That’s it. The end. For real and forever. Now that you know, how does it make you feel, exactly? As published in the journal Science, and summarized below by the BBC:

Astronomers used the way that light from distant stars was distorted by a huge galactic cluster known as Abell 1689 to work out the amount of dark energy in the cosmos.

Dark energy is a mysterious force that speeds up the expansion of the Universe.

Understanding the distribution of this force revealed that the likely fate of the Universe was to keep on expanding.

[...]

Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term “absolute zero”.

Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, a leading cosmologist and co-author of this study, said that the findings finally proved “exactly what the fate of the Universe will be”.

Hmmm. And how does Professor Natarajan feel about that, I wonder? She seems happy enough to be the messenger, and I suppose it is quite the feather in her cap.

You would think that this news about the ultimate fate of the Universe and everything that it has ever contained — including all of our lives, legacies and dreams — would be getting more attention, and indeed perhaps it will once it filters out through the rest of what’s going on in the headlines today, like the baseball player Roger Clemens being indicted for perjury and the salmonella-induced recall of 340 million eggs in the United States. [Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith, News by Sean Curnyn
15 Comments »

Those attending Christian churches this morning following the most common Lectionaries would, I think, have heard from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11 (KJV):

And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

Give us day by day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

[Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn
2 Comments »

Tom Jones’ new album is called Praise & Blame,and has a distinct tilt towards songs of faith, like What Good Am I?, Didn’t It Rain, and Lord Help the Poor and Needy. Now, an e-mail from the vice-president of Island Records, David Sharpe, has been leaked by someone, and it indicates some extreme displeasure with the Tom’s latest musical direction. From WalesOnline:

Mr Sharpe fumed to colleagues: “I have just listened to the album and want to know if this is some sick joke?”

[...]

[The e-mail] stated: “We did not invest a fortune in an established artist for him to deliver 12 tracks from the common book of prayer.

“This is certainly not what we paid for.”

Jones is not happy about this and is making his feelings clear.

“In the press it says that I’ve gone off and made something that the record company didn’t pay me for and that they don’t like it.

“People tell me that all publicity is good publicity, that’s what I’ve been told.

“People say to me ‘well it’s being talked about’, but to me it’s being talked about in a negative way.

“Hopefully, if there’s any good that comes out of it, it’s that people will wonder about [the new album]. But it isn’t the way I would handle it by going and making a stupid statement. That’s not going to help it.

“They’ve apologised, they can’t apologise enough – and they’ve said ‘we’ll make good on this’.”

Some people, perhaps including Tom Jones, are not entirely sure if this e-mail reflected Sharpe’s real opinions or if the leaking of it is in fact a kind of publicity stunt. However, I think we may mislead ourselves by assuming too much deviousness, when in fact Sharpe’s scathing response to Tom Jones’ gospel music is pretty much par for the course amongst record executives when one of their secular artists makes this kind of move.

It’s well established history how the execs at Columbia hated Bob Dylan’s gospel stuff, and went out of their way to bury Saved.(Some conspiracy theorists even suspect they sabotaged the mix on that record.) I’ve written in a different venue on how Paddy McAloon’s masterpiece Let’s Change the World With Musicwas dismissed, if not suppressed, by those in control of the purse strings at Sony in the U.K. back in 1992, reportedly because of discomfort with numerous references to the divine in the songs’ lyrics.

The only thing I wonder is this: In these cases, do the record company executives oppose songs of faith because they genuinely believe that kind of music won’t sell (in which case I think they’re grossly mistaken) or does the attitude come from a deep antipathy towards the very concept of belief in God?

Motivations tend to be messy, so what’s going on is probably a combination of the two, but I would not at all underestimate the latter cause.

I do note that it’s quite sad that an Englishman would refer to the venerable old Book of Common Prayer as the “common book of prayer.”

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn
1 Comment »

Above is just another breathtaking image from the Hubble Space Telescope, recently released. It is of a region called N11 of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The sciences of physics and astronomy tell us that what we’re looking at is a nursery of stars. (More images and more details are at this link.) Gases are being compressed and compacted here and nuclear fusion is sparking and bringing forth bright new spheres of light and energy which will shine for billions of years, like our own Sun. What planets might they light, what frozen or perhaps boiling vistas on strange and beautiful worlds that human eyes will never see?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers
the moon and stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

When I was younger, there was a very difficult-to-resolve conflict here. [Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn
1 Comment »

At First Things, Meghan Duke recounts and reflects upon her remarkable experience while visiting the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. last week. [Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith, Politics by Sean Curnyn
1 Comment »

This past Friday night I attended a memorial mass for Richard John Neuhaus at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, marking the one year anniversary of his passing. I’ve written before about the impact RJN had on me, primarily through his writings; in particular through his profound and classic book Death on a Friday Afternoon. Friday evening’s mass was beautifully done in every respect (including the music provided by the choir of New York’s Church of Notre Dame). The homily was given by Fr. George Rutler. And near the end of the mass, Fr. Benedict Groeschel shared some warm, humorous and poignant stories of Fr. Neuhaus. [Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn
No Comments »

There’s a book called “God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas”.One of the chapters in it was written by the late, great Richard John Neuhaus, and begins like this:

We are all searching, and ultimately — whether we know it or not — we are searching for God. Ultimately, we are searching for the Ultimate, and the Ultimate is God. It is not easy, searching for God, but maybe your reading this book is part of your own searching. The fact is that we do not really know what we’re looking for or who we’re looking for. Almost a thousand years ago, St. Anselm of Canterbury said, “God is that greater than which cannot be thought.” [Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn
1 Comment »

Oh, Jesus: if only You could sue. From the AP: NYC cabbie mistakenly beaten by good Samaritans.

Police said a cab driver who tried to take a purse from a woman fare beater was beaten by a group of good Samaritans who thought they were seeing a robbery. Police said it happened Saturday morning near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal when four woman[sic], who had been club-going, got into a fight with the cab driver over the fare. [Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn
No Comments »

Bishop Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, has been asked by President-elect Barack Obama to deliver an invocation at the Lincoln Memorial during a presidential inaugural [Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn
No Comments »

Andrew Sullivan claims a petard is about to be hoisted, in reference to a sermon recently given by the pastor of Governor Sarah Palin’s church, one Larry Kroon. Sullivan clearly believes that it is exactly equivalent to some of the controversial sermon remarks of Barack Obama’s pastor and mentor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright (remember, Obama named one of his memoirs from a phrase his pastor coined, and praised him enthusiastically until the day he threw him in the garbage). [Read more →]

From section: Commentary, Faith, Politics by Sean Curnyn
No Comments »