Category: Culture

Worth Considering…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment
“The more people deviate from the natural simple life and move toward luxury, the more human stress increases. And as worldly politeness expands, simplicity, joy and the natural human smile are lost.”

Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos

After the show…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

they call your name. Once, twice, three times and you’re done. Somebody else takes your place.

Outside the wind is cold. The band moves out into the night. The audience heads in from the cold after a last cigarette. It’s not much. A cot and a few feet of space. No privacy really. If someone snores everyone knows. The chapel where the show had been turns into a large bedroom faster than the band can get its gear into the parking lot.

But its warm and tonight the wind is cold. They say its going to get below zero and they call your name, once, twice, three times. If you don’t respond you lose your place. There’s always another person without a place to go, another body in need of a bed. Jesus said that the poor would always be with us and this mission never closes, never has to post a “vacancy” sign, never runs short of lost men needing to be found.

In the end there were five left and three spaces. The names were placed in a bucket and two were left out in the cold. There was nothing that could be done. There are thousands of fancy hotel beds but only a few places for the men with long hair who live in the alleys during the day and sleep in missions during the night.

Right now I’m home. The show is over. My gear is all safely inside. I’ll be in bed shortly. Somewhere out there are two men and probably more, the ones whose names weren’t picked, trying to find a place to keep alive as the wind rolls in from the northwest and the temperature sinks.

Lord have mercy.

 

Don't Die Stupid…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |

A friend of mine hands me what looks like a business card. It says, “Don’t Die Stupid.” As America begins another round of voting to select the next president, or retain the current one, what we need is a stupid test. Flunk it and you shouldn’t vote.

Evidence of the dumbing-down of America is everywhere. Some of it is chronicled in a new book, “Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America” by Daniel J. Flynn(Buy the book at a 34% discount by clicking here) .

Flynn contends popular culture has divorced itself from the life of the mind. He has plenty of examples in case television, texting, video games and improper use of English (“she was like and then I was like”) are not enough.

Flynn calls the digital age that has sped up the process by which we receive information “Idiotville,” because it has made us less intelligent.

“Stupid is the new smart,” writes Flynn. He says we arrived at this lower level of brain activity because as recently as the last century “the everyman aspired to high culture and … intellectuals descended from the ivory tower to speak to the everyman.” Today, he says, “Those who pursue the life of the mind have insulated themselves from popular culture. Speaking in insider jargon and writing unread books, intellectuals have locked themselves away in a ghetto of their own creation.”

That has left the nonintellectual class to fend for itself. One library inPortland, Me., rather than leading, is being led by the unformed teenage mind. “Video gaming is just a new form of literacy,” says the “teen librarian.” If so, what’s the new form of illiteracy, ignorance about how to use a joystick?

Flynn quotes from Steven Johnson’sbook, “Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter.” Sure, and sugar makes us slimmer. Johnson says, “Reality shows … challenge our emotional intelligence.” Emotional intelligence? In an age when feelings trump everything and too many reality TV programs feature well-heeled housewives and love-starved bachelors, “emotional intelligence” is a contradiction.

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste” is the slogan of theUnited Negro College Fund. It certainly is.

Here’s a potent example of what Flynn means when he writes about the destruction of our minds: “At the tony Cushing Academy in western Massachusetts, $40,000in tuition doesn’t even get you a library anymore. ‘When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’ the prep school’s headmaster notes, adding, ‘This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451.” ”

“It is, and ‘1984,’ too,” comments Flynn. “In place of the twenty thousand discarded books, the school spent$500,000on an Orwellian ‘learning center’ complete with three giant flat-screen televisions and a cappuccino machine. School officials guessed that only a few dozen books had been checked out at any one time.”

The solution? Get rid of the books. Don’t get kids interested in books when they’d rather play “World of Warcraft,” or if younger, watch cartoons, which can’t be that different from “The Canterbury Tales,” right?

Our intellectual depth increasingly resembles floor wax; shiny on top, but lacking depth. A muscle atrophies if it is not used. Similarly, a mind becomes lazy if it is not well fed. And a weak mind dumbs-down our politics. We elect people we come to dislike because too many of us require no more of them than we require of ourselves. We then wonder why little seems to work and the country soon suffers.

In Iowa this week, followed by New Hampshire, South Carolina andFlorida, Republican voters will begin the process of selecting a presidential nominee. It’s not that sufficient information about the problems confronting us — along with solutions that actually work — are not available. It’s just that we’re not reading much about them.

Like, ya know, man, that’s just the way it is. Like, ya know what I’m sayin’?

Cal Thomas

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

From time to time His Grace, Bishop Thomas, currently administering the Diocese of Toledo and the Midwest sends Priests interesting articles and bits of information. This one is particularly good and needed. 

 

WASHINGTON BUREAU: Terry Mattingly’s religion column for 12/07/11.

      At first, there didn’t seem to be much an 80-something grandmother
could do to help her church’s college freshmen wrestle with the trials
and temptations of their first weeks away at college.

      After all, she knew very little about Facebook, YouTube, online
homework, smartphones or texting, let alone “sexting.”

      She did, however, know how to write letters. So that is what she did,
writing personal letters to each student to let them know that she was
praying for them, wishing them the best as they searched for a college
church and looking forward to seeing them at Thanksgiving and
Christmas.

      According to church members, the “students sought her out and rushed
to give her hugs and to say, ‘Thank you,’ whenever they came home,”
said Kara E. Powell, who teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary in
Pasadena, Calif., and directs the Fuller Youth Institute.

      However, another church member later stressed that the researcher had
not heard the whole story. “Instead of writing one letter and that was
that, she had actually written a letter to each of the students every
week,” said Powell.

      This was one of the most striking stories that the seminary professor
heard while doing follow-up work for the Youth Institute’s six-year
College Transition Project, which followed 500 Christian young people
as they jumped from high school to college.

      The goal was to find strategies for parents and religious leaders who
wanted to help teens develop a personal faith that would “stick” when
tested. The research was released earlier this year in a book entitled
“Sticky Faith: Everyday ideas to build lasting faith in your kids,”
written by Powell and another Fuller colleague, Chap Clark.

      The letter-writing grandmother, said Powell, was an example of one
major lesson discovered during this process. After years of
“segregating” teens off into their own niche, age-specific worship
services and programs, there is evidence that young believers also
profit from intergenerational contacts, conversations and mentoring
projects with senior adults. Young people are also more likely to
retain their faith if they helped teach the faith to the very young.

      Right up front, the researchers admitted that the young people in
this study had higher than average grade-point averages, were more
likely to have been raised in unbroken homes and had grown up in
churches large enough to employ youth ministers. That was the point.

      Nevertheless, some of the results were sobering.

      * When studies are combined, it appears that 40 to 50 percent of
“churched” young people will abandon their faith — at least during
the college years.

      * Only one in seven young people in the Fuller study felt they were
ready for the personal, moral challenges of college.

      * Events in the first two weeks establish patterns for many college
careers, especially those linked to alcohol, sex and involvement in
religious activities.

      The finding that will inspire, or trouble, many parents, according to
Powell and Clark, is that the faith practiced by most young people is
rooted in the beliefs, values and choices that they see practiced in
their own homes. If young people see their parents praying, it’s more
likely that they will pray. If they hear their parents weaving faith
into the joys and trials of daily life, it’s more likely that this
behavior will “stick.”

      It’s one thing to talk to children, said Powell. It’s something else
to find ways to truly communicate — two-way communication — with the
young about faith, doubt, temptation and forgiveness. Breakthroughs
can take place while discussing everything from homework to movies,
from a parent’s confessions about mistakes in the past to a child’s
hints about his or her hopes for the future.

      “We are not saying that it will help if you lecture to your children
about faith,” she said. Instead, the goal is for “every parent to be a
student of what their children love and, whether its sports or movies
or who knows what, to be able to engage their children on that topic.
You have to ask, ‘What is my child passionate about?’ You also have to
be honest and let your children know what you’re passionate about.

      “Then you have to ask how you can bring faith into those
conversations so that you can share your faith journeys. There is no
way to force this. If it isn’t happening naturally, the kids are going
to know it.”

 Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) directs the Washington Journalism
Center at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.