all will be made well—even death—all will be made well. But first we must believe. We must watch what cannot clearly be seen, reach for what cannot be grasped. Only by watching and reaching do we ever see or grasp.

Martha wants to know, “Do you believe?”

28 July 2009

Parables do not save

17th Week OT (Tues): Ex 33.7-11, 34.5-9, 28; Matt 13.36-43
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur

Jesus fell for it! His disciples ask for the meaning of the sower's parable and Jesus caves. Just yesterday, I was praising our Lord for having the proper teacherly attitude toward the use of parables. Up until today, he has resisted the temptation to dissect his stories, to take them apart for close inspection and risk killing them for the sake of ever-elusive clarity. But today his students want to know what the sower's parable “means.” They ask Jesus, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” Jesus explains his story by matching each image or action in the parable with a parallel image or action from scripture: “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom,” and so on. For the disciples and probably most of those reading this passage centuries later, Jesus has the last word on the meaning of this parable. And why not? It's his story, so he gets to interpret it. Even if we accept as definitive the meaning he gives to this parable, we can still ask why he gave it an explanation in the first place. Well, the Psalmist sings this morning, “The Lord is kind and merciful,” so maybe Jesus is taking pity on the metaphor-challenged. But doesn't Jesus say in earlier readings that only those who are graced with insight can understand the parables? If the disciples need to be taught the correct interpretation, does that mean that they don't have graced insight? Or is Jesus doing something here other than what it at first appears he is doing? The Lord can be very sneaky when he wants to be. . .

The disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable to them. Does Jesus do this; does he explain the parable? More or less. What he does is give them the interpretative keys to the story; he lays out for them how to give the parable meaning by giving it one meaning—the sower is the Son of Man; the field is the world, etc. So, one way of explaining the parables is to replace story elements (images, characters) with complementary elements from scripture and then work out how these elements tell a new story. The explanation that Jesus gives is not The Explanation for All Ages; it is what we could call a hermeneutical pattern, or an interpretative model. For example, the sower of seed could be the Church; the field could be missionary territories; the seeds could be fired-up catechists and their families, etc. Are their limits to this sort of interpretative model? Oh yes. I used to warn my students away from hermeneutical relativism by telling them, “There may be no one right interpretation of this poem, but there are millions of wrong ones!”

In the case of the sower's parable, Jesus enlightens his disciples with an explanation that cracks open a cosmic story, an end-time tale of how All This ends in a harvest of souls for heaven and a midden-heap of sinners for the fiery furnaces of hell. Though we might tinker with the details and shift around the storyline, what we cannot avoid in the sower's parable is the rather straightforward teaching that our choices as loved-creatures have eternal consequences. We are animals gifted with reason; set above the angels because we are free to love or not. To love as we ought is to measure our share in the divine life; to fail to love as we ought is to measure our grave for an eternal abode. With a face set in stone and a heart to match, the anti-lover will burn—maybe it will be the furnace fires of hell, or maybe it will be the scalding freeze of a deathless void. Whatever else hell may be, it is to be eternally abandoned. And the most appalling part is that it is freely chosen abandonment.

Jesus explains the parable to the disciples, but he doesn't refine his explanation into a full-blown interpretation. He gives them and us a way to understand what our glorious or inglorious end looks like. There is a choice to make. As always-loved creatures, we receive Christ's wisdom to the limits of our capacity. Augustine liked to (unknowingly) misquote Isaiah, “Unless you will have believed, you will not understand” (Isa 7.9). First comes our assent to the Good News of God's mercy, then comes our understanding of what that mercy means for us eternally. If, as Aquinas teaches us, we receive according to our natures, then make sure your nature is properly graced in belief to receive the truth of a parable—even if the details escape your less-than-poetical imagination. Remember: parables do the teaching; Jesus does the saving.

27 July 2009

No future in parables

17th Week OT (Mon): Ex 32.15-34; Matt 13.31-35
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur

Poets use verse to hide secret messages. Everyone knows that they could just say what they mean in plain prose, but the whole point of poetry is to figure out the code—the symbols, the allusions, etc.—and then decipher the hidden message to win the prize! Once you crack the code a poet uses, all of his or her poems can be decrypted in the same way. Every time I teach poetry, I have to un-teach this method of reading poetry. At some point in the class—especially with E. Dickinson or W. Stevens—someone will snap and cry out in frustration: “Just tell us what it means!!!” Though I am moved to pity, I am also resolved to resist allowing my students to turn good poetry into a de-coder ring game. Jesus seems to share my teacherly attitude when it comes to his parables. Those listening to Jesus must be about ready to do a little shouting all their own: “Mustard seeds! Leaven! Flour! What are you talking about?!” The irony here, of course, is that Jesus is speaking in parables not to hide the truth, but to uncover it: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.” Like enjoying good poetry, understanding a parable is more an experience of wisdom than it is an act of intellect. It's not so much about what you know as how you live.

Poetry, prophecy, parables—all very risky ways of telling the truth. You would do a lot better with a straightforward propositional claim, or even a mathematical equation. No ambiguity, no room for getting it wrong. The future, if we are to know it, must be known clearly; otherwise, we will make all sorts of mistakes now. Of course, some say that the future is mute. Emily Dickinson declares: “The Future never spoke,/Nor will he, like the Dumb,/Reveal by sign or syllable/Of his profound To-come.” What is to come for us is not revealed by sign or syllable. Why? The future never spoke, nor will he. Notice that the parables Jesus proposes are not about the future either. They do not gesture toward tomorrow, rather they describe what the wise can already see: the kingdom of God grows, spreads, breathes life into, is infectious, multiplies. What has lain hidden at the foundation of the world is that the world's foundation is God's kingdom.

Jesus “proposed” his parables to the crowds. The wise see. Those who do not see nonetheless get a glimpse, a flash of what lay underneath. Like the seeds and leaven, the parables themselves work their way into the soil of the imagination, into the flour of the spirit and begin expand, multiply, and breath until they either propose wisdom or produce frustration. Maybe we should say that frustration is the beginning of wisdom. It could be the rough edges of a tale that rub us into seeking out more and more. . .or maybe just the half-told truths of fable that spark a quest. . .or even the odd little story about a woman and her bread dough. . .none of these are about a fictional future but a deepened present.

How does it change your day to believe for even a minute or two that the foundations of the world rest on the kingdom of God?

26 July 2009

Not a good Sunday morning

Bad News. . .

Didn't sleep a wink last night. . .severely nauseated, vomiting. . .got up at 6am to work on today's homily for the sisters, more vomiting. . .went over to the convent and asked one of the nurses to take my BP: 174/120. She gave a nitro tablet. BP dropped a little and then went to 154/120. My pulse was 135. We phoned the on-call doctor for my doc's office. I phoned a friend of mine who is a doctor. . .waiting to hear what I should do. . .

Please, pray!

UPDATE: Doc just called. . .she said go to the ER, so to the ER I go.

Update 2.0: Back from the ER. Nothing permanently damaged. Dizziness and vomiting caused by an ear infection. . .BP was brought down with some Clonodine. Good stuff.

Thank for the prayers!!!!