Did You See What I Saw?

We watched the movie:  "The Invention of Lying"  the other night. It was ultimately intended as a comedy but I think it was also intended as an attack at organized religion and any belief in God at all.   Spoiler alert:  if you haven't yet seen the movie there are a few plot points revealed in the next few paragraphs.

 The people live in a world where not only do they always speak the truth, but they also must be brutally honest and have no filtering mechanism whatsoever.  In other words they say exactly what is on their minds in a very unvarnished way.  Then one man inadvertently discoverers that he can lie and because no one else does people believe what he says.  He begins to lie to make the world better for himself, creating a world the way he wants it to be.

When he visits his mother in the hospital and her Dr. has informed her that she will most likely die that day and it will be all over. The son panics and tells his mom whatever he can think of about an afterlife that he thinks will make her happy as she dies, and the Dr and Nurses hear him.   When word gets out that he knows what happens after you die he has to explain how he knows so he makes up a reason for how he came to know this information and what it all means.  No matter how simple the message he was trying to impart, people kept twisting it or hearing what they wanted to hear or just jumbling it into a huge mess, so he kept having to add more and more detail


It was really interesting to me as a commentary on the difficult task of the theologian.  Theologians have the task of creating apprehension of the ineffable.  They try to keep their explanations simple, but just like the man in the movie, no matter how simply they try, people hear what they want to hear, or get the message muddled.  The theologian thinks his message is very clear yet the hearers can't or won't hear it as clearly as he presents it.

Or maybe I was just projecting my own frustrations at trying to write simple essays on theology into this little film. 

Why don't you see the movie and tell me what you think.

Pax

It is all about the Birth of Mary, People

This is the one term of Catholic Church doctrine that is misinterpreted by so many people. Miss-used might be a better way to say it. I get really tired when I hear people makings jokes about the Immaculate Conception, when they are really trying to reference the Virgin Birth. I don't mind you making fun of my faith tradition, I just wish you would bother to take the time to get to know a little about it before you go spouting off your big mouth.

This quote below is a wonderful explanation as to why Mary had to be conceived without sin in order to be prepared to be the Theotokos (God bearer). God makes sense if you just take the time to think logically about how this was all set about.

Anyway, Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Had Infinite Purity chosen any other port of entrance into humanity but that of human purity,

it would have created a tremendous difficulty, namely,

how could He be sinless if He was born of sin-laden humanity?

- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

(On the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

Pax

The Dumb Ox . . .

Who changed the World!

Today we celebrate the Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas whose nick name among the men he attended college classes with was "the dumb ox" both for his size and for the labored way in which he thought out each statement before he made them.

Can you imagine what our faith or the world for that matter would be like without the legacy that this "dumb ox" left behind? Not only his catechetical legacy but his spiritual one as well.

We should all be so deliberate in choosing our words, I think.

Happy Feast Day to Thomas.

Happy Feast Day to us all.

Pax

RIP Avery Cardinal Dulles SJ

One of the best books I ever read (long before I ever decided to go to Gradual School I might add) was The Assurance of Things Hoped For., By Avery Cardinal Dulles SJ It was the most amazingly clear (but very deep) study of faith I had ever read. I was hooked from that point.

I loved the way Cardinal Dulles could explain the most complex of issues (although I will freely admit that there were times that I had to read certain passages two and even three times to be sure I was comprehending exactly what he was saying).

When I did reach Gradual school I had a professor there who had studied under "Fr. Dulles" at Catholic U in DC. We were treated to many very funny and captivating stories about him.

So I was saddened to hear that he had died this week.

His faith and service to the Church will be greatly rewarded in heaven.

Pax

A Little Help

Tonight I have to give a talk at RCIA:

The Ten Commandments NOT The Ten Suggestions


In the eight years that I have done RCIA ministry this is my least favorite talk and one I would never freely choose to do. Out of those eight years, it has fallen upon my shoulders to give this talk . . .



wait for it . . .



eight times!


I guess, God understands better than I do that I have a perspective on sin and the ten commandments that will help those entering the church to see the freedom that they offer as a guide for living one's life.

If you get a chance I would appreciate a prayer (and we all know how God's time works, so if you are reading this on Thursday or Friday or even December 10th, say a prayer for me, it won't go wasted). that my talk goes well and that the young men and women in this RCIA class will have a much better understanding of the freedom of living a moral life after I break open the commandments with them.

I use a very interactive style, and try to engage them as much as possible in the interpretation process, so the Holy Spirit can guide the direction in which the discussion takes. I would hate to go into the evening knowing exactly what I was going to say based upon my faults and failings and not address any of their specific needs. Heaven knows I have enough faults to go around, but my faults are mine and I don't begin to think they would be the same as for a 19 years old college male.

So, again, please send up a prayer that things go well, and that hearts are opened and touched. I would appreciate the back-up.

Pax

Gradual School Flash Back . . Compliments of the Ironic Catholic

I hope she doesn't mind I am going to quote it here because I burst out laughing, sprayed my computer with coffee and scared my kids this morning:


The Ironic Catholic: Weather: An Apophatic Front Sweeps In Today:

"Periods of apophatic darkness including ways of negation over far northern Minnesota, should make a paradigm shift into northern Wisconsin, processing but not spirating well north of the metro area.
The hypostatic union may spark numerous parabolic metaphors from late Tuesday night into Friday, ripe for nighttime analogical imagination capable of localized cataphaticism.

Eschatological forecast: 1.5' of dogma by Friday, some interpretation over the millenia, when most apocalyptic language should pass to our south, over Iowa. Next age should be clear (but yet more windy) than the last."

If you intone the words in a southern drawl and add a knowing yesssss to the end of each paragraph, this could have come from the mouth of one of my professors at Gradual School as a way to confound the less aware students. Sadly, some of my fellow gradual school classmates would be nodding along in agreement while others were furiously scribbling notes. Still others would be fumbling with their theological dictionary under the table furiously looking up every other word trying to appear as though they were keeping up with the flow of his discourse. (I have to admit that my first class I was one of the ones withe the theological dictionary in my lap), but even I would have known that this was too much, I hope.

This is way too funny. I may send it to Fr. Denis. It will make his day. I can just hear him saying "Yesssssss" in his knowing way after he has read it, with that little smile on his angelic face.

Pax

GO:Theology Thursday: What I'm Reading

I picked up a little book at a Red Cross Book Fair for no better reasons and than:

1) it was dollar-a-bag day

& 2) I could fit it into my bag

& 3) it was written by a Jesuit

Seriously, one should never need more compelling reasons to purchase a book, don't you think? It sat on my shelf for months unread as I completed my Gradual School finals. Then just as I was entering the Season of Lent this year and looking for something new to read my eye landed on this little blue volume with the interesting title:

The Three Keys to Heaven

by Moritz Meschler, S.J.

I had all but forgotten about slipping it into the crevice at the side of my "dollar-a-bag" day haul. Seeing no other title that really sparked my interest, I picked up this little volume and decided to give it a read as my Lenten Study. The author chose a very old style of flowery language (and gender exclusive pronouns ) and because of those facts I assumed it had been written a very long time ago, but the copyright date is 1981-- so go figure. Part of the language difficulty might be that the author first wrote in German and this was a translation from German, so I give him some leeway that the stiffness comes from translational difficulty.

Having said that, I LOVE THIS BOOK. The wisdom of the message is not lost in the odd language choices. In fact not long after my first quick read through I began to re-read it and underline passages I wanted to remember (as if I were studying again).

The "keys to heaven" or fundamental principals of the spiritual life as the author sees them are: prayer, self denial, and love of the Divine Saviour. Each of the three is taken in great detail from a basic definition to stumbling blocks, to graces received. My greatest struggle with the language was in the section on self denial because the author uses the language of mortification and I struggle to understand that type of language completely, but even so there is so much to be gained from the wisdom of those pages. One of my favorite passages from this section (it became my lectio divina for that day in fact) was:

Too much food overburdens the stomach, too much knowledge
puffs up the mind. Knowledge is not the highest good, truth stands
higher. Without truth, knowledge is mere deceit and falsehood.
Therefore, study and inquiry must follow a certain order: we must learn first what is necessary, then what is useful, then what is pleasant.

(The Three Keys to Heaven M. Meschler S.J. 100)

Anyway, I just wanted to share a wonderful little book that I found by God-incidence at a Red Cross book fair and have become so attached to because it is teaching me volumes about the spiritual life. I am continuing to study and underline passages to use as Lectio.

I hope you can find a copy somewhere (although I doubt you will find one for the same price I paid for my copy) and reap the same benefit.

Pax

GO Two-fer What I'm Writing Wednesday and Theology Thursday Rolled Into One

On Wednesday my lovely 18 year old daughter had a seizure at school. She hasn't had a seizure since she was 13 years old, when she was diagnosed with epilepsy so we were a bit shocked by this turn of events, but after a visit to her Neurologist, we may have a reason for this and it may be an isolated incident. Just to be safe though, she is being placed back on a maintenance dose of epilepsy meds for the time being and we are praying that she has no more problems.

Because having to deal with her problem threw off my schedule for the day I am combining my two topic lines for Wednesday and Thursday and I am going to feature one of my articles from Helium.com as the GO Theology Thursday blog entry.

I want to emphasize for those of you who might be wondering why someone who just completed a degree in Theology would write an essay on the Eucharist in this simple language that when I write for Helium I try to write with the intention of making my essays understandable to anyone who has never in their lives even entered a Catholic Church. I try to explain Catholic doctrine and practices in as simple a language as I can. I think I did a very nice job in this particular essay on the topic of Eucharist and its meaning to mankind.

I hope you enjoy it.

Pax

*Preview of Purgatory, Perhaps*

So, today I was at the drugstore:

• standing in line

• reading my philosophy textbook

• listening to Abba on the Muzak system.

Was that a foretaste of what my purgatory will be like?

I think so.





Pax

Amazing Things Happen When You Can't Sleep OR Angelmeg's Theology Lesson for the Week

My sister couldn't sleep so she was watching a movie in her room with the sound up way too loud and it woke me up.

Anyway I decided to surf the blogosphere anc check out some weblogs of seminarians from my beloved Saint Meinrad just for kicks.

That is when I came across this Blog by one seminarian, John O'Neill, that I have had the pleasure of actually meeting, though I don't know if he would remember me.


What I really want you to read is this paper he wrote for his Theological Anthropology Course.


I know this professor, and were it not for my slavish need to actually graduate soon and being focussed these days on only taking courses that are required for graduation I would have signed up for this course. More's the pity I suppose.

Separation of Church and State of Matter?

Read This Awesome Post from Ironic Catholic, which actually was written by her devoted husband.

Having worked in a Home Economics/Food and Nutrition office in College this was extremely funny to me in ways I can't even begin to explain.

I was laughing so hard I think I may have done some aerobic exercise for today. So I have that going for me as well.

Enjoy.

Pax

I'm in a Flannery State of Mind

We have had a month around here.

Car trouble like you wouldn't believe. I just bought a new car to replace the car that was hit and now my new car is in the shop because I found out that the heater doesn't work. Lucky for me that the place I purchased it from is willing to take it in and make things right for me.

But, just when my car worries are getting worked out, my husband's car is doing strange things again (and I mean really strange). So, lucky for me I bought a car big enough to hold the entire family.

God's grace isn't warm and fuzzy, sometimes it is dark and disruptive. That is just what the woman after my own heart Flannery was always trying to tell people with her fiction. God loves us and when we love Him that doesn't make our lives perfect it just means that we aren't alone in our troubles.

So, we are off to try to get our car situations worked out. God is good, all the time. Even when we have to pick up one car, just to take the other one to the shop.

Pax

Children of Men

WARNING: This Trailer made me cry,

I hope the movie lives up to the preview . . .






h/t to Mike at The Propaganda Machine for the link

What I'm Not Missing

Mrangelmeg and I took his cousin Lilli to St Meinrad with us on Friday evening for a couple of functions that happened to be going on that evening in conjunction with this semester's lay student class weekend. As I have said before I am happily not taking a class this semester, but these two particular functions were ones that were not to be missed.

The first was the dedication of a painting that was donated to the school by the students of Fr Damien Dietlein OSB, the Old Testament Professor there. The picture is called Exodus and is of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, painted by an Ethiopian artist who currently lives in South Dakota. The entire enterprise was done as a surprise to Damo (our name for Father) and he was genuinely touched and surprised by the affair.

The other activity was the inaugural session of Theology in the Round, a session intended to bring Seminarians, Lay Students and Alumni together for an evening of discussion surrounding a topic chosen by a guest speaker. The evening's speaker happened to be another of my professors: Fr. Denis Robinson OSB whom I had for Early Church History and had been telling mrangelmeg about for months. His topic was John Henry Newman and Catholic Education. It was a bit more lecture than discussion, but very interesting none-the-less. I really wanted mrangelmeg to have a chance to experience Fr. Denis because he is a force with which to be reckoned.

After that discussion we spent some time in the little bar on campus which is called the Unstable ( Benedictines take a vow of stability, so they call the bar, the Unstable, get it?) visiting with all my friends who are there for class this weekend while I am not. I do miss them so very much, though I don't miss class at all. I even had a chance to talk to the artist of the painting, which was really cool, they flew him in for the unveiling, but his plane was delayed and he didn't get there till later, but he was going to be there for the weekend.

We had a wonderful time. And we got to see the Extreme Makeover Home Edition house in St. Meinrad (the town) as we drove to the Monastery. How cool was that?

I have to admit, knowing that those of my friends who were there for Fr. Denis' class on Creed were having a quiz on Heresies in the early church on Saturday morning I was more than happy to be returning home Friday night.

Pax