A:
In a conversation with a friend this past Sunday, it occurred to me how much I'm going to enjoy being post-Treveccan. There are so many essays/articles I want to cook up, so many aspects of history and theology upon which I want to reflect, and I'll have time this summer (and this fall!) to write and read and think about them. It's difficult to explain how odd my situation is, and I haven't even been aware of it as a 'situation' until this last Sunday. Most of my friends go home after work and read, or do laundry, or work on their house, or write essays/articles that they find interesting. This whole concept is unimaginable to me, since I've spent my entire adult life at the university and typically working a job to at least strive to pay the university bills. Laundry is something that somehow miraculously gets done between schoolwork and work. The notion of coming home from work at 3:30 and having nothing 'due' is incomprehensible. And the notion of working as an academic, working in a field that I enjoy studying and teaching, is an idea too good to be true (. . . you mean to say that *most* people don't work two full-time jobs??)
B:
Quick clarification: Watchmen is good as far as the story, faithfulness to the book, etc. That's all I was trying to say. I did not necessarily mean it is a 'good' movie, because it isn't. I wouldn't recommend anyone see Watchmen at the movie theatre, and I'm almost ready to say that there is very little good to be had in it altogether. Basically, read the book; the book has the real meat and element of beauty that adequately engages the frank inadequacies, human fumblings, and hard questions of [post-]modern characters in a [post-]modern world (it primarily engages this reality through its deconstructing the superhero mythos). The graphic novel is dark and, well, graphic, but the movie is just about the closest thing to a visceral orgy that you can have (literally and figuratively). Whereas in the book Rorschach chains up a criminal to a stove and then sets the building on fire - dark and horrifying, but nothing is shown of the criminal's death - the movie zooms in upon Rorschach planting a meat-cleaver in the criminal's head over and over. And there are two fairly graphic sex scenes, three (I think) in total. Connect this to a general 'condensation' of the powerful message of the book and the already intrinsically dark, violent, and disturbing themes of the material in question, and my advice would be: read the book.
C:
Again yesterday, upon discovering my 'denominational affiliation,' someone at work asked me (with surprising alarm) why so many students at Trevecca - especially (he noted) history students, and theology students, and music students at Trevecca - become Catholic. Well, there are probably a number of reasons and responses; as Chesterton notes, the Church is a city with a thousand gates, and no single person enters Her from exactly the same angle. Some of the reasons may be considered 'good reasons,' while others may be impugned by those who witness the decision. However, one of the most obvious and general answers - especially as it pertains to history, theology, and music students - has seemed quite self-explanatory to me: if a person who is serious about the testimony of the Christian faith s/he has been handed actually studies the history of Christianity, or studies the Holy Scriptures, or studies the development of music in the history of oft-scoffed-at 'Christendom,' it is not surprising if s/he may in fact see how spontaneously-generated and insubstantial protestantism and its derivatives are.
At least when conceivably 'ignorant', for example, the protestant can look at the state of affairs and conclude that the Church really is merely the 'Roman Catholic denomination' alongside many other denominations; after all, all these groups presently coexist. However, it is exceedingly difficult to justify standing outside the Church and simultaneously calling oneself a Christian once one actually realises (historically and scripturally) that one's own historical inheritance of the faith is an incomplete and alternate rendition of that-which-always-came-before; it is difficult (as a Nazarene pastor) to off-handedly snub theology that is scripturally, doctrinally, and logically solid . . . and that 'somehow' has a Life to it that manages to solve many of the needless theological dilemmas the Nazarene denomination seems unable to address within itself. And when you are finally given the faith to believe that the Sacraments - particularly the Eucharist - are the definition for the quite historically verifiable terms 'sacrament' and 'sacramental,' it becomes clear that the protestant pieces are at best 'CatholicLite' and at worst something unrelated to the Catholic Church altogether. At this point there is no thought of grafting 'Roman Catholicism' into protestant faith; the suggestion becomes laughable. It becomes clear then, at least in the very definition, that all roads (and measures and definitions we have been handed) lead toward Rome.
-r
