Colbert and the Cardinal (U.S. Catholics #1 and #2)

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Steve Rabey

Timothy Cardinal Dolan kissed the hand of host Stephen Colbert on the Sept. 3 edition of “The Colbert Report.” Perhaps the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Archbishop of New York agreed with Colbert’s comment:

You’re the second most famous Catholic in America, next to myself.

Other revelations during the interview segment with U.S. Catholics #1 and #2:

Colbert said that when Dolan was not elected Pope, as some had expected, he lost 50 bucks in a bet. Dolan affirmed that no Ouija board or chicken bones were used in the papal voting.

More important, Colbert isn’t sure about Mass attendance after Pope Francis reportedly said that “even atheists are redeemed by Christ.”

“He’s too soft on sin for me,” said Colbert, adding: “If even atheists are redeemed by Christ, why have I been going to Mass on Sundays? I could have gotten another nine holes in.”

Posted in Blog, Quotable

Seamus Heaney’s Celtic Catholic Poetry (R.I.P.)

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Steve Rabey

The world lost one of its greatest and most popular poets Saturday Aug. 31 when Seamus Heaney died in a Dublin hospital.

Born on a family farm named Mossbawn in County Derry Northern Ireland, Heaney often wrote about potatoes, peat and the power of rural tradition, as well as the Troubles that plagued his native land. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, his life and work were described in the Award Ceremony Speech:

Seamus Heaney comes from a humble, farming community, but at the same time we meet in him a learned poet who in the very microcosm of language cultivates and reveals the Celtic, pre-Christian and Catholic literary heritage.

His first collection of poems, published in 1966, included “Digging,” which paid homage to his rural roots:

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

Before describing his choice of a different calling:

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Ten more collections would follow, the last published in 2010.

His 1984 collection, Station Island, was inspired by Lough Derg, the penitential pilgrimage site that has attracted disciples for centuries:

Blurred swimmings as I faced the sun, my back
to the stone pillar and the iron cross,
ready to say the dream words I renounce…

See his obituary here.

Posted in Blog, Quotable, Writing Life

Civil religion, “Sheilaism,” and Robert Bellah (R.I.P.)

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Steve Rabey

Those of us who follow religion and culture lost a founding father last month. Robert Bellah, the Berkeley scholar, helped open the academy doors for the sociological study of religion.

He gave us the term “civil religion,” but was best known for his (and his co-authors’) 1985 book, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, which explored the ways that the American individualism that had been largely praised by de Tocqueville had, in more recent times, “grown cancerous.”

American cultural traditions define personality, achievement, and the purpose of human life in ways that leave the individual suspended in glorious, but terrifying, isolation.

Other Bellahisms:

For many, “freedom means being left alone,” or “freedom from the demands of others.”

“Sheilaism” is what we get when American-style individualism meets religion, as explained by Sheila Larson, one of the many Americans interviewed in habits:

My faith has carried me along way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.

When the kind of “expressive individualism” pioneered by Walt Whitman collided with the cultural revolution of the 1960s, the result was a new kind of mysticism that tends to “radicalize and absolutize” religious individualism.

Bellah’s prescription for recovery includes a return to tradition and community:

Perhaps common worship, in which we express our gratitude and wonder in the face of the mystery of being itself, is the most important thing of all.

Thank you, Robert Bellah.

See the New York Times obit here.

Posted in Blog, Past Is Present, Quotable

Mindy Kaling: Kindness Rules

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Steve Rabey

Funny but not mean. Honest but not vicious. That’s Mindy Kaling’s goal in her popular TV show, “The Kaling Project,” according to a recent profile in Entertainment Weekly.

“Mindy’s Rules for Writing,” a sidebar to the Aug. 9 cover story on Kaling and “The New Hollywood,” describes the ethos encoded in the “voice checklist” the show’s writers follow. Among the six rules:

1) Characters are helpful and kind.

2) No one is a moron.

4) Conflict should never come from a desire to be cruel or mean.

Nice!

Posted in Blog, Quotable, Writing Life

Are We Searching or Being Searched?

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Steve Rabey

“By the time you search, something’s already failed.”
– Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, quoted in New York Times story about a new generation of “Predictive Search” apps that anticipate what you need to know before you search for it and that are raising questions about privacy and other concerns.

Posted in Blog, Man&Machine, Quotable

Colbert and the Cardinal (U.S. Catholics #1 and #2)

Seamus Heaney’s Celtic Catholic Poetry (R.I.P.)

Civil religion, “Sheilaism,” and Robert Bellah (R.I.P.)

Mindy Kaling: Kindness Rules

Are We Searching or Being Searched?

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