A Sound of Sheer Silence

Let's think for a moment about how we get around.  Human beings are clearly designed to walk upright.  Our spine is optimized for an upright posture, and is on a relative basis stronger than our quadruped cousins to handle the higher load at the top of the body.  Our head is set on top of the spine in a manner that has us looking forward naturally only when standing upright (and, conversely and unhelpfully, looking down when on all fours).  Our hips have a different design than most four-legged mammals, allowing for a greater range of motion but putting our legs in an awkward position relative to our torso if we are on all fours.  Our arms are shorter than our legs, forcing us either to "walk" with our knees as points of contact (which they are manifestly not designed to do), or else to arch our backs in an awkward and unstable posture.  Our hand bones are small and fragile, clearly not designed to take the repeated pounding involved in being a point of con...

Twitter is mostly terrible, but there are a few bright spots, and one of them is Nicole Cliffe.  Moreso than anyone else I have found, she is able to tell consistently compelling stories in the weird and artificial format that Twitter provides.  She also has this incredibly ability to build community around her writing on Twitter, which sounds strange when you say it but is 100% true. Yesterday, Cliffe dropped a particularly amazing story, the beginning of which is: OKAY: I am going to tell the story of my bigamous grandmother at the current time. Please mute me if you heard it two years ago. Please do not steal it for an Elite Daily story (happened last time.) — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) March 25, 2018 Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.  Beyond being a cracker of a tale, her story got me thinking about a question that I think is at the heart of so much what is going on in America right now.  Everyone, I think, recognizes that things have chan...

Barring some unforeseen development, on Sunday Bishop Thomas Breidenthal of the Diocese of Southern Ohio of the Episcopal Church will officially pronounce that I (and about a dozen other folks) have changed denominations and officially joined the Episcopal Church.  As I sit here, 48 hours from this event taking place, I have some unorganized thoughts about where I am and where I might be going.  This is, perhaps, a "confession" in the classical sense of the term. If I had to pick a single reason for deciding to make this move, it would be that I wanted to live my faith with greater authenticity and personal integrity.  As time has gone on, it is has become increasingly clear to me that I simply don't believe some of the things that the Roman Catholic Church insists that I believe.  I recognize that many people can, happily and with great personal integrity and self-assurance, believe and live those ideas and principles, and while we can debate the impact of some of...

1. One of my favorite movies, and a movie I will defend to the death, is The Fountain.   The conventional wisdom is that The Fountain  (2006) was a weird misstep in director Darren Aronofsky's career between the critically acclaimed, commercially successful hits Requiem for a Dream  (2000) and The Wrestler  (2008) (and, later Black Swan (2010)).  That conventional wisdom is wrong-- The Fountain is every bit as good as those films (and I think better than Requiem and Black Swan , though I really like those films).  It is, I will admit, less accessible than some of his other films--it doesn't have a conventional narrative structure, but instead intertwines three related stories.  But if you take the time to work through what is going on, it will reward you. [Also, a quick aside--the soundtrack to The Fountain  by Clint Mansell and Kronos Quartet, is absolutely fantastic.  Even if you don't see the movie, listen to the soundtrack--it i...

The oldest known comprehensive creedal formulation of the Christian faith is known as the "Old Roman Symbol."  As best as we can tell, it dates from the 2nd Century, and is found almost unchanged in both Latin and Greek forms (the Greek version adds "the life everlasting" to the end of the litany).  Here is what it says: I believe in God the Father almighty; and in Christ Jesus His only Son, our Lord, Who was born from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried, on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, whence He will come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit, the holy Church, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the flesh. With a few additions, the Old Roman Symbol forms the basis of what has become known as the Apostles Creed, the creed which is used in the West as the Baptismal creed: I believe in God, the Father almigh...

In the previous post, I took a look at the idea of a taboo, and whether people are freaking out about homosexuality because it is a taboo.  If homosexuality is a taboo, we would expect it to be "protecting" some social division or structure.  And I think homosexuality is "protecting" a social division--the division between men and women, and the notion that this division manifests itself in rigid roles respective to each gender. Let's go back to St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3: 26-28. Other than the resurrection accounts, I think this is the most radical passage of the New Testament.  St. Paul is naming three of the most profound divisions in his society and declaring them to be irrelevant in light of the coming of...

One of the true joys that has come from writing this blog is that it has given me the chance to make what I call "Internet friends."  These are people that I have not met in person, but people who I have interacted with via Twitter or email as a result of something I written, or something they have written, or both.  Frank Strong of Letters to the Catholic Right   is one such person (by the way, you should absolutely check out his recent post on the goings on in the Episcopal Church , of which he is a member), as is Bill Lindsey of Bilgrimage .  Another one of my Internet friends is Maureen Clarke, a woman who lives in Manchester, England, and maintains an active Twitter feed involving the Catholic Church, UK politics, and healthcare issues in her neck of the woods. On Saturday, Maureen tweeted the following: The debate on LGBT dominated the Synod on the family yet nothing changes.  Why is sin always synonymous with sex?  What about greed power, etc W...

I've talked before about the idea of "Christian Realism."  The premise here is that Christianity, properly understood, describes the world as it actually is.  As a result, if there is some empirical claim made on behalf of Christianity, and that claim proves to be wrong, then our understanding of Christianity is flawed.  The solution is not to reject Christianity, nor to put our fingers in our ears and pretend that we don't hear the fact that is inconsistent with our empirical claim; the solution is to go back to the drawing board and rethink our empirical presuppositions.  After all, as Aquinas said,“[a]ll that is true, by whomsoever it has been said, has its origin in the Spirit.” Christian Realism is a real problem with regard to Catholicism and sexual issues.   A good example of the problem can be seen in this piece by Lisa Duffy.  Here's the key quote: When sex is experienced outside of marriage, there is no freedom or innocence; it’s all about re...

#6: "Walk on the Ocean" by Toad the Wet Sprocket (off of fear  (1991)) It is cliche, but it is true.  There are songs that get locked into your consciousness and become associated with a particular time and place.  This is an example of such a song.  It reminds me of high school, and in particular early high school over-night trips for various competitions.  I hear this song and I am immediately 15 or 16 years old for a few minutes while it is playing. The biggest problem with being a teenager, ultimately, is the information gap involved.  Lots of new and bewildering things are going on, and all of these things feel entirely sui generis , as if you are the first person to go through them.  This is of course entirely untrue--I don't believe there is a single person who has ever lived who has not struggled through adolescence on one level or another.  Perhaps there are teenagers who understand this fact, are not scared by it, and can just r...

[ Note:  The piece on Confession is in progress, but needs more work, so a detour for now.] When we worship an idol, our love, which is in principle a good thing, is trapped into grasping onto something made in our own image. This “something”, which we of course do not perceive as an idol, then becomes the repository for all the security and certainty which we idolaters need in order to survive in the world. We are unaware that the tighter we grasp it, the more insecure and uncertain we in fact become, and the more we empty the object which we idolize of any potential for truth and meaning. And of course because love is in principle a good thing, for us to get untangled from its distorted form is very painful. Nevertheless, against any tendency we might have to blame the idol for being an idol, it is really the pattern of desire in us, the grasping, that is the problem, not the object. For just as the Bible is not an act of communication that we can lay hold of, but the written m...

1.  Words have a magic to them.  We tend to think of them as neutral carriers of meaning, but as any one of a number of impenetrable philosophy texts (mostly French) will tell you, the linkage between "words" and "meaning" is often more complex and ambiguous than we recognize. We've all had the experience of words conveying less meaning than we intend--we say or write something that we think is clear, but turns out to be impossible for the listener to understand.  We've also all had the experience of words conveying a different meaning from the one we intend--we mean one thing, but it is heard as something else. And, every once in a while, the words we say have more meaning that we intend--our words touch on some power that we were not consciously aware of when we say them, but is present nonetheless.  It is in these moments that the magic of words comes to the fore.  It is in these moments that words become transcendent. 2.  Think about poetry, or song...

Now that we've gotten this climate change thing sorted out , it's time for all of us to refocus our attention back to where it belongs--sex!  Yes my friends, this summer, and into the fall, are going to bring us a number of events that are going to place the attention of many on who is doing what to whom and under what circumstances.  The first domino fell on Friday, in the form of the Supreme Court ruling on the gay marriage cases.  But it's not over yet, not by a long shot.  Observe: Last week,  we got the prepatory document for Synod on the Family Part II, Electric Boogaloo . [Ed. Note:   Official English translation here ]. If you have been following this story, you will not be surprised to hear that it is a mixed bag!  For example, it calls out "a certain vision of feminism that considers maternity a pretext for the utilization of women and an obstacle to their full realization."  (Boo!).  But then it follows up with praise for "[a] s...