Reminds me of a Steve Martin skit on Saturday Night Live where he repeatedly asked "What the hell is that?"
First off, I generally love your work. That said, why the bone to pick w/ suburbia and suburbanites?
It's a bit ironic that this is coming from Ste Jeanne D'Arc's parish. If I remember my history correctly, the young saint practically had to bullwhip the French into fighting the English.
Arrrghh ! What is this parish doing to the reputation of one of my patrons ? Isn't it bad enough these types misrepresent Venerable Newman all the time without messing about with St. Jeanne d'Arc too ?
OK, personal rant over. You may continue with your regular commenting..
I'm a suburbanite myself. I'm aware I don't live a heroic life and I don't regard myself as the Vanguard of History, the Model of Courage, the Seat of Wisdom or the Voice of God. Suburbanites who do (such as the plump and self-satisfied burghers at St. Joan's) are to be ridiculed for their vanity. They are the people satire was invented for.
Suburban Fan--
St Joan of Arc's not even in the suburbs, actually. It's in South Minneapolis.
It's pretty funny though, admit. Maui in a snowy Minneapolis January.
It's very funny, yep. Hey, didn't mean to take the conversation off on a tangent. Just wanted to get a better grasp of why the Blog Host peppers his blog w/ comments about suburbia. Wanted to make sure he's not one of those self-righteous city-dwellers who think that *they're* Models of Courage (etc.) just by virtue of urban residence. I meet a LOT of that type.
I'm still not willing to believe this place actually exists. C'mon, Mark, it's time to admit that this "St. Joan" website is just a (brilliant) parody.
I've seen plenty of AmChurch whackiness over the years, but I thought such concentrations of Full Mooners were only to be found at certain campus ministry centers and in the national and diocesan bureaucracies. Wow!
Wait a minute. Maybe it's not a parody. It would take an awfully clever satirist to make up stuff like this:
http://www.stjoan.com/features/f...s/
featurefr.htm
Sorry - on the previous link, scroll down and click on "Feminine Workshop Series."
Or, actually, you can click on pretty much any of the other "Features From the Past Year" if you want a good chuckle.
The Onion's got nothing on the authors of this stuff.
"one of those self-righteous city-dwellers who think that *they're* Models of Courage (etc.) just by virtue of urban residence. I meet a LOT of that type."
As do I. Interestingly enough, two of the most egregious examples are some friends who live about a block from St Joan of Arc. So Jordan, unfortunately, it's not a parody, as much as we might wish it. 
I was going to say something really nasty about these people until it turned out that this couple's son died a few days before the trip.
Nonetheless, I'm glad that St. Joan of Arc is not my parish.
Rob--
"urban residence"...OK, South Minneapolis isn't Edina (wealthy Mpls suburb) but it's not Lake and Bloomington (where the infamous NYT "Murderapolis" story took place) either.
Twin Cities liberals are absolutely amazing. Truly, we must live in one of the most provincial cities on this planet. Pathetic.
Brian - greetings to a fellow MNer!
Good point on S. Minneapolis not exactly being the "hood" - it's just that you'd never know it from the friends of ours who live there, who seem to think they are missionaries in Calcutta. Good people in general, utterly insufferable on the topic of city vs. suburb (I'm obviously in the latter camp).
Are you familiar w/ Pax Christi in Eden Prairie at all? (for non-MNers, smug suburban parish which invited laypeople to participate in the consecration a couple years back) I'm convinced they're secretly funding St Joan's to make themselves look orthodox.
This St. Joan website is a treasure trove of the bizarre. Found this gem in the "Response to Catholic Spirit Editorial" on why women should be ordained to the priesthood:
"Jesus was not Catholic. Jesus was not Christian. Therefore, I think it would be accurate to say that Jesus had very little, if anything, to do with the doctrine and dogma of the Catholic Church. The decision that women could not be priests, along with many other rules and codes were decided by a gathering of wealthy, educated, middle-aged Caucasian men several hundred years after the time of Christ."
Fortunately, as this piece so ably demonstrates, our enlightened age no longer limits the right to prounounce on matters of Church discipline and doctrine to the "educated."
"Jesus was not Catholic. Jesus was not Christian. Therefore, I think it would be accurate to say that Jesus had very little, if anything, to do with the doctrine and dogma of the Catholic Church."
Apparently Jesus and St. Joan of Arc have more in common that I thought...
Somehow, it seems odd for pacifists to congregate under the banner of a woman warrior, n'est ce pas? Sweet Joan, pray for them!
I'd love to see what Joanie would do if she saw a bunch of those loonies wandering about. Well, of course, first she'd smack them upside the head with the flat of her sword, but then what?
If you check out the "Feminine Workshop Series" link, you'll see that the authors of this idiotic "workshop" hold up for as a models the Aztec pantheon.
Sure, who needs Christ and the Church's spiritual tradition when we can learn from one of the most brutal, bloodthirsty and oppressive societies in the history of mankind. Next these ninnies will tell us that those quaint and oh-so-indigenous had something to teach us with regards to human sacrifice.
And who are the ringleaders of this circus? A pair of Franciscan nuns. Figures.
And the obvious question arises:
Where's the bishop in all of this??
Where's the bishop in all of this?
Knowing some dioceses, oh, he's probably the one in the background with the hula hoop and the face paint.
Okay, that was uncharitable. Bad me.
The tough thing for me to admit is: I used to think like the folks at St. JofArc. Back when I was a neo-Gnostic and before I came back to the Church.
I couldn't have figured it out on my own. God the Holy Spirit (himself) has to show you. Otherwise, you dwell in darkness.
I'm mad as hell that these folks are not corrected, not shown the error of their ways. These are the heresies that float on the perimeter of the Catholic Church and have for 1800 years or so, or forver in some cases. The response of the faithful is to draw the line and help these folks cross back over.
If you write them letters, be nice and pray and God will let you vaporize their silly gnosticism.
And remember, treating them with contempt is connected to being self assured of our own salvation. And in a way that is the same blind false-positivism that theology like theirs suffers from.
-tc, boston
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