"Do you believe in magic?" -- John Sebastian
This past week, I've been on the phone taking care of the preliminaries involved in arranging financing for buying a house. Anyone who's done it in the past three years knows what a can of worms that is. If it's been much longer than that for you -- stay where you are.
That, and I've been working for a living. Most of that has been getting the kinks out of my new computer system. The Macintosh G5 is great. But setting it up and transferring files is the easy part. The real test is getting everything else on the network to play ball. Things like printers, for instance. You don't want to wait until a deadline looms to find out that your fonts don't work in a particular application (which has happened lately).
Meanwhile, in the Catholic blogosphere...
Much virtual ink has been spilled about a comment then-Cardinal Ratzinger made about the Harry Potter novels. Apparently he was less than impressed. Now that he's known as Pope Benedict XVI, every utterance is treated as a mark on stone tablets on Mount Sinai. Oh, and he doesn't like rock and roll either. (By the way, some years ago, the official Latinist in the Vatican, as part of his job to expand the vocabulary as called for by the needs of the times, came up with a name for that genre: musica dissonia. Cute, huh?)
When we were kids in the 50s and 60s, we watched Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, and Mary Martin in Peter Pan, oblivious to the dangers of New Age thinking that might have lurked beneath the surface. But with the advent of the 21st century, it seems a kid has to have his imagination micromanaged. Perhaps it's one of the by-products of a culture that has erased the distinction between fantasy and reality. Either that, or we all need to lighten the hell up.
On the other hand, when God is treated as a mystery, as opposed to the Pillsbury doughboy to be molded and shaped at will, it becomes easier to appreciate mystery for what it truly is, as opposed to what someone wishes it would be. Perhaps it is when our sense of the cosmos -- and who's really in charge -- is so threatened by misguided forces, that it only takes a children's novel to upset us.
I suppose that's why I find Cacciauida's approach to the subject to be... well, very novel.
1 comment:
A few years, we saw basketball phenom Michael Jackson fail when he tried his hand(s) at baseball. And, Dennis Miller didn't attract/retain viewers to ABC's Monday Night Football. Much more recently, actor Tom Cruise learned he wasn't exactly a psychiatrist.
So, as we can see, there is a tendency among homo sapiens to gravitate to games and professions for which they are not proficient.
Does anyone remember that the Pope's cannot err in matters of faith and morals? Why then are we concerned that he has OPINIONS about a stinkin' fictional book? Why are we worried that he doesn't rock to Springsteen or otherwise shake his booty?
He's the Pope, and human, and can make a mistake. If I recall, there was one Perfect Person Who walked the face of the earth. Can anyone give me a clue as to whom He was?
Cheez!
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