Coffee Bowl Browsing

Bishop Jose S. Vasquez appointed as ordinary for the Diocese of Austin.  Excellent choice.  I met the good bishop while serving as a deacon in Houston.  He came to the priory to visit a sick friar who had preceded him as pastor in a parish in San Angelo.  His respect for our elderly brother was exemplary.  Very impressive.

Activist behind the ACORN pimp/prostitute video stings has been arrested for trying to wiretap the office of a LA Senator.  If convicted, he and his friends will spend ten years in jail.  If this allegation is true:  dumb, just plain dumb.

Socialist experiment in Israel bends toward private property rights.  This happens in religious life as well.  Communitarianism (the model for religious life) is not socialism, but sometimes the drum beat of "community life" can drown out the fruitful contributions of the individual.  As always, there's a via media that balances both community and the individual.  It ain't easy.

On facing east at the altar.  I think this is going to catch on big time in the RCC.  There's no problem here really, but the people in the pews need to be properly and thoroughly catechized about the why's of doing it.  Ad hoc changes are always a bad idea.

Personhood Initiative in Kansas.  On the face of it, amending the Constitution to recognize the personhood of the fetus seems like a good idea.  But we need to be careful and think through the legal implications of doing so.  Yes, it would make abortion a crime.  But would it open mothers to lawsuits by grown children for failing to eat properly, for drinking/smoking while pregnant, for knowingly bringing a child into an abusive home, etc.?  Lawyers are very creative.  Caution. 

Paralyzed for want of a definition:  Tom K. busts the wafflers on "torture."  Just in case there's a question. . .the Church is against it. 

Apparently, if there's any doubt in your mind that your baby will grow up to be anything other than the Next Einstein, the Next Mozart or NFL quarterback, you should just kill it.  Do we really need anymore pedophile rapists?

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Poets to Read (two lists): UPDATED

Per a reader request:  Fr. Philip's Modern/Contemporary [American] Poetry Recommendations!

Modern (deceased)

Hart Crane
Robert Lowell
Amy Clampitt (formal)
Denise Levertov
Louise Bogan
Marianne Moore
Wallace Stevens (difficult)
Sylvia Plath
James Wright

Contemporary (living)

John Ashbury (difficult)
Louise Gluck
Charles Wright
Franz Wright (Catholic)
Eric Pankey (Anglican)
Robert Hass
Mark Jarman (Christian)
W. S. Merwin
Jack Gilbert
Jorie Graham (very difficult)
Edward Hirsch

Great Mod/Cont Poets Who Aren't from the U.S.

Eavan Boland (Irish)
Seamus Heaney (Irish)
Rainer Maria Rilke (German)
Charles Baudelaire (French)
Octavio Paz (Mexican)
Pablo Neruda (Chile)
Anna Akhmatova (Russian)

The Poetry Foundation has an excellent collection of poems searchable by author, subject, school, date, etc.  

NB.  The exclusion of a poet from these lists does not mean that I don't like their work.  These are all listed off the top of my head.  I don't have my poetry library with me.  Like wine and movies, poets tend to attract devout followers and detractors.  Some poets we can all agree are Worthies even if we don't care for their work (e.g., W. C. Williams).  Some poets are so absolutely basic to the American voice that they must be read in order to understand everything that follows:  Whitman & Dickinson.

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Coffee Bowl Browsing (Mini-edition)

Words and phrases that drive progressive Catholics crazy.  I nominate "Dominus Iesus."  Drove some of my seminary professors nuts!

Like, um, ya know. . .it's like I dunno, true?  An inarticulate generation. 

Are pro-abortion women at war with their biology?



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No spirit of cowardice among us

Timothy & Titus: Readings

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

We are not born again of water so that we might wither and die in a spirit of cowardice. The spirit that binds us to one another in the Church and the Church to Christ is the spirit of power, love, and self-control—the Holy Spirit of God, the same Spirit that set the apostles on fire at Pentecost and gave birth to the Church. Hiding in the Upper Room, fearing for their lives, Christ's followers were spiritual refugees, dissidents and heretics, outcasts from their temple and rebels against the Empire. Their Teacher was dead, and though resurrected from the tomb, he had yet to fulfill his promise to send a spirit of consolation and guidance. They were weak, scared witless, desolate, and completely without a purpose. When the Holy Spirit descended upon them, they were transformed as bearers of the Word to the world, set aflame with a zeal for preaching and teaching, for witnessing and healing. And they knew—Christ has promised it—they knew that their ministry in the spirit would see them once again cast out and persecuted. But rather than gather again to complain about these injustices or plot a strategy for dominance, they went out and did what they were ordered to do: they lived lives of power, love, and self-control. In the presence of opposition to the gospel, even outright hostility or violence, do we bear witness to this spirit, or do we live cowardly lives of silence?

In a homily on Paul's second letter to Timothy, the great Patristic preacher, St. John Chrysostom, says, “. . .if we were soldiers of this world, and waged an earthly war, the chains that confine our hands would [serve to restrain us]. But now God has made us such that nothing can subdue us. For our hands are bound, but not our tongue, since nothing can bind the tongue but cowardice and unbelief alone.” Had we been charged by Christ to subdue the political powers of the world, it would be enough to throw us in jail as violent prisoners of war. Unable to kill our enemies from behind bars, the war for the Kingdom would have been quickly ended. Our courage, steadfastness, and determination would have been wasted and ultimately footnoted in history as just another zealous Judean uprising against Rome. Fortunately, as St John preaches, though our hands can be chained by the enemy, our tongue cannot. Only we can bind our witness; only we can silence the Word we have been given to speak.

If we are silent, suppressing the spirit of courage we have been given, are we silent b/c of cowardice or unbelief? What do we fear? Why would we not believe? There is a certain clarity to fear. Being afraid provides a straight path, a downhill run. For example, the discomfort we may feel in preaching the gospel is easily avoided, simply ignored. Just be quiet. Don't speak. No one is offended. No one is harmed. Everything remains as it always has been. And we can continue to enjoy the esteem of family and friends. Disbelieving is more difficult but no less effective in silencing the gospel. Love is really just being polite. Mercy is really just overlooking sin. Faith is really just a wild gamble against the inevitable, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. Disbelieving is a cowardly way to pick and choose easy victories over our equally disbelieving enemy. It's fighting for the other side.

Paul writes to Timothy, “. . .bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God.” What is this strength? Yes, it's the spirit of power, love, and self-control, the Holy Spirit given to the Church, the Body that Christ himself identifies when he says, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Are we brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers of the Son? If so, we will do the will of God, setting aside cowardice and stirring up the Spirit that gives us life and strength and, finally, even victory over death.

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Coffee Bowl Browsing

National Book Critics award nominees announced.  I'm only familiar with three of the poets (Louise Gluck is one of my top ten living American poets) and none of the rest.  Been out of the lit business too long.

Ed Driscoll has a great round-up of various "They Warned Us He Wasn't Ready" essays.

More on the difference btw men and women.  This time it's the difference btw husbands and wives.

On recruiting Islamic terrorists in the U.K.

A Brit visits the Platonic Form of All American Mega-Churches:  Saddleback Church.  Takeaway immpression?  ". . .the butt end of Christianity: stripped of history and icon­ography, wholly immersed in its secular surroundings. . ."  Ouch.  The writer notes that research indicates that communities like Saddleback are the future of American religion.  Wrong.  They are just the latest fad.  When a church polls its "market" and relies on "occasional attenders," things will not go well in the future.

Is voodoo the answer to Haiti's problems or the cause? 

BXVI to priests:  "Blog, Fathers!  Blog!"  Been there, doing that since 2005, Your Holiness.  :-)

Sister Mary and Sister Martha buy some beer. (via New Advent)

Death Wish:  on why we in the West are obsessed with apocalyptic scenarios.  Apparently, global warming and global jihad are the two dominant scenarios at the moment.  No mention of the Zombie Apocalypse. . .no doubt the Zombies are paying this guy off to keep quiet.

Apostolic Visitator asks sisters to cooperate with her mission.  NB.  don't read the comments if you are easily provoked by nonsense.

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Coffee Bowl Browsing

Lord, when will the embarrassing revelations end?  More IPCC goofs.

Creepy Scientologists in Haiti touching people. . .I'd have to shout, "Boundaries!"

Two words that make me very, very nervous:  "regime change."

Video on the origins and purpose of campaign finance reform. . .I think it's more complicated than this, but the Supreme Court's decision to strike down McCain-Feingold seems right to me.

Mutually Assured Destruction for both the Dems and the GOP:  eliminating the filibuster.  The GOP tried it in 2005, now the Dems think it's a good idea.  Think again.

Leftist media rage over the U.S. Supreme Court decision against McCain-Feingold is basically a confession:  The People are too stupid to make their own decisions.  When I was a dependable academic lefty, the idea that the Great Unwashed Masses were too stupid to govern themselves was dogma. 

I'll confess: snakes turn me into a squealing little girl. . .even movies/vids featuring snakes make me tremble.  Spiders?  Not so much.  Watch this guy try to corral Big Mama Spider-san.  Hilarious.

Ship in a bottle?  Impressive.  Ship in a bottle sculpted out of snow?  Awesome!

On the many uses of empty beer bottles:  not just for bar fights anymore!

The latest eco-friendly craze:  re-purposing.

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Coming soon. . .

There will be a homily for the 3rd Sunday in OT!

And the question have piled up, so I'll get to those as well.

Don't forget to check out the Book Depository Wish List Experiment. . .one reader has used it successfully!  (NB.  B.D.'s wish list tech isn't as posh as Amazon's. . .you have to type in the shipping address. . .found at the bottom in the right side bar -------->)

:-)

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Coffee Bowl Browsing

A painful view of B.O. from Canada:  "He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called 'the gift' of his own articulation. And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent."

Gobsmacked:  Sec. of Defense Gates says Taliban has legitimate role to play in Afghanistan's political future.  Then why are American soldiers fighting and dying over there?

Scott Brown and the Cistercian nuns who pray for him. . .maybe they can pray him into a truly pro-life way of thinking (anti-abortion, anti-torture).

Pro-abort feminists try to spin the annual March for Life as an anti-abortion dinosaur:  few young women at the march this year.  Keep this lie in mind next year, ladies!

For legal fan boys and girls:  five posts on how to reform the Supreme Court to make it more efficient, responsive, and less prone to propping up judicial-celebrity egos.  I'm no expert, but these reforms strike me as exactly right.

John Allen explains the ecumenical import of the Holy Father's recent visit to Rome's premier synagogue.  This isn't Fr. Oprah's ecumenism, boys and girls.

On the weirdness that is the English language.  Can you guess what part of speech non-English speakers have the most difficulty learning?  It's the part of speech that native English speakers cannot adequately explain!  [In my experience teaching ESL and living in a couple of international communities, non-native English speakers never quite figure out how to use prepositions.  It's really not much easier in Italian, though Spanish seems more logical.]

I've been curious about the French Foreign Legion

Ooooooooooooooo. . .I want one!  This thing would make my cramped flight over the Pond much nicer.

Why revolving doors?  Caution:  it's a Trump Conspiracy!


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Another blow to Global-Warming's "credibility"

Hmmmmmm. . .the "settled science" of the Nobel Prize winning IPCC isn't so settled after all:

The Indian head of the UN climate change panel defended his position yesterday even as further errors were identified in the panel's assessment of Himalayan glaciers.

[. . .]

The IPCC’s 2007 report, which won it the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”.

But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999.

The IPCC admitted on Thursday that the prediction was “poorly substantiated” in the latest of a series of blows to the panel’s credibility.

Read the whole embarrassing article here.

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Wish List Experiment

The Book Depository, the British answer to Amazon.com, has made it possible to share personal Wish Lists on-line.

So, an experiment:  I've moved seven books from my Amazon list to the B.D. list.

There are several advantages to this change. . .if it works.

First, the B.D. ships free worldwide.  International shipping from the U.S. usually runs about $13.

Second, since the books are delivered from within the E.U. marketplace, there will be no duty charge on my end.  Duties run from about $10-$50 depending on the declared value of the books.

Third, books from the B.D. arrive within 10 days from the U.K.  It can take 6 weeks to get them from the U.S. . .if they arrive at all.

The only disadvantage:  B.D. doesn't sell used books, so their prices are a bit higher than Amazon's.

Anyway, let's see how it goes!

Fr. Philip's Book Depository Wish List

NB.  In the top right hand corner there's a drop down menu that allows you to select a currency.  The Euro is the default currency for my server.  It might be the dollar for an American server.  Be sure and change it to the dollar. . .no need to add conversion charges!

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Poetry and our life in God

Philosophy vs. Poetry.  This is one of the great intellectual rivalries in the western world.  We're supposed to believe that philosophy offers clarity and precision, while poetry offers obfuscation and imprecision.  Or, philosophy offers sterile analysis, while poetry offers enriching beauty.  I always teach my literature students that poetry, in the pursuit of truth, works to exhaust the imprecision of language, thus approaching precision by negation.  The paradigms of American poetry--Whitman and Dickinson--shows us two radically different poetical means to the same truth-seeking end.  Whitman says it All in order to get to closer to Everything.  Dickinson says as Little as possible to lead us to More than we can comprehend.

Fortunately, for both theologians and poets, there is very little enmity between theology and poetry.  God's most beautiful Self-revelation is given to us in the poetry of scripture.  The Church's poet-theologians--Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, et al--demonstrate that the imprecision of poetic language is sometimes the best means for bringing us to a divine end.

Franz Wright, son of the famous American poet, James Wright, is one of this country's best Catholic poets.  He demonstrates that it is possible (and desirable) to compose poems of faith that eschew sentimentality and conventional imagery.  Wright's life-long battles with drug and alcohol addiction, depression, apostasy, suicide, and nihilism aren't sugar-coated in his poems.  They stage the scene for God's light to brighten.

“My Peace I Leave”

The next life will be darker than this so

we must prepare

a light.

Help me change.

Here on my knees

in the hell of my

heart,

on its cold star,

apart.

Because if we say we are your followers

while in reality walking in darkness

we lie and do not live

according to the truth and so

I won't lie, and I will live

according to the truth, acknowledge

I mostly live cut off

and walk in darkness.

Help me,

I still need to know

there is a place,

the temple still stands,

the unknowable

housed,

this infinite

somewhere.

Help me find

the horizontal

portal, the misplaces

sky-blue

book, which is

peace.

The world didn't give me this

word, but

the world cannot take it away--

Franz Wright, Wheeling Motel, 2010

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Coffee Bowl Browsing

Some things you just don't do:  remind guests in your home that they are guests in your home and tell ladies to act like ladies. 

Good Week:  GOP takes "Kennedy's Seat" in MA.  Air America fills for bankruptcy.  Copenhagen Climate Change Accords already a failure. 

Uh oh.  Barbara "Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer may be in trouble.  So sad.

B.O.'s Manhattan terror trials may be in trouble.  

Coalition for Clarity:  Because Torture is Intrinsically Evil.  Utilitarianism is antithetical to a Catholic understanding of the dignity of the human person.  A fetus is not a means to an end.  Neither is a captured terrorist.

Prayer lands a plane.  This doesn't bode well for my summer travel plans.  I fervently pray the rosary on take-off and landing!

U.S. Supreme Court guts campaign finance law as a violation of the First Amendment.  What's next?  Protecting gun ownership rights and free expression of religion? 

Fr. Robert Barron on our fascination with apocalyptic thinking.  If you are looking for an excellent, readable introduction to the thought of Thomas Aquinas, you really can't do much better than Barron's Thomas Aquinas:  Spiritual Master.  This book is really a summary of the Summa theologiae, but don't let that deter you.  I recommend this book more often than any other.

On the definition and practical uses of "Crunchy Catholicism."

On the church and the Soft Fascism of leftist bureaucracies in Canada. 

A video analogy for Congressional Democrats post-Brown win in MA.

My roommate died from malaria.  Can I eat the body?

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The difference btw the Male and Female Mind

Risking life and limb, I give you the difference between the male and female mind:

Dispute it, if you dare!


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Coffee Bowl Browsing (No Politics Edition)

So far beyond disturbing that it's unsayable:  bodies in the streets of Haiti

How is the media covering religion in the midst of Haitian suffering?

Dick Dawkins and the New Atheists help out in Haiti in order to prove that Christians aren't the only one who can do good deeds.  Of course, Christians have been saying that for 2,000 years (i.e. "virtuous pagans," anyone?)

A review of the movie, Book of Eli (Spoiler Alert!).   I've seen it.  As a movie, it's a Redneck Moviegoer's dream.  As a message about faith and perseverance, it's straight out of the Old Testament.   As a film (as opposed to a movie), it ain't art.  I also saw Avatar.  No comment.

Deal Hudson remembers an evening with pro-aborts Mortimer Adler and Justice Blackmun. 

On the dangers of those canned intercessions at Mass (When I said Mass at a hospital chapel in Dallas, I always read through the canned intercessions for the day and corrected them.  There was almost always something dodgy in them.)

Is the Mississippi Delta the next Haiti:  prospects for an American earthquake.  I hope not!  My whole family lives in the delta.

Not only are they bringing about the Apocalypse, they're getting married!

Site chocked full of documentaries. . .looks like most of the ones on religion are anti-Christian.

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The Discovery of God

I'm coming into a great appreciation for the work of Henri de Lubac.  De Lubac is one of the many theologians of Vatican Two who came to publicly oppose the "Spirit of Vatican Two" hijacking of the Council's renewal agenda.  A prominent member of the ressourcement movement ("back to the sources"), de Lubac shows Catholic theologians how to be at once responsive to modern developments in theological research and faithful to the Tradition of the Church.  He is at once a great theologian, an excellent philosopher, and a mystic.

If you are looking for a substantial introduction to the Church's philosophical grounding for her theological worldview, you really can't do much better than de Lubac's The Discovery of God.  By no means an easy read, Discovery will set you up with years of intellectual challenges and pull you through centuries of hard ecclesial thinking about all things human and divine.  This book is steeped in the Patristic and Thomistic tradition, but also makes good use of more modern and contemporary philosophical insights, including phenomenology (philosophy of experience).

Two excerpts:

The universe through which God reveals himself is not only his work:  it is his creature.  It is not merely a thing which God in his omnipresence made out of nothing; and for that very reason it is a being which exists and lives only on the life and being which it is continuously borrowing from its Author.  Or rather--since the classical metaphors of "loan" and "source" are either too feeble or too strong--the universe live and exists only in God.  In Eo vivimus et sumus.  God is "his own being," but he is also "the being of all" (Pseudo-Dionysus). He is incomprehensible, inaccessible, and at the same time familiar and close to us.  "The root and principle of every creature," he is the Being present par excellence (Aquinas).  (87)

+

Infinite intelligibility--such is God.  The incomprehensible is the opposite of the unintelligible.  The deeper we enter into the infinite, the better we understand that we can never hold it in our hands. . .(Whatever is understood by science is limited by the understanding of the knower.)  The infinite is not a sum of finite elements, and what we understand of it is not a fragment torn from what remains to be understood.  The intelligence does not do away with the mystery nor does it even begin to understand it; it in no way diminishes it, it does not "bite" on it:  it enters deeper and deeper into it and discovers it more and more as a mystery.  (117)

Great stuff!

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