My uncle, Pat Ambrose, died today. My grandmother has lost two of hers sons to brain tumors in a little over a year.
May God bless Pat.
Football=Marriage?
Last week I posted about the annoying comparison of a football contract to a marriage. The AP continued that yesterday:
Favre retired in March, but then decided he still wanted to play. After a messy divorce with Green Bay, the Packers traded him to New York, where he’s going through his 18th training camp.
Our media culture can’t tell the difference between a sports contract and a marriage. No wonder the institution of marriage is in trouble. I think this comes from an emerging idea that marriage is nothing more than a civil contract to be dissolved when at least one party finds the continuation of the contract to be inconvenient.
So the question, is our society’s outlook of marriage to low, or our view of sports too high?
It’s OK as long as you don’t love her…
Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards admitted to having an extramarital affair after months of denials. In admitting to the affair, Edwards told ABC news that he did not love the woman. I’m sure that makes his wife feel much better.
OK, things that don’t make you sympathetic: trying to excuse your adultery by claiming you’re just a cad.
Football isn’t like marriage
This summer’s sports soap opera has finally ended with the Green Bay Packers trading their un-retiring and future hall of fame quarterback Brett Favre to the New York Jets.
Packers president Mark Murphy said, “It’s like a marriage that ends. It happens. Neither party is at fault.”
Now I’m a guy who views Superbowl Sunday as a holiday (albeit a secular one – like Labor Day). But even I do not confuse a business negotiation with a marriage.
Uh, Mr. Murphy? Football is not like marriage. Divorce is never no one’s fault. In marriage, two people take vows. These vows normally involve a lifetime commitment, unlike a football contract. Marriages the end in divorce are because one or both spouses don’t live up to those vows.
Marriage is in trouble when one of the greatest tragedies in society is equated with a football player leaving a team and no one notices.
Update 8/8:
I was watching ESPN “1st and 10” this morning and the host said that Brett Favre was coming off a 16 year divorce in Green Bay and moving into a home with his new wife in New York.
Sigh. No, ESPN. Brett Favre was only employed by the Packers, not married to them. Football is a great past-time and all, but it isn’t fundamental to a society like marriage is.
Do you remember?
Someday I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren that I remember where I was when I learned that Brett Favre got traded to the New York Jets…
Not all tax collectors are bad.
I recently came across a discussion of this passage in gospel of Luke:
Luke 18:
10. “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
11. “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: `God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
12. `I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’
13. “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, `God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’
14. “I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Isn’t it funny how things jump out at you sometimes? Like this one got me wondering about this anonymous tax collector. Jesus had a tax collector in his audience when he taught this parable. Did you ever wonder if the tax collector in this passage was the same tax collector that became an apostle of Jesus, now most commonly known as St. Matthew?
Quote O’ the day
“God doesn’t promise tomorrow, he does promise eternity.”
-Tony Snow, 1955-2008
Liturgy for comprehension
Julie at Happy Catholic , Amy Welborn, and Jeff Miller have all taken issue with the USCCB for not approving a section of the proposed translation of the Roman Missal.
I respect all of these bloggers but I disagree with them in this case. In fact, I find their criticisms of Bishop Trautman to be unfair and misrepresentative of his position, especially the “Dick and Jane” parody Jeff Miller employs. Bishop Trautman has stated he is not for using “street language” and advocates the translation having “an elevated tone”. That does not mean the translation should use archaic language and overly complicated structure.
Trautman’s criticism does have substance:
[Trautman]said that the text’s preference for mimicking the sentence structure of Latin, featuring long sentences with a large number of dependent clauses, impedes understanding in English. Trautman cited one prayer in the new Proper of Seasons presented as a single 12-line sentence with three separate clauses.
This is where I get to put my education as a technical writer to use. The good bishop is right. Any 12-line sentence should be rewritten because it will be ineffective. In the same article Auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba of Milwaukee said, “If I have trouble understanding the text when I read it, I wonder how it’s going to be possible to pray with it in the context of worship.” The bishops are not claiming laity are stupid, they are claiming that the writing is confusing. The translation is just bad communication.
The translation violates rules of writing for comprehension. A couple of those rules are, do not use archaic language when it can be avoided and do not use longer sentences when shorter sentences will do. Long sentences with mulitple clauses should be broken up into smaller sentences to increase clarity. The presentation of a 12-line sentence with three separate clauses ignores this concept.
Overly complicated writing is a barrier to communication and by extension it is a barrier to worship in liturgy. It is not insulting to laity to ask for a faithful translation that is also understandable to the modern venacular. The entire purpose of having a venacular translation is to make the liturgy more approachable to the laity. I shouldn’t need to have a master’s degree to understand it.
My little imp
Most useless emergency exit…ever
Actual emergency exit sign at Denver International Airport:
I can’t help but think of the worst case scenario. How long must 15 seconds be if a fire is spreading through the room? Even worse, what if a gunman is shooting people? (Eveyone else in this area would have already been disarmed.)
If you are looking for a way so that people will not be able to get to safety, I think this would have to be it.