Furthermore…

Back in the 50’s my high school buddy and I went off to different colleges in different towns. He found a job in a restaurant to help pay his way, and fell in love with a waitress. I got a lot of letters from him rhapsodizing on her desirability, and then got one telling that he had got her pregnant.
They seemed of one mind that they had arrived at an undesired state of affairs. Subsequent letters provided a running account of the methods and means they considered for getting rid of the little problem. She collected lore from her girlfriends, and he was in the first year of pre-med, so they collected a fair number of ideas to sift through for their solution, some of them rather bizarre. I remember him at one time stating that he had seen pictures in biology books of early stage human embryos, and didn’t feel any compunction at destroying something which looked like that.
Meanwhile it seemed that the once torrid romance pretty well cooled off, and they kept a distant, civil contact. Some time later I traveled to the his city to visit him, and while we were hanging out lady friend came along pushing a baby in a wheeler, his and her kid. But their separate lives took them in different directions, and I don’t remember him having any contact with her or the baby thereafter.

Monk to Luther noisily nailing the 95 theses to a door:

“Hey, take it easy there! This isn’t a mighty fortress, you know!”

A strange day. In the morning I heard a replay of one of the late Dr. D. James Kennedy’s programs, a panegyric on Martin Luther. The Church and its representatives were painted melodramatically as overbearing and unbending, while poor Martin was seen as a simple, sincere obedient follower of the Scriptures.

Then later in the day i was reading a recap of Church history on the Multiply Catholic Friends site and saw a thumbnail picture of Luther along with a short summary of his place in the march of Catholic time:

“1517 – Martin Luther, a priest, posted his 95 theses in Germany, beginning the Protestant Reformation, leading to a breakup among Christians in the Western world into hundreds of denominations. They are not able to keep united since they deny the authority of the Pope, the successor to St. Peter. Jesus appointed Peter to keep His Church one in faith. His teaching of sola scriptura (Bible only is the sole rule of faith) and sola fide (salvation by faith alone) became the foundation of Protestantism.”

Then still later, I saw a reference that ysterday (October 31st) was the anniversary of the posting of the 95 theses on the door in Wittenberg.

Kid with radio to friend:

“No, it’s not a Christian talk show. It’s a listen show!”

This expression in Jesus’ little example about the persons knocking on the master’s door being told to go away even though they protested that they had eaten and drank with him is thought provoking. I surfed around ysterday trying to find a knowlegeable gloss on this verse without result. But then Fr. Mitch in his homily for the Daily Mass on EWTN had something to say about it. He mentioned that it was drawn from a formula used by the rabbis to excommunicate. Father distinuished between those who struggle and strive to please God in their lives, versus those who merely hang around, not making themselves known to Him in a meaningful way, so that He knows ‘where they come from.’

Our everyday parlance includes phrases suggestively close to the one in question. We ask “where are you coming from?” when someone’s line of thought seems obscure, and “I know where you are going with that” when we intuit someone’s direction of thought before it is expressed completely.

And then, I don’t hear it anymore, but comedians used to use the phrase “from hunger” in referring to something declasse. Maybe its from Yiddish.

One church maintenance man to other as they look at birds frolicking in holy water font:

“I think that new holy water font was made out of an old birdbath!”

I think I wrote about this before, but I am fascinated by the mental processes which go into deciding how to vote. Mental, but not necessarily rational or logical. The first thing I remember in this connection was the pundits disclosing that women voted for candidates according to their physical appearance and impressiveness, what is now subsumed, I guess, under the term ‘charisma.’ .
This election year there seems to be a heavy lining up of Black people anxious to vote for “their” candidate, a kind of selection by identification, just as ‘regular folks’ seem ready to opt for the lady governor of Alaska on the basis of her folksiness.
Not so much as in past theres, there still are large numbers of party faithful who see elections through Party eyes, died in the wool Republicans and Democrats. They’ll trot out old saws about the characteristics of the two parties, us being right, and them being wrong. Reminds one of the Balkans and Ireland.
Notable in this line of analysis is how little congruence there is between these ways of thinking and the way the Church urges us to approach the decision making process. It reminds me of the papable of the sower, where some of the seed fell on rocky ground and the birds of the air came along and ate it. The Catholic advice just sits on the surface of people’s minds, and doesn’t take root. The media, the people all about, and old ways of oing things correspond to the dirty birds.

Delivery man to pair of eyes peeking out from behind door of Ye Olde Pornography Makers:

“I just need someone to sign for this shipment of millstones and neck harnesses!”

One of the members of our faith sharing group pointed out that our pastor now has ‘Very Reverend’ as part of his signature, and wondered what this signifies. I usually know about such matters but in this case had to confess it was beyond me. Wouldn’t ‘Rather Reverend’ be rather more redolent of respectability? Someone else suggested it is like being part way to becoming a monsignor, but I allowed that such is not the case, and began delving into a copy of the

Catechism of the Catholic Church

while the discussion went ahead apace. Discussion then wandered into the question of by whom or how bishops are named. Somehow I felt led, perhaps it was because of something I saw in the

Catechism

, to aver that the Pope names them, then later adjusted my story to say he might only approve someone else’s nomination, you know, more or less, so to speak.

Elizabethan Judge to constable about prisoner in stocks:

“What! You say he’s only a rapist? Cancel the death sentence! I thought you said he was a Papist!”