Seatback Entertainment: Progress or Stultification?

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

The medium is the massage. – Marshall McLuhan

I have always enjoyed flying, which is a blessing given that my current position involves a fair amount of travel. Apart from the security lines, I profit from the down-time in the lounge, I enjoy looking out the window of the aeroplane, and I actually like the little meals they bring right to your seat as though you were an astronaut. Finally, I appreciate the opportunity to watch films. A large fraction of the movies I see are at ten thousand metres off the ground.

So, You’re Reading the Title of This Blog Entry

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves.
— On Gabriel Oak’s tiny library in Far from the Madding Crowd

Now you are continuing on to read its first sentence. Before you go any further, stop and ask yourself what are the chances that you will read every sentence of this blog article, right through to the end, without checking your email, looking at Facebook, texting a friend, following a hyperlink, or interrupting in any other similar way. If you are like me and are honest with yourself, the chances are small! How many online articles do we merely skim, glance at, or half-heartedly scroll through, desultorily highlighting random snippets of text?

The Medium is the Message: Pope Francis and the Poor Church, for the Poor

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

Photo: http://holysoulshermitage.com

“The medium is the message.” This famous phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan has been in my mind for the last week. McLuhan meant that the form of the medium embeds itself in the message. The election of Pope Francis has further driven home the meaning of that phrase. For weeks, after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, we prayed for the right person to exercise the Petrine ministry. We spent long hours discussing and reading commentaries on the right person for “the job”. We pondered; we waited; we wondered: What kind of a Pope does the Church need today? What will the election of the new Pope mean for the Church and for the world? And then, we prayed some more.

The Next Pope and the Number of the Beast

By John D. O’Brien, S.J.

Amid the fervent speculation over the identity of the next Pope has been an undercurrent of conjecture over whether the Church is about to elect its last Pope, the pontiff who will preside over the apocalyptic era, perhaps the final consummation predicted by Christ.

The dominant fuel is provided by the Prophecies of St. Malachy, the 12th century Archbishop of Armagh, who reportedly had visions of all the popes from 1143 until “the end of the world”. He left a series of cryptic Latin phrases which supposedly describe each one. Pope Benedict XVI is the second-last on the list; his successor, therefore, will be the final pope. He will be called “Peter the Roman”, of whom the prophecy says:

In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Petrus Romanus, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills [i.e. Rome] will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.

What I Learned From Teaching This Year

By John D. O'Brien, S.J.

Credit: www. webpages.scu.edu/

At the end of my first semester teaching in higher education, I find it an opportune time to evaluate the experience while it’s fresh, and draw out some key lessons learned. These are not, in any way, “ultimate” pointers for teaching, nor are they limited to college or university—they have resonance with other teaching experiences in high school and workplace. I arrange them as “rules” only for ease of reading. They are as follows:

The Baby is Coming

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

http://www.mariansolidarity.com

In the opening song of one of my favourite musicals, Wicked, there is an exchange between the midwife and a father about the forthcoming birth of the long-expected baby.

Midwife: It's coming.

Father: Now?

Midwife: The baby is coming.

Father: And how!

They soon discover that the baby is not what they expected – they are puzzled by it;

Midwife: How can it be?

Father: What does it mean?

My friends, the baby is coming. We are now but a couple of days away from the celebration of the spiritual birth of Jesus. "To us a child is born, to us a son is given" (Is 9:6). These prophetic words are fulfilled in the infancy narrative of St. Luke the evangelist. The baby born in the stable is the eternal Son of God. Jesus is the Word who was in the beginning, the Word who was with God, the Word who was God. All things made were made through him (Jn 1:1-3). When the Prophet Isaiah says: "to us a child is born", he reveals, in all its fullness, the mystery of Christmas: the eternal generation of the Word of the Father, his birth in time through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Watching Television from a Mountaintop

By John D. O'Brien, S.J.

My mother grew up in the last town in North America to get television. It was nestled in a remote valley in the Rocky Mountains and this quirk of geography had kept it television-free nearly two decades after the rest of the world had embraced the blue box. She recalls life in McBride: the sense of community and fellowship, sporting activities, fairs and festivals, children playing all over town in safety. It can sound rather idyllic, like it was Bedford Falls or a Norman Rockwell painting. Obviously sin was as present then as it is today. Her father was the town constable, after all, and regularly had to lock transgressors up in jail, which was located on the ground floor of their family home (the prisoner, if he was sober, sometimes got an invitation from grandma to join the family for dinner).

In the early 1970s, the town successfully petitioned the government to build special transmitters to relay television to the valley, and when researchers at the University of British Columbia got wind of it, they sent twelve faculty and students to observe. They did extensive surveys both before and then two years after the arrival of television, with control studies in nearby towns. It was a social scientist’s dream case.