Thank you. (loud applause) Thank you all very much. Thank you, Fr. Despereaux. Please, folks (continued applause), please be seated. A little restraint every now & then. . . (laughter).

Seriously, this is quite an honor for me. I can’t say an unexpected honor, as this invitation was in the cards for some time now. And this despite all the non-attention I’ve received from many of your Catholic intellectuals; wasn’t it your own Fr. Cheever in Ancient Near Eastern Studies who said in your student paper that I don’t exist? (laughter). He’s not alone in thinking that, though I take it that after we got to know each other a bit better last night he has a different take on things. Talk about an ashen countenance when I discussed my background! Suffice it to say that he knows a bit more about ancient mythology & sacrifice than he did before we spoke. It really is too bad he can’t be here today, as he’s much in my thoughts, as are all the fine academics at this institution. Much of the work you do is directly responsible for my being here today, & I am much pleased by it.

To honor the graduates of St. Sincerus, I will focus my remarks on the creative gifts God has so richly blessed you all with, as well as on your sacred responsibility to nurture those gifts, despite the heavy costs. As you know, you live in a world in which the majority of people seek to restrain, to control, & even to deny the creativity of the few. Isn’t it a sad irony that such a gift, which can help you to make & remake your world, & which is an expression of God’s image within you, so badly frightens the unimaginative?  I believe the patron of this school would be as pleased as I am with your attempts in recent years to use your creativity to produce such a life affirming environment here on campus, & would hope that you continue forward. “Fear not!” I can almost here him saying at this very moment, as he thinks about the work of your administration, faculty, & student organizations to make more people welcome here.

(loud applause from the members of the audience, who rise from their seats; shouts of “SSU! SSU!” break out)

Yes, by all means, celebrate yourselves. Always. . . At any rate, before we all get too carried away (there is a time & place for everything, remember), I wish to address the following in my remarks: the need for creativity & innovation in forming diverse communities, in thinking through your moral lives, & in applying the benefits of scientific discovery to the improvement of life. As you already excel in the first two of these, it’s likely you’ll have some things to tell me; so I’ll reserve my longer remarks for the third.

I think the most visible accomplishment of SSU is your creativity in opening the doors of your community to make a hospitable place for the least of your brothers & sisters. You have indeed taken to heart the words from the gospel, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” Remarkable words, these. . . In fact, to acknowledge your openness to the speaker of these words, I think you might consider renaming your fine institution. How does this sound: “St. Sincerus Multiversity”? (audience cheers) For you all know, as is evident in your student organizations, mission statements, diversity statements, statements of respect, & statements of inclusivity, not to mention your 10K Race for Acceptance & your world-class Center for the Understanding of Love & Tolerance, that there is a bewildering array of opinions, viewpoints, perspectives, doctrines, hopes & fears, & experiences out there. C’est la vie! as the French would say. But you have chosen the path of courage by celebrating the diversity that lesser individuals & communities would feel threatened by. This was apparent to me yesterday as I toured your campus, talked with members of the faculty, ate lunch with students in the student union, & listened with fascination as your very own Fr. Despereaux gave the key-note lecture at the conference that ended last night, “Diverse Worshippers, Diverse Ecclesiologies: An Eco-Vegan Critique of Traditional Eucharistic Theology.” Who knew just how scandalous a simple memorial meal could be? I’ll tell you who knew: you did, & you should take pride at standing up to your bishop’s objections to your hosting such a conference. You must be wary of those who sneer at the mere whiff of innovation, as a true multiversity will embrace innovation & be led by it. And the leaders of this multiversity will always ask, “Did God really say that we will perish if we take the high road of conscience & freedom?” Your bishop, & all those like him in seats of power, fear that by your inclusion of the marginalized you will become the true locus of ecclesial authority. For it is love that binds you together & bears the loudest witness to true gospel values. It is love that is the true measure of holiness & thus authority, & the clearest mark of love is the creative attempt to love those different from yourself. Here you must brook no opposition, for true tolerance will beat down those who stand up against it with the violence of love. The hatred of hate, as Fr. Despereaux suggested to your fine school paper, is essential to the Catholic ethos, & must grow ever-stronger & harsher if you are to prevail.

As with your openness to openness in expanding your community, you have also shown remarkable zeal in creatively rethinking the old moral platitudes that continue to restrict so many in your Church, & I don’t think I have to say much here. But let me draw your attention to a phrase I recently heard from an artist discussing his work. We should, he said, learn to “transgress in love.” Savor that for a moment: “Transgress in love.” (Pauses for several moments) Isn’t this precisely what the prophets & apostles did? Would there ever have been a St. Sincerus, or any saint at all, without transgressing the narrow categories of the narrow minded? Acts of transgressive creativity in the service of love stand behind every true revolution, moral or otherwise. I saw something of this last night. Your Phallic Fridays may have brought intense criticism upon your school, but what I witnessed last night, & on into the morning, was nothing less than moral courage. And what creativity! Talk about challenging traditional morality! You folks zealously chased it away, & what remained behind you clubbed into passive submission, which is in itself an act of delicious creativity. I almost blush thinking about your courage. But beyond all the interesting intimacies whispered & pursued, what I witnessed was the fresh air of a new world blowing onto campus. This, I suspect, is what your Church leaders meant by aggiornamento all those years ago, & it was a genuine pleasure to see the spirit of Vatican II, as they sometimes still call it, so vigorously indulged in.

And this leads me to my final topic, which of course is an extension of everything I’ve already said. I refer to the creative rethinking of what human life may become through the application of exciting new technologies to the human subject. The fact that you opened a Center of Bioethics & Biotechnology four years ago, under the direction of a Princeton grad, no less, suggests that you are perhaps already preparing yourselves for the inevitable changes ahead. Let me begin with a rather everyday, even banal, example to lead into my remarks.

(holds up a pair of eyeglasses, seemingly pulled out of the air)

Look at this invention. What genius! Carefully ground glass, placed elegantly in a metal frame. What your gospels suggest, though only in a metaphorical sense, is now possible through the science of optics: “Let the blind see!” What we have here, & what you, sir, (pointing to a student in the 5th row) have in the form of contact lenses, represents a small victory over nature by those cheated out of normal vision. “The least of my brethren” will always include the blind, no? And not just the blind, but those suffering from even worse maladies & mistakes. “In science & in medicine/I was a stranger & you took me in.” That Irish band which often gets under my skin came up with that line, which nicely expresses how so many of your scientists & physicians have understood their task as healers. To overcome the limitations of arbitrary nature, to transgress in love the boundaries fixed by an often senseless & cruel world in service to their Lord: this is the glory & the promise of the science & practice of medicine.

And not just in the restoration of vision. That young lady in the 12th row with the insulin pump attached to her hip; that gentlemen in the 39th row taking medication for his depression; the younger sister of the graduate in the 3rd row, sitting at home scared half to death because she is, as you say, “late”, but who knows that a visit to a woman’s health clinic can save her; & even your own Fr. Cheever, who is, we hope, recovering from the heart attack he suffered last night: these & countless others here this afternoon have reason to celebrate the scientific advances & innovations that make it possible to live a healthy, normal life. But should you settle for normal? For mere restoration?

A few of the faculty members of your Biotechnology program think not, & I’m with them. Two summers ago one of them attended a conference at an another fine institution, Oxford University, on “Bioethics & the Posthuman Future.” What he began to wonder about as he heard papers being read & developments in biotechnology presented, I have always known, that death, your greatest of enemies, need not have the final word. I think it is time for all of you to be excited about how your assault on the limits nature imposes on you has turned in such fruitful directions. Is it not possible, you can now ask in all seriousness, to consider death as a disease? A condition that can be treated, like smallpox, malaria, & countless other forms of illness & disease? Even, perhaps, overcome?

Some may scoff, & attribute such thoughts to the fantastic imaginations of science fiction writers. Yet these fantastic imaginations are directly responsible for insulin pumps, Zoloft, anti-platelet agents, & the humble contact lens, not to mention the world of technology that helps you pay your bills online, send text messages, & safely celebrate your Phallic Fridays. Why not celebrate these imaginations, & encourage them to roam freely in pursuit of humanity’s greatest prize? As those familiar with posthumanism already know, a growing number of scientists, philosophers, & ethicists have been on the cusp of truly revolutionary discoveries. Some suggest that, given the fact that the human brain is very much like a complex supercomputer, there exists the possibility of developing a process by which you, the real you, that is, all the information in your brain, could actually be transferred to a computer. Scanning the synaptic structure of a brain with sufficient resolution & then implementing the same computations in a computer, a process that takes advantage of developments in nanotechnology; or using an electron microscope with automatic image processing to disassemble the brain atom by atom: these are just two of the possible methods by which scientists are thinking their way into the brave new future, one that promises the opportunity of releasing you from your bondage to your bodies, with all their frailties & imperfections. What are your two greatest enemies, according to the sacred text? “The world & the flesh.” The flesh, the body, that which separates you from the heights of the genuine transcendence you all crave. This posthuman hope of moving beyond mere bodily existence is an ancient one, cherished in all cultures, & is at the heart of your own finest spiritual traditions. What is religion, after all, if not a means to achieve spiritual liberation? And what is spiritual liberation if not a release from the prison house of the body? “Death, where is your victory? Where is your sting?” For the first time these words can become more than wishful thinking, but only if you deprive death of that which it feeds on.

There will be those who challenge your courage & vision here. They will claim that you are “tampering with nature” or “trying to play God.” To those concerns I say only this: You, sir, with the eyeglasses, are you not “tampering with nature”? Are you not pleased that others have? And you, young lady with the insulin pump, are you not celebrating the achievements of those who have “played God” in the field of medical research? Nature & its God took away your vision, & stopped your pancreas from producing insulin. Have you not, by the very fact that you see clearly, & that you are alive despite having a defective pancreas, already signaled your rebellion from nature? And those of you who will take a few Advils when you get a headache, or turn on the air conditioning when it gets hot, or take antibiotics when you have a sinus infection, or ask a surgeon to remove a tumor from the body of your child, are you not all “tampering with nature”?

Of course you are. And rightly so, for you know that nature is cruel & merciless, & that your ability to defend yourselves against it is part of God’s greatest gift, your creativity & inventiveness. You have been entrusted with dominion over creation, & bear witness to your faithfulness with every new discovery, every invention that diminishes suffering, every creative use of human skill & freedom. Should you not use this gift of dominion? Should you not, as in the parable, use the talents God gave you to extend this gift? It seems to me that your scriptures teach that you have the responsibility to grab the right fruit this time, that which hangs from the tree of life. While the garden that holds that tree was once declared off-limits, it need no longer be. The angel guarding it has laid down his flaming sword, which represents the human limitations in knowledge & courage that cripple your attempts to take what is rightfully offered you. All that keeps you from it now is fear, & the desire of the weak to control you by dictating what is “natural.” You have shown remarkable courage in resisting those people in the areas I mentioned earlier in my speech. Why not continue forward? Or, rather, why not go back to the garden where you made your original mistake, & make the wiser choice this time?

The final frontier is not just a metaphor from a television series, but a genuine possibility that lies before you, like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new. I wonder if you will have the courage to strive for it.

Let me close with a quote from one of my favorite literary passages. As with many such passages, the true meaning becomes apparent only with the passage of time. While the mid-19^th century may not have been truly prepared to understand & act upon these words, I suspect the time is ripe for you to actualize the vision announced here:

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.”

You have in so many ways, St. Sincerus University class of 2012, spoken the rude truth. You have refused the easy paths of conformity & obedience. You have shunned the cliches, the pre-packaged ideas others would force upon you. Platitudes are not for you. No, you go boldly where no one has gone before; you take the road less travelled; you question authority. You challenge the sacredness of all traditions & allow only your own constitution to dictate your way forward. Good for you. When others disagree, as they will, remember the words of Emerson: “if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.”

Good luck to you all.

Sixth Sunday of Easter Lectionary: 56 Mass readings from (USCCB) (Audio)

Sixth Sunday of Easter—May 13, 2012 (Scripture Speaks)

Begotten By Love: Reflections for the Sixth Sunday of EasterDr. Scott Hahn (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology)

Saint Matthias by Simone Martini

May 11 – St. Ignatius of Laconi
May 13 – Our Lady of Fatima
May 14 – St. Matthias (American Catholic.org Saint of the Day)

10 Things To Know About Marian Apparitions (Aggie Catholic)

Waking Up Is Hard to Do by Thomas Howard (CERC)

Walker Percy’s novels and essays tackle what C. S. Lewis called “the great platitudes” and T. S. Eliot called “the permanent things.” That is to say, they concern themselves with far more than manners, psychology, or social issues.

Solicitude: The Second Lively Virtue by Anthony Esolen on (CERC)

Just as the heart-opening virtue of humility is the remedy for pride, so solicitude for the good of others is the remedy for envy, the second of the deadly vices. Our name for this vice derives from the Latin invidia, which literally means the habit of seeing things twisted (the inner meaning of our word wrong) or inside-out.

Answering Common Objections About Mary (Shameless Popery)

May 5, 2012

In a move already denounced by Catholic bishops & other leading religious conservatives, St. Sincerus University, the nation’s 84^th largest Catholic university, has invited Satan to deliver its commencement speech later this month. Also known as the Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, &, more popularly, the Devil, Satan is a divisive figure among Catholics & other Christians. Several Catholic universities have upset religious conservatives in recent years by inviting controversial figures to deliver commencement speeches, as when the University of Notre Dame, the nation’s largest Catholic University, invited President Barack Obama, who supports a woman’s right to abortion, in 2009. The invitation to Satan by SSU president Fr. Thad Despereaux comes at a time when many Catholics are highly critical of the Obama administration’s attempts to reform health care, which some claim would force Catholic institutions to violate their Church’s teachings by providing contraceptives as part of their health insurance plans. Fr. Despereaux, in comments made to the Daily Sham, SSU’s student newspaper, said that having Satan on campus gives bold witness to a central Catholic principle that God can be found in all things. “The continuing politicization of the faith indicates just how important it is for us to build bridges,” Fr. Despereaux said. “Our whole mission as a university is to bring people together. Satan is badly misunderstood by many people, & we hope to show our graduates that stereotypes, & the hatred they engender, have no place on a Catholic campus. As Catholics we are to hate hate.”

On-campus reactions at SSU have been favorable, as faculty & students alike have applauded the university’s open-mindedness in issuing the invitation. Dr. Sophia Greengrass, Director of the university’s Wiccan Institute, called the invitation a brave attempt to promote the university’s academic integrity in the face of “fascist attempts by the male hierarchy to impose its limited & limiting dogmas,” while Declan Spencer, a Religious Studies major studying the mythical underpinnings of religious language, said he hoped to meet Satan & thank him for his contributions to world culture.  Some faculty, however, have questioned the wisdom of the invitation. “Satan doesn’t actually exist,” said Fr. Eddie Cheever, Professor of Early Christian Literature, “so it will be interesting to hear what he says. Or doesn’t say.” And Professor David Evans, known for his support of traditional Church teachings, said the invitation further reflects the administration’s attempts to distance itself from the Church.  “It does make sense, given the administration’s recent policies,” he said, noting Fr. Despereaux’s endorsement of Phallic Fridays, in which students erect large phallic sculptures around the SSU chapel, cover them with latex, & ironically sing hymns to the fertility god Priapus, as well as the popular Religion-less Lent, instituted last year, in which Catholic students were urged to give up prayer & mass attendance during Lent.

As of this afternoon, Satan has not publicly responded to the invitation, though Prof. Evans suggested that since he is already quite at home at SSU, there is little doubt that he will accept.

Coming soon: The commencement speech by Satan at St. Sincerus. He’ll be giving it on Saturday afternoon, May 12; we’ll post it later that night.

Sarah Emsley, from her Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues:

“. . . the major achievement of Northanger Abbey is. . . the creation of complex villains. Both the General & John Thorpe are believable as more or less ordinary members of society. They are not so clearly vicious that they are shunned by all rational people. The fortune-hunting greed of both of them, the intemperance of the General, & the foolish & inconsiderate behavior of Thorpe are complicated by the fact that they are generally accepted in society & approved by Catherine’s chaperones, the Allens. That villains can be ordinary people is radical, just as the idea that heroines can be ordinary girls is radical. Both the vicious & the virtuous are shown in all their ordinariness. They are, quite simply, human. Catherine must learn to distinguish between ordinary people who are actively good or at least mostly harmless, & ordinary people whose vices impinge on her own virtue. Northanger Abbey shows that villains can be complicated & that novels can be morally serious & bitingly comic at the same time.”     

Lovers of Jane Austen, along with those interested in virtue ethics, will find Emsley’s book a profitable read. It’s expensive as all get out, though, as my used copy cost the price of a bottle of very good bourbon. Such is the burden of the teacher, forced to buy expensive books that you love to read. At any rate, what Emsley says calls to mind GK Chesterton’s piece, “On Jane Austen in the General Election.”, where he responds to the view, circulated in a leading daily paper, that “a modern girl would see through the insincerity on Mr. Wickham, in Pride & Prejudice, in five minutes.” Because women are now more liberated & enjoy a new attitude to men, so it goes, & because Jane Austen is read badly if it all, according to GKC, such an idea is possible.

Not so fast. Austen has given us in Wickham (as in General Tilney & John Thorpe from Northanger Abbey, John Willoughby from Sense & Sensibility, Henry Crawford from Mansfield Park, & William Elliot from Persuasion) an example of a “quiet & plausible liar.” Austen, according to GKC, “did not make Elizabeth Bennett to be a person easily deceived, & she did not make her deceiver a vulgar impostor. Mr. Wickham was one of those very formidable people who tell lies by telling the truth.” Just not the whole truth, which leads Lizzy to see only what Wickham (&, as Lizzy comes to realize, she herself) wants to see. This makes him a convincing villain, even if he comes without the horns & pitchfork. And, for GKC, a typical politician, as he possesses “good manners & good nature & a light touch.” As Emsley recognizes, it is part of Austen’s literary skill & moral acuity to give us rogues like Wickham et al. whose character is revealed only over time by those whose goodness has been severely put to the test.

Fourth Sunday of Easter
Lectionary: 50 Sunday Mass readings (USCCB) (Audio)

Fourth Sunday of Easter—April 29, 2012 (Scripture Speaks)

The Shepherd’s Voice: Reflections on the Fourth Sunday of Easter Dr. Scott Hahn (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology)

Love the shepherd, beware of the wolf, tolerate the hireling 4th Sunday of Easter (TNTM)

April 28 – St. Louis Mary de Montfort
April 29 – St. Catherine of Siena
April 30 – St. Pius V
May 1 – St. Joseph the Worker
May 2 – St. Athanasius
May 3 – Sts. Philip and James (American Catholic.org Saint of the Day)

Can You Be Good Without God? Fr. Dwight Longenecker on (Patheos)

Mass attendance is down. Maybe that’s because we don’t realize the radical claims of Catholicism.

Humility: The First of the Lively Virtues Anthony Esolen (CERC) (Audio)

Blessings For Child In the Womb Confirmed (Aggie Catholics)

Which Books Were in Early Christian Bibles? (Shameless Popery)

Charles Colson’s ‘Ecumenism of the Trenches’ in (NCR)

How can we be in the world and not of the world? (salt + light)

In the words of Blessed John Henry Newman in his prayer “Radiating Christ”:

“Let me preach You without preaching, not by words, but by my example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You…”

A (possible) television saint (salt + light)

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen – Our Father – Part 1 of 4

I read a story in the paper not long ago about a pastor of a Protestant church who, in the hopes of drawing more men to his services, organized a car show.  This pastor rides a Harley & wears jeans & Hawaiian shirts, a point of some importance to the writer of the article.  In its fifth year, the car show draws about 10,000 attendees, has big-name sponsors, & is tied into various charitable causes.  This is a nice story, as people are enjoying themselves & helping others.  Whether or not the pastor is meeting his stated goal of getting “dads out of the garage & into the church” was left unsaid, but the dads are at least out of the garage, which meets the first half of the goal.

I’ve heard similar stories throughout the years about pastors, youth ministers, & others interested in evangelizing the unchurched by inviting them to events such as Christian film nights, Christian rock concerts, Christian coffee houses, Christian comedy nights, & so on.  On the face of it, there’s probably not much to say about this ongoing attempt to reach people by showing them that, yes, we Christians can have fun, too.  We’re human, after all, & we can watch movies, make jokes, & drink lattes like everyone else.  We can even rock-n-roll.  Yet I think there is an underlying assumption in all these stories, one shared by the journalists who write them & by many of those who read them. Namely, the assumption that Christianity makes living an enjoyable life, one replete with everyday pleasures, difficult if not impossible.

I want to be careful here, because I don’t want to be be unduly critical of believers trying to cast their nets & fulfill Christ’s call to be fishers of men.  Evangelism has always taken on interesting & creative forms, including in societies like ours where the Gospel has grown stale.  Nor do I want to make too much out of what, as I said above, is a nice story.  And yet. . .  I couldn’t help, when thinking about pastors wearing Hawaiian shirts, riding Harleys, & organizing Christian car shows, being reminded of Nietzsche’s caustic remarks about the deadening effects Christianity has had on the soul of the West.  Of course Nietzsche had never seen a Protestant pastor in jeans, & he was spared from the banalities of both Christian rock & American journalism.  He did, however, say some things that are pertinent to the story I cited & what many in our society today instinctively feel about Christianity.

Of all the critics of the faith Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) holds pride of place for his wit, ability to turn a phrase, & psychological insight into the impact of Christianity on the psyche of the West.  It would be refreshing to encounter a critic of Nietzsche’s intellectual stature today amid all the drivel dished out by publishing houses seeking to capitalize on the new atheism buzz.  At the very least, we would be treated to a literary elegance that would make even the worst overstatements & inaccuracies more tolerable.  More importantly, we would have a critic who takes Christianity seriously enough to try to understand it & how it shapes its followers.  Even if Nietzsche often badly misreads the faith & its implications, he knows that he must do more than hurl missiles in the hope of destroying something he doesn’t like.  Rather, as a critic he must understand in some depth the Christian ethos & how it revolutionized everything from politics to art to morality as it swept through the late ancient world & changed the way people in the West felt & thought about everything.

Throughout his work Nietzsche complains that Christianity emasculates those who embrace it & the society it takes root in.  “The death of the genuinely human” might be the best short answer to the question of what Nietzsche thinks happens when Christianity establishes itself as the dominant faith of a people.  The ressentiment (he always uses the French word; no one I’ve read seems to know why) he finds at the root of the Christian ethos is a living & active force, sitting in judgment of & trying to root out the very virtues which make genuine greatness possible.  These virtues, according to Nietzsche, are in fact the principle means by which humans make sense of their world & seek to overcome the tragic dimensions of existence.  The pride that Christians denounce as the worst of sins, the recognition of the superiority of the noble to the mediocre that Christians decry as a refusal to honor all of God’s creatures, are, among other qualities characteristic of the greatest civilizations, required to ensure that those civilizations do not lapse into the decadence that Nietzsche associates with nihilism.  Such decadence results from the denial of what makes us most human, & Christianity bears much of the responsibility for this decadence.  A creed that elevates weakness at the expense of strength eviscerates human beings & the cultures they build, as is evident when we study the historical record of the West.

This type of criticism is widely & instinctively felt, if not well understood or articulated.  Not because people have been reading Nietzsche & his disciples, but because it seems to many that religion makes people soft.  Isn’t it commonly held that to “be religious” is to be somehow unnatural & weak?  Think of all the restrictions, all the denials, all the things we are supposed to avoid.  Chastity & abstinence, rejecting anger, suppressing our natural aggressiveness, turning the other cheek, forgiving those who harm you, becoming the milquetoast subjects of an ethic that demands the unnatural virtue of meekness:  How does this fit the do-it-yourself American ethos?  How does this allow us to be properly human?  And, in a society with simplistic ideas about gender roles, doesn’t this Christian ethos seem too feminine?  Isn’t this apparent at every church service, where all you have to do is check out the male/female ratio of those in attendance to take the measure of this religion?  Nietzsche was tapping into a natural vein of criticism when he attacked Christianity as life-denying, & while the average critic today may not be able to keep in step with his blistering polemic, there is a shared distrust of any form of religious sensibility, especially one nurtured by all the sweet sentiments expressed in popular Christian culture.  Christianity can often seem like a humorless attempt to follow the Jesus in those kitschy paintings, the one who is holding a lamb & surrounded by cute little children.  All so sweet, all so sentimental.  This is the faith that conquered a world?

Some Christians will respond to this view, which they may unconsciously hold themselves, by mimicking secular culture.  I remember going to a Christian rock concert shortly after my conversion all those years ago.  The friend who invited me, a recent convert as well, tried to convince me that the devil did not have the best tunes, & that Christian rock was legitimate.  “You praise Jesus and get to rock,” he said.  After a few songs, as we walked out of the auditorium with blank stares on our faces & a sick feeling in our hearts, we got in the car & cranked up REM (this was the mid-’80’s).  “Too bad they’re not Christian,” we said, wondering how many more Christian concerts we’d be invited to.  “Too bad we’re not supposed to like this stuff,” we thought, wondering if we’d get to listen to the music we liked without feeling guilty.  “Love not the world,” right?  This meant, according to the crowd we hung with, “Love not secular music, secular movies, secular activities, anything that smacks of the life you are leaving behind.”  For these are not the fruit of the love of Christ, so what good are they?  They glorify the flesh, not the Lord.  And how do they help us evangelize the lost?  How do they not corrupt those of us who now live in Christ & are called to denounce the spirit of this age?  Yes, the devil probably does have the best tunes, as we had to admit after listening to the Christian stuff, but real sacrifices must be made.  Take up your cross & all that.  Just like the guy did who testified in church that he had burned all his secular records because of his desire to serve the Lord with all his heart.  The applause he received was impressive.

Such was the thinking of the Christian world I had entered, the world of a conservative Protestant evangelicalism still haunted by its fundamentalist origins.  My group of new friends had a few who still listened to secular music & watched secular films, though guiltily.  That included me.  Lacking a theological foundation in the incarnational logic of the faith, we enjoyed secular culture with a bad conscience, & even tried to justify our delights by appealing to how we would be able to meet unbelievers on their own turf. “This will actually help us to witness to Christ,” we said, trying to answer the critic inside us who wondered how our visitations to the land of the lost would be seen by its inhabitants.  “Unbelievers will see that we Christians are actually cool, that our faith doesn’t disqualify us from the good life.”  And, of course, we tried to find all kinds of hidden Christian ideas in our secular music & films, deciphering lyrics & scripts as if they were allegories begging to be cracked open by those of us brave enough to risk such dangerous exposure.

This will sound familiar to a lot of believers, not only Protestants, current or former.  While I think this is more of a Protestant issue, there are Catholics who struggle with the same questions & doubts.  With this sort of struggle within the community of believers, is it any surprise that those on the outside think what they do about us?  It often seems to them, as it does to many believers themselves, that we have embraced a faith that demands of us a renunciation of everything that makes life worth living, even innocent pleasures.  Isn’t this just more evidence that we can’t enjoy life without feeling guilty?  Who needs Nietzsche to point out the obvious?  It’s enough simply to hear us babbling about beatitudes that deny common sense & running away from even harmless pursuits like music & movies to remind people why going to church seems a huge waste of time.

I think this is behind those stories that inform readers that there are Christians who wear Hawaiian shirts, ride Harleys, engage in activities like going to car shows, open coffee shops with religious names (“Sacred Grounds,” “Holy Beans,” etc.), go to Christian concerts, & so on.  “Hey, look,” the stories imply, “those religious people are actually doing things we enjoy.  Maybe they’re not so weird, after all.”  The newspaper is no place to look for theological sophistication, but it does reveal the common American lack of even the most basic awareness of Christian teaching.  This misunderstanding includes the idea that, as Nietzsche believed, we Christians can not by the very logic of our faith live the good life, as too much must be excluded.  The Harley riders, moviegoers, & rockers among us must be the exception to the rule. It’s as if we’re at the zoo & we see a baboon combing its hair.  “Hey, kids, look at the funny monkey,” we say.  ”It’s trying to act like us.”  Yes, but it’s still a baboon.

Some believers accept the basic premise of these stories, & play the baboon, primping & preening for their secular neighbors, hoping to be validated in their eyes, or perhaps hoping to convince themselves that they are not giving up everything that makes life worth living.  No, I am not indicting the pastor in the story mentioned above, or most of the other Christians who do similar things (but “Sacred Grounds”? C’mon).  Rather, I am simply reflecting on my own experiences as a new believer way back when, what Nietzsche said about us Christians, & some commonly held ideas in our society.  I do think there is some validity in reading news stories from this perspective, or in asking these questions about them & why they are considered worthy of being published in the first place.  What’s most important to me about all this, however, is the conviction that Jesus was actually wrong, that following him does demand our emasculation, that the poor in spirit are not the blessed ones, & that meekness is a sign of weakness.  And that the saints I so admire didn’t know the truth that sets us free.  The good life may or may not include car shows or rock music, but it will be modeled upon the life of Jesus.  On this point Nietzsche was badly mistaken, as are all those who accept his conclusions.  That those outside (& sometimes inside) our community of faith are surprised by the fact that we can use the things of this world, that we can enjoy many things that are not overtly “religious,” is not ultimately due to their commitment to Nietzsche’s writings or lack of theological knowledge, but to our inability or unwillingness as believers to understand Jesus & the faith we profess, & to live accordingly.  Were we to live the Beatitudes, as the saints always do, & witness to the joy that life in Christ makes possible, we might inspire journalists to write a different type of story about us, one that does not express surprise at the fact that we can ride Harleys.  Too many Christians seem to think that everyday pleasures are morally suspect & that there is something odd about Christians who enjoy themselves doing “regular” things.  In our preaching & in our lives we should be better able to tease out the implications of the incarnational faith we profess, & show by the joy of our lives that Nietzsche, & everyone who suspects that he was right, had a deeply flawed understanding of what it means to be human.  And that Jesus was on target when he told us that the good life, the happy life, the life of genuine blessedness, is lived only by those are transformed by the Holy Spirit so that they are poor in spirit, knowing their dependence upon God; so that they are meek, able to battle successfully the temptation to use force against the foes & frustrations that seek to thwart us; & so on.  We are hardly emasculated by the Spirit, but strengthened & enabled to live as God intended us to live.  Rather than having to read reports on how Christians are doing things others do, despite their religious beliefs, we should see more stories about how utterly different we are, how we live with greater joy & peace than our neighbors, & how that joy & peace is a sign of the presence of the Spirit within us.

–Anthony DiStefano

Third Sunday of Easter – Lectionary: 47 Sunday’s Mass readings from (USCCB) (Audio)

Third Sunday of Easter—April 22, 2012 (Scripture Speaks)

April 22nd 2012 – Third Sunday of Easter Understanding the Scriptures Dr. Scott Hahn (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology) (Audio)

Did Jesus really eat after the Resurrection?Fr. Ryan Erlenbush (TNTM)

Saint George Killing the Dragon

April 20 – St. Conrad of Parzham
April 21 – St. Anselm
April 23 – St. George
April 25 – St. Mark (American Catholic.org) Saint of the day

Pray for Chuck Colson

Building Catholic Character: 5 Things Parents Can Do (Audio) Thomas Lickona on (CERC)

Vatican Undertakes Reform of Nuns’ Group (Zenit) Archbishop Sartain of Seattle Appointed as Delegate

Michael Vorris (The Vortex) Our Blessed Lord and the Hobbit

Being Born Again: A Commentary by Fr. Barron (Word on Fire)

Archbishop Fulton J. sheen – Three Kinds of Love Part 5

Second Sunday of Easter Lectionary: 44 (USCCB) (Audio)

Divine Mercy Sunday—April 15, 2012 (Scripture Speaks)

April 15th 2012 – Divine Mercy Sunday The Day the Lord Made Dr. Scott Hahn (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology) (Audio)

St. Bernadette statue at the Lourdes Grotto

A Man for Our Season Tim Kelleher (FT) on St Martin I

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us (salt + light)

The Shroud of Turin, represented at every Mass Fr. Ryan Erlenbush (TNTM)

Today the air conditioning man told me he got “fixed”. So, I couldn’t resist… Leila Miller in the (LCB)


The Lost Art of Catholic Drinking Sean P. Dailey (CERC) (Audio)

Free downloadable books by G.K. Chesterton at Seton Hall University

Archbishop Fulton J. sheen – Three Kinds of Love Part 4

“The Hunger Games” (SPOILERS) – A Commentary by Fr. Barron

I recently finished The Hunger Games trilogy, & think it requires some comment. I’m aware of why some critics think the books deeply flawed from a moral perspective, yet I find the story provocative in the best sort of way. The 3^rd book was a literary letdown, as many have already noted, but I found the resolution satisfying nonetheless. It seems that one of the questions I have wrestled with is whether or not I can dislike the main protagonist of a series, yet find her both convincing & effective as a character. My biggest struggle concerns the suitability of the series for my 7^th grader, whose friends—some of them younger than her—have read the series & seen the film. She is thus exposed to the Team Peeta talk that the media machine spins out. But how prepared is she for the types of discussions we will have about redemptive violence, scapegoating, just war theory, & the other topics I think need addressing? 

Likewise, the question of the literary presentation of ambiguous characters like Katniss requires attention. When young readers will so quickly identify with her, does it make sense for an author whose intended audience is teens to have such a character involved in the murder of innocent people, even if in the service of a greater good? I remember the boy in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road asking his father if they were the good guys, seeking some assurance that they had not departed from the proper path. That story was for a more mature audience, one hopefully better able to negotiate the horrors revealed in it. As an adult, I can appreciate how ruined a person Katniss becomes as a result of what happens to her & the resulting choices she makes, & see The Hunger Games as a realistic portrayal of how violence spins out of control & destroys everyone in its path. But in the consumer culture these books (& film) inhabit, where the characters become catch phrases, how likely is it young readers will be able to appreciate some of the subtleties in the story?

I’ll start with some familiar topics I teach at Xavier & have written on previously. Check some of my earlier posts at the Emeth Society blog for more details on Peter Singer. Please be aware that I will ramble, as I am trying to find my thoughts on these troubling questions.

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In 1973 Ursula Le Guin published “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” a story I stumbled upon years ago in a moral philosophy anthology. The premise is simple & elegant: the shining, prosperous city of Omelas, filled with happy & cultured citizens, requires for its continued success the suffering of a single child, locked in darkness & misery in a basement closet. Here is Le Guin’s description:

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes–the child has no understanding of time or interval–sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes speaks. “I will be good,” it says. “Please let me out. I will be good!” They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, “eh-haa, eh-haa,” and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.

Despite the discomfort such a spectacle causes the citizens of Omelas, they all know there is nothing they can do to alleviate the suffering of the child. As we are told,“they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” None of these people are outwardly cruel, in the normal usage of the term. None visit the child to torment it or add to its sufferings. None publish tracts on why the child should suffer, on why it deserves its fate. And they all feel the necessary sorrow such a reality should provoke. But they can not aid the child, or seek any change at all, if they wish to preserve their status quo:

They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

The title of the story refers to those who can, for one reason or another, no longer live with such a bargain. These people leave Omelas for no one knows where: The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

This story appears in, among other places, the section of an anthology covering utilitarianism in its different forms, & is used by the editors to raise the question of how much suffering is acceptable when great benefit or happiness results. I like using the story with my Seniors, as it nicely complements Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” which they read in their English classes, & encourages consideration of the deals we make in society to benefit ourselves but which harm others. I usually warn them not to dismiss the scenario as too fantastic, & ask them why I think this. Some raise the issues of sweat shops or corporate greed, while others discuss how we treat animals to feed ourselves. A few mention abortion. I try to draw attention to what must occur in Omelas for this economy to function as well as it does, namely, the complete dehumanization of the child & the ability to justify its suffering, which leads to the further dehumanization of those offering justification. Such justification is always necessary, & the citizens of Omelas are well-trained in offering it, especially as they must find a way to live with themselves in the face of such wretchedness:

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. . .

Yet there is another dimension to this tale that brings to my mind The Hunger Games & what it portrays, a dimension that should warn the reader not to read Le Guin’s story as a simplistic fable. And to consider the very real modern & contemporary societies where analogous horrors have been & continue to be perpetrated in one form or another.

. . . Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.

“They know compassion.” And nobility, poignancy, profundity. In short, things which make any society “civilized.” “They” are not uncouth barbarians, but the most cultured of people, those with whom we like to identify ourselves. Yet their compassion, & the compassion of all societies that engages in rationalizations for its moral barbarity, falls well short of the full demands love places on us, the “suffering-with” the wounded & vulnerable other in our midst that the gospel calls us to. Their compassion is one that ultimately kills. This thought occurs to me every time I hear the bioethicist Peter Singer of Princeton University speak about compassion & his desire to alleviate suffering by offering a thoroughly rational ethical theory, one freed from the stains of emotion, not to mention all hints of teleology & religious faith. When covering his work some of my students openly wonder how he can speak of compassion & the elimination of suffering while claiming that there is little ethical difference between killing a snail & a day-old infant. The personhood theory he espouses alongside his updated version of utilitarianism would be of great use in Omelas, I think. Distinguishing between a human being & a human person based on cognitive capacities is a clever move for anyone interested in justifying the mistreatment, including the death, of those considered expendable because they are burdensome. Abortion rights advocates like this approach for obvious reasons, as do medical ethicists seeking to justify infanticide by calling it post-birth abortion. What is so worrisome, I try to convey to them, is how dehumanizing others desensitizes us to not only their dignity as persons, but to our own humanity. CS Lewis noted how our mistreatment of others makes it easier & more satisfying to continue mistreating them, just as acting in a loving manner ultimately makes it easier to love. He knew Aristotle & St. Thomas, & wrote compellingly not only about growth in the virtues & vices, but also about the abolition of man, the process by which we gradually surrender the moral sensibilities that provide the foundations for civilized life. Bl. John Paul II spoke of the culture of death that emerges out of this abolition, a culture that has little difficulty in speaking of compassion while pursuing its exact opposite. Even the most perverse societies, like that of Omelas, have their cultured devotees of compassion, justice, peace, etc., who openly weep at injustice & suffering, so long as it is the right type. In a weird sort of parallelism, the daily cruelties visited upon the vulnerable produce in the abusers a kind of psychic energy enabling not only their tears, but also their cultural achievements. I have no reason to doubt that Peter Singer is a fine father to his daughters, that medical ethicists justifying infanticide are fine employees & upstanding citizens. Hitler was very nice to his secretaries; as Traudl Junge recounts in her account of her life serving Hitler, he was like a father to her, & she appreciated his many kindnesses. The cruelties he visited upon his enemies, like those rationalized by advocates of personhood theory & the continued suffering of the child in Omelas, often seem completely divorced from genuine hatred. And they are considered necessary, just, required for social harmony. The cruelties are rationalized, shown to be necessary if we wish to be truly humane. Theories are developed showing how logically necessary it is to perform the rituals of cruelty. As is the case with the citizens of Panem.

As Collins describes this nation & its inhabitants, there is little reason to consider Panem, its capital a shining city of prosperity, as the dark haunt of bloodthirsty ghouls. The bread-&-circuses theme is carefully announced & illustrated, hearkening us back to ancient Rome & its taste for murderous entertainments, & some of the characters we meet from there are indeed bizarre & callous. But apart from President Snow, who literally reeks of blood (why he does is explained in the 3^rd book), we do not see anyone with horns or a pitchfork. The people there have the same concerns & fears as we do, & rightly worry about the social chaos that rebellion can cause. Of course Panem is also bathed in the blood of the innocent, & its citizens revel in all the rituals attached to the Hunger Games themselves. But ask any of them if their enjoyment of these rituals suggests a warped moral sense or a taste for cruelty, & you’ll be able to count the blank stares. Just as most of the citizens of Omelas consider themselves & their society just; just as Peter Singer & all the other contemporary merchants of death raise the flag of compassion on the graves of their victims. They are able to do this with a straight face because they fail to see those victims as victims, as real persons deserving anything like real compassion.  Thus their growing indifference to the suffering they glamorize, & their increasing capacity to perfect the language & rituals by which they justify & routinize their cruelty.

Suzanne Collins’ real contribution in her trilogy, however, has less to do with how she paints the bad guys & more to do with how the good guys emulate them. Apart from Peeta, who among the good guys is tortured by the violence they are forced into? Katniss is difficult to read, at least after only one reading of the series. She is sympathetic & heroic, cold & calculating all at once. And she becomes a seasoned killer. Above all, she is ruined by what happens to her & the subsequent choices she makes, & this is where Collins achieves something JK Rowling does not in the Harry Potter books. There, good & evil are more easily distinguishable. While Draco Malfoy encourages some sympathy, how many other Slytherins or Death Eaters are more than one-dimensional characters, wholly bent on evil? Severus Snape is the one great literary character in the series, a man of no little complexity who repels & attracts at the same time, & Dumbledore develops greater depth when we learn of his adolescent desire for power & how this led to tragedy, for him & others. But fighting against the bad guys never seems to affect the good guys all that much. Harry is haunted by the loss of his parents & his godfather, but does he ever wrestle with using unforgivable curses (unsuccessfully, I have to add)? Fortunately for him, he doesn’t actually kill anybody, especialy innocents, at least that we can see. (Is that right? Apart from Voldemort, does Harry actually kill anyone? I can’t recall.) As dark as the series got in the last 2 books, it is remarkably staid in its violence when contrasted with Collins’ trilogy, & we are never encouraged to reflect on the person Harry is forced to become as a result of his involvement in the war against Voldemort, because he doesn’t really change all that much. We cheer him on as he hunts horcruxes & pushes aside one attempt after another to thwart him, but the chief difficulty he faces is procedural, not moral: How can he find & destroy horcruxes, & then kill their maker? Because of this, most of the violence in the Harry Potter series is unremarkable. Characters we like die at the hands of the wicked, & characters we like kill the wicked, but the moral stakes are much lower than those in The Hunger Games trilogy. Again, Katniss is shattered not only by her losses, for, like Harry, she loses family members, but most of all by her own actions. Her final act of killing does seem to indicate a moral awareness of some depth, but by that point she is so deeply implicated in the very acts she is fighting against that it seems hollow. The laughter of President Snow is telling. Does he see what Katniss has become?

This is a tremendous risk for Collins. Teen readers are not often called upon to exercise the type of discernment required by these books, & I suspect that most readers, even adults, will likely miss the invitation to lament the cruelties we compassionate, cultured people too often justify & celebrate. Many readers have complained about how the 3^rd book was a disappointment, for one reason or another. They especially don’t like how the characters develop. Perhaps they want the same assurances JK Rowling gave, the nice wrap up, an epilog in which normality reigns & where our heroes can grow old in peace after vanquishing their foes. What Suzanne Collins refuses to do is allow any touch of normality for a protagonist forced to endure not only the barbarity of the rituals of a modern panem et circenses government strategy, but her own growing indifference to the use of scapegoating & violence as a strategy to defeat the bad guys. For this Collins should be thanked, not chastised, as some reviewers shocked by the presence of such violence do. Whether or not you like the books, or think them fit reading for teens or adults, there is in them an invitation to reflect upon not only the horrors of war & our capacity to turn murder into reality TV, but upon the price all have to pay for the violence we too often endorse as the only means of achieving peace & justice.

—Anthony DiStefano

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Lectionary: 37 (USCCB) (Audio)

Palm Sunday—April 1, 2012 (Scripture Speaks)

April 1st 2012 – Passion Sunday Darkness at Noon Dr. Scott Hahn (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology) (Audio)

The final week of Jesus’ life, a chronology Fr. Ryan Erlenbush (TNTM)

April 1 – St. Hugh of Grenoble
April 2 – St. Francis of Paola
April 4 – St. Isidore of Seville (American Catholic.org) Saint of the Day

Internet Users’ Prayer To Saint Isidore Of Seville (Catholic Prayers)

Almighty and eternal God,
who has created us in Thy image
and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful,
especially in the divine person
of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
grant we beseech Thee that,
through the example of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor,
during our journeys through the Internet
we will direct our hands and eyes
only to that which is pleasing to Thee
and treat with charity and patience
all those souls whom we encounter.
Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Bloggers unite! Saving one life at a time. *NEW UPDATE! (Little Catholic Bubble) rallies the troops around Malcolm.

Why Bigger Might Be Easier Betsy VanDenBerghe on (First Things)

Are We Seeking Truth, or Convenience? by Jennifer Fulwiler at (NCR)

3 Failed Attempts to Troll the Catholic Church Marc Barnes on (Patheos)

Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (Audio) Mitchell Kalpakgian (CERC)

In The Wind in the Willows three famous places — the River, the Open Road, and the Wild Wood — depict three ways of life.

“The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half as much
As intelligent Mr. Toad!”