This makes me mad

You get a bit of this if you live in Europe. A lot of people in N. America still think Europe is some amazing magic place like Narnia where the animals can talk and you can breathe under water and all you do all day is eat ice cream and drink champagne and swan around on yachts with beautiful women.

Yeah, it's a bit like that if you're here on holiday.

If you live here, it's a place where you work, commute, go grocery shopping and take out the trash exactly like everywhere else in the world... oh, except the people are all weird, you often can't get the things you're used to or go to the movies, the rules are totally different and everyone speaks another language. You can't, in other words, live a normal life... which can be a little hard to take if you have to do it for five or six years. There's a reason ex-pats have much higher rates of stress-related illness than the general population.

But I guess people don't think much about this. They're too busy being envious in the commbox.

John Sonnen, of the ridiculously popular and famous Orbis Catholicus Secundus photo blog, that gets about 3000 hits a day, has had his camera stolen while in Madrid. If you had paid me a million bucks I wouldn't have gone to World Youth Day, (well, I might have said I would, taken your money and then gone off somewhere very very quiet and solitary to spend it), but John has gone to Madrid to shepherd around a bunch of screaming teenagers... for free.

In return for this, some bastard waiter has stolen his camera, the fabulous camera that was donated to him by a kind friend in the States so he could keep blogging. He has put up a post asking if there is anyone out there who might be willing to buy him a new one.

Naturally, someone without enough imagination to live an interesting life of his own has decided to be a jerk about it in the commbox...

Anonymous said...

You are a grown, married man and you always requesting money when life throws you a curve ball. Why don't you save your own money and buy your own camera when you have enough to do so? What makes you feel entitled to ask people to send you hard earned money in this economy to assist you whenever some problem comes up or you need extra money? It's not dignified. Most people don't get to travel to Spain, Russia, Poland, England, France in a life time, yet poor man that you are has been to these places numerous times. Seems like you are doing pretty good to me.

I am so mad at this idiot that I am posting my response just in case John, who is much nicer than I, decides not to post it.

Oh, and hey Jerkface "Anonymous"!

John works his ass off all year as a tour guide in Rome, which is incredibly hard work, as well as keeping up his studies. He does this blog as a happy hobby and as a serious apostolate that is appreciated by as many as 3000 people a day. It's positive. It's uplifting. It's Catholic-friendly and a needed response to people like me who are always talking about how awful the world is.

John only had that camera because a kind reader, fan and friend who could afford it, bought it for him so he could carry on with this work that is such a help to others. He can't possibly afford to replace it.

Also, as a person who has never been to Europe, you obviously don't know that it costs next to nothing to fly/train and or/boat around Europe. The ferry fare to Tunis for example, (when it was a place anyone wanted to go) is about 25 Euros. It's incredibly expensive to fly across the Atlantic, but once you're here, it can be as little as 10 Euros to go to places like Dublin, Paris, London, etc. Everyone, and I mean EVERYone in Europe flies all over the place all the freaking time. You know why? Because it's ridiculously tiny. I could walk to Austria from here in a few days. If you can stay with friends or friends of friends, you can travel around Europe all you like for no more than it would cost to commute from the burbs to your crappy down-town North American city job for a week.

The other way he, and any one of the rest of us who wants to, gets to go places is because other people are kind and good, friendly and helpful and want to see other people having a nice time.

Envy is an ugly sin, mate. It's the only one that Thomas Aquinas said creates misery for those who indulge in it and gives absolutely nothing in return.

I'm sorry if your crap life sucks and you hate North America and have never been anywhere. But you know what? It's not that hard really, you just have to buy a ticket and go.

Oh, and on top of that, it helps a lot if you are a decent soul who's nice enough and friendly enough for other people to want to be nice to back.

So, sucks to be you, I guess.

(And hey, way to be a manly man there, lobbing insults and vitriol behind anonymity.)

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Aw man...

How come I never find anything this good?

I need to go for more walks.



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Spam

An evil spammer has hacked my email account and has sent advertising messages to everyone on my email list.

Sorry about this. I woke to over 80 messages in my own spambox. Please ignore until I figure out what to do about it. Hate to lose an email address I've been using for ten years.

Suggestions?

HJW



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"Allowed to die" a quick lesson in media manipulation

Today the Daily Mail is running a poll with the question, "Should 'minimally conscious' patients be allowed to die?

As of this writing, 29% said No, 71% said yes.

I have to wonder though, if the people who clicked Yes had given much thought to the form of the question. Something I learned as a lobbyist paying close attention to various pieces of legislation is to always look very closely indeed at the pages of the bill that give the definitions of terms. What does it mean to be "allowed to die"? And what, exactly, are we talking about when we refer to "minimally conscious" people?

I'll help here with some research I have done into the question at hand. In the cases I have studied closely, that of Terri Schiavo in the US and Eluana Englaro in Italy, neither woman was a) terminally ill, b) on a respirator c) sick in any way. Both were brain damaged, but the damage did not impair any of their vital bodily functions. In both cases, the only care they needed was ordinary nursing care, bathing, clothing and, most crucially, feeding. Both of them could have lived a normal lifespan if these had been continued.

In the case of Terri Schiavo, her family made it public knowledge that she was not "in a coma," not in a "vegetative state". In her case, the public was shown video and photographs of Terri awake and responsive to the people and stimuli around her. In the case of Eluana Englaro, although we were shown no photos, it was revealed to the public that she was not ill, was not on a respirator, was not in a coma and required only food and hydration via a feeding tube. In the US, the delivery of food and water via a tube is classified as "medical treatment" that can be refused by a patient or (and here's what killed Terri) by a patient's guardian. In Italy this is not the case, but the artificial delivery of food and water was not specifically dealt with in law. However, in both countries, "assisting a suicide" is an offense, as is homicide.

We are all aware of the media frenzy, including a great deal of misdirection, surrounding the case of Terri Schiavo. In Italy, there was also a loud uproar and the media paid a great deal of attention to the case, particularly towards the end of Eluana's life. In most cases, the media consistently used this phrase: "allowed to die," a piece of deliberate and conscious misdirection, that I maintain is maliciously motivated to promote the cause of legalised assisted suicide and euthanasia, a favourite cause on the left in Europe and the US.

In parliaments too, the phrase is consistently used as a type of pacifier by legislators trying to lift prohibitions on assisted suicide. It sound quite natural and harmless doesn't it, and it plays on the perfectly moral principle that patients who are near to death from illness should be able to refuse extraordinary, aggressive or painful procedures if there is little chance that they will significantly prolong life.

If a cancer patient is in the last stages of the disease and all normal measures have been taken, everyone agrees that it is not only perfectly licit but in fact desirable to provide palliative care and allow the patient and their loved ones some quiet time before the end.

But the question asked by the Daily Mail above doesn't mention "terminally ill" patients. It doesn't specify that a person who is potentially to be "allowed to die" is about to do so anyway and is being plagued with aggressive extraordinary treatments. All it says is "minimally conscious" and "allowed to die".

Let's examine the following scenario. A healthy person has been drugged into minimal consciousness. He is strapped to a gurney and wheeled into a room and left there without provision for food and water.

Now, ask the following question: Is he being murdered or is he being "allowed to die"?

Now, let's examine another scenario. A healthy person is in a car accident and is rushed to the hospital with a severe head injury. It is determined in the hospital that although she remains otherwise healthy and undamaged, her brain function is never going to be what it was and she will require help with feeding, dressing and bathing etc., very likely for the rest of her life which, barring future illness, should be a normal span. She is taken to a nursing home run by nuns who are happy to take on the duties of caring for her for the rest of her life. This includes delivery of food and water via a stomach tube.

If the nuns then removed her food and hydration tube and refused to care for her and she died, should they be liable for charges of neglect causing death? Perhaps even homicide?

Is it "allowing a person to die" if he is helpless and is refused food and water?

I wonder how the British public would be answering a poll question like the following:

"Should vulnerable patients be deliberately starved and dehydrated to death when their lives are deemed to be worthless by a hospital ethics committee?"



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A punto...

It's an old standby. Whenever there is a huge, distracting, celebrity-saturated news story going on, watch Parliament especially closely...

With British attention distracted by the phone-hacking scandal, this week the European political elite hurled another £96 billion at the ailing Greek economy, desperate to stave off a financial meltdown that could plunge the entire European project into disaster.

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One nation, under...

A while ago, an Irish friend involved in politics told me that the EUrocrats are going to be taking full advantage of the instability created by the economic crisis to solidify their plans to abolish the nation state in Europe and unite the EU member states into a single socialist European superstate.

Apparently, that happened on Wednesday, while no one was paying attention. Which, in my experience, is the way really big things are brought about by politicians who know the public doesn't want their really big things. It is an axiom among lobbyists: if there is a huge news story breaking, it is wise to watch with extra care that day what the government is doing in Parliament.

European politicians have developed the same superstitious attachment to the single currency. They are determined to persist with it, no matter what suffering it causes, or however brutal its economic and social consequences.

There is only one way of sustaining this policy, as the International Monetary Fund argued ahead of yesterday’s summit in Brussels... Admittedly, the IMF should not be regarded as an impartial arbiter. Theoretically, its responsibilities stretch around the globe, but it has become the plaything of a reactionary European elite, of whom its latest managing director, Christine Lagarde (a dreadful and backward-looking choice), is the latest manifestation. However, the IMF was entirely correct when it pointed out that the only conceivable salvation for the eurozone is to impose greater fiscal integration among member states.

This advice was finally being taken yesterday – and it is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of the decision which European leaders seemed last night to be reaching. By authorising a huge expansion in the bail-out fund that is propping up the EU’s peripheral members (largely in order to stop the contagion spreading to Italy and Spain), the eurozone has taken the decisive step to becoming a fiscal union.

So long as the settlement is accepted by national parliaments, yesterday will come to be seen as the witching hour after which Europe will cease to be, except vestigially, a collection of nation states.

It will have one economic government, one currency, one foreign policy. This integration will be so complete that taxpayers in the more prosperous countries will be expected to pay for the welfare systems and pension plans of failing EU states.

This is the final realisation of the dream that animated the founders of the Common Market more than half a century ago – which is one reason why so many prominent Europeans have privately welcomed the eurozone catastrophe, labelling it a “beneficial crisis”.

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Let's see how long it takes, shall we?

Until the Catholic bishops of Ireland say something, anything at all, about the attempt by the government to shut down the practice of the Catholic Faith in Ireland.

A friend commented this evening:

"Well, why don't they just bring their enormous moral authority to bear ...

Oh, wait..."



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For our bulging Anglicans Are Peculiar file...

I realise that she's very helpfully with us on at least one important issue, but really,


what on earth is she wearing?

I have to say that the absurdity of the whole Anglican Ministrix thing comes painfully home when presented with the day to day usages. For instance, I had trouble not bursting out laughing when I was instructed to refer to one as "Mother" so and so. You see, she was...err...umm... a priest and because one calls a "male priest" "Father" it stands to reason that...

(I solved the problem by addressing the person in question as "Miss" so and so, since she was not married. I thought this was a hilarious solution since, at first sight - processing down the aisle of Chester Cathedral in a cope - I had had no idea that she was not a man. It is perhaps a bit improper, but have you ever heard the joke about the real reason the Anglican Church agreed to start ordaining women? It's slightly impolite, so email me and I'll tell you.)

That sort of thing. That and the clothes. I had the pleasure of meeting Victoria Matthews, lauded far and wide as the most "conservative" Anglican "bishop" in the Canadian Anglican establishment. And she is. It's just that, well... when I met her, she was all got up in a black skirt/jacket suit combo paired with a purple clerical shirt and collar. I had a hard time figuring out where to put my eyes so they didn't become an occasion for at least a giant social faux pas.

It's what happens when a group of people replace The Real with their personal preferences.



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Pious and overly devotional

The post below quoting Fr. Faber (whose writing on the spiritual life deserves a great deal more attention than that of the attention-seeking Newman) has generated much interesting comment here and on Facebook. I post below my addition to the discussion.

First, I simply have an instinctive aversion to public displays of devotion, for much the same reason I object to public displays of affection between members of a pair-bonded unit. This might just be an English thing, but it embarrasses me on the person's behalf. It betrays a lack of a certain kind of social modesty. One keeps that sort of thing private. It's a thing appropriate to moments of sincere discussion between intimates.

I think (though he was not my favourite Catholic writer) I remember Thomas Merton also making a similar comment in Seven Story Mountain, along the lines of "There is something nauseating about pious talk".

The other reason is that it tends to cheapen the devotional life. Talking about, thinking about and praying to God is so important that it should not be tossed about like the wrapping on a bag of take-away.

But mostly I posted Fr. Faber's quote because of the ongoing debate about the Traddie world over nice vs. holy. Trads are notoriously given to very public displays of devotion (and insisting that they be conducted in the right way!!) while holding the knife ever-ready for the quick one between the ribs of anyone who crosses them. This tendency is hardly limited to the Traditionalist movement in the Church, but it certainly seems to be more prevalent as a community trait there.

They are ever-ready too, with the quick and often pat rejoinder when faced with any criticism: "The hard truth is better than the sweet lie". This is usually followed by recitations of Our Lord's open displays of anger against the pharisees and money-changers. Passers-by, non-Catholics and children, however, are often witness to these kinds of exchanges and I think are justified in going away disappointed. See how they love each other?

Well, I'm not a spiritual writer and it's not for me to correct, particularly since the quick and irritable rejoinder are defining characteristics of my own interpersonal and devotional life. I am faced daily with the temptation to the quick and snarky response.

I posted Fr. Faber's comment because I was relieved somewhat to learn that this is not a modern problem, that others greater and holier than I have observed it and fought against it. It's comforting to have companions in temptation.

The question of real vs. false devotion is extremely pertinent, and is a big part of Fr. Faber's very pointed writing on the spiritual life. Of course real devotion produces real sanctity, but it is only too easy to fall into the trap of presuming one's self devoted, and therefore superior to the general run of humanity, or even the general run of Christians. It is a salutary warning, and one that is repeated many times by C. S. Lewis and nearly all other writers on the Christian life.

It is for this reason I have banned excessive God-talk in the commbox, and the reason it tends to irritate me so much. I have found that in many, if not most cases when a person engages in gratuitous God-talk, particularly in a public forum, the person is much more likely to be talking about himself. Or herself, since it seems mostly to be a female vice.

In fact, this was proven to me quite aptly recently when a person who had left a particularly flowery God-talk commbox post became abusive and extremely nasty when I deleted his comment and said why. From the excessively POD language and tone, I had guessed that this was someone who was greatly enamoured of his own holiness and was very interested in demonstrating it for the world to admire. The incontinent note I received as punishment for daring to call him on his bullshit proved my suspicion to have been justified.

Don't keep your light under a bushel, by any means, but I think it's good advice to try to keep our phylacteries as narrow and our tassels as short as possible, yes?

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So, I'm not the only one who's noticed

“Devout people are, as a class, the least kind of all classes. This is a scandalous thing to say; but the scandal of the fact is so much greater than the scandal of acknowledging it, that I will brave this for the sake of a greater good. Religious people are an unkindly lot."

Fr. William Frederick Faber, founder of the London Oratory



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