The Great Pope/Halloween Hoax of 2009

Note: Religious and Cultural Commentary

I couldn't possibly imagine, just a few days ago, writing a serious commentary about the Halloween holiday. It is what it is, is it not? Kids dressing up in tacky costumes, begging candy from their neighbors while adults decorate their house like carnival scare houses.

But Friday there was quite the barrage of misleading, anti-Catholic articles that hit the front (online) pages of major news services. All reported on an alleged announcement from the Vatican that Halloween was evil and to be avoided.

USA Today: Vatican warns parents that Halloween is 'anti-Christian'

UK Telegraph: Vatican condemns Halloween as 'anti-Christian'

Daily Mail: Halloween is 'dangerous' says the Pope as he slams 'anti-Christian' festival

London Times: Hallowe’en is the devil’s work, Catholic church warns parents

Each of these articles is followed by public comments that are clearly anti-Catholic, although as I follow the links again much of the early, bigoted rhetoric seems to have been removed or pushed aside.

So are the reports true? In shorthand: Bull - and not the papal kind either.

First of all, the Pope has diddly-squat to do with the issue, and including his title in the headline would appear to be a cheap stab at generating hits (and so it did).

Second, the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano may or may not have a stand on the issue, but in fact, as noted FOUR paragraphs into the Telegraph story, it was actually an article discussing European opposition to the American holiday. It was not a grand and official announcement of anything.

Specifically, the article quoted a Spanish priest; not a Bishop, as reported, but a priest present at a conference of Bishops. Disturbed by the new popularity of an American custom, he offered the opinion that if such a holiday was to be honored it should be done as an affirmation of life rather than a celebration of death. Good luck pulling that off, but hey, he has the right to dream.

So, to summarize: a priest in Spain talks to a reporter about his opposition to an American custom crossing the pond. The Vatican's newspaper quotes him in an article about European opposition to Halloween (which, lets face it, is probably a cultural objection, ala Euro Disney). This is then reported by English newspapers as an official Vatican announcement. It is embellished to get as much value out of anti-Catholic feeling as possible, which is when American papers catch the scent of blood and latch on.

Think I'm exaggerating? Then check out the opening paragraphs of the Daily Mail's wonderfully even keel report:

When Victoria Romero, 6, dressed up as a witch for a Hallowe’en party this week she could hardly have imagined that she was provoking the wrath of God by attending a celebration akin to a Black Mass — at least in the eyes of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain.

Wearing skeleton suits, dressing up as vampires, witches or goblins or slapping on fake blood is not far removed from communing with the Devil, according to the country’s bishops.

However, the bishops, with Vatican backing, have reserved their venom for the millions of parents who allowed their children to celebrate this “pagan” festival.

For the record, I'm Catholic, and decently serious about it. Yet in 35 years of Catholic school, church, youth groups, PTA, Scouting, etc, I've never once heard of an official Catholic objection to Halloween. Even if you want to argue it promotes the occult, I'd counter by saying it marginalizes and weakens it, doing to that belief what Santa does to Christmas.

It is quite possible that from a distance, European eyes see the practice as a morbid and decadent holiday. It is possible the Vatican will, someday, make an official announcement about the practice. I can't speak for what it will say - but I'm pretty sure it won't come via a Spanish priest quoted secondhand in a British newspaper.

It is stunning to discover that 49 years after JFK lost votes because of his religion, and half a millennium after Luther, institutional anti-Catholic bias is still entrenched. Disgusting - would Judaism or Islam be treated the same in the press, or would there be a damning outcry?


h/t The Catholic Key Blog

Happy Halloween!

Good spooking and safe trick or treating to all!

Many posts about this holiday will follow in the weeks to come, but for now I thought I'd write about the snack Lisa made for each of the kids classrooms (and the Daisy Scouts meeting too!). Just in case you need a last minute treat, this is simple, quick, and relatively cheap (~$13 for fifty or so handmade ghosts)

Just take some Nutter-Butters cookies, dip them in white chocolate, and add mini-chocolate chips for eyes. Oila! Cookie Ghosts.



On the first go-round the store was out of Nutter-Butters, so we substituted a different cookie (seen in these pictures). I'd say it didn't hold the chocolate half as well as the NB, nor look (or taste!) as appealing, but you get the drift. Either way, the kids loved them.



Happy Halloween!

Locke and Key

Locke and Key is a graphic novel written by Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King and a fine author in his own right.

The Locke family relocates across the country after the murder of the husband/father, taking up residence in his childhood home on Lovecraft Island.

(Lovecraft Island? How's that for a glaring "GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN!").

The family is in tatters, with the Mom turning to alcohol, the oldest son wracked with guilt, and the youngest striking up a conversation with a mysterious voice in a well.

Soon it becomes obvious that now all is what it seems, and that the evil that took their loved one might have began the game, years ago, in that very home.

Worse yet, the same killers who struck down the Dad have the answered evil's call again, and are about to pay the Locke family a very special visit.

I liked it. The characters had depth and their grieving felt real, and the story was well told. I think the material would have been much better off as straight prose, as I don't think the graphic aspect of it does anything of consequence to further the readers enjoyment.

But frankly, aside from the ending that screamed "Sequel!" I have very little to complain about.

3.0 out of 4

Tonight on Conan

Alice in Chains will be performing "Check My Brain" on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien tonight. .

Grandma Tepher

The baby in the picture is my YaYa. She's in the arms of Mildred "Grandma" Tepher (Tepfer?), a resident of Lisa's hometown of Sturgis, MI. She doubled as a surrogate grandmother to my wife while Lisa's family lived there in the 1970's.

Lisa took me to meet her prior to our wedding, and I found her a friendly soul who still kept momentos from Lisa's early childhood. Before Mildred's death in the middle part of this decade, Lisa and her Mom took YaYa to meet her too. Whereas on my trip we dined at the local Big Boy's, YaYa got the special treatment: they journed across the border to Indiana to eat at a restaurant she liked.

Mildred, RIP - you're still missed.

A Quiet Flame

A Quiet Flame is the fifth in Phillip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series, a set of 'noir' mysteries set in and around Hitler's Berlin. But now the war is over and Gunther, a long-time adversary of Nazism, has been misidentified as a war criminal. He escapes to Peron's Argentina, where he joins a large contingent of exiled Nazi's living under assumed names.

Gunther's investigative skills pique the interest of an Argentinian officer who offers him a deal: find the missing daughter of a prominent man, and in exchange Peron's own doctor will cure Gunther of his early stage cancer.

Along the way Gunther also takes the case of a beautiful Jewish woman who is looking for her missing relatives, and as the cases become intertwined it becomes obvious that Argentina hides a secret as dark as anything in Europe.

Noir often becomes boring to me, with its endless obsession with darkness and tragedy. Kerr is an acknowledged master of the form, and so I managed to avoid that fate. Instead Kerr failed in setting up and then resolving the mystery at hand. In the end it is resolved in a single, off-hand conversation, as if the facts were off-stage the whole time. He obviously wished our attention to be focused on the social and historical crimes of the era, and not the wanderings of a single young woman, but so what? He could have - he should have - done both.

2.5 out of 4.

Why we call him Smiley

Here's my son with his cousin Caitlin, who he calls "Kay-Kay"











Naw, the nickname doesn't fit at all. :)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Ken Follett once wrote a wonderful piece in The Writer on how he believes 'high' and 'popular' literature differ. He says 'popular' literature is built around an idea or action, while 'High' literature is often concerned with the internal dilemmas of the character at the expense of plot or story.

Well, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button certainly has a neat idea behind it, that of a man who is born 'old' and slowly grows 'younger' as years pass. And it does carry Fitzgerald's name, so you'd expect some artistic merit. Is this the rare combination of both style and substance?

Eh, not so much. Keep in mind two things. One, the movie took the germ of the story from Fitzgerald and concocted a very liberal adaptation. And two, somehow they managed to take a movie that should hinge largely on an original, intiguing storyline and made it a strictly character driven film.

I liked the movie. No, I did, I swear. But I liked it in the same way I enjoy sitting down with an old man and listening to him tell the tale of his life. That, in a nutshell, is what this film offers: the rather mundane but well told memories of an average joe.
Is he born 'old'? Yes. Does he grow 'younger'? Yes. Does it miraculously seem to have no bearing on the plot or the shape of his life? Yes. You could remove the age gimmick from the movie and sell it, as is, as a bittersweet lifelong romance. He grows up in a nursing home, but it appears to be no different of an upbringing than that of any other child whose parent is a live-in nurse. He un-ages while serving on the high seas, but it's brushed away with a two sentence exchange with his captain. He spends a large amount of time onscreen as standard-age Brad Pitt. And so on.

To repeat, I liked the movie and don't regret a minute I spent watching it. But a masterpiece or high art it was not.

3.0 out of 4

Happy Birthday YaYa!

There's not much time to post today, but I wanted to make sure to stop by and wish my oldest a Happy 8th Birthday! Everyday with her has been a blessing, even the lousy ones, and I hope she has a blast today!

We love you YaYa!

Books Read 2002 - some spoilers

1.The ten thousand : a novel of ancient Greece by Michael Curtis Ford. (a yawner when compared to Gates of Fire)

2.Bums by Peter Glockenbock

3 Lost Soldiers by James Webb

4 The Eye of The World by Robert Jordan (as seen by the next 8 entries, I’m hooked!)

5 The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

6 The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan

7 The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan (best of the bunch)

8 The Fires of Heaven: by Robert Jordan

9 Lord of Chaos: by Robert Jordan

10 A Crown of Swords: by Robert Jordan

11 The Path of Daggers: by Robert Jordan

12 Winter’s Heart by Robert Jordan

13 Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden (excellent!)

14 Gallow’s Thief by Bernard Cornwell

15 Little Grandpa by Dan Slapczynski

16 Old Polish Legends by F.C. Anstruther

17 City of Bones by Michael Connelly

18Warning of War by James Brady (so-so. pretty weak and predictable)

19 The Marines of Autumn by James Brady (poetic and tragic, yet horribly pro-Marine, anti-GI; yet another reminder that an author sometimes intrudes on his own work)

20 American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold by Harry Turtledove

21 Jolie Blon’s Bounce by James Lee Burke (scary. What a great bad guy!)

22 Sharpe’s Company by Bernard Cornwell

23 The Moment She was Gone by Evan Hunter (excellent. It really hit home and I’ve passed the book along to others)

24 Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosley

25 Sharpe’s Sword by Bernard Cornwell

26 Acid Row by Minette Walters (very good book. I may have found a female author worth reading)

27 To Catch a Spy by Stuart Kaminsky (Cary Grant vs the Nazis. Fun book)

28 Mortal Prey by John Sandford (where’s the terror that made the series so powerful?)

29 Code Sixty-One by Donald Harstad (a nice, quirky change of pace)

30 The Shape of Snakes by Minette Walters (yup, a female author worth reading)

31 Twice Dying Neil Mchmahon (ok)

32 The Echo by Minette Walters

33 Eleven Days by Donald Harstad (his first, and so far the best, book)

34.American Gods by Neil Gaiman (winner of the Bram Stoker Award for best novel of 2001; a fine read, even if I lost interest in the home stretch)

35 The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb (plain jane style, decent story. Enjoyable)

36 Known Dead by Donald Harstad (the 2nd of the series; much more relaxed and readable than the first in the series or the newest one. Wonder if deadline pressure caused him to slip backwards with Code-Sixty-One?)

37 Blood Double by Neil McMahon (goofy plot about DNA and evil corporations. I can’t really see a genuine reason for the protagonist to get involved, but heck, what do I know? Still a decent read.)

38 Hardfreeze by Dan Simmons (deliciously violent and unrepentant. Much better than the first in the series! It also features a discussion dissing the recent Spenser novels. A blast.)

39 Street Boys by Lorenzo Carcaterra (awful. What a fall from grace from his last work. Not only is the plot predictable and amateurish [the German soldier has the hero at his mercy, yet chooses to brag about it before the kill – and suddenly, the hero is saved from a shot out of nowhere! – about a dozen times]. Italy is also given a free pass in WWII [ah, sure we sided with Hitler at first. But, uh, now we don’t], and every German is a Nazi. Geesh. If it wasn’t the only book I had over Labor Day, I’d have dropped it like a block of cement.)

40 Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism by William J. Bennett (a solid and well written thesis arguing for continued American action in response to 911. I agreed with most of his thoughts, but felt many to be too obvious to deserve a detailed discussion. Because of that, some parts failed to catch my interest).

41.Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand, and Support your Daughter when she’s growing up so fast by Joe Kelly (a pretty good book dealing with a variety of issues in a girls life. Some of it is gobbldy-gook, but most of it is very valuable)

42. Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew who Fought Back by Jere Longman (the heroic and inspiring story of the only American’s who struck back on 9-11)

43 The Walkaway by Scott Phillips (a funny and effective mystery. A joy to read.)
44 The Collection by Bentley Little

45 The Revelation by Bentley Little

46 Shrink Rap by Robert B. Parker (good read, as expected, but Parker needs to see a shrink of his own to get over his obsession with both psychiatriy and homosexuality. Everyone in his latest books is either gay, screwy, or both)

47 From a Buick 8 by Stephen King (may be wrong, but didn’t see much of a plot here)
48 The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (every bit as terrifying – if not more so- than the movie. And I very much like Blatty’s style).

49 BFI Modern Classics: The Exorcist by Mark Kermode (a British critique of the film)

50 The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty (not a very good book, and short to boot)

51 Legion by William Peter Blatty (a sequel of sorts to the Exorcist. Mainly a mystery with long discussions of philosophy thrown in. Still a good read though.)

52 The Stand by Stephen King (very good – very long – book)

53 The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King (I suppose its deeply metaphorical. Or boring. Depends on your outlook).

54 The Shining by Stephen King (deeply unsettling. Not a book to read while working night audit at a hotel)

55 Gerald’s Game by Stephen King (very good. An excellent example of how to say ‘no’ to your characters)

56 The Green Mile by Stephen King (a very enjoyable, very good book)

57 Bag of Bones by Stephen King (ok – it started out very strong and then took a crap. King was a child of the sixties, and sometimes the sensibilities of the time overwhelm his work. Aside from turning the departed wife into a saint (when you were at first made to believe she was having an affair) he makes the whole thing into a statement on race. Which is fine, but having read several of his books in a short time, I see a pattern. He paints every African-American as someone put-upon and abused at the hands of the redneck majority. This is certainly true in some cases, and it was pertinent in The Green Mile, but here???? What happened to Sara Tidwell was atrocious and disgusting. That said, I REFUSE to justify a century of child murder OR see her as anything but a damned soul - both the opposite of what King seems to portray. Children are innocent. For her to take her revenge on them is as wrong as the crime that killed her. In whole, a mediocre work)

58 Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell. (A sequel to Archer’s Tale. A very engaging novel of the Hundred Years War)

59 Fat Ollie’s Book by Ed McBain (wonderful! As expected a sharp, witty book that dances with the grace of Astaire. Full of snide little jibes at his own legacy, his fictional creation – and even his world famous disclaimer! Plus Fat Ollie finally gets a shot at center stage. What a joy!)

60 Under the Eagle by Steve Scarrow (a Sharpe-like adventure of the Roman invasion of Britain. The author has potential, but he’s still rough around the edges. And lay off the British slang, eh? How many times did a centurian yell “Bloody Bastards!”