Level Wise

You know, I’m only 30, but I’ve done a decent amount with my life thus far. I’ve lived in foreign lands and travelled to third world countries and stayed among the natives; I’ve studied philosophy and theology and patristics, Latin, French and Greek; I’ve played in chess tournaments in England, and was captain of my boat on the crew team at Oxford; I’ve got a law degree from Notre Dame and clerk on my state’s Supreme Court… But the absolute greatest thing I’ve ever done, the most satisfying, the most wondrous, is being a mother. Bar none. After the diapers, spit-ups, thousand loads of laundry, and sleep-deprivation, Marie’s little smile still sends me over the moon, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

There’s nothing like waking up early on a snowy day to attend Mass with one’s family, then afterwards having a nice lunch together, and then, with the baby asleep in her swinging chair beside you, the snow fine and white outside and the sun still high, sitting down to a hot pot of tea and cream to read Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday for the first time.

This morning, due to a not-entirely-culpable lateness in rising, we thought we’d try a local Novus Ordo mass rather than driving 1.5 hours to Sacramento. First stop, St. Monica’s in Willows. The faithful meander into the church chattering away and dressed for a day at the beach. An altar girl lights the candles. A woman is solemnly seated in a chair to the right of the altar table, and two more women are “tuning up” their guitars and what not in the corner as if preparing for a concert. After a short time the solemnly-seated 60ish-looking crop-haired woman gets up, ascends the podium, and says “Good morning!”. Most of the congregation replies jovially, “Good morning!” She then proceeds to announce some news about a “presider” - I didn’t catch it all - and then turns to one of the women with the instruments. The music lady then announces that we must all sing “Gather Us In” (a song I’ve never heard) together, and everyone commences with the awful song. All of this and still no sight of a priest anywhere. We got up and left.

Jihad Watch provides more clues pertaining to the Armanious family murders:

“The Armanious family had inspired several Muslims to convert to Christianity — or thought they had. These converts were actually practicing taqiyya, or religious deception, pretending to be friends of these Christians in order to strengthen themselves against them, as in Qur’an 3:28: ‘Let believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful — he that does this has nothing to hope for from Allah — except in self-defense.’
Of course, the family, not suspecting the deception, was happy to see the ‘converted’ men and willingly let them in to their home. That’s why there was no sign of forced entry. Then the ‘converted’ Muslims did their grisly work.

The greatly inspiring but now defunct Caelum et Terra journal was, for a time, the pre-eminent “crunchy Catholic” magazine in the English language. In a new blog by the same name, a former editor of the journal describes the C & T vision thus:

“Let me just free-associate for a moment: our vision was (and is) mystical, contemplative, distributist, agrarian, sacramental, ecumenical, aesthetic, traditionalist, and progressive. Note the last two: there are significant political differences among us, but we all believe that the Catholic faith is simultaneously the most conservative and the most revolutionary force on earth. And we agree that there really is a culture of death growing in the world, and that Christianity naturally tends toward the development of a culture of life.”

This grisly murder here has Islamic terror written all over it.

Hossam Armanious, 47, who along with his wife and two daughters was found stabbed to death in his Jersey City home early Friday, would regularly debate religion in a Middle Eastern chat room, one source said.
Armanious, an Egyptian Christian, was well known for expressing his Coptic beliefs and engaging in fiery back-and-forth with Muslims on the Web site paltalk.com.

He “had the reputation for being one of the most outspoken Egyptian Christians,” said the source, who had close ties to the family.

Incredible, isn’t it, that we have so long forgotten our most ruthless and persistent enemy. It is certainly time to act. America is no place for the violence and barbarism of the Mohammedan religion. Perhaps an amendment to the Constitution is in order …

Seattle Catholic today links to this article by Fr. Hugh Thwaites, S.J. here:

“When people forget about Original Sin, they are unaware of the chronic weakness of our intellect and wills, and of our chronic tendency to slide into error and sin. Our faith needs a frequent input of doctrinally nourishing liturgy if it is to stay pure. The traditional rite of Mass provided this. The new rite does not.

There is nothing wrong with the new rite. Rome cannot feed her children with poison. But the new rite of Mass does not give us what we need. Michael Davies’ analogy is helpful here. If a doctor tells a couple that their child need milk every day, and they give the child only water, the child may not live. There is nothing wrong with water. But if the child needs milk, water may not be enough.

Mark Butterworth has some interesting comments on “success”:

“Michael Medved read extracts from portions of his new book, Right Turns, which didn’t make the cut and were edited out. One section had to do with his success as a teenager at selling encyclopedias. He ended the chapter with a brief homily on the key to any success in America was the ability to sell or promote your ideas, your product, your gifts and to close the sale. The most important aspect after all.

He mentioned that people who were too shy or reluctant to sell end up in a pool of self-pity …”

Similar sentiment is reproduced on the VDARE site (not recommended):

A Waverly Concert Christmas is absolutely the best Christmas / New Year recording ever. A rare and priceless treasure, I tell you truly. Play it all year ’round, each time leaving behind modernity and all its pomps and works and ways.

I think I’ve figured it out. The religion of the masses, that is. It is Comfort. All the strange and seemingly disconnected ideologies, from vegetarianism to pacifism to socialism to fascism to capitalism to environmentalism and all the rest, the common denominator is Comfort - that is, Comfort for the elect, whomever or whatever the elect happens to be.

Pulling into the driveway one evening, I knew my 8-year-old daughter had country in her genes:

Amy: “Do you know what, Daddy?”

Yesterday I put up an entry suggesting that the tsunami and divine chastisement may not be completely unrelated. It was really the continuation of a discussion on Amy Welborn’s blog, and that context was important. The connection between earthly calamities and the divine will is certainly worth discussing, but after reading one more account of the disaster yesterday — something about beaches full of children being swept out to sea — it occurred to me that I’m not really up to the task.

My post might have been interpreted as rejoicing that a notorious haven
for sex tourism and child prostitution was devastated by the tsunami, no matter the “collateral damage”. Truth be told, there was something like that going on. But there is such a thing as looking too hard for the silver lining. Were some of those children mine, I would probably like to strangle armchair theologians pontificating on their weblogs about the meaning of it all just now.

My love and tender one are you
My sweet and lovely son are you
You are my love and darling you
Unworthy, I of you

Your mild and gentle eyes proclaim
The loving heart with which you came
A tender helpless tiny babe
With boundless gifts of grace

King of Kings, most holy one
Gone the sun eternal one
You are my God and helpless son
High ruler of mankind

My love and tender one are you
My sweet and lovely son are you
You are my love and darling you
Unworthy, I of you

Merry Christmas

“To most men loneliness is a doom. It is imposed upon the criminal as the heaviest of punishments; carried to extremes we know it will drive him mad; nothing seems to unman a man as the loneliness of a prison cell. Even for those who are not criminals, nothing so wrings pity from a human heart as the sight of another who is utterly alone. Loneliness to men is the very ghost of life, dogging their steps, haunting them at every turn, from which they are always trying to escape. It cannot be fought, it cannot be avoided, yet there is nothing many more dread for themselves, or see with more concern in others.