The Musical Priest

From the poet W. B. Yeats: Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.  Grant Gallicho , a reporter for Commonweal, reported July 1st that Archbishop John Nienstedt is "being investigated for 'multiple allegations' of inappropriate sexual conduct with seminarians, priests, and other men." It should be noted immediately that this accusation does not involve minors. Nevertheless, the fact that Archbishop Nienstedt has been a vocal opponent of gay-marriage and, in 2012, reportedly committed $650,000 to support an amendment to the Minnesota state constitution that would have defined marriage as between one man and one woman. This effort, as Gallicho notes in his piece, failed to pass.  Not surprisingly, the accusation against Nienstedt has elicited the...

Leave it to the Catholic Church to dedicate a feast day to an internal organ. A cynic mutter, "What next? The Blessed Toe? The Immaculate Hangnail? The Miraculous Gall Bladder?" Such utterances notwithstanding, today marks the Church's celebration of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. Although understandably neglected by most of us - no children, after all, get an annual Sacred Heart vacation - it may be worthwhile to spend a few moments considering what it means to observe this solemnity so dear to the Society of Jesus.  The symbolism of the heart is hardly foreign. Top-40 songs croon melancholically about the "broken heart." Students feel devastated when the college they had "set their heart on" sends them a rejection letter. As loved ones struggle with an issue, one feels "heart sick." In the Scriptures, "hardness of heart" prevents Pharaoh from allowing the Hebrew people to leave Egypt and keeps the crowds gathered around Jes...

Images of the sacred are necessary, but since they inevitably become stabilized, reverence can become fixed and shackled to them, in bondage to them. Religions spawn idolatry because we resist being reminded of the impermanence of our images, even those of the Holy. ~William Desmond, Philosophy and Its Others I begin this post with the above quote because, to my mind, it captures an essential aspect of what might be considered our contemporary tendencies toward idolatry. Normally, when we hear the word idolatry , we think of things like golden calves and statues of false gods. At its root, idolatry occurs when we place something finite in the place of the infinite. While I can't say I've had much of an impulse to forge a golden cow, I'll admit that there are times when I'm seduced by other "idolatrous" images present in the world: riches, being honored, being powerful. It seems to me that many of us face the temptation toward idolatry quite frequently. No...

For those interested, a piece I wrote for the The Jesuit Post has gone live. It's a short essay drawing upon the thought of René Girard to look at some of the issues present in our media-fixation on the case of Donald Sterling. Scapegoating Donald Sterling

Two weeks ago, I took my five-year old nephew Quinn to see the new X-Men movie. Truth be told, I had no idea (1) if he'd like the movie or (2) if he'd be able to sit through it. Fortunately, there were enough action sequences to captivate his attention and he did manage to make it through the whole film.  The film opens with a bleak depiction of the future: Sentinel robots have effectively destroyed the planet. Once-beautiful and flourishing cities have been ravaged and there remains but a glimmer of hope that, through the use of their mutant powers, the surviving X-Men work together to correct history.  The X-Men narrative, like many superhero arcs, raises the question of a savior. Who is going to sweep in and rescue us from our woe? Who is it who has the power to stand up to the forces of evil, to resist the darkness, and lead us into the light? Superman. Batman. Wolverine. Wonder Woman. Spiderman. In each telling of the superhero's story, there emerges a figure w...

I realized that I would be a virgin forever, condemned to suffer rejection and humiliation at the hands of women because they don’t fancy me, because their sexual attractions are flawed. They are attracted to  the wrong type of male. I always mused to myself that I would rather die than suffer such an existence,  and I knew that if it came to that, I would exact my revenge upon the world in the most catastrophic  way possible. At least then, I could die knowing that I fought back against the injustice that has been  dealt to me. These are words taken from the 101st page of Elliot Rodger's 137-page manifesto . Entitled "My Twisted World," it records a deeply troubled young man's effort to narrate his life. In one especially chilling passage, he muses on the abolishment of women and imagines constructing concentration camps where women would be "deliberately starved to death." In an image evocative of the Tower of Babel, he imagines having an "enormous...

Stephen King, in the forward to 1976's Night Shift , writes the following: At night, when I go to  bed I still am at pains to be sure that my legs are under the blankets after the lights go out. I'm not a child anymore but...I don't like to sleep with one leg sticking out. Because if a cool hand ever reached out from under the bed and grasped my ankle, I might scream. Yes, I might scream to wake the dead. That sort of thing doesn't happen, of course, and we all know that. In the stories[...]The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.  As an unabashed aficionado of horror and fantasy, I know something of King's concerns: I, too, make sure my feet are covered each night by a blanket. I still hold my breath as I drive past cemeteries. I always make escape routes from buildings in the case of zombie attack. I often daydre...