Bedlam or Parnassus

Creation Is a Killer

2012-02-02T11:48:00.000-05:00

Ars gratia artis. Art for the sake of art. This expression, which surrounds the roaring lion's head at the beginning of all MGM movies, suggests an ancient idea, that art need have no other purpose than for itself. Yet even this statement says something about purpose. Art either serves the purpose of the artist toward himself or it serves the purpose of the artist toward others. It must, however, have a purpose in one direction or the other.

I recently posted about the onslaught of negative response to the Indiana senate's passing of a bill that would allow the teaching of creationism in public school science classes. I suggested in that piece that the reason for such acrimony was that creationism is equated in the public mind with Christianity. I would like to revise that to say that it goes much deeper.

The idea that a being created the universe ex nihilo is repugnant to the modern person because it challenges his assumed license to live life as he pleases. If universe is the random chance production of basic material that has always existed, then it has no purpose, and I can do with my life whatever I want. I am as much a random chance production as is the moon. On the other hand, if the universe was in fact created by a creator, then that creation had a purpose. It may have been nothing more than ars gratia artis, an act to please the creator, but it had a purpose of some kind. If this is so, and I am a part of that creation, then I have a purpose, too, which means that any notion of complete license in how to live my life vanishes. Free will exists, for I have the ability to follow that purpose or rebel against it, but the idea that I am utterly free to do as I please, that whatever I do is okay, becomes nonsense. In short, if the universe is the creation of God, then the very fact of that creation kills the narcissistic concept of complete license.

We abort our children because they infringe on our perceived right to complete license. A Jewish friend of mine was asking about English idioms regarding the word "soul" because he was translating a Hebrew song for some of his students. We talked about the fact that at one time, we used the word soul in more casual conversation, as in "There are five hundred souls aboard the ship." We do not do this now, because such talk would remind us that there is more to a person than his mere physical presence and his base, animal impulses. We can kill babies in the womb because we say they are not people, physical and spiritual entities. A pregnancy is about an it. It is a medical condition, a burden, and to some even a disease. We can think this way because we have come to believe that there is no purpose to life other than the one each individual gives to it, and we have come to believe this because we have jettisoned any idea that there is a God Who has designed creation to a specific end, and that we have a role to play in His grand story.

Poor, Stupid Christians

2012-02-01T11:46:00.000-05:00

You really have to feel sorry for Christians, don't you? I mean, they are, and I hate to put it like this, but they really are stupid, aren't they? They believe in the most outdated things. Can you even imagine someone believing that a divine being spoke the universe into existence in this day and age? Why, it is positively medieval!

Such is the tone of comments on a friend's Facebook post about the bill that just passed the Indiana senate. This bill would allow the teaching of creationism based on religious views to be taught alongside evolution in public school science classes.

This piece is not to discuss whether or not creationism should be taught in science class, should be taught at all, or should be taught in public school. It is not about the validity of creationism, nor is it about whether the government should legislate curriculum, especially a curriculum that may have a religious component. The purpose of this blog post is to take issue with comments like the following.

Oh hello, everyone, welcome to Texas!
Wow. Indiana is really setting the bar high. Maybe we should teach alternate theories of gravity too.
Cut to me moving the kids to nova scotia and becoming a home school mama.
It overwhelms me how sad I an for Hoosier Education. I wish they could understand the ramifications of their education policies!!!
So happy I am not teaching Biology any longer. When I began teaching in XXXX, we were "required" to teach creationism in addition to evolution....my lesson that minute was, "Creationism is based on faith. To learn more, go to Sunday School."
May have to move to New Zealand sooner rather than later. NZ is about as far away fron the Indiana Senate as I can get!
Seems the legislators have not evolved beyond simian thinking.

One person posted this link, which refers to teachers and legislators "peddling creationism," calls creationism "garbage," and concludes, "Once upon a time, I thought the goal was to excel and provide the best education possible; in Indiana, the dream is a school system that is less than half shitty."

Disturbing aspect of responses #1: Does anyone else notice the virulent hatred of the tone of these responses? The same could be said of the comments to the Indianapolis Star article linked above. I am not sure whether the dripping sarcasm does more damage from its bitter acidity or the height from which it drips, flowing from noses so firmly stuck in the upper atmosphere.

Disturbing aspect of responses #2: We all know the cause for this fierce opposition. It is that creationism = Christianity in the minds of many, and Christianity must have no voice in the public square. It does not matter that other faiths that espouse creationism are named in the senate bill. The simple fact is that the whole thing smacks of religion, and because religion is still synonymous with Christianity, it is written off as a bad thing.

Disturbing aspect of responses #3: Several of those who made these comments are colleagues or former colleagues of mine. I recently wrote of the corrosive toll that teaching in a public school can take on Christian teachers, and this what I mean. Are these people nice? Of course they are. We exchange pleasant conversation in the hallways and for the most part would never discuss any of this. I have certainly never been attacked for my Christian faith. Yet the attack is there, lurking in the air we breathe. The anti-Christianity ethos pervades our educational system, and just as it is impossible to walk through a highly radiated region without getting radiation poisoning, so it is impossible not to feel weary to the point of sickness by the perspective that shapes everything about what I do for a living.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

2012-01-31T10:40:00.000-05:00

I recently finished my twentieth children's book, The Girl From Binfield. I have written a book for each of our children's birthdays, plus a couple of others for them along the way. When they were quite young, the books were all rhyming stories with pictures, but when each turned seven, I began writing them chapter books. None of them are available to the public at this time because our children have preferred to keep them for themselves. Perhaps someday they will see a wider audience.

The latest for our daughter's seventh birthday is a 27,000 word, 125 page, work that tells the imagined story behind Alexander Pope's poem "Upon a Girl of Seven Years Old," which he wrote in 1713 and published in Bernard Lintot's Miscellanies in 1714. The story begins in the fall of 1712 in the village of Binfield, just outside Windsor Forest, and focuses on Polly Spencer, the youngest of six in a farming family. Polly shows great interest in stories and has the ability to speak in rhyme, but is often underfoot in the busy household. Their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Pope, invite Polly to serve in their home in exchange for Mrs. Pope's teaching her. Polly begins her studies and work with Mrs. Pope in January of 1713 and quickly develops into a fine student. Edith Pope shares Polly's verses with her son, Alexander, who is quite impressed. Alexander, who has just decided to begin translating the Iliad, sends some of his advance money to his parents to join him in London for the debut of Joseph Addison's play Cato, which debuted in April of that year. Edith Pope takes Polly instead of her husband, and in London Polly encounters the fashionable world of Teresa and Martha Blount, Alexander's friends, and has a wonderful time at the play. Alexander writes the poem "Upon a Girl of Seven Years Old" for her birthday, bringing the main story to a close. An epilogue shows Polly a married woman with a daughter of her own. Polly has become a playwright, married to an actor, and she shows her daughter the poem that Alexander had written for her years before.

One would think that, given such context, the words "ladies" and "gentlemen" would not have elicited the green underline that alerts a user of Microsoft Word that there is a grammatical error. I have written about this politcally correct grammatical tyranny before (here and here), so I am not surprised when Word highlights something like this. I clicked on the explanation, and, true to form, Word suggested alternatives such as "woman" or "man." This is unfortunate, for the proposed substitutes are not synonyms. Any grown girl is a woman, but not all women are ladies, and many a man there is who could hardly be called a gentleman.

Such is part of the flattening of our lexical and therefore our social topography, a greying of the landscape. As Anthony Esolen has said, "No one is too poor for poetry." I am unwilling to surrender even one color from the lexical palette, including those words that are painful and dangerous. They are part of who we are. They describe the human experience, and we are just so much less human to the degree that we pretend they do not exist. Hopefully there are still a few ladies and gentlemen in the world. If not, then they can at least live on in our lexicon to help us remember what we have lost.

Numbers Don't Lie

2012-01-30T16:02:00.000-05:00

The topic on which I was going to post today will wait. I hope it will be a good read and provoke some thought, but it is not nearly so important as this post from Young, Evangelical, and Catholic. Read it now and consider these and other steps:

1. Pray for forgiveness for all involved, including those you know who have committed the sin of omission by doing nothing.

2. Pray for turned hearts, i.e. the gift of repentance, for all those who provide this murderous service, those who seek it, and those who promote it.

3. Silently listen for what God would have you do next.

Truly, this is nostra culpa, nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa.

Sunday Snippets for 29 January 2012

2012-01-29T12:57:00.000-05:00

Posts for this week's Sunday Snippets include:

And Your Chicks for Free...No need to go to a strip club when you have Big Ten basketball on TV
Between Brutality and Culture...Sci-fi classic novel Dune reminds us that how we treat our dead is a mark of who we really are.
Proud Shame...Indiana becomes the second state in the nation to offer a license plate to promote the sin of homosexuality among young people.
Seeing Both Sides Can Make You Cross Eyed...The cognitive and moral toll of teaching in a public school
Sacramental Math...A common belief about the Holy Spirit held by Protestants should make it easier to accept the doctrine of Real Presence in the Eucharist.
Beautiful Language, Bad People...Latin, the Romans, and a perceptive question by a high school student

Thanks to RAnn for hosting Sunday Snippets, and thanks to all the readers out there!

Beautiful Language, Bad People

2012-01-27T12:49:00.000-05:00

A Latin II student asked me one of the best questions I have ever received. We have just started our study of Caesar's De Bello Gallico, and this student, who is at the top of his class, asked me his question at the end of class. We only had a few minutes to discuss in the passing period between classes, and I was not able to say all that I wanted, but it was a wonderful few moments.

He asked, "How can such bad people have made such a beautiful language?"

I asked him to explain what he meant, and he said that he was bothered that people who were so vicious, especially politically, could have produced a language like Latin. He wondered how anyone could have been happy in such a world.

I knew what my response was going to be, but I wanted to gauge how he would take it, so I asked him, "Are you a religious guy at all?" He said that he was Catholic and going through confirmation, thus making him about as religious as one could get. I then said in answer to his question, "You are looking at a world without Christ." I went on to say that, since we were all made in the image of God, we were capable of beautiful things, such as the Latin language with its poetry and literature. Yet in a world that did not know Christ, the fallen nature of man was free to pursue its own ends, which inevitably meant violence and corruption. Since he had to go to class, I did not have to time to explore with him the paradox of the beautiful and the bad in our own society.

I think he understood my answer, but I could tell he was still bothered about the Roman situation, as well he should have been. We are right to see contradiction and wrong in a society that can at once produce the Aeneid and the Ides of March, but we must also see the same forces at work within our contemporary culture.

I was grateful for this student's question. It shows just how deeply our children are capable of thinking and why we must never dumb down our interactions with them, whether in school, in church, or in any other endeavor. We must pray for ever more opportunities to interact with our children in matters that matter most.

Sacramental Math

2012-01-26T13:03:00.000-05:00

Just as the laws of classical mechanics break down at the quantum level, so the laws of mathematics that most of us know fail to work the closer we get to the Trinity. Since first grade, we have learned that 1+1+1=3. With the Trinity, however, 1+1+1=1. We should find it no surprise, then, when it comes to deep matters of interaction with our triune God, other aspects of math cease to operate as expected.

Consider the Eucharist. It really is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ, but this does not mean that there is more than one Christ, despite His material presence in multiple locations simultaneously. In this instance, multiplication does not produce increase. There is but ever one Christ.

This is, of course, a point of disagreement among Protestants who do not see the sacred emblems of bread and wine as anything other than bread and wine. This is curious, however, since Protestants freely accept the strangeness of "God-math" when it comes to the Holy Spirit. In John 14:17 we read with regard to the Spirit, "The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you." (NIV) The Greek for "you" in this verse is υμιν, which is the second person plural. On the day of Pentecost in Acts, everyone was filled with the Holy Spirit. No Protestant thinks that there is more than one Holy Spirit. We all know that there is but one Third Person of the Trinity. This is a miracle, to be sure, for once again, multiplicity of location does not indicate increase, but if we accept this, then there should be no problem with sacramental math by which one Lord Jesus can be fully present in multiple instances of the Eucharist. Now, Protestants certainly have other problems with the doctrine of the Real Presence, but the mathematics of it all can hardly be one of them.

Seeing Both Sides Can Make You Cross Eyed

2012-01-25T21:52:00.001-05:00

Doubt has become the goal of knowing. Certainty is dismissed as both unattainable and undesirable. A recent Facebook picture of Bertrand Russell contains the quotation, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."

I have long seen this among the high school students I teach, and they are learning the lesson of doubt quite well. We teach it to them under the guise of critical thinking, which is, of course, a good skill. It becomes deleterious to thought, however, when it becomes an end per se, which it must be in a world that says truth does not exist except as a relativistic, amorphous fantasy.

This post is not another lament about children educated in the uncertain seas of truthless relativism. It is about the damage done to teachers in such a system. It is about me.

Not long ago I was leading the small group of fifth grade boys at our church. Our son is part of the group, and the lesson involved giving the boys a series of cartoons in which the characters encountered different challenges to living as a Christian. Their job was to write the words in the dialogues bubbles of what the Christian could say in each situation. I was proud of the boys for coming up with reasonable, faithful responses. They knew what to say and were confident of their answers. What nearly brought me to tears in front of them was that I did not have their certainty. I knew the right answers, just as they did, but I could see too well the opposing side, could sense the complex and tortured discussion that would ensue in the adult world over the issues in the cartoons.

To be sure, mature thought is complex, and there is a difference between the simplistic understanding of a child and the adult perspective that properly considers multiple aspects of an issue. Yet I realized in that moment just how eroded is my ability to discuss truth in the public venue of the classroom. I am constrained to push away whatever I know to be true in an effort to foster within developing minds the questioning faculty that exists for no purpose beyond itself. I have lived and breathed this toxic air of relativism for so long that, despite my deep convictions, I find myself crippled with regard to teaching or expressing those convictions. I am the academic equivalent of the miner suffering from black lung disease.

Ei mihi! Domine, miserere mei!

Proud Shame

2012-01-24T13:15:00.000-05:00

We encourage everyone these days to take pride in his or her own self and activities, yet Scripture reminds us that, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." (Proverbs 16:18, KJV) Nowhere is this more evident than in the pride movement that promotes the sin of homosexual behavior. Indiana can now claim its prideful shame, or shameful pride, in promoting this sin in the lives of children and young people aged 12-21 with a new license plate.

One would have thought, perhaps, that the first state to issue a pro-homosexual license plate whose proceeds benefit an organization that supports youth homosexuality would have been New York or California, where the wars over marriage rage the fiercest. Instead, here we are in the heartland, a swath of America often called the Bible belt, promoting and supporting sin with our license plates. We are the second state in the union, Maryland being the first, to offer a pro-homosexual license plate.

Although there are many articles about this turn of events, the one cited above notes that the absurdity of this, not on moral or religious grounds, but by health standards alone. As it observes, what is to prevent cigar club owners from getting their own license plate? Let's promote lung cancer and COPD while we are at it.

I have not seen the argument that swayed the legislature into allowing this plate, but I could well imagine that part of the argument was that Indiana offers other specialty plates, including those that support certain universities, those that support environmental causes, and the ever-popular and controversial "In God We Trust" plate. In fact, I would bet that this one was a key in getting the new plate among the options. If we cannot force the removal of a plate that references God, then we can at least offer one that promotes sin.

Has it finally come down to this, that we must allow everything because we can say no to nothing? Has truth truly become so eroded that we genuinely cannot say X is good and Y is not for fear of offending Y? Must the devil actually have his due in the current version of the democratic American experiment? When a conservative, church-going, Bible-believing culture like that of the midwestern state of Indiana issues a pro-homosexual license plate to finance the promotion of sin among children, then the answer, apparently, is yes.

Between Brutality and Culture

2012-01-23T19:05:00.000-05:00

With yesterday's marking the 39th anniversary of legalized murder in the Untied States, I am reminded of this passage from Frank Herbert's Dune. Lady Jessica Atreides, mother of the protagonist Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides, watches a funeral rite and thinks to herself, "The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture -- it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead." (p. 313, 1984 Berkeley edition)

Mourning is an art. The ancient Romans kept wax masks of their deceased ancestors in their homes, not only to remind them on a daily basis of their larger families, but for them to wear during the funeral procession of the next relative to die in imitation of the departed welcoming the newest family member to the underworld. Wealthy citizens would hire mourners to weep and wail. When I teach about this in my Latin II classes, I always talk about American funeral processions and how cars must pull to the side of the road for one to pass. As I tell my students, no one is going anywhere so important that he cannot pause a few moments to pay respect.

Many ancient cultures had elaborate funeral rites. The Greeks and the Romans were both k own for their funeral games. A dear friend who is a devout Jew has told me of the extended time of mourning that is the custom in his religion.

The Lady Jessica was right. Such acts separate brutality from culture. How, then, can it be considered an advancement of culture to show such disrespect for life by brutally murdering it in what should be its safest place? What sort of culture disposes of a child as so much medical waste?

And Your Chicks For Free

2012-01-22T13:33:00.000-05:00

In the Dire Straits's classic from the 80s, if you learn to play the guitar, you may get a blister on your little finger, but you can expect money for nothing and your chicks for free. I was reminded of this recently when I watched Indiana University's men's basketball team take on Nebraska. We do not see a lot of the IU cheerleaders on television, but when we do, they are appropriately dressed. It is no surprise that we saw much more of the Cornhusker cheerleaders, whose short, sequined skirts did not extend below the curve of their hips. Flesh-colored slippers made it appear they were barefoot. What little sequined cloth passed for a top left exposed everything from sternum to pelvis. And speaking of pelvises, they worked theirs in slow grinds and rapid pops.

There was a time when a man had to pay good money for this kind of thing. It would be in the sleazy environment of the strip joint or the more upscale sounding "gentlemen's club," but now, what need to stuff singles in g-strings at a lingerie lunch? You can get all your bump and grind at a college basketball game.

I have come to expect soft core porn in the grocery checkout. I know the ads for strip clubs are always in the sports section of the paper. Yet so far, a Big Ten basketball has been a pretty safe thing for our family to watch. Our son, who is 11, plays basketball, and I want him to learn from watching good college players. I know that pro games involve pole-dancing cheerleaders, but college?

At least he won't have to spend money on such things when he grows up. He can get his chicks for free. God have mercy on us all.

Sunday Snippets for 22 January 2012

2012-01-22T08:35:00.000-05:00

Contributions to this week's Sunday Snippets include:

Theology From Dune, Part I...A look at the both/and of the physical and spiritual nature of truth via the sci-fi classic novel Dune
Theology From Dune, Part II...Another look at Dune for a reminder of the necessity of teaching our children the faith and the importance of suffering and oppression in our lives

Once again, it was a slow blogging week. I am finishing a book and was preparing to for a major presentation on Friday (see http://www.romanpersonas.blogspot.com/ for pics of me as a Roman centurion among middle schoolers). Much to blog about this coming week.

Thanks to all the readers out there!

Theology From Dune, Part II

2012-01-21T22:57:00.000-05:00

In the sci-fi classic Dune, protagonist Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides is led through the community of the desert tribe known as the Fremen, who are cruelly oppressed and under constant threat from extra-planetary rulers. He observes a class of children being taught and asks, "You conduct classes at a time like this?" His guide replies, "What Liet taught us, we cannot pause an instant in that. Liet who is dead must not be forgotten. It is the Chakobsa way." (p.346. All references are to the 1984 Berkeley Books edition.)

Scripture says that we must teach our children the faith at all times. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says, " These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." (NIV)

Do you sense this kind of committed urgency among the Christian families of young children that you know? Does that kind of electric intensity permeate your children's ministry or Sunday School?

I didn't think so. So why is what passes for Christian education so often sappy, foolish, insulting, sporadic, second-thought, second-rate drivel in the world of American Christianity? What the fictional Fremen and the historic Old Testament Jews have in common is oppression, a catalyst missing, or at least unrecognized, among American Christians. Oppression and the daily awareness of the threat of death has a way of burning away the dross and leaving the pure, refined necessities. Of course, suburban, minivan, Christian families are also under attack...from 24/7 porn, from moral relativism, from forced acceptance of sin under the guise of tolerance. There is every bit as much reason for Christians to be as intense and intentional about teaching our children as were the Jews and the Fremen. To restate Dune, Jesus Who died and rose again must not be forgotten. It is the Christian way.

Theology from Dune, Part I

2012-01-16T17:49:00.000-05:00

I recently posted on a topic inspired by my re-reading of the sci-fi classic Dune, by Frank Herbert. (All references are to the 1984 Berkeley Books edition.) As I near the end, I find that there is more grist for the blog, hence the first in what will be a series of posts.

Let me begin by saying that I carefully avoided the title "Theology of Dune." The novel and its successors, not unlike the Matrix movies, employ a syncretism of actual faiths along with Herbert's fertile imagination in the creation of cultures in the universe he describes. Good work could undoubtedly be done on the actual theology of Dune (and apparently needs to be done, as a quick Google search turns up the almost unheard of nothing.) Nevertheless, these posts are not about that. They are about aspects of Christian theology and life illuminated or explicated by certain scenes in this novel.

Near the beginning of the third part of the novel, the protragonist, Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides wonders whether he is perceiving reality as it is, or as it is presented to him when his awareness is enhanced by the spice melange. "Still, there was about him a feeling of abandonment. He wondered if it might be possible that his ruh-spirit had slipped over somehow into the world where the Fremen believed he had his true existence -- into the alam al-mithal, the world of similitudes, that metaphysical realm where all physical limitations were removed. And he knew fear at the thought of such a place, because removal of all limitations meant removal of all points of reference. In the landscape of a myth he could not orient himself and say: 'I am I because I am here.'" (p. 382)

There is a brilliant post at the Bad Catholic blog in which arguing that Descartes did serious damage to how we understand the world, particularly sexual intercourse, when he declared that the mind and body were two different entities, each capable of existing independently from the other. The post is very much worth reading and discussing in its own right, but the point I am making is that he says the same thing as Herbert in the passage above. Paul Atreides sensed fear at the prospect of a world without limitations, a world of pure spirit and no physicality. Marc, the author of the blog post, points out a similar apprehension we all feel for ghosts (all spirit, no body) and corpses (all body, no soul).

Even in the Christian world, we have a tendency toward this dualism, embracing the spiritual as distinct from and superior to the physical. Of course, we have some reasons for that. Consider the words of Jesus in John 4:21-24, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (NIV) This leads many to support this dualism and superiority of the spirit. Among the unfortunate consequences of this thinking is an untethering of the truth from authority. Truth becomes whatever the Holy Spirit speaks to me, independent from the tradition and authority of the Church.

Yet if we look carefully, Jesus says we must worship in truth. Pilate incorrectly asked the question, "What is truth?" He asked it in the only way he knew how, but since the Incarnation, the only proper way of phrasing the question is "Who is truth?" Christ has shown that truth is personal, that God Himself is personal, three persons eternally existing in one being. When He tells us to worship in spirit and truth, He is not lifting one up above and separate from the other. As He is in His very being, He unites the two. To worship in truth means to worship in the One Who is Truth, and that One is most certainly a physical being.

The character Paul Atreides is right to feel fear at the thought of a world loosened from all points of reference. We are right to feel the creepy-crawlies about ghosts and corpses and any religion that speaks purely of the spiritual. Jesus was a man. He was a Judean man in the first century of a certain height and a particular weight. His hair needed cutting periodically and one of his ears was lower than the other. He was also God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, of being with the Father. As always with the truth that has been revealed most fully in Him, we see that the real nature of things is both/and, not either/or.

Apolitical Blues

2012-01-09T22:26:00.000-05:00

"Now, you are of the Ichwan Bedwine, our brother." (Dune, Frank Herbert, Berkley Books, 1984, p. 308)

I am not sure why, but I am re-reading the sci-fi classic Dune, and I was struck by the scene in which the protagonist, Paul Atreides, undergoes a test and is admitted to the tribal culture of the Fremen on the planet Arrakis to which his family has moved. He is given a name that can only be used within the tribe, and he chooses another name by which he will be known in public. There is deep kinship and an unbreakable bond within this desert tribe. There are common purpose, shared resources, and honor among the people.

I paused in my reading, struck by how deeply I am alienated from anything like that. There have been times and cultures in which a person's tribal affiliations truly defined him and shaped his life. In the 5th century B.C., it meant something to be an Athenian. Dante was a Florentine and never could have conceived of himself otherwise, and the list goes on.

Yet in 21st century, middle-American, suburbia, there is little of this kind of identity, and I suspect it has disappeared from many other places as well. We associate with various sports teams, create subcultures around certain types of music, align ourselves with various points on the political spectrum, but these are all a far cry from true community and relationship, the kinds of connections that create identities and shape how we see the world.

I had a friend once who lamented with his pastor that he could not find the camaraderie he had enjoyed in the military and was contemplating leaving his job to become a firefighter in an effort to find it. The pastor suggested he might find what he sought in the church. It is true that small groups are the name of the game these days, especially in large and Evangelical churches. Yet none of these comes anywhere close to the deep, shared, purpose-driven life of the Fremen in Dune or the committed tribal life so common in literature.

I was pondering all this when I saw a new comment on an old blog post. This person wrote, "In the US, a person sees himself/herself as an individual, so 'choosing Christ' then later choosing a church is normal. This 'belief' is a psychological choice, so religion gets diluted into merely psychology (what works for the individual is good for him). But in most cultures a persons sees himself or herself as a member of an extended family."

There it is. And although I can acknowledge this is an accurate diagnosis of the situation, there seems to be nothing I can do about it. I can read and understand depictions of deep, true community, but it seems as far away as the fictitious planet Arrakis. I have friends, of course, wonderful friends who would do anything for me just as I would for them. Yet our geographically distant lives and the way of the modern world do not permit us to live our lives together. Instead, we live our lives next to each other, interacting by choice, but not out of the necessary fabric of life. In this regard, modern American life is thoroughly Protestant, and this, perhaps more than anything else separates Protestants from Catholics. To the degree that Catholics are entrenched in this way of life, it is what puts them at odds with their own Church, their own Tradition, and their own leaders. The title of this post recalls the Little Feat song of the same name, but I chose it for its true, etymological meaning. We are apolitical, which is to say, without a polis, a city, a home, an identity. As the song says, this leads to the meanest blues around

Sunday Snippets for 8 January 2012

2012-01-08T09:15:00.000-05:00

We were on vacation last week, so blogging was light. Contributions to this week's Sunday Snippets are:

52 Pick Up...On a New Year's goal of reading and quiet focus on God

The Necessity of Constraints...Why some taboos in society are good

Thanks to all the readers out there!

The Necessity of Constraints

2012-01-03T23:38:00.000-05:00

"For as Cleanthes said, just as sound, when pent up in the narrow channel of a trumpet, comes out sharper and stronger, so it seems to me that a thought, when compressed into the numbered feet of poetry, springs forth much more violently and strikes me a much stiffer jolt." (Montaigne, "On the Education of Children")

"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit...the arbitrariness of the constraint only serves to obtain precision of execution." (Igor Stravinsky, http://www.nous.org.uk/oulipo.html)

It is not okay to promote or support in any way in any forum that which is sin or leads to sinful behavior. While this includes everything from drugs and prostitution to gambling and murder, there can be no question that in contemporary life, the two most significant sins are abortion and homosexuality. These are, of course, no more sinful than many other sins, but they are the most significant, for they are the ones being ever more accepted and normalized.

Pat Archbold writes, "We have/had taboos for a reason. It is called concupiscence. Sin is attractive and it will ever be thus. Taboos exist to protect our society, especially our young, from the ravages of such attractive sin."

No woman should undergo the back alley abortion. No gay person should be beaten to death for his or her preferences or behavior. Yet the taboos on abortion and homosexuality have served valuable purposes throughout history and across cultures. They are not acceptable in society, they should not be promoted or encouraged, and the taboos against them reinforce this in local and daily ways.

Robert George writes, "[T]here is a significant element in the elite sector of the culture---an element with real power over the lives and careers of people...---that wishes to penalize or discriminate against those who refuse in conscience to yield to the liberal orthodoxy on issues of sex and marriage[.]" We see this in our courts and elected leadership. We see it in our advertisements and entertainment industry. We see it in our public educational system at increasingly earlier stages.

In 2003, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger authored a strongly worded document instructing Catholic leaders in how to respond to the challenges of homosexuality in public life. This document should be read and followed by every Christian leader, whether in politics, the classroom, the boardroom, the playing field, or the family room. We have come to believe that everything is permissible for everyone all the time. This is not only illogical, it is just plain wrong and harmful. Constraints are necessary in the arts, in written and spoken communication, and in the fabric of society, not for the sake of random and pointless constraint, but to allow true, good, and beautiful human life to flourish.

52 Pick Up

2012-01-02T10:11:00.000-05:00

One of the Christmas gifts I received from my mother was a book called Coach Wooden. It unpacks the seven principles that the legendary UCLA basketball coach's father gave him when he was young and that he passed on to countless players and coaches. One of the principles is to drink deeply from good books especially the Bible. Author Pat Williams observes that anyone with a high school education could reasonably read a book a week. Our family became so taken with this idea that we have decided to take it on this year.

As so often happens when cleaning, you discover things you forgot you had. My wife and I launched into a year-end house cleaning, and as we dusted the bookshelves and culled volumes we no longer need, I frequently became like a child re-discovering favorite old toys. This added to my eagerness to read a book a week this year, and we decided that we would only read books from our own shelves. What need to go to the bookstore or library when there are unexplored treasures on one's own shelves?

This fits in with a larger and even deeper desire I have for the coming year. I want to increase in holiness and faithfulness. This is not just the obligatory Christian thing to say. I am awash in good, but often distracting things. I live my life going Mach I, tail on fire. I teach six classes a day, each as if it were a virtuoso performance. I am involved in multiple writing projects all the time, and when it comes to some incredible, new, creative idea, I follow it as if I were a child with the worst case if A.D.D. We are quite active in our church and are the homeschooling family of two children. Yet what I need most, and most truly desire, is peace, quiet, and time with God. I want to re-discover the discipline of my youth, for my life has grown sloppy. I want to see only Christ and all things through Him. I want to decrease that He may increase. This, more than anything, is my goal for the new year.

Sunday Snippets for 1 January 2012

2012-01-02T00:31:00.000-05:00

Contributions to Sunday Snippets include:

Let This Cup Pass...What it is like for a Christian teacher to work in public education

The Dream of St. Jerome...When was is so near, and yet so far in matters of faith

Ineffable...Reflections in the minutes of Christmas Day on the extravagant love of God

What Difference Does It Make?...Minimalist and maximalist ecclesiologies vie for Protestant's heart

A Warm and Friendly Crack House of Horrors...When no one even cares about matters of ultimate consequence, yet remain really nice folks

Thanks to all the readers and those who left comments in 2011! Please spread the word about this blog. Let's push the daily readership through the roof, not because I want a big audience, but because it is always good to have more people discussing important issues. Follow me @bedlamparnassus on Twitter, too. I am sure there will be much to discuss this year from the heights of Mt. Parnassus and the depths of Bedlam.

A Warm and Friendly Crack House of Horrors

2011-12-28T21:04:00.000-05:00

A manicured lawn greets you upon your arrival along the gently curving driveway that leads through a grove of trees, waving in a cool, spring breeze. You walk past flower beds of riotous color and a tasteful fountain whose trickling waters speak of serenity. The woman of the house welcomes you with a June Cleaver smile and a mirror of freshly cut coke. She apologizes that her husband is still working in the basement, but invites you to fondle her children in the living room while she finishes clubbing the baby seal and baking the green bean casserole for dinner. Dad calls from the basement in a warm, broad voice, telling you to grab a couple of blunts and some soda pop and see what he has been working on. He tells you to watch your step as you reach the bottom of the stairs and the beginning of the blood trail that leads to the pool table on which are spread parts of the family dog.

Is this the insane product of a twisted mind or an accurate metaphor for contemporary society? I argue the latter after reading this USA Today article (h/t Insight Scoop). I have often said that I am sure Hitler could be quite charming at dinner parties. We are becoming a culture of nice people who do some good things, but who are open to moral corruption because of the vacuum behind the facade of pleasantness.

So what is the cause and what is the cure? The cause, ultimately, is original sin, but there are some immediate causes suggested in the article. The Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., says that "the whole purpose of faith is to be a source of guidance, strength and perspective in difficult times." Well, um, no. These may be benefits of faith, but faith itself describes the means of relationship between humans and God. If it has no greater purpose than strength during difficulty, then it is no different from or necessarily better than a bottle of whiskey or a re-run of Oprah. If this is the best that Christianity can offer, then people say they can live their lives just fine without it.

One woman, Rev. Ema Drouillard, says that more and more of the clients for whom she performs weddings choose the service that does not mention God. Rabbi Micah Greenstein of Temple Israel, Memphis, says, "Judaism teaches that spirituality is practical. When you see something that is broken, fix it. When you find something that is lost, return it. When you see something that needs to be done, do it. In that way you will be taking care of the world and fulfilling your role as God's partner, know it or not."

This may be accurate for Judaism, but it is still wrong. God is not the sum total of warm fuzzies one gets when serving a meal at a homeless shelter. As for this woman who performs God-less weddings, the result is no more a marriage than state-legitimized sodomite unions.

Part of the problem, then, is that the truth has been watered down and bastardized. The Church has but one thing to offer the world, and that is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If we offer anything less, then the world is right to reject it.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing to me, an educator, is that in both the USA Today and Insight Scoop pieces, there are high school teachers who have given no thought to questions of ultimate consequence and therefore have no thoughts whatsoever on such matters. Another solution to the grim problem presented in these articles is to have teachers who have read and thought and written and discussed and prayed over the ultimate questions. When I read articles like these, I am re-confirmed in my commitment to being a Christian presence in public school through the teaching of Latin. If the statistics are accurate, then there is nothing more important that I could do than to read Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil with high school students and challenge them to think deeply as members of the great conversation.

What Difference Does It Make?

2011-12-27T09:48:00.000-05:00

A week ago at Called to Communion, Tom Riello posted an article titled, "When 'Less' Is NOT 'More.'" In it he discusses the reductionist understanding of the Protestant in contrast to the maximalist understanding of the Catholic. He begins by citing Richard John Neuhaus. "For the Protestant, the act of faith is an act of faith in Christ, and only then, if at all, is it an act of faith in the Church. They are two acts of faith. For the Catholic, the act of faith in Christ and His Church is one act of faith” (Catholic Matters, p. 75). He continues with a reference to Pope Benedict XVI. "If the Church is allowed to be reduced to nothing more than a community of like-minded people, then the Catholic Church, to borrow from the former Cardinal Ratzinger, 'has nothing to do with faith or is perceived as an obstacle to it: "faith, yes; Church, no. Christ, yes; Church, no"'" (Dogma and Preaching, p. 21). Riello concludes with a contrast of metaphor. "The Catholic understands the Church not as a something, but as a someone, 'Mother.'"

Now put that together with two other articles. Much ado was made this year about whether churches should close on Christmas Sunday. Of all the pieces, this succinct little piece seemed to get to the heart of it.

Finally, there was this by the inimitable Anthony Esolen. "It’s bad enough to have the dreary wherever we turn in this modern world. Why should we have it within our churches? Even if a parish has no money for stained glass windows, everybody can afford stained glass prayers."

The large, Evangelical church of which we are members had no services on Christmas Day. We had one one Friday, December 23, and three on December 24. I heard no official reason for the lack of a Sunday service, but I cannot imagine too many would have asked for it anyway. We regularly offer services on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, and despite efforts to encourage our congregation toward a commitment to the essence of Sabbath, resting and so forth as resented in books like Mudhouse Sabbath, there is nothing special about the actual day of Sunday. How could there be? We are squarely in the "less-is-more" camp. It cannot logically matter to God on what day worship is held, since the only thing that matters is a saving relationship, guaranteed by accepting Jesus into one's heart as Lord and Savior. The metaphors of Bethlehem, the manger, and the Eucharist as outlined in the Mere Comments article, would be interesting to Evangelicals, but hardly compelling. As for Anthony Esolen's comment, it would not be a matter of whether we could afford stained glass windows or prayers. We would never even consider either. Evangelical churches that do have the money would put it into a killer sound system and state-of-the-art projection equipment to be installed in the most generic, and therefore flexible, space possible. As for prayers, what matters is authenticity, not poetry

Of course, we would be wrong if poetry replaced authenticity or stained glass became more important than evangelism, but the problem in most Evangelical churches is assuming an either/or perspective rather than a both/and. Of course, either/or matches the min a list theological view, with both/and corresponding to the maximalist.

And yet for all of this, for all of my understanding of what is really at work in this discussion and longing for and agreeing with the fuller view of the Catholic Church, it is Father Neuhaus' words that describe and convict me. "For the Protestant, the act of faith is an act of faith in Christ, and only then, if at all, is it an act of faith in the Church. They are two acts of faith. For the Catholic, the act of faith in Christ and His Church is one act of faith." I do not just acknowledge his accurate depiction of the Protestant view, I feel it deep within. This has so deeply been written into my very flesh that for all my intellectual ability to see otherwise, I cannot feel other than as Father Neuhaus wrote.

Ei mihi! Domine, miserere mei. Credo. Adiuva incredulitatem meam.

Ineffable

2011-12-25T11:31:00.000-05:00

Minutes after midnight on Christmas, I tried to post a few words, but found the effort futile. I am not confident this will be much more successful.

This Christmas I am overwhelmed by God's ineffable love and majesty. It all started a few days ago with Elizabeth Scalia's piece at First Things. Any post titled "Benedict's Christocentrism" is guaranteed to get my attention. All theology, indeed all life, must be Christocentric. Christ is the author of all things. In Him we live and move and have our being. Naturally, then I am drawn to anyone who openly proclaims and lives this truth. In that piece, Scalia cited a text with three sentences that captivated me. "We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things [and] builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent."

She did not, however, cite the source for this, but a quick search led me to ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI AT THE OPENING OF THE 12th ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS, and there came the next piece of being overwhelmed. The Holy Father writes, "All is created from the Word and all is called to serve the Word. This means that all of creation, in the end, is conceived of to create the place of encounter between God and his creature, a place where the history of love between God and his creature can develop. 'Omnia serviunt tibi'. The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and his creature."

Pause and let the immensity of that truth overtake you. The infinitely complex subatomic structure of the physical world, the far-flung luminous glories of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field have all been spoken into existence by the breath of love. It is extravagance beyond all possible reason or ability to comprehend. It is extravagance that matches the equally unreasonable extravagance of God's love that allowed Himself, His Son, to become one of us so that through His death we could be united with Him. We are left without words in the face of the ineffable, having recourse but to the feeble piling up of superlatives that sound like a child's pure, enthusiastic babble, to which our heavenly Father simply smiles and says, "I know, my child. I know."

And that is just the physical aspect of the immensity of God's love. Consider now the spatio-temporal and metaphoric arrangement of the Incarnation. Jesus, the bread of life, was born in Bethlehem, which is literally the house of bread. The One Who told us to eat His flesh was first placed in a manger, which derives from the word "to eat." The Good Shepherd is the pastor of His flock, literally the one who feeds. And when did this all take place? It was in a divinely ordered arrangement of time pregnant with meaning. Tradition tells us that the Annunciation was on March 25, as was the death of our Lord. St. Augustine points out that the womb that held no other was like the tomb that held no other. A conception on March 25 leads to a birth on December 25, exposing the lie that our holy day is but a baptized pagan celebration. The biblical evidence shows this as well.

When I ponder these things, my knees grow weak, dropping me to a proper posture of awe and reverence. My body becomes slack, and my heart swings open to embrace the fullness and the immensity of the One Who has embraced me.

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

The Dream of St. Jerome

2011-12-22T10:10:00.000-05:00

Ciceronianus es, non Christianus. "You are a Ciceronian, not a Christian."

According to the story, this was the judgment St. Jerome heard when he dreamed he was before a heavenly tribunal. How history repeats itself.

Not long ago I had a dream, whose details I cannot recall, in which I realized, by contrast with the innocence of our son, just how far I have drifted. I am not a murderer or drug dealer, mind you, but as I said in a recent post, the many-sided oppression of contemporary American life, especially as lived out in American public schools, has affected me in ways I do not like. I am distrustful, suspecting the worst in the world around me. There is a hardness and an edge that was not there when I was a boy of eleven, like our son.

This morning I was listening to a reading of the Latin text of Luke 1:46-55, the Magnificat, and I paused to consider how close I am to what matters, and yet how far. I spend my days reading and teaching Classical Latin and writing about the authors of Rome's golden era. My life is the language of the Church, but at times it feels as if I am walking past a great cathedral, mere paces away on the sidewalk, yet miles distant. St. Jerome's judgment could be applied to me, and I know well of what St. Augustine speaks when, in Book 1 of his Confessions, he rebukes himself for having lamented the loss of love between Dido and Aeneas in the Aeneid, while never giving thought to the loss of his own soul.

And then it was that my wife shared with me her dream. Our Lord has blessed my wife with the gift to hear Him more clearly than I do, both awake and in her dreams. She said she dreamed last night that we were in our kitchen and that a piece of paper was floating in the air. She knew that Jesus was present, and when the paper landed on the table, there was a picture of Jesus that our son had drawn. In her dream I challenged this and said it was a picture of Apollo.

It does not take Joseph in an Egyptian jail to interpret this dream. There, in Technicolor glory, was my wife and her gift of discernment, our son in his innocence and closeness with Jesus, and me in my challenges, doubts, and Classical bravado.

We have hanging in our living room this painting by Salvador Dali, titled Corpus Hypercubus. I have always loved it for its depiction of Jesus as Lord of all, including dimensions of space and time of which we cannot conceive. I have also always been struck the man in the Classical garb gazing at this ineffable truth before him. While there is much beauty in the Classical world, and I am convinced it has much to teach us, that world no less than ours is, on its own merits, separated from God. While I continue to walk in both the modern and the Classical world, I long to do so as one who knows, deep in his flesh, that his citizenship is not here, but in heaven.

Let This Cup Pass

2011-12-21T08:43:00.000-05:00

As I walked the halls of the public high school where I teach Latin, returning to my room after submitting six failures from Latin I to the guidance office, I felt the weight of an elephant on my chest and burning tears around the rims of my eyes. It was not the six failures that produced these sensations, but they contributed to a cumulative, crushing effect. Perhaps it was that one of our students was raped on her way home earlier this week. Perhaps it was the cheating scandal that has rocked our school, involving a young man who photographed with his phone a final exam and sold it to students. This same young man was discovered to have stolen multiple tests and quizzes from another teacher during the teacher's absence. Perhaps it was a colleague's discovery that a student had gotten onto his computer and changed grades. Perhaps it the sadness I have felt for some time and that hit critical mass yesterday over a former student who is a friend on Facebook. This student, who must be in her late twenties by now, was a dark, edgy girl as I recall her. Now, she works at a local bar, and the vast majority of her body not covered by clothing is decked out in tattoos. I do not want to know what a former student looks like under her clothes. She friended me a long time ago, and I accepted, but now I see frequent updates of her in all manner of undress at her work, which seems to promote such appearance. I am praying the Lord will draw her to Him and out of the life she is living.

Yes, there are good times, too. Yesterday I called a family to inform them of their daughter's perfect score on her final. The grandmother took the call and was ecstatic over the news. I think it brought them additional joy, since my student's mother is suffering from a brain tumor, something of which I was unaware.

Yet today as I walked the halls, I felt oppression. My school is above average in academic, athletic, and artistic/musical achievements. We have the awards and statistics to prove it. We are, however, feeling the crushing weight of the immorality and despair that seems to be sweeping the nation, if not the world. I found myself wanting to get out, to leave, to do anything but bear the burden of this weight.

And then I thought of Mother Teresa and of Jesus. How long did Mother Teresa work in the slums? What oppression did her soul suffer? What weight of sin did our Lord have to carry in the moral sinkhole of the 1st century Roman empire? In the garden of Gethsemane, He asked our Father, "Let this cup pass from me," but added in His typical, faithful way, "nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done."

At the end of the day, I am honored by the call to serve God in this capacity, I call I first heard as a high school student. I am also grateful for the ability to feel grief over what surrounds and threatens us. There are times when I wonder how deeply I have been stained by the culture in which I am so deeply enmeshed. I was shaken recently when the word "homey" came up in our class, and I immediately thought of the slang term for a fellow gang member, but one of my students first thought of the adjective meaning comfortable, warm, and homelike.

Pray for our children in this country, whose amorality so quickly leads to immorality. Pray for their parents and the other leaders in their lives to lead them well toward the One Who is truth, even Jesus Christ. Pray for my former student who has gone down a wayward path. She has a beautiful name, in stark contrast with her appearance. Our Lord will understand why I ask that you pray for her using the name "Sharon," which, of course, is not her name.

And pray for the Christian adults in America's public schools. Yesterday, as I walked the halls, I felt as if I were carrying a large, round shield in my left hand and a large sword in my right. The shield was dented and dirty, and the weapons were heavy in my hands. Like the Hebrew slaves of Egypt, we are increasingly being asked to make bricks without straw as foolish and constricting initiatives bind the hands of the creative teachers who would do the best for children.

Sunday Snippets for 18 December 2011

2011-12-18T10:07:00.000-05:00

Contributions to this week's Sunday Snippets include:

The Little or the Great...Plutarch reminds that even ancient educators could waste time on foolishness.
This Is College Reading?...A nude, lesbian comic book is required reading at a Midwestern liberal arts college.
A Symphony of Language...High school students exploring various translations of the Aeneid discover the glories of language.
I'm Happy for Myself, So Leave Me Alone...Discussing Cicero's De Amicitia reveals the sad and lonely isolationism of our hyper-connected culture.

Thanks to all the readers out there and welcome to new commenters this week!

I'm Happy For Myself, So Leave Me Alone

2011-12-16T20:58:00.000-05:00

Cicero's treatise De Amicitia is the classic work on friendship,and my Latin III students read selections from it each year. A few days ago we were discussing one of my favorite passages, and I got a reaction I had never heard before. Cicero wrote, "Qui esset tantus fructus in prosperis rebus, nisi haberes, qui illis aeque ac tu ipse gauderet?" "Hiw great would be the enjoyment of good times if you did not have someone who would rejoice in them as much as you do?"

One of my students disagreed with this, and several chimed in to support her view. According to this student, there is nothing to be gained from having someone with whom to share good fortune. It is better to be happy for yourself. You do not need someone else to be happy for you. Another student, in seconding this position, said she hated it when her parents rejoiced over her accomplishments and would prefer to keep them to herself.

How terribly sad and lonely this perspective is. It seems to be born of a bleak and isolated life. So many features of the modern world lead to a fragmented life dissociated from all real community. Few live within walking distance of school, grocery, or church. The Beach Boys' song "Be True to Your School" has little meaning in an age in which one sibling attends one school while another goes somewhere else, students frequently date outside their school, and young people attend various youth groups that have no connection with their home church. Improved transportation and communication devices that allow us to go wherever we want, talk with whomever we want, and buy whatever we want...all whenever we want...have led to the refutation of Donne. Each man has become an island unto himself. We eschew almost every kind of authority and embrace community only so long as it serves our needs. When the pastor says something we dislike, we go church shopping.

It is a good thing my students only burned their tongues on the hot soup of Cicero. Socrates in Plato's Apology would have scalded them with his insistence that he remain a part of his community, even if that community condemned him to death.

A Symphony of Language

2011-12-15T20:18:00.001-05:00

Today my Advanced Placement Latin students continued their study of the Aeneid, their exploration of comparative translations, and their preparation for final exams by picking one passage each and then looking at multiple translations in order to choose a favorite. We have many translations in our room, and among the ones they chose to examine were versions by Cranch (1886), Humphries (1951), Lombardo (2005), Oakley (1907), Ahl (2007), Jackson (1906), Ruden (2009), Goold & Fairclough (1916), and Fitzgerald (1983). Their task was to familiarize themselves again with the Latin of their chosen passage and then to examine each of the translations, passing each one on to the next student. When they were finished, I wrote these questions on the board. What do you look for in a translation? Which did you pick as your favorite and how did it fulfill your criteria? What else did you like about your chosen translation?

Interestingly, the Cranch received the most votes for favorite, followed by Lombardo. Humphries, Oakley, and Ahl were also high in the mix. Some students said they wanted a translation that had music to it, one that captured the sound of the Latin. Others wanted something vivid and flowing, while some said they wanted something they could readily understand. One student said she wanted something that sounded like Vergil in his time. I was quite struck by these different preferences and the students' ability to articulate them, but what truly caught my attention was what one said about her preference for Cranch. She liked that the sound was more elegant. She said that they rarely read anything like this in school, and that with the advent of texting, language was rapidly disappearing.

Pause on that for a moment. She did not say that she rarely heard anything like this in popular culture, which would have been true enough, but that she did not hear anything like it in school. Quickly vanishing are the likes of Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer. Yet when 21st century American teens get a chance to hear good language, they like. They are intrigued by it, charmed by it, and want more of it.

She also said that language was disappearing as a result of the texting onslaught. Now, I do not imagine that this was a well thought out observation, and when pressed, she might have said she did not mean what I took from it. Nonetheless, it is an piercing observation. It is not just that good language is disappearing. Language itself is crippled by the use of emoticons and abbreviations.

I have done similar activities with comparative translation in other classes, and there is certainly a large segment of students who prefer older renderings, even that of Dryden from the late 17th century. In general, they seem to like those versions that are at once lucid and graceful, with a flowing meter that is true poetry. This is a point to be taken seriously by adults who interact with children in schools, churches, and other organizations. There is no need to dumb down content or talk down to children, no need to be cute for the sake of cuteness. To speak the language of a teen does not mean to talk like a buffoon. It is to speak to a teen with the same respect with which we would like to be addressed, to be aware of their lives and concerns, and to help connect them with the grander story that began long before even we were born and that will continue long after we are dead.

It is also worth noting that only a story like the Aeneid is capable of such rich and vast and continuous interpretation. Why are Dante's Divine Comedy, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Homer's Trojan War epics the sources of so many works of fine art, music, drama, and further literature? Why is it that the grim narcissism of many contemporary works is unlikely to produce any additional reflective creation? The answer to both these questions is simple: inspiration. While the secular works are not God-breathed as is holy Scripture, they do contain the breath of true creation and invention, and breath not only suggests, but also produces life. Life that does not reproduce is sterile. The great works of the Western canon are fertile in their ability invite and allow new readings, new creations, new joys with every passing generation and change of culture. They stand the test of time.

For this reason I suggested to my students that it was important to find favorite translations of Homer, Vergil, and Dante, for these would be the authors they would return to as adults and would share with others, including their children. For me it is Pope's Homer and Esolen's Dante. I am still searching for my Vergil, but the search is delightful and one I enjoy pursuing in the companionship of such intelligent and perceptive young readers.

This Is College Reading?

2011-12-14T20:31:00.000-05:00

'Tis the season for students to return from college to visit their former high school teachers. Today I was blessed by one of these visits from a young lady who graduated in May and now attends a small, Midwestern, liberal arts university. She was an International Baccalaureate student who studied both French and Latin. She is sweet and brilliant, and it was a delight to catch up with her. We talked of classes taken, classes on the horizon, and intended major. I knew she had read and written on Plato, for she had emailed earlier in the semester to ask me some questions, so I asked about this class, which is a required freshman reading and writing class. In addition to Plato, she told me the class had read an autobiographical graphic novel called Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Tonight I found the book at our Barnes & Noble and it was exactly as my student had described.

This Time magazine #1 best book of 2006 by the author of popular comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, tells Bechdel's story of discovering she was a lesbian even as she discovered her father, an English teacher and funeral home owner, was gay, a fact revealed shortly before he committed suicide. This graphic novel contains two cartoons of Bechdel masturbating and two pages of her nude and in bed with another nude woman face down between her legs.

In my last post I mentioned the article in the magazine of Indiana University's college of arts and sciences on the value of a college education, and I agree with its conclusion that a broad, liberal arts education is of great value and worth a significant cost. I cannot, however, imagine paying one one dime for my child to be subjected to insipid, navel-gazing porn pitched under the notion of enlightenment.

Compare this nonsense with Columbia's famous Core Curriculum. Says the Columbia website, "The Core Curriculum is the set of common courses required of all undergraduates and considered the necessary general education for students, irrespective of their choice in major." This year's readings (full list here and here) include such authors as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Homer, Aeschylus, and Herodotus. Oh, and selections from the Bible. There are no lesbian comic books on the list.

I was crushed when I heard that my student had been required to read this drivel. I am sick to think that this could be mandatory for our own children someday. So, I will do what I can. I will draw attention to the absurdity passing for college education at some institutions, celebrate those who are doing it right, and continue to teach and share with as many as I can the true foundations of a meaningful, liberal arts education.

The Little or the Great

2011-12-12T18:25:00.000-05:00

ἀστείως δὲ καὶ Βίων ἔλεγεν ὁ φιλόσοφος ὅτι ὥσπερ οἱ μνηστῆρες τῇ Πηνελόπῃ πλησιάζειν μὴ δυνάμενοι ταῖς ταύτης ἐμίγνυντο θεραπαίναις, οὕτω καὶ οἱ φιλοσοφίας μὴ δυνάμενοι κατατυχεῖν ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις παιδεύμασι τοῖς οὐδενὸς ἀξίοις ἑαυτοὺς κατασκελετεύουσι. (Plutarch, De liberis educandis 7d)

And Bion the philosopher wittily said that just as the suitors, unable to draw near to Penelope, mingled with her serving girls, so those unable to hit the mark of philosophy wear themselves to the bone in other matters of education that you would not at all think of value. (translation mine)

I ran across this quotation as I was recently looking back through Victor Davis Hanson's Who Killed Homer?, in which I have highlighted almost more text than I left plain. I shared it with so e of my high school Latin students today as I told them, mere days before finals, that I really do not care about their ability to identify gerunds and purpose clauses per se, but only as these are tools to reading great literature and so pressing on to that which truly matters.

Of course, the real sting of Plutarch's words is for politicians school leaders who are incapable themselves of hitting the mark of deep and true understanding, but waste their time on endless, new initiatives and attempts to improve test scores.

In the most recent issue of Indiana University's College of arts and Sciences magazine, there is a wonderful article on the lasting value of a broad, liberal arts education. It is nice to see that even secular press is realizing, once again, what some have known for so long. Great issues are great for a reason, and we do ourselves and our children a disservice when we focus on ridiculous things that no one could possibly consider important.

Sunday Snippets for 11 December 2011

2011-12-11T09:08:00.000-05:00

This week's contributions to Sunday Snippets include:

Why Matters...A look at why the reason behind good deeds matters as much as the deeds themselves.
Cross or Crucifix...Protestants utilize one, Catholics the other.
Privileged Sex...A post that wonders why a particular method of orgasm deserves the bully pulpit of the United States's support more than, oh, say, protection from murder.
A Multifaceted Victory...A college basketball win is so much more than just a college basketball win.

Thanks to all the readers out there!

A Multifaceted Victory

2011-12-10T23:28:00.000-05:00

Indiana University men's basketball went 9-0 tonight with a 73-72 victory over #1 ranked Kentucky, and it was a victory on many levels. Fans of college basketball will know that IU has been building back to its storied status after disgraceful recruiting violations by a fortunately short-lived coach who will remain nameless here. That road back to what many Hoosier faithful consider their birthright of basketball supremacy has been led by Coach Tom Crean, and tonight's win proves that things are moving in the right direction.

It is also a moral victory over a coach like John Calipari of the Kentucky Wildcats. Not only does scandal and dishonor surround this coach, but his picture is in the dictionary next to the phrase "one and done," for he seems to court the type of athlete who only intends to play one year of collegiate ball before turning pro. Some of us still think that college sports come second to education, and Coach Crean is clearly in that camp.

You will notice that the common element in the preceding paragraphs is Coach Tom Crean. A final reason this victory is so sweet is because it comes under the leadership of a man any parent would be happy to have coaching his son. In the last tweet before the game, Coach Creen said, "Take time to think deeply of the Savior's arrival. Like Mary treasure these things in your heart. Lk 2:19." I have posted about Coach Crean before (here, here, and here), and I only get more impressed with this man. His players have been blessed with more than a simple victory of points tonight.

Privileged Sex

2011-12-07T11:28:00.000-05:00

I do not think a person should be abused or killed because he or she desires his or her own gender or practices homosexuality. I also do not think a person should be abused he or she is a child or killed because he or she lives inside a womb. My question, then, is this. Why is abuse and killing of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people more worthy of the bully pulpit that is the the United States than children caught up the sex trafficking trade or those butchered in the womb? Why do they deserve more protection than Christians killed for their faith?

CBS announced yesterday that, "the United States will now use foreign aid as a tool to improve Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights abroad." As I said, no one should be abused or killed for his sexual activities. Yet who can deny that when the United States gets behind a cause, that cause is significantly advanced? So why this one as opposed to so many others? Are there more crimes against LGBT people around the world than against children? Are there more crimes committed in response to sexual orientation than in response to religion?

If there is only one instance of a crime, it is still a crime and should be opposed. We are finite creatures, however, with a limited number of hours in the day and money in the bank. We must allocate our resources according to some standard. I give to this charity and not to that one for some hopefully well thought out reason. I am just curious why a particular method of achieving an orgasm should receive the full-throated support of the most powerful nation in the world when an unborn child can be murdered because of his residence, a young person can be carted across state lines for the sexual pleasure of adults, and a Christian can be arrested, beaten, and killed for proclaiming the truth about God.

Cross or Crucifix

2011-12-06T09:52:00.000-05:00

Our large, Evangelical church recently presented The Sound of Music to sold-out crowds on four consecutive nights. It was an incredible production, and I sat with a smile stretched across my face almost the entire time. I had forgotten just how enjoyable this musical is.

My heart soared when at the beginning, and at other moments in the play, a chorus of nuns sang in Latin. I heard the "Ave, Maria," among others, and I could not help rejoicing to hear such glorious music in our church. I could not help being a bit amused as well that this Evangelical church was portraying Catholicism and allowing words that do not represent what we believe.

Then I noticed the set and looked more closely at the nuns' costumes. There was not a crucifix to be seen. The set for the abbey involved a desk for the Mother Superior, and behind her was a large, ornate cross, but not a crucifix. Several of the nuns wore crosses, either around their necks or from their belts, but none were crucifixes.

I admit that I know next to nothing about the particular order that Maria was considering joining or what that order wears, but I can be quite certain that, while we may have sung some Latin that did not square with our church theologically, we would never have had a character wearing a crucifix. I do not know whether this was a conscious decision on the part of the cast and director. It may not even have occurred to Protestants to wear anything else but an empty cross, but if anyone had suggested, I am rather confident the suggestion would have been rejected.

So what is the big deal? I suspect that the sisters would have worn crucifixes (my Catholic friends can elaborate in the combox on this point), but the lack of this item certainly did not make any difference to the overall flow of the musical. These were no more real nuns than the man playing Georg von Trapp was a real captain in the navy. Still, it pointed to the divide between Protestants and Catholics.

I have often thought it odd that we sing the Matt Maher song "Adoration" sometimes when we celebrate communion.

Look at the words. "Down in adoration falling, this great sacrament we hail." Protestants do not hail the sacrament of the Eucharist. To varying degrees we honor and respect the practice of celebrating communion, but we do not honor the elements themselves, much less see anything in them worthy of hailing.

So we will sing songs that sound beautiful, even when their words do not comport with our theology. We draw the line, however, at any visual representation the could be connected with Catholicism.

Why Matters

2011-12-05T11:28:00.000-05:00

We had gone out to dinner with some friends after church and were discussing a ministry with which our church partners, Shepherd Community Center, whose mission is to break the cycle of poverty on the near eastside of Indianapolis. Our waitress overhead us and stopped to say that she had done a study of Shepherd as part of a program she is working on at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Her task was to help Shepherd identify a particular problem and develop solutions to it. She explained that the problem Shepherd gave her was the turnover in mentors who work each week for an entire year with children. When I asked her what solution she came up with, she said that she had noted Shepherd's strict requirement that mentors be Christian and part of a church. Her solution was to ease that restriction so that others could mentor, thus giving Shepherd a broader base from which to draw.

That does make sense. If a group is having a hard time keeping its volunteers, it may need a deeper bench, as they say in basketball. After all, the goal is helping children, right? Surely it would be better to help more children than to help fewer by clinging to strict rules.

Of course, this is just the sort of argument for why Catholic hospitals and adoptions agencies should cave on issues of abortion and so-called gay marriage. If they really want to help people, they will not shut down their programs, which will then help no one, by clinging to beliefs that not everyone shares.

Yet the why of a thing matters. Consider two events from the New Testament.

And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. (Mark 12:41-44, KJV)

When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. (Acts 8:18-21, KJV)

By the logic of our waitress and much of contemporary society, Jesus was wrong. The widow did not give more than the rich people gave. Giving a dollar is giving less than giving a hundred. By the logic of our waitress and much of contemporary society, Simon the sorcerer had the right idea. If a few people could dispense the Holy Spirit, then to spread the blessing, it would make sense to give that ability to someone who was willing to pay for it.

In both these cases, however, it is the matter of why that most counts with God. It is the condition of the person's heart. Yes, a hundred dollars in the collection plate could do a lot of good, but God would prefer fifty cents from the child who wanted to give from his piggy bank. We think in measurable terms. If helping one person is good, helping two must be better, so let's do whatever it takes to help more. This, however, is not Kingdom logic. Kingdom logic says that it is better to do a little from the faithful desire to serve the one true God than to do a lot from any other motive, no matter how good it is. We must remember the words of Peter, "But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years --and a thousand years like one day.The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard 'delay,' but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:8-9, NAB) Our task is not to hurry up doing what we think is good. Our task is not to mass produce good to reach the widest possible consumer base. Our task is to be faithful.

Sunday Snippets for 4 December 2011

2011-12-04T08:51:00.000-05:00

This week's contributions to Sunday Snippets include:

Simple Steps to Kill a Child...A horrific report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (United Kingdom) presents a chilling method for murdering unborn children.
335 or 10?...Why it takes American educators so many words to say so little.
Discovering Sunlight...A novel offers an encomium to Latin and Vergil, a description of why we read literature in the first place, and an example of good writing.
Good, Low-Tech Education...Not every school has drunk the Kool-Aid in high-tech worship.
Can Particularity Become Too Scandalous?...An article has prompted some of the most disturbing thoughts about Christianity in America.

Thanks to all the readers out there!

Can Particularity Become Too Scandalous?

2011-12-02T10:32:00.000-05:00

When theologians speak of the scandal of particularity, they mean the stumbling block (the original meaning of the Greek word from which we derive "scandal") that God could be a particular person. In the case of Christ, this means that God was X feet tall, weighed X pounds, was capable of having clogged pores as a teenager. This particular person was a male of Jewish ethnicity living at a certain time and place in the world. Christians embrace this scandal as part of the wonderful mystery of the Incarnation.

Yet I have been forced to wonder whether particularity can become too scandalous. Carl Olson at Insight Scoop presents a few paragraphs from David B. Hart's essay "Future tense, IV: America & the angels of Sacré-Cœur" in the December, 2011 issue of The New Criterion. What follows are the passages that has me wondering.

[T]here is no American equivalent of Sacré-Cœur: some consecrated space haunted by the glories and failures of a deep past, ennobled and burdened by antique hopes and fantasies, emblematic of an ancient people’s whole spiritual story, but also eloquent of spiritual disappointment and the waning of faith. There are places of local memory, especially in the South, but their scope is rather severely circumscribed. America’s churches, when they are not merely serviceable clapboard meetinghouses or tents of steel and glass, are mostly just imitations of European originals: imported, transplanted, always somewhat out of place. They tell us practically nothing about America itself, and even less about whatever numinous presences might be hovering overhead.

There may not be a distinctive American civilization in the fullest sense, but there definitely is a distinctly American Christianity. It is something protean, scattered, fragmentary, and fissile, often either mildly or exorbitantly heretical, and sometimes only vestigially Christian, but it can nevertheless justly be called the American religion—and it is a powerful religion. It is, however, a style of faith remarkably lacking in beautiful material forms or coherent institutional structures, not by accident, but essentially. Its civic inexpressiveness is a consequence not simply of cultural privation, or of frontier simplicity, or of modern utilitarianism, or even of some lingering Puritan reserve towards ecclesial rank and architectural ostentation, but also of a profound and radical resistance to outward forms. It is a religion of the book or of private revelation, of oracular wisdom and foolish rapture, but not one of tradition, hierarchy, or public creeds. Even where it creates intricate institutions of its own, and erects its own large temples, it tends to do so entirely on its own terms: in a void, in a cultural and (ideally) physical desert, at a fantastic remove from all traditional sources of authority, historical “validity,” or good taste (Mormonism is an expression of this tendency at its boldest, most original, and most effervescently vulgar). What America shares with, say, France is the general Western heritage of Christian belief, with all its confessional variations; what it has never had any real part in, however, is Christendom.

In one sense, this is not at all surprising. America was born in flight from the Old World’s thrones and altars, the corrupt accommodations between spiritual authority and earthly power, the old confusion of reverence for God with servility before princes.

Just about every living religion has found some kind of home here, bringing along whatever institutional supports it could fit into its luggage. Many such creeds have even managed to preserve the better part of their integrity. Still, I would argue (maybe with a little temerity), such communities exist here as displaced fragments of other spiritual worlds, embassies from more homogeneous religious cultures, and it is from those cultures that they derive whatever cogency they possess. They are beneficiaries of the hospitable and capacious indeterminacy of American spirituality, but not direct expressions of it. The form of Christianity most truly indigenous to America is one that is simultaneously peculiarly disembodied and indomitably vigorous, and its unity is one of temperament rather than confession.

I have gone some distance, I suppose, without offering some specific example of this “American religion” I keep referring to. This is because I really do understand it as something intrinsically impalpable and shapeless: a diffuse and pervasive spiritual temper rather than a particular creed. But, for clarity’s sake, I may as well admit that I regard American Evangelicalism in all its varieties—fundamentalist, Pentecostal, blandly therapeutic—as the most pristine expression of this temper. I say this not because of Evangelicalism’s remarkable demographic range, its dominance in certain large regions of the country, or its extraordinary missionary success in Latin America and elsewhere, but simply because I am convinced of its autochthony: it is a form of spiritual life that no other nation could have produced, and the one most perfectly in accord with the special genius and idiocy, virtue and vice, of American culture.

Whatever one’s view of Evangelicalism, only bigotry could prevent one from recognizing its many admirable features: the dignity, decency, and probity it inspires in individuals, families, and communities; the moral seriousness it nourishes in countless consciences; its frequent and generous commitment to alleviating the sufferings of the indigent and ill; its capacity for binding diverse peoples together in a shared spiritual resolve; its power to alter character profoundly for the better; the joy it confers. But, conversely, only a deep ignorance of Christian history could blind one to its equally numerous eccentricities: the odd individualism of its understanding of salvation; its bizarre talk of Christ as one’s “personal Lord and savior”; its fantastic scriptural literalism; the crass sentimentality of some of its more popular forms of worship; its occasional tendency to confuse piety with patriotism.

Yes, Jesus was a 1st century Jewish male, but should my faith be 21st century American Christianity? What Hart describes in the paragraphs above of American Evangelicalism, from his depiction of its physical structurs to its beliefs and actions is spot on. I have lived it for more than forty years. I have also been aware of the connection between the American way of thinking, being, and living that is so tied to it, but for whatever reason, Hart's words have caused me to pause.

The most disturbing sentence to me is this. "It is a form of spiritual life that no other nation could have produced, and the one most perfectly in accord with the special genius and idiocy, virtue and vice, of American culture." It disturbs me deeply to think that the way of living out my life with and before God has been shaped in any way other than by God Himself.

And yet it has. There can be no question that the features of American Evangelicalism he describes are utterly at one with the American way of thinking and, to paraphrase Hart, eccentric when viewed through the lens of history. Taking it a step further, while Hart is correct that other religions and forms of the Christian faith have found their root here and possess a cogency derivative of their original cultures, the much lamented lack of cogency in American Catholicism and Judaism points to the sad truth that, like American Evangelicalism, all religions, given enough time, become more American. The old metaphor of the melting pot has proven true. Distinct and beautiful metals have been melted down into an alloy that bears little resemblance to its constituent parts.

All of this leaves one feeling rather like one of the prisoners in Plato's cave. Suddenly there is a sense that things are not as they appear, or that how things appear is not how they should be. One is led to cry out with Paul, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25, KJV)

Good, Low-Tech Education

2011-12-01T09:59:00.000-05:00

On the segment of the NBC Nightly News for Wednesday, November 30, 2011, there was a report in the Education Nation segment on a school in Silicon Valley. This school, attended even by children of Google execs, eschews technology in the lower grades and brings it only cautiously, as needed, in high school. The results are phenomenal, and both parents and students embrace the freedom of, in the words of a Google vice-president, not being constrained by technology. Education reporter Rehema Ellis tells us in the video that the philosophy behind this school is one hundred years old, and there lies the key.

I can go her one better. Classical Christian education (for definitions and examples see here, here, and here) is based on the medieval trivium. It focuses on memorization of core material in the early grades, learning to argue in the middle grades, and learning to synthesize and present knowledge in the upper grades. Such a system is amazingly well suited to each stage of a child's emotional and cognitive development.

The problem with contemporary public education is that it heralds only the new. The best theory to be made policy and foisted off on children is the one that is five minutes old. That is, unless there is a theory two minutes old, or one that an education guru just thought up.

There is a growing push-back against the suffocating use of technology. More and more we are seeing that all i-things are not necessarily good, or at least not in such quantities. It takes a private school, however, to acknowledge and act on such truth. For some reason, public schools seem incapable of doing anything other than increase the use of technology and seek after the next latest and greatest theory.

Discovering Sunlight

2011-11-30T08:42:00.000-05:00

In the 1978 novel The Far Arena by Richard Ben Sapir, Sister Olav spends the year before taking final vows for the Dominican order teaching Latin at a Norwegian school. While the plot is actually about a gladiator from the time of Domitian who fell into ice in the far north and whose body, recovered by oil drillers in the 20th century, is brought back to life, I find myself savoring the following passage in a way I could not when I first read it nearly twenty-five years ago. Sister Olav is introducing her class to the Aeneid.

"When I first read this poet, it was like discovering sunlight. I find in Vergil the beauty of the discipline of Latin, the economy and genius of this language which gave a civilization and an organization to a world of warring tribes."

This poem she did not have to mentally translate into Norwegian. She knew the words and the meter and the meaning as one.

As she orated, she did not look at the slim, red-bound volume but recited from something deeper than memory.

She closed her eyes and drifted with the meter, almost like a child hearing a beloved aunt tell a familiar story, each word an old friend to be greeted again in proper order with other old familiar friends. But with this poem, like mature works, there always seemed to be a new dimension, a new reality from which to experience one's being. (pp. 64-65)

There are but two languages, Greek and Latin. No others have so broadly and profoundly both shaped and given expression to human perception across such expanses of time and space. English, for all its linguistic power and worldwide use, would not exist but for Greek and Latin, and they far outstrip it in musicality. Sister Olav's metaphor is perfect. To discover Latin through Vergil is to discover the sun.

Yet Sapir does more than merely offer an encomium to Latin. He sings the joy of reading. Beloved works need to be read again and again so that their words can become familiar friends. This is the joy that can be had in literature. This is why we read to ourselves, read to others, and teach children this marvelous skill.

All of this we see in Sapir's prose. What evocative specificity he employs when he writes, "almost like a child hearing a beloved aunt tell a familiar story." While the form of his writing is prose, his words make poetry.

335 or 10?

2011-11-29T08:18:00.000-05:00

Indianapolis Public Schools are noticing an ethnic gap between their faculty and their students. According to a recent article in the Indianapolis Star, 85% of the faculty in 2010 was white, but only 23% of the students were white. "To help teachers adapt," says the article, "the district created a 335-page curriculum guide with ideas on lessons in African American history." Since it is now a requirement that multicultural themes be incorporated into lessons, this massive tome was apparently deemed necessary. What it necessitated for me when I read the article was to jump up from my chair and stride with much steam and purpose to a colleague's room empty of students so I could have an appropriate place to yell, "Bullshit!"

What lit my fire was not only the absurdity of such a massive document, but its even greater foolishness when compared with the math curriculum in Finland. It runs to a grand total of ten pages. Now, I am not mathematician, but I do remember that there is quite a bit of stuff to learn in math. You've got everything from whole numbers and fractions to imaginary numbers to deal with. There are the four basic functions, not to mention all the specialty knowledge of geometry, both plane and solid, pre-algebra, algebra, statistics, and calculus. Yet the Finns have boiled it all down to a lean and mean ten page document that allows their teachers to get on with the business of actually teaching. In the United States where everyone laments our poor education, we produce 335-page epics.

I was talking with another colleague who pointed out that those who know something can usually express it in few words. They are succinct. Those who do not know cast about for many words to hide their lack of knowledge. As Harry Frankfurt described in his book on the topic, this is the essence of bullshit. Jesus said the same thing. "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Matthew 6:7-8, NIV)

Wordsworth was correct when he said that the world is too much with us. Late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. There is too much noise, too much talking. Jennifer Fulwiler recent posted about lost Sundays and our missing day of rest, and I shared with my student teacher Psalm 46:10, which says simply, "Be still and know that I am God."

As my own efforts to compose English accentual verse in Horatian meter recently reminded me (see here and here), slowing down and being quiet serve us very well. We need less, not more...of words as well as material possessions...and it is not lost on me that I contribute to the noise with my own writings. I will, I suppose, take comfort in this. My writings are closer to 10 than to 335.

Simple Steps to Kill a Child

2011-11-28T08:15:00.000-05:00

I first ran across this piece through Rorate Caeli the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Knowing that many people would not be reading blogs over the holiday weekend, I held off posting about it until today. As is often my practice, I do a quick read of favorite blogs before leaving school, and thus, about 3:00 on Wednesday afternoon, I discovered a clear outline for how to kill a child. Mind you, this was not on some lunatic-fringe website. It comes to us from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (United Kingdom). Rarely am I so shaken that I actually shake. I stumbled about my classroom, gathering my items for the drive home, shocked, stunned, trembling. Never have I seen anything so cold, calculating, and heartless. Consider just a few lines from this document with the my comments in black.

Inducing fetal death before medical abortion may have beneficial emotional, ethical and legal consequences. Put simply, it may benefit you to kill someone, and this document will tell you how best to do it. Had that sentence said that the death of a homosexual or a Muslim may have beneficial consequences, there would have been such a firestorm of protest the Internet itself may have gone down.
in cases where the fetal abnormality is not lethal or the abortion is not for fetal abnormality and is being undertaken after 21 weeks and 6 days of gestation, failure to perform feticide could result in a live birth and survival, which contradicts the intention of the abortion. God forbid that the intent of abortion should be thwarted and that there be, horror of horrors, a live birth.
When medical abortion is chosen, special steps are required to ensure that the fetus is dead at the time of abortion. The RCOG recommends feticide for abortions over 21 weeks and 6 days of gestation, except in the case of lethal fetal abnormality, and that feticide should always be performed by an appropriately trained practitioner (under consultant supervision) using aseptic conditions and with continuous ultrasound. Again, to put it simply, the RCOG recommends that you obtain someone who is trained to kill, lest an unskilled murderer botch the job. If there were a recommendation like this in a mafia movie, it would be comic.

The document goes on to list the procedures for guaranteeing the death of the child that are so chilling one is reminded of the Nazi regime. This horrific document needs widespread attention, and we must all fall to our knees in repentance and prayer.

Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.

Sunday Snippets for 27 November 2011

2011-11-27T11:42:00.000-05:00

Contributions to this week's Sunday Snippets include:

All The Fun's In How You Say a Thing...The preface to a 19th century translation of Horace's Odes illustrates the complex joys of poetry.
Tools of the Craft...Inspired by the Horace preface, I set about to compose in a Horatian meter, but first had to acquire the right tools, such as a fountain pen and quiet.
My First Second Asclepiadian...An exercise in composing in the Latin meter known as Second Asclepiadian.

I am deeply thankful for all my Catholic friends out there who have been reading this blog, offering comments, and providing such good discussion on matters that matter. I am excited for all of you as you savored the new Mass translation today. Please share with me your thoughts and experiences. I would love to hear what it was like to worship with this beautiful language so close to the original Latin.

My First Second Asclepiadian

2011-11-23T09:48:00.000-05:00

In a recent post I talked about experimenting with an accentual form of Horace's meters. Last night I finished a first draft of a poem in the Second Asclepiadian meter. Using / to represent an accented syllable and v to represent an unaccented, with || representing the caesura and x representing either a syllable that can be either accented or unaccented, the Second Asclepiadian looks like this.

/ v / v v / || / v v / v x

/ v / v v / v x.

The first three lines of the stanza are in the Asclepiadian meter, and the final line is called a Glyconic. About the most I can claim for this rude first effort is the alliteration of liquid consonants in the last line of the first stanza and the expression "having been done" in the second stanza, which is a typical, wooden student translation of the ablative absolute construction in Latin. This is far from being anything good, but is merely an exercise.

How can I write a verse modeled on Horace's

Meter, not having read, studied or thought about

Him since days long ago, when as a student I

First heard lyrical Latin lines.

Then I sought but to turn classical verse to prose,

Keeping grammar just right -- ablative absolutes

Stiff and having been done just as my teacher had

Taught when I was a boy in school.

Coming back to such verse now as a man I can

See and hear so much more artistry in those lines

I can scarcely have hope ever to write with both

Grace and technical prowess, too.

What I noticed in trying to compose in this meter was that I needed to speak the rhythm aloud multiple times with nonsense syllables. I had to get the rhythm in my head before I could begin to use it. I doubt I shall go further with this. It was an interesting exercise and nothing more.

Tools of the Craft

2011-11-22T11:28:00.000-05:00

When I was a boy and went to the doctor, I came home and wanted to be a doctor. The same was true for dentist and teacher and barber. This is probably why I enjoy historical re-enactment, and it is certainly why I cannot read a favorite author or genre without wanting to imitate that style of writing. If I read a Mickey Spillane potboiler, I want to write a hard-nosed detective novel. If I read Homer, I want to compose my own epic. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I think there is something mimetic in our nature. We were created in the image of God. Images and their creation are, therefore, part of our DNA.

I recently wrote about the care necessary to translate the complex poetry of Horace, and this naturally led me back to Horace himself and a desire to explore through my own composition some of his poetic experimentation. I began by reading a bit on an accentual variation of Horace's quantitative meter here. Yet as I contemplated composing in the First Asclepiadian (I just love that name), I was sharply confronted with an obstacle that has become epidemic in our age. I move too fast.

This kind of poetic work is not something that can be dashed off quickly. Pope said that as a child he "lisp'd in numbers, for the number came," and when it comes to heroic couplets, I, too, can rattle them off without too much thought. There is a complexity to the Horatian meters, however, that will not permit this. I am a hard-driving, hard-driven person, and hyperlinked world of e-texts has only worsened my tendency to jump from this to that. What must I do to put myself in a place of attempting this kind of poetry?

My first step was to fill a favorite Waterman fountain pen. While I write much on the computer and now my iPad, I knew that Horatian meter would demand the kind of slow sensitivity that only a fountain pen in contact with a physical page could produce.

I was next blessed to read the post of a friend on the very matter of slowing down. Was God trying to tell me something? Was He blessing me with a sort of Horatian salvation, knowing that this would force me to be still?

In stolen moments today, I have managed to squirrel myself away in the library with a copy of Horace, cheap notebook, and my pen. Slowing down has been a challenge, but wow! It is nothing compared with the challenge of trying to compose in an accentual form of a Latin meter. This is tough stuff! Yet it is fun and a challenge and I suspect I will come back to it until I have developed some comfort, if not facility, with this style of poetry. Without a doubt, however, the best thing it has brought me is a reason to slow down.

All The Fun's In How You Say a Thing

2011-11-21T10:24:00.001-05:00

The title of this post is the title of a book by Timothy Steele. I first became aware of Steele twenty years ago through his book Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter. In addition to being a Guggenheim Fellow and teaching at Cal State, Los Angeles, he is associated with what many call New Formalism. In short, Steele is a poet who adheres to traditional poetic forms. He employs traditional rhythms and rhymes to create poetry that is vibrant and in no way archaic. He is my kind of guy.

The title of his book All the Fun's... seemed the perfect title for this post, which is about the preface to John Conington's 1863 edition of Horace's Odes. One of my academic interests is translation and translation theory, and I have come to enjoy reading the preface of any translated work to see what the translator was thinking. In the case of Conington, I hit the mother lode. After having gone on for many pages about his attempts to find just the right English meter to use in translating a particular Latin one, he writes, "From this enumeration, which I fear has been somewhat tedious...." It is that, there can be no question, and I take a secret pleasure in thinking that I am one of few people likely to have read his preface in recent years, and perhaps the only one to have read and annotated it on an iPad. Still, what he has to say on translation and versification has proven both interesting and beneficial.

He begins his preface by saying, "I scarcely know what excuse I can offer for making public this attempt to 'translate the untranslatable.'" That line alone had me hooked, for he is right. In many ways, translation is an impossible art, an idea I have explored in a journal article here and elsewhere on this blog (search "translation theory"). He followed this by saying, "No one can be more convinced than I am that a really successful translator must be himself an original poet." Once again, I could not agree more, but where many would depart from Conington, Steele, and me is in what constitutes good poetry. To quote Douglas Hofstadter, poetry is more than just prose with a ragged right margin.

Conington takes his role as poet and translator seriously, and for many pages explores with his readers the options he considered for rendering such delightful sounding metrics as Fourth Asclepiadian, Sapphic, Alcaic, into English, explaining why he rejected or chose what he did. He gave me much to consider in my own efforts to translate and compose verse, reminding me that some meters are simply better suited for expressing certain things. With regard to his choice of an eight-syllable iambic line with alternating rhymes, he writes, "[I]n a few passages, chiefly those containing proper names, I have had no disagreeable sense of confinement. I believe the reason of this to be that the Latin Alcaic generally contains fewer words in proportion than the Latin Sapphic, the fomer being favourable to long words, the latter to short ones...."

Yet for all the benefit a would-be poet or translator may take from his discussion of metrical particulars, perhaps the greatest is the awareness that form matters. Read through this preface, not allowing yourself to become distracted by references to poetic forms you may not understand, and you will come away with a sense of how a thoughtful user of language approaches his craft. With regard to how people used language before him, he writes, "It is the fashion to say that the characteristic of the literature of the last century was shallow clearness, the expression of obvious thoughts in obvious, though highly refined language." I cannot help but think that if he were to characterize the literature of today, he would find vulgar, self-obsessed, insipid feelings, not thoughts, expressed in disjointed and simplistic language.

The reason for this is found in a line Conington uses to describe his own shortcomings, but it is one that can apply many arenas of life. Says Conington, "[W]eakness may claim a license of which strength would disdain to avail itself."

The strong writer will endeavor to say things of meaning in the best possible way. He or she will not give in to the trends of the age. Like Steele, good poets will work out the difficulties of meter and find within them the framework for building something worth lasting past a generation.

Sunday Snippets for 20 November 2011

2011-11-20T09:50:00.000-05:00

Contributions to this week's Sunday Snippets include:

Dissatisfied Socrates Tests the Test...G.K. Chesterton points out what it is necessary to have have worked out a philosophy of what we believe.
Disqualified...A porn star reads to elementary students and an actress famous for nudity portrays the Virgin Mary.
Characteristic Clause...Latin grammar shows how the Romans knew something about character that many of seem to have forgotten.
Accidental Marriage...An article on transubstantiation inspires Aristotelian thoughts about marriage.

Blessings and thanks to all the readers out there!

Accidental Marriage

2011-11-17T11:06:00.001-05:00

Since reading Mark Shea's article, "Transubstantiation: Change We Can Believe In," about a week ago, I have been pondering off and on whether there is something we can understand about marriage through a discussion of accidents and substance. The argument behind transubstantiation is, of course, that although the accidents, or species, do not change, the substance changes. Thus, what appears as bread and wine to human perception from the naked eye all the way to the molecular level, is, in fact, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.

In the ongoing debate about the definition of marriage, those who promote homosexual unions under this name are in effect trying to duplicate the miracle underlying transubstantiation. They argue that two people in love, who appear to human perception as two distinct persons, are, in fact, one entity. Of course, rather than argue that this is what has happened, they point merely to the accidents of cohabitation, shared affection, self-surrender, and commitment as evidence that there is a marriage present.

These are, however, merely accidents and not the thing itself. Brothers in arms may exhibit the same accidents, yet no one, least of all they, would claim that there was a marriage. The reason is that marriage is a substance in the sense put forth in Aristotle's Categories. Marriage is not something that exists in a couple, but rather is an independent entity in which a couple may exist.

What can bring the substance of marriage into existence? Surely it is only the divine working of God by which two are made one flesh. No hocus pocus of legislation or good intent can bring about the substance of marriage, however much the accidents of a relationship may appear to some to indicate it.

As I was thinking about this, I read the Catechism on marriage and ran across something in section 1661 that is of great importance in understanding what marriage really is. "Marriage introduces one into an ecclesial order, and creates rights and duties in the Church between the spouses and towards their children; - Since marriage is a state of life in the Church, certainty about it is necessary (hence the obligation to have witnesses)."

Marriage as an ecclesial order...when was the last time you thought of it like that? Pastor, priest, bishop, nun, monk...we think of all these as ecclesial orders and we all, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox alike, know that there is something special about these offices. We know that there are expectations on those who fill them to behave in certain ways and to do certain things. There is a proper claim of an individual congregation and the Church at large upon these people. We expect that they order their lives around their calling within the Church.

And there is no difference with marriage. I wonder how it would change the lives of legitimately married heterosexual couples if they truly understood this.

Characteristic Clause

2011-11-16T11:11:00.000-05:00

In a recent post, I argued that it former porn stars should not read books at elementary schools to first graders, but I did not fully discuss why this is. In Latin there is a construction known as the characteristic clause. It employs a subjunctive verb rather than an indicative, and this is only difference between it an a relative clause. The difference in meaning, however, is significant. Consider the following examples.

A. Marcus est puer qui canes verberat.
B. Marcus est puer qui canes verberet.

If you look closely, the only difference between these two sentences is one vowel in the final word. Think now about the difference in meaning.

A. Marcus is the boy who beats dogs.
B. Marcus is the sorty of boy who beats dogs.

As I point out to my Latin II students, the boy in the first sentence could get arrested. Beating dogs is illegal. This sentence seems to say that there has been a rash of dog beating in the neighborhood, but we have finally found the culprit. It is Marcus who is, in fact, beating the dogs.

The second sentence, however, says nothing of the culpability of Marcus. He may beat dogs, or he may not beat dogs. He may, as it turns out, be quite the dog lover. There is something about him, though, that makes him seem to others like the sort of person who, given the chance, would be beat a dog.

In the age of scientism, all that matters are the cold, hard facts. If woman is not dressed provocatively and is not reading aloud from Penthouse Forum, then it is perfectly fine for her to read story books to first graders. Nothing else matters, certainly not character. Yet the Romans knew, as they grammar bears witness, that character does matter. Quintillian says that Cato's definition of an orator was "vir bonus, dicendi peritus" (Instit. Orat. XII.1) This means, "a good man, skilled in speaking."

It was not enough for a Roman orator to have good diction and to project his voice from a firm diaphragm. Skills of the trade were not enough. One had to be a good man as well. Consider the requirements of an elder in Titus 1:6-9.

An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. (NIV)

As long as an elder is not drunk at a church meeting, what does it matter if he gets wasted on Friday night? If his fornication does not cause him to be late to some responsibility at church, does it really make a difference if he is cheating on his wife, especially if he does it discreetly? Come on, now. This guy has good financial sense. He has led his company to be one of the biggest in the industry. He would make a great elder for our church.

Well, um, no. At least not according to Scripture. In the musical A Chorus Line, one character laments in song, "Am I my resume?" No, if by that he means just the total of his skill set. Yes, if by that he means all that he does, says, thinks, or ever has done, said, and thought. Most people in most cultures throughout most of time have known that it matters what kind of person you are. It still matters today, even if we are not the sort of people who recognize it.

Disqualified

2011-11-15T15:55:00.000-05:00

Is there anything a person could have done prior to performing a certain task that would make disqualify him for that task? Most schools and churches, for example, will not hire someone to work with children who has a record of child abuse. It does not matter whether this person has repented, been habilitated, and made a new creature in Christ. Even a church will say that this person may not serve in children's ministry.

What about being a porn star? What about being an award-winning porn star? What about being an award-winning porn star for best anal sex scene and best oral sex who has been two years out of the adult entertainment business reading to first graders at a public school?

What about an actress famous for nudity and homemade porn portraying Mary in a Christmas comedy sketch?

I think for many people there is a natural revulsion from both these examples. On the other hand, many Christians may feel that if these women have repented of their past actions, then nothing should stand in their way of future work. I certainly feel revulsion from these stories, but also think that nothing should stand in their way of future work, so long as that work is along the lines of serving as an actuary at an insurance agency, splitting atoms at a nuclear facility, or asking, "Do you want fries with that?" There just seems something wrong, however, with a porn star, even one not currently working in the field, reading to first graders or a famously nude actress portraying Mary.

But is it Christian charity to think this way and act on such thoughts? Is it appropriate? Is it logical?

Sasha Grey claims that her work in pornography does not define who she is. I am glad that this is the case. Indeed, if she repents of her sins and follows the command of Jesus to the woman at the well not to continue in her sin, such past work does not define her. There is, however, the very real consequence that almost everyone else sees her as a porn actress. This may be unfair, and it may be unfortunate, but it is a fact and cannot be changed at the moment. Over time, perhaps, people may forget, but for the moment, this is how the world sees her, and it affects her ability to do certain other tasks.

A criminal may shoot a clerk in the arm as he robs the store. The clerk may lose that arm through amputation. The criminal may genuinely repent and ask the forgiveness of the clerk, and the clerk may genuinely forgive him. That clerk, however, will spend the rest of his life with only one arm. There has been a very real consequence to the criminal's actions, one that no one can deny or take away.

There is a reason why the Jewish leaders could not accept the thirty pieces of silver that Judas tried to return to them. They had become blood money. It did not matter that the leaders themselves were the ones who bribed Judas, effectively making the coins blood money. It did not matter that the leaders would have benefitted from the financial gain of thirty more silver coins. It was blood money, and it could not be accepted into the treasury.

We all want adults to be involved with the education of children, and we all want to promote reading. Most Christians like to see the portrayal of the birth of Jesus, albeit not in a sketch comedy. Yet education and reading are not so important that just anyone should be allowed to assist, and no portrayal of the Nativity is worth casting Pamela Anderson as the Blessed Mother.

Saying this is not uncharitable. It is simply stating that actions have consequences, some of which may disqualify us, perhaps only for a certain period of time, from doing other things we would like to do. I am sure there are many other things Miss Grey could do to help education that would be appropriate for her even now, despite her past, but reading to first graders is not one of them. Likewise, Miss Anderson could honor the Holy Family in a variety of ways, none of which involve her portraying Mary. There is plenty for both actresses to do to advance good causes. They need not feel limited to these particular avenues.

Dissatisfied Socrates Tests the Test

2011-11-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

Life is difficult. I suspect we all know that, but not necessarily in the way I am thinking of at the moment. There are the challenges of ill health, a broken relationship, and the rising costs of living. These are what we usually think of when someone says that life is difficult because these are the challenges that everyone faces in some form or another. They are inescapable.

Then there are the difficulties brought on by ourselves. The drug addict, the adulterer, and the student who cheats on a chemistry exam all face challenges that make their lives difficult as a result of their own poor choices, which we used to call sins.

The kind of difficulty I am thinking of, however, is that brought on by ourselves, but not the unintended consequence of having one too many drinks before getting behind the wheel. I am thinking of the difficulty we know good and well we are introducing into our lives, a difficulty we have gone put of our way to embrace rather than to avoid. I am referring to intentional living, which is the result old fashioned thinking.

We are all familiar with John Stuart Mill's dictum, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.". (Utilitarianism, 1863) Like you, I know a good many satisfied pigs. These are fine people, mind you, friends and relatives, the people I want to invite to a party. I do not mean this as insult, but rather that the vast majority of our acquaintances do what everyone else does. If they are Republicans, they say and do the things most Republicans say and do. The same goes whether their defining characteristic is Midwesterner, athlete, or public school teacher. This can produce an enjoyable, even a good life. It is a way of living that reduces some of the difficulty in life. Fortunately or unfortunately, it has never been a way of living I could pull off.

A recent Insight Scoop post cites this from G.K. Chesterton:

[M]an is always influenced by thought of some kind, his own or somebody else's; that of somebody he trusts or that of somebody he never heard of, thought at first, second or third hand; thought from exploded legends or unverified rumours; but always something with the shadow of a system of values and a reason for preference. A man does test everything by something. The question here is whether he has ever tested the test.

I was talking with a homeschooling mother today. She and her husband are wrestling with the right choice to make for their child next year, as are we. Most families send their children to the school closest to their home, and this meets the needs of many of them. Yet I think such an important decision as who will teach the child that God has entrusted to my wife and me the truths of God's created order, should not be left to a mere fact of geography with no further thought. Chesterton argues that each person should have some philosophy to guid him through such decisions. Indeed, the letters Phi Beta Kappa of the renowned honor society are the first letters of three Greek words, philosophia biou kubernetes, meaning "philosophy is the guide of life."

Having a philosophy about something does not make dealing with that thing any easier. I have a philosophy about education. It has certainly made my job as a teacher more difficult and my role as a father more challenging. It would be so much easier not to wrestle with questions my friends and relatives have never even thought to ask. Yet Chesterton is right. All our decisions are the result of our testing the facts. The question is what test we will use. At times I think my test regarding education is a six hour essay exam with one question divided into thirty-seven parts, but at the end of the day, is the difficult life that I, as a Christian Socrates, have willingly chosen.

Sunday Snippets 13 November 2011

2011-11-13T18:39:00.000-05:00

Contributions to Sunday Snippets this week include:

First the Rant... ...A post about the filthy, morally bankrupt, popular primetime show called Glee.
...And Then the Rave...A brilliant review of the latest translation of the Iliad has much to say about the value of Classical literature.
On Preparing Students, Or Not, For What...A scene from an Evelyn Waugh short story prompts us to ask what exactly it is we are preparing our students for.

Thanks to all the readers out there! I love to chat with you in the combox!

On Preparing Students, Or Not, For What

2011-11-11T08:58:00.000-05:00

I recently ran across a reference to an Evelyn Waugh story that I had to read for myself. It is titled, Scott-King's Modern Europe and details the summer vacation of a Classics teacher at British school in the 1940s. The scene that caught my attention comes from pp. 375-376 of The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh.

Later the headmaster sent for Scott-King.

"You know," he said, "we are starting this year with fifteen fewer classical specialists than we had last term."

"I thought that would be about the number."

"As you know, I'm an old Greats man myself. I deplore it as much as you do. But what are we to do? Parents are not interested in producing the 'complete man' any more. They want to qualify their boys for jobs in the modern world. You can hardly blame them, can you?"

"Oh yes," said Scott-King. "I can and do."

"I always say you are a much more important man here than I am. One couldn't conceive of Granchester without Scott-Kingt. But has it ever occurred to you that a time may come when there will be no more classical boys at all?"

"Oh yes. Often."

"What I was going to suggest was -- I wonder if you will consider taking some other subject as well as the classics? History, for example, preferably economic history?"

"No, headmaster."

"But, you know, there may be something of a crisis ahead."

"Yes, headmaster."

"Then what do you intend to do?"

"If you approve, headmaster, I will stay as I am as long as any boy wants to read the classics. I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world."

"It's a short-sighted view, Scott-King."

"There, headmaster, with all respect, I differ from you profoundly. I think it is the most long-sighted view it is possible to take."

As I wrote in a recent post, we have all the more reason to teach the Great Books to the Glee generation. The parents in Waugh's story are the parents of today, as they have likely been the parents of every age. They want their children to go to school in order to get a good job that pays good money and comes with health insurance. This is the reason for the constant rise in Spanish class enrollments, the addition of technology programs, and the demise of cursive writing in the primary schools. The headmaster in Waugh's story is the headmaster of today, along with the principal and the school board.

Yet Mr. Scott-King is an unlikely hero, for he has quietly taken his stand and dared to challenge the prevailing misconceptions of his day. Why on earth would we want to prepare students for the world we see around us? Do we really want to prepare them to work for Fannie Mae or Freddi Mac? Do we really want to prepare them to be successful in the entertainment or sports worlds of today? Would we not much rather, if we took but a moment's pause to consider it, prepare them to change those worlds? Would those who are Christians not much rather prepare them to be the salt and light that Christ commanded us to be?

Judas was well prepared for his world. Hobbes only thought that life was nasty, brutish, and short. Consider the ancient world, where there was poor medical care, poor sanitation, and the Romans ruled with the iron gladius. Judas was well prepared for this world, for he knew that it would take bribery and betrayal to make things happen. He put to good use the lessons of his education.

Paul, too, was well prepared for his world. He was a Pharisee among Pharisees, but he had the scales removed from his eyes in order to see that he must jettison the kind of education he had received in order to follow faithfully the divine Logos.

Yes, we need economics classes and basic keyboarding, but students need the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, if only because these are so utterly useless in preparing them for the modern world.

...And Then the Rave

2011-11-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I did not so much rant against the obscene drivel that is the popular Fox television show Glee as outline the plot of the most recent episode and let it speak for itself. From the insane halls of Bedlam, we go now to the sublime heights of Parnassus.

In October of 2011, Stephen Mitchell's new translation of the Iliad was released. On November 7, Daniel Mendelsohn's review appeared in The New Yorker. After highlighting nearly everything in the article, I have begun to share it with my advanced Latin students, who are reading Vergil's Aeneid. There are really three distinct parts to Mendelsohn's review. He discusses the competing theories on whether there was a primal text of the Iliad written by one man named Homer, or whether the poem is the product from a long series of bards singing songs of the Trojan War. He also, perhaps unintentionally, offers a eulogy for the liberal arts and speaks to important issues in translation theory.

In his eulogy of literature, he writes on p. 79 of two scenes, one involving Hector and one with Achilles, and then gives a concise and beautiful reason for why we read such things.

Hector, who is still in his armor, leans over to pick up his young son, but the boy recoils screaming until his father takes off his terrifying helmet. It's unlikely that literature will find a better symbol for the way in which war makes us unrecognizable -- to others, to ourselves.

[Achilles'] wrath causes an unexpected and catastrophic loss of his own: the death of Patroclus. The harrowing scenes of grief that follow demonstrate a truth that Achilles grasps too late: his reputation wasn't, after all, the thing he valued most. That the insight is inseparable from the loss is what gives the poem its wrenching grandeur. Pathei mathos, Aeschylus wrote in his "Agamemnon,".... We "suffer into knowledge."

[T]he Iliad [is a] richly detailed work of art that provides an image of every possible extreme of human experience, a reminder of who we are and who we sometimes strive to be.

This is why we teach such things to our children and why we continue to savor classic works as we grow older. This is why the Iliad is better for high school students to read than Equus or The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea.

Mendelsohn concludes his review by pointing out Mitchell's flattening of the translation. This review makes a great companion piece to Anthony Esolen's recent article on the new Mass translation. Both the 1960s Mass translation and Mitchell's work omit much of the poetry of their originals. Mendelsohn ends by saying,

[A]n ancient authority inheres in that old-time diction, the plushly padded epithets and stately rhythms. All this, along with many other subtle effects, is gone from Mitchell's Iliad, which, in its eagerness to reproduce what Homer says, strips away how he said it. [I]ts richness, even its stiffness, is part of what makes it large, makes it commanding, makes it great.

The Iliad doesn't need to be modernized, because the question it raises is a modern -- indeed, existentialist -- one: how do we fill our short lives with meaning?

Many teachers and authors seek to recast what is ancient into a mold more readily apprehensible by the present age. Such efforts are predicated in the assumption that the present age is incapable of grasping what its ancestors have enjoyed. Admittedly, with a Glee generation, such an assumption may be valid. Yet if so, it simply provides all the more reason to teach classic works, including Classics, to those who are unlikely to hear elsewhere that there even is such a place as Parnassus. And when we lead students to the haunt of the Muses, we must not give them watered down nectar, but must encourage them, with the wisdom of Pope,

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
There, shallow draughts intoxicated the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

First, the Rant...

2011-11-09T08:25:00.000-05:00

Just before 8:00 last night, I ran across a piece from LifeSiteNews with the headline "‘Glee’ displays gay teen sex in prime-time.". Realizing that the show was about to come on, I flipped to the Fox station to watch. My wife left the room at one point, but I hung in to the end. While my first reaction had been merely to blast the show for its promulgation of perversity, I decided to watch it first rather than just take the word of an article, even from a site that I trust.

I wish I had stayed with just the article.

This show is the most vapid, narcissistic, vain, self-centered, and shallow homage to drivel I have ever seen. The one adult in last night's episode was the female coach of the boys' football team, and her greatest contribution to the plot was confessing to a teen boy that she was still a virgin and then accepting dating advice from the kid. In the absence of any kind of appropriate adult leadership, is it any wonder this show is little more than the musical version of Lord of the Flies?

The plot centered the school production of West Side Story and the teen director's attempts to get the male and female leads to act with more authenticity. The director, by the way, was the same kid giving advice to the female football coach. This teen director questioned whether the play's leads had ever had sex, concluding that, if not, they would be unable to portray their characters in a way convincing to the audience.

This triggered the majority of the episode, which saw the lead girl and her boyfriend and the lead actor and his boyfriend getting ever closer to having sex. The significant others of the lead teen actors in the play were not disposed toward having sex for the first time simply so their partners could act better. When the gay lead actor complained to his boyfriend that they had "never allowed their hands visas to go south of the border," the boyfriend replied that this was the reason there is such a thing as masturbation.

After disastrous attempts to have sex that resulted in nothing more than the gay couple getting fake I.D.s and going to a gay bar on drag queen night and the hetero boy making cookies for his girlfriend, the play debuted at the school, and I thought nothing would be consummated.

I was wrong.

In the final minutes of the show, we see both couples in bed snuggling, kissing, and preparing for sex as the episode faded to black. We were led to believe that now it was okay, because the female lead and the male lead were not manipulating their partners into sex so they could be better actors. They were now doing it for the right reason, which, of course, was love.

I have no further comment to make on this. The description of this episode of a primetime, massively popular television show with legions of teen followers, speaks for itself. Besides, I need to clean up the vomit from my keyboard.

Sunday Snippets for 6 November 2011

2011-11-06T10:57:00.000-05:00

This week's contributions to Sunday Snippets include:

I Didn't Know You Had a Girl There...A chance encounter with a true gentlemen
Sola Scriptura Est Bovis Stercus...A friend's phone call points out, once again, the absurdity of sola scriptura.
Am I An Infidel Or Not?...Based on the Quran's definition, I am an Islamic infidel.
I Am Not Homophobic...Neither by definition nor by the survey linked through public school teaching resources

Thanks to all the readers out there! And don't forget to check out my Roman re-enactment venture, Roman Personas, at http://www.romanpersonas.blogspot.com/, and on Facebook and Twitter!

I Am Not Homophobic

2011-11-03T10:44:00.001-04:00

I have been, and still am to a certain degree, aquaphobic. Deep water scares me because I am not that confident a swimmer, although I did go sliding into the 12' pool with our son this summer and enjoyed it...somewhat. I have never been claustrophobic or agoraphobic because I do not fear enclosed or wide open spaces. Basing my statement, then, on the etymology of the word and the way the -phobic suffix is used in all other compounds, I can confidently proclaim that I am not homophobic.

Do I know the practice of homosexuality to be sin? Yes, every bit as much as I know my own heterosexual lust to be sin. Do I oppose legalizing the incoherent notion of gay marriage? Yes, every bit as much as I oppose legislative attempts to round off pi. This, however, is not the result of any sort of fear of homosexuals. Therefore, by definition, I am not homophobic.

Just to be sure, however, I took a test. It was a survey linked from the website tolerance.org, a resource given to teachers at our school for helping us create culturally sensitive classrooms. Before I share the results of the survey, let's take a moment to see the kinds of resources tolerance.org provides.

There is the lesson plan on 10 ways homophobia affects "straight" people ("snark" quotes included on original site), with it's claim that, "Homophobia prevents vital information on sex and sexuality to be taught in schools. Without this information, youth are putting themselves at a greater risk for HIV and other STDs."

There is a lesson on "Exposing Hidden Homophobia," an article on gay children's books, and a post titled "THIS is Why We Need A GSA.". For those not in the know, that is the Gay-Straight Alliance, and yes, our school has a chapter.

To be fair, there are other topics of tolerance addressed at this site. These include "Focus on the Family Goes After LGBT Students," "Being 'Tolerant' About Creationism" (again, the snark quotes are original), and a lesson plan titled "Does Rick Warren Represent Diversity?". Rather than make you take the class on the mega-church pastor's inaugural prayer for President Obama, let me save you the time. The answer, according to this lesson, is no.

Now, do not think that all the resources here are anti-religion. There is the lesson plan "Debunking Stereotypes About Islam and Muslims," a post titled "How My Muslim Students Made Me a Better Person," and "Commemorate 9/11 By Confronting Islamophobia."

Among these resources, I found the "How Homophobic Are You?" survey from PBS. I followed the link and was confirmed that indeed I am not homophobic. Although I indicated my strong agreement that homosexuality is immoral and that I would be upset to learn that a close friend was gay, I said that I did not use derogatory language or fear that a gay person would come on to me.

My hope is that this revelation of my lack of homophobia means I will not have to visit sites like tolerance.org again.

Am I An Infidel Or Not?

2011-11-02T15:00:00.000-04:00

Raymond Ibrahim reminds us that, according to Quran 5:17, "Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary." This was expanded recently by Egypt's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, when he stated, "Whoever thinks the Christ is God, or the Son of God, not symbolically — for we are all sons of God — but attributively, has rejected the faith which God requires for salvation." When it comes to the Trinity, there are, ironically, three passages in the Quran that in some combination deny and misunderstand this core Christian doctrine.

Let me go on record as saying that, according to the Quran and its explication by Sheikh Ali Gomaa, I am an Islamic infidel. I cite Peter in John 6:68, I have believed and have come to know that Jesus Christ is God, the incarnate Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Who has from eternity to eternity existed as one God in three persons.

But why do I believe this? How have I come to know it? Those who deny the Trinity or the divine nature of Christ, have biblical texts to support them. There are numerous passages proclaiming God is one. Jesus never explicitly said, "I am God, worship me as part of the Holy Trinity." One could, with some reason, cite biblical reasons to deny these core Christian teachings.

So how do I know that Jesus is God, that God is Trinity, and other Christian doctrines not explicitly laid out in Scripture? I know them the way Peter knew them. They have been revealed to me by my Father in heaven. Whereas the form of Peter's revelation was more immediate, my revelation is no less authentic or authoritative because it has come through the body of Christ on earth, the Church. I believe and know these truths of the faith because I have been taught them, and I can trust that teaching. As I discussed in a recent post, it is absurd to think that Christians can get along without a teaching authority in the Church.

So I am an infidel according to those who themselves have an incorrect belief about God. However nice my Muslim friends may be, however charming they may think I am, we do not worship the same God, and it does us both a disservice to pretend otherwise. Allah may the Islamic word for "god," but then again, Apollo was a Latin word for "god," as was Iuppiter, Pluto, and many others. When a Roman used the generic word deus, he could be referring to any one of the pantheon of his deities, or to deity in general. When a Christian uses the word "God," he means Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He means One in Three and Three in One. He means the One about Whom Dr. William Shedd once wrote, "as he that denies this fundamental article of the Christian religion may lose his soul, so he that much strives to understand it may lose his wits."

Sola Scriptura Est Bovis Stercus

2011-11-01T20:52:00.000-04:00

I had intended to post something about some Reformation Day articles floating around, such as this and this. I wanted to explore why the sense of disunity felt so keenly by some Christians is not merely ignored, but flat out unrecognized by others, such as Evangelicals. I suspect it is a combination of thinking that some Christians, most notably Catholics, are wrong, if they can even be considered Christians at all, and believing that there really is no disunity, but that all Christians are unified in what truly matters, our belief in Jesus as Lord. In short, there is either a minimalist, lowest common denominator approach to the faith that says, "There is no disunity, only difference," or a confident Protestantism that says, "We are right, you must reunite with us, and it is really not our problem."

Yet what put me into Popeye mode was a phone conversation with an old friend. This friend attends an Evangelical church, and he and his wife are in a Bible study with other couples. One of the husbands, who apparently has some experience with biblical languages, undertook an exhaustive study of marriage in the Bible, and concluded in a 100-page paper that God does not expressly forbid polygyny. The man says he wants to be wring about this, but is rather convinced by his research. My friend is concerned for this man's growth in the faith and for his marriage.

I began my response by saying that a man and woman are called to leave their parents and become one flesh, that Abram was still wrong even though there was no explicit condemnation of his lying about his wife Sarai, and that there is the model of Christ and the Church as His bride. Then I launched into what I really thought, which was that this whole thing was a powerful example of why sola scriptura is complete and utter horseshit. I pointed out the need for a teaching authority in the Church, just barely muzzling my desire to say "magisterium," explaining why, even though we are called to love God with all our mind, it is not up to Mr. Lone Ranger Christian and his Greek lexicon to make up the faith independent of Christians in Egypt, Ireland, or 1824. In other words, the work of my friend's friend must be recognizable as Christian to brothers and sisters across time and space, or it is not valid. Again, I muzzled myself from saying consensus fidelium.

Argh! This kind of nonsense drives me absolutely nuts!

I Didn't Know You Had a Girl There

2011-10-31T21:15:00.000-04:00

My wife was in line ordering food at a local fast food restaurant recently, and I took our children (boy 10, girl 6) to the restroom with me to wash our hands. Our daughter and I were finished and using the hand dryer, and our son was finishing up washing as a burly biker dude entered the restroom. This guy was, well, big and burly, with a biker t-shirt, an enviable mane of black hair, and an equally enviable Civil War beard. He took care of his business at the urinal, and as our son moved to the hand dryer and he stepped toward the sink, he noticed our daughter. He turned to me and said, gesturing to the stall, "I didn't know you had a girl there. I would have gone inside." I said that it was fine, but then I thanked him before we left.

No harm was done, as our daughter was chattering away and more interested in the hand dryer, and besides, the urinal was decently blocked by a small privacy wall. Nonetheless, I spent the rest of the meal stunned by the incredible respect this man had shown our little girl and me. This was honor. This was decency. This was respect. It is what we should expect from men. I will never know this man's name, but I tip my hat to him and will tell his story many times in the years to come.

Sunday Snipptes for 30 October 2011

2011-10-30T09:34:00.000-04:00

We were on Fall Break at the end of the week, so there were only a few posts for Sunday Snippets:

The Idol of Truth...The root of all our problems becomes clear when you take remove Christ and try to keep what you like about the Christian faith.
Sorry I Missed Mosque...A bumper sticker that mocks Christians serves as a helpful reminder.
Roman Personas...My new venture in Roman re-enactment. Please consider following this new blog, as well as following me on Facebook and Twitter.
True Translation...An incisive, eloquent apologia for the humanities in the guise of a piece about the new Mass translation by the incomparable Anthony Esolen.

Thanks to all the readers out there!

True Translation

2011-10-26T22:30:00.000-04:00

Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my.

Those were the opening words of an email response to a friend who shared with me Anthony Esolen's article in First Things on the new Mass translation. So important is this article that I have included it in the permanent links on the sidebar. Before you read another word of mine, read Dr. Esolen's piece, or rather, savor it. If you care to return, I have a few thoughts that I could barely put into words.

His concluding metaphor of restoring a statue of Mary reminds me of the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling about ten years ago. People had grown accustomed to the dull colors, assuming that Michelangelo had painted in muted tones. As the restoration revealed, the colors were actually quite bright. What the world had taken for muted tones was, in fact, dirt.

I said the article was about the new Mass translation, but it is about so very much more. This is a piece about translation and translation theory. It is a piece about the prismatic beauty of Latin. By setting side by side soaring poetry and pedestrian prose, it is about the power, potential, and glory of English. It is the clearest, most persuasive argument for the necessity of a liberal arts education that can lead people from their native darkness into the light where they can not only see and contemplate the true, the good, and the beautiful, but are equipped to contribute a verse as well.

Share this article with anyone who is literate, speaks English, enjoys Latin, cares about the Mass, or who is none of the above and sees language as nothing more than a hammer, a means to an end. Share it with anyone you love.

Roman Personas

2011-10-26T15:25:00.000-04:00

For several years, I have portrayed at schools and churches a fictional character named Publius Sempronius Tuditanus, one of the guards at the tomb of Christ. The armor I wore was assembled from pieces I had received from a former student, a few gifts from my wife, and some items I had purchased. The outfit was okay, but it was incomplete and not as authentic as it could be.

Thanks to a grant from the Lilly Foundation, I have been able to do considerable research into the Roman military, especially the period of the late Republic (last century B.C.). The grant also allowed me to visit Roman re-enactors this summer and to purchase the most authentic reproduction armor.

Inspired by all this, I have launched Roman Personas (full website coming soon!) as a vehicle for presenting four historical Roman characters. I will portray Cicero, Vergil, and Gaius Crastinus, and I will continue to present Tuditanus. Gaius Crastinus was the primus pilus, or first-rank centurion of Caesar's beloved Legio X, which performed above all others in Gaul and helped him defeat Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus.

Tomorrow I will present Crastinus for the first time at a local school, and I am quite excited. Please check out my blog http://www.romanpersonas.blogspot.com/ and consider following me there and on Twitter (RomanPersonas) and on Facebook. There is more information at the blog, especially on Roman Personas products. There is also an update on the soon-to-be launched website.

I wrote in my grant application, "When we are young, we love pretending to be the characters in our favorite stories, yet too many adults have lost this playful sense of adventure. Teaching teenagers for the majority of my career has helped me stay in touch with that playful nature. I have often told friends, students, and family that I would have paid director Ridley Scott to have the chance to be an extra in his 2000 Academy Award-winning movie, Gladiator." Well, that dream is coming true.

So tell your friends about Roman Personas! Follow me on the blog, Twitter, and Facebook! Get your Roman Personas gear and remember...Antiquity Never Gets Old!

Sorry I Missed Mosque

2011-10-25T10:37:00.000-04:00

This morning on the way to work, I saw a bumper sticker that read, "Sorry I missed church. I was practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian."

I have been offended by that bumper sticker in the past. I have felt scorn and derision whoever it was who put such a scornful and derisive sticker on her car. Today, however, I felt sadness and gratitude. In the first place, I felt sadness because the person had obviously missed what Christianity is all about. Those who follow Jesus want to share His love and grace, not because we want to force some to be like us, but because we genuinely want others to know the incredible joy of that comes from knowing and following Him. This message of this bumper sticker would be appropriate if directed toward an organization bent on the subjugation of others, but that is not what the Church is all about. She is a bride, and she invites all of her beloved friends to the wedding celebration. If a person sent such a hateful response to a human bride, everyone would feel sorry for the person who had so obviously missed the point of the invitation and the wonderful experience that it offered.

I was also grateful for this bumper sticker, or rather, for the person's freedom to display it. I doubt she would have gotten very far down the road in a Muslim country had the message begun, "Sorry I missed mosque." Of course, she would not have been driving anyhow, given her gender, but that is another issue. While I hurt for the person who put this sticker on her car, I am grateful that she has the freedom to speak against me in this country, just as I am grateful that I have the freedom to witness to her.

I am also grateful for the reminder that even in this land of religious freedom, the one socially acceptable prejudice is against Christians. Mind you, I am not grateful for the prejudice, but I am thankful for the reminder that it exists. As I wrote recently, we need to keep our crucified Lord before our eyes. In this regard, the crucifix serves as a more potent reminder than the empty cross. If we follow Him, we will suffer. Some suffer more, some less, but all who follow Christ Jesus will suffer some kind of loss for doing so. May whatever minor sufferings I endure be used by Him for His glory and to bring more into His Kingdom.

The Idol of Truth

2011-10-24T14:47:00.000-04:00

Before you read another word of mine, read this post by Fr. Bevil Bramwell.

There it is, folks. That is the most succinct diagnosis of the cause our contemporary ills. It is the Idol of Truth. We see every day the living out of Cardinal Newman's prophetic words. Fr. Bramwell cited them, but allow me to cite them again.

What is the world's religion now? It has taken the brighter side of the Gospel – its tidings of comfort, its precepts of love; all darker, deeper views of man's condition and prospects being comparatively forgotten. This is the religion natural to a civilized age, and well has Satan dressed and completed it into an idol of the Truth. As the reason is cultivated, the taste formed, the affections and sentiments refined, a general decency and grace will of course spread over the face of society, quite independently of the influence of Revelation. That beauty and delicacy of thought, which is so attractive in books, then extends to the conduct of life, to all we have, all we do, all we are.

I have said many times that I am quite confident Hitler was charming at dinner parties. Today, this has become the measure of a person's actions. As long as you are a nice person and want to help the environment, it does not matter that you are pro-abortion. As long as care that your students learn to read, it does not matter that you practice homosexuality. As long as you try to reduce taxes, it does not matter that you commit adultery in the Oval Office.

Fr. Bramwell refers to the Crucifixion and points out that the Christian faith asks for, and I would add offers, something more than smiley faces. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in Death on a Friday Afternoon urged us not to rush on so quickly to Easter, but to stay for a moment with Good Friday, to remain next to the derelict on the cross. This is an apt reminder, for no one would suffer a martyr's fate for what Fr. Bramwell calls "Oprah's truth," or indeed for any other small-t truth capable of accepting an adjective. Christ died for something considerably more than the idea that so long as you are nice to children, old people, and dogs, you can do whatever else you want that makes you happy. The gates of hell would never open to release opposition to such a flimsy, incorporeal idea as that.

No, the gates of hell fling wide against the "edgy, risky, robust" faith that is Christianity. Hell does not oppose an abstraction, but the Word made flesh and all who follow Him, and from this we can be sure that if the extent of our faith is Christian platitudes that Satan himself could spout, we are in no danger of such an attack, and this is the most perilous condition in which to find oneself.

A crucifix is perhaps a more helpful reminder here than the empty cross. We need to keep before our eyes that it was a real man, albeit the unique God-man, who suffered, bled, and died. We need to see on a regular basis the image of the One who is Truth and in whom all derivative expressions of truth inhere. We must ever keep or gaze upon the One who leads us daily into battle and the cruciform shape of the only weapon we have. We do not serve an abstraction, a philosophy, or an idea. We do not follow The One of the ancient Greeks, but rather The One Who Is, and while this may lead us to a cross of our own, we can suffer our martyrdom in god faith, knowing that our Lord has walked the same path, and it is the path of truth.

Sunday Snippets for 23 October 2011

2011-10-23T09:22:00.000-04:00

This week's contributions to Sunday Snippets are:

A Protestant Look at James...An amazing sermon on the relationship between faith and works at an Evangelical church. Tell me if this sounds like Protestant theology to you.
Silence for Those Who Truly Have No Voice...A day of silence to protest abortion
Teetering on the Line...A teenager's t-shirt is a reminder that we all have the tendency to see just how much we can get away with when it comes to God.

Thanks to all the readers out there!

Teetering on the Line

2011-10-19T11:18:00.000-04:00

We all know people push the line of rules and regulations to see what they can get by with. I had started to say that children push the line, but that would be unfair to children. We all do it.

Today I saw an example of this in the high school where I teach. A young man was walking down the hall wearing a t-shirt that depicted Sharon Stone sitting in the interrogation chair in the movie Basic Instinct. If you know the movie, then you know the scene. The picture on this t-shirt was of Stone with her legs crossed, just before the part where, as she put it in a later interview, you could "see all the way to Nebraska."

Technically, this shirt fell within the guidelines for appropriate clothing, but let's be honest here. Whoever made that shirt knew what followed that scene in the movie. Anyone who would buy and wear it knows that, too. Furthermore, anyone who wears it wants those of us who see it to think of that scene. So was the boy in violation of dress code?

This is how we often act when it comes to God. We want to push the envelope. We want to do the least possible for Him, while doing the most possible for ourselves. I believe in Jesus, a person says, so do I really have to go to church? I give to the poor, so do I have to be baptized? What is the bare minimum I have to do to be saved, and how much can I get by with and still be just inside the outer limit of God's grace?

Such questions are, of course, utterly misguided. Our relationship with God is not like pushing the limit of the dress code at high school. If we were to ask our significant other, "What is the minimum I have to do to stay in relationship with you and how much will you let me do before you kick me out," it would be clear that the relationship was already over. When we are in love, the other person is the center of our world. We change our schedules to be with that person. We want to get as close to that person as we can, not as far away.

So how is it with your relationship with God? Are you passionate to draw as close to Him as you can, or are you more interested in what you can get by with and still be in His good graces?

Silence For Those Who Truly Have No Voice

2011-10-18T20:57:00.000-04:00

It was the last period of the day today, and one of my top students told me that her friend, another of my top students, would not be speaking today in honor of those who are murdered by abortion. Almost every year I have a few students who tell me they will not be speaking on a given day to stand in solidarity with those who have no voice in our country, homosexuals. I always find this ironic, since there are few groups that have a louder voice these days. What struck me first about today's day of silence was that I had heard nothing about it. This was a new one for me, and I was glad to learn of it.

I was, of course, impressed that one of my students would take a stand for such an important issue. She is a very intelligent, popular young lady, and I hope that her actions spoke loudly to her friends.

What struck me most, however, was the comment of another of my students at the end of class. It seems this student and the silent girl had been in French class, and the French teacher told the girl that she agreed with her. This other student expressed incredulity that a teacher would make such a comment, and one of my boys replied that the French teacher should not be foisting her opinions on anyone. At that point I said of my silent student, "I agree with her, too, and the last time I checked, I still had the freedom in this country to say so."

For more on this truly worthy day of silence, see http://silentday.org/.

A Protestant Look at James

2011-10-17T11:21:00.000-04:00

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,”and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:14-26, NIV)

The Greek text for verse 14 actually asks, "You don't think that faith alone can save you, do you?" It expects a negative question. There is more to living the Christian faith than merely giving mental assent to some propositions. It is more than just praying a prayer with someone and thinking you are good to go for salvation. Faith is not just believing the right things, but believing the right way. The proper way to believe is through the deeds described here by James. It is believing in a loving, sacrificial, Christ-like manner.

Where would you guess I heard the above thoughts preached recently? If you know your historic Christianity, then you would not guess a Protestant church, much less an evangelical one. You would be wrong.

I heard this weekend perhaps the best explication of how faith and works combine in the life of the Christian. The pastor made a both/and argument, rather than an either/or, and I was blown away by it. He directly took issue with the so-called "sinner's prayer." This was an evangelical church, folks. Can you see how radical this message was?

Of course, this leads to many more challenges, as any good sermon should. If it is faith and works in this broader understanding of what it means to believe, then sola fide understood as mental assent alone goes out the window. Sola scriptura goes next, because this understanding is not obvious to all. It has to be taught. If scripture is not as perspicuous as the sola scriptura crowd claim, then there must be an authoritative teaching authority, else I can go to church A that defines faith one way and to church B that defines it in a contradictory way, and I am left to my own devices to decide the truth (and no one should call in the Holy Spirit here, for church A and B will both claim that He has guided their teaching).

This broadened understanding of faith as faith + works can also be seen as deriving from the Incarnation, which shows us that Jesus was not either God or man, but both God and man. Suddenly we see both/and as the norm of the faith, along with a certain physicality. Jesus is God and man. Faith means mental assent in right doctrine and physical works. How big a jump is it, then, to the Real Presence of Christ in the substance beneath the accidents of the Eucharist? How big a jump is it that the Church is not merely an invisible alliance of Christians, but an identifiable entity in the world?

While I cannot even imagine a flourishing evangelical church that is borderline mega-church moving across theTiber, something is clearly afoot here, and I am excited about the conversations that any thoughtful follower of Christ at this church must have.

Sunday Snippets for 16 October 2011

2011-10-16T18:10:00.000-04:00

Contributions to this week's Sunday Snippets include:

A New Homer...A look at why we will always need yet another translation of Homer, such as the latest by Stephen Mitchell
Freedom of Religion-8th Century B.C. ... An important, and perhaps the first, example of freedom of religion can be found in Book I of the Iliad.
Wounding the Body of Christ...The attack on Coptic Christians and a study of why young people leave the Church
The Necessary Scandal of Particularity...What the Incarnation has to say with regard to the Eucharist, the teaching authority of the Church, and whether or not our physical selves are necessary to who we are

Thanks to all the readers out there! Some interesting posts coming up next week!

The Necessary Scandal of Particularity

2011-10-13T13:12:00.000-04:00

Jesus Christ was a particular person. He was a first century Jewish man from an identifiable family. He lived in a particular place and at a certain time. His height could measured in feet and inches, his weight in pounds. The particularity has been a scandal for some, "scandal" being taken in the literal sense of its Greek root σκανδαλον, meaning "trap" or "obstacle." Yet this scandal of particularity is essential to the Christian faith. We have come to believe and we know, as Peter put it in John 6:68, that Jesus was fully God and fully man.

It should come as no surprise, then, that anything having to do with our own particular natures, natures formed in the image of God, would be attacked by the enemy through those who have fallen into his ways of thinking. Consider this piece on transitional humanity at The New Atlantis. There are those who see our particular, physical forms as being irrelevant to our true selves. My six-foot, two hundred plus pound body with brown hair has no essential connection with me. Who I am could just as well be instantiated in another form. From the article, we read of Duke University literature professor Katherine Hayles, who "has captured the idea of posthumanity nicely, characterizing it in her book How We Became Posthuman (1999) as assuming (1) that 'informational patterns' (such as those in the human brain) are more important than their 'material instantiation' (in the brain itself); (2) that consciousness is an epiphenomenon caused by and reducible to brain activity; (3) that the body is our first prosthesis (that is, something used by the self rather than integral to our selfhood); and (4) that there is no essential difference between bodies and computer simulations, between organisms and mechanisms."

Setting aside for a moment issues regarding philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence, there is a connection here with the body of Christ on earth, the Church, and with one key celebration within that body, the partaking of Communion or the Eucharist. It could be argued that Protestant ecclesiology and understanding of the Eucharist is more akin with those who are scandalized by particularity. Protestants believe that there is no visible Church, but an invisible fellowship of believers that can be instantiated in any of variety of ways. Likewise, absent a belief in the Real Presence, the Eucharist can just as well be celebrated with a release of purple and white balloons. Furthermore, we can be in touch with Jesus in a variety of ways, not primarily through the Eucharist. Catholicism, of course, embraces the notion of particularity, understanding the Church to be a specific, identifiable body within the world and adoring the actual body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ in the species of the Eucharist.

This all becomes important when we look at the problem of young people leaving the Christian faith and/or the Church. On the "Ideas for Change" page of the website supporting the book You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church by David Kinnaman, president of The Barna Group, there is a confusing mix of suggestions. We see things like,

[S]ince these folks are far more global than any generation that has come before, I simply don’t believe they will buy the idea that Christianity is the only path. Having traveled and networked around the world, they’re well aware that God has figured out many ways to speak to people. Insisting otherwise means you won’t stand a chance of speaking to them.

First, they don’t want a dumbed-down or soft-sell version of the gospel. They want the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. They don’t want to be coddled. They want to be challenged. They want something that gets up in their face and demands sacrifice, demands risk, demands surrender.

These two suggestions are utterly contradictory. The one claims that young people are too savvy to accept the exclusive claims of the Gospel, but the second claims that young people want to be challenged by the whole truth of the Gospel. Which is it?

Then we have these two passages.

Jesus never commanded His followers to draw people to a particular church’s ministry philosophy or even theology, but to proclaim a message that points people toward Christ himself, who came to redeem a fallen world.

[T]hose parishes that place Jesus Christ at the center are flourishing. He is placed at the center through strong catechetics, the preaching of sin and redemption, and the fostering of Eucharistic adoration. In turn, a community of fortified believers promote the gospel message through a myriad of social works.

Again, these are in complete contradiction. The first is a pure, sola scriptura, individualistic approach to the faith. The second is, well, fairly obviously written by an orthodox Catholic. As these two opposed suggestions illustrate, theology is quite important. Indeed, it is necessary for coming to any kind of understanding regarding the truth of the matter.

So what has this to do with the scandal of particularity and so-called transitional humanity? Many voices speaking many different things do not produce music. They define cacophony. The world does not need Christians in competition with each other. It needs a clear, identifiable voice speaking the truth in love. It needs a particular body doing the work of the particular, incarnate God. Will this be a scandal? It already is, but then again, so was our Lord.

Wounding the Body of Christ

2011-10-12T10:36:00.000-04:00

Death could not triumph over our incarnate Lord, but He was wounded and killed. He promised that not even the gates of hell could prevail over His Church, but that body, too, can suffer. As it has always been, the wounds to the body of Christ that is the Church come from within and without.

Patrick Madrid links us to a story that still has me walking around shell shocked. According to our State Department, there is not one Christian church in Afghanistan. I do not think we Americans can wrap our heads around that fact any more than a person can grasp the number trillion or the distance of a light year. It has been two thousand years since Christ walked the earth, and while the earth is a decently sized planet, how can it be possible that there is a country without a church? Even worse, how is possible that there is a country that once had churches, but has them no more?

Put this against the savage attack on our Coptic brothers and sisters in Egypt this week. How much longer will Christians remain in that embattled country? Admittedly, Christians have not been the majority in either country, but they have had a presence there, and now that presence is fading or gone. The last words of our Lord before He ascended to heaven were that we should go to all nations, teaching all He had commanded, and baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We must cry over the losses in Afghanistan and Egypt. We must pray. And we must go back.

Ah, but who will go? Will it be our young warriors, the youth of our faith who are being trained to live a vigorous life for Christ? Not according to this Barna study. Those who know this Christian research group know that little good news every comes from it. This is not an insult to the Barna group, merely a sign of our times, and this study is no different.

Now, to be frank, I find most of the reasons given in this study for why young people leave the Church absurd. They do not want a church that tells them there may be sin in their lives. As far as that goes, this is why people left Jesus. His teachings were too hard. What concerns, me, however is reason #2 in the report. According to Barna, "one-fifth of these young adults who attended a church as a teenager said that 'God seems missing from my experience of church.'" This must make us all sit up and take notice. God is missing from church? How can that be? It can be when we surrender to a need to hip, cute, engaging, and relevant. A church's primary purpose is not entertainment, even when that is seen as an evangelistic tool. My Catholic readers will quickly note that, at least in their churches, God is always present in the consecrated host, and this can perhaps lead to good discussion in another post. Nonetheless, we should be shocked into repentance when we read that 20% of our young people do not see God in the churches they attend.

Over at the Aggie Catholics blog, there is a wonderful observation and suggestion on what to do about all this. "The problem is that we aren't forming them into disciples of Christ first, and then releasing them into the culture. Rather, we allow the culture to form them first."

There it is. We are under siege, as we have been since the disciples trembled in the upper room following the crucifixion. Sometimes the warfare is less obvious, but today it is clear. Christians were murdered by their own government in Egypt this week because they were Christians. There is not one Christian church remaining in Afghanistan. Fifty-nine percent of our young Christians leave their churches after age 15 permanently or for an extended time. We must regain our focus. We must fast and pray, as our Lord taught us. We must teach our children, talking about His precepts at home and on the road, writing them on our doorposts and binding them on our foreheads, as our Lord taught us. We must take the Gospel of His love and grace to the ends of the earth, as He taught us. Whatever else has taken our attention, we must pull our heads out of the fog and with clear focus return to the battle to which we are called.

Freedom of Religion-8th Century B.C.

2011-10-11T10:24:00.001-04:00

In my last post, I wrote about the new translation of the Iliad by Stephen Mitchell. As with any good text, there is always something new to be discovered with each reading, and what struck me as I read Book I was the exchange between Calchas, the prophet, and Achilles. You may recall that Chryses, the priest of Apollo, had approached the Greek camp and begged for the return of his daughter, Chryseis, who had been taken by Agamemnon. The Mycenaean leader told the priest in no uncertain terms what would happen to his daughter once she made the trip back to Greece as his slave and invited him, quite indelicately, to leave the camp. Calchas prayed to Apollo for vengeance, and the god of the silver bow responded by shooting arrows of plague into the camp, aiming first for the mules and dogs and moving on to the men.

Achilles then called an assembly to see if they should atone for some unperformed rite or if a sacrifice could made to appease the gods. He asked the prophet Calchas to speak, but before he did, he asked something of Achilles.

Beloved of Jove, Achilles! would'st thou know
Why angry Phoebus bends his fatal bow?
First give thy faith, and plight a prince's word
Of sure protection, by thy power and sword.

To whom Pelides:—"From thy inmost soul
Speak what thou know'st, and speak without control.
E'en by that god I swear who rules the day,
To whom thy hands the vows of Greece convey.
And whose bless'd oracles thy lips declare;
Long as Achilles breathes this vital air,
No daring Greek, of all the numerous band,
Against his priest shall lift an impious hand;
Not e'en the chief by whom our hosts are led,
The king of kings, shall touch that sacred head." (Translation Pope)

It is clear that people will speak out what God has told them, even when they lack the safety to do so. Of such stuff are martyrs made, and we need only look at the recent events in Egypt as a reminder. Yet the ability to live out one's faith in freedom is a foundational principle of any flourishing society. Even the Romans, known for their oppression of Christians, were, for their time, rather open minded when it came to such matters. They were happy to allow conquered peoples to retain their own language and customs, including their religious practices, so long as they paid taxes and worshiped the emperor when called upon. It was, of course, impossible for Christians and Jews to abide by the latter, but generally speaking, the Roman empire was amazingly open when it came to matters of religion, and we see the root of the foundational piece of Western literature, the Iliad.

And why did Calchas ask for protection from Achilles? As he said,

For I must speak what wisdom would conceal,
And truths, invidious to the great, reveal,
Bold is the task, when subjects, grown too wise,
Instruct a monarch where his error lies;
For though we deem the short-lived fury past,
'Tis sure the mighty will revenge at last.

Religion will often speak words that offend the secular powers that be, especially when the words contain the truth. It is a small leader, and by extension, a small government, that cannot listen to truth. Any leader is free to disregard the truth, but to rule certain expressions of it off the table in advance is a sign of small-minded fear.

Whom does Calchas fear? It is none other than Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the allied Greek forces at Troy. Who would ever want to be like Agamemnon? This is the man Achilles calls out as being a greedy coward. While it was the affair between Paris and Helen that prompted the war, it is the arrogant pride of a small-minded tyrant that incites the μηνιν, or "rage," that is the first word of the Iliad and its central theme.

The lesson for modern leaders is simple. If you want to be a tyrant like Agamemnon, make people afraid to live out their faith in the public square. If you grant protection for the religious life, you will be a hero, like Achilles.

A New Homer

2011-10-10T19:49:00.000-04:00

In what felt like a blast from the past, our family recently visited the local Barnes & Noble. With the closing of the Borders chain and the death knell of print books being rung from all quarters, we thought it we should do our part to help brick and mortar stores stay afloat. A hundred thirty bucks later, I am confident we did our share.

Much of what we purchased were titles my wife need for homeschooling, but I did manage to pick up a surprise for myself, a new translation of the Iliad by Stephen Mitchell. It had only come out a few days before, and being completely unaware of any forthcoming translations, I was taken pleasantly by surprise. On page lix of the prefatory material, he cites Matthew Arnold's advice: "The translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author:--that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble." In the little I have read so far of Book I, I would say that he has achieved much of this. There is a flow that allows me to hear the music of the English poetry as I have been able to do with only a few versions, Fagles' and Pope's, for example.

If you look at this list, you will see that there have been a great many translations of Homer into English, and it is often the unstated requirement for a translator to explain why he has produced yet another. The answer I have never seen given, but that I think is operative in many, if not all cases, is the natural desire, seen most commonly in the play of children, to imitate. When a child goes to the doctor, she comes home and plays doctor. Show a boy a Superman comic, and he will soon have a blanket flapping at his back as he leaps tall living room chairs in a single bound.

As one who loves great stories, I want to get deeper into them, and since I am not so nimble to go leaping over living room furniture anymore, my way to imitate is to translate or record or re-write in a new way. There will always be new translations of Homer and others, not because the world so much needs them, but because deep readers cannot leave those favorite characters when the last page has been turned.

Sunday Snippets for 9 October 2011

2011-10-09T09:15:00.000-04:00

Contributions to Sunday Snippets include:

Dying Moments...A post in which I talk about a Cursillo-type weekend where God healed me.
If You Can Leave For Books...The preface to an 18th century translation of the Aeneid offers a delightful invitation away from the distractions of the day.
Drinking the Kool-Aid...The homosexualist agenda continues to infiltrate American public schools. Please vote in the poll associated with this post. It closes in a few days.
Obama Helps Me See Things More Clearly...The President's arrogant comment regarding what his healthcare plan forces on America has helped me with a certain issue.

As always, thanks to RAnn for hosting the Snippets, and thanks to all the readers out there!

Obama Helps Me See Things More Clearly

2011-10-07T09:41:00.001-04:00

There have been a number of articles on President Obama's remarks at a recent DNC fundraiser in St. Louis, although I should note that there was no mention of this on the nightly news yesterday, and a Google News search of the phrase "darn tooting" does not autofill. Nonetheless, there has been some reporting on these remarks, and the best title goes to the one by Jimmy Akin, "Obama Brags on His Thuggish Contraception Policy."

According to the official White House transcript of the event,

We repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” so that every single American can serve their country, regardless of who they love. (Applause.) And, yes, we passed health care reform because no one in America should go bankrupt because somebody in their family gets sick. (Applause.)

Insurance companies can’t drop your coverage for no good reason. They won’t be able to deny your coverage because of preexisting conditions. Think about what that means for families all across America. Think about what it means for women.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Birth control --

THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely. You’re stealing my line. (Applause.) Breast cancer, cervical cancer are no longer preexisting conditions. No longer can insurance companies discriminate against women just because you guys are the ones who have to give birth. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Darn right!

THE PRESIDENT: Darn tooting. (Laughter.) They have to cover things like mammograms and contraception as preventive care, no more out-of-pocket costs.

This is helpful to me. It clarifies matters a bit. You see, despite being a fairly logical guy who appreciates a well-constructed argument, I am a "doubting Thomas" when it comes to things that are bad. I just cannot believe, for example, that when a person says something like, "Truth is relative," he can really mean what he says. I assume he must be joking. Despite the evidence in our schools, I cannot really believe that adults who want the best for children can seriously advocate the homosexual lifestyle. I think that they cannot really mean what they say.

So it helps me when our President says what he said in St. Louis. Despite all the evidence of his pro-sodomy, pro-death positions, I never want to believe that he is as bad as all that. After all, he does have a pleasant cadence to his speech, and surely that counts for something.

Yet this man made a joke out of the federal government paying for birth control. He bragged about the government being forced to fund contraception. He did so the day before the Justice Department made a case before the Supreme Court arguing that the government should be allowed to have a say in the ministerial functions of churches and church organizations. Such crass, arrogant, and indeed thuggish behavior clarifies two things for me. It reminds me how much I must pray for all those in office and it makes a compelling reasons for why this man must not be elected to a second term.

If you have not already done so, please read "Drinking the Kool-Aid" and vote in the poll in the sidebar.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

2011-10-05T19:13:00.001-04:00

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:18-27, NIV)

The focus of the staff development part of the faculty meeting at the public high school where I teach was on creating culturally relevant classrooms. This largely had to do with finding ways to connect with our students and drawing on their experiences to facilitate a more meaningful engagement with the subject matter. While there was no talk about homosexuality, the following statements were on handouts that the teachers received.

"Culture can be viewed as 'webs of significance' which help to make a person's identity. These can include circles of race, ethnicity, gender, language, sexual orientation, religion, and more."

"Create in each classroom a just climate for students with disabilities, students who are gay, students who live in poverty, students who are English language learners, students of color, students in the religious minority."

We have at our school a chapter of the Gay-Staight Alliance and have performed The Laramie Project, so the statements on this handout were nothing new. Nonetheless, I am sick of this. Hidden under the guise of justice, such statements are nothing more than an attempt to normalize abnormal and sinful behavior, and to do so with those who are most open to suggestion, children.

Make no mistake, this is the same thing that is happening with the case brought before the Supreme Court today that is about whether or not the federal government can determine who is and is not a minister in a church or church-related organization (see here, here, and here). Should this decision, which is expected next summer, go in favor of the Obama administration's case, it will be a blink of the eye before a church or church school will be forced under the laws of equal employment to hire a homosexual job applicant.

So here is my question. What should a Christian teacher do in light of the materials I described above being handed out at a staff meeting? Should such a teacher in addition to prayer, make some sort of response, either in orally or in writing, in public at the meeting or in private, to one or more school officials? Should such a teacher take no action other than prayer?

I invite you to respond through the poll in the sidebar. As always, I welcome your comments as well.

If You Can Leave For Books

2011-10-04T10:52:00.000-04:00

While doing some research on Book XI of Vergil's Aeneid yesterday, I ran across the 18th century translation by Christopher Pitt. Books I through IV can be found here, and VII through XII here (Note: If anyone can locate books V and VI, please let me know). On a first, quick read, I liked it very much. Pitt wrote in rhyming couplets, as Dryden did in his translation of Vergil, but after a brief reading of Pitt, I preferred his. He seems closer to the original and not as inflated as Dryden.

In the preface to the volume containing Books VII through XII, Pitt wrote,

If you can leave for Books the crowded Court,
And generous Bourdeaux for a Glass of Port,
To these sweet Solitudes, without Delay,
Break from the World's Impertinence away.

What a delightful invitation! To leave the busyness of our work life for a good book, to sit with a glass of port, or perhaps a warm scotch, and break from the world's impertinence, ah, that is a sweet invitation indeed. And, of course, what finer book to join with a fine spirit than the Aeneid?

Dying Moments

2011-10-03T15:40:00.000-04:00

This weekend I served on the team of a retreat called The Great Banquet. In 1944, a movement within the Catholic Church started in Spain called Cursillo. This weekend retreat focusing on the basics of the Christian faith eventually crossed the ocean and was even picked up by many Protestant churches. Variants of this weekend go by many names, but the one I have been involved with sporadically over the years is The Great Banquet.

I attended the weekend in serving capacity, but I was blessed beyond measure. God showed me the root cause of fear in my life that has led to my attempts at control over a great many things. This fear has also had much darker and crippling emotional consequences. After confessing to Him what He had revealed to me and turning it over to Him, I felt a light-hearted joy as never before. It was not sappy, saccharine happiness. It was a deep joy that allowed me to see only Him, and it rekindled an evangelistic fervor, but for a different reason. I have always prayed for and wanted people to come to Christ, but this was different. I found myself wanting them to come the Christ Who had healed me. On the whole, I suppose my feelings were not much different from those in the gospels who were healed by our Lord.

Among the things that He showed me, and in fact had begun revealing in the days leading up to the retreat, was that I have been drinking the bitter poison of some co-workers. In the quick banter among colleagues, I had begun to imbibe the grim, dark, even sinister perspective that many hold. To be fair to these colleagues, it is difficult not to adopt such perspectives in the present educational climate. Yet I am a Christian. I should have known better than to get drawn into such blackness. It truly was affecting my spirit. I must be a light in the darkness, not only for others, but for myself as well. For those who understand the reference, I will conclude by saying,

De Colores!

Raising the Dead

2011-09-29T10:44:00.000-04:00

Far too much talk about education these days centers around teaching practical skills for job success and how to measure how well the students mastered them. This is not, first and foremost, the purpose of education. It is the purpose of training programs, but not of education. Consider the following from Dr. Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College.

"Education, as classically conceived, is not primarily for citizenship, or for making money, or for success in life, or for a veneer of "culture," or for escaping your lower-class origins and joining the middle class, or for professional or vocational training, whether the profession is honorable, like auto repair, or questionable, like law; and whether the profession is telling the truth, like an x-ray technician, or telling lies, like advertising or communications or politics. The first and foundational purpose of education is not external but internal: it is to make the little human a little more human, bigger on the inside."

It is for this reason that he can go on to say, "One of the functions of the teacher is to raise the dead, to make their authors present. How? Not by doing anything to the authors, but to the readers: by getting the students to read the great books as their authors intended them to be read, namely actively, questioningly, in dialogue with the author, who will speak to them from beyond the grave or from a distance if, and only if, the reader asks the right questions, the logical questions. The reader may thus get the alarming sense that he is being haunted by the ghost of the writer. A great book, properly read, becomes not just a dead object but a living subject, a person, or the ghost of a person."

You can read more of his talk on the new sidebar to this blog, The Parnassus Files. It is worth your time to read his clear explication of the Classical model of education and his defense, especially of Latin and Greek studies.

We must constantly remind ourselves of the true purpose of education, lest we fall prey to the jackbooted march of the pragmatic. Such a mindset has led to schools, secondary and undergraduate, in which the canon of Western literature has been rejected and replaced with classes in pickling and fermentation (see the Kreeft article). The result is a growing army of young people poorly equipped to think or to express their thoughts.

Dr. Aaron Urbanczyk at Aquinas College in Tennesse wrote a sobering piece for The Catholic Thing in which he painfully exposes what happens when young people are denied an entrance to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and the other great writers and thinkers of the Western tradition. They have no other means with which to frame or express a thought, especially with regard to ethics, than to rely on their emotions. He concludes by citing Plato, from Phaedo 117e.

"For you know well, my dear Crito, that to express oneself badly is not only faulty as far as the language goes, but does some harm to the soul."

I shared this with my own students today, and pointed out to them that, for the most part, poor writing leads to poor thinking and that the reason they study Latin and English grammar, great literature, and works of history, is to help them learn both to think and how to express clearly and meaningfully their thoughts. I interrupted our prepared lesson for the day to talk about this because I subscribe to the model of teaching laid out by Dr. Kreeft, described by Dr. Urbanczyk, and eloquently eulogized in Dr. George Steiner's Lessons of the Masters. I believe it is my job to help raise the dead.

On Being Docile

2011-09-28T10:58:00.000-04:00

There is much talk these days about the need for teachers to engage their students in meaningful ways. We hear phrases like "real-life application," "student-centered learning," and "inquiry-based" or "collaborative" lessons. These phrases certainly sound good, and the intentions behind them are almost always noble, but rather often they are used to talk about what teachers should do to help students learn. I wonder, though, what should students do?

In the past, some students came from dysfunctional homes, just as they do today. In the past, some students showed up without being prepared with homework or materials, just as they do today. The biggest difference between the past and today is the expectation of docility. There was a time when teachers could reasonably expect their students to be docile, and when the students were not, the teachers would address this particular issue with them and with their parents.

Has it been a while since you heard the word "docility?" It is derived from the Latin verb docere, which means "to teach." Being docile is being able to be taught. While there is a proper expectation that teachers be masters of their subjects and have the ability to communicate clearly, I do not think it reasonable to expect a teacher to be interesting. Do not get me wrong. It is certainly helpful when a teacher is interesting and engaging, but this really should not be necessary in the logical sense of that word. A teacher's ability to engage students really should not be something without which a student is guaranteed to fail. A student should be able to learn, perhaps less enjoyably, but he should be able to learn from the intelligent, articulate teacher whose personality is as dry as dust, and this can happen when the student is docile.

In the education war, and make no mistake, battles are being waged privately and publicly across the ideological spectrum, the primary focus is on teachers, and while I agree that thoughtful teachers can always improve and some teachers should be removed, we really must focus a bit more on students, and not in the way that phrase is usually meant. We must expect docility from our students. We should expect a student to be in a mental and emotional place where he can learn when he enters the class. It is the responsibility first and foremost, if not entirely, of parents to foster docility in their children.

Parents must set regular bedtimes for their children through high school. Excessive noise and visual stimulation must be kept to a minimum or eliminated from the home. Televisions, flickering computer screens, and the radio are not conducive for completing homework or sleep. Parents must say no to some activities, even when they are good. A packed schedule produces exhaustion, which is not conducive to docility. To be docile, you must be alert. Parents must also lead proper lives themselves, which is, perhaps, the topic of another post.

In short, a significant help to America's education woes is the old concept of docility. It is free and therefore will not demand a tax increase. Nurturing it in children may even help families break the chains of materialism and hyper-stimulation that exhaust and enslave them. One thing is certain. Without docility, it does not matter how interesting or engaging the teacher is. The child, by definition, will not learn.

The Return of Polycarp

2011-09-27T14:22:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I wrote about the growing attack on morality within the culture and the ability to practice the Christian faith openly. A piece from Catholic News Agency gives further evidence and testimony that this is not "Chicken Little" paranoia (as does the update to my previous post, added in red).

To be perfectly frank, I do not think there are that many Christian schools, Christian homeschools, or any other Christian organizations obsessing terribly about homosexuality to the point where they need to make biblical teaching on the matter a primary focus of their daily life. Christians are being forced to teach more about it, however, in the wake of the homosexualist agenda that seeks an ever larger bully pulpit.

At any rate, as the CNA article points out, it is becoming difficult if not impossible for committed Christians of any stripe to live out their faith in the public square. Positions of employment are being denied them because of their faith. Does this sound familiar?

It should to anyone who has read the New Testament or even a bit of Church history. The times of our martyrdom are upon us, and for many, it is unfamiliar territory. We have had it good for a long time. We have lived openly in our faith, and most of our neighbors saw our faith as a positive force within the larger society. In city after city, state after state, country after country, this is ceasing to be the case.

So how do we prepare ourselves and our children for the battles ahead? We must read Scripture, of course, and we must pray. We should also study the lives of that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us through martyrdom. Their lives are a textbook for how to stand faithfully in the face of persecution.

One of my favorites is the martyrdom of Polycarp, found in its entirety in English here. Of this wonderful story, perhaps the best part is in chapter 10.

Ἐπιμένοντος δὲ´πάλιν αὐτοῦ καὶ λέγοντος· Ὄμοσον τὴν Καίσαρος τύχην, ἀπεκρίνατο· Εἰ κενοδοξεῖς, ἵνα ὀμόσω τὴν καίσαρος τύχην, ὡς σὺ λέγεις, προσποιεῖ δὲ ἀγνοεῖν με, τίς εἰμι, μετὰ παρρησίας ἄκουε· Χριστιανός εἰμι. εἰ δὲ θέλεις τὸν τοῦ Χριστιανισμοῦ μαθεῖν λόγον, δὸς ἡμέραν καὶ ἄκουσον.

And when the proconsul yet again pressed him, and said, "Swear by the fortune of Cæsar, he answered, "Since you are vainly urgent that, as you say, I should swear by the fortune of Cæsar, and pretend not to know who and what I am, hear me declare with boldness, I am a Christian. And if you wish to learn what the doctrines of Christianity are, appoint me a day, and you shall hear them."

I love it. What a bold response by a bishop in his 80s! "I am a Christian. If you want to know what that means, name the day and listen."

This is what is called for in our present age. It is what Paul meant when he told us in Ephesians 6 to put on the armor of Christ and take our stand. Of course, this is what has always been required of Christians. We must remind ourselves of this in the present hour and, as the Lord said to Polycarp, play the man.

They Must Be, In Some Sense, Kidding

2011-09-26T19:35:00.001-04:00

In the movie Keeping the Faith, Edward Norton says, "The true New Yorkers understand that people living anywhere else must be, in some sense, kidding." I was reminded of this line when I saw this piece at Creative Minority Report (h/t New Advent). Watch the video of a Christian coffee shop owner in England who was told by the police that he could not have Scriptures displayed on his wall-mounted flatscreen because someone had claimed it was in violation of laws against hate speech.

As I say, my first reaction was that the legislators and police in this British town must be, in some sense, joking. Then I read the comments in the combox. One person wrote, "Last summer I watched at least a dozen documentaries on the Holocaust. Over and over I saw Jews who refused to leave Europe until it was too late because they simply could not believe what was happening. It was so surreal they could not accept it until it was too late. This was not because they were Jews, but because they were human. In hindsight it is painfully obvious what was happening. And it is painfully obvious to me that we are in the early stages of history repeating itself. Many people, especially Christians, will scoff at this idea...."

Then I recalled a comment at Fr. Longenecker's blog on his recent post, "Clarifying Marriage." One person seemed to find it absurd that any church would feel threatened with the possibility that a state agent would force it to perform rites of marriage for gays.

Suddenly, I no longer saw those who promulgate and enforce hate-speech legislation as the ones who must be joking. As ludicrous as such actions are, it is those who cannot feel the increasing heat until the water around them boils who must be joking if they laugh off such issues as irrelevant. With every passing day, we fall faster and further into the non-Christian, anti-Christian world of that our first-century brothers and sisters saw. We have grown accustomed, especially in the United States, not only to being able to practice our faith freely, but to seeing that faith have a voice at the table of state. To pretend that such free ability will always exist is naive. It should exist, for it was on such that our country was founded, but it is foolish to expect that it always will, especially as we see the attacks that are coming with greater ferocity every day in our schools, our entertainment, our news and social media, and our government.

As we continue living our lives for the One Who gave His for us, we must remember the following from Leif Enger's book Peace Like a River. "We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves." We must follow the instruction of Deuteronomy 11:18-21, "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth. (NIV) We must pray and equip ourselves and the next generation of Christians in how to live as the salt and light our Lord commanded us to be.

Update: As proof that this is no "Chicken Little" paranoia, see this article on California's new law regarding the contributions of LGBT people and the zero tolerance for any opposition to the regime.

Sunday Snippets for 25 September 2011

2011-09-25T08:25:00.000-04:00

Wow! What a busy and eclectic week at Bedlam or Parnassus! Posts for this week's Sunday Snippets include:

Double-Slit Theology...A famous physics experiment reveals that when it comes to the differences between Protestant and Catholic theology, what you see is what you get.
Tweating Students Wike Widdle Babies...On the absurdity of approaching students, especially in matters of the faith, with a watered-down approach.
Proud to Be a Teacher...An dinner with fellow grant recipients reminds me of the excellence among many teachers.
5th Grade Cosmology...A look at Hubble's Ultra Deep Field with our son at bedtime prompts some fascinating observations from him.
If It's Too Loud, You're... ...Exploring the sonic bomardment in contemporary churches.
Faster Than the Speed of Dark...Recent discoveries in particle physics have significant implications for the physicalist model of the universe used to undermine Christian faith.

Thanks to all the readers out there and to RAnn who hosts Sunday Snippets!

Faster Than the Speed of Dark

2011-09-23T08:51:00.000-04:00

When my students arrive in the last moments of the passing period and ask to go to the restroom before the bell rings, I often say yes, but add that they should hurry, faster than the speed of dark. As they race back down the hall, they will often stop and look back at me in confusion when they realize what I have said. I have even had discussions in class as to whether there is such a thing as the speed of dark, and if so, whether it is the same as or slower than the speed of light.

Yesterday, Reuters reported that scientists from CERN, after three years of testing and rechecking of findings, have announced that neutrinos travel faster than light. Particles launched from Geneva to San Grasso, Italy, arrived sixty nanoseconds (60 billionths of a second) faster than light would have. They are cautious in their announcement, asking for colleagues to confirm their results and refusing to speculate on what this could mean if the results hold up.

Think about this for a moment. If these results are accurate, we are seeing a momentous shift in our understanding of creation. Whatever the practical applications of such a discovery may be, the most significant consequence at the moment is that what we thought was an immutable law of the physical world may be wrong.

Without question, the natural sciences have discovered much, and from those discoveries we have changed the world, both for the better and the worse. No one could reasonably argue that the natural sciences have not accomplished extraordinary things. What can and should be resisted, however, is the hubris stemming from such achievement that leads to scientism, or the belief that science and its methods alone are capable of producing reliable knowledge. There are many ways of knowing...emotional, intuitive, logical, traditional, authoritative, experimental...and the list goes on. Some of these ways of knowing are better suited for certain areas of understanding than for others. Some work well together, or support one another by filling in gaps that a particular way of knowing is incapable of addressing. It is has become the mark of an increasingly narrow vision of knowledge to assume and proclaim that the methods of the natural sciences are the only ones in which we can put our confidence. Should the recent findings at CERN be proven accurate, the foundations of the false idol of scientism will be shaken.

Mind you, this will in no way invalidate the methods of the various sciences, but it will highlight that the absolute certainty sometimes claimed for these methods is, at the very least, overstating the case. It will also damage the radical physicalist model of creation that says the world is closed to any non-physical causation and that there is no such thing as mind, soul, or consciousness, considering rather that these are merely descriptions of physical brain states. Proving false the constant of the speed of light would call into question a physicalist model of the universe that says there can be no non-physical causation because we cannot observe non-physical force. It would remind us that just as with past paradigm shifts in the sciences, our scientific laws are subject to change. Again, this should not cause us to reject the sciences as untrustworthy, but it should cause us to pause before bowing to them as at some altar of immutable truth.

If It's Too Loud, You're...

2011-09-22T11:14:00.000-04:00

...in church. Some of us of a certain age expected that line to conclude with the words "you're too old." Readers of this blog know that I enjoy my rock music every now and then, and I have certainly been to loud concerts. Hey, one of my favorite groups is Deep Purple, who was once in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest band in the world. At the London Rainbow Theatre, their sound reached 117dB and rendered three members of the audience unconscious. According to the Daily Telegraph in February of 1971, "Where others may sap the emotions, Deep Purple squeezes, then crushes the senses and afterwards it all seems like having been bludgeoned slowly into a condition of acquiescent insensibility." But I digress.

Last weekend as we entered the worship center (Evangelical churches long ago eschewed the word "sanctuary"), I was struck by a sonic barrage that for sheer volume would have made Deep Purple proud. A little girl in front of us covered her ears. As we took our seats, I whipped out my iPhone and quickly downloaded a free decibel meter app. The opening music in our auditorium never dropped below 90dB and frequently approached 100dB. Even given that my free app may not be the most refined sound instrument in the world, it gave numeric expression to one thing. The music was too loud.

Not only was there zero chance for prayerful meditation or hearing yourself think, much less being able to talk to the person beside you, the lyrics were nonexistent. I could see mouths moving of the vocalists on stage, but in the instrumental Blitzkrieg that surrounded them, the words were lost.

In the beginning was the Word. I used to have a choir director in junior high who, even though I attended public school, quoted that line from John's Gospel. Whatever primacy words are supposed to have, they were driven into the background last weekend.

It is not just that such levels can be dangerous, for when it comes to that, we expose our ears to sonic danger when we mow the grass and go to the airport. It is that such deafening sonic blasts seem incongruous with God, Who had this encounter with Elijah.

And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. (1 Kings 19:11-12, KJV)

5th Grade Cosmology

2011-09-21T21:52:00.000-04:00

Tonight, just before reading our son a bedtime story (we are in the middle of a Carl Sandburg book on Abraham Lincoln's years in Indiana), we turned out the lights in his room, and I showed him the new NASA app I had downloaded for my iPad. He is ten, soon to be eleven, and loves studying outer space. We looked at some amazing pictures from the Hubble telescope and then watched a four minute movie of the Ultra Deep Field. Images of the UDF are the farthest images mankind has ever had of the universe. It is humbling and awe inspiring.

We lay back on his bed afterward and began to talk. I asked him what this said about God, Who spoke the universe into creation, and somewhere in the conversation, our son mused over whether Eden could have been on another planet. When God exiled our first parents from the garden, perhaps He sent them to earth. This would explain why we have never found Eden.

I shook my head in wonder at such a deep thought and then commented on how foolish it is for people to kill each other and blow each other up in war when there are so many wonders yet to explore. Talking more to myself, I wondered aloud why we engage in such violence. Our son replied that it was because of Adam, Eve, and the snake.

I love the way his mind works. His excited wonder about space excites me, and I marvel at how he integrates hypothesis with the facts of the faith. What a blessing it is to think deep thoughts with him.

Proud to Be a Teacher

2011-09-21T09:49:00.000-04:00

Readers of this blog know that I am no fan of the public educational system that we have in this country. While this may sound a bit like biting the hand that has fed and continues to feed me since I was educated in public schools K-12, attended public undergraduate and graduate, and have taught my entire adult life in public schools (on top of being the son of two public school educators). Yet my beef is not with the children we teach, the physical resources of the schools (for the most part), or the majority of my colleagues. It is with legislation crafted by those who do not understand education and with bitter fruits of a fallen humanity that have increasingly influenced what goes on within the culture and curricula of many schools.

Last night I was surrounded by teachers who exemplified the best of our profession and allowed me to take pride in being a teacher. For the past twenty-five years, the Lilly Foundation has sponsored the Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship. This program invites Indiana teachers to apply for $8,000.00 grants to pursue projects of their own design that bring renewal to themselves and that can benefit their students. Last night was one of the regional dinners for Fellows to present their projects among each other and colleagues from their school. While I certainly enjoyed my own project, it was hearing the adventures of others that was the blessing of the evening.

A full list of the 2011 Fellows and their projects can be found here, and it is worth the time to skim the topics these teachers pursued. I heard stories of travel to Africa, Germany, and Italy. Two teachers worked together on a project to study jazz in New Orleans and then write a jazz composition for the band at their school to play in the spring. An art teacher explored anthropology, osteology, art, and forensic science in the construction of facial reconstruction of unidentified skeletal remains. A middle school teacher studied oil painting, visited Civil War battle sites, and painted forty historical scenes.

Can you imagine being a student in such classes? Seriously, what would it be like to learn about the Civil War through pictures that your teacher had painted?

These are the masters of their craft, and it was inspiring to be among them. On top of that, I am deeply grateful to the Lilly Foundation for supporting teachers in this way. Where politicians wring their hands or construct more guidelines that have little hope of accomplishing anything other than hamstringing genuine pedagogical artistry, this private foundation for a quarter century has put its money behind something worthwhile. Indiana is blessed to have this resource.

True teachers are learners. They are artists. They are creators and discoverers of knowledge every bit as much as they are communicators of it. One of the best ways to address the myriad ills of American education is to inspire these teachers to be what God has called them to be and to provide the resources for them to do it. It is not to roll out a supposedly novel legislative initiative that is merely the re-heated gruel of a previously failed attempt to transform education in one grand sweep. It requires the commitment of private individuals and organizations like the Lilly Foundation who have confidence in intelligent and creative men and women to pursue what will make them come alive, for in this, as St. Irenaeus said, God will truly be glorified.

Tweating Students Wike Widdle Babies

2011-09-20T11:23:00.000-04:00

On his blog Smaller Manhattans, KKolwitz posted a piece last week about using fine art with the sixth graders in his catechism class. He writes, "Images help children learn, but I like to use fine art rather than something specifically pitched at 11-year-olds. The kids can learn from a 'grownup' mosaic as well as they can a cartoon; and fine art is simply a richer experience, spiritually, culturally, aesthetically, you name it."

I have had the great blessing of teaching for twenty years both professionally and in volunteer settings. As a professional teacher, I have taught 8th grade through undergraduate Latin. In churches I have worked with elementary, high school, and college students. On top of that, my wife and I have two children.

What has this experience taught me? Among other things, it has taught me that children are not idiots. Once they are past the crawling stage, they are no longer babies. Why, then, do we treat children as if they were other than they are? Why do we assume a diminished capacity to learn and feel the need to entertain our way through education?

I love children's literature, and much of our children play with has been designed specifically for people their age. Yet for all that, there is no need to dumb down curriculum and assume from the outset that they cannot handle deep or complex material. I also know that when presented with the large, brightly colored, plastic hammer and screwdriver or the actual tools, our children always went for the real deal.

Paul challenged us in this area. In 1 Corinthians 3, he tells the citizens of Corinth that he has been forced to treat them like infants, giving them milk in his teaching rather than the meat of deeper doctrine. He says this as a challenge to them, and they should be embarassed about it. My parents used to tell the story that when I was a baby, my dad would stick a suction cup toy on his forehead, prompting me to laugh and allowing my mom to pop a bite of food in my mouth. There came a time when this was no longer necessary.

Far too many schools have assumed that since children are of an X-Box, Internet, i-Whatever culture, they must be catered to using such instruments. Too many of our churches, falsely assuming that professional educators know what they are talking about, base their teaching strategies on the "proven" methods of their secular counterparts. I will leave discussion of secular teaching methodology for another time. At the end of the day, it does not matter whether a child has learned the dates of the Civil War, how to balance a chemical equation, or the subjunctive mood in Latin. If educators want to waste their time with foolish teaching methods, there are no eternal consequences. Churches, however, are entrusted with a sacred duty teaching the faith. They are must come alongside parents to assist them with their God-given duties. Playing around with goofy ideas meant to entertain is an abdication of that duty. Parents themselves need to be taught that X-Box, the Internet, and i-Gizmos are not the salvation of their children. What better way than for their church to model mature, meaningful, and genuinely effective teaching strategies that do not treat children like idiots or infants?

Double-Slit Theology

2011-09-19T19:43:00.000-04:00

According to the famous double-slit experiment, whether or not light is a wave or a particle depends on what sort of test you run. If you set up an experiment that expects particle-like results, then light appears to be a particle. If you set one up that expects wave-like results, then light appears to be a wave. In short, you get whatever you are looking for.

In a recent post, I explored some of the differences between Protestant and Catholic understanding of the sacraments. One of the key issues I kept running up against with regard to the Eucharist, however, was whether the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist were taught explicitly in the Bible. Now, you must understand, I have read all the arguments for the Real Presence, and I agree with them. Most Protestants have no problem with the doctrine of the Trinity, even though it is not explicitly taught in the Bible. It has robust biblical testimony and, of course, the good theological work of the first few centuries. On this line of reasoning, Protestants should have no problem with understanding the Eucharist as the real body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. There is robust biblical testimony and the good work theological work of the first few centuries. Yet for some reason, this is a sticking point for most Protestants, and even those of us who intellectually assent to the doctrine cannot seem to cross the barrier of genuine belief. We remain Augustines in the garden, wrestling with ourselves as we know that the simplest act of will would bring about such belief.

As I pondered this biblical litmus test that Protestants apply to most things, I thought of the double-slit experiment. If you apply a sola scriptura test, you will get a sola scriptura answer. If you apply a tradition test, you will get a tradition answer. The question is which test to apply. One deeply ensconced in the sola scriptura understanding of faith simply cannot see his way out of it, and likewise the one whose life has been lived within the Catholic understanding of tradition. We can grasp the reasons for the other's understanding and may even acknowledge the validity of some or even all points of that understanding, but to adopt that understanding and actually see matters through it is, well, a different matter.

There is a parallel here with work on A.I., or Artificial Intelligence. Some say that we will one day achieve strong A.I., or A.I. that is the full equivalent of human intelligence. Others say that this is impossible and that the best we can achieve is weak A.I., or machines that behave intelligently, but not at the human level. (For further on this particular issue, see here.) I am of the latter camp. We have already attained weak A.I., for our smart phones and computers perform intelligent functions. The test I have for strong A.I., and a test I think no none-human thinking device could pass is this. Consider how you and I go about making our ethical decisions. A person may claim to follow virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, or any other ethical system, but in practice we are seldom so monolithic in our approach. We may make a decision based on one system in a certain situation and based on another system in a different situation, or we may consistently apply one system during a given period of our lives, but another system at a different stage of life. Imagine now an intelligent system programmed with all the rules of various ethical systems. The system would easily be able to follow the rules of a given system and could even switch among them, but such switching would require a further algorithm, or set of rules, more structured than what governs our own switching between ethical systems. There are times when we simply act inconsistently, and when confronted with this fact, feel regret and wish that we had acted differently. While the ethical rules could be understand as programmed in both the human mind and in the intelligent machine, there is no algorithm capable of dictating the randomness and inconsistency of human action.

So what has the above discussion of Protestant and Catholic theology to do with A.I.? I can understand all the rules of Protestant theology and all the rules of Catholic theology, much as an intelligent machine or I can be taught all the rules of various ethical systems. The question remains, as I stated earlier, which theology to follow. The good news is that just as a human is able to find his way to the appropriate ethical system, even though he may indeed choose incorrectly, so a human must be able to find his way to the correct theology. We have a Good Shepherd, and He has promised to send His Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. Whatever confidence, or lack thereof, we have in our unaided reason, we can say with Paul, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." (2 Timothy 1:12, KJV)

Sunday Snippets for 18 September 2011

2011-09-18T08:13:00.000-04:00

It was quite the eclectic week for posts at Bedlam or Parnassus. This week we have:

The NIV and James 2:14...Some research for a friend led me to see a gross mistranslation of this verse in the NIV that betrays an extreme Reformation bias. Interestingly, the NIV is not alone in deliberately altering the verse.
Kill 'em All...A mother in Canada is acquitted for the strangulation of her newborn on the grounds that, since Canada has no law against abortion, it is clear Canadians sympathize with mothers over the onerous burdens that babies place on them.
Excellent, Overlooked 1969 Album...Deep Purple's self-titled third release is a masterpiece of moody, Hammond organ-driven music.
Impiety With Impunity...A poem in a Classics journal eloquently touches on a central problem of modern life, and offers a solution.
Crude Facticity...This is an extended look at the fundamental difference between Protestant and Catholic understanding of things, particularly as applied to the Eucharist and marriage.

As always, thanks to the readers out there. Hey, we just picked up another follower on Twitter! Be sure to tell your friends to become one of the followers of Bedlam or Parnassus, both on the blog and through Twitter. I am not collecting followers like so many stamps, but I do enjoy the good discussions that can happen in the combox from a variety of readers.

Crude Facticity

2011-09-16T16:08:00.000-04:00

Carl Olson at Insight Scoop has published a piece from Peter Kreeft's book Fundamentals of the Faith. In this short selection, Kreeft talks about the differering understanding of Protestants and Catholics with regard to the sacraments as being rooted in the "crude, even vulgar facticity," of the sacraments. He writes,

Protestants are usually much more comfortable with a merely symbolic view of sacraments, for their faith is primarily verbal, not sacramental. After all, it is the Bible that looms so large in the center of their horizon. They believe in creation and Incarnation and Resurrection only because they are in the Bible. The material events are surrounded by the holy words. The Catholic sensibility is the inside-out version of this: the words are surrounded by the holy facts. To the Catholic sensibility it is not primarily words but matter that is holy because God created it, incarnated himself in it, raised it from death, and took it to heaven with him in his ascension.

This is quite accurate. As a Protestant, I can testify that ours is a primarily verbal understanding of the faith. It is also spiritual, but rarely is it corporal, except when it comes to issues of social justice, and then the hands-on, direct touch with the downtrodden is lifted up as the model. It was this sentence, though, that struck me most deeply. "They believe in creation and Incarnation and Resurrection only because they are in the Bible."

Is that true? As I have pondered this throughout the day, I think that it is. The Bible says X about creation and so I believe it, but obviously I have no personal knowledge of it, much less any tactile knowledge, sensory perception, or visceral understanding of it. The same is true of the Incarnation and Resurrection. We sing, "He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way. He lives, He lives, salvation to impart. You ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart."

This is certainly true, of course. God does dwell in our hearts, but there is something a bit shadowy about something like that. Many Christians pride themselves on being among the blessed who believe without the need for seeing, for we are quite certain we would not have needed to thrust our hand into Christ's side as Thomas did.

I am not so sure. I am not so sure that we really do believe as much as we like to think or as much as we try to convince ourselves. I am not so sure we have read that passage rightly. John says in 1 John 4:20, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." (NIV) It is fine to talk about God, but at the end of the day, for many people, He is a thoroughly abstract concept, not unlike an irrational number. We must never forget that, for all our love of words, the Word Himself became flesh, to live and dwell among us.

In the passage cited on Insight Scoop, Kreeft talks about the Eucharist. Certainly this is an area where the verbal, Protestant theology and the incarnational, Catholic theology are most at odds. Although most Protestants celebrate the Lord's Supper with some degree of reverence, there is no pressing reason to see it any differently from any other act that we perform corporately, such as sing worship songs or listen to a sermon, and indeed, many see it on just such a level ground.

Yet we also see this differing view of the faith played out in other areas. Could it be that this is one reason for the acceptance, even with great sorrow, of divorce among many Protestants, but its continued rejection by the Catholic Church? We may talk of the two becoming one flesh, but let us get serious for a moment. My wife cannot fit into my shoes, and I cannot fit into her skirt. We are clearly not one flesh. It is a nice metaphor, and most of us attach a spiritual meaning to it, but without an incarnational view, a sacramental view of marriage, can it truly be anything more than two people living in close proximity?

The objection to this is that marriage is a spiritual reality, but let us examine that phrase a bit more closely. Reality is that which has been realized. Stemming from the same Latin root res, meaning "thing," reality is that which has been "thingified." By definition, the spiritual cannot be real. Such cannot be any more than God could be a man. Yet through the Incarnation, God did become a man. He did not, as Richard John Neuhaus once said of justification, divinely cook the books. He did not say, "Okay, let's take a man...uh, how about Joseph and Mary's boy...and we'll all agree to call him God." Instead, in a way that passes the possibility for comprehension, God really, in the literal sense of that word, became a man.

Is it so hard, then, to accept the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation? Paraphrasing the verse from 1 John above, if we cannot accept the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ under the accidents of the Eucharist that we can see, how can we accept the historical Incarnation, which we cannot see? This has significant implications for our views on marriage, for most people, Protestants and Catholics alike, want to see strong marriages in their communities. Yet how can we believe in a real, i.e. "thingified," union of two people without a sacramental understanding rooted in the reality of the Eucharist and the Incarnation? It would seem that we want it both ways. We want marriage to be real, but not the Eucharist. Such a divisive mindset cannot help but bring about the destruction of the entire house.

Impiety With Impunity

2011-09-15T22:55:00.000-04:00

In the most recent issue of The Classical Outlook (Vol.88, No.4), the journal of the American Classical League, there is a haunting poem title "Logotokos" by Brian Patrick Eha. It is about an aging Classics professor, but the highlight is this.

--Night in the dark room falls and keeps on falling,
Calligraphy-ink-black, one milkglass lamp
In the circle of whose light the volume lies:
Impiaque aeternam timuerunt saecula noctem.

If only that were true. Impiety
Today comes without punishment, with praise
For independent thought, judgement unmoored
From history, the lessons of time and fate;
A nakedness of mind in this new world
Considered first prerequisite of life.

The Latin is from Vergil's Georgics I.468 and translates as "the impious ages have feared the everlasting night."

I do not know this poet, but he has accurately described a central problem of the current age. His answer to the problem is in the next stanza, which runs,

And yet in Seneca is more of life
(As the old professor understands the word)
Than in a thousand latter-day philosophies
And Don Quixotes, the momentary jousts
Of the public forum.

Excellent, Overlooked 1969 Album

2011-09-14T21:22:00.000-04:00

Fans of classic rock know Deep Purple for such anthems as "Smoke on the Water", "Highway Star", "Burn", and other monster, riff-laden tunes. Before the arena hits, however, came three albums in 1968-1969 of a decidedly different nature. These were more experimental, at times orchestral, and more defined by Jon Lord's Hammond organ than Richie Blackmore's Stratocaster. Of these three early releases, the third, a self-titled offering from 1969, is the best, and having just listened to it again, I wanted to share it with loyal readers.

Although it is difficult to find a copy with the original artwork taken from Hieronymus Bosch's "The Earthly Garden of Delights," a click on the picture above will take you to Amazon's re-release and digital update. What draws me are the haunting lyrics and moody atmosphere that conjures for me images of crushed velvet jackets, puffy shirts, and cravats. There are a few foretastes of the guitar-hero pyrotechnics of later incarnations of the band, but for the most part we here the moody, experimental music of the late 60s, before formulaic, corporate music took over the airwaves. The lyrics are poetic, and Rod Evans lends them a clean, pure, and rich vocal.

This album will surprise many rock fans and will perhaps help skeptics see that some rock musicians do have more musical chops than just the three-chord thrash. It is very much a period piece, but it is a pleasant period to visit every once in a while.

Kill 'em All

2011-09-13T12:25:00.000-04:00

Where will it end? Touchstone's blog Mere Comments alerts us to article from Lifesitenews about a recent ruling in Canada in which a woman was allowed to walk freely from the courthouse after having strangled her infant boy to death and thrown his body across the fence into the neighbor's yard. Justice Joanne Veit said that Canada's lack of abortion laws indicates that Canadians, "generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support."

It seems to me that the Canadians are not sympathetic enough if they would not allow me to murder my child who is in the terrible twos, for the behaviors of children that age frequently place onerous demands on a parent. They should also allow me to murder my teenager, for we all know what onerous demands they can place on parents. The twenty-something college grad without a job can also place onerous demands on a parent and when it comes to senior citizens, well, we all know what onerous demands they can place on all of us. Truly, by the logic of this judge, laws against murder should either be removed from the books or amended to allow for onerous burdens on anyone, for mothers should not be allowed special privileges, nor should we be so naive to think that only infants are capable of doling out onerous burdens.

I shared this article with my Latin II classes today as an example of the ancient world coming back to life. We had just been talking about the Roman family in the past couple of weeks, and only yesterday had discussed the extreme power of the paterfamilias, which allowed a father to kill an unwanted child. Fortunately, my students had enough moral fiber to be outraged at what had happened, not in some cultish or tribal backwater, not in a country run by Sharia law, but among our First World neighbors to the north.

This is an abomination. It is an outrage. It deserves all the media converage it can get, for the light must be shined into this dark sinkhole of immorality. I rather doubt it will receive much outside the blogosphere, especially when a search of the mother's name, Katrina Effert, in Google News produced a whopping five hits, and none of them from major news sources.

Think about that. A mother is acquitted, and not even for reasons of insanity, for strangling her child to death, and neither the monstrosity of her crime nor the life of her child merits more than five meager references on the world wide web.

God forgive us, for we know not what we do.

The NIV and James 2:14

2011-09-12T18:59:00.000-04:00

I was recently doing some analysis of the Greek text of James for a friend and ran across a disturbing mistranslation in the New International Version. Actually, there was quite a bit about the NIV version of James that bothered me, such as a general weakening of verbs and metaphors and an inexplicable changing of word order for no obvious reason, often destroying chiastic effects that James had employed to strengthen his point. Nonetheless, it was the translation of James 2:14 that I found most disturbing.

The Greek for the last part of this verse, which is a question, reads:

μη δυναται η πιστις σωσαι αυτον

The NIV has, "Can such faith save him?"

The problem with this is that the word μη in the Greek introduces a question that expects a negative answer. In the Vulgate translation of the verse, we find, "Numquid poterit fides salvare eum." Latin shares with Greek the ability to express simply whether the speaker of a question expects a positive or negative answer, and numquid is the Latin way to express expectation of the negative. In short, James is saying, "Surely faith will not be able to save, will it?"

In case anyone thinks that perhaps this grammatical construction did not exist in the time of James, or that James did not know it, we should observe that in James 2:21 and 4:1, he uses ουκ, nonne in the Latin Vulgate, which expresses a question expecting a positive answer. It is clear that James knew exactly what he was saying by using μη in 2:14.

Interestingly, I can find only one English translation that expresses this connotation, the Lexham English Bible. Its translation reads, "That faith is not able to save him, is it?" It contains a footnote on the text that says, "The negative construction in Greek anticipates a negative answer here."

My initial interpretation was that the NIV had gone too far in its Martin Lutheresque, Reformation-influenced translation in its attempt to undercut a verse already difficult for the doctrine of sola fide. I am not sure what to make of the fact, however, that nearly all English translations, even Dr. Challoner's revision of the Douay-Rheims, make this omission. It is possible that these translations have supposed enough negative anticipation to be conveyed by the preceding part of the verse. Nonetheless, the assumption of a negative response is assumed in the Greek, and it certainly provides a challenge for sola fide.

Sunday Snippets for 11 September 2011

2011-09-11T09:46:00.000-04:00

Contributions to Sunday Snippets from this week include:

Best Sex-Ed Ever...An article from Lifesitenews gives some of the clearest, most sound sex-education ever. It is the kind of stuff your child is guaranteed not to hear in school.
The Purpose of Education...A piece by Fr. James V. Schall gives rise to thoughts about the purpose of education and the difference between education and training.
God Gave Rock and Roll To You...The title pretty much says it all.
A Prayer I Don't Want To Pray...Prayers against strip-club behavior at American high schools.

Thanks to RAnn for hosting Sunday Snippets and to the all the readers out there! May the remembrance of 9/11 draw us all closer to our Lord.