Isaiah 66:12

“I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream.”



James Mountain, composer, among other things, of the music Wye Valley used for the hymn Like A River Glorious, died June 27, 1933.

Stop the Presses! is the running title of his feature. In this issue, Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher surveys the weblog idea and where blogs might fit in to established journalism.

Here's the headline:



Board The Weblog Bandwagon Now, Please

Newspapers Missed Most Internet Trends; Isn't It Time To Catch One?

Rev. Samuel Edwards, an Episcopal priest and a traditionalist long at odds with what are widely viewed as heterodox innovations in theology and discipline by substantial parts of the denomination, has announced that he will leave the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Province of Christ the King.



After years of service in Fort Worth, Texas, Fr. Edwards had been chosen as rector of Christ Church in Accokeek, Maryland, an action leading to a lengthy legal battle with the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and its acting bishop Jane Holmes Dixon.



In announcing his decision, Fr. Edwards wrote: "I have done all that I can do in the effort to recall the Episcopal Church to its godly heritage of evangelical faith and catholic order. That effort, and my part in it, appears to have been unsuccessful."

Today is the feast of Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons and martyr. Distinguished as a bishop and theologian, he's also of great interest for what he tells us about other great figures, particularly in his account of St. Polycarp (Adv. Haer. III): "he was not only taught by the Apostles, and lived in familiar intercourse with many that had seen Christ, but also received his appointment in Asia from the Apostles as Bishop in the Church of Smyrna."



And Irenaeus, as a young man, had himself seen St. Polycarp in Smyrna. Even at the death of Irenaeus c. A.D. 202, then, how close in time we still are to the events of our salvation: he knew someone who knew someone who had been with the Lord Jesus.

Psalm 8: 3-4

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?



It's always good to consider His works, which is one of the reasons that the Astronomy Pic of the Day is linked to the right. And Dan Durda of Southwest Research Institute has created a web site that lets visitors explore the Apollo moon-landing sites.



In his meditation on Psalm 8 during Wednesday's audience, Pope John Paul II referred to the Apollo program's greatest mission and the words of Pope Paul VI at the time:



"Man ..., at the heart of this enterprise, is revealed to us as gigantic. He seems to be divine, not in himself, but in his beginning and in his end. Honor, therefore, to man, honor to his dignity, to his spirit, to his life." With these words, in July 1969, Paul VI entrusted to the American astronauts leaving for the moon the text of Psalm 8, which was just proclaimed, so that it would enter into the cosmic spaces (Insegnamenti VII [1969], pp. 493-494).

Kairos is back, and very welcome. Good points about dehydration, physical and spiritual. And as he writes: We must pray, every day. It's as important to our spiritual health as drinking water is to our physical.



I'd add that a necessary part of our prayer, and for the same reason, is an examination of conscience, a confession of our sin and rebellion, and a plea for the grace of repentant tears. Remembering David in Psalm 32: 3-5.



As long as I kept silent, my bones wasted away; I groaned all the day.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength withered as in dry summer heat.

Then I declared my sin to you; my guilt I did not hide. I said, "I confess my faults to the LORD," and you took away the guilt of my sin.



How Blest Is He Whose Trespass

Here's the headline: Osama bin Laden is dead, says Mark Steyn, but it suits the Bush administration for the Eurosophists to believe he is alive.



Is there anyone who's currently writing as well and as perceptively on as many subjects as Mark Steyn? And with acid and vinegar so well used? Take a look at Dust bin, his feature essay in The Spectator.

Fr. Phil Bloom in Seattle posts Top Ten Misleading Slogans and writes:



Slogans are "discussion stoppers." Once they are trotted out, the conversation is over. Or at least it is supposed to be.



He uses them, instead, as starting points.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held today (text of opinion here) that the 1954 statute adding the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional and that the state may not require the recitation of the Pledge in schools.



State law had required that teachers lead the recitation of the pledge, not that schoolchildren themselves recite it. The court ruled that the words of the Pledge were essentially normative and not descriptive and that its recitation in the presence of dissenting children (or in the presence of children of dissenting parents) was itself a coercive affront to their religious beliefs and was therefore unconstitutional.



The logic of the opinion would seem also to outlaw in schools any corporate recitation of the Declaration of Independence with its reference to "Nature and Nature's God" and "endowed by their Creator." Pushed further, of course, the court has come close to saying that government-run schools may not pursue normative instruction without heightened scrutiny from the courts, that only descriptive instruction will presumptively pass Constitutional muster. Education in the full sense would then become an almost impossible enterprise. And the Public Square would indeed be naked.



And why so many intelligent men and women, jurists or not, cannot understand the distinction between a recognition of the existence and sovereignty of God and a distinctive expression of fealty to God through a particular religious system --- for those scoring at home, it's government establishment of the latter, not acknowledgement of the former, that the Constitution proscribes --- well, that inability to make distinctions will remain unexplained.





God Bless America

A Love Affair We Can't Get Over is a fine entry over at Don't Be A Shamed. Scroll to mid-day Tuesday 6/25. Links to Frederick Bastiat, Eve Tushnet and Sara Russo as the mind and heart move from Joycelyn Elders to Alan Keyes. Alive to the wonder of life.

Problems and implications of a technology that's now central to our daily routine. What rights do you have relative to your provider? And what control does the user have? In the current issue of Technology Review, Simson Garfinkel considers how to Declare E-Mail Independence.

Barlow Farms blog links to a contemporary realist painting by Michael Chelich, Christ Washing Peter's Feet. Repays inspection and thought. Chelich's St. Joseph and Child hangs in St. Anne's Church in Lansing, Illinois.

Zenit News Agency reports:



Henry VIII May Have Delayed Monks´ Industrial Innovation: Closed a Monastery That Had Makings of an Early Blast Furnace



LONDON, JUNE 24, 2002 (Zenit.org).- King Henry VIII´s revolt against the Catholic Church and his closing of monasteries may also have helped postpone the industrial revolution.



Archaeologists have found evidence that the Cistercian monks of Rievaulx Abbey, in North Yorkshire, were developing a prototype blast furnace for the large-scale production of cast iron when they were evicted by the king in 1538, the Daily Telegraph reports.



Without the break with Rome, it is possible that the seeds of industrial Britain could have been sown in the cloisters.



Researchers were spending last weekend producing iron in the abbey grounds for the first time in 450 years. By analyzing the slag produced in the re-created clay furnace, scientists hope to find clues about the development of the full-scale blast furnace, the invention that perhaps more than any other ushered in the industrial age.



Rievaulx had its own facilities for producing iron for the abbey´s quarries and farms and for sale to the outside world. After the monks were expelled, an inventory of the abbey listed a furnace at Laskill, about four miles from the abbey.



Gerry McDonnell, an archaeologist at Bradford University, was intrigued to find out how far the monks had developed iron technology.



Since the Iron Age, the most common form of furnace had been a clay stack, usually around 6 feet high and 3 feet wide and built around a frame of willow branches. Charcoal and iron were piled into the top, and air was pumped into it with bellows.



Stack furnaces are unlikely to reach the 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,482 Celsius) needed to melt iron. To create cast iron, blast furnaces with mechanically powered bellows are needed. Textbooks used to state that the first were built in Kent in the 1490s.



McDonnell believes that the Rievaulx monks were close to creating such a furnace. An excavation there has revealed a square, stone-built furnace about 15 feet across, which probably was water-powered.



The slag of a primitive stack furnace contains high concentrations of iron. But a chemical analysis of the slag at Laskill shows concentrations far more typical of a blast furnace.



"One of the key things is that the Cistercians had a regular meeting of abbots every year, and they had the means of sharing technological advances across Europe," he said. "They effectively had a stranglehold on iron. The breakup of the monasteries broke up this network of technology transfer."



"They had the potential to move to blast furnaces that produced nothing but cast iron," McDonnell added. "They were poised to do it on a large scale, but by breaking up the virtual monopoly, Henry VIII effectively broke up that potential."







This is the kind of news that can fuel years of speculation and seminar topics. It also provides an opportunity to give thanks for the finest flower of Rievaulx Abbey, the saint and scholar Aelred, whose work and reputation are sometimes misused in our own day.

Spending some time in 2 Timothy, at 2:15: the approved workman "who correctly handles the word of truth" and at 3:16: "All Scripture is God-breathed." The stakes involved in the translation of Sacred Scripture could scarcely be higher and, when there are disputes, feelings run high as well.



More voices have been raised in the last months over Today's New International Version, and more questions and defenses have been presented. The largest Protestant body in the United States has resolved that it "cannot commend the TNIV to Southern Baptists or the larger Christian community." Distinguished men and women have expressed their grave concern and dismay. And technology has allowed open access to the questions under discussion and the issues under debate.



Many of the same issues are being raised as Roman Catholics await the English translation of the new Roman Missal.



We long for what reflects and speaks Him with precision, clarity and effectiveness. And shows forth His Truth in beauty, holiness and fidelity. May we seek it with integrity and in charity.



All Glory, Laud, and Honor

James Cordrey at Threshing Floor posts his poem Chameleon.



So many the temptations to deny the authentic, to adapt ourselves to environments that aren't always healthy, simultaneously to deny and to profess. Vanity often, fear often, avarice often, sloth often, all the vicious children of pride.



The woman at the well. The woman taken in adultery. Those who condemned her. All of them convicted. All of them stripped of their masks and their pretense. All of them known to the depths of their personality and being. All of them, like us, called to be His.



And it's not the mask that's redeemed, not the chameleon, but our true selves. Rich Mullins, thinking of Luke 15:20 and the Prodigal in his song Growing Young, put it this way: "And our father still waits, and he watches down the road, to see the crying boys come running, back to His arms."



An older hymn says Like a Wayward Child I've Wandered. Let's go home.

Craig Schwarze at Thinking Out Loud has done some work and analysis and come up with The Leaderboard, "a popular ranking of the Christian blogosphere." Here's the first of his FAQs and its answer.



How was the Leaderboard compiled?



The basis of the Leaderboard is Martin Roth's list of Christian Blogs. A computer program was used to search the front page of each blog for links to other blogs on the list. The number of links directed to each site is accumulated and displayed in the Leaderboard above.

I took his name at my Confirmation and we celebrate his feast today, the patron saint of youth St. Aloysius Gonzaga.



Ecc 12:1-2: Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain.

A remarkable exhibition opened last week at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and will remain in Philadelphia until late August. The show American Sublime: Epic Landscapes of Our Nation, 1820-1880 was mounted at the Tate Gallery in London to popular success and to critical applause, with reservations.



Some of these paintings have lived in my memory for years and have changed the way I see the natural world. Take a look at the previews and catalogue and accept this assurance: The exhibition is well worth a visit, even worth a trip.

Posting the previous entry reminded me of the great collection of figures represented in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. It's a room to fill visitors with awe and gratitude when they consider the contributions of those represented there. And it would be better for the country, better for all of us, if those stories of sacrifice, discipline and achievement -- a kind of secular parallel to the cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12 -- were more widely told and taught.



Biography remains one of the best ways of communicating history, especially to children, and those remarkable tales convey the time as well as the person, reminding us of past failures and wounds as well as of hopes and triumphs, providing heroes to celebrate and models to follow.



It's worth noting that the heroes chosen by the states to represent them in Statuary Hall include the remarkable woman religious Mother Joseph and four priests, Father Damien of Molokai from Hawaii and the Franciscan Father Junipero Serra from California and the Jesuits Father Jacques Marquette from Wisconsin and Father Eusebio F. Kino from Arizona.

President Bush announced the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 12 men and women of distinction, achievement and service. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

The Capuchin Fathers have been the staff at St. John the Evangelist Church in downtown Philadelphia for more than ten years and so on Monday evening there was a local Mass of Thanksgiving for the newly canonized Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. St. John's not nearly large enough and so the Mass was scheduled for the Cathedral of Ss. Peter and Paul on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway a few blocks away. Thrilling to be part of the congregation of 2500, to share the thanksgiving and the joy. The epistle was Galatians 6:14-18: "May I never boast except in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world .... "



More than almost anyone else of recent times, Padre Pio is identified with the Sacrament of Penance. How grueling must have been the hours he spent in the confessional, how tender his ministering to individual souls in their pain and grief, how blessed we are that we have available such a ceremony of accountability, forgiveness, reconciliation and healing.



Padre Pio's constant exhortation: "Pray, hope, do not worry." Or, as in Hebrews 10:21-22: “Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.” Blessed Assurance.

"You would weigh less on the top of a mountain than at sea level." I've no reason to doubt the truth of the statement, but didn't expect to read it inside a Snapple bottle-cap. It's billed as #106 in a series of what the company is pleased to describe as "real facts," as if there were another variety.



Commercial speech of this kind reminds me of a character in Auberon Waugh's novel A Bed of Flowers, who's appalled by the nonsense of a claim that some detergent washes "whiter than white." You needn't subscribe to a Platonic theory of Forms to see the absurdity of the claim. Commercial manipulations of language can be a source of comedy and are effective in selling the product but there's always a lurking danger when words aren't used with honesty and care. Some slopes really are slippery.





Waugh's novel, even though time-bound, deserves to be more widely known. A retelling of Shakespeare's As You Like It and a portrait of the detritus of the Age of Aquarius against the background of a Wilsonian England accepting the slaughter of the Ibo tribe in Biafra in order to maintain an influential presence in Nigeria. Waugh, to greater degree even than his father Evelyn, could spout the acid and vitriol when needed.





Francis Cardinal Arinze was a young bishop in Nigeria at the time of the Biafran secession and did heroic work. Bernardin Cardinal Gantin worked as a young bishop in neighboring Benin. So many of our brothers and sisters have seen suffering and persecution on a scale we can't imagine. And still they do. Let us not forget.

Admirable restraint and an absence of rancor in the telling of remembered pain from Anthony Marquis at Veni Sancte Spiritus. So many with youthful innocence and enthusiam dimmed, so many hearts wounded. It's good of Anthony to forego the privacy of difficult memories in the hope of helping others.

A grim posting from Tal G. in Jerusalem:



<<<<<< There is a high terror alert in Jerusalem, and I am sitting here in my apartment listening to the helicopters fly overhead. They say that a specific person is planning a suicide bombing, and he might have succeeded in getting into Jerusalem already.





Also, on the Channel 2 News, they said that the Palestinians are very concerned because Bush's upcoming speech is expected to lay out a proposal for some kind of long term conditional Palestinian state under "adult supervision." >>>>>>>



Isaiah 54:14: In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall not come near thee.



May it be so.

John Wesley was born 199 years ago today. How Happy Is The Pilgrim's Lot.

James Cordrey links to a cogent and disturbing analysis of The Stigma of Chastity by Gina Dalfonzo.

Too many walls for too many years. Made by men. Walls of silence. Walls to protect those who needed to see clearly what they'd done. And begged forgiveness of Him and of His children. A voice can cry in the wilderness and be heard. No human voice can penetrate the walls. They must come down.



Our hearts tell us plainly if we listen and trust: He is a fortress, and He our only home. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.

Tom Roberts of National Catholic Reporter with a feature from the Dallas meeting of the American bishops. Rod Dreher of National Review is there as well. A lot of talk in Dallas and elsewhere about regaining "credibility." And some of the grim results of fecklessness on many questions are readily apparent. Dealing with the scandal on the Dallas agenda, preparation for a necessary and long-overdue cleansing however painful, also crowds out other pressing concerns. It makes it unlikely, for example, that we'll soon hear from the episcopate the full-throated and prophetic condemnation demanded by the advancing prospect of human cloning.





But we trust in Him, as it says, "The eternal God is your Refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Deuteronomy 33:27



And so our hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.

Hebrews 13: 5-6

"... because God has said,

'Never will I leave you;

Never will I forsake you.'



So we say with confidence,

'The Lord is my helper: I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?' "





We put our trust in Him who is (Isaiah 32:2) "as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."



How Firm a Foundation

Emily Stimpson writes well and truly in her note "A Word of Caution" earlier today:





"Every last bishop on the floor can say all the right words and cast all the right votes, without any real and lasting good being done. They can stand before the cameras weeping, crying "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa," without any real inner transformation taking place. They can pass policies that satisfy even the harshest of critics, without doing one pleasing thing in the eyes of the Lord.





"The most important things that happen in Dallas, the things that God cares about the most, will not happen on TV. EWTN cannot show us the hearts of the bishops or of the victims who will attend the meeting. The television cameras won’t be present during the hours of quiet private prayer. We won’t hear the confessions these men make before God. We won’t see the rekindling of the Holy Spirit in their souls. We won’t know if one simple act of courtesy by a bishop will start the renewal of faith in the life of a victim.





"We need to remember that the Holy Spirit is the one in charge of making sure this conference blesses the Body. And frustrating as it may be, He does not always work in ways that make sense to us or that we can easily and quickly evaluate. "







The unctuous will be there, of course, and the political, and the fearful -- men, after all -- but men also gifted in their various ways. And holding an office, and wearing a chrism, of committed service.



How important to remember Whose service. How necessary to remember the obligation of preaching Him by "kindly deeds and virtuous life," as it's written in today's hymn of trust and assurance, Faith of Our Fathers.

365 times we're told it in Scripture in different forms: "Fear not." "Do not be afraid." But there's still trepidation, isn't there, as we wait to see how the American episcopate will respond to the Situation at their meeting in Dallas. We know that they can be trusted as shepherds only to the extent that they are united in following Him and trusting His word.

For them and for us, then, a week of hymns of trust and assurance, beginning with Isaac Watts's great meditation on the text of Psalm 90, O God Our Help in Ages Past.

I began the blog just a few weeks ago with the motto of the Venerable John Henry Newman: Cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to heart). Have made reference to John Calvin and his warning that the heart is an idol maker. To Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” To Psalm 95: "If today you hear His voice, harden not your heart."





Gerard Serafin goes to the trouble of making sure that his every reference to the heart is printed in red. James Cordrey, following John Eldredge and other guides, has been thinking and writing on the wild and restless heart and the sacred romance. Our father Augustine sounds in our ears: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” And Paul (1Cor 2:9) quotes Isaiah: Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the wonders that God hath prepared for them that love him.





And now Friday in the octave of Corpus Christi, the great feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Think of Anselm’s writing that the heart of man in His presence will scarcely be able to comprehend the joy that will belong to it from so great a good. That, in order to encompass it, the hearts of His beloved will themselves need be taken up into the joy of their Lord.





And compared to such a prospect, what isn’t dross, and how can we keep from singing?





Herman Joseph of Cologne's majestic hymn Summi Regis Cor Aveto, traditional for this feast, is not available but here is O Love, how deep, how broad, how high, whose authorship in the Latin by Thomas a Kempis there is no compelling reason to doubt.

Had been missing John Derbyshire’s words on NRO and got lucky in the last week with his April Diary and then an account of a few days at the meeting of the American Institute of Mathematics. Derb is, I imagine, a much better math mind than he claims but even at a much lower level (like my own) there’s a lot of fun, as well as instruction, to be had from popular discussions in the field. Try something like Isaac Asimov’s 3.1416 and All That. It’s got good discovery stories, quirky personalities, some comedy, and lucid presentation of ideas to stretch and exercise the mind.



Or, if you’re a fan of mysteries, find a copy of the short story The Zero Clue and the great Rex Stout’s great (in several senses) Nero Wolfe. The story – in the collection Three Men Out -- hinges on knowledge of one of the seminal triumphs of number theory and makes reference to Lancelot Hogben’s Mathematics for the Million. That last a very fine survey itself, and clearly the author’s parents had read their Walter Scott. More? Here’s what must be close to a definitive list of fiction with mathematical background or theme. More serious? Here's the Basic Library List from The Mathematical Association of America.



Just about any object or idea can be seen more clearly when you've got mathematics in your background. Let your mind dance a little in the numbers field.

Heard part of an interview with Stephen Arterburn the other night. He’s the author of Every Man’s Battle, subtitled Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. Some talk on a good text, Job 31:1: “I made a covenant with mine eyes.” Got me thinking how common used to be the admonition, following on these words and on Matthew 18:9 (“If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out …”) and other texts, that we practice “custody of the eyes.” Not that it’s easy. When Abercrombie & Fitch advertise in the way that they have, when even so previously distinguished a man as Robert Dole involves himself in (to use a currently popular word) ephebophilia to hawk Pepsi, well, what help the wider culture gives us is certainly slight.



But the heart would find a path to spiritual adultery somehow, wouldn’t it? John Calvin spoke nothing but truth when he said that the heart is an idol-maker. We’ll need to remember Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”

The heroic witness Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing in The Cost of Discipleship:



<<<<<<<< “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.” >>>>>>>>>>

And speaking of fighting the good fight, Fr. Frank Pavone asks help in getting the word out to seminarians. Visit the Priests For Life website for details of the National Conference and Retreat for Seminarians. Pittsburgh in mid-August.



Should anyone still need evidence of what's at stake, look and marvel.



Many thanks (yet again) to Amy Welborn for directions to this wondrous image.