Defending the 12th century since the 14th; blogging since the 21st.

Catholicism, Conservatism, the Middle Ages, Opera, and Historical and Literary Objets d'Art blogged by a suburban dad who teaches law and writes stuff.


"Very fun." -- J. Bottum, Editor, FIRST THINGS

"Too modest" -- Elinor Dashwood

"Perhaps the wisest man on the Web" -- Henry Dieterich

"Hat tip: me (but really Cacciaguida)" -- Diana Feygin, Editor, THE YALE FREE PRESS

"You are my sire. You give me confidence to speak. You raise my heart so high that I am no more I." -- Dante

"Fabulous!"-- Warlock D.J. Prod of Didsbury

Who was Cacciaguida? See Dante's PARADISO, Cantos XV, XVI, & XVII.


E-mail me

 
MRAIRRRR!!

BTW, "animus" is just a term that Justice Kennedy handed to gay activists in Romer, and they're going to keep hitting people with it until it breaks. Perhaps some judicious mockery is in order. "Animus -- wasn't he a sort of second-tier Roman poet, or was that Statius?" "Oh, you animus...!" "That commenter is a real pain in the animus."
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:06 PM

 
The Holy See has just released Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:06 PM

 
Ignatius Press is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a conference. Click here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:51 AM

 
Whoa: a website for opera broadcasts on the Net
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:39 AM

 
On the front page of today's Washington Times, but not mentioned by the Washington Post: Bush Vows "No Compromise" on Gay "Marriage." (The New York Times covered it too.)

From the President's remarks:

"I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own," he said. "I think it's very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country.

"On the other hand, that does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on an issue such as marriage," Mr. Bush added. "And that's really where the issue is heading here in Washington, and that is the definition of marriage."

posted by Cacciaguida at 9:07 AM

 
The Cranky Professor reviews two books of medieval import: one on the indispensable Abbe Migne, one on early Christian book production.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:00 PM

 
Hmm, looks good: Cultural Conservatism
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:53 PM

 
An interesting subsidiary argument against gay marriage

By the way, which family will pay for the wedding?

For more, read everything else on MarriageDebate.com, and also read Maggie's Weekly Standard article.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:19 PM

 
Criminal profs
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:54 PM

 
Proper disposal of sacred items, guy-style. It's the "BLAMMO!" that adds the bravura touch.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:40 PM

 
Some Duckies Sailed the Ocean Blue
In Nineteen Hundred Ninety-Two

This is way great. It seems that an ocean-going commercial lost some cargo, consisting of -- bath toys. Yes, a flotilla of plastic ducks (their brilliant yellow no doubt faded from salt-water exposure) has been sailing over the bounding main for about eleven years. Evidently they could not agree on a destination: some are now being spotted off the eastern U.S., and others are turning up in English waters. Thanks to The Rat for this one.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:30 PM

 
Meet the Metz

Allan Metz, compiler of Blondie from Punk to Present: a Pictorial History, has written in to announce his Blondie website.

All the Amazon reviewers love Mr. Metz's book; one of them calls it a "hanging-on-the-telephone-book-sized compilation...." Picture this!
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:52 PM

 
How far has dumbitude spread?

I had a conversation this past weekend in which conflicting views were expressed about who the “common man” is, and whether he’s an idiot. One participant said, yes, he’s an idiot, and used as his test group a set of high-school students doing a summer program at Yale. Another participant said, no, the common man absorbs a lot of knowledge from the culture around him, even if not in a very integrated way; he used as his test group the kids of the South Bronx whom he deals with as part of his work for a private educational foundation up there.

(Why “up” there?

New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town
The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down
The people ride in a hole in the ground
New York New York, it’s a wonderful town!

That’s why.)

Meanwhile, I see where an obscene joke in a new trans-Atlantic sexploitation sitcom had to be dropped from the American version of the show – why? Because the U.S. is more puritanical than Cool Britannia? No: because the joke, though obscene, was based on a proverb that is traditional, as in, handed down as part of the common culture from back in the day until, oh, about thirty, forty years ago – and the producers found that Americans just don't know it. They would understand the obscenity, of course, but not the double entendre that is so much a part of British humor.

For a final note along the same lines, in my copy of Henry James’s The Bostonians (the 1984 Penguin edition, edited by Charles Anderson), a reference by the author to “all the kingdoms of the earth” (in ch. 32) is footnoted to let readers know that this phrase comes from Luke 4:5. The current Penguin edition probably explains further that Luke comes from an old book called the Bible.

posted by Cacciaguida at 2:56 PM

 
WEEK-LONG BLOG BREAK. See you next Sunday.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:48 PM

 
Conversation chez Cacciaguida: 'Delia's bedtime

Elinor: Time for you to be in bed.

Cacciadelia: Oh, motherrrrr. You're supposed to be in bed too. Honestly.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:47 PM

 
Blogroll additions: Maine Catholic and Beyond, via Kathy the Carmelite; and four -- count'em, four -- New York Mets blogs! Just think how many there'll be when they get out of last place! (I'm going to file them under "Baseball".)

Shea Daily: a Mets Weblog

Mets Correspondent Report

Always Amazin

The Eddie Kranepool Society

posted by Cacciaguida at 9:36 PM

 
Much-needed explanation of Civil marriage, Religious marriage, Validity, and Sacramentality, by Fr. Jim.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:24 PM

 
Noli Irritate Leones, commenting on my gay-marriage "offer", remarks:

The anti-adultery statute question is easy for me: given a choice between anti-adultery statutes (but no anti-sodomy statutes) and the pre-Lawrence world of anti-sodomy statutes, but no anti-adultery statutes, I find the world of anti-adultery statutes far more moral. Anti-sodomy laws without anti-adultery laws strikes me as simply sexual scapegoating.

Amen!
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:19 PM

 
Maggie Gallagher's blog MarriageDebate.com is now on line. (I'll blogroll it as soon as I figure out whether it belongs under "Axis of Eve" or "Other Fine Blogs.")
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:59 PM

 
"Little Teddy is fierce." Via Clayton Cramer, whose blog you should visit.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:35 AM

 
Just discovered Tonecluster, an interesting blog helping out in the defense of the West against Islamofascism. Also, I've updated my link to Pejmanesque, formerly PejmanPundit.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:41 PM

 
Opera and Broadway


Erik, of Erik's Rant, asks:

Hey, Cacciaguida,

Have you read John Dizikes's Opera in America? If so, what do make of his assertion that American Musical Theater should be seen as opera (he calls them New York Operas)? Certainly Porgy and Bess is an opera - arias, duets, recitatives, only a couple of lines of spoken dialog, but Guys and Dolls? Personally I have trouble considering opera comique in the same class as Verdi, but Dizikes makes some good points. I would be curious to read your take on this, as you seem to be quite the opera fanatic.


I've thought a lot about this over the years. Despite the obvious differences (e.g., Broadway singing does not require operatic training), the boundary is porous. Here are some facts:

* Gian Carlo Menotti is indisputably an opera composer, but The Consul opened on Broadway before moving to the operatic stage.

* Porgy started on Broadway, but has been done at the Met. Many African-American singers made their Met debuts in the production without staying on; but Gregg Baker, who sang Crown, has stayed with the company, singing Escamillo, Donner, and other mainstream baritone parts. (BTW, in Porgy, it's only the few white characters who have spoken lines! Besides, spoken dialogue doesn't take a work out of the opera category: consider Mozart's Magic Flute or Beethoven's Fidelio.)

* Sweeney Todd has completed the transition from Broadway to opera. One of the idols of my opera-listening childhood, Rosalind Elias, sang Mrs. Lovett at the NYCO. Opera companies all over the country produce Sweeney.

* Another Sondheim work, A Little Night Music, has also come to the NYCO, but more as a musical than as an opera, as the principle performers were not singers: e.g., Jeremy Irons in the Len Cariou part.

* There are other Broadway musicals that have never been treated as operas, but have nonetheless drawn opera singers to their leading roles. Some examples:

South Pacific -- Emil de Becque has been sung by Ezio Pinza (in the original cast!), Giorgio Tozzi, & Jerome Hines; (Giorgio did the singing for Rossano Brazzi in the movie)

Fiddler on the Roof -- Tevye has been sung by Robert Merrill and Jan Peerce (reflecting some uncertainty as to the whether it's a baritone or tenor role!)

Man of La Mancha -- Don Quixote has been sung by Giorgio Tozzi and Jerome Hines

Most Happy Fella -- Robert Weede (original cast), Giorgio Tozzi, Spiro Malas


Broadway in its spring of creativity (roughly 1920-1970) was a popular art form. The theatres were full. New shows were advertised in taxicabs and buses. People bought the "original cast albums" and asked each other if they'd seen this or that. Now, Broadway is moribund, kept alive only by a small number of composers, which number just happens to include Andrew Lloyd Webber. (More about him in a minute.)

Opera in its spring of creativity (roughly 1820-1930) was also popular: by 1820 it had ceased to be the exclusive province of royal courts, and before 1930 it had not yet become substantially the province of aesthetes and opera queens. Even today, it has its populistic outposts. Consider the Italian-Americans of New York City and what Italian opera means to them: think Moonstruck, and the role of Puccinian opera there.

So I don't wonder that Lloyd Webber sometimes rips off Puccini: he and Puccini performed the laudable function of keeping their respective musical-theatrical forms meaningful to a broad public.

Oh, one more thing: on the Blondie album Autoamerican, Debbie sings "Follow Me", Nimue's song from Lerner & Loewe's Camelot!
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:14 PM

 
Ahem, Elinor...

1. It's Webber, not Weber.

2. Lloyd Webber is in the category of show music/Broadway, which is separate from either pop or classical. His competitors are Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim, not the Beach Boys, the Beatles, or Beethoven.

3. You forgot Blondie! See, when I take a walk on the pop side, I generally want something a little edgier than the Beach Boys, but not headbanging either. So, who you gonna call? Once more unto the bleach...!

4. Get some comment boxes, fer krynout loud! :)


posted by Cacciaguida at 1:16 PM

 

Archbishop Justin Rigali

Rigali to Philly

Archbishop Justin Rigali, of St. Louis, MO, will be the new Archbishop of Philadelphia, succeeding Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua. Click here too ("In a move likely to maintain Philadelphia's legacy of conservative Catholicism...").

This means a red hat for a hierarch who has long deserved one. Apparently St. Louis is no longer a "red hat see," though it once was (Carberry, May).

Back in the '80s, rumors were that Rigali was Rome's preference for Los Angeles, but that the other California bishops succeeded in blocking the appointment. L.A. got Mahoney instead. Ahem. Anyway.

Congratulations to Archbishop Rigali, to the Holy See, and to the people of Philadelphia!
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:31 AM

 
More on the gay marriage "offer"

My "offer" on gay marriage is getting some play, so I thought I'd reprint it here, together with a sage addition from Fr. Jim Tucker. I wrote:

BTW, I have a standing offer to gay-marriage advocates: give me a return to traditional fault-based divorce, ruthlessly enforced, narrowly defined, and no no-fault; and give me anti-adultery criminal statutes, upheld by the Supreme Court, and enforced as regularly as they can be without turning us into a police state. Then, I'll give you gay marriage.

They won't take it, of course, and not only because my conditions are impossible. They don't want marriage: they only want what straights have turned marriage into in the last half-century or so.

To which Fr. Jim adds, and I must sadly agree:

many (most?) of the heterosexuals getting married in America these days don't really want marriage, either, and they would be just as fast to turn marriage down if the traditional marriage laws were put back in place. But, as far as I know, there's no massive effort among the pro-family lobby to restore the traditional meaning of marriage (in all its aspects) among straights. Curious oversight.

Indeed. About ten years ago the Family Research Council published a paper analyzing the legal flaws of no-fault divorce; I'm not sure what they've done on that since then. I don't know of anyone who has researched (not that it would be an easy task) whether adultery laws do any good or not. Heritage Foundation family policy analyst Patrick Fagan publishes a stream of pieces that fill some, not all, of the gaps. At the 1997 APPI conference "Homosexuality in American Public Life," Pat courageously let fly, and denounced contraception as part of the problem. This was the same conference where Prof. Russell Hittinger made the speech about how straights have deprived marriage of its public link to procreation and fidelity.

But whatever some conservative philosophers and policy guys may say, the law is moving in the opposite direction -- as detailed in this timely piece by Richard Nadler in NRO.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:35 PM

 
A handful of arts blogs

Just discovered ArtsJournal.com, not a self-described blog, but a "weekday digest of some of the best arts and cultural journalism in the English-speaking world."

A subset of ArtsJournal.com -- and the reason I found it in the first place -- is Terry Teachout's blog, called About Last Night: TERRY TEACHOUT on the arts in New York City. Also on board is The Artful Manager, a blog on arts management. Greg Sandow, classical music critic for The Wall Street Journal, is expected to join the ArtsJournal family of blogs within days.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:54 AM

 
Nazareth mosque

Israelis do the right thing, and the Holy See thanks them for it. Good show all around.
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:14 PM

 
Gay marriage, jihad, and other sobering reflections

As if on cue, Maggie Gallagher has posted this essay on NRO. She is also starting a website on this issue, to be called MarriageDebate.com, starting July 21.

If you visit NRO to read her essay, and you should, stay on to read this one as well, on the use of Yahoo!Groups by Al Qaeda-related cadres. The two items are not unrelated: abandonment of sex-complementary marriage by the state leads to further weakening of the family, which leads to further growth of the state, which leads to: (a) transfer of government resources from defence to domestic social problems, and to (b) a growing number of Americans accepting certain jihadist arguments against the United States: that it is decadent, that it is immoral, that it needs radical surgery.

Please remember that American Communism fed on too-often-accurate perceptions that America had deep social problems, coupled with a perception that there was a "rising power in the east" (to borrow a Tolkien expression) that was serious about doing something about it.

Of course Islamist victory would mean a form of totalitarianism for which Hitler and Stalin have only barely prepared our imaginations; but I have an uneasy feeling that that's what happens to civilizations that allow the fundamental cells of their societies to dissolve.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:51 PM

 
Ratzinger as the Catholic Strauss

From "Faith, Philosophy and Theology," the first essay in The Nature and Mission of Theolgogy:

The most ancient Christian sculptures which have come down to us are found on sarcophagi of the third century. Their iconographical canon comprises three figures: the shepherd, the orans and the philosopher.... He is the true philosopher, because he has knowledge of the mystery of death.

This patristic image, Ratzinger says, was upset first by the Schoolmen's distinction between theology and philosophy, then by the transformation of that distinction into an opposition, first by the Reformers, then by the Enlightenment. Then he moves to his solutions. First:

Faith has the right to be missionary only if it truly transcends all traditions and constitutes an appeal to reason and an orientation toward the truth itself. However, if man is made to know reality and has to conduct his life, not merely as tradition dictates, but in conformity to truth, faith also has the positive duty to be missionary.... The fact that today missionary dynamism threatens to trickle away into nothing goes hand in hand with the deficit in philosophy which characterizes the contemporary theological scene.

So faith ultimately belongs to phusis, not nomos (as Strauss uses those terms). Missionary activity is not sharing one's tradition, but telling the truth. Then, drawing on Bonaventure, the cardinal moves in for another point that also has Socratic echoes:

Faith can wish to understand because it is moved by love for the One upon whom it has bestowed its consent. Love seeks understanding. It wishes to know ever better the one whom it loves. It "seeks his face", as Augustine never tires of repeating. Love is the desire for intimate knowledge, so that the quest for intelligence can even be an inner requirement of love.... [L]ove, the center of Christian reality on which "depend the law and the prophets", is at the same time eros for truth, and only so does it remain sound as agape for God and man. (Emphasis added)

Finally, in a postscript entitled "Gnosis, Philosophy and Theology," Ratzinger makes a further move: not only is faith a good fit with philosophy -- there is doubt whether philosophy can even survive without faith, lest it be crowded out by gnosis:

Philosophy, which always remains a question and awaits an answer which it cannot give on its own, was too little for them [the Gnostics]. They pretended to possess clear knowledge -- knowledge in the sense of power to master the world both on this side of death and beyond it. Gnosis turns out to be the negation of philosophy, whereas faith defends both the grandeur and misery of philosophy. Are we not witnessing something quite similar today? Authentic philosophy, with its ultimate uncertainty, disgusts us. We want, not philosophy, but gnosis, that is, exact, verifiable knowledge. Moreover, philosophy is to a great extent weary of itself. It shares the impatience to become like the other disciplines both in nature and in worth. It wishes to be just as "exact" as they are. Yet it purchases exactitude at the price of its greatness, for in so doing it is no longer able to pose those questions which are proper to it alone.... It is not questioning, in fact, which places obstacles to faith but that closure which no longer wants to question and holds truth to be unreachable or not worth striving for. Faith does not destroy philosophy, it champions it. Only when it takes up the cause of philosophy does it remain true to itself.

posted by Cacciaguida at 9:10 PM

 
Wine v. beer

NYC Mayor Bloomberg, already suspected of despising the pleasures of the poor because of his abolitionist stance on smoking, has "uncorked" class warfare by wading into this one.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:13 PM

 
Guardian (UK): Indonesia Suspects Said to Plot Attacks

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - A group of Indonesian terror suspects arrested with a huge cache of explosives and weapons were planning a series of attacks on churches and shopping malls across the world's most populous Muslim nation, police said Saturday.


posted by Cacciaguida at 4:20 PM

 
Gay "marriage" -- whither NR and the "Marriage Movment"?

Eve was, of course, right to recommend this post by Noah Millman, and right again to withhold complete agreement. What started this is that, as Millman puts it, John O'Sullivan has chimed in with NR's creeping surrender on the gay marriage issue.

Maybe if someone could convince O'Sullivan that a lot of gays are immigrants....

I'm also having a hard time figuring out where MarriageMovement.org stands on this. Tom Sylvester proclaims himself undecided, but adds, in this otherwise very sound post on fairness in the gay-marriage debate:

[I]f anyone is likely to make me more pro-same-sex marriage, it's folks like Lou Sheldon and Gary Bauer. If they really cared about resisting same-sex marriage, they'd politely decline interviews and refer reporters to Stanley Kurtz, Maggie Gallagher, and others who make thoughtful, secular arguments against same-sex marriage that are not rooted in an anti-gay animus.

Now, with the exception of Mr. Kurtz (whose writings at NRO I admire), I am personally acquainted with all the persons Mr. Sylvester mentions. The difference between them is that Ms. Gallagher makes sophisticated moral and sociological arguments, the Rev. Mr Sheldon makes simplistic arguments from religious authority, and Mr. Bauer is somewhere in between, but closer to Ms. Gallagher, IMHO. Where on that continuum does "anti-gay" animus set in? And how does Mr. Sylvester know who has it and who doesn't? Is it simply that "argument from authority" = anti-gay animus, while "thoughtful, secular" = no anti-gay animus? Where's the support for those equations? Wouldn't a humble "IMHO" have been appropriate here?

My concern here is that "anti-gay animus" is undefined; all we know about it for sure is that anyone deemed to have it is expelled from the SSM debate, perhaps from all debates. Therefore we can be sure that gay activists are not going to define it the way Mr. Sylvester does, with Kurtz and Gallagher falling on the good side of the line; they are going to define it so that all their opponents fall on the wrong side of the line. For that reason, those who insist on fairness in the SSM debate probably should not assist in the mainstreaming of this inherently ideological turn of phrase.

BTW, I have a standing offer to gay-marriage advocates: give me a return to traditional fault-based divorce, ruthlessly enforced, narrowly defined, and no no-fault; and give me anti-adultery criminal statutes, upheld by the Supreme Court, and enforced as regularly as they can be without turning us into a police state. Then, I'll give you gay marriage.

They won't take it, of course, and not only because my conditions are impossible. They don't want marriage: they only want what straights have turned marriage into in the last half-century or so.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:56 PM

 
The top 200-or-so most expensive zip codes

Factoids about them:

1. Fifteen of them are in San Francisco, more than in any other single city.

2. I used to live in two of them. However:
a. not at the same time
b. neither of them was in San Francisco
c. I don't anymore

posted by Cacciaguida at 10:34 PM

 
The Father Zigrang/Tridentine Mass crisis in Texas (diocese of Galveston-Houston)

The Old Oligarch says all that needs saying here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:35 PM

 
Meyer meets Matrix.
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:31 PM

 
Encouraging: in Prague Speech, Brit Conservative leader assumes Thatcher mantle on Europe

From the Daily Torygraph:

Iain Duncan Smith yesterday thrust himself to the head of a revolt against a European super state with a call for a "democratic revolution" against the euro and the draft European constitution.

Iain Duncan Smith in Prague to deliver his speech on Europe
He cast himself in the mould of Margaret Thatcher, who, in a speech in Bruges in 1988, promised to oppose a super state. He offered himself as a "champion" of the rights of national democracies.


posted by Cacciaguida at 12:02 PM

 
Those Germans

I was on this German record-store website yesterday, and I spent some time there (and not only time, my dear) because they have this faboo 1953 AIDA with Zinka that I've been looking for simply forever and -- well, anyway, when you register your address with them, they have not one but two categories before even getting to your name: Anrede (address), and Titel. The options for Anrede are Herr and Frau. (Is fraeulein not pc enough anymore?)

And then: the options under Titel (and they are the same whether your Anrede is Herr or Frau) are -- and I am not making this up -- "Dr.", Prof.", and "Dr. Prof."
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:11 AM

 
This is great. (Via Eve.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:08 AM

 
The five lawyerous mysteries

Just came from the family rosary; luminous mysteries, since it's Thursday. A few Thursdays ago I accidentally ran "luminous" and "glorious" together, and it came out "lawyerous." Well of course I couldn't let that go, so here they are:

1. The amended complaint
2. The deposition
3. The motion for summary judgment
4. The motion for a directed verdict
5. The appeal
posted by Cacciaguida at 7:40 PM

 
Ovulation consternation

In case you've been reading breathless, stop-the-presses headlines about the Saskatchewan study of ovulation, such as this one, or this, or this, , be sure to read this too.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:43 PM

 
Slate -- Life With the Mets: How to survive the summer at Shea Stadium.

posted by Cacciaguida at 5:31 PM

 

Mei Xiang


Baby panda on the way? (The Washington Post's headline is "Panda Pregnancy Considered Long Shot." That should amuse The Rat.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:07 PM

 
Conversation chez Cacciaguida: hot sauce

Scene: Mexican restaurant (a real, non-chain one)

Cacciaguida: This sauce tastes pretty serious.

Number One Son: So, not more than a pint?

Cacciaguida: Yeah, I know -- it's the sort of thing you shampoo with.

Number One Son: Not shampoo -- mouthwash! You think Listerine kills germs? Ha ha -- I can hear them scream!
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:22 PM

 
What happens to your PhD if your dissertation gets classified?
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:19 PM

 
A real-life Daffy Duck

Yesterday's Washington Post contained this story, which begins:

Diana Flynt, center supervisor for the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland, Fla., was tending a red-tailed hawk. "This is an incredible electrocution case," she said. "It was a very rainy day, and people actually saw the bird conduct. One wingtip and the other wingtip touched two lines."

The hawk had arrived with third-degree burns and hundreds of singed feathers. Its normally black beak and talons were "more a kind of dead brown," Flynt said. But no bones were broken and the bird's circulatory system and mental facilities were intact, and recovery was underway.

...except that he keeps saying, "You'rrrre deth-PICK-able!!"
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:59 PM

 
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive/But to be dumb was very heaven

Ex-priest longs for All That, back in '68, in the Gainesville Sun:

"It was at the height of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, the pro-feminist movement, there were a lot of concerns the students had at that time and none of it was expressed in the hymns that we sang at Mass," said Gannon, who left the priesthood in 1976.

So after seeing the way students reacted to the folk songs at informal gatherings, he asked the group to sing at a Sunday Mass. While traditionalists thought he'd turned the church into a coffeehouse, they couldn't argue with what they saw.

"As the weeks wore on the church just filled up and remained filled for five years with people of all different faiths - Catholics, Protestants and Jews, people of no faith at all," Gannon said.

Uh, like the man said -- we couldn't argue with what we saw. The church filled up with people who didn's share the fullness of the Faith any more than Fr. Gannon did; it lasted five whole years; then Fr. Gannon left the priesthood. Yup. Can't argue.

posted by Cacciaguida at 9:36 PM

 
Anne Applebaum, Gulag historian and Washington Post columnist, on how New Yorkers' thinking they're smart makes them dumber than Washingtonians.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:21 PM

 
Preacher seeks sign, gets zapped by lightning

posted by Cacciaguida at 2:30 PM

 
Bel canto, can belto, can headbang

According to this, bel canto tenor Juan Diego Florez

started out singing pop and heavy metal with a band in his native Lima, covering Led Zeppelin and the Beatles. A whole lot of love for music of all kinds, however, made the teenager realize he had a voice that could do more than belt.

Free vocal lessons in his high school chorus, and quick memorizing of Schubert's plaintive "Ave Maria" and Verdi's fiendishly difficult, rambunctious "Questa o quella" from "Rigoletto," earned Florez a spot in the Lima Conservatory at 17. A full scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia followed....

posted by Cacciaguida at 11:35 AM

 
Fox News: Sandra Day O'Connor Dated Fellow Justice -- "no names yet." Well duh. Haven't we always assumed that she and Rehnquist were an item back at Stanford Law?
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:05 PM

 
Cacciadelia at the podium:

God is like millions of brothers.

(She has four, all older. God doesn't hit her as much.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:26 PM

 
Hee hee --

Lost maxims of equity, as discovered by Eugene Volokh

and

Some of those maxims translated into Latin by Gary O'Connor

I'll now try my hand at those of Eugene's maxims that Gary didn't translate. Corrections welcome.


Equity can be grumpy before its first cup of coffee.

Equitas ante primum caffeinum furiosa esse potest.


Equity is crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.

Equitas dura ad extra, suavis ad intra.


Equity is a mean drunk.

Equitas bibenda Zorakosa est.


Equity, like all of us, prefers the rich and good-looking.

Equitas sicut omnes dives formosisque prediliget.

posted by Cacciaguida at 6:13 PM

 
Scents and Scentsibility

The elusively sweet Elinor has some advice for the ladies -- not that ladies who need to read this are likely be those who read this blog, but anyway, spread the wordl

(And gee, isn't it swell that permalinks are working again? Bravo, Blogger!)
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:53 PM

 
What country are you? (Via Zorak)

You're Ireland!

Mystical and rain-soaked, you remain mysterious to many people, and this
makes you intriguing.  You also like a good night at the pub, though many are just as
worried that you will blow up the pub as drink your beverage of choice.  You're good
with words, remarkably lucky, and know and enjoy at least fifteen ways of eating a potato.
 You really don't like snakes.
Take the Country Quiz at
the Blue Pyramid

posted by Cacciaguida at 12:47 PM

 
Good advice

In today's first reading, God says to Abraham (Gen. 21:12): omnia quae dixerit tibi Sarra audi vocem eius (Old Vulgate; thanks to O.O.'s online Scripture library!)
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:28 PM

 
Whoa....

Check out this abstract from last year's Medieval Academy conference: “Cacciaguida’s Place: An Anti-mercantile History of Florence within the Structure of the Paradiso,” by Susan Noakes.

Yeah, I guess I did get pretty anti-mercantile when young Dante came through for his famous chat. Pretty anti-immigration too. I didn't really mean it that way: I was just complaining about certain lawless families that had come in, and about people who were doing stuff it would take the U.S. Supreme Court to approve of. I really think a city can balance economic growth and civic virtue; Florence didn't, that's all.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:34 AM

 
Homeschooling, homemaking, and PowerPuff Girls

There are all kinds of homeschoolers, and, as Gilbert & Sullivan's Lord Chancellor would say, "They clash, my lords, they clash." Also, a surprising number of Catholic homeschooling families feature self-identified "crappy homemakers." For an interesting discussion, visit Kathy the Carmelite, and scroll down to the June 23 post entitled "'I'm a bad parent'". Be sure to read the comments.

FWIW, I haven't seen much of the PowerPuff Girls (read K the C's post to see how they come into this), but what I've seen, I like. "Fighting crime before bedtime." They're brave and bold, but every so often they cry. Shortly after Cacciadelia was born, it became clear that she was so sweet, we just had to make up a legend that she was in fact "fierce," at least to evil-doers. For us, she was the original PowerPuff girl.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:27 AM

 
Democrats for Life holds awards banquet. (Via Rosa Mystica.)

DFL is here, it's clear, get used to it.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:03 AM

 

It's Bishop O'Malley from the JP2 and you'rrrrrre ARCHBISHOP!!


Bishop Sean O'Malley is to be the new Archbishop of Boston

O'Malley was only recently transferred from Fall River, MA, to Palm Beach, FL. The Catholics of Palm Beach must be wondering if they inadvertently joined Bishop-of-the-Month Club, but O'Malley seems to have earned a reputation as a fixer and healer for dioceses plagued with clerical sex abuse, so who you gonna call?

Meanwhile:

* Palm Beach gets Bishop Gerald Barbarito, who was appointed to the diocese of Ogdensburg, NY four years ago when its then-Bishop, Paul Loverde, was appointed to Arlington, VA.

* Acceptance of the age-required resignation of Richmond VA Bishop Walter Sullivan is still pending. I guess with all the goings-on in Phoenix and Boston, it's been hard for Bishop Sullivan to get attention for his resignation letter. Send it again!

* Concerning O'Malley, a sandaled Capuchin friar who is fluent in Spanish, The Washington Post says this:

"This is what is so beautiful for Boston -- he'll have the Irish credentials, but he'll be as Hispanic as anyone named Jesus Gonzales. He'll bring those two worlds together," said Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a Catholic theologian and longtime friend.

This is encouraging -- and the most encouraging thing about it is the part that says "Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a longtime friend." Msgr. Albacete is also a long-time friend of Cacciaguida, and a founder of Triumph Magazine (click here for a collection of its columns), which lasted from 1968 until 1975, when it folded and was re-born as Christendom College. I simplify, of course, but's that's it in a nutshell.

posted by Cacciaguida at 10:50 AM