Perfectly without Standards

I've been playing with Haiku recently. I was mulling over the phenomenon in which non-believing critics point out the flaws in the religiously observant, and came up with the following:

A religious man
Always falls short. Atheist,
he can never fail.

To Save A Life Is Pretty Good, Actually

I don't review movies all that often, but I'm making an exception in the case of To Save a Life. I feel the need to put my two bits in on this one largely because of the critical material I'm finding on it on public sources. To put things simply: critics hate it, moviegoers love it. At Rotten Tomatoes, for example, the critic rating as of this writing is 31% positive (4 of 13), but the user rating is 92% positive (49 out of 53).

That's not that unusual, particularly with Christian films: many critics are secularists and most moviegoers who bother to see Christian films at all are Christian and maybe just a teensy bit biased in their favor. Moreover, Christian films tend to suffer the effects of low budgets even when the writing is good.

Before I go off preaching on films and criticism, I'd better come right out and and admit that I don't get to the movies much. I also haven't kept up with the fairly new independent Christian film movement. I saw Amazing Grace on vid and liked it, though the parade of historical characters kept me flipping madly through Britannica for half of it. But I'm generally reticent about theater films. My feeling is that if I'm going to sit in the dark for a couple of hours and can't even bring along knitting, I'd better be seeing a world-class bit of cinema--no smarmy writing or ham actors allowed.

My film viewing choices therefore tend to be subject to the advice and occasional whims of others. Hon. Daughter Number One, a certifiable film junkie, got me into Up by declaring "You have to see Up." So there. (I really liked it.) But when a couple of months ago I considered attending a showing of Facing the Giants at our parish I was stopped dead by said daughter:

"It's Prosperity Gospel fodder," she pointed out. "Look, at the beginning of the movie the protagonist isn't a Christian. His football team sucks, his wife can't get pregnant, and his truck is broken down. By the end he's accepted Christ, his team wins, his wife is pregnant and somebody gives him a new truck. You know real life isn't that simple. It's bad theology." Thus I still have to plead ignorance of that film and its companion, Fireproof, although I feel I should watch them out of regional loyalty. Not that that helps the Falcons much.

Recently, though, our parish youth director started promoting To Save A Life. I was intrigued, and started reading what I could find on it. I noticed that an LA Times critic, going against the grain, had reviewed it favorably, and that several of the negative critics' reviews couldn't seem to get past the film's religious bent to review it on its merits as a film. That was irritating. It's often enough a critic or other film "expert" weighs in on singularly repulsive subject matter in a film with commentary along the lines of:

"Of course the message of Birth of a Nation can't be condoned, but Griffith's directing was inspired..."

Thus I went and saw To Save a Life and thus follows my opinion of it, as concise and free of spoilers as I can get it. Disagree with my viewpoint or Christianity or the directing if you must; at the very least the message can be condoned. I, for one, think the message and the film are both worthy of praise.

The story, first of all, is believable. Some liberties are taken in the interest of condensing it into a film (it's rare we receive two earthshattering pieces of bad news in one afternoon, after all, and repeated kegger scenes--after the cops raid one, why don't the rest of the 'rents figure out putting the kid in charge when you leave town for the weekend is a bad idea?--give the impression that all these kids do is party, party, party) but the film doesn't lose much realism by condensation. In a couple of hours it comes to grips with most of the big issues teens today have to deal with: bullying, cliques, suicide, cutting, drinking, sex, pregnancy, figuring out where God fits into it all, and keeping the faith when it would be easier to give up are explored with compassion but not sentimentality.

The characters are realistic. I've read that the script was written by a youth pastor, and I can tell he's been paying attention to his kids. The young actors look, talk, and act like real teenagers. [Note: This opinion has been independently confirmed by five or six real teenagers from Hon. Daughter No. 2's youth group.] The Christian teens are thankfully far more normal than those usually portrayed in secular productions: they can't be singled out of the student body by excessive modesty in dress and tease each other spiritedly, if without the venom seen in other characters. The two villains of the piece, an obnoxious jock and a preacher's son who's a sort of stoner Uriah Heep are a bit unidimensional in their nastiness, but they're not major characters, either. The acting is good, especially considering most of the cast seem to be relative unknowns. (Hon. Daughter No. 2 thought she'd seen the actor who played Johnny Garcia in something, but didn't recognize anyone else.) Nobody overacts, thank goodness.

Cinematography is professional and very well done. Multiple-angle shots of keg party scenes are used effectively to evoke the chaos of the events. Tricky shooting isn't overused, though, and the camera work enhances the storytelling rather than overwhelming it.

The film isn't preachy. Yes, the protagonist's personal crisis leads him to faith, and yes, the hip youth pastor preaches a few times during the film. That doesn't make it preachy, unless you think a youth pastor exhorting his charges to care about the kids nobody else cares about in the wake of a teen suicide is preachy. The film is overtly religious, but it's nonsense to suggest that it beats the viewer over the head with that perspective. If anything, it's brutally honest about sincere doubt and the reasons that drive many people away from church. And it doesn't sugarcoat the fact that Christianity is not a get-out-of-misery- free card.

One of the most refreshing aspects of the film is its depiction of a multiracial community in which race doesn't seem to be a big deal. The church and youth group scenes show a more diverse congregation than I suspect is found in most churches (that is, unless they're Catholic!) The youth pastor models a fulfilling Christan marriage that is also interracial; though his wife appears in only a few scenes their sense of partnership is evident. Even at the high school, cliquiness isn't explicitly along racial lines. (I discussed this with one of our Youth Group Moms, who is black, however: she felt that race could be a factor in an early scene in which girls invite the protagonist to a party but tell him to get rid of his black friend Roger. I see Roger as an object of scorn among "coolies" of all races because of a physical handicap, but I suppose the scene is open to interpretation.) In any case, I think the scenes of the church kids and the youth pastor's home life beautifully depict real "no Gentile or Jew" Christianity.

So regarding To Save a Life, I'm gonna have to give a thumbs down to the critics who panned it, and a thumbs up to anyone who found something positive they could take away from it. It's unquestionably a good movie for teens to see, but it's well-done and smart enough for adults as well. If you're an adult with a few teens in your life, take them, and after you've seen the film go discuss it over coffee or ice cream. If you've been feeling a little un-hip about their day-to-day concerns, I guarantee it'll be a worthwhile outing.

A Swing and A Miss

Golfers are familiar with the terms "Mulligan" and "Gimme," but how many are familiar with the term "Tiger?" A duffer hits a "Tiger" when he drives 50 yards and lands, disasterously, against a tree.

Recently around here, the news has been full of infidelity. (One could argue that mainstream news always lacks fidelity, but that is for another post.) South Carolina First Lady Jennie Sanford giving the gubenatorial heave-ho to husband Mark for his transgressions with an Argentine "soulmate." And of course Tiger Woods playing at least an extra nine. I turned on the television the other night to find an entire show dedicated to infidelity: Cheaters. (Will they get around to making shows about the crossing of the other nine commandments?)I couldn't watch more than a few minutes of this "show."

Exposure to infidelity seems inescapable, if lamentable. A good friend at work is having to go through a divorce because of his wife's infidelity. In the first three places I lived during my married life, my next door neighbors divorced (ok, the last ones weren't legally married, but you get the point.), and at least two were due to infidelity. Such things could give one a complex.

All this stands in marked contrast to the example of the Holy Family. Mary and Joseph were not without issues -- Mary's surprise pregnancy must have been a terrible shock, and could have had fatal consequences had she been betrothed to someone else. But we remember the nativity with Mary and Joseph in attendance.

Some look on marriage as quaint and out of date; and yet, the tabloids make a killing from exposing marital transgressions. Despite the sexual revolution, we cannot escape the premise that adultery is wrong.

Canon Fodder

This from our local arts and entertainment weekly. I have to admit it made me laugh:

No, Muslims don't believe that Jesus was the messiah. Think of it like a movie. The Torah was the first one, and the New Testament is the sequel. Then the Qu'ran comes out and it retcons the last one like it never happened. There's still Jesus, be he's not the main character anymore, and the messiah hasn't shown up yet. Jews liked the first movie, but ignored the sequels. Christians think you need to watch the first two movies, but the third one doesn't count. Muslims think the third movie was the best, and the Mormons liked the second one so much that they started writing fan-fiction that doesn't fit with any of the series of the canon.

Bible Belt or Swath of Sin?

Do you live in "Sin City?" Is your county the envy of the nation, or just rife with envy? Geographers from Kansas State University have put together a project which attempts to lay out where each of the Cardinal Sins is most prevalent. For each sin, the group used various statistical measures for 3000 counties nationwide. As with any attempt to quantify the abstract, there may be room for argument for any given measure.

Envy is measured by the total number of thefts in an area:



Greed is a comparison of average incomes with the number of people living below the poverty line:



Gluttony is the number of fast food restaurants per capita:



Wrath is the total number of violent crimes:



Lust is the total number of STDs per capita:



Sloth compares expenditures on arts, entertainment and recreation with the employment rate:



Pride is an aggregate of the other six sins:



I don't know if "Fast Food equals Gluttony" is a good measure here, but amount of groceries consumed per capita is probably harder to measure. I thought the Lust and Wrath measures are pretty good. I also thought the Greed measure was pretty clever, but I wonder if charitable giving could be used as an offset? And looking at the Pride map, the old Bible belt doesn't fare too well.

Hat tips to Junk Charts and FlowingData.

Or, as I like to call it, "The Church of the Great Cosmic Gumball Machine"

Now here is a quote that speaks to the problem of catechizing teenagers (and some other folks as well) in the present age:

[Christian]Smith — himself an evangelical — led an exhaustive study of the religious & spiritual lives of American teenagers, and his findings (published in the book Soul Searching and also found in a dvd with the same title) found that whatever the religious beliefs professed by American teens (and, I’d argue, by adults as well), the vast majority of them “practiced” what he terms “Moralistic Therapuetic Deism”, a worldview in which God acts as divine butler or cosmic therapist: there when I need Him, but out of the way otherwise and most of the time.

Chris Burgwald at American Catholic.

Having taught weekly faith formation classes for middle schoolers for a number of years (high schoolers briefly, but they're a bit easier) and currently enduring my own last two (out of four) teenagers plus their various friends and acquaintances, I feel his pain.

I could never quite wrap my brain around the debate I once had with an eighth-grade girl in one of my classes who habitually expressed her disdain for matters of church teaching and evidently regarded herself as very forward-thinking for doing so. One day I made the mistake of using the word "myth" in reference to the Genesis creation story* and had to spend considerable class time defending myself when she declared the belief (picked up from well-trained young-earth creationist schoolmates--how do those folks manage to indictrinate so thoroughly at such a difficult age?) that dinosaurs existed concurrently with humans as "proven" by the descriptions of Leviathan and Behemoth in the book of Job. Never mind my pointing out that crocs and hippos were both well-known, by reputation if not by personal experience, to the writers of Hebrew scripture.

For goodness' sake, if you're going to dabble in modernism, why rebound to fundamentalism over minor points?

*Although we would be mere monerans (anachronistic archaebacteria?) in the TTLB ecosystem if such a category existed and can usually count our hits on one hand, I just know somebody is going to drop in and rake me over the coals for even breathing the word myth in the same sentence with the book of Genesis. Not that it will be likely to make any difference, but I submit definition one of Webster's New World Dictionary, 1979 by William Collins Publishers (I am a fossil,aren't I?), edited for brevity only:

A traditional story of unknown authorship, ostensibly with a historical basis, but serving usually to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the customs, institutions, religious rites, etc. of a people...

Or as I put it to the young lady in question at the time, a story that employs poetic or figurative language to teach a fundamental truth.

Don't Force It

The difference between cooption and coercion is the same as --
the difference between donation and taxation;
the difference between volunteer service and draft;
the difference between altrusism and burden;
the difference between being responsible for one's own actions, and "just following orders;"
the difference between freedom, and something less.

-------------------------------------------------------

A discussion I have had in the comm box of the blog Civics Geeks regarding the definition of "political community" reminded me of an idea that is central to my political thinking. That in all cases, cooption is preferable to coercion. That is not to say that cooption can be used in all circumstances, but that it is the preferred state.

A person who gives time, talent and treasure of his own free will derives spiritual benefit from the act. One who has those goods coerced from him will often feel unjustly deprived, no matter how good the cause.

I believe the Church is the ultimate coopting organization. Members of the Church are voluntary members, and can separate themselves at will. Membership in the Church, at least in the United States in the 21st century, is an exercise of free will.

In the political arena, I want a candidate who is less likely to coerce me into doing the right thing, and more likely to attempt to convince me to do the right thing, even though the latter is the harder task.

Rose & Mose

Two unrelated news items noticed in the past few days:

Lila Rose Rides Again

The pro-life UCLA Advocate, under the leadership of editor-in-chief Lila Rose, have busted Planned Parenthood yet again. (Links to previous investigations conducted by this intrepid young cub may be found here and here.) Targeting Idaho, a state in which it is legal to secretly tape a phone conversation, the Advocate had an actor pose as a prospective donor with an unusual request:

Donor: Wonderful. I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group - would that be possible?

Kersey: Absolutely.

Donor: Like the black community for example?

Kersey: Certainly.

Donor: OK, so the abortion I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose.

Kersey: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that you wanted your gift to be used to help (an) African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that that gift was earmarked specifically for that purpose.

Donor: Great. Because I really face trouble with affirmative action, and I don't want my kids being disadvantaged, you know, against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name, you know.

Kersey: Mmhmm, absolutely.

Donor: So that's definitely possible.

Kersey: Oh, always, always.

Donor: So I just wanna - can I put this in the name of my son?

Kersey: Absolutely.

Donor: Yeah, he's trying to get into colleges, and he's going to be applying, you know, he's just ... really faced troubles with affirmative action.

Kersey: Mmhmm.

Donor: And we don't, you know, we just think, you know, the less black kids out there the better.

Kersey: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable.
Um, David, let me, if I may, just get some sort of specific general information so we can set this up the right way. You said you wanted to put it in your son's name, and you would like this designated specifically to assist (an) African-American woman who's looking to terminate a pregnancy.

Donor: Exactly, and yeah, I wanna protect my son, so he can get into college.

Kersey: All right. Excuse my hesitation, um, um, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited, and I wanna make sure I don't leave anything out.

The full story and transcript may be found at The Idaho Statesman. Hat tip for the link to the Susan B. Anthony List (named for American history's best-known pro-life feminist.)

The Advocate also has tapes from several other states, but is waiting for responses from Idaho and Ohio (from whence they released a similar exchange) before releasing them.

Old-fashioned investigative reporting. I love it!

***

Moses' Long Strange Trip

Psychology professor Benny Shanon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem went on a trip to the Amazon, where he went on another sort of trip entirely: one produced by a local hallucinatory plant potion. Since then, he's used the stuff hundreds of times and written a book about the plant. Why do I envision something along the lines of In a Gadda Da Vida or maybe those plays that Tennessee Williams turned out during the 60's that never see the stage anymore?

At any rate, Shanon's long strange trip "enlightened" him to posit a hypothesis about the religious experience of Moses and the Children of Israel at the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, which he subsequently published in the philosophy journal Time and Mind. He suggested that the ancient Israelites may have used Middle Eastern desert plants (in particular, wild rue or acacia) in religious ceremonies and that these may have produced the events described in the book of Exodus:

And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking.

Which leaves me wondering: does one really need hallucinogens to see thunder and lightning, perhaps followed by smoke if the vegetation up there was dry, on an isolated mountaintop?

Shanon is a proponent of the religion-has-its-roots-in-the-use-of-psychotropics school of anthropology, presumably because no one could ever have a religious experience while stone cold sober. He figures the burning bush story is evidence Moses was trippin' years before he led the Children to the Promised Land as well.

Aside from the obvious issue of why the Children would follow some stoner across a desert through forty years of misery, I'm absolutely disinclined to buy this one. Moses wasn't chasing spiritual jollies when he encountered that bush, he was busy watching his father-in-law's sheep. I'm no aggie, but it seems to me that getting high while trying to hold off predators and keep together a herd of beasts not known for their intellect is not good animal husbandry.

It's no accident that many cultures which were known to use psychotropics in worship or fortunetelling kept the use limited to a select few on specific occasions. Life was pretty darn dangerous for primitive people: having large segments of the population or individuals critical to community survival one toke over the line could have spelled disaster.

The full story is here.

Trials of the Arche-Bishop, Wyth Sum Byrd-Countynge Toss'd In

I haven't read all of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan William's remarks on the place of Sharia in the English legal system yet, and it's often hard to judge what exactly was said based on news reports. Just ask Benedict XVI. Thus I'm disinclined to weigh in on whether it's fair to start addressing the man as "Archbishop Neville Chamberlain."

Nonetheless, we enjoy nothing better than a well-done satire in parody form here at the Minor Premise. And as the Chaucer blogger hasn't been penning lately, I really, really appreciated being able to get my Chaucerian fix courtesy of the irreverently literary Iowahawk. So rightly or wrongly, I had a very good laugh with a twist of schadenfreude at the expense of the aforementioned unfortunate archbishop. Perhaps it's just as well that confession season is upon us. An excerpt from Heere Bigynneth the Tale of the Asse-Hatte: An Archbishop of Canterbury Tale follows:

1 Whan in Februar, withe hise global warmynge

2 Midst unseasonabyl rain and stormynge

3 Gaia in hyr heat encourages

4 Englande folke to goon pilgrimages.

5 Frome everiches farme and shire

6 Frome London Towne and Lancanshire

7 The pilgryms toward Canterbury wended

8 Wyth fyve weke holiday leave extended

9 In hybryd Prius and Subaru

10 Off the Boughton Bypasse, east on M2.

11 Fouer and Twyntie theye came to seke

12 The Arche-Bishop, wyse and meke

13 Labouryte and hippye, Gaye and Greene

14 Anti-warre and libertyne

15 All sondry folke urbayne and progressyve

16 Vexed by Musselmans aggressyve.

Read it all here. Hat tip to MrsDarwin, who, like myself, wold she had ywriten yt.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Baby and I forgot and got into the Great Backyard Bird Count a bit late (and wouldn't you know it, our previously plentiful yard birds weren't cooperating the first day of the count anyway.) As I seem to be having some trouble getting the Count website to load, I figured I might as well get our notes from the rest of the weekend off the back of a postcard and on here.

Our results, mostly from 15-minute intervals at the back window, but including some time Baby spent on the boardwalk out at the Swamp:
2/16--Swamp
8 Mallards
3 Blue-winged Teals
4 Great Egrets
3 Chipping Sparrows
--Yard
3 American Goldfinches
1 Pair Dark-eyed Juncos
2 Chipping Sparrows
1 White-throated Sparrow
2/17--Yard
3 Am. Goldfinches
2 male House Finches (one was my bud with the pinkeye--he was looking a little less goopy today!)
2 American Robins
1 Carolina Chickadee
1 Tufted Titmouse
1 Yellow-Rumped Warbler
1 Mourning Dove
2/18--Yard
2 Am. Goldfinches
2 Carolina Chickadees
1 female Northern Cardinal

Bending Over Backwards

Inspired by the Ironic Catholic's post on the refined teaching regarding unbaptized babies, the Parody department came up with this ditty:

Limbo Rock
by Dminor (apologies to Jon Sheldon and Billy Strange)

Every little boy and girl
That does arrive into our world
Has a chance to be with God
All can have a decent shot
If the parents aren't so quick
or perhaps a little thick
God can take them in his hand
It is up to his command

(spoken)
We can hope it now
Limbo's over now
We hope, but not know
(sung)

Tho we fear that Adam's stain
Keep babies from heaven's plain
Innocent tho they may be
of the world's depravity
tho some can baptize 'em quick
some arrive here much too sick
and those lost inside the womb
we hope God can make some room

(instrumental break)

Where God takes a baby's soul
only He can have control
We pray to the Lord above
That He handles them with love
We used Limbo to explain
How those babies kept from pain
It's for just Him to decide
certain knowledge we're denied

(spoken)
Don't lose that faithful hope
So said our holy Pope
We hope but not know

---------------------------------

The Zenit dispatch on the subject is here.

-----------------------

A side note: I was able to visit with Rambling Speech, and she was looking well. She is very much the Balmerite, at least for now. . . .

Admonition to a young man

...being loaned a much nicer car than he'll be able to afford in a long time.

To be Scotch taped to the dash in some location where it is visible but does not interfere with safe driving.

It has been your incredible good fortune to have bestowed on you the use of this vehicle for the next several months, subject to your appropriate use of same. In the interest of encouraging said appropriate use, I suggest you contemplate the following analogy:

The loan of the car may be viewed as a literary symbol of Free Grace. It's not much of a stretch when you consider the gasoline costs this change in ride should save you. Think of it this way: you didn't earn it, it isn't owed you, and your benefactor is not without cause to suppose that you might, at some point, prove unworthy of it. Yet it is given you nonetheless. Car:Grace. Grace:Car. See?

Oh, don't worry; I'm not looking to blaspheme here. Salvation metaphors are extremely common in literature. Remember the parables? Remember the Narnia Chronicles? The Song of Solomon? Try to think of the number of times you heard the phrase "Christ Figure" mentioned in your last English class. Had Saint John of the Cross had grease monkey tendencies, I suspect he might have come up with a soteriological allegory much along these lines.

Going back to our analogy, however: the use of the car has been granted. Gratis--well, except for the fact that you'll have to fill it up and wash it. It's not a perfect analogy. Then again, maybe it's not so bad. Once you have Grace, after all, it rests with you to feed it, and to keep it clean as well. Otherwise you just cruise along complacently with your Grace, assuming it will always be there as it weakens from lack of reinforcement and tarnishes from the accumulated stain of sinful behavior. Eventually it gives out completely under the even inch of built-up gunk lining the entire interior of the soul/engine. You know what one of those looks like.

Let's move along with that analogy. Assume you are assiduous about feeding your car/Grace, avoiding occasions of sin and mudding, and at least hosing off the pollen every couple of weeks or so. What else is a benificiary to do?

Well, as anybody who's been there can tell you, you can very easily wreck your car by not following the rules, just as you can very easily wreck your Grace by not following the rules. The Grace rules are those ones that were written in stone back in the book of Exodus, plus those that Christ gave us in the Gospels. The car rules are the ones that were written in ink in that manual you got before you took the licensing test, plus basic courtesy and common sense. Don't drive stupid; you probably won't wreck. Don't speed; likewise. Don't cut off that semi; you get the idea. Don't read the Commandments as a challenge and try to see how close to the line you can get on them; you should stay out of trouble. But only if you also resist thinking about pushing the envelope, and love your neighbor even when he annoys the heck out of you. Not your best buds: you can rationalize excuses for their irritating behavior all day long. I mean the guy down the street with whom you can't wait to find fault.

Finally, I exhort you to assume full responsibility for your car/Grace. (I'll also leave it to you to figure out the metaphors from here on.) You are, after all, the one in control. I don't wanna hear the litany: bad brakes, bad alignment, bad idle, wants to go fast, and so on. It's your job to keep that sucker driving the way it's supposed to. If you have to slow down, so be it. If you have to spend $80 on parts and crawl under the chassis with a wrench, so be it.

So the engine tends to head for fifty: fine (unless you're driving in a thirty-five mile zone.) If you find yourself at seventy-five, you can't blame the engine. Slow the heck down, and pay more attention! So everybody else is passing you as if you're standing still. Your car is still not going to transfigure into a Ferrari, and you're still not on the Daytona Speedway. Get off and take the darn backroad. You know most of them, anyway.

In short, take care of and respect your car, and your Grace. They're both going to be rather difficult to replace if you don't. If you do these things, there is reason to hope that you will drive on the Road of the Lord joyously and well for a long time to come.

Also--and this is not meant metaphorically--the Chief just might decide to let you learn to drive the big red fire engine.

Holy Thursday

To the old law still obedient
In its feast of love divine
Love divine, the new law giving,
Gives himself as Bread and Wine

. . . .

Come , adore this wonderous presence;
bow to Christ, the source of grace!
Here is kept the ancient promise
Of God's earthly dwelling place!

- from Pange Lingua

Same Song, Second Verse

The garden is coming along and things have settled down a bit, but as Holy Week is beginning I'm going to be extending my blog holiday for a while longer. I thought I ought to get in an addendum to D's comments below, however, before shutting down operations. I've been reading the continuing adventures of Sister and her motley crew of nuns for several months now, whereas he looks in only on occasion; lately I've been studying it and its companion site in depth, so I have a bit wider experience from which to opine.

I think D's assessment of the blog is basically sound. Sister, whoever she may be, is above all else a good storyteller.(I'm using the feminine article for convenience's sake here; she could be a middle-aged man in a wifebeater t-shirt for all I know. Her flair for detail makes me lean slightly in the direction of the author's being female, but that's a hypothesis I could easily revise. And while I acknowledge the possibility that she could be a nun, little would surprise me more than to be shown authoritatively that this is the case.) Her characters are not mere stereotypes; they are sympathetically portrayed and come alive in the stories. They could easily be real people, and may be based on real people.

The posts as a rule are not excessively long (the picture volume, however, can make for slow loading for those of us with slightly obsolete software; a skilled proofreader would moreover be to her benefit.) They generally blend some entertaining personal story or news item with a fairly basic catechism lesson or saint story; occasionally some contemporary church issue like the Medjugorje revelations is discussed. Sister seems to do do a respectable job of researching her material, as far as this spottily-schooled lay Catholic can see; on occasion a better-informed reader corrects a point. At worst, I haven't noticed anything that strikes me as disrespectful of the Church or outright heresy. The blog is funny and interesting and seems, understandably, popular. It is far from "deep" theology, mind you--it would never occur to me to ask Sister a Jimmy Akin-level question or to assume she was correct on a point that I couldn't independently verify. Most of Sister's lessons are the sort of thing that can be picked up at Catholic Online or similar sites, put into an entertaining story. When I taught middle-school religious ed, I'd have loved to have had a textbook formatted in this style. The comboxes are generally pretty friendly as well, and Catholics of various stripes often discuss belief and tradition or share advice with each other.

Sister is affiliated with an online purveyor of religious medals which sell for about $12 apiece and are attractively strung with colorful beads or macrame. They're pretty, but assuming they're garden-variety tin medals and craft store findings the price strikes me a bit stiff. Display pages include blurbs in the same slightly snarky but basically respectful tone of the blog posts. (I thought one play on the term "ball chain" pushed the envelope, but nothing else raised hackles.) It's a pretty good advertising scheme, especially if you're aiming at young Catholics of the 'Net generation. I could find no information on the sales site that would clue me in to who runs the shop or what affiliations they may have; paraphernalia typical of many Catholic sites and blogs--a dedication to a patron saint for example--seem to be absent as well. I'm not saying the proprietors are not Catholic; it's not as if anybody gets rich in the sacramentals business and there's little nonreligious motivation for going into it. But assuming they are, they're certainly not overt about it.

The blog is of a type I would call a "character blog" or "persona blog" and in that regard is one of quite a few I've encountered on the 'Net. Usually it is apparent that such blogs portray a character, although the bloggers, dramatic types that they are, often go to great lengths to stay in character. The author of another character blog I read, (unfortunately less frequently due to the enforced slower pace of reading Middle English) Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog encountered a problem because of this. It seems a magazine contacted him about using a quote for an article but needed to publish his real name. He insisted that his "real name" was Geoffrey Chaucer and refused to give any other; thus he was not published.

Sister, likewise, seems determined to be Sister and only Sister to the readership. This really wouldn't seem to be a problem; one wouldn't expect that any reader could pass the blog's masthead, with its snarky "Life is tough. But nuns are tougher..." motto and black-and-white photo of a traditionally-habited elderly nun that pretty obviously came from a pre-Vatican II-era Catholic school yearbook, and remain under the delusion that what follows represents reality. Unfortunately, in the world of the 'Net, all kinds of things one wouldn't expect seem to happen.

While I doubt that the most naive reader would presume that the 500-plus-years-deceased Chaucer has lately resurrected and taken up blogging, elderly nuns--even the traditional variety--are fairly common. Moreover, women religious and postulants are well represented in the blogosphere, as are monks. Thus a blogging traditional nun isn't a huge imaginative leap for a moderately 'Net-savvy Catholic. Add to the mix the fact that the 'Net is society condensed: skim Sister's combox for a few weeks and you'll find all kinds. [Full disclosure: Skim Sister's next-to-last post and you'll encounter Yours Truly at loggerheads with a particularly vicious species of troll. I must be a lightning rod.] There are seekers, trads who love Sister's pre-Vat. II mindset, and occasional anticatholics. Some of the lattermost clearly come in with an eye to thrashing some Catholics; a few are under the impression that it's the blog version of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You. (I haven't seen the play, but reviews I've read indicate its contempt for Catholicism is pretty overt. If the Sister of the blog is trying to mock the Church in any way, she's being phenomenally subtle about it.) Among the Catholics, most readers seem to understand that they are dealing with a persona, (a few have thought it a con job, and indicated as much) and don't have any problem with that. Trying to sleuth out Sister's real identity with probing questions is an ongoing game, but as she has thus far been closemouthed on that matter little progress has been made that I can see.

A few readers--most Catholics, some probably seekers, do seem to be under the impression that Sister is a 100% Real Nun. This is where the potential for harm is. The odds of encountering people with "issues" in a few months of blogging are high. One recently scolded Sister at length for her crusty answers to questioners, which he considered unsuitable to a religious. (He obviously never met Sr. Andrew, who taught at my school until it closed down in the early '70's.) I suggested he was taking the blog too seriously; I wish he had replied to me because my next comment to him would have been to direct him to the dictionary to look up "persona." I've had enough contact with amateur theater folks to respect their commitment to their characters, but there are limits.

Others ask advice on matters that are very probably beyond Sister's scope, and a few seem to hang on her words with just a little too much vehemence to be really healthy. I don't have a problem at all with someone, Catholic or otherwise, portraying a nun as long as it's in good fun and done respectfully. I don't care for Whoopi Goldberg's politics, but I thought Sister Act was kinda cute. I do, however, have a problem with anyone portraying a nun allowing that portrayal to go to a point at which it becomes messing with someone's mind. If Sister's creator is a Catholic, I can't imagine how she can post three times a week with that responsibility hanging over her head. I couldn't do it. I couldn't have somebody take my crusty act the wrong way (even if they hadn't been very nice to begin with) and not try to smooth things over. I couldn't keep up the act in the presence of someone who--as far as I could see--genuinely needed help. The Catholic training runs too deep.

Sister may be a good Catholic, or a good person who is not a Catholic, with good intentions. If I had ever gotten the impression that her intent was nefarious, I would currently have more time to read Chaucer. But what seems to have started out as a clever but harmless product-moving scheme is getting out of control, and needs to be brought back into line. Comment moderation is easily enough done, and can go far toward keeping troublemakers out and discussion civil. And if Sister is not doing so, she needs to consider seriously the need to occasionally drop character long enough to make sure her "act" will not lead to harm.

For the rest of us, what to do? It costs nothing to read, and as long as the stories continue to be good I intend to do so. For readers who get the joke, I think the blog is benign. I don't know that I'll be hanging around the comboxes much; the atmosphere in there has gotten too tense. As for the sales side of the operation: I don't wear much jewelry, have access to sacramentals shops locally if I need them, and am troubled by the lack of information available about the business. So I believe for now I'll just keep my credit card tucked away.

A BLESSED EASTER TO ALL.

UPDATE 5/15/07: Just happened across Sister's Best Stuff in the World Page--One of her commenters addresses her thus: Jane, You’re still funny after all these years! Barbara Daly Fincher The Plot Thickens...

It's a Mystery

I have watched with interest some exchanges on Ask Sister Mary Martha, a blog connected with an online sacramental store, heavenhelpus. The blog is written in the character of an older Sister who teaches in a Catholic school, and plays upon the stereotype of the dour nun. One might think that flogging an old cliche like that would be a receipe for tedium. However, this is far from the case.

First of all, Sr. Mary Martha appears to be knowledgable about and respectful of Catholic culture and teachings. For example, when discussing the "Saturday promise" of the brown scapular, she correctly pointed to the necessary beliefs underlying the promise. I have seen no reason to argue with Sister's knowledge of the faith and doctrine. She does avoid deep theology, but that would be consistent with the persona.

Added to the interesting information, Sister is a likable persona who is reasonably well written. Her stories are subtle, amusing, and (important for a blog) not too long. When I read Sister's posts, I can hear her voice in my head (or, perhaps, the voices of some of the older nuns back at St. Anthony's).

The quality of the blog, however, is not what prompted me to write. Rather, it is the folks it attracts to its comm box. Generally, they come in two types: Catholics who appreciate the content and enjoy Sister's stories, and those who come to tear down and ridicule the faithful. Some of the latter believe that they have an ally in Sister, since she is a persona. I imagine that these are the same types who would have found the "Beverly Hillbillies"-based reality show amusing; the misadventures of the inferior put on display for the elite. I have a real distaste for that way of thinking.

Somewhere, there may be a man in a wifebeater teeshirt laughing at all the faithful, as he counts his earnings from selling religious medals. On the internet, you never can be absolutely certain with whom you are dealing. And that goes double when money is involved. It is hard to imagine, though, someone keeping up the pretense of respect for the Catholic faith apparent in "Ask Sister Mary Martha" while harboring animosity towards it.

I enjoy the blog, and I enjoy the earnest discussion that ensues. Folks appear to occasionally learn some things, and the discourse, save the trolls, is civil. Whatever the motivation of the author of the blog (and I have to believe that it is at least partly commercial), I believe the blog is, at its worst, harmless and, at its best, a worthwhile read.

For C's take on the matter, check out her post above.

oh, for some dancing angels

DarwinCatholic recently had an excellent (and discussion-provoking) post on anti-evolution arguments (specifically those in Ann Coulter's book Godless.) The whole is worth reading, but one reference in particular got me mulling over some things I'd recently read. We Catholics are notable hair-splitters (which is fine mental exercise,) but I'm beginning to think the reason Sister used to answer so many questions with "It's a mystery!" was that she knew what was coming if she got into specifics. Staunch defense of the faith is admirable, but it's important to make sure it's actually a point of faith that is being defended. It's also important not to run roughshod over the beatitudes while defending the faith; that tends to negate any good that may be accomplished.

Monogenism--the idea that all humanity stems from one pair of ancestors--seems to lead to more fisticuffs among the bretheren and sisteren in Catholic blog comboxes than any other, excepting maybe sex and liturgical music. Oh, it can get nasty in there. I've actually gotten to a point very close to yelling at the screen, "YOU ARE BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN CHRIST! YOU ARE PROBABLY IN PERFECT AGREEMENT ON 90% OR BETTER OF ALL POINTS OF DOCTRINE! YOU ARE HAVING A MINOR DISAGREEMENT ON A VERY ESOTERIC THEOLOGICAL POINT! STOP CALLING EACH OTHER NAMES! AND GO TO YOUR ROOMS! NOW!!!" You wouldn't think it would be the sort of topic that would result in the throwing of virtual crockery among Catholics as the Church never objected to the theory of evolution (on the other hand, I guess you wouldn't have expected the question of whether Christ had one will or two to result in the throwing of actual crockery in the 7th century--but it did.)

That idea, regardless of whether it's approached biblically or biologically, tends to end up all tied up in an absolutely literal reading of the first several chapters of Genesis. A literal reading of Genesis leaves some unanswered questions. While initially only one couple (and subsequently their offspring) are mentioned, somewhere about the time Cain reduces the human population by one by murdering his brother Abel we start getting some hints that he and his parents are not alone in the world:
...anyone may kill me at sight. (Gen. 4:15) NAB
I don't know about you, but I think if he had been thinking of his father Adam the words would have come out differently. Then, out of the blue, Cain acquires a wife and fathers Enoch.

It is at this point that the tizzies start. If there are no other people in the world, then Cain must be (horrors) marrying his sister! On the other hand, maybe there were other humanoids who were not ensouled, and the children of Adam and Eve interbred with them--but that would be icky, too, because they wouldn't really be humans. Add in the reference to humans interbreeding with the Nephilim in Gen. 6, and you've got a regular soap opera (or maybe a primetime medical drama.) We modern humans are understandably uncomfortable with either option. Sibling incest taboos have been pretty widespread, if not absolutely universal, throughout history (although Genesis later indicates that they were not in effect at this time: Abram and Sarai are half-siblings through their father Terah.) Likewise, humans interbreeding with something not quite human is a pretty creepy concept. But while the criterion for humanness with regard to the Creation is ensoulment, the presence or absence of a human soul doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with species genetics. You could (in theory anyway) have souled humans and unsouled humans with identical DNA and the capacity to reproduce. For some reason the recent report of skeletal finds that suggested interbreeding might have taken place between Neandertals and Sapiens hominids came to mind, although I think that's probably an apples-and-oranges comparison.

One commenter on Darwin's post raised the objection that unsouled humans didn't fit with the concept of a merciful and loving God; I think that's a valid point. Which is why I'm less concerned with how God ensouled humanity than with the belief that He did. Likewise I'm less concerned with whether there is some sort of genetic basis for original sin than I am with the readily observable fact that we all bear its stain to some degree or another.

Jesus may well have explained all these matters to the apostles, but if He did, it didn't make it into any of the Gospels. Mebbe those were the things that the evangelists had to leave out because there just wasn't room--that which fell under "if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books..." (Jn. 21:25. NAB.) I'm inclined to think that the reason it wasn't written down is that, unlike that business about loving God and your neighbor, being like a child before God, feeding the hungry, etc., it wasn't critical to our development as Christians. I can see the Evangelist on Patmos now: "What to leave out...the prophecy of John?...the miracles?...that business about keeping His commandments? Or the skinny on where Cain got his wife?"

An odd analogy crept into my mind while I was mulling all this over, and refused to leave. I figure I'll conclude with it, even if it is silly, because it has stubbornly lingered between my ears. It might be problematic as it requires that a mythical (folkloric?) being stand in for God, whom I don't believe to be a mythical being. What the heck, so did Narnia. It sums up pretty well, though, where I've been trying to go with this:

There's an old CTW television special called Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. (It about figures I'd come around to a childrens' programming analogy eventually. Heck, I've spent the last twenty years raising kids; what did you expect?) One of the story lines of the program involves Big Bird's quest to solve the mystery of how Santa gets down chimneys. This is more dramatic than one would think as Bird is convinced (oh, that nasty Oscar!) that unless he can figure this out, no one will get any presents. He eventually dozes off on the roof while awaiting Santa's arrival. By the time his friends find him and bring him down to the warmth of his neighbors' apartment, Bird is in despair: he's missed Santa and will never solve the mystery! Neighbor Gordon brings him back down to earth simply by pointing out the filled stockings on the hearth, the gifts under the tree. "Does it look to you," he queries Bird, "like nobody's having Christmas around here?" Everything suddenly falls into place for Big Bird: Christmas comes, and Santa gets down that chimney, regardless of whether we understand all the details.

God is with us, who have both immortal souls and a sinful nature, regardless of whether we ever figure out all the details of our earthly origins.

Beloved, let us love one another,because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
1Jn 4:7 NAB

Prayer and Petitions

Darwin of DarwinCatholic has posted on a recent flap at ScienceBlogs. It seems that Richard Dawkins (tagged by Darwin in terms I wish I'd come up with as "the posterboy of trying to turn scientific conclusions into sweeping philosophical ones") had signed (then repudiated after unsurprising general outrage erupted) a petition to outlaw the religious indoctrination or identification of children under the age of sixteen in Britain. In other words, no teaching religion to children, and no identifying them as members of a given sect, until they are legally adults (most kids in Britain are heading into the workforce or job training at sixteen, unless they are getting ready for college.) This, assert the petitioners, will encourage "free thought," which sounds like a noble concept unless you've heard enough atheist dogma to recognize it as a euphemism for atheism.

I would be very much surprised if this petition got very far; most sensible people, to include probably the vast majority of the nonreligious among us, can spot the problems inherent right away. I know my Logic Early Warning System was going off like the neighbors' singularly irritating car alarm. As guardians of their children, parents have the right within reason to make decisions regarding their upbringing; take this away from one subset of the population and nobody's rights are safe. One nonreligious opponent aptly put it thus:
Indeed, I would argue that the absolute last thing that any atheist wants to do is to encourage government to take such authority, because believe me, it's a hell of a lot more likely that you're gonna find it illegal to teach your beliefs than it is to make it illegal to teach someone else's beliefs.
Besides, as D reminded me, England has an established church and retains an official Defender of the Faith in the person of its monarch; unless Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth is prepared to shrug off that aspect of her position and go over completely to the other side it doesn't seem that such a ruling could legitimately be passed. But the petitioners weren't dissuaded from trying, even if one of the more high-profile ones did cut and run as soon as things got uncomfortable. And the thought that they might have concluded they had a shot at success, or at least at launching the idea as one worthy of serious discussion, is a bit disconcerting.

Assuming that the petitioners, or at least some among them, were absolutely serious about their proposal and actually did look to a time when every child would be shielded from religious influence, I proceeded to indulge in some idle musing on the eventual result of such a proposal's being enacted. It worked out something like this:

Problem 1: Define "religious teaching/indoctrination." If you tell your child there's a God, presumably that's religious indoctrination. What if you tell your child there is no God? You can't "prove" either viewpoint scientifiically, so what but a religious teaching could the latter be? Furthermore, is Santa Claus religious? How about the Tooth Fairy? Would she be Wiccan, or maybe Theosophist? What if it's a Tooth Mouse instead? Where does the Easter Bunny fit in? He's kinda between pagan and religious--there's the fertility rite aspect of the character, but then there's that unsettling rebirth and new life after the winter thing, too. If you read your kid the Narnia Chronicles, is that religious "indoctrination"? How about if you keep a Bible for your own reading but fail to keep it away from the kiddies? Are you required to lock it up or put it on a high shelf like girlie magazines or the bourbon? Is a crucifix on the wall or a concrete Madonna in the garden "indoctrination?" Will high school students be cleared to read Chaucer's "Miller's Tale," while the Prioress and Second Nun are kept off limits? What to do with the Nun's Priest,who is nominally a "religious" figure but whose lifestyle and tale are not? Will works of literature with Christ figures be banned from the classroom, or read but not discussed in those terms? Will high school students only be exposed to John Donne's dirty poems, skipping Death Be Not Proud and the like entirely?

Carried to its logical extreme, is it "religious indoctrination" to tell your four-year-old that it's wrong to hit his little sister and take the blocks away from her? That it's not nice to pull the dog's tail? If not, where are these constructs of right and wrong, nice and not nice, coming from? Who sets the standard? Why is that standard better than yours or mine? How exactly does this encourage free thinking?

Problem 2: Does a ban on religious "definition" of children mean that parents can't baptize their infants, that children old enough to know what's going on can't be baptized, or that nobody can be baptized before they are 16? Does it make any difference if the kid requests baptism? Can a terminally ill child request sacraments or prayer? Can he or she be told of belief in an afterlife? Is the government going to intervene if parents baptize or hold a religious service for a miscarried or deceased infant? Here I've spent pretty much my entire adult life being told the government has no standing to intrude in people's bedrooms (whether or not the bedroom is actually involved at the time,) and what comes around the bend but some of those same people proposing that the government intrude in my church and nursery?

Problem 3: Does this apply to citizens only, or is everybody on British soil going to be held to this standard? How will it be enforced? What will the penalties be for violations? Are parents going to get off with a fine, or get their kids taken away, or do jail time, for reading them some Bible stories? Will Wiccans be subject to the same penalties if they teach their beliefs to their children? How about Muslims? Going back to what I said under Prob. 1, will reading your kid Atlas Shrugged or the letters of Bertrand Russell also incur a penalty?

A bit rambling and downright silly in spots, I know, but since we've decided to entertain discussion on the subject I'd like to see some answers. Petitioners, think of it as warm-up for the rest of what you'll get thrown at you. If you're determined to launch a major social engineering project, you'd best be prepared to explain to the rest of us just how it's going to improve all our lives.

In pondering the mentality that leads to this sort of thinking, I idly mused my way into the thought that some of it might be influenced by current events. I don't know this to be the case, and I could well be barking up the wrong tree, but the thought occurred and I figured I'd float it. As I understand it, Christian churches in England right now suffer from pretty sparse attendance. While Christians are neither on the verge of extinction nor particularly given to going away quietly, and they could experience a resurgence, it seems odd that all these prominent antitheists could find a minority so threatening. On the other hand, mosques are multiplying. Given the "homegrown" terrorist incidents in Britain in recent years, might some of the signatories to this petition be concerned with the overrun of the country by radical Islamism, and the loss of English culture? If so, perhaps they feel the only fair way to address the problem is a blanket ban on all religion. This throws the baby out with the bathwater as far as I'm concerned as it assumes that the problem is religious belief and not a toxic ideology incorporating religious, political and cultural elements that are accepted by few others even within the same faith tradition.
Of course, all the good and noble aspects of religious belief--reverence, charity, piety, selflessness, and so on--get tossed out along with the source of the problem. I'm not betting on them being replaced by religion-free versions of same.

No Other Gods Before Me . . . .

I found this comment on Newsbusters.org in the
comment section of Brent Bozell's blog from a poster called mattm:

The statement "there are no absolutes" is itself an absolute, and therefore, the phrase is an oxymoron.
If an Atheist says he/she believes there is no god, that's fine. That's a belief and is therefore just as religious as Theism. Therefore, Atheists have no right to mock anyone for being "religious", since they, too, are religious.
If, on the other hand, they claim to know there is no God, then they are claiming omniscience, because the only way to know of the non-existence of God is to know everything, which is to be God. Therefore, Atheists (who claim to know there is no God) are, in fact, claiming an attribute that only a god could have, thereby making themselves their own god, thus rendering Atheism absurd.
This is the meaning of Psalm 14:1 "The fool hath said in his heart 'there is no God'"

I wish I had written that!

Christmas

He neither shall be borned in house nor in hall,
Nor in a king's palace, but in an ox's stall.

He neither shall be washen in white wine nor in red,
But in the clear spring water with which we were christened.

He neither shall be clothed in purple nor in pall,
But in the fair white linen that usen babies all.

He neither shall be rocked in silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden cradle that rocks upon the mold.

--from As Joseph Was A-Walking,
Appalachian spiritual.

When I was a seeker,
I sought both night and day;
I sought the Lord to help me,
And He showed me the way.

He made me a watchman
Upon the city wall,
And if I am a Christian,
I am the least of all.

---from Go Tell it on the Mountain
African-American spiritual

A blessed Christmas to all.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few whales to go harpoon

I had noted without paying too much attention the election by the Episcopal church of Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop. This morning I came across a reference to a New York Times Magazine interview with her along with some selected quotes:


[Interviewer]How many members of the Episcopal Church are there in this country?

[Schori]About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.

[Int.]Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?

[Schori]No. It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.


Aside from these somewhat backhanded remarks, most of the (very short and not terribly deep) interview reads benign, if overly sanctimonious. The above quotes (surprise, surprise,) were not well taken by commenters on Open Book, Catholic writer Amy Welborn's blog. They have led to some creative commentary, however, and a Cafepress mug I may have to drop hints about for Christmas. I'm in a quandry; I'd had my eye on Feminists For Life's Stanton and Anthony "Another humorless old biddy for life" mugs for a while and now they've got a competitor.

I dunno about everybody else, but I kinda like Kate. Having no natural skill myself in tact or diplomacy, I'm always heartened to learn of public figures next to whom I could appear to have kissed the Blarney Stone. It's a real self-image boost to realize one is not the planet's biggest verbal maladroit.

With my newfound confidence I'm considering issuing Ms. Bish a challenge. As one of those overprocreating Catholics who don't give a darn about stewardship of the planet, I'd like to propose she try a month or two of compacting the garbage for a household including four young children, one in diapers, into a 50-liter can. That's liters, not gallons. That's with pickup every other week. When she decides she's had enough, I'd be happy to give her some pointers. I did it for several years.

Thought for the day

...from Psalm 127 (JB) and with thanks to Henri J.M. Nouwen in With Open Hands (1972, Ave Maria Press.)

If Yahweh does not build the house,
in vain the masons toil;
if Yahweh does not guard the city,
in vain the sentries watch.