Asymmetric Religion and Philosophy

From the Wiki:

The Twelve Days of Christmas are the festive days beginning on Christmas Day (25 December). This period is also known as Christmastide. The Twelfth Day of Christmas is 5 January - the day before the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January.

I think Crosby and the Andrew Sisters had a fine version:

Caravaggio adds one of those Saints who experienced Christ during his lifetime, St. Francis.

About 2000 years ago, God decided to become man in addition to God to fulfill a mission He gave Himself, the redemption of the world. Respecting our free will, God sought the cooperation of she whom He created for that purpose, Mary.

I can prove this indirectly through the testimony of the apostles, all of whom suffered and died carrying out their own mission assigned to them by Jesus, to spread the Good News. We also have the reality of unique miracles, personal witnesses, and the peaceful transformation of an entire society. Nobody can disprove it directly or indirectly without arguing that the God of their conception wouldn't follow this course or that there isn't a God at all. Therefore a leap, but not one that must ignore reality or dismiss counter-evidence: God thinks faith important and I don't expect completely verifiable evidence until He comes again.

One may assume that such a course better served Cosmic Justice. Actions must be recompensed physically as well as in thought. The means by which God deals with humanity's straying, a mystery which requires faith in man's free will- that man could have done otherwise even with God's foreknowledge, is sacrifice, a recurrent theme in God's history with us and instituted to help us appreciate the truth.

God simply wants us to recognize this reality, to believe what truly is, and in keeping with the emphasis on physical actions, to live in accordance with that truth. The moral ordering of the world is faintly written on our heart and He's given us sacraments, scripture, and an earthly authority, His Church, to help us out.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I love everything related to this season- the music, movies, decorations; and the way they combine with my memories of Christmases past and what I believe about the holy day to effect a real inner-transformation, one that conforms to the traditional urgings of the Advent season: peace, charity, brotherhood.

Merry Christmas

An intelligent person recognizes that any organization will have a percentage of bad members. A person who's studied the abuse crisis in the Church as I have, a little, will also realize that abuse occurs, tragically, anywhere authority intersects weakness, and especially where men encounter potential sexual victims (see links below).

We all feel for the victims, and nobody is excusing misconduct, so lets get that out of the way.

Now, what hurt the Church's reputation is the seeming lack of action on the part of the Church hierarchy- really, if you're a hierarchical institution, the people on top better be good. By not immediately dismissing bad priests and bishops, the Church gave the impression that it wasn't concerned about or that it even condoned what was going on. Christopher Hitchens jumps on the fact that Bernadin Law received an appointment in Rome after being bishop when the pedophile scandal broke in Boston. While they snicker, the faithful fume at what they perceive as a betrayal of trust.

I might not attend a Christmas concert at the Our Lady of Angels Cathedral just because one of the the worst Cardinals since Richelieu, Mahoney, might be there.

Which is why I'm very happy that the Pope has accepted the resignation of Limerick Bishop, Donal Murray and that the Irish Church will restructure.

Finally.

Some perspective on the crisis here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

As Anne Applebaum notices and Diane Francis' anti-person screed proves, nature worship leads to a diminution of man's place in the world. It's logical, actually:

1. If desiring nature to be preserved as it is now or restore it to a pre-human state is the greatest good.

2. and, if people are just one creature amongst many, without any more natural worth than nature itself.

3. and, if man is using more than his share of resources or damaging the earth so that 1 is impossible.

4. then, man's power to destroy needs to diminish.

We can do this two ways, by reducing the number of people or limiting each person's engagement with nature.

Christianity teaches us that man is the ultimate physical creation (angels are spirit) and infinitely more valuable than animals by virtue of our being created in God's image, as moral agents. The universe's resources are here for us. One judges anything men do in relation to the earth by how it impacts humanity, physically and aesthetically (preserving nature because men enjoy its beauty is perfectly justifiable, although using marble to make Michelangelo's David is probably more beneficial to mankind than having another slab of marble in the ground).

You can be thoroughly secular and still value men more than nature, but you can't do so logically while holding the the first and/or second assumption; it would just be a personal preference.

As for the Pope's seemingly anti-capital pronouncements, it's probably not correct to frame them in secular right-left terms.

Society should orient itself towards what's good for its citizens (I think it's capitalism) and if taking care of the environment, as per the explanation above, is part of that, so be it.

Can Fox report something about the Vatican and science without mentioning Galileo in the first sentence or Giordano Bruno, who was not burned at the stake for being a scientist, in the middle of the report. Really, the article needs two anti-Catholic references?

Why didn't they say that the search for extraterrestrial life follows the great history of the Catholic Church in encouraging science in general and particular scientists like Galileo; Copernicus; Mendel; and Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, who first proposed the Big Bang theory or Nicholas Steno, one of the pioneers of archaeology?

How about mentioning that 5% of the greatest mathematicians in history were Jesuit priests?

Too much to ask?

I may have a mini-obsession at any one time (the last being 40s music), but I'm pretty moderate about any one thing over time and my interests have breadth- from the physical like cars and technology to the metaphysical to those things in between, like music and art. I partition my radio listening according to this tendency. When I reach maximum political talk radio capacity, I switch to straight news, music, or, like I did a couple of years ago, the Comedy Channel on Sirius.

Lately, I've been listening to Catholic radio on Sirius. They have two Catholic channels, the Catholic Channel and EWTN. The former has a good psychologist show called Fully Alive! with Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak.

EWTN is more serious, generally. My favorite show, one that I've been podcasting for the last month or so, is the Catholic Answers radio show. Patrick Coffin hosts the show and he's a very talented broadcaster. Calm and goofy, he has a great radio presence. Each day, he welcomes a different guest, with Sister Rosalind Moss, a convert from Judaism, being an especially powerful speaker, combining as she does intelligence and emotion to produce one engaging presentation. I see her being the successor to Mother Angelica.

Anyways, they're having a membership drive. The site for the drive is here. I suggest you download one of their free podcasts, here.

In light of current national events.

Here (no paragraph breaks, annoying) here, here, and here.

Saints are those people the Church has determined to have made it to Heaven. You can read about the process here. Since they're there and, assuming that people in Heaven have a lot of time on their hands, it's OK to ask them to pray for us. One also assumes that their prayers are more effective since they're "plugged-in," so to speak.

(CNN) --

Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints Sunday, including a 19th-century priest who worked with ostracized leprosy patients in Hawaii before contracting the disease himself and dying from it.
Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints Sunday in a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

Read more »

The St. Francis day "blessing of the animals" is an intersection of religion, modern sensibilities, and just plain fun.

It's helps people to remember the great St. Francis. People who tend to miss mass (but who like animals) might make a point of attending that day. That's the religion part.

It satisfies the modern emphasis on the environment and animal worlds while placing them in a proper context: humans as caretakers of God's natural gifts to humanity. Or, that we're to take care of God's creation, not because nature deserves it a priori, but because He gave it to us to serve our legitimate needs (dogfighting excluded).

People who worry that such ceremonies blur the line between animals and people, shouldn't. Priests bless inanimate objects like Rosaries and swords (the Asymmetric blade of smiting +5 will soon receive one); why not animals?

It's also a lot of fun. My kids were very excited about taking the animals. Our dog and two cats found the experience quite stimulating as well (my female dog didn't exactly act in the most lady-like manner, however). We made jokes about whether our mean cat, Smokey, would behave better after the blessing.

Anyways, a nice tradition and one parishioners and the Church should encourage.

For Smokey, this blessing might serve as more of an exorcism.

Antonio and Samantha with the cats.

Priest blesses animals. We got a certificate and everything. The kids care more about that certificate, by the way, than their multitudinous awards from school.

Goldy, looser than Lindsay Lohan after 4 Margaritas, eyes a potential beau.

It's better to be loved than hated. This is only true if you're loved and hated for the correct reasons.

Conversely, it's better to be hated than loved if one is hated unjustly and doesn't truly merit love.

I take great pride in my Catholic faith when somebody, in order to attack it, has to lie. Such is the case with Penn and Teller's show on the Vatican. The funny thing is that there are some legitimate, if less dramatic, criticisms they could have made. Instead, they went for the conspiracy theorist, "all evil flows from..." angle.

Bill Donohue has a response here. I plan on asking for a rebuke of lies (only) from CBS representative Nancy Tellem: nancy.tellem@tvc.cbs.com

I don't have time to go over the show, but let me just rebut one: the Church has saved millions of lives in Africa because of her teachings on condoms and chastity.