The Ark and The Dove

End of the World as We Know It

Jerusalem finally got sacked by the Babylonians in today's reading.
I think it's worth meditating on just how mind-shattering that event had to have been.
Everything you thought you knew to be true was, in the breach of a wall, rendered totally subject to question. You lost everything in the world that you thought was familiar, and, worse yet, it seemed like the God you believed in wasn't powerful enough to preserve you from some upstart Chaldeans. Maybe that God didn't even exist.
It's only in the macroscopic view of history that you can really know what was going on...that as much as that invasion seemed to attack your entire perception of the universe, in the end, it couldn't change reality.
At times, I think that's even a more important lesson of the Old Testament than trying to read it typologically. Every time a world event seems to erase God from the playing field (be it Egyptian slavery,internal corruption, Babylonian captivity, or a host of other hostile takeovers), God does, in time, step back into the picture.
It's as if the authors of the Old Testament are saying, "We hear you. A lot of the time, it really doesn't look like there is a benevolent God...but just hang in there, and you'll see what we're talking about." To a Christian, the Jewish Bible is essentially reads like one long "I told you so."

We can't know whether we'll get to see what they are talking about in our own lifetimes, but we can bolster our faith by seeing how things played out in the past.

I "Suppose" so...

Drudge linked to an article from The Independent reporting that scientists are having a freakout over the prospect that there might be no ice at the North Pole by the end of the summer.

What I found particularly noteworthy was the following quote:

"...There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

What I want to know is according to whom? Who says there is supposed to be ice there? It wasn't there when the planet started, and it looks like it probably won't be there when we end. So on what basis do we know that there is supposed to be ice there? Just because that's what we've always known? Is there some kind of planetary owner's manual that these scientists have access to?

"In the event that polar ice caps melt, please contact your local galactic service station."

Conspiracy Theory of the Day

Today's Conspiracy Theory: Homosexual Advocacy Is Promoted by the Zero Population Growth Movement

This wouldn't be a conspiracy theory if I had any evidence to back it up, so I won't pretend to. All I have to go in is my frazzled wits and tortured logic.

That being said, gay rights seems like the perfect cause for Zero Population Growth. At least, male homosexuality does. Technology now allows lesbians to undergo artificial insemination...but, I'm still willing to wager that two lesbians married to each other would end up producing fewer of the pesky little hominids than if each of those women were married to a man.

Do you have too many people on a planet watching too much erotic television programming? You better be careful, because monkey-see-monkey-do, and the next thing you know, you'll have scads of babies when contraceptives fail or are misused. Not so if you can convince people to experiment with homosexuality! That's right, kids, with homosexuality, you can indulge in all the bodily friction you want without ever causing a pregnancy and contributing to the already overburdened overpopulation of poor old Gaia.

And, I bet you it will only be a matter of years before the State starts giving homosexual couples tax breaks in the form of carbon offsets as an incentive to marry. Heterosexual couples just lead to those pesky, carbon-spewing babies. Heterosexuality is an evolutionary dead end as far as the environment is concerned. The future of the planet depends on more people opting for homosexual lifestyles (or sterilization...take your pick)!

Tyranny of the Few

via Pewsitter

The Baltimore Sun is covering action by the ACLU to end lunchtime prayer at the Naval Academy. Apparently, nine of the 4,200 midshipmen were so offended by the practice, that they sought legal advise on how to eradicate this most abominable practice of saying grace. They feel that the Naval Academy culture pushes religious views on those who don't agree with them. Apparently, a Washington lawyer says the Academy is "treading on thin ice" legally:

"Being in a service academy is a unique environment where obedience and group dynamics are at their apogee," Fidell [a Washington lawyer] said. "The danger that individual preferences or conscience will be overridden as a result of group pressure or institutional pressure is palpable."

So what seems more absurd to you...that a practice that 3,191 cadets tolerate be endured by nine who don't, or that the belief system of nine be imposed on the 3,191?

It's about Time...

Isabel sent me a link to an article in Time magazine about the "pregnancy pact" incident at Gloucester High School. Nancy Gibbs brings a refreshingly rational view to Time magazine, where I usually dismiss the columns offhand as painfully biased. Her argument, in a nutshell, is that too many people have been trying to wrangle the story for political gain, mostly with regards to how the state should educate the youth about sex or how the media are indoctrinating our children with loose morals. Instead, Gibbs suggests that what we should learn from the incident is that more young people discover choosing life to be more rewarding than abortion, and are willing to take responsibility for their actions.

What if the "problem" in evidence at Gloucester High has more to do with the rejection of abortion than the acceptance of teen pregnancy?...what if the visible leap in pregnancies is part of a different trend, which the national studies confirm; not necessarily more kids having sex, or more girls getting pregnant, but more of those who do deciding to keep the baby rather than abort it...surely they deserve more sympathy and support than shame and derision, if the trend they reflect is not a typical teenager's inclination to have sex, but rather a willingness to take responsibility for the consequences.

Voting for the Other Side

Does anyone else ever get the sense that one of the major distinctions between a "liberal" voter and a "conservative" voter is that the former justifies his vote based on what he thinks other people believe whereas the later is more likely to argue he votes on what he believes?
I feel like this comes up a lot in conversations on issues like gay rights and abortion: "Why should I (usually meaning you) impose my beliefs on someone else by voting against gay marrage? Why should I force someone to live according to my morality?"
Well, it seems to me that the best answer to this is honest democracy. The way the game is supposed to work is that we all vote for what we believe will be best for the country. The group that has the most votes wins the game. If we start casting our votes for things we don't believe in, then we are, in effect, surrendering our suffrage. This was precisely the kind of thing that led the founding fathers to not give slaves full representation and that led English politicians in the 17th Century to restrict voting rights only to land owners. The fear was that slaves or servants would vote in their master's best interest rather than in their own. In our paradoxically world, the opposite seems to be the case. Rather than those with less power surrendering their votes to those with more power, those in the majority are being asked to surrender their wills over to the minority.
If you vote pro-choice or pro-gay marriage, you are essentially saying that you think these things are a good thing for the country, that we should have more of them, and that you want your children to live in a country that has more of it. You are saying that the future survival of the nation depends on redefining marriage and the ability to kill your own offspring. If you vote against gay marriage and abortion, it doesn't have to be some kind of moral indictment or condemnation of persons. It means that you don't think those are the best direction for the country, that you think the future of this country will do best with uninterrupted, government-sponsored heterosexual reproduction.

I Read it for the Articles...I swear!

Via Pewsitter...

Apparently, Playboy Magazine is running an interview with Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue.

I wonder if they are considering running Our Lady of Guadalupe as the centerfold.

Test Your Knowledge of 20th Century Communism

Holocausts of Communism Test

Happy Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist

I didn't realize it until today's homily, we only celebrate 3 birthdays in the liturgical calendar: Jesus, Mary and St. John the Baptist.

In Brazil, this day is known as Diário de Sáo Joáo (Saint John's Day). The festivities are set off in the villages and countryside by the Fogueira de Sáo Joáo (bonfire) on St. John's eve. Families and friends eat traditional foods around the fire while younger folks jump over the fire and firecrackers are exploded. The day is primarily a festival for children, who save up months in advance to purchase fireworks to set off for the day. In cities this is a day for parties and dances, with the urban dwellers dressing up in rural costumes.
St. John is the protector of lovers, so for fun, young country girls in Brazil will roll up scraps of paper, each bearing a name of a single girl and place them into a bowl of water. The first one which unfolds indicates the girl who will marry first.

From catholicculture.org

Mover's Purgatory

Anyone who needs a quick meditation on purgatory should try preparing their worldly belonging for an Interstate move.
Not only does packing this stuff up (and then living out of boxes for several weeks) make a good penance, but the process also makes one want to get rid of stuff that they previously wanted (or in some cases get rid of things that they still want). It seems to me that having tediously to pile all of my loot together into one place makes me quite surfeited. For instance, I've become so sick of packing things that I've started just giving things away...things that I've lugged around with me for over ten years and that had become permanent fixtures in my apartment. There is a kind of emptiness now where my life size Boba Fett once stood. My bedroom feels somehow empty...despite the mounds of junk.
It also means that I'm forced to make comparative value judgments. Take my collection of board games. Literally. I'm giving them away.
I have some board games that are still in their original cellophane after innumerable years. I'm mostly holding on to them for sentimental reasons because they were gifts. I've been planning on donating them to the CSC, since they seem awfully bulky to move and they'd just end up sitting around again.
But then I looked at the size of some of the things I was going to keep that had less monetary or sentimental value, and realized my system of determining what to keep and dispose of wasn't very consistent. Thus, the board games became a kind of litmus test of what was worth keeping. To keep something the size of the Cranium box should have to mean that it was worth more than the Cranium box, but that wasn't always the case. In other words, my stack of board games isn't nearly as bad a problem as my stack of clearance toys.

Suffice to say, I've gotten rid of a lot of toys using the Cranium box test.

By now you can probably figure out how I'm going to allegorize this: If we are going to get rid of our spiritual baggage, we should spend more time on the junk that's really a problem rather than being impressed with ourselves for getting rid of stuff that isn't really bothering us or anybody else for that matter.
What are the minor character quirks that we spend more time addressing as a means of distracting us from working on the serious character flaws that lead us astray?