"why love, of course, instant love"

What is it with red-haired women named Mary?

First there's this in Manalive by Chesterton:

This was a slight young woman in dark gray, and in no way notable but for a load of dull red hair . . . Her surname seemed to be Gray, and Miss Hunt called her Mary . . .

Later:

"It's Mary," said the heiress, "my companion Mary Gray: that cracked friend of yours called Smith has proposed to her in the garden, after ten hours' acquaintance, and he wants to go off with her now for a special license."

Then this, which is, as Hollywood says, based on a true story:

From a small group discussion

Prospective Dad: So -- how do you raise children to be good people?

Me (speaking for other experienced parent and myself): As soon as we find out, we'll let you know.

Not that our kids are not good people -- it's just that they're works in progress.

Vanishing Witness (Updated)

My son (we'll call him First Timothy) tells me that while home alone today, he answered the door to "the world's fastest Jehovah's Witness", who handed him an invitation to some event and fled. First Timothy actually pursued him with a copy of Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth, but the guy had a head start, fueled perhaps by the stories I suspect the JWs tell each other about our fearsome dwelling and its inhabitants.

A home auto-da-fe was immediately held, I am told.

ETA: I feel compelled to add, it was the paper he burned, not the distributor. I don't want to be hunted down by any Jehovah's Witness Protection Program, let alone the actual police.

What I did Friday instead of posting

• Called home twice while grocery shopping
• Got lost on public transit
• Saw portfolio show at art school -- lace is in, salt is out
• Read (in transit) most of The Duchess of Malfi, which I was supposed to do 30-some years ago. Sorry!

Blue and cold

 Just finished re-reading Hans Brinker, which, being a 19th-century children's novel, is full of moral and historical lessons and wild coincidences leading up to a triumphantly happy ending, yet in the midst of all of it sets before you this insight into the mind of a girl who struggles to love her father:

Gretel looked at her in troubled silence, wondering whether it were very wicked to care more for one parent than for the other, and sure—yes, quite sure—that she dreaded her father while she clung to her mother with a love that was almost idolatry.

Hans loves the father so well, she thought, why cannot I? Yet I could not help crying when I saw his hand bleed that day, last month, when he snatched the knife—and now, when he moans, how I ache, ache all over. Perhaps I love him, after all, and God will see that I am not such a bad, wicked girl as I thought. Yes, I love the poor father—almost as Hans does—not quite, for Hans is stronger and does not fear him . . . I don't want the poor father to die, to be all blue and cold like Annie Bouman's little sister. I KNOW I don't. Dear God, I don't want Father to die.

Of course, this being a book of its type, the dreaded father got that way through a brain injury while doing his job in difficult conditions, not through, for example, drinking steadily till he cared about nothing else. Still, lots of alcoholics' children must have read that and silently nodded.

Gone public

Awhile back, I mentioned a private blog I was reading; it's now public, as it was originally, so here is Cheeky Pink Girl.

Unfortunately, it went public because going private didn't stop its persecutors from sneaking in. Charlotte is perfectly willing to fight in the open; they're not.

Anyway, just read her story.

What I did yesterday instead of posting

• Spend a lot of time looking for stock photos to illustrate very specific ideas (a couple of them from articles of my own)
• Clean the bathroom I share with three males
• Talk to our accountant and insurance rep about dead ends
• Make beef stew
• Work a penitential service (I had to keep an eye on the priest hearing confessions by the back fire exit [ha!] and tell people when he was ready for the next one. At first, I waited till I saw him raise his right hand -- and there were false alarms as he was quite the gesticulator -- then I saw that, when he leaned back and listened for a longish time, an Act of Contrition was being made, and considering the distance, it was time for the next person in line to start on their way. In answer to some question from an old gentleman, I said, "I don't know, it's the first time we've done it this way" and he said, "I hope it's the last!")
• Scrape wax off the altar (don't ask)

"Propaganda?"

It's new, it's "vaguely written", it was called for by "Russian politicians" -- oh yeah, "and the Orthodox Church" -- and it goes way beyond what the Catechism would approve of. It's St. Petersburg's "law cracking down on displays - and perhaps even public discussions - of homosexuality". Anything that could be considered "propaganda".

Seven years for religious hatred, 5,000 to 500,000 rubles for promoting homosexuality. Just another surprise from the former Soviet Union -- and once again, one that'll do no one any good.

"require or incentivize"?

Breaking: More contortions over who has to pay for birth control.

WSJ:

Under one scenario, administrators of self-insured plans would be required to cover the costs of providing contraception and recoup the money through revenue they get from sources other than the religious employer . . . An additional proposal would be for the federal government to require or incentivize private multi-state insurance companies to provide free contraception coverage to workers at the religious institutions.

So it's still a possibilty for the government to require businesses to provide something free -- but maybe it'll just bribe offer incentives instead. Maybe. Well, one small step.

Outward signs

On a private blog, there's a discussion going on about "Protestant nonsense" some Catholics have bought into -- that modesty means wearing a long skirt, that there's an 11th commandment saying "Thou shalt homeschool" and so forth.

What it reminds me of, more than anything else, is the time when I was about nine and discovered the Amish. And I wished that Catholics had to dress like them. (The women, anyway; I was too young to care what the guys looked like.) Not only did I think it was a more graceful style of dress -- and I needed all the physical grace I could get -- I wanted a concrete sign that I belonged to something. I wanted to be able to say, "Look, me too!" without saying anything.

Maybe that's all they want, these people who think you should be able to tell a Catholic at sight -- and since no dress regulations are ever going to come down from the Church, they try to encode their own. Except, without the official authority, it's not so much "Look, me too!" as "C'mon, you too! Please?"

World Turned Upside Down

Up to seven years for “a premeditated hooligan act based on religious hatred” in Russia?

It sounds as if the laws have teeth there. Not that I wish seven years of familial separation on these tiresome devushki, or, more importantly, their little kids.

I've read recently that the Orthodox are much more on the watch for sacrilege than us Westerners. It sounds as if it's true, even in places where 90% of the self-identified Orthodox are non-practicing.

Fantasy boxing

I'd like to see Trudeau the MP replaced by Trudeau the cartoonist in the fight at the end of this month. Does that make me evil?

So much common sense until he gets onto the subject of abortion. Then suddenly he's like one of those conspiracy theorists I wrote about earlier; there's only one viewpoint that can even be considered, no matter how week it's shown to be.

Will it hurt, indeed.

What do you do with a conspiracy theorist . . .

. . . early in the morning? While they still might listen to you, because the sinister airliners have not yet been out spraying the stuff that makes us too stupid and placid to believe conspiracy theories?

There are some good ideas here -- avoid the subject, try to channel their energies into something useful, or flat out ask them what, if anything, would convince them the theory was wrong. The nail mark in the hands and the spear wound in the side, if you will. St. Thomas held up his side of the deal when his terms were met. But what if they won't set any terms at all? If they say nothing will convince them? Shouldn't that in itself show them they're irrational over this?

There are way bigger messes in the human mind  than any plane could put in the sky.

Give 'em enough rope

That's how I look at the NYT "are you still Catholic???" ads. Apparently designed to give tepid Catholics one last nudge out of the Church, they're more likely to backfire when those people see they're being told what to do by someone with less claim on them than the Church.

Or maybe I'm just thinking that to justify my not complaining more strongly about them -- for instance, to the NYT itself. 

I've edited a couple of articles that were obviously meant to provoke anyone who believed in any religion (always excepting Islam), but only drew a single mild comment from a Christian. And I think they alienated lots of readers who might not be religious themselves but are uncomfortable with contempt for religion.

Anyway, I can hope that's what's happening.

If only they COULD pay for it

With my tendency to misread headlines, at first I thought this said "Parishioners Pay for Return of St. Lawrence O'Toole's Heart". It seemed as if someone had announced they were holding it for ransom, instead of having taken it for God knows what purpose. If only it were known to be simple avarice.

There is an underground trade in relics, of course, but this is something too unique to show up in the classifieds. And eBay won't take human body parts; besides, they learned better than to list things like this a few years ago, when thousands of us threatened to close our accounts because someone was allowed to list a consecrated Host.

Praying is it, I guess.

Very well, they contradict themselves

I had not been aware of Pinterest; if I had, I probably would've set up an account and then not gotten around to doing anything with it. However, it seems to breed copyright issues, as Milehimama has learned.

Seems Pinterest tells you it's illegal to post anything that anyone else owns the rights to -- also it's rude to post anything you've made yourself. Which leaves . . . ?

A certain U.S. government form that shall be numberless tells you to fill the SSAN space with zeroes if the applicant has no Social Security number. Then it tells you to sign confirming under penalty of perjury that everything on the form is true.

I spent a few hours yesterday in a place where I overheard utterances like: "You're the ones who entered with the suspicious items . . . That's not what it says on your application . . . One person translating . . . Attention! The alarm was false." And where someone said to me, "Ma'am, let me see your hairpin." To which I replied, "It's plastic," and she was satisfied.

Vatican.va hacked

Anonymous took www.vatican.va for its latest victim,

"in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts . . . This attack is not against the Christian religion or the faithful around the world . . . "

Faithful who, of course, don't believe in the doctrine, the liturgies, or the concepts, but stay faithful only because . . . remind me again?

Sorry. It's like NATO: an attack on one is an attack on all.

More absurdity:

In their statement, Anonymous went on to accused (sic) the Catholic Church of several historical wrongdoings including killing opponents, burning texts and harbouring Nazi war criminals.
The group also blasted the institution for "allowing its representatives to harass children."

Harass? Is that the worst word they could think of? Does that even begin to describe what happened? Don't tell me Anonymous chose this word out of libel chill.

(Merci a AFP)

 

Not giving Jesus a nose job

Ray Downing, who led the enormous task of building a 3D model from the Shroud of Turin, says "I didn't do him any favors on the nose." If by favor he means making the nose small, unobtrusive and inwardly curving, well, it looks as if God didn't do Mr. Downing any favors, either.

Seriously, it's fascinating. You can get the story on DVD.

"Take care lest any man steal thy crown"

The St. Louis Altar at Notre Dame de Paris.Of course, he was also a king of France . . . who used to invite poor people to dinner, then eat what they left.

Trivia

I like the vaguely grungy-continental style of my template of the moment, but light text on dark really isn't a good idea. By the time anyone reads this, it'll probably have changed.