Catholic Monarchist

Treason and Richard II

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:40:00 +0000

This semester I'm also taking a Shakespeare class. Our first paper is due Monday; I'm doing mine on Richard II. In our class discussions, I was the only one (who admitted to it, anyway) to state that Bolingbroke was wrong to overthrow Richard. My paper is somewhat related to that. There are two approaches evident in the play: first, the belief that the monarch is God's deputy, and he must be served, even when individual rights are not respected; and two, the belief that individual rights must be served, so much that any act of treason becomes permissible.

But treason is a funny thing. The Founding Fathers committed treason, and justified it by saying that the laws of nature were not being respected. Therefore, they claimed that by the laws of nature, they had the right to overthrow the king and establish a new government. However, by doing so they set a precedent. The precedent was that individual rights are more important than duty to one's country, that a ruler does not deserve allegiance unless it's working out for you. As soon as it doesn't work for you any longer, you then have the right--by God--to get rid of your ruler.

The result is that you can't actually accuse someone of treason. How can a person be treasonous, when allegiance is owed not to the country, but to oneself? Richard II is a perfect example of the beginnings of this ideology. Bolingbroke's rights were stepped on when Richard seized his inheritance. He therefore felt he had the right to take up arms and overthrow the monarch, whom he did not conceive of as God's deputy, but only an agent of rights. Since he had failed in his duty to preserve rights, he had failed also to fulfill his end of the bargain, and so, in the name of rights, Richard had to go.

I'm about halfway done with my paper, and I really wish I could find more on divine right so as to articulate my opposition to the Bolingbroke approach. I had asked my teacher for specific sources, but I think he already thought I was crazy for stating that Bolingbroke should have toughed it out. No need to exacerbate the situation.

Jesus and female priests

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:04:00 +0000

In her book Pandora's Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek & Roman Antiquity, Eva Cantarella notes that the Vestal Virgins were priestesses of Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth, and a cult of Aphrodite, merged with the Roman Fortuna and then identified with the Egyptian Isis, allowed both male and female priests. Many cults whose adherents were exclusively women existed as well: the cult of the Bona Dea, or that of Fortuna Muliebris (a cult for univirae, women who had had only one husband), and then of course the Bacchic rites. Cantarella does not say, however, whether these cults had officiants we could call priests. At any rate, there would have existed in the first century the precedent for female priests. Since Jesus routinely broke social convention regarding women --just speaking to them, for example!--and since his most devoted disciples were women--the Marys and Salome--the question is, on what grounds can we say that he meant women as well as men to be priests? He had precedent (the Vestal Virgins, the cults), and he clearly had esteem for women in disregard of social convention. Instead, he chose twelve men to serve the Church.

Do we say he would have chosen women if he had not been afraid to break social taboos? No one with any familiarity with Jesus as a revolutionary can really say that with a straight face. You don't go to your death because you're afraid to offend people. Do we say that he didn't respect women--the man who spoke to the woman at the well, who praised Mary Magdalene for having more faith than the upstanding males with whom he was dining, who saved the adulterous woman from the trap set for her? Or do we say that he knew what the Twelve would face and didn't want to put women in that position? Somewhat silly, because if he knew what the Twelve were in for, he also knew what was going to happen to, say, St. Perpetua and St. Catherine of Alexandria. He never exempted women from the ridicule, torture, and death guaranteed to his followers because women's constitutions couldn't take it (a suggestion which is insulting to me, and to any other woman who's ever gone through natural childbirth*).

At this point I'm not going farther than Jesus' own actions in discussing women and the Church, but I think it's pretty clear from his actions that for this particular office in the Church--the priesthood--he deliberately selected men. He knew about female priests. He was unafraid to break convention. He respected women and required the same sacrifices of them as he would men. Yet, for this role he chose no women.

What I would suggest is that a good deal of the furor over women as priests stems from the misunderstanding that priests are to be construed as those who give orders and make up what everyone is to believe. If this is your conception of the office of priesthood, you naturally feel that that the Church then does not want women in a position of power, where they might "make up" rules that benefit women.

Except that the office of priest isn't one of "power," but of servant. (I won't go into the whole "making up rules" nonsense in a post already far too long.) For whatever reason, these servants are to be men. Why? I don't know. I do think that the assumption that this excludes women from a place in the church is wrong--but I also think that Paul, in his writing, established teaching which unjustly restricts women (whether Paul meant it to or not). That's what my paper this semester is about.

Should be fun.

*I'm seriously LMAO at the thought that anyone would suggest a woman can't take the pain a man can.

The Hellbound vs. the Heavenbound

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:56:00 +0000

Someone on a message board I sometimes post on made a post about a little girl--eleven years old--who is convinced her dying grandfather is going to hell because he's fallen away from "the Lord's church." Ah, I remember those days. Let's see, diary entry, aged eleven:

I'm scared Jesus'll come back and I'll go to hell, cuz I'm not baptized.

Then every time--every time--there was a thunderstorm I'd be crying and scared to death, because I knew, just knew, that it heralded the return of the Lord, and even after I was baptized, how could I be sure I'd done it right? What if I hadn't been sorry enough for the many horrible sins a thirteen-year-old can commit? What if I hadn't known enough? What if I hadn't had the right intentions? Or, what if I wasn't good enough? How was I supposed to be good enough? Why weren't all my intentions to be good working?

It amazes me how the Church of Christ can so cripple its children with this burden, that everyone--EVERYONE--is going to hell, and maybe even you, too, if you happened to have a limb escape the waters of baptism, because then you wouldn't have been "buried." You divide everyone you meet into two categories:

The Hellbound:
Everyone who died prior to Pentecost.

Everyone who was born and died between about 300 A.D. and the nineteenth century.

Everyone who isn't baptized.

Everyone who isn't baptized for the right reasons.

Baptists.

Congregations that let women speak.

Congregations that use Powerpoint.

The Heavenbound:
Your congregation. And even then not all of them.

The Plan to Solve All My Problems

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:13:00 +0000

I don't know why I forgot to mention it, but I wrote a piece on the theological reasons for vegetarianism, and America Magazine is going to publish it. It'll probably be after the election, since that takes precedence. Also, I got hired at the school newspaper, and my first articles came out this week. Ok, it's not the New York Times, but it's a start. Check one more thing off my Plan to Solve All My Problems.

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is Women in Antiquity, a combined art history/women's studies magazine. As soon as I heard about this class-this would be last semester--I knew I was going to take it, and I also knew what my paper topic would be (though once we got into the material my planned topic got some competition from some other cool areas of interest). Anyway, I am doing my research paper on the influence of Greek and Roman attitudes toward women in St. Paul's writing. It's profoundly obvious, once you start reading what the ancient Greek poets and philosophers thought about women and the place of women, that not only did that influence Paul, but was the reason for the Church Fathers' occasional misogyny as well. That is to say, usually everyone thinks of Christianity as somehow responsible for misogynist ideas, when in reality Christianity simply had a hard time growing out of classical ideas about women--such as that women were to be submissive, belonged in the home, had a different nature than men, possibly didn't have a soul, so on. (Not all of that is Paul's--such ideas were debated by others, though.)

I'm going to restrict my paper just to Paul, though, but the problem is that my school library doesn't carry any theological journals (of course not), and I don't even think JSTOR indexes them. It doesn't seem, however, a particularly daunting task, though when I floated it to my professor she seemed to think it would be. Wading through the works of Aristotle and Hesiod? Extracting examples from legal code? Painstakingly translating Latin quotes authors aren't good enough to translate for me? No prob! Now, I just need to learn Greek. . . .

Of gift horses and mouths

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:23:00 +0000

Sometimes I irritate myself. Often, in fact. Take the way I'm like an eight-year-old on Christmas. All these presents, and I pout because I didn't get the Red Ryder BB gun. What I mean is, I focus obsessively on the fact that I'm single, totally ignoring and discounting what I do have. Really discounting, and sometimes even ignoring and abusing what I do have. I'm finally in college, for example. How awesome is that, and yet, there have been times this past year when I didn't show up for class, didn't study, didn't try to learn anything because my thoughts were elsewhere. This great chance I have to finally get an education, and have I said thank you?

My best friend Caitlin is another such blessing. I've never had a best friend before. Heck, I've hardly even had any friends before. I'm one of those people who just never fits in anywhere, who always feels out of place wherever I am, who just doesn't click with people. I attribute it to all sorts of things, but last year I met Caitlin within a few weeks of moving out. How strange, how fortunate to meet her when I was at a point where I had no friends or family of any kind, and what's stranger that whatever totally off-the-wall and emotionally unbalanced thing I feel, she's felt too, and pretty much every weird impulse and thought I've ever had, she's had them too. We joke that we're the same person, and what's even stranger about it is that there's over a decade's difference in age between us. How many years did I go feeling completely alone in the world, wishing for a friend, just one friend? I have that now, and have I ever stopped to thank God for giving a real, genuine friendship to me?

Faith and the unfettered exercise of my beliefs is yet another blessing I abuse. Ever since I was a preteen, I wanted to be Catholic. I "knew" they were all heathens going to hell, but I longed to be able to say the rosary, to be able to say the prayers, to go to Mass. I was so unhappy in the church of Christ, even though I believed everything the church teaches. I kept going because it was right, even if wholly lacking in spiritual richness. And then totally by accident I discovered the truth. I could have gone my entire life believing the same bare, skeletal beliefs of the church of Christ, could have gone my whole life going to church without ever once being able to worship God. Could have gone my whole life eating crackers and taking sips of grape juice, yet feeling starved. I don't know how correct it is to say that God made sure it went differently,
though I do know that the desires I had to be Catholic were probably the Holy Spirit calling.

Yet, now that I am Catholic, how often do I pray? How often have I missed Mass, especially in the last six months? How often do I immerse myself in the intellectual and theological traditions of the church? How much do I actually let my faith into my life? I have deliberately put it aside because the man I loved (who didn't, by the way, love me back) hated God, because I knew no one would want to date me if they knew I actually believed in Catholicism.

I told God it wasn't fair that I should be single, and then listed all my incomparable virtues as reasons why. Or, I'd swing the other way and pout that maybe God just didn't intend any blessings for me at all, and poor St. Perpetua that I am, that was his pleasure. But, all that is totally beside the point. What is the point is that I wasn't happy with those blessings he had given me, so why on earth would he give me another one, especially one who would replace him as the god of my idolatry?

So, tonight at Mass I thought about all this, and prayed, after St. Francis de Sales, for total indifference. Maybe I am supposed to be single. Maybe not. Maybe it shouldn't really matter so much. As I said before, why did I want, and why would I want, someone for whom I have to hide the real me? Is the real me so shameful that I have to represent myself in a way I'm not? How can I have so little self-respect to do that? Or, so little pride in myself? Why do I let a man have such complete control over me that his personality dominates, anyway? What do I care if some stupid guy doesn't like facial piercings or tattooes or my vegetarianism or my Catholicism? What makes him so superior? Why would I be interested in him if he doesn't think such things make me worth getting to know, anyway?

I have blessings, and it really is time I said thank you, because if I got the Red Ryder, I'd probably just put my eye out with it.

Letting someone have his choice

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:23:00 +0000

I had been working on a story with an undefined aim, that is, i had no idea what would happen. i think I'm the sort of writer who is best working with psychological stories rather than plot-driven stories--hate it, but it's the inevitable result of years of introspection. Anyway, last night I abandoned that, admittedly interesting but probably dead-ended, story and decided to take on something new.

An idea had been percolating for a while. i have a friend who is very, very angry at God, and says that if God exists, he can't be good, because there's too much evil in the world for a good God to allow. For a long time, this really upset me, and I would try to convince him that he was wrong, that he had no reason to be angry with God.

Finally, I saw the light. First, there is evil in the world, and no thinking person wouldn't ask why a good God allows it. Rabbi Harold Kushner addresses this in a study of Job (the name of the book escapes me). Some people do conclude that if God is good, he cannot be great, and if he is great, then he is not good. When people do conclude this, God does not rush down to correct them. When people review the state of things and decide that God is to blame, God does not get angry. In fact, the book of Job shows that God allows us to question him about these things. The fact is, we were given the capacity to reason, and free will, so that we could come to a decision on our own about loving, and even forgiving, God. We do have that right as free beings.

That was what I wasn't allowing my friend--the right to not forgive God, the right to be angry about what we perceive as injustices. Essentially, he had made his choice, the choice not to love God, and at some point, I had to allow him the dignity of his choice, instead of pushing the view on him that I wanted him to have.

So, a story needs to come of this. I'm not sure how it will unfold yet. That's what i hate about writing--planning it out, putting the pieces together. I'll work on it.

Writing, and the lack thereof

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:52:00 +0000

I had a bad weekend.

But let's not dwell on that. I forced myself to work on a story some over the last few days. Even though I am much better at writing nonfiction, I have to write fiction to feel I'm "really" a writer. Of course, because I rarely do it, I'm not very good at it. Every now and again I'll hack out a story and then get depressed because it's not very good. Well, of course it's not. I avoid writing because when I don't write, I can pretend I'm a better writer than I really am. If I actually write, I have to face that I'm not that that great.

Anyway, I've decided to quit putting it off, and I worked on a story that's been languishing for~six months? At the beginning of this year I was going to write six stories.

So far, I've written one and a half.

Kavanaugh on just war

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:41:00 +0000

John Kavanaugh's column in America Magazine this week deals with the problem some Catholics have with voting for McCain, namely, his support and intent to expand the war. That's pretty much my problem with McCain too. When we first started the war, I was for it, but then I was also pretty much in lockstep with the Republican party back then. When I converted, we had a session in RCIA about just war, and while he didn't really cover all of the theological discussion on what makes a war just, the speaker did quote Pope John II several times in reference to the current war. The timbre of the lecture was that this war, at least, is unjust.

In this part of the country, you really can't get away with saying that. Most people were furious. They even went and talked to Father Sexton about it. I found it sad, first, that we could all sit through nine months of extremely dumbed-down "instruction" without anybody getting their knickers in a wad that we weren't getting the meat of the Faith--nobody really got exercised over anything having to do with dogma issues, but step on their politics and wow, watch out; and second, it annoyed me that we didn't get similar lectures on issues of abortion, contraception, and in vitro. (Well, people might have gotten upset.) I digress . . . .

Anyway, I myself was conflicted. I'd thought I supported the war, but I firmly believe that even when the Pope isn't speaking definitively, it's a good idea to consider what he's saying. Kavanaugh, in his article, quotes the late Father as stating,

[The war is] a defeat for humanity, [especially in light of the] consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations.

Is it a just war? I don't know. I know that I personally see a lot of people who support the war for jingoistic reasons, for retributive reasons, or for pure politics. I openly admit to having dragged my feet on researching the exact causes of the war, at least according to what we know now. I do know that the terms of the Geneva Convention prohibit one nation's invading another for the sake of approximating its resources . . . and while it may be argued that we "need" oil to fund our ravenous consumption of gas, and therefore have to have the Middle East East under control in order to protect our "American way of life"--I don't think that's a sound, or defensible reason.

Anyway, the point. When it comes down to it, though, we have to vote for the lesser of two evils. Abortion is a defined evil. War is sometimes permissible. Obama is heartlessly pro-abortion. McCain is not. I could not justify voting for a man who believes it is permissible to murder unborn, and sometimes born, infants; on the other hand, is it any more permissible to murder children and civilians? But then, I question Obama's pacifism. It seems, to me, incompatible to be able to hold the position that we don't make war because killing is bad! bad! while simultaneously voting to legalize the murder of infants. (And you can swing that around to pose to McCain.) I would question, in the end, the dedication of either one to their respective positions. You truly are not pro-life if you are pro-war; and if you are pro-abortion, you truly are for violence. In the end, can either be voted for?

So here's what's what.

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:38:00 +0000

I know I haven't posted much of anything this last year. There were a lot of reasons for that. I hadn't wanted to talk about it, really, but I got divorced last summer. Afterwards, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with myself. I didn't have any kind of goals in mind, and I certainly wasn't qualified to pursue a career. I was kind of lost.

I really didn't have any friends before the divorce, but afterwards I had even fewer acquaintances. Getting out on my own, and starting school, did mean I made some friends. I made a best friend, in fact, the best friend I have ever had. I made a handful of other friends and dated a little bit. I'm still very good friends with one of those guys.

The thing is, when you spend your childhood with a very overbearing father, then get married as a teenager, you don't really know how to be independent. It came to me slowly over the last six or seven months--I really didn't know how to function without a man telling me what to do. So I think one of the reasons I was quick to date within weeks of the divorce was my a terror of being alone.

Of course, the guy I was quick to fall for is a decent guy who could see this about me, and pretty consistently rejected me for my own good. It took me months and months to see why.

One of the things that's fallen by the wayside in all of this has been my faith. Not that I ever stopped believing--I kept going to Mass, but even that stopped about six months ago. I made a conscious decision to choose somebody over God, somebody who didn't appreciate that I had Catholic beliefs. I didn't feel good about it, and I can definitely say I suffered because of it. Depression and the blah days came back.

I can't say that I had a change of heart so much as my rational sense intervened. See, I deliberately shut out feelings of guilt because I knew I wouldn't be able to handle them, and admitting my guilt would mean I'd have to give up that guy. And I didn't think I could do that.

But like I said, my rational sense intervened. I knew the truth, and I knew that I wasn't choosing it. And that meant I had no integrity. I couldn't stand that about myself.

So . . . I went to Confession. I confessed. ("Bless me Father, for I have sinned . . . a lot.") I went to Mass. I realized how much I had missed it. How nothing I am without my faith, how pointless I am without it.

I guess I fell prey to the lie that in order to be accepted I had to change myself. I also have a horrible, nagging demon that tells me no nice Catholic boy will ever want to date me, so I should go with the atheists, the agnostics. I honestly don't know what it's like to share faith with someone, to have that in common.

But, I guess if that's so, then it's better to be alone, isn't it? I don't, as they say, lack for resources. I couldn't say that a year ago. I mean, I know I'm beautiful, intelligent, artistic, thoughtful, and loving. I know the truth about the Faith. Why would I ever again settle for a guy who doesn't see that all of those things are what make me special, and appreciates them? What would attract me to him anyway, if he doesn't even love me for those things?

FYI, an annullment of the marriage is pending. We should hear any day. . . .

Neat

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:01:00 +0000

In response to Nancy Pelosi's confusion regarding Church teaching on abortion, the USCCB issued a two-page fact sheet on Church teaching. A good excerpt:

Given the scientific fact that a human life begins at conception, the only moral norm needed to understand the Church’s opposition to abortion is the principle that each and every human life has inherent dignity, and thus must be treated with the respect due to a human person. This is the foundation for the Church’s social doctrine, including its teachings on war, the use of capital punishment, euthanasia, health care, poverty and immigration. Conversely, to claim that some live human beings do not deserve respect or should not be treated as “persons” (based on changeable factors such as age, condition, location, or lack of mental or physical abilities) is to deny the very idea of inherent human rights. Such a claim undermines respect for the lives of many vulnerable people before and after birth.

Sexism

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:06:00 +0000

It's incredible that those opposed to Palin are actually asking how she can possibly be both vice-president and mother to her kids. No one would ever ask a man that. How offensive and sexist.

Well, I'm thrilled!

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:50:00 +0000

Up till an hour ago I still wasn't sure if I was going to vote McCain. There was no question but that I wouldn't vote for Obama, not least because he's pro-abortion and even voted against saving the lives of babies born in botched abortions. (How can you justify that??) But McCain, well, I just didn't know.

No question now, though. Palin is solidly pro-life and a success story, a real woman. And she can't be attacked with the usual accusation against pro-life women: "Well, if YOU had a baby you knew was deformed, you'd change your tune." Plus, I'm giggling in anticipation of how liberal feminists will react. As a feminist myself (just not a liberal one), I was pretty unhappy about the Hillary option--she represents Gloria Steinem's feminism, not a feminism I'm into. Palin, though, is a role model for real women, and she strengthens the ticket.

Of course, while Hillary was running, the press had an annoying way of criticizing her based on her looks/clothing. One gossip magazine even did a spread on Hillary's worst outfits (authored by Hillary herself--some feminist, to agree to do that!). The woman was running for president, and we focus on that? The same will probably go for Palin. Because there still is a double standard, her clothes and appearance will be focused on. The difference, I think, will be that Palin won't try to play along the way Hillary did.

The one thing I don't like about her is her approval of and participation in hunting. Can't do much about that, since she's from Alaska. But, that's a minor point, one I won't argue about.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn Dies

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:50:00 +0000

In Russia, to which he had returned in 1994.

The Church and IVF

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:36:00 +0000

Since it's the anniversary of the first successful in vitro fertilization procedure, a lot of stories are in the news about its use. A story by Arthur Caplan this morning on MSNBC caught my eye. Apparently, a 70-year-old Indian woman just had a baby conceived via IVF. The story goes on to dismiss all those silly fears people had about IVF when it was first introduced, and states,

Even the Catholic Church, which has never approved the break between sex and procreation, has taken a relatively benign view of the use of IVF by married couples.

I'm not sure why Caplan says that. It isn't true:

In summary, the Catholic Church condemns as gravely evil acts, both IVF in and of itself, and stem cell research performed on IVF embryos.

And it's not hard to see why:

Because of the availability of new culture media, it has recently become possible to let the embryos grow for up to seven days, by which time, only the most vigorous survive. This reduces the number of embryos implanted and increases the number of successful implantations, while also reducing the number of multiple pregnancies. Note that most embryos (up to 19 out of 20), conceived in IVF clinics eventually die. If they are not implanted, they are either "donated" for research, in which case they are killed, or they are kept in cold storage in very low temperatures after which most are disposed of, or eventually die. Since frequently several embryos are implanted at one time, multiple pregnancies occur. Not infrequently, early in pregnancy, some of these embryos are killed by injection of potassium chloride into the embryo's heart. This procedure is euphemistically called "fetal reduction."

I realize that infertility is a heartbreaking condition, but it amounts to selfishness and a lack of love to insist that any child you parent must be born of one's own body. Further, how much did you really want children, if you are willing to allow "the extras" to be killed, or used for medical research? Not to mention the procedure of egg donation, which is a misogynist's dream--the mechanization of the female body.

Finally got this page done, at least

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:28:00 +0000

I redesigned using the CSS I've learned. I'm not sure about the color scheme, but I can worry about that later.

Did anybody hear about P.Z. Myers? I didn't catch the first release, so I don't know what he's aiming to do, but according to this report, he

pierced it [the Host] with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash.

That's not so much hatred of the Faith as some kind of vengeance. I don't know what he's been through, but it must have been something terrible to make him so vicious.

Unrelated to the avowed purpose of this blog . . .

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:52:00 +0000

THE X-FILES COMES OUT TOMORROW!!!!

Batman, schmatman. I want to see Mulder and Scully!!

The update begins . . .

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:02:00 +0000

It took me forever, but I finally have a CSS-based design worked out for at least part of the site--the book part. I'll be uploading the pages throughout the day. I'd wanted to make a stylesheet for printing (that was why the old design was plain-jane, so it could be easily printed), with a format like the old design, but I have not as of yet figured out how to do that. I also seem unable to properly implement external style sheets--when I tried it out, only half of the rules imported. Not sure why. Finally, I'm adding a handy comments form on each page of the section, but I'm not ~entirely~ sure it will function. It relies on having an email program installed on the user's computer, and I don't have one, so I can't test it to see--maybe someone could try it out and see?

New and scary. . . .

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:15:00 +0000

. . . . this growing up and taking action with my life stuff. I sent my book off to a publisher yesterday, which isn't the first time I've done it, but this is when I get serious about it. I finished an article on the theological basis for veganism as well, sent that off to a magazine for a tryout. (Two more ideas for articles are percolating.) Oh, and I sent a story to Glimmertrain. Then, wow, got my GED, and my bachelor's is within sight. I'm already thinking about grad school--I want to get a masters in anthropology. (Ok, I'll even divulge that I want to get a doctorate in theology, and I already know what my thesis will be.) Then there's this new job--no more drone work behind the cash register, I actually have a professional job where I'm paid to be creative and write and play with the computer. I'm about to start classes to get a certification in.(I taught myself years ago by looking at source codes, but finally decided to learn it for real, and at some point in the not-too-distant future this site will reflect the new stuff I've learned.) I'm getting it together with my business too, aiming to reopen my etsy shop by November (it was August, but despite diligent work all summer I have nowhere near what I wanted to have in my shop). Then today my friend Nathan hooked me up with a guy who needs photography work for his CD. I'm not in the least confident I can do it, but I can certainly fake it. So, all this stuff is happening, and I'm no longer passively watching life go by while I accomplish nothing and hope for nothing, and it's like living in Bizarroland. All my life I've been tucked into myself too scared to move, and now who is this person who is doing things?

Sally Quinn on Communion

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:40:00 +0000

Sally Quinn, a Washington Post writer, explains why she received Communion at Tim Russert's funeral.

The essence of the piece is here:

Like most of us, I am searching for meaning in my life, looking for markers from all faith traditions which touch me in a spiritual way. In this moment of loss I felt invited to take part in this sacrament.

She didn't receive Communion (not "took," as she repeatedly writes in the piece) because she believed it was the Body and Blood of Christ, but because she was searching for meaning. But how does one achieve meaning when one doesn't believe in the meaning? I'm flabbergasted. What she did was abuse of the Faith--using it, in a narcissistic way, to make herself feel spiritual, without actually respecting what it means.

I gather from this piece that she cobbles together a spirituality based on what appeals to her from different faiths, and she's genuinely surprised, even offended, that this would bother anyone. Best of all is her resort to "That's not what Jesus would do." No, Jesus would never be offended that someone act in a supremely hypocritical manner by proclaiming Communion with a Church that they have no Communion with.

Abortion and animal rights

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:00:00 +0000

The other night, while I was away in Tennessee visiting my brother, my roommate tortured herself by watching YouTube videos about abortion (I'd have stopped her in the interest of our supply of Kleenex, had I been there). When I came back and she'd regaled me with details of the videos, we started talking about the rise in the belief that the murder of babies up to four or five months is acceptable. Why, she asked, would anyone say that?

Well, for the same exact reason animal testing is permitted. Sadly, most Christians don't see anything wrong with animal testing, factory farming, or hunting, but the same logic that permits animal testing and factory farming applies not just to legal infanticide, but to abortion and the cloning of human beings for research. It goes like this: A higher consciousness is necessary to feel pain. Animals don't have the consciousness of selfhood that sentient beings have, and so they cannot feel pain. (Yeah, they howl and scream and whimper, but they only look like they feel pain.) Therefore, you are not harming them by testing on them or by crowding them into dark pits of their own feces for their entire lives. They don't know any better, and therefore, you're justified in refusing them any dignity as creatures of God in their own right.

Now, since babies don't theoretically have a sense of self, they are not persons, and can't think, and therefore, aren't protected as persons, and can be killed--just like an animal.

It is, to me, lopsided to be pro-life, but not against animal testing. C.S. Lewis wrote about this half a century ago--when you start viewing one class of God's creation as products to be used for your own gain (as is the mentality behind factory farming and animal testing), you start viewing certain classes of humans that way, too. So, voila, we start cloning human beings to test on.

Now, to end with, here's Pope John Paul II on the issue of how to treat creation:

In this desire to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, man consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an excessive and disordered way. At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day. Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are. Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannical than governed by him.

--Love and Responsibility

Play that funky music

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:30:00 +0000

Wow, I've been in a funk lately. Of course, I've been helping it out by listening to the most depressing playlists ever assembled: Cat Power, Bright Eyes, Jose Gonzalez, the gang's all here! ~Seriously, though, I think it's due to facing, for the first time ever in my life, real challenges. It's scary, and I'm scared. I know I spend a lot of time worrying and fretting and feeling helpless, but I usually come through in the end and do that which requires guts. I know that. I've never needed support, but I do wish I had it.

Randomness

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 05:47:00 +0000

I get a serious kick out of the google searches that people perform to find this site, but it's always freaky when someone searches my name specifically. I like to think I remain unknown, but I don't think I'm doing a good job of it. Should I ever manage to publish my book conventionally, I fear legions of angry Church of Christ preachers descending to accuse me of just having a bone to pick with "the Lord's Church" . . . but oh well.

The Master Plan

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:14:00 +0000

I think it was St Francis de Sales who wrote in Introduction to the Devout Life that one of the tricks of the devil is to distract us with more projects than we can possibly finish, so that we will end up finishing nothing, and be of no use at all. Given its applicability (is that a word? It is now) to my life, I've probably blogged about it before, but wow, is it ever apropos for me.

I'd kind of reached a point where I was a total slacker, and was letting everything go. I think I have this need to let things get really bad in order to motivate me to take action. I'm sure I need therapy for this. Whatever, the point is, everything was at a standstill. Despite having finished the semester with straight As, I wasn't even sure why I was in school any longer; I wanted to quit writing; I had no idea what at all to do with my life.

So in the last two weeks I roused myself from my slacker stupor and got together a Plan to Fix All My Problems. Items included are as follows:

Get GED*

Get job that will enable me to not just pay all my monthly bills, but will enable me to pay off my credit cards and save some money.

Learn Spanish. Looks good on a resume, makes possible an option of working for migrants' rights

Fine-tune my from-scratch html skills. Looks good on a resume.

Make a genuine effort to turn my sewing into a real small business

Get my book published

Join a writing group in order to have motivation to write

*No, I don't have my GED. Yes, I got into college without it. No, I don't know how. Ask the admissions board.

Anyway, so as you can see, my Master Plan is doing a great job of requiring me to do about a thousand things right now! Wednesday I go to register for the GED, and July 2 I actually start a new job; a non-horrible job I'm looking forward to. I registered for Spanish in the fall and I'm sewing madly. I also received my stimulus check and sent its modest amount straightaway to one of my credit cards, paying it off (still have two to go, one easily dealt with, the other . . . not so much). That leaves my book. . . . and today I'm working on formatting it from html to a .doc format. Although, as you can see, I'm not being very diligent about it.

Postscript

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:45:00 +0000

It occurred to me as I was trying to get a few hours' sleep before that Greek exam that one good argument against female priests is the prevalence of pagan priestesses in antiquity. Since there would have been no cultural bias against females officiating, if there were theological license for it in the Church there would not have been that impediment to ordaining them. (I mention this because sometimes I hear it said that the reason the early Church didn't ordain women was because of cultural reasons.)

Cultural influences and St Paul

noreply@blogger.com (kate) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:47:00 +0000

One of my potential exam questions for my Greek Art exam (Tomorrow. At 2. That's twelve hours from now. I am not ready.) is on female identity in Greece as revealed by literary and artistic evidence. I never knew just how much of what St Paul says in his epistles is apparently the result of the Greek values the world of antiguity inherited; for example, in ancient Greece the ideal woman was to be completely submissive to the authority of the head of the household, and the only respectable role for a woman (exceptions notwithstanding) was to manage the household. I have to ask how much of St Paul's admonitions are actually theologically based and how much culturally based.

Not only that, but the lingering insistence that women not work, that our sphere is strictly domestic--it becomes, in light of this, a ridiculous anachronism clung to, ostensibly for theological reasons, but actually as part and parcel of the influence antiquity still maintains. Bishop Williamson of the SSPX comes to mind, with his frankly misogynistic view that God made women to feel, not to think, and if a woman thinks, she is acting contrary to her nature--that's textbook Greek values. (I haven't studied medieval theology yet, but given such figures as St Catherine of Siena, I don't think the bishop's views are orthodox.)

Of course, as is my wont, I'm conflicted about all this. I grew up with a father who believed that he was theologically licensed to dominate, and a mother who believed she was theologically required to be a doormat. It can't help but have an effect on me in that I will never be comfortable with the idea of submission, but I also don't want to use that as an excuse for ignoring sound theology--where it exists. The trouble is identifying it. I think the Church is still working its way out of those purely Greek values, but so many people still cling to those Greek values as actual theological ones. (Like believing women should still wear skirts in order to be "womanly," not necessarily a Greek value--because if it were they'd be insisting men wear them too--even though such an idea is not in any way a defined article of faith.)

(Postscript, this has nothing to do with actual, defined, catechetical articles of faith, such as whether women can be priests. I'm talking about that which is cultural only. Also, since it is past two a.m., I cannot vouch for the complete coherency of this post. I am now going to make more coffee and tackle the last two potential exam questions for tomorrow.)