Note to the Chief: the fight must be finished without me; Gordon will have to continue to free men alone; put on hold the HDCOD4MP frag fests with the guys - they can all eat cake. I am now officially a participant in the 7th generation of Gamerdom! My console of choice... the Nintendo Wii. The last time I owned a console from the Big N was '89 or '90 when I got the NES (which also happened to be my very first video game system ever). When the Wii launched in 2006 I wasn't particularly interested but then Super Mario Galaxy debuted last year and I was goggle-eyed, flabbergasted, gobsmacked and I wept.

Thus began a protracted quest for the elusive Wii. When I finally spied a bundle on Circuit City's website I snatched it right up (after fainting) along with Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I grabbed Zelda: Twilight Princess, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II & III, a gamecube control pad and a memory card at Gamestop. (Getting a Wii was like getting two consoles in one since I never owned a Gamecube.) Now I'm beyond giddy anticipating the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and schooling some fools with a little one on one Jedi lightsaber action - a dream come true!

Far from being a gimmick, the Wii's motion controls have redefined the first person shooter / adventure for me. The Wii remote enables my twitch response time to be much faster now and accuracy is spot on! I wish I could port all my Xbox FPS's over to Wii! I can't imagine playing Zelda any other way either. Swinging the Wiimote for sword slashes and casting my fishing line by tossing the remote forward is so natural that the experience would be lessened by button mashing for the same effect.

Having online functionality is a nice touch for a Nintendo console (albeit imperfect) but I can take it or leave it. I don't use the Virtual Console downloads and find most of the other online features redundant for me personally. As for online play I don't have any games that make use of the Wii's Wi-Fi capabilities yet. I lost interest in online play a while back with Halo 2-esque experiences and needed a break from multiplayer gaming anyway (for now) so.... I'll check that feature out eventually.

The Wii has turned out to be Heaven even without the rapture of hardcore FPS's like Bioshock, etc. I do love shooters and the Wii lends itself well to that genre so hopefully big things are in store for the little console in that department. Now that I own the elusive Wii along with my Xbox, DS and PC I'm guilt ridden with my excesses but blissfully happy anyway!

My Top 12 Favorite Xbox Games:

This season has found me retrospective about the last couple of years of Xbox gaming and so I have compiled a list of my favorite games on that now venerable platform. These aren't necessarily the best games but are certainly the ones that have impressed me the most in some fashion. My list, originally intended to be a top 10, ended up being a top 12 (with a short honorable mention epilogue) Couldn't help myself. ;)

The following list is made up only of games I have actually played and played on the Xbox. There are many other games I haven't played on Xbox that I'm sure I would enjoy as much and would reflect that in any future Fav list. I have played Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy on my PC for example and loved them and would like to try them on Xbox someday.

12. Farcry: Instincts

This game is attractive for it's bright outdoor sunny environments and satisfying gameplay. I love the empowering feral abilities that enable rage attacks allowing the player to rip bad guys apart and tear through the jungle. There is a multiplayer map editor that permits you to create your own maps and then share them online and play with friends. Vehicle control is a mess though. The game would be better served by omitting vehicles entirely. [language warning: the game drops a few bombs]

11. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Perhaps it's a testament to my obsessive compulsive ways or maybe to my general lack of skill but I haven't ever beaten this game. I have not or cannot beat it because I can't tolerate tripping alarms. Not a one! So when I invariably do, I restart the level from the beginning. SC is as pretty as games get on Xbox. The stealth gameplay, voice acting, great story and clever puzzles are a masterful blend making this a game not to be missed.

10. Fable: TLC

I was wary of RPG's until I discovered this game. The thing that turned me onto this was that Fable offered real time combat instead of turn based. I had always wanted to play other RPG's but couldn't get passed this issue. Fable is loads of fun and I've spent countless hours just fishing or kicking chickens around or electrocuting people with lightning strike. Good times.

9. Star Wars: Republic Commando

This game has been described by some (namely Morgan Webb) as, "Halo hosed down in Star Wars juice." I would agree with that. The game is short but very gratifying with excellent voice acting and an immersive storyline. If you like FPS's and Star Wars then this game is for you. The multiplayer is forgettable though.

8. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

I hesitated in getting this game for the aforementioned loathing of turned based combat. The high recommendations the game received along with my burning desire for all things Star Wars helped me overcome that prejudice and I fell in love; completely. This game drew me in and I became merrily lost in the universe of Jedi's and Twi'leks. I've even grown to appreciate turned based combat realizing it is deeper, more engrossing and more exciting than I ever gave it credit. KOTOR is a must for any self-respecting Star Wars fan.

7. Burnout: Takedown/Revenge

I have combined these two games because I don't favor one over the other. While very similar they do offer distinctly different feels in racing. The biggest difference is the "Traffic Checking" that Revenge employs. It's a wonderful change but occasionally I crave the traditional rules of traffic crashing that Takedown uses. Arcade racers for life!

6. Crimson Skies

Crimson Skies is one of the first games I played on XboxLive. I was so lost in those days but people were by-and-large friendly and helpful. This game blew my mind with it's visuals (I'd never seen water so stunning) and the ability to free roam, flying about the maps shooting everything in sight was amazing. The controls are tight and flying around feels good. The musical score really stands out; you will notice it! The game is like Indiana Jones except in dirigibles.

5. Star Wars: Battlefront I & II

These two games are combined for much the same reasons as Burnout. The two games don't differ greatly but there is enough nuance in the latter that it will be most peoples favorite. While Battlefront II allows for far more voice options, stat ranking, auto targeting, "sprinting" and arguably better maps (as well as space maps) Battlefront I is my favorite and is visually the sharper of the two in my opinion. I logged (literally) hundred's and hundred's of hours on XboxLive playing Battlefront and developed many friendships with folks from all over the world. I played this until I was nearly sick of it and considered making this my number 1.

4. Halo 2

This is the game I bought my Xbox for in the first place. I had played a little Halo: CE on PC and enjoyed it's multiplayer immensely. I wanted to continue the fight so I made the plunge into Xbox. I had no regrets; well, in the long run I had (almost) no regrets. This was the first game I played on XboxLive. It was an atrocious ordeal! Racism, bigotry, foul language, militantly anti-Christian people along with rude and obstinate jerks who wished to ruin the game for everyone made my first forays into online console gaming a nightmare of vulgarity. After that, I played Halo 2 online only with friends in custom games. Halo 2's campaign felt a little short to me but overall this was a riveting action game. The campaign was outstanding and prompted me to buy Halo: CE for Xbox to acquaint myself with the whole story. (I had never been able to finish Halo before because of performance issues with my PC)

3. SSX 3

The 2006 Torino Olympic Games left me hungering for a snowboarding game. The "official" Olympic game was rated poorly so I did my research, discovered the SSX series among others, purchased SSX 3 and the homework paid off. Not realistic in the least, this is an arcade snowboarding racer and is oh so much fun. I love the soundtrack and the feel of speed the game generates. With spectacular mid-air tricks that must be timed just right to the look and texture of the snow, this game is just plain fun and gets better and better the more I play.

2. Half-Life 2

I first played HL2 on PC when I downloaded the Steam demo which included an entire level of the game, "We Don't Go To Ravenholm." I was hooked. It has the most clever puzzles I've ever encountered in a shooter and with the unique physics engine makes it an experience on par with nothing else. This is a well layed out game that is an obvious labor of love from the game designers and it shows. All the NPC's are well animated and the voice acting and storyline are compelling. Certain voices are overly used but it doesn't detract from the game. Half-Life 2 is a long FPS, longer than any other I have played clocking in at around 25hrs. This is a game that encourages you to just goof off and play around with the physics and see what mischief you can get into with the gravity-gun. Playing HL2 has been one of my most enjoyable gaming experiences ever. [HL2 is quite violent, graphic blood and all, but rag doll deaths are hilarious to watch]

1. Halo: CE

It was my favorite online game on PC but my laptop graphics card was weak and chugged horrendously playing it; consequentially I never finished the singleplayer campaign for all the infernal framerate issues. When I finally bought it for Xbox and played it all the way through, I fell for Halo's story hard. This is by far my favorite game and favorite FPS. The campaign maps are ingeniously layed out (the Library never bothered me). The enemy AI is some of the best I've ever seen. The pacing of the game is perfect and keeps you engaged while the mood is enthusiastic and at times chilling. The single element that I loved most was the idea of being a super soldier aided by space marines in a hopeless situation. From the warthogs to the shotguns to the music to the story to the art to the perfected first person controls to the tight gameplay, Halo is one of the best games I have ever played on any platform period. Everything just clicks and comes together perfectly. If only the Xbox version had all the PC Multiplayer maps and offered online play and co-op it would have been a perfect 10. Even so, I have yet to play the FPS that impresses me more than Halo.

While the subsequent games did not make the list they are loads of fun: Doom 3, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Freedom Fighters, Mercenaries, Ninja Gaiden: Black, Chronicles of Riddick*, Mech Assault.

Not only are they all a blast to play but in addition Doom 3 and Riddick have stunning graphics which help craft absorbing worlds albeit, they are not worlds you'd want your young ones to visit....ever! *[Riddick is a game parents definitely should keep away from the kiddies]

Why I Am A Catholic

By G. K. Chesterton

From Twelve Modern Apostles and Their Creeds (1926)

Reprinted in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 3 Ignatius Press 1990

The difficulty of explaining "why I am a Catholic" is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. I could fill all my space with separate sentences each beginning with the words, "It is the only thing that . . ." As, for instance, (1) It is the only thing that really prevents a sin from being a secret. (2) It is the only thing in which the superior cannot be superior; in the sense of supercilious. (3) It is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age. (4) It is the only thing that talks as if it were the truth; as if it were a real messenger refusing to tamper with a real message. (5) It is the only type of Christianity that really contains every type of man; even the respectable man. (6) It is the only large attempt to change the world from the inside; working through wills and not laws; and so on.

Or I might treat the matter personally and describe my own conversion; but I happen to have a strong feeling that this method makes the business look much smaller than it really is. Numbers of

much better men have been sincerely converted to much worse religions. I would much prefer to attempt to say here of the Catholic Church precisely the things that cannot be said even of its very

respectable rivals. In short, I would say chiefly of the Catholic Church that it is catholic. I would rather try to suggest that it is not only larger than me, but larger than anything in the world; that it is

indeed larger than the world. But since in this short space I can only take a section, I will consider it in its capacity of a guardian of the truth.

The other day a well-known writer, otherwise quite well-informed, said that the Catholic Church is always the enemy of new ideas. It probably did not occur to him that his own remark was not exactly in the nature of a new idea. It is one of the notions that Catholics have to be continually refuting, because it is such a very old idea. Indeed, those who complain that Catholicism cannot say anything new, seldom think it necessary to say anything new about Catholicism. As a matter of fact, a real study of history will show it to be curiously contrary to the fact. In so far as the ideas really are ideas, and in so far as any such ideas can be new, Catholics have continually suffered through supporting them when they were really new; when they were much too new to find any other support. The Catholic was not only first in the field but alone in the field; and there was as yet nobody to understand what he had found there.

Thus, for instance, nearly two hundred years before the Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, in an age devoted to the pride and praise of princes, Cardinal Bellarmine and Suarez the Spaniard laid down lucidly the whole theory of real democracy. But in that age of Divine Right they only produced the impression of being sophistical and sanguinary Jesuits, creeping about with daggers to effect the murder of kings. So, again, the Casuists of the Catholic schools said all that can really be said for the problem plays and problem novels of our own time, two hundred years before they were written. They said that there really are problems of moral conduct; but they had the misfortune to say it two hundred years too soon. In a time of tub-thumping fanaticism and free and easy vituperation, they merely got themselves called liars and shufflers for being psychologists before psychology was the fashion. It would be easy to give any number of other examples down to the present day, and the case of ideas that are still too new to be understood. There are passages in Pope Leo's Encyclical on Labor [Also known as Rerum Novarum, released in 1891] which are only now beginning to be used as hints for social movements much newer than socialism. And when Mr. Belloc wrote about the Servile State, he advanced an economic theory so original that hardly anybody has yet realized what it is. A few centuries hence, other people will probably repeat it, and repeat it wrong. And then, if Catholics object, their protest will be easily explained by the well-known fact that Catholics never care for new ideas.

Nevertheless, the man who made that remark about Catholics meant something; and it is only fair to him to understand it rather more clearly than he stated it. What he meant was that, in the modern

world, the Catholic Church is in fact the enemy of many influential fashions; most of which still claim to be new, though many of them are beginning to be a little stale. In other words, in so far as he meant that the Church often attacks what the world at any given moment supports, he was perfectly right . The Church does often set herself against the fashion of this world that passes away; and she has experience enough to know how very rapidly it does pass away. But to understand exactly what is involved, it is necessary to take a rather larger view and consider the ultimate nature of the ideas in question, to consider, so to speak, the idea of the idea.

Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves. The truth about the Catholic attitude towards heresy, or as some would say, towards liberty, can best be expressed perhaps by the metaphor of a map. The Catholic Church carries a sort of map of the mind which looks like the map of a maze, but which is in fact a guide to the maze. It has been compiled from knowledge which, even considered as human knowledge, is quite without any human parallel.

There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and especially

nearly all errors. The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them.

On this map of the mind the errors are marked as exceptions. The greater part of it consists of playgrounds and happy hunting-fields, where the mind may have as much liberty as it likes; not to mention any number of intellectual battle-fields in which the battle is indefinitely open and undecided. But it does definitely take the responsibility of marking certain roads as leading nowhere or leading to destruction, to a blank wall, or a sheer precipice. By this means, it does prevent men from wasting their time or losing their lives upon paths that have been found futile or disastrous again and again in the past, but which might otherwise entrap travelers again and again in the future. The Church does make herself responsible for warning her people against these; and upon these the real issue of the case depends. She does dogmatically defend humanity from its worst foes, those hoary and horrible and devouring monsters of the old mistakes. Now all these false issues have a way of looking quite fresh, especially to a fresh generation. Their first statement always sounds harmless and plausible. I will give only two examples. It sounds harmless to say, as most modern people have said: "Actions are only wrong if they are bad for society." Follow it out, and sooner or later you will have the inhumanity of a hive or a heathen city, establishing slavery as the cheapest and most certain means of production, torturing the slaves for evidence because the individual is nothing to the State, declaring that an innocent man must die for the people, as

did the murderers of Christ. Then, perhaps, you will go back to Catholic definitions, and find that the Church, while she also says it is our duty to work for society, says other things also which forbid individual injustice. Or again, it sounds quite pious to say, "Our moral conflict should end with a victory of the spiritual over the material." Follow it out, and you may end in the madness of the Manicheans, saying that a suicide is good because it is a sacrifice, that a sexual perversion is good because it produces no life, that the devil made the sun and moon because they are material. Then you may begin to guess why Catholicism insists that there are evil spirits as well as good; and that materials also may be sacred, as in the Incarnation or the Mass, in the sacrament of marriage or the resurrection of the body.

Now there is no other corporate mind in the world that is thus on the watch to prevent minds from going wrong. The policeman comes too late, when he tries to prevent men from going wrong. The doctor comes too late, for he only comes to lock up a madman, not to advise a sane man on how not to go mad. And all other sects and schools are inadequate for the purpose. This is not because each of them may not contain a truth, but precisely because each of them does contain a

truth; and is content to contain a truth. None of the others really pretends to contain the truth. None of the others, that is, really pretends to be looking out in all directions at once. The Church is not

merely armed against the heresies of the past or even of the present, but equally against those of the future, that may be the exact opposite of those of the present. Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of

asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists. Thus, when the world went Puritan in the seventeenth century, the Church was charged with pushing charity to the point of sophistry, with making everything easy with the laxity of the confessional. Now that the world is not going Puritan but Pagan, it is the Church that is everywhere protesting against a Pagan laxity in dress or manners. It is doing what the Puritans wanted done when it is really wanted. In all probability, all that is best in Protestantism will only survive in Catholicism; and in that sense all Catholics will still be Puritans when all Puritans are Pagans.

Thus, for instance, Catholicism, in a sense little understood, stands outside a quarrel like that of Darwinism at Dayton. It stands outside it because it stands all around it, as a house stands all around two incongruous pieces of furniture. It is no sectarian boast to say it is before and after and beyond all these things in all directions. It is impartial in a fight between the Fundamentalist and the theory of the Origin of Species, because it goes back to an origin before that Origin; because it is more fundamental than Fundamentalism. It knows where the Bible came from. It also knows where most of the theories of Evolution go to. It knows there were many other Gospels

besides the Four Gospels, and that the others were only eliminated by the authority of the Catholic Church. It knows there are many other evolutionary theories besides the Darwinian theory; and that the latter is quite likely to be eliminated by later science. It does not, in the conventional phrase, accept the conclusions of science, for the simple reason that science has not concluded. To conclude is to shut up; and the man of science is not at all likely to shut up. It does not, in the

conventional phrase, believe what the Bible says, for the simple reason that the Bible does not say anything. You cannot put a book in the witness-box and ask it what it really means. The Fundamentalist controversy itself destroys Fundamentalism. The Bible by itself cannot be a basis of agreement when it is a cause of disagreement; it cannot be the common ground of Christians when some take it allegorically and some literally. The Catholic refers it to something that can say something, to the living, consistent, and continuous mind of which I have spoken; the highest mind of man guided by God.

Every moment increases for us the moral necessity for such an immortal mind. We must have something that will hold the four corners of the world still, while we make our social experiments or build our Utopias. For instance, we must have a final agreement, if only on the truism of human brotherhood, that will resist some reaction of human brutality. Nothing is more likely just now than that the corruption of representative government will lead to the rich breaking loose altogether, and trampling on all the traditions of equality with mere pagan pride. We must have the truisms everywhere recognized as true. We must prevent mere reaction and the dreary repetition of the old mistakes. We must make the intellectual world safe for democracy. But in the conditions of modern mental anarchy, neither that nor any other ideal is safe. just as Protestants appealed from priests to the Bible, and did not realize that the Bible also could be questioned, so republicans appealed from kings to the people, and did not realize that the people also could be defied. There is no end to

the dissolution of ideas, the destruction of all tests of truth, that has become possible since men abandoned the attempt to keep a central and civilized Truth, to contain all truths and trace out and refute all errors. Since then, each group has taken one truth at a time and spent the time in turning it into a falsehood. We have had nothing but movements; or in other words, monomanias. But the Church is not a movement but a meeting-place; the trysting-place of all the truths in the world.

www.chesterton.org

BACK TO THE FUTURE
Pope Benedict's Liturgical Time Bomb
By Raymond Arroyo

While drafting the decree that would return the old Latin Mass to Catholic altars around the world, the Pope rightly predicted that reaction to his directive would range from "joyful acceptance to harsh opposition." But what he did not, perhaps, anticipate was the reaction (or convenient spin) of the pundit clss and not a few clerics who have minimized the decree or tried to dismiss it as a curiosity-- a non-event that is likely to have little effect beyond a few "ultraconservative" throwbacks. This analysis misses the point, and does the Pope and his carefully considered decree a disservice. There is much more at play here than satiating the liturgical appetites of a few traditionalists attached to an old form of the Mass, and the consequences could be far reaching.

In a nutshell the legislation (made public last Saturday) allows a pastor, on his own authority, to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, codified in the 16th century, for any member of the faithful desirous of it. Following the second Vatican council the venerable Mass, which had been celebrated for hundreds of years in Latin, complete with smells and bells, fell out of practice. It was actively suppressed in some quarters-- though never outlawed by the Church universal. Pope John Paul the Second increased access to the old rite in 1988, although the permission of the local bishop was required for a priest to offer it. That is no longer the case. This new legislation removes all obstacles, including the middleman, requiring no permission from anyone. It also puts the traditional Latin Mass on a par with its newer incarnation (the widely celebrated vernacular Mass). In the words of the Pope, these Masses constitute "two usages of the one Roman rite."

The Pope's decision was certainly not arrived at hastily. Pope Benedict's liturgical legislation had been in the works since 2005. Repeated consultations and bureaucratic blockades stalled the release. It is an open secret that many in the Roman Curia (including top Vatican officials) were opposed to the decree. Bishops in France and England flew into a tizzy over the prospect of reviving the Old Mass, rattling sabers long before the Pope acted. Several bishops tell me that the President of the American Bishops Conference, Bishop William Skylstad during an audience in Rome, flatly told the Pope, to his face, that the bishops of the US opposed any revival of the old rite insisting that it would cause "division." In the face of such opposition and considerable resistance, Pope Benedict has seen fit to release his decree anyway. The question is: why? Why would the Pope risk alienating so many of his own churchman to appeal to a relatively small group of Catholics (by his own count 600,000 globally) attached to the old ways?

WHY HE DID IT
First off, one must understand that reform of the liturgy has been a central concern for Pope Ratzinger for decades. The Mass is the "greatest prayer of the Church" in his estimation and the fountainhead of western culture. He sees the reform of the liturgy as a crucial part of strengthening all other aspects of the Church, principally, its holiness and its unity.

This is a Pope disgusted by some of the gross innovations and liturgical experimentation he witnessed during the post-Vatican II period. In his letter to the bishops of the world he suggested that these "arbitrary deformations of the liturgy" provoked his decree. There is little room for such tomfoolery in the old Mass. The form of the Traditional Roman Rite permits few options, and its focus is on the Eucharist and not on the assembled or the celebrant.

During an interview I conducted with the Pope prior to his election, when our discussion turned to the old rite of the Mass, he said "(what) was at one time holy for the Church is always holy." He spoke of the need to revive a "stronger presence of some elements of Latin" in the liturgy to underscore the "universal dimension" of the Mass. Before the Second Vatican Council, a Mass celebrated in New York was identical to the Mass celebrated in the Holy Land. One cannot say that is true today. Wider availability of the Old rite instantly restores a sense of universality that has been lacking for decades and will gradually make Catholics more comfortable with the use of Latin in the new Mass. Benedict's action is not only, as has been widely reported, to placate a small group of "untratraditionalists." His intentions are far wider and will, by his reckoning, strengthen the liturgy in both its older and newer forms.

The Pope's decree points Catholics back to the origins of the new Mass and underscores the continuity of the two rites. Pope Benedict tells his bishops that as a result of his decree, "The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI (the new mass) will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage." By placing the two Masses in close proximity, I think it is safe to say the Pope is hoping that the new Mass will take on the sensibilities of the old. It is almost a free market approach to liturgical reform. Here is a chance for people to experience the older and younger liturgical brothers and determine for themselves, which they prefer. The Pope is betting that sacrality and reverence will win out over innovation and novelty, no matter which rite people choose.

There are inevitable problems: many priests simply don't know the Latin language. They can learn it, or at least enough of it to get through the Mass. The movements of the Traditional rite can also be gleaned from older clergy and groups like the Fraternity of St. Peter that offer intensive instruction in the old Mass. Similarly, the laity will catch on. As the odd physical gestures that have taken hold over the last thirty years demonstrate (like the incessant hand holding and hand shaking that have at times made the Mass look more like a hoe-down), the Catholic people will go where they are led, and they usually do so with little discord. Parishioners can actively follow the Mass using a Missal, which usually provides side-by-side translations. Listening with attention will be required. But who said reaching God, or worshiping Him should be effortless? Since the Vatican Council generations of Catholics have participated in Masses and repeated actions that they have no historical appreciation or understanding of. This move by the Pope will not only provoke a healthy conversation about why Catholics do what they do, but ground them in the beauty and meaning of the New Mass as well as the Old.

IT'S A YOUNG THING
There is a generation gap emerging in the reception to the Pope's decree. Generally those Catholics in their late 50's and older are not as receptive as their younger counterparts. Several years ago I was struck to discover, while visiting a seminary abroad, that a group of seminarians were spending their recreation time learning the Old Rite of the Mass from an Octogenarian cleric. I have since discovered that this underground movement among seminarians is more widespread than I had imagined. Benedict's liberalization of the old rite is not the case of a Pope on a nostalgia kick. Rather, he is tapping into an organic liturgical movement that has sprung up among the young-a natural yearning for devotions and traditions that they were denied in their formation. Catholics in their 40's, 30's, and 20's are rediscovering their roots and craving greater orthodoxy than their parents or grandparents. John Paul the Second was laughed to scorn when he began his World Youth Day gatherings, but he rejected the conventional wisdom and pressed forward, with a conviction that his Church's future resided with the young. His successor is following a similar course.

Go to any parish where the Latin Mass is offered with regularity: Old St. Mary's in Washington, St. Agnes in New York, or St. Patrick's in New Orleans and you are likely to find only a handful of people who were even alive when the old Mass was still the norm. The cries of infants rise up like incense at these services and young people are everywhere.

If the Pope had only intended to give Traditionalist Catholics the Mass of their youth, he would have crafted a far narrower piece of legislation. As he wrote in a letter to his bishops, accompanying the decree: "Immediately after the Second Vatican Council it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them."

For those who wish to pooh-pooh this papal action or diminish its importance, it would perhaps be instructive to put aside personal prejudices, and venture into one of these parishes where the Old Roman Rite is offered regularly. Look carefully into the eyes of the young people packing the pews. They want to be a part of what was, what is, and what now will be-a liturgy rooted in the eternal. In those pews is a preview of the Church that Benedict XVI envisions for the future: one that is holy, sacred, vibrant, and unified.

----Raymond also wrote an abridged version for the Wall Street Journal titled The Language of Tradition.

On April 30, 2000, His Holiness John Paul II, in response to the wishes of the Christian faithful, declared that "the Second Sunday of Easter henceforth throughout the Church will also be called Divine Mercy Sunday" (cf. Homily: 30 April 2000 and Decree: Congregation for Worship). The desire for this celebration was expressed by Our Lord to St. Faustina, and can be found recorded in her Diary.

For some years now part of my Easterobservance has come to include the Novena to The Divine Mercy which our Lord gave to Saint Faustina and is to be said on the nine days before theFeast of Mercy.As part ofthe special novena* I recite the Chaplet of Mercy and in addition try tomake Confession within a reasonable time before the Sunday Feast.This is an exciting way to bridge Lent (a timeof abstinence, fasting and spiritual reflection) and Easter (a time of celebration and thanksgiving). The novena begins in "Holy Week" on Good Friday and carries through all of "Easter Week."

*A Novena is typically nine days of prayer in preparation of a celebration of a feast day. In the case of the Novena to The Divine Mercy, we pray the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy each day for a specific intention.

...Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy (Diary 699).

My wonderful folks got me an onyx DS Lite for my birthday and I am as pleased as punch! I've had a blast with it so far and can hardly put the thing down. It's very light weight and is so compact that it fits snug in my pocket. The only grievance I could have with it is that it smudges easily. You cannot pick it up without getting fingerprints all over the case. That doesn't really bother me though and it cleans off easy enough with a quick wiping with my shirt. Aesthetically, it is a beautiful and sleek looking machine.

The fact that I can close the lid on this baby at any time in mid game and resume play when opening the lid again is fantastic! The screen is as bright as they say on its highest setting but in a dark room the second brightness level is more than adequate. The battery lasts between 5 and 19 hours (a major reason I wanted one) depending on usage, settings, etc. The DS Lite's Wi-Fi capabilities are awesome and I haven't experienced any lag thus far.  All in all it's the perfect handheld gaming system for me and I highly recommend it for anyone!!

Along with a car adapter I got the following games:

I'm looking forward to getting either an M3 Passcard or Datel Max Media Dock or Play-Yan in the future so I can enjoy mp3's on my DS.  WOOT!

One Night with the King (2006)

Directed by Michael O. Sajbel. Tiffany Dupont, Luke Goss, John Rhys-Davies, John Noble, Tommy “Tiny” Lister, James Callis, Jonah Lotan, Omar Sharif, Peter O’Toole. FoxFaith.

By Steven D. Greydanus  (Decent Films Guide)

Coming just a few weeks after the faith-and-football drama Facing the Giants, One Night With the King — a retelling of the Old Testament story of Esther — is the second overtly religious Christian-produced independent film to hit the big screen within a few weeks.

Facing the Giants was financed by a Georgia Baptist church, then picked up for distribution by Goldwyn. One Night with the King, directed by relative unknown Michael Sajbel (whose credits consist of a few films for Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures) and produced by Gener8Xion Entertainment (the company behind the apocalyptic Omega Code thrillers), comes to theaters courtesy of FoxFaith, 20th Century Fox’s new faith-and-family-values division. If the success of The Passion of the Christ hasn’t yet sent the Hollywood studios scrambling to produce religiously oriented fare, it’s at least partly responsible for the interest in films like these that otherwise might have gone straight to video.

As that suggests, One Night With the King, like Facing the Giants, has a distinctly made-for-TV vibe, notwithstanding the biblical film’s visual spectacle and a distinguished supporting cast including Lord of the Rings alums John Rhys-Davies and John Noble and Lawrence of Arabia costars Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif.

Sets, locations and especially costumes are quite good, with the Persian setting adding some exotic Bollywood-esque flavor to the usual ancient Near Eastern nomad couture. The only lapse in production values is some glaring CGI, used for a couple of waterfalls and a white moth that seems to have flown in, along with Rhys-Davies and Noble, from The Lord of the Rings. (The heroine even talks to the moth on a rooftop in the opening scene, like Gandalf atop Orthanc.)

The apparent Peter Jackson influence doesn’t stop there. One Night with the King opens with a voiceover prologue flashing back hundreds of years, in which we learn of (a) the forging of a sinister metal trinket and (b) an ominous act of defiance by a king following a victory in battle that will have dire repercussions for ages to come.

The king is Saul, who, despite Samuel’s orders to spare no one after conquering the Amalekites, allows King Agag to live. Samuel (O’Toole) kills Agag, but, in a non-biblical twist, Agag’s pregnant queen escapes. Following a midrashic tradition, Agag becomes the ancestor of the genocidally anti-Semitic Haman (James Callis, looking oddly like Jesus). Following the biblical story, Haman plots to exterminate the diaspora Jews in Persia, but is foiled by the courage and cunning of the heroine (Tiffany Dupont, Cheaper by the Dozen), whom King Xerxes (British pop star Luke Gross) makes his queen.

Haman makes his entrance on horseback amid ominous portents, in the company of black-swathed riders — I’m sure I heard Nazgûl screeches on the soundtrack. The whitened streets of Susa evoke Minas Tirith, the White City (though the architecture is vaguely early Naboo), accented by distinctly Jacksonian aerial cinematography.

Well, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best. Yet the screenplay, by Omega scribe Stephan Blinn, is home-video hackneyed rather than silver-screen sophisticated. Take Rhys-Davies’s opening voiceover: “From whence comes the purpose of a person’s life? Comes it by chance? Or does a call of destiny come for each of us?”

The problem is especially pronounced in the romantic scenes, in which Xerxes increasingly comes off like a smitten schoolboy mooning over the head cheerleader. “Know you how many times I tried to come to you after that first night?” Xerxes murmurs as he holds Esther. “How many evenings I spent counting the stars to keep my mind off of you? How many excuses I created just to avoid the other candidates?”

Um, why? He’s the king, right? What’s stopping him from being with the woman he wants (or not being with women he doesn’t want)? Later, as circumstances drive a wedge between the king and his bride, Xerxes pines for Esther’s affection with all the dignity and manliness of teenaged Anakin Skywalker carrying the torch for Amidala in Attack of the Clones. Not very attractive.

If all this, like the title of the film, sounds a bit romance-novelish, well, there’s a reason for that. The film is adapted from the book of Esther by way of the novel Hadassah: One Night with the King, written by Pentecostal preacher Tommy Tenney and published by Christian publisher Bethany House.

The novel, written in the form of a letter from the biblical Esther to a future royal bride-to-be, swoonily romanticizes Xerxes and Esther’s relationship, while turning Haman into a virtual forerunner of Hitler complete with a swastika-like “twisted cross” symbol adopted from India (the swastika has pre-Nazi roots in Hindu and Jain traditions).

The novel is of indifferent merit; despite a few nods to Jewish tradition (such as Haman’s descent from Agag), its most prominent feature may be glaring anachronism. From Esther’s opening salutation “Dear X…” to her lamenting the corruption of the word “intimacy” as a “prudish euphemism” for sex, the novel’s contemporary sensibilities are stamped on every page. (The letter probably should have started something like “Esther, Queen of Persia and wife of Xerxes, to…” And while the use of “intimacy” for sex roughly parallels the actual Hebrew euphemism “to know,” this usage is not corrupt or “prudish,” but profound.) Also, despite the ostensibly female narration, the novel’s romantic point of view is glaringly male-centered (one passage finds Esther advising her female reader on the kind of woman that a man really wants).

Though affecting to be an ancient Hebrew manuscript, the novel frequently betrays its native English-language roots, sometimes in unintentionally humorous ways. While Tenney consistently uses “G–d,” following the post-Masoretic tradition of omitting vowels in the divine Name, on the very first page of Esther’s account he has Esther herself explicitly comment on the use of “the traditional Hebrew abbreviated forms in referring to Deity.” This reference would have been meaningless in Esther’s day, since Hebrew writing had no vowels at all until centuries after Christ, let alone in the time of Esther! Later, Esther compares Haman’s “twisted cross” symbol to the X’s in her husband’s name, though to the best of my knowledge “Xerxes” has no X‑like characters in either Persian or Hebrew.

Though the novel takes significant liberties with the biblical story, the film departs further still. The canonical story opens with the defiance of Xerxes’s previous queen, Vashti, who refuses the king’s summons to appear at a feast where he wants to show off her beauty to his guests. The book of Esther explicitly draws out the potentially subversive implications of this act: What if other women, hearing of this, likewise refuse to obey their husbands? To ward off this danger, Xerxes dismisses Vashti and proclaims throughout the kingdom that all women must honor their husbands.

This event is all but unrecognizable in the film, in which Vashti’s refusal to appear is construed as an act of political resistance against her husband’s war with Greece, which the queen opposes. (The novel has a somewhat different angle on the event, claiming that Vashti refused to come at the feast because Xerxes wanted her to appear naked.)

Though both book and film versions incorporate elements of Jewish tradition, the story apparently sticks to the Hebrew text of Esther, ignoring the Greek additions in the Septuagint version of Esther, accepted as canonical by Catholics and Orthodox. Even when the film happens to go beyond the Hebrew text in exactly the same way as the deuterocanonical text, it ignores the deuterocanonical passages as potential source material.

Take the scene in which Mordecai prays to the Lord to save his people. The Hebrew text of Esther contains no prayers, but Mordecai is depicted offering just such a prayer in the Septuagint version of Esther. This deuterocanonical prayer would have been perfect for the movie’s purposes (“And now, O Lord God and King, God of Abraham, spare thy people, for the eyes of our foes are upon us to annihilate us…”). Yet instead the film merely has Mordecai use words drawn from Isaiah 40 (“They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength…”). Is this Protestant bias, more open to Jewish tradition than Hellenistic Jewish writings accepted as scripture by the Catholic Church?

Neither the film nor the book sells the romance of Esther and Xerxes. Whether due to the screenplay, direction, actors, or some combination, Esther herself comes off as chipper, chirpy and charming, but lacking in gravitas and depth. She’s much given to mischievous, playful banter like “You think of me as a child? Well, you’re wrong… I’m much younger than that,” but her winsomeness falls short of real complexity and mystery.

Xerxes, with his bare chest, Fabio hair, and mithril‑y silver duds, looks like a bodice-ripper cover model or a 70s glam rocker. He’s supposedly captivated by Esther reading aloud from the book of Genesis; in the story of Jacob and Laban, Xerxes identifies Esther with — get this — Jacob, while he himself hopes to be her Rachel, her favorite, though he’s afraid he will only be her Leah. Oh dear.

What the heck is going on with Esther’s jewel pendant, which reflects luminous stars of David on surrounding objects when the light hits it just right — or does it? A late plot twist apparently suggests that it may be a bit like the jingle bells in The Polar Express: You’ve got to believe to understand, or something. Huh?

Christians lamenting the state of Hollywood sometimes flippantly comment that this or that Bible story “would make a great movie — intrigue, sex, violence, spectacle, etc.” By itself, though, that’s not a recipe for a great movie, but a mediocre one. The story of Esther could certainly be made into a great film. One Night with the King is not that film. In a number of ways, it’s not even that story.

Brief, distant grisly imagery and minimal violence; restrained sexual themes and mild sensuality.

The Dyrtie Rednex have finished the season without coming in dead last!  This was always and ever our goal - to conform to mediocrity (but not too much) by under-achieving our way through the league.  We fought the good fight, cried a little and died a lot.  Congratulations Rednex!  We ended up Gettin 'er Done after all!!!   Sooooie!