Again it is approaching my bedtime, so I will allow Cardinal Arinze to explain mortal sin which is, by the way, scriptural.
That servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely; and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
[Luke 12:47-48]
If anyone sees his brother sinning, if the sin is not deadly, he should pray to God and he will give him life. This is only for those whose sin is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.
[1 John 5:16]
So I spent most of the day traveling to Key Largo. I managed to get my rental car just as rush hour was starting so it took me almost two hours to get from the airport to the hotel. On the way I passed two strip clubs, two adult video stores, one adult movie theater, an oriental massage parlor, and a sleazy lingerie shop called Dirty Laundry. I felt like The Block in Baltimore had been transported to Florida and stretched out over 50 miles of highway. Let's just say I'm really glad I brought a spray bottle of holy water and some blessed salt. Who knows what kind of creatures have been cast out of this hotel room! ;o) But seriously, pray for Southern Florida!
Anyway, since it's almost my bedtime I'll share an excerpt from The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis:
By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness--the desire to see others than self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, "What does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven--a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves", and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all". [...] Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. [...] It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes.
Is our God such a tolerant God? Lewis says, "though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense." As far as Lewis was concerned, the cold indifference of tolerance is a kind of contempt.
So I challenged mom to accept Jennifer's challenge (at The Conversion Diary) of 7 blog posts in 7 days starting today. Since it's already after my bedtime I'll start with my favorite excerpt from The Little Flowers of St. Francis:
But I do not want to omit one thing which he who saw this vision used to tell, for it sounded very noteworthy to me. For he said that the way in which the Order would be reformed would be very different from the way in which it was founded, because the working of the Holy Spirit, without there being a leader, will choose uneducated youths and simple, plain persons who are looked down upon. And without their having any example or teacher--even against the teaching and practice of the teachers--the Spirit of Christ will select them and fill them with holy fear and a very pure love of Christ. And when their number has increased in various places, then He will send them an utterly pure and saintly shepherd and leader, wholly conformed to Christ.
Might this be true of the Church as well? To the praise and glory of Christ. Amen.
It's always amusing to check out the search keywords people use to get to your website. For this blog the most noteworthy include: aquinas prostitute poker, pimp jesus, and anti-christ. Who would have thought the Google algorithm would place me anywhere near the top for anti-christ? I do hope the pimp jesus person got what he/she was looking for.
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According to Wikipedia, the word sardonic comes from the Latin term risus sardonicus: a grin from spasm of the facial muscles associated with tetanus and other poisonings. Wow. Both appropriate and horrible. Tetanus is not something to take lightly, people. Get your shots!
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So the Polar Bear Plunge is back. I'm sure you're all very excited to hear about that. Especially anyone who said they would donate and forgot. Our God is a God of second chances! ;o) Second attempt occurs on March 8. This time I won't tell Ruby.
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Last weekend I met baby Evie (kinda like Eevee, except not), who is very cute and let me hold her for an hour without making many audible noises. Next time I can bring her the accidental baby hat, so long as her head doesn't grow too fast.
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Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen explains three types of love. "To love when you're unloved, that's heroic."
What makes the Saint is the one who is willing at each and every crisis of his life to make some act of self denial. Then love truly is an ascension. Both the love of man for a woman and the love of a soul for God. --Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen--
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The story of St. Valentine, a great defender of the Sacrament of Marriage!
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Happy Valentine's Day to my family! Wish you were here!!!! :o)
I do not think that humans are just another animal. One huge difference between humans and animals is that animals are not capable of sin. Animals do not have the Knowledge of Good and Evil. A dog might choose to dig through the trash knowing that he will be scolded if his owner notices. And when his owner does notice he may cringe in anticipation of the scolding. But he doesn't have an understanding that obedience to lawful authority is good and willful disobedience is evil. His doggie brain just desired the hot dog in the trash more than it feared his owner's scolding.
The fact that animals cannot sin is one of the reasons that many people say they prefer animals to people. Your pet does not hold grudges or refuse to be seen in public with you when you're not dressed well enough. Your pet will forgive more than seventy times seven times. In whatever capacity your pet is capable of love, it loves unconditionally.
Your pet is also simple. He does not have a creative mind that allows him to write piano concertos or paint portraits or understand general relativity. A dog is content to be a dog. He doesn't feel driven to reach new heights of doggie achievement, where no dog has gone before. The simplicity of animals is another reason we might prefer them to humans. Your dog is not going to have an emotional meltdown because you accidentally burnt the toast this morning. Your cat isn't going to feel unloved if you refuse to share your feelings.
Animals act is predictable ways. Steve Irwin always said that if someone gets attacked by an animal it's the human's fault because the animal is just doing what animals do. We can't say that of humans. There is no formula for predicting human behavior. While the college students of the Stanford Prison Experiment quickly fell into a set of predictable roles based on their individual personalities and the surrounding environment, in larger sample sizes we find that counterexamples, however few, always exist. From St. Maximilian Kolbe taking the place of a man to be executed at Auschwitz to Fr. Emil Kapaun routinely giving away his starvation rations in a Korean POW camp, we find that somehow it is possible to be the exception. Human beings are capable of rising above. Under inhuman conditions, not everyone is reduced to operating on base instincts and animalistic urges.
One might think that insisting that humans are just like other animals will make us better stewards of the Earth, because we will feel more solidarity with the animals. Knowing that what makes human beings different from animals is the root of all evil, we may think that rendering humans as just another animal will free us from the pride that leads to every kind of conflict. We may think that likening ourselves to animals will bring greater peace by freeing us from our inhibitions and eliminating shame and guilt. But there is a major problem with this kind of thinking: Human beings are not just like animals. I may wish that it were true, but wishing doesn't make it so.
Human beings were given the gift of intellect in order to understand and love God, who is Truth and Love. We were given creative abilities to produce masterpieces that glorify God. We were given free will in order to choose good, while remaining fully capable of choosing evil. We were given such freedom in order to work tremendous good. Humans beings are not simple and predictable, which is wonderful when our unpredictability is ordered toward God. Unfortunately, we do not always choose good. We do sin. To treat human beings like just another animal is to ignore sin and to pretend that we don't have the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's a fantasy world where I cannot be held accountable for my actions because I am simply responding to my natural urges. It is excusable for a dog to act simply by responding to his natural urges. However, as mom used to say, you and I should know better.
This great gift of being created in the image and likeness of God with the ability to create and to produce ever greater achievements should be embraced and cultivated. With such a gift comes great responsibility. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." --Luke 12:48 Such a gift should be used for creative rather than destructive purposes. Instead of glorifying the animals and degrading the humans, we human beings need to be called higher. We must demand that human beings do not behave like animals but, rather, strive to recognize our full human potential. We need repentance and conversion and the hope of becoming what we were created to be: Perfect, like our Heavenly Father is perfect.
Or, from a more secular humanist perspective:
"When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be."--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In which there is much discussion of food, the power of prayer thwarts the Polar Bear Plunge, and my love life is subjected to Facebook-style psychoanalysis.
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Rebekah's birthday was this month so I gave her some Vermonty maple soda from Vermont Sweetwater. I tried to ask ahead of time if she likes maple, but Rebekah is too much of a scientist and thought I was talking about the Maple computational software. Fortunately I remembered to take a picture of the gift packaging I decorated. It will come in handy if I decide to do this professionally and need to build a portfolio.
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I've been told that the perfect Marylandy gift is Old Bay Seasoning so I tried it out first on Allison. I think this Apple Glazed Vegetable and Edamame Stir Fry seems worth a try. After mom made me some awesome homemade Smartfood popcorn with margarine, parmesan, and romano, we talked about trying Old Bay popcorn. Turns out crab corn is a thing.
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So the Polar Bear Plunge was canceled due to 20 mile per hour winds and three foot waves. I did not get this news until around 9am, after I had spent about half an hour shaving, so at least I made that nontrivial sacrifice. I did feel a little bit like I had dodged a bullet and casually attributed the fortuitous cancellation to intercessory prayers. THANK YOU EVERYBODY WHO DONATED!! About half an hour later I got an unexpected phone call from my friend Ruby. I haven't seen Ruby for several weeks but had emailed her about the plunge and she agreed to donate. So I answered the phone and heard a rush of words as Ruby, who doesn't use Facebook, explained that she had been so concerned about me getting frost bite or hypothermia or maybe ending up dead that she had even worried to her husband and our friend about it and had been begging God to keep me safe. She was so relieved by the cancellation that she had already called our friend to give her the good news. She said, "Jesus, I know you can do anything and that you grant miracles in response to prayer so please do something and keep Sarah from harm." So who knows? The plunge may have been cancelled in response to Ruby's fervent prayers. Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him? [Mk 4:41]
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When I turned on the water Saturday morning, I stuck my foot under the cold shower and felt a tiny thrill of panic. The chill felt uncomfortable and yet that water must be much warmer than the ice cold Chesapeake. It reminded me of a story from a little book someone gave me on suffering. The story is about two pastors who were to be burned at the stake for refusing to renounce their faith. (It was a Protestant booklet, so they were probably being killed by Catholics.) They were locked in a prison cell at sunset waiting for their execution the next day. Through a window they could see the preparations taking place. One pastor was much younger and very afraid, while the older pastor was calm and at peace with the situation. As it was getting dark, the younger pastor went to light a candle but accidentally burnt his hand. The pain was terrible and he really started to panic. How could he persevere tomorrow, keep his wits about him, and remain faithful to God? Then the older pastor reminded him, "The Lord did not ask you to burn your finger on that candle. But when He asks you to accept martyrdom tomorrow, he will give you the grace to endure it."
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We had a potluck dinner at our debrief meeting for the winter relief shelter at my former church. I now have a pretty great collection of potluck favorites:
I was instructed via Facebook to, "Pick up the nearest book to you, turn to page 45. The first sentence explains your love life."
Since the closest books were my Bible and breviary, I decided to go with third closest, Fr. Elijah: An Apocalypse. "What he really means is he can't stand the Church looking over his shoulder, making him accountable for his nutty pronouncements and for warping the minds of a generation of kids." Admittedly, this sounds like something I might say.
But I got curious and looked up page 45 in my Bible and found: "When she went away, she took off her shawl and put on her widow's garb again." Well, I'm not a widow but I have certainly taken off the shawl. This seems much more appropriate. And it was the closest book. How did Facebook know??? ;o)
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When she went away, she took off her shawl and put on her widow's garb again. [Gn 38:19] This is from the story of poor Tamar. She had been widowed twice when she decided to put on her shawl and trick her father-in-law into having relations with her. Thinking she was a temple prostitute, he purchased her services without realizing it was Tamar. She gave birth to twin sons, one of which was the great great great... grandfather of King David. A man treating a woman as a sex object and a woman using sex to control a man--I'm sure glad we don't have to deal with that anymore! Oh my, how things change over the course of several millennia.
Jan 22 was the annual March for Life during which hundreds of thousands of young people descend on Washington DC in a peaceful protest that absolutely-under-no-circumstances will receive any media attention outside of (maybe) Fox News. Sad to miss it this year because of a business trip, I thought I would prepare a new post.
I was recently reading an article about the prevalence of sex selective abortion among certain cultural groups here in the West. As disturbing as the problem is, it really highlights a disconnect. At this point in time, there is widespread disapproval of sex selective abortion in the western world. And yet at the same time, easy access to abortion is being proclaimed by some to be a basic human right because absolute freedom demands "a woman's body, her choice." Logically, we can't have it both ways.
"A woman's body, her choice" means that it doesn't matter who the baby would grow up to be if allowed to live (girl/boy/whatever). It doesn't matter why the woman is choosing abortion, because it's HER body. If genetic testing shows that her son will be a brunette and she wants a blonde, she can abort him. If her daughter won't be as smart as she had hoped or as pretty as she had hoped, she can abort her. Test results could show that the baby will grow up to be the next Martin Luther King Jr. or another Einstein or Nelson Mandela. If the woman doesn't feel like carrying a baby to term--abort him! A woman's body, her choice means that even if I know ahead of time that the baby will be completely healthy but not as fill-in-the-blank as I want her to be then I am entitled to an abortion.
On the one hand, the "A woman's body, her choice" mentality is completely centered on the woman. In fact, we are told that the "baby" is merely a clump of cells and no human life actually exists at early stages of pregnancy. Therefore, we are told, nothing is being destroyed by the abortion.* On the other hand, laws against sex selective abortion (like in the UK) acknowledge the fact that a human person will result from pregnancy and that abortion can result in dangerous (for example, eugenic and genocidal) effects on a population.
*Not only is this fuzzy logic (Think. What will happen nine months from now if I don't have this abortion? How am I going into labor if that thing wasn't a baby??) but it ignores that fact that third trimester abortions and live birth abortions (during which the baby is born prematurely and left to die of exposure) are legal and performed at many clinics.
When one considers the many reasons for which a woman might choose abortion, it becomes clear that the "clump of cells" is NOT part of the woman's body. It is, in fact, the first few cells which will form a NEW body. A body which, as Kathy Ireland points out, might even have a penis! And, remembering back to my fifth grade physiology class, a penis is typically NOT part of a woman's body. From the prevalence of sex selective abortion in certain cultures, it is clear that allowing women absolute freedom of choice can have a strong effect on demographics. Many of those who so wholeheartedly promote abortion as a means of liberating women would be outraged to find that females are aborted at far higher rates than males. But we cannot have our cake and eat it too. Either the woman is free to choose or she is not.
The same contradiction is present in the debates over assisted suicide and right-to-death laws. Many of us are perfectly happy to provide certain suffering souls with such a service. We are happy to grant them death because we assume that we would not want to live under such circumstances. However, we don't want to grant free access because we know that this would almost certainly have tragic and disastrous effects. But how can we impose limitations? If a person has a right to die when he/she chooses then there should be no conditions imposed. For those who would complain that a depressed person cannot be trusted to make such a decision because he is not in his right mind, I would tritely reply: "Who am I to judge?"
We have lost our integrity. We no longer seek the truth but rather formulate arguments to justify what we 'feel' should be true. In order to maintain intellectual integrity, we need to know what we believe and follow our arguments to their logical conclusions. We need to pick a side. As the Lord said in the Book of Revelation: "Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth." We have taken on a nauseating lukewarmness.
And so I encourage everyone to pick a side--become hot or cold. If you are telling me that you support gay marriage then I would prefer to hear that you also support polygamy and the revocation of laws prohibiting incestuous marriages. If you are telling me that you believe abortion should be legal, then I would prefer to hear that you also support eugenics and infanticide. If you are telling me that you think the terminally ill should be allowed to self-administer lethal amounts of drugs and choose their time of death, then I would prefer to hear that you also support the right of your angry neighbor to choose death in order to get back at his parents who never really loved him. However, my hope is, of course, that upon following these beliefs to their logical conclusions, your eyes will be opened and you will become hot rather than cold!
