Where is your God Now?

Those of you who know me will surely realize that tomorrow marks an important day, not only for myself but for many of my friends and family. That's right, my alma mater Marquette is playing in the Elite 8.

Of course, there's also the fact that tomorrow is Holy Saturday, the final day of the Triduum, the day Christ spent in the tomb. While not technically a part of Lent, the Triduum is one of the most solemn periods on the Church calendar. I'll be in a bar getting a nice afternoon buzz, watching basketball.

I spent some time today considering whether that would be appropriate use of my day. The realization came to me that, rather than being sacrilegious, it's more or less in the liturgical spirit of the season.

"God is dead," Nietzche said and, like a stopped clock, he's right once a year.* What else is there to do? Do like the late-Republic Romans, I guess, when they stopped believing in their gods. Drink wine, watch gladiator contests and try to ignore the fact that the country is transforming before our eyes into an imperial military state. For a few hours, we Christians enter into the state the pre-Christian world found itself in. Take a moment to read Phillip Larkin's poem Aubade. (No seriously, read it!) How else is there to live with the unescapable inevitability of our own demise?

Fortunately, we have the advantage of knowing how the story ends. Death is no longer the last word. Jesus (showing His humanity) enters into death, like Bruce Banner slipping on an ill-fated white shirt in the morning. But by the end of the day His divinity bursts forth in Hulk-mode, destroying the power of death in the process.

Within a couple of centuries, Roman culture went from the the fading worship of gods they didn't totally believe in, to killing the God who was sent to them, to being ruled by that God-man's followers. Yet, their culture wasn't extinguished. It was baptized. The very term "alma mater" comes from the language of Zeno and Marcus Aurelius, but was preserved by Catholics for use in the university system they created.**

Have hope, Christus Vincit!

(It's always disheartening to realize that someone else blogged about the same topic as you did, and better. After I finished drafting this post, I came across this article by David Warren. Mr. Warren's article is a lot like this blog post, except it's insightful and well-written. And when you're done, read his whole archive. I burned through it in a couple of days and I'm smarter for it, if only in the sense that I know what a real writer sounds like.)

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* Imagine this is some kind of calendar clock, with 365 positions on the dial, corresponding to days of the year. Or imagine that I'm not good with similes.

** Every week, my parish's confirmation class has Little Caesar's pizza for lunch. Each pizza comes topped with pepperoni, sausage and the delicious irony that Catholicism continues to be believed and passed on, while our 2nd century oppressor is now a cartoon image used to sell fast food.

And a Third Post, Just to Make Tom Nervous

Some of my more masochistic readers may wonder what it's like to be inside my head. Well, here's a little peek. The other day, a memory I hadn't even though of in years came back to me as a fully-formed (stupid) bilingual pun.

So, when I was in college I met a girl who was studying abroad from Germany. I speak ein bischen German (better than the average American, at least). She spoke a bit of English (probably better than the average American, as well), so we had that common. It seemed like we were kind of hitting it off [Ed.: probably not], but the semester came to an end and she heraus'ed back to Germany. Only then did I realize I hadn't gotten a home phone number, an email address, a Facebook friendship, any way to remain in contact.

"Well," my brain concluded as that old memory flickered past. "I guess she was the one that Goethe way."

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Blog up, Patrowsky.

Something I Hadn't Considered

Savor .the ongoing silence about Obama’s ongoing Drone War against civilians, including children, in Pakistan right now, as opposed to what will be the incessant chatter about Cardinal Bergoglio’s imaginary role in the Dirty War in Argentina forty years ago. The Pope of Roman Catholics must be raked over coals, but their own God-Emperor Barack must be shielded from any kind of scrutiny at all.
(Source).

I've been pretty peeved* about both of those issues lately, but I hadn't considered them in conjuction. This is turning into a perfect storm of powerless righteous indignation.

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* "Pretty peeved" is the proper response to a President's assertion that he can order me killed by drone strikes without due process, right?

All I Don't Know is What I Read in the Papers

We have a new pope! Not only that, but he's a Jesuit, the order that ran my alma mater. And he took the name Francis, my confirmation patron saint. So, I have a lot of reasons to like him already, which is good because I know next to nothing about him personally.

I realize this is uncharacteristic for a blog (particularly one run by your humble correspondant) but I don't know much more, so I'm going to shut up on this topic. If only others showed such discretion, particularly people who are actually paid to report the news.

I don't want to get into some kind of Poping contest, where I consider which one I like better than the others. That's not what this is about. I just loooooved Pope Benedict. He had a difficult act to follow, but he understood he wasn't John Paul II and didn't try to be. He wasn't wildly charismatic, he was a soft-spoken introvert. He seemed like someone who just wished everyone would pipe down for a minute so he could explain a thought was more than a 10 second soundbite snatched out of context. (I understand the feeling.*)

Sadly, he rarely got that opportunity. Instead, he was painted as Nazi (even though he was forcibly enlisted, and deserted as soon as he could escape). He was called an enabler of pedophiles (even though he was the one who took action against Fr. Maciel, essentially the moment he became pope). He was called a hard-nosed dogmatist (even though a brief perusal of his writings showed a gentle man explaining himself with clear-headed logic). His most lasting impression upon pop culture will almost certainly be the fact that he was an old man with bags under his eyes, who drew comparisons to Emperor Palpatine.

All this goes to prove that what GK Chesterton wrote in Edwardian England is still true today. "It will not be necessary for anyone to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press.... We have a censorship by the press."

Nearly every report about Pope Francis in a major non-Catholic media outlet has come with a subtle barb, an implied "Given that the last guy was so terrible..." I think you're well aware by now that I don't do research for this blog, so this NPR Morning Edition story is the first that came to mind. (Also, this interview with Sr. Pat Farrell) Note the implication that comes with these questions and responses. "He doesn't wear red shoes," "I grumble a lot about my Church's teaching, but...," "We're all in wait and see mode," a "sincere hope" that he would condemn child abuse (Benedict's famous reference to "filth" and John Paul II's term "appalling sin" apparently were not harsh enough).

Particularly for the parishioner interviews, there's no point of reference. Were their opinions a majority view? Or just the view that the person writing the story decided to highlight? Do these people have any particular competency to back up their opinions?

You'll notice that the implications are just that – implied. If the accusation were directly stated, it would be open to obvious refutation. Instead, it hovers in the background as something "everyone knows".

I think I have some insight into how this kind of things happens. I shudder to bring this shame upon myself and my family, but I must be honest here: I originally declared myself as a journalism major in college. For a semester and a half, I wrote for the school's official paper.** We had two editions a week. I wrote one or two articles per edition, for the princely sum of $7 per story. The stories were denominated in inches and I don't recall the exact conversion rates, but they were generally in the area 500-700 words. Any news story required at least three quoted sources. That part especially sucked. No one had an interesting opinion about that student government hearing you just sat through. And even if they did, it probably didn't coincide with the angle you were told to write about. Stories were assigned Monday and published Tuesday or assigned Tuesday and published Thursday

Tight deadlines, little pay, stories chosen for headline value by the editors instead of news value by the reporters. That's no way to run a news outlet. Yet, everything I hear about professional media outlets (with real alleged honest-to-goodness adults!) suggests it's not so different out there in the real world.

I only have two real areas of expertise: Computers and Catholic theology. And it seems like every time I read a news article about either of those subjects, I'm driven by the urge to take a red pen to the thing. "Common misconception, not true." "That's not what that word means." "That 'source' is actually a nut who doesn't represent mainstream thinking in the area."

Yet, I read about everything else and absorb it with the assumption it must be true. I'm stuck in Donald Rumsfeld's ultimate nightmare: unknown unknowns. I have no idea what I've absorbed that's just hanging around in the back of my head and is flat out not true. I don't know anything about the Higgs Boson or or Portugese austerity measures or Libyan rebel groups, except what I see in the papers. What else do I not know I don't know?

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* Any comparisons between myself and Pope Benedict are purely a matter of kind and not degree. I might be excessively full of myself, but even my pride has limits.
** To avoid an libel suits, I will state upfront that all facts from here to the end of the paragraph are based on my fuzzy memory. I'm pretty sure I'm in the ballpark, but exact amounts are probably wrong.
** Part b, I later ran the website for their competition, the apparently now-defunct independent paper.

Bells!

Ahhhhhhhhhh!