Family photos from Christmas

My niece Kylee on the patio at her home in San Luis Obispo.

"Moo moo."

I'll teach her how to water plants.


Finally got some photos of her sticking her tongue out.

Little Daniel with cousins Dom and Mike.

Grandma and her children.

Dancing queen.



Grinning after my mom started laughing really hard because Kylee copied my mom in saying "pope, pope" during the televised broadcast of his Christmas blessing and also because she said "Amen" after the blessing was done.

She's clapping here, but this is what she looks like when she brings her hands together to imitating praying and also to say "Amen."

Kylee dancing.



The extended family, after our feast at Golden Corral.





KK and her fiance, after? the great cookie competition.

"Belly button."

Cayden

Kylee and her father.

At Ming's.

Cayden and his dad, cousin "Jabroni."


Mini-hobbit.

Getting acquainted with Sonic.

4 generations.

Guess who.

Room of Her Own

April 24, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative

Room of Her Own

Feminism’s long journey from “Is this all?” to having it all to being liberated by less.

by Kara Hopkins

Modern feminist lore dates its first chapter from 1963, when Betty Friedan found the original desperate housewives vacuuming their spotless ranch houses—in high heels, natch—and heard them asking, “Is this all?”

Hate Friedan if it suits—anyone who told Phyllis Schlafly, “I’d like to burn you at the stake,” would have earned the Right’s ire, absent the rest of her radical cargo. The feminist matriarch’s early Marxist affiliations are well documented, and her Feminine Mystique ranked seventh on Human Events’ list of the “most harmful books” of the last two centuries. But she tapped sufficient angst to sell three million copies and compel millions more American women to trade aprons for power suits and kitchens for corner offices. So swift was the sea change that their daughters would not ask “Is this all?” but “Can you have it all?”—and then wonder if they wanted it.

It’s fashionable in the salons of the Right to dismiss the full freight of feminism without examining its manifest. With a flick of the pen, the whole movement can be blamed for “Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports” as it is in the subtitle of Kate O’Beirne’s new bestseller. But even so ham-fisted an indictment carries a concession: this was a revolution that left fingerprints on all spheres. To caricature it as the project of a handful of hags who struck out on the dating market is to ignore the essential question of why feminism found such fertile soil. The debating ploy is as common as it is lazy: spotlight extremists as emblematic of the whole, for if one’s opponent can be cast as moronic or malicious, what need for argument? But no club is that exclusive.

Feminism certainly wasn’t. Following Friedan’s death last month, on her 85th birthday, Germaine Greer waltzed over her grave, telling The Guardian, “Betty was disconcerted by lesbianism, leery of abortion and ultimately concerned for the men whose ancient privileges she feared were being eroded. … The world will be a tamer place without her.”

That ungracious obituary wouldn’t have surprised Friedan, who admitted, “I’m at odds with the radical feminists because I’m not anti-marriage and anti-family. I always thought it was dangerous to go against the idea of the family. I don’t even like the phrase ‘women’s liberation’ because that idea of being set free from everything doesn’t seem right to me.” No boilerplate feminist, Friedan saw men as “fellow victims,” not “the product of a damaged gene” (Greer) or “rapists, batterers, plunderers, killers” (Andrea Dworkin). She didn’t share Ms. editor Robin Morgan’s belief that marriage is a “slavery-like practice,” arguing instead, “I believe in marriage. I think intimacy, bonding, and families have value.”

That’s not to say that Friedan should be remembered as some kind of closet conservative. She did, after all, jot the fateful initials NOW—later incarnated into the National Organization for Women —on a napkin and was instrumental in founding the National Abortion Rights Action League. She memorably called American homes “comfortable concentration camps,” and despite pretty words for the nuclear family was unable to hold her own marriage together. Her children would recall eating TV dinners “way beyond the recommended limit.”

Both sides of the political divide could, therefore, attack Friedan for ideological impurity, and with ample cause—best evidence that the movement her question sparked was never as monolithic as critics claim. Had it been as venomous as the extreme representatives, feminism could have gained no foothold in Middle America. Housewives didn’t clamor to join Valerie Solanas’s SCUM—Society for Cutting Up Men—which was never more than a treehouse club. Deeper social currents were at work, so that what might have receded into the realm of curious sociology—as Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 effort had—became instead a mainstream movement populated by millions of average women.

The project began innocently enough: when surveying her Smith College classmates for their 15-year reunion, Friedan picked up a surprising thread—a “problem that had no name.” Behind their picket fences, these pert housewives were dissatisfied and isolated, medicating their boredom with redecorating projects and Chardonnay. “As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffered Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—‘Is this all?’” ran the opening lines of The Feminine Mystique.

Of course life was never that tidy, and much of Friedan’s diagnosis was overdrawn. “What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor?” A perfectly normal one who doesn’t seek the answers to existential questions in linoleum, thanks. And being “a server of food and putter-on of pants and a bed maker” is not exactly the gulag. (It was later revealed that Friedan knew little of the domestic drudgery she bemoaned: she employed a maid.)

Still the message resonated, though many who took up the torch were animated by more radical tendencies. “Don’t get into the bra-burning, anti-man, politics-of-orgasm school,” Friedan warned college students in 1970. She would go on to write in The Second Stage, published in 1981, that her successors had fallen into a trap “which denied that core of women’s personhood that is fulfilled through love, nurture, home.” It was this voice—not strident talk of fish and bicycles—that lured most women into believing that they could tend both home and office with equal grace.

With the advent of mechanized housework, packaged food, and public education, there was less demand for that skill set known as the domestic arts. Historically the management of a household and the raising of children were highly regarded—and fully consuming. In 1869, Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe could write in The American Woman’s Home, “It is the aim of this volume to elevate both the honor and the remuneration of all employments that sustain the many difficult and varied duties of the family state, and thus to render each department of woman’s profession as much desired and respected as the most honored professions of men.” But with modern conveniences came a premium on efficiency—the market’s gateway into the private sphere, where the feminine values of tranquility, well-being, tradition, and taste had previously held sway. As the custodians of daily ritual gave in to cheaper and faster, home became recalibrated by work metrics. Previous compensations—healthy children, a peaceful refuge for her husband, a gracious table for friends—turned meager. Those who had paid no attention when Beauvoir wrote, “Woman’s work within the home [is] not directly useful to society, produces nothing. It is subordinate, secondary, parasitic,” began to entertain doubts.

A simultaneous revolution was altering men. Not long before but an age away, Robert Wright could write in Angel in the House of women who “tame the animal in a man and rescue his spirit from the deadening world of work.” As work took over that domestic duty, taming the animal by shackling him to a desk and burying him in a pile of paper, the ancient masculine values—heroism, independence, honor—yielded to the bureaucratic machine, which harnessed the power of traditional feminine traits —harmony, teamwork, compliance—to create a docile workforce. With his chivalric impulse thus blunted, what man wouldn’t welcome relief from the breadwinner’s burden? In the place of the angel, Philip Wylie would write of a “huge class of idle, middle-aged women” who “raped” men by binding them to humdrum lives. Far from the conservative map of the battle, these men weren’t feminism’s antagonists—or even its targets.

Boredom more than fervor rallies the best revolutionaries, and the suburban ennui Friedan identified was real. American women were not so much oppressed as dislocated. Washing machines and self-cleaning ovens lengthened their days, while sprawl quarantined them from community. These deposed queens of the domestic hive weren’t plotting the overthrow of any patriarchy. They wanted to do valuable work, the determinants of which were already being renegotiated when feminism arrived on the scene.

Friedan wrote, “[V]acuuming the living room floor—with or without makeup—is not work that takes enough thought or energy to challenge any woman’s full capacity. Down through the ages man has known that he was set apart from other animals by his mind’s power to have an idea, a vision, and shape the future of it … when he discovers and creates and shapes a future different from his past, he is a man, a human being.” The implication was that private work was intellectually barren, and because this role had traditionally fallen to women, they were being denied the humanizing rigors of the public domain. Women’s studies professor Linda Hirshman would go further: “The family—with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks … allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore assigning it to women is unjust.” Of course this wasn’t true, for it supposes that men at work are developing life-altering technologies or untangling theoretical impossibilities rather than doodling their way through meetings or shoveling paperwork into bureaucracy’s maw. Moreover, it overlooks the unique capacity of men to find fulfillment in provision and women in nurture—and the responsibility of both to tend their intellectual gardens by maintaining lives beyond the demands of home and work.

Yet by attaching to existing currents and packing enough truth around a lie, feminists were able to persuade women of their degradation. Home had changed. Hearth had cooled. That diagnosis was not wrong, but the cure has nearly killed the patient, for it missed an essential truth that Friedan understood: “that core of women’s personhood that is fulfilled through love, nurture, home.” Women didn’t need to take their rightful half of the world by acting like men; they already had it simply by being women. In this, feminism pitched its battle not against men but against women. As Christopher Lasch noted in Women and the Common Life, “A feminist movement that respected the achievements of women in the past would not disparage housework, motherhood or unpaid civic and neighborly services. It would not make a paycheck the only symbol of accomplishment. ... It would insist that people need self-respecting honorable callings, not glamorous careers that carry high salaries but take them away from their families.”

And it’s not as if women didn’t work outside of the home before they read The Feminine Mystique. In 1967, 41 percent of mothers worked. But today 72 percent do—and regularly spend their off hours clicking away at BlackBerrys and taking cellphone calls.

That investment has yielded dividends: maternity leave is standard, college admissions favor women, sex-specific help-wanted ads are museum pieces, and pay differentials result primarily from voluntary detours from the career track. In a recent column, Susan Jacoby recalled applying for a reporting job at the Washington Post in 1965 and being asked to write an essay on “How I Plan to Combine Motherhood with a Career.” That’s probably actionable now.

But darker trends also attend, and while it would be difficult to trace causal lines, not all can be coincidental. With the combined work hours for professional couples with children under 18 rising to 91 hours per week, how could marriages go unaffected? The American divorce rate is nearly twice what it was in 1960, and women pay the highest price with 40 percent of divorced mothers ending up in poverty. In a controversial Newsweek article published in November 1990, entitled “The Failure of Feminism,” Kay Ebeling confessed, “In 1973, I left what could have been a perfectly good marriage, taking with me a child in diapers, a 10-year-old Plymouth and Volume 1, Number One of Ms. Magazine. I was convinced I could make it on my own. In the last 15 years my ex has married or lived with a succession of women. As he gets older, his women stay in their 20s. Meanwhile, I’ve stayed unattached. He drives a BMW. I ride buses.”

Even families that remain intact are learning a cold economic lesson: the second salary that was once something between a political statement and a rainy-day fund is becoming increasingly necessary. In a devil’s bargain, women have sacrificed their freedom and domestic satisfaction while median household income has remained unchanged in constant dollars since 1970. As Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi reveal in The Two-Income Trap, “once they have paid the mortgage, the car payments, the taxes, the health-insurance, and the day-care bills, today’s dual-income families have less discretionary income … than the single income family of a generation ago. … Mothers now work two jobs, at home and at the office. And yet they have less cash on hand.”

But that is not even the highest cost. The dearest toll is incalculable but evident to anyone who has watched a young mother en route to daycare, cellphone jangling, briefcase gaping, while she wrangles the toddler smearing Pop-Tart on her suit and the wailing infant who started commuting at six weeks. Hers is desperation deeper than any ’60s housewife. For the draw and demands of home didn’t vanish because working women began giving at the office. They still mop the floors—at midnight. There’s an early AM scene in Allison Pearson’s silly-sad novel I Don’t Know How She Does It in which narrator Kate Reddy, just returned from a business trip, pounds purchased pies with a rolling pin so they will look homemade for her daughter’s school party, then hides the boxes so her nanny can’t expose her domestic duplicity to the “Mother Superiors.”

Having it all meant doing it all, for natural law cannot be vetoed: the social structure couldn’t change enough to override the intrinsic divide between private and public spheres or ignore the sexes’ yen to find more satisfaction in one than the other. Much as they pretended to be men at work, women were still mothers and wives and began to view the diminishment of these roles with some sense of loss. Equality had extracted a measure of femininity, not because women were wearing gray flannel but because, as Bette Davis confessed in “All About Eve”: “The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster, you forget you’ll need them again when you get back to being a woman. … And in the last analysis nothing’s any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that, you’re not a woman. You’re something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings.”

Backlash would be too strong a word, for what came next has been less a broad reversal than a smattering of individual decisions that together suggest a shift. In October 2003, the New York Times Magazine published Lisa Belkin’s “The Opt-Out Revolution.” “Why don’t women run the world?” she asked. “Maybe it’s because they don’t want to.” Much like Friedan a generation before, Belkin looked at her fellow Princeton alumnae and found an unexpected pattern. “I know that’s very un-p.c., but I like life’s rhythms when I’m nurturing a child,” a lawyer become stay-at-home mom admitted. “Women today, if we think about feminism at all, we see it as a battle fought for ‘the choice.’ For us, the freedom to work if we want to work is the feminist strain in our lives,” another career girl turned mother told her.

This “choice feminism” infuriated radicals who retorted that the persistence of “gendered roles” presented a false choice, however much empowerment rhetoric a woman packed around her decision. “‘Choice feminism’ claims that staying home with the kids is just one more feminist option. Funny that most men rarely make the same ‘choice.’ Exactly what kind of choice is that?” Linda Hirshman asked in the December issue of The American Prospect. (Ironically, after years of using “choice” as their euphemism for abortion when they didn’t view all options as equally acceptable, feminists were caught short when women who weren’t advancing their agenda began using the word literally.)

The reaction revealed how far feminism had become removed from ordinary women. There had always been a totalitarian element that was less interested in individual freedom than social revolution—the notion that a woman shouldn’t have the option to work outside of the home but rather the obligation. Simone de Beauvoir had written, “No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. … Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” Yet her strain never found a popular audience—the Second Sex author famously threw Friedan’s Second Stage across a room. (Interviewed about the book, Friedan told the New York Times, “Some militants repudiated all the parts of the personhood of women that have been and are still expressed in family, home and love. In trying to ape men’s lives, they have truncated themselves away from grounding experiences.”)

The average Janes with whom feminism first found mass appeal seem to be testing a new movement. Census figures reveal that the rate of working mothers with children under age one has dropped to 53 percent from a high of 59 percent—the first decline since the indicator debuted in 1976 at 31 percent. While scarcely a revolution, the trend prompted Business Week to run “Goodbye Boss Lady, Hello Soccer Mom,” and Time to devote a cover story to “The Case for Staying Home.” Maureen Dowd, far more kitten than tiger, wrote in her widely noted Are Men Necessary? “Four decades after feminism blossomed in a giddy wave of bra barbeques, birth-control pills and unisex clothes, the ideal of having it all is a risible cliché.”

Critics contend that the phenomenon is confined to a small group of affluent white women, which doesn’t reverse the trend line but does reveal a poignant truth. If those who can afford it want to stay home with their children, those who cannot afford it likely do as well—and they no longer have the choice their mothers did. Warren and Tyagi write, “When millions of mothers entered the workforce, they ratcheted up the price of a middle-class life for everyone, including families that wanted to keep Mom at home. A generation ago, a single bread-winner who worked diligently and spent carefully could assure his family a comfortable position in the middle class. But the frenzied bidding wars, fueled by families with two incomes, changed the game for single-income families as well, pushing them down the economic ladder.”

It is here that feminism may prove most cruel, for if the ’60s found women languishing in their dollhouses—though scarcely barred from the workforce—the new century finds them no more fulfilled than their mothers but far less free. Dowd writes, “Many women I know, who once disdained their mothers’ lifestyles, no longer see those lives as tedious or indulgent. Now they look back with a tad of longing. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to while away time playing bridge and tennis and lunching with girlfriends and eating shrimp cocktails?” Their mothers were of course more likely to iron shirts than nibble shrimp, but in this case the gloss matters more than the history. The modern fantasy of the independent woman is “Stepford,” not “Wall Street”—and Dowd wasn’t cast as a Taliban sympathizer for noting feminism’s failure.

Publications make a ritual of printing the movement’s obituary, and vultures descend from both Left and Right, though they generally pick at a caricature rather than a carcass. The Left looks through a revisionist lens and recalls feminism as a Marxist project aimed at overwhelming capitalist gender roles yet fails to admit that average women signed on to no such crusade. They were disappointed not because feminism failed to make them equal, but because in so doing it made them less female.

The Right, on the other hand, reduced feminism to a war against men—which could never have enlisted the majority of women into its ranks—and then declared victory in a fight that never was, without admitting that as conservatives they might have borne some responsibility for the sanctity of the domestic tradition.

Where does this leave women? In an experiential rather than an ideological place that only 40 years of wilderness wandering could locate. It’s certainly imperfect. Many have no choice but to work—this was true in 1963 as well. But whatever wistfulness those housewives felt as their husbands headed out for the office now belongs to the past. They have been there—and back. Some have chosen high-powered careers, grateful that they can be CEOs as well as their secretaries, but they do so acknowledging that they won’t have it all. Still others have decided that whatever social stigma now attached to full-time motherhood is offset by witnessing their children’s first steps.

“The end of our exploring,” T.S. Elliot wrote, “will be to arrive at where we started, and to know the place for the first time.” In that, much as it has cost us, feminism has succeeded. Women no longer have to lie awake nights wondering “Is this all?” They have tried to have it all—and decided they are more liberated by less.

Father Cantalamessa on Seeking and Giving Love

Father Cantalamessa on Seeking and Giving Love

Pontifical Household Preacher Comments on Sunday's Readings

ROME, JAN. 26, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of a commentary by the Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, on the readings from this Sunday's liturgy.

* * *

Unless you have charity...
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30

This Sunday's Gospel narrates the rejection Jesus meets at Nazareth, his hometown, the first time he returns after beginning his public ministry. This rejection elicits the famous remark, "No prophet is accepted in his own country."

We commented on Mark's account of this episode last year; we can therefore focus our attention on the second reading where we find a very important message. This is Paul's celebrated hymn to charity. Charity is the religious term for love. This is, then, a hymn to love, perhaps the most celebrated and sublime ever written.

When Christianity appeared on the world's stage, love had already employed various singers. The most illustrious was Plato who wrote an entire treatise on it. The common name for love at that time was "eros" (this is where we get "erotic" and "eroticism" from).

Christianity sensed that this passionate and desirous love was not adequate to express the novelty of the biblical concept. For this reason it avoided the term "eros" and substituted that of "agape," which could be translated as "spiritual love" or "charity" -- although the latter term has come to acquire a too restricted meaning: doing charity, works of charity.

The difference between "eros" and "agape" is this. Desirous or erotic love is exclusive; it is consummated between two persons; the interference of a third person would mean its destruction, its betrayal. Sometimes the birth of a child can throw this kind of love into a crisis.

The giving type of love, "agape," on the contrary embraces everyone, no one can be excluded, not even enemies. The classical formula of "eros" is pronounced by Violetta in Verdi's opera "La Traviata": "Love me, Alfredo. Love me as much as I love you."

The classical formula of "agape" is that of Jesus who says: "As I have loved you, love one another." This latter is a love that is meant to circulate, to expand.

Another difference is this. Erotic love, in the more typical form of "falling in love," does not last long, or it lasts only by changing its object, that is, by falling in love with different people successively. Of charity, however, St. Paul says that it "remains," indeed it is the only thing that remains in eternity, even after faith and hope have ceased.

But between these two loves -- that of seeking and that of giving -- there is not separation and contraposition, but rather development and growth.

"Eros" is the point of departure for us and "agape" is the point of arrival. Between them there is room for a whole education and growth in love. Let us take the most common case which is love between two persons.

In the love between a husband and wife "eros" prevails at the beginning, attraction, reciprocal desire, the conquering of the other, and so a certain egoism. If this love does not make an effort to enrich itself along the way with a new dimension, one of gratuity, of reciprocal tenderness, of a capacity to forget oneself for the other, and to project itself into children, we all know how it will end.

Paul's message is quite relevant today. The entertainment and advertising worlds seem bent on inculcating in young people that love is reducible to "eros" and that "eros" is reducible to sex. Life is presented as a continual idol in a world where everything is beautiful, young, and healthy; where there is no growing old, no sickness, and everyone can spend as much as they want.

But this is a colossal lie that generates unrealistic expectations, which, once they are not met, provoke frustration, rebellion against family and society, and often open the door to crime. The word of God makes it such that the critical sense in people is not altogether extinguished when this illusory vision of life is daily proposed to them.

Br. B

St. Albert -- side entrance

Not sure if this is a photo of St. Thomas Aquinas.

St. Dominic?

Br. B

Special programming at EWTN

I missed the papal vespers at St. Paul's-Outside-the-Walls (doh!), but this may be of interest to some of you:


IN CONCERT
EVENSONG AT KING’S COLLEGE (60:00)
King’s College Choir, Cambridge, England (Stephen Cloebury conducting) Evensong originated in the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours as the seventh of the Office of Hours – Vespers. The psalms and canticles of Vesspers were first sung to Gregorian chan ts and developed later into harmonized choral settings. Selections include Psalm 50, the Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, Salve Regin a, and Edward Bairstow’s "Lord, Thou Hast Been Our Refuge." Evensong originated in the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours as t he seventh of the Office of Hours—Vespers. The psalms and canticles of Vespers were first sung to Gregorian chants and developed later into harmonized choral settings. In this program, you will hear setting of Psalm 50, the Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, Salve Regina and the beautiful anthem, "Lord, Thou hast been our refuge" by Edward Bairstow. The Choir of King’s College, Cambridg e, England with Stephen Cloebury conducting.

Sunday January 28, 2007 1:30 PM Eastern Time
Sunday January 28, 2007 10:30 AM Pacific Time

Saturday February 3, 2007 3:00 AM Eastern Time
Saturday February 3, 2007 12:00 AM Pacific Time

Online liturgical texts

NLM makes note of some scanned copies of various liturgical texts over at google.

Sarge--there is a Carthusian breviary--but I wouldn't be surprised if you have your own copy.

Is 24 really that politically incorrect?

None of the terrorists this season have been shown to be praying or praising Allah or performing any other overt religious acts. It does not seem that they are "true believers" but just ideologues. We'll see if the depiction changes. Their religion has not been explicitly mentioned either, although it is apparent that they are from the Near/Middle East. Perhaps the true Muslim is the one working for the Islamic American Alliance, but he hasn't been shown praying either.

Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2007

Watching Iwo Jima in Japan

By Bryan Walsh

When Pearl Harbor was hit, Takeo Iguchi was in Washington, D.C., where his father was stationed as a Japanese diplomat. By the time the war was over, he was in Tokyo, where he survived the city's horrific firebombing— and still has scars on his hands to prove it. When I recently had lunch with Iguchi, the 75-year-old diplomat-turned-academic brought up the Clint Eastwood film Letters from Iwo Jima, which he had seen the previous day. He wondered aloud whether the film would resonate with Japanese today, most of whom had been born after the war. As for himself, Iguchi had found Letters unexpectedly moving: "That was the war as we lived it."

The movie's box office receipts alone would seem to answer Iguchi's question. (Letters was co-produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, a subsidiary of Time Warner, which also owns TIME.) Through last weekend, the Oscar-nominated Letters had grossed just under $40 million, earning it the top spot during the Japanese cinema industry's all-important New Year holiday season. Not bad for a downbeat movie that chronicles one of Japan's bitterest defeats — one that has rarely been the subject of a Japanese film.

Letters comes at a time when yesterday's war is pressing for attention in today's headlines. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the country's first leader born after World War II, has announced his intention to revise Japan's pacifist postwar constitution, and he recently elevated its Defense Agency to full cabinet-ministry status. Abe's grandfather Nobusuke Kishi had been a top official in Japan's wartime government (as well as a prominent postwar Prime Minister), and Abe himself has, in the past, fudged the issue of his country's responsibility for the Pacific war. Just how open that question remains in Japan was underscored last year by a lengthy investigation into responsibility for the war conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's biggest newspaper. (Short answer: the Japanese military and government, but not the emperor.) The equivalent exercise in the U.S. would be the New York Times devoting weeks to an investigation of who was at fault in the Civil War.

The rise to power of Abe — widely described as a nationalist before his election last September — had liberal critics fearing a return of the dark days of prewar military rule. That's hardly been the case: Abe has so far proved admirably pragmatic in international affairs, and even the threat of a nuclear North Korea has done little to stir Japan from its accustomed postwar pacifism. To the Japanese soldiers in Letters, war is hell, the same as it is everywhere else. Still, Japan is clearly taking steps to become a normal country with a normal military, and the unfinished legacy of the war still looms.

The problem is less with the U.S. — Tokyo and Washington are closer than ever — but with the rest of Asia, particularly the countries that suffered under Japanese occupation, with which no consensus over the past has been achieved. Japan's military atrocities still enrage Chinese and Koreans, including ones born long after 1945, while many Japanese dispute the scale of their abuses, and see their country as the ultimate victim. Repeated efforts to forge a common view of the war through joint history commissions have gotten nowhere, and more than 60 years after it ended, a misplaced word about the war can still dynamite the region's fragile diplomatic balance.

Clint Eastwood's movie sidesteps the minefield by focusing on a single battle in the Pacific theater. It portrays Japan's soldiers as human, flawed and tragic, and Japanese audiences have no trouble identifying with them as they fight a doomed battle under a hard-driving but caring general (played by star Ken Watanabe) whom many Japanese would probably see as the perfect boss. Letters doesn't shy away from the suicidal warrior ethos that ultimately drove Japan's military to lead the country into obliteration — witness the scene where a lieutenant orders his men to kill themselves with live grenades, and all but one does so. But as the reviewer Aaron Gerow pointed out in the Daily Yomiuri, Letters doesn't truly attempt to grapple with history; unlike its companion movie Flags of Our Fathers, which probed the long-term cost of war and remembrance. Watanabe put it this way in an interview with TIME last month. "This film is not a display of patriotism," he said. "It is a testimony to what war is" — war in its universal immediacy.

As difficult as Letters can be to watch, that fact might make it easier for Japanese audiences to embrace it. They aren't required to ponder the psychic cost of the battle on the survivors — few as there were — nor to wonder at the political mistakes that wrought horror from Manchuria to New Guinea. That's not the film Eastwood wanted to make, and that he chose not to takes nothing away from his accomplishment. But if he had, I doubt that Abe would have walked out of a screening calling it a "very good film" — and that $40 million gross might have come out a bit lighter.

In fact, based on what I've seen from the trailer from the Yamato movie, I don't see much difference in perspective between the two. So what does it say when an American makes a movie about WW2 that could have been made by a Japanese?

A movie is not necessarily meant to give history lessons, complete with judgments, condemnations and approval (Is it possible to recount history without a moral perspective?); but it seems to me that German movies dealing with WW2 will have at least one character questioning the war or being critical of Hitler and his inner circle. Do we need to be reminded that the enemy is human also? Yes. Should we remember the dead despite the fact that they have participated in an unjust war? Yes, and we should pray for them.

But is it really the concern of the artist to educate the public? Even if it isn't, should he not be aware of how his work of art (especially if his work of art has a moral dimension) might affect the audience and take that into consideration?

Mike Tuggle on James Webb

The senator from Virginia continues to impress. Perhaps he will come around on the social questions.

Some Kylee stories

Kylee is learning how to make the sign of the cross-she touches her head and then her chest, but doesn't know what to do after that--but she says "Amen."

Yesterday? my mom fell asleep with EWTN on the TV--Daily Mass started and Kylee was trying to get my mom's attention with her "eh! eh!" sounds. She pointed to the TV and the priests were processing in, and I think she said "Amen."

Another time my niece, mom, and sister were upstairs, and EWTN was on the TV again, and there was a photo of the pope. Kylee said, "pope, pope" and my sister said, "That's not the pope." But then the caption appeared: "[Pope] Benedict XVI," and my sister said, "Oh, you're right" or something like that. haha

Shooter trailer

Apple
Yahoo
official site

opens March 16

A bit of Jason Bourne, a bit of Sniper--not sure if the main character is a Southerner, it would be great if he is. haha I doubt it though.

Updated: Watched the trailer a second time -- with a name like Robert Lee Swaggart... the character sounds like he's from the South. I wonder how authentic the character is though. The trailer does play up the fact that he believes in honor.

Updated, 2/21: The movie is based on the novel, Point of No Return, by Stephen Hunter

Reflections on Apocalypto

The movie did ok the first weekend of its release; I don't know what its current receipts are, and if they are lower than expectations it is because of Mel Gibson's drunk-driving scandal. My cousin DW asserted that he wouldn't watch any of his films, but I didn't catch the reason.

The movie that inspired the title for this blog is rather simple, as Mel Gibon himself admits (for example, see his interviews here and here)--there isn't much "psychological complexity" to the characters that moderns seem to demand (to justify their own failings and weaknesses), and it is clear who is the aggressor and who is committing injustice. The first two acts serve to contrast the culture of Jaguar Paw's people with that of the Mayans, while the third is the "chase movie," with a "shock" ending that some have compared to that of The Planet of the Apes (though I thought it was rather predictable, especially given the timeframe of the movie).

What the movie does do is emphasize the fundamental value of the family and community and of peace and harmony, both within the community and with those outside the community. As I suspected, the movie is more supportive of anarcho-primitivism than of agrarianism since Jaguar Paw is a member of a hunter-gatherer society while the savage Mayans have a rather sophisticated [i.e. stratified and hierarchical] urbanized culture; still, the movie does not defend anarcho-primitivist claims about egalitarianism [political, social, and gender] being intrinsic to hunter-gatherer cultures and therefore demonstrating its inherent superority to all other cultures. The complementarity of roles of men and women is even more clear in such a 'primitive' culture, even if there is some levelling, in so far as everyone is actively doing something for the family and for the community, and no one can be said to be a "prisoner of the home" nor "a mere passive consumer."

The anarcho-primitivists are the new commune-ists and utopians of the 21st century. No significant division of tasks and functions between the men, though those who are older do not have the requisite physical fitness to engage in hunting or defense. One could make the argument that one has a duty not only to preserve one's health but also physical fitness, not only for one's own sake, but for the sake of the family and the community. Here in contemporary America, with many delaying having children until much later, one needs to stay in shape at the very least so that one can keep up with the kids. It does not seem to me that one needs to be in that fit in order to garden and to do the other labors of the contemporary household, with all of the conveniences that are already in place, but perhaps some physical activity is sufficient to keep one in shape. Still, it's not like one needs to drawing water by hand from a well, or chop wood or tend to livestock.

The use of violence is limited to defense and reprisal raids. One is hesitant to call this war-making, probably because what we imagine by "war" is so much bigger, and longer-lasting, and the damage and deaths greater. Because a hunting-gathering community is small, it is difficult for it to build an empire, though not difficult for it to enslave small numbers of people from defeated societies.

The polity that is the constitution that is attainable for most communities , and is one based on the martial virtues (according to Aristotle in his Politics, 3.7).
However, Aristotle would limit the powers the masses can exercise to the choosing and auditing of those who hold office. What about hunter-gatherer societies? It would seem that all(?) hunters-warriors have some sort of a deliberative voice, even if their authority is not as great as those of the elders, who have more experience and perhaps a greater measure of wisdom, and with whom the ultimate responsibility of making decisions lies. Only those who risk (or have risked) their own lives to defend the community should have a voice in public affairs. What is my incentive to trust someone who has never risked his life for the sake of the community, or is not willing to place his own sons at risk?

While the Mayan human-hunter has initiated his own son into his [unjust] business [of capturing slaves and victims for sacrifice], one notes that he is still an instrument of the Mayan state. It seems unlikely that those at the top of the pyramid (both figuratively and literally) need to risk their own lives or the lives of their family. Rather they live as tyrants, using others as instruments to further their own private good.

There is a link between defending the community through war and concern for the common good, as the former should be for the sake of the latter.

[For further reflection: reason is insufficient for order in a fallen world, strength and will are needed to impose order on others. What of the generalizations that are made by Chesterton or Aristotle (Politics 1260a2) regarding the differences between men and women and their functions with respect to the household and to the political community? Outward-looking and a concern with justice and relations with other members of the community vs. inward-looking and a concern with the members of the household, especially the children.]

There are activities other than war-making for which cooperation is necessary and which make the interdependence between members of a community manifest. How else does one learn accountability to others and acquire a sense of community other than by living with them and cooperating with them?

[I need to read on the transition of both the Greeks and the Romans to the city-states, and how laws were enforced and offenders were brought to justice. If the ideal is to put the burden of enforcement upon the citizens themselves, is the law enforcement profession unnecessary? Perhaps some guardians of public order are necessary in order to serve as "referees" and to prevent injustice from infecting 'private' enforcement of justice (although it's not really 'private' since the citizens would be carrying out a function properly belonging to them as citizens); also they serve as substitutes for those who do not have family members to aid them in the pursuit of justice.

It is necessary for a community to delegate police powers to only certain individuals? Or if it is possible for the community to police itself, with each citizen sharing the responsibility (having a primary duty to defend family and neighbors), should this be the case? Does the latter flow from the natural law? It seems the former is not necessarily of the natural law, though it is a determination of it in positive law. But is that the only just arrangement?

Is law enforcement unhealthy intrinsically? How about work as a corrections officer/prison guard? Or are they unhealthy only because of the size of the community involved, and the crimes and criminals one must deal with? Crime seems to be less manageable in a larger community, and if the community is too large, then criminal syndicates and conspiracies are more difficult to monitor and check. What are the causes contributing to the increase in stress and PSTD? Is the increase in crime one of them?]

The Mayan city is an exemplar of the culture of violence and death; readiness to kill as a response to the slightest offense. (Is something similar to be found in samurai culture? Not between samurai themselves, but between samurai and members of the lower classes. Were there similar injustices in Korean culture? This is the sort of thing that happens when differentiation of function leads to differentiation to status and justice?)

One notes that the mother-in-law, being too old, is cast aside as being useless by her Mayan captors--since she cannot be a good slave, she is released to fend for herself, and presumably to die. One does not see many old faces in the crowd.

Who is the Brother Abel to whom the movie is dedicated? How much of our economy is bound up with violence and injustice? And how can we free ourselves from that evil? Does the rise of large estates always involve some sort of injustice? Is a primitive society (like a hunting-gathering) always one of relative equality, with respect to property? There appears to be very little diversification of function, division of labor, at least between the men.

However, Byron King makes the following claim:

Mayan civilization was extensive, both in terms of a large population and geographic extent. Mayan civilization ranged from southern Mexico to the Yucatan, and down into areas that are now parts of Guatemala and El Salvador. And as the movie makes clear, Mayan society had numerous specialized social roles incorporated within it. Boiled down to an anthropological essence, Mayan society was heterogeneous and filled with social inequality, so by definition, it was "complex." The jungle-dwellers lived in small villages, from which they nimbly trekked across the rain forest eking out an existence in a manner little removed from that of a hunter-gatherer. But they traded with other villages, and hence had the rudiments of economic life and a primitive form of what Adam Smith would much later (in 1776, to be exact) call "the division of labor."

The city-dwellers, on the other hand, were part of a far more elaborate social ladder. This urban Mayan hierarchy spanned its way from the lowest forms of human slavery, broken men working in the mines and pits, to a class of organized agricultural laborers, to a merchant class selling things such as corn, textiles, jade, and slaves. From these strata of traders, the societal structure rapidly narrowed to focus on a small number of the highest of high priests atop the mountain-like temples, carving the beating hearts out of sacrificial human beings and speaking directly to the gods.

It is not clear to me if this is based on the movie or on a book. If the movie, I didn't see anything in the movie to back it up. The only trading that takes place is an exchange of gifts/food between Jaguar Paw's hunting party and a group of people who are fleeing the Mayans.

If we accept the contention by anarcho-primitivists that hunter-gatherers do have leisure, than instead of using "leisured class" to refer to the elites in a certain sort of society/economy, we should probably say the "overly-leisured class," who have too much leisure at the expense of the leisure of others, through unjust economic arrangements? The Mesoamerican hunter-gatherers we see in Apocalypto do have some leisure, both during the day and especially at night, time for story-telling, percussion music (iirc), and dancing.

Jaguar Paw's people do not perform many overt acts of religion, though one woman does invoke a goddess to watch over the children who are left behind, iirc. What is the state of religious observance in their village? It is not known if they invoke the god(s) before the hunt, since the movie begins with the hunt in progress, but they do not thank the gods after the hunt is completed. Apocalypto isn't meant to be a detailed anthropological study of this tribe/village, but I'd be interested to find out more about the religion of native Americans, just like I'd be curious to find out what their music (both vocal and instrumental) was like. [Hence my desire to read the ethnological study of the religion of primitive cultures by Fr. Schmidt and his collaborators.] There are, of course, the human sacrifices by the Mayans which serve as a contrast to Christianity. It is not clear if any of the priests and elites actually believe in the things that they say while conducting the sacrifices, or if it is just rhetoric they employ in order to manipulate the masses and to prevent discontent from creating a movement for violent overthrow.

Of course, the primary sacrifice that God wants is internal sacrifice. External, visible sacrifice is valuable only in so far as it reflects this internal disposition. (Psalm 51: 16-17; Aquinas on sacrifice) In human sacrifice we see how true religion (and external sacrifice) has been perverted by sin and disordered self-love, and there is of course the demonic aspect...

We can contrast the culture of Jaguar Paw's village with the life of the elites depicted in Genji - A Thousand Year Love, a film adaptation of A Tale of Genji (broadcast by Fuji Telecast on ch. 26 New Year's Day as a part of its Japanese New Year programming). After all, what sort of economy enables a noble to have more than one wife, without having to work for it? Some sort of feudal system, obviously, if we are looking at the historical Japanese society.

[More info about the film: Released in 2001, directed by Tonko Horikawa, starring, among others, Tokiwa Takako and Sayuri Yoshinaga. The original novel was written 1000 years ago, so the clothing and styles are deliberately? anachronistic. As I missed the beginning, and any introduction to the film, I'm guessing that this was an example of poetic license. The movie is visual wonder, but perhaps too stylized, and the musical commentary may be rather unnecessary--describing what should be obvious to anyone watching the movie. The commentary at the end of the movie provided by the character narrating the tale, recommending that women should choose the man they love, and so on, feels a bit modern and tacked on, as is her desire and of the two members of the nobility accompanying her to help the fisherman to drag in the nets. A review of the film...]

The formal dress of the court ladies inhibits them from doing physical labor or daily tasks. Certainly their decorative fashion is enhanced and emphasized; whether they were treated as equals by their husbands or lords, that is possible but it seems unlikely to us. Can there ever be equality if there is polygamy? Can there be headship without disdain? After all, disdain for women, viewing and treating them as inferiors, is the result of original sin.

[The same sort of observations could be made of Chinese imperial court life--The Curse of the Golden Flower could be used as an illustration, even if it's not historically accurate in every respect.]

I note that there is an underwater birthing scene in both Apocalypto and Genji: does this method really facilitate childbirth? Water allows one to stand, and the standing position seems to be better than lying down. (Gravity comes into play?) It brings to mind the African birthing chair that one of my English teachers had in the classroom. There are those who support natural childbirth and the employment of midwives when possible, instead of doctors--it's something to consider for the post-oil age and the adaptations that will have to be made.

Would I recommend Apocalypto? Yes. However, even after watching it, I had an empty feeling--for some reason I wasn't fully satisfied, though I can't say why. Was it because the plot was so simple? Or maybe because it wasn't Christian enough, even if it confirms the Natural Law, and I was looking for a more overtly Christian movie from Mel? Or perhaps it's the third act, the "chase movie," which doesn't live up to the first two acts of the movie.

From Byron King's review:

If you do not want to see the movie, you should at least read the book. And that book would be the pathbreaking 1988 work The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Joseph Tainter. No, I do not believe that The Collapse of Complex Societies actually formed the basis for Mel Gibson's screenplay, as the previously noted The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century formed the basis for Black Robe. But in Tainter's remarkable study of the history of collapsed civilizations, including the Mayan, he listed four concepts that help to explain how and why societies collapse:

1. Human societies are problem-solving organizations.
2. Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance.
3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita.
4. Investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.

Tainter explains that the "number of challenges with which the universe can confront a society is, for practical purposes, infinite." But complex societies seem to have a sociopolitical inertia that keeps on increasing their level of complexity in order to survive new challenges. In the early stages, societies in the ascendancy can afford to throw resources at their problems. But this cannot go on indefinitely. Or at least, no other society in history has even managed to pull it off over the long haul.

According to Tainter's thesis, there comes a time when what he characterizes as "investments in additional complexity" produce fewer and fewer returns over time, until, eventually, the whole construct reaches a point of precarious stability due to diminishing return. That is, society cannot muster enough energy continuously to fuel its inherent complexity. Past that point, it is only a matter of time before the inevitable collapse occurs. When a new challenge comes along, whether it is exhaustion of a critical resource, climate stress, outside invasion, or some other set of circumstances, the overly complex society will be unable to muster the resources necessary to deal with the crisis. And at this point, society collapses.

If an overly complex society is fortunate, it will merely deconstruct itself and revert to a much simpler form. And if it is not fortunate, the representatives of an unsustainably complex society will encounter a few ships belonging to foreign explorers, anchored offshore and sending small boats toward the beach, just like in the movies. The rest, as they say, is history.

How does this apply to my own life? Should I return to CA? Do I owe something to the community in which i was raised? Yes, but how much of that community actually exists now? How many ties do I still have? Of course a community is always somewhat fluid, as old members die and new ones are born, but one does not look merely at the individuals but also at families and lineages, since the family is the basic unit. (A political community's identity is dependent upon its regime or constitution, formally, but there is something to be said for some continuity in the matter of the community as well--the families.) How many of those families are still around? (What happened to Nicole Miller from 3rd grade?) With the break up of extended families, coupled with the greater mobility of the "nuclear" family, roots in the community tend to be rather weak. How many citizens treat their community as nothing more than a temporary place of residence, to be abandoned when a higher-paying job comes along somewhere else? Sure, there may be some other benefits, like the public schools, but if these disappeared, what reason would they have to stay?

What should I do for the community? I am starting to have an aversion to anything to do with local government, including law enforcement. Would I be willing to put my life on the line for people who may not deserve it?

ST II II 26, 5 ad 3

Every man is immediately concerned with the care of his own body, but not with his neighbor's welfare, except perhaps in cases of urgency: wherefore charity does not necessarily require a man to imperil his own body for his neighbor's welfare, except in a case where he is under obligation to do so and if a man of his own accord offer himself for that purpose, this belongs to the perfection of charity.

Am I obligated to do so for someone else because he is an individual and on the basis of some particular justice? Or because he is a member of the community, and for the sake of the common good? It seems to me to be more the latter than the former. If I risk my life for the sake of the community, the community better be one that can take care of my family. But if it isn't, and is on the decline, do I not have a greater obligation to find some other line of work with which I can provide for my family and allows me to be around to protect it?

Besides, enforcing the law is a shadow of the practice of politics, and I'm more drawn to that than law enforcement in itself. One could argue that law enforcement is some sort of participation in politics, but I am having difficulties finding those arguments, since there is no deliberation, it's all upholding the results someone else's deliberation [laws]. A LEO is not a social worker; in our culture functions that belong to the citizenry have been taken over by various bureaucrats of the state.

I used to think the Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputies faced as much risk and danger as security guards. The students at 'Tino would complain that the deputies had nothing else to do but issue them citations for this and that. Are they really needed? I suppose they are. I don't like their light brown/olive uniforms, but perhaps their work is relatively safer than the SJPD. There's certainly less crime in Cupertino and the other areas than in San Jose. The risk might be worth it, if the community and its leadership were oriented to the common good and observing the proper first principles, but I really doubt San Jose is such an instance. Local governments in the Bay Area tend to be liberal and PC. I'm open to counterarguments that San Jose (like the rest of metropolitan California) is not a degenerate community. It may not be as bad as San Francisco, but there's plenty of bad policy--just look at the public schools.

With the disintegration of the political community, it seems even more important to maintain family ties--what else is left? Of course, one's obligations to one's family should be sufficient reasons in themselves.

Galatians 5:13-26

13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another. 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, 21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. 26 Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.

(from Crosswalk)

How greater the obligation we have to exercise charity within the family. We should know who the author of discord, strife, and envy is.

Note: look into moving to Arizona while finishing up work? How about an apartment near the Christown walmart/costco? Check rents.

Bishop Brian Farrell on Christian Unity

On Reaching Christian Unity (Part 1)

Homily From Bishop Brian Farrell

DUBLIN, Ireland, JAN. 23, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is the first part of a homily delivered on Thursday in Dublin by Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, at the opening of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

(Part 2 of the homily will appear on Wednesday)

* * *

Every time the baptized come together to pray, it is the Spirit who guides them and teaches them how to pray. It is the same Spirit who builds the Church's unity. Naturally, people have been praying for the unity of Christ's followers since the beginning.

Christians who take to heart the 17th chapter of John's Gospel know that things are not as they should be and that the scandal of division weakens the proclamation of the Gospel; they know that the ecumenical movement is not a luxury in the life of the Church. We cannot separate our following of Christ from our passion for the unity of the Body of Christ that is the Church.

This year, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is 99 years old.

Ninety-nine years ago, Father Paul Watson, an Anglican priest and co-founder of the Society of the Atonement, introduced a Prayer Octave for Christian Unity that was celebrated for the first time Jan. 18-25, 1908.

Unity for Father Watson meant a "return" to the Roman Catholic Church, hence the symbolic dates of the feast of the Chair of Peter, which at that time was celebrated Jan. 18, and the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on Jan. 25. This is usually regarded as the beginning of the week as we know it today.

In 1936, a pioneer of ecumenism in French Catholicism, the Abbé Paul Couturier, brought in a new interpretation of the Unity Octave, when he saw that the idea of "return" made it difficult for many Christians to join with Catholics in prayer. He began what he called the "Universal Week of Prayer for Christian Unity," keeping the same dates of Jan. 18-25, but urging people to pray for the unity of the Church "as Christ wills it." That is what we are here for this evening: to pray together for the unity, the full communion, of all the baptized, in the way and at the time that the Lord, through the work of the Holy Spirit, will arrange.

The scriptural theme of this year's week of prayer is taken from the story in Mark's Gospel [7:31-37] of the healing of the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. Jesus looks up to heaven, sighs and says, "Ephphata -- be opened," and the man can hear and speak. "He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

Jesus brings the person back to his normal condition, in which he can, without hindrance, seek his fulfillment in contact and communion with others. The cured man becomes a symbol of a healed and reconciled humanity, capable of cherishing and practicing all those values and qualities that make life a reflection of the inner life of God himself: communication, harmony, solidarity, love, justice and peace.

But who decides the theme for each year? The process starts at the local level in a different country each year. In this way, Christians around the world pray out of the real-life experience of people trying to meet the challenges of a particular situation. For last year's week of prayer, an ecumenical group gathered here in Ireland with the help of Father Brendan Leahy, and sponsored by the Irish episcopal conference, suggested the theme of Christ present wherever his followers gather to invoke him.

Why that theme? The decades of sectarian violence had sharpened many people's sense of the inadequacy of every merely political effort to bring about reconciliation. Christians belonging to different traditions had discovered the power of prayer to bring them together beyond every boundary: "Where two or three gather in my name, there I am in their midst" [Matthew 18:18-20].

This year the inspiration comes from South Africa, specifically from Umlazi, near Durban. Umlazi is a "township," one of those segregated areas in which the black population was forced to live during the apartheid era. Umlazi is a place of unemployment and poverty, with all that goes with that in terms of privation in health care, housing, education, social cohesion, and hope. It, and other townships like it, are places where the HIV/AIDS tragedy has reached pandemic levels, with more than 50% of the population infected.

But there is a tragedy within the tragedy. "Ubunqunu" in the local language means something like being uncovered, "nakedness," and it refers to all those things that people do not ever talk about. There is a code of silence surrounding certain aspects of life.

There is a code of silence surrounding AIDS. It is a stigmatized disease. When they can no longer hide the symptoms, people retire to their huts and are seldom seen again. They do not seek help. Their families no longer mention them. South Africa as a country is only slowly coming to admit publicly that there is a problem.

The Churches in South Africa are working together to overcome this code of silence that leads to death. They have developed ecumenical prayer services, with "breaking the code of silence" as the central theme. Through prayer, people, especially young people, are given the confidence and courage to "speak the unspeakable."

At the heart of the materials prepared for this year's prayer for Christian unity you will hear an urgent call to "break the silence." In every culture there are enormous unmet needs: The poor, the sick, the homeless, the refugee and the outcast, are our neighbors. Injustice, discrimination, violence, even slavery, take their toll on the streets of Dublin, as they do in every city of our sin-marked world.

The deaf and dumb man of St. Mark's Gospel stands for all of us, individually and collectively. As in the case of the man who could neither hear nor speak, if the Lord loosens our tongues, our ability to understand and to speak out, in truth and honesty, would surely be a blessing for our society.

But note that Jesus first heals the man's inability to hear: Ephphata -- be opened! Surely what Jesus wants is not just that the man be able to hear the sound of words, but that he be able to listen to those around him. It is not "hearing" but "listening" that creates bonds of communication and communion, and therefore makes possible that unity of purpose without which no problem can be faced and managed.

In the materials offered by the people of Umlazi there is a prayer to break the silence, and it says: "Open our ears that we might hear the voices muffled by the trials and suffering of the transient world." If we listen to this cry in our hearts and in our consciences we may become better people, more committed followers of the Jesus who alone has the words of eternal life, who can teach us what it means to be genuinely human in a very dehumanized world.

However, there is something else to be learned from the people of Umlazi. In their severe deprivation and in their anguish for the AIDS pandemic, they look to the Churches for light and support. And what do they see?

Let me read their own words: "In Umlazi, there is one courthouse, one hospital, one post office, one clinic, one set of shops, and one cemetery reflecting one overwhelming challenge facing the people. In this same township, the people, almost all of whom are Christian, adhere to scriptures which profess that there is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all [cf. Ephesians 4:4-6].

"Yet there are many churches, which are not in full communion with each other, and which remain a sign of divided Christianity. In Umlazi, there is an impatience and frustration with inherited divisions generated many centuries ago in other lands."

The sin and the scandal of division tear at the very heart of God's people. Our divisions run deep, and all our Churches are wounded and in need of conversion, purification and healing. That is what we are here for this evening.

(Wednesday: What hope for ecumenism?)

On Reaching Christian Unity (Part 2)

Homily From Bishop Brian Farrell

DUBLIN, Ireland, JAN. 23, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is Part 2 a homily delivered Thursday in Dublin by Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. It came at the opening of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Part 1 appeared Tuesday.

* * *

What hope for ecumenism?

Clearly, the search for Christian unity will be long and difficult. So where do we stand? Believe me, we are not in an ecumenical winter, as some say. This past year alone has seen one important ecumenical event after another; the theological dialogues have gone on, with many good results; visits and meetings between the heads of Churches have been continuous; more and more people and local communities are taking part in what is now referred to as "spiritual ecumenism." Let me speak only of some of the things that I have personally experienced, and limited to this past year.

The general assembly of the [World Council of Churches] in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in February 2006, brought together more than three hundred different churches from practically all Christian traditions; the International Catholic-Orthodox Theological dialogue in Belgrade in September; the theological dialogue with the Ancient Oriental-Orthodox Churches (Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Malankara Church, the Ethiopian and Eritrean Churches).

There are continuous contacts, meetings and dialogues with practically all the Christian World Communions. The [Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity] is directly involved in twelve official dialogues with Churches and ecclesial communities at the international level, and takes part in many other meetings and activities of ecumenical interest.

Official international delegations to visit Benedict XVI: from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches; from the Lutheran Church of Finland, of Norway, of Sweden; from the World Methodist Council; the Lutheran World Federation; the visit of the archbishop of Canterbury; the archbishop of Athens and All Greece. As every year there was an exchange of delegations between the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch, at the end of June for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, the patron saints of Rome, and at the end of November for the feast of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Constantinople. Except that this year the Catholic delegation to Constantinople was led by Pope Benedict himself.

People want to see results from all this activity. But the communion we seek is neither a question of Church diplomacy nor of strategic agreements made in ecclesiastical back-rooms. In its original sense it has to do with "participation," having a part in, sharing in God's gift of redemption and grace. We are brought into communion -- with God and with one another -- when we all share in the same grace: one Lord, one baptism, one Spirit, one Father of all.

And the visible sign of this communion will be as St. Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17: "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf."

Our ecumenical journey is not towards a mere appearance of unity -- towards some sort of ecclesiastical good neighborliness. The communion we seek has its source, its model and its fulfillment in the very life of the Trinity. Superficial gestures will not bring about the unity for which the Lord prayed.

Very often it is the significant though almost imperceptible gesture that marks the progress being made. Let me give a few examples.

First, that the Patriarch and the Pope exchanged the sign of peace during the Divine Liturgy itself. Up to now, at the Phanar, this gesture had always taken place after the celebration itself, given that for our Orthodox brothers the sign of peace within the liturgy expresses a very weighty commitment, introduced by the deacon with this exhortation: "Let us love one another that with one mind we may together make our profession of faith." And then follows the Creed. This may seem like a small thing; but it has much spiritual meaning.

Another important factor: in the common declaration signed by the Pope and the Patriarch, they recall "the solemn ecclesial act banishing from memory the ancient anathemas which for centuries have had a negative effect on relations between our Churches."

They then go on to say: "We have not yet drawn from this act all the positive consequences which can flow from it in our progress towards full unity." They are clearly saying: let us move in very real and practical ways to eliminate the remaining barriers keeping us apart.

And it is significant that Pope Benedict chose the solemn liturgy at the Patriarchate to meet head-on one of the major challenges of the ecumenical journey. In his words: "The issue of the universal service of Peter and his successors has unfortunately given rise to our differences of opinion, which we hope to overcome, thanks also to the theological dialogue which has been recently resumed."

And then with emphasis he renewed a commitment undertaken by Pope John Paul II: "Pope John Paul extended an invitation to enter into a fraternal dialogue aimed at identifying ways in which the Petrine ministry might be exercised today, while respecting its nature and essence, so as to 'accomplish a service of love recognized by all concerned' ['Ut Unum Sint,' 95]. It is my desire today to recall and renew this invitation."

The journey towards full communion may be slow and mostly imperceptible; but the Holy Spirit is at work, and someday, without us knowing how, he will bring to completion the work that he has begun.

So, what should we do?

Because the Church is not just her ministers and leaders but the whole body of the faithful, more and more people need to be involved in what is being called "spiritual ecumenism." Christians, no matter what tradition they belong to, can say with joy and gratitude that "what unites us is much greater than what divides us."

They believe in God the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior, and in the Holy Spirit, the advocate, the giver of life and holiness. They recognize that through the sacrament of baptism they are spiritually reborn and united with Christ and with one another. Together they honor Sacred Scripture as the word of God and as an abiding norm of belief and action. They share in prayer and in many other common sources of the spiritual life.

The Holy Spirit is operative among all the baptized with his sanctifying power. He calls all to true holiness, and it is he who in every generation has prepared Christians of all traditions to face martyrdom for Christ.

Spiritual ecumenism appreciates and values all these gifts in the Churches of East and West. So we need opportunities for a spiritual exchange of gifts.

Christians from different traditions need to meet each other, and in prayer, through a healing of memories, inspire each other to ever greater fidelity to Christ and to the Gospel.

That, in great part, is the value of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Having a special week does not exhaust our commitment, but it reminds us that to love Christ's Church is to yearn for her holiness and her unity.

There are wrinkles, even unpleasant scars, on the face of the Church: and a strong ecumenical commitment is an essential factor in restoring her beauty.

Only when Christ's prayer at the Last Supper is fulfilled, only when we are all one as he ardently wished, only then will the Church clearly appear as the sign and sacrament of the world's salvation. Only then will God's purpose be fulfilled: "that the world may believe."

Todd English

his official site

Never heard of him, though he might have come up during the Food Network discussion over Christmas. Oh wait... I think I remember hearing him mentioned as one of the American Iron Chefs. Fujian Gal is having a Pfizer dinner at the Boston Olives tomorrow. It's rather $$$, so no, I'll never go...

He's seems a bit too metro... "I just want to look good for my customers." Yeah, right.

Ammo for Ms. Lieber

Time out better than spanking for naughty kids: experts

By Patricia Reaney Wed Jan 24, 8:23 AM ET

LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters Life!) - Time out, extra chores and taking away privileges are more useful forms of disciplining naughty children than spanking or hitting, according to a study on Wednesday.
ADVERTISEMENT

An estimated 94 percent of parents use some form of corporal punishment to teach their toddlers right from wrong, according to research studies. But psychologists say it could lead to later emotional and behavioral problems.

Even children who were only smacked occasionally are more likely to show signs of depression or lower self-esteem.

"The key is consistency. Using something like corporal punishment that seems severe at best doesn't help and can put a child at risk for problems," said Dr Paul Frick, of the University of New Orleans in Louisiana.

"It is better to use other types of discipline and focus on the consistency," he added.

The use of physical punishment to discipline children has long been controversial. In countries such as Austria, Finland, Germany and Sweden it is illegal to use corporal punishment at home or in schools.

Frick and his team, who studied the impact of corporal punishment on 98 children, said they couldn't find any positive effects. Some children learned more from the hitting aspect than what the parent was trying to teach them.

"The key is to have a lot of different forms of punishment depending on the age of the child," said Frick, who reported his findings in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.

He recommended time out for younger children and taking away television and electronic toys for older youngsters. Giving extra chores can also get the message across.

Other disciplinary measures are at least as effective as corporal punishment and have less harmful potential consequences.

The researchers screened children whom they thought were at risk of later conduct problems and an equal number of other children who acted as a control group, to study what disciplinary measures would be most helpful.

They questioned the parents and the children about positive and negative parenting behavior including the use of corporal punishment.

"We got it from both perspectives," said Frick.

He added that children on the receiving end of a slap can learn that when they are upset and angry they hit, rather than understanding their behavior was wrong and that they need to do better.

Parental Socialization Practices

B16: On Ecumenism

On Ecumenism in 2006

"Moments of Great Significance in This Slow Ascent to Unity"

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 24, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's address at today's general audience, dedicated to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which ends Thursday.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity closes tomorrow, which this year had as its theme the words of Mark's Gospel "He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak" (Mark 7:37). We could also repeat these words, which express the wonder of the people who witnessed the healing of the man who could not hear or speak, on seeing the wonderful flowering of the commitment for the re-establishment of Christian unity. On reviewing the journey of the last forty years, we marvel at how the Lord has awakened us from the lethargy of self-sufficiency and indifference; how he makes us ever more able to "listen to one another" and not just "hear ourselves"; how he has loosened our tongue so that the prayer we raise to him has greater force of conviction for the world.

Yes, it is true, the Lord has granted me many graces and, in the light of the Spirit, has illuminated many testimonies. They have demonstrated that everything can be attained by praying, when we are able to obey with trust and humility to the divine commandment of love and to adhere to Christ's longing for the unity of all his disciples.

"The attainment of union is the concern of the whole Church, faithful and shepherds alike," affirms the Second Vatican Council. "This concern extends to everyone, according to his talent, whether it be exercised in his daily Christian life or in his theological and historical search" ("Unitatis Redintegratio," 5).

The first common duty is prayer. By praying, and praying together, Christians acquire a greater awareness of their condition of brothers, even if they are still divided; and by praying we learn better to listen to the Lord, as we can only find the path to unity by listening to the Lord and following his voice.

Ecumenism is certainly a slow process, at times perhaps even discouraging when one gives in to the temptation to "hear" and not to "listen," to say half-truths, instead of having the courage to proclaim them. It is not easy to emerge from "comfortable deafness," as if the unaltered Gospel did not have the capacity to re-flower, reaffirming itself as providential leaven of conversion and spiritual renewal for each one of us.

Ecumenism, as I was saying, is a slow process; it is a gradual journey of ascent, as are all journeys of repentance. However, it is a journey that, after the initial difficulties and in fact in them, presents also great moments of joy, refreshing pauses, and allows one to breathe fully the very pure air of full communion.

The experience of these decades, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, shows that the search for Christian unity is realized at different levels and in innumerable circumstances: in parishes, in hospitals, in contacts between people, in collaboration between local communities in all parts of the world, and especially in areas where to carry out a gesture of good will in favor of a brother calls for great effort and also for a purification of the memory.

In this context of hope, dotted with concrete steps toward the full communion of Christians, are also framed the meetings and events that constantly mark the rhythm of my ministry, the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, shepherd of the universal Church. I would now like to review the most significant events that took place in 2006, which were motives of joy and gratitude to the Lord.

The year began with the official visit of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. The international Catholic-Reformed Commission presented a document, for the consideration of the respective authorities, which concluded with a process of dialogue initiated in 1970, which has lasted, therefore, 36 years. This document is entitled "The Church as Community of Common Testimony of the Kingdom of God."

On Jan. 25, 2006, hence, a year ago, on the solemn closing of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the delegates for Europe's ecumenism, convoked jointly by the Council of European Bishops' Conferences and the Conference of European Churches participated in the first stage of approach to the third European Ecumenical Assembly, which will be held on Orthodox soil, in Sibiu, in September of this year.

On the occasion of the Wednesday audiences, I have been able to receive the delegations of the World Baptist Alliance and of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the United States, which is faithful to its periodic visits to Rome. I had the opportunity, moreover, to meet with the leaders of the Orthodox Church of Georgia, which I follow with affection, continuing that bond of friendship that united His Holiness Ilia II with my venerated predecessor, the Servant of God Pope John Paul II.

Continuing with this chronology of last year's ecumenical meetings, is the summit of religious leaders, held in Moscow in July of 2006. Alexy II, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, requested in a special message the adherence of the Holy See. Useful afterward was the visit of Metropolitan Kirill of the Patriarchate of Moscow, who expressed the intention to reach a more explicit normalization of our bilateral relations.

Also appreciated was the visit of the priests and students of the College of the Diakonia Apostolica of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece. I wish to recall also that in its general assembly in Porto Alegre, the World Council of Churches dedicated ample space to Catholic participation. On that occasion I sent a particular message.

I also wanted to send a message to the general meeting of the Methodist World Conference in Seoul. I recall with pleasure, moreover, the cordial visit of the secretaries of Christian World Communions, an organization of mutual information and contact between different confessions.

Continuing with the chronology of the year 2006, we come to the official visit last November of the archbishop of Canterbury and primate of the Anglican Communion. I shared with him and his entourage a significant moment of prayer in the Redemptoris Mater chapel of the Apostolic Palace.

With reference to the unforgettable apostolic journey to Turkey and to the meeting with His Holiness Bartholomew I, I am pleased to recall the numerous gestures that were more eloquent than words. I take advantage of the opportunity to greet once more His Holiness Bartholomew I and to thank him for the letter he wrote me on my return to Rome.

I assure him of my prayer and my commitment to act so that the consequences will ensue of that embrace of peace, which we gave one another during the Divine Liturgy in the church of St. George in the Phanar.

The year ended with the official visit to Rome of the archbishop of Athens and All Greece, His Beatitude Christodoulos, with whom we exchanged demanding gifts: the icons of the "Panaghia," the All Holy, and that of Sts. Peter and Paul embracing.

Are these not perhaps instances of lofty spiritual values, moments of joy, of great significance in this slow ascent to unity of which I have spoken? These moments illuminate the commitment, often silent, but intense, that unites us in the quest for unity. They encourage us to make every possible effort to continue on this slow but important ascent.

We commend ourselves to the constant intercession of the Mother of God and of our protector saints so that they will support and help us not to fail in our good intentions, so that they will encourage us to intensify all efforts, praying and working with confidence, convinced that the Holy Spirit will do the rest. He will give us complete unity when and how it pleases him. And, strengthened by this confidence, let us go forward on the path of faith, of hope and of charity. The Lord is guiding us.

[Translation by ZENIT]

[At the end of the audience, the Pope greeted pilgrims in several languages. In English, he said:]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This Week of Prayer for Christian Unity takes as its theme these words from St. Mark's Gospel: "He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak" (cf. Mark 7:31-37). As we recall the wonder felt by those who witnessed Jesus' healing of a man who could not hear or speak, we too marvel at the remarkable growth that has taken place in ecumenical relations during the last forty years.

The Lord has helped us to overcome our deafness, so that we can listen profoundly to one another, and he has restored our power of speech so that we can pray together and proclaim, the truth with conviction.

In thanking God for the many ecumenical initiatives we have witnessed at every level of the Church's life, I want to recall some particular events in which I have been personally involved during the past year.

I was pleased to receive visits from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, as well as the World Baptist Alliance and representatives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In November I was able to spend time in prayer with the archbishop of Canterbury.

And in Turkey I had the opportunity of visiting the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, whom I greet once more, recalling our fraternal encounter with great joy.

Through the intercession of Our Lady and all the saints, may our work for Christian unity continue to progress, so that the Holy Spirit may make us truly one.

I greet with affection all the English-speaking pilgrims present at today's audience, especially the groups from Denmark and the United States of America. I pray that your visit to Rome will deepen your faith and hope in Christ, who alone can bring healing to our world. Upon all of you and upon your loved ones, I invoke God's blessings of joy and peace.

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana