Conversi Ad Domini

In the liturgy of the ancient Church, after the homily the Bishop or the one who presided at the celebration, the principal celebrant, would say: "Conversi ad Dominum". Then he and everyone would rise and turn to the East. They all wanted to look towards Christ. Only if we are converted, only in this conversion to Christ, in this common gaze at Christ, will we be able to find the gift of unity.
-Pope Benedict XVI, in a General Audience comemorating the "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (23 Jan., A.D. 2008)

Biretta tip to Fr. John Fenton and The Young Fogey

Bishop Behind Barbed Wire

Our wonderful legacy from the 1999 Kosovo War!

His Grace, Bishop Artemije of the Diocese of Raska and Prizren, laments from Gracanica Monastery, which is behind barbed wire:

“Unfortunately, the destruction of our holy shines have been committed under the authority of the international community, in the presence of KFOR and UNMIK , so their presence here was not any guarantee or protection for our churches and monasteries.

“We can only presume what will happen to us if the Albanians would be granted independence of Kosovo. And I’m asking myself why would the international community sacrifice one historical nation and its cultural heritage in the 21st century. I wonder, why?”

Read the BBC News report by Mark Mardell here.

Garrison Keillor: "Where is St. Michael?"

Courtesy of The Western Confucian

From The Korea Herald:

by Garrison Keillor

Back in the day, we fundamentalists didn't mess with angels, sensing that Catholics owned the angel franchise, part of their dim smoky world of bead-rattling and hocus-pocus and lugubrious statuary, so instead we focused on the Holy Spirit who dwelt in all of us true believers and told us what to do and what to say, which is convenient for people with plenty of self-confidence. You read some Scripture and work up a sweat over it and stand up in the sunlit sanctuary, no dinging or chanting, no costumes or choreography, and you open your mouth and out comes Truth, such as the doctrine of Separation from the World, which was appealing to those of us with no social skills -- if people didn't like us, it was proof of our righteousness.
The idea that I was right and most other people were wrong stuck with me through my cocksure youth and some of middle age, but then comes the perilous passage of life when a man lies awake thinking about the prostate and the mitral valve, and your interest in Truth fades a little compared to your interest in winged beings who might come and rescue people in serious trouble. Nowadays I think more about angels. And sometimes I slip into Catholic churches to sit and commune with any resident angels and to light a few candles, especially for young people in trouble.
The sorrows of old age are tedious; it's the disasters of the young that tear at your heart. The son of an old friend has a bad accident and damages his spinal cord and now is in rehab, trying to put as much of his life together as he can. The daughter of an old friend is shot in broad daylight in the streets of Johannesburg, carrying her infant. A young man's little boy sprouts a horrible brain tumor and the father suspends his studies for several years to care for him, meanwhile his wife leaves him. These are grievous situations for which I sit in a cold empty church and look at St. Michael and ask him to intervene.
And then there is the grief that old righteous people inflict on the young, such as our public schools. I'm looking at U.S. Department of Education statistics on reading achievement and see that here in Minnesota -- proud, progressive Minnesota - on a 500-point test (average score: 225), 27 percent of fourth-graders score below basic proficiency, and black and Hispanic kids score 30-some points lower than white on average, and the 30 percent of public schoolkids who come from households in poverty (who qualify for reduced-price school lunches) score 27 points lower than those who don't come from poverty.
Reading is the key to everything. Teaching children to read is a fundamental moral obligation of the society. That 27 percent are at serious risk of crippling illiteracy is an outrageous scandal.
This is a bleak picture for an old Democrat. Face it, the schools are not run by Republican oligarchs in top hats and spats but by perfectly nice, caring, sharing people, with a smattering of yoga/raga/tofu/mojo/mantra folks like my old confreres. Nice people are failing these kids, but when they are called on it, they get very huffy. When the grand poobah Ph.D.s of education stand up and blow, they speak with great confidence about theories of teaching, and considering the test results, the bums ought to be thrown out.
There is much evidence that teaching phonics really works, especially with kids with learning disabilities, a growing constituency. But because phonics is associated with behaviorism and with conservatives, and because the Current Occupant has spoken on the subject, my fellow liberals are opposed.
Liberal dogma says that each child is inherently gifted and will read if only he is read to. This was true of my grandson; it is demonstrably not true of many kids, including my sandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter. The No Child Left Behind initiative has plenty of flaws, but the Democrats who are trashing it should take another look at the Reading First program. It is morally disgusting if Democrats throw out Republican programs that are good for children. Life is not a scrimmage. Grown-ups who stick with dogma even though it condemns children to second-class lives should be put on buses and sent to North Dakota to hoe wheat for a year.
St. Michael, I beg you to send angels to watch over fourth-graders who are struggling to read, because the righteous among us are not doing the job.
Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the United States. -- Ed.

Bishop Hilarion's "Passion According to St. Matthew"

For your Lenten pleasure (ours start in three weeks!)

His Grace's EXCELLENT composition is available online, as originally aired on EWTN.

Click here to listen, and while there, you may read a number of essays this remarkable man of God has written. Accomplished musician, theologian, and bishop of Christ's flock. Enjoy!

Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens, RIP

I had mixed feelings about his ministry, for the reasons that this article will show.

However, since he was an able shepherd of Christ's flock, carrying out his duty in celebrating the mysteries and guarding the sacraments to the end of time, I will exclaim: Requiescas in Pace, pastor Christi! Memory Eternal!

From the BBC News Service:

An attempted liver transplant in 2007 was unsuccessful, and the archbishop had grown steadily weaker recently.
Archbishop Christodoulos was a colourful and controversial figure, the BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Greece says.

He defended the church's pre-eminent role in the state and upheld Hellenism - the national character and culture of Greece, our correspondent says.

But critics say that under Archbishop Christodoulos, Greece remained a country which discriminates against those who are not Orthodox, including Catholics and worshippers of other branches of Christianity.

Read the rest of the article here:

Update: First Chapter Sent Off!

The first chapter of my dissertation was just sent to my committee. I await their feedback with earnest expectation!

In the meantime, I will be working on the two chapters I need to finish, plus finish editing the rest of the five.

It's nearing completion, and I have this clammy sense of expectation, fear, elation, all at once! It's close to the end of the road before, hopefully, I can at last say Phinally Done!!!

Pagans or Apostates?

An Essay by Dr. Alice von Hildebrand, published by the New Oxford Review:

He who aims at changing society -- for good or for evil -- knows that he should gain control over three things: education, the news media, and entertainment. These are the keys that shape a society.My concern is education. Great men have always emphasized its crucial importance. To form young minds is to build the future of a society. There is no nobler task, and education begins at home. The mother is the primary educator of her child, for she will spend more time with her babies than the father can, even though his role is also crucial. To educate is to lead, to draw, to guide. The child, inexperienced and unknowing, needs a guiding hand to teach him the elementary rules of human existence. This hand should be both firm and gentle: firm because morally, intellectually, and physically, the child is not yet steady on his legs; gentle because this firmness should be an expression of loving concern for his welfare. Granted that these two qualities are not easily combined, it is typical of great personalities that they manage to unite what -- at first sight -- are irreconcilable opposites.

It is monly said today that "we have fallen back into paganism." This claim is a gross oversimplification. Granted that man's nature has been wounded by Original Sin, it is definitely not true to claim -- as the Calvinists do -- that it is totally corrupt. We only need turn to the great works of pagan antiquity to see that the best among the pagans were sincere lovers of truth and that their contributions are remarkable even though they were inevitably incomplete. They did not benefit from Christian revelation, but their works prove that there is a natural law inscribed in man's heart, and that men of good will can easily read its dictates. Plato was such a man.


Plato devoted most of his writings to education. His two major works, The Republic and The Laws, are dedicated to this all-important topic. This article aims partly at etching the accomplishments of this great pagan.

Had Plato met Peter Singer (who advocates infanticide at Princeton), he would have been outraged. To place animals on the level of man would have kindled his ire. Some animals can be trained, that is, forced to do the will of the trainer; one can train a dog to take a few steps on two legs. Children can be trained as far as certain physical activities are concerned, but education addresses children as human beings. In this case, the educator worthy of the name does not impose his will upon his pupils; he guides them to do, in collaboration with them, what they ought to do, so that, one day, they will freely do it on their own. The knowledge of this "oughtness" will benefit the child: Knowing the moral law and living up to its norms is essential to man's true development.

Read the rest here
Biretta tip to to The Western Confucian

I'm Baaack!

It's been a long hiatus, I know, but the dissertation is LARGELY done, with one-and-a-half more chapters to go. I am editing the introductory chapter, getting ready to send it out to my doctoral committee, and while finishing the chapters I need to finish, I will go on with editing what is finished. I am hoping to defend some time in April.

In May I will be flying out to Michigan for the annual International Medieval Congress at the University of Michigan in Kalamazoo (yes, I know, that catchy ditty by Glen Miller). This is often called a "summer camp for medievalists." I won't be giving a paper this time around, but will be attending a number of conferences on monastic history and spirituality, and a few on Tolkien and the Middle Ages!

Last year at the Congress, I met this man
His name? Diego Poole, who is now professor of law at the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. As a university student in the late 80's, he was Pope John Paul II's "unofficial jester," if you will, entertaining him, and thousands of college students from around the world during a world student congress at the Vatican every on Holy Week. He is known as the man who made the Pope laugh so hard, he alomost fell out of his seat!

He is a member of Opus Dei, and as a university faculty, his main research is on the how Christian natural law tradition (especially in its Thomistic variety) can inform moral and ethical questions that arise in modern jurisprudence.

I had the pleasure of having served as his translator during the presentation of his paper. My job was simply to explain some questions from the Q and A period that he might have some trouble understanding due to his still growing grasp of English. He did fine, only needing my services once. We have since then kept up e-mail correspondence, and will likely see each other again this year in Kalamazoo (or "The Zoo" as it is oftimes called).

I hope you, whatever reading public I have, have had a blessed Christmas feast and Holy Epihany/Theophany season.

I will be posting moderately again, given my many commitments, but will blog more once the dissertation is done, defended and approved!

Pax Vobiscum!