…not blogging for a little while.

…taking care of some stuff that has sprung up.

…very proud of his wife.

…otherwise fine.

One of the things I noticed from people’s comments was that very few people read the entire post, or perhaps they read it and chose not to consider its content.  This being the Catholic Blogosphere, this is unremarkable.

I was struck by how many people, either directly or indirectly, assumed that Jayme and I were just seeking career advancement and money.  We do okay, but anybody who reads this blog knows that I am a pastoral minister, so the idea that we are out for money is laughable.  And I wonder if our genders were reversed, how many people would have suggested that.

A number of people said things along the lines of “people just want you to have children” too. Disagree with me, sure, but at least give me something deeper than, “people are just excited.”  Considering that they were commenting on a blog that frequently explores the relationship between capitalism and abortion, I’m a bit confused by this.  Are only the undesirable parts of sexual mores related to the social system?

I am excited that I thought of this whole “American Social Religion” thing.  Its the first original theological thought I have had in a while.  I’d like to explore it more in a post sometime down the line.

[1] Also, it has been a long time since I had to write well, and it was nice to be put through my paces again.

It was when I was 14 or 15.  My Grandfather had fully succumb to Alzheimer’s, and out of nowhere he began speaking in Flemish.  My Grandmother immediately made him stop.  This confused me, he would go to the BK club to have a beer, his desk had a Belgian flag on it and he even self published a book entitled The Belgians of Indiana, a book that outlined the immigration of Flemish Americans to the Mishawaka area.  So why begrudge a man who’s mind was slowly slipping away his native tongue?

I’ve experienced similar attitudes at the parishes I’ve worked at.  Meet a nice old Italian or Irish lady, and ask them if they would ever visit their homeland.  Four out of five times you will hear “That Hellhole?  I left on purpose!”

To this day this event still baffles me.  ”What are the rules with this sort of thing?”  I guess, play Rolle Bolle at the BK but absolutely do not speak Flemish while you do so.  I suppose its a moot point, but when I think about how my Grandfather fell back on Flemish when he couldn’t remember English anymore…well sometimes I still think he deserves an answer.

After some investigation I’ve determined that this is the manifest from the ship my Grandfather came over on.

The Flemish American is a blog chronicling the contributions of Flemish immigrants to American culture.  Very interesting, especially for history buffs.

Most Belgian immigrants moved to Northern Wisconsin, mostly from the French speaking regions in the South of the country.  The archive has a lot of interesting information.  This collection includes photos, oral histories and an architectural survey.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to play any of the oral histories on my computer.

For those of you not in the loop, the Catholic blogosphere is this very ugly place where people judge each other, call each other names, make ridiculous claims they feel no need to back up and on the rarest occasion talk about Catholicism.  For a good take on the sort of absurdity that flies here, notice conversations about whether married deacons should abstain from conjugal union with their wives.

Usually these sort of shouting matches are tempered by cooler heads calling for “charity.”  ”Disagree with each other if you will, but at least be ‘charitable’ to your opponents,” these people will say.  Of course, it being the Internet, these sorts of appeals are largely ignored.

But why?  I have come to suspect that its precisely this emphasis on “charity” that keeps the Catholic blogosphere angry.  ”Charity” you see is ill equipped to deal with discourse, it always has been and it always will be.  Charity is first of all a virtue and one that–like its sister mercy–requires some inequality between parties in order to be discharged.  Mercy assumes one party is disposed to harm another and does not.  Similarly, Charity assumes one party has the ability to help another person and does.  What the Catholic blogosphere labels “charity” is probably more likely “mercy” because there is no helping involved.  Catholic bloggers who are concerned with being charitable, if they were true to their word, would go out of their way to assist their opponents in better construing their points.

Second, in the Blogosphere as a whole and the Catholic Blogophere in specific, the entire point is the “democratization” that the Internet demands and predicates which wiped out any functional inequality that may have existed.  Anybody who can get to a library with an Internet connection can run a blog on any subject.  They are never required to reveal their own names.  Because there is no functional inequality, we must assume that “charitable blogging” is primarily concerned with educational inequality.  This too is largely masked by online anonymity.

What then should be governing our online conversations?  I suggest “manners,” mainly the one’s your mother taught you.  People born in the Midwest know this all to well.  Rich or poor, privileged or not, in the Midwest the fact that “nobody is any better than anybody else” is worked into you from birth.  Our manners are part of what makes us humane and civilized, and when I look at people shouting at each other online, that’s usually missing.  Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of Catholic bloggers accusing each other of being Nazi’s for example, they said “I think this person is coming from a serious place and trying to understand their faith, but I disagree and here’s why…”  This assumes no inequality.  It is not a virtue per se (er, not a moral one at least).  It does not demand we know our opponents.  It does require that we love them, or at least go through the motions, so that real love could eventually bloom.

Respectuflly,

AdamV

ps I think online anonimity can be a good thing

In the middle ages people didn’t leave their huts from late December to late February.  I think that’s actually a pretty good way to go about it.

My first memory of Dungeons & Dragons was sometime in seventh grade.  Some kids at summer camp wanted to spend their day playing D&D instead of being outside, and the counselors made them go out.  Later that school year (still seventh grade) I had another “run in” so to speak.  On Thursdays I would sneak downstairs after my parents went to bed to watch new episodes of Star Trek, rather than wait the next day to watch them on my VCR.  Usually this meant sitting through the 11 o’clock news.  One night the main story involved some teenagers who lived not far from me (and who I knew, in passing, but knew well enough) had kidnapped some neighborhood pets and killed them.  Their blood they used to “roleplay” a scene from Vampire:  The Masquerade.  At the time my big reaction was, “Wow, I actually know these people.”  As an easily spooked 11 year old, seeing this on the news scared me to the core.

At the same time, I had a couple of friend’s whose older brothers played D&D and they were really nice guys.  And my friends were all good too.  Many of those friends, as we got into High School, would play D&D as well.  Occasionally, I would get invited to join them.  But I always…didn’t.  That experience that I mentioned in the last paragraph, the gut feeling of disgust stuck with me well into high school (although I knew better than to stereotype my friends).  And in college, it just sort of never came up.  On the rarest of rare occasions I would be reminded that role-playing games exist.

In graduate school, my friend Matt recommended a computer game called Neverwinter Nights to me.  I run an operating system called Linux, and very few games are made for it, so the opportunity to play a well polished game was one I didn’t want to pass up.  I really liked it…a lot.  So much that I thought I’d like to give regular Dunegeons & Dragons a try.  So I got the “core books” off the internet, and learned the basic rules.  I even tried to play a game with my brothers (which went poorly).  I went to my local hobby shop and he pointed me to the Pittsburgh RPGA.  When I first emailed the person, I found out that they play every other Saturday.  I RSVPed to attend and showed up and then was informed I would have to observe.  Bummed out I obliged them so I could learn how to play D&D properly, and made arrangements to play next time in person.  And when I showed up again, I was told I would have to observe.  The Pittsburgh RPGA’s online website isn’t really that helpful either.  Anyways, after that I was told that I should, instead, join the meetup group.  I did, but you just sort of join…and then you’ve joined.  There’s not really been any follow-up.

Finally, I watched a documentary called The Dungeon Masters.  Which really wasn’t very good, and didn’t feature anything related to rpg’s.  It mostly reinforced a bunch of stereotypes.

That pretty much sums up my knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons.  What has my overall impression been?  First of all, from the outside, Dungeons and Dragons looks like a lot of fun.  Second, whether something is catered to introverts or not, attempts to organize anything, especially just setting up a framework for people to organize themselves, usually end up being extroverted in nature.  Third, despite rhetoric to the contrary gaming is a bit too much of a closed fortress.  Inside jokes and complicated rules don’t really help.  I think WotC has taken some steps in the right direction with this last point.  Still, I think they need to do a better job.

UPDATE: One last observation.  For a game, many of the players seemed to be taking things deathly seriously, at least the times I’ve seen it played.  I doubt this experience is universal, and I consider the observation more interesting than damning.  But still.

The next step is to get a home improvement loan and start to overhaul the house.  We originally were going to gut and replace the bathrooms, improve the energy efficiency of some of the windows and replace the basement door with something more secure.  Unfortunately, it looks like there is some problems with the flashing where the  porch roof meets the house wall and we might have some leaks.  We are getting moisture in the basement right under that wall, and some mold is forming on our baseboards and window frames.  There may be some mold in the walls, I don’t know if replacing the flashing (if that’s even the problem) will fix that, or even if its very bad.  So that might mean potentially ripping out some walls.  We are also thinking of increasing the number of windows we replace to keep the heat in during the winter.  When I think of all the debt we will incur to do this, it makes my head spin.

The silver lining is, of course, living in a better house.  And actually having functioning bathrooms.  And having learned about various problems with owning a house and how to fix them, which we probably wouldn’t have had to do with a newer house.