His Holiness Gets (Justifiably) Snarky

Q.: What’s the difference between a terrorist and a theologian?

A.: You can negotiate with a terrorist.

It was a matter of some amusement when His Holiness, Benedict XVI said, “To an attentive reader of my text, it is clear that in no way did I wish to make my own the negative words pronounced by the medieval emperor.” In other words, “If you have half a brain, you realize that the remarks I made included this quote from Michael II Paleologus, a Byzantine emperor from the first quarter of the 14th century. Further, halfwit, this was an historical allusion made in an academic setting before an audience who, presumably, had brains enough to figure all this out.”

The ever-present Council on American Islamic Relations weighed in, of course, along with Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Jasser takes offense at the statement - certainly not the Holy Father’s - that Mohammed forced conversions and found most expedient the sword in the work of evangelization. Jasser apparently is offended by historical fact.

From his perch at Duke University, Muslim scholar Ebrahim Moosa says the Pope’s text was meant to provoke a violent reaction. Mr. Moosa apparently can offer nothing more scholarly than this remark, which scarcely merits little more than the comment that he has not gone far into the scholar bank to withdraw this poor excuse for what can only be described - charitably - as the petulant frenzy of those who will do violence simply for the joy of it.

Muslim theologian Adnane Mokrani complains that the Pope explains does not apologize for his remarks. It would be intellectually dishonest for His Holiness to apologize for quoting an historic text. Unless I miss my bet, Benedict XVI is nothing if not intellectually honest.

In an earlier life, Benedict XVI was a professor and remains one to this day. He speaks in an academic voice despite his elevation to the papacy.

His Holiness has been accused, along with President Bush, of trying to reignite the Crusades. Of course, all the aggression - the bombing of churches, the murder of a nun - has been on the part of self-proclaimed Muslims who reputedly are messengers of a religion that proclaims peace.

To assuage their outrage over the remarks of His Holiness, perhaps our Muslim brethren might be better served by getting around to apologizing not only for the recent outrages committed in the name of Islam, but also for the historical record which amply demonstrates their ancestors’ use of the sword in their own brand of “peaceful” evangelization.

Mary Koechig, Fisherwoman Extraordinaire

Fishing just isn’t the same anymore. For nearly 20 years, I was a solitary fisherman. I was on the road six months short of two decades and fished where I wanted when I wanted. No back of the boat for me. I was alone and treasured my solitude. Tonight, I am alone, my rods rigged and ready. Yet, there is a play in the light which has turned to shades of grayish white, gray and black. I don’t fish. I turn around and look the other way.

A flotilla of geese - four families of them - has left the northwestern shore of the lake and is headed over to the east side. Eight adults and 13 goslings out for their evening swim and bedding for the night. They are black shapes against that gray-white sky, sailing into the gray that eventually turns black on the other side of the lake.

Mary changed fishing for me forever. She didn’t even fish, yet she changed it. My first visit to a fishing lodge was at her suggestion. We went for our 15th anniversary a few years ago. She never wet a line. All Mary did was point out to me what should have been obvious. She showed me patterns of light coming through trees. Where I saw glare in the water, she saw works of art. While I concentrated on what should have been productive water, she saw the whole picture.

Phoebe, the hummingbird, has left for the evening but will be back in the morning to feed on the fuchsias Mary always wanted hanging. Fred, the Great Blue Heron, will come by in the morning for brunch over in the southwestern-most part of the cove where there are plenty of dead sticks to disguise his legs.

I was on the road for nearly 20 years, all on my own. It always seemed that when I met anyone they talked too much and said too little. While I fished, Mary offered a constant commentary on our surroundings, always seeing things through her art teacher’s eye. What might have been mindless chatter from others became powerful imagery from her. She talked a lot and said a lot more than her words seemed to imply. When she spoke, it paid to listen. If you listened, you were bound to be rewarded by seeing something you otherwise would have missed.

We bought this place on the cove five years ago and she insisted on spending every summer weekend up here. This is not remarkable except when you consider that she was undergoing chemotherapy for the last four and a half of those years. After the doctors and nurses had done their worst, she would say, “Get me to the cottage.” Once here, she would brighten as much as she could, and then lie in her lounge chair, waiting for Phoebe to come along. Every time that hummingbird came by, Mary was like a child on Christmas morning.

“Marc, would you please go and fish,” she would ask. Not wanting to leave her, I stayed up on the deck, looking longingly at the water. She insisted that I go fish. I would walk down to the dock and plant a chair there, fishing from the dock. Frustrated, she would tell me, “Go out in the boat.” I couldn’t leave her there, all alone. Last year she convinced me to buy a set of walkie talkies so I could use the boat and stay in contact with her and still use the boat. I went out once.

Truthfully, it was better for me to sit on the dock or on the deck and listen to her describe the surroundings to me. I saw everything but knew nothing of it without her describing it all. She brought it all alive for me. She also brought it all into perspective.

When I suggested we had found this place by accident, she said, “It was the grace of God that did it.” Watching me fish from the dock one day, she said, for no apparent reason, “God is good.”

To her great joy and embarrassment, the cove on which this cottage sits, was named, “Mary’s Cove,” in her honor on August 2, 2005.

Mary died on April 2, 2006 and I will never have another fishing partner as fine as her. I will still fish, and she still will be with me, but it just won’t be the same anymore.

The Death of Free Will

Free will is dead. Long live free will.

Yes, free will has died after putting up a valiant fight against various plots against it for years. The final blow came sometime in the last couple of weeks when some headshrinker exposed road rage as the result of something he calls, "Intermittent Explosive Disorder." When you are driving down the highway and some fool begins to act violently, whether verbally or physically, have pity on him because, you see, he is the victim of a genuine psychiatric disorder. As entry 312.34, it actually is entered in the pages of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It simply is being applied to bad behavior.

Free moral agency has expired with the doctor's pronouncement. No longer able to control ourselves, we now have psychiatric authority to misbehave in whatever fashion we wish just as long as we remember to explain it all away with the IED defense. Responsibility has been defenestrated. Psychiatric rationalization has entered the room and thrown it out. This is not comforting, though.

Always of the opinion that psychiatry was in the business of doing away with cheap rationalization, we now find that our entire worldview of the subject must undergo radical change. None of us, apparently, is responsible for our own actions. Crime, therefore, cannot exist. Sin cannot exist. And what about that screaming baby in the next room? Infants likely suffer from this dire disorder and probably should be medicated from birth. Okay, then. Why not pre-natal meds for the kids? Nip this stuff in the bud is what I say.

In fact, let's all just medicate ourselves into a stupor and forget the whole deal. Let's all just forget what we owe to the world and concentrate on what the world owes us. If the world fails to pay up, we can always smack the daylights out of someone and know that we are covered in the shrinks' book. And if the shrinks say it's so, the courts will not be far behind.

More on The Da Vinci Code

Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ - St. Jerome

Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence - I Peter 3:15 (Holy Bible, RSV, 2d Catholic ed.)

So much has been written and spoken about The DaVinci Code that to say anything at all runs the risk of redundancy. One thing that cannot be said too often, however, is that this is what the educators of the world call, “a teaching moment.”

For example, Mr. Dan Brown, in his resplendently flawed work, The DaVinci Code, repeatedly refers to the Vatican being active around 325 A.D. What the benighted Mr. Dan Brown fails to realize is that the Vatican did not exist in 325 A.D. How many Catholics really know that? After his claim that artistic and architectural references in the book are factual, it is laughable that he would talk about frescoes in Notre Dame. Look it up on the internet, for pity’s sake. Mr. Dan Brown can only count 12 cups in Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Most folks have no problem finding thirteen.

What really irks here, though, is the ignorance of Catholics when it comes to matters of their own religion. Catholics somehow have forgotten who they are, where they came from. Most don’t even know where they are going, in this world or the next. Catholics in this country today are intellectually no better off than they were in the 18th and 19th centuries. Gaudium et spes, states, “Believers can have more than a little to do with the rise of atheism. To the extent that they are careless about their instruction in the faith, or presenting its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God and of religion.” (quoted in The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 2125). This is not merely instruction; it is a warning to not let our brains go to seed. We are responsible for our own intellectual health.

Catholics have gotten intellectually lazy, intellectually slothful. Sloth, you will remember, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Remember those? You can find them CCC 1866. If you cannot name the Seven Deadly Sins, it is a safe bet you can name the last seven Oscar best actors, actresses, or the like. Think about it. Which matters?

If people have the time and inclination to open The Da Vinci Code or to go see they movie, they should at least grant the same time and attention to what the Church is all about.

The Da Vinci Code Brouhaha

DISCLAIMER: I have not read The Da Vinci Code. I do not intend to read The Da Vinci Code. I simply do not have the time. And I really do not have the inclination to read bad history.

The success of failure of The Da Vinci Code will have little effect on society as a whole, yet the bother that is being generated by this book makes it seem as though the world is about to end not with a whimper, but a bang. There is so much publicity both positive and negative surrounding this book and movie that it is easy to imagine some publicist at Doubleday or Sony playing both ends against the middle in order to boost sales. That kind of conspiracy is nothing compared to what Mr. Dan Brown suggests in his book. So, what is the bother all about?

Quite simply, Mr. Dan Brown has taken some highly inaccurate history and made up a story of murder and intrigue with the Catholic Church as the arch-villain. Nothing new here. When Al Smith ran for president, the Ku Klux Klan spread rumors that if elected, Smith would have a tunnel built from the White House to the Vatican, thereby making a Vatican takeover of the country a simple matter. Anti-Catholic bias in this country goes back to pre-revolutionary times. So, casting the Church as villain does nothing to add to the originality mix in Mr. Dan Brown’s work.

People seem to be alarmed over what this cheap entertainment could possibly do to the Church. It is quite possible that some people would even leave the Church over this. That is their misfortune. That also is their sin. The Church requires us to remedy vincible ignorance. Invincible ignorance can be excused. However, when presented with malign comments about the Church it is our duty to investigate the facts of the case and to act upon the truth. In other words, the Church requires us to educate ourselves. We do ourselves harm when we blindly accept the first story that comes along. We must become our own fact-checkers, taking advantage of the brain God has given us, along with the resources available online or in the library.

All of this reminds me of the fuss with Napoleon. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12132a.htm) The little Corsican had been trying to deal with Pius VII for years. Napoleon threatened, "I will destroy the Church.” Ercole Consalvi, Pius VII’s secretary of state, replied, “No, you will not. We have been trying for 1700 years and haven’t been able to do it.” (http://www.stpetersbasilica.org/Docs/seminarians2.htm) I doubt there is much any work by Mr. Dan Brown can contribute to Napoleon’s desire.

Shame on blogger edwardtheo80461805

On Wednesday, April 26, I posted a memorial to my late wife on my blog. The blogger edwardtheo80461805 attempted to desecrate that blog by sending a spam message about two-week college degrees.

It would be gratifying to describe edwardtheo80461805 in the most despicable adjectives imaginable. It would be gratifying to understand how anyone could do such a thing. In fact, it would be gratifying to occasion a case of forced rectal cranial inversion upon this edwardtheo80461805 except for the fact that this hairball has a congenital case of RCI already.

I do not expect edwardtheo80461805 to understand this one iota, but I will be saying a prayer for his or her sorry soul.

By the way, I will do everything in my power to identify and expose edwardtheo80461805 for the criminally crass and despicable abscess on the lower posterior of society he or she is.

By the way, that really is me in the picture. If you see me, edwardtheo80461805, come up and introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you.

Mary Ethel Koechig, 1942-2006

Mary Ethel Koechig died on April 2, 2006. Official cause of death: Cardiopulmonary arrest due to malignant pleural effusion due to metastatic breast cancer. Contributing factors: liver metastasis, neuropathy, and malnutrition. After four and one-half years of chemotherapy, her body could take no more. Two of her friends, one of her cousins, and her husband were with her when she died. It was a surreal moment, one in which time seems to invert itself, when everything is out of joint. It is a moment that sits with me every waking hour; one that interrupts my sleep. I am her husband.

Whether the treatments got too rough or she was having one of her best days, she would daily explain, "God isn't finished with me yet." She also would joke that any bad days she had could be chalked up to T.O.P. or, Time Off Purgatory. Mary's faith was that strong; she absolutely trusted that she was in the hands of God and that whatever came along would be taken care of by the grace of God. Hard as it was, that faith was - is - mine as well. Still, on the human level, and as her husband, I hated everything she went through and fretted because I could not fix it all.

It seems the only thing we had after our faith was humor. On the rare occasions when she would complain, I would tell her, "Walk it off, you sissy." This usually made her smile. She referred to her disease as "free-range cancer." Entering the oncologist's office, she would announce, "I'm here to have poison pumped into my body." We were sometimes referred to as the Friday afternoon entertainment at the doctor's office. A young seminarian who came for visits to our house brought Mary a bottle of holy water from Lourdes. Mary occasionally would liberally sprinkle herself while saying, "Okay, Bernadette, let's have another miracle here."

Looking back on some of the humor, I wonder why I did not console her more. Mary sat with a tube stuck in her chest, getting her sometimes weekly round of chemo, consoling others who were in much better shape than she. That is what she did all her life. She consoled and she helped when and where she could.

Mary loved me completely and without reservation. She understood my need to try to laugh off this whole mess and to try to keep things light. She also insisted that I was not the clown that others saw and sometimes would get angry with me when I failed to let others see any other side of me. She would tell me that it bothered her that others might not know any other side of me. For herself, she had few concerns. Mary lived for others. People speak of the quality of life. Mary lived a kind of quality of love for others.

Chief among Mary's disappointments were the time missed with Genevieve, her only grandchild, and the fact that her father treated her as if she were 12. Intimidated by her brain and independence, her father mistakenly confused these with foolishness. It is a tragedy in his life he never knew his daughter. Preferring his women dumb and dominated, poor TB probably was mostly scared of intelligent and independent Mary from whom he nor anyone had anything to fear.

We were going to go to Houghton Lake and Ortonville, Michigan and then we were going to go back to Rome for our fourth trip there. Now I am up here at Mary's Cove in Lebanon, Connecticut, wondering where to go, what to do. The enormity of this loss is suffocating. But suffocation is out of the question at the moment. Mary wanted more than anything to know that I would be able to take care of myself after she was gone. So, next month I shall proceed to Houghton Lake and thence to Ortonville to see Samuel Theodore, our brand spanking new nephew. Young Sam, and Genevieve, will know about their aunt and grandmother who loved them and loved them well as she did all others she knew.

Last year, some political highhandedness resulted in a blessing and an embarrassment for Mary. The First Selectman of the Town of Lebanon was contacted and told about Mary and her love for the cove on which our cottage sits. Mary long ago said that no matter how bad she felt, she wanted to be here at the cottage where she could look out on the water and feel God's peace around her. On August 2, 2005, the cove was officially named Mary's Cove. It truly is Mary's cove.

I moved up here the day after her funeral and have been here ever since. She is everywhere at this place. Yesterday, I took her paddle boat out on the cove for the first time this year and I could feel her beside me. She crops up at the most unexpected places and times as when, driving up to the main road, she suddenly entered my mind, just as a wild turkey hen brushed my windshield with her wing. When Fred, the great blue heron swoops in first thing in the morning to steal fish out of the cove, I think of Mary and the first time she saw him. Although the bullfrogs have not yet started, I think of the first time she heard bullfrogs. It was the first summer here. Asking what that ungodly noise could be, she found it difficult to believe bullfrogs could make such a racket. When she finally became convinced this was not another of my stories about barking spiders, she began to notice nights when the bullfrogs were quieter than usual. She came to love their sound.

A favorite memory of Mary and her cove is of her lying in her lounge chair, looking out at the lake, when suddenly she stage-whispered, "Marc! Look! It's a hummingbird!" She had never seen a hummingbird close up in her life. She was like a child on Christmas morning. That hummingbird became a twice-daily visitor. Once in the morning and once in the evening it came and each time was like the first time for Mary. Everything beautiful was new to her each time she saw it. She was a woman with a child's sense of wonder.

Loving Mary is a privilege. This privilege is not to be taken lightly, but is one to be respected and honored at every breath. Loving Mary is reason for hope and for life.