There is a continuous attraction, beginning with God, going to the world, and ending at last with God, an attraction which returns to the same place where it began as though in a kind of circle. -Marsilio Ficino
or: Slouching towards the “American Jesus” – part III
The autumn sky in New Orleans threatened rain. But rain this time of year is nothing like the downpours of hurricane season, the ones that all churches here pray that Our Lady of Prompt Succour temper with her motherly hand. AG was already in a bad mood, and I didn’t blame her. After rather naively thinking that going to see Scott Hahn and some other guy (Brian… something) was a good idea, and even buying tickets for ten dollars a pop to have the honor of doing so, we were then informed about a week ago that:
1. We should get there a half hour early due to the high turnout and,
2. Because the high school where the talk was being held was having “another function”, we were asked to park four blocks away, at another school parking lot, in not one of the best neighborhoods in New Orleans…
So yeah, we were starting off on a bad note. AG just wanted me to park in the original parking lot, and I quipped, “well why not? We’re Catholics, not Presbyterians.” But at the last moment, I chickened out, and parked in a parking space across the street from the parking lot.
“Why are we going to this again,” AG asked quite annoyed.
“Hey, don’t make me look like the bad guy here. You also said you wanted to come.”
When we got in, it was pop-con Catholicism at full throttle. Of course, both authors of that night had booths hawking their apologetic wares to eager Catholics with more disposable income than knowledge. I took out our tickets and we walked to the door where the presentation was being held. Some nice peppy Catholic girl took our tickets, and we walked into … wait for it… a high school basketball gymnasium. There were no seats, we were expected to sit in the bleachers. I looked at AG, and that was the last straw. In her mind, not only had we paid for the privilege of seeing the don of the Catholic apologetics mafia speak, but we had to spend two and a half exciting hours sitting in high school bleachers after a long day at the office. She reacted like any good Catholic girl would under such circumstances. By saying quite audibly:
Ordinarily, I don’t read Protestant blogs, especially those of the “Catholic friendly” type. So places like the Internet Monk rarely see my virtual shadow graze their screen full of pixels. One post on Josh S.’ blog did link to a post on this other blog, and since I have of late thought that I am being unfair to Protestant religious culture and the brave Catholics who venture to “dialogue” with it (mostly converts themselves), I decided to take a gander. From my understanding, the owner of this popular website is ambivalent towards Catholicism and Orthodoxy since his wife has converted to the one True, Roman Faith. So apparently, he really wants to know what we think, and people far more patient than I am have tried to explain it to him. In spite of these efforts, the Protestant blogger has to conclude the following:
I appreciate the worship, reverence, holiness, sacrifice, devotion and prayerfulness I see in Catholic Christians. In the category of Jesus shaped spirituality, there is much to affirm about the Catholic way of being Christian…
What continues to haunt me, however, is not the resolution of my own differences with Catholicism. I’m quite satisfied that, minus some devastating alteration in my own view of faith, God and the church, I’ll be a Protestant on the bus with the “Happy Enough” Protestants till the end of my ride.
We traded the errors of Rome for what we have now. I can be glad we do not believe in the assumption of Mary or in indulgences, but from there, I’m left sad that I can go weeks without hearing the Gospel, but never a day without moralism, culture war idolatry and consumer church. Read the rest of this entry »
Little is known about the reclusive Kenny Hill, a bricklayer by trade, born around 1950. In 1988, he settled on some property on the bayou in Chauvin (pronounced show-van), Louisiana—population 3,400. Hill pitched a tent as his home and, over time, built a small rustic home that demonstrated an interesting use of space and attention to detail. Then, in 1990, without explanation, he began transforming his lush bayou environment into a fantastic chronicle of the world as seen through his eyes.
Less than a decade later, more than 100 primarily religious concrete sculptures densely pack the narrow, bayouside property. The sculptures are a profound mixture of Biblical reference, Cajun colors, and the evident pain and struggle of the artist’s life. Most figures—black, white, male, female, child, or solider—are guided, supported, or lifted by seemingly weightless angels. The unique angels, some inviting passage, others prohibiting, vary from blue skinned, bare-footed, and sightless to regal celestial figures clad in medieval garb with the black boots of the local shrimp fishermen.
AG and I visited here this past weekend, and my first reaction was: “this is what happens when you don’t have an editor”. But it was an unexpected and pleasant surprise near the “end of the line” in southern Louisiana. I also have to give a shout out to Annie Miller’s Sons’ Swamp Tours and Bayou Delight Restaurant, both outside of Houma. The former was pleasant and reasonably priced, and the latter was just an obscenity of southern Louisiana cuisine (i.e. fried food “porn”: fried alligator, crawfish, frogs’ legs, boudin balls, shrimp, etc.) I recommend the “Cajun Platter”. See below for more pictures of the sculpture garden.
AG and I watched this movie recently, and were quite impressed by it. Directed by Kim Ki-duk, the film follows the life of a monk growing up in a Korean Buddhist hermitage, falling into grave sin, and returning to begin the process over again. As you can see from the clip above, this movie was beautifully shot, and it touches upon the themes of desire, suffering, and liberation. It is also, as you can tell from the title, based on the idea that life is a cycle from which man attempts to break free. There are too many powerful images in this movie for me to really analyze, so I highly recommend that the reader see this film.
If you can’t be in the age you love, love the one you’re in
One of my favorite Nietzsche aphorisms is one I have cited many times before in my essays, and it is the following:
Oh, those Greeks! They knew about living: for this, it is necessary to stop courageously at the surface, at the drapery, at the skin, to worship appearances, to believe in forms, sounds, and words, and the entire Olympus of appearances! Those Greeks were superficial- out of profundity! Read the rest of this entry »
In seminary, our day would always open with those words: “O God, come to my assistance”. In rapid succession, trying not to drag, we would chant the psalmody in recto tono. This was the office of Prime, the first office of the day for slackers who didn’t rise at three in the morning for Matins. After much back and forth, and after the last Gloria Patri, we would rapidly come to the part where we would finally be able to sit down on our cold, hard benches. A reader would come forth in the middle of the choir, and begin to read, in Spanish, from the Roman Martyrology. At this point, I would usually just space out. For even while trusting the wisdom of Holy Mother Church, the violence portrayed could be almost gratuitous. Yes, it is very edifying what the martyrs lived and suffered through, but there was only so much of stuff like the following that you could stomach before breakfast:
At Spoleto, in the days of Emperor Antoninus, the passion of St. Pontian, martyr, who was barbarously scourged for Christ by the command of the judge Fabian, and then compelled to walk barefoot on burning coals. As he was uninjured by the fire, he was put on the rack, was torn with iron hooks, then thrown into a dungeon, where he was comforted by the visit of an angel. He was afterwards exposed to the lions, had melted lead poured over him, and finally died by the sword. Read the rest of this entry »
…Part of the reason that there are these notable “reversions” is that these people have not really converted (“embraced”) Catholicism.
It’s not simply a case of “assent” to doctrine, which too many converts seem to believe. One also has to embrace Catholic culture. Too many evangelicals have “embraced” Catholicism simply on the basis of agreements on abortion and other bioethical issues. They are not interested in “embracing” Catholic culture or the tradition of the Church. Too many converts assume that they can assent to dogma and then remake the Church in their own image. It’s gnostic. And too many spend most of their time endlessly criticizing and blaming the Church for everything, including their own unfulfilled ecclesial ambitions and their own starry-eyed notion of what the Church was or was not. And while many converts talk endlessly about having found the “truth” or the “fullness of the faith,” they seem to abhor Catholicism when it is incarnated. It’s just not as tidy as they would like. And the comparisons to the greater faith, fervor, community, and discipleship of evangelical Protestantism makes one wonder why they became Catholic in the first place.
For a lot of people, Internet apologetics seems to be like a gigantic role-playing game. They get to swagger around beating their chests because they are Thundarr the Terrible, Sacred Warrior of Truth and Goodness, and they wield the double-edged Unbeatable Mystical Sword of Supreme Rightness as they virtuously battle the nefarious forces of the Evil Lord Falsehood and his Abominable Army of Uruk-hai Orcs. “Aha! Take that! I just rolled a 32 to go with my Ultimate Refutation of All Heresies card! Begone thou dire demons of doubt and deception!” As the poet said, One, two! One, two! And through and through! The Vorpal Blade goes snicker-snack! He leaves it dead, and with its head he goes galumphing back. Let the people rejoice. The kingdom is saved! Truth lives to be attacked – and more importantly, defended – another day!
I forgot, in other words, how deadly serious some people take their online apologetics activities. It’s like the old caricature of die-hard Dungeons and Dragons fans in the 80’s – a lot of people online come to identify the core of their beings and the whole meaning of their faith in Christ with their online combative personas. They come to think that what they do online is a Sacred Mission for God, and that at all costs they must not fail. They come to take the cause of “giving an answer” (the only half-quoted sentence from 1 Pet. 3:15) as a life-or-death thing – if they don’t decisively win this battle on this message board or blog right now by giving an absolutely and plainly irrefutable refutation of the other guy’s “nonsense,” well, then, Truth will self-destruct and they will be left with nothing but doubt and fear and the horrific prospect of having to admit to their legion of adoring fans that this time they have to admit defeat and will have to commit to doing better next time. The resilience of Thundarr’s ego when he faces a potential defeat turns out to be inversely proportional to the verbal confidence he projects at the beginning of his arguments when he thinks nobody could ever possibly get the better of him.
…The “liturgy wars” are the outcome of precisely this kind of thing, a centralized program enacted by a politburo which said, “This is what you must do.” Away with programs! Human existence is messy, and the way out of the chaos of the past several decades will be messy and very much unpredictable. Thomas Day seems to understand this, and so does the pope, who has granted more freedoms than restrictions with respect to the liturgy.
Maybe by “program” people are looking for a declaration of loyalty from Professor Day, a statement on whether he stands with the Thisses or the Thats in the midst of the debate about worship. ”Forget chant and Latin! Do good hymns with organ like they used to do at my old middle-church Episcopalian parlor,” says one constituency. ”No! We must return immediately to Latin and all Gregorian chant and throw away everything else,” another group might claim. Day strikes me as being too wise for this. In the midst of the strife, it’s easy to fall for panaceas, but often the truth gets lost in the fog. I myself have worked in Novus Ordo parishes, in Traditional Rite parishes, and even in Protestant churches. I have visited others, as well. I have heard German Catholics blow the windows out with Grosser Gott; I have heard Mennonites wake the dead with their shape-note singing; I have been moved to tears by the sound of Lutherans singing Ein feste Burg; and on one cold February Ash Wednesday, I heard a Catholic congregation, after years of tra-la-la music, raise the roof singing Agnus Dei XVIII, unaccompanied—and they didn’t even drag. We do not need panaceas. We need culture and common sense. Thomas Day’s book will do much to help us achieve these things.
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