Pecunia radix malorum est, sed etiam fructos laborum nostrorum providere debet.

Money is the root of evils, but is also is necessary to ensure the fruits of our labors.



I don't honestly know if anyone thinks such, but I can't help wondering that some of what I had to say in my previous post concerning economic realities came across in an unintended way. I can't help think that some people reading what I said may be saying to themselves, "Yeah, so what, I have the same problems too and you don't see me on the verge of uprooting my family in order to chase after the latest possible job promotion. John, you're not unique, special, different, etc, why should we symphathize with you?" "Or you don't know what real hardship is; I got twice as many kids as you, etc." The short answer to these supposed claims is that you're comparing apples to oranges. I'll explain below.



Now, anyone who has been reading my posts, would, no doubt, understand full well from where I am coming concerning the subject of education and academic excellence for my children. Therefore, there is no need to dwell on this, but the economic issues I raised may bear a bit more explanation.



I have come to discover some things:



1. Most people seem to earn more income than I do; some far more. This is comparing a single-income father to a single-income father.

2. Most have owned their homes (or are already in their second homes) for far longer than I have such that they were able to literally capitalize on being able to purchase their homes when housing prices were in much better proportion to incomes (i.e. anytime before 2003).

For example, I have a friend who bought a decent home, perfectly suitable to his family's needs, about 9 years ago for $125,000; today that same home would sell for $300,000, even after recent depreciation in home values. Let's say for argument that my friend's income was a modest $45,000 back in 2000 and that he now makes $75,000 due to promotions and merit increases. Let's also say for argument's sake say that the interest rate on his mortgage in 2000 was 7.5% (a realistic figure for that time) and now the prevailing interest rate for a new mortgage is 5.0%. Finally, let's say in either case the friend puts down $10,000 as a downpayment. With these assumptions, and leaving aside Real Estate Taxes, Insurance, and PMI, the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed mortgage would be:

In 2000 - $115,000 (125 less 10) @ 7.5% = $804.10/month
In 2009 - $290,000 (300 less 10) @ 5.0% = $1,556.78/month

In 2000, the friend's mortgage payment, leaving aside taxes and insurance, would have been 21.4% of his monthly gross income (804/(45,000/12)). In 2009, that same percentage would be 24.9%. Hence, a disproportionate increase of 3.5%. But, the friend is still making that original $804 payment as a proportion of his now higher salary; hence, he has more room to absorb tax increases and his financial hardship, if any, would be due to other factors such as health insurance and/or expensive discretionary spending habits.

Take a younger father just starting to look for houses who currently makes $45,000/year. There is no way he could afford the $300,000 home which is typically the price for a home he NEEDS for his family size, not necessarily wants. He couldn't even get a more modest $200,000 home. That $45,000 is only going to get him into a $150,000 home ($175k tops), but even $175,000 buys a shack or a home with some serious deficiencies or a home which is simply too small for a family, unless you live in Middle America. But, in Middle America, one does not make $45,000 unless he is a veteran employee of some sort. And even in once cheap Middle America, it is getting harder to find a decent family home for less than $150,000 and incomes there too are still inadequate to meet the inflation of real estate.

Perhaps, I am beating a dead horse here, but based on this typical scenario, today's 35, 40, 45 year old father was able to lock into real estate at prices which were much more proportionate to his entry or somewhat post-entry level income at the time he was say 25 or 30. Today, the 25 or 30 year old with a similar income level cannot afford anything near what a person his same age and income was able to afford just 10 years ago.

I sometimes hear complaints that economic hardship means people will have to cancel their family vacations, stop eating out so much, cut down on amusements, etc. Would that I could complain like that! No, we already don't do these things and haven't since we were married. Our family vacations are trips to relatives at whose homes we stay free of charge. We don't eat out; we hardly even order out food to be delivered at home. We don't go to indoor or outdoor theme parks. Yet, the crunch is on despite our tight budget, and that crunch is due to three factors:

1. We were not able to afford a decent house the same way our immediate elders were 10 years ago.
2. Because of #1, our base mortgage payment is already high to the tune of 25%-30% of monthly gross income, which means there is little to no room to absorb Real Estate Tax increases.
3. Health Insurance premiums have been skyrocketing.

John, you should have known better! How so? I have to provide a shelter for my family; an apartment would not suffice and even apartment rents would rival the mortgage payments I now make. And, I honestly did not expect taxes and health insurance to shoot up at the annual rates they have! The rates of increase have been absolutely insane! My projections back in 2006 made a reasonable guess that we would be able to weather normal inflationary increases, so we went ahead with purchasing the house.

Has it come to a point where no one under the age of 40 can realistically afford to live, marry, and raise a family? Should we all just continue living with our parents? Talk about the perpetuation and elongation of adolescence.

Quando caeli movendi sunt et terra...

Pardon my "misuse" of a phrase from the Libera me antiphon (also is the 9th. Responsory from the Matins of the Office of the Dead) sung at the beginning of the Absolution following the Requiem Mass proper, but this text kind of sums up the current state of affairs in my life. "When the heavens and the earth must/ought to be moved..."

Ever happen upon a situation wherein many different factors, once floating around irrespective of each other, all came together as if God intends to send a clear message? The heavens and the earth, figuratively speaking, are to be moved; that is, the spiritual and secular realities of my own life and that of my family are going to be radically changed because we are about to embark on a major relocation to New England.

Four years ago, while we still lived in Maryland, I was in the midst of interviewing for jobs in the Philly metro area with the intent of relocating my family to South Jersey in order to Mater Ecclesiae parishioners. We had visited Mater Ecclesiae several times, especially for Holy Week, during the few years leading up to that time, and had decided we needed to ditch the "Liturgical Desert" that was the Indult Mass in Baltimore for the spiritual betterment of our family. Likewise, moving to another job allowed for the strong possibility of significantly improving our economic welfare as well, but this was a secondary emphasis and benefit. Both benefits came to fruition in February 2006. The new job which I had taken quickly deteriorated into a very bad situation, and by the grace of God, I was able to land a higher paying and personally constructive job with my old company in August of the same year. Therefore, I was blessed with a significant increase in pay that year alone, and we were well on our way towards building roots here.

It wasn't until sometime later in 2007 that we finally managed to be social with our new fellow parishioners and truly become "accepted" among the community. My wife and I don't make friends easily, and I know for myself, being the melancholic perfectionist I am, I am very choosy about making the effort to be friends with someone, and usually my friends tend to be others who share the same, deep, passionate ideals and interests that I do. My temperament is not one to be comfortable with casual friendships. All that being said, we finally felt at home, and such has been the case for the last two years.

However, during the same two years, as our children have grown older and we have begun to interact with other families, our once idealistic vision of homeschooling (based on what we had seen in our real life experiences in other places) began to crumble. This is not to say that everyone soured us on this; no, not even a majority, but a significant minority of families in which the children are neither being disciplined nor being held accountable to study has given us great pause. Some teenagers now who have only been homeschooled their entire lives remain literally uneducated and will be unable to mature properly into Catholic adults. Likewise, we have come to the conclusion that we both lack the proper temperament to prudently embark upon homeschooling our own children since we would likely not be able to juggle caring for younger children while at the same time providing a disciplined and structured learning environment for our older children. We do not want our children to suffer the same fate of lacking character and academic discipline from which both my wife and I have benefited in our own schooling experience. It is going to be extremely difficult to change the prevailing anti-intellectual culture here by establishing classical schools. And even if we were to change this situation by redoubling our efforts to establish classical schools, it would not happen in time for some, if not all, of our children. Where there are already classical schools, they exist in expensive zipcodes over in the Philly suburbs, an area which will remain economically off limits to us, rendering those schools inapproachable from a commuting perspective.

During the same time, living in NJ has proven to be economically challenging. To put it bluntly, I made a mistake when I purchased the house in which I currently reside. It is a money pit, and will continue to be, but it is also located in an area which neither of us sees as being beneficial from an economic and cultural perspective. Therefore, it is not to our benefit to invest any more funds into this house since we have no intention of staying there long term. We need to move just simply to lessen the impact of astronomically rising property taxes. Health insurance premiums, likewise, have been jumping to the tunes of 35% and 45% over the last few years. My cost of living increase will outstrip the raise I just received earlier this year thereby causing my economic well-being to go in reverse. The sick part about all of this - we live without most material luxuries -i.e. no TV service, very cheap computers and no new techy/gagdety things, no dining out except when on vacation/homecooked meals almost every day, relatively low electricity and gas utilization (my utility bills never break $100 except in the winter), strict gasoline consumption, relatively low credit card debt, no car payments and no need to get a new car until we absolutely have to, a strict food budget which is probably half of what most people with similar family size spend, no formula, no baby food, diaper usage kept in check, etc, etc, etc. Yet, just cutting down our cost of living to the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter and making an income which is nowhere near poverty level, we still are on track for serious hardship come 2011/2012 based on my current projections and recent trends. I keep track of every cent spent like a hawk (I'm an accountant), so I can say this with very firm confidence. Moving to NH will alleviate both the cost of housing issue and will give us a reasonable assurance that property taxes will only rise at very modest/normal rates of increase - believe me, I checked some towns' historical rates up there to be sure! Being able to live closer to work will also cut down on gasoline and eliminate the tolls I currently spend. But, very importantly, by living with my in-laws and divesting ourselves from our current house, we will have a rare opportunity to recharge ourselves financially, eliminate any remaining debts, and carefully and methodically buy another house which we will enjoy for the long term. This is why it is always good to have family around and never to live in isolation; when the time comes for us to do our part, we will be there for our children's material well being too. Such will not happen by staying in NJ.

For all the above reasons, we had already been tossing around the idea of relocating. We (mostly I) began to second guess our decision to move to NJ. All of sudden in the last week, a job opportunity popped up out of nowhere which instantaneously forced me to seriously consider it in light of the economic and educational challenges we are likely to face in the near future. Now, there is still no certain guarantee I will the job in New England due to some of the usual corporate red tape, but as it looks now, there's a 95% chance it will happen.


More to come during this time of possible transition...

Comm. Omnium Fidelium Defunctorum

Today is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, more colloquially known as All Souls' Day. All Souls’ Day this year is particularly fitting. This year alone, I have had sad privilege to attend three funerals, two of which were just in the last two weeks. All three deceased were people whom I knew fairly well in my earlier childhood but haven’t seen much over the last fifteen years.

The first was my great-uncle Danny, 82, my paternal grandfather’s youngest brother and last of the male children of his family to pass on. Uncle Danny was a devout Catholic all of his life but sadly succumbed, as so many of the pre-Vatican II generation, to the Novus Ordo mentality. No mention of Purgatory or prayers for his soul were to be found when he passed. His Mass card at the Funeral Home did not even have a religious picture on it. How sad!

The second to die this year was the Larry, 93, the father of my god-father. Not a blood relative, Larry and his family were close friends to ours well before and during my earlier lifetime. Just the same as with Uncle Danny, Larry was a devout Catholic, Knight of Columbus, and very well respected in the Catholic establishment of the section of the Bronx from which we all came. And just as with Uncle Danny, no mention of Purgatory, but at least his Mass Card was religious in nature.

Lastly, my Aunt Fortune, having battled a rare brain disease, succumbed to it at the age of 49. She was my Aunt by marriage to my Uncle Mike, my mother’s brother. Having been raised a good Catholic girl in and around the Tristate area of NYC, she (along with my uncle and cousin) moved to a small town in upstate NY well away from her social support. My mother’s family was never particularly devout, save for my great-grandmother, and the Catholic dioceses in upstate NY have had a long history of some of the worst liberal bishops. It is no wonder to me that Fortune found little support in the disastrous Albany Diocese and left the Church for the devoted and "doctrinally purer" Baptists. She died without the graces of Confession, Extreme Unction, and Holy Viaticum. Her funeral was a Baptist service in which she was essentially canonized and her body was cremated and not buried.

All three of these folks need our prayers. If they received the grace of God’s mercy and are in Purgatory, please pray for them.

Preparatio Anni Novi

I like to refer to the time following the Feast of Christ the King and the First Sunday of Advent as a preparation period for the new liturgical year. This week alone, being that Christ the King fell at its earliest possible date of Oct 25 leaving an entire week until All Saints, features a rare week of almost all Ferial Days with the exception of Wednesday for the Second Class Feast of Sts. Simon & Jude. Being that the liturgical calendar is so devoid of feasts in the interim (like the Novus Ordo is for 50 out of 52 weeks), I thought this would be a great week to establish some voluntary penitential observances (except on Wednesday) to be capped with the observance of the traditional fast and abstinence for the Vigil of All Saints (sadly suppressed as a liturgical observation in the 1955 excisions) and publicly sung First Vespers of All Saints at my church.

My wife jokingly calls what I am doing an "Anti-Octave" to which I responded, "There do exist penitential octaves of sorts (e.g. Sapientiatide from Dec 17 - Dec 24, Holy Week) even if they are not actually refered to as octaves." But I appreciate her humor since it was meant to convey that an Octave is usually understood as a joyful celebration of a feast for eight days; hence the term "Anti-Octave" to convey an eight day period of penance instead of feasting.

More about Vigils. Both Tuesday and Saturday of this week were traditional vigils, those of Sts. Simon & Jude and All Saints, respectively. Both were of the lowest rank (i.e. Simple) of vigils. In my personal restoration of certain elements of the older observances, I have reincorporated the liturgical observations of such vigils as fourth class vigils in praying the Office, drawing upon older Breviaries for the proper elements thereof.

Looking ahead, Advent is but five weeks away. The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions usually observe a six-week period for Advent as opposed to the four weeks in the West. Advent being my favorite liturgical season, I always lament its brevity. So, with this in mind and the Christ the King/All Saints interim "Octave" of penance, I thought I would gradually build up a preparatory period, a sort of "Septuagesima" to preceed Advent. All days of the fourth class between now and then will be penitential observances. Additionally, all weekdays, except any First and Second Class Feasts, will be penitential beginning the second week before Advent. I plan to do some extra spiritual reading, especially topics having to do with the practice of virtues and eschatological exegeses. I am really determined to eradicate ever more diligently the abomination which is the secular "Christmas" season, set to begin soon if not already, but such eradication begins by personal purification and penance to make reparation for the perversions of and/or lack of regard for our religious festivals.

A good friend of mine at my parish just began a men's group affiliated with the Miles Christi. I am not all that familiar with the Miles Christi, but the charism revolves around personal spiritual growth, theological and doctrinal discussions, and evangelization to the world at large. In short, it seems to be spiritually focused, as opposed to the more "secular" nature of other Catholic men's organizations. Having been to the first meeting, I feel recharged to some degree to dust off, proverbially, many of the spiritual ideals to which I had been more faithful back in my SSPX days. Now is a great time to refocus on spiritual growth because I am afraid that the laxity which I lament in general honestly starts with a lamentation in the mirror.

As the Epistle to the Romans from the First Sunday of Advent states, "Jam est tempus nos de somno surgere, dies autem appropinquavit, abjiciamus ergo opera tenebrarum...nunc salus nostra proprior quam cum credidimus..." Already it is time for us to rise from sleep...but the day has arrived, let us therefore cast off the works of darkness...for our salvation is nearer than when we believed...Now let us begin a personal advent in expecation of the season of Advent.

Vita Liturgica

It seems quite evident that my pastor has been drinking from the same well-spring I have concerning the Liturgical Ethos. He plans to discuss in his sermons over some period of time the concept of living the Liturgical Year and all the details which go into that necessary endeavor. Not to plagiarize or steal someone else's fire, but I had kind of planned to steer this blog along the same way. Be that as it may, I think I may "steal" some of what he has to say, giving credit to the proper source of course, as we go along.

So, I'll conclude this post with what I believe to have been his thesis statement during his 20 minute sermon yesterday, and I paraphrase, "We must have a Liturgical Spirituality in addition to and concurrent with a Devotional Spirituality". Think of what this means; for too long, and very much due to the persecution of Anglo-Irish Catholics who, in turn, dominated the Catholic hierarchy and culture in the US, devotionalism (e.g. the Rosary to the exclusion of praying the Mass, prayers to saints, any praying we do outside the context of Mass and the Office) has reigned supreme, and the sense of Liturgy in terms of spirituality and formal communal worship by which we order our lives has suffered. Now is a good time as any to restore the proper balance between the two, as both are good, but the Liturgy is the highest form of prayer.

Brevissima verba

I have a whole host of pressing topics about which to discuss, but I am still mulling through my thoughts. These are mostly of a liturgical nature, so stay tuned.

I did, however, want to briefly mention that we are now in the month of October (yes, John, thanks for stating the obvious); October is liturgically the month in which both books of Maccabees are read at Office of Matins each day. The passages contained therein never cease to interest me, and the parallels to the Hellenistic occupation of Israel compared to our present age is astounding. Would that we had the ideals, fortitude, and wherewithal to purge our society from its present evils, spiritual, mental, and physical, as did the holy Maccabees of old.

Lastly, I wanted to quickly mention that one of my Latin classes is a course in Ecclesiastical Latin. Not even when I went through a Latin regimen in the SSPX was there ever a Latin class specifically devoted to Church Latin; that was something you absorbed peripherally from going to Mass and the Office if you so chose to absorb it. So, I'm pretty excited about having my two, very bright students, start delving into the Vulgate and other Liturgical texts keeping the themes concurrent to the progression of the Liturgical Year. Hence, they have assignments this month to translate tracts from Maccabees and also from the Liturgy of Christ the King.

Compendium Parobolum de Rebus Scholasticis

To conclude my series of posts concerning anti-intellectualism, I want again to focus on our arguably most important task towards the eradication of anti-intellectualism, namely, the proper education of our children, especially those who will be the next generation of traditional Catholics.

Firstly, however, I shall sum up what I have written thus far concerning anti-intellectualism:

1. While it may have always been around, it was fostered, incubated, and projected onto society via the free reign of Protestantism in the US. Both the Quakers and Puritans contributed towards its dominance on this society, although the Puritans retained a more Catholic sense of scholastic endeavor.

2. The fledgling and mostly poor Catholic immigrants who came from some of the more intellectually astute Catholic countries of Europe largely integrated and assimilated into US culture, thereby absorbing anti-intellectual tendencies, most notably in how the Catholic Parochial School system did not endeavor (from an overall perspective) to foster the higher scholasticism of Catholic Europe, but were content to follow the same pattern (i.e. parallel) of the Protestant public schools in terms of their purpose and academic scope.

3. Catholics, to a significant extent nowadays, of both the modernist and traditionalist stripes, through little to no fault of their own, see little value in academic rigor just as long as the Catechism is learned (traditionalist) or the children are taught what they "need to know" for material well-being (modernist). This latter view is likewise shared by society at large via the public schools.

4. Modern education and "un-schooling" are two sides of the same anti-intellectual "coin". We need to recover the academic regimen of a classical Catholic scholasticism en masse.

5. Anti-intellectualism is manifested in many ways including dismissiveness of intellectual pursuits and trumping up only what is practical and necessary for everyday, mundane concerns.

6. 99% of Colleges no longer are centers of scholasticism. We should avoid them, except for true colleges which offer both a Catholic and truly scholastic pursuit. Catholics should, nevertheless, always strive toward higher learning throughout their entire lives, whether or not a formal college experience is available, and this holds true regardless of what we do to earn a living (i.e. the "Both And" philosophy).

With all these in mind, our children need to be BOTH reared in the knowledge and fear of the Lord AND classically educated via academic rigor. All of us have a vocation, be it religious or married or single. All of us have a Duty of State at any given point of our lives. Children who are still under the care of their parents and are not of the proper age to support themselves in life, are by definition, students, i.e. all children's Duty of State is to study, to learn and be properly educated. This last point has, sadly, not been known nor emphasized in recent years, but I would say the SSPX has done a great service in promoting this truth (the SSPX has taken great efforts to establish schools wherever they go).

Proper education prepares our children for whatever they may eventually be or do in life. There is a despicable error floating around by which some parents are hindering, actively or passively, their children for any academic achievement because the only important thing that they learn is how to perform domestic duties (i.e. girls are only going to be wives/mothers or nuns) or trades/practical skills (i.e. boys are only going to be husbands/fathers or priests). This is so wrong. Firstly, religious vocations in particular require scholastic endeavor; nuns and priests have to be teachers of the Faith. Secondly, it doesn't matter if our children grow up solely to be domestics with both parents working the land, proper education is still necessary. We do a great disservice, albeit a crime, if we as parents allow our children to remain ignorant and grow up to become what will be a Catholic under-class. No! We cannot let this happen. We need an educated class (if we are to speak in terms of class); we need a scholastic generation to keep, defend, and promote the Faith to future generations and to the growing population of pagans. We need an intellectual body to transform society away from its political and economic errors and to build a Catholic civilization. We need all these things. Both and.

Let us not artificially limit our children, we as a literate generation have a great opportunity to raise an even more literate and faithful generation. We have the opportunity to produce another generation with the likes of Sts. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Ambrose, Albert the Great, et. al. Let's do it. Let's eradicate this disease of anti-intellectualism. Let us, once and for all, drive a stake through the Protestant ethic of what is good only for the here and now, and let us recover a Catholic society, wherein the Church is vibrant and the culture is educated and Catholicized.

Doing all of these things we can realize the ideal of a true aristocracy. The Greek adjective aristoi means "the best"; hence, aristocracy means a rule by the best of a society. Rather than focusing on restoring an aristocracy in the political or economic sense (which is laudable too), we should foster a society wherein aristoi are truly present. We do not need wealth or privilege to be aristocratic; we need only a proper education readily available to all to build the Catholic civilization yet to come.