The diocesan shuffle

My diocese moves priests on a regular schedule. Pastors typically stay at a parish for 6 years (or maybe 10 - I forget). Parochial vicars (all priests other than the pastor) generally stay for 2 years.

At my parish our two parochial vicars came two years ago; so on July 1 they are moving on, and two new parochial vicars arrive.

I like the effects this has on the diocese as a corporate body, on the priests, and on the individual parishioners.

The diocese gets a flexible way to move priests to where they are needed, and a way to expose priests to all parts of the diocese, from the more rural to the near-city.

The priests get to know and work with more of their brethren. Parish priests tend to get tunnel-vision, seeing only their parish, so the regular reassignments broaden their horizons. Plus they meet more of the faithful.

Individual parishioners get to meet and work with more priests. This is very important for me. I've talked with people who've had the same pastor for 20+ years. Such a parish inevitably revolves around the person and personality of that one pastor. With priests coming and going relatively frequently, the faithful get to see that the Church's teachings remain the same, just expressed in a different style by each pastor. The focus is more on the person of Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith, less on any one priest.

I am always sorry to see my parish's priests leave, and at the same time I always look forward to meeting the new ones. What a great gift God has given us in the ordinary parish priest! The homilies, Masses, confessions, and counseling I've received from my humble parish priests have done more for my spiritual life than any other human interaction.

Too Many Curses

"Too Many Curses" by A. Lee Martinez is the 5th book from this great fantasy writer - I've also read the previous 4. Almost unheard of for a modern fantasy writer is that all 5 books have different characters, plots, and styles. No trilogies, no series, no continuity from book to book. They are all totally different! How refreshing!

And they are all funny, lighthearted books; but not completely without depth, and internally logical and consistent. I had about decided there would be no more great fantasy writers - maybe I was wrong.

Our daily bread

A few years ago I would get discouraged thinking about all the Masses and confessions I would be going to over the years. Isn't it possible just finally to become the ultimate Christian and stop having to invest the time and effort into driving to church day after day after day?

Then I read a story about an older gentleman who counted up the thousands of sermons he'd heard over the years. He couldn't remember the details of a single one. He thought they were all wasted! His pastor asked him if he could remember any of the thousands of meals his wife had made him, over the same number of years... He couldn't remember them either.

The lesson is clear. We eat three times a day (more or less) to keep up our physical strength and vitality. I attend Mass six times a week (more or less) to keep up my spiritual strength... The homily, the Eucharist, daily spiritual reading, is all food for the mind. On days I neglect Mass, prayer, and reading, my clarity of vision and focus on God suffers; just like my body suffers if I skip a few meals.

Viva Cristo Rey

"Viva Cristo Rey!" - Long live Christ the King - was Miguel Pro's exclamation before his execution by firing squad in Mexico in 1927, during the terrible persecution of Catholics.

The government took this famous picture of the firing squad, intending it to belittle Pro's Catholicity, showing the weakness of the Faith compared to the government. His hands were not tied in that position - he deliberately spread his arms in imitation of the Crucifixion, just before he was shot and killed. Copies of the picture were distributed like postcards, to discourage the faithful. It had the opposite effect, inspiring the Catholics to such an extent the government soon outlawed the pictures.

At last year's Opus Dei retreat, they played Miguel Pro's story during the lunches. The story is hard to forget.

Recently I struggled with the real truth of my life in terms of pride and humility. The catchphrase - "Viva Cristo Rey!" - popped into my head and comforted me greatly. I still repeat it to myself from time to time during the day - when I'm tired, or discouraged, or just to remind myself of God. It clarifies my thoughts and gives me energy.

Long live Christ the King!

The Object Primer 3rd Edition

The Object Primer: Agile Model Driven Development by Scott Ambler is the book I'm reading at work during lunch. In terms of introducing object-oriented concepts it is, in fact, a primer; very basic, starting off almost from scratch. Going back to basics is something everyone should do every once in a while... I have a definite tendency to make things as complicated as I can, and it's good to read a text that boils a topic down to the very basics.

It was written in 2004, and it's interesting how technology changes. One of the first chapters introduces the basic building blocks of business-oriented application development: object technology, relational databases, Web services, and XML. By "object technology" he means a rich domain model expressed in terms of the problem domain. I hardly ever see object technology applied in the disciplined way he describes... Maybe I've been working on the wrong projects. As for relational databases, they have certainly been everyone's bread and butter for over a generation now, but it is amazing how few programmers really know anything about them. The very largest Web sites don't seem to use traditional relational databases for the most part but every application I've written for over 20 years now is backed by one. Web services seem to be falling out of fashion in favor of plain old XML ("POX") and URL-driven interfaces.

But that is just the first chapter. I'm reading the book for practical experience and guidance on modeling - something I hardly ever do - I prefer writing paragraphs of text (much like this post that you are reading now), over boxes and arrows. But long and painful experience shows that modeling can be a huge help to team communication, team thought, communicating with the customer and management, etc. And it can help you write better software... All the problems arise from too much modeling, too early in the project; pro forma modeling done to fulfill a checklist by people who could care less about the model itself; and models that only partly reflect reality so they can't be trusted as a description of the actual software.

My hope from reading this book is to help me use models effectively, avoiding these traps.

Pride, humility, adherence to God's will

It's been a while since I wrote about This Tremendous Lover. Like my retreat last November, it has caused tremendous upheaval in my spiritual life.

The upheaval came after I read the chapter on humility and adherence to God's will. Humility means having a clear understanding ourselves; adherence to God's will means losing ourselves to let God live in us.

In reading this chapter, I recognized myself in M. Eugene Boylan's description of the proud man who has hope only in himself.

One of the reasons why men are so anxious to exalt themselves -- to overestimate their own value and their own powers -- to resent anything that would tend to lower themselves in their own esteem or that of others -- is because they see no hope for their happiness save in themselves. That is often why they are so "touchy," so resentful of criticism, so impatient of opposition, so insistent on getting their own way, so eager be known, so anxious for praise, so determined on ruling their surroundings. They clutch at themselves like drowning men clutch at a straw. And as life goes on, and they are still far from being satisfied, their attitude borders on the feverish and the hysterical; whatever they may have got, they are certainly far from having found peace....

Some men are quite adroit in turning the conversation to topics in which they can display their knowledge or ability. The patronizing person is generally a a proud person.... There are those who insist upon maintaining their own opinion, those who cannot let any slip pass without correcting it, those who are only too glad to correct others.... Contemptuous sarcasm and mordant wit often come from pride.

I didn't recognize myself in any part of his description of the humble man who lives for God.

The attitude of the man who has true Christian humility is just the opposite. His hope is placed in God; he sees no hope in himself. He has not to worry about getting his own way; all that matters is that God should get His way. He knows that the less he has to do with the arranging of things, the more likely it is that things will turn out for the best. He is by no means spineless or inert. On the contrary, let him but once be certain that God wills him to undertake a certain work, and he will tackle it, no matter what it may be, because he knows his sufficiency is from God....

The avoidance of all those manifestations of pride which we mentioned above would be sound forms of practical humility. To speak as little of one's own self or affairs as possible; to mind one's own business; to avoid curiosity; not to want to manage other people's affairs; to accept contradiction or correction; not to insist upon one's own opinion unless truth or justice require it, and then to do so moderately, but with courage; to pass over the mistakes of others, to cover them up; to yield to will of others, where neither duty nor charity nor genuine Christian principle is involved; to hide one's own ability or talents; to avoid ostentation; all such are works of humility that are within the power of all.

I've known for some time the extent of my my problem with pride... But this was basically just an intellectual surface knowledge. Reading this chapter was enough to bring it home in a real, concrete fashion.

The fact is that standing on my own, being self-sufficient, is close to the heart of my personality. Turning my gaze from myself to God amounts to a leap into the unknown, a jump off the cliff, an embrace of the abyss. It means turning myself inside out.

It means trusting God, allowing His Word to re-shape me. For the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12) I pray for the Word of God to twist between my soul and spirit, to scour me and turn me to Him.

An Outcast of the Islands

This book is Joseph Conrad's second novel, published in 1886.

Conrad is quite an author; he was Polish, and didn't even learn English until his twenties, and yet became one of the finest novelists ever to write in English. The Wikipedia article I linked to above says he is a forerunner to modern writers, his style influencing everyone from D.H. Lawrence to Herman Melville. Personally I feel William Faulkner (another of my favorites) owes something to Conrad as well. Listening to Conrad's novel Nostromo on CD was a peak experience of my reading life.

"An Outcast of the Islands" depiction of obsession and alienation is so intense that I actually had to stop reading it for a few months. Even with the few month's gap, the story made such an impression on me that when I picked it back up last week, the whole story was still in my mind... In fact I never really stopped thinking about it. Not too many books have made such an impression on me.

The cover shown here is the cover of my copy. I can't find a better image online. I find the cover itself very evocative; it's from a painting called "Old Boathouse and Riverside Vegetation, Sarawak", by Marianne North.

But I'm not eloquent enough to explain Conrad's appeal. His sentences are simple and declarative, like Tolstoy's. The stories tend to shift back and forth in time and perspective, like Faulkner. But mainly, his stories are very interior; Conrad externalizes in narrative action the deepest functioning of the human soul.

There's a few authors that I've made a point of collecting and reading all their works that I could find... and they are an eclectic group. Donald Hamilton (espionage), William Faulkner (best writer ever), Glen Cook (fantasy), Robert E. Howard (fantasy), Ross MacDonald (mysteries), and Erich Maria Remarque (war). Conrad is well on his way to joining this group!