Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1355

Looks fun!

JJ Abrams and Spielberg. What's not to like?

I do get the impression, though, that this film will be yet another attempt by Spielberg to work through his issues with dad, divorce, and all that. It tends to crop up over and over in his films. However, as a kid who made Super 8 movies and who thought it would be cool to meet an alien, the premise sounds jolly.

Lent. Day 3

In which we discuss how it's going.

A Maryland reader writes

Here in Maryland, our House of Delegates is debating a SSM bill on the floor today (Friday, 11 March). If it passes, our "Catholic" Governor O'Malley (St Patrick, pray for us!!!) has promised to sign it. The Democrats and the Governor are really twisting the arms of the undecided legislators. Our state is so pathetically liberal despite our Archdiocese being the "Premier See." PLEASE pray and offer up your Friday Lenten Sacrifices today that this will not pass. Thank you!

Aux armes, citoyens!

Ha!

A friend writes with tongue planted firmly in cheek:

Dear Mr Shea, I've not read any of your work, but thought someone ought to inform you that lying is probably permissible for the sake of a good cause. You should look into this! I think you will find that in such instances, lying is actually good, rather than evil. However, if you insist on referring to lying as 'intrinsically evil' (which is absurd, since even St Thomas Aquinas admits that the fallen angels themselves are good insofar as they are created and sustained by God; if demons are not intrinsically evil then a fortiori lying must not be, or, are you some kind of idiot?), as i was saying, if you persist in calling a lie 'intrinsically evil', then you must admit by force of logic that in some instances, lies are not lies, for otherwise we would have to assert that good is evil, which is nonsense and an insult to the truth. I for one think it is better to lie than be a demon, and it appears St Thomas agrees with me. And, with all due respect Mark, only an idiot would disagree with St Thomas on such matters.

Yours sincerely,

'Concerned for your soul'

I see the light!

Frank Weathers reminds us...

that Ayn Rand's ice cold pride is at the antipodes from the Sermon on the Mount.

I've always regarded Rand as something like a photo negative of Stalin. Her philosophy can kill souls just as much as his. Indeed, with the creed of selfishness and her Sign of the Dollar in place of the Cross, I regard her godless inhuman individualist philosophy of pride as one of the main drivers of the culture of abortion. What Stalin achieved by force via a vast organized state system of murder, Rand's philosophy has achieved via privatized violence and the cooperation of millions of individuals who, of their own free will, choose to participate in a system of slaughter that is all about Looking Out for Number One. No secret police or system of organized state terror is necessary. We freely choose death here in the free post-Christian West.

Comfort for Communists

"In January of last year Bezboznik complained that anti-religious Soviets had been disbanded in seventy districts, while it had been thought that in the region of Kovrov there was a whole system of atheist cells, the President of that region wrote… that neither in the town nor in the region were there any cells left—in fact, 'in the entire district there is now only one organized atheist—myself.'" - From an article by Father C.C. Martindale S.J. in the Catholic Herald, 11 May, 1935.

"I'm all alone; I can't organise anyone,
There's nobody left to organise me,
And still I'm the only organised atheist
In all the province of Skuntz (E.C.).

Sometimes disgusting organised atheists
Orphan the stars without permit from me,
Unmake their Maker without their ticket
or their copy of Form x.793.

The Blasphemy Drill's getting slacker and slacker,
Free Thought is becoming alarmingly free,
And I'll be the only organised atheist
Between the Bug and the big Black Sea."

***

Ours, ours is the key O desolate crier,
The golden key to what ills distress you
Left without ever a God to judge you,
Lost without even Man to oppress you.

Look west, look west to the Land of Profits,
To the old gold marts, and confess it then
How greatly your great propaganda prospers
When left to the methods of Business Men.

Ah, Mammon is mightier than Marx in making
a goose-step order for godless geese,
And snobs know better than mobs to measure
Where Golf shall flourish and God shall cease.

Lift up your hearts in the wastes Slavonian,
Let no Red Sun on your wrath go down;
There are millions of very much organized atheists
In the Outer Circle of London Town.

- G.K. Chesterton

If you are looking for a chance to do an unusual corporal work of mercy, you can always check out the Facebook page dedicated to the idea of plugging the Gulf oil leak with the works of Ayn Rand. A worthy endeavor!

I'm not much on astrology

...but I don't know that associating plate tectonics with the tidal pull of the moon is a) astrology or b) particularly daft. Yesterday's events seem to suggest there is something to it. I'd be interested to hear from anybody with knowledge in the relevant sciences.

I do think it will be fun to watch True Believers come up with explanations for why the world didn't end on March 18, May 21 and October 21, respectively.

This goes out to all the date setters:



"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." - Matthew 24:36

I'm amazed I never heard of these guys!

A reader writes:

I noted your post about Joe Shuster and wondered if you knew about his famous cousin, Canadian comedy legend Frank Shuster, one half of the duo Wayne and Shuster, former Ed Sullivan Show regulars and the geniuses responsible for Shakespearean Baseball

and a hilarious take on Julius Caesar, full of bad Latin puns. Enjoy!

This is extremely cool! My Canadian blood flushes with patriotic pride!

Prayers for Japan

What else can you do in the face of such destruction?

Our Lady of Akita, pray for Japan! And thanks be to God through Christ our Lord for sparing the rest of the Pacific Rim a tsunami.

John Norton at OSV writes...

What do you think about doing a quick post asking people for their BESTEST confession experience ever, and we'll pick half a dozen responses to print with your piece? Needs to happen soon…

The piece he refers to is a little article I've written about the sacrament of confession. If you've got a great story of confession, toss it in the combox below and it could wind up in a sidebar to the article (safely anonymized, of course).

Fr. Shane Tharp writes:

Today, I'm working with someone from another parish on implementing the new Missal. I am using those materials Ted Sri worked up along with some of my special magic. Then I strolled over to Fr. Phillip's blog and he mentioned having classes about the Creed due to the fact that with the new translation restoring "I Believe" rather than the weaker "We Believe," Catholics need to be more personally engaged with words of the Creed. All of this points out how interconnected all of the Faith really is. Even though I am preparing for irritation and frustration as the translation is put into place, I anticipate great fruit coming from it. I guess that's the only reason to show interest in "The Liturgy Wars" (trademark pending). The Liturgy can save the world so long as those who use it use it in a spirit of the covenantal Faith that binds us together. We have got to stop making the liturgy about ourselves. It's about our participation in a work that God has begun and will consummate at the end of time. This new translation is both overwhelming in the details and ripe with promise all the way around. I think the emotion is "excit-o-whelmed."

Happily, I have no responsibilities in implementing the new liturgy beyond "Remember your lines and your blocking". I will, as is my custom, receive any liturgy the Church gives me with gratitude and pray for good, hard-working priests like Fr. Shane, whose (often thankless) task is to herd us cats in the pews. I, for one, am grateful to ye, padre. I look forward to the coming years as the new changes get settled in and the grace juices start flowing as we let the liturgy teach us.

And yes, "excite-o-whelmed" is a word because Fr. Shane just wrote it. When people complain, "That's not a word. You just made that up!" I always ask, "Name one word somebody didn't make up." One of my secret dreams as an English major is to someday coin a word that winds up in the dictionary. I'm still rooting for "eupocrisy" but I think it's too fancy pants Greekish to really catch on (even though it really is a nifty term that describes something for which we have no other English word).

The measure of a successful coinage is "Does anybody use the word besides you and people close to you? By this standard, "eupocrisy" fails miserably.

Typically, new words, like language in general, are transmitted along the vectors of money and power. When Alexander becomes powerful, Greek becomes the dominant tongue. As Rome waxes, so does Latin. When the nation states arise, their languages follow them into their Empires. Not surprisingly, the American Century led to the dominance of English and, within the language, successful economic or cultural ventures transmit new words like "software" or "cyberspace", "d'oh!" or even "hobbit". So the Japanese adopt such terms as "aisu kurimu" (ice cream) and "beseburu" (baseball) because, hey!, American culture rulz.

Moral #1: if Fr. Shane wants "excite-o-whelmed" to catch on, he should become Pope and keep using it in his encyclicals and books. It'll catch on.

Moral #2: Get ready to learn a lot of Chinese in the 21st Century.