Can You Be Helped?

2002-12-04T15:45:00.000-06:00

"The Holy Father does not want to relativize the uniqueness of Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life, but he wants to show that this truth about Christ cannot be proclaimed with violence or with human power, but only with the force of truth. And for this, a human contact of dialogue and love is necessary, as the apostles showed in the great mission of the early Church: without making use of worldly power, using the force of conviction."
--Cardinal Ratzinger

Get this article here.

2002-09-03T14:55:00.000-05:00

More LA Cathedral rantings:

Can You Be Helped is very proud to provide to our readers a digest of photographs of the new LA Cathedral. It is our wish to above all be constructive in these postings. Our main point is that with only a few hundred million dollars of changes (ha! that's all!), the Architectural Abomination could be made into a scenic and lovely cathedral, resembling a church that your grandparents might recognize. (I'll stop the journalistic "we" thing now.)

A lovely statue of Our Lady of the X-Files. OK I'm crying as I write that, because it is just so sad that I can describe a statue of the Mother of God, the Theotokos, Mary Most Holy with the words "Our Lady of the X-Files," but I'm expecting Mulder to open a door in that entry-tower-thing and return from his alien abduction through some weird transdimensional portal installed with the soul-less technical know-how required to assemble a structure like this. (the arts of Mordor are at it again...)

Does this not just SCREAM "I need a baldachino!!!" Here are some other views of the interior nave: Here's one looking towards the sanctuary, and another looking from the organ at the sanctuary, and another from the baptismal font looking at the nave. Here's another looking at the sanctuary and organ. The whole thing looks so devoid of ornamentation that it would be EASY to ornament it nicely, even to build an interior structure for a frescoed ceiling. Use your imagination: think of the ceiling of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi... think of the Renaissance ceiling of St. Mary Major in Rome... which would go nicely with a trippy Baldachino, said Baldichino resting upon wobbly pillars emphasizing that Christ's Church will not collapse from the shock of these scandals...

This photo makes it look like they're going for a "leaning tower of Pisa" effect...

I think someone forgot to tell his Eminence that the Seventies ended and you're not allowed to make brass chandelieric absurdities anymore.

The Bronze Door is actually pretty cool.

Check out this lamp above the reliquary of St. Vibiana. Not bad at all...

This photo makes it look as if there isn't a single right angle on the entire structure. Is that some kind of "statement" or something? I hate it when people get allegorical with architecture and try to convince me of all sorts of stupid ideas by withholding truth and beauty from a building, thereby trying to fool me into thinking that, oh yeah, the world is as ugly as this building, and the universe as disordered as these walls, etc. etc. Sorry to go all ad hominem on the architect.

Blecchh!!!!

Some exterior views: From diagonally across the street. From the highway. You see, all it needs is a nice "overlay" of French Gothic and we've got ourselves a nice looking church. Gothic architecture, while it does acknowledge the structure of a building, can just be "layered" over a box-ish understructure when needed... Hmm. Well, when I make my first hundred million, I know where to stick it.

(If you want to look at all of the pictures above and more, I got them from Yahoo's news service here. They seem to be constantly changing their order, so I had to link to them individually.)

2002-08-30T15:03:00.000-05:00

It's Just SO UGLY...

IF you wish to see the Architectural Abomination known as the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, click here. Or here. To recover from the shock, I recommend you visit this site of smells-n-bells architectural grooviness.

2002-08-29T14:15:00.000-05:00

Changing Lanes

When the movie "Changing Lanes" was released this spring, the trailers gave the impression that it was just a film about one man who hits another man's car, and then the second man gets really mad and tries to kill the first man. You may or may not remember the trailer. I yawned as soon as I saw it, because it was advertised as just-another-stupid-action-movie. BUT IT WASN'T!!! This movie was one of the most riveting moral dramas made in recent years. It is easily one of the best movies made this year. (Roger Ebert thought so, so don't take my word for it. Take his!)

(FYI- I'm not anti-action-movie; its just that when filmmakers go for the "faux-grandeur" thing I get ticked off because they leave out any sense of morality, complexity, consequences or what not. The trailer made me think it was "Steven Seagal meets the streets of New York." Ugh.)

For those of you who are Christian, this movie is what you've been hoping Hollywood would make. It's honest about sin, it doesn't pull any punches in its depiction of the depravity of its two main characters. But there is also *hope* in this film: sin is portrayed as an error which can be fixed, a pit from which there might be escape. Hope that they could change, awareness that they want to, and more... It is a wonderfully complex story that is told with a Christian perspective so right-on that you'll sit there watching it and think to yourself, "HOW did this movie ever get MADE?!"

So, rent this movie when it comes out. And then BUY IT.

2002-08-29T13:48:00.000-05:00

Give the girl a chance...

Quite awhile ago there was a great article on NRO by Tom Hoopes, editor of the National Catholic Register, about Alanis Morrisette and why people ought to listen to what she has to say. His article was really interesting and you can get it here.

Alanis came out with a another video, for her song "Precious Illusions", which you can watch here, from the Maverick Records site. Click on "Precious Illusions" at the bottom of the screen and select the appropriate modem speed, and then WATCH THE VIDEO.

I don't know what she was getting at with the song, and I don't know if it was an album exec who made the decision to make the video in the way it was made, or what. But I have *never* seen a video as visually interesting as this one. It starts out in a dimly lit, drab room where a party is taking place. Then you see Alanis, seeming either glum or blank or pensive, looking into the camera. Then the image splits in two for the remainder of the video, until the very end. On the right of the screen is the "modern" romance she has with Boyfriend, and on the left of the screen is a Medieval courtship with Knight in Shining Armor. The modern romance is shot in the same color and light as the party: dark, shadowy, gloomy colors. But the Medieval romance is shot through with brilliant colors, with this ethereal light shining through enamelized images. It looks like they took regular film, took half of the cells out of the film so you have choppier motion, and then gave the image this animated overlay that looks like a religious icon...

Don't take my word for it. Go watch it. I have not seen it played much at all on MTV (May their signal have interference), and the only time I saw it was in June on this college campus closed-circuit network. It didn't make it very high on the Billboard charts, either. It doesn't surprise me that they're not playing it, because it seems to say that "things once were better than they are now..." inasmuch as romance has been replaced by something grittier and darker.

So, like I said, I'm not sure what they meant by the video- I have to go research that... But it is a beautiful thing to behold, and I highly recommend it.

2002-08-26T17:16:00.000-05:00

Regarding Kelly Ripa and fruity water...

Cardinal Ratzinger, "He Who Cannot Be Stopped," said some pretty fab remarks about the manipulation of beauty for commercial ends, or so my tunnel vision tells me. Here are some quotes:

Commenting on the meeting's theme, "The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty," Cardinal Ratzinger said: "Today the message of beauty is cast into doubt because of the power of falsehood, which makes use of various stratagems."

"One of these is to promote beauty that does not awaken nostalgia of the ineffable, but rather promotes the will to possess," he said.

"Who would not recognize, for example, those images in advertising that are thought out with extraordinary ability to tempt man irresistibly to possess something and to look for momentary satisfaction?" the cardinal asked.

You see, even The Cardinal Prefect (for you non-Catholics, that means "His Supreme Authoritativeness") is aware of the insidious plot of the purveyors of fruity water! And yes, I forgot to take my Paxil today. Sorry.

The complete text of his remarks is available on www.zenit.org. They were given on August 21st, 2002.

2002-08-23T00:58:00.000-05:00

what's your order?

2002-08-16T17:21:00.000-05:00

Insane Cartesian Plain

Missouri Loves Company, or, They paved paradise and put up a parking lot...

OK so I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, and I used to think, like the Mormons do, that this is the Garden of Eden, but I now must say that the metro area has entered its post-lapsarian phase indeed. For you see, there is a new property development called "Gravois Bluffs" around here, built where there used to be some bluffs. Monstrous bluffs, mind you. But I did use the past-tense, because the ever-helpful property developers decided to remove the bluffs. So "Gravois Bluffs" is built where there are no longer any bluffs. They took this humongous, I mean humongous "mountain" (hey, its Missouri, if its bigger than a breadbox its a mountain) and just disposed of it. And that is mean, because, well, we don't have that much topography to look at around here. A person can only take so many vacation days a year to go to topographically interesting states such as Colorado or California. So when they just delete a mountain to further "Progress" (I thought we had progressed past that notion, but I guess the Chamber of Commerce hasn't yet) and to create a Neverending Parking Lot of fragrant asphalt, well, I ask, "what are you smoking?"

You think I'm overreacting? ok. Look.

2002-08-15T01:38:00.000-05:00

OK so now they're selling fruity water. And Kelly Ripa is being all cute and sassy trying to sell me fruity water. And it makes me angry because cuteness should not be bastardized in the service of commerce. Cuteness is for wooing your beloved, or flirting with co-workers, or getting out of speeding tickets (though I can't really do that), or other stuff. But it most certainly is not meant to hock fruity water during "Judging Amy" commercial breaks. I want chickface to stop manipulating me with her giggly demeanor and dyed blonde hair, all to get me to buy a product of Mordor. Sweetened with Splenda (insert asinine copyright trademark absurdities here)-- clearly an abomination of perfectly good molecules. Why must I be bothered in the midst of a well-crafted episode of "Judging Amy" (May the Hall sisters be praised!) with chipper tool of commerce hocking l'eau de chem? Don't get me wrong: I'm sure Kelly is a wonderful human being and all that, but she is playing with my mind and it irks me.

2002-08-14T22:05:00.000-05:00

So I've decided to start a blog, my purpose being to get my beefs out of my system so that my friends do not encounter the ticked-off infuriated side of my personality, which I shall be depositing here from now on. There have been too many conversations, at too many get-togethers, which were spent crabbing about whatever it is I'm upset about at the time. So I'm going to cut it out, and leave it here.

Oh, and you're welcome.