Napolitano's Interview on This Week

I think we've got to be close to the tipping point as far as tolerance of a politician's decision to say nothing in an interview. I think we're getting close to where it will do more damage for someone to come on a show and attempt a lame CYA, as Janet Napolitano did on ABC's This Week, versus the alternative of not going on at all.

Most of us crave a little honesty from our public officials, whether it be in the form of a mea culpa or a more robust CYA. Tell us that it's cost prohibitive to wand everyone on the T.I.D.E. list. Tell us something we don't know. Consider it a teaching moment. We now at least know that there's a big list and a wittle bitty list. But other than that all Napolitano told us was that everything is under investigation, to be completed when the media loses interest.

On many of these shows it's mainly a vehicle for the host to opine via his questions. Tapper wanted to know why this terrorist wasn't subject to heightened security at the airports. Others, including at least one U.S. senator, wanted to know how why Abdulmutallab had a U.S. visa after his radicalization in London. I am sensitive to the fact that no set of security measures is perfect, but when your father rats on you and your name is Abdulmutallab, well it's amazing the guy didn't at least get wanded.

At least Napolitano could've done us the favor of looking perturbed. A sunny disposition when some old-fashioned squiriming was called for does not a good interview make.

It's Boxing Day Somewhere

Enbrethiliel promised to deliver this meme on Boxing Day, although through the miracle of modern technology I'm seeing it today, Christmas Day in my neck of the woods.

Speaking of fine blogueuses, I learned that there are other ways to keep a journal than to kvetch from Bill White's wife's recent post:

Today I received, via US Mail, an early birthday present. My husband ordered it for me at my request. I've been waiting anxiously for it to arrive because my devotions and daily writing had come to an end until it came in. You see, recently I filled up my journal; where I write my thanksgivings and hopes; where I jot thoughts on my morning and evening devotions. So I finally received a new Gratitude Journal. It has a nice layout, with good questions to help me recall the day and all the good that happened. My birthday's in a couple of weeks, so I was able to justify to myself buying the same journal I had even though it's a bit pricey and a simple notebook would suit the purpose.

Photo via Henry & Roz Dieterich

"If a prophet or angel had come, man's longing for God, for a more intimate communication with God, would not have been satisfied...All this longing of the people, all this desire of the human heart, was fulfilled in the crib at Bethlehem...Over our altars floats the joy of the joyful message, from the plains of Bethlehem it sinks into our hearts and breathes consolation and hope into our souls. The Saviour is born for us, a Saviour who will deliver us from sin and from the thralldom of Satan, who reconciles us to God and opens heaven to us." - St. John Vianney, "Sermons on the Nativity of Our Lord"

High-larity Ensues

Unintentional hilarity from Slate concerning the possibility of a virgin birth. "Very, very unlikely" is the verdict. A potential Onion piece...

Various & Sundry

I'm underwhelmed by the statement of Sen. Harkin saying that "with apologies to Santa, Christmas will be anti-climactic this year" due to the passing of health care legislation. Santa is not the reason for the season and no worries about anti-climax need occur.

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I'm a sucker for these sorts of posts that spin waste products into gold. In the link above, Bob the Ape writes poetry using modern corporate buzzwords.

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The little girl in front of me at liturgy was drawing pictures with one of those cool pens I used to have thirty years ago, the kind that has four or five different colors of ink which are controlled by depressing one of the levers of different colors. I thought about how oblivious she was to what was going on at the altar and thought how that is replicated in me so often - how I am oblivious to God's actions, to His omnipresence, to his presence in others. Then I looked back up at the altar. :-)

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Heard Steven Ray and Al Kresta mention on air how they each have some 20 to 25 thousand books. Steven Riddle territory. That's surreal for me to conceptualize since my 2,000 fills a whole room & some of another.

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

Over our altars floats the joy of the joyful message, from the plains of Bethlehem it sinks into our hearts and breathes consolation and hope into our souls. The Saviour is born for us, a Saviour who will deliver us from sin and from the thralldom of Satan, who reconciles us to God and opens heaven to us. - St. John Vianney, Sermons on the Nativity

A priest once told me that that "self-talk," those words that comfort us or tear us down in our heads are like our friends. If our friends are advising us to be dissatisfied, or criticizing our loved ones, etc, then we're hanging out with the wrong crowd. - Betty Duffy

I’ve read and enjoyed any number of classics not assigned in school. I started Shakespeare early, thanks to my parents’ leftover college textbooks...I like pretty much all the major and minor poets until after World War I. I really enjoyed Moby Dick — it’s a hallucinatory techno-thriller, written by a natural blogger who loves to digress. I read Boswell’s Life of Johnson until my eyes started to cross. The unabridged Don Quixote was a bit of a slog for a sixth grader, but things do happen that aren’t all despairdespairdespair. And nobody made me sit in English class and discuss What Things Meant. But most of the books assigned in school are depressing, depressing, depressing. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. (Didn’t make it past the first chapter.) Earth Abides. (One of the top ten worst sf novels ever!!) Stupid Catcher in the Rye. Stupid Stranger in a Strange Land. That dang Bear story by Faulkner. (Also skipped.) To Kill a Mockingbird. (Okay, not stupid or hideous, but not exactly enjoyable.) Crime and Punishment. (At least when it gets into the investigation thriller part, there’s some relief.) We don’t teach schoolkids to enjoy wit and depth; we teach them that literature is about the mute endurance of literary suffering and despair. Fortunately, I was a voracious reader before, after, and during my English classes, so even the horrors of assigned reading couldn’t convince me that all books were dull, stale, and unprofitable. - post at "Aliens in This World"

British historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations thrive when the lower classes aspire to be like the upper classes, and they decay when the upper classes try to be like the lower classes. Looked at through this prism, it’s hard not to see America in a prolonged period of decay. - Jonah Goldberg of NRO

Universalism is perhaps the second-most American belief about the afterlife possible. For the most nationally characteristic view, I turn to an existentialist friend of mine, who once told me, "I heard someone say that everybody gets the afterlife he or she believes in. And I couldn't help but think, That's so American!" Americans believe in a universe whose order is apparent to the naked eye; an order where God's justice lines up neatly with American cultural preferences for self-definition and multiple "truths." This is a mindset that we might expect from a nation that has built its identity on both Enlightenment philosophy and immigration -- as ZZ Top didn't quite sing, everybody's crazy 'bout a self-made man. Even our Last Things must be self-wrought and accommodating, pluralist and tolerant and as blandly nice as an American airport smile. - Eve Tushnet

Patronal dissonance: I found a lost St. Anthony medal today. - Tom of Disputations tweet

I've given up all hope of finding my St. Jude prayer card. - John J McG tweet

Where platitudes are concerned, I dislike them because Jesus is not just the reason we celebrate the season, he’s the reason for my entire life. I don’t like the idea that I have to cue up warm fuzzy Advent and Christmas feelings simply because I’ve pressed the pause button on my crazy life. It so rarely works and then I feel disappointed...As long as my joy is my Christ, no one can take it from me. But I can squander it, as easily as I stop “doing” my faith. If I am not practicing my faith and my joy every day, then it’s no wonder I feel nothing when I pause to remember the reason I celebrate anything. - Betty Duffy

Books to the ceiling,/ Books to the sky,/ My pile of books is a mile high./ How I love them! How I need them!/ I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. - Arnold Lobel

There's a terrific moment in the TV show House, in which the irascible and brilliant Dr. Greg House is explaining to a lapsed Catholic subordinate why he doesn't believe in the afterlife. House, with all the self-lacerating irony that actor Hugh Laurie can impart to the character, says, "I would hate to think that all of this was just atest."....[Modernity] poses the question, "Are pious actions good because the gods love them, or do the gods love pious actions because they are good?" No fully Christian answer can accept the terms of the question, since it drives a wedge between God and the world He created...As a final argument that this life is not just a test, I'll point to the sacred wounds of the risen Christ. When Christ appeared, resurrected, before the apostles, He was so thoroughly wounded that St. Thomas could actually poke a finger into His bleeding side. What happened to Him in this life was irrevocable. There are no "do-overs"; there are no "give-backs." Whatever healing or transformation of our wounds occurs in the next life, I suspect the wounds themselves will remain, just as Christ's wounds remained. So think of the penitent centurion -- think of his heaven. In his heaven, he is still the man who speared the side of Christ. His wrong action was not erased by God's love -- though it was transformed. His life was witness, not a test: In a test, all that matters is whether you pass. In witness, what matters is whether you live the unique and strange vocation you were given in a way that makes it possible for Christ's fingerprints to be seen on your face. - Eve Tushnet post

Cornhusker Chutzpah

My, my. Not since the advent of Jesse James has someone come along and so successfully profited off the backs of others as has Ben Nelson, the plucky Nebraskan Senator who held up the U.S. Treasury for Medicaid aid "in perpetuity". To quote the old song The Twelfth of Never, "that's a long, long time." I've been lately hypmotized by this latest legislative trainwreck, er, process, which makes its own argument for why the government shouldn't be involved in health care.

Let's Play...

...why's my bookbag (or e-reader equivalent) so damn heavy?

From Buzz by Stephen Braun:

"Modern neuroscience suggests that it would be a mistake to discount the multiplicity of the mind, to forget that one's conscious self is not one's entire self, and to ignore the power of the nonrational forces within us.

This deep dichotomy between reason and irrationality can be seen in the world's tremendous appetite for alcohol and caffeine. Alcohol is liberator of the irrational. Caffeine is the stimulator of the rational. It would appear that the human spirit craves both poles and turns to these most familiar drugs to achieve those ends."

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From George Rutler's The Cure d'Ars Today: St. John Vianney:

The remains of his body lie in a glass case over an altar in Ars...Anglo-Saxons find this custom of displaying saints odd, and even offensive. It is a crystal-clear exposition of death, and more cerebral people prefer to keep the most graphic facts of life opaque; they do not want to think of death as a fact of life. The graphic display of a corpse is the one kind of exhibitionism still generally considered degrading. But what seems morbid to the mundane conscience is vital to the transcendent conscience. One gets muddled trying to combine the two the wrong way: sacramentalism is a right kind of transcendent earthiness, but materialism issues in a vapidity. The embalmed relics of Lenin and Mao are shadowy and grotesque parodies of the saintly cults. The totalitarian and the saint both recumbent should attack any fair sense of equipoise.

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Heroes are better than we are; saints are better than themselves. That is, saints become the ultimate pragmatists by making themselves totally available to God's original design for men. The hero imposes his will on nature as an act; the saint imposes God's will on nature as a state. In the case of the hero, heroism is deed; it is a way of being for the saint. "We have a treasure,then, in our keeping, but its shell is of perishable earthenware; it must be God, and not anything in ourselves, that gives it its power" (2 Cor 4:7).

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From Charles Dickens by GK Chesterton:

A definite school regarded Dickens as a great man from the first days of his fame: Dickens certainly belonged to this school. In reply to this question, "Why have we no great men to-day?" many modern explanations are offered. Advertisement, cigarette-smoking, the decay of religion, the decay of agriculture, too much humanitarianism, too little humanitarianism, the fact that people are educated insufficiently, the fact that they are educated at all, all these are reasons given. If I give my own explanation, it is not for its intrinsic value; it is because my answer to the question, "Why have we no great men?" is a short way of stating the deepest and most catastrophic difference between the age in which we live and the early nineteenth century; the age under the shadow of the French Revolution, the age in which Dickens was born.

The soundest of the Dickens critics, a man of genius, Mr. George Gissing, opens his criticism by remarking that the world in which Dickens grew up was a hard and cruel world. He notes its gross feeding, its fierce sports, its fighting and foul humour, and all this he summarises in the words hard and cruel. It is curious how different are the impressions of men. To me this old English world seems infinitely less hard and cruel than the world described in Gissing's own novels. Coarse external customs are merely relative, and easily assimilated. A man soon learnt to harden his hands and harden his head. Faced with the world of Gissing, he can do little but harden his heart. But the fundamental difference between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the end of it is a difference simple but enormous. The first period was full of evil things, but it was full of hope. The second period, the fin de siécle, was even full (in some sense) of good things. But it was occupied in asking what was the good of good things. Joy itself became joyless; and the fighting of Cobbett was happier than the feasting of Walter Pater. The men of Cobbett's day were sturdy enough to endure and inflict brutality; but they were also sturdy enough to alter it. This "hard and cruel" age was, after all, the age of reform.

The Reading Window

At the bookstore in Utah I visited back a few months ago, they take their reading window seriously:

(The reader looks very '70s-ish, 'eh?)

When Democrats Attack...

...other Democrats, it makes for good TV. Hence I was glued to Howard Dean's cri de coeur about the principle of the thing. I haven't seen such a Democratic stand for principle since the Paul Wellstone era¹. It's an odd feeling to see Dean's mouth moving and to appreciate what he's saying. Strange bedfellows & all that.

Friend Ham o' Bone² thinks this country is no longer center-right, but Dick Morris predicted last night that both houses of Congress will fall into Republican hands in '10 due to the leftward lurch of the O'ministration. I find Morris' prediction hard to believe, but it would certainly show the country is very centrist and possibly even center-right. The fact that if there was a Tea Party party it would have most favored party status seems to show something.

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Steven Riddle inspired me³ to pick up my volume of stories titled Samuel Johnson is Indignant by Lydia Davis and I wondered what took me so long. Her clear, limpid prose is full of wry surprises. I read it through dry itchy eyes the color of burnt sienna. (Joking about the color - I just wanted to say 'burnt sienna'. Can you tell I'm being influenced by the "Big Book of NBA Basketball" with it's pointless asides?) I think I have an allergy or pink eye or some combination thereof.
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Interesting link on the experience of Russia in going from command economy to a free market version, and how the chief architect is remembered.

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Tuesday night I done dragged my arse out in the cold, dark night to pick up my in-laws and drive 'cross town to dinner at Buca de Becca, an Italian joint with a mesmerizing maze of rooms containing thousands of pictures of everything Italian but with a special emphasis on things Catholic. The place is eccentrically irreverent: a bust of Pope John Paul II pops up in a glass box at the center of one table. A cardinal's mitre is framed next to a picture of Pope Paul VI. A large poster of a priest yawning while hearing a confession, maybe Betty Duffy's but I really tend to doubt that. On another wall is a young Sophia Loren, legged in black fishnet.

We wend through all these pictures and memorabilia to the kitchen, where there was a table with a family of four eating. An odd thing to see. "That is motivation to keep the kitchen clean," says one member of our party, which was Steph's small church group, some twenty or so with spouses.
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1 - Not that the Republicans are any better at principle of course. I always thought health care was something the Repubs should've tackled when they had a majority since they were no doubt fully aware that if they didn't do something, the Dems would come in and do it worse. (Of course, the Repubs got into it by passing the prescription drug bill, which only made us more dependent on the drug of government, literally & figuratively.) Perhaps the Repubs thought that if they started down that slippery slope of health care reform, it would end up in socialized medicine. Perhaps they didn't care. Perhaps Bush should've executed the Iraq war better. Perhaps...

2 - Hambone, by the way, is to pessimists what Sugar Pops is to sugary cereals - the [insert a fancy Latin phrase for 'the prime example' Not sine qua non but... Bob the Ape, can you help?].

3 - Steven has reincarnated himself as the Mark Shea of lit bloggers, offering a bonanza of fecundity. Will he find fame in the blogosphere yet? How much readership overlap is there between Flos Carmeli and Momentary Taste? These and other questions prompt us as the world turns.

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

Frazer was perfectly right to point to the similarities between myth and Christianity. In both instances you have a victim who is killed by an entire community and who becomes who he is and who he has always been, the christ of the community. What Frazer did not see, which is the simplest thing of all, is that Christianity is very different from mythology. It is exactly the same situation, but whereas in all the myths the victim is guilty, in Christianity, Christ is innocent. - Rene Girard on National Review TV

I think my understanding of “apostolate” has been colored by my experiences with Regnum Christi, in which apostolate is related to recruitment, and is worked on during hours specifically designated for Christian work. As that Movement undergoes purification, I am also rethinking how I use certain words I am in the habit of using. Part of my objection to the “blog as aspotolate” idea is that it compartmentalizes aspects of our Christian life. - Betty Duffy

You are absolutely right that these matters of the hymn announcers and the furniture arrangement are very trivial. Leave the parish? So....why are we in a parish? You know how when you go on an airplane the stewardess (are they still called that?) tells you that if that little oxygen mask drops you should make sure you have yours on before you assist anyone else? We are in a parish to get to Heaven. My job is to get myself to heaven and to assist you in getting to Heaven, in that order. If I'm not working to get myself to Heaven, I won't be able to help you. I'll just pass out and die. So we sit in these pews together. We pray together. We eat pancake breakfasts and attend funerals. And someday, we hope to be in Heaven together. If you can't even be in the same church building with Joe Schlemmer because Joe got to read the hymn list instead of Mary Bernbrock, how are you going to stand being in Heaven with Joe?" - Sister Mary Martha's blog

Climate and society are both chaotic systems -- in fact, since they affect each other, they're chaotic subsystems of a larger chaotic system with a vast number of variables. The best climate models in the world have not been validated, the uncertainty of economic models is empirically established and recognized in law... and these models all produce input for the even sketchier models of what we really care about, which is the common good (of which I won't attempt a definition here). - Tom of Disputations

So how does the National Catholic Reporter celebrate the feast of St. Juan Diego? Why of course by linking to articles denying that he ever existed...Anne Rice in her last book in the Vampire Chronicles involved St. Juan Diego in the plot. At one point the Vampire Lestat reads an article about him since he has a subscription to the National Catholic Reporter (figures). So questions of his existence are part of the novel and it is obvious that Anne Rice was swayed by this dissident rag. Lestat ponders the intersection of papal infallibility and a non-existent saint and imagines Juan Diego popping into Heaven upon the Pope's proclamation. - Jeff Miller aka "Curt Jester"

It is precisely because God is God that he lacks 'a human range of emotions'—and that is what makes him ungraspable in the terms of literature, which is a humane art. - Mr. Wilson of Books INQ via Steven Riddle's "Momentary Taste of Being"

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. - opening of a Shirley Jackson novel via Steven Riddle

Nobody ever left the Catholic Church because of an Andrew Greeley novel; but many have returned to the Catholic Church because of one. - via Sancta Sanctis

My [musical] tastes were set in stone in 1965–66...I believe I could recognize every Top 40 song from those years. Then my interest in rock simply shut off... The antics of the industry (grossness, seriousness) had something to do with the death of my interest, along with the poverty of the form and the lack of talent of most of the practioners...The Hillsdale student who drove me to the airport after my gig two weeks ago said he was a senior, a political philosophy major, and a fan of classic rock..., he said, he had had to examine his preferences in light of Plato's analysis of music and its power over the soul. I could hear the thrumming of the Straussian Interstate as he spoke, and I warned him to be always mindful of Plato's envy of artists: He can't stand the fact that Homer is a better writer than he is, and he may have the same resentment of musicians. - Richard Brookhiser on his "Right Place" blog

The dark cloud that's lurking over all this political hubbub is the threat, or the seductive whisper (depending on how I feel that day) that none of it is going to matter. Soon I may need to re-orient myself very simply towards the survival of my family and my people, and I sort of welcome the thought. I live my life so much in the realm of superfluities, and so little in what is essential. It's sort of the modern conundrum that life has become so easy that my very existence seems superfluous at times, that my sole purpose is to consume what can be consumed. - Betty Duffy

Reading Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars... First he details the spiritual health and devotions in pre-Anglican Church England, and then he details the destruction. Here is a snip from the destruction, which started as a creeping destruction:

So the sprinkling of the holy water was explained not in terms of the water's power to banish demons or bring blessing, but "to put us in remembrance of our baptism and the blood of Christ sprinkled for our redemption," holy bread was presented not as a curative but "to put us in remembrance of the sacrament of the altar," candles at Candlemas not as defences against the power of evil or the disorder of the elements but "in memory of Christ the spiritual light".

As I read this, I wonder who won in the end. The water-downed version seems to be what we live with today in most Catholic parishes. Our faith, Catholic culture and devotions have been eliminated (who celebrates Candlemas now?) or greatly watered-down (I have never heard sprinkling of holy water to banish demons except from one priest.) - Jim of Bethune Catholic

This 'n That

So, according to Drudge, Harry Reid can't find 60 senators. Color me skeptical. Wasn't it not long ago that three senators were holding up even a debate on health care? Didn't they all fold like tin cans? Do tin cans fold? This health care bill has more lives than a reincarnated cat. And I really find it hard to believe that the Senate wants to extend a program (Medicare) that even its defenders (like Obama) say is full of fraud and abuse and which doctors treat like the plague.

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Watched the DVD The Star which proposes that God literally wrote in the heavens of the birth and death of his Son, with a crescent moon at Virgo's feet (Rev. 12) to a full lunar eclipse at the Son's death. Beautiful & recommended.

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Perhaps too imbued with the therapeutic but interesting thoughts here via Steven Riddle, on Lydia Davis collection of short stories:

It’s been making my daily train ride from Queens to Manhattan and back again almost tolerable, too. Unlike James Wood, who read straight through, beginning to end, I just sort of reach into my bag, grab the book, and let it fall open where it may. I hadn’t intended on reading it this way, but something about the stories encourages it. It occurred to me yesterday that there are only two other categories of books I (and probably many people) read like this: poetry collections and religious texts (in my case, the Bible).

What do the Davis, poetry, and religious tomes have in common? I think it’s that they all operate as devotional texts, defined, in my mind, as speaking to an emotional need; as employing aphorism (they offer concise wisdom or instruction); and, perhaps most significantly, as possessing many chambers. These are books you walk into: although their various components—individual poems, stories, verses—come together to form a whole, they are distinct. One doesn’t follow linearly from another. You don’t necessarily know what you will find when you flip the book open, but you are sure to find something that suits your current mood. And this is why they become companions; the books you take everywhere, objects of devotion.

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As a child my favorite Christmas specials were A Christmas Carol and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I soaked up the messages contained therein as if they were Scripture. What were the messages? In How the Grinch Stole Christmas, his conversion was so complete and neat and fast and, more or less, painless. In TV examples, the misery is all in the pre-conversion stage. You are miserable, you find Love, and are happy. But is that the way it works? Conversion is an on-going process that involves self-denial. With the Grinch, it seems there isn't an outside force (God) who intervenes; instead simply the thought occurs to him that "maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store; maybe Christmas means a little bit more." And his heart was touched by it. But God can, of course, give us promptings and thoughts we otherwise wouldn't have had. And it's hardly a Pelagian tale for the Grinch tries to save the sleigh full of toys from sliding down the mountain and he (and the little dog) are using every ounce of strength they have and it's obviously inadequate.

Suddenly his heart is said to have grown 3 times its size through no effort of his own and he is given prodigious strength such that makes the sleigh as light as a feather. The end result is a civilized, socialable Grinch with good table manners. :-) At the moment of conversion his eye color changed from a blood-red/brown to a light blue but at the end of his struggle with the sleigh it reverted briefly to red with his face reflecting fear; then there seemed a second wind of a conversion, this time conferring strength.

Did the Grinch make me think back then that conversion happens without personal effort and that it is always accompanied by sheer joy? Of course the Grinch did exert personal effort in attempting to save the gifts on the sled.

Did I think that only those visited by three ghosts or whose hearts bust - i.e. have supernatural experiences like Scrooge & the Grinch - have need of improvement? I found A Christmas Carol motivating in the sense that I wanted to be good so as not to become like Scrooge. Back then it wasn't about God so much - it would've never occurred to me as a teen to pray that I not be like Scrooge or that I be given the graces Scrooge was given. I thought with my own effort I could avoid his friend Marley's fate.

Kindleoscopy

The downside of Kindle and other electronic readers is well-documented in the link above - including the further dependency on the electrical grid, though at this point I'm so already on the grid that I figure I have to dance with the grid that brung me. Anyway, I had to laugh at the rogue commenter who said the following:

I’d go out and get a Kindle but I’m too busy rubbing sticks together to make a fire and the wood is wet dammit. When I caint no longer get my free assortment of arcane books from the Concept who traffics in used books on the internets, maybe I’ll go get one of these fancy gadgets but I’ll likely go to the library first.

Do they have an aerosol scent can to spray mouldering scents upon the Kindle, can one hang a Mildew imbued Paper Pine Tree Scent from one’s reading glasses? Can one make notations amid the text in a Kindle? Can one be used to prop a short table leg up? Do they hit with the same resounding thud upon the skull whence firing missiles at the Missus? Can they be easily avoided whence the fired missile is returning?Inquiring minds need to know.

Various & Sundry

I'm getting scads of emails from folks wanting a 2010 edition of Babes of the Blogosphere: Catlick Edition. (Okay, only one person, but she's an avid reader of this blog which ought count for something.) It's a tempting offer, given how much fun last year's was, but I loathe the idea of leaving anyone off. Good writing is sexy and so there are a lot of sexy blogosphere babes. You know who you are.

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Announcement: Effective Janurary 1st, this blog will limit Tiger Woods' role in its marketing.

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There was an interesting article in the paper Sunday about how Charles Dickens life has become something of a fascination:

Of the making of books by or about Charles Dickens, there apparently is no end. He wrote constantly, published promiscuously, lived intensely, dreamed extravagantly.

Dickens influenced, inspired and challenged others to produce amazing things, too. The thriving field of what we might call Contingent Dickens — works based on Dickens’ works, or on his life or on the Victorian era that his vivid word portraits made famous — is a significant literary genre in its own right.

Consider A Christmas Carol, one of his best-known tales, being performed on stages nationwide. Consider the new film version of the same tale, with Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge, the mean old miser who gets his holiday comeuppance. Consider Drood (2009), the brooding, brilliant Dan Simmons novel that features a distastefully conniving Dickens. Consider The Last Dickens (2009), Matthew Pearl’s fictional picture of Dickens’ American lecture tour. Consider Mr. Timothy (2003), Louis Bayard’s strikingly atmospheric novel that imagines the adult Tiny Tim, the cheerful sickly lad in Carol.

Wrapping one’s arms around Dickens is no easy task. He was too big, too restless, too productive, too accomplished, too complicated, too mysterious.

That mysterious streak is part of the reason for the fascination. The article prompted me to read some of Chesterton's remarkable biography of Charles Dickens and it feels as timely as if it could be written yesterday. On the lack of heroes:

[Thomas] Carlyle killed the heroes; there have been none since his time. He killed the heroic (which he sincerely loved) by forcing upon each man this question: "Am I strong or weak?" To which the answer from any honest man whatever (yes, from Cæsar or Bismarck) would "weak." He asked for candidates for a definite aristocracy, for men who should hold themselves consciously above their fellows. He advertised for them, so to speak; he promised them glory; he promised them omnipotence. They have not appeared yet. They never will. For the real heroes of whom he wrote had appeared out of an ecstacy of the ordinary. [Carlyle] was disappointed with Equality; but Equality was not disappointed with him. Equality is justified of all her children. But we, in the post-Carlylean period, have be come fastidious about great men. Every man examines himself, every man examines his neighbours, to see whether they or he quite come up to the exact line of greatness. The answer is, naturally, "No." And many a man calls himself contentedly "a minor poet" who would then have been inspired to be a major prophet.

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"The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross; because it is a narrow gate, while many seek the joys that can be gained through it, it is given to few to desire to pass through it." - St. John of the Cross

Also o'er the weekend read a lot about my new favorite book of the Bible - “the book of Consolation” as it is sometimes called - that of Isaiah, specifically chapters 54 & 55. Sure it feels like cherry-picking, as if attempting to procure promises without conspicuous effort on my part. Sure it was written to those in deep exile, pre-Christ. But hey it's part of the Bible too!

Michael Dubruiel on Thursday's Gospel

Good stuff - I find his thoughts almost always compelling (found here):

When I hear the Gospel reading for today, I'm stopped in my tracks by the phrase "the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence and the violent are taking it by storm" and necessarily I've had to spend some time canvassing the great minds of the church to figure out just exactly what Jesus meant by this. Well, it turns out that the Greek word that is translated "violence" above is probably best rendered "forceful" but that doesn't change the overall passage that much, yet it does give us some indication of what is meant by violence. The early Fathers of the Church felt that the passage was best understood by thinking about who was entering the kingdom of heaven--sinners, namely people who did not belong there. They were intruders, outsiders who had been let in through the violence of the cross. Taking this a step further, if our sins are really what nailed Jesus to a cross then we see that the violence we have done to the Son of God in some way has been our ticket to the kingdom of heaven. It is only those however, who are desperate to enter who get in. One imagines the crowds that surrounded Jesus and John the Baptist (a modern example might be Pope John Paul and the crowds that surround his visits). Only a desperate person would get close enough to touch Our Lord. So it is today. Are we desperate in our desire to enter the kingdom of heaven or is it somewhere way down the list of things to do today?

On the Palin Haters

I believe there are diminishing returns in the demonization of conservative figures since the Left can yell "so-and-so is Satan!" for only so long before people detect a pattern. So I'm not sure the way Palin enrages the Left isn't a good thing. Call it the rope-a-dope strategy: let them punch themselves out.

They hated Reagan, they hated Gingrich. Some will remember that Karl Rove had his own star turn, earning opprobium for helping get Bush elected in '00. Bush himself became the devil until it seemed that Cheney was wielding power. Post-Cheney it's now Palin.

Palin brings especial terror because she's a new political animal: the populist pro-lifer. Scares the heck out of the establishment. She's Ross Perot with breasts -- and convictions about something beyond the deficit.

Various & Sundry

Been meaning to read all of Acedia & Me by Kathleen Norris since it's haunting how she mentions that eating your food quickly is a sign of impatience and sloth. She also mentions same with respect to the consuming of books. Yet the prime conditions for reading Acedia & Me are rare: can't be down (because it would be too depressing), can't be too up (since then I don't think I need to read it), must be slothful (because then I know I need to read it) but not slothful to the point of being too slothful to read it. Small window of opportunity there. :-)

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Funny line on Obama from Peg Noonan: "If he's going to bow to something, it might as well be reality."