Archbishop Carlson on the Current Situation

FROM THE ARTICLE Archbishop Carlson calls for peace as grand jury says no indictment for Ferguson police officer:

“I implore each of you: Choose peace!” said Archbishop Carlson, who prayed at the memorial site for Brown in the days after the shooting and led a Rosary on Nov. 5 in January-Wabash Park. “Reject any false and empty hope that violence will solve problems. Violence only creates more violence. Let’s work for a better, stronger, more holy community— one founded upon respect for each other, respect for life, and our shared responsibility for the common good.”

UMSL to Destroy the Former Incarnate Word Convent

CHARLES LUCAS, second-generation French-American, and a settler in the Saint Louis region before Missouri statehood, owned a considerable amount of land around what is now Normandy, Missouri, which he named after his father’s birthplace.

Lucas was killed in a duel by Thomas Hart Benton, then a rival lawyer and future United States Senator, and the Lucas estate passed on to his brother James, and his sister Ann, who married into the Hunt family. The Lucas-Hunts were very generous to the Church, which led to an astonishing variety of Catholic institutions in the area, the remains of some can be seen in these articles:

Normandy, Missouri - the “Little Rome of the West", part 1
Normandy, Missouri - the “Little Rome of the West", part 2

Part of this former Lucas and Hunt land is now the property of the University of Missouri—Saint Louis, which also owns a number of the formerly Catholic buildings featured in the articles linked above.



Here is the former convent of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word (Congregatio Sororum Caritatis a Verbo Incarnato). It is now known as Normandie Hall, on the UMSL campus. The school intends to demolish this building this summer, the reason being that it would cost $11 million to renovate — and only $1 million to destroy.

A news report on this can be found here: Former convent faces demolition at UMSL. A Facebook group hoping to preserve the convent can be found here: Save Incarnate Word Convent + Alumni Center.

This is a shame, but UMSL has a history of rather uninspiring architectural choices, including the destruction of its first building, the elegant clubhouse of the former Bellerive Country Club, as well as the tepid Modernist buildings that punctuate spaces between its vast parking lots. Contrast this with the better architecture found at Saint Louis, Webster, and Washington Universities. Banality drives out the beautiful.

UPDATE: the university decided to save the building for now, and is looking into various proposals for it.

A Day of Fasting and Prayer

POPE FRANCIS exhorts:

…There are so many conflicts in this world which cause me great suffering and worry, but in these days my heart is deeply wounded in particular by what is happening in Syria and anguished by the dramatic developments which are looming…

To this end, brothers and sisters, I have decided to proclaim for the whole Church on 7 September next, the vigil of the birth of Mary, Queen of Peace, a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world, and I also invite each person, including our fellow Christians, followers of other religions and all men of good will, to participate, in whatever way they can, in this initiative.

On 7 September, in Saint Peter’s Square, here, from 19:00 until 24:00, we will gather in prayer and in a spirit of penance, invoking God’s great gift of peace upon the beloved nation of Syria and upon each situation of conflict and violence around the world. Humanity needs to see these gestures of peace and to hear words of hope and peace! I ask all the local churches, in addition to fasting, that they gather to pray for this intention…

[source]

That's prayer and fasting, folks.

Acknowledgments

FIRST, I would like to offer again my congratulations and my love to my parents on the occasion of their 60^th anniversary of marriage, which occurred on July 10^th. We had a fine celebration this week.

I would also like to recall my entrance into the Church, on Trinity Sunday, ten years ago. This has been a blessing to me, although I admit to my shame that I hardly ever acknowledge those blessings. I have new crosses to bear, but also the grace to carry them. Perhaps like what was said of the ancient Irish, my songs are now sad but my battles are happy.

I spent the months of May and June working on processing photos for a new book, which should be out this autumn, and so I haven’t blogged much here lately. Like my other Reedy Press books, this will be a full-color coffee-table photo book featuring scenes from around Saint Louis, and will be available at local bookstores as well as online booksellers.  I would also like to acknowledge my long-suffering friend Tina, who drove me thousands of miles for this book, in brutal winter weather, often in the dead of night, in the cold and snow, and who constantly cajoled me to complete my task even though I was ill at the time and could hardly walk.

While I do have other urgent tasks that I ought to take care of in the near future, I am also looking for future topics for photo books and am open to suggestions. I have two titles currently under development, but would like to fill up the pipeline, so to speak, with more works.  I would like to find writers who are open to doing collaborations: if you are a good writer, diligent, able to meet deadlines, good at public speaking, and are willing to work on speculation — please understand that the first royalty check might appear a year after completing the work — please contact me. My major limitation in doing photography is travel expenses, and would be delighted to find donors or organizations who would be willing to underwrite my travel costs, in exchange for sharing in the income of the resulting books.

I would also like to acknowledge my father, and my patroness Laura Rogers, who recently gave me a camera for my birthday. It has a quiet shutter and can take excellent pictures even in dimly lit churches.

If you are on Facebook, you might want to ‘like’ two pages that I manage there:

• St. Louis Parks features my photography and supports the book of the same name by Reedy Press; you can purchase a copy of the book by clicking the button on the sidebar.
• Catholic Art Theory features quotes on the arts from artists, philosophers, theologians, and magisterial documents, which help explain the meaning, theory, and importance of the arts in the Church and in general. 

Medal of Honor Posthumously Awarded to Capt. Emil J. Kapaun, Servant of God

FROM THE UNITED STATES ARMY:

Chaplain Emil J. Kapaun, while assigned to Headquarters Company, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism, patriotism, and selfless service between Nov. 1-2, 1950. During the Battle of Unsan [North Korea], Kapaun was serving with the 3rd Battalion of the 8th Cavalry Regiment. As Chinese Communist forces encircled the battalion, Kapaun moved fearlessly from foxhole to foxhole under direct enemy fire in order to provide comfort and reassurance to the outnumbered Soldiers. He repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to recover wounded men, dragging them to safety. When he couldn't drag them, he dug shallow trenches to shield them from enemy fire. As Chinese forces closed in, Kapaun rejected several chances to escape, instead volunteering to stay behind and care for the wounded. He was taken as a prisoner of war by Chinese forces on Nov. 2, 1950.

After he was captured, Kapaun and other prisoners were marched for several days northward toward prisoner-of-war camps. During the march Kapaun led by example in caring for injured Soldiers, refusing to take a break from carrying the stretchers of the wounded while encouraging others to do their part.

Once inside the dismal prison camps, Kapaun risked his life by sneaking around the camp after dark, foraging for food, caring for the sick, and encouraging his fellow Soldiers to sustain their faith and their humanity. On at least one occasion, he was brutally punished for his disobedience, being forced to sit outside in subzero weather without any garments. When the Chinese instituted a mandatory re-education program, Kapaun patiently and politely rejected every theory put forth by the instructors. Later, Kapaun openly flouted his captors by conducting a sunrise service on Easter morning, 1951.

When Kapaun began to suffer from the physical toll of his captivity, the Chinese transferred him to a filthy, unheated hospital where he died alone. As he was being carried to the hospital, he asked God's forgiveness for his captors, and made his fellow prisoners promise to keep their faith. Chaplain Kapaun died in captivity on May 23, 1951.

Chaplain Emil J. Kapaun repeatedly risked his own life to save the lives of hundreds of fellow Americans. His extraordinary courage, faith and leadership inspired thousands of prisoners to survive hellish conditions, resist enemy indoctrination, and retain their faith in God and country. His actions reflect the utmost credit upon him, the 1st Cavalry Division, and the United States Army.

[source]

During yesterday’s award ceremony, President Obama called Capt. Kapaun “An American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who wielded the mightiest weapon of all, a love for his brothers so pure that he was willing to die so that they might live.”

Kapaun graduated from the college seminary of Conception Abbey, located north of Kansas City, and also attended Kenrick Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri. He was ordained a priest in the Diocese of Wichita.

Fr. Kapaun exhibited spiritual and corporal works of mercy in great abundance, and the number of miracles attributed to his intercession are remarkable. Because of his heroic virtue, Fr, Kapaun was recognized as a Servant of God by Pope John Paul II in 1993. Fr. Kapaun’s Cause for Sainthood can be found at the Diocese of Wichita’s website here.

From a homily of Fr. Kapaun for Palm Sunday:

A great leader exerts a most powerful influence over the hearts and minds of his followers. Though the task of following such a leader is most arduous in itself, yet it becomes sweet and honorable, and comparatively easy in practice when the followers consider the dignity of the leader, the relation of the leader to his followers, the motives which prompt the leader, and the rewards which he offers.

Greater dignity than the dignity of Christ we cannot imagine. Christ is God the Son, equal to the Father and the Holy Ghost in all things. He is our King, for God the Father sent Him to redeem us and teach us the way of salvation. His position and honor among God’s people in this world is the highest. No other leader can compare in dignity with Him.

[source]

More information can be found at the Father Kapaun Guild: http://www.frkapaun.org

Press Conference with Archbishop Carlson about the election of Pope Francis.

The Archbishop of Saint Louis, the Most Rev. Robert Carlson, with the V. Rev. Douglas W. Marcouiller, Provincial of the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus.

The Last Day of Pope Benedict XVI

(Vatican Radio) The Pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI will come to an end with the Sede Vacante (“Vacant See”) beginning at 8pm Rome time (7pm GMT). On the last full day of his pontificate, Pope Benedict will hold a special farewell meeting with members of the College of Cardinals in the Clementine Hall. At 4.55 p.m. the Pope will bid farewell to the pontifical household, an depart the Apostolic Palace by car from the San Damaso Courtyard. From there, he will be driven to the Vatican heliport, where he will be seen off by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. At 5.15 p.m. he will be flown to Castel Gandolfo, about 30 km from Rome. The Holy Father will then briefly greet the faithful of the Diocese of Albano from the central balcony of the Apostolic Palace. This will be the last public appearance of Pope Benedict XVI while in office. At 8 p.m, the reign of the 265^th Pope, the 264^th successor of St. Peter, will come to an end, having lasted 7 years, 10 months, and 9 days.

(source)

...The decision I have made, after much prayer, is the fruit of a serene trust in God’s will and a deep love of Christ’s Church. I will continue to accompany the Church with my prayers, and I ask each of you to pray for me and for the new Pope. In union with Mary and all the saints, let us entrust ourselves in faith and hope to God, who continues to watch over our lives and to guide the journey of the Church and our world along the paths of history...

— Pope Benedict XVI, excerpt from his last General Audience, Saint Peter's Square, Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Resignation of Pope Benedict

“...WITH FULL FREEDOM I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.”

Full declaration.

Announcement

READERS FREQUENTLY ask me if they can purchase prints of the photos found on this website; while I am always happy to provide prints, this manual process was slow and consequently expensive. However, I now have an easy-to-use website with better pricing.



You can purchase photos here:

http://msabeln.zenfolio.com

I use the commercial Zenfolio website, which handles photo selection, framing, mounting, printing, shipping, and payment. You can select a variety of print sizes, and I specifically process each photograph to look good in print.

Currently, that website offers only a small selection of my popular photographs. Please review the photos found on Rome of the West or on my Flickr site, and if there is any specific photos you would like to order, please let me know and I will add them.

For clergy and religious, I offer a 15% discount. Please send me an email with your contact information, and I will send you a discount code. In addition to this, for pastors of churches and for dioceses, I offer photographs of these churches AT MY COST.

Please consider using these prints for fundraising; also, I am willing to speak to your church or group: recently, I have been lecturing on the topic of the classical and medieval understanding of art, and how this understanding applies today.



http://msabeln.zenfolio.com

“Bounty” Replica Shipwrecked

A PHOTOGRAPH of a replica of the H.M.S. Bounty, which I took in Chicago, Illinois, in August, 2003.



This ship was lost during Hurricane Sandy. According to Wikipedia:

On October 25, 2012, the vessel left New London, Connecticut, heading for St. Petersburg, Florida, initially going on an easterly course to avoid Hurricane Sandy. On 29 October 2012 at 03:54 EDT, the ship's owner called the United States Coast Guard for help during the hurricane after she lost contact with the ship's master. The ship's master had reported she was taking on water off the coast of North Carolina, about 160 miles (260 km) from the storm, and the crew were preparing to abandon ship. There were sixteen people aboard. Vice Admiral Parker, USCG, reported the ship had sunk and fourteen people had been rescued from liferafts by two rescue helicopters. The storm had washed the captain and two crew overboard—one of the latter had made it to a liferaft, but the other two were missing. They wore orange survival suits complete with strobe lights, thereby giving rescuers some hope of finding them alive. Claudene Christian, one of the two missing crewmembers and a descendant of the original Bounty's Fletcher Christian, was found by the Coast Guard. She was unresponsive, and rushed to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.

The other missing crew member was long time Captain Robin Walbridge.
Bounty's last reported position was 33°54′N 73°50′W.

Area Catholic Schools Given Honors

THE CARDINAL NEWMAN SOCIETY is an organization that seeks to help strengthen Catholic identity in higher education. The other day they put out a list of the 50 top Catholic high schools in the U.S., which can be found here. In the Saint Louis area, these schools received special recognition:

• Marquette Catholic High School, in Alton, Illinois; for excellence in academics and civics education.
• Rosati-Kain High School in Saint Louis, Missouri; for excellence in academics.
• Saint John Vianney High School, in Kirkwood, Missouri; for excellence in academics.

All Catholic schools in the Saint Louis area can be found on these websites:

• Archdiocese of Saint Louis
• Diocese of Belleville
• Diocese of Springfield

Catholic education isn't something that is normally on my radar, so to speak. But I have friends and acquaintances with children, and the amount of agony they endure — and amount of treasure they spend — in order to get them a good education is appalling. Many Catholic parents, unable to get their children into a Catholic school, eventually give up and send them to the public schools, which after all are “free.” Catholic education has many problems these days, and the question of identity is foremost, although unjust funding for schools has made the problem worse.

Public schools were rare in the United States until Catholics started immigrating to this country in large numbers, bringing their parochial schools with them. To the existing American population this was a problem, because Catholics would soon make up the majority of people who were qualified for the jobs that did need a formal education, particularly in the professions. As Papists were seen as un-American, mandatory public school education for all was a necessity to avoid a demographic crisis, and without a doubt contemporary “reproductive health” is another demographic weapon. But this was nothing new: the Roman emperor, Julian the Apostate, started state funding of schools and hospitals for similar reasons. If you press most any strong supporter of the public schools for their honest opinion of Catholic education, you will quickly find out that little has changed.

The religious doctrine behind Catholic education is “instructing the ignorant,” which is one of the spiritual works of mercy. It is something that we must do because it derives from the commandment to love our neighbor. Philosophically, an education is desirable so that a child can grow in virtue: learning about and practicing what it takes to live a good life. An education ought to make a child a good person in themselves, and this is far more valuable than only knowing useful skills. Traditional Catholic education attempted to produce students who were good before all else, since education is a two-edged sword which can be wielded for good or for evil. These are good, positive things for education.

Modern public education is often negative: first and foremost, it must not be religious. One consequence of this is the negation of the principle that people have ontological worth, but rather, that they must be useful to have any worth. Another negative is the trend, prominently started with Dewey, of eliminating any metaphysical or higher philosophical basis for education: the stated intention was to make education more scientific, but this ended up instead making it more ideological, based on lower, false philosophy, for philosophy and metaphysics are inescapable. Another, newer negative, is the current emphasis on “teaching to the test,” where nearly all education is directed towards making students pass standardized tests: this is negative because it denies parents, schools, and teachers the liberty to teach according to the way that seems best for them and their students. Finally, the public school system seeks to become a monopoly, negating the natural rights of parents and of the Church.

It is perilous to base any system of thought on negatives, for negation is the basic principle of all evil: see Saint Boethius and Saint Thomas Aquinas for details.

I see no easy way out of the current educational crisis in our country, although a good start would be repeal of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and in the longer term, the restoration of funding to private and parochial schools. Increased vocations to the religious life will be needed for the Catholic schools, but that is a spiritual problem and not a relatively easy political problem.

"graveyard of grand and beautiful buildings"

A REPORTER VISITS the ruined Cathedral of Mogadishu, Somalia; see the article Somalia's graveyard of grand and beautiful buildings, on the BBC website. From the article:

"...we were inside the remains of what had once been one of the grandest Catholic cathedrals in the whole of Africa, built by Italian colonialists in the 1920s. Its last bishop, Salvatore Colombo, was murdered there in 1989 as he was giving mass.

"I felt very tiny inside that building. Perhaps because the roof has been completely blown off, the walls of the cathedral seemed to stretch right up to the blue sky above.

"Although we were in the carcass of a building, enough remained of the elegant stone arches and the shadows of crosses, for us to know that we were in a sacred place..."

Mogadishu was devastated by civil war, but the city is now being rebuilt.

Can’t find a job?

THE ECONOMY IS tanking again.

There are some people who say this doesn’t matter much. Some clever traders tell us that they can earn as much during a down economy as they can during an up one, so they don’t care about the state of the economy. But this is only true insofar as we haven’t hit bottom yet, for as they throw people out into the streets, and downsize companies, they eventually make things worse for themselves too. They may end up owning an entire city, but it will be a city in ruins, and they may eventually find it hard to find even a few loyal subjects who will do their bidding.

Others, of the more idealistic and revolutionary mindset think that worse is better, for the Revolution will never come unless the people are desperate. These, too, are shocking in their disregard for others. Would-be revolutionaries are also clever, but they too may have a bitter fate when things hit bottom, and the people realize that it was the revolutionaries themselves who turned a minor crisis into a disaster.

They are heartless and cruel, but that is common in modern thinking and its theories that deny love, such as utilitarianism and Marxism. So let us keep in mind that some people, even very educated, wealthy, or powerful people, due ultimately to pride, greed, hatred, or envy, want things to get worse.

But the problem is simple: people naturally need food, clothing, shelter, and comforts, for themselves and for those whom they love, and our current economy, for many people, is making this exceptionally difficult. Being unable to find a job, many are becoming dependents, or turning to a life of crime, or getting into debt, or worse. People turn to government, but government can’t provide services if people don’t have jobs and pay taxes. Lack of jobs means that everyone suffers, except for the few mentioned above, who subscribe to evil philosophies.

A preponderance of job seeking these days, I’ve heard, is done electronically, which leads to some problems.

• Employers say it is difficult to find qualified people for positions, and this is harming the economy.
• This is despite the fact that employers are inundated with a huge number of resumes for open positions, from people who are desperate for work.
• Employers have downsized their Human Resources departments, or have outsourced them to other companies, in order to reduce costs.
• Employers, for efficiency, use software filters to wade through the resumes, and these filters are based on criteria they choose ahead of time. The filters may not be devised by knowledgeable people.
• Employers' job filters are very explicit — only those resumes that have certain keywords will pass the filter. Wanting to avoid job training costs, employers will often demand specific job skills and experience. Learning on the job, except for unpaid internships, is very rare these days.
• Job hunters, knowing about the employers’ filters, pepper their resumes with keywords hoping to pass the filters. Knowing that they can learn quickly, and have skills that are transferrable, job hunters will include skills that they may only be somewhat familiar with, knowing that the employer probably won’t be able to notice the difference.
• Employers, knowing that job hunters pepper their resumes with keywords, set the threshold on their filters very high, allowing only a small percentage of resumes to pass.
• The few resumes that do go past the filters are either, by miracle, perfect job candidates, or more likely, are dishonest, claiming experience they did not have.
• Employers therefore include honesty detectors on their software filters, or make applicants take an online honesty test during the application process, which attempts to detect lying.
• The honesty filters are set with a very low tolerance for lying, rejecting too many ordinary, but generally honest people, while still passing very good liars. Validity testing shows that a large percentage of those tested as being liars are not — between 40% to over 90%, while up to perhaps half or more of the liars pass the test as being honest. The tests are considered statistically valid because they typically detect honest people as being honest, but clearly they are problematic.
• Honesty test results are sometimes adjusted to prevent outcome bias, so some identifiable groups are basically given a free pass, and other groups are judged more harshly, leading, inevitably, to an even higher percentage of dishonest people passing the filter.
• Success in the job market these days, according to some, is knowing how to game the job system. Note that this does not necessarily have much to do with actually being able to do the job. The system is encouraging people to be dishonest.

This article tells of a company that had 25,000 applicants for a standard engineering position — and yet the Human Resources department said none were qualified. That is hardly possible. Something is broken, and the people in charge are not acting rationally.

Unfortunately, business has no interest in spending more money on good hiring practices, and governments led by social democratic parties have a vested interest in expanding their pool of dependents, as is found in the unemployed. But these tendencies make things worse overall.

Until now, it appears that governments have attempted to buoy the world economy by ‘quantitative easing,’ which is a new way of saying ‘printing money.’ This is a basic method used in Keynesian economics to avoid the severe deflation in prices that used to normally happen after the collapse of the periodic business cycle.  But if the money only circulates among those who already have it, and if the money just goes after purchasing the goods that already exist, then this extra money will simply turn into inflated prices rather than giving unemployed people new jobs. We see this inflation particularly with food and fuel prices, which unfortunately are basic necessities for both the employed and unemployed. There will be a huge temptation by governments to fund social welfare programs by merely printing money — which is currently not possible in Europe because of the discipline of the Euro common currency — but this would only mean even more money chasing the same small pool of goods, causing severe inflation, and will not significantly increase production. More people will have money, but the money will be worthless, for there will be very little to purchase: this was the case in planned economies in the Communist era; everyone had plenty of cash, but had to waste hours every day standing in line to get whatever goods that happened to be available.

The only thing worse than not having a job is to become a slave to a job while being unable to purchase anything with the wages. We must avoid solutions to our economic woes that will put people to work without allowing them to personally prosper.

Human beings are made in the Image and Likeness of God, and so we have a sacred duty to help our fellow man. But modern philosophies reject this notion and instead see us as replaceable cogs in the machine of society, which get us into problems like we are currently experiencing. As society becomes more secularized, the problems get worse. The modern idea is that man can save humanity by putting together scientifically designed systems of government and business, and this Pelagian idea, the idea that man can save himself, is very popular. But the consequence of the heresy of Pelagianism is that our systems severely punish people who don’t live up to expectations, as we see with our high level of unemployment and our bulging prisons. We see this in a brutal fashion in class conflict, where entire groups of people are persecuted or even wiped out because they aren’t good enough. Mercy is not a modern virtue.

I would suggest that Catholics start acting like Catholics, in both business and government. Seeing people as individuals, and not as data encoded on a resume or as members of some class, would be a good start.

Healthy Foods Make You Unpleasant

FROM A PEER-REVIEWED journal comes an article Wholesome Foods and Wholesome Morals? Organic Foods Reduce Prosocial Behavior and Harshen Moral Judgments, by Kendall J. Eskine. The article abstract is:

Recent research has revealed that specific tastes can influence moral processing, with sweet tastes inducing prosocial behavior and disgusting tastes harshening moral judgments. Do similar effects apply to different food types (comfort foods, organic foods, etc.)? Although organic foods are often marketed with moral terms (e.g., Honest Tea, Purity Life, and Smart Balance), no research to date has investigated the extent to which exposure to organic foods influences moral judgments or behavior. After viewing a few organic foods, comfort foods, or control foods, participants who were exposed to organic foods volunteered significantly less time to help a needy stranger, and they judged moral transgressions significantly harsher than those who viewed nonorganic foods. These results suggest that exposure to organic foods may lead people to affirm their moral identities, which attenuates their desire to be altruistic.

(Further commentary on the article can be found here.)

In other words, big fans of organic foods can be judgmental and self-righteous Pharisees, which isn’t telling us anything new. Of course, such behavior is often found in Christians, and that is likely a big reason why many people reject Christianity.

Once I wrote an article about the anxiety that can come from only eating health foods: Orthorexia nervosa is a type of scrupulosity that comes from the desire to eat only good food. Psychologists sometimes define scrupulosity as something having to do with only religious matters, but rather it has to do with any kind of moral behavior, and certainly healthy eating is ultimately a moral concern. Scrupulosity is basically the state of mind that believes morally neutral things to be sinful, or turns venial sins into mortal sins, and is the vice opposite to laxity. Scrupulosity about anything, even healthy eating, sucks all the joy out of life, and is a strong deterrent to evangelism.

The religious impulse is a part of human nature. However, true religion has been largely lost in our culture, and so this impulse is transferred to lesser things, such as eating.

Saint Joseph Church, Ridgway, Illinois, destroyed by tornado

SAD NEWS: The recent spate of tornadoes in the U.S. midwest has caused great damage, including the destruction of Saint Joseph’s Church, in Ridgway, Illinois, of the Diocese of Belleville. Only the old high altar was spared, but thankfully no one was injured. See the article: Illinois miracle: altar spared after church hit by tornado.

Here is a prayer for protection against storms:

God our Father, Creator of the Universe and Lord over all creation, we humbly stand before you as your children in thanksgiving for your loving care and protection. We ask that you keep us safe from all tornadoes which may threaten us in the coming season. Protect us from all fear and anxiety of storms and give us an ardent trust and hope in Your love and mercy. You alone bring peace, calm and safety. Father, we thank you in advance, for you are our only Refuge. We ask this through Jesus Christ Your Son, Who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Shocking JFK Revelation

A RECENT NEWS article reveals a rather shocking and previous unknown side of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963). In October of 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union seemed to be on the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles being placed in communist Cuba — missiles that could easily destroy cities in the southeastern U.S. According to a confidant:

...he confided to her during his standoff with the Soviet Union that “I’d rather my children red than dead.”

Or in other words, it seems that Kennedy would rather have surrendered the United States to communist rule than to risk war. If this lack of resolve was known by his Soviet adversaries, things could have gone very badly for our nation. Instead, the crisis was resolved peacefully, with both sides backing down to the status quo.

That quote was taken from this news article: JFK intern Mimi Alford discusses affair with the president. This is simply more evidence that sin can make you stupid.

Saint Mary's Church, in Brussels, Illinois, Destroyed by Fire

AN EMAIL FROM a parishioner of Saint Mary's Church, in Brussels, Illinois, informed me that the church was destroyed by a fire that sparked during the Christmas Vigil Mass. Firefighters and parishioners bravely managed to save many movable items in the church, including vestments, chalices, and statues, but the building itself is a total loss; fortunately, no one was injured, nor were adjacent properties harmed.

News stories and videos of the fire can be found here, here, and here.

My article on the church, dating from March 2009, is here, and a few additional photos of the church can be viewed here.



The sanctuary of the church, as it was in March of 2009.

The church dates from the 1860s, and was the center of life in this town, which is about 90% Catholic. This is a significant loss for the parishioners, who nevertheless hope to rebuild. However, it seems difficult to hope that this church, which was one of the finest country churches in the region, could be rebuilt in a similar manner today. The sense of filial piety, the respect for pious ancestors who have gone before, has preserved this church through the decades, and the same piety can move us to tears over the church's loss.

We live in a world that was made very good, yet is fallen. We are to expect sorrow and loss in this “vale of tears,” and while our reason should judge our feelings, we ought to mourn the loss of the good things in this life, such as this church. Jesus wept, His mother is called Our Lady of Sorrows, and we are to bear our crosses and follow Him. “Behold, I make all things new:” all sorrow and pain works out for the best insofar as we are united to God’s Will.

"Brat bans"

A NEW TREND: banning children from public places. See the article, The no-kids-allowed movement is spreading. From the article:

When did kids become the equivalent of second-hand smoke? Blame a wave of childless adults with money to spare. "Empty nesters continue to wield a huge swath of discretionary spending dollars, and population dips in first-world countries mean more childless couples than ever," writes AdWeek's Klara.

This is a trend that I first noticed in the past year: in Saint Louis there is a Meetup.com group which only allows childless adults, and my immediate reaction was that it was quite odd. As of yet I haven't noticed any businesses hereabouts banning small children, but since (as far as I know) I'm not a parent, perhaps I haven't noticed that this trend is already here.

But really, this is a trend long coming. Decades ago, I've visited synagogues and Christian denominations whose congregations were gray and childless. A deadly silence filled these worship facilities, since, for whatever reason, children were not valued or wanted. As culture ultimately derives from cult, or religion, we ought not be surprised at our culture's increasing hatred of children. If the hatred of children is a core idea in cult, then we ought to expect that this idea will spread to the wider culture. This hatred of children has varying motivations, since it is often rooted in the ideas of saving the planet as well as enjoying wealth.

I've heard many parents complain about how badly they are treated by those who think children are unnecessary or evil, but as these parents generally aren't sensitive (since parenthood tends to make one grow up quickly), their judgmental attackers go away without being charged with a hate crime.  As the article above explains:

Most parents with young children have self-imposed limits on spending and leisure. This new movement imposes limits set by the public. And the public isn't as child-friendly as it used to be. As businesses respond to their new breed of 'first-class' clientele, are parents in danger of becoming second-class citizens?

I'm sure that few would think that they hate children; they simply think that children ought not be seen, heard, or exist at all. If you do a little bit of research on the child-free movement, you quickly find out that the majority of these people simply do not like children, and especially don't like their noise, dirty appearance, and disorderly conduct. For most, it is not ideological, but rather practical. If there are screaming children in your church, how can you hear the priestess' sermon about how god is non-judgemental and does not want to impose her views on you? Now we ought to realize that there are ideologies and philosophies that state that children are ontologically evil, and these philosophies have become mainstream. That's why we call this the Culture of Death.

Now I must admit that I often wish for mandatory prison time with hard labor for teenage boys (in order to beat the obnoxiousness out of them) and an absolute ban on 12-year old girls in public (for the sake of my eardrums). However, I try to be tolerant, and I do not propose making these musings public policy, while child-haters are very quick to impose their views on others, by custom or by law. We see this mildly in the United States, with snarky remarks to parents of more than two children, or severely in China, where they kill if you do not obey.

Another objection is that couples ought to hold off on having children until they have the means to afford to raise one adequately. While this seems to be prudent, please consider that this advice often leads to a child that will be noisy, dirty, and disorderly, and likely will grow up to be a self-centered, intolerant, child-hating adult (who ironically also hates his parents). You reap what you sow. This perfectionism has led our culture to spend enormous sums of public and private treasure to produce children that adults hate, and tends to produce children who never quite achieve psychological adulthood. (Notice: I do not claim to have achieved psychological adulthood).

There are lots of children where I go to church, and most are very well-behaved, because they are taught good behavior by their parents. Babies will scream of course, because that is a part of their nature; and the parents of these line up in the far back of the church calming down these little ones. I hardly find it distracting, for these children show love and hope.

Rapture and the Gnostic Tendency

IF YOU ARE reading this, then you haven't been raptured! Poor Harold Camping and his followers, getting their hopes dashed. We really ought to take pity on these, some of whom gave up everything for an unrealized hope.

But this is nothing new.

(Image source unknown)

Imagine, if you will, Harold Camping's followers. These are poor, alienated, uneducated working class people, the bitter clingers holding on to their guns, booze, and bibles as the only constants in their life. These lonely, desperate people listen to Mr. Camping on their cheap AM radios late at night, and undoubtably believe that he is their only true friend. They hope that God will rapture them away from all this misery, and in this they are confident that they are one of the elect, the saved. Sadly, those of us who are left behind will be destroyed soon after, with certain knowledge that nothing will save us. These followers are of course profoundly ignorant, and oppose every societal initiative that will make their lives better. Mr. Camping himself shows a profound ignorance of the Bible, picking only those verses which support his theories. His historical timeline is also arbitrarily manufactured. Camping is definitely an oddity; he no longer belongs to any organized church (he claims the Age of the Church is now over) and holds to the unusual doctrine of annihilationism. He gets his conservative Protestant message out to his followers through his ownership of a large number of radio stations.

Rather, instead imagine a group of Franciscan sisters, very much in the spirit of Vatican 2: they have shed their habits and have gone beyond Jesus and the oppressive institutional male church, embracing instead a more global consciousness. They do not preach the doctrine of Hell, but rather they are in tune with the ancient wisdom of native peoples, and — as Francis himself no doubt would have done in a more enlightened era — are moving towards a holistic Environmentalist ethic. The good sisters are known for holding rather exclusive retreats, attended by prominent academics, celebrities, and progressive politicians. Their core message is that the Earth is dying, and environmental catastrophes will soon occur because of industrialization and consumerism; very many people will undoubtably die due to global climate change, but this will trigger a new age of humanity with a better way of life for those who are left behind — an age without a church. Our sisters of Saint Francis are a vanguard group, the new way of doing church as envisioned by the Council, and are highly respected by the primary agents of change in our contemporary culture. The sisters defend their charism with the help of highly-regarded scriptural scholars, whose critical exegesis brings to light a historical Biblical worldview quite alien to the naïvely simplistic and literalistic reading preferred by reactionaries in the church (e.g., Pope Benedict and Cardinal Burke).

Harold Camping being raptured. Drawing by Owen Swain;
image source here. Used with permission.

Even though my Franciscan sisters are imaginary, undoubtably the description is familiar; likewise my stereotypical Camping listener ought to sound plausible. However, I think it is fairly obvious that both groups seem to have a lot in common, including a doomsday scenario, a rejection of ecclesiology, the thought that we are entering a new age, the denial of Hell, salvation being limited to a self-selected elite, and twisting Sacred Scripture in novel ways to mean whatever they want it to mean, contrary to thousands of years of understanding. They both seem to express the same inclination in two different ways.

This inclination is perhaps broadly called gnostic, although I call it that with reservation. Gnosticism was the very first heresy in the Church, traditionally founded by Simon Magus, who wanted to purchase Saint Peter's power of miracles. It is from Simon Magus that we get the name of the sin of simony, the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices. Many intellectuals have used the word gnostic to describe the worldview of people who are suffering under the modern malaise; however, Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin writes about the overuse of the word gnostic in an article here.

This gnostic tendency pops up frequently, and is especially popular today. While the news media may not be treating Camping's doomsday scenario seriously, the Mayan Calendar doomsday — December 21^st, 2012 — is getting far more serious press, if only to refute it. Environmental doom, however, is reported as an established fact, and certainly is far more plausible to elite culture.

This is not new. The Joachimites, followers of the Sicilian mystic, Joachim of Flora (ca. 1135-1202), believed that a new age of the world would come in the year 1260: the world would be unified in eternal peace (and ruled by the Franciscans) without need for law or church.

The American Baptist preacher, William Miller, predicted that the world would come to an end sometime in the year following March 21^st in 1843. (Why do doomsayers like to use the 21^st day of the month?) He gained tens or hundreds of thousands of followers; but when the world did not end, this led to what was called the Great Disappointment.

But do not think that these failed prophesies led to skepticism or to a widespread rejection of religion, or that people discarded the notion that we can predict the end of the world. Miller's failure at predicting the end of the world rather led to even more radical sects, which moved even farther from orthodoxy and towards gnosticism. The failure of the Millerites led to the anti-Trinitarian Jehovah's Witnesses and Adventists, and even gave impetus to the Bahá'í in Persia. The failure of the otherwise fairly orthodox Franciscan Joachimites eventually led, in the 1300s, to numerous gnostic-like sects completely outside of the Church.

The new sects formed out of failed doomsday prophesies tend to be very potent, proselytizing far more intensely than any mainstream religion, and their ideas eventually can become engrained in our culture. How many times have you heard that the God of the Old Testament is angry and judgmental, while the God of the New Testament is nice and loving (despite the praises of the mercy and love of God in the O.T., and the promise of Christ being the Lion of Judah who will rule the nations with a rod of iron in the N.T.)? This came from the Joachimites. Some even claim that Naziism and Marxism are rooted in the same source. Millerite-style prophesies of the end-times are extremely common, as we see today.

The presence of elite, doomsday-preaching, scripture-interpreting gnostic-leaning sects is not the end of our story. It gets worse. We get new, more radical sects in the wake of failed prophesy; but some of these groups are not content to wait for the end of the world; rather, they mean to cause the end of the world.

The German-born political scientist Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin (1901-1985) worked to discern the causes of the violent totalitarian political systems of the 20^th century, including Naziism and Communism. He concluded that this violence was due to the gnostic tendency. Some people become alienated from society, and so come to believe that this alienation is due to the inherent evil and disorder of the material world. Like-minded alienated people come together into a sect, having determined that they alone have discovered the secret knowledge that can save humanity, and thereafter act as harbingers of doom.

These gnostics form an elite, and may see themselves as god-men, supermen or Übermensch, or an intellectual vanguard. As they alone have the knowledge of salvation, and due to their alienation from society, they undoubtably will have little regard for the vast bulk of humanity. It is natural to assume that these people would want to change the world for the better. But since these people are alienated from the world, and despise most the world's inhabitants, they would likely be open to changing the world by any means necessary, including widespread destruction.

According to Vögelin, the end-stage of the gnostic tendency is the willingness to “immanentize the eschaton”, that is, bring about in history the final, perfected stage of human society, to create universal peace, Heaven on Earth. We found this in the despotic regimes of the 20^th century, and we see this with contemporary transhumanists or in those who promote the Technological Singularity. (By the way, tornadoes and hurricanes are the closest things to singularities that we find on Earth. When one of these near-singularities go by a place, indeed we find peace, for most everyone is dead.)

For the Joachimites, their eternal peace would come through an unprecedented world-wide crusade, where all the world's nations would forcibly come under their submission. For the greatly disappointed Millerites, the extremely violent American Civil War was the solution to their problem of injustice. (And some would say that the U.S. entry into the First World War was a continuation of the same ideology).

Environmentalists have been predicting worldwide biological catastrophes since the 1960s. These prophesies of doom have often gone unheeded — and unfulfilled. And so the sects have grown every more radical, from first suggesting that industry ought to voluntarily cut pollution emissions, until now, where they demand that the world population be cut by billions, and quickly. Radical indeed, and potentially bloody on an unprecedented scale. But they promise a return to Eden.

Extreme technophiles predict a new age of peace and prosperity that will occur after the revolution when the Machines take over. But haven't these people seen any science fiction film made in the past 45 years? Intelligent robots almost always turn into violent killing machines. Is that what they really want? Perhaps, if they have the gnostic tendency. See C.S. Lewis' book The Abolition of Man for a clear refutation of the idea of salvation through technology.

Violence, war, revolution, and strife are the fruits of the gnostic tendency. If matter is evil, then why should someone worry about death and destruction? If we experience times of peace, then undoubtably the gnostic tendency would prefer abortion and euthanasia. It's all pretty much the same. There will be peace when everyone is dead.

But we should recall that the eschaton has already been immanentized, in the Person of Christ. We have been living in the End Times for nearly 2,000 years. Christ Himself repeatedly told us that we would not know the day and the hour of the End, that it will come like a thief in the night.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Canon 676:

The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.

We must always be prepared. Let us not forget that each one of us is facing our own personal End of the World and Judgement Day, which can come any time, and without any warning. That the ultimate End comes on Saturday means little if you die on Wednesday.