Something(s) I notic’d in the State of the[/Our] Union February 1, 2010

Remember, American presidents must be men of the people, it is OUR union; even though it is a message from the president to Congress, who do not own the country.  Darn that populace watching…oh wait, I’m one of them too.  Anyways…

Over the years I have watch’d some of the 42nd and 43rd Presidents’ addresses, and so the 44th President deserv’d the same treatment.  This nation is egalitarian! Correct? Much the analyses are made elsewhere, but this part stuck out to mine ears:

Abroad, America’s greatest source of strength has always been our ideals. The same is true at home. We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal, that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it; that if you adhere to our common values you should be treated no different than anyone else.

We must continually renew this promise. My Administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations[...]

To me, this passage is fascinating; it is near the conclusion mind you.  Is the president a ‘Fifties’ conformist? You know, the stereotype from those films time-line wise that run into the early 1960s; believing that everyone should wear similar hats & ties, supports modified capitalism, prosecuting Communist party members, with thick glasses, slick’d hair, and believing in a rigid code of morality.  Writers from the Conservative bent from Dinesh D’Souza towards David Brooks have seen America before the 1970s as having a collective morality to which all adher’d.   It was in other words external; whereas to-day, publick ethics are internal, growing out from every singular conscience.  That was the revolution of the Psychadelic Sixties, if it feels good, ‘I’ can do such, so long as no one else gets hurt, and past generations cannot tell ‘me’ to stop.  But the current president wants to set up a universal standard for persons all to heed.

Garry Wills in Nixon Agonistes writes well about America’s supposèd covenent; to wit, freedom domestic and abroad exists because of an allegèd ought between the American state and peoples, to provide for existence.  By this model, providèd that one goes along with the general path.  International states, get in line, or else…just as citizens in the Unitèd States need to come quietly.  This scheme was toss’d out by the radicals of the last fifty years.  But the notions of the New Left seem to be falling away.  Remember, this statement was made in the context of civil rights, it was not just in the context of eulogizing hard working Americans.  Keep an eye looking for such Old Left paradigms.

Addendum:  President Barack Obama seems to be proverbially drinking from the whole wine of the previous administration, all the way to the dregs metaphorically.  Foreign intervention, is still on the table, so states this quotation also from near the end:

Even as we prosecute two wars, we are also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people – the threat of nuclear weapons. I have embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons, and seeks a world without them. To reduce our stockpiles and launchers, while ensuring our deterrent, the United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades. And at April’s Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring forty-four nations together behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

These diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of these weapons. That is why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions – sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That is why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: they, too, will face growing consequences.

That is the leadership that we are providing – engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We are working through the G-20 to sustain a lasting global recovery. We are working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science, education and innovation. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We are helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS. And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bio-terrorism or an infectious disease – a plan that will counter threats at home, and strengthen public health abroad.

As we have for over sixty years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores. But we also do it because it is right.[..]

The Cliché Way to Start: Entry Two September 6, 2008

Does the sound of a barking dog ever bother you? Is it even unworthy for notice? Perhaps, but sadly persons writing articles on-line—and even academick papers—seem to devote energy, to sounds that are not present.  You must understand that including allusions of the literary sort seems clever to many readers.  Therefore, why not try to seem truly cleverer, than by referring to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, “Silver Blaze” from the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes that is more famous for Reichenbach Falls.  (True fans of the detective know what I mean.)  This introduction generally has a phrase about listen for the dogs that are not barking; sadly this attempt at English mastery misses the point of that Holmes mystery.

The title refers towards an eponymous horse, which has gone missing.  Not to mention the fact that the groomer, John Straker, has died mysteriously.  Through much walking and some train riding Sherlock solves the case.  “Silver Blaze” is in mine opinion, one of the few mysteries (concerning the residents of 221B Bakers Street,) where anyone can crack the case.  To then answer the mystery, Silver Blaze in fact killed Straker to save his—the horse’s—life.  The dog in question knew Straker; so the dog made no noise.  But people miss the point of the story, the Scotland Yard detectives can collect evidence, but they lack imagination to catch the perpetrator.  The same is with writers, trying to sound well-read, who use a common declaration about sounds not made by canine animals, thus making themselves the same champs that Holmes had to correct.

My friend Brian likes to defend this method of introduction.  I however grow weary with trying to not-so-cleverly proceeding with attaching ones self to Sherlock’s brilliance.  Doctor Doyle may have done us a service my introducing the concept of smoking guns at crime scenes as metaphors for irrefutable evidence into the language of English, but I start to wish that “Silver Blaze” were less-cleverly written piece of detective fiction.

So what is wrong with this country-at-large? August 25, 2008

Nothing like a little rant.  Here we stand in America.  The press should be critiquing past bills by Senator Biden.  Our journalists should analyze his foreign policy visits for common trends; hopefully not like how our current president looked intpo then-President Putin’s “soul” and liked what he thought he [Bush] saw.  Nah, what does Politico do the major piece on? Joe Biden’s hair; perhaps more colorfully his-lack-of.  Ya know, when the fourth estate interrupts coverage of Iraq to get into Paris Hilton and her jail time as Jay Leno then illustrates, we know that we for certain are seeking trouble.

…& The Post-Modern Christian August 21, 2008

Two posts before I used the phrase Modern Christian.  In reality, we, those Christians born in the year 1985 since the year Jesus was born, are Post-Modern Christians.  Religion has become fragmented as modernity has aged.  What does that sentence mean? Modernity has seen two major world wars, smaller ones, and a Cold War.  The death toll has stretched the people’s belief in God; much less the traditional Christian one.  Science was a factor for Christians in the 1700s and thence.  But the challenges of comprehension grew in the nineteenth century.  Protestants, as most notice, have difficulty with Macro-Evolution.  Astronomy has grown by the bound.  But living in an Atomic Era really can be just too much for some to handle.  So following all the death of the Second World War, we turned our collective face from that Old School.  So much blood was too much.  Good bwye to discretion.  Good bwye to duty.  Good bwye to Neo-Hegelian teleologies of the Great Books school.  And good bwye to the collective writ of dogma from successive generations.  It is not even about beginning the world again; it is about trying to forget anew by feeling good.  Too soon to know whether the soixante-huitards were wrong? Maybe, but they sure did damage going about it…therefore Christianity today has the myriad of facets that:

• Baptism, in all denominations. becomes delayed as concern for the funerary quality to burying original sin and being born anew towards an opening to God’s grace becomes less important.
• Confirmation/Chrismation into multiple sects multiplies.  Parents try to compromise by taking their children to different churches for spiritual grace.  Heck some try the hybrid of bringing up offspring in Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity.  As a result people believe nothing if everything is just the same.  Persons look upon religious faith as a cultural inheritance like ethnic ancestry for discarding when something interesting comes along. 
• Marriage in houses of worship and/or by clergy remains popular; though people have none intention of following a religion’s laws.
• The daily life brings a sense of taking Communion for granted.  It is done all the time and becomes timeless yet obligatory. 
• Repentance is over-rated since people become not sorry for sins that are in these times unnecessary for survival.  (A knight in the Middle Ages frequently had to kill to survive.  Fornication however to-day would not be so mandatory.)  Besides, will not God just blanket forgive all sins anyway?
• Ordination for those Orders Holy have less substantial value, as a laity becomes suspicious of the minister’s actions, whilst coddling their religious leaders to have less judgement rendered unto them.  And so fewer candidates step in for the job.
• And all rituals like anointing the sick and dead become deconstructed and perhaps shunned for supposed pagan qualities; perhaps embraced because of such hearsay.

[I proceed to disrupt this series for clearing up an idiom] August 20, 2008

When I refer to someone as a “cafeteria Catholick,” I do not mean “someone who picks and chooses aspects of Catholicity” to believe.  (For that I prefer “salad-bar Catholick” to label.)  Rather I mean “cafeteria Catholick” as someone who goes into the dining hall to talk and discuss Catholicism aplenty but then does nothing for the Catholick Church outside such an establishment.  All chat and none of action; but then not a true hypocrite since they may believe some articles of faith.  Now back to what I was leading up towards on this website.

…Two Parishes, One Church… August 18, 2008

Some months ago I attended a meeting about the future renovation of my parish set for 2009.  Our pastor gave the talk and then took all questions.  I caught him off guard with a query about the 1989 renovation when Immaculate Conception was first changed.  You see the second renovation means restoring high altar plus moving the tabernacle back to the middle of the sanctuary.  Besides stone floors, this renovation undoes the 1989 renovation.  (Though one should add that IHM fared worse in the renovation department.  Monsignor Connors ((may he rest in peace)) did far more to change that ekklesia for the worse when he refurbished that interior, according to Mary Wolff.  Oh, and Monsignor Connors also briefly had liturgical dancing in tony Scarsdale’s Catholick sanctuary.  Yup.)  The current altar—really just an old adult baptismal font with a thin slab of stone atop it—will be moved further back into the presbyterium so that more pews can be put in and also straightened.  So twenty years later, those parishioners who fought the renovation all the way to Cardinall O’Connor, can smile.  And New York’s Archbishop actually agreed with the congregation but did not dare to contradict a fellow priest who was the Monsignor pastor.  For my part so long as bispecies Communion continues I shall attend when in Eastchester.  (Thence the reason I usually do not attend mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary.)   As for sources, consult the privately published history of my parish.  Should you require more photographic documentation, my christening, done by a priest famous in my parish, was in the pre-rennovated Immaculate Conception.

A note about my life… August 18, 2008

Several months ago, a friend commented that this website–he knowing I hold the Catholick faith–referred to this website as a “nice little confessional,” but then seeing the look of irritation, thought I was offended, thereupon saying he was sorry.  But it was not my supposed piety that was hurt, rather the perpetuation of a fallacy about my spiritual upbringing, which leads me to this clarification; namely, that I have never truly seen a confessional’s inside.

I was raised in Immaculate Conception in Eastchester/Tuckahoe, New York.  We had altar girls years before they were legally permitted.  At least once–at a mass to which a friend and I served–a layperson gave the homily.  (Since then I have discovered that the 1983 Code of Canon Law has a loophole allowing this practice; similar to how female acolytes started arising.  Though the latter’s abuse is not a matter of doctrine, unlike the former.)  The priest presiding used to walk around the nave and apse with the incense.  The big contrast was with Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scarsdale, NY that had no bispecies communion.  Altar servers used to hold pattens under the communicants for their receiving.  And of course, IHM still had confessionals.  My parish was all about “reconciliation rooms” for the sacrament of Penance.  All my dealings with my confessors (even through college) has been done race to face.  Beyond even the sacrament of Repentance–my favorite locution–I was taught by my well-meaning catechists and clerics a watered-down “by the way Jesus loves you” spirituality.  Heck, one vicar joked at my Confirmation prep mass about how none knew the meaning of the term Transubstantiation.  It was not until college that I truly developed an understanding of what the Catholic Church actually teaches.

Looking back one might actually call me, with some accuracy, a kind of Protestant during mine adolescence.  I never prayed towards any saints before my time at Hobart.  (My “Hail Marys” were automatic and to this day I struggle with the hyperdulia for the blessed Mother.)  I was given an award for knowledge of the Bible, which I loved reading; but not for the catechism that I never–those distant days ago– would even have known existed.  So please, do not ever presume that I have some ultra-Traditionalist, Tridentine past.  My life is one of the modern Christian.

The Cliché Way to Start: Entry One-and-a-Half April 6, 2008

Add to this thread, when someone utters, “In the history of mankind,” or, “Mankind knows,” when starting the writing.  Pseudo-pedantic, at best I think; at worst, chauvanism.

The Cliché Way to Start: Entry One March 26, 2008

In the history of the world…I have no real way to get back to this site proper, following an overly long hiatus.  An hiatus too long actually.  But when it comes towards essays, do not invoke some planetary chronicle when writing the first sentence.  You do not know the chronicle; and even if you did somehow, it would sound pompous and arrogant.  But I have entries farther afield to come.

So What Is the Problem of a World Without Fathers? Incest January 11, 2008

All right, so years ago, I took a class on the French Revolution, where we read Lynn Hunt’s Family Romance of the French Revolution available at Amazon still.  In one of that book’s many chapters, she chronicles how much of Eighteenth century literature deals with worlds, without fathers.  And the children turn out all right.  In mine own experience, I have known friends having just their mothers, as a result of widowhood, parental divorce, or even illegitimacy.  And they have done well despite being raised in a single-parent home.  Still there was, and is, a problem to look out for, that of incest, say those fictions.  You see, in a world without fathers, how do you know the gal or guy, which you love, is not a sibling? Fraternal twins across in England discovered the hard way.