This post is a round-up of tools and tidbits that have been useful to me over the last four years of formation. If you are in discernment for the diaconate or in the midst of aspirancy, some of these things might be useful to you. Diocesan programs can obviously vary from place to place.

If your formation program includes access to a library - especially a seminary library - take the time to become familiar with the various databases available for access. Many times, things that are not available in one database are actually sitting in another one. Some of them will give you online access to complete books, though the path to getting there might not be immediately obvious. My first go-tos tended to be Atla, JSTOR, IxTheo, and the Oxford eBook collection, but access and mileage varies according to your particular institution.

We had a “get acquainted” session with the librarian at one point early on, but I don’t think I really got the hang of online research until I was in my third year. Our librarians can also get scans of physical texts if they’re in the holdings but not online and can usually turn around requests very quickly.

Familiarize yourself with any in-house style guides. The individual instructors will tell you in their syllabi what, if any, formatting expectations they have, but it’s very good to know what the institution expects as well. St. Meinrad’s in-house guide is largely based on Turabian, with some important deviations peculiar to theological texts, biblical citations, magisterial documents, and primary sources. In some cases, they defer to the style guide used by Liturgical Press (abbreviations and so forth). Refer to these guides early and often as you’re writing, particularly anything around citations. Get used to doing things according to the institution’s way, and life will be easier.

If it’s been several years since you’ve been in school (and who among us, amirite), find a blank MLA template for Word (or LibreWriter) and use it for all your short-form stuff. If you’re a weirdo, you can find MLA templates in LaTeX. I nearly wrote my closure papers in LaTeX, but I couldn’t work out some tiny quirk with footnote formatting, so I dropped back to LibreWriter

For formal papers, getting a handle on citations is a must. There will be lots of them, and I found Zotero invaluable. If you’re familiar with Mendeley, you should be able to pick up Zotero pretty quickly, and the price is right: it’s free. Both are databases for tracking research sources. You can annotate PDFs in Zotero, which connects to Word and LibreWriter for inserting citations and auto-generating bibliographies. Once you get the workflow down, using it is a breeze. I have saved almost everything I’ve read for school (as well as all the books I’ve bought) in my Zotero database.

Grammarly has been invaluable in correcting some bad habits. I have also used Claude to review papers for flow and structure. A prompt I used recently went something like this and turned out to be very useful in tightening up a few things.

This essay is for a masters-level theology course I am completing as part of my preparation for ordination to the diaconate. I would like suggestions regarding structure, flow, and any minor grammatical or spelling errors. I want to leave the text as intact as possible, so please do not suggest substantive changes beyond structural/organizational, or the grammar errors I have already mentioned. If you have other suggestions beyond what I have specified, inquire first before showing them to me so that I can opt to decline seeing them.

Quizlets are useful for generating flash-cards and practice tests. Basic, limited access is free. We also used Google Docs to collaborate on study guides for tests.

If you need to suss out a piece of music real quick, but can’t read sheet music well, Sheet Music Scanner might be worth a look. Take a picture of the music, give it a second, and it plays it back to you. This has been especially useful for the weekends when I get assigned as cantor for mass.

Happy Memorial of St. Nicholas, who allegedly decked Arius' halls at the Council of Nicaea.

One of the papers I wrote for my closure project was an analysis of City of God as a template for the modern apologist. Augustine didn’t mount a courtroom-style defense of the faith like Justin Martyr, nor did he use the language of statesmen like Tertullian. Instead, he met pagan arguments on their own terms, without appealing to external authority. In fact, the authority he quotes most often is Varro, who tried (and generally seems to have failed) to systematize pagan belief.

The lesson for the modern apologist, I think, is to survey the landscape around us like shipwreck survivors and make use of the things lying around the shore. It’s almost a commonplace these days that the world is slowly careening into the darkness of a post-Christian era. You’re either lost to the zeitgeist or hunkered down as part of a vital remnant. I’m not sure that either of these views is particularly useful. The deep yearning for the transcendent hasn’t gone anywhere, and neither have the urges to worship or at least make use of the forms of worship and ritual (see Charles Taylor). This ought to give us tremendous hope and optimism as evangelists and apologists. An alternative to the immanent frame will have to be proposed from the highways and hedgerows, not the doorways of the narthex (see James Shea).

Just asked Claude for book recommendations based on things I’ve enjoyed in the weird/magic realism genre…this is what it came back with:

1. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
2. Little, Big by John Crowley
3. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz
4. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
5. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño

We got our grades back for the last exam, and I’m satisfied with mine, so I’ll pass on the corrections opportunity offered by our instructor. All that remains is a pair of essays; he sent the prompts for those just now. Those aren’t due until early January, but I’ll probably start working on them this week. S̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ w̶a̶i̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ o̶n̶ g̶r̶a̶d̶e̶s̶ f̶o̶r̶ m̶y̶ b̶i̶g̶ p̶a̶p̶e̶r̶s̶.

[update: they came in, and I crushed them]

In other news, we came through Thanksgiving weekend just fine. It may snow a little tonight, but nothing dramatic. Looking forward to some time off again later this month and closing the (calendar) year out.

My formation cohort is about a year away from ordination, and we all seem to be hitting the ‘ready to be done with academic work’ wall about now. At the same time, it’s clear to me that once all of the school overhead has cleared away, I’ll need to come up with some other self-directed plan for continued (but lighter) study and hopefully more leisure reading. I’d like to go back and dip into a few things we touched on over the past few years - books that were required but from which we only read selections, that sort of thing. First test will come this spring - we have some travel planned, and by then, everything should be wrapped up and done. Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer is at the top of the list for certain.

Currently reading: The Once and Future King by T. H. White 📚

Turkey: seasoned. Grill: cleaned out. Served at mass this morning then took care of some year-end admin stuff for work. Everyone seems to be laying low, as it should be. Another wave of cooking will start later. Tomorrow morning is the Turkey Trot, followed by food & football. God bless you all!

Another formation weekend is behind us, and all that remains of Trinity and Salvation are a couple of papers to submit sometime before the end of December. Plenty to think about, especially the stuff on eschatology.

Our next class is a Liturgical Practicum, and the various rituals have been sitting here for a while now. We just need to review all the praenotandae and any general instructions beforehand. The final for that one will be to record an instructional video on some facet of what we’re studying, which will wrap up the semester. Looking ahead, our final semester will be Moral Theology and Canon Law, two weekends apiece.

This past weekend was one of our potluck sessions. One weekend per semester, our families join us for Sunday mass, bring a covered dish, and then we all get together and eat. It’s all great fun, and for our kids, it’s one of the highlights of the year. I came home from that, lazed on the couch a little, dipped into Four Quartets, napped, and watched football. Grandkids and in-laws rolled in a bit later and a good time was had by all.

Georgia won yesterday, so life is good. Regarding pro teams, I’m kind of non-committal. I’ll watch whoever is on. The kids root for the Titans, which makes sense, and the Vols, which does not. My wife and I both went to Georgia. None of the kids go to UT, though several go to MTSU, which is having a dismal season as usual. We were a house divided when the Dawgs ran roughshod over Tennessee last weekend.

So this morning, for the first time, I preached (or more accurately, ‘delivered a reflection’). It went well and I avoided heresy. Got several compliments and good feedback from Fr. Last night at OCIA we discussed the liturgical calendar and I went way too deep on the dating of Christmas.

I spent last week in Las Vegas for work. The event was fine, but I’m not big on the whole hotel/casino/resort thing. I get it: the business is gambling, and all things are ordered to it, but that means there’s nowhere to chill inside without betting on something. I get it; just don’t like it. 2/10.

The forgiveness of particular venial sins comes about only through an act of fervor in the charity already possessed habitually. Aquinas rightly points out that this movement of contrition does not always occur. He writes, “it can happen that after someone has committed a venial sin, he will not actually think anything about abandoning the sin or holding to it, but he thinks perhaps that a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles; and in this thought he falls asleep and dies.“²⁷ Obviously, according to Aquinas’s argument, this geometer has not yet been forgiven for his sin. The guilt remains. Nevertheless, because he maintained the love of God, he would ultimately still be destined for the beatific vision.

— Fr. Luke Wilgenbusch, Saved as Through Fire: A Thomistic Account of Purgatory, Temporal Punishment, and Satisfaction

The clear takeaway is that excessive, habitual thoughts about math are not necessarily good for your soul. The footnote references Aquinas’s commentary on the Sentences, lib. 4, dist. 21, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 1: “Potest autem quod aliquis postquam veniale peccatum commisit, nihil actualiter cogitet de peccato vel dimittendo vel tenendo; sed cogitet forte quod triangulus habet tres angulos aequales duobus rectis; et in hac cogitatione obdormiat, et moriatur.”

Christian life on earth is eternal life already begun. Sanctifying grace and charity endure eternally. St. John of the Cross speaks thus: “In the evening of our life we shall be judged by our love for God and neighbor.”

— Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

Tiny nest. Hummingbird, maybe? I found it in the grass under one of our trees.

Un nidito (posiblemente de un colibrí) que encontré abajo de nuestros arboles.

Estoy empezando a soña en español como era joven y estudiante en la universidad. A veces practico en mente, describiendo cosas o conceptos teologicós, y por eso puedo contestar cuando hay preguntas sobre, por ejemplo, las ultimas cosas (el juzgo particular, etc). Esto pasó anoche en OCIA cuando terminamos la clase. Las otras catequistas ya saben que estoy preparando con estudios formales y frecuentemente refirén a mi las preguntas difíciles o complicadas. Bueno - aqui puedo tambien practicar como escribir (y lo siento si me falta acentos o otras marcas - no he configurado los caracteres…corto y pego desde otra terminal).

I subscribed to the paid version of Claude and want to give it a run for a bit. So far I like it. I had it review some stuff I had written and it came up with some pretty good suggestions and (probably not accidentally) a couple of compliments. Grist for the mill, so to speak. One thing I appreciate is the disclosure straight out of the gate that it won’t try to give precise citations (“which question in the Summa addresses XYZ,” for example). For larger, complicated issues it seems to do a pretty good job of breaking them down and some occasional serviceable synthesis of ideas.

I pasted the full text of a Wikipedia article that I was having some trouble parsing. It confirmed my unspoken hunch about some bias and provided what I thought to be an ample theological response.

In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity. No algorithm will ever be able to capture, for example, the nostalgia that all of us feel, whatever our age, and wherever we live, when we recall how we first used a fork to seal the edges of the pies that we helped our mothers or grandmothers to make at home. It was a moment of culinary apprenticeship, somewhere between child-play and adulthood, when we first felt responsible for working and helping one another. Along with the fork, I could also mention thousands of other little things that are a precious part of everyone’s life: a smile we elicited by telling a joke, a picture we sketched in the light of a window, the first game of soccer we played with a rag ball, the worms we collected in a shoebox, a flower we pressed in the pages of a book, our concern for a fledgling bird fallen from its nest, a wish we made in plucking a daisy. All these little things, ordinary in themselves yet extraordinary for us, can never be captured by algorithms. The fork, the joke, the window, the ball, the shoebox, the book, the bird, the flower: all of these live on as precious memories “kept” deep in our heart.

This profound core, present in every man and woman, is not that of the soul, but of the entire person in his or her unique psychosomatic identity. Everything finds its unity in the heart, which can be the dwelling-place of love in all its spiritual, psychic and even physical dimensions. In a word, if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved.

Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Dilexit Nos, par. 20-21

Class this weekend was good; I’ve summarized it below. iykyk.

I was not expecting a Herman Hesse reference in tonight’s reading.

Then came October full of merry glee:
For, yet his noule was totty of the must,
Which he was treading in the wine-fats see,
And of the ioyous oyle, whose gentle gust
Made him so frollick and so full of lust:
Vpon a dreadfull Scorpion he did ride,
The same which by Dianaes doom vniust
Slew great Orion: and eeke by his side
He had his ploughing share, and coulter ready tyde.

We are in the maddening time of the year when the outside looks like fall but feels like summer. The leaves are changing, there’s been frost in the morning but we’re still getting into the 80s during the day. I’ll rue these words come February, but I need autumn and winter to step on it.

Speaking of dreadfull Scorpions and the like, I noticed on Seek that Joro spiders have a couple of spots in Tennessee now, near Chattanooga and in a few other locations well to the west and east of here. This does not please me. I had been hearing about them from my folks in Atlanta for a while and got a chance to see them up close when I was down there a couple of weeks ago. I’m a live-and-let-live sort of person as regards spiders and whatnot, but these things are gross, and their webs are disgusting. I have not spotted any in our yard yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Papers submitted. They’re out of my hands and commended to Almighty God and the instructors who will grade them. I will use my remaining brain cells to finish Gilles Emery’s books on the Trinity before class in a couple of weeks. I’m still on my long Borges kick and am revisiting the short stories in English but occasionally bouncing back to the Spanish versions too. Not sure what I’ll look at next, to be totally honest. The end of our formal studies is slowly coming into view, which means reading and study will return to (mostly) self-directed, though likely along three parallel tracks: leisure, ministerial/study, and spiritual. Speaking of:

Chautard on the interior life was exactly what I needed, and I recommend it to anyone else who is looking for the how and why of developing a habit of contemplative prayer. My spiritual director seems to be a fan of French spirituality; prior to Chautard, he had me reading Frances De Sales and Jacques Phillipe. Something about Chautard reminds me of Evagrius, though I’m unsure why. I think it’s the close association he makes between contemplative prayer and active charity and the absolute necessity of the former to carry out the latter. In any event, my morning prayer routine looks something like this:

1. Office of Readings
2. Morning Prayer
3. Spiritual reading 5-10 minutes
4. Contemplative prayer, 20 minutes
5. Final prayer of thanksgiving and intent before wandering over to the office

I recently increased the time for contemplative prayer from 15 to 20 minutes; my goal is to get to 30, and I don’t think it will be terribly difficult. I use a timer to make myself accountable - originally to keep from quitting too soon. Now it serves to make sure I don’t stay in the chair too long! I can maintain this schedule just about every day of the week, though parts occasionally shift around if I’m serving mass early or, to be frank, feeling lazy on Saturday morning.

No nerd news for now. With a little more in the way of spare time I may start dipping back into radio stuff. I also promised myself a new game for the wintertime once schoolwork was done. I was weighing Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress and am leaning towards Rimworld right now. It seems easier to dip in and out of, and an online friend of mine who has played both agrees. I’m going to lay Factorio aside for now, though the new space expansion looks absolutely fantastic.

Currently reading: Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges 📚. Bouncing back and forth between English and Spanish versions for language practice.

All three papers for my concluding exercise are done and in the can! I am well ahead of the 11/14 deadline and may peruse them one last time, but I’m generally satisfied with them. I feel so Augustinian at the moment I can’t even describe it.

Katydid