Those who had been scattered by the persecution that arose because of Stephen went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but Jews. There were some Cypriots and Cyrenians among them, however, who came to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks as well, proclaiming the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. (Acts 11:19-21)
Both this first reading from Mass today and today’s memorial of St. George jostle our consciences with reminders of the role of courage in the Christian life – its source and why it is always needed. In other words – there’s always resistance to the Good News, from within and without.
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Today is the commemoration of St. George.
St. George is in the Loyola Kids Book of Saints. In the first part of the chapter I try to strike the balance between what we think we know about George and the legendary material. But I also always try to respect the legendary material as an expression of a truth – here, the courage required to follow Christ. He’s in the section, “Saints are people who are brave.”
The Byzantine Rite has no such reservations about St George, as is often the case with some of the best loved legends and traditions about the Saints. He is honored with the titles “Great Martyr”, meaning one who suffered many and various torments during his martyrdom, and “Bearer of the Standard of Victory”; in the preparation rite of the Divine Liturgy, he is named in the company of martyrs second only to St Stephen. His feast always occurs in Eastertide, unless it be impeded by Holy Week or Easter week; one of the texts for Vespers of his feast refers to this in a very clever way.
Thou didst suffer along with the Savior, and having willingly imitated His death by death (thanato ton thanaton … mimesamenos), o glorious one, thou reignest with Him, clothed in bright splendor, adorned with thy blood, decorated with the scepter of thy prizes, outstanding with the crown of victory, for endless ages, o Great-Martyr George.
The phrase “having willingly imitated His death by death” makes an obvious reference to words of the well-known Paschal troparion, “Christ is risen from the dead, by death he conquered death (thanato ton thanaton … patesas), and gave life to those in the tomb.”
The performance featured the Cathedral Choir, professional soloists from out of town and the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra.
I will freely confess that this is the first complete performance of this work I’ve ever attended. The reason, I think, is that performances of the piece almost always occur in the weeks before Christmas, and you know…that’s a busy time of year. Especially when you have kids in school and then your own musician in the family. But I have always wanted – and hopefully will someday – attend a Messiah singalong concert most of all. This wasn’t that, of course, but someday.
The only element of the performance that I wasn’t a fan of was the use of a countertenor rather than a (female) contralto or mezzo-soprano. Countertenors kind of skeeve me out anyway, but that’s nothing to be proud of, I suppose. I mean, he sang beautifully, but I would have preferred hearing a more full-throated contralto, for example.
I had assumed that the choice was made because this was supposed to be a performance that evoked something of the original vibe – (although a mixed-sex chorus would violate that) – but no. According to this article, Handel wrote these solos for female and male voices, and men were rarely used for that mezzo/contralto voice.
(Also interesting for the explanation of the difference between a countertenor and castrati voice and vocal physiology.)
Anyway.
Not having ever listened to the whole piece from beginning to end, I was struck, most of all, by the context of the Hallelujah chorus.
The section begins with verses reflective of the Suffering Servant and the Man of Sorrows. These are followed by a number of verses highlighting the corruption of earthly powers and God’s power over them:
Air (Bass) Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against His Anointed. (Psalms 2 : 1-2)
Chorus Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yokes from us. (Psalms 2 : 3)
Recitative (Tenor) He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; the Lord shall have them in derision. (Psalms 2 : 4)
Air (Tenor) Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. (Psalms 2 : 9)
And THEN ….Hallelujah!
Chorus Hallelujah! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. (Revelation 19 : 6) The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever. (Revelation 11 : 15) King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. (Revelation 19 : 16) Hallelujah!
Followed, in the final section, by praise for the Risen Lord.
Let me add that during the performance of those God-will-strike-the-mighty-down verses, thunder began to roll and lightening flash. By the time we got to the Hallelujah chorus, the storm was pounding, the thunder audible even through the stone walls, and the lightening illuminating the large crucifixion in stained-glass on the right.
I knew that the Hallelujah chorus came at the end of the crucifixion section of the piece, but had no idea that it centers our experience of the crucifixion as the manifestation of God’s victory over earthly powers, including those ultimate earthly powers of sin and death, but all other would-be usurpers to divine power as well. It’s fierce and strong and stirring – especially with that extra soundtrack thundering above and illuminating the paradoxical way of divine victory – through love.
Anyway, upon entering the University of Tennessee, I claimed a major of Honors History and a minor of religious studies. (Instapundit’s dad, Dr. Charles Reynolds, was one of my professors). One of the classes was in medieval church history, and yup, we plunged into Anselm, and I was introduced to thinking about the one of whom no greater can be thought, although more of the focus was on his atonement theory.
A monk with an intense spiritual life, an excellent teacher of the young, a theologian with an extraordinary capacity for speculation, a wise man of governance and an intransigent defender of libertas Ecclesiae, of the Church’s freedom, Anselm is one of the eminent figures of the Middle Ages who was able to harmonize all these qualities, thanks to the profound mystical experience that always guided his thought and his action.
St Anselm was born in 1033 (or at the beginning of 1034) in Aosta, the first child of a noble family. His father was a coarse man dedicated to the pleasures of life who squandered his possessions. On the other hand, Anselm’s mother was a profoundly religious woman of high moral standing (cf. Eadmer, Vita Sancti Anselmi, PL 159, col. 49). It was she, his mother, who saw to the first human and religious formation of her son whom she subsequently entrusted to the Benedictines at a priory in Aosta. Anselm, who since childhood as his biographer recounts imagined that the good Lord dwelled among the towering, snow-capped peaks of the Alps, dreamed one night that he had been invited to this splendid kingdom by God himself, who had a long and affable conversation with him and then gave him to eat “a very white bread roll” (ibid., col. 51). This dream left him with the conviction that he was called to carry out a lofty mission.
At the age of 15, he asked to be admitted to the Benedictine Order but his father brought the full force of his authority to bear against him and did not even give way when his son, seriously ill and feeling close to death, begged for the religious habit as a supreme comfort.
After his recovery and the premature death of his mother, Anselm went through a period of moral dissipation. He neglected his studies and, consumed by earthly passions, grew deaf to God’s call. He left home and began to wander through France in search of new experiences. Three years later, having arrived in Normandy, he went to the Benedictine Abbey of Bec, attracted by the fame of Lanfranc of Pavia, the Prior. For him this was a providential meeting, crucial to the rest of his life. Under Lanfranc’s guidance Anselm energetically resumed his studies and it was not long before he became not only the favourite pupil but also the teacher’s confidante. His monastic vocation was rekindled and, after an attentive evaluation, at the age of 27 he entered the monastic order and was ordained a priest. Ascesis and study unfolded new horizons before him, enabling him to rediscover at a far higher level the same familiarity with God which he had had as a child.
When Lanfranc became Abbot of Caen in 1063, Anselm, after barely three years of monastic life, was named Prior of the Monastery of Bec and teacher of the cloister school, showing his gifts as a refined educator. He was not keen on authoritarian methods; he compared young people to small plants that develop better if they are not enclosed in greenhouses and granted them a “healthy” freedom. He was very demanding with himself and with others in monastic observance, but rather than imposing his discipline he strove to have it followed by persuasion.
Upon the death of Abbot Herluin, the founder of the Abbey of Bec, Anselm was unanimously elected to succeed him; it was February 1079. In the meantime numerous monks had been summoned to Canterbury to bring to their brethren on the other side of the Channel the renewal that was being brought about on the continent. Their work was so well received that Lanfranc of Pavia, Abbot of Caen, became the new Archbishop of Canterbury. He asked Anselm to spend a certain period with him in order to instruct the monks and to help him in the difficult plight in which his ecclesiastical community had been left after the Norman conquest. Anselm’s stay turned out to be very fruitful; he won such popularity and esteem that when Lanfranc died he was chosen to succeed him in the archiepiscopal See of Canterbury. He received his solemn episcopal consecration in December 1093.
Anselm immediately became involved in a strenuous struggle for the Church’s freedom, valiantly supporting the independence of the spiritual power from the temporal. Anselm defended the Church from undue interference by political authorities, especially King William Rufus and Henry I, finding encouragement and support in the Roman Pontiff to whom he always showed courageous and cordial adherence. In 1103, this fidelity even cost him the bitterness of exile from his See of Canterbury. Moreover, it was only in 1106, when King Henry I renounced his right to the conferral of ecclesiastical offices, as well as to the collection of taxes and the confiscation of Church properties, that Anselm could return to England, where he was festively welcomed by the clergy and the people. Thus the long battle he had fought with the weapons of perseverance, pride and goodness ended happily. This holy Archbishop, who roused such deep admiration around him wherever he went, dedicated the last years of his life to the moral formation of the clergy and to intellectual research into theological topics. He died on 21 April 1109, accompanied by the words of the Gospel proclaimed in Holy Mass on that day: “You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom…” (Lk 22: 28-30). So it was that the dream of the mysterious banquet he had had as a small boy, at the very beginning of his spiritual journey, found fulfilment. Jesus, who had invited him to sit at his table, welcomed Anselm upon his death into the eternal Kingdom of the Father.
“I pray, O God, to know you, to love you, that I may rejoice in you. And if I cannot attain to full joy in this life may I at least advance from day to day, until that joy shall come to the full” (Proslogion, chapter 14). This prayer enables us to understand the mystical soul of this great Saint of the Middle Ages, the founder of scholastic theology, to whom Christian tradition has given the title: “Magnificent Doctor”, because he fostered an intense desire to deepen his knowledge of the divine Mysteries but in the full awareness that the quest for God is never ending, at least on this earth. The clarity and logical rigour of his thought always aimed at “raising the mind to contemplation of God” (ibid., Proemium). He states clearly that whoever intends to study theology cannot rely on his intelligence alone but must cultivate at the same time a profound experience of faith. The theologian’s activity, according to St Anselm, thus develops in three stages: faith, a gift God freely offers, to be received with humility; experience,which consists in incarnating God’s word in one’s own daily life; and therefore true knowledge, which is never the fruit of ascetic reasoning but rather of contemplative intuition. In this regard his famous words remain more useful than ever, even today, for healthy theological research and for anyone who wishes to deepen his knowledge of the truths of faith: “I do not endeavour, O Lord, to penetrate your sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree your truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, that unless I believed, I should not understand” (ibid., 1).
Dear brothers and sisters, may the love of the truth and the constant thirst for God that marked St Anselm’s entire existence be an incentive to every Christian to seek tirelessly an ever more intimate union with Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. In addition, may the zeal full of courage that distinguished his pastoral action and occasionally brought him misunderstanding, sorrow and even exile be an encouragement for Pastors, for consecrated people and for all the faithful to love Christ’s Church, to pray, to work and to suffer for her, without ever abandoning or betraying her. May the Virgin Mother of God, for whom St Anselm had a tender, filial devotion, obtain this grace for us. “Mary, it is you whom my heart yearns to love”, St Anselm wrote, “it is you whom my tongue ardently desires to praise”
To Anselm “a boy who grew up in the mountains” as his biographer Eadmer describes him (Eadmer, Vita Sancti Anselmi, I, 2) it seemed impossible to imagine anything greater than God: gazing since childhood at those inaccessible peaks may have had something to do with this intuition. Indeed, already as a child he considered that to meet God it was necessary “to climb to the top of the mountain” (ibid.). Indeed, he was to understand better and better that God is found at an inaccessible height, situated beyond the goals that man can reach since God is beyond the thinkable. For this reason the journey in quest of God, at least on this earth, will be never-ending but will always consist of thought and yearning, a rigorous process of the mind and the imploring plea of the heart.
This coming Sunday is “Good Shepherd Sunday,” and what many of us might not realize, as we hear homilies about 1st century sheep herders and Old Testament imagery, is that Jesus’ words about being a shepherd in today’s Gospel are part of a larger narrative.
Jesus alludes to sheep and shepherds in other contexts throughout the Gospels, but it’s important to realize that today’s passage, from John 10, doesn’t just exist as a collection of quotable sayings that Jesus is standing around tossing out. It’s actually the second part of another event – the healing of the man born blind, described in John 9. Go back and read it for yourself!
Jesus’ words about being a shepherd to whom the sheep respond and who gathers and protects, rather than abandons his sheep, is, in fact, not a general illustration, but a continuation of his attack on the Pharisees who had excommunicated the man born blind. This is a case in which the useful, but of course not original division of Scripture into chapters can actually hamper our understanding.
When I wrote about Jesus as the Good Shepherd in the theLoyola Kids Book of Bible Stories, I focused on this passage and placed it in this context. I took a slightly different angle, though – appropriate to the audience of children, of course – and focused on listening to the voice of Jesus who cares for us and rescues us – and being able to recognize that voice in the midst of all the other voices that call to us.
The excerpts below are just the first and last pages of the section – the first so you can see how they are introduced, and the last, so you can see how each chapter ends – with a tie-back into Catholic-specific stuff and then questions for review and reflection.
Then, the first page of the entry on “Shepherd” from The Loyola Kids Book of Signs and Symbols.Remember how the book is organized – this first page has a basic explanation, and then the facing page has a more in-depth exploration of the symbol.
There is great depth and richness in the imagery of sheep and shepherd, not reducible to simplistic allusions to gentleness and lambs, as appealing as that may be. It has profound historical resonance in relation to Israel and its kings. It is about intimacy and recognition and protection, for, if you think about it, the rod and staff of Psalm 23 are not decorative. They are for support, they are for warding off enemies.
The critique of contemporary shepherds implicit in all of the Scripture readings is directed at their weakness and failure to protect the sheep.
Finally, the chapter on the Second Sunday of Easter (which was traditionally Good Shepherd Sunday until You-Know-What) from the 1947 7th grade textbook which I often share with you.
I had wanted to see this when it came out in the theaters, but never got around to it. So wait for the library it was. We watched it last night and well, it fulfilled my expectations, which, based on reviews I’d read, not high. But hey, you guys can spill all the ink and the bytes on The Chosen, now it’s my turn.
So? Well, good intentions, decent execution, surprising conclusion but overall disappointing and nowhere near as sharp as it could have been.
I will confess to you at the very beginning though, that one of the main reasons I wanted to see this is that it was filmed in Matera, Italy – as was The Passion of the Christ, Pasolini’s Gospel According to Saint Matthew and yes, the opening scene of No Time to Die.
The concept of the movie is: set in Biblical times, with a predominantly Black cast (the Romans and some of the enslaved people shown are white) – Clarence is the disciple Thomas’ twin (get it?) and a scoundrel. He owes a bad guy a bunch of money and possibly his life as well, so, seeing how his brother’s master, Jesus, is pulling in the crowds, he cooks up a scheme to do some preaching, fake some miracles and proclaim himself a messiah. Being a vociferous non-believer in God in any form, this is, at first, a conscience-free choice.
But events snowball and Clarence is eventually arrested by the Romans because, of course, he’s going around saying he’s a messiah. And a fellow named Barabbas is part of his crew, so that doesn’t help.
Throughout the last part of the film, Clarence’s conscience has started kicking into gear, he’s beginning to sense what the real Jesus is all about, and by the end, through his own sacrifice and suffering, yes, he’s become a believer.
At the time of its release, I read some comments on Reddit from viewers deeply annoyed at this – what is actually a kind of moving and faith-embracing turn.
But still?
I’d give it a 5/10. Maybe even 4.5.
First, the script is disjointed and not exactly subtle. There are weird, unnecessary touches of magical realism – like a hookah bar where people are actually floating around. Dumb. I like the basic story, but it’s just not smoothly told and has stupid moments.
Secondly, the faith stuff is not completely off, but it is also pretty far from “on.” There’s no real sense of why people are believing in Jesus, no indication of what he’s actually teaching, why these disciples have come on board, what anyone means when they talk about a “messiah” or “savior.”
There are allusions to Gospel incidents and appearances by Gospel figures, but it’s all mixed up and not in a way that indicates anyone was trying to create some smart kind of pastiche. Mary Magdalene first appears as a tough gal racing a chariot (against Clarence) – which was fine, but then she’s the woman caught in adultery, so what?
In fact that whole incident from John 8 reflects what’s wrong with the movie. Mary (so that’s strike one) is chained to a wall, in the process of being stoned, when Jesus shows up, holds up his hand – and the stones freeze in mid-air, fall to the ground, Jesus breaks Mary’s chain without touching it and then utters the “first stone” words. Magic, in other words. Miracles are like magic.
It’s just dumb and shows what was missing: Clarence, in his quest to be taken as a messiah, fixates on the miracles and fakes them – his redemption would have been more grounded and effective if we’d seen and heard Jesus doing and saying, well, actual Jesus things that prompt self-reflection and recognition of what Jesus offers that the world – and our flawed, sinful selves – cannot.
I did appreciate the scene with Alfre Woodard as Mary, Jesus’ mother, in which she vigorously and humorously defends the virginal conception of her son to the skeptical Clarence who’s sought her out to learn how Jesus does his “tricks.”
But OH OF COURSE – in an earlier scene, an apostle scorns Clarence (who’s shown up trying for a spot as the 13th apostle) – because you don’t even believe in the Immaculate Conception.
PEOPLE! GET IT RIGHT! JUST LOOK IT UP ON WIKIPEDIA!
I will say, though, that the last fifteen minutes almost redeem the stupidity and flaws in the rest of the movie. Clarence’s way of the cross is harsh and painful and what happens afterwards has been earned. Ironically, the suffering he had sought to avoid has taught him that love, and more importantly, God is absolutely real. He’d begun the film proclaiming that he didn’t need belief because he had knowledge, you can’t “know” that God exists, knowledge is certainly superior to belief, ergo, God doesn’t exist. By the time he’s on the cross he’s challenged about God’s existence. Does he believe? No, he responds now – he knows.
Simplistic, yes. But the post-crucifixion business? It got some skeptics who were just there for laughs big mad, so maybe that simplicity served some purpose.
Final takeaway? Mildly entertaining, weak construction and writing, pointlessly absurd at points, an attempt at satire that would actually have been strengthened by more fidelity to the Gospel narratives, but with a surprisingly moving ending.
Last summer, Oxford Ph.D philosopher, Villanova professor (and BHM resident) Chris Barnett contacted me and asked me if I’d do a podcast with him. It would be on faith ‘n’ culture. Sure, I said, we always have good conversations, so why not?
We decided that the focus for the first (first? Gasp!) season would be film, and that a good way to attack it would be to discuss a list of our “20 most spiritually significant films.”
And we were off!
Early on we – probably more me – got fixated on the idea of having and recording these conversations in situ – that is, just in the way we usually had them – at drinking/eating places.
That was a bit of a challenge at first, as you can imagine. Not only because we needed someplace fairly quiet, but also a situation in which we weren’t going to bother anyone else.
For the first episode, we walked around Pepper Place here in Birmingham, trying two different spots before we finally just had to settle outside at a coffee shop.
(The first place seemed to be great until an outdoor generator or something at a neighboring building started wheezing and clanking. We then walked to a bar nearby that was empty (this was mid afternoon), but had music playing pretty loudly. I explained what we were doing to the barkeep and sort of motioned upward to the speakers. She looked at me and shrugged. Sucks to be you was the vibe. Did I mention there were no customers in the bar at the time?)
So…thanks to the following for hosting us over the past months:
The last two worked out the best, so thanks to them both, and especially to the fine folks at Cahaba – and especially barkeep Molly – for letting us wander in and set up shop every ten days or so. They are a busy place, but mid-Friday afternoons has worked out great for us, and we appreciate them!
So, what is Malick trying to explore with these three characters (the three that I find the most prominent in the narrative)? I think it’s that we are all bound for war, but not all of us are built for it. It’s an exploration of how different types of men face the state that nature is always in. Do we embrace it? Do we act like it’s not real? Do we fold under the weight of it?
As I mentioned, we have two more episodes coming this spring. One is a wrap-up, with some Honorable Mentions from both of us – for me, it was a matter of a couple that I did really have a Solomon’s choices happening, but there are also a couple of films that if I’d been really really honest about something I’d felt was significant to me – I would have placed on the list, but was held back by a fear of y’all judging me.
And we’ll do another episode on the Hawke production Wildcat about Flannery O’Connor once we’re able to see it, which should be soon.
This will be quick. I have Wednesday morning duty at a food pantry, so let’s go.
The nest on top of the rain spout has been reoccupied this year. The photos below represent one week’s growth. Hopefully the baby birds will survive this year and not, as they were in one past year, be eaten, probably by a hawk. No, I didn’t see it happen, but I did go out one morning to see baby bird feathers scattered on the ground, so yeah.
We’ll have two more episodes this season before taking a summer break – one wrap-up, in which we hash out our thoughts on our films and reveal some Honorable Mentions, and then another in which we discuss the Ethan/Maya Hawke/Flannery O’Connor film, Wildcat.
And we will be back next fall, but with a focus on literature…mostly.
I knew the movie was different, as I indicate in my post, and yes, it is very different. The novel has narrative perspective of first person from the mind of a serial killer, but never actually details his acts.
Well, in the film (spoiler alert), the protagonist, played by Humphrey Bogart, is suspected to be a killer and is manic and prone to violence, but is not. So…yeah, just bare bones. It was fairly enjoyable for what it is, though, although I can’t imagine putting this in even the top 10 or maybe even 20 noir films, as some do. Gloria Grahame was great as usual, there was a good bit of snappy dialogue, and it’s always interesting to see vintage LA, but yeah, the book was definitely better.
The Manchurian Candidate – a rewatch for both of us, although it was so long ago that Mother of the Year made her son watch this that he didn’t remember much of it.
Hey! Mother of the Year! There’s a theme for you, I guess.
It’s a highly enjoyable film that does hold up after sixty years, thanks in part to some great performances as well as, in Movie Guy Son’s words, a “cynical air and inventive camerawork that feels at home in the 21st century as it did in the more experimental corners of 1960s cinema.”
Experimental and weird: the dreams/recollections of the brain-washing. Even the conversation between Janet Leigh and Frank Sinatra on the train is one of the strangest meet-not-really-cute scenes you could ever see.
Angela Lansbury is iconic, and while there are a lot of scenes that could be mentioned in that regard, I’ve always found this one, featuring her intense, controlling focus on the television at a press conference, the most fascinating. She says everything with no words.
Also Sinatra. I always enjoy seeing Sinatra in a film, and his portrayal tense, tortured, but eventually resolute Marco is gripping.
After miraculously surviving a jump from his burning plane, RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) encounters the American radio operator (Kim Hunter) to whom he has just delivered his dying wishes, and, face-to-face on a tranquil English beach, the pair fall in love. When a messenger from the hereafter arrives to correct the bureaucratic error that spared his life, Peter must mount a fierce defense for his right to stay on earth—painted by production designer Alfred Junge and cinematographer Jack Cardiff as a rich Technicolor Eden—climbing a wide staircase to stand trial in a starkly beautiful, black-and-white modernist afterlife. Intended to smooth tensions between the wartime allies Britain and America, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s richly humanistic A Matter of Life and Death traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love.
(Cheating because I have to go).
The trial scene, in my opinion, is too long and tonally interrupts the film. But everything else is marvelous, beginning with the opening scene of Peter plummeting to his certain death while communicating with June to the tension about his trial and the deft plot twist that gives Peter the exact advocate he needs to make his case in the afterlife. Plenty of good humor, much of it coming from Peter’s “conductor” – who was supposed to fetch him for the afterlife but missed him because of the fog – a fop who had been beheaded in the French Revolution, played by Marius Goring.
Entertaining, yes, but also thought-provoking, not only in terms of British-American postwar relations, but also in terms of loss. There’s a sadness about it, even amidst the hope, as I imagine a post-war audience watching an airman try to argue his way out of a wartime death in favor of a full, normal life, loved and loving in the beauty of this color-saturated world – how many of those watching had, in the fog of unknowing, made that argument themselves, either on the front or at home?
In my drawing of Black Elk, I chose to portray him as a young man, basing the figure on a photograph taken around 1886. I chose also to make the drawing circular, since he had spoken at length about the symbolic importance of the circle in Lakota thought, lamenting the transition from life in teepees to life in orthogonal buildings. I drew it on an irregularly shaped piece of brown calfskin.
The emblems in the drawing combine imagery from Black Elk’s visions with traditional Catholic symbols. The circle with the four horse heads represents the cardinal directions: red for east, white for north, black for west, and yellow for south. These are also the colors of the Lakota medicine wheel. In earlier illustrations of Black Elk’s visions made by his friend Standing Bear, a dark blue paint was used to represent black; I also have done this. The white color I made by scraping away the top layer of the calfskin. I placed these same four colors in the cruciform halo in the icon of Jesus Christ that Black Elk holds.
The other large circle includes the hoop of peoples, with its red road of goodness running from north to south, and the black road of troubles running from west to east. I combined this emblem with the nomen sacrum of Jesus Christ. The two smaller circles represent Nicholas Black Elk’s two names. The three gold balls on a red background are a traditional symbol of St. Nicholas of Myra. The other contains a literal black elk.
Surrounding the central figure and the emblems, I drew an herb with flowers in four colors: red, yellow, blue and white. This represents the herb of healing that Black Elk saw in his visions, and later discovered.
As a result, the writing is cramped, brittle. Oyler clearly wishes to be a person who says brilliant things—the Renata Adler of looking at your phone a lot—but she lacks the curiosity that would permit her to do so.
As well as a helpful explanation of what this thing called an essay is:
Since Montaigne, the best essays have been, as the French word suggests, trials, attempts. They entail the writer struggling toward greater knowledge through sustained research, painful introspection, and provocative inquiry. And they allow the reader to walk away with a freeing sense of the possibilities of life, the sensation that one can think more deeply and more bravely—that there is more outside one’s experience than one has thought, and perhaps more within it, too.
An apt reminder for any kind of writer of what this is all about.
We know now the paths of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd intersected frequently when filming, and yet they each had their individual favorite places to shoot. We can appreciate how Keaton, and especially Lloyd, crafted elaborate chase sequences by cleverly editing shots filmed all across Southern California. And we can savor the moments of everyday life captured in the background of their films.
Over 40 saints’ lives,written at a middle-school reading level.
I. Saints are People Who Love Children St. Nicholas,St. John Bosco, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Blessed Gianna Beretta Molla
Saints Are People Who Love Their Families St. Monica,St. Cyril and St. Methodius, St. Therese of Lisieux,Blessed Frederic Ozanam,
Saints Are People Who Surprise OthersSt. Simeon Stylites,St. Celestine V,St. Joan of Arc,St. Catherine of Siena
Saints Are People Who Create St. Hildegard of Bingen,Blessed Fra Angelico,St. John of the Cross,Blessed Miguel Pro
Saints Are People Who Teach Us New Ways to Pray St. Benedict,St. Dominic de Guzman,St. Teresa of Avila,St. Louis de Monfort
Saints Are People Who See Beyond the Everyday St. Juan Diego, St. Frances of Rome, St. Bernadette Soubirous, Blessed Padre Pio
Saints Are People Who Travel From Home St. Boniface, St. Peter Claver, St. Francis Xavier, St. Francis Solano, St. Francis Xavier Cabrini
Saints Are People Who Are Strong Leaders St. Helena, St. Leo the Great, St. Wenceslaus, St. John Neumann
Saints Are People Who Tell The Truth St. Polycarp, St. Thomas Becket, St. Thomas More, Blessed Titus Brandsma
Saints Are People Who Help Us Understand God St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Jerome, St. Patrick, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Edith Stein
Saints Are People Who Change Their Lives for God St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the Great, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Camillus de Lellis, St. Katharine Drexel
Saints Are People Who Are Brave St. Perpetua and St. Felicity, St. George, St. Margaret Clitherow, St. Isaac Jogues, The Carmelite Nuns of Compiegne, St. Maximilian Kolbe
Saints Are People Who Help the Poor and Sick St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Martin de Porres, Blessed Joseph de Veuster
Saints Are People Who Help In Ordinary Ways St. Christopher, St. Blaise, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Bernard of Montjoux
Saints Are People Who Come From All Over the World Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, St. Paul Miki, Blessed Peter To Rot, Blessed Maria Clementine Anuarite Nengapeta
The Catholic Woman’s Book of Days is a 365-day devotional for Catholic women. It is loosely tied to the liturgical year, is a very handy size, and features special devotions for several saints. It is not structured to be tied to any particular year. So it’s sort of perennial. And no, I don’t know about the crosses on the cover. People always ask me about them, thinking they’re mine. You can take a look inside the devotional, including several entries for January and June here.
Well, I did it, friends, I did it for you – I read through Judith Butler’s newest, Who’s Afraid of Gender?
“Read through,” which is different from “read” and, to defend myself, even different from “skim.” But yes, my eyes encountered most of the words on the pages of this book.
As I finished, I decided that the book had been grievously misnamed. The real title was unspoken but nonetheless seemed to arise from every page:
Achtually….
You got it – that know-it-all who knows very little but still takes it upon her/him/theirself to correct us all.
My second thought was that this book read as an amalgamation of two forces: Butler herself, regurgitating her schtick, and some unfortunate and not very bright graduate student assistant who was tasked with the assignment, “Find me samples of gender critical meanies from the past few years” and who procrastinated and finally got to work a couple of days before the deadline.
And who bizarrely decided that THE VATICAN was the driving force behind all of this.
For that is how this book begins – two chapters dedicated to THE VATICAN and the notion of the sex binary which, apparently, no one in the course of history had thought to suggest real. If people are questioning the claims of gender now, it’s totally the fault of THE VATICAN.
Someone needs to feed this into an AI art generator: “Thomas Nast-Pope-Gender” – and that might approximate the feel of what Butler serves here.
(The purported seriousness of this work is not at all helped by the fact that the very first paragraph of the first chapter warning us of popish knavery quite strangely attributes a document from the (then-named) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as the “Roman Catholic Council for the Family” – twice.)
I will say that it is pretty entertaining to constantly encounter Pope Francis as Judith Butler’s Baddest Guy, far more than Benedict. Another tragic blow for gender-friendly Catholics.
Beyond THE VATICAN, a very weird, narrow and peculiar scenario of gender-critical movements, organizations is sketched out that definitely gives Charlie conspiracy meme vibes.
This is ironic because Butler’s thesis, such as it is, is that opposition to “gender” is really an exercise in fear – and then she basis a great deal of her own “argument” on, yes, fear: fear of THE VATICAN and its minions, fear of evangelicals, Trump, and fear of the destruction these baddies are posed to bring to pass.
Look, I’m not going to do a detailed tour of Butler’s book. It’s not worth your or my time. I’ll just make some point that are applicable to this conversation and public conversation in general:
This book is all about psychologizing the opposition to gender-talk. It’s not about your argument, TERF – it’s about what you really fear – obvious from the title. This is a common technique for attempting to discredit opponents, as well as being pretty lazy. We see it all the time in all sorts of areas: Your arguments about abortion are irrelevant – you really just hate women. Your questions about this statement of Rome are really just about how much you hate Pope Francis and want the 50’s back.
Etc.
Butler fills her text with assertions that anti-gender voices don’t actually read anything from the other side and don’t make actual arguments.
Which is an ironic, inadvertent admission of projection, for it indicates she hasn’t read much gender-critical material herself.
Others have detailed Butler’s ridiculous expansion of this point, looking at how she either ignores the arguments of most of the gender-critical world or misstates them.
For a couple of critiques, including a charge of plagiarism, go here and here.
Some of her assertions reach, stretch and assert to the point of risibility. She takes on the gamete-producing definition of sex by actually articulating the “hey not all women can get pregnant” line. What is this, a college dorm bull session? She defends the malleability of sex definitions by explaining the nuanced differences in the meaning of “sex” in various legal situations. It’s all very strange.
This was my first sort-of direct encounter with Butler, and ooh boy, what a mess. The incoherence is stunning – and I don’t mean “incoherence” to mean “opaqueness” – Butler’s most frequent critical tag. The whole philosophy, if you want to call it that, is simply incoherent.
Sex and gender are malleable, Butler says, and she seems to ground her argument mostly on the conviction that self-determination is at the heart of being human, and if we don’t have complete self-determination to fulfill our desires, our humanity is compromised.
But of course, we still never can grasp that fluttering, fleeting object: womanhood. And I say “womanhood” instead of “sex” because really, Butler, like most activists, does not seem as concerned to expand the understanding of “man” as she as of “woman.”
No, it is “woman” that anyone has the right to claim, but what Butler never addresses – at least here – is where that leaves “feminism” – about which she also writes quite a bit here. She accuses gender-critical feminists of being traitors, essentially, in allying themselves with THE VATICAN, of course, but with other (gasp) “right-wingers” and being stubbornly obtuse as to how they are diluting the feminist cause.
Sex can be both real and mutable, unless we believe that “the truth” is always immutable and never historical, a proposition that would one again ally Rowling WITH THE PAPACY. (253)
(Caps my flourish, obv.)
All right, if “woman” has no intrinsic meaning, how can there be any “woman” whose rights are threatened?
Further – and this is more important – if there is such a thing as “woman” whose rights have been and are restricted in various settings, on what basis has that restriction occurred? Butler writes:
Equally painful is the fear that women feel on the streets as they seek simply to live their lives and move freely without fear.” (250)
Well…why? Why would a woman walking on the street be threatened, and not a man? And why should anyone care that it is specifically a woman who might be threatened and not just a human being?
(Yes, both sexes are victims of violence, but statistically, women are more at risk, and more at risk of violence at the hands of men.)
Are we going to theorize and uncategorize our way out of that?
Butler apparently does not see that when you have gender-fied “woman” – there is no basis for speaking any longer about “woman” whose existence, rights or fears are in any way shaped by her embodied female experience. In Butler’s world “feminism” or particular concerns about women’s lives cannot exist. They just can’t.
Somehow, if “who has betrayed feminism” is a question you care about, I think I know the answer – and it’s not Rowling, Stock or Lawford-Smith.
Charlotte was Both 