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All Caps / Accordian - Madvillain

Who Would Want To Live In a Ghetto?

I originally wrote a version of this post for the Pilgrim Center of Hope.

Alley. Jacek Yerka (2004)

As the media assistant for the Pilgrim Center of Hope I do a number of things, including screening telephone calls for our weekly show Catholicism Live!. (That means if you called and weren’t given time to talk about your question or comment, you can blame me. Please send all hate mail to media@fakeaddress.com.)

Last week, we had a show about porn. Not my favorite talk show topic, but my job was thankfully behind the scenes for this one. Though if I were the interviewer I'd say, "Other people's sex is boring. Porn is stupid. Let's talk about real intimacy, and why it's funny."

The promo for this episode got thirteen shares on Facebook. Thirteen! But you know who didn’t share the promo?

The one lady who called in.

I know this because I talked with her for a few minutes, and she vented her spleen about just how terrible it was that we were talking about porn.

Couldn’t we talk about something else?, she wanted to know.
There’s so much beauty in the faith and rich history of the Church, it would be better to tell others about those things, she asserted.
Do we really think someone who views pornography would listen anyway?, she asked.
And What if a child was listening and, you know, getting ideas!

It was clear from the conversation that she just thought the subject was disgusting and didn’t want to be made uncomfortable. Never mind mercy, forget hope – she just didn’t want to deal with the ‘ew’ factor.

Well, let me tell you: all sin is ugly. All sin. There will always be particular kinds of sins which bother us more than others, for good reasons. There is wisdom in being disturbed. But sheesh, lady. 

There was one other comment she made that was particularly curious: she complained that the program had replaced the EWTN one on the Crusades. That, she asserted, is the kind of thing people should be learning about. We need to be able to defend our faith, after all, and misinformation about the Crusades is always being used against the Church. In other words, Why worry about sinners who are already lost? We need to defend ourselves!

No, people. This is exactly the wrong attitude, and its ironic to worry about being misunderstood while advocating ignorance toward others. I’m reminded of this episode as I read some of the feedback on the bishops’ recent document, Relatio post disceptationem, the result of a week of discussion at the ongoing Synod on the Family in Rome.

Much ink has been spilt over the emphasis on what’s called the “law of gradualness” – a long established, common sense rule of pastoral theology which encourages spiritual advisors to keep in mind that people grow gradually rather than all at once.

The bishops have voiced a desire to ponder whether the Church has failed to create a welcoming atmosphere for people in “irregular unions” (homosexuals, divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, cohabitating couples). They would like to consider how keeping the “law of gradualness” in mind could allow Church leaders to seek out, walk beside, and offer love to people even when they are not living in full communion with the Church.

Here is one beautiful section of the document:

23. Imitating Jesus’ merciful gaze, the Church must accompany her most fragile sons and daughters, marked by wounded and lost love, with attention and care, restoring trust and hope to them like the light of a beacon in a port, or a torch carried among the people to light the way for those who are lost or find themselves in the midst of the storm.

25. …The Church has to carry this out with the tenderness of a mother and the clarity of a teacher (cf. Eph 4,15), in fidelity to the merciful kenosi of Christ. The truth is incarnated in human fragility not to condemn it, but to cure it.

Many Catholics in the public sphere have praised this tonal shift from the bishops. While there are challenges and open questions to be carefully contemplated (as always), it clearly addresses issues with due consideration that have needed this kind of attention for a long time.

Refreshment at the city’s fountain of Taorimina. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1846)

But not all are happy with the document. Some Catholics are downright panicky. Consider these comments gleaned from Facebook:

“The truth is that if it’s approval people want, there are many other better places to find it. The Church’s role should simply be to proclaim the truth. Those who have ears will hear and God will build His Church.”

“Having just attended a retreat on the family, and restoring family life, I got a very clear perspective on the family, and how broken the family is in our society, and how fundamental the family is to our society. This synod, if it persists in the homosexual context, will completely break what the family is.”

“Jesus called a spade a spade way more than anybody else in the Bible. The results of the questionnaire sent out last year should have the Fathers of the Church scared for their eternal lives having allowed so many people to not only fall into but also to embrace grave sin. Their response: to focus on the positive aspects of the sinful choices Catholics have embraced.”

Do you see the same defensive irony in these comments as the lady who called into last week’s show? On the one hand, the Kingdom of God deserves to flourish, to have its truth understood and its rich splendor enjoyed. On the other hand, the Kingdom of God is a ghetto, so if the doors were opened, the roof would likely come tumbling down.

One of these views is correct, and here’s a hint: Who would want to live in a ghetto? Besides Leticia Adams.

Rainbow, New York City. John French Sloan (1912)

"Faith" "Hope" "Love" by Czeslaw Milosz

Faith

Faith is whenever you look 

At a dewdrop or floating leaf

And know that they are there because they have to be.

Even if you close your eyes and dream up things

The world will remain as it has always been

And the leaf will be carried by the waters of the river.

You have faith also when you hurt your foot

Against a sharp rock and you know

That rocks are meant to hurt feet.

See the long shadow that is cast by the tree?

We and the flowers throw shadows on the earth.

What has no shadow has no strength to live.

Hope

Hope is with you when you believe

The earth is not a dream but living flesh,

That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie, 

That all things you have ever seen here

Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.

Could we but look more clearly and wisely

We might discover somewhere in the garden

A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,

That there is nothing, just a seeming,

These are the ones who have no hope.

They think that the moment we turn away,

The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,

As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills-- 

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn't always understand.

My heart is restless until I check Facebook

I used to tell my 8th grade catechism class that "the Gospel is the fullness of reality," repeating it frequently in hopes that, if nothing else, that would stick.

Here we have Louis CK advocating, in his usual princely way . . . something along the same lines of experiencing that fullness.

One takeaway: if you're gonna stab yourself with catharsis, choose something interesting and dewy rather than sterile and insulating. 

The May Magnificat - Gerard Manley Hopkins

May is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—
Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?
Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in every thing—
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.
Well but there was more than this:
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry
And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—
This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.

Fart Jokes, Vol. 1

Artur Rosman, literature/theory/theology/philosophy scholar/professor and blogger at Cosmos the in Lost ("Wherein a Catholic backwardness reigns") shared this on Facebook earlier today:

Post by Artur Sebastian Rosman.

Note the number of comments in the thread.

Some of my favorites:

- The Sound of Music
- As Tears Go By
- Black Snake Moan
- Birth of a Nation
- James and the Giant Peach
- Life Aquatic
- True Grit
- While You Were Sleeping
- The Fast and the Furious
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- 48 Hours
- Some Like It Hot
- Bridget Jones' Diarrhea (cheating, but ha!)
- That Thing You Do
- An Inconvenient Truth
- Honey, I Blew Up the Kids
- Firewalk With Me


And my contribution:

Pompeii

...but even Mongo thought that was low hanging fruit.