All right, a couple things before I start packing:
I got to see my beautiful Elizabeth dance. The city's a better place because she's there.
Went to Best Buy and bought her a new car radio-cd player to replace the one that was stolen when some lowlifes broke into her vehicle. Smashed the window, opened the door, neatly excised the technology, then walked away. The purchase made her smile. Good music is a necessity in the downtown traffic.
Across the street from the Ruth Page Theater, some townhouses are going up. They start at $2,200,000. Any takers?
Went to Mass at Holy Name Cathedral, whose modern gothic interior (vaulted wooden ceilings, scrolled columns) makes the cathedral I go to look spartan. Good bookstore underneath, where I picked up Fr. Hardon's A Treasury of Catholic Wisdom. Saw some other books with names like Vere, Welborn, Kreeft, etc., on them. Oh, and Aquinas, Augustine, and Chesterton. In Hardon's tome I found this pearl for the Dreher types and others of similar impulse:
And He says to him again after the resurrection: Feed my sheep. It is on him that He builds the Church, and to him that He entrusts the sheep to feed. And although He assigns a like power to all the Apostles, yet He founded a single Chair, thus establishing by His own authority the source and hallmark of the Church's oneness. No doubt the others were all that Peter was, but a primacy was given to Peter, and it is thus made clear that there is but one Church and one Chair. So too, even if they are all shepherds, we are shown but one flock which is to be fed by all the Apostles in common accord. If a man does not hold fast to this oneness of Peter, does he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he deserts the Chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, has he still confidence that he is in the Church?
I know, you've heard it before. It sounds so boringly familiar. But I think it's nice when something written in 251 A.D. sounds so familiar that it might have been written yesterday, for that excerpt was by St. Cyprian, and comes from his The Unity of the Catholic Church. And I can go back earlier, too, which I will at some future date. Cyprian was martyred for his faith under the emperor Valerian in 258 A.D., having surrendered himself to his persecutors. If you find yourself annoyed to the point of despair by pedophile priests and enabling bishops, wait until some modern version of Diocletian rises from the ashes. Then we'll see what you're made of.
There was more I'd hoped to have fun with, but I must retire.
4 comments:
I was just reading a piece in the Chicago paper yesterday about property values, and it struck me that I will never, ever afford to live in the neighborhood where I grew up, which is funny because when I was growing up it was rife with gangs and drugs. Now it's rife with drunk yuppies who couldn't parallel park their Expeditions if their lives depended on it. At least the thugs had the decency not to be obnoxiously loud after one or two in the morning, except for the occasionally gunshot.
As for Holy Name, I love that ceiling. I went to daily Mass there for the whole summer of 1998. Unfortunately, once you get past the ceiling, there isn't much to see. But I could look at that ceiling all day.
The bookshop in the basement must be a new thing, I only remember there being a gift store across the street, and the book selection there was not great.
Yeah, the bookshop's pretty good. The mass was pretty good (Mother's Day stuff). The choir was pretty good. Sounded like a professional schola. The traffic, the parking, and the price of an apartment are outrageous. Some good places to eat in that town, too.
If you find yourself annoyed to the point of despair by pedophile priests and enabling bishops, wait until some modern version of Diocletian rises from the ashes. Then we'll see what you're made of.
It is a mystery why people respond to adversity by begging for more.
:~)
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