Falling short of the glory

Here's a nice patient response to the "if-homosexual-acts-are-evil-then-so-are-shellfish-and-also-polyester-blends-and-BTW-slavery-is-okay" argument that's been dragged out again. What really struck me, though, was this man's statement about his conversion when he realized "how far we fall short of the glory of God". This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately -- how we think we're just fine because we settle for so little, because we take the cheap substitute not knowing the real thing exists or not letting ourselves admit it does. We are, as St. Thomas More says, like a man who's on his way back to his comfortable home, but stops off at an inn -- and spends the rest of his life there, working in the stable for free drinks.

And having whined about a video . . .

I now give you one I like.

This whole movie is full of things I like: The cranky Irish priest who tells the altar boys -- in Spanish -- to hurry up packing his stuff because he has "four other country clubs" to say Mass at. The way Smith dresses up for Sunday though he doesn't go to church -- he doesn't go to Mass with the nuns, either, because "I'm a Baptist" -- and spends the morning in the cafe eating a big greasy breakfast in his Sunday suit. The unflappable cafe owner who takes his huge order and just says "No beans, Senor?" The way Smith stands up to the construction company owner who calls him "boy".

But mostly, the battle of the Bible verses -- which the Catholic side wins.

It starts at 2:02

Real Catholic Confession

I used to cut Michael Voris a lot more slack till he made the Amazing Grace video.

It came with a note that this hymn was theologically unsound, or something -- I'm not checking back after all this time -- and I thought, "This should be interesting. After all, he has a degree in theology."

Well, none of his theological expertise was on view there -- all he did was run through the lyrics and bawl "Stop!" every few words, then point out something supposedly un-Catholic like calling oneself a "wretch". Which, it seemed to me, had more to do with his feelings about the song than with anything he may have learned in God 101 or whatever they called it. If he had calmly pointed out stuff that was wrong and that the average viewer was unlikely to catch, I would've gone on listening to him. For a while, anyway. But after that, it seemed to me he wasn't attempting to use his hard-won learning.


If this is seen as jumping on the bandwagon against him, well, it's been at the back of my mind for a while, and the attention he's been getting lately on a much more distasteful matter has brought it forward again.

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Phineas Redux, by Anthony Trollope, fictionalizes (among lots of other things) the debate over  dis-establishing the Church of England -- in other words, ending its support by the taxpayers. (That kind of "establishment" being, of course, what the U.S. Constitution forbids, never mind what else has been read into it.)

A hapless Catholic in the book is called, in the same speech, an idolater who believes "a crumb of bread" is God, a traitor to his Savior -- and a traitor to his country. Being guided in what matters most by a man who lives in Italy, of all places! Better to avoid any awkward conflicts and choose your religious authority from your compatriots.

Except . . . 

Trollope, maybe inadvertently, goes on to show just what was wrong with the Church of England.

We do believe,—the majority among us does so,—that if we live and die in sin we shall after some fashion come to great punishment, and we believe also that by having pastors among us who shall be men of God, we may best aid ourselves and our children in avoiding this bitter end.

This would still hold true today if we hadn't largely lost the idea of the "great punishment", or any punishment at all, for sin -- anyway, it's still true that most people feel the need of something approximating religion.

People need a nation, too; why not combine them? Well --

What is a thoughtful man to do who acknowledges the danger of his soul, but cannot swallow his parson whole simply because he has been sent to him from some source in which he has no special confidence, perhaps by some distant lord, perhaps by a Lord Chancellor whose political friend has had a son with a tutor? 

If the "parson" were a Catholic priest, the thoughtful man could at least take comfort in the reflection that it's not the pastor who has to be swallowed whole, just the Host he gives you (and even that . . . ) He could have "special confidence" that the pastor would forgive his sins, in God's name, without telling anyone no matter what. He'd know that whatever his parish lacked, it had someone to dispense the Sacraments.

What is he to do when, in spite of some fine linen and purple left among us, the provision for the man of God in his parish or district is so poor that no man of God fitted to teach him will come and take it?

Oh, I don't know, maybe things would go better if the men of God were under some obligation to go wherever they were told, or if they didn't have families to worry about, or maybe both . . . ?

Spring Arrives

By George Grosz

What I did yesterday instead of posting (again)

Lots of things, among them reading a chunk of this book, written by someone who "proves that pretty much anyone can become mildly famous on the Internet for any reason whatsoever, as long as they update every day."

So that's the only reason I'm not famous.

The book is great, though. Among other things, it accuses Pope Paul III of (quoting from memory here) "hilariously failing to predict the 1464 World Cup". His Holiness was sure the Marquessate of Mantua would beat the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It says here.

His Most Catholic Majesty Will Now Dispense Open Air Justice

The  headlines make it sound as if Juan Carlos is apologizing for having shot an elephant -- the articles make it clear that the real problem is his going on an expensive vacation while his people are having hard times.

After all, this is the country that gave us bullfighting. The supposedly against-the-odds killing of a large animal by a lone man is a national sport. 

The King has always been pretty straightforward ("Democracy has begun" "You'll take us back to a military dictatorship over my dead body") and now he just says he's sorry and he made a mistake.

Anyway, open-air justice works both ways, and he went home with a broken hip.

Useless Things I Learned at Work Today

The cutting job is done, anyway. I went with literal/boring to replace childish/smutty. Verily, the Lord hath lent me his hacksaw.

In the course of my work, I learned the following, none of which is any use to me but which I'm happy to know anyway:

• No, it's not from "for unlawful carnal knowledge". "With precious few exceptions, words of acronymic origin date from the 20th century and no earlier. It's almost guaranteed, therefore, any word from before the time of automobiles did not spring to life from a series of initials becoming so common folks began pronouncing it as its own word."
• "All living animals, at the least, have 7% genetic flaws ... A flaw may be anything like an undesirable coat color to a bad heart." Wonder if it's true of humans. I'm at risk for a bad heart, but I think my coat's a nice color. This lady also says you shouldn't breed a mean-tempered animal; if that were applied to humans I wouldn't be here.
•  There's a restaurant in Quebec City whose name means "The Venial Sin". No explanation given, unless it's the part about it "reinventing itself ceaselessly".

Some days . . .

. . . when you beg for help from the Lord, you feel like asking Him to lend you his old hacksaw if he's still got it.

Today I can see I'm going to have to spend some time cutting out childish dirty words and filling up the gaps they leave. (Also, Lord, if you have any wood putty . . . )





Christ the Carpenter...

Edmund Worndle...

Buy This at Allposters.com

Troubled with a demon?

May God bless this man's niece, who called a priest for him:

The man had used a sharp instrument to carve the word Hell on his chest.

When the priest entered the room, the man spoke in the third person, saying "He belongs to me. Get out of here," using a strange voice.

The priest told CBC News that he had never seen anything like this and was concerned enough to call police, for safety reasons.

He said he then blessed the man, saying he belonged to the good side, to Jesus. With that, the man's voice returned to normal for a short time.

For a short time. The bishop says they need a real exorcist -- and they're rare these days.

Prayers for the man (and his niece, and the priest) couldn't hurt, anyway.

"We came to play!"

A little boy's love of arcade games leads him to -- build his own low-tech, hand-powered arcade out of cardboard.

Kind of thing I used to think of but never see through when I was a girl.

Found serendipitously while searching for intelligent comment on the death of Thomas Kinkade.

Things Unseen

These poor people actually believe in the existence of the 1956 L.L. Bean catalog -- with such pathetically touching fervor that they've created a live re-enactment of its cover and put it on the latest catalog.

Every modern thinking -- uh, person knows that the 1956 L.L. Bean catalog never existed. Oh, there was a cover for it, and the cover was what convinced those naive Fifties types that there was an actual catalog inside. But they were too intimidated by the authorities of the time to open it and see for themselves. What if it was Red propaganda? They could get hauled in front of Senator McCarthy just for looking at it! The look on the woman's face, as if she were on the verge of complaining to her husband, would also have frightened and repelled them with its radical defiance of the social order, not to mention the implication a girl child had been taken on a fishing trip.

Finally, in three minutes of intensive research I was unable to find a single 1956 L.L. Bean catalog for sale on eBay.

Yet, somehow, belief persists.

Tale of two panicky days

Yesterday reminded me of another day, long ago, which I also spent scrambling to fix something I hadn't broken, begging favors of people who had no reason to want to help me.

For what I did yesterday, I've been given a word of praise; back then, my only reward was the probability that the boss would, someday, stop being mad at me for something that was someone else's fault. (Well, there was also the moment when a certain VIP relented and gave me the signature I needed, saying that now I knew more than my boss . . . "No  comment, sir," I said cheerfully.)

Being appreciated for something besides your handiness as an object of blame can happen at any stage of your life or career -- but when it does happen, that's when you've arrived.

A large helping of calm, please

One or the other I could handle on my own. But when

1. there's no time to waste, and
2. I realize I've been inadvertently doing just that --

I need a large helping of calm. Like this song, which has that effect for some reason. 

("And Holy is His Name" is a setting of the Magnificat to this tune. I played it once to some small children who asked me, in all seriousness, if that was the BVM herself singing on the CD. Anyway, if I 'm ever taken hostage by terrorists, this is something I'll probably sing to myself to try to stay sane.)

(Cheerful thoughts for Holy Week!)

"Displays of extreme physical suffering won’t impress God"

This from the Filipino bishops, who see a touch of Spanish excess sometimes in Holy Week. Like "self-flagellation and crucifixion". 

On the other hand, they also say that visiting seven to 14 different churches on Holy Thursday can sometimes be too much fun. (What's a barkada? Never mind, there are any number of people I can ask.)

No, displays won't impress Someone who can see everything. But in the West, we go too far in the other direction. "God doesn't care if I give up my afternoon snack in Lent. What difference does it make?" Sometimes it seems as if there's no reason to deny yourself anything -- and then you're about to break the First Commandment.

Real Housewives of the Old Testament

I've never understood how the "strange" woman in Proverbs 7:14 -- 15 was reasoning:

I vowed victims for prosperity, this day I have paid my vows.  [15] Therefore I am come out to meet thee, desirous to see thee, and I have found thee.

"Thee" being a man she invites to spend the night while her husband's away with a bag of money. So -- she promised to sacrifice X number of goats if the husband's business did well; she did that today and now figures she can do whatever she wants, at least for a while? Or does she think the sacrifice somehow induced God to help her meet the man on the side? That "therefore" seems to join it all together. But why is she even mentioning religious practices to him? It hardly sets the tone; she might as well proposition him by saying "Let's go break the sixth commandment".

Is this meant to show how irrational her thinking has become? That if you keep deceiving someone else, you'll start deceiving yourself?

She is, I suppose, the Non-Valiant Woman.

Settling the side bets

Still trying to draw some lessons from this . . . Don't use up all your energy at the beginning? Don't pick a fight with someone taller than you? (And if you do, charge admission.) Just "a bet is a bet"? Or that it's time to chop off some of my own hair and donate it. (I don't see any mention of Brazeau planning to do that.)