Late Papers

He who does not hold out a hand is not a Christian

2016-02-29T13:57:00.001-06:00

"The sinner belongs to Christianity. A sinner can make the best prayer […] The sinner is an integral portion, an integral part of the Christian mechanism. The sinner lies at the heart of Christianity.
[….]
The sinner, together with the saint, enters into the system, is of the system of Christianity.

He who does not enter the system, who does not hold out a hand, he it is who is not a Christian. It is he who has no competence whatever in matters of Christianity. It is he who is a stranger. The sinner holds out a hand to the saint, gives a hand to the saint, since the saint gives a hand to the sinner. And all together, one by means of the other, one pulling up the other, they ascend to Jesus, they form a chain which ascends to Jesus, a chain of fingers which cannot be unlinked. He who is not a Christian is he who does not hold out a hand. It matters little what next he does with this hand. When a man can accomplish the loftiest action in the world without being steeped in grace, this man is a Stoic, he is not a Christian. When a man can commit the lowest action in the world precisely without committing a sin [Himmler, for example, boasted of "remaining decent"], this man is not a Christian. A Christian is not defined by a low water mark, but by communion.

[…Christianity] is a city. A bad citizen belongs to the city. A good stranger does not."

(Basic Verities, Charles Péguy, Rendered into English by Ann and Julian Green, p 179-183. New York: Pantheon Books, 1943).

Congratulations to everyone involved with Spotlight for winning Best Picture at the Oscars. I would like to watch it, but I see few movies at the theaters these days. I did catch an episode of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting: Glare of the spotlight. This hour-long radio program has three sections on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church: 1. the original story in The Boston Globe; 2. the cover up of abuse in the Twin Cities of Minnesota; and 3. the problem of international relocation of priests who have been credibly accused. I received confirmation in the Catholic Church by a pastor who was guilty, but (fortunately) I switched to public schools after 4th grade because of the failure of my teachers to give me an education. I had been ostracized at school and my dad witnessed a lay teacher telling my classmates to punch me in the arm on the way out of class. I also grew up across the street from a teenager who was angry and menacing as a result of his abuse at the hands of priests. May all those involved find the face of mercy in the end.

When the abuse scandal first broke, I realized that abuse in the Church was only the tip of the iceberg of abuse in society. In the horizon of family and friends, I have known abusive atheists, unbelievers, family members, teachers, and others who abused trust. I am glad that the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church now train lay people to identify and prevent child sexual abuse. And I am glad to have participated in a prayer service of reparation at my childhood parish. I have no final statement on this because I feel it is better to keep open a wound than to seal up an infection prematurely.

It is in the context of this open wound, that I would like to mention a couple of books that I've read recently.

The first novel, A Land Without Sin by Paula Huston, is a great adventure into the jungles of southern Mexico, into the role of sacrifice in religions, and into the painful human history of sin and brutality. It's a deeply intimate descent into the darkness of family secrets and the sinfulness that we magnify through self-justification and evasion. This book was also my most significant introduction to the dynamics of the thought of René Girard. I had come across Girard in the theology of Balthasar, and he has a certain currency among his populizers. I see a kind of a glib talk of scapegoating and a way of making his ideas serve various apologetic purposes. Reading A Land Without Sin was the first time that I have found myself implicated by the dynamics of the scapegoat and not justified. As a result, I've ordered myself an interlibrary loan of Girard's I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.

The second book, a novella by John Scalzi, is called The God Engines. Like Wolfe's A Sorcerer's House, this book has some pretty divided reactions. A number of readers consider it fantasy because it has a scientistic mechanism for religious belief (not unlike Gaiman's American Gods, and like AG also classified as horror). Some also feel the book is making some polemical point about religion, although from reading the reviews I am not sure what parties are offended (evangelicals, Catholics, atheists?). The conceit of the story is a world where spaceships are powered by captive gods, also called 'The Defiled," who are literally whipped into obedience. Suffice it to say that when I read this book, I felt a strong examination of conscience in my own religiosity, and I feel that it couldn't have been written if Scalzi were not doing likewise. Here's a photo of a part that reminds me of the need for a New Evangelization in Christianity:

I began this post with a quote from Péguy. At its heart, Christianity is not a religion of self justification, of escape from the evil of life, of a grand system for achieving virtue and for preventing sin, but a relationship with Jesus Christ who embraces my nothing, my evil, my sin. And in this embrace, he draws us all to the perfection of life eternal.

Two Fairy Stories: Stardust and The Sorcerer's House

2016-02-23T14:04:00.002-06:00

The Sorcerer's House by Gene Wolfe,
dedicated to Neil Gaiman, 2010.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman, dedicated to
Gene & Rosemary Wolfe, 1999.

*

My first book by Gaiman was American Gods. A while back, I watched Stardust on Netflix and noticed that the film was based on this novel by Gaiman. I was a bit intrigued by the story because the central event is remarkably Christian. A being in heaven (a star) descends to earth to live among people. As a "fairy tale for adults", the book has plenty of sex and violence. At the heart of the book, is something like a richly imaginative engagement with and critique of the notion of the Incarnation. As a star in heaven, Yvaine looked upon the struggles and sorrows of the world with sympathy until human lust for power knocks her to earth. She lands on the other side of the wall in the human town of Wall, England. She can only live on the fairy side of the wall, for if she had fallen on the other side, she would have burned up.

I just read The Sorcerer's House by Gene Wolfe. It's my first book by Wolfe, and I picked it up almost at random from the handful of books by Wolfe at my library. I was pleasantly to see that it was dedicated to Neil Gaiman. This novel is also a kind of fairy tale for adults, and it also has no shortage of sex and violence (moralists can go hang!). Unlike Stardust, there is no figure of Incarnation, and the main character, Bax, is no Christian either, but a genial, amoral guy who yet has a yearning for something more: expressed in his doctorates in Ancient History and 19th Century Literature and his memory of childhood, but also expressed in treasure map cons. I should mention, by the way, that the hermeneutics of The Sorcerer's House are controversial: many believe that the whole fantastic story could be a fabrication of Bax; others take the supernatural elements as given. In short, the book comes down to the classic trilemma of Christian apologetics: Bax is either lying, crazy, or (mostly) telling the truth. For me, the greatness of the story is not in any particularly religious idea, but in the spaciousness of its humanity. It's a house, a universe, that expands to accommodate those who dwell there, and it's a dramatic, intense, and vertiginous Reality which cannot be diminished to profit and avarice.

Babylon Candles and the Triannulus with Longlight

A sidenote about magical devices.

In Stardust, Babylon candles are candles that take you where you want to go, burning up as they do so.

In The Sorcerer's House, a triannulus is a device with 3 rings (with Bax writing letters on lined loose leaf paper, it's almost a PUN!). It's flat, and the 3 rings have images of items to be desired. You line up symbols on the three rings to specify what it is you want. Then you light a candle called a longlight, being careful to extinguish it when you get what you want. I found this device to be quite cool. By aligning the glyphs, the user apparently binds the natural world with symbols, but this is tied to the desire of the user. 'Longlight' is a word coined by Wolfe in the novel, and it would seem to be an archaic term for candle, but Old English already had the words 'candle' and 'light'. In my estimation, 'longlight' means longing-light, an objective correlative for the desire of the user. What's fascinating about the longlight is that to get what you want, the desire has to be co-terminal with the item wanted. If it is extinguished before or burns long after the item, then the numen (divinity, power) of the user grows. With the limitations of the device, I cannot imagine it would be a serious tool for a sorcerer, but instead a device for apprentices to learn about the power of desire, especially when it does not coincide with discrete objects.

Words about Dad

2016-02-22T15:24:00.002-06:00

I'm Fred Kaffenberger III. Welcome! Mom asked me to say a few words about dad, Fred Kaffenberger Jr.

When I was perhaps 9 or 10 I recognized Dad's goodness as a sign of the closeness of Christ to me, the tangible sign of God's nearness. A few weeks ago, I asked mom how she became Christian. She answered that she had known that Jesus loved her all of her life, but that when she met Dad, she encountered Christ. He took us on road trips every summer: camping, watching shooting stars, visiting extended family, going to Christian Family Movement conventions. As a father, he never treated the kids the same but always worked to provide what each one needed, always picking us up or dropping us off from events, even at great inconvenience to himself (a giving that has continued long past our childhoods and including the grandchildren). He lived the corporal and spiritual works of mercy: from counseling inmates and winterizing homes to teaching students and praying for the living and the dead.

One of the great lessons Dad taught us was how to say goodbye. When I cried at losing a helium balloon as a child, he taught me to say "bye, bye balloon," a lesson he repeated through the years. When I lost my grandfather, Fred Kaffenberger Sr, Dad took me to the grave and told me to say goodbye. It was a difficult lesson, but Dad knew from personal experience that the glory of this world is passing.

Yes, the glory of this world is passing, but a greater glory reaches His hand out to us even now. Msgr. Luigi Giussani said to a dear friend of his who had lost his father: "The more the symbols that have been taken away are big, the more the reality comes close, intrusively. Look at its face, the Reality, Him: Lord Jesus. Oh, only He exists! Look at Him in His face as you've never looked before; His gaze has never been so demanding before; so fixed, so scrutinizing."

In this moment, I feel that Dad's presence teaching me again: To say goodbye to the man who taught me so much, but to embrace in a more profound way the Infinite Mystery, "that Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named."

Son of the American Revolution dies while laying wreaths on veterans' graves

2016-02-22T12:32:00.001-06:00

By Brian Burnes
The Kansas City Star
Kansas City, Missouri
December 19, 2015

Warm weather drew a much larger crowd than usual to take part in the annual Wreaths Across America event Saturday at Arlington National Cemetery, where more than 241,000 wreaths were placed at the graves of the fallen. Even with high threat level, wreath-laying events still a go

When Wreaths Across America founder Morrill Worcester turned on the radio Friday morning, he heard news that the U.S. terrorist threat levels were the highest they've been since 9/11. "How ironic," he said after arriving at the Pentagon to lay 184 wreaths in honor of those who died at the Arlington site 14 years ago. Community joins in wreath-laying ceremony

Kansas City has lost a patriot.

Fred Kaffenberger Jr., 80, a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, while wearing the colonial attire and tri-corner hat of society members, died last week in Leavenworth National Cemetery while laying Christmas wreaths at the graves of veterans.

The details of Kaffenberger's death, which have since gone viral, strike friends and family members as fitting.

"He went exactly the way he would have chosen to go," said daughter Amber DiGiovanni.

The Sons of the American Revolution is a "lineage" society whose members have traced their family trees back to an ancestor who "supported the cause of American independence" during the Revolutionary War.

A video screen grab shows Fred Kaffenberger Jr., dressed in Colonial-era garb. Kaffenberger died Dec. 12, 2015, while taking part in a Wreaths Across America event at Leavenworth National Cemetery, Kansas, while laying Christmas wreaths at the graves of veterans.
As a member, Kaffenberger personified patriotism for the benefit of any group that asked him to appear. He participated in full uniform in parades and naturalization ceremonies and often gave programs on American flag history.

"When he walked into a room wearing that uniform, he looked like George Washington," DiGiovanni said.

He had always been patriotic. As a fourth-grader in Lebanon, Mo., Kaffenberger won an American Legion poetry contest for a poem written for Poppy Day, an annual remembrance of veterans.

"There goes a soldier walking down the street, but there are many many soldiers without any feet, so buy a poppy on Poppy Day and help a soldier on his way," the poem read in part.

"That is indicative of an old soul at a very young age," DiGiovanni said.

He went on to a life of serving others. Despite later developing vision problems, Kaffenberger, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, subscribed to at least eight magazines just so he could donate them to veterans programs.

"He didn't have time to read them anyway," said Wanda Kaffenberger, his widow.

He was busy, she said, donating blood or washing dishes during Lent at the Knights of Columbus fish fries. Neighbors knew him for his almost daily walk from the family's Waldo home to early Mass at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church.

As a Kansas City Public Schools history and civics teacher for 33 years, Kaffenberger exhibited fierce devotion to his work, sometimes to the dismay of family members.

"Every time I would have a child on a school day, which seemed to happen a lot with me, he would only be at the hospital for a little while," said Wanda Kaffenberger. "And then he would say, 'I'm going back to school; if I can find a reason to skip class, my students will find a reason to skip,' and out he would go.

"I would be mad, but if he wasn't doing anything at the hospital he was not going to stay. He was so wonderfully unusual."

So it seemed fitting, family members said, that Kaffenberger died Dec. 12 while distributing Christmas wreaths for Wreaths Across America, a holiday program honoring veterans, at the national cemetery in Leavenworth.

Each volunteer received one wreath he could lay on the grave of his choosing.

When the wreath placing was almost complete, Kaffenberger took two wreaths, one for the grave of a nonrelated veteran and the other for the grave of John DiGiovanni, his daughter Amber's late husband. His ashes had been interred there for four years.

"When he didn't come back, the other gentlemen went looking for him," his daughter said.

"One of the those who found Pop later picked up the fallen wreath and placed it on John's grave for him."

The way her father died while in service to others has been inspirational, said daughter Shannon Kaffenberger.

"He somehow found a way to raise us up, to elevate us, even in his passing," she said.

Doctors said Kaffenberger died of natural causes.

"It was a blessing," Wanda Kaffenberger said.

"Jesus said, 'Fred, supper's ready.' Had he not died so beautifully it would be hard, but every step he ever had taken had been toward the kingdom of God. He had loved his neighbor as himself."

There even was some room for levity at the hospital where doctors declared him dead, she added.

"His son Fred said, 'It's just like Dad to drop dead in the middle of the cemetery and cut out the middleman.' We laughed and cried, and we all were of one spirit.

"When we left that hospital room, it was like water pouring out of a cup."

via: Stars & Stripes

An English major???!

2014-08-23T13:47:00.003-05:00

Even in a Nation, Christopher Leitch 2005.
Chalk on vintage map mounted on cloth. Sprint Nextel Art Collection

I work as a data analyst, extracting data from systems and using it to support decision making. When I interviewed for my current position, and after we had discussed the basics of background and position, my manager looked down at my resume and then at me and asked, "An English major?!" I laughed and confessed that I love to read and that's why I majored in English. At a previous interview, the decision maker was provoked in a similar way, but he told me that his brother-in-law was also an English major, and is currently the VP of a major hotel chain. My response to him was that the rise of social media has made verbal communication skills an essential skill in today's business world.

A while back, a dear friend told me that he saw a certain dynamic tension in my life between poetry and technology. He felt that my love of poetry and my sense for the whole clashed in an interesting way with my work in the field of technology. For me, however, text and technology have always been together in my life like twins. As a child, I immersed myself in The Book of Knowledge encyclopedia, where articles of industry and science were interlaced with Victorian poetry and folk tales. My formative high school years were spent skipping boring classes and hanging out in the computer lab where I played the text adventure Zork on the school district mainframe, or wrote programs in Basic to manipulate text strings: count syllables in words, or extract first and last name from a full name.

In college, I was especially fascinated by a short story by Ernest J. Gaines, "Just Like a Tree." The story uses multiple narrators, similar to Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying, but in a compact, elegant, and even symmetrical way. Before graphic organizers were commonplace, I diagrammed the various roles in the story: young boy, adult woman, adult man, old woman. I found that the story neatly divides into two sections, like a two act play. The first begins with a young boy and ends with a young boy; the second begins with an old woman and ends with an old woman. I also found it fascinating that the main characters in the story never narrate but are only described by others: Emmanuel and Aunt Fe.

And now I read databases in addition to poems and novels (adding pivot tables and vlookups to complement grammar and rhetoric). A database is like a massive novel by Faulkner or Thomas Mann, easy to get lost in, but also a place where one can notice patterns and themes, and discover the fascinating connections and unexpected relationships. By naming the dynamic tensions, my friend was helping me become aware that I am living at one end of the tension by working in technology, and that eventually I will need to do justice to poetry in my life. Technology and text, text and technology have ever been interwoven in my life, so when that time comes, I expect it would mean that the independent clause and the subordinate clause will exchange places. The dominant and secondary themes will trade off.

Notes: Black Mesa Poems by Jimmy Santiago Baca

2014-06-24T21:05:00.001-05:00

Black Mesa Poems, Auto-awesome by Google Plus

I got this book when Baca read at Rockhurst University around 1991. These poems are conversational, descriptive, and tell of life with neighbors and friends. The tensions are vivid: a neighbor who blasts him with a shotgun for good reason; a drunk Indian arguing with the cinematic myth of the Old West; a friend who tired of struggling takes a job in a weapons lab and becomes an acquaintance. As a reader, I felt challenged to take sides: the memory of his father screwed by the government, the voices of immigrants fleeing oppression. Where do I stand? Do I embrace the poverty of existence, or do I sacrifice friendship to insulate myself from my needs?

Many lines are consonant heavy, which tends to be my preference also, even if it makes reading them aloud difficult at times. The other thing I note is an avoidance of definite and indefinite articles, which I could go either way on. I appreciate the dense feel which this achieves, but I also feel that articles can make the lines flow better.

from "As Children Know"

2014-06-22T14:25:00.002-05:00

"Let decisions go!
     Let them blow 
     like school children's papers
     against the fence,
     rattling in the afternoon wind.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Poetry received for Father's Day

2014-06-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

How did this book make it to my wishlist?

Via FSG's Work in Progress newsletter, specifically this post: Awayward, from April of last year, so a 14-month buying cycle.

"I wanted peace"

2014-06-18T23:02:00.002-05:00

"I wanted peace,
I wanted to diffuse the immovable core
of vengeance in my heart,
I had carried since a child,
dismantle the bloody wheel of violence
I had ridden since a child"
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "From Violence to Peace" in Black Mesa Poems

Exodus

2014-04-26T20:10:00.001-05:00

PODS is getting packed. So many books, along with some bookcases and other furniture. Another day or so will do it: beds and washer, desks and table and chairs. Before packing and after packing today I walked around the lake again. Goodbye lake. The new place is close to work, and closer to family and friends. There's two parks, including a little urban forest. Lots of mockingbirds around, but much less red-winged blackbirds and herons, and those lake turtles. For the past three years, I've walked daily in the area we are moving to, on lunch and work breaks.

A Review of Sorts: American Gods

2014-03-14T14:22:00.002-05:00

"A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly." NAB Jn 10:10

Pros:

great story with surprises and opportunities to match wits with the storyteller.
incisive description of the powers that rule modern life: the old gods of power, lust, chaos, and the new ones of financial intangibles, internet, and mass media.
thoughtful critique of the idolatry of these gods: the sacrifices people make (typically children) to the gods in exchange for benefits, the way people lose themselves in exchange for a bit of transcendence, the parasitic nature of these gods made by human hands.
devastating satire that leaves few unscathed: Christians, pagans, Muslims, and secular folk.
insofar as the book cultivates (see what I did there?) a sympathy for the gods, this satire also implicates the reader (I'm reminded of Dante's sentimentality regarding the damned and how Virgil points out that it's really due to his own attachment to sin).
meditation on the United States as a land less friendly to these gods than elsewhere.
wisely leaves out direct exchange with Jesus (the appendix which includes this cut scene well confirms the decision and also confirms the great decision not to explicitly invoke the word meme, which has fallen on hard times in the last 14 years.Even Milton the Christian fell flat in the attempt.
prescient in tackling themes of increased impact of religion, terrorism, airport security, paranoia, and the divide between rationalism and romanticism.
a very touching scene where a priestess laments the pragmatism of her protege in opposition to an interest in the gods themselves.

Cons:

would have been nice to have seen some awareness of the anthropological philosopher René Girard and his reflections on sacrifice.
analysis of religion has some great gaps: notably not much regarding the Jewish opposition to images made by human hands.
gods are discussed as beings in the world semi-Platonic ideals, but the mysterious ground of being greater than that which can be conceived gets barely a mention as the Great Spirit.
gods in the book have motivation, eyes that see, and ears that hear in distinction with the idols of this world which have no eyes, ears, or motivation beyond that of their servants.
because the book stops at the gods and the land and leaves as a theoretical the ground of being, it ends up defending and rationalizing the inhumanity of idolatry to an extent.
instead of one Jesus god, it would have been more accurate to have had dozens all at odds with each other. To be fair, this would take a whole different book to work out. Hence the wisdom of avoiding Jesus.

Reading Gaiman for the First Time: American Gods

2014-03-12T17:39:00.003-05:00

Finished Part I of Gaiman's American Gods (author's preferred text) in which the most obvious conflict is between old gods and new. He's done a deft job of sucking me into sympathy with the old gods, such that I feel a bit funny reading it on a Kindle. Dangerous sex between gods and men (one can see why it was good for humanity to outlaw temple prostitution). Reminds me in a good way of Mann's Joseph and His Brothers and Walter Wink's Naming the Powers series. Odin is decisively American, always grinning and rarely with joy, seeking to battle the weather with an army.

Spring in the City

2014-03-12T09:01:00.001-05:00

Confident that cold and salt have done with harm,
the city trucks anoint the winter wounds
with acrid perfume and the blackest balm.

Celebrating Lent

2014-03-10T11:20:00.000-05:00

Lent has arrived, the bright sadness. The public confession of many that we are sinners who are going to die. In this case, a smudge on the forehead is not a sign of exclusivity or belonging to a club, but a sign of belonging to the human condition, the communion of sinners I believe Péguy called it.

For adults, Lent begins not so much with liturgy and ashes, but with the hidden, personal and communal act of fasting, a shot across the bow of those of us who are tempted to fall into the reduction to appearances, the reduction to physical needs. An invitation to follow Jesus in affirming the priority of the Mystery who gives life over the means which mediate life to us.

In my house, Lent also began with the loss of DSL connectivity from Thursday afternoon through Sunday afternoon: an unplanned penance that caused us to make the first family trip to the public library (with wifi) in many years. We are sinners who are going to die: like cut irises after a wedding. But the ashy cross is also a reminder that Christ has conquered death and sin, and that the Mystery who gives life cannot be stopped by the event of death or sin. Let us remember each other in this time of trials and testing.

I am Joseph, your brother

2014-02-23T16:21:00.000-06:00

Yesterday and today, I was laid out on my back sick for much of the day. Since I was laying down, I decided to watch the full 45 minute presentation of Bishop Anthony Palmer and his message from Pope Francis. I had watched about 10 minutes, and I told my wife she had to watch it too. We could no longer get the full video on Youtube, so I came out and we sat and watched the whole thing on my phone. I was profoundly moved at a couple of points: Bishop Anthony's amazing story, and that Kenneth Copeland had backed him, and then Pope Francis speaking from the heart about the sons of Jacob with money but no food, and then finding not only the food but also a brother.

More a father than ever

2014-02-22T21:43:00.000-06:00

Rainy snowy walk near work last week

"Fr. Giussani then raised his finger and pointed it at me and with his voice full of anger and disgust said: 'This question of yours does not interest me at all!' And he walked off."

"Recognizing Christ in 'something more'" (Fr. Vincent Nagel in linked article)

In the article above,Nagle (whose talk at the Pittsburgh Encounter is linked below) shares a first encounter.

Even better, blogging in the classic vein at Video Meloria

2014-02-22T20:38:00.001-06:00

One of my restaurant outings, not TS's because
nothing says Valentine's Day like Oklahoma Joe's BBQ

Restaurant Outing and Other Commentary

No pull quote because there's no sound bite, but it's perhaps just long enough for a post…

Once again, Milliner has some great thoughts…

2014-02-22T20:27:00.003-06:00

A bit of surprising beauty in a drab place
where we were a couple of weeks ago

"The enduring values in which conservatives believe— beauty among them— are more fecund than we think. We ought to be open to their new and unexpected manifestations. After all, what future is there for a movement without capacity for surprise?" Nameless Beauty: Conservatism’s Architecture Problem by Matthew J. Milliner

Posted in grateful response for my friend TS of Video Meloria who blogged an article I posted elsewhere and he still gave me credit without me having blogged it here!

Something great is happening in my life

2013-11-09T09:26:00.001-06:00

Crucifix at St. Elizabeth's, replica of 7th C. Italian

I continue to live with the announcement that "Truth is a relationship," and looking again at the Letter to the non-believers of Pope Francis, there's another passage which for me sheds more light on the sentence, even though it comes earlier in the letter (p3).

"The uniqueness [of Christianity] lies, I would say, in the fact that the faith makes us share, through Jesus, in the relationship he has with God who is Abba, and from this perspective, in the relationship of love which he has with all men and women, enemies included. In other words, the sonship of Jesus, as presented by the Christian faith, is not revealed so as to emphasize an insurmountable separation between Jesus and everyone else; rather, it is revealed to tell us that in him, we are all called to be children in the one Father and so brothers and sisters to one another.

The uniqueness of Jesus has to do with communication, not exclusion."

In the context of these words of Pope Francis, I notice a certain change in me, an openness, a transparency with regard to faith. Last Saturday, I went back to my parent's parish, the parish where I was baptized: St. Elizabeth's. Since last October, I had been intrigued by the proposal of the Year of Faith to visit the parish of one's baptism, and there renew one's baptismal vows. Although it's only half an hour from my house, I only managed to make the trip in these last few weeks of the Year of Faith. I got there at 3:00 for confession and then came back with my folks for Mass. I had brought along a text for renewal of baptismal vows, which I prayed privately. To my surprise, however, there was an infant baptism at Mass, and I had the privilege of renewing my baptismal vows publicly.

I felt fortunate to be able to go to Mass with my folks again (especially remembering the deaths of my father-in-law and mother-in-law last year). My folks have always sat in the second pew, but now they sit on the left side instead of the right side of the church— where the old folks always used to sit. Mom invited me to sit between her and dad, but I sat at her side instead. I felt a tremendous recoil of memory praying again where I had grown up praying. My folks had planned on going to Aldi afterward, so I went shopping with them. As we were leaving the grocery store, I noticed these friends of me and Karen who are newlyweds, and they told me that they have just joined the parish. I had the idea perhaps having dinner with my younger sister, who is in the neighborhood, but I ended up eating with my folks instead. Afterward, I did get together with my sister and caught up. These events made me see that this greatness in life is not something that closes me off, but opens me to being with others: the parish of my youth, my folks, my siblings, and friends.

"Truth is a relationship." While this has been resounding in my life, it has reminded me of the story of a spring onion from The Karamazov Brothers, a story which Dorothy Day loved to tell. An old woman dies and is thrown into the lake of fire for her sins, but her guardian angel recalled one good act from her life: she had given a spring onion to a beggar woman. The angel brought her the onion and began to pull her out using the onion. Here's what happens:

"he had almost pulled her out when all the other sinners in the lake, seeing that she was being rescued, began to cling to her so that they too might be pulled out. But the woman was as wicked as can be, and she began to lash out with her feet: 'He's pulling me out, not you, it's my onion, not yours.' No sooner had she said this, than the onion snapped. And the woman fell back into the lake, where she's burning to this day. And the angel burst into tears and left" (Oxford World's Classics, 443-444).

For a long time I had heard this story as one describing the existence of one who is truly wicked. This woman is so bad that she not only sins, but also would lose her life to prevent others from living. But, if "truth is a relationship," and if Jesus connects us with His Father, then who am I to kick at those around me? Insofar as I shut out those around me, then, faith is as tenuous as that spring onion.

[update 11/16/2013. I just discovered that my baptismal date is November 5, 1967, so it turns out that my trip to the parish was the first Saturday following the anniversary of my baptism]

Truth Is a Relationship

2013-10-05T21:46:00.002-05:00

"To begin with, I would not speak about 'absolute' truths, even for believers, in the sense that absolute is that which is disconnected and bereft of all relationship. Truth, according to the Christian faith, is the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, truth is a relationship. As such each one of us receives the truth and expresses it from within, that is to say, according to one’s own circumstances, culture and situation in life, etc. This does not mean that truth is variable and subjective, quite the contrary. But it does signify that it comes to us always and only as a way and a life. Did not Jesus himself say: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life?' In other words, truth, being completely one with love, demands humility and an openness to be sought, received and expressed."

Letter to the non-believers: Pope Francis responds to journalist Eugenio Scalfari

Disputations and Parables

2013-09-30T22:38:00.000-05:00

Daphne Angelidou, At Night, 1990
photo by Sharon Mollerus on Flickr

Wouldn't that make a good title for a book of poems: Disputations and Parables? Actually, I've been thinking about the Gospel readings for the past few weeks in the lectionary: parables embedded as they are in a back and forth with Pharisees. Luke 14: Jesus eats at the house of a Pharisee, and tells the parable of the banquet in which the guests justify their not coming. In 15, the Pharisees and scribes complain that Jesus "welcomes sinners and eats with them," and so he tells them the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son. In 16, he tells the parable of the crafty steward, and the Pharisees laugh at his warning about the impossibility of loving God and money both. Jesus then tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which he follows with a warning about not leading others astray.

Joseph Ratzinger has said that "To call the four accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John 'Gospels' is precisely to express that Jesus himself, the entirety of his acting, teaching, living, rising, and remaining with us is the 'gospel'" (Gospel, Catechesis, Catechism, 51). The Gospels, then, are a privileged way of encountering Christ. To hear the disputations, the teaching, the parables coming from Jesus's mouth, to hear these words spoken by the One who knows hearts, who knows my heart. Do I not, as anyone, feel a defensiveness, an urge to justify myself when I hear these words? An urge to cast myself as one who is on the right side…

The rich man and Lazarus: am I not a poor man who suffers because of others? Maybe the apostles felt themselves to be poor also, because after this parable they asked Jesus to increase their faith. But Jesus tells them that even a small point of faith, a mustard seed, could move a mulberry tree to the sea. If you have me— even the smallest point of contact with me— Jesus seems to say, then you are not resigned to lying outside the gates: you are not poor and paralyzed but rich. One of the great challenges of life is to discover where one's desires and talents intersect with the needs of the world and of the Church. What provokes me in the Gospel reading above all is the sense that those who need what I have to offer are right under my nose, right at my gate. And yet, the parable ends with the reminder of one who rises from the dead. May the risen One complete the work he has begun in me.

Midway through After Virtue

2013-09-21T13:03:00.001-05:00

I've been reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. I confess I avoided it for many years because I suspected that it would be a series of rationalizations (my own emotivism) and also because I have an aversion to moralism. As I recall, my grad school roommate who had a philosophy and English background was very interested in After Virtue as a way of reading modern fiction.

I have been pleased to see the account of the modern approach to morality and the conception of the individual. MacIntyre says that the way to understand contemporary moral reasoning is to see it as a collection of fragments from a previous system that has collapsed (This reminds me, by the way, of what Georgio Ambrosio said (Pittsburgh Encounter 2013) about the Higgs boson— it breaks before it can be observed, but they can identify its fragments).

After Chapter 4, I asked myself "Is morality mainly about ideas?" I was pleased, then, to see MacIntyre's response at the beginning of Chapter 5: "So far I have presented the failure of justifying morality as the failure of a succession of particular arguments…"

The discussion of arguments, however, continues through Chapter 8. I felt a compunction upon reading MacIntyre's discussion of "the manager" in the modern world:

"The manager represents in his character the obliteration of the distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative social relations […] The manager treats ends as given, as outside his scope; his concern is with technique, with effectiveness in transforming raw materials into final products, unskilled labor into skilled labor, investment into profits" (30).

"Hence the manager as *character* is other than what he first seems to be: the social world of everyday hard-headed practical pragmatic no-nonsense realism which is the environment of management is one which depends for its sustained existence on the systematic perpetuation of misunderstanding and belief in fictions" (107).

Chapter 9 marks a shift because it brings in Nietzsche as the preeminent critic of the project of modern moralism, and raises the possibility that it may be time to return to Aristotle's ethics (which he mentions elsewhere thrived in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic forms). The chapter concludes by promising a discussion of the Iliad, so I am encouraged to see that narrative will complement argument in the discussion of morality.

The person who starts out afraid of what is greater, loses as well that which is less. ~Giussani

2013-09-20T17:15:00.000-05:00

The keynote speech of the Pittsburgh Encounter 2013: Fr. Vincent Nagle, FSCB: "Attraction As the Force of Salvation."

In this talk, Fr. Vincent discusses desires, suffering, Great Books, the Saint Ignatius Institute at San Francisco University, tragedy and farce, growing up in a nudist colony, New Age movement, Ram Dass, the Buddha, Silence of the Lambs, the Song of Songs, The Life of Brian, and more. Toward the end, he addresses a male student who is sitting with several girls and jokes "just one!" What prevails in life for us: limit or promise?

"The person who starts out afraid of what is greater, loses as well that which is less." Giussani (1:04:00)

"The first and most fundamental movement of our spirit in every moment consists in going out of ourselves in order to adhere to Someone calling to us, attracting us to Himself." Don Massimo Camisasca (1:17:06)

As a bonus, I discovered this video of Dr. David C. Schindler giving his last lecture at Villanova Humanities program before relocating to the JPII Institute in Washington, DC: "Wonder Is the Final Word":

Is wonder a lack or a surplus?

"Wonder, it seems to me, is a kind of astonishment and surprise on the one hand; but it's different from just simple shock because it seems to me that wonder implies not only this surprise but on this other hand also, a desire, kind of a positive desire or attraction." (0:17:32)

"philosophy is a movement from imperfect wonder to an ever more perfect wonder, and that movement from imperfect to more perfect wonder coincides with a movement from imperfect knowledge to an ever more perfect knowledge. And so, ultimately wonder and knowledge coincide." (0:33:06)

Reading in Philosophy and Literature

2013-09-19T20:51:00.001-05:00

Pittsburgh Bridge

Back from attending the Pittsburgh Encounter, I've started reading Don Quixote and After Virtue. I'm also awaiting my copy of Freedom Readers by Dennis Looney.

I've read DQ before, if partially, in World Masterpieces class. What I'm enjoying now is my ability to discern the forms of the narrative: to see how unsympathetic Quixote is before Sancho Panza joins him, and how comical once Panza is his foil, but also capable of actual nobility, as in his defense of Marcela (who defends herself well enough besides).

Philosophy and ethics aren't my strong suit, so I haven't rushed to read After Virtue— though I have had recommendations from reliable sources. Into the third chapter, I'm appreciating the perspective that it gives me on the times we live in.

To be reading Don Quixote (100 pages in) and After Virtue (28 pages tonight) at the same time brings me back to the experience of being a college student: reading philosophy, literature, science, history, communication theory, all at the same time with the enviable position of seeing how they illuminate each other (something the professors believed in abstractly but did not suffer, like the students).

From After Virtue:

"In our own time emotivism is a theory embodied in characters who all share the emotivist view of the distinction between rational and non-rational discourse, but who represent the embodiment of that distinction in very different social contexts. […] The manager represents in his character the obliteration of the distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative social relations […] The manager treats ends as given, as outside his scope; his concern is with technique, with effectiveness in transforming raw materials into final products, unskilled labor into skilled labor, investment into profits" (30).

No wonder I run into the iceberg of Manager— I could never be this sort of paragon.

The Mountains Rose By an Elevating Virtue…

2013-09-16T17:15:00.000-05:00

Reflected Cathedral by Brian Byrnes on Flickr

A tantalizing detail came out of the Dante panel of the Pittsburgh Encounter: a reference to Dante's address on how the mountains came to be higher than the land. I found the below article when I got back, conveniently available via my public library.

"At Verona in 1320 Dante Alighieri delivered an address, later published as "A Question of the Water and of the Land," which dealt with the position and origins of the continental land mass and its mountains. In this cogently argued discourse the ideas expressed in Aristotle's Meteorologica and De caelo are blended with Dante's own cosmography and cosmogeny, as expressed in his Divine Comedy. There is, however, a shift in emphasis from the poetical-theological explanations of the Inferno to an approach based on assumed physical principles. In essence, the land mass and its mountains were uplifted by the stars of Dante's eighth heaven, which attracted them by diffusing an "elevating virtue" (akin to magnetism) and by causing vapors to rise within the land, thus swelling it. In this paper Dante's ideas on the origin and form of the land are presented and analyzed. I relate Dante's ideas to the theories of other natural philosophers of the Middle Ages, including Avicenna, Jean Buridan, and Ristoro d'Arezzo and show that thinking on earth science matters had in many ways reached a critical state by the fourteenth century."

Abstract of "Dante and the Form of Land" by David Alexander. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Mar1986, Vol. 76 Issue 1, p38-49. 12p.