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 ...

Yesterday, on the road again, my actress and I attended a Vigil Mass somewhere in America.  It was definitely America, though it may not have been a Mass. The priest was a 70-something soft-spoken slow moving effeminate fellow, and the music was all the Bad Stuff, about a dozen of the worst "hymns" played over and over again on piano before Mass even started, kind of like an episode of The Twilight Zone where you're trapped in an elevator with horrible "muzak" and nobody else trapped with you seems to mind or even notice. The priest assured us in the homily that when Moses lifted his arms and God's staff before the Israelites battling Amalek ( Ex. 17:8-13 ), he was "giving them instructions on the battle," showing them where to attack and where to draw back, and so forth.  Far from being miraculous (which the text implies, the strength of Israel growing when the staff of God was raised and faltering when it was lowered), this was merely a n...

From an article at Religion News Service , Mark Silk writes ... A decade ago, I heard a Catholic lawyer who’d made a career of representing religious institutions in sex abuse cases describe the difference between reporting a wayward clergyman to a Methodist or Episcopal bishop versus “one of ours.” In the former case, he’d sit down in the Protestant leader’s living room, with the photos of children and grandchildren on the mantle, and the man’s sympathy would at once go to the abused. In the latter, the meeting would take place in a chancery conference room and the first words out of His Excellency’s mouth would be, “Poor Father.” And a seminarian comments ... Desmond Drummer   Oct 15, 2013 at 5:16 pm As a Catholic seminarian, I know well that the “poor father” (and “poor bishop”) syndrome is alive and well within the next generation of priests. It’s sad — VERY disturbing. Some seminarians feel that their pursuit of ordained ministry in the Catholic Church is some sor...

Not long ago I asked, "What would you do?" regarding a predator priest in the archdiocese of St. Paul, who had a long history of sexual misconduct with teen aged boys and who kept a camper on the parking lot of his parish, where he eventually molested two boys who were not yet teens.  Nobody told me what they would do, but Archbishop Nienstadt did nothing.   For this he was praised by conservative Catholics. Well, there's another scandal in St. Paul, and you can read about it in detail at the Minnesota Public Radio site ... but let me summarize it for you. While a transitional deacon waiting to be ordained to the priesthood, Jon Shelley caught the attention of counselors at a retreat center, who noted that he had trouble keeping proper boundaries with boys, and "wrestled" with some of them in a swimming pool. After being ordained, Fr. Shelley allowed an 18-year-old boy to live in the rectory with him at one point. Thousands of gay pornograp...

Rod Dreher  brings up some current sex scandals in the Church, some of which I've written about recently on this blog. One involves Fr. Riedlinger in New Jersey.  Riedlinger was a favorite of Msgr. Rossi, who is the rector of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC - enough of a favorite that Riedlinger claimed he would "vacation" with Rossi (who is a much older man).  Riedlinger would be introduced by Rossi to young seminarians, and Riedlinger would then proceed to hit on these guys and turn the talk around to gay sex.  Some of the young seminarians would complain about this, and their complaints would go unheeded. Eventually, two of them instituted a "sting" operation against Riedlinger .  Timothy Schmalz and his roommate Ryan posed as a 16-year-old boy on Facebook, and "friended" Fr. Riedlinger, who soon turned the conversation toward sex. The messages show Riedlinger needed little or no invitation to steer the conversa...

You would think that if we really were able to get exactly what we wanted, we would be happy.  But that is hardly the case.  Precisely and exactly the opposite is the case. *** On Tuesday I posted about what I consider the primary symptom of life without God - Unreality . We can live unreal lives in a number of ways, but sooner or later we get checked.  And even when the check is not sudden or dramatic, God's Reality (which I call Judgment ) has a way of checking our Unrealities little by little every day.  This "reality check" consists not so much of us "checking in" with Reality, but with Reality "checking" us, in the sense of a body slam that halts our progress.  And when Reality can't intervene and check us, we suffer.  I have known a few extremely wealthy people, and the worst thing their money does is shield them (and especially their children) from the consequences of bad behavior.  You might say that Blank Checks can ward off Reality...

What on earth is wrong with our bishops?   As bad as I thought Bishop Finn handled the Fr. Ratigan case , I had no idea that he ignored the red flags described in this letter alone.  The letter was written in 2010 by Julie Hess, the principal of the Catholic school at the parish where Fr. Ratigan was pastor, and delivered to Finn's Vicar General, his second-in-command. All you need to keep in mind while reading it is that Fr. Ratigan was later discovered to have been busy taking pornographic photographs of the little girls of his parish (one as young as age two), was molesting them, and has since been sentenced to 50 years in Federal prison without the possibility of parole. How did Fr. Ratigan's ordinary react to this letter and to the unfolding of this horrific case? Bishop Finn utterly and totally ignored this letter .  As far as I know, he never even acknowledged receiving it until more than a year later, after the story broke, when he claimed he finally "r...

Let me begin by saying that "sexting" (sending lewd comments and naked photos of yourself via text), though sinful, is far from the worst thing one adult can do to another.  Sexting someone you think is a 16-year-old boy ... well, that's another story But which is worse?  A priest sexting someone he thinks is a 16-year-old boy, but isn't - or a pastor refusing to tell parishioners about this and bullying them into not asking questions when the priest is removed from their parish for this very reason? The priest intended to abuse a minor, but didn't.  The pastor intended to bully his parishioners, and did. From The Star Ledger  (emphasis mine) ... The text messages read as if they’ve been ripped from a pornographic novel. Matthew Riedlinger quizzed his texting partner about sex videos, pressed for details about intimate liaisons, described sexual acts and encouraged mutual masturbation. He also repeatedly asked to meet. "Promise me you will...

While in the bathtub tonight I finally understood what Stanley Jaki meant when he said (more than once) that the universe can not be infinite, for an infinite quantity can never be realized. That never really sank in until I saw it ... right there in the tub as the water was sinking down the drain.  It is the nature of infinity that it has no limit.  Its very definition means it is indefinite - in-de-finite; it can not be real, composed of things.   It can only be conceptual.  There is no such thing as "an infinite number of things" for infinity is, in one sense, not a "number" (you can never count "up to" infinity), and "things" are always "realized".  By its nature infinity can not be "realized", composed of actual things. Jaki saw this and saw that this was the fundamental philosophical and mathematic reason that the universe was finite; there were empirical reasons as well.  And if the universe is finite, then materia...

The other day, I referenced an article by Minnesota Public Radio  in my post What Would You Do?  regarding one of the most mishandled cases of abusing clergy since Bishop Finn and Father Ratigan . And Bill Donohue has stepped into the fray, going so far as to giving "Kudos to Archbishop Nienstedt", the man who must take the administrative blame for the sexual abuse of two boys by Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer.  Kudos indeed. Donohue's legalistic defense of the indefensible can be read here . The best thing to be said for it is that it's short.  And he ends with a pointed challenge, which I will be so bold as to answer.  Or attempt to answer. Donohue says ... The burden is on those who disagree to say exactly what should be done in instances where there are no complainants. Well, there were complaints in the Wehmeyer case, as anyone reading the MPR article will see, but Donohue plays fast and loose with the facts.  This is his M.O. But he has pointed o...

Most of us, I imagine, read our emails backwards.  That is to say that when a bunch of emails pile up in our inboxes, they are usually arranged from most recent to least recent.  This is like reading Chapter Ten of a novel, then reading Chapter Nine, and so forth. The Riverfront Times has an article on Archbishop Carlson and his history of handling claims of abuse .  One of the very helpful things the RFT does is to embed on their website the original documents related to the issues they are reporting.  And so you can bypass any possible lax reporting or media spin by going to the source.  This was particularly helpful in the Bishop Finn case .  I still have readers, for example, who are quite rightly concerned about how the media tarnishes the Catholic Church by reporting half-truths, but who don't realize that in this internet age, and especially in the Bishop Finn case, original source documents are available (i.e., the Graves Report and the Stipulat...

Fr. Shawn Ratigan Fr. Shawn Ratigan has been sentenced to 50 years in Federal prison without the possibility of parole for molesting and taking explicit photographs of girls as young as age 2. You can read about it here - but the Kansas City Star goes into some detail about the nature of the crimes, and it's not easy to stomach. At the time the story broke, when it was revealed that Ratigan's bishop, Robert Finn, mishandled the case and showed a flagrant disregard for the victims and their families, Bill Donohue of the Catholic Defense League downplayed Ratigan's crimes and asserted that no child pornography was involved.  The priest was just a shutter bug who liked to take photos of young girls and their crotches, or so Donohue implied. In the perfect world, Bill Donohue would read the Star's description of the photos Ratigan took and the physical contact he had with his helpless victims and would issue a heart-felt apology for the shameful way he spun the s...

In a seminar once, someone asked C. G. Jung about the meaning of life.  "Isn't love the meaning of life?" he was asked. "No!" he replied emphatically.  "The meaning of life is life!" In other words, vitality, exuberance, existence, power.  Success!  (i.e., Moloch , Priapus ) Not sacrifice, compassion, caring, surrender.  Failure!  (i.e. the Cross) C. G. Jung Before my conversion, I read everything Carl Jung ever wrote.  Twenty or more volumes.  This one answer sums up the gigantic mistake that was behind his philosophy and that is behind everything that is ultimately anti-Christian.  There was much good in Jung - a rejection of Freud's atheistic materialism, a regard for the whole person, an appreciation for the spiritual realm, the courage to take religion seriously - but there was a poison, a poison that was particularly bad for me, and for anyone who was using Jung's false faith as a substitute for true Faith, as I was. And...