The Kenrick Alumni Dinner was last night. For this occasion, some of my classmates and I made a video, which was shown to the alumni and seminary community. I think it went over pretty well.

The premise: The class of 1957 made a film about what the seminary would be like 50 years in the future, i.e., 2007. This film appeared on an obscure ecclesiastical television show entitled “The Rectory.” Our video is (ostensibly) a segment of that television show, which includes the video from the class of 1957.

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You can watch Seminarians in the Third Millennium on YouTube.

Seminarians in the Third Millennium is in various formats on my Kenrick website.

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Evan (Billy O’Malley) Harkins’s blog: Galea Salutis.

Anthony (Narrator, Smoking Seminarian #2) Ochoa’s blog: Sonet Vox Tua, including his post on the topic.

Nick (Video Editing and Encoding, Rev. Schmitz, S.J.) Winker’s blog: Clever Title Goes Here.

The other day, we were watching a video on St. Paul, and at one point they showed a temple for pagan gods. Briefly, the camera caught a glimpse of the words “SIMVLACRA CASTORVM.” I thought it was funny because the word castor means “beaver,” so the phrase could mean “idols of beavers.”

Of course, it does not really mean this. The ambiguity (in a grammatical sense, not a logical one) comes because of the coincidence of the ending “orum” (Genitive, 2nd Decl. Masculine/Neuter Plural) and the ending “um” (Genitive, 3rd. Decl. Plural). Many third declension nouns that refer to people, especially as agents, end in “-or” such that the genitive plural ends with the letters “orum.”

For example, “peccatorum” on the face of it means either “of sins” or “of sinners.”

So, the phrase really means “the idols of the pure/holy/chaste.” Now … why does the word for “chaste,” castus, seem so similar to the word for “beaver,” castor? The answer the ancients gave is that the beaver makes himself chaste.

Thus, there is the ancient folklore surrounding the beaver, that is, that the beaver is hunted for its testicles, the oil of which can be used to make medicine. When it sees that it is being hunted and cannot escape, therefore, the beaver bites off its testicles and throws them to the hunter so that it preserves its life.

In this way, the beaver became a symbol of the Christian who casts off his attachment to sin so that the devil, seeing nothing he wants, does not pursue.

All this makes me wonder whether we get “castor oil” from this legend?

Some of you may know that I’m quite fond of webcomics. Well, I was catching up a little bit today, and I saw this cartoon from 21st Century Fox. It’s like the kind of thing I normally write about … only in cartoon form.

Update: I don’t know where that comic has gone!

Have you ever gone shopping … for heresy? If you were invincibly ignorant before, prepare to receive a mega-dose of truth! Error doesn’t take a vacation: it’s ripe for the purchasing at the everyday low price of your soul.

Let’s look at some of the offenders:

Glade’s slogan: “Created by nature, captured by Glade.”

The Holy Catholic Church says (Canons of Vatican I):

If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced, according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God; or holds that God did not create by his will free from all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself; or denies that the world was created for the glory of God: anathema sit

Sorry, Glade. I’m sure you’ll be enjoying the refreshing scent of cinnamon apple for all eternity–in Hell.

Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Desire for true happiness frees man from his immoderate attachment to the goods of this world so that he can find his fulfillment in the vision and beatitude of God. “The promise [of seeing God] surpasses all beatitude. . . . In Scripture, to see is to possess. . . . Whoever sees God has obtained all the goods of which he can conceive.”

You lose, kitty.

Council of Trent:

If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; anathema sit.

Oh, don’t worry. You earned your eternal destiny.

“Looks so natural, no one can tell.”

(1 Samuel 16:7):

Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.

(Luke 12:7):

Even the hairs of your head have all been counted.

Utter foolishness and pomp.

Josh Miller pointed out in a post yesterday that according to some, “the collapse of the Roman Catholic Church will occur on August 7, 2007.”

I can’t believe I missed it.

You may want to check out these videos on YouTube which parody the “Mac versus PC” commercials on the theme of Natural Family Planning versus Contraception. They’re pretty funny.

Now if only there were a parody of the Apple “switch” ads from a few years ago:

I used to use the pill … but it was so confusing … and you have to do it at the exact right time … and I was, like, … uh?

Now that I use NFP, it just works.


[1] - Stopped prayer
# cd /valley/kidron
# ls
olive_grove/
# cd olive_grove/
# who
jesus pts/0 Mar 14 9:00 (localhost)
judas pts/1 Mar 14 9:12 (localhost)
# whoami
jesus
# whoami
jesus


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Username: simonpeter
Password: *********

$ sword ~malchus
rm: remove write-protected regular file `/home/malchus/ear-right'? y


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# rm -f /home/simonpeter/bin/sword
# cp ~father/cup ~/
# cd ~annas


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Username: simonpeter
Password: *********

$ DISCIPLE="FALSE" echo $DISCIPLE
$ !!
$ !!


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Username: pontiuspilate
Password: *********

$ whatis truth
truth truth (1) - print jesus' voice to stdout
$ scourge jesus
$ cat /usr/bin/man


Nick Winker wrote an hilarious (fictitious) interview with Archbishop Lefebvre in the context of the Church as a software project. It’s very well written. Actually it reminds me of when X.org was formed from XFree86, only kind of backwards.

In other news, Dylan discovers a very niche website which lives up to its name.

The theme of the St. Louis Steubenville Conference in Springfield, MO (talk about being confused as to the location of the event!) was “All Access.” I saw numerous groups with themed t-shirts, many of which were supposed to be humorous or clever.

“All Access,” of course, suggests to me that we make a shirt with Christ as some kind of computer hacker. He could be sitting in the dark in front of a screen entering commands like: # chmod 666 /heaven .¹

Think about it:

Christ is the “root of Jesse.”²

He also prefers “Unix for the Kingdom.”

He lived with his parents until he was 30 (probably in his mom’s basement in Nazareth).

He could have a giant jug of water that has become Mt. Dew sitting next to him.

The Bible even says that God “swiftly runs his command” (Psalm 147:15), which probably indicates that he has two cores in one processor.

He could rm -r our sins.³

I’m liking this idea … a lot. Maybe someone (possibly I myself) should design a shirt around this theme.

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1 On Unix-based Operating Systems, “chmod 666″ gives all users read/write permission for a file, that is, it gives them “All Access.” The fact that it includes the number of the Beast of Revelation is a coincidence.

2 On Unix-based Operating Systems, “root” is the super-user.

3 Delete recursively.