warm bland fuzzies for all

Starbucks and Kohl's Department Stores have used the same song celebrating "the holidays."  From the Times-Union story:

The song, which starts with "This holiday, I'm coming home to you," is not specific to Christmas or Hanukkah and it has plenty of oohs and aahs so the commercial's narrator has space to speak – all calculated to make the song more marketable to advertisers.

This as opposed to specific holidays like, y'know, Christmas or Hanukkah.  But hey, it sells coffee--and obviously the young singer featured hopes it brings new musical opportunities.

Local angle:  the musician creating and recording this song graduated from my institution, The College of Saint Rose.  The College itself seems to follow the same sort of bland secularized holiday feel the song celebrates.  On the other hand, the same college also produced Father Matthew Venuti, one of the Anglican Ordinariate's first priests.

Thus an on-going, and beautiful, even as that beauty often emerges amid anguish and suffering (spiritual and physical), paradox of Christianity:  that particular commitments--heck, let's call them what they are, conversions--appear amid life's predominant, bland, undifferentiated reality.  Thus the Catholic tradition extols some of the greatest spiritual autobiographies:  Augustine's Confessions, Newman's Apologia pro vita sua, Merton's Seven Storey Mountain, and Day's The Long Loneliness.  More recently converts such as Scott Hahn, Jennifer Fulwiler, and Patrick Madrid's Surprised by Truth series detail new versions of this same story.

Something similar works in the time-tested Christmas favorites.  When played endlessly before Thanksgiving, the songs--particularly the secular ones like "Walking in a Winter Wonderland"--can, for all their imagery, lose some of their appeal.  What makes Christmas music Christmas is, of course, the Christian particularity. Warm fuzzies can take us only so far. We can come home any time during the year, but only once during the year does the joyful news that Christ is born ring true.

surrender cobra

from an ESPN report on a familiar scene in sports television:  a player or team makes an amazing play to win the game at last possible second and the opponents' fans stand, dumbfounded, with their hands on their heads.  It often looks like this:

Image courtesy Reddit.

A fitting image, especially when Catholic colleges make decisions and announcements like The College of Saint Rose did Friday, December 11, 2015:  twenty-three faculty positions cut and several programs and majors cut from across the curriculum.  Some of these were professional and graduate programs (e.g., Bachelor's program in Art Education and the graduate program in Communications), while others covered liberal arts subjects like Economics, American Studies, and....Philosophy and Religious Studies.  These last three are/were the majors my department offered.

The Sisters of St. Joseph, the women's order that founded Saint Rose in 1920, issued the following statement about the cuts:

Nearly 100 years ago, Sister Blanche Rooney, CSJ, and other brave Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet saw a need and acted.

Inspired by the legacy of the original Sisters of Saint Joseph, who as women in 1650 took the radical step of going into the world to minister to the poor, the sick and the desperate of Le Puy, France, Sister Blanche envisioned a college that would teach and empower young women to be citizen leaders grounded in faith and dedicated to excellence and service.

In founding The College of Saint Rose, the local Province of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet recognized that, just as they were responding to a need, fulfilling its mission would forever require the college to be alert and amenable to a changing reality in the larger society, and especially among its current and prospective students.

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In other words, to meet and serve people where they are.

This founding principle is why we support President Carolyn Stefanco, the Board of Trustees and all those on campus working diligently to lead our beloved Saint Rose in updating academic programs and priorities to meet the changing needs of students who count on the college to prepare them to succeed in a world they will inherit.

and then a bit later:

Change is upsetting for many in all walks of life, including our own. It creates anxiety and uncertainty, and can leave some feeling overlooked, forgotten, left behind. That is why it is so important in times of change to extend grace, love and affirmation to all in our community. Change also is an opportunity for renewal, and renewal is empowering. Responsible leaders are obligated to recognize the need for change and act carefully but resolutely.

Read the statement and you'll soon note what is absent:  any reference or indication of the College's founding as a religious endeavor.  It's utilitarian endeavor now;  what serves the greatest good for the greatest number of people.  A principle that many, including the Sisters themselves, would argue is not part of the Catholic social justice tradition.  And that is correct.