Because the Holy Spirit is On the Line

Posted by Webster
I have a theory that can be stated simply: The Holy Spirit is on FaceBook. I don’t mean to promote a single form of the new electronic media by proposing this. I could as easily prove that the Holy Spirit uses Twitter. I mean, think about it. What sound does a dove make? Tweet, tweet.

I offer this for weekend discussion and propose one test case for consideration. Exhibit A: Frank Weathers.

Several weeks ago, as dedicated readers of this space know, I was struggling with the direction of YIM Catholic. Started as a sort of love letter to Katie and the girls—you are the most important people in the world to me, these are the most important ideas, let me share—YIM Catholic took on a life of its own, mysteriously attracting the attention of such as Fr. Jim Martin at America magazine and Elizabeth Scalia over at The Anchoress. Them and others, all in a few weeks.

It was at that point that the ego went rampant and your humble servant began blogging his fanny off, like Cedric the Entertainer working out to a Richard Simmons video. It didn't do much for my fanny, but it sure as heck annoyed my bride.

I began to despair, and with a twist thrown in from a personal matter that has since clarified itself, I thought, Junk it. You've lost the original purity of mission. You're making a fool of yourself. Switch off that darn video and have a pizza. Pepperoni, extra cheese.

It was about this time that Frank Weathers (remember Exhibit A?) started barraging me with e-mails. Something about a retired Marine from, where was it, Kentucky? Tennessee? Probably the hills, where he brewed moonshine, I thought. Since I don't give anyone the right to retire until they're older than me, I had “Frank W” pegged as a geezer with a few teeth left in his head after a life of bar fights, staggering around with a jug in his hand and semper fi on his chapped and dirty lips.

But his e-mails were too smart for that. He began providing me on-line resources for subjects on which I was writing or might write, stuff I never would have found myself, about Merton, Erasmus, Dickens’s Life of Our Lord. He almost seemed to anticipate my thoughts, moving stealthily like a Navy Seal in the darkness just ahead of YIM Catholic. It came to a place where I could not ignore the old geezer a minute longer. Then I found out he was no geezer: Twelve years younger than me, happily married, father of three handsome kids, active in a second career that allows him to research questions posed in this space, a persuasive and thoughtful writer, and—most important to the mission here—vitally, passionately, happily Catholic.

I made Frank a proposal. How about writing up your own conversion experiences in a short (500-to-750-word) essay? If it's any good, I'll put it up and let the dogs howl. An hour later, Frank's 900-word draft was in my in-box, and by the following morning, before I had a chance to react to this barrage, he had sent me "chapter 2." Whaaaat? I screamed to myself. Then I read what Frank had written and thought I heard a bird chirping. Could Frank be the answer to a prayer I hadn't even verbalized? An answer to the woes faced by every blogger, I'll bet: loneliness and fatigue. Loneliness, because every day you have to strap it on and write 1,000 words that no one might even read. Fatigue, because, do the math, that's 365,000 words a year.

Oh, yeah, and this: There's no money in it. (See annoyed bride)

I have an impulsive child in me, who makes snap decisions and then sometimes regrets them. But so far I have had no reason to doubt the decision that came next: By the time Frank had written and submitted chapter 3 (before chapter 1 was even on line), I realized that this stuff, good stuff too, was pouring out of him. I realized that, as a Catholic convert from the same RCIA graduation class of 2008, Frank seemed to have a lot in common with me. On the flip side, as a man raised in the South and a man with a distinguished military career under his belt (I have none), he might have significantly different points of view on non-essential points. (The maxim “In essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity” may not come from St. Augustine, as some say, but it works for me.)

So I said, “Permission to come aboard!” And here we are. Frank has made it clear that I am the front-seater, that he’s content to sit behind as RIO, covering my six. (I’m starting to get some of this military terminology.) I’ve made it clear that if I go down in the line of duty, or while working out to Richard Simmons, he has the conn. Last night, Frank talked me on-line through the set-up of a FaceBook fan page. He’s twelve years younger, remember, and he gets this stuff better; I’m convinced it’s generational, that he was born into a world of color television and never saw “Leave it to Beaver” in black-and-white.

The Holy Spirit on FaceBook? Yes, I’m sure of it. And everywhere else on line. Messages coming all day long, many of them not from the HS. Which is the problem, of course. But it’s all about keeping our own channels open, isn’t it? Like recognizing the sound of a bird chirping when you hear it, and opening the window so you can hear it sing.

Because the Saints are “Hard Corps”

Posted by Frank
“For Conspicuous Gallantry and Intrepidity in Action at the Risk of Life, Above and Beyond the Call of Duty . . . ”

As a kid growing up, I had a lot of daydreams floating through my head. Daydreams of Glory! The lines above (from the beginning of the citation for the Medal of Honor) would be read to throngs of adoring, thankful citizens as my exploits and heroic feats of daring-do and close-combat were read and celebrated throughout the land. Is it any wonder that I was drawn to the vocation of a warrior?

I wrote here about one of the Marines that every new recruit is taught about when he is undergoing either Marine Corps Recruit Training (boot camp) or Officer Candidates School (OCS). The Marine I am referring to is Sergeant Major Dan Daly. Was he a Catholic? Who knows? And frankly, that's not the point.

The point is that the Marine Corps teaches all of her warriors her history. And if you like, you can think of Dan Daly, along with Smedley Butler, John H. Quick, Chesty Puller, O. P. Smith, Samuel Nicholas, John A. Lejuene, et al (I could go on naming Marines for hours) as the Marine Corps equivalent of the Communion of the Saints here in the Church Militant. I have so much fun learning their names and reading about their heroic exploits! Talk about “Above and Beyond the Call of Duty”!

I don't know much, but I do know this: Marines who have been “canonized” by the Corps were ordinary Marines who responded extraordinarily in a combat situation. A freshly minted private who has just graduated from boot camp is just as much a Marine as the hero Captain Kurcaba, whose bravery was written about by his comrade Joseph R. Owen in his memoir Colder Than Hell: A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin Reservoir.

It's lump-in-my-throat time. As Owen recounts in his memoir:

Under enemy fire Captain Wilcox, Kurcaba, and Lee all walked straight up. It seemed impossible to me that they weren't hit, especially Lee, who was usually far forward. It set a good example for the men, and I tried to do the same.

Yet when a fire-fight got hot, Owen would hit the deck and low-crawl to protect himself. Captain Kurcaba never “got down.” He said to Owen in the heat of a battle once, “If I get down, I may never get up again.” Owen writes, “I couldn't speak to my superior officer who stood while I groveled on the deck [under fire]. I forced myself to stand up and I wished that Joe Kurcaba would get the hell away from me!”

Wow! — The saints are a lot like that to me too. Would you agree? Their exploits of daring are frightening and yet inspiring at the same time. Whether we’re talking about Joan of Arc or Charles Borromeo each challenges us to be better Christians the way the heroes of the Corps taught me to be a better Marine.

There is a fact about all Marines, whether they are flying F-18s or serving food in the chow hall: Every Marine is a rifleman. And there is a similar fact to be said of members of the Catholic Church: As a Christian, each one of us is called to the Priesthood. Maybe not Holy Orders, but the Royal Priesthood all the same. If you don't want this, then you joined the wrong outfit. If you were born into this, guess what, you still have to earn the title. Because Marines are made and not born, and so are Catholics.

Our first Pope (dare I equate St. Peter with the first Commandant of the Marine Corps, Samuel Nicholas?) said as much in the second chapter of his first letter. Is 1 Peter 2:9 similar to a Marine Corps Order? I’d say yes:

But you are a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises” of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Mother Church has remembered Her heroes and canonized them in the Communion of the Saints so that by their “conspicuous gallantry” they can demonstrate to both raw Catholic recruits and grizzled Catholic veterans how to be good Catholic Christians.

By the way, if you graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy, you have to go to Marine Corps OCS. No excuses, no waivers, no questions. And if you were in the Army and want to try out the Marines next, you’d have to leave your rank behind and rejoin as a private. Think about that the next time the “Renew” class is mentioned in your parish and you think to yourself, I don't need that nor do I have the time.

Semper Fidelis

Thoughts on the LOTH for Today

Posted by Frank
Replace the phrase descendants of Israel in Isaiah 45 with the sheep of my flock from Psalm 99 in today's morning prayer and ponder these words anew.

Isaiah 45:
Turn to me and you will be saved, all you ends of the earth;
for I am God, there is no other.

I have sworn by my own being,
I have decreed a judgment that will not be revoked;
for every knee will bend to me,
every tongue swear by my name.

"Only in the Lord,” they will say,
“are there justice and strength!”
All who resisted him will come to him, and be dismayed;
but in the Lord all descendants of Israel
will receive justice and glory."

From Psalm 99:

Know that the Lord is God
He made us and we are his
—his people, the sheep of his flock

YIMC Book Club, “Orthodoxy,” Chapter 3

Posted by Webster
The honor roll of the YIMC Book Club reads as follows: Mary, Kneeling Catholic, EPG, Goodalice19, Mujerlatina, Mike, Regina, Frank & Webster (Who am I missing?)

It's been a long day, YIMC Book Clubbers! So I'm going to keep this short and turn it over to you.

Chapter 3, “The Suicide of Thought”

Frankly, between you and me, this overeducated Exeter boy finds Chesterton intimidating. He is so damn smart, he piles on the analogies, the metaphors, like baked beans on a Saturday supper plate. And this chapter has more beans than the two previous chapters combined. But—

Let's all remember that Chesterton was writing in the first decade of the 20th century, one hundred years ago. Imagine that! In the name of Christianity, he took on the following “titans” of Western thought: Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Tolstoy! (There are others mentioned in chapter 3, but this is a heavy-hitting line-up.) He stood up to these guys and said, “You know what? You don't get it. The Protestant Reformation ‘shattered’ Christianity 350 years ago, and all the intellectual powers of man have come unhinged from their moral base.”

Here are a couple of related quotes from chapter 3 that resonate with me.

In the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority, we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum.

And—

Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain. 

What I understand from this chapter is that, by becoming unhinged from the Divine truth that inspired it, Western thought has flown off into an orbit of its own. And Chesterton is calling us back to Christ.

What do you think, my newfound Catholic friends?

Because GK and Joan Were Both Catholics

Posted by Webster
While preparing for tonight's meeting of the YIM Catholic Book Club, I was struck by G. K. Chesterton's appreciation for Joan of Arc in Orthodoxy, chapter 3. That Chesterton, whom I am growing to admire, could have written this about Joan, whom I have long revered, is all the proof I need that the Catholic Church is on to something.

Though I have to admit it gives me pause—in a week when I've extolled pacifist Dorothy Day—that Joan was every bit the Catholic Dorothy was—and a warrior to boot.

Here's Chesterton on Joan:

Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them.

I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typcial aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We know that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow.

Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing.

It was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost.