I have to admit that I enjoy movies that have vast hordes of extras in the cast who play zombies. I’ve had fun with zombies here on the blog recently when, inspired by the drop-dead apocalyptic day of reckoning that was expected last year failed to materialize. You know, because Christ said clearly that,
But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (more…)
Here’s Jon Stewart again doing that thing he does so well: working to analyze the “news” for us. And the new scary regime of the day? Our old nemesis, and favorite of the new cohort of saber rattlers: Iran. Yeah, I gave that away in the title, didn’t I. But that isn’t the joke, see? (more…)
The photograph above is of Nyokodo, the small hut where Dr. Takashi Nagai and his children lived after his city was destroyed. Ian Higgins, and others from Major Oak Entertainment, spent 10 days in Nagasaki and environs interviewing folks, and filming scenes for the film about Dr. Nagai’s experience in the aftermath of that cataclysmic event. (more…)
At Casa del Weathers, steak is on the menu tonight, like it will be in every clime and place where Marines serve. Today, see, is a High Holy Day for Marines like me. On this day, in the Year of Our Lord, 1775, the Continental Congress agreed to form two battalions of Marines. The committee that decided this met at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, over beers of course, and the Continental Marines were born. (more…)
I was just over at YIMCatholic 1.0 looking for something in the archives, when I noticed a milestone for the blog has been reached on this day: 500,000 page views?! How accurate is that doo-hickey (way down below the Holy Family==>>) ? I really have no idea. But it does gives me a neat snapshot of the world like this, (more…)
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| Check out my cool sword! Can’t wait to use it… |
There I was, writing about pluralism. So my friend Mark Shea has been catching some heat lately for commenting on a video where self-proclaimed Catholic role-model, and all around knowledgeable guy, Michael Voris, blasts the hymn Amazing Grace for leading all Catholics into perdition’s flames. There’s a host of similar conspiracies that have been hatched on us too, and MV dutifully warns us of them all.
Here is what Mark wrote, and is now being pilloried for.
Maybe I can help divide the forces attacking the Dark Lord of the Pacific Northwest! Mark Shea is a big boy. He can handle stuff like this without any assistance from Joe Six-Pack, USMC. I mean, he’s taken him on for trying to act like a bishop before. But what the heck, Sun Tzu would approve of me working to divide the forces of an aggressor on an ally, so here goes.
Sure, anyone with their head on straight can simply ignore this guy easily, seeing as his venue of choice is YouTube. I’d rather watch Otis Rush play blues guitar over there than listen to another uncharitable rant by Michael Voris.
Back in April, I suggested reading the saints makes more sense. Now, thanks to a tip from a friend of a friend, and the interwebs, I have the video that I hope will make even the most sanguine, and die-hard fan of the Vortex scratch their head and say, What the hell?! It’s from way back in October of last year, but somehow, I missed it then. This is painful to watch…
Micheal Voris on the Proper Form of Government
Heh. And you thought I just grabbed the title for this post out of thin air. Thankfully, and I reckon Michael doesn’t grasp this, the United States Government isn’t a direct democracy. It is a republican form of government and a representative democracy. Perhaps he hasn’t read the Constitution, and frankly I wonder if he ever read the Federalist Papers? No. 51 in particular. Importantly, the Church seems pretty pleased with the advent of representative democracy and the freedoms they have given human beings, but what does she know?
Uh-oh, it looks like some pesky stuff from Vatican II. Yep, from Guadium et spes, aka the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World. Remember my post on that document? Here’s a couple of relevant nuggets,
#73. The present keener sense of human dignity has given rise in many parts of the world to attempts to bring about a politico-juridical order which will give better protection to the rights of the person in public life. These include the right freely to meet and form associations, the right to express one’s own opinion and to profess one’s religion both publicly and privately. The protection of the rights of a person is indeed a necessary condition so that citizens, individually or collectively, can take an active part in the life and government of the state.
#75. It is in full accord with human nature that juridical-political structures should, with ever better success and without any discrimination, afford all their citizens the chance to participate freely and actively in establishing the constitutional bases of a political community, governing the state, determining the scope and purpose of various institutions, and choosing leaders.
Hmmm. I knew I liked the Council for a number of reasons. Go read that whole section on The Life of the Political Community.
Like Mark said in his post on Amazing Grace, I’m not sure why folks listen to Mr.Voris at all. He is my Christian brother too, but this is way over the line. Joe Six-Pack, USMC spent a good part of his life defending his country, and by extension, the Constitution. All those serving in the Armed Forces have taken an oath to uphold and defend it as well. I’ve even had friends who have been killed while under oath to it.
Nope, if this is “Real Catholic TV,” then I’ll eat my copy of the Catechism. “Real Crazy TV” seems like a better title to me.
Hey, I’ve got a better idea! I’ll keep my copy of the Catechism (and Gaudium et spes) in good shape and instead, I’ll just take my family out to see the final Harry Potter movie.
UPDATE
Creative Minority Report posts, Voris & Shea: Can’t We All Just Get Along? How about beers in a rose garden somewhere! —Publius 🙂
UPDATE II: A then, a few days later…
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| U.S. Military Color Guard with the Colors and the Papal Flag |
Joe Six-Pack, USMC here. Yesterday my family put into practice prayers that they learned a long time ago. You see, a line of storms was forecast to hit our area, and everyone took them seriously.
Wednesday nights are when many parishes hold their C.C.D. classes for the kids. That’s an abbreviation for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes. The teachers called the house and informed us that due to the weather forecasts, classes for tonight would be cancelled.
Remember when you were in school and classes were cancelled due to snow? That is the kind of jubilation that my kids reacted with when we received this news. Cart-wheels and high-fives all around! And then Joe Six-Pack crashed the party with, “Well, since C.C.D. is cancelled, we’ll be praying the Rosary tonight.” Dad can be such a killjoy at times, ’tis true.
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| Emeril! |
But I’m a Dad, and I have always been a Christian Dad, the one who taught my children to pray the Our Father even when I knew it only as “the Lord’s Prayer.” And now that I’m a Catholic Dad? Well, I’m not quite the Emeril Lagasse of prayer, but I’ve definitely cranked it up another notch. Bam! Or as we say it around these parts (East Gallilee, er I mean Tennessee), Bhayum!
How scary was the weather? Well, let’s just say that my 15 year old son sent me a text before I headed home from work with the following words: “Be safe Daddy.” I don’t think he’s called me “Daddy” for three of four years now. Scary weather forecasts will do that to a kid, and even to an adult. “Abba” is “Daddy” as I recall, and Our Lord even pointed that out to the Apostles.
I texted him back that I would be fine, because it was early yet and the cells hadn’t arrived. When I got home, I noticed my wife had prepped some chicken drumsticks for grilling. So I did the only thing that a man could do: I put on my poncho and grilled them. A man has got to eat, and he has to feed his family. Pretty basic stuff, right? I even had a beer while I was cookin’. My motto is “one beer, per man, per day” and I don’t let the weather interrupt that. Ever.
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| Solid Oak! |
So, we were finishing up our dinner, which we ate in the formal dining room because the kitchen table was covered with stuff from our pantry. Remember the stairs I built? Sheesh, that seems like a hundred years ago. They climb over the pantry below, and as I built them with oak treads, with nails, glue, and screws to boot, I know the safest place in the house is right underneath the stairs. The pantry, then, doubles as the stronghold of Casa del Weathers. My wife had made more room for us in case we needed to hit the stronghold. Smart woman! That’s why I married her.
As I was helping myself to another drumstick and more cheese mashed potatoes, I asked my youngest son to get me a beer. My daughter informed me that she had already gotten me a beer earlier and I said, “yes, but today I’ll have another, because “the Extreme” is thirsty tonight. See, we watched the movie Twister a few weeks back to prepare for Spring. I had joked about being “the Extreme” while I was grillin’ too. “I betcha didn’t know your Dad was ‘the Extreme,'” I said, but she shot back “oh yes I do!” Then the phone rang, the CCD teacher called to scrub the mission for tonight, and the jubilation and high-fives reined supreme.
That is, until “the Extreme” said, “Well, since C.C.D. is cancelled, we’ll be praying the Rosary tonight.” The natives were not happy. But I outrank them, see, and when an extra hour gets freed up to practice our faith, I grab it. And then the first storm cell made it’s presence felt, and we headed into the strong-hold, just like in the movie Thunderheart. And trust me, hearts were thundering in the pantry at this point.
We didn’t have time to grab our rosaries, but after years of training, we didn’t need them. And that is the point of this post. In the Marines, we trained constantly in peace-time and during war-time. Training is non-stop; “it ain’t training, unless it’s raining.” And when we were in the pantry, the prayer training we had been practicing all these years, paid off. Did our prayers stop the storm? Stop tornadoes from ripping our house apart? I don’t know. Many who prayed lost their homes and businesses in Alabama.
No. The praying did what nothing else can do. It provided comfort and courage during the worst storms we have ever lived through. Did you see the news that some atheists are calling for atheist chaplains to minister to them in the military? I’m not sure what good that would do, or in what way they can be ministered to by atheist chaplains. “Worried are you? Here you go lad, read a little of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and be of good cheer.” Hmmm.
Here is what we did instead. In the stronghold, we held hands and we prayed the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be. And when the storm abated, we sang the Gloria and left our refuge. Twenty minutes later, we went right back in and did it all again. We even said the Nicene Creed, after I botched the Apostles Creed (rookie!). We sang the Gloria again though, which we all know by heart.
At one point, I noticed that my daughter had stopped praying with us. She started listening to the ruckus that was going on outside instead. I noted the signs of panic in her eyes, and her tears started flowing as her fears rose up. As the boys and my wife kept praying loudly, I reached for her hand and said,
“Honey, I need you to keep praying. We all need you to pray along with us.”
She squeezed my hand, and mentally and physically she backed away from the precipice of fear and panic, and joined the rest of us in saying our prayers. She had faith in me, see, just like she did when I helped her learn to swim in the deep end of the pool, or ride her bicycle without training wheels.
But the faith isn’t in me, but in the example I was setting. And she knows that now more than ever. Her faith, our faith, is in the Lord. And we cried out to Him in the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be. And no matter what happened that night to our property or our bodies, the importance of why we pray was apparent to her, and to all of us. We cried out to our Heavenly Daddy, “Abba Father!” because we need His compassion and peace when our courage is tried.
We were like the sleeping disciples who woke up on the boat in a storm on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:34-41). We cried out to the Lord, like they did, and our souls were comforted. I’m not going to go into much more detail. Suffice it to say, “you play the way you practice.” And when it comes to prayer, when you practice it during the peaceful times, and you or you children think it is a waste of time, or boring, and even pointless, keep at it.
Because when the trying times arrive, as they most certainly will, all that peacetime prayer training will pay off.
This morning it is raining in my neck of the woods. It was accompanied by thunder and lightning, and yet it was a gentle and warm rain. As I was pulling into the parking garage, I noticed the trolley bus was pulling up to the stop outside. Good, I thought. I won’t have to walk in the rain.
But as it turns out, this particular bus driver is one of the impatient ones. As I was walking towards the exit of the garage, he motored off. Truthfully, I didn’t think much of this because I usually walk up to the office anyway. I just opened up my umbrella and kept on going, like the fellow in Merle Keller’s painting here.
My walk takes me by the new bus transit center that was opened recently. As I stood at the cross walk waiting for the light to change, I noticed with some amusement that a brand new sign proclaimed that our town was designated a “Solar City” by the Department of Energy. This must be because of the lone solar panel at work at the bus station. It’s the only one I’ve seen in town.
As it was raining, there were only a few of us walking. Pretty soon I learned why I was walking too. I noticed a man up ahead coming towards the station as I was walking past it. By his appearance, and by the reception he was getting from the other pedestrians, I knew he was a homeless person. Most treat them like lepers, but I no longer do.
As he approached me now, he asked if he could ask me a question, and to his great surprise I said Sure. You would have thought I had given him $1000. He asked if he could step under my umbrella as he talked and I said Absolutely. By now, you’re thinking I have a death wish or something, right?
Then he just thanked me for even noticing him. He said that most whom he approached wouldn’t even look at him. That is the “homeless person equals leper” effect at work. It’s not a new phenomenon, having been around forever. He didn’t want to give me a sob story or anything, he said, but he only wanted to ask me if I would give him a blessing.
Having no money on me, I tried to give him my apple and orange but he insisted that he only wanted a blessing and nothing more. I agreed to this immediately and I told him I would pray for him right away. I asked him for his name and he told me, “Vernon.”
“Vernon,” I said, “I will keep you in my prayers.” He thanked me profusely, stepped out from under my umbrella, and continued his walk towards the bus station. I resumed my walk towards the office, but now with mental prayers rising up to heaven for Vernon.
I had never seen Vernon before, and quite honestly that is the case with most of my encounters with the homeless. No “regulars,” just passing strangers. In a post yesterday, I wrote that I don’t spend much energy worrying about things I cannot have an effect on. But I’m also well aware of these words written by St. Teresa of Avila,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Could I change Vernon’s life by merely acknowledging his presence? It’s possible. Will my prayers for Vernon be answered? Undoubtedly yes, and I’ll never know to what effect. Chalk this up to my faith in “Son Power.”
Why did I talk to Vernon? Because the homeless, the beggars on the streets, are people that have a name. They are people with a story, and with wants and needs. And they are like you and me, except we are one tragedy removed from being in their shoes. Would it surprise you that they may just want a hug?
Maybe I was like the lone solar panel in my town which makes the whole enchilada a “Solar City.” The one bit of yeast helping the whole loaf to rise. It’s Lent, and Lent is for alms giving. This is what we do. Ayn Rand, with her leaven of the Pharisees, wouldn’t like it one bit. So I knew it was the right thing to do.
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| St. Francis gives his mantle to a beggar |
Perhaps Vernon is an angel in disguise. St. Francis of Assisi, even before his conversion, handled beggars like this,
He was not one of those typical society men who hardly have a penny to give a beggar, but willingly spend their hundreds on a champagne feast. His way of thinking was the following: “If I am generous, yes, even extravagant with my friends who at the best only say ‘thanks’ to me for them, or repay me with another invitation, how much greater grounds have I for alms giving which God himself has promised to repay a hundredfold?”
This was the inspiring life thought of the Middle Ages, which here carried out the genially literal and genially naive translation of the words of the gospel: “As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.” Francis knew — as the whole Middle Ages knew it — that not even a glass of cold water, given by the disciples, would remain unpaid and unrewarded by the Master.
Therefore a pang went through his heart when, one day as there was a crowd in the shop, and he was in a hurry to get through, he had sent a beggar away. “If this man had come from one of my friends,” said he to himself, “from Count this or Baron that, he would have got what he asked for. Now he comes from the King of kings and from the Lord of lords, and I let him go away empty-handed. I even gave him a repelling word.” And he determined from that day on to give to every one who asked him in God’s name — per amor di Dio, as the Italian beggars still are wont to say.
And so have I. I don’t have much in a material way to give. Just some spare change, or an apple and an orange, or an uneaten lunch. But “hey brother, can you spare a prayer?” will always be answered in the affirmative and always given freely (even when it isn’t asked for).
It’s roughly the midpoint of Lent. Unlike last Friday, when we were celebrating a Solemnity, we are back to abstaining from meat today. But no worries. I’ve always been fond of fish tacos, so that is what’s on the menu at Casa del Weathers tonight. And there is beer to go with them, for the adults anyway, so all is well.
Tonight’s feature presentation is Lilies of the Field starring Sidney Poitier. Poitier won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for this film in 1964. I never saw it though because I was a baby in swaddling clothes around that time.
But I’ve always liked Poitier’s work. For example: Blackboard Jungle, The Bedford Incident, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. I also liked him in To Sir with Love and They Call Me MISTER Tibbs. Come to think of it, I don’t think there is a single movie I’ve seen him in that I did not like.
So what is this film about? Based on a true story that was fictionalized as a novel by William Edmund Barret, the story is about one Homer Smith and a group of nuns he stumbles upon. Out of luck, and out of work, he stops to put some water in his radiator at a farm in Arizona while heading westward to find construction work. The farm just happens to be run by a gaggle of transplanted East German nuns from the Sisters of Walburga.
As it turns out, this is a match made in heaven and brought together on earth. Homer isn’t to sure about all this, bun the nuns are. Have a look at the trailer (and prepare to be sucked in for the whole enchilada).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCEWzXTk8_kAre you humming the tune “Amen” yet? Head to your usual video outlets, or watch this on You Tube or over at Gloria.tv in its entirety.
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