Pumping Gas and Seeing Stars

Little John's ongoing story of seeing celebrities while pumping gas in Malibu (circa 1984). Somehow this one doesn't surprise me a bit.

Late one rainy night a big, black BMW drives up and the passenger window lowers. It's Danny DiVito. He asks if I can replace the wiper blades. It's after 10:00 pm and after that hour the crew at the station would usually have an altered mental state. Plus putting in replacement blades can be a real hassle. So I said, "No I don't think we can help." Man, you would have thought they just cancelled "Taxi"! Mr. DiVito got super mad, insulted me and then announced that he would get his gas elsewhere. Man was I upset that he didn't buy 20 dollars of gas at the station where I made $3.50 per hour (or whatever the minimum wage was in 1983 or 84). He really knew how to hurt a guy!

This is the end of this series unless Little John drops any more stories my way.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due ... Bill Clinton Did This Right

Bill Clinton might have vetoed the GOP written welfare reform several times before finally, in an election year - signing the legislation. But he signed it. Amid all of the predictions of gloom and doom, the certainty of the left that the world would end should welfare-as-we-then-knew-it be updated and reformed, Clinton signed.

The world did not end. What ended was the seeming-entrenchment of a whole group of people, of all ethnic backgrounds, into a hopeless dependence upon the government which led nowhere, gave no promise, encouraged no future, thwarted dreams and individual potential, and perpetuated the whole idea of dependence, of inability, of needing a caretaker.

Read the whole thing at Stones Cry Out. I never would have thought of it that way so this was an eye opening article. And now I can give Bill Clinton a little bit of credit. Even though I detest him, I detest even more the idea of never giving him any credit for doing the right thing ... after all, he must have done something right! Right?

How Blogging Has Prepared Me for the Real World ...

... Or, How Not to Fight With Friends About Your Faith

I have watched so many "discussions" between traditional and progressive Catholics in the blogging world. In practically every case they have led to nothing except extended arguing and quite often bad feelings. As far as I can tell it is because each has their ideas already set and is trying to convince the other to change their mind. It rarely is simply setting out the reasons for one's beliefs so the other can understand where you are coming from. And, those arguments make me tired, so very tired.

So, last night, when a friend surprised me by suddenly declaring, "I'm a big time liberal Catholic" and wanting to "discuss" why there should be no altar rails in any Catholic churches, I was more than wary. I was determined not to get dragged into something that would ruin our friendship, to say nothing of making it difficult to work on a possible project that we might be doing together.

Actually, his reasons were very enlightening. I didn't mind hearing why he had those views although I wasn't getting the idea that my own were necessarily being heard ... and I didn't have the desire to even attempt swaying him to my POV (to say nothing of the fact that the venue wasn't appropriate for that particular discussion). So once both of us had gone over the same ground a couple of times, I refused to talk about it any more.

Cop out? Maybe. But why turn a friend into an adversary over an altar rail? That is just plain nuts. On the way home I told Tom, "Thank you for being a cradle Catholic who is still traditional." After a second, he said, "Well, thank you for being a traditional Catholic too." That made me realize, crazy convert that I am, what torture it would have been for both of us to be continually in disagreement over this or unable to discuss the Church at all. A new realization and a little something extra to be thankful for.

In what is necessary, unity;
in what is not necessary, liberty
and in all things charity.

St. Augustine

The discussion also made me go back and reread this post which quotes John Allen about why Vatican II divided the Church. It is one of the best reasons for the two varying attitudes I've ever come across and one that keeps me in charity with both sides.

Human Nature is the Basis for Morality

There are two very different ideas in the world today about the basis for morality. The typically modern idea is that moral laws are man-made rules like the rules of a game such as tennis, created by human will and therefore changeable by human will. The traditional idea, on the other hand, which is taught not only by the Catholic Church but by all the world's major religions and nearly all pre-modern philosophies, is that the laws of morality are not rules that we make but principles that we discover, like the laws of a science such as anatomy. They are based on human nature, and human nature is essentially unchanging; and therefore the laws of morality are also essentially unchanging, like the laws of anatomy... There are universal principles, based on human nature, for bodily health and for mental health -- and also for moral health.

Because our human nature is composed of body and soul, with powers of intellect, will, and feelings, and because it is our nature to love the good but also to be tempted by evil, it is necessary for us to cultivate such virtues as self-control, wisdom, courage, and honesty. Catholic morality follows the classic Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in deriving the essential principles of morality from unchanging human nature and its real, objective needs rather than from the changing subjective feelings and desires of individuals or societies. Thus its essential principles are universal (the same for everyone), objective (discovered, not invented), and unchangeable.

Catholic Christianity:A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

All the Ways God Gets Our Attention

As saintos at luminous miseries prepares to convert to Catholicism we are being shown the gamut of ways God calls us. When the family is being shown around the grand old Catholic church that will be their new "church home" we see God calling through the sheer beauty of the art.

For our eldest daughter it really have been straight up doctrine, I mean how much more core can one get than being convinced of the truth of the Eucharist, body, blood and divinity of our Lord Jesus in the bread and the wine? For our youngest it is the witness of the work God is doing in her sister and in me and a fascination with the rosary, no doubt. For Mrs. Saintos it is her thriving spirit, her will to see us do life as a family and her own commitment to me as the spiritual head of the family. I know this sounds frightfully old fashioned but it comes as it is her own will to live this way and not some onerous obligation on my part it seems to me the act of a very strong person who happens to be a woman. For our son God seems to be reaching out to him through the relational and esthetic. Our son was much moved by the artwork that was so visible in the church, cancels, beautiful not kitschy sculptures, the Blessed Mother and Child, Joseph the Worker, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Holy Mary and the like. I know a moment of impact for us all was in seeing the Tabernacle. Father explained it and then opened it to show us the blessed host. I am telling you, I cannot speak for the others but I felt the tinglies! A moment that impacted our son was when Father showed us the one item that survived the fire that brought the building to ash in the nineteen seventies, it was the original Chalice.

Think of how many modern Catholic churches that saintos' son could visit today and not receive the same message because there is no beauty there to call him. I remember visiting the Basilica of Notre Dame in Montreal and watching a young woman ask her husband what was wrong. The church was incredibly beautiful and he had been brought to tears just by being there. He told her he was "having a moment" and we knew what he meant ... he had been feeling God's glory communicated through the beauty created to honor Him. I get that feeling from nature but I think it is a special calling to get it from man's works made to honor God.

Romance 1001

Ham-scented notes aside, neither Tom or I are very creative about romance ... or romantic at all, truth be told. Neither of us are the most spontaneous in the world. Yet, it turns out we would both enjoy a little romance in our lives. (Hmmmm, wonder why that marriage retreat was such a good idea?)

Before we even left San Antonio on Sunday we hit a Borders and bought the only book we saw with a lot of ideas listed. 1001 Ways to Be Romantic by Gregory Godeck. We almost didn't pick it up when we saw it had been recommended by Oprah, but overcame our Oprah-phobia. I particularly liked the part I saw when flipping through it that was like a point-by-point checklist of how to come up with romantic ideas. Yes! Instructions! Corny? Maybe. But it is a place to begin.

Still thinking of this as primarily a book of lists to flip through, however, I was astonished to see Tom start at the beginning and reading it just like a regular book. Which is how we wound up having a long conversation about it this morning. (Talk about it? Analyze it? Oh yeah, now that's our style!)

Interestingly enough, amidst the lists is a primer on romance itself: how to think about romance, how not to become paralyzed by requiring the "perfect" idea, how to appreciate the romantic gesture that is made to you, etc. Ok, based on other conversations with couples (we are not alone), I begin to see why this book is so popular. We can get a lot of books of lists (based on interesting samples from the retreat), but a "how-to" book? That's right down our alley.

If You Can Start the Day

From my inbox. Thanks Marcia!

If you can start the day without caffeine,

If you can get going without pep pills,

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him,

If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,



... Then you are probably the family dog!

Beyond Cana

Is there a more perfect name for a marriage retreat ... especially one that focuses on marriage enrichment? No. There isn't. It is pure genius.

However, that shouldn't surprise me, as I consider the man who came up with the original idea for this retreat to be a genius. In fact, on the way home (a 5-hour drive from San Antonio to Dallas), I said to Tom, "Ken is a genius, a GENIUS!" He said, "Yes, you've mentioned that before." Oooops.

It is a very interesting concept, first of all, that this is for enriching marriages. We didn't fully grasp that when we signed up but it was just what we were aiming for ... helping us celebrate what is already working and do the hard and necessary work of talking about what isn't working ... while getting both of us to listen to the other. Incorporated through this is the spiritual element that is so essential to any successful undertaking. There was an overarching theme of marriage as a sacrament and as a place where we reflect God's glory. Wow!

Giving the details would make no sense as anyone who has ever gone on a retreat knows full well. Part of the retreat process is progressing as things unfold around you rather than seeing the whole thing laid out ahead of time or divorced from the overall atmosphere.

I can say that the retreat gave us the tools we needed to communicate our love, our frustrations, our needs, our fears ... everything ... in a safe and undemanding environment. I am not saying it was easy. There were times when we were praying and very afraid to bring things up. But God was there with us (corny? yes. but it is true). Also we were committed to each other and to this process. In fact, the item that turned out to be the main issue between us is one that only God had in mind as we both had pushed it so far back, so long ago, that we couldn't even really define it at first.

Naturally, it didn't hurt that there were two mandatory "date" nights in the charming town of Boerne at the edge of Texas' hill country. It all combined so well to remind us of what made us fall in love in the first place and how deeply we have grown to love each other in the meantime.

Tom's reaction is stated a bit differently but the end result was the same for both of us:

This program is good for a couple like us because it is not at all a "crisis" oriented concept. In fact it is rooted in business situation assessment and planning wrapped in a "marriage as a sacrament" context. Better than just taking a weekend off together, it is really helps break down the little personal barriers people tend to develop over time. Then to plan on how to minimize the negative and emphasize the positive.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who said a little prayer for the retreat. We discovered that the retreat team had a monastery full of nuns praying for us. I know also that my CRHP team was praying for us. And, then there is anyone who dropped by here and saw that request. So it is no wonder that we had a fabulous experience.

The next challenge is really the big one. We must make changes to our routines on a day to day basis. I realized that routine sucks all those great new plans right out of your head when we got home and dropped right back into the regular needs of daily life with the girls. That is, until that wonderful moment, when my dear Tom (having realized the same thing I found out later), suddenly started implementing a little change that very evening. And the change was in the very area I had been most terrified about approaching him. How I love that man o' mine!

That was such a surprise and such a delight ... and such a warning about the need to be vigilant about putting our plans into effect. His motion touched me so that I was warming myself at the memory of it while making lunch the next morning. The perfect time to slip a note into his sandwich wrapper some might mention? Ah yes. And so it was done. He has the note in his shirt pocket as we speak ... now I just have to remember that a ham sandwich will give a note an unmistakable fragrance throughout the day ... and figure out a way around that!

And the very best part? If the routine overcomes us again, if we forget part of what we vowed to change, if new problems surface ... and we all know that this is reality speaking, not pessimism ... this retreat is designed so that we can pick our own weekend, retreat from the world, and do it ourselves annually or whenever we want. How cool is that? You know the answer already. Very cool.

Both Flattering and Mystifying

I am not sure what language this is, much less what the blogger's nationality is, but thank you for the link Martti Savijoki. Obviously, you are better educated than I am as you definitely are reading Happy Catholic in a second language.

I think I'm gonna add a foreign language section to the sidebar ...

The Personalism of Catholic Morality

What is the image of "Catholic morality" propogated by today's secular world, especially the media establishment, which forms modern minds through TV, movies, journalism, and public education? It is that of a joyless, repressive, dehumanizing, impersonal, and irrational system, something alien and inhuman and often simply stupid.

How totally different Catholic morality looks from the inside, from the viewpoint of those who live it, especially the saints! When the media meet a saint, like Mother Teresa, their stereotypes dissolve and die. Nothing looks more different from inside than from outside than Catholic morality -- except people in love. Nothing appears more foolish to non-lovers, or more wise and wonderful to lovers.

For Catholic morality is a love affair with Christ and his people, though not "romantic" love. It has its laws and rules, as a city has its streets. Streets are essential to a city, but they are not the very essence of a city... Streets are a means to the end of getting home. Home is where the real living takes place. Similarly, moral rules are the street map to the good life, but they are not the thing itself. The thing itself is a relationship of love, like a marriage. The marriage covenant has laws, like God's covenant with us. But husband and wife are faithful to each other first of all, not to the laws. The laws define and command their fidelity to each other. Principles are for persons, not persons for principles. Catholic morality is personalistic -- it is person-centric because it is Christocentric, and Christ is a person, not a principle.

Catholic Christianity:A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

Giving Thanks

Gratitude, someone once said, is the heart of prayer. And I think that person was right. Gratitude for a meal is really just an extension of the gratitude we're called to live in all day long.

There are times when my life is not what I want or think it should be. It might be a small aggravation or a huge worry, but the bottom line is, I don't like it and I'm not happy with it. A while back, I decided that anger, frustration, and wishful thinking got me nowhere. Forget where that could be, I decided, and concentrate on what is and where God is in all of it. Instead of thinking "I wish" or "If only" or something more profane, I started forcing myself to simply think (or pray), "Thank you."

You'd be amazed at what that does to change your perspective instantly.

The Words We Pray

Exactly right. The trick is remembering to be thankful always. Hard to believe how easily I can forget that ... St. Albert the Great, help my memory.

Isn't LIfe Strange?

Tony Hendra (who plays manager Ian Faith) writes in his memoir "Father Joe" that he attempted suicide the night before the first day of filming. He credits the joy he experienced in making the film with bringing him back from his depression.

Well that's a shocker. Looking up trivia from This is Spinal Tap I was stunned to see both the effect that making the movie had on Hendra and also that he wrote Father Joe. It's also funny what inspires you. I was never that interested in reading Father Joe but now it's going on my book list.

Where's the Story?

Get Religion is wondering why no major media source has picked up on a major Vatican story mentioned by John Allen.

Sources indicate that the long-awaited Vatican document on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries is now in the hands of Pope Benedict XVI. The document, which has been condensed from earlier versions, reasserts the response given by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2002, in response to a dubium submitted by a bishop on whether a homosexual could be ordained: “A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency, is not fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders.”

That reply was published in the November-December 2002 issue of Notitiae, the official publication of the congregation.

It is up to Benedict XVI to decide whether to issue the new document as it stands, to send it back for revision, or to shelve it on the basis that for now such a document is “inopportune.”

No kidding. Not only is that story a hot button for all kinds of secular groups but, naturally, it will be of great interest to Catholics. Get Religion puts it so very well.

So did I miss the story somewhere else?... You see, people tend to forget that sexuality issues in the Catholic world are not strictly a left vs. right affair. It is also a matter of public vs. private... It is hard to overemphasize how important this story is among Catholic politicos.

No word from MSM so far...

Pumping Gas and Seeing Stars

Little John's ongoing story of seeing celebrities while pumping gas in Malibu (circa 1984).

I worked with a 60's burnout who lived in a van with his Bassett hound. He loved the folk music of the 60's and in particular Joni Mitchell. She would come in from time to time and he finally got up the nerve to say something to her. He told her that her music had really touched him and her response was, "Shut up and pump the gas". So much for peace and love!

The Only Interesting Thing

[The Prioress] said, next, as to you and this story you have told me: you have been cruelly treated and betrayed, your childhood has been stolen. The world is oftentimes une patisse emerdee, a shit pie, but this is known, this is boring. The only interesting thing is how we use the suffering that is inevitable in life.

Valley of the Bones by Michael Gruber

"Why are people so proud of being half assed about their religion?"

This was Rose's question after we'd been talking about various progressive Catholic opinions seen around St. Blogs in the last few days.

Good point.

Saint Thomas Aquinas ... says if a Catholic comes to believe the Church is in error in some essential, officially defined doctrine, it is a mortal sin against conscience, a sin of hypocrisy, for him to remain in the Church and call himself a Catholic, but only a venial sin against knowledge for him to leave the Church in honest but partly culpable error.

Peter Kreeft

Further thoughts about that subject can be found here.

A Heartwarming, True Story

MORRISON - Mark Hickethier knew he was going to have to dig deep for this celebration dinner. "We were out to kill the fatted calf," he said, talking about his big plans...

But no expense was too much for his only son, who's about to ship off to Iraq for his first tour of duty. Matt Hickethier has almost completed training, and has this week to say farewell to his family for about a year.

The young Marine decided to wear his dress blues to the fancy restaurant. His mother and sister wore their finest dresses...

Perhaps it was the dress blues; maybe it was the general revelry and good vibes emanating from the Hickethier table. The truth may never be revealed, but the Hickethiers had certainly drawn attention. A couple at a neighboring table summoned Jason Barba, their server, and made a most unusual request.

"He gave me his credit card and requested I keep the tab open," said Barba. "'Anything that they order is on me.'"

Stephanie Amador, who was waiting on the Hickethier table, said the gentleman who picked up the tab insisted on doing it and also insisted on anonymity. The gesture was not even to be announced until he had finished and departed.

While the servers were impressed by this generous move, the Hickethiers were floored.

"I don't know the motivation, but I do know that it was mind-blowing," said Mark.

... The gesture at The Fort reminded him of the many Americans that support young men like his son.

Read the whole thing here.

Via Always Jason.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me

Every month, The Word Among Us has a different theme. I get as much out of those articles as I do from the daily devotions. This month they examine exactly what "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Phillipians 4:13) means and how to live it in our own lives.

This seemed fairly obvious to me until I read the articles and saw it can be applied in just as many ways as there are different sorts of people. I Can Do All Things in Christ, Overcoming a Mountain of Fear, and Whatever is Good and Noble and Pure... are all well worth reading. They also have a very practical "how-to" article that I am going to put here in it's entirety for easy access.

"Your Wounds I Will Heal."
A Method of Prayer for Healing of Memories

Our memory is a great gift from God. The problem is that we are sinners living in a sinful world, and we have all been hurt in the past. These wounds stay in our memories and can be instrumental in developing fears and anxieties within us--fears and anxieties that bind us up and rob us of our joy and confidence in the Lord. But no matter how bleak our memories appear, there is great hope. Jesus died for every scar and every wound, and he is always ready to heal.

If you want to seek this kind of healing, a good way to start is by examining your fears. Ask yourself, "What am I most afraid of? Do my fears prevent me from doing what I know I should do or what I feel God wants me to do? Are there one or two important events in my past that have contributed to this kind of fear?"

Next, replay these past events in your mind as best you can as you begin to pray. Try to picture Jesus with you as this event unfolds. Imagine yourself taking Jesus' hand, and tell him why this event has made you so fearful. Tell him how these fears affect you and why you want to be rid of them. Ask him to take away the fear and the pain.

As you pray through this event, write down what you sense the Lord is saying or doing. How is he reacting as he holds your hand and watches things unfold with you? Do this over and over again as time allows. Don't be afraid to pray for long periods without saying anything. Just try to calm your heart and sense what Jesus is doing in you.

As you go through your day, should you feel fear rising up in you again, put your memory to good use! Recall what you sensed Jesus doing in your prayer. Remember his words of consolation, his gestures of comfort, and the sense of hope and promise you felt as you prayed. Over time, you will see these painful memories healed and your fears melt away.

Blessings and Afflictions

"I dreamed I was getting a guided tour of heaven?" Emmylou says. "I was wearing a jumpsuit and a hard hat and my tour guide, he was the same as I was, and we were in this giant building, kind of an industrial shed like in those boring old movies they used to show us in high school, how they make paper or ice cream. And there was this big huge machine in it, whirring and clanking away, and there was a conveyor belt coming out of one end of it, and on the conveyor belt were rows of golden bricks, but softer: they looked like giant Twinkies, row after row of them, and when they got to the end of the conveyor belt they fell off of it. I looked to see where they were falling to and I saw that there was a big hole in the floor there and through it I could see clouds and blue sky and the earth far below. I asked the guide what the Twinkie things were, and he said they were blessings, and I remember thinking, in the dream, how marvelous is the Lord showering all these blessings down on us. Then we moved on, across an alley and into another big huge shed with the same kind of machine cranking away, the same conveyor belt, the same giant Twinkies falling down, and I said to the guide, 'Oh, these are more blessings,' and he said, 'No, those are afflictions,' and I said, 'Oh, but they look just the same as the blessings,' and he said, 'They are the same!'"

Valley of Bones by Michael Gruber

My partway-through-the-book review is here.

Those Happy Golden Years

My mother received this as an email and started thinking back to what things really were like when she was young and growing up in Cincinnati. She then produced this treasure for her children which I am sharing with y'all.

This makes me think of growing up in Cleveland, taking off for a Saturday with a couple of friends and a sandwich, and riding our bikes through neighborhoods and finding patches of woodlands still left undeveloped. It reminds me of buying a big old Royal Crown soda to go with the sandwich, too. I don't think my parents worried, or I wouldn't have been allow to go. It was a time of scavanger hunt parties, and people even walked places like to the little neighborhood stores that were always just a few blocks away. Not quite as good as Mayberry, but we never came to harm or even a hint of it!

So, even in a large town, suburban life was pretty easygoing. I also remember living in the outskirts of Cleveland before baby Brenda, and riding downtown on the trolley: I took my sister Beverly to ballet class, and bought baby clothes for Brenda, too. Cleveland wasn't nearly as nice, but it was still OK as a downtown. The May Company still reigned, and I still remember that I heard "Sleigh Ride" for the first time walking through downtown. Can you imagine a time like that? No cell phones, no street people, no TV.

To speak of one more Cleveland thing, Father was always proud of the fact that he knew Chef Boyardi and used to have lunch at his little downtown eaterie before he became famous.

And speaking of those old days: there were school lunches that were never refrigerated but left in lockers. None of us died from eating them.

Those neighborhood stores were always family run, and their stock was shelved to the ceiling. Tongs were used to reach a high level selection. They had veggies, but only in season, and think what that meant: potatoes, onions, and just a few other things unless it was summer and there were green beans. I don't remember meat, but they did have the super-licious ice cream Drumsticks. (Popsicles, too, but then there was the ice cream cart every afternoon jingling through your neighborhood from which to buy them. Rare treats; money was scarce.)

These stores were literally everywhere. Just walk a few blocks and you'd find one. For families like mine, who didn't have a car, they were a true convenience. When we did supermarket, we had to ride a streetcar and lug bags of groceries to bring them home. Or, as my father and I did, drag a kid's wagon to the store and haul it home, loaded and loudly protesting to the point of embarrassment to a young teen. As "recently" as the early 60's in Wisconsin, there were still neighborhood stores. In the Missouri town where we live now you can still see their ghosts in the older neigborhoods.

Of course there was no AC, so you just sweated, kept the curtains closed, and rested after lunch. Poor Mother, I can't imagine how hard it must have been running a household, ironing, hanging wash out and having dinner on the spot for Father when he came home. I used to sit on the front and steps and watch for him to get off the streetcar. Newspapers were delivered twice a day, and folded into neat little squares. They introduced me to my first Agatha Christie, run as a serial: "What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw". Hmmm, didn't Dickens start out that way?

When we lived in Cleveland Mother could walk one block to a hairdresser, who was the sister of the mayor. I guess life at that time divided itself into living segments: little neighborhoods within a whole that worked for residents. Would it be nice to go back? I think so ( BUT with air conditioning). In some ways we live like that now, not walking but having our own clusters of stores we frequent. Kind of the same, but highly mobilized (and with all those damned cell phones). I have enjoyed, this summer, driving to the houses I do and seeing bevies of kids out on bikes, or a parade of kids with backpacks going to a park event. It's nice to know neighborhoods still exist as such!

Thinking about all this has taken me deep into my young years ... it's been fun. So many memories have been tapped that I didn't even realize were there!

A Fascinating Book

I'm only halfway through so this is just a partial commentary about Valley of the Bones by Michael Gruber. I had to share it though because it is hands-down one of the most interesting books I have read in a very long time, both for technique and content. I first read about it in this month's Crisis magazine. They rarely review fiction and this is a gritty mystery, so my interest was piqued. When the reviewer said it was a really Catholic book, but without the usual trappings found in a mystery I really perked up my ears.

In Miami, a man is hit on the head and thrown from a hotel balcony. When the homicide detective, Paz, goes up to investigate, he finds a woman, Emmylou Dideroff, in the room. She is in a trance, speaking to St. Catherine of Siena, which qualifies her to the detective as both a wacko and a likely murderer. This seems confirmed when they find a bloody weapon on the balcony with Emmylou's fingerprints all over it. She even has a likely motive but denies committing the murder. This is not as open and shut as it seems as Jimmy Paz pursues clues that lead to the international oil market, a FBI watch list, and missionaries in the Sudan.

Aside from the intricate mystery there is the spiritual factor. Emmylou claims to have communion with the devil which leads to her being put in a mental institution where, at the detective's request, she begins writing a confession. However, her confession is more along the lines of St. Augustine's Confessions ... and soon she is filling four notebooks with the story of her life. At this point we meet Lorna Wise, a psychiatrist who is determining Emmylou's fitness for trial. Both Wise and Paz have actual moments of seeing the devil that Emmylou has mentioned but they manage to lie to themselves. Little doubt is left to the reader, though, that what they are experiencing is real. Strange personality changes start coming over Paz who is beginning to wonder if he is possessed and then shaking off the feeling. I am screaming to him, "Wake up and smell the coffee! YES, yes you are!" Obviously this is no ordinary mystery.

Along the way we see Wise's various insecurities, Paz's Cuban-American world and how he relates to the "white" world, insights into police detecting, how men and women relate to each other, and so much more. Most of all, there is a strong spiritual thread throughout that is interesting in itself as each character responds in their own way. This all is being told through four points of view: the detective, the psychiatrist, Emmylou's confessions, and pages from the book Faithful Unto Death: The Story of the Nursing Sisters of the Blood of Christ by Sr. Benedicta Cooley. As I read further I am beginning to see that these are all showing various ways of conversion, of openness to God. This feeling is intensified when we meet Paz's former partner, a strong evangelical Christian who is not afraid to share his faith. Most unusual for a mystery of this sort.

This may sound like a jumble of information but that is part of what makes this book so very interesting. The author is a masterful writer who makes everything come together naturally.

Make no mistake, it is a gritty, adult mystery and has sexual content that may offend some readers, so far most of which is in Emmylou's confessions. However, at this point any offensive content has been relayed with such a lack of passion or detail that I didn't find it bothersome.

I can't wait to see where this book goes because there is literally no telling. Naturally, being vitally interested in faith, the spiritual content is all I need to be glued to the book as it seems very true to life thus far. The intertwining of mystery and personal relationships make it irresistible. I will definitely be picking up Gruber's previous book after I have finished this one.

Purgatory

Purgatory exists because God is both just and merciful.

Purgatory is "like a refiner's fire" (Mal 3:2). It refines and purifies those who at the moment of death are neither good enough for an immediate heaven nor bad enough for hell. "All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven" (CCC 1030). "The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned" (CCC 1031)...

The existence of purgatory logically follows from two facts: our imperfection on earth and our perfection in heaven.

1. At the moment of death, most of us are not completely sanctified (purified, made holy), even though we are justified, or saved by having been baptized into Christ's Body and having thereby received God's supernatural life into our souls, having accepted him by faith and not having rejected him by unrepented mortal sin.
2. But in heaven, we will be perfectly sanctified, with no lingering bad habits or imperfections in our souls.
3. Therefore, for most of us, there must be some additional change, some purification, between death and heaven. This is purgatory.

... Unlike heaven or hell, purgatory is only temporary. Purgatory takes away the temporal punishment still due for our sins after our Baptism, faith, and repentance have already saved us from the eternal punishment due to our sin, that is hell.

Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

Glyphnotes

• We’ll just match that PMS 2935 with a screen mix. Huh?


• What the heck is RSS? (Not to be confused with ROUS.)


• I figure there are three type of computer users:
  1. Those that know all the keyboard shortcuts and use them.
  2. Those that use the right mouse button, instead.
  3. Those that have trouble remembering all but the most basic commands.
  If you are in the third category, this short article opens a whole new world into using your computer.

Glyphnotes is Tom's answer to all the questions we see repeatedly in the course of doing graphic design work for print and on the web. Drop by and see what's up over there. It is pretty nifty (and this is not just the devoted wifey speaking). Just click on the sidebar to go to any article. Be sure to let him know if you like it or not ... we love feedback!

Pumping Gas and Seeing Stars

Little John's ongoing story of seeing celebrities while pumping gas in Malibu (circa 1984).

One night (I worked 3-midnight) around 10 pm a limo pulls up. A huge black guy gets out, walks to the ladies room and goes inside. After a minute or so he returns to the limo and opens the door and out steps Dolly Parton. He escorts her to the ladies room and a few minutes later she returns to the limo and they leave. To me it was like a Aesop's fable. The lesson...when you have to go you have to go, no matter how rich or famous.

Bad Car Karma?

In my driving life I have had some of the oddest accidents. Very few were my fault and when they were it was for mundane reasons. However, I have had the oddest things happen when others were busy hitting me.

For instance there was the time when a guy thought he'd get a jump on the light and turn left before the other lanes started up. Trouble is, he ran smack dab into me as I was innocently driving along the lane he couldn't see. That in itself isn't odd, but it was distinctly surreal to be sitting there, trying to figure out if I could open the door this guy had just smashed into when up pounded two men in flannel shirts, waving badges, and saying, "We're undercover cops. We saw the whole thing and will be your witness." So there's something I don't see every day ... or ever.

Or the time that I was driving up to a red light and a man waiting to exit the grocery store parking lot suddenly revved up his car and rammed right into the side of the van. Turns out that he had Alzheimer's and thought he was hitting the brakes. That was the wake-up call for his daughter, riding with him, that something more needed to be done about Dad's condition.

Then there's the time that I was driving by an intersection and a parked car on the other side of the street just burst into flames. I'm talking flames here. It was like something off a Hollywood set. And no one stopped or even seemed to notice. Ok, that wasn't an accident but you have to admit it was freaky.

These are just a few of my car chronicles and luckily I've always come out of it unhurt, even if the car has been totalled. For instance, the time the delivery truck doing 60 hit me, I know my guardian angel was on the case because the entire front of the car was at a distinct angle to the rest of the car ... but I had instinctively hit the brakes just in the nick of time to tear out her rear axle so she couldn't leave the scene ... oh, and to stop her from hitting me dead on.

I'll end with yesterday's story, when I was again innocently driving (I'm always innocent; that's my story and I'm sticking to it!) in the right hand lane toward an intersection, next to one of those gigantically long Mayflower moving vans. I always feel like an idiot because I am nervous about driving next to big trucks. I don't trust the drivers to see me in their mirrors. It's a good thing I was nervously eyeing this one since I was halfway up the length of the van. I noticed right away that my lane was getting narrower and narrower ... because the truck was moving over. Maybe he was just out of his lane for a moment? Nope. He was moving over now! I hit the horn and hit the gas. Caught between a high curb on one side and this immensely long truck on the other I started wondering about crushed vans (and people inside them). He came far enough over to hit my side mirror (good thing it snaps back) and then finally came to a halt. I pulled up even with the cab, opened my window and then we had a very inelegant exchange of screaming at each other. Because he seemed to think that this was my fault and I should have gotten out of the way by going faster (or something). Wrong. So we will see how Mayflower handles this as I pulled up enough to get his license plate before moving on.

I think when my Guardian Angel got assigned they made a point of making sure he was extra good at handling car situations. Thank heavens!

Best Short Movie Review Ever

Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool gives us a spot-on, succinct review of "Stealth."

Well here it is... down to the final ounce, this film is 7 tons of dumb.

"... she is also just so darn happy!"

The Anchoress took me totally by surprise with some very kind and generous comments. When they come from someone who I admire as much as I do her, well, that just makes me doubly happy! (Couldn't resist that one, ya know.)

Being so darned happy has come up before and led me to reflection of just why that is ... which I am linking to here for anyone who is interested, as well as to my conversion story. Because, as in all things, it is through the grace of God who I can never thank enough for His goodness to me and mine.

Cheers Anchoress and thanks again!

Making Money With Anti-Catholicism

While other forms of bigotry are confined to the world of cranks and conspiracy theorists, anti-Church historical polemic makes money for major American publishing houses. Within the last decade, blue-ribbon publishers have produced such works as John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope, Garry Wills' Papal Sin and Why I Am a Catholic, James Carroll's Constantine's Sword, and Daniel J. Goldhagen's A Moral Reckoning. By 2002, readers had access to "a virtual book of the month club on institutional Catholicism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust." That is in addition to the widespread use of the anti-Catholic pseudo-history in many works on Catholic attitudes to sexuality and gender, on early Christianity, and on medieval history. Obviously this run of anti-Church blockbusters does not mean that America's leading publishers are conspiring to destroy or calumniate Catholicism. The publishers act as they do because they believe that people will buy the books, and the success of authors such as Carroll and Cornwell indicates they are exactly right. Against the charge that the books are purely hostile attacks, the publishers can state, quite accurately, that in most case the authors themselves claim to be loyal Catholics. Wills, Cornwell, and Carroll would all make such an assertion, and their insider status certainly helps to deflect criticism.

But whatever the publishers' motives, the total effect of such an outpouring of deeply hostile books is powerful. Imagine browsing the religion section of a major bookstore and finding Catholicism represented chiefly by these titles. The obvious lesson for the average reader is that the Catholic Church carries a huge burden of guilt for its historical atrocities, that it is a prime motivator of anti-Semitism and a collaborator with Nazism.

The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice
by Philip Jenkins

I discovered this when I was first converting and innocently looking over the books at Borders. It didn't take much perusing of book jackets, even to such a newbie as myself, to find that some people who claimed love for the Church were pouring out bitter invective in these same books. As was a matter of dicussion here last week, it took Cardinal Ratzinger being elected Pope to get any of his books into the mainstream stores near me.

Marching Into My Heart

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS
This movie is a fascinating look at what the Emperor penguins endure every year as they go mate and raise their chicks. Frankly, as I watched this I couldn't believe any penguins existed under these circumstances for very long. The fact that they are still here after thousands of years testifies to the innate toughness of these birds. I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in nature films see this movie.

As I watched the penguins enduring things like a winter storm which brought conditions of 80 degrees below zero and 100 mile per hour winds, I kept wondering how the film makers got the footage. We are treated to just a few glimpses of them in the closing credits so do not leave before you see them. They hint at the movie I'd really like to see, that perhaps we will get when the DVD is released ... The Making of March of the Penguins.

My approval of this movie is not unconditional, however, as there is a fly in the ointment. The movie makers seem determined to elicit emotion from the viewer and use the twin bludgeons of unbelievably sentimental music (which at times is incredibly loud) and relentless anthropomorphization. The movie would have been much stronger with a lighter touch on both which accounts for my rating of ...

***
"Liked it despite the absence of flubber..." - Mel Gibson reading Prof. Frink's review

Finding "Church" Everywhere Else

More and more Christians say the usual ways of "doing church" no longer resonate in a contemporary, postmodern culture. Seeking to fill the gap, a growing movement called "the emerging church" is developing new forms of worship and asking new theological questions.

Adherents to the movement don't align themselves with any established denomination. Their rites and worship settings are unconventional – often more coffeehouse or college-dorm ambience than church.

Many emerging churches weave together elements from different religious traditions, especially Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Some are renewing medieval mystical practices such as walking the labyrinth. Some emphasize video images, electronic music and audience participation.

This Dallas Morning News story goes into great detail over the "emergent church" and pastors' alarm as Gen X abandons traditional worship. In this same vein, A Real Big Fish talks about finding church at work with fellow believers.

My reaction to all this is essentially Catholic. Any church that doesn't have the Eucharist is just a building where believers gather. Some may be pretty and some may be plain and some may have coffee and DJs that mix cds for the worshippers ... in fact, some may be like my Catholic women's book club. Jesus is there with any worshippers where two or more are gathered in His name but it isn't the same as having his actual presence in the Eucharist right there with you. Without the Eucharist then one place is just as good as another ... and no place is as good as being in front of the tabernacle.

The Importance of the Body in Christianity

Christ's Resurrection bestows new dignity on our bodies by revealing to us a new, unexpected, and glorious eternal destiny for them ... "In expectation of that day, the believer's body and soul already participate in the dignity of belonging to Christ" (CCC 1004).

In most religions (such as Hinduism), only spirit is immortal. In some (such as Gnosticism), only spirit is good. In some (such as Buddhism), only spirit is real. But for Christians, the body is real, good, and immortal. No religion exalts matter and the body as Christianity does:

1. God created it and declared it "good" (Gen 1).
2. God united man's body with his immortal soul to make one substance, one being.
3. And therefore he made the body immortal like the soul, through resurrection.
4. In sexual intercourse, he uses a material act to make new immortal souls.
5. And he kept his human body forever. Every since Christ took his human nature, body and soul, to heaven in the Ascension, God has a body forever. Christ did not "un-incarnate" when he ascended.
6. He now uses matter to save souls in Baptism and the Eucharist.

... The practical moral consequences of this doctrine of the resurrection as the body's destiny are radical, especially to contemporary culture. "This dignity entails the demand that he should treat with respect his own body, but also the body of every other person" (CCC 1004). "Do you know that your bodies are the members of Christ? ... Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit ...You are not your own' you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body" (1 Cor 6:15, 19-20).

The origin of modern hedonism and materialism (especially the "sexual revolution") is not the discovery of the goodness or greatness of the body, but the denial of it, by the Gnostic separation of body from spirit, by the confinement of religion and morality to subjective intention (the idea that if it is motivated by love, anything is moral). The "materialism" of the playboy really stems from the denial of the sacredness of matter and the body, which is then used as a mere tool, a means to the end of pleasure and excitement. His end is subjectively good feelings in the soul, not the objective good of the body.

Catholic Christianity:A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

The Church Loves All Her Children

No matter what sins they commit, sinners continue to belong to the Church since spiritual goods still subsist in them -- goods such as the indelible character received in Baptism and Confirmation, the theological virtues of faith and hope ...

The Church continues to live in her children who are not in the state of grace. The Church seeks to work against the evil that corrupts their souls. She struggles to keep them in her fold, to bring them back to life with her love. She conserves them as one conserves a treasure not easily parted from. And it is not because she wants to carry around dead weight. She only hopes that through the power of patience, gentleness, and pardon the sinner will make his return to her. It is like the withered branch which for lack of sap is allowed time to regain health and flower once more. (J.C. Journet, Theology of the Church).

The Church does not forget for one single day that she is a Mother. She continually prays for her children who are ill. She waits with infinite patience. She seeks to help them with abundant charity. We ought to bring to the Lord our prayers, works, joys and sufferings for the sake of those who belong to the church but who do not participate fully in the life of grace We should especially keep in mind those we happen to know personally who may need to return to the fullness of spiritual life.

In Conversation with God: Daily Meditations

This is something I tend to forget. Though my parents may turn their backs on the Church (to say nothing of God), this makes them no less her children. I also love that phrase "fullness of spiritual life" which fits so very many situations.

Walk the Line

Joaquin Phoenix is Johnny Cash and I am so there! (Maybe I'd better rent Ray first and catch up on my singer movies though.)

Pumping Gas and Watching Stars

Want to know what the stars are really like? Work at a gas station near where they live. Tom's nephew, Little John, grew up in Malibu and has a million stories ... as I pry them out of him (though so far not much prying has been required) I will share them.

Living in Malibu was an interesting experience. My first year of community college I worked at the only full service gas station in the area. Of course nobody who is anybody pumps their own gas, so I got to serve a lot of the big stars.

My friend Eden Unger's parents had built a spectacular home, even by Malibu standards, and a year or so after completion of the home I saw Eden at a party, which was rare since she was a sophmore at UC Berkley. Eden's parents were friends of Leo Penn (Sean's dad) and everyone in the world knew that Madonna and Sean were to be married in a super secret wedding. I asked Eden if the wedding would be at her house and she smiled and said, "maybe". We knew that was a yes. So, the next night I am working at the gas station and we hear that the big wedding is taking place at Eden's house. It was a madhouse, the first big paparazzi wedding with helicopters and the whole nine yards. At about midnight I am shutting the gas station when a short guy walks up and asks me for change for a dollar since he needs to use the pay phone (1984, before mobile phones). It's Tom Cruise. I think, "Wow is this guy short!" Anyway he says thanks and heads over to the pay phone. I shut the station and get in my car to go home and I notice he is still talking on the phone. I have always wondered why he needed to use our payphone at such a strange hour.

I have a million celebrity stories from Malibu and the Unocal 76 station!

Feed My Sheep...

The Catholic Diocese of Dallas is asking its parishes to take a little extra out of their collection plates to help pay diocesan legal costs.

In a letter sent to pastors this week, Bishop Charles Grahmann said two legal fights were likely to cost the cash-strapped diocese more than the $1 million budgeted for litigation in 2006.

Those two cases are the battle against the Dallas school system's attempt to condemn land next to a Catholic cemetery and the lawsuit over two child molesters who worked at St. Pius X Catholic Church's child-care center in Far East Dallas in the 1990s.

"Those costs have exhausted our reserves," the bishop wrote of those two lawsuits.

Dallas Morning News
(free registration required)

I have often said that if our bishop can't be a good shepherd the least we could expect is a good businessman. Evidently not.

Seeing this in the newspaper this morning evoked the usual eyerolls from Tom and me. We haven't forgotten, as apparently Bishop Grahmann has, the first time our reserves "were exhausted" by paying for the Rudy Kos lawsuit settlement due to the bishop's intransigence (he only officially apoligized to the victims and their families last year). The St. Pius X is too much more of the same for us.

Our parish has had its own problems with the bishop, as have many others. Like most Dallas Catholics we are waiting until next year when Bishop Grahmann turns 75 and has to send his letter of resignation to the Vatican ... and crossing our fingers that they accept it. Until then I guess we'll just have to keep on paying and waiting for our bishop to remember to "feed my sheep."

Fetal Tissues Are Used in Vaccines?

I had no idea at all. It took a Vatican statement condemning the practice and the CWN news report to clue me in.

The Vatican has condemned the use of vaccines derived from fetal tissue, and exhorted Catholics to lobby for the development of alternative vaccines.

The new instructions from the Vatican provide strong support for parents and doctors who resist the use of vaccines that are based on fetal remains. Such vaccines are commonly used today in the US to inoculate patients-- usually children-- against diseases such as measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella, smallpox, rabies, polio, and hepatitis A. In some cases the vaccines developed from fetal tissues are the only products available to patients seeking protection from the disease. ...

Although parents and doctors may be morally justified in using such vaccines, when no alternative is available, the Vatican document says that they "have a duty to take recourse to alternatives, putting pressure on political authorities and health systems" to produce morally acceptable alternative treatments.

In its analysis, the Pontifical Academy for Life listed the vaccines developed from fetal tissues:

A) Live vaccines against rubella:

• the monovalent vaccines against rubella Meruvax®!! (Merck) (U.S.), Rudivax® (Sanofi Pasteur, Fr.), and Ervevax® (RA 27/3) (GlaxoSmithKline, Belgium);
• the combined vaccine MR against rubella and measles, commercialized with the name of M-R-VAX® (Merck, US) and Rudi-Rouvax® (AVP, France);
• the combined vaccine against rubella and mumps marketed under the name of Biavax®!! (Merck, U.S.);
• the combined vaccine MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) against rubella, mumps and measles, marketed under the name of M-M-R® II (Merck, US), R.O.R.®, Trimovax® (Sanofi Pasteur, Fr.), and Priorix® (GlaxoSmithKline UK).

B) Other vaccines, also prepared using human cell lines from aborted fetuses:

• two vaccines against hepatitis A, one produced by Merck (VAQTA), the other one produced by GlaxoSmithKline (HAVRIX), both of them being prepared using MRC-5;
• one vaccine against chicken pox, Varivax®, produced by Merck using WI-38 and MRC-5;
• one vaccine against poliomyelitis, the inactivated polio virus vaccine Poliovax® (Aventis-Pasteur, Fr.) using MRC-5;
• one vaccine against rabies, Imovax®, produced by Aventis Pasteur, harvested from infected human diploid cells, MRC-5 strain;
• one vaccine against smallpox, AC AM 1000, prepared by Acambis using MRC-5, still on trial.

Read the entire story at Catholic World News. The entire Vatican statement can be found here.

The Christian Attitude Toward Death

I like that Kreeft points out it is natural to have multiple attitudes toward death. So often we are expected to have only one ... if we miss someone there is sure to be a person who points out that we should be happy they'll be in heaven. Right. Got that. But that doesn't mean we can't miss them ... or not look forward to the process ourself.

Since death is both natural, unnatural, and supernatural, we should have three corresponding attitudes toward it:

Since it is natural, we honestly confront it and accept it as a fact of our being, instead of avoiding it by endless diversions of our attention or, by living in denial, pretending it is not there.

Since it is also unnatural, the inescapable punishment for sin, we hate it and fight it as our enemy, "the last enemy" (1 Cor 15:26).

Finally, since it is also supernatural, transformed by Christ's Resurrection, we welcome it. For if we are in Christ, death comes to us as God's golden chariot sent to fetch his Cinderella bride from the cinders of this dying world to his golden castle to live with him in eternal ecstasy.

The element that pervades all three of these attitudes is readiness. "The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death. In the ancient litany of the saints, for instance, she has us pray: 'From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord'; to ask the Mother of God to intercede for us 'at the hour of our death' in the Hail Mary; and to entrust ourselves to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death (CCC 1014).

"'Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience ... Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow'" (CCC 1014).

Catholic Christianity:A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

Delivering Ultimatiums to God

You know the kind I mean. At some point we're lying there in bed suffering from the flu or a terrible sinus headache, not really convinced that we might not die, and we issue the directive, "Either heal me or take me now, Jesus." And we mean it ... because we have never felt so terrible ... ever.

Ok, somewhere deep in the recesses of our minds we know we're not gonna die. We know that another and better day will dawn; maybe even this very day will improve. But, personally, that is a time when I am not about thinking. I am all about feeling. That is when it is very, very good to be a Catholic. We're told that our suffering is never wasted if we offer it up for others, following Jesus' example. All we have to do is to be able to remember it at that point.

This morning, with a sinus headache that made my pillow feel hard, I had some first-class suffering to offer up. And I have a friend in dire need who I could offer it up for. So I lay there, struggling my way through the rosary, forgetting what I was doing because I moved my head and that might have been the very moment when Jesus was coming to take me because I felt as if I was dying ... and then getting back to it. And you know what? It helped me too because I had my mind, such as it was, on something besides how I felt. No matter how horrible I felt that allergy pill and aspirin were going to kick in eventually and my friend has no such options. Her problems are so much worse.

I made it all the way through the rosary and eventually that aspirin did kick in. Another lesson in gratitude was mine. Not only do I appreciate my good health but I also am glad for all those little annoyances of everyday life ... the ones that I try to let slide off my back and offer up for various causes. If not for that daily practice I am not sure I would have remembered to offer up the big one this morning. Which not only helped my friend, it helped me. No wonder I'm happy to be Catholic.

Symbolism of Beasts in Harry Potter

Which is your favorite Harry Potter beast? They all have a symbolic meaning says John Granger in Christianity Today. He spells it out for each in the article.

For most of us, the connection between an animal and its symbolic quality is pretty clear. A dog embodies and radiates the virtue of loyalty; a cat, feminine beauty and grace; a lion, power and majesty; an eagle, freedom; and a horse, nobility.

But the animals in Harry Potter are not your conventional domestic pets or zoo beasts. Rowling has a rich imagination and a special fascination for fantastic beasts; she has even written a Hogwarts "schoolbook," Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, cataloging her favorites, A to Z. Are these products of her imagination symbols in the way eagles and lions are symbols? ...

Many of the animals in Harry Potter are Rowling's own inventions (although the Acromantula reminds Tolkien fans of the giant spider Shelob and of the den of spiders in The Hobbit). However, let's focus on traditional symbols from European literature because of the wealth of references that support the interpretation of their supernatural qualities. If there is a single giveaway of the Christian meaning in Harry Potter, it is in the uniform meaning of the symbols. The magical creatures and figures we will look at more closely are the griffin, the unicorn, the phoenix, the stag, the centaur, the hippogriff, and the red lion. Each is a traditional symbol of arts and letters used to point to the qualities and person of Christ.

The Blogger and the Fatwa

The Anarchangel has had a fatwa and death threats issued for his blogging about Islam and the Koran. Granted, "in your face" seems to be the only style he knows, but this is the sort of extreme reaction that Robert Spencer wrote about in Islam Unveiled when talking about why Muslims in the United States didn't complain about extremists. He then went on to talk about documented cases of people disappeared if they gave information to the authorities and I think I am remembering that he mentioned Arizona which is where this blogger lives ... which makes me glad that the FBI is taking The Anarchangel seriously. Via On the Other Foot.

This is What Happens When You Don't Blog All Weekend ...

... and keep finding interesting stuff because everyone else did blog all weekend. You wind up with a zillion blog entries. And still you haven't blogged about the family's day trip to the Fort Worth Zoo.

It is justly among one of the top in the country with most of the zoo having lovely landscaping and habitats that are clearly designed for the animals' comfort. (The exception to that is the newest part of the zoo which feels more like a badly designed amusement park with few exhibits that make you feel as if the animals are comfortable. Unbelievably badly done considering the majority of the zoo.)

The weather was fairly comfortable thanks to the daily rainstorms we've been having and the animals were much more lively than we had expected. We wound up spending six hours walking around and having a blast.

Our favorite moment was when watching an orangutan family that had a playful and curious youngster. At one point a frog jumped out of the stream nearby and he scurried over to sniff it, very hesitantly poke it with a finger and then jump back when it jumped away. He followed it all over trying to figure it out until an older sibling came up to see what he was doing, picked up the frog until he lost interest, and then put it down again and left. It was almost like watching them with the family pet. Rose got a photo of the youngster getting ready to touch the frog. I circled the frog but it is well camouflaged that I don't know if you can see it.



Our other favorite moment was when the youngest of the elephants decided to go full body in the water and really play. I don't think I've ever seen an elephant do that and although this photo doesn't capture any of the actual hijinks, Rose did manage to get this little elephant's face expressing the delight of the moment.

About That "Weeds" Parable

This one really hit a chord as I have seen posts all over St. Blog's about it. I'm guilty too but my post was just a commentary excerpt that I really liked. Most have mentioned some variation of the Kinder, Gentler Parable mentioned by Karen Hall. That is what we got ourselves. Something about turning from "bad wheat" into "good wheat." Oh well. Maybe it was meant for someone else. I got my message earlier from "In Conversation with God."

No one had the guts of the priest who gave the history lesson on "The Weeds of Islam" as reported by Lofted Nest. Now there's a priest with conviction.

Ok, Good Charlotte Fans, Here You Go

The most looked for thing on my blog in the last few weeks? These two photos. Go figure. Maybe it was the shock of seeing those photos connected with a blog called Happy Catholic. Anyway, that's why I'm reposting this blog entry. Gotta keep the people happy, doncha know?

This Good Catholic Boy ...

Benji Madden, Good Charlotte

... wrote this song ...

"Wondering"

If you want me to wait
I would wait for you
If you tell me to stay
I would stay right through
If you don't wanna say
Anything at all
I'm happy wondering

Since I was a young man
I never was a fun man
I never had a plan and no security
Then ever since I met you
I never could forget you
I only wanna get you right here next to me

[chorus]
Cause everybody (a-whoa-oh-oh)
Needs someone that they can trust and
You're somebody (a-whoa-oh-oh)
That I found just in time
If you want me to wait
I would wait for you
If you tell me to stay
I would stay right through
If you don't wanna say
Anything at all
I'm happy wondering


Now my life is changing
It's always rearranging
It's always getting stranger than I thought it ever could
Ever since I found you
I wanna be around you
I want to get down to the point that I need you

[chorus]

Don't tell me
The bad news
Don't tell me anything at all
Just tell me
That you need me
And stay right here with me

[chorus]

... about his dog. Awwww. Read the chorus again ... I think those are his dog's words there. Double awwwwwww.

Why do I say he's a "good Catholic boy?" Well, I'm not positive but here's his twin brother with his tatoos of the Virgin Mary on one arm and the sacred heart of Jesus on the other. So, just guessing here...

Joel Madden, Good Charlotte

Thanks to my "beat reporter", Rose, for this one, presented as supporting evidence when revising her "Mom mix" playlist ... just keeping me current, ya know! (And if you like these pictures you ought to get an eyeful of the posters on her wall!)

Are Protestants to blame for church divisions?

Yes. And so are Catholics.

"'However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers ... All who have been justified in faith by Baptism are incorporated into Christ'" (CCC 818); they are our "separated brethren."

"Christ's Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church" (CCC 819). The Protestant limbs that broke off from the Catholic tree can still have enough life-giving sap (God's truth and grace) from the root (Christ) through the trunk (the Catholic Church) to be the means of salvation for their members. The Church of Christ "subsists in" (CCC 816) the Roman Catholic Church most completely but not exclusively.

Catholic Christianity:A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

The Church as the ultimate reason for creation

"Christians of the first centuries said, 'The world was created for the sake of the Church.' God created the world for the sake of" [our] "communion with his divine life, a communion brought about by ... the Church ...

"'Just as God's will is creation and is called "the world," so his intention is the salvation of men, and it is called "the Church"'" (CCC 760).

The Church is the reason for creation, the reason for the Big Bang. The universe is a Church-making machine, and the Church is a saint-making machine.

Catholic Christianity:A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

The Church is necessary for salvation

Since we have no salvation without Christ,
And we do not know Christ without the Church,
It follows that there is no salvation without the Church.

This traditional formula of the Church Fathers (see CCC 846), "Outside the Church there is no salvation", does not mean that Protestants and others are not saved, because this formula is not an answer to the mind's curiosity about the populations of heaven and hell, but an answer to the sincerely seeking heart's question "Where is salvation? Where is the road? What has God done to show me how to be saved?" Similarly, Christ's words to his disciples about "many" choosing the "wide" road to destruction and only "few" finding the "narrow" road to life (Mt 7:14) are not the words of a statistician spoken to a census taker, but the words of a loving heavenly Father to his beloved children, warning them of danger. To the Good Shepherd even one out of a hundred sheep is too many to lose and ninety-nine too few to save (Mt 18:12).

In fact the Church explicitly teaches that many who call themselves non-Catholics are saved. Vatican Council II said that "they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it" (LG 14), but also that "[t]hose who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience -- those too may achieve eternal salvation" (LG 16) -- not because conscience is an adequate substitute for the Church, but because conscience, too is contact with God.

Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

Batman Begins

I read so many highly favorable reviews by so many diverse people, including Barbara Nicolosi who it seems never likes anything of this sort, that I was very surprised to find myself bored about two-thirds of the way through the movie. One more explosion, one more hallucinatory vision shown, one more over-the-top action scene ... it reminded me in a way of True Lies in which James Cameron just kept going with the action scenes until they had the reverse effect of that intended ... it was too much and I tuned out. Now, I liked True Lies but a little restraint would have made it a much better movie and that is how I felt about Batman Begins. I really liked so much of it, especially Christian Bale's star turn ... the way his appearance was so flexible he really looked different from portrayal of callow youth to rich playboy Bruce Wayne to in-transition ninja-training guy. Katie Holmes didn't add anything to her role but I did like the way her character would stand up for herself using her taser or grabbing a gun on the run when protecting the little boy (maybe he'll become Robin?).

Aside from the unrelenting action scene complaint, I hafta say that none of us understood the reason that whats-her-name (Katie Holmes) gave for not being able to hook up with Batman. I have never heard such twisted logic. "Umm, Bruce, you've turned yourself into everything that you should have and I'm missing that shallow guy I fell in love with so forget it." What the heck?

I thought the whole responsibility for power/living up to dead father's expectations theme was done much better in Spiderman 2, although I did like the constant reminder, "Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up."

HC Rating: *** (Liked it despite absence of flubber.)

What the Bleep Do We Know? More Than These Moviemakers Do.

Guest reviewer, Hannah, has strong feelings about What the Bleep Do We Know?

Her rating: * - Worse than Godfather III.
Her review:

I'm know a lot of people found this movie "eye-opening" and "enlightening", but it is the most pretentious mockery of a film I have ever seen. The makers of this film completely threw philosophy and logic out the window when they decided to support the claims of the so-called experts interviewed herein.

The first example of such woeful judgment calls is the tale of the Native Americans not being able to see Columbus' ships. The explanation is that the ships were too foreign to them, so their brains ignored them completely. Only when the shaman focused and pointed them out did the others believe and see. First of all, this is a myth hundreds of years old and from a non-credible source. Second, the logic of this story would make all new-borns blind, as the world is an alien place to them, much more so than a big ship is to an Indian. Later on in the film, the experts turn to a subject on which they do not even claim to have expertise. They begin derailing all conventional views of God. Whether they realize it or not, these include Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism of any sort. In other words, all of the worlds' most cherished religions are debunked in a few moments. These are no theologians, but people who, like everyone else in the world, simply think their reasoning is the best. And what is their reasoning? They don't give any. They simply rave about how wrong and insulting it is to our pantheistic, universe- encompassing God of Spinoza's fancy that there are those who would still follow the old ways. Conflicting views are simply out of the question. When thoroughly examined, these people are some of the most close-minded I have ever beheld. No substantial logic is ever laid out, so we just have to believe that they somehow obtained extensive knowledge about a subject that has remained elusive to humanity since the beginning of time. Sounds reasonable.

The animation portion of the movie is disgusting and poorly-executed. I am a huge fan of animation, and these little "things" disgusted me and made me want to turn the movie off and burn it. This section alone would have caused me to want to suppress the memory of this movie forever, had not so many other hideous flaws done the trick already. I do not claim to have all the answers nor to be the ultimate judge of logic or reason, but check your facts, people, and use your heads. This movie makes no sense and is designed to be appealing to those with no background in philosophy or specialized sciences. As a student and lover of both, this movie makes me sick.

While researching the movie, Hannah found additional information:

I found out while reading many of the 350 reviews, that the movie was basically an infomercial for Ramtha. You know, the 35,000 spirit of the Cro-magnon warrior of Atlantis that the main expert was "channeling". None of the experts names and so-called qualifications were revealed until the end because they were all followers of J.Z. Knight's cult, except for one, who has loudly complained that his interview was edited to give the false impression that he supports the cults beliefs. Wow. That explains a lot. This was my favorite Amazon review:

If you are interested in listening to professors talk in circles, then ultimately admit that quantum physics is impossible to explain, then this movie is for you. "How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?" one of them says. Was he really quoting Alice in Wonderland?

Let me sum it up for you: Thinking positively about a memory, event, or the future is better than thinking about it negatively. Wow, what a mind blowing concept. I think I learned that when I was 12 yrs old.

Now can I go up to Rantha's camp in Washington and get locked in the place? I'd be happy to sign her contract not allowing me to leave the facility, use electricity, etc. I think I'll sit under the $100,000 chandeliers in the horse stables and ponder if reality is real.

Hero Revisited

Tom hadn't seen Hero and that was all the excuse we needed to rent the DVD again. He was less impressed than the rest of us but liked it well enough. The vivid visuals made us wonder about the symbolism of the colors and so we went a-Googlin' and found this:

In many of his films, Zhang Yimou has used the color red as a means of making a vibrant symbolic statement. However, according to the fact file on IMDB.com, the spectrum of the color motif in Hero has been expanded to include red as a symbol for imagination, blue for perceived reality, white for truth, and green for enlightenment and peace.

Source

We also found references to other symbolism that we hadn't particularly wondered about but that proved to be very interesting as well.

The chorus of the king’s servants are not meant to be comical, as it would seem to many, but rather emblematic of the will of a population under political stress.

The fight scenes are not meant to be presented as if these people enjoyed supernatural powers. Rather, they are the memories of the individuals and—more importantly—mythic figures of the people of China who endow them with abilities and traits far beyond the scope of the average person.

Source

Infallibility

Vatican Council I defined what Catholics had always believed: that the pope, like the ecumenical (worldwide) councils, is infallible (preserved by God from error) when defining doctrine or morality for the whole Church. He is not personally infallible, but his office is.

God did not let us wonder and wander in darkness about the most important truths we had to know in order to fulfill our most important task in life, union with him. No human lover would allow that if he could help it. Neither did God. Papal infallibility, like every other Catholic dogma, is properly understood only by the primacy of love...

When the Church is infallible

1. "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful..., he proclaims in an absolute decision a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals" (LG 25).
2. "The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops, when together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme teaching office" (LG 25).
3. Even doctrines not explicitly labeled infallible can be binding on Catholic belief because "[d]ivine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter,...when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a 'definitive manner,' they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium teaching ... of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful 'are to adhere...with religious assent' (LG 25)" (CCC 892). Wise and good parents do not explicitly label everything they say to their children as "infallible", yet wise and good children trust them. Similarly, we should trust Holy Mother Church, the Church of the apostles, saints, and martyrs, the Church with a two-thousand-year-long-memory, much more than we trust our own opinions.
4. The sign the Church attaches to an infallible teaching is Christocentric: "When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine 'for belief as being divinely revealed,' and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions 'must be adhered to with the obedience of faith'" (CCC 891).
   

Catholic Christianity:A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

Mini Book Reviews

Quick comments about the last few books I've read:

• 57. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich - Stephanie Plum may be looking for a new job but it's business as usual. More cars are blown up in this book than usual and the family works itself to a fever pitch preparing for Valerie's wedding. For me this book didn't pick up until the last third when Stephanie gave up sugar and was forced to take up another stress-reducing activity. I'll let y'all find out what that is. Any Stephanie Plum fans will find this worth reading though not up to the last book's standards.


• 56. Under the Overpass by Mike Yankoski - Mike Yankoski and his friend, Sam, set out to find out what it is really like to be homeless in America by taking to the streets with minimal supplies and living in four American cities sleeping on the streets, earning their way with their guitar playing, and getting a deeper glimpse into what it means to be a Christian. This came highly recommended by martha, martha (sidebar) and is HIGHLY recommended in return by me. It will make you think twice the next time you want to turn your head and avoid that homeless man or woman coming toward you with their hand out. Also worth noting is their conclusion about handouts after months on the street. They advise giving food, water, gift certificates to restaurants or grocery stores, or taking the person to a place and buying them a meal. They do not advise giving cash because half of the time the person will be using it for drugs. This was the subject of much debate here several months ago and I'm glad to have confirmation of my granola bar/bottled water policy.
  


• 55. Captain from Castile by Samuel Shellabarger - classic book about a young soldier whose family runs afoul of the Spanish Inquisition. He winds up with Cortes discovering Mexico and goes through not only adventures but individual growth during that time. Written in 1954, this book has a good sense of perspective. Highly recommended, this has been a favorite of mine for many years.

For cookbook minireviews go to Glad Gastronome.

Church authority: The basis for the doctrine of the Trinity

The authority of the Church was necessary for us to know the truth of the Trinity. This most distinctively Christian doctrine of all, the one that reveals the nature of God himself, the nature of ultimate reality, was revealed by God clearly only to the Church. It was not clearly revealed to his chosen people, the Jews. It is not clearly defined in the New Testament. God waited to reveal it to the Church.

Scripture contains the data for the doctrine of the Trinity; but that is not enough, for every heretic, too, throughout history has appealed to Scripture. As a matter of historical fact, it has proved impossible for men to know the nature of the true God without the true Church. The dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation (and the two natures of Christ) were in fact derived from the Catholic Church.

Catholic Christianity:A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

Post-Vacation Vow

I am going on a diet. From this day forward, I pledge there will be no pork chop too succulent! No donut too tasty! No pizza too laden with delicious toppings to prevent me from reaching my scientifically-determined ideal weight! As God as my witness, I'll always be hungry again!

Homer Simpson

This is a pretty universal experience wouldn't you say?

Abilene Update

We're in the Holiday Inn Express at Abilene, Kanas, impatiently awaiting the opening time for the Eisenhower Presidential Library (9 a.m.). We're grooving on the cable (first the history channel for a little Roman/Gaullic conflict, now Animal Planet for the skinny on the Tasmanian Devil ... very, very scary animals).

The hotel manager said that this hotel is always full because of the big draw that the Eisenhower Library creates. Lots of people like us will detour just enough to visit. Not only did Eisenhower save civilization and lead our country, but he helped saved his hometown of Abilene by creating a steady tourist trade.

We got an upgrade to a Executive Suite because of a room shortage (not because it's too full at the moment but because two maids called in sick this morning and they still don't have all the regular rooms cleaned up ... pity the poor breakfast cook who got a call after her father's birthday party to come in and clean rooms). Anyway, this room gets a much high rating than the Embassy Suites we stayed in at the Plaza in KC. Sad for the Embassy Suites but nice for us at the moment.

Most amazing is that I'm blogging from a Holiday Inn in Abilene, Kansas. Yes, wireless high-speed Internet is available everywhere. Though it is free here as a marketing pull (all the hotel billboards for a long way around push their FREE internet connections). Another improvement over Embassy Suites where we paid ten dollars a day ... good thing Tom had business to check on.