Rock Stars Then and Now . . .

This just in from my “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” files. No doubt most of you, like I, listened to at least some of the music these rock stars performed over the last 40 years. Once upon a time, they were young and firm and beautiful. That's how I remember them, or at least those of them who interested me, way back when I was young and firm and thought of myself as beautiful.

So, when I ran across those pictures, and these, juxtaposing how some of these famous people used to look with how they look today, I was reminded of Scripture's admonitions about how fleeting this life is and how quickly our youth and beauty fade. Not even rock stars can escape it. It reminds me of how, in God's eyes, money, influence, and pulchritude (ah, the pulchritude of youth!) are ultimately meaningless. Seeing these pictures was for me a good, salutary reminder of how I need to keep my eyes fixed on what really matters.

Job 14:2 — “He comes forth like a flower, and withers; he flees like a shadow, and continues not.”

Eccl. 2:1, 11 — “I said to myself, 'Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.' But behold, this also was vanity. . . . Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

Psalm 90:6 — “in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.”

1 Peter 1:24 — “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls.”

James 1:11 — “For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.”

Grace Slick (seriously)

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Your Oxymoron for the Day

Photographer captures tragic final moments of Chinese firefighter lost while cleaning oil spill

“July 16, 2010, an oil pipeline explosion accident happened in Dalian, the fire was put out after 15 hours of burning. The cause of the accident was still under investigation. According to CCTV, about 400,000 gallons of oil was spilled into the Yellow Sea, which heavily polluted over 160 square kilometers of the sea water. (The BP oil spills at the Gulf of Mexico was over 100 million gallons)

“(From Daqi) A photographer, in 334 seconds, captured the death of a firefighter when cleaning up the oil spill.

“Out of curiosity, a photographer from Zhejiang aimed his camera at the Dalian firefighters cleaning up the oil spill in the ocean. He said, “never thought he would have died…”

“Two firefighters are cleaning up the water pump in the ocean.

“Zhang Liang cuts the rope line between the floating water pump and the fishing boat . . .” (continue)

Prelapsarian Mel Gibson

This 3-minute video clip of Mel Gibson's opening monologue for "Saturday Night Live" in 1989 features him talking about his career long before his plunge from the apotheosis of celebrity he came to enjoy — 21 years before, to be exact. Given all that has befallen him recently, his comments here are weirdly, ironically prescient. Watch, and you'll see what I mean.

I'll be in the air tonight on Catholic radio

Hubba, hubba. I'll be fielding questions from callers today during the first hour of the “Catholic Answers Live” broadcast (6:00 to 7:00 p.m. ET). You can catch it on a Catholic radio station in your area, if you don't have one near you yet (they're popping up all over the place) you can also listen live online. I hope you'll tune in.

Breaking news

Dramatic Pictures of Recent Storms and the Damage They Caused

Click here for 35 more pictures.

A visual reminder of the importance of 1 Peter 5:8-9

For the purposes of this video, I offer an analogy:

Alligators are to humans in a boat on a river what the devil and his minions are to humans in the Barque of Peter steering toward salvation. They can't get you if you're close to the Lord, are properly armed, and remain inside the boat. But heaven help him who loses his weapons of the spirit and ventures out of the boat into the water. Just listen to what Fr. Corapi says about that.

It's a potent reminder of why, after imploring the Lord for our spiritual safety, we should also remember to invoke the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Michael the Archangel. After all, they know how to deal with the infernal "alligators" out there right now, just looking for someone to devour.

Do you ever feel like telling someone to shut up and sit down?

That's basically what canon lawyer Edward Peters did the other day to Steve Kellmeyer, though he did it temperately, which I'm sure gave his message all the more impact. Dr. Peters reacted to Kellmeyer's vituperation against Dr. Janet Smith, a widely respected professor of moral theology at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, and one of Christopher West's defenders in the recent imbroglio over the latter's "Theology of the Body" methods and message. Kellmeyer has been a fierce and persistent critic of West, as Mark Shea recently observed with great bemusement.

(Note: Legitimate criticism of Christopher West's methods is not the problem. Plenty of thoughtful Catholics have come down on both sides of that controversy. Rather, the problem is the acrimonious way in which some, such as Steve Kellmeyer, have prosecuted the issue.)

I cannot say that I know Dr. Smith well, though I have had brief conversations with her, here and there over the years, and my wife and I once shared a very pleasant private meal with her in Munich after a conference at which Dr. Smith and I spoke. I have nothing but respect and admiration for her and her long history of excellent service to the Catholic Church, and thus it pained me, as it obviously pained Edward Peters and, I'm sure, her many friends and admirers, to see her unjustly attacked. That's why I'm glad to see people come to her defense, especially Dr. Peters' response to the canon law argument which Steve Kellmeyer unwisely employed in his recent foray against her.

As for Steve, I've known him for many years, though not well, and my impression of him has always been that he is a highly intelligent and gifted man with a sincere desire to explain, defend, and promote the Catholic Faith. To the extent he uses his gifts prudently and charitably to accomplish that goal, I applaud him and wish him all success, especially of the spiritual variety. But to the extent that he undermines that worthy goal by being gratuitous, mean-spirited, petty, and querulous (as, sadly, he has been toward people like Janet Smith and Christopher West) Peters, Shea, and the others who are telling him, essentially, to shut up and sit down are rendering a much needed service. Not everyone who is nice to you is a friend, and not everyone who is harsh with you is an enemy. I hope he heeds their admonitions, cools down, and then resumes his work calmly and without the acerbity from which it currently suffers.

Did you hear the one about how Archbishop Burke was "promoted out" of the US?

That's what a great many of his Stateside critics would have you believe. But given the Archbishop's steady rise in prominence, influence, and his accumulation of real power within the Roman curia, I'd say his critics are really just whistling past the cemetery. They know that he represents and champions the very things that a great many of them are implacably opposed to (e.g., the Usus Antiquior Missae, a clear, unambiguous, orthodox presentation of Catholic doctrine, confronting obstinately dissenting "Catholic" politicians and others who promote abortion, Catholic moral teaching on issues on sexual issues, etc.).

Thus, the higher Archbishop Burke rises and the more powerful he becomes, Deo volente, the more effervescently will evaporate their hopes and dreams and fantasies of such things as women in the priesthood, the Church's abandonment of its teaching on the immorality of contraception and homosexual acts, etc.

Catholic commentator Diane Korzeniewski provides the salient facts about His Grace's ascendancy plus a thought-provoking question about just how high he might rise.

Well, we're movin on up,

To the east side.

To a deluxe apartment in the sky.

Movin on up,

To the east side.

We finally got a piece of the pie.

Fish don't fry in the kitchen;

Beans don't burn on the grill.

Took a whole lotta tryin',

Just to get up that hill.

Now we're up in the big leagues,

Gettin' our turn at bat.

As long as we live, it's you and me baby,

There ain't nothin wrong with that.

Well, we're movin on up,

To the east side.

To a deluxe apartment in the sky.

Movin on up,

To the east side.

We finally got a piece of the pie.

Do kids really need a dad AND a mom? Why not two dads or two moms?

Last week, on my “Open Line” radio show (Thursdays, 3-5 ET), I took a call from a listener who wanted some advice on how to talk to a “gay marriage” proponent about why it's better to have a mom and a dad versus some other combination. I tried to offer a few points for consideration. Please click the image to launch the audio clip, or click here.

Meet Rory

I admit, when I first saw this satirical GOP-sponsored commercial, I thought it was pure satire. In other words, I thought there was no way that Harry Reid's son, Rory Reid, the Democrat candidate for governor of Nevada, was really dropping his last name from much of his public campaign outreach. But then I checked out his official campaign website and was . . . not really surprised, actually . . . to see that that's pretty much what he's doing — campaigning mainly as "Rory."

True, that move has worked in the past for well-known and widely admired political icons like Teddy (Roosevelt), Ike and, more recently, Hillary. But Rory? Mmm, not so much.

A Secular Media View of the "Catholics Come Home" Campaign

Catholics everywhere are deeply distressed by the priestly sexual abuse scandals that have convulsed the Church over the past decade, but it seems that Boston-area Catholics have been among the most traumatized by them. In a certain sense, Boston was the epicenter of the scandal-quake that rocked the Church in the U.S., its aftershocks reverberating in Ireland, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere.

This was made clear to me several years ago when I arrived at a suburban Boston parish where I was to give a lecture that evening. To my astonishment, about two dozen men and women were demonstrating with chants and protest signs on the front steps of the church. I had never seen anything like it in all the years I've been doing this work. Drawing closer, I read the signs and saw that they were protesting Cardinal Law and the Archdiocese for their handling of the whole mess, especially of notorious offenders such as John Geoghan, Paul Shanley, Robert Gale, etc. Most likely, it was a contingent of "Voice of the Faithful" folks waving the signs. I didn't ask. But it definitely made an impression on me.

Sadly, many thousands of demoralized New England Catholics have left the Church in the wake of the scandals. Last November, and again this past March, during two week-long speaking tours of parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston, I had the occasion to talk with many Catholics who confirmed that. It seemed that practically everyone had a friend or family member who abandoned Catholicism and who identified the scandals as a major reason, if not the reason for their departure.

Well, there is a new and encouraging chapter being written in the history of the Church in the Northeast in part due to a highly effective media outreach being undertaken in the Archdiocese of Boston aimed at encouraging fallen-away, alienated, angry, and/or in some other way disaffected Catholics to come home. Appropriately enough, the media outreach is called Catholics Come Home, and their extremely well-produced commercials and other resources have already helped literally tens of thousands of former Catholics and a significant number of non-Catholics come home to the Catholic Church. I've been personally affiliated with Catholics Come Home, both as a supporter and as a consultant, for the past 3 1/2 years. (My work for them took place 3 years ago, when I authored all the original content for their website.)

I'm keenly interested in seeing how things go with their ongoing media outreach in major metropolitan areas around the U.S. That's what this video clip caught my eye. It's a news report by WGBH, a Boston-based radio & television conglomerate that blankets New England. I found their coverage of the recent Catholics Come Home campaign in the Archdiocese of Boston to be quite interesting, especially as it came at this issue from a decidedly secular vantage point. Check it out.

Photo of the Day

For your captioning pleasure . . .

Practical advice from a former atheist on how to evangelize atheists

N.B.: Jennifer's conversion story — from a born-&-raised atheist to a convinced Catholic — will appear in the next issue of Envoy Magazine (vol. 9.4). Her website is conversiondiary.com.