Gospel Scenes and Meditations

Gospel Scenes and Meditations

Say a prayer today.

The more secular the society the more the need to pray.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

After I met the author I no longer desired to read his books.

Democrats cry Republican.

British history ceased to make any sense.

Peter Brooke, The Christian Faith and the Financial Crisis.

Infallible Ignorance

There is the famous question whether St. John sets the Crucifixion on the day of the Passover, the day on which the lambs are killed, and not on the day following, as the Synoptists appear to do. The question has been fought between Easterns and Westerns—for the Easterns use leavened bread for the Holy Eucharist, and wish to show that the Last Supper was just before the days of unleavened bread—and between Catholics and Catholics, and between critics and critics. That most brilliant and most fervent defender of the Church, the late Monsignor Duchesne, used to say that when he was a young man he imagined, like many young scholars, that he had discovered an infallible way of reconciling St. John here with the Synoptists, but that in later years he had realised that we are too ignorant of the customs of those days to assert any of the many solutions to be decisive! —Dom John Chapman, The Four Gospels [1927] (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1944), pp. 61–62.

Adapted from St. Seraphim of Sarov

Verbs have the same meanings in religion and society.

Funny Typo

Chapman's bloomers are as big as his insights. — Sebastian Moore OSB, Introduction to Abbot Chapman, Spiritual Letters [1935], London, 2003, p. vii.

NOTE 12/19/14. It was not a typo, just an Englishism:

They saw Ronnie that evening. He merely burst into laughter. It's all my fault, entirely my fault! You see, one gets so used to Roman ways that one forgets to warn people. I ought to have primed you to tell Testastorta that you had come to Rome on purpose to inform the Holy Father of the enthusiastic reception among English Catholics of the decrees on the mass media, the reform of the liturgy and above all Lumen Gentium. You would then have had a pucka private audience in which you could have said what you liked. My dear, innocent cousins, what a bloomer! Thank God I'm not a Papist or I should have had to resign my post as being tarred with the integriste brush. As a respectable Protestant I am fortunately above suspicion…
— Bryan Houghton, Judith's Marriage, 1987, p. 170.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Renounce the search for happiness and you find the substance. — John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation (1900)

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. —Matthew 6:33

You have nothing but example to contribute.

Reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it. — John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation (1900).

First Feed the Belly or the Soul?

The matter of the physical support of the individual follows in the wake of a regard for his soul, but never precedes it. — John Jay Chapman, Causes and Consequences

If so, the idea that missionaries should first feed the bodies then the souls of the natives was mistaken.

After noon mass at St. Mary's, Charlie gives me a loaf bread and two squares of tomato pie from Perreca's.

When You Die

When you die, will someone pray for you?

Barack Obama

Obama is not just a disappointment, he is a danger. He is the most blatantly dishonest person I have ever witnessed in public life. — marymmccurnin

Erik Wensberg on Jane Jacobs (2006)

“The audience was filled with citizen soldiers who had fought urban battles with Jane. Erik Wensberg was one of her earliest allies as a founding member with her of the Committee to Save the West Village. A journalist and teacher, Erik was the first to read the manuscript of The Death and Life of American Cities before she submitted it to her editor, Jason Epstein at Random House.” Jane Jacobs: A Public Celebration | More photos from this event

I met her first in January of 1961, when she co-chaired a neighborhood meeting, abruptly called. Completely ordinary, open, and unassuming, she read us a banal bit of boilerplate from the Times, which said that the city would study fourteen blocks in western Greenwich Village with a view to possible urban renewal. Jane patiently explained to us that the so-called study was the opening fraud of a government racket which cleared urban land of buildings and tenants and brought in expensive versions of both, who paid higher taxes. If we liked our friendly, frowzy neighborhood, urban renewal had to be stopped.

By an astounding fluke, Jane had just finished writing The Death and Life of Great American Cities. This history and critique of modern city planning exposed with candor and force urban renewal nationwide. I was a magazine editor, and Jane asked me to edit her manuscript while she tried to organize the neighborhood. This was but the beginning of her seven-year ordeal as activist, speaker, and organizer wherever needed around New York.

How could she say no? As the chairman of the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway, she damned well got it stopped. As the first president of the Committee to Save the West Village she saw to it that it was saved within a year.

We, her friends, neighbors, and random volunteers grew sharper by the month. No one who examines the great arc of Jane’s books now talks of the numberless, deadly hearings at City Hall, the dogged subway rides down and back, the forming of alliances with other groups, flyers to be written and handed out. Such was the glamor of being a published author to Jane at first.

It remained for the Committee to Save the West Village, now the triumphant West Village Committee, to build a group of buildings, 420 apartments, subsidized by the state. On little plots of already vacant land, they displaced not a soul but increased our neighborhood’s density, a Good Thing. These buildings we called West Village Houses. You’ll have noticed that there had been no West Village at all until the city decided to tear down western Greenwich Village.

We didn’t win ‘em all. Philip Johnson’s overweening Bobst Library did to Washington Square Park what we said it would. The World Trade Center, no matter the facts on the ground, would lurch toward the sun on account of money and power and dangerous fantasy the likes of which New York had never seen. Our city fathers and mothers often have the dream lives of little boys.

Somewhere in the copious record of our climactic 14-hour hearing on the West Village is a sheet of pictograms by a Chinese philosopher no one has ever heard of. Translated into English and read aloud to the Commission by a Perry Street housewife, it told a fable of a gentle village invaded by pompous dimwits, who are driven out, as indeed were ours. The Chinese philosopher was a jolly Jewish linguist at the UN named Stanley. The white-bread City Planning Commissioners were most impressed with our tony Asian connection, and were never the wiser. As the clerk of the commission solemnly accepted the script, Jane was convulsed with giggles.

—Erik Wensberg, at Jane Jacobs: A Public Celebration, Washington Square Park, New York City, June 28, 2006.

Erik Wensberg, editor/writer, key Jacobs ally (1931–2010). Photo by david herwaldt.

Dear Mr. Wong,

It was kind of you to note with respect the death of my brother, and to think of sending me condolences. He considered himself Jane's protector, her sergeant, and occasionally her henchman. His discovery of her and their shared feelings for the importance of community and neighborhood was an epiphany for him. He continued her work of fostering and rescuing the character of the West Village after she left and for the rest of his life. Erik's connection to Jacques Barzun ultimately brought him acclaim, though no royalties, when he took on the revision of Follett's American Usage at Barzun's request. He continued his correspondence with The Great Man, and by Michael Murray's own admission, was instrumental in the polishing of Barzun's biography. Because Erik had edited chapters over the years, Michael brought him the finished manuscript in the nursing home, and Erik read it before he died last July. Michael and I have corresponded and spoken on the phone; he researched and essentially wrote Erik's obituary, and has been the kindest of friends. Erik had many extraordinary friends.

Erik and I were close and fond siblings, but he was also a very private person and I still learn about different corners of his career in literature and local politics. Living in Los Angeles made it particularly difficult and complex to take care of him over this last year. I am still recovering from that effort myself. Erik's good friend, David Herwaldt, helped enormously to clear his apartment and has taken on the task of being his literary executor. He is seeing to it that Erik's letters and writing will be housed in a university library. As I said, Erik had many extraordinary friends....

Gratefully,
Eleanor Pelcyger
Oct. 1, 2010

P.S. First, I never saw the photo of my brother looking so much like his own dad in front of the assembled multitude. Thank you for how nicely it puts Erik in the thick of the tribute. Second, I shall forward this to many of his friends who were miffed at the way the Times ignored his death. It's a lovely speech, isn't it. He not only wrote well, he spoke wonderfully, with a musical voice that reached all corners.

Tocqueville

Generally speaking, people are not very ardent or indomitable or energetic in their affairs when their personal passions are not engaged. Yet their personal passions, however vivid they may be, do not propel them either very far or very high unless these passions keep growing before their own eyes, unless they seem to justify themselves by being related to some greater cause for the service of mankind.

It is due to our human sense of honor that we should be in need of this stimulant. Add to passions born of self-interest the aim to change the face of the world and to regenerate the human race: only then will you see what men are really capable of.

That is the history of the French Revolution.

Its narrow-minded and selfish nature led to violence and darkness; its generous and selfless elements made its impulse powerful and great.

— Tocqueville, Quoted in John Lukacs, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Bibliographical Essay

Good Article on John Lukacs

The Lettered Reactionary, by John Rodden and John Rossi. Thanks to ibergus.

Letter from the CBO on Costing Single Payer Health Care

In answer to the question, Is CBO costing H.R. 676 or other Single-Payer legislation?


Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 6:01 PM

CBO produces formal cost estimates of bills when they are reported out of committee. As no committee has announced plans to vote on that measure, I am not aware of any plans to provide a formal estimate. If there is a vote on an amendment containing the text of that measure, it is possible we would provide the members with some understanding of its fiscal impact. That could be in the form of a letter or memo or table; I do not know.
I hope this helps.

Melissa Merson
Director of Communications

Looking into the Future — and the Past

Requisite Organization, 2008 Presidential Election Information

See also: Alison Brause, December 11, 2000: New Research Explains Dilemma in 2000 Presidential Election

About Elliott Jaques.

On Elliot Jaques: Art Kleiner, Elliott Jaques Levels with You
 

Redistribution of Wealth

Why does the phrase raise a red flag?

Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
— Acts 4:34–35

A Conservative for Obama

A Conservative for Obama, by Wick Allison

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