I went to see... Me and You and Everyone You Know at the IFC Center theater. It was interesting, amusing, and somewhat juvenile. I wouldn't bother if I were you. The theater itself, however, is awesome. (With the exception of the popcorn, they serve what is described as organic popcorn. The only difference seems to be that the kernels are not as big and fluffy.)

The other day I saw a man wearing a Roman legionnaire costume pedaling a pedicab down the street. I suppose it was a gimmick to get up business, but really...

Rode a bus today. I had previously done this when we visited New York. This was the first time I had done it since I moved to New York though. It wasn't a crosstown and it ran straight up Sixth Avenue just like the train there did, so it was probably pointless, it just happened to be there right as I was coming out of a store and heading uptown (though the train station was right there too.

So really, there're multiple posts because I feel like it.

OK, a bunch of things to say. Will be broken up into multiple posts to allow people to comment individually. OK, not like there's gonna be tons of commenting or anything.

That end-of-mass hymn at Our Saviour is the Justinian Hymn. It is also in the Byzantine liturgy, but is not the same as the cherubic hymn.

Obviously a busy morning here at work.

I walked by the NYC Opus Dei building on Lexington today between buying some pants and going to church. There was a black man walking in and out of the building. Apparently the Work brooks no middle ground on the melanin issue... no albino assasin monks in evidence though.

Salon.com News | Police, G8 protesters clash in Scotland:

"One man stripped off his clothes and walked naked down the street, pursued by reporters."

A Battle-Tested Beginner:

Were it not for the silver-dollar-size scar on the inside of his elbow, the legacy of an AK-47 round, [Lance Corporal] Jeffery Walker would look like any other freshman trying to survive the wrenching induction into the U.S. Naval Academy.

The wiry 20-year-old from Conover, N.C., calmly complied, following the yellow line taped to the floor of Alumni Hall on Tuesday. It marked the path to his new uniforms, to doctors' needles, to instructions on a proper salute and, ultimately, to becoming an officer.

Walker knows that no matter how exacting the next four years may be, no one will be shooting at him. Nor will he watch his fellow Marines spill blood on the streets of Fallujah.

"It won't be Iraq," he said.

Walker is part of a small but growing demographic of incoming cadets and midshipmen at the nation's service academies: combat veterans. He has the scar and the Purple Heart to prove it.

The Naval Academy has long accepted midshipmen from the enlisted ranks [has it ever not?]; it took 76 this year. But combat veterans have rarely been seen at the Annapolis institution since the Vietnam era. Walker is one of two sworn in yesterday, both Marines, both of whom fought in Iraq. [Well, we haven't had that many combat vets since then.] Academy officials expect more.

The number of veterans has grown sharply at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where 30 combat veterans were inducted this week, including a Purple Heart recipient, said West Point spokesman Frank DeMaro. Last year, there were 22. The year before that, eight.
...
"Their respect within the brigade will be high, especially when the other midshipmen see their combat ribbons on their chest," [Vice Adm. Rodney P.] Rempt[, the academy superintendent,] said. "What we do is encourage them to share their stories and their experiences and to help their classmates. But they still have to achieve all the same goals."

And this is kinda lazy:

And like all first-year midshipmen, he was instructed on the five basic responses all plebes need to know:

"Yes, sir." "No, sir." "Aye, aye." "No excuse." "I'll find out."

There should be a sir (or ma'am) after each of those.

The formatting is fixed!

Publius gets almost all of the credit (he'd get it all, but he didn't log in and paste in the code). He's also got a great blog, that link you see above and now also on the blogroll.

Strangely, it's the "weekends" that are making this overnight schedule hard. Not wanting to give up the daytime of my time off, I'm only getting two nights of somewhat extended sleep rather than three nights in my two days off.

The blog formatting is screwed up. I don't know why. I didn't change anything.

Christopher Caldwell in the The Weekly Standard:

"People often use the word 'culture' as a synonym for 'cuisine.' When they clim to adore the 'diverse and vibrant culture' of the city they live in, what they're actually trying to say, nine times out of ten, is that they like kung pao chicken. Those of us who grew up in Massachusetts often here strangers extol our culture. But it is seldom our accents or our well-earned sanctimony that so beguile them. They generally mean that they like fried clams."

Comcast Message Center:

"Good Day Sir, It is my pleasure reaching you through this means, I am in need of a trust worthy foreign person that can assist me have my fund(s) worth 8Million English Pounds Stirling transferred out of the non operational bank account that my late Uncle, Chief. Honesty RJ. Brown deposited "

His uncle's name is "Honesty"! Well then he must be "trust worthy [sic]".

open book: Are you a Papist?:

Rod Dreher: "Jay Nordlinger's a Christian Scientist"

Things you'd never have guessed...

I've tied a Windsor knot in my tie this morning, well actually I tied it at night, but it is now morning. It's oddly semetrical.

Insanely, with that I should go to bed at near 8AM, since I have to be to work at 12AM (ie 16 hours from now). This overnights thing is going to just be wierd! Though I do get paid a bit more.

Total Number of Books I Own/ Have Owned: I probably own 300 currently, which doesn't sound like a lot except that I move a lot and like to move them with me. Sadly, here in NY I only have a couple dozen. The total I've owned is probably around 1,000, I've been pretty good about selling them.

Last Book I Bought:

Three actually:

Happiness and Contemplation by Josef Peiper
Christian State in Life by Adrienne von Speyr
American Prometheus: the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Books I'm Reading Now:
American Prometheus and Relativity by Einstein

Five Books That Have Meant A Lot to Me:

I can't limit myself to five.

Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating
The 1662 Book of Common Prayer (substantially by Cramner)
The Book of Lights by Chiam Potok
Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (and the Summa Contra Gentiles as well, but for a completely different reason)
On Free Choice of the Will by St. Augustine (though that was probably just a matter of timing)
The Roman Missal
The Rule of St. Benedict (guess who wrote that)

I find that there's a group of historical fiction/non-fiction that's important to me, informed by my ancestry and personal history:

The Killer Angels (the Civil War) by Michael Shaara
The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Rememberance (World War Two and the Holocaust) all by Herman Wouk
The Headmaster by John McPhee
Trinity by Leon Uris (though another novel or a straight history of Ireland could probably stand in here just as easily)
Good-Bye To All That by Robert Graves

Tag Five Other Bloggers to Do This - If they Wish
I don't know five bloggers...

It's interesting, but while I love books, my religion, politics, etc. have been influenced very much by other things. Beyond my upbringing, intellectual epiphanies were largely shaped by a radio show Catholic Answers Live (which I always listened to over the internet and have never actually heard on the radio) and my politics were shaped by reading The Freeman and as I think about it, the Wall Street Journal. Though religious and political books solidified the things I learned there. In becoming a philosopher, being taught to philosophize was more important than reading philosophy.

This was interestingly hopeful in another way, thinking about books and other places that I've learned from makes me realize how much I've learned and grown in understanding even relatively recently. Makes me more hopeful about the future of the enterprise.

If this means what I think it does, it's pretty funny.

One of the public television stations (not 13, but I think 21) here in NYC is showing Witness to Hope during pledge week. I find this kind of shameless. They're not exactly promoters of Catholic values the rest of the year. with things like Now. Perhaps they'll be improving though, with the new guy in charge at CPB. He's certainly been getting rough treatment in the liberal media.

Today is some sort of Puerto Rican festival here in Midtown. It seems like we have a festival/parade every week. Last week was "Salute to Israel".

Salon.com News | Everything you always wanted to know about the stem cell debate:

"There are also philosophical reasons to question the embryo's status. Does the embryo have a 'soul'? Bioethicists note that if it does, it's not an individual soul, since an embryo at this stage has not yet reached the point where it might split in two to become twins. An embryo can't be thought of as an individual person, some ethicists say, since it may actually become two different people."

I've seen this argument repeated over and over again and it is simply not a very good argument. This is akin to arguing that an adult can't have a soul because a child comes from biological material from it's parents. And it's parents recombined into three people.

The obvious reply is that when the embryo splits the soul that was there before is linked with one part and the new part gets a new soul. Just think of it as human reproduction being a bit more complicated.

I was just looking at the blog and realized that posts I had just posted had times on them that looked like an hour ago. The blog was still on East Indiana time!

It's fixed now.

I'd also add that there's been a lot more posting here than there has been someplace else.

Jeanetta is complaining that there aren't enough funny things she said on the blog anymore. The reason for this is most likely that she's not saying funny things to me. I think I'm the one who should complain. Harumph.

The New York Times Style section reports today, "The tie-front bolero sweaters seen everywhere provide today's uniform of T-shirt and jeans with an elegant high-waisted Empire silhouette."

I swear that I had the exact same thought yesterday. The Times beat me into print. (Not that I usually publish fashion criticism anywhere.)

People might want to know that I have next Monday and Tuesday off and the following Monday and Tuesday.

I just got my renewal notice for National Review. I subscribe/d to the online version. I'm not going to renew. Instead of decided to subscribe to the (British) Prospect (in the online option for 1/5 the price). Which seems to resemble nothing as much as Michael Kelly's Atlantic. While I continue to subscribe to the Atlantic, I'm just not as happy with it as I used to be. As for National Review, between NRO (sorry guys, but it does take away from the NR craving for me), which I don't even read as much as I used to, and the Weekly Standard, which I get free at work, it seems less essential, not to mention that they reprint Bill Buckley's syndicated columns that are run in the New York Sun.

Roger Clegg writes, also in NRO:

You can read the Fourteenth Amendment all day and not find anything in it about the legality of gay sex, which was the issue in Lawrence v. Texas.

There's also an offhand bit in Frum's blog there from Sally Satel and Christina Sommers: "A modernized stoicism turns out to be a very effective life philosophy." We can add that mention to Don't Sweat the Small Stuff in the catalogue of modern stoics.

Warren Bell in an NRO article "Condumb?":

In 1856, Gustave Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary in part as a indictment of the promulgation of lending libraries, which were causing Emma-types to read the mass-culture novels of the day, and thereafter dream of romance and lovers. So, too, Sex and the City 140 years later, with the additional pernicious effect of promoting the Cosmopolitan as a suitable cocktail for people who are not holding poodles or smoking through a long black cigarette holder.

Here's an interesting bit of perspective. Recounted in this week's Weekly Standard:

After a series of academic succeses at Harvard College, [Robert Oppenheimer] went to England's Cambridge University in 1925 to study physics, but suffered a breakdown. Its most serious manifestation was poisoning his tutor's apple, an act that almost got him charged with attempted murder. Oppenheimer recovered, transferred to the University of Göttingen in Germany, and quickly became a star in the new and burgeoning field of quantum mechanics. Just two years after getting his bachelor's degree, he had a Ph.D. and a reputation as one of the leading young theoretical physicists in the world.

Professor Steven Landsburg of the University of Rochester:

Writing in Slate:

All of which is pure speculation, and pure speculation can lead one badly astray. My colleagues and I have a little game we sometimes play at lunch. We pick a local business and estimate its profit. (How many customers do we see going in per hour? How much does the average customer spend? How many employees are there, and how much do they probably earn? And so forth.) Our conclusion has invariably been that the business in question is losing money fast enough to bankrupt anyone this side of Bill Gates. Yet after 20 years, most of those businesses are still there. The conclusion is that either most retail establishments are owned by eccentric billionaires, or there's something about retailing we haven't figured out.

He's got a book too, Armchair Economist: the Economics of Everyday Life (and other books).

Word is that private planes are going to be allowed back at Regan National in D.C. for the first time since 9/11. One of the requirements will be that they have an armed law enforcement officer on board. That seemed rather expensive to me. But then I realized that we're talking about private jets here, so it's not that much of a burden. Those suckers (the planes that is) are already pretty expensive.

Tardy Pope stresses connection between institution and Spirit during noontime remarks

"Vatican City, May. 16, 2005 (CNA) - Yesterday, a 20-minute late Pope Benedict greeted some 40,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the noontime Regina Coeli prayer, beaming about his ordination of 21 new priests immediately before, and discussed the profound relationship between the Spirit and institution of the Church.

"The Holy Father asked the crowd 'to please excuse me for the great delay. I had the grace to ordain 21 priests and such a harvest for God lasts quite a bit of time, therefore, thank you for your understanding.'"

See, Thomas, he does need that watch.

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World:

"Pope Benedict XVI has told the Israeli ambassador to the Vatican he intends to visit the main synagogue in Cologne, Germany, in August, becoming the second pontiff in history to visit a Jewish place of worship."

Well, Peter was a visitor of synagogues as well. So that would make at least three. I see this repeated in all sorts of news. What they should write is "the first modern Pope".

Wow. Aaron Brown of CNN is wierd tonight. Is he always that wierd? I've never watched his show before.

I have next Sun, Monday, Tuesday off. Thinking of going back to VA for the three days. Gotta check the bus and train schedules.

Having just come off my "weekend" and the first two day weekend I've had in about a month it feels very Mondayish to me tonight, even though it's Friday for the rest of the world.

I guess my silent roomate has departed, since my landlord/roomate has now moved into the other bedroom. Next time I see him I'll have to make sure he can still make the rent on the reduced circumstances, while at the same time not offering to pay more myself.

I went to Mass yesterday, Ascension, Holy Day of Obligation, at St. Rita in the Bronx. Which appears to have be an ethnically Italian parish when it built it's building around 1905 (St. Rita being Umbrian). It seems they never got beyond building the basement. The Church is only one level and you go down below grade to enter it. There are quite a few other parishes within 5-blocks or so. St. Pius V (not SSPV), is only about a block and a half. It'd be interesting to know what ethnic groups/migrations were at work here that the Church was never finished. It's not clear from the interior either if it was ever more "built" then it is today, e.g. pre-Vatican II.

There were no MC's in evidence at the 12 noon Mass. There's adoration there at their convent every M-Thurs. at 2:30, but I had to go to work (ok, so I didn't have all of the two days off, but it was just an hour long meeting with the brass) by 3:15 in Midtown. They also have adoration Sunday evenings, so we'll see how Sunday night is. I still hate making phone calls.

The Corner on National Review Online:

"MANHATTAN MUSIC [K. J. Lopez]
Passed along:

Fr. George Rutler invites you to a concert of music performed by Johannes Somary, on the occasion of the dedication of the Eileen Grady Manning Memorial Organ, at the Church of Our Saviour, 59 Park Avenue (at 38th Street), on Thursday, May 5, at 6 p.m.


Posted at 08:19 AM"

The article from National "Catholic" Reporter is for subscribers only (I don't subscribe), but the preview is enough. Jeanetta'll love it:

Pink smoke declares 'priestly people come in both sexes'
By Catholic News Service

"Before the cardinals locked into the Sistine Chapel had a chance to cast their first ballot, a group protesting the lack of women’s voices in the conclave gathered outside Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago April 18 to send up billows of bright pink smoke along with prayers for women to be heard."

Is there some reason "top-quality pre-engineered steel buildings" are considered especially attractive to conservative radio show listeners?

New link in the sidebar to the blog England Expects.

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish:

"EMAIL OF THE DAY: 'I am a 67 year old gay man (born in the reign of Pius XI and have suffered under 5 popes - John XXIII being a breath of clean air - and Benedict XVI promises to continue the tradition of the others). I read and sympathize with your agony; may I offer some advice?
"1) If you want to be a Catholic, be one. Let no one define your Catholicity for you. Conservative Catholics, alternating between crowing and fulminating, do not speak for the whole church as it has marched down through the ages. (Think Dorothy Day, Bernadette Soubirous, Francis of Assisi, the fathers Berrigan, GK Chesterton, to name but a few.) Although I don't have precise figures, my guess is that, in the Western hemisphere, they are in the minority. In America, they make 'majority' noises because they have united with evangelical Protestants to vote for the Bush Imperium. It is a dangerous liaison; to the fundamentalists, the Church of Rome has always been the Whore of Babylon."

GK Chesterton fought against the Church? That's way out there. Francis was very strictly obedient to the Church. He just happened to get instructions directly from Chirst. I don't think Mr. Sullivan would make progress claiming those criteria. Same w/Bernadette, but substitute Mary. Note that both were taken seriously by the Church w/in their lifetimes. Dorthy Day is a complicated figure theologically. Where Church doctrine was clear she toed the line.

See here:

"She was theologically and liturgically traditional, while radical in her social justice activism. She once stated, "[w]hen it comes to labor and politics, . . . I am inclined to be sympathetic to the left, but when it comes to the Catholic Church, then I am far to the right." 478"

"478. For example, the Catholic Worker has never concentrated significant attention to issues of abortion or homosexuality. See Voices from the Catholic Worker 63 (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993). "That was a very funny thing about Dorothy. For all her radicalism politically, Dorothy had a profoundly conservative streak in her makeup. She was a very conservative Catholic, theologically ...." Id. at 75. "Dorothy was an extremely orthodox Catholic, not at all theologically a dissident. She certainly would not at all favor abortion. She would, I think take a very dim view of homosexual behavior." Id. at 80; see also Alden Whitman, Dorothy Day, Outspoken Catholic Activist, Dies at 83, N.Y. Times, Nov. 30, 1980, at 45."

In German town, Benedict XVI known for love of cats, conversation - Yahoo! News:

"Hofbauer and many others in Regensburg, where the new pope remains on the faculty rolls, shared mixed emotions, pride and sorrow, when they heard the news. Georg Ratzinger said he almost feels as if he's lost his brother, knowing that it won't be easy to see him now.

"'I thought he'd retire soon, and we would finally have a lot of time to finish all the talks we've started through the years. We talked about that, just this Christmas when he was home,' Hofbauer said.

"'He thought it sounded nice, to retire, to take it easy. That's not how it worked out though, is it?'"

Kind of sad.

In German town, Benedict XVI known for love of cats, conversation - Yahoo! News:

"'I went with him once,' said Konrad Baumgartner, the head of the theology department at Regensburg University. 'Afterwards, he went into the old cemetery behind the church.

"'It was full of cats, and when he went out, they all ran to him. They knew him and loved him. He stood there, petting some and talking to them, for quite a long time. He visited the cats whenever he visited the church. His love for cats is quite famous.'

"...those who know the man known as 'God's Rottweiler' say his soft, human side has been ignored.

"The pope loves cats, can't resist Christmas cookies and, three months ago, waxed on about how he dreamed of retiring from the hectic life at the Vatican to enjoy his last years reading, writing and talking with friends."

Cats! We've found the Holy Father's flaw.

ScrappleFace: Vatican Spins Off U.S. Catholic Church

"(2004-04-20) -- In one of his first official moves, Pope Benedict XVI today announced that the Vatican would "spin off" the U.S. division of the Roman Catholic church, but retain a 49-percent stake in the new entity, called R.C. Lite."

Personally I was pulling for "New Church", or "Passover Coke" or something.

National Catholic Reporter: Joan Chittister April 13, 2005:

"Journalists are rushing from source to source trying to determine the future of a church led by a theologian considered by many to be both doctrinaire and dogmatic. "

Doctrine and Dogma from a Catholic? Who'd've thunk it?

Well obviously Joanniekins wasn't expecting it...

"Did anyone really think such an election could happen at a time when the church is apparently more in need of openness than intransigent resistance in the face of so much new information and emerging new questions? Answer: No."

Umm, Michael Novak predicted it and there were others. People who actually report and analyze and don't just project their own views onto the Church. John Allen of your very own paper thought it entirely likely.

"Does anyone know why the Cardinals of the church elected as Pope one of its most polarizing personalities? Answer: No. "

Umm, well the quick answer is that the electors presumably know why they voted for him.

"Hospitality, the fourth dimension of Benedictine spirituality, takes everyone in. No one is excluded from the Christian community. No one is too bad, too poor, too useless, too unimportant to be part of the community. 'Let the Guest be treated as Christ,' the Rule says. Treating one another as Christ becomes the norm."

We should note that there is also a section in the Rule on excommunication.

Anyhow, it's not as bad as one might of expected from the ex-Abbess.

The New York Times > International > International Special > New Pope's Birthplace Becomes a Center of Pride, With Muted Misgivings at the Edges:

A former subject from Munich chimes in:

"'He would never be able to connect with young people like John Paul,' said Christian Schuster, 35. 'The pope had humility. Cardinal Ratzinger has a different image. He is a very powerful man.'"

Of course, Schuster was 12 when the Pope moved to Rome.

The New York Times > International > International Special > New Pope's Birthplace Becomes a Center of Pride, With Muted Misgivings at the Edges:

"In the joyful din here, there were few dissenting voices concerning Cardinal Ratzinger or his conservative leanings. 'The pope must set a path for the church that he believes in,' said Engelbert Feldner, 69, the town's former brew master. 'He can't bend with the times.'"

And if you were wondering about the culture of the Pope's hometown, note that they have a "Brew master".

The New York Times > International > International Special > For America's Divided Roman Catholics, a New Disagreement:

"Clem Boleche, 29, an Augustinian brother from the Philippines who is studying to be a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, said his classmates at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology rushed into a room with a television to await the announcement of the new pope. When Cardinal Ratzinger appeared on the balcony, he said, the room grew silent.

"Brother Boleche said he and many others were hoping for someone less conservative and more open to debating church doctrine.

"'I'm honestly not surprised, but I think it would have been more exciting, more of a challenge, if he came from a different area,' Brother Boleche said. 'Latin America is alive. It is open, and is not stifling the spirit like many European churches.'"

With all due respect to Brother Boleche, how much experience does a 29 year old seminarian from the Phillipines who studies in America have with the "stifiling of the spirit" of the European Church, or for that matter with the "alive"ness of Latin America.

Voice of the faithful spokeswoman optimistic about Ratzinger!

The New York Times > International > International Special > For America's Divided Roman Catholics, a New Disagreement:

"Some groups critical of the church's handling of sexually abusive priests also said it was too early to draw conclusions. Suzanne Morse, communications director for Voice of the Faithful, which advocates a greater role for the laity in church governance, said that even when the new pope was a cardinal, his views on the abuse scandal were evolving.

Ms. Morse said that when the first accusations were made against priests, Cardinal Ratzinger 'seemed to think the problem was a media creation.' She added, 'But since then, we have seen small but significant signs that he has some sense of the scope of the clergy sexual abuse crisis.'"

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Smoke Gets in Our News:

"After all, Cardinal Ratzinger, nicknamed 'God's Rottweiler' and 'the Enforcer,' helped deny Communion rights to John Kerry and other Catholic politicians in the 2004 election."

It's my own fault for reading Maureen Dowd, nicknamed "the petulant child", but when was John Kerry denied communion?

Salon.com | "The church will continue to suffer":

Andrew Greeley:

"Women -- and not only in the United States -- are very angry at the church. It is no exaggeration to say that many of them, devout Catholics to the core, will tell you they hated John Paul because he hated women."

Othewise known as "people who are insane".

"He will have to put off his persona as stats professor and put on his persona as a parish priest."

A Stats Professor? Wow, that's a very strange comment. It kind of makes sense since Greeley is a sociologist and sociologist spend a lot of time studying statistics. I wonder if he's refering to his colleagues or his old professors.

Frances Kissling:

"I can no longer delude myself about these princes’ almost total lack of interest in healing the divide in the Church, in showing compassion for or even in listening to the voices of the suffering. The time for nuance is over. Let the unholy war begin."

Was the manuevering she did after the election was tactical and not a real change of heart? I think you've already been fighting the bad fight for a lot of years ma'am.

"Mary Segers, professor of political science at Rutgers University"

"Ratzinger thinks that since Europe has Christian roots, by definition you can't admit a Muslim country into the European Union. That worries me more than anything else, because I think that one of the tasks the next pope must undertake is making some sort of outreach to Islam."

Huh? I guess this is a reference to Turkey.

EurActiv.com tells us:

"In an interview with Le Figaro in 2004, Ratzinger expressed his clear view on one of the most divisive issues facing the EU: 'Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe,' he was quoted as saying."

But it's not that surprising that their's controversy over Turkey. That's why they're not members already. And we all know how much weight Catholic views get in the EU. Remember the controversy over the preamble to the constitution. Then there was the EU presidency candidate who was "outed" as a Catholic and forced to step aside.

"James Martin, Jesuit priest, associate editor of America magazine and author of 'In Good Company'"

"While I trust that the Holy Spirit will be helping Pope Benedict XVI over the next few years, I would be lying if I didn't say how disappointed I was by the cardinals' selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope. To my mind, there were many other candidates who had more pastoral experience, who have been more open to dialogue with other religions, and who have demonstrated more sensitivity to the thoughtful questioning that has always characterized Christian theology. But the cardinals quickly settled on a man who would forcefully continue John Paul's approach to governing the church. I can only pray that Pope Benedict proves to be more tolerant and open-minded than Cardinal Ratzinger was. But stranger things have happened in the Catholic Church, and I am hoping that the God of Surprises will surprise all of us."

But of course theologians who have worked with Ratzinger say just that about him, that he's open to questioning. And the World Jewish Congress and the Traditional Anglican Communion both have commented on how open to interfaith discussion he is. Oh, but you wanted him to be open to Liberal discussion.

There's a lot more nonsense later on in the article. For instance that he left Tubingen because of student unrest, which is true but unremarkable. Would you want to teach theology with Marxists sitting-in during your classes? Not a productive use of ones time. But I'm bored with it.

National Catholic Reporter: Electing a new pope April 19, 2005:

"As a young priest, Ratzinger was on the progressive side of theological debates, and served at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) as a peritus for reform-minded Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, Germany. After the student revolutions of 1968, however, Ratzinger shifted to the right. In the Vatican, he has been the driving force behind crackdowns on liberation theology, religious pluralism, challenges to traditional moral teachings on issues such as homosexuality, and dissent on issues such as women's ordination."

Really that should say "a great mass of academic theologians, especially ones that were paid attention to by the media, shifted to the left making Ratzinger, a theologian seem to be on the right.

As best I can tell, I've got Ratzinger's memoir, but I've just started reading it, Ratzinger is in the vein of the synthesis of Thomism, philosophical personalism (with such proponents as Martin Buber, Karol Wojtyla [tempered by phenomenology], and more recently Leon Kass], and the nouvelle theologie of de Lubac and von Balthazar, a school that doesn't really have a name other than "the ascendent modern orthodoxy", rather than the further left Kung, Rahner, and Schillebeckx.

Great shirts!



That says: "Viva El Presidente Summers!"

Sadly not in my size.

This is pretty funny:

From the NY Daily News today:

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is cracking down on narcotics detectives to tame what some brass consider a cowboy culture open to corruption, the Daily News has learned.

Amazing! Didn't anyone who's ever watched a cop show on TV know this already?

National Catholic Reporter: Electing a new pope April 11, 2005: "Outline of a Ratzinger papacy"

John Allen practically endorses the Ratzinger papacy.

Inside the Vatican - Monthly Catholic Magazine: "Rosario's Choice

- by Dr. Robert Moynihan, Editor, Inside the Vatican"

This is the most interesting article I've seen yet on the conclave. Whether it's the best article won't be known, of course, until after the conclave.

There's an Benedictine monastery of (largely) Americans in Italy at Norcia. If you think that's a long way to go to join a religious congregation, consider the nascent Canons Regular of Jesus the Lord. They're recruiting for their Canonry in Vladivostock.

An interesting article on goings on in Theology.

National Review Online has reposted Jonah Goldberg's essay on McDonald's which includes this classic line:

"Watson credits McDonald's for the fact that middle- and upper-class customers in Hong Kong, and increasingly throughout China, have come to accept a wait-your-turn system instead of mobs. This may sadden traditionalists, but nostalgia for mobs is not a strong argument."

Another in our continuing series "Do not confuse...":

Hans Kung and Hans Urs von Balthasar

Mass at St. Patrick's last night had the usual annoyances (the usher who always decides that the consecration is a great time to dump money into the box, and he's standing right outside of the choir!), but the organ playing was very strange. The program said the playing was being done by the principal organist. The solo playing and improvisation was outstanding, including a "Tu Es Petrus" (not Durufle's but it escapes me at the moment whose it was) that was amazing. The hymn playing included, however, impossible ritardandos at the end of the hymns and exagerated rubato. This made singing along very difficult. (The choice of communion hymns was also unfortunate. We had both "Be Not Afraid" and another similar hymn. One would have been alright, but two in a row was a bit too much sentimentality all in a place.)

5 cities on $250 a day
"Experience the most glamorous places for less"

Umm...that's quite a bit of money isn't it?

Restaurants I want to try:

Hummus Place
Listed in New York as a place for meals under $10.
109 St. Marks Pl. (212)-529-9198

WD-50
Chef profiled (was it GQ or Esquire I forget) for his doing unnatural things to food, e.g. fried mayonnaise, also mentioned as "Weird Food That Actually Tastes Good" in New York.
50 Clinton St. (212)-477-2900

Tebeya
Japanese Chicken wings. Positive note in the Sun.
144 West 19th St. (212)-924-3335

Richshaw Dumpling House
From the Post.
61 W. 23rd St. (212)-924-9220

Also the resurrected Jazz club Smalls at 183 W. 10th St.

(Ok, I admit, the purpose of this post was mainly to get a stack of restaurant reviews of my desk.)

From Amy Jean:

make black the states you've been to, bold the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C.

The Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Daniel and Companions

Friars Minor and martyrs; dates of birth unknown; died 10 October, 1227. The martyrdom of St. Berard and his companions in 1219 had inflamed many of the religious of the Order of Friars Minor with the desire of preaching the Gospel in heathen lands; and in 1227, the year following St. Francis's death, six religious of Tuscany, Agnellus, Samuel, Donulus, Leo, Hugolinus, and Nicholas, petitioned Brother Elias of Cortona, then vicar-general of the order, for permission to preach the Gospel to the infidels of Morocco. The six missionaries went first to Spain, where they were joined by Daniel, Minister Provincial of Calabria, who became their superior. They set sail from Spain and on 20 September reached the coast of Africa, where they remained for a few days in a small village inhabited mostly by Christian merchants just beyond the walls of the Saracen city of Ceuta. Finally, very early on Sunday morning, they entered the city, and immediately began to preach the Gospel and to denounce the religion of Mahomet. They were soon apprehended and brought before the sultan who, thinking that they were mad, ordered them to be cast into prison. Here they remained until the following Sunday when they were again brought before the sultan, who, by promises and threats, endeavoured in vain to make them deny the Christian religion. They were all condemned to death. Each one approached Daniel, the superior, to ask his blessing and permission to die for Christ. They were all beheaded. St. Daniel and his companions were canonized by Leo X in 1516. Their feast is kept in the order on the thirteenth of October.

The New York Times Magazine ran a story today "The Soul of the New Exurb". They were doing alright until we come to this paragraph, ostensibly explaining the history and particular demonational beliefs of the Assemblies of God (emphasis mine):

McFarland frequently refers to himself as a mail-order pastor. In fact -- and he readily acknowledges this too -- he never finished his pastoral coursework. He can lead Radiant anyway because the denomination to which Radiant belongs, the Assemblies of God, doesn't require its pastors to be ordained. This is not a mere quirk in the bylaws. The Assemblies, a Pentecostal movement that grew out of the preapocalyptic revivalism of the early 20th century and counts John Ashcroft (the son of an Assemblies minister) among its more prominent members, has historically been skeptical of all institutional education, seminaries included. The movement now has its own seminary in Springfield, Mo., but it continues to hew to tenets that most other denominations consider radical. Among other things, the Assemblies treats the Bible as fact and believes in miracles, faith healing and speaking in tongues.

Well, Catholics "hew to" all three of these "radical tenets". Now, some Christians believe speaking-in-tongues ceased in the Apostolic age, others believe it is an infrequently (nowadays) bestowed gift of the Holy Spirit, but no one doesn't believe in it. I don't think there are any denominations that would deny that Jesus "healed the sick" either, which is the essential belief of faith-healing, the difference is whether, how often, how, and in what way it continues to the present day. And no Mr. Fancy New York Writer, it's not just the ignorant hicks who believe the bible is "fact", a locution that could cover everyone from Jerry Falwell to John Dominic Crossan.

There's a fun New Yorker magazine parody blog here.

Urbi et Orbi Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II:

3. Stay with us, Living Word of the Father,
and teach us words and deeds of peace:
peace for our world consecrated by your blood
and drenched in the blood of so many innocent victims:
peace for the countries of the Middle East and Africa,
where so much blood continues to be shed;
peace for all of humanity,
still threatened by fratricidal wars.
Stay with us, Bread of eternal life,
broken and distributed to those at table:
give also to us the strength to show generous solidarity
towards the multitudes who are even today
suffering and dying from poverty and hunger,
decimated by fatal epidemics
or devastated by immense natural disasters.
By the power of your Resurrection,
may they too become sharers in new life.

4. We, the men and women of the third millennium,
we too need you, Risen Lord!
Stay with us now, and until the end of time.
Grant that the material progress of peoples
may never obscure the spiritual values
which are the soul of their civilization.
Sustain us, we pray, on our journey.
In you do we believe, in you do we hope,
for you alone have the words of eternal life (cf. Jn 6:68).
Mane nobiscum, Domine! Alleluia!

The whole thing is here on the website of the Holy See.

John Allen of National Catholic Reporter interviewed in Newsweek:

A common criticism of Opus Dei is that it appears to be a cliquey and elitist organization. Is it?

There is some truth to that. Your point of departure has to be that this is a group that has been savagely attacked for decades, so there is a tendency for them to feel comfortable with one another than with outsiders. As far as the elitism goes, again I think there's no corporate policy that they want to be elitist. I went to nine countries for this book [and in] every country I would go to—every one—in addition to seeing top officials, Opus Dei would also get me to see a bus driver, barber or a mechanic because they know there is this perception of elitism and they want you to understand that there are also blue-collar people, which is true. But on the other hand I would say that, again, going back to the sociology, inside the Catholic Church, particularly for young practicing Catholics, it's a little bit like the Marines—you know, "the few, the proud." They tend to attract very driven, idealistic, hard-working, smart people, and therefore there probably is an overrepresentation of what you would consider elites inside Opus Dei which is not their fault, I just think it's the reality of what their market is. And frankly, even the bus drivers and barbers I met, these were damn hardworking bus drivers and barbers.

One effect of the Schiavo case has been to let loose a torrent of nonsense about living wills. The following from Robert George, interviewed by National Review Online is a useful corrective:

Even if we were to credit Michael Schiavo's account of his conversation with Terri before her injury — which I am not inclined to do — it is a mistake to assume that people can make decisions in advance about whether to have themselves starved to death if they eventually find themselves disabled. That's why living wills have proven to be so often unreliable. One does not know how one will actually feel, or how one will feel about one's life and the prospect of death, or whether one will retain a desire to live despite a mental or physical disability, when one is not actually in that condition and when one is envisaging it from the perspective of more or less robust health.

Consider the case of a beautiful young woman — an actress or fashion model perhaps — who is severely burned in a fire. Prior to actually finding herself in such a condition, she might have supposed — and even said, if the subject had come up in a conversation — that she would rather be dead than live with her face grotesquely disfigured. But no one would be surprised if in the actual event she did not try to kill herself by starvation or some other means, and did not want to die.

George is of course against starving Schiavo to death. The whole interview is here.

Cover story -- Church in Crisis: Mahony, in legal battle, insists church has right to secrecy

Man, how ironic that the liberals' favorite bishop can't get his act together on this. I thought the sex scandals were supposed to be all about a conservative clericalism, ultramontanism, and the exclusion of lay people from church government.

Even if Mahoney wants to resurrect some kind of benefit of clergy, he should know that it was abolished in the common law for "atrocious crimes, murder, poisoning, burglary, highway robbery, and sacrilege" by statute in the reign of Edward III. See the Catholic Encylopedia article on Benefit of Clergy.

Ted: “This is not our country; we’re guests here. . . . There’s a lot of anti-NATO feeling here. . . . Actually here it’s OTAN.”

Fred: “They’re against OTAN? What are they for—Soviet troops racing across Europe, eating all the croissants?”

--Barcelona, Whit Stillman

So my current, "Do not confuse these two" isAmy Sullivan and Amy Wellborn.

JIMMY AKIN.ORG: Distance Doctorates?

I have a long comment on this post. I'm not sure how interesting it is.

In The New York Sun, headline over the review of the new Bruce Willis movie, Hostage:

'Die Hard,' With a Ninja

Bruce Willis was born in Germany according to his IMDB bio.

You are 'regularly metric verse'. This can take
many forms, including heroic couplets, blank
verse, and other iambic pentameters, for
example. It has not been used much since the
nineteenth century; modern poets tend to prefer
rhyme without meter, or even poetry with
neither rhyme nor meter.

You appreciate the beautiful things in life--the
joy of music, the color of leaves falling, the
rhythm of a heartbeat. You see life itself as
a series of little poems. The result (or is it
the cause?) is that you are pensive and often
melancholy. You enjoy the company of other
people, but they find you unexcitable and
depressing. Your problem is that regularly
metric verse has been obsolete for a long time.


What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

(via the Saintly Simmerin' Simians.)

Argghh, so that Theology on Tap is actually on one of the last days of my working evenings, so I won't be there.

Well I seem to be my life's own resident idiot today.

An interesting take on the current crisis in Northern Ireland:

From Slate, in an article, "Gerry's Kids: The IRA and Sinn Fein are in trouble. So where does Gerry Adams go from here?":

If Adams really approved the bank raid, it's hard not to ask: What was he thinking? One fascinating theory says the bank robbery might actually be part of Adams' covert strategy to force a recalcitrant IRA to lay down its weapons once and for all. Ed Moloney, an award-winning journalist and author of A Secret History of the IRA, says Adams may have sanctioned the robbery knowing the ensuing outrage would force the hand of the hard-liners in his midst, leaving them with a stark choice: Either go back to war, a political non-starter in the post-9/11 world, or, if republicans are to preserve the credibility they have gained both on the island and in London and Washington, lay down their arms for good. In other words, republicans can run a major political party, or they can be ostracized and lumped in with Osama Bin Laden.

Perhaps I'm a bit prejediced to see this as good news because I've written (in The Irish Rover) that he, unlike the Islam-facists, is someone with whom we can negotiate--limited aims and all that, but he's just so damn cheeky.

This is an odd test and an odd result (via The Tiffster):


You're the Fashion Plate!
Take What sort of Hipster are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

You know what's "in" and what's "out," and you give those trends the finger! You wear what you want and get damn respect for it. You still own pants you wore in high school. Your hair is five different shades of hip. You make it cool to shop at Goodwill, the Gap, and even Walmart. You hang out in crowded bars and restaurants, but don't care if anyone is even looking at you (though they are). You're swank and friendly and at ease just about anywhere. You're well-liked and talked about. The world wants to be just like you.

Just because it's Friday, doesn't mean you get to slack off, get commenting peons.

Who's in:

WHAT: Theology on Tap – “What Does the Eucharist Mean to the Modern Person?”

WHEN: Tuesday, March 15, 2005

WHERE: Metro 53 Restaurant and Lounge 307 East 53rd Street, between Second and First Avenues (212) 838-0007. E/V Trains to Lexington Avenue stop, 6 Train to 51st Street stop.

TIME: 7pm-whenever

DETAILS: Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR, will be giving a lecture on this topic. 7pm begins the Happy Hour, 7:30pm is the lecture, followed by a chat and mingle from 8:30pm on.

So I found a great place to get my hair cut. $10 (plus tip of course) fast and in the old-style. Russian (or other cyrillic-alphabet using) Jews I think, though possibly some of them are Jews and some of them are Russian. Right here in Midtown, basement of 55 W 47th, between 5th and 6th in amongst all the jewelry repairers and such of the Diamond District.

It would be kinda of amusing to engage in some street theater there. Stand outside muttering like the hawkers, "Buy Gold, Buy Diamonds," but mutter different things: "Avacados for sale." "We buy ballet tickets."

Here's a trivia question for you: what is/are the suffragan see(s) of the Archdiocese of Washington?

That's a Monday I think:

New York City Meliora Celebration—Reflections on the University of Rochester
• April 11, 2005
• see times below
• Tavern on the Green

6:30—cocktail reception

7:45—welcoming remarks by Nathan F. Moser '75, CEO of National Envelope Corporation and Chair of the Rochester Regional Leadership Cabinet of Metro New York
President Jackson has led the Univeristy with distinction for 11 years. He leaves his most lasting legacy in undergraduate education. Among his many accomplishments, President Jackson created the College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering to provide an integrated learning environment; devised the successful and nationally noted Rochester Renaissance Plan; and transformed the undergraduate experience into one built squarely on the ideals of research.

There is no charge for this event, but reservations are required. Please contact the Office of College Advancement at (800) 281.2055 to register. Tavern on the Green is located at Central Park at West 67th Street.

"Without a Trace" is the most consistently good entertainment program I see on TV (and at work we see at lot of TV). Though it's not, I believe, that realistic.

Sen. Robert "Sheets" Byrd (pace Rush) said tonight on "Hannity & Colmes" that the Sermon on the Mount had persuaded him to leave the KKK. Now, I'm against the KKK and I love the Sermon on the Mount, but wouldn't 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:28, or Colossians 3:11 have been more relevant choices (all "neither slave nor free, Jew nor Greek" chapters). I don't know, it just seems a silly attribution to me.

I may be coming down with a cold, which would be lousy.

Three of the five titles in "read regularly" were in Latin so I translated the other two.

"THE PUNCH LINES" BY SUSAN SHAPIRO:
(VILLAGE VOICE LITERARY SUPPLEMENT April-May 2000)

The New York intellectuals who wrote for Partisan Review and Commentary were called "the Family." Unlike Charles Manson's clan, they only killed in print. (Walter Kirn likened them to "literary mobsters but without the actual Mafia's occasional spasms of mercy for its own.")

From the NY Sun:

WALTER HALLORAN, 83, 'EXORCIST' PRIEST

The Rev. Walter H. Halloran, a priest who took part in an exorcism that spawned the book and move "The exorcist," died Tuesday in Milwaukee. He was age 83.

Halloran was the last living Jesuit who assisted in the exorcism in 1949 at a psychiatric unit in St. Louis. He was a 27-year-old Jesuit scholastic at Saint Louis University when a priest called him to the psychiatric wing at Alexian Brothers Hospital.

The Rev. William S. Bowdern was trying to help a 14-year-old boy who he believed was possessed by a demon, and he needed a strong man to help control the boy.

"The little boy would go into a seizure and get quite violent," Halloran told the St. Louis Post Dispatch in 1988. "So Father Bowdern asked me to hold him. Yes he did break my nose." Halloran said he saw streaks and arrows and words like "hell" on the boy's skin.

A three-paragraph news account of the incident inspired William Peter Blatty to write his 1971 best seller "The Exorcist," which led to the movie a few years latter. Blatty's story featured a 12-year-old girl.

Halloran earned two Bronze Stars for serving as a paratrooper chaplain during the Vietnam War, the oldest airborne chaplain at the time at 48.

Category IV - The
Musketeer

You have a small, highly edited social group, and
you like it that way.


What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Rich Lowry on National Review Online:
(following emphasis mine)

The Texas case came about because in 2002 a homeless man named Thomas Van Orden — on his way to idling the day away at the State Law Library — noticed the display on the grounds of the Texas state capitol. As it happens, Van Orden has a law degree (is this an over-lawyered country or what?). With nothing else to do with his time, he sued. The display had been up since 1961, and in 40 years, no one in Texas had noticed the state was trying to establish a religion.

I am Kong. Strong and passionate, I tend to be misunderstood, sometimes even feared. I don't want to fight, I don't want to cause trouble, all I ask is a little love, and a little peace. If I don't get what I want, I get angry, and throw barrels and flaming oil at whatever's stopping me. What Video Game Character Are You?

Book Game
Here are the rules:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

This, however, neither interrupted their mirth nor their diversion, nor gave the least truce to the lamentations of Sancho, who prayed and cursed by turns as he flew. Indeed, nothing of this sort, either could or did avail him, until, leaving off, out of pure weariness, they thought fit to wrap him up in his great coat, and set him on his donkey again. The compassionate Maritornes seeing him so much fatigued, thought he would be the better for a drink of water, which, that it might be cooler, she fetched from the well; and Sancho had just put the mug to his lips, when his drink was halted, by the voice of his master, who cried aloud, "Son Sancho, drink not water, drink not that which will be the occasion of thy death, my son; behold this most sacred balsam, (holding up the cruet of potion in his hand) two drops of which will effectually cure thee."

Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes, translated by Tobias Smollett

(from JMT)

I believe I've done one of these before, but here it is again.

You're Cambodia!

Life's been really rough, but it's slowly improving.  You know
way too much about the skeletal structure of humans, mostly from being forced to study
it.  This has given you a fear of many things, most especially the color red.
 The future has to be more promising though, and your greatest adversary can now
never come back to hurt you any more.
Take
the Country Quiz at the href="http://bluepyramid.org">Blue Pyramid