Monthly Archives: May 2013
Discerning Little Known Jesuit Virtues
Now that the College of Cardinals have elected Pope Francis as the first Jesuit pontiff, people have been discerning the Society of Jesus’ contributions to building the Kingdom of God.
Some wags defined Jesuits as: An order of priests known for their ability to found colleges with good basketball teams.”
There is some truth to that observation as Gonzaga, Marquette, Georgetown, Creighton and St. Louis all were participants in the 2013 edition of NCAA March Madness. In the new look Big East (which really should be called the Conclave Conference) four of the nine Catholic members are Jesuit. This S.J. hoops tradition is so strong that when Marquette contemplated changing its mascot and team moniker in the early 1990s, one of the seriously considered suggestions was the “Jumpin’ Jesuits”.
However, Fr. James Martin, S.J. insists that Jesuits ought to be known for more than prowess on the parquet floor.
So we should raise a glass of Gin and Tonic to the explorers, the linguists, the scientists, the educators, the artists, the thespians and the theologians who have been part of the Jesuits’ proud 472 year history.
We should not ignore the recent miracle in the election of the former Fr. Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis– there is such a thing as a humble Jesuit! 😉
Steve Martin on Persistence
If an entertainer is persistent enough then he or she may become a member of SNL’s exclusive Five Timers’ Club, like new inductee Justin Timberlake.
Understanding the Ascension Through Art
Ascension Thursday is the close of the forty day celebration of Easter. Some dioceses have moved marking this Solemnity of this feast to Sunday. To better celebrate the wonder and mystery of this event of salvific history, we can turn to art.
The Seventeenth Century poet John Donne tended to take an intellectual approach to spirituality in La Coruna. (1618). The section dedicated to the Ascension offers conceits which prepares the person for acting in faith:
Salute the last, and everlasting day,
Joy at the uprising of this Sun, and Son,
Ye whose true tears, or tribulation
Have purely wash’d, or burnt your drossy clay.
Behold, the Highest, parting hence away,
Lightens the dark clouds, which He treads upon;
Nor doth he by ascending show alone,
But first He, and He first enters the way.
O strong Ram, which hast batter’d heaven for me!
Mild lamb, which with Thy Blood hast mark’d the path!
Bright Torch, which shinest, that I the way may see!
O, with Thy own Blood quench Thy own just wrath;
And if Thy Holy Spirit my Muse did raise,
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.
While Donne was raised as a Catholic, he converted to Anglicanism in his adulthood. The verses reflect this sentiment as it uses quitessential Catholic symbols,such as light and dark, as well as the sacrifice of the innocent lamb. But the final verse emphasizes the personal rather than communal aspect of faith.
Another distinctive feature of Donne’s literary style are his metaphysical conceits. which uses imagery in an extended metaphor to combine vastly different ideas into a single notion. Hence, the ascension is likened to both a strong Ram to break down the door of faith to heaven and as a mild lamb in a blood sacrifice to show the path.
Three hundred and fifty years later, Salvador Dali painted “The Ascension of Christ” (1958) as Jesus is rising toward an energized and electrified heaven.
Dali’s surreal style of juxtaposing images one would not ordinarily associate in order to create a deeper meaning requires going beyond a rational exposition of faith. But Dali’s depiction is not devoid of reality, as the prominent feet would have been the last thing that the Apostles who witness the Ascension would have seen.
Dali attributes the inspiration for “The Ascension of Christ” to a cosmic dream that he had in 1950 full of vivid color where he saw the nucleus of an atom. Dali was an ardent atheist but he later re-embraced his Catholic faith (perhaps after an exorcism) but Dali often fused his conceptions of Christianity with science. Dali realized that the nucleus was the true representation of the unifying spirit of Christ. This nuclear mysticism is meant to connect everyone.
Dali’s “Ascension of Christ” does have some incongruities. Dali was inspired by the atom but it looks like a sunflower or perhaps a stylized depictions of the sun. Dali was often intrigued with continuous circular patterns like a sunflower floret as it followed the law of logarithmic spiral, which Dali explained to Mike Wallace in 1958 was associated with the force of spirit in chastity.
While the dove ready to descend from the clouds seems like an allusion to the Pentecost liturgically celebrated in 10 days. But why is Gala (Dali’s wife and artistic muse) peering out from the clouds? In other Dalian religiously inspired paintings, Gala represented the Virgin Mary. Historically, the dormition of the Theotokis happened long after Christ’s ascension into heaven. However, Mary is often considered the Queen Mother of Heaven and as the resurrection transcended time and space, it could show the Mother of God weeping at her son’s departure from the Earth from her prospective place in heaven.
Other aspects to appreciate in Dali’s depiction of Christ’s glorified body ascending to heaven is his hands and feet. Aside from the positioning of the foot, notice how the soles of his foot were soiled, as reminders that our Messiah walked among us. Also the Jesus’ fingers are curled, which lends some visual drama to the painting but combined with with electrified heavens hints at power.
Whether we are spoken to by Donne’s metaphysical conceits or dazzled by Dali’s depictions of nuclear mysticism, the Ascension of Christ into heaven is a foretaste of what the faithful may expect in our eventual heavenly home.
The District of Calamity Recipe for Burnt Rice (sic)
The House Oversight and Investigative Committee hearings on Benghazi held by Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA 49th) has shown that the State knew from the get go that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was not due to a spontaneous demonstration about an anti-Islamic internet video.
So as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY) famously asked in the earlier Benghazi hearing– “What difference does it make?”
Briefly, the testimony from the three high level diplomats to Libya showed decision making with eschewed customary operating procedure, it alluded to political pressure on career State Department bureaucrats to silence the Benghazi bungle (which in the law is called Obstruction of Justice), highlights an Obama Administration more intent on campaigning to get re-elected rather than governing in America’s interest. This sort of testimony could give someone a headache (sic).
Moreover, it shows that the most of the media are Obama Administration toadies who will ignore and obfuscate rather than pursue the truth to a scandal larger than Watergate where four brave Americans died. And most of the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee ran interference to denigrate the witnesses to protect Mrs. B.J. Clinton’s presidential prospects in 2016.
Well, this lie emanating from the Oval Office and the State Department was a recipe for burnt rice from a willing dupe. Maybe the recipe came from the cookbook for 3 am snacks, right next to Stand By Your Man cookies.
Vivisecting the Church of Nice
Although Michael Voris’s klaxon calls for traditional Catholic culture at ChurchMilitant.tv can often sound strident, this special edition of “The Vortex” which excoriates “The Church of Nice” seems right on target.
Whether it is a parody of “The Bortex” or the regular “Vortex”, Michael Voris styled coif seems quite reminiscent of Stuart Smalley sans the cardigan sweater. If he follow a similar path, he could find himself in the U.S Senate ala Al Franken (D-MN).
Biden’s Scatter Shot Security Advice
During a Facebook online forum in February, Vice President Joe Biden gave some shocking shoot from the hip security advice:
The problem is that such advice is illegal in Mr. Biden’s home state of Delaware as there are strict regulations on guns that a citizen can shoot on his property. According to former Delaware Deputy Attorney General John Garvey: “In Delaware, you have to be in fear of your life to use deadly force…You cannot use deadly force to protect your property.”
Aside from the legal implication of this scattershot in the dark strategy, it is more challenging for petite women to use a shotgun rather than other weapons. And the gun grabbers’ desire to limit ammunition, both by shrinking magazines on semi-automatics as well as ammunition shortages, put a home break-in victim in peril once they are effectively out of ammo.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) offered an apt analogy for Biden’s shotgun “strategery”–
Biden’s shotgun strategy might be effected against a Flock of Seagulls, especially if one had good aim at the M-TV.
Divining Fault Lines With the Fairer Sex?
Several years ago, Iranian imam Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a rival to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadejad, gave a special sermon for the Friday Noon prayer. Kazem Sedighi criticized women for dressing immodestly and behaving promiscuously for causing earthquakes and that Iranian women needed to adopt their lives to Islamic codes lest they be buried in the rubble.
This unusual intellectual interruption inspired some satire in the belly of the beast of Iran’s arch-nemesis –America.
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| “Boobquake” agitator Jen McCreight in 2010 |
Sedighi’s inflammatory opinion about feminine wiles widening the fault lines for tectonic temblors also shook up Western feminists. In 2010, Jennifer McCreight was a skeptical atheist senior at Purdue University, who suggested organizing a “Boobquake” in reaction to the imam’s sermon.
McCreight urged readers of her blog to dress in immodest clothing on April 26, 2010 to represent “Boobquake”. It was postulated that so much concentrated female immodesty would either trigger a trembler or that “…Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble.” Well the ground did not rumble despite an estimated 200,000 women world-wide participating. At Purdue, the male spectators outnumbered the women with risque couture.
Sedighi is not the only prominent religious figure who have been blowhards which equate natural disasters with divine retribution
District of Calamity 