What Does It Mean?

Masses all over the world are becoming scarce.  Dozens of dioceses all over these United States are suspending public Masses.  Just yesterday afternoon came the announcement that public Masses in the Diocese of Boise are suspended, at least through Palm Sunday (though the Cathedral parish is vastly increasing the availability of confession and Eucharistic adoration).  A few dioceses are taking the intermediate approach of carrying on with public Masses but dispensing the faithful from the Sunday obligation, or at least dispensing certain categories of people from the obligation.  The Society of St. Pius X is more or less following this middle course, though they intend to add Masses in places where their chapels are full, so that fewer people will attend each Mass.

I can only give my own, non-authoritative opinion as to what this all means.  I think it means there is an immense lack of faith and a failure to see this crisis in a supernatural light.  Some bishops in Italy, where hundreds are dying every day, have actually come out and denied even the possibility that this plague is a scourge of divine chastisement calling for repentance, conversion and propitiation.  Even some good priests say they think this is not a chastisement, despite obviously recognizing the many reasons why we so richly deserve a chastisement.  A time like this calls for an increase, not a decrease, in reception of the Sacraments and in offerings of the Propitiating Sacrifice.

Yet God, without Whose consent nothing happens, is permitting the shutting down of the Sacrifice and the restricting of access to the Sacraments even during a pandemic.  This, frankly, is a chastisement in itself, and one that I think is even more frightening than the coronavirus itself and rightly described as apocalyptic.  We should ask ourselves why God would strip us of the Mass and in some cases the Sacraments in a time of contagion.  I fear that one answer may be that, so far from propitiating God, we have actually been making the occasion of our worship a means of aggravating our guilt.

Are our hearts far away from Him, even while we honor Him with our lips?  There seems little enough to distinguish us from non-Catholics.  The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, says that, according to a 2011 study, 98% of Catholic women have used contraceptives at some point; 87% were currently using contraceptives; and 89% of Catholic women who have never married have had sex.  The Church has never changed her teaching on contraceptives or sex outside of marriage.  According to a 2015 Pew Research Center report, a quarter of Catholics have been divorced; 44% have lived in concubinage; 62% favor Communion for those who have divorced and remarried without an annulment.  Even our own clergy, up to the highest levels of the Church, have been outspoken proponents of Communion for the divorced and remarried, which the Church has never endorsed and cannot endorse.  A 2019 Pew study found that only 31% of Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Most of these do not know the Church’s doctrine of transubstantiation; but 22% of Catholics do know it but reject it.  Is God putting the kibosh on countless multitudes of unworthy and sacrilegious Communions?

What about general irreverence in church?  The noise levels inside a Catholic church surpass anything that went on even during the crazy seventies, when all sorts of excesses ran riot in the liturgy.  The last time I was present at a priestly ordination in my diocese, several years ago, people were literally whooping and yelling inside the cathedral, during the Mass, as if they were at a football game.  No one corrected them.  (Now I come to think of it, we have had very, very few priestly ordinations in this diocese since then.)  Many of us, who do not have the excuse of having just come in from hard and unavoidable labor, appear at Mass dirty and smelly, dressed like slobs, or dressed immodestly.  Maybe God got tired of looking at tramp stamps and butt cracks and cleavage and flip flops inside His house, and smelling B.O. and listening to inane sports conversations in front of the tabernacle, and tossed us out until we have straightened up.  Wouldn’t we throw people out of our houses who came over only to behave disrespectfully and ignore us?

Also on ice are bound to be a great many Masses offered by perverted and corrupt priests and bishops, such as those who, to our shame, have been exposed in recent years, and by priests who preach errors and heresies from the pulpit.  Yes, as St. Thomas More explains in his Dialogue Concerning Heresies, a bad priest does not make for an invalid Mass; but nevertheless, he also argues that it would be better to have fewer Masses than more Masses offered by bad priests.  “For though God of His goodness, however bad the priest may be, well accepts the oblation of Christ’s holy Body for the sake of other folk,” says Thomas, “He yet is highly displeased with that priest’s presumption.  And we ought never to seek our own well-being with our neighbor’s harm.  And we should, as a duty to God, rather forgo the profit that we ourselves might attain by a Mass than see His Majesty disreverenced by the bold presumption of such an odious minister as He has forbidden to come around Him.”  It is worth reflecting on what the effect is in the diocese when an evil priest is uncovered and brought to light.  Do we collectively, as a local church, put on sackcloth and ashes and try to make reparation and do justice?  Or is it business as usual?

And then there is the Mass itself, as celebrated in so many places.  We quite fail, on a constant and ongoing basis, to offer to God the best that we have.  We replace Latin with the vernacular; we replace chant with guitars and tambourines, badly played; we replace polyphony with Broadway show tunes and campfire ditties.  Consider the following from a paean to ourselves, often trotted out during Lent, in which God only gets a couple of passing mentions:

We reach out to those who are homeless/To those who live without warmth/In the coolness of evening we’ll shelter their dreams/We will clothe them in mercy and peace.

What does this morass even mean?  And then there is the gender ideology injected into the Palm Sunday Gospel reading of the Passion, where the liberal liturgists assign all the male lines to female readers, while a multitude of able-bodied men stand around mute.  Whom do we seek to please by this gender-bending?  Is God pleased?

I am among those who think depriving us of the Mass and shrinking the visibility of the Church in a time of pestilence is a failure on the part of the bishops, and the result of our experiment in bringing the Church into line with the modern world.  But whatever guilt bishops may or may not incur in this is swallowed up by the realization that none of this could have happened without the permission of Almighty God.  God has allowed this to happen for a reason.

God loves us infinitely, as though each of us were the only person who ever existed, and He sent His Son to die to unlock the gates of heaven that were closed against us on account of sin.  But He is not required to put up with our crap.

We would have no chance of making it to heaven if He did.

Rumor

There is a rumor going around to the effect that priest of the Boise diocese, or some group of them, have had A Meeting to declare Their Resolution that there shall be No Latin Used Whatsoever in Any Novus Ordo Mass.  This is only a rumor; but, sadly, it is believable.  There is at least one local parish where this rule is apparently in effect.

And it is believable because so much of the Catholic hierarchy has spent the last half-century or so proving that they do not (a) believe in the content of the Catholic Faith, or (b) care about the flock, except insofar as the flock serves their purposes for the moment.  

Jesus asked, which of our fathers, if we asked him for bread, would give us a stone, or a serpent if we asked for a fish, or a scorpion if we asked for an egg?  Sadly, the answer, in our time, is, the Catholic hierarchy.  To so many of our priests and bishops, we are nothing more than sources of money, for which their demands are endless, or raw material for their liturgical or social engineering experiments.  They have no respect for our sensibilities, and double down on the things that hurt or offend us.  They excoriate us, not for our sins, but for wanting to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, or kneeling, or only from the consecrated hands of a priest.  We have to repeatedly beg many of them for the legitimate goods we seek, that lie only within their power to give us (such as the traditional Mass), and they either ignore us, deny us outright or grudgingly dole us out crumbs.  Many bishops are remote, quasi-mythical figures who don’t even answer letters from their subjects or grant them audiences.  Instead, they spend millions of our dollars on vain pursuits, like the just-concluded USCCB general assembly, behind a tight wall of armed security, at the $300.00-a-night Inner Harbor Marriott in Baltimore.  And they spend a lot of time not turfing out the sexual predators from among their own ranks. 

Jesus said: “If you, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask Him?”  How far must one have fallen not to even know how to give good gifts to the children?

Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, saith the Lord God, forasmuch as my flocks have been made a spoil, and my sheep are become a prey to all the beasts of the field, because there was no shepherd: for my shepherds did not seek after my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flocks: Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I Myself come upon the shepherds, I will require my flock at their hand, and I will cause them to cease from feeding the flock any more, neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more: and I will deliver my flock from their mouth, and it shall no more be meat for them.

Ezekiel 34:7-10.

The Local Scandal

The news recently came from Rome that a certain retired and now imprisoned priest of the Boise Diocese has been deposed from the clerical state.  

Now-Mr. William Thomas Faucher pled guilty last year to a selection of felony charges of possessing and distributing child porn, out of about a couple dozen counts.  Despite the support of prominent Boise citizens, like Mayor Chris Bieter, and Faucher’s characterization of himself as “one really sick puppy” who “screwed up big time,” and his argument that he needed to be placed on probation so he could be free to help people in the community, he received a 25-year fixed prison sentence.  That means Faucher, who is now in his 70s, will not be eligible for parole until he has served 25 years, making this effectively a life sentence. The sentence is now up on appeal before the Idaho Supreme Court.

    There is plenty of news coverage of the depth and breadth and height of Faucher’s satanic depravity, which led him to amass a collection of exceptionally violent child porn images and videos numbering in the thousands.  There is no need, then, to darken this space with descriptions of these, or the sacrileges he boasted of committing, or the chat room conversations with other degenerates that police found on his computer. Just the Information (that is, the charging document) filed in the district court makes sickening reading.

But those who profess to have been shocked by the discovery of Faucher’s filthy proclivities should, on further reflection, probably not be shocked.  Faucher gave us a window onto his character during his prejudgment stint in jail by his public outpourings.  He published a newsletter in which he gave his supporters the benefit, among other things, of his complaints about the food, his complaints about access to television, his complaints about the consequences he was facing, and his great condescension in forgiving the prosecutor, the bishop and others who worked to put him behind bars.  He granted a jailhouse interview with the press in which he blamed the late Bishop Michael Driscoll for his plight, and shared his delusional belief that his legacy would not be as a priest who was into child porn. Even his supporters, while trying to make him sound good to the media, painted a picture of a character marked by ice-cold arrogance and viciousness toward anyone who disagreed with his views. Many saints have been imprisoned without having committed any crimes. Can you think of any who wasted time on recriminations?

But Faucher has been letting his biggest red freak flag fly for many years: his longtime public dissent from the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual morality.  He was for years a darling of the left for his pro-gay politics, even going so far as to print an editorial in the local paper in support of same-sex “marriage.”  For this alone he should have been suspended, yet the diocese left him untouched. Dealing with him fell to the secular authorities, almost a decade and a half later.  

As I have previously noted in this space, we cannot throw out the Ten Commandments without also forfeiting the protection they afford.  It makes no sense to expect someone to actually abide in his private life by moral laws that he publicly rejects. Why, if you publicly deride the moral law, would you go to the trouble of living by it when no one is looking, and preying on innocent people in order to feed the appetites that that law does not restrain? And if priests publicly deride the moral law, they betray their whole mission as priests. They not only sin themselves, but also drag others down with them. Where is the faith of bishops who leave the Eucharistic Lord and their flocks in the hands of these filthy soul-murderers?

I hope for two things out of this sordid business.  First, Christ died and poured out every drop of His Blood for the salvation of William Thomas Faucher, as much as He did for me.  I hope that, before he dies, Faucher realizes the enormity of what he has done, repents of his evil ways and converts, so that he will be saved from going to hell.  Second, I hope our current bishop, for the sake of his own soul and for the souls under his care, will turf out all the dirty priests in his diocese, and that he will single out for particular attention any other clergy who share Faucher’s views on sexuality.  Sex perverts network and stick together, and cover for each other — at least until someone outlives his usefulness. Did Faucher outlive his usefulness? Was it in fact another pervert that turned him in, for reasons having nothing to do with the wrongfulness of his acts? Was it the merest of coincidences that in 2005, Faucher had a deacon in his parish who also went to prison for child porn?  It is in any case hard to credit that someone with such an extensive collection of porn as Faucher’s is a newcomer to the vice, or that he could have been into it, and the drugs he was also caught with, for so long, with absolutely no one noticing.   

There is no real dichotomy between a man’s private life and his public persona.  We are not talking here about singular instances of someone doing something wrong, or something stupid.  Everyone who lives long enough will, sooner or later, do something he later regrets. But evil habits, especially unrepented ones, are another matter.  And if you are a Catholic priest, it matters very much whether you hew to the entire Deposit of Faith, since you are charged with the grave responsibility of upholding and promulgating it.  You cannot have heterodoxy alongside holiness, as the case of Mr. Faucher amply proves.

Reflections on the Last Full Day of Winter, 2017

Boise: where it's sometimes hard to tell which
season it is.

-- This winter we got more snow in the Treasure Valley than we have ever had since I moved down here in 2003.  All the years I lived up in the Idaho panhandle taught me to deal with huge amounts of snow (though winter is still a huge trial for me, even 21 years after leaving southern California); but up there, the local authorities are pretty good at snow removal.  Down here, we are pretty clueless as to how to deal with even a little snow.  Even busy thoroughfares go unplowed and untreated during snowfalls, so if you work in downtown Boise, and it's been snowing, it might take you an hour to an hour and a half to travel the five miles from there to the Bench.  The great winter avalanche of 2017 was such a disaster, and the local highway district was so unprepared to cope, that they had to suspend their red-tape requirements for private snow removal contractors (question: why should we ever have red tape for such a thing?) and even bring in the National Guard to remove snow.  Still, it was days before any residential streets got plowed, and the local schools quickly exhausted their quotas of snow days for the year.  A lot of people ended up getting stuck in various places; I personally had to be rescued twice.

-- In the wake of all of which, the (already-much-despised) local highway district backed a bill in the state legislature that would limit highway districts' snow removal responsibilities.  You have to hand it to them for their sense of timing.

-- I have spent the last couple of weeks of winter battling a viral infection that started in my sinuses and settled into my upper respiratory tract.  It couldn't have come at a worse time from the point of view of my work calendar.  There is not a lot you can do about viral bronchitis except treat the symptoms, get as much rest and fluids as you can, and ride it out.  I have drunk gallons of black tea with honey and lemon (and occasionally rum).  I cut out the rum when I got a prescription for codeine cough syrup, and cut out the lemon when it started to give me a sour stomach.  God bless whoever invented codeine cough syrup.  It is worth all the money in the world not to be up all night coughing your brains out.

-- With the end of winter comes the beginning of Lent (at least this year, when Easter falls a little on the late side).  I am making a terrible Lent.  My whole life has felt like one long Lent for the last couple of years -- especially last year, with the death of my mother, hard on the heels of the death of a dear friend, in turn hard on the heels of the death of my grandfather.  There is nothing messier than life; it does not seem that one can become a saint by avoiding the mess.

-- And there does not seem to be a greater mess than the mess that is currently the Catholic Church.  My own diocese feels like the most God-forsaken one on the planet.  Every parish is so busy doing its own thing that one is reduced to finding the least-offensive Mass possible on Sundays and holy days of obligation.  Long gone are the days when you could attend Mass anywhere in the world and it would always be the same, always Catholic and always familiar.  I have news for priests: idiosyncrasies in the liturgy -- including tinging it with your malodorous personalities -- was never, ever something the laity in the pews clamored for.  This is something you wanted, because you forgot who you are and who God is (hint: you aren't Him) and why you are there at the altar, and you were therefore becoming bored with the whole affair.  Now you have succeeded in making several generations of Catholics forget it, too.  Congratulations.

-- Part of the mess in the Church is the idiotic idea that rules are bad (except of course any rule that prohibits the traditional Mass), and that Jesus did away with rules.  Set aside for the moment the irony of holding this view during the reign of perhaps the most autocratic, authoritarian pope in recent history (who himself ridicules people who pursue private devotions according to rules).  The reality is that if you take away rules, you kick out from under a lot of people a much-needed support for their weakness.  Rules give people clarity and certainty.  Some people need these things, even if you think they're stupid.  And if you think something is stupid that legitimately serves the needs of your fellow man, and you don't care what effect depriving him of it might have, then maybe you have not made as much spiritual progress as you think.

-- On the political front.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news to liberals (well, maybe not so much), but: all the stuff President Trump is doing that you think I should find outrageous, from knocking the media to cutting funding for PBS, I actually enjoy seeing him do.  In fact, these are things I have wanted to see for years and years -- and so have plenty of other Americans.

-- And while we're on the subject of Trump, the media just can't stop lying about him -- like the latest wholly-manufactured firestorm about how he is going to eliminate Meals on Wheels.  But even if Meals on Wheels were a federal program (which it isn't) and Trump was going to abolish it (which he isn't), what is to stop all these reporters from reviving it and funding it on a private basis?

-- In fact, where does the idea come from that, unless the government confiscates our money and does "charity" for us, we in the United States are going to leave old people to starve in ratty, run-down apartments or die in the streets?  It's true that in a lot of ways, we Americans have our heads up our butts; but it's also true that Americans are some of the most generous people in the world.  We have an all-volunteer military, so everybody who joins up -- especially when we have troops committed to various hell-holes around the world -- has demonstrated a willingness to give up creature comforts and even their lives for their fellow Americans.  The same goes for those who voluntarily join police departments and fire departments.  Whenever some disaster strikes on the other side of the globe, we are the ones who rush to the scene with rescue personnel and equipment.  And we Americans contribute substantially to charities.  We even found charities.  We are the ones who gave the world the Red Cross.  The Christian spirit -- which liberals have worked so hard to undermine and destroy -- is nevertheless still so potent that even in its diluted form, it is powerful enough to motivate Americans on behalf of the needy.

-- Back to the seasons.  Now that the end of winter is only about 12 hours away as I write this, we are swiftly approaching another harbinger of the change of season, namely, the roaring back to life of the irrigation works.  We southern Idahoans know spring is well and truly under way when the sluices are opened and the irrigation canals fill up.  Northern Idaho doesn't need irrigation, so they miss out on this minor spectacle.

-- Meanwhile, we look for another sort of spring in a world that seems hopelessly messed up -- a spiritual spring; the real springtime the fathers of the Second Vatican Council thought they were ushering in, though the hopes of those who acted in good faith were cheated.  There have certainly been plenty of changes on the political front, over which all the right people are dismayed.  I hope this represents a real sea change, and more than a mere temporary reprieve from the disasters we had previously been hurtling toward.  

Convalescent Cogitations (UPDATED)

Sts. Cosmas and Damian: physicians and martyrs.

Going to the hospital for, if not a life-threatening, at least a life-inconveniencing procedure under general anesthesia causes one to pause and meditate upon one's vulnerability and mortality.  In the weeks leading up to this morning's surgery I mostly went about my daily business; but now, while I rest and metabolize the various sedatives out of my system, I have little to do except ponder Great Issues.  I probably should also make room in my cogitations to consider the wisdom of publishing their fruits while still in a condition that would make it illegal for me to drive; maybe I will hold off on clicking that button until tomorrow.  On the other hand, maybe today is the day to announce the happy news that I came through the surgery very well, with very little pain, and the doctor said everything looked good.  I should have lab results on the biopsy in a week.  UPDATE: Biopsy results were normal.

-- I have to first express my gratitude to my aunt, Margie Blake, who got up at an ungodly hour to drive out all the way from a neighboring county and get me to the hospital at 5:30 a.m.; stayed with me until I went into surgery; stayed at the hospital all morning until I was ready to go home; talked to the doctor for me after the surgery; and provided me with a very delicious potato soup and Jello.  Her response to being so sorely put out by me?  Happiness at being able to do it.

-- I have to also express my gratitude to the doctors and nurses and orderlies at St. Luke's Hospital in Boise for the extraordinary care they took to be kind and gentle, see to my physical comfort, avoid inflicting unnecessary pain and assuage my anxieties.  These were people who get up extremely early in the morning, work long hours, perform strenuous and sometimes stomach-churning duties, ford innumerable streams of government red tape, and treat difficult and demanding people with kindness and compassion on a daily basis.  I, who roll out of bed at the latest possible minute I can get away with and still make it to work, and then spend my days being difficult and demanding, don't know how they do it.

--  One point that forced itself upon me with great clarity this morning was the necessity of preparing spiritually in advance for that supreme moment when one is about to leave this life.  The only real way to do this is to get into the habit of praying -- in particular, praying for protection from a sudden and unprovided death -- and frequenting the Sacraments.  It is rash and foolhardy to count on being able to slide into heaven at the last minute after a lifetime of neglecting the things of God.  After all, even if you don't die suddenly, you may nevertheless be in excruciating pain at the end, or you may not have all your marbles, or you may suddenly lose consciousness.  (I tried but failed to be aware of the moment when I would lose consciousness in the operating room: I was waking up in recovery before I knew I had gone to sleep.)  But even if you have the capacity for quiet concentration, a hospital is too full of distractions and interruptions for it.  Make your preparations and intentions and resolutions for that time now, while you are still capable, and keep renewing them.

-- I did not seek the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, or Extreme Unction, before my surgery.  This was because Extreme Unction is for persons who have begun to be in danger of death through bodily infirmity and not an anticipated cause from without.  All the evidence up to now indicates that, apart from certain symptoms, I am otherwise quite healthy, so that to the extent, if any, that I was in danger of death, it was from an external source and not from one internal to myself.  However, there are other ways to prepare for situations like this: going to confession and receiving Holy Communion ahead of time; getting in the daily Rosary before going in (even if you can't quite finish it); wearing the brown scapular (though the doctors will make you wear it someplace other than around your neck); arranging in advance to have a priest contacted in the event something goes wrong.  If -- which God forbid -- my biopsy turns up something potentially life-threatening, then I will seek Extreme Unction in the hell-whipping traditional form.

-- You never want to eat a thick, juicy steak so much as on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, and you never want to go out and run errands so much as when you're not supposed to drive.  I also would really like to take a shower tonight but can't.

-- I hope the Swedish chemist Nils Löfgren made it straight into heaven without stopping in purgatory for inventing Lidocaine.

-- One downside to the Internet is that the ready accessibility of limitless information makes people think they can be experts without the expense and arduous labor of going to school and gaining experience.  Doctors and nurses must get really tired of having constantly and daily to burst people's Internet research bubbles.

-- I told myself to pick up some dark chocolate with almonds when I went to the store last night.  Should have listened.

Random New Year Thoughts

This four-day weekend after a high-octane December seems a good opportunity to regale the world with my ruminations.

-- 2015 is my 20th year living in Idaho.  That is almost half my life.  But, while you can take the girl out of Southern California, you can't take Southern California out of the girl.  We simply did not have winter in SoCal, where 50 degrees is bundle-up weather.  Winter is therefore a great trial for me, even after all these years, many of which were in the Idaho Panhandle, where ice and snow are far more plentiful than in the Treasure Valley.

-- Given which, I would need a damn good reason to venture out in freezing weather for New Year's.  Which brings us to Boise's answer to the Times Square Ball Drop: the New Year's Eve Potato Drop. We do not have a Times Square or a ball.  What we have got is a giant foam potato hanging from a boom crane, lit by two or three blue and green laser lights; a guy in a potato suit; and, presumably, to gin up the applause, a bottomless supply of booze and perhaps other, less legal stimulants.  When I first saw a picture of the potato on the news, I was struck by its almost exact resemblance to the evidence in a prison contraband case I just handled.  Sorry, but this does not constitute a damn good reason sufficient to justify braving the cold on New Year's.

-- Challis, Idaho started out the new year with a 4.9 magnitude earthquake.  It was reportedly felt clear in the North End of Boise.  I live in Boise, but not in the North End.  I did not feel anything.  An earthquake, for those who have never been in one, is quite unmistakable, no matter how weak.  It is qualitatively different from, say, construction in the area or a heavy truck driving by.  If you're not sure whether you have ever felt an earthquake, you probably haven't.

-- My patroness for 2015 is St. Ann, mother of the Mother of God.  Although she is my namesake, I have neglected her most of my life.  I have been thinking about her lately, and at midnight adoration on New Year's I started a novena to her.  While preparing our New Year's Day dinner, one of my lay Dominican sisters showed me a little statue she acquired at a thrift store.  It was St. Ann instructing her immaculate daughter on Scripture.   A sign?

-- As we enter the new year, it is increasingly clear that the majority of priests and bishops in our time are hirelings.  Sorry, but there is no getting around this and it's time to face up to it.  These hirelings -- most of whom were ordained in the '60s, '70s and '80s -- bear the heavy responsibility for having spent the last half-century (a) trying to transform the Church into something entirely unrecognizable from what she had previously been, and (b) propagandizing the laity into thinking this is a good thing.  Like the process by which a tree trunk is transformed into a piece of stone by the gradual replacement of its organic components with minerals, this attempt to re-invent the Church has transformed the hearts of her members into stone by gradually replacing their Catholic faith with the minerals of socialism, pop psychology, materialism, narcissism and a host of other evils, until they no longer recognize their plight.  Fortunately, most of the current generations of hirelings have not got many more active years left; but, absent an intervention by the Holy Spirit -- which we are not close to deserving -- it will take a long time to undo their damage.

-- If you don't know how to recognize a hireling, here are just a few signs: (1) he can't stick to the Missal at Mass, or to the forms of other Sacraments, but must always interject his own comments and/or improvisations.  (2) He preaches errors from the pulpit.  (If you can't recognize errors preached from the pulpit, get yourself a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and get busy.)  (3) He treats being a priest like an ordinary job.  (4) He devotes little time to prayer or actual ministry; he seldom darkens the door of a church or chapel, or makes himself available to administer the Sacraments.  The former deficiency will be harder for the laity to discern than the latter; but if he denigrates or makes fun of popular prayers and devotions like the Rosary, that is a clue.  (5) He has a great love of humanity in general, but little use for human beings in particular; therefore, he treats particular people with coldness and even rudeness.

-- In 2015, Benedict XVI will turn 88.  If he dies while Francis is still the reigning Pope, I fear what will happen to the liturgical reforms he began.

-- Shortly before the close of the old year, I started reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War.  Of course, it is a pro-Confederate book, which is what makes it politically incorrect, since conventional "wisdom" has the Confederacy pegged as a bunch of racist neanderthals.  The book makes some good points and gives rise to some considerations that give one pause.  For one thing -- and despite embarrassing sentiments like the one articulated by Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens to the effect that the Confederate government was founded upon the "great truth" that the Negro is not equal to the White Man -- Dixie was not All About Slavery, any more than the North was All About Abolition.  Dixie, for all her faults, was also about a lot of things the world is much poorer for having less of: honor; chivalry; faith; subsidiarity; the worth of the individual and the family.  The North, on the other hand, was already imbued with the pragmatic utilitarianism that now dominates our own age -- thanks in large part to the North's conquest of the the South.  To this conquest we may also, I think, trace the destruction of the several states as buffers and defenses against an overreaching and domineering federal government, to whose influence no aspect of our lives is now immune.  And then there is the concept of total war, as put into practice by Union generals, most notably Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.  The evil, racist, backward, slave-holding South, on the other hand, did not practice total war.  Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee rejected the idea of deliberately making war on civilians.

-- It is worth noting, by the way, that in his celebrated and unabashedly pro-Union series on the Civil War, Ken Burns was careful to make clear the unpopularity in the North of abolition as a cause to fight for.  As for Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (which did not in fact free the slaves), it was decried in the North, not merely by Jefferson Davis.

-- Speaking of Jefferson Davis, have you never been struck by his close physical resemblance to Abraham Lincoln?

-- And speaking of Lincoln: recall that he said, in his Second Inaugural, that the Civil War was God's judgment on the entire country for the sin of slavery.  About 620,000 American soldiers died in the Civil War -- almost a quarter of a million more than died in World War II.  In this country, we enter the new year stained with the blood of nearly as many aborted babies as the total number of dead from all countries in World War II.  If it is true that 620,000 dead was the price we paid for the institution of slavery, what must be the punishment that awaits us for abortion? 

-- And then there are the micro-conflicts.  A small incident over the holidays got me to thinking about what it really means to win or to lose.  There are times when one wins by losing, and times when one loses by winning.  For example, if you engage in a contest of wills with someone who truly wants the best for you, you cannot win except by losing.  Of course, you must be able to recognize those persons who truly want the best for you; and the key is to know what it means for someone to want the best.  It does not mean what a lot of people think it means.  It means the opposite of what the world means.  Ultimately, it means that person wants you to be eternally happy in heaven, even at the expense of your temporal and transitory happiness on earth.

May your New Year be filled with the best, and may it lead you to eternal happiness.

Worldwide Adoration

Pope Francis asked that today, in honor of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, every parish in the world have a Holy Hour of adoration between 17:00-18:00 Rome time.  That was 9:00-10:00 a.m. here in the Mountain time zone, and very conveniently fills up the hour between the first two Sunday Masses at St. John's Cathedral.  The Host, placed in the cathedral's very beautiful, ruby-studded monstrance, was enthroned on the altar, surrounded by candles.  The hour ended with Benediction.  Plenty of Latin was involved.  

And, for the first time since I have attended the cathedral parish, silence reigned before Mass.  I am in the habit of arriving early on Sundays to pray the Rosary before Mass; but pretty soon, the cathedral fills up with people yapping and laughing and carrying on and generally behaving as though they were someplace else, until the noise becomes unbearable.  It is especially awful when there is a Baptism between Masses.  Today, however, a very different atmosphere prevailed.  Except for the occasional unavoidable noises, like coughs and sneezes, the cathedral was quiet.  People were on their knees, praying.  Some sat with prayer books or devotionals.  People coming in made every effort to do so silently.  If there was anyone there not praying, at least they weren't yakking, either.  

It should always be that way inside a church.  It's God's house, and the gate of heaven, and Jesus is always present there in the tabernacle.  Yet sadly, the uproarious din of the Novus Ordo Missae spills over into the hours outside of Mass, so that it's almost never quiet in churches, and hasn't been for a long time in a lot of places.  But the Blessed Sacrament, exposed in the monstrance and enthroned on the altar, makes a palpable difference.  We should have this hour of adoration every Sunday.  If the majority of Catholics -- even the Mass-goers -- no longer believe in the Real Presence, then bring them before their Eucharistic Lord, every Sunday before Mass, where they can have Him right in front of their eyes and be conscious of His presence.  He will take care of the rest.  

And I hope Pope Francis makes a habit of calling for worldwide Holy Hours.  This is a perfect use of our media of instantaneous communications.  Imagine a worldwide Holy Hour every month!  If this became a regular event, parishes would have the opportunity to adjust their Sunday Mass schedules if necessary, until Catholics in every parish on earth are kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament at the exact same hour, obtaining graces and blessings for themselves and the whole world.  This could not fail to have its effect.  Perhaps even, in the fullness of time, the conversion of every nation on earth.

In fact, we should write to the Holy Father and ask him.  Those who do not ask, do not receive.  Hopefully, some influential person will join in this petition.

Icebound

A couple of weeks ago, we had a snow storm here in the Treasure Valley, which dropped about 3-4 inches of white stuff.  This was followed by one of our famous inversions, featuring temperatures ranging from zero to the teens, coupled with bad air quality -- until last night, when we got frozen rain.  This morning, everything was encased in ice: very slick, very treacherous.  And I was dumb enough to go out to work in it, sprained ankle and all.

Looking at the 10-day forecast, it appears we will soon have a tropical heat wave with highs in the high thirties, though my hopes for temperatures in the forties appear to be dashed.  But even in awful weather like we've been having here, Divine Providence does not call in sick:

-- I have a walker with brakes to use over dangerous ground, and steel-plated hiking boots for support to my ankle.

-- I have Rock Star Parking at the courthouse -- and this morning, when the parking lot lay under about half an inch of solid ice, there, waiting for me, was the closest non-handicapped space in the whole lot.

-- My next-door neighbor has been good enough to de-ice the walkway out to the carport, and even cleared away all the ice from in front of my door.

Yes, I have a few things to be thankful for -- good practice for the eagerly-hoped-for coming of milder weather.

Fast for Vocations

The most evident mark of God's anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.  Instead of nourishing those committed to their care, they rend and devour them brutally.  Instead of leading their people to God, they drag Christian souls into hell in their train.  Instead of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are its innocuous poison and its murky darkness....

When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them.  That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, "Return, O ye revolting children...and I will give you pastors according to my own heart" (Jer. 3:14-15).  Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge visited upon the people in consequence of sin.

St. John Eudes, The Priest, His Dignity and Obligations

Go back and read that quote four or five times.

Let's face facts: the Church is in a deep crisis, and it starts with the laity.  There are not enough faithful Catholics.  The traditional nuclear family is giving way to  promiscuity and concubinage; the lives of the children born into such situations are a house of cards.  Catholics divorce at the same rate as the rest of the population.  Parishes are closing, not only because there are too few priests, but because so few of us in the pews actually attend Mass and support the Church anymore.  Many Catholics do not keep Sunday as a holy day, filling it full of unnecessary servile work or less-than-wholesome recreation.  Many Catholics do not know that theirs is the True Church, or even care whether there is such a thing as the True Church.  Many Catholics do not know the content of the Catholic Faith; many do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist; many think the Church's stance against intrinsic evils like abortion, contraceptives and gay "marriage" is stupid.  More than half of Catholics in the U.S. voted for Barack Obama, probably the most pro-abortion, anti-Catholic president in the history of our country.

In short: we, the laity, are a mess.  And since it is from the ranks of the laity that clergy and religious are drawn, it should come as no surprise to us to find that they, too, are a mess.  Congregations of women religious have gone off the rails, kicking the habit and embracing feminolatry, socialism, lesbianism, Eastern mysticism and all sorts of other poisons.  Catholic worship has degenerated to little more than a fourth-rate night-club act, with dreadful music, improvised rites and ham-handed attempts at humor.  Bishops run their dioceses as if they were middle-management bureaucrats instead of shepherds of souls.     Many priests give themselves over to worldly, and even sinful and downright disgusting, pursuits; the faithful ones are persecuted by their own brethren.  Many clergy of every rank are mired in modernism: rejecting the supernatural; accepting only the gray, the flat-footed, the pedestrian, the ugly as reality; regarding the Church as just another political institution instead of as the pure and spotless Bride of Christ; and reducing the miracles recounted in Scripture to mere psychological or meteorological aberrations, and God to a mere impersonal force, secondary in importance to Man.  And, of course, there are not nearly enough priests and religious, thanks in no small part to liberal chancery staff and superiors who assiduously weed out orthodox candidates.

The laity in the world, the religious, and the clergy all react upon one another: none of them can be corrupted without also corrupting everyone else.  Shrink the pool of faithful lay Catholics, and you shrink the number of faithful priests and religious.  When religious abandon their charisms, they are not obtaining conversions or supporting the work of the clergy with their prayers.  When priests go off the reservation, they are not forming faithful Catholics.  And the results spill over into the world at large: because we Catholics have ceased to be Catholics in more than just name, the Catholic faith is far less of a force to be reckoned with: indecency reigns in advertising and entertainment; our schools and universities are centers of leftist, atheist indoctrination; our economies are turning socialist; and our governments are filled with assorted crooks, grifters and totalitarians.

How do we begin to reverse this trend?  Step number one must be prayer and penance.  We must begin to make reparation for our sins and pray for help.  We cannot expect help unless we ask for it.

Accordingly, the Bl. Margaret of Castello Chapter of lay Dominicans in Boise, Idaho is undertaking a novena of fasts for vocations.  For nine consecutive Fridays, beginning next Friday, the chapter will fast for the following intentions:

1. For more vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

2. For good and holy bishops and priests and religious.

3. For the conversion of bad bishops and priests and religious.

We urge you to join us in this endeavor.  If you are also a Dominican, get your chapter or your house to join us.  If you cannot fast, please pray or substitute some other penitential act in union with the fast.  Since vocations come from us, the laity, we must act and not sit around waiting for the priests and religious to come to our rescue.

Then came the disciples to Jesus secretly, and said: Why could not we cast him out?  Jesus said to them: Because of your unbelief. For, amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you.  But this kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting.  

Matthew 17:18-20

P.S. Supertradmum is also putting together a fast on Friday, September 21st for a new President and a new America that puts God first.   Even if you are not an American citizen, go over and pledge your support!  Remember that America has always been the refuge of the downtrodden and oppressed from all over the world; if she falls, where shall we run to? 

Mrs. Kathleen Schuck, O.P., RIP

Mrs. Kathleen Schuck, O.P., in 2007.

Kathleen Schuck and her husband Jim were charter members of the Chapter of Lay Dominicans of Bl. Margaret of Castello, Boise, Idaho, Western Province of the Holy Name of Jesus, being among that first group to make their perpetual professions on the Vigil of the Assumption, 2004.  Jim died less than a year later and was the second member to be buried in the chapter cemetery in Homedale.  Determined to make merely temporary their separation after decades of married life, Kathleen had her own name inscribed on his headstone, and prepared for the day -- seven years minus 20 days thence -- when she would rejoin him.

But this was not a gloomy or dour preparation, as the photo above attests.  That was what Kathleen looked like most of the time, even after losing her hair and much of her strength to chemotherapy.  A master wood carver and maker of musical instruments -- particularly the mountain dulcimer -- Kathleen kept herself busy with her artistic pursuits; carving; teaching; traveling; her activities at her local parish and with the Dominicans, whom she served as our prioress, all of which she kept up until just days ago.  And praying, which she never stopped doing: she had rosaries all over her house, next to any chair she might settle in.  She greatly desired that everyone pray: her last phone call to me was a request that I find some good quality parts and make 100 rosaries for the Dominican mission in Mexicali.

Before I knew Kathleen, she had fought a battle with breast cancer, from which she emerged, not unscarred, but still strong and robust.  Then, a few years ago, came the pain in her shoulder that could not be accounted for as an injury: the cancer was back, this time in her bones.  She beat back this new assault forcefully, and kept up her activity as much as she could.  The Cross of Remembrance Memorial Garden for the unborn dead, slowly but surely taking shape in Homedale, became her life's work.  But although Kathleen enjoyed stretches of relative vigor, both the cancer and the side effects of its treatment gradually gained ground.  By Thanksgiving, her hair -- which had never had more than a touch of gray, even though she was past 70 -- was gone.  For some months before her death, she was on oxygen, and had to cut short her appearances at chapter and council meetings because of her fatigue.  Her last appearance at a chapter meeting was in April, where she announced that for the first time, the doctors had given her a timetable for survival: twelve weeks to twelve months.  To our sorrow, their low estimate has turned out to be off by about five weeks, proving once again that the practice of medicine is called "practice" for a reason.

And so today is Kathleen's birthday in eternity.  In a little while this date will be memorialized on the headstone that already bears her name, and under which her mortal remains will be laid to rest alongside those of her beloved Jim, with whom, we trust, she was reunited this morning at 9 o'clock, together with her mother and father, her siblings, Bl. Margaret of Castello -- whose relic she had at her bedside when she died -- St. Dominic, Our Lady, and all the saints and angels, before the throne of the Trinity, Whose light she sought faithfully always to live in and reflect to others.  

In matters of liturgy, Kathleen and I disagreed: she was for many years involved in the Charismatic Renewal and did not care for Mass in the Extraordinary Form, although she did tolerate it on those rare occasions when we could have it, if only for the sake of affectionately indulging the younger, traditionally-minded members of the chapter.  I trust she will not mind my smiling a little at the thought of her newly-made discovery that, in fact, it really is Gregorian chant that most closely resembles the song of the angels before the Throne of the Most High.  I trust too that, even though she was not a fan of Latin, she will not mind my saying for her, from the heart:

Réquiem ætérnam dona ei Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat ei. Requiéscat in pace. Amen.  

Partial Eclipse

On May 20th, the annular eclipse that swept across the western United States was visible from the Boise area as a partial eclipse.  I decided to grab a sandwich, a diet Coke, and go out somewhere where I'd have a good view and investigate.

Tension heightened as the day progressed because of the persistent presence of pestiferous clouds.  But as the eclipse began, the clouds actually turned out to be a good thing, making it possible to get a direct (if a little fuzzy) shot of the moon taking a bite out of the sun.  (Note: never look at the sun through the eyepiece of your camera.  My camera doesn't have an eyepiece, but if it did, I wouldn't have looked through it, because that would have been dumb.)

The last time I saw a partial solar eclipse was when I was a kid living in Southern California.  I watched the eclipse on the concrete floor of the garage, projected through a hole in the old wood-shake roof.  Remembering this, I decided to use the projection method to observe this eclipse.  After some trial and error, I finally got my jury-rigged pinhole projector to work.

This set-up might have been more elegant if I had been more organized.  The campaign ad covers a too-large hole in the cardboard.  

 

And here is the equally jury-rigged projection screen: a small notepad I use for grocery lists.

I remember that the world looked quite odd under the first partial eclipse I ever saw.  The sun was noticeably dimmer, as though it were cloudy out, but instead of the diffuse sunlight that shines through clouds, one saw the same clear-cut shadows as when the sky is cloudless.  This time, even at maximum eclipse, the sun did not appear dimmer because it had been partly cloudy all day. Here's the projection at the moment of maximum eclipse.  The sun was just a sliver, like a fingernail clipping, yet it would still have been far too bright to look at directly.   

After maximum eclipse, the clouds came back, and it was possible to get another direct shot at the sun, which is circled in red.  If you look closely, you can just make out the crescent shape.  (Note: see note above.  Never gaze directly at the sun without some safety equipment.)

I hope next time I have the chance to see a solar eclipse, I will be more organized and better set up.  I also hope one of these days to be in the path of totality.  Still, even a partial eclipse is pretty cool.    

The Bishop of Boise Speaks Out

The Bishop of the Diocese of Boise, +Michael Driscoll, has spoken out against the Obama administration's frontal assault on the Catholic Church and the First Amendment.  A letter from the bishop to the Catholics of Idaho was read from the pulpit on Sunday.

The bishop's letter starts out by stating the problem succinctly and forcefully (emphasis in original):

On January 20th, the United States Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule mandating that contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization be included at no cost to the insured in all health care plans.  This means that health insurers will be forced to include these immoral "services" in their health plans and that every employer, including Catholic parishes, schools, hospitals, charitable organizations, and and social service agencies, will be forced to provide and pay for this coverage that is a clear violation of Catholic teaching.

The bishop urges us to contact our legislators and ask them to work for the reversal of the mandate.  For the record, here is a list of Idaho's congressional delegates and how to reach them at both their D.C. and local offices (for an email form, click here):

Senator Mike Crapo (R)
U.S. Senate
239 Dirksen Senate Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-6142

251 East Front Street, Suite 205
Boise, ID 83702
(208) 334-1776

Senator James E. Risch (R)
U.S. Senate
483 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-2752

350 North 9th Street, Suite 302
Boise, ID 83702
(208) 342-7985

Congressman Raul Labrador (R)
1st Congressional District
U.S. House of Representatives
1523 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-6611

33 Broadway Ave., Ste. 251
Meridian, ID 83642
(208) 888-3188

Congressman Mike Simpson (R)
2nd Congressional District
U.S. House of Representatives
2312 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5531

802 W. Bannock, Suite 600
Boise, ID 83702
(208) 334-1953

In his last paragraph, Bishop Driscoll states:

As Americans and as Catholics, we are blessed with religious liberty which safeguards our right to live our principles and moral convictions.  Our civil laws should fully recognize and protect our right, obligation, and opportunities to participate in society without being forced to abandon or ignore the central moral convictions of our Catholic faith.

This is why we have the First Amendment, folks: not to shield the delicate eyes and ears of atheists from crosses, creches, or Christian utterances, but to protect the province of religion against government invasions like this mandate.  The time has come -- indeed, it is long overdue -- for us to fight for our faith.

Pray for the bishop and the priests of the Diocese of Boise, and for all bishops and priests, who are in the front lines in this war.    

Hall Monitor Nation

LEX NON ORITUR EX INJURIA: The law does not arise from a mere injury.

LEX NON FAVET DELICATORUM VOTIS: The law does not favor the wishes of the dainty.

LEX NON CURAT DE MINIMIS: The law does not care about trifles. 

-- Ancient legal maxims

Many people -- even those who do not associate the Gem State exclusively with toothless, mulletted rednecks in pickup trucks with bird dogs and gun racks, nutty militiamen out in the back woods, and white supremacists -- think of Idaho as a "red" state.  Idaho certainly has a fairly reliable record of voting Republican, at least during the course of my lifetime.  It might come as a surprise, then, to learn that the capital of this reputedly conservative state -- whose city council members once passed a resolution supporting Obamacare -- aspires to compete with places like New York and San Francisco in the Nanny State Playoffs.  And it is well on its way there.

Exhibit A: the Boise City Smoke-Free Air Ordinance, which took effect on New Year's.  It is now illegal, in the city of Boise, to smoke, among other places: 

-- In any enclosed public place, including privately owned bars and restaurants; 

-- In common areas in apartment buildings, condos and trailer parks (!); 

-- In private clubs;

-- In sports arenas;

-- In any common use area;

-- At bus stops;

-- Outside city buildings;

-- At sidewalk cafes;

-- In outdoor service lines (i.e., people lining up outside to acquire some service);

-- Within Grove Plaza downtown, and on 8th Street downtown, between Main and Bannock;

which leaves smokers with about 2 square inches within the city of Boise.  This ordinance even reaches into private residences that serve as child or adult day care centers, health care facilities, or private businesses accessible to at least one employee.  It makes it illegal to permit smoking in "public places" as defined in the ordinance, even though the public place is privately owned.  It also specifically gives private persons the right to press charges against offenders. 

So much for the "land of the free and the home of the brave."  Now we are a nation of hall monitors. 

Fortunately, there are some business owners who are gearing up to file a lawsuit against the city to challenge this idiotic ordinance, to the extent it reaches into the affairs of private property owners.  But the dismaying thing is that a lot of people seem to like this sort of government overreaching.  After all, they say, we don't smoke; why should we be subjected to other people's smoke?

But the popularity of cigarette smoke is beside the point.  A bigger question for the pro-smoking-ban bunch is: why should you be allowed to harness the coercive police powers of the state for the purpose of sparing yourselves a mere inconvenience?  Why should scarce police resources be diverted to protecting your delicate sensibilities?  Why should you be allowed to deprive the owners of private property of the right to decide whether to allow smoking on their premises?  Why should you deprive other, tax-paying citizens of the full enjoyment of public property, especially outdoor public property, just because they smoke?  Do they somehow pay less taxes than you do?  I myself have never smoked, and do not care for the smell of cigarette smoke.  But the solution to my problem is very simple: I just don't patronize businesses that allow smoking on their premises.  No muss, no fuss!  And if somebody near me is smoking out in the open air, so what?  Within a second or two, the smoke will blow away. 

And by the way, this ordinance is bound to strike where least expected.  As bad as an assault on private property rights is, this smoking ban is a lot more than that.  Consider the following provision, which defines "smoking" (emphases added):

“Smoking” means inhaling, exhaling, burning, carrying, or possessing any combusting (heated, lit, or smoldering) tobacco or any other substance, whether contained in a cigar, cigarette, or pipe, or any other object. Smoking does not include possession of an unlit or unheated cigar, cigarette, or pipe. Smoking does not include use of an e-cigarette which creates only a vapor without any smoke.

Notice that this definition of "smoking" is broad enough to cover other burning substances besides tobacco, such as incense.  The only religious exemption to the smoking ban is American Indian ceremonies.  The anti-incense crowd already exerts a disproportionate influence at local churches.  How long will it be before somebody calls the cops on the Catholic Church for incense at Mass, or in a Eucharistic procession?  Worse yet (and heaven forfend): how many parishes will buckle and cut out incense altogether for fear of prosecution?  Would this not be unconstitutional prior restraint?  Have the enemies of the Church not got enough bludgeons to beat her down with?

Don't think it can't happen.  Look at what already has happened.

Bells

When I was a kid, there was always the sound of church bells in the air.  I could hear the bells -- or, more accurately, the carillon -- from my parish church, St. Catherine of Siena in Reseda, California, all the way from home.  There were the Westminster chimes that ushered in every hour; there were the Angelus bells three times a day; there was the single tolling bell for Mass; and then there were the special chimes at noon, followed by bell renditions of hymns.  I don't know whether they got the bells up and running again after the Northridge earthquake, but I hope they did.

Now I seldom hear church bells.  I cannot hear any from my home, although there is a Catholic church nearby that has a carillon.  The bell is rung a few minutes before Mass at my cathedral parish, and sometimes when I go downtown for Mass on Sundays I can hear a bell or two from the Protestant churches.  But these days, the world is full of sourpusses who complain to the sourpusses on city councils about church bells exceeding decibel levels.  The liberal First-Amendment rampart watchers are nowhere to be found when local governments and courts silence church bells; the overall effect has been to substitute them with less edifying ambient sounds.

And so we turn to, of all places, YouTube for edification.  Today I felt like listening to church bells.  Here is an interesting video on the bells of Cologne Cathedral in Germany, where you can hear each of its individual bells -- some of which go all the way back to the Middle Ages -- and then all of them together (plenum):

And here is one where you can just listen to all of them for a while:

 

Amil Myshin, R.I.P.

Today, a multitude of family, friends, colleagues, judges, prosecutors and court staff descended upon the chapel at Summers Funeral Home in downtown Boise to pay their respects and say farewell to a great lawyer and remarkable human being.

Three years was all too short a time in which to get to know Amil Myshin.  I enjoyed going up to the fifth floor of the courthouse and watching him on his hind legs, when my own calendar permitted.  But the best thing was the lunchtime conversations.  Amil was a great raconteur.  Whether he talked about old cases, or his sons, or his days in the service, or my first boss who used to work with him, or his scuba-diving adventures, it would have been a delight -- if it were possible -- just to sit and listen to him tell stories all day.  And laugh.  Amil had so much laughter in him that it would have taken a concerted effort not to laugh with him.  It was as much fun to watch Amil laugh as it was to laugh oneself.

The Gospel of Matthew says that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks; and so it is possible to learn a lot about a man as much by what comes out of his mouth as by how he conducts himself.  What sort of a man did Amil's words and conduct reveal?  It was clear that he enjoyed a good fight; but -- if one can trot out a metaphor -- he was no common, swaggering street brawler.  Amil was a gentleman.  And -- to extend the metaphor -- it was not for the sake of seeing blood spurt from wounds or feeling bones crack beneath his fists that he enjoyed a fight, but for the contest of wit and skill and endurance that he carried out with quiet dignity.  And he never forgot that matters of life and death hung upon his skill.  His courage always rose to match the stakes for which he fought, stakes than which there are none higher in the legal system.   

What mark should decades of defending accused murderers -- looking at crime scene and autopsy photos and poring over gruesome reports and listening to witness accounts of unspeakable brutality and witnessing a client's execution -- leave on a man's soul?  No lawyer or his family could come entirely unscathed through such ordeals. Amil was no different: he took some real blows on account of his work.  The danger of taking on hardships is that we may permit the toughness they build up to carry over into callousness.  But during the time that I knew Amil, in the last three years of his life, he was kindly, patient, gentle, modest, self-effacing, understanding, and cheerful.  In fact, considering all that he had seen and gone through over the years, his character was as remarkable for those things that it lacked as for those that it possessed.  Amil's vocabulary was not always the cleanest -- that is unfortunately a side effect of our trade -- but his professionalism was such that I never heard him utter a harsh word all the time I knew him, even in his moments of exasperation.  Even a consummate professional like Amil must occasionally let slip some flaw, whether he wants to or not; yet every time I interacted with him, I was struck by the complete absence in him of bitterness, egotism, pettiness, vindictiveness, meanness, vanity or pusillanimity.  And I could not -- cannot -- help considering how poorly my own behavior and attitude compared with his.  Even the last time I talked with him, when he was obviously ill and weak and distracted, he was uncomplaining and dignified, and still managed a few laughs.

But years and years of high-pressure, high-stakes, high-profile cases take their toll at last.  Amil shone out as a clear beacon over miles of rough seas, but the tower that housed that beacon was crumbling.  He struggled hard to go on preparing his last big case, even as his strength ebbed, until finally even his still-robust spirit had to yield to his physical exhaustion.  By the close of August 6th -- the Feast of the Transfiguration -- all was over.

Greater love than this no man has, said Jesus, that he lay down his life for his friends.  What I saw of Amil, especially toward the end, convinced me that he did indeed lay down his life.  Who were the friends for whom he laid it down?  Anyone who has ever worked as a public defender, as he did, could rattle off a fairly accurate description.  Clients who worked hard to try his patience.  Clients who called him 20 or 30 times a day and left threatening or raging messages on his voice mail.  Clients who tried to manipulate him and play him off against his co-counsel.  Clients who complained about him.  Clients who wrote nasty letters.  Clients who tried to make trouble for him and get him fired off their cases.  Clients who would do and say things publicly that would blow weeks' worth of his hard work all to hell, and create weeks' worth of additional work into the bargain.  Clients who fought him every step of the way, even though he was their only friend in the whole system.  Yet, for their sakes, he was glad to give all he had, even the strength to go on living.  Amil savored the thrill of combat, but in the end, he fought -- and died -- for love.

I do not know whether Amil thought of it in those terms, but with all that he had and all that he did for them, he loved every last societal outcast that he defended, no matter what they stood accused of or what they had actually done.  I do not know what level of commitment Amil had to the Christian faith, but he clearly knew something about sacrificial love.  He clearly knew, and lived, the love that is not a warm, fuzzy feeling, but an act of the will.  He knew, and lived, the love that wills to serve, freely and voluntarily, to the best of one's ability -- and even to the death -- people one knows will repay one with nothing except rank ingratitude.  Can such a love as this fail to cover a multitude of faults?

I trust that, in that supreme moment, when Amil stood before his God in the greatest trial of all, upon whose outcome depend the greatest stakes of all, it did not.  R.I.P.

Amil Norman Myshin, Jr. (1946-2011)