Gossamer

What we call Indian summer - the spell of fine weather in late fall - was in England called goose summer (Middle English gossomer); it was the season for eating the fatted goose. But in that season, fine spider-webs might glisten of a pleasant morn. In German sommer is used both of the season and of "summer-film"; whence gossamer is applied to any very thin or delicate material. It was once guessed that the word came from God-summer; compare to the history of goodbye. It is also suggested that the word is from God's seam, or thread, that as legend tells this filmy substance is the ravelling of the winding-sheet of the Virgin Mary, which trailed back to earth as she ascended to heaven. And mention is made, too, of the Latin gossipin - cotton. Enough to break the gossamer thread.

- From Joseph Shipley's Dictionary of Word Origins

A Christmastide execution

I hope all of my readers are enjoying a blessed Christmas season! Remember that for Catholics (and for other Christians, too) Christmas lasts a lot longer than our culture recognizes. In fact, the Eastern Orthodox have not even had their Christmas yet.

The Christmas season was interrupted on Friday night by the execution of Saddam Hussein. Our news media behaved in a typically ghoulish fashion - hour by hour updates on "Is he dead yet? Is he going to die at 8 o'clock or 10 o'clock?" You would have thought they were calling a sporting event and not an imminent death.

Catholic opinion on the morality of his execution is divided - see Evangelical Catholicism for an anti opinion, and canon lawyer Jimmy Akin's blog for the opposing side. In my opinion, the best commentary on this topic comes from Christopher Blosser.

I tend to think that the execution of Saddam probably was justifiable on the grounds that the Iraqi authorities, operating as they are in an almost chaotic situation, could likely not guarantee that his continued life on this earth would not contribute to more violence against innocents. As long as the old ex-tyrant lived, he would always be a rallying point for extremists and terrorists.

Of course, his execution also may make him a martyr and provide the exact same rallying point...

In any case, it is the task of every Catholic (and indeed, every Christian) to pray for his thousands of victims and their families, who suffered so horrendously at his hands.

It is also our more difficult duty to pray for the repose of the soul of the wicked man himself. To do this we must try to look at Saddam with the eyes of Jesus, Who loved him enough to die for him on the cross and Who instantly accepts a sinner's sincere repentance, even if it comes at the last moment on the gallows when the rope snaps tight.

I hope that in his last moments of life, Saddam Hussein did repent of his innumerable crimes against humanity and that he will spend eternity in Heaven. Our God is a God of perfect mercy and perfect justice, and He is certainly able to give us both the punishment we richly deserve and the pity we could never dream of meriting.

Please join me in praying that Saddam's purgatory began today. I imagine it will be a lengthy stay.

Adoration of the Kings by Jan Gossaert, c. 1500-15

The beauty of Christmas

I am absolutely in love with Magnificat, a lavishly produced monthly that brings the reader the prayers of the daily and Sunday Masses, lives of the saints (even the less famous ones), gorgeous artwork, beautiful hymns and wonderful reflections. A one year subscription (or better yet, two years!) makes a great Christmas gift (ahem, ahem).

This editorial from the Christmas issue of Magnificat is so profound that I just have to quote it...

In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, the agnostic Charles Ryder engages in a casual conversation about Christianity with his lax but Catholic friend Sebastian Flyte. Charles says, "But, my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all. I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass." Sebastian replies, "Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea." Charles presses him, "But you can't believe things just because they're a lovely idea." To which Sebastian simply responds, "But I do. That's how I believe."

...Pope Benedict has stated that "the beautiful is knowledge in a superior form since it arouses man to the real greatness of the truth. True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of beauty that wounds man. Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction."

...Sebastion Flyte knows he can trust this beauty because of the way it satisfies the heart God has given him....

"Beauty and love form the true consolation in the world, bringing it as near as possible to the world of the resurrection" (Pope Benedict XVI). And that world begins in this world this Christmas.

Now that's food for the soul.

Book Sale, part deux

The latest round produced:

- Amo, Amas, Amat and More: How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment of Others (Introduction by the immortal William F. Buckley)

- A Dictionary of the Origin of Words

- 100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses and Misuses

- The Stranger, by Albert Camus (Existentialist nonsense, but it was an answer on Jeopardy recently, and I've never read it, so of course I had to get it)

- A Lutheran "order of worship" - basically a missal, looks to be quite old school, but I am primarily interested to see where the theological lapses come in

Again, with the lousy Religion section. Oh well, maybe next time.

'My Father Was an Anonymous Sperm Donor'

An editorial in the Washington Post by a young lady who was conceived via artificial insemination at a sperm donor bank.

...When she was 32, my mother -- single, and worried that she might never marry and have a family -- allowed a doctor wearing rubber gloves to inject a syringe of sperm from an unknown man into her uterus so that she could have a baby. I am the result: a donor-conceived child...

Note: The mother "allowed a doctor wearing rubber gloves to inject a syringe of sperm from an unknown man into her uterus." The sexual act is designed to both express love and create new life. That's how human beings function, biologically. Love and life are thus by their very natures meant to be intertwined. This is why contraception in all its forms distorts sex: It artifically destroys the life-giving properties of sex and puts constraints on love.

In the sperm donor bank scenario, we have a more rare distortion: new life is created, but the love part of the sexual equation is non-existent. Instead of the warmth of a love, we have the cold hands and steel instruments of a doctor.

Back to the article.

...I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the "parents" -- the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his "donation." As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right?

...I'm here to tell you that emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn't ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It's hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won't matter to the "products" of the cryobanks' service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place...

The full piece is definitely worth a read.

Hat tip, Diogenes .

My mother is getting older and funnier

"The back pain, it's hungry. It yearns for food. It's like a tapeworm."

- My mother, explaining her desire to tear open the Mr. Chicken box and start eating right in the car

Because Papa says!

You can "make" Pope Benedict say anything here. Things like, for instance:






Please use this for good and not for evil ;)

Thanks to my friend Lauren for giving me the site!

Great Christmas Gift!

You can listen to a beautiful sample by clicking on the button.

A tradition

I always repost this every once in a while. My favorite poem, by Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., an English priest:


Spring and Fall

To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Reading it always makes me sad and happy at the same time.

The poem makes specific reference to the melancholy of the change of seasons, which we actually just experienced a month ago or so. Even small children recognize the alteration in the environment and can even be moved to regret the fading of seasonal warmth and light.

Similar to the quarters of the year, life has its seasons which pass. In our culture, we don't like to acknowledge this - eternal summer is the goal; hence our emphasis on youth and our denial of the reality of aging and death. The reality, of course, is that we, like the leaves of Goldengrove, pass away. The important thing is to be ready when the time comes.

Yes, it's hard knowing that mortality is in our future; life is a beautiful gift from God, and there's a reason we grieve in the face of death. But the Christian can know that life with Him will be still more wonderful, and best of all, there will be no "unleaving" or other change in season: Heaven will be one long springtime of praise.

Dude, where's my car?

Dude, it's like, totally over there in the ditch.

Anyone in Northeast Ohio today knows that we got our first Nasty Snow Spell this morning. For reasons unknown, the state salt trucks never manage to make it to our part of town before, oh, seven o'clock at night. In spite of this, one is still obligated to go to work.

Therefore, I left ten minutes early this morning, hoping to crawl to work and still make it on time; my crawling was apparently not slow and pathetic enough, and so I was punished by going into a spin. It felt rather like a dream, and so I wasn't too freaked out until I careened into a ditch and glided right into one of the massive bushes in Connecticut Colony, which is the subdivision right down the street (I didn't get too far, ha ha ha). The bush was so huge and I was in so tight that I couldn't force open my driver's side door, and I had to crawl through my car and get out of the passenger door. Lovely and scary.

The car looks to be fine, and I'm fine, other than feeling like an idiot. The wonderful thing about being at home is that my dear father came and is "taking care of it," i.e. he is staying with the car and waiting for the roadside assistance to come. That's what fathers are for! Rescuing their young daughters from driving mishaps! ;) I got to go home and nurse my wounded vanity... I got called off of work. One day's wages, pffft.

Books

Hudson Library sales are less exciting than University library sales... but they are still fun, and cheap!

After about an hour perusing the shelves, I managed to find:

1. Brave New World - I know we already have Huxley's masterpiece lying around the house in several editions, but I couldn't resist.

2. The Complete Poetry of John Donne - Speaks for itself.

3. Gone With the Wind - I know, it's the greasy Big Mac of literature, what can I say? I am weak.

4. Part six of Remembrance of Things Past - "The Sweet Cheat Gone" - I've never read Proust, but supposedly every educated human being is supposed to.

5. The Complete Works of O. Henry, Volume II - I always adored his short story, The Gift of the Magi. But where is Volume I?

6. The Florence King Reader - I am somewhat ashamed of this buy. Miss King (she absolutely hates being called "Ms.") is an anti-feminist conservative, but an atheist, but a very funny atheist.

7. Leviathan - Of course, this book's entire last section is a long attack on the Roman Catholic Church, under the heading of "The Kingdom of Darkness." Besides which, the work's entire philosophy is loathsome. Nevertheless, I couldn't resist picking it up, in honor of those innumerable history classes during which we were forced to memorize the differences between Hobbes and Locke, Locke being the good, freedom-loving tabula rasa guy and Hobbes being the bad, misanthropic totalitarian guy. Those were the days.

All for $5 - not bad, although I was a bit disappointed in their Religion section.