Waiting for Godot to Leave

C. G. Jung One of the games Carl Jung and his followers used to play was this.  They would claim that they were not obsessed with sex the way the Freudians were, that they (the Jungians) wouldn't say that Paschal Candle = Penis  (Freud would say this, and Christopher West does say this ) but instead they would claim Paschal Candle = Penis = Creative Power of God = the Self = Individuation ("Individuation", by the way, is a three-dollar word for, "Do whatever you want to do"). "The Paschal Candle does not simply symbolize the penis!" they would exclaim (though they'd say phallus instead).  "Because the phallus itself symbolizes creative energy, which symbolizes God, and God is the archetype for the Self - that thing beneath the ego that we must cultivate through the process of Individuation." But here's the problem - where do you choose the symbol to stop?  Even if Candle = phallus = God = Self = Individuation ... we...

The Emperor has no clothes on.  He's naked for all to see, but not all want to see it. The World's Most Zealous Defender of Christopher West  writes Is it "possible" to look upon someone naked not your spouse without lust? Not only is it "possible"--it's "required" for purity of heart. It's *necessary* that we be able "see rightly" in this regard if ever we are to pass through the active and passive purgation of the senses and toward the deeper "illuminative way" of the spiritual life.  Now he's not saying merely that lust is a sin and that we should mortify it. He's saying that in order to approach mystical union with God, one is required to look at naked ladies without lust.    That's your homework, in other words.  Get to it.

I've been hired to rewrite the above ad to reflect a greater theological accuracy. "Sadly, many of our beloved senior customers have gone to heaven.  Or possibly to hell.  Old Lady Bernice - yeah, she's in hell.  Purgatory for some, I imagine - though von Balthazar would suggest that there is the outside shot that all of them are in fact in heaven; personally, I knew these women well and old Hans can Ur my Von Balthazar, if you know what I mean.  Anyway, we need some new angels to fill our chairs.  Not angels, per se, who don't have hair - at least not physical hair (after all, how many angels can dance on the end of a hairpin? ha ha - but I digress); but moral angels, by which I mean people of good behavior who tip me well.  In brief, we need new customers.  OK?"

My Conspiracy Theory friends are (strange as it sounds) very angry at Daylight Saving Time, claiming it's the government's way of asserting arbitrary power over us, that it represents man's insane assertion of human will over Nature.  After arguing with them all day yesterday, I've finally come up with a post that should suffice. You might say I've sprung forward to the truth and fallen back on a handy explanation of it ... *** If you're using anything other than a sundial (and we've been using mechanical clocks since the 13th Century), noon by the clock is almost NEVER noon by the sun at any place on the earth on any given day. Perhaps twice a year sun noon will correspond to mechanical clock or digital clock noon within a few seconds. And this correspondence is rarely on the days of Spring or Autumn Equinox. This is because your location on earth will never be matched up with the "time zone" to the exact minute. Solar noon for Eastern Sta...

Across the river from where I live, the neighboring diocese of Belleville, Illinois is a trend-setter.  They led the way with the sex abuse scandal in the Church long before the story broke nationally. NCR reports about Fr. Kownacki, a diocesan priest from the Belleville diocese ... Rev. Raymond Kownacki  In 1973, a 16-year-old girl, Gina Parks, contacted diocesan officials and claimed Kownacki, during a two-year period while he was pastor of a small parish in St. Francisville and later in a parish to which he was transferred in Washington Park, abused her sexually, had intercourse with her, even attempted to cause an abortion when she became pregnant. ... Parks said Kownacki gave her alcohol, promised to help her get into art school and assured her sex was OK because God "wanted people to love each other." The bishop, knowing this, and knowing that Fr. Kownacki had molested a girl from Guatemala and that "twin boys from Guatemala were living in the Wash...

My actors and I were once booked to perform at a Catholic Family Camp somewhere in the U.S. It was one of the spookiest places I've ever been to.  The lack of maintenance was appalling - everything was leaking, badly in need of paint, dreary, run down - truly a Catholic Ghetto in the worst sense of the word.  The crew and counselors take vows of celibacy - lay camp counselors taking a vow of celibacy.  Doesn't that sound like fun?  Kind of like being castrated in order to work at McDonald's. "We're not a cult," one of the staff told me when we got there.  "Every one in town thinks we're a cult, but we're not a cult!" Before we performed, I was forced to sign a "rider" to our Theater of the Word contract that gave this camp the right to tape our performance and do with it what they wished - including broadcast it or put it on the internet - with no compensation or royalty to be paid to me.  This was presented to me backstag...

These, I am told, are "hipsters" - and I feel a sudden desire to puke. A friend and blog reader writes that he thinks one of the hallmarks of the new "Hipster Catholics" - by which he seems to mean the cool young crunchy "independent music" types who are more or less orthodox (unless a bit of heterodoxy suits them) and who are self-consciously and deliberately "counter cultural" and "independent" in a way that shows how seriously and deeply they really do identify with superficial things - that one of the hallmarks of "Hipster Catholics" is "lack of masculinity".  Some of them, he even implies, have an "apostolate", which means they sponge off others while engaging in "ministry".  This is kind of like living off Mom, Dad and student loans while getting your second B.A. in Art History at age 30. He contrasts them with sober and mature men, who, whether lay or clergy, take responsibility for ...