Do You Really Want It? – Catholic Match Post

Posted on January 11, 2020 by DBreitenbeck

My latest Catholic Match post is on the all-important question of “do you really want what you say you want?”

I think a lot of the things we claim to want are in this category.

We say we like the outdoors, or that we would like to travel, or that we want a relationship. We may even make some easy, halfhearted efforts in that direction, such as reading up on foreign places or making up a profile on CatholicMatch. But we go no further.

We never book a flight or work out a way to budget for the trip. We don’t make overtures to people we find or respond to those we receive. We play with the idea, but we never commit to it.

But to truly desire something is different. That is when you want the thing itself, for its own sake. We think of it often and give our time and attention to figuring out how to achieve it. We’re excited by every small step that leads us that much closer to its accomplishment.

This is when the wish goes beyond a pleasing fantasy to become a real motivating force. It becomes, as it were, incarnate in action.

For instance, a man who says he ‘would like’ to travel to Japan might spend time reading up on the country, or enjoy relics of Japanese culture, but he won’t go any further.

He ‘wants’ to go to Japan in the same sense that he ‘wants’ to be a millionaire; it is a pleasant fantasy that conceivably could happen at some point. But the man who truly desires to see the Land of the Rising Sun won’t just stop at speculation; he’ll figure out the cost of the trip and carefully budget for it, spend time every day learning the language, and book a flight months in advance so that he’s fully committed to the journey. His desire takes on form by driving him to real and ongoing effort to achieve it.

In other words, you may judge whether you really want something by what you do to acquire it, and what you really desire is shown by what you in fact do.

Now, if you will here stop and honestly ask yourself what your real actions say about your desires, most likely you will find that they are not at all what you would have thought or wanted them to be. Most of us will probably find that watching funny videos on YouTube or engaging in meaningless chatter on social media hold a higher priority with us than serving God or pursuing what we describe as our dreams.

Read the rest here.

Talking about St. John Henry Newman’s Idea of a Gentleman at Catholic Match

Posted on November 21, 2019 by DBreitenbeck

Latest Catholic Match piece is up, going into St. John Henry Newman’s description of a Gentleman and how it applies to people today:

St. Cardinal Newman (a man who knew something of being both a Christian and a gentleman) offered this definition (abridged: the full description can be found in his Idea of a University):

‘It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain…The true gentleman…carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast;—all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at their ease and at home.

He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome.

He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets every thing for the best…

He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blunder.’

The Saint is here speaking of the ideal of a secular gentleman: of “gentlemanly behavior as such” you might say.Obviously, Cardinal Newman is the last man in existence who would take this to the extreme of hiding your faith or compromising the truth to avoid giving offense: he gave plenty of “jars and jolts” in the course of his life, not the least being scandalizing a good portion of the nation by converting to the Church of Rome.

But the idea is that a gentleman avoids any unnecessary offense and seeks to make the other person or people as comfortable as possible. Lord knows that’s a challenge enough, and it is here that we can truly stand out in today’s world.

Read the rest here.

Catholic Match Post on a World without Manners

Posted on November 5, 2019 by DBreitenbeck

My latest post is up on Catholic Match, discussing the pitfalls and solutions of dating in a world without set manners:

For an example; just the other day I read a woman claiming that it is inappropriate behavior for a man to compliment a woman on her looks if they are not dating. Not long after, on a different site, I read a man recounting how he did just that in a (successful) bid to cheer up an evidently unhappy stranger.

Now, suppose a man who thinks it is an act of kindness compliments a woman who believes that such behavior is inappropriate. We immediately have a conflict in which one thinks she is being mistreated and the other thinks he is being rebuked for an act of kindness.

The immediate point isn’t which one is right; the point is that neither can justly claim the other did anything wrong, as far as this little scenario goes, because they were each following what they believed to be appropriate. Only there is, at present, no objective and exterior standard which both may be expected to know and to which both can appeal.

To make matters worse, the same man may receive a completely different response from a different woman, meaning that even his own experience cannot serve him as a guide.

Thus, the answer often given when this problem is brought up—“Just don’t act inappropriately”—misses the point entirely. The problem isn’t so much that people behave inappropriately, it’s that the word ‘inappropriate’ in this circumstance has no content.

To say ‘act appropriately’ is meaningless unless there is an agreed upon, objective standard for ‘appropriate’ that both parties can be expected to be aware of and to which both sides can appeal. We simply do not have that in modern Western society (we are not discussing here obviously aggressive behavior such as physical grabbing or open solicitation).

Now, the obvious solution is “then we need to establish new standards!” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. No one sits down and says, “our society shall have these manners and these norms for this reason.” These things develop over time, born of ethics, custom, common beliefs, and so on. All that’s mostly been torn up and thrown out of our culture, and restoring it is beyond the scope of any one of us.

No, my point is much less ambitious; it is simply to encourage charity. Being aware that the other person is operating under such uncertainty ought to make us more patient and less quick to judge when he does something we consider inappropriate. This alone would smooth out many if not most of the friction that occurs in such cases.

Read the rest here.

UPDATE: I realized that I put in the wrong link in both cases. It’s been fixed.

Catholic Match Piece on Why Fighting is Good For You

Posted on October 8, 2019 by DBreitenbeck

My latest piece is up on Catholic Match, wherein I advise people to get into fights:

Our Lord says, “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

Unfortunately, we have a tendency to confuse ‘peace’ with simply the avoidance of conflict. But there are two ways people avoid conflict; the first is by presenting their differences in an atmosphere of mutual respect and goodwill and working out a solution based on higher, shared goals. When successful, this indeed brings about peace.

The other way is by ignoring a problem and hoping it goes away. This is the method favored by professional pacifists and armchair demagogues and never results in actual peace (though it does sometimes bring Peace Prizes if you’re into that sort of thing).

So, when it comes to the conflicts that will inevitably arise in our relationships, I’m recommending the first option, right? Sitting down, working out a mutually beneficial solution based on shared goals and values? Absolutely.

But the trouble is, that takes a lot of practice, a lot of virtue, and a lot of genuine love and self-sacrifice. It’s probably going to take you a while to reach a position where this is anything but an elaborate show version of the second option for one or both parties.

But wait! If there are only two options, one bad, the other often out of reach, where does that leave us?

Where most such efforts end up: just having the fight after all.

Because let’s be honest here, you will have fights in your relationship. There are always differences between two people (especially when one is a man and the other is a woman), and sooner or later this will lead to disagreements that will have to be settled or at the very least acknowledged.

Ready? Fight!

Talking Dying Franchises at ‘The Federalist’

Posted on October 3, 2019 by DBreitenbeck

First article in a while is up on The Federalist, talking about why dying franchises matter:

The imaginative power of Star Wars’s IP has been systematically stripped away into a confused and contradictory mess loaded down with contemporary politics. The simple, yet rich story of the originals (and even of the prequels, for all their faults) now suffers from a soulless and pointless tumor that grinds the rich characters of the originals into the dirt in order to set up hollow new ones.

“So what?” you might say. “Why does this matter? It’s just a fantasy film franchise. There are other, more important things in the world. Who cares?” Evidently, quite a few people care. But here is why it matters.

We’re Losing Wholesome Entertainment

In the first place, in practical terms, this means the loss of yet another source of wholesome and uplifting entertainment. Not much of that remains in mainstream American culture. This is important because the stories we tell and listen to affect how we see the world. They are part of how we communicate values and ethics. They are part of how we pass on our understanding of life and humanity. And they are an essential element in the continuity of culture.

A hopeful tale of good triumphing over evil, leavened by rich characters driven by familial love, courage, and decency, and bounded over by a mystical power delineating good and evil, cannot but have a positive effect on its audience as a whole. It isn’t the best story possible, nor the only such source, but in terms of mainstream media, there are precious few such stories left, and they grow fewer every day.

“Star Wars” was an atavism in its own time, a throwback to an earlier, more hopeful trend in Hollywood in contrast to the grim, nihilist fare that was all the rage in the late 1970s. It sparked a renaissance of that kind of storytelling, but now we are in an arguably worse state of affairs.

In our day, mainstream media is increasingly preaching a socio-political agenda. No hope, no uplift, no joy is permitted. Only instruction. Something that made people happier and better, something that helped communicate a healthy understanding of the world, has now been gutted for the sake of scoring political points. That matters.

Read the rest here.

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