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Friday, January 30, 2004
Okay After several reader critiques, I've decided to remove the post about McCarrick and GU's stem cell research. I think I was overhasty in my judgement here. I'll give it more thought. Ever since we got one, our cat has stopped channeling Lyndon LaRouche messages to us Peace and quiet reign in my head. The Sibleys! Don't forget to vote for my blog for excellence in all categories! I want one of them cool statuettes with Fr. Sibley's "I dissent against Acts 15! Bring back circumcision NOW!" action figure pose. Liturgical Translation Revolutionaries Stamp Tiny Feet in Impotent Rage Dear Lord! New translations of the Liturgy are actually going to reflect what the liturgy says and not what liturgical revolutionaries distort it to say! The Woodstock Generation wets its pants (either due to frustration at losing their grip on power or out of sheer decrepitude). Fr. Michael Barber, SJ Marine Corps chaplain in Iraq and one helluva fine priest and hero. Just to further confuse my readers who think I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat despiser of the Military who loathes Jesuits. The Pro-Life Catholic Mask is Ripped Off My Yellow Dog Democrat Face! A reader writes: Enclosed is an article which is headlined below: re: President Bush deserves to be re-elected. I note below that, in addition to this shocking expose of my True Nature, my criticism of Grand End to Evil Projects (based on my deep-seated suspicion of secular messianism, not my Yellow Dog Democrat inclinations) is met with the intelligent comment, "Mark Shea disses Bush, supports coreligionist Kerry. News at 11." Er, yes. No doubt it's my support for Kerry that lead me to write that "Kerry must be stopped." All part of the cunning Yellow Dog Democrat facade that leads me to comment endlessly on the Braindead Left and the Dems as the Evil Party whose sole uniting principle is fanatical dedication to the Sacrament of Abortion. Yessirree. I'm just an especially subtle Dem operative. Why? Because I criticize Bush and the Stupid Party for their minimalist approach to human life issues. Therefore, I must really want another Dem abortion fanatic in the White House. It could not possibly be, of course, that I will support Bush, but at the same time urge the Right to take more seriously the centrality of the family and the dignity of the human person. Support for Bush must be total and unequivocal. Anything less makes you a Yellow Dog Democrat. And they say conservatives are not ideologues. The Cost of Grand End to Evil Projects I come from a military family. That's why I fret about Grand "End to Evil" Projects. It's generally guys like my Dad and brothers who have to pay the bills for that in blood. That's why I like to be reeeeally reeeeally sure we know what we are doing when we embark on such projects. A reader writes: I've started going to meetings of the Christian student group at my law school (no Catholic groups here). They are a great group of people, and I'm enjoying spending time with them, but I am also feeling that I should be a bit cautious not to be pulled into anything "too" evangelical. The main thing, I think, is to always keep in mind the distinction between theological and cultural differences. Both Catholics and Protestants have a hard time doing that and so either tend to absorb real theological notions at various with the Faith or avoid merely cultural things as somehow a danger to the Faith. Classic example #1: Catholics who fall into saying things like "as long as you believe in Jesus nothing else really matters" and then proceed from there to jettison any Catholic dogmas that Evangelicalism is uncomfortable with. Classic example #2: spontaneous prayer vs. liturgical prayer. The dogmas really matter. The prayer style are both/and, not either/or. My recommendation is for Catholics to be thoroughly ecumenical and at ease in an Evangelical setting, but to also know their faith well enough so that they can understand the so-called Catholic distinctives for what they are: the teaching of the apostolic Tradition in its fullness. The paradigm Catholics must grasp is that Catholic Faith *is* "mere Christianity". Anything less than the full deposit of Faith is not "the basics". It is a subtraction and an oversimplification which can only be mended by the fullness of the Faith as it is revealed through the Catholic Faith. One needn't be obnoxious about that. There's no need to beat wonderful Evangelical people over the head with triumphalism. Indeed, to be triumphal is dumb since there's nothing particularly meritorious about it. We don't "possess" the Truth. At best, the Truth possesses us despite our labors to screw it all up. But there's also no reason to feel ashamed of it, as Paul was not ashamed of the gospel. So when your Evangelical friends, with the best intentions, say things like "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe in Jesus" (by which they mean, "You don't need all that extra Catholic junk") you can always make it clear that it matters very much. Just ask them to join you in saying a prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Voila! I matters very much to them that you *not* believe such things. And if you do, for many of them, your faith in Jesus is in real question. From that point, of course, you can discuss the basis of such points of perfectly biblical doctrine and make it clear that the Church has not *added* anything: all this is implied in Scripture. Rather, Evangelicalism has made a good start, but the Church has gone rather further in exploring the revelation. Or, if you prefer a less confrontive way, you can simply describe how it is you have found Jesus in the context of the Catholic Faith. Most Evangelicals are open to the idea that Catholics are Christian. But they often have a vague notion that they have a "relationship with Jesus" that just happens to go on independent of their relationship to the Catholic Church. Making it clear that this relationship is inextricably bound up with the Church and its teachings is often a very eye-opening experience for Evangelicals since it ultimately leads us to confront the same question about the Church that Jesus asked about himself: "Who do you say I am?" Speaking of which... the NY Times bravely speaks out against the mainstream press' lockstep opposition to the limitless splendors of gay marriage. One Catholic priest, who has violated his church's ban, said: "We can bless a dog, we can bless a boat, we can bless a car, but we can't say a prayer over two people who love each other and want to spend their lives together. You don't have to call it marriage; you can call it a deep and abiding friendship, but you can't bless it." Thank God for that kind of culture-bucking courage from our anonymous priest vs. his evil church's "ban"! And, thanks to Sweden, there may soon come a time when he will be able to bless dogs in a whole new way too! Destroy all taboos! Some observations on yesterday's Brownshirt kafuffle A number of readers wrote to object when I connected ideologically-driven property damage and vandalism to brownshirts. The typical objection can be summarized as "Stickers do not rise to the level of Kristallnacht or the Holocaust." And, of course, this is true--and would matter if that was what I was saying. But, of course, that's not what I'm saying. Permit me to illustrate what I *am* saying. If I tell you that so and so is a lazy slob and remark that "idle hands are the devil's playground" most of us would not immediately say "Oh, so you are saying that a lazy person is the same thing as a satanist who performs grisly ritual murders on innocent little children, eh?" We would recognize that small things are *related to* and can lead to big things. Indeed, we make these sorts of connections all the time. We recognize relationships, while not feeling the moronic compulsion to proclaim complete identification. We say of some fool out protesting for abortion rights that they are "doing the devil's work" without meaning that they are necessarily even aware they are doing so. Jesus made rather stark use of this principle when he rebuked Simon Peter in Matthew 16. ("Get behind me, Satan!") Now, when I point out brownshirt behavior among "gay activists" I am doing basically the same thing. As Andy's breathless fulminations make clear, a culture that no longer understands where real Ultimate Evil is found (in Satan) can still recognize the best icon of evil our race has yet furnished: the Nazis. Interestingly, if I were to write that ideologically-driven vandals were "doing the devil's work", I doubt Andy would hyperventilate, though, in fact, I would be speaking quite literally and relating such actions to evil far greater than Hitler's. Somehow, I think he could grasp that I do not make an absolute identification between some stickers and the Prince of Darkness, but that I am saying that in their own feeble way, such vandals are doing their pathetic best to advance his kingdom of Noise. But when I relate such actions to the much more minor business of mere human evil in the Third Reich (which is vanishingly small compared to the evil of Satan), Andy's limited imagination is suddenly fired up! I am mocking the sufferings of millions! Well, no. I am saying there is a real relationship (not an identification, a relationship) between the ideologically-driven contempt that fuels these small acts of vandalism and property damage and other larger acts of vandalism and property damage. I am saying that small acts of contempt lead to bigger and more horrible ones. Now the thing I am responding to when I name such acts of bullying cowardice is precisely the bullying cowardice. The goal of bullying cowardice is to intimidate by whatever means necessary. And so, for instance, some folk in my comments boxes have, with the narcissism I've come to expect whenever dealing with gay agitprop, completely overlooked the fact that what prompted this discussion was, after all, an act of vandalism by the Gay Agitprop Brigade. Instead, they've invoked all the normal sob stuff about pink triangles and concentration camps: as though anybody who objects to ideologically-driven acts of vandalism by gays is eager to load gays on the boxcars. In short, more desperate attempts at bullying. Now my response to bullies is to make fun of them. It is to mock, not the suffering of millions, but the bullying of bullies. Hence, the "Gay Brownshirts on the March!" headlines when I run across the remarkably frequent acts of threats, vandalism, intimidation, and even violence that seems to characterize the Sexual Orientation of Peace. Some good souls, such as Alias Clio, express an understandable concern that this approach does not make for a good debate. Quite true. And if I were seeking to debate with bullies, that would matter. But I'm not. I'm seeking to fight bullies and the best way I know how to do that in the public square is to make clear that people who act this way are indeed bullies and are doing the devil's (or, if your imagination is limited by atheism) Hitler's work. As I've said repeatedly, I do not regard all, or even most gays, as brownshirts. I regard gay brownshirts (and their apologists) as brownshirts. There are, as Jeff Miller's handy Brownshirt Activity Discernment Threat Level Meter makes clear, different degrees of brownshirt activity and thinking and I will attempt to color-code accordingly. The sticker thing was at Code Level Sienna. There are also, of course, brownshirt actions committed by various other sorts of ideologues. For instance, as I have pointed out, there are alledged "Catholic pundits" who advocate the mass murder of the innocent men, women, and children of Tehran, Mecca, Medina, Damascus and Tripoli. Such people are every bit as enamored of evil as the gay brownshirts I criticize in my little brownshirt alerts. But such people tend not to have many people making excuses for them. And they are, thanks be to God, powerless to implement their murderous agenda. Gay brownshirts have lots of people making excuses for them and muffling public awareness of their bullying actions. And they *frequently* not only talk about, but act on their Brownshirt Dreams, as the links I post make clear. I opt not to ignore such actions but to point them out. Insensitive? You betcha! But then I don't much care about the feelings of bullies. I care about their victims and stopping their bullying. Claybourn on Lawrence, the Swedes, and Their Special Animal Friends Gotta love the handwringing complaint in the article yesterday that all this unpleasantness is due to the criminalization of sex with children. Our poor furry friends! Suffering due to the irrational prudishness of those who just can see that Love Knows No Age Boundaries! Not to worry. The logic at work behind Lawrence will corrode this and every other last vestige of moral sanity. At the end of the day, the *sole* question will center on individual consent. It is mere sentiment that keeps the "Sex with Children is Totally Different" Brigade afloat. Sooner or later it will be pointed out that children are quite able to give consent and then the wheedling and pleas will begin to soften that societal barrier as well. Look for the introduction of the magic word "taboo". When that enters the conversation, it's the signal that the Chattering Classes have decided another hitherto granite moral prohibition is now just a malleable "irrational prejudice" to be swept away. And here's a picture of the agitprop that will help advance the Revolution. For the full article, go here. And remember, the real issue is not the glaring and obvious pathologies in the gay community, it's those who use insensitive language when mocking the fact that those pathologies are excused, covered up, and shouted down. I predict the preferred strategy for shouting this piece down will "Pay no attention to this because the Family Research Council wrote it. Refute the documentation? Who needs to when the messenger has been sufficiently demonized?" Thursday, January 29, 2004
Threat Level Elevated to "Brownshirt" Speak incorrect opinions that happen to reflect biblical teaching, get sued for a "hate crime" for (I'm willing to bet) considerably more than $500. The vandalism is to the right of free speech and the teaching of Christ. I ask and the Curt Jester Provides! Color-coded "Threat Levels" for all your Brownshirt Activity Discernment needs! 
Jeff Miller: Bloomin' Genius. Sweden: Not Ready for Prime Time--Yet But who's to say it's wrong? Indeed, isn't it hateful to say it's wrong? Could there possibly be anything more incredibly glorious and splendid than homosexuality? NO! say the critics! NOOOOO!!! Down in adoration falling This great lifestyle choice we hail Over ancient forms of union Newer rights of sin prevail Faith will tell us all are latent When our propaganda fails. (Kudos to Mark Gordon for the Hymn to All Things Gay). A reader springs to the defense of the Jesuits Come on yall. Everytime you bash the Jesuit order just because of what only some Jesuits do, you run off potential good guys who are thinking about the order and you run the nutty guys right into the arms of the Jesuits. It's gross stereotyping like this that nearly kept me from entering the order and participating in its renewal! Tales of Catechetical Horrors A reader relates an all-too-familiar tale: I graduated from law school last May and now live in D.C. with my wife. Sometime last year I was drawn back to Christianity after several years wandering in the desert of Logical Positivism. I had been raised a Southern Baptist, but since I was more or less now starting from scratch, I delved into Theology and the history of the church. Needless to say I was rather taken aback by the argument in favor of the Roman Catholic Church. Being raised a Baptist, I naturally had certain ingrained anti-Catholic prejudices, and so I spent about 3 or 4 months attending an Episcopal Church before I could make the Great Leap. First off, I can relate. Read my own story of catechetical horrors here. Second, you've every right to be ticked. But don't get mad, get even: become a faithful Catholic, learn your faith thoroughly (this is what the Catechism and the plentiful works of serious Catholics are for), and then start doing the teaching yourself. Simply put, it is no good a) staying out of the Church because catechesis sucks or b) hoping that the heretical catechist will change his spots. Therefore, import into the Church the gifts you have as a pro-active Protestant who takes his baptismal obligation as prophet, priest and king seriously. Assume that the disaster with which God is confronting you is a call to ministry until God makes it clear you are wrong to assume so. That is, more or less, why I started writing: I wanted to provide people with all the stuff nobody gave me when I was entering the Church. The Church's teaching is solid. It's her teachers that suck. Happily, it is the Church, not the individual catechist, to which you are to submit your will. When the catechist says something cockamamie and at obvious odds with the Church's real teaching, feel free to ignore it. Feel free also to give the correct teaching--but in love. Don't pick fights because a) it will scare onlookers who won't hear the Church's teaching, but simply hear Angry Guy vs. Tolerant and Open Minded Guy and b) it will kill your chances of getting to do catechesis later. Serpents. Doves. Etc. Finally, seek first the kingdom. After a traumatic experience of lousy catechesis, it's easy to focus more on Opposing Bad Catetchists than on the positive proclamation of the truths of the Faith. If you do the former, you may find yourself rejecting some legitimate part of the Faith simply because Mr. Lousy Catechist taught it. If you do the latter, then you can focus on Christ and not on protest. Hope that helps. Secret Agent Man Does the Definitive Fisk of the Latest Hatchet Job on the Passion Get a cup of coffee for this one. People are mad at me for the latest Gay Brownshirt entry Apparently, deliberate ideologically-driven property damage and vandalism has to reach a certain threshhold before it's brownshirt activity. Smash shop windows and scrawl "JUDEN" on the doors: that's Brownshirt. Just do slightly smaller acts of vandalism and property damage and it's not. Somebody needs to publish the Official Index of How Much Ideologically-Driven Vandalism and Property Damage You Can Get Away with Before Being a Brownshirt. I'm rusty at measuring these nuances and think all such acts of ideology-prompted vandalism and property damage are morally indistinguishable from the sort of bullyboy crap the SA enjoyed doing. The Prophet Chesterton on the Difference Between Martyrs and Suicides For people no longer capable of making elementary moral judgments: Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one's self. Grave moderns told us that we must not even say "poor fellow," of a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny. In all this I found myself utterly hostile to many who called themselves liberal and humane. Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for rape, and there almost always are for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer's suicidal automatic machines. There is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. The man's crime is different from other crimes -- for it makes even crimes impossible. The Prophet Chesterton on Catholics for Dean ...or Kerry or any of the other pro-abort fanatics currently running the Dem circus: Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody's system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody's sense of reality: to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense. Each started with a paradox: a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of what they would call a sane point of view. That is the one thing common to Hobbes and Hegel, to Kant and Bergson. to Berkeley and William James. A man had to believe something that no normal man would believe, if it were suddenly propounded to his simplicity; as that law is above right, or right is outside reason, or things are only as we think them, or everything is relative to a reality that is not there. The modern philosopher claims, like a sort of confidence man, that if once we will grant him this, the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if once he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind. In much the same way, the Catholics for Dean types claim, like a sort of confidence man, that if you will just accept the basic twist that it's fine to overlook a candidate's fanatical devotion to murdering the innocent--that if once we will grant him this--the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if once he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind. No wonder the site is run by a philosophy major. Patricia Heaton is cool Part of my ongoing campaign to mock Evangelicals in that triumphalist way I have. Kerry's Done That, Peg. Now, of course, Kerry Must be Stopped Noonan on Gen. Jack Ripper. Looks like I was wrong about Edwards. Don't let it stop you from coming to France with me. We shall, 'ow you say? drown our poleeteecal woes in vino on ze banks of ze Seine and make ironic postmoderne remarques at passing Americans amid clouds of clove cigarette smoke. Quelle magnifique! "The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain" Paging Catholics for Dean! Paging Catholics for Dean! Ahem: "Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect and claims to the 'rightness' of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community." (US Bishops, 1998, Living the Gospel of Life, n.23) Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Gay Brownshirts on the March! Respect for private property is for untermenschen. When you are gay, you are above such pedestrian concerns. Wanna Go On a Pilgrimage to France with Me and Fr. Rob Johansen? Now's your chance! This will be wicked fun and cool! Sign up today! Thanks to reader Mark Windsor, Travel Agent Extraordinaire, for thinking up this idea. It's not set in stone yet. Mark tells me: There are a couple of things you might want to stress. By the way, if you are wondering how the heck I afford this when I was scraping for dough to get our roof fixed, the answer is: "There's no way I could afford this. That's why it's so wonderful that Mr. Windsor asked me to be a host of the trip along with Fr. Rob. That way my bills are all covered. My deepest gratitude to him!" Jesuits. Again. A reader writes: Justice Anthony Kennedy (author of Planned Parenthood v' Casey and Lawrence v' Texas) will dedicate the new home of the University of San Francisco School of Law (its been renovated and expanded) on Thursday Jan. 29. Before the ribbon cutting ceremony, Kennedy will give a keynote address at St. Ignatius Church (across the street - S.I. is both the chapel of USF and an archdiocesan parish). Leading the ceremonies is University president, Fr. Stephen Privett, S.J. Bishops, like Bourbons, seem to remember everything and learn nothing. Give 'em hell. Howard Dean Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life! But Republicanism has separated you from Dean. However, Dean has made a provision for your sin by becoming Incarnate as a Presidential candidate and dying in the polls. With your vote, he can Rise Again and make a way for you to be One with him. But you must believe. Believe with all the faith of this guy! Never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity A source in Rome who has been following all of the "Passion" kafuffle writes: First of all, the Pope is not supposed to have said "It is as it was", he was supposed to have said "era cose", the Italian (well, that is what Dziwisz told the producer. One presumes any conversation between the Pope and Dziwisz would have been in Polish). Remember, the Times guy he found the guy who acted as the translator. Okay. Looks like a big ol' heap o' miscommunications to me. Not everything's clear, of course. What's the story about Navarro-Valls? Who knows? If he got some garbled version of the quote and (mark this) was an enthusiast for the film (not somebody out to sabotage it) he may have gotten hepped up and passed the "quote" along to Allen and Noonan and the Icon folk in the hope it would help boost the film, but without adequately checking to see if he got his facts straight. Then, (such is the nature of bureaucratic bungling) the Vatican goes berserk because it suddenly seems the Pope is endorsing a film, when all Dziwisz did was give the guy a polite reply (use the Italian accent, and say to yourself in mob-guy fashion "it is what it was", and you can kinda see how the phrase can have a few shades of meaning). Then (such is the nature of bureaucratic bungling) we get the first response - deny, deny, deny! followed by the second response: "Memo to N-V: Fall on Your Sword." If that's what happened, it was not the best route to take (to put it mildly). They should have explained that "it is as it was" was not necessarily referring to the Passion itself, but to the movie (although, that may make it sound like the Pope hated the film, which may explain why they didn't do this since that would have been misleading too). Bottom line: we don't know what he thought about it: He, and presumably Dziwisz, are the only ones who know). More to the point: It illustrates (if it an accurate guess) how such things can happen with everybody having honorable intentions and nobody lying. Somehow this reminds me of one of the incredibly well-constructed bits of dialogic chaos in a Tom Stoppard play like "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". The Lexicon is Oh So True However, Carl left out two of the most important words in Spontaneous Evangelical Prayer that is Ever So Much Closer to God than the Stiff Ritualistic Prayers of Catholics and Mainline Protestants: "Just" and "Really". "Oh Lord, I just really want to just really come before you and just really thank you as I just really pray, Lord, that you would just really take the words "Just" and "Really" out of my prayer vocabulary." - One of the funniest Wittenberg Door cartoon captions ever published. Victory! I have beaten Fr. Bryce to the punch on this one! "The King James Code". Yep. Somebody takes this stuff seriously. Build up the Church in Seattle! Hey you Western Washingtonians! I will be giving a talk about my conversion ("How I Got This Way") this Friday evening followed by my "Making Senses Out of Scripture" workshop from 9:00 to 3:00 on Saturday! The goal is the build up the Church in two ways: First, and most important: spiritually. Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ, so come and learn about the treasure of Scripture so that you can grow closer to Christ and be conformed to his image. Second: Physically. In 2001, the Big Quake on Ash Wednesday damaged Blessed Sacrament parish to the tune of 3.6 million bucks. Our insurance covered 2 million of the cost. We have to raise the rest. So this weekend is a fundraiser. All the registration dollars go to the building fund. Your support is badly needed as we are not a rich parish by any stretch of the imagination. So come and do double good for the Kingdom of God! You'll be glad you did! To register, contact the Blessed Sacrament Church Office at (206) 547-3020, or e-mail blessedsacrament@yahoo.com. A new form of Catholic Evangelization "Fellow" writes concerning the German cannibal: The murderer's just another sicko, nothing special. We all know what makes this story special, what made it grab headlines -- the guy who wanted to be eaten. I get it. Fellow is actually a Christian evangelist, trying to frighten wavering people into the arms of Christ by presenting arguments against the Faith that are the most grotesque apotheosis of the morally blind musings of contemporary culture. I mean, nobody could write something like this and be serious, could they? Catholics for Moloch Another sophisticated argument from the Theological Whores for Baby Killing Brigade. Remember this Dan Maguire creep, because he is one of those McBrienesque "go-to" guys in the Media Rolodex. Whenever Abp. Burke does something sensible, you can bet the press will quote this Judas for "balance". Good thing we aren't barbarians like Islamofascists They probably don't have anything *like* this sort of sophisticated philosophy to justify their acts of mass murder. Those poor crude bastards. When they want to kill innocent people, they just do it and don't hire some guy in a turtleneck to explain to TV-watching mouth-breathers why what they are doing is Deep and Enriching for Society. Consequently: it's a public relations disaster! Kill a few thousand people and the world hates you! But here in the West we have so honed the art of massaging public relations that we can run entire industries built on the slaughter of millions of babies each and every year and people can call this a "tiny" problem right in my own comments boxes. And so, why not expand the Franchise? Why should the Industry be cruelly hindered from harvesting still more dollars from the murder of infants as well? Or are you one of those damn liberals who opposes the Free Enterprise System? The West: Where every private individual can be his own Saddam. That's why God is on our side. We make murder democratic, not oligarchic. Never Assume ...that just because people belong to something with an imposing name like "World Economic Forum" they know what they are talking about. Here's a PDF on the latest fulmination among the "experts" at WEF, jabbering about the latest trends among other jabberers about religion. So guess what they're saying? Why, they're regurgitating the latest bad fiction fads from the Da Vinci Code! Wanna know why? Because they don't really know anything about theology, or history. But they do know what their peers at wine and brie soirees talk about and they have to provide some sort of justification for their determination to attack the Church as the softening campaign before imposing the Typical Agenda. Keating v. Matatics Subject: Karl Keating's E-Letter RadTradism and Weird Obsession with Jews: They Go Together Like Peas and Carrots. So I open my email yesterday... and here's this big private exchange going on between some chucklehead for "Catholics for Dean" (Motto: We Catholics need a President who used to intern for Planned Parenthood, but who is too chickenshit to acknowledge whether or not he murdered babies personally). Seems he was trying to bring me on board the Dean Train. I didn't respond because a) a vote for Dean is a vote for Planned Parenthood and b) Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere were handling the guy nicely. Oh, and the Curt Jester had some blunt remarks for the "Pay no attention to the blood on Dean's hands" Catholics too. Anyhow, demonstrating the class that has characterized the Deanie Babies, Catholics for Dean has now opted to unilaterally publish the private correspondence between Tim Whatzizface and Shaidle. Quelle Jerque! Interesting Discussion of Apologetics Here, here, and here. Carl Olsen nails the key point when he says, "All of Gaillardetz's good points have already been made. By a "new apologist." Read Mark Brumley's How Not to Share Your Faith: The Seven Deadly Sins of Catholic Apologetics and Evangelization (Catholic Answers, 2002)." PM follows it up with the other essential point. The complaint of Real Theologians[TM] against those darn upstart apologists is the complaint of the Eye against the Foot for not being an Eye. The apologists are complained against because apologetics doesn't look like the ecumenical dialogue that theologians like to conduct. The remedy is the lesson of 1 Corinthians 12. The reason apologists do what they do is varied yet rather consistent. I started doing the work of explaining the faith because I wanted to do for others what (ahem) hardly anybody did for me when I was coming into the Church. Do we need a new apologetics? Yes. But we need a new *apologetics*. Not the scrapping of apologetics and the replacement of it with a nice harmless watery dialogue that affirms everybody in their okayness. There are plenty of pathologies at work in the Apologetics Subculture: arrogance, triumphalism, Fundamentalism that Thinks it is Catholicism. It is a subculture that is particularly attractive to young, unmarried males who are spoiling to beat the crap out of somebody in a fight and call it "defending the Faith." Brumley has done a fine job of analyzing and prescribing cures for these pathologies. What he has *not* done is essentially attempt to geld the entire apologetics project or (most maddening of all) pat apologists on the head and speak as though they are rustic rubes whose childishness and flat-footed enthusiasm should be taken in hand by Grownups such as himself. This seems to be the province of Real Theologians, who issue little warnings about "the new apologists" every couple of years. Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Since I was so hard on NRO-ites the other day... It's only fair to point out that Stanley Kurtz has an excellent piece in the Weekly Standard on the disastrous effects of gay marriage in Scandinavia. It only makes sense of course, since Sullivan's stupid argument boiled down to "Look at Britney Spears! She trashes marriage! So why can't gays further pervert the purpose and point of marriage?" Gay marriage advocates wish to portray the drive to stop this act of societal suicide as oppression. Nope. It's exaltation--of the family. A society which does not privilege and protect the family is a society that it doomed. The result of gay marriage will not be gay marriage. It will be the further exposure of the family to the destructive forces that have done so much to harm it already. The mania of modern culture is to destroy what is natural and then "solve" the catastrophic results by redefining the monstrosity we create as being just the same as what went beforeandbesideswhocareswhatwentbeforeanyway. Why Washingtonians Lie and Say it Rains Here All the Time It's to keep people like this in California. More proof we live in a fallen world Alec Baldwin gets an Oscar nomination and Ian McKellen does not. "Franken said he's not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely." Reason #9095468456644509 the Left is brain-dead. "Protecting free speech" = "inflicting physical violence on people who heckle millionaires". Is it not getting weird the way the Left seems to go out of its way to exalt Islam? I begin to think that it's really about separation of Christianity and State. By the way, speaking of Fr. Bryce Sibley... Everywhere I went in South Dakota, all the priests of the rising generation knew him and loved him. That should fill you with hope--and a little bit of fear. Apparently his bulletin board at the North American College was endlessly fascinating. An early draft of his blog, by all reports. I promised myself I would only have only blog about Papal Break Dancing So, I've decided this is the link, since it gives you video, as well as Fr. Bryce' inimitable take on things. I must say that, for sheer hysterical over-reaction, I thought a couple of the comments at Amy's blog were priceless: "Today's art performance is tomorrow's "liturgy" - that's been the pattern for a long time now..." Uh huh. Amy's Dead Right, of Course EWTN goes over you with a fine tooth comb... unless you are Mel. Very idiosyncratic. Hee hee hee! General Jack Ripper finds himself wedged in an exceedingly painful spot between two PC orthodoxies: The Glories of Homosexuality vs. the Immutable Rightness of Everything a Politicized Black Preacher Has to Say. Pish Tosh! Think Nothing of It! We must continue the race to manufacture humans! Manifest Destiny! Historical Inevitability! Grant monies! Nobel Prizes! And, er, Serving Humanity (whatever we determine that word shall henceforth mean). How AIDS works AIDS does not generally kill you. What kills you are the infections that result from other diseases when AIDS makes it impossible to defend yourself from them. There are lots of organisms present on your skin right now that will kill you in days--if you suddenly lost your immune system. The German cannibal case is an example of Cultural AIDS at work. There are always some nuts present in any society who will do something horrible. A healthy culture is able to say why they are wrong and dispense with them to prison or the gallows. A deeply sick society--like ours--has trouble figuring out exactly why such people are wrong (we wouldn't want to use a judgemental word like "evil"). Such a society is begging for the proliferation of more evil. Lucky for us, God is on our side. What the picture doesn't show you... according to a reader... is, that upon release, the "doves of peace" were viciously attacked by the sea gulls which circle St. Peter's Dome, and the Vatican groundsmen had to pick up the pieces of their torn apart bodies behind the Basilica after the Angelus! Sounds like a scene from "Mars Attacks!". Lawmakers Vote to 'Celebrate' America: Where anybody who wants can be their own private Saddam. |
