Veritas Ensis Noster.

November 4, 2010 - Vol. VIII, No. III

rambler the

Social Network or World Domination?

EDITOR-IN-ABSENTIAVincent D’Agostino

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDavid Frank

MANAGING EDITORSara Federico

LAYOUT EDITORAdele C. Smith

NEWS & OPINION EDITORPhilip O’Neill

ARTS & CULTURE EDITORSP.J. Freeman; Tyler Lowe

FAITH & REASON EDITORBrian Killackey

PUBLISHERAdele C. Smith

FACULTY ADVISORDr. Patrick Keats

CONTRIBUTORSSavanna Buckner; Sean Connolly; Noreen Daly; Lauren Enk; Peter O’Dwyer; Megan Rolla; Elizabeth Sartor

FRONT COVERAdele C. Smith

News & OpiNiON

Arts & Culture

FAith & reAsON

Building Community Through Classic Filmsby David Frank

Limbo of the Infants: Nothing is Certainby Peter O’Dwyer

A Call to Faith and Responsibilityby Noreen Daly

To ConTaCT The RambleR:134 Christendom DriveFront Royal, VA 22630

e-mail: rambler.editor@gmail.comWeb: www.facebook.com/therambleronline

ouR mission sTaTemenT

The RambleR and its staff are dedicated to training the next generation of Catholic journal-

ists and intellectuals. We prize the liberal arts education received from Christendom College

and write about the news, arts, culture, faith, and reason from this gained perspective. We believe we will play an essential part in a renaissance of new leaders, journalists, and communicators for

the 21st century.

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FeAture

The Rambler

Veritas ensis noster

An Independent Student JournalChristendom College

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The Disconcerting Dreams of Mark Zuckerbergby Savanna Buckner

Out and About: Washington, D.C.by Tyler Lowe

12 Music Soothes the Savage Beast. . .by Elizabeth Sartor

10

Touché: The Art of Reparteeby Lauren Enk

Sed Contra: What Have We Given Our Bishops?by Sean Connolly

Veritas Ensis Noster.

November 4, 2010 - Vol. VIII, No. III

rambler the

Social Network or World Domination?

Cover photo courtesy of Adele C. Smith. Christendom students in the St. John’s Computer lab all check into Facebook. Is it really simply an innocent networking site? See page 12.

Rambler: Pronunciation: \ram-blər\Function: nounDate: c. 20021. A student organization determined to present truth and withhold nothing, discussing a variety of subjects such as administration, morality, culture, politics, and faith.

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the lAst wOrdTell Me You Didn’t Voteby Adele C. Smith

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iN this issue...

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humOrThe Complete Philosophical Guideby Megan Rolla

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Dear Readers,

Ah, November. It’s my favorite time of year. Paradoxically, November is simultaneously a time of change and of tradition. The leaves here in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley are changing colors gloriously; Republicans now control the U.S. House of Representatives; and as my birthday ap-proaches, another year of my life comes to a close. Yet November is full of tradition as well. In American tradition, there’s football and Thanksgiv-ing; in Roman Catholic tradition, the month of November is dedicated to praying for the souls of the dead.

Here at The Rambler, we are all about both change and tradition. This issue features several new contributors: Savanna Buckner, Sean Connolly, Nor-een Daly and Lauren Enk. Two of them--Miss Buckner and Miss Daly--wrote articles on certain changes visible in our modern American society, specifically, America’s lapse from the vision of her founders (pg.8), and the Facebook phenomenon (pg. 12), respectively. Both articles challenge the reader to start a new change, for we have no right to complain about the evil that we make no effort to overcome, as Adele C Smith emphasizes in ‘The Last Word’ (pg.19).

And then there is tradition. Those traditions worth keeping always have a note of being ever new, for as they are handed down, they become part of the lives of each new generation. Elizabeth Sartor writes from Rome on the depths of tradition in Italy’s culture, especially in music culture, and its benefit to the soul (pg. 10), while I report on Dr. McGraw’s unique pro-gram using classic Hollywood films---some still well-known, some nearly forgotten--to teach the natural law (pg. 5).

As a final note, I would like to apologize to the administration, faculty, staff, and student body on behalf of The Rambler for the misprinted issue in October. An article was published that should never have been printed and I am deeply sorry for any offense taken. The style of the article in question was distasteful and unprofessional. We have recommitted ourselves as a staff to uphold our mission of fair, unbiased, professional Catholic journalism. We hope you accept our sincere apology and con-tinue to be our faithful readers.

In Jesu et Maria,

editOr’s COrNer

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David Frank ’12ediToR-in-Chief

Photos courtesy of Christendom College

News BrieFs

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On the weekend of November 13th-14th, over 80 high school students are expected to come to campus for the Summer Program Reunion. This is following up after a record summer of 160 campers. Be very afraid, fellow students, very afraid...

Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to travel to Spain this weekend. He is to travel first to Barcelona, then to San-tiago de Compostela. 200,000 pilgrims are expected to meet him at his destination.

Virginia voters did more than their fair share to contrib-ute to the Republican House victory. Of the 11 Con-gressional Districts in the Commonwealth, only three Democratic nominees were elected. The other five were all Republican.

Even though the Republicans have the House majority, there are still ten seats that have yet to be determined in New York, Texas, Illinois, Washington, Kentuckey, Vir-ginia, and two in both California and Arizona. Absentee ballots are still not wholly accounted for, but, in the past, those who care enough to do absentee voting usually aren’t voting Democrat.

Obama is sending 34 warships to India to prepare for his three day diplomatic mission in Mumbai and Delhi. A vast array of American Spec Ops, Secret Sevice, and other National Security operatives are traveling with this impressive fleet. Furthermore, preparations for an emergency evacuation have been put in place in case of a terrorist attack.

With inductions and elections approaching for the Chester-Belloc Debate Society, that means that there is only one debate left in the semester. Although the proposition is not yet solidified, the date of the debate will take place on November 21st, 2010. It will be run by a new chairman, as Chairman Christopher Foeckler will be departing for the Rome semester in the spring, along with Secretary Mary Becher.

RDA?

News & OpiNiON

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Can anything good come from Hollywood? According to Dr. Onalee McGraw, who has been using classic films to teach truth and the natural law for the past 24 years, the answer is clearly

in the affirmative. A convert to Catholicism and a longtime friend of Christendom College, McGraw is primarily known to the Catholics of Front Royal, Virginia, as the Coordinator of High School Religious Education at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church. What is not so well known is that she is also the director and co-founder of the Educa-tional Guidance Institute (EGI), a non-profit organization that focuses on using classic films to present today’s youth with transcendent truths and the importance of living a virtuous life. Now, with the help of Christendom College alumna Katherine Scott,’10, and several current Christendom students, McGraw is developing and refining new film-based curricula to be used at the parish, high school, and college levels. EGI has worked with Christendom students for the past couple years, but it was only when McGraw began collaborating with Scott during the 2009-2010 academic year that student involvement began in earnest. Students meet once a month at McGraw’s home just down the street from Christendom College to watch a classic film, analyze it in group discussion, and decide whether it is useful for teaching important truths or values. Rachel Kujawa, ’13, who has been attending the film nights since January, describes the program as “trying to present ideas which have been lost in modern society in a way that is accessible to modern teenagers and college students,” and “trying to bring back clas-sic films which tended to have deeper meaning and greater entertain-ment value than the bland shoot’em-ups or the problematic themes of today’s entertainment media.” Dr. McGraw considers her education to have been a unique prepa-ration for her future work with EGI. She first attended Whittier Col-lege, where she received an appreciation for tradition, culture, and the natural equality of all human beings. “This was before the Civil Rights Movement, so it was not political correctness; it was part of the atmo-sphere of the college,” says McGraw. Then, while an exchange student at Howard University in her junior year, McGraw encountered Martin Luther King, Jr., which prompted her to become one of the first white college students involved in the Civil Rights Movement. With a new-found interest in political science, she attended Georgetown University, where she earned her Ph.D. in Government. “I like to think that it was really the Holy Spirit directing me towards the Catholic faith,” says Mc-Graw, referring to her experience as a non-Catholic at Georgetown, which was a very Catholic university at that time. “At Georgetown, I

was taking political theory classes that would be very similar to Chris-tendom’s classes nowadays—studying Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas—and I began to understand that truth is not relative, that it is something you can objectively discover and study.”At Georgetown, McGraw was also exposed to the reality of the natural law. “That was very compelling for a young person like myself, because I had been into existentialist philosophy, but by that time, it was very clear to me that you could not build your whole life on what you personally thought was valid,” McGraw recalls. Her introduction to objective truth and natural law was a significant factor in the eventual creation of EGI. McGraw put her political science education and knowledge of the natural law to work in the ’70s and ’80s, notably working with the pro-life movement after Roe v. Wade and the conservative Heritage Foun-dation. During the Reagan years, however, she shifted her focus from

by David Frank ’12

Building Community Through Classic Films

Onalee McGraw, left, sits with Katherine Scott,’10, in her Front Royal home. Photo courtesy of Angela Sus.

political activism to educational work in order to answer Pope John Paul II’s call to engage the culture. Then, in 1986, she was approached by an influential friend, Margaret Whitehead, who wanted to start a non-profit organization to help youth through character formation programs, teaching the truth about sexu-ality and the natural law. A year later, the newly-formed Educational Guidance Institute received its first federal grant. “The heart of the program was that we taught the natural law,” McGraw explains. “Mar-garet and I were both Catholic, and we were convinced that since God has put the natural law in everyone’s heart, we can teach the person in a way that will stimulate this truth within the heart..” The two developed a program on the truth and meaning of human sexuality using classical and Thomistic thought and worked with a variety of groups, including Latinos and African-Americans. Besides Aristotle and St. Thomas, Pulitzer-Prize-winning psychiatrist Dr. Robert Coles’ book The Moral Life of Children greatly influenced Mc-Graw. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. Dr. Coles had this whole concept of good movies generating moral energy, and that idea captivated me. I asked myself, ‘Which movies would generate that kind of moral en-ergy?’ and within two months, I had the ‘canon’ of my program, though it has changed some since then.” Some of the films most popular with EGI’s audiences are It’s a Wonderful Life, A Raisin in the Sun, Roman Holi-day, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, No Way Out, and a few newer ‘classics’ like Radio and Remember the Titans. But what exactly makes a film classic? McGraw says it’s hard to define, pointing out that although most classic films are products of an earlier time, there are a few more recent films which can nevertheless be called “classic.” According to McGraw, “A classic film is something you want to see again and again,” a film in which the story, characters, production quality and message are timeless. “We want to draw on that kind of passion for excellence, the passion for things that last, because I firmly believe that people are not getting that passion satisfied today,” McGraw asserts. “There is too much that is rushing and temporal.” Katherine Scott explains, “The reason we use classic films is to show people products of a culture that understood virtue and presented it in a morally unambiguous way. The production code was very explicit that no one should be morally diminished upon leaving the theater, whereas movies today are very often cloudy and murky in the way they present moral issues.This ambiguity affects how people learn to form their consciences and how they make moral choices. If they don’t know what is right and what is wrong, they’re not going to be able to choose it in concrete actions.” Right morality is not the only good to be gained from classic films. “We want to build a cultural appreciation in watching these films, to come together to have discussions, to build friendships, and to reinvigo-rate the culture that we have,” says Scott. But why use films, rather than another medium such as books? “The benefit of using this medium in particular is that it initially bypasses discursive reasoning to some de-gree,” Scott explains. “People just see the images and are affected on an emotional and intuitive level. They’re applauding the good without having fully rationalized it at first.” Scott also emphasizes a second ben-efit, referencing the Thomistic theory of abstraction, in which images are considered necessary for human knowledge and learning. “Film provides you with those images; you abstract from the images and then through the discussion have the concepts either cemented in your mind

or discovered for the first time through the film.” “We are developing different versions of the curriculum to suit the needs of parishes, college students, women and men’s study groups, as well as a program to restore the principles underlying America’s found-ing.”, explains Scott. “For a number of years EGI was under a federal grant, with which we taught abstinence education through film in the public schools. Things being how they are now, that’s no longer pos-sible. But it actually frees us to pursue truth more explicitly and not to have to be politically correct or pull any punches.” Katherine describes their vision for the parish model under development. “Ideally, a group in a parish would sponsor the program and organize the showings. At each event, they would distribute handouts of key terms so participants can know and discuss the meaning of such concepts as virtue, free-dom, and happiness and friendship. Then they would watch a classic film keeping these concepts in mind. Afterwards, under the guidance of discussion leaders, students would examine and explore the themes seen in the film with the goal of arriving at the truth.” Through their post-film discussions at the McGraw home, Chris-tendom students are directly shaping the content of these models. But the benefit is not entirely on the side of EGI. Refreshments, always welcome to college students, are ample. And it’s a good opportunity for students to get together for a movie, inevitably followed by lively con-versation. “I have really enjoyed watching movies that I have seen many times before and getting other people’s perspectives on them, as well as seeing new movies that I never otherwise would have even known about,” says Kujawa. “And it’s a great way to relax in the middle of the week, with all the tension of college life, particularly during midterms.”

The Educational Guidance Institute can be found online at EGIonline.org. For those interested in attending movie nights at Dr. McGraw’s house, contact Rachel Kujawa or Sara Federico.

If you have any questions regarding this article or The Rambler, please contact David Frank at rambler.editor@gmail.com.

News & OpiNiON

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“By all odds the capital’smost influential journal of

opinion these days.”—Vanity Fair,

July, 2003

weeklystandard.com

News & OpiNiON

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The fate of unbaptized children is more than a difficult question. It is a painful one. This is not just a passive question; it actively challenges the believer. Few things invoke such heartbreak as

the death of a child, especially an infant. Worse still, when we turn to God for solace, doubt can creep in. The notion of children going to hell is especially repulsive our sense of justice. The question has taken on an urgency unparalleled in its history. With the rise of casual and then state-sponsored abortion, the dead are piling up. Many Catholics are on the front lines every day against abortion, which ramps up the level of contact the average adherent has with the issue. Things have come to such a head that the Papacy ordered a theologi-cal commission to do a intense study on the matter, and especially in regards to the theory of Limbo. The commission took years, but at last, in spring 2007, the commission released its studies in The Hope of Salva-tion for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized. The purpose of this article is to highlight the message of this document (which will be referred to as “The Hope of Salvation” in the rest of this article due to the long name) because its dissemination has been lackluster at best. This is not due to any failing on the Pope or the commission's fault. The primary difficulty was the media getting hung up on Limbo: Either the media was too lazy to even read the article, “Vatican City: Pope Closes Limbo” from the New York Times, or simply too insane to not use it as another missile in the Sedevacantist arsenal: “Damning Limbo to Hell” of www.traditionalmass.org (The light is still burning!) where the Holy Father is called an “ecclesiastical Santa Claus who gives away heaven to little babies.” Which is apparently a bad thing. But this is more than just the next batch tedious attacks on the Church: there is a deep reason that The Hope of Salvation can baffle out-siders and even Catholics. The tricky thing about Limbo is that it is a theory. Catholics have the benefit of theological certitude to an ex-tent unknown in other religions in almost all other significant matters. Catholics also have the benefit of intellectual humility: we know and recognize that there are some things God keeps hidden. We are forbid-den from idle speculation on the populations of heaven and hell. God holds His secrets tight. Indeed, if it is not necessary for our salvation, it is not addressed in public revelation. We also have the Sacred Mysteries, which inspire us to contemplation but are still above human under-standing. The uncertainty of Limbo is unusual for us, and there is an impulse to deny it entirely, or embrace it as dogma. People who watch Catholics suffer as well: they are not used to watching us grapple with theories, and are accustomed to considering anything out of the Holy See to be Dogma. The fate of unbaptized children is a secret. Limbo is a theory used to try and reconcile what we know about what is necessary for salvation: Baptism, and what is necessary for damnation: grave mortal sin. Un-baptized children have neither. It is important to remember two things:

one, Limbo has never once been proclaimed as dogma by the Catholic Church, and isn't even mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the theory was held by some of our most beloved and wisest philosophers and Catholics are free to hold it as true. But Pope Benedict and the Theological Commission raise a new question: if there could be an alternate theory, or that we may not need a theory at all: just hope. Oddly enough, for all the rancor, the document is one of the most comforting and gentle documents issued by the Vatican. Pope Benedict wants us to take up the spirit, not the letter, of Limbo. The document points to biblical and liturgical reasons to have hope for unborn chil-dren: Christ's sayings on children, as well as the “Harrowing of Hell,” where Christ literally raided the abode of the righteous fathers of the Old Testament and brought them to heaven. Also, the liturgy for dead children offers hope for the grieving. The Hope of Salvation reminds us that “Christian Hope goes utterly beyond human hope.” God's ability to save souls is limited only by our resistance to Him, and God is not constrained by His own sacraments. The spirit of Lim-bo is hope as well as faith. The Pope tells us that we have faith that God wants infants to go to heaven infinitely more than the most grief-stricken mother, and we have hope that He will make it happen. The letter of Limbo will always be unsatisfactory. I repeat, it is acceptable to hold that Limbo exists, but there is something in the human heart that prevents us from politely informing bereaved parents that their miscar-ried child is “Technically in hell.” Pope Benedict knows this, and wishes to spare us from desperate endeavors into the unknowable to try and win consolation. We don't need to know everything. The conclusion of the document stresses again that the commission says that we do not have sure knowledge, but insists that there are “Serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized will be saved and enjoy the Beatific vision.” One of the biggest threats of Limbo is not the substance of the idea, it's the nature of fallen men. We begin to start drawing lines on the subject of who is saved, a subject which is not only unknown but upon which we have no competence or authority to make assertions what-soever. We know that baptism is necessary for salvation, and we know of God's mercy. How they interact and work together to both punish evil and save men is wonderful and mysterious and there are many valid and laudable approaches, including Limbo, to try to understand how it works. The Hope of Salvation cautions us to be wary of the precipitous void where one can fall into relativism and not regard the sacraments with the proper respect and their necessity. But we must also always remember, the document urges, the second most terrible place in the entire universe is the throne upon which God sits as He judges who goes to hell, and who goes to heaven and that we should not be so quick to covet it. Rather, we should save our energy for the hope that our departed loved ones (and enemies, of course) have made it home.

by Peter O’Dwyer ’11

Limbo of the Infants: Nothing is Certain

On Saturday morning, August 28, 2010, seven Christendom students journeyed to Washington, D.C., joining hundreds of thousands of Americans from all parts of the country at the

steps of the Lincoln Memorial for Glenn Beck’s non-political Restoring Honor Event. This was the first in a series of extracurricular activi-ties organized by Christendom College’s Political Science department this semester. The event was an opportunity for Americans to show their dedication to restoring America to its original roots intended by the Founding Fathers and to hear guest speakers like Sarah Palin and Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. En route to the event, the students saw bumper stickers with mes-sages such as, “I’ll keep my guns, money and freedom; you can keep the ‘change,’” or “Doh-Bama” with a yellow Simpsons-like caricature of Barack Obama. By the time they reached the Vienna metro station, it became apparent just how large the crowds would be: the ticket line stretched outside the station and through the parking lot. Fortunately, thanks to the ingenuity of Richard Allington, ’11, and the crowd ma-neuvering techniques acquired by some of the senior students during Holy Week in Rome, the Christendom students quickly reached the train platform, entered the hot and crowded city, and marched deter-minedly to the Reflection Pool and World War II Monument. After squeezing as close to the center stage as possible, they managed to get a view of one of the huge television screens for the closing speech given by Glenn Beck. As he began to speak, stillness enveloped the crowd. Straining their ears and standing on tiptoes, the students stood there in silence, amazed to see so many fellow Americans who were anti-big government, anti-gov-ernment handouts, anti-Obama, anti-“change,” pro-individual responsibility, pro-Second Amendment, pro-family—in other words, truly conservative. Beck’s speech included a history les-son of sorts on the founding of the United States. America was founded on Christian principles. The words laus deo, “Praise be to God,” are inscribed on the top of the Washington Memo-rial. Christianity is literally and figura-tively carved into the very foundation of America. However, the leftists have been working to erase Christianity from our history books since the early 1920s. They need us to forget our Christian roots in order for their socialist ideol-

ogy to progress. Slowly, the rewriting of history and the banning of prayer in public schools has led many to believe that there is no place for God in society and that there has always been a separation between church and state. For example, copies of the U.S. Constitution, a docu-ment created to protect our rights, are now sold with disclaimers on them: “This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.” For too long the government has tried to erase our history; for too long the American people have been told that they are not capable of taking care of themselves. As Glenn Beck’s radio talk show theme says, “We must remember who we are.” We are a nation grown out of integrity and justice, and these modern times attempt to portray morality and integrity as being equally outdated as that “old piece of paper,” as George W. Bush once called the Constitution. Beck spoke of one man who could be out there in the crowd at that very moment, a modern day George Washington to change the history of the world. Why shouldn’t that one person be a Christendom Col-lege student? With our Catholic principles, solid education, and sound philosophy, we know that we are working by the hand of God. “One man did change the history of the world,” commented Francis Aul,

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News & OpiNiON

by Noreen Daly ’11

A Call to Faith and Responsibility

From left to right: Michael Heffernan, Paul Nangurai, Francis Aul, Ania Zganiacz, Peter Donahue, Noreen Daly, Steven Curtin, and Richard Allington all attended Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally in Washington, D.C. Photos courtesy of Noreen Daly.

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News & OpiNiON

’11, referring to Christ. The challenge of being tempted by power and money is a potential threat, but who could be better prepared to face this challenge than a faithful and well-formed Catholic? He or she would fight for the glory of God in the face of temptation, overcome it, and restore Christ and honor to our country. The maze of politics is often avoided by Christendom students, but we must remember that as conservatives, we are not alone; rather, as Beck said, “America is crying out for the truth.” We must not be intimi-dated or discouraged by the media; our country is not lost; we are a great nation, even though Obama would have us think otherwise. Beck urged Americans to active membership in their country’s jour-ney into the future: “America is at a crossroads, and today we must decide: Who are we? What is it we believe? We must advance or perish!” Now is not the time to bury ourselves behind copies of the Basic Works of Aristotle. Beck’s rally made it evident that America is nothing like the caricature of America painted by the liberal-con-trolled media. Americans are waking up and looking for the truth.Beck also said, “Pray so that your children see that you pray. Do not close the door.” We need to open our doors and let the world see us on our knees. The idea that charity begins at home, or that the family that prays together stays together—these are ideas that many at the rally were hearing for the first time. We are a step ahead of this. All those at the rally were looking for a way to restore our country, though many may not have known what exactly they were attempting to regain. But we do know. We, the students of Christen-dom College, are the ones who hold the key. Our country needs us because we have been given the truth. Beck concluded his speech with the following bolstering state-ment: “It is not that God is on our side; it is up to us to examine and reform our lives according to the laws of God—and then we will be successful because we will be on God’s side.” This call to faith and responsibility were not the empty words of a politician trying to flatter the masses, but a good all-American man telling people what they needed to hear.

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Arts & Culture

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Also known as the Italian. While many (including myself) like to poke fun at the extremities of the virtues and vices of the Italian culture, one must admit that one of their virtues easily

puts at least American culture to shame. The Italians have a strong sense of appreciation of beauty. While this extends to many areas of Italian culture, one could argue that it is most prominently evident in the Italians’ appreciation for the art of music. While America, most assuredly, isn't devoid of music aside from ‘popular’ music, one could hardly describe music as being inherent in our culture from its beginnings. There is clearly something to be said of a country such as Italy that has produced such musical geniuses as Guiseppe Verdi, Antonio Vivaldi, and Giochinno Rossini. Without Italian composers, we wouldn't have “The Four Seasons” or “La Travi-atta.” We wouldn't even have Stradivari violins. In Italy, it is not uncommon for members of a chorus from an opera to stand on street corners advertising for the opera. In Vene-tian churches, stringed instruments dated from the 15th century are dis-played magnificently in cases, showcasing their beauty, age, and majesty. Musicians in general seem to crawl out of the sidewalks, playing accor-dions and guitars. And it isn't just Rome; in Florence, musicians take to piazzas in the day and night, playing in quartets, with large string basses, drums, guitars and clarinets. At night talented singers and guitarists croon on street corners. In Venice, talented string quartets play outside of restaurants, while accordions take to quaint bridges, completing the stereotype. One may initially respond, “Well, we have people that play like that here in the U.S. too,” and of course, this is true. Wandering the streets of Washington D.C., Cleveland, or Boston, the sounds of sad melodies of saxophones drift through the night air. Yet, at the same time, one must look at how they are viewed. In America, we seem to look at these street musicians as bums, just looking to make a dollar or two, which could be true. In Italy, while some here and there may be gypsies, the vast majority are talented musicians, who genuinely love what they do. Why else would a quartet continue to play songs in an empty piazza, to no one but a little curly-haired blonde girl, spinning in circles to the music? The reason it is so different for the Italians is the music is, and always has been, an immensely large part of their lives. It is inherently linked with the history of Italy, and the history of music has much to thank Italy for. While in the U.S., it is somewhat an unusual circumstance

for a friend to mention, in passing that they'll be attending an opera on the weekend, this is a fairly normal occurrence in Italy. In fact, the opera itself wouldn't be in existence without the musical contributions of Italy! Both classical music, as well as opera have deep roots in Italy. In addition, Italy also has a unique sense of culture with the folk music they produce, with unique instrumentations and styles. The Italians also have an excellent sense of how important good music is in the Church as well. Papal concerts are often held in the Vatican. I had the pleasure of seeing one at which Guiseppe Verdi's Requiem Mass, written in 1873, was performed. Many were moved to tears by the beauty of the music, and Pope Benedict XVI, who was present, stated that the concert was a “moment of true beauty able to lift the spirit,” and it was a “great cry to the eternal Father in an attempt to overcome the cry of despair in face of death.” The Italians, as we all know are expressive, and Verdi was able to capture the passion and expressions of the Italian people in this beautiful Requiem, which Pope Benedict further describes as “the gamut of human sentiments in face of the end of life, man's anguish before his natural frailty, the feeling of rebellion in face of death, disconcert on the threshold of eternity.” The Italians, especially Verdi (though others too) seem to truly grasp all that music can do for one's soul. Only in Italy are free concerts of a requiem Mass by Wolfgang Am-madeus Mozart held in churches as glorious as Santa Maria Ara Coeli. On most street corners you can find an advertisement for an entirely free concert, which tend to not to be performed by your average, ‘run-of-the-mill’ musicians. They are professionals, who, many being Italian, see the importance of a culture that has a strong appreciation for the true beauty that music contains, and the importance of sharing it with as many people as possible. Music touches the soul; as Il Papa says, “[music is] a melodic link that penetrates the soul with sweetness, bring-ing the listener to feel [the composer's] same nostalgic consummation, the same call of that truth of the heart that goes beyond all rationality. In this way a picture is born that speaks of genuine everyday life, of nostalgia, of introspection and of the future.” Perhaps, if we allow our souls and our culture to be “penetrated,” as Pope Benedict says, we too can experience the calm and peace that true beauty can bring. If we but just learn to appreciate the beauty of music, as Italians seem to, the savage beast inside all of us will be tamed.

Music soothes by Elizabeth Sartor ’12

the savage Beast...

Arts & Culture

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Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Sartor

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Arts & Culture

Twenty-six-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, the youngest billionaire in our cosmos, has fathered a philosophy that is, at this very moment, redefining the web and our understanding of human

relations. He is honest about the novelty of his experiment, but a little murky as to what end-product we should expect. In fact, it is only by studying Zuckerberg’s past words and actions together that a blueprint of his dream emerges. The Web 3.0 envisioned by Zuckerberg parts ways with the traditional Internet; it is grounded in different, and wor-risome, first principles. The key to understanding Zuckerberg lies in his concept of the social graph. Zuckerberg calls this graph the core of his work, adding that his philosophy of the world and the inter-connection of things are embedded in it. Basically, the graph refers to a global digital mapping of both humans and objects, defined exclusively by their connections. The web Zuckerberg looks forward to is one in which the default is social and everyone is known by their real identity. One vast, united front that is “smarter” and more “personable.” On every page you click, you receive advertisements and recommendations tailored specifically to you based on your web history, as well as the history of your friends. Everything, yes everything, is inter-connected in Zuckerberg’s dream world. And Zuckerberg’s philosophy, incarnate in Facebook, has been eaten up. Lauded as an advanced method of communication and sharing, Facebook’s climb to superstructure status has been more of an elevator ride than an upward haul. Over five million online users have adopted Face-book, and the number continues to rise. Zuckerberg’s philosophy

is evidently invigorating, but not necessarily healthy. There has been an appalling silence in the space where a natural question should have been raised. Why? Why build our entire web structure on this idea of social sharing? Zuckerberg’s own answers are inadequate, even humorous: “Ultimately, just being able to map out all these things in one graph is just going to be really valuable for understanding what all these people and things are and what they’re doing.” “The idea is that people don’t exist in isolation. You are the set of things that you are connected with. It’s your real identity, and these are real connections that you have.” Zuckerberg’s plan is paradoxical; his gentle words about community and sharing and social are misleading in the case of the virtual network. While Zuckerberg would have us believe that it is possible to foster true friendship via social networking, he fails to see that there is something

by Savanna Buckner ’14

The Disconcerting Dreams of Mark Zuckerberg

Photo courtesy of Flickr|Rootology.

Mark Zuckerberg, right, at a conference held in 2008. Does his Social Network really foster community or is it something more sinister than that?

“But civilization is to be tested not so much by the dexterity of inventions as by the worth of what is invented.” -G.K. Chesterton

13 | ThiRTeen

Arts & Culture

fundamentally withheld in such a relationship. Zuckerberg wants the web to be used more personally. But social networking is depersonal-ized by nature, the most frequent messages are ones broadcast to the public, and screen communication is ever in competition with every-thing else that can, and does, pop up. On the web, relationships are less with people and more with objects you can choose to click on and play with when you like. Relationships on the web simply are not real; they are removed and only receive “life” from the user’s interest in them. Most people still agree that it is unhealthy to use the screen as the pri-mary sphere of one’s relationships. Yet this is exactly what Zuckerberg’s philosophy encourages: the pouring of one’s whole life into an avatar. This is a disquieting thought, especially considering that these online communications cannot occur without abandonment, to some degree, of real-world relationships. Zuckerberg’s words also fall short when we analyze how social net-working functions, or fails to function, as a community. Social network-ing does indeed aid the flow of the web. But it clearly does not refine the quality of information that people share. Unlike a real and healthy community, Facebook demands neither service or sacrifice for the greater good, nor preparation for it. Technologies like Facebook center on self-interest, not genuine cooperation. In the context of community, Zuckerberg’s hope for more openness again falters. The true communal instinct fostered by social networking is found in the abnormal curios-ity of users. As Sebastian Waisman noted, the whole success of online networking is due to one feature: “the ability to look at other users’ in-formation without their knowledge—in other words, to spy.” It is also troubling to compare social networking to a community because social networks contain practically none of the repercussions that offline life does. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg says that Facebook always tries to em-phasize the utility component. This is a reasonable enough point. The ease of having all one’s contacts in a big lump is undeniably attractive. But there is a grave discrepancy in Zuckerberg’s words. On one hand, he wants to build one big social community online, based on utility. On the other, he wants us all to have a more “meaningful” web experience. How does utility correlate with meaning? It seems more likely that, if Zuckerberg’s web comes about, both real life and the web will suffer as their roles become increasingly confused. Is there any defense for social networking under democracy’s banner? After all, Zuckerberg seems to think so. Zuckerberg says that the power of democracy is at work in Facebook and that, by giving everyone a voice and “power,” the system will end up in a really good place. Well, Facebook does reinforce interest-group politics. But it does not serve democracy—at least, not deliberative democracy—because it does not encourage people to have their opinions challenged and it thwarts delv-ing deeply into issues. So, though social networking strengthens interest groups, it does not benefit deliberative democracy. The web as we know it is a sort of mathematical tool; Zuckerberg would like it to be a kind of omniscient god. For Zuckerberg’s open web wish to come true, everything will have to be owned, in a sense, by one potent force. If lots of power corrupts a lot, this only spells trouble. But could this ever even happen? This is where the present ten-sion between Facebook and Google comes into play. Less than a year ago, Facebook made it so that users could access Facebook relation-ships, without logging in, on over 10,000 independent sites. In April, Facebook rolled out an array of developments, specifically the Open

Graph and Social Plugins, aimed at increasing Facebook’s capacity for power. In October, Facebook entered into a search engine partnership with Microsoft. This friction between search engines underscores the real battle, one over the future of the web. Facebook contends for a social web, Google primarily for a content web. Through Facebook, Zuckerberg is daily prying information out of the hands of Google, broadening Google’s “blind spot” as its servers receive data which Google cannot reach. It is certainly not implausible that Zuckerberg’s social web revolution will succeed. Zuckerberg’s vision also lends itself toward a social stigma around those who have privacy concerns. In Zuckerberg’s eyes, exposing your life online somehow endorses integrity. This has raised some sparks from Alan Jacobs, that lovable blogger for The New Atlantis. “So I have some sort of obligation to make it easier for people to get in touch with me—to match my life to the ‘expected way to make connections?’ That seems like a philosophically suspect claim to me,” he said. It is indeed an unsound claim, but it is the claim that will possibly be at the heart of Web 3.0. Jacobs offers two further complaints worthy of note. First, he hints that Zuckerberg’s ambitions are just another instance of American culture’s unceasing war against introverts. Second, he notices that no one seems to be able to provide a decent response to those who share his own reason for not using Facebook: “I’m not freaking interested.” The problem is, if Zuckerberg’s social web comes to be, it is doubtful that one will be able to opt out of surrendering one’s personal information, whether he’s interested or not. “On Facebook, I know who you are because I know who the people are who you know,” said Zuckerberg. This sounds like nonsense be-cause it is. But this much is true: whoever is in charge of this one, huge web family Zuckerberg envisions will have access to an unprecedented amount of information. Amusingly, Zuckerberg critiqued Google by saying that no one wants to be part of a surveillance society. He assures that in his social graph, users will be allowed to decide which infor-mation they make public and private. Unfortunately, it is just the case that whatever information one puts on Facebook is effectively public, regardless of privacy settings, because it’s officially owned by Facebook. Not to mention that Facebook’s record of abiding by its own terms of contract has been, well, far from sterling. And let’s not even bring the government into this. Do people really want the web to be one exten-sion of Facebook? Centralizing power on the web will only lead to the abuse of information, as web history has proven time and again. “Up until now all the advancements in technology have said that in-formation and data are the most important thing. The most important thing to us is that there is a person sitting behind that keyboard. We think the Internet is about people.” These are the interesting words of Facebook’s senior platform manager, words which fall short in so many ways. The Internet is in its element when it deals with data and infor-mation; it is not in its element when it deals, in a much removed way, with human beings. Computers are for information, not for meaning and purpose in one’s life. Overemphasizing linking us to who we know, ZuckerWeb would separate us from the strangers surrounding us in the real world. This is precisely why Zuckerberg’s vision of web future is disordered: it wishes to revolutionize the web’s role from tool to society. The web can serve man well as an instrument; it does not, however, make for a wholesome and meaningful place in which to live.

Four:

Three:

One:

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Arts & Culture

by Tyler Lowe ’11Even though a drive into Washington D.C. from Christendom College takes only an hour and a half, Christendom students rarely experience the city. Every student knows the difficulty that making the trip entails: begging a ride off of friends with cars, buying gas, and taking time out of already full schedules. Whether due to these reasons, or to ignorance or apathy, a whole cultural and social world remains uninvestigated.

If you get the opportunity, check out:

The Kennedy CenTeR foR The PeRfoRming aRTs, overlooking the Potomac River in the northwest quadrant of the city, boasts a busy cal-endar of theatre, musicals, dance, and classical and contemporary mu-sic, including National Symphony Orchestra performances. Students might be especially interested in the free concerts offered every day at 6:00 P.M. on the Millennium Stage. Be sure to go out onto the roof for a beautiful view of the Potomac River, Arlington, and D.C.

For Juniors and Seniors still suffering from withdrawal from Italian culture, go to PiTango gelaTo at 413 7th St NW in Chinatown. Ge-lato made from fresh ingredients comes with a choice of two or three flavors, which range from chocolates to fruits to nuts. Former Rome students will recognize the variety. I received a complimentary cappuc-cino when I enquired about their Italian coffee (a very smart marketing move which had me coming back), so definitely ask!

While in Chinatown, take the opportunity to visit the naTional PoR-TRaiT galleRy on the corner of 8th and F NW, right above the Gallery Place-Chinatown metro stop, and part of the Smithsonian. Be sure to stop by the Norman Rockwell Exhibit between now and January 2nd. On display are 57 of Rockwell’s major drawings and paintings, icons of mid-twentieth century American culture, on loan from the private col-lections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Washington D.C.Out and About:

Two:If you want a 100% authentic D.C. burger experience, go to good sTuff eaTeRy at 303 Pennsylvania Ave SE, just a few blocks south of the Capitol. Burger, fries, and milkshake are classics. Before you go, though, ladies, be warned. In the same way that in college you can only have two out of three essential things: school, sleep, or friends, I guarantee that you will only be able to finish two of the three. Guys might be luckier.

Every issue, we hope to feature another segment of Out and About, giving students a taste of local attractions and places to go in the Virginia area. If you have any questions or ideas, please e-mail Tyler Lowe at rambler.arts@gmail.com.

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FAith & reAsON

by Lauren Enk ’14

The Art of Repartee

The other day, someone suggested to me that it is the mark of a genuine Southerner when he can “hand you an insult with a drink and a smile.” I had to agree, and it made me ponder

on how the art of insult is swiftly becoming a lost art. It takes very little ability to throw foul words at an opponent, or to denigrate his appearance, manners, mental capacity or origin with the overused in-sults that most schoolchildren might know. The man is rare, however, who can, with one sharp jab from his razor wit, formulate a really fine insult on the spot. Indeed, if he’s truly clever, he can pull it off with such finesse—under the veil of courtesy—that the man insulted will be obliged to soak up the full portent of the insult, gradually coming to a complete comprehension of the deeply infuriating things just at-tributed to him. A real insult ought to be like a fine wine—deep and strong but delicate, which one must mull over to absorb and enjoy all the richness of its flavors. The classic example, of course, of the power and potency that can potentially be packed into one solid line of a poetic insult is found in that man of keen blade and keener wit, Cyrano de Bergerac. When a fool attempts to insult de Bergerac with the incredibly bland line, “Sir, your nose is rather large,” de Bergerac replies with one of the best de-fenses of the art of insult ever invented: “Why, you might have said,” he cries, “oh, a great many things…why waste your opportunity?” He proceeds to point out all the vast array of humorous, clever, or sarcastic things the man might have said to insult him, and concludes: “These, my dear sir, are things you might have said, Had you some tinge of letters, or of wit To color your discourse. But wit—not so, You never had an atom—and of letters, You need but three to write you down—an Ass.” Yet, the best insult is not one-sided; insulting people in a way that they themselves do not recognize it is merely one-dimensional enter-tainment for the insulter. A clever man does not show off his clever-ness to his advantage by exchanging insults with a duller man, but rather with a brilliant one. Seldom do two men appear at their sharpest and brightest as they do in rapid-fire repartee. There is a thrilling difference between keen-witted men exchanging insults and the mediocre man’s method of insulting. It is the difference between two poised swords-men wielding their blades with incomparable finesse, and two com-mon bullies boxing each other’s ears in a barroom. It is the difference between artists and amateurs. In fact, when insult is raised to the level of art, it requires a degree of courtesy that, remarkably, encourages mutual respect among the best-matched opponents. A prime example is found in one of the best

swashbucklers ever made: the 1937 version of The Prisoner of Zenda. The twisty plot of this adventure culminates with the hero and the prime villain matched against one another in a brilliant duel of swords and words. As they dash about the scene, wielding their glinting rapiers, they banter back and forth with remarkable cool. For instance, as the hero rushes to cut the rope of the drawbridge, the villain comments: “You’re so fond of rope, it’s a pity to finish you off with steel.” When the ras-cal sarcastically asks the hero why he will not be killed quietly, the hero glibly replies, “Oh, a little noise always adds a touch of cheer.” While attempting to skewer one another with swords, they do so with their words, one teasing the other about giving him his “last fencing lesson.” By the end, the two have come to mutually admire one another—if for nothing else, at least for their ready wits and ready blades. “You and I,” says the villain to the hero, “are the only two people worth saving in this whole affair.” Perhaps he’s right; no other characters seem so brilliant and enjoyable as these two who display their talent in the art of insult. Another classic example of rapier wit and blade that ultimately leads to a sort of friendship is the lively exchange between the two mas-ter swordsmen, Inigo Montoya and Wesley in The Princess Bride. After engaging in possibly one of the best duels—with both weapon and word—in the history of film, these two men have gained each other’s total respect and eventually become fast friends. Even when Wesley has defeated his skilled opponent, he does not kill him, saying, “I would sooner smash a stained glass window than destroy an artist like your-self.” Indeed, when insult is truly made into an art, the courtesy and re-spect that the opponents must have for each other can often make it blossom into more than a love-hate relationship—it becomes a genuine friendship. Nothing comes to mind sooner than the brilliant dialogue of Casablanca, rife with the subtle insults of real masters in this art, the cynical saloon-keeper Rick and the “poor corrupt official” Captain Louis Renault. From the first their relationship is adversarial; without any bond between them, they mutually distrust and tolerate one anoth-er. When Renault casually enumerates the reasons he allows Rick’s café to remain open, Rick sarcastically replies that he thought it was because he let the captain win at roulette. Speculating on Rick’s motives for not returning to America, Renault ponders whether he stole money, or pos-sibly ran off with a senator’s wife. “I like to think you killed a man,” he says, “It’s the romantic in me.” Even when the two men become directly pitted against each other in a life-and-death battle of wits, they keep up their cool-headed, insulting repartee, as when Renault courte-ously comments, “Ricky, I’m going to miss you. Apparently, you’re the only one in Casablanca with less scruples than I.” At last, at the crucial

Washington D.C.Touché:

FAith & reAsON

16 | sixTeen

by Sean Connolly ’13

Sed Contra: What Have We Given Our Bishops?

Our attitude towards our ecclesiastical superiors must at its in-nermost be one of obedience. Our bishops are, as St. Ig-natius tells us in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans, to be treated

as Christ in our midst, and obeyed with humility and a willingness to follow whithersoever they lead. This attitude is not manifest in a will-ingness to doubt and correct our bishops, but rather in a willingness to be corrected. We should not be open to the idea of our bishops’ erring more than we are open to the idea of ourselves erring. If we find ourselves in doubt or at odds with something promulgated by our bishops, we should first try to our uttermost to understand how it can be understood in an orthodox way. Only after we have beat our heads against the table in frustration—only when, if there is an orthodox in-terpretation to the promulgation, we find it quite beyond our intellec-tual capacity to discern—should we suspect that our bishops have acted in error, let alone heresy, and this with great reservation, and we should submit our doubts to competent, orthodox authorities in every effort to resolve them. How much more is this the case when our doubt is not about the actions of one bishop, but rather of a consensus of bishops, and over a long period of time! Yet, in his recent article, “What Have Our Bishops Given Us?”, printed in the October 2010 issue of The Rambler, Mr. Rob-erts evinces, at least to my reading, nothing of this attitude. He freely conjectures that it is possible, and could even seem likely, that the NAB translation, “at least in its fully annotated editions,” is “a textbook of

what Catholics do not believe,” that is, presumably, of heresy. Although he refrains from accusing them outright of being heretics themselves, Mr. Roberts has no qualms with accusing the American bishops, our bishops, to whom is owed obedience and the concomitant benefit of the doubt, of promoting for decades what is “a translation rife with theological imprecision at best [a token to obedience], and overflowing with heresy and concessions to left-leaning feminist philosophy at worst [the tenor taken by the rest of the article].” To make such an accusation is quite serious, and there ought to be serious grounds for doing so. And, in my opinion, the arguments which the author has himself provided to support his assertions are not sufficient grounds to make such an accusation against anyone, let alone our bishops; the texts which the author cites as examples of erroneous teaching, as I will show, may all be interpreted in a way consistent with Catholic orthodoxy, and do not necessarily lead one to the conclusion that the translation and commentary promoted by our bishops for our use, approved with no less than three Imprimaturs and two Nihil Obstats, is a minefield of error. In order to establish his position as consistent with orthodoxy in spite of its attitude, Mr. Roberts commences with an appeal to “ortho-dox Catholics,” and specifically to an article by Fr. Richard John Neu-haus which appeared in First Things in May 2001. But Fr. Neuhaus’ critique, at least as he is citing it, is aesthetic, not doctrinal, and lends no support to Mr. Roberts’ claims that the NAB translation is doctrinally

moment, the relationship that has grown and developed through the art of insult blossoms into something more, so that the two enemies suddenly become allies: “Louis,” says Rick, “this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” In the end, as paradoxical as it may seem, this sort of friendship is really possible when the art of insult has an element of genuine charity in it. There is a real-world example for such a relationship: the seem-ingly-impossible friendship between the heroic defender of the Faith, G.K. Chesterton, and the infamous freethinker George Bernard Shaw. These men were polar opposites; they held views completely in con-tradiction to each other, and yet they were the best of friends. The de-bates held between them became famous for the jousting wordplay by which these brilliant men wittily denigrated each other’s arguments and opinions while remaining great friends in private life. Perhaps nothing better epitomizes the art of insult and summarizes the delicate mutual respect between two opponents in this art than one short little exchange

between the famously fat Chesterton and the reputedly skinny Shaw. Upon greeting each other one day, Chesterton teased his friend: “I see there has been a famine in the land.” “And I see the cause of it,” Shaw replied, adding, “If I were as fat as you, I would hang myself.” “If I were to hang myself,” answered Chesterton, “I would use you as the rope.” This paradoxical relationship that included such witty jibes at one another was in fact a true friendship; Shaw once said that if he ever got into heaven it would be because of G.K. Chesterton. Something is lost in a world where such tactful, genuine camara-derie is impossible—a world where the ordinary man has lost the art of insult. The modern, politically-correct man is not merely afraid of offending his opponent; he is incapable of doing so. However, if two men are truly opponents, how are they to learn to respect one another, to avoid their relationship ending in bitterness, if they are not united in this one mutual bond of subtle satire and witty wordplay—the bond of esteem bred through the art of insult?

unsound (whether the article goes into the territory of doctrine is not my lookout; it is for Mr. Roberts to make his own case). And as for the “consistent rejection” of this translation by “orthodox Catholics,” that’s all we are given. Mr. Roberts cites no one else; in matters of the transla-tion’s doctrinal accuracy, he is arguing from his own authority. To make this case, Mr. Roberts then proceeds to analyze several quotations from the NAB commentary on the Gospels in light of a quotation which he supplies from Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, which main-tains that the Gospels are to be understood as historical accounts of the actions of Jesus Christ while he lived among men on Earth. He begins with a quotation from the NAB’s commentary on Mat-thew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, which states that the beatitudes which are not Lucan were, “added by the evangelist and are probably his own composition,” which Mr. Roberts interprets as tantamount to saying that “Jesus didn’t actually give us the Beatitudes.” In the language of the commentaries, however, this interpretation is not necessary. To the commentators, right or wrong as it may be, evangelists may be said to have engaged in one of two activities: editing or composing. Editing involves the evangelist’s taking a passage from some source, such as another Gospel, and incorporating it dynamically into his text; the evi-dence for this is usually taken to be identical or extremely similar word-ing between two Gospels. Composing is the addition of new material to the Gospel not found or thought to have been found in sources. To make this clearer, the authors of the first putative sources would have done nothing but compose, as they were drawing from no source but the life of Christ as it existed in their memories and in the oral tradition. Composition, then, does not need to be synonymous with invention; it may be understood to mean putting something to paper for the first time. As such, it is not difficult to imagine Matthew adding the additional Beatitudes from memory, rather than quoting them from a source text, and so “composing” them. The note may be understood as fully orthodox, and there is no need to read it as heretical. Mr. Roberts’ next citation is of the note to Luke 1 regarding the source of the Magnificat. He takes difference with the commen-tator’s appraisal of the text as likely being an insertion by Luke of an early Christian hymn, rather than as Mary’s actual words. Whatever the case, it is enough to say to this objection that the attribution of a text to Mary has no bearing on whether the Gos-pel faithfully records “what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught,” which is the criterion from Dei Verbum by which Mr. Roberts critiques the commentary; historical elements do not preclude literary evidence. This comment may be under-stood as orthodox, though it perhaps offends the sensibilities of some by contradicting the non-dogmatic tradition of the Church. The next comment he quotes, which deals with the literary merit of Luke’s arrangement of the dialogue at the Annunciation, may be similarly dealt with. In his next analysis, Mr. Roberts laments that the commentators do not find it necessary to affirm that events literally took place, and that they are written “as if Luke were merely a painstaking novelist.” In answer to this criticism, it suffices to say that the literal occurrence of historical events is not something which can be confirmed or denied with any certainty by textual criticism. It would have been inappropriate, then, for the commentators to

make any such statement for, no matter how true it were, it would have been beyond the competence of their field. Mr. Roberts’ finest critique is perhaps of the comment on Matthew 16:21-23, for here the commentator does delve into Christology, pon-tificating about what predictions of Christ are and are not “probable.” Nevertheless, as no specific quotations of Jesus are included in these verses, the comment is not open to the criticism that Jesus’ very words are being denied as His, only that a certain very literal reading may not be the case. And indeed, in his rebuttal, Mr. Roberts himself delves into Christology, asserting that it is “absurd” to assert anything but that Christ knew the most specific details of His coming passion. I cannot speak with enough authority on this matter to maintain that the one or the other is in error, but it seems to me that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 471-74, suggests that there might have been a limit to Christ's knowledge of human affairs, if not of divine truths. As such, the mere suggestion that Christ might not have known certain specific details of future events does not to me seem in itself heretical. I am not making an aesthetic defense of the NAB translation, nor am I even commenting on its pedagogical worth. I merely hope to have shown that the accusation of heresy which Mr. Roberts made in his article was unwarranted by the evidence which he provided, and that the tone of the article was inappropriate in the context of the filial obedience which, as Catholics, we owe to our bishops.

FAith & reAsON

17 | sevenTeen

humOr

18 | eighTeen

Drawn during class and submitted by Megan Rolla,’11. Approved by philosophy professor Mike Brown. Looks like somebody was paying attention in class.

the lAst wOrd

More welcome paving from Mr. Foeckler. The driveway next to Fran’s is now black-top as opposed to gravel and mud--again, hardly suit-able for girls and their heels.

ThumbsJust another opportunity for presenting our opinions. Agree? Disagree? Have an opinion of your own? Let us know!

Weekly ‘floor activities’ or-ganized by certain RAs, notably Elizabeth Walsh’s study breaks and James Hannon’s hot dog nights are huge hits. Jealous? Ask your local RA.

No-Shave November is upon us, for better or for worse. For some men, it’ll be an improvement. For others...well, some girls might run for the hills. You decide if this is good or bad.

Wireless internet shouldn’t be thought of as a distrac-tion. It’s invaluable for pa-pers and students who want to work past midnight. Why don’t we have access to this research tool of the 21st cen-tury?

We love the new Student Center parking lot...but now there aren’t enough spaces for off-campus students in the morning. Perhaps some creative re-painting or sim-ply more parking spaces for students?

19 | nineTeen

Voting isn’t that important, you know. It’s also such an effort if you’re not in your home state. You have to print out a request for an absentee voter ballot, fill it out, buy a stamp, mail it in, wait for the voting ballot, fill it out, mail it back. It just takes forever and those precious minutes could be put to better use in getting a few more kills in Call of Duty 4 or conquering the Middle East in Medieval: Total War 2. Things are fine. Really. You don’t have to vote. No is going to wrench you from your bed or your Xbox 360 and drag you to the polls. Seri-ously, what difference can one person make? It’s all pointless in the end. The other guy will win no matter what you do. One vote doesn’t really change anything and you have more important things on your mind. Look at the age old maxim: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it’s broke, leave it alone. Maybe it will magically fix itself. Or we could just leave it to the people currently in charge and kep trust-ing them to make things better. Or maybe they’ll make things worse than ever before. How would you feel then? Not so great anymore, huh? In all seriousness, voting is a very important part of our lives as US citizens. The ‘bubble’ of Christendom is no excuse to shirk that respon-sibilty. When you don’t exercise your right to vote, you surrender the right to complain about the government. When things in the country go wrong, you can’t blame the politicians because the blame rests on your shoulders. Many people today try to shift the blame to anyone but them-selves when we should all stand up and accept the responsibilities and consequences of our actions and inactions. With current economy, industry, and employment rates going down the drain, it’s our duty to step up and make a difference. November 2nd has come and gone, but all of the results aren’t in yet. Because of absentee vot-ing, some districts may have to wait until Novem-ber 25th before all the results are tallied. Repub-licans currently control the US House with 239 seats against the Democrats 186. Democrats still maintain control of the US Senate with 49 seats against the Republicans 46. Independents con-trol two seats in the Senate but they’re counted

with the Democrats. Take a look at the map of the country and you’ll see a large chunk drown-ing in red. This wasn’t a historical election, by all means, but it certainly was an important one. Were you a part of it? When one person decides his vote won’t make a difference, do you really think he’s the only one thinking that? Whether it’s local politics or the presidential election, vote. Yes, it sounds cheesy, but one person can make a difference. Obama ran in 2008 on words like ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and in a way he was right. We are the hope, we are the change that will turn the gov-ernment around--but only if we get up and do something. So go on, tell me you didn’t vote. Tell me that you sat back and did nothing. Maybe you’re not feeling the intense effects of the coun-try’s current state of affairs right now, but as soon as you graduate and start looking for a job, won’t you wish you’d done something to make things different?

Have anything you want to say to the college or to The Rambler staff? E-mail us at rambler.editor@gmail.com.

by Adele C. Smith ’12

Tell Me You Didn’t Vote

Write for The RambleR. . .And Reap the Rewards

The RambleR is a member of the COLLEGIATE NETWORK of alternative, right-of-center newspapers on college campuses nationwide. Founded in 1979, the Network today numbers 109 member papers. Those who work for CN-affiliated newspapers are eligible for a variety of opportunities and benefits:

Get a Journalism Job: Paid Internships & FellowshipsThe CN offers paid summer internships and postgraduate, year-long fellowships at promi-nent media venues. Fellows and interns work as real journalists. Write for the front page of the Washignton Times or serve as a full voting member of USA Today’s Editorial Board. Alumni include: Jonathan Karl, national security correspondent for ABC News, and Naomi Schaefer Riley, depu-ty taste editor, Wall Street Journal.

Go to Prague in the Summer: Geo-Strategic Journalism CourseThe CN annually invites 12 of its best student reporters to an expenses-paid foreign corre-spondence course in Washington, D.C., and Prague, Czech Republic. The CN gives students access to key players in both nations. In return, students write three reporting pieces. The CN works to get these stories published.

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The weekly STaNdaRd

Radio FRee eURoPe (PRagUe)NaTioNal Review and more . . .

Contact The RambleR at rambler.editor@gmail.com for more information. Visit the CN’s website: www.collegiatenetwork.org.

Each member paper sends two editors to one of the CN’s two Editors Conferences each fall. The CN also offers Professional Reporting Courses and sundry other training and networking events, all of which are expenses-paid opportunities to connect with professional journalists and fellow student reporters around the nation.

PRAGUE U.S. AMBASSADOR BRIEFING