Old News is Good News

It's been over 6 years since I wrote about the grotesquerie in the Montana court room of the Honorable G Todd Baugh when he gave a slap on the wrist to Stacey Dean Rambold after Rambold raped a 14 year old girl who was a student in his high school class. The girl, who later committed suicide while the trial was pending. 

The Dishonorable G Todd Baugh

The now Dishonorable G Todd Baugh was censured and suspended as a judge by the Montana Supreme Court in 2013 for that judgment,particularly his opinion that the 14 year old victim "appeared older than her chronological age."

In a six-page ruling, the court said Baugh’s actions warranted suspension without pay for 31 days. Noting Baugh's term expires at the end of the year and that he did not seek re-election, the court said the suspension would begin on Dec. 1.

The verdict against Rambold was also overturned by the Montana Supreme Court, who sentenced Rambold to 15 years, with 5 suspended, for the rape of the girl.

The rapist, Stacey Dean Rambold

Both stories are good news, though thin justice for the young girl who was raped by her high school teacher and subsequently killed herself.

Of concern though, is the further development, from 2017, that Rambold has apparently been paroled by the State of Montana after serving only 2 1/2 years in prison,  having completed a sex offender program, and paroled to the Great State of California.

Cherice Moralez (1993-2010)

In your charity, please lift an Ave for the repose of the soul of Cherice Moralez.

In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

"May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs receive you at your arrival and lead you to the holy city Jerusalem. May choirs of angels receive you and with Lazarus, once a beggar, may you have eternal rest."

Pope Francis and the title of Our Lady as "Co-redemptrix" - Part 2 .... a reply to Fr. George David Byers

In my previous article, "Pope Francis and the title of Our Lady as "Co-redemptrix", I had requested that another blogger, Fr. Byers of Let Us Arise!, remove his erroneous attacks against Pope Francis. I had posted a quoted and corrected version of the message I had sent to him.

Fr. Byer did not approve that post as a reply to his blog. Instead he obliquely referred to my comments, playing off the fact that I am an architect, with another essay titled Co-Redemptrix unnecessary for faith? Un-architecting “relational signifiers”.

Suffice it to say, that Fr. Byer did not address anything of substance in terms of his errors of what the Holy Father actually said, nor even to the point of how a formal definition of "Co-Redemptrix"  might be "necessary for the Faith".  In fact, he didn't even attempt a mutually respectful discussion. Instead he engaged in straw man fallacies, multiple ad hominems, derision, sarcasm, and distortion.

And that's just in the first paragraph:

A rather anthropologically inhumane comment arrived to the blog stating “co-redemptrix as a title […] is not necessary for the faith,” and that “‘Co’ seems to be too strong of a relational signifier.” – That’s from a doctor of philosophy in theology, as it were, so to speak, who’s trying to architect Catholic faith with big words. Oooo! Big words! So, he says:

• The “‘Co’ [of co-redemptrix] seems to be too strong…”

I guess he’s a man of his time. Are we all supposed to be absolute individualists, with no “relational signifiers” that are, you know, too strong, nothing that would disturb our faith so much as to be, like, actually related to others, to God?
Bwahahahaha…. Sorry. This is actually sad.

He then set out on an indistinct path (by his own terms, a "rant") about the importance of "relational signifiers" -- a term he simultaneously derides and places in scare quotes while apparently accepting the validity and import of the words themselves.

The phrase must have stuck in his craw, since he spent quite a bit of energy describing (correctly as it happens to be) the relation we as baptized Catholics have with Our Lord, and the ways it is signified in Scripture: namely, that we are called to a process of identification with Christ -- divinization, or theosis.  But Fr. Byers never shows any Scriptural evidence that Our Lady acts as a co-redemptrix, nor that Scripture obviates any concerns about using the proper and correct relational signifiers.

Through out each of his scriptural quotes, he consistently shows how we are able to participate in the act of Christ because Christ took on our humanity to redeem us.  Nowhere does he get around to any actual objection to what I wrote, and in the middle of that, he apparently he agrees with me:

"Look. Christ is our Redeemer, alone. I know that."

Which of course is presumably the very reason that the Popes don't seem interested in trying to define "co-redemptrix", let alone make is a matter of declared dogma. Which was my point in the first place.  The Church properly avoids ambiguous language, especially in matters of Christology, which properly informs Mariology.

If Fr. Byers really knows that Christ alone is our Redeemer, and that any sense of The Blessed Virgin as "co-redemptrix" is by analogy, and that all analogy has limits, and that without a clear and precise dogmatic definition of what is to be intended and what is to be avoided by the term "co-redemptrix" that the use is subject to misunderstanding and may prove a stumbling block to ecumenism (and even so, it would probably still be subject to misunderstanding and prove a stumbling block), then I am not sure exactly what his complaint is with me.

I don't even know what the title of his latest blog post means, since he did not "unarchitect" anything but rather showed the importance of "relational signifiers", and he never made an argument for why declaring an infallible dogma of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix was necessary for the Catholic Faith.

He evidently just thinks I'm some sort of Muslim or a prostitute or something...   

I have provided a screen shot of my reply to him, since I have no reason to think that he would approve this one either. 

Pope Francis and the title of Our Lady as "Co-redemptrix"

I am posting my reply to Fr. George Byers, who on his blog Let Us Arise treats Holy Father Francis poorly and unjustly.

The title of his essay is "Pope Francis rejects seven popes on Co-redemptrix", which is a startling statement, and opens with:

"I’m going to offer a critique of Pope Francis’ impassioned rejection of Mary as Co-Redemptrix at Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe the other day, December 12, 2019"

He has several grievances, but the heart of his concern seems to be when the Pope said (by Fr. Byer's transcription and translation)

• “Quando vengan con historias de que de declarala esto a ser trato como un dogma o esto – non la perdamos in tonteras.”
• “When they come with stories of having to declare this [Mary as Co-Redemptrix] to be a dogma or whatever – let’s not lose her in stupidities.”

and concludes from that:

“Stupidities.” This, of course, is not a named, but is nonetheless a direct attack on seven previous popes, as well as, it seems to me – and this is perhaps to the point – on Mark Miravale, who has made this title of Co-Redemptrix a life project. He’s done a lot of excellent work on this. What Pope Francis does is simply offensive. If he wants to pick a fight, he should name his adversaries who are alive today instead of hiding behind a bully pulpit. All stupidities about Mary? Really?"

This is all seems fundamentally incorrect: the Holy Father did not reject seven of his predecessors in their use of the term "Co-redemptrix" and he certainly did not directly (or indirectly) attack them, and he did not call the term itself, nor its use "stupid", nor is even the term "stupidities" necessarily the best translation in this context.

I look to any Argentinian Spanish speakers to help here, realizing that Spanish words take on many regional nuances and even completely different meanings from Spain through the various Spanish speaking countries in North, Central, and South America.

From my own high school Spanish course, our first memorized dialogue ("¿Hola, Luisa, que tal?") is still ingrained in my synaptic neural network: a boy invites a girl to his birthday party, she coyly suggests he is only inviting her so he will get more birthday presents.  He replies,

¡No seas tonta! ¡No te invito por eso!

Don't be silly! I don't invite you for that!

I cannot of course speak dispostively here -- my Spanish is not that good, and I am try to construct from context what the Holy Father seems to have been suggesting: after all, immediately after admonishing people to not demand that the Church must declare Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix as a new dogma, he continues to remind us all of what can be unambiguously said of her, on the great occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe:

María es mujer, es Nuestra Señora, María es Madre de su Hijo y de la Santa Madre Iglesia jerárquica y María es mestiza, mujer de nuestros pueblos, pero que mestizó a Dios.

which seems to be something like:

Mary is the Woman, is Our Lady, Mary is the Mother of her Son and of the hierarchical Holy Mother Church, and Mary is mestiza (a 'mixed race woman'): a woman of our people, but who "mixed" with God.

I cannot bring myself to think that the Holy Father chose the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to insult the Virgin. This is the Vatican link to the official text of his homily in Spanish.

Here is the (slightly corrected) comment I made on Father Byer's blog:

I'm pretty sure tontaras (tontaria) in this case is more like "silliness" -- no nos perdamos en tonteras seems more to say, "let not lose ourselves in silliness".   And what is being said to be silly?   That we must declare Mary as Co-Redemptrix as a matter of dogma.  

Pope Francis did not call that title "stupid".  He did not say any of his predecessors were stupid. He did not reject seven of his predecessors. 

BTW, you seem to be the only one who transcribes what he said as "non la perdamos in tonteras"    Most give "No nos perdamos..." which is what it sounds like to me, though I'm not fluent in Spanish and the Argentinian accent is not something I'm familiar with. I would advise you to check on this -- "no nos perdamos en tonteras" makes sense as I have translated it -- your "Don't lose her" is not so clear since he is speaking about the claim that she must be declared Coredemptrix as a matter of necessary dogma.

Cardinal Ratzinger was also concerned for the use of the term as well. His concern seems more than just "it’s correct but the wording could be misinterpreted", but rather that the term itself "departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the Fathers, and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings."  and

"“Everything comes from Him [Christ], as the Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians, in particular, tell us; Mary, too, is everything she is through Him ...  The word ‘co-redemptrix’ would obscure this origin. A correct intention being expressed in the wrong way."  (Cardinal Ratzinger with Peter Seewald, God and the World: A Conversation). [quote taken from David Armstrong's blog on this topic].

"Co-" seems to be too strong of a relational signifier:  co-pilot, co-conspirator, cooperator, co-chair, coworker, coadjutor, etc -- this prefix implies an equality in acting; that either can do the act, and it not a term of necessary subordination.  So I think there are valid reasons the term has not been officially adopted, let alone defined. 

Above all, theological language are terms need to be precise -- the avoidance of ambiguity is important for Christology, as for Mariology.  Other popes may have used Co-Redemptrix as a title without ever defining exactly what was intended: to do so from a papal office would be to make it magisterial as a formal and official definition -- akin to a dogmatic or doctrinal definition.  I can understand why no previous Pontiff did so: it is not necessary for the Faith, and might well be imprudent to do so.  Holy Father Francis seems to say the same, though in his characteristically rougher manner.

I ask you, Father George David Byers, to retract this essay -- it is an unjust and problematic account of what the Pope actually said, and comes across as an attack on the Supreme Pontiff.

Yours in Christ,

Steven J Schloeder, PhD (Theology)
Swarthmore PA

The Government in Ottawa gives permission to build a wall

To protect the citizens from beauty. 

Above: The existing Château Laurier seen from Major's Hill Park. Below: The proposed and approved design by architectsAlliance.

One sees an obvious typology to the various border wall projects proposed for America's southern border.

Border Wall Prototypes (from cms.qz.com)

This raises the obvious question of why the architects chose a barrier wall type as their civic expression?  What are they enclosing or defending or protecting or excluding or demarcating? Is this some slavish obedience to the zeitgeist? 

Contrast this to the design sensibilities of the original architects and developers a mere century ago: 

 

The existing Château Laurier in Ottawa, designed in a stately early 20th century French Chateau Revival style, was intentionally designed to complement the neighboring Parliament Buildings on Parliament Hill, a promontory overlooking the city.

Image from Google Earth: The Chateau Laurier in the foreground with the Parliament buildings behind

The developer of the original hotel, Charles Melville Hays of the Grand Trunk Railway, had commissioned the original architect, Bradford Lee Gilbert of New York, to harmonize with the civic scale and architectural referents of the adjacent governmental complex.

Château Chenonceau, Loire Valley, France (image from Wiki Commons, GNU free)

The original Château Laurier was a poor man's Chenonceau, a traveler's hotel where private rooms could be had for $2 a night, or a traveling salesman could sleep dormitory style with common baths. But the architecture on the personal and civic scale spoke of a dignity to which we all aspire and which was once expressive of a view of the person in relationship with history, tradition, society, and beauty.

While Gilbert was removed from the project, and was succeeded by Ross and Macfarlane  of Montreal, the intentions and the talents of the architects and developer were clear. Even in an age of architectural pluralism and historical stylism, when one could design convincing civic and institutional buildings in Greco-Roman Classicism, Neo-Gothic of either the French or English Tudor variants, Italianate, Mission Revival, Egyptian, or Renaissance Palladianism, the civic sensibility was to design with respect to and regard for the neighbors.

The limits of Modern Architecture

This was an age before the hegemony and totalitarianism of the Modern movement which  effectively mandated that all buildings should be built in modern materials (steel, concrete, plate glass), without regard for context or civic engagement, and certainly without reference to the human person or the architectural patrimony of the past. So for the past 100 years we have been building buildings indistinguishable from any other typological building built anywhere else or at any time since.

The modern architect is today limited to the programmatic and functionally driven dictates of the project, massing to maximize the code permitted envelope, and to articulate the box with a limited vocabulary of materials, with window shapes and building massing which don't need to correspond to the internal organization of the building.

The architecture of modernism is reducible to the functional and economical, manipulated by the idiosyncratic mind of the architect as form giver. It is no longer a truly public art which respects the civitas. A planning consultant for the design team, one Dennis Jacobs, is on record as stating in defense of the design and in rejection of the public outcry against the design:

This is not a court of public opinion — this is a municipal government decision.

And the gatekeepers of the civitas -- in this case the Ottawa Council -- have been as negligent in oversight as Epstein's jailers.

Polite Buildings for the Polis 

Architecture is the most durable of the arts, and the most informative and impactful of how we organize our lives in the public realm and shape our common life. This is precisely why architecture has an ethical aspect to it: architects, developers, municipal planning staff and elected officials have obligations to the community far beyond the mere financial benefits of the industry. One is permitted to pursue one's private goods -- in this case the financial gain from being a hotelier or a developer or an architectural firm -- but not at the expense of the common good.

And in this case, we can consider the common aesthetic experience of the entire community to be a part of the common good: those things which we share in common without competition or exclusion (the principles of non-rivalry and non-excludability). This principle of the common good is all the more important as the scale and prominence of the "good" is considered:  no one really ought care what your garden shed looks like, whereas we all have a vested interested in how our civic scaled architecture and public spaces affect us. And the fact that architecture has not only an aspect of non-excludability, but forced and coerced inclusion, heightens the ethical demand on the owner, the design team, and those entrusted with the common weal of the community.

With this in mind, we can better appreciate the efforts of those who over the past several decades have renewed an interest in the communal aspects of architecture and urban planning, notably groups such as INTBAU, the Congress for New Urbanism, the Form-Based Codes Institute, numerous professionals in private practice, and select programs at some schools of architecture such as the School of Architecture at University of Notre Dame. 

I mention the last one in particular given that one of the graduate students, Michael Pfaff, has drawn up an alternate proposal to solve the same design problem given to the architects of record.

Such an approach respects its neighbors.  It does not think to pile up overseas shipping cargo containers (as Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson likened the approved design) next to your lovely home simply because that's what the architect fancied. It is a truly civic and civilized architectural approach for the civitas, a polite architecture for the polis, and rejects the radical, isolated individualism of Ayn Rand's Howard Roark which is the manifested expression of the Enlightenment rejection of tradition, relationship, and natural community.

It is certainly interesting that only 20 years ago, the previous owner of the hotel, the Fairmont Group, received planning permission for a similar expansion to the Château Laurier, which was respectful of the original design intent. This was very much the same approach when in 1929, the hotel added a whole 240-room wing keeping with the existing Val de Loire Château style.

The 2000 proposed addition to Château Laurier, by Le Group Arcop. Thanks to Scott Moffatt, on Twitter, for this reference.

It is noteworthy that past ages once saw the virtue in treating people in the fullness of their dignity.  In service of persons made in imagines Dei, truly noble beings worth of beauty and a civilized life,  the architecture supported and manifested a vision of civic virtue. The aristocratic style of the Loire Châteaux seemed to be a fitting architectural expression. Once the style of the grand nobility, the democratization of the new world saw these historic styles as apt for the dignity of the citizen in the new modern nations. 

What will be built speaks rather of the individual as an economic unit, to be warehoused in a container, embedded in a great wall.  And rather than providing a grand facade which extends the presence of the historic Château Laurier, the approved project will literally deface the hotel from the Ottawa skyline. It will hide the humanizing and historic architecture behind a steel wall more fit for border control.

Thoughts on The Walking Dead (NO SPOILERS)

Season Seven opener was brutal -- some say "violence porn" -- others have said "enough!" and stopped watching it.

I was out in Arizona, without access to cable to watch AMC, and my wife didn't want to wait for my return...  So in this curious age of innovation, we up her iPad to film the TV screen while I watching it streaming live on my iPhone.  Necessity is, indeed, the mother of invention.

A few thoughts occur to me about this program:

1) I understand and respect if you stop watching the show because of the graphic violence. It's certainly not a "Christian" show imbued with all sorts of plain virtues you want to pass on to your children. It's more like Flannery O'Connor -- what is life without grace; or showing by absence how we are allowed to acquire virtues and civil organization and culture because of the stability of society and governance, and how we would be forced to live in a state of raw nature if that were suddenly stripped away.

2) The brutality of the violence, and our reaction to it, is due to the sense of "relationship" we have with the characters. We are not so moved when "others" meet their violent ends, even at the hands of our favorite characters. Yet these too have backstories and trajectories and narratives, and a story could be told about any of them, and then we would care about them and their deaths.

3)  The opening season episode complete changed the psychological dynamic of all the main characters, esp the protagonist -- how is that not really relevant character and story line development?

4) The backstory on Negan should be really interesting as well -- how does a man become that person, or was he always so, and how does he justify his acts for the sake of the community? He's a microcosmic US government, or any sovereign, who will crush anyone to keep order by keeping everyone in line for the good of the whole. This is all jarring to us because we as so softened to our democratic sensibilities, but he's basically a Carolingian warlord or a Tudor king, absent the Church to direct and constrain his morality.

No, it's not "Christian" show, but you can't get away from the perennial issues of life, meaning, social order, moral reasoning, or the fallen human condition that the Church and the Gospel so brilliantly answer toward.  As one friend, a completely grounded, intelligent, and orthodox Catholic priest, noted, "I think TWD is the most subversive show on TV that even attracts those it's subverting--urban and suburban soft Lefties who think tax dollars, teddy bears, and niceness seminars will save the world."

Your thoughts?

Building the City of God Here on Earth....

I'll be speaking at the International Institute for Culture this Saturday night on the intersection between Catholic social teaching, church architecture, and urban planning. 

If you're in the Philly area, stop by for the talk and meet a wonderful group of people!

more information here: International Institute for Culture

http://iiculture.org/details.asp?idOfEvent=530

Our Lady of Grace - Progress Update

We are thrilled that Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, in Maricopa, Arizona,is now under construction! The Blessing of the Site and the Ground breaking ceremony was on March 1st, 2015, and since then Redden Construction has been working steadily and efficiently to build the church.

Phases 1A and 1B (last year) was to install the site infrastructure -- roads, utilities and sewer, grading and drainage, etc) -- and the parking lot for the church.

Phase 1C is now under construction for the 500 seat church, with the administration building to follow next year as funds are raised.

Michael Barnes, a long time parishioner and member of the parish Building Committee, has been filming the progress of the construction with his quadcopter and Go-Pro camera. Enjoy the video see the wonderful progress being made!