Beasts of the Northern Wild

This is how a fishing village dies -- not, usually, in a wall of water, any more than a farming community dies in an earthquake:

 Now, the crab plant is long gone, every shop in town is shuttered and the population has plummeted to 72 from a one-time high of almost 800. Aside from a toddler and a pair of young teenagers, virtually the only islanders left are a few dozen widows and seniors, many of whom don’t have the money to leave.

And in reality it started with people going off to Halifax or Toronto "to work" and coming back, and going again and eventually not coming back. Once that starts happening, a place, no matter how hard to get to, really no longer is cut off from the outside world. And it has to take the consequences.

My contribution on the veil question

Beasts of the Southern Wild

In lieu of a post on Bomb Girls, which is still on hiatus, I give you: Sparkler Girl, aka Hushpuppy, heroine of Beasts of the Southern Wild, a new-to-me movie until a few nights ago.

You most likely already know it's about Hushpuppy and her daddy (every Southern father is a daddy) and how this tiny, very poor family and its neighbours weather a hurricane. So I won't go over that, but just the things I didn't know before I saw the movie:

• Hushpuppy probably has a real name, -- I thought I heard her father call her by it a few times, but I couldn't make it out. Their last name is Doucette -- French for "small sweet thing", or maybe just a mispronunciation of Doucet, as in Isle Charles Doucet, off the coast of Louisiana, where they live.
• They're at the low end of the scale even for the place they live in. The neighbours mostly seem to have cars and houses (rundown, for sure, but still standard modern construction). A couple of them even run a small store.The Doucettes live in a trailer+shack and get around in a boat improvised from a pickup truck bed.
•  Hushpuppy's father keeps calling her by misplaced masculine words even when he's trying to encourage her ("You da man"). As I grew up, I was also on the receiving end of a lot of this and it annoyed me. Couldn't he see . . .? or didn't he want to?

 Altogether not a typical Hollywood movie, which was why I wanted to see it -- except for the way it idealized the poor. These people couldn't wait to "escape" from the hospital/shelter they were taken to and get back to their squalid homes; I couldn't help thinking if I'd been among them I would more likely have hidden in the hospital and stayed there till someone made me leave. 

The middle class half of me thought, "But it's their world, where they can be themselves" and the hardscrabble half of me said, "Ha! They don't know when they've got it good!"

If you can live with that, see it.

Laypeople's vetoes

With the papers speculating on who'll be the next Pope, and even declaring who should or shouldn't (in the article I linked below, Dershowitz says quite rightly that as a Jew he has a right to speak out against the possible election of an anti-Semite), we should be aware that this isn't some modern trend, that laypeople, influential or otherwise, have only lately begun to dare to voice their opinions on this.

For a long time, in fact:

Three leading Catholic heads of state claimed the power of veto: the King of France, the King of Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor (the Emperor of Austria after the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire). This was rarely exercised; however, no candidate against whom the veto was claimed had ever been elected Pope in that same conclave.  (Wikipedia)

 The veto was last used by Austria in 1903. That conclave ended up electing Pius X, who promptly abolished the veto though he owed his election to it.

Even earlier , a mob crashed the conclave of 1378 yelling (at least as I've read in other sources): "Lo volemo Romano!", saying they'd only accept a Pope from their own city. The cardinals threw a white cloak on one of them who came from a Roman family and forced him out on the balcony to mislead the crowd. It didn't say what happened when people found out there actually was  no election, and later that they now had a Pope from a place called Itri.

So let them hold forth in the papers, it's nothing to the way it once was.

Stories I can't say anything charitable about

"Manitoba poised to demand faith-based independent schools allow gay-straight alliances" because a girl in BC killed herself after being sexually blackmailed by a grown man.

"Virulent anti-Semite on short list to become next pope" --  whoa. If what's said there is true, the man shouldn't even have a vote.

Lines of the Day

From some sitcom rerun I glanced at yesterday while folding laundry (I'm such a meticulous researcher of my sources):

Priest: Christina, you don't need me to tell you to do the right thing.

Woman (hopefully): Any decision I make is the right one for me?

Priest: Okay, apparently you do need me to tell you to do the right thing.

Real reconciliation is great, but . . .

Emily Yoffe ("Dear Prudence") brings up the unpopular truth that reconciliation needs to come from both sides, and we really have no control over whether the other person even feels they've done anything to be forgiven for.

Loved ones and friends – sometimes even therapists – who urge reconnecting with a parent often speak as if forgiveness will be a psychic aloe vera, a balm that will heal the wounds of the past . . . What these people fail to take into account is the potential psychological cost of reconnecting, of dredging up painful memories and reviving destructive patterns.

She's writing about parents (and it's hard both to be estranged from such a close relation, and to forgive someone who devoted their life to staying drunk when they should've been helping you grow up), but reconnecting with anyone you've broken with can have its cost.

And yes, I think you can forgive someone and still "leave them alone except in prayer"  as Marie Luttrell once wrote. No embraces, no chance to say magnanimously, "I forgive you", just a moving on from your own anger. 

No Bomb Girls again tonight, but . . .

I want to speculate a little, since it seems from the last few episodes that Carol is going the Frank Burns route. Naturally her next step would be to pair off with another unlikeable character. Donald, the all-purpose jerk, has already helped her embarrass Vera, but he's too low-rent for someone as aggressively snobby as Carol. So . . . I may have been too quick to match up Detective Prentice with Kate. A Mountie is still not quite on Carol's level, but like all official types he's been given a little extra importance by the war. Besides, he could use a snitch to keep an eye on Marco.

Line of the day

From Louis Ginzburg's Legends of the Jews:

In the east, the west, and the south, heaven and earth touch each other, but the north God left unfinished, that any man who announced himself as a god might be set the task of supplying the deficiency, and stand convicted as a pretender.

Let me keep reminding myself that Jesus has finished the north and made it touch heaven.

"Andrew Bennett, a canary in the coal mine"

That's what Michael den Tandt calls the new Ambassador of Religious Freedom.

(He might call me  a member of "the urban chattering classes" because I have a degree and live within an easy walk of a Starbuck's, but I'm going to overlook that because I agree with him.)

. . . there is a blithe assumption in mass media culture, evidenced again recently by the widespread social media mirth surrounding the recent resignation/retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, that religion is passé. And indeed for many, as declining traditional church attendance shows, it is.

But only for many,  not for all, in Canada. And certainly not for many in places like the Middle East.

The idea that religion is passé is not new, either. Pope Benedict himself ran into it during WW II -- "Pick something else, we won't need priests in the New Germany" his army commander advised him.

Hey, it's been around at least since Karl Marx. 

Whether the Office of Religious Freedom makes any kind of difference remains to be seen -- Den Tandt has his doubts, as poor  Mr. Bennett has "only" five million a year to work with. Maybe it can do a little instructing of the ignorant -- that secularism is not the state religion of Canada. 

Lone Licia

Licia Corbella has come across the Physicians’ Alliance for Total Refusal of Euthanasia -- which not only exists, but includes some doctors influential enough to be taken seriously. You would think so, anyway. But:

“You’re the first journalist of a major news outlet to call me,” revealed [Dr. Catherine] Ferrier.
. . .
It really is shameful how the side in favour of physicians killing their patients must rely on suppression of the other side of the debate and misinformation to push their insidious agenda.

Watch everyone pile on her now for criticizing a recently dead woman -- who didn't have to die.

Papal names for Card. Ouellet

In the event, of course. He might want to name himself after one of the Canadian Martyrs, so I've helpfully sorted their first names into categories:

Already Papal: John. (This one too.)

Not Papal but Mainstream: Anthony.  Charles.

A Little Out There: Noel.  Gabriel. 

Really Out There: Isaac.

And My Recommendation: René.

Ashes to infinity

Yesterday's Mass was just a little more penitential . . .

Let's start again on "Ashes"

That's all we're going to sing

There may be more Ash Wednesday hymns

But we've rehearsed nothing.

By the fourth repeat of "Ashes"

You'll know you should repent

Begin again on "Ashes"

You might as well, it's Lent.

Well, that was the best I could come up with while doing the dishes.      

The Ash Wednesday Effect

It's too early in the day for me to be feeling the effects of the fast -- but I am. Slow, disoriented and generally low blood-sugary. Maybe just because I expected to?

It even seems to have started yesterday. Fortunately my editor in chief is in a good mood.

Happy Lincoln's Birthday

The Peacemakers by George Healy

On this day in 1809, Lincoln's life had an unpromising start. Of course it also had an abrupt and violent end. In between, it's the story of "how a human being, by cultivating the virtues of prudence and charity, achieves human greatness" (Christopher S. Morrissey).

Papa Ouellet?

First it was just the entirely unbiased opinion of various Canadian papers -- them plus the Wall Street Journal -- but now ABC News says it too.

A hockey player. Someone who believes in writing to your political leaders and holding them to account. Hey, I've actually attended a Mass he said.

Nobody's mentioning the French-"English" divide right now. When it comes to something world class, we're all just Canadian.

"Il sait porter la croix . . ."

Whirling thoughts

Wiedersehn!

• He deserves a rest
• But we'll miss him
•  It was so good to have a Pope who spoke so forthrightly -- like a German
• But we couldn't have had a German Pope any earlier
• God send us someone as good as him
• What a Lent this is going to be
• What's even the protocol for this?
• People who believe in the St. Malachy prophecy must be on edge

Cuio regio, not ours

Father de Souza says, more or less, that during all the time (1688 till today, IIRC) that it was illegal for the king or queen to be Catholic, or married to a Catholic -- well, no Catholic would've wanted to be in those positions anyway, so there. 

I would have preferred that the prohibition against marrying Catholics remain. Not as a relic of prejudicial attitudes that have now greatly diminished, but as a reminder that at the heart of the British constitutional settlement lies a matter of greatest consequence . . . The Crown in Parliament speaks, and the church kneels.

In fact, he thinks (with more charity than I can muster) that under the old rules, Britain was actually doing us a favour:

The fact that Catholics were formally barred from this arrangement was an implicit acknowledgment of their dissent from that settlement. 

"This arrangement" -- which I believe is called regalism -- is the problem, not the off chance of some Catholic getting entangled in it.

But of course I'm not biased by being Irish. Or having spent a quarter century married to a non-Catholic whose faith in secularism has suffered much more than my faith in God.

Weekly semi-compulsive Bomb Girls post

The preview for tonight's episode shows Gladys lamely admitting she hasn't "done right" by her fiancé, Betty reaffirming her crush on Kate, and Eugene about to fling himself off a building. Based on how misleading the previews have been lately, I predict:

Gladys lying her head off as she claims she's been a good girl, playing cards with Betty every Saturday night. Betty happily serving as maid of honour at Kate's wedding to, oh, let's say Detective Prentice, the Mountie who's started persecuting Marco. Eugene painting his parents' fence and then watching it dry.

Found while looking for the official Obama skeet shooting photo

If he had any boys in the family, he'd be used to this kind of thing.

Things I learned over the weekend

1. I've been compromising with God
2. Of greater general interest -- Jesuit novices all have to make a month-long pilgrimage, which, for the priest who was telling us about this, meant getting $35 and a one-way bus ticket

Being realistic

When I choose a Region of the Month for a publication, I should not base my choice on little things like climate, scenery, historical interest or tourist-friendliness. No, my only criterion should be availability of a large number of royalty-free photos.