Subsidiarity and Small Towns: Why They Matter

When I visited Ireland in my freshman year of college with my rugby team, we went to a town on the west coast called Doolin. It was enchanting. The small cottages, shops, and taverns hugged the cobblestone streets that shimmered from a recent rain. We went into one of the taverns and heard a man singing Irish ballads l never heard before but never forgot about afterward. It was as if the town had always been there. In my ignorance, I had just stumbled upon it while never knowing any place like it ever existed. It told a story older than my home country. There was no need for anyone to tell that story. It was just there and it told itself. That town was the essence of subsidiarity. No big company or government built it, but it represented everything its countrymen lived and loved. It didn't need any modern amenities because it existed before the modern world came up with amenities and survived just fine without them for centuries. It had everything it needed, and that included nothing modern society said it needed. There may have been wifi in the town, but I wouldn't have known. The outside world subsided long before hitting the streets of Doolin. There are many towns like it throughout the world--towns where subsidiarity survives--and the people living there are just fine, actually. According to the Catechism: The principle of subsidiarity is a teaching according to which a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need (CCC, 1919). Subsidiarity means every task is the responsibility of the community most closely impacted by the task, and that community should only reach out when its own resources don't suffice for completing the task. The principle is not stating that tasks ought to be allocated that way, or that tasks should be bestowed upon communities in that way; any more than an apple should hit the ground when it falls from the tree. Subsidiarity is not something that needs to be made so. It's just the way it is. It's the natural order of things. But when corrupt human institutions get in the way of the natural order, subsidiarity subsides. Then is when we need to talk about how things should be, because then the natural order is interrupted. Then big businesses and big governments should step aside and take a laissez-faire approach to the affairs of local communities. It's sad though, because neither the Democratic nor the Republican base truly supports subsidiarity. They may claim to in order to get more votes, but their platforms mostly support policies that favor more government and big business involvement in our everyday lives. Very few major politicians actually support small businesses and smaller government. During the damn panic, big businesses and big governments worked together while small businesses struggled to make it. Big businesses could afford to shut down stores and services. Small businesses can't. Big businesses and big governments can afford to live in a make-believe world. Small communities and small businesses that have to survive in the real world cannot. And yet, smaller is still better. Smaller is bigger because it's more tangible and more real. The smaller things in life are heavy and substantial, gritty and cumbersome. The bigger something gets the faker it becomes. I love going to Amish country in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It always surprises me when I go there to see how well-organized their small self-sufficient society is. I'm not familiar with any other Amish region, but in south-central Pennsylvania there's a sprinkling of beautiful little towns that hearken back to simpler times. That whole vintage America mindset stretches up to the Lehigh Valley as well in towns like Stroudsburg and Quakertown; beautiful quaint villages dotting the countryside. When I go out there, I get the sense that people still understand what it takes to make a community. In this day and age, maybe those towns aren't completely self-sufficient, but they lend to the vision of a better, more practical, more natural, more American America. Somehow, we need to build an authentic Catholic community, similar to what Catholics are building in Veritatis Splendor, Texas, which seems to be inspired by not only Pope John Paul II's encyclical of the same name but also by Rod Dreher's Benedict Option. On the community's website it states: Veritatis Splendor includes a grand oratory and seven institutes of truth professing authenticity to liberal education, law, liberty, human rights, life, media and culture. Directors of the Institutes live and work in the community and, by virtue of the offices they hold, become missionaries in the world to transmit these values in a way that promotes truth, goodness, and beauty and, in so doing, restores Christ in civilization. Veritatis Splendor is still in it's planning stage, but there's another town that proves such a plan can become reality in today's world. Ave Maria, Florida, founded by former Domino's owner Tom Monaghan, is a planned town that also attempts to capture this vision of a Catholic town, and seems to be doing quite well at it. The town, with an oratory at its center, has over 30,000 residents and sold a record number of homes in January 2021. Politicians and media outlets want to claim they're all about conservatism, liberalism, the free market, and then they don't have much to point to as a tangible example of what they're actually talking about. What does their ideology actually look like? I'm not talking about someone who lives it out well in their lives or a media outlet that represents it well. What does it look like when an entire society builds its communities based on the principles of a certain ideology, principles like subsidiarity? Does it even work? Or are ideologies just based on ideals that never bear good fruit when we try to embody them? Rambling Spirit may just be a website, but it presents a paradox: It is all about making roots. It is like what Gandalf said of Aragorn: "Not all who wander are lost." Rambling Spirit is anchored in a desire to pursue truth, goodness, and beauty. Before we go on that journey, we have to build a strong foundation. Then, from that foundation, we go off on our adventures. That is, after all, how the explorers did it during the Age of Discovery. They wouldn't have had the resources to go off and explore the world if they were not departing from powerful kingdoms that provided for them. They had a base. We, today's Catholics, need a base. It could have its own farms, community center, homes, stores, schools and library, while being centered around a church. What do we need to do to make this happen? Do we need to reach out to religious orders and venture capitalists? We need more Catholic towns. We need to start with something. Perhaps this website can be that something. The mission of this website could be to promote this kind of community. Everything I write can augment that vision. If my vision of a Catholic town ever happened, storytellers, journalists, and reporters would come and capture their angle of the town, the angle they want to show and nothing more. For many people, that would suffice. They would hear about the town through some magazine, news channel or a short story; say "that's interesting", and think only what the narrator wanted them to think about the town. But that's the beauty of a town. Its story does not have to end on the page or the screen. It actually exists. It can be its own narrator and tell its own story, cumbersome grit and all. Subsidiarity is a self-sufficient community run by faithful Catholics who can show what it means to be faithful Catholics not only through their own lives, but also through the actual town they live in; a city on a hill. Let's show them how it's done. We can have our own news outlets, our own pillar of truth to the world. Then people wouldn't have to pick and choose what pile of truth to rummage through to find the bits and pieces they want to find. We could tell our own story through the impetus of the town, a living story that can't be denied.

Clapping at Mass and the Value of Silence

St. Paul tells us to pray constantly (1 Thessalonians 5:17). One way to do that is by actually praying with our words. Another way is to always be thinking about God in our works of mercy, as well as through our charitable words to others. Our entire life can be a prayer if we put God first in everything we do and always keep his will in mind. But Mass is different than the rest of life. It is not a way of praying to God by proxy. Mass is among the very few times in life when we do not have to encounter God through others, because God is right there with us. Remember what Jesus said to Martha when she was doing all the work while Mary was just sitting there with Jesus. He said: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42). Mass is the “one thing”. It is the “good portion”. There is no need for applause or accolades for others, no need to tend to earthly matters when we are in the presence of the Lord. Understandably, it is hard to remember this when we are surrounded by others, but Mass is not about us. Bringing attention back down to ourselves is adverse to the nature of the Mass. This is why popes have strong words about the matter: “Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attraction fades quickly – it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation” (Pope Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy). Here’s what Pope St. John XXIII said on the matter: “If I must express a wish, it is that in church you not shout out, that you not clap your hands, and that you not greet even the Pope, because ‘templum Dei, templum Dei’ (‘The temple of God is the temple of God’).” What’s the Big Deal? But what’s the big deal, after all? Shouldn’t we be allowed to express our gratitude and admiration for fellow believers praising God with their talents? And aren’t we, by applauding them, indirectly applauding God, the giver of talents, as well? Correct, we are indirectly praising God when we clap for someone else in church, when we should be directly praising him. Applauding during Mass is like showing honor to a fellow guest at a wedding reception during the bride and groom’s first dance. Some people may say an atmosphere that discourages clapping in Mass only breeds a false sense of piety, but what is truly false is the notion that true piety begins with us rather than God. Clapping is a way of praising another, whether we admit it or not, and praising another human being in the place where God ought to be praised is at best an attempt to make humans a way to God, and is at worst idolatry. We do not need a way to God because God has come down to us. A church sanctuary is the place where a person can best draw closer to God, and it is a person’s relationship with God that always ought to be first and foremost in their spiritual life and in all aspects of life. As Pat Archbold said in a NC Register article on this same issue, we will reap the benefits of deeper holiness if we “remove the anthropocentric mentality that has destroyed worship.” Mass Is Where Heaven and Earth Meet I'm not saying we shouldn't show any form of gratitude for the choir, the homilist, altar servers, or anyone else who assists in Mass. But why does it have to be during Mass, the source and summit of our faith? Writing for U.S. Catholic, David Phippart had some good alternatives: "We'd do better to create a climate of gratitude with occasional bulletin kudos, surprise refreshments at rehearsals now and then, an annual appreciation dinner, and the like," he wrote. It is true that in some cultures and subcultures, clapping is appropriate as a celebration, as it reflects the psalmist’s words: “All you peoples, clap your hands; shout to God with joyful cries.”–Psalm 41:7 However, the psalmist is speaking of applause directed toward God as a form of praise. We must remember Mass is a vertical form of worship, and by clapping or cheering for anyone except God we make it horizontal. We make it about us, not him. You may say “Aren’t all forms of worship vertical?” Actually, no, because we also worship God through good works toward others, as we see Christ in them, and this is horizontal worship. Good works and works of mercy, are the crossbeam of the Cross, where God is reaching out to humanity through his Body, the Church. But Mass is not the same as this. It is God’s condescension down to us, where heaven meets earth, where the head of the Cross (Christ) meets the foot of the Cross (believers). For many of us, let’s be honest, Mass is the only time we are truly focusing on our faith and intentionally living it. So we naturally try to cram all aspects of it into that one hour. We awkwardly try to be cordial and charitable toward the people sitting next to us, and friendly--as we know how--to the volunteers who have devoted their time to the music ministry or whatever else. There are times and places for these acts of bonding. This is why parishes encourage participation in after-Mass activities and other events throughout the church community throughout the week. But Mass is a person’s time to worship God, so he or she may properly receive him. That purpose is enough. Clapping during or after Mass not only encourages praise of others over God, it also discourages an atmosphere of prayer to God. You may say applause are over quickly and therefore are not that distracting, but in this age when dozens of thoughts are vying for our attention, those several seconds can in fact derail our focus. We come to Mass for a brief opportunity to be with God without distractions. The errands we have to run, the relationships that are on our minds, even the game we may want to watch later that day, are all trying to pull us away from God. Mass may be a person’s rare opportunity to be one-on-one with God in prayer. Why would someone want to intrude upon that? When it comes to staying focused--on anything, but especially while praying--nothing helps like silence. The Rule of St. Benedict put a high value on silence, giving a whole chapter to the subject in the work. When it comes to serving our neighbor, nothing helps like separating ourselves from them for a short time to take a moment to pray in silence--so we can rightly orient ourselves to God and thereby better serve others. Jesus did as much. He left the crowds, and even his disciples, quite often to go pray alone. He did this because in his human nature he knew that no relationship he had on earth could be right until his relationship with the Father was right. We would do well to keep that in mind, because our relationship with God is the “one thing” that matters.

Problems with Psalm 142 NAB Translation, (and new translations of the Bible in general)

I was praying morning prayer with my family and we came across Psalm 142, the New American Bible translation. The wording didn’t strike me as too moving, and my wife pointed out that a different translation of the same psalm, the translation she was familiar with, Psalm 141 from the Douay-Rheims had a much greater effect on her heart. It is common for various potent truths to be lost in new translations of the Bible, and this particular psalm demonstrates that issue as good as any Bible passage. While the Douay-Rheims says “In his sight I pour out my prayer” in this psalm, the NAB says, “I pour out my complaint before Him.” While the older translation says, “When my spirit failed me, then thou knewest my paths”, the NAB states, “When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, You knew my path.” While the Douay-Rheims says, “the just wait for me, until thou reward me,” the NAB version is, “The righteous will surround me, For You will deal bountifully with me.” I don’t know about you, but something about the word choice in the Douay-Rheims just rings more true to me, and I don’t think it’s just a matter of preference. The change in wording affects the whole angle that the psalm originally took, and may hinder the psalmist’s original message. In the changes above, the focus in the Douay-Rheims is on God’s grace and sustenance rather than the psalmist’s state. The old version uses the word “prayer” instead of “complaint”, and “reward” instead of “bountifully”, and in doing so the Douay-Rheims version more adequately addresses the way prayer works. It’s about God. It’s about how he answers our cry, not about us crying out to him and how gracefully he responds to us. The formula is simple and not human-centered, but God-centered. We offer our petition to him, and he answers. It’s that simple. Changing the wording from “my spirit failed me” to “my spirit was overwhelmed” presents another problem. This new wording does not address the fact that I am the problem and I need God to redeem my fallen state. If I am simply saying I am overwhelmed; I am not acknowledging the fact that I have failed and need a savior. Being overwhelmed connotes that I was deeply afflicted by a problem outside myself, and it doesn’t point to the real problem, which is that my spirit is inadequate and needs God’s grace. The way the NAB version reads is anthropocentric: “I complained” and the Lord responded “bountifully” to me. While the word “bountifully” may seem innocuous, it corrupts the psalmic formula, because it’s not about how bountifully the Lord responds. God is worthy of praise for the simple fact that he responds at all, and in fact the reward may not even be bountiful. The reward may be his response itself, or even further trial if only because the trial is God’s response. The Code of the Human Heart and Mind The human heart and mind are like computers and language is like code. If you change certain parts of the input you get a different outcome; if you make a mistake, even the slightest, the code doesn’t work — then the program doesn’t work. God wrote the code for our hearts, and the words he gave us in the Bible were designed to reach our hearts. Various modern translations have changed that code so much that it no longer has the effect it once did. It’s no wonder we are hardly moved when we hear Scripture read at Mass or read it ourselves. When we’re hardly moved, this causes us to easily get distracted. Something must have been lost in translation. Different Translations, Different Effects The logic behind the Church’s acceptable English translations of the Bible in the U.S. is that it’s better to translate Scripture from the original ancient Greek or Hebrew into English. The New American Bible is kind of a hodgepodge of translations, though. The New Testament is translated from the Greek, while the Old Testament is translated from Latin, except for Genesis which is translated from Hebrew. Perhaps such an eclectic approach best represents the diversity of Scripture and the Catholic Faith, but there is a problem with having anything other than translations from Latin. No matter how learned a scholar of ancient Greek may be, he never experienced the language spoken in its time. There is no legitimate bridge between ancient Greek and modern English, not even modern Greek suffices because no ancient Greek speaker ever spoke with any modern Greek speaker. Thus, Latin is in fact the more suitable language from which to translate Scripture, because Latin speakers were contemporaries of ancient Greek speakers. They lived in the same world, even partook in the same debates when it came to choosing dogmatic language. Furthermore, Latin speakers encountered vernacular languages like English in later centuries as well. Therefore, the earliest Latin translations, like the Latin Vulgate, provide a better bridge from the ancient Greek to modern English than that of modern scholars of ancient Greek; not only because Latin translators would have understood ancient Greek better, but also because early English translators would have understood Latin better than ancient Greek. The translators of the Douay-Rheims Bible, or the first Bible written in English, understood the importance of this succession, and therefore translated the Bible entirely from the Latin Vulgate. This is not hypothetical. The early Church understood the value of succession, the handing down of truths from one generation to the next. The fecundity of those truths could easily be lost from one generation to the next, from one language to the next. That is why it is imperative for each translation to take small leaps, if any are necessary at all. The Word of God is not a collection of cultural myths that just need to be passed on from generation to generation for the lessons it teaches, nor is it open to the latest lifestyle or vernacular language. If there are truths in the Bible that have been lost over time, we need to retrieve the lost truth and conform our lives to it to better understand it, not change what is in the Bible so it better relates to us. Whether we want to make the Bible more relatable to our modern lifestyle, or recover the original meaning of the text, we owe our ancestors our trust that they hold the key to understanding the book they handed down to us; no matter how much times change or how much time passes.

A role for pebbles

"Jay!" he exclaimed, "You just gave me a great idea."
"I did? Well, give me it back because I could use one."

Mark, Jay's friend and editor, wasted no time, but raced to his car and drove home to write a column on his epiphany.

The next morning he came back to the office with a gleaming smile. "I may just get time for this, but I'd prove a point," he said as he started the truck and headed for the warehouse. When he got there, he pushed up the large garage door, walked over to the pile of tomorrow's newspapers -- every one in the chain, which was about half the newspapers in the city -- and loaded them into the truck. He still didn't tell Jay what his idea was.

"There's supposed to be little if any wind tomorrow, right?"
"I guess. What are you going to do?"

After driving to the park, Mark took a stack of papers out of the truck and started laying them on the sides of the path. "Pebbles, just in case," he said as he looked around and found a handful of stones to place on top of the papers. Continuing his run, he handed a few to Jay.

"I don't want to be your accomplice," said Jay.

"Yes you do," Mark replied. "They're taxing newspapers because they see our whole industry as a waste. We're struggling as it is, and now they're giving people just one more reason to not buy a paper."

"So how is scattering papers all over the park going to help?"

"It'll do several things, depending on the kind of person. If they're environmentalists, they'll be deeply offended, collect all of them and send them to the recycling center. If they're skeptics, they'll pick up one, read the daily news, then probably throw it away. If they're political, they'll pick one up, read the daily news, become deeply offended and then probably throw it in the garbage. If they're unemployed, they'll skip to the classified section, look for a job, then probably use it to wrap their presents."

"So basically, people will do the same thing they'd do if the papers were at the stand, just in a shorter span of time," Jay observed.

"Exactly! The quicker they're taken the quicker we'll run out. Come noon time, the 50% who grab a paper on their lunch break will be agitated that they have nothing to read with their afternoon coffee. After a few days of this, people will notice how much a part of their lifestyle newspapers are, and they'll either rally to have the tax removed or willingly put out the extra dime for something they now see as a necessity."

"Ok," said Jay. "But what if word gets out that the paper is scattered all over the park?"

"I see your point. Are newspapers really a nuisance for them, or is the whole issue just fuel for their cause? Nothing keeps recycling centers going like paper, and just about every day there's a paper that leaves a column open for green street's opinion. Even they need us."

They continued their masquerade while they talked, and by now all of the Main Street Park walkways were surrounded by the seven major newspapers of the city. It was about 5:30 a.m. The first morning rushers were entering town with their dew-covered headlights glaring through the dark fog. The brisk November morning could have been midnight, but the lamposts in the park were beginning to dim, and the moon was beginning to set. There was only a little breeze and the pebbles did their job.

When mark and Jay finished they went back to their office on Exchange Street. If that morning changed their common course of thought, then they didn't show it. From 7:30 a.m. on, their day was filled with the same hectic business of phone calls with upset, satisfied, and bored costomers; until noontime.

It wasn't strange enough to see newspapers all over the park, but it was exasperating for businessmen of all sorts to see empty newstands throughout downtown, just as Mark predicted. The phones of The Current Publishers office rang off the hook, and as they did Mark began his second column. He even used some of the complaints as quotes:

"What do you think you're doing? Do you have any idea how important it is for a busy man like me to know what's going on in my neighborhood? No news channel gives me that! No radio station suffices. I need words on a page. I can't bring my laptop to lunch," said Randy Traimor, a broker from downtown.
You'd think a lousy dime of taxes wouldn't get people all tangled up like this, but the change they have for a newspaper is as preset as their alarm clocks. Don't mess with a business man's alarm clock.
"I buy a whole stack of each paper every morning for my office," said Edward Callihan, president of York Real Estate. "I like to keep all my employees informed about every little movement in our area. What am I supposed to do now?" A stack is forty or fifty papers. There's fifteen major newspapers in our city. That's an extra $67.50 Mr. Callihan has to dish out every morning, if the city starts taxing this essential commodity.

You could imagine how bad mark got it the next morning, but you'd probably be wrong. His readers saw his point. He didn't misquote anyone, and in reality he was right. The same people who were mad at there being no papers at their stand were mad when they found out the city was trying to tax the journalists' pages.

But the state got after him. Here's an example of the difference between a democracy and a republic.

So what's the big fossil?

Introducing Ida, a.k.a. Darwinius, the newest fossil discovery that Darwinists claim is a missing link between monkeys and lemurs. It's a beautiful fossil, so well-preserved that some may categorize it as miraculous. But is it what Darwinists are claiming it is, a missing link?

There are a few reasons for why I say it isn't. First, there's the whole ambiguously vague timeline that comes up once again. As I observe the famous drawing that shows all our supposed ancestors following a homo sapien, I wonder why homo sapiens weeded out neanderthals but let apes survive. And I wonder why monkeys weeded out Ida's species but let lemurs share the trees with them.

Second, apparently Ida doesn't fit into the right time slot. According to the press release (http://www.revealingthelink.com/more-about-ida/resources/press_release.pdf), 47 million year-old Ida is "twenty times older than most fossils that explain human evolution". So Darwinists still have to explain 45 million years of primate evolution. I've always wondered why the gaps of the evolution timeline are in the middle. You'd think the timeline would be most vague in the beginning, having gaps prevail where the vast eclipse of time has shrouded the proof evolutionists are looking for. But apparently, the gaps are most prevalent where Darwinists need the most proof, namely at the spots that would link humans to another family of animals. It's clear that they don't have their timeline straightened out. All of the species on the timeline could have just as easily lived at the same time. But they insist that Ida is a missing link, an ancestor from whom future species of primates emerged.

Next, Darwinists are fascinated by how well-preserved Ida is, because fossils from the Eocene Era, the era they say she's from, are never so identifiable. (Explore a prehistoric time line.) Well, perhaps the Eocene Era wasn't as long ago as Darwinists assume. Or perhaps Ida is more preserved than most fossils from the Eocene Era simply because she is not from the Eocene Era, but from a much more recent era. But that presumption can't be true because it's not compatible with their overall theory. In order for Ida to be what Darwinists say she is, she had to have lived long before her monkey descendants. But the degree of her preservation suggests she's from a much later time.

Why am I so heated about this issue? Because areas that ought to be left to faith are being intruded upon by science. I don't understand why those who believe in physical healing through saints and shrines all around the world get labelled religious fanatics, while belief in an unidentifiable fossil makes one a reasonable modern citizen who is convinced by nothing but empirical evidence.

What's missinng

Mosaics don't scale our church walls anymore.
What is it that we're missing if not this?
We've let go of religious expression
because we have forgotten what it's for.
But if that's not what's missing,
then tell me, what is?
Religious expression in our schools - no more.
It's a thought tycoon that's itself religious.
I hope the students have learned their lesson.
Something underneath those who have the floor,
tells them to make their lessons
all but religious.
So what do you get when you take the human core
out of our textbooks and public places?
Economic and mental depression;
do we need to review the preconditions of war?
Where faith is not free to roam,
God spare me from what is.

A reason to really begin

I've been waiting for something positive to pop up that would motivate me to really start this blog. Well, that something came in the form of a poll stating more Americans now claim to be pro-life than pro-choice. The Gallup poll surveyed 1,000 Americans and found that those who lean towards pro-life values jumped from 44% to 51% in the past year, and this is the most that percentage has jumped since Gallup started the annual survey in 1995. I've heard that some are calling this the "Obama Effect", because it might reflect how Americans are becoming more aware of our president's true agenda. The common pro-life response to this theory, of course, is that we have always known Obama's agenda and were not surprised when he started to drastically change things as soon as he took office. According to this poll, however, 7% of a group of representational Americans had to wait until they saw the ax lying on the ground.

I sure hope this is the beginning of a new chapter in this cultural battle, a turning point that will mark similar trends in polls around the country. And I hope Obama is paying attention to the democratic pulse of our nation kept by these polls. I sure hope rescinding the Mexico City Policy and ordering Plan B was the end of our capital's pro-choice decisions. I hope Notre Dame and Georgetown start to see what their founding Church has been trying to tell them all along -- that jumping on the bandwagon is only a joy ride for a little while, and if the riders don't pay attention to the portents they're going to crash into the brick wall of truth the portents warned them about. The good news is the people are starting to see the truth, according to this poll. Here's the page:

www.gallup.com/poll/118399/More-Americans-Pro-Life-Than-Pro-Choice-First-Time.aspx.