Reactions

It’s current;y 3:50am and I’ve been awake since roughly 2:30am.  I awoke to the sounds of an argument.  Unfortunately this is not uncommon living next to the University.  As I grumbled about kids getting off my lawn and turned over to go back to sleep, I heard a forceful female voice say “No!” That had me getting out of bed and before my feet touched the ground I heard a woman’s scream!  I ran to the window with a flashlight in hand, just sure I was going to have to encourage someone to keep their hands to themselves.

What I saw was an either misadverurous or suicidal young woman coming down from the 5th floor fire escape of our building.  The girl’s female friend had apparently successfully talked her down and the girl had slipped and lost her shoe(thus the No! and the scream).  I had thought to call out and make sure everything was ok, but the girl was already on her way down the stairs. As the young woman made it to the safety of the ground floor the two departed quickly, leaving the shoe which had fallen onto the roof of the covered patio.

I spent the next 15 minutes walking the floor to various windows to try and make sure the pair had headed home (wherever that may be). I am only now coming down from the adrenaline rush from the experience. But I have had time to sit quietly and pray.

One issue that came to mind is that it seems that I was perhaps the only person who had gone to their window while all this occurred (I’ll find out for sure at breakfast).  Surely others heard the interaction, though perhaps there are some heavy sleepers out there…  So how do we respond when there are potentially dangerous things going on?

gnats and camels

It’s the questions I get this time of year which drive me nuts.

 

Can I eat chicken on Friday?

Can I eat meat on Friday because Friday is my birthday and I want to celebrate?

I didn’t make it to Ash Wednesday Mass can you bring ashes to my grandma?

I missed Mass on Ash Wednesday, do I have to go to Confession?

Why don’t you give ashes on Sunday?

I gave up X but I’m not a nice person without X can I change what I gave up?

Will I go to Hell if I didn’t get ashes?

I’m not Catholic, can I get ashes?

My ashes rubbed off can I get more?

Can I get ashes in my hair so it doesn’t mess up my makeup?

 

I’m having a bit of fun, but I have been asked everyone of those questions in some form or another and I’m pretty sure it’s a universal experience for priests.  Lenten traditions are some of the most powerful signs the Church has.  Think about it, on most Holy Days of Obligation I couldn’t get more than a couple of hundred people to come to Mass out of the thousands registered, and yet without fail Masses for Ash Wednesday were standing room only!  This speaks to the power of symbolism and of ritual.  There is something primordial of coming forward and being reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return while being signed with the cross.  It’s a powerful moment for us Catholics.

 

However, we must be very cautious of letting those symbols lose their meaning and become merely superstition.  We as Catholics are notorious for it.  Ashes are a sign of repentance, of showing that we are lower than dirt due to our sins.  Yet for many its just “a thing that we do cause we’re Catholic.”  The 40 days of Lent are to be a reminder that we are to prepare the way of the Lord. We are training up for the spiritual marathon that is Holy Week.  NOBODY just gets up and runs a marathon! You train for it.  You run everyday.  You eat only healthy food and deny yourself all sorts of bad things in order to run the race and finish.  That my friends is the importance of Lent.

 

Yet we keep falling back into superstition and sin.  Part of the fault lays squarely with the Church.  We’ve not done well with catechesis.  We go with the bare minimum.  “Jesus loves you, here color this picture.”  We don’t train soldiers by letting them play MW3 and that’ll be enough!!!  We put them through weeks of basic and advanced training on every aspect of military life.  The lack of catechesis is very telling in the questions above.

 

A few personal examples:

I recall as a child that after making my First Holy Communion I was given a children’s missal that had a rosary and scapular. I was taught nothing about these things, in fact I didn’t have the first clue what the were or how to use them.  When I asked my friends about the scapular, one kid told me that I had to wear it so that I wouldn’t go to Hell.  We were taught about the rosary in 3rd grade, but I never really prayed it until I was a teenager.  That poor missal got colored in by my little brother, because neither of us knew any better.

 

The superstitions hit hard during Lent. Growing up, Lent was mainly about having to pick something to give up.  “Should I pick chocolate or Dr. Pepper?  Hmmm… I really like them both..  Maybe I could give up gum instead and keep the chocolate and Dr. Pepper!  Yeah! That’s what I’ll do!!!”  There was no spiritual dimension to it.  As a teenager, I consistently gave up chocolate because it gave me zits, so I could kill two birds with one sacrifice.

 

As a seminarian, it was almost comical to see guys (myself included) headed to Whataburger at 11:50pm on Friday night so that we could have a burger just as soon as it turned midnight.  Or worse, we would go to Red Lobster or Papadeaux’s and gorge ourselves on expensive seafood.  Big sacrifice there!

 

We have to understand why we do what we do as Catholics!  It is the only way to maintain the truth and vibrancy of the imagery and ritual of the Church without falling into the dangerous pit of superstition!  Jesus chastised the scribes and Pharisees saying “You hypocrites! You pay tithes on mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgement and mercy and fidelity. But these you should have done without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!” (NAB – Matthew 23:23-24)

 

Jesus encourages us to utilize the rich treasures of the Church in all it’s powerful imagery, but we cannot forget the bigger picture.  Lent is a preparation for Holy Week and Easter! If we only focus on the externals, then that is exactly how far the Gospel will reach.  The training period begins Wednesday.  It’s is my prayer that I will consider the weightier things and not get trapped in the minutiae, and it’s my prayer for you too!

 

 

Bait and Switch

Warning: Epic level monkeyrant ahead!  You’ve been warned.

 

Sometime in mid-December I noticed that Orson Scott Card would be putting out a new book in the Ender’s Game Universe.It was titled Shadow’s in Flight and would be out Feb. 7th, 2011. I was stoked!  You see, Ender’s Game is probably my most beloved novel.  I read it as a kid and it affirmed me in my geekiness.  It was one of those books that encouraged a bright kid who was taunted and bullied for being a “nerd” that being “a nerd” was not a curse nor even a bad thing.  I have read and reread that book numerous times and learned something new from it every time. So a new book coming out in that universe was epic!

 

Now, I’m a bit impatient, I’ll admit, so the date stuck firmly in my mind.  About mid-January I get an email from Amazon saying that the scheduled delivery of the book was changed to Feb 1st blah, blah, blah…   February rolls around, and I’ve been rereading CS Friedman’s Coldfire trilogy so I hadn’t checked my downloads.

 

Skip to today, I get an email from Amazon about new sci-fi/fantasy.  I see Shadow’s in Flight…  O yeah, guess I ought to make sure that downloaded correctly.  Check the Kindle and no new books by Orson Scott Card…  Hmmmmm.  Odd.  I know I preordered that baby.  So I follow the link over to Amazon.  The link leads to the hardback edition for $14.95.  When I click the link over to the Kindle edition, I’m a bit surprised to see it’s still on pre-order.  As I scan the page, my heart drops and steam shoots out my ears and I hear myself rather loudly vocalize a few words that are completely inappropriate coming from the mouth of a priest.  Why all this?

 

“This title will be auto-deliverd to your kindle on February 1, 2013.”

 

February 1, 2013!!!!

 

2013?!?!?!?!?!?!?

 

So let me get this straight.  You are writing a book and selling it in hardback form for a piddling $14.95 and making your loyal (and most likely to be technologically advanced, ie e-reader owning) fans wait for over a year for a trifling $5.00????

 

So in my red-eyed rage I run over to the Hatrack River Forum.  This is the forum owned and operated by Orson Scott Card.  There is a post there where in OSC’s wife chimes in on the issue.

“I assume Amazon was not aware of this decision early enough to change the kindle publication date when the book was announced. I assume they figured it would be released at the same time. So, sorry for any confusion.“

That’s fool-hardy if you expect me to believe that!  These publishers have contracts as to publishing dates.  They schedule such things down well over a year in advance do to the nature of having to print out many thousands of copies of books.

 

And then I read this little doozy:

“With Shadows in Flight, OSC and his publisher are trying a new pricing structure. The hardback edition is less expensive – and yes, it is a smaller book. But you must understand that ebook editions should not actually be competing with hardback publication – ebooks are a cheaper version like a paperback. Publishers need to make their overhead expenses from hardback publication. Moving the less expensive ebook release to be more like a paperback is what OSC and his publisher have decided to do with this publication.”

 

First of all I have a few issues with this statement.  The e-book is not like a paperback.  Paperbacks are cheaper than hard cover because of the materials used.  The paper quality is lower and thus cheaper.  The process of binding is less expensive.  The ink used to print the paperback is cheaper.  Thus a paperback is cheaper than a hard cover book. When it comes to an e-book there are very few production costs.  You take the file that the author emailed you, put it through a conversion program to make sure it will work with said e-reader, press a button and BOOM e-book.  It takes very little time and there are essentially no costs whatsoever!!!

 

Yet it seems that Orson Scott Card and his publisher have decided to look at e-books as e-vil and thus follow a truly antiquated publishing outlook.

 

To me the price I pay for a book, either dead-tree or electronic, is superficial.  I’m buying the words, I am buying the story!

 

I could care less if they were:

hand scribed and illuminated by pointy-eared Elven Monks on the sacred leaves of the World Tree with ink made from the blood of dragons

or

printed on newsprint

or

recorded by a voice actor and sold as a CD

or

sold as a collection of electrons commonly known as an e-book. 

Words are words!

 

Sadly, this attitude of many publishing houses is precisely what creates digital pirates. Within 10 seconds, I can look up a torrent for this particular book, download it, and be reading it…for free on my Kindle.  I don’t do that because stealing is a sin! However, I can see how easy it is to fall into that trap, “Big Publishing has pulled another fast one on us, so to get them back, I’m just gonna torrent it.”  Perceived injustice creates pirates!

 

For me, this is the kicker. I can get the hardback NEW for $10.88 from Amazon!!!  So the difference between getting a dead-tree version and waiting over a year for the e-book… 89 cents!

If you want to cover the overhead costs of publishing, then set you price point at what  cost you think it should be.  Would I pay $14.99 for an e-book?  Yessireebob! I’ve done it before.  Heck I used to pay $29.99 for a hard back of a beloved series!  I’m buying the words!!! E-books are a huge profit point for a publisher. You eliminate nearly all the overhead of publishing.  However it seems these folks are stuck in a past where number of hardbacks sold equals success.

Now here is my dilemma and I hope it spurs some conversation and debate in the comments section, do I wait?

 

 

Pray for your bishop!

Thanks to my good friend over at A Secular Priest I encountered Rosary for the Bishop.

The premise is quite simple: sign up and pledge to pray for a specific bishop on a specific day.  I would ask you to follow this link and sign up to pray for Bishop Michael Pfeifer, OMI of San Angelo (or your own Bishop!).

I was glad to see that I wasn’t the first to pledge to pray for him.  I certainly hope I won’t be the last!  So check it out and should the Spirit move you, join in!

Bells of St. Mary’s

So tonight one of the canonisti brought out his movie rig.  Digital projector, laptop, and Bose speakers.  He set up shop in the TV lounge and we were able to watch The Bells of St. Mary’s with Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  You see, I’ve never before watched it.  Can you imagine that? A Roman Catholic , and a priest no less that hadn’t seen the Bells of St. Mary’s!  Scandalous… LOL

 

A few thoughts.

 

While the scenes of a priest wearing his clerics and praying the divine office and numerous nuns (in habit no less!) teaching in a Catholic Parochial school were heartwarming, there were also moments where myself and Fr. Adrian Sharp were literally cringing. In a post-scandal age, it is simply unimaginable the things that Bing’s Fr. O’Malley did in the movie.  Visiting students alone in their home.  Picking up 1st graders. Meeting nuns alone at night. Encouraging schoolyard fights and bullying. On and on.

 

RANT ON  Yes it is a movie and surely there are liberties taken.  Some may even say that it was a different age.  However, the reality is that Dallas happened, and it needed to happen. To expose some very ugly truths to the light of Christ’s healing.  Priests need to have boundaries, just like everyone else…  We need to be thoughtful and proactive in not getting into situations that lead to sin, or even the appearance of sin.

 

There’s a time and a place for nostalgia, to even reminiscence about “the good old days,” but the reality is that the handsome priest in the smartly tailored clerics and jaunty hat with a penchant for breaking into a cheery song as he fixes everything wrong with the world is just another Hollywood fantasy. It is just as much of a fantasy as the evil, lecherous, demonic priests we see in movies today.

 

Hollywood always warps reality.  “Reality TV?” Give me a break!  “Based on a true story?” only in as much as there was a person in a somewhat similar situation.  Blah!  

 

I’m certainly NOT saying that there aren’t good holy priests out there… because there are many of them. I’ve met them and I am continually inspired by them. But they certainly aren’t perfect or without their foibles.  God chooses imperfect people who do their best, and they still sin!  From St. Peter on down through the ages, priests have been less than perfect.  Luke 5:1-8 tells us that Simon Peter didn’t believe until they caught a boatload of fish, and he uttered the words so often on my own lips, “Depart from me Lord for I am a sinful man!”

Pray for your priests!  We are fallible. We are fallen. We are broken. We are human.     RANT OFF

 

…as I was saying, movies are entertainment and I was certainly entertained!  I enjoyed the humor and the lack of smut, foul language, and violence so prevalent in movies today.  I’d recommend it, if you haven’t seen it!

 

And now this priest is going to go pray Compline… no promises on a cheery song or a jaunty hat! LOL

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sequel to Phantom of the Opera!

Did you know that there is a sequel to the Phantom of the Opera???  Neither did I, but I stumbled upon it yesterday and I have been listening to the soundtrack ever since (thank you iTunes! LOL). It’s called Love Never Dies. The link leads to the Australian production.  It still hasn’t hit Broadway here in the States.  It has lots of musical throwbacks to the original.  If you are a fan of Phantom, I suggest you taking a look.  There is a DVD of the London production that will be available at the end of May 2012.  I’ve already got mine preordered!  LOL

Reflections on a rough draft…

A pile of 42 pages of paper sits in my desk still warm from its trip through the laser printer.  I agonize over the timing of turning it in at noon or at the end of the day.  I worry about the title, the footnotes, the organization, the everything of this paper… Turning it in is like setting it firmly in reality.  The words I’ve written will be read and judged by another. Once it’s turned in I can’t just hit delete and change a word, a paragraph, a page, or even the whole bloody thing. It’s terrifying and liberating all at the same time.

 

The liberation is what I seek the most.  I’ll be happy to be done with that specter who for the last nine months has continually whispered, “But you need to be writing…”.  I know that I don’t have much aspiration in terms of being some academic author, because then that specter would be my continual companion.

 

The rough draft is done!  That is the main thing!!!