Catholicae Testudines

Pro-life

Alert reader Justin sent me this article.  You should read it.  I gotta run, so I'll leave the commenting to you.

Leavening the world

We need good priests and religious, but the other side of the coin is that we also need laypeople who will conform the world to Christ.  People like St. Thomas More, who have a genuinely Catholic worldview, who would prefer death to sin, but who "would not tear down the law even to get at the Devil," as he put it.  Do you see what I'm getting at?  The law I mean could mean the civil law, or it could mean the legitimate practices of a profession, such as journalism.  We need people like this in the media most urgently because of the powerful dynamic between modern media and society, but we need it everywhere.  I think that is how the culture will be transformed.

History and perspective

That's an interesting comment about the Gies'.  That's about how I felt, too.  They seemed to look at the Church from an outsiders' perspective but they weren't attacking, just reporting.  About medieval peoples' habits and customs they would say "they had strengths X, Y, and Z, and shortcomings in A, B, C," or something; definitely looking at things from a modern perspective while not ignoring the good they saw.

A clumsy explanation, perhaps, but this is to be contrasted with a show I recently watched on the History Channel which was like, "Medieval Freak-Out Stories," which was more like "Medieval people were so dumb, weird, and disgusting.  Just look at this weird or disgusting thing they'd do!"  If only I could have a time machine send me similar History Channel programs from 500 years in the future!  "Ha ha, 21st Century people were so dumb!  Just look at their primitive technology!  And even that was too much for their simple, naive, credulous minds - a Famous Person could get on tv and say that 2+2=5, or lettuce causes brain damage, and repeat it often enough and they'd believe it!"

Valete, amici et amicae!

I'm going on vacation for two weeks, so if Albert and Peter don't post more you'll just have to wait to get your CT fix.  If you're now hooked on Catholic blogs, you might try looking at some on the ones in the sidebar. 

Journalism

I'm glad to see that we've got a new commentor.  Especially since I've been itching to have a discussion with this one about both the purpose and the current state of journalism.  But in the meantime here's a link that makes sums up one of my views rather nicely, from the sodakmonk.

  "When we really wish to know how the world is going, it is no bad test to take some tag or current phrase of the press and reverse it, substituting the precise contrary, and see whether it makes more sense that way. It generally does....."           - The Well and he Shallows, 1935

           Acting on G.K.'s guidance, I decided to take some typical headlines found these days, and do his switcheroo on them.

          United States is a very unified country

          Few problems noticed with election process

          Presidential Vote in Ohio not very close

          US forces in Iraq face only scattered resistance

          Catholics in US: back to normal

To add a few of my own from the current crop of headlines from washingtonpost.com:
            "In Thailand, Waiting for Aid" becomes "Thailand Recieves Aid" and "Rebels Kill Two Dozen Iraqis" becomes "Rebels leave most Iraqis Alone."

Ancient diet advice

from the "Life in a Medieval City" by Joseph and Frances Gies:

The regimen of the hospital is strict and simple, with emphasis on common sense.  In fact, there remains a considerable fund of common sense in the medieval man's attitude toward health.  Many sound health rules are contained in aphorisms and verses, one of the most famous of which compendiums is known as the Health Rule of Salerno...Written in Latin verse it contained these recommendations, given here in the Elizabethan translation of Sir John Harrington:

A king that cannot rule him his diet
Will hardly rule his realm in peace and quiet.

For healthy men may cheese be wholesome food,
But for the weak and sickly 'tis not good.

Use three doctors still, first Dr. Quiet,
Next Dr. Merry-man and Dr. Diet...

Wine, Women, and Baths, by art of nature warme,
Us'd or abus'd do men much good or harme.

Some live to drinke new wine not fully fin'd,
But for your health we sish that you drink none,
For such to dangerous fluxes are inclin'd,
Besides the lees of wine doe breed the stone.
But such by our consent shall drink alone.
For water and small biere we make no question
Are enemies to health and good digestion;
And Horace in a verse of his rehearses,
That water-drinkers never make good verses.

Open-mindedness

"Narrow-minded" is a favorite reproach of many people against Catholics who accept the faith  in its entirety.

However, narrowness is precisely what the authority of the Catholic Church saves you from.  Accepting the fullness of the faith saves you from the tyranny of the narrowness of the prejudices of your region, of your age, and, ironically, the narrowness of your own opinions.

For it is only natural that even where people are not tempted to view error as more attractive than the truth, still they tend to emphasize one thing they like above the rest, homing in on it to the point where they neglect the good in different things, even to the point of ending up at last in error.

So in an age where a great emphasis is put on ascetism, the Church insists on the goodness of marriage and of created things, allowing ascetics to hold their opinion within the bounds of the truth, but forcing them to have a mind open to the full truth.  Likewise, to an age that exalts bodily pleasure of every kind, the Church firmly reminds us that the purpose of life is to know, love, and serve God in this life and share His joy in the next, and that renouncing good things out of love for God can help powerfully to unite us to Him.  Again those who dwell on hell are reminded of heaven, while those who ignore the reality of hell are also corrected; the same for sin and virtue, hatred of sin and love of neighbor, mercy and justice, and the many other seeming contradictions which are not contradictions at all, but two necessary and complementary parts of a whole reality.

Outside the Church, where people are free to be "open-minded," each individual may zero in on the special topic that is of particular interest to him, seeing only a the part of the truth visible to his limited view.  Worse yet, people being human, group-think often develops, and a tendency which might have been balanced in a society overall (which would still be an inferior situation to each person apprehending the whole truth) rages out of control until people realize how deranged they are and overcorrect in the opposite direction.

To be sure, the general opinion of the faithful is liable to oscillate from over time, now emphasizing this more, now emphasizing that, but the teaching of the Church is always there, and her living authority, always able to save the Church from irreparable disaster and save us personally from the error of the narrowness that focuses on a good thing to the exclusion of the full truth.

It's called the "idiot box" for a reason

Some people ask me how come I seem to know so much cool stuff.  This is partly a consequence of the truism that if you are very judicious on when to offer your opinion, you say fewer foolish things, and people have a high opinion of you.  I am complimented, but I am also painfully aware of the lack of depth of knowledge I really do have.  On the other hand, I do know some cool stuff.  But it's not like the knowledge just leaps into my head.

Consider these two strategies of learning:

1.) Habitually learning from tv shows.

2.) Short term: Bypassing the literature whose primary purpose is to entertain or titillate, go to an expert who writes in a popular style.  Go as "high up" in terms of technical or specialized knowledge as you can reasonably understand.  Read a variety of authors, but rather than automatically taking all as equally authoritative or making an emotional reaction, think critically, look at historical and other evidence in order to make a judgment on who is the most authoritative.  Do your best to seek the truth in humility. Longer term: If you are really interested in the subject, gain as good an understanding as is reasonable of the underlying principles and technical details necessary to understand the matter.  Go for the highest and most authoritative texts or experts possible.  Read primary sources where appropriate as well as later developments and analysis (I won't lie - this takes a sustained determined effort and a considerable amount of self-discipline.  But that's how every really worthwhile thing is, isn't it?).  [Also known as "being a nerd."]

Now, what's wrong with tv?  Nothing in itself; it's just another medium of communication.  But think about how tv is.  It's great for entertainment (well, it has the potential for being great for entertainment).  But as a source of education it has many serious weaknesses, which taken in combination, mean that if you are habitually using the tv as your primary way of learning about the world, your education is probably severely deficient.  Some topics are just not of huge importance, so if you take into account the shortcomings of tv, you can use tv to your advantage to learn things you might not have otherwise known, but others (such as religion and basic philosophy that informs everyday decisions) are so important that you cannot get by with just learning from the tv.

For one thing, the information you get from tv is probably going to be very superficial.  Even non-fiction shows are not above focusing on the shocking or titillating in order to boost ratings.  Even if the show is an informative show on history or science or something, there's only so much you can get into half an hour or an hour.  And usually these shows must assume that the viewer begins with no prior knowledge of the topic whatsoever, so they are hampered even further.  If all you want is a rudimentary, superficial, and very much simplified understanding of the topic, then that is ok (you can't be an expert in everything, after all).  For instance, I am happy with a rudimentary and superficial knowledge of the ecosystem of the Sahara desert, or the Punic wars, so watching a program on it is enough for me (maybe with a some follow-up reading if I found it very interesting).  I find that tv shows can be an interesting springboard for further learning on a topic.  However, if you stop with just the show, you must accept the fact that you are going to have to defer to almost anyone who knows much of anything on the topic.  Or you can just be really obstinate (but I don't consider that a valid option).

Another weakness of tv (and this goes for newspapers, too but it is even worse on the tube) is that reporters must constantly report on things that they are not expert in.  This is not a reproach against reporters; I really respect the ones who try their best, but again, no one can be an expert in everything.  I imagine it is a very difficult job; you must reduce everything you want to say to a small column, and that long, nuanced interview with the expert gets cut down to a line, or a five-second clip.  You're hearing it from a guy who heard it from a guy, and no doubt the reporter tried to pass along what the guy said, even if he was knowledgeable enough to go to a really authoritative source, which he may not have been.  Even specialized area writers still have a rough time (judging from the ones I know enough to know about, i.e. science and religion).  So if you use tv and newspapers for what they're good for, such as getting the latest developments on something you already understand, or getting a start on something, or gaining broad but shallow knowledge, you will be ok, but if you use them exclusively or near exclusively in your learning process, don't expect to understand the matter very well.

Still another weakness is that if you rely only on tv (and papers), a relatively small number of people get to be the gatekeepers of the information that enters your mind (i.e. the editors or station execs).  And you are fooling yourself if you don't think they have an agenda.  Everyone has an agenda, and even if they try to to be evenhanded or underhanded about it, it still informs their thinking and decisions, and caveat auditor - it is up to you to evaluate what that agenda is, whether it is a good one, and how it colors their thinking (and interpretation of facts). 

A corollary to this is the propagation of mental habits or attitudes.  Hilaire Belloc observed last century that the challenges facing the Church in his day were not really systems of doctrines opposed to Church teaching such as Puritanism, or Jansenism, or Materialism, as they often were in the past.  Rather, they were attitudes, general feelings, or patterns of avoiding uncomfortable thought (what he called the "modern mind") that led to erroneous conclusions about the nature of man, life, and his relationship to God.  This is still true today.  Television today is tightly in the grip of those whose conception of the purpose of man are radically opposed to the Church's.  Yet if you turn on the tv, you will not hear a exposition of doctrines attacking the Church (this would perhaps be easier to deal with, because they could be confronted in the open and refuted by reasonable arguments).  Rather, you will get a lot of shows that have certain underlying assumptions.  And if you watch enough of them with your mental guard down as most people do, you will absorb their Weltanschauung without even being aware of it.  Even if you don't remember what happened in the show.  Most people turn off their critical thinking faculties when they enjoy a tv show in a way they would not do for anything else (for instance, the internet).  They allow it to bypass their intellect and reason in a way that is quite astonishing (this seems to go for music too).  A well-formed Catholic has his principles in place and can make rational decisions about these things.  But for someone who has no real principles, or weak ones only, something else is going to fill up that vacuum, and it's likely going to come from the tv.

I've probably left out some important things (and I dragged newspapers into it somewhat) but I think with these things in mind, you can more intelligently watch tv, and use it to your advantage rather than the opposite.

I know that brevity is the soul of wit...

But I haven't been writing for almost...[checks watch]...four days.  And soon I'll be off on vacation, so the volume will make up for a lack of frequent updating.

Catholic guilt et al.

When you do something wrong, shouldn't you feel bad about it?  And that bad feeling should move you to do something to rectify the bad situation, or if you can't, at least do what you can.  So clearly, guilt has a salutary purpose.  But just as clearly, there is a disordered version of it: where you fixate on the guilt itself instead of dealing with the situation that is causing it, and wallow in it, which has the effect of thwarting its purpose and making you miserable.  That and scrupulousness.  These latter, I think, is what Fr. Bill is talking about when he says "there is no such thing as Catholic guilt: only Catholic forgiveness."  Disordered Catholic guilt.  The properly ordered kind is probably better called "compunction for sin" or something. 

Here's the "et al.": Now some people, perceiving that the feeling of guilt is extremely unpleasant and that they need to end the situation, decide to convince themselves, one way or another, that they shouldn't have felt guilty in the first place (i.e. whatever they did was right, for one reason or another).  Now for a non-Catholic this is still wrong, but he might be more easily excused because although he knew that he could not forgive his own sins, nor could other people in the end, really (and maybe he knew or intuited that only God could forgive sins), and not having access to the Sacrament of Penance, whereby he could have certain knowledge of forgiveness, maybe he tries ending it (maybe even by not believing in God anymore) because he lacks the (ordinary) means to resolve it.

So doing his best to trample down or shout over the objections of his conscience, he has now "gotten rid" of guilt.  For Catholics who try this, it is the weirdest and most messed up of all, because they know that they know what they should be doing, and they know they're not doing it, even if they've pushed it as far away as possible.

But the funny thing is,  people have this deep need to feel bad when they've done something wrong, and it seems like if they've "gotten rid" of God, they project it onto other things, like "humanity" or "the world" (these are tempting because often you really do also need forgiveness from other people), or minorities, or other countries, or even "health."  What am I thinking of?  You know, like "White liberal guilt," or American national guilt.  But the thing is, even a really bad case of "Catholic guilt" (the bad kind) can be resolved by just one good confession.  But these other types of guilt?  They're permanent.  They're unforgivable.  Who can forgive them?  Self-hatred can nurse them; only self-destruction can really put an end to them once you believe in them.

But I'd like to discourse on one of the weirdest ones, which I alluded to earlier, and which is very common in America.  There was this chef on NPR the other day and (she's from somewhere in Europe or great Britain) she made some observations on American attitudes toward food and diet.  She said when she did word associations with people, and she said "chocolate cake" [hey, did I just see you cringe?], Europeans commonly said something along the lines of "celebration," while Americans said "guilt."  Think about that.  Isn't that stupid?  Isn't chocolate cake intrinsically good, although one can abuse it?  But our stale leftover cultural puritanism has mated with our wrong notion of the virtue of temperance and our diet obsession and health worship to produce a hideous spawn.

In fact, don't you know people who figure they can commit whatever sin they want as long as they're "good people overall" or whatever, but it's death before fat (or carbs, as the case may be)?  Yes, you do, don't you.  And they've got it backwards!  (The truth is death before sin, and eat what you like, in moderation, in case that wasn't clear enough for you).  But they commit their diet "sins" anyway, when they can no longer restrain themselves, and there's no "forgiveness" except to pursue the (for most people impossible) goal of a practically 100% lean physique (which isn't necessarily healthy especially for women, who are typically the most worried about it).  Am I making my frustration clear enough?

In fact, this silly attitude is so culturally prevalent that even many of my good Catholic friends are infected to some degree - they have the right attitude toward avoiding sin and seeking God's forgiveness in confession when they do and such (which is the important thing) - but they still play by the rules of that dumb diet game and beat themselves up about eating a reasonable amount of something they like in the context of an overall low-fat (or whatever) day or week.  At least they have it right in the really important area, but it's still annoying to hear the guilt wails, especially from girls who are more towards the skinny side of good-looking. 

Anyway.  Did that count as a gripe session?