Catholicae Testudines

Candy, Candy, Candy

Isabel and I saw Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Friday night. A splendid film, to say the least, with a very pro-family and even pro-fatherhood message. Indeed, I found the most rewarding aspect of the film [spoilers] to be the moral that Willy Wonka learns that art requires discipline and that true liberty requires adhering to certain rules.
There were two issues I had with the script, however. First, Wonka comes off as something of a hypocrite.

The Oompa-loompa songs (from the lyrics you can understand) continually chastise parents for not giving their children strict enough rules or they chastise children for not obeying the rules already laid down. Rules are important, and they must be obeyed. The consequences otherwise are dire. Yet the movie suggests that Wonka's whole fortunes were made because he broke the rules. Indeed, he laments that the only thing parents (he can't pronounce the word) do is confine you by declaring stupid rules to follow. Wonka expects others to follow the rules, but he sees no value in following the rules himself. I suppose this makes sense if you think of Wonka as some kind of man-child. How often do children hold others to standards from which they believe themselves to be exempt? However, since no one in the film itself explicitly points out Wonka's hypocricy, it appears more like an oversight than an intended irony.

My second question concerning the script is that it explicitly suggests that Wonka has engineered specific traps for specific children. After the first child is swallowed by the chocolate river the Oompa-loompas sing their didactic hymn. The film then pauses for an extended scene as characters debate how the song seems rehearsed, and even Charlie asks how Gloop's name could have been written into the song spontaneously.

There are four songs: one for each child that fails. Which means that Wonka must have anticipated which child would fail in which room (and though I realize I might be thinking far too logically about the madcap Wonka, as Chesterton points out, madmen are usually the most logical...whether they be ficitonal characters or people who think too much about fictional characters). Anyway, there is no song about Charlie--which means Charlie was never tested. Why does Wonka create traps for the first four children, but none for Charlie? Does he plan on giving Charlie the factory before he even meets him?

Wonka acknowledges that most of the other children found tickets by some design of their own, whereas Charlie came to have a ticket merely by luck. Perhaps that was all Wonka wanted to do--let fate determine the winner. If such was the case, then the other four children's demises are all a bluff. Wonka engineers their failures to give Charlie the sense that he has won something where others have failed, even though Charlie himself does nothing to earn the prize. Again, however, the film never explicitly reveals such a plot.

One can only assume that Wonka is some kind of sadist who delights in watching children suffer. He isn't really testing the children. He isn't really teaching Charlie anything. He just enjoys bullying children whose parents have overindulged them to get revenge on his own father who he remembers as being overly-repressive. Wonka, apparently, hates children who get to do whatever they want because he feels that he never got to do anything he wanted when he was a child.

Thus, he naturally gravitates towards Charlie, who is repressed as severely, though by his socio-economic background rather than his parents. (Could this be a story of nature versus nurture...is Charlie only preserved from being a brat because his parents can't afford to spoil him? Remember, in the previous movie adaptation, Charlie is as guilty of breaking Wonka's rules as any of the other children...). Those who were repressed help raise up those who are oppressed while humiliating the upper and middle classes for sheer spite.

Well, that really sorted things out for me. I'm glad we had a chance to have this little chat.

ERRORS encore

In the last post I was focusing on pictures that, if you didn't already have an anti-Catholic bias, wouldn't seem that bad. For those of you who read Peter's comment, here are the pictures he's talking about.

The Interior of a Nunnery
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and as a bonus

Romish schools vs. Public schools.

Click "continue reading" to see the cover Peter talked about (it's a little blurry).

It's blurry due to the fact that I forgot either to to turn up the lights or held the camera more still, and I had had enough of taking these pictures. It's worn away, too, because the book is very old, so the pope is indistinct to begin with. If you noticed that the pictures in the last post were gray while these latest were sepia-tone, that's because I turned off the flash and changed the lighting to emphasize the antique look you'd see if you actually had the book in your hands.

Keep in mind this book was written in the period when the "nativist" Protestant movement sought to pit "real Americans" (i.e. WASPs) against the waves of Catholic immigrants who were different, numerous, and wouldn't subordinate their Church and their faith to exaggerated nationalism. This was one of the main issues that the Knights of Columbus was formed to deal with (another one being the influence and seductive attraction of Freemasonry), to demonstrate true and rightly ordered love for one's country and fight the lie that the Catholic faith is contrary to an authentic patriotism. If you've ever wondered why the organization is named after Columbus, recall that until quite recently, Christopher Columbus was a big folk hero, sort of like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. The name served to remind Protestants who liked to think of themselves as the "original" Americans that the man popularly regarded as the discoverer of the New World was a Catholic who dedicated his voyage to our Lady. This attitude of those Protestants is the context in which to understand the cover.

The book itself is less of a real argument against the Catholic faith as it is a devotional work for a certain type of Protestant who must reassure himself about what and why he doesn't hold with the Catholic Church. The cogent questions it asks (rhetorical though they may be) could be boiled down to a pamphlet or booklet, the contents of which could then be addressed in a brief apologetics work, but the first step would involve a great deal of exceedingly tiresome reading. "The most profound thinkers," harrumph. They give themselves too much credit.

As the majority of Protestants don't bother with history or the historical continuity of their ideas, if one was going to write such a work of apologetics, it would probably be more practical to address the questions that they are asking these days. Skimming it might give some background into the leftover dregs of ideas that form the basis of the unquestioned assumptions of some people today, but its value, I think, is more as a cultural-historical artifact than anything else.

Since everyone's having so much fun...

...with old-time Protestant propaganda, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon with some of my own. These images are taken from the 1894 book "ERRORS of the ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH and its Insidious Influence in the United States and Other Countries by the most profound thinkers of the present day and the History and Progress of the AMERICAN PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (A.P.A.) by SCOTT F. HERSHEY and ASSOCIATES, Including The Sufferings and Deaths of the Protestant Martyrs under Popish Persecutions." Like the pictures Disputations and S.O.T.H.W. point out, many of them are the kind that someone like me can't exactly see why these things are so horrible, but suspects that for the audience for which this book was intended, the author really could have put anything at all, even just a priest or a nun or a layman just standing there, because they were so primed to recoil in horror at whatever is there. The text is much the same. As Tom points out, these days these might be more horrifying to "progressive" Catholics (than to many Protestants who, not having been indoctrinated with reasons why they should recoil from these things, may actually approach them with a somewhat open mind). Take a gander:

"Catholic Ceremonials from Cradle to Grave." (Baptism! Marriage! Praying for dead people! Oh, no! And blessing the marriage bed!)

See more pictures -

Interlude: "Luther's Monument at Worms." (Gee, I hope you're not going to pay respect or honor to Luther after all that saint-bashing, or make an image of him to venerate after all that statue-bashing.)

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"At the Confessional - With open Doors, Bars are no protection." (Huh? Is he supposed to be trying to seduce her or something? Is that the problem?)

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"Proclaiming the Dogma at the Council"

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"Nun receiving the veil." (Have we need of further evidence?)

Mike's blog meme

I forgot to put the article up since I wasn't reminded due to the fact that I don't check Mike's blog very often because he never updates it. In fact, he has very little room to pick on Sierra, even though she has so far been something of a stealth member of Catholic Girl Talk.

Ok, ten years ago, five, last week, and yesterday [editor's note - this was supposed to be posted Monday].

Ten: Summer between sixth and seventh grades. This was my second summer camp with the Boy Scouts if I remember the year correctly, at Parker Mountain Scout Reservation in New Hampshire (Boston Minuteman Council, if anyone's wondering - I don't know if either of them are still extant). I did Rifle, Shotgun, Archery, and Environmental Science merit badges, among other things. Other than that, a lot of reading and little league baseball.

Five: Summer between high school and college. Traveled a lot that summer, visited relatives. Epic-length car trips are traditional in my family. And you get to see the places in between more than when you just fly over them.

One: Worked as counsellor/ranger for the national camp (in Westernohe, Germany) of the Deutsche Pfadfinderschaft Sankt Georg, the German Catholic Scout organization that traces its lineage back to Boy Scout founder Lord Robert Baden-Powell. Good experience overall. As World Youth Day (Weltjugendtag) is coming up, perhaps it would interest you that I got to carry the World Youth Day cross when it went through the camp

Last week: Went to Mass, read, prayed, and rested. It was Sunday.

Yesterday (Sunday): Same deal, except I was the thurifer at the 10:00 Mass.

G.I. Jedi

Oh, and while I'm talking about comic books, don't forget to check out Star Wars vs. G.I.Joe , if you haven't already.

Holy Republicans, Batman!

Remember that book club we are supposed to be running with Catholic Girl Talk? Well, at the moment, we are working on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns—the story of an aging Bruce Wayne who decides to resurrect Batman after a government ban on superheroes.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to do a political reading of the comic book. The first problem with such a reading is how to approach the story from an objective perspective (and I apologize in advance for flinging around terms like liberal and conservative rather...well...liberally). Though it is set in the 80s, it bears an uncanny resonance with current events. Ronald Reagan is depicted as a cowboy president, out to rustle up the Communist bad guys in Cuba threatening us with a nuclear attack. It makes for a rather eerie read (just substitute Bush for Reagan, al Queda for Cuba, and a nuclear attack for...well...a nuclear attack).

Now, on one hand, Batman comes off to me as being something of a rightwing nutjob in the comic, if only because all of the characters depicted as bleeding heart liberals absolutely hate him. Batman looks like a warhawk among a bunch of doves.

But then you have the appearance of Superman, who, by contrast, makes Batman look anything but conservative. Superman is something of a super-patriot, to the point of letting himself be used as a military weapon against foreign countries in a war of deterrence. He’s also depicted as the all-American momma’s boy who does exactly what he’s told. Next to Clark Kent, the infinitely wealthy and high class Bruce Wayne looks like a tough little street kid who never had a chance. The dispute between Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne becomes a classic right-wing/left-wing stale mate concerning the role of environmental upbringing. Furthermore, Batman directly resists the overtly Republican government by even donning the cowl, and derides Superman for his complicity in global warfare.

Then Superman gets zapped by a nuclear missile and the skies are covered in a nuclear winter haze. Suddenly, Superman turns into an eco-warrior calling on the Earth Mother to give him just enough sunlight to recuperate after the irradiation (Superman gains his power from Earth’s yellow sun, in case you didn’t know that).

So what happens when the reader picks up this story? Does the reader just accept that Frank Miller is trying to create a dramatic conflict, and therefore tries to depict his super heroes existing in a tenuous political balance...or does the reader fill in the gaps to make Batman or Superman a proponent of their own ideology? (I have my own opinion, I’m just trying to spark conversation with a leading question. It’s called pedagogy.)

Oh, one thing I couldn't help noticing

In that last article I linked to...

The [Protestant] pastor related the following:

Another service that stands out was based on "God is our audience and we are the performers." We asked everyone to enter the auditorium through the stage doors. We set-up the band at the very front edge of the stage, with their backs to the audience. As people walked on stage, they were invited to just stand worship God in that place. After a period of time, they were offered Communion and then took their seats in the auditorium. With the band facing away from the other worshippers, we could truly understand that we are all equal performers, worshipping God, our Creator.

Isn't that interesting?

Now, if a priest followed the long-standing custom of offering the Mass that way (which he is allowed to do under the GIRM), he would be vigorously denounced by some people for "turning back the clock" or "undoing progress" or some such. But if a super-cool, ultra-modern, cutting-edge, future-today liberal Protestant pastor can do it, and the solidarity it caused people to feel with their leaders speaks so powerfully to them, is he being "anti-progressive"? Not that I'd want to do all the other things he tried out, but did you see what I saw?

Hm...That's interesting

Another random internet thing I happened upon: Protestant minister: What "experiential worship" looks like.

I respect them for trying, but I am thankful for the Holy Mass, which because of the most holy Sacrament of the Altar is the ultimate "experiential worship." On our own we never could have devised or implemented such a direct and intimate encounter with the saving Passion and glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ as he gives us, through no merit of our own, in the Eucharist.

This one's dedicated to Joey

Seven secrets of shooting video that looks like film.

Tastes like chicken?

Article on why. A condensed version of the report from the highly entertaining Annals of Improbable Research.