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Much blogging this past week – click back to see what I’ve been writing about – some more Spain stuff – including the bullfight – some bookblogging, etc. Also started the week with Mary Magdalene Thursday and today. Her feast is Monday, so I’ll be sharing big chunks of my book on her.
Image on right from the Loyola Kids book of Catholic Signs and Symbols.
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Daniel Mitsui on rebuilding Notre Dame:
The commentary in the aftermath of the tragic fire at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Paris is telling of this. Certainly I understand the dread that its reconstruction will be entrusted to some architect with no religious sensibility. But the reactionary demand to rebuild Notre Dame exactly as it was before is equally troubling. If the faithful never saw in a church fire the opportunity to build something even better, the Gothic cathedrals would never have existed at all. (There are rumors even that the Archbishop of Reims started the blaze himself in 1210!)
I fear that at some time soon, one of the great artistic or architectural treasures of Christianity will be ruined more completely and irreparably than Notre Dame, and that in response to demands that it be rebuilt exactly as it was before, living artists will dismissed from the task as too untrustworthy. Instead, a computer model will be constructed from the photographic record, and everything will be 3D printed in concrete or faux wood. Once that happens, a precedent is set, and living artists and architects thenceforth will compete, most likely at an economic disadvantage, against computers imitating the old masters.
Interesting observations on “The New Evangelical Liturgy:”
The problem is that the new evangelical liturgy leaves out a lot of authentic Christian congregational worship. There is very little concern to include the congregation; almost everything is “going on” on the “platform” with the congregation watching and listening. Take away the “sermon” (inspirational talk) and what happens is almost exactly what happens at a Christian rock concert. (Yes, I have attended them—from Petra to Tree63 to Casting Crowns!) In fact, one of my only claims to fame is my one time close association with Petra. I was the organizer of one of the group’s earliest concerts. They asked to perform at a Youth for Christ event that I was in charge of and they took a free will offering. They were almost completely unknown then.
How a church should worship is clearly dictated in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians (14:26) the Apostle Paul says that when Christians come together “each one” should have something to contribute. I take that to mean congregational participation. It may not be possible in today’s larger churches for literally “each one” in the congregation to contribute something distinct to the worship service, but to leave congregational participation aside entirely, to care nothing about it, to put on a display of musical talent without inviting the whole congregation to participate (other than watch and listen) and make that possible is unbiblical.
Now. Take some time and think about that. Remember, this is from the perspective of an evangelical Christian. It is, perhaps, a teachable moment, not only for folks from these traditions, but for Catholics themselves, to reflect on the nature of sacramental ritual and how it – despite getting a bad rap for being something that’s done by an ordained minister that the rest of us watch – isn’t that at all. To reflect on how a sacramental vision and reality is deeply participatory, when you actually understand and engage with the theology and spirituality of it.
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Let’s move on to education, since school’s coming up. And yes, for some people in this part of the world it is. Many of you Yankees and others won’t be heading to the classroom until after Labor Day, but down here, kids are sadly counting down the days – and for some systems, they’ll be going back in about three weeks.
(We’re homeschooling high school – and because of travel, that means, that Kid has been doing light Algebra II and Latin all summer.)
So in honor of school – here’s a set of essays from the Cato Institute on Unschooling!
I see the real problem with schooling is that it misleads parents, policymakers, and the public with respect to what is most important in getting an education. With the right enculturation, schooling may be superfluous, and unschooling works brilliantly. With the wrong enculturation, schooling seems to be at best limited with respect to its impact. Thus the entire existence of schooling as the dominant form of education has distorted the conversation around education. This is why I say that Bryan Caplan’s book should have been called The Case Against Schooling, not The Case Against Education.[10]
From this perspective, the schooling system is committing fraud by encouraging people to believe that learning the content of schooling is a necessary or sufficient condition for success. I see the next frontier in learning and human capital development to be a focus on cultivating specific cultural elements: intellectual dialogue, entrepreneurial initiative, self-discipline, and others. We need to create new and better subcultures of learning. But we are not likely to do so as long as schooling is the dominant paradigm. Simply adding Angela Duckworth’s “Character Playbooks” to a schooling curriculum will not result in the development of key character traits among populations in which they are absent.
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And on the polar opposite end of the spectrum, this article from New York magazine on conflict in Brooklyn’s Grace Church School – a prestigious and tony preschool. The conflict itself is not that fascinating – basically a new director had very poor skills in dealing with personnel, and put all of her energy into developing relationships with celebrity and fashionista parents – but this will give you a glimpse into the lives of the One Percent – and make you glad you’re in the 99.
Each spring, Grace Church School holds an annual exmissions meeting, where the parents of Threes, soon to be Fours, are invited to learn about the stressful process of applying to kindergarten the following year. The meeting takes place in the basement — the same room the gala is normally in — although in this case, no one is having fun. Parents who have been through the terrifying gauntlet are invited to share their experiences, and the director gives an overview. “This is the first time in your life you are not a consumer,” was how Morgano liked to open the event. All the control belonged to the elementary schools. For parents accustomed to control in every aspect of their lives, the prospect was terrifying. “You’re like, palms sweating, edge of seat,” one says.
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Novel read over the past two days: The Honorary Consul by Greene. (Borrowed through archive.org) I might blog more about it next week in a Digest post, but as I read it, a thought came to me: Greene is often critiqued by those who characterize his central theme as sinners-are-the-best-saints. It really is interesting that so much of his work centers on a weary man ensnared in some sort of web of weakness and sin who ends up doing something decent, heroic or even saintly. It’s central to this novel – and not just with one character, but two (and maybe three). It became pretty clear in reading this one that the point is not to suggest that a person who is a self-conscious “sinner” has an inside track on holiness that the self-consciously striving-for-virtue person does not. It’s more another, slightly different version of the Flannery O’Connor take on things.
O’Connor’s characters are all afflicted by pride, and must be bludgeoned in extreme ways in order to be open to grace.
Greene’s protagonists are enmeshed in sin and darkness, but even they have the capacity to be open to goodness working through them – when put in extreme circumstances in which the stakes really become very, very clear and even, we could say, black and white.
Either way, it’s all about what it takes to shake us up, get us to see and most importantly, get us to act: a burning bush in the wilderness, a vision of fire, being tossed to the ground and blinded, a strange girl hurling a book at us in a waiting room, or the possibility of seeing an innocent man be killed.
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Remember my short store The Absence of War, is available here. I have sharing enabled on it, so you can get a few reads for the price of one, I’m thinking.
Also, please check out Son #2’s new novel, Crystal Embers here. (If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free) And his blog, focused mostly on film, here.
Reviewer Steven McEvoy on Crystal Embers:
I would describe this story as a retelling of the tale of Saint George and the Dragon, but from a completely different angel. George has been released from his role in the military after a long and hard-fought civil war. He has been sent home, but home is his men, the battles, and the adventure. He does not know where he fits, and a quiet desperation keeps gripping him. His wife, Virginia, is lost in her own way. Her husband that returned from war is not man she remembers leaving or had built up in her memory. And she is no longer in charge or the lands and has a stranger sharing her bed. George is known as the hero who ended the war. She mourns the loss of her child, and it is a child he never met. They encounter a dragon on their land and both of them become enthralled by it. But everyone expects the hero of the war to kill the dragon.
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