Opening Day! (And other things)

Ma called. She lost her job. Again.

I was officially sworn into the Corps today. We broke out the official "line" stuff for inspections ... Interestingly enough, one of the things we're required to have (besides spit-shine shoes, pressed pants, buttoned shirt cuffs, etc.) is a "soul full of Grace." One of the Corps members tried to have it changed to "soul animated by love." She was voted down.

The Mayor of DC declared this "City Year Day." In the press last year, the picture captions referred to the Corps members "taking their vows." Hopefully they will use different words this time. The Civilian Service is way cool, whopdee-do.

One of my flatmates, Dani, told me how her boyfriend, Ron, said that girls "are like rocks. You can play with them in your hand as you like and then toss them away when you're through."

Dani felt this was rather funny, because Ron was clearly saying it to nettle her. She was disturbed, however, when he inexplicably began calling her "Pebble." He insists that this is a term of endearment.

Andrew (yes, pen-up-the-toilet-Andrew,) is a strange lad. He told me a theory he heard, that people in all relationships are essentially prostitutes. They do nice things for each other, simply because they want, in the end, to get sexual gratification. I explained to him that for people fully living the Catholic Faith, that is impossible, because Catholic men and women do not use one another merely for pleasure, but always leave the door open to that most unselfish of acts: creation.

Poor Andrew. I had to sew his pants up for him, because he'd already torn a hole in them. He is one of five registered Republicans in the Corps, and a former gang member. Just this past weekend he got some felony charges dropped. He's never been baptized, but he wears a medal of St. Michael around his neck.

He sort of reminds me of the actual prostitutes the Church loves so much, those women who do not deny the horror of their crimes, who do not excuse the sinfulness of their lives, who come into the Cathedral and sit in the back pews at Mass, who call themselves Catholic but never dream of receiving Communion. You know the people I'm talking about; the people who hang at the edge of repentance, estranged apart from the family, but remaining, somehow, a part of the family.

I was talking with Sami, another Corps Member ... and he related how at his Confirmation retreat, he told the priest who was hearing Confessions that he didn't think he was really Catholic. The priest told him that was alright, as long as he was a "good" person ... so he proceeded to go through with Confirmation. When the Bishop made the Sign of the Cross on his forehead, Sami explained that the chrism suddenly began to burn. It slid down his face like a stream of fire. "I don't think that was good," he said.

Confirmation was the happiest day of my life. But a priest of God wronged Sami, so for Sami, Confirmation was the day he was a traitor, a liar, and a sneak. For me the chrism felt like the Kiss of Heaven ... for him it felt like a burning Curse of Cain. And he, this self-professed agnostic, carries it with him even now, this guilty feeling that he has betrayed God, that God knows it, and that God knew it from the instant the chrism touched his forehead.

Lord, how much we are in need of holy priests.

I had a really great post planned for today, but y'all are going to have to wait. Today is Tuesday, which means I work a twelve hour shift. Time is scrunched much.

Good news:

The Toilet is Dead! Long live the Toilet!

Late one evening, about two weeks ago, one of our two toilets died. It was clogged, I mean. Andrew, the flatmate who lives with the other boy on the far side of the common area, had the brilliant idea of putting a ball-point pen up the toilet, to break up the clog. He then lost the pen. Somewhere in the toilet.

As you might imagine, it's been quite a to-do, with plumbers, landlords and the like. But last weekend, Megan's father rode in on a white horse, and snaked the silly thing. After some aggressive plunging, the toilet lives!

"I love the smell of regulations in the morning. Smells like ... Success."

Here I'm quoting Sam, one of my teammates. After spending a good deal of time "in traction," as they say, we've had no more Chapter Eight violations. The lava is cooling, I think.

The weather is beautiful.

I mean, drop-dead gorgeous. I love Fall in DC. In Maryland. In Virginia. In all fifty-nifty U-nited States! La la la la la!

My blisters are horribly hurty

I was going to be cranky about the poppers formed on both my feet by new shoes and boots. But I've decided to give them all an intention, and now with every step, I'm prayerful in spite of myself! Take that Satan! Woo-Hoo!

Interesting Bits

~ Mark Shea remarks on Andrew Sullivan, a true Conservative Idjit.

~ Papa Ratzi recently had a meeting with Hans Kueng. Yes, that Hans Kueng. Remember when evil Cardinal Ratzinger supposedly kept Hans Kueng's severed head in his closet, hanging over the stacks of gay porn and the shrine to Der Fuhrer?

Gee whiz, now they say Papa Ratzi is Mr. Nice Guy to Irritating, Painfully Irrelevant Dissident. Oy vey.

Hans Kueng himself reports that the meeting was rather cordial. Fear not, he does not fail to remind the press corps, yet again, that he and Papa were once dear, old friends, but they had a tragic falling out. Honestly, I think Hans wants to write himself into a soap opera. What Hans means to say is, Papa stayed Catholic, but Hans did not. Hans then refused to admit the fact. And the result was: Friction.

Oh no! Evil has made its way onto Notre Dame's campus!

The diabolical blob-like creatures apparently love self-expression, and show up for class wearing t-shirts which read:

"I'm With Evil -->"
"Got Fornication?"
"Martin Luther Is My Homeboy"
"NASCAR"
"I separated the pro-creative and unitive aspects of the marital act and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"

But fear not! Newly inaugurated ND president Fr. John Jenkins has a
to-do list ready to go:

1. Maintain religious and academic standards
2. Hire a good football coach
3. Don't let the Basilica be destroyed by giant blue flamey manifestation of evil

You can watch the whole hilarious cartoon show here.
Thanks to the Holy Whapping for the giggles.

City Year pictures!

The wonderfully welcoming people at Head Start took photos of our orientation meeting and sent them around. Go have a look see. Click on "View pictures without signing in."

Can you spot me? Maybe not, he he he, I've got my hair up!

The Daily "D'oh!"

Rev. Robinson, the first openly gay Bishop in the Episcopal Church, is predicting a division in the Anglican Communion over his consecration.

Gee, yah thinky Gene?


(Thank you, Jeff Miller, for the laughs)

In the RC episcopacy, we know there have been, and are, homosexual bishops. If any of them suddenly became openly, praticing gay bishops, I know that situation would not long persist. Still, word on the street is that Papa Ratzinger is going to issue a document which clarifies the matter even further.

It says that not only should homosexuals not be bishops, they shouldn't even be priests. If you've got a tendency towards going koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs, the seminary is not for you. Not even if you're a faithful, self-controlled, orthodox young man with every intention of remaining celibate.

The Wapo article I linked to above mentions a rarely reported fact: the vast majority of priest sex-abuse cases reported during the last scandal involved neither children nor teen-age seductresses, but adolescent boys.

Well, gang, today was what we call a DAY

It began with a discussion of "Chapter Eight" violations. This chapter is divided into different sections, each detailing a part of the code of conduct, including what we can and cannot do in uniform.

We went over this before, during boot camp. But I'm on the CYCLE (City Year Campaign for Literacy Education,) team, and so is a girl I'll call Ava. Ava is a vegan, and has dreadlocks. Once, when she discovered that one of our fellow Corps members was the daughter of the chief of western-hemisphere operations for the IMF, she hunted the poor girl down and made her cry for being the spawn of such an evil man. I told Ava that my international economics professors all worked for Ronald Reagan, and her mouth literally dropped open. She stood there, staring at me in horror, for quite some time. Now, I like Ava. I'm wearing her shirt right now, actually. (She was nice enough to lend me one of hers, because my uniform shirts all arrived four sizes too big.) But she is very loud, and very proud.

We've been going all over the city to various schools, being trained, that kind of junk. And on buses, trains, and sidewalks, Ava continued to be very loud and proud. She had apparently failed to read Chapter Eight.

Yesterday, she was going on about abortion. Now, I read Chapter Eight, so I dutifully kept my mouth shut. I occupied my brains with the various pledges we have to recite from memory. But somebody must have squealed to our PM about what happened, because our PM decided we all needed to arrive early this morning and re-learn Chapter Eight. Particularly the parts about not participating in politically partisan speech whilst wearing the uniform.

Also ...

Today I have two more questions to add to my Rather Personal Queries list.

It's up to four already:

1. "Why do you wear black all the time?"

A: I pointed out to the young lady asking that I was, in fact, wearing a white shirt, and the day before I wore a blue shirt. She responded: "Why just black and white all the time, then?" Sigh. Perhaps I do dress over-simply. I was rushing through the National Shrine on my way to Mass last Sunday, and somebody told me "Good morning, Sister."

2. "Why do you wear skirts all the time?"

A: Two of my flatmates asked this question. Then, apparently, other Corps members asked them about me. I guess they thought it might be a religious thing (see question #3.) The truth is, I went to the Elliott School of International Affairs, two blocks away from the State Department. They encouraged us to dress like professionals. I know some boys who wore suits to class every day. All I had for "dress-up" were skirts, and my ratty old sweatpants were regulated to Saturdays. I soon discovered that the one day I looked like crud, that was the day I would run into someone important.

I'm hoping all this dressing stuff will become mostly irrelevant now, since we're all in uniform.

3. "When did you become religious?"

A: This came up when we were forced to participate in extensive, excruciating, "getting to know you" stuff. I answered that I took RCIA classes, and I was confirmed April 10 2004. I fix that as the date of my official "conversion." The Church treated me like an adult convert, and my certificate reads that I was "joyfully received into full Communion with the Catholic Church" on that date.

4. "Did you find Jesus or something?"

A: This was a follow up to question #3. While I certainly "found Jesus," I did not have the emotional experience demanded by some fundamentalist groups, an experience they describe as "finding Jesus," an experience to which I thought the questioner was most likely referring. I replied: "It was more of an intellectual thing." Then followed a query about whether or not I had "found the Bible." I replied: "It was a philosophical thing."

The burst in questioning is, I believe, because the other shoe has dropped on my Evil Conservative status. I thought perhaps my cover would not be blown, what with my carefully placed criticisms of Fox News (Geraldo Rivera, bleech) and George Bush (he's been tardy to class recently.)

Alas, the fact has been made known. Now I've become a highly unusual specimen they all wish to dissect. I'm more than happy to give them the scalpel myself. Open book I say. I just hope I don't end up scandalizing anyone. Or perhaps scandalizing isn't the right word.

Nashville Postulants are coming!!!

Informed sources say pictures of the new Nashville postulants will be up on their website soon. Stay tuned! One of those pictured will be Sister Vic, who entered the convent last August ... you can read her xanga here.

This is from her entrance essay:

Overall, I have grown to greatly trust the Sisters; to trust that they honestly desire the salvation of souls, including mine, and would not lead me or anyone entrusted to their care astray. Through the spirit of Saint Dominic, I felt God showing me how true preaching and teaching stirs hearts and inspires a love of our Church, whereas teaching that incites unnecessary skepticism or doubt cuts at the heart of the Church. I found myself asking, “God do you want to use me in this awesome work of yours?“ The answer seemed to be a slowly revealed “Yes.” I treasure quiet prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and so I was overjoyed at the Sisters insistence that they are first and foremost contemplatives, who happen to be apostolic. The contemplative foundation is what ultimately set my mind at ease that the Sisters are utterly dependent on Christ’s revealing the things of heaven to them for their [apostolate.]

Whilst you are waiting for the Nashville pictures, here's one of the new postulants of the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist ...

... Sister Carly, in the second row from the back, is going to be a wonderful religious. Her patience with my endless, annoying questions demonstrated truly heroic sanctity!

YEAH Toast!

The famous Heywood Banks "Toast" anthem,
for your morning viewing pleasure. If you want to actually hear the authentic thing, click here

All around the country and coast to coast
People always say, "what do you like most?"
I don’t want to brag, I don’t want to boast
I always tell ‘em, "I like toast!"

YEAH, TOAST!!
YEAH, TOAST!!

I get up in the morning ‘bout six A.M.
Have a little jelly, have a little jam
Take a piece of bread, put it in the slot
Push down the lever and the wires get hot,
I get toast!

YEAH, TOAST!
YEAH, TOAST!

Now, there’s no secret to toasting perfection
There’s a dial on the side and you make your selection
Push to the dark or the light and then
If it pops too soon, press down again
Make toast!

YEAH, TOAST!
YEAH, TOAST!

When the first caveman drove in from the drags
Didn’t know what would go with the bacon and the eggs
Must have met a genius, got it in his head
Plug the toaster in the wall, buy a bag of bread
Make toast!

YEAH, TOAST!
YEAH, TOAST!

Oui Monsieur, bonjour coquette,
Une croissant? Et vous auvent?
Maurice Chevalier, Eiffel Tower,
Oui Marie, baguette, bonsoir!

FRENCH TOAST!
FRENCH TOAST!

YEAH TOAST!!

Arrrrr, It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day ...

... So here are two very lovely, not-pirate like postulants from the awesome Sister Servants of the Eternal Word. Their postulancy started in July. Don't they just glow?

Sister Katie and Sister Elizabeth:

The Monk Under the Mitre

Godspy has a great, non-floozy work up on WYD and our dear Amato.

Thank you, Amy, for the link.

Your Comments Requested

When I was a child, my home was with my family, in Ohio. We weren't well-off, but we had a very nice house. And there was always food on our table, and clothes on my back. One night, some kids from our wealthy, suburban community spray-painted the words:
"Poor [Expletive-Deleted]" on the driveway.

When we woke up to find the black mess scrawled across the pavement in front of our house, my Mother was furious. She called the police. She wanted to leave it there, so that everyone would know just how snobby the "City of Hudson Village" really was.

My Father didn't say a word. He went to the garage, and came back with a bucket, a brush and some paint thinner. And then he got on his hands and his knees. And he scrubbed. The people who walked or drove by were horrified. They offered to help. But he did it by himself. He worked alone, all day. In the late afternoon, he was finished.

That is the only experience of "class discrimination" I've ever had. While I was on my little team-building retreat these past three days, the most intense, super-uncomfortable thing we did was the "Privilege Line." All 50 Corps members stood in a parking lot, side by side, in a line. Then our Program Manager called out various commands. For example: If your utilities have ever been cut because the bill didn't get paid, take one step back. If your parents graduated college, take two steps forward, etc.

At the end, the most privileged people stood at the front of the parking lot, while the least privileged were in the back. Where was I? In the middle. The lower middle, but still solidly middle. It was an extremely embarrassing experience for both the over and under-privileged, even though our faces were veiled from one another by the onset of twilight. (Thank God for earlier sunsets.) The whole exercise produced three hours of excruciating discussion.

I, of course, kept my mouth shut, but I could not help but feel a bit annoyed. I mean, this is America. We don't have a class system; we have a rat race. Some people get a head start, but everyone has an equal chance at finishing. I sat there all night, listening to people complain about where they'd come from. The rich kids were apologetic about being rich. The poor kids were bitter about being poor. The self-pity was blinding.

I thought: are these people really grown-ups?

When I was a child, I was ashamed by the obscene words painted on our driveway. I was angry that my Father did nothing except quietly clean up after the spoiled rotten little brats who vandalized our home. I wondered a lot about the identities of the little brats. I had little fantasies about how I would embarrass them if I knew who they were.

And then I grew up.

I found out that the little brats were going to grow up too. And I knew that the little brats were going to realize what they had done. I thought about how I would feel if I were in their place, and I knew that even if I were an atheist, Communist, drug trafficker, I would still feel deep shame and remorse for what I had done to the poorest family on my street, back when I was a stupid unthinking kid. I would never tell anyone about it, maybe not even my husband, for fear of making them hate me.

Now I would say, that's punishment enough.

I'm not sorry about being "poorer" than most people I grew up with. And I'm not sorry that the people I grew up with had more money than me. They didn't have to watch out for the jealousy, bitterness, and resentment that can come with being poorer, and I wasn't tempted by the pride, arrogance, and indolence that can come with being richer.

I am always bemused when grown-ups, who very often have several decades of living experience on me, don't understand this. The more passionate among them talk endlessly about eliminating poverty, radically redistributing wealth, and all of that. It strikes me as idiotic. Can a person be so impoverished, or so wealthy, that his human dignity is insulted? Yes, and there is something wrong with that. That has got to be rectified. But there is nothing wrong, in particular with being poor. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being rich.

Am I completely off base here?

Pray for me, dear Bloggies

I'm posting from my office computer (naughty, naughty me.) Work is having me go on a 3-day team-building retreat down in the Virginia woods somewheres. And this while On-Again, Off-Again Hurricane Ophelia is due to make her grand entrance! Ophelia, ah, what a lyrical name, isn't it?

More Nun-Gazing Escapades

I've been indulging in some nun-gazing. PhatMass is the place for lovely bits of information, including the SMME's brand spanking-new final profession newsletter!!! (scroll for the goods)

The new Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus in Des Moines, Iowa. (check out the full, PCPA-style habits):


The hugely inspirational Missionaries of Charity:


The super-POD Poor Clare Colettines in Rockford, Illinois:


And finally, what you've all been waiting for ... the exuberantly joyful
Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist:

Scared of this guy? Me neither.

The first time I saw this video, I laughed. Out loud. It just struck me as funny, for whatever reason. Then it comes out that this guy is really just that whiny Adam Gadahn kid, who converted to the kill-the-infidels thing as a disaffected teenager. And get this, the brat hails from that region of perfect sanity, Southern California.

Oy. Apparently, the authorities are equally amused by Adam's pitiful attempt: just "the usual well-worn jihadist propaganda themes," they yawn. Really, the whole thing really does look like one of those SNL skits. What a knuckle-head. I might even feel a little sorry for him, since his parents were probably hippies.

For the dead turned suddenly to ash, the Lord God did not suffer their tomb to be unmarked

In the rubble of the Twin Towers, a cross is found...



And fashioned into a memorial (that's Archbishop Sandri, who later announced JP2's death, at the podium)



"For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."
~Romans 14:8 (from today's Readings for the Mass.)

I forgot to tell you guys ... I'm nuts too!

Re: comments on my last post. None need worry about me mocking the diagnosed mentally ill. Because there are plenty of people who think I'm undiagnosed mentally ill.

This afternoon whilst noodling around online, I discovered Ask Oxford.Com, where the makers of that splendid dictionary answer all sorts of questions about the English language. An excellent day at the beach for my OCD tendencies! I would much rather read about teeny tiny semantic differences in written and spoken verbiage than rearrange my shoes and pencils according to size and color again.

I also recommend the "On Language" column in the
New York Times Magazine and the relevant books by the adorably irritating language maven, William Safire. Mr. Safire once coined his own word:

klong (n) 1. a sudden rush of crud to the heart, usually brought about by the realization or comprehension of a Big Embarrassing Mistake.

It's a very clever word, one I use often enough!

Promised Juicy Post

Long, long ago, the first President Bush funded this thing called City Year. Later, President Clinton funded this thing called AmeriCorps, which "ate" City Year. Recently, the current President Bush funded this thing called USA Freedom Corps, which went on to eat AmeriCorps. Yummy, yummy, said the big, fat federal government.

So what do all the "enlisted" volunteers do? Well, some of them are on mobile teams. The disaster-relief people are deployed wherever there's a need, as there is in the Gulf Coast right now. If you're involved in emergency environmental management, you'll travel too. Other people do Homeland Security stuff.

My program is the "City Year" Corps; its headquarters are in Boston, but I'm stationed in DC. The City Year teams don't move around; they're deployed in certain urban areas, where their mandate is to do work with children and the poor. To what end? What they're trying to do is Strengthen Democracy. They pour that on like gravy. As in: Betsy, you look sleepy, aren't you excited about Strengthening Your Democracy today?

It works kind of like the Peace Corps, (only you serve the people in your own country instead of going abroad.) I get a weekly stipend to help cover my living expenses. They have oodles of rules. No gum chewing, No jay-walking, No headphones, No sitting on public transportation, No buying alcohol, No buying cigarettes, No swearing, No fraternizing ... The uniform is this red thing that only comes in men's sizes. The shirt must be tucked in, and they do a readiness check every morning to see if you've got all the pieces on, clean and pressed.

There are also oodles of acronyms .. BTR, BTA, LDD, SSD, etc. and routines to learn. Instead of saying "at ease," they yell "formation!" The proper response to "are you ready?" is: "City Year is always ready!" We've been told there's a "natural attrition rate" because some people don't conform to the "City Year culture." We've also been promised that: 1. We will cry many times 2. We will want to quit many times.

So blah, can you tell I'm not exactly thrilled? I have a feeling once I get my actual teaching job, I'll be happier. This past week all we've been doing is training, and my brains are starting to leak out my ears. Everyone here is between the ages of 17 and 24; most of them are in the older range. They are an odd bunch of kids; they definitely qualify as "weird." I've never met a bunch of people with such a high prevalence of diagnosed mental illness among them. Depression, Attention Deficit, and Bipolar Disorder are all very well represented.

They have also attached little identities to themselves ... The gay one, the poor one, the rich one, the WASP, the interracial one, the Unitarian, the Wiccan, the vegan, the Communist, the girl who doesn't wear a bra or shave her legs ... They have intense, emotional, disagreeable conversations about everything. I get exhausted just listening to them! And all of it is wrapped in a painfully uber-Liberal wrapper.

I think I was invited onto this team in order to be the token Christian. That's the little identity I'm supposed to have. I read the Holy Scriptures (not out loud of course,) during one of our breaks, and I could feel the shock emanating from the eyeballs of my fellow Corps members. We're supposed to be "growing" into "social capitalists and entrepreneurs" by interacting with "different" people, and I guess my role is to be the Bible Thumper the others have tried their best to avoid their whole lives.

Imagine their disgust when they find out I'm a conservative! This week, one of my flatmates (Danielle,) was describing various people, using the term "Republican" as a stand-alone pejorative adjective. Two of my other flatmates spoke up, telling her "you can't use 'Republican' like that." Danielle replied that, well, Republicans are usually homophobic, and they generally have evil values. Also, she would not date a Republican, because any guy who was a Republican was most likely a bad person.

At which point, I announced, "I'm a registered Republican."

...Horrified Silence ...

They were very embarrassed, but I was strangely amused.

I know this post might make it seem like I'm miserable, but really, I'm not. It's just hard, that's all. I do like the early rising, the discipline, and the uniform. What I like best is that every day I'm going to be beaten over the head with opportunities for little acts of love. I mean, there will be big neon lights pointing them out; big, fat red arrows that not even an Oblivion like myself could miss. It's much harder to be a saint if you're a bank teller, compared with being a volunteer working with the poor. A mon avis, anyway.

"Sacrificing Humans to the Condom Gods"

Well guys, it looks like those crazy Birth Control Imperialists are at it again. Never mind that Uganda's traditional culture denounces infidelity and values abstinence ... Ideological foreign invaders are determined to prove their evil, religious, conservative political enemies wrong. Even if the effort costs a few million Ugandans their lives. And here I thought human sacrifice went out with the Aztecs!

Propaganda: Condoms were responsible for the success in Uganda, and cases of AIDS may now increase because the Bush administration has begun to replace condoms with abstinence-only training. According to a August 30th story in the Guardian newspaper, "Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms and an emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries which has succeeded in reducing its AIDS rates."[...]

Reality: Abstinence and fidelity were responsible for the success in Uganda, and AIDS may now increase because Western institutions have insisted that condoms replace abstinence and fidelity training. According to Dr. Edward Green, a Harvard medical professor and an expert on Uganda, "Abstinence and fidelity objectives and indicators have been almost completely removed from Uganda's current national AIDS strategy (which were central to earlier strategies), apparently to appease the wazungu (foreign AIDS advisors)." And so there is the possibility that the West could use condoms to raise AIDS rates while at the same time blaming abstinence, in order to make the case for even more condoms.

Propaganda: It is more important to liberate Ugandan women from conventional marriage than it is to liberate Ugandan women from prostitution, since marriage is an enormous threat to women. According to Lewis, "As more and more research is done on the particular vulnerability of women to infection, we're learning more about the situations in which risk is paramount. And extraordinarily enough, according to UNAIDS, the risk is particularly high in apparently monogamous marriages and partnerships. Ironically, and lethally, in the age of AIDS in Africa, marriage can be dangerous to women's health. [...] "

Reality: It is difficult to know whether this statement is simply chauvinist (men cannot remain faithful and do not care if they infect their wives), or chauvinist and racist (black men cannot remain faithful and do not care if they infect their wives). But the idea that married women are more vulnerable than prostitutes because some married men are promiscuous when all men who frequent prostitutes are by definition promiscuous is ridiculous.

Propaganda: The Christian beliefs of George W. Bush and the Ugandan first lady are guiding them to replace sound public health policy again focused almost exclusively on the condom with "abstinence only" religious doctrine. [...]

Reality: It was traditional religious beliefs that guided the Ugandan government and its people to reduce sexual promiscuity so successfully in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Happy Birthday Mamma

Today is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You have to be a very, very special creature if you want to have your birthday celebrated by the Catholic Church. Like, Immaculately Conceived special. Or John the Baptist special.

As you can see, I'm not recently deceased. Posting has been light because I just started work. (There'll be a long juicy post about that this weekend, promise.)

Also in today's news: Ah-nold Schwarzenegger says he's going to veto (or terminate with extreme prejudice) a gay-marriage bill pushed through by California's loopy legislature. Ah-nold usually behaves like a CINO/RINO boar, so I'm guessing this declaration of his is political: most Californians don't live in LA or San Fran, and are therefore not fruits, flakes, or nuts.

"Thou Shalt Not Drool"

That's the headline in The Guardian, good grief.
The press has apparently crowned Don Georgio, Papa's personal secretary, the undisputed king of all Fathers-What-A-Waste.

But once they finish with the necessary chit-chat about what a looker Father is, The Guardian warns their readers that, alas, he is an evil Conservative, and is thus, in fact, ugly as sin.

The Theory of Evolution is Irrational

Well, not entirely. But an all-embracing theory of evolution is inherently so. Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book, Truth and Tolerance, explains why. If you're silly and you can't read it all, at least read the bolded part. If you're smart you'll go read the whole thing here.

[...]Has the last word been spoken? Have Christianity and reason permanently parted company? [...] No one will be able to cast serious doubt upon the scientific evidence for micro-evolutionary processes. R. Junker and S. Scherer, in their "critical reader" on evolution, have this to say: "Many examples of such developmental steps [microevolutionary processes] are known to us from natural processes of variation and development. The research done on them by evolutionary biologists produced significant knowledge of the adaptive capacity of living systems, which seems marvelous."

They tell us, accordingly, that one would therefore be quite justified in describing the research of early development as the reigning monarch among biological disciplines. [...] Within the teaching about evolution itself, the problem emerges at the point of transition from micro to macro-evolution, on which point Szathmary and Maynard Smith, both convinced supporters of an all-embracing theory of evolution, nonetheless declare that: "There is no theoretical basis for believing that evolutionary lines become more complex with time; and there is also no empirical evidence that this happens."

The question that has now to be put certainly delves deeper: it is whether the theory of evolution can be presented as a universal theory concerning all reality, beyond which further questions about the origin and the nature of things are no longer admissible and indeed no longer necessary, or whether such ultimate questions do not after all go beyond the realm of what can be entirely the object of research and knowledge by natural science.

I should like to put the question in still more concrete form. Has everything been said with the kind of answer that we find thus formulated by Popper: "Life as we know it consists of physical 'bodies' (more precisely, structures) which are problem solving. This the various species have 'learned' by natural selection, that is to say by the method of reproduction plus variation, which itself has been learned by the same method. This regress is not necessarily infinite." I do not think so. In the end this concerns a choice that can no longer be made on purely scientific grounds or basically on philosophical grounds.

The question is whether reason, or rationality, stands at the beginning of all things and is grounded in the basis of all things or not. The question is whether reality originated on the basis of chance and necessity (or, as Popper says, in agreement with Butler, on the basis of luck and cunning) and, thus, from what is irrational; that is, whether reason, being a chance by-product of irrationality and floating in an ocean of irrationality, is ultimately just as meaningless; or whether the principle that represents the fundamental conviction of Christian faith and of its philosophy remains true: "In principio erat Verbum" -- at the beginning of all things stands the creative power of reason.

Now as then, Christian faith represents the choice in favor of the priority of reason and of rationality. This ultimate question, as we have already said, can no longer be decided by arguments from natural science, and even philosophical thought reaches its limits here. In that sense, there is no ultimate demonstration that the basic choice involved in Christianity is correct. Yet, can reason really renounce its claim to the priority of what is rational over the irrational, the claim that the Logos is at the ultimate origin of things, without abolishing itself?

The explanatory model presented by Popper, which reappears in different variations in the various accounts of the "basic philosophy," shows that reason cannot do other than to think of irrationality according to its own standards, that is, those of reason (solving problems, learning methods!), so that it implicitly reintroduces nonetheless the primacy of reason, which has just been denied. Even today, by reason of its choosing to assert the primacy of reason, Christianity remains "enlightened," and I think that any enlightenment that cancels this choice must, contrary to all appearances, mean, not an evolution, but an involution, a shrinking, of enlightenment [...]

Is apologetics good for anything?

I would say, it is definitely useful for something. It is definitely useful at confirming Catholics in their belief, shoring up their defenses, expanding their knowledge and appreciation of the Faith, etc. On a certain level, all Catholics should be apologists, learned in what and why they believe.

But what about conversion?

The person most easily convinced of the Catholic claim to be the sole true Church of Christ is someone who already believes in Christ, right? But I wager that conversing with a Muslim or a Jew about the meaning of the Incarnation is less frustrating than interlocution with a fundamentalist. With a fundamentalist, or really most Protestants, the discussion frequently descends into a Scripture-quoting match.

I don't usually like using Scripture in explaining the Faith, because every Protestant I'm trying to reach has their own interpretation of Scripture. It's not productive to argue history either, because everyone clings to their own prejudiced version of how things happened. What's left? Philosophy.

The problem is, you can't argue philosophy with a fundamentalist. Because they have none. (I won't go so far as to say that fundamentalists do not have human reason, but I think the extra-scriptural doctrine of Sola Scriptura is a paradox pushing things rather far. And when someone proposes a theology which denounces all theology as man-made, well, then things are pushed too far.) So the well-meaning Catholic is forced to limit themselves to Scripture. That, as Fr. Sibley once pointed out, is playing the game by the opposition's rules, a rarely effective strategy.

Then there are the most agonizing cases, the nominal Catholic who has fallen away. With them, I think apologetics might be most useful. Very often (as it was in my case,) there is ignorance which can be rectified. Then again, what Hilary commented on one my earlier posts is true: arguing vehemently and forthrightly with a dissenter, frequently pushes them further away from the Faith.

With apologetics, it's a tight-rope walk. I remember Papa saying something about that: Charity without Truth is empty, Truth without Love is but a crashing cymbal. Another thing to remember is that the Truth provides its own defense and its own explanation. In the end, everyone is going to know it.

Once a priest, who was serving as the BBC's advisor on Catholic affairs, received a letter from a producer asking how he might ascertain the official Roman Catholic view of heaven and hell. Father answered him in a memorandum comprising a single word: "Die."