The land war in the Mount Elgon region in Kenya is "a forgotten tragedy," according to today's Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.
Reuters wrote that an allocation of government land in July 2006 unleashed a war between the Ndorobo and Soy clans of the Sabaot ethnic group that has killed around 300, mostly civilians.
More than 60,000 terrorised people have fled their homes in an area originally populated by 170,000.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Another Iconoclasm
Le mépris ou l'horreur des chrétiens modernes pour toutes les manifestations d'un art supérieur est intolérable et paraît même une autre sorte d'iconoclastie plus démoniaque.
(Léon Bloy, La femme pauvre, 1897)
The contempt or horror of modern Christians for all the manifestations of a superior art is beyond bearing, and even appears to be another and a more devilish kind of iconoclasm.
(Léon Bloy, La femme pauvre, 1897)
The contempt or horror of modern Christians for all the manifestations of a superior art is beyond bearing, and even appears to be another and a more devilish kind of iconoclasm.
Reporter-Duck
(Mallard Fillmore by Bruce Tinsley, via Seattle-PI)
A seasoned, rumpled ex-newspaper reporter, Mallard now works for WFDR-TV in Washington, D.C. The fact that he is a duck doesn't stand out at Channel 3 nearly as much as his unapologetic political viewpoints do.
Tell the Truth
From the movie Ace in the Hole (1951) by Billy Wilder, with Kirk Douglas.
Douglas plays Charles (Chuck) Tatum, an immoral New York reporter down and out in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
His reputation is in need of even greater repair as he ambles arrogantly into the publisher's office of the small-time Sun-Bulletin, trying to land a job.
"I've been fired from eleven papers with a total circulation of seven million," Tatum brags to editor Jacob Q. Boot (Porter Hall), offering the services of a "250-dollar-a-week reporter for 50 bucks. Make it 45."
"I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog."
TATUM: Mr. Boot, I was passing through Albuquerque; had breakfast here. I read your paper and thought you might be interested in my reaction.
BOOT: Indeed I am.
TATUM: Well, to be honest, it made me throw up. I don't mean to tell you I was expecting the New York Times, but even for Albuquerque, this is pretty Albuquerque.
BOOT: Alright, here's your nickel back.
[...]
TATUM: I've done a lot of lying in my time. I've lied to men who wear belts. I've lied to men who wear suspenders. But I'd never be so stupid as to lie to a man who wears both belt and suspenders.
[...]
TATUM: Where's my desk?
BOOT: The one by the door. You may be out of here by Saturday.
TATUM: Sooner the better.
Stitched in needlepoint and framed above a desk, the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin motto admonishes, "Tell the Truth."
"Wish I could coin 'em like that," Tatum quips to the secretary. "If I ever do, will you embroider it for me?"
Friday, July 25, 2008
Annus Horribilis
Revenues shrinking to MicroMachine proportions, newsroom jobs disappearing like sand under a rising tide...
Is 2008 the worst year in modern newspaper history?
Here are five other contenders: 1931, 1957, 1963, 1982 and 1999.
Is 2008 the worst year in modern newspaper history?
Here are five other contenders: 1931, 1957, 1963, 1982 and 1999.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
News Stories in Photographs
The Boston Globe's blog The Big Picture tells stories through photos:
Giant, dramatic, vivid images that take up the entire computer screen – in the tradition of photo storytelling found in National Geographic and Life magazine, according to the blog's creator, Alan Taylor. [AJR]
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Virtue and Knowledge
As a result of his exaggerated intellectualism he [Plato] failed to distinguish the acts of the practical from those of the speculative intellect and identified virtue, which requires rectitude of the will, with knowledge, which is a perfection of the reason alone.
He therefore misapplied the principle, in itself true, that the will always follows the guidance of the understanding, and maintained that sin is simply due to lack of knowledge and that no one deliberately does evil: "the sinner is merely an ignorant person."
The consequence of this theory, which Plato did not intend, is the denial of free will.
(Jacques Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy)
He therefore misapplied the principle, in itself true, that the will always follows the guidance of the understanding, and maintained that sin is simply due to lack of knowledge and that no one deliberately does evil: "the sinner is merely an ignorant person."
The consequence of this theory, which Plato did not intend, is the denial of free will.
(Jacques Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy)
Monday, July 21, 2008
Entertainment?
...the exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, often presented through television and the internet as entertainment. I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who actually do suffer violence and sexual exploitation "explain" that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely "entertainment"?
(Pope Benedict XVI, here)
(Pope Benedict XVI, here)
Friday, July 18, 2008
Miracles Happen
Heavenly result in assignment from hell:
After all, miracles happen...
It's almost miraculous, but the international telecast of World Youth Day [in Sydney, Australia] has so far come together without an obvious technical hitch.
The telecast of 18 hours of live coverage over six days [...] requires a logistically daunting 21 outside broadcasts. It started with Tuesday's opening mass and will culminate with the Pope's address to an expected 500,000 faithful at Randwick racecourse on Sunday.
[Sally Jackson, The Australian]
After all, miracles happen...
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Second Life
Even in this era of editorial reinvention, few media outlets have remade themselves as completely as the legendary German-language newspaper Aufbau. Founded in 1934, the publication's mission was to help Jewish refugees and their children shed their European past and rebuild their lives in the United States. It was, in the words of longtime editor Manfred George, "an American paper, written and published in America" and "firmly faced toward our American future." Not anymore. Aufbau has traded in its storied newsprint and remade itself as a glossy monthly magazine based not in America, but in Europe. [Mariah Blake, CJR]
Well, for the record, Aufbau is now based in Zurich, Switzerland.
Monday, July 14, 2008
'Noncombat' Deaths
...a subject that once got no coverage, and now gets far too little: so-called "noncombat" deaths among US troops in Iraq. Included are those who die from illness, accidents and suicides. [Greg Mitchell, E&P]
Friday, July 11, 2008
Churchish for Journalists
Oh, all those strange and mysterious words used by people who go to church!
They speak a language known as Catholish, Churchish or Ecclesialese, as the Italians call it. It is specialised, technical, Greek- and Latin-based and frequently obscure.
So I started to write a book, Churchish for Journalists: an alphabetical glossary of church-related terms or jargon buster. The purpose is to help avoid the most common mistakes made by religion reporters who are non-specialist in the field.
They speak a language known as Catholish, Churchish or Ecclesialese, as the Italians call it. It is specialised, technical, Greek- and Latin-based and frequently obscure.
So I started to write a book, Churchish for Journalists: an alphabetical glossary of church-related terms or jargon buster. The purpose is to help avoid the most common mistakes made by religion reporters who are non-specialist in the field.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Sydney
The TV commercial of the World Youth Day 2008 that will be held in Sydney, Australia, from 15 to 20 July. A report of mine about this 23rd WYD and the theme song Receive the Power, written by Guy Sebastian (winner of the first Australian Idol contest in 2003) and Gary Pinto.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Music for Paradise
Ora et labora is the famous motto of the Rule given to the monks by St Benedict. It is Latin for "pray and work." But it would be better to say ora, labora et canta: pray, work and sing. Here's why.
Gregor Henckel Donnersmarck, Abbot of the Cistercian Abbey Stift Heiligenkreuz:
Gregor Henckel Donnersmarck, Abbot of the Cistercian Abbey Stift Heiligenkreuz:
Much of today's world is too fast, too loud and altogether bewildering. A monastery is a piece of paradise by comparison. Monks strive to live peacefully, content, somehow out of time.
Our Cistercian Abbey, Stift Heiligenkreuz in the Vienna woods in Austria, is one of those rare places where heaven and earth meet. This ancient monastery was founded in 1133 but is still going today, hundreds of years later. It is a large and thriving community with many young monks. Why are we so blessed with vocations?
Maybe because simply doing our job is the right thing to do? We live daily life according to the rhythm of "ora et labora," working and praying and praising God from morning to night, starting every day at 5.15am. Cistercian monks live their lives in a community where everyone has the same simple but glorious goal of getting to heaven. And we hope you can hear this in our singing of Gregorian chant, which is not music for the sake of music; it is prayer.
Gregorian chant is old and venerable, named after Pope Gregory the Great († 604): who called it the "Song of Angels." The music is simple and poignant, connecting heaven and earth. In part this is simply because the words of the chant are excerpts from the Latin Bible, the Word of God. Monks sing words back to God which He has given to us. On this record we sing Compline, the monk's night prayer built around Psalm 90, and also the peaceful setting of our funeral mass (Requiem), which points towards the wonderful mystery of life after death. When the monks sing, the chant opens our hearts. We hope it purifies our souls and helps us regain clarity, light, strength and peace. Where there is chaos, we seek to restore order. Where there is emptiness, we try and find meaning. And where there is sadness, joy can return.
In September 2007, Pope Benedict XVI came to visit Heiligenkreuz. When the monks began to sing he sank into meditation and adoration in front of the watching world. In his speech to us he encouraged our country's monks to continue praying the chant.
The monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz have made this CD to show the world that Gregorian chant is so beautiful because it aims for the highest, for the greatest of all goals. Chant will move everyone who listens, because it is "music for paradise."
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The Cross
"As I was observing," continued Michael, "this man also took the view that the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all unreason. His history is rather amusing. It is also a perfect allegory of what happens to rationalists like yourself.
"He began, of course, by refusing to allow a crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck, or even in a picture. He said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary and fantastic shape, that it was a monstrosity, loved because it was paradoxical. Then he began to grow fiercer and more eccentric; he would batter the crosses by the roadside; for he lived in a Roman Catholic country. Finally in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving it in the air, and uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars.
"Then one still summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and transfiguration which changes the world. He was standing smoking, for a moment, in the front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes were opened. Not a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by a sudden change in the eyesight that this paling was an army of innumerable crosses linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up his heavy stick and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his homeward path he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and every paling is a wall of crosses.
"When he returned to his house he was a literal madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung himself upon a bed only to remember that this, too, like all workmanlike things, was constructed on the accursed plan. He broke his furniture because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made of crosses. He was found in the river."
Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
"Is that story really true?" he asked.
"Oh, no," said Michael, airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end by breaking up the habitable world."
(GK Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross)
"He began, of course, by refusing to allow a crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck, or even in a picture. He said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary and fantastic shape, that it was a monstrosity, loved because it was paradoxical. Then he began to grow fiercer and more eccentric; he would batter the crosses by the roadside; for he lived in a Roman Catholic country. Finally in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving it in the air, and uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars.
"Then one still summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and transfiguration which changes the world. He was standing smoking, for a moment, in the front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes were opened. Not a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by a sudden change in the eyesight that this paling was an army of innumerable crosses linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up his heavy stick and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his homeward path he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and every paling is a wall of crosses.
"When he returned to his house he was a literal madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung himself upon a bed only to remember that this, too, like all workmanlike things, was constructed on the accursed plan. He broke his furniture because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made of crosses. He was found in the river."
Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
"Is that story really true?" he asked.
"Oh, no," said Michael, airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end by breaking up the habitable world."
(GK Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross)
Clement XIII, Pope
I wrote two articles (here and here) about the election of Pope Clement XIII (Carlo Rezzonico) on July 6, 1758 -- 250 years ago.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Jackals
Personal columnists, and this is getting to read a little like a column, are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat—no matter who killed the meat for him.
(Ernest Hemingway, "Old Newsman Writes: A Letter from Cuba," in Esquire, New York, December 1934, reprinted in By-Line)
(Ernest Hemingway, "Old Newsman Writes: A Letter from Cuba," in Esquire, New York, December 1934, reprinted in By-Line)
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