04 July 2011

Coffee Cup Browsing

Gaza Flotilla (a.k.a. "Ridiculous Leftist P.R. Stunt of the Week") is stopped by the Greek gov't.  Who knew the Greek gov't had that much sense?

B.O.'s own economics team reports that the "stimulus" costs $278,000/job "created or saved." 


Christian preacher battered and abused by a largely Muslim crowd. . .in Iran?  Yemen?  No.  Dearborn, MI. 

Episcopal parish comes home to Rome.  Watch for more of this as the E.C. continues its slow suicide.

Like ancient Rome, the postmodern West is increasingly "polytheistic, proud, anti-Christian, sexually confused, with rampant infanticide, frequent wars, incivility and cruelty, and a general breakdown of family loyalties."  Are we prepared for martyrdom? 

Three ways to declare your independence from the federal/state Nannies. . .


Big brothers are the same across species.


Oh, that explains it. . .

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03 July 2011

Ambushed in the Bookstore

Went to Half-Priced Books this afternoon to browse the philosophy and poetry selections.

While looking through the poetry anthologies, a young man walked behind and said something I didn't quite catch.   

--Sorry.  I didn't hear you.

--What church do you go to?

I thought he must recognize me from Mass, or maybe from U.D.  He seemed harmless, if a little addled.

--What church do I go to?

--Yes.  

--Well, I go to the priory.

--OK.  Do you family and friends go to church?

By this time I've figured out that this is a Religious Ambush, and I ain't playin'.

--Yes.  They all do.

--Good.  What's the priory?

--It's where I live.  I'm a Catholic priest and a Dominican friar.

--Oh. . .(long pause with an anxious look). . .have you read Revelations 17 lately?

--Lately?  No, can't say I have.

--Do you know the name of the city in that chapter?

--Let me guess:  Rome?

--Yes.  Now that you are old enough to make your own choice, you should re-read that chapter.

My brain is whirling now.  I'm trying to decide if I really wanna do this.  Do I want to confront this guy with his historically illiterate fundamentalism and challenge him on his anti-Catholic bigotry?  He doesn't strike me as being very open to discussion and the last thing I want is a public shouting match. 

I chicken out. . .

--OK.  I will.

He nods and walks off.

What would you have done?

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01 July 2011

Love is a person

Most Sacred Heart
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

John uses the word “love” eighteen times in this morning's selection from his first letter. We might conclude from the frequency of its occurrence and the confidence John shows in its use, that love is a word that picks out a clearly formed idea, a concept sharply distinguished from similar but imprecise notions. This means that we should be able to read John's letter and answer with a great deal of confidence the question, “What is love?” But this is exactly the wrong question to ask. Asked this way, the question leads us to a woefully impoverished answer. The better answer comes with the question, “Who is love?” And to this question, John answers, “God is love.” Lest we think that this too is an imprecise definition, hear what our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has to say about what it means to acknowledge and accept this fundamental truth, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” Love is an event, a person. Still too sterile, maybe too abstract? I believe Yeats can help us here. Following the Magi in his imagination, Yeats goes to Bethlehem and finds “the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.” In the flesh and bone of a child, the uncontrollable mystery of love wiggles and cries. Meeting this child, loving this child is to know, to love God.

When did we start to think of love as a concept rather than a person? When did we start to define love in terms of pure emotion, or describe it with the language of biology? When did love become a game piece in the battles of politics and economics? Love has become a libertine passion, a criminal excuse, a political talking-point, an ideological hot-button. It's a reason to demolish, to fight, to build, to save, to heal. In the name of love, we feed thousands and slaughter just as many; for love, we marry and destroy marriage; we rescue and condemn. Is this what Yeats means when he describes the child Jesus as an “uncontrollable mystery”? Released into the world, divine love is untamed and untamable—a mystery to be met, to be accepted or rejected but never properly trained. If God is love, then Love is uncontrollable; at the very least, Love is uncontrollable by those who claim to love.

We do not tame divine love. Rather we are tamed by Him who is Love. Jesus tells us to take on his yoke and take direction. Put on his harness and be driven. The “uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor” dares us to risk life and limb in his care, to place ourselves ahead of him in the field but yoked to a task—the work of giving his Father's love hands and feet, minds and voices. This is not only what he dares us to do, it is what we have vowed to do. If love has become so plastic, so malleable as to mean anything, to be anything, then those of us who claim to love must demonstrate—unambiguously demonstrate—that Love is a person, and that He abides with those who abide with Him. His yoke is our witness. And the work we do in his name must bear the fruit of His love for all.


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30 June 2011

Coffee Cup Browsing

TIME editor gets the Constitution wrong. . .fourteen times!  Fortunately, no one reads TIME anymore.

Five Easy Steps to Cultural Destruction

"Infamous liberal outpost". . .Washington Theological Union to close in 2013.  The "Spirit of Vatican Two" has left the building!

Every rapist in Norway in 2010 was a Muslim??? 

More hilarity at the U.N.:  North Korea put in charge of nuclear disarmament

On the effects of WI's budget repair. . .

Fishing with Moses


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28 June 2011

Update

Yes!  I'm still out here. . .

Reading/preparing for the two classes I'm teaching this summer is keeping me unusually busy.

The 20th Century Literature course is particularly time-consuming given that we've been reading several large modernist novels.  Now that we've moved into modernist poetry difficulty has replaced length as the principal challenge. . .though the novels pose their own difficulties.

I'm celebrating/preaching the Friday Mass at the priory.  So far, no invitations to celebrate a Sunday Mass have arrived.  

Next term will be much less hectic. . .at the very least, Coffee Bowl Browsing will return as a regular feature.

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25 June 2011

The best Catholic Books

Brandon Vogt provides the Catholic cyberworld with an invaluable service!  



I'm just a little embarrassed by how few of these books I've read. . .too many years studying modernist literature. . .hmmmmm. . .

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On books rec'd and not. . .(Updated)

Time for a few Mille Grazie's to my kind and generous Book Benefactors. . .

. . .to Robert B. for The Road to Serfdom. . .

. . .to Fr. Matthew G. for Theology Remixed. . .

. . .to C.J. & Kitty D. for Recent Catholic Philosophy, vol 2. . .

. . .to Blaine H. for Recent Catholic Philosophy, vol. 1. . .

and Anon for Bright of the Sky. . .this is the one I thought has been purchased as a Kindle Book.

Though they were purchased back in March, I haven't yet received:

Opening Up the Scriptures or Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments. . .maybe they went to Rome ahead of me.  

Mille grazie!  Book Benefactors are always in my daily prayers!

P.S.  How could I forget!?  Thanks to Jeff M. for the Kindle Book, The Gypsy Morph.

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24 June 2011

What?! What!? I can't hear you!

Last week I noticed a significant decline in the acuity of the hearing in my right ear.  If I closed my left ear, I was completely deaf.   Beginning Thursday, the hearing started to improve a bit.

So, this morning I went to the ENT doc and he told me--after several tests, etc.--that I have Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss. . .to the tune of a 20% loss in my right ear.  The most likely cause is inflammation around the cochlear nerve (I think that's what he called it, anyway), so he's giving me a month's course of steroids.  

I asked him, "Doc, you're telling me that my ear nerve isn't working b/c my brain is swelling?"  He said, "Well, that's a rough summary."  I said, "Brain swelling.  I blame philosophy."

Please pray for my Ear Nerve!  Who's the patron saint of hearing???

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Two classes for 2nd summer term at U.D.

I will be teaching two classes at the Univ of Dallas second summer term: American literature and a poetry writing workshop. 
The workshop will focus on critical reading and the creative process in writing poetry.  We will be reading L.O.T.S. of contemporary poetry!
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Will you lose your head for Jesus?

Nativity of John the Baptist
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

When the angel Gabriel announces to Zechariah that his wife Elizabeth will give birth to a son, a son who will go one to announce the coming of the long-promised Messiah, Zechariah gives voice to the doubts of his heart and asks, "How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years." A perfectly reasonable question, one anyone of us might ask! Zechariah's question earns a stern rebuke and a punishment. He's struck speechless and will remain so until his son is born. Once John is born and Zechariah confirms in writing the infant's non-traditional name, his tongue is loosed and he sings a hymn of praise to God. The unusual events surrounding the conception and birth of John lead the people to ask, “What, then, will this child be?” This child will grow into a herald of the Lord, not only announcing the arrival of the Messiah but baptizing him as well, standing in witness at the Jordan when the Holy Spirit descends to confirm the Sonship of Jesus. John the Baptizer runs before the Christ, proclaiming the imminent fulfillment of God's promise to send among His people one who will restore all of creation to righteousness. For Christ, John is a forerunner, a harbinger; for us, he is an example, a model of joyful obedience to the Word once and always spoken. 

John baptizes Jesus and hears the voice of the Father speak, “This is my son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” John's ministry for all the years leading up to this moment has been a ministry of obedience, of listening to the Word being spoken. Conceived for a single purpose and born to give voice to God's promise of a Messiah, John roams as a prophet among the people, baptizing them with water, preparing them in repentance for the arrival of the Christ. Determined, maybe a little obstinate, certainly faithful, John's obedience to God's Word costs him his freedom on more than one occasion and eventually head—a price he no doubt willing paid. As our example of faithfulness, we have to ask: are we prepared to follow John into prison, all the way to the executioner's block? To answer this question, we have to answer another one first: what is our purpose as followers of the Christ?

Daily we called upon to distinguish between the means and the end of our baptismal vows; that is, we are called upon to remember the difference between what we have vowed to be and do and how we have vowed to accomplished these goals. Being baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ makes us imperfect Christs and sets us on the way to becoming holy as God Himself is holy. To become Christs for others. That's our end as followers of Christ. The means we use to reach this perfected end flow out of our cooperation with God's gifts to each of us: we feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, heal the sick, clothe the naked, bury the dead, announce mercy to the sinner, and love our enemies in the face of their hatred for us. Each of these can be a means to our end; they are not the end itself. If our end is to become Christ, then we can say with certainty –even if tinged with a little trepidation—that Yes we will follow John to prison and on to the executioner's block if necessary. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. does not require the kind of obedience to God's Word that John exemplified. However, becoming Christ requires just such obedience and more. Becoming Christ requires the clear, unambiguous commitment of the heart and mind, our whole person, to the single clarion truth that there is nothing more important, nothing more vital to our lives as creatures of a loving God than our undivided love for Him. Listening to His Word, His Word made flesh, and acting accordingly is the very center of our lives. Though this truth costs us nothing to acquire, it might cost us our lives to share. If so, we remember what the people said of John, “For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.” And He is with us as well.

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21 June 2011

Coffee Bowl Browsing

On the failure of liberal Catholicism:  Part One and Part Two


Passive-aggressive, manipulative, self-aggrandizing?  Fr. Corapi's adieu to his priesthood.

Evangelists for the Church of Global Warming caught fudging the data. . .again.  You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.

In 2009, ten companies a week on average left CA for more business-friendly states.  Today, that number is fifty-four. [Link Fixed]


B.O.'s USDA wants "heterosexism" (i.e. support for traditional marriage) equated with racism.  Let the re-education regime commence!

Just say NO!!!! to sudsy water.

Southwest Airlines implements a new and more humiliating seating procedure.

"This ole thing?  Just something I saw in the window and had to have." 

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19 June 2011

OP Novices approved for vows

Just received word that our Southern Province novices have been approved for Simple Vows!

Congrats, brothers!!


Brs. Juan and Thomas More, first and second from the left.

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Two for the Three-in-One

Two homilies for Trinity Sunday:

O Lord, do come along (2008)

Suffering for mystery (2009)

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18 June 2011

Yes to Jenny; no to kung-fu (A Wedding Homily)

Jennifer-Patrick Wedding
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Catherine of Siena Church

It's August 1, 2008 and I am sweating away my obedient life in Rome. Having just discovered that the language school I am enrolled in doesn't hold classes in August b/c of the traditional Roman summer Ferie, and having no A/C or internet access in my 16th century convent cell, I am precariously perched on a rented stool in a dodgy internet cafe on the Street of Snakes. Why “dodgy,” you ask? Well, it's on the Street of Snakes. And the whole time I am there a steady stream of early twenty-something Italian guys come and go holding what look like smallish bricks of heroin tightly wrapped in tissue paper. How do I know it's heroin? I don't. I'm a writer, a literature professor, and, most importantly, a southerner. . .so wild exaggeration and outright lying in the pursuit of a good story are sacred duties. It turns out that the internet cafe was a front for a pub crawl business and all those packages were actually bundles of coupons for handing out to tourists. Though I'm sure you are relieved to know that I wasn't in any danger of being kidnapped by Roman drug lords and forced into spending my life as a heroin mule for the gypsy syndicates, you have to be asking yourself at this point: what does any of this have to do with Jenny and Patrick getting married? Good question. You see, while I sat delicately planted on my rented stool in that internet cafe, watching the scuzzy Italian couriers rush in and out with their faux heroin bricks, and wiping Rome's oppressive August humidity from my brow, I received an email from Patrick. Like most emails from Patrick, it was long, a bit convoluted, and contained two questions. First, should I marry Jenny? And, second, should I become a kung-fu master? There it is: August 1, 2008. . .the beginning of something larger than Patrick's capacity to ask annoying questions: the first hint that Patrick is thinking about Jenny “in that way.” So, yes, Patrick, you should marry Jenny. And, no, Grasshopper, you should not become a kung-fu master. 

When Patrick and Jenny asked me more than a year ago to preside at their wedding Mass, I was just a bit apprehensive. Knowing both of these U.D. alums quite well and remembering the first time I laid eyes on Jenny during Charity Week walking up the mall in D&D drag, I was afraid that these two were planning a Star Trek wedding or a Princess Bride wedding or some other uber-dorky ceremony that would require me to wear a period costume or some sort of ridiculous hat. I could just see me processing down the aisle dressed as a 37th Level Chaotic Good Drow Elf Cleric named Pleiades the Ample. Thanks be to God and all His Saints, they wanted a normal, Catholic wedding with a normal Catholic wedding homily. . .so, without further falsehood or exaggeration, here it is:

Paul, inspired, and no doubt telling the truth, assures us, “Love never fails.” Though we are certainly happy to hear this bit of wisdom and grateful to Paul for its timely delivery, we should not be accused of thick-headedness if we were to ask, “Never fails what? Or never fails whom?” OK. Love never fails us. Love never fails to heal, to reconcile, to forgive, to hope. Love never fails when all else does; when the last chance passes untaken; when there's no one left and no one coming. Love never fails to flourish: to tell the truth and all the truth, to ohhh at the beautiful, and to demand the good. Love has never failed. Will not fail. In fact, Love cannot fail; it is the most excellent way.

Love is fundamental, elemental, if you will; it is the primal and pervasive way. Without love, Paul writes, both human and angelic tongues are nothing more than clanging noises. Without love, all knowledge, all prophecy, all mystery are empty. Without love, a faith that moves mountains cannot move mountains and the self-sacrifice of body, mind, and spirit gain us nothing. Love gives a tongue its words. Gives knowledge, prophecy, and mystery their intelligibility. Love gives faith its power; gives sacrifice its reason for holiness. Primitively, primally, “[Love] bears all things, [Love] believes all things, [Love] hopes all things, and [Love] endures all things.” And to the degree that we participate in this Love, to the degree that we love, we bear, believe, hope, and endure all things as well. And we do so not b/c we are strong or determined or especially holy. We love b/c we are first loved. Loved by Love Himself from the vacuum-suck pop of creation from nothing of everything, we are loved. To love in return is our only reason for being here. 

Lest we confuse love with Love, let's make a few important distinctions. Paul is not writing about the warm feeling of affection one gets for someone one finds attractive; or the fierce attachment one might feel toward a parent or sibling. Yes, that's love but it's not the Love that Paul is writing about. Paul is writing about the Spirit of Love that spoke the Word over the Void and created from nothing everything that is. The same Spirit of Love who freed the slaves in Egypt, led them through the desert, brought them to the Promised Land, and established them as a holy people, a nation of priests, a kingdom of prophets. This is the same Spirit of Love who issued the Law, inspired the Prophets, and promised His people a Messiah. The same Spirit of Love who introduced His son at the River Jordan; transfigured him on Mt Tabor; raised him from the dead on Easter morning; descended like a mighty wind upon the disciples; and lives with us still as a consoler, counselor, and advocate. This Love is the Love that binds us to one another, that holds us fast in our hope, and shows us the way to forgiveness and mercy. This is the Love that never fails, that cannot fail. Hormones, neuro-transmitters, passions, emotions are all well and good when we need to be motivated and the complex cocktail of brain chemistry that produces the state we call “love” is quite useful for motivating action, but it is also quite dangerous if not properly controlled. One of the most common mistakes we make as humans is to confuse the brain state we call “love” with Love Himself. I am confident that Patrick and Jenny—with their U.D. educations and sensible upbringings—will not make the mistake of believing that the Love Who Never Fails is the brain state we call “love.” That sort of love crashes and burns more frequently and more brightly than not. No amount of prayer or sacrifice or fasting will fortify a marriage against the tides of adversity if that marriage is rooted in the sort of love that can washed out of the brain with a timely release of dopamine-serotonin antagonists. The Love that matters, the Love that makes a Christian marriage a marriage is Love Himself, Christ Jesus and the love that he is for his bride, the Church.

I know that you two know what Christian marriage is: I did your marriage prep! But I would be remiss in my duties as a priest if I didn't at least touch on the sacramental nature of our little adventure in love this afternoon. By exchanging matrimonial vows in the Church before God's people and His minister, you two are vowing to live your lives as a sacrament—a visible sign—of Christ's love for his Church. Not only do you vow to live as a sign, you are vowing to BE the love that Christ has for his Church. Sacraments not only point at God's grace, they make His grace present and efficacious. So, when we look at you two, bonded together by vows in the Church, we see not only a sign of divine love, we see Divine Love Himself and we see how much He loves His Church in how much you love one another. Thus, when Paul writes that love is patient and kind, not jealous or pompous, not inflated or rude; that love does not seek its own interests; that it is not quick-tempered nor does it brood over injury; that love does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth, he is describing not only how you two should behave with one another, he's also describing how God loves His people.

In his priestly prayer to the Father, Jesus asks that we all might be made one so that our perfection in him would be assured. Each of us has one last imperfection—one remaining crack, one broken bit—that, when it is finally healed, will mark us out as one, done, complete. For most of us, that last imperfection is hidden under layers of flashier imperfections, louder cracks, squeakier bits that get more attention in prayer and sacrifice early on. One sign that we are ready and willing to begin naming and healing all of our imperfections is the readiness and the willingness to enter into a marriage covenant and have all our bruises and bumps and scars and creases and crevices exposed to the sacrificial love of another human soul. This is the vocation you were called to and the vocation you have agreed to pursue. Therefore, if you will bring one another to perfection in Christ, you will love one another with ferocious generosity, vigorous patience, and zealous humility. Nothing matters more—and I mean NOTHING—than your vow to be a sacramental sign of Christ's love for his Church. When money, kids, jobs, etc. start to ease cracks in your lives, remember: we are a sign of Christ's love for his Church. When jealousy, anger, impatience rise up, remember: we are a sign of Christ's love for his Church. When you are tempted to go your separate ways, remember: we are a sign of Christ's love for his Church. And b/c you are here to become a sign of Christ's love for his Church, his Church is here today to say AMEN to your vows, to witness the creation of this sacrament, and to make our own promises to support you in your ministry to us. 

One last note to you both. The book of Sirach says that “a worthy wife brings joy to her husband.” She also brings a beer and a sandwich so that a smile is ever on his face. Sirach also says that a good wife is a great gift to the man who fears the Lord. If the man is smart, he will also fear his wife. . .for those sandwiches do not make themselves!

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17 June 2011

Spending a heavenly treasure

11th Week OT (F)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory

Noting the ever-present threat of moths and decay and thieves, Jesus advises his disciples to avoid storing their treasures here on earth. Even well-loved prizes and keepsakes are subject to the wear and tear of gravity, greed, and the occasional, hungry bug. Of course, the question here isn't really about where we ought to store our treasures. By highlighting the possibilities for storing our treasures, Jesus indirectly dares us to question the nature of what it is that we treasure. In other words, by advising us to store up our treasures in heaven and not on earth, Jesus is telling us that anything we could store on earth cannot be a treasure. A true treasure, that which is permanently valuable, cannot be eaten, stolen, or lost to rot, and anything we can lock in a box, hide under a floorboard, or pack into a freezer bag can disappear, will disappear, eventually. What sort of treasure cannot, will not fall apart over time or diminish in value if given away? In fact, what sort of treasure increases in value for you the more you give it away? The only kind of treasure that can be stored in heaven: the favor of God when we follow His Christ in preaching and teaching the Good News, and serving the least of His people. What the Church keeps, we lose; what we spend, we have. 

As creatures intimately bound to the material world, as embodied souls thoroughly subject to space and time and gravity and all those other terribly inconvenient physical realities, it is sometimes difficult, more than difficult at times, to move our thinking and doing beyond the immediate and the proximate and to think and do in terms of the infinite and the eternal. For Christians, still bound to the material world though not of it, our thinking and doing is best focused on The End of Things and the holy pretense of thinking and doing as if The End were here already. What difference does it make to our plans, our investments, our projects if we fake the End Time? Does that sound dishonest? Well, it's what we are supposed to be doing—faking the End Times, that is, living now as if the End were here. Not running around screaming and hoarding food and water but rather setting up our lives as if God's justice already prevails, as if Christ ruled here and now every heart and mind, as if the new heavens and the new earth were set resolutely into their places and were just waiting for us to arrive. 

Living “as if” in this way doesn't mean that we believe the Kingdom of Heaven is some sort of material paradise destined to be manifested by the work of our hands! No. Living “as if” our treasure were storable only in heaven and never on earth means living in full and glorious knowledge that our Lord has won his victory over death and that everything we do is motivated by the living hope that his death and resurrection reveal to us. That's the light that dispels the darkness: the living hope, the daily hope, the hope moment by moment, knowing that God's promises have been fulfilled. Our task—bound to the world but not of it—is to keep the Word, store the Word by freely giving it away; to store up our heavenly treasure by going on a wild spending spree. The more we spend, the more we save!

Pic credit:  Bonkas

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