Please Pray for my Daughter Lucy.

She's been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

She's 27 years old. A mother with a two year old daughter and a Christendom graduate.

NFP is harmful to a marriage.

But NFP can, and sometimes should, be used to prevent a greater harm to a marriage.

Like with other medicinal devices, NFP is a necessary evil that can be used to prevent a greater harm to the marriage from occurring. Similarly, chemotherapy is harmful to the body, but it too is a necessary evil that can be used to prevent a greater harm to the body from occurring.

Mathematical symbols are not a description of the concrete, but are instead in an intrinsic symbol of a property inherent in the concrete.

Atoms really do look like Styrofoam balls joined together with sticks. Atoms also really do look like the drawings that appear to look a lot like the solar system. And atoms really do look like all the other drawings and models that have been produced over the years. Atoms look like all of them.

Women in Art / as window into the soul of a culture.

A few years back there was a jury which concluded that Matisse, Van Gogh and Hopper are exemplars of artists whose art approaches the objectively beautiful. A verdict which says far more about the jury, and the culture that jury is part of, than it says about the artists in question.

The FSSP is not only forging new frontiers in architecture,

Noblesse oblige, the Catholic foundation of economic life

Noblesse oblige is grounded in the understanding that society is by nature hierarchical and ordered to the good of man both here on earth as well as to his final end. Noblesse oblige is grounded in the same principle as subsidiarity, i.e. an understanding that society is natural to man, and man finds his perfection in society.

The Ecclesial Movements and New Communities are a Poor Substitute for an Organically Formed Society.

As the title suggests, the reason the Ecclesial Movements and New Communities exist are for natural social reasons. To be sure, the Movements and Communities have a spiritual character, but as the name New Community evinces, the nature of these entities is primarily that of a substitute society to compensate for a defect in modern society.

American society is an amorphous limitless creature where Catholics are not at home. Men in general by nature seek stability, and Catholics in particular seek stability within a Catholic environment. And so as a reaction to american society, Catholics seek out stability and limit and localism in these Theocratic New Communities.

Openness to life.

My marketing strategy for designing Catholic church architecture

I've decided to aggressively expand my design into church architecture.

Life is wonderful and I wouldn't change even a small speck of it

for no other reason than I fear to loose what I cherish most.

Musings on what is a living wage?

An employer can't know what to pay his worker unless he knows what he's actually expected to pay for. And so the question is : what is included, or not included in the living wage?

Our Daughter Lucy was graduated from Christendom College today

Extended Breastfeeding. It's natural, and the way God intended.

And it's time for american Catholics to get over their prudishness and get with the program.

The worldwide average for weaning is past the fourth birthday Extended breastfeeding is natural, and it's beautiful, and it should be the norm in any Catholic public setting.

Today the Gregorian calendar hanging on the kitchen wall commemorates my oldest daughter's birthday.

While the liturgical calendar commemorates St. Thomas Aquinas.
A connection perhaps? She is after all a senior and philosophy major at Christendom College.

I love you my wonderful.
Philosophy is barren without children and family.

I never understood the incarnation until I had children

because I never understood, not the willingness to sacrifice, but the longing to sacrifice without any reward but the good of those who are my own.

Christ making us his own is not accidental to his sacrifice, but essential to the act.

God created us to see the beautiful subjectively.

I have the muse, and it is through the muse that I intuitively know my art of architecture. Others, who do not have the muse, also likewise possess an appetite to know the beautiful of the art, but they know the art less well.

I could not care less what the Pope says from day to day

because what he says from day to day does not have relevance to my day to day life.

Catholic blogs are commonly discussing the latest papal pronouncement, but why do it?

The Church does not change

The guide for boys wanting to be accepted into the all girls college because that's where the babes are.

In other words, how to take advantage of the new changes in society.

Saving souls by sowing invincible ignorance

Saving souls by sowing invincible ignorance one student at a time is not only the secret strategy of Catholic colleges in america to make peace with the world while also saving souls.

Making the perfect the enemy of the good : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the common thread of error running through today's Catholic thought.

“Sometimes Frank sighed, thinking he had caught a tropic bird, all flame and jewel color, when a wren would have served him just as well. In fact, much better.” Gone With the Wind

Modern design in a traditional Catholic home.

I buy mass produced standardized 4'x8' sheets of .75" birch veneer plywood and rip them down to 9.5" wide lengths, and run one long edge of each through a shaper for an ogee shaped edge. I cut them to length, (5) at 27",(2) at 28.5", and (2) at 69", and assemble them with 2.5" deck screws, and I'm done.

The book shelves meet all the qualifications of modern design, which is a type of design that developed out of a progressive world view. The books that sit upon them are not modern, as in not progressive. They're the kind of books progressives delight in burning.

My children's formation.

I knew a girl in college at TAC who had a sense of the beautiful that was different from any anyone I had ever known before. It was subtle, but unmistakably there and I used to wonder what it was I was looking at.

Years later after I had some experience with Waldorf, and in turn later found out the girl in college had gone through Waldorf, I had my answer. Waldorf forms children to a sense of the beautiful like nowhere else.

Seeing the world simply.

Some would call it being simple minded, and I suppose in a way it is. Seeing the world simply is to grasp the world about us as it appears to us by simply standing still and quietly observing with our unaided senses. It's the rejection of the more complex when the more simple will suffice.

God created a world where the men of yesterday were not at a disadvantage to know what it was necessary for them to know. For instance, it was not necessary for men to know and understand metallurgy, but it was necessary for them have sufficient knowledge and understanding of what is the proper ordering of society. And thus God gave us from the beginning the necessary tools to live in harmony with one another in a virtuous society.

How does a sleeping child know he is touching his parent?

Last night my 6 years old son while sound asleep scooched up to me until he pressed the top of his head against me. He then stopped and fell into a deeper sleep breathing pattern.

It was the same deeper breathing that happens when I put my hand on them when they are sleeping alone where they will take a deep breath and settling into deeper sleep breathing.

Even when I put the back of my hand against their hair, or against their cloth covered chest they recognize the touch of another person.

How are they able to distinguish the touch of a parent from the touch of any other object?

Please note : this post is currently being written, read at your own risk

Religious freedom in society is an illusion.

Every society by nature has a dominant religion that governs society.

A society may tolerate a different religion because it sees that other religion as sufficiently benign, but it will not tolerate what it considers harmful to the common good of society.

Supersized Catholic families are not a mark of the Faith

But they can be, and I suspect often are, a mark of those who don't have a holistic understanding of God's creation. There are, of course, exceptions. But exceptions are just that, and like most discussions what is under discussion is what is normative.

Please note : this post is currently being written, read at your own risk

The proof of Catholic social theory is : Does it work at a practical level?

As an architect, I spend my days transforming the sublime into concrete practical reality, because at the end of the day the art must produce a product that's both buildable and afterward usable.

Human life is lived in three dimensional Euclidean space with architecture needing to answer a plethora of different requirements. With every requirement having its own standards to satisfy. Which in turn makes architecture the art of hierarchical compromise because conflicts between requirements require solutions.

Architecture is three dimensional puzzle problem solving where the solution is finally ordered to human life lived at a practical level.

Architecture is problem solving. People come to me with a problem and pay me to solve it. Medical doctors are likewise problem solvers, as are engineers, farmers and blacksmiths. People need to eat, farmers provide the solution to that problem.

Catholic social theoreticians are likewise problem solvers, or at least they should be problem solvers. Because if they're not solving the problem at hand, then they're only pretending to practice their art.

My grandparents were cousins, as were their parents before them

as were their parents before them down through the generation where as far as I can tell they never strayed further than a marriage with a second cousin.

It was a tradition dating back to when my family came to the new mexico area from Asturias Spain at the founding of the land grant. A land grant my grandparents emigrated from up to Colorado.

It was a tradition that not only kept the Jewish blood in the family, but likewise gave assurance of the traditional matrilineal succession of the Jewish religion.

The family were conversos, they practiced Jewish customs while appearing outwardly as Catholics. My grandfather was an atheist, and whether my grandmother still knowingly thought of herself as Jewish I don't know.

Selling out our neighbors for the good of strangers and consumerism : Immigrant residential construction Labor is Scab Labor,

and those immigrant residential construction workers don't cease being scab labor just because over the years they've for all practical purposes permanently displaced most of the native workers who had the jobs the scabs now hold.

The physical world has no reality apart from as symbol

The Gothic Cathedral / Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order pages xvi - xvii

. . . The physical world as we understand it has no reality except as symbol . . . Maximus the Confessor, a thinker we shall meet again later, actually defines what he calls "symbolic vision" as the ability to apprehend within the objects of sense perception the invisible reality of the intelligible that lays beyond them . . .

Indifference : a consequence of socially desired & promoted child neglect.

Indifference : A consequence of the Progressive Movement's understanding of man.

Indifference : A consequence that can likewise be found among Catholics for much the same reason.

. . . Noel Noel Noel Noel may all those who complain about my noisy children at mass go to hell. . .

more to come.

No one in his right mind pays for random letters printed on paper

which in turn is why some authors sell well, and others do not sell well, because what people are buying is the information conveyed by the paper and ink.

This is also why those who pay big money for modern art do exhibit signs of insanity, because they, for all practical purposes, are paying for nothing more than random ink splotches.

"The house is a machine for living in" a paradigm of modernist sensibility

Please note: This post is currently being written, read at your own risk

Human scale is Euclidean

I've long considered it commonly recognized, perhaps even self evident, that Human scale is Euclidean, but apparently my view on the matter is not quite as common among the Catholic intellectual class as I imagined.

Dead children are also well behaved.

"Crying it out" : teaching our children to be well behaved by means of child neglect.

Please note: This post is currently being written, read at your own risk

What is Intellectual Private Property, IPP ?

That Intellectual Property, IP, does exist cannot reasonably be denied. Just as, similarly, circles, or cubes or rectangles exist cannot reasonably be denied. They exist as an abstraction from nature. They're a perfecting of the imperfect.

Denial of the existence of intellectual private property. A mark of Cain.

[ Also see my other post : What is Intellectual Private Property ? ]

Those who argue that Intellectual Private Property, IPP does not exist are akin to the sodomites in Dante's Inferno because they make barren what is by nature fruitful.

The Self Evident is the Razors Edge.

We live our daily lives accepting the self evident, which is likewise a Catholic understanding of the world.

We also live our daily lives accepting illusion as reality, which is not Catholic.

Both the self evident and illusion have become so intermingled that it's often difficult to tell one from the other because much of that illusion has become second nature to us.

Usury is one such illusion. Usury itself is real enough, but what usury says is reality is the illusion. Like alchemy, its the creation of value by transforming something which is virtually valueless into something of value.



more to come.

Wondering, can we see substantial change

in the same manner as we measure temperature, or experience radio waves or similar? With temperature, for instance we don't measure temperature, but measure the effect of temperature on some material body which is affected by it. Same with radio waves.

To all things there is a limit,

Including the size of the natural, i.e. at human scale, State.

Disposable Diapers : Poisoning our children one baby at a time.

Disposable diapers. A common baby gift, especially when calls go out at the parish for stuff to give the mother who just birthed the latest addition to the parish. Where there always seems to be a stack of the toxic chemical laden things by the parish door with some new mother's name attached.

Torture : What it is. . . . And. . . . What it is not.

If you want answers as opposed to the typical blather, read my article over at my eclectic musings blog

And for those of you without a sense of humor, (like the bloggers who have banned me), you can put me on the rack in place of the hypothetical distributist I use as an example. Because really, I don't mind a bit, hypotheticals are actually rather painless.

The problem isn't automobiles, but the need for transportation.

And looking back to horses, is not a solution, because they were never a good solution in the first place, which is why they were replaced by automobiles.
"Nowadays there is a myth that the city streets, so patently inadequate for floods of automobiles, are antiquated vestiges of horse and buggy conditions, suitable to the traffic of their time, but...

Nothing could be less true..."
The Death of The Great American City page 340

Catholic society is grounded in practical experience

Which in turn means Catholic society is grounded in wisdom. Because wisdom is the practical application of universal principles to our daily lives.

Universal principles which include those principles that have been codified in the encyclicals, the catechism, and similar; and that we know to be true relative to the authority giving them to us. Some universals are likewise self evident, while others are within us such as the natural law. All having in common that they are true guides to how we should live in society.

Practical experience is required because the difficulty for us is understanding how the universal principles should be applied to each given particular circumstance. We can't just take the universal principles by themselves separated from practical experience and apply them because they are finally only understandable in the context of our daily lives.

Living according to human scale

Since we are by nature at human scale, it's fitting that any entity we use, consume, know or in some other manner have contact with should likewise be at human scale or as close to human scale as possible. And as a practical matter, we do when given the choice surround ourselves with entities which are scaled to us.

Geocentrism is true. So likewise is Heliocentrism true.

The Extreme Sport of Oxen Powered Family Farms

The Impractical versus the Practical and knowing where each fits into our lives.

Hand knitted garments and similar are lovely for a number of reasons / But don't mistake them for being practical everyday fare.

In other words we must order our environment to fit the existing environment.
__________

Please Pray for my father who died on March 14, 2011

White Plastic Crosses / sanitizing catholicism for mass marketing appeal

Catholicism really is all those aspects that Protestants abhor. Little Black Cordelias, dripping blood crucifixes, wine and spices, incense and rituals. It's a Faith that luxuriates in God's creation. It’s shadow and light, procession and sanctuary. The tabernacle as house of God, where the material, the intellectual and the spiritual all are directed and focused on Christ and his sacrifice and the sacrifice of the mass. It’s a cross with a Christ.

Walls with books suitable for all ages and cozy places to read them.

My children have always done well on any kind of religious examination, but yet we've never sat down in any kind of formal study environment to teach them, as is often written of on other blogs.

I suspect the reason they've done well is because the Faith permeates our life at home, and so likewise does it permeate the discussions which is where the children in turn have learned their Faith. It's been a passive method, not unlike our walls lined with books.

The books are there. They're part of their lives, and they couldn't imagine it any other way.

Modern Physics : The science of “mad but clever proposal"s

When ever I read any modern physics attempt at explaining observations my thoughts wander back to the "mad but clever proposal" of epicycles and how they too were used to explain observation.

All of God’s Creation Seeks Stability

As we know from observable creation, each part, construct, or substantial whole seeks stability according to its nature.

Rocks when dropped seek the stability of rest as does poured water. Magnetic attracted objects likewise seek stability within that force and so it goes with all of observable non-living creation.

Living creature also seek stability, but of a different kind. For instance : Plants seek the stability of propagation of the species. While sentient animals also seek stability of satiation of their senses, along with stability of propagation of the species. With each creature having a capacity of self motion according to its kind so as to satisfy these natural inclinations for stability.

Organic Catholicism : It's not only about being environmentally sensitive of our carbon footprints

But that is definitely part of it, because if we live as Catholics our footprint will naturally be smaller because a holistic life is naturally less dependent on consumption.

Organic Catholicism isn't a type of Catholic, but is instead an exploration of and explanation of an aspect of what all men by nature have in common. It's an exploration into how we are organized and how we can understand that organization in the context of the modern world we find ourselves in.

Organic Catholicism is back to nature, as in back to our nature. It looks at the world around us according to our nature, which in turn is to look at the world simply.

Organic Catholicism in the title to this blog is a double entendre where the first meaning is how Catholic society needs to occur. Catholicism as a societal entity needs to occur as a natural process, as opposed to being in some manner just created out of whole cloth.

Organic Catholicism in the second sense refers to how Catholic society needs to exist. Organic Catholicism is taken in this sense as a holistic understanding of man which is to say that which is ordinary to man in his totality as individual, family, and society, and their ordering to each other and to God.

The vice of being overly cautious.

It’s a vice I find most common on blogs dedicated to some moral issue, such as torture, or some perceived moral issue such as capital punishment or immigration.

The War Against Boys :

Please Note. This post needs to be rewritten. And is currently in the process of being rewritten and expanded on.

How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men Is a book that comes to mind when considering how mass media and its advertising is reshaping American society, because of the similar reshaping of our boys to first use their emotions when making choices to where we're becoming a society which makes its choices grounded not on reason, but on the passions.

The Cult of NFP

The turning of the medicinal into a requirement by transforming the medicinal into a necessary component of the marriage bed.

Home schooling : the "medicinal choice"

Jean Rioux on my first homeschooling thread, Homeschooling, another bad idea, makes the important clarification I left unsaid.

The actual problem is two fold. First were the underlying societal occurrences which forced families initially to homeschool, and second homeschooling in turn becoming seen not as a necessary evil to mitigate those societal occurrences, but becoming seen as a positive good which in turn should be the first choice of parents.

Seeing the world through Catholic eyes

Is no different than seeing the world through the eyes of common sense. For Catholics, the world is as we actually perceive it, not as some would theorize we perceive it. What I mean by common sense, is how we actually live our daily lives, see the world, and interact with each other.

For instance, we don’t step in front of a moving bus because we know with certitude the bus actually does exist, and that the bus would actually squish us like a bug.

The Smoker Principle

The surest way I know of to spot a traditionalist at a Motu Proprio or FFSP parish. As opposed to meeting the new comers who want to be Catholic but are missing the nuances.

As with any rule there's exceptions, but if you want to meet the Catholics who live Belloc's ditty :

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!

Look for the smokers.

Cafeteria Feasting

While Cafeteria catholics pretend to be Catholics while choosing the world, others of us are cafeteria Catholics because we're just handed the cornucopia and told to do what ever one does with cornucopias.

And being American Catholics culturally cast adrift to do as each one pleases, why not just have at it and stuff ourselves?

An excerpt from a conversation at the dinner table some years back:

Me: “all right everyone, from now on were going to be Agrarians. Each one of you gets one candle, so that if you want the light of more than one you’re going to have commune with each other.”

My wife, Jule, likes the idea, she’s been into candle light since Christmas tide because we used candles on the tree for the first time instead of electric lights.

Think locally, Act locally

Some years back there was a study that found a high percentage of Americans could not name their federal senators or congressman. I remember being appalled. - - Today, I have no idea who my senators or congressman currently are, nor do I care to know. And am a bit sorry I do know who the sitting president is.

Trolley cars and the neighbors we never see

The other day while driving home from the only local motu proprio mass, I pointed out to the children a pair of old trolley train tracks which were visible at the road surface. For them, trains are a novelty and cars are the only practical mode of transportation. But it wasn’t that long ago that those trolley tracks were the more practical mode of transportation.

Back to the earth, getting it partly right

The preeminent 'virtue' of modern society

"Confronted with St. Paul's admonition against "covetousness", Christian libertarians -- a phrase as oxymoronic as Christian socialist -- respond with something like Calvin's interpretation of "covetousness" as nothing more than an immoderate desire for gain," which leaves the door open to a life devoted to the getting and spending that men have elevated to one of the highest of virtues . . .

Nursing babies. It's not sexual, but why do most women act like it is?

Nor was it seen as sexual culturally by Catholics through the ages which is why we find through the ages painting of Mary nursing the Baby Jesus.

Remembering the dead

"Never build massive cemeteries. Instead, allocate pieces of land throughout the community as grave sites--corners of parks, sections of paths, gardens, beside gateways... Give each grave site an edge, a path, and a quiet corner where people can sit. By custom, this is hallowed land"
A Pattern Language pages 356-357

Bunny hutch mulch pile

Candle light / decorating the Christmas tree

If you haven't planned on it, it's not too late. Lit candles on the Christmas tree are remarkably lovely. Years ago I read In Praise of Shadows, but it wasn't until we used candles that the drastic difference in ambiance between fire and electricity came home.

Adoption is an Evil

And sometimes a necessary evil, but we should never forget that it is an evil.

Usury : who owns the land the serf tills?

More to the point, why does the lord own the land in perpetuity? The serf pays compensation to the lord every year to maintain the right to till land that in all respects but title is treated as if owned by the serf..

Not NFP but Ecological breastfeeding

Everyone talks about how God designed us for NFP as if NFP is a positive good. But what God actually designed us for is ecological breastfeeding.

Homeschooling, Another bad idea.

Traditional Catholic mothers are overwhelmed as it is because they are isolated from family and friends who they can lean on to help them out, and now have added the extra burden of homeschooling to an already destructive environment.

Now read : Home schooling : the "medicinal choice"