The Good Word

(A decent picture of St. Mary’s from the entrance to the sanctuary)

Today I attended the bilingual mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral. In this case bilingual means that the priest is constantly switching between English and Spanish, rather than beginning with one and then consistently translating into the other.

So, two-thirds of the parishioners could only participate in the Spanish part, and one-third could participate only when the priest spoke English. I didn’t notice anyone besides the priest and the choir who seemed to understand 100% of what was said.

However, despite the language barrier, I always enjoy the bilingual mass for a couple reasons. First, it’s wonderful to see that the mass is the same in the Spanish, though perhaps with a bit of a different flavor to it. Also, I like to see all the babies. Probably 50% of the congregation today was under age 10.

I love that though  the Hispanic Catholic population in Colorado Springs is rather unenthusiastic when it comes to singing and listening to the homily, it seems  that the thought of using birth control never even crosses their minds.

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Since Lent is right around the corner (Ash Wednesday is the 23rd), I’m starting to realize just how soon I will be Catholic (Easter Vigil).

One of the coolest things about being confirmed in the Catholic Church is getting to choose a Christian name. It’s not that “Zachary” doesn’t have sufficient Christian street-cred or anything, but taking a confirmation name is supposed to be symbolic of starting a new life in the Church.

So, if you know, as many of you do, how I love words, names, and saints, you know that this is going to be a difficult decision.

I’m thinking of doing a bracket, NCAA style. Sixty-four of the top saints (there are around 10,000) duke it out to be my spiritual homeboy.

So, I need your help to narrow the field.

All eligible saints must be:
1. Male - I don't want a girl's name, despite how cool it would be to add Ethelgitha to my already tri-national name.

2. Awesome – Like George, who fought dragons, or Gerard who “had the faculties of levitation and bilocation”.

3. Not French – Bernard is great and all, but I just can’t stand the idea that a Frenchie is watching my back (every implication intended).

4. Playfully Obscure – Something between Thomas Aquinas and Zdislava of Lemberk.

 
5. Appropriate –  Francis de Sales is the patron saint of writers, and it would be great to find a saint with my dad’s name, Philip.

Leave a comment, I need your thoughts and suggestions so that I can get on this, pronto.

Also, if you’ve got the time, check out LOLSaints.

My day was all budget cuts and technological failures. How was yours?

I used to have a personal maxim along the lines of: the majority is always wrong. And it was pretty functional. It doesn’t imply that any minorities are right, it just suggests that most of the people will be dead wrong most of the time. This thought, despite not being entirely accurate, was enforced only by observing surroundings (i.e. While, statistically only 40% of marriages in our country end in divorce, approximately 80% of marriages in my socio-economic bracket and geographical region end in divorce).

While I’ve since revised my world view, I find that I generally still make important decisions based on what would best help the reigning underdog in any given situation.

For instance: I entered college thinking I would be a biochemistry major. Though I love science, I’ve found that society as a whole does too; however, it generally looks down on “dead” languages and the frivolous waste of time that some like to call literature. So I decided to study English, Greek, and Latin.

My religious views were similarly influenced: When I first became acquainted with Christianity I wasn’t drawn to it because of the hope of salvation, or a fear of evil; I read Lewis’ Mere Christianity and The New Testament and saw that Christianity was revolutionary and counter-cultural.

Then, when I found out there was a denomination of Christianity that even Christians hated, I decided that it must be worthy of investigation. I found that being Catholic was even less culturally acceptable than being a mainline Protestant and so I reveled in a new chance at persecution.

Now, as I contemplate my vocation (fr. Lat. voco, vocare – to call, summon), I find myself in a dilemma, or rather a tetralemma. Tonight at RCIA we discussed ordination and marriage, and I couldn’t help but notice that in all that vocation talk we never considered the other options. The exhaustive list, to my mind, is:

1. Marriage
2. Ordination (as a priest, bishop, or deacon)*
3. Singleness
4. Religious (scholastic, contemplative, service orders)

I’ve always (so the pattern shows) made choices based on whichever cause was most in need of a champion. So which is it? (Obviously this debate ignores the very nature of a vocation [see etymology above]).

Obviously, we don’t have many decent examples of marriage out there, and fewer good examples of priests than we would hope, but is anyone just single anymore? It’s a vocation that’s often ignored, but Paul suggests that marriage is almost a condescension to those who lack the austerity necessary to embrace singleness (1 Cor 7: 1-2).

Perhaps it’s been the long day I’ve had, perhaps the heretical teaching of my RCIA teachers, but I’m sincerely putting the question forward: which vocation is most under-represented in our society and why?

And if that bored you, statistically speaking, you might enjoy this:

*Deacons can actually double-dip and be both married and ordained, though they don’t have the same faculties as priests.

Who is God?

Is God that bedtime story we tell so that children will be good? Is He the leader of a secret club, a cult, the sole purpose of which is to shower its leader with gifts and praise? Is He a jailer – someone who makes a law and hides it, then locks us up and throws away the key when we inevitably transgress this hidden code?

Hold that thought.

Aristotle was a Greek. He lived several hundred years before the birth of Christ, he served as a tutor to Alexander The Great, and in his spare time he wrote extensively on nearly every science we practice today (biology, geometry, metaphysics, rhetoric, dramaturgy, politics, etc). He was the greatest mind of his time, and to put it lightly, the western world is still running off Aristotle’s intellectual fumes.

Again, Aristotle was Greek. He wasn’t a pantheist, but he also certainly wasn’t a Jew. Aristotle did, however, feel pretty confident that he knew God.

Aristotle thought that there had to be a God, there had to be a source, there had to be Being Itself. Knowing more than perhaps any man had ever known before him about how the world worked, Aristotle posited that there must be some thing, some conscious source from which all things emanated. This thing was the source of truth (it was the explanation, the reason, the logic behind all things as they were), goodness (it was law, it determined each thing’s purpose and how could a thing functioning against itss purpose be good?), and beauty (it gave order and substance to the world).

Hold that thought.

Today on Stuff Christians Like, a blog that I’ve read ever since I started using Google Reader, the author published a post about a Harley Davidson ad which appeared in last week’s Sports Illustrated. The ad read:

"For over 100 years, we've unleashed a lot of souls. We've made men bolder, women stronger and shrinks poorer."

Jon proceeds to comment:

That is adorable.

The idea that sculpted metal and rubber from a factory in Milwaukee is going to unleash your soul is so over the top ludicrous that it travels past ridiculous and comes all the way back to hilarious.

…

Am I the only one that wishes every idol was as honest as Harley Davidson?

By “idol” Jon means a false idol, like the golden calf the Israelites made after their Exodus from Egypt, and I take issue with Jon taking Harley Davidson’s claim so lightly.*

The company says that they have “made men bolder, women stronger and shrinks poorer.” I’m sorry, but if they’ve actually done any of that then they’ve been doing more for humanity than most local churches. If they’ve done any of that they’ve been doing good. If they’ve done any of that they’ve been doing God’s work.

The problem with God is that he’s not a set of rules, he’s not a jailer, he’s not even a cult leader. He’s Truth. He’s Goodness. He’s Beauty. And if your Harley Davidson motorcycle can do more to help a man realize his nature and be happy, then, by all means, run our churches out of business. Seriously.

Introduce some free market ideals here. Would your church draw the numbers it does if it didn’t have two electric guitars in band and four projection screens? Would you be there if it didn’t?

God is in whatever is good, true, and beautiful and if there is more goodness and beauty in a motorcycle than in your church, Lord help you.

In my personal search for truth, goodness, and beauty I’ve found only two seemingly inexhaustible sources of it: my soon-to-be church (Catholic) and creation itself. Pop music is a close third.

Now, do note that I don’t think salvation is going to come through a Harley Davidson motorcycle, at least not typically. But, it seems a lot more likely that you’ll learn who God is cruising America’s highways than at some Sunday services I’ve attended.

*Now, I’m not dissing on Jon here, nor am I trying to talk behind his back (I feel like posting a rebuttal on his site would be like a Little League team getting pissed about the outcome of the World Series and challenging the loser to game of sandlot ball).

I was thinking as I drove home from work on Friday, that even if cars end up eating the ozone layer and baking us all to a crisp, in some way, God has sanctioned their existence in the pleasure that a dog experiences when he sticks his head out the window.

Mallory responded to this thought by asking why it is that dogs love sticking their heads out the window of a moving vehicle, but they hate it if you blow in their faces....

What Has Jesus to do With Halloween

Every Sunday the bulletin at Divine Redeemer makes me smile. This week, among other things, it advertised a church sponsored haunted house. That's right, not a Fall Festival, not Trunk-or-Treat, but an honest to goodness, scare the pants off you, vampires and werewolves, haunted house.

One of the many thing I love about the church is that they take humanity as it is and go from there. They don't start with the assumption that if we know Jesus we're perfect already and just need to be kept that way.

Championing Halloween shouldn't just be the job of the Catholic Church though, Christianity in general should realize what a perfect opportunity for evangelism it is when, for a month out of the year, everyone in America acknowledges the existence of a spiritual reality.

I don't know about you, but I would much rather talk to a pantheist or the pagan about Christianity than an agnostic or an atheist. At least the devil-worshipper is working with all the same dimensions of reality as the Christian. They acknowledge that a spiritual world exists and that it interacts with the physical world in a meaningful way.

Every child, unless otherwise guided, by the age of 12 will have a fully developed set of pantheistic beliefs. They'll see God in nature, in music, in their friends and family. They'll see evil in the destroying power of divorce and family strife, in ignorance and hatred, in alcohol and even in the fact that the more they know, the less sun-shiny their world seems. Everyone feels the transcendent in music, in physical exertion, in the fuzzy feelings of a first love, the rush of the wind and a warm summer rain. It is only our teenage years or an earlier and more unnatural introduction to materialism that will either make us cling to our false gods or throw them, along with our stuffed animals and LEGOs into an attic, only to be held from that point forward with nostalgia rather than a truly spiritual fascination.

There is something so hard-hearted about not believing in any spiritual reality of any sort, and something ignorant about a Christianity that doesn't realize the real spiritual good that Harry Potter, Eragon, and Halloween are doing.

Christians should be able to embrace Halloween as the only time the most people will acknowledge that a spiritual reality exists at all.

It's amazing how much the shadow tells us about the light and how ineffectual a battle we would be fighting if we set out to conquer rap music, immodest clothing and fast food without allowing Christians and non-Christians alike to see that our battle "is not against enemies of flesh and blood...but against the spiritual forces of darkness of this present age."

Also, the bulletin announced that the Colorado Springs Catholic Young Adult Group would have their monthly "Theology on Tap" meeting at Jack Quinn's at 7pm on Wednesday. Nothing like a Bible study at an Irish pub. Seriously. These people really know what's up.

Your Halloween video:

Real quick - there was no internet to be found at my house yesterday so I'm going to do my best to double-post today.

5 Good Reasons to be Scared Today

1. When I got in my car today, eating a piece of cold pizza slathered in roasted garlic, I thought the Vue was greeting me with a Halloween message, but really I had just mistaken "Odometer" for "October".

2. A kid, with the most sincere expression and tone, excused his absence on Wednesday by saying that his family had spent Rosh Hashanah at home preparing for the End Times. Seriously, the kid spent the day reading Revelation and trying to tie Nostradamus prophesies to current events. So.... if this kid's dad "feels a rapture coming on" is he going to miss more class? On the bright side I really didn't see Sarah Palin as the Whore of Babylon, but it does kind of make sense and now I can be prepared. Why else would a woman only own red suits?

3. Cardinal John Henry Newman has been disinterred and is to be kept in a church on Halloween and All Saint's Day in preparation of a mass honoring him and promoting his cause for sainthood. Read about it here.

4. Perhaps they are digging up ol' Newmie in hopes of finding that he is incorruptible. What's incorruptible? Why I thought you'd never ask: 10 Incorruptible Saints. Check out especially St. Bernadette who died in 1879 and as of a really 80's looking photograph still looks like she's just sleeping.

5. This is my favorite Sesame Street segment of all time: