St. Austin Review: Reclaiming Culture

May 22nd, 2013Life in Deathby Joseph Pearce

My wife has just forwarded me this wonderful video. It focuses on a Catholic coffin maker and shows how Christianity lives with death in a spirit of joy and expectation. The Benedictine spirituality of ore et labore (prayer and work) reminds me of Middle-earth - of hobbits in the Shire but particularly of the elves who put all that they love and all that they are in to all that they make. In this sense the wonderful craftsman in this video is truly elven in his approach to art and life - and death:

The Coffinmaker from Dan McComb on Vimeo.

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May 22nd, 2013LOVE AND REASON IN ROMEO AND JULIETby Joseph Pearce

I've been giving lots of interviews over the past few weeks in relation to the recent publication of my book, Shakespeare on Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence in Romeo and Juliet. Here's the link to a news story just published by the Catholic News Agency:

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/author-finds-catholic-themes-in-shakespeares-romeo-and-juliet/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+catholicnewsagency%2Fdailynews-us+%28CNA+Daily+News+-+US%29.

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May 21st, 2013Rome Versus Romance in “Romeo and Juliet”by Joseph Pearce

Yesterday morning I was interviewed on "Morning Air" on Relevant Radio about my new book, Shakespeare On Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence in Romeo and Juliet. The radio station has now posted the interview on-line:  

http://relevantradio.streamguys.us/MA%20Archive/MA20130520c.mp3

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May 21st, 2013Belloc, Chesterton, and the French Revolutionby Joseph Pearce

In my post on Friday (True Democrats are Not Democrats), I mentioned that I would aim to say a little more about the Chesterbelloc's misguided support for the French Revolution. For the time being, though much more could be said, I'd like to restrict my comments to my brief discussion of it in my forthcoming book, "Race With the Devil: A Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love", which I finished writing yesterday and which should be published in August.

Here's the paragraph about Chesterton, Belloc and the French Revolution:

Another important and beneficent influence that the reading of Chesterton and Belloc had upon me was a weakening of the Prussophilia that I had inherited at my father’s knee. Through my sympathy with Strasser’s Bavarian perspective, I had already begun to distinguish between Prussia and Germany, the former of which was now perceived to represent a belligerent and destructive imperialism. Now, in reading Belloc and Chesterton, I came to see European history through their anti-Prussian eyes and with their Francophile perspective. My sympathies swung from Germany to France, freeing me further from my previous ideological bondage to the Teutonic and Norse fetish. In Belloc’s view, which was adopted and echoed by Chesterton, France had always been at the heart of Christendom whereas the Germanic spirit had always been on the heretical hinterlands and barbaric fringes, threatening European civilization with its uncivilized presence. I have since come to see that Belloc’s own Francophile perspective suffers from patriotic bias and that his and Chesterton’s sympathy for the French Revolution and the secular Republic that followed in its wake is untenable and indefensible from an orthodox Christian perspective. At the time, however, the psychologically seismic shift from Germany to France was a vital move in the right direction, leading me away from all that is indubitably evil in the pride of Prussia and in its genocidal legacy.

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May 21st, 2013Frankenstein: The Monster and the Criticsby Joseph Pearce

I was delighted and heartened to see a good review of the Ignatius Critical Edition of Frankenstein in Crisis Magazine. Here's the link: 

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/frankenstein-by-mary-shelly

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May 19th, 2013The Demand for Social Assurance that Abortion and Sexual Evils Are OKby Colin Jory

Richard Kerley, of whose descent into schizophrenia and tragic death as a vagrant I recently told on this site, back in the late 1970s when abortion was still generally abhorred and abortionists were still occasionally prosecuted, made a very telling point. I remember the scene clearly: he was leaning on the piano in our living room.  He observed that the greater the number of women who have (elective) abortions, the more demand there will be that abortion be legalized, because these women will only be able to dull their irrepressible sense of the evil they have done by demanding social assurance that it was OK. One can extend the point and say that the greater the number of mothers, husbands, and sisters there will also be who demand social assurance that abortion is OK, because of their wish to feel assured that their loved ones acted defensibly.

This same related-party wishfulness has been a strong factor in compounding the support for every type of sex-related evil which has become publicly respectable since Vatican II and Woodstock, from fornication to homosexual "marriage". I recall a friend telling in the 1970s of her experiences when trying to present the Church’s teachings on marriage to a school religious education class here in Canberra. The response was aggressive hostility from some (Catholic) girls: “My older sister/brother is living with her/his boyfriend/girlfriend because they are not yet ready to get married. Are you trying to say that she/he is in mortal sin?” “My older sister/brother and her husband/wife are practising contraception because they can’t yet afford to have a baby. Are you trying to say that she/he is in mortal sin?”

A few days ago I circulated by email my above account of Richard Kerley’s observation, in relation to an excellent article on abortion, “The Deed that Dare Not Speak Its Name”, in the Spectator (U.K.) of 11 May by Dr David Daintree, who recently retired as President of Campion College in Sydney, an orthodox Catholic liberal arts college. Dr Daintree himself replied with the following pertinent remark:

"I recall a meeting with the headmaster of the very evangelical St Andrew's Cathedral School [Sydney], who told me that the day after he preached against abortion he was deluged by complaints from parents, all of whom (he knew or suspected) were mothers or aunts or what have you of young women who had had abortions. He said too that it was a very middle-class thing. My daughter is a GP [medical practitioner] in a working class area: none of the women there, she says, countenance abortion.”

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May 17th, 2013NEWMAN A to Z: SAINTS, INVOCATION OFby Joseph Pearce

You would not think it against the Gospel, I suppose, to ask for yourself the prayers of a good man on earth. Why then should you scruple to ask his prayers, when, having left this world and gone to God, he has become possessed of a far greater power?

All quotes from the Newman A to Z are taken from The Quotable Newman, recently published by Sophia Institute Press.

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May 17th, 2013True Democrats Are Not Democratsby Joseph Pearce

It's a mark of my protracted absence from the Ink Desk that I am only now responding to a comment on one of my posts, dating April 8th, almost six weeks ago! The comment was written by "Ed" in response to my post "Tolkien and Democracy".

Ed's comment raises some very interesting questions about the nature of democracy, which warrant further attention. I'm posting Ed's comment in its entirety, my response will follow:

Tolkien a democrat?! Say it ain't so Joseph!

Okay, okay, I know you were not suggesting that, but the very thought makes me cringe! Tolkien was a Monarchist was he not? And a strong believer in the Old (Catholic) world, yes? I know about the guilds, etc, etc in the middle ages, but perhaps it's because of the revolution(s), but democracy leaves a bad taste in my Catholic mouth. To me it just spells the doom of the Catholic world of yore. A pox on it!

And speaking of the Chesterbelloc monster, while there is much from them that I admire, I have never been able to forgive them for their love of the French revolution. How two Catholics could so love a revolution tha massacred their fellow brothers and sisters and so persecuted their Church, and destroyed the world made by that said Church, is beyond me.

My response:

Before proceeding to Ed's skepticism about democracy, I'd like to agree with him about the Chesterbelloc's bizarre sympathy with the French Revolution. The Revolution was a manifestation of murderous secular fundamentalism, a precursor of the communism, Nazism and abortionism of more recent times.

I could say more about the reasons for the Chesterbelloc's misguided support for the Jacobins but such a discussion will have to wait until another time. For the present, I'd like to address Ed's suggestion that democracy should leave a bad taste in the mouth of Catholics. 

As always, it's important that we define our terms.

Democracy means the rule of the people (Demos = People).

The rule of the people could be the rule of the Majority (note the upper case). This is not necessarily a good thing. Nazi Germany was the rule of the Majority (Hitler was voted into power) and the oppression by the Majority of the Minorities. The communist regimes in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China were also governments ruled by the Majority, i.e. the workers, at least in theory (unlike the Nazis, the communists were never elected to power by the “Majority” that they claimed to represent). Communism was the oppression by the Majority (poor) of the Minority (rich). This form of "democracy" is tyranny.

Ironically, and paradoxically, modern western “democracy” is not always the rule of the Majority but the rule of a coalition of Minorities who use the political mechanisms to further their own sectional interests, through lobbying, control of the media etc. In such pluralistic “democracies” the Majority is often not only silent but impotent. 

The rule of the people could be the rule of the Mob. This was the danger inherent

in democracy that Plato enumerates in the Republic. As one might expect of a philosopher of Plato’s stature his critique is unsettlingly close to the reality that we are experiencing in our own time. His wisdom possesses the timelessness that is attached to Truth.

In our day, the control by minorities of political mechanisms, such as the mass media, has led to the brainwashing of the Majority. It has also led to rule by the Mob of Youth, the most immature and naïve members of society, who are therefore the most susceptible to media manipulation. The thought that the very fabric of civilized society, essentially unchanged from time immemorial, can be unraveled overnight by the Mob of Youth, a teenage rampage, is the lowest and most ignorant kind of mob rule.

There is, however, a genuine form of democracy, advocated by the Catholic Church, which is known as subsidiarity. This understanding of society is rooted in the sacrosanct position of the Family at the heart of society. It protects this smallest of political organisms from the tyranny of Big Power. It calls for democratic structures to be brought closer to the people, i.e. closer to families, through the devolution of power from Big Government to Small Government. It calls for the devolution of power from undemocratic “democratic” institutions, such as the Federal Government or the European Union, and the restoration of real political power to local, regional and state governments. 

I discuss the undemocratic nature of modern macro-democracies in my book, Small is Still Beautiful, especially in the chapters titled “A Democracy of Small Areas” and “Making Democracy Democratic”.

The problem is not democracy per se but the bogus democracy which is really a tyranny

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May 16th, 2013BIG BROTHER PERSECUTES CATHOLIC VOTERSby Joseph Pearce

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May 15th, 2013From Homeschoolers in Louisiana to a Prison in Englandby Joseph Pearce

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. After two frenetic months of manic activity and almost ceaseless travelling, I can sense a respite on the horizon.  Apart from speaking at a homeschooling conference in Charlotte, NC, on Saturday May 25 (which is, in any case, only a two hour drive from my home), I have no other speaking engagements until June 7. 

Last weekend I was at a homeschooling conference in Lafayette, Louisiana, one of my favourite parts of the country. I sampled southern hospitality and cajun cooking, the latter of which included deep-fried oysters and alligator legs. I also had a taste of home cooking when a teenage homeschooler brought me some home-baked English-style scones. They were truly scrumptious and reminded me of my home across the Water.

Returning home to South Carolina, I have also returned home to England this week. Perhaps I should clarify. I returned home to South Carolina in the present, sharing time and space with my family, but I have simultaneously returned home to the England of my past. I am presently writing a full-length book on my conversion to Catholicism, which is provisionally titled, "Race with the Devil: A Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love". I am almost finished. Yesterday I found myself back in prision with my former self, serving a twelve month sentence for "hate crimes". Thankfully, a twelve month sentence, when revisited in the memory, only lasts a few hours of written reminiscing.

Today I am released from prison but embark upon one of the darkest and unhappiest years of my life, a chapter of my past which will form a chapter in my book entitled "The Gutter and the Stars".

I hope to finish the book within the next few days. Perhaps I might request the prayers of all Ink Deskers that I can glorify God in the writing of my story. 

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May 14th, 2013Strange Notionsby Dena Hunt

I seldom recommend anything, lest Murphy's law kick in, but this looks really, really good. Watch the clip at:

http://brandonvogt.com/strange-notions/

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May 14th, 2013A Truly Catholic Educationby Joseph Pearce

Following my earlier post about Cardinal O'Malley's boycotting of Boston College's commencement in protest at BC's honouring of a pro-abortion politician, I thought I would contrast BC's abandonment of the Faith with the fidelity of Thomas More College, an hour north of Boston, the genuinely Catholic institution at which I am honoured to teach. The extent to which the students at TMC receive an authentic and bona dife Catholic education was epitomised in a letter handed to the college President by a student following her final exam. Here's an extract from the student's letter. It speaks for itself:

"When I arrived I was indifferent to the Catholic Faith into which I was baptized, but the great witness of friends and faculty has called me back. I cannot tell you how heartening it is to see you and all our professors at daily Mass. I cannot tell you how heartening it is to know that you believe in objective goods and desire them for your students."

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May 14th, 2013Boston College and Baby Cullingby Joseph Pearce

Boston College is the latest so-called "Catholic" school to promote the spread of abortion through the honoring of pro-abortionists. It is, however, heartening that Cardinal O'Malley is taking a courageous and uncompromising stand in defence of unborn children. Read on:

Cardinal O’Malley to boycott Boston College commencement over honoring of pro-abortion Irish PM

by Tim Drake

May 10, 2013 (CNS) - Archdiocese of Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley said today that he plans to boycott Boston College's commencement ceremony May 20 because it will feature Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny as its commencement speaker. The College is scheduled to award Kenny an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Kenny supports loosening the country's legislation against abortion.

“Since the university has not withdrawn the invitation and because the Taoiseach (prime minister) has not seen fit to decline, I shall not attend the graduation,’’ O’Malley said in a statement released this afternoon. “It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the Bishops’ directives," he added, referencing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops instruction that Catholic institutions not honor those whose views are inconsistent with the Church's teachings.

Traditionally, the Boston archbishop delivers the final benediction at Boston College's commencement each year.

Continued Cardinal O'Malley's statement:

The Irish Bishops have responded to that development (the introduction of pro-abortion legislation in Ireland) by affirming the Church’s teaching that “the deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of life is always morally wrong” and expressed serious concern that the proposed legislation “represents a dramatic and morally unacceptable change to Irish law.”

"Boston College invited Prime Minister Kenny a year ago to speak at our commencement to celebrate its heritage and relationship with Ireland and our desire to recognize and celebrate our heritage," Boston College Spokesman Jack Dunn told the Boston Globe. "Our invitation is independent of the proposed bill that will be debated in the Irish parliament this summer."

In an interview with the Catholic Herald, Cardinal O'Malley urged Ireland to stand against pressures to legalize abortion.

“Abortion is the taking of an innocent human life; everyone should resist abortion. Ireland has the good fortune, in part thanks to Catholic sensibilities, that her people have been opposed to abortion despite the great pressure that they have come under from secularising forces,” said Cardinal O'Malley. “Ireland should be very proud of its pro-life heritage and how traditionally there has been great importance given to human life. Every life counts, and I am very proud that in Ireland protection is given to life that is as vulnerable as the unborn.

"I hope that Ireland will continue to stand up against the pressures – I know the pressures are there. Pressure to legislate for abortion is a dehumanising force in our world. The laws have a function of teaching what is right and wrong. And simply because someone is going to do something, does not mean that we have to facilitate it, condone it, or encourage it.”

Cardinal O'Malley's complete statement:

Because the Gospel of Life is the centerpiece of the Church’s social doctrine and because we consider abortion a crime against humanity, the Catholic Bishops of the United States have asked that Catholic institutions not honor government officials or politicians who promote abortion with their laws and policies.

Recently I learned that the Prime Minister of Ireland, the Hon. Mr. Enda Kenny was slated to receive an honorary degree at Boston College’s graduation this year. I am sure that the invitation was made in good faith, long before it came to the attention of the leadership of Boston College that Mr. Kenny is aggressively promoting abortion legislation. The Irish Bishops have responded to that development by affirming the Church’s teaching that “the deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of life is always morally wrong” and expressed serious concern that the proposed legislation “represents a dramatic and morally unacceptable change to Irish law.”

Since the university has not withdrawn the invitation and because the Taoiseach has not seen fit to decline, I shall not attend the graduation. It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the Bishops’ directives. Although I shall not be present to impart the final benediction, I assure the graduates that they are in my prayers on this important day in their lives, and I pray that their studies will prepare them to be heralds of the Church’s Social Gospel and “men and women for others,” especially for the most vulnerable in our midst.

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May 14th, 2013Abortion and the Obamanationby Joseph Pearce

It's sickening but not surprising that President Obama has been deafeningly silent about the murder of babies in Philadelphia by an abortionist. Obama has consistently sided with abortionists and against babies whenever exercising his right to choose on which side to vote on the abortion issue. This article by the eloquently hard-hitting Anne Hendershott nails Obama for his hypocrisy in the wake of the conviction of Kermit Gosnell:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/when-politicians-allow-the-murder-of-infants?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

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May 13th, 2013Romeo and Juliet: What’s Love Got to Do With It?by Joseph Pearce

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May 13th, 2013Jesus and the Sins of the Fleshby Joseph Pearce

I am continually astounded by the brilliance of Anthony Esolen. Here is his excellent article on the teaching of Christ on sexual sin from today's Crisis:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/what-jesus-really-said-about-sins-of-the-flesh?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

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May 13th, 2013Dancing in Our Fairy Woodby Joseph Pearce

Our family is blessed to live in a relatively secluded corner of South Carolina in a house surrounded by woods. We have named our home and its surrounding land Ladydale, dedicating the valley in which we live to the Mother of God. Recently my wife happened to catch a glimpse of a wood elf dancing in the trees, capturing the moment for posterity with the camera she happened to have on hand. In truth, the photo is of our five year old daughter, Evangeline, who is even more enchanting, at least in the eyes of her father, than any beguiling visitor from Faerie. 

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May 13th, 2013An Invitation to Join My Classesby Joseph Pearce

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May 12th, 2013Mortification at the Cathedralby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

I tried to blog in the confessional today.

What I mean by that is I tried to tell the priest what I told my readers in Feeding the Hungry I, my post from this morning.  "The works of my Hungry I are works of the flesh as St. Paul calls them," I said.  "I have been sowing to the flesh and not to the spirit," I said, echoing Galatians 6:8. 

"Well, what can you find in the desires of your Hungry I that can be redeemed?" he suddenly asked. 

I felt like saying, "Um ... these are things that need to be mortified, not redeemed," but I couldn't quite get that out. 

For one thing, there is a basic truth that no desire is wholly bad, and perhaps this priest meant that (as the Westians say) "A man who knocks on the door of a whore house is looking for God," so I should just skip the whore house and go straight to God. 

But the answer to that was given by Jacques Maritain.

Here we stand before the crucial problem of the education of the human being. Certain educators confuse person and individual; in order to grant personality the development and the freedom of expansion to which it aspires, they refuse all asceticism, they want man to yield fruit without being pruned. They think that the happiness of man consists in that joyous smile which is seen, in the advertisements, on the faces of boys and girls relishing a good cigarette or a glass of Coca-Cola. Instead of fulfilling himself, man disperses and disassociates himself. 

Maritain speaks of the distinction between flesh and spirit, without using those terms.

If the development of the human being follows the direction of material individuality, he will be carried in the direction of the “hateful ego,” whose law is to snatch, to absorb for oneself. In this case, personality as such will tend to adulterate, to dissolve. If, on the contrary, the development follows the direction of spiritual personality, then it will be in the direction of the generous self of saints and heroes ...

In other words, the Hungry I is the hateful ego, a phrase Maritain coins from Pascal and Pascal's
attitude toward the ego.  Maritain speaks of the dual nature of man, which St. Paul calls flesh vs. spirit or the Old Adam vs. the New Self, baptized and saved by Christ.

Lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,23and ... be renewed in the spirit of your mind,24and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.  (Eph. 4:22-24)

... Paul writes.

For Maritain the split is between Individuality (the flesh) and Personality (the spirit); we are both spirit and flesh, body and soul, limited by matter and form (flesh) and capable of understanding and freedom (spirit).

Thus, Maritain maintains, the flesh itself is not evil, but the fruits of a life devoted to the flesh are evil - the acts of a man giving himself over to "snatching and absorbing", to the works of the flesh ...

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, ²¹ envy,^[a] drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.  (Gal. 5:19-21)

But we live in a world where you don't hear - even in the confessional much less the pulpit - any talk of asceticism, self-denial, mortification; you don't hear of the cross.

***

So I stayed for Mass. 

It was a cathedral in a large city.  My confessor was the celebrant.  It turns out he holds a position of some authority in the diocese, ranking high in the chancery.

He was about as flamboyantly gay as a priest can be. 

The homily was typical, A Plentitude of Platitudes and a Paucity of Particulars - but at least it was short - which I was grateful for - but when the priest stopped talking he introduced a layman in a suit who made a pitch for money for the diocese, finishing the forgettable homily with an insipid commercial that gave me nauseating flashbacks to Catholic Schools Week.  The guy in the suit got this far ...

My daughter went to Catholic Schools for 12 years and she received a wonderful education.  She was taught diversity and tolerance and respect for everyone.

... and I got up and walked out.  It's really bad form to curse and swear in the pews at Mass.

I was tempted to leave, but my car was blocked in.

So I waited til the pitch was over and returned to my pew.  The celebrant, to give him credit, did not ad-lib his way through the liturgy, but at the end he grew effusive about Mother's Day and invited us all to come to a concert next week in which women will be performing music honoring women.

"I ought to put together a concert by men honoring men," I thought.  "I wonder if he'd promote that."

***

As the other cars left and I was no longer hemmed in, I drove away thinking, "Why can't we simply be Christian?  Why can't we be a witness to the world?  Why do we keep selling out?"

And so, dear readers, there's a reason I was not advised to mortify all those works of the flesh - the desires of my Hungry I that the Apostle tells us will keep us out of heaven; the reason is we worship the flesh at the altar of Indulgence - even in our cathedrals.

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May 11th, 2013Death, Genesis, and All Thatby Dena Hunt

Jimmy Akin ponders entropy and immortality as they relate to dinosaurs, Genesis,

and St Thomas Aquinas:

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/

Heaven knows there’s never been a theory shortage on this subject, never been a

dearth of opinion about death and (im)mortality. Everybody and his brother has had

some notion about it.

The longer I putter about with words, however, the more I perceive their

limitations, the more I recognize that the thoughts that really mattered to me

personally never came in malleable words but in another, firmer, form, which, for

want of a better term, I guess I could call “vision,” not in the sense of “having” a

vision, more in the sense of “perceiving” something that is, after all, simply non-

verbal.

If any of the theories had ever been really correct, people wouldn’t have kept

coming up with them. I think it’s a temptation, actually. It’s an attempt to contain,

restrict, confine, something too big for us to get outside of. That is, after all, what

language does: delineate via definition, exclude via exposition. The whole process

is illusory—just as we imagine that we exclude nature from ourselves—literally—

by calling it the “environment.” The word is absurd; its meaning signifies that which

is around us. But nature doesn’t surround us; it’s part of us, and we are part of it. It

is therefore NOT our environment. But the (rather stupid) word gives a clue about

the way in which science self-supercedes, by its own compulsion to objectify, into

perpetual obsolescence, gaining not ever-increasing knowledge, but ever-increasing

irrelevance to knowledge.

Once. And once only, I perceived “something” that is as close as I will ever come

to comprehending (im)mortality. And science—whether it uses such terms

as “entropy” or “environment”—would not, I don’t think, be capable of verbal

explication, or any sort of objective articulation. Just to set the scene: I was standing

outside at night. The weather had been stormy all day, heavy clouds and high winds.

I had lost my job, and short of a miracle, I would soon lose my home and everything

I’d worked for. The creature dearest in the world to me was inside, dying. Without

him, I would have no heart left in me to break. I was overcome by a great weariness,

too weary to think, to pray. Nothing.

I perceived that everything—literally everything—not just organic life, but

buildings, towns, countries, ideas, thoughts—is mortal. Everything is dying.

Nothing—literally nothing—is immortal. Death owns ALL of reality, both material

and immaterial, including that which, in our human frailty, we call “love.”

In a flash quicker than lightening, into this darkness, from its height to its depth,

there pierced a great sword. The whole of all things, all reality—including, even, all

our ideas about reality—was pierced by this sword. The sword had a “name,” which

is to say that there was a word by which it is identified: Incarnation. But it spoke not

a word, of course; its existence suggested no verbal thing; instead it was itself Word.

It was not history or prophecy or explanation. It simply existed. Into the chaos of

darkness, there came Being. Eternity pierced time. Once and forever. That is all I

“know” about (im)mortality. It’s not a theory, but an experience.

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May 8th, 2013Uncle Sam Becomes Big Brotherby Joseph Pearce

Those who believe that Big Brother bit the dust with the fall of the Soviet Empire are in for a nasty shock. Big Brother is alive and well in the United States. He is not only alive and well but growing bigger with every year that passes.

If the Cold War was being fought against socialism and its centralization of power into the hands of the state, we can see that the Cold War was being lost even as we thought it was won. The sad and sorry fact is that Uncle Sam is metamorphosing into Big Brother. Here's the evidence: 

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May 8th, 2013The History in Historical Fictionby Dena Hunt

When I decided to write Treason, set in sixteenth-century England, I read a great deal. The novel purposely avoided the more famous names of that period (like Robert Southwell, Edmund Campion, etc.) and it avoided the famous Jesuit missionary priests—because my purpose was to tell what life would have been like for ordinary people, and for an ordinary young Englishman, one of many over the years, returning to his homeland as a priest after attending seminary at Douai. We know the famous names, and their stories, but we know nothing about the unknown, nameless thousands who suffered, enduring unfulfilled hope year after year of Elizabeth’s long, torturous rule. History gives us facts and information, but it can’t tell us about unknown people, or their experience; for that, we have to turn to fiction. 

Treason has been getting wonderful reviews on Amazon, I’m glad to say. But recently, one reviewer cited what she called “a historical inaccuracy.” Stephanie Mann, author of Supremacy and Survival and an expert on the English Reformation, wrote very kind remarks about the story, and about my writing, but expressed regret that “missionary priests” did not face arrest and execution until after 1585—and my novel is set in 1581. She posted the review on Amazon, on her blog, and it was apparently picked up on many other sites as well. Where, I wondered, had I gone wrong? I had been careful to read only reliable sources. Finally, I leafed through one of my major sources. Here is my response to Ms. Mann:

Dear Ms. Mann,

Thank you for your wonderfully kind remarks about my novel. I'm very grateful, and I'm so glad you enjoyed it. The "one issue of historical accuracy" you had with it was the date of 1581. I chose that date after reading your own excellent history of the period, Supremacy and Survival, where, on page 57, I found: "In January of 1581, Parliament met and passed a new set of penal laws, making it high treason to be a Catholic priest in England...." On the same page, you quoted Ronald Knox's description of the young priests' lives on their return to England from the seminary at Douai: " ...they left home to study for the priesthood and returned home to live 'the life of an outlaw' and die in agony in their early thirties." These were ordinary young English Catholic men, not "missionary priests."

Thank you for your review and for your own excellent study of the period, which was a major source of historical background for me in writing Treason.

Dena Hunt

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May 8th, 2013DIscovering England and Oxfordby Joseph Pearce

I've just received an e-mail from one of my students at Thomas More College, requesting suggestions for places to visit in Oxford and London. I thought my response might be of interest to visitors to the Ink Desk who might be contemplating visiting these two English cities.

Here's the e-mail I've received. My response follows:

I am emailing because I was accepted to the Oxford Program, so I will be in Oxford for two weeks this August. Afterwards, I will have roughly three days to travel before leaving from London to return to New Hampshire. What places do you recommend I go to while I am in Oxford? During the three days afterwards, I hope to see cathedrals and churches. Which are the loveliest, and preferably Catholic, churches in England? What are your favorite parts of England and of London in particular?

Thank you, and with prayers,

My response:

Oxford highlights:

The Oxford Oratory (the most beautiful Catholic church in Oxford with the most beautiful liturgy). Blackfriars is more austere but also worth a visit.

Tolkien's grave. Lewis's grave.

The best short hike is from Oxford to the Trout Inn on the river at Wolvercote. You need to check out the footpath route along the river, via the village of Binsey, made famous by Hopkins' poem "Binsey Poplars". The poplars have been re-planted so the "especial scene" that Hopkins eulogized in the poem is once again there to be enjoyed. You walk right under the poplars en route to the Trout.

The Eagle and Child pub, the regular haunt of Tolkien, Lewis and the Inklings.

Try to take some tours of the older colleges. Merton College was where Oxford taught; Magdalen was where Lewis taught; Balliol was the college from which Belloc graduated.

Try to visit Littlemore, a shrine to Blessed John Henry Newman.

London highlights:

The Brompton Oratory. The most beautiful Catholic church in London with the most beautiful liturgy. The 11am Sunday sung latin Mass is not to be missed.

Westminster Cathedral. Say a prayer at the tomb of the martyr, St. John Southworth, whose remains are on display.

Corpus Christi church on Maiden Lane, known as the actors' church, is worth visiting. Small but quaint. I believe that this was the church at which Chesterton's brother was received into the Church, at which Chesterton and Belloc were both present.

Corpus Christi is also next to Covent Garden, a good place to hang out for a coffee or snack.

The Church of the Immaculate Conception, the Jesuit church in Mayfair, is really beautiful and also has a beautiful liturgy. This was home to the famous Jesuits, Martin D'Arcy and Philip Caruman,and was the church at which I beliee both Evelyn Waugh and Edith Sitwell were received.

St. Etheldreda's church in Ely Place is another old and beautiful Catholic church.

You can walk from Corpus Christi to St. Etheldrea's in abut fifteen minutes. You can walk from Brompton Oratory to the Jesuit church in Mayfair by walking across Hyde Park. A very pleasant walk that would probably take about half an hour or so.

You can also walk from Brompton Oratory to Westminster Cathedral by walking past Buckingham Palace, home of the Queen.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, in a back alley just off Fleet Street (down the road from Corpus Christi) is an ancient pub, hundreds of years old, at which many famous members of the literati have dined and drank, including Dr. Johnson, Shelley, Chesterton and Belloc. Make sure to explore the two levels of cellar bars.

The Tower of London, especially if you can arrange to visit St. Thomas More's cell.

The Globe Theatre, a replica of Shakespeare's original.

My favourite parts of England are the Lake District, the Yorkshire Moors and Dales, and the rural counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, but you won't have time to visit these places in the limited time you have.

Beautiful Anglican cathedrals (originally Catholic of course) which are not too far from Oxford include those at Salisbury and Winchester. The former has the highest spire in England, the latter is where Alfred the Great is buried (I believe).

Enjoy my native land!

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May 7th, 2013The Saint and the Scientistby Joseph Pearce

My good friend at Ave Maria University, Dr. James Peliska, has sent me this excellent link to a short talk by the pysician who saved Mother Teresa's life in the late 1980s. It is both funny and edifying and is well worth the investment of the few minutes of time that it takes to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD9RI2Bm69U

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May 7th, 2013The Meaning of Loveby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Yesterday I wrote a bit about the third chapter of Colleen Caroll Campbell's book My Sisters, the Saints, in which she writes about Divine Mercy and Human Desire.

The day before Divine Mercy Sunday this year, I wrote the following ...

I have never before felt that martyrdom was an actual possibility in this life. Now I know it is. In fact, now I know that all of us are called to be just that, martyrs - witnesses at the deepest level - for Christ. Perhaps our martyrdoms will be white and not red; we may not spill our physical blood, but we will spill the blood of our broken hearts, united with His, pierced for our sake. Only if we love past the breaking point will our lives have meaning - and that destroys us, so that we can eventually say, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." (Gal. 2:20)

I really think this is the answer to the question of the meaning of love, a question asked by all of us and answered incorrectly by the Westians, correctly but not completely by people like Fromm and Jung and the psychology of Eros, and completely by Divine Revelation.

***

In Chapter Four, Colleen talks about her frustrations with infertility, once she was married and looking to start a family.  With the help of the writings of Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), she realizes that motherhood need not be merely biological - that spiritual and social motherhood are quite legitimate.  Indeed, while G. K. Chesterton and his wife were unable to have children, Chesterton has become a spiritual father to thousands by means of his writings and intercessions.

This form of "sublimation" (to use a psychological term), this means of channeling desires that may be frustrated or inappropriate or disordinate into service of God and man, Colleen describes thus ...

If motherhood is more about what's in your heart than what's in your womb, I needed to stop waiting for a baby to use my maternal gifts.  I needed to start recognizing the opportunities I already had to nurture growth in others, defend the vulnerable, and make the world a more loving, humane place. ...

Discovering Edith inspired me to approach the substance of my work differently, too.  Her description of a woman's "personal and all-embracing" outlook shed new light on my desire to make my writing more personal, to integrate my work and faith more fully, and to nurture growth in my readers, rather than simply winning debates.  I had tried to squelch this desire in the past, fearing that a more personal, creative turn in my work would make me more vulnerable to criticism.  Reading Edith emboldened me to reconsider.  Perhaps the drive to bear fruit that I could not satisfy on a physical level could spill over into my work and make it more poignant, resonant, and real.  Maybe I could give myself permission to be more open about who I was and what I believed, to be truly maternal in my willingness to give to others until it hurt.

"To give to others until it hurt" - in other words (as I wrote before Divine Mercy Sunday and as I have written before) "to love past the breaking point".

***

This is nothing less than the key to redemption.

We will never find our heart's desire in things of this world.  The love we have for this world is good in and of itself, but is meant to be given wholly not to passing things but to the everlasting source of all things, to the Holy Trinity.

It is only by giving ourselves wholly in love for Jesus, a great burning sacrificial love, that we find meaning and life everlasting.

Delight yourself also in the Lord,

And He shall give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

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May 6th, 2013Divine Mercy and Human Desireby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Colleen Caroll Campbell has written a dynamite book, My Sisters, the Saints.  

I am reading it aloud to my wife Karen.  Tonight I read Chapter Three, which is about how St. Faustina and the concept of Divine Mercy helped Colleen to make a very difficult decision in 2003, the year she served as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

My ears perked up at Colleen's mention of Divine Mercy because Divine Mercy Sunday was a watershed day for me this year, and also because I was feeling a bit guilty about the post I wrote earlier today, Women's Lib: Single, Female, Dog-Lover, Meth Addict.  I felt guilty for saying there things like ...

The fact is - women are not made for this - not made to be "single young professionals".  This is not the form God molded for women.  A woman is meant for far greater and far more mysterious things than climbing the corporate ladder and doing enough amphetamines to get her through the day

I mean, that's a bit harsh - maybe even a bit chauvinistic.  Though Chesterton's quote is more apt ...

Modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of domesticity. They fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home, and develop a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm. That is why they do office work so well; and that is why they ought not to do it.

But Colleen's Chapter Three was all about this very issue, written from the inside out - from inside the Beltway, no less, and from breaking out.  Colleen says of her life in Washington, DC and of the dilemma she faced there ...

A lifetime of striving had brought me to the epicenter of worldly power.  Now that I finally could direct my workaholic tendencies into the high-pressure, high-status job I always had dreamed of, my drive to strive had waned.  God had replaced it with new yearnings: for union with John, for time with my father, for a personal life that no longer merely fit into the margins of my career.

One of the things that brought Colleen around to making the right decision - a decision that involved sacrifice and courage, a decision contrary to everything the world now tells young women they should do - was Psalm 37.

As it turns out, earlier today I had read Psalm 37 and highlighted the very verses Colleen quotes in her book.

Trust in the Lord, and do good;

Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.

Delight yourself also in the Lord,

And He shall give you the desires of your heart.

Now, this "desires of your heart" - this speaks deeply to me.  But we miserable sinners, especially we miserable sinners who are addicts of one sort or another, we think our worldly desires - our lusts - are no different than the much deeper and much more profound "desires of our hearts".  Even popular Catholics make this mistake.  I don't know about you, but if left to my own resources, I would rather seek Power than Love, Control than Trust, Apotheosis than Humility.  We addicts want to Live the Lie, it's what we think will get us there; the fix will fix everything, or so we think.

And so the simple challenge, "Trust in the Lord and do good."  "Feed on His faithfulness".  (What a line!  "Feed on His faithfulness")  "And He shall give you the desires of your heart" - not just satiate our lusts, but fulfill our deepest desires - this simple challenge is a challenge indeed!

For the message of Divine Mercy is simply this: "Jesus, I trust in you."

"The graces of my mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is trust," Jesus told Faustina, according to her diary.  "The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive."

Not only, Lord, do I believe that You are faithful (I know I'm hardly faithful, but You are always faithful), not only do I believe that You're faithful, I will "feed" on Your faithfulness as Your 37th Psalm says.  I will delight in You and You will give me the desires of my heart - for my deepest desire is simply to be united to You.

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May 5th, 2013Women’s Lib: Single, Female, Dog-Lover, Meth Addictby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

When we pour ourselves into the form God made for us, we are happy and fulfilled.  When we ignore that and mold things our own way, we are miserable.

I think addiction is a fine example of the latter.  Addiction is on the far end of the sin spectrum.  Addiction is the Gollum principle at work - slavery and dehumanization in action, the fruit of a life devoted to sin.  All sin is eventually a form of addiction, and you see that quite clearly when you read about addictions, for "He that sins is a slave to sin," as Our Lord told us (John 8:34), and is made a slave by means of a progressive de-humanization, of greater and greater loss of will and reason to the drug of choice that controls us.

Take, for example, this story from the Drugs Forum website.  What strikes me is not so much the sin itself, and not even the rationalization of sin (which I wrote about earlier today, "A Dialogue with the Devil and a Chat with Bill Clinton") - since we all rationalize our sins.  What strikes me is how much this young woman is like other single young women I know.  My other young friends may not be meth users, but read this and then let me explain ...

SWIM is pretty outspoken about her MJ use [MY NOTE: This site uses odd acronyms.  SWIN means "Someone Who Isn't Me" - although in this case it's almost certainly a third-person way of talking about one's self; and MJ means marijuana], as she truly feels it being illegal is just plain silly in comparison to alcohol and what it can and does to people. Pretty much everyone in SWIMs life is aware of the fact she smokes.  ... 

SWIM took up smoking meth in the last 6 months or so, casual user, few times a month and ONLY three people know, the three people she has done it with. SWIM plans to keep it that way. SWIM however, doesn't feel bad that everyone doesn't know, unfortunately the stigma attached to this particular drug is definitely one that could get her in a heap of trouble and she is smart enough to know that. 

SWIM knows so many people who smoke MJ, but luckily for SWIM, tends to smoke at home alone most times, so wouldn't have to lose a lot of long time friends. SWIM has no intentions of stopping MJ, it helps her with her bipolar disorder and she enjoys it. 

As for the meth and other recreational drugs (ecstacy, shrooms and xanax on occassion), well, SWIM knows that if and when she decides to stop, those three friends can't come around any longer, hence why SWIM thinks keeping a smaller circle of friends who use the drugs you are considering coming off someday is your best bet. 

SWIM is single and lives alone with her dog. SWIM rarely ever feels guilt. Granted, the times of going overboard and doing too much, things like that, normal guilt, but that's it for her. SWIM feels that everyone has the right to do to their body what they like. SWIM is just smart enough to know that not everyone needs to know everything about what SWIM does. Maybe SWIM digs the secret side of the meth, maybe that's part of the allure. 

SWIM functions completely normally on MJ, but doesn't go to work high, EVER. Luckily, SWIM can get through an 8-10 hour day no problem. Granted, SWIM has a one hitter and a stash in the car for the ride home, but doesn't spend her day thinking about when that hit will be. MJ just helps her chill when she gets home from work, unwind and clear her mind. SWIM smokes about an ounce of the really expensive stuff a month, so a 1/4 a week. A lot to most people.

SWIM for the most part (she's had her moments) partakes of meth on weekends and any other drug, such as shrooms or ecstacy. SWIM will not lie and say she hasn't tweaked during the week, gotten little sleep and took a hit to wake up for work. Luckily, that has happned ONCE and SWIM felt tremendous guilt over that and it set her ass straight. SWIM is very passionate about work and while she kicked ass at work that week, she felt horrible knowing that she was disrespecting her employer and her own beliefs regarding conduct at work. 

Now of course there's plenty of irony here, "I'm not an addict because even though I use daily and have to smoke on my way home from work, I'm not obsessed with it.  MJ is no problem even though in my case it's been a gateway to meth, ecstasy, shrooms, etc.  I know meth use is dangerous, but I have it well under control, and can stop whenever I want to," etc.

But beyond the irony is how similar this young woman's attitude is to that of other "Single Young Females" whose focus is on their careers and their dogs.

The fact is - women are not made for this - not made to be "single young professionals".  This is not the form God molded for women.  A woman is meant for far greater and far more mysterious things than climbing the corporate ladder and doing enough amphetamines to get her through the day.

Or, as the prophet G. K. Chesterton said ...

Modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of domesticity. They fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home, and develop a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm. That is why they do office work so well; and that is why they ought not to do it.

Am I saying that all single professional females are secretly meth addicts?  Of course not.  But the ones I've known who have been most eager about their careers have had about them something of the great and sinister temptation or even preoccupation that "SWIM" describes in her own life.  Perhaps they are not sneaking into closets to smoke meth with co-conspirators who are as psychologically disturbed as they are, but they may be sneaking into closets to have "experimental" Lesbian encounters, or to have affairs with married men, or to find better ways of picking up guys at bars and having nearly anonymous sex with them - all of which are examples of devotion to power.

Power is the antithesis of love, and women know this more than men do; they know it naturally, in their bones.  But women in our feminist culture - especially women who have lacked any kind of father in their lives (including God the Father) - are encouraged to become Whores for Power.  They end up seeking the kind of power and control over their pain that comes from getting high, power and control over men that comes from promiscuous sex, power and control over desire itself that comes from perverse sex - and this lust for power leads inevitably to lives of sterility, lives of loneliness in an urban apartment with a toy dog and an emasculated on-again-off-again live-in boyfriend, lives of greater and greater lust for control accompanied by a greater and greater loss of meaning.

And this we call "women's liberation".

One of the many real life "Faces of Meth".

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May 3rd, 2013NEWMAN A to Z: RULE OF FAITHby Joseph Pearce

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May 3rd, 2013Coming Up For Airby Joseph Pearce

I am writing this brief note to apologize for my protracted absence from the Ink Desk. I hope to get back to writing regular posts next week.

My only excuse is that I've been on the road almost permanently over the past few weeks. I was only home for three days out of seventeen!

Many good things have happened. Talks in sundry places, filming for TV, and teaching at Thomas More College and Mount Royal Academy.

I leave for the airport in two hours. Back on Monday afternoon. Thereafter (God willing) I'll be writing regularly and frequently for the Ink Desk once again.

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April 30th, 2013A Tell-Tale Heartby Hannah O'Connor

I have the ability to go to daily Mass at work.  Eleven-thirty rolls around and students, staff and faculty at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts step out of their offices or classrooms, dorm rooms or study lounge, and head to the centre of campus.  The Chapel at the college is nestled in a red barn building with a crisp white trim surrounded by maples and oaks as if to say “Yes! Robert Frost spoke of me”.  This building also serves as the student study lounge, cafeteria and kitchen, offices, and woodshop.  Amid the hubbub of activity stepping into the chapel one would expect an island of solace, dignified wooden pews, terracotta stations, the works of our Artist-in-Residence and Iconographer David Clayton, and air with hints of incense, floor wax and dappled sunlight.  Reality, in fact, is very much like this, with one slight exception.

The other day, while having a conversation with a prospective student, she mentioned that she had really enjoyed Friday’s Mass celebrated in the Extraordinary Form, but was surprised at one point because it sounded like someone was walking around above the chapel.  I smiled and replied that it was probably someone in the woodshop.  I then realized that this was something out of the ordinary in most people’s minds.  A freshman at the college had recently observed how she loved to hear the busy people and community around her, and that it was a reminder she was in the very epicenter, the heart of that community. 

You hear the Chef chatting, the pots being washed, a door slamming, someone walking in the woodshop, distant laughter, a familiar voice.  This could be viewed as negative, but then one hears that familiar voice or laugh right before the “Our Father” or during the Offertory, and is not distracted but rather uplifted.  The heart rejoices for that laughter, for that friend who has been brought into your life, for those old familiar things that one in a small community holds dear.  At this moment you realize that even silence is not soundless.  That the heart of our little college campus is beating strong.  The heart of the community is surrounded by the life of the community. Each person streams from the chapel doors, down to lunch, back to classrooms, offices and dorm rooms, the newly oxygenated blood being pumped back out into the community:  a constant cycle of rejuvenation, an imitation of natural order and beauty. 

Not only am I lucky to be able to attend daily Mass, is it my job as a little platelet, as a part of the whole.  My job to be drawn to the very heart, and then sent out myself rejuvenated, to rejuvenate the community.  We are all called to this, in communities big or small.

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April 28th, 2013More About Radicalby Dena Hunt

The word “radical” is an adjective. An adjective modifies a noun. “Radical” is not a noun. A person cannot be “a” radical. Just one small example.

One of the linguistic phenomena of our times is the mutation of grammatical function. No one can author a book, nor can anyone pen a book. One must write a book, perhaps with a pen, and thereby become an author. I’m not talking about the obvious and better-recognized mutations of diction, e.g., pro-choice, gay, etc., but about mutated grammar.

Now, any rational person might wonder how on earth I could be so pedantic. In a world where one major disaster follows another, why on earth does such trivia matter? It matters.

I concede to the caricature of an old maid schoolteacher, wearing glasses and a sour expression of disapproval. Ridicule me all you want. Accuse me of hypercriticism, blame me for your F in English, condemn me for picking nits, assume that I don’t know what’s “really” important, and imagine all you want to that I’m sexually repressed. (What you don’t know about that latter bit won’t hurt you.) But I’m going to make a few flat and unapologetic statements here:

1. Grammar is the foundation on which all logic rests. (Grammar’s not important?)

2. The function of language is to define reality. (It’s not important?)

3. A person’s relative sanity is historically determined by his ability to “make sense.” How? His language. (How important is it?)

Back in the days when people actually “dated,” I sometimes met someone who ruined all chance of future development by making this inane remark: “Oh, you’re an English professor? I’d better watch my grammar!” (The remark was usually followed by a stupid smirk.) I’d reply with something like: “Oh, you’re an architect? I’d better check the design of my house.” The truth is that grammar more than affects, or influences, our speech or writing—it actually determines our thoughts.

No one can be a radical. It’s possible to be an “extremist,” but only if both the issue and the position have been specifically identified beforehand. But when commentators, political/social, ecclesial/theological, whatever, use such terms, they’re not communicating, they’re manipulating. It’s prudent to just turn them off. Anyone who has anything really meaningful to say will always take great care to say it—excuse the expression—correctly. It’s revealing to see how seldom political and grammatical correctness occupy the same verbal space. Someone who’s trying to defend a child’s right to live can’t refer to “reproductive health.” Inevitably, he’ll end up getting flustered, stammering. Why? Because he’s thinking correctly and the stupid phrase won’t fit in correct thinking. It’s like trying to put a sock on a shoe instead of on a foot. It’s crazy. But it’s just this kind of (bleep) that’s polluting our minds, rendering them incapable of rational thought.  

How important is it? It’s important.

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April 27th, 2013Tolkien on EWTNby Joseph Pearce

I'm delighted to have received an encouraging e-mail about the hour-long program on The Lord of the Rings which I filmed for EWTN a few years ago. The correspondent ended by requesting "more please". There will indeed be more - two more in fact. Earlier this month I filmed two more hour-long Tolkien specials, another on The Lord of the Rings and one on The Hobbit. Apart from my own contribution, the specials also include the acting talents of Kevin O'Brien as Tolkien and the artistic gifts of Jef Murray, both of whom will be well-known to StAR subscribers. Kevin is a regular columnist and Jef is StAR's writer-in-residence whose work graces every issue. I am so blessed to have such gifted collaborators.

Here's the text of the e-mail I've just received:

Yes, indeed, 'Bravo'!  Congratulations on your new EWTN program, Tolkien: Lord of the Rings - A Catholic Worldview.  I so enjoyed watching ... every minute of it.  In fact I wished that it would have been a full length feature film.  Seriously, well done!

It was like a beautifully crafted composition.  Beginning with your walking through hillside and reading Tolkien... the cuts to the illustrations... and back.  The story of Tolkien's life was an artistic collage, not a dry document.  What can I say about the vignette between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis... so well done.

I was delighted to learn the truth of Tolkien's great opus, as he said, was a religious work, and in particular a Catholic one. Then you developed this point with your explanation of the language and names in the story; as well as the myth's corollary to creation, the Fall and Christ's redemption of mankind.  

Two important points remain with me. Firstly, Tolkien said, "We tell stories, because of God's image within us."  I believe this also to be true for an artist. We draw, paint and sculpt, because of God's image within us."

Secondly, your explanation of the place of Frodo when he puts the ring on his finger... not being in the 'place of good'... nor with evil. Rather he was at the place of decision... to choose to do the Good... or submit to doom.

(now I am like Solomon) ' No, three things I have to say': I really was impressed with the truth that the Hobbits exhibited Christ's love in their care for the unlovable  scoundrel, Gollum.  

Enough, already.  I simply loved it. Thank you.

More please ...

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April 24th, 2013Cupid, Death and the Good Lifeby Hannah O'Connor

What does it mean to have a good time? Is it really just a question of personal preference, as many young people would tell you today, or is it more a matter of being well-tuned—well-tuned to the realities around us—instead of being plugged in and tuned out? 

“Cupid and Death” is not a rave party theme, not a hip new band, not a fraternity or sorority hosted event, but rather a musical Masque of sorts, containing Donne, Shakespeare, the music of John Dowland, Euclidian jokes and a four part Polyphonic chorus all arranged by our very own junior, Jonathan Wanner.  I recently had the privilege of attending the performance of “Cupid and Death”.

Cupid and Death rest a night at an Inn, where the scoundrel of a Chamberlin switches the quivers of Cupid for the quivers of Death.  Jolly mischief ensues as both Death and Cupid go on their ways only to be thwarted as Cupid’s arrows bring death and Death’s bring amore.  Just as things start getting thoroughly out of hand, a stately Angel of the Lord comes to set things aright.  He chastises Cupid and Death, reminding them that they are mere servants to his Master.  Order is restored and the Chorus concludes with a simply angelic polyphonic harmony glorifying the wounds and love of Christ that bring life in abundance.

Not how you would expect college students and staff to be spending a weekend.  The students came out in full force to attend the performance. In fact, many of them attended showings on Saturday and Sunday. Everyone around me was bought to tears of laughter by the witty lines and exaggerated shenanigans.  It was a truly spectacular performance displaying the virtues of true love, a good death and an ordered creator-praising nature. It was a festive occasion within a flourishing community.

 I utterly enjoyed this performance.  It was fun. Everyone I know should have the privilege of gaining so much enjoyment out of similar past times. In speaking with others, I realize that the art of festivity, true fun, and enjoyment is something that has been cast aside for cheaper pleasures, entertainment, and spectacle. There is a disconnect today. It is especially clear in young people who go around convincing one another that certain things are fun, when in reality the majority of them are lost, confused and miserable.  When did we decide as a generation that the idea of “good, clean, wholesome fun” is backwards, pathetic and dorky? When did we get tuned to the static station of instantly gratifying pleasures, losing control and being disordered?

When I received my school books sophomore year of college I was packing for my Rome Semester.  I opened the books like new found friends, only to pack them away again with my belongings.  There were two that caught my eye: Leisure the Basis of Culture and In Tune with the World: a Theory of Festivity, both written by German Catholic Philosopher, Josef Pieper and both made it into my carry on. Indeed, they were read cover to cover before I set foot on Italian soil, where I was to spend four glorious months.  The reader is introduced to the concept of leisure in each work and invited to reflect and turn towards the ordered life.  Through these works, we are drawn to question, “What is the good life?”.  Our eyes are opened to see the gratitude and generosity demanded by the gift of life itself. 

A popular slogan that I am sure we have all seen or perhaps worn ourselves is “Life is Good”. Young people today will blatantly state life is good, but it no longer occurs to them that they are made to pursue goodness. That, of course, is impossible, because they have no understanding of it and there lies the tragedy. Enslaved to lie of relativity and therefore living without any manner of a moral compass, they seek immediate gratification in the meanest of ways. All the while they are parched, truly parched, for “Death and Cupid.” They are thirsting for the goodness, for the innocence, for the joyful hope that should be theirs as young people.

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April 24th, 2013WHAT’S LUTHER GOT TO DO WITH IT?by Joseph Pearce

I sent out an e-mail recently promoting Dena Hunt's excellent new novel, Treason, about the plight of Catholics in Elizabethan England. I've received several positive responses. The most recent is this polite but perhaps barbed response or riposte from a Protestant. My response follows. 

Sounds fascinating!  I agree that Elizabeth (along with most of the Tudors) were pretty nasty towards Roman Catholics.

Perhaps to balance out the historical picture, you could release a novelization of Foxe's Book of Martyrs?  Or the life of Jan Hus?  Or William Tyndale?  Or the Lollards?  Or the plight of evangelicals in modern-day Chiapas?

I agree with you about the oppression perpetrated on a number of religions by modern secular states during the twentieth century, and I am (like yourself, I'm sure) frequently annoyed at the secularist propaganda that nevertheless persists, and often claims that religion is the casus belli.  Perhaps, in light of this particular zeitgeist, Christians could learn something from the Elizabethans' poor example and stop accusing one another? 

And here's my reply:

I see Elizabethan England as the progenitor of the modern secular fundamentalist state. I don't see the English Reformation as being Catholic versus Protestant but as Catholic versus Machiavellian humanism. Burghley and his henchmen were first and foremost ruthless secular pragmatists.

The Anglican church was not founded on the principles of Luther or Calvin but on the loins of Henry VIII. It had nothing to do with theology and everything to do with the usurpation of power by the state.

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April 24th, 2013Imperfect Kids Have a Place in the Planby Lorraine V. Murray

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April 23rd, 2013My Bostonby M. Jordan Lichens

Thanks to Rod Dreher, there have been several discussions about finding and making a community lately; a theme that resonates a lot when the city I've come to love and reluctantly called home is attacked. I don't know that I ever wanted to admit my love of this hard region, with the constant winters, the people and their famously laconic social skills, and the lack of real mountains. However, reading Dreher's work and reflecting on how much New England has adopted me has certainly been a time of reflection and thus it's overdue for some praise to my community.

Boston has a strange draw for us Lichens boys. I can recall being eight-years-old and being moved to tears that my oldest brother decided to leave Oregon for Boston. "Boston," I thought, "Where is that and why would he want to leave?" Bob had just moved back in with the family and now needed a change; he needed to get as far away from Oregon's spirit and geography as he could, and New England is as much a foreign nation to a kid from Cascadia as much as any other place. It seemed so weird to me, but I ended up following in his footsteps a good fourteen years later and would return to this region after my departure from grad school. Like Bob, I too needed to get out of Oregon but I never imagine that I'd feel the same affection that he did for this place.

My first impression of Boston was that it is an old city, carved by Puritans in a hostile place and refined by the toughest people I've ever encountered. New Englanders can come off as rude, with a huge chip on their shoulder. It can be mistaken as rudeness, but it is only their odd way of loving. They protect their hamlets, towns, neighborhoods, and cities much like the hero of The Napoleon of  Notting Hill. A boy growing up in East Boston or Bow, NH is likely to see their simple land as citadel worth protecting and loving. In fact, these last few days of carnage have reminded me that New England can teach the whole nations one simple truth: that a place is loved not because it is great but that its greatness is but a reflection of the love the people have poured out on it.

I may have been initially put off by the people, but I truly do love this region. Her old forests, colonial towns, and ages of folklore produce stories of ghosts, romance, and adventure and very often these same stories happen in the same few square miles. If you go to one town of a few hundred people you can plop down in a pub and feel the many ages of hopes and dreams that were poured out for generations even if not a single person will engage you in small talk. This is, after all, the soil which was tilled by the Sons of Liberty that helped plant the seeds for our many great poets and novelists.

"There are two ways of getting home," Chesterton wrote, "and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place." Chesterton was talking about seeing the familiar things made new, as if you found a new joy and adventure by gazing at the same hill you've walked one thousand times before. As I look at the videos of the Marathon Bombings I see the unspeakable horror of what a coward will do to maim and harm other but I also see the much overlooked simple kindness of people running back to offer aid and help to their fallen friends. Even in a place renowned for its less-than-friendly demeanor  there is still enough good in people that they will help when all common sense would say to run.

Boston and all of New England have so much beauty but it takes a second look before one can see it again. Here is my hope that I don't forget the joys that this adopted land of mine teaches me.

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April 22nd, 2013Getting Beat and Getting the Beatlesby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Many years ago, I was in Bardstown, Kentucky.  I was channel surfing on AM radio and I found a station playing "I am the Walrus" by the Beatles.  I stopped the car, got gas, bought some stuff in the store, and started the car again after ten minutes to hear the same station playing the same song - "I am the Walrus".

The station was playing that song on an endless loop - "I am the Walrus" all weekend long.

***

Yesterday, actress Maria Romine and I were driving back home from Fairhope, Alabama, and we got through about half of Mississippi listening to 780 AM playing all Beatles songs.  But playing only the left channel of each stereo number.  Thus a few of the songs had no vocals, and "Martha, my Dear" had no horns or bass, only piano, strings and vocal.  (The right channel of that song - a minimalist mix of vocals, bass, drums and horns - is much more interesting, as you can hear at YouTube).

"I wonder why the folks who run this radio station can't tell that they're only broadcasting the left channel of each song," I said to Maria.  Then I realized.

It's AM radio.

And it's Mississippi.

***

Today I heard "We Can Work It Out", a song that has significance for me, and a song that served as a consolation, really an answer to a prayer.

And I thought of the Beatles and Getting Beat - rather, getting beaten - by life and by our sins and by the sins of others.

The trouble with the sort of fame the Beatles had, and with the sort of affluence many of us have is really the camel through the eye of the needle trouble.  When you're "bigger than Jesus" as John Lennon observed the Beatles were at one point, you have no boundaries.

And without boundaries, we make a mess of things.

***

If I've learned anything from the past nine months, it's this: you can't be happy in this world even if you follow your heart's desire.  Even the path of love, the path of beauty, truth and goodness will make us miserable if we have "disordinate affections".  Indulgence makes us miserable, not happy and certainly not peaceful - for indulgence is another word for "disordinate affections".

But "disordinate affections" means simply "love without God's order", "love without the priorities or boundaries God has built into it".  It can mean having too little affection and burying your talent in the ground out of fear; or too much affection and being too interested in the financial sense, and by analogy in the psychological sense.  It can mean putting your ego so much on the line that worldly failure means shame, dishonor and hari-kari; or pulling your ego out entirely, taking no chances and settling for a safe part-time job at Taco Bell when God is calling you to be Commissioner of Baseball and save the sport.  (St. Peter on the day you die: "Well, we'd let you in heaven, but why were you working at Taco Bell when God made you to be Commissioner of Baseball and solve the steroid problem?")  It can mean sleeping around with anyone who moves, or never going on a date because you're afraid spinach will stick to your teeth at dinner and your date will think you're an idiot.  "Disordinate affections" means too much or too little libido / Eros / philia - it means love without its proper order. And it means heartache.

If you don't believe me, look at the world around you.  What has "following our bliss" meant, now that "free love" has been available to us since the Pill?  It has meant the death of the family, STDs, abortion, perversion and misery.  As Chesterton says, speaking of the pull to perversion the hedonists of old inevitably felt ...

"The wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did. The immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence. ... When Man goes straight he goes crooked. When he follows his nose he manages somehow to put his nose out of joint, or even to cut off his nose to spite his face." 

And when he follows his heart, he finds heartache and he puts his whole self out of whack.

Unless he follows His heart - His Sacred Heart, the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

If "All You Need Is Love" and if that love is an unbridled love of the world - a love of disordiante affection - you'll end up like John Lennon and like most rock stars who are given the strange blessing of following their hearts desires without limit - you'll end up a hateful unhappy heroin addict who sings about "peace, peace when there is no peace" - no peace at least in your own troubled soul.

Thus the importance of mortification, sufferings, penance - at the very least they force us to stop playing God, to humiliate ourselves, and to honor His boundaries.

***

So always keep in mind ...

We plant, another waters, and God gives the increase.  The increase is beyond us.  The increase may be "natural", but it is from beyond nature.  It is miraculous.  It is not of us; it is of God.  "We Can Work It Out", but only if renounce ultimate control and lay it all on the altar of the Cross.

"We Can Work It Out" when we let Him work it out.

If we're bigger than Jesus, we won't be "too big to fail", we will have failed already.

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April 20th, 2013The Bad Radicalby Dena Hunt

During the presidential campaign, during political arguments, and during religious

disagreement, including those within the Church, this ad hominem seems to be

the ultimate card: Call your opponent “radical.” Closely followed by its synonym

“extremist,” this bit of name-calling can used nominally or adjectively to equal

advantage in dismissing the opponent and/or his argument. Its use has become so

widespread, so acceptable, that it’s never called into question, never recognized as

the ad hominem fallacy that it is.

Why is this so? Because the universally acceptable creed is relativism. It’s relativism

that’s really at work when we speak of “tolerant,” which is now used as an antonym

of “radical.” Both terms should be removed from the lexicon of public discourse

because both have lost their semantic value. (In the absence of any absolute, non-

absolute has no meaning.)

The Boston bombers have been referred to countless times as having been

“radicalized.” That means they ceased to be relativistic in their faith. Bad. We don’t

mind people being religious, as long as they don’t take their religion seriously

(radically), as long as they keep it confined to their private lives, their churches,

synagogues, or mosques, and inside their own homes. We want religious people

to put secular values ahead of religious ones. We want them to recognize our god

(the state, euphemistically called “society” lest we be recognized as totalitarian)

first. We want them to castigate those members of their faith who threaten by word

or deed to get out of line by actually living according to the tenets of their faith or

encouraging others to do so.

But there is something in every human being that longs for authenticity, for

objective truth. State/society/community can’t answer that longing. In some people

the hunger for something greater than themselves becomes so strong that they

endure incredible suffering and martyrdom; they become saints or heroes. Or

terrorists. They become radicalized.

I’m as horrified as everyone else by the Boston bombings, but I think the secular

political and sociological analyses of the bombers’ actions are superficial and facile.

It has nothing to do with politics or sociology. In denying the reality of the Absolute

a priori, such analyses can’t even approach an understanding—indeed, they ARE the

problem. The “enemy” is not America or Israel, or any country; it’s not Christians

or Jews, or any religion. These are actually only trees, and it’s the forest that is the

enemy. And that forest is collective, inclusive, tolerant “society.”

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April 20th, 2013THE SHIRE COMES TO EWTNby Joseph Pearce

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April 20th, 2013Hobbits and Moreby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Chuck Chalberg as G. K. Chesterton at Pauline Books and Media in St. Louis

Stained glass window of Christ in blue jeans - the modern everyman-as-Christ - in the chapel at St. Ambrose  College, Davenport, IA

The stations at St. Ambrose all feature the blue jean Jesus - the  modern everyman as Christ.

Jesus addresses the Wailing Women - whose children are playing cowboys & Indians.

With Joseph Pearce on the "Hobbit Hole" set of the upcoming EWTN special based on Joseph's book Bilbo's Journey.

 I have a story to go with the above photo.  This is Tolkien's office set at EWTN.  In one scene, I am Tolkien, reading from The Lord of the Rings.  I put the book down and get lost in the story.  I walk off the set onto the green screen, which, in post-production, will be transformed into a forest setting in Middle Earth.  I sit upon the green box (left) and address an imaginary figure - what will later become Frodo.

Where we were forced to stay for our performance in Fairhope, Alabama.  I guess the Super 8 was full.

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April 20th, 2013No Life without Fatherby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Colin O'Brien (right) at age 21.

As a father, I never thought I was doing anything special.

Our son Colin was born 21 years ago - April 20, 1992.  It was a day that changed my life entirely for the better.  I never thought I could love another human being the way I loved him - from the very moment he appeared.

Colin O'Brien at something less than 21.

But, dads, we all know that there's not a lot we can do - especially in those first few months.  The mother is so much The Mother that we all, I suspect, have a sense of our inadequacy.  We just kind of stand around and scratch ourselves, and change a diaper or two, clumsily at first.  It seemed to me as if my contribution to fatherhood passed in a fleeting moment of abandon nine months prior, and that there was really nothing left for me to do from that point forward.

Of course, later in life, fathers become very important - but I don't think we dads ever quite realize how.

***

Last Sunday, the great Anthony Esolen spoke at the Credo Dinner in St. Louis.  His theme was fatherhood as indispensable to culture and civilization.  He mentioned Hofni and Phineas, Eli's sons, priests in the temple (see 1 Samuel), who "know not the LORD", but instead are "sons of Belial" - which is to say, sons of no-father.  The lack of the presence of the father in their family (Eli is their biological father, but he is ineffectual as a father figure) as well as in their cosmology (they are, practically speaking, rank atheists) turns them into nihilistic materialists - into brutes.  And when even priests abandon the Father and His Faith, disaster results.  Their infidelity results in the loss of the very presence of God the Father among the Israelites - the Arc of God is captured during their priestly reign.

Anthony Esolen at something more than 21.

Esolen drew comparisons with literature (Telemachus' fatherless plight in The Odyssey) as well as in current events (our entire culture - see Detroit).  And of course when fatherless anarchy spawns "sons of Belial"" who threaten our very existence, the State steps in, becoming the totalitarian father, controlling us and enslaving us more and more to "protect" us from the nihilism that a culture without fathers produces.

***

Another father - Father Mitch Pacwa - spoke to me about this very theme at EWTN this week, where I spent several days filming two specials hosted by Joseph Pearce, in which I portray J. R. R. Tolkien, the first of which is scheduled to air this December.  Fr. Mitch quoted some appalling statistics on the effects of a civilization without fathers - which is ultimately no civilization at all.  He managed to make me quite convinced that the Dark Ages are in fact upon us and that the Church has more of a challenge than even we pessimists realize.

 In other words, before long the whole world will be Detroit.

Fr. Mitch, whose cowboy hat is older than Colin.

***

But forget Detroit.

Civilization is alive and well in Trussville, Alabama.  Of all places!  We Yankees find that hard to believe, but I experienced it first hand, as, on Wednesday night, Joseph Pearce and I attended the ACTA Community Theater production of - get this - Life with Father.

Life with Father is a delightful comedy, based on the book by Clarence Day.  It holds the record as the longest running non-musical in Broadway history.

Poster from the movie starring William Powell.  The play is even older than I am.

The play tells the true story of the Day family, living in New York in 1893.  And while it's a light comedy, it deals with two very important themes - how does a son find his independence, particularly from a father who is a bit overbearing; and how does the self-made man get saved?

The first question is dealt with very cleverly in the script, as the young Clarence struggles to earn $15 to buy himself a suit, for in wearing his father's hand-me-downs, he finds himself unable to do anything his father wouldn't do.  This marvelous and simple symbolism of clothing as identity finds its fulfillment in the final moment of the play, when Clarence, finally in his own outfit, self-bought and self-paid-for, becomes his own person.

But actually the suit is not bought and paid for by Clarence.  In a bit of funny numbers-juggling, the resources for Clarence's independence - the money for the new clothes - in a round-about way comes from his father.

This is simply a way of showing how we are all dependent on grace.  We can never earn our own salvation, or work our way up to our own identity.  We cooperate with the gift, but the gift is always, ultimately, from the Father.

And thus the second major theme of the play - can Father, the self-made man, the typical American, the pragmatist - can Father be saved?  He seems certain of it, but his certainty is based upon his self-confidence; heaven will not be denied him, for he has earned his way in, and if he hasn't, he certainly has enough pull to work the system and land his rightful place.

This becomes the main element of the plot, as the family discovers that Father - whose parents were 19th Century "free thinkers" - was never baptized.  Of course the play remains a light comedy and does not deal with theology in a heavy handed way, but the themes remain, and even the question, "Can baptism be effective without repentance?" is dealt with very subtlely and effectively.  For although Father never literally kneels (not even at church), he does so figuratively more than once during the course of the action.

The play was directed by Theater of the Word actress Emily Lunsford (who is profiled here), and was very well staged.  Perfectly cast, the performances of Howard Green as Father, and David Gregson as the Anglican priest were especially noteworthy.  Matt Mitchell as Clarence is also quite charming.

Emily's entire family is in show business - at least at the Community Theater level.  Her little brother Joseph and her little sister Lucy are stand outs in Life with Father - Lucy in particular steals the opening scene as the much maligned maid.

And it is always a joy for me to go to Alabama and to see two wonderful families - the family of workers-in-the-vineyard at EWTN, and the Amazing Performing Lunsfords.

***

And so, today, as I ponder my 21-years of fatherhood, I realize more than ever that without the family there is no civilization, and without the father, there is no family.

So look up, fellow fathers.  We dads are more important than we suspect.

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April 19th, 2013R.I.P. Richard Kerleyby Colin Jory

I write from Sydney, where I am in temporary residence away from my native Canberra, doing a 4-week course of intensive studies.

In February 2012, on the other side of our vast continent, on the outskirts of the little town of Nannup, West Australia, in a depression in large paddock, human bones were found. Nannup, insofar as it is close to anywhere known anywhere else, is close to Bunbury, which is 94 kilometres (58 miles) north. I’ve never been to Western Australia, but from what I can infer from the omniscient Internet, Nannup would have been a one-horse town until the last horse died of terminal boredom.

The state of the bones showed that they had been there a considerable time. The grass in the paddock had been long until the owner began grazing horses there, and it was only when it had been nibbled down that the bones were noticed. A few days ago DNA testing identified them as the human remains of Richard Kerley. The people of Nannup and wherever else Richard had drifted would have known him as an amiable, harmless vagrant They would have found him a lucid, thoughtful and interesting conversationalist, but one whose conversation would drift seamlessly from the real word into a delusional world of conspiracies which to him was just as real. Richard had schizophrenia. Anyone who has seen or sees that extraordinary movie, “A Beautiful Mind”, about the genius economist, Nobel Prize winner and schizophrenic John Nash, will understand Richard despite having never met him.

Richard was my good friend, and the good friend of very many others. He came from Melbourne, Victoria, and he did an undergraduate degree at the Australian National University in Canberra in the early 1970s. He was one of the founders of the John XXIII Fellowship, a movement of orthodox Catholic intellectual activists which I think I have previously mentioned and which subsequently became the Campion Fellowship of Australia, and did much good (and from which the U.S. Fellowship of Catholic Scholars took the term “Fellowship”). Richard (Dick to his friends) was indirectly responsible for the “John XXIII” part of the name. When the inter-state communications were in progress in 1972 which led to the foundation of the Fellowship in Melbourne at the end of that year, Richard, who was in residence at John XXIII College at the ANU, read Pope John XXIII’s Journey of a Soul. He spoke to me about how profoundly orthodox and traditional in his pieties and outlook the Pope had been, and how utterly different he was  from the mythology spun concerning him by the anti-orthodox factionaries in the Church who, even by 1972, had done vast harm. This inspired me to suggest John XXIII’s name for the nascent movement. I also suggested that it be called a Fellowship, my inspiration being Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Rings, plus the fact that I had written the history of the Victorian Campion Society, which was founded at Melbourne University in 1931 and was enormously influential. I observed when researching the Society in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at the instigation of Australia’s foremost historian, Professor C.M.H. Clark, who supervised my Honours and Masters theses, that even though it had faded away in Victoria in the mid-1950s, its former members remained united by powerful bonds of fellowship.

It was many years later that Richard, by then back in Melbourne, showed the first signs of schizophrenia. What could be done by his loving family was done, and chemical treatment was successful when Richard could be kept to it, but that was never for long. He would arrive at our door in Canberra every year two, or at the door of our mutual good friends and Fellowship members John and Ruth Harris, and would be our or their guest for as long as he chose to stay. That meant he was part of the six Harris children’s and the eight Jory children’s lives, and they will always remember him fondly. Further details regarding Richard’s peregrinations are unnecessary here, but when he landed in Western Australia we discovered the fact from indirect evidence, and John Harris sadly predicted that his end would be exactly (and I mean exactly) as happened. It is very unlikely that there was foul play. Richard’s brother, Peter, telephoned the news of the identification of Richard’s bones through to my wife Paula last night, 19 April, and she telephoned the news to me.

Richard held only a few jobs, none for long, and he never married – although he did much good work in Canberra and Melbourne for the pro-Life cause. He believed, fatalistically, that his life had been a waste  So would anyone who met him in his wanderings and had not known him before. We, his friends, and his family, know better. God writes straight on crooked lines, and Richard was one of his quills. May his soul, being of the faithful departed, rest in peace.

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April 16th, 2013Where Was God at the Boston Marathon?by Lorraine V. Murray

Here's the link to the column I wrote for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about that little boy who died in the bombings at the race. Just click "continue reading" and you can see the whole column: 

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/national/where-was-god-at-the-boston-marathon/nXNkK/

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April 16th, 2013Pope Francis and Our Blessed Motherby Lorraine V. Murray

When I first saw Pope Francis step onto the balcony, shortly after he had been elected pope, I noticed how calm and joyful he seemed.

Here he was, a man who had gone from being a humble cardinal in Buenos Aires to becoming shepherd for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics—and yet he didn’t seem ruffled at all.

I wondered what his secret was.

Over the next few weeks, my admiration for him grew, especially when I heard that he had personally telephoned his newspaper deliveryman in Buenos Aires to cancel his paper. He has also invited the gardeners and street sweepers to the Masses he celebrates at the Vatican’s Santa Maria residence.

Our new pope treats people as if each one were important and special, no matter how lowly they might be in society’s eyes—which is exactly what Christ did. Pope Francis evidently isn’t tied up in knots about social standing and expectations.

And perhaps his secret is this: He has a special devotion to the Blessed Mother in her role as “undoer of knots.”

The knots are difficult situations in our lives which result from sin, and which drag us down. They may have been there for years, and sometimes involve our relationships with other people.

A novena to Mary designed to ask for help in untying these knots comes from a book called Against Heresies written by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, who noted that “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary.”

One of the prayers to Mary says, “God has granted you great power over all the demons. I renounce all of them today, every connection I have had with them ….”

Some of the devilish knots we inherit from parents, but then we go on, sometimes unknowingly, to tighten them ourselves. As the years pass, these painful obstacles constrict us more and more—and we add additional snarls along the way.

In my life, knots involve relationships with other people that center on guilt and obligation, and my impossible attempts to sense what they’re feeling before they say a word.

So, for example, if I send an email to a relative who doesn’t answer it for, say, a week, during that time I will imagine the worst, as in “She’s angry” or “She’s crossed me off her list.”

Obviously the only way to find out why the person hasn’t answered the email is to come out and ask, but this particular knot involves not confronting people, but instead, stewing in imaginary juices. Often, I will discover later that the person was ill, or had a family emergency, or simply forgot.

In my family, there were certain cues you could count on as a sign of how someone else felt about you. If you got all dressed up in your Sunday best and your father never said a word—which was how it usually went—that meant he didn’t see you, didn’t love you and in an odd way, you were rendered invisible.

Many people, I suspect, are haunted by this invisibility knot, which is a heartfelt seeking for approval and love that often gets derailed because it centers on human beings instead of the Lord.

So many snarls haunt us in this fallen world in which Satan prowls about, intent on dragging us down. For parents, a knot may involve trying too hard to control their children’s lives, so the kids develop their own knots, which involve excessive dependency on the parents.

And sometimes our clinging to things—and other people—too tightly can become a burden because we resist change, insisting on old ways of doing things even if they are causing us pain.

Perhaps Pope Francis at one time experienced many painful obstacles in his life—or why else would he have become devoted to this particular aspect of Mary? But over time, it seems he has learned to surrender his troubles into her hands—and through her intercession, he apparently has found peace.

One of the prayers from this novena to Mary says it all: “I entrust into your hands this knot which robs the peace of my heart, paralyzes my soul and keeps me from going to my Lord and serving Him with my life.” Mother Mary, pray for us!

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April 15th, 2013Reflections on the Christian Life: Life’s Meaning through Esolen’s Eyesby Hannah O'Connor

Imagine walking through a field of the most abundant and varied wildflowers; imagine gathering them in your arms; imagine carrying them with you.  This is how it is to read Anthony Esolen’s latest work, Reflections on the Christian Life. Esolen has walked through that field and gathered flowers that come in the form of scriptural and personal anecdotes as well as through the wisdom of the great minds of Western Civilization: Tolkien, Chesterton, Cicero, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare. These are indeed the most powerful weapons against the secular world in which we live today. In one anecdote, Esolen relates how a young skeptic student came to him and said, “You guys have all the ammunition! Dante and Shakespeare and Cervantes and Milton! We don’t have any defense against them!” Esolen presents them in a bouquet to his readers as an invitation to journey with him and embrace these various treasures as old familiar friends. Indeed, somewhere in the middle of this book I began to smile each time I came across a quote or example from an author. I was unexpectedly re-visiting old friends.

I thought it a little funny the day I was asked to write about Mr. Esolen’s new book because he has been involved in my life indirectly in a number of ways.  I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, two blocks away from the formidable entrance to Providence College where he teaches.  His daughter and I were part of the same homeschooling group for a time, and I probably met him during those years, though I have no memory of it.  During home-High School I read his translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Volumes I would eventually take with me to Thomas More College and revisit.  The year I entered my life-changing undergrad years was the very same year a new president was chosen for Thomas More College.  I later discovered, oddly enough, that the position was very nearly filled by Anthony Esolen.  Six years later, I am now sitting at my desk with his new book published by Sophia Press—Thomas More College’s publishing arm.

In the middle of enjoying and reflecting on the work, two explosions went off in Boston.  Many of us on campus immediately thought of friends, family members and acquaintances that were down in the city, 45 minutes south of us.  After I had gathered my mind around the shock and worry, I tried to continue writing. I realized that I could only think of what is written on the back cover of Esolen’s book,

Indeed, this book will finally awaken in you the unshakable confidence that despite even the tragic stories of this life, the good things you’ve known and loved are not gone forever: all that is lost will be found; all will be restored; all will be perfected. Truly there will be "a new heaven and a new earth" (Rev 21:1).

This captures Mr. Esolen’s work.  How full of hope. How fitting for this moment.

Reflections on the Christian Life is a bouquet of anecdotal stories and "good news" on the nature of living sorrows and joys, education, baptism, mercy and faith. It certainly has a different feel from his previous works, but it is a book to re-visit and to share.  In fact, I already have a waiting list for my copy, and while I would love to share with you all, you can best find out more for yourself.

http://shop.sophiainstitute.com/Reflections-on-the-Christian-Life-P370.aspx

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April 15th, 2013God Really Is Alive and Well!by Lorraine V. Murray

The evening news often seems extremely distressing and depressing, so I recently wrote something hopeful for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Today, with the nation reeling from the horrific news about the Boston Marathon bombings, the message seems especially appropriate.

To read the article, you have to click on "continue reading," but you do not have to register until May 16. For now, it is free! 

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April 13th, 2013Gunsby Dena Hunt

It was 1984, and I lived and worked in New Orleans. My godfather gave me a gun.

It’s a little Italian automatic, very small, fits in my palm, and it is now—as I write—in

the drawer by my bed, just where my godfather told me to keep it.

I shot it once. At his fishing camp in Bay St. Louis. I’ve never shot it again. I

remember that I said, “Hey, I could get in trouble for having this.” He replied, “Well,

you’ll be alive to get in that trouble, won’t you.”

Good point.

And that’s it. It’s still by my bed. And it’s still loaded.

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April 11th, 2013Gunsby Dena Hunt

It was 1984, and I lived and worked in New Orleans. My godfather gave me a gun. It’s a little Italian automatic, very small, fits in my palm, and it is now—as I write—in the drawer by my bed, just where my godfather told me to keep it.

I shot it once. At his fishing camp in Bay St. Louis. I’ve never shot it again. I remember that I said, “Hey, I could get in trouble for having this.” He replied, “Well, you’ll be alive to get in that trouble, won’t you.”

Good point.

And that’s it. It’s still by my bed. And it’s still loaded.

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April 10th, 2013Scapulars and Tattoos meet Tolkien and Chestertonby Hannah O'Connor

I will never forget my College’s president, Dr. William Fahey, saying he had found the best way to describe his students was “Scapulars and Tattoos”.  I often think of this when I look at the people around me and I always marvel at the wide array of young, energetic, passionate, faith-filled people that are pursuing truth. Many have tattoos. Many have scapulars—that wonderful gift from Our Lady.  But all of them, each having journeyed to Thomas More College by a unique path, are bound together by a common love and thirst for the Truth that will set you free. It especially came to mind of late in the case of a current student who recently joined the Church.   

The Easter Break was a time of rejoicing and new birth for all of us, but especially for a friend of mine and student of Thomas More College, Allison ‘Clare’ Welton.  As I celebrated my one-year birthday at the Easter Vigil in Nashua, New Hampshire, over 1,000 miles away at St. Isidores in Kansas, my friend was coming into full communion with the Catholic Church.

“I knew it was going to be the life I lived, but being at Thomas More College, with the people, in the classes, at Mass, being shown Catholicism in such richness, seeing it being lived out in people’s lives, is stuff you don’t find in books!” said Allison ‘Clare’ Welton, Class of’16

During her first semester at Thomas More College, Allison continued RCIA at the local parish of  St. Patrick’s. She then joined 31 other RCIA candidates at the Vigil Mass at St. Isidore’s.  She had been emotional leading up to the Triduum, but on Holy Saturday, time seemed to go by strangely. That night at the Vigil she got up to receive the Eucharist for the first time with a smile on her face. Before she knew it, she was back in the pew kneeling next to her uncle, a recent convert who is her sponsor into the Church. This reminded me of my own experiences when entering the Church.

This year, at my second Easter Vigil, having lived a year of Catholic faith, I found it much more striking than I had the moment I first stepped up to receive. I can only hope that the more we both grow in our faith the more striking it will be every time.

Afterwards, Allison said “I received a lot of texts and phone calls on Saturday and Sunday from TMC’ers telling me they were praying for me and were really excited for me, so even though I was hundreds of miles away from you all, I felt like you were with me on Saturday”.  Allison’s peers, like her, had at some point in their lives become part of a vibrant Catholic community at the college, the sort of community that is rare to find; one that Catholics long to revive. As Allison said, she had known she was going to be Catholic, but being part of such a community, one she had never encountered before, reveled a richness that she had not experienced previously. 

While it is true that Allison did not discover this richness in books, it is not to say that books held no importance. Allison had been going to a Protestant church that had been especially anti-Catholic. “I began asking questions, to find out why Catholicism was so bad, and these questions ended up having the reverse effect.” she said.  These questions led to conversations with some of her relatives, her uncle being one of them.  Books also guided her.  “Letters to a Young Catholic” by George Weigal, was one in particular that helped her on her journey.  She also has a special attachment to the works of Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton. I saw a photo of Allison on Facebook after the Easter Vigil wielding a replica of Sting in one hand with her rite of initiation certificate in the other, while Chesterton and Tolkien watched on in the background. She was armed well by them indeed!

I have the privilege of sharing my office with Joseph Pearce, writer in residence at Thomas More College. I more than once have stepped into the office and simultaneously stepped into a conversation about Chesterton, Tolkien, or Lewis between Mr. Pearce and Allison. 

“Scapulars and Tattoos” not only aptly captures the student body of Thomas More College but encompasses all people on their path to the Church and growth in their faith. Chesterton obviously captured it best in the following…

THE CONVERT

AFTER one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

~G.K. Chesterton

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April 9th, 2013Shakespeare as Schoolmasterby Pavel Chichikov

A story at the BBC tells us that young Will Shakespeare may have been, for a few years, a provincial schoolmaster and not a director, producer, actor or writer of plays. It’s here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22064636

Can you imagine the creator of Hamlet and King Lear on the receiving end of the spit-balls and the giggles of infants in a school room – while his back was turned?  Perhaps he couldn’t either.

At any rate, London must have been a relief after a school teacher’s servitude in Hampshire. Did he imagine himself an Anthony or a Caesar while teaching grammar and simple sums?

In any case, school boys do creep into a few lines, literally creeping thus into Romeo and Juliet:

Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books,

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

And creeping here, from As You Like It:

Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

Are these lines drawn from experience more recent than that of childhood?  Perhaps?

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April 8th, 2013Tolkien and Democracyby Joseph Pearce

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April 7th, 2013For Love or Moneyby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

"People will do anything for a fifty dollar bill," said George Bernard Shaw, "except work for it."

George Bernard Shaw

I'm paraphrasing.  He probably said "fifty pound note".  He put that line in the mouth of one of the characters in his play Major Barbara, which also contains the lines (again I'm quoting from memory)

There are only two ways to tell if a man is serious about something: he'll pay for it or kill for it.

And

What is life but the daily and hourly selling of our soul for trifles?

One of the themes of that electric and witty comedy is that money is a great and good impersonal force that measures how serious we are about things.  What people spend money on shows you where their priorities lie, at the very least.

Now I'm an actor.  Actors have no money.  We have a bit more than free-lance writers, but less that folks who have day jobs.  One of the reasons we have no money is we work cheap - or free.  Most actors love what they do so much that they'll do it without getting paid for it.  This creates some really bad theater, which I've written about before.

But it also gives us some lessons on love.

***

How on earth are we to love?  That's the main question of life and the primary theme of Divine Revelation.

Some folks will tell you all love is free love, or love can only be true if we can make a vow and then break it when we've "grown" or when we've become "another person" - of which G. K. Chesterton says ...

And the end of all this is that maddening horror of unreality which
descends upon the decadents, and compared with which physical pain
itself would have the freshness of a youthful thing. The one hell which
imagination must conceive as most hellish is to be eternally acting a
play without even the narrowest and dirtiest greenroom in which to be human. And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of
the free-lover. To be everlastingly passing through dangers which we
know cannot scathe us, to be taking oaths which we know cannot bind us,
to be defying enemies who we know cannot conquer us--this is the
grinning tyranny of decadence which is called freedom.

Let me unpack that paragraph for you.  For more on "unreality", click the link.  It's a word Bl. John Henry Newman occasionally used, but here it is in Chesterton.  It's a great word and it means a life of eternal contrivance or make-believe, a Peter Pan existence, the hell of the inconsequential - "inconsequential" meaning both nothing following from another thing (in-con-sequence), and also nothing being important enough to die for or to live for - everything is inconsequential or trivial.  Everything is a trifle for which we sell our souls.  

This life of artifice and living death is a "maddening horror" of unreality, which Chesterton says "descends upon the decadents".  The decadents are the poets of Chesterton's youth, the Oscar Wildes and their ilk, who gave themselves over to prancing about with great affectation, often to the point of being "gay" - the greatest of all unrealities.

(Parenthetically, here, let me say something about the whole gay nonsense.  We typically have a natural revulsion for sodomy - even "gay marriage advocates" don't want to go there in their minds - but how often do we really think about the even more frightening unreality of Lesbianism?  Most guys are turned on by the thought of women being sexually aroused in that way, but St. Paul is very clear in Romans that Lesbianism is a result of something else; it's the result of a cause that comes first - abandoning the reality of God's revelation in nature - in other words, Lesbianism is a kind of punishment, a consequence that God permits, resulting from a life of affectation, of devotion to unreality.  Does this mean that girls who experiment with Lesbian encounters are depraved and being punished by God?  Not today, I don't think, as it's almost become a cultural rite of passage; it's "chic".  But women who devote their lives to this are far more disturbed than we care to admit.)

Getting back to Chesterton, he then says that,

The one hell which imagination must conceive as most hellish is to be eternally acting a play without even the narrowest and dirtiest greenroom in which to be human. And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of the free-lover.

To be continually pretending, to be always cut off from reality, to be a "free lover" who can pack up and move on when the fancy fades, is "most hellish".  This is because love is not free; love exacts a price; love demands commitment; love binds; love consists of sacrifice.  Love has boundaries.

Thus, to shack up is never an expression of love, for either party may move on at any time, once the fancy fades.  Even to get married, now that we've ignored Christ's commandment on divorce and remarriage, becomes an example of this artificial life where we are constantly "taking oaths we know cannot bind us".  And extra marital flings, even emotional infidelities that do not pass beyond Skype or the internet, are doomed to this same fate.  For the Unreal never works - for long.  The Unreal always brings in its wake this "grinning tyranny of decadence".

We keep thinking we can love on our own terms, but He keeps showing us that love is far more real than we wish to make it.  For He is Real and He is love.

***

Thus, when we actors give and give and give without reciprocation - when the producer tells us he loves us but he won't even pay us what the stagehand makes - when we preach the Gospel and are met with stony silence - when we love a friend who won't pass that barrier of Unreality and pretense - then we must shake the dust off our feet and move on.

For Shaw was wrong.  Our lives are not the daily and hourly selling of our souls for trifles.  Our lives are a gift of self to God, as the widow who puts in her mite (all that she has) - for man finds himself only in a gift of himself.  And what we seek in return is not mere trifles.  If we seek money in the marketplace, it's only because money facilitates justice in trade.  No, if we give everything to God, He gives everything back,

homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields--along with persecutions--and in the age to come eternal life. (Mark 10:30)

... but when we work in His vineyard, in this age, in the here and now, we are to expect reciprocation, which in the world is measured by money, but which in the Bible is measured by any kind of return- the fig tree that ought to bear fruit (Luke 13:16 & Mat. 21:19), the talent that should return profit (Mat 25:14 ff.) and the Good Soil that should bring forth much.

Unreality is sterility, however - affectation and "gay sex" and contraception lead nowhere and produce nothing.  And yet that is what's all around us.  The worst of us receive much and give nothing in return.  The best of us give much and get nothing in return.

Unless we give to Him and learn to love within the bounds God (who is Love Himself) has set for us.

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April 6th, 2013Turning the Other Cheek is an Act of Mercyby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Have you ever noticed that we can't hurt someone or do an injustice to someone without vilifying that person first?  We can't do a dirty deed unless we've rationalized it.  Part of the witness of Christ Himself was His "passive resistance" at His trial.  By allowing us to do what we did to Him, He showed us our sins and shamed us.  Had He resisted, we would have said, "Well, this man deserves it!  Listen to how he spoke to the High Priest!  Look at how angry he got!  Listen to how he curses us from the cross!  Look at how he spits back when we spit on him!"

But in accepting His persecution and in suffering willingly and for the most part silently - indeed in praying for us as we tortured and killed Him -  He prevented us from convincing ourselves that we were in the right - or at least He inserted a lingering doubt.  And as we jeered Him, maybe one or two of us felt a touch of shame.

Thus "resist not evil" and "turn the other cheek" is really an act of mercy toward the aggressor - it not only keeps you from losing yourself to wrath and giving in to the lust for vengeance, it keeps your enemy from the handy trick of convincing himself that he's justified in hating you and hurting you.  Turning the other cheek is more for his sake than for yours.

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April 6th, 2013We’re Off to Kill the Wizardby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Tonight we performed my totally re-written script of We're Off to Kill the Wizard for the first time.

The show stars Maria Romine as Dorothy.

Larry the Cable Guy as the Scarecrow

Justin Bieber as the Tin Man

And Samuel L. Jackson as the Cowardly Lion

Our performance was at Holy-Field Winery in Basehor, Kansas.

The first version of this show featured Jack Nicholson as the Scarecrow, Al Gore as the Tin Man and Steve the Crocodile Hunter as the Cowardly Lion).  The first time we performed that version at Holy-Field was in June of 2005 (before Justin Bieber was even born - almost!)

On that fateful night, in the middle of Act Two, owner Michelle Meyer began flashing the lights on and off.  We stopped the show and she made this announcement, "The tornado sirens are going off.  We're all going to have to go into the wine cellar to finish the performance - follow me!"  So 90 people got up from their seats and we all marched outside, around the winery building and toward the cellar door around back, where we finished Act Two amid the tanks of wine.

On the way down the stairs, my actress at the time, Linda Spahl, turned to me and said,

"I can see the headline now, ACTRESS IN DOROTHY COSTUME KILLED BY TORNADO IN KANSAS!"

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April 4th, 2013A Postcard from Princetonby Joseph Pearce

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April 3rd, 2013Dirty Dancing is Grinding Me Downby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

My limerick about Lansing, Kansas ...

There once was a Baptist from Lansing,
With morality always advancing,
Said, "I'll never make love
On Earth or above.
Why not? Well, it may lead to dancing."

I use this as an intro to what reader "Ink" writes of her impression of the Beaux-Arts Ball that she and her college school of architecture classmates attended ...

When I looked out at the dance floor, I saw what looked like a writhing orgy of black and skin (architects always wear black; I stood out in blue).  The style of “dance” was what is called “grinding,” and it is pretty much obscene… not to mention that very few people show up to Beaux-Arts sober (being in the sober contingency is a little frustrating sometimes).  The whole thing made me sad.  What has been lost is an appreciation for culture and beauty, as well as any skill in dancing whatsoever.  Most dances which would qualify as “ballroom” dances are inherently gendered: the lead and follow is built in.  It requires sacrifice and submission on both parts; the leader is in charge of making all the decisions, whether he wants to or not, and the follower has to obey, whether she wants to or not.  Otherwise, they’ll go nowhere and probably run into each other.  And I really like that; it means that “Do you want to dance?” becomes a question which doesn’t involve some guy trying to rub himself all over you with music so loud you can’t hear yourself think and instead an opportunity for humour as you try to learn his leader-signals (each leader has his own little quirks) and follow what he tells you to do, while sometimes (or often) having to stop and say “wait, WHAT?” if his signals don’t translate to actions well.  It requires genuine attention on the part of both parties, making the social aspect more apparent as you can actually talk to each other.

Now what Ink may not know is that dancing is just like sex - and indeed sex is just like life.

On the one hand we have the Modern Barbarians who bump and grind, missing the entire poetry of movement and of relationship.  The grind is to dancing what hammering a nail is to a symphony.   A symphony includes many elements, rhythm, melody, harmonics, tone, theme - all of which combine in a coordination of beauty.  Hammering a nail isn't even musical - it's a functional act that resembles one element of music - rhythm - but is really only a brute approximation of it, falling shy even of mere rhythm itself.

Grinding is likewise an element of sex, but only a functional one that is only a brute approximation of the whole symphony.

If these New Age Brutes don't know how to dance, they don't really know how to make love - which is about more than hammering nails.  And if they can't dance, they probably can't read - read a partner, a book, or even the writing on the wall.  We have educated them to ignorance, led them to grunts and grinds and given them a diploma and a plaque to show them how sophisticated they are.  And we wonder why civilization is ending.

A view of my brief career as a show hall dancer

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April 3rd, 2013Thoroughly Modern Mindlessnessby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Reader Bonnie has asked me to comment upon Chesterton's view of modernity or the modern man.

I'll do that in three words: absence of thought.

Now in more than three words ...

***

As I wrote recently, in my post The Sacred Heart Sits Atop the Sacred Backbone,

The great hallmark of the modern world is just this: no boundaries - fuzziness, blur, formlessness: no borders in life, no definition or backbone in the Church, no belief in the reality of form, and hence no ability to think.

This, I believe, is the distinguishing characteristic of the modern world, though there are many others, which include (according to Hilaire Belloc) atheism, cruelty, slavery to the state and to private corporations, etc.  But Belloc, too, sees the Irrational as perhaps the most infernal characteristic of the modern mindset.



Chesterton elaborates ...

As a politician, [the modern man] will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. ...  Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

Now, of course the term "modern" means more than just this.  It can refer to a trend or style or era in politics, art, music, literature, and so forth.

And as I'm very fond of pointing out, Chesterton, who was anything but a modernist in his philosophy, was very much a modernist in his style as a writer of fiction.   He is almost the typical "modern writer", as far as style and structure is concerned, when it comes to, say, The Man who was Thursday.  That book could only have been written in the 20th Century.  No other literary movement, such as Classicism or Romanticism, could have produced it.  It's a very "modern" novel.

And we also know of some of the true blessings of the modern world - scientific advancement, increased comfort, the information revolution, freedom of movement, etc.

But Chesterton's use of "modern" is almost always as an adjective that describes today's man in the confusion of his soul - because the inner life of the modern world is what Chesterton looks at, and that inner life is one that has abandoned faith in reason: not "faith and reason", but having faith IN reason and in reason's ability to comprehend reality at all - indeed the modern world must eventually abandon faith even in reality itself.

The sword that divides is simple and comes early in the history of modern thought - as soon as you doubt the reality of things, you are a modern.  Once you become too squeamish to make the leap of faith from "I think therefore I am" to "It is - and thank God It is!", you are a modern man and you have abandoned all hope of being able to reason further.  For if there are no "things" (separate from you and separate from one another), there are no distinctions and ultimately even the greatest of things, the most distinct of things - being itself - ceases to be.  Doubt being and you will end up denying being, and with it the mind's reason and the heart's hope.

And you will be the Modern Man.

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April 3rd, 2013Gay-Marriage Activist: “The Institution of Marriage Should Not Exist”by Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

"Gay marriage" is not about marriage equality.  It's about DESTROYING MARRIAGE.  That's not my take on it.  That is, in fact, the simple agenda of the activists behind this movement and they admit it.

From Joe Grabowski 

We've all heard the argument that marriage redefinition won't affect your marriage or my marriage, right? Or maybe you've made that argument yourself?
Well, for once some refreshing honesty on that subject, from journalist Masha Gessen (who legally 'married' her same-sex partner in Massachusetts in 2004):

"It’s a no-brainer that we should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.  [cheers from the audience]

That causes my brain some trouble. And part of why it causes me trouble is because fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there—because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life."

So, what was this about a bridge for sale?

For more see here.  

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April 2nd, 2013Our New Popeby Dena Hunt

The priest at my church is over the moon about our new Pope. I’ve never seen him so happy. He says that our new Pope may not write any encyclicals—because he IS an encyclical. He is “living Jesus” because he washes the feet of juvenile offenders, including a Muslim, and because he disdains white pants and red shoes in favor of black, and because he “loves the poor” and chose the name of Francis, etc.

This new Pope, says a famous traditionalist blogger, is motivated by evangelism. Evangelism is the real motive behind all these departures from formality and tradition, these gestures in favor of simplicity. But if that’s really his “motive,” he hasn’t said so. But the blogger is as happy as my priest—though for different reasons—yet both are certain they really “get it.”

Meanwhile, some people fear radical deforms of the liturgy, but there’s nothing about black shoes that should portend universal trivialization of the Mass. As for dogma—unless that self-proclaimed Irish “prophetess” is right, he will not attempt to transform Christian dogma into some absurd contemporary social ideology. (If he does, I’ll leave the Church. There will no longer be a reason for any of us to stay because the Church will cease to be.)

I’m not making light of my priest’s sentiments. I rejoice for him, if not so much with him. I’m also not prepared to take the famous blogger’s word for what motivates Pope Francis.

Apparently unlike my priest and many others over the moon, I don’t personally have anything against red shoes or white pants—or against the synthetic ermine on the Holy Father’s capelet, traditionally worn when he first greets the people of Rome and the world. I don’t really care a great deal about whose feet he chooses to wash, what kind of car he rides in, or where he chooses to live.

I think nobody knows yet—except, of course, that self-proclaimed Irish prophetess who says that Benedict XVI was the last “true” Pope, the last one chosen by God, and that this new Pope Francis is not chosen by God, but will—etc. (not worth going into).

It doesn’t matter. He is the Pope—he is OUR Pope. For the vast bulk of the world’s Catholics, he’s a “dark horse.” We’re not privy to conclave conversations, still less to the prayers of the electing cardinals, and even less than that—I don’t think we know what “purpose” the Holy Spirit has in store for the Church. The fact is, we don’t know much at all, and we don’t know him. We only know a little about him based pretty much on hearsay, and on the impassioned opinions of those who believe they do know him—and know what he’s “up to.” Actually, I think that kind of talk is bait, maybe even poisonous bait.

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April 2nd, 2013More on Milton and His Contemporariesby Joseph Pearce

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April 2nd, 2013The Culture of Death and the Poetry of Lifeby Joseph Pearce

Subscribers to the St. Austin Review will be familiar with the writing and wisdom of Donald DeMarco, who has been a regular contributor to StAR over the years. In today's Crisis he waxes lyrical on the connection between Blessed John Paul II and T. S. Eliot, especially in their respective critiques of the culture of death.

Although DeMarco makes the faux pas of describing Eliot as an Anglo-Catholic at the time that "The Waste Land" was written, whereas, in fact, Eliot did not convert to Anglo-Catholicism until six years later, his analysis of Eliot's poem is full of perceptive insight. Here's the link: 

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-cultures-of-life-and-death-in-poetry?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

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April 2nd, 2013Candles in the Darkby Joseph Pearce

Earlier today I gave an interview for EWTN Radio on my new book, Candles in the Dark: The Authorized Biography of Father Richard Ho Lung and the Missionaries of the Poor (Saint Benedict Press). Those interested in listening to the interview or in learning more about the book can listen to the interview on the uploaded podcast on the following link:

http://www.ewtn.com/multimedia/audio_radio.asp?servertime=201210151405

Alternatively, the interview can also be found on this link:

http://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/seriessearchprog.asp?seriesID=6696&T1=at+home

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April 1st, 2013Paradise Lost and Foundby Joseph Pearce

As astonishing as it may seem, the great Puritan poet, John Milton, seems to have become a Catholic several years before his death, and to have remained a papist until his death. Evidence that Milton is amongst the illustrious list of literary converts is given in a footnote on p. 71 of my book, Through Shakespeare's Eyes. 

Here is the full text of the footnote :

Intriguingly, and astonishingly, a letter to the Tablet, published May 23, 1908, less than a year after Chesterton wrote these words, provides documentary evidence of the unthinkable fact that Milton may also have died a Catholic. As unbelievable as this may seem, the evidence is provided by the respected historian W. H. Gratton Flood from a reputable source. While searching in the seventh report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Gratton Flood came across the following statement from the autobiography of Sir John Percival, in volume 2 of the Egmont Papers: "Milton, the poet, died a Papist. Dr Charlotte, Master of University College, Oxford, told me lately at Bath that he remembers to have heard from Dr Binks that he was at an entertainment in King James' reign, when Sir Christopher Milton, one of the Judges, and elder brother to the famous Mr Milton, the poet, was present; that the Judge did then say publicly his brother was a Papist some years before he died, and that he died so. I am still more persuaded of it from what Dr English told me that he often heard Mr Prior, the poet, say that the late Earl of Dorset told him the same thing."

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March 28th, 2013Sodomy and Proper Disgustby Colin Jory

C.S. Lewis’ little booklet The Abolition of Man is about proper responses. Lewis was fired to write it by a declaration in a new school-book that when a person says that a waterfall is sublime, he is telling nothing about the waterfall but only about his personal feelings. He declared that this is false, and that when fed to schoolchildren it is destructively false. He told that in reality the beholder was not merely testifying to how he felt when he gazed on the waterfall, but implying that, because of the way we are made and the characteristics of the particular waterfall, those feelings are the proper ones to have, and the waterfall should seem to any and all of us to be sublime. Extending the precept, he argued that there is a natural law, and within that there is human nature, by authority of which there are proper ways we should feel about a great array of things.

Lewis humbly instanced himself as a negative example, in one regard. He noted that the proposition, “little children are delightful”, holds true even though he himself found small children merely annoying; and that because it is true his inability to perceive them as delightful was a defect and an objective disability, something which was wrong about him.

He made a most perceptive observation regarding the well-intentioned, unrecognised indoctrination of schoolchildren by the authors of the offending book. He declared of the ordinary schoolchild,

It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.

 

Is that not prescient of the present?

Now, sodomy, or buggery, is unnatural sexual intercourse. It can be heterosexual, homosexual or bestial, and it is disgusting. By that I do not mean simply that I find it disgusting, or even that I necessarily do find all instances of such behaviour disgusting rather than, for instance, merely laughable, but that – as Lewis would have said – the proper response for anyone and everyone to such behaviour is to feel disgust at it. A person who is homosexual by inclination should feel disgust at the prospect of homosexual sodomy even though he is attracted to it. I remember a very fine Catholic man, now deceased, who was prominent locally in the (Canberra) Knights of the Southern Cross, Australia’s equivalent of the Knights of Columbus, was married with several children, but was slightly effeminate (which most homosexuals are not). When on one occasion the subject of homosexual behaviour was touched upon he expressed deep disgust yet, I noticed, gave an involuntary little thrill-shiver which revealed that he simultaneously felt attracted to it. His response was the proper Christian one: the attraction to sodomy he couldn’t help, but his disgust at such behaviour arose from his deep appreciation that it is nonetheless innately wrong and disgusting

At that time I used to do a lot of book reviewing for the now-defunct Melbourne Catholic weekly the Advocate, and was given to review a well-received book on Australian society by a very prominent Melbourne Catholic layman. He was certainly orthodox, and in the mid-1950s had been the last president of one of Australia’s most spectacularly influential lay organisations, the Campion Society. I reviewed the book favourably, but noted that at one point he touched on homosexuality and represented it as natural, but spoke of disgust at homosexual sodomy as if it was regrettable and not natural. He was quite cut, and responded in the next issue with the declaration that not all homosexuals are sodomites and not all sodomites are homosexual – which is, of course, true but was utterly irrelevant.

He was a psychologist and was routinely used by the archdiocese to vet candidates for seminary life; and recently I discovered, from the scurrilous but useful “Broken Rites” site, which catalogues Australian Catholic priests, religious and Church lay employees who have provably sexually abused children or persons under their care, that in the 1980s some candidates and seminarians who felt same-sex attractions and were sent to him he gave “emotional release” therapy by encouraging them to masturbate in his presence, and on occasions helping them do so. That does not mean his Catholic orthodoxy was a sham; it simply means that he deceived himself at a time when the Church seemed to have quietly abandoned all its teachings on sexual sins and much else, and to be keeping them on its books as dead letters. It is very easy for us to deceive ourselves when we feel strong but wrong sexual attractions, whether heterosexual or homosexual; and it has been a great wickedness among the Church’s authorities that, under the excuse of “pastoral sensitivity” and “non-divisiveness”, they have for decades deprived the ordinary, sinful faithful, whether priests, religious or laity, of the authoritative Catholic and (thus) Divine teachings, taught authoritatively, that we need and until post-Vatican II or post-Humanae Vitae always had as our strongest bulwark against sexual temptation.

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March 28th, 2013Speaking Engagements for Aprilby Joseph Pearce

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March 28th, 2013Newman A to Z: Pby Joseph Pearce

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March 28th, 2013TORn: A Site all Tolkien Fans Should Frequentby Abigail C. Reimel

Just wanted to share a link that should have been shared a long time ago!

www.theonering.net (referred to as TORn by its fans) is a site which originated when Hobbit movie rumors did, many years before the movie actually materialized, and has been posting about all things Tolkien ever since. They not only provide the best movie media coverage to be found on the world wide web, but they also review Tolkien’s works, post about his history, feature videos that explore Tolkien-esque themes, and devotedly inform fans of days worth celebrating, such as the recently passed Tolkien Reading Day and the regular feature: “Today in Middle-Earth”.

I encourage all Tolkien fans to head on over and check out this site “forged by and for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien”; while there, be sure to vote in Round Three of Middle-earth March Madness, check out the most recent film developments for The Desolation of Smaug, and enjoy browsing the Library, where the most recent articles include a review of the first Latin translation of The Hobbit and an article on where the Shire received its name.

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March 27th, 2013Bilbo Baggins Comes to Wisconsinby Joseph Pearce

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March 27th, 2013Candles of Light and Lifeby Joseph Pearce

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March 27th, 2013The Catholic Northby Joseph Pearce

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March 26th, 2013Reconciliationby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Last night I posted on Facebook

Has anyone out there ever had anyone who hurt you, other than a spouse or child, actually apologize to you - or apologize in anything but a very limited and conditional way? It has happened to me once in my entire life, and that was an actor who wanted me to hire him again. I did, and it was a huge mistake. Other than that, a genuine "I'm sorry" is never heard, among Christians, pagans, or atheists.

To my surprise, I got a number of comments.   Many people said that they and their spouses are always apologizing to one another, and sincerely - but that it's a very rare thing for those outside of our immediate families to do such things.

I think this is the mystery of Reconciliation.

The reason friends or strangers who hurt us hardly ever offer sincere apologies (or even the occasional "I'm sorry, but -") is the reason they hurt us in the first place - they don't care.  A sincere apology requires contrition, in the same way that the Sacrament of Reconciliation requires contrition, and contrition consists not only in a sincere sorrow for having done wrong, but also a desire not to do wrong again or even to put ourselves in a position to do wrong: the motivation behind genuine contrition is repair, the re-instatement of an old status.  Bad friends or strangers have no desire for such a thing, for they were not seeking that to begin with.

So the decline of the use of Confession in the Catholic Church is not just because priests don't recommend it enough or offer it enough, but because most Catholics don't have any desire to be Reconciled - to be in full communion with Jesus Christ.  To do so would mean giving up our secret pleasures - judgmentalism, promiscuous sex, pornography, false-tolerance, love of money, etc.  Why would we want to be Reconciled with a Body that requires such renunciations in order to be intimate with it, in order to be friends?

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March 26th, 2013Boundariesby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Love demands boundaries.

This is maybe the hardest lesson for moderns to appreciate.

Thought demands boundaries.  This is because thought recognizes the boundaries that do exist.  A married couple cannot be two men or two women - this is a boundary that exists independent of what we want.  Giving you life over to drugs or porn will make you miserable - this is a boundary that we try to cross all the time, and then we find to our surprise that it applies to us as well as to all those others, those addicts, who are not us.  There are distinctions in form and without acknowledging them, pure confusion results - but look at the money spent on "higher education" in this country, for an indoctrination that is blind to intangible reality.

At any rate, the most miserable person in the world is a spoiled child.  My wife corrects me: "The most miserable person in the world is a spoiled child who does not get his or her way."  A brat having a tantrum displays an unhappiness and lack of perspective that knows no bounds, for a spoiled child knows no boundaries.

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March 26th, 2013A “New World” New Popeby Hannah O'Connor

March 13^th, was the day of my first Pope.  I had grown to respect and love Benedict during my four years as an undergrad at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, and his writings in fact, were influential in my conversion to Catholicism this past year. But, March 13^th was the day of MY first Pope. 

Being Protestant and disdaining, I obviously missed the excitement around Benedict’s election, and I never knew what I had missed.  While to other parts of Merrimack, New Hampshire, it was just another ho-hum hump day of the week, at Thomas More College the event was magnified beyond imagination to a level truly worthy of the occasion itself! As a staff member of the College I was privileged to partake in the celebration of a small close knit Catholic community that reflected the celebration of the Church on March 13^th.

During daily morning Mass, College Chaplain Father Healey prayed for a new pope.  At about two in the afternoon, excited shouts could be heard: news had arrived on campus of white smoke seen issuing from the Sistine Chapel. Students were promptly issuing forth from the doors of classrooms in a waterfall of excitement.

In the library, groups of students and faculty craned their necks to watch the coverage of the new Pope’s entrance onto the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica. The only students absent were those currently completing the Rome Semester who were present at Saint Peter’s in the flesh. At the suggestion of the faculty present, one of the juniors was sent to fetch a few bottles of celebratory champagne.

The rest of the afternoon took on a festive mood, to say the least.  Sunshine and excitement reached every corner of campus. Staff and faculty, who were close by, gathered in the main office of the Administration Building, watching via the presidential secretary’s office.  The mailman came and went, a bit of the outside world most likely confused by groups of students scurrying across campus singing in Latin. Every time the web feedback had to buffer, all in the office cried out, probably mystifying the workmen who were installing a new front door to the building that day. There was no NBA game of great importance today, no Stanley Cup championship winner, no Red Sox game, no national holiday, it was March 13^th. What in the world could make this whole community of people so ecstatic?

The rest of the day truly was a holiday for all at the College. When that name was announced there was a general hush, not of disappointment, but of excitement, hope and wonder.  Hope that was uplifted when that balcony curtain parted and that humble man stepped forward into the entire world.  It was a day that should have been celebrated by all of the New World, nay the entire world!  Instead of continuing on in mild confusion, mailman and carpenter alike should have been able to pause a while in celebration. That day, the day of my first Pope, made me realize, what an incredible gift a good and strong faith filled community is.  What a day of Firsts on so many levels; the first pope from the New World, the first Jesuit, the first Francis, and my first pope.

At supper, President Fahey gave a short address to the student body expressing the College’s profound gratitude for the election of a new pontiff. Following the speech, a dozen generously-donated bottles of champagne were brought out to toast Pope Francis and his pontificate:

Thomas More College expresses its profound gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the election of Pope Francis.

Following the Magisterial teaching on higher education as found in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the College joyfully lives out its Catholic identity by proposing to its students—and to the world—the truth as found in the person of Jesus Christ and His Church. We prayerfully hope that the witness of Pope Francis be an example and inspiration for the College's mission to rejoice in the pursuit of truth.

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March 25th, 2013Big Brother and Big Businessby Joseph Pearce

Big Government and Big Business are the best of friends. The nature of their friendship, and its destructive impact on the freedom of the family, can be seen in the way in which Bill Gates is in league with the Obama regime in forcing secular fundamentalism onto school curricula across the nation. If Gates and Obama have their way, all children will be forced to learn their version of reality. Their plans amount to compulsory brainwashing. Read more:  

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-ambitions-of-bill-and-melinda-gates-controlling-population-and-public-education?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

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March 25th, 2013The Degrees of Difficulty in Forgivingby Dena Hunt

Breathes there a Christian who has not encountered the stumbling block of forgiveness? The lack of it, I mean. First, some delineation is necessary. I’m not talking about huge collective sins like, say, World War II, nor am I talking about the minor irritants or disappointments in some acquaintance or other. No. Somebody close. Something personal.

Somebody betrays your trust, personally. They said or did something that hurt you to the core. The marriage/friendship/relationship is broken and you go your separate ways. Life goes on, and you try not to think about it—because it causes you pain, or it makes you angry (though you know the anger is really just an expression of your pain.) Days, weeks, months, go by. If the relationship is particularly close (spouse, sibling, parent), even years go by. And there is still pain.

You realize you have to forgive them. Not for the sake of the relationship. That’s shattered. But for your own sake. You just need to stop the pain, and you know that forgiveness is the only way. Okay. How? The difficulty of forgiving is a matter of degree.

1. Easy: They apologize. Is the apology sincere? Are they really contrite? Do they acknowledge their guilt and promise never to do it again? If so, forgiving is easy. You accept the apology but you keep your distance if you’re intelligent. Betrayers of trust are usually serial (though not always), and if they’re truly contrite, maybe they’ve learned from the experience. When we apologize to God during Confession—and we’re sincere—this is the way we usually do it. God accepts our apology, and we forgive others as he has forgiven us.

2. Not so easy: They apologize but they condition it. They say, “I’m sorry IF I hurt you,” or “I’m sorry IF I said or did something to offend you.” This is not sincere because there’s no acknowledgement of guilt here. It’s hypocritical. Worse than that, they force you to accept an apology you know to be insincere. You have to accept it because you can’t refuse to forgive somebody without incurring sin yourself. So you accept the apology with equal insincerity so the ordeal can be “officially” over. Nothing is mended here. Not your pain or anger nor their soul—which, in the absence of true repentance, is stained. The injury here is actually compounded because they’ve put you in the position of having to accept the false apology, thereby making you as hypocritical as they are. To go to Confession with such an apology is sacrilege.

3. Difficult: They turn it on you. The destruction of the relationship is made to be your fault. This is the usual choice of those who habitually displace responsibility. When confronted, they say things like: “Well, you’re the one who’s angry, not me” (not even minima culpa here). Of course they’re not angry; they’re not the one who’s been hurt. You want to forgive but they make it impossible this way. They

put you into a dilemma. If you walk away, you’re the one to blame; if you resume the relationship without an apology from them, you accept responsibility for their misdeeds. The injury they’ve done you is swept under the rug, ignored. And you resume the relationship, even though it now has the shape of a cruciform. This is the kind of misdeed that never even makes it to Confession. Without radical transformation in the wrongdoer, it will eventually lead to--

4. The most difficult degree of all: This forgiveness includes the difficult degree just described, but it goes further. It faces a brick wall of utter denial. You are hurt, but, because they intended you no harm, they assert that no harm was done. You have no right to be hurt. And worse than the original injury is this additional one: The injury was done out of their indifference. Your injury is irrelevant because YOU are irrelevant. Once they “prove” their innocence through denying any harm, their interest in the matter is spent.

This is shocking, even astonishing. Someone steps on a child’s kitten and then says, “Well, I didn’t know it was there,” and immediately forgets both what he did and the child. He acknowledges nothing. He had no intention of harm—because he didn’t care enough to notice in the first place. Ergo, he’s guilty of nothing.

Anyone who’s ever been confronted with this last degree of difficulty in forgiving will know just how frustrating it can be. It’s the kind that most often causes in us frail mortals a real and sustained anger. I remember reading somewhere that even Pope Benedict once said that while we’re all required to forgive even the most grievous hurt, in the absence of repentance, it’s impossible. I would add that the absence even of acknowledgement is still worse. But worst of all is this indifference in the place where that acknowledgement should be.

BUT there is a way and it’s in one half of a sentence, one dependent clause: “…for they know not what they do.”

Try it. It works. Ruminate on it. Digest it. They’re astonishingly insensitive, amazingly ignorant, simply void of any empathic capability. We like to believe that when our Lord hung on the Cross where our sins put him, he forgave us out of love. But maybe it was simple pity. Maybe it was because he could see just how monstrously deformed we are.

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March 22nd, 2013Is the New Pope an Admirer of G.K. Chesterton?by Joseph Pearce

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March 22nd, 2013To Crack the Frozen Earthby C.J. Williams

Lent always meant death to me. No, it wasn’t grieving, or even a miserable season. But it was grey. The numbness of a shroud. The turning away. It meant looking down and being or acting depressed, and it meant dredging up all the abject and inexcusable things I’d done or known or seen in the world.

It meant focusing on the negative to me – and I always felt, no, I believed that was the whole of it. Look ahead to Death! O Death, let’s see and feel your sting. Sit right here in – what was really sticky ashy self-pity – and then look forward to Death, and more self-recrimination, self-pity, misery. For underneath it, a little neurotic part of myself said it was all my fault, and I ought to be able to change it, if I were really worth anything.

Lent. Self-inflicted and self-absorbed. But most particularly, dead.

Which is strange, at the root, because it is Christmas , and Advent, in which we wait in irredeemed dark, or Christless death – in a dead winter world while days get deeper with darkness, and shorter in cold. It is Adven that is full of the silence and chill of a world dying, cold both in season and for lack of Life and Love. It is Advent, and even after Christmas, which though they herald a hope, and wonder, have not yet returned t us our freedom; not yet.

Yet when Lent comes, Winter will soon be waning. Lent comes as days lengthen, and spring prods and peers in at the dawn. Lent comes when Christ is grown, and is out on hilltops and in the cities, proclaiming the Good News. The command and fulfillment of a new covenant are cracking the frozen Earth.

Lent comes not looking towards Death, no, not even looking towards mere hope – no, Lent comes with the trumpets of total and fulfilling salvation; new life; absolute abolition of self-struck misery, the muddy sin-spitty self-pity and fear. This is the defeat of Death. His Birth was only a precursor, a hint to our own re-birth if we follow him through – His Birth, which reclothes our humanity in divinity.

I thought Lent was about being a blob, a stick in the mud. Alone, without a true connection to a God Who Loves Us, the weight of Death – I wrestled with it, and gave up. I looked at God as far off, and as punishing. And Lent was the time to fix it all, in that peculiarly human topsy-turvy pride – the pride that says I am the very worst, I am misery, and thus I have excuse to complain or hide or do nothing.

This is not Lent. This is the world, untouched by Lent. This is the despair, still masked, not subjected to the brilliant glare of the desert and the 40 days turned bold-faced towards God. This is a lie.

For Lent is about joy. Lent is about action – which is why we pray, and give alms, and take on a sacrifice, or habit-forming service; not to misery ourselves, to change ourselves from mud-huggers to dawn-seekers; to raise our eyes from dust to daylight. The days grow longer as the Son travels the countryside, speaking the Word of God; the Word He speaks, the Word He is, the Word He fulfills. And he loves those who listen, and turn towards it. He loves us before we can ever understand the radiance of the season, before we ever love ourselves.

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March 21st, 2013Good Catholic Historiansby Joseph Pearce

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March 21st, 2013A Postcard from the Still Frozen Northby Joseph Pearce

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March 21st, 2013Happiness is a Warm Ringoby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

She told me a short anecdote.

"When John Lennon was in grade school, the assignment was to write down what you wanted to be when you grew up.  He wrote down one word - HAPPY.  The teacher scolded him for that."

And I thought, "Well, that's a great answer.  A better teacher would have said ...

'Do you want to be happy, John?  Well, all you need is love.  Not sentiment or good will, but love.  Serve God and serve others and you will be happy.  Love even through suffering and sacrifice and you will be happy.' "

I suspect, from what little I know of John Lennon, that while he loved his music (and served God and others through his music), the fame and "success" that came with it made him downright miserable - made him a heroin addict and a vulgar little man spewing venom when he didn't get his way.  There was certainly more to Lennon than that, but at his worst, he was about as mean and unhappy as a human being can get.

This is not to negate his rather remarkable soul and wit, which cry out to us from his music, and especially his singing.  He is easily the best vocalist of the Beatles - because of the rawness of emotion that he was able to convey in his performances.  Paul has a sweeter voice, but John had greater range and depth and pain in everything he sang.  And while "Imagine" - his solo career masterpiece - is a pretty insipid song philosophically, the melody is beautiful and the sentiment - while wrong-headed - is quite innocent and well-intentioned.  His religious urges - even when they took the form of a frustrated atheism yearning for a worldly utopia - were always honest and unvarnished.  Let us hope that he's in that very heaven that he could never Imagine.

And we all need a touch of Lennon to our McCartney.  We all need the pain and honesty and skepticism that brings some spice to our glib, easy and charming ways.  If you don't know what Jesus meant by "salt of the earth", just think of what John Lennon was to the Beatles - which would have been a pretty tame pop group without him, without that added spice.

And I'll go further than that - we all need a little Ringo.  Ringo is the Sancho Panza to our Don Quixote - the good natured and down-to-earth and sometimes foolish and inept brunt of our aspirations.  We all suspect that the George in us is really a bit pretentious when it comes to all that mystical nonsense - but the Ringo is the Sam to our Frodo, the Dogberry to our Benedict, the dog to our cat.  Well, you know what I mean.

Ringo is my favorite Beatle.

There, I've said it and I'm glad!  Though it astonishes me that (as I've said before) my Stanford Nutting videos get more YouTube views than Ringo's do.

***

But the deeper message here is not about the Beatles - it's about how do you be HAPPY?  How do you steward your love?

How often we give, only to get taken.  How often we offer, only to be ignored.  How often do we kick in, only to be kicked out?

And when we do sometimes catch the ear of the world, as the four lads from Liverpool did, how often do we all shine on, like the moon, the stars and the sun, and then, when the super-nova fades, come crashing down to a hell of our own making, nothing below us, above us only sky, and a gnawing pain in our gut and a desperate need for our next fix?

Love is not easy; success is not easy; being happy is not easy.

But it's what I want to be when I grow up.

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March 21st, 2013Ink and Fairy Dustby Joseph Pearce

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March 19th, 2013A Lonely Griefby Dena Hunt

I have been watching our new Holy Father’s inauguration and listening to his homily. He is in all ways an admirable and inspiring figure, and I am completely certain of his anointing by the Holy Spirit to lead us, to be our Shepherd. I am completely without any reservations about him, even less than many who don’t yet feel that they know enough about him to rejoice wholeheartedly in his election—even those among the very faithful to whom it would not occur to have reservations in the first place. But--

Today is the feast day of St. Joseph, and I cannot forget there is another Joseph in silent seclusion, unmentioned. If he had died, if there had been a time given to us for mourning, if ----. This is not a complaint, still less a criticism, and I know and understand the need for no mention of him by the Church. We cannot have two popes. Everything has been done to give the illusion that he’s “gone.” But--

He’s not gone. I still love him. I cannot just stop loving him because he resigned. It’s not that easy. Perhaps it’s unseemly, or not in accord with what’s good for the Church and for us. And I’m sure our Pope Emeritus wouldn’t approve this feeling of profound loss, but I can’t just transfer—on command, as it were—all reverence to another Pope as though the one whom I love as Holy Father had ceased to be. It’s not merely as though he died but something much worse—Everything is happening in the Church, in the media, even in the Catholic blogosphere as though he were never here. It’s strange, unnatural, and something makes me want to say it’s also unbecoming.

I want to repeat that I’m not criticizing anything, and I recognize, under the circumstances, the need for—it’s hard to say it—the “Pope Emeritus” to be as invisible as possible. “The king is dead—long live the king” and all that. But that’s the point: He’s not dead—and there has been no period of mourning—and there is a falseness here that estranges.

Our new Holy Father is charming, wise, all things good—but I have found no responsive chord except one: Before he ascended the balcony to greet the people after his election, he telephoned Benedict XVI!

I think grief is infinitely worse when one feels so alone in it, a grief that should be shared by millions of brothers and sisters—but isn’t recognized, isn’t allowed. I have never felt this estranged from the Church. 

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March 19th, 2013Faith and Parking Spacesby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

A good friend of mine once was bragging about a thing called "Est", which was sort of Scientology-lite, or a cult for those who wanted a cult they could take home with them at night.

One of the things "Est" promised was how, once you got the "power", you could free up parking spaces in front of places you were driving to.  The Power of Positive Thinking applied to your own personal convenience.

Yesterday, the priest in confession (a retired auxiliary bishop) gave me a CD to listen to as penance.  The guy on the CD was some Protestant speaking before a group in the 1960's.  He was preaching "Empathetic Reconciliation" or something like that - meaning that you could in his words "beam out" God's forgiveness even to people you knew who were not the least bit repentant for their sins.  He asserted that God gave the power to forgive or retain sins not to the apostles, but to all Christians.  And therefore, all you had to do was to pray in just the right way and the power would "beam out" forgiveness to that person - not for their own good, but for yours.  The three or four examples he gave were of people who were reluctant to cooperate, but suddenly became team players after this forgiveness was "beamed out" to them, unaware though they were of this fact.  One gal refused to sell a valuable piece of property until she was vicariously forgiven (or whatever the phrase is), at which point she was willing to sell and everyone was happy.  Kind of a nascent Prosperity Gospel for "Est" rejects.  The Power of Positive Thinking applied to your own personal convenience.

Of course, the Church teaches that - as in all things between God and man - two things are needed: God's grace and our cooperation with it.  The Angel Gabriel's offer and Mary's "yes".  The forgiveness the father offers the prodigal son, and the shame and repentance of the son that preceded this and that made him open to seeking forgiveness.  Without penance, reconciliation is cheap grace at best, a joke at worst, offering no real repair of the breach that sin has caused.

But lo and behold, what did that horrid publication The Word Among Us say about yesterday's Scrpture readings?  That God is always active in our lives.  How do we know this?  Well, when we are looking for a parking space near our destination and God provides it, we know God is working in our lives!

I threw the book across the room and cursed again.

It reminded me of a horrible homily I heard at an FSSP Latin Mass.  The 29-year-old priest said, "One day I wanted to have salsa with my chips, and I realized I had no clean containers to put the salsa in.  Then I realized the butter tub in the fridge was empty.  It made a great salsa container!  God does indeed provide."  And he was serious.

My friends, there's a word for all of this stuff, a word only lit majors know, a word that sums up Est and beaming out forgiveness so that your enemies start to cooperate with you and parking spaces and butter tubs being the sort of things we would set our hearts on.

And that word is Bathos.

And its related adjective - Bathetic.

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March 18th, 2013Of Slackers, Control Freaks and Loveby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

(Above: Kevin the Slacker / Kevin the Control Freak)

***

I was a slacker.

I could not hold down a day job.  I was constitutionally unable to work in any field other than bringing words to life - drama, theater, show biz.  Try to make a living at that, as a 20-year-old in St. Louis - I dare you.  I was an atheist, but I had a vocation, and I knew it.  I had a call that I had to answer, even if no one was on the other line when I picked up the phone.

And I filled in the best I could.  I did quite well performing singing telegrams - over 2,000 of them in a five-year period.  I supported myself for short periods in various ways - as a stand up comic, a magician, a drama teacher.  At one point, I toured to military bases in Korea, Japan and Australia with a show I wrote and produced.  I worked for a year or two as the Fool at the Royal Dumpe in St. Louis.  I sold inflatable entertainment items to colleges across the U.S. - sumo wresting suits, inflatable obstacle courses, etc.  I delivered flyers door-to-door while listening to cassette recordings of stage plays on my Walmkman.

One year things were so bad that I had to count the pennies in the penny jar my grandma had given me.  Seventeen dollars in pennies, money that I used to buy food the week my cash ran out.  This was at a time when I was living in a house where the rain would literally pour through the roof, but since I couldn't afford to pay the rent, the landlord wouldn't fix it.  He eventually evicted me.  I found a dryer place.

***

Ten years later, I was a control freak.

I spent every waking hour working for my business, Upstage Productions.  When I wasn't touring with shows, I was in the office writing, selling, rehearsing, directing.  I would almost never see my family.  My wife, who married me when I was a slacker, couldn't believe the transformation.  And she didn't completely like it, for I had gone too far in the opposite direction.

What happened?

I had found a way to make a living at something I loved.  Murder Mystery Dinner Theater shows gave me the opportunity to write and perform in productions that were funny, that involved improvisation and acting, and that paid very well - and it was an opportunity that seemed hand-crafted for me and my unusual mixture of talent and temperament.  Frustrated as I had been all those years of having such dearth prospects, I threw myself into murder mysteries with gusto, to the detriment of the rest of my life.

But what was the rest of my life?

The rest of my life was then and has since been the great mystery of libido - by which I mean not merely sexual energy, but "liking", "desire", "interest" - indeed "love".  Jung used the word more in this sense, and it is in this sense I use it - a term that includes sexual desire, but that is more than just sexual desire.  It is the motivation that provokes our interest in something else, the urge to get out of bed in the morning for a particular thing or person we seek.  Eros is perhaps a better term for libido, but Eros has a more specific sexual connotation, as well as a more expansive spiritual connotation - and libido can be content with worldly things, while Eros is never quite so content. I suspect many people struggle with libido and their struggles mirror mine, though mine have been particularly dramatic, in a life devoted to drama.

***

What do I mean by all this psycho-sexual gobbledygook?

First, libido is scary.  God calls us to serve Him by serving our neighbor, by engaging in our states in life, by working through the imperfect place he's put us in.  But doing this requires an abandonment to His will - actually more of an affirmation of His will - which means a renunciation, a sacrifice, a loss of control over our own little patterns and schemes.  And so, out of fear,we either draw back and become slackers or go hyper and become control freaks.

Let me give you some examples of the problems of libido (the problems of love), all taken from real experiences, names changed to protect the innocent.

• A depressed person is known primarily by his or her lack of libido - a withdrawal of interest in life.  Similarly, slackers and bored teen-agers are known by this lack of general interest in life.  The great tragedy of the bored and depressed is that they cannot engage in the world around them.

For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete and correct his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself. Do read Charles Williams’ Descent into Hell and study the character of Mr. Wentworth.

I'm not too fond of Charles Williams, but Lewis' description makes me want to read that book.

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March 17th, 2013Musing on “Les Miserables”by Christopher King

I have fond memories of seeing Les Miserables in its San Francisco stage production many years ago.  It was therefore with great disappointment—and with some questioning of my judgment in earlier years—that several months ago I saw the 25th anniversary stage production (a cynical affair, I thought), and with correspondingly heightened delight that I recently watched (and re-watched) the recent film adaptation with Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, et al.

I was particularly struck by two aspects of the film: first, the unexpectedly sympathetic portrayal of religious imagery, and second, the immense charity and understanding with which the characters were presented.  (To be sure, the film also contains powerful renditions of the classic Les Miserables songs, plus a great deal of haunting imagery, such as the symbolic scenes of Inspector Javert beneath the stars far above the sleeping city of Paris, walking a ledge with measured step.  But such “natural beauty” was less startling and unexpected than the “moral beauty”, which is of central importance.)

The religious dimension is portrayed in a way that, although sometimes subtle, sometimes more overt, is profoundly sympathetic and very beautiful.  Valjean’s new life begins when a bishop with great compassion and humility “buys his soul for God” at the price of his silver candlesticks.  Unlike in any modern production that I can recall, the bishop is portrayed as being thorougly genuine and loving, and is the one who first welcomes Valjean into heaven after his death.  Valjean and Cosette also take refuge in a monastery midway through the film, and Valjean again returns to the monastery, as to a refuge, when he is dying.  I failed to notice until late in the film—more astute viewers may have noticed it far earlier than I—that even in the greatest haste, Valjean carefully packs his candlesticks—the price of his soul—each time that he flees the relentless Javert from one location to set up a new life in another.  I was also amazed to see how omnipresent imagery of crosses and crucifixes was throughout the film, not only prominently on the dressers of Valjean and Javert, but also subtly, in unexpected places, such as on the barricade where the student revolutionaries stage their uprising.  (As if Emmanuel, “God with us”, is secretly, silently, accompanying them all, pure or flawed, in all places and all circumstances.)

I was also struck by the great charity--compassion and understanding–with which the characters were portrayed.  Most productions would use the conflict to set up characters who are the enemy, who are portrayed as without redeeming virtues, people that the audience can hate.  Yet aside from a few malevolent minor characters who torment Fantine, shown only for a few moments, only the Thernardiers are portrayed as out-and-out villians, and that‘s only fitting, given their role as a sort of comic relief.  Javert’s blind, misguided commitment to stern justice and order is portrayed with compassion, as a kind of tragedy.  Both the student revolutionaries, who go out foolishly but boldly to resist the government, and the young officer who leads the soldiers opposed to them (and whose discomfort with the prospect of initiating a one-sided battle that will lead to their slaughter shows on his face when he orders the attack)… both Marius, the aristocratic young revolutionary who disclaims his class, and his wealthy grandfather who is wounded by his actions but who continues to love him nonetheless… all are portrayed with understanding and love.  There are few works—and particular major films—that I can recall that are of this nature, that don’t fall back from time to time on the device of opposing love for one group with loathing for their enemies.  (The novels of the little-known but gloriously compassionate author Elizabeth Goudge is one of the exceptions that comes to mind.)  These are the sort of eyes that I imagine holy-hearted people have when they look upon the world and its creatures--whether noble and generous, or erring and lost--with compassion and love.

My sole disappointemnt came in the final minutes, when Valjean passes through death, welcomed by the priest in the darkness of the church and led by Fantine out into the sunshine, to the vision of a new society.  As if one had passed through the veil of the transcendent, hinted at by all that preceded it, to arrive… in Paris again?  Only this time with singing, happy people?  (I suppose that in theory it could be like the real Narnia, after the old world has passed away… but it wasn’t.)  A new, more humane, more just, more jubilant society—nice though it is—is quite a letdown, if one was hoping for the Beatific Vision, and this final scene ever-so-slightly undermines the greatness that preceded it and leaves one speculating about the director’s intentions in including it.  But then one can just sigh gently, put aside the apparent imperfection of this final part, and dwell again within the beauty of the whole.

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March 15th, 2013Beyond Politicsby Joseph Pearce

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March 14th, 2013A Postcard from Romeby Joseph Pearce

This is a short and delightful eye witness account of the election of Pope Francis by Cornelius Sullivan, an excellent Catholic artist whose work has been featured in the St. Austin Review. It makes for edifying and entertaining reading and contains one of the funniest unintentional puns that I've ever seen. Read on and discover how the love of wine is truly divine!

http://www.corneliussullivan.com/Pope%20Francis%20I.html

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March 14th, 2013A Flower of St. Francisby Joseph Pearce

What do you get when you cross a Franicscan with a Jesuit? In the field of literature you get one of the greatest poets of all time. Gerard Manley Hopkins was a convert to the Faith, a Jesuit priest and one who was imbued to the core with the spirit of St. Francis. In many ways his philosophy and the poetry which it informed is a creative fusion of Ignatian and Franciscan spirituality. This same fusion is to be seen in the holy example of Father Ho Lung, founder of the Missionaries of the Poor, one of the fastest growing religious orders in the Church today. I have just had the honour of writing a biography of Father Ho Lung, soon to be published as Candles in the Dark: Father Ho Lung and the Missionaries of the Poor. Father Ho Lung converted to the Faith under the influence of the Franciscan sisters who taught him. Becoming a Jesuit he taught literature at high school and university, having a particular love for the poetry of his fellow Franciscan Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins, before devoting his life in service to the poorest of the poor.

Now I am struck by the parallels between Father Ho Lung and our new pope. Like Father Ho Lung, Pope Francis is a Jesuit who has spent his life in Franciscan simplicity and in genuine service to the poor. He has also taught high school, including literature I believe.

Let's return to our original quesiton. What do you get when you cross a Franciscan with a Jesuit? You get the greatest of poets, the holiest of priests, and (God willing and please God), a truly great pope.

I am appearing on Teresa Tomeo's show in about twenty minutes to talk about the new pope so will have to curtail my own musings here on the Ink Desk. Instead, I'll provide a link to an excellent article on the new pope by Scott Richert:  

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/pope-francis-knows-what-must-be-done?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

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March 14th, 2013Hamlet the Catholicby Joseph Pearce

Here's an excellent article on Hamlet by Mitchell Kalpakgian in today's Crisis:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/shakespeares-hamlet?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

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March 14th, 2013Newman A to Z: Original Sinby Joseph Pearce

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March 14th, 2013Les Misérables: Mercy and Miseryby Joseph Pearce

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March 14th, 2013Walking the Walk and Doubting the Doubtby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

I have one brief thing to say about our new Holy Father, Pope Francis.  His fellow Jesuits in Argentina don't like him.  And that is the best sign we've had yet that this man is holy and devout!  The Jesuits have gone badly off the rails, and the corruption of the best is the worst.  Since the Jesuits were at one time the best of the best, their corruption has produced, in most cases, the worst of the worst.  But maybe that will change.  The young Jesuits in formation show much promise, and now a Jesuit pope might make a difference, the kind of difference most current Jesuits are very much opposed to.

Plus he takes public transportation, loves the poor, and defends marriage.  He walks the walk.  What a blessing he is! 

***

But I wanted to post about something that I've experienced many times, and that I suspect some of my readers go through as well.

And that is "coming down".

After every intense spiritual experience I've had - whether that experience came at a visit to EWTN, a Chesterton Conference, a Theater of the Word tour - I've always had a hard time "coming down".  There is a decompression that you have to go through when leaving the mountain top.  It usually takes several days, and it always seems to involve the following ...

• Doubting the reality or validity of the experience.

• Physical exhaustion.

• Doubting your own integrity.

• Mild depression or the desire to eat and sleep, or to do anything other than work.

• Cyncism and foul temper

Remember that when the apostles came down the mountain after the Transfiguration of Our Lord, they came down to His suffering and death - a real "come down" to say the least!

But then there followed the most unexpected experience of all, the world's greatest mountain top vista- Easter Morning.

The Transfigutation prepared Peter, James and John for both - both the passion and the resurrection.  It revealed the truth about Christ, a truth that they were bound to have doubted when He lay dead and bloody in the tomb; a truth they only began to process, to understand, to assimilate - after He rose in a shining and glorified body from that same tomb.

***

If you're "coming down" from anything right now, my biggest advice would be, go ahead and doubt, but doubt the doubt.   Doubt the temptation to doubt - the temptation to judge the great grace you've been given as worthless or illusory.  Doubt the nasty belittling voice in your ear.  Doubt not your own sinfulness (which is always there), but doubt the suggestion that your sinfulness makes the grace you've received worthless. 

Those are all lies you're hearing. 

The mountain top is nearer to God.  His love is greater than we can ever imagine, and we see only reflections of it in our friends, our lovers, our soul mates - in even the most joyful moments here in the valley or there on top.

So don't doubt; or if you must, doubt the doubt. 

And pray for the man who has just been chosen to stay near the mountain and lead us.

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March 13th, 2013Christianity Liteby Joseph Pearce

No sooner had the unexpected news from Rome ricocheted across the globe than certain whispered hopes began to be heard: Time now for women priests. Time to abolish the celibate priesthood. Time to soften up on birth control, abortion, marriage. Such are the perpetual longings of those who would remake the Catholic Church by aligning it with that North Star of modernity, the sexual revolution.

The next pope can pop those trial balloons by energetically deploying Christianity's most underutilized asset these days: doctrinal orthodoxy. That, and only that, will move the church out of its defensive crouch and back into forward mode.

Everyone knows what stands in the way of such assertiveness: 10-plus years of sex scandals. Hence the first order of business is to establish that the scandals, as an institutional phenomenon, are over. Perhaps also a radical new organization—say, a monastic order dedicated to penance for the sins of the sexual revolution itself—would help to clarify a thing or two about messaging.

Then maybe the rest of the world can get around to a widely overlooked but potent truth: Christianity Lite has been tried repeatedly during the past few decades, and for Catholics and Protestants alike, the result has been graying pews, falling attendance, indifferent practice and children from "Christian" homes who do not know Easter from the Easter bunny.

Why? Because Christianity Lite turns its back on that other great institution whose fate has been historically twinned with that of the churches: the family. As the empirical record shows, where the family is strong, so are Christian communities and doctrine—and vice versa. For both Protestants and Catholics, it is orthodoxy, not heterodoxy, that galvanizes the faithful, mints new recruits and succeeds, literally, in reproducing itself.

Unprecedented numbers of fatherless homes, burgeoning levels of depression and anxiety, a sexual ethos so freakishly jejune that parents of every stripe fear it—these are just some of the specters now stalking the secular West. Then there are the crushing burdens outside the West that traditional teaching also addresses: the women around the world who suffer genuine oppression, like sex trafficking; the millions of believers persecuted for believing; the many other human beings unwanted by anyone else and upon whose intrinsic dignity Christianity—and sometimes, only Christianity—insists.

The best defense remains a good offense, and the riven secular world itself, however inadvertently, hands the next pope plenty of moral ammunition. He just has to be willing to use it.

Mrs. Eberstadt is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and the author of "How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization," to be published in April by Templeton Press.

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March 12th, 2013A Postcard from Wichitaby Joseph Pearce

It's a real challenge to find time to write for the Ink Desk when one is travelling hither and thither in this large country, which dwarves my native land in terms of size if not necessarily in terms of cultural inheritance. I sent a hurried postcard from Nashville a few days ago, and now, after a blissful two days at home with my family, I find myself in Wichita, Kansas. This is virgin territory for me. I've been to Kansas before but never to this particular corner of it. As a child it was known to me as the home of the "Lineman" whom Glen Campbell made famous. I know nothing else about it, except that it's in the middle of a prairie that's larger in size than England.

The purpose of my visit is to speak at the local chapter of Legatus. My topic: "Catholic Responsibility in a Hostile Government". Amongst the questions that my address will address: What would St. Thomas More do and say if he met Barack Obama? What does Shakespeare have to say about the obomanation? What does it mean to be the king's good servant but God's first? Why is the United States no longer a democratic country? What is necessary to restore real democracy? What does the past tell us about the present and the future?

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March 12th, 2013Following the StARby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

The Bellarmine Forum, which is always a worthwhile read, has just published a list of recommended Catholic websites, and the St. Austin Review and its blog the Ink Desk make the top of the list.

It's good to see that folks are following the StAR.  For, as the Bellarmine Forum reminds us ...

The St. Austin Review (StAR) is the premier international journal of Catholic culture, literature, and ideas. In its pages, printed every two months, some of the brightest and most vigorous minds around meet to explore the people, ideas, movements, and events that shape and misshape our world.  Contributors to StAR are poets, philosophers, artists, theologians, historians, and journalists, together giving StAR the breadth and depth necessary for its “unique and worthwhile project.”  

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March 12th, 2013Bronte Viewed from the Heightsby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

I once asked Joseph Pearce, the most well-read man I've ever met, how he managed to get such a good education without going to college.

"Kevin," he replied, "I am well educated BECAUSE I did not go to college."

***

I have the great honor of tutoring a very intelligent 15-year-old home-schooled student.  Together we just finished Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, which I read allowed to my student, over the course of several days, changing my voice for each character and dramatizing the action the best I could.

And, as Joseph Pearce will tell you, there's an advantage to a lack of much formal education.  Thus, although I did graduate from college (I am ashamed to admit), I've learned everything I know on my own - but that everything has never included any of the rich and complex novels of the Brontes.  So I was able to approach the Heights as my student did, unprejudiced by any agenda one might pick up at university, either feminist or post-modern or what-have-you.

Emily Bronte

And to my eyes, unfamiliar with the literary criticism that has assessed the novel for the past 170 years, it was clearly a story about forgiveness, about how clinging on to vengeance or jealousy is literally self-destructive, for the climax of the story is a simple moment where two young people forgive one another (Cathy and Hareton), end up in love, and thereby complete an imbalance and an injustice that has lasted for a generation.  There was, of course, much more to the tale - complex and three-dimensional characters, social commentary, Gothic romance, a touch of horror, intense passion expressed in a lyrical and spiritual manner - but the point of the story overall is something the critics have apparently been missing all this time.

Joyce Carol Oates gets it, and chides those who don't.

Who will inherit the earth's riches? Who will inherit a stable, rather than a self-consuming, love? What endures, for mankind's sake, is not the violent and narcissistic love of Catherine and Heathcliff (who identify with each other, as fatal twins, rather than individuals), but the easier, more friendly, and altogether more plausible love of the second Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw. How ironic, then, that Brontë's brilliantly imagined dialectic, arguing for the inevitable exorcism of the old demons of childhood, and professing an attitude toward time and change that might even be called optimistic, should have been, and continues to be, misread. 

She goes on to compare (in a brilliant essay that you can read in full) mis-reading critics to censors who judge a book not by its cover but by an offensive word here or there.  The mis-readers who see Bronte's imagination as "narrow", or who see the novel as extolling the self-indulgent Victorian narcissistic Gothic romance it clearly undercuts, or who see it as a novel that exalts the moral authority of individual longing and rugged independence, (when this is not at all what the novel does) are similar to such small-minded censors.

But it's understandable that the novel would be misread.  The power of its "chick flick" elements, and the atmosphere that is reminiscent of Poe or the darker scenes from Dickens, the stunning love story that keeps the reader enthralled over the long recounted history, and the rebellious and morally ambivalent character of the very masculine Heathcliff, serve to obscure the structure of the story and the overall theme that is being conveyed.  Critics, Oates tells us, get caught up in the process of the novel and thereby lose sight of its structure - failing to see the book (I would say) from the Heights, and wuthering thereby in confusion.

And need it be said that this is a typically modern mistake, this misreading of Wuthering Heights?  I think this is because of a dichotomy that Oates calls design vs. process.  She seems to mean this: PROCESS is the reader or viewer's involvement in the emotions of the story, the "Dionysian" immersion into the work, while DESIGN  is the "Apollonian" overview of the work, by which design the reader or audience sees the meaning that the characters, acts and emotions reveal.

In Dante's day, design was paramount; with Shakespeare design and process co-exist; the neo-classicists of the 18th Century tended more toward design; the romantics of the 19th Century tended more toward process.

And today nobody believes in design.  There is no design in nature, we are told - either human nature or the rest of nature.  How, then, can there be design in art?  Isn't reading a novel all about feeling things, just like the faith is supposed to be all about feelings and not about the structure of life, or about insight?  Given this modern disregard for appreciating design as an element of art, and given the power and beauty of the process of Bronte's novel, is it any wonder that the book is not seen as the great work of Christian fiction that it is?

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March 12th, 2013Alice von Hildebrand—90 Years Old Todayby Joseph Pearce

Alice von Hildebrand, wife of the late Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand and a formidable philosopher in her own right, was born on this day in 1923. I have been blessed to know this wonderful lady for several years. As editor-in-chief of Sapientia Press, I was honoured to publish her marvellous book, The Privilege of Being a Woman, which is Sapientia's bestselling title ever. I've also met her on several occasions and am in awe at the sharpness of her mind. Although she is a great admirer of my own books, she perceives their flaws with incisive perception. Considering her reputation, I am humbled that she should have had the time or inclination to have read my own work, let alone that she should have done so with such care and attention. It is truly a privilege to know such a woman. Happy Birthday Dr. von Hilderbrand.

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March 11th, 2013C.S. Lewis on Purgatoryby Joseph Pearce

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March 10th, 2013St. James Answers Gollumby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Lately I've been answering questions posed to me by a Protestant reader of my blog, and this time I'm going to let the Apostle James answer a question that no reader of any blog has posed to me, but that many of you could; in fact I could post it myself.

My hypothetical reader writes ...

Why can't I follow Christ and do what I want?  I mean, I really really really am attached to my sins.  I'd like to believe they're not really sins, but I know better.  My sins scratch me right where I itch.  I pray to be delivered of them, but secretly I love them.  I mean, what the hell would I do without my sins??? They are my preciousssss - Signed, Gollum.

And St. James replies ...

Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. - James 4:8

Our first prayer, then, should be to become "single minded" about following Christ; which is to say, not to be ambivalent about sin.  Hard to do, and maybe never totally achievable in this lifetime - and certainly not achievable at all without His grace.  But look more closely at the context in which St. James places this admonition.  (My gloss is in red.)  From James Chapter 4 ...

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.   ³When you ask, you do not receive,because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.  God is not our gumball machine - put a prayer in here, get a gumball out there, chew and enjoy.  God wants us to enter into a dialogue with Him (prayer), but not so that we may find in Him a better gimmick to fill our wants, a longer stick with which to scratch that itch.  For the shallow notion of God as itch scratcher, see here.  

⁴ You adulterous people,^[a] Adulterous?  Because we're not faithful to our marriage-bond with God.  don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?  A bit harsh there, St. James, wouldn't you say?  Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. This is not as harsh as it sounds; it is not a denial of the goodness of God's created world; this is not Eastern mysticism.  This is simply saying that you cannot serve two masters - God and Mammon (Mammon being riches, pleasures, fame, possessions, your drug-of-choice - i.e. "the world") ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us^[b]? ⁶  But he gives us more grace. If we need help to serve Him, and not just a new fix, he'll give us more grace.  That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
    but shows favor to the humble.”^[c] 

⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. What an amazing thing to say!!!  Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  In other words, repent and have a "firm purpose of amendment" as the Catholic Church says, doing our best (by His grace) to avoid not only sin, but also near occasions of sin - thus being of one mind, with purity of heart (purity of intention).  ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Whoa!  What is this, Lent or something?  You mean we're not only to set our hearts and minds on God with a single-minded purity of love and intention, but also to bemoan our sinful state and feel sorry enough and guilty enough that we become really serious about not sinning again???  This grieving, moaning and wailing part - can we not bracket it out when this reading appears in the Liturgy?  It's just too disturbing! - Well, I'm joking, but it should hit us and hit us hard, double-minded sinners that we are, with hearts of grave impurity. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

And that last part - "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up" - that is exactly what Jesus told us in yesterday's readings, "He who humbles himself will be exalted" - (Luke 14:11) - and it's not at all what The Word Among Us told us about yesterday's readings, which was, more or less, "Don't change and God will be fine with you."

No, dear Gollum, the steps go like this

• Stop asking God for stuff that merely scratches your itch.
• Ask for His grace, that you may approach Him with clean hands, a single mind and a pure heart.
• Feel bad about the monster sin is making you into and do penance for it, so that, at the very least, you will be serious about amendment, about the change He will work in you, if you let Him.

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March 9th, 2013The Audacity of Heaven - or - Heaven is a Slap in the Faceby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

We tend to settle for things.

And understandably so.  Buffeted and battered as we are by life, we make the best of it, we grin and bear it.

We do not moan the moans, give voice to the great longing that we feel.  We do not reveal the hole that is never full, the hole in the pit, the very pit of our stomachs, the very pit of hell inside of each of us.  It  is a desire that we can never find satisfaction for, a debt that will ever remain unpaid - the great unfulfilled longing, the gaping hole of unhappiness, the greatest and most persistent effect of sin.

***

And suddenly there comes, as a surprise, the Person who answers the question we dare not ask, who feeds us with the bread we have denied that we desire, who gives us to drink the water that quenches that never-ending thirst.

Heaven is not angels and harps and elevator music.

It is not a nice comfy chair, a new sofa, people being friendly and welcoming.

Heaven is a slap in the face.

"Dare you hide or soften your desire for Me?" says the LORD.  "Dare you overlook the pain men gave you, the pain you gave them, the pain you all gave Me?  Dare you desire not what you think you desire - sex, euphoria, comfort - dare you desire what I dare to give you?  The answer to your question, the filling of the pit, the Satisfaction that is more real and more final than you could ever have imagined?"

***

The purpose of all of our suffering is to get us to give up our selfish sophistries and to prepare us for a far greater fulfillment, a far more encompassing satisfaction, than we could ever imagine.

And love, the greatest of all gifts, is, on earth, but a shadow of it.

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