Attended daily Mass Monday and found a sign
taped to the front door of the Cathedral; there has been vandalism there and
they are locking the doors immediately after the daily Masses henceforth. I know of one incident from last week,
apparently one of the many homeless men that hang around the Catholic Charities
place across the street urinated in the baptismal font. There may have been others.
To his credit, Father said he hated to lock
the doors like that but he couldn't sit by while "sacred things" were
vandalized. It's a shame that one quiet
spot left in downtown Colorado Springs has now been lost due to the probably
irresponsible act of one poor confused individual.
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Another good column in the Wall Street
Journal on Tuesday, this one from Bret Stephens. It does a pretty good job of describing the
state of higher education, which appears to be getting worse all the time. It takes the form of a commencement address
and starts out as follows:
"Allow me to
be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let's be
honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few
years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased
degree. Now you're entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president
whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the
self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your
parents. They're the ones who spent a fortune on your education only to get you
back— return-to-sender, forwarding address unknown.
No doubt some of
you have overcome real hardships or taken real degrees. A couple of years ago I
hired a summer intern from West Point. She came to the office directly from
weeks of field exercises in which she kept a bulletproof vest on at all times,
even while sleeping. She writes brilliantly and is as self-effacing as she is
accomplished. Now she's in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban."
He describes an interview with an Ivy League graduate as follows:
"A few months
ago, I interviewed a young man with an astonishingly high GPA from an Ivy
League university and aspirations to write about Middle East politics. We got
on the subject of the Suez Crisis of 1956. He was vaguely familiar with it. But
he didn't know who was president of the United States in 1956. And he didn't
know who succeeded that president."
This is nearly unbelievable, yet it isn't, and it's sad. One can't help but wonder what happens when
these very highly educated illiterates begin to assume important positions in
business and government. How will the
country survive?
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On a brighter note, a major project at work has been completed and
life is returning slowly to normal. The
hours are shorter and there's at least a bit of time to think.
I just completed an excellent book by Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle
Ages. His is the first book I've
read that offers some reasonable explanation of the relationship between faith
and reason. I hope to provide a full
review in a future post.
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You may have noticed a bit of redesign of the blog. I'm hoping to broaden my focus to the
Catholic faith in general and the design changes are an attempt to put that
broader focus into symbolic form. Hope
you enjoy it.
