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BRIAN'S
TAKE…
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 This might be of interest to those who've been following my tortuous learning of a new programming language over the last few months. For those new to Catholica, for months now I've been busy learning a new program that will enable us in the future to do some even more exciting things here on Catholica. The immediate objective though was in the development of a new website for a musician friend and collaborator in the work Amanda and I are engaged in. At long last, I'm able to show what is almost the full fruit of the effort. Below you will see what is effectively an entire website. If you have a look through the entire thing you will effectively have downloaded about 20Mb of multi-media content. (You can view it all below and navigate to all parts of the website but if you really want to do that you might be better off going to the full-size version which you'll find at www.zoltan.com.au. The text size will be a bit small in ths scaled down image below.) 20Mb is the entire size of the hard disk on the first computer I used in 1987. Have we come a long way in 20 years? (Just out of interest, the total size of the Catholica website is now approaching 600Mb.) Making all that information appear as seamlessly, smoothly and in ways that engage the audience it is intended to serve is a huge effort and in turn I am indebted to the many largely anonymous individuals who have developed the computing language and coding that enable us to communicate in these exciting new ways. Ironically, after spending months of intensive effort learning the new code, I eventually found that it still has some bugs in it and so the final version of the website in fact has gone back to using a hybrid of the last generation of code and some of the new as, at this time, the older code is more stable and there are still some things the programmers are developing that are not yet available in the latest language. I provided a previous post in our forum (see: "The long gig...") where I wrote at length about the challenge this study endeavour was providing. The entire endeavour is now almost complete — I just have to add a few links and it will be online as the officlal website. (The version you see above is in fact not yet "the official site" but hopefully when the links are completed it will be "turned on" in the next 24 hours or so.) What's all this got to do with a "Catholic" website? For those who wonder what in the freak this must have to do with a "Catholic" website I'd just point out that the headline on the site announces that this month and next, Zoltan and Amanda (my wife and the co-publisher of Catholica) are busy in the studio recording 27 tracks — and it's basically all "Good News" music. That is as "connected" to Catholica and what I do as my fingers are to my wrist and as my wrist is to my arm and my arm to my brain and soul. I doubt that the Pope, if he was at all interested, would be unlikely to have a clue as to what this is all about, and neither would our neanderthal friends. We remain grateful though to "the people of vision" who do appreciate the value of this work and whose financial support has helped make it all possible. Will this be the music our children and our children's children are still singing in 20, 30, 40 or 100 years down the track? Who knows? The answer to that lies largely in the lap of God. Would those who funded those "renegades" and "sinners" like Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci have valued at the time the influence their "art" would have inspired in so many over such a long period in time? We all owe an enormous debt to the Medici's (and in many respects we are also in debt to that family of "sinners") and others who had the vision to financially support all those "artists" who, down through time, "put out into the deep" — the one's who take the risks and who are not prepared to "play the nerny, nerny games" of "look at how much more holy and obedient I am than all of youse heathen!". The "other side of the coin"…
Overnight I received a review copy of Stephen Utick's new book "Captain Charles – Engineer of Charity". It is the story of Charles Gordon O'Neill. He was the guy who effectively established the St Vincent de Paul charity in Australia and New Zealand. His life ended as a complete "failure". He literally "died a pauper" in the year Australia became a federation and a nation. You'll be hearing much more about Charles Gordon O'Neill and his story and this book in coming weeks. Our own colleague, Cliff Baxter, was one among many who was involved in some of the immense amount of research that went into this book and his work is acknowledged in the introduction. The story of Charles Gordon O'Neill in many ways cuts to the paradox of the Christian story and the Catholic story. Reading the lives of Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci one could be forgiven for having doubts that if they were alive today anyone would be brave enough to finance their art — such would the hoops they'd be asked to jump through to prove they were "orthodox" and paid up members of "the club" before they'd be allowed to put a single brush stroke to canvas — or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and other places where their works ended up being displayed. Charles O'Neill is the "other side of the coin". The risk that ultimately we all have to take as Christians and Catholics is that ultimately all of our work might seem completely in vain and without merit. History, not our contemporaries, and God is the ultimate judge of what in each of our lives has merit. It is a huge challenge to get one's head around this: in a sense, if we are true "followers of Christ", we have to be prepared to suffer our own crucifixion as Charles O'Neill did where his entire life ended in abject failure and he was forgotten and rejected by those whom he had helped. The difficult part of the lesson is that one cannot wallow in one's "misery and poverty" — actively seeking to be "unsuccessful", "crucified" or "poor" in the false expectation that it is our "lack of success", our "poverty", or our "crosses" which "prove" that we are Christ-like and worthy of salvation or resurrection. This is not a lesson one is likely to learn at any Hillsong-type Church. These days one finds it diffcult to even find anybody who preaches it in a Catholic Church. It is a lesson we need to get back to. Let us hope that Stephen Utick's new book, "Captain Charles — Engineer of Charity", might play a large part in getting the St Vincent de Paul Society "back on track" and also the entire Catholic Church back on the true track and away from these stupid, petty, "political games" of "Nerny, nerny, my God's bigger 'n your God and I'm more holy than you!" it has become embroiled in. This game has driven the vast majority in Western civilisation out the friggin' door. Isn't that "the game" the Pope is presently playing re-introducing this very divisive prayer regarding the Jewish people in the Easter liturgies of our Church? The St Vincent de Paul Society today does also need to guard against being taken down the road of "Corporate Catholicism" that is ultimately uncaring and totally disinterested in the needs of those whom it was set up to serve. The focus of "corporate religion", the focus of any "corporate enterprise", becomes serving the interests of "the priestly class", the bureaucrats, "the power brokers" and the people that is meant to be the focus of their attention get left out in the cold. Our bishops and cardinals also need to become more mindful of this. And get the freakin' message through to Benedict and "the power brokers, the old fuddy-duddys, the 'old women', and the bureaucrats in Rome" — if you have any self-respect whatsoever for what you are going to say to God when you meet him face-to-face and have to answer for the shambles that the religion you head has become at the beginning of the 21st Century.  BOOK LAUNCH:
We welcome your thoughts in response to this commentary in our forum. Brian Coyne can be contacted at: Brian Coyne <editor@catholica.com.au> ©2007 Brian Coyne |
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