Transforming a Suburban Parish

If you've been watching the links on our right sidebar, you might have seen this story from Beatus Est. But the links move pretty quickly, so in case you missed it, I wanted to put it here, front and center. The story needs little introduction; it explains how to turn this...



into this...



...and with minimal disruption and logical revenue flows to fund the project. So give the story a quick read. I think you'll be intrigued.

50 Beers to Drink Before You Die

Some time ago I came across this list of 50 Beers to Drink Before You Die. It includes some of my favorite beers, among them Rogue Shakespeare Stout (pt 1), Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barley Wine (pt 1), Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA (pt 3), Theakston Old Peculier (pg 4) and Stone Arrogant Bastard (pt 10). It's also got some beers I'm now interested to try, such as Orkney SkullSplitter (pt 4) and the Great Lakes Brewing Co. Edmund Fitzgerald Porter (pt 6).

I highly doubt, however, that this is the best beer list out there. In spite of the nice pictures and little write-ups, there are some omissions, such as Delirium, either the Tremens or the Nocturnum. And what about Weyerbacher Heresy? And where was Chimay Blue among the Belgians?

See any favorite beers on the list? Beers that you would add? Lists you'd recommend? Beer experts of the world: please share your wisdom!

In any case, I'm thankful for interesting beers, the people who make them and those who write about them.

Natural Law Theory: George and Arendt

The St. Thomas law school recently hosted Robert P. George, fellow at Princeton and natural law theorist, to receive the Humanae Dignitatis award and speak on “Natural Law, God, and Human Dignity.” His theory of natural law is that it is only known to us humans when we experience it. Knowledge of natural law is not innate, but rather experienced – something that we do rather than that is done to us. Through experience, we come to understand basic moral norms of natural law. The one he cited was a variation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Act so that your action furthers the fundamental reason for man’s existence. Virtue he defined as the habit of acting in accordance with these moral norms.

Yet he did not seem to answer what sort of experience we must make. While it might be assumed that man will always act reasonably, and therefore always act in pursuit of his good, George also noted that whole societies have been misled as to the nature of the good and yet have continued to act entirely reasonably. In fact, as Hannah Arendt describes in her study The Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem, the entire German society in World War II seemed to have turned conscience on its head, and accepted that state of affairs. She writes: “[C]onscience as such had apparently got lost in Germany, and this to a point where people hardly remembered it and had ceased to realize that the surprising ‘new set of German values’ was not shared by the outside world.”

Supporting her theory was the fact that Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the “Final Solution,” was an ordinary man with an ordinary sense of morality, who had initially experienced great aversion to the idea of “liquidating” the Jews. Until that order was given, he had simply assumed the “Solution” was to make Germany judenrein by expelling, exporting, and otherwise physically removing Jews from the country.

He felt these twinges of conscience for approximately 10 weeks, Arendt reports. At the end of that time, he attended the conference at Wannsee, devoted to the particulars of the Final Solution. Everyone, without exception, states Arendt, spoke as though the immorality of the plan was not even in question: it was a nonissue. Since his superiors had adopted this position, and, indeed, everyone Eichmann knew, he gave it no further thought. (Eichmann stated that no one, not even the local religious leaders, ever pointed out to him the evil he was engaging in. Instead, they worked within the “law,” obtaining “exceptions,” but never directly challenging the law.) Eichmann had corrupted Kant’s principle (“act so the principle of your action can become the principle for general laws”) to mean “Act so that the Fuehrer, if he knew what you were doing, would approve.” Hitler’s will was substituted for Eichmann’s and was regarded throughout Germany as having the force of law.

The horrors of the Holocaust are well-known. Following the end of World War II, at the Nuremberg Trials, international law began to adopt a minimum moral standard that would apply regardless of what the law of the individual country had been at the time the crime had been committed. The source of this moral standard was to be what all nations regarded as moral. But, again, there remained the question, which is coming back in the recent debates about medical conscience clauses, whether the conscience can be relied upon to define an objective morality, or whether, particularly if knowledge of morality is predicated on experience and habits of acting, conscience is simply relative and dependent on individual experience, cultural norms, and other subjective and changeable criteria. If the latter, there is no guaranty that something like the Holocaust will not happen again.

Catholic, Lay and Modern, All at Once

I hope that this blog is more than just a collection of links, references to other people's work. I hope we generate real content, sharing new ideas and insights. Nevertheless, today I am once again simply going to recommend the ideas of someone else.

Three someones, in fact: The Magdalene Sisters. These pseudonymous blog writers describe themselves as "three women trying to figure out what it means to be Catholic, lay, and modern, all at once."

The other day I was trying to explain to a friend why I'm a reader. One of the things I like is the honesty about living the Christian life. I think they're good about sharing what's really going on in their lives, without giving undue details.

Maybe I've only picked 'em up because I don't have a lot of Catholic conversations in College Station, I suggested. But there's more to it than that: I kind of feel like I'm just keeping up with thoughtful friends of mine. Except I don't know them. That might sound creepy, but perhaps it makes some sense.

I've had moments of, "Yes, I deal with that too!" or "What? Really?!? Women think that way?!?" or "Wow, they're trying to live the Catholic life with way more sincerity than me. I'm humbled." or "Hmm... that sounds like interesting reading." Granted, it's kind of geared toward a female audience, but I find it's still very worth reading: grappling with what it means to be Catholic in the modern world.

Is reading about the personal, professional and spiritual struggles of three anonymous women voyeuristic? For some it might be. But I have found it interesting, insightful and uplifting. And something more: charming, you might say. I may have an inflated appreciation from being a regular reader, building, over time, a sense of who these women are and where they're coming from. Their blog is probably not for everyone, but it's one of my favorite reads.

The Things We'll Do for Art's Sake!

The things we’ll do for art’s sake!

Some people, worshipers in the cult of genius, will attribute to artists a godlike status, exempting them from the normal rules of morality. Fortunately, most people would shy away from such a repulsive conclusion. Aspiring artists will show their devotion to art not by explicit artist-worship but simply by devoting their energy and talents to their chosen field. Practice (and study) makes perfect, right? A professional violinist will practice for hours each day perfecting his technique and learning new music. A serious sculptor will examine the works of past masters and learn more about the materials he uses.

Some artists, though, will resort to more extreme measures. Robert Schumann allegedly permanently injured his right hand when, in an attempt to strengthen his weaker fingers, he used a device that held back one finger while he played the piano. Schumann didn't realize that what the device really did was destroy the finger--as well as his concert career. A little manic, no?

But, what happens when the potential artist is only a child, and his parents really want to encourage him in his art? How much pressure should they put on their child? To turn to a more specific example, what about a young boy who is a promising singer? It would be a shame if all his hard work went to waste when he hit puberty, wouldn't it? So, why not just castrate him?

What, that isn’t a reasonable solution? In the last few years a lot of ink has been spilled over the phenomenon of overbearing parents who force their children to become the perfect golfer (e.g. Tiger Woods), or pianist, or whatever. But, at least contemporary parents have not been castrating their boys to advance their singing careers. But, in the 18th century, castration was a surprisingly—shockingly—widespread practice.

The theory was that that for certain physiological reasons only men—albeit evirati (“de-manned men”)—were capable of singing certain soprano pieces. Half a man apparently had more singing power than a whole woman. In the 18th century, the sound of a castrato's voice was all the rage in the opera world, and even in church music. Some historians have charged that besides aesthetics, the Church's restrictions on laywomen singing in church led to the widespread use of castrati. However, it should be pointed out that Pope Benedict XIV had already tried to ban the use of castrati in churches as early as 1748, though this attempt was unsuccessful. No matter what the cause was, at the height of the castrati craze in the middle of the 18th century, hundreds of parents, many of them poor, were castrating their young boys each year. The key advantage in the parents' eyes was that they could assure their boys entry into a lucrative career. Of course, there were also distinct disadvantages. As one might imagine, the surgical procedure was probably not entirely sanitary. Furthermore, these castrati didn't really have any options in life besides singing. (Marriage, of course, wasn't really an option either.)

One (the only?) benefit of the French Revolution is that it seems to have brought castrati into disrepute, since they were closely associated with the reigning fashions of the ancien regime. The last opera to be written specifically for a castrato was probably Giacomo Meyerbeer's Il crociato in Egitto in 1824. In Italy, the use of castrati was outlawed upon unification in 1870. However, it actually survived into the 20th century in the Vatican, until Pope Pius X, with the cooperation of Don Lorenzo Perosi, finally ended the practice in the Sistine Chapel choir. In fact, there are some early sound recordings of castrati available, such as this clip of Alessandro Moreschi singing the Ave Maria.

The phenomenon of castrati is one of the more memorable examples of the mania which art is capable of inspiring: otherwise sane parents mutilating their young boys. But, there must be other examples of this type of behavior, such as Schumann's finger. Is there any general explanation for this mania, or is this phenomenon too idiosyncratic to admit of one general explanation? If you can think of an explanation, please let me know.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

While living at the Quincy House I developed a love of Wes Anderson films (and of one of Anderson's gurus, Whit Stillman). At the time I noticed that Anderson was working on a version of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. At last, that effort is coming to fruition.



I remember enjoying Fantastic Mr. Fox quite a lot as a child. It would be interesting to read it again, (a) to see if I still enjoy it and (b) to see if Anderson's take is a faithful one. From the looks of it, he has taken certain liberties with the story. This is not, in my view, necessarily a bad thing. When translating a work from one genre to another, slavishness can sometimes fall flat. I am hopeful, however, that Anderson has produced a film which works well on the screen and is faithful to the heart of Dahl's work (even if not quite every line).

Thanks go out to the oodles of people who simultaneously brought this trailer to my attention.

Conservatives & Libertarians (Part II)

As a short addendum to my earlier post on conservatives and libertarians, I just wanted to post a link to an article by Friedrich Hayek entitled "Why I Am Not a Conservative." This article, then, could serve as the libertarian counterpart to Russell Kirk's essay on conservatism's superiority to libertarianism.

One of the essential differences between conservatives and libertarians, according to Hayek, is the conservatives' "fondness for authority." This fondness for authority is based on its "fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces" and its "lack of understanding of economic forces." All of this is "difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty." Fighting words?

For those of you not familiar with Hayek, he was a famous economist (Nobel Prize laureate in 1974), and one of the key figures in the Austrian school of economics. In other words, he was a libertarian or a classical liberal. His most famous book, at least among the general public, is the now classic Road to Serfdom in which he attacked the creeping socialism of every major political system in the world at the time--Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, the New Deal in America, and similar programs in the other Western democracies.