Sitting in Starbucks / Chapters

Many people would be thinking many things as they sat enjoying a 'tall blond (roast)' on a beautiful Friday morning in May, waiting for Canadian Tire to finally getting around to perhaps fixing their car.

I am thinking how much I hate two things: Motown and the Beatles. I always have. Hated both.

And I am sure that this fact is something that distinguishes me from nearly every other human creature under Providence. Beatles songs are just random assemblances of words and sounds under the guise of song-ness (why would one, after all, care to have just one melody and tempo per song?), whereas Motown is a bunch of Raffi played ad nauseum, promoted in an ill-conceived effort to assuage white-guilt with the vindication of black art. If you want black art, any manner of Blues will do. Motown is about as artistic as the Spice Girls. Even philanthropy has standards. Yes, Stevie Wonder is brilliant, but not when singing the Jackson Five.

Am I having a bad day, you ask? No, not at all.

And, I understand the human need to be a part of something bigger than oneself, to have 'culture' they can point to and feel smart for appreciating. But to my mind, liking the Beatles and Motown makes you about as deep as a crepe, makes you the musical equivalent of the dude who hangs the poster of child-killer, Che Guevara, on his wall, thinking thereby that he is 'of the people,' as well as educated, revealing in one fell-swoop to the world that he is neither, nor will he ever be...

Yes, Starbucks / Chapters plays a lot of Beatles and Motown.

And, no, I am not going to still be your friend anyway if you like these things. To be forgiven, a sin must first be confessed and one must adopt a firm purpose of amendment.

Rose Dinner

I had the privilege of having attended my first Rose Dinner that marks the National March for Life in Ottawa. It was very good. It was a real who's who of pro-life Canada. One surprise was seeing that someone that I simply assumed was crazy, was actually very articulate and interesting. I am referring to Linda Gibbons, of course, who offered a heart-felt appeal for support for another jailed pro-life crusader, Mary Wagner.

The dinner was excellent and I met a lot of great people. A person who continues to intrigue me is His Grace, Archbishop Lepine. He has a warm and humble bearing. Apparently he is studying English. He speaks well enough, but it is very impressive to me that he wants to be able to take his whole flock under his wing in this way even more effectively.

So, as a blogger, I have to point out a "thing," though. I wouldn't be a very interesting blogger otherwise.

The thing I want to point out concerns the young people. They were there in great number. In fact, they had their own large hall filled. And let me preface my remarks by saying that young people are vital to the prolife movement and are doing a very admirable job. And, they dressed the part. I think they saw this night as a fun night, to dress up and have a good time.

Nevertheless, I could not help noticing the latest style. It is very short dresses. Not, skirts, dresses. The style seems to be to run half-way down the thigh. Now, let me say this, there is no more powerful force behind abortion in the First World than lasciviousness. Unrestrained sexuality, the sexual revolution, has produced these untold millions of abortions. Nothing else is a more significant contributor. So, why can't these young ladies - and we add, their mothers and fathers - see that there is a direct correlation between less-than-modest attire and abortion? Nor am I denying that one can be pro-life and not in favour of Christian sexual ethics. Some are pro-life and yet not pro-Christian. I doubt these girls would fit into that category. I honestly don't think they thought about it, that they made the connection. Surely, abortion is on one extreme of the moral equation. It is evil par excellence. Immodesty is not nearly as grievous a thing. And sure, some adults would be radically pro-life and yet not have a big problem with drinking too much or swearing. These things aren't murder, after all. And me, I've done A and B and yet would never consider abortion even in my darkest day...

Yet, it is odd, isn't it, these young women with their remarkably short dresses? I guess they don't get that abortion in North America primarily pertains to their junta. It is girls in their teens and 20s who have all the abortions. They are the group that all this is about - the Rose Dinner, the March for Life, etc. So, why haven't we seemed to get across to them that the main reason, or a main reason, why abortions occur in North America is because girls in their age group are not protecting themselves from sexualization? I know that in this day and age it is not PC to tell a woman how to dress. I think I would rather do so than let her face the consequences of figuring this all out on her own. I have seen too many young woman end up with the scars of abortion to not want to say something. Sure, they might get mad at me now, but maybe I'd give them something to consider when they find things in their lives not turning out as their youthful idealism had lead them to expect. Abortion happens. A lot.

Anyway, I know that the day after the Rose Dinner there was planned some sort of youth rally-formation thingy. Maybe that was to occur there. Someone let me know.

St. Joseph the Worker, Give me Work!

You all, my friends, must pray for me today so that I find gainly employment for my family!

A Wider Sense of Stockholm

I just finished reading an excellent book: The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, by J.S. Conway. It's an older book, having been written in the '60s, but for the most part its presentation of the relevant documents is not dated. I am sure it can be improved upon as more documents surface: I think the author mentioned that he could not access those in the then East Germany. I would imagine the USSR had many too of relevance. Nevertheless, the documents and the history here presented was quite thorough and helped me to get beyond the generalized mythology of Nazism that we citizens of the democratic countries have.

So how did the Churches behave? The authors thinks not well, except in a few heroic cases: a few heroic Protestants and a few heroic Catholics. I am not about to call his analysis simplistic, based as it is on a very good historical sense (if we don't know the history then we have no right to an opinion, I believe). Nevertheless, I think he tends to define heroes as those who speak publicly. He doesn't give enough attention to the other modes of heroism. He recognizes them, of course, but doesn't spend too much time talking about them. A lot of blame needs to be dished out, surely, on the Christians of Nazi Germany. I am not saying it doesn't. Yet good people - heroes - should not be painted with that one brush just because they did not act publicly. Prudence, effectiveness, required keeping under the Gestapo's radar.

But I want to talk about something else. Please read Conway's book though. It is extraordinarily interesting and beneficial.

I want to talk about an issue that has arisen in my thinking. I started to think about it last summer when I was reading Radzinsky's biography of Stalin. This was an excellent study, as I think I've indicated in a previous post. I found it especially valuable as an investigation of the manner in which Stalin could manipulate perceptions. That was the foundation of his political success, it seems Radzinski is arguing. What comes out is a presentation of human nature that certainly dissolves liberal optimism. We are not what we think we are as a species.

Conway seems to confirm my thinking. The subject of his analysis is both how the Nazis persecuted the 'two' Christian churches and the response of those being persecuted. Why do we give in so much, make excuses for evil action? I am not a psychologist so I can only hazard guesses. As a theologian I can talk about original sin and then analyze the doctrine of virtue to come up with a partial explanation. All of that is interesting, but purely academic if we can't extend it to our lives today, and that is what I want to talk about.

Surely no one can really deny, can they, that persecution is going on today against Christianity in North America (and Europe and South America; no one doubts that it is in China and the Islamic World)?

But the forms of persecution are somewhat different and a whole lot more subtle than that perpetrated by the Nazis. Or are they?

I think they are not. And I think that we think it is subtler because of this thing, this tendency we have to deny the obvious, unpleasant truth: that people hate us, and that we need to resist them and do unpleasant things as a result.

As another excellent book makes clear - Grassman's On Killing - we are loath to do violence. This all part and parcel of what is customarily referred to as the Stockholm Syndrome: an identification with one's enemies, most broadly speaking. I am not going to make all the logical connections here; I think you can do that for yourself. What is essentially at root here is the basic synergistic principle: avoid evil. Pain is evil, suffering is evil, thus, we run from it by whatever means necessary. What this means for the Churches is that we tend to align ourselves with our enemies: here, feminism, homosexualism, Marxism, etc. This is in essence what Liberal Catholicism is, isn't it? The adoption of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. Why do people follow trends, intellectual or fashion, etc? I've always been fascinated by that phenomenon, since I don't generally do that. Even as a kid my brothers and I never asked for the latest fashion item. I was, and still am, astounded by the sudden proliferation of things like "Areopostole" shirts. When I was in high school it was those ugly "Chip and Pepper" shirts - remember those? Why do we do this? It's basic tribalism, or group-mentality thinking. Human beings are instinctively aware that it is dangerous to stand out, like a stripe-less zebra. Translating that to the ideological sphere, Christians are instinctively aware that they must adopt the common system of belief, since it is dangerous not to.

I have noticed this in the work place: one must blame someone else for a problem if one is to survive. I don't do that, and so suffer the consequences. It requires a certain amount of fortitude to live in the truth. The workplace is a laboratory in which to study poor human behavior, all the things I am talking about: group dynamics of conformity and blame (scapegoating). I have been in enough workplaces to know now that this is a universal phenomenon. It just upset me to realize that a 'Christian' workplace is no different on this score.

Let me give an example of the Stockholm syndrome effecting a liberal Catholic. The person that jumped so quickly to mind was Gary Wills. I have read a few of his things. He has actually made a pretty good contribution to Augustinian Studies, it pains me to admit. Wills first came to the attention of the Catholic intellectual world with his works, Why I am a Catholic and Papal Sin. He has just released another book called Why Priests? I haven't read it, so I can only comment on the other two. It seems to me that these works are classic examples of Stockholm Syndrome. Wills is turning against the Catholic Church which he recognizes is weaker than the dominant secular culture. Sure, he has the gall to yet call himself Catholic - as all liberals have that gall, when there is nothing Catholic about them. Why would he not just say, I am no longer Catholic? Because he knows that one of the dominant motifs of that secular culture is the rebel-motif. He is a rebel Catholic, fighting against 'the man.' But in actuality, he is fighting for the man - the secular man, who is really 'the man,' after all, since the Church is weak and secularism is strong. He is not a rebel, he is a bully. The worst part of it is that he is not the musclehead who picks the fight with the nerd, he is the little scared guy who cheers the musclehead on. That is the far more shameful role. I am sure that his Why Priests is yet still more anti-clericalism. Catholic priests today are the victim nerds. Whoever attacks priests is doing just what those despicable Nazis in Hitler's Germany and Communists in Stalin's Russia did. Priests are a weak visible minority. Wills' desire to destroy them (and the Catholic Church as a whole) is the act of a coward who wishes to blend into the crowd and turn the crowd away from the possibility of turning on him. It's basic human nature in all its pathetic glory. I wonder if Wills - who is an accomplished historian - grasps that when the history of this age is written he will be cast in the role of persecutor, not victim.

Is he aware of any of this? Is his conscience clean or not? Is he motivated by love of truth, love of money, love of 'true Christianity,' or something else? Of course, one who is infected with Stockholm Syndrome is not conscious of it; if he was, it wouldn't be so virulent. I am guessing that he is one of those 'love of truth' or 'true Christianity' people. Sure, he's filthy rich, but I think that he has likely hidden from his conscious self that money motivates him. (Another reason to pick on the weak and to espouse the party position is that it is much more lucrative. Money is one of the surest defenses against attack. A great refuge of cowards.)

So the work place, the publishing world, the academic world, the political world, the media - if you examine them closely you will see them perpetrating the very same things that the everyday-Nazi did. They are all motivated by fear of persecution, so they persecute.

What a Christian needs to do is constantly question his motives. Success is a worldly thing. I side with the philosophical tradition. I believe life is about becoming good and wise. The best thing a person can do qua person is develop virtue. Read Aristotle's Ethics again and again and again. Let's all agree on this. The world can be arranged into two camps: those who follow Aristotle and those who follow Marx. Which side are you on?

The only thing that will keep you from the Stockholm Syndrome and from persecuting and scapegoating the weak is developing the muscles of virtue. Everyone else will fall.

Family Today, as Seen on Vacation

When you are not employed, you vacation when you will. This year that meant an April trip back to PEI and Nova Scotia, to see relatives we have not seen in years, and so that children can be seen by relatives who have never seen them before.

When you have five children, vacations that mean seven hours in a car for two days straight are a rare event. My previous, 'never again,' returned this year in the last 100-kilometer stretch, though with a smile...

It was a very nice trip. I am glad that the kids have a closer connection with their extended family now. But I want to talk about the very phenomenon of the five-kid family in today's Canada.

The first thing you notice is the looks at Tim Hortons. Especially Quebec Tim Hortons. I think many people assume that you have other people's kids with your own. Why are the kids not in school (or daycare) they no doubt wonder. The second thing I noticed is how initial wonder and perhaps negative judgement turn into smiles and warm-hearted attention towards our one-year-old, especially. The response of a Quebec woman about my age who obviously didn't have kids of her own stood out to me. She adored Lauren, but what does this mean? Is she one of those cursed with infertility (perhaps brought on by the Pill), or, what is more likely, statistically speaking, is she a victim of a culture that places motherhood well below everything else, who suddenly finds herself at forty wondering if she did the right thing, who suddenly finds herself wondering if admiring other people's kids has the same charm it did when she was twenty-five or thirty? This wasn't a one-time event. Every time we went somewhere, there was an admiring woman. Sometimes older, perhaps missing her own grown children, sometimes just like this middle aged woman.

What has become emblematic for me of the subject - how does our family fit into this modern world? - was the fact that at the Dartmouth Sportsplex, where we took the kids swimming one night, we are not a family at all, no, we are - according to the young man who took out money, anyway - a "family plus two." I wonder which two were demoted? Is this going to cause them issues later in life, I wonder? Thus, despite the fact that the only DNA present in those five children are mine and Anne-Marie's, we do not qualify for the family rate. It's amazing that in this day and age when everyone and his dog qualifies as a 'marriage' under the law, my family does not, at least not at the Dartmouth Sportsplex.

All parents are familiar with the reaction that kids garner from older adults in restaurants, etc. There is a special reaction, though, that the appearance of five children with two adults brings about.

Not much is set up to accommodate us. Some hotels charge you more for this many kids, for some reason, even though you are cramming yourselves in to the same number of beds. Some don't even let you put seven people into one room - whether they are your children or not. Fast-food restaurants are intrinsically biased against families when you think about it. They price on individually-sized portions. Only a place like KFC would have something resembling a "family portion." Sure, pizza is also a viable option. But burgers and fries - forgot about it. You'd do just as well at a 'sit-down' restaurant. Order the nachos and ask for some extra plates. And here's a question - why don't restaurants offer, like, apples and oranges - unpeeled, unprocessed - and a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese? That would be a very healthy and inexpensive snack for a family-on-the-go,wouldn't it?

But it's not about health and it's not about saving your larger-than-average family a buck. It's about how to maximize profit and efficiency in this one-size-fits-all mentality. Conform or suffer the consequences, says the Dartmouth Sportsplex, MacDonalds, Tim Hortons, Best Western and Quality Inn.

You know things will turn around when this generation ages and looks for someone to take care of them in the old-age homes - my five children. But that's little consolation to my wallet and to my sense of belonging in this country right now.

____________________

And let me just say one last thing, for as much as we love our families, I have no desire whatsoever to move back to Nova Scotia. There is only one place I have found where I feel my family is welcomed and respected, and that is in Barry's Bay, where there just happens to be a lot of good Catholics around. It's not about being around other people with large families. It's about the Catholic respect for life and the family. In fact, two of my closest friends there are an infertile couple. I'm sorry, secular people, but I am not all that comfortable around you. You send off wicked vibes.

When we lived in NS we had one family we were close to. We eventually became friendly with another. NS has a population of 900,000. In Barry's Bay, which has a population of about 1,200 souls, we have a number of good friends... people we like to be around... people who don't give off that vibe like there is something wrong with us for liking our children and for not being wealthy and materially-oriented.

Home-schooling

So, we home-school.

We did for a few years when the oldest two were young, and then put them in school. Now, we are doing so again because of a career change, but, you know, really enjoying it.

That's my main thought: why define your schooling type so exclusively? We do that almost out of the need to draw vain satisfaction from talking about it to others.

"I'm a home-schooler!" - pride.

"They home-school!" - derision.

I have met several people who have told me, "Ya, we were home-schooled for part and went to school for part." That always struck me as a sign of disorganization and meandering... or worse.

Now I can honestly say, why not?!

Why is one form so much better than the other such that the other would offer no benefit regardless of the factors at play? That's simple dogmatism. Having now been a father and an educator for over a decade, I would say that those factors at play determine which is better at any given point in time: home schooling or school schooling.

On the one hand, when we first home-schooled, our children were afraid of their own shadows. On the other, Anne-Marie got them reading like ten-year-olds by five.

Of course, I'll never forget Isaiah's first day of school: the teacher showed him a list of bad words he could not say at school. He had never heard of those words before. That was not a stellar beginning.

What I'm happiest about right now, is that I have a chance to spend more time with my kids, and help them with those areas I see that they were either falling behind in, or were not being taught. Some kids do well in the crazy classroom setting, others do not. The fact is, most kids can benefit from a combination of the two. People who deny this a priori probably have some non-rational reason for it.

Anyway, keep us in your prayers. It's not easy.

Powerful Words, or not so much

I love words.
So much.
A well-turned phrase is the most joyful and wonderful thing in the world to me.
I suck them in like a dude with a cuban.

A confession: when my copy of Catholic Insight arrives I head directly for my article, if I happen to have one in that issue, and soak myself in, like Narcissus sucking in the pond. I love writing. Some day to be as great as Augustine, or Nietzsche, or Coleridge, would be just such a fine thing.

Sometimes at mass, the words of divine Scripture strike my ears like Beethoven's choicest notes. My favourites? So many to speak of. The Pauline Hymns are up there - Philippians 2:5-11 and Colosians 1:15-20. There are so many powerful passages in Isaiah and the Psalms...

Sometimes at mass, the words of the hymns strike my ears like choices notes of a malfunctioning appliance. My favourite? So many to speak of. Seeing how it's Lent, Come Back to Me would be right up there:

Come back to me with all your heart,
don’t let fear keep us apart.
Trees do bend, tho’ straight and tall;
so must we to others’ call.

Long have I waited for your coming
Home to me and living deeply our new life

The wilderness will lead you
to your heart where I will speak.
Integrity and justice
with tenderness you shall know.


Long have I waited for your coming
Home to me and living deeply our new life

You shall sleep secure with peace;
faithfulness will be your joy.


Long have I waited for your coming
Home to me and living deeply our new life

Maybe it is that I have only heard this song poorly delivered? But that can't be it. Most hymns are, objectively speaking, poorly delivered. Why have I singled out this one?

This song has longed bothered me, even way back as a young convert. The chorus is the worst. The idea of an adulterer (yes, that is what Hosea is about, the biblical book apparently at the root of this hymn) simply coming home to me and living deeply our new life, is not one that appeals to me. I guess you can say I must not be a very forgiving person. Whatever.

What's up with the phrase:

Trees do bend, tho’ straight and tall;
so must we to others’ call.

So, I have to bend to whomever calls to me, is that it? I guess you meant to God's call, huh? Or, maybe you didn't. Maybe you think "being open" is just so great.

And then there's this gem:

The wilderness will lead you
to your heart where I will speak.

So, the wilderness is going to lead the wayward soul on to the right path? Sounds so very fancy. So very fancy and Pelagian. Hippy nonsense.

My apologies to old choir ladies who might read this (I doubt they constitute a high percentage of my readership), but you, it is you, who have ruined this already terrible song.

I have never complained about the liturgy at thetheologyofdad, nor especially of liturgical music. I know how hard it is to put good music together. It's way too easy to criticize and too many people do it.

So chalk this one up to the stress of Lent.

While I'm at it, I dislike the setting of the English Stabat Mater that's used at the Stations.

Why is it that the closer we get to Good Friday the more melodramatic the music becomes? Good Friday is the worst (for music). But, luckily, things quickly get better with the Easter Vigil.

Ok, it's clear now. I'm the worst Catholic ever.