Inexcusable

I mean this, the dramatic portrayal of President Ronald Reagan's life.

This twisting of history for what is obviously a political end is preposterous, and inexcusable. At least when liberals or Democrats twist language to their own ends it's subtle.

Sour Mood

I just had my senior picture taken (for the yearbook). As I'm not too keen on posing for snapshots, I approached the affair with a bit of boredom.

After waiting on line (that's right, not in line) for an unnecessary amount of time I finally took my seat beneath the harsh lights.

The woman who was to take my picture asked me to kindly remove the piece of paper I had in my suit's breast pocket. Of course, it wasn't a piece of paper. It was a handkerchief (I wear it as a pocket square, folding and positioning it so that a thin white horizontal strip sticks up and out of my pocket).

Her ignorant suggestion immediately put me in a foul mood. She is a professional photographer. Has she never seen a man wear a pocket square? Has she never even seen a movie wherein men wear pocket squares?

I fault her and this culture of ours. What is the breast pocket for if not to house a handkerchief or pocket square? Must a pocket be purely utilitarian?

Not sure this is totally accurate...

Since Vicious took the test:



BUSINESSMAN
(Dominant Extrovert Concrete Thinker )



Like just 3% of the population you are a BUSINESSMAN (DECT). Hide the children and protect the bunnies, basically. In ancient times you would be a deadly barbarian. These days, you're perfect for Wall Street. You prefer concrete thinking to a more creative style, and your direct modes of thought and action help you succeed in whatever you may try to accomplish.

Your forceful and outgoing personality can make you seem like a hothead, but because your mind ultimately rules your heart you rarely let your emotions get in the way of your goals. By the way, think of Genghis Kahn buying seven million pork bellies on the trading market, and then eating half of them, and you have yourself. Good luck.

UGH!

That someone can be so clinical when discussing abortion is quite disgusting.

Mark Shea's right; this brutal honesty about the culture of death won't make the dark side any friends.

See you in 2054

I was very pleased to see some old friends this weekend, among them my fellow bloggers Eve Tushnet, The Old Oligarch, Cacciaguida, and Zorak.

We spent a lot of time talking about Church union. Eve and I focused on what Catholics and Orthodox could learn from each other. Catholics, because of their willingness to deal with and even assimilate so much of the outside world, have a wealth of knowledge that would be helpful to apply as the hypothetically re-united Church fights against the spiritual vacuum of modernity. Orthodox, because of their strict adherence to the forms of worship (you cannot find an Orthodox parish where the Divine Liturgy has turned watery, while I've heard many horror stories about parishes where the altar and Presence were just a bit hard to find) have been less vulnerable to internal corruption (Orthodoxy never faced a Reformation or other such horrible schisms and heresies).

That should not apply that Orthodoxy is any less intellectual than Catholicism, though. I had the great pleasure of meeting a graduate student in Byzantine ecclesiastical music, the son of an Orthodox priest as well as a graduate of the seminary. He rattled off quite a few books and authors that I will certainly look at in the coming weeks in an attempt to develop a more sophisticated understanding of my faith. In fact, I'm contemplating taking a year off before law school to study theology at either the Holy Cross seminary Boston or St. Vladimir's in NY.

The Old Oligarch and I argued about the Filioque for a while. I think we agreed that this phrase was a little problematic, and did not exactly clarify the nature of the Trinity. I would maintain that we need not even talk about the generation of the Persons of the Trinity to differentiate them; rather, we can talk about the "function," so to speak, of each Person (Father as Source of Godhead, Son as Redeemer, Holy Spirit as Perfector).

If we do talk about their respective generation, the Filioque falls short. The Old Oligarch explained that, because we cannot quite be sure of the difference between "proceeding from" and "begotten of" (if I understood him correctly) the Son and Holy Spirit blur together. So, to tell the difference between these two Persons of thee Trinity, we appeal to Biblical evidence and come to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit proceeds both from the Father and the Son. Now we have a difference between the Son and Holy Spirit, and have a relationship between them apart from the mediation of the Father (in other words, we can now say more than the Holy Spirit relates to the Son through the Father, in that the former proceeds from and the latter is begotten of).

However, the Filioque introduces its own problematic language. Can we really say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son in the same way? I think not. The Old Oligarch and I both agreed that, when most people talk about the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Son, the Holy Spirit is being sent from the Father and through the Son (perhaps I'll edit this post later on by finding some Biblical passages, but dinner is in a few minutes). So, what we really need is a third word, apart from proceeding and begetting, to explain how the Holy Spirit "proceeds from" the Son.

If we establish that the Father and the Son are "doing" different things, I think we can clear up the big theological difference between Catholics and Orthodox.

Regardless, I would rather the two sides at least achieved sacramental unity, even before sorting out their theological differences. I find that having attended services at St. Mary's with my Catholic friends, along with trying to receive every week and thus attempting to live a sacramentally satisfying life, puts me in a much better position to think about theology. If I may tweak the saying that Mark Shea is so fond of ("Sin makes you stupid"): if we can pray together and receive together, we can think together.

Death, Deliverance?

Let's be honest. This is NOT about the right to die. This is about the right to kill.

Though I do agree that in some instances fiercely clinging to life is just a symptom of a fear of death one should not have, especially a Christian. But in this case it doesn't seem that the husband has done all he could to help rehabilitate his wife. It's a shame that, once again, the law has written off the helpless, the hurt, the human.

Another Day

I was sitting at my desk a few minutes ago, trying to study for the midterm I will be taking on Wednesday, when in a fit of restlessness I looked up. At the back of my desk, towards the wall, stand two pictures of my father.

His birthday was three days ago.

I'm filled by such an indescribable empty feeling. I've no patience with so many of the petty problems I have to deal with every day. To listen to the complaints of people who don't realize how great they've got it, and to have to endure it all with a perfectly straight face and hopefully with a bit of helpful advice, grates like flint on steel, sharpening an already biting pain.

I still remember Wednesday so well. I would call my father at work every Wednesday. He would immediately drop everything, no matter how busy he was, just to take a few minutes to talk to me. The pain and fatigue in his voice would immediately melt away because for those few minutes, energized as he was by the knowledge that his only son loved him enough to call. He was always so happy every Wednesday thanks to those calls, his coworkers told me during his wake and funeral. So happy, just because of a telephone call.

I would have called him to wish him a happy birthday, as I always would. A year older, another year of backbreaking work under his belt, and yet he'd be so happy just because of a simple phone call. Because he knew that his son loved him. What else does a father really need?

It's so simple I can't describe it. It's so powerful that, well, I can't describe it.

I doubt I'll ever fully wrap my mind around what it means to love, and I'm sure those who say they have are lying. The fact that a man can work himself, literally to death, for the sake of his wife and children, who he loves infinitely more than life itself, will never cease to confuse me, despite making so much sense. It's like staring at something sublime, a towering mountain or a never-ending sea: the sheer greatness of these objects cannot help but impress, and cannot help but be to much to comprehend.

So now I think about all the telephone calls I'll never get a chance to make. About all the handshakes I'll miss. About all the hours of just sitting and talking I was really, really looking forward to. And it hurts, it really, really hurts.

I look back on all the times I'll never forget. I remember two summers ago, when I visited my father nearly every day for lunch. We'd always sit upstairs for an hour or so and just talk for a while. Work would wait during that hour because it was as close to sacred as you can get outside of church. He'd tell me things I'd never heard before, things he probably never told anyone else. I got to know my father a lot that summer. 2002, one hell of a year.

But that year is gone. Those days are gone. Another day goes by, so much poorer than the days that once were.

I wish I could have done something at least. My mother visited his grave and left some flowers, keeping her weekly vigil going. I wish I could have been there, even though the few minutes I spend by his grave every week I'm home are invariably painful.

I really wish I could call and say hello. That's it, just a simple hello.

My father took it really hard when my grandfather died. A few weeks later, he received a call at work. On the other end of the line was the rough, unmistakable voice of my grandfather, repeating my father's name over and over and telling him how much he loved him.

One of those wouldn't be so bad.

Lord have mercy on his soul, on the souls of my grandfather and grandmother, and on those he's left behind. Mother Mary and St. Andrew, along with the whole host of Heaven, please pray for us.

Interesting

Couples seeking to marry in China must decide to give themselves the option to divorce or not. Makes you think about what marriage is, which is the point.

(via Zorak)