My view for a while

On the road.

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I feel sort of human. The antibiotics may be helping.

Fairly short flights today and everything seems to be on time.

None of Pres. Obama’s artificial, inflicted, political flight delays … yet.

Yes, this is the book.

UPDATE:

Part II:

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What fun. Blech.

Still feeling human.

I will not repeat my earlier observation lest I tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing!

As Preserved Killick warned Joe Plaice, ‘naming calls’?

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in O'Brian Tags, On the road, Preserved Killick, What Fr. Z is up to and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

24 Comments

  1. acardnal says:

    “None of Pres. Obama’s artificial, inflicted, political flight delays … yet.”

    Having prepared government budgets in my previous life, your statement is so very true. When faced with budget cuts, politicians intentionally prepare budgets to inflict maximum damage on essential services, e.g. police, fire, snow plowing, garbage pick-up, instead of where the real fat is located, e.g. inefficient govt. employees who can’t be fired, abuse of overtime, contracting practices, and public sector union employees’ pay and benefits.

    Maxim: Inflict maximum pain and inconvenience in order to convince citizens that tax increases are necessary.

    Safe travels, Father Z!

  2. The Masked Chicken says:

    It should have been pretty self-evident that Christianity does not assimilate perfectly with anything other than Christianity.

    While it is true that assimilation is a problem within the Catholic Church in America, historically, of more importance, is figuring out why such permission was given in the first place. When the Jesuits first came to China, they tried to assimilate with the indigenous culture and Rome told them to stop it (albeit it took 100 years to do so – the so-called, “Rites Controversy”). This was at least a hundred years before the American experiment began.

    While it is true that Catholicism has made adaptations of a material nature with a culture (use of indigenous money, etc.,) , since the time of the First Council of Jerusalem, when eating meat of strangled animals (i.e., animals sacrificed to false Gods), was forbidden, Catholics have resisted the adaptations of the spiritual aspects of a culture or, at least, whenever such experiments were tried, they were, eventually, outlawed. What permitted the idea of assimilation in America was not so much Archbishop Carroll, et. al. (who, after all, established the parochial education system precisely because they could not assimilate with the 19th-century Protestant education establishment), but the ravaging of the American youth by two World Wars and the rise of Continental Modernism in the 1880s prior to WWI. In war, feelings come first (as there is little time to think on the battle field and testosterone fuels aggression) and after both World Wars, we see a rise in youth movements based almost exclusively on the satisfaction of hedonism. Of course, Modernism revels in this emotional sense, attaching it to religion.

    It was not so much assimilation of American culture that weakened the Church, per se, as the slow, steady infiltration of Modernistic ideas in both the American clergy and the education establishments in the U. S. Americans have been, from the beginning, a pretty independent lot, but when mass education came into existence just prior to World War I, Dewey’s ideas of establishing a unified, shall I say, essentially, slave or worker culture by educational indoctrination, by so-called, “scientific,” means of education, were nothing more nor less than laying the ground work for a culture of subservience. I claim that it is this, rather than simply assimilation, that has weakened the Church in America. In the 1960’s, the mantra was, “Do your own thing,” but isn’t it curious that everybody wound up doing the same thing – having a lot of unrestrained sex? Far from being a revolution towards independence, by the 1950’s, Americans had already been conditioned, including Catholics, to be subservient to The Group. Is it so hard to understand how easily Catholics rolled over, as a group, during the 1960’s? If the liberals had not gained control of the mass media after Vatican II and if the Vatican had not deigned to even consider contraception as a moral issue (that had been settled with Casti Connubii in the 1930’s, after all), but slapped down, hard, the mere mention of it, the Church in the U. S. would be much stronger, today.

    Ultimately, one can trace the weakening of the Church in the U. S. to the linking together of passions by mass media, suspect educational means, and War. Such group formation activities made it easy for a small change to have a big effect. I am pessimistic in the short run that anything but a large-scale counter movement can reverse the tide and I don’t see that happening within the next fifty years. By then, the world, for better or worse, will be a different place.

    The Chicken

  3. The Masked Chicken says:

    That was a comment about the book, not the plane ride. Hope you get some rest.

    The Chicken

  4. campello says:

    I am wicked amped up for this!!!! Can’t wait.

  5. Campello: That’s … good… right?

  6. VexillaRegis says:

    Aargh! Why can’t I be a St Paul’s Cambridge MA tomorrow? Pout. Never been to a Solemn High Mass, just low ones. Pout, pout. You’re lucky!

  7. Have a blessed time in Cambridge, Fr. Z. I hope someone takes photos at the Mass; and that you’ll post some here for all who could not be there.

  8. LarryW2LJ says:

    “Campello: That’s … good… right?”

    Yes, Father, yes it is.

  9. OrthodoxChick says:

    Fr. Z.

    In New England, everything is “wicked” good, wicked cool, wicked awesome, etc. That means it’s not just good, cool, or awesome, but it’s super-incredible good, cool, awesome.

    Have a wicked good flight!

  10. OrthodoxChick says:

    My son is receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation tomorrow night, otherwise I would definitely be there. I’m sorry I’m going to miss it.

  11. monmir says:

    A book! I thought you liked your kindle! [I do! But I haven’t forgotten these things.]
    Safe flight and prayers for you at Adoration tonight with the Dominicans.

  12. future_sister says:

    So close… yet so far away… I really do need to get my driver’s license this summer…

  13. Kathleen10 says:

    Masked Chicken. I agree.
    Haha, wicked. My son and his wife laugh at me when I tell them something is wicked anything.
    I need to look into what is going on in Cambridge.
    Fr. Z., you should be feeling pretty good by now. If you don’t feel better in a day or two, call Doc back and tell him?

  14. frjim4321 says:

    Glad the Z-pac is kicking in.

    No cigars for a while.

    Safe trip…

  15. The Astronomer says:

    Well, Father, it took a little over a month, but as you foresaw, the Liberals are turning on His Holiness Pope Francis. It begins with the infamous Jamie Manson over at Fishwrap with a little hit piece entitled:

    “Pope Francis, women and ‘chauvinism with skirts'”
    Jamie Manson | Apr. 24, 2013

    Francis, like John Paul II and countless critics of feminism from the past century, employs the same old misrepresentation of feminism as a belligerent imitation of male domination. (“Chauvinism” is the translation of Francis’ word machismo.) Apparently Francis believes feminists should have been satisfied when they achieved the right to vote in the 1920s. (Is he aware of the irony that women, by virtue of their anatomies, still have yet to achieve any approximation of voting rights in the Roman Catholic church?)

    In a world where women account for 70 percent of the global poor, half of all pregnant women lack adequate prenatal care, and two-thirds of the world’s illiterate population is made up of women, Pope Francis wants to insist that any further fight for equal treatment under the law and equal standing in society should be understood as women trying — like vindictive macho men in female drag — to insist on their superiority over men.

    Right again, Fr. Z.

  16. Indulgentiam says:

    Have a safe trip Father and enjoy yourself. Try to retire early, get plenty of rest and drink plenty of Holy Water :)

    @ The Astronomer –thanks for the update.
    “(Is he aware of the irony that women, by virtue of their anatomies, still have yet to achieve any approximation of voting rights in the Roman Catholic church?)”. I guess she’s not aware that no one else has either. Somebody should tell her that the Catholic Church is not a democracy sis. Good grief! What a confused individual. And her stats are way off, how predictably sophist of her.

  17. jameeka says:

    Wow. I don’t think I ever saw the main Church of St Pauls’s, it was always the lower basement/ parish center/cafeteria in the late 70s, early 80s…hope it’s wonderful!

  18. jflare says:

    Good Morning,
    Hey, Chicken, FWIW, Dewey bears responsibility for inflicting educational madness here in the ‘States. However, we should remember that he borrowed a bunch of ideas from the Germans of Bismarck’s era. I read a book on education a few years ago–Catholic, in particular, but also in general–that discussed the matter. I don’t remember the title, but the author highlighted how, by the time Catholic schools had established themselves firmly in America, parents had already effectively abdicated on many aspects of their responsibilities as parents to be first educators for their kids.

    As to the “be free” and “be an individual” notions–or how people have lived them out, I’ve often wondered how the education system would handle it if someone actually thought creatively. ..Then I’ve realized that, wait, people HAVE done so. ..And our education system has mostly stomped it out. Ooops. Wonder if we can abolish the US Dept of Education before we implode as a nation…..hmmmmm…

  19. Imrahil says:

    Dear @Chicken,

    two annotations come to my mind for your, as always, highly interesting analysis:

    Wasn’t the outlawing of idolatrously sacrificed meat (other of course than sacrificing it oneself) a rather prudential legislative action, given that St. Paul insisted that in itself this meat does no harm?

    And: wasn’t the Chinese Rite controversy retrospectively decided in favor of the then-Jesuits by an unsuspicious and authoritative person, to wit, Pius XII? (In light of which: we can only deplore that it was not decided like this in the first place, might have won China for us.)

  20. The Masked Chicken says:

    The Rites Controversy was initially decided against the Jesuits and it seriously curtailed any evangelizing in China for centuries. It was re-interpreted and overturned by Pope Pius XII 250 years, later, but, essentially, this just pits pope against pope because earlier popes had condemned the assimilation of cultural practices. This gets into a very tricky, contentious area of how cultural practices of a society can be Christianized. This, sadly, is at the heart of the disagreement about practices post- and pre-Vatican II, as earlier popes disagree with later popes and Vatican II. It’s related to the whole religious liberty thing.

    The Chicken

  21. TundraMN says:

    The “book” in question is awesome! At Fr. Z’s recommendation in a post a couple of days ago I ordered this inexpensive paperback from Amazon and started reading it this morning. If the actual text from the book is as good as the foreword by His Excellency, Archbishop Charles Chaput, then I will be purchasing a few more copies for my good friends who are seminarians studying at St. John Vianney.

  22. PostCatholic says:

    Will you really be in my hometown of Cambridge tomorrow? I will as well, at HDS, and through the weekend. I’d be happy to cross the Yard and come meet you if you have one of your blog get-togethers.

    Travel recommendation: Across the street from the church doors of St Paul’s is Cafe Pamplona (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Pamplona). Get the guava and grilled manchengo cheese sandwich. You can thank me later.

    St Paul’s is a pretty church. Several friends of mine got married there in the 1990’s when Rev. Bryan Hehir was the pastor. I don’t imagine you’re one of his fans…

  23. Imrahil says:

    Dear @Chicken,

    well yes, but if we pit Pope against Pope, it is the more recent Pope that has to win the match (provided the older one cannot be proven both to be fallible and to be erroneous), according to the general principle: Lex posterior derogat legi priori.

Comments are closed.