reading cybernetics old-school
When I discovered, as I related in a Text Patterns post, than Thomas Pynchon claimed to have been influenced, as a young writer, by Norbert Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings, I decided to find that book and read it. But wouldn’t it be cool, I thought, if I could get an edition that Pynchon might have read?
AbeBooks to the rescue. Isn’t that cool?
a listening Pope?
Speaking as an interested outsider to recent intra-Catholic disputes, I find this article completely incomprehensible. Gaillardetz tells us that Pope Francis is all about building a “listening church” and the “decentralization of authority” — but how is that description compatible with Francis’s refusal to answer questions from Cardinals of the church, and his repeated mockery of traditionalists, even to the point of calling out priests wearing more formal vestments than he prefers as effeminate? In these matters Francis may be right or wrong, but I can’t see anything to suggest that he listens or wants to decentralize power. Rather, on every issue he seems to speak not just with confidence but also with contempt of anyone who disagrees with him.
re-litigating the Reformation
With the 500th anniversary of the Reformation coming on, I’m already seeing pieces — they annoy me too much for me to link to them — that see the anniversary as an opportunity to take sides, to say The Reformation is good because it supports this thing I approve of or The Reformation is bad because it supports this thing I disapprove of or This good thing just happened and thanks be to the Reformation which after all caused it or This bad thing just happened so curses upon the Reformation which after all caused it. It’s going to be bad enough when serious Catholics and Protestants use the anniversary to cudgel one another — that’s already started — but everyone else is going to want a piece of the action as well.
We could strive to understand the Reformation, to open up a very complex and multilayered phenomenon for reflection, to break down simplistic caricatures, to discover unexplored (or underexplored) possibilities. But taking sides is what our cultures seems to do with everything now. Everyone seems to be asking of every phenomenon, though with their own tribal affiliation substituted, “Yes, but is it good for the Jews?" So what does the Reformation mean for feminism, LGBTQ rights, transgender rights, race, Republicans and Democrats, Muslims in Europe? That’s what we’re going to be hearing for the next year: a few words on Martin Luther and then that’s enough about him, let’s talk about us and figure out whether Luther is for us or against us. Whatever is happening in this very moment will be the interpretative key people will use to (they think) unlock the meaning of the Reformation. For those of us who are more seriously interested in history and the complicated ways it does and does not shape the present, this is not going to be fun.
Hauerwas on Mary
If [Charles] Taylor's characterization of our time as empty - a characterization I suspect many of us will find forces a self-recognition we would prefer to avoid - is accurate, we can better understand why we have trouble knowing how to acknowledge we are Mary's people. We may be ready to acknowledge that the stories that constitute our lives are ones we may not have chosen, but we nevertheless believe that when all is said and done we get to make our lives up. But Mary did not choose to be Mary, the one highly favoured by God. Rather, she willingly accepted her role in God's salvation by becoming the mother of God - even while asking, "How can this be?"How extraordinary it is that we know the name of our Lord’s mother! The time we live in as Christians is not empty. It is a time constituted by Isaiah’s prophecy that a particular young woman will bear a son whose name will be Immanuel. It is a time constituted by a young woman named Mary who was chosen by God to carry and give birth to one fully human and fully God. It is a time that is made possible by Joseph, her husband, who trusted in what he was told by the Holy Spirit. It is that time in which we exist. It is a time that gives us time in a world that thinks it has no time to worship a Lord who has Mary as a mother.
now this is a crèche
[caption id=“attachment_29635” align=“aligncenter” width=“700”]
Garry Wills on Neapolitan crèches[/caption]
dependence
God's gift at Christmas is relationship, not just another human relationship but relation to God the Father by standing where Jesus stands, standing in the full torrent of his love and creativity, giving and receiving. To come into that place and to be rooted and grounded there means letting go of our fear of dependence and opening our hearts to be fed and enlarged and transformed. And that in turn means looking at how we handle dependence in ourselves and others, how we accept the positive dependence involved in lifelong learning and growing, and help one another deal with it positively.
So the important thing is not that everyone gets to stand on their own two feet and turns into a reliable "independent" consumer and contributor to the GNP. What we expect from each other in a generous and grown-up society is much more to do with all of us learning how to ask from each other, how to receive from each other, how to depend on the generosity of those who love us and stand alongside us. And that again means a particular care for those who need us most, who need us to secure their place and guarantee that there is nourishment and stability for them.
a friendly reminder
Even in the beginnings of this one and only Church of God there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly condemned. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions made their appearance and quite large communities came to be separated from full communion with the Catholic Church — for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame. The children who are born into these Communities and who grow up believing in Christ cannot be accused of the sin involved in the separation, and the Catholic Church embraces them as brothers, with respect and affection. For men who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect. The differences that exist in varying degrees between them and the Catholic Church — whether in doctrine and sometimes in discipline, or concerning the structure of the Church — do indeed create many obstacles, sometimes serious ones, to full ecclesiastical communion. The ecumenical movement is striving to overcome these obstacles. But even in spite of them it remains true that all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ's body, and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church.
— Unitatis redintegratio, added to the Catechism of the Catholic Church here. Emphases mine, of course.