Culture

New blog: Stuff Catholics Like

With an obvious nod to the hilarious and popular blog Stuff White People Like, Jeff Miller, Ian Rutherford, and several others have started the equally hilarious Stuff Catholics Like.

Stuff White People Like is a satirical take on explaining the crazy things that people of European descent do and value. For example, recent entries have looked at the weird circumstances in which white people wear scarves—often not for warmth but for fashion; their propensity for New Balance shoes; rugby; free healthcare; and music piracy. It’s not that these are peculiarly “white” topics, but the entries explain how white folk—i.e. upper middle class Euro-Americans—put them to unusual use or approach them in a funny manner. What makes it funny is how it turns the normal attitude upside, turning the behavior of people in the minority into the norm by which the behavior of the majority is judged.

Anyway, Stuff Catholics Like also takes a satirical and light-hearted look at all things Catholic. Some entries extol the things that Catholics love from a timeless perspective, while others examine those peculiar modern inventions that drive some of us crazy. So for example, there are entries on holy water, babies, and rosaries, as well as non-Catholics wearing Catholic stuff (think the recent sighting of Clinton wearing a “Brazilian Mary bracelet”), clapping in church, and felt banners.

While it is fun—and it is important that those of you without a sense of humor, and you know who you are, should not go to the blog—it is also an opportunity to learn a thing or two. So go there, and enjoy it, and when your non-Catholic relatives, friends, and co-workers ask you “Why do Catholics…?” you’ll have a place to send them to have a laugh and understand.

Good sportsmanship

An inspiring story of good sportsmanship by two college women’s softball teams competing for a championship.

John Michael Talbot’s monastery destroyed by fire

Catholic musician John Michael Talbot and his community of lay monastics suffered a great loss this week:

The home of The Brothers and Sisters of Charity founded by Dove Award-winning musician John Michael Talbot suffered a swift and vicious fire close to midnight on April 29. There was no loss of life, although members of the community, including Talbot, are suffering from the effects of smoke inhalation.

The fire began in the chapel and spread to the community’s Common Center which housed the kitchen, offices, library, classrooms and dining space. All are a total loss. It is unknown how the fire started, but has been declared “no fault” by the fire inspector, says Talbot. Various awards melted in the heat or were burned along with the community archives, inventory and tour equipment. Living areas, studio and instruments were unharmed.

Talbot said that he was up late recording and heard some odd popping noises before noticing a glow in the windows of his hermitage home facing the chapel. He and his wife, Viola, ran to the chapel and found the hoses insufficient to fight the fire, already reaching high into the sky. Talbot said he pounded and screamed at the doors of the other hermitages. Some in the community went into the fire in an attempt to save valuables. Talbot said the smoke was thick and blinding and that all he could see was “black.” When it became clear that the battle was lost, the brothers, sisters and families of the community watched the buildings burn while waiting for the fire department. Talbot says that the fire department put all of their resources into aggressively fighting the fire, but could not save the building. The wood construction contributed to the speed of the fire which burned the chapel to the ground in an hour.

At the wish of the community, Talbot’s Canadian Tour will continue as planned beginning in Great Falls, Montana with a number of stops in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Tour dates and information may be found at his website, http://www.johnmichaeltalbot.com. Founder, Spiritual Father and General Minister of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity since 1980, Talbot credits monastic life in the community as key for the Christian worship songs he writes and records.

While the damage is covered by insurance, donations are helping bridge the financial gap as the community awaits, reorganizes and prepares to rebuild, “this time in stone,” says Talbot. Little Portion Hermitage is located in Berryville, in the Ozark Mountains in Northwest Arkansas. For more information about the community, see http://www.littleportion.org .

[From a Christian Newswire press release]

96 percent of passersby don’t appreciate “great” art when seen on the street

Some documentary filmmakers set out to see whether the vast unwashed masses could appreciate contemporary art that sells for millions in art galleries. They had the artist, Tuynmans, whose artwork sells for millions, painted it on a wall in the Belgian city of Antwerp and they found that 96% of passersby didn’t give it a second glance.

In the video, they start by getting museum curators and art experts to gush on the “importance” of Tuynmans and how, even when it is taken out of its “context” and “vocabulary”, the average Joe should be able to appreciate it.

Yet, in the end, when no one stops to watch the abstract image of monkeys copulating--Yes, really--the filmmakers don’t conclude that there might be something lacking in the art--and in contemporary abstract art in general--but that this should be a wake-up call for average folks to get with it and recognize the artwork that they don’t see as beautiful or “important.”

Incidentally, I wonder what would have happened had there been a Rembrandt or Vermeer or Caravaggio painted on the wall. I suspect the numbers would have been quite different.

I also remarked to Melanie that I suspect that the gradual shift of art appreciation from art created for the glory of God to art done for the glory of commerce (note the emphasis on the video on how much Tuynman’s art sells for). which began during the Renaissance, can be tracked alongside its decline from something that is true in itself and that every person can appreciate on its face to something that requires an art appreciation course to appreciate.

Update: Melanie (who’s writing her own blog post on this video) just made a very good point that she’ll expand on herself. When you watch the video, you may realize that you never get a good view of any of Tuynman’s art. It’s always in the distance or behind the artist or the people in the gallery or the art expert. If that’s not symbolic I don’t know what is: You aren’t allowed to view the art for yourself on your own terms; you’re only allowed to approach through someone else’s interpretation of it for you.

Not enough boredom … or leisure

My liturgy and sacraments professor in college, Fr. Giles Dimock, OP, used to bemoan the lack of silence in our daily lives. We move from noisy homes and offices—many people leave the TV on in he background as they move about doing other things— to cars that have their radio on already when we turn then on. He made these remarks in relation to the need for moments of silence during the Mass, saying that at times the silence was almost as important as what was said.

Looks like the secular world is beginning to see what effect a world with constant stimulation is becoming.

Increasingly, these empty moments are being saturated with productivity, communication, and the digital distractions offered by an ever-expanding array of slick mobile devices. A few years ago, cellphone maker Motorola even began using the word “microboredom” to describe the ever-smaller slices of free time from which new mobile technology offers an escape. “Mobisodes,” two-minute long television episodes of everything from “Lost” to “Prison Break” made for the cellphone screen, are perfectly tailored for the microbored. Cellphone games are often designed to last just minutes — simple, snack-sized diversions like Snake, solitaire, and Tetris. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook turn every mundane moment between activities into a chance to broadcast feelings and thoughts; even if it is just to triple-tap a keypad with the words “I am bored.”

Are we oversaturated with communication? On the one hand, while some bemoan the isolation caused by hordes of iPod-wearing commuters on buses and trains, all caught up in their own aural worlds, on the other hand, it’s not like commuting before iPods was a gabfest. Talking to strangers on the T was cause for people to sidle away from you warily. (Maybe that’s just the big city.)

So, I’m not sure I agree with the writer’s assertion that “boredom” is a good thing, per se. Maybe it’s a problem with the word. It’s not boredom that we need, but leisure. We need to turn away from the world for a time and recollect, re-create. We open ourselves in a conversation with God, by turning away form distractions. We retreat.

Compare this with the modern vacation, tied to the office via Blackberry and laptop so that you’re never really disconnected. And if it’s not work, it’s a video game or a music player or some other gadget or gizmo or television or something. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, perhaps less the worst, but not as good as the best.

But my dream vacation, the one I bring to mind whenever I sit back and contemplate, would take me far away from all that: a ship of sail, a deep blue sea, sun and sand, my family surrounding me, and no clock, no cares, no distractions. Just time to live in the moment, a preview of the beatific life of the eternal now that awaits us in heaven.

As much as I enjoy gadgets and gizmos and the great river of information that flows past my screen and over my iPod every day, I do love to unplug once in a while and get away. Mmmm, maybe it’s time to start planning our summer vacation.

Religious faith in America fading over the past generation

While the Catholic Church is losing members slower than Protestant churches, that’s only because so many immigrants are themselves Catholic already. That’s one of the conclusions of the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, as reported in the New York Times.

What’s sad is that self-identified former Catholics make up one of the largest religious groups in the US.

According to their research, over the past generation, 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations, either to another religion or denomination or to nothing at all. Of Catholics it says:

To no one’s surprise, “unaffiliated” was the biggest gainer. That the United States is becoming ever more secular and/or hostile to religious faith is fairly evident to anyone living in or near a big city or on the coasts. But it’s a spreading phenomenon.

Of course, the surveyors see it in the context of politics and similar matters. Plus, I’m not sure whether they even understand the categories they’re studying.

The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.”

Which is, you know, what agnostic means. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, whose definition is as good as any, it means: “A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.” That’s pretty much someone who believes in “nothing in particular.”

They also claim that people are abandoning large, impersonal churches for more personal, intimate venues. Supposedly, mega-churches succeed not because they are large but because “they have smaller ministries inside.” Or because they offer an experience that is not hostile to the experience that many people seek, which is a religion that doesn’t require too much counter-cultural changing of their lives.

Catholics coming in the front door and out the back

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The Getting It gap

I was reading this post by a Mac software developer on the challenges of creating new products that you know will fit into people’s lives even though they don’t know it. He calls it “The Getting It Gap.” He uses the iPod as an example where many people didn’t understand the appeal of yet another expensive music device back in 2001 and were quite happy with their low-capacity, easily scratched CDs. Yet Apple saw what people would want if only they knew why they would want it.

While the obvious lessons about hyper-consumerism can be drawn even as we acknowledge that its questionable if anyone actually needs a digital music player, I think the “Getting Gap” idea offers something for those of us who have something else to offer: the Gospel.

What’s interesting to me about this nostalgic trip down memory lane is not so much that I was dense about the iPod and what it could do for me, but that Apple went right ahead and developed the thing anyway. I imagine that most people suffer from this same habitual resistance to new ideas, especially when the new ideas are trying to replace habits that people believe are already optimal. The density I describe here represents serious marketplace inertia for any company that develops game-changing products. How does an innovator convince ordinary people that they’d be happier on the other side of this mental gap?

And most interestingly of all, how does an innovator convince themselves there’s a gap, and that getting people over it will change the world? I only got over the iPod gap with the benefit of a physical object I could hold in my hand, a set of headphones, and some seriously rocking tunes. Apple got over it considerably sooner than that.

Many of us consider ourselves innovators, albeit on a smaller scale than a company such as Apple. So try to imagine a product, a philosophy, or a way of life. Hold it in your hands and examine it carefully. I know you’re sure you don’t need it, and you can’t imagine what you would ever use it for. Neither can anybody else. But in a few years we’ll wonder how we ever lived without it.

Don’t we Christians and Catholics suffer a “getting it” gap with the rest of the world? We can’t imagine our lives without our faith, without God, without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, yet it’s sometimes hard to understand why other people can’t “get” why that’s such a good thing.

Perhaps what we should be doing is standing in their shoes for a moment and see with their eyes. Then figure out how to convey what we have in a manner that not only makes senses, but makes a compelling argument. Why hasn’t your life been complete until now? How will this fulfill you in ways you never thought possible?

It’s not exactly a new approach to evangelization, but it’s important to step back once in a while and re-examine our own approach to ensure that we’re not pushing people away by our ham-handedness or obstinacy or arrogance or plain impenetrability. In other words, we don’t want to be Microsoft’s Zune.

Christians in Hollywood, prepare!

Act One, the program that prepares Christians for careers in Hollywood, is accepting applications for its upcoming summer programs.

Summer Screenwriting Program

The Act One Screenwriting Program trains talented Christians for careers as mainstream
film and television writers.  The program takes place in the heart of the Hollywood entertainment industry
with intensive classroom instruction and mentoring from a world-class faculty of over 50 top-notch
TV and movie writers, agents and producers.  Among those you will learn from include Hollywood pros
like Dean Batali (That 70s Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of
Emily Rose), Monica Macer (Lost, Prison Break), Bill Marsilii (Déjà Vu) and
David McFadzean (Home Improvement, What Women Want).

“Act One helps the Christian writer overcome the temptation to ignore or
oversimplify the arduous task of integrating faith and creativity.  It provides
not only a serious investigation into the art and craft of screenwriting, but
also a challenge to think deeply about content.”
- Scott Derrickson, writer/director, The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Act One Summer Screenwriting Program
July 11 - August 4, 2008
Los Angeles, CA

Program Dates and Applications

Applications available at: http://www.actoneprogram.com

Deadline: March 13, 2008 by 5:00 pm

The Summer Entertainment Executive Program

In partnership with Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business & Management, Act One
operates a rigorous 12-week training and internship program to prepare Christian entrepreneurs,
attorneys, corporate executives and MBA’s for executive careers in mainstream entertainment.

Our elite faculty includes Hollywood professionals from the top networks, studios,
agencies and production companies, including: Producers Ralph Winter (Fantastic Four, X-Men),
Steve McEveety (The Passion of the Christ, Braveheart) & Howard Kazanjian (Raiders of
the Lost Ark); TV Executive Producers Dean Batali (That 70’s Show) & John Tinker
(Boston Public, NCIS); Studio, Network and Agency Executives Jocelyn Diaz
(Development Exec, ABC) & Terry Botwick (President, Vanguard Animation and Film;
former Senior VP at CBS); Chuck Slocum (Assistant Executive Director, WGA West);
Exhibitor Michael Pade (Executive VP, Regal Cinemas); Christian scholars Dallas
Willard (The Divine Conspiracy) & Larry Poland (Master Media International); and
many more.

Act One Executive Program 2008
June 5 - August 22, 2008
Los Angeles, CA

Applications available at: http://www.actoneprogram.com

Deadline: March 14, 2008 by 12:00 pm

For more information visit http://www.actoneprogram.com.

Growing up Italian-American

My Uncle Frank sent me a link to this wonderful video called “Our Contributions: The Italians in America”. It is narrated by the actor Robert Loggia and it sums up the memories of growing up as an Italian-American in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, a time when families were much tighter, when neighborhoods were our world, and when the parish church was the center of that world.

I came at the tail-end of that time, but I still remember my grandparents’ garden and Sundays at their home (and later my aunts’ and uncles’ homes) and the amazing food and the weird melange of Sicilian and English that they all spoke and all the rest.

If you’re over about 35 years old have an Italian background, you may recognize your own family in this video. And we can all be wistful about a lost time. Nostalgia smoothes over the rough bits, but it also highlights what’s been lost.

Race, sex, and principle

Is there any way next November, if Barack Obama is the Democrat candidate, that if he loses the mainstream media won’t agonize over the question, “Is America still racist?”

And is there any way, if Hillary Clinton is the candidate, that if she loses the meme won’t be “Is America still sexist?”

Can America decide against either of those two candidates based on principle and their stances on the issues and not have their reasoning perverted?

Probably not, since the modern electoral process has become a beauty contest perpetuated in the first place by the media themselves. Too many voters make their decision based on emotion rather than logic, like this Boston voter quoted in today’s Boston Herald: “I voted for Obama … I’m attracted to his charisma and personality. He’s more charming than Hillary.”

This is the result of our television culture. Since about 1948 and the emergence of TV news, presidential elections have become more about style than substance. Now it’s more about themes—the first black president, the first woman president, the first Mormon president—than substance.

So come November, if the Democrat candidate goes down in defeat, I fully expect to pick up my newspaper in the following days and read that America still has a long way to go to shed its racist/sexist ways. And it won’t be true.

Brides to ask attendants to sign pre-nups?

The headline in this British newspaper is a bit misleading: “Bridesmaids may have to sign weight contracts”. In fact, there’s no indication that anyone actually is making bridesmaid sign contracts.

What really happened is that when a bridal magazine asked 1,000 women, 20 percent said they be willing to make their maids-of-honor sign contracts for their services and among the most popular clauses in that contract were weight restrictions. In fact, most of the respondents said their biggest complaints were bridesmaids who put on weight, got pregnant, or changed their hairstyles before the wedding.

So while it’s not likely we’ll see actual contracts being dropped on brides’ friends and sisters, but it’s yet more evidence that people have lost sight of what marriage and weddings are about.

Frankly, if someone asked me to be in their wedding and then asked me to sign a contract, I’d tell them to take a hike. That is the height of bad manners and rudeness.

Family-values conservatives … with families

He told me that we'd get a much different kind of conservatism if more conservative intellectuals had kids, or were more involved in family life. Conservatives whose intellections and contributions to public debate don't factor in family life are in general too narrowly focused for their own good, he said.

Professor disciplined for academic speech

Talk about Orwellian tactics. I wonder when the outrage over the trampling of academic freedom will ring out.

A professor who’s been teaching at Brandeis University for nearly 5 decades, in a class on Latin American politics, said that “that Mexican migrants are sometimes referred to pejoratively as ‘wetbacks.’” Note that he was not expressing his own opinion, nor was he he condoning the word. He was simply describing it in the context of a class discussion on politics, presumably one having to do with opposition to Mexican immigration to the US. But even that’s not allowed if even one student is offended.

If “wetback” is unacceptable, even when one is saying that it’s unacceptable, then I guess that “Huckleberry Finn” is banned from campus. Of course, if there’s a class on “gangsta rap”— and what progressive university is complete without one?— I’m sure the so-called “N”-word is just fine because it’s being used by one who would be subjected to it and thus stripped of the oppressive power it has when a white man uses it.

Likewise, you can probably assume that Professor Donald Hindley is not Hispanic, and is therefore not allowed to use the “oppressive” word in any context.

A student complained to the administration, according to the foundation, which in October found that Hindley had made “statements in class that were inappropriate, racial, and discriminatory.”

Hindley also received a letter from Provost Marty Krauss in which he was threatened with termination and told a monitor would observe his classes until Krauss determined he was “able to conduct (himself) appropriately in the classroom.”

[…]

“Brandeis … has behaved utterly outrageously and atrociously,” he said.

“I have been persecuted for some years because I am outspoken … and this is vindictive persecution for my outspokenness,” he said before refusing to comment further and referring questions to his lawyer.

The Boston Globe notes the irony that Brandeis is named for “former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, a passionate defender of free speech rights.”

Catholic author gives the Boston Globe something it doesn’t usually see

Peter Kreeft, Catholic author and philosophy professor at Boston College, has a new book featuring advice he gives to his grown children, titled “Before I Go: Letters to Our Children About What Really Matters”. Now the Boston Globe publishes a Q&A interview with him on the subject of the book and his faith.

Of course, the Globe can print nothing about the Church without turning it into an ideological battle of some sort, and if anyone knows anything about Kreeft, they know that (a) he is as far from being an ideologue as one can be and (b) he is a master of Socratic dialogue. Thus the Globe’s interviewer comes to the battle of wits completely unarmed and unprepared.

Witness the ground being laid in the lede:

What goes unsaid during life stays unsaid when you’re dead. That perhaps obvious bit of wisdom compelled Peter Kreeft, a Boston College philosophy professor, to write of his love and offer his best advice for his four 30-something children in his latest book, “Before I Go” (Rowman & Littlefield). The counsel draws heavily on his Roman Catholicism, especially on social teaching, as the book makes clear his opposition to artificial contraception, gay marriage, and abortion.

I have not read this book (yet) but I will confidently predict that nowhere in it does Kreeft compose a belligerent argument in defense of the Church’s teaching. He mention these teachings and perhaps illustrate the logic and then assume that a Christian would hold them. But stridency is not Kreeft’s way.

Kreeft really shines in the interview, however, when he refuses to rise to the typical bait provided by the interviewer. To wit:

Q. You find much wisdom in your church. Is there any area in which you think the church misses the boat?

A. One of the reasons I became a Catholic when I was in college is my discovery of the astonishing gap between what the church teaches and what she practices. Her practice has been extremely spotty - she hasn’t lived up to her ideals very well at all - and yet her ideals have remained the same and consistent and faithful and very high.

Q. Are there ideals the church holds to that you think are wrong?

A. No. The church claims to be the authentic voice of Christ and his apostles on earth. If that claim isn’t true, it’s arrogant and blasphemous. If it is true, well, you eat all the food that Mother Church puts on your plate. Which does not mean it’s a complete meal. The church never claims to give you all the answers.

He also deflects the implicit challenge that questions how a believer in God can reconcile that belief with suffering the world. This is one the most basic challenges raised and answered in Kreeft’s famed book “Yes or No?: Straight Answers to Tough Questions About Christianity”, not to mention his book-length answer in “Making Sense Out of Suffering”. Of course one may doubt, he says, but that’s where trust comes in.

Doubts are the ants in the pants that keep faith moving. It’s similar to our relationship with other human beings. The decision to trust them is a gamble, and we can lose if we’re wrong. God doesn’t give you a guarantee.

What a refreshing change of pace to read in the Globe, a voice of one who is not selling something or polemicizing, but offering incisive and honest truth and logic.

What the world eats: a family by family comparison

My uncle sent me this link to a Time magazine photo essay, “What the World Eats.” In a series of 16 photographs, they show families from around the world of varying sizes, what that family consumes in a typical week, and how much they spend.

The essay was timely because Melanie and I were reviewing our financial budget and discussing how much we spend on groceries and whether we might be able to cut back. Frankly what we spend sounded high and we’re going to see if we can cut it back some.

On the other hand, apart from the families in the Third World nations, we’re spending less per person than almost every family in the developed nations. The German family spends about $2,000 per month for food for two adults and two teens!

Check out the American families (two are included): I suppose they’re fairly representative, but see how much of their food is pre-packaged and how little fruits and vegetables they eat. I just wish Time had included a list of the food because I would have found it fascinating.

Anyway, maybe Melanie and I aren’t doing so bad after all since we buy few pre-packaged foods; we eat more fruits, veggies and grains than meat; and we make as much as we can from scratch. Still, I’m sure we could cut back even more if we need to. We’ll see.