Reading

Success can make for lousy storytelling - usually, once they start living happily ever after, the story's over. So it's probably best that my reading at the Mission Valley Borders Books & Music didn't have them standing in the stacks, straining after every word. If it had, how would I write about it?

Once, twice, maybe three times, the voice went out across the store. “Borders welcomes Matthew Lickona, who will read from his book, Swimming with Scapulars.” To no avail. I wanted to tell them to give it a rest already. That was the only really embarrassing moment - withouth the announcement, this was just a guy and some friends at a table, reading a book. But the announcement filled the store, letting everybody know that this was a public event, one they might care to attend. My boss-editor came with two of his daughters, bless him. And my wife, and my friends Canisius, Shawn, Kate, Mary, and Gary and his wife Maria. I read, recounting my struggles for these ten people I knew, trying not to notice as a couple of people sat down for a minute, then departed. We had a good chat, a few of them bought copies, and the manager was very kind. "You've sold twelve copies here so far. That's good. One person bought five copies. I've had nonfiction titles sell two in a whole year."

Something for the folks over at BookAngst101, the ones who wonder whether ads sell books. My boss gave me four full-page ads in the Reader, circulation 160,000, all of which mentioned the Borders signing prominently. Now maybe people just weren’t that interested in my book – that’s eminently possible. And maybe they were interested in the book but not in the reading – also possible. But still, something to consider. My boss also ran a reprint of the NYTBR rave that Judith Moore's Fat Girl got for several weeks, and that doesn’t seem to have helped much, either. "It's selling better in Kansas City," he remarked, and Kansas City is a much smaller metropolis than San Diego. (This should not be read as ingratitude to my boss. Four full-page ads was a tremendous gift, and I know it.)

My second reading was better. The owners of Cosmos Coffee, situated on my town's main drag, kindly kept their shop open late for me on a Sunday evening. More people came, including a few I didn't recognize. I read more; there were questions afterwards. Afterwards, we moseyed across the street to Maxwell's House of Books, an excellent used bookstore, and I signed a few books, answered a few more questions, and got buzzy on bubbly and Yellow Tail Shiraz. By the end, it was just me and Canisius (who is convinced that carpenters like himself are the best-read people in the world), the proprietor (a former carpenter) and his wife, and a Presbyterian pastor who was filling it at a local Methodist church. The talk eventually veered south, and I left with a copy of The Burden of Southern History, which I am enjoying very much. Easy to love a book that opens with a consideration of what Southern experience has to offer the rest of America - poverty instead of abundance, failure instead of near-constant success, a real struggle with genuine moral evil. (The essay was written mid-century, when the South was perhaps more curious about its distinctiveness.)

When Walker Percy was asked why the South had produced so many fine novelists, he answered, "Because we lost the war" - a very similar notion.

Home

I can't decide which is realer - California, where I've started a career, bought a house, started a family, found friends, planted a garden (well, the wife did), seen children baptized and shriven and joined to Christ in communion, etc.

Or New York, where I'm from, and where my parents live, and where my brother wants to get back to. It's not apron strings; it's terroir (to use a gag-inducing bit of winespeak). It's the place. A couple of years ago, my boss took me hiking through Yosemite. It was, naturally, amazing, and I'm grateful to have seen it. But last summer, I took my kids walking through the dripping shale gorges and waterfalls of Treman State Park in Ithaca, and I could have wept for the beauty of it if I hadn't been so mad at my kids and their utter lack of interest in walking slowly and contemplating the wonder of the place. (More particularly, I was mad because their constant agitation made it difficult for me to do the contemplating. If there's one thing I lack, it's serenity amid the chaos.)

And it's the quality of interaction with family - even when it's cacophonous (headed for airport, can't check spelling) - and there were times on this visit when it was - it carries such weight, has such substance.

Yesterday's News

Peter Steinfels, top-dog religion reporter for the New York Times (I know, I know, don't I read anything else?), has weighed in on the "But what will the kids think of Papa Benedict?" question. (Yes, everyone else reported on this days ago. In my world, time runs a little more slowly.)

The parts that caught my attention:

"Catholic teenagers were far less apt to affirm belief in a personal God, to report having ever undergone a very moving, powerful worship experience, or to say their faith was extremely important in shaping their daily lives or major life decisions."

Belief in a personal God - that's disturbing, and I would suggest it points to lousy catechesis. A very moving, powerful worship experience? Seems to me a body could go through most of life without having one of those, and yet remain a deeply committed, even holy, Catholic. As for faith shaping daily lives - um, they're teenagers. Their faith is fledgling - at least mine was at that age, even if I was serious about it.

"There has been a lot of impressionistic talk, often verging on boosterism, about a new "John Paul II generation" of deeply committed, conservative young Catholics. So what should be said about this quite different-looking crop of John Paul II teenagers? How did this happen on the watch of the very pope who undeniably exhibited such magnetism among youth?"

I'd like to stand as a particular, concrete counterpoint to the "impressionistic talk." True, I don't know how many other people out there share my beliefs, and as ever, I like to use "willing to adhere to Church teaching" instead of "conservative." But I'll answer to "deeply committed." But again, I'm a young Catholic, but hardly a teenager.

"The obvious answer is that one individual, no matter how charismatic a communicator of his convictions, cannot do it alone. Even the millions touched by World Youth Days are only a small - and often unrepresentative - fraction of young Catholics, who as a whole can be reached only at the grass roots, through parish worship, religious education, youth ministry and, of course, their parents' example."

Right on, Steinfels. So if there's a problem, I'd say it's there - parish worship and religious education. I won't presume to judge about their parents' example.

"If this whole infrastructure of religious socialization is creaky, undermanned, short on skills and resources, fearful of ideas and innovation or unresponsive to important demographic, socioeconomic and cultural forces, then even the most dynamic pontiff can enliven only a minority of young Catholics."

That's a cleverly lumped-together list. Creaky infrastructure? Amen. Fearful of ideas and innovation? Is this really the problem? Unresponsive to cultural forces? Is this another way of saying "refusing to yield to the times and blow with the prevailing wind"? And is that really the problem? Is there a lot of that kind of refusal going on in the American Catholic infrastructure of religious socialization? (I'm sincere in my question, not rhetorical.)

But it's probably true that even the most dynamic pontiff will enliven only a minority. That's the "creative minority" he's referring to, no?

Comedy of Porn

San Diego has a pirate radio station, 96.9. They don’t like the paper I write for one bit, but, magnanimous soul that I am, I sometimes listen to them anyway. A few nights ago, I tuned in at the tail end of a comedy routine. (That’s one of the nice things about pirate radio, I suppose – no format requirements. Unlike this blog thing, with its strict parameters. Lit blog? Catholic blog? Pop blog? Oh, will I never be free?) The comic, a young fellow, was marveling that airports sold, along with travel accessories, fancy chocolate, and other generally family friendly fare, porn. The poor youngster clearly hadn’t considered the plight of the people who made the airline industry great – lonely businessmen.

I thought of that routine as I browsed the Hudson News kiosks in O’Hare on my way back to San Diego yesterday: "Hm. Jeff Sharlet in Harper’s, writing about a megachurch as part of a series on The Religious Right’s War on America. Sharlet says he doesn’t have anything against Christianity, but dang... Ooh – Dwell has a piece on prefab construction. Shelter porn; that’s for me. And of course, there’s the regular porn. That black plastic shield isn’t doing the gal on the cover of Playboy’s Book of Lingerie any favors – all you can see is her face, and even airbrushed, it’s an unfortunate mug for a model."

It occurred to me that Tom Green could have made something fine out of the comic’s observation – porn in this most public of places. (Tom Green. That’s great, Matthew – thinking two years behind… When Monsignor Albicete invokes Sanford and Son on Charlie Rose, it’s charming. When you reference Tom Green, it’s just lame.) Imagine it – Tom goes into Hudson News and buys a copy of everything they’ve got – Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, the works – then brings it on a plane, rips off the plastic covers and starts perusing with enthusiasm. A guy next to him gets offended and says something. “What are you talking about,” he fires back. “C’mon, she’s hot! Look at that! Can you tell me she isn’t hot?” A woman complains. “Hey, nobody’s making you look. I’m just doing my thing over here. I’m not looking at you, am I?” Someone calls the stewardess.

“Sir, you’ll have to put that away.”

“Forget it! I bought these magazines at the airport! You guys sold ‘em to me! You’re telling me I can’t look at ‘em? You’re looking at a lawsuit here, lady!”

(Which reminds me of another great moment in Sideways – when Miles, stuck on his own for a day, ends up at the liquor store, ordering a copy of Barely Legal. The poor clerk goes to fetch it, and Miles stops him. “No, the new issue, please.” The old one is old news for him; he’s used it up. Quietly driving the pathetic spike in deeper.)

And then the capper, the gross-out, over-the-top, signature Tom Green moment. (Gentle readers may wish to skip this part.) He takes a copy into the plane's bathroom, and emerges, smiling, five minutes later. "All better," he says to everyone. You've got your society in microcosm there in the plane's cabin, and Tom making everyone uncomfortable... might have been right up his alley.

Fabulous.

Last time I'll dig into the Magister article below, but I didn't want to let this line slip by:

He is distrustful of theologians who “do not love art, poetry, music, nature: they can be dangerous.”

Thereby hangs a tale.

Catholic Sex Blog?

The thought occurs that there have been a fair number of posts on this blog about NFP, contraception, and Catholic teaching on sexual matters. To anyone who might be tempted to accuse me of being obsessed with the subject, let me offer a word of explanation.

From the Magister article cited below: "The encyclical of Paul VI forbidding artificial contraception produced one of the most serious ruptures between the papal magisterium and the practice of the faithful in recent decades."

I think this is true, and that the matter must be faced, discussed, thought about, dialogued over (hoo!), addressed, and otherwise taken on if the Church is to maintain its integrity. Not that the Church will fall apart, but that there is a real problem in the Mystical Body when the head doesn't direct the, er, other members. The casual acceptance on the part of the faithful of a practice denounced as "instrinsically evil" is a serious rupture, indeed. (And to anybody who doesn't think sex is such a big deal, I ask this: If it's not a big deal, why do people feel led to disobey?)

I'm supposed to be working on another project, but I keep thinking about this one, suggested to me by a friend - a real investigation of how Catholics in the pews live out their Christian marriages. How they reconcile their practices with Church teaching. How they understand themselves and their marriage in relation to the Church. My views on the subject are easy enough to discern; I wouldn't have to be grinding an axe. I could just listen. I think such a project would have merit.

Those curious Catholics

I've read here and there that the pope favors a "smaller, more creative" Church. This is tremendously appealing to me. Christianity is no longer the dominant culture in this country (to the extent that it ever was), and Catholicism may be regarded as an oddball sect. Well and good. An oddball sect that knows what it's about and has a mission to bring Christ to the world sounds okay to me.

Addendum

With regard to the post below, this may prove helpful. A pertinent excerpt from the Cardinal's letter:

"In a society which seems increasingly to downgrade the value of chastity, conjugal fidelity and temperance, and to be preoccupied sometimes almost exclusively with physical health and temporal well-being, the church's responsibility is to give that kind of witness which is proper to her, namely an unequivocal witness of effective and unreserved solidarity with those who are suffering and, at the same time, a witness of defense of the dignity of human sexuality which can only be realized within the context of moral law."

My question about the source of the authority stands, however.

Well, now.

Sandro Magister has written a piece on Benedict XVI's agenda which includes this interesting entry:

HUMANAE VITAE. The encyclical of Paul VI forbidding artificial contraception produced one of the most serious ruptures between the papal magisterium and the practice of the faithful in recent decades. But today the focal point of the Church’s preaching has shifted: more than the pill and the condom, the Church’s attention is concentrated on the defense of every life from the moment of conception. The result is that even at the summit of the Church’s leadership calm discussions have begun again about the prohibition of “Humanae Vitae” as not definitive or rigid, but open to future corrections. Cardinal Georges Cottier, official theologian of the papal household, gave an authoritative first sign of a shift one month before John Paul II died: he admitted the use of the condom as a defense against AIDS, under accurately described special conditions. It is possible that the new pope will take further steps in the same direction.

I will look further into this, but one question first: is the question really whether the "prohibition of Humanae Vitae" is definitive or rigid? I thought Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the consistent teaching of the Church on this point, and that the authority of the prohibition was taken from the magisterium, not the encyclical. This makes it sound like the prohibition didn't come until Humanae Vitae. I'm happy to be enlightened on this point. Anyone?

Nota Bene

Posting will be (even) lighter over the next week or so. My grandmother died last week, and we're going to upstate New York for the funeral - all six of us. I'll try to check in now and then. Hope to see you (both of you) back here next week!

Bleat

Got a chance to talk on the local public radio morning show today. I was just a call-in guy, the in-studio guests were both much more critical of the Church - the sister wanted women priests, the professor wanted the Church to keep talking about change, etc. I wished I could have responded, wished I could have given more detail, but my time was short. I did get to mention that if you accept Church authority here and not there, you aren't really accepting Church authority. You're accepting your own authority, and you're pleased if the Church happens to agree with you. You measure the Church; the Church does not measure you. "Here, yes; there, no." Of course, I wasn't that coherent. But it wasn't too awful.

I also got to mention that while we do have something of a priest shortage, there are places where the seminaries are full to bursting, and those places have something in common: bishops who are willing to boldly proclaim and defend the Catholic faith. I talked to a friend today who said that they built a whole new wing at the LA diocese seminary after Vatican II, so sure were they that men would now flock to the priesthood. What happened? The largest diocese in the country had years when it produced no priests at all. Not so, the diocese of Lincoln.

And while I stumbled through it, I made my principal point: I (and I believe others like me) accept the difficult, oft-dissented-from teachings of the Church because I believe the Church's aim is to make me a disciple of Christ, to lead me to Jesus, and that it knows the way I need to go.

Sideways

I have written elsewhere about the painful similarities between wine lover/wannabe novelist/San Diegan Miles in the film Sideways and my own self. But I watched it with a couple of friends the other night, and I remembered how much I loved the following exchange:

Miles: I can't kill myself before I've even been published.

Jack: What about that guy who wrote Confederacy of Dunces? He killed himself before he got published, and he's really famous now.

Miles: Thanks a lot.

John Kennedy Toole as the enemy of artistic self-pity. Very good.

We drank Pinot as we watched - but not California Pinot. Friend Darin brought down a bunch of '93 Burgundies. They were sublime. Burgundy, often as not, will break your heart - some of the '93s had started to go gently into that good night - but when it's on, it's as good as wine gets. Miles' speech about why he likes Pinot - thin-skinned, requiring constant love and care, etc. - was fun on the Miles-is-Pinot end of things, but it didn't get at the real glory of the grape: the way it transmits place, the velvet texture it can achieve, and the stop-and-marvel flavors it can deliver. I don't drink wine for intellectual reasons - comparisons to people, connections to history - I drink it for pleasure. Complicated pleasure, admitting of nuance and complexity - but pleasure.

But I digress. A friend found the film painful to watch, said there was just too much wretchedness. Didn't like the characters, thought the director was a snob. I disagreed. Miles learns love - it took love to go into that ranch house. Jack repents and confesses. What say you?

In and Out

I listened to the radio for the announcement of the new pope. It was awe-inspiring, to hear the roar drop to absolute silence when the announcement was made. After that, I turned it off. My friend came over with Champagne, and we drank to Benedict XVI.
Catholicism's day at the top of the headlines will continue a while longer, I suspect. But I can't bring myself to dive into the fray today - to read the stories, to hear the reactions both pro and con, to dig into Ratzinger's history and writing. Today, I am grateful for his elevation, hopeful for the future.
What about the rest of you?

Long Live Pope Benedict

Who are these people?

Friends here, Darin and Melanie and their four kids. We're listening to NPR as we wait to hear the identity of the new pope. As we listened to the breathless attempts to fill time, Mel asked, "Who are these people? They sound like they're on Iron Chef!" Perfect.
"This is really exciting. There is a lot of anticipation. I've never experienced anything like this before."

Paging Tom Waits

Over on Godspy, David Scott paints a A Portrait of the Pope as a Young Artist. In the essay, Scott writes:

"John Paul was passionately convinced that poets, writers, sculptors, painters, architects, musicians and actors had a crucial role to play in 'the new evangelization' of the world.

'Humanity in every age—and even today—looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny,' he wrote in a very personal letter to the world's artists penned on the final Easter of the 20th century.

He urged artists to see their talent and inspiration as gifts from God and to use these gifts for
the spiritual renewal of civilization."

I wasn't thinking about any of the preceding when I wrote the following song. But I think the preceding may have something to do with the reason I thought the song worked.

I started dreaming about how it would sound if Tom Waits performed it. A while later, my Uncle Terry, who produces the television show Austin City Limits, sent me a tape of Waits' appearance on the show back in '78. In a spoken-word bit about the whores at Hollywood and Vine, he mentioned both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Call it what you may.

Misfits was the last film for both Gable and Monroe. In it, there's a scene where they attempt to rope a wild horse in the desert. The name of this song is "Misfits."

Well, the curve of your backside
Is somehow familiar
Like a calendar girl
That I saw long ago
And if you're more woman
Than the ones in the movies
I recall a blonde bombshell
Who blew up just so.

Now I'm not suggesting
That I'm some Clark Gable
And there's no pretending
You're Marilyn Monroe
But we are two misfits
Doin' the best that we're able
To get through the night
The one way we know.

Well the lines on my face
From the wind and the sunshine
May give me away
As an old-fashioned man
And it may be so
That the best is behind me
But frankly, my dear
I don't give a damn

Now I'm not suggesting
That I'm some Clark Gable
And there's no pretending
You're Marilyn Monroe
But we are two misfits
Doin' the best that we're able
To get through the night
The one way we know.

There's a wild black mustang
Out there in the desert
And he threatens to trample us
And leave us for dead
And though we both know
These ropes just won't hold him
We'll strain and pretend
Down here on this bed.

And if I'm suggesting
That I'm some Clark Gable
And if we're both pretending
You're Marilyn Monroe
We'll still be two misfits
Doin' the best that we're able
To get through the night
It's the one way we know.

Paging Andrea Gilbert

Amy Welborn was kind enough to interview me about my book over at her blog. Right away, I got a pretty scathing critique from a "GG". I wrote a detailed response to her detailed critique - check the comments section of the interview if you're at all curious - but it didn't seem to make much of an impression. GG is also Mukluk, aka Andrea Gilbert, the author of today's slam at Amazon.

This post is an invitation to Ms. Gilbert to respond (here) to my response to her critique over at Open Book.

Ow.

Over at Amazon, my book had been soldiering along under a sunny sky, the sunshine provided by a very kind and very thorough review from one Helena Burns. I don't know Ms. Burns, and the review wasn't completely gushing, two factors which I thought added credibility. It was everything a body could hope for, especially since Amazon doesn't seem to want to publish my Publisher's Weekly review.

Customer review number two is up now, and it is less than laudatory. I think the reviewer gets me wrong, but I'm not going to launch into a litany of self-defense. What I will do is make a polite request: if anybody out there has read my book and has the time and inclination, a review on Amazon would be much appreciated. (I know I'm opening myself up for more pans, but that's the risk you take.) Thanks!

A Family Thing

My sister-in-law Lisa, theologian/writer/homeschooling mother of six, shared this entry from her journal with me. I thought I'd share it with you. (Note that it was written before the death of John Paul II.)

2/24/05

The pope has said that the gospel of our times is the gospel of suffering. I don’t think that there is much room anymore for evangelization. In the West, at least, everyone, or most everyone is too broken. There is no need for apologetics because no one is embracing a creed that needs to be argued against. I’m not talking about the evangelicals. I’m referring to most of the rest of the country. Divorce, abortion, contraception--the net result is not moral confusion, but ontological confusion. People don’t know what they believe, they are not sure that they believe in anything.

What is left is suffering--offering one’s life for others. Has this not been the message of all the saints of our time? Mother Teresa--”It is not ours to do great things, but small things with great love.” St. Therese of Lisieux offering herself for the salvation of the world.

The pope stands as a figure with one foot in the old era, one in the new. In the eighties he was a triumphant figure: ushering in the end of communism, the end of the Cold War. He was doing great things. But now, in a new era, his “greatness” seems to be waning. He has decried the war, but noone is listening. He can do nothing, apparently, to stop the spread of Western materialism into the East, the terrorism of the Middle East, the war in Iraq. Apparently.

That’s where the suffering comes in. Only through salvific suffering can the world be saved.

Gremlins in the System...

...so I won't link to the I Heart the Observer post below. For some reason, it's displaying only ten of the comments. There are more like 20, and I think the discussion has been interesting. If you're curious, scroll down and click on the comments button and you'll be able to see the whole exchange.

And Introducing...

...my brother Mark, who will occcasionally grace this blog with his presence. Mark writes:

TIME's April 11, 2005 commemorative issue dedicated to John Paul II features a 1996 full-spread super-wide-angle photo by Gianni Giansanti taken from behind the Pope as he addresses a crowd gathered at night in the shadow of the Colosseum. Or, to be more accurate, a crowd gathered under huge floodlights that bathe both the crowd and the massive ruin in brilliance, throwing into shadowy relief the intricate textures of multitude and architectural wonder. At the bottom of the photo, the tiny figure of the Pope stands on a stage, overlooking the crowd spread out below him. Toward the top of the photo, framed by the ruins, the full moon—an image of Mother Mary beaming down on her beloved son. And in the center, filling almost the entire frame, stands the Colosseum, that ancient theater of riotous, murderous debauchery, now empty, barren, mute.

And then there is the caption.

“The Gladiator: Never cowed by controversy, the Pope at the Colosseum in Rome in 1996, defended traditional views on abortion, sexuality and contraception.”

The insensitivity is total. Not insensitivity to the feelings of the Catholic readership—for who among the faithful would be sad to hear their Pope described as an undaunted crusader for the truth?—but insensitivity to the meaning, to the dramatic irony, of the image: The lions are dead. The empire is dead. The Church lives. Moreover, the Church, embodied in this tiny figure dwarfed by that giant pagan edifice, is triumphant—and not merely because it has perdured while its oppressor has not. For almost directly above the Pope’s head can be seen inscribed on the face of the Colosseum the Cross, imprinted at the head of a great stone tablet which pays tribute to the Christian martyrs.

And so here is the uber-irony: The Pope was not a gladiator—he did not “conquer” by besting his enemies in combat, intellectual or otherwise. He triumphed as the Holy Martyrs triumphed—by becoming a victim, a victim for love. He conquered the hearts of men and women everywhere by offering himself to them, by giving to the last drop, by going to the ends of his strength and beyond, in order to be with his flock all over the world, that they might be encouraged—that they might hear the Gospel—that they might hear the truth that sets hearts free.

Howdy

On the off chance that any of you are stopping by because of my interview over at Open Book and are at all curious about the book I wrote, there's an excerpt over at Godspy. Welcome!

You're Older Than You've Ever Been...

...and now you're even older. And now you're even older...

Acccording to this, I'm a touch long in the tooth for Generation John Paul II, and probably a hair too cynical about institutions, the Church included.

According to one research associate: "Catholics in the 'millennial generation' are more likely to attend Mass weekly, pray every day, feel that religion is important and have a lot of confidence in the church than Catholics in either the Vatican II generation (born 1943 to 1960) or those in the Post-Vatican II generation (1961 to 1981)."

So I could complain that a few of us X'ers were there first on the whole "Eucharistic Adorations"/reviving old devotions thing, and that Big Media is overlooking people like me because it's already packaged us as cynical sideliners - but I suppose that'd be typical Gen-X griping.

Confidence in the Church? That's an interesting one. Confidence that the Holy Spirit guides the institution, protects it from errror in teaching about faith and morals, and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it? Sure. After that, it gets a little muddier (said the cynical member of the Post-Vatican II generation).

An interesting note from the piece:

"Their Catholicism is quite focused on John Paul II, especially his teachings on contraception and the family," said Mr. Keating, who teaches at Providence College in Rhode Island. "It's fairly significant. They are a force in the church.

A line like that seems bound to attract some of the people who complain that John Paul II spent way too much time on sexual mores. My initial answer: sexual mores are deeply tied up with personal sanctity. You begin with what's close to you. But further: sexual mores are deeply tied up with the family, and the family is a public institution that has considerable impact on society. I was happy to see the two - contraception and the family - mentioned together.

Quandary

This blog is barely over a month old, and already, I'm cannibalizing comments... Oh, the shame of it. But I think I've got good reason here, since there's a question asked.

A reader writes:

"This actually brings up an interesting quandary I'm facing. My fiance and I have been taking NFP classes, and had initially planned to wait a little while-- probably about a year-- to start trying to have a family after the wedding. However, after seeing several friends struggle with fertility issues, we've become convinced just to leave it in God's hands from the outset of the marriage, and wait until after the first is born (God willing) to use NFP for a while.

Now, the quandary: several non-Catholic and cafeteria Catholic friends and family members know that we've been taking NFP classes. So, if we were to get pregnant very soon after the wedding, they might be led to believe that NFP is ineffective. Do we tell them our plans now, so that they won't attribute any pregnancy to an NFP "failure"? Do we stay mum? I don't know whether I'd rather inadvertently reinforce the doctor's stereotype, described by Anonymous, above, or have my parents and friends asking me every month whether I'm pregnant!!"

My first reaction: tell 'em. NFP is a lousy tool for evangelization, because it's so bound up with the multitudinous details known only to the spouses that lead them to make their decisions about abstaining or not abstaining. But if people know you're NFP fans and are looking to mock the practice, the hassle of letting them know you're trying for a child might be classified a charitable act - helping to prevent their making a (false) judgement.

But I'm not an expert. Anybody else?

Obits

I was over at Tingle Alley, and noted that Carrie noted that the NYT's obituary for Andrea Dworkin was less than scintillating, while the Guardian's piece was much better. This isn't quite apples to apples, since the Guardian piece isn't technically an obit, but it strikes a familiar note: the English papers often handle big-time obituaries better than we do. They're sharper, more honest, more detailed.

Does anyone else remember a proposal a while back for a magazine entitled Obit, one that would run long, Guardian-quality obituaries of the recently deceased? You'd still need a celebrity for the cover, of course, but inside, you could have significant people from all walks of life. The pope just died, but so did the guy who developed a bunch of the vaccines routinely given to children today. It'd give people a sense of things beyond the past week/month. I don't think it's a morbid idea; I think it'd be fascinating.

NFP = No Funnin', Please

("Funnin'" being a fantastic euphemism for sex I picked up from a San Diego Reader story by a California boy who joined the military and ended up on a furlough in West Virginia. "That's how it is every weekend around here," said one of his hosts toward the evening's end. "A little dancin', a little drinkin', a little funnin', a little fightin'.")

Usually, of course, NFP is known by its more polite title: Natural Family Planning. NFP means that if you don't feel God is calling you to conceive a child during a particular month, you abstain from sex during the woman's fertile period.

Is there a more ridiculed, more routinely ignored teaching of the Church than the prohibition of contraception? Is there anything else on the Church's "intrinsically evil" list that gets less treatment, from the pulpit or elsewhere? And yet, is there a more salient sexual struggle for Joe Average Married Catholic? The guy who doesn't sleep around, keeps his eyes off the porn, and maintains a healthy intimacy with his wife?

You all remember how sweet the stolen pear tasted to young Augustine in the Confessions - because it was forbidden? NFP takes that to a whole new level. See, the sex *isn't* forbidden - you're married! It's licit! It's an occasion of grace! BUT... "No, no, no... not tonight, dear. I'm fertile, which means I'm more likely to be feeling amorous. But no, no, no... remember? We talked about this."

I DON'T CARE WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT! COME TO ME NOW, WOMAN!

Wait, who said that? You keep quiet down there.

You want to see time stretched out on the rack? Try an ordinary evening at home after the kids are in bed and the day's work is done - during the Fertile Times. And at evening's end, you can look forward to climbing into bed with your wife and ... going to sleep.

I haven't suffered like some other guys I know. My wife's fertility takes ages to return after she gives birth. But I've seen them suffer. I'm not big on support-group type stuff, but it'd be nice if the Church in America didn't seem to be quietly ignoring this teaching and actually acknowledged the difficulty here. It's a hard road, and it'd be nice not to feel like a freak within the very institution that puts you on that road.

Don't Trust Anyone Over 30 (I'm 31).

That's it. I'm old.
U2's Achtung Baby, together with Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Sessions, was the album of my freshman year of college.
The wife wanted to hear it again - don't know what happened to the old copy.
Running into The Wherehouse while out with the four kids on an errand.
"Can I help you?" said the horrifically young girl hanging out with her co-workers.
"I'm just looking for Achtung Baby."
Blank.
"U2."
"The new album?"
"No." The *old* album. The *alternative classic rock* album.
She walked me over to the U2 stuff, where another worker was standing.
"Brad's the U2 guy."
"No, I'm not. I like them, but I don't know much about them."
"Oh, that's right, you're The Cure."
I paid and got back to the minivan.
My music theory teacher in college once squealed with delight, "Oh, now I understand why you all like rock 'n roll! It's nostalgic!"
Right she was.
I'm old.

I Heart the Observer

There's an advantage to writing for the secular media: because you're not automatically suspected of pushing a particular agenda - say, opposition to contraception - you can get the straight dope. Last June, the New York Observer, one of my favorite reads, published a remarkable article entitled The Orgasmatron Finally Shows Up: High-Tech Rhythm. It was about Lady-Comp, the gadget which helps a woman monitor her fertility by measuring her basal temperature and comparing it to a database of thousands of other women.

The article's authors collected an astonishing array of quotations. To wit:
"I hate the pill. It makes me gain weight and get moody."
"To me, getting off the pill was huge. It sounds like a cliché, but it was very liberating."
"I was looking for something that didn't make me feel sick or that I had to remember to take. We used condoms; if something happened, we were prepared to deal with the result. But using condoms was such a pain in the ass."
Sara, a Lady-Comp devotee who works in banking in upstate New York, said the device had vastly improved her sex life. "It makes you appreciate the green days," she said. "Before [when she was on the Pill], we were just lazy about it, thinking we could do it any day. And now my sex drive is much better."

They also delivered this gem:
Representatives of Planned Parenthood said they'd heard of the device, but refused to comment on anything that wasn't a "real" contraceptive.

It's a balanced piece, complete with sniffing dismissals from doctors - "it's as useless as a thermometer," "NFP has the highest failure rate of any form of birth control," etc. - and an admission that the "Lady-Cop" can limit your love life: "Ms. Ince's husband, Brandon, thinks that if anything, Lady-Comp errs on the side of safety. 'The downside of the Lady-Comp is that there's not a whole lot of green days-you know, when you've known someone for 10 years, the green days are few and far between already,' he joked. 'You have to make sure all moons are aligned for those green days. There are probably, maybe eight days of the cycle that are green. That's 22 days of either caution or red.'

'My conspiracy theory is that the birth-control-pill companies don't want people to know about [Lady-Comp] because it's such a challenge to their market,' huffed Ms. Ince. 'You hear doctors talk about it as if it's a crackpot scheme, but it's natural, the basics of a woman's fertility. I just think there's this huge disconnect with what women know about their bodies and their fertility cycles.'"

Amazing to read that in a secular paper, especially one as pinkly hip as the Observer.

Of course, there are other ways to help monitor fertility - such as the romantic and sexy practice of monitoring cervical mucous. When it gets stretchy, it's time for cold showers. Or tennis. I got a call from a friend a while back. "You and me are playing tonight," he growled. "My wife just went bungee-jumping on her mucous." Ah, l'amour.

Gosh.

Over at thumos, a very kind comment on my book.

Modern (New York) Times

Sometimes, when the sun is shining a little too brightly and the birds are singing a little too sweetly, I read the New York Times. Ah, much better.

Wall-to-wall cheerful dissent. Oh, but wait... a voice from the other side:

"Certainly there are traditionalists. 'If it works, why mess with it? It lasted 2,000 years. Why mess with it?' asked Joseph M. Perry, 51, a mechanic from Reading, Mass. Mr. Perry says he does not agree with abortion and thinks priests should remain celibate and male."

Well, since the rest of the article is busy pointing out that it *doesn't* work, at least for a lot of American Catholics, there seems to be good reason to mess with it, no?

I can't really fault the Times; the picture they paint here - of "widespread acceptance among Roman Catholics in the United States that they can be out of step with the Vatican and still unequivocally call themselves Catholic" - is probably accurate.

I did take issue with this: "Broadly, they say they hope for a church that more readily embraces modernity. For some, it means that priests might be allowed to marry. For others, it could entail the arrival of women as priests. Most, polls show, would like to see a softening of the church's stance on birth control."

Why again would married priests or women priests or a "softening of the stance on birth control" mean an embrace of modernity? Have modern times changed mens' desire for sex? Have they changed women? Have they changed the nature of sex? (Again with the "softening of the stance," as if it were a simple disciplinary policy. The "stance" on birth control is rooted in the Catholic understanding of what sex is. It's a conclusion, not an assertion.)

But the Times finished beautifully: "I'm afraid the church as a whole is coming to the point where it isn't one size fits all any more," said Jack Scalione, 66, a turnpike inspector, who was watching the papal funeral on television at Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in East Boston. "What's good in Europe isn't necessarily good in America, and what's good in America isn't necessarily what's good in Latin America. You have to fit to the wishes of the people because the people are the church."

That last sentence nails it. If Catholics in Greenland want to take up ritual torture and genital mutilation - well, you have to fit the wishes of the people, because the people are the church. What's good in America isn't necessarily good in Greenland.

(Disclaimer: I have no idea about what Catholics in Greenland actually want. It's just an example.)

Obedience

Here we go. After 10 years of doing interviews and deciding what gets included and what gets cut, the shoe's on the other foot.

Here's where I make it in:

And even people sitting side by side have different takes on what the church should be. Some, like Matthew Lickona, author of Swimming With Scapulars, a memoir on his devout Catholicism, believe "obedience is a primary virtue. If we are created beings, we are under the authority of the one who created us. The church proclaims it and I accept it."

The interview that produced that quote was lengthy and delightful. I wish the piece had given me more space to explain myself the way I did in the interview, or included the next thing I said after the bit about obedience. "I have as my example Christ in the garden - 'Not my will, but thine.'"

But I understand about space constraints, and at least I got that middle sentence in there.

While I'm at it, I'll note what follows my quote:

Yet a wholly different logic is espoused by Linda Pieczynski, spokesperson for the Catholic group Call to Action. "If the great majority of the faithful do not accept a church teaching, it must not be an authentic church teaching," she says.

A wholly different logic, indeed. And if the great majority reject the notion that Christ was both true God and true man?

Frank Rich's favorite cocktail? The Gibson.

Frank Rich is at it again. How happy he must have been when Mel Gibson and The Passion both found their way into the Schiavo story.

I think he's right that there is a bloodthirsty, death-loving element in the culture, and in humanity in general - though this is hardly a revelation. I don't think those elements were the reason, certainly not the primary one, for the interest in the Schiavo and JPII stories.

But mostly, I just wanted to write that headline.

(Story Via Open Book.)

Frottage in the Times

Back in college, around sophomore year, my roommate got into the habit of perusing the dictionary for new and interesting words. The sexual ones, of course, are easy to recall. "Frottage," he read in his nonplused declamatory tones. "The act of rubbing against the body of another person, as in a crowd, to attain sexual gratification." (That's the definition at Answers.com; I seem to remember the one he read being more general. Another person was not required.)

We liked the word. It had the appropriately silly sound for so pathetic an action. But it remained a word you didn't haul out in polite conversation.

Not so, The New York Times Book Review, in its review of Ruth Reichl's latest memoir.

"I say, old girl, what about a spot of knee frottage? Something to make up for that dreadfully flat Chambertin? I know it's a bit of a stretch, you being married and all, but there's something about that wig you're sporting..."

"Oh, Walter, I'd love to; but I'm much too busy channelling my mother. Waiter! Take this chicken back to the kitchen and have the chef apologize to it for the cruel and unusual treatment he has given it!"

John Paul the Lowly

I haven't felt driven (let alone called) to really get down and dirty with the details and go at it with JPII's critics. (I have nothing but admiration for those who have.) But after reading some of the critics here and there, I do want to present this image:

The pope, prostrate, face down before the tabernacle.

Not, we have it on good authority, an unsusual sight.

Completely humbled before Jesus. It's an image that doesn't fit with the one presented by some of his critics.

Speaking of Last Things...

The Last Judgement, as presented in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle:

"...And at last, out of the shadow of the trees, racing up the hill for dear life, by thousands and by millions, came all kinds of creatures - Talking Beasts, Dwarfs, Satyrs, Fauns, Giants, Calormenes, men from Archenland, Monopods, and strange and unearthly things from the remote islands or the remote Western lands. And all these ran up to the doorway where Aslan stood.

...The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came right up to Aslan one or the other of two things happened to each of them. They all looked straight in his face, I don't think they had any choice about that. And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly - it was fear and hatred; except that, on the faces of Talking Beasts, the fear and hatred lasted only a fraction of a second. You could see that they suddenly ceased to be *Talking* Beasts. They were just ordinary animals. And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow...

...But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the Door, in at Aslan's right. There were some queer specimens among them..."

So much there. All come to judgement - no choice involved. But there is choice in the verdict - if you fear and hate him, you turn away. Perfectly natural, proceeding from your own will. No surprise ruling, violently forced upon you. (And the divine spark goes out - the Talking Beast becomes simply a beast.) If you love him, even if that love is mixed with fear, you go in at the door. And there may be some surprises among those counted his friends...

I don't know how doctrinally sound it is. If the will is instantly rectified at the judgement, then everyone will want to go to their intended home in paradise. The suffering of the damned will be that they cannot go where they know they belong. But I like very much the notion that we choose heaven or hell long before we get to judgement.

Memento Mori

The pope's last will and testamenthas been released. He made several additions over the years; what stuck with me is this one, from 1980:

"Today I only want to add this to it, that everyone should have present the prospect of death. And must be ready to present himself before the Lord and Judge -- and, contemporaneously, Redeemer and Father. I also take this into consideration continually, entrusting that decisive moment to the Mother of Christ and of the Church -- to the Mother of my hope."

"The mother of my hope," is not a figurative term - she's the mother of the Redeemer, because of whom hope is possible. But it's what comes before that's arresting to me: "That everyone should have present the prospect of death." To some extent, everybody agrees with this - it's the reason behind all those high-school yearbook resolutions to "live each day to its fullest," to "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," to "live each day like it was our last." It's the reasoning behind the recent country song about living like you were dying. You *are* dying.

Of course, the pope, however much he might laud the human impulse to fulfill one's potential and to experience the fulness of being that comes from living in communion with Christ (an impulse perhaps echoed, however faintly, in those hopeful resolutions and admonitions), is getting at something different. Not, "the grave is the end, so live it up," but rather, "the grave is the end which ought to inform what comes before," the way the image of the finished house informs its construction. The perpetual presence of death is not morbid. It is, or it ought to be, directive of life.

Parlor Games on the Interweb

Via About Last Night:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
The Gospel of John. I know, I know, but what if everybody else thinks the same thing? I don't want that one to get lost. And besides, it's tough to beat that opening chapter.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Hard not to be fond of Elizabeth Bennett...

The last book you bought was...?
The Red and the Black by Stendahl (thank you, Daedalus)

The last book you read was...?
Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds

What are you currently reading?
About a dozen things - I'll pick Fat Girl by Judith Moore

Five books you would take to a desert island...
The Library of America Flannery O’Connor, Evelyn Waugh's Work Suspended (even though it's unfinished), C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker, Divine Intimacy by Father Gabriel

Who are you passing this stick on to and why?
The Old Hag...because she's so busy these days that she may not have seen this already...

Extremely Minor Artwork

A song that came to me the other day. Think Chet Baker - high, melancholy croon, mellow trumpet accompanying...

Some other guy
Gets to punch your ticket
Some other guy
Gets to ring your bell
Some other guy
Jingles your triangle
Some other guy
Gets to kiss and tell

Some other guy
Knows your lucky number
Some other guy
Tries position forty-two
Some other guy
Has finally found a lover
Some other guy
I just wish it wasn't you

I know it isn't sexy
To think about our sex
To parse our carnal poem
To linger and dissect
But our two halves made one thing
That's broken back in half
And somewhere in your body
Is the part of me that laughs

Some other guy
Listens to you snoring
Some other guy
Waits to fall asleep
Some other guy
Wonders what my name was
Some other guy
Hopes this is for keeps

Don't worry. I'm keeping my day job.

Holy Infallibility, Batman...

...it's the Incredible Popeman!
(Thanks to Smokee Wilson for the link.)

Pardon me, sir...

...but your bile is showing.
Thomas Cahill's rant in today's NYT is not quite one step up from pure invective, but he does say something I can agree with:

"And there is no other solution for the church but to begin again, as if it were the church of the catacombs, an oddball minority sect in a world of casual cruelty and unbending empire that gathered adherents because it was so unlike the surrounding society."

And the problem with that is...what? The Church is always going to be against the times. "If the world hates you, remember that it has hated me first."

What gets me most - what's funniest, really - about people like Cahill accusing other people of being intellectual incompetents is that he doesn't seem to have read what JPII wrote about why he believed what he did. Arguments are made. Positions are defended. You know, intellectual stuff. You might try engaging it sometime, instead of name calling and ranting about infallibility.

Lines we'd like to hear...

...in the debate over contraception:
"Whaddya mean, contraceptive sex is selfish? It says right here: 'Ribbed for her pleasure!'"

Reading vs. The Ego

The astonishingly prolific Terry Teachout, workaholic though he may be, once wrote in his blog that he has never felt the urge to try his hand at fiction. He consumes it, he critiques it, but he is blissfully free of the desire to create it. Lucky sod. When reading a novel, he never thinks, "I could do better than this; why can't I just finish the thing and get it published?" never thinks "I could never write like this; why do I even bother trying?" He just takes it in without running it through the gauntlet of his ego. Imagine.

"Grace as a sort of ecstatic fire...

...that takes things down to essentials.''
That's an expression used by John Ames, the protagonist of Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead, which has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Read James Wood's New York Times review here.

I ain't no Marilynne Robinson, but it gives a guy hope, especially when he's been told (by a sympathetic reader) that there's too much religion in his novel-in-interminable-progress. (Oh, that bottomless ego - Marilynne Robinson won the Pulitzer? Then there's hope for ME!)

Scrooge McDuck is sexy.

That, of course, is a line from The Last Days of Disco, in which poor Alice has been convinced that men like it when you slip words like "sexy" into conversations, no matter how ridiculous the result. It's the line that came to mind when I read - yes, this is old news, so sue me - that Pamela Anderson is starring in Stacked, a Fox sitcom about a hottie who's tired of her empty glam life and gets a job in a ... wait for it... bookstore. Suddenly, reading is sexy. Books are sexy. Just like Scrooge McDuck! Has anyone alerted Maud?

Last one

Once more (with feeling), over at Beliefnet, there's a piece from the late papal biographer Tad Szulc. In it, Szulc writes,

"Why, then, was John Paul II so convinced that the church could survive in the 21st century only as an institution inside an impregnable bastion of repressive conservatism, behind closed ranks of intellectually retrograde think-alike cardinals and bishops? Why did this eminently intelligent and erudite man believe that this was the church’s salvation rather than the road to eventual disaster about which so many Catholic thinkers have warned?

The only plausible answer is that it was a matter of faith, because John Paul II’s devotion to it was so overwhelming, leading him to severe, uncompromising, often cruel positions--brooking no dissent, no matter how subtle. Naturally, John Paul II was the child of his era and environment. He was a mystic, and the product of the culture and history of his native Poland that rejected compromises over basic values."

Leaving aside the truth of the charge - "the only plausible answer"? You wrote a biography of the man. Did you even read what he wrote? Again, the same principle animated the stuff you liked and the stuff you didn't. You can't separate the one from the other. John Paul II was a man, and Jesus was God and man, so the comparison won't hold perfectly, but I've seen this kind of thing with regard to Jesus as well. "A great social teacher, a champion of love and forgiveness. Can't we just ignore that bit about denying yourself and carrying your cross and being sent into the lake of fire?" No, you can't. It all comes from the same place.

While we're at it...

Also over at Beliefnet (see post below), Father Andrew Greely weighs in for the opposition.

Greely writes, "The Catholic Church today is polarized by deep disagreements between progressives and those who would restore the status quo ante the Vatican Council, between laity and lower clergy on the one hand and the Roman Curia on the other, between those who favor the decentralization suggested by the council's theory of 'collegiality' and those who favor ever tighter control from Rome."

Says you, Father. There are plenty of people who think the implementation of the Council got hijacked, and that John Paul II was working to fulfill its aims, rather than return to any sort of pre-Council status quo. And I don't favor "ever tighter control from Rome." I favor a willingness to adhere to the magisterium of the Church.

Greely writes that John Paul II's attempt to lay down the law was doomed from the get-go: "The laity and the lower clergy had already decided that in the area of human sexuality, the church no longer had the right to order them."

Ah. Vox populi, vox dei. The people have spoken. Give it up, Your Holiness.

Greely writes, "The extremely conservative bishops he appointed, usually on curial recommendation, to further his restorationist agenda, further offended many of the laity and the lower clergy."

This had me grinning. Ah, that extremely conservative Cardinal Mahony in Los Angeles. The one who ordered a Pasadena priest to rip out the Communion rail in his gorgeous old church. Conservative bishop Tod Brown in Orange, who let the indult for the Tridentine Rite die with the priest who had it. Conservatives, conservatives, everywhere!

All you need is love...

Over at Beliefnet, George Weigel has an essay about Pope John Paul II. In it, he writes:

"Why did the Pope remain a compelling figure for the young? One reason was his transparent integrity. Young people have acutely sensitive hypocrisy detectors; in John Paul II, they saw a man who believed what he said and acted out his beliefs. There was no "spin" here--only integrity all the way through, the integrity of a man who committed every facet of his life to Jesus Christ. This was immensely compelling."

I agree. I'd like to add this: that integrity gives the lie to so many of his detractors, the ones who say, "He was wonderful in many ways - his support of religious and political freedom, his commitment to the poor, his championing of life - AND YET, he was authoritarian, controlling, and rigid on questions regarding subjects such as women (ordination, abortion rights) and sexuality (contraception, homosexuality)."

I'm not buying. Every man has his complexities, but this image is of a pope so fractured - loving some, all but disregarding others - that he comes across as two men. I sensed integrity in the pope, and that sense convinced me that it was the same man, the same love, that championed political freedom and yet opposed contraception. The two acts were born of the same principle - a belief in the inherent and inviolable dignity of humanity. To my eyes, all these aspects of his papacy were motivated by love, a genuine love which was not always comforting, but which was eminently real and redemptive.

The pope

"He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."
- Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2

Pope John Paul II is the only pope I have ever known. I was born in 1973, and cannot remember hearing about any pope before he was elected in 1978. We were living in Boston when he visited in 1979; my family attended, along with countless others. I got it into my six-year-old head that I needed to see this man up close, and slipped away from my parents and into the crowd. I remember it clearly: row by row, stepping between much bigger bodies, all of them standing, not realizing until I had gotten almost to the front that I was lost. My father found me, and we started heading back to Mom and my brother. Mom was holding up her umbrella. It started to rain. Then everybody was holding up an umbrella. We made it back. How's that for the grace of God?

John Paul II was to me an awe-inspiring figure, straining to hold together a ship that seemed to me ready to break apart, striving to give ground where he could (Day of World Prayer, etc.), but holding fast where he had to in order to preserve the truth proclaimed by the Church.

I chuckle when I hear critics accuse him of keeping the Church from entering the modern world (contraception, et al). I have heard others criticize him for being much too modern, considering first the heart of man and not the order set down by God, sacrificing Thomism to phenomenology, etc.

I loved and revered the man. I mourn his death.

Deathwatch

Got a call from a friend; apparently, all the news networks are waiting for the pope to die. I'm waiting for one of them to create a little vulture icon, bearing the network logo around its neck, to slowly circle in the lower left corner of the screen. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have another system down. The pope is no longer digesting his food. Let's turn now to a man who once saw a youth theater production of The Jeweler's Shop for another perspective. Mr. Wiczinski, you've seen a play written by the pope before he was pope. Would you say that the next pope will have to pay more attention to the idea that women priests are an inevitability?"
"Um..."
"Thank you. Now back to you, Ron. Is he still breathing?"
"Not sure. I'm going to see if I can get the camera on this satellite to zoom in through a window into the pope's chamber, then employ night-vision/x-ray/heat-scan technology to get a better idea of just how badly he's doing. Remember, you see it first on... Deathwatch!"
Kind of makes me long for the days of, "The pope has a cold," followed, a week later, by "The pope is dead."