…I ran 3.5 miles this week for the first time in… ages! There was a time - a time, albeit, long ago - when five miles twice a day was the standard. But I muscled out three and a half, post twinkies, post cigarettes, post not giving a gosh darned.

The goal, folks and folkettes, is a marathon. Don’t ask me what brought on this surge of health consciousness, other than the realization that if I don’t start exercising now, I sure as hell won’t do much as an ordinandi.

Pray I don’t collapse of a heart attack. I have a lot of training ahead of me. I’ll need to cast off a lot of empty carbs and wonderfully enticing soft drinks. But, the goal is simply this: after my ordination, I will run at least 26 miles, to prove to myself that I absolutely can.

…is that I’ve completely missed the Republican National Convention. Awesome. In fact, I’d forgotten that it was even going on until I checked my email recently.

Yeah, I’ve been on retreat since Sunday night, and will continue until Friday. I’m back on the farm, so to speak, and we begin every school year with a nice, long silent retreat. I usually start to crumble on day four, so here I am at the computer. Silence for longer than an hour always seems to trigger some inner-hostility. Carthusian I’m not.

I’m woefully behind in terms of keeping up with some of my correspondence, so if I owe you an email, I apologize. You know who you are.

I’ve been working up a couple of posts on theologically related topics, so I’ll get those out ASAP here.

My whirlwind of an August keeps rolling on, this time to the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky. I’ll be helping out with whatever building project they assign us to. This after wrapping up internship and visiting family in both Wichita and Omaha.

*****

Travis’ wake was beautiful. I had to leave an hour and a half in, in order to return to the seminary for tomorrow morning’s journey, but people were still lined up out the funeral home’s doors to pay their final respects to Travis and his family. I talked to people I hadn’t seen in years. A decade even. One of the redeeming qualities of tragedy is that it really does bring us all back together.

He would’ve been surprised, I think, at how many people came out to see him off. He was certainly well-loved. My only regret in this whole matter is that I won’t be able to attend tomorrow’s funeral, but the opportunity to bid him farewell has consoled me greatly. Travis’ father did me a profound honor by naming me pallbearer, and the sense of gratitude I feel will never diminish.

*****

Oh, and allow me to go on record: House Bunny looks like the stupidest movie ever made. The fact that it is receiving such critical acclaim and might lead at the box office shows just how terrible most Hollywood films are nowadays. Here’s to hoping that when I return from Appalachia, I won’t have to see that terrible trailer with the lead character exclaiming, “That’s freaking hot!” while she attempts to imitate Marilyn Monroe’s classic scene.

That’s not freaking hot. Just freaking stupid.

I’ve been thinking on what to post for a couple of days now, in memory of my grade school friend and college roommate. Travis died on Monday, which also happened to be the first anniversary of my maternal grandfather’s passing.

When you spend two years living in a 10×15′ room with someone, you get to know them well. And while fully aware that written remembrances run the tendency to canonize, I can only think of one thing wrong with the guy: he was too clean and orderly for my lazy living habits. Otherwise, he was a good man who was wise enough to understand that life should be lived in love, always with a laugh and a smile.

He was the best of us, and it was an honor to have called him a friend.

Please keep Travis, his family, and all his friends in your prayers. These are dark days.

Matthew Travis Stanley

MOUNT ZION - Matthew Travis Stanley, 28, of Mt. Zion, Illinois, Civil Engineer for the City of Decatur, passed away at 10:03 P.M., Monday, August 18, 2008, at Decatur Memorial Hospital.  Visitation will be from 5 to 8 P.M. on Friday, August 22, at Brintlinger & Earl Funeral Home, Decatur, Illinois. Celebration of life services will be held at 10:00 A.M., Saturday, August 23, at Central Christian Church, Decatur, Illinois. Memorials may be made to the Lance Armstrong Foundation or Donor’s Choice. Travis was born on July 11, 1980, the son of David E. and Diane L. (Walker) Stanley. Travis graduated from MacArthur High School in 1998 and continued his education at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, earning his degree in 2002. In the spring of 2004, Travis was diagnosed with cancer. Following his diagnosis and time-consuming treatments, Travis refused to let cancer dictate how he would live. Travis maintained a positive and cheerful outlook on life, striving to become a more remarkable individual each day touching and inspiring all who knew him. Despite his challenges, Travis remained ambitious and in the spring 2008, successfully completed the state exam thereby fulfilling his goal of becoming a licensed professional engineer. Surviving are his parents of Sullivan, IL; brother M. Christian Stanley of Indianapolis, IN; grandparents Lorraine and Kenny Seitz of Boody, IL.  He was preceded in death by his grandmother Mary Walker of Decatur. The family would like to thank the physicians, nurses , and staff of both 7 and 8 North of Saint Louis University Hospital and also a special thanks to Travis’s work family at the City of Decatur. Condolences may be left to the family at www.brintlinger andearl.com. Obituary written by family members. Online guest book at www.legacy.com/herald-review/Obituaries.asp

A great post at Inside Catholic today. Bad music, the obvious trappings of inclusive language, and this final little chestnut:

Beyond that, however, I don’t have passionate issues with liturgical stuff. That’s because I don’t have a passionate interest in liturgy, and the fruit that I see among those who do have such passionate issues persuades me to never develop a passionate interest in liturgy.

Precisely. What fruit sees the greatest yield for a liturgical warrior - right or left?

Bitterness, seconded only by a few healthy bushels of self-righteousness.

Not really, but the The Basement Tapes classic just rolled through iTunes.

In reality, I’ll be finishing things up here on internship and won’t have much time to blog. So if you send me an email over the next few days, I’ll get back to you when things cool down.

Hope all’s doin’ fine out there.

I owe Micah Tillman an apology, for failing to detect that his piece on Obama as the fulfillment of the Philosopher King was actually satire. Of course, I read the entire article (as I read the entirety of everything I take issue with), but failed to detect that Tillman was indeed joking. Per Hemingway, my built-in B.S. detector must be broken. But at least I wasn’t the only person taken in: this piece has been linked by multiple bloggers, all of whom missed the humor.

That having been said, I read it now and pick up on the subtle humor.

Actually, I read it now and it’s hilarious instead of infuriating.

Micah’s wife gets to the heart of the matter, which is why I don’t feel too ashamed at the moment: you can’t be too over-the-top in terms of mocking these guys. As we consistently see from Is Barack Obama the Messiah?, O!’s disciples will say any number of ridiculously assinine things in support of their candidate. I’d imagine writing satire based upon insanity is difficult - if not impossible - for anyone.

So, mea culpa, mea culpa. And thanks for finally letting me in on the joke :-).

EDIT: Just for fun: Over at IBOtM?, the following is attached to the post linking to Tillman:

DISCLAIMER: further investigation leads us to suspect that Tillman may not necessarily believe what he claims. Despite his lack of faith, we think his argument sound.

Heh.

From a blogging physicist: “On the Breaking of Bad Habits Acquired in One’s Youth: Smoking and Atheism.”

His story is a lot like my own, even if we’re years apart in age. This resonates well:

Today, however, I feel moved to look back at a couple of statements made by famous atheists, which, when I first read them, found great favor with me as being wonderfully eloquent. I somehow felt pride at being able to join with these highly intelligent and bravely defiant men in facing the reality of the meaninglessness of the universe, while inwardly mocking those who took the cowardly, intellectually weak way out: religious mystification and consolation. Of course, I have a very different response to them now.

PZ Myers: Regulars to the religious blogosphere know by now that evangelical atheist PZ Myers has - in a profound act of faith according to his belief system - desecrated the Eucharist and the Koran, amongst other religious articles. Mark Shea pens a great response at Inside Catholic, even if I don’t endorse all of his polemic.

All religious opinion aside, that Myers would do such a thing merely to play to peoples’ emotions strikes me as extremely juvenile. He makes absolutely no point, other than that when you seek to get people riled up, they’ll get riled up. In essence, he’s a fantastic product of his generation.

Daring. Shocking. Yawn.

Material Atheism: I have absolutely zero respect for material atheism as a faith system. Think about it: folks like Myers and Dawkins attempt to use solely the physical world to draw conclusions about the transcendent (the nonmaterial), and that’s a lot like trying to use a scale to measure velocity. Questions about theism belong to a philosophical paradigm, which draws upon the material without requiring the same kind of material verification as science. That which is transcendent is so precisely because it extends itself beyond the material, after all. And that’s why I’ve never seen a “God debate” between a scientist and a philosopher/theologian that has gone to the scientist.

Anyway, this is kid stuff. It’s all so self-evident that it doesn’t much interest me anymore.

But what interests me is how we got here, and some Christians may disagree.

I believe well-meaning Christians created this Frankenstein by doing much the same thing as the material atheist. Kansans rallying against the teaching of evolution in public schools. Fundamentalists insisting that the world was created in seven literal days. Folks denying the possibility of evolution in general.

Christians attacked science first, operating out of a poor theological understanding. “This can’t be true because the Bible says…!” is a good launching point for what I mean. A fundamentalism suggesting that million year-old dinosaur bones were planted to test man’s faith in God, completely undermining the scientific project, is another great example of what I mean.

With the attack on science from the theistic camp, it was only a matter of time before all the taunts and challenges forced material atheists over their respective line. Their categorical error is the direct result of Christianity’s, and everybody is losing as a result.

I can’t help but wonder if Dylan sensed a similar senseless tension when he penned the following lines:

They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff,
“I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don’t care.”
High Water everywhere
“High Water (Song for Charlie Patton)“

Now that a Belgian brewing company owns Anheuser-Busch, does that mean Budweiser and its spawn will now be worth consuming?

My dream answer: “Yes. We will completely destroy the current formula in a sweep of document burnings. A-B will move from St. Louis to Oregon, where we will brew a mixture of pales, tripels, and quadrupels.”

The probable answer: “Are you kidding me? A bunch of foolish Americans who don’t know what real beer tastes like buy this stuff by the gallon!”

Sigh.

UPDATE (7/25/08): Tillman’s article is satire. And so subtle, no one picked up on it. I’m not sure whether or not this makes it great or terrible satire, but at any rate, I apologize to Micah Tillman for taking him seriously :-).

Micah Tillman, lecturer in philosophy at Catholic University, on O!:

Barack Obama is the Platonic philosopher king we’ve been looking for for the past 2,400 years.

That’s right. It’s finally happened.

Allow me to explain.

Plato argued that without a philosopher king there could be neither happiness (V, 473e, VI, 500d-3) nor personal perfection (VI, 499a-b). Therefore, none of us will attain the four excellences required for true unity — each of our souls will remain internally divided, broken (IV, 441c-d, 443c-e) — until the philosopher king arrives.

For Pete’s sake. Really, Micah. When I first clicked on the link, I expected some tongue-in-cheek action. Nope. None here.

So let’s get this straight, friends. Just so we’re all on the same page. According to Micah, your acquisition of personal perfection and happiness is inextricably tied to Barack Obama.

Just when I thought the nonsense couldn’t get any worse, our well-meaning Platonist friend goes even further:

But he’ll do even more. He won’t just heal our city-states and souls. He won’t just bring the Heavenly Kingdom — dreamt of in both Platonism and Christianity — to earth. He will heal the earth itself.

Barack Obama. Healing the earth. Bringing about the Heavenly Kingdom. Excuse me for a moment.

(HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!)

Ahem. Sorry about that.

Really, this is like watching adults go gah-gah over a prefabricated, talentless, fake boy band. It simultaneously infuriates and amuses.

Do these people even realize how ridiculous they are in their Obama worship? Do they understand that despite his crafty campaign, what meager evidence we have about the man suggests that he’s your typical liberal politician? He’s no philosopher, much less a philosopher king. He’s not even much of a thinker, especially where political philosophy is concerned.

Barack Obama isn’t the Messiah, Micah. The guy who fits Plato’s description of philosopher king, who will heal the earth itself, bring about the Heavenly Kingdom - take a look around you, Micah. His image is bound to be all around you there on campus, seeing as how you’re sitting in a Catholic institution.

Do I even need to mention his name?

For the benefit of readers Richard & J.E. Childers, I posit the following, in response to the Supreme Court’s awesome decision today:

1. People who think that guns make them look cool are fools.
2. People who support taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens are fools.
3. People who think that the act of taking guns from law-abiding citizens will cut down on violent crime are fools (See: England, where draconian gun laws have resulted in an increase in gun-related crime, as well as an increase in stabbings. Welcome back to the feudal age!)
4. People with children who do not use trigger-locks are fools.
5. Those in the aforementioned category who do not educate their children on the proper respect for and handling of guns are fools.
6. People who oppose guns are most frequently those who have never handled them. Unfamiliarity breeds irrational fear, and these people are… you guessed it: fools.

People sometimes ask me what I’ll buy when I finally have disposable income (a reasonable question, even though money is the furthest thing from my mind in relation to why I do anything, much less the priesthood).

I think they expect me to say something like, “a car,” or “a television.” Partly in truth, partly to be provocative, I always respond: “An M1 Garand and range time.”

I’ve always loved to shoot. BB guns, shotguns, .22’s, whatever. In my adult life, however, I’ve never been in a position to get serious about it. I’ve wanted a handgun for a while now. Marksmanship is definitely a hobby, and it’s ridiculous to think that I as a responsible individual with no criminal history should be barred from pursuing that hobby in this country.

Remember, friends: Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

…the coolest. party. ever.

…for daring to read about women’s rights. (H/T: Reader L.H.)

Doesn’t look good for the question I’ve been asking ever since the attack on Iraq: Can a post-Enlightenment ideal like democratic pluralism exist in a pre-Enlightenment society?

I’ve stuck with “no” for a long time now. But I’d love nothing more than to be proven wrong.

WSJ: “NARAL Catholics Line Up for Obama” by William McGurn. (H/T: Gerald)

I don’t know how many times I’ve said it, even to people who ask me about the issue around the parish. I don’t care if O! can heal the sick and bring eyesight to the blind. The right to life is the most fundamental right, the right upon which all other rights are constructed (JPII, Evangelium Vitae, 1995). Without this foundation, anything any politician builds will sink into the ground.

My position has nothing to do with my religion, and everything to do with trying to construct a logically consistent life ethic. This is why the atheist Christopher Hitchens and I completely agree on abortion, even if I think he couldn’t be more wrong on religion.

The justification these NARAL Catholics bring (”I disagree with abortion, and I wouldn’t have one myself, but…”) to the table is a tired one, also inconsistent. If (a) I believe abortion is the unjustified termination of human life and (b) the unjustified termination of human life is murder, then (c) I must believe abortion is murder. So, why wouldn’t I speak out against something I perceive to be murder, and how could I - in good conscience - promote abortion through either word or deed?

I believe it’s safe to say that these NARAL Catholics do not agree with (a) or (b). The typical appeals to “democracy,” “my views shouldn’t be forced on the whole population,” etc. don’t stand up when you follow the (somewhat sloppy) syllogism above.

To conclude, however, I do need to give Obama his due in one area: at least he’s fairly consistent. As Jeff Miller wrote a while back, “Only Moloch is more pro-abortion than Obama.”

And he’s spared us the tired “I wouldn’t ever let my daughters get one” tripe so common to politicians justifying their pro-death vote. Just the opposite. Should his daughters make a mistake, Obama says, he “[doesn't] want them punished with a baby.”

He’s in favor of partial-birth abortions. In Illinois, he even voted in favor of infanticide, removing all rights from a baby born during a botched abortion, living outside the mother’s womb.

Not even the NARAL supports that.

What fun would the cross-town rivalry be, if the winner couldn’t gloat a little?

…but this image is too good not to post:

 
I have this theory. It runs like this: The Cubs have always been God’s favorite team. God is a Cubs fan. But God is also just, and it simply wouldn’t be fair for him to play favorites.
 
Still, O Lord, 100 years seems like long enough as far as establishing neutrality goes.
 

...Msgr. Robert Sokolowski’s Phenomenology of the Human Person.

Released last month, Hierothee of Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex calls it “The Most Important Philosophy Book of the 21st Century (So Far),” and includes a link to Jesuit Fr. James V. Schall’s rather comprehensive review.

I’ve been fascinated by phenomenology ever since I read Sokolowski’s Introduction to Phenomenology in my second year of philosophy. This book caught me to such a degree that I still carry it wherever I go when I’m away from the seminary, along with the breviary and the Bible. And yes, I’m fully aware that this makes me an uber nerd.

I end with a simple declaration, requiring neither evidence nor elucidation: Thomists rule.

Obama’s seal amuses your fledgling Latinist. “‘Vero possumus’, rough Latin for ‘Yes, we can.’”

And as the picture credit also informs us, “Obama’s eagle wears his ‘O’ campaign logo with a rising sun representing hope ahead.”

Yes, we can. Hope. Change.

Brilliant, really. Wonderful ways to say a lot, while saying absolutely nothing at the same time. The perfect strategy - and indeed, maybe the only winning strategy - for a junior senator who has passed exactly one piece of legislation.

I don’t have a problem with the fact that the O! campaign bastardized the presidential seal. Whatever.

What amuses me - and strikes me as outrageously pretentious - is how they decided to use Latin, as if this should somehow add extra weight to the mantra. We do tend, afterall, to reserve Latin for the Really Important Stuff nowadays, the unarguable tenants of whatever we’re dealing with.

Here’s one last slogan, one I prefer when dealing with politics in general: “By their fruits you will know them.”