Gristle Fire

At times I’d rather
Stay in bed
And forget the wars we fight

At times I’d rather
Ignore the blight
And forget my friends
The dead

At times I’d rather
Walk away
And kill the pain inside

At times I’d rather
Run and hide
And forget the things
We say

But I remember

For all times forever
Stay awake
He alone died for our fall

For all times forever
Hear the call
And lean on your friends
They partake

For all times forever
Stand fast
He makes all things new

For all times forever
Find a pew
And practice the things
He has passed

-Dominic Tramontana

Top Ten Things to do for a Catholic Halloween

While I respect that some Christians prefer not to celebrate the day, my family and I really enjoy Halloween. We enjoy it for the sense of community the day seems to exude. We enjoy getting the kids dressed up and watching everyone in the neighborhood enjoy themselves. The neighbors usually have a fire or two to warm up by. What more can I say. It’s just a great time.

Taylor Marshall at Canterbury Tales has put together a very good list of the Top Ten Things to do for a Catholic Halloween. Taylor has some good pointers on keeping the day fun and Catholic including why we shouldn’t call it “Satan’s Holiday.”

EWTN unveils a new series dedicated to Vatican museum art

Should be interesting.

EWTN Paints ‘Catholic Canvas‘
10-Episode Series Takes Viewers Inside Vatican, Sistine Chapel
By Mike Reynolds — Multichannel News, 10/29/2008 10:03:00 AM

EWTN next week will unveil a new series dedicated to works with in Vatican museums.

The 10-episode Catholic Canvas debuts Nov. 6 at 6:30 p.m. (ET). with the installment entitled “The Angels.”

Officials at the global Catholic network, with the support of the Primavera Fine Art Foundation, said it was given unprecedented access to Vatican museums.

Entire episodes are dedicated to Mary, to the Epiphany, to Christ’s earthly ministry, His passion, death and resurrection, St. Peter, and the saints. Naturally, the series concludes with the last judgment.

“We were granted four days of filming inside the Sistine Chapel — a privilege that has never been granted to any other network,” said EWTN president Michael Warsaw in a statement. “The Sistine Chapel is the backbone for the series because it conveys so beautifully in art the stories of our salvation.”

The first installment is hosted by Elisabeth Lev, professor of Christian Art and Architecture at Duquesne University’s Italian campus. Lev’s commentary provides viewers with an in-depth explanation of the artistic genius behind the representation of the Cherubim and Seraphim as represented in Costanza’s Sarcophagus, Rafael’s Madonna of Foligno, and many other masterpieces.

At the conclusion of each show, viewers will see Father Mark Haydu, L.C., International Director of the Vatican Museums’ Patrons of the Arts, who delivers a short presentation about one of the many restoration projects being financed by the patrons.

Can it be done smaller?

I used to find it difficult to apply Catholic Social Teaching to some areas of my life. Voting is a good example. The five non-negotiables are obvious, but what about taxes? What about Capitalism vs. Socialism? What about policing the world? Then I discovered G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Both men were Catholic writers and political and intellectual philosophers. They spent a great deal of time applying Catholic Social Teaching to matters of state and economics. Their idea of Distributism inspired in me a simple question, which I now use to guide many of my most critical decisions.

Can it be done smaller?

This question asks a few things. It asks can it be done smaller in the sense of locality. It asks can it be done smaller in the sense of unit of government. And it asks can it be done smaller in the sense of personal entity.

So now if I go to the store, I will try to buy locally grown or manufactured goods. I will try to buy from local family owned stores instead of large chains. I will try to visit farm markets instead of grocery stores. I can’t always do these things due to monetary considerations, but I am making a conscious effort. I buy Michigan beers (which are some of the best in the world). And I even started buying Michigan wine (haven’t found any I like yet though).

When it comes to voting, I make the same considerations. Can it be done smaller? I am all for helping the needy, but I would much rather let the local Churches and communities handle it than the state or federal governments. So, I make sure I support my parish and my community, but I don’t vote to increase taxes for any programs. I spend more time making sure I pick the best person for the local elections—I’m no longer just a “big election guy.” And I always vote against giving more power to each progressively larger unit of government.

This question, “Can it be done smaller?”, is also one of the reasons we homeschool our children. The Catholic School the kids were going to was and is great. It is a part of my parish and I know and love everyone there, but when I thought about it, I realized we could do it smaller. Now my kids have the best student to teacher ratio they’ve ever had. And I think this is where the Catholic Social Teaching manifests itself most clearly.

Socialism puts all of the power in the hands of government. Capitalism puts all of the power into the hands of big business. Neither of these options suits my definition of Catholic Social Teaching. However, Distributism, seems to fit quite well. The reason the “Can it be done smaller?” question works is because it puts the focus on the individual, the family, the parish, and the community. It empowers individuals and families without enabling sloth and mediocrity.

Peace Full

In following my heart
I lost my soul

In pursuit of my soul
I lost my heart

So I go back to the start
And re-imagine the goal

It will take thought and prayer
To complete the whole

-Dominic Tramontana

What would you have me do, Lord?

What would you have me do, Lord? It is a question I often ask You, yet I know I never need to because You perpetually tell us Your will. But through my own faults, I don’t always listen. And when I do listen, I often lack the courage to abide. I want nothing more than to do Your will, Lord, but I need help. I need Your help.

Lord, please grant me the wisdom and clarity I need to hear Your will and the courage and fortitude I need to live my life accordingly.

Thank You. I love You.

Amen.

McCain is funny

McCain delivers a very funny speech at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner.

h/t to Buzz Blog

The man who read The Man Who Was Thursday

I have spent most of my life fighting an internal battle between several dichotomies. I have an artistic sensibility, but I enjoy learning the strategy of battle. I relish in the messiness and freeness of watercolor painting, but I long for the strict and reverent Catholic Mass. I admire my family’s blue color Democratic passion to see that all are cared for, but I admire the God & country ideals of the Republicans I have met in business. I dislike big business, but dislike big government just as much. I used to think that I just didn’t know who I was. I thought I was confused and just couldn’t make up my mind. But then I discovered someone.

When I re-entered the Church, I was on fire to learn all I could about my faith (still am). So I bought and read books, I listened to Catholic radio and I watched Catholic television. I quickly discovered that there are certain figures and certain books, which stand out among the many. I read Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism. I read C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I read Kreeft’s and Tacelli’s Handbook of Christian Apologetics. And then I read G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy—and then I read it again—and I think once more.

I was amazed. I was infatuated. I was beside myself with how comfortable and familiar Chesterton’s journey was to me. I was never an atheist, but I could relate to his finding in the Catholic Church the very same religion he built in his own mind using logic. The difference was I left that Church without realizing I was already in it. I knew almost right away that Chesterton was something special. I began learning more and more about Chesterton and enjoying more and more of his work. Eventually I read the book that would help me reconcile my internal dichotomies. I read The Man Who Was Thursday.

In a Man Who Was Thursday both the protagonist and antagonist are poets. One is an anarchist and one is a police officer. Both are liberal in the classical sense, but one is conservative in the modern sense. The protagonist has a “poet’s intuition”, but has Aquinas’ logic. Thursday is a man with an anarchists’ passion, but with the ideals and determination of a Crusader. I realized that I had found in Chesterton’s world a resolution to my internal struggle. I realized that I could be a poet and a conservative. That I could love the blue collar middle class who fight against big business and still love the white collar upper class who fight against big government. I could be an intellectual without being a snob. I could be blue without being crude. I didn’t have to be a socialist or a capitalist.

Chesterton, like the Church, has helped me realize that the answers to my own internal identity questions are not “either or” but “both and.”

The Function of Art by Pope Pius XII

“An address by His Holiness Pope Pius XII to a group of Italian artists received in audience on April 8, 1952.

With deep satisfaction, beloved sons and daughters, promoters of the figurative arts, We welcome your devout homage and that of your families, by reason of your coming to Us on the occasion of the sixth Roman quadrennial meeting, and We express to you Our pleasure for the remembrance-gift which you are leaving with Us.

How delightful your presence is to Us is shown by the tradition itself of the Roman pontificate. As the heir of universal culture it has never ceased to appreciate art, to surround itself with works of art, to make art, within due limits, the collaborator of its divine mission, preserving and elevating its destiny, which is to guide the soul to God.

Upon crossing the threshold of this house of the common Father, you felt as though you were in your own world, perceiving yourselves and your ideals in the masterpieces gathered here throughout the centuries. Nothing is lacking therefore to make this meeting mutually delightful between the Successor, though unworthy, of those Pontiffs who shone as generous patrons of the arts, and you who continue the Italian artistic tradition.

It is needless to explain to you-who feel it within yourselves, often as a noble torment-one of the essential characteristics of art, which consists in a certain intrinsic ‘affinity’ of art with religion, which in certain ways renders artists interpreters of the infinite perfections of God, and particularly of the beauty and harmony of God’s creation.

The function of all art lies in fact in breaking through the narrow and tortuous enclosure of the finite, in which man is immerged while living here below, and in providing a window to the infinite for his hungry soul.

Thus it follows that any effort-and it would be a vain one, indeed-aimed at denying or suppressing any relation between art and religion must impair art itself. Whatever artistic beauty one may wish to grasp in the world, in nature and in man, in order to express it in sound, in color, or in plays for the masses, such beauty cannot prescind from God. Whatever exists is bound to Him by an essential relationship. Hence, there is not, neither in life nor in art- be it intended as an expression of the subject or as an interpretation of the object-the exclusively “human,” the exclusively “natural” or “immanent.”

The greater the clarity with which art mirrors the infinite, the divine, the greater will be its possibility for success in striving toward its ideal and true, artistic accomplishment. Thus, the more an artist lives religion, the better prepared he will be to speak the language of art, to understand its harmonies, to communicate its emotions.

Naturally, We are far from thinking that in order to be interpreters of God in the sense just mentioned, artists must treat explicitly religious subjects. On the other hand, one cannot question the fact that never, perhaps, has art reached its highest peaks as it has in these subjects.

In this manner, the great masters of Christian arts became interpreters, not only of the beauty but also of the goodness of God, the Revealer and Redeemer. Marvelous exchange of services between Christianity and art! From their Faith they drew sublime inspirations. They drew hearts to the Faith when for continuous centuries they communicated and spread the truths contained in the Holy Scriptures, truths inaccessible, at least directly, to the humble people.

In truth, artistic masterpieces were known as the “Bible of the people,” to mention such noted examples as the windows of Chartres, the door of Ghiberti (by happy expression known as the Door of Paradise), the Roman and Ravenna mosaics and the facade of the Cathedral of Orvieto. These and other masterpieces not only translate into easy reading and universal language the Christian truths, they also communicate the intimate sense and emotion of these truths with an effectiveness, lyricism and ardor that, perhaps, is not contained in even the most fervent preaching.

Souls ennobled, elevated and prepared by art, are thus better disposed to receive the religious truths and the grace of Jesus Christ. This is one of the reasons why the Sovereign Pontiffs, and the Church in general, honored and continue to honor art and to offer its works as a tribute of human beings to God’s Majesty in His churches, which have always been abodes of art and religion at the same time.

Beloved children, crown your artistic ideals with those of religion, which revitalize and integrate them. The artist is of himself a privileged person among men, but the Christian artist is, in a certain sense, a chosen one, because it is proper to those chosen to contemplate, to enjoy and to express God’s perfections.

Seek God here below in nature and in man, but above all within yourselves. Do not vainly try to give the human without the divine, nor nature without its Creator. Harmonize instead the finite with the infinite, the temporal with the eternal, man with God, and thus you will give the truth of art and the true art.

Even without making it a specific aim, endeavor to educate men’s hearts-so easily inclined toward materialism -toward kindness and a spiritual feeling; you to whom it is given to speak a language which all peoples can understand. Strive to bring men closer to one another. May the artist’s vocation, for which you are indebted to God, lead you to this mission: a mission so noble and worthy that it is sufficient in itself to give to your daily life-often harsh and arduous-its fullness and a courageous faith.

In order that these Our wishes may be fulfilled and God glorified in your art, We invoke upon you and your families an abundance of heavenly favors and may the Apostolic Blessing which We impart upon you from the fullness of Our heart be a promise of them.”

Why are artists liberal?

Why are so many of my favorite artists so liberal. Alec Baldwin is super talented, so is Matt Damon, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Sean Penn and so on. All of them are very liberal—Marxist liberal. Why?

Do artists in general tend to be liberal? Or is it just the mob/peer pressure of Hollywood?

Is it just the cool starving artist thing to do even though all of these guys are rich?

My hope is that it is distorted compassion. I can appreciate compassion, even when it is misguided. I get why someone would protest against war—I hate war. I get why someone would try to protect animals from unnecessary harm—we should be good stewards to God’s creations. But I cant understand how someone can fight so veraciously to protect a monkey from cosmetic testing and yet think its ok to kill a baby still in his mothers’ womb.

I say I hope it is distorted compassion because I don’t like believing that people are motivated strictly out of a desire for immoral, personal, freedom. It’s often the case, but it is disheartening to think artists I admire so much for their talent can be so misguided. I would be ok with Bruce Springsteen telling me he hated war and violence and everything else we all hate if he would only also wage war on the genocide that is abortion. I’m ok with Matt Damon thinking Bush made bad decisions if only he would acknowledge that fetal stem cell research encourages and promotes creating babies for destruction and experimentation.

I’m a conservative, but I can appreciate liberalism when it comes from compassion. However, I cannot understand liberalism when it comes from and angry desire to protect all from everything except the weakest from death and the world from the Truth.