I'm just back from the weekend retreat for the GNT community. The charismatic reputation the university is known for was lived up to over the weekend - plenty of tongues, worship, praise music, and the like. For the most part, I was fine with it, though it was mildly irritating a few times in matters mostly unrelated to anything charismatic.

I let myself be prayed over by our New Zealand priest, Fr. Mike, and in the process received a gift completely unexpected as far as I was concerned. It wasn't anything that would be considered charismatic in the ordinary sense, but a sort of personal revelation. A truth was revealed about myself - one I would not have admitted and one I really wasn't even aware of. Then Christ revealed something about our relationship and His love of me in an intensely personal manner. The tissues they had were graciously appreciated after that experience, both by me and by the priest, through whom all of the above was made known.

Contrary to my usual practice, I wrote some notes in a journal later that night, desiring to ensure that certain things would not be forgotten. Regardless, even absent any notes for later reflection, that night is not likely to be one I'll forget anytime soon.

MONDAY UPDATE AND ADDENDUM: The original post has been modified upon further reflection. I also needed to say that the other shoe dropped, so to speak, this morning, which suddenly made everything make sense in its entirety. And that revelation, in its turn, hit straight to the core - as if the previous one didn't.

I felt somewhat like St. Paul must have felt, suddenly realizing how far off the right path he'd strayed and the gravity of what he'd done. I feel worse about this than I do about any of my other sins, partly because it's the root cause of a lot of them. It's truly humbling what dirt God can find in the hidden depths of the soul.

Posted by Justice at 9:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Deacon Bill sounds more than a little worried these days on EWTN. In over three years of watching, I've often seen appeals due to temporary fundraising shortfalls, but I can't remember hearing him appeal to rich people specifically, even though it's often happened throughout EWTN's history.

The little people are rich collectively, so if you can, drop some spare funds in EWTN's collection basket to help them out. If not, pray that they can raise the needed funds.

Posted by Justice at 1:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Regarding the present question of whether or not to deny communion to public officials who involve themselves in the scandal of supporting things like abortion or gay marriage, I ran across this passage from the old Rite of Penance given in the 1964 edition of the Roman Ritual (Part V, Chapter I):

23. The priest must take great pains to decide in which instances absolution should be given, denied, or deferred, lest he absolve such as are indisposed for this benefit--persons, for example, who give no indication of contrition, who refuse to put an end to hatred and enmity, to make restitution when they are able, to give up an approximate occasion of sin, or in any other way refuse to forsake their sins and amend their life. To this class belong also persons who have given public scandal, unless they make public satisfaction and remove the scandal. Moreover, he cannot absolve any whose sins are reserved to higher authorities.

No beating around the bush with that - and this isn't just saying communion should be refused, but absolution of sins.

Incidentally, I was thumbing through the old rite since I'd noticed in the Latin a rather curious phrase in the absolution, Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat - may our Lord Jesus Christ absolve you. It's not essential to the form, although it certainly makes clearer what the sacrament's purpose is. Perhaps at some point, this can be re-inserted into the current absolution prayer, as it can fit in rather naturally after "may God grant you pardon and peace."

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Following a technical gaffe on my part, comments have now been restored.

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I won't be around this entire weekend, nor will I be reachable. Since spam has been rather nasty of late, I've switched off comments while I'm gone.

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In the course of reading the material for the second paper in Biblical Foundations, it's interesting that the major work which really leapt out at me is a critique of the Enlightenment by the Protestant Colin Gunton, Enlightenment & Alienation, which is a good complement to reading Fides et Ratio. I wish I'd had it when I read Fides et Ratio the first time around, since it really goes to the heart of the problem. Not surprisingly, this work is hard to find; barely a dozen institutes of higher learning in Ohio even have a copy.

Raymond Brown's works have been much more of a hassle to read, since his style is characterized by making an intelligent point and then following it up in such a way as to make me doubt the veracity of what he'd said before. I also fail to see how the Bible can have meant something in the past, but now it means something else. Now I know why Deacon Mike cringed when I told him I had some of his work on my reading list. There's some useful material in there, but it needs to be carefully lifted out. Exactly how did he end up with the Nihil Obstat?

Incidentally, a paper Pope Benedict XVI wrote and presented at a conference with Brown more than 15 years ago that was seen as contrary to Brown also made its way onto the reading list.

Posted by Justice at 3:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

While last week's test went much better than expected, thanks to some mercy, I am now hopelessly behind on a paper due on Thursday. The good news is I at least managed to take care of Tuesday's paper in due order, doing most of the work last week.

I will now be burying myself in books, trying to finish reading 2 books, excerpts from 3 more, and some articles that have been neglected. At least this time, I'm highlighting with my topic in mind, which will likely be on Enlightenment epistemology.

Posted by Justice at 12:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, gas prices hit a high of $3.099 here in Steubenville. The current price of gas has fallen a whopping 72 cents since then, going for $2.379 this weekend, making gas at least 12 cents per gallon cheaper than when I came down to Steubenville in late August (I can't remember if it was $2.499 or $2.599 at the time).

That's a pretty substantial decline in only a month and a half's time, and it's often been sudden, dropping in increments of a nickel or more overnight at times. Maybe they'll have to drag out the ones again at some point.

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I saw this over on the Curt Jester, and upon checking, found the 5th sentence of my 23rd post too funny not to post this meme and pass it along.

The meme's rules:

1.Go into your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Post the fifth sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.

My 23rd post was entitled Consecration of Virgins, and the 5th sentence of that post happens to be:

Time to get the word out, it'd be nice to have more consecrated virgins than dedicated twits.

As a little incentive to go check out that post, I linked to an example of what I considered dedicated twits.

The hot potato's being passed on to the Angry Twins, Friary Notes, Happy Catholic, Shrine of the Holy Whapping, and Flying Stars.

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The Curt Jester points to a rather interesting decree from the USCCB on clerical garb. Oddly enough, I've noticed more priests back home out of clerical dress since that was published in 1999 than I can ever remember before that. Particularly the Newman Center priests who never wore chasubles on any occasion and the priest who showed up for mass in jeans and a t-shirt.

Perhaps someone edited the decree along the way from:

In liturgical rites, clerics shall wear the vesture prescribed in the proper liturgical books. Outside liturgical functions, a black suit and Roman collar are the usual attire for priests. The use of the cassock is at the discretion of the cleric.

to

In liturgical rites, clerics shall not wear the vesture prescribed in the proper liturgical books. Outside liturgical functions, a black suit and Roman collar are unusual attire for priests. The use of the cassock is at the indiscretion of the cleric.

Posted by Justice at 9:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I thought Fr. Giles's midterm last week was about the worst I was going to see this semester. It turns out I was wrong about that, as today's Christian Moral Principles exam was so punishing, someone broke down and cried before it was over. That's the second exam in a row in which that's happened - not a good sign. Can someone explain to me why the 601 class is going easier than any of the background classes?

Not that the exam was unfair, as I recognized almost everything as being from the lectures, they just didn't happen to be things I thought would appear on the exam. In a way, this stems from interpreting "fill in the blank" to mean something like one blank in a sentence, not a fairly challenging task of trying to reconstruct exact quotations from the notes. Other than the multiplicity of such questions, most of the exam wasn't too bad.

I do find it discomforting that it doesn't seem like anybody from that class really believes that they did well, including myself. Perhaps the deacon will have some mercy on us given the near universality of gloom. If I escape with something in the B range, I will be very happy, since I can make that up by knowing how to study for the next exam.

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A funny story about library books...

Some weeks ago, I went to look for a book that I needed to read for a book report in the library. As both copies were then unavailable, I put one on reserve. Before it reached Franciscan, one of the two checked out copies came back, which I then checked out. Once the reserve showed up, I promptly sent it back, as I didn't want to risk any chance of incurring the $125 lost book fee.

Today, I went to renew my books online, and noticed the system said I had two copies of the book in question checked out. Thinking this might have been the loaned out book still in the system, I had them check it out, only to say that I had both Franciscan copies. Sure enough, upon coming home, I discovered that I do indeed have both copies.

So the funny thing is, I went to the library to check out a book I already had, not realizing I'd picked it up as a resource for another class and that I was one of the two people I was waiting on to return the book. And then I checked out the second copy, and for the last 2 weeks hadn't realized I had both copies. And when the reserve copy came in, for a few moments, I actually had three copies of the exact same book checked out.

The only thing funnier than this bit of humorous nonsense is that the library's computer system (which is networked across the state) apparently had no problem letting me check out three copies of the same book. The exceedingly popular book that I can't get enough of? The Sources of Revelation by Henri de Lubac. Incidentally, though I hold both copies, unless someone else wants them, I can theoretically hoard them for almost another month with renewals. I think I'll just turn one back in tomorrow and have a good laugh out of it.

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Fr. Benedict Groeschel was very timely last night in the Sunday Night Live show on EWTN when he spoke about private revelations toward the end of the show. He mentioned three saints who had visions or private revelations that were incorrect, and the errors of which were outlined by Pope Benedict XIV. The three saints in question are St. Hildegarde, St. Bridget, and St. Catherine of Siena. St. Catherine Laboure also apparently had an error in prophetic predictions, muffing at least two of them, to which she replied, "I got it wrong." That someone who experienced what the Church considers a genuine apparition of the Blessed Virgin was capable of misreading the Holy Spirit suggests it really is wise to take these things with a grain of salt, since we're all fallible, even in discerning the Spirit's message. (The Sunday Night Live audio clip can be downloaded this week while it's up. The above information is located around the 50:00 mark.)

Private revelations have been quite the topic of discussion in the last week, mainly on topics that aren't terribly important, so this was a convenient whack back to common sense, since tossing private revelations and speculative theology around is all rather pointless if it's not based in the teachings of the Church or the Bible.

Sidenote - as if to further reinforce the point that the writings of the saints aren't guaranteed to be free of error, today I chose to read from St. Alphonsus Liguori, in which he stated rather simply that the Eucharist would disappear from earth for a period of three and a half years when the Antichrist came around. That's pretty sketchy, as that doesn't even leave a faithful remnant (as many like to call it) to keep the Sacraments going.

Posted by Justice at 11:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Morristown and Beleaguered TA have been moved to the inactive list, as the former's author is in Iraq and not able to post, and the latter's author has switched over to Centrifugal Farce, which has been added to the list.

Mark Shea returns to the active list, a bit late, since I didn't notice his return about 6 weeks ago.

Kaus Files joins the pundits list again, as he's just too witty not to enjoy.

New to the list is Friary Notes, by Br. Seraphim Beshoner, one of the TORs in Steubenville. While he's seen me before, he wouldn't know me as the author of this blog...yet, anyway.

Posted by Justice at 4:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fr. Giles sprang a relatively difficult exam in Ecclesiology. I had been expecting a more general test, but thankfully, as it was fill-in, true/false, and multiple choice, I was able to manage. I don't quite agree with the asking of 2 questions based on an analogy by the German theologian Tommes (that the early Church was more like an organism than an organization), or the question asking whether it was true that the canonists manned the cannons for the Church during the Middle Ages (I took him literally and said false...others took it figuratively and said true).

Overall, it was one of those exams where it was done in 15 minutes if one was very familiar with the material. It was a royal nightmare to those who didn't know the material well enough, as attention to detail was everything on this exam, and partial knowledge was probably more a hindrance than no knowledge at all on some of the multiple choice and true/false questions (for example, knowing Aquinas was an Aristotelian probably cost people if they forgot the Summa's exitus/redditus is neo-Platonic).

Posted by Justice at 4:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

EWTN's been airing a miniseries on St. Teresa of Avila this week. I've been catching it at the ungodly hour of 3 in the morning, since I'm never home at the more reasonable airing at 5 in the evening. It continues through Friday at the same times. The series is in Spanish, with English subtitling.

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It turns out that I know one of the priests on the Vatican's seminary visitation team, and the pick doesn't do much to boost my confidence that they'll be getting to the bottom of things. I say this mostly based on my experience with him as a Confessor, which was, to say as little as possible, not exactly according to the Rite (once it was definitely invalid) and occasionally on shaky ground in moral theology.

Hopefully my experience is an outlier, as the priest did genuinely seem to be trying his best to educate his flock in the parish the few times I heard Mass, and I was notoriously difficult as a penitent at that point in time. The man did have an unfortunate tendency to compromise on rubrics for convenience's sake though, so I'll be praying for him.

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Well, after reading a week's worth of commentary on Harriet Miers, I note a general theme that most people, regardless of position, are arguing for principle over policy. The trouble is, the nomination has revealed fault lines in the Republican party because of a disagreement over the principles involved.

The Republicans, having been more like a tent party in recent years, have two main ideas over who they want as a Supreme Court justice. One group would like someone with a sound, conservative judicial theory, who won't be an activist on the bench. The other side would like someone to overturn Roe v Wade first and foremost and be an ally in the culture wars, but doesn't put as much importance on other legal issues.

Granted, Bush was put in a difficult situation with the nominations. He either had to choose a nominee that managed to satisfy both groups, who would also have a record sure to bring on a fight by Democrats, pick a nominee that appealed to one side and not the other, or pick a nominee that satisfied neither. I do think the appearance of Republican weakness in the Senate, whether or not it was really true, led to the two picks he's made so far. In a way, Roberts was intended to appeal to the conservative judicial theory folks while Miers is an attempt to make the social conservative wing happy. The outcome has been that nobody is really happy because Bush, by trying to make everyone happy, has rather succeeded in doing the opposite.

Provoking all this infighting may well have been a mistake that will set the conservatives back in the short-term. In a way, however, the discussion is healthy to the extent that it shows that the Republican party is not a monolith. Chesterton once said that a thing worth doing was worth doing badly - and that sums up Bush's attempts to sell his nominees to his backers, as well as the response of his supporters to the nominations. The Democrats, make no mistake, would have picked someone and been united behind them all the way to the swearing-in ceremony, smooth as the paved road to hell.

By all means, if the objection to Miers is based on principle, and not merely policy objections, real or feared, stick to the principle. It's not worth selling out principles to get the policy we want, since eventually the abandoned principles will be sorely missed at a later date. But on the other hand, can we try not to act like the Democratic base when we disagree with each other? I've never seen an argument in which anger, nastiness, or anything else personal like cries of betrayal helped the case.

Posted by Justice at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Due to the new installation of Movable Type, the filtering system is brand new and hasn't yet been trained to filter out spam as well as it should. As such, spam has been hitting some entries in the blog. Please bear with the scum until the system can learn how to deal with it.

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Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor who illegally married gay couples in California last year, has arguably sent the concept of civil rights even further into the ground by saying wireless access is a civil rights issue. Excuse me? Since when did access to the internet become a civil right? I would have thought something a little more basic, like perhaps owning a home, would come before internet access in the civil rights arena. Is Newsom planning to push for wireless access across the entire third world, or is this only a civil right for his own constituency?

This puts his gay marriage antics last year more in context. It's not that he's principled, just that he has such a wide concept of civil rights, he'd probably be willing to claim that unfettered access to porn is also a civil right, along with the ability to have stores open 24/7 for the customer's convenience. Where exactly does the runaway train of rights stop?

Can we get back on the page with civil rights and return to the original idea that civil rights only deal with inherent human dignity, and not the whims and pleasures of a rich society gone mad?

Posted by Justice at 3:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Andy, thankfully over his days as a Beleagured TA, has taken up a new home at Centrifugal Farce. Let me tell you, setting that up had all the makings of a farce, as I spent about 2 hours making a mess of my web server and Movable Type due to a path error on my part. I had actually denied public access to the site for a while. Never doubt the value of COPY/PASTE when dealing with paths.

Posted by Justice at 12:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Well, the first theology position paper came back, a solid A-, a bit better than what I was expecting, given I'm not terribly used to writing such things. The professor's biggest gripe appears to have been some sloppy grammar (I knew I'd missed a reference to fundamentalism in the plural), mainly my that's and which's not being used correctly. Otherwise, I only had a couple issues with a theological explanation that was a bit dubious, but not obviously in error (inerrancy of Scripture), and some vagueness about how Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium all operated in harmony.

The wit thrown into the paper apparently didn't draw any particular notice, which I'll take as license to use it again. One example:

"...the Bible was never intended as a divine self-help manual to answer any and all questions, ..." [Final Fantasy 6 influenced this line, making it one of the few times a video game has found its way into a theology paper.]

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My copy of Movable Type is now licensed, making use of the discount Six Apart offered last month. Hopefully the upgrade will take care of spam issues that have been cropping up of late.

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It's certainly been an interesting day reading reaction to the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court from my usual daily reading. Most reaction has been negative, the notable exceptions being Hugh Hewitt and the Anchoress.

Granted, the woman has never actually been a judge before, which is the biggest problem I have with the selection. The Supreme Court isn't exactly the place to start, although the woman has a legal background and would hopefully be able to manage. I'm not particularly bothered by the donations to Democrats in the late 1980s up through the early 1990s. I was on the Dem side of the aisle much longer than that, and it's pointless to get stuck on issues in the past which might not be relevant any more.

I am encouraged by the fact that Miers belongs to what's described as an evangelical "fundamentalist" church, and has for at least the last 10 years, and is described by her pastor as holding beliefs consistent with that faith. That inspires confidence on social issues, as does some pro-life work done in the legal profession.

It's probably not what conservatives, myself included, were hoping for, but when a President gets elected on the basis of him being the better of two lousy options (or in New York, the best of seven lousy options), this is what results. Make the best of the situation and aim for a better outcome next time around, assuming this is a bad move, which it may well not be. Rome was not built in a day, and correcting the government is NOT going to happen without its ups and downs. Besides, Bush has been very shrewd as President, and I wouldn't put it past him to have done this just because he knew it would tick off half the right, making him and his picks seem more moderate and reasonable by comparison (a potential asset for the next selection).

Posted by Justice at 9:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Franciscan University's annual Medieval Festival will run later today (Saturday) from noon to midnight. For anyone in the nearby area who would like to launch water balloons at me in the Tomato Theatre production, the showtimes are 12:00, 1:20, and 3:30. When I'm not doing that, I'm likely to be floating around shooting pictures in a knight costume. If I'm lucky, I might be able to pick up a sword and shield for it...

Posted by Justice at 12:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack