The League of Bearded Catholics

Ouch! Oldest Family Farm in U.S. For Sale

This hurts me someplace I can't quite pinpoint.

Chesterton offers some helpful perspective;

"Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property." - Commonwealth 10-12-32

"Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work." - "Hudge and Gudge," What's Wrong with the World

"You can't have the family farm without the family." - Tales of the Long Bow

Special Thanks to The American Chesterton Society for the quotes

Steamed Rice

Anne Rice is angry;

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control... In the name of ... Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen." - Anne Rice, via Twitter

Sounds a lot like "Non Serviam!!", from here. I don't know anything about Anne Rice, haven't read her books. I know there was a stir a while back when she deigned to re-enter the Church and grace us all with her presence. I'm always very cautious abour celebrity conversions and Mizz Rice illustrates one reason why.

People are flighty. They'll say and do things for all kinds of reasons at the drop of a hat... make vows, join the army, redecorate the living room. Celebrities seem even more than ususally restless and ungrounded, always - very publically - embracing this movement or that guru or endorsing some new miracle health lifestyle.

Oh, Anne, Anne... whence the righteous indignation? You sound for all the world like the naive and disillusioned victim of a bait-and-switch con. Had you no idea at all what Christianity was before you signed on? Were the Ten Commandments something you had just never come across, the way some people - by a kind of miracle of chance - have never had a hamburger?

Being a Christian means turning from your own will and embracing the will of God, especially in the teaching of Christ, which has been around for, well... a while now. It strikes me as more than a little disingenuous for you to walk out of the front door of the Church and cry, "I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that the Pope refuses to endorse gay marriage!"

That would be like me storming out of a PETA rally, protesting, "Why, I had no idea this was such a narrow-minded organization! They refused to hear my presentation on the benefits of eating hamburgers!".

At least she has the decency to leave, which is more than can be said for dissidents like Call to Action, who insist that, of course, they are the real Catholics... because they have the courage to reject everything even remotely associated with Catholicism. Anne Rice is sane enough, still, to see the contradiction.

Perhaps she will go and have herself de-baptized.

Anne Rice's real problem may be simply that she holds - has held her entire life - a narrow and naive picture of God as, well, a Tame Lion;

By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness ... by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, "What does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all". - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Addendum: The Curt Jester apparently has a similar take. Read Committed to My Own Personal Version of Christ.

While The Internet Monk and his readers find in the occasion cause for much introspective hand-wringing. Meh.

P.S. - I've edited the above, slightly. The original was too snarky.

Not Necessarily a Book Review - Perelandra

Let me offer a big disclaimer here at the beginning of this post; I am not a literary critic... or a literary anything, for that matter. I'm not qualified even to do real criticism in my own field (fine art). I do offer social criticism pretty often, but I feel more comfortable in that role, as I have a fair amount of experience with society, having lived in it nearly every day.

What follows, then, is no more a real book review than my posts on movies could be considered movie reviews. I don't know enough about either books or movies to put things in proper perspective. If I want real movie reviews, I try to find out what pros like Steven Greydanus or Barb Nicolosi are saying.

So consider this a kind of loose recollection of how one average schlub felt about reading C.S. Lewis' space trilogy.

I knew almost nothing of the story before I began (I have yet to read That Hideous Strength, so shaddap, already, and no spoilers please). My ignorance may be confirmed in recalling that not long ago, I spoke of the entire trilogy as being "about Mars", which is only partly true of the first book, Out of the Silent Planet.

Out of the Silent Planet was a fun read, imaginative, and profound at points. Certainly as serviceable a "let's pretend we're on another planet" tale as one could reasonably ask for. It was a pleasure to read a space story written before (but not too long before) we actually did begin to go into space, when the Unknowns were so much bigger (this begs to be made into a cool Steampunk graphic novel).

That said, I wasn't bowled over. I was surely engaged enough to pick up book two, but I did not have extremely high expectations. Then Perelandra (the aforementioned "book two"), over the course of a couple of chapters, became one of my favorite books ever (not that I'm widely read).

More after the break. AHOY!! SPOILERS AHEAD!

It'll Never Catch On

You may have seen this, but it's still cool - a (very short) film of G.K. Chesterton speaking at Worcester College in 1931.

Of course, I doubt these talking motion pictures will ever replace silent films. Just a novelty.

(Tip of the slouchy, shapeless hat to Michael B..)

To Beard, or Not to Beard?

The mysterious TFM sends along this story - via the Pittsburgh Catholic - by His Eminence Bishop David Zubick, regarding his recent bearding (on doctor's orders, no less) and his resulting internal conflict and psychic struggle, as well as the reactions of those around him.

There are those, apparently, who still turn a gimlet eye to the Face Coat, and who see in it all manner of disturbing significance.

And then, for the good Bishop, there is the habitual momentum of a lifetime of shaving. Going out unshaven probably made him feel something like you might feel if you went out without brushing your teeth or showering.

He puts a good "face" on it though.

Scientific Progress Goes "Boink"

Please remove your hats and observe a moment of internet silence...

Our old beast of a computer gave up the ghost in dramatic fashion last night, and so we will be broadcasting for a while from the luxuriously appointed facilities of our local public library, which finds it sensible to dole out internet time in two half-hour sessions per day.

I wouldn't be too surprised to find that this actually improves the quality. Economy is undervalued as an attribute of good writing.

Incidentally, this reminds me of an old blue jean jacket that I, my wife and some friends gave a true Viking funeral, once upon a time. We sat and watched (and drank)  on the lake shore, as it floated away, burning. This was a little hard to explain to the policeman who came around... at 2:00 a.m..

I don't suppose a similar send-off would be ecologically appropriate for a computer. But then, it might actually be better than "recycling" it. There's no way we can make our curent level of wasteful living make sense, not even with fairy tales of recycling.

Oh, well. Maybe I can use it as a boat anchor. When I get a boat.

Saving the Boomers

Good news; Barbara Nicolosi Harrington is back to blogging after a nearly two year hiatus. If there is a short list of women to whom I would grant the title Honorary Bearded Lady, she is on it.

She writes in this article at Patheos about the slow-motion train wreck that is the aging of the Baby Boomers, the really only half-interested response of their children, and the way this is reflected in the art of the modern cinema.

Thanks to the unrestrained narcissism of the Boomers, the Gen-Xers (or whatever they would like to be called) find themselves honestly assessing the worth of all the things the Boomers discarded - self-sacrifice, tradition, family, hard work, authenticity.

Her position is that part of the job of the Church may be to help the X-ers to forgive the Boomers and bear their old age with patience, rather than, you know... euthanizing them. The generation that aborted a fourth of its young now hopes for better treatment from their surviving children.

Another task of the Church is to get the Boomers to repent of their misdeeds for the sake of their own souls.

I remarked on Facebook that many Boomers have so much of themselves invested in their colossal mistakes that it will take a special kind of grace for them to be able to repent. I thought of an illustration; think of how hard it would be, having covered your body in tattoos and other "body modifications" to ever even begin to consider that it might have been a mistake. Psychologically, emotionally, and in every other way, one has a vested interest in keeping up the game face and insisting you have "no regrets", because the alternative is too upsetting to think about.

Auto Design...

...as a clue to the Modern American Psyche. From my personal blog, Old World Swine.

Saint or Ain't?

Patron Saint of Curmudgeons? Oh, I hope so.

The Pachyderminator writes in the combox on this post about the Hilaire Belloc novena;

Sorry to be a curmudgeon, but you can't pray for his soul and pray for his intercession at the same time. He can't receive our prayers if he's in still in purgatory. And if we're not confident that he's in heaven, we shouldn't be holding novenas to him.

First of all, admit it... you really like being a curmudgeon. I know I do, on occasion. I look forward to turning fifty later this year, as it will mark a sort of symbolic beginning to my most curmudgeonly years... though I don't expect to hit my full potential until after seventy (God willing).

Hilaire Belloc certainly made the most of his natural gift for grumpiness, too, which is why - though I'm confident he will enjoy the Beatific Vision - I'm less certain he will be canonized by the Church than I am in the case of, say, Chesterton.

People don't naturally associate gruffness and snark with sainthood, even though we have plenty of examples to demonstrate how they may go together; St. Paul, St, Augustine... there is even a legend of St. Nicholas (our beloved patron!) punching Arius in the nose at the council of Nicea. There are many others.

In the case of praying to Belloc, or praying for him, I don't find the idea generates for me the kind of cognitive dissonance that it seems to for the highly esteemed Pachyderminator, and perhaps others. People began praying to Mother Teresa almost (forgive me, Mother) before her body had cooled, long before there was any official cause. I and many others have found ourselves praying for the soul of a dead relative one minute, and praying for their intercession the next. Perhaps rolling them together so tightly might give one pause, but the fact is, for anyone not canonized by the Church, we can't know for certain which kind of prayer will be more appropriate at any given point in time. If it makes one uncomfortable to the point of distraction, of course, one need not do it, but I don't see any hard and fast reason not to.

(*edit* - I will concede, though, that this is the first I've heard of a novena to anyone who is not a canonized saint)

Whereas I find a saintly glow evident behind practically all of Chesterton's writing - even his polemics - it seems less evident in Belloc's work, though I personally have no doubts as to where he is spending eternity.

Truthfully, I might need to be a tad more careful in separating my personal confidence in Chesterton's saintly status and my hopes that he will be officially canonized. I am pretty ignorant on what it takes to move the process of beatification ahead, and though I see copious evidence of Chesterton's sanctity, I don't know how this stacks up to the official requirements of the Church.

Others, who know much more than I do of the process, do share this confidence, though, and that gives me hope.

God Invented Weekends

I love being a Catholic. The photo above was not set up at all... just a collection of stuff that happened to be there this morning: my favorite pipe, some smoking paraphernalia, prayer book, Rosary and G.K. Chesterton coffee mug. Later tonight, I suppose I should take another photo, only there will likely be a glass of wine instead of the coffee.

There are hedges that need trimming, and half a hundred small chores that cry for attention, but The Boss jovially insisted I take the whole day off and drop by His House later to see him.

Sunday is also a great day to read all the poems Pavel Chichikov has sent through the week. Like a good meal, it takes a little leisure to give them proper attention.

Today (Sunday, July 11) is also day four of the Belloc Novena.

(cross posted at Old World Swine)