Against The Grain

Sunday, September 21, 2003

Weekends are usually when I have time available to read other people's blogs and do a little blogging of my own. Here's some of the content (some recent, some dated) that I found of interest in my weekend perusal of St. Blog's:

Very thought-provoking discussion taking place at William Luse' Apologia debating the moral justification of Paul Hill's murder of an abortionist. Well worth reading.
Dale Price sees Gibson's The Passion as a contemporary Uncle Tom's Cabin, "a work whose symbolic import may well outweigh its artistic merits". Initially it was about the merit of Jewish concerns about how they are portrayed; it is now the focal point in the "civil war" between progressive & conservative Catholics over the soul of the American Catholic Church.
John Da Fiesole's Disputations responds to the question -- posed elsewhere on St. Blogs -- as to whether God is Catholic. Minute Particulars "tempers our pontifications" with citations from the 4th Lateran Council and St. Thomas Aquinas.
I've referred to Sandra Meisel's article Swinging at Windmills a number of times in blogging on the radtrads. In "The Conspiracy of Sandra Meisel" (Rerum Novarum 9/17/03), Shawn I. McElhenney documents some rather curious similarities in phrasing between Meisel's article and some writings of his own back in 2001. Mere coincidence? -- You be the judge.
Marking his 6 month anniversary as a Catholic, Sean Roberts notes: "It's been said that one of the hardest things about being Catholic is other Catholics. The truth of that statement hits home more and more these days. . . ." Having recently moved from a traditional Byzantine-Catholic parish to what a "liberal Catholic" parish (that is to say: populated by lovers of bad music, hand-holders during the "Our Father" and promoters of of "goofy social justice causes"), he realizes:
I would walk around feeling smug, pitying all these poor souls who had no idea what true religion was, not realizing what a pharisee I was becoming. Only one thing troubled me... if they were only barely Catholic, why was their love for God so palpable?
I've come to realize that making the move to St. Elizabethan was the exact thing I needed, though not for the reasons I originally thought. I'm a better Catholic for coming because I've learned just how big the Church is. I'm on the opposite side of just about every imaginable spectrum from most of the Roman Catholic parishioners of St. Elizabeths, but, by golly, these guys are Catholic and to be in Communion with the Pope means that I am in Communion with them as well.
Thank you, Sean, for a good reminder to all of us.
Summa Contra Mundum makes the case that in most cases downloading copyrighted music is a mortal sin. Meanwhile, The Old Oligarch directs readers to the works of Palestrina, available at DoveSong's MP3 Library, which also offers selections from a variety of genres ranging from Western Classical to World (Indian, Chinese, Indian, Persian) to Gospel (Black, Southern, Applachian and Bluegrass) to early Jazz & Pop from the 30's to the 50's.
Granted, Dovesong's intentions are higher than that of your adolescent, but as they admit on their homepage:
This music is not published by The DoveSong Foundation, Inc. and is being made available for educational purposes only. We do not sell this music, nor do we own any copyrights. We do make payments to licensing organist ions, however.
Are such payments sufficient enough as to relieve them of their guilt in file-sharing? Perhaps Summa Contra Mundum enlighten us as to their spiritual standing.
Speaking of The Old Oligarch, he recently blogged on The Insightful Hazards of Being a Lay Theologian, recalling some experiences which lead him to conclude that "Ex Corde Ecclesiae is so completely, absolutely correct to insist that the Church's theologians swear their fidelity to her."

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