A couple of more five-question meme answers

[fpb]

1. Have you always been Catholic, or was there some point at which you either converted, or made up your mind that you really believed?

I was brought up in a conventionally Catholic family, and we went to Church on Sundays, but both my parents had a fairly sixties left-of-centre attitude - both, for instance, voted against the Church in the great referenda of the early seventies on divorce and abortion. In my teens I drifted away from the Church, as was to be expected. I began to take an interest again during my period in the Army, when I noticed that the only place where one could think serious thoughts was in the chapel. I also realized that this was not a matter of personalities - the chaplain was a very unimpressive person. It was the environment itself that encouraged thought. What really sealed it, though was when, a few years later, I turned to the New Testament with the eyes of a scholar. By then, I had already spent enough time in the company of ancient texts of all kinds to be able to distinguish more or less instinctively between factual narrative and legend; and I was astonished to find that all the Gospels, and in particular the Gospel of John, bore all the signs of eyewitness accounts. It is as a historian that I became convinced that what the Gospels and the rest of the NT describe, really did happen.

2. Was it frightening to leave Italy to attend school in England?

I was not nearly as frightened as I should have been. I was still of an age to be romantic, and there cannot possibly be a more romantic place to study than King's School, Canterbury - look it up: the most ancient school in the world, in the middle of a medieval city, and a part of the establishment of Canterbury Cathedral. Of what other school can anyone say that one literally spends his time in the middle of history? Every time we went to the Cathedral, we passed on the spot where St.Thomas Beckett died - to mention just one. Plus, the situation of Italy in the mid-seventies, when I was sent, was depressing in the extreme. The Seventies! Anyone who is nostalgic about them cannot remember them well: terrorism, 25% inflation, the Soviet Union more powerful and threatening than ever, unemployment, cheap and tawdry tastes. What is there to be nostalgic about? So I did not feel I was leaving anything worth regretting. The problem, of course, is that I was completely unsuited to an English Public School environment. I had absolutely no idea how to behave. It was the first of my great social disasters.


3. You must have noticed that you have a lot of fascinated readers-and-lurkers, many of whom are female; what's your theory as to why that's so?

I am tempted to say that it is much smaller than the number of dedicated enemies, but that does not change the facts. I am one of those people whom people just naturally notice. They know when I am in a room, even if I sit in a back row and do nothing. That is not something I can change, although I have often wished I could.

4. What are you looking forward to this summer? (Summer things, I mean--like a cool drink under the sun).

I have a large terrace outside my flat, and I mean to get some use out of it, both in terms of sitting down in the sun with a book, and of getting some outdoors-type work - DIY and such - done.

5. Are you a morning person, or a night owl?

My body forces me to be a morning one. I always wake up at sunrise; this can be a nuisance in England in June, when it starts getting light at 3.30 in the morning!


And from norwyn

Ok, you aren't easy....or maybe you are, I don't know...*snerk* Seriously, I had to put some thought into these...

1. Who would be the five people, living or dead, you would invite to dinner, and why?

1) It's kind of difficult, because some people one would want to meet would not be terrific company over dinner, and some would only be good value as conversationalists. (You remember St.Paul in Corinthians remarking on how unimpressive he was in person.) I would say... Dr.Johnson. GK Chesterton. CS Lewis (if he left his notorious temper at home). John Henry Newman, perhaps. Sydney Smith for the laughs - although apart from Newman, this would be quite a witty company anyway.

2. What is a typical day for you?

2) Wake up early (I am conditioned to awaken when the sun rises). Read my e-mails and some internet stuff. Get breakfast. Get working (translating or writing or reading). Have lunch between twelve and one. Often a nap towards two. More work. Dinner between six and seven. More work, phone calls, e-mails, internet activity. To bed by ten or eleven.

3. I'll use your #3, edited because I don't think you've been married...Do you see yourself ever getting married?

3) No.

4. Have you ever suffered a crisis of faith?

4) Constantly. I have to remind myself that there is no INTELLECTUAL obstacle to belief, because the emotional and instinctive ones are so strong.

5. At the risk of appearing shallow, what do you look like? I'm just asking for basic characteristics: I need some kind of mental frame of reference because I think in pictures, and have to remind myself that you are not wearing an ancient battle helmet, although I guess that is amusing, and for all I know, you could very well be wearing one. Everyone becomes their icon, right? My default icon needs a haircut, I suppose, since my hair is bobbed now, not down to the middle of my back anymore...but then I'd have to change the Marysue icon, and lose Sirius Black in the process...

5) Shortish (one metre seventy), fat (almost twice the weight I should be, and the numbers are much too embarrasing to mention), with thick hair still mostly black and just a little thin on top, heavy eyebrows, sallow skin, strongly marked features and rather large brown eyes.

Comments

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Forgive my rudeness, but as someone well past my growing years, I think you should postpone the internet and go out for a walk when you get up in the morning. You're getting to the age when you'll need all the health benefits you can get - use it before you lose it. Try it for three weeks. If you don't like it, you can tell me where to put my advice.
(And the 70's weren't as bad as the 90's, even with inflation. Disco traumatized you.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

People being murdered in the streets and the apparent omnipotence of mafia and terrorists traumatized me. Remember, this is Italy I am talking about. But all of Europe was enjoying the same kind of stuff.

As for walking... I am thinking about it, but the question asked for a typical day. I do not necessarily go out every day, but I might.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

It's a silly site, but Myfreediet.com has some simple indoor exercises.

From the pain in my stomach muscles, they work.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

I am tempted to say that it is much smaller than the number of dedicated enemies, but that does not change the facts. I am one of those people whom people just naturally notice. They know when I am in a room, even if I sit in a back row and do nothing. That is not something I can change, although I have often wished I could.

You should say it is because you are so sexy, the women cannot resist you!

I have to remind myself that there is no INTELLECTUAL obstacle to belief, because the emotional and instinctive ones are so strong.

That's interesting. What is an instinctive obstacle to belief? I don't think I ever experienced that.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"However much evidence there may be for miracles, miracles just do not happen." That is not an intellectual position, it is an instinctive one.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

Don't most people think the opposite?

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that doesn't make it so.

"However much evidence there may be for X, X just doesn't/don't happen," is most certainly not an intellectual position, regardless of what has been substituted for X.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

I think you misunderstand my question. FPB says it is instinctive to him, which interests me because in my experience the opposite position is the instinctive one.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I would not say so. I think, actually, that the idea that people have an instinctive need to believe something beyond the reality of this life is a claim that cannot be proved, and that in fact tends to serve as a justification for the failure of atheism to sweep the world. When atheists are discouraged that so many people are resistant to their apparently cast-iron arguments, they reach the conclusion that there is this irrational preference for supernatural views. That is at least a dubious claim and at worst a refusal to engage with the rationality of their opponents.

This is a thought I only just conceptualized, and needs some more elaboration. I may post about it later.

[geno0823.livejournal.com]

Shortish (one metre seventy), fat (almost twice the weight I should be, and the numbers are much too embarrasing to mention), with thick hair still mostly black and just a little thin on top, heavy eyebrows, sallow skin, strongly marked features and rather large brown eyes.
pics plz? :D :D :D :D

[tashmania.livejournal.com]

I finally have the post-exams time to ask questions!

1. Where can the greatest view in the world be found?
2. What are your three favourite films?
3. How did you discover and get onto Livejournal? (I thought of this yesterday, and it's now the question of the day! Curses.)
4. Would you say you are a good instinctive judge of character from the moment you meet people, or do you need to know people before you judge their character?
5. Next time I am in Canterbury, is there anywhere in particular I should visit, a building to go and see, an area to wander by?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

1) I do not think you can single one out. The world is full of beauty. Italy has more than her fair share, but in this country you need only travel a few dozen miles to see the ceiling of St.John's Chapel in Cambridge, or the Precincts of Canterbury Cathedral.

2) Ummmm.... Casablanca, Il Gattopardo (Visconti's The Leopard, in the original Italian) and something by Miyazaki, probably Laputa.

3) From HP fiction, and specifically following up on what my two favourite writers at the time, Hijja and Kayla Rudbek, were doing.

4) After my experiences at college, definitely not a good judge. But one can only go by one's perceptions, and I still try to make up my own mind about people.

5) The Precincts, the area behind the Cathedral that hosts King's School. And, of course, the Cathedral itself. Also, the remains of St.Augustine's monastery, and the very ancient church of St.Martin's, which may have been there before Augustine ever came.

And five more, if you like.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

1. Homer or Vergil? You may use both sides of the paper. No points will be awarded for choosing Hesiod instead.
2. Count Fosco: your sort of bloke?
3. Proper patriotism aside, Italy: your love/hate relationship with your country (we all of us have such a relationship).
4. Cricket is superior to footer: discuss.
5. Brown or Blair: which is worse?

Re: And five more, if you like.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

1)Both. Given that my Greek is not as good as my Latin, and definitely not good enough to read original texts without a crib, it is lucky that Homer translates better than Virgil. It is true that people have always broken their heads against his majestic simplicity of utterance, but that majestic simplicity also means that there is always something left - "I wish that contention would die out in the whole world!" - "Do only the sons of Atreus love their wives? Every decent man, every man in his right mind, loves and cherishes his own" - "And you, old man, you too were famous for your fortunes". On the other hand, if you haven't read Virgil in Latin, you do not know what nobility of utterance and music in language mean. Tennyson was quite right in praising him as "Welder of the stateliest measure/ Ever molded by the mind of man."
2) No, but what a wonderful character. He and Professor Pesca both are amazingly well-designed, credible, real - just compare them to any Italian, indeed anyone from outside England, in the works of Collins' great friend Dickens. His mixture of ready wit, mountebank bravado, and startling fluency, is really Italian and not just a cliche'; except that, for the purposes of his story, Collins has made him more fearsome and invincible than such a man would ordinarily be, one can think of many scoundrels just like him. Likewise, Pesca's naive enthusiasm for modernity and the political frustrations it conceals are especially typical of educated Italians at that point in time, and are a feature of the national character that has not yet died. Two tremendous characters, and two powerful rebukes to the Victorian and post-Victorian habit of ethnic cliche'.
3) I should post a long post just to get started on this subject. Let me just say that an Italian is more apt than most to understand why a South African would title a novel "Cry, the beloved country".
4) It isn't. End of discussion.
5) Brown - except that his clumsiness is such that it may finally see an end to the whole unloveable project of underhanded, smiling progressivism.

[every-bite.livejournal.com]

Here via friend-of-a-friend-of-a... etc. etc. and I always love what you write, so I thought I'd jump on the 5 questions bandwagon. Because, you know, you can afford to get really personal with virtual strangers, right? ;)


Um. Okay.

1. Would you, even though you have met the love of your life, ever have an affair?

2. Which fictional characters most remind you of yourself?

3. Do you think you'll ever live in Italy again?

4. If you had the chance to take redcoast out on a date, would you take it?

5. And this is where it gets uber-personal, but I always make this one of my five when it's a man I'm asking. How would you rank yourself in terms of...size? You know. In the genitalia sense. Below average, average, or above average? (It's sort of a sub-question, which is kind of cheating, I know, but is this something that men actually think about??)

That's all. Nice to meet you. :)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

1. ABSOLUTELY NOT.
2. I'd rather not answer that.
3. If I ever make enough to retire, I want to buy a house in the Alps and live there.
4. Hmmmm... now let me see... I have no commitments... I have the opportunity to take out a pretty blonde less than half my age... what do you think? Besides, that would larn'er.
5. Contrary to popular belief, most blokes pay little or no attention to this matter. My impression is that I am average, but I never bothered to compare. For what it's worth, I have never had a member of the opposite sex point between my legs and burst out laughing.

[every-bite.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the thoughtful answers. Although you've piqued my curiousity to no end with your reticence to answer, of all of them, #2!

Ah, see, I didn't have the benefit of a mental picture of redcoast, so when you put it that way...

And your response to my last (and truly invasive) question is also very respectable. I've oft wondered just how much thought men put into such matters. Women - well, the lot I know, anyway - seem preoccupied with brasseires and their trappings, so I'd always assumed the same could be said for the other half. But we do know what happens when we assume.

You're very frank, even with a complete stranger. Admirable!

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Did you answer my questions? I really can't remember now!

I am one of those people whom people just naturally notice. They know when I am in a room, even if I sit in a back row and do nothing. That is not something I can change, although I have often wished I could.

Personally, I haven't a clue whether I am or not. I always feel as though people are staring at me. Does that count?

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

I think that means you're self-conscious-- by chance, are you a little clumsy, too? (in word or deed)

That doesn't rule out you being a magnet, though.

I do know that my writing tone is distinctive--and I can't figure out why; I just know that no matter the name at the top, folks who knew me before tend to ask "hey, do you know XXXX....?" and I have to respond "oh, I went by that name back...."

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I am slightly clumsy when I'm nervous but not overly so. I suspect it's got more to do with my choice in clothing than anything else. I tend to wear really low cut tops. Thing is, I dress that way because I like it, but I really damn well wish people would stop staring at me.

I don't think my writing style is distinctive. I hope not! I'd hate for future employers to find my fandom stuff.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Hey, if they recognize your fandom stuff, then THEY are fans, too.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Hopefully!

But if I go for a security clearance, there's always the remote possibility they might find my fandom stuff by trawling through the internet. Very remote though, given that I don't use my real name or anything.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

My husband is a geek; he got a clearance that he can't tell me the level of.

My brother babysets seals, despite him being a jock-geek.

I think you're alright, unless you write fandom about taking over the nation....

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

:) Thanks. I've actually been stressing slightly about this. I'm graduating in a year and half and I'm hoping to get into something with top secret clearance. Of course, there's always the problem of me being born in another country, but I can't do anything about that!

Well I did write one fic that was slightly pedophilic, but nothing major and it wasn't endorsing it or anything.

My first reaction to a really high security clearance is still 'damn that would be cool!'

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Honestly?

The foreign connections will be the bigger problem--depends on what your foreign relates are like.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I was afraid of that. Although, I'm not in contact with any of them beyond hearing second hand stuff about what's happening from my mother. So I doubt it would be a problem. Both my parents have secret clearance here, so yeah, I suspect my family has already been looked at and cleared. :p

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Hehe, that DOES rather tip towards the "you can be trusted" side.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, I went back and found I did not! Sorry. I will do it now.

Describe your idea of a perfect date.
We laugh a lot, we exchange compliments, we blush at each other's compliments, we end with a kiss under the stars and a promise to do it again. A few dates later, I take her to Capitol Hill, Rome, take her to the south-east corner (which has one of the finest views on Earth, over the Forum and the Palatine) and offer her my ring. I had actually planned it all for one of the women I loved, and it never happened.

Is there any personality trait/quality in somebody that will immediately put you off that person?
Superficial features such as a stupid laugh or strange mannerisms tend to have a bad effect on me, but I consciously try to avoid reacting on that, of course. And I hate chewing gum and spitting. There is, however, a deeper kind of incompatibility, to which I cannot give a name, which means that I either shut up and go away or know that I will have problems with this guy more or less from the word go.

What makes you respect somebody?
Many different things. Visible honesty. Talent. There is one person on my f-list whose political and religious views I find execrable, but whom I find pleasant and intelligent on a personal level. Of course, at the top there is self-sacrificing courage and heroism, but you cannot ask that of everyone.

If you were going to a desert island for the rest of your life and you could only bring five items, what would they be?
A generator that worked on items to be found on the island; a computer; a satellite connection with the Internet, powered by the generator; a fridge, ditto; and a woodworker's tool kit.

Ice-cream or gelato? And why?
I love everything in that line, except "cornish cream" flavour English ice cream, which is gross. (Ever eaten solid butter as a child, out of curiosity? That is what it tastes like.) Italian ice cream is generally better, even brilliant - although of course not every maker is equally good - but the best ice cream in the world is actually kulfi.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

,i>And I hate chewing gum and spitting.

Never go to China then. It's appalling there.

There is one person on my f-list whose political and religious views I find execrable

Only one? I mean, I believe my political and religious views are pretty much the polar opposite of yours. :p

No, I can't say I've ever tasted solid butter. But that sounds pretty gross. My favourite gelato flavour has to be mango. Hell, I like anything mango flavoured.

[lametiger.livejournal.com]

You tell how you studied yourself back into a Biblical belief system, but don't really directly address one issue--that of Catholicism versus other branches of Christianity. Was it a matter of default--that you were raised at least nominally Catholic, so that is what you returned to? And what do you think of the Reformation slogan Sola Scriptura?

As a side question to this, what do you think of Ann Rice's rather public return to the faith of her childhood? Have you read any of her recent books, and if so what was your reaction?

I find these questions interesting because I was a missionary kid who never really abandoned the (Protestant for the sake of broad classification) faith in which I was brought up, but my intellectual bent means that I am constantly evaluating my beliefs even while holding firmly to them.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I do not think the issue ever seriously presented itself to me. I can defend my Catholicism from a historic viewpoint as I can defend my faith, but I never had a crisis point about the one as I had about the other. You might like a look at this essay of mine on being Catholic: http://fpb.livejournal.com/145365.html

I would say, too, that I would not qualify my belief system as "Biblical". To me, everything goes up to, and comes down from, Christ: Christ as a unique historical figure, and Christ as God and a person of God. That is, the Bible matters to me in so far as it leads up to Christ, and in so far as Jesus of Nazareth was intensely steeped in the Old Testament and endorsed it implicitly and explicitly dozens of times. But when the Old Testament presents teachings that are explicitly or implicitly contrary to those of Our Lord - for instance the various moments of Jewish racism, ethnocentrism and even massacre - that is not an issue to me, because it does not affect what Jesus said, did or suffered. I would say that it still is important that such things are on record, because they testify to the immense importance that the Jews felt to the notion of keeping separate from the rest, of keeping their national allegiance to God intact - however misguided their methods. But it does not affect my view of Jesus; how could it? The same goes for the Jewish protests that Christians misread certain parts of the Bible as they have it. The point is, first, that the Bible was an evolving text, and, second, that the Bible that Jesus and His disciples knew and used was the Septuagint, as can be shown by dozens of Gospel passages, and that is the version from which our reflections should start.

As for Madame Rice's conversion, I have to say that my friends and I did not take it very seriously at the time:
http://fpb.livejournal.com/137571.html
http://fpb.livejournal.com/147235.html

[lametiger.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I may respond at some point to the distinction you make on a Biblical belief system, but for now, the reasons I brought up Anne Rice:

I have actually only read Out of Egypt so far and have not decided whether to go any further. I confess that I never had any interest in reading any of her earlier writings but was intrigued when I saw the series title "Christ the Lord"--so different from blatantly sexual vampires. I was further intrigued by the author's note at the back of the book in which she detailed her journey as including an examination of the historical validity of the New Testament scriptures. In short, it sounded a little like what you were saying about yourself. I am hesitant to judge at this stage whether her conversion was real and permanent after seeing how Bob Dylan toyed briefly with Christianity before moving on. (I do notice your wording that "my friends and I did not take it very seriously at the time" [emphasis mine] and wonder if it is significant.)

As for the book itself, I was not exactly overwhelmed by it. Among other things, I was disappointed that she chose, apparently as an intriguing plot device, to include the childhood miracle narratives as part of her story while admitting that they do not hold up to the same rigorous historical scrutiny that the canonical Gospels do.

Bob Dylan

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I do not think Bob Dylan actually moved away from Christianity. My information is that he is Catholic, and that agrees with a text from his album Oh Mercy, which is ten years later than Slow Train Coming:

Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams,
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
Cross the valleys and streams,
For they're deep and they're wide
And the world's on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride.

Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow,
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know.
Oh it's rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow.

Ring them bells Sweet Martha,
For the poor man's son,
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one.
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep.

Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf,
Ring them bells for all of us who are left,
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through.
Ring them bells, for the time that flies,
For the child that cries
When innocence dies.

Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the top of the room,
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom.
Oh the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they're breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong.

Not all the imagery is clear, but most of it is obvious. "The world's on its side... the mountains are filled with lost sheep..."; and it's not just chance, someone is doing this deliberately: "The lines are long, and the fighting is wrong, and they're breaking down the distance between right and wrong". And it is in the face of this that St.Peter is called upon to ring his bells with an iron hand: "So the people will know", against the delusion that there is no distance between right and wrong. St.Peter is the strongest of the bell ringers, but not the only one: Martha, Catherine, even some heathens - luckily awake in a "city that dreams" - are also called upon to rise and ring. The sound must go across "the valleys and streams, for they're deep and they're wide, and the world's on its side" - it is not easy for the sound of the bells to reach in such a big and distracted world, so the sound must be loud. And yet they must be rung. It is somehow - we are not told how - good even for the blind and the deaf; it is certainly good for all of us who are left - for the few who will judge the many when the game is through. ("Know you not that you will judge angels?") The song is dominated by specifically NT imagery and ideas - the lost sheep waiting for the Good Shepherd, the need to go forth and teach the truth across the whole wide world and even "to the blind and the deaf", the faithful who will judge the world at the end of the age. I doubt that it could have been written except by someone who read the New Testament regularly.

Anne Rice

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The reason why I specified "at the time" is purely historian's caution. Those are the views I had at the time, and as since then I had no opportunity whatever to think on the matter, I do not know whether anything has happened to change them.