I knew the name Thomas Merton but nothing else about him (that quote at the top of this page) so I looked him up. He was a Trappist monk who lived in the last half of the 20th century. I don't know why he couldn't just leave the monastery.
Speaking of things Catholic can we revisit the Pope's decree that the death penalty is never appropriate?
Of course we can. I'm the one sitting here in a Starbucks with a keyboard in front of me and an Americano to my right. What are you going to do about it, anyway?!
When we got home from church Pam went to fixing lunch while I looked for something to watch on TV, something that would ease us into our Sunday afternoon naps. Normally that would be a golf tournament or baseball game, both known for their sedative effect. While looking at those options I stumbled across Great Performances at the Met and a performance of Mozart's opera Cosi Fan Tutti. It had just started and we ended up watching the whole thing.
Fun!
This version was set in the 50s with pushup bras, saddle shoes, and leather motorcycle jackets with the collar turned up (think the Fonz). I recognized some of the arias but had no clue their original setting.
It's an entertaining story, great music, and this setting made it especially interesting.
Pam liked it, too. So you know it was good.
What wasn't good was the interview of cast members by one of the Great Performances hosts after the opera. She asked one of the leads of Mozart was a misogynist. (The plot line makes to two female leads look less than virtuous.)
Ah, c'mon. Are we seriously going to judge people who lived 200 years ago on the standards of contemporary western culture? Remember, what goes around comes around.
The Pope said that capital punishment is never right because we now have other options for punishing the worst offenders. I'm unclear what options we have now that weren't available 500 years ago when the Roman Catholic Church put people to death. I also wonder what he does with some awkward biblical passages like Gen. 9:6 and Rom. 13:4.
But the bigger problem for Francis is the principle behind those and other biblical passages. The death penalty is about justice. The one who willfully and maliciously takes the life of another kills someone made in the image of God and justice - the principle of lex talionis - requires that his life be taken. It is not nice, not something anyone should revel in, but it is just. To not apply the death penalty in those cases minimizes and devalues the life of the victim.
Justice seems to be an outdated social ethic lately.
One of the problems with the demise of justice as a primary principle is the effect that has on an understanding of the gospel.
"The wages of sin is death." We were all under the curse of the law and the power of the cross is that Christ paid our penalty. God's forgiveness is not some "olly, olly, oxenfree" pronouncement that just waves off our guilt. God's justice required that the penalty be paid and Christ paid it for us as our substitute. Apart from the principle of lex talionis, why the cross??
Did you see the video footage (an interesting term given that there are no physical lengths to digital clips as there were when it was on film) of the explosion at the speech being given by Venezuelan President Maduro? My favorite part is where the soldiers standing in ranks in the street RUN for cover at the sound of the explosion.
Yep, these are the guys ready to lay down their lives for el Presidente!
Last night while eating dinner we watched an episode of The Great British Baking Show. I got all motivated and got up to bake a blueberry pie. I tried doing some trick stuff with the crust, decorating it with cutouts and different washes.
FAIL.
It's my first pie since early spring and even the filling didn't come out right. I gotta get back into practice.
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