Theater of the Word Incorporated

The Lord of Failure

2012-01-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

Think about this: the cross was a means of terrible, ignominious defeat. But this sign of defeat has become the means of victory. There is no defeat or worldy despair in which Christ is not present. He is the Lord of Failure. He has taken on all of our mis-shapen, twisted disappointments, and through Him not even unrequited love, not even abandonment, not even meaninglessness can triumph. What triumphs is the cross - and the cross is the persistence of love in the midst of annihilation and death.

Why Republicans will Never End Abortion

2012-01-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

My friend Scott P. Richert has an excellent article on about.com Catholicism entitled Put Not Your Trust in Princes.

In it, he makes the perceptive point that Republicans will never end abortion in this country, any more than Democrats ever will, "because Republican politicians, just as surely as Democratic ones, have no desire to lose an 'issue' that reliably brings them millions of votes in every national election." He illustrates this by showing the anti-life antics of both George W. Bush and most of the current Republican contenders.

And yet Scott remains optimistic about ending abortion in this country.

Why?

Read his article to find out!

Novena to St. Paul - the Whole Thing

2012-01-24T11:24:00.001-08:00

Well, I had intended to post each day's prayers for the novena leading up to the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25) on each separate day for nine days prior to the Feast, but, naturally, I was way too busy with shows, travel and crises at home and abroad to hit the mark.

Here, then, is the entire novena. For private use.

TO BE PRAYED DAILY:

Glorious St. Paul,
Most zealous Apostle,
Martyr for the love of Christ,
Through your intercession may God grant us a deep faith,
A steadfast hope,
A burning love for our Lord;
So that we can proclaim with you,
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ
who lives in me.”
Help us to become apostles
Serving the Church with a pure heart,
Witnesses to her truth and beauty
Amidst the darkness of our days.
With you we praise God our Father:
“To Him be the glory, in the Church
and in Christ, now and forever.”
Amen.

First Day

DEATH TO SIN

St. Paul the Apostle, you who were "the greatest of sinners" "died to sin" , and were "buried with Christ in Baptism." May we, like you, "put to death all that is earthly in us", for "how can we who died to sin still live in it?"

Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, free us from slavery to sin.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition.

(pray CONCLUDING prayers daily; see below)

Second Day

THE NEW MAN

St. Paul the Apostle, you remind us that dying to sin entails rising again, "that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life." Thus we must "be renewed in the spirit of our minds, putting on the new self, created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth."

Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, make us anew.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition

Third Day

SANCTIFICATION

St. Paul the Apostle, you tell us to die to sin, to rise again in Christ. Freed from sin and remade in Christ, we become servants of God. "But now that you have been freed from sin and have become God's slaves, the benefit you reap is sanctification, and the result is eternal life."

Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, sanctify us, make us holy - for Your holiness leads to life everlasting.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition

Fourth Day

SUFFERING

St. Paul the Apostle, dead to sin, renewed by Christ, made holy by his grace, may we always remember your words, "you are heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, provided that you suffer with him in order that you may also be glorified with him."

Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, may we join You in taking up our cross daily and suffering with You, in order that we might be glorified with You.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition.

Fifth Day

RUNNING THE RACE

St. Paul the Apostle, you "fought the good fight." You did not "run aimlessly or box as one beating the air" . You "chastized your body to bring it into subjection" , knowing that fighting the good fight is a spiritual battle. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Let us, therefore, as you advise us, "take unto [ourselves] the whole armour of God, that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."

Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, give us the armor of God that we may win the spiritual battle.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition.

Sixth Day

ZEAL

St. Paul the Apostle, you said, "For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached Thee fell upon Me.'" And you also said, "Am I trying to please men or God? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ."

Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, give us the zeal to please You, though in pleasing You we might displease men.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition.

Seventh Day

THE BODY OF CHRIST

St. Paul the Apostle, you who encountered the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus, even after His ascension, recognized that He remained yet among us. His Body constitutes the Church. “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it,” you told us. And His body is also the Eucharistic sacrifice, which you described to the Corinthians. “This is my body, which is given up for you. Do this in memory of me,” as you tell us Jesus said. And you bore in your own body “the marks of Christ” . Beyond that, you write, “And I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, which is the Church,”

Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, make us aware of Your body in the Eucharist, and make us willing to join in the completion of this perfect offering of Your sacred Body and Blood as members of Your mystical Body, the Church.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition.

Eighth Day

HOLY PARADOX

St. Paul the Apostle, you ask, "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" and you remind us that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men," for "His strength is made perfect in weakness."
Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, give us the wisdom not of this world, but the wisdom that is foolish to this world; and make Your strength perfect in our weakness.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition

Ninth Day

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT

St. Paul the Apostle, you were blinded on the road to Damascus, and saw from that point forward by the light of Christ, for "a light has shone in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." And yet though now we "see through a glass darkly," then we shall see "face to face" For upon your conversion, God sent you to us, "to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light."

Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Paul, open our eyes and turn us from darkness to light.

And, Father, through the intercession of the Apostle, grant my petition.

CONCLUSION - to be prayed daily.

Most Holy Trinity, through the intercession of St. Paul, Convert, Apostle, and Martyr, grant us the grace to be imitators of him as he is of Christ, always remembering ...

"If I have not love, I am nothing .. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in what is right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. ... And now these three remain, Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is love."

Conservatives and Anarchy

2012-01-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

Paul Adams has written a wonderful piece over on the Ink Desk entitled America and the Irrelevance of the Tea Party in which he points out the affinity between so-called "conservative" and the moral anarchy toward which their philosophies and policies are leading them and us.

I commented on Paul's piece in the combox at the Ink Desk:

The fact is that the philosophy of Materialism continues to effect all aspects of our lives. I don't mean Materialism in the popular sense of "consumerism", but Materialism properly so-called, the doctrine that everything that exists is but a mere aggregation of atoms, free will and reason being but illusions created by the interplay of molecules.

This philosophy is what is behind the libertarianism of the modern "conservative". It is the notion, as you suggest, that individuals are the atoms that compose the social unit, atoms whose wills are arbitrary and meaningless, which means, of course, that the conglomeration of these disparate wills is just as arbitrary and meaningless.

Materialism is a form of nominalism - there is nothing but individuals, no types, no generalities. This kind of thinking obliterates "nature", including "human nature". It leads to a world where nothing connects to anything, which is more or less what T. S. Eliot called "hell".

The Cult of Chance

2012-01-08T00:15:00.000-08:00

I am reading as many books as I can by Fr. Stanley Jaki, in preparation for my one-man show, Science and Religion, in which I will portray Fr. Jaki at the Portsmouth Institute Conference next June.

One of the fun things about reading Fr. Jaki is that he makes intriguing off-handed comments in all of his books that you wish he'd elaborate on more, but you find you have to read more of his books to get a sense of what he's saying.

Take this aside from his Miracles and Physics (Christendom Press, 1999)

Miracles should seem to abound even today except for those who take refuge in bad philosophy of which its present most fashionable kind is steeped in the cult of chance. Only they fail to give a definition of chance which is more satisfactory than the handy use of that word to cover-up one's ignorance.

What a great phrase - The Cult of Chance. Fr. Jaki means by this the devotion to Chance as the catch-all for materialists and agnostics and Darwinists, who ascribe to "mere chance" or the "random combination of matter" everything we see around us.

What causes evolution? Chance mutations. What causes consciousness in man? Chance chemistry and random firings of neurons. What determines our fate? Chance.

But Fr. Jaki tantalizes us with the implied challenge to define Chance. Jaki himself does not do so in the paragraph from which I quote. He merely points out that the idolators of the god Chance fail to define the word, using it as a catch-all, a buzz-word to cover ignorance.

In fact, it's worse than that. The acolytes of Chance are not merely using a word to cover what's missing in their thinking, they are making what's missing into what's there, into the source of all that's there.

So before you read further, accept Fr. Jaki's implied challenge. Define Chance.

Here's my own definition, an easy one, and one helped along by St. Thomas Aquinas and his meditations on Chance. And though it's a two-word definition, I think it's an accurate one - accurate enough to reveal the sleight-of-hand behind the Randomists, if we can coin a term for those who worship that which is Random.

The definition is this. Chance is unintended events.

Now the first thing to note about this definition is that it begs the question, "unintended by whom?" St. Thomas points out that strictly speaking nothing is "unintended" by God, for example. Nothing is outside of either His positive will or His permissive will.

But leaving God outside of the question, this definition would mean "unintended by man" or "unintended by any agent capable of intentionality".

When we roll the dice, for example, the result we get is determined - determined by a jumble of causes that we can not control. The jarring back and forth of the dice, the surface of the table they land on, the atmospheric pressure - thousands of causes will determine the number the dice display when their jarring ceases. But these causes are (practically speaking) beyond our control; thus the effect is beyond the scope of our intent.

We can know something about the probability of the event, based on a mathematical analysis of the history of previous roles of the dice, extrapolated into the future. But we can not intend the result of a particular number on the dice, the way we can intend to pick up a flower or pass the mustard to the person who asks for it. (If we could, we would clean up at Vegas). Events that we have willed to do (and that turn out the way we willed them) are not chance events. Events that are beyond our will - though caused by who knows what - are (from our perspective) chance events.

Defining Chance clearly, then, reveals something interesting.

What it reveals is that nothing can happen by chance.

What I mean when I say that nothing can happen by chance is that quite literally nothing can happen by the agency of or caused by chance - for the phrase "by chance" implies that Chance is an agent, that Chance does something.

Chance does nothing. Chance, in a sense, is nothing. Chance is our word for a lack of agency. To say, "This was caused by a lack of agency" is like saying "this was caused by a lack of cause". What we mean when we say "this happened by chance" is "this event was caused by something that is beyond the scope of our intent".

Chance thus refers to the event, not the cause, except insofar as the word refers to our lack of possible participation in the cause.

Of course this opens up the shady area of the intent of creatures without free will. When a tree moves nutrients throughout its structure, this movement is not an "unintended event", though assigning "intent" to a plant is stretching what that word typically means.

The point here, without going further, is simply that "chance" refers to results that happen outside of a perceived deliberate agency, and the hallmark of all living matter is a kind of intentionality or deliberate doing - so all events intended and caused by a living agent are not chance events.

Thus, to say that evolution is caused by random or chance mutations is simply to say that evolution is caused by nothing deliberate. And this is tantamount to saying, "We don't know what causes it".

But how many evolutionists are honest enough to say, "Evolution is our word for the slow development over the eons of living things from simplicity of form and function to complexity of form and function, and we have absolutely no idea what causes it." Instead you'll hear them gloat, "We all evolved by chance."

Thereby covering their ignorance with pride and making a Something out of nothing.

Advice to Aspiring Actors

2012-01-07T21:29:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine who's done lots of community theater emailed me about her first audition for a professional acting troupe. She did not make call-backs, and might have had a shot at chorus, but because she didn't know tap, they didn't consider her.

It struck me that my reply is filled with so many gems of wisdom, I was obliged to share it with my readers.

I wrote ...

***

You see, I can tap. It's one of those weapons you collect in your arsenal, just in case, like you, you miss the call-back for a principal role, but want to end up in chorus. And I memorized BABY GOT BACK by Sir Mix-a-Lot twenty years ago, just in case I needed filler material during a show - an emergency item from my bag of tricks. I did it tonight and it was the highlight of the show, for some reason. This is why I learned the ukulele and the nose whistle. You never know when you might have to pull something out of thin air to keep the audience from turning on you.

If you really want to take another swing at it, the key is audition all over, everywhere, every audition. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Turn the parts down if you don't want them, but audition anyway, for practice. After about a dozen auditions, you'll know exactly what to do to nail it.

So, to sum up ...

1. Learn tap

2. Learn an obscure rap song and how to play two cheap musical instruments you can carry with you anywhere. Have them handy in case you forget your lines in the middle of a show or the audience starts to turn on you.

3. Audition everywhere. Of course, this will tick off the people who cast you when you turn them down, but once you get good, you'll start to make enemies anyway, so you might as well begin now.

***

... but of course the greatest gem of wisdom I did not pass on. Stay out of show business and do something sane.

Above: The author plays a showboat on the Mighty Missouri River in the Old Days, pulling something out of his bag of tricks.

I May Not Know Much About Art, but I Know What I Don't Like

2012-01-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

Above: Colonel Sanders O'Hara and his daughter Scarlett on board My Old Kentucky Dinner Train.

Comments at my previous post have inspired me to elaborate a bit about one of the major stumbling blocks in Literary Criticism.

We were at the Missouri Governor's Mansion performing our comedy murder mystery Gone with the Passing of the Wind.

The Governor's Mansion is quite beautiful, and both the guests and the servers were in full formal attire. Indeed, the servers were milling about in tails offering drinks to the guests on silver platters - just like you see in those old movies. We were told that the servers were State prisoners on a kind of work release.

The show begins with me as Scarlett O'Hara's father, whom I play as Colonel Sanders. After giving the "top ten list" of his "eleven secret herbs and spices" (which includes "Number Ten, Grease" and "Number Six, Methyl-hydrogenated-polysorbate-butane") the Colonel bemoans the Lost Cause.

"One day," he exclaims, "the South will rise again, and we're gonna make the world safe for slavery!"

Now this is a joke.

And sometimes you have to explain a joke, which I will do now and which perhaps we should have done that night. The joke is a parody of Woodrow Wilson's rationalization of World War I, in use up until this day, that U.S. foreign wars are an attempt to "make the world safe for democracy". And so, in one line, Colonel Sanders O'Hara is poking fun both at 20th & 21st Century Imperialism as well as the less than noble institution of slavery that served as the primary issue behind the Civil War.

A week later, the director of the Mansion called us. "We received complaints about that joke," she said.

"From whom?" I asked.

"From the servers."

The servers.

In other words, the prisoners.

Indeed, most of the servers were black, and they were offended, thinking that I was somehow endorsing slavery (of course, the character I played was, but I wasn't). This is a prime example of -

Confusing the depiction of sin with the endorsement of sin.

The fact that a character in a silly little play I wrote is a racist does not mean that I am a racist, or that the play endorses that character's point of view. In fact, had the prisoners gotten the joke, they would have realized that that line is in that play specifically to make fun of racism. This is why I enumerated as one of my complaints against a Protestant worldview in my last post, "they think that art or fiction that depicts sin is itself sinful, regardless of the context in which or the purpose for which the sin is depicted".

So we have the humorlessness of the prisoners, passed along by their keepers, the politically correct and equally humorless State of Missouri (a slave state until the War, incidentally).

But we see this all the time, especially in Catholic Fiction. One of the reasons our literary output does not attract readers beyond the Catholic Ghetto is that publishers and writers these days tend to be squeamish about the role of sin in a story, and for that matter in Salvation History. We cringe at Flannery O'Connor because we really don't think Jesus Christ would lower himself quite so much as to save the utterly despicable characters in her tales.

This comes from a lingering Puritanism. It is another example of what's in the Protestant air we breathe, and air that has molded even our Catholic lungs.

We Doth Protest Too Much

2012-01-03T21:36:00.000-08:00

I've figured it out. It explains so much. A great many of my Catholic friends are simply Protestants. They object to and Protest not only many basic Catholic teachings, but the whole tenor and worldview of the Catholic Church. Included in this are a great many self-consciously "real Catholics" and "uber-Catholics".

Now of course it's tricky "judging" another person's Catholicism. Technically speaking, every baptized person is Catholic, whether they know it or not - though most are not in full communion with the Catholic Church. This is because there's no other Church to be baptized into.

So I'm not talking literally here. I don't want to make the mistake Mr. Voris et. al. are doing in saying "I'm a REAL CATHOLIC and you're not."

So with that in mind, and using a bit of literary license, there is a Protestant worldview and a Catholic worldview, and most of my Catholic friends are steeped in the former.

They believe that a good end justifies a bad means; they endorse torture; they think that art or fiction that depicts sin is itself sinful, regardless of the context in which or the purpose for which the sin is depicted; they believe individualism trumps obedience to authority; they believe rational criticism is suspect; they are anti-intellectuals; they think activism is more important than prayer or faith; they give lip service to chastity, but they are deeply suspicious of it; they are libertarian and believe that government should not even build and maintain roads (some of them have actually said this to me); they can't tell good writing from bad; they do not understand what the fullness of Reason is.

Anyway, these are all hallmarks of the Protestant worldview.

And, to our shame, we Catholics, many of us, are marching under this banner.

We Have no King but Caesar

2012-01-03T11:01:00.001-08:00

2012 has dawned, and "Real Catholic TV" is still calling itself "Real Catholic TV", despite their bishop admonishing them not to.

So let me get this straight.

"Real Catholics" disobey and mock their ordinaries when it suits them - a la Fr. Pavone and "freefrpavone.com" - or simply ignore them - a la Michael Voris.

By the same token, "Real Catholics" defend their bishops from just criticism and from calls to follow more closely the teachings of Christ - a la Bishop Finn.

Point out that Bishop Finn, successor to the apostles, should follow the Christian truth that he preaches, defending the most innocent and helpless among us, and "Real Catholics" will threaten to beat you up. Point out that if bishops should follow canon law and deny communion to unrepentant pro-abortion politicians (which they should), then lay leaders of apostolates should follow canon law and not call something Catholic that is not Catholic (Voris' rants are sometimes quite far from Catholic, "real" or "surreal") - point this out, and you'll be lynched.

So how do we know what to do?

Should we defend our bishops or disobey them?

Should we follow canon law or flout it?

The answer: politics trumps religion.

We have no king but Caesar.

Odds and Ends

2011-12-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

First, a new policy on comments. If you post as "Anonymous", you must sign the comment with your name. You know my name, our readers should know your name. Since lately "Anonymous" comments have been more or less this ...

"Kevin, you are utterly pathetic and not to be trusted. Reading your stuff I realize what a coward and a cad you are. You are a very low form of life. I am amazed at how judgmental, hateful and closed-minded you are. You are a few notches below morally reprehensible. I don't believe a word you say about Bishop Finn, Father Corapi, Father Pavone, or Michael Voris. You are not even as good of a person as Judas."

... I feel that such commenters should at least have the gumption to embarrass themselves by name.

Second, here's my review of Midnight in Paris, the most recent Woody Allen movie.

So the trailer of "Midnight in Paris" made it look like an interesting romantic comedy - character comedy. Then about 15 minutes in it becomes a narcissistic fantasy. Woody Allen at his lamest.

I looked up "self-indulgent" in the dictionary. There was a picture of Woody Allen.

‎20 minutes before the end of the film, it's all "let's add stupid onto stupid" and see what we get. It's either 2stupid or stupid squared. Not sure which.

I looked on the side of the box and this is what it said: Take a pseudo-intellectual worldview, moronic and predictable plot elements, mix in some interesting directing and a few scenes of good dialogue and you get this waste of 90 minutes.

The photography was interesting, but Owen Wilson's acting choices consisted of "be a blonde Woody Allen". An insultingly bad movie.

- Anonymous

What if "Life is Good" Sued "Life Sucks"?

2011-12-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

I hate people, and it turns out that might be a registered trademark.

Let me explain.

My daughter Kerry talked us into driving down to Lafayette Square last Sunday to get brunch. Lafayette Square is a trendy St. Louis neighborhood where rehabbers live, surrounded by the ghetto on four sides. But once a year all the Yuppies from West St. Louis County come down to Lafayette Square for the Lafayette Square House Tour, and for an hour or two it's safe to walk the streets - unless you fear white collar crime: for example, getting a fraudulent stock tip from a middle aged guy in trendy sweater at brunch before the house tour starts.

So there they were, hundreds of them milling about, and our little brunch place so crowded you couldn’t get in the front door.

“I hate people,” I observed to my wife Karen, who was driving.

“Should we go to Uncle Bill’s?” Karen asked, Uncle Bill’s being the only restaurant left in St. Louis that still serves buckwheat pancakes.

“It’s 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon,” I replied. “It’s impossible to get into Uncle Bills at 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon. This is the busiest time for Sunday brunch – the hour when all the churches are done, and the hour when all the pagan fornicators in their twenties are just getting out of bed and taking their sleepover partners to get more bacon, sitting there with their bleary-eyed stare, wearing last night’s outfit and trying to wake up over coffee and buckwheat pancakes, a bit too embarrassed to look each other in the eye.”

“Dad, you are so crabby,” said Kerry.

“I hate people,” I added as a rejoinder, sinking back into the passenger seat, and ready to sink into a foul temper that would last the rest of the Christian Sabbath.

And then I saw it.

A sticker in the back window of one of the cars parked along the street. It was a picture of a cloud, light blue and inside the cloud was the phrase LIFE IS GOOD.

Well, heck, even an old curmudgeon like me can be swayed by a cliché in a car window two weeks before Christmas. LIFE IS GOOD, I thought. God is simply talking to me. LIFE IS GOOD, stop complaining, stop hating people. Why am I so crabby?

And then I saw it – a little tiny “R” in a circle.

LIFE IS GOOD – REGISTERED TRADEMARK.

“This is a marketing slogan!” I exclaimed. “LIFE IS GOOD has become a marketing slogan!”

Years ago, I received a letter from a guy in Texas who told me that if I ever again produced my comedy murder mystery entitled Murder on the Disoriented Express, he would sue me, as he had a registered trademark on that phrase. And then – in the same letter – he told me that he was a playwright, too, and would I consider producing some of his plays? I am not making this up. (Did I mention I hate people?)

I wrote back and noted that it would be pretty difficult to defend a trademark that’s based on a copyrighted work by another author – in this case Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. In addition to that, copyright law does not protect titles of works, as I understand it, while it does protect parody – but after several angry emails back and forth between me and this guy’s lawyer, the whole thing reminded me of the time that Warner Brothers threatened to sue the Marx Brothers for making A Night in Casablanca, claiming it was an infringement on the Warner Brothers movie Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

Groucho wrote

***

Dear Warner Brothers,

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca. …

I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if you plan on releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

***

The whole correspondence is quite funny and it can be found here.

But even though Groucho and I don’t take these trademark issues seriously, corporate folks do, even when they’re trying to trademark something that is not only a cliché (LIFE IS GOOD) but a tenet of the Catholic Church, taught for over 2,000 years. I mean, heck, right before God rested on His very first Sabbath Day, way back in Genesis Chapter One, He looked at life and said IT IS GOOD. Seems God the Father might have a claim on this phrase Himself, having coined it a few billion years ago, just a few God-Days after the Big Bang.

But a registered trademark the phrase indeed is.

A quick Google search indicates that LIFE IS GOOD is some sort of clothing line, some trendy feel-good fornicate-and-sleep-til-noon-save-the-planet clothing line. Oh, and they train children on how to play.

That’s right, they train children on how to play.

It’s a clothing line. And they make bumper stickers. And they train child care workers to help children release their psychological issues caused by trauma by playing.

But not just playing the way kids play. Playing the way the adults say is best for your bruised and battered psyches for you to play, dammit! Now shut up and let me teach you the only thing a kid never needs to be taught – HOW TO PLAY!

Now, seriously, I’m sure there are benefits to “play therapy”, and I’m sure the owners of LIFE IS GOOD REGISTERED TRADEMARK have the best intentions when it comes to helping traumatized children. (Actually I’m not so sure they have the best intentions; this is all corporate branding, in a way). But why they’re doing NOTHING to combat GLOBAL WARMING is beyond me. And I certainly hope they sponsor the Lafayette Square Gay Pride Parade next summer – but at least they’re doing something until then. At least they’re in the Oprah spirit, after all, if not the Christmas spirit. Still – “Child Care Worker, teach me to play …” I just can’t quite picture it.

At any rate, be warned that if you are a young Distributist selling genuine dark buckwheat pancake mix (discontinued by Aunt Jemimah and becoming almost impossible to find) at a kiosk you’ve built with your own hands on a street corner in Lafayette Square just south of downtown St. Louis, be sure to tell your customers to HAVE A NICE DAY and be sure you do not utter the phrase LIFE IS GOOD, because that observation – hell, that basic fact – is now a REGISTERED TRADEMARK protected by the Federal Court System of the United States of America, the same government that is now owned and operated by Goldman Sachs and BOA. So WATCH IT.

Well, if there’s any consolation, at least LIFE SUCKS is not registered.

Oh, wait a minute – it IS! See http://www.lifesucksinc.com/files/info.pdf - where it clearly says, “LIFE SUCKS is a registered trademark of LIFE SUCKS INC.”

Now what can I say when I’m really really crabby? “REGISTERED TRADEMARK and then you die!” Come on, that just won’t do.

Wait.

Maybe if I register as a trademark the phrase HAPPY HOLIDAYS I can get people to start saying MERRY CHRISTMAS instead, for fear of being sued.

Now that’s the Christmas spirit!

The Seed of Grace

2011-12-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

We know that at the moment of the Immaculate Conception, the New Testament silently begins. It begins in a hidden way, without any fiat from Mary or her mother. It begins entirely with grace, as everything begins.

The Kingdom of Heaven at Mary's Immaculate Conception was smaller than a mustard seed, less noticeable than a pinch of yeast, surrounded by the darkness of a womb - a darkness that did not overcome it. And yet from this small and seemingly insignificant beginning, the Kingdom has come among us in power and clarity.

Fourteen or so years later, the Kingdom has another small and hidden beginning. John the Baptist is conceived before Our Lord begins to live in the Virgin's womb. And while we know that Mary says yes to God when the angel appears to her, we know that Zechariah breathed out a kind of no. He responds to Gabriel with a doubt.

In that doubt is the antithesis of Faith; in that doubt is the kind of No that can undo the Kingdom. And in that doubt is the last word Zechariah speaks until his lips are free to affirm God's plan at the birth of Zechariah's son. "His name is John" is Zechariah's Yes to the absurdity (in human terms) of the Providence of the Lord. His first words in nine months, his first utterance after his penance of being unable to speak are a surprising and even shocking "Yes". It is his way of saying, "I renounce my selfish and personal claim to the identity of my only son; I offer him up to this new order which is breaking through, to the glory we are beginning to glimpse behind a torn veil."

And then when Our Lady says Yes - when she gives her fiat - her action is less active than it is passive. It is an action that allows, that suffers, that permits God as the active source of grace to work his wonders through her, through His Son, and through us.

If we don't have the courage to say Yes, may we at least have the grace to stop saying No.

The Price We're Paying

2011-12-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

Above: Fr. Shawn Ratigan, with children.

I have learned, both from private correspondence and from Donohue's rants at the Catholic League, that the defenders of Bishop Finn have come up with a game plan and talking points.

Their case amounts to this:

THERE WAS NO SEXUAL ABUSE. Bishop Finn can not be guilty of failure to report sexual abuse. When Fr. Ratigan took pictures of the crotches of little girls at his parish and at least one set of photos of a naked two-year old, he was NOT ABUSING CHILDREN.

So, my fellow conservative Catholics, we can indeed spare ourselves embarrassment and our hero, Bishop Finn, from a tarnished reputation, but to do so we have to pay a very hefty price.

The price is our own kids.

Just be prepared, if you make this sacrifice, for what it entails. It entails the normilization of perverse behavior, and it also means that if one of your children is victimized in this way, you can say nothing, for your naked two-year old, fodder for the fantasies of a warped soul, may be used in this way without you being able to become as indignant as every fiber of common sense, every instict, and every ounce of the Law of Love indicates you should.

And if you've got an eight-year-old whose crotch appears dozens of times in jpg's on Fr. Ratigan's computer?

Tough.

We've got a reputation to save.

For more info, see The Full Story on Bishop Finn and The Spin Shall Set You Free

Reuters on Bishop Finn

2011-12-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

Reuters publishes a thorough summary of the Bishop Finn / Fr. Ratigan case here. My own summary of the case is here.

The destruction of evidence, abetted by Bishop Finn, is acknowledged by the police in this article to have been "a significant blow" to the criminal investigation.

Christmas Programming from Theater of the Word

2011-11-25T17:23:00.000-08:00

Pictured: Theater of the Word programming director, Sid the Christmas Elf, planning Theater of the Word's televised Christmas schedule

My actress Maria Romine, who knows these things, tells me that some of the Christmas-themed programming from Theater of the Word Incorporated will air on EWTN this Advent and Christmas season.

Our episode A MORNING STAR CHRISTMAS will air on EWTN on the following dates and times ...

Tuesday, December 20 at 5:30 pm Eastern / 4:30 Central
Wednesday, December 21 at 11:00 pm Eastern / 10:00 pm Central
Saturday, December 24 at 4:00 am Eastern / 3:00 am Central
Tuesday, December 27 at 5:00 am Eastern / 4:00 am Central

Here's a clip from that episode starring me and Frank Zito

And then Chesterton's THE SURPRISE, in which I play the romantic lead (what else?), and which is a delightful play that's kind of a Christmas story (it's a fairy tale inspired by the Incarnation), airs on the following dates and times ...

Sunday, December 18 at 8:00 pm Eastern / 7:00 pm Central
Friday, December 23 at 1:00 pm Eastern / Noon Central
Monday, December 26 at 2:00 am Eastern / 1:00 am Central

And may we all have a blessed Advent and Christmas season!

I Can't Get Free of Free-Father-Frank

2011-11-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before, as soon as I got tired of receiving beg emails every other day from Priests for Life and cancelled my email subscription, I began receiving spam emails from some shady outfit called freefrfrank.com. I won't link to their site, as the site tries to run scripts on me when I visit it and locks up Internet Explorer. There are no opportunities to unsubscribe from this spam, and it's coming to an address that only Priests for Life knew. In their latest spam, they carry a statement by Fr. Pavone about his priesthood. Clearly, Fr. Pavone is aware of this website (which, if you do manage to visit it you'll find contains what almost amounts to hate speech against Bishop Zurek). Clearly, Fr. Pavone's organization provided this site with my email address without my permission so that they might illegally spam me. Clearly, Fr. Pavone tacitly endorses these venomous attacks on his bishop. Clearly, when Fr. Pavone publicly supports doing bad so that good may come, we should take him at his word.

Anyone who gives a dime to Priests for Life at this point is a fool.

Shakespeare the Papist

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

The UK Telegraph reports today that the Vatican newspaper says there are "few doubts" that Shakespeare was a Catholic.

That's obviously the case, as anyone who has read Joseph Pearce's two books on the subject (The Quest for Shakespeare and Through Shakespeare's Eyes ) can tell you. Indeed, the documentary evidence alone (which Joseph covers in The Quest for Shakespeare) is what any unbiased observer would call conclusive, without even looking at the Catholic spirit and Catholic themes of the plays themselves (which Joseph covers in Through Shakespeare's Eyes).

But what a hornet's nest of comments appear on the UK Telegraph site! I haven't the patience to read them all, myself, but I encourage you to take a glance at them at least. If you doubt that anti-Catholicism is alive and well, the fervor and indignation of the commenters on this issue will satisfy you on that score. If there is any logic to be found in the commenters, the logic seems to be kind-of sort-of syllogistic ...

1. The Catholic Church is narrow and shadowy and judgmental

2. Shakespeare's plays are broad and lively and fun

3. Therefore, Shakespeare was not a Catholic.

But this bigotry takes many forms.

One commenter, for example, more or less says, "How dare the Vatican tell us what to believe about Shakespeare!" That comment is so wrong-headed it's hard to know where to begin. Behind it is nothing but confusion. First, it never occurs to the commenter that the Vatican is not exactly speaking with the authority of the Church, far less is one reporter working for L'Osservatore Romano; next, it never occurs to him that the Church is not in the business of issuing fatwas and snuffing out reasoned discussion on any subject, much less literary criticism or historical fact; and most importantly, that the question of Shakespeare's religion is just such a question of Historical Fact, a question that is independent of one's empathy toward or antipathy against the Church.

And there's the great irony that the anti-Catholic bigots in the UK Telegraph comboxes are all worked up that the Church is the enemy of reason, art and (as one Protestant commenter implies) Christ Himself - and they make these points in the most unreasonable, inartistic and antichristian way possible.

Well, Willie Shakespeare (God rest his soul) keeps learning after death what Catholics have known from the beginning - that Our Lord and Savior is a Sign of Contradiction, and that He will be spoken against, or sometimes simply ranted and raved against.

I would suggest that the Earl of Oxford wrote all of the comments in the UK Telegraph comboxes - but they're not the work of one man. They are the hallmark of chaos and contradiction - they are Legion.

The Holy Spirit Doesn't Mind Tacky

2011-11-20T22:21:00.000-08:00

Anglicans share a "deep seated belief that God always and everywhere is the arbiter of good taste," a friend of mine observed in an email to me.

"But the Holy Spirit doesn't mind tacky," I shot back.

My correspondent thought that in saying this I was, perhaps, advocating bad art, or even tacky liturgical music (Marty Haugen / David Haas), which I wasn't. So I elaborated as follows ...

Not long after my conversion I was reading our local non-conformist alternate weekly newspaper (which is exactly like all the other non-conformist alternate weekly newspapers in America and probably owned by the same company). It featured an article on a Pentecostal weekly gathering in rural Missouri, a holy roller church that was causing quite a stir and attracting large numbers of visitors. Since tired liberals in sweaters (the kind who write for and read the non-conformist alternate weeklies) are the snobbiest of snobs, the article was condescending and sneering. It made fun of fat ladies from Wal-Mart speaking in tongues; red neck teen-agers rolling on the floor; hick young men with mullets dancing in the aisles. And I thought, "Well, you folks might look down on these simpletons - but I doubt the Holy Spirit would." That is to say, Protestant heresies aside, the Third Person of the Trinity would no more mind the bad breath and gun-racks of Show Me State hill-billies than the Second Person of the Trinity minded the smell of animal dung in that stable so long ago.

In other words, the Holy Spirit doesn't mind working through tacky. He'll even work through the snobs who hate tacky. Sloppy "hoosiers" (as we call them) and immaculate "metro-sexuals", both. God embraces the butts of the jokes of cynical yuppies as well as the cynical yuppies making the jokes. We might be squeamish about either kind of neighbor (snobs and red necks), but the Holy Spirit isn't.

This is not to say we should aspire for tackiness - especially in the things we offer overtly to God. For instance, there's no reason the music at the typical Catholic parish should be an affront to all that is human, while the music at the nearly empty Episcopal parish down the block is reverent and beautiful.

But if bad taste alone kept God from redeeming us, there's not a suburban music minister I know of who would make it to heaven.

Yes, we must offer our best to God. But He offers His best to us even when we're at our worst.

That's my point.

From Faith to Faith

2011-11-19T10:21:00.001-08:00

There is an odd phrase in St. Paul that has long been debated by scholars. Romans 1:17 -

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.

Paul seems to be saying that there is a kind of preliminary faith through which we are led to a deeper faith, in which the righteousness of God is revealed.

What, then, is this original faith? What is the first faith in "from faith to faith"?

Paul tells us right away, as he describes, by contrast, those non-Christians who have no original faith - that is to say who have no "good faith" and who approach the world in "bad faith". These are the unbelievers whose hearts are closed to belief, who see the evidence of God in the world around them, and who therefore know God at least in some inchoate way, but who neither glorify nor thank this not-yet-fully-known God. And though they have at least an inkling of Him, they become "vain in their imaginations", becoming fools with dark hearts who trade the source of creation for some petty part of creation that they worship in His stead. And, as Paul points out, with great psychological and spiritual insight, such folk of "bad faith" descend into a kind of ridiculousness and perversion.

Having been an atheist myself at a young age, I can attest to this. My atheism was not really an intellectual position - it was an exercise of ill will. It was crankiness. It was anger and disappointment. It was not a "good faith" philosophy, for it refused to acknowledge the truth and asserted instead the bile of my own dark heart.

We see this all the time, especially on the internet. Rarely will you find people arguing any subject in "good faith". Instead, you find people doing somersaults to justify their sins, and the venom that springs forth is called "argumentation". But it is not that. It is simply communication in "bad faith".

When (through drama) I began to see the mystery beyond my own petty tyranny, I began to approach the world in "good faith", which by the grace of God led, eventually, to the True Faith, the Catholic Faith.

At least in my case this was the meaning of "From Faith to Faith".

Bishop Finn is not Finn-ished

2011-11-16T21:30:00.000-08:00

The headline in the Kansas City Star is a bit misleading. BISHOP FINN AVOIDS INDICTMENT BY ENTERING INTO DIVERSION PROGRAM. This is true, but only for Clay County, Missouri. Bishop Finn has already been indicted in Jackson County, Missouri and has pled not guilty in that case. Unless a deal is struck there, he will face a trial.

In the Clay County case, the prosecutor has agreed not to seek an indictment if Bishop Finn participates in a monthly program that in effect allows the county government to have a certain degree of hands-on involvement in running or monitoring the sexual abuse response programs of the diocese.

Reaction to this deal, as reported by the Star, runs from satisfaction to outrage. I think the most telling quote is this:

***

" ... For the church to put itself in a position where the only way out of its legal difficulties is to submit to the oversight of governmental authorities, just that is really a tragic day for the church," said Nicholas Cafardi, a law professor at Duquesne University and former chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth.

***

I, for one, am pleased that Bishop Finn agreed to use “all reasonable resources” to identify any child whose photograph or video emerges during a child abuse investigation, which is precisely what they did not do in the Fr. Ratigan case, which I explain in detail here and here.

But I still say, all legal questions aside, that the way to deal with this thing is with the use of one of the most powerful spiritual weapons at our disposal as Catholics - public penance by Bishop Finn.

Bishop Finn, we know you are not a monster. We know you are a follower of Christ; we know you are a shepherd in the Church, one of our leaders. Please do not lead by example when your example is merely worldly. Show us the power of the sacraments and of the grace of God for which you have dedicated your life. Cutting a deal for worldly reasons is one thing; doing public penance in sackcloth and ashes is quite another - not only would that act carry tremendous supernatural weight and set the devil scurrying, it would be the most powerful witness to Christians and agnostics alike - the witness to how we all should acknowledge and repent of our sins.

It may be the very act God has ordained you to; it may be the great good He looks for out of this sorry shambles of evil and cowardice He has allowed. Do not let this opportunity pass you by.

Stanford Nutting on "What is Truth?"

2011-11-08T12:41:00.001-08:00

The Madman and the Sane Man

2011-11-07T19:54:00.000-08:00

Here I am as philosopher, madman, atheist, and syphilitic poet Frederich Nietzsche. Chuck Chalberg provides the balance.

From Season Six of The Apostle of Common Sense on EWTN.

The moustache was even more frightening in real life, as you can see from the contemporary drawing of the real Nietzsche by Hans Olde (right).

Sex and Success

2011-11-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

"God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful," Bl. Teresa of Calcutta.

What do the following have in common:

Liberal Catholic support for contraception, abortion, divorce and perversion

Conservative Catholic support for Torture and Lying

Liberal Catholic support for socialism and Liberation Theology

Conservative Catholic support for folk heroes such as Maciel, Euteneuer, Corapi and Pavone

Liberal Catholic support for political candidates who advocate policies that help the poor and immigrants but who are otherwise vehemently anti-Catholic

Conservative Catholic vilification of anyone who is less than a "super disciple" or of anyone who dares criticize Conservative Catholic heroes

Answer: What they all have in common is Sex and Success.

Let me explain.

Over at Mark Shea's blog, Mark links to a National Catholic Register article in which he discusses voting and Catholics. "Scott W." of the blog Romish Internet Graffiti comments thus ...

Actually, it’s not that difficult to find such candidates [candidates who don't support abortion or torture]. It is just difficult to find one with a chance of winning which really isn’t the point as we are called to be faithful, not effective.

Scott is echoing Blessed Teresa's quote above, and in doing so he gets to the root of things - the root beneath the dissidence and turmoil we see in the Church in America.

If an American Catholic is confused or dissenting, he is either a proponent of lust without limit or of success-over-sacrifice.

What I mean by "success-over-sacrifice" is that, for Catholics on both the left and the right, results trump methods and ends justify means.

This is what I would call the heresy of Activism, the belief that this world matters more than the next and that anything we do to compromise our effectiveness (our success) in this world is to be shunned. Therefore, the leftists will tell you that helping the poor is more important than obeying the Church on matters of faith and morals - for results trump methods and ends justify means. Rigthies will tell you that defeating abortion justifies lying, defeating Islam justifies torture, and being an effective (successful) super-disciple is more important than being an ineffective (unsuccessful) moral and faithful disciple - for results trump methods and ends justify means.

And what we worship is not the God of Sacrifice and Suffering, but the false idol of Success.

What they all forget is that this is the only faith where Failure is glorious, where by suffering and dying we heal and live, where the greatest worldly defeat may actually be the greatest worldly (and other-worldly) victory. What they all forget is that nasty item unique to the Catholic Church, not found in any other religion and not embraced by any other philosophy of the world, the cross.

What they forget is we are called to be faithful, not successful.

Liar, Thou Pants on Fire

2011-11-05T23:29:00.000-07:00

The Church tells us that Lying is intrinsically evil and may never be done under any circumstances. The catechisms of John Paul II and Trent are both quite clear on this, as are bishops and popes all the way back to St. Augustine at least.

There are those who respond by saying, "This is not Church teaching. This is one of a number of teachings on Lying, all of which contradict each other. The Church is not teaching with any authority on this matter. It is mere theological opinion and may safely be ignored."

Well, it seems to me that all Christians would respect the authority of Holy Scripture, even if they argue about the authority of the Magisterium.

What then are the Apologists for Lying to make of this, from Revelations 21:8, where God Himself tells St. John what types of people will be barred from entering into the Heavenly Kingdom of the New Jerusalem ...

***

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death (King James Version)

[In other words, all liars go to hell].

***

See also Rev. 21:27 where this is reiterated - he that "maketh a lie" will be kept out of Heaven. In the New American translation, "But nothing unclear will enter it, nor anyone who does abominable things or tells lies."

It seems to me that when liars are sent to hell along with murderers and idolaters, we had best take Church teaching on Lying seriously - and repent of our own lies, for it is simply the Truth that will set us free.

And that's more than theological opinion.

***

ADDENDUM - I added this to the combox, but it's worth adding here: it's not clear if it's God the Father telling St. John this stuff about liars going to hell or Jesus Christ, the Son. At any rate, there is a third reiteration of it, in Rev. 22:15, which is either Jesus speaking or John himself recapping the situation under the inspiration of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit - "For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

Now, dear readers, a hallmark of this debate has been that the Lying Apologists do not address points my side makes. They side-step them and throw other objections at us. When we address those other objections, the things we say in reply are ignored and new objections are thrown at us. And so on.

I'm tired of that technique. So if you wish to comment, please address what this post is about - GOD HIMSELF TELLING US THREE TIMES AT THE VERY END OF SCRIPTURE THAT ALL LIARS ARE SENT TO HELL. Please address that point - as it really can not be safely ignored.

Obama Follows in the Footsteps of Conservative Catholics

2011-11-05T09:02:00.001-07:00

When President Obama yesterday thumbed his nose at the due process of law by refusing to answer a congressional subpoena (in the stirring tradition of Richard M. Nixon), he put a wonderful spin on it. Obama is above the law because ...

"I can only conclude that your decision to issue a subpoena, authorized by a party-line vote, was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation."

Now this is really a masterful way of winning while whining. The argument, you see, is not "executive privilege" but something more personal and more petty.

And this is exactly the way some self-styled Conservative Catholics think.

The argument is simply a twist on the end justifies the means. It's an argument that not only allows you to do whatever you want if your heart is in the right place, it also allows you to ignore and ridicule your neighbor because his heart isn't.

Does Congress have the right to subpoena the President? Of course it does, but you may ignore the rule of law if Congress is, in your estimation, poorly motivated.

Has Bishop Finn behaved abysmally in the Fr. Ratigan case in Kansas City? Of course he has, but you may ignore that if his critics, in your estimation, are out to get him.

Is the Church clear that Lying and Torture are Intrinsically evil? Of course it is, but you may lie and torture anyway if, in your estimation, you're a good guy doing these things for the right reasons.

Mark Shea quotes G. K. Chesterton at length here, the most telling quote being ...

"When Religion would have maddened men, Theology kept them sane."

Our theology teaches us that we must obey the moral precepts of the Church even when we don't feel like it and even if it hurts to do so. For what is right is more important than our self-sufficiency, our mistaken notion that good people always do good if they mean well - and our inane conviction that we are always good people.

Take a look at the arrogance of President Obama, flouting law for personal reasons. And then take a look in the mirror.

***

ADDENDUM - I just read the full letter written by a White House attorney rejecting the subpoena. The argument the White House makes is actually more rational than the sentence above quoted, which is the one sentence being reported in the media. The argument is not simply that congress is behaving politically (which it always does) but that the subpoena is too broad in scope. The first argument is utterly beside the point; the second argument at least addresses a legal issue and is a valid argument to make.

But my point stands. Smearing your opponents' intentions (which you can never know for sure anyway unless you can read minds and hearts) is as much beside the point as lauding your own intentions. But we have fallen into such tortuous paths of subjectivism that we really think if one means well from his own point of view, one may do simply anything and be justified in doing it. The contrary to that is the notion that anyone who gives us grief must perforce have bad intentions. And that's the only sin left under the Dictatorship of Relativism - bad intentions.

The end justifies the means - as long as one "means well".

Death of the Party

2011-11-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

A skit on death and small talk from The Apostle of Common Sense on EWTN. In this scene I appear as myself - the real me.

An Interview with Kevin O'Brien

2011-11-03T14:35:00.001-07:00

This is an interview David Higbee of St. Irenaeus Ministries conducted with me. Please click on the link and check out the good work David is doing in his apostolate. I'm told his podcasts are especially good. In fact, you'll find one of me performing my one-man Hilarie Belloc show, as recorded last month in Rochester, New York.

This will be published in the newsletter / magazine of St. Irenaeus Ministries. Thanks to them for allowing me to mirror it here.

Arts and Entertainment for Christ
An Interview with Kevin O’Brien

Q: Kevin, you are known for your one-man shows, like the one you recently put on at the Rochester Chesterton Conference in October, where you portrayed Hilaire Belloc, and, of course, from your theatrical performances on Catholic television. In 2007 you organized a theatrical endeavor with the potential to touch many souls. Please tell us about the origin and concept of Theater of the Word, Inc.

The Theater of the Word Incorporated is named after the “Theater of the Word”, Karol Wojtyla’s drama troupe, the clandestine theater company of Nazi-occupied Poland. We add the title “incorporated” to our company to emphasize that we are the Theater of the Word-Incorporated, or the Word-become-flesh. For as “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”, we, as actors, flesh out words on the printed page by bringing them to life in performance. And so we travel the country evangelizing through drama, and we also produce material for television, the internet and audio books.

As to how we came about – well, that’s a long story of the Providence of God acting through a number of seemingly incredible coincidences. But our main benefactors in the beginning were Father Joseph Fessio and Ignatius Press as well as then-Archbishop Raymond Burke of my home archdiocese, St. Louis. They provided the resources and encouragement for us to go forward and to answer God’s call in this creative and challenging way.

Q: You mention Archbishop Burke (now Cardinal Burke). What have you found or what do you sense of the hierarchy’s attitude toward using the theatrical arts and media to reach souls?

I am sorry to say that we’ve discovered a kind of institutionalism widespread in the Church, and even in many lay apostolates. A typical diocese or parish settles into the attitude of maintaining the status quo, and, above all, of not taking risks. If you approach a pastor with the opportunity to allow their parishioners to see a live performance that would stir their souls, engage their emotions, and perhaps encourage them to grow closer to Christ, the typical response is, “Well, we don’t do that”, or “There’s no committee for that,” or “That might work as a fund raiser, but BINGO and fish fries do much better.”

On the diocesan level, it is all too often a question of how much insurance do you carry and what can we do to make sure we don’t get any complaints about this.

On the other hand, there are enough priests and bishops out there who like what we do and who see the value in it, that we are, in fact, able to spread the Word through comedy and drama – though not without a good deal of resistance along the way.

Q: You come from a theatrical background. How did the faith come to figure in your life?

At age nine I considered myself an atheist. It wasn’t until I began to appear in plays as a teenager that I discovered tangible evidence of the realm beyond, of something outside of my control that was best termed “spiritual”. Things would happen to me and to my fellow actors on stage that we could not force, that we could merely prepare for and invite – a kind of spontaneity and authenticity of performance that was in fact a “spiritual” thing. It was an experience you could kill by trying to be in total control of what you were doing; it was an experience you could not make happen, but you could prevent from happening – which is precisely how we stand in relation to God’s grace. Once you were totally rehearsed and prepared, if you lost yourself in performance, you might gain yourself in performance, so to speak. And this is what led me, over a long and adventurous path, into the Catholic Church.

As to my background in theater, I have been making a living as an actor, playwright or director for thirty years, doing everything from stand-up comedy, magic, and singing telegrams to movies and TV – and that storehouse of experience in “show biz” taught me that you can’t evangelize though drama without at the very least being entertaining.

Q: I can see that evangelizing and transforming our culture are at the heart of what you do with the performing arts, but could you elaborate on how the idea of entertainment fits into this?

I think the great challenge facing Christians today is how easy it is for our faith to become “unreal”. A sanctimonious faith, a faith divorced from real life, a faith that is squeamish and diffident, is bound to be a sterile and fruitless faith.

Thus the gateway to a transformative drama is to make sure that drama or comedy is first of all entertaining. And how is something entertaining? Drama is entertaining by being real at some level; it’s entertaining by engaging the whole person, and not by presenting propaganda, or by presenting a false image of a false humanity. Drama and comedy must deal with the human heart in its fullness, its sinfulness, and its relation to the demanding love and awesome presence of God. A drama that attempts to grapple with real men who themselves are grappling at some level with a real God is bound to be entertaining.

Q: You’ve done intense, dramatic portrayals, but you’ve also done comic satires, like your portrayal of Standford Nutting, seen by thousands of people on YouTube. Would you explain the creation of this memorable character – and what you hope to get across to your viewers?

We have two choices in dealing with the Standord Nuttings of the world: to laugh at them or to kill them. It’s more effective to laugh at them.

Stanford Nutting, who “Stands-for Nothing”, is an amalgam of many real people. For example, two ex-seminarians came to a meeting at which we were discussing Chesterton’s book Orthodoxy, and kept interrupting the discussion by saying really foolish and insipid things. “It sounds to me as if you haven’t even read the book,” I said to one of them. “I haven’t!” he replied, “But I object to the title!”

Then there was the tired old liberal in a sweater, who worked at St. Louis University High School, and who proudly told me that he teaches his students that “there is no difference between fiction and non-fiction.” At that moment I decided I would not be sending my son to St. Louis University High School, thus saving myself $40,000, and adding another element to the mix that became Stanford Nutting.

Q: I can see where certain so-called liberal or “progressive” elements might react negatively to your message, but you have also gotten negative reactions from certain so-called conservative quarters. How do you find people reacting, positively or negatively to your message and approach?

The liberals at least are comfortable with drama and with the idea of people having fun. The more Puritanical conservatives are seriously uncomfortable with the whole concept of drama because it involves fun. The more radical-right elements in the Catholic Church are indistinguishable from Puritans, both the modern and the historical variety. And it was the Puritans who shut down the theaters in England, putting an end to the most rich and beautiful period of dramatic art in the history of the world.

But the push back comes from both right and left.

Take, for instance, reactions to our show The Journey of St. Paul. The liberals would complain to me that I included Paul’s admonition to practicing homosexuals that they will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9 and elsewhere). Conservatives would complain to me that we showed Paul confronting Peter, our first Pope, opposing him “to his face because he stood condemned” in his timidity in teaching how Christ fulfilled the Law (see Gal. 2:11). Both scenes in my show come directly from sacred Scripture. And in both cases, the truth of Scripture was being objected to by folks with a certain agenda. And so the fullness of Christ’s message continues to act as a sign of contradiction, even within the Church.

Q: Kevin, I know that you’re concerned about capturing the moral and spiritual imagination of a new generation and have a unique vantage point in gauging the response of your audiences around the country. You’ve worked closely with Dale Ahlquist, who has been so effective in his work with the American Chesterton Society and a host of projects everywhere. Do you see a revival of interest in the Catholic arts? What do you make of the current climate, its receptivity, and the prospects?

I have been honored to have Dale Ahlquist as a good friend and to play an important role in the American Chesterton Society for many years now. And I have seen the growth of interest in Chesterton – it’s been a kind of resurrection from the dead of one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. Chesterton is alive again – and popular.

As to the receptivity – young people are hungry for intellectual and cultural stimulation, but they don’t know how to think; they don’t know the vocabulary of culture. This is why drama is so important. A high school or college student may not pick up Peter Kreeft’s book Socrates Meets Jesus, which would take several hours to read through – but this same student might come to a 90 minute presentation of our stage adaptation of the book, especially if it’s funny and thought-provoking and if it hits him where he’s at.

One of my most memorable experiences in this regard happened not on stage but in the men’s room. I was attending a performance of Chesterton’s play Magic produced by the Blackbird Theater Company of Nashville, and during intermission I overheard young college students discussing the theology of the play at the urinals! Now that’s a good sign – a sign that a dramatic work is making an impact.

But it is almost impossible to explain the reactions we get from our audiences and from the people who book our shows. When people come up to you with tears in their eyes and tell you something you just did was the most moving performance they’ve ever seen, it really strikes you and you realize that it’s not you accomplishing this, but the Spirit working through you. Actors and other artists, in this sense, are like priests – bridges connecting people with something beyond themselves. And our vocation is therefore somewhat sacred.

And yet I have a better answer to this question. I have a quote from a sixteen-year-old girl who saw our play The Call, our show on vocations, at the Institute on Religious Life Conference in Chicago. She sent me this email:

I am so glad I got to come and experience seeing “The Call” this last weekend! You guys showing up in my life has got to be one of the best things that has ever happened! You and your crew have been an inspiration! I saw God shine in every single one of your faces! ... Last night when I got home after 11 pm, my grandma and I had a little chat about the conference and of course, about you! I told her how wonderful you guys were and how being with you guys has helped my discernment a lot! I was telling her that whenever I heard a talk on evangelization and missionary work ... my heart felt pulled, and also when I watched the show you put on ... I also felt pulled. So to sum it all up, I feel God might be calling me to go out and evangelize. I don’t know, though, whether it could be through talking, acting, singing ... Not sure on that part ... But I know your prayers will most definitely help!

An email like this tells you why we do what we do.

Q: This is all very exciting, very promising. What are your hopes and dreams for the Theater of the Word, Inc? Do you hope to encourage other Christian writers and performing artists?

I think the future for us will involve much more presence on internet TV. And, yes, I very much want to encourage others in the performing arts. I blog regularly about the relation between acting and the faith and this seems to be encouraging many in the industry. So I encourage people to follow our blog and also our YouTube page, both of which can be reached from our website www.thewordinc.org. I hope all who are interested will follow us, help us, and thereby become a part of the renewal of the theatrical and cinematic arts for the greater glory of God.

Q: You put on well-received performances at local conferences and in parishes or other venues across the country. How can interested persons contact you to check out the possibility of getting you into their area?

Through our website (www.thewordinc.org) or by phone at 1-888-840-WORD. We price our shows below what it costs us to produce them, in the hopes that as many parishes, schools and conferences as possible can afford to book us, enabling us to “bring light to the world by bringing words to life”.

Kevin, I can only wish and pray you God’s good success in reaching our society through the theatrical arts. This is what people are watching and listening to today. I applaud your efforts to use various media and technologies. You have a vision and passion, and this is a vital endeavor. Thank you for sharing your vision with us.

God in a Box

2011-11-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

One of the most startling things about the Christian Faith is that it is always greater than we are.

We can't get it under our belts because we can't get Him under our belts.

One of the problems I keep running into in others is a problem I keep running into in myself. When God becomes a tool for us, either by being an excuse for improving our self-esteem, or a hammer we knock other people around with, we're abusing the greatest of gifts. For instance, there's the Puritan who is convinced that his Faith has given him membership in a special club, and that the rest of humanity, excluded from this club, is doomed to hell - and nothing could make our Puritan happier than the dreadful and eternal damnation of others.

"I'd like to join a club and beat you over the head with it," in the immortal words of theologian Groucho Marx.

And then there are those of us who emasculate God, turning (in Peter Kreeft's phrase) Christ the King into Christ the Kitten. Or, as my friend Tom Leith put it, Jesus was Nice, You be Nice, Too. At least the Puritans have a God with a shape.

Such Indifferentists have a God that is an amoeba. The Puritans at least have a weapon to wield - a club they can beat you over the head with; the Indifferentists have a fluffy pillow.

And then one might make the mistake of thinking that the true Christians are the ones who make the biggest show of it. But an unlimited number of Hail Marys, daily Masses and pro-life bumper stickers won't stop even a self-styled Devout Catholic from revealing that it's often not a question of the Humility of Christ or the Grace of God, but a question of I Want What I Want When I Want It. Challenge their tribal allegiance, their political affiliation, or their vested interest, and they'll turn on you in a minute.

And while we can understand the Liberals for Dissenting for the sake of Unlimited Sexual Indulgence, we can only stare in amazement at "Conservatives" standing proud for Torture, Lying, Usury and Criminal Negligence. I can understand selling your birthright for hookers and parties, but for a bowl of pottage?

But the galling thing is the fault is not just theirs.

How fun it would be for those of us with a satirical bent to spend all day mocking the Christian Church - a holy Church comprised of sinful men - this disparity of what we aspire to be and what we manage to be is the perfect material for satire. The problem is we're making fun of ourselves when we make fun of all the other misfits and moralists around us.

For we simply do what they do. We put God in a box. And then when He emerges from it Living and Moving, as He did from the tomb and as He always will, we stare in amazement, certain that the Church can't be what He is making it; it must be what we want it to be in our own little narrow hearts.

C. S. Lewis somewhere says that once one becomes a Christian, things go pretty smoothly for a while and you begin to think, "This ain't so tough. I've got this Christianity thing in the bag." And then you realize God doesn't fit in a bag. And woe to you if you make the mistake of praying, "God, make me a better Christian," because He'll answer that prayer.

As Lewis describes it ...

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

If Peter Kreeft were a Priest or a Deacon ...

2011-11-02T19:48:00.000-07:00

If Peter Kreeft were a priest or a deacon, this would be the best homily I ever heard. As it is, it's simply the best speech Peter Kreeft has written.

Some highlights to entice you to click through to the link above and read the whole thing:

***

Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.

***

The theme of spiritual warfare is never absent in scripture, and never absent in the life and writings of a single saint. But it is never present in the religious education of any of my “Catholic” students at Boston College. Whenever I speak of it, they are stunned and silent, as if they have suddenly entered another world. They have. They have gone past the warm fuzzies, the fur coats of psychology-disguised-as-religion, into a world where they meet Christ the King, not Christ the Kitten. Welcome back from the moon, kids.

***

And if God still loves his Church in America, he will soon make it small and poor and persecuted, as he did to ancient Israel, so that he can keep it alive. If he loves us, he will prune us, and we will bleed, and the blood of the martyrs will be the seed of the Church again, and a second spring will come—but not without blood. It never happens without blood, sacrifice, and suffering.

***

Can you imagine what twelve more Mother Teresas would do for the world? Can you imagine what would happen if just twelve readers of this article offered Christ 100% of their hearts and held back nothing, absolutely nothing?

***

The article can be read by clicking here.

The Humor of Shaw and Chesterton

2011-11-02T14:58:00.000-07:00

Here I am reading from a letter written in 1908 by George Bernard Shaw to G. K. Chesterton - and from another letter from Shaw to Chesterton's wife, Frances. Shaw is quite funny here. It's worth watching.

My friend Mark Shea follows up with a few observations about Drama and the Faith.

This is taken from an unaired episode of The Apostle of Common Sense on EWTN.

The Spin Shall Set You Free

2011-10-31T20:20:00.000-07:00

How did the question move from "Why are we going to war?" to "Who is that man's wife". I asked the first question. Someone else asked the second. It worked. It's still working. - Sean Penn as Joe Wilson in Fair Game.

***

I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers vowing to assault me physically. I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers saying that I'm a pervert. I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers (clergy even) telling me that my writing amounts to "bullying" and "uniformed public rants" (see my post on Bishop Finn and some of the more recent of the 100 comments).

But I am bothered by the Lie. I am bothered by the Spin. And I am bothered by innocent people being blamed and not protected.

I wrote last week's piece because Bishop Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, in his defence of Bishop Finn, played right into the hands of the Tribalism that is fast seeking to become the sixth wound in the Body of Christ. The meme goes like this: If you criticize my guy, you are in league with the forces of darkness.

And now Bill Donohue has stepped into the fray, playing exactly the same game.

But this isn't about us vs. them, it's about sin and repenting of sin - through the grace of Christ.

So let's play Father Z. here and ask not "what does the prayer really say" but "what is the reality behind the spin"?

Below are Donohue's assertions with my comments in red.

***

Last December, crotch-shot pictures of young girls, fully clothed, were found on Fr. Ratigan’s computer; there was one photo of a naked girl. The very next day, the Diocese contacted a police officer and described the naked picture - No, the picture described was a theoretical picture that had not yet been seen, and this theoretical picture was described to an off-duty police officer informally by the Vicar General. The theoretical picture described bore no resemblance to any of the the actual pictures on the laptop.;

a Diocesan attorney was shown it. There was more than an "it", there were hundreds, and more than a diocesan attorney was shown these pictures.

Because the photo was not sexual in nature, it was determined that it did not constitute child pornography. Absolutely untrue. The photographs were all sexual in nature. They may or may not have met the legal standard for child pornography, but the police were not given the chance to determine that for six months. In any event, the failure of the diocese here is a moral one, even if not a legal one.

This explains why the Independent Review Board was not contacted—there was no specific allegation of child abuse. Tell the parents that these photos were not forms of child abuse, Mr. Donohue.

Think about that for a minute. Bill Donohue is saying that a U.S. diocese that had hundreds of pictures of little girl's crotches and many picutres of a naked sleeping two-year-old on a priest's laptop were right in failing to contact the Independent Review Board because "there was no specific allegation of child abuse". This is a despicable statement, Mr. Donohue. Despicable.

When Fr. Ratigan discovered that the Diocese had learned of his fetish, he attempted suicide. When he recovered, he was immediately sent for psychiatric evaluation. It is important to note that Bishop Finn, who never saw any of the photos, did this precisely because he was considering the possibility of removing Fr. Ratigan from ministry. After evaluation (the priest was diagnosed as suffering from depression, but was not judged to be a pedophile) - note that this diagnosis was so obviously wrong that many in the Chancery office advised Bishop Finn to seek a second opinion. He did not.,

Fr. Ratigan was placed in a spot away from children and subjected to various restrictions. No, he was placed at a retreat center where school children were sent on a regular basis and was allowed unsupervised access to them and to the families of his former parish, the families whose girls he was lusting after.

After he violated them, the Diocese called the cops. Actually, the off-duty police officer called the cops only after it became apparent that the Vicar General was dragging his feet - and by the time the police were brought in, Bishop Finn had allowed the laptop containing the original evidence and containing any other undiscovered caches of evidence to be destroyed.

That’s when more disturbing photos were found.

***

Donohue then goes on not to write more about this case, but to slam David Clohessy and SNAP.

But the question, you see, is not (as Bill Donohoe claims) "Is David Clohessy a liberal?" but "Why were the parents not contacted and the children not helped?" The question is not (as Bishop Naumann claims) "Is the Kansas City press pro-abortion?" but "Why was the minimum of decency and Christian charity not exercised here?" The question is not, "Who is this man's wife?" but "Why did we go to war?"

And let me be clear: I am not calling for Bishop Finn to resign, nor am I making any comment upon the prosecution of Bishop Finn.

In fact, I believe people when they tell me he's a good man, a sweet man, a kind man, and a serious follower of Christ.

And that is why I am calling on him merely to do the one thing that would do more than anything else to fix the damage to the Body of Christ - public penance.

"Is this Heaven?" It's Baseball

2011-10-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

I mostly write about religious subjects on this blog, so it's only fitting I should write about baseball.

There's the old joke that baseball was first mentioned in the Bible - Genesis 1:1 - "In the big inning". But there really is a theology to our national passtime. It is the most transcendent of games. We don't know everything about the after-life, but we do know this: baseball will be played in heaven.

My friend Deacon John (Scotty) Wainscott tells me, "It's because it's the only game where there's no clock." Deacon Scotty knows what he's talking about. He's given communion to Stan Musial, for crying out loud. "Baseball's perfect warrior; baseball's perfect knight". (Stan is pictured above at age 90 winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year)

In St. Louis, my home town, we have perhaps the greatest love of baseball of any city on earth.

And of course there's the fact that the cardinal bird was named after the Cardinals in the Catholic Church - thus, the St. Louis Cardinals, the greatest team in the National League, was too. Sort of like the San Diego Padres, a team named after priests.

And then there's that movie Field of Dreams. In that movie, the character played by Burt Lancaster, the character who sacrifices his life to save a child, the character who had one major league appearance but no at bat, this same character finally gets a chance to face a pitcher - and he hits a sacrifice fly. And the climax of the film is his own personal sacrifice to save the life of the little girl.

Pictured: Son Colin batting where Field of Dreams was filmed, near Dyersburg, Iowa.

Baseball is about sacrifice. It's about the patient poetry of slow motion and the headline prose of speed. It's about dexterity, stamina, force of will and dumb luck. It's the hardest of all games to play. It's a game of grit; it's a game of grace. It's a game of inches and a game of 450 foot home runs. It's a game of microseconds ("bang-bang plays") and a game of marathons that last all night. It's a game where we demand super-human objectivity and observation from umpires we'd like to kill. It's a game of tobacco spitting geniuses, back street hoodlums, city boys, country boys, free-wheeling managers dancing in the dugout and scheming vegetarian lawyer managers smoldering beside the bench.

And it's the perfect game for radio. No other sport was made for radio, and radio was made for no other sport. The Theater of the Mind and the Theater of the Word-Only. Here in St. Louis we have been blessed with the best radio play-by-play and color guys ever, Harry Caray, Jack Buck, Joe Buck and Mike Shannon. And many other radio guys along the way who have gone very far - including Joe Garagiola and Bob Costas (and Tim McCarver if you throw in TV). Some of my best memories include rain delays in the old days, when instead of switching to a call-in show or a pre-recorded program, Buck and Shannon would fill time talking - talking for hours on end, telling stories about baseball, until the rain cleared up and the play went on - filling air time with no preparation, just chatting about this amazing game and their love for it, this love which filled their lives.

Then there's my old friend Jim Sala, who told me that he would never marry any woman who didn't know the Infield Fly Rule.

And then there was last night.

Actress Maria Romine and I were performing at Summit Lake Winery in Holt's Summit, Missouri. We kept hearing updates about World Series Game Six throughout the evening. If the Cardinals lost this game to the Texas Rangers, everything was over. If somehow we managed to win, we'd get one more chance - Game Seven, the final and deciding game of the 2011 season.

We finished the show and began driving to our next destination, Kansas City, sometime mid-game. For a long while we picked up ESPN Radio on FM. When it faded away we were able to get the clear channel 50,000 watt AM signal of KMOX, The Voice of St. Louis, and between the two we drove in horror, astonishment and glee, our car trip a kind of roller coaster ride of bone-head plays and sparkling feats of athletics and magic as the score see-sawed into extra-innings, the Cardinals tying the Rangers in the sixth, the ninth and the tenth.

As we got closer to the Super Eight in Bonner Springs, Kansas (our luxurious destination), the static was overwhelming, the signal fading every time we passed beneath a bridge. It was the bottom of the 11th, 11:45 pm as we pulled up to the lobby, the game fading in and out like our hopes.

"They've got a TV on in the lobby!" Maria observed.

Local St. Louis boy and World Series phenom David Freese was at bat with no outs in the bottom of the 11th. I left Maria in the car and dashed in to plop my credit card down at the front desk, hoping to get to my room in time to watch the rest of the game - however long the rest of the game might take.

I turned to where the TV was in the lobby. It was facing the other direction, and I couldn't see the screen. Three Chinese or Japanese men were gathered around it, jumping up and down in astonishment.

I ran to the them. "What happened?" I asked. They could speak no English.

"Jow jee pong niti tong!" one of them exclaimed.

I turned to the TV screen. The Cardinals were pouring onto the field. They were mobbing David Freese, literally tearing his jersey off of him.

"Nee Pow Jing Pow orloo!" my Asian friend shouted.

"Did he hit a home run?" I asked.

"Home-unn," he confirmed.

I was at a Comfort Inn in Kansas City to catch the final out of the 2006 World Series, the 10th World Series victory for the Cardinals, and I was here at a Kansas Super Eight to catch - almost - the final play of the most incredible World Series Game ever in 2011. And the memories flowed.

For baseball is the glue that binds our lives together. We remember, with a kind of fondness and nostalgia that rises above time, we Cardinals fans, the come-from-behind finish of 1964, Gibson's 17 strikeouts in 1968, his pitching with a broken leg, Brock's speed, Ozzie's talent, Glen Brummer stealing home, seat cushion night, Pond Scum, the tarnished-in-hindsight but thrilling-at-the-time home run race between McGwire and Sosa, and now, forever, regardless of what happens tonight in Game Seven, the unbelievable come-from-behind run that began on St. Genesius Day in August when the Cardinals were 10 1/2 games out and that included the greatest performance by a hitter in the World Series since Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson on a warm night in Texas last weekend.

Enough.

I have written about many things, mysterious and mundane, but alas! I can not write about baseball. At least not in a way that gives it the honor it deserves.

My friend and fellow writer Rod Bennett observes, "Baseball is sacred the way war is sacred, Kevin -- because of all the suffering and anxiety involved. Honest to Pete, watching Game 7 of the '91 series (the Smoltz/Morris ordeal that ended 1-0 in the 10th and turned on a lowly baserunning error) I had a real spiritual insight on some small scale. I felt as Lee must have felt watching the battle of Gettysburg. Ridiculous, I know -- it's only a game. Still, there it is. Anyhow, go Cards." - and this cheer for my team from a Braves fan, Atlanta's collapse in September enabling the Redbirds to do what they've been doing ever since.

Frank Weathers, who admonished me that writing about baseball is offering up "straw" (this is what St. Thomas Aquinas said of his body of work, a lifetime of magnificent meditations upon God) - and he's right, it is that - still himself manages to catch a hint of the glory of the game in his post about amateur sports and families.

Frank's observations include ...

So why do we even bother [with baseball] in our household? Joy in living is the only real reason that I can think of. That and the realization that though our children’s gifts and abilities are out of our hands, they should still be developed. Besides, everything we spend time doing matters.

... And there is the riddle of our son’s gift, for example. Though endowed with excellent hand-eye coordination, and having an arm that can accurately throw thunderbolts, the most important characteristic of all isn’t even a physical one. It is that my son simply loves this game. And this love for it drives him to do things that only love can make him do ... [because] now that he has made the high school team, the love for the game has been tested by the fires of hard work and sweat. There is a spiritual message in all of this somewhere, I am sure.

And part of that message is a son playing catch with his old man, whose old man played catch with him.

And we can no more describe this game than we can describe the tradition of our American culture, the rewards of hard work and persistence, the smell of green grass, the chill of an October night, or the simple love of father and son.

God bless the Cardinals and the Rangers. God bless this game.

Pictured: My son Colin O'Brien in the dugout at Busch Stadium, age four or so.

Bad Monks and the Rest of Us

2011-10-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

Regular reader Ink has an interesting post on her blog "With Eager Feet" about something I said concerning Bad Monks and Actors.

Ink writes ...

***

Some time ago, I had the chance to meet Kevin, owner of Theatre of the Word, Inc. I now consider him a friend (and hope he considers me the same, even with the age difference). Something he said in one of our conversations stuck with me, and I will do my best to repeat it here:

“Actors are basically bad monks. Monks devote themselves fully and completely to one subject–prayer. Actors do the same thing for theatre, but they have strayed from their path along the way. That’s why they’re all so messed-up.”

I would like to make the same case for architects. I am frequently here in studio till all hours of the night, working, talking, laughing–always in studio. And many of my classmates are here with me. We throw ourselves headlong into our work and only come up for air when a project is over, at which point in time we promptly fall asleep on the nearest horizontal surface. This is entirely normal and expected of us. We live like ascetics – cloistered in studio, often eating only one meal a day. ... All we talk or think about is architecture, or studio this, or studio that. ... I have slept in studio. ... I frequently eat in studio. My friends are in studio. ... And I work, and work, and work, late into the night.

So, Kevin–I think architects just might beat actors in terms of “bad monks.” Minus the universally accepted norm of “messed-up is okay,” of course (though we still do have our weirdos).

Excerpt taken from Memoirs of a Bad Monk, a book as of yet unwritten by Ink.

***

To which I responded ...

***

Maybe it's not Actors and Architects who are bad monks. Maybe Monks are just good actors or good architects.

Pictured: the Incredibly Sexy amoral hero Howard Roark, uber-architect from Ayn Rand's novel about how power is sexier than love.

You know, Ink, you’re at that age when most girls fall in love with that hunk of a dreamer-architect-Nietzchian what’s-his-name in that awful Ayn Rand book about how architects without morality are better than non-geniuses who actually care about people. I forget the name of the book. Don’t read it. Just wait for a Hallmark movie about sexy architects and you’ll do better.

Anyway, my point is that this kind of devotion is really only virtuous if it’s an expression of love. If you love your art, your craft, your writing, and if your love and the fruits of your love bring greater glory to God and benefit to your neighbor, then by all means give up everything for this pearl of great price – sleep in studio, miss meals, live out of your car. I mean, if you get married and have kids, you’ll do all that for your kids – stay up all night when they’re sick, miss meals so they can eat better, sacrifice everything for them – and gladly.

But we also see people live this way because they’re losers or addicts. And many a non-genius businessman with a beer gut will sleep in the office and miss meals to make that project deadline – and not really out of love or for the greater glory of God, but for a more selfish reason.

So it’s important that our sacrifices, our asceticisms, our loves, are prioritized. There always tends to seep in that love of self, that desire to be admired and adored (at least it does in my case) – and that is utter poison, turning “losing your life to gain your life” into “losing your life to gain power over life – and over others”.

May we always beg God to purify our hearts that we may, even in the midst of our mixed motives, always make true sacrifices for His sake, not false sacrifices for our own sake.

The Full Story on Bishop Finn

2011-10-23T20:28:00.000-07:00

"Let's step outside and settle this thing like men," she said, and she was a lady. "You're spewing anti-Catholic rhetoric!" he insisted. "How can you criticize a bishop when you're an actor and everyone knows actors are perverts and nitwits," she screamed. (That last gal had a point).

These are all reactions to my post last week about Rod Dreher's article on Bishop Finn's Indictment.

And above all, people are charging me with believing the biased media coverage of the scandal.

This, at least, is not true. In fact, everything I say in this post will be taken not from a media account of the scandal, but from the independent report on it as commissioned by the diocese, the Graves Report, which you can read on your own here.

So let's shove the media aside and see for ourselves what's contained in this internal diocesan report conducted by an independent firm.

***

Fr. Shawn Ratigan was a priest of the diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph, Missouri. While pastor of St. Patrick's Parish (a parish with a grade school), his behavior around children raised many red flags. There were several incidents of "boundary violation", in which Fr. Ratigan held girls on his lap or tried to spend time with them alone while waiting for rides. At one function, he began rubbing a girl's back until her father angrily pulled her away. A pair of girl's panties was found in Fr. Ratigan's back yard planter.

In December, 2010, a computer technician servicing Fr. Ratigan's laptop discovered hundreds of photographs of young girls, apparently taken by Fr. Ratigan. Many were of children playing, the photographer focusing on their crotches and not including their faces. There were photos of girls climbing ladders in swim suits, focusing on their crotches. There were photos of girls wearing shorts sitting with their legs apart, focusing on their crotches. The girls appeared to be between eight and ten years old. One stash of photos was of a child in diapers. The series of photos ended with the diaper moved to the side, to reveal the girl's genitals and her bare buttocks. The photos were labeled with this toddler's name. Another series of photos was of a girl of about age seven, sleeping, but posed in sexually provocative ways while asleep. Her face was fully visible. The computer also contained links to internet sites advertising spy photo pens and two way mirrors.

The computer technician who made this discovery, his hands shaking, brought this laptop to the deacon at St. Patrick's and showed him the photos. The deacon immediately took the laptop to Msgr. Murphy, the Vicar General of the diocese, and Bishop Finn's right hand man. Before he viewed the images, Msgr. Murphy called and asked a friend of his who was a police officer if a single photo of a nude girl on a laptop "in a non-sexual pose" constituted child pornography. The officer answered that it might, but, particularly if it were of a family member, it would probably not be prosecuted.

This was the only contact the diocese made with the police until the following May. For, even after Msgr. Murphy viewed the images, and after it became clear that these images were not of family members, and that they were of a sexual nature, and that they were almost certainly photos Fr. Ratigan had taken of children in the diocese, neither Msgr. Murphy nor any one else involved in this case, contacted the police for nearly six months.

As soon as the pictures were discovered, Fr. Ratigan tried to kill himself, leaving a note saying he was sorry for what he had done. He survived his suicide attempt and was sent to a psychologist in Philadelphia who specializes in treating priests with problems. And yet, after interviewing Fr. Ratigan, and even after viewing the pictures which were pulled from Fr. Ratigan's laptop, the psychologist concluded he was not a pedophile. He was just lonely. And depressed. Why? Because the principal of the school was "out to get him," having complained about his inappropriate behavior around children. It was her fault, not his.

The diagnosis being evidently wrong, there were at least a few people in the Chancery Office who advised Bishop Finn to seek a second opinion. He did not.

At one point the legal counsel for the diocese told Msgr. Murphy that an attempt should be made to identify the children in the photographs, particularly if they were children in the diocese, as it appeared they were - victims of a child pornographer, and perhaps of other more violent sexual abuse at his hands. Legal Counsel also advised Msgr. Murphy to report this case to the Missouri Division of Family Services.

But contrary to the advise of counsel (and contrary to common sense, not to mention Christian charity), no one made any attempt to identify these victims or to reach out to their families.

No one made any report to the Division of Family Services.

In fact, no one even bothered to report the incident to the Independent Review Board, as required by diocesan "Protecting God's Children" policies!

Bishop Finn then assigns Fr. Ratigan to a Vincentian Retreat Center ... where school groups often go on retreats. He tells Fr. Ratigan to stay away from computers, cameras and children, but he allows him to say Mass for the school groups.

The Vincentian leaders at the retreat house adamantly claim that they were never informed of these restrictions on Fr. Ratigan, nor were they told he was a pedophile with a flair for child pornography; they thought he was simply recovering from his suicide attempt. Bishop Finn says he informed them of the full story; they say he did not. In fact, they told the firm conducting the independent review that if they had known the full scope of the situation, they would not have let Fr. Ratigan live with them. In any event, no one was placed in a supervisory role over Fr. Ratigan. He was living entirely unsupervised.

Immediately, Fr. Ratigan began using Facebook. He started attending public events and St. Patrick's parish-family events where children were present, including a birthday party for a sixth grade girl. He started glad handing parishioners, telling them the reason he had not been re-assigned to St. Patrick's was that the principal was "out to get him". Against the Bishop's directives, he made contact with children on retreat at the center, and on Easter Sunday - Easter Sunday - he tried to take pornographic pictures of a girl at the center.

Bishop Finn was informed of all of these violations of the "honor code" he had placed on Fr. Ratigan and yet Bishop Finn admitted that, as late as May of 2011, he had (in his own words) "not formulated a plan to further address Fr. Ratigan's behavior if he continued to violate restrictions".

By the middle of May, Msgr. Murphy eventually let his policeman friend know of the full scope of the situation - that the laptop contained not one photo of a nude girl in a non-provocative pose (as he had told him earlier), but hundreds of photos of girls, all of a lascivious nature. The police officer said, "You never told me that," and informed Msgr. Murphy that the diocese should immediately turn the laptop over to the police.

But instead the laptop was given to Bishop Finn, who gave it to Fr. Ratigan's brother, who (naturally) destroyed it.

And while copies remained of the photos, the original evidence (the laptop and its hard drive), including any other cached information the police could have obtained, is now gone for good.

***

Now, Bishop Naumann makes a passioned defense of his brother bishop, and points out that many in the Kansas City media are viciously pro-abortion and will stop at nothing to destroy the Catholic Church. Bishop Naumann, I'm sure this is true.

And many lay folk have pointed out to me that Bishop Finn is orthodox in his teaching and has boldly attacked pornography, for example. I'm sure that this is true as well.

But have we come to a stage where we are so desperate for orthodox bishops that we turn a blind eye to their other shortcomings? Are we so defensive against our own sins that we refuse to acknowledge where we fall shy of virtue, simply because other sinners are pointing our failures out to us?

And how do we expect to turn the hearts of the pro-abortion zealots in the Kansas City media if we don't even have the gumption to protect a two-year-old girl who's being victimized while asleep by one of our priests? Why on earth would they listen to us about the evils of killing unborn babies when we won't even do anything to protect a sleeping two-year-old from a predator?

Because, my friends, it comes down to this.

Bishop Finn and his Vicar General knew that children under their care had been exploited and abused. Bishop Finn and his Vicar General did nothing to identify or protect those children. Instead, and incredibly, when the story finally broke, Bishop Finn and his Vicar General instructed that the parish of St. Patrick's hold listening sessions at which parents were asked to write down one "hurt" and one "hope".

As the Graves Report states, two "hurts" collected at listening sessions included the following ...

***

The images of my daughter's private areas that the FBI showed me, they are forever burned into my brain. Shawn Ratigan was in my house, around my children in February, and I thought my children were completely SAFE!!

***

You let one of your priests hurt my children and you saw the pictures and decided to cover it up. That monster was in my house in February 2011 to prey on my children and I let him in since you felt you were above the law and made that decision not to turn in photos of my kids.

***

So those of you out there who are offering to take me out back and fight me, those of you who think I'm an anti-Catholic filled with hatred and Chick-tract rhetoric, those of you who think that if a human being happens to be an actor, he should not be allowed to write about this, answer one question for me ...

What would you say to these parents? Or better yet, if Fr. Ratigan had taken pictures of your sleeping two-year-old girl and removed her diapers to take a spy-pen snapshot of her vagina and her bare butt for use on his computer, and perhaps molested her and the diocese never bothered to tell you this, and never bothered to warn you not to let this man back in your house, or reach out to make sure you and your daughter got the help you needed (all the while the beg letters for the annual diocesan appeal kept coming in the mail) ... what would you put down on the "hurt" card? What would you "share" as your "hope" during the listening session while somewhere a man we call father masturbates to a picture of your sleeping two-year-old?

Perhaps Bishop Finn should not be tried for this misdemeanor (failure to report the crime in a timely manner) in the criminal courts of my state. I think a case could be made either way. But one thing I'm sure he should do.

He should repent in sack cloth and ashes and beg the forgiveness of every girl dancing naked in Fr. Ratigan's dreams. For he had the ability to reach out and offer help and the love of Christ to these girls and their parents, and he did not do it.

Comedy Fund Raiser in Chicago

2011-10-21T11:41:00.001-07:00

10/30/2011 Institute on Religious Life Comedy Fundraiser Luncheon

Please join us for the Institute on Religious Life’s Benefit Luncheon to be held Sunday, October 30, from 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., at the Country Squire, 19133 W. Route 120 in Grayslake.

The event will feature Mr. Kevin O’Brien and his Theater of the Word, Incorporated troupe who will perform Adventures at St. Somewhere.

This dramatic comedy highlights a Franciscan priest’s dealings with gooey liberals, crabby traditionalists, moronic confirmation candidates, over-volunteering church ladies, and everyone in between. It is a funny, profound, and heartwarming story dedicated to those who dedicate themselves to us—our priests and religious!

The event will also include up-to-the-minute information about IRL’s activities to promote priestly and religious vocations among young people.

There is no cost to attend but reservations needed; all donations will go toward the work of the Institute on Religious Life.

Please RSVP at (847) 573-8975 or
IRLstaff@religiouslife.com

It Ain't All Right vs. Left

2011-10-20T07:22:00.002-07:00

From Rod Dreher's report on the indictment of Bishop Finn in Kansas City ...

***

When news broke, local Catholics were outraged. The diocese organized “listening sessions” to manage the public reaction, and had participants engage in an asinine Stuart Smalley-ish exercise in which they were instructed to write down a “hurt” and then write down a “hope.” Among the “hurts” written down by angry parents:

“The images of my daughter’s private areas that the FBI showed me, they are
forever burned into my brain. … Shawn Ratigan was in my house, around my
children in February, and I thought my children were completely SAFE!!”

***

One of the earliest and most difficult lessons I learned in covering the abuse scandal is that you can never, ever tell the bad guys from the good guys based on whether or not they are faithful to the Magisterium — that is, whether or not they are orthodox Catholics. Would that you could! A very conservative priest told me early on not to make that mistake; there are scoundrels who hide behind their Catholic orthodoxy, he said, and use it to disarm the suspicions of the faithful. The late Father Richard John Neuhaus was one of the most intellectually sophisticated Catholics in the world, and a defender of Catholic orthodoxy. But he too was hoodwinked by this belief, most embarrassingly in his staunch defense of Father Marcial Maciel, of whom, Neuhaus wrote in First Things, he believed was “morally certain” was not guilty of the lurid sexual abuse accusations made against him. After Pope Benedict moved against Maciel, Neuhaus backed down. We later learned that things with Maciel were actually worse than most people knew.

Can't Care, Don't Care, Won't Care

2011-10-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

"Don't take this so personally," my wife Karen always tells me. And of course she's right.

In the past, when employees would become Vampires or Aliens it used to really bug me. How could they do this to me when I trusted them and gave them opportunities to help us and do good work? I would say to myself. Then I realized it had absolutely nothing to do with me.

But when clients do me wrong, it's a bit harder to shake off. Especially when said clients are supposed to be cooperating with the mission of Theater of the Word, working in some way to spread God's message.

But we get shafted by our Church-affiliated clients even more frequently than we get shafted by secular clients.

And I've noticed a pattern. I think it applies to all of the business world, secular or Christian.

1. CAN'T CARE

First, there are the clients who are simply incompetent. They drop the ball on projects because they simply can't run their businesses in any systematic or effective manor. They mean nothing personal by this, they simply can't care, "care" meaning to exercise care, and "care" also meaning the gift of good will that is caritas: care, love. When you can't find your desk under the clutter, you can't find the piece of paper that is the key to the whole project and that was due three weeks ago. And I would guess General Incompetence ("can't care") accounts for 90% of all failed cooperative endeavors.

2. DON'T CARE

A less common, but more disturbing situation, is when you enter into a relationship with a client who simply doesn't care. They have the competence to cooperate with you and make your project a success, but they care so little about what you're doing, about quality, and frankly about you, that they'll give-a-crap only when it suits them. This is troublesome, until you realize that the Don't Cares don't care for anybody who works hard for them, not just you. The best way to keep the Don't Cares out of your business: charge enough to make them either not hire you or else take an interest in their investment. Charging too little will always encourage the Don't Cares.

3. WON'T CARE

These first two examples are passively aggressive. This final type, actively so. These are the people who take an active disliking to you and who deliberately try to hurt you or sabotage you. Their lack of positive care is willful - "non serviam", and "non co-operatio" - I won't serve, and I won't cooperate - not because I can't or I don't but because I won't. This happened to us early on with Theater of the Word, when someone at a diocese booked us to do shows, and then the liberals who run the diocese found out and made a point not to promote the shows, to provide no technical support, and to turn the heat off in the seminary where we were staying (a seminary that was otherwise empty, the diocese having generated no vocations for ages), thus trying to freeze us out. I am not making this up. Most recently, the Kennedy Catholics managed to cancel our pro-life tour in Massachusetts, even after contracts had been signed and deposits paid on the shows.

The thing is, these three types of bad business relationships are both not personal and personal at the same time. By the time the resistance gets to be third stage "won't care" variety, you see the nasty little narrow faced gremlin behind it, and you realize that yes, Virginia, there is a grinch, and he takes a very strong disliking to you and to the little bit of good in the world you're tyring to do.

The Scandal Continues

2011-10-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

Priests for Life was sending me those annoying beg emails every other day, so I finally "unsubscried" and it seemed to have worked. Now I am getting spam from a group called Free Father Frank. These emails are coming to a private email address which almost no one knows.

But Priests for Life knew it.

And as soon as I unsubscribed from Priests for Life, this new organization somehow got my email address ... apparently from them. The new emails offer no unsubscribe option. They are spam plain and simple. They slander Bishop Zurek and they have that "Spirit Daily" quality.

This, coupled with more and more evidence that Priests for Life is in fact involved in some sort of financial chicanery, particularly with a group called Gospel of Life Ministries - which, sources tell me, is an organization utterly devoted to the Consequentialism endorsed by Father Pavone, should, at the very least, give one pause.

The Most Dangerous Thing in the World

2011-10-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

What does Safe Sex have in common with Bad Catholic Art?

What does Squeamishness have to do with Bad Catholic Worship?

Why is truth stranger than fiction?

That last one at least we know. "Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction," G. K. Chesterton points out, "for we have made fiction to suit ourselves."

Last week I posted on fiction and drama and how Christian art these days fails to hold any interest for human beings. Red Cardigan has taken up that theme here where she laments the fact that Catholic publishers want fiction that is "safe", overtly "Catholic", sentimental and squishy.

And this is really a more painful thing to write about than I let on. It's painful because writers die a little bit for their work, poets speak from hearts that are circumcised, and actors are the most vulnerable of the lot. I can not tell you how difficult it's been throughout my career to pour my soul into something that is disregarded or kicked around or cheapened by the people who are paying me to do it, and who do not really value it. And it's worse in the Church than in the world.

And I've begun to suspect this is because many folks in the Church are unwittingly abetting the Cult of Sterility.

When God tells us in Isaiah 55:11

So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, achieving the end for which I sent it.

He is telling us that his Word, Jesus Christ, is not just a nice guy, but the most creative and active element in the world today. His Word is seminal, a seed that exists to make us fruitful. We see this in the mystery of the Annunciation. The love that the Lord and Mary had for one another does not return void, the incarnate Son of God comes to be on earth through this love and this assent, born of prayer - born of an intimate communion.

Love is supposed to lead to something - something interesting, for crying out loud (like the little girl on the left, something interesting that the love my wife and I shared led to).

But the world around us is all about the Void, sterility, emptiness. We love "safe sex", but the only way to make sex safe is to cut the gonads off of love.

I have just finished a creative project that will never be seen or heard by human beings. It was a Catholic project, for which I was paid a ridiculously low figure, and which now, being finished, will return void - for the producer will neglect to market it. It's like doing great work for EWTN and having it air at 5:30 in the morning on Thursdays. And while I'm at it, all that Marty Haugen crap and the eager young squeaky Catholics with guitars at the Youth Mass - all of that is simply contrived and unreal, and like all such things will return nothing but the whirlwind.

The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour. Were it to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it up. (Hos. 8:7)

Our bishops are friendly but squeamish, our youth hooking up but disconnected, our hearts bleeding but barren. Our food is not filling; our sex is safe, our passion is listless.

They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the LORD to cherish. (Hos. 4:10)

What I'm saying in this tirade is that the problem is not merely the Catholic Ghetto. The problem is assuming that the Word is somehow unreal, that He can not appeal to real men, to sinners, to actual people, to human beings - the problem is our vastly naive assumption that we ought to control the situation, and that the Word will stay aloof from all this mess and return void.

On the contrary, the Holy Spirit, who comes to us from the Father and the Son, is disturbing, unsettling, fecund.

We are the ones keeping Him from touching hearts and minds. We are the ones who think that art can be safe, as safe as contraceptive sex, as safe as loving another person - and yet loving another person is the most dangerous thing in the world.

Something for Human Beings

2011-10-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

At the Rochester Chesterton Conference, left to right: Kevin O'Brien, Dale Ahlquist, Joseph Pearce, Tom Martin.

One way to transform the culture is to get men drinking and smoking again.

"Transforming the Culture" was the theme of this year's Chesterton Conference in Rochester, New York, which 150 eager Chestertonians attended this past weekend.

It was an honor for me to be included in the line-up of presenters, including Dale Ahlquist delivering a speech entitled "Apocalypse Later", Tom Martin (the John Senior of Nebraska) speaking on Chesterton and the culture of America, and Joseph Pearce delivering such gems as

Christ is the means as well as the end, He is the Way as well as the Truth and the Life.

and

When you experience beauty, you cannot help having a sense of gratitude. Beauty does not exist in isolation: reason & love go with it.

Martin, for those of you who don't know him, teaches at the University of Nebraska Kearney and must be a great philosophy teacher, for only a great philosophy teacher would elicit responses from students such as these (taken from a rate the professor website):

He really needs to stop relating everything to God.

(I love that one) and

Unless you're willing to spend 4 hours on one page you can kiss your thoughts of an A goodbye. Very difficult professor.

But back to drinking and smoking.

It was the party after the conference (the party is the "end" and the conference is the "means"). I sat with perhaps fifteen other men in Lou Horvath's screened-in patio as the rain fell hard on a chilly October night, the darkness surrounding us, cigar smoke filling the room, whiskey, good wine and good beer flowing, the ChesterBelloc Drinking and Debating Club in full swing.

David Higbee of St. Irenaeus Ministries and I were sharing an intense conversation over Kentucky bourbon about evangelizing through drama. (Kentucky bourbon shown here, as modeled by an Upstage Actress for a picture I took at an unidentified tasting room in Kentucky. Note: it was either include a picture of this gal or of David Higbee, so I did what I had to do.)

And David said to me something that will always stick in my mind. We were talking about how most Catholic drama and Catholic comedy and Catholic programming is utterly bad (I've touched on this elsewhere). And David said simply, "We need to be putting stuff out there that human beings would want to see."

Now think about that.

And think about the stuff we try to pass off as our attempts at Transforming the Culture. And think about how much of that any actual human being would want to sit through.

Chesterton got it. Chesterton knew that in fiction, drama, journalism, poetry, or what have you, first you have to engage the human person - first you have to reach out to human beings.

By contrast, the True Believers, the hard core and long suffering residents of the Catholic Ghetto aren't that picky. They grasp for straws, producing and consuming stuff that hardly rates as culture much less culture transformed. But if we're going to appeal to the pagans and agnostics and lapsed Catholics in our midst, we must do so with art that's honest, that's authentic, that engages, that is not contrived, not didactic, not dreary, not self-indulgent, not boring, not bad.

The True, the Beautiful and the Good echo the glory of the Holy Trinity, and we dare not as artist or audience settle for the Trite, the Banal and the Mediocre.

These sorts of insights only come by way of cigar smoke, bourbon, a chilly night, the pouring rain, and true Christian fellowship.

This is because there's something dangerous in men of like mind smoking and drinking together, united in a love of Christ.

There's nothing dangerous about Kumbaya, about "the sign of peace", about sitting in a circle and sharing. The one is living and has gonads; the other is the emasculated product of the same society that's trying its best to re-bury G. K. Chesterton.

Thanks to Lou and Jeanne Horvath and to everyone who attended this year's conference.

Scamming the Scammers

2011-09-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Got this via email today at our sister company, Upstage Productions ...

I am pleased to announce that Upstage Productions has been selected for the 2011 St. Louis Award in the Amateur Theatrical Company category by the US Commerce Association (USCA).

I'm sure that your selection as a 2011 Award Winner is a reflection of the hard work of not only yourself, but of many people that have supported your business and contributed to the subsequent success of your organization. Congratulations on your selection to such an elite group of small businesses.

My reply:

Gosh! What a shame. We're not an "amateur theatrical company" so that award you spent so much money on needs to go back to the company that took the time and effort to make it.

Good news, though - I have awarded the U. S. Commerce Association THE BEST ADVERTISEMENT IN THE "LET'S SEE WHAT KIND OF SUCKERS WE'RE DEALING WITH" CATEGORY. Just send me the routing number of your checking account, and I'll send the certificate right to you.

Kevin O'Brien
Vice-President & Artistic Director
Upstage Productions

***

For the report by the BBB designating the so-called U. S. Commerce Association as scam artists click here.

The End of Arguing without End

2011-09-28T11:33:00.001-07:00

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

The Lying Apologists have resorted to the claim, "the teaching that lying is inherently evil is not a teaching that requires our assent" (returning to the claim that began my involvement in all of this, when a Catholic correspondent wrote, "We are not bound by what the Catechism teaches").

So we've come full circle.

Or more accurately, we haven't gone anywhere.

However, I am willing to end this on my part by granting, freely, that if their consciences are clean on this issue, those making excuses for Lying may believe what they want (indeed, free will being what it is, they may believe what they want in any case). This is true for any Catholic issue - birth control, abortion, sodomy, social justice, etc. Each of us is always free - indeed, obligated - to follow his conscience even if it leads him to deny the settled teaching of the Catholic Church (though this is self-defeating, since the primacy of conscience is itself a settled teaching of the Catholic Church).

At any rate, it's high time for the argument to end, as it's no longer a rational argument.

For example, the fact that Janet Smith's case for Lying was utterly annihilated by Tollefsen and Pruss in First Things might give a Lying Apologist pause. But no! Such a defeat can be ignored. More than that, such a defeat can be celebrated. The fact that Smith's sophistry has been dismantled, that her position has been shown to be unsustainable piece by piece, has on the contrary, become proof that she was right. The Lying Apologists don't engage Tollefsen & Pruss's rebuttal. They simply say, "Ah ha! The debate continues!"

Follow the logic, then ... if you dare!

1. ASSERTION: The Catechism does not present the settled teaching of the Catholic Church and we are not required to assent to what it teaches.

2. REBUTTAL: No, the teaching on Lying being inherently evil goes all the way back to Scripture and has been affirmed by bishops (St. Augustine), Popes (St. Gregory), the Angelic Doctor (St. Thomas Aquinas), the Catechism of Trent (over four hundred years ago), and the current Catechism. It may not safely be ignored; it requires our assent.

3. REPLY: You are calling me a dissenter! That's an ad hominem attack!

1. ASSERTION: Janet Smith says it's OK to lie!

2. REBUTTAL: Tollefsen and Pruss show how utterly wrong she is.

3. REPLY: Proof that the debate continues! We may believe what we want!

And so it goes.

I will delete all comments on this issue, pro or con, so please don't leave any in the combox below. The argument, as you can see, has become something other than an argument - and so it's pointless to continue.

Let us pray for one another.

The Coming Persecution

2011-09-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing about being a Prophet. The trick is you don't peer into the future, you peer into the present. You simply take a look at what's going on around you, at the stuff everybody else sees but no one wants to notice. And you extrapolate.

For instance, you gather the hints being thrown out in the Father Pavone situation and you make the obvious connection, as I do here, that things are going to go from bad to worse - and the cause is the heresy of Americanism and our devotion to consequentialism, which will doom the pro-life movement from within, despite our best efforts to rationalize our sin.

Likewise, Fr. James V. Schall, S. J. writes a prophetic piece about the coming persecution of the Catholic Church, which is really only the present persecution extrapolated out in time. Fr. Schall points out, as an alarming example, the legal mandate that private insurance must now cover contraception, about which a commenter notes

I work for a Catholic-sponsored health insurance company. We are preparing to comply with the HHS mandate. There is NO sign that the company is fighting back. I'm an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and I'm terribly distressed by my company's apparently ho-hum attitude toward this assault on religious liberty. It affects all orthodox Christians (small-o and capital O). I don't know if there is a plan to fight back or not, but I've seen no evidence of it yet. I've already decided to resign if the company does comply with the HHS mandate. I don't think that I could in conscience work for an organization that goes against its own moral and ethical teaching.

... a very telling example of the reality of the coming persecution - it's already here and it's forcing people to lose their jobs at the very least.

Fr. Schall also predicts that soon in the United States, as in China, there will be two "churches", one an underground catacomb true Church and the other the government sanctioned "official church". The true Church will be persecuted and shuttered because of "hate speech" - which means pointing out the sins of sodomy, fornication, contraception, abortion, the abuse of children, the abuse of the poor, de facto slavery to the state and to corporations, and all the things we're not only tolerating but celebrating in our culture today. The "official church", the false church, will join in celebrating all these horrors and will make it all go down smoothly by offering services with gay guitar music and self-esteem workshops over coffee and donuts.

I will be bold enough to add another prophecy, based simply upon observing what we see today and what we've seen in the past generation. And that is this: two-thirds of the Catholic bishops in the United States will collude with the spirit of antichrist in the coming generation and will glibly and complacently join in the fun of the sham Christ and his sham Church.

Now, friends, I know this sounds just a tad apocalyptic. I know I sound as if I've put on a bad wig and am imitating Michael Voris, who has rightly been pointing out the sins of the liberals, while using the Orwelian tactics of a Ministry of Mis-information demagogue to do so.
I know I sound as if I'm a furious mad-trad, building a bunker with my bare hands to ward off the coming persecution, even though I have an obsessive-compuslive fear of getting my hands dirty. I know I sound as if I've performed the audio book version of too many end-of-times Michael O'Brien novels (which are quite good, by the way).

But here's why I'm not really crazy.

And here's why Fr. Schall is not really crazy. This is the last paragraph of his article:

Constitutional assurances of free speech, free exercise of religion, and limited government no longer carry much weight against entrenched “democratic” ideologies, something both John Paul II and Benedict XVI foresaw. Few of us like to think this way about America, no doubt. We recall the Polish bishops before 1939. But our “invasion” does not come from the outside. It comes from within our souls, as all disorders of polity do.

It comes from within our souls, as all disorders of polity do.

That's a great line, and it shows both the strength and the sanity of the Christian Faith.

The heart of this prophecy is the trouble in our hearts.

What the "professional prophets" such as Michael Voris fail to proclaim in their jeremiads is love - the love of the pierced heart of Our Savior which looks upon the Battle of the End Times not as a battle of "us vs. them" but as a battle for the salvation of souls, which is fought in each and every human heart and can only be won by the grace of God, by joining in His everlasting sacrifice, by suffering, by loving our enemies; and by realizing that the answer is not Activism (the heresy that nothing we do matters unless we effect some sort of broad social change - which underlies the motivations of the Lying Apologists and the errors of some in the pro-life movement); the answer is not paranoia and hunkering down (the neo-Puritanism of the mad-trads), closing our hearts to our neighbors and to the world; the answer is none of these things.

In the coming persecution, the answer is within you. It is the Kingdom of God, which is within you, among you, and the only "order of polity" that is not "disordered", for the Kingdom of God, the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly City of True Polity, is the fruit of our hearts united with His.

The Sensitive Actor Responds to his Director

2011-09-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

This is part three to this and this. And I swear I am not making this up ...

Here's part of what I deal with in my business. I placed an ad last week for an actor to play a part in an upcoming television series. I got an email from one guy and offered him a slot last Friday, audition by appointment, any time during the day or evening he could make it. "I've got to work," he tersely replied, and suggested no alternate dates.

Then I placed another ad this week. He applied again. I offered him 9:30 am this Friday (Sept. 23). He made the appointment, then emailed me late tonight (Thursday, Sept. 22) saying, "I've got to cancel. I've got to work."

When I told him I would not reschedule him, that two attempts were all I was going to make to audition him, he wrote back (and I swear I am not making this up, it's a copy and paste, punctuation and all) ...

"you should respect the artists personal life before your own selfish need. Dont reply back to me unless you are mature enough to understand my side."

I mean, you can't make this stuff up! This is why I LOVE this business!

DISCLAIMER: The photo above is not of the Sensitive Actor, but of yours truly portraying a Sensitive Actor.

Taking Them at Their Word

2011-09-22T20:06:00.001-07:00

OK, against my better judgment, here goes.

The interminable Lying Debate has popped up again, thanks to a brilliant piece by Christopher Tollefsen and Alexander Pruss and Mark Shea's link to it, at which a very interesting discussion has erupted in his combox.

I wrote on this issue at length, beginning with my critique of James O'Keefe here, here and here, and specifically about the morality of lying, which I covered over the course of dozens of posts, best summarized here. It's also worthwhile to note Sean Dailey's editorial at Gilbert Magazine and the free-for-all in the comment box that ensued.

And while I don't want to dredge all that up again and make a whole bunch of Catholics mad at me, I do want to say one other thing that will make another whole bunch of Catholics mad at me.

And that is this: I think I know which way the Fr. Pavone dispute will play out.

And I don't think it will end well.

I say this not because I am criticizing or judging Fr. Pavone, who has worked tirelessly for the pro-life cause, but because if we take him at his word, then we see his actions of late are in line with what he says - and will probably continue to be.

There's lots to read on this subject all over the internet, but Phil Lawler's latest piece is a great summary of the issue, along with links to Ed Peter's excellent insights, Lawler's piece containing assessments of the financial issues involved, which have been hardly mentioned and which are the catalyst for Fr. Pavone's recall to Amarillo.

What is making me weigh in on this now (foolishly, no doubt) is Fr. Pavone sent out an email today criticizing Phil Lawler (quoting him without naming him) and painting with a broad brush the bloggers who are writing on this issue in a way very similar to the underhanded tactics used by Michael Voris. Voris, you'll recall, impulsively weighed in on the wrong side of the John Corapi scandal, and more than that, maligned all of Corapi's critics as being members of a shadowy liberal gay cabal. Vori's video is parodied here - though it's tough to parody a self-parody.

Now Fr. Pavone hasn't quite gone that far yet, but he's being unfair to Lawler and to the other pro-life Catholic bloggers writing on this issue, all of whom have expressed great admiration and regard for Fr. Pavone, who is, all the same, not beyond criticism.

Now what does this have to do with lying?

Simple. At the height of the Lying Debate this past spring, Fr. Pavone came out publicly in support of the tactics in question, of doing whatever it takes, of lying for a good cause, of consequentialism.

And many of us were willing to give him a free pass on that, pro-life zealot that he is.

But if a man says he thinks bad can be done so that good may come, that the ends justify the means, we really ought to take him at his word. For if the cause is great enough - and protecting the unborn is a great and noble cause, without question - then lying may be justified, disobeying your bishop may be justified, maligning fellow Catholics may be justified, even financial malfeasance may be justified. I hope I'm wrong, but if we look at what Fr. Pavone both says and lately what he does, the prognosis for how this situation will play out is not a good one.

And so let us continue to pray for everyone involved, especially the unborn, the true victims in all of this.

The Persons of the Drama

2011-09-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

PERSONA: 1. The name for the mask Greek actors would wear to portray their characters (possibly from Latin per+sona, "sound through", as their voices would "sound through" the speaking hole in the mask); 2. A character in a drama - plural "personae", as in "dramatis personae"; 3. The personality (persona-lity) we present to the world, our public "mask".

The story of our patron St. Genesius is the story of a dramatic conversion - literally. That is to say, it's the story of a conversion that happened during a drama on stage.

Genesius had the opportunity to perform a show before the emperor in Fourth Century Rome, a show mocking those pesky Christians. This would clearly be a great boost to his career! He would be playing a Christian-wanna-be in a scene mocking that ridiculous superstition Baptism. And so, like all good actors, he decided to research his role, which meant, in his case, pretending to be a catechumen - a pagan desiring baptism. So he hung around a group of Christians for a while and received instruction in the faith and then split - sort of like a young guy sleeping with a gal until she starts pressuring him to "commit". He had all the info he needed, after all.

And then it was opening night! A full house, and there was Diocletian in the V.I.P. seats! If the emperor liked it, Genesius had it made! A contract with Fourth Century Fox, money to buy a new house with a two-chariot garage, a Rolex sun-dial strapped to his wrist, all that stuff.

But, you see, there is something about Acting, and that something is the truth of the Incarnation.

One of the things God does is He sends ripples through the universe. One event, such as the Incarnation, is recapitulated both symbolically and actually throughout time. In this case, the artistic expression called Acting in its very essence reaffirms the truth of the Word become flesh. Acting is taking the Word and bringing it to bear: it is taking words on paper and fleshing them out on stage. It is taking a form and an idea and living it out in time, space and matter. All art does this, Acting more so than any.

All art is incarnational, and in that way it bears witness, even mutely, to the truth of the Incarnation.

This means that any good actor somehow becomes the character he portrays - but not in the way most people think. We don't really have identity crises based on the roles we're playing - "Am I Hamlet or am I John Smith? Who am I???" After all, our lives as actors are typically full of identity crises anyway, day in and day out (we're not the most mature or balanced of people) - so the roles we play don't really mess us up much more than we already are.

But it is true that certain actors are cast for certain parts because they "get it", they understand the part in their bones, the character is something they really are somewhere inside and so they can pull that part of them out and give it voice.

This is the mystery of Acting, the empathy behind it, the mystery of being, the mystery of pretending, the "virtue of IF". For the actor there is a safety in donning the mask, for the audience a distancing in sitting in the dark and watching life through a frame. In the midst, then, of this fiction, this hypothetical reality, we are free as actors and audience to become something new, even provisionally, even vicariously.

And thus we can see the two sides of the question raised by my post You Hate Me! You Really Hate Me!.

Regarding that post, my friend Kelly Kerr says, in so many words, why would non-Christian actors freak out when playing Christian parts? Isn't it the actors job to take on any part he is assigned?

While my friend Mark Holgate says, in so many words, what makes you think you can cast non-Christian actors in dramas or comedies that are spreading the message of Christ? Mark continues, "It's funny, isn't it? The same people [actors] think nothing of clumsy nihilistic preaching and ranting (it's 'realistic' and 'authentic') but mention Jesus in a show and they run for the hills. Power in the Name, methinks."

Kelly is looking at the artifice of acting, the mask; while Mark is looking at the truth the mask reveals, the word spoken through the persona of the mask.

When we began Theater of the Word Incorporated , I was willing to trust God, but only to a point. I had written shows for a four-person touring troupe, and I knew that it would be impossible to find three other actors who were

1. Talented

2. Reliable

3. Christian

4. Available to tour.

It's hard enough in St. Louis to find actors who are talented, or who are reliable, or who are available - and I did not know of any who were Christian, except one or two who were not available to tour.

And so I figured I would be the point man, the Christian actor in the troupe, and the others would simply play their roles and don their masks the way good actors should.

And, as it turned out, we had a few conversions along the way - one actor went from atheist to "I think I'm Christian now"; two others went from "I'm Christian, but I'll never be Catholic!" to full communion with the Catholic Church.

But, as a rule, the non-Christian actors could NOT simply "play their roles". Perhaps they could at first. Perhaps touring would be fine for a while, the acting good, the attitude acceptable ... but sooner or later I'd notice the actors would either

1. find themselves drawn to a more intimate relation with Christ

2. find themselves angry and uncomfortable with being in plays that (even in subtle ways) glorified Christ

The upshot of reaction number two has been actors getting difficult, quitting in a huff, or me no longer casting them, and then, apparently, spreading the word in town that I'm a horrible man to work for and a horrible man period. But that's the whole sign of contradiction thing. And it's all about Him, not me.

For, in the same way the Incarnation ripples throughout time in places you'd least expect it, so does the Crucifixion. If Christ were indeed simply a benign prophet, as the atheists and new pagans try to make Him, then there would be plenty of neutral ground in people's reaction to Him, as there is in our assessment of Buddha or Mohammed. The Cross still lives in that we either worship Him as God or crucify Him as an annoying thorn in our side, a disturbing voice in our ear that we dare not listen to.

He still lives, you see. And He is still being denied and crucified by all of us in one way or another.

In my own way it was my unwillingness to trust that God would provide His theater company with actors who were willing to follow St. Genesius the way St. Genesius followed Christ.

For, in the very moment the water was poured on his head, the moment the sarcastic cynical comic scene mocking these fools for Christ was played out before the emperor and the audience, something clicked in Genesius' brain, in his being. The instruction in the faith, the catechumenate that he thought was only an exercise in Researching a Role 101 must have touched him in a deep and hidden place, and the mask brought forth the true man, the persona on stage made the person beneath sound through, and our patron experienced a miracle. The pretend baptism - a baptism of mockery and vulgarity, a sick and cruel joke made by a sick and cruel culture (cf. any situation comedy currently on TV) - became a sudden "baptism of desire" and Genesius "went up", leaving the script behind and improvising a witness to the Living God who died and rose again - a witness to life - that would end in the end of the life of this particular actor, the beheading of Genesius - for we are "baptized into His death" (Romans 6:3) so that, like Him, we should walk "in newness of life".

G. K. Chesterton pointed out long ago a truth that was old even then, "As soon as you stop being against the Catholic Church, you find yourself oddly in favor of it. There is no in-between. There is no neutral ground."

And once I decided to trust God just a wee bit more, took the risk of dumping the actors who were resisting us and our mission, He suddenly sent me the impossible - an amazing cast of talented, reliable, available Christian actors.

The actor who told me I was intolerant last week was just an example of me putting my hand to the plow and turning back for a bit, of thinking it's impossible to find a good Christian actor to play a role in a show that's only mildly evangelistic, of making the old mistake over again.

But I should know better. After all, the old life is dying and the New Life is sounding through.

Tolerance and Hate

2011-09-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

This is a post by Msgr. Pope for the Archdiocese of Washington DC in which he uses my alter-ego Stanford Nutting (played by me on EWTN and in many of our YouTube skits) to illustrate the hypocrisy of faux-tolerance.

Interesting that this has come up just after I've been lectured about being "intolerant" by a young actor who doesn't even know me.

You Hate Me! You Really Hate Me!

2011-09-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

I have just been hit with one of the nastiest insults I've ever received. It was from a young actor that I'd just offered a fine part. He told me, in so many words, that the word on the street in the St. Louis acting community is I'm an intolerant bigot who fosters a horrendous working environment, and that I'd have to assure him I'd change my ways if he were going to accept the part and work with me. The kid is probably 24. I'm 50. I've been earning a living as an actor, producer and director since before he was born. And I'm offering him paying work, but he's lecturing me about who I am and what I do and how wrong it all is.

This scuttlebutt about the real me he heard from some of the pagan and atheist actors I foolishly cast in Theater of the Word shows over the years. Now I have worked with lots of pagans and atheists and gays and Lesbians and freaks and drug addicts and you name it - the motley neurotics and narcissists who populate this business - from the beginning - not an easy thing to do for an intolerant bigot. But when it comes to Theater of the Word Incorporated, it seems that if I put non-Christians in shows that seek to honor Jesus, their skin starts to crawl and I'm the one to blame for it.

As to the working environment, well, we don't put up with drug use, diva fits or promiscuity. We simply provide good direction, pay, and the promise that if everyone works hard we'll encourage them and guide them and if they don't, we'll get rid of them for the sake of the show and the other actors.

But here's the kicker - the actors who weren't Christian and who used to take work from me thinking evangelizing through drama was just an acting gig like any other acting gig were either drawn closer to the Church (we've had quite a few converts along the way) or (more likely) reacted violently against the Church sooner or later while on tour. I even suspect some of the actresses who took work in our pro-life show had probably had abortions that they'd never repented of or grieved over and naively assumed they could appear in a show that reveals the horror of abortion and not have it effect them.

But sooner or later it did, and sooner or later the Holy Spirit stirred things up and the next thing you know they're telling other actors how bigoted and intolerant I am.

Lord, what fools we actors be!

Update: I elaborate on this a bit more in this post: Persons of the Drama.

Art since the Garden of Eden

2011-09-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

If you want to return to the Garden of Eden, head to Kansas. It's right there in the town of Lucas on the High Plains.

It's a quirky place, built by S. P. Dinsmoor, a Civil War veteran, who can only be described as a crank. The yard of his hand-built house, front and back, is filled with his own bizarre sculpture, expressing his own peculiar philosophy.

The climax of the tour is viewing the Body of the Artist as a Dead Man. You may peer into his crypt, in which S. P. Dinsmoor is laid out exposed to gawkers. For this privilege you must pay one U.S. dollar, per the terms of Dinsmoor's will.

The fun part about seeing the Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas is that it's such an off-the-beaten path adventure. The sad part is the locals pretend this kind of thing is "folk art".

Well, it may be "folk", but it ain't art.

Chesterton's famous quip, "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly" only applies to amateurs - and you might say, always applies to amateurs.

There is a thing out there called "community theater". Now if you read Chesterton and only Chesterton, you might get the impression that community theater, being a thing worth doing and a thing done by amateurs, would be a thing done badly. And you'd be right.

But in Chesterton's praise of the homespun generalist, in his praise of motherhood and education (from which his "thing worth doing" quip is taken), he overlooks sacrifice, the painful side of love, the love to which the word "amateur" refers (from the Latin amator, lover). An amateur, I would say in a more cynical quip, is someone who does something out of love, but a love for which he has yet to sacrifice. A professional has "paid the price".

For example, the reason we don't go to amateur brain surgeons is because if a man really loves brain surgery, he becomes a professional, he "professes" it - he spends a dozen years in school and countless sleepless nights studying it and perfecting it. If, by contrast, it's his "hobby" - well, a hobby is like a mistress, you might "love" her, but you ain't gonna marry her.

And an amateur actor loves acting the way a married man loves his mistress - indeed finding a mistress is one of the motivations of married men who do a lot of community theater.

By contrast, for those of us who are wed to a vocation of drama - well, here's what happens.

A winery in Southern Missouri expresses interest in our murder mystery dinner theater productions. I go down and meet with the owner, a woman who informs me that the community theater troupe out of Cape Girardeau is "a lot cheaper" than we are and she's thinking of using them instead.

Now, there's almost no answer to this. To point out that the reason we have been performing monthly shows at some wineries for twelve years straight with a loyal following, some of whom have seen over forty of our productions, is to point out the obvious. She'll get at most two performances out of the amateur troupe before word gets out that the mysteries aren't worth the $35 per ticket she'll be charging for dinner and show.

But in acting more than in any other profession, people on the outside say, "I can do that! How hard can that be?" And they pick up the scalpel and perform the do-it-yourself lobotomy and the patient never wakes up.

My point is, yes we should do things out of love, even the things we can only do badly and can only dabble at for fun. But let's not pretend "folk art" is "art" or the girl behind the counter at Wendy's who flirts with us is the woman we'd die for. The woman we'd die for is the woman we married.

And a vocation is not a hobby.

A Few Observations

2011-09-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

‎1. Ever notice how it's the little slights that hurt more than the big ones?

2. The Culture of Death is a magnet, a black hole, sucking everything and everybody into it.

3. That love is transcendent of time, space and matter is a fact that stares us in the face every day

A Revealing Headline

2011-09-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

This headline is from stltoday.com, the website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Post-Dispatch is a notoriously liberal paper. Had the adult victim (the pregnant woman) killed the baby in an abortion clinic, no mention would have been made of the child's death.

Since a gunman killed both mother and child, the newspaper mentions it.

Murder is only murder if certain people murder, it seems.

Terrorism and Abortion

2011-09-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

On Facebook today, I posted a comment made by Facebook friend Brian Douglass:

On 9/11/01 3,000 people killed by people who abused the skills they have been taught was called terrorism and mass murder. On every day in this country the over 3,000 people who are killed legally by people who abuse the skills they have been taught are called "a woman's right to choose".

Soon after I posted this, my favorite atheist Steve posted this:

Hey guys! Abortion doctors are just as bad-if not worse-than the 9/11 hijackers! I know this because Kevin O'Brien says so. Boy, have us secular progressives been morally confused for the past 10 years, going after those "terrorists" when the real terrorists are living comfortable lives at home. Killing a fetus because you aren't ready to be a parent and killing thousands of living, breathing human beings in cold blood because you want to restore an Islamic Caliphate are actually the same thing!

Now, Steve is a good guy and a very intelligent young man, one of my son's good friends, and a lot of fun to debate with - so much fun that at the last meeting of the ChesterBelloc Drinking and Debating Club I swore at him at the top of my lungs. But, seriously, Steve is no slouch, so I commented on what he had said thus:

***

Steve, my favorite atheist, if a fetus is an innocent human being, which it is, then yes killing an innocent in the womb is as bad as killing an innocent in a skyscraper. You follow the logic I'm sure.

You may not agree with the logic, but you follow it. However, you confuse the issue in your post above by bringing motive into the picture.

If the fetus is a person, then it matters not if you kill him because you don't want to be bothered with having a kid or because you want to establish an Islamic caliphate.

But if the fetus is not a person, then motive is also irrelevant. If the fetus is a clump of cells, then why bring up motive at all? It's convenient for me to take a crap and flush the clump of cells down the toilet. I could therefore understand you saying, "Kevin O'Brien compares the slaughter of innocent human beings in a terrorist act to taking a crap and flushing a toilet!" But what I don't understand is why you bring up motives.

If the fetus is a person, motives don't matter. If the fetus is not a person, motives don't matter. Unless your thinking is clouded by a conscience that's not so sure.

***

I have suggested that the discussion on Facebook move here to my blog where it can be followed by more than a select group of friends. We'll see what happens!

A New Credo

2011-09-07T10:04:00.001-07:00

I believe in one head of hair, that of Michael Voris, hair from hair, more hair from more hair, and in his infallibility. I believe "professional Catholics" who make a ton of money on their faith, like Mark Shea, Kevin O'Brien and Timothy Jones, should be criticized in a vague nameless way. I believe in one holy Corapi, forced out of his ministry even though we all remember he quit. I believe we can make a good case for lying, torture, and the subjugation of the poor. I look for the election to come, Real Catholic TV without end, amen.

Pictured above: the Michael Voris look is all the rage!

Quitting Show Business

2011-09-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

There are some days when I just want out.

For example.

On Friday I placed an ad at the St. Louis Auditions website seeking an actress to play the part of Juliet in Joseph Pearce's third season of The Quest for Shakespeare on EWTN. In Shakespeare's script Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is said to be 13 going on 14 (much younger than she is typically played). Joseph makes much of this in his brilliant analysis of the play, focusing on Juliet's vulnerability and the lack of support she receives from everyone around her. Consequently, I am advertising for an actress who can play that age. This, I have learned, is a dangerous thing to do.

As of today, I've had dozens of emails from stage moms all over the country - some of whom are so obviously "pimping" their daughters it's disturbing. It reminds me of the moms and dads who were letting their little boys sleep in the same bed with Michael Jackson, knowing darn well what was going on, all out of their hunger for fame.

Lola Falana, whom I interviewed for my television show here, (and who is pictured above with the aforementioned Michael Jackson) and who has had one of the most spectacular careers in show business, has talked privately to me quite passionately about the damage done to young people in this industry, the abuse she herself suffered as an underage dancer in Philadelphia, and her concern for the teen contestants who are fodder for shows such as American Idol. "They will chew you up and spit you out," she said. "There are predators in this business and they will take every bit of innocence and joy away from you."

And speaking of American Idol, the show's producer Nigel Lithgow was for some reason one of the faux-sincere hosts of this year's MDA Telethon. Not only does MDA pay their public relations director $400,000 a year, not only do they refuse to disavow embryonic stem cell research, not only did they force Jerry Lewis out after fifty years of giving his life to this cause, but they lied about what they did, asserted that he "retired" and mounted a bland quasi-tribute to him to open the show. This is the worst of show business, and it only reminds one of Sammy Maudlin:

Then again, you can't hate the art behind the business, the insight behind the cheats and scoundrels, the truth behind the empty pretense - it's what gives us parodies like the one above, and it's why we do this in the first place.

So I guess I'm not quitting show business after all. But if I do, I have my lines memorized for my next role ... "Would you like fries with that?"

The Magic of Theater

2011-08-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

Amanda Card-McCoy as Patricia Carleon in Blackbird Theater's production of G. K. Chesterton's play Magic.

There's a reason I don't go see live theater. I'm sick of it. Plus, it's almost always bad.

And there's a reason I can't pay all of my bills every month. I'm an actor. I'm an actor who does lots of Christian theater, no less - a true recipe for financial disaster.

But acting is a vocation - God has made us to do this, called us to do this, and doing this is the most challenging thing on earth. Many of us realize early on, as I did, that if we're ever going to work consistently, we have to produce our own stuff.

And after you've made a living at that for about thirty years, as I have, you realize more than you ever did how hard this business is. It's a collaborative art that requires tremendous talent and dedication at every link in the chain; lose a link here or there and instead of a "hit" you've got something that "hits" the ground with a thud.

This is why much of the stuff Theater of the Word Incorporated has done for EWTN has been a bit cheesy. This is why our production of Magic at the American Chesterton Society Conference a few weeks back was a struggle (we had about one or two rehearsals total, the cast not gathered together until the very week of the show). This is why everything we tour with is no more than four actors, simple props and a black backdrop. We have literally no financial resources and we have clients who always poor mouth us and sometimes stiff us. Given the conditions under which we work, it's remarkable that we come up with stuff that's as good as we do.

Or, as the lead character in Chesterton's Magic (who is himself in showbiz) puts it ...

A man spends his time incessantly in going about in third-class carriages to fifth-rate lodgings. He has to make up new tricks, new patter, new nonsense, sometimes every night of his life. Mostly he has to do it in the beastly black cities of the Midlands and the North, where he can't get out into the country.

Translated into my life, this means most recently we've done 33 performances of 12 scripts in 90 days, traveling 17,000 miles through 18 states - and while not in the "beastly black cities of the north", at least for one night we were stranded in Toledo. And that counts.

I bring all of this up not because I'm griping, but because when it all comes together, when you get it right, when the Magic of Theater happens, it's worth it. We may be starving, homeless and hungry, but it's worth it. It's worth it because, whether we know it or not, whether we're Christians or not, we're doing it for love - we're doing it for God.

Now since I hate to go see live theater, I've had to enjoy these consolations - these moments where everything comes together and the audience is one with the cast and the cast is one with the material - on stage as an actor. But last week - on August 25, the Feast of St. Genesius, Patron of Actors - it happened to me in the audience.

My actors and I went down to Nashville, Tennessee to see Blackbird Theater's production of Chesterton's Magic - the same play the American Chesterton Society had struggled so mightily with in St. Louis three weeks before.

Produced by Randy Spivey with the help of Greg Greene, and directed by Wes Driver, this was the perfect production of this play. Honestly. I don't know how the original West End Production or the two Broadway productions could have been any better.

Now my friends know me as a curmudgeon, as a crabby cynical old cuss who would critique the Second Coming as being "over-produced". I do not rave about anything, as a rule. I am more Belloc than I am Chesterton.

But allow me to rave.

I know Chesterton and his writing very well. He was the man who more than any other brought me from atheism into the Christian Faith. I have been reading him, studying him, adapting him, performing him for close to fifteen years. I know his plays very well. I was the Poet in EWTN's version of his play The Surprise, Father Brown in our TV movie version of The Honor of Israel Gow, Ignatius Press audio book performer of Manalive, gave the keynote address on Chesterton and Drama at the 2009 Chesterton Conference in Seattle. I've even taken Dale Ahlquist out to dinner and made him pay for it!

Believe me, then, when I tell you that this was the perfect production of this play.

We begin with the set. Bradley Jones designed a very attractive realistic Edwardian drawing room set - which made me realize how important the set is to this play. Unlike The Surprise, which takes place in a kind of fairy tale setting, the whole point of Magic is the contrast between the supernatural and the mundane. The eeriness of the magician's tricks and the presence of the demonic only really work if played off against a realistic background. This play is all about normal everyday skeptics confronting the shock and terror of a world beyond this one - and that can only work if the everyday world looks solid and real on stage. Thus a good set can make or break this play, as it's really a kind of set drama. I didn't realize that until I recognized how much we lost by comparison playing the thing with an abstract set in St. Louis.

Stephen Moss' lighting, Hannah Schmidt's costumes, and even the judicious but powerful use of background music all contributed to this effect.

So quite literally the stage is set. A brilliant script, great set, lights, music, costumes - now it's up to the actors and the director to make the dead stuff come to life. Heck, how hard could that be!

This was an unbelievable cast, from top to bottom. One little example: Robyn Berg played the part of Hastings (written for a man, but played by a woman in this production), a throw-away part, a part that's so incidental we gave it to a deacon in our version (after all, deacons don't do anything, as we all know). Now in the climactic scene, Ms. Berg as Hastings has a little moment where she is overcome by a foreboding, a sense of spiritual oppression. She played it by falling back just a bit against a wall, as if she were fighting against fainting. It was a tiny little movement, an exquisite little bit of physical "business", and it was just the thing to set the tone for the climax that followed, a climax that happens after Hastings' exit, no less. It was a marvelous little piece of acting, and it came from an actress playing the least important role in the play!

And from there on up, it was a delight to watch these actors work. Christopher R. C. Bosen played the Duke, the most difficult role in the show, as he's asked to get laughs off of lines that are funny because they don't make sense and his fellow actors stare at him in confusion whenever he says these non-sequiturs. How easy it would be for these lines actually to play this way and for the audience to join in the blank stares of confusion! But Bosen gave the character a character-voice and milked the maximum out of his dozens of comic moments.

Alan Lee played the part I played in St. Louis, the materialist doctor, and was just what the doctor ordered, you might say. He played him more droll and bourgeois than I did, and it worked like a charm.

Another contrast to our production was Daniel Hackman (pictured here), who played the Anglican Rev. Smith. Gary Wells, in our show, played Smith as a kind and balanced gentleman, very even-tempered, whose sanity depended upon his dullness - and it worked. But Hackman kicked it up a few notches and drove the play forward with his passionate portrayal of a man of cloth having a crisis of faith. I was amazed at how Mr. Hackman was able to play the part "big" at moments and yet never so big that he upstaged others or seemed out of place in the context of the scene. Indeed, Hackman made Smith the central supporting character in the show; much of the conflict played itself through Smith in this production, and that was due largely to the astonishing performance of this gifted actor.

Zack McCann as Morris (pictured here) was also very impressive in a difficult role, a role that's a mixture of comic relief, a parody of stage conventions, with a touch of pathos and tragedy - while being at the same time the role of a three-dimensional figure whose skepticism goes dangerously further than that of any one else in the story. A hard part to play, but McCann managed to play it both for laughs and for integrity. I was especially impressed with his ability to build in the scene where Morris goes crazy.

And then there are the leads.

I would marry Amanda Card-McCoy if my wife would let me and if Judge Judy and Beyonce turn me down. She was just right as Patricia. Her accent was a bullseye, her mixture of dreamy innocence and hard-edged practicality was exactly where it should be.

And then there's David Compton as the Conjurer (pictured here). I thought we did well in St. Louis with my buddy Kaiser Johnson in this role (and we did), but Compton was incredible. I was surprised to learn that he had struggled in rehearsal to get to where he got with this part, as he absolutely nailed the character, and nailed both the comic delivery of the laugh lines (of which there are many) as well as the undercurrent of guilt and anger which occasionally rise to the surface, and which are central to who he is and to how the story unfolds. And he did it all in a way that looked smooth and effortless.

And the two leads together - Card-McCoy and Compton - pulled off the most delightful, entertaining and believable love scenes one could ever hope to see. They had a table of teenage girls next to us melting with the delicacy of the romance.

I could rave about the scene they filmed and played as a movie to begin the show, or the strolling magicians who did a pre-show warm-up, but I have to save my final rave for the director.

Now usually a director is kind of like a manager in baseball. He can very rarely help a play, and quite often he can hurt it. In the case of Blackbird Theater's Magic, however, there's only one explanation for why the whole thing worked as well as it did. Wes Driver, the director, understood the play from the inside out. He cast a brilliant cast and then drew from them absolutely every single moment and "beat" that the show needed. The pacing, the character insights, the feel for the show - everything was perfect, and this is a sign of excellent direction.

We met with Wes and some of the cast and crew after the show.

The good news is these are not only good actors and producers and directors, but good people. Blackbird Theater is the resident professional company at Lipscomb University in Nashville, and it's a company well worth your support. Their mission statement reads as follows ...

We want to do the kind of the shows we ourselves most want to see—imaginative, intellectually stimulating, and uniquely theatrical. Not self-indulgent experimental stuff. Not kitschy homespun comedies either. Theater with intellectual heft and humor. Fiercely entertaining . . . with maybe a little to discuss at dinner.

What a wonderful vision for a theater company.

And what a wonderful experience for a group of rag-tag actors sitting in the audience on our feast day. Well worth the five-hour drive down from St. Louis.

For there we sat, feeling as good in the audience as we typically only feel on stage.

As the Conjurer says of himself and his show business background:

My mother was a lady and she married a dying fiddler who tramped the roads; and the mixture plays the cat and banjo with my body and soul. I can see my mother now cooking food in dirtier and dirtier lodgings, darning socks with weaker and weaker eyes when she might have worn pearls by consenting to be a rational person.

Well, actors are not rational people. And while the pearls we do manage to wear are costume jewelry only, they show forth a greater beauty and a deeper truth than real pearls do, especially when there's magic on stage.

Blessed Dominic Barberi

2011-08-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

Happy Feast Day of Bl. Dominic Barberi! Here I am on The Journey Home as Barberi telling his story.

Trading a Transmission for an Indulgence

2011-08-24T18:14:00.000-07:00

Stranded in Toledo. It was that bad.

After a grueling month that was culminated by my actress Maria Romine falling in Lake Superior, we left the piercingly beautiful city of Duluth, Minnesota for our 18 hour drive to Monroe, New York to perform for the World Youth Day events of the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate and right after passing through the toll booth on the Ohio Turnpike, our transmission went out and we had to be towed fifty miles to Toledo, where I had to rent an SUV and throw our sound, lights and costumes into it and keep driving, as the show must go on - for some crazy reason. (The van is still in Toledo and Karen will have to drive seven hours up from St. Louis and get it once it's fixed.)

The show went well enough, especially considering that most of the ninth and tenth graders there were forced to come by their DREs.

And I sat there in Mass on Sunday, at the sister's charming chapel, feeling angry and bitter and simply worn out. Then the homily - by (I believe) Fr. Glenn Sudano of the CFRs (shown hearing confession outdoors before Mass) - kicked into high gear, and I saw it all, the pain, the travel, the sacrifices, the hassles, the bad money, the foolishness. It all came into focus. "At first Peter was not afraid when he stepped out of the boat," Father explained, "because he didn't look at the waves and at the storm around him. He kept his eyes on Jesus."

Well, naturally, keep your eyes on Jesus. That's why I'm doing this, after all. There's no other good reason to.

And afterwards our fans found us and the consolations flowed.

But it's difficult. It's difficult to keep motivated. It's difficult not to slide into depression when the resistance, both in the world and in your own breast, is persistent.

Today, for instance. As difficult as this Genesian Lent has been (from the Immaculate Heart of Mary til now, when I began this series of posts), today was the hardest. My wife Karen and I were getting hit from all over - financial challenges, difficulties with clients, family trouble - even a friend trying to resurrect the Lying Debate and claiming he'll never see me again if I don't salve his conscience and admit I'm deliberately perverting the Catechism when I say lying is bad. I mean, the devil is the Lord of the Flies because he does his most effective work with thousands of annoying little bug bites - and today the insects had full reign.

There is something about suffering that only the greatest of saints understood.

Look at the similarities between Christmas and Easter. In both cases, God vanished and Faith and Hope seemed to mock us.

When God died on Good Friday and Mary held Him in her arms, all of the universe had ceased to have meaning. Truth and Goodness had been made Ugly by our sins and our hate and the Prime Mover of All Things, the source of all meaning itself, lay without movement in the arms of a woman who should never had been made to grieve. And after He is laid in the tomb, we do not see the moment when death turns to life. It is hidden from us, for it is too glorious for us to understand.

And we all know the magic of a dark Christmas Eve. We all know the hush of that Silent Night. But that hidden blessing comes from God being absent from the eyes of our world-weary vulgarities, unheard by our hungry hungry Herods. God is as hidden in that cave in Bethlehem as He is in that tomb in Jerusalem. In both cases, the silent turning point is veiled and the world turns its bloodlust elsewhere as new life secretly begins.

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 1 Cor. 15:51-52

This sounds like wishful thinking, a child's dream. But on the contrary, St. Paul insists upon it. If Christ be not raised ... then is our faith in vain. Eternal life is central to the Christian Faith - His resurrection and ours can not be separated.

The body of flesh dies and the body of the Spirit is born to a glory unimaginable. But how do we keep our eyes on that when they tend to gape at the storms around us?

We began these posts by talking about St. Genesius, our patron, the only actor with integrity, whose Feast Day is August 25. He, like so many then and now, died for Christ.

We must all die for Christ. "I die daily" as Paul said. And die not only to our sins, but simply die. We must come to that painful awful place where meaning has fled and the One in Whom we put our faith lies dead in the arms of a weeping woman; that painful place where the songs of the angels mock us - we are told He is born, but He is hidden from our eyes, unseen and unfelt by our broken hearts.

When God is dead, Faith becomes true Faith. When our hopes are dashed, Hope becomes true Hope. And when we love a God we cannot see, and who lies lifeless in our arms, Love becomes Love at that moment.

And when our transmission goes out fifty miles shy of Toledo, our vocations are being tested.

Chesterton, as usual, says it best ...

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse.

***

"Great news!" Sister Maria Catherine said. "The Pope has granted a plenary indulgence to anyone participating in World Youth Day activities - anywhere in the world, including here in Monroe, New York!"

Ah, yes, so we traded a transmission for an indulgence, but the hard part is always the condition that makes it stick - renouncing our attachment to sin - including the sin of not seeing the forest for the trees; or not seeing the Jesus for the waves.

Getting In Character

2011-08-18T13:08:00.001-07:00

Is the YOUCAT, the Youth Catechism, a work tantamount to heresy, as some on the internet are suggesting, or is it an effective tool of catechesis that talks to young people at their level?

One answer to this question brings up one of the most profound analogies between Acting and the Faith.

But first, let me take a moment to agree with one thing the YOUCAT recall website says. The writer of this page quotes the YOUCAT as stating that the Church rejects "all artificial means of contraception". This is a common but flawed assertion, and it is one that is loosely and wrongly used by proponents of Natural Family Planning (NFP). For a long time this drove me crazy, as I couldn't understand why the Church would object to artificial contraception (such as the pill or condoms) and not "natural contraception" such as NFP. Are we Christian Scientists? I would ask myself. Or worse - are we New Age Pagans, who hate what is artificial and love what is "natural"?

I really was stuck on this teaching because it made no logical sense to me, and this was the biggest logjam I faced after becoming Catholic. Then I realized it: the Church prohibits contraception, period. Natural Family Planning is not contraception at all. It is simply periodic continence, or not having sex if there's a good reason for a wife not to get pregnant. When during the month the wife is fertile, if you don't want babies, don't have sex. This is not wilfully frustrating the procreative aspect of the marital act, which is what contraception is. The "natural" and "artificial" labels are not only misnomers, they cloud the coherence of the argument.

So that point is a good one - but I'm not so sure of the rest of the critique of the YOUCAT, and I don't really want to address that, since I haven't read the YOUCAT (though I have read the Catechsim cover-to-cover) and I'm not really here to talk about the YOUCAT itself, but instead the issue it raises that leads back to Acting and the Faith

So let's stop talking about sex and talk about something interesting instead.

At the Catholic Answers Forum, a commenter named Manualman makes an excellent point; and while I don't know if this applies to the YOUCAT debate, it certainly applies to the Torture Debate, the Super-Disciples Debate, and the Lying Debate.

Manualman writes:

... God is not arbitrary. Sin IS indeed sin. But what sin IS is something that by its nature damages our ability to give and receive love (both human and divine). Not just the commission of an act 'on the list.'

You technically cannot make a list of mortal sins in catholic theology. Even murder might not be a mortal sin if the killer is mentally incompetent. Look it up: mortal sin requires three elements: grave matter, knowledge that the matter is evil and consent.

What Youcat is trying to do here (IMO) is avoid the mistakes of previous generations. Masturbation is grave matter precisely because it twists the blessed gift of human sexuality that was meant to be re-gifted to one's spouse into a narcisstic experience. Youcat explains that to my satisfaction. It's not about 'demonizing' the temptation a person experiences, but helping him understand what is appealing about it and why giving into it is not just a violation of a rule, but a genuine harm.

Another later poster here fails to recognize that he makes my point better than his own: simply attempting to make people be good via following the rules never works. [my emphasis] They always find a loophole. The way to help people to do good and avoid evil is to explain to them what evil IS and how much damage it does. Again, Youcat passes the deeper test. The last thing teens need is a list of rules that appear to be arbitrary to them, have no clear explanation and seem disconnected to their own experience of reality. Youcat avoids that pitfall and speaks to people where they are at.

If you're looking for a rigid, rules based religion that doesn't require you to comprehend, [my emphasis] but only obey a fixed list of rules, then I agree Youcat isn't for you. But perhaps catholicism isn't either.

Yeah, I know, we were supposed to stop talking about sex, and this is all about YOUCAT's teaching on masturbation, the act being both grave matter for sin and also a habit that young men in particular can find almost impossible to break. Apparently, the YOUCAT is trying to acknowledge this by putting the teaching in context (so that it does not seem arbitrary) and by acknowledging the fact that someone addicted to this sin should not heap self-abuse upon self-abuse (as it were) and feel demonized by something they often can not control.

As I say, that's what the argument seems to be about, and whether the YOUCAT should have worded this section differently (see footnote below) I will not address. But what does interest me is the argument Manualman is making.

The argument is really this: Think with the Mind of the Church, which is no less than the Mind of Christ.

Or in other words: GET IN CHARACTER.

Every actor knows the feeling: you struggle with a role over and over again in rehearsal and even in performance and it never seems to click. Then, all of a sudden, a word or a gesture makes the whole character come together for you, and every line you speak in the play makes sense. You become engaged in the role, you discover the part, you get in character, and the organic unity takes care of itself. Suddenly you stop struggling over lines here or there that don't work for you, or looking to motivate certain moments that seem to stick out - for suddenly it all comes together and everything in the play works the way it obviously should, but the way you just couldn't imagine it working earlier in the creative process. Actors know this, and actors pray that this happens for them - at least before closing night!

The Faith is like that. That's why words like "artificial" or "natural" can cloud an issue, as can words like "demonize" when applied to certain sins. The Faith is a whole, the teachings are all one thing. The Church's view on sex, for instance, is rooted in love, marriage and mutual self-sacrifice. Once you see that whole, then you know instantly how wrong something like masturbation is. Outside of that whole, beyond that organic understanding, Church teaching may indeed seem like unrelated arbitrary bits and pieces - which it never is, for it is the Way of Christ, the most whole and complete Way in the world. It is a living teaching.

Thus St. Paul tells us "I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the understanding; I will sing with the spirit, I will sing also with the understanding." (1 Cor. 14:15)

Our job as Christians and as Good Actors is to understand, not to follow or mimic from without, but to be transformed from within, so that the whole makes sense, and that with the understanding we will have "the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16)

Footnote - from the YOUCAT:

Question 409 (Page 222)

Is Masturbation an offense against love?

Masturbation is an offense against love, because it makes the excitement of sexual pleasure an end in itself and uncouples it from the holistic unfolding of love between a man and a women. That is why “sex with yourself” is a contradiction in terms.

The Church does not demonize masturbation, but she warns against trivializing it. In fact many young people and adults are in danger of becoming isolated in their consumption of lewd pictures, films, and Internet services instead of finding love in a personal relationship. Loneliness can lead to a blind alley in which masturbation becomes an addiction. Living by the motto ‘“For sex I do not need anyone; i will have it myself, however and whenever I need it” makes nobody happy.

God Talking to Me

2011-08-17T01:05:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we will present my play The Call at the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate in Monroe, New York. This is a play about vocations, and the difficulty of hearing God's call in a world filled with distractions. I wrote it at the suggestion of our friends at the Institute on Religious Life . And while a show about vocations may sound didactic, preachy and boring like most religious theater, it is anything but that.

In fact, a high school student who attended our premiere performance in Chicago wrote:

I am so glad I got to come and experience this last weekend! You guys showing up in my life has got to be one of the best things that has ever happend! You and your crew has been an inspiration! I saw God shine in every single one of your faces! You guys are wonderful people!

Last night when i got home after 11pm, my grandma and I had a little chat about the conference and of course, about you! I told her how wonderful you guys were and how being with you guys has helped my discernment a lot! I was telling her that whenever I heard a talk on evangelization and missionary work... my heart felt pulled, and also when I watched the show you put on... I also felt pulled. So to sum it all up, I feel God might be calling me to go out and evangelize. I dont know, though, that it could be through talking, acting, singing... Not sure on that part.. But i know your prayers will most deffinately help!

Now of course we're just the instruments of something like this. But the show's pretty good, and that doesn't hurt.

So I've been thinking a lot about vocations lately, and what a challenge they can be. I think this is because we like to think of prayer as "Me talking to God", while a vocation is "God talking to me". And He talks with a voice that, though still and small, is very profound and resonant. It is the same Voice that moved upon the waters before the earth was fully formed, after all - and this same Voice speaks to us in the most intimate and hidden places of our hearts.

And all actors know this. We know this because if we have a vocation to act, and if it's not just a hobby or a pass-time or a way to pick up girls, it stirs us at our deepest and most vulnerable spot.

As my character Sam says at a climactic moment of the play (and as Sister Maria answers him) ...

SAM: (articulating his desperation) You don’t understand! I can’t love! It hurts too much, hurts like writing the great poem that only suffering can produce. And I can not endure that suffering – or the sweetness of that poem. It tears out the core of my being! I can’t live that way! I can’t love God. That would take me past the breaking point. And I’m already broke! I can’t even love the trees, the birds, the sunshine. Good gravy, woman, I can’t even love you!

MARIA: … you know what I think? I think you have a true vocation.

SAM: I don’t even know what a vocation is!

MARIA: A vocation is a call to love, to love past the breaking point.

SAM: You said a vocation was a call to personal holiness.

MARIA: Which is the fruit of loving past the breaking point. When a sister picks the worms out of the body of a man dying on the street of a third world country, she’s loving Christ, with her whole self. When a priest endures torture and solitary confinement out of loyalty to Jesus and service to others, he’s loving Christ, with his whole self. When a wife changes dirty diapers and puts up with a husband like you for better or for worse as long as you both shall live, she’s loving Christ, with her whole self. Past the breaking point.

***

On this second day of the Genesian Novena, let us recall how glibly we talk to God in prayer and how resistant we are when He talks back to us with that Voice that moves upon the waters.

Let us recall actress and playwright St. Therese who experienced a terrifying urge to flee the day before she made her vows, and whose faith was shaken even as she was granted a share in the heart of the sufferings of Jesus at the glorious and painful end of her life.

Let us recall our general vocation as Christians to go out and preach the Gospel, preaching both in how we live and also with words - a vocation we hardly ever consider, much less answer with any zeal or courage.

And let us recall our audiences, who respond to us (as did our high school fan above) if we respond to Him.

***

As we hear at the end of The Call ...

SAM: Oh, Sister, tell me one more thing. I can’t hold down a day job. Is that a sign of a vocation?

MARIA: In your case, it probably is.

***

To book The Call or any of our other shows, visit us at The Theater of the Word Incorporated or call 1-888-840-WORD

Superior Photo Journalism

2011-08-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

Pictures I took on our 2005 trip to Duluth, Minnesota.

This is the Actress.

This is our hero. We'll call him "Ken".

Ken thinks: "I may have to save this Actress' life some day."

The Chester-Belloc Drinking and Debating Society meets on the shore of Lake Superior. The Actress was an Observer, as women aren't typically allowed at the meetings.

The Actress had fun.

Our hero had fun.

The Actress was showing me her dental work.

Time to leave!

Oh, dear! The Actress has fallen into the Lake!

ACTRESS: What happened?

KEN: You fell into the Lake!

"Ken is my hero! He saved my life!"

Ken thinks: "Hmm. Where are my keys?"

The Actress is embarrassed. Ken has lost his keys in the Lake!

We return the Actress to her room.

The next day: I find Ken's keys! They were right where he left them - at the bottom of Lake Superior.

Colin and friend Sam search for rocks. Who is that girl behind them?

She seems to be bending over backwards to get their attention.

But the boys don't notice her - at all.

Well, I notice her and I get it all on film - Superior Photo Journalism.

Meanwhile, it's now 2011 and today during outdoor rehearsal my actress Maria fell into the Lake - fully sober, during the day. I fished her out without getting wet. It was really rather scary, as the Lake can be quite hazardous. Maria, to her credit, dried in the sun and our outdoor rehearsal continued. She's a real trooper.

No pictures, though - too busy saving her.

I am told that over the weekend actress Emily fell into the river.

The only damage so far has been to cell phones .

Today (August 16) is Day One of the St. Genesius Novena. St. Genesius, please keep us safe!

Beyond Spectacular

2011-08-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

The problem with the Phineas and Ferb movie Across the Second Dimension is that it’s too spectacular.

Phineas and Ferb (my favorite TV show next to Judge Judy and The Journey Home) is brilliant for many reasons, but these are generally small reasons – humorous moments that are not overdone, a variety of characters that are true to their traits in a variety of situations, complex and interwoven plots that are usually not forced. But when Disney wants a movie, I imagine Disney demands action and adventure and fight scenes and big giant devices and apocalyptic moments – and it all gets way too noisy. What’s good about this show is the contrast between the smallness of the kids’ back yard and the largeness of the adventures that fit into it – and that smallness doesn’t readily fit into a spectacle-sensation-with-pano-vision-and-full-screen-dolby-surround-sound-90-minute-movie.

And this is a problem in show business. When Miss Saigon came to the Fox Theater in St. Louis many years ago everybody kept talking about how an actual helicopter somehow descended from the rafters and appeared on stage. Nobody talked about the show or what it meant, only the spectacle and what struck their eyes and stunned their senses and knocked them senseless. When we saw Richard Harris as King Arthur in Camelot at the Muny, he more or less stumbled through the role until his big final monologue that he played so over-the-top (holding Excalibur in the air and shouting, “Vengeaaaannnncceeee!”) that the rubes in the audience stood up for him at curtain call – this a kind of spectacle of acting, an empty, noisy showing off, not unlike the spectacle of Spectacular Over-Production with props and scenery.

And while spectacle and its literary counterpart melodrama are always elements in dramatic art, to the extent they dominate a dramatic work, that dramatic work is compromised.

Compare the plays of St. Therese, the Little Flower, for instance.

Yes, St. Therese wrote plays. And acted in them. I suspect this is why she’s been involved in Theater of the Word of late along with our patron St. Genesius.

I have been reading a collection of her plays translated into English, and published by ICS. These were written as recreation pieces to be performed by the Carmelite sisters. They all have a pageant-like or presentational feel to them, and being weak on dialogue, one wonders how they would play outside of a recitational setting. But they nevertheless, even in translation, have a stunning beauty of simplicity and a depth of spiritual insight and passion.

Take the very short “Jesus at Bethany”, in which Therese played Jesus and two sisters played Martha and Mary. This play is simply a series of stanzas sung to folk tunes in which Mary and Jesus speak to one another for five or ten minutes, followed by Martha and Jesus speaking to one another for five or ten minutes. The only dramatic conflicts are Mary’s feelings of unworthiness and Martha’s frustration with Mary. In the midst of that we have a bold – perhaps audacious – love scene between Mary (identified as Mary Magdalene) and Jesus – not the kind of love scene hoped for by those Da Vinci Code fans who assure us that Jesus and Magdalene had a thing going and he fathered children by her. It’s not that at all.

It is, on the contrary, much more daring than that. It is a love that goes so much further than that.

At the beginning, Magdalene declares her love for Christ, and St. Therese has Jesus answer

JESUS: From now on, O Mary,
You’ll want to live for Me
And all My life
I will suffer for you.

Think about that. What kind of intimacy is this! This makes that Da Vinci Code nonsense Puritanical by comparison.

A few verses later, Magdalene replies

MAGDALENE: Jesus, your very love
Makes my heart tremble.
Your supreme goodness
Increases my pain.

Think about that! What a beautiful line.

Into this rapt declaration of mutual love, Martha inserts herself complaining of Mary’s neglect of work, and Christ, in the course of a few stanzas, gently leads her to the truth. Then the eyes of the active and bustling Martha are opened, she abandons her jealousy and griping, and she declares her intention to match the love of Magdalene, even in the drudgery of her daily chores.

JESUS: You understand the great mystery
Which made me descend to these places.
Yes, the hidden life is dearer
Than all the glory of the Heavens.

MARTHA: Jesus, to delight You, I want all my life
To despise honors and human glory.
While working for you I will imitate Mary
Seeking only Your divine gaze.

The paradox of the Hidden Life surpassing even the glories of heaven is something I alluded to here, and is the antidote for all the show biz raz-a-ma-taz and noisy spectacle the dramatic arts are prone to. And the willingness to seek Jesus in the humble and ordinary routine of daily life is likewise an antidote to the hunger for attention we actors are prone to.

But spectacle has a role in drama, even in the drama of profound little things. For example, in her play Joan of Arc Accomplishing Her Mission, Therese includes a fair share of spectacle, notably the fire scene in which Joan is martyred, and which nearly consumed Therese playing the role of Joan in performance when the fire almost got out of hand.

But the play is not about the battlefields of blood and gore; it’s not about the raging fire that consumes the young virgin and spellbinds the audience; it’s not even about the spectacle of saints and angels appearing to Joan in prison. It’s about the Hidden Life of a girl who had faith, who put all of her trust in Jesus, and who was led through the fire and beyond it to Act Three. For, in Therese’s play, the martyrdom of Joan ends the Second Act; the Third Act takes place in heaven and engages Joan in the needs of modern day France, fallen into apostasy. The climax is not the fight scenes; the climax is not the crowning of the king; the climax is not the immolation of the virgin; the climax is in the world beyond, which for now is somewhat Hidden from us.

For while we see through a glass darkly, we must not forget the consolations we receive and the glimpses of what lies behind the drudgery of our daily chores. We, like Joan, are visited by saints and angels, though perhaps in ways we do not perceive – in ways that are Hidden, like much of the life of Our Lord.

It is not the spectacle on stage that concerns us, but the spectacle off. The Drama is about the God behind the scenery and how He is revealed to us through our characters and our conflicts, hidden by a veil that is torn at the crucifixion, revealed at that moment of sacrifice by the great glimpse into a love more audacious than romantic love, the unimaginable love of a God consoling us with His saints and angels and hidden visitations, His little things, His little ways, His little saints, that draw us closer, despite our showmanship, to the quiet and loving Him.

My Wife Married an Actor

2011-08-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

So my wife married an actor – me.

I can’t tell you why, as I don’t know myself.

We dated a long time, and she saw all the ups and downs – the years I made a living performing singing telegrams all over St. Louis dressed as a gorilla; the six weeks I made a living as a stand-up comic until the owner of the club got drunk, got on the mike, cursed his patrons and told them all to get the hell out; the summer I was hired as a comic / M.C. on board a riverboat and told three days before the first cruise that I was expected to perform as a magician instead (although I wasn’t one); the tour to Japan, Korea and Australia with four actresses who hated each other until halfway through the tour when they all decided they got along fine because they were united in their hatred of me; and so forth.

So by the time we got married and had Colin, our son, I was going to college to make something of myself, as it was obvious a career in show business – although it was my vocation – was a waste of time and was nothing that would reliably support a family.

But the very week I graduated, this ad ran in the paper: “Seeking comedy improv troupe to perform historical skits at Six Flags.” It turns out a company out of Texas, Living History Productions, had produced a series of cartoons on historical American figures, was setting up outdoor kiosks at Six Flags Theme Parks around the country, and was looking for improv troupes to perform short skits to attract attention to these kiosks.

Now, I had never performed comedy improv, I knew of no one who had, and I certainly didn’t run a comedy improv troupe.

So I had my agent call and tell them how great my comedy improv troupe was. We called ourselves the Fallen Arches, and, according to our agent, we were great.

The audition was set, I gathered a bunch of actors I knew and the day the Texas big wig flew into town to check us out, I told my cast, “I realize we hardly know each other’s names and we’ve never worked together before, but this guy thinks we’re a comedy improv troupe, so we have to pretend as if we’re used to doing these bits.”

Anyway, the guy loved us. “I thought St. Louis would be the last town where I’d find good comedy improv, but it turns out you guys are better than the troupes I’ve found on either coast!” I am not making this up, this is exactly what he said.

So we were hired to perform a full summer at Six Flags over Mid-America, six shows a day outdoors, and I scheduled the entire summer from my pool of actors who were allegedly members of this non-existent troupe. We all had to go to training with the teenagers at Six Flags, we were all issued badges, we all had official picture IDs.

Finally my career was coming together – and though this had nothing to do with my college degree, a good five or six months of paid acting work stretched before me.

The first day came and my troupe and I performed our skit about Ben Franklin outdoors on a hot early summer day at Six Flags. We literally “chilled out” in an air conditioned trailer while waiting to perform our second show. The second show went better than the first, the audiences were laughing, and everything was going great.

We returned to our trailer to rest up for our third show, and found, to our surprise, that the trailer was locked. We got a quick lunch, headed back to the trailer and found a note on it, “Call the front office”.

I got a hold of someone in management and said, “What’s going on here?”

“We do not have a contract with Living History Productions of Dallas, Texas, and you have no permission to be performing at our theme park.”

“What do you mean? You trained us, issued us badges, gave us permission to be here.”

“The contract had not been finalized and negotiations have fallen through. Security will now escort you from the park."

And we were forcibly ejected and asked not to return – at least not dressed as Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.

I told Karen.

“That’s it! I’ve had enough! I can’t stand this! You have to give up show business. We’ve got a baby now and you’ve got to find a way to support this family that does not involve this kind of emotional and financial roller coaster.”

That fall we began performing murder mysteries regularly at restaurants, wineries and dinner trains around the country. Karen told me it would never work. She was very angry at me that I took the first gig.

That was eighteen years ago and not long after that, Karen was able to quit her job and we’ve been depending on murder mysteries ever since. I write this in Duluth, Minnesota, where we’ve been performing on the North Shore Scenic Railroad for twelve seasons, and where we’ve added a Theater of the Word show to our 2011 tour, a fund raiser for a crisis pregnancy center (and where we just performed to a standing ovation).

And the point of all this is – actors, our spouses often have it worse than we do.

My big suggestion – have a plan. When Karen’s cousin Jenna Fischer moved to L.A. to make it big, she had a five-year plan. She had to hit a number of goals in her acting career by the end of five years or she would return to St. Louis and do murder mysteries with me again, or even work as a secretary in an office somewhere. As it turns out, she’s working as a secretary in an office on NBC’s show The Office, a role she landed in her fifth year in Hollywood.

Have a plan. Don’t leave your wife guessing. Set a goal for the sort of stuff you’d like to be doing in five or ten years and have a B plan and a C plan if your A plan doesn’t work out – which it probably won’t. Remember, this is the hardest business in the world, the most unforgiving, the most brutal, and if you’re in it just to be famous, you’re in it for the wrong reason. Your plan should be about making a living and doing good work – enough of a challenge without mixing in your sad and pathetic desire for vainglory at the same time.

And be ready for the day your wife or husband says, “I’ve had enough. You can never do this again.” And just smile and say, “But, darling, you marred an actor.”

Then run.

The Priest as Actor - or Show Biz where It Don't Belong

2011-08-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

Now, the life of a working actor is crazy, but the reason we do this isn’t. The reason we do this is the most sane thing in the world. Or out of the world.

And to illustrate this, I’m going to talk about the Holy Mass.

But first.

Last week was hell week. In a moment of insane weakness I had agreed to co-produce and perform in Chesterton’s full-length legit play Magic at the American Chesterton Society conference in St. Louis, with a maximum three days of rehearsal, and lights, sound, costumes and set provided by Theater of the Word Incorporated – all out of the goodness of my heart (meaning we weren’t getting paid for it).

Then, the day following that performance, I had to drive three hours one way down to Paducah, Kentucky with my actress Andrea to perform Who Wants to Murder a Millionaire at – of all things – a wedding reception. This got me home at 12:30 am, a quick five hours of sleep, and up by 5:30 for a 6:00 am departure to Wichita with Kaiser Johnson, who had forgotten his lines in The Call, our show on vocations, in which he plays the lead, and which we were to perform at 3:00 pm at the Mid West Catholic Family Conference to an audience of three hundred teen agers. At noon I woke him up in the car and coached him on his lines while I was driving. With coaching, he was able to recall most of them (we had only performed the play once and only rehearsed it twice, three months prior); we got to Wichita at 1:30, had a quick sound check, ran lines with Maria and Dave, and then the four of us did the show (this being the third show Maria and Dave had done that weekend, and the third I had done that weekend, six performances of six different scripts between us). To our surprise, The Call went off without a hitch and was received by a thunderous standing ovation from the three hundred middle school and high school kids in the audience – a real triumph.

Then I had to go to Mass.

I was working or driving during the Vigil Mass times on Saturday and from 6:00 am on Sunday. It was now 5:00 pm and I was running out of options for a Sunday Mass. I drove to the church in Wichita where I was told there was a 5:15 Sunday Mass, but the Church was empty. Masstimes.org indicated a 7:00 pm Mass at the Newman Center in Wichita, but the Newman Center’s website said they were on the summer schedule, so I wasn’t sure 7:00 pm would be on, either. I then found on my phone a church nearby that supposedly had a 5:00 pm Sunday Mass. I’d be late, but I could still make it.

My GPS (whom we call “Gwen”) directed me to the church, a modern monstrosity a few miles away in a residential neighborhood. The church was packed. I walked in and could find no holy water or tabernacle, only two huge jumbo-trons and an all-black choir gettin’ down to some rock and roll spiritual. “I’m in the black church!” I thought – and sure enough, I was the only white guy there. Then I saw the banner, “Salem Methodist Church welcomes you.” I asked somebody where the Catholic church was, and was directed to the other end of the block.

The Catholic church was also packed. I struggled to find an open space in a pew. I had no idea how late I was, as the music minister (a guy my age only round and squat, built like most middle-aged music ministers, wearing glasses and bopping his head to the not-good-enough-to-be-in-Godspell-or-Jesus-Christ-Superstar hymn he was playing and which paled in comparison to the tune the African American Methodist Gospel Choir were no doubt still singing a block away) droned on an on. The lyrics seemed to be, “It’s all about meeeee, Lord! It’s all about me! It’s all about meeee, Lord! It’s all about me!” I gritted my teeth and tried to figure out where I was in Mass. “This sure doesn’t sound like the Psalm,” I said to myself.

No, it was the Offertory, and presently there stood before us all a figure in glowing and brilliant green. Good God, it was Stanford Nutting! Only better looking, more self-assured, much more effeminate, and tremendously proud to be “on stage”. This was, it seems, the priest.

Every movement was showmanship. Every gesture exquisite. Every other word ad-libbed. I kept praying that the consecration, at least, would be word for word, but it went something like this …

“After supper with his closest and dearest friends, who meant so much to him, he took the cup, gave the cup to his disciples, in a true spirit of sharing and fellowship, and with understanding and compassion said, ‘This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, which will be shed for absolutely all of you, every single one, regardless of your faith tradition, you who mean so very much to one another, so that sins may be forgiven and judgmentalism will end. Do this in memory of me.'”

Thus was Mass. Or maybe it wasn’t Mass. It was really hard to tell.

And I thought of Father Joseph Fessio, our benefactor, who had been at the Mid-West Catholic Family Conference with us, and who has for years been fighting for the reform of the Liturgy, and who celebrates ad orientem, facing liturgical east, facing the tabernacle, facing the same direction we face, offering for us on our behalf, the eternal sacrifice.

“It’s all about You, Lord. It’s all about You.”

I used to think the argument over the direction the priest faces a meaningless one. I used to think the bad art and architecture, the bad homilies, the horrendous music, did more to weaken the faith than the physical position of the priest.

But now I’m not so sure. In fact, I’m sure I was wrong.

If the priest faces the people (contrary to the way he’s supposed to face per the General Instruction of the Roman Missal), he’s performing a show – or at least that’s the temptation.

And while we actors must face the audience when we’re on stage performing a show, our inner attitude must be facing not the audience, not even our other actors, but instead must be facing the One to Whom we point and for Whom we are in this crazy business to begin with.

Then I went back to the bar at the Mid West Catholic Family Conference, and continued in the great tradition not only of the Catholic Church but of Drinking Actors such as Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. The cast party (such as it was) had begun. Kaiser Johnson was performing Eddie Izzard routines, Erik Pratt and I were discussing Shatner and the original Star Trek episodes, Dave was laughing and Maria was snorting as we ate and drank and thanked God for The Call He had given us.

And may we all turn ourselves around.

The Working Actor

2011-08-02T06:10:00.000-07:00

(Takes deep breath)

On Friday, July 22, my actress Maria Romine and I drove the 9 1/2 hours from St. Louis to Athens, Georgia, where on Saturday I gave a presentation on the show business of writing, and where I walked in a nearby cemetery in 110 degree heat index learning my lines for some of the ten different scripts we're producing in the next month and where a security guard stopped and drove me to campus when the cemetery closed, the old guy pointing out where all his family was buried in a Southern accent so thick I could hardly understand what he was saying, and where in the evening Maria and I performed Murder on the Disoriented Express, a show we hadn't done in two years, and then we got up early for Mass on Sunday and went to a nearby church where the Mass was all about some blonde, who stood at the lectern and told us what the homily was going to be about, and then after communion told us what the homily had been about except she dumbed it down to a point where I felt like I was watching Mr. Rodgers and then we got in our car and drove fourteen hours to Galena, Illinois, near Wisconsin, got up early the next morning and performed Mayberry R.I.P., a show we hadn't done in three years, finished, and drove six hours back to St. Louis, where on Wednesday morning I got up at 3:30 am to catch a 6:00 am flight to New England where I performed three shows on a train in Vermont with new actress Jenna Sullivan, both of us exhausted by projecting and running around sweating, with a quick return to St. Louis for a fund raiser performance Saturday night of a double-show of Mayberry R.I.P. (Act One in room A, followed by Act One in room B, followed by Act Two in room A, followed by Act Two in room B, followed by the Solution in room A, followed by the Solution in room B) in Carlinville, Illinois, doing a script I spent all morning adapting with jokes about local Carlinville politics, and during which I ran into the corner of a podium in room B while making my exit, knocking the wind out of me and leaving a nasty bruise and probably breaking a rib, and where we got a standing ovation (in room B), drove home and got up on Monday to begin a week where we try to fit in our only three rehearsals for G. K. Chesterton's play Magic, which we will be performing at this year's Chesterton Conference, before we leave for Wichita, Kansas (a six hour drive) where my cast will be performing The Great Adventure, in addition to the premiere performance of The Body of Christ (which we spent three days rehearsing in mid-July) and where on Sunday I'll join them to perform The Call (which we've done only once, back in April), but before which I will head to Paducah, Kentucky to perform Who Wants to Murder a Millionaire with Andrea Purnell (with whom I've never done the show before)- three hours down and three hours back - heading to Duluth, Minnesota (a ten hour drive) the following weekend to do a fund raiser for the Women's Care Center and a week of shows on the North Shore Scenic Railroad, after which we drive to New York for a performance at the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate - a show in which I play Dave's part, Dave plays Kaiser's part, and Erik plays my part - but today I woke up at 7:08 (because my alarm didn't go off) for a 7:10 interview on the Son Rise Morning Show on Sacred Heart Radio with Brian Patrick, who talked to me about distributism for twenty minutes, even though I thought we'd talk mostly about Theater of the Word.

Pretending in order to Get Real

2011-07-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

If God exists, then He is real. In fact, He is that which is Most Real. He is Ultimate Reality. He is more real than we are, for our reality is a participation in His.

Indeed, every human being communicates with other human beings in an attempt to discover and to share That which is Real. If there is no Reality, then there can be nothing to talk about - except to hear our own words bounce around or to feel better about ourselves.

But only fools or scoundrels communicate for selfish or meaningless reasons. All authentic communication is predicated upon Reality, the attempt to discover and share with one another That which is Real.

Even atheists believe this. Atheists simply claim God is unreal, a comfortable illusion; but the good and thoughtful atheists share our devotion to That which is Real (the bad and thoughtless atheists tell you nothing is real) and the well-intentioned atheists still serve God in seeking what is Real, even without knowing it is Him they seek.

But look at us - even at us Christians - and look at our miserable and pathetic devotion to the Unreal.

In our economy, we blow bubbles and ride them until they pop.

In our personal lives, we have virtual relationships or barring that we simply get off with internet porn.

In our politics, we pretend as if marriage is whatever we say it is, life begins when we say it does, and man is what we want him to be.

And we fight to the death to maintain the illusions, the Unrealities that comfort us.

But the Unrealities don't comfort us. God made death, sin, and hell so that the world would be Real and our choices Real choices.

Think about the people you know whose lives are the most unreal, the old fools trying to act young, the addicts ignoring the destruction their addiction brings, the morally blind and deaf who continue to repeat the same behaviors in their lives over and over again despite the despair this breeds in themselves and others.

We want our sex sterile, our emotions numbed, our awareness fogged.

And we are lonely and miserable in our house of cards, our hall of mirrors.

But every now and then we read a good book, see a good play, watch a good movie, hear a moving song, and everything changes for just a moment and we remember that - thank God - we are not sufficient unto ourselves and the pretense we have built, the lie in which we live, the gauze in which we wrap ourselves, is not the country club prison we make it to be.

It's sad to say this rarely happens in church. But it often happens in a darkened theater.

Thus all artists, and actors in particular, can function as a kind of priesthood, for the function of a priest is to bridge the human to the divine, and in the case of good dramatic art to bring to the audience a glimpse of the truth that lies behind the scenery, the Reality illuminated by the gels of the footlights.

It is our job to communicate with good art, with well-written plays, and in our playing and our make-believe, to show forth That which is Real.

May we never forget this awesome responsibility that we, who ourselves are sinners devoted to the comfort of the Lie, bear. May we always serve what is real, what is True - that is to say, What is God.

St. Genesius, pray for us.

Christians and Usury

2011-07-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

I have an article published in the Distributist Review this week. If you wander what usury is, what the Church teaches on it, how it is ruining our economy, and how Christians shold respond to it, click here!

The Actor as Child

2011-07-17T01:14:00.000-07:00

I had promised a post on the Actor as Priest, but before we get to that, let's talk for a minute about the vulnerability of acting - or the Actor as Child.

Actors wear masks and costumes, but in some ways they're quite naked on stage. Especially in an emotionally demanding role, an actor puts a very intimate part of himself out there for all to see, under the glare of spotlights, the gaze of the audience, the judgment of critics, the potential ridicule of the director. And actors do this because they are very trusting people, in a way.

And playing upon this, many directors or acting coaches will have actors do "trust falls" at rehearsal, in which an actor stands on stage, closes his eyes and simply plummets off, to be caught (he trusts) in the arms of his fellow cast members standing below (I would not advise doing this in a one-man show). This is meant to emphasize our dependence on one another and our need to abandon ourselves to the "experience", for being distrustful or closing one's heart can really block the creative process and hamper the kind of give-and-take actors need to develop with their peers in performance.

And actors tend to be vulnerable people to begin with, and both child-like in the good sense and childish in the bad sense. They are generally quite willing to trust and put their faith in something or someone (though most actors today are pagans and the last thing they'll do is trust in God).

This often opens actors up to the potential for serious abuse, some of it sexual, but most of it psychological. There are a ton of charlatans posing as acting coaches and directors at workshops and grad schools around the country, cult leader types who use mind games to mess with the actors under their care in order to bed their bodies and break their spirits. From what I hear, most grad school acting programs are simply Mind Games that you pay for.

And yet cynicism is the worst response to this. For cynicism in an actor or in anybody is a hardening of the heart. And as I said this hardening of heart chokes off the creative process.

For all artists need to keep this vulnerability, and all Christians need to have a vulnerability as well. We know Our Lord tells us that we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless we become like little children, but He also tells us something similar that's profoundly mysterious, something connected to being vulnerable - to being receptive.

In the Old Testament, David says to God, "With the pure thou dost shew thyself pure; And with the perverse thou dost shew thyself contrary." (2 Sam. 22:27) In the New Testament, God says to us, "Take heed what you hear. In what measure you shall mete, it shall be measured to you again, and more shall be given to you." (Mark 4:24)

These passages may not seem at first to be related to vulnerability, to circumcision of heart, or to becoming like children, but really they are. In some mysterious way, God - and all of life - responds to the approach we take, to the measure with which we measure, to the openness with which we hear the Word. We receive more than we expect when we don't shut ourselves off to the awful pain and splendor of life - and our cup overflows, with living water from flinty rock - if our cup is empty and ready to receive. It is the "cup of suffering", and if it is clean inside it will shine on the outside as well (see Mat. 23:26 & 26:39).

I have written elsewhere of the mystery of the soil, the strange way in which reception of the Word allows the potential life in the Word to come forth. Mark follows up the "measure for measure" speech in his gospel by going straight to this (Mark 4:26 & 27) - "And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow - how, he does not know."

Indeed, how we do not know. Our "know how" is less impressive than we think, and actors learn this all the time. "Know how" on stage only gets you so far. It's the presence of the Spirit that really matters, not your sophistication or technical prowess.

We do not "know how" the Word takes root and grows within us, but we do know that it can not do so without our willing reception of the Word, our cultivation of it - which requires at the very least a heart circumcised, broken like good soil by the plow of suffering, a heart open to the mystery that the seed contains. Only through our child-like vulnerability, trust, and openness (un-worldly-wise as these qualities are) can we become channels of grace - both on stage and off.

Thus actors must always be broken, broken like the alabaster box that contained the ointment that was poured upon Jesus' head, broken like the heart of Our Lord when it was pierced with a lance, broken like soil that the plow turns up to receive the seed, broken like the apostles who had nothing else to live for without Christ, broken like the pride of St. Paul knocked off his high horse, broken like an actor who's so broke can't pay his rent and whose heart is so sensitive that it shatters at the smallest of things.

For if we hear with good measure we will be hurt, we will be broken, and it is then that we will be able to Act.

The Meaning of Life and Why We Act

2011-07-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine was living in Chicago and he was miserable. Not because of the Cubs. And not because of toll booths. And not because of the winters!

He was miserable because he wasn't famous.

He was slaving away auditioning everywhere and doing some sort of comedy improv thing on local access cable TV and he was angry and sore that nobody noticed him. His whole life was focused on getting noticed! getting seen! getting famous!

And this is what happens to actors when they forget that it's not all about them. It's about the work.

But before I say that again, let's examine the question of The Meaning of Life

Earlier this week we had a backyard meeting of the ChesterBelloc Drinking and Debating Club, my men's only group that sits around discussing philosophy, life, religion, while arguing and drinking. Two of our members have tremendous faith - not faith in God, but faith in Evolution as the Answer to all Questions.

I finally got one of them (my favorite atheist, Steve) to admit the following:

From a subjective point of view, which is to say from the point of view of a human whose vested interest is the survival of his self and his species, man is better than other creatures. From an objective point of view, however (the point of view of an observer from space or an impartial eye in the sky), man is no better than any other creature. And the things that make man different from other animals - art, music, literature, will, reason, love - these things we value subjectively because they have a biological or evolutionary function in that they give us a reason to get out of bed in the morning, to eat, defecate and copulate. Culture, will and reason serve our animal existence by making us more adaptable and varied, etc.; in Steven's view the higher serves the lower, for really there is no higher or lower, it's all level.

Indeed, Favorite Atheist Steve was consistent enough to admit that only within the framework of life does life have meaning. Natural selection and adaptation are meaningful only because living things struggle to adapt and live - but from a purely impartial point of view, life has no inherent advantage over non-life: living matter is no better than non-living matter: indeed, something is not better than nothing, except for those selfish living somethings under the illusion that it is. Thus a rabbit exists only to make more rabbits and not to chew some grass and enjoy the beautiful day. We don't live to understand and appreciate and love; we understand and appreciate and love in order to live - for reason and will and even joy and laughter are only biological tricks to keep us eating and defecating and copulating so our kids can eat and defecate and copulate some more.

And this fascinates me.

Actor Erik with a K (our other man of faith) noted, "Are people better than animals? Let me put it this way, if a house were on fire and I had a chance to save either serial killer John Wayne Gacy or a dog, I'd save the dog."

"And I'd save John Wayne Gacy," I replied. "That's what makes me Catholic. Even the worst sinner is made in the image and likeness of God and is infinitely more valuable than all animals."

Now this does indeed all relate to acting - because either Steve is right that art, culture, music, reason, will, faith, love, have no intrinsic value, no objective value, are in and of themselves worthless, and are valuable only from our own points of view, and even then for reasons that are biological and chemical and deterministic; or I am right they have a transcendent value that rises above the dog-eat-dog world of natural competition and selection. "Prove that," Steve challenged me. "I can't," I replied, "You either see that or you don't."

But if you see that culture has value, that man has value, that life has value, then you can see that God probably does exist - for if any reality is transcendent, then the greatest reality must be transcendent. If reason is there - and it is - then life is not just about matter, for even if reason is a function of matter, reason transcends matter. If will is real, then there is a spiritual reality, for will is a spiritual thing. There is not just matter, there is form as well, as there is no matter without form. These unseen things (reason, will, form) are real and quite literally transcendent. So is beauty. So is goodness.

At any rate what you do see if something is better than nothing, if life is better than non-life, if man is better than a dog, if reason and will are better than robotics, if art is better than eating and defecating, and if good art is better than bad art, then, actors, listen up ...

FOCUS ON THE WORK.

You are made to make. You were created to create. "Ourselves we do not own" as Shakespeare says. It's not about you being the hero of public access cable TV, it's not about you being a matinee idol - it's frankly not about you at all. It's about truth, beauty and goodness - and those things are real, as real as matter and energy and biology - and they are of God. The idea of God is not an illusion to make us get out of bed. God does not serve our lesser selves. We drag the butts of our lesser selves out of bed in order to serve God; otherwise, what's the point? Literally. What's the point?

Use your talent for great things, for things beyond your self. Use your talent to serve God.

Otherwise you'll be miserable in Chicago, waiting 100 years for a World Series victory and 100 hours in traffic jams.

My next post: The Actor as Priest. Stay tuned.

Finding Direction

2011-07-09T14:08:00.000-07:00

Joan Roberts (left) and Celeste Holm backstage during the first Broadway run of "Oklahoma". They are the two surviving cast members. Joan is soon to be 93; Celeste is 94.

We sat there with my friend Joan Roberts, who played Laurey in the original Broadway production of Oklahoma, eating lunch in a Long Island restaurant. She was regaling us with a ton of stories about her days in vaudeville, the times she played the outdoor Muny Theater in St. Louis (in the 1930's), the time she auditioned for Cole Porter, how she helped Rogers and Hammerstein raise money to fund Oklahoma, and on and on. Maria and I were eating it up. But Actor Number Three (who shall remain nameless), a good guy, but a schulb, kept drifting off. How he could be disengaged during a lunch with this remarkable woman was beyond me. He looked desperately like he wanted to text.

Then the conversation turned toward Directing.

One of the funniest Matt Groening Life in Hell cartoons I ever saw was a drawing of a tombstone in a graveyard, on which was written the words HOPED TO DIRECT SOMEDAY.

That would have been me. I used to dream of directing. Webster University in St. Louis actually offers a B.A. in something they have the temerity to call "pre-directing", as if it's all that tough. Well, it's not.

But here's the thing about directing: it's a pain in the butt. It would be a blast if it weren't for the actors, but there's no way around the actors, so it's a pain in the butt.

Actor Number Three perked up for a minute and actually said something. "What do you do if you're in a play with a bad director? What do you do if he's giving you bad blocking or a wrong interpretation for your character?" (This will probably tell you a lot about my relationship with Actor Number Three).

"Tell him, Joan," I said to myself, "Tell him the virtue of OBEDIENCE, that mammoth gargantuan virtue that allows every actor to do his thing with serenity, casting all of his cares on to the director - the Director, who is the play's god, the figure who makes the final decision, the one whose word is law no matter what. Tell him!"

"The director?" she frowned. "Who's rear end is on the line during performance, his or yours? Who's going to get the applause? Who's going to get the cat calls? Who's got to make it work in the end? Ignore the director and do whatever you want!"

This was Joan Robert's advice to a Young Actor, based on literally 85 years in show business!

Well, I could understand what she meant. And the fact is some directors are simply awful and if they vanish the way they should after opening night and leave you to do all the work that people pay to see, well, why not do what works instead of what some guy who's not even there dreamed up?

But in fact Acting is indeed like Life and obedience is a virtue even when you're obeying someone who knows less than you do.

Take this Fr. Corapi situation. And this, I hope, is the last time I mention it.

What has finally calmed the waters is Fr. Corapi's superior doing what superiors and bishops ought to do - in this case, after years of not supervising Fr. Corapi - but doing it nonetheless.

When Fr. Corapi's superior said, "We have the goods on this guy. He is, for now, unfit for ministry, please do not follow him," the hurricane blew out and blew away. Certainly, the die-hards continue to drink the Kool-Aid, but the bulk of Fr. Corapi's supporters, who are well-meaning Catholics disgruntled with the lack of effective leadership in the Church, have backed off and have realized that something is indeed wrong with the man.

So what do you think would happen if the bishops would do what Fr. Corapi's superior did, and simply point out to Catholics that they are not to follow other Catholics who are publicly creating scandal? If the bishops followed canon law procedures and denied communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians, or ex-communicated the unrepentant ones who are building up a culture of death, what do you think the effect would be? Sure, we'd see the liberals howl, but a lot of them would simply shut up.

Vic Vacuous is right about one thing - we're in the midst of a Vacuum - and it's a power vacuum. We're seeing the level of dissent in the Church that we are - on both the right and the left - because the plays have been without Directors who take their jobs seriously enough to reign in those pains in the butts, those actors, who are under their care.

Joan Roberts will be 93 next Friday. Happy Birthday, Joan! Next time I take you to lunch, Actor Number Three will not be with us.

Because the dirty little secret is, when it comes down to actors vs. directors, the directors always win.

May the Lord send us more Good Directors.

It Ain't all about Show Biz

2011-07-05T22:42:00.000-07:00

The Fraternity of St. Genesius, in its wisdom, has its members pray an additional mystery of the Rosary every day, one of what I would call the Apocalyptic Mysteries (mysteries of hidden things revealed), in this case the Mystery of the Hidden Life of Jesus.

Why, I often wondered, would Actors and those who pray for Actors be asked to meditate daily upon the Hidden Life of Jesus, those years when Our Lord lived quietly with Joseph and Mary, before His public ministry - those years when He loved and blessed in many hidden and small ways?

Obviously, to remind us that it ain't all about show biz.

It ain't all about the big sermon, the throaty denunciation, the dramatic conversion. As Fr. Longenecker and St. Therese remind us, holiness is about small, un-noticed hidden acts of love and sacrifice.

We can still serve God if we don't hit the big time. We will still be loved if our pilot doesn't get picked up. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church if we have to retire to Robstown, Texas. Things will go on just fine, you know, even after we die.

Many of the actors who work for me are too young to remember Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson was as big as you can get. His Tonight Show was the pinnacle of the entertainment industry. Now Johnny is dead and half the people in the U.S.A. have no idea who he was.

Heck, Ringo Starr, my favorite Beatle, couldn't walk down the street without getting mobbed forty years ago. Now my YouTube videos get more views than his do.

But that won't last either, my friends.

Because even when you're as big as Kevin O'Brien, EWTN Rock Star, you're still smaller than the old lady in the nursing home who can't move her legs and whose kids don't come to visit, but who prays a Rosary every day and who in silent and hidden ways loved God and her neighbor her entire life.

Because it ain't all about show biz.

Idolatry and the Stewardship of Love

2011-07-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

I am supposed to be in the midst of blogging about Acting and the Faith, and maybe I am, but I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm not ... but then again, maybe I am.

Today we learned more of the truth about Fr. Corapi's fall from grace from his superior at SOLT. I originally suspected when I heard this news that Fr. Corapi's followers would dig in their heels and that Fr. Corapi would play this revelation as a violation of his due process, and that the rejection of truth would continue, as would the game of blaming the innocent. But, to my surprise, this seems to have been the turning of the tide. The revelation by SOLT today was not greeted by Father Corapi's supporters with skepticism, hatred of Bishop Mulvane, calls to storm EWTN, or anything other than resigned sadness.

Fr. Longenecker nails it today, twice. First, in his post that's directly about Fr. Corapi and in his post that's indirectly about Fr. Corapi, the latter post being very insightful and touching. And the comments on both posts are surprisingly level-headed and charitable! This is especially surprising, for, back in March, Fr. Longenecker first timidly offered the sensible suggestion that we ought not, you know, go so far as to idolize any particular priest - and he was brutalized and nearly crucified in his combox for daring to suggest such a thing.

And the reason Fr. Corapi has gone awry we can all understand, and we see it in many actors - Rock Star Syndrome. And the reason Fr. Corapi's supporters turned ugly and nasty for a while there we can also all understand - Othello Syndrome. They are two sides of the same coin.

Rock Star Syndrome

We can all understand Fr. Corapi and his temptations. I mean, sex drugs and rock and roll - that stuff sells because that stuff is fun. Father's fall is a very understandable one. I mean, the reason there's drugs and hookers is guys like drugs and hookers.

Now, I have a hunch there's more to be revealed about Fr. Corapi and his behavior - but for now, these particular sins, though disappointing in a priest, are sins common to the human lot. And common especially to actors, who are desperate for attention and power anyway. There is a secret delight in power and control in all sexual sins - at least there is for men - and the sex of rock stars, of men who are idolized and adored, is a very potent form of the power-high that is the spiritual thrill behind mere carnal pleasure. Rock Star Sex is sex for power's sake, for the sake of being idolized and adored, for the sake of pride and control.

But this sin of pride and control, this sin of feeding off of the hero worship our audiences seem to offer us, this sin of being idolized, of being on top, is balanced by another sin, a sin less understood, the sin of being at the bottom, at the foot of the idol, and of offering to that idol the deepest and dearest part of your soul.

Othello Syndrome - "loving not wisely but too well"

While I know of no actor who does not secretly desire to be idolized himself, I know of no actor who does not openly idolize another actor, a movie or TV star.

And the sin of idolatry is as wrong as it is because it is a sin of misplaced devotion, of misdirected love, of the willful disordering of the greatest thing in our hearts. The greatest thing in our hearts is our hunger for God and our capacity to love Him - and when this most precious gift is indulged and allowed to light upon anything less than what it's made to worship, when our God-urge satiates itself upon any created thing, we go horribly wrong - and, like Othello, we become horribly gullible and capable of the most violent and irrational acts. We go so deeply wrong because the best thing about us goes wrong.

As I wrote to a friend today, "Emotions run high on this issue because all of Father's critics and fans love him and love what he's done. It's our sense of betrayed love and trust that has made this ugly. We have seen the spectacle of a spectacular preacher fall spectacularly, and that hurts everyone involved. We feel like crying, 'My father, why have you abandoned us?'"

We have all been jilted and we have all been hurt, and so things have gotten messy; accusations and over-reactions abounding. But we must not forget - we are not to put our faith in princes or in the sons of men. For doing so is a sin worse than addiction to drugs or dalliance with prostitutes.

How This Really Applies to Acting

Actors are suckers. We are fools for love. We love, like Othello, not wisely but too well. We become, like Othello, jealous and easily manipulated by others. We love so much that we will pay people to put us on stage and call us interns. We love so much that we will pay good money to directors in grad school who emotionally and physically abuse us. We love so much that we will work for a fraction of what we're worth. We love so much that we get taken advantage of. Again and again.

We are right to love our craft and to be willing to sacrifice for our love. We are wrong when we fail to see that this vocation of ours is not just a call from God, but a call to God, a call to serve Him and not simply to serve others or our own careers.

Conclusion

Yes, Actors, we are in this because we want to be gods. But we are much more hungry to love God than we are to be God, for we know that being God is alien to our nature, but serving God fits like a glove. Devotion makes us happy - recognizing that will keep us from the worst sins of pride - but devotion must be properly placed and subject to renunciation and sacrifice.

Let us pray for Fr. Corapi, his bishop, his superior, his accuser, his victims, and for all of us who have not been the best stewards of our love - who have loved not wisely but too well.

How Not to Act

2011-07-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

Now of we course we all know actors are messed up individuals who desperately desire attention - me included. And we all know every actor wants to be the center of attention and become a big hit on the big screen and be adored by his countless fans - me included. And we all know that actors are eager to be carried around on people's shoulders and hailed as gods walking the earth - me included.

And the thing is actors know this about one another. And so we know that at cast parties, most of the talk will be about "myself". The leading lady will talk about herself, the leading man will talk about himself, and you'll interrupt every few seconds to say a word or two about yourself. Actors know this and realize that cast parties are almost always dull because of this, unless the cast has really come together during a show. Then cast parties can be a blast!

And how does a cast "come together"? By not behaving like actors when onstage.

Let's say it's your role in one play to carry a spear and stand behind the three or four actors who have dialogue in a given scene. All you're supposed to do is stand there and look like a spear carrier. But let's say, that in a desperate desire to be noticed, you decide to start mugging and making faces or fart noises, or even better - you let a rubber chicken drop from your pants! Now this is clever and creative and it will certainly get you noticed and achieve one of the main reasons you've become an actor. You'll be the center of attention.

And your fellow actors will kill you.

And you won't get the check.

Now the funny thing is that there's another force at work in the heart of the average actor. The average actor will perhaps stumble upon a show in which being noticed is not the most important thing - the play is, doing justice to the material is, the art is, and what the art points to is - a play where everyone is giving his all and the whole thing comes together and the audience loves it and suddenly, somehow, you realize you're a part of something much bigger than you are - even if you are simply carrying a spear. Suddenly you realize that you are part of a community, and that there is a communion at the heart of all this - a communion between the actors and the material, a communion betweeb the actors and his fellow cast members, a communion between all of this and the audience.

And then you start to see what sacrifice is. Sacrifice is skipping your big speech if your fellow actor has muffed a line and cut two pages and if going back and picking up your moment would be too awkward. Sacrifice is going on stage even when you're deathly ill because there's no understudy and the show must go on. Sacrifice is living a life of penury and privation because you want nothing more than to ply your craft, as it is the thing you're called to do and you love it beyond belief. (Marvin Hamlisch captured that perfectly in the best song from A Chorus Line.)

And of course this all applies to life. In life, sacrifice is the essence of love. Selfishness is the essence of sin. Selfishness is territorial and isolating; sacrifice is self-giving and unitive.

Get ready to get ticked off at me again, readers, but here we go.

If you support torture despite the clear teaching of the Church of Christ, you are being selfish, territorial and sinful.

If you practice contraception despite the clear teaching of the Church of Christ, you are being selfish, territorial and sinful.

If you support lying for certain causes despite the clear teaching of the Church of Christ, you are being selfish, territorial and sinful.

If you support something called marriage between members of the same sex despite the clear teaching of the Church of Christ, you are being selfish, territorial and sinful.

If you hate your pastor because he's allowed the music minister to do away with the teen chorus your kid sings in, or he won't let the girl scouts read the gospel at the girl scout Mass, or he won't let your kid be confirmed without some sort of preparation, you are being selfish, territorial and sinful.

If you assign the darkest of motives to the hearts of people who are doing things you don't like (such as criticizing a popular priest who's gone awry), you are being selfish, territorial and sinful.

And when you're being selfish, territorial and sinful, you are not being a good actor.

Going Up

2011-07-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

From my point of view as an actor and producer, any show is a good show if the audience doesn't try to kill you and if you get the check.

My favorite actor was killed by the audience and never got the check.

Today, July 1, is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and tomorrow, July 2, is the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Fraternity of St. Genesius to which I belong, has as our co-patrons the Immaculate Heart of Mary and St. Genesius, patron saint of actors. In the Fraternity we pray daily for those in the theatrical and cinematic arts that they may be granted the grace St. Genesius had, who, while appearing on stage in a play mocking the Christians, received a miraculous conversion of heart during a mock-baptism. This conversion so struck him that he "went up" as we say in show biz. He dropped his lines and began to ad-lib - only he ad libbed a spontaneous witness for Christ - which did not fit in a play the whole purpose of which was to ridicule Jesus and His followers. This did not go over well with his fellow actors, or with the Roman emperor, for whom this play was being performed, and who was sitting right there in the audience. Genesius was imprisoned, told to recant, refused, and was martyred - finding a true baptism of blood to answer the false baptism on stage.

So not only was Genesius killed because of this performance - I'm almost certain he also did not get the check.

Anyway, I have for a while considered the time between the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Feast of St. Genesius (which is Aug. 25, also the feast of the patron of my archdiocese, St. Louis) to be a kind of third season of penance, in addition to Advent and Lent. So join me then, on this blog, between now and then, between these two great feasts, for fifty days or so of suffering! Or at least for reflections upon the relationship between Acting and the Faith.

One of the great connections between Acting and the Faith is also a great potential temptation. It is what Touchstone calls "The virtue of IF."

Pretending is a wonderful gift. Man, alone of the all the animals, has the ability to pretend, to make-believe. As actors we don masks and pretend to be what we are not, we act out stories that the audience knows are not literally true but true at a deeper level: for the purpose of masking is revelation - we mask that we might unmask, we veil ourselves onstage that the veil might be lifted offstage. For the stage is a microcosm for life, a toy theater in which we get a perspective on existence itself. The proscenium is a frame in which we can safely, for two brief hours, view reality from a distance.

Now the flipside of this, the temptation I talked about, is Unreality (see yesterday's post, "Not Built with a Full Deck"). Actors are so good at make-believe that we tend to apply this talent to our lives, we tend to live in a fiction, to make our beds in a house of cards. And actors aren't the only ones who do this. We all tend to devote ourselves to things that are unreal, and some of us give our whole lives to the unrealities we serve.

Serving Unreality, devoting ourselves to our private fictions, giving ourselves over to mere pretense, is idolatry. When the stars in your eyes don't lead you to the stars of heaven, you and your life become unreal. All the world may be a stage, but when your private stage becomes all the world, you've got problems. When American Idol slips into American Idolatry, we need help.

"For the worship of infamous idols is the reason and source and extremity of all evil." - Wisdom 14:27. Scripture tells us here that idolatry is the SOURCE of all evil, for idolatry is putting a substitute in place of God, and living for the unreal is living for idols, which these days tend not to be statues or pictures but false images of ourselves and of others, to which we give credence, we give the gift of faith proper only to God.

This is why so many actors are gay. I'm being quite serious here. You will find a disproportionate number of active homosexual men in the theater not simply because they get to wear make-up but because they get to wear make-believe. For perversion is the ultimate form of Unreality. There is a secret thrill to denying our natures. Twisting our desires away from where they would normally and powerfully drive us, twisting them toward something utterly unreal, something affirmed only by our own will, something the love of which will bear no fruit - giving ourselves over to a hollow, empty fraud - this is vanity, this is idolatry, this is sin. And the exact same thing applies to contraception, which is simply the heterosexual's way of making his own eros "unreal" - sterile, make-believe, self-indulgent, self-consumed and self-consuming.

Here I insert my caveat - sodomites and birth control junkies are simply sinners like the rest of us and should be loved like the rest of us. We all are idolators to some extent, all devoted to our private, consoling fictions, our little perversions that give us an illusion of power and control and that keep us from the great reality beyond the footlights.

The point here, though, is not simply the potential that play acting has to draw us to sin, but the fact that making believe is a great gift, and an element of the virtue of faith. This is why its misuse is so tragic - tragic in the most true (and dramatic) sense of that word. May we have the grace to use this gift to serve Him Who is Most Real, and not our own legion of unrealities.

Anyway, this will serve as the start of Fifty Days of Meditation on Acting and the Faith and on how we can be better Actors and more Faithful.

Not Built with a Full Deck

2011-06-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

Back in January I blogged about things that are "fruit" or "unreal". This Unreality is related to the Catholic Ghetto, which I have written about at length. But you find Unreality all about you and not just in the pews.

For example, most of my actors live Unreal lives. They loom large in their own minds as brilliant, engaging people, as stars, as idols. And sometimes they are quite charming people. Sometimes they're just unemployed drug addicts. But they almost never seem to have any grasp on reality or on life beyond themselves. This makes it very difficult to work with them.

And we all know people who are Unreal in varying ways, whose lives and whose families just don't seem "down to earth", whose whole way of living seems contrived. Some people live as if their fecal matter doesn't stink, or as if the house of cards they've built were reality - someplace they could live in, as if their hall of mirrors were made of solid oak. And this applies to Christians and non-Christians, to people of all walks of life.

The lure of Unreality, of coming up with a substitute for what God has actually given us, is almost irresistible. Truth is stranger than fiction, says Chesterton, because we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

Of course we need to strive for Reality in religion, to adore not idols made by our own hands and minds, but God Himself. This is hard, as Newman points out, for we are bound to profess to be more Christian than we really are, to aim higher than we attain on a daily basis, and thus we are bound to be hypocrites to some degree.

But the problem is not so much aiming to be Real and falling shy of the mark as aiming at something altogether Unreal.

A book I recently finished is Authenticity - a Biblical Theology of Discernment by Fr. Thomas Dubay. Fr. Dubay argues that Authenticity is the hallmark of one's relationship with Christ, that Authenticity is the doorway to holiness.

This makes sense. For if God is anything, He is Reality: He is That Which is Ultimately and Completely REAL. The more real we become, the more we become like God - which is what sanctification is all about.

This is why humor is so important. With humor, we can laugh at who we really are, under our pretenses, behind our masks, beneath the cosmetics of Unreality. There have been those who have suggested to me that it's not right to make fun of fellow Catholics behaving badly; but if we can't laugh at our own sins, we're sunk - sunk beneath a tide of make-believe, an ocean of illusions.

We are lousy smelly sinners who pretend to be more than we are, and whose justification and salvation starts with God and hinges on our acceptance of Him. And if we can laugh at ourselves and our pretentiousness we can chase the devil away, we can rid ourselves of all our own conceits and become far less conceited in the process.

May we let the Lord of Many Mansions build us into Living Stones, and may we let fall our flimsy houses of cards. And may we have the grace to laugh at them as they crumble!

Removing my USCCB Rose Colored Glasses

2011-06-29T14:51:00.001-07:00

This is good. Chrisopher Patrick, in a comment here, says to me ...

" ... so much of your career is dependent upon Church sponsorship (do you think you'd have a gig on EWTN if you engaged in regular criticism of bishops who deserve to be criticized?) No one appears on EWTN TV or radio who is critical of bishops who fail to defend or teach the Faith. ... Try removing your USCCB-issue rose colored glasses and see if the condition of the Church isn't a good bit more dire than you are allowed to say (and keep your job)."

So now I understand a bit why people like Michael Voris' video that I parodied here. They actually believe what he says, and they think that people like Mark Shea and me really somehow are "professional Catholics" on Church payrolls who are afraid to criticize bishops.

Well, I can't convince people like Christopher Patrick that I'm not on some Church payroll somewhere, but I can do this:

Christopher, listen up!

MOST BISHOPS ARE FAILURES. Most bishops have abrogated their teaching authority and have allowed apostacy to run rampant in their dioceses. With few exceptions, Cardinal Burke being foremost among them, the bishops are more like lame administrators than they are heirs to the apostles.

THE CHURCH IN AMERICA IS A REAL MESS. I agree with Michael Voris' general take on things - the liberals in particular have really messed things up. It is indeed "dire", as you phrase it.

"THE USCCB IS AS USEFUL AS TEATS ON A BULL." I'm quoting something a priest friend of mine once told me, and I agree completely.

THE PREACHING OF FR. CORAPI AND MUCH OF THE TEACHING OF MICHAEL VORIS IS SPOT ON, BOLD, FEARLESS, AND VERY MUCH NEEDED. This is why I am criticizing them both. They are too important to let them slip into the error of factionalism and disobedience without being called out for it.

Hope that helps.

We're on the same team. Let us pray for one another.