Chastity: both/and

Theology of the Body and Chastisement of the Flesh: A Response to the Recent Debate

A great article on chastity, the whole Christopher West controversy and practical advice for living a life of purity from the saints. It explores the false separation between West's presentation of Theology of the Body and the traditional idea of concupiscence. It's a little wordy, but well worth reading.

Bam! Miracle!

I think it's funny that there is such doubt about God's existence in the world, that people look down on belief in the supernatural, and that we are so affected by our secular culture.

And then something like this happens.

Lying in a hospital bed in Boston, Massachusetts, barely able to lift his head, Jack Sullivan was in such pain he was struggling to breathe.

There had been complications with the operation on his back. Doctors had warned that he would be left paralysed unless he underwent surgery, but on opening him up they discovered his spine had been so severely ruptured that protective fluids had leaked out.

Devastated and desperate, his hopes and plans for the future fading, Sullivan prayed to Cardinal Newman. He had turned to Newman after once watching a documentary about the Anglican cleric who had converted to Roman Catholicism in the 19th century, finding his life inspiring.

Almost immediately, the pain disappeared and he felt a surge of strength in his body. Pulling back the sheets, he tentatively felt for the floor with his toes – and then walked upright for the first time in months.

Venerable John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Would Jesus go to Mass?

Adam's Ale answers:

Actually, no He wouldn’t and neither would we since it would be the Second Coming. But a more important question is did Jesus attend services when He did live here on earth. The answer is yes. He studied the Scriptures (Old Testament obviously) went to synagogue, observed the high holy days, and some suggest that the tassel that the lady plagued with hemorrhages touched and was subsequently cured was part of the religious dress of the Jewish people.

...

We go to Mass weekly because this is the example set by Jesus Christ. We gather in the Catholic Church because we believe He gave His authority to the Church in matters of faith and morals. We gather at a Mass rather than a service because we believe that He gave us a sacrifice and a sacrificial system through the priesthood to be celebrated. And we do it as the universal Church because Christ’s mission was and is about unity. That is our role as sons and daughters of our Father. We come first in love and then in duty in season and out, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health all the days of our lives until we are one with Him in glory.

How to get vocations:

Be in love with Jesus.

According to the newspaper, she “has become the biggest phenomenon in the Church since Teresa of Calcutta,” as “she has made the old convent of Lerma into an attractive recruiting banner for female vocations, with 135 professional women with a median age of 35 and 100 more on a waiting list.” The paper adds that Sr. Vernoica has also “opened a house in the town of La Aguilera, 24 miles from Lerma, at a huge monastery donated by her Franciscan brothers."

Need proof?

[Found on Intentional Disciples via CAEI]

Muscially newsworthy.

1. I really like this new "dead robot" wallpaper from Five Iron Frenzy.

2. In the words of Bear McCreary: "BSG music is finally on iTunes!"

Not helpful:

Pelosi's office trashed by pro-life demonstrators

I agree with AmericanPapist:

Such activities, in my estimation, serve no purpose. They certainly do not seem to convert any hearts, and only allow enemies of our cause to caricature us as violent, unlawful trouble makers, which is of course a disservice to our sincere efforts to advance a culture of life in this country.

Surprise!

My pre-ordered copy of Switchfoot's Hello Hurricane showed up today even though it doesn't officially come out until Tuesday.

Thank you, Peter Kreeft!

From The Philosophy of Tolkien:

For the Church, too, is a "fellowship of the ring", but her ring is exactly the opposite of Sauron's. It is the Eucharist: a little wafer that is equally round, but full rather than empty; the humble extension of the Incarnation of God into man rather than the proud self-exaltation of man in order to make himself God. (223 - 224)

Just trying this out ...

It's my photostream!

Thanks, Mom!

My mom sent me a quote from this great article.

How are Catholic priests holding up under the avalanche of today's bad publicity? Astonishingly well, according to surveys. Between September 2003 and April 2005, St. Luke's Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland, a treatment center for priests with addictions and psychological problems, questioned 1,286 priests at their annual convocations in 16 American dioceses about their experience of priesthood. Asked to comment on the statement, "Overall, I am happy as a priest," more than 90 percent agreed. More than 81 percent said they would choose priesthood again. Only 6 percent were thinking of leaving. Could other professions match those numbers?

How is that possible? Why would any man in his right mind want to be a Catholic priest today? In the article cited above, Archbishop Quinn has an answer:

I believe... that this is the best time in the history of the Church to be a priest, because it is a time when there can be only one reason for being a priest or for remaining a priest -- that is, to 'be with' Christ. It is not for perks or applause or respect or position or money or any other worldly gain or advantage. Those things either no longer exist or are swiftly passing. The priest of today is forced to choose whether he wants to give himself to the real Christ, who embraced poverty, including the poverty of the commonplace, rejection, misrepresentation -- the real Christ of the gospels -- or whether, with the mistaken throngs of Jesus' time, he wants an earthly, worldly messiah for whom success follows upon success.

I haven't heard anything from this album ...

... but I have a feeling The Swell Season's new CD will be good based on what they've done before.

*cough ... Once ... cough*

The art of the highway.

Here are two articles/interviews on Sufjan's The BQE, named after the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in NYC.

1. This first one is a NPR interview. Sufjan comments on the whole project and they play some clips.

2. This one is much deeper and can be a bit of a downer at points. It seems like Sufjan is disenchanted with producing music for consumption and is just making music for himself right now.

In a recent interview you conducted with Shannon Stephens for asthmatickitty.com's Sidebar section, you wrote the following; "For myself, I'm starting to fear that music is far too selfish, self-absorbed, and self-interested for the ordinary life. When I'm entrenched in a project, for instance, the dishes are left undone, the bills left unpaid, the house is a mess. I become sub-human. I begin to despise all my bad habits." Then later, you say, "I'm at a point where I no longer have a deep desire to share my music with anyone, having spent many years imparting my songs to the public. Although I have great respect for the social dynamic of music ― that it should be shared with others, that it brings people together ― I now feel something personal is irrevocably lost in this process." And in your essay for the BQE project, you suggest that car culture and the expressway itself really reveal the self-destructive nature of man. So, after all of this, my question here is, do you think that you or perhaps all of us stuck in this moment of our cultural trajectory, are enduring a particular kind of existential dilemma?

I can't speak for the culture at large or anyone else. But for myself, I definitely feel a kind of claustrophobia because of the excess in our culture and the availability of so much.

It's funny that you had this little interview and it made headlines. People seemed to think you were saying, "I'm retired."

Yeah, no, I didn't intend to say that. I would never explicitly say something like that. But I definitely feel like "What is the point? What's the point of making music anymore?" I feel that the album no longer has a stronghold or has any real bearing anymore. The physical format itself is obsolete; the CD is obsolete and the LP is kinda nostalgic. So, I think the album is suffering and that's how I've always created ― I work with these conceptual albums in the long-form. And I'm wondering, what's the value of my work once these forms are obsolete and everyone's just downloading music? And I'm starting to get sick of my conceptual ideas. I'm getting tired of these grand, epic endeavours and wanting to just make music for the joy of making music and having it be immediate and nothing to do with the industry itself, which, y'know is suffering right now of course. And I think it has to do with a creative crisis too. I'm wondering, "What am I doing? What is a song even?" I'm questioning, what's the point of a song? Is a song antiquated? Does it have any power any more? The format itself ― a narrative song with accompaniment ― is really beyond me now. Like, I feel that The BQE is not really a song, it's not really a movie, it's not really just a soundtrack. It's so ambiguous and diversified, it seems to lack shape. And the expressway itself lacks shape, so I feel like it's all related to this existential crisis: Me versus the BQE, or me versus my work, y'know? And I don't think I can win; I feel like it's a losing battle.

I hope it leads to to new albums in the future. There are some cool points about music and culture in general in the article.

What's worse than a horrible song?

A horrible cover of a horrible song.

Witness: Seether playing George Michael's "Careless Whisper."

You may know the song as the one with the obnoxious sax solo in the opening or by the name that I had always assumed was the title of the song, "never gonna dance again."

Gag.

Switchfoot's official video for "Mess of Me"

I am pumped for the new album.

Oh, Sufjan.

Instead of giving me another album of his brilliant folk/pop/whatever music, he gives cryptic interviews like this. It's a little old but still applies.

His Fifty States Project, which he announced in 2003 as an epic song cycle about every American state, hasn't quite got off the ground. It began with an album about Michigan, then came Illinois, but there it stopped. "I have no qualms about admitting it was a promotional gimmick," he laughs.

His next two projects are an improvised synth-based album called Music for Insomnia, and a new string-quartet version of Enjoy Your Rabbit, his electronica record about Chinese zodiac signs. "I've feverishly, consistently, obsessively recorded," he says. "So now I've begun this self-imposed hiatus, where I'll stop releasing records and focus on writing. It's healthy for me to shake off all these pretensions and these epic conceptual endeavours."

So, he is making music .... and what about "improvised synth-based album" doesn't sound epic and conceptual?

Myself in stained glass.

Why I Am Catholic asks some interesting questions on the feast of St. Martin de Porres:

Much surely has been made, and will be made again today, of Martin de Porres being the first black saint in the Americas. What gets me instead is the broom (here in a statue from New Orleans) and the dog, cat, bird, and mouse eating from the same dish at his feet (as in other representations of the Lima-born Dominican brother). If I am going to be a saint (and that's the goal, isn't it?), what will my statue be holding? What animals will gather at my plaster feet? What colors will stand out in my stained-glass window?

These questions are not about presumption. What do we want to be remembered for? What is the purpose of our life? How will we serve God?

The images of saints that are in our churches and elsewhere symbolize what they did with the time God gave them on earth. Some are martyrs, others bishops and other simple servants of the poor. What will our windows look like?

Wisdom from CS Lewis

I came across this in Peter Kreeft's The Philosophy of Tolkien:

The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite ... When we are caught up into the experience which a "grand" style communicates, we are, in a sense, no longer conscious of the style. Incense is consumed by being used. (page 149)

While I wasn't very impressed ...

... with the new straight-to-DVD movie, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, Bear McCreary's soundtrack always blows me away. I'm currently hooked on the theme from The Plan, "Apocalypse." You can read Bear's description of the song on his blog here.

This version even has Cavil's speech about wanting to be more, taken from, what was for me, one of the best moments of the last season.

While I'm on the subject: why was I not impressed with The Plan? Well, first off it seemed really choppy to me. It was almost a string of clips from the first two seasons with random new scenes in between. The new stuff was supposed to give us a whole new insight to the show - the Cylon's point of view.

Instead, it just seemed like the makers of the movie just found ridiculous things to add that, while new, were not all that interesting. The few parts I really enjoyed were Leobon's first encounter with Starbuck on the radio and some of the funnier bits ("But this is a teal jacket.").

Overall, it seemed like a sad attempt to continue a show that has reached its natural end. If they want to make a movie, they should look at something in the ancient history of the show like this sort of thing.

Byzantine history on Twitter.

Check out Cry For Byzantium. This twitter feed is going through the whole history of the Byzantine Empire, "140 characters at a time."

Here is the accompanying blog with an explanation of what's going on with this.

The Creeper

Our newest blockbuster hit! It was created when we discovered how obnoxious my door sounds when you open it slowly.

An explosion of sound.

1. Remember Pomplamoose? You can get mp3s of their cover songs (legally) here.

2. The Ting Tings play "Keep Your Head" and "Be The One" live.

3. MxPx pays "Secret Weapon" live.

4. Amazon has "The 99 Most Essential Vivaldi Masterpieces" for just $2.99.

5. I don't know if I've mentioned Rosborough before, but their new EP has three cool songs.

Any random Sunday.

1. David Malki ! (creator of Wondermark) posted his action movie-inspired wedding poster, trailer and, oh yeah, cake. Hysterical.

Get ready for the bride of your life.

2. Beijing's first snow of season 'artificially induced'

Good and evil.

1. An exorcist talks about exorcism for Halloween.

2. Mark Shea on "Deliver us from evil."

Highlights:

Our radically incurious and timid culture of secularism makes a careful study of thinking about it as little as possible, all while carrying on the ridiculous charade of prattling about "freedom" versus the supposed restrictions that an evil theocratic Church is just about to impose on us all. But, in fact, our culture wants nothing to do with real freedom. It wants comfort at all costs and does not want to contemplate for a second that God has chosen to allow us to live in a very dangerous world where our choices have wide-ranging and eternal consequences. Just how dangerous may be seen in the story of what happened to God Himself when He became man. A universe where devils and men are free to conspire to visit the horrors of the crucifixion on the Creator of the Universe is not a universe where we lack freedom. It is a universe where we face such terrifying and prodigious freedom that we are constantly inventing foolish little systems of order to try to rein in our radical capacity for evil.

---

I mentioned that there is another way of "believing in" the devil that has an odd affinity with such direct dabbling in the occult. This is the paranoid way that some Christians can take, which, while being called "spiritual warfare," is actually a sort of terrified fascination with the devil that can supplant the worship of God. I have known Christians whose every waking hour was spent studying the darkness; "researching" the occult; and consuming hours, days, months, and years feverishly "making connections" between this and that feared occultic quack or movement -- all in the barren and fruitless notion that they were somehow doing some good and not merely feeding an endless paranoid appetite for conspiracy. I have watched as such Christians have rendered their lives into little psychic hells in which no one could be trusted, the devil lurked behind every good thing (including the Mass itself), and the universe appeared to them to be barren of God. The problem lay not in God's absence but with their persistent and stubborn choice to "give Satan the glory" by devoting all their waking thought to fearing him instead of loving God. It is a tragic choice, but one which we can all make in our own ways, whenever we opt to give fear, anger, doubt, and suspicion pride of place.

3. Good Catholics should not wear aprons - The reasons why Catholics cannot be Masons.

Something I will check out.

Saint Vincent Gallery Exhibit Features Founder Wimmer on 200th Anniversary

Here's a YouTube video showcasing some of the items in the exhibit including Archabbot Wimmer's chalice, breviaries and snuff boxes.

St. Therese has been busy.

Anglican Bishop Confirms St. Therese is Behind Anglican Ordinariate

What the kids are listening to these days ...

I heard of this from a couple of people on Twitter and decided to look it up.

It's certainly catchy. A cool video too.