A blog milestone

If I count a post I've scheduled for a later date (I do that sometimes), as of now I have written 10,000 posts for the blog since I began in 2010.  Not bad.  As I've said before, the original reasoning for the blog passed many years ago. Since then it's became an informal setting for me to just spout on about things, but usually not things in my own areas of expertise.  That's so I don't feel pressured to do much more than type off the top of my head, hit spellcheck, and then publish. A sort of 'sit a spell' place to bounce around ideas and observations.  Truth be told, its the comments more than my own ramblings I find the most valuable.  

But something interesting caught my eye.  It isn't that I've published 10,000 posts.  I've actually only published 4,913.  So where are the rest?  Left in mothball for the most part.  Those are posts, some of them quite long, that I had second thoughts about or decided there was a reason I shouldn't hit publish.  Some I've deleted over the years, most I keep around for reference if need be.  But that's over 5,000 posts I wrote out, then chose for reasons not to publish. 

Not sure why that made me think.  I'm conservative by nature, though not necessarily 'a conservative.'  That is, I tend to exercise restraint.  If I write fast and spellcheck fast, I nonetheless will sometimes let a post sit for days or weeks before I decide to hit publish.  And as is obvious, in at least 5,000 cases, I may think the better of it and decide not to hit publish at all. 

For instance, I saw a story about Pope Francis a couple weeks ago. Something about him and education.  It wasn't anything that surprised me.  But after about a half dozen paragraphs of fussing, and hitting save, I went back and figured it would do no good to publish.  One, there was nothing especially new about the complaint.  And two, to be honest, a more charitable take might have given a different spin than the one I took, and I could see how someone could take that approach.  So I decided not to publish.  That's why most of the over 5,000 posts sit there collecting digital dust. 

Just thought that it interesting I've not posted more than I have posted.  Plus, that it was an even 10,000 total was, I felt, noteworthy and fun. 

Our Catholic Conversion and where things stand

I've noticed a couple responses to my post below, and some have reached out to contact - dare I say console - me over the same post.  Still working on the borrowed computer, as funds just aren't there to get the main one fixed.  And that's cramping my time for blogging.

Blogging.  I started my blog several years ago  (2010 I think).  That was after about a year of suggestions.  They started in 2009, about three years after we entered the Church.  At that time, we were sort of bouncing about, trying to make ends meet, sure that something was going to come up in the not-too-distant that would get my minister back into high gear, albeit for a Catholic purpose.

I had worked with RCIA groups, and had done lecture series on the Bible and Church History.  I was advised to write a book.  Several who saw my series pushed my name to other parishes or other Catholic organizations to help me get my foot in the door.  Several who took part in my series advised me to get my thoughts together for writing and teaching and that grand ministry whose door was soon to open.

So with that, after kicking it around, I decided to start a blog.  One, just to get used to putting my thoughts into words.  It had been years since I was in school, and since I'm not a professional writer, the knack for writing my ideas down had gotten rusty.  Two, to engage others.  Hopefully people would come by and I could bounce off ideas and hear mine corrected. Three, I could sort of chisel out a focus - what was it that I was passionate about?

That was back in 2010.  Now, I've all but been told that there is no place for me in our diocese.  Having spent too long waiting, just trying to get by waiting for the grand door opening, and having encountered more than a few misfortunes during this time, we are no longer financially able to relocate to anywhere else.  Meaning that for all intents and purposes, there is no ministry opening for me.

With that realization, it's difficult to keep the ministry flames alive.  I have a library, but to what end?  I've seriously thought of just giving it away (most of it).  I'm not sure what it matters if I keep up with things or even comment on them.  If I'm destined to be a paper pusher in a vast corporation, what is it that I think this regarding the current Pope or that regarding the change in times?

The blog itself has changed over time.  When I first started, I got a hat tip from some other bloggers, and early on there were several who commented.  The comments, in blog-fashion, sometimes got nasty.  Eventually I put a stop to those.   At that time, the comments section went haywire and no comments were able to be made.  I didn't mind.  I liked the relative quite.  Yet I didn't like just throwing things out without comments.  It seemed cowardly, as I think it is, to throw out a stinging commentary without a change for rebuttal.  So I brought the comments back.  But by then, many had left or ceased to comment. The comments never caught up to where they were.  Even now, except for a small handful who occasionally comment, the comment sections remain largely empty.

And if blogging with no comments is cowardly, commenting with no comments can also be tiring.  What's the point?  Is anyone even reading?  And since my ministry days are, at this point with this diocese and this bishop, done, why bother?  So I'm just not sure.  Right now, I've time to think of it.  My wife has a job interview this week.  How her working will fit with home school we don't know.  But we know we need funds and need them now.  With funds, we can do things like fix computers, and then, who knows?  For now, I've time to think about the blog, my library, and a great many things.  I'll return when I can.  Thanks for the prayers, and if anyone knows Bishop who's seriously a fan of Protestant minister converts, just let me know.  If not, a filthy rich Catholic wanting to depart with some of his or her excess will do.

I love The Ten Commandments

Not just the ones from the Bible, brought to us in various forms (depending on your faith tradition) throughout the centuries and the bedrock upon which Western morality was imagined in the Christian era.  Nope, I mean The Ten Commandments, the one, the only, the version that sticks in your mind despite all the knowledge you have indicating that Moses would not look like Charlton Heston.  Fact is, once you see this film, he will forever look like Charlton Heston, no matter how many Middle Eastern, Arabic, Palestinian, Egyptian or African portrayals Hollywood can muster.

The biggest blockbuster of the 1950s, and the first movie to give Gone With the Wind a run for the money, DeMille's TTC is Hollywood splendor at its best.  I know, we tend to chuckle at the acting style, the dialogue, the pomp and pageantry, as we do to anything produced before 1998.  We lament and mourn the bloated love story and interpolations that are added to appease a post-war WASP audience increasingly glued to the one eyed monster of the modern living room.

And yet, I'm not so sure those criticisms are fair, or even true.  Yes, DeMille's farewell masterpiece was a product of the era, as are our films.  As are any films or artistic endeavors.  But let's take a longer look, and see why I get as much of a spiritual jolt from this product of Hollywood dream manufacturing as I did from The Passion  of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth  or any other attempt by Hollywood to show me what the real Ten Commandments or any other biblical story really would have looked like.

First, the criticisms.  The main one for anyone schooled in the biblical narrative is that there are plenty of additions that have nothing to do with the history.  Careful now, some - such as Moses and his Ethiopian campaign - come to us from ancient sources and traditions, not unlike those traditions we Christians have (such as the three wise men versus just a bunch of Magi as it's written in the Scriptures).  DeMille says he consulted other ancient texts than 'The Holy Scriptures', and he appears to have done just that.

Of course not all of the characters or story lines are from anything other than the screenplay writer's mind.  The love story, the relational embellishments, the added fictional characters are a bit like the love story of Cameron's Titanic.  But here's a big difference.  To me, there is actually a point to be made from all of the Commandment's additions.  Cameron uses his fictional characters to drive home the point of 'bad evil rich people/good beautiful not-rich non-conformists'.  DeMille uses it to gradually bring into the story line the idea of God's working in history, despite everything going on in the world.  Despite our day to day living, our going to the fields and coming from them, or grand and selfish plans, God Himself has a plan long before we realize it.  When we're out there, seeing life being what happens while we're busy making other plans, God is ahead of the pack, ahead of the game.

And so first off, one of the reasons I like TTC is precisely because of the buildup, the love story, the embellished relationships.  It wouldn't take much to make this a non-biblical fictional narrative set in ancient Egypt.  And yet, add the biblical narrative, and the entire theme of the movie goes right, and can't be imagined without it.  I'd like to think that's what happens in our lives when we behave and actually listen to God: the narrative of our lives is suddenly altered, and no longer can we imagine it without God, even though we may have imagined it that way earlier.

If anything bothers me about the alterations, it's that DeMille lets God off the hook.  It isn't God who sends the worst plague, but it is Pharaoh who decrees the plague on the first born; God is seen almost childishly turning Pharaoh's words around, rather than being the source of the plague.  Likewise, it isn't God who hardens Pharaoh's heart, it's that rascally and randy Nefertiti.   She hardens it through her woman's ways.  Again, a slight but nonetheless important part of the Christian and Jewish narrative: Pharaoh's heart was hardened precisely because God hardened it.  Something Paul reflects on in his letter to the Romans.  Something that has caused believers to reflect on for eons.  But with everything else he was working through, I suppose it was just one extra thing DeMille didn't' want to grapple with.

Another thing I love comes from DeMille's legendary Cast of Thousands.  With no CGI, he manages to build sets and assemble an army of extras that could invade a city and shame most modern productions.  And though he is overseeing it all, keeping it all from spiraling out of control, he makes sure we see the little things, the small stories.  In the high point of the movie for me, the day of the Hebrews' freedom, DeMille mixes the grand, sweeping, almost boastful view of endless thousands of extras and props, with periodic looks at the little things: children trying to move a stubborn mule, a camel nibbling on a bunch of straw, the birth of a baby, a couple suddenly clasping hands as they march to freedom, an old man turning his fig tree over to be planted in the promised land he will never see.  It's beautiful,  and a reminder for those of us who beat each other over our opinions on the grand movements of history, most of which we will never have any say over, just how important those small times are.  For it's our small times we tend to remember, and can control.  God will get us to the big finish line.  Let's not forget the small times along the way.

The miracle scenes are, of course, cutting edge for their day.  And in fact, it wouldn't be until the recent era that we could hope to surpass them.  Listed among anyone's top ten scenes in cinematic history list is the splitting of the Red Sea.  Never one to mince with scholarly dispute, DeMille delivers it in the most spectacular way imaginable. As he does with everything else: the burning bush, the various plagues, the visions of Mt. Sinai.  It's all straight out of Sunday School and Renaissance art.  Nothing scientific.  None of the minimalist bare nature approach that imagines later biblical writers rewrote the events to make a spiritual point.  This is straight from the belief that our religion is the result of revelation, not inspiration   And the miracles are not some subtle 'strain your eyes with faith and you might be able to see the divine.'  Nope, these are flat out 'here's a miracle people!'  And if we must grapple with the question of unbelief in the face of such awesome demonstrations of God's power, we need only remember the punchline to the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: if they don't believe Moses and the Prophets, a man sent back from the dead won't convince them either.  Which is why the pitfall of 'prove God' is an exercise in futility.  Edward G. Robinson's dutifully sleazy Dathan could care less what he saw.  All the grand miracles were merely obstacles to his selfish agendas.  As they always are to those who refuse to believe.

Another thing DeMille's simplistic pre-critical approach shows is the real power and divine supernatural presence of God, and those he chooses.  There are no subtleties there.  There are no wimps.  There are no losers.  DeMille makes it clear that Moses was destined for something great.  He was just that good.  The man didn't sneeze that he didn't accomplish something grand.  And so it is, if you look at the Bible.  Despite the other Hollywood narrative, that religious types are typically good for little, in the biblical narrative, the movers and shakers picked by God were basically movers and shakers anyway.  Peter, based on what evidence we have, must have been a successful fisherman.  Matthew a tax collector  not bad in that day and age.  Paul was clearly an up and coming rock star.  David a shepherd who knew his way around big, bad guys before he ever met Goliath.  And Moses, at least somehow connected to the court, and in the film given enough talents and skills to right the US economy.

God is about big things.  Sometimes God is there, if we're not careful, to help us find our car keys or get jobs or get healthy.  While that can clearly happen, which is why we don't want to overlook the little things, God is also about the big things: humanity, the world, the universe.  God laid the foundations of the earth.  God draws the line of the seashores.  And in the end of days, God is a nightmare, a terror for those who reject him, so much so that they ask for the hills and mountains to fall upon them to escape his wrathful visage.  It is from this fate that we are saved.  It is from slavery that God intervenes to save us, and it is from the slavery of death that God intervenes to save us on that Christmas morn.  No need for rethinking what it may have been, just taking the stories as they come, and perhaps our religion should be bigger than we allow it to be.  In an age of religious minimalism, where hedonism and narcissism can shout from the rooftops but we've been convinced that religion must shut up and stay in the closet, it's nice to remember that perhaps that's not the way it should be.  Instead of churches that look like shopping centers, perhaps a good old grand cathedral that says 'here be God' would be nice.

Maybe it's me, but I miss some of that simple 'It happened because God made it happen.'  Moses and the biblical events actually occurred.   I don't mean six literal days or we have to get hung up on Jonah and the fish.  But the key events and people were real.  I've read too many Catholic scholars who seem to have tossed in the towel, and adopted a modern Catholic approach: whatever scholars say about the Bible being myth is true, but Jesus did too raise from the dead.  Sort of the same approach to science: everything science says about the universe and evolution is fine with us, but God does too exist.  As a result, I've read more than one Catholic bible study that relegates this entire foundational event to the realm of myth and legend.  Not myth as discussed by Tolkien and Lewis, but myth as made up fairy tale, lies, baseless fiction through which inspirational insights were gleaned by those with the cranial capacity to do so.

Call me odd, but sometimes I prefer the old meat and potatoes approach.  Moses was and did what the Bible says.  And if the miracles didn't look like DeMille's, they weren't just a bunch of natural things that insightful people spun accordingly.  I prefer the revelation rather than inspiration approach.  There's a heaven.  There's a hell.  Jesus came to save us from the latter, which is a definite possibility.  And when God does things  he does them Big, often with big people prepared to step out into the desert, even though they have no way of knowing how it will work.  The still small voice?  Sure. It has its place as well.  The foundry of  the wilderness, the deserted places where we must go to be tempted? They're out there, too.  And sure, a Babe in a manger is not an invading army.  But if Moses can really split seas and lead multitudes, perhaps it becomes less important to rethink the grand and glorious miracles of Easter and the Resurrection.  You never know. Anyway, that's why every Easter, we sit down with the kids, and reflect on a time when Moses was big, Heston was bigger, and the country that spawned this account thought better days were before us.  It is, after all, just what the Hebrews thought, and sometimes that's not a bad thought to have.

Can we handle the truth?

Remember all those years ago, when I posted this post?  I meant to make a broader point at the time, but life kept getting in the way, I guess just like it does when trying to look at clouds.  Anyway, to be honest, I can't remember the point I was going to make.  Here are the two clips again, perhaps they'll jar my memory:

Please watch this little gem of scene chewing on the part of Cruise and Nicholson, from the film A Few Good Men:

Now watch this speech, given toward the end of the film "The Caine Mutiny":

There are a couple excellent points from Jose Ferrer's wonderful speech at the end of the Caine Mutiny, and an interesting comparison.

1. While so many of us are going about looking at college, going to college, getting jobs, making money - we still have a military to thank for it.  It's hard to imagine that lesson being told to a WWII generation audience, but you sometimes get the impression that old Greatest Generation wasn't quite as homogeneous as we like to think.  But it's especially true today, when we all sit back, comfy in our little computer worlds, going on with life, using our troops as pawns on an ideological chessboard, shooting their mission in the foot, condemning everything they're fighting for, and then somehow,  in often superficial ways, declaring our undying love for what they accomplish while condemning their accomplishment.  My 14 year old said it best when he asked: if our wars are so evil, how can we praise those who volunteer to fight them?   Sometimes I think the war protesters of the 60s were more true to themselves: our war was evil and illegal  and our troops a bunch of baby murdering Genghis Khans.  At least that was honest, not the bizarre twist and turns on what we see today, from people who only know the end result and spend little time in the world really thinking about the alternatives.   We've come to take it for granted that American can lose war after war and it doesn't really matter.  I'm sure it matters to those who die and their families.  I have a hunch some day in the not too distant, it's going to matter to a whole lot of other people.

2. You don't follow a captain because you like the way he parts his hair, you follow him because he's the captain or you're no good.  As a Catholic, I'm sometimes amused at how some of my post-baby boomer brethren and sistren in the Faith seem to adopt that classic rage against the machine, all authority sucks, 'I don't lift a finger for a leader unless he proves his worth to me' attitude.  Funny how a movie made in 1954 based on a book written earlier about WWII already felt the need to make that point.  It only got worse.  Today, even the most Catholic Catholics seem to have a bit of this fight authority and authority always wins attitude, especially when they are young enough to remember the fond days of Howdy Doody.  And yet, how many then turn around and defend the priesthood,  the Church,  the Magisterium on grounds that, well, we should.  Should why?  You can't uphold the idea that authority basically sucks in every other way, hold impossible standards, exploit every flaw and failing, and then turn around and ask everyone else to do the opposite when it comes to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.  People in the ancient of days followed the authority of the Church because they followed authority.  They weren't idiots.  They weren't stupid.  They knew when they had rotten or corrupt leaders.  But they had a respect for the idea of authority.  Don't give me crap about adhering to Paul's admonition that we pray for our leaders and respect authority when even a barnyard jackass could see we do otherwise.  If as Catholics we expect the authority of the Church to be followed, we had best get back to a time when we follow authority in general and in real measure, not just vain words.

3. Notice that Jack Nicholson basically gives the same speech Jose Ferrer gives.  Same basic 'we stand on the line and keep you safe' speech.  Of course Ferrer is already using the third person - it's 'they' who do it, as opposed to Nicholson's me.  Plus A Few Good Men is classic pre-Gulf War liberalism:  the military basically sucks.  It's all rotten, down to our twisted and maniacal soldiers.  It was only realizing that our country would not stand for another war in which our soldiers were so maligned as the Vietnam war that critics of the war began walking that delicate -and at times borderline hypocritical - path of 'war of evil/praise the solders who fight it'.  So in A Few Good Men, it's heroic rebels out to save the world from the likes of Nicholson.  No mental illness here, and Cruise's character has nothing but scorn for him, as opposed to Ferrer who is sick with what he had to do.

But notice the difference.  Nicholson's famous guarding the wall speech is almost meant to be parody,  its very essence worthy of scorn.  This was the hip late 80s and early 90s.  We had met the enemy, and it was us.  Already the various breakdowns in basic assumptions that makes fealty to Mother Church seem almost incompatible with our modern cultural assumptions.  When Ferrer says it, he means it.  We owe our asses to these people  No matter how mixed up, messed up, screwed up, and no matter how flawed.

Which brings us to the final point.  It is clear when watching Caine that the breakdown of the Captain is the result of stress and strain, and disloyalty from his officers.  What he did may have been bad, but it was the result of being in the trenches.  Being in the thick of life.  Of struggling in the real world.

In the Internet world of the Blogosphere, I'm aware we're all really living in the world, and we all have our experience dealing with life.  But here's the thing.  To read blogs and comments, sometimes I think we forget it.  Oh, to deal one and one, face to face we can be sympathetic.  But once we hit the world of the internet, we forget what people go through.  We forget their humanity. Like the officers on the Caine, we forget that people may need understanding, not condemnation, scorn, and self-righteous contempt.

I'm not saying for a minute we shouldn't call spades spades, or speak out against evil, or wrong, or mistakes.  That's fair.  We are called to correct those in error after all (and accept correction, FWIW).  But we should remember that the purpose of apologetics or any type of rendering an account of our faith is to win SOULS, not arguments.  Nor is it to pat ourselves on the back for not sinning as bad as those folks, or obviously not being wrong about things that matter, as opposed to them.

As a pastor, it never failed that you had people come up and want you to call down the wrath of God on those sinners over there, those people who were blaspheming God or following heretical thinking.  Always those people.  But you get 'those people' into your study, into your office, and guess what.  You begin to find out that sometimes there are very deep and complex reasons behind why they think this or do that.  No, you don't condone it.  And yes, you point out the teachings of the faith.  But you don't call names.  You don't put them down.  You shouldn't say they don't love Jesus, believe the Bible is the Word of God, or the Catholic Equivalent - they ignore Church teaching or don't care about the Magisterium.   Because they are in the trenches like me, like you, like everyone else.

Unless you know what you are wrong about and are sure it doesn't matter, you had best damn well hold back on the outright condemnations and judgmentalism.   Unless you are sure your sins don't matter like theirs, you had best remember that the contempt and loathing you feel may have far less to do with pure fealty to Holy Writ, and maybe more to do with secret motives that you don't want anyone, including yourself, to know.  Because in the end, when we sit around and judge others who disagree here, or act there, about all manner of topics: abortion, death penalty  torture, war, social justice, Catholic doctrine or whatever, it might not be them after all.  It might not be the ones we're looking at who are the problem. It might be us who everyone else is looking at wondering if we have gone off the deep end due to stress and pressure, or have we simply become wicked and evil and are following paths to darkness. 

On Catholicism and limits

I was informed regarding my post on fasting that there are other Catholics who fast in the classical understanding of fasting.  Of course I know that.  Again, my point wasn't to say the hub of holiness spins on me.  It was to point out that a requirement put forth by the Church for giving up is actually something that many today would be hard put to achieve.  If the majority were eating three rounded meals a day, I could see it.  But why have such a limit at all?  Why not say: do without.  Yes, for medical factors there can be exceptions.  There were in most materials I read in the day.  But to fast like that?  Many's the day I can barely boast a full regular meal in a day.

Perhaps pushing the limit.  Just like the minimum requirements for being a faithful Catholic.  Maybe, just having minimum requirements at all.  Sometimes I wonder about that.  Why say 'minimum'?  Why not say maximum?  Why not push for the stars.  I am not alone in noticing that when it comes to the overall Church, fealty to the Church is at times lacking, and sometimes in numbers greater than other religious traditions, whether Protestantism  Judaism, Islam, Atheism.  Catholicism frequently scores pretty low in the devotion scale.  Yes, I know that Catholics nail it when it comes to charitable giving, and few other traditions can hold a candle to the generosity that come from the Catholic world.

But with that said, time after time when studies are done, it is found that Catholics as a group lag behind.  It's something that Catholics involved within the Church  through education, ministries, discipleship often lament. Perhaps one reason, just a thought, is this idea of the minimum.  The idea of the least I can do.  Perhaps pushing a little more.  Saying that we should strive for the most.  Give it all up, unless there are reasons we can't.  I think of my own boys.  Usually I don't tell the the least I expect from them.  I usually try to push them and tell them the most of what I expect.  It's probably not for no reason that God didn't tell the Israelites 'any lamb will do, but one without blemish would be better.'

Maybe, just maybe, if the Church turned around and said it expected weekly attendance,  giving it all up for fasting, monthly confession, and on and on, it would be seen as setting the bar higher.  Even if folks couldn't always make it, failing to make it 100% might result in 80%.  But being told 5% is the minimum goal might end up being 5% at tops, or even less to fail for far too many.

Just  a thought, as I kick things around this Ash Wednesday.

As a Catholic, how do I see election day?

Do I see this:

Or do I see this:

Truth be told, I see neither.  I understand that things will be about the same tomorrow, though we may see yet more chinks in the American breastplate, and depending on the outcome, will be given more evidence that the best days of America are finally behind her.  If Obama wins, my guess is we'll see the full fury of his agenda unleashed, for there is a sizable swath of America that has decided the time has come to end all this non-liberal stuff, and they see in Obama their best chance to succeed.  If Romney is elected, your guess is as good as mine.  I wish I knew where Romney stands on a host of issues, and perhaps it's that doubt that allowed me to cast a vote in that direction, rather than do nothing while the onward march of anti-religious bigotry gains momentum in our society.  It may not end socially just because Obama is defeated of course, but at least it won't have an advocate in the White House.  But either way, God will still be God, the Church won't crumble, and eternal life will still be waiting for those who kept their eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our Faith.

Why Wikipedia should be taken in small doses

So it is known to those who know us that we are a family of holiday junkies.  We love holidays.  We have Irish Feasts on St. Patrick's day, and cookouts on Labor Day and Memorial Day, July 4th isn't even worth debating.  We're even trying to find a custom for Arbor Day. Naturally the biggies get as much attention as our meager bank accounts can manage.  We put special emphasis on doing things, with the subsequent feasting being an integral part.

For some holidays, we extend the seasons depending on just how much fun stuff we can do as a family.  Even though, as Catholics, Advent is to be a time of quiet reflection in preparation for the coming celebrations, we still do plenty of 'Christmas cheer' leading up to it.  First, our society makes it darn near impossible to do otherwise.  Second, with the celebration of St. Nicholas, we can justify traditional festivities that came before the Nativity.

Another such season is Halloween, or All Hallows' Eve.  I know, and I call myself a Christian!  Well, as I've said before, the whole Halloween thing always set my blood to running since as a kid, I knew more than anything it meant Christmas was just around the corner.  Plus, Halloween is just too darn cool.  I don't mean the horror schlock that passes today, with gore and blood and guts and zombies eating human limbs and all.  Nor do I mean the sexed up 'dress your eight year old daughter like a porn star' rubbish that one finds typical in our enlightened age.

I mean the good old ghouls and ghosts and goblin hosts.  The stuff that sends that little shiver down your spine, that people in olden days used to believe, and today perhaps not enough.  It's noteworthy that the Catholic Church says nothing about there being no ghosts or a spirit world one way or another.  That's fine with me.  Call me a skeptic, but I don't put much stock in it.  I do appreciate the feelings people have for it, and find it a healthier pastime than those dedicated to insisting that there is nothing beyond the material.

So since I do appreciate that feeling that the dead might be getting closer to the living at this time, it's easy to sit back and find a ton of things to do.  We always have our annual 'Ghost Walks', where we frequent cemeteries and find old gravestones or mausoleums to remind us that from dust we came, and unto dust we will return.  Cemeteries with old iron fences or twisted and gnarled trees get a bonus point.  We also do lantern walks, with lanterns fashioned at Colonial Williamsburg that we purchased all those ages ago when we actually had, you know, money.

And of course, thanks to the Hollywood obsession with the subject, we watch a truckload of movies and specials.  Because of the hurried schedule our boys have in school, we've had to spread things out and start earlier than we used to.  Used to be we didn't even think 'fall stuff' until October.  But now we begin in September, with the first apple cider and pumpkin donuts.  We start by plopping in the old Universal monster movies: movies featuring Frankenstein and his Bride, the Wolf Man, Dracula, the Mummy, the Invisible Man.  Not all of them each year, but usually the first three in some order.

By October, we begin watching Halloween specials, including the Simpsons' all too cool Tree House of Horror series (at least the first seasons when they were good), the previously mentioned Disney special which kicks it off, and of course no season is complete without the Great Pumpkin.  We also do haunted drives, try to find haunted locales and see various haunted looking houses (Our area has its fair share).

Since the oldest boys are older, we can get some of the more intense films, though we won't show them productions stocked with sex or sexual imagery or too vulgar or gory.  At this stage, they are able to see a few of them, and one that now graces the annual schedules is 1981's Poltergeist.  We first watched it a couple years ago, but the younger of the older three weren't ready for it, and we spent several nights sharing our bed with them after the watching.  But this year we tried it again.  While the basic spookiness and creepiness (and Craig T. Nelson coolness) was still on display, there was only one renegade child up at night because of it.

Now one of the things the boys love to do, especially after watching a movie for the first time, is rush to the Internet to find out trivia and details.  And now we approach our long awaited point!  So, in keeping with their own tradition, the net was consulted for all manner of Poltergeist trivia.  Naturally, as Google is wont to do, one of the first resources to pop up on the list was the Wikipedia article.  We read through it together.  And then we came to the 'Reception' section.  That is, how was the film received.

And what did it say?  Why, to read the article, it was ever and always celebrated and praised.  It was loved. It was considered a classic.  It was better than Citizen Kane!  OK, it didn't say that.  But why should I worry about things like facts and details when Wikipedia, the number one source for information in the Internet Age, doesn't?  According to the article, it was well received and generally praised by critics.

Allow me to retort.  No it wasn't.  It is now.  And there are some now who dare suggest that this movie has more staying power than the other Spielberg movie released that year called E.T.  Yet when it came out, the response was divided at best, with virtually all the praise being reserved for young Elliot and his extra-terrestrial friend.  I happened to catch Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel all but panning  it, setting it against the oh-so superior E.T.  Everywhere that E.T. triumphed, Poltergeist faltered.  Nothing but low grade rubbish in comparison.  Spielberg should have focused on E.T. and let the horror to someone else.

Of course some critics may have liked it.  But the ones I heard locally, in addition to Siskil and Ebert, generally panned the movie.  As I said, it has certainly gained traction in recent years, and there are those who say it is now far better in the long run than E.T.  Others like them both.  Many look back at it as a turning-point in modern horror movies.  Yes, nowadays, most critics seem to praise Poltergeist.  But it was not always so.

How can the wiki article say otherwise? Easy.  Follow the sources.  Notice that all of the sources from that section are from works many years later.  They are not from the actual critics of the day.  One source was written in 2000 for goodness sake.  So we have a picture painted that simply is not accurate.  No matter how you slice it, having the two biggest movie critics of the age pan your film does not make it well received.

I know.  It's only a movie.  It's only a wiki article about a movie.  And if that's all Wikipedia did, I wouldn't care.  But it isn't.  From physics to history to politics to religion, Wikipedia is the stop off for every subject, and the place to go today for a growing number of people to find out information about the world.  Some people go nowhere else.  To them, citing Wiki is all you need.  And that scares me.

It's not the first time I've seen articles on Wikipedia that suggested bias or incomplete information.  This one just hit home because I have a vivid memory of the reviews of that time.  There are other examples, and therein lies the problem.  I follow the Jesus principle that if you are faithful in little, you'll be faithful in much.  Likewise, if you are reliable in little, you'll be reliable in much.  If Wikipedia is unreliable in a little thing like a Hollywood film, how in the world can I trust it to be reliable about some complex matter like bioethics or historical theology?  How can I go there to find out about George Washington, or learn what happened at Waterloo?

Sorry, but I imagine that there is much I don't know in the universe.  In fact, I'm sure of it.  So I have to have reason to trust something that is telling me about something I don't know.  If, based on the few things I know, I'm able to find errors and bias and inaccuracies, then how in God's green earth am I supposed to trust, when it comes to all those subjects I don't know, that it happens to be spot on?  I can't.  And because I try to resist the "Internet makes us smart" fad, I don't.

A note about the recent posts on gay rights

It might appear that I have been spending an inordinate amount of time on this issue.  Some might think it's because of some latent sexual identity problem I have.  Not really.  First, it's because I don't have time to blog much due to various reasons.  Second, when I sit down it seems as if the latest gay rights story is what everyone is talking about.  Third, the Gay Rights Movement is about the only thing getting what it wants right now. 

Our rather dull and incompetent president, who is no doubt a good family man and decent fellow, continues to fail on almost every front.  I mean it.  The guy is a joke at this point.  If everything was equal and he was a Republican, (and be honest, a white Republican), why there probably would be calls to remove him from office.  As it stands, the liberal propaganda machine in our educational, media, and entertainment industries are bending over backwards to find something - anything - for which they can praise him.  And in 2012, woe be to him who dares criticize him. 

But in fairness, he has done well for gay rights.  He may be accomplishing nothing overseas.  He may be plunging into one non-war war after another.  He may be playing with our military for purely political reasons, promising to reduce our troop numbers to twice what they were when he took office.  He may be assuring us that the economy is better since gas is all the way down to only about a 1.50 over what it was two years ago.  He may be looking desperate as he can't figure out how to fix the debt, the unemployment, and our soon to collapse entitlement system.  But by goodness, he has gone in there and given his all to gay rights supporters, and for that we Americans thank him.

It's been the dual sides of this that has hit me when I've had time to sit and blog.  On one hand, while everything is floundering, while wars, genocides, pandemics, economic collapse, and hopelessness continue to grip America, the West, and the World, the GRM continues to have such disproportionate power to see to it that its desires are addressed if nothing else is given the time of day.  And on the other hand, the very movement born under 'there's no absolute moral truths, nobody has a right to legislate morality, we should all live in peace and agree to disagree' continues to use the crushing iron gauntlet of censorship, oppression, ostracizing, and general eradication of those who refuse to go along with the demand for conformity and group think. 

It's a strange brew.  When all else is falling apart, the only thing making headway is a movement founded on diversity and peopled and supported by among the highest income earners who are increasingly demanding society punish all who fail to conform to its dogmatic demands.  Again, a thousand years from now I can't imagine what people will think when they look at this, the twilight of Western Civilization.  But I have a pretty good idea of why they will think it.