HAPPY YEAR OF THE DOG | Good Luck Year, But Not for Trump

Happy Chinese New Year!

It will be the Year of the Dog in the zodiac calendar. It is the Year of the Earth Dog. (The twelve years of the zodiac cycle within a larger 48-year cycle governed by the four ancient elements, fire, water, earth, air, similar to the length of the Kondratiev cycle.)

This can be a lucky year, because the dog is loyal. But it is an unlucky year for those born in a prior Year of the Dog.

Donald Trump was born in such a prior year, 1946 (he, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were born within three months of each other).

Those who take the feng shui of the zodiac calendar seriously are predicting that Trump will have bad luck in this year, from February 16, 2018 through the beginning of the next year in February 2019, which will start the year of the pig.

SHORT FATWA | Male Hygiene

Wudu, purification by water. A
ritual in many religions.

As someone raised with religious ritual in Catholic schools and monasteries, I am endlessly curious about religious practices.  

When Kim Jong-un reacted negatively to an insult by President Trump, I wondered whether his hex should be considered a short fatwa in the Islamic religion.

On Google, the words "Short Fatwa" take you to an Islamic Forum. A short fatwa is a brief piece of guidance online, a teaching tweet, helpful but not a substitute for a longer fatwa from an Imam. A perennial issue in the Islamic Forum is cleanliness, or what based on the ancient Greeks would be called hygiene, after Hygieia (Ὑγιεία), the goddess of health and cleanliness, and daughter [sometimes wife] of Asklepios or the Romanized Asclepius, the god of medicine. (Her symbol was a large tamed snake, sometimes with a basin of water. The symbol of Asclepius is a single snake spiraling a rod; a rod with two snakes is the caduceus, symbol for the god Hermes or the Roman Mercury.)

One religious young man wrote an inquiry to the Islamic Forum that caught my eye. It addressed post-urination dribble. Does a single stray drop make one unclean and therefore unready for prayer? This is a strict standard, showing the young man's great devotion. Here is the Forum writer's short-fatwa response:

"I remember someone once asking our Imam in the Masjid [mosque] about it. This is not a fatwa [ruling on Islamic law from an authority], just some practical advice. The Imam said that if you always have this problem, which according to him is quite common these days, then what you can do is, after you have finished urinating:

• Stay seated for a few moments. 

• Then cough a few times which should help get rid of last few drops. 

• Then he said to take some tissue roll and place it in your boxer shorts and walk about doing your normal stuff. While you walk about and are doing your own stuff any last drops will be rid of. 

• Then go back and perform wudu [purification] after washing the private parts. This is a safe way in making sure that none of the drops, if any, would fall on your clothes, and [thereby] keeping your tahara [ritual purification].

"There was an Imam who actually used to spend like up to half an hour when he would go to relieve himself and the only reason was to be careful of this issue. It was his taqwa [fear of God, spirituality, faithfulness to the law] that caused him to be absolutely certain that he was in a pure state. So he would wait around after relieving himself in the masjid bathroom and then do wudu quite a while later."

CALUMNY | What Are Its Antonyms?

The Junior House, Ampleforth College, York,
England, c. 1954. I am Second-Hand Rose—
 second row, second from the left.

July 11, 2017—J. K. Rowling earlier this month took President Trump to task for his CNN tweet with the wrestling video.

She quoted George Washington: "To persevere in one's duty, and keep silent, is the best answer to calumny."

That has spurred new interest in the obsolescing word calumny.

It brought back to me one of the very fine talks that Fr. Peter Utley (Richard Utley in his pre-monastic life) gave to his Junior House flock at Ampleforth College, which I attended in 1953-1955.

Fr. Peter devoted an entire talk to the subject of detraction and calumny. The somewhat obsolete word calumny (the preferred word for a civil complaint about slander today would be "defamation") is the subject of many a Catholic homily, because it describes the eighth commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness against Thy Neighbor." A sample of Biblical references to calumny may be found here.

Fr. Peter was an impressive monk, who played cricket for the RAF and exemplified the British Public School model of Muscular Christianity. What I found memorable about his talk on calumny was that it was so analytical about the word. Calumny is actually two offenses wrapped into one.

Fr. Peter did not just contrast calumny with speaking well of people, which is what you will find if you look up "calumny antonym" on the internet. He did not present calumny as a choice between speaking well of people vs. telling lies about them.

No, he presented two dualities:

• Speaking well of people vs. speaking ill of them. 
• Telling the truth vs. telling lies.

Calumny is two sins, he said. Detraction is saying negative things about someone for no reason. Calumny goes beyond that to add lying. Fr. Peter said that Christianity brought a higher standard than the eighth commandment. It was not enough to avoid lying about one's neighbor. We should also not engage in spreading negative truths about people.

One defense against libel (bearing false witness in writing) and slander (bearing false witness orally) is that the negative information is true. Fr. Peter would say that true negative statements are still wrong if they are made out of revenge, or envy or just maliciousness. Detractors seek lower someone else's reputation for no reason.

Fr. Peter made exceptions for people whose job it is to make comparisons, such as teachers grading their pupils. That includes all of us in the marketplace as we seek a service provider. The relative quality of the goods or services being provided is of importance and we can share our experience blamelessly because we are trying to help someone make a purchase. In the marketplace, comparing one's own product favorably to that of the competition is part of conducting business. But in one's personal life, we are expected to show restraint.

That's what I remember. It was a good lesson, for our understanding of our language and of our lives.