Omnes Sancti et Sanctæ Coreæ, orate pro nobis.

Now Blogging Afresh at Ad Orientem 西儒 - The Western Confucian



Sunday, March 27, 2005

Christ is Risen!





    The Morning of the Resurrection by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)
    [image from CGFA]


Happy Easter!


Today, I'll try to fit in a viewing of Hill Number One, "an hour-long Easter special sponsored by the Family Rosary Crusade--the story of Jesus after the crucifixion, when he was buried in the tomb and then was risen. It's talky, stiffly staged, and very earnest. [James] Dean has a small role, about four lines of dialogue, and he's wildly miscast as the serene and pious John the Baptist."

John the Apostle, not John the Baptist.

In contrast to the above review, I found it very moving. It begins with several soldiers in the Korean War contemplating the meaning of life. A Catholic chaplain relates the Easter story. It was James Dean's first on-screen appearance. At the end, a priest with an Irish accent extols familes to pray the rosary together.

The Golden Age of Television! That wouldn't fly today!

[image from IFILM Movies - Hill Number One]


End of Blogfast

Here are some things I might have posted about over the last 40 days:


My Son Joel at One Month



Holy Week

Holy Week 2005 was of course marked by the absence of the Holy Father and the very unholy events occurring in Florida. Terri is in the last stages of dying from thirst as I write this. I can think of nothing new to add to the horror, rage, and disgust all people of informed conscience feel observing these events.

The Caelum et Terra Blog's Daniel Nichols, in The Passion of Terri Schiavo, writes:
    The Russian Church has a name for those innocents who, while not martyred for their faith, nevertheless are unjustly killed: they are called Passion-Bearers, and their suffering is seen as a participation in the sufferings of Christ.


El Camino Real's Jeff Culbreath exposes the hypocrisy of both the Bushes and many leading paleo-conservatives.

First, he links to this posting by Apologia's William Luse entitled Goodbye, Terri, from which this comes:
    From somewhere in America, probably Texas, George Bush took a moment out from pitching other matters like Social Security reform to remind us that we should always 'err on the side of life.' Why? Because this 'is a complex case.' No it isn't, Mr. President. And your use of that word lets you off the hook. It tells us you're not sure a murder is taking place. In it we can read the future. It tells us you already know that the courts will rule against you, but you have made a gesture. Much like your brother in Florida, who petitioned the same court that is allowing this execution for permission to take Terri into protective state custody via the DCF, and who likewise knew what the decision would be - but he had made a gesture. Do you really want to make a gesture, Mr. President, Mr. Governor? Send in the federal marshals to take custody. Clinton did it, with the intention of returning a boy to his father and to reinternment in the prison camp known as Cuba. But you, Mr. President, have the opportunity to literally set someone free, to save her not merely from prison but from death. You can use the justification that Martin Luther King used in his breaking of the law (acquired via St. Augustine): that an unjust law is no law at all; that the State cannot lawfully participate in murder; and that the Florida law that got this ball rolling is unconstitutional, thereby rendering null and void all judicial decisions pursuant to it.

    Will you, Mr. President, lay down your political life for this one innocent friend, this woman, this human being? No, you will not.

Next, writing in SCHIAVO AND THE LIMITS OF IDEOLOGY, Mr. Culbreath minces no words:
    One strains to find a common thread in the various opinions of "old rightists" that are opposed to Christian faith and order. Barry Goldwater was militantly pro-abortion, Sam Francis wanted non-whites to practice contraception, Winston Churchill advocated using poison gas on civilian populations, Pat Buchanan winks at torture, Thomas Fleming thinks that euthanasia is a family affair, and John Derbyshire has just invited Michael Schiavo over for a beer. I think the common thread among these paleo-conservative opinions is an exaggerated belief in human inequality. I say exaggeratred, because human inequality is certainly a fact of our existence and needs to be emphasized over and against the prevailing egalitarianism. But many of the old rightists seem to believe that human differences - such as the difference between people like Terri Schiavo and the rest of us - determine human value. And that is why the Catholic can never get too chummy with them, no matter how praiseworthy their views on other subjects.
 
Finally, a reminder to keep praying:


A Lenten Breakthrough?

Ever since first putting effort into Lent a few years ago, I've always ended up disappointed with myself. In fact, by Good Friday, I usually feel like I should be doing this:

or this:

[The first image reminds me of an old movie in which a clueless American in Spain sees a religious procession and asks, "What's with all these crazy ku kluxers?"]

In the morning of the last day of Lent this year, I finally realized that disappointment might be what the season's all about: disappointment with one's sinful self. Lent is for penitence. If I want to feel good about myself, I'll turn to Oprah and Dr. Phil.

But by the evening of that same day, I had learned much more than that. I had been having an ongoing battle with Scrupulosity. It was not the old type, born of legalism, in which one worries about breaking the Eucharistic fast if a particle of food becomes dislodged from one's teeth one hour before mass, but the new type born of a conscience raised in a culture in which words like virtue and sin have become archaic, and words like venial and mortal completely alien.

The breakthrough occurred as I was mentally reviewing the various Internet sites, listed below, that I had consulted for hours researching the above themes, trying to decide whether or not I was in a state of mortal sin and thereby not worthy of the Eucharist. I decided I’d compose an email to a blogging priest, since although my Korean ability is sufficient for confessing my sins, it is not at a level that I could get serious spiritual direction on a matter like this.

While mentally composing this message, the sitiation came to light and I answered my own question. I came to the conclusion that I had probably committed a venial sin, out of ignorance, lack of reflection, or both, especially since I did not consider that it might have been a mortal sin until after the fact. More importantly, however, I concluded that instead of wasting hours contemplating whether some past sin had been venial or mortal, I should instead abhor all sin, mortal and venial, as well as its near occasion, and devote my spiritual energies to rooting it out and doing penance. I realize now that my scrupulosity had been a cover for all kinds of venial sins that I had let grow like weeds in an untended garden, some of which gave rise to actual mortal sins. Prayer, especially The Divine Mercy Chaplet, will be my way out of this mess.

Right now, I feel like the character in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, a disabled boy on his death bed, who cheerfully lets his half-brother know that he had “conquered an habitual disposition.”

Here are some sites that were helpful in defining the differences between mortal and venial sins:

Here’s a site that tries to simplify things in light of the “Biblical scholarship in the Catholic Church in the past 30 years” and ends up leaving a muddled, confused mess:


LXX

In order to reinvigorate my study of classical languages, I bought a copy of the Septuaginta (LXX), the Third Century B.C. translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.

I was happy to find this evidence for the Catholic biblical canon written by the Protestant editor in the preface:
    Thus it came about that the earliest Christian communities were formed to a large extent from Jews of the Dispersion, while the LXX, being already everywhere wide-spread and well-known, was simply adopted by the Christians as the Church's Bible.

The LXX, you see, contains the deuterocanonical texts that Protestants reject.


Two Book Reviews

Here are two interesting book reviews that appeared recently:


Books Finished

Here are some very brief reviews of my own of books I recently finished:
    The Rosary of Our Lady by Romano Guardini
    This excellent devotional work by a great thinker really upgraded my daily Rosary during Lent.

    Great Heresies by Hillaire Belloc
    I was enthralled by everything he wrote, especially about Mohammedanism being a Catholic heresy, but not the way he wrote it. Belloc seems to repeat things unnecessarily too often. I feel the same way about G.K. Chesterton, Belloc's colleague. There's something about his style of writing I don't like even though I love what he has to say.

    The Belief of Catholics by Ronald Knox
    This is the book to read to understand the Catholic Faith! I'll be searching out other works by this author, whom no less a figure than Evelyn Waugh credited with having written the 20th Century's greatest book.

    The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
    Southern Catholic existentialism. What more needs to be said? Here's more about the author: Walker Percy: Doctor of the Soul.

Today I begin A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh.


Converts

Here's a list I found of 503 Notable Converts to Catholicism, a conference entitled the Catholic Pilgrimage of Converts, fellow ex-Missouri Synod Lutheran Fr. Ricahrd John Neuhaus' How I Became the Catholic I Was, and this partial list of converts complied by the late Gerard Serafin, from a post entitled The Convert:
    How much the poorer the Church would be without this "great cloud of witnesses!" Just think of the contributions of those like John Henry Newman and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Frederick William Faber, of Gilbert Keith Chesterton , Robert Hugh Benson, Sir Arnold Lunn, Christopher Dawson, Eric Gill, of Ronald Knox, the great Welsh poet, David Jones, Les Murray (Australian poet), Takaski Nagai.

    Or more recently of Peter Kreeft, Thomas and Lovelace Howard, Malcolm and Kitty Muggeridge, Paul and Evelyn Vitz, Sheldon Vanauken (God rest his soul), Dale Vree (editor of The New Oxford Review) and Deal Hudson (editor of Crisis), Scott and Kimberly Hahn, John Michael Talbot, Annie Dillard, the once-abortionist doctor, Bernard Nathanson.

    How blessed we have been by converts like St. Edith Stein and Dorothy Day (the canonizable foundress, along with the saintly Peter Maurin, of the CatholicWorker movement), of other saintly friends, Catherine von Hueck Doherty, and Helen Iswolsky, by Adrienne von Speyr and Gertrude von le Fort, of both Jacques and Raissa Maritain. Of Angelus Silesius, of Fr Louis Bouyer, Brother Max Thurian of Taize (may he rest in peace), Fr Richard John Neuhaus and Fr George Rutler. And of the great Russian, Vladimir Soloviev as well! The convert scripture scholars like Henrich Schlier (disciple of Rudolf Bultmann), and Eugene Pedersen.

    The writers like Sigrid Undset, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Walker Percy. Americans like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Orestes Brownson, Isaac Hecker, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the son of John Foster Dulles, Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J. And converts like "the rocking horse" Catholic, Caryll Houselander, and the convert-in-heart Simone Weil, Deitrich von Hildebrand, Thomas Merton, Fr Aidan Nichols, OP.

    How marvelous a group! I realize this is a very limited listing (I didn't even mention, "The Duke" John Wayne!)? The list could get very long...... thank God!


Defense of a Saintly Man

I posted this on a blog where a commenter was engaging in character assassination: Pope Pius XII from the Jewish Virtual Library.


Science and Scientism

Here are some science-related articles that appeared recently:


Darwinian Fundamentalists and other Atheists

Here's a good article: The Metaphysics of Evolution.

And I liked this quote from Turkish philosopher Harun Yahya in Atheism worldwide in decline:
    Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as "the ways of reason and science," is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance.

As the Psalmist observed, "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God" ( Psalm 14:1).


Economics and Politics

Searching for information on Distributism for a comment on another blogger's site led me to an examination of Paleoconservatism and Paleolibertarianism. I find myself being persuaded more and more by the latter, thanks to the excellent Lewrockwell.com and paleolibertarian bloggers like Serge of A conservative blog for peace, and Fr. Jim Tucker of Dappled Things.

Here are various websites related to the above ideas:

Finally, here are two very interesting paleolibertarian articles:


The Pope vs. Hunter S. Thompson

From An inglorious suicide:
    How striking is the contrast between Thompson’s tawdry death and the excruciating struggle of Pope John Paul II, whose passionate belief in the sanctity of life remains unwavering, even as Parkinson’s disease slowly ravages him. The pope’s example of courage and dignity sends a powerful message, but the chattering class would rather talk instead about why this stubborn man won’t resign. Meanwhile they extol Hunter Thompson and are itching to know — are his ashes really going to be fired from a cannon?


Birds


We started raising four members of the Lonchura striata domestica species. What interests me most is the last part of that name: The Society Finch does not exist outside of captivity! (See The Society Finch: A Bird With A Mysterious Past.)

There's even a Society Finch Blogger!

[Image from the SOCIETY FICH PAGE]


Links

These excellent blogs were kind enough to link to this one:


I'm returning the favor on my side-bar.


Gifts from a Reader

A reader sent these links, the first of which is about a new Catholic translation of the Bible into Korean:

Also from this reader comes this refreshing quote:
    'I am an aristocrat. I love liberty; I hate equality.'
    John Randolph of Roanoke (1773–1833), American legislator


A Parental Visit

My parents visited for the first three weeks of Lent. Not only was I able to see Korea through their fresh eyes, I re-learned the value of an extended family, such as the one I grew up in.


A Brief Movie Review

On Fat Tuesday, I saw Diarios de motocicleta (2004), the hagiographic biopic about Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's youthful trip across South America.

Very beautiful imagery.

Very sinister ideological content.

Much better is director Walter Salles's Central do Brasil (1998).


Finally...

... here are some articles I found interesting enough to bookmark:

I got through that without once mentioning the Dokdo/Takeshima row.

posted by Iosue Andreas Sartorius at 1:00 AM |