A new temptation?

Hope posted this which she found here:

Entering Community

Jean Vanier

"When people enter community, especially from a place of loneliness in a big city or from a place of aggression and rejection, they find the warmth and the love exhilarating. This permits them to start lifting their masks and barriers and to become vulnerable. They may enter into a time of communion and great joy.

But then too, as they lift their masks and become vulnerable, they discover that community can be a terrible place, because it is a place of relationship; it is the revelation of our wounded emotions and of how painful it can be to live with others, especially with some people. It is so much easier to live with books and objects, television, or dogs and cats! It is so much easier to live alone and just do things for others, when one feels like it."

Source: Community and Growth

It is easier ... so much so, that I wonder if it isn't the predominant temptation of a certain kind of woman of a certain age. ;)

Virtuality and the death of here-ness

Terry Teachout posted this quote in his blog, About Last Night:

"The images on the screen are patterns of light, not living actors. They are not affected by applause or hissing. They will be the same in a packed house or an empty one. And they will be the same every time the movie is shown. This affects the audience. Occasionally, movie audiences applaud or hiss or walk out, but for the most part they are passive. No social bond between the audience and the actors can exist."

O.B. Hardison, Entering the Maze: Identity and Change in Modern Culture

Sometimes you read something and your mind just goes ... duh.

I want to think about this some more.

The film industry got started right around the turn of the century. Since that time, people have been watching other people perform in that behind-the-glass way, with a sense of, they're safe from me, and I'm safe from them.

What has that done to the way we experience theatre? Life?

Podcast, schmodcast

I just went to a site, hoping that I could dip in and find out what an interesting quote was all about. What a letdown: it's all podcasts!

I hate podcasts. Don't even listen to radio, except for classical music. No CDs at home, no television to speak of... the house is mostly silent.

I wish those who podcast would get themselves a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking or something, and just post the raw transcription along with the verbal. I'd happily take even a not-cleaned-up text; then at least their ideas would get my attention.

/rant

This sounds about right...

Jane Eyre

Jane, orphaned at a young age, is turned out by her aunt. After a gloomy childhood at boarding school, she leaves to find mystery and romance with the dark, strange, Mr. Rochester...

Which Classic Heroine are You?

Toward reconstruction

There is a school of thought called "deconstructionism" which is familiar to anyone who's been involved in academia/liberal arts at the college level. Derrida is an author whose work I've not read but which I understand to be important in this study. It's also my understanding that the deconstructionists evolved, if you will, from the pragmatists - Ralph Waldo Emerson, et al. In graduate English classes, I understood its essential aim is to eliminate all non-essentials from written expression, until the words themselves do the job of conveying meaning, rather than the emotions they invoke. I deliberately have avoided becoming too familiar with it, because I perceived that it is not good for people.

Unlike a writing technique or story structure method or anything else, deconstructionism is a kind of perverse philosophy which ends up requiring one to see all things through a lens which dismisses or explains away anything but the essence of what is meant. In religion, the same experience can be encountered in Christian Science, where all that is seen, encountered, or felt must be filtered and explained through the lens of its particular understanding.

In art, deconstructionism usually ends up in "non-representational" works - meaning, no people or recognizable figures which would convey meaning. That's cheating, in a way, in this school of thought. Instead, the construct - whether it be in art, or language, or music - should stand alone, absolutely without the trappings of culture, story, or anything else. It is judged by whether its meaning comes through without that "baggage." One must "go deeper" into the art in order to get at its meaning. In a way, it draws upon the kind of Buddhist practice of self-emptying and utter detachment, until there is nothing left but the essence of one's self. Christian mysticism seeks the same kind of self-surrender, yet it is entirely different. To the Christian, meaning and essence resolve in the one-in-three Person: love. Deconstructionism is ultimately sterile; there is no motivation to do anything but keep explaining and clearing away nonessentials. For the healthy Christian, the process results in a full and happy life.

Deconstructionism is considered courageous, and it is, in an ignorantly reckless way, because to put the self out there without any buffer or societal help to interpret life, the ordinary framework of decision-making and support is gone. Deconstructionists dismiss the Liar along with the Beautiful One, but that doesn't mean either doesn't exist.

When an unclean spirit goes out of a person it roams through arid regions searching for rest but finds none. Then it says, 'I will return to my home from which I came.' But upon returning, it finds it empty, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and brings back with itself seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they move in and dwell there; and the last condition of that person is worse than the first. Thus it will be with this evil generation.

Part of the fallout from this kind of thinking is a refusal to allow any kind of emotion into public discourse. Things are reduced to their absolute meaning. Anything evoking emotion is wrong. In fact, not content to have impoverished their own souls, this camp wages a lively war against the sentiments which protect all of us in our journey along the treacherous path of life.

Nowhere is this more glaringly obvious than in the area of family and motherhood. The family used to be a favourite topic of artists, writers, and preachers. It was the most important of all human relationships. Without it, we would not be here. It served as the model for our understanding of God and our role in the world. However, in its essence, family does not exist. It is a mental and societal construct, not a fact. Once that concept is deconstructed to its essence, the facts remaining are DNA - but, just because you share someone's DNA, you are not therefore required to have anything to do with them based on that fact alone.

In the ideal of the Judeo-Christian tradition, sex was best reserved for husband and wife, a legal and intensely personal bond which formed a family. Deconstructed, sex is merely "friendly exercise."

Nothing meant so much throughout time as a baby. Our Lord elected to become one of us as a baby because he knew what that would do to people as they tried to get their minds and hearts around it. But, in its essence, a fetus is a product of conception - no more.

Because it is rigorously logical, it is a seductive school of thought. To those whose catechesis was lacking, who drank in the entrenched professional academic cynicism of the 50s and 60s and 70s, it is non-negotiable. They literally know no better. To them, the only way to protect from spin is to avoid anything that would interpret the facts.

Its influence could already be seen in the 60s, as interior decoration became spare and basic, and women's clothing became less adorned. Cynicism became chic. The Vietnam war fostered both cynicism and hard-bitten detachment from all that would engender emotion. God - a construct if there ever was one - was immediately dismissed as an option. Belief was not real and therefore was repudiated.

Those involved in Vatican II - the heirs of it, if you will, the ones charged with carrying it out - were fresh out of college and university, their minds filled with this complex and exceedingly subtle bias towards disinterpretation. To them, the deposit of Faith was an accretion which needed to be cleared away in order to expose the truth about what was going on. Representational art - statuary - needed to be removed in order to open the mind to consider the pure truth, without all the clutter of devotionals, candles, customs, genuflections, novenas, prayers, etc. etc. etc. In their zeal, and because they were not contemplatives, and because they were ignorant of mysticism because it was disallowed in their understanding, they completely missed the point. Better men than they had already walked that path and done the deconstruction; men like St. John of the Cross. But the mystics emptied their minds and souls and hearts of all except the Love they followed and served. They did not empty themselves to nothingness, but to clear away the impediments to union with God. Love healed and restored them, rebuilding their understanding until they were able to see through the obscuring layers of nonsense that people throw up around their souls and their personalities and their comprehension just to get by and through this crazy life - just as Jesus did.

It is hard to talk to these people. Not only are they utterly convinced their stance is correct, the philosophy has seeped into all corners of society where academics, especially those in the liberal arts, hold sway. All public education is tinged with it. It's rampant throughout the commercial arts of movies and popular music. Government has uncomfortably adopted its tenets, accepting as fact that the separation of church and state will be endangered by the exercise of freedom of speech about forms of belief, which are not necessary (pragmatist) and nonessential to truth (deconstructionist). Saddest of all, though, are the children of all ages, pre-born, growing, and adult, because they have been robbed of so much that makes life sweet and grand. Sex is not the mystical and devoted union celebrated in Scripture (in Tobit, the Song of Songs, the Psalms, Isaiah and elsewhere). If the spiritual is allowed, it veers off into the tantric instead of seeing it for what it is: two individuals, united as one in all ways. Discussion of the conception, birth and growth of children is sterile and factual, because the societal constructs are forbidden. Anyone who would appeal to the emotions is ridiculed or shouted down as being "unfair".

Deconstructionism is an interesting and worthwhile theory, and it is useful when applied to art, following the same path as St. John of the Cross did when he progressively surrendered all to deliberately descend into the dark night of the soul, then being born anew, was raised up, made whole by Love. In the same way an artist can peel away all the nonessentials to learn and expose the essential behind painting; this may mean giving up representational art for a while. But it is true annihilation to stay in that place. Instead, one needs to come back to life, to show the truth of life through its trappings. Michelangelo, Beethoven, Rubens - these come to mind as artists whose art consciously covers itself in common constructs, but you can see the essence right through, and talk about meaning and intent for years.

The Catholic Church knows all this - and it is probable that she doesn't know that she knows. According to Paul, we are all part of the body; just as the body knows things - I'm typing unconsciously, for example - the soul can know them, too. We know Christ in the breaking of the bread. We see him in our fellow man - the Sisters of Charity literally dragging people out of the gutter because they are Christ, suffering and alone. And, while the Catholic Church goes on doing what she does, laity confused and taken aback by the superficial abandonment of what they most need, she is protected by One who created the one who whispered the thoughts of deconstruction into its proponents, and chortles with glee as its soul-deadening maxims are promulgated throughout society. And we know this by simply looking at our Leader in Christ's stead. Like John Paul II before him, he is one of the few of whom I'm aware who can deal with the most subtle and determined proponent of deconstructionism on their own ground. He is an intellectual swordsman, anticipating and disarming even the strongest arguments with a gentle touch, deep courtesy, and airtight reasoning - "rightly dividing the word of truth."

If those students of Derrida would honestly and seriously read through some of the works produced by the last two popes, and be willing to consider their points in thoughtful debate, their skill in understanding might find a whole new field of endeavour, where they could use their intellectual muscle to tread the path of real deconstruction - the kind that leads unavoidably to the tomb. But this self-emptying withdrawal from constructed meaning goes far beyond picking apart the rags of mortal existence. This deconstruction of self has been demonstrated by our Master. He calls us to take the narrow path away from self and world-clutter insofar as we can. His way requires acceptance of annihilation and nothingness and the lack of meaning in experience; but he will not let you stay there. He leads you out of the darkness through the way you cannot see from the outside. When Love itself disappears from the soul's sight in the blackness, it is the soul's choice to stay there, and despair, or to reach out and ask to be led home. There is no tomb so dark and deep he cannot find it. There is no soul so empty and lost he cannot hear its silent call to him in faith. There is no soul he cannot ransom if it hopes in him. There is no soul he does not love.

How political feminism validates the hierarchical model

(OK, that's glib. But - made you look!)

A recent article in "Books and Culture," (January/February 2007, Vol. 13, No. 1, Page 28) is entitled, "On Slippery Slopes, the Blogosphere, and (oh yes) Women". In it, Susan Wise Bauer responds to the outcry following her review of a book:

I haven't come out against the Trinity or the bodily resurrection. I remarked on my blog how much I liked John Stackhouse's new book Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender.

This fairly mild pronouncement got highlighted on Gender-News.com, which published a headline story announcing that "many evangelicals may have been blindsided" by my blog entry, and quoted Randy Stinson of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood as saying, "She is undermining biblical authority by holding her current position on the gender issue."

In the rest of the piece, Bauer seems to try to defend her positive review of his book, while somehow convincing people that the charge of "undermining biblical authority" cannot be true.

Well, I'm not convinced.

Women and homosexuals: they're inextricably linked all across the evangelical cosmos. Al Mohler writes that "feminism must necessarily be joined to the homosexual agenda." Egalitarian thinking, says Rick Philips on Reformation 21, "launches its adherents onto the slippery slope: by following this principle one cannot fail to end up endorsing homosexual unions." Ligon Duncan insists that as soon as the PCUSA approved the ordination of women, it had already "decided the issue of homosexual ordination."

With our love for condensation and distillation and shorthand - "blogging" for "posting to a web log," for example - the use of "homosexual" tends to get abbreviated to the word itself, which is too easily understood as "the person of homosexual orientation." That makes people mad, and rightly so: it's inaccurate, and unfair.

What is meant by "the issue of homosexual ordination" is not "we don't like homosexuals and won't have them around us." The issue is more accurately stated as, "Paul was explicit in his condemnation of homosexual acts, following a long tradition of explicit condemnation of homosexual acts in the Old Testament. Are we going to have a minister who upholds what Paul said, or not? If not, where do we draw the line? Do we want to get into those kinds of discussions in church, or do we want to worship without mental reservations?" And, in virtually all cases of which I'm aware, churches have no objection to ordaining celibate homosexuals. Churches which want to live according to the plain words of Scripture will bar from their pulpits those who engage in homosexual acts and are determined to teach and preach their acceptability in spite of the clear words of Scripture. They will also bar from their pulpits heterosexuals who violate the teachings of Scripture they are supposed to honor by example as well as with their words. It isn't about sex, but integrity. It's like helping out at Republican headquarters while actively campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Cognitive dissonance, and all that.

Now, since the Scriptures contain admittedly inconvenient teachings about sexual morality, it is a very human, albeit childish, tactic to simply ignore the unpleasant bits and enjoy the rest. However, this has a predictable effect. That's why this paragraph made me laugh in astonishment:

As a defense of the Bible, this is very peculiar. If allowing women to be ordained will destroy the authority of Scripture, why doesn't the slippery slope argument go, "Ordain women, and Christ's bodily resurrection will be the next thing to go," or, "Ordain women, and we may have to relinquish our belief in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of the sins, and the life everlasting"?

Um, Ms. Bauer ...? Excuse me, but that's already happened, and quite a long time ago. How about if you get up to speed on some of the jaw-droppingly heterodox and/or pantheistic and/or monist statements coming out of Episcopal leadership these days, and get back to us.

There's a political reality underlying this particular line of argument that has little to do with Scripture. Egalitarianism shares some its premises with political feminism, a movement which originated in the 1970s and which (as Stackhouse points out) is blamed by many conservative Christians for "a wide range of social pathologies," including promiscuity, "depression of wages" (brought on by too many women in the workplace), the phenomenon of latchkey children, a rise in divorce, and hatred of Christianity.

Whether or not political feminism is responsible for all the ills laid at its door,...

Unfortunately, this is a huge topic, and while there is room for nearly endless debate about whether political feminism is a cause or a symptom, it's a bit off-putting to have her use the written equivalent of a dismissive wave of the hand.

...this much is undeniable: as political feminism matured, it lent its language and much of its agenda to the growing gay rights movement. Politically, gay rights did build on the women's rights movement, just as women's rights had built on the civil rights movement of earlier decades.

Uh-oh... I sense where this is going. And the way she states that, it sounds like women's rights came out of the civil rights movement... instead of the cause of women's rights hitching a ride on the civil rights movement to gain traction and credibility by painting women as an oppressed minority.

But let us persevere ... here (at last) is The Point she is trying to make:

[The civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, and the gay rights movement] are secular political movements. Their task has been to figure out how a wildly diverse population can co-exist in a democracy, a secular political entity which theoretically gives every citizen an equal voice. They mix the good and the just (women should be paid equal wages for equal work; homosexuals should not be fired or assaulted because of their sexual preference) with the unholy and un-scriptural. But since when do secular political movements provide a model for the church?

This is, unfortunately, not a rhetorical question. Plenty of churches are democracies, which is not necessarily a scriptural model. Plenty of churches have adopted other elements of American political structure, more or less uncritically. To those who argue that, in some denominations, the ordination of women has led to the open acceptance of homosexuality, I would agree that this is indeed a real phenomenon. It has occurred because, in those denominations, the church has completely lost sight of the fact that it is supposed to be the gathered people of God, a counterculture which lives apart from the power-structures of the world.

When a church moves from egalitarianism to an open rejection of the biblical teachings on sexuality, hordes of conservative theologians ought to post essays on their blogs about why we shouldn't model ourselves on the world. They ought to argue that the church shouldn't be adopting secular political modes of leadership, including elections and Robert's Rules of Order. They ought to point out that the power structures of the church are supposed to be entirely different than those of American politics.

I hadn't thought of that before. I think she's right. And I think - perhaps inadvertently - she has, with that paragraph, validated the historic structure of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, which has always seen the clear difference between its modes of governing its realm and the secular techniques for achieving civilized cooperation.

(These days there is always the specter of The Scandal lurking behind any consideration of the Roman Catholic system of self-government. Whatever one's position or conclusions, I think it's fair to say that The Scandal was due more to intemperate and unwise changes to spiritual and religious practice after Vatican II, and to the appalling choices made by bishops who did not deal appropriately with problems when they became aware of them, than to the structure of the Roman Catholic church per se.)

I think Ms. Bauer's point about church governance is valid. I think she has a long way to go in her development as a critic, though, because she got waylaid along the way by all sorts of tempting side-trails, and that's where she ran into trouble, in my opinion. Her observation about church government was valid, and interesting. I believe she should have left the rhetoric and inflammatory logic to the author. He may be able to wade into those battles and win; she cannot, yet.

Please take note of the following.

The phrase is, "toe the line," not "tow the line," if you please.

Thank you for your kind attention. Carry on ...

Thoughts from the mission, about the mission

In fulfillment of a desire I've had for several months now, my work schedule facilitated a day to myself to visit the Santa Barbara and Ventura missions.

For some time Jesus has been reasoning with me about the whole RC thing. I decided some months ago that I needed to just back off and stay away, because the revulsion and fury incited by the latest out of Orange County or Los Angeles were obviously far more dangerous to my soul than staying home for my usual practice of reading and meditation and prayer. I am a codependent and must stay away from those who would emotionally, financially, or otherwise abuse me; God knows this and I trust him not to penalize me.

But Jesus, ever patient, waited until I got fed up with the limitations of Protestant theology, then tried (yet!) again. In the grace of quiet thought-colloquy that is sometimes granted during times of silent meditation, he pointed out that, given all we American Catholics have been through, and the news out of Europe about empty churches, it would seem inevitable that the next Pope after Vatican II would come from the ranks of the "reformers." Instead, it was John Paul I, followed by John Paul II. The "reformers" thought for sure their guy would get in after John Paul II's demise; instead it was Benedict XVI. I'm not surprised that there were literal howls of dismay in archdiocesan offices at the news, especially here in Los Angeles.

Every day that Joseph Ratzinger wakes up and does his duty as Pope is a gift from God. Benedict XVI is gently, firmly, steering the Barque of Peter back on course. Every time I think I'm going to be able to shake the dust of RC off my feet forever, he writes something or says something that stops me, humbled, in my tracks.

And that's what Jesus keeps reminding me: it didn't have to be Ratzinger. It could have been, say, Roger Mahony.

(If Roger Mahony were Pope, I would expect to hear the crash of wrecking balls in St. Peter's within a decade. That old Michelangelo crap would have to go. After all, it makes one want to just spontaneously kneel in awe! And we can't have kneeling ... especially not in church!)

[ahem. /sarcasm. sorry.]

But Jesus is not about to let that happen. This is His Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. He promised, remember?

And every time we act as though it could be otherwise, we sin by lack of trust.

It was with those thoughts in mind that I prepared for my little pilgrimage.

- - - - - - -

I stayed overnight in a nearby town and had a difficult night for some reason. I woke very anxious at one point, feeling like I could not breathe well. I blamed the dusty heater. Fortunately the room had French doors which I could open a ways, which seemed to help.

Santa Barbara's gift shop and museum are the most recognizably Catholic parts of the whole experience, these days. The church interior is pretty, but bare and sterile. In the church, the altar - white stone, very beautiful - is the most noticeable thing, carefully and dramatically lit. I couldn't find the tabernacle. It feels like a building carefully made up to look like a house of worship, with superficial nods to the lively faith that brought it into being in the first place.

For example, there are two places where candles are allowed: just outside the gift shop, and in the crypt. While exploring the cemetery garden, I ventured into the crypt, reading with fascination the inscriptions on the tombs. Down a long passage, dark in spite of the bright morning, I found the big crucifix which probably used to adorn the church in other times. The life-size Jesus, cold and alone, hangs in the near-dark among his faithful dead, except for three wavering flames in the candles in the racks below him. The symbolism was probably as inadvertent as it was glaringly obvious.

In Ventura, the church was busy - baptisms, followed by a funeral - and so I didn't go in. But this is one of the extremely rare churches where the indult mass is permitted every Sunday, and its influence shows in the gift shop. I was able to purchase a black mantilla, which I've been needing, and a Pièta prayerbook. I also got Magnificat for February. I'd heard about this publication but had never seen it before. It's beautiful! I plan to use it this coming month, then subscribe if it is the help it looks like it will be.

The drive down the coast was so beautiful. I've heard some remark on the fact that the highway uses land of unbelievable value, leaving it unavailable for development, while the highway could be placed higher on the bluffs. (Never mind that the bluffs keep tumbling down). But the original planners laid the highway next to the ocean, so there is a blissful long stretch of unalloyed beauty, in spite of the feverish development going on all these years.

In the same way, it could be said that Jesus prepared the Church for this terrible time. If we think that she could be stopped by a relatively few years of nonsense, we aren't giving much credit to her Founder and shepherd. In spite of the contempt and harshness displayed by the reformers, the history of this Church cannot be altered, and unless and until they purge every single old prayerbook, destroy every rosary, eradicate all performances of the glorious music composed for the church, and suppress every single order and institute now flourishing due to their love of traditional ways, those traditions and practices, and the deep spirituality they inspire, will persist, especially among the idealistic young.

Whenever I read Deus Caritas Est, I know that I shall never be able to uphold the ideals it teaches without a miracle of grace in my life. Reading it leaves me knowing beyond doubt that I am human, and absolutely in need of grace - a good place to be, spiritually. Just because I cannot, on my own, live out those ideals, does not make them wrong and me right.

The "reformers" who've been so cruel and heartless towards Christ's needy, stupid sheep, deserve from the flock nothing but prayer. True, we must put up with their innovations, the mangled liturgies, the excruciating music, dull banners, uninspiring churches, and all the rest of it. But, like us, they will have to stand before Jesus - and, because of the incredible responsibility of the guidance of souls for whom Jesus died, they will be called to account that much more strictly.

Every child whose faith was stunted or extinguished, or whose life on earth was over before it began, and for all the adults who fled the Church, disillusioned and angry and hungry and confused - for every one of those souls, those who could have supported them but did not, will have to answer. I believe they need prayer more than nattering from us, at this point.

They can mangle our Mass until it's unrecognizable, give us only cold bare buildings to stand in while we worship, and pooh-pooh our traditional pious practices, refuse us communion on the tongue and drag us to our feet when we would kneel before the Host - but they cannot stop Jesus' love for us, no matter what they try. And, once we've known Jesus' gentle touch on our souls, they can never take that away from us, either. They are helpless. And Jesus reminds them, and us, every time Joseph Ratzinger wakes up in the morning and yawns and stretches and gets out of bed to face another day. He doesn't have to be there. John Paul II didn't have to be elected, either, or live as long as he did. Those who remove the tabernacle and resist Eucharistic adoration and sneer at the kind of traditional piety which sees Jesus as a real human being as well as the Son of God would squirm in discomfort at this picture:

... There is an illustrative episode from [John Paul II's] last months that hints at [how he managed to stand as strong as a rock while the tides of relativism washed around him]. This was, recall, a period when the focus was on the pope’s suffering and when, one would think, he would be consumed by it. One of his closest senior aides was looking for the pope in his apartments. Not finding him, he went into the private chapel. There he found the pope in his altar chair, with his arms around the tabernacle, singing in Polish. The aide fled. Later in the afternoon, he asked John Paul II what he had been doing in the chapel. The pope responded that he had been singing a song his mother used to sing to him when he was sad as a boy, and that he had been comforting our Lord.

The frightening intimacy that this man gained with Jesus Christ has changed the world, because Christ shone through him in a way that could be seen by billions of people. John Paul II had gone so completely into God that others could see God in him. This, his whole life seemed to say, is how a man lives who is not afraid, because “love always brings victory.”

Robert R. Reilly in Crisis Magazine, May 25, 2005.

It is Jesus' church, messy and all-too-human, with too many weak, self-protective leaders and too many indifferent, childish laity ... but it is his, and he loves it more dearly than his own life, as he proved. We need not be afraid.

Just checking in

... with prayers for Penni and her mom, among other things.


I am well ... better than I deserve ... and yet having so little time to tell the story ...

Blessings to you who read this.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Very Lady A. Noël the Disheveled of Ofsted in the Bucket Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

The scary thing is it's actually pretty much right on ... !


Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title