Michael Healy

Neil Diamond and The Metaphysics of the Person

Dec. 11, 2012, at 4:51pm

Pop music in general often deals with superficial things, e.g., Jan and Dean’s hit song “Honolulu Lulu” about the courage of a curvy surfer girl to go out and face the big waves.  (In its defense, it does have the one great line revealing the level of religious awareness in the surfing culture: “When the beach is quiet and you know you’re out of luck, we pray for surf while makin’ out in the truck.”)  

Other songs, on a bit higher level, deal with intense emotions, though these powerful feelings are not always particularly well-ordered or understood.  In Neil Diamond’s repertoire, such songs would include “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “Cherry, Cherry,” “Kentucky Woman,” “Thank the Lord for the Night …

Katie van Schaijik

Light of Advent in the dark of December

Dec. 10, 2012, at 10:20pm

Today it was warm outside.  April warm.  But it was also overcast and drizzly, so that even at midday, we had to have lamps on all over the house.  Ten more days of lengthening darkness.

It is so, so good to be able to light the Advent candles and read the hope-imparting, heart-exalting readings assigned to these weeks of the Liturgical year!

Otherwise, I fear I'd succumb to gloom.

What inscrutable mixtures of body, psyche and spirit we persons are!  And how kind and merciful of God to answer all our wants as He constantly does!

Devra Torres

Prayer and Fasting: Taking it Personally

Dec. 7, 2012, at 5:13pm

This morning I came across this story about an announcement by Bishop Cordileone of Oakland.

The bishops are calling on Catholics to do five specific things to advance this campaign for liberty, life and marriage. These include saying the rosary daily, attending a special Holy Hour on the last Sunday of each month, participating in a Fortnight of Freedom in the summer of 2013, including in every Mass prayers of the faithful for the causes of life, marriage and liberty, and fasting and abstaining from meat on Fridays.

I had the following reactions:

First: Wonderful!  That’s what we need: bishops who will stand up for the truth!

Second: Oh…wait a minute…today’s Friday.  That would mean…

…

Michael Healy

Guardini on Forgiveness

Dec. 6, 2012, at 11:09pm

Earlier this month my wife Maria pointed out to me a very beautiful paragraph on forgiveness by Romano Guardini included in one of the daily readings (Meditation for Nov. 12) in the November issue of Magnificat.  Remembering that I had the book (The Lord) in the basement, I searched it out to read further—from Chapter XIII. 

After reviewing the relevant line of the text of the Our Father and some commentary on it in Matt. 6:14-15 (But if you do not forgive men, neither will your father forgive you your offenses), Matt. 18: 21-2 (Forgive 70 times 7 times) and Matt 18: 35 (the story of the king settling accounts with the heartless servant who was forgiven but would not forgive a lesser …

Katie van Schaijik

Patient waiting

Dec. 4, 2012, at 10:26am

A friend linked a beautiful John Paul II quotation:

‎For a stalk to grow or a flower to open there must be time that cannot be forced; nine months must go by for the birth of a human child; to write a book or compose music often years must be dedicated to patient research ...To find the mystery there must be patience, interior purification, silence, waiting....

It reminds me of one of the pearls of wisdom Alice von Hildebrand gave me about courtship.  "If you break open a bud in your impatience to see the flower, you ruin it." Love takes time to grow between persons.  Don't force it.

It's striking how simple and true this is, and yet, how difficult to realize in our lives!  Our culture …

Jules van Schaijik

Why gender matters

Dec. 2, 2012, at 2:07pm

Ideally, Christians are always ready to give an answer for their hope and faith to anyone who asks. In practice, however, we usually don't have a convincing answer until someone asks for it. That's when we first begin to reflect on our own views.

This explains the situation many of us find ourselves in today, concerning our views on marriage. We firmly believe that it is a life-long commitment between a man and a woman. But when challenged, we can't think of any persuasive arguments, and our view appears to be no more than a blind, unjust prejudice.

For those, who, like me, want to better understand their own views on this all-important subject, and be able to give a reason for it, I …

Devra Torres

Fair Game: Enlarging your Religious Compartment

Dec. 1, 2012, at 10:02pm

As I’ve mentioned, I used to have a peculiar understanding of spontaneity.

It was a Good Thing.  Period.

I did allow that even someone as charmingly whimsical as myself needed to be predictable and systematic sometimes.  Teeth had to be brushed.  Sunday Mass couldn’t be neglected.  I didn’t want to end up toothless or damned, 

so I was willing to attend to a few select things on schedule whether the mood struck me or no. 

But if I was sloppy and incompetent about the other 99% of life, well, that was a lot more appealing than becoming one of those intimidating people who march through life in a haze of grim perfectionism.  (I thought of an acquaintance who was raising a well-mannered …

Michael Healy

Endings and Beginnings: The Liturgical Year and the Fullness of Joy

Dec. 1, 2012, at 4:49pm

Over my nearly 62 years on this earth, I’ve been able to read through the Bible several times, and the New Testament a couple of times more.  Alleluia!  What a gift!  One of the things which has always struck me is the overwhelming, superabundant joy that flows through those who knew and walked with Christ—the Apostles and Evangelists, Peter, Paul, James, John, etc.  I have been especially impressed with the joy and longing at the end of the entire revelation, in the Apocalypse (despite all the frightful dimensions of the book), as well as the superabounding joy that seems to break forth at the very beginning of the epistles of Paul, Peter, James, and John. 

It occurred to me that this joy …

Jules van Schaijik

Virtual choirs & the transformative power of music

Nov. 30, 2012, at 1:07pm

"This is really neat!" wrote Michael Wallacavage, as he sent around a link to this fascinating clip of Eric Whitacre's virtual choirs. Watch it, and I think you'll agree.

The singing starts at 6:27 and then again at 12:12 on the timeline. But don't skip what comes before! Whitacre's introduction is very interesting and engaging. He not only talks about the project itself, how it came about and so on, but also explains how he got interested in classical music. As a youth, his dream was to be a pop star. (He wanted to be the fifth member of Depeche Mode. Remember them?). But when he got to college he joined a choir instead. Not for love of music, mind you, but because it included a free trip …

Michael Healy

JPII on Different Kinds of Human Needs:  Illustrations from Popular Music

Nov. 28, 2012, at 11:47pm

In Love and Responsibility, John Paul II makes some interesting distinctions about human needs and the different levels on which they operate.  He especially makes a point to distinguish between mere desire (based in need alone, i.e. in me) and love as desire (based in a value-responding affirmation of the other, in light of which I recognize my desire or need as centered in this specific person because of their irreplaceable beauty and value).  He says the following in his section on “Love as Desire” under his treatment of “Metaphysical Analysis of Love:”

On the natural level, man and woman need one another to complete their own being.  The sexual urge or sexual desire is an indication …

Katie van Schaijik

Good and evil in the human heart

Nov. 26, 2012, at 12:49pm

Hospice voluteers in our area have inaugurated a book club, as a way of sharing our experiences and interests and getting to know each other better. The first book we're reading together is The End of Your Life Book Club. It's written by Will Schwalbe, who chronicles his mother's dying of pancreatic cancer. Both great readers, one of the ways they cope with the tedium of her chemo treatments is by reading and discussing books together. Mary Anne Schwalbe comes across as an extraordinary woman, who lived a life of dedication to good causes, especially the cause of refugees. She was a believing Christian and a life-long activist, convinced that the way not to be overwhelmed by the problems …

Katie van Schaijik

Liberty rests on spirituality

Nov. 24, 2012, at 10:41pm

In a sobering article over at Crisis, Fr. Rutler reminds us of Alexander Solzhenitzyn's prophetic address to the Harvard class of 1978: 

...we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.

How can we expect to retain our right to religious liberty if we've rejected the notion of being "under God"?

Devra Torres

7 Quick Takes: Consumerism and its Discontents

Nov. 24, 2012, at 3:22pm

 (Yes, it's Saturday.  I lose track of time when long-lost adult children come to visit. But I wanted to get in on Jen Fulweiler's weekly blogger tradition.  You can, too, if you like: see Jen's instructions at the very end of this post.)

                                          *    *    *    *    *    

---1---

As my philosophy professor, the late lamented Dr. William Marra, used to say,

“Money is happiness in the abstract.”

He was right: if we dedicate Black Friday to commerce,

it’s not so much because we want this particular HDTV or that particular vegan leather handbag: it’s because money seems to bestow the power to be happy in whatever way we might turn out to desire.  It …

Devra Torres

Back and Forth

Nov. 18, 2012, at 5:38pm

“We are here to serve others,” the apocryphal mother explains.

“Well, then,” responds the little apocryphal boy, “What are the others here for?” 

*  *  *  *

No wonder he’s confused.  Which are we supposed to be, self-centered or other-centered?

Well, you might say--both.

When you read the Bible, you keep running into principles like

and

“With what measure you measure, it will be measured to you” 

and, of course,

There’s a common thread here: they keep on drawing you not simply towards others, but back and forth from your own desires, obligations and actions to everybody else’s.  They keep reminding you to acknowledge the personhood, the interiority, the subjectivity, of both the …

Katie van Schaijik

The metaphysics of marriage

Nov. 15, 2012, at 11:15am

Over at Public Discourse, Michael Hannon has a clarifying article on the debate over "same sex marriage".  (Hat tip facebook friend Patrick Langrell.)

Hannon shows convincingly that the common case for SSM rests on some basic confusions—or obfuscations (my word, not his)—about the nature of marriage.  

Olson and Boies [the super-lawyers making an apparently sincere case in favor of the legalization of SSM]—and the movement in general—claim that preserving marriage as a union of man and woman is unjust discrimination. For no good reason, they assert, the “right to marry” is being denied to same-sex couples, who are just as capable of loving and committing to each other as opposite-sex …

Katie van Schaijik

Cardinal Dolan, pastoral personalist

Nov. 13, 2012, at 10:17am

Cardinal Dolan yesterday offered a beautiful address to fellow bishops.

I am struck by his emphasis on prayer and interior conversion as the beginning of the New Evangelization.  He quotes St. Bernard: "If you want to be a channel, you must first be a reservoir."  What he says of bishops is true of laymen too:

I would suggest this morning that this reservoir of our lives and ministry, when it comes especially to the New Evangelization, must first be filled with the spirit of interior conversion born of our own renewal. That's the way we become channels of a truly effective transformation of the world, through our own witness of a penitential heart, and our own full embrace of the …

Devra Torres

Three Hopeful Consequences of an Awful Election

Nov. 10, 2012, at 9:47am

(in keeping with my role as Pollyanna in Chief)

First: It turns out it wasn’t just me!  I woke up the morning of November 7th with a highly unusual urge to set things in order.  I cleaned a closet and a bathroom before breakfast.  No, really—you can look it up on Snopes.  And it turned out this was no isolated phenomenon.  My sister Abby described Wednesday morning at her house:

We cleaned everything. We soaked the stove knobs in ammonia. We cleaned the dried milk drops off the hutch. We cleaned UNDER the microwave and all the couches. We used up the ammonia and the bleach (but not at the same time). We cleared surfaces of objects that had been invisible before the election…

My other …

Katie van Schaijik

Wisdom from Wittaker Chambers

Nov. 7, 2012, at 8:57am

I spent a sleepless night of worry for our nation.

One of my best insomnia rememdies is to put on a favorite audio book, usually Wittaker Chambers' Witness.  In most cases, the calm steady voice of the narrator takes my mind off whatever treadmill it happens to be on and lulls me to sleep.  But sometimes, like last night, it's not enough.

The upside is that I heard anew the beautiful and deep wisdom of his story, including countless gems like this one:

When man tried to organize society without God, he ends up organizing it against man.

Michael Healy

Working Through the Problem of Evil in Personal Experience

Nov. 5, 2012, at 10:17am

Without attempting any application to current politics (in contrast to my previous two posts on Martin Buber), I wish to draw out some of the further wisdom of this 20^th-century personalist Jewish philosopher and author of Good and Evil concerning how to attain a deeper measure of wisdom through our experience, even when that experience is negative.  He says: 

For the most part we understand only gradually the decisive experiences which we have in our relation to the world.  First we accept what they seem to offer us, we express it, we weave it into a ‘view,’ and then think we are aware of our world.  But we come to see that what we look on in this view is only an appearance.  Not that …

Devra Torres

Coming Soon: Love and Self-Esteem in English!

Nov. 2, 2012, at 1:29pm

This is not official, but Scepter is hoping to have my translation of this book (about which more here and here) out by January 1st, 2013.