Catholic Superman Memes
I saw the new Superman movie, Man of Steel, last night. As I drove into work today I got the idea for a few Catholic memes. SPOILER WARNING…
Tag: featured
The Four Loves – Chapter 2 (Part 2: “Love of nature”)
Continuing my notes on The Four Loves, this is the first of two posts which continue my summary of Chapter 2 (“Likings and Loves for the subhuman”). In this post we will be looking at the section which Lewis devotes to the love of nature.
1. Some people have a special love of nature
For some people, perhaps especially for Englishmen and Russians, what we call “the love of nature” is a permanent and serious sentiment. I mean here that love of nature which cannot be adequately classified simply as an instance of our love for beauty.
(a) This is more than simply an appreciation of beauty
Of course many natural objects – trees, flowers and animals – are beautiful.
(i) Either of individual objects…
But the nature-lovers whom I have in mind are not very much concerned with individual beautiful objects of that sort. The man who is distracts them. An enthusiastic botanist is for them a dreadful companion on a ramble. He is always stopping to draw their attention to particulars. N
(ii) …or of vistas
or are they looking for “views” or landscapes. Wordsworth, their spokesman, strongly deprecates this. It leads to “a comparison of scene with scene”, makes you “pamper” yourself with “meagre novelties of colour and proportion”.
(b) For these lovers of nature, it is about the “Spirit” of the place
While you are busying yourself with this critical and discriminating activity you lose what really matters – the “moods of time and season”, the “spirit” of the place. And of course Wordsworth is right. That is why, if you love nature in his fashion, a landscape painter is (out of doors) an even worse companion than a botanist. It is the “moods” or the “spirit” that matter.
(c) Which is why beauty itself per se is the focus
Nature-lovers want to receive as fully as possible whatever nature, at each particular time and place, is, so to speak, saying. The obvious richness, grace and harmony of some scenes are no more precious to them than the grimness, bleakness, terror, monotony, or “visionary dreariness” of others. The featureless itself gets from them a willing response. It is one more word uttered by nature. They lay themselves bare to the sheer quality of every countryside every hour of the day. They want to absorb it into themselves, to be coloured through and through by it.
Writing to Bishops
Earlier this week, I wrote a post on Facebook saying that I had spent the first few days of 2019 writing letters to different bishops, and invited others to do the same.
The purpose in writing these letters was to encourage our bishops to be fearless in the exercise of their office, to teach Catholic doctrine faithfully and to protect their flocks from physical and spiritual abuse, all the while being respectful of their office.
My friend Noelle asked me for an outline of what I wrote. Unfortunately, each letter had been different in content. However, I thought it might be helpful to post a synthesis of what I had written over the course of the different letters…
Your Excellency,
There is no sugar-coating it, the Church is in a state of crisis. Unfortunately, much of this relates to the laity’s wavering confidence in the episcopacy, as well as their faith in the upper echelons of the Church’s hierarchy. I am grieved to say that over the past year, both the sin and utter timidity of many, many bishops has continued to be on full display for all the world to see. The results of this have been devastating. Catholics are leaving the Church. Of those who remain, many are withdrawing their financial support. Those in RCIA are reconsidering their choice. Many souls are at risk.
If ever there was a time when the Church cried out for strong and fearless leadership, it is now. The flock need to see the faces of their shepherds and hear their voices. We need to be reassured that the Diocese is in good hands. We need to know that those who would prey on innocents will be swiftly removed and automatically reported to the secular authorities. Not only that, we need to have complete confidence that Catholic teaching will be upheld without exception in every parish, particularly in the extremely unpopular area of personal morality. We need to know that our shepherds will not cower in fear, but will defend us from the wolves.
St. Ignatius, on his way to execution in AD 107, wrote a letter to encourage his fellow bishop, Polycarp. I humbly offer these words to you as an encouragement to be fearless as you shepherd the Diocese over the coming year:
“The times call for you…as one tossed with tempest seeks for the haven, so that both you and those under your care may attain to God. Be sober as God’s athlete: the prize set before you is immortality and eternal life”
Thank you, your Excellency, for giving this letter your attention. You are in my prayers and I am always at your service. I look forward to hearing from you as to how I may assist in your effort to comfort and strengthen the Church.
God bless,
David Bates
NO Improvements?
Those of you who know me will know that I purposefully attend the “Extraordinary Form” (EF) of the Mass several times a year. This form of the Mass is sometimes known as “The Tridentine Mass” and is the Liturgy which our grandparents would have typically attended.
There’s much to commend the Extraordinary Form and I would love to see it become more widely available. However, as much as I love the older form of the Mass, I have to say, that when it’s done well, I actually prefer the “Novus Ordo” (NO) Mass. This is the amended liturgy which came about following the Second Vatican Council and which is more typically found around the world today in Roman-Rite Catholic Churches.
(Having said all that, I actually go to Byzantine Liturgy on Sundays)
Although I generally prefer the Novus Ordo, I think it’s safe to say that every Catholic has been to a typical parish Mass where the service has, well, left a lot to be desired… These banal liturgies have considerably nurtured the feeling among more traditional Catholics that the Novus Ordo was a considerable misstep in the development of the Roman liturgy. However, personally I think that when it’s done well, it’s thoroughly beautiful.
In recent months I’ve been in an extended email exchange with a friend who infinitely prefers the Extraordinary Form. During our discussion, I gave some suggestions of some simple things which can be done to elevate the typical Mass-going experience and I thought I’d share them here. Not all of these are Novus Ordo-specific, but in my opinion they would resolve many of the problems which are more commonly associated with the new form of the Mass…
When the British don’t talk about sex…
As I was driving in to work today, I was listening to Episode 26 of Trending with Don and Timmerie.
One of the news items being discussed by the hosts referred to my country of origin and I thought it would be worth briefly sharing here. The news item in question referred to a study by David Paton and Liam Wright and published in the Journal of Health Economics.
Back in the 1990s, Britain had some of the highest teen pregnancy rates, so the government responded with a rigorous sex education plan costing four hundred and fifty-four million pounds. The plan was implemented, free contraception was handed out… but it it did little to reduce the occurrences of teen pregnancy.
However, in 2008 things changed. Due to the economic downturn, the funding for the sex education initiatives were cut. Some of the schools chose to continue the programmes, while others dropped them due to lack of funding. It might surprise some to find out that in the geographical areas where the programmes no longer functioned, there was a distinct drop in the number of teenage pregnancies and abortions (up to 40%), while it was business-as-usual in the areas where the programmes continued.
Perhaps contraception isn’t the panacea we were promised…
Manvotional: Discovering Your Faults
It’s time for another Manvotional from Art of Manliness to be recorded onto MP3. I actually think this is my favourite one to date…
Manvotional (Download)
“Water Lily” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
The unaccompanied MP3 is available here.
The Four Loves – Chapter 5 (“Eros”)
C.S. Lewis Doodle
Quotations
What is Eros?
…that state which we call “being in love”… Sexuality makes part of our subject only when it becomes an ingredient in the complex state of “being in love”. That sexual experience can occur without Eros… and that Eros includes other things besides sexual activity, I take for granted… The carnal or animally sexual element within Eros, I intend… to call Venus.
Eros, Venus and Morality
I am not at all subscribing to the popular idea that it is the absence or presence of Eros which makes the sexual act “impure” or “pure”… Most of our ancestors were married off in early youth to partners chosen by their parents on grounds that had nothing to do with Eros… Conversely, this act, done under the influence of a soaring and iridescent Eros which reduces the role of the senses to a minor consideration, may yet be plain adultery, may involve breaking a wife’s heart, deceiving a husband, betraying a friend, polluting hospitality; and deserting your children. It has not pleased God that the distinction between a sin and a duty should turn on fine feelings.
Love’s Contemplative
Very often what comes first is simply a delighted pre-occupation with the Beloved – a general, unspecified pre-occupation with her in her totality. A man in this state really hasn’t leisure to think of sex. He is too busy thinking of a person. The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself. He is full of desire, but the desire may not be sexually toned. If you asked him what he wanted, the true reply would often be, “To go on thinking of her.” He is love’s contemplative.
… Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved…
The thing is a sensory pleasure; that is, an event occurring within one’s own body. We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he “wants a woman”. Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes). Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.