Christmas Bustle and Holiday Stress

Julie D. has a nice post up about the "proper" way to observe Advent. Here's the money paragraph, to my mind:

Come to think of it, Mary and Joseph must have had a hard time reflecting and waiting for Christ to come also. I bet they would have enjoyed some peace and quiet preparing for the baby. Instead they had to pack up, travel under less than ideal conditions amidst the hustle and bustle of a huge crowd, found nowhere to stay (and likely nothing much really good to eat) ... and then had a newborn baby to care for ... while Joseph had no work coming in to support the family. (Sounds strikingly like a modern-day Christmas nightmare doesn't it?) I bet in spite of all their holiness they were worrying plenty about the realities of daily life ... and probably because of all their holiness they still were full of joy and able to contemplate the true miracle in which they were privileged to take part (at least that's how my mind's eye vision works on the scenario).

Now, I deplore the commercialism of Christmas as much as the next St. Blog's Parishioner, but as those who are called to live in the world but not of it, doesn't it do us good to have a little something to resist? What better way to learn to sacrifice with a joyful spirit than to observe Advent and Christmas faithfully while not cracking down on the grandparents for buying a pile of gifts for the kiddies because they love them so? (Unless of course they're giving Barbies, at which I draw the line on grounds of taste, not expense.) I'm not much of a gift-giver myself, but it would be a true act of penance and a test of my generosity to buy presents for everyone in my family and get them there on time. For some, this comes naturally because they actually have a joyful spirit of giving. (Though most people I know who fall into this category also have far more disposable income than we do, so perhaps it's also a matter of sharing blessings.)

I'm not talking about those who give gifts and practice Christmas cheer because that's just what you do in December. If it's not a religious holiday for you, then don't celebrate Christmas and save yourself the stress! But there are many for whom Christmas as a religious observance is entirely compatible with the celebratory aspect of the holiday: lavish giving of gifts and all-out home decoration and parties galore. That's not the way I prefer to do it, but I do need to step back from the idea that these aren't valid or authentic ways to express the joy of the season.

Why I Don't Believe in a Young Earth

Commenter Jeff asks on an otherwise unrelated post:

Suppose--just for the sake of argument--you were convinced that an honest reading of the Tradition of the Church required you to believe that the initial chapters of Genesis were historical. Would you be able to do it, or do you think that Darwinism is so irrefutable that you would have to abandon or radically redetermine your faith?

I think this is the question that worries a lot of Catholics without a strong scientific background as they watch the evolution/creationist/ID debate on Catholic blogs. Here are these otherwise solid Christians taking common cause with the likes of the Richard Dawkins against their brother Christians. What gives? Are these folks really Christian? Do they care more about science than about faith? Do they only accept Catholicism so long as it agrees with science?

To the extent that one is confident that one's scientific understanding of the physical world is accurate, a religion's agreement or rejection of science can certainly affect one's judgment of the religion. Augustine, in the Confessions, writes of how he was initially leary of Christianity because some of the apologists he heard endorsed cosmological models he knew to be false. Once again, one of the factors that caused him to reject Manichaeanism was that his questions about physics and cosmology were put off with cheap rhetorical tactics rather than knowledge and substantive explanation.

The reason I would be troubled if I "were convinced that an honest reading of the Tradition of the Church required you to believe that the initial chapters of Genesis were historical" is not because I think that "Darwinism is so irrefutable that you would have to abandon or radically redetermine your faith" but rather that a whole host of fields from evolutionary biology and paleontology to geology, astronomy, physics and more all point to a very old universe. It is certainly true that I find the scientific evidence for the descent with modification of biological organisms to be quite convincing, but a truly literal/historical reading of Genesis such as Anglican Bishop Usher proposed in the 19th century (and which, I would argue, represented very much a 19th century approach to the Bible, at odds with the tradition of the Early Fathers and Medieval scholars) requires much more than the rejection of the details of the current evolutionary synthesis.

For instance, we know that light travels at a set speed of approximately 186,282 miles per second. For various reasons subject to fairly rigorous mathematical proof, we believe that various astronomical objects that we can observer are hundreds of thousands or millions of light years (the distance that light can travel in one year) away from us. Were the universe only 6-10 thousand years old, we should not be able to see those objects. (This is but one example among literally thousands that point to an ancient universe.)

If someone asked me to believe that the universe was created ten thousand years ago, he would be asking me to believe that the physical world, as examined with our God-given senses and faculty of reason, is intensely misleading. Not just difficult to understand, but directly misleading.

Some suggested that these apparent inconsistencies are a mystery, to which faith must be applied. The Eucharist, after all, does not look like the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. You could perform no scientific test that would allow you to determine that a consecrated host is different from an unconsecrated one. Yet Christ, the Bible and the Church all tell us that while retaining the physical accidents of bread and wine, the consecrated bread and wine are in substance the body and blood of Our Lord. And this I believe, and believe without question. Should the necessity come, I pray that I would die in and for that believe in union with all the holy martyrs throughout history.

However, I would maintain that the Eucharist is fundamentally different from the question of the creation of the universe. Christ told his disciples that unless they ate his flesh and drank his blood there would be no life in him. His disciples said "this is a hard saying" and some left him over it. Christ specifically presented the mystery of the Eucharist as something which runs contrary to our perceptions yet is necessary for our salvation. If Christ has put forward the doctrine that the earth was created within the last 10,000 years (contrary to all appearances) as a mystery of our salvation, then as in the case of the Eucharist we would be called to set aside the evidence of reason and our sense and believe Him. However, he did not. Nor, honestly, can I imagine why a young earth would be a necessary mystery of salvation -- unless one adheres to what are traditionally Protestant standards of biblical interpretation in which the "plain meaning" of every passage of the Bible is necessarily true.

Circling back to Jeff's original question, I hope this at least provides some understanding of how I (as an orthodox Catholic who also is very attached to the findings of modern science) look at the issue. Honestly, the question of what I would think if the Tradition of the Church required a literal/historical interpretation of Genesis barely makes sense to me, since it seems to me that one of the great signs of wisdom in the Church (as opposed to the many sects that have broken off from her) is that she melds faith and reason so well in this regard -- and has throughout her history. It's not so much that I find the Fathers and Doctors of the Church silent in regard to whether it is possible that the history and cosmology of the universe are not literally as described in Genesis, but rather that it seems to me that they are nearly universally in agreement (when they address the matter) that Genesis is not primarily a historical or scientific narrative. Aquinas and Augustine both seem to agree that it is not only possible but indeed likely that the history and cosmology of Genesis are not literally true.

I am certainly willing to believe mysteries of the faith which are beyond any scientific proof -- and contrary to any scientific data -- (such as the Eucharist) but I simply cannot see how the creation of the universe is a mystery of this sort.

Goblet of Fire

After another absolutely insane, wall-to-all kind of day at the office (thus, no posts) yesterday MrsDarwin and made a long scheduled trip out to see the latest Harry Potter movie. (Babysitting takes some getting around here.)

Overall, quite good, I thought. Patrick Boyle (composer for all Kenneth Branagh films and also for Gosford Park, among others) was a nice replacement for the traditional John Williams score. Cutting down the second longest of the books, I thought the director/screenwriter made a good choice to drop a number of entire sub-plots rather than trying to cram everything in as the first couple movies did.

As the shadows lengthen around Harry and it becomes evident that another dark time or magical civil war is descending in this and the next two books, it strikes me how lucky and unusual we are in our current time, in that we live in comparatively peaceful times. The WSJ had a review of a new biography of Siegfried Sassoon, and it struck me how much rougher a time someone had living from the 1880s to the 1960s than people born in the 60s and 70s here in the US. There's no telling what lies ahead, but despite the cultural and moral decline (and the looming threat of Islamofascism) we really do have it terribly easy, and every sign of continuing to have it so.

An Interrogator on Torture

Mark Shea (under the guidance of the sagacious David Curp) links to a letter posted on The Corner:

I am opposed to torture under all circumstances, and there should be laws against it. Those who break them, should be punished. As a former Army Counterintelligence Agent, I conducted battlefield interrogations of enemy prisoners of war as well as strategic debriefings of higher value targets, and I've served in bad places where bad things will happen if you don't get the information.

On more than one occasion, I had discussions with some of our operators regarding the obtaining of information in the ticking bomb scenario. Our discussion ran along the lines of "It's against the law. It's against the UCMJ. We'd go to jail. But if we knew the bomb was ticking, and this guy had the information that could save dozens or hundreds or more people, or if the team (the operators and the unit) were going to be wiped out if we didn't get it, I'd whip out a hatchet and an entrenching tool and go to work on him." We were comfortable with this fairly horrible ambiguity and the bad consequences that would accompany it only because the military ethos was to sacrifice ourselves for others, and the notion of incurring legal jeopardy to save others struck us as a righteous cause, but it had to be predicated on the necessity of the ticking bomb. We did not want torture legalized. We did not want a guide book. We were fine with the notion we'd be punished had we ever used it - we never got into the neighborhood, much less seriously considering using it on anybody, BTW, we were just prepared to do what we had to do because it occurred to use that we could be in that position. There are some things that are too horrible to give a moral and legal imprimatur to, and torture is one of them, just as the law doesn't permit cannibalism but won't convict shipwrecked sailors and air crashed rugby players for engaging in it. We know these taboo and downright wrong practices sometimes rear their heads for good reason, but they are animalistic behaviors that come from a bestial place in the human soul, and no civilized society can long withstand a handshake deal with such beasts. Better to keep them caged.

Well said, indeed, I think. And as I mentioned before, I think this well displays the inherent "two masters" danger of being a secular authority. In strictly worldly terms, it is indeed your job to do what is necessary to protect those under your charge. In terms of the salvation of your eternal soul, it is necessary that you avoid sin, no matter what the consequences.

Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess

This has been one of those days, and it's sure not slowing down yet, but since I'm not looking like writing anything insightful today, here's someone who wrote a few insightful things four hundred years ago.

These are some extracts from Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, in which he sought to explain what he believed was the proper relationship of science and scripture. Note that Galileo works from good sources, letting St. Augustine do most of his theological heavy lifting for him.

The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still. Since the Bible cannot err; it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone takes a erroneous and heretical position who maintains that the sun is inherently motionless and the earth movable.

With regard to this argument, I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth-whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare words signify. Hence in expounding the Bible if one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error. Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and follies. Thus it would be necessary to assign to God feet, hands and eyes, as well as corporeal and human affections, such as anger, repentance, hatred, and sometimes even the forgetting of things past and ignorance of those to come. These propositions uttered by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities, Of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. For the sake of those who deserve to be separated from the herd, it is necessary that wise expositors should produce the true senses of such passages, together with the special reasons for which they were set down in these words. This doctrine is so widespread and so definite with all theologians that it would be superfluous to adduce evidence for it.

Hence I think that I may reasonably conclude that whenever the Bible has occasion to speak of any physical conclusion (especially those which are very abstruse and hard to understand), the rule has been observed of avoiding confusion in the minds of the common people which would render them contumacious toward the higher mysteries. Now the Bible, merely to condescend to popular capacity, has not hesitated to obscure some very important pronouncements, attributing to God himself some qualities extremely remote from (and even contrary to) His essence. Who, then, would positively declare that this principle has been set aside, and the Bible has confined itself rigorously to the bare and restricted sense of its words, when speaking but casually of the earth, of water, of the sun, or of any other created thing? Especially in view of the fact that these things in no way concern the primary purpose of the sacred writings, which is the service of God and the salvation of souls - matters infinitely beyond the comprehension of the common people.

This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense­experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense­experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature's actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible. Perhaps this is what Tertullian meant by these words:

We conclude that God is known first through Nature, and then again, more particularly, by doctrine, by Nature in His works, and by doctrine in His revealed word.

From this I do not mean to infer that we need not have an extraordinary esteem for the passages of holy Scripture. On the contrary, having arrived at any certainties in physics, we ought to utilize these as the most appropriate aids in the true exposition of the Bible and in the investigation of those meanings which are necessarily contained therein, for these must be concordant with demonstrated truths. I should judge that the authority of the Bible was designed to persuade men of those articles and propositions which, surpassing all human reasoning could not be made credible by science, or by any other means than through the very mouth of the Holy Spirit.

Yet even in those propositions which are not matters of faith, this authority ought to be preferred over that of all human writings which are supported only by bare assertions or probable arguments, and not set forth in a demonstrative way. This I hold to be necessary and proper to the same extent that divine wisdom surpasses all human judgment and conjecture.

But I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations. This must be especially true in those sciences of which but the faintest trace (and that consisting of conclusions) is to be found in the Bible. Of astronomy; for instance, so little is found that none of the planets except Venus are so much as mentioned, and this only once or twice under the name of "Lucifer." If the sacred scribes had had any intention of teaching people certain arrangements and motions of the heavenly bodies, or had they wished us to derive such knowledge from the Bible, then in my opinion they would not have spoken of these matters so sparingly in comparison with the infinite number of admirable conclusions which are demonstrated in that science. Far from pretending to teach us the constitution and motions of the heavens and other stars, with their shapes, magnitudes, and distances, the authors of the Bible intentionally forbore to speak of these things, though all were quite well known to them. Such is the opinion of the holiest and most learned Fathers, and in St. Augustine we find the following words:

It is likewise commonly asked what we may believe about the form and shape of the heavens according to the Scriptures, for many contend much about these matters. But with superior prudence our authors have forborne to speak of this, as in no way furthering the student with respect to a blessed life-and, more important still, as taking up much of that time which should be spent in holy exercises. What is it to me whether heaven, like a sphere surrounds the earth on all sides as a mass balanced in the center of the universe, or whether like a dish it merely covers and overcasts the earth? Belief in Scripture is urged rather for the reason we have often mentioned; that is, in order that no one, through ignorance of divine passages, finding anything in our Bibles or hearing anything cited from them of such a nature as may seem to oppose manifest conclusions, should be induced to suspect their truth when they teach, relate, and deliver more profitable matters. Hence let it be said briefly, touching the form of heaven, that our authors knew the truth but the Holy Spirit did not desire that men should learn things that are useful to no one for salvation.

The same disregard of these sacred authors toward beliefs about the phenomena of the celestial bodies is repeated to us by St. Augustine in his next chapter. On the question whether we are to believe that the heaven moves or stands still, he writes thus:

Some of the brethren raise a question concerning the motion of heaven, whether it is fixed or moved. If it is moved, they say, how is it a firmament? If it stands still, how do these stars which are held fixed in it go round from east to west, the more northerly performing shorter circuits near the pole, so that the heaven (if there is another pole unknown to us) may seem to revolve upon some axis, or (if there is no other pole) may be thought to move as a discus? To these men I reply that it would require many subtle and profound reasonings to find out which of these things is actually so; but to undertake this and discuss it is consistent neither with my leisure nor with the duty of those whom I desire to instruct in essential matters more directly conducing to their salvation and to the benefit of the holy Church.

From these things it follows as a necessary consequence that, since the Holy Ghost did not intend to teach us whether heaven moves or stands still, whether its shape is spherical or like a discus or extended in a plane, nor whether the earth is located at its center or off to one side, then so much the less was it intended to settle for us any other conclusion of the same kind. And the motion or rest of the earth and the sun is so closely linked with the things just named, that without a determination of the one, neither side can be taken in the other matters. Now if the Holy Spirit has purposely neglected to teach us propositions of this sort as irrelevant to the highest goal (that is, to our salvation), how can anyone affirm that it is obligatory to take sides on them, that one belief is required by faith, while the other side is erroneous? Can an opinion be heretical and yet have no concern with the salvation of souls? Can the Holy Ghost be asserted not to have intended teaching us something that does concern our salvation? I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree: "That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven. not how heaven goes."

But let us again consider the degree to which necessary demonstrations and sense experiences ought to be respected in physical conclusions, and the authority they have enjoyed at the hands of holy and learned theologians. From among a hundred attestations I have selected the following:

We must also take heed, in handling the doctrine of Moses. that we altogether avoid saying positively and confidently anything which contradicts manifest experiences and the reasoning of philosophy or the other sciences. For since every truth is in agreement with all other truth, the truth of Holy Writ cannot be contrary to the solid reasons and experiences of human knowledge.

And in St. Augustine we read:

If anyone shall set the authority of Holy Writ against clear and manifest reason, he who does this knows not what he has undertaken; for he opposes to the truth not the meaning of the Bible, which is beyond his comprehension, but rather his own interpretation, not what is in the Bible, but what he has found in himself and imagines to be there.

This granted, and it being true that two truths cannot contradict one another, it is the function of expositors to seek out the true senses of scriptural texts. These will unquestionably accord with the physical conclusions which manifest sense and necessary demonstrations have previously made certain to us. Now the Bible, as has been remarked, admits in many places expositions that are remote from the signification of the words for reasons we have already given. Moreover, we are unable to affirm that all interpreters of the Bible speak by Divine inspiration for if that were so there would exist no differences among them about the sense of a given passage. Hence I should think it would be the part of prudence not to permit anyone to usurp scriptural texts and force them in some way to maintain any physical conclusion to be true, when at some future time the senses and demonstrative or necessary reasons may show the contrary. Who indeed will set bounds to human ingenuity? Who will assert that everything in the universe capable of being perceived is already discovered and known? Let us rather confess quite truly that "Those truths which we know are very few in comparison with those which we do not know."

Kids and cold

"I'm cold. You go put on a sweater."

That's how it is here. I have a low tolerance for being chilly, and it even makes me cold to see dolls laying around with no clothes on. Why, then, is it that my daughters find it perfectly comfortable to run around in ballet leotards or sundresses or nothing but their skivvies? I'm flipping through the Lands' End catalogue dreaming of fleece slippers, and they're dancing around with bare arms and legs and toes. It makes me shiver just looking at them.

Part of the problem is that they're both such clothes horses. I dress them warmly, and half an hour later they've changed into dresses. Babs is a great believer in dressing for the occasion: she changes for lunch, for dinner, for bed, and once or twice in the afternoon just for kicks. She doesn't always pick appropriate outfits, but she has her own sense of style, and if I choose an outfit that offends, I hear all about it.

At least I haven't seen the girls in white shoes after Labor Day.

It's Worth Living

An Examined Life is back and active after lying quiet for a couple weeks.

Keeping the Little House

Noogs and I have have finished our read-aloud of Little House in the Big Woods. Of the many things that struck me while reading it, one was the sheer efficiency of Ma and the pioneer housekeepers. Under primitive conditions Ma instilled manners and a respect for authority in her children, tended the garden, fed the livestock, kept her house clean, washed her laundry by hand, sewed their clothes (again, by hand), and coped with the loneliness of the solitary life of a pioneer woman. I was left to meditate on my own shortcomings as a housekeeper (brought on mostly by my own poor management of time and lack of absolute necessity) and I pondered whether or not I should succumb to a thoroughly 21st century inferiority complex.

On further consideration, I decided against the complex. (I don't manage my time well enough to waste it on being depressed.) How, I wondered, did Ma get everything done without going insane? Well, let's start with the housecleaning. Our house is small to moderate by modern standards -- 1800 sq. ft. We've accumulated stuff over the years, and the process has been accelerated by having children who receive toys for their birthdays and Christmas. Well, the little house was just that -- one bedroom, one living room, a pantry, a storage attic. That's not a lot of space to clean. The advent of modern plastics has allowed for a glut of basically useless toys -- I mean, Little People are cute and occupy the kids for a while, but do they really serve any purpose?

So, if my house were reduced to about the size of my living room and dining room and all the useless knick-knacks and toys and stuff were removed, I'd have a lot less cleaning to do. We'd have to reduce our book stash, of course.

Now, for laundry -- I spend most of my time either doing it or avoiding it. Little socks, underwear, all the t-shirts and leggings and dresses and sweaters -- and that's just the girls' clothes. Let's take it back to the 1870s: two or three day-to-day dresses for the girls, plus one for dressing up. Same for me. A few shirts and trousers for Darwin, along with a few vests. A couple pairs of drawers for everyone. I may have to wash it by hand, but the volume has decreased drastically. Plus, the girls and I wear aprons and pinafores so we don't wear out our clothes any faster than necessary, and this cuts down on stains as well. We may only take a bath once a week (though sometimes that's not much different than life with small children now :)) but we would be used to that.

These differences don't trump everything, of course. But how much more time would I have to spend on gardening, sewing, cheese-making, hat-making, and baking if I weren't distracted by technology? No wasting time on the computer, no distracting telephone calls, no t.v. at nights. I could have washed all my dishes by hand in the time it's taken me to write this so far. On the other hand, the girls have just fallen asleep in front of the t.v. (while watching a DVD of the moon landing, no less!) so I'm going to use this precious quiet time to -- knit.

Torture, Sin and The Law

Fr. Neuhaus of First Things has an interesting take (second item down) on Charles Krauthammer's much debated article on torture in the Weekly Standard, in which Krauthammer asserts that in certain extreme circumstances the use of torture might be not only morally acceptable, but necessary.

It strikes me that one of the things that is often lost of us in our modern age, even on many good Catholics, is the dichotomy between being "of this world" and being "of the next". In Dante's Purgatorio, he encounters in ante-purgatory the valley of the pre-occupied, many of them political and military leaders.

The souls in ante-purgatory are those who, while in the end choosing God, not only need to purge away their sins from this world, but before they can even begin the process of purification must reorient themselves toward God -- something which, whether through sloth, late repentance or distraction they failed to do in this life. (Those who died under excommunication occupy a lower level of ante-purgatory, and must wait a period of time determined by their period of unrepentant excommunication before they can be admitted to the higher levels.)

It was commonly agreed upon in Dante's time that devoting one's energy to being a good ruler might well detract from one's ability to be a good person. With the advent of a great emphasis on Church social teaching and improving the lot of the residents of this world, this view seems to have lost emphasis, if not been totally discarded.

On the one had, people assert that as a Christian a ruler should in all cases do that which is morally right -- even if the results for his secular charge (the state) are negative. On the other hand, others assert that whatever doing whatever is best for one's country must in and of itself be moral.

According to Neuhaus, McCain seems to have avoided both of these approaches and hearkened back to a more medieval approach. In interviews, McCain has said that although he believes that interrogation tactics that fall under or close to the definition of torture should be illegal, he nonetheless expects that should the oft-suggested "ticking bomb" circumstance come about, that government officials would in fact authorize tactics in violation of his proposed law. The point, he feels, is that in such a circumstance the officials in question should have to weigh the likelihood of gaining truly essential information that might save millions of lives against the possible repercussions of breaking the law.

I agree with Neuhaus that McCain is probably on the right track here. (I'm not speaking necessarily about the details of his proposed amendment, on which I'm not an expert, but rather on the general principle that torture should be universally illegal.) Torturing a suspect, even someone you're sure is guilty and has information that could save countless lives is nonetheless morally wrong. To the extent that it is a moral good for the laws of our country to reflect the moral law, we should therefore outlaw the use of torture in such a situation.

And yet, it is unquestionably true that someone who is entirely devoted to the good of the state (even to the possible exclusion of the good of his soul) would ignore this law under truly extreme circumstances. Depending on what this person did and whether he was right, it may well be that the country and God would choose to forgive that person for his crime rather than punishing him. Although a wrong done for a good cause is no less wrong, it is more readily forgivable than a wrong done for the sake of doing wrong.

This is the dichotomy that Dante deals with in describing the valley of the pre-occupied. These are the people who devoted themselves primarily to preserving mortal lives and mortal institutions, even when the means necessary to do so were contrary to God's laws. They set their sights on worldly goods rather than eternal goods. They sacrificed their time, their energy and even in many cases their lives for goods that were not the highest good, using means that were not the highest means.

The sacrifices such people make "to protect and to serve" worldy institutions should not be underestimated. And they deserve respect for what they do. But it is at the same time essential to remember that just because an action is the best or only possible way to preserve a country or a life does not necessarily mean that it is the right thing to do. Sometimes we are placed in situations where following God's law means giving up one's land, power, or life. This is when we are faces with the difficult truth of Christ's statement that a man cannot serve two masters.

Dante's solution to is to affirm that serving the good of the state can mean neglecting God's law, yet at the same time seeing that true faithfulness even to a worldly master is still pleasing to God, though imperfect and in need of purification.

Hef's World

James Pinkerton of TCS (who has written before about the demographics of the abortion debate) offers an interesting analysis of why Maureen Dowd is unhappy, and Hugh Hefner is not.

Essentially, women like Down have accepted the operating principles of "Hef's World". The catch is, although acting like the baser sort of men was supposed to be liberating, Dowd finds herself unhappy with the results, while Hefner, one assumes, does not.

Survivors

The UK Daily Mail reports that about fifty babies are born in the UK each year after surviving botched abortions at 22 weeks or later. (Abortion is available on demand in the UK up to 24 weeks.)

The debate over abortion was reignited last night after it emerged that 50 babies survive botched terminations in Britain every year.

The figures are the first to show the true scale of a problem thought to have been confined to just a handful of babies.

Now some of the country's leading doctors will investigate how so many survived to be born after just 22 weeks of pregnancy. Shockingly, some of the babies may have gone through more than one abortion....

Doctors in Norwich are treating a toddler born at 24 weeks after three botched terminations.

The boy, now aged two, has a range of medical problems. Cemach's report to the Department of Health could see Britain's abortion procedures being overhauled.
Currently, abortions at 22 weeks of pregnancy and above involve the fatal injection of a chemical into the baby's heart while it is still in the womb.

Any babies that survive the procedure, and are born alive, are entitled to medical care. However, anti-abortion campaigners claim that some are so unwanted that they are simply left to die.

Last night, one of Britain's leading obstetricians accused the doctors who carried out botched abortions of 'sub-standard' medicine.

Yes, well. Many of us would indeed consider killing the patient to be "sub-standard" medicine. I wonder how much this happens in the US? (We have more people and more abortions, so I assume it happens more -- though I don't know if we're as merciful with those who survive their attempted executions.)

What happens to these poor children, I wonder? Are they usually put up for adoption or do they remain with their reluctant parents? What does it do to a person to know that your parents tried to kill you before they even knew you?

UPDATE: Amy Welborn links to a more detailed article about this in The Times.

Top Ten Influences Meme

This actually took me quite a bit of thinking, which I imagine means that it was good for me. I'm a rather bookish person, and so most of my biggest influences are authors or books. For good or ill, most of the greatest influences in my life (beyond my wife and immediate family) are books, not people.

The Top Ten Influences (excluding God and family) Meme (inflicted by Pro Ecclesia and Fr. Martin Fox)

These start out in chronological order and then are just in any old order at all.

1. I'm going to break the family rule right off, because this does deserve a place. Arguably the single greatest influence on my life was my youngest brother, Jonathon, who died of SIDS on the morning of Epiphany when I was seven. It is fairly rare these days for a child of seven to experience the reality that death can come at any time to any person -- even someone younger than himself. Some people don't seem to hit that realization till they're in their forties... I think it also probably pushed me hard in the direction of self sufficiency from a young age. In a family tragedy like that, your parents certainly provide lots of support and comfort, but at the same time you can sense that they have their own sorrow to deal with.

2. Greek & Norse Mythology -- I still have on the shelf the copy of Gods & Heroes from Viking Mythology by Brian Branston which I was given for my fifth birthday. This and a similar large illustrated book of Greek mythology were standard read-alouds in my family as far back as I can remember. Looking back, I think one of the things I got from hearing so much pagan mythology at a young age was that often fate deals you lousy cards, and heroism consists of dealing well with a bad situation. I don't "believe in fate" the way people do when they say that something is "meant to happen", but I certainly believe that there is no guarantee that you will be as happy as you want to be in life. Sometimes we're placed in situations (see above) where the best you can do is suffer well.

3. The NRA -- For my tenth birthday, I desperately wanted an air rifle. The ruling was that if I checked out enough books from the library to fully understand gun function and safety that I could have one -- with the understanding that if I ever violated these safety rules I would lose the air rifle. By age ten, I was already a voracious reader, so once I got started reading about guns, I didn't really stop. Before long I got into reading American Rifleman (the NRA's magazine) every month at the library. The NRA's second amendment advocacy and somewhat libertarian approach to conservatism was in many way the first introduction to American politics. The NRA certainly didn't remain my primary interest in politics (In fact, although I now own several guns I've never become a member.) and I quickly got into listening to conservative talk radio and such instead, but it was the beginning.

4. Plato -- I first encountered Plato in the Great Books based high school curriculum my parents put me through, and read him again in my college honors program and in various classics and philosophy classes. Certain of Plato's arguments, like the argument in Euthyphro for the existence of the ideal "good" and "justice" (which, as Aquinas would point out, is what we mean by "God") have become central to my faith. The dialogue form also made a great impression on me. And some of Plato's images (such as the cave in Republic) are hauntingly memorable and seem to sum up much of out intellectual predicament on this earth.

5. Tolkien -- I've read all of Tolkien's major works numerous times, and his imagery is very much part of my intellectual and artistic vocabulary. However The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are probably not the biggest influences on me, though I love both and have read them a number of times. The Silmarillion is a truly brilliant synthesis of Christian imagery expressed through the medium of pagan myth. My father must have read the creation story from the Silmarillion to me at a very young age, because for years I actually thought it was part of the Bible. My other favorite Tolkien work is The Smith of Wooten Major, a story which I have (I can't say why) always associated with death and the afterlife.

6. Waugh -- Brideshead Revisited is easily one of the single most influential books in my life. I've read it numerous times, and many of its themes have molded my relationship with and understanding of Catholicism.

7. Stephen Jay Gould -- In case no on has noticed, evolution evolution is one of my interests... Gould is not a brilliant writer by any stretch, though his popular books and collections of essays are well worth reading a show a wide ranging set of intellectual interests. One particular essay of his, however, have very much stayed with me: his piece on Nonoverlapping Magisteria, which he later expanded into the book Rocks of Ages. Gould doesn't fully understand the concept of a world with multiple levels of meaning, but for an atheist he does a good and very honest job of trying to give both religion and science their own separate and important spheres, and explain the differences between these two types knowledge. It's far from perfect, but it's noble and under-appreciated effort.

8. John Paul II -- I was born during the first year of John Paul II's pontificate, so it goes without saying that he in many ways defines the modern papacy for me. While the importance of the papacy is the protection from error which Christ promised Peter and his successors, at the human level it must have been very different to experience Paul VI's reign during one's formative years rather than John Paul II's. However, it's not the World Youth Day "rock star" side of John Paul II's papacy that strongly affected me, but rather his personalist philosophy as applied to the question of human sexuality. Love and Responsibility (which I've read twice) and Theology of the Body (which I keep trying to read but stalling out on) lay out an understanding of sexuality that takes the Church's historical understanding of the human person and runs with it to produce a much more sophisticated set of sexual ethics than found in Aquinas or Augustine.

9. Dante -- I've read the Divine Comedy three times now, though I know I would benefit from doing so again. There is no greater work of Catholic literature. To follow it, a decent set of commentary is needed, especially the first time through. My own favorite by a long way is Dorothy Sayers' translation and commentary. Don't just stop with the Inferno either. The Purgatorio is arguably the best volume, and the Paradiso is also well worth reading. Nor should Dante be seen as the nasty old medieval condemning people to hell. The thing people forget is that the Divine Comedy is first and foremost an account of Dante's own conversion from sin to repentance and thence to grace.

10. Origen -- I read Origen in Stuebenville's great books based Honors Program. Nearly everyone else in the class hated him -- writing him off as a heretic. For me, he was possibly the most interesting of the early fathers. I read his Commentary on the Song of Songs and On First Principles. On First Principles is interesting, but it was the Commentary that really fascinated me. This was my first encounter with biblical criticism that went beyond what the author meant, indeed to meanings which the author could most certainly not have meant. Here, within two hundred years of the time of Christ and long before Constantine or the Council of nice, we find a well formed understanding of the multiple sense of scripture and a very sophisticated melding of ancient pagan thought with Christian theology -- though given the early date of origin's work, some of his conclusions (especially in On First Principles) would later be deemed article. Reading Aquinas and Augustine during high school, I hadn't seen theology and biblical criticism in particular as being as imaginative as Origen made it. Certainly, Aquinas states (more clearly than Origen) the four senses of scripture. Reading Origen, however, made me understand what interpreting scripture at different levels actually looked like.

And there it is.

I hesitate to "tag" anyone, being a self professed non-lover of memes, but I'd be really curious to see Erin of Bearing Blog, Bernard of A Little Light from the East, and Michael of Sacramentum Vitae list their top ten influences.

Vinegar Pie -- Update

For them as wants to know:

The vinegar pie was quite interesting. It did cook up nicely, and my meringue browned prettily and puffed up, though after two days in the fridge it beaded and fell. As MrsDrP remarked, it was somewhat like a lemon pie, without the lemon. (Mine held together very nicely and sliced well -- maybe it was the extra refrigeration?) It did have a pronounced vinegar tang that turned off many of my tasters, though Darwin was actually a big fan of it. (He's not really into sweetness, flavorwise.) But the meringue was popular, if not aesthetically perfect.

I can't say that I'd necessarily make it again, though I'm glad I tried it once. I think I'd rather have a lemon pie -- I think the flavors balance out much better there. But if you were living in the woods of Wisconsin 130 years ago and didn't have lemons available, this is a fairly close facsimile. Try it once, just to say you've had vinegar pie like Ma Ingalls made in the Big Woods. Then be glad you live in 2005.

Happy Thanksgiving to our Loyal Readership

May you all have a blessed Thanksgiving and avoid the sin of gluttony...

Things I'm thankful for at this moment: that Darwin is getting to sleep in without little girls rousting on his head; for Noogs singing in the bathroom (she's enacting scenes from Wallace and Gromit with toothbrushes); that even though I left my pumpkin pie sitting on top of the stove all night it didn't go bad because I left the window open as well (brr!); that I have a comfortable house, even if right now it's an unholy mess.

In the spirit of sharing, here is the recipe for my mother's cornbread stuffing. It's not Thanksgiving dinner for me without it.

• 2 boxes Jiffy cornbread mix, enough to make a 9x13 pan of cornbread (you can make your own, but the sweetness of the Jiffy works well with the stuffing; I prefer it.)
• 2 c. celery, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 c. onions or scallions (I often use green onions)
• giblets from turkey to make broth (or 1 can, about 2 c., chicken broth)
• 1 stick butter
  
• 1 Tbs. parsley
• 1/2 tsp. basil
• 1/4 tsp. sage
• 1/4 tsp. thyme
• 1/4 tsp oregano

1. Bake cornbread and put it into a large bowl. Don't crumble it too much yet.
2. Boil giblets and neck to make turkey broth (my mom says just cover them with water, but it works out to be about 2 cups.) Alternatively, boil chicken broth.
   
3. Add celery, bell pepper, onions, and butter to broth; boil until tender.
4. If using giblets and if desired, chop up giblets and neck meat and add to corn bread.
5. Add all seasonings to cornbread along with salt and pepper to taste, mix.
6. Pour broth with vegetables over cornbread mixture and stir just until everything is moistened. This can be refrigerated for several days (makes great leftovers!) or you can put it in a pan, dot the top with butter, and heat through. Serves lots.

Bon appetit!

Reckless Driving Comments Prove the Vatican Just Doesn't Care

You may think that the flap over the document about homosexuality and the priesthood was much ado about not that much, but Speculative Catholic has the scoop on an even less significant brouhaha:

Responding to Pope Benedict XVI's comments that reckless driving was a "social evil", reckless driving advocates declared that it was the beginning of a witch hunt against reckless drivers, that recklessness was a gift from God, and that it would make reckless drivers in the priesthood feel unwelcome.The Pope's comments made it clear that while he had the utmost respect for the reckless, they should not act upon their reckless instinct, but instead live lives of sensibility.Reckless spokesperson Evil Knievel said that the idea that recklessness could be a transitory adolescent phenomenon was outdated. Debate continues to rage over whether recklessness is genetic or acquired trait.

Given that most Americans have latent tendencies to reckless driving and that many choose to act on them, I wonder what effect this will have on the American Church? Will the USCCB issue a statement? Will the pundits froth?

All the Meme that's fit to print

More meme madness from Rick: I've been tagged with the Birthday Meme. You find your birthday verse in each gospel. I've used the New Jerusalem Bible.

Matthew 12:5
Or again, have you not read in the Law that on the sabbath day the Temple priests break the sabbath without being blamed for it?

Mark 12:5
And he sent another and him they killed; then a number of others, and they thrashed some and killed the rest.

Luke 12:5
"Master," Simon replied, "we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets."

John 12:5
"Why wasn't this ointment sold for three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor?"

I haven't analysed these verses for a theme, but I do hope you all will note that my birthday is fast approaching and will make arrangements for the festivities.

Are you done yet?

One of my violin students was picked up yesterday afternoon by her father's fiancee, with whom I only have a nodding acquaintance at church. She congratulated me on my pregnancy and asked, "Is this it for you?" When I replied, "No, I hope not," she was genuinely surprised.

"Oh, so you want one more?"

Well, I said, I hoped to have several more. I explained that I had five siblings myself, and so it was hard to imagine having less. She laughed and said that she was an only child. When I told her that I was having a girl, it all made sense.

"Then you're going to try for a boy?"

I'd like a boy one day, but it wouldn't matter to me if the next baby was a boy or a girl. After all, my girls are very excited about having a sister with whom to play tea party and princesses.

These are socially awkward question -- not because I have a hard time answering, "No, I hope not,", but because they're not polite things to ask. I've heard them enough that I have a ready answer (see above), but they still jar each time.

The personal question is ubiquitous these days, and more often than not is asked by relative strangers. I'm not sure why reproductive questions should considered within the bounds of tasteful conversation. After all, medical questions about appearances are generally taboo.

"So, do you plan on having your stomach stapled?"

"You know, you should consider having your face waxed."

"Let me recommend my dentist. He can do wonders, even with teeth like yours."

Perhaps the reproductive question is a sign that reproduction and family still have some significance, culturally and ideologically. If you see a family with more than four children, you'd be pretty safe in betting the farm that they follow some strain of conservative religion. It's one of the most obvious ways to announce your personal beliefs without saying a word.

That's why the I found the idea of the remake of "Cheaper by the Dozen" so jarring. (No, I didn't see it; it sounded like a pale comparison to the original.) Nobody just HAS twelve children anymore. Outside of a religious lifestyle, nobody CHOOSES to have twelve children. It simply isn't done in Western culture these days. Perhaps someone can point me to an islolated example, but for one secular family with six kids, I can point you to ten or more Catholic families with seven. And it's a pretty safe assumption that those Catholic mothers were asked each time, "Are you done yet?"

Library Overlap

It is, it seems, a small world. I spent a bunch of time adding books to LibraryThing this evening, and with 111 volumes cataloged so far, I am informed that Flos Carmeli's collection has the most overlap with ours out of all LibraryThing users -- and I haven't even hit our main religion section yet.

Authors held in common include Robertson Davies, Camus, Dickens, John Paul II, James Blaylock and Chesterton. I'm curious to see how this trend continues...

(Hope this doesn't seem too spooky of me Mr. Riddle.)

Living the Consequences

The folks on Amy Welborn's blog are discussing a situation where a 26-year-old single Pre-K teacher at a Catholic school was fired after she revealed to the principle that she was pregnant out of wedlock and had no intentions of marrying.

The NY Daily News covers the facts in a bit more detail here.

The debate, as usual in these situations, is over whether the need to present proper moral role models to elementary school children (and enforce a certain base level of Catholic morality among employees of Church institutions) outweights the desire not to create an environment in which it is more advantageous to a woman to have an abortion than to carry her child to term.

Commentor Neil quotes a study of the reasons women have abortions:

"The decision to have an abortion is typically motivated by diverse interrelated reasons. Nearly three-quarters of respondents indicated that they could not afford to have a child now, and large proportions mentioned responsibilities to children, partner issues and unreadiness to parent. The in-depth interviews revealed that these reasons are multiple dimensions of complicated life situations. For example, financial difficulties are often the result of lack of support from one's partner, or lack of a partner altogether; and the financial and emotional responsibility to provide for existing children without adequate resources makes it too hard for some women to care for another child."

The study thus concludes that most abortions occur because of financial necessity, not "convenience" as critics often accuse. I suspect this is mainly a matter of personal interpretation. I'm sure there are couple who, if in the financial position of the Darwin family and already possessed of two toddlers, would believe that it would be financially impossible for them to have another child.

However, the larger question is: How do you discourage pre-marital sex and any resulting out of wedlock pregnancies without encouraging abortion?

Historically, societies that have sought to discourage pre-marital sex have done so through some combination of punishing men who either take the virginity of women they are not married to or get pregnant women they are not married to and punishing women who either lose their virginity prior to marriage or get pregnant prior to marriage. The two approaches tend to go hand in hand to some extent, since if a woman is severely punished for violating her society's sexual mores, it is more likely that her friends or family will in turn punish the man responsible for putting her in the position to receive that punishment.

Of course, sometimes things break down, and a society chooses to punish almost exclusively one gender and not the other. This usually means punishing the woman for not "maintaining her virtue" and letting the man off with no more than the reputation of being a rake. This is clearly an injustice and should be avoided.

At the same time, if we assume that any single, pregnant woman who is placed in an uncomfortable situation by being pregnant will have an abortion, and that it is thus the duty of pro-life institutions to make sure she is not placed in an uncomfortable situation, we place ourselves an almost impossible task, in that the task of raising a child as a single parent is by definition a very difficult one. Further, human beings being the fallen creatures that we are, people tend to assume that if a particular action carries no visible penalty, that it can't be very wrong. In this sense, by creating an environment in which it a woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock suffers no obvious penalty, we would in essence send the message that acting in that way is basically "okay".

I suspect that in a fallen world achieving the right balance between enforcing rules that make moral lessons clear while treating individual sinners with love and compassion is impossible to get right all of the time. It's not the sort of thing that can be achieved by a blanket administrative policy. Real justice and mercy are necessarily individual.

Our current society tends very much towards the mercy side of the spectrum, especially in cases of sexual sin where (everyone hastens to point out) no crime has been committed. This is partly due to our horror at the incredible levels of suffering sometimes heaped upon unwed mothers and their children a hundred years or more ago -- the sort of thing that made led people describe loss of virginity before marriage to the "the fate worse than death" for a woman. Nonetheless, our efforts as a society to be more supportive of unwed mothers has (in combination with a number of other factors) led to unwed motherhood being very nearly the norm. Now around 40% of children born in the US each year are born to unwed mothers. And since there is a clear, inherent degree of suffering associated with having a child out of wedlock and growing up in a single parent family -- we have got rid of one type of suffering and replaced it with an even more widespread (though lower intensity) variety.

It bears thinking on.

The meme to end all memes

I'm just not into memes. In fact, I don't necessarily like them. (In that Far Side where the scientists are testing what will roll off a duck's back, Larson could have added, "Meme off a Darwin's back.") But a number of people that I do like have tagged me with them lately, so I'm going to hit them all in one post and be done with it.

The Confiteor Meme (inflicted by SpeculativeCatholic and The City of God)

I confess that I'm a snob about many things including but not limited to education, literature, movies, TV, cheese, beer, scotch, vodka, wine, shoes, shaving and the MacOS.

I confess that I don't have enough money to indulge all my snobbery, and so am often condemning things I am not above doing myself.

I confess that I am a classic over-committer, agreeing to do nearly anything that seems important and then struggling to get everything done.

I confess that I sometimes find the monkeys very trying, though they are also very dear girls.

I confess that I am not a morning person -- at all.

I confess that on the really rough days I drink coffee all day to keep up to speed and then need to have at least one alcoholic drink at night to slow down. (Otherwise I don't have the sense to feel tired and blog all night.)

I confess that within a month of FideiDefensor putting the topic into my head I requested the forms to get a Curio and Relics Federal Firearms License from the ATF.

I confess that I should probably be working on something or other right now, but I'm not.

I confess that, despite my pretensions to education, I've forgotten most of my math beyond Algebra II (despite working in a math intensive field -- I just never use calculus in my database work).

I confess I really enjoy some music I know is not in any objective sense "good". Metallica comes to mind.

I confess that my confessions are so boring and repetitious that I once had my pastor ask me "Again?" (Though it does change with time. "I kicked my brother and hit my sister" eventually gets swapped out for "I was spoke uncharitably about some people at work.")

I confess that MrsDarwin was the first woman I ever kissed, but I made up for it by doing so for nearly twenty minutes.

I confess that it was after 2am at the time.

I confess that neither of us thought till afterwards about the fact she was currently dating someone else -- though that was easily remedied.

I confess the penance for our haste in getting together was knowing that as college freshman we had a lot of waiting to do.

I confess this makes me very, very unsympathetic to young people who tell me they "can't wait" and that older people "don't understand".

I confess that people in college increasingly are seeming like "young people" from my vantage point.

I confess that liturgically I often feel like a man without a country: not being modern enough to enjoy the all too common guitar mass, not being Eastern enough to feel I can commit to the Byzantine rite, and not liking the lengthy silences of the Tridentine mass. I prefer a "high" Novus Ordo (whether in Latin or English) but they are harder to come by than one might wish.

I confess to pronouncing the double-L in Amarillo like a Y, and not intending to stop.

I confess I once laughed outloud at MrsDarwin when she pronounced La Jolla the way it's spelled.

I confess I sometimes have the urge to do housecleaning at strange times (often when angry) but can't seem to get into a routine of being helpful around the house.

I confess I like pants.

I confess this has gone on long enough.

The Meme of Three (inflicted by FideiDefensor/College Catholic)

This coming Sunday, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of Christ the King. The Church will begin a new Liturgical year, beginning with the joyous season of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. This is a wonderful opportunity for Catholics to reflect on how they've lived their Faith this past year, and how they'd like to live it in the coming Liturgical year. So, Here's the meme. In honor of the Blessed Trinity, we:

1. Write three things for which you're grateful to God in this past liturgical year.
I. New life.
II. Benedict XVI.
III. That my oldest daughter had just enough attention span now to say one Our Father, one Hail Mary and one Glory Be quietly with me after communion. (It keeps her from scrambling about for a few minutes and hopefully will help her understand this is when we pray quietly.)

2. Write three ways in which you hope to improve you're relationship with God in this coming liturgical year.
I. Manage to pay attention through one full mass -- monkeys permitting.
II. Finally manage to finish reading Theology of the Body.
III. Start saying at least one hour of the Divine Office each day -- a habit which monkeys and laziness have pushed out of our lives over the last few years.

3. Pass this on to three other bloggers.
Sorry. Shan't.

Okay, it's gotten far too late, so I'm going to tackle the Top Ten Influences meme tomorrow...