The Anchoress

It is, of course, as I have written elsewhere, the 150th anniversary of Our Lady’s appearances to Bernadette Soubirous at the grotto at Lourdes.

Fr. James Martin, who writes beautifully about his experiences at Lourdes in his book, My Life With the Saints, has taken another trip there, to help out with the pilgrims and the masses and the baths, and here is what he says this time:

The best part of the trip? That’s easy: being with the generous Knights and Dames, the tireless volunteers and companions, and especially the hopeful malades. Each of the malades comes to Lourdes for different reasons and were at different places with their illnesses. (This year I heard anger for the first time, which struck me as bracingly honest and real). But all were hoping for some sort of healing—physical, emotional or spiritual. With all the good humor and faith of the malades, it’s sometimes easy for me to forget the deep emotions that lay just underneath the surface, but conversations can quickly turn serious over breakfast, lunch or dinner, or while you’re waiting in line for a bath. Tears come quickly at Lourdes and flow as fast as the Gave River, which runs silently past the Grotto.

Spiritual healings come frequently at Lourdes, but after I returne people always ask me about the physical ones. So: any miracles? Yes, though maybe not as dramatic as the 66 authenticated ones. For example: One man in our group had suffered from the injuries that occurred during the first Gulf War, and, as a guest of the Order of Malta, had come to Lourdes seeking healing. His eyesight, never good, had deteriorated since being injured. As he told me while we were waiting in line for the baths, as soon as he landed in Lourdes his eyesight somehow seemed to get even worse. Someone suggested he take off his eyeglasses to let his eyes rest. A few minutes later, he told me, he could see perfectly well. “Look,” he said, “I can read your nametag from here.” And he did, from a few feet away. “I haven’t been able to see that well for 25 years!”

What do you make of that? Well, as one character says in “The Song of Bernadette,” for those without faith no explanation is possible; for those with faith no explanation is necessary.

I suspect that the whole piece may be “entirely too Catholic” for some of my readers, and I apologize for that; but I found it a fascinating and entertaining read. I had hoped either my son or my husband would make it to Lourdes this year, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Ah, well. In God’s own time.

My husband got involved with watching The Jane Austen Book Club last night. I couldn’t take more than a few minutes of it. I like chick flicks as much as anyone, I guess, but I strongly dislike soap opera, particularly witless soap opera (I am aware I may be offending some fans of the flick, and I apologize) and I couldn’t watch it. I hung in for a while, but lost it when one of the gals went into screaming hysterics at her husband, because he talked to a friend of hers who had embarrassed her in high school.

“That was high school,” the husband says, “it’s over.”

To which she replies with her tragic gravity: “High school is never over!”

Jane Austen would have made mincemeat with that woman, laying her out quite nicely in delicious and incisive ridicule.

I pronounced the movie “Moofy” and went to leave for something more entertaining, like unloading the dishwasher. My husband asked, “what is ‘moofy‘?

I snorted with disdain, “stupid-as-moo and goofy; I just made it up, inspired by this insipidy!”

“Oh, and I guess ‘insipidy’ is a new word, too?”

I blushed, realizing that I’d clevered-myself into a hole. “Yes, I made that up, too! I’m a wealth of new words!”

“Yeah…more like you’re ill-acquainted with proper English,” he teased. “Why don’t you call the six-year old (my niece) and tell her your new words; she’ll love them!”

So, this morning I called the six-year old, who invited me over for bagels, and she likes the word “moofy” quite a lot.

But because she has some measure of taste she looked balefully at me with “insipidy.” She doesn’t know “insipid” but she figures any word that makes her want to sing “inspidy doo-dah, zippity-yay” is probably stupid.

I think it’s cute, but I defer to the kid; she’s lost a tooth, after all, and is thus growing in wisdom.

Another new word invented from the blog: SMUPPITY (Smug & Uppity)

Excerpt from God and the World; A Conversation btween Peter Seewald and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

Seewald: Is faith, in principle, always present in man?

Ratzinger: So far as we can learn about the history of mankind, through excavations right back into prehistory, we can see that there has always been an idea of God. The Marxists had professed the end of religion. With the end of oppression we would no longer need the medicine of God, we were told. But even they have had to recognize that religion never comes to an end, because it is present in man as such.

This inner sensor does not, in any case, work automatically, like some piece of technology, but is a living thing that can either develop with the person or, on the other hand, become desensitized and almost dead. With a progressive inner fulfillment the sensor becomes ever more acute, more alive and interactive. In the opposite case, it becomes dull and, as it were, anaesthetized. Nonetheless, even in an unbelieving person there remains somehow a vestigial question of whether there is after all something there. Without taking this inner sensitivity into account we just cannot understand the history of mankind.

There was an article in the news the other day, and I thought I’d saved it, but apparently not, about how researchers are confirming the idea that our tissue, our cellular makeup, holds memories. When I read it I thought of this Ratzinger quote on the “idea of God” throughout the life of man, and wondered - as I have many times before - whether our deep inclination to consider God, and our longing for Him, is not rooted in that moment of creation when God “breathed into Adam,” the merest bit of himself, his essence. Does our instinct for God reside there, in that tiny divine spark that departed from Himself into us - burned, as it were, into our DNA; is it that spark that moves within us and keeps us questing and longing, the spark that intuitively finds comfort in the notion of Christ wishing to “reconcile all things to Himself?”

This is how I used to explain it to my kids:

“When we are Created, the Creator puts a bit of himself in us - the Divine Spark - think of one of those cartoons where the sun spits a ray of light somewhere. Imagine God spitting his light into us, “ptooooie!” For our whole lives, we have that inside us, and since it is the part of us that belongs to God, is made from God, we long all our lives to find our way back to God, to be reunited - to be whole. We are like plugs looking for the main outlet to which we can attach ourselves, forever.”

And I like what Merton said, quoted here:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us…It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

There’s something wonderfully comforting about all of that mystery. Sometimes, when I am at Adoration, lost in the mist and bliss that feels like Heaven on Earth (and renders me mute for anything but praise) the connection - the sense of “home” feels nearly complete.

Q: Anchoress, if someone tells you that you cannot be credibly pro-life until you adopt a sick baby, and then you go out and adopt a sick baby (and then a second) and that person - who promised to become “pro-life” if you did it - never kept his end of the bargain, what does that mean?

A: It means you can’t form a conscience in fits and starts. You cannot become “pro-life” because of what someone else does, unless you are really willing to let their actions open up within you what you have previously closed and locked tight. And since Jim Caviezel gives witness that picking up on this friend’s cynical prompting has enriched his life and blessed him, it also means that God speaks to us through anyone - in any way - he chooses, even if they seem unlikely candidates for the job, so you might as well listen up respectfully and be sweet to everybody.

Q: Will there always be an England?

A: Starting to look a little doubtful, isn’t it? Within the last week we’ve seen the nation all but cancel St. George’s Day for fear of insulting their Islamist population, and they allowed the EU to issue a map without Great Britain. Note “The English Channel” is now “The Channel Sea.” My Celtic ancestors must be spinning in their graves. Brits at their Best has more on all that.

Q: So, Anchorage is digging out from yet another massive snowjob snowfall. But these folks say global warming is not cooling. Do you still say it’s all hoo-hah?

A: Yes, I say whether we are in any sort of “preventable” weather cycle is debatable, whether we can actually affect the earth’s weather is dubious (we can’t even predict next week’s weather accurately) and whether any of the interesting weather anomalies is “manmade” is hoo-hah, especially since we steadfastly ignore the sun. Mark Steyn is looking at ethanol ethics, as I did last week and last month. IBD wonders if we can undo the ethanol mistake. There’s all kinds of inconvenient truths out there, but the really troubling one, to my way of thinking, is people going hungry.

Q: Why do you refer to “Manmade” Global Warming as “hoo-hah” - don’t you know that’s a slang for a woman’s private parts?

A: Not in my neck of the woods. I don’t know who calls vaginas and vulva’s “hoohah’s;” on this blog we just call them what they are, and routinely mock the vulvic-worship. I learned “hoo-hah” at the knee of my Jewish neighbors, and I love the way it dismisses nonsense with beautiful and semitic simplicity. Kipling said “a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” I say a vagina is just a vagina, but a surpassing bit of absolute blarney is a hoo-hah!

Q: Are you missing William F. Buckley?

A: Actually I do mean to read God and Man at Yale, but as with Ronald Reagan, I came to appreciation of Buckley rather late. However, there is a new piece up on the man by Fr. George W. Rutler. Rutler, you may remember, was the man who said to Christopher Hitchens, “you will either die a Catholic or a madman…”. Rutler offered to tell Hitchens the difference at that point, and I wish Hitchen had allowed him to, because I really want to know what it is. Hitchens, however, busily plugging his book with a “Whack-a-Christian” tour, did not allow Rutler to explain. This disappointed me. I think as a rule Hitchens’ very curious mind (and his sense of humor) would have looked forward to the answer as a whole new point of debate; but strangely, he didn’t want to know. Speaking of atheism, I notice that Pajamas Media has a feature piece on the Scientific embrace of Atheism, which looks like a good read. I have no problem with atheists, myself. I just think they should be as tolerant of my creed as I am of theirs, and stop trying to force their beliefs on me..

Q: Last week you were unhappy with Lisa Miller at Newsweek for her piece about Pope Benedict; do you like them any better this week?

A: You mean that incredibly tone-deaf piece on why Benedict didn’t “connect” with people? Too funny in retrospect, isn’t it? I have no animus toward Miller or Newsweek; I just think the magazine’s writers are supremely out-of-touch - almost endearingly so - with a huge portion of the country. They prove it again this week with this startlingly bigoted piece by Michael Hirsch in which he basically disses and dismisses people who are not like him and don’t live in the elitist coastal enclaves:

“…what we know today as Red State America. This region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants–the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics…Southern frontiersmen never got over their hatred of the East Coast elites and a belief in the morality and nobility of defying them. Their champion was the Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson. The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest.

He also calls his fellow countrymen “yahoos” and goes on blathering like that for a while. Well, goldarnit, Barack shure did warned us ’bout folks like this ol’ boy, clingin’, bitterly, to his’n identity n’his secular-humanist creed!

Q: Um, aren’t you a New Yorker?

A: I am, born here and live here now, but there was that whole adolescence spent in the unnamed place among the cowpokes and prospectors, and I will forever have some real perspective into the south and west which allows appreciation. Hirsch should get out more and broaden his horizons a little. There is a whole interesting world beyond the Smuppity West Side.

Q: Aw, did you just invent a word? Smuppity?

A: Why yes, I did. Smug & Uppity = Smuppity. My word, as of right now. But you can use it.

Q: You’re awfully quiet on the Hillary-front, lately.

A: Well, I am busy inventing new words for the lexicon, but Hubbard is both amusing and smart on Hillary today.

Q: So, Anchoress, then you’ve had your fill of writing about Pope Benedict XVI?

A: Well, actually, I am going to be quoting rather extensively from his tremendous book God and the World (which is actually a three-day conversation with writer Peter Seewald, and it’s fascinating) during the week, but for now others are doing Benedict, or things papal, very well indeed. Check out Deacon Greg’s links about the book of victim names which Cardinal Sean O’Malley handed the pontiff in Washington DC (somehow I’d envisioned a yellow legal pad, but I’m not artistic), and this interview with a Jewish journalist covering the pope’s visit. Never forget to check out the Deac’s homily for the week, which is always an insightful gift.

Then check out Irene Lagan’s coverage of the pope’s Regina Caeli address to the audience following his ordination of 29 new priests, during which he mentioned some trouble spots in the world (particularly Africa) and also his recent visit to the US:

I thank God who greatly blessed this unique mission and allowed me to make be an instrument of hope of Christ for the Church and for the country. At the same time I thank him because I myself was confirmed in the hope of American Catholics: I found it a great vitality and determination to live and bear witness to the faith in Jesus.

The tireless Rocco Palmieri has the full text of the address.

Most surprisingly - and worth mentioning in light of Benedict’s ongoing, full-on engagement of both Islam and the Arab peoples - one of the newly-ordained is an Iraqi.

Meanwhile, I totally agree with this comparison between John Paul II and Benedict. And I agree with Rod Dreher that this is a great “commercial” for Catholicism.

Q: Well, you just live in a sunny, “everything-is-beautiful” la-la land, dontcha?

A: No, I don’t, and I’ve had my forays into the darkling company, but I’ve never written about it with Gerard’s power and unstinting honesty. And for a sad but also rather lovely and uplifting story, check out Okie on the Lam’s tribute to his late mother-in-law. The greatness of the Greatest Generation was not gender-exclusive.

Q:Get any interesting review copies, lately?

A: Well…yes and no, but mostly no. I have an advance of A Persistent Peace by Fr. John Dear, S.J., which will soon be released by Loyola Press, (forward by Martin Sheen) and I will talk more about it when I’ve finished it, but so far…well, I’m trying very hard to appreciate the good father’s ultra-pacifist philosophy (and I’m sure some regular readers of the blog may enjoy it) but - perhaps because I am Irish - I don’t quite get it. I know all the intellectual arguments for pacifism (it reduces us to the behavior of the aggressors, violence begets violence, love is the answer) and I even agree with that to a point. There there is that point, where I must say that “yes, love, love, love is the answer but it is not expedient.” And sometimes - as when you have people plotting to release poison in a subway, or something, expedience is the other answer. This is why I can never fully embrace either the “full pacifist” stance or the warrior mentality. Too much of either seems out-of-balance to me, and Fr. Dear’s book - page after page of noble pacifism drenched with hero-worship of Ghandi and Tutu - after a while makes me feel rather clammy. Oh. I guess I did just review it!

On the other hand, Instapundit has received a review copy of a book I wish they’d have sent me: Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II. Insty calls it: A collection of essays, including one on a particular breed of pacifist that Chesterton saw as new in the 20th Century: “He does not so much believe in his own conscience as disbelieve in the common conscience which is the soul of any society. His hatred for patriotism is very much plainer than his love for peace.”

Indeed. Heh.

Speaking of Chesterton, Maureen Martin has some fun with him, here:

Chesterton joked that while his friends Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton led lives that convinced people to help the poor and commune with God, that he, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy were quickly becoming the patron saints of people “who just read all the time.”

Very cute.

Q: Don’t you think Chesterton and Antonin Scalia would have hit it off?

A: Absolutely. I’d love to have seen Stahl interview both of ‘em.

Q: Was that you I saw last Friday night at Carnegie Hall singing Molly Malone with Bryn Terfel?

A: Yep! I agree with Nordlinger, too, that his Mozart was the unintended highlight of the night. Bryn’s voice and Mozart are a match made in heaven.

John Hawkins is featuring an interview with Carol Platt Liebau wherein she discusses her new book, Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)

The cover-design is awful; it reminds me of one of Anne Rice’s Vampire tomes, but the book itself sounds interesting. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

CPL: …in my view, there has been a strand of feminism that has been very destructive to young girls and even to women of slightly older ages and I talk about them in Prude and I call it “do me feminism.”

Q: A lot of people think the only downside for premarital sex is STDs and pregnancy and if you avoid those problems by wearing a condom, then you might as well enjoy yourself. Let’s say a person isn’t religious and they don’t get STDs or get pregnant; why shouldn’t they have sex before marriage?

That’s the key question that I was trying to strike at the heart of Prude.

You know what? You may avoid an STD, you may never confront an unwedded pregnancy, but even so, giving too much, too soon, to too many people is still a terrible idea. It’s terrible idea because there are many, many, emotional and psychological consequences that often these little girls are never told about.

Q: Like what?

They include regret, anxiety, shame, the inability to trust men, and trouble forming permanent committed relationships later. You know, John, it all makes sense. If you’re the kind of young woman who doesn’t understand why it’s important not just to have sex with any guy that wants you to, you’re probably going to be prone to seeing some of the less attractive sides of male behavior. If you see that over and over again…it’s going to be difficult to learn how to trust men…

Q: What would you say to a young woman who said to you, “Carol, I’m a Christian and I’m inclined not to have premarital sex, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep a boyfriend or even eventually get married unless I do have sex before marriage.”

…That’s a fair question, but obviously, if someone’s a Christian, they already have a certain basis why it’s not always right to do everything we want to do at the moment we want to do it.

The thing I would also say to that young woman is that I think she is underestimating men. Because, of course, you have a lot of men out there who are looking for nothing more than a little quick action. But, there are also a lot of very fine men who are looking for a woman they can respect and are looking for a woman who has loved them enough, even before she met them — to want to save a very precious and important part of herself, the sort of deep intimacy that comes with having sex with someone you love and who is committed to you — for him…

I do like that Liebau has taken head-on the notion that if one does not subscribe to the idea that our orgasms were meant to be the alphas and omegas of our lives, one is quickly labeled a “prude.” This name-calling and spiteful mockery is par-for-the-course with those who have decided that the world is a schoolyard and they are forever 14 years old. Go against the conventional wisdom and try to live with a little discipline and self-restraint, and you are derided as uptight, repressed, frigid…you know…you “have issues.” No one ever wonders if the people who cannot bear to consider self-restraint don’t have some issues of their own.

I think Liebau makes an important point about how feminism has evolved into something that encourages being used by men because the woman is “using him back.” Using each other is close to regarding each other as “things,” and we’ve talked before about where that leads. It is how we stop seeing each other as human beings, at all.

In this blog I’ve touched on the old canard that “Catholics believe every sperm is sacred,” in a way that I think (I hope) makes sense to a reader who actually has an open mind, but it doesn’t get read too often, (although this guy seems to get it.)

Likewise I’ve spent some time wondering about the whole point and meaning of virginity (and circumcision). These subjects don’t get spoken about too often - quite possibly because people are so afraid of the social pressure to conform to the age and to get with the program.

The age is so fast and noisy that - as Pope Benedict said last week - it doesn’t allow us much time to think and to process or to wonder. But these are important, really basic and essential issues that have for too long been relegated into the “uncool” pile. I’m glad to see Liebau’s book, and I hope it furthers the discussion.

Related: Who Told You that You Were Naked?
They Eat Up My People
Every Sperm is Sacred?
Self-respect is not prudery

I just finished (and loved) The Last Secret of Fatima by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, which will be coming out in early May but may be pre-ordered.

If you followed coverage of Pope Benedict’s XVI’s recent visit to America, you saw a lot of Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican’s SecState; you’ll recall he told informed the pope, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, of the moment of the anniversary of his election, at which the pope spoke so eloquently and extemporaneously.

The Last Secret of Fatima is actually a book-length interview (along the lines of God and the World) between Cardinal Bertone and Giuseppe De Carli, the head of Vatican broadcasting - one initiated by De Carli, and addressing the endless speculation about the “last secret” given to Lucia de Santos by the Virgin Mary nearly a century ago in Portugal. The Vatican, under John Paul II’s orders, made that “secret” public in 2000, but for some the revelation has never satisfied. I ate the book up and even found the forward (by Pope Benedict) and the introduction to be interesting and compelling.

Because it is in interview form, The Last Secret of Fatima is a fast and entertaining read - at times its two participants interrupt each other, get testy or teasing, and once they abruptly fall into a quick discussion about an Italian soccer team, but all the while they are giving us some tantalizing glimpses into the thinking and personalities of John Paul I, John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger (both as Cardinal and as Pope Benedict) and Sr. Lucia, herself. It also goes into surprising medical and political detail about the assassination attempt against John Paul, and how that event, coupled with his finally asking to see Lucia’s letter, shaped the remainder of his papacy. If we always knew that John Paul was a first-class mystic, we meet his stubbornness, and Lucia’s liveliness. Also very interesting, particularly in light of his recent visit, we get to see Ratzinger the careful theologian and scholar as obedient servant.

A few excerpts:

Bertrone: As Cardinal Ratzinger correctly explained, a prophecy, even a catastrophic or apocalyptic one, cannot be inevitable. Our Lady called for “Penance, Penance, Penance!” Prayer and penance are stronger than evil and bullets. Prophecy does not predict some inevitable fate that is deterministically bound to happen no matter what. Otherwise, we would be at the mercy of dark forces dangling us over an abyss of nothingness. That would make absolutely no sense given everything that we know about theology, spirituality, or the Church…On the contrary, prophecy is an urgent invitation to conversion, penance and prayer, and the point is that these things have the power to change the course of history. The mistake made by some of the Fatamists after the publication of the Third Secret was to give the text a literal, fatalistic interpretation. They hastily concluded that the Vatican had withheld the Third Secret until the year 2000 because John Paul II had survived the assassination attempt, whereas, in their view, the pope’s actual death was a requirement for the prophecy to be fulfilled. They seemed to assume that everything is governed by chance, and not by the God who “delivers us from evil.” The freedom to do evil is not the last world. True freedom is the freedom to be on God’s side.
[…]
Q: For the first time ever, the custodian of the Catholic faith Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was making public statements about a private revelation. This alone would have been enough to underscore the exceptional nature of the event. After all…the same Ratzinger had said, “Fatima will not be the origin of the apocalypse. That is impossible. No apparition is indispensable to the faith, because Revelation ended with Jesus Christ. Secret messages add nothing to what a Christian needs to know of Revelation.” Your Eminence, I have the distinct impression that if Ratzinger had had his druthers, the Secret would have stayed a secret. Or am I mistaken?

Bertrone: I think you are. Pope Benedict XIV had already given the Church a carefully worked out distinction between public and private revelation. So it wasn’t as if we were jumping over a cliff with no safety net. Moreover, Cardinal Ratzinger was not opposed to revealing the Third Secret. He didn’t have any doubts or objections. The assassination attempt and the pope’s illness were signs. The last postscript to the shooting was the pope’s offering of forgiveness to Ali Agca at the Rebibbia prison on December 27, 1983. We were almost overwhelmed by the abundance of very meaningful signs. So why not transmit the call of Fatima to the broader Christian community? After all, it is the call to conversion, prayer and penance issued by Our Lord’s Mother, herself. The Fatima message is saturated with the Gospel. [emphasis mine - admin]

The book is very nearly up to the moment, discussing Pope Benedict’s Regensberg address and how quickly his remarks were jumped on and misreported by the press both in Europe and in America, the pope’s visit to Turkey, and what Fatima means to Islam. I knew that Fatima was named for Mohammed’s favorite daughter, who married a Christian and made her stand on that bit of land in Portugal, but I was not aware, for example, of this:

Q: …Fatima plays a role for Shiite that is similar to the role of Mary in Catholicism. For instance, Shiite theology assigns Fatima a part in the end-times. The Shiites believe that the Fatima shrine belongs by right to the Muslims and that the Catholics have stolen it form its rightful owners. They argue that if a Lady dressed in shining white appeared there, then it’s because she had a message for Muslims and not for Christians…[the question continues and goes into behavior De Carli has witnessed by Muslins at the Fatima Shrine]

Bertone: Let’s stick with the prophecy and not stray into other areas…when I met with Lucia the second time she showed absolutely no interest in drawing connections between Fatima and the attack on the Twin Towers…

The conversation between Bertone and Di Carli is lively and far-reaching, at one point one of them even quotes Magdi Allam who we know since Easter as Magdi Christiano Allam.

I will admit that Fatima has never held much fascination for me as it has for others. These apparitions are not articles of faith and while the Church very carefully investigates them and either recommends them as “worthy of belief” or not, (as it says in the book, between 1928 and 1975 there were 232 reported apparitions in thirty-two countries; the Church has recognized only 15 as authentic) Catholics are under no compulsion to pay heed to any of them. Even so, I found eavesdropping-with-permission on Cardinal Bertrone and Giuseppe De Carli to be irresistable, fascinating and ultimately very satisfying both to the spirit and to the intellect. It’s a good ‘un!

Curt Jester has his review here.

If you’ve never read the remarkable book The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, you really should consider it. It’s not just for Catholics; it is a tremendously readable autobiography of a brilliant man on spiritual sojourn. One of those books you pick up and have difficulty putting down. I quote some of the book - and share how it made me think.

Here is a video about Merton and the evolution of the book

Did it seem to you, as it did to me, that we watched Benedict loosen up or break free a little bit at this mass? Watching him exit he seemed bigger and bolder to me, as though he was growing into his part.

I was inclined to like him, of course, through his writings, but I didn’t know if I would be put off by his manner. After half a lifetime watching the effusive, playful and outgoing John Paul II, I wondered if Benedict, in person, could manage to inspire in the same way. He does.

Benedict is shy. His body language is a little self-protective. He does not run out to meet you…instead, he draws you in, and his sweetness and transparent kindliness runs completely counter to the whole “rottweiller narrative,” which I think is taking a beating (as is the credibility of the press who repeated it ad nauseam) in the face of Benedict’s actual presence.

A “liberal catholic” friend of mine emailed: Don’t tell any of my liberal friends (that is, everyone) but I’m starting to really like the guy…

I think that sense of surprised delight is going both ways; I get a sense that just as we’re discovering we like the guy, the pope is also feeling like he likes us. I say that from an introvert’s standpoint (because I am one); it is entirely possible to love people deeply but still cringe at crowds and exposure. You can see Benedict’s discomfort a little in the way he waves - both hands up in the air, almost pushing back against all that is coming forward. I totally understand that. It is of a piece with him holding back a little while shaking hands.

But watching Benedict leave the stadium today, he seemed different - serene but also somehow larger. The crowd was pressing into him in an almost alarming manner; Benedict seemed like he was about to topple over from the waves of people surging on both sides and the Secret Service guys seemed pretty unhappy about it.

But Benedict did not seem unhappy. In a situation that would normally distress and exhaust an introvert, the pope seemed strangely bouyed up by grace, and it was remarkable to watch. People were tugging, touching, reaching out - and in the middle of it all he paused to bless a young man in a wheelchair, stopped to kiss a sleeping baby and each time he did it with such a humble and priestly mien and a manner suggesting that he was in his own little sphere, and all the urgent press of the world touched him not. It was enormously powerful for me.

Video update: Turns out the infant he kissed was Kate Elizabeth Clemens, daughter of NY Jets Quarterback Kellen Clemens, which you can see here.

Meanwhile, Benedict is talking and talking and talking. To Catholic educators at Catholic University of America, to some 200 religious leaders from many faiths, and to our Jewish brethren. He is saying a great deal and none of it is empty or insubstantial. I had hoped to have had a minor analysis of his speech last night, to the Bishops, done for you but there’s been no time. It may take weeks or months to really delve into what Benedict is bringing to America in these six days.

Fr. James Martin has the same sense I did and shares a great story.

Zoe Romanowsky tells what it’s like to attend mass with 46,000 others.

Cobb says: “Benedict continues to speak directly to me”. Seems there’s a lot of that going around!

Sisu is blogging around

Related: Benedict Books You Know you Want

(H/T American Digest)

Yes, I said the site would be “wall-to-wall” Benedict for the duration of his visit. I may throw in a video here or there - or something just to refresh myself, but if you’re looking for All Things Benedict, this is where we’re at so far - I’ll be writing more later.

Benedict Gets Big at Nationals Stadium (He seemed Bunyunesque!)

The Pope on the Sex Abuse Issue (A first-look at Benedict’s address to his bishops following Vespers. Includes some personal stuff.)

Benedict’s serious call for seriousness (His brief address at the WH packed a big punch for a little piece.)

US sees a very different pope (Not quite the salivating rottweiller we’d been told to expect.)

This Peter is a lot like Paul (links to Mark Shea’s excellent and insightful piece.)

Benedict is so shy! (Looks at the pontiff’s body language at Andrews AFB.)

“Deeply Ashamed” Benedict and the Priesthood (His remarks en route.)

The press and Benedict (The man and the narrative.)

The Reality of Benedict and Benedict & Islam; a supernatural gambit (a recent piece at Pajamas Media, and one from last year.)

BEST PICTURES: This gallery has awesome pictures of all the proceedings. (H/T to Opinionated Catholic who is doing his own extensive coverage, even about how the pope waves weirdly)

Live EWTN here.

More coming up, meanwhile, don’t forget to look into The Deacon’s Bench, Whispers in the Loggia, Amy Welborn, American Papist and the other great Catholic bloggers I have in my blogroll for additional perspectives and usually much more knowledgeable writing than you can get here.

John Paul II was a writer who produced a steady output; Benedict XVI is a prolific writer who knocks out so many volumes he is like the clerical Stephen King - except he’s writing history and philosophy. Some books by or about Benedict that you may want to delve into: