bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • A successful seminary.

    A piece on our local seminary, St. John Vianney, and the 100 or so young men studying there.  The entering class this year:  49 men.   That’s a lot.

    There’s no room at SJV for what some call "the beige church" — the "whatever turns you on" spirituality that became popular in the 1970s and ’80s. In Baer’s view, the recent clergy abuse scandals had their roots, in part, in the freewheeling seminaries of those years.

    "Today’s young men won’t give their entire lives for a cynical, watered-down life of church work," he says. "Either the priesthood is essential for the salvation of the world, or they’re going to go somewhere else to make a lot more money and have a lot more fun."

    Exactly.  Who is going to give their whole lives for something if they don’t really believe in it? 

    …SJV’s watchword is accountability. "The era of the Lone Ranger priest with a secret life has got to end," says Baer. Seminarians meet twice a week in small groups to encourage and support each other. "They take each other to task for things as small as ‘your room is a mess.’ We want them to get used to correcting their brothers."

    I like that. 

    "We’re normal people, average Joes," responds Kregg Hochhalter, a transfer student from the Archdiocese of Bismarck, N.D. St. Thomas football fans can attest to this. At the Tommies’ games, seminarians clad in purple T-shirts lead the crowd in rowdy cheers. Football cocaptain Ben Kessler, an SJV senior named First Team Academic All-American by ESPN the Magazine, was recently featured on Fox Sports Net. Another SJV athlete, Nick Donohue, turned down a chance to become a tennis pro to attend the seminary.

    Baer still chuckles about the raucous "half prayer meeting, half pep rally" the seminarians staged after Pope Benedict’s election in April 2005. Campus security guards chased them off a roof, so they led an exuberant procession through the campus, as other students enthusiastically cheered them on.

    I know one SJV seminarian — we used to attend the same parish and belonged to a young adults’ group there.  When my family switched to a parish with a more traditional reverence for the Eucharist, we ran into Chris there and were pleasantly surprised to find he’d entered the seminary.  He’ll be great for the Church, and he doesn’t fit the stereotypes.  He’s a techie, he’s got a biting sarcasm, he’s a heck of a lot of fun to have a conversation with.  All of these things are perfect for the priesthood, if you ask me.

    H/t Amy Welborn.

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  • Chicken in foil packets with grated root vegetables.

    Dinner tonight in twenty minutes of prep and twenty minutes in the oven:

      • 4          boneless skinless chicken breast halves
      • 1          peeled large sweet potato
      • 1          small onion
      • 1          peeled large carrot
      • 1          turnip (thanks for the turnip, Hannah)
      • 4         slices from one ripe tomato
      • Salt and pepper and balsamic vinegar to taste
      • 4          one-foot squares of heavy aluminum foil

    Grate the sweet potato, onion, carrot, and turnip in the food processor.  Salt and pepper to taste.   In each square of aluminum foil place about 3/4 to 1 cup of vegetable mixture. Top with chicken breast and slice of tomato.  Add salt and pepper and a few drops of balsamic vinegar.  Seal packets and bake 20 minutes at 450 degrees F.

    Adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.  Have with a tossed salad and, if you used lots of pepper, some late harvest Riesling.

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  • Diaper-free babies in the NYT.

    Here’s the article.

    About 2,000 people across the country have joined Internet groups and e-mail lists to learn more about the techniques of encouraging a baby – too young to walk or talk – to go in a toilet, a sink or a pot. Through a nonprofit group, Diaper Free Baby (www.diaperfreebaby.org), 77 local groups have formed in 35 states to encourage the practice. One author’s how-to books on the subject have sold about 50,000 copies.

    Nice to see this getting some mainstream attention. 

    Soon after my second son Milo was born, I taught him to pee in the sink or potty, or wherever I wanted him to, in response to a "cue" noise (a low, glottal growl).   It worked like a charm; he would "hold it," he would squirm to let me know he needed to pee, and he would pee when I held him in position.

    I wasn’t consistent with it, though.  We used diapers too, first just as a backup or in the car,and gradually we got lazy and "lost" the cueing.  By the time he was a year old he was back in diapers whenever we left the house.  At home, though, we kept the potties out, and he would still use them if he happened to be butt-naked.  Just a couple of months ago, he refused to wear diapers anymore, and that was it.   Definitely an easy toilet training.  I wonder if his early experiences as an "EC’ed" baby (where EC stands for "elimination communication," a common term among those in the know) helped him toilet train as a toddler.

    A couple of our little friends were/are being raised diaper free.  I can vouch for it — the method works beautifully, if your lifestyle allows for it. 

    For families who practice the technique, the advantages are many: savings in the cost of diapers, which can reach $3,000 a child; less guilt about contributing to the 22 billion disposable diapers that end up in landfills every year; no diaper rash, and a nursery that doesn’t reek of diaper pail. They also note that age 2, a common age for toilet training, is a time of notorious willfulness and a terrible age to start teaching any child anything.

    Misconceptions abound:

    "It doesn’t sound like anything I would ever even attempt to try," said Erinn Marchetti, who has two preschool-age children and was shopping recently at Toys "R" Us in Times Square. "It’s hard enough when they’re 2 and 3."

    Sounds like she assumes it would be harder to train a baby.  It’s not.  I’ve done both and the baby was easier.  My first son, I tried to train starting at age 2.  We didn’t finish until he was 3 years, 7 months.

    And get a load of this one.  I wonder how many Toys R Us shoppers the reporter had to interview before hearing this one.

    Another mother in Toys "R" Us, who offered her opinion but wanted to remain anonymous, was aghast at the notion. "Have you read Freud?" she asked, worrying about the method’s long-term effects. "I imagine it’s going to come out in sexual ways."

    An "expert" weighs in:

    "Even if you’re getting them to go in a pot as a young infant, I don’t know if it will have any long-term impact for all the effort you have to go through," said Dr. Mark Wolraich, author of the academy’s "Guide to Toilet Training" (Bantam Books, 2003). "The risk is, if it’s not working and the parents are frustrated, they’re creating more negative interactions with their child."

    Seems to me that "if it’s not working and the parents are frustrated," they’ll… buy diapers.

    Anyway, I was glad to see it in the news.

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  • “Narnia: Deep magic.”

    What a relief.  Barbara Nicolosi’s seen the new Narnia film, and she says it’s great.

    The movie is lovely. The print we saw had some special effects still in stages, but it didn’t detract from the stunning vision the movie radiates off the screen. England is musty and dreary. Narnia is a wonderland. Tke kids are going to love it. They are going to want to walk through that wardrobe with Lucy time after time.

    But best of all, contrary to Peter Jackson’s agenda-aversion manhandling of Tolkien’s classic, here, the tone of LW&W is as close to the book as probably could have been achieved. All the lines the Christians are worrying about are in there. All the scenes you want to see are here and lovingly rendered. So everybody can relax and get ready to enjoy, and we can all take the Wonderful World of Disney back into our hearts — and save the studio for 2005! Truly, our forgiveness is completely saving…

    I truly cannot wait.  H/t Amy Welborn.

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  • They should get a better machine.

    I decided to Google myself — the blog, actually — and Google’s black box chewed up  "bearing blog" and spit out this link for No.2:

    Nicolas Chaunu, carrying the project Emob, "the effective, dynamic elearning and deeply humanized", informs us of the creation of a bearing blog on the elearning.

    The corner of the e-learning was launched one month ago. The other part of the blog relates to the creation of a company which will be born next October and which will be specialized in the creation of contents of multi-media formation on line.

    Good corner to exchange with the actors of the field and to make known themselves on the Fabric.

    Huh?  Oh, I get it, it’s a machine translation from the original French.  The term "the creation of a bearing blog on the elearning" is really supposed to be "the creation of a blog bearing on the subject of e-learning."

    By this post I hope to make known myself on the Fabric (Toile).  Does that mean the Web, or the Net?

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  • You know who you are.

    The name of this blog made me think of some friends of mine.

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  • Ann Althouse commenters rock. And do show tunes.

    Ann Althouse, she who was quoted in the New York Times saying blogging is fun, throws her commenters a puzzle (I said such-and-such, can you guess the context?) and they run with it.  (Wait, can you run with a puzzle?)

    Some of them seem to have forgotten the original post:

    Scalia!
    I just read a judge named Scalia,
    Despite what I have found,
    my land may not belong to me!

    Scalia! I just read a judge named Scalia,
    His arguments were sound,
    But still they may take away my property!

    I had to cover my mouth to keep from embarrassing myself in the coffee shop.  Read the whole thing.

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  • “Home-schooling is sort of like a college student’s virginity…”

    "…People figure it’s a mark of religiosity, but nearly as often it’s just personal taste, or a lack of better options."

    From OpinionJournal, in an article subtitled "Home-schoolers of all stripes find common ground in some good, old-fashioned books."

    One thing that his most popular books had in common, Mr. [Pat] Farenga[, who used to run a home-schooler’s bookstore,] says, is that they tended to be "about kids . . . figuring things out for themselves. Not like ‘Sesame Street,’ with adults showing children how to do things." Mr. Farenga cites the popularity among home-schoolers of C.S. Lewis’s "Chronicles of Narnia," both a seminal epic by a great Christian apologist and an adventure tale of self-sufficient children, with their parents conspicuously absent.

    Read it, it’s good.  Via Auntie Suzanne, who, by the way, likes our cooking.

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  • I’m a cheater.

    Exchange between Mark and me, last night:

    Me:  Hey, you’re reading my book.

    Mark:  So?

    Me:  That’s the reason I keep accumulating piles of books on my table.  You take them.

    Mark:  Oh, that’s the reason, is it?

    Me:  Um, yes, something like that, anyway.

    Mark:  You know what the real reason is?  You cheat on your books, that’s why.

    Serial monography, maybe?

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  • Glass chalices and sex abuse.

    Domenico at Bettnet, along with the National Catholic Reporter, makes a good point:

    While the matter of what chalices are made of or what pronouns to use are objectively important in their place, if we can’t stop priests from molesting kids and bishops from protecting those priests, why bother?

    It’s a matter of perspective, says Domenico:

    …arguing over those questions should take a back seat to the very real problem of the scandal of priestly and episcopal malfeasance.  When measured against each other it can seem like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

    Good point.  I haven’t commented very much on the abuse scandal, and I should probably try to — that is, when I have something to add to the conversation.  Nonetheless, these words from the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:21) are trustworthy:

    …His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’   

    Context?  The parable is found immediately after the parable of the ten virgins (five foolish, five wise — the foolish ones fail to prepare and get locked out of the wedding, the wise ones prepare and are welcomed) and immediately before what C. S. Lewis called "the frightening parable of the sheep and the goats" (in which one’s salvation depends entirely on corporal works of mercy).  The message of this chapter moves from the self outward:  Prepare yourself wisely.  Serve your master faithfully.  Serve the world generously. 

    The thing that bothers me about the chalices and other small matters is, precisely, their smallness. 

    Bishops looking the other way while priests abused children and adolescents:  a big problem of disobedience, with a huge amount of inertia — it takes a big, big push for multiple bishops to turn around, submit to obedience, surely the first steps in solving the problem.  (I do not mean holding committees to draft working documents of reconciliation.  The first step that will really  move us in the right direction is confession, repentance, penance, restitution:  from the bishops themselves, every one who knowingly let this happen and every one who remained willfully ignorant.  Maybe they’ve all, already, done so;  I hope so.)

    Bishops shuffling glass chalices around on the altar:  a small matter of disobedience (and disobedience it is).  But so easily turned around!  So easy to return to obedience, quietly and without public comment.  All it takes is to wake up one morning and say to oneself:  By gum, I’m going to dust off the metal chalices in the back of the sacristy cupboard and use those when I say Mass today!   Goodness, let’s not even worry just yet about, say, reminding the pastors of the parishes in the diocese that glass isn’t allowed, let alone enforcing it.  I mean simply doing it yourself, when you say Mass.  We old-fashioned types call that "setting an example." 

    Perspective — the very same perspective that Dom et al. ask for — demands that we note that becoming faithful in small matters is much more easily done than becoming faithful in large matters.  The opportunity to repent of a small thing and to become faithful in a small thing is truly a great one, a generous gift of an opportunity, a chance to "take Heaven by a trick of love," to paraphrase Ste. Therese. 

    What a gift!   If God gives us such an easy way to be faithful and we don’t take it and use it wisely, what will He say to us?   The moral of the parable of the talents is  For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.  Maybe it would be better to look to a related parable, the parable of the faithful steward (Luke 12:42-48):  Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.

    We have no guarantees  that a person who is faithful in small matters will execute larger responsibilities well.   (The logical corollary to this truth is called, ironically, the Peter Principle.)  But it’s those persons who are entrusted with large matters, for the simple reason that the other people have proven themselves faithless in small matters, and why on earth would we want to keep on trusting them? 

    Small matters, matter.

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  • Cinnamon buns.

    I like cinnamon buns.  They are my favorite pastry.  But I do not eat them often, nor feed them to my children, despite the fact that my husband, for a living, compels robots to make them, or something like that.  He WILL NOT BRING THEM HOME to us, though.  He brings chocolate chips aplenty.  I do not like chocolate chips.

    On that note, here’s something I read in the breed ’em and weep archives that rang true, not just because of the cinnamon buns, but because I routinely say completely illogical things like this.

    “IF YOU CAN’T BEHAVE AFTER A CINNAMON BUN,” I heard myself say, “THEN YOU WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER HAVE ANOTHER CINNAMON BUN AGAIN, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.”

    …“Why?” she asked, suddenly worried.

    “Because you can’t handle them,” I said. …

    “Because a cinnamon bun has too much SUGAR and when you have too much SUGAR, you stop behaving, and THEN you start twirling, and THEN you start falling in front of SPEEDING CARS, and then you get RUN OVER, and they KILL YOU and you’re DEAD. You will DIE if you have another cinnamon bun, and as a family, we can’t afford that. No more cinnamon buns, EVER. Do you understand me?”

    Maybe this is why I am not allowed to have cinnamon buns.

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  • Legion.

    Every time I click a link that sends me to Waiterrant, I’m impressed.  Here’s yet another.

    H/T Fructus Ventris.

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