By the Light of the Apostles

2008-07-16T10:54:00.002-07:00

Anglican Angst

The remaining Anglican (Episcopalian, for us Americans) bishops are holding the Lambeth Conference this year. As you are probably aware, there has been a serious split within the Anglican communion over such questions as the ordination of women, gays, and whatever. Liberal bishops have taken over the denomination over the last 10 years or so. As Jordan Hylden writes on the First Things blog, the difficulty lies, essentially, with these liberals’ firm dedication to the idea of licentiousness:

Unfortunately, there are several factors in play that will make the Lambeth bishops’ task very difficult. Most fundamentally, the bishops will have to confront a theology, held by many of their own members, which places little value on doctrinal unity and scriptural authority and instead exalts near-unbounded freedom and diversity in matters of faith and ethics. Liberal Anglican modernists, many of them from North America, believe that doctrinal latitude is central to what it means to be Anglican. They argue that the 2003 consecration to the episcopate of Gene Robinson, an actively gay man, was fully in keeping with Anglican tradition, even though the 1998 Lambeth conference had held homosexual practice to be incompatible with scriptural norms. Several American and Canadian bishops continue to publicly bless same-sex unions, in defiance of the repeated requests of the international organs of Anglicanism and the canons of their own churches.

It seems an impossible task to bring full, Christian communion back to the Anglican church, and this is both sad and trying for those who remain members. As Mr. Hylden writes,

Two weeks ago, many conservative Anglicans met at GAFCON to produce their own statement of doctrinal foundations and to begin their own way forward. It is not difficult to see why many faithful Anglicans felt that such a move was needed. But it should be no less difficult to see why the GAFCON path will only lead to further schism. In essence, if it is followed as an alternative to the existing structures of Anglicanism, it amounts to the creation of a new evangelical church in the Anglican tradition. Many orthodox Anglicans will not in good conscience be able to join them, and where there is one split, more are sure to follow.

The prayers of all Christians over this matter are much needed.

2008-07-15T06:46:00.006-07:00

James Pierson, writing in The New Criterion's blog describes some of the latest shenanigans on campus:

According to an article in Saturday’s New York Times, the faculty of the University of Chicago is in an uproar over plans to establish a research institute named in honor of the late Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and long time faculty member at the University. Some 100 faculty members have signed a petition objecting to any such enterprise that might place a stamp of approval on Professor Friedman’s economic theories. They also seem to fear that such an institute would signal to the outside world that Chicago’s faculty “lacks intellectual and ideological diversity.” The indignant faculty members seem blissfully unaware that their protest sends precisely this signal, implying as it does that the left leaning faculty at the University are made uncomfortable and fearful by the presence in their midst of competing points of view.

The protests are being led by one Bruce Lincoln, a professor in the Divinity School who seems especially exercised by the prospect of a Friedman Institute on his campus. Roger Kimball, quoting from the professor’s own website, reports that Mr. Lincoln "has a notoriously short attention span and has also written on a wide variety of topics, including Guatemalan curanderismo, Lakota sun dances, Melanesian funerary rituals, Swazi kingship, the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre, Marco Polo, professional wrestling, and the theology of George W. Bush." Professor Lincoln is plainly the type of “scholar” who is increasingly found in divinity schools, sociology departments, and gender studies institutes – which is to say that he is not a scholar

There is so much silliness these days in most university liberal arts departments that it is hard to tell what's real and what's a put on. Yet, the situation is devolving into a serious social crisis; the intellectual life of our society is being choked to death by sheer inanity. We have lost sight of what is truly important in order to engage in the trivial. Enough said.

2008-07-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

On Loving Once and Loving Often

Once loving is a gen’ral Fashion,
To Nature ‘tis a tribute paid:
But, loving often shews that Passion
Despises Reason’s feeble Aide.

Elizabeth Tollet

2008-07-10T07:18:00.001-07:00

What he said!

On the 4th of July, Roger Kimbell posted a rather long comment on the damage the phenomenon of multi-culturalism has inflicted on America. This is only a small quote from that post.

The multiculturalists claim to be fostering a progressive cultural cosmopolitanism distinguished by superior sensitivity to the downtrodden and dispossessed. In fact, they encourage an orgy of self-flagellating liberal guilt as impotent as it is insatiable. The “sensitivity” of the multiculturalist is an index not of moral refinement but of moral vacuousness.

Multiculturalism is a moral intoxicant; its thrill centers around the emotion of superior virtue; its hangover subsists on a diet of ignorance and blighted “good intentions.” Wherever the imperatives of multiculturalism have touched the curriculum, they have left broad swaths of anti-Western attitudinizing competing for attention with quite astonishing historical blindness. Courses on minorities, women’s issues, the Third World proliferate; the teaching of mainstream history slides into oblivion.

A profound ignorance of the milestones of American culture is one predictable result of this mood. The statistics have become proverbial. Huntington quotes one poll from the 1990s showing that while 90 percent of Ivy League students could identify Rosa Parks, only 25 percent could identify the author of the words “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In a 1999 survey, 40 percent of seniors at fifty-five top colleges could not say within half a century when the Civil War was fought. Another study found that more high school students knew who Harriet Tubman was than knew that Washington commanded the American army in the revolution or that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation.

But multiculturalism is not only an academic phenomenon. The attitudes it fosters have profound social as well as intellectual consequences. One consequence has been a sharp rise in the phenomenon of immigration without–or with only partial–assimilation: a dangerous demographic trend that threatens American identity in the most basic way.

2008-07-09T11:20:00.005-07:00

Tiger Stadium

Demolition has begun on old Tiger (formerly Briggs) Stadium in my hometown, Detroit. I remember attending many games there when I was growing up, including Detroit Lions football games in the fall. I saw Mantle and Maris play, Whitey Ford pitch along with the stars of one of the Tiger's best seasons, 1961. That would be Stormin' Norman Cash, Al Kaline and the rest. If there is baseball tradition in Detroit, it lives in Tiger Stadium. It was a beautiful old park and its a shame to see it go.

Another suprising thing to me is that, looking at the web sites of the major Detroit papers, there seems to be relatively little interest in the loss of the old place; the demolition is not receiving major coverage. One aspect that is receiving coverage is the apparently failing attempt by a private group to save part of the stadium from destruction. The papers seem to almost be gloating over the failure to raise sufficient funds to prevent total demolition.

Part of me wonders, why should anyone do this? The ballpark is hardly in a good part of town, but even if that were not the case, what use could now be made of it? But, I also wonder if the papers' lack of enthusiasm for saving Tiger Stadium is an indication of the current day disdain for anything that smacks of tradition: out with the old, in with the new, whether or not the new is an improvment. This current disdain is most graphically displayed in the unfathomable rush by a major political party in this country to nominate a man for President who has no discernable qualifications for the job, other than an expressed desire for "change."

For me, I'll take tradition anytime.

2008-07-08T09:06:00.001-07:00

THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL

1 Vital spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

2 Hark! they whisper; angels say,
‘Sister Spirit, come away!’
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be Death?

3 The world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?

Alexander Pope

2008-07-04T08:00:00.001-07:00

Happy 4th of July.

2008-07-03T12:00:00.001-07:00

From St John Climacus

Let us charge into the good fight with joy and love without being afraid of our enemies. Though unseen themselves, they can look at the face of our soul, and if they see it altered by fear, they take up arms against us all the more fiercely. For the cunning creatures have observed that we are scared. So let us take up arms against them courageously. No one will fight with a resolute fighter.

St. John Climacus

2008-07-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

Starbucks

Starbucks is closing something like 600 stores across the country. I have to admit that whenever I hear news like this from a company that has, over the last few years expanded in a far too aggressive manner, I have the same feeling: "Well, they should have seen that coming." I mean, just to take one example, on Academy Avenue here in Colorado Springs, there are at least 4 Starbucks stores within a two mile stretch. That seems like over saturation, to say the least, and I like to imagine that I would have had to foresight and great business acumen to never have allowed anything like that to happen had I been in a responsible position in Starbucks management. Who knows.

But, after this initial reaction, I quickly checked myself.

I like Starbucks. I prefer my coffee honest and strong. I like to taste coffee when I drink coffee, not other things like water or milk. Starbucks makes good, strong, coffee, coffee with flavor. One of the great mysteries of life is how they ever got off on the tangent of making things like "half-calf, double mocha, triple express" whatevers. These kinds of drinks are for teenagers and those not ready to face real life as it should be faced, mano a mano.

I don't know where I acquired this taste. I may have inherited it from my mother, who drank tea, not coffee, but who made her tea strong enough to get your attention. Or it may have come from long exposure to my father-in-law whose preferred brew was New Orleans coffee with plenty of chicory. His method for preparing it was to open a new can, measure out four or five scoops, throw that in the trash and pour the rest in the coffee maker. That's only a slight exaggeration.

It will be a sad day when one or more of those stores on Academy Avenue closes and there is one less outlet for good coffee.

But there's another reason why my reaction was out of place.

This is something of a misfortune for a number of people who either work or otherwise make their living in connection with this ubiquitous coffee chain. I had to remind myself that the world doesn't revolve around my love for coffee. In truth, the Christian reaction to this kind of misfortune is one of compassion and, perhaps, prayer for those affected. Fortunately, Starbucks is taking the high road and has said they will attempt to place employees of these outlets in the remaining stores and I hope they will be able to do that.

In the meantime, if you're in town, give me a ring (or an email) and we'll go get a cup of coffee. Starbucks, of course.

2008-05-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

My Little Notebook

I have a small notebook. It’s a Moleskine reporter type notebook that measures 3.5” x 5.5”, has a stiff black cover and a neat elastic strap that I can use to either keep it closed or mark a page for easy reference. It also has a little built-in pocket in the back for storing stray notes on scraps of paper. I’ve used it regularly over the last two years to write down brief descriptions of things seen, or important quotes either from the Bible or from books read, but mostly, just to keep lists of things to do, phone numbers to remember and other mundane information.

I pulled out this notebook a couple of day ago and noticed I was close to filling it up. For no reason, I began looking at all I had written in there and it dawned on me that, despite the rather trivial nature of most of my jottings, the notebook had become a rather good record of my life over the last 24 months. It had become one of the best journals I have ever kept. My first entries tell the story of our last big vacation, to Hawaii, and it has a brief packing list along computations I made for a contest on the plane to calculate the time we would reach the midway point of the flight over the Pacific. It has a brief description of some Army officers I saw at the airport. I suspect they had just returned from Iraq. It notes on things to remember for a new job, common phrases in German to use while on a business trip over there along with a couple of addresses for people I needed to contact. It’s a remarkable record.

It got me thinking about St. Benedict and his emphasis in the Rule on the importance of working out our salvation within the boundaries of our daily existence. I wasn’t sure I completely understood what he meant but I now have graphic evidence of it; my journal shows a pattern of the mixture of daily routine and (all too rare) sudden insight gained from the Word or other reading. My daily routine is down there.

My concern now is that, after making this interesting discovery, my entries in my little notebook won’t maintain their spontaneity and, therefore, my notebook will the valuable little tool it has been. I’ll try not to let that happen.

2008-05-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

First Entry

I find it hard to justify a new blog in our already confused, Babel like, internet world. Perhaps it is sheer pride, perhaps a lack of anything better to do than inflict my thoughts and ramblings on an innocent world. Whatever, I'll press on.

I won't offer any great statement of purpose here, either. I intend to try to focus here on the struggles and rewards of being a Catholic layman, a financial executive in a growing small business, American and Coloradan, who is somewhat distressed at what I see going on around me. But, there is hope in Christ, and so I intend to reflect that hope in all I write.

I also write as one deeply affected by Benedictine and Monastic spirituality. Benedict, in his Rule, wrote a deeply practical guide to Christian life, and not one intended only for monks; it has ready application to modern life, as it did to life in the 5th century. Yet, the real focus here is Gospel spirituality. A quote that applies to my intent, it would be the following from W.R. Grossouw:

“Next, there is the host of concrete, changing situations, innumerable and unforseeable, in which it is the duty of the Christian to work out his fundamental situation by creatively giving to each concrete situation a Christian meaning, by responding to it as a child of God and a sharer in the kingdom.”

As Christians, we live in the real world, we face concrete situations. We have to get up, go to work, come home and cook dinner, wash dishes, feed the cat. We don't know today what the tomorrow will bring. Once we accept Christ in our lives, we don't forever after live some ideal kind of existence free of the trials and tribulations of daily life.

And yet, how often to we stop to think that this daily drudgery is the stuff of our salvation when dealt with “creatively.” When we do our “duty” we are, truly, furthering the Kingdom of God here on earth. Benedict knew this and his Rule reflects it in every word he wrote. This is the underlying truth that I hope will color everything I post here.

I ask for your prayers that I am able to live up to that kind of ideal.