I feel a rant coming on . . . .

I know that ranting isn’t really a very appropriate activity for someone who aspires to being a serious Christian at any time – let alone in these last days of Advent, but a coarse old man am I, I choose the second best . . .

Late last week multiple ostensibly Catholic websites participated in the PR blitzkrieg for this morally offensive film – oops, I meant this morally offensive film – on the grounds that it can teach us about love. It actually might not have been quite so bad had they promoted the former rather than the latter.

In the first film, some men motivated by their love of their (misguided) beliefs and their (narrowly defined) community engage in a barbaric act of violence as an attempt to (1) frighten their enemies into surrendering and (2) embolden their allies in a struggle they see as just. Outsiders generally see the act of barbarity for what it is and are so edified. It becomes clear that the end does not justify the means and that the end sought by these people is evil.

In the second film, two men engage in behavior that violates their human dignity and benefits no one. The story is framed in such a way as to present these men’s vicious acts as virtuous. Cf. Isaiah 5:20-24.

At least one of the ostensibly Catholic websites has backed away from its endorsement of this latest mass media inversion of good and evil, after some unwanted attention. Others persist. Miserere, Domine!

The music we get at Sunday Mass at our parish is usually pretty dreadful, not just in execution, but particularly in selection thanks to the perpetually-aggrieved boomer leftist uebermenschische music-director (“pablum”). I was pleasantly surprised that the song at the presentation of the gifts started out as an English translation of Conditor alma siderum. After the first verse we got some Disneyish chorus added on, but then the going got weird. No more translation, like this or, if the archaic sound of that translation grates, here, but an entirely new (and tiresome) text.

Since the pablum does still believe there are two sinful behaviors – the rich oppressing the poor and warfare – the lyrics included petitions to the great Campus-Chancellor-in-the-sky to rid the world of these annoyances. Now I grant that war is often, if not always, sinful, as is oppression of the poor by the rich. Decrying these, though, is no great task in our parish. Almost no one sees himself as rich and those that do are generally quite confident both that their wealth is justly earned and that they’re singularly generous about sharing it by dropping a check for $15 or $20 in the collection plate each week and giving away some old clothes at the holidays.

How about condemning gluttony, pride, anger, dishonesty or envy? Don’t those still count? Or do those hit too close to home? Sheesh! I’m not even asking for the ones that would get lots of folks uncomfortable like adultery, fornication or sexual depravity. Heck, we needn’t even mention murdering inconvenient family members! Baby steps, that’s all I’m asking here.

Besides the narrowness of the pablum outlook, there’s the fact that the boomer liturgists in general wouldn’t know poetry if it walked up to them, gave them a wedgie, and smote them about the head with a flurry of rhymed tetrameter.

Then again, I’m in no position to shirk any penance that comes my way.

Daybreak, and a candle-end