Bernard always had a few prayers in the hall and some whiskey afterwards as he was rarther pious but Mr Salteena was not very adicted to prayers so he marched up to bed. Ethel stayed as she thourght it would be a good thing. The butler came in as he was a very holy man and Bernard piously said the Our Father and a very good hymm called I will keep my anger down and a Decad of the Rosary.
-Daisy Ashford, The Young Visiters, found in the comments here!

THE DEATH-HAUNTED ART OF FRIENDSHIP, PART II: At Catholic Lane. This time, sacrificial friendship in the Bible and in our everyday lives:

How often in Scripture we find violence mingled with love, like water mingled with wine: in the Song of Songs, the watchmen beating the lover as she searches the city for her beloved; in Genesis, Abram’s knife poised over Isaac’s breast. Yet it is friendship that features most prominently in this strange dynamic of love and violence. It is most explicitly and insistently linked to death and sacrifice.

more

A SUMMARY OF MY TALK IN DENVER is up at the Spiritual Friendship blog.

About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying
and singing hymns to God as the prisoners listened,
there was suddenly such a severe earthquake
that the foundations of the jail shook;
all the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose.
When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open,
he drew his sword and was about to kill himself,
thinking that the prisoners had escaped.
But Paul shouted out in a loud voice,
"Do no harm to yourself; we are all here."
He asked for a light and rushed in and,
trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.
Then he brought them out and said,
"Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

--Acts; from today's readings. This jailer is one of those startling marginal figures who duck into the New Testament, react in unexpected ways, and then duck back out of sight.

SIMCHA FISHER, FOR MOTHER'S DAY.

THE MIND ANSWERS THE BELL LIKE A SERVANT: A quick, necessary postscript to my recent long post about conversion--and I meant to say this earlier but got blown off-course by events! Anyway it would be easy to think that if you can become Catholic for reasons as intellectual as the ones I describe in that post, your faith would remain a papery husk, a bunch of moral laws rather than a passionate relationship with Jesus Christ. That kind of faith is certainly not what I was advocating. I think people generally move beyond their initial reasons and motives for conversion; and it's necessary to do so, as we begin to step into the areas of Catholic faith and practice which initially felt the most remote to us. People who accept Catholicism as a groundwork for morality can, I hope, now revisit the music, the prayer practices, the ascetic practices, and the corporal works of mercy, and love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, and strength.

Post title is a nod to this.

THREE MYTHS ABOUT THE CHURCH TO GIVE UP FOR LENT. From the unimportance of monsignors to the crucial witness of martyrs. I'd say 95% of public discussion of Catholicism in this country assumes the truth of all of these myths.

(Also, if PG Wodehouse shuffled back onto this mortal coil, I'd like to think his next book would be called The Unimportance of Monsignors.)

"HOW I GOT GOOD CATHOLIC BOOKS INTO MY LOCAL LIBRARY SYSTEM (AND HOW YOU CAN TOO!)" Via... maybe Simcha Fisher?

I immediately thought of Wesley Hill's book (not Catholic but we will overlook that for the moment) and less-immediately thought of two kids' books I loved, The Satanic Mill and The Wicked Enchantment. I wrote about them in an old piece which is very flawed but with whose basic thesis I still agree, here. (The 2009 date is when it was reprinted--I'm pretty sure it was originally written in 2002.) Other books I'd push: Kathy Shaidle's Lobotomy Magnificat, Tim Powers's Declare, and Alan Bray's The Friend. You guys doubtless have your own candidates!

WHAT IF WE ARE IN DISSENT?

A reader writes in response to Thursday’s post, “Why Are They Here?”:

I feel that I am a faithful Catholic- attend Mass, pray regularly, try to follow the Church in all things. But I fall short on this with one issue- I do disagree about the Church’s stance on homosexuality and gay marriage. My beloved sister is a lesbian, is married (in her state and in the Episcopalian church) to her partner of 15 years. They have 2 beautiful children. I have prayed over this issue, talked to my priest, talked to my husband, read extensively. I know intellectually that what I feel goes against Church teaching. But I cannot/ do not look at what my sister is doing as wrong. I’m happy she found someone she loves to spend her life with. I love her children, and I’m so happy that they exist. My sister and her partner are raising them wonderfully.

[snip]

So, in a way, I could understand where some of those posters on Jezebel are coming from. Sometimes conservative Catholic bloggers will talk about how they struggled with a Church teaching, but the post always ends with how they changed, and saw the light, and saw the truth and beauty in the Church’s teachings. But what are you supposed to do when that doesn’t happen?

more; comments are a mixed bag but there's some stuff I think my readers would appreciate there too

"FATHER, WE'RE READY FOR THAT HOMILY ON CONTRACEPTION NOW."

WHAT DO SINGLE PEOPLE NEED FROM THE CHURCH?

"THE SELLING OF CHAPUT'S CHATEAU":

Philadelphia’s Archbishop Chaput made a brave, but not entirely unexpected, move when he announced that the Archdiocese would be selling its 13,000 square foot, 3-story stone mansion at 5400 City Line Avenue. The sixteen-room, six-car garage structure sits on slightly more than 8 acres of land and has been described as a "baronial home." Purchased for $115,000 in 1935 by Cardinal Dennis Dougherty at a time when the idea of a mansion seemed appropriate for a "Prince of the Church," the opulent residence now risks being seen as an embarrassment of riches in the wake of financially driven closings of Catholic schools in the area.

Archbishop Chaput is no novice when it comes to selling expensive mansions for smaller living quarters. In 1999, as Archbishop of Denver, he sold the Denver bishop’s villa and moved into the diocesan seminary. ...

The die-hards who call for 1st Century austerity fail to take into account the difference between opulent living and giving the best when it comes to what the ancient Jews believed about decorating the Second Temple of Jerusalem, built by Herod. Nearly 20-stories high and constructed by some 10,000 men, the white marble and gold edifice with striking bronze doors was considered to be a "footstool" of God’s presence. It was in this elaborate, incense-smoked place that Jesus himself prayed, and where, incidentally, he never once criticized as being too opulent or extravagant in its expression of adoration of the Father.

For over a century and a half, hard-working Catholics in the United States gave willingly to build churches that would stand the test of time. Nothing was too good for a temple, be it marble altar rails, towering frescoes or gilded high altars. Living a simpler "humbler" life should mean downsizing from a mansion to a house, not turning churches into concrete Brutalism bunkers that signify nothing.

more (via First Thoughts)

SOME SMALL THOUGHTS ON REPETITIVE PRAYER: I know it's easy to criticize repeated prayers because they can seem rote, dissolving into jabberwocky. But having just finished a prayer in which I really did forget my place and get kind of mixed up, I was struck by how apt that experience is--how well it fits our experience of long-term spiritual life and struggle.

I mean, we forget parts of our pain, too, or get mixed up about which parts go where. They sometimes become rote parts of our lives, acknowledged but barely recognized. And then we're suddenly startled by some fragment of self-knowledge and it glints like broken glass. This happens with repeated prayers as well. Some previously-overlooked phrase will suddenly envelop me like wings, or hit hard on a bruise. Repetition is a way of allowing ourselves to be surprised by what arises in the course of what might seem like an ordinary night's prayer.

It also keeps us from thinking that spiritual problems get "solved," finished. The struggle may feel rote one day, mumbled through quickly and gotten over with, but it in fact does have to be repeated in all its manifold forms, this day and the next and the next.

(Somewhat more coherent thoughts from me on repetitive prayer here.)

ALL MY SINS MISREMEMBERED: Review of David Carr's Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life--His Own. I've read a bunch of addiction memoirs this past year, and this is the one which spoke to me the most, by far. Carr is a reporter and editor (currently writing for the New York Times, but I promise not to hold that against him), and he decided to use his investigative techniques to figure out what really happened during his years of addiction to alcohol and cocaine. He did interviews and reviewed the documentary record--rehab admittance reports, police reports, all the old bad memories.

You can tell what he found from the Norman Mailer tagline he uses: "Who could tell anymore where was what? Liars controlled the locks." Some of his mismemories turned out to make him seem worse than he'd really been--but mostly he found that he'd been much more of a thug and a loser than he'd let himself remember. He'd hurt women, made violent threats, and even after a rock-bottom night on which he left his infant twin daughters alone in the car while he smoked crack, he took months to finally get clean. (He'd remembered that as the turning point. And it was... but big trucks make wide turns, and they take some time.)

Carr's prose style is roughed-up, not quite tabloid, with a fine streak of gallows humor. (The chapter on his relapse is titled, "Additional Research.") The book is also deeply forgiving, with compassion toward literally everyone who crossed the path of Carr's trainwreck: not just his first wife, the dealer, but also, for example, the people who ran his last rehab, a somewhat ramshackle affair with too much emphasis on humiliation and restriction for your own good ("There is no humility without humiliation," as Mother Theresa said, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to take it on yourself to humble others) but a lot of genuine love and companionship. Maybe the best example of this aspect of the book is Carr's description of Jayson Blair, whom he clearly views as a fellow addict, fellow newspaperman, and fellow human being--not a catchphrase.

Carr was raised Catholic, in a deeply loving family. I'm sure this is one reason the book spoke to me so much; I'm guessing books with more familial dysfunction will speak more to people who came from more cruel, tumultuous, or broken homes. His descriptions of his own faith, a matter of trust and need and accepting the lack of answers, struck me as powerful and poignant. I may have choked up a bit when he described lying on a couch during a period of brutal cancer treatment, listening to one of his little girls upstairs, guiding her sister through a childlike prayer to Mary. There are snapshots of the ways in which editing can be a leadership role. (I interned at the Washington City Paper while Carr was EIC there, and from my perspective he was a fantastic leader, although he gives ample evidence for an opposing point of view in the book!)

One thing which really struck me about The Night of the Gun is that although his catastrophe days make up the majority of the page count, the book feels like it's much more about recovery and sobriety. Maybe that's because the entire project of the book is a recovery project, so even the darkest parts are embedded in a project of rebuilding the personal integrity shattered by active addiction. It seems like a lot of memoirists fumble for words when trying to describe both the work and the joys of sobriety. There can be a sense that the mere absence of pain is such a relief, in itself, that there's nothing left to describe, just a blank space. Carr really conveys so vividly the working, loving life of gratitude and creation and service.

EVERY YEAR, Daniel Mitsui dedicates the month of November to memento moris (mementos mori?) and other Christian artistry of death. Every year, I forget to tell you guys until it's been a couple weeks! But definitely check out his typically stark and sublime collection of death masks, dances of death, Outside Over There-style tombs, and even an alphabet of death.

NEVER FORGET WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO LIVE IN ROOMS LIKE THESE: GetReligion excerpts the discussion of faith from an NPR interview with David Carr, former Washington City Paper editor-in-chief and the author of one of the very best books I've read this year, The Night of the Gun. I'll write more about his book when I do my year-end roundup, but for now I'll just say that I found his comments on NPR characteristically relatable and down-to-earth and humbled.

THERE'S A SERIES ON PRAYING THE ROSARY THROUGH ART at Crisis. The Joyful Mysteries are here; I especially liked the choices for the Sorrowful Mysteries.

"THE NEW BRIGHTON ROCK: BAD ROMANCE." In which I review a movie.

TWO ANONYREADER COMMENTS ON FORDHAM-RELATED THINGS: Anonyreader #1:

I just listened to the panel you were on at Fordham, and I wanted to note something regarding one of the questions you were asked -- namely, the one concerning "celibacy as a sanction."

The traditional teaching of the Catholic Church is actually that celibacy is the highest way of life. See Session 24, Canon X of the Council of Trent. (That link goes to http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct24.html, in case the link doesn't work.)

This has been lost in modern times with the dominance first of the notion of the nuclear family, and then of sexual politics, and the Church's responses to both of these things. However... there it is.

Also, semi-tangentially, I found this article when I was looking up a website to cite the above canon (that's http://www.ts.mu.edu/content/51/51.3/51.3.4.pdf). Food for thought.

and anonyreader #2:

If you want to get rid of priestly awe, trying having a kid brother who is a priest. My brother [Redacted] was ordained a couple of years ago, and he is still just as goofy as he was as a kid, and a little too firmly Republican for my taste. But he's still a good priest. This also probably pertains to folks who form close friendships with priests. It's inevitable that one sees one's friends as complete humans, otherwise you are not really their friend.

I think a lot of people avoid friendship with priests because of some of the issues you were talking about. They distance themselves from them out of a reverential awe. While I think it's a good idea to maintain a certain distance from your confessor, or perhaps even your pastor, it would be beneficial for most lay people if they had a decently close friendship with a priest. (If priests only have priest friends, they become an insulated echo chamber, just like any other credential based group.)

I had a small problem with this line from your post. "These are reasons that a layperson-to-priest attitude of empathy at best, wry distance at worst, will serve both parties much better than a surfeit of awe." This may be true, as I said, when dealing with your own confessor, but with priests generally? Doesn't this instrumentalize priests, rather than treat them as full and complete human beings? If the awe of the laity makes it too easy for priests to cover up sins, I think it's a good idea for there to be people who are ready and willing to tell a priest he's wrong.

I value my friends the most who will tell me when I'm being a jerk. I certainly don't hesitate to tell [Redacted] when I think he's wrong, and I decline to call him Father or show him any more respect than I ever have, and I think that will ultimately be to his benefit.

Just some thoughts.

Thank you!

REALLY FANTASTIC INTERVIEW WITH ROCCO PALMO. Via WAWIV. I initially skipped this but went back to it on his recommendation and it was completely worth it.