Memorare

Gospel Scenes and Meditations

2011-04-16T12:04:00.001-07:00

Gospel Scenes and Meditations

Love God x 6

2009-08-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

Feast of the Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin Mary
into Heaven

Circles for Pentecost

2007-05-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

Life is a gift. The Giver is greater than the gift. It is all right to die. So ends this blog.

Paul Stern

2007-05-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

Paul Stern did not manage to emigrate. Perhaps he did not even try. In the summer of 1942 I was in Leipzig for a few days, and one evening I again visited my friends at the Oratory. They asked me if I would object to meeting Paul Stern. People used to ask such questions in those days, by way of precaution. Then I was told that for some time Paul Stern had been living in the Ghetto; but because he married a non-Jewess he did not have to wear the yellow star. This meant that he could go freely about the town, at least when his work was over. However, he had to report back at ten o’clock at night; prior to this he would often come to the Oratory, mostly to play the organ. I also learned that some time before, in the wake of a more intensive study of Saint Thomas, he had become a Catholic. His present work, eight hours a day, and under supervision, was picking out bits of metal from the refuse dumps of Leipzig. On my way to his remote room I wondered what words to use, meeting him again under these circumstances. But straight away it was obvious that, if anyone needed words of comfort, he, at least, did not. The man who sat opposite me was calm and cheerful; he knew no bitterness, not even, it seemed, sadness. Then I understood what my friends had told me: if they had ever met a saint, it was Paul Stern. We spoke about Thomas Aquinas and about that evening in Hegner’s house [when there was a discussion — “disputation” — about Stern and Hans Nachod’s manner of translating Summa contra gentiles into German]. He complimented me on my output since then. He was a little sorry to be without my small book on hope, which he had somehow mislaid. But when, somewhat ashamed, I promised to send him a new copy here, to the Oratory, he made a friendly gesture of refusal, as if something had suddenly occurred to him: I don’t need it any more—. In a 1959 posthumous edition of John Henry Newman’s Dream of Gerontius [Traum des Gerontius] the last translation, apparently, on which the two friends [Stern and Nachod] collaborated, one reads that Paul Stern was deported to Theresienstadt in 1943 and probably died in Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of fifty-four.

— Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known

Computer-Buddy

2007-05-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

Since Turing, a scientific genius, was not speaking ex tempore but presenting, in [Computing machinery and intelligence], a well-considered opinion, something more specific than general human fallibility seems called for as an explanation for his adoption of a view [that he had come up with a test to determine if a computer may be said to think] that seems nothing less than absurd. My explanation is that Turing was lonely; first because it is in the nature of things that a genius must be lonely, but also and more particularly because he was a homosexual in a society that strongly rejected homosexuality. In seeing the computer as a potential friend he was by no means alone — many of the strange beliefs I will be discussing are at bottom searches for a buddy — and the computer is not the most unlikely entity in which lonely man has attempted to find a friend. But whatever the cause that led a genius of Turing’s caliber to suppose a computer capable of thought, I see in it a failure of confidence in their own experience on the part of modern cultivated people. It is a failure that shows itself again in our increasing preoccupation, sometimes even obsession, with the world of the Virtual — that is, of things that do such a good job of seeming that mere being cannot compete.

— Mark Halpern, Paradox Lost: the Cost of a Virtual World

Read also, Mark Halpern, The Trouble with the Turing Test, The New Atlantis, Number 11, Winter 2006.

Mark Halpern initiated The Jacques Barzun Centennial.

“Lacking”

2007-05-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

³ και υστερησαντος οινου λεγει η μητηρ τον Ιησου προς αυτον, Οινον ουκ εχουστν.
⁴ και λεγει αυτη ο Ιησους, Τι εμοι και σοι, γυναι; ουπω ηκει η ωρα μου.
— John 2

³ And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.
⁴ Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

Usteresantos, meaning “they were wanting, they were lacking in,” (as in ‘they were wanting wine’) is related to the word usteron, meaning the womb – from whence we get the words ‘hysterectomy,’ ‘hysterical,’ etc. . . .

Beings who have no ‘metaphysical’ inquietude cannot have history. The animals are ‘fulfilled’ in a way that we are not; it is our very ‘lacking’ that gives us the historical impulse. In this sense history is so ‘womb-driven’; it is the feminine of mankind (i.e., of all men and women) expressed, drawn out, lived out, upon the plane of temporalization. . . .

Never has it happened that so many people have been so ‘lacking’ . . . . in the feeling of ‘lacking.’ That is to say, history now unfolds on the plane of self-sufficiency, amidst the hordes of the self-sufficient, those who are barren in the womb.

And never before has there been such a period of prolonged stagnation as the Modern Age. Things haven’t changed in essentials in decades, half a century, a century, a century and a half. . . . Western mankind, stunting its growth with materialism, is paralyzing its capacity for creative development. . . .

— Caryl Johnston, Metaphysics and ‘Lacking in Something’

Read also Caryl Johnston, Holy Mother, and, perhaps, A Wedding.

Useful Ignorance

2007-05-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

From Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, Paragraph 153:

The present idea of dialogue obscures the way of useful ignorance that is appropriate for minds that are incapable of adopting the way of examination, and that adhere firmly to their fundamental assent and do not devote much attention to opposing views, to find out where their error lies. Being afraid of ideas opposed to what they know is certainly true, they keep themselves in ignorance to preserve the truths they already possess, and shut out false ideas and also any true ones that happen to be mixed in with them, without separating the one from the other.

This way of useful ignorance is legitimate in Catholicism, is based on the theoretical principle explained earlier [Having established even by one convincing consideration that religion is true, the latter is to be held on to even if particular difficulties remain unresolved.], and is moreover the condition in which the great majority of all religious believers find themselves.¹¹

¹¹ The theory of useful ignorance is developed by Manzoni in his Morale Cattolica, ed. cit., Vol. II, pp.422–3 and Vol. III, p.131.

Gospel Scenes

2007-05-23T16:57:00.001-07:00

Gospel Scenes can now be read and (to Scene 30) heard together.

Albany Assessment 13

2007-05-23T09:35:00.000-07:00

Albany reassessment has many hitting roof, Albany Times Union article by Tim O’Brien, May 23, 2007. Note: Rezsin Adams.

Albany Assessment 12

2007-05-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

Ted and Rezsin treated Mary and me to dinner at Ocean Palace last night. Rezsin mentioned that she spoke with Tim O’Brien of the Times Union about her assessment. An article may appear in the paper tomorrow.

Went to Mass with Dot at the PH. Saw Dot’s new room on the 3^rd, then after picking up Olivia at Erin’s, the four of us had lunch at Emma Cleary’s before coming home to see, with Ted and Rezsin, the DVD of The Queen.

Worst Case Scenario

2007-05-19T06:48:00.000-07:00

That we live, and move, and have our being in a lie.

Circiterisms

2007-05-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

Paragraph 50 of Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes of the Catholic Church in the XX^th Century, trans. by Fr. John P. Parsons:

50. Novel hermenutic of the Council, continued.
Circiterisms. Use of the conjunction but.
Deepening understanding.

The circiterism is something which occurs frequently in the arguments of the innovators. It consists in referring to an indistinct and confused term as if it were something well established and defined, and then extracting or excluding from it the element one needs to extract or exclude. The term spirit of the council, or indeed the council, is just such an expression. I remember instances in pastoral practice, of priestly innovators violating quite definite rules which had been in no way altered since the council, and replying to the faithful, who were amazed at their arbitrary proceedings, by referring them to the council.

I do not deny that a knowing subject can only direct his attention successively to the various parts of a complex whole, given, on the one hand, that the intentio¹⁴ of the intellect is incapable of contemplating all sides of it at once, and on the other, that the exercise of thought is free. I do, however, maintain that this mode of operation, natural to the intellect, must not be confused with that deliberate diversion of attention which the will can impose on the workings of the mind so that, as the Gospel puts it, it fails to see what it sees and to grasp what it knows.¹⁵ The first kind of mental operation occurs in genuine research, which of its nature proceeds step by step, but the second does not deserve to be called research, since it imposes on facts a manner of viewing them which originated in one’s subjective inclinations.

It is also common to talk about a message, and a code by which one reads and deciphers the message. The notion of a reading has replaced that of the knowledge of something, thus replacing the binding force of univocal knowledge with a plurality of possible readings. It is alleged that a single message can be read in different keys: if it is heterodox, in an orthodox key. This method, however, forgets that the text has a primitive, inherent, obvious and literal sense of its own, which must be understood before any reading, and that it sometimes does not admit of being read with the key with which the second reading proposes to read it. The counciliar texts, like any others, have, independently of the reading that may be made of them, an obvious and univocal readability, that is, a literal sense which is the basis of any other sense which may be found in them. Hermeneutical perfection consists in reducing the second reading to the first, which gives the true sense of the text. The Church, moreover, has never proceeded in any other way.

The technique adopted by the innovators in the post-conciliar period thus consists in illuminating or obscuring, glossing or reinforcing, individual parts of a text or of a truth. This is merely the abuse of that faculty of abstraction which the mind necessarily exercises when it examines any complex whole. It is a necessary condition of all discursive knowledge arrived at in time, as distinct from angelic intuition.

To this they add another technique, characteristic of those who disseminate error: that of hiding one truth behind another so as to be able to behave as if the hidden truth were not only hidden but simply non-existent. When the Church, for example, is defined as the People of God on a journey, the other side of the truth is hidden, namely that the Church also includes the blessed who have already reached the end of the journey, and that they are the more important part of the Church, since they are the part in which the purpose of the Church and of the universe has been fulfilled. In the next stage, the truth which was still part of the message but which has been put in the background will end up being dropped from the message altogether, through the rejection of the cult of the saints.

The procedure we have described is often effected by using the conjunction but. One has merely to know the full meaning of words in order to recognize the hidden intention of this school of interpreters. For example, to attack the principle of the religious life they write: Le fondement de la vie religieuse n’est pas remis en question, mais son style de réalisation.¹⁶ Again, to get round the dogma of the virginity of Our Lady in partu¹⁷ they say that doubts are possible non d’ailleurs sur la croyance, elle-même dont nul ne conteste les titres dogmatiques, mais sur son object exacte, dont il ne serait pas assuré qu’il comprenne le miracle de l’enfantement sans lésion corporelle.¹⁸ And to attack the enclosure of nuns they write: La cloîture doit être maintenue, mais elle soit être adaptée selon les conditions des temps et des lieux.¹⁹

The particle mais²⁰ is equivalent to magis,²¹ from which it derives, and thus while appearing to maintain one’s position on the virginity of Our Lady, on the religious life and on the enclosure of nuns, one is asserting that what is more important than a principle, are the ways of adapting it to times and places. But what sort of principle is inferior rather than superior to its realizations? Is it not obvious that there are styles which destroy, rather than express, the fundamentals they are meant to embody? At this rate one might just as well say that the fundamentals of gothic style are not in dispute, only the way they are realized; and then proceed to abolish the pointed arch.

This use of but often occurs in the speeches of the council fathers, when they lay down in their principal assertion something which will be destroyed by the but in a secondary assertion, so that the latter becomes what is principally asserted. So too at the Synod of Bishops in 1980, French language group B wrote: The group adheres without reserve to Humanae Vitae, but the dichotomy between the rigidity of law and pastoral flexibility must be overcome. Thus adherence to the encyclical becomes purely verbal, because bending the law to conform with human weakness is more important than the encyclical’s teaching.²² The formula of those who wanted the admission of divorced and remarried people to the Eucharist was more forthright: Il ne s’agit pas de renoncer à l’exigence évangelique, mais de reconnaître la possibilité pour tous d’être réintégrés dans la communion ecclésiale.²³

At the same Synod on the Family in 1980, the use of the word deepening²⁴ cropped up among the innovators. While seeking the abandonment of the doctrine taught in Humanae Vitae, they confessed complete adherence to it, but asked that the doctrine be deepened; meaning not that it be strengthened by new arguments, but changed into something else. The process of deepening would apparently consist in searching and searching until one arrived at an opposite conclusion.

Even more important is the fact that circiterisms were sometimes used in the drawing up of the conciliar documents themselves. These inexact formulations were deliberately introduced so that post-conciliar hermeneutics could gloss or reinforce whichever ideas it liked. Nous l’exprimons d’une façon diplomatique, mais après le Concile nous tirerons les conclusions implicites.²⁵ It is a diplomatic style, that is, as the word itself implies, double, in which the text is formulated to accord with its interpretation, thus reversing the natural order of thinking and writing.

¹⁴ Concentration or attention.
¹⁵ Matthew, 13:13.
¹⁶ The foundations of the religious life are not in question, but the style of its realization. Report of the Union des Supérieurs de France, 3 vols. cited in Itinéraires, No. 155, 1971, p.43.
¹⁷ While giving birth.
¹⁸ Not concerning the belief itself, the dogmatic credentials of which are not contested by anyone, but as to its exact object, which does not necessarily include the miracle of giving birth without rupture of the body. See J.H. Nicolas, La virginité de Marie, Fribourg, Switzerland 1957, p.18, who argues against the unorthodox thesis of A. Mitterer, Dogma und Biologie, Vienna 1952.
¹⁹ Enclosure must be maintained, but it must be adapted according to circumstances of time and place. Supérieurs de France, op. cit.
²⁰ French mais; English but; Italian ma.
²¹ Latin for more.
²² Osservatore Romano, 15 October 1980.
²³ It is not a question of abandoning the demands of the Gospel, but of recognizing the possibility that all people can be reintegrated into the ecclesial community. Informations catholiques internationales, No.555, 13 October 1980, p.12.
²⁴ Approfondimento in Italian, with a connotation of exploration and research.
²⁵ We will express it in a diplomatic way, but after the council we will draw out the implicit conclusions. Statement by Fr. Schillebeeckx in the Dutch magazine De Bazuin, No.16, 1965, quoted in French translation in Itinéraires, No.155, 1971, p.40.

nobo

2007-05-18T03:47:00.001-07:00

Expect to be on-line less, so have turned off meebo.

Albany Assessment 11

2007-05-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

One difficulty with filing a Complaint on Real Property Assessment in Albany is that people get — or come away with — contradictory or apparently mistaken advice. An example of contradictory advice (or understanding of that advice) is that at a neighborhood meeting I was told that the City of Albany Department of Assessment and Taxation did not distinguish between one- and two-family row houses, and today a neighbor who owns a one-family row house told me that she was advised by the same department not to list two-family row houses among her comparables. An example of apparently mistaken advice is that in showing people how to fill out Form RP-524, employees at the Assessment and Taxation Department cross out Part Three, Sections B, C, and D. and tell people to just fill in Item 4 of Section A. UNEQUAL ASSESSMENT (Complete items 1–4). Now Section A appears to have to do with the percentage assessment of full value, whereas people are really complaining about excessive assessment, the apparent subject of Section B.

I do not say that the advice given by the Assessment and Taxation Department is contradictory or mistaken. I am saying that what people are coming away with appears to be contradictory or mistaken.

A Lionel Trilling Remembrance

2007-05-16T19:42:00.001-07:00

Ted told me that long ago an acquaintance of his, Rebecca Roth, was thinking about writing an essay about The Princess Casamassima. She heard that Lionel Trilling was also working on an essay, and wrote to him to ask if he thought she should continue. Trilling wrote back, saying yes, by all means, he thought she had something to contribute and sent her the only copy he had of his draft essay, asking that she send it back after reading it. She did send it back, but did not write her own essay, concluding that she did not in fact have much more to say that Trilling had not said better.

Ted contrasted this story with his own about Lionel Edel, according to Ted an unpleasant man, who he said complained to him that he had to rush into print an article about Henry James’ later years, because another scholar was writing about the same subject. Ted added the he couldn't imagine that Jacques Barzun would have acted as Edel apparently did.

In “George Orwell and the Politics of Truth” Trilling wrote about a somewhat similar occasion in which, however, he avoided sharing his thoughts:

It happened by a curious chance that on the day I agreed to write this essay as the introduction to the new edition of Homage to Catalonia, and indeed at the very moment that I was reaching for the telephone to tell the publisher that I would write it, a young man, a graduate student of mine, came in to see me, the purpose of his visit being to ask what I thought about his doing an essay on George Orwell. My answer, naturally, was ready, and when I had given it and we had been amused and pleased by the coincidence, he settled down for a chat about our common subject. But I asked him not to talk about Orwell. I didn’t want to dissipate in talk what ideas I had, and also I didn't want my ideas crossed with his, which were sure to be very good. So, for a while we merely exchanged bibliographical information, asking each other which of Orwell’s books we had read and which we owned. But then, as if he could not resist making at least one remark about Orwell himself, he said suddenly in a very simple and matter-of-fact way, “He was a virtuous man.” And we sat there agreeing at length about this statement, finding pleasure in talking about it.

Success and Failure of Councils

2007-05-16T03:48:00.000-07:00

Comparisons between once council and another are dangerous, since one needs to specify in what respect the comparison is being made. If one looks to their practical effectiveness one will find that, for example, Lateran V (1512–1517) achieved nothing regarding the causa reformationis with which it was principally concerned, since its reforming decrees were a dead letter; but that its dogmatic decrees were important since they excluded neoaristotelianism, by condemning those who taught that the sould was mortal. Only a Trent were doctrinal clarification and practical measures equally signficant, but even Trent failed entirely in the causa unionis for which it had primarily been summoned.
— Roman Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XX^th Century, Paragraph 35.

The Aging New

2007-05-15T18:43:00.000-07:00

Nous vivons actuellement dans une société qui est « vieillissante », non pas tellement parce que la moyenne d’âge est plus élevée, mais parce que malgré l’invention constante de toutes sortes d’invention techniques nouvelles (au sens du mot grec neos) et de milliers de nouvelles formes de distraction (répondant à une acédie généralisée), il y a bien peu d’authentique nouveauté [kainos] dans la quête de sens et dans la profondeur des relations.
— Armand Veilleux, Voici que je fais toutes choses nouvelles

Mendacious Banality — and Hope

2007-05-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

The secular mood and tone of the English we use in worship carry [the 1960s] into our times. Perhaps it sustains those who are still locked into its ideals, categories, and agenda. Some of these people are the loudest in decrying the work of Vox Clara and the new ICEL, perhaps because they sense that the existing language of ICEL is an echo of the mood of their era.

When liturgical language no longer speaks with dignity, reverence, and graciousness, we risk losing an essentially Catholic way of how we relate to God, how we understand God and ourselves as persons. The fathers at the Synod on the Eucharist in 2005 were concerned about this desacralized mood which undermines the praxis of liturgy today. In the Anglophone world, for nearly forty years, the banal ICEL language has gradually insinuated a kind of neutrality into the minds of millions of Catholics, dulling their Catholic sense of public worship and prayer, failing to nourish holiness or to promote sound spirituality. Partly through inadequate language, a desacralized atmosphere has been created in many of our churches, and it is less than Catholic. The loss of sacral language may be seen as a betrayal of the Second Vatican Council’s radiant vision of the liturgy. It can only serve the interests of what Pope Benedict XVI has identified as the false hermeneutic of the council.

That false hermeneutic is not restricted to theological faculties, rectories, or religious houses. Recently I discussed this dimension of truthfulness and the imminent translations with a wise friend who pointed out that some middle-aged and elderly laity will probably resent the new Vox Clara and ICEL texts, not because they are new, but because they will seem to be “a reversion to the past.” That will remind them that they are not living up to the doctrinal and moral norms of the Church, norms they want to consider locked in a past they never wish to see again. So we may also expect to hear the cry “archaisms!” or something similar from some lay people. Others accustomed to fast food may not wish to savor what is more substantial, subtle, and refined. Even if we find it hard to articulate exactly what happened, something went wrong in the language of Catholic worship, and that has caused harm among Christ’s faithful. . . .

Lying is a sin. Then, we may well ask, has our worship in the English language involved telling lies for nearly forty years? I regret to say that to a certain extent it has. This is evident, first, in many demonstrable instances at the obvious level of mistranslation through omission, distortion, or the blurring of language that bears doctrinal truth. Secondly, it may be discerned in more subtle ways – as the undermining of the truth of the mystery and above all as the creation of a dull mood that drains away the truth of Christian worship. This is why it is important to redefine the debate between the two contrasting ICEL translations in ethical terms.

Those running a rearguard action to salvage as much of the old ICEL as possible should face some ethical challenges. It is all very well now to take up the rhetoric about being ‘pastorally sensitive’ to the people. There was not a word of that over thirty years ago when a hastily mistranslated liturgy robbed the people of much of their Catholic cultural and spiritual heritage. Here the ethic of strategic mistranslation enters a domain closely related to lying: stealing. Much is rightly made of robbing people of their ethnic, indigenous, or spiritual cultures, but something like this has been going on quietly among English-speaking Catholics for years, through the banal, but calculated, ICEL translations.

— Peter J. Elliott, Liturgical Translation:A Question of Truth, Antiphon, 10:3 (2006)

But Msgr. (and Bishop-elect) Elliott concludes hopefully:

Now is the time to look forward and “wait in joyful hope,” if I may use one of the old ICEL’s more felicitous phrases. Something better is emerging in this area of English liturgical language, a significant development that may also make it possible to face the wider challenges of an inevitable reform of the reform. Through the new
translations, we hope to see something of the glory of the liturgy shine once more. May we recover the divine splendor of the truth, on the lips, in the minds, and in the hearts of a people worshipping the triune God “in spirit and in truth.”

Yet the lie was and is a great evil, for as Romano Amerio wrote:

The Church is only in danger of perishing if she loses the truth, not if she fails to live up to it.
— Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XX^th Century, Paragraph 14.

Bread and Circuses

2007-05-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

There will naturally be games — like the Roman circenses — but who could dignfiy the amusements for the masses under the name of festival?
— Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture

I suppose everyone will agree that bowls and March Madness are more like circuses than festivals. So also, I suppose the Olympics and the World Series, as is shown when something tragic happens and we are told that this other thing is what is really important. Neither are arts festivals really important. Worshipping God would seem to be really important. Why do people give so little time and attention to what they acknowledge as really important?

To work is to pray, said Carlyle, in whose writings the following statement can be read: Fundamentally speaking, all genuine work is religion, and every religion that is not work can go and live with the Brahmins, the Antinomians, and the Whirling Dervishes. Would anyone want to say that this is merely a marginal opinion from the nineteenth century, expressed in pathetic terms, and not rather the very state of mind of the total world of work, which our wild is preparing to become?
— Josef Pieper, Ibid.

Our own clichéd (and also apparently nineteenth century) way of agreeing with Carlyle is to praise someone for doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way.

There are certain things which one cannot do in order to . . . do something else. One either does not do them at all or one does them because they are meaningful in themselves. Certainly the doctors are correct in saying that lack of leisure makes one ill. But at the same time, it is impossible to be truly at leisure merely for the sake of health. Such logical confusion is not only unfitting, it simply cannot work. Leisure cannot be realized so long as one understands it to be a means, even if a means to the end of rescuing the culture of Christian Europe. The celebration of God’s praises cannot be realized unless it takes place for its own sake. But this — the most noble form of harmony with the world as a whole — is the deepest source of leisure.
— Josef Pieper, Ibid.,

Every ought is ground in an is

2007-05-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

Every ought is grounded in an is; the good is what corresponds to reality. If anyone wants to know and do the good, he must direct his gaze to the objective world of being; not to his own mind, not to his own conscience, not to values, nor to ideals or paradigms he has himself drawn up. He must look away from his own act and toward reality.
— Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known

And if is is I Am Who Am, why consult myself?

Ad Orientem

2007-05-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

I am glad to see in the film Into Great Silence that at the Grande Chartreuse Mass is celebrated ad orientem, even with the monks surrounding the altar.

To Be Contemporary

2007-05-12T18:28:00.001-07:00

The common discourse on modern church architecture, it seems to me, regularly uses the notion of what is contemporary in too narrow a sense. Those who explicitly insist on being of today should indeed expect that tomorrow they will be considered of yesterday. The Christian immersed in the life rhythm of the Church claims much larger dimensions for his today, in geographical space as well as historical time. I think of the Requiem Mass for my brother inside the rotunda of St. Micael's in Fulda, a church dating back eleven hundred years. I think of the High Mass in Notre Dame on the feast of Corpus Christi, when the sequence Lauda Sion made me suddenly aware that a professor at the Paris university, Thomas Aquinas, had composed these lines seven hundred years earlier, and that he might have listened to its first recital in this very same cathedral.

And I think of a Mass in 1963, inside the church built by one of Antonio Gaudi’s students in memory of the martyrs of Nagasaki, a building rich in visual symbolism, with steeples reaching like two bare arms into the same sky out of which had fallen, in 1945, the atomic bomb. All this, undoubtedly, belongs to my own today: the Gregorian chant, the traditional words, and also the church buildings! What is the unifying principle here, tying together all these thoroughly different buildings, bridging distances of a thousand years, and making them truly contemporary? It is alone the fact that every one of these buildings, right from the beginning, had been conceived and erected as shelter for the one and ever identical sacred action that makes such a building, in name and in fact, an aedes sacra a sacred space.

— Josef Pieper, In Search of the Sacred

New and New

2007-05-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

Dans le grec biblique l’idée de nouveauté est exprimée par deux mots: neos et kainos. Le premier de ces deux mots désigne simplement ce qui est nouveau dans le temps: un nouveau-né, par exemple. Cela implique jeunesse et donc aussi manque de maturité. Le deuxième mot: kainos, kainè, (celui qui est utilisé dans notre texte de l’Apocalypse qui parle de terre nouvelle, de création nouvelle, de Jérusalem nouvelle, etc.) signifie quelque chose de nouveau dans sa nature, dans son essence, donc quelque chose de meilleur, de plus accompli.
— ArmandVeilleux, Voici que je fais toutes choses nouvelles

In Persona Christi

2007-05-12T16:40:00.000-07:00

When I say in the course of a conversation, To be or not to be — that is the question, I quote Shakespeare. But the actor on the stage, pronouncing the same words, does not quote Shakespeare or any of his creations; he rather speaks and acts in the person of Hamlet, whom he personifies. Even more accurately, he does not speak and act in place of Hamlet but rather identifies with him in a certain sense; he speaks and acts as Hamlet.

Christian theology has accepted this particular expression in all innocence in order to emphasize through it the special relationship between the ordained priest and the person of Christ.

— Josef Pieper, In Search of the Sacred

For this reason is it a much more serious matter than simply bad judgment or poor style when the priest at the altar greets the congregation like a good buddy, using some conventional commonplace — something a serious actor, for instance, would never do onstage. The same has to be said regarding the priest who after the liturgy, still dressed in his vestments, joins the chatting groups of people outside the church to discuss the weather and the latest news. An American friend from New Mexico and I had some common experiences in this regard. He was fluent in Spanish and after years of study an expert on this subject. He told me — and this contrasts with the preceding remarks — that the Indians, many of whom were his personal friends, would ignore him as soon as they had donned their ceremonial robes and would not engage in their usual friendly conversation with him.

— Josef Pieper, Ibid.

Justification

2007-05-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

“At the end of the day, the reason for the Reformation was the debate over justification. If that is no longer an issue, I have to be Catholic,” Beckwith said. “It seems to me that if there is not a very strong reason to be Protestant, then the default position should be to belong to the historic church.”
—Washington Post, Saturday, May 12, 2007

Read JOINT DECLARATION ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION by the Lutheran World Federation
and the Catholic Church.

New and Old

2007-05-12T15:20:00.000-07:00

The New Testament derives its titles for ecclesiastical offices not from the Jewish or Gentile cultic terminology of the time but from the secular realm of the political order. This proven fact, however, in my opinion, does not carry such an obvious significance as is frequently supposed. The intention evidently was to prevent all possibility of confusing the new Christian dispensation with the Mosaic rites of the temple or, even more importantly, with pagan cultic terms. Does not every “first generation” find itself in such a unique situtation, its identity precarious and threatened? I know of a European Catholic missionary, working for decades in India, who had the sacred om of Hinduism (in Bengal script rendered with three letters) engraved on the bse of his chalice as a symbol of the Trinity. Yet for a newly converted Hindu this would be inappropriate. His first and decisive concern has to concentrate on living out and clarifying the radically new demands of his young Christian faith, and so he must first turn away entirely from his “former” ways and avoid confusion between the “new” and the “old”.

The missionary, in contrast, can afford to be open-minded in this respect since his faith is not imperiled here; he is right in emphasizing common ground in spite of all differences. And since in the celebration of the Christian mysteries the rites of the temple and all pagan cults were not only supplanted but at the same time purified, corrected, perfected, and fulfilled, it became possible for later generations in the early Church, rightfully and in all sincerity, to adopt into their own language quite a number of expressions from Jewish as well as pagan rituals, without having to fear confusing misconceptions anymore.

We should point out here, in passing, as it were, that we no longer have any direct knowledge about the “connotations”, the contexts and implications, of those designations taken from the political sphere, or of how they were used in the living language of the first century. Those, however, who nowadays speak of the bishop as the “supervisor”, or the priest as the “presider at the Eucharistic assembly”, are simply using a stylish “jargon” aimed not so much as defining a situation as at hitting an opposing position.

— Josef Pieper, In Search of the Sacred

This is a good explanation of the “lateness” of some “ancient” Christian feasts, as well as a caution against “arguing from history”.

Formality in Liturgy

2007-05-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

The strict formality of all sacred “language” (gestures, signs, words) . . . is not only necessitated by the communal character of the sacred action, though it is true that free improvisation, on the spur of the moment, would always be the action of the individual only. No, such formality has perhaps more to do with an inherent quality of not being at any one’s disposal, the same way a completed poem may not be changed at will.
— Josef Pieper, In Search of the Sacred

This perhaps helps one to see that the Sacrifice of the Mass is one with Christ’s sacrifice.

The “doing” action of the liturgist corresponds to the analogous “contemplating” coaction of the congregation.
— Ibid.

This should be read in the light of Guardini: Looking as a Liturgical Act.

Mysteries of the Occult

2007-05-12T08:37:00.000-07:00

by Mary Murphy

Read and hear.

leebo

2007-05-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

Don’t know how long I'll keep it, but after having dinner with Jake and Irina I put a meebo box in this blog and on MurphyWong. I am usually offline — will this serve as an answering machine?

Albany Assessment Statistics

2007-05-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

Here are some statisics on 1- and 2- family residences assessed at less than $10,000,000.

To see residential properties assessed at $10,000,000 or more, try Search for Comparable Albany NY Residential Properties.

The 19,964 properties found are 93% of the 21,245 properties in the City of Albany Residential Inventory.

Item	Sum	Min	Max	Median	Mean	SD
SFLA	34,704,102	256	7,741	1,638	1,738	609.7
BR	73,799	0	9	3	3.7	1.35
FB	31,136	0	6	2	1.6	0.59
HB	6,399	0	5	2	0.3	0.47
Assmnt	3,273,359,567	1,500	3,764,3005	160,600	163,963	87,568
/SFLA	1,972,633	0	1,586	101	98.8	47.83

Dividing the total assessment by the total SFLA gives $94.32 /SFLA.

Persuasion

2007-05-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
— Luke 16:31

And if they hear not one who rose from the dead, neither will they be persuaded by yours truly.

Cross and Crucifix

2007-05-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

A renewed shock went through the anti-clerical party on finding that the Cross was a Crucifix. This represented, to many amiable and professedly moderate Nonconformists and other Protestants, exactly that extra touch that they could not tolerate. The distinction is all the more clearly to be kept in mind because it is, on the face of it, an entirely irrational distinction. The sort of Evangelical who demands what he calls a Living Christ must surely find it difficult to reconcile with his religion an indifference to a Dying Christ; but anyhow one would think he would prefer it to a Dead Cross. To salute the Cross in that sense is literally to bow down to wood and stone; since it is only an image in stone of something that was made of wood. It is surely less idolatrous to salute the Incarnate God or His image;
—G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography

The image of Jesus is now quite lost. Perhaps our artists can no longer see it. I thought some years ago that I heard it.

A Sermon

2007-05-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

“No, Miller, I don’t myself think much of science as a phase of human development. It has given us a lot of ingenious toys; they take our attention away from the real problems, of course, and since the problems are insoluble, I suppose we ought to be grateful for distraction. But the fact is, the human mind, the individual mind, has always been made more interesting by dwelling on the old riddles, even if it makes nothing of them. Science hasn’t given us any new amazements, except of the superficial kind we get from witnessing dexterity and sleight-of-hand. It hasn’t given us any richer pleasures, as the Renaissance did, nor any new sins — not one! Indeed, it takes our old ones away. It’s the laboratory, not the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. You’ll agree there is not much thrill about a physiological sin. We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don’t think you help people by making their conduct of no importance — you impoverish them. As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in a gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that’s what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.

“Moses learned the importance of that in the Egyptian court, and when he wanted to make a population of slaves into an independent people in the shortest possible time, he invented elaborate ceremonials to give them a feeling of dignity and purpose. Every act had some imaginative end. The cutting of the finger nails was a religious observance. The Christian theologians went over the books of the Law, like great artists, getting splendid effects by excision. They reset the stage with more space and mystery, throwing all the light upon a few sins of great dramatic value — only seven, you remember, and of those only three that are perpetually enthralling. With the theologians came the cathedral-builders; the sculptors and glass-workers and painters. They might, without sacrilege, have changed the prayer a little and said, Thy will be done in art, as it is in heaven. How can it be done anywhere else as it is in heaven? But I think the hour is up. You might tell me next week, Miller, what you think science has done for us, besides making us very comfortable."

— Professor St. Peter, in Willa Cather,The Professor’s House, Book I, Chapter 5.

Besides making us very comfortable — well, perhaps it no longer does this — science has provided cures and, if not everlasting, at least extended life, the “miracles” like those of Jesus which caused his disciples to believe on him.

Albany Assessment 10

2007-05-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

This morning the Albany Assessment and Taxation Commissioner Keith McDonald told me that many properties in Center Square may have underestimated SFLA because property owners would not permit inspection (why should a property owner be rewarded for non-cooperation?), and that the Board of Assessment Review was aware of this. How to use this acknowledgment of underestimation is another matter. I asked for “Residential Building Updates” on a number of properties. Tomorrow I'll pick the RBUs up and discuss with Mr. McDonald if the information in them can be used in my complaint.

Meanwhile, needless to say, many property owners are “blinding” their basement windows, so that one cannot visually ascertain if the basements are being used as “living area.”

It all seems very unfair.

Related to SFLA, Mr. McDonald confirmed that it is measured from the outside, and therefore includes exterior walls, hallways, stairs, closets, chimneys, etc.

Albany Assessment 9

2007-05-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

Attended a neighborhood meeting at First Presbyterian Church. People complained about, among other things, inconsistencies and errors in determining SFLAs (Square Feet of Living Area) of properties. Since the basis of appealing one’s assessment is to show nearby properties with higher SFLAs and lower assessments, these inconsistencies and errors make appealing complicated. A couple of people said there should be a class action suit against the city, but no lawyer stood up. A person did say that if the Board of Assessment Review did not grant one's appeal, one should sue the city in small claims court and one will probably win.

Added the two blocks of Spring Street and the first block of Henry Johnson Boulevard to my Center Square + Hudson/Park version of my assessments program.

Not for Naught

2007-05-08T19:07:00.000-07:00

I have my mission — I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. . . . If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
— John Henry Newman, quoted in Thomas D. Williams, Spiritual Progress

Pragmatism in Practice

2007-05-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Chesterton gives a stunning example in his Autobiography. People in his small town wanted to put up a war memorial. After raising the money, some decided it would be “more practical” to build a meeting hall. The new proposal split the community. Chesterton comments:

If people thought it wrong to have a memory of the war, let them say so. If they did not approve of wasting money on a War Memorial, let us scrap the War Memorial and save the money. But to do something totally different which we wanted to do, was unworthy of Homo Sapiens. . . . I got some converts to my view: but I think that many still thought that I was not practical; though in fact I was very specially practical, for those who understand what is really meant by Pragma. The most practical test of the problem of unmemorial memorials was offered by the Rector of Beaconsfield, who got up and said: ”We already have a ward in the Wycombe Hospital which was supposed to commemorate something. Can anybody here tell me what it commemorates?”

The case is worth a moment’s attention to the pattern it reveals. Discerning the pragma usually requires that we pull apart old links: the townspeople thought of a meeting hall as practical (because you can meet there endlessly) and of a war memorial as unpractical (because you can only look at it). But a monument does memorialize and a hall does not; therefore the bronze group of soldiers (“with an officer about to hurl his binoculars at the post office”) is practical for the stated purpose.

— Jacques Barzun, A Stroll with William James, 1983, 98

Now if the purpose of a Catholic church is to remember Jesus, how should it be built?

Center Square + Hudson / Park

2007-05-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

My assessment program for my neighborhood:

Search for Comparable Center Square and Hudson / Park Residential Properties

The Knowledge of Dead Men

2007-05-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

For myself, I knew I could never master the Church Fathers within my lifetime, so I decided simply to trust Newman’s judgment that the claims of Catholicism are consonant with the patritic testimony. Newman certainly knew the Fathers better than most men, whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox.
— Fr Alvin Kimel, in a Comment to Francis J. Beckwith, My Return to the Catholic Church

More and more one comes across the recognition that some who are now dead knew more about things worth knowing than some who are now liviing.

Islam Divided

2007-05-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

The fracture line that traverses Afghan Islam permits one to understand why, for example, between the Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo and his young Afghan interpreter, Adjmal Nashqbandi, both kidnapped last March, the former was set free, while the latter was assassinated. . . . In the abduction of Daniele Mastrogiacomo and his intepreter, Adjmal Nashqbandi, it is probably the origin of the latter that favored the tragic outcome of the affair: for the Taliban, the Sufi world represents the adversary par excellence, to be fought and eliminated, precisely because mystical Islam contains the alternative to political Islam.
— Khaled Fouad Allam, quoted in Sandro Magister, Why the Real War Is Inside Islam

Romano Amerio on Liturgy

2007-05-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

The principle of creativity stems from the false presupposition that the liturgy ought to express the feelings of the faithful, and that it is something that they themselves produce. What it really expresses is the mystery of Christ, Christ being the true source of the liturgy. The new view implicitly reduces the liturgy to the level of poetry (p. 632).

The policy of creativity, which is intended to make the liturgy “more lively and participatory” produces two effects. Firstly, it changes a sacred action into a theatrical display. Secondly, it changes the celebrant’s activity into something private, or idiosyncratic, when in fact it always has a public and social character, even when it takes place in private (p. 633).

— Romano Amerio, quoted in Father Peter Joseph, review of OTA UNUM: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the 20th Century, by Romano Amerio (English translation by Fr John Parsons)

One often gets the impression from liturgists that for them the body of Christ assembled in a church is more Christ than Christ himself.

Read also Sandro Magister, “La Civiltà Cattolica” Breaks the Silence – On Romano Amerio.

Dominican Idaho seems about to give excerpts from Amerio’s Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century.

Francis Beckwith’s Return to the Catholic Church

2007-05-06T05:53:00.000-07:00

. . . I thought it wise for me to err on the side of the Church with historical and theological continuity with the first generations of Christians that followed Christ’s Apostles.
— Francis J. Beckwith, My Return to the Catholic Church

Yesterday, Dr. Beckwith resigned as President of the Evangelical Theological Society.

See also personal home page of francis j. beckwith.

How grateful one is to catch a glimpse of the Holy Spirit acting on the heart and mind of another. One of the many comments is apparently from one of Professor Beckwith’s brothers:

I have known Frank Beckwith for nearly 40 years and have never met anyone with a greater love for Christ. Frank’s love for Jesus is not just found in is heart and soul though, but in his mind. His intellectual quest, which began as a teenager, has guided his entire life. I know that this decision only happened after much thought, research, and prayer.

I never doubted that this day would come, though I prayed often for it. I want to welcome you home to the Church that Christ created (Matt 16: 18-19) and let you know that the Dayton Beckwiths all love you and Frankie dearly.

You, my brother, are my hero.

Posted by: Patrick Beckwith | May 6, 2007 9:18 PM

Why you pretend to like modern art

2007-05-05T18:53:00.000-07:00

Spengler, May 1, 2007:

In their urge toward self-worship, the artists of the 20th century descended to extreme levels of artlessness to persuade themselves that they were in fact creative. In their compulsion to worship themselves in the absence of God, they produced ideas far more ridiculous, and certainly a great deal uglier, than revealed religion in all its weaknesses ever contrived. The modern cult of individual self-expression is a poor substitute for the religion it strove to replace, and the delusion of personal creativity an even worse substitute for redemption.

Fr.Glenn Sudano, CFR, May 3, 2007:

I can only speak for myself, but the way I see it, the spiritual crisis in the world continues to deepen. We can see that in many ways people are choosing two opposite paths. Yet, there are many, too many, who are standing with one foot on the shores of illusion and the other on the boat of truth. As the world continues to journey into the new millennium, no doubt the pain of straddling will become unbearable. Many will be forced to make a choice. This is why we must pray and preach the gospel. This is not a time to be afraid, but rather to be courageous and take a step which others call crazy. May God give each of us the grace to not keep one foot on shore, but to step aboard the barc of Peter where Christ is Captain. Yes, the world’s only sane asylum!

Pottery Fest

2007-05-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

Went the Pottery Fest at the Shaker Site in Colonie to see pots by Michael McCarthy. Asked him if he would make a casserole for us. While there also heard Jim Gaudet sing with his group.

The Recital

2007-05-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

by Mary Murphy

Hear and read.

Into Great Silence

2007-05-04T03:34:00.001-07:00

Albany Assessment 8

2007-05-03T18:52:00.000-07:00

A tour of the Center Square neighborhood seems to show that the majority of residences have basements that are being “lived in.” If these lived-in spaces are not included in the Residential Inventory SFLA (square feet of living area) of many of the residences, then owners of residences like ours, which have basements unsuitable for living in, are being treated unfairly, since assessments are to a great extent based on SFLA.

For Center Square + Hudson/Park assessment help, try Search for Comparable CS + H/P Residential Properties.

The Professor’s House

2007-05-02T03:33:00.000-07:00

Am reading to Ted Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, in Ted’s own copy, with his notes that I studiously avoid looking at.

Albany Assessment 7

2007-05-01T15:48:00.000-07:00

It may be useful to find residential properties assessed slightly higher than yours but with much higher SFLA (square feet of living area). I have found properties near ours that our assesed at less than 5% above our assessment but have 20% to 50% more SFLA than ours does.

Use: Search for Comparable Albany NY Residential Properties

Smalbany?

2007-04-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

Three of this morning’s users of Search for Comparable Albany NY Residential Properties have come from:

Moscow, Russian Federation

Mooresville, North Carolina

Cleveland, Ohio

The Riverway Storytelling Festival

2007-04-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

Am enjoying the Fifth Annual Riverway Storytelling Festival, seven days of storytelling by 30 storytellers in 23 events. Also took part in the Annual Spring Cleanup Day and BBQ Party sponsored by the Center Square and the Hudson/Park Neighborhood Associations. How is it that these things are being accomplished by ordinary people I know, whereas plans for the Jacques Barzun Centennial are going nowhere?

People need time to mature

2007-04-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

One expression of . . . techno-pathology is the high rate of depression and, I suspect, divorce. Life doesn’t change by the click of a mouse. People, like plants, need time to mature. Many of life’s situations which we find disagreeable can change if only we put into them some time and effort. Too many people today run for the fire escape at just the smell of smoke. Emergency doors should rarely be used, yet many people, especially the young, use them because they don’t care to wait.
— Fr. Glenn Sudano, CFR, Most Blessed Sacrament Friary, Newark, NJ, From the Friars, April 26, 2007

Albany Assessment 6

2007-04-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

Albany Assessment 5

2007-04-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

See:

Albany Assessment 4.

Albany Assessment 6

Here are the charts:

1. Comparable SALES Report SFLA = Residential Inventory SFLA:


Parcel    76.24-1-71 76.24-2-37   76.24-2-38
Class            210        210          210
Stories            2          2            2
1st Story        903        765          680
2nd Story        735        777          692
Fin Bsmt         368        765          680
Sum             2006       2307         2052
CSR SFLA        1638       1542         1372
RI SFLA         1638       1542         1372

2. Comparable SALES Report SFLA <> Residential Inventory SFLA:


Parcel    76.24-1-70 76.32-1-23    76.24-2-63    76.24-4-36
Class            220        220           220           220
Stories            2          2             2             2
1st Story        828        680           600           540
2nd Story        828        692           616           540
Fin Bsmt         630        680           600           540
Sum             2286       2052          1816          1620
CSR SFLA        2286       2052          1816          1620
RI SFLA         1656       1372          1216          1080

Parcel    76.24-4-27  76.24-6-9     76.24-6-1    76.24-6-20
Class            220        220           210           220 
Stories            2          2             2             2
1st Story        494        882          1144           880
2nd Story        494        898          1144           880
Fin Bsmt         494        882           572           880
Sum             1482       2662          2860          2640
CSR SFLA        1482       2662          2860          2640
RI SFLA          988       1780          2288          1760

3. Arithmetic Error?


Parcel    76.24-6-90
Class            220
Stories            2
1st Story        855
2nd Story        871
Fin Bsmt         877
Sum             2603
CSR SFLA        2581
RI SFLA         1726

In the sample, the properties in Group 1 are all 1 Family Residences (Class 210), while the properties in Group 2 are all 2 Family Residences (Class 220), except Parcel 76.24-6-1. Compare 76.24-6-38, which is in Group 1 and 76.32-1-23, which is in Group 2:


Parcel    76.24-6-38  76.32-1-23
Class            210         220
Stories            2           2
1st Story        680         680
2nd Story        692         692
Fin Bsmt         680         680
Sum             2052        2052
CSR SFLA        1372        2052
RI SFLA         1372        1372

Without the arithmetic error, the 2 Family Residence in Group 3 would also be in Group 2.

Albany Assessment 4

2007-04-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

I am finding what appear to be discrepancies in SFLA (Square Feet of Living Area) between the Residential Inventory on which I based my computer program Search for Comparable Albany NY Residential Properties and the Comparable SALES Report - RESIDENTIAL that I received on my property at City Hall.

For example, Parcel 76.24-1-71 has

1st Story 903
2nd Story 735
Fin Bsmt 368

which adds up to 2006, but both the SALES Report and the Residential Inventory give the SFLA as 1638.

Similarly, Parcel 76.24-2-37 has

1st Story 765
2nd Story 777
Fin Bsmt 765

which adds up to 2307, but both the SALES Report and the Residential Inventory give the SFLA as 1542.

Likewise, Parcel 76.24-2-38 has

1st Story 680
2nd Story 692
Fin Bsmt 680

which adds up to 2052, but both the SALES Report and the Residential Inventory give the SFLA as 1372.

On the other hand, Parcel 76.24-2-63 has

1st Story 600
2nd Story 616
Fin Bsmt 600

which adds up to a SFLA of 1816 as the SALES Report says, but the Residential Inventory gives gives the SFLA as 1216.

It seems that in the first three cases the "Fin Bsmt/Fin Rec Room" was not added to the SFLA for either the SALES Report or the Residential Inventory, while in the last case, the "Fin Bsmt" was added to the SFLA of the SALES Report but not to the SFLA of the Residenttial Inventory. Will have to go to the Department of Assessment and Taxation and ask about this.

LATER: Looking at the "Stories" numbers in the SALES Report, I see that, except for Parcel 76.24-2-63, if Stories = 2.0, only the 1st and 2nd stories are included in the SFLA -- the "Fin Bsmt" is not, except for Parcel 76.24-2-63, which has two stories, but for which the "Fin Bsmt" is included in the SALES Report SFLA but not in the Residential Inventory SFLA. This also seems to have happened to Parcels 76.24-4-36,76.24-6-9, 76.24.6-1, 76.24-6-20, 76.24-4-27, 76.32-1-23, and 76.24-1-70.

There seems to be an arithmetic error for Parcel 76.24-90 where

1st Story 855
2nd Story 871
Fin Bsmt 877

is made to add up to 2581 whereas the true sum is 2603. But 855*2 + 771 = 2581.

All this is very complicated and shows how difficult it is to come up with "comparable" properties. I'll try to summarize in a chart. (See Albany Assessment 5).

There are probably reasonable explanations for the apparent discrepancies. I hope I understand the explanations.

Bishop Hubbard on Cardinal Ratzinger on the Position of the Altar

2007-04-25T04:37:00.000-07:00

Bishop Hubbard:

Are you aware that it is the tradition of cathedrals to have the altar in a central position with the people gathered around? This precedent is affirmed by Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy.
— Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, April 3, 2007

Cardinal Ratzinger:

The re-shaping so far described, of the Jewish synagogue for the purpose of Christian worship, clearly shows — as we have already said — how, even in architecture, there is both continuity and newness in the relationship of the Old Testament to the New. Expression in space had to be given to the properly Christian act of worship, the celebration of the Eucharist, together with the ministry of the Word, which is ordered toward that celebration.

Plainly, further developments became not only possible but necessary. A place set aside for Baptism had to be found. The Sacrament of Penance went through a long process of development, which resulted in changes to the form of the church building. Popular piety in its many different forms inevitably found expression in the place dedicated to divine worship. The question of sacred images had to be resolved. Church music had to be fitted into the spatial structure. We saw that the architectural canon for the liturgy of Word and Sacrament is not a rigid one, though with every new development and re-ordering the question has to be posed: what is in harmony with the essence of the liturgy, and what detracts from it? In the very form of its places of divine worship, which we have just been considering, Christianity, speaking and thinking in a Semitic way, has laid down principles by which this question can be answered. Despite all the variations in practice that have taken place far into the second millennium, one thing has remained clear for the whole of Christendom: praying toward the East is a tradition that goes back to the beginning. Moreover, it is a fundamental expression of the Christian synthesis of cosmos and history, of being rooted in the once-for-all events of salvation history while going out to meet the Lord who is to come again. Here both the fidelity to the gift already bestowed and the dynamism of going forward are given equal expression.

Posture and God's universality

Modern man has little understanding of this “orientation”. Judaism and Islam, now as in the past, take it for granted that we should pray toward the central place of revelation, to the God who has revealed Himself to us, in the manner and in the place in which He revealed Himself. By contrast, in the western world, an abstract way of thinking, which in a certain way is the fruit of Christian influence, has become dominant. God is spiritual, and God is everywhere: does that not mean that prayer is not tied to a particular place or direction? Now we can indeed pray everywhere, and God is accessible to us everywhere. This idea of the universality of God is a consequence of Christian universality, of the Christian's looking up to God above all gods, the God who embraces the cosmos and is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. But our knowledge of this universality is the fruit of revelation: God has shown Himself to us. Only for this reason do we know Him, only for this reason can we confidently pray to Him everywhere. And precisely for this reason is it appropriate, now as in the past, that we should express in Christian prayer our turning to the God who has revealed Himself to us. Just as God assumed a body and entered the time and space of this world, so it is appropriate to prayer — at least to communal liturgical prayer — that our speaking to God should be “incarnational”, that it should be Christological, turned through the incarnate Word to the Triune God. The cosmic symbol of the rising sun expresses the universality of God above all particular places and yet maintains the concreteness of Divine Revelation. Our praying is thus inserted into the procession of the nations to God.

The Church’s living altar

But what about the altar? In what direction should we pray during the Eucharistic liturgy? In Byzantine church buildings the structure just described was essentially retained, but in Rome a somewhat different arrangement developed. The bishop’s chair was shifted to the center of the apse, and so the altar was moved into the nave. This seems to have been the case in the Lateran basilica and in Saint Mary Major well into the ninth century. However, in Saint Peter’s, during the pontificate of Saint Gregory the Great (590-604), the altar was moved nearer to the bishop’s chair, probably for the simple reason that he was supposed to stand as much as possible above the tomb of Saint Peter. This was an outward and visible expression of the truth that we celebrate the Sacrifice of the Lord in the Communion of Saints, a communion spanning all the times and ages.

The custom of erecting an altar above the tombs of the martyrs probably goes back a long way and is an outcome of the same motivation. Throughout history the martyrs continue Christ’s self-oblation; they are like the Church’s living altar, made not of stones but of men, who have become members of the Body of Christ and thus express a new kind of cultus: sacrifice is humanity becoming love with Christ.

Arrangement of Saint Peter’s copied

The ordering of Saint Peter’s was then copied, so it would seem, in many other stational churches in Rome. For the purposes of this discussion, we do not need to go into the disputed details of this process. The controversy in our own century was triggered by another innovation. Because of topographical circumstances, it turned out that Saint Peter's faced west. Thus, if the celebrating priest wanted — as the Christian tradition of prayer demands — to face east, he had to stand behind the people and look — this is the logical conclusion — toward the people. For whatever reason it was done, one can also see this arrangement in a whole series of church buildings within Saint Peter's direct sphere of influence.

The liturgical renewal in our own century took up this alleged model and developed from it a new idea for the form of the Liturgy. The Eucharist, so it was said, had to be celebrated versus populum (towards the people). The altar — as can be seen in the normative model of Saint Peter’s — had to be positioned in such a way that priest and people looked at each other and formed together the circle of the celebrating community. This alone, so it was said, was compatible with the meaning of the Christian Liturgy, with the requirement of active participation. This alone conformed to the primordial model of the Last Supper.

These arguments seemed in the end so persuasive that after the Council (which says nothing about “turning to the people”) new altars were set up everywhere, and today celebration versus populum really does look like the characteristic fruit of Vatican II's liturgical renewal. In fact it is the most conspicuous consequence of a re-ordering that not only signifies a new external arrangement of the places dedicated to the Liturgy, but also brings with it a new idea of the essence of the Liturgy — the Liturgy as a communal meal.

Misunderstanding of meal symbolism

This is, of course, a misunderstanding of the significance of the Roman basilica and of the positioning of its altar, and the representation of the Last Supper is also, to say the least, inaccurate. Consider, for example, what Louis Bouyer has to say on the subject:

The idea that celebration versus populum was the original form, indeed the way the Last Supper itself was celebrated, rests purely and simply on a mistaken idea of what a banquet, Christian or even non-Christian, was like in antiquity. In the earliest days of Christianity the head of table never took his place facing the other participants. Everyone sat or lay on the convex side of an S-shaped or horseshoe-shaped table. Nowhere in Christian antiquity could anyone have come up with the idea that the man presiding at the meal had to take his place versus populum. The communal character of a meal was emphasized by precisely the opposite arrangement, namely, by the fact that everyone at the meal found himself on the same side of the table (54f).

In any case, there is a further point that we must add to this discussion of the ‘shape’ of meals: the Eucharist that Christians celebrate really cannot adequately be described by the term ‘meal’. True, Our Lord established the new reality of Christian worship within the framework of a Jewish (Passover) meal, but it was precisely this new reality, not the meal as such, which He commanded us to repeat. Very soon the new reality was separated from its ancient context and found its proper and suitable form, a form already predetermined by the fact that the Eucharist refers back to the Cross and thus to the transformation of Temple sacrifice into the reasonable worship of God.

Not from the meal alone

Thus it came to pass that the synagogue Liturgy of the Word, renewed and deepened in a Christian way, merged with the remembrance of Christ's Death and Resurrection to become the 'Eucharist', and precisely thus was fidelity to the command “Do this” fulfilled. This new complete form of worship could not be derived simply from the meal, but had to be defined through the interconnection of temple and synagogue, Word and Sacrament, cosmos and history. It expresses itself in the very form that we discovered in the liturgical structure of the early Churches in the world of Semitic Christianity. It also, of course, remained fundamental for Rome.

Once again let me quote Bouyer:

Never and nowhere before (that is, before the sixteenth century) is there any indication of the slightest importance being attached, or even attention given, to the question of whether the priest should celebrate with the people behind him or in front of him. Professor Cyril Vogel has proved that, “if anything was stressed, it was that the priest should recite the Eucharistic Prayer, like all other prayers, turned towards the East Even when the orientation of the church allowed the priest to pray facing the people, we must not forget that it was not just the priest who turned to the East, but the whole congregation with him” (p. 56).

"Unprecedented clericalism"

Admittedly, these connections were obscured or fell into total oblivion in the church buildings and liturgical practice of the modern age. This is the only explanation for the fact that the common direction of prayer of priest and people got labeled as “celebrating towards the wall” or “turning your back on the people” and came to seem absurd and totally unacceptable. And this alone explains why the meal — even in modern pictures — became the normative idea of liturgical celebration for Christians.

In reality what happened was that an unprecedented clericalization came on the scene. Now the priest — the “presider”, as they now prefer to call him — becomes the real point of reference for the whole Liturgy. Everything depends on him. We have to see him, to respond to him, to be involved in what he is doing. His creativity sustains the whole thing.

Not surprisingly, people try to reduce this newly created role by assigning all kinds of liturgical functions to different individuals and entrusting the “creative” planning of the Liturgy to groups of people who like to, and are supposed to, “make a contribution of their own”. Less and less is God in the picture. More and more important is what is done by the human beings who meet here and do not like to subject themselves to a “pre-determined pattern”.

The self-enclosed circle

The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is locked into itself. The common turning toward the East was not a “celebration toward the wall”; it did not mean that the priest “had his back to the people”: the priest himself was not regarded as so important. For just as the congregation in the synagogue looked together toward Jerusalem, so in the Christian Liturgy the congregation looked together “toward the Lord”. As one of the fathers of Vatican II's Constitution on the Liturgy, J.A. Jungmann, put it, it was much more a question of priest and people facing in the same direction, knowing that together they were in a procession toward the Lord. They did not lock themselves into a circle, they did not gaze at one another, but as the pilgrim People of God they set off for the Oriens, for the Christ who comes to meet us. . . .

But is this not all romanticism and nostalgia for the past? Can the original form of Christian prayer still say something to us today, or should we try to find our own form, a form for our own times? Of course, we cannot simply replicate the past. Every age must discover and express the essence of the liturgy anew. The point is to discover this essence amid all the changing appearances. It would surely be a mistake to reject all the reforms of our century wholesale. When the altar was very remote from the faithful, it was right to move it back to the people. In cathedrals this made possible the recovery of the tradition of the altar at the crossing, the meeting-point of the nave and the presbyterium. It was also important clearly to distinguish the place for the Liturgy of the Word from the place for the strictly Eucharistic liturgy. For the Liturgy of the Word is about speaking and responding, and so a face-to-face exchange between proclaimer and hearer does make sense. In the Psalm the hearer digests what he has heard, takes it into himself, and transforms it into prayer, so that it becomes a response.

Turn to the East is essential

On the other hand, a common turning to the East during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of accidentals, but of essentials. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord. It is not now a question of dialogue, but of common worship, of setting off towards the One who is to come. What corresponds with the reality of what is happening is not the closed circle, but the common movement forward expressed in a common direction for prayer. . . .

The image of God in man

[An] objection is that we do not need to look toward the East, towards the crucifix, that, when priest and faithful look at one another, they are looking at the image of God in man, and so facing one another is the right direction for prayer. I find it hard to believe that the famous reviewer thought this was a serious argument. For we do not see the image of God in man in such a simplistic way. The “image of God” in man is not, of course, something that we can photograph or see with a merely photographic kind of perception. We can indeed see it, but only with the new seeing of faith. We can see it, just as we can see the goodness in a man, his honesty, interior truth, humility, love — everything, in fact, that gives him a certain likeness to God. But if we are to do this, we must learn a new kind of seeing, and that is what the Eucharist is for. . . .

The sign of the Son of Man

A more important objection is of the practical order. Are we really going to re-order everything all over again? Nothing is more harmful to the Liturgy than constant changes, even if it seems to be for the sake of genuine renewal.

I see a solution to this in a suggestion I noted at the beginning in connection with the insights of Erik Peterson. Facing toward the East, as we heard, was linked with the “sign of the Son of Man”", with the Cross, which announces Our Lord’s Second Coming. That is why, very early on, the East was linked with the sign of the cross. Where a direct common turning toward the East is not possible, the cross can serve as the interior “East” of faith. It should stand in the middle of the altar and be the common point of focus for both priest and praying community.

In this way we obey the ancient call to prayer: Conversi ad Dominum, “Turn to the Lord!” In this way we look together at the One whose Death tore the veil of the Temple — the One who stands before the Father for us and encloses us in His arms in order to make us the new and living Temple.

Moving the altar cross to the side to give an uninterrupted view of the priest is something I regard as one of the truly absurd phenomena of recent decades. Is the cross disruptive during Mass? Is the priest more important than Our Lord?

This mistake should be corrected as quickly as possible; it can be done without further rebuilding. The Lord is the point of reference. He is the rising sun of history. That is why there can be a cross of the Passion, which represents the Suffering Lord who for us let His side be pierced, from which flowed blood and water (Eucharist and Baptism), as well as a cross of triumph, which expresses the idea of Our Lord's Second Coming and guides our eyes towards it. For it is always the One Lord: Christ yesterday, today, and for ever (Heb. 13. 8).

— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Chapter 3

Our House

2007-04-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Posted by altuwa on Flickr

Albany Assessment 3

2007-04-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

Search for Comparable Albany NY Residential Properties

This is a site that has a tool set up that is supposed to help you with your tax assessment. I can’t vouch for the tool or the author but it looks like it might be helpful. And all of the posts on the blog are about either religion or tax assessments so you know they guy is serious as he sticks to the two topics we all can’t avoid. Please comment on your experience with the assessment tool.
— Democracy in Albany, News, Mon Apr 23rd, 2007 at 04:32:39 AM EST

This quotation from Democracy in Albany seems fitting: “It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.” — Machiavelli

Albany Assessment 2

2007-04-20T04:34:00.000-07:00

Went down to the Department of Assessment and Taxation in Albany City Hall yesterday afternoon. For a row house such as ours one- and two-family homes are comparable. Should look for a house in our neighborhood with at least as many baths, not many more (= small) bedrooms, and not less than 100 SFLA (square foot living area) than ours. Assessed value is more important than sales price.

Portraits in Four Lines

2007-04-19T04:34:00.000-07:00

It is gratifying when the subject of a clerihew affirms its aptness:

If the idea you're talking about is following a Postscript model for definitions (and presumably other things, like control flow and iteration, possibly typed values on stacks, dictionaries as a first-class data type, etc.), then I have no problem. It’s an old idea I’ve brought up many times over the years, and enshrined in Leo Wong’s “Forth Clerihews” back in 1999:

John Passaniti
Considered it a pity.
Forth had most slipped
By not heeding PostScript.

— John Passaniti, Forth Frustrations

Forth Clerihews

Albany Assessment

2007-04-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

Wrote a couple of little programs to see if I have any basis for challenging our recent assessment. One program lists properties in a particular class and style that have greater SFLA than x and smaller Assessment than y. The other lists properties in a particular class and style that have a smaller Assessment / SFLA than z. The properties are in the city of Albany. I’m told that for the purposes of challenging our assesment the comparable properties must be within five blocks of ours.

Divine Mercy

2007-04-15T14:53:00.001-07:00

Easter

2007-04-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

You, you who are bent, bowed beneath your secret burden, stand! Stretch to touch the sky, for your weary exile is now spent. Look, there, upon the East, comes the once Crucified, rising to lead you, yes you, from your dark Friday to this, our bright and endless Easter morn!
— Father Glenn Sudano, CFR, From the Friars

Good Friday

2007-04-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Holy Thursday

2007-04-05T04:19:00.001-07:00

Palm Sunday

2007-04-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

Bishop Herzog Returns to Catholicism

2007-03-31T05:29:00.000-07:00

Episcopal Bishop Daniel Herzog, not Roman Catholic Bishop Howard Hubbard.

See:

Albany Times Union, March 30, 2007, and March 31, 2007.

Catholic World News

The Living Church Foundation

In blogs

Proving the Truth of God

2007-03-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

In this last part of [The Star of Redemption, Franz Rosenzweig] enquires about truth, this innermost chamber of revelation, of the name of God. Yet this truth has to be “different from the truth of the philosophers . . . it has to be truth for everybody.” Truth has to become our truth. “Truth is no longer what is true, but becomes that which has been proved [bewährt] to be true.” This is the continuous task of synagogue and church, to prove the one truth of God, truth which is given to them only as divided earthly truth. And they do this in prayer and commandment, with which they keep the thirst for the eternal kingdom of redemption unquenched in the midst of the unredeemed kingdoms of this world. Each prays and lives according to truth as each receives and understands.
— Rüdiger Lux, Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929)

Children at the Well

2007-03-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

This storytelling event at Niskayuna Reformed Church was enjoyable and well attended.

See also Adah Hetko, Stories Build Links of Faith, Albany Times Union, March 17, 2007.

Children at the Well 2006

Why God lies

2007-03-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

Spengler

Thy kingdom come

2007-03-23T04:29:00.000-07:00

Thy will be done, in heart as it is in heaven.

“The Celestial Rail-road”

2007-03-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

Read to Ted the Hawthorne short story. An excerpt:

Day after day, as I walked the streets of Vanity, my manners and deportment became more and more like those of the inhabitants. The place began to seem like home; the idea of pursuing my travels to the Celestial City was almost obliterated from my mind. I was reminded of it, however, by the sight of the same pair of simple pilgrims at whom we had laughed so heartily, when Apollyon puffed smoke and steam into their faces, at the commencement of our journey. There they stood amid the densest bustle of Vanity — the dealers offering them their purple, and fine linen, and jewels; the men of wit and humor gibing at them; a pair of buxom ladies ogling them askance; while the benevolent Mr. Smooth-it-away whispered some of his wisdom at their elbows, and pointed to a newly-erected temple — but there were these worthy simpletons, making the scene look wild and monstrous, merely by their sturdy repudiation of all part in its business or pleasures.

One of them — his name was Stick-to-the-right —perceived in my face, I suppose, a species of sympathy and almost admiration, which, to my own great surprise, I could not help feeling for this pragmatic couple. It prompted him to address me.

“Sir,” inquired he, with a sad, yet mild and kindly voice, “do you call yourself a pilgrim?”

“Yes,” I replied, “my right to that appellation is indubitable. I am merely a sojourner here in Vanity Fair, being bound to the Celestial City by the new rail-road.”

“Alas, friend,” rejoined Mr. Stick-to-the-right, “I do assure you, and beseech you to receive the truth of my words, that that whole concern is a bubble. You may travel on it all your lifetime, were you to live thousands of years, and yet never get beyond the limits of Vanity Fair! Yea; though you should deem yourself entering the gates of the Blessed City, it will be nothing but a miserable delusion.”

“The Lord of the Celestial City,” began the other pilgrim, whose name was Mr. Foot-it-to-Heaven, “has refused, and will ever refuse, to grant an act of incorporation for this rail-road; and unless that be obtained, no passenger can ever hope to enter his dominions. Wherefore, every man, who buys a ticket, must lay his account with losing the purchase-money — which is the value of his own soul.”

“Poh, nonsense!” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, taking my arm and leading me off, “these fellows ought to be indicted for a libel. If the law stood as it once did in Vanity Fair, we should see them grinning through the iron bars of the prison window.”

This incident made a considerable impression on my mind, and contributed with other circumstances to indispose me to a permanent residence in the city of Vanity; although, of course, I was not simple enough to give up my original plan of gliding along easily and commodiously by railroad. Still, I grew anxious to be gone. There was one strange thing that troubled me; amid the occupations or amusements of the fair, nothing was more common than for a person — whether at a feast, theatre, or church, or trafficking for wealth and honors, or whatever he might be doing, and however unseasonable the interruption — suddenly to vanish like a soap-bubble, and be never more seen of his fellows; and so accustomed were the latter to such little accidents, that they went on with their business, as quietly as if nothing had happened.

Julian V. Noble

2007-03-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

J Thomas wrote:

On Mar 12, 11:49 am, castanaly...@gmail.com wrote:

> Julian Noble died on 11 March 2007, his funeral will
> be in Charlottesville, Va. at the Hill & Woods on
> 1st & Market Street at 11 am 13 of March 2007.

He told me stories about economics from Herodotus. I probably wouldn’t have gotten around to reading Herodotus except for him.

I went to a Rochester convention and slept in the dorm. John Noble was in the next room, alone. My roommate was asleep, and woke up when the noise started. “We have to call maintenance. That machine is tearing itself apart.” I tried to remember. “People told me about John Noble's snoring. That must be it.” It was surprisingly loud through a cinderblock wall. Later Larry Forsley explained that they never ever gave John a roommate even if he asked for one. After that year they gave him an end room and filled the room next to him last. And he started coming to conventions with his wife and they got a hotel room.

He was not only a gentleman. He was a warm-hearted, friendly gentleman.

I once wrote something he enjoyed:

Professor Julian V. Noble
Had a vision global:
Wouldn't it be terrific,
If Forth were Scientific?

— Forth Clerihews (read, hear)

Reassessment

2007-03-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

Received a reassessment notice from the Albany Office of Assessment and Taxation, City Hall, Room 302. From last year to this, our assessment went up 235%. In a city of failing public schools and poor public services, this reassessment is a good way of driving people out of town.

See also Assessments causing concern, Albany Times Union, March 3, 2007

Religion on One’s Sleeve

2007-03-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

Iannone: This may be more than a little personal but the subject of your spiritual beliefs came up in short piece Fr. Richard John Neuhaus wrote in First Things. What it seems to boil down to is, do you believe in the transcendent, something higher than man to which man is responsive? Would you care to comment further?

Barzun: With this set of questions you have presented me with a copy of a comment on my book From Dawn to Decadence, in which Neuhaus complains that, although it satisfies many of his expectations, it gives no clue to what I believe. That remark is a shocking sign of the times. Everyone, it seems, must be tagged, must belong to some gang. And the personal note must be struck to command attention: subject matter is not enough. It used to be that only the famous put forward their ego; now not an article or a review fails to start with “I.” What follows may have nothing to do with the owner of the pronoun. “I was under my car greasing the differential, when it struck me that Article V of the Constitution . . . .” It is an even worse misconception to expect that a work of history shall give a clue to the writer’s belief. It is to require partisanship in his treatment, it is to ask that he violate the historian’s obligation to treat all figures and parties with an even hand. I take it as a compliment that I failed in that duty. But I venture to offer the opinion that the writing of history, by its very nature, rules out one type of belief, materialism. The materialist refers event, action, and character back to some physical element in man or the external world. It’s a faith, not a testable theory. According to it, human beings have no will of their own, only the illusion of it. Now, when such a believer undertakes to write history, he faces a stern necessity: he is bound to relate to their supposed material cause all the picturesque things that he presents, for example the range and wildness of individuality, the pivotal force of trifles, the manifestations of greatness, the failures of unquestioned talent. But he cannot point to the pattern of matter that underlies these appearances and determines them and that fools the human agents into thinking that they are carrying out purposes of their own. Some will answer: Wait! Science, wonderful science, is making great progress in locating functions in the brain, and when complete will explain it all. This is an old fallacy. The jump from brain to mind is not bridged by such discoveries. No matter what portion of it is agitated by — let’s say — solving a crossword puzzle, that motion of molecules does not account for the creation of the pastime. It was not locked up in that group of neurons and one day released to the New York Times. In short, mind exists as a part in the material universe, in it but not of it.

— Carol Iannone, “A Conversation with Jacques Barzun,” Academic Questions, Volume 19, Number 4 / Fall 2006, Pages 19 - 27

Reading-Aloud Day

2007-03-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

Wednesday seems to have again become reading-aloud day for me. At noon mass at St. Mary’s Chapel I was lector, and this evening I read to Ted Adams “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by “Aubépine.”

Love

2007-03-13T06:41:00.000-07:00

We would not know how to love you if we did not love others.

“Secularism”

2007-03-13T06:34:00.000-07:00

A handy word for clergy.

Devotions

2007-03-13T06:32:00.000-07:00

Devotions are belittled compared with liturgy, but are not devotions a way of praying always?

My Path to Heaven

2007-03-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

I think that if I forgive I shall go to heaven.

False Metrics

2007-03-11T06:49:00.000-07:00

. . . it would be hard to imagine . . . . communitarian values emerging from a similar discussion [among community leaders] in San Antonio, or in most other American cities, 40 or 50 years ago, when the trend of thinking was just the opposite.

A key to understanding the change might be what one participant wrote about the schools: “Stop supporting false metrics in education.”

The comment was evidently directed against the schools' enslavement to TAKS — the standardized, multiple-choice Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which several participants condemned by name, for good reason.

In my view, false metrics dominated American thinking in the two generations after World War II, right up to the present.

The good was what could be measured or counted objectively — dollars, square feet, sales, test scores, the number of vehicles per hour that could flee the city — to the sacrifice of human meaning or intrinsic value.

The idea of a community was swamped by an emphasis on the insular family, its insular house and its insular cars — the more cars, the bigger the house the better, because the primary function of the family was to circulate dollars.

—Mike Greenberg, Leaders’ ‘moral vision’ tied to a physical sense of community, San Antonio Express-News, March 10, 2007

City

2007-03-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

I wanted to see this today.

Priests, Wisemen, Prophets

2007-03-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

Then said they, Come and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.
— Jeremiah 18:18

The world in Jeremiah’s day had its priests, its wise, its prophets, but who knows them?

Start Something Up

2007-03-05T03:37:00.000-08:00

Politicians not only represent us, they represent the scheme by which our changeable will is expressed. They are, as a group, the hardest working professionals; they must continually learn new masses of facts, make judgments, give help, and continue to please. It is this obligation, of course, that makes them look unprincipled, To please and do another’s will is prositution, but it remains the nub of the representative system.

With these many complex deeds and chaotic demands, American democracy would have little to show the world with pride if it were not for another aspect of our life that Tocqueville observed and admired, that is, our habit of setting up free, spontaneous associations for every conceivable purpose. To this day, anybody with a typewriter and a copying machine can start a league, a club, a think tank, a library, a museum, a hospital, a college, or a center for this and that, and can proceed to raise money, publish a newsletter, and carry on propaganda — all tax exempt, without government permission or interference, and free of the slightest ridicule from the surrounding society. Here is where the habits of American democracy survive in full force. Robert’s Rules of Order are sacred scripture and the treasurer’s report is scanned like a love letter. Committees work with high seriousness, volunteers abound, and the democratic process reaches new heights of refinement (It is not uncommon, for example, that after a strenuous debate in committee, a vote of seven to five will prompt the chairman to say, “This business needs further thought; we shouldn’t go ahead divided as we are.”)

This admirable tradition enables us to accomplish by and for ourselves many things that in other democracies require government action.

— Jacques Barzun, Is Democratic Theory for Export?

Fashioning Democracy

2007-03-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

A democracy cannot be fashioned out of whatever people happen to be around in a given region; it cannot be promoted from outside by strangers; and it may still be impossible when attempted from inside by determined natives. Just as life on the earth depended on a particular coming together of unrelated factors, so a cluster of disparate elements and conditions is needed for a democracy to be born viable. Among these conditions one can name tradition, literacy, and a certain kind of training in give-and-take, as well as the sobering effect of national disaster — France in 1870 and Germany in 1945. The most adaptable of peoples, the Japanese, took a century to approximate Western democracy, aided no doubt by the harsh tutelage which followed a grievous defeat. And another people might have taken these same experiences the other way, as spurs to resist change.

— Jacques Barzun, Is Democratic Theory for Export? (1.5MB pdf file)

Hope’s War

2007-03-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

On YouTube. Thanks to Mike Greenberg.

Something Is Different

2007-03-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

For many years I have carried on a correspondence with one of my college professors. He is my mentor, a father figure, a friend. I am forever in his debt for what he shared with me and he has continued to share with me in the decades since I graduated from college. I have hundreds of letters that he has written to me over the years. His handwriting, his little cartoons and interlinear musical notations - they are treasures. I read them over and over, following the curve of his hand as he painstakingly wrote to me.

Several years ago, at the age of 81, he began writing email messages to me. While our communication increased and became more convenient, it is not the same. I can pass his letters to my children. But his email messages? They are full of his humor and style. But they print out in Verdana 12 point with a header full of gibberish assigned by servers. He is the same person but it is different. Something is missing. Something important.

— Douglas Yeo, What Happened to the Internet?

Spring Cleaning

2007-02-28T03:41:00.000-08:00

Create in me a clean heart, O God.
— Psalm 51:10

During Lent, clean your temple. Less in, more out. Fast, give alms, pray to the owner of the temple.

Read today for the first time in St. Mary’s Chapel, 111 Washington Ave.

+ +

Birthday party for Rezsin this evening at this month’s Save the Pine Bush dinner.

“To Whom It May Concern”

2007-02-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

Lithuania's President Valdas Adamkus' letter to New York's Cardinal Edward Egan:

Vilnius, 26 January2007

His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan
Archbishop of New York

Your Eminence,

Please allow me to address you on an issue of great importance to me, the people of Lithuania and those of Lithuanian heritage living in the Unites States of America. Last week we learned that the Archdiocese of New York intends to dose Our Lady of Vilnius Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan. Recalling the history of Our Lady of Vinius since its founding on 10 December 1909 and knowing the religious and cultural significance it bears for the Lithuanian American Catholic community of New York and its vicinities, such an intention concerns me greatly.

Tolerance and respect for the heritage and religious traditions of ethnic minorities with whom we have lived together throughout the history of our countries are among the values that are followed and cherished by both of our societies.

Almost a century ago Lithuanian immigrants in America built, using their own funds,the Church of Our Lady of Vilnius to have a place for worship and witness their love and faith in God. With time the church acquired yet another mission: it became a center fostering not only religious belief but also Lithuanian culture and national identity. People rallied around their church to maintain community bonds and remain close to their homeland.

Extraordinary Lithuanian American cultural treasures have been assembled in the church. Because of its architectural and artistic value, the church building has been included in the, "List of U.S. Heritage Objects Important for Lithuania" compiled in accordance with the Agreement beween the Government Of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Lithuania on the Protection and Preservation of Certain cultural Properties, which came into force on 3 August of 2006.

Today, when many young people from Lithuania arrive to live, work and study in the United States of America. Our Lady of Vilnius in Manhattan is gaining an ever more important role. It has become a growing house of spiritual guidance and ethnic culture. giving generous spiritual and moral support. Its activities could strongly contribute to the process of evangelization of the young generation.

Being greatly concerned about the preservation of the Lithuanian national identity and the devotion of the Lithuanian people to Christian values, I appeal to you. Your Eminence, to give special attention to the role played by the Parish of Our Lady of Vinius in fostering national identity and spirituality and to preserve the Church for the society of today and the generations of tomorrow.

Please accept, Eminence, the assurances of my highest esteem,

Valdas Adamkus
President of the Republic of Lithuania

See also Archdiocese of New York, Statement of Joseph Zwilling, Director of Communications, On The Closing of Our Lady of Vilnius Church, the website Save Our Lady of Vilnius, a blog, and a petition.

“Repair My House”

2007-02-26T03:34:00.000-08:00

Most Blessed Sacrament Friary, Newark, NJ

Fr. Glenn Sudano, CFR, From the Friars, February 25, 2007.

For, With, To

2007-02-20T19:35:00.000-08:00

If you want to hunger for God, fast; if you want to suffer with God, suffer; if you want to give to God, give.

Albany in Baltimore

2007-02-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

Photograph by Clark Miller

Paul Grondahl, Religious Conversion, Albany Times Union, February 18, 2007.

See also John G. Waite Associates, Basilica of the Assumption.

Entering Canaan

2007-02-17T19:15:00.000-08:00

A report by Fr. Glenn Sudano, CFR

Jacques Barzun Centennial Celebration

2007-02-14T09:29:00.000-08:00

Website

“I am sorry that I made them.”

2007-02-13T09:46:00.000-08:00

So the LORD said: “I will wipe out from the earth the men whom I have created, and not only the men, but also the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air, for I am sorry that I made them.”
— Genesis 6:7

How has man improved since then?

Right and Wrong

2007-02-12T19:06:00.000-08:00

It is always right to say that something is wrong. But being right about the wrong doesn’t ensure that one’s solution will make things better.

Streaming Barzun

2007-02-11T19:41:00.000-08:00

A Java applet

Free Republic

2007-02-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

Comments on the Albany Times Union article about the Cathedral Pastoral Advisory Council Letter to the Diocese of Albany.

Sewing

2007-02-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

O attended her first sewing class at JoAnn Fabrics in Northway Mall.

“Hiatus worries parish leaders”

2007-02-05T03:17:00.000-08:00

Article in the Albany Times Union, February 5, 2007

See also Church Makeover.