I passed a hearse parked in front of a church today. The name in the window said 'Anderson'. Of course, since this is northern Illinois, that could be the name of both the funeral home AND the deceased. It got me thinking, though, about that particular surname.
Anderson, of course, means 'son of Anders', just like 'Larson' and 'Nelson' refer to sons of Lars and Nels. And Anders is a perfectly ordinary male Christian name in Scandinavian societies. But if my memory of high-school German is correct, 'ander' means 'other' in modern German. Since an older, proto-German is the ancestor of both modern German and all the Scandinavian languages, does that mean that the name originally meant 'other'?
How does 'other' get to be a first name? I envision a couple of Viking chiefs meeting, and one of them saying 'So Rolf, I guess introductions are in order. This is my first-born, my pride and joy, my son Gunnar...and, oh yes, this is my other son.'
Funny where your mind can wander when you're supposed to be thinking about something else.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
What Do We Need?
The surprise announcement that our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, is abdicating his position because of poor health, has set off a frenzy of speculation about the next pope, and what we 'need' him to be like. The secular media, in predictable fashion, has vilified Benedict because he wouldn't validate their vision of modernity. They felt the same way about Blessed John Paul II during his pontificate, and veered around 180 degrees after his death, proclaiming his obvious greatness. I suppose that's one way to insure that his successor can be called a failure, for not living up to John Paul's standard. Those of us who don't depend on CBS News or CNN for our information, don't believe Benedict was a failure at all.
What do we need in a pope in the 21st century? First of all, we need a man of strong faith. The western world seems to be rejecting Christianity at the same time that non-Christian religions are becoming trendy and gaining in militancy. Our beliefs are under attack from both without and within, and it's becoming easier for people to lose heart. Let's pray that our next pope, through his simple faith in the Gospel and the traditions of our Holy Mother Church, can energize the flock and clearly demonstrate to the world how we need Catholicism now more than ever.
Simplicity is key to another thing I think we really need in the next pope. I've read a fair amount of 'handicapping' commentary which tries to push one or the other candidate for the papacy, often on the basis of perceived intelligence. Like political talking heads, they seem to think we need to get the 'smartest man in the room.' I say - nuts to that. I don't think a whole alphabet of initials behind someone's name means they obviously have the ability to lead a great nation or a church. It just means they can complete course work and satisfy academic requirements. Let our next pope be a man with more compassion and common sense than 'book learning'.
It would be good for our next Holy Father, as recent popes have been, to be thoughtful and willing to listen. Those who talk all the time and don't bother to listen can never really be good leaders, in either the secular or religious world. He should both proclaim the eternal truths of the gospel, and prayerfully consider new interpretations. That doesn't mean I'm hoping he will be a 'transformational' figure who rejects all the teachings that set so many progressive molars grinding. The Catholic Church is not a democracy, and we don't get a vote on what it proclaims as truth, much as some of us might like to. I, for one, earnestly pray that the day will come when women can become priests - but I'm not about to insist that the next pope has to make me happy in that regard. Let him both preach and listen, and he will be a worthy successor to St Peter.
Finally, let's pray that the next pope is a man of joy. The 21st-century world is a truly depressing place, and we need to combat that gloom with all the weapons we have. Our faith is one of those weapons, and not the smallest one. Despite (or because of) the central image of Christ Crucified, the final message of Catholicism is in fact a joyful one. Our Lord was incarnate on earth, suffered for our sakes, and earned for us a lasting peace in the house of His Father. What could be happier than that?
Monday, February 4, 2013
White Rose Rising
When I was a young man in college, many decades ago, I got interested in a lot of things about which I'd never heard before. Like a lot of college kids, before they get out into the real world, I was passionate about justice and fairness. And one of the causes I took up was rehabilitating the reputation of an English king who'd been cut down a half-millenium before.
Kind of a strange thing for a small-town Illinois boy to care about, right? I don't disagree. All I can say is that from the first time I encountered real historical data about Richard III, and saw how radically it differed from the popular stories about his profound deformity and wickedness, I wanted to tell everybody I came across how rotten a deal I believed he'd been given by both Shakespeare and 'history'. When I was on my semester study tour in England, I made a special point to take the tube to Chelsea, and see a medieval town-house that had been moved there from the city some years before, just because it had once been leased by Richard as his city residence. I started (and never finished, of course) a short play about him for one of my writing classes. And I read everything I could find on the fifteenth century, including a small masterpiece of a detective story called 'The Daughter of Time'.
All this comes back to my mind because the announcement came today - the bones dug up from under the parking lot at the Leicester city council have been proven to be the actual final remains of King Richard III. Not only are they the right period, with the right injuries, but DNA comparison to an actual descendant of Richard's sister shows a match. It almost takes my breath away - for centuries, we've believed that the bones were lost. The friary under which they'd been interred was certainly destroyed by Henry VIII, like so many Catholic foundations, and there was even a story that at the time of the dissolution the king's remains were dug up and pitched into the river. But now, because of historical detective work, archaeology, and scientific analysis, the University of Leicester team has given the whole world a new picture of the last of the Plantagenets.
Was he a hunchback? No, the bones show scoliosis, but no severe deformity. The radio-carbon dating gives the right dates, both for the age of the bones and the age of the individual when he BECAME bones. And the violence that was done to those bones bears out the most flattering details that even the Tudors admitted about his final hours: that Richard III died fighting bravely, within inches of victory, driving toward the enemy command post at the center of the Tudor army, while Henry VII hid behind his captains. There's even a knife-scrape along one buttock, which suggests a 'humiliation' injury post-mortem, when the corpse had been stripped and flung across a horse.
It's a sad way to go, and the Tudors, who had a weak claim to the throne and needed all the bolstering they could get, proceeded to make it worse. They paid every fifteenth and sixteenth-century flack they could to write the most scurrilous stories about Richard III: that he came into the world with teeth already in his mouth, that he drowned his own brother in a butt of wine, that he was the one who dispatched Henry VI in the Tower of London, that he wanted his wife to die so he could marry his niece, and on and on. And of course, the big one, that he sent his servants to murder his nephews, the little 'Princes in the Tower'. Richard III became the original cartoon wicked uncle.
The discovery and identification of a set of bones doesn't mean that their owner and operator wasn't really a villain, of course. The skeleton can't sit up on the table and shout 'I didn't do it!' But maybe, if people start taking more of an interest, someone who's smart and hardworking and lucky will be the one to uncover some real hard evidence that can shine through the Tudor stories. Glamor and propaganda, like that employed by some American political families, shouldn't be allowed to obscure the truth forever. And one final word about the gentleman from the colonies that provided the DNA for comparison - wouldn't it be fun if the English kicked the Windsors to the curb and gave the crown to a Canadian carpenter?
Kind of a strange thing for a small-town Illinois boy to care about, right? I don't disagree. All I can say is that from the first time I encountered real historical data about Richard III, and saw how radically it differed from the popular stories about his profound deformity and wickedness, I wanted to tell everybody I came across how rotten a deal I believed he'd been given by both Shakespeare and 'history'. When I was on my semester study tour in England, I made a special point to take the tube to Chelsea, and see a medieval town-house that had been moved there from the city some years before, just because it had once been leased by Richard as his city residence. I started (and never finished, of course) a short play about him for one of my writing classes. And I read everything I could find on the fifteenth century, including a small masterpiece of a detective story called 'The Daughter of Time'.
All this comes back to my mind because the announcement came today - the bones dug up from under the parking lot at the Leicester city council have been proven to be the actual final remains of King Richard III. Not only are they the right period, with the right injuries, but DNA comparison to an actual descendant of Richard's sister shows a match. It almost takes my breath away - for centuries, we've believed that the bones were lost. The friary under which they'd been interred was certainly destroyed by Henry VIII, like so many Catholic foundations, and there was even a story that at the time of the dissolution the king's remains were dug up and pitched into the river. But now, because of historical detective work, archaeology, and scientific analysis, the University of Leicester team has given the whole world a new picture of the last of the Plantagenets.
Was he a hunchback? No, the bones show scoliosis, but no severe deformity. The radio-carbon dating gives the right dates, both for the age of the bones and the age of the individual when he BECAME bones. And the violence that was done to those bones bears out the most flattering details that even the Tudors admitted about his final hours: that Richard III died fighting bravely, within inches of victory, driving toward the enemy command post at the center of the Tudor army, while Henry VII hid behind his captains. There's even a knife-scrape along one buttock, which suggests a 'humiliation' injury post-mortem, when the corpse had been stripped and flung across a horse.
It's a sad way to go, and the Tudors, who had a weak claim to the throne and needed all the bolstering they could get, proceeded to make it worse. They paid every fifteenth and sixteenth-century flack they could to write the most scurrilous stories about Richard III: that he came into the world with teeth already in his mouth, that he drowned his own brother in a butt of wine, that he was the one who dispatched Henry VI in the Tower of London, that he wanted his wife to die so he could marry his niece, and on and on. And of course, the big one, that he sent his servants to murder his nephews, the little 'Princes in the Tower'. Richard III became the original cartoon wicked uncle.
The discovery and identification of a set of bones doesn't mean that their owner and operator wasn't really a villain, of course. The skeleton can't sit up on the table and shout 'I didn't do it!' But maybe, if people start taking more of an interest, someone who's smart and hardworking and lucky will be the one to uncover some real hard evidence that can shine through the Tudor stories. Glamor and propaganda, like that employed by some American political families, shouldn't be allowed to obscure the truth forever. And one final word about the gentleman from the colonies that provided the DNA for comparison - wouldn't it be fun if the English kicked the Windsors to the curb and gave the crown to a Canadian carpenter?
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