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Friday, January 31, 2003
Andrew Sullivan Demonstrates "Flexibility" When It Comes to the Pole Star Around Which His Life Turns Turns out there's no problem at all with a US Court dictating to Catholics on theological matters and suspending the law to do so, just so long as the Court is declaring that gays can do whatever they like. First amendment? That's for commoners, not gays. They can use the courts to dictate the theology of any Christian body that hurts their widdle feelings. News bulletin for Sullivan: The Eucharist is not a civil right. Amy has a terrific contribution to the ongoing discussion here In particular, her cogent analysis of the Dark Side of Wick Allison's confrontation with Grahmann is well taken. There *is* a note of "We made you and we can break you" which can just as easily be seen as a number of Rich Men seeking to rule the Church as a confrontation between a good layman and a bad bishop. I'm not saying Allison is a rich man who seeks to make the Church his investment or plaything. I am saying, however, that we are never more in danger than when we are right. It blinds us to our own fallenness. Citizen Kane started out as a zealous reformer. He ends as a cynical manipulator and Power Player. Fr. Rob Johansen's Hat is "ThrownBack" in to St. Blog's Ring After four months off the air, he's back. Now all we need is Fr. Bryce Sibley's Saintly Salmagundi to return to the air and St. Blog's will have its clerical staff back. Caesar tries to tell the Church who can receive communion Oh sure, they're guilty as charged. But the judge needed be the Voice of the Faithful so the law was dispensed with in order for Caesar to meddle in matters of theology. I wonder if the ACLU will protest? Shrill Harridans Sport New Novelty Act Lickspittle puff piece on the latest bit of freakishness from deep space feminism. Yes, there is something so exquisitely suburban and self-satisfied about it, isn't there? A reader writes below: I'm trying to convince my wife to let me go to the St. Joan of Arc's "Aloha and Peace" thing in Hawaii. I'm not a Catholic, mind you, and I'm pro-Iraq war, and I'm not a raving liberal nutbar, but, gosh, it's Hawaii, and I'm all for that. That must be tough pilgrimage, doing anti-war rallying in Hawaii in the middle of winter. Proposed St. Joan improvement to the liturgy: "May She Who Is accept this sacrifice at our hands, for the praise and glory of our name. For our self-satisfaction and the smugness of all our fellow suburbanites." Defending vs. Explaining I keep getting the sensation that when I *explain* what I think the Pope is up to in his actions toward our bishops, people think I am necessarily *defending* his prudential judgments. "But Mark! What about this and that and the other thing?" Please understand. You can plead with me all you like, but I'm not the guy making the decisions here. As I've already said, there are a number of bishops who, if it were up to me, would be gone. It's not up to me. It's up to the Holy Father. Since it is up to the Holy Father, I figure the best thing I can do is try to educate myself (and others) on why he acts the way he does and what informs his thinking. I figure this because I have a basic conviction that the prudent thing to do is to always have a grasp of the world as it actually is, rather than of some fantasy world. So, for instance, when Rod complains below of how Rome's actions will *look* to people, I naturally grant that, of course, they will look that way. And I can do nothing about that. What I *can* do is ask, "Okay. Rome's actions *look* like the Pope doesn't care. But is that really the case? Does anything we know of the Holy Father actually suggest that he does not care?" And of course, nothing that I know of does suggest this. So I'm forced to ask "What then *does* account for his actions?" and the answer I come up with is what I have already discussed. It is an entirely separate question whether I think his Tradition-based prudential judgment is going to actually work and is, in all situations, the best. In fact, I am skeptical of this, at least in some cases. But, as I said before, given his track record in facing down other colossal evils, I'm willing to suppose the Holy Spirit is guiding him in ways I don't necessarily grasp. One final thing: I don't buy the "Children are still in peril!!!!" line that goes with the complaint about leaving the Demonstrable Idiots in office. Priests may well be in danger (from bishops ready to perform human sacrifice on them at the drop of a miter). But I am highly skeptical that there will be a repeat performance of the past 20 years. There will, of course, be future cases of abuse. But the climate has altogether changed. A supercharged laity and unintimidated media and state will pound the living hell out of a cleric and his bishop in future, should abuse and coverup happen. And I doubt the coverup is likely. Irresponsible bishops are now much more likely to dump on their priests over flimsy accusations than to dump on victims for real ones. Note the resounding successes of McCormack when he tried to live on a business-as-usual basis in NH by sticking some gay priest into a parish and had whole congregations screaming at him. Note the happy situation in Dallas and the docile sheep like Wick Allison. It won't be business as usual anymore. No. What seems to me to be the real objection is not that children are in danger but that there is One Proper Punishment for Demonstrable Idiots and One Only and that the Pope, failing to administer this, is failing to administer punishment. My contention is that the Pope is administering punishment but (as is characteristic for him) punishment with an eye to redemption and healing, not just for the idiot bishop, but for the culture that produced him and which he reflects. This is a Pope who believes in the possibility of radical redemption. Again, I say this, not because I think this desperate attempt at remedy is going to work, but because I believe it to be essential that we understand the Pope's thinking if we are to navigate in the real world as it actually is and not in some fantasy world. Attempts to analyze the situation which begin, "The Pope, in his cold autocratic and monarchical indifference..." or "The Pope, hopelessly senile and drooling on his throne..." or "The Pope, secretly desiring to micromanage the American Church..." or "The Pope, egomaniacally seeking to fend off all challenges to his reputation as St. John Paul the Great..." are all attempts to navigate from false premises. We should at least begin our thinking by knowing how the Pope thinks, if only so we can argue a different strategy more effectively. A reader writes: I don't know how much of the conversation you were following in the comment box that followed your praise of Bush's call for an end to partial-birth abortion. I was one of the three commentors, and was inexplicably attacked by both the atheist and the pro-life advocate in trying to articulate why an end to abortion is unlikely to occur in the current legal arena. I'll leave it to you other amateur law scholars to hash this out. Thursday, January 30, 2003
Rod asks a good question down below and I think I'd like to blog my response ...since I think I'm safe in saying that my take on what the Pope is up to compelling our hapless bench of bishop to stay is definitely a minority--and unpopular--opinion with many of my readers. Rod asks: I do wonder, though, what would have to happen for you to change your mind, and to see the Pope's strategy as a matter of a serious failure to govern the Church properly, period. I s'pose I'd have to have a better grasp of ecclesiology to answer that with certainty. As it stands, certain common sense things come to mind of course. If JPII did what Law did, for instance, and deliberately a) endangered children while b) lying to parents about it and c) putting the squeeze on witnesses to shut up, I'd call that bad governance. Likewise, if he deliberately had let O'Connell stay on, endangering kids, that would have been a clear act of bad governance, I think. What I see with JPII is a deliberate (though counter-intuitive, as he frequently is) attempt to live according to the Tradition, particularly the theology of the Cross and the Church's teaching on the grace of ordination, born out of a deep conviction that *only* fidelity to the Tradition and not secular templates, whether "conservative" or "liberal" hold any hope for the authentic restoration of the Church. Given his track record in asserting the Tradition against eastern forms of secularism a decade and a half ago, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here, while recalling all the while that we are talking about prudential judgments and not doctrine. Maybe he's making a bad call here. Humans make mistakes and this is a tough call. What I will *never* believe is that he is being deliberately irresponsible. It's not in the man. In reviewing the above, I realize that you spoke, not of hypothetical bad things the Pope *might* do, but of his "strategy" (i.e., what he is doing). I should have addressed that better. I think only time can tell whether his current strategy will pay off. The reality has always been that the Pope is not, for a large number of reasons, in a position to fire a huge number of bishops. It would, as I have already pointed out, been an exercise of papal power that would make Hildebrand blush and this Pope is not a Hildebrand but a Pope of the Second Vatican Council and the author of Ut Unum Sint. The "stroke of a pen" to get rid of "legions of bad bishops" was never gonna happen and *could* never happen given John Paul's view (a correct view, I think) of his relation to his brother bishops. Myriad problems arise from such a seemingly simple solution ranging from "Why assume the replacements will be better?" to "Kiss reconciliation with the Eastern Church goodbye" to "Who the hell does the Pope think he is writing Ut Unum Sint and then acting like the autocratic King of the Church?" Further, of course, is the problem I've mentioned in the past: the fact that it's not, in the Pope's view, just a problem with the clergy, but a deep deep problem in American culture that needs to be addressed. We are one sick bunch of puppies, as an evening's worth of television will establish beyond reasonable doubt. I remind you again of the lawyer for Shanley's victims who said of Shanley, "If he weren't a damned pervert, he'd be my hero." That the tortured state of American Catholicism and a bishopectomy won't fix that. So if he can't can large numbers of the "hapless bench of bishops" and "fix it" what can he do? Well, it seems to me that he's stuck doing what it appears to me he's trying to do: steer the American (and, really, the English-speaking Church) toward the way of the cross and a corporate struggle for renewal. I think, by the way, that in doing this he's agreeing to do his own cross-embracing in the form of the inevitable blame and hostility he'll get for "not acting" etc. etc. Some of the "Destroy them all!" Brigade reserve their special hatred for him. That too, is part of the cross. But as I consider the matter, I am compelled to agree that it appears the only way out is through the cross, not around it. So through we must go. How it will all work out I don't know. I don't even know *that* it will work out. Failure is part of life and maybe JPII will fail here. He's not guaranteed success and neither are we. What failure would look like would be, I suppose, something like Grahmanns and McCormacks becoming more numerous, more whiny, more arrogant, and more clueless rather than the opposite. The main test of *complete* failure would be a repeat performance, not of clerical abuse (that will happen till the end of time because priests are sinners) but of yet another complex of coverups, intimidation and the failure of episcopal oversight that was the real heart of the crisis. And that's something that we can't evaluate for several years at the minimum. But whether he fails or not (and the results will not be known in his lifetime), I think he's trying extremely hard to do right by the Tradition (which means he is also trying very hard to do right by victims, betrayed sheep, the mercy and justice of God for wicked shepherds, and most of all, by Our Lord). I think one of the most tragic things about this time in our history is that to say that is to invite catcalls of "papalotry" from some of my readers, as though the presumption of good will in the absence of any evidence to the contrary is a sin or an act of lickspittle obsequiousness. For these, it doesn't matter that I have expressed real disagreement with the Holy Father on certain prudential judgments. It doesn't even matter that, if it were up to me, there are certain bishops who'd be outta there long ago. No, for those who loathe him, I must condemn JPII as personally wicked and morally corrupt or I'm a "papalotor" who never ever ever admits the Pope is wrong about anything ever. Nonetheless, though I disagree with him on several prudential judgments, I will not accuse the Pope of being a wicked man because I believe from the bottom of my heart that he is a very good and very great man. I know you agree with this assessment of his character, Rod, because you've said it yourself. I hope some of my more rabid readers will rethink their loathing of JPII and thank God for the gift of his pontificate. He's in a tough spot, trying to deal with the catastrophe the American Church dealt him. I don't know if his approach will work, but I have no doubt whatever that he is trying to do what God wills. A reasonable complaint Disputations takes issue both with this blog and with Wick Allison for pointing out that Bp. Grahmann and other bishops such as Bp. McCormack are, in my opinion, lousy bishops who have badly betrayed their flock and who give little evidence that they see very far beyond how much this inconveniences them. My reasons for pointing out their miscreancy has to do with what I think the purpose of the Holy Father is in leaving them in office. As I have maintained all along, this policy is not passive, it is active. The Holy Father takes seriously the theology of the cross and the theology of Holy Orders, including the grace of ordination which enables schleps to become pastors. Rather than deal with the problem of the American Church according to secular templates dictated by Bill Gates (Defective part? Replace it with a shiny new part from the factory!) the Pope has very deliberately opted to compel bad bishops to sit in the midst of the mess they have created, embrace the cross, and let the grace of ordination (finally) begin to make shepherds out of them (and perhaps save their souls). This is always a dicey proposition but I think JPII sees no way out but through. It involves, as I have pointed out, the reality that the flock will also have to embrace the cross (something Americans dislike since what could *possibly* be sick or deranged about our culture? No, it's all just the bishop's problem!). It's also dicey because, of course, there's always the chance a bishop will simply refuse to embrace the cross and go on looking for way to shift responsibility. When a bishop does this (such as McCormack or Keeler or, I think, Grahmann) I think it's the duty of the laity to tell the bishop that he's being a bad shepherd and to make life uncomfortable for him. It seems to me that, if it is truly the purpose of the Pope to compel the bishops to face the people they have hurt and betrayed, then it is the duty of the betrayed to speak clearly to those bishops about just how they have (and in some cases, continue to) hurt us by their lousy fidelity to their office. I am not, I think, a member of the "Destroy them all!" brigade that appear to infest some comments boxes. I reject the impulse of some I see in cyberspace to be as cynical as possible about everything a bishop says or does and to assume, at all times, the worst about them. God knows I am a sinner and I want people to hope for me, not constantly say, "You loser! There's no hope for you!" Likewise, I want holy bishops and I think I've been willing (and desire to continue) to give bishops the benefit of the doubt. Heck, I even went to bat for Law when he was doing his duty and articulating the bishop's misgivings about war and everybody else was spitting on him. But I also want people to tell me when I'm full of crap because I know my sins blind me as well as kill me. So I see no good reason to affirm McCormack or Grahmann in their okayness when they still do not seem to be grasping the gravity of what they have done to their flocks. If my take on the Pope's approach is right, I think he *expects* the laity to make life uncomfortable for bishops till they truly demonstrate some seriousness about living in fidelity to the Tradition. Okay, now feel free to tell me I'm all wet. I'm really trying to think with the Church here. So help me do it. Knowing who they are killing makes a lot fewer doctors able to bear the thought of killing him or her No wonder Planned Parenthood wants the public to be mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed b*******. Hence the opposition to "Right to Know" initiatives. May God solemnly damn Planned Parenthood. Former Screenwriter for M*A*S*H finds she's a warmonger I was noting last week how creaky, antique, and self-righteously 70s M*A*S*H sounds these days. Apparently, even some of the people who helped make it are thinking this. Myth No. 9337234 Large corporations are all run by rich conservatives who affirm the religious status quo. In reality, the rich are frequently as Jesus has described them: people who have chosen Mammon over God. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest -- if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this -- that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy More Mysteries of the Atheistic Worldview Down below, one of my atheist readers makes two blithe statements which baffle me. At one point he declares that such and so would be wrong because "conscience and reason" tell him so. He also declares he has a "right to life". Question: Conscience and reason are, on the atheist's showing, products of mindless forces at work on our biology, just as appetite or sexuality are products of mindless forces (allegedly). We are, according to the atheist, free to artificially thwart our appetites and sexuality and I think our atheist friends would argue that there's nothing wrong with that, no? Why are we not then guiltless if we thwart conscience and reason too? They are, after all, just another by-product of molecular activity. If you tell me we are evolutionarily "programmed" to obey conscience I answer that we are evolutionarily programmed to reproduce. Yet somehow it is morally neutral to practice contraception of the reproductive system (allegedly) but "wrong" to practice contraception of conscience and reason when they get in the way of what we want. Why, it's almost as if there is a Judge in the background, saying we are, oh, what's the word I'm looking for... sinning?...if we ignore our conscience. Second question: why do you think the idea of a "spirit" is baseless superstition (since it cannot be subjected to scientific measurement), yet you subscribe to the existence of odorless, colorless, massless "rights"? If never seen, heard, tasted, felt, smelt, weighed or measured a "right", yet you seem to insist they exist anyway? Where do "rights" come from? This could be entertaining In my book, By What Authority?, I argue that, on the basis of the bare text of Scripture alone, there is no ironclad case for monogamy as the only legitimate conception of marriage. The real reason figures like James Dobson imagine that it is, is because they have imbibed Sacred Tradition without realizing it. (Martin Luther, by the way, agrees with me.) Now comes this helpful fellow, a bible centered Polish Christian who argues the biblical case for polygamy and declares the anti-polygamist to be an enemy of God. If you are a Christian who rejects the Catholic idea of Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture as the "twin streams" of revelation, feel free to use my comments box to construct an argument against this guy on the basis of the bare text of Scripture alone. Remember, you can't just show that monogamy is okay with God. You have to got the distance and show that monogamy is the *only* legitimate Christian conception of marriage and you have to do it without an implicit or explicit appeal to Sacred Tradition. That is your mission, should you choose to accept it. This blog will now self-destruct in ten seconds. Jeremy Lott on the Christian Sturmabteilung and their Righteous Campaign Against Harry Potter, JRR Tolkien and Other Purveyors of Wickedness Found this on Amy's Blog It's another demonstration of Chesterton's remark that when you neglect the big laws (against, f'rinstance, abuse of children) you don't get freedom and you don't even get anarchy. You get the small laws. Look for lots of "zero tolerance" thinking as our culture insanely over-reacts to the sins of clerics. Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Bravo to Wick Allison! ...for his challenge to Bp. Charles Grahmann, the lousy bishop of Dallas who is beginning to pull into the lead for the coveted Worst Still-Serving American Bishop award. You can't jerk your flock around forever, Bishop. In Persian, they say, "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin". In Dallas, it's "Don't Mess with Texas." There are Christians who Define Themselves in Terms of What They Are Not Some Protestants spend virtually no time proclaiming their Faith because they are too busy Not Being Catholic (like the guys at what I affectionately refer to as NotRoman.org. Theoretically, they are about Jesus. Really, they are about attacking Catholics. Likewise, there are Catholics whose principal self-defining characteristic is that they are not Protestant, not neo, not Novus Ordo, not rigid, not orthodox, not this, not that. At the Reactionary Dissent end of the spectrum, we just met the helpful people at Novus Ordo Watch today. At the liberal Dissent end are the extremely self-satisfied suburbanites at St. Joan of Arc parish, who are all about not being "rigid pre-Vatican II" Catholics (or Catholics in any discernible sense at all). Well, it turns out the Orthodox are fallen in this regard too. For some, it's more important to be Not Roman than to be Orthodox. A Problem That May Be Coming Down the Pike Someday for Christians is the insistence by some conservative Jews that the Temple be rebuilt after the razing of the Dome of the Rock. I've given this little thought myself, but I suspect it will throw Evangelical supporters into a tailspin while the Catholic Church (as is its custom) will be more deliberate about its response. Obviously, for Christians, the reinstitution of Temple worship and animal sacrifices is absolutely unnecessary. Hebrews is all about this. However, the fact that Christianity and Temple worship could co-exist for 40 years suggests that it could co-exist again, should Jews succeed (which is a *very* long shot) in rebuilding the Temple on the Temple Mount. Personally, I don't think it's ever gonna happen. The hard reality is that Israel exists as long as the US is a superpower. When we go away, it will, in all likelihood go away (unless it can befriend anothe superpower). And I seriously doubt the US is going to plump for backing the razing of the Dome of the Rock and the rebuilding of the Temple. So, both politically and theologically, I see no good reason for it. Neither divine nor human power seems to me to back up this dream. The "Progression" from Rational to Irrational Atheism In the good old days, atheists were bold, muscular manly men who courageously offered that they were paragons of Reason bringing the light of Truth to a world huddling in fear and ignorance due to the hoodoo and priestcraft of benighted fools. Science and Reason were the new colossi which would sweep aside medieval superstition that kept us in darkness and ignorance. Light would come, not through mystical mysteries, but through true rationality based on scientific investigation. This was the ringing cry that found its voice in the Enlightenment and hit its stride in the 19th Century. Alas, this robust and simple-minded certainty that Reason rather than Faith was the wave of the future is all but spent now. Carl Sagan was one of the last of the antique Rational Atheists. Now atheism sounds much more like Andy in my comments box: "Ah, so Mind (whatever that is) is rooted in the fundamental Reason (whatever that is) that is the mind of God (whatever that is)." Andy, as is his custom, is mostly trying to score points by ridicule rather than actual argument. But he points out his own problem inadvertantly. For the atheist, at the end of the day, is now reduced to saying "I don't know what Mind is, but mine is still superior to a theist's. I don't know what Reason is, but it's still superior to Faith. I don't know what the Mind of God is, but I'm sure that it can't possibly exist. Why? Because my mind (whatever that is) tells me that God's existence is contrary to Reason (whatever that is)." In short, atheism comes down to saying "No!" to God for any reason or no reason. Atheism is not about reason ultimately. It's quite willing to reject the very idea of reason if reason begins to point to God. The children of heresy always kill their parents. Irrational atheists are now in the process of destroying, not Christianity, but rationalism. Scott Hahn's Salvation History Site has a Blog! Christopher Cuddy is on the air! Salvation History is a great resource for Catholic biblical study, by the way. Check it out! Shoutin' Bill Donahue sez... A Voice of the Fuddled member is the driving force behind yet another attempt to destroy the Seal of the Confessional. But of course. Voice of the Fuddled does not have a *clue* what the Faith is. Naturally, its loopier and most embittered members are going to launch attacks on the very heart of the Faith they claim to be protecting. God, defend your sacraments from the victims of Stockholm Syndrome who now seek to carry on the work of destruction that men like Paul Shanley began. Glob of chemicals named "Andy" struggles to show that its epiphenomena are "true" while Christian globs of chemicals have epiphenomena that are "false" and even "ridiculous". Actually, Andy, the point is that, on your showing "mind" is simply one contortion on the idiotic face of matter. Why should I think it "higher" or more important than any other? And why should I think the contortions on the accidental brain chemistries of atheists "better" than the contortions on the brain chemistries of believers. It's like arbitrarily declaring that this piece of driftwood is "better" or "superior to" or "smarter than" that one. On the Judeo-Christian showing, mind is the creation of Mind. It is rooted in fundamental Reason that is the mind of God. Mind is not necessarily rational because it is the creation of spirit rather than idiotic matter. It is (or can be) rational if it is the creation of Reason. There's nothing specially fine about mere spirit, since spirit is not necessarily rational. The devil, in Christian reckoning, is a spirit, but one that has perverted all its faculties (including reason) to fundamentally absurd ends. So Christians do not believe that a mind arising from mere spirit is somehow automatically rational. A mind under the influence of that spirit called Satan is, indeed, profoundly irrational. By the way... Loved the call for a ban on cloning and partial birth abortion. Let's see if the Stupid Party tries to weasel with the "health of the mother" escape hatch that renders the ban null and void. Heard the SOTU Like always, came away liking W and trusting in his basic goodness and intelligence. (Yes, intelligence. Bush lacks verbal intelligence, which is the only sort of intelligence the chattering classes recognize. If you are verbally gifted (like Richard Dawkins) you can be an absolutely blithering idiot in other forms of intelligence (like Richard Dawkins) and the chattering classes will never notice. Bush is gifted in other forms of intelligence, which is why his chattering classed enemies consistently...misunderestimate...him. Professing to be wise, they became fools....) Anyway, like Greg Krehbiel, I thought he stated his case for war with clarity and simplicity. Show me the evidence at the Security Council next week and I'm with you, W. She's been so kind to this blog and I've been so remiss So, without further ado, let me point you to a fun new addition to St. Blog's, Karen Hall's Disordered Affections. Celebrity Death Match In this cornah, the Lidless Eyes from Novus Ordo Watch (a bunch of really courageous guys who give absolutely no information on who they are, but who follow the ancient apostolic command to bitch and complain and despair and point fingers.) vs. In this cornah, The Lidless Eye Inquisition (happy warriors for the actual Catholic Faith who have been rescued by the Holy Spirit from Reactionary Dissent). Unlike the chickens at Novus Ordo Watch, these guys tell you who they are. Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Down below... I mentioned that both Sts. Ignatius and Teresa noticed the difference between their shallow Catholic youth and the genuine life of conversion they embarked on as adults. Somebody asked what I was talking about. Both saints had profound experiences of deepening conversion in their adult lives which led to them abandoning their former ways and going all out for God. Since they were Catholics, living in a Catholic culture, they recognized that this did not mean their Catholic upbringing had been a waste and now they were "born again". (This, by the way, is a real rather than semantic difference between Evangelical and Catholic theology. To be "born again" in common Evangelical understanding is to have a "living encounter" with Jesus--usually accompanied by emotion. For Catholics, to be born again is an ontological reality normatively given through the sacrament of baptism which is quite independent of emotions. One may or may not *feel* born again when one is baptized. But if you are baptized, you are born again. The upside of Evangelical parlance is that it stresses that relationship with Christ should be a living reality, not an abstraction. The downside is that it is often a semi-Pelagianism: you are "really a Christian" if you achieve a particular emotional state and use a particular jargon acceptable to Evangelicals. Otherwise, your salvation is suspect. The downside of the Catholic approach is that it can tend to dismiss all appeals to living discipleship as emotivism. The upside is that it directs our eyes to the objective fact of our baptism as the lynchpin of our incorporation into the life of the Blessed Trinity, rather than to an introspective hall of mirrors in which we are continually fretting about whether we really meant it when we asked Jesus to be our personal Lord and Savior. And, of course, the Catholic approach is the biblical one whereas the Evangelical method of "asking Jesus into your heart" is of extremely recent vintage and without biblical precedent. Because baptism, not a "born again experience" as understood by Evangelical, is the biblical and Catholic gateway to union with Christ, both Ignatius and Teresa saw their profound conversion experience as God revealing what the grace of their baptism had given them. Often, today, cradle Catholics will have similar experiences, but assume that they mean their Catholic upbringing was mere empty religion. The experience of deepening conversion is quite real (and Catholics sneer at it to their peril), but the "born again" Catholic often pits the experience of deepening conversion *against* their baptism and upbringing, often because this experience happens through contact with lively Evangelicalism. For this reason, many leave the Church. Sometimes, they find their way back to the Catholic faith. Perhaps the best book I know which describes this process of both leaving and returning is Jeff Cavins' powerful and moving My Life on the Rock. It is honest, direct, powerful, funny and intensely painful and joyful as it recounts how he left the Church at 18 after a "born again" experience set him at odds with his Catholic family, and how he eventually returned after 12 years as an Assembly of God pastor. Catholics trying to get a sense of the powerful dynamics that drive such conversions can scarcely do better than to read this book. It's a story that millions of Catholic families have lived and it provide real hope that reconciliation and healing is possible by the grace of God. Andy writes concerning my "globs of chemicals called 'atheists'" blog To matter - to be of importance. Importance is defined and assigned by the human mind. I consider my life to be important to me, therefore it matters to me - the future heat-death of the universe is of no consequence to my present assigment of importance. My life might not matter to you - on the whole, it probably doesn't except in some sort of vague way since you don't know me. It doesn't mean that my life, in general, doesn't matter (since it does to me, my friends, my family, etc). Matter, according to atheists, has certain epiphenomena. Configure it one way and you get a hydrogen bomb. Configure it another way and you have a barking poodle or a milkshake, or a tide, yawn, or vomit. Configure it still another way and you have "mind", according to the atheist. Why the atheist attaches mystical signficance to the last epiphenomena is beyond me, given the atheist's first principles. I think it has to do with the atheist's lingering superstitious belief that "mind" (particularly his own mind) is reflective of something "higher". This belief is a last echo of the theistic worldview he rejects. Like all heresies, it derives its strength from the Judeo-Christian worldview. But when you cut the branch from the tree it dies. Sorry. But your exalted view of "mind" goes down the drain with all the rest. Now you can certainly go on arbitrarily attaching "significance" (whatever *that* is) to things. What you can't do is give any good reason for it other than "It matters to me". But then, of course, it becomes all-fired difficult to explain why you think certain things should matter to everybody. It becomes hard to see why so many atheists are "evangelical", wanting to assert that the epiphenomena of chemical activity in their brains are "true" while the epiphenomena of chemical activity in a Christian's brain is a "delusion". You might as well argue that my enjoyment of chocolate is "false" and your love of beer is "true". You can only do that *if* you are going to acknowledge that your mind is not an epiphenomenon of matter--as Christians do. But if your first premise is to *insist* that it is an epiphenonemon of matter, then you are just talking gibberish. Someday you'll be able to fax your cat Are there any Catholic theologians keeping up with this stuff? A Church that thinks in centuries had better acquire what St. Thomas calls "agility" to deal with these swift changes (note that I do not necessarily call it "swift progress"). We don't know if these new technologies are progress till we see which direction they are taken by the humans who use them: toward or away from the dignity of the human person. The great efficiency achieved in death camp technology was a swift change in the 40s. It was not progress. Forgot to say I had a wonderful time in British Columbia this past weekend. Redeemer Pacific College is a really happening place and I'm confident we're gonna see some terrific Christian leaders come outta there. In fact, Jeremy Lott (who I met and with whom I had a delightful conversation) is from there. Monday, January 27, 2003
The JDL vs. Spike Jones One of the curious things about the difference between the WWII generation and ours is the way in which we deal with the figure of Adolf Hitler. The generation that actually defeated Hitler heaped gobs of ridicule on him: When Der Fuehrer says, "We ist der master race" We HEIL! HEIL! Right in Der Fuehrer's face Not to love Der Fuehrer is a great disgrace So we HEIL! HEIL! Right in Der Fuehrer's face When Herr Göbbels says, "We own der world und space" We HEIL! HEIL! Right in Herr Göbbel's face When Herr Göring says they'll never bomb this place We HEIL! HEIL! Right in Herr Göring's face Are we not the supermen Aryan pure supermen? Ja we ist der supermen Super-duper supermen! Ist this Nutzi land not good? Would you leave it if you could? Ja this Nutzi land is good Vee would leave it if we could We bring the world to order Heil Hitler's world New Order Everyone of foreign race will love Der Fuehrer's face When we bring to der world disorder When Der Fuehrer says, "We ist der master race" We HEIL! HEIL! Right in Der Fuehrer's face When Der Fuehrer says, "We ist der master race" We HEIL! HEIL! Right in Der Fuhrer's face! Similarly, you find contemparies like Tolkien referring to Hitler as "that ruddy little ignoramus" and that "ignorant cad". He is, for the generation that defeated him, but a puny little humbug. But as the Holocaust and the full depth of Hitler's evil has taken root in the imagination of passing generations, something has happened that is not altogether healthy, I think. He has acquired the status of an evil demigod. Attempts to humanize him, that is, to remind us that he sprang from the stock of Adam, and not from the pit of hell, are now condemned as attempts to make him a sympathetic figure. Sight unseen, "Max" has been condemned by the Jewish Defense League and others. "The film is in bad taste," says a statement posted on the JDL Web site. There is nothing human, it says, "about the most vicious, vile murderer in world history." This is, I think, understandable but very dangerous. Turn Hitler into a remote demigod of evil and you imply that human beings could not do what he did again. The whole point of Hitler's story is that he was a man, not a god or a devil, and that what he became any of us could become. Our fathers and mothers (or grandfathers if you are a Gen Xer) had a certain common sense in laughing at this ignorant little cad and not just falling silent in a sort of distorted act of reverence. He was, when all the trappings of power were stripped away, a vanishingly small and stupid little creep, but a little creep with human blood who was made in the image of God and who twisted that image beyond recognition. He was not a fallen angel, not something that sprang from nowhere, not a foreigner to the human race. Magnifying him into something superhuman or stripping him of humanity cuts us off from learning the lesson that we too are fallen and capable of his evil folly. "Are you a Christian?" Below, one of my readers has suggested it is somehow insulting to compile a Catholic/Evangelical phrasebook. But I am in earnest. There are lots of things which Evangelicals and Catholics say which the other party either does not understand or, worse, *thinks* he understands. To pick a random example, a Catholic I spoke to recently was hurt when, upon being asked which church she attended and answering, "St. John's Catholic Church", she was asked if she was a Christian by her Evangelical schoolmate. To a Catholic, it is painful to be asked "Are you a Christian?" by Evangelicals. The Catholic wants to shout " Of *course* I'm a Christian!" But the Evangelical does not mean that (usually) as a swipe against Catholics. Indeed, an Evangelical can and frequently does ask the same of any large "mainline" Church. He might even ask it of other Evangelicals. For he means (in translation) "Have you had a living encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you a disciple or just going through religious motions?" He means what a Catholic would mean by asking "Are you docile to the Holy Spirit? Are you serious about the teaching of Christ?" Heaven knows, readers on a blog like mine, who spend so much time discussing the difference between serious Catholic faith and AmChurch, know that one can be a Sim Christian. St. Ignatius of Loyola realized the same thing (about himself). So did Teresa of Avila. An Evangelical who asks "Are you a Christian?" is often as solicitous for your spiritual well-being as those great saints. But because the jargon is different, Catholics can take offense rather than hear the real question. So yes. Jargon differences do matter. They don't account for all disagreements. But they do matter. Conflicted About War I think it's no secret that I'm conflicted about war with Iraq. I plump, tentatively, in favor of it, but respect deeply some of my friends who oppose it. (I don't respect all who oppose it since a great many of them seem like ninnies or cads. On the other hand, some of the people who support war seem to me to be sinister people too.) Part of what has bothered me has, of course, been the reservations of the Holy Father in this department. But even more has been the queer reluctance of the Bush Administration to give us much to go on as far as the gazillions of WMDs that they keep saying they are sure about. Greg Krehbiel (no Euroweenie he) sums it up nicely: "We want facts, Mr. President -- facts and cold logic -- before we go to war." He too has the same curious sense I do that there's a stampede for war with an odd vacuum in the reasoning department. You don't have to be a Lefty to think this. All you have to do is look at Peg Noonan, who points out the same thing the Bushies are obviously thinking (since they are now--finally--talking about "making a case"): namely, that the case has not been made. She would not need to advise them on how to make the case if they had made it already. Rather than making a case, what seems to happen is what Krehbiel complains of: assertions without details and evidence like in this story. There's only a limited window of time before the chance to garner support for this war dries up. A public whose formative experience of trusting government when it goes to war was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and its aftermath is a public you better be prepared to give some solid facts to. That's just life in these here United States, Mister President. Globs of Chemicals Called "Atheists" Flounder Around Trying to Explain Why Their Pointless Little Lives Matter When They Just Finished Explaining that Nothing Matters Theist points out that this is dumb. Makes obvious point that our lives only matter in relation to God. Lidless Eyes at the Remnant Publish Pontifical Ecclesia Dei Commission Letter with Inconveniences "Abbreviated" Clean Out of It All Reactionary Dissenters care about is The Truth. And it doesn't matter how many "abbreviated" documents they have to publish to find it! Meanwhile in Canada... NON-CATHOLIC PRO-ABORT CANADIAN GOVERNOR-GENERAL RECEIVES COMMUNION FROM BISHOP Reason: Archbishop Gervais did not want to "make a scene." Now that's the kind of episcopal courage we're used to here in the Americas! Kudos to Emily Stimpson for this Stupid Headline Alert "Vatican to Reinforce Catholic Orthodoxy" In other news, the BBC reports that Thermometers are Being Used to Tell Temperature, The Sky is Blue, Boeing Plans to Design and Build Airplanes, and the BBC has added a department devoted to reporting Really Obvious Things. Battle Lines in California Catholicism It wasn't hard to foresee that Bp. Weigand will be opposed by Catholic Whores for Baby-Killing. By the way, I think it highly unlikely Weigand will win this battle, but that does not make it one unworthy of fighting. I shall be very surprised if the good Cardinal of LA backs him up. My expectation for rhetoric from AmChurch types is summed up by the last couple grafs of the story. There may also be a difference of opinion about the governor within the Catholic Church. Davis and his wife regularly attend Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills. Good Shepherd pastor Colm O'Ryan did not return calls from The Bee requesting an interview, nor did his bishop, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony. Another AmChurch Catholic named Roger Taney felt that way about slavery. Weenies will lament Weigand's act as an attempt by Imperial Rome to interfere in American politics. Bunk. Davis can do what he likes in the Governor's mansion and the Church can't do a damn thing to stop him besides appeal to hearts and minds. AmChurch Weenie rhetoric about some mythical Roman desire to return to beheading people is the normal twaddle to be expected from people who care more about accomodating culture than proclaiming the gospel. In case they hadn't heard, "persuasion" is a legitimate tool of American citizens--even if they are Catholics. Gray Davis is free to do as he likes and Bp. Weigand will not be leading a mob with torches to curtail Davis' abuse of his freedom. Davis just shouldn't try to do as he pleases in the house of God. His AmChurch Weenie apologists would have told Ambrose he was being too hard on Theodosius for refusing him communion after slaughtering the Thessalonians. "The Catholic Church needs to be more affirming of Theodosius' hard choices and not impose its morality on others." You Weenies can join in affirming slaughterers and the politicians who love them in their okayness. The task of a bishop is to teach, govern, and sanctify: a task far too few bishops have been willing to take up. Bravo Bp. Weigand! Remember back in 2000? ...when American politicians and lay Catholics slavishly followed everything the American bishops had to say. Boy, those were the days. All a bishop had to do was say, "Jump!" and American Catholics reflexively responded, "How high?" Yessirree! In the good old days, before the Scandal, American Catholics *respected* their bishops and American politics paid close attention to their teaching. At least, in the alternative history universe from which the New York Times writes. In my universe, the American bishops have largely been get-along go-along bureaucrats that nobody paid attention to for decades. The Scandal did not rob them of moral authority. It showed why this hapless bench of bishops have been the sort of people nobody (even a child rapist) needed to worry about listening to for about 30 years. Looks like somebody mistakenly thinks I'm a trendsetter I think I'll pull a Steve Jobs and sue the pants off Kathy Shaidle for infringing on the "look and feel" of my blog template. Oh sure, nitpickers will cavil that she was using the template first (as if *that* has anything to do with it). The trouble, you see, is with a few bishops It's not the whole of American culture that's seriously deranged about sex or anything. No. Just snip off a few bishops at the top and that will fix it. We don't need no stinking theology of the cross. We're all right, jack. From the "Getting More Than You Bargained For" Dept. This is delicious. Planned Parenthood kvetched about South Carolina's "Choose Life" license plates. So one canny lawmaker has proposed to answer PP's complaint by making available "Choose Death" plates. PP is backpedaling, since they don't want their real message to be all *that* clear. More on Good Bishop Weigand A reader sez: I think bishop Weigand's decision to deny Gray Davis access to the Eucharist is a very significant move. Joseph Graham 'Gray' Davis has a serious dilemma. Being a California Democrat, he can't afford to be anything but a pro-choice radical, on the other hand, he relies on his Catholic identity for the votes of blue-collar and Hispanic Catholics. So, he can't outright reject the Church, on the other hand, he won't get anywhere close to the Catholic position on abortion. My bet is that in the coming days Davis is going to try to strong-arm Weigand for some sort of 'understanding' or shop around for a more sympathetic bishop. As for the former case, I don't think he has a chance: Weigand realizes that this is not only the right course to follow in order to shepherd an errant member of his flock, but also an important teaching moment for the Church. God willing, the good bishop will not budge. This, I'm sure, will infuriate a governor who considers it a divine right to have his way. And, if the past has anything to teach us, he will seek some sort of retribution ("Gov. Davis announces that he will panel a committee to investigate the malfeasance of the bishops in the current child abuse scandal"). A friend from my parish writes: Aquinas walked miles to get a copy of a book by Chrysostom. I just summoned up hundreds of pages of text by pressing a few buttons. And they claim modernism isn't unalloyed goodness! Your point about alarmism is well taken. I know there's going to be a certain percentage of people out there who are going to become apoplectic about these liturgical changes. For myself, I can pray standing or sitting. It don't make much nevermind with me. What's much more distracting to my prayers is people freaking out over liturgical changes. Look at it this way: if you have your choice between being gassed at Auschwitz or freezing to death at Kolyma, or being jailed for conversion in Saudi Arabia, versus having to stand after communion, I'd say that the latter is a rather light cross to bear (if it's even a cross at all). Find something else to worry about. Life is too short. I am now about to reveal how truly out of touch I am I not only don't know who won the Super Bowl yesterday, I don't even know who played. Cyberspace: keeping people from being stoned to death by angry mobs for over a decade. Evangelicalese as She is Spoke A century ago, the immortal Pedro Carolino, an enterprising Portuguese, created the delightful work "English as She is Spoke". It was an English/Portuguese phrasebook to help the Portuguese holidaymaker communicate with power and eloquence to his English-speaking hosts in America and England. As you might guess from the title, Carolino's reach exceeded his grasp. He did not, in fact, know any English. However, nothing daunted, he acquired an English/French phrasebook and a French/Portuguese phrasebook and set to work educating his countrymen on various English "phrases and idiotisms" such as "The dog that bark than bite" and "to craunch a marmoset". Seeking the intercession of Blessed Pedro Carolino, I propose something similar and ask for your input as I begin collecting ideas for my own phrasebook. This will not be cross-lingual, but cross-cultural. For I propose to draft a Catholic/Evangelical phrasebook which will translate ideas and concepts used in one culture into the language of the other. For example, "Ministry" means, in Evangelicalese, what Catholics mean by "apostolate". Other samples include the following: Catholic term/Evangelical cognate Merit/fruitfulness charism/spiritual gift venial sin/stumbling mortal sin/backsliding formation/discipleship etc. I'm trying to think of other cognate terms. Can you think of any? Excellent! Bp. Grahmann feels the heat Bp. Grahmann, a close running contender for the coveted Worst Still-Serving American Bishop prize, is discovering you can't jerk your flock around forever. Other bishops will be learning this important lesson too. Julianne Wiley writes Dear Catholic friends, Gotta love Julianne's particularly brilliant observation that you cannot recognize the Body of Christ whom you have not seen if you don't recognize the body of a human being whom you have seen. Snow Day A belated link to my latest on Catholic Exchange. Dedicated to all you folks who are sick of snow. You live in a world of wonders and have forgotten it. Thursday, January 23, 2003
I'm outta here Off to Canada, home of Kathy Shaidle, Back Bacon, William Shatner, and my Mom, to hang around with the students at Redeemer Pacific. Then, on Saturday, it's "A Day with Mark Shea". Where: St. Nicholas Parish, 20675 87th Avenue, Langley, BC, Canada. When: 10am-4pm. Sponsor: Redeemer Pacific College, Langley, BC. Phone: 604-888-7727. Website: www.rpconferences.com. Hope you can come if you live somewhere in the region! Russ Lopez, Spokesman for Gray Davis (and AmChurch) sez... Bishops should stop "telling the faithful how to practice their faith." And the job of a bishop is....? Wow! Bp. William Weigand to Gov. Gray Davis of California: Renounce your support of abortion rights or stop taking Holy Communion! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Bishop Weigand! Please donate your spine chromosomes to the rest of the American episcopacy! |
