The Ark and The Dove

Assortment of Thoughts for Today

Society: I'm still seeing "It Gets Better" videos offering encouragement to depressed gay teens in reaction to the recent college student suicide. I have two thoughts on this: 1) Is it really accurate to think that this suicide occurred because of homophobia or a particular antipathy towards homosexuality? I'm sure there are plenty of straightlaced heterosexual kids that would commit suicide out of the sheer embarassment of having their sexual activity exposed to the entire Internet. 2) Would these videos still be called "It Gets Better" if they included statistics on venereal diseases among gay males?

Education: Why don't colleges just go ahead and make an "Athletics Major." A lot of colleges are already offering classes like kinesiology and management, as well as courses on baseball and football through their American studies and literature departments. I know plenty of students who have gotten reasonable employment within college athletics due to their participation in sports. Even if they aren't getting drafted into the pros, they are just as likely to end up as coaches, assistant coaches, or some type of manager as they are to get jobs related to their actual majors. Heck, you are probably more likely to get some kind of employment because you played lacrosse than you are because you studied Shakespeare. And most athletes I know are working harder and practicing more than any dance student, theater major, or any other performance art that has an actual academic department. In many ways, athletics requires more brainpower than most performance art fields. Consider that your typical athlete has to make critical decisions on the fly, because sports are a dynamic form of entertainment. Sure you can drill and memorize plays, but you also have to be able to improvise -- if only to strategize which play to implement. Dancers and singers, as far as I know, don't often find themselves rearranging whole muscial sets mid-song. I have a hard time imagining ballerinas in the middle of The Nutcracker deciding to switch things up during the intermission and suddenly busting out with...uhm...some other ballet...You know, I think The Nutcracker is pretty much the extent of my knowledge regarding dance. There goes my ethos for that argument.

Economics: I recently saw one of those fake motivational posters on the Internet featuring an image of the loaves and fishes with the tagline: "Piracy: Jesus did it." Obviously, the implication is that there is no difference between Jesus miraculously generating bread and fish out of an original source and peer-to-peer file sharing. I think the main difference here is that the Romans had no law on the books against multiplying fishes, so -- while a funny gag -- it is perhaps not the most logically fair comparison. Besides, even if there was a law, Jesus was God, and therefore the Author of all creation. For Jesus to "copy" and distribute fish would be like Blizzard deciding to e-mail everyone a free copy of WoW.

Faith: Isabel and I were in downtown Philly this last weekend, so we ended up going to Mass at St. John the Evangelist. The Franciscans there kept me a little nervous with repeated references to modern day social justice issues, but I have to admit that the priest who said our Mass was one of the most energetic and joyful presiders I've ever seen. Sang his way through pretty much the whole thing, God bless him. It's also a pretty awesome building, if you get a chance to see it.

Culture: Do I buy The Force Unleashed II as a reward for finishing my job applications? The trailers look pretty awesome...but so did the trailers for every prequel movie...I've been burnt before.

Good News

Archbishop Edwin Frederick O'Brien will become the fifteenth archbishop of Baltimore.
Good news for Baltimore, Archbishop O'Brien, and Cardinal Keeler.

I've met Archbishop O'Brien several times at the CSC, he would help out at the leadership conference as well as say mass on several occasions.

You can read more here.

"Something More Manageable"

Only read if you want to get upset.

Does Anyone Think This Was a Fair Question?

Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes asks Mitt Romney a Mormon, whether or not they engaged in premarital sex.  I think Romney is getting picked on because he's a Mormon, EVERY announced candidate professes to be a member of some religious tradition and all of their religious traditions oppose premarital sex.  But I don't think Obama, Edwards or Clinton would be asked that question.  So should the personal questions be asked?  I can't say the Romney's answer, "No," affected my judgment of him as a presidential candidate.  I must say I'm viscerally opposed to creating a checklist of all the grave sins and ask a candidate to check them off.

Forgetting history doomed to repeat etc.

Remember the days when that foolish "foreign-government" slam against Catholics regarding the Pope was actually something people took seriously?  When people sang songs, and meant it, like "Oh, I'd rather be a Klansman in my robes of snowy white/Than be a Catholic priest and wear a robe as black as night/For a Klansman is American and America is his home/But a Catholic priest is loyal to a foreign prince in Rome"?

Hopefully this business that MCJ raises the alarm about in his own communion is an isolated case and not the "latest thing" - protesting Christian orthodoxy as subjection to foreign domination and un-American.

Thank you, Get Religion

For your coverage of the coverage of the Apostolic Exhortation.  Too bad everyone who reads the papers won't read this.

Apparently, if I was "normal,"

(I am presuming that Reuters thinks of its readership as composed chiefly of "normal" people), I would be searching the Pope's proclamation for what it said about the gay and/or sexual revolution agenda.

I was a bit surprised that the article did mention liturgy at the end:

In another section, Benedict lamented that many Catholic priests did not know Latin, the official language of the Church. 

He said Latin should be used in parts of large open-air masses held at international gatherings "to express more clearly the unity and universality of the Church".

He said he wanted to see more Latin and more Gregorian chant used in Church services.

"Certainly, as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another," he said."

If you were wondering, I did not edit that chunk of text myself.  

Rumor Mill

An Australian newspaper claims that Pope Benedict plans to release the rumored indult as a motu proprio soon.

Things that you should know that reporters probably do not know to tell you:

1.) Rumors.  The exact same rumors were bandied about at this exact same time last year.  Only I didn't hear the thing about the printers.  But even if it's a true rumor, it could be true for the more remote future rather than the near future.  You know how the Vatican works.

2.) The "Latin Mass."  Vatican II did not "get rid" of Latin, although a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking so.  So far as I know, every Sacramentary has the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin.  If you look in the front of an English Sacramentary, you will see a decree from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments dated March 26, 1970 stating that the Latin edition of the new (1970) Roman Missal may be used immediately as soon as it is printed, but other languages must wait for special permission.

3.) What changes I expect you will (or won't) see in the near future.  Don't suppose that there will be this huge tide of 1962 Missal (aka the Tridentine Mass) sweeping in.  If you don't understand how this works -  How many priests do you know who are prepared to celebrate Mass according to the current (1970) Roman Missal mostly or all in Latin (which is right now always allowed and requires no special permission)?  Divide that number by (by my  guess) ten or perhaps more and you will have an estimate of how many might be interested in celebrating 1962 Missal Mass.

Robotic Ethics Charter

Since Peter has been interested in tackling robot-human ethical issues lately, I thought I'd post this news link.

Maybe they can have a barking meter

NJ residents with noisy dogs could face fines.