Monthly Archives: April 2015

on Literature

A Little Self-Promotion

From my Amazon.com author page:

As an English teacher, scholar, and poet, I map the world with words.

I am a true devotee of the liberal arts. From the smallest question of paragraph structure to the profoundest meditation on “this quintessence of dust” who dwells “on this isthmus of a middle state,” I teach English in order to guide, guard, and goad my willing students into habits that make for virtue.

I have travelled farther than I ever could have imagined, and am happier to have come home than I ever would have believed. My first home taught me that if I truly know where my home is, I need never be homesick. Coming home to the Catholic Church and to my loving wife now teach me how to dwell, to abide.

…and I will read by any light I can find.

(source: Amazon.com: Peter G. Epps: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle)

From my Lulu.com author page:

Finds that seeking the True, the Good, and the Beautiful is sometimes more like fumbling in the dark for a light switch than like a hero’s quest.

A small-town preacher’s kid who has travelled farther than he ever could have imagined, and is happier to have come home than he ever would have believed. Home taught him to love his roots, but never be homesick. Coming home to the Catholic church and to his loving wife are teaching him to dwell, to abide.

Writes poems. Teaches students. Loves his wife.

Reads by any light.

(source: Peter G. Epps’s Books and Publications Spotlight)

 

Quotables

Moving Past History

A really helpful article on what may be Cardinal George’s most famous and controversial sentence ends with the following extended commentary that makes me think of something I’ve been trying to say, as well:

Analogies can easily be multiplied, if one wants to push a thesis; but the point is that the greatest threat to world peace and international justice is the nation state gone bad, claiming an absolute power, deciding questions and making “laws” beyond its competence. Few there are, however, who would venture to ask if there might be a better way for humanity to organize itself for the sake of the common good. Few, that is, beyond a prophetic voice like that of Dorothy Day, speaking acerbically about “Holy Mother the State,” or the ecclesiastical voice that calls the world, from generation to generation, to live at peace in the kingdom of God.

God sustains the world, in good times and in bad. Catholics, along with many others, believe that only one person has overcome and rescued history: Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, savior of the world and head of his body, the church. Those who gather at his cross and by his empty tomb, no matter their nationality, are on the right side of history. Those who lie about him and persecute or harass his followers in any age might imagine they are bringing something new to history, but they inevitably end up ringing the changes on the old human story of sin and oppression. There is nothing “progressive” about sin, even when it is promoted as “enlightened.”

The world divorced from the God who created and redeemed it inevitably comes to a bad end. It’s on the wrong side of the only history that finally matters.

(source: Cardinal George: The Myth and Reality of ‘I’ll Die in My Bed’–emphasis added)

That Dark Age you’re worrying about?  Well, survey the likely results of today’s transient pragmatic arrangements, and consider it mali principii malus finis.  

And then quit worrying, and get on the right side of final causation!

Public-Personal, Quotables

Not Clear on the Concept?

“If in our theology departments we are not teaching the basics of who Jesus Christ is to future priests, to students that really want a Catholic education, then we are doing them a disservice,” Thomas observed. “I also think that it’s a good moment for other professors in the University to renew that commitment, and this could serve as a reminder and example of how Catholic professors, and especially Catholic professors who are also priests, are to teach the faith.”

Fr. Costadoat and his supporters have not responded favorably to his chastisement. “‘What’s Catholic’ creates problems in the university environment,” Fr. Costadoat wrote. “When the mission of a university is confused with the demands of the Christian religion, it is the very catholicity of universities which ends up being discredited. …When the catholicity of a university is made to depend on its students’ and, above all, its professors’ religious affiliation or devotion, the university sickens.”

(source: New Details on Jesuit Theologian Banned From Teaching Catholic Theology)

Hold on, what was that sentence again?

When the catholicity of a university is made to depend on its students’ and, above all, its professors’ religious affiliation or devotion, the university sickens.

(source: New Details on Jesuit Theologian Banned From Teaching Catholic Theology)

One feels compelled to suggest a little basic reading to the professor, though it is a shame and a grief to have to say this over and over:

13. Since the objective of a Catholic University is to assure in an institutional manner a Christian presence in the university world confronting the great problems of society and culture(16), every Catholic University, as Catholic, must have the following essential characteristics:

1. a Christian inspiration not only of individuals but of the university community as such;

2. a continuing reflection in the light of the Catholic faith upon the growing treasury of human knowledge, to which it seeks to contribute by its own research;

3. fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church;

4. an institutional commitment to the service of the people of God and of the human family in their pilgrimage to the transcendent goal which gives meaning to life”(17).

(source: Ex Corde Ecclesiae (15 August 1990))

Quotables

Remember Anselm

Anselm was, in the best sense of the phrase (the one Henry VIII would make perverse) a defender of the faith. And this was the subject of an encyclical by Pope St. Pius X, Communium Rerum, on the saint’s feast in 1909. The Holy Father mentions neither the ontological proof nor Fides quaerens intellectum. It’s Anselm’s defense of the Church’s role in public life that mattered to Pio Decimo.

He lists the popes (Gregory VII, Urban II, Paschal II) who corresponded with Anselm and held him in high esteem. “And yet,” Pius writes, “Anselm in his own eyes was but a despicable and unknown good-for-nothing, a man of no parts, sinful in his life.” But Anselm is praiseworthy not only because of his humility, but also because he bravely championed ecclesiastical rights against the power of secular governance.

The pope’s praise of Anselm as a model churchman (and loyal servant of popes) was written not long after a great earthquake had rocked Messina, Sicily (7.1 on the Richter Scale), followed by a tsunami, destroying most of the city, and killing 70,000. Pius had filled the Apostolic Palace with refugees, even as the Italian government provided little in the way of aid. How, Pius wondered, can any sensible Christian not see the Church as more exemplary than the State?

Pius sees Anselm as a comrade in arms in the ongoing battle against error – in the 20th century it was the war against modernism – which he and his predecessors (Pius IX and Leo XIII especially) seemed never to vanquish despite their many warnings to the faithful.

Sancte Anselme, ora pro nobis.

(source: St. Anselm: Man of Premises – The Catholic ThingThe Catholic Thing)

Quotables

Remember Cardinal George

Among other talents, Cardinal George was a good pianist. I like to play myself and one day, at the piano in the residence, I asked why he didn’t play anymore: “I don’t have the time, and my taste now has outrun my ability.”

If true, it’s one of the few areas in which his talents fell below his very high standards. He was a great leader, a great mind, a great friend. Probably the remark he will be most remembered for is: “I expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of the ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization as the Church has done so often in human history.” I’ve been receiving messages from friends, here and abroad, about their affection for him and worries about what happens next for the Church in America. All that is, of course, uncertain, and Cardinal George – who did much in life for both the Church and the nation – would likely say: that, now, depends on us.

Requiescat in pace. Et in paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem.

(source: Remembering Cardinal George – The Catholic Thing)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu7mM_zqapA]

Public-Personal

One in Hope and Doctrine, One in Charity

Robert George pens an open letter to the Holy Father, asking him to do what we have no doubt he is willing to do–but, as in many cases, what we would certainly appreciate his doing more firmly and publicly!  I have emphasized what I take to be the key line in this worthy missive, below:

Here in the United States we are blessed with many bishops who join you in bearing witness to these profound and indispensable truths. Even in the face of social and economic pressure on them to yield or go silent, they boldly and joyously proclaim the Church’s teachings on marriage and chastity. None has been more fearless or ardent in upholding these beautiful and liberating teachings than Salvatore Cordileone, the Archbishop of San Francisco. Faithful Catholics in his archdiocese and throughout our country have been edified by his labors—particularly those addressed to ensuring that the Catholic schools under his care teach and model fidelity to Catholic doctrine in all matters of faith and morals. Unsurprisingly, however, these labors have drawn the antagonism of many who despise the Church’s moral teachings, especially those concerning marriage and sexual morality.

This morning, a group of people published an open letter to you in a San Francisco newspaper urging you to remove Archbishop Cordileone from his office. They identify themselves as Catholics and plead with you to send them a new archbishop that will be true to what they describe as “our values.” But their values, unlike the values proclaimed and upheld by Archbishop Cordileone, are not the values of the Catholic faith. Their complaint against the Archbishop finally comes down to his refusal to bow down before the values of contemporary secularist sexual morality and gender ideology. For this, however, he should be applauded and encouraged, not condemned, much less ousted.

Be assured, Holy Father, that the “prominent Catholics,” as the media describes them, who call on you to remove Archbishop Cordileone do not speak for the faithful Catholics of San Francisco. Already, a movement has emerged to support and encourage the Archbishop. It is a movement of grateful Catholics—not “prominent” people—but ordinary men and women, many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants from many lands. These men and women are grateful to have an archbishop who believes and teaches what the Church believes and teaches. They send their children to the diocesan schools because they desire for them an education imbued with a Christian spirit and shaped by the teachings of the Catholic faith. Their spirits have been lifted by Archbishop Cordileone’s tireless work to ensure that such an education is available to all who desire it.

With gratitude to God for your own witness and ministry, I humbly ask you to join those of us who are supporting and encouraging Archbishop Cordileone. It would be a wonderful thing for you quietly to let him know that he has your blessing, and that the insults and defamations he is experiencing as a result of his faithful apostolic work are a participation in the redemptive suffering of Jesus, who said: “anyone who would be my disciple must take up his cross and follow me.”

(source: A Letter to Pope Francis | Robert P. George | First Things)

There are many more supporters.  Too many folks are confused, thinking that the service of God, or the service of the servants of God, is a matter of pandering to constituencies after the manner of politicians in a mass-market democracy.  But, even setting aside the question of truth for a moment–always a dangerous thing to do, even for sake of argument–what does it make sense to expect from those who dedicate their lives to their belief that the Creator of the universe cares about humanity and has spoken?

Does it make sense to expect them to rewrite the Creator’s explanations to suit the preferences of creatures?

What would it say about their faith if they did?

But there are plenty of voices speaking the faith of the Church back to her, and in front of the world.  And, Deo volente, they will someday be able to do so in a country where calumny and slander do not replace public justice.

And if not, well, we’ve been there before. Continue reading »

Public-Personal, Quotables

Unity of the Good versus Divisive Contumacy

It is evident that the pastoral practice of the Church cannot stand in opposition to the binding doctrine nor simply ignore it. In the same manner, an architect could perhaps build a most beautiful bridge. However, if he does not pay attention to the laws of structural engineering, he risks the collapse of his construction. In the same manner, every pastoral practice has to follow the Word of God if it does not want to fail. A change of the teaching, of the dogma, is unthinkable. Who nevertheless consciously does it, or insistently demands it, is a heretic – even if he wears the Roman Purple.

(source: Cardinal Brandmüller | LifeSite)

OK, there’s that.  It’s true, and worth remembering when so many folks seem to think that the Church should be run by marketing focus groups, hankerings for private revelation, prosthetics to stimulate or simulate quasi-spiritual “passion” and “intimacy,” rather than by real, substantial, manifest union with Jesus Christ, the Author and Finisher of her faith….

…and then let go of the critique, for a moment, and remember with a grin…

 …and in that spirit, read today’s catechesis from the Holy Father:

Modern and contemporary culture has opened up new spaces, new freedoms and new depths for the enrichment and understanding of this difference. But it has also introduced many doubts and much scepticism. I wonder, for example, if so-called gender theory is not an expression of frustration and resignation, that aims to cancel out sexual difference as it is no longer able to face it. Yes, we run the risk of taking step backwards. Indeed, the removal of difference is the problem, not the solution. To solve their problems in relating to each other, men and women must instead speak more, listen more, know each other better, value each other more. They must treat each other with respect and cooperate in friendship. With these human bases, supported by God’s grace, it is possible to plan a lifelong matrimonial and family union. The marriage and family bond is a serious matter for all, not only for believers. I would like to encourage intellectuals not to ignore this theme, as if it were secondary to our efforts to promote a freer and more just society.

(source: VIS news – Holy See Press Office: General audience: the complementarity between man and woman)

Reflections

Cathedral Stones Into LEGO Bricks: A Quick Guide to the Alchemy of Deconstruction

Deconstruction, on its own terms, is a very complex and interesting way of working with words which, in the end, yields whatever the strong reader is able to conjure from his own most profound commitments sans whatever she suspects of being construed to privilege some suspect or alien authority.  It is, in short, intrinsically interesting and useful in displaying the deep prejudices of those who practice it, and unfortunately, except for those who practice it to the point of radical commitment to a really true, good, and beautiful Cause–thereby ceasing to be deconstructive critics–ultimately useless.

I am sad to say I probably devoted too much of my life to demonstrating my acuity with this method, and happy to say I really did fight “out the other end” into what lies beyond words, the grace of my baptism propelling me through fidelity to the Word into discovering its coordinate Sacrament.  And I am happy to say that deep familiarity with this way of reading and writing is often very useful in the intellectual climate of late modernity (however much I may find fault with them, no good Marxist, existentialist, or post-structuralist is wrong about everything; and in fact there are insights I cannot imagine gleaning without them).  In fact, I cannot easily imagine how, without passing through the forest of deconstruction, I could have reached the gleaming city we never dreamed of on the plains where I grew up.  So I am grateful for this wasting and wandering, for it led me here.

Still, I think it is important to note that, from the perspective I have adopted since encountering the profound truth of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist–the mystery called “transubstantiation”–the basic “moves” of [the] deconstruction [of the logocentrism of the Western metaphysical tradition] are all encumbered with a too-easy acceptance of an Enlightenment depiction of knowing as typical of the Western tradition, itself based on an invisible assumption that the erroneous tradition past St. Thomas Aquinas is typical of the whole of that tradition (including Thomas).  I can hint a genealogy of the error quite briefly, in fact:   Continue reading »

Quotables, Reflections

Follow the Water

As a hart longs for flowing streams,
so longs my soul for thee, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?

My tears have been my food day and night,
while men say to me continually,
“Where is your God?”

These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul

(source: Psalm 42 RSVCE)

I’m thirsty, run out, spent, panting and ready to stampede toward the first hint of water.  I’m drinking my own salt tears, tears bitter with the taunts of those who seem right, who seem to be “on the right side of history,” but who I can only respond to by pouring out my soul–expending myself in service to what is true, beautiful, good, and trampled.  I thirst.

And as I am here, empty, thirsty, remembering my days of triumph and joy, I am overtaken by more water than I can handle, by the flash floods of your thundering goodness; your love looks more like the rapids I can’t handle, like the sea crashing over the heads of the haughty Egyptians, than like those cutesy photos of a deer sipping sweetly from some still pool:

I remember thee from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of thy cataracts;
all thy waves and thy billows have gone over me.

(source: Psalm 42 RSVCE)

And I remember what happens when you strike the rock, or obediently speak to Him.

The people found fault with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you find fault with me? Why do you put the Lord to the proof?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people murmured against Moses, and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand the rod with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, that the people may drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah and Mer′ibah, because of the faultfinding of the children of Israel, and because they put the Lord to the proof by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

(source: Exodus 17 RSVCE)

Reflections

one of the good ones

Good thoughts from a good teacher–a good Director of Religious Education–that our parish would surely wish to keep!

Jesus loves us. And he loves us not with a gooshy feel good love, but with a love that summons us to be the best that we can be: to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. This love can feel great at times, and other times, we want to say, “No thanks, I prefer option B.” In the past 5 years, his love for me has involved my husband’s kidney transplant, my son’s autism diagnosis, my hysterectomy, moving 3 times in 3 years, becoming an advocate for special needs, teaching full time, teaching not at all, becoming a parish office worker, and leaving again after I fell in love with parish work. God’s love is hard. And please don’t tell me about “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” because I can’t handle all of this, and I don’t handle all of it well.

(source: Truckin’ for the Lord)

From the other side of things, it’s hard to agree that she and her family “don’t handle all of it well,” but I know I wouldn’t like to borrow that list of challenges.  I don’t handle my own problems well, and not many of my problems would be worth mentioning in this company!

But every one of us, however ragged or smooth, do struggle; and we do find love in this struggle. Continue reading »

Public-Personal

More Like This, Oklahoma! HB 1721 becomes law

I’m proud to be an adopted son of Oklahoma, today.  Glad to be invited among those who pray, those who keep reality firmly in view, those who admit no exceptions to the dignity of humanity, those who take costly stands in difficult times; to live in a place where steps can be taken, and improved on, to right the wrongs that blight our society.  To make us a little less like the evils we alternately reprehend and patronize in “others” kept safely at bay by TV screens, book covers, and oceans.  

To free ourselves from “subtle conspiracies of worldliness” a little at a time.  Even if the steps are small.

Happy, that is, to read this story:

Oklahoma has become the second state to ban a common second-trimester abortion procedure that critics describe as dismembering a fetus.

Republican Gov. Mary Fallin signed the legislation Monday after it was overwhelmingly approved by the House and Senate. The abortion measure prohibits doctors from using forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a live fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces. Such instruments are used in dilation and evacuation procedures performed in the second trimester.

The bill would ban the procedure except when necessary to save a woman’s life. Critics say the procedure is often the safest to terminate pregnancies during the second trimester.

(source: Oklahoma governor signs measure banning abortion procedure | News OK)

Sure, neither AP nor News OK can quite handle the amount of torque required to treat such an obvious and wholesome (and still wholly inadequate) limitation on the brutal and gruesome slaughter of innocents–note that “critics” are cited twice, with opposite valences, without clear referents, and yet in both cases the drift of the sentence is that actually dismembering babies old enough to have members to be torn apart and crushed is somehow less serious and more justifiable than one would think, given untutored access to reality.  Reality, however, shines through; Continue reading »

Public-Personal

Beside the Point

I’m really not going to have much negative to say about this.  Nothing wrong with trying to see how little you can get by on:

Gwyneth Paltrow is trying out a new kind of diet.

The actress and lifestyle guru [OK, I’m chortling a bit at that–PGE], who regularly champions high-end healthy eating, wellness tips and luxury items on her Goop website and in her cookbooks, will spend the next week living, and cooking, on a food stamp budget.

Paltrow accepted celebrity chef Mario Batali’s call to participate in the Food Bank NYC Challenge, and will spend the next week making meals from just $29 worth of groceries, or $1.38 per meal.

(source: Gwyneth Paltrow is living on food stamps for a week – CBS News)

And it looks like the selections are pretty good (incidentally, Paltrow obviously has access to a better produce section than most food stamps recipients–but let’s don’t be spoilsports):

But here’s the thing:  I’ve gotten by on less than that, Continue reading »

Public-Personal

Some Welcome News

University of Chicago guidelines on academic freedom, now also adopted at Princeton:

It is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. Although the University greatly values civility, and although all members of the University community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.

(source: Princeton Votes for Academic Freedom | Robert P. George | First Things)