The Catholic Thing

by Michael Pakaluk

It happens almost without fail that when I try to insert an old-style USB plug into a socket for it, I get it the wrong way. Moreover, when I say to myself, "I am probably inserting it the wrong way once again. Therefore, this time I will reverse what I intended to do," and then flip it, I invariably discover that I did have it the right way, and that in trying to correct myself I made it wrong again.

But how can this be? Can the universe really be so designed, that I am meant to encounter a contradiction every time I try to plug in an old-style USB? Is the contradiction so strongly woven into reality that - like the angel of death in the old tale - when you've thought you've avoided it, it has captured you, nonetheless?

I've often been tempted to write a column on this contradiction. In the past, I dismissed the idea, because it seemed silly. But then yesterday a friend wrote to complain, out of the blue and unprompted: "Every time I'm tempted to play Lotto I recall how often, when I plug a USB cord into one of those adapters, I plug it in wrong." Maybe it's not just me.

In any case, I want to say that there is a broad class of similar phenomena, where the world seems designed to annoy us with contradictions.

The word "annoyance" is itself telling. It comes from the word for hateful, "odious." Something an-oying, presents something hateful to us, an-odious. If the world is designed to be annoying, then it is designed to be hated - which seems profoundly correct from a Christian point of view. Surely a good God would design a world that pricks us with small hateful things. Hence the answer to the puzzle of why there are spiders, mosquitoes, cockroaches, gnats, and flies.

We try to minimize annoyances, yet we cannot remove them. Entire institutions are dedicated to removing them. We call them "resorts." Resorts can succeed in producing an annoyance-free life for a few days, perhaps (even if the USB problem perdures). But we know resorts are unreal. A wise traveler expects a resort to fail. He will take it in stride if he sees a dust bunny in a corner, or if the lobby coffee isn't hot, or the leaf blower in the morning is too loud.

In war, ordinary annoyances grow in size to become almost overwhelming, as if the world rises up in protest against the war - the mud, the rats, the maggots, the stench.

Mosquitoes are naturally occurring annoyances. But we bring them upon ourselves, if we leave around lots of standing water, so that they become part natural, part artificial.

Then there are annoyances which specifically bedevil our devices and machines. That these are a distinct class is shown by our invention of a distinct word for them, "gremlins" - a word which did not exist before the 1920s. Its popularity today is traceable back to its use by U.S. servicemen in World War II.

We cannot escape the effects of original sin with our machines. Gremlins will inevitably get into the best-designed and manufactured jeeps, tanks, and airplanes. Likewise, it is an unalterable rule that microphones will malfunction in public events. Perfectly good projectors fail more than they work. Phone buttons fail when they are most necessary. . . all because of gremlins.

Perhaps we should distinguish a "spoiling" from an annoyance. The rule that any material object that you love inordinately will be damaged the very first day that you own it is a rule of spoiling. The rule that you will need to fight feelings of regret and recrimination everyday thereafter is a rule of annoyance.

Annoyances seem gender-specific. Men are annoyed by such things as that it is impossible to pick up a collar stay. We lose at least one sock in every wash. The charcoal runs out only when we are confident that we have plenty. Plastic wrap inevitably splits and starts building up exponentially on a small portion of the roll. Hairs grow from the side of our ears at the rate of 2 inches per night.

These are annoying things, and they are transient. The annoyan...

by Daniel B. Gallagher.

I'm a Luddite, but I can't turn a blind eye to how deeply technology has affected my teaching. On the one hand, it's hard to imagine a greater gift to the humanities than the Internet. Not only can you pull up classical texts in readable transcriptions, you can instantly access high-resolution images of those texts in manuscript form. Pop into the Latin Library for a text-only version of the Aeneid, or go the Vatican Library for stupendous images of the Vergilius Vaticanus, a 1,600-year-old illuminated codex. Few of my students, of course, are trained to work with the Vergilius Vaticanus, but with a little Latin, they can delve into Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, Livy, and a host of other Latin authors at the Latin Library.

You would think that such ready access to the great works of the past would make it possible to bring students with little to no background up to speed rather quickly. Take Dante's Divine Comedy, for instance. You don't even need to have a physical copy anymore (though don't be caught dead in my class without one). You have the entire Italian text, multiple English translations, and copious commentary all at Digital Dante.

Considering how little students know about mythology, Christianity, philosophy, theology, history, and all the other things you need to know to follow the Commedia, the Internet is a godsend.

Never heard of Pasiphaë? Go to Wikipedia. Then click "images" and immerse yourself in a range of artworks depicting the Cretan queen mating with the Minotaur. Don't know Guido Guinizelli? His biography is yours with the click of a button. So are his poems, his portrait, and an article that analyzes a recently discovered manuscript of his poem Omo ch'è saggio non corre leggero ("A wise man does not run lightly").

In short, you can make up for a lifetime of lost learning or write a decent term paper without ever entering a library.

But herein lies the mystery. Why don't students do it? Why don't they take the simple steps necessary to become familiar with the Middle Ages or fill in other knowledge gaps that have widened during their youth, often through no fault of their own?

Plenty of studies have already shown the detrimental effects of desultory Internet browsing. Many tech enthusiasts have conversely argued for the astounding learning progress possible through apps such as Duolingo. Being the Luddite that I am, I want to offer two other answers, one more distressing than the other.

The first is that the humanities must be taught with passion - a passion that inspires students to read, say, the entire Iliad, not the CliffsNotes. Even with a world full of books at his disposal, the average student, no matter how bright, won't turn the cover page of the Iliad unless someone has at least suggested to him that it will change his life.

But this is not merely a matter of cheerleading. Plenty of parents in the homeschooling movement do that day after day, but - again, through no fault of their own - have red only the CliffsNotes. They know the importance of the great books but have only a vague idea of what makes them great. You can only figure that out by reading the entire Iliad. The Iliad will change your life, the CliffsNotes will not. My wife and I homeschool four, so I know it's easier said than done. But I can offer no other answer.

I am afraid the second answer is much more serious. Namely, maybe there are no gaps. What appear to be gaps are actually corners of the brain stuffed with garbage, false narratives, and outright woke propaganda. Where a love of Homer and Dante and many others should reign, a wrathful cynicism towards everything they represent seethes and rots.

This became glaringly evident to me during the infamous February 16th interview with Marco Rubio on Face the Nation. The host, Margaret Brennan, asked the Secretary of State to respond to criticisms directed at J.D. Vance for meeting with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, Alice We...

By Anthony Esolen.

I have been committing Paradise Lost to memory - in emulation of a farmer who lived one big field over from a professor of mine, the medievalist George Kane, when George was a boy in Saskatchewan. Yes, I know what Milton thought of the Catholic Church. But Paradise Lost is still the greatest single poem in English, and I find Milton quite shrewd in his psychological analysis of good and evil, and what moves a presumably intelligent being to do wrong.

I write this because some of the prelates in our Church seem to me to have a childish and simplistic, if not guileful, view of the relationship between what we know or think we know, and what it is right for us to do.

Below, from memory, is Adam speaking to Eve in Book 9, on the fateful morning of the temptation and fall. Eve wants to work aside from Adam till noon, to get more done that way, because while they are near each other, they smile, they chat, and "the hour of supper comes unearned." Adam does not think it is a good idea, because, as he and Eve both know very well, they have an enemy somewhere in wait, malicious and devoured with hatred, but subtle and full of guile. Eve says, rightly enough, that God has made them proof against temptation, whether they are together or alone.

Adam will yield, as we know, but in his last warning to Eve he sets forth how an innocent and intelligent soul can yet err in reasoning. God has made man "perfect," that is, finished, fully wrought, what man in his kind should be, and left him secure from outward force. But. . .

within himself

The danger lies, yet lies within his power:

Against his will he can receive no harm.

But God left free the will, for what obeys

Reason is free, and reason he made right,

But bid her well beware, and still erect,

Lest by some fair appearing good surprised

She dictate false, and misinform the will

To do what God expressly hath forbid.

Then not mistrust, but tender love enjoins

That I should mind thee oft, and mind thou me.

Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve,

For reason not impossibly may meet

Some specious object by the foe suborned,

And fall into deception unawares,

Not keeping strictest watch, as she was warned.

Notice that Adam and Eve, before the Fall, can reason incorrectly, at least for a time. How so? They may view only one aspect of a question. They may draw a hasty conclusion. They may not possess all the pertinent facts. A mistake is not a sin.

Presumably (and Milton has already shown us the process in action, several times), if they let the question rest awhile, if they ask an answer from someone wiser than they are, if they talk the matter over, they will eventually find their mistake in reasoning.

Such mistakes, or unsettled doubts, are of no decisive consequence, if we are talking about why the stars shine when all creatures are asleep, or why the infinitesimally tiny earth should receive influences from all the heavenly bodies, or whether angels can enjoy earthly food.

They are urgent, in the case of Adam and Eve, only when they touch upon the "sole command, sole pledge of their obedience." Suppose then that your reason is "surprised," that is, ambushed, so that some evil action looks good.

This is a common thing: everyone who chooses the wrong chooses it under some aspect of good. Such good is "specious," as Adam puts it. Milton intends the word literally: it is speciosum; it looks flashy on the outside.

Hence we must obey, regardless of what we think we see at the moment. This is not blind obedience. It is a humble acknowledgment of our intellectual limitations, even if we are not confused by sinful desires. When those desires are in force, we can be pretty sure that "reason" will be rationalization, excuse-making, arguing oneself into the position that most pleases.

The stronger the passions, or the more ingrained the habits, the more inevitable the rationalization will be. Sexual sins are not the worst - though that is no more than to say that pneumonia is not as b...

By Robert Royal.

A high-placed Cardinal complained this past week that some people - particularly some traditional Catholics - are hoping that Pope Francis will die. There are such Catholics, and their open disrespect for the successor of Peter, whatever his record, is simply wrong. But the way that they and the whole world take notice when the Pope of Rome may be exiting this mortal life to be replaced by another head of a Church that numbers nearly 1.4 billion members indicates that, despite all the problems and outright failures of Christianity in the modern world, its historic leader (in some ways even for many Protestants) still matters.

At this moment, when the pope is in critical condition, it's only natural for people to look around and wonder: Who would be the best person to lead the Church as we enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century?

It's an impossible question to answer, and there's great wisdom in the old Roman phrase Chi entra papa in conclave, esce cardinale ("Who enters a conclave as pope exits as a cardinal.") There have been just too many "frontrunners" who were never chosen. But if you're looking for information, the best place is The College of Cardinals Report.

Besides, it's only seemly to wait until the current occupant of the Chair of Peter has passed on before speculating. But it's useful - not only for those of us who will live under the next pope but for the next pope himself - to consider not who but what we will need in the next few years. And the simple answer to that question is: It's complicated.

I briefly scandalized my colleagues in the "Conclave Crew" (the precursor of the EWTN Papal Posse) the first time in 2013 that we all met in Rome. I was convinced then - and still am - that we don't need another "teaching" pope, by which I mean a pontiff and a Church that propose many "new things" to the world, except the uniquely New Thing, Jesus Christ, the beauty tam antiqua, tam nova ("ever ancient, ever new") in St. Augustine's phrase.

Our God may be a God of surprises, but just now my sense is that we need much less that's novel, interesting, and "surprising," much more that is plain, solid, and sane. Between JPII and Benedict XVI, we were given an enormous spiritual, moral, and social legacy that still desperately needs to be absorbed at every level of the Church - from the tiniest parish to the most powerful dicasteries in Rome - and even beyond.

Because even the most simple elements of Christianity have been slipping away from the culture and often from the Church herself. A wise woman of my acquaintance recently pointed out to me that in 2023 on the popular quiz show "Jeopardy," three contestants were asked to fill in the phrase "Our Father who art in Heaven, blank be Thy Name." None was able to do so.

In a culture where that can happen, many of the things that are regarded as "issues" the Church must tackle - things like gender, climate, mass immigration, most politics - are first-world luxury concerns. If we believe that God became Man to save us from our sins in order to prepare us for eternal life then certain priorities arise.

The most urgent thing any pope must do in our day is to get people to look beyond material matters to the spiritual dimensions of reality as a preparation for encountering the Lord of Creation. That's always been a problem, of course, but the situation is worse today given the sheer power of modern science and technology. Indeed, there's no small temptation these days to worship the work of our digital - and increasingly AI-generated - hands. But that is a snare and a delusion, even something of an open idol.

Several prelates have the gifts to address this problem and would make good popes, other things being equal. But other things aren't equal, and the next pontiff is also going to have to have a very different set of skills in order to carry out a deep reform of the Vatican itself, especially the tangled mess of sex scandals and financial irregula...

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia.

But first a note from Robert Royal: As we make this posting, Pope Francis's condition is being described as critical by the Vatican. We encourage all our readers to pray for the Holy Father.

Now for today's column...

There's a little bit of Thomas Jefferson in each of us. A scary thought. He infamously cut and pasted verses from the Gospels to remove all miracles and mentions of the supernatural. The result was The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth or the "Jefferson Bible." It's an arrogant work that presents a naturalized Jesus, who is eminently reasonable and palatable to a certain kind of taste - and harmless.

Unfortunately, we have the tendency to do likewise. If we don't cut out passages with a razor as Jefferson did, we certainly water down the strong words and smooth out the rough edges. We explain away what might discomfit us. As with Jefferson, it's all to make the Gospels more acceptable, more comfortable for our cult of comfort.

So it is with today's Gospel (Lk 6:27-38), one of the most demanding and haunting. Jesus commands us to "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." We are to be merciful just as our Father in heaven is merciful. But we look for a way to take the sting out of these commands: They're hyperbole. . . .He's speaking metaphorically. . . .Well, I mean, what does it really mean to love? We trim the words to fit our lives, rather than changing our lives to fit them.

Jesus meant what He said. And He Himself did what He commanded: Father, forgive them. He is the Word-made-flesh, both teacher and exemplar. He reveals by His own life that His commands are possible. The saints have taken these words at face-value and lived them out. No Christian martyr ever died spitting out vengeful threats at his executioners. The martyrs fulfilled Jesus' command with words of forgiveness and mercy, even to their enemies. Stephen in Jerusalem, Thomas More on Tower Hill, Maximilian Kolbe in Auschwitz - they fulfilled the words of today's Gospel.

Which means that these words are possible to live. But only as Christians. Christ's words never make any sense apart from Him and our vital participation in His life. The radical mercy He commands is not an add-on to discipleship but the inevitable fruit of our life in Christ. Problem is, we're still shackled to the natural, earthly man spoken of in the second reading. We're still assessing the New Adam's words by the First Adam's standards. We have not yet put on the fresh spiritual way of thinking characteristic of Christians.

The reason we want to water down Christ's words is because we don't hear them within the context of grace and divine filiation. We labor under the misconception that God will somehow give a command that we cannot fulfill. Instead we should consider that when He gives a command He also gives the grace to fulfill it.

Forgiveness is not only difficult but practically impossible without grace. Only God's grace makes us capable of Christian forgiveness, to be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. Indeed, we can be merciful as He is only because we have Him as our Heavenly Father.

Supreme confidence in this grace is expressed (not surprisingly) by Saint Augustine in his wonderful little prayer: Da quod iubes et iube quod vis (Give what you command and then command what you will). A favorite prayer of Pope Benedict XVI's. The Doctor of Grace gets the order just right. God commands us to do crazy things - like loving our enemies and blessing our persecutors - because He has first given us His grace, made us His children.

The first reading highlights by contrast the distinctly Christian dimension of the Gospel. It tells the story of David's mercy towards King Saul. But notice that his mercy is not the unqualified kind expected of us. David stays his hand only because Saul is the Lord's anointed. And "who can lay hands on the Lord's anointed and remain unpunishe...

by Father Raymond J. de Souza.

The feast of the "Apostles of the Slavs" - Saints Cyril and Methodius" - is observed liturgically on 14th February and not at all culturally, as schoolchildren draw valentines instead and their fathers buy flowers. No harm done.

If the feast of the holy brothers had an octave, this year's would be remembered as bringing much harm to the Slavic lands. As the world rubbed its eyes in disbelief, the president of the United States offered his thoughts, analysis, and proposals regarding Russia's war on Ukraine, the third anniversary of which falls on Monday.

In 2022, Catholics in Ukraine prayed that President Vladimir Putin of Russia might have a change of heart. This year they beseech God for the same regarding President Donald Trump. The two presidents see the world in similar ways, in which great powers dominate their "near abroad." St. John Paul the Great, a proud Slav himself, had a different view, which he laid out in some detail in the 1980s. The contrasting views are apparent before the Christian world now.

In 2014, when Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was distressed, muttering that it was a "19th-century act in the 21st-century." He must have been totally flummoxed when Putin then gave his Crimea address to the Russian Duma, and went back not to the 19th century, but nine hundred years earlier, to the Crimea where "Prince Vladimir was baptized", noting that "his spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization, and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus."

"We are one people," Putin continued. "Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other."

In the name of these spiritual and fraternal bonds, Putin has invaded and killed his brother Slavs. He has done this with the blessing of Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow, who understands himself to be the spiritual father of the Ukrainians being killed by the Russian armed forces. For that reason, the "father and head" of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv - on a visit to the United States and Canada in these days - has referred to the war as "sacrilegious."

It is unlikely that President Trump has views on the 10th-century baptism of the Slavic peoples, but he certainly has ideas about the 19th-century. Unlike Kerry, who lamented 19th-century thinking, Trump welcomes it.

In his second inaugural address, Trump declared that the "United States will once again consider itself a growing nation - one that. . .expands our territory." It was a return to the Monroe Doctrine and "manifest destiny," words Trump deployed to rather extravagant effect, speaking of setting out for Mars. Trump did not speak of the American founding but did mention two presidents, William McKinley (1897-1901) and Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). Trump frequently praises that era - "tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary."

The Monroe Doctrine, announced in the State of the Union address in 1823, instructed the European powers to consider the American continent, north and south, as the sphere of the United States. Their colonial days were over in America's backyard. In his 1904 State of the Union address, Theodore Roosevelt noted that in certain situations "adherence to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States. . .to the exercise of an international police power."

America reserved to itself the right to intervene in its own backyard and to acquire new territory, as it did in the McKinley-Roosevelt years. And if there are to be colonies in this hemisphere - Greenland, Panama, Guantanamo - then the United States should have them.

It is easy to imagine that he would be sympathetic to how Putin thinks about Russia's "near abroad." That term, the English translation of blizhneye zarubezhye, came to prominence after the dissolution of ...

By David Warren.

There is a joke I remembered from my senior childhood, itself a large number of years ago: "I want to die in peace and tranquility, like my grandfather. Not screaming and panicking, like his passengers."

Well, my own maternal grandpa was a railway engineer, or as we say today "a train driver." I hasten to point out that he did not die in a train wreck, though some did on the Sydney and Louisburg Railroad, though few, because its passengers were mostly humble lumps of coal.

I remembered this joke when I was myself being wheeled into surgery, from a heart attack with all the trimmings, four years ago (to the day). This was my way of planning for a good death, or at least as good as possible.

By an extraordinary coincidence, my Nova Scotia buddy, the poet Fraser Sutherland, was being wheeled in a gurney the other way along the same hospital corridor. He had also had a heart attack, but it was not his first, and he did not survive it.

In a peculiar sense, I deem Fraser my "secular" guide to death, a kind of "Canadian Book of the Dead." (He was a sincere Quaker, and a courageous one, who had recently endured the loss of his whole family.) May he rest in peace.

Death, for modern man, comes usually by surprise, for we have received no preparation from "happy clappy" Church figures, who avoid what they see as morbidity. Even when the doctors have given us formal warning, and death comes with or without bells clanging, it comes suddenly even when it is smooth.

But there are also good priests, and traditional churches, and even though the Church may appear to be passing through a spiritual vacuum, there are ten-thousands of them and they can't all be utterly broken. Among such company one may speak of "a good death," and find people who won't be offended, because they know what you mean.

My own first acquaintance with this phrase came not from personal experience but when I was exposed to the movie, A Man for All Seasons, and then went to the length of reading a Catholic biography of this saint, as he became one of my principal heroes.

I was in high school, and not even Christian at the time, but accessible to heroism and a good story.

It had not escaped my notice that Thomas More had had his head chopped off. This did not usually cause much pain (except, the Tudors often combined it with torture). But More had been unjustly tried and convicted, and had time to "think about it," while a guest of the Tower of London.

Through all his parting conversations with friends, and unambiguous enemies, he had maintained not only calm, but a rich sense of humor. I soon learned that this humor, sometimes even slapstick, is a common quality among Catholic saints and martyrs.

And yet they do take death, even their own, seriously.

Given excruciating pain, there may be a certain amount of involuntary shrieking, but grumbling about fate and injustice is rare. There are Christian prayers to give thanks to God and heart to the afflicted, and these may be found in any traditional worship manual. You may say them, but in silence if necessary, or if not, in a moderate, unemotional voice.

The good non-Christians also share this habit, and the execution chamber is a good place to look for subtle, secretive Catholics and near-Catholics, and for the chance of witnessing a good death. Alas, the condemned do not stay very long to prattle, for the typical execution is fairly prompt.

To die well does not require a formal education or degree, but it does require preparation. It is, or would seem to be, the culminating moment for an organized life. This does not mean the most dramatic moment, and could be the opposite - especially if one is well-prepared.

For in that moment of "transition," where one is changing from a live person into a dead person - or rather like the dragonfly, a metamorphic change from nymph - one is not merely a mechanical thing who dies as a fly dies, perhaps by impact with an automotive windshield. It is more like being born....

By Stephen P. White.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, February 20th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss Pope Francis' health crisis, the participation of an Anglican woman in the installation Mass of a Brazilian archbishop, and President Trump's decision to speed up approvals and pay for IVF treatments - as well as other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

In 2026, the United States will celebrate our semiquincentennial; 250 years is a long time in terms of one human life. But it is not so very long a lifespan for a people, a nation. I say nation, not government, because I take it that there is such a thing as an American nation, which predates our Constitution and the government it established.

Not that it is easy to define a nation as something distinct from its government, particularly in the American case. An Englishman can list the many forms of government under which the English nation has existed. Same for a Frenchman or a Pole. In the latter case, the Polish nation managed to survive more than a century of partition during which no Poland appeared on a map and there was no Polish government.

America is no longer young, but neither is she particularly old, at least not compared to many of our European cousins. A nation young enough to recall its own birthday can't possibly be that old. America is certainly not old compared to some nations of the East, say, China or Japan. A people whose history as a people extends back into legend and myth is an ancient people, indeed.

One wonders if there can ever again be such ancient peoples or have the last of those nations already come into the world. Can a nation whose origins are recorded in contemporary newspaper accounts, whose youth was captured in photographs or on newsreels, ever really be old? Barring some great cataclysm, there can be no new peoples founded in myth and legend, only nations founded in history. We remember too much. We record too much.

We Americans date the beginning of our nation from a particular day in July of 1776, though one could argue that the Declaration of Independence no more created our nation than a birth certificate creates a newborn. It was the announcement of an existing (if disputed and previously unrecognized) reality. But the Declaration was not in itself an act of generation.

America as a nation had already begun to exist as a thing distinct from the British Empire. It was a new nation, but it was already alive - in utero, so to speak - well before its birth into the world.

By contrast, and whatever its aspirations, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, while it undoubtedly led to the alteration of both the French nation and the French government, marked neither the end of the French nation nor the arrival of a new one. One declaration heralded a natural (if difficult) birth after a long gestation; the other ushered in desperate acts of national self-mutilation.

Whether the American nation - again, positing that such a thing really exists - would survive a dramatic change in its form of government (as France underwent in 1789) or through a long partition (as Poland did) is an interesting question. Whether we already have survived such changes, and how many times, is another interesting question.

In his final address as president, Ronald Reagan quoted a letter he had received, in which the writer observed the following: "You can go to liv in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to liv in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to liv in America and become an American."

Ther...

By Brad Miner.

COSTARD

O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words.

I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word;

for thou art not so long by the head as

honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier

swallowed than a flap-dragon.

from Love's Labours Lost, Act 5, Scene 2

I begin by drawing the reader's attention to that nearly impossible-to-pronounce and unfamiliar word Shakespeare puts in the mouth of a country bumpkin. Costard is a go-between for swells at the court of Ferdinand, king of Navarre, who have sworn off the company of women. Love's Labour's Lost is a comedy, so you can guess how honorably the gentlemen adhere to their oath of chastity.

Oh, and a flap-dragon: Samuel Johnson (in his Dictionary) explains: "a play game in which they catch raisins out of burning brandy and, extinguishing them by closing the mouth, eat them." Great fun, I suppose, especially in a chilly parlor on Christmas Eve. Some fingers were burned; brandy dulled the pain.

Honorificabilitudinitatibus - to make linguistic matters worse - is a hapax legomenon, i.e. a word that appears just once. Hapax legomenon (italicized because it's Greek) is defined in the Shorter Oxford dictionary this way: "A word, form, etc., of which only one recorded instance is known." Honorificabilitudinitatibus (an English neologism, so not italicized) appeared originally in Shakespeare's comedy making it also a coinage. And it means honorableness.

So, it's not really, as Costard seems to suggest, a thing that could actually be eaten, although an actor who plays the role might easily choke on it.

But Costard might also be suggesting that, as a man might "swallow" his pride, he could also swallow his honor. In either case, there should be a kind of burning worse than flaming raisins.

Surely, shame is among the fires of Hell. It's a feeling most of us know if we are not saints. Although men and women who have burned with shame have sometimes become saints.

Honorificabilitudinitatibus is the longest word in the Shakespeare canon and is the longest word in the English language in which each consonant, save the last, is followed by a vowel.

Now, to live without honor is a shameful thing. To aspire to honorableness is to feel shame whenever one falls short. Indeed, the Greek and Latin words used to refer to sin (respectively hamartia and peccatum) mean "to miss the mark" or "fail to reach the goal."

I know the heat of shame for reasons I'll not disclose, although years have passed since I last deserved it. I have, however, occasionally been embarrassed. That's hard to avoid and, anyway, is just a mild and passing tinge of red in the face.

As the Lord said, "Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels"

A thing often found in Victorian and earlier literature is the chastisement by someone of an unrepentant sinner: "Sir, do you have no shame!?"

Shameless is a word sometimes used these days with a wry smile and a shake of the head and meant as a qualified compliment - the sort of thing you say to a buddy who just ordered a third Martini or a second slice of chocolate truffle layer cake.

Honor conquers shame by making sin and crime unappealing. Honor begins with self-respect and respect for others, and when it's wedded with faith, as is the case with Christian martyrs, it's a gateway to heaven.

In Shakespeare's Richard II, Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk, unjustly accused of murder (and exiled), stands before the king:

My dear dear lord,

The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is spotless reputation: that away,

Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.

A jewel in a ten-times-barr'd-up chest

Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.

Mine honour is my life; both grow in one:

Take honour from me, and my life is done:

Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;

In that I live and for that will I die. [bold emphasis added]

No ho...

By Randall Smith.

I don't suppose I'm the only one who has noticed that, on immigration, Americans are largely talking past one another. By that, I don't mean merely that they disagree, which they do - with a vengeance. I mean that the arguments of the two sides are incommensurable, making any agreement or compromise inconceivable.

Let me illustrate with a different example. If you start with the premise that "justice" means "getting to keep what you work for," then you can easily craft a valid argument that taxes should be lowered. But if you start with the premise that "justice" means spreading the benefits of the society around more equally, then you can easily craft an argument that taxes should be raised.

The problem is both senses of "justice" are defensible. But since the two sides are starting from different premises, they will always be talking past one another, and their frustration is likely to give way to anger. "They just want to take the hard-earned money of good working people!" "They just want to give tax breaks to the rich!"

What if we import the language of "rights"? "Rights," in modern parlance, are taken to be absolute. They "trump" any social cost-benefit analysis. If I have a "right" to something, the government needs a "compelling interest" to curb it. So, let's say some people are worried about the social problems caused by pornography. If a group of pornographers can convince a court that they have a "right" to publish pornography, then that "trumps" - it outweighs - any calculus of the social problems it may cause.

Conservatives understand this because many of them make the same claim about gun rights. When someone says, "Widespread gun ownership causes all these social problems," one need only say, "Owning a gun is a right," and that seems to be the end of the argument - for them, at least. Thus people who assert a "right" and people who enumerate social costs are simply talking past one another. If I have a "right," I have a right.

The way people on the other side often decide to respond is by creating an opposite "right" of their own. "I have a right not to have my children encounter pornography." Or, "We have a right not to have our community endangered by guns." So then we get people who say, "I have a right to smoke," arguing with people who say, "I have a right not to breathe second-hand smoke." Try getting those two to compromise - or even talk to each other civilly.

Now insert "immigration" into the above examples. "Justice," for one group, means "not breaking the laws of immigration." "Justice," for the other, means sharing the benefits of the rich with the poor. Yes, and yes. So now what?

Countries have a "right" to secure their borders. People have a "right" to migrate. Okay, now what?

Some people say, "there are so many social problems caused by illegal immigrants; it costs so much." Maybe so, but if they have a "right," then it's like owning a gun or the freedom of expression. The "right" trumps the social costs. They have a right, and so we have a duty to them.

Others insist that if the country has a right (and indeed an obligation) to secure its borders, then we can't let immigrants violate that security or else the border is meaningless. Try to get those two groups to compromise or even talk with one another civilly. "You just want to flood the country with illegals!" "You people are selfish and don't care about the poor!" And it just gets angrier from there.

Person A lists all the horrors caused by some illegal immigrants. Person B lists all the benefits of immigrants and all the horrors they suffer in their home countries, If Person A doesn't listen with enough sympathy to Person B's horror stories about immigrant suffering, and if Person B doesn't seem to care about Person A's horror stories about problems caused by illegal immigrants, each concludes the other must be ignorant or heartless.

Now let's say we introduce "religion" into the mix. How's that going to work out? Cleric...