The Copy vs. the Personality

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia got a black eye in 2007 when the identity of an editor working under the pseudonym Essjay (aka Ryan Jordan) came to light.

Essjay had passed himself off as a professor of Religion with a PhD in Theology and a degree in Canon Law. In truth he was really a 24-year-old college drop-out who used “Catholicism for Dummies” to edit articles on religion. During his engagement as a Wikipedia editor he wrote over 20,000 contributions.

The Wikipedia folks eventually asked Essjay to resign -- he'd been a paid employee, and he left with a defiant non-apology apology -- but initially founder Jimmy Wales dismissed the matter as no big deal. The false background was deemed to be of small consequence: in JW's view, it was just part of the persona of the pseudonym. Significantly, when Essjay's true identity was revealed, Wikipedia did not ask him to clear out; that came later only after a sustained public outcry.

That Essjay had editorial authority to resolve disputes between contributors -- i.e. he had final say in how a number of articles regarding Catholicism were written -- was of no consequence to Wales and the Wikipedia crowd. That Essjay claimed to be a homosexual theologian espousing liberal Christianity and berated non-liberals was not initially on the radar for them either, though later under pressure from readers they were obliged to admit at least that Essjay had leveraged his fake credentials to bolster his arguments.

Read about the matter here and here and here.

Wikipedia: the idea is to collaborate on interesting topics, but in the end biased and activist editors who suffer from group-think and liberal peer pressure ("how can a million lemmings all be wrong?") have the final say. You might find accurate information there, but use with caution.

On a potentially positive note, look for up-and-coming rival Citizendium to make a run at unseating Wikipedia as the go-to site for information down the road: its editors bill it as a credible free online encyclopedia characterized by expert, peer-reviewed content. It could turn out to be just as liberal as Wikipedia, but for now it's being touted as the thinking man's alternative to what the septic and dysfunctional amateurs are doing over at Wikipedia.

The Face of St. Nicholas

Source

Forensic pathologist Francesco Introna of the University of Bari in Italy commissioned facial anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson of the University of Manchester in England to reconstruct the face and head of St. Nicholas of Myra using the saint's relics -- specifically, his skull.

Forensic Reconstruction of
St. Nicholas of Myra

Two Knocks

The first knock occurred Monday morning on my way in to the office. I was stopped at an intersection waiting for the light to change. Ahead of me was a police car. Suddenly the car started to back up; he tagged my front bumper on the driver's side. The damage was minimal -- I'd sustained worse in parking lot dings that you just shrug your shoulder at and move on. It's just memorable that for once, the guy in the rear wasn't at fault, and the cause was a police sergeant.

The second knock occurred Monday evening on my way to a friend's house for dinner. A deer ran right in front of me; I slammed on the bakes, but I still clipped the critter, which bounced around a few times and then got up and ran away. I stopped the car, turned on the hazards, and checked for damage, but saw none, so I resumed my journey. For the next half mile I drove very slowly looking for the deer on the side of the road, but I didn't see him; hopefully he made it with just a few bruises. Incidentally, the deer hit my car in the exact spot where the sergeant did. Oh, the rumor that the deer was sporting a sticker that read "Friend of the FOP" is a dirty lie.

The Bells

If you're ever serving Mass in a white marble sanctuary, and the high Mass bells that the servers ring get under foot, and you accidentally kick them, and they clang across the white marble tile floor, and careen into the white marble altar, and go bouncing, spinning around -- take if from me -- if you ever do that, it's very loud.

Symbols of the Evangelists

When I was in Dublin in 2002 I visited Trinity college and got a glimpse of the Book of Kells, the finest surviving illuminated manuscript to have been produced in medieval Europe. The book contains the four Gospels.

Symbols of the Four Evangelists
From the Book of Kells

Folio 27 of the book contains an illumination of the symbols of the four Evangelists.

St. Matthew - a Man (upper left)
St. Matthew's Gospel begins with a description of the human generation of Christ; thus, his symbol is the face of a man.

St. Mark - a Lion (upper right)
St. Mark's Gospel begins with the prophecy of Isaias about St. John the Baptist proclaiming the Lord's coming. The Baptist lived many years in the wilderness among lions and other beasts; thus, his symbol is a lion.

St. Luke - an Ox (lower left)
St. Luke's Gospel treats more than the rest with our Lord's suffering and death as a sacrifice for our sins -- and an ox served as a symbol of sacrifice.

St. John - an Eagle (lower right)
St. John is pictured as an eagle because His Gospel soars to spiritual heights in its elevated preaching.

In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, at Deus erat Verbum.

Why God Became Man

Christmas Day

Fr. Knox on why God became a man -- from The Belief of Catholics:

The hope of eternal life was not denied to fallen man, but it was offered, now, only as the prize of a severe probation. And he must struggle against an internal enemy he found too strong for him, with only such crumbs of uncovenanted assistance as God's mercy might afford. It was not intended, in God's Providence, that this pitiful condition of things should endure as long as the world lasted. Man's fault had been foreseen, and with the fault the Remedy. God became Man in order that, dying, he might atone for our sins, and win us the graces normally necessary to the attainment of salvation.

The coming of our Lord was thus not merely a Revelation to illuminate our minds; it was also designed to rescue man from his impoverishment and his spiritual dangers. It was to win for us, not only those "actual" graces by which, since then as before, God has turned our hearts to himself, but "habitual" grace, the state of "justification," in which we are assured of God's friendship, are enabled, during our lifetime, to perform actions pleasing to him, and at our death, if we have persevered, to attain the felicity of heaven. To achieve such blessings for us, it was needful to make amends for the affront offered by the sin of our first parents to the outraged Justice of Almighty God. Although he could have accepted some lesser sacrifice, he determined to make atonement for us himself, and to make it in full measure by the perfect offering of Death.

The Second Person, then, of the Blessed Trinity became Man for our sakes. Without losing or laying aside the Divine Nature which is his by right, he united to his own Divine Person a second, human Nature, in which he was born, lived on earth, and died. Once more the stubborn tradition of the Church could not rest content until it had fortified itself within these safeguards of definition. To think of Our Lord's Divine Nature as being annihilated, even temporarily, would be nonsense. A mere limitation of it, if that were thinkable, would not make it become truly human. To deny the reality of the human Nature would be false to all our evidence. Nothing less than a personal identity between the Eternal Word and Jesus of Nazareth would constitute a Divine Witness, or a Divine Victim. Every possible substitute for the received doctrine has been tried, and found wanting.

We believe that the circumstances of our Lord's coming into the world were marked by two miracles especially. In the first place, that she who was to be his Mother was endowed with that same gift of innocence which had been possessed and lost by our first parents; and that this freedom from the curse and the taint of "original sin" was bestowed upon her in the first instant of her Conception. And we also believe that both in and after the Birth of our Lord she remained a pure Virgin. From her, nevertheless, our Lord took a true human Body, which was the receptacle of a true human Soul. And in this human Nature he lived and died and rose again; and at last ascended into heaven, where it still persists.

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Christmas, the Great Feast of the Son of God Who appeared in human flesh, the feast in which heaven stoops down to earth with ineffable grace and benevolence, is also the day on which Christianity and mankind, before the Crib, contemplating the "goodness and kindness of God our Saviour" become more deeply conscious of the intimate unity that God has established between them.

The Birth of the Saviour of the World, of the Restorer of human dignity in all its fullness, is the moment characterized by the alliance of all men of goodwill. There to the poor world, torn by discord, divided by selfishness, poisoned by hate, love will be restored, and it will be allowed to march forward in cordial harmony, towards the common goal, to find at last the cure for its wounds in the peace of Christ.

- From the 1944 Christmas Message of His Holiness, Venerable Pope Pius XII

Hodie Christus natus est!

Christmas Truce

Christmas Eve

The time was Christmas Eve, 1914, and the place was Ypres, Belgium. German troops decorated the trees around their trenches with candles, then sang Stille Nacht. The Brits on the other side of the No Man's Land in between responded with English Christmas carols. When the artillery barrage stopped, the two sides exchanged Christmas greetings and small gifts of chocolate, whiskey, cigars; a few even swapped addresses. The fallen were retrieved from the battlefield and given proper burial. The matter was completely spontaneous.

Here's an account of the matter titled "Christmas in the Trenches."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9coPzDx6tA&feature