The Ark and The Dove

Catholic Terp Alum in WaPo Photo Spread

Soon-to-be Fr. Dave Wells is all over this Washington Post photo essay of Mount Saint Mary seminarians getting ready for ordination.

Man, you undergrads sure grew up fast. I remember watching freshman girls get all giddy around Dave in the cafeteria back when I used to crash Catholic Terp lunch tables.

Anyway, make sure to pray for the seminarians...they're going to need the help during this current wave of bad press for the Church (which the Washington Post article associated with the photos seems rather intent on pointing out).

I Didn't Realize They Were Locked to Begin With...

Joseph Pearce, the ultra-passionate Catholic interpreter of literature, has a new CD title that claims to "unlock" The Lord of the Rings.

I'm hoping that the title, which is in fact "Joseph Pearce Unlocks 'The Lord of the Rings'" is just some kind of provocative mumbo-jumbo that his editor invented.

It makes me nervous whenever someone claims to have the real interpretation of a text, to have really solved it this time, as if all those other interpretations just don't get it.

The fact of the matter is that just about anyone who can get past the fake-textual scholarship in Tolkien's introduction can "unlock" The Lord of the Rings in their own way...and a good many of them are equally valid. Tolkien is, in this regard, much like Shakespeare (although I suspect Pearce only thinks Shakespeare is truly unlocked with Peter's keys as well).

Tolkien (as is often cited) claimed to have not written an allegory. If it isn't an allegory, then there is no magic code to decipher. If there is no magic code to decipher, than there can be no definitive "unlocking" of the text. Besides, Tolkien also happens to be rather directly transparent with motives. He's left us a rather large body of paratext, commentaries, letters and whatnot that pretty clearly lay out motives, thoughts, revisions, themes, and whatnot...not to mention his invitation for readers to apply the text however they see fit...to "allegorize" it if you will.

Pearce's interpretation might be inspirational. It might be thought-provoking. It might even be academically sound. But, please, don't think that Joseph Pearce has the magic key to unlock the text.

If you really want to unlock Tolkien, all you have to do is say "friend" and enter.

To Heck with Prophet Art, Make May 20th "Draw Jesus Christ Day"

There's been some Internet buzz generated by an artist blogger's attempt to make May 20th "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day."

Apparently, the artist has gotten a little skittesh because some over-enthusiastic artists have already started posting intentionally offensive images. The artist appears to have wanted people just to draw benign images as a means of showing solidarity with free speech advocates. After all, even South Park didn't portray Muhammad negatively. It was part of their satire that Comedy Central would censor benign images of Islam's Prophet and yet still air blatantly offensive images of every other religious figure imaginable.

That being said, maybe instead of exercising our political freedom to draw whomever we darned want to...we should use the day to express our religious and spiritual freedom to revere God in our own art. Rather than drawing Muhammad as a means of biting our thumbs at deranged Muslims who are willing to kill people over pictures, we should instead show off and flaunt our freedom and our intimate relationship with God who doesn't mind when we draw pictures of Him.

Actually, it might be a great day to celebrate the Shroud of Turin...(if it is really miraculous, then its God's self-portrait; if it's fake, then it still makes the point about depicting Christ in art.)

TimesOnline: Newman was Anti-papist; Benedict Wrong to Beatify

The TimesOnline is running an article claiming that Pope Benedict is about to beatify Cardinal Newman on faulty grounds. According to the article, the alleged miracle (the quick alleviation of spinal pain of a deacon who had back surgery) has been dismissed by numerous surgeons who claim that the alleviation of pain is actually fairly common. The article also pursues a line of argument suggesting that Newman was opposed to papal authority, and that it is comically ironic to beatify a man who (as the article would have it) pretty much thought the papacy was a joke.

I can't say that I'm enough of a Newman scholar or a neurosurgeon to weigh in on the veracity of either issue, but my thoughts on this are twofold.

First, I'm reluctant to trust a news source -- particularly a British news source -- to accurately depict the views of Cardinal Newman or the case for his sainthood. Oh, the article throws around a lot of Latin and goes into detail about the process of canonization in general, but it provides precious little information on Newman's case in particular. The only details concerning Newman that the article seems interested in are 1) that he converted to Catholicism, 2) that he didn't want to be canonized, 3) that his miracle might be spurious, and 4) that he has two soundbites that make him seem antipapist.

The article is trying to suggest that Cardinal Newman was something like Monty Python's Brian. He can protest his own holiness all he wants, but that merely makes the religious idolize him all the more for humility.

Second, how problematic would it be if the miracle had other potential explanations? That is, can coincidence be sufficient for an event to be miraculous? I suppose what I am questioning is whether the miraculous could simply be what Freud might call the "uncanny" -- our sense that coincidence suggests a deeper meaning. Personally, I think we are always safer when the miraculous is a straight-up supernatural event -- a suspending or manipulation of nature that is beyond scientific understanding. Of course, even this definition of a miracle is problematic as science advances in its knowledge. Is it so unimaginable that a day might come for the world when all miracles have a possible explanation? In such an imaginary world, a miracle would no longer be the impossible--it would merely be the highly improbable. Coincidence, really, is a measure of the highly improbable; coincidence evokes a feeling of the miraculous, even if it is still within the confines of natural possibility. Thus, the day might come when miracles are gauged not by possibility but by probability. It might not be merely that a particular event occurs, but when it occurs that contributes to his miraculous nature. I recall once watching an archaeological documentary on Exodus where the narrator mused that there could be various possible explanations for the parting of the Red Sea. It need not have been beyond natural causes. But that the Red Sea parted at the moment most convenient for an escape would certainly seem and feel miraculous...and so why not be miraculous?

Of course, this is just fancy. It could well be that miracles will never be explicable. It could well be that the miracle attributed to Newman is problematic.

In any event, I still think the Pope has more credibility to argue who is worthy of the saintly title than the TimesOnline, and I'm confident that the Vatican spent more time researching Newman's case than a journalist.

Obama and the Death of the Humanities

Drudge linked to an article describing a commencement speech recently delivered by Pres. Obama:

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.

It's a little ironic that I should have found that quote on a site like Drudge and that you are now reading it on this blog.

Anyway, the quote makes me a little sad inside because it is precisely exemplifies the problem that English Departments are facing right now...only not in the way Obama might imagine.

To Obama, information is a tool of empowerment. This is a classical Marxist approach to the humanities. Information is only good so far as it is useful...so far as it is a political tool.

I don't think this is a completely invalid approach to literature, and, in fact, Renaissance authors might have agreed with the president to a certain extent. Sir Philip Sidney, after all, famously argues that the ultimate goal of art is to produce virtue which ought to yield moral action. An art that influences action surely has a political component to it.

Yet, Sidney also understand that art out to delight as it instructed. That art, which is after all, a medium to convey information, cannot merely be about conveying information. Art is more than just a vessel for data -- which is precisely one of the reasons why it can lift a man towards virtue when done well.

Now, if Obama wants to argue there is too much bad art in the country, I'm fine with that. But when has such a claim not been true? There's always a preponderance of bad art to good art -- the scarcity of good art drives up its value.

But Renaissance artists aside, is diversion and distraction so bad? Is...for lack of a better word...fun and play really what is destroying the nation?

Obama comes off sounding like a robot, a computational machine, that only seeks data to process to complete a program.

Haven't we reached the point in our post-modern world that we can value enjoying information for its own sake? Is entertainment really such a bad thing?

There's a country western song that was popular last year or so, I think it was called "Chicken Fried." It was practically a send up of Epicurean philosophy -- not of the hedonistic sort -- but of the purer sort: the idea that pleasure could itself be a good and worth defending and striving for. It may well be that American freedom is not founded wholly in lofty philosophical notions of liberty and rights or human dignity. It might well be that American freedom is rooted firmly in the ability to squander that freedom in simple pleasures. Remember, the original Tea Party occurred because of...well...tea. I'm sure historians can argue over the various ideological underpinnings of the protest, but I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of revolutionaries really were just annoyed over tea.

I'm not about to launch into a long defense of Epicureanism--I'm certainly not going to advocate it as a life philosophy as it leads to easily into materialism--but I think it is also a bit too easily dismissed by the more Stoic thinker, as Obama would profess himself to be in this speech.

Worldly pleasures are passing. The are divine goods far better.

But something tells me that Obama isn't nudging his audience towards the divine. Rather, he wants them to exchange their worldly pleasures for worldly political activism. But if you remove worldly pleasures from the equation, what exactly was worldly political activism worth?

Perhaps Obama misunderstands how entertainment itself becomes a means of empowerment and emancipation.

I don't want my students to read Shakespeare so they can be inspired to be political activists. I want my students to read Shakespeare and say, "Wow! That was awesome!" That would be real liberation.

Rules, Rules, Rules

‘It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us

not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities,

namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols,

from blood, from meats of strangled animals,

and from unlawful marriage.

If you keep free of these,

you will be doing what is right.  Farewell.’
                                                    Acts 15: 28-29

The excerpt above comes, of course, from today's first reading.

The Apostles compose the letter after their first Council -- the one where they have to determine whether or not non-Jewish men have to undergo the blade before becoming Christians.

We all know the sigh of relief that resulted from that meeting.

But I kept thinking this morning was how simple the taboos became after this Council: don't eat meat offered in pagan sacrifice (seems tacky enough to be banned), don't drink blood (what were people up to that they needed this rule?!?), don't eat from strangled animals (fair enough), and avoid unlawful marriage...

Ah, that would be the doozy, wouldn't it. How many early Christians nodded approvingly at the first three and then did an embarrassed double take at number four.

But more to the point, what does it say about our modern world that we can't even adhere to these four basic rules?

What does it say about us that we can't even handle marriage in a more mature way than people who have to be told not to drink blood?

Why Didn't I Like The Fantastic Mr. Fox?

Note that the title is not why I didn't like the film.

Isabel and I got around to watching the stop-motion film last night...or, rather, I got around to watching it. The movie put Isabel to sleep no less than three times.
(I'm not sure if it's a bigger deal whether a movie puts her to sleep once for most of the film or three times spread throughout.)
Anyway, the movie should have worked for me. I like animation. I'm a sucker for old-timey stop motion.
I've enjoyed a lot of Wes Anderson's films.
I'm a Roald Dahl fan (although I've never read this book...which might suggest that a lack of nostalgia prevented me from embracing the narrative).
I even like animals...especially of the talking sort.

So why didn't this movie work for me?

I'm not sure.

Maybe I wasn't in the mood for slow-burn, nervous humor after a day of grading.
Maybe I was put off by the fact that the goodness and identifiability of the animals contrasted with the utterly grotesque, morally bankrupt, and alienating humans.

Do all three poultry farmers have to be evil? Couldn't there have been a nice poultry farmer somewhere?

Are the farmers problematic because they are farmers, or are we supposed to get the sense that these are particularly bad farmers because they appear to hoard their chickens for themselves?

Whatever the original story's intent, I kept feeling like the movie was going to slip into some kind of perverse environmentalist propaganda. I don't think it ever quite did...but I wasn't sure. The plot was very episodic, so themes seemed to shift from one bit to the next.

I did like that Mr. Fox's subversive lifestyle came with its costs. His major heist schemes are for the thrill of law-breaking, rather than out of survival or necessity...and he does penance as a result of his sins. Nevertheless, if the movie suggests he is clearly wrong for stealing from corporate farmers, the movie ends with an ambiguous sense that he is somehow more justified stealing from the Big Box Walmart analog at the end of the movie (although the fact that it bears the names of the three evil farmers might suggest that the story will repeat its cycle). Mr. Fox isn't an ideal protagonist, and the film is aware of that, so I think that's in its favor.

For the most part, the movie just seemed to be animals having awkward conversations and then apologizing later for being awkward.

What did I miss?