The Ark and The Dove

Spoilsports

Now that Pope Benedict is safely out of the country, I feel as though I can say some things without seeming like a spoilsport. Of course, I qualify all of the statement below with extreme gratitude for his visit and for the opportunity to have great seats at the Papal Mass in D.C.

That being said, what the heck was with the music at the Washington, D.C. Mass?
I can understand to a degree the desire to show the multiculturalism of American music...but some of it was just downright scary. And I mean like Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, Nightmare Before Christmas scary. Einstein on the Beach creepy. Phantom of the Opera diabolic, even. I'm trying to find a Youtube clip of the responsorial psalm, since I recall that being the most terrifying, but I haven't found one yet. If anyone has one, please link to it in the comments.

The only thing that rivaled the music for disenchantment was the freaky radical Protestants hanging around outside. I know it's an anachronistic joke, but these guys really put the protest in Protestant. There actually weren't that many of them, but to have them lurking around the exit gates as we made our way out of the city was kind of like watching DaVinci's kid brother try to draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa with a crayon. For your amusement, I plan on posting some of their more absurd signs...but for starters, feast your eyes on this example anti-Catholic hate speech...

If you can't read it, the yellow sign says "Roman Catholicism is of the Devil: it will send you to: Hell"

Despite the spurious use of the colon, one must wonder what goes through the heads of such Protestantors. Do they really think that the kind of evangelization Christ was talking about involved holding angry, crudely designed picket signs outside of a place where Christians just finished worshipping? Does he really think that the Pope's message of turning to Christ as our only true hope is from the devil? Or do you think he was a parishioner who was crying sour grapes after he didn't get a ticket to the Mass?

On the other hand, I'll give him credit for having the guts to confront the devil head on and march outside of the auditorium where the Antichrist had just spewed forth venomous lies. He might have been afraid some of his minions would make a martyr out of him...
If I really thought that Satan-spawn were holding a 46,000 follower rally in a stadium, I probably would high-tail it out of the city!

Looking for Something to Protest?

The Maryland Food Collective (the "Co-op" in the Stamp) now has a shiny new "The Pope was a Nazi" bumper sticker behind the center cash register.

They are supposed to have a comment box by their microwave, so you might want to drop them a note asking them to remove the sticker voluntarily.

That seems the most polite way of handling it.
You might also try contacting whoever reads the Stamp Student Union feedback form.
Even Benedict-hating Bill Maher has admitted the claim of Benedict being a Nazi is false...and any number of Websites hostile to Benedict will concede that:

There is absolutely no reason to think that Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, is now or has ever been secretly a Nazi. Nothing he has ever said or done even remotely suggests the slightest sympathy with any of the basic Nazi ideas or goals. Any claim that he is a Nazi is implausible at best.

The quote above comes from an article on About.com's section on Agnosticism/Atheism. The rest of the article accuses Benedict of distorting his own past and not repenting for not taking a stronger stance against the Holocaust when he was a teenager...but even that author is forced to admit that Benedict was never a Nazi.

What makes me most upset about all this is that I don't know where I am going to buy cheap banana chips to snack on in between classes anymore...

UPDATE: There are Stamp Student Union Feedback forms on a wall outside of the Co-op. You can fill them out and drop them off in the feedback box at the concierge desk (the info desk) upstairs.

UPDATE #2: As of the last time I was in the Co-op, the sign appeared to have been taken down. At the very least, I didn't see it prominently displayed behind the cashier...although if I had, it might have prevented me from eating a whole bag of dates and feeling rather unsettled for the rest of the night...

The Last (Wednesday Night) Supper

I was just about to lay myself to sleep when I spied a dark spot on my ceiling.
At first, I coughed it up to a floater and bad vision since I didn't have my glasses on at the time...but once I replaced my spectacles to read some of Introduction to Christianity, it became quite evident that a decent-sized arachnid was splayed out directly overhead.
My initial attempts to capture him with a tissue failed miserably, as the multi-legged invertebrate leapt from above and hid himself in my bed.
A vaudevillian scene followed...with me scurrying about, stripping my bed, shaking out sheets, and eventually watching the critter scoot out from fold in my pillow case and make a mad dash for a surbase.
Not ready to accept a truce, I gathered my trusty bug gun (gift from Isabel) and sucked up the intruder.
He is now in what must seem like a bug gulag, surrounded by the carcasses of the last six creatures I've captured (as I've mentioned before, my humane efforts to trap the bugs are often thwarted by my own forgetfulness to free them later).
In any event, this worked up an appetite in me, so I went to the kitchen to eat some peanut butter slathered on slices of bread. Then, I began to wonder why I had gotten so hungry over so little work. As the recollection came to mind of a half-eaten plate of pasta at the free Wednesday Night Dinner at UMD's Catholic Student Center, a shuddering realization occurred...that was my last Wednesday night dinner.

Probably ever.

It had occurred to me at the dinner that it might be my last time there, but only because I never actually plan on going to them. When Isabel is in town, I usually skip out...but one can never be sure precisely when Isabel is going to be in town. It wasn't until just before I started this entry that I remembered that I am booked for the next two Wednesday nights.

So if anyone at the CSC is still checking in here, thanks for letting me hang around for the free food all these years!

Call Me When It's Middle-Earth Day...

I kept hearing snippets about it being Earth Day today. Whoopee.

No day off...no candy...no presents...

Whoever is in charge of Earth Day PR definitely needs to get on the inflatable globe beach ball about this one.

If you want me to get all warm and fuzzy about the environment (with its hostile ecosystem which is constantly trying to kill me with its pollen, poisonous spiders, and various bacteria and  viruses), then you better start giving me some short-term incentives.

I'm certainly down with the whole stewardship thing. It's biblical, and even Gandalf says he'll keep making his stand against Mordor so long as there is a single flower to protect...

Sorry...I fell back into the Middle-Earth Day pipe dream for a second there...

...but I do think people sometimes get carried away with environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to produce people who view the earth as a mother, or (worse yet) an organism on which we are a parasitic infestation. There is very little on Earth Day that seems like scientific, rational environmental science. Personally, I prefer to think of the Earth as a very useful machine, or (on my more cynical days) a giant volcano that environmentalists revere as a god and like to sacrifice virgins into on the off chance that it will choose not to blow up on its own volition any time soon...like the firey, molten furnace that is Mt. Doom...

Sorry, there I go again...

Papal Mass Photo Essay

This is the view of entering Nationals Stadium after braving the Metro at 6 AM.

Around 7 AM, the stadium was not quite packed yet. Mass would not begin for another three hours...




Here's a glimpse of Fr. Kyle doing important things. We know it was Fr. Kyle because Catholic Terps called him while he was doing important things and asked him to wave in our direction. (That's him waving, not beating his own the head.)






The first glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI was most easily viewable on the Jumbotron.
I don't know what he needed the bulletproof glass for...those bodyguards look like the could deflect bullets with their faces.





In terms of physical proximity, this was about the closest the pope came to our seats. You can just barely make out the blurry cranium of Archbishop Wuerl in the front.





I just liked this image of the Green Knight saluting to Pope Benedict as he passed (we dubbed him Gawain).

Compare to the 7 AM shot.
It was pretty much a packed house. Just before Mass started, there were a couple of sections that looked like they might have been empty, but they were filled at the last minute.

Isabel took this picture. She's very proud of it.
I think people took more pictures of the pope on the Jumbotron than of the pope on the field.

Colbert Goes All Catholic Nutty and Tolkien-Nerdy on Larry King

Colbert talks about his ticket to see an upcoming papal Mass, the Lives of the Saints, and Tolkien...

In or Out?

I was reading an article on scholasticism the other day. I didn't get very far into it, and I can't seem to find it now, so I apologize in advance if I'm somehow plagiarizing it. What I did learn in the first few paragraphs, however, was that the Latin root for education means "to draw out."

Long story short, what this made me think (and where the author may well have intended to go) was that a classical Catholic education will almost always be at fundamental odds with a Marxist approach to pedagogy.

That is, if we really do believe what we profess to believe, then we think that the purpose of education is not so much to implant values and ways of thinking into students. Rather, we try to help them understand the tents of natural law that already reside within them. We are not inserting truths in them; we are making them see truths that are already written on their hearts.

This simply won't jive with Marxism which says that no Truth can be written on our hearts because any such concepts are indoctrinated by an ideological state apparatus.

Of course, the Marxist would just say that the belief in natural law is itself a man-made fiction designed to reinforce the Church authority that tries to control us. Even if we should claim to know or feel the reality of natural law, any such knowledge or feeling would be predicated on an ideology that has been engrafted on us. It might feel like it comes from within, and it might even feel like a particular truth is self-evident...but it the Marxist would argue it only seems self-evident because we have been programmed so well by the Church that we have normalized its teachings.

The same, of course, could be said for the cynicism of Marxism...but that's because Marxism is fine with being a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Welcome, Pope Benedict!

Although I'm sure your very busy schedule will prevent you from leaving a comment below, I wanted to make sure to extend a hearty welcome to the U.S.A.!

It's hard not to be a little self-conscious when guests come over...so please don't mind the mess.

There's a couple of piles of dirty laundry here and there, and you might find that we like our radios loud (as well as our guitars). There's also the annoying neighbors who will no doubt stop by and say something embarrassing for everyone. But we'll try to maintain etiquette.

We want you to feel at home, so tell us what would make you more comfortable. We'll think you are just being polite if you say everything is fine.

Batman and Kre-ku-ak'tu-yok!

Patrick J. Michaels has an opinion column at FoxNews revealing how basic English 101 research strategies can topple mighty journalistic empires (and even a presidential candidate) when it comes to Global Warming. The issue in questions is, apparently, an urban legend that global warming has caused robins to migrate further north than ever before, confusing indigenous people who have no name for the alien bird. McCain. the BBC, and New York Times all cited this startling (but not starling) fact.
As Michaels reports, however, a quick bibliographical research turns up plenty of evidence of old books (some even older than McCain!) that contain Inuit and Eskimo names for the avians, long predating the current climate change craze. (He also mentions that an island that was supposed to have recently emerged for the first time from under ice is actually marked on maps from 50 years ago.)

American Idol Weirdness

Isabel and I sat through the Idol results show tonight.

It was an odd viewing experience.

First, there was this totally bizarre montage of various celebrities (most of whom I couldn't recognize) lip-syncing to The Monkees' "I'm a Believer." I guess it was supposed to be about believing in "Idol Gives Back," but it didn't really seem appropriate. Plus, it seemed like every thirty seconds one of the celebrities tried to be funny by grabbing their own breasts or miming as though they were grabbing someone else's.

Next up, they had video clips of the presidential candidates being patriotic for Idol. Hillary looked and spoke like a pod person. Is anyone else freaked out when she opens her eyes wide and you can see her whole iris? Chilling, that.
McCain was actually pretty darned funny in a crazy uncle kind of way...threatening to deport Simon in a new immigration plan.
Ahem.
Obama (who got cheers from the audience) sounded like he was running for student council president. Apparently that is an effective approach to people who are actually still in school. I guess you could say he knows his audience (and their level of intelligence).

What bothers me the most about the candidate's clips is that the Democrats appeared to get twice as much time as the Republicans merely because they can't get their act together. I didn't count the minutes, so maybe it was just my perception. I don't know that I would have wanted McCain to get twice as much time, but it does make things seem unbalanced...as if two-thirds of the nation is Democrat, when the real issue is that Democrats are a house divided.

Finally, the Australian guy got the boot, which seemed to affect Isabel on a deep and personal level.