Australia

Well, kind readers, be advised that from tomorrow until April 30th I shall be enjoying the delights and charms of the Antipodes. I shall be resident in Lennox Head, Australia, for the majority of the time, followed by a brief stint in New Zealand. During this exciting time, I will continue to blog, albeit not at this address. To keep up with my adventures, do head over to my Australia-specific blog at the address below:

http://mattschmalzel.tumblr.com


Cheers one and all! Keep the light on for me!

Unbuilt Washington

While in Washington DC this past weekend, I had the great good pleasure of being able to visit the National Building Museum. Housed in a spectacular red-brick Renaissance Revival building that once served as the Pension Office for the US military, the Building Museum documents and exhibits various artifacts related to architecture throughout the United States. By some stroke of fortune, one of the exhibitions that was ongoing during my visit was called Unbuilt Washington which showcased a collections of designs and proposals for the city, buildings, and monuments of our nation's capital that never came to fruition. Among the various interesting artifacts were a pyramidal design for the Lincoln Memorial, a plan to turn the Mall into a Venice-like grand canal, and a Versailles-esque design for a presidential palace. One of my favorite collections of images was the assembly of different designs for the Library of Congress submitted by the architectural firm of Smithmeyer and Pelz. Below are several images of their various proposal. The first is their original design, followed by two alternatives, ending with an image of the building that exists today.

Mother Teresa and the March for Life

March for Life 2009, the last time I was able to attend

In the great Catholic moral tradition, taking of any innocent human life is an intrinsic evil. Each human is endowed with an immortal soul and is created in the image and likeness of God. This is the basis of our dignity as human persons. Whenever the source of that dignity is clouded or denied, humanity suffers. This is why I will be in Washington, DC this weekend, taking part in the March for Life. I will be there, alongside a crowd of 300,000 others, firmly witnessing by my presence that all life is sacred - from conception until natural death. We have a responsibility to show love and charity to all of our fellow men - especially the most innocent and helpless among us; the poor, the lonely, the elderly, the unborn. Consider these quotes from Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta on the matter:

‎"Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters."

"What is taking place in America is a war against the child. And if we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another."

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."

Please keep me in your prayers, and say a little prayer for all of our brothers and sisters in Christ - even those yet unborn.

Why Build Beautiful Churches?

Invariably, when a new Catholic building project is discussed, all manner of people emerge from the pious woodwork and begin to wail something along the lines of: "Why waste all this money on a beautiful church, couldn't these funds be better used for feeding the poor!" Now, obviously, this is a question near and dear to my own heart, as I see building as one of the best ways I can use my talents in the service of God. But, as well-intentioned as this sort of line of argumentation is (and I generally think that the people that make the argument have others' interests at heart), let us consider some thoughts from the other side of the issue.

• Arguably the greatest (and most beautiful) monuments of Western civilization have been built for the purpose of worshiping God. From the marble temples of antiquity to the gold-encrusted sanctuaries of the Counter-Reformation, our civilization has tended to give what is beautiful and best in order to honor the divine. Evidently, God (or gods, to the pagans) was so important to their everyday life that they felt comfortable using their best and most ingenious talents to further his glory. 
• For this argument to work, we must simply ignore the fact that the Church is the largest charitable giver in the world and has helped more poor people than any other institution - ever.
• By and large, many of the most beautiful churches in Christendom were built by - you guessed it - the poor! I know of beautiful tales of my own hometown of parishioners - poor, immigrant Poles - scrounging and sacrificing in order to donate their own small contribution to the construction of their parish church. The results of their sacrifices continue to grace the skylines of many cities across this nation and the world.
• In some respects the argument is quite lazy, as it inherently believes that simply throwing money at the poor will alleviate all suffering. This view is both sophomoric and extremely myopic considering the ways that poverty is entrenched in society.
• To paraphrase Dorothy Day, a church that is splendid and beautiful is likely the only place that a poor person could go - free of charge - to experience the majesty of God. To refuse them this experience is to confine the poor to a life of unrelenting grayness. 
• Catholics in this country are particularly prone to falling for the Protestant definition of a church building - that it is a mere meeting-place for like-minded believers. From the Catholic point of view, this definition is intrinsically false. The church building is itself a sort of sacrament, in that it brings God's presence to us. It is a sacred space for sacred actions - the fulfillment of both the Temple and the synagogue, and a hint at the glory of the New Jerusalem. It is an icon of the Church, the Body of Christ, itself. It is liturgical space, not a mere meetinghouse.
• Beauty and truth are intrinsically linked. To build (and by extension, to make any art) beautiful is to lift back the veil and reveal the truth. That is how beautiful churches can help make theological truths apparent.

Yes, churches are expensive. Beautiful churches are more expensive. But dodging the sacrifice necessary to build them by playing the Judas card (John 12:1-8), robs the world of the true beauty of God and the splendor of the truth - evangelization in stone, as it were. 

What can happen if we put our minds to it

Projects like this have a way of warming my cold Michigander heart. Check out the before and after pictures of the renovation undertaken at St. Louis Catholic Church in Memphis, Tennessee (borrowed from the New Liturgical Movement). The results, as I think you will agree, are quite magnificent - and inspiring to those of us with interests in sacred architecture. I think the chief success of this project is that the architects didn't overdo the space into something stylistically foreign to the existing structure. The end result looks as though it could have been built in the 1950s, when the church was originally built. Due respect was given to existing geometries and materials, which I think is commendable. Context, as they say, is everything.

If only certain parishes within the Diocese of Grand Rapids (who shall remain nameless) could work up the effort to complete something like this. Beauty is the radiance of truth after all. 

Studies Have Shown

Studies have shown that the gravitational pull of the moon causes cancer in those born in Kansas. Studies have shown that an appreciation for art can be taught to chimpanzees, and some Republicans. Studies have shown that the nose-hairs of a rare type of antelope can be used in medicine to prevent warts, boils and the enfant terrible syndrome that typifies the characters of Jersey Shore. Studies have shown that those who live within a mile of a highway are apt to take more vacations to Zimbabwe. Studies have shown that Manichaeans are usually the most successful in the business world out of all the varieties of Christian heretics. Studies have shown that men who routinely crack their knuckles make better lovers. Studies have shown that camels begin walking with their non-dominant leg when in the Southern Hemisphere. Studies have shown that the bounciness ratio of tennis balls is directly proportional to the wavelength of light that gets bounced off of Howie Mandel's head. Studies have shown that breathing the air in the basement of several Gothic cathedrals in France can raise your IQ. Studies have shown that a daily dose of red wine, garlic, potato skins, blueberries, and olive oil can make you appear to be health-conscious when dining with friends.

You get my point. If I had a nickel for each time I've heard someone or something claim that a study has shown something I could give Midas a pretty good run for his money (pardon the pun). It all begs the question of why we put so much stock in the numerical correlations these sundry studies claim to purport. Why are numbers the gods of our modern civilization? Yes, I realize that numerical data is necessary for scientific research, but why do we give all numerical data a free pass as proof? Why are the numbers omnipotent? Why do we equate truth with number? Studies have shown that people who pose these theoretical questions are often later admitted to insane asylums or houses of ill repute.

2011 Literary Review

We engaged in a fair bit of reading this past year and I shall endeavor to now pass the savings on to you, giving my humble and near-sighted opinions on what I read. In no particular order, we have:

Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton) 
Definitely in the running for one of my favorite books of all time. Truly, as the cover of my version proclaimed, it is "one of the ten indispensable spiritual classics of the past 1,500 years." For those yet unfamiliar with the wit and wisdom of G.K. Chesterton, you are in for a delicious treat. The man brilliantly and cleverly undermines the prevailing pop philosophies of early 20th Century Britain (eerily similar to our current pop philosophies) and provides a clear and ringing defense of Christian orthodoxy. Reading this book was like coming out of a fog into bright sunshine. I exhaustively recommend it, even if you are not particularly religious. At a slim 100 pages or so, you haven't got much to lose.

East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
Another text which would be required reading at any future Schmalzel Institute of Things You Should Know would be this American classic written by one of this nation's preeminent literary figures. East of Eden ambitiously reinterprets the story of Cain and Abel over succeeding generations of the Trask family, who moved from Connecticut to California in the early 20th Century. East of Eden, like all of Steinbeck's works, is a telling portrayal of life, sparing no unpleasantries. The characters are full of life and flaws, just like the rest of us, which makes the story so compelling. Underlaying the biblical allusions is a sustained investigation of free will and its effect on the lives of the main characters. A must-read.

Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy)
This is quite simply a depressing book. Hardy details the unfortunate life of Jude Fawley in late 19th Century Britain. He marries and divorces and falls in love again, with his cousin, which leads to disastrous consequences, especially when his first wife returns. It is tragic novel, in the tradition of the ancient Greek tragedies - though there is a question of whether there is truly catharsis at the end. The true tragedy resides in Jude's (and the other characters) inability to conform with society's demands and the demands of his social class.

Basilica (R.A. Scotti)
Basilica is a fast-paced narrative of the construction of St. Peter's in Rome. This book was a treasure-trove of insight, both architectural and historical. To see such a monument constructed required the dedication of eight different architects, the power of at least twenty popes, and the timespan of about 150 years. How the building we see today ever got built is as much chance as anything else. Personalities such as Pope Julius II and Bernini were very interesting to learn more about, especially in a less "academic" sense. These character were real people who had real interactions with each other - which were often quite tumultuous. Recommended to any with an interest in history, the church, or architecture (or all three, like me!).

The Lives of a Cell (Lewis Thomas)
This slim volume is a collection of essays by esteemed biologist Lewis Thomas. Please, hold your yawns, this one gets interesting. Rather than focusing on science in a scientific way, Thomas discusses wide ranging subjects - death, music, New York City - in biological terms. It is at once poetic and deeply thought provoking to read his work. And, at approximately three pages apiece, he doesn't demand too much from the reader for each essay. Originally, I had to read this book for my AP Biology class in high school, but I felt it tugging me back for another look this summer. It's that interesting. Highly recommended to anybody who's curious about the world and their biological selves.

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
All I can say is thank goodness this book was as short as it was. Essentially, this novel is a very extended metaphor about colonialism's negative impacts on native societies couched in a story about hunting for ivory. I admit it is a well-constructed extended metaphor, but it gets a bit tiresome.

One for the Road (Tony Horwitz)
Subtitled "An Outback Adventure," this travelogue is an account of the author's hitchhiking romp around Australia. Leaving behind his journalistic post in Sydney, the author travels around the colorful interior of the continent and meets a host of similarly colorful people. This was an easy and entertaining read and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in Australia - especially any who have been there or plan to go. Can't wait to see if Mr. Horwitz's observations come to bear on my journeys around that country.

Jesus of Nazareth (Pope Benedict XVI)
Well, I'm not quite finished with this one yet, but I still feel confident to discuss its contents. In a word, the book is brilliant. This, the first installment of what will eventually be a trio of books on the life of Our Lord, covers the events that transpire between the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan and the Transfiguration. The pope takes the Gospels as his basis and adds a host of supplemental information to reconstruct a portrait of Christ as he actually was, rather than what we sometimes wish him to be. This book is simply packed with insights on each page, which is why it's taking me so long to get through. It's a book that you read for five minutes and then set down and stare into space for five minutes thinking about. Highly recommended, even to my non-Catholic friends, as it is not divisively written.

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
The most recently finished book on the list is F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz-age classic. I seem to have been one of the only people who had made it through high school without having to read this book, and I couldn't stand having been left out. I'm glad I made the effort, because this is truly a classic of American literature. It's hard to say a lot without revealing too much, so I'll simply say its a tragedy with a heart we can all relate to.

That's all for now, folks! I'll be reading in the new year as well, with The Fountainhead, Brideshead Revisited, In a Sunburned Country, and The Sun Also Rises beginning the list.

In which we ponder science and religion

The feast of the Epiphany (today) seems an appropriate time to consider a subject that has cropped up in a few of my conversations of late - the relationship between science and religion (namely the Catholic Church). The appropriateness of the Epiphany for such an intellectual musing centers on God revealing himself to the world via the star of Bethlehem and the subsequent arrival of the magi from the east. The magi, we must assume, were pagan philosophers and astronomers who looked to the stars and the world about them for answers to the mysteries of life. With the birth of Christ, their vague searches among the shadows for spiritual meaning were over when they encountered the truth in the manger.

This is where our consideration of the twin subjects of science and religion must begin - the search for truth. In terms of religious, and specifically Christian thought, God is truth. Or, put another way, all that is true comes from God. The Scriptures testify to this readily for Our Lord proclaims in the Gospel of St. John, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." In order to conceive how science and religion fit together, we must consider God the author of all that is true in the universe, as he himself declares.

The second step we must take is to consider how we as humans come to know truth. First and foremost, we are born as material creatures in a material world - thus we have an understanding of the physical world around us through our senses and our investigations. We are also born with and develop an intellect, which subscribes to the natural law - the law written on the hearts of all human beings. Therefore, the things which we observe in nature and the things that we discern in our hearts tend toward truth. This tendency, however, is perfected by God's own revelation of himself - the divine law. Revelation is a third source of truth and is found in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and is interpreted by the Magisterium (teaching authority) of the Church. This is the Catholic position on how truth may be known.

Science fits in quite nicely in this system of the world. For, we must note that science is founded on claims that can only be classified as mystical, or even religious in nature. That is, they cannot be proved or disproved through the sciences:

• The world is intelligible. This is the primary assertion of science. It is the basis of all scientific inquiry. Scientists must believe that the world is imbued with meaning and that it can therefore be made sense of. This premise is largely glossed over as common sense, but we can see its grounding in Western thought if we compare it to, say, the Native American worldview. Many Native American tribes (if not all) subscribed to the belief that nature is sacred and that it is not to be tampered with. Science could not develop under such philosophical circumstances. Science, the knowledge of the world around us, can only exist when we desacralize our surroundings. 
• The mind is capable of discerning truth. This is also so obvious to us Westerns that we often don't stop to think about it. However, in order for the scientific method to function, we must believe that our mind is capable of rational decisions. We must, in essence, possess that faith that our interior thoughts correspond with exterior realities. Hence the importance of the soul in theology. If we were soulless collections of randomly-collected cells, what faith could we have that our bodies naturally evolved to know right from wrong. Thus, the true skeptic is trapped by his skepticism into believing he is unable to know anything for certain. Science cannot exist under these conditions either. 

Now that we have examined how science exists in our culture, we must get on to the true heart of the issue. I have heard outrageous claims that the Church stands in direct opposition to science. These claims are fueled by Dan Brown half-truths and the straw-man arguments of the New Atheists who need a convincing theological bogeyman. The knowledge proposed by the Church and the knowledge developed by scientific inquiry are of two fundamentally different species. Theological truths, as proposed by the Church, attempt to answer questions of why. Scientific truths, on the other hand, are very convincing in explaining to us what things are and how they work. Science falters when it attempts to answer questions of ultimate meaning. Hence, the Church has consistently taught that knowledge gained by the sciences is inherently good, since it uncovers truth that God has imprinted in creation. And, subsequently, since the scope of science and the scope of theology are two different spheres of thought, they can never be said to contradict.

On the theological side of things, we must be conscious of how we are interpreting divine revelation when considering scientific claims. Biblical Fundamentalism, though a fairly recent phenomenon in Christian theology, has a firm claim on a vast segment of the population. This can exacerbate conflict between religion and science, and can quite frankly make Christianity out to look quite foolish. Catholics have never been Biblical Fundamentalists in the modern sense of the term. Yes, the Church teaches that the Scriptures are infallible, and yes she teaches that they are the inspired word of God. She does not teach, however, that all Scripture is to be read at literal face value. She has never taught such a doctrine that is quite foreign to the Christian mind.

The Bible must be understood quite carefully. The various books are written in various styles. To say that the Psalms are to be understood as plainly as the Letters of St. Paul is to deprive oneself of the poetic richness of those songs. So, when we consider the accounts of creation in Genesis, we cannot read them with the journalistic expectations with which we read newspapers. The Church has fantastic precedent in this arena when we consider the writings of the bishops and other members of the early Church. The modern disciplines of history and science were not around when the Biblical books were written, so it escapes me why some continue to force these views on ancient texts. Not even the biblical scholars of the early modern period did that. 

So, let us briefly consider the creation of the world (a tall order, I realize). The best of modern scientific research says that the universe is approximately thirteen billion years old and began with a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang (a theory which was put forward by a Catholic priest incidentally). Earth took shape slowly over the course of the ages and eventually life developed. How can we interpret the biblical accounts of creation in light of this knowledge? 

First, we must say with certainty that science will never be able to answer the question of why the universe exists, or why it was created in the first place. That is purely metaphysical in nature. Second, we must consider Genesis with our knowledge of what sort of writing it is. It is not journalistic, it is poetic. Just because it is poetic doesn't mean that we can't discern concrete truths from it. Here are a few off the top of my head:

• God created the world. It was not a random act of chance, but an act of the divine will to create.
• God created the world by speaking. In direct contrast to other ancient myths, whose creation stories were often violent, the God of the Bible spoke the world into existence. This prefigures the sending of Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, to redeem creation.
• Creation is good. The account in Genesis speaks quite clearly to the fact that God did not create evil. Material creation is not inherently evil. We are not to attempt to escape the material world, rather we are to sanctify it. 
• Man occupies a special place in creation. Man is the only creature endowed with intellect. We are also unique in our creation in the image and likeness of our creator. We are not mere animals.

I could probably go on (I am sure books have been written on the subject). But with this example we can see how theological truths such as the ones above can never be proven or disproven by science, yet this does not make them untrue. Additionally, we can understand the truth of these statements without disparaging the truth of scientific inquiry which paints a different picture of how the events transpired. 

Science and religion thus only contradict when we force them to. This comes from both sides. Perhaps it is an atheist setting up the Church as anti-science and anti-logic. Perhaps it is your local fundamentalist preacher decrying the purported age of the earth. Whenever you here such arguments, recall that in reality both sides are much more nuanced and compatible than it often appears. The search for truth is not confined to the stars nor is it confined to the crib in Bethlehem. We just need to be able to see the two of them for what they are and not confuse their relative importance and impact on our lives.

New Years

Euchre is my family's other religion. The card game, which seems peculiar to us Northerners, functions as an effective means for conversation and competition, while at the same time working as a stop-gap so that those two things don't spiral out of control too much. Too much competition coupled with too much conversation seems to be the subtext of each and every lukewarm reality-tv show spewed out of the mouth of Hollywood anyways. Clearly I digress.

Suffice to say that we take euchre seriously, especially when money is involved. What better way to kick off the new year than with a sixteen-person tournament of the game? Surely I can think of nothing better. The game (or games, rather) began round about six thirty on New Years Day, after the dishes had been finished and digestion inaugurated. All sixteen of us processed rather solemnly to grandma's kitchen table where we chose our scorecard, and by extension, the location and partnerships of all of our games. Card tables where swiftly set up in the front and back rooms so that four games could be accommodated all at once. Initial drinks were served - whiskey slush and variations of Kahlua-mixes (might as well be the national drink, as far as we're concerned). Sometime amidst the preliminary ballyhoo, the five-dollar entrance fee was assessed and the winner's pot decided (fifty dollars for the grand champion, twenty for runner-up, and ten for third place, twenty-five cent penalty per euchre).

Then the games began - trump was called, tricks were won, euchres (and partners) were endured. We shuffled about the house kaleidoscopically, shifting alliances and chairs. Conversation ebbed and flowed, depending on the amount of concentration and importance attached to each point. Shouts and laughter erupt from the back room! Grandma is accusing Sean of cheating. Threats (which we must assume are not serious) are made. Giggles from the front room as word of the incident filters through the house. Grandma must not be getting good cards we all agree. The back window is cracked to let in some crisp night air.

A general decree goes out declaring a halftime after the fifth game is finished. Not wishing to let the activity retreat to mere eating and drinking, several of us cousins begin a quick game of Black Jack to pass the time. Twenty-one is just as rare as the loners were in the first five games of the tournament. Back to the game! Find your partners! Find your table! Are you my partner? Sit here. No, let's sit there, those seats are hot. What's trump?

And so the evening went.

By the end of the night several incidents had transpired. Who of us will ever forget the time that me and Aunt Jane got seventeen points in one game because of her three loners? Who can possibly lose track of Margaux's record-breaking number of euchres (twelve in ten games, for those of you playing at home)? Grandma's half-joking cries of foul play will surely ring clear throughout the new year.

We reconvened to hear the end results. Mark won! Second place, Matt! Third place, a tie! The tie was duly settled by left-handed arm-wrestling on the circle table. Debate concerning the validity of such a tie-breaker continued for some time. At that point the whiskey slush, the fire, and the conversation were dying. We collected our winnings, bundled up, bid goodnight, and trod off into the cold, clear night assured of a warm new year ahead.