The Ark and The Dove

Economy of Aid

As Earth Day propaganda flutters by, I wondered in what cases is it better to fly out to a third world country and try to help those in need and in what cases would it have been better just to send money?

Is there a time frame for this?

For instance, if a student is going to fly to a relief effort in Africa for a few weeks...are there cases where it would have been better to have just donated the cost of airfare?

God Bless Trey Parker and Matt Stone

Something tells me that I probably don't have a lot in common with the spiritual or religious views of the creators of South Park. I also don't think that their brand of satire or their recent episodes centering on the insanity of Islamic radicalism and the cowardice of Western censorship are doing much to heal the rifts in our divided world.

I can't say that I was all that happy to see an image of Pope Benedict among the celebrities intending to sue South Park...but I hardly feel a need to kill anyone over it.

I get the point that it isn't really the pope--it's a cartoon caricature of the pope included for rhetorical effect. In a way, it's a mark of pride for Catholics that South Park can poke fun at our leaders and institutions. It means that no one thinks Catholics are going to turn violent over it.

It's an embarrassment to Muslims everywhere that Comedy Central feels the need to censor depictions of Muhamed. It says that Comedy Central believes that there are followers of Muhamed who lack the intelligence, sophistication, maturity, or even the sense of humor to get smart satire. It says that Comedy Central believes that there are self-proclaimed followers of Muhamed who are so infantile that they must be protected from possible insults. 

Earth Day...time to drive around the block a few times

Is Earth Day really something worth celebrating?

It's not like the Earth is inherent bad or evil...after all, God said it was good when He made it. I can't help but think, though, that our terrestrial origins and habitation are something of an embarrassment. They peg us as subordinate beings, rooted in our physicality until our physical bodies can be more perfectly bound to our spiritual natures.

Shouldn't we rather be more interested in a Heaven Day?

Didn't we have one of those? Wasn't that the Sabbath?

Anyway, I don't think we should be stupid about our resources or management of the planet...but I do fear that events like Earth Day lend too much credence to authoritarian micromanagement in the name of the planet as well as neo-paganism.

Communion or Disunion

I don't think my marriage to Isabel would work if we weren't on the same page about the Eucharist.

This isn't to say that I have some kind of special insight into transubstantiation or that I have a superior understanding of Communion, but I do believe in it.

While I'm sure Isabel would still "respect" my belief if she weren't Catholic, I doubt she would "get it." There would be a very central part of my self that was completely closed off to her. It would be like having police tape wrapped around a section of my soul.

This would perhaps be true on some level for any religious sentiment that wasn't shared by a couple -- a Jewish couple made this point at our Pre-Cana class (and it could be true for any activity, interest, or passion), but it is particularly true for the Eucharist.

Mass isn't just an activity -- the Eucharist is surrendering one's essential being to God so that He might become part of it and change it.

A non-Catholic...or perhaps just a disinterested Catholic...either wouldn't get the significance of this, and therefore be distanced from me, or they would have to resent it. After all, the union with Christ in Communion is closer than the union of marriage could ever be.

Without a mutual understanding of the Eucharist, it seems to me that the Eucharist could easily drive a wedge between a couple (he came to divide, after all).

However, when a couple does have the same, Catholic, understanding of the Eucharist, it becomes a strengthening bond in practical and spiritual ways. In practical terms, it's a bit like Christ sending the Apostles out in pairs. I've always imagined this had to do with watching each other's back. When one of the Apostles would feel tempted or disheartened, he could always fall back on the buddy system (even if he didn't avoid sin for his own sake, he might be apt to save face for the other guy).

But on a more spiritual level, I've always considered the Eucharist as a kind of transitive property of theology. For instance, I, as a selfish individual, have plenty of barriers that interfere with my relationship with Isabel. And even Isabel -- as perfect as she may be -- no doubt must have some psychological hang-ups that interfere with her relationship with me. There is, shockingly, always work to be done to get around these obstacles.

Certainly, these obstacles (in this case, we can call them sins) also impede my relationship with Christ.

All sorts of spiritual gunk block the channels to grace. But in the case of Christ, the interference is all one-sided on my part. Christ doesn't bring any baggage to the relationship. Therefore, one assumes that my relationship with Christ will always be more complete than with Isabel.

But it also is assumable that Isabel's relationship with Christ is always more complete than with me. I hope so for her sake, at least.

Now here comes the paradoxical algebra...if I am in Communion with Christ and Isabel is in Communion with Christ, then, by transitive property, shouldn't we be in Communion with each other by way of Christ?

And if that union to Christ is more complete, our union to each other via Christ is more complete than our union with each other could be sans Christ. Or, to put it another way, Peter + Isabel.

Three Card Monty of the Soul

Drudge linked to an article about human DNA swapping. I'm not going to pretend that this article is complete or accurate or that I even fully grasp the science behind it.

The idea seems to be that scientists in Britain have started sucking the DNA out of embryos coming from women with a particular disorder, and then swap out the DNA in an egg from another woman and replace it with the previously removed DNA. (It's all about putting the DNA from an embryo with defective mitochondria into an egg with working mitochondria.)

Frankly, the spiritual implications of such a technology make me woozy.

Are we supposed to assume that the soul from the first embryo follows the DNA into the new egg?

Are we supposed to assume that the soul is separated from the embryo when the DNA is removed? Is it a kind embryonic death? Does a new individual emerges once the DNA is transplanted? (Michael Crichton played with this concept when he described teleportation technology in Timeline--if your body is fragmented, do you technically die? Is it the reassembled body still you or is it a separate entity that is an almost exact copy of you?)

Too complicated to compute at this hour...brain shutting down...

In the Beginning there was Logos...in the end, there was Pathos...

Drudge linked to a Sun article which purports that Christophers "I have Daddy Issues" Hitchens and Richard "It's Better to be Smart than to be Correct" Dawkins plan on arresting the Pope.

Pope Benedict XVI was hit by new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed in 1985, arguing against defrocking a sex-abuser priest. He is due to visit Britain in September. International law allows an arrest for crimes against humanity outside a person's own borders.

Hitchens said: "The institutionalised concealment of child rape is a crime under any law."

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2928120/Pope-arrest-plot.html#ixzz0ktOp4zWq

Really, boys? This is your publicity stunt of choice, now? Arresting the pope?

Of course, the article doesn't really help matters. It says the pope signed a letter in 1985 against defrocking a priest, and then has a Hitchens quote accusing the pope of concealing child rape.

These are logically connected in what way?

Do we have some kind of document showing that Ratzinger advocated concealing pedophiles?

Do Hitchens and Dawkins even understand what it means to defrock a priest?

And are we now to arrest people for making arguments on behalf of criminals? Wouldn't we have to arrest every defense attorney that ever stood on behalf of a perp?

UPDATE:

This article by Michael Sean Winters makes a pretty clear case why the accusations above are hogwash. It does a great job showing how the media are presenting incomplete pictures that make it look like Ratzinger was defending a pedophile and the Church's reputation even though neither are plausible in the full context.

Extras...Cut!

A year or so ago, I caught an episode of the HBO sitcom Extras while in a hotel conferencing.
Since then, I've also watched some highlight reels from the show on Youtube (the Ian McKellen/Gandalf bit is one of the funniest clips you can find online). So when Isabel and I signed up for Netflix, we decided to add the first season to our cue.

We didn't even finish watching the first disk. I know pilot episodes are bad, but we have limited entertainment time and prefer to go for known quantities.

Besides, Isabel still has World Six of Yoshi's Island to beat.

The reasons for our complaint are two-fold with the first episode.
First, we might be getting more prudish in our old age. Maybe it's just that we don't have cable or view many modern comedies, but watching Kate Winslet mime oral sex as a joke just doesn't make us laugh.
Second, while Ricky Gervais is a master of awkward, nervous, Fawlty Towers-style humor, something about the first episode of Extras just doesn't click. It might be a similar dynamic as Christopher Guest movies. (I think Guest and Gervais have very similar senses of filmed humor.) When they are delivering their nervous humor in the context of a mockumentary, it works much better than when the same humor is applied to a non-mockumentary, straight narrative. Guest's Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and Mighty Wind were all hilarious. For Your Consideration fell flat. The Office was utterly compelling and also funny. Extras, not so much. And, of course, both Extras and For Your Consideration try to take you inside the world of B-Hollywood. One would think that people in entertainment would have a greater understanding of that subject than others, and yet in both Guest's and Gervais's cases, the viewer feels less a sense of the plausible reality -- or even believable cartoon reality. Perhaps this is a paradox of the old writer's adage to write what you know. Writing what is outside their immediate experience seems more digestible.

If you've seen the first episode of Extra you probably know where I'm going with this. The episode presents a cartoon caricature of Catholicism that is neither recognizable nor particularly believable. Gervais's character, an extra playing a Nazi soldier, romantically pursues another extra playing a nun. Metaphor becomes literal when she turns out to be a practicing Catholic whose sister has cerebral palsy. To really hit you over the head with it, she invites Gervais on what he thinks is a date, but then turns out to be some kind of moribund prayer service. Mostly everyone at the prayer service is a little odd (okay, maybe that's not so unbelievable), but the really weird part is when the priest starts grilling Gervais on whether or not he's Catholic. In full Basil Fawlty mode, Gervais tries to bluff his way out of the inquisition, but the priest looks suspicious. Finally, the priest flat out accuses Gervais of not being Catholic.
When Gervais fesses up that he's an atheist who just came as part of an attempt to seduce his lady friend (who uses the opportunity to make a public witness to her stance against premarital sex), everyone gives him a cold stare.

Really?

Maybe I move in unusual circles, but most people know wouldn't exactly confront this kind of thing head-on (unless, of course, they had suspicions and thought he was going to go to Mass and receive Communion). They might gossip after the fact. And if it did come out that someone at a prayer service wasn't Catholic, they'd either see it as an opportunity to educate or convert.

But maybe Catholicism has a different flavor in Britain.

Anyway, I know the show is less concerned with mimetic representations of faith groups than it is with the facility of comic narrative...but the depiction of Catholicism struck me as hollow. Whatever Gervais's own knowledge of religion might be, Gervais's script expressed as little understanding about the faith as his character did.

Looks like we are going to bump up Avatar: The Last Airbender, Book Three on our queue.

Judas Iscariot was from Chicago, right?

Michelle Malkin has a column up at Townhall.com lamenting the rise of literally Chicago-style politics in the Catholic Church.

In particular, she is worried about the radicalization, politicalization, and apparent mental instability of Fr. Pfleger.

On a roll, Pfleger mustered up his best Wright imitation and let loose on the entire country, proclaiming: "America is the greatest sin against God."

Pfleger has also embraced hate-crime hoax engineer Al Sharpton. Outraged Catholics across the country called on the archdiocese of Chicago to remove Pfleger. In response, Cardinal George meekly suspended Pfleger for two weeks over his "partisan" remarks -- and has now honored him for his "service" to "racial justice."

Testing Prenatal Memory

BoingBoing is running an article about how researchers test prenatal memory.

Obligatory and ugly abortion debate follows in the comment boxes.

Re-Titling the Gospels?

I was just thinking how a group like Quirk Press might market the Gospels...

1. Jesus Christ -- Demonslayer
2. Apostles vs. Centurions
3. Surviving a 1st Century Roman Occupation
4. The Messiah that Wouldn't Die
5. The Synoptic Gospels: Choose Your Own Adventure

Got any more?