I'm mostly gone tomorrow

We've been scrambling, as usual, to keep our noses above water financially at Chez Shea. Tomorrow belongs to writing to bring in a few shekels, clearing the decks of some work, and if necessary, learning to breath underwater.

Prayers appreciated.

Today's film recommendation

We're No Angels If you like your humor black and dry, this is a film for you.

Don't confuse it with the Robert DeNiro/Sean Penn remake. The good one has Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray (plus, of course, everybody's fave villain, Basil Rathbone).

Mercy, the most scandalous demand of the gospel...

...is also the most breath-takingly beautiful and supernatural. The power to do what this woman did can only come from God.

Please pray for Binky the Web Elf

I know, it sounds silly (and Binky revels in droll humor) but this is serious. He's very ill. Dunno what's wrong.

Prayer request

A reader writes:

My father is suffering from macular degeneration - an eye condition - and although it was confined to his right eye, his left eye is now afflicted as well. He can't read the paper without a magnifying glass any more. Most of all, he fears he won't be able to look after my brother, who has schizophrenia and is helpless.

He is devastated and I find I don't know how to comfort him. Could I ask for prayers, both for his comfort and, perhaps, that his condition might be arrested or reversed or even cured altogether?

He's still recovering from my mother's death last January, too.

St. Joseph, Blessed Mother, St. Lucy and St. Benedict Joseph Labre, please intercede for this family that they may find mercy, relief and consolation. Father, please lift from them the weight of this heavy cross. Send them the grace they need to bear their sufferings. And turn those sufferings to the glory of the Resurrection through Christ our Lord. Amen

Odd

Here's a piece by Penn Jillette on why he's an atheist. I can't account for it, but I have the odd sense that in the right circumstances, the two of us could be friends. I, at any rate, somehow come away from the piece liking the man in spite of myself. I don't agree with a word he says, of course. And I think a lot of people would very understandably find him obnoxious, but for some reason, I find that there is something... what? Honest? Bracing? Not Whiny? Direct? I can't find the right word.

Hmmm... I'm not sure. C.S. Lewis' fiction was dotted with atheists, all of whom were more or less reincarnations of The Great Knock, a lapsed Scotch Presbyterian who sternly rejected belief in God yet who was honest as the daylight. Lewis remarks about him that he thought the idea the human voice should be employed for anything besides finding the truth was preposterous.

I dunno. I'm surprised by my reaction to the piece....

Maybe it's that he seems to actually try to make a case *for* atheism rather than simply *against* All Those Stupid Religious People Over There. He doesn't make a complete success of that (snarky comments about invisible friends and so forth). But he seems to be trying to be *for* something more than against something. He may find, to his surprise, that God is even more furiously *for* things than he is. At any rate, I hope he discovers that fact.

Hmmm...

Give Sullivan Credit Where it is Due

He doesn't yet have the moxie to say, "Okay, it was ugly and vicious and totally outrageous to suggest that Benedict is a medieval Jew hater because of his remarks about usury. I apologize for that outrageous and wholly unwarranted insult. Please forgive me." But he does back down after a fashion and I applaud him for doing so.

In turn, let me try to reciprocate and say that I think I was wrong today to fall into Sullivan's own habit of identifying his person with his homosexuality. Sullivan's habit is replace the term "homosexuality" with "homosexual". This allows him to play the trick of saying that Church teaches that the person, not the appetite, is "disordered". It's a great, albeit not very persuasive to me, bit of sleight of hand for whipping up fury at the Church for its failure to accomodate Sullivan.

But the reality is that Sullivan is wrong. The reality is that we are not our sins or our disordered appetites. Our sins do not name us. They are not the deepest truth about us. And this remains true even when we wish to pretend that our sins are not sins--even when we insist on the futile attempt to get others to approve those sins.

And, a bit closer to home, this remains true even when somebody angers us by, say, sliming a good man as an anti-semite in the effort to discredit the Church's teaching.

I continue to say that Sullivan's journalism is ultimately organized around the defense of homosexual practice as the great non-negotiable "pole star". But I think that I overstepped in calling it the "key" to his writing because I think this is to suggest that his considerable (and, I think, God-given) gifts as a writer are essentially ordered toward sin. This is a way-too-Calvinist view that identifies sin with creation. I do not believe that any human being is *essentially* sinful. Sin does not constitute our humanity; it destroys it. Nature is not corrupt. Corruption is corrupt.

For this reason, I think I owe Andrew an apology for speaking as though his homosexuality (which is a corruption of nature) is essential to who he is. I realize he will not take that as a compliment nor as much of an apology, since he is engaged in the project of attempting to argue that it is the essence of who he is. But I disagree and I think I was wrong to speak that way.

So: mea culpa. Please forgive me for not distinguishing a man from his appetites and sinful acts. I was wrong to do it.

My Pal Dave Curp Sends me the Following Link and remarks...

"A Grownup Tackles the Torture Issue"

I agree. This is one of the rare moments when I've had the sense I was reading a morally serious person who was not simply acting as a apologist and excuse-maker for whatever the Administration needed justifying.

Some of my readers where angered by my response to the Krauthammer piece (and, in turn, to them). By way of analogy, permit me to try to illustrate why I find so much of the Right Wing press' attempt to soften the ground for Torture so thoroughly obnoxious.

First, permit me to quote Uncle Screwtape again describing the basic strategy of hell: "We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic."

One can quibble about whether "generations" all agree about things. The point remains clear: We tend to be blind to those sins which most coincide with our favorite virtues. The man who loves justice can often excuse his indulgence of rage. The sentimentalist may be inclined the virtue of gentleness, but blind to the sin of indulgence.

Here's a little lab demonstration of this principle at work in a field far from the Torture question: an apologia for gay marriage from a Catholic theologian, which disguises itself as a plea for nuance in biblical interpretation.

The argument is a skilled work of ledgerdemain. It tells a lie by means of a complex series of true statements. All the points about biblical teaching are true. All the nuances are correct. And yet, somehow, the central point is never made that gay marriage remains a metaphysical impossibility in the Catholic tradition and that homosexual practice is, in fact, a grave sin. The theologian leaves you with the impression that only a beetle-browed fundamentalist could so radically misread Scripture as to think homosexual marriage was wrong and homosexual acts a sin. In short, he directs the fashionable outcry against those vices of which we are least in danger (persecution of homosexuals) and fixes our approval on the virtue (in this case, hermaneutical nuance) nearest to that vice (gay marriage and approval of homosex) which he is trying to make endemic.

My basic beef is that this is what some members of the Right Wing Punditocracy are trying to do too. The stress of argument after argument is not on "How do we avoid this if at all possible?" It is on intimidating the reader into accepting torture, calling him a pantywaist, a "Torture Pharisee", a preening moralist, "squeamish" and "unrealistic". Again and again, the goal is not to keep torture at bay, but to encourage us to welcome it, to ask not "How can we avoid it?" but "How can we get away with it?"

Much sleight of hand is employed, along with the insults and intimidation of the "squeamish". One sleight of hand trick that Tom at Disputations pointed out is this: say "Of course I'm against torture, and how dare you insinuate otherwise, you demagogue!" while also saying, "You know, not all torture is immoral. In fact, some torture is a duty and positive moral good!" To such people, I just want to say, "Make up your mind."

Another sleight of hand trick is to say, "What about the ticking bomb scenario! Wake up and be a Realist!" while steadfastly ignoring the voices that say, "But the ticking bomb *is* the fantasy. The *reality* is that we have tortured and that there is a rather disturbing death rate for detainees. If the goal is to avoid evil, then shouldn't we be arguing the case for *against* making torture more acceptable instead of trying every sleight of hand trick we can think of to manipulate the public into accepting it?"

What irked me in the Krauthammer thread (aside from Krauthammer joining Chavez, Ledeen and various others in making the case for torture) was the fact that some of my readers seem so all-fired bent on making any excuse they can and employing precisely the Screwtapian rhetorical strategies that the apologist for gay marriage used: warning against things I am not in danger of while totally ignoring the main point.

So, for instance, one reader, faced with the hard cold fact that the Church condemns torture, tried this little trick:

Amazing how the Church went for almost two millenia having no teaching banning torture applied by the State or the Church, and now anyone unwilling to sign on to a policy that would reduce our interrogators to playing twenty questions with terrorists is tarred as a member of the "Rubber Hose Right". Mark, was it the "Rubber Hose Church" until the latter half of the last century?

Now, a natural reading of this is that the author is arguing, not simply for "torture" in scare quotes, or "so-called torture", but Torture. That is, after all, what was practiced in Christian states during the medieval and Renaissance period. The implication is not only that the Church has contradicted itself (probably in "squeamish" post-Vatican II deference to pantywaist Euro-trendiness), but that Torture (not just "torture") used to be just fine.

So it's not a particular difficult leap of logic to read this as an apology for Torture, not "torture".

So I asked as much of the reader:

I take it I can now put you down as someone who is no longer part of the "Of course, I'm against torture! But what *is* torture anyway?" contingent and who has now joined the full-throated "Hell Yes! Let's use Torture! In fact, Torture is a Catholic value!" group?

That's certainly not making the case for fog anymore. So I guess it's an improvement--after a fashion.

Who replied by re-inforcing his suggestion that Torture (not "torture" or "so-called torture" is a "Catholic value" only recently subverted by the Euro-weenie post-Vatican II Church.

Mark, I can then assume that you don't wish to address the question as to whether the Church was the "Rubber Hose Church" under your criteria until the latter half of the last century?

I replied:

As we both know, the Church's teaching develops over time. There are any number of things which were permissible in Catholic culture (see, for instance, my friend Dave Curp's article on slavery, or our long sad history of animosity to Jews) that the Church has, in its developed teaching, repudiated. Among these things is torture, as we have already discussed. If you wish to make the case for dissent from the Church's teaching on torture, I trust you will also be making the case for dissent from the Church's teaching concerning the curse upon all Jewry and the goodness of slavery? Me: I just stick with the Church's basic developed teaching which says that torture is wrong--even when America does it.

My reader then suddenly retreated back to the "I'm against torture" position, while still continuing to make the case that we don't really need to listen to the Church's developed teaching about torture:

My point Mark is that to argue from the history of the Church an absolute anti-torture position is not possible unless we lop off 1950 years of Church history. Unlike the position of the Church on abortion which has been consistant for 2000 years the position of the Church on torture has shifted back and forth over time. I think it interesting that the modern absolute anti-torture positon of the modern popes only came about after the Church no longer had the papal states to rule.

On an issue where the Church has found little stability over time I think a great deal of care should be taken in making sweeping moral judgments.

My own personal opinion, as I have stated before, is that I am against physical torture, such as breaking limbs, beatings, etc., but I am not against such non-physical techniques as sleepness, repeated questioning, psycholgical manipulation, "white noise", etc. I fear that the McCain law would outlaw those useful questioning techniques, and that is why I am opposed to it.

Now you may be wondering why my reader took such care to rebut the claim that the history of the Church makes an anti-torture position obvious. Particularly since I have never made such a stupid argument and am perfectly aware of the fact that Catholics committed torture in the past, with the approval of bishops. From a rational standpoint his argument makes no sense, because it rebuts something I'm not saying. But from a sleight-of-hand standpoint it makes great sense, because it suggests to the reader that the Magisterium can be safely ignored if it threatens the growing consensus of the Right-Wing Punditocracy and the policies of the Bush Administration.

It's that habit of using sleight-of-hand rather than argument that I've been primarily angered by when reading the TorturePundits in the media and their apologists in my comboxes. They pretend to want a serious discussion, but give every indication that the real goal is simply to make excuses for whatever we might want to do, be doing, or might do to detainees.

In conclusion, I recognize that we are dealing with complex issues. Distinguishing the difference between legitimate coercion and torture is difficult. I know that. I've said it repeatedly. What aggravates me is the deep insincerity of the Rubber Hose Pundits whose goal is not to make sure that torture never occurs, nor that such distinctions really happen, but rather to make sure that when torture does happen, the public will be receptive to it or intimidated into silence about it. I salute the serious man who wrote Jonah Goldberg to really grapple with the question instead of do everything in his power to minimize moral norms, attack Church teaching, make excuses, intimidate, shout down, and generally apologize for torture.

Check out the Narnia SuperTrailer

Caution: this could be a long download.

Limbo is Currently in the Process of Fading from a Favored Theory to an Unfavored Theory

The operative word, of course, is "theory". It was never more than that.

I've never bought limbo myself, but Catholics are free to do so if they like (unless Rome formally condemns the theory). I think it's the fruit of a view of the sacraments which sees them as reducing valves designed to weed out as many people as possible from the mercy of God. I think it wiser to look at the sacraments as the places where we *surely* meet the love and grace of God, but not to pretend that we know these are the *only* places where God's grace can be manifested to us.

Some people ask "Then why evangelize?" This seems to me like asking, "If you've heard a rumor that the girl you've loved all your life wants to marry you, isn't that knowledge enough? Why actually go to the trouble of marrying her?" It's a crazy question if we know anything about love.

But if we are thinking legalistically and asking "What's the absolute bare minimum I need in order to be saved?" then we run into all the crazy nonsense of people arguing that they don't need to bother with sacraments and the equally crazy nonsense of Catholics answering that only those who have access to sacraments can be saved. The person who claims to love God and yet wants nothing to do with his gifts has a highly dubious love of God. But likewise, the Catholic who claims God is love and yet talks as though God is engaged in an earnest effort to damn babies because they did not jump through the proper hoop also seems to me to have a defective view of the love of God. I think God honors our feeblest attempt to respond to his grace. Some of us never get as far as the sacraments. That's alright. Grace supplies (as the good thief found out). That's no excuse for us not to try to respond though. Rather, it's encouragement for us to keep trying. We are bound by the sacraments, but God is not bound.

Sullivan in the Centrifuge

The key to everything Sullivan writes is the defense of his sex life. His attacks on Bush suddenly began after Bush said no to gay marriage. And, of course, his increasingly shrill loathing of Benedict springs from the same source. Now, an attacker can exploit an enemy's weakness or he can try to create a weakness where one does not exist. In the case of Bush, he really is vulnerable on the question of torture and Sullivan has been doing a bang-up job pointing out the weakness of the Administration and its apologists on this matter. I have serious difficulty believing he would be nearly so passionate if Bush had announced that he would do everything in his power to make gay marriage the law of the land. In that event, I think we'd be reading lots of fawning suck-up pieces about Bush's "tough stands" against international terror, etc.

The reason I think this is simple: when no actual weakness can be demonstrated (on Benedict's part), Sullivan simply resorts to the dishonest smear. There's much to choose from on that front, but I think the most transparent example so far is this:

NOW USURY?? Benedict XVI's latest enthusiasm is, apparently, the "infamy of usury". The original formal condemnation of usury - i.e. interest-bearing loans - emerged at roughly the time the Church also created the formal doctrines condemning Jews and "sodomites" in the early medieval era, so it is not surprising Benedict would seek to re-emphasize it. He recently honored the National Anti-Usury Consultancy, and described interest-bearing accounts as a "social plague," and all financial interest as something that "annihilates the life of the poor." If you are versed in the ancient anti-Semitic tropes of the medieval Church, you will be unsurprised by this language. Just so all you Catholics with 401ks and interest-bearing bank accounts: according to this pope, you are enmeshed in evil. Welcome to the club. By the way, does the Vatican earn interest?

Note the text I bolded. Sullivan, like so many cradle Catholics, is of course largely ignorant of Scripture and it's repeated condemnation of lending money at interest. He is also ignorant of the facts pointed out by C.S. Lewis:

There is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest: and lending money at interest - what we call investment - is the basis of our whole system. Now it may not absolutely follow that we are wrong. Some people say that when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians agreed in forbidding interest (or 'usury' as they called it), they could not foresee the joint stock company, and were only thinking of the private moneylender, and that, therefore, we need not bother about what they said. That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not. That is where we want the Christian economist. But I should not have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilizations had agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which we have based our whole life. (Mere Christianity)

Sullivan could, of course, have bothered to find that out before making such an ignorant comment. But that would have interfered with his flat-footed portrayal of Benedict as a conspiracy theorist at war with International Jewish Bankers. And, of course, it would get in the way of his rhetorical linkage of "sodomites" and the Jew who (we all know) the evil FuhrerPope seeks to persecute.

After all, no poor person has ever become hopeless mired in credit card debt. That's a fantasy. But Benedict's murderous hatred of Jews is sober realism.

Expect Sullivan's voice to go beyond the pitch of human hearing as he continues his increasing deranged attacks on the Church's teaching about homosexual practice.

Update: Welcome Sullivan readers. Yes, it's true. Andrew, with a straight face, smears Benedict with the suggestion that he is an anti-semite at war with Jewish bankers and then has the chutzpah to complain about "low blows". Amazing.

A sensible reader knows that when I point out Andrew's writings all hinge on his sex life, this does not mean that every single syllable he writes is about that. Rather it means that this is the great Non-Negotiable: everything bows before it. Issues which have little to do with it cross his radar and are commented upon. He's not a monomaniac. But when anything threatens that "pole star of his journalism" (as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus long ago termed Andrew's all-consuming journalistic bias) everything must be sacrificed to it. And so, the lionized Bush of the post-9/11 period inexorably morphed into the enemy Bush once he made clear that he was a Garden Variety Republican on the Gay Marriage Question.

As to Benedict, Andrew's doing a great job his own self showing the depths to which he will sink in the campaign to malign him for failing to edit the Church's teaching to suit Andrew's demands. I don't much need to gild the skunk cabbage.

Anyway, thanks for the traffic. It's a rare week when I get called on the carpet for my black diabolical Pride for opposing the TorturePundits *and* get accused of "low blows" by a man who has smeared the Pope with the suggestion of Jew hatred.

What a world of wonders.

Oh, and by the way, I thought Fr. Timothy Radcliffe's take on the Instruction was very much worth reading. Andrew could do with a dose of his non-hysteria.

Thank God For Extinction

I like that Nature is pitiless.

St. Blog's Prayer Network is Back on the Air

I'm going to make a permanent link on my left rail so folks can go there to share their prayer requests.

Freedom of Choice for Everybody Except Pharmacists

Israel's Foremost Military Historian on the Iraq War

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. (CCC 2309)

This is one of those stories I haven't followed, but somebody might care about

Volokh talking about Ave Maria's project in Florida. The last time this subject came up, two crazies showed up in my comment boxes, arguing passionately with each other about something I neither understood nor recall, calling each other liars, and writing me angry emails because it had been *five whole minutes* and I hadn't deleted blocked or banned the other person. I eventually solved the problem by deleting, blocking and banning everybody in the argument. Ah, technology.

I still have very little interest in what Ave Maria does. It's their school. They can do as they like. What interested me about this particular thread was the curious bigotry which seems to suggest a growing modern notion that "Where two or three are gathered in Christ's name--there a 'cult' is also." I can see no particular justification for this notion, just a nameless fear that if enough Christians or (shudder!) Catholics form a community, it won't be long before the witch-burnings, Committees of Public Sanctity, vigilante militias and Thought Police are instituted by the Village Elders.

The Scourge of All Male, Celibate School Teachers Continues to Reap its Dreadful Harvest

Christian Bloggers in the News

Mostly focuses on Evangelicals.

The Frustration of Having an Unpublished Book

A reader writes:

I read your post regarding Spirit Daily's article on the statue weeping blood with interest. I visit that website every day, but I don't know why. Once in a while there's a legitimate story that I haven't read elsewhere. Most of the time, however, I come away frustrated and angry at their sensationalistic tactics.

I would be forever indebted to you if you could clear something up for me regarding Medjugorje. Michael H. Brown has links to more Medjugorje websites than he has to Fatima and Lourdes sites put together. He posts the monthly message and there's a link to pilgrimages on the left of his website. But that's neither here nor there.

Here's the thing: Someone very close to me visited Medjugorje a few months ago and returned a changed woman and, in my opinion, it wasn't for the better. She was so holy, with a rosary wrapped around her wrist, speaking softly and closing her eyes often in rapturous piety that I thought I would throw up. She brought me back a rosary that she claimed had been blessed by the Blessed Mother. I brought it to my pastor who rolled his eyes and said, "No, that won't cut it," and he blessed it himself.

Now, you have to understand something. Prior to her visit, I was pretty much sold on the events there. But there was something about her personality upon her return that really made me uncomfortable. So, I did some Googling on "Medjugorje + hoax" and came up with some information. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how credible it is. The thing that jumped out at me, though, was the disobedience of the Franciscans there toward their bishop. Well, naturally, that was all I needed. All the greatest saints who ever received visions or apparitions and were told to build a church went to their superiors first, right? And if the superior said "no way," that was the end of it. And in the end, whoever it was that appeared to the saint praised them for their obedience to authority.

This website also indicated that although supporters of Medjugorje claim that Pope John Paul II visited there twice, he in fact visited the bishop and did not actually go to the site of the apparitions. At this point, my suspicions gave way to full blown disbelief and anger at how so many people have been duped.

And then yesterday, somewhere on Catholic Exchange, I believe (I could be wrong), there was an article referencing John Paul II's support of the events taking place there.

Now I don't know what to think. Yeah, yeah, I know I don't have to believe in any apparitions for my salvation. But I sure would like to know one way or another who's gone off the deep end here. Did John Paul endorse and support what was going on there? Or was he being tremendously diplomatic in his choice of words while reserving judgment?

Any help you can offer would really be appreciated. Thanks so much!

Among the many things discussed in my frustratingly-unpublished book about Mary is the phenomenon of private revelation, including apparitions. People often write me asking me to adjudicate Medjugorge. I won't do it. As a member of the "Trust, but verify" school, I remain firmly agnostic. Medjugorge Enthusiasts point to this or that wonder. I remind them that wonders do not necessarily all come from God. Medjugorge Condemners point to this and that episcopal condemnation. I remind them that Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake under the full wrath of the local ordinary, but things turned out differently in the long run.

As somebody who has absolutely no dog in this fight, my recommendation is basically to stop wasting time inculcating a devotion to a phenomenon about which the Church has rendered no verdict. It is also to stop issuing one man anathemas against that same phenom for the same reason. If a person must have a devotion to a private revelation, there are plenty of legit ones that the Church has approved. Meanwhile, let the Church do its job. That way, if the Church does render a verdict (which is by no means certain) we will not face the risk of being dogmatically convinced the Church was a) blinded by the smoke of Satan from seeing the heavenly glory of Mary in our midst or b) overcome by Hellish Powers and tricked into approving this demonic delusion. Instead, you'll be able to say, "Okay! Rome has spoken. The matter is at an end."

My Latest on Catholic Exchange

The first thing to know about evil is that it is not a problem, but a mystery.

Back later, gotta run!

Touchstone on Why Johnny Cash Reached People, Especially Young People

Gen X and Y are the people who are paying all the bills for Generation Narcissus. They tend to resonate with prophets who speak with authenticity.

I used the word "prophet" somewhat advisedly and in a Pauline sense. He refers the term not merely to biblical prophets but to bards and poets (cf. Titus). Gen X does much the same thing in its hunger for the Spirit. Songwriters tend to get elevated to the status of prophet and Johnny Cash achieved that status for many people.

The Magisterium has Blood on its Hands!

Unintentional rhetorical overkill from Dennis Prager, who doubtless does not really mean to call guys like JPII and Benedict XVI accomplices to murder, but nonetheless winds up doing so in his attempt to swat a fly with a sledge hammer.

Can't he say "I disagree with you about the death penalty" without making such a lurid D'Hippolitan charge?

There are two basic personality types in the Catholic world

The Spirit Daily personality, which reads stories like this and instantly believes them.

And my personality type, which reads stories like this and says, "We'll see."

Outside the Church, of course, are the people who say, "No amount of evidence, no matter how persuasive, will ever convince me that a supernatural event took place, because I have a philosophy that forbids miracles and how could somebody as clever as me ever be wrong?"

I tend to be of the "Trust, but verify" school.

Culture of Death Probes New Zealand with its Tentacles

One hopes that the Kiwi sullenness toward Aussie culture will help to rebuff this little act of cultural imperialism.

SCOTUS to Take on Abortion-Related Case

Hell's Ministry of Agitprop Attempts to Respond with Pro-Choice Sympathy Piece--Unfortunately it's so bloody creepy that the effect is not what the Powers and Principalities were hoping for.

Reminds me of the attempts in the local Seattle press to lionize Jack Kevorkian as warm, fuzzy, and grandfatherly. The guy's essential uber-creepiness just bled through as he proudly showed off his paintings of mutilated corpses and waxed enthusiastic about how he loved to photograph the eyes of patients at the instant of death.

It was tough trying to sell that psycho as America's Grampa. And as the general awareness of what abortion means has settled into the American psyche, it's gotten harder and harder to portray these butchers as anything but what they are: murderers of the innocent in pursuit of the dollar and in defiance of God and conscience.

Dean at Blogs4God writes:

Not looking for links for myself, but hoping you'll help out Mike Boyink.

He's a techblogger whose putting his talents to good by offering a place where
we can tell positive stories about/on ourselves related to our walk with Him.

I just posted an article on it:

Or you can source it directly:

Either way, it'd be great if you gave Mike B a shout out and some traffic.

Done.

A reader writes:

I'd be very interested in how you and your Catholic readers interpret
"keeping the Sabbath". Among other things, the CCC states in article 2172, "...The Sabbath brings everyday work to a halt and provides a respite. It is a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money." Just what does that mean? For me and my family, it means no mall, no unnecessary work, no unnecessary shopping (though maybe a gallon of milk if needed). I know practicing Catholics who treat Sunday as the day to go shopping. I don't know, having spent half my life as a Protestant and half as a Catholic, it seems to me that many of our evangelical friends do better with this Commandment than Catholics do. So what's the deal?

Discuss, class.

John Zmirak Discovered the Same Thing I Did!

It turns out Christmas begins, not ends, on Christmas day. The fun thing about this discovery is how counter-cultural you get to be. While everybody else thinks it's gone back being merely "always winter and never Christmas", you can keep the 12 Days and have a quietly jolly time.

Interview with a Search Engine

Something to amuse ourselves as we watch the dream of artificial intelligence recede into the distance.

Interesting piece by Fr. Todd on the Distinction between Effeminacy and Femininity

A Return to the Tridentine Rite Will Fix Everything

Sin turns out to be a reality even in the world of the Ultra-Pure.

Narnia Is Going to Be Awesome

Always promising when the reviewer wants to give it six out of five stars.

For Those Who Missed This Delectable Piece of Canadiana

The fact that this guy managed to make it to the level of Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister makes me wonder: what's the highest level that kookery has ever reached in the US government? Please be specific. Don't just toss in the name of your least favorite President. I want specific examples of real documented kookery in high office.

Think of the Columbia Journalism Review as a kind of "Bias Hatchery"

Here it is arguing that "American journalists must stop acting as if there is any kind of scientific argument left to cover related to Darwinism. Thus, “fairness” does not apply, since there are no critics of Darwinian orthodoxy worthy of being treated fairly. Thus, all the critics are religious nuts and there is no need to take their claims seriously or present their arguments accurately."

And yet, here it is again, wringing its hands about Free and Open Pursuit of the Truth when a Catholic journal subverts Catholic teaching. The piece does include "outspoken conservative" Fr. Richard John Neuhaus' common sense comment that "If you’re a publication that aims to advance the mission of the Catholic Church, is it balance to publish material fifty percent in favor and fifty against? That’s not balance, it’s undermining the mission of the magazine.” But notice that Fr. Tom Reese and Tom Roberts of the Reporter are not call "outspoken liberals". Nope. They're just normal. Neuhaus' quote has the look and feel of a comment that was cut-and-pasted into an article in the spot where the reporter had written in brackets "Find some quote from some supporter". The rest of the article leaves you in no doubt as to the fear and defiance you should be feeling about the pall of intellectual repression that now hangs over journalistic freedom in the Catholic world.

Some religious dogmas are open to question. Others are most emphatically not. If you have questions, the CJR will tell which believes you may correctly hold.

A reader writes:

My sister-in-law gave us a Jesse Tree the first year we were married. It was a tradition in my husband's family, but not in mine. I have learned more about it over the years and was surprised to find out that there are different versions. I am not talking about how it looks, but rather the old testament figures who are included in in the Jesse Tree are different from one version to the next. Can you ask your readers for their lists of Jesse Tree symbols? I would like to add to ours and maybe rotate some so that the stories are a little different every year. Thanks!

Alert: EPA to Allow Pesticide Testing on Orphans & Mentally Handicapped Children

Can this really be true? Anybody know anything about this?

Knowledgeable Catholics Support Vatican Priesthood Policy, Ignorant Clueless Catholics Think They Oppose It

...but, in fact support it too.

Money graf: "More than three dozen interviews at churches in Los Angeles and around Boston, Washington and Austin, Tex., underscored that Catholics were as divided as the rest of the country in their attitudes about gay men and lesbians. Roughly half the Catholics interviewed praised the Vatican document as upholding church teachings, which consider homosexuality "objectively disordered." But just as many parishioners criticized it as unfair to gay men, saying that a priest's commitment to celibacy should be the issue, not his sexual orientation."

Um, since that's what the Vatican document also basically teaches, that would mean that these people also support the Vatican policy, but don't realize that's what they are doing.

I suppose the NY Times reporter could have pointed this out to them, but then there would be no cherished "American Catholics Split on Gay Ban" story anymore and nothing for the NY Times to talk about.

Find some quote from some NY Times interviewer to justify shoddy journalism.

The Usual Sleight of Hand Article

A bit of free advertising for Voice of the Fuddled under the guise of a profile of an "exiled priest". Turns out some guy left the priesthood, ostensibly because he's upset about priestly abuse, but now is spending all his time lobbying for (you guessed it) women's ordination, abolition of celibacy, and all the rest of the Pelvic Left's Typical Menu of Grievances.

Peter Jackson is going to rock the house again

I'm not dumb enough to take that bet.

Check out Homestarrunner vs. Other Little Girl

Am I the Only Person Who Thinks This an Exceedingly Strange and Truncated Editorial?

A reader asks

I came across this.

Talks about a Christmas concert next Saturday, apparently this singer (Daniela Mercury) is banned from the concert. Fine since she was planning to hand condoms to the Pope or something. But then it talks about Black eyed peas Hip Hop band being there. I thought, Humm that is odd. So I looked up some of their lyrics. I can't say I was impressed with any of the material, but some of it I would not want my kids to hear. So why on earth are they invited to the Vatican concert for I wonder? You thoughts on your blog maybe....

I never quite know what to do when people send me things like this. There's such a strong tendency in the conservative Catholic world to draw a correlation between aesthetics and spirituality. So when somebody does something that does not suit our taste in the arts, there's a vague notion that this casts a shadow on our theology and our moral life too. I think this can often be a huge mistake and is one of the great stiflers of artistic creativity--and of theology too.

Me: I loathe hip hop as a general rule. But that's just my aesthetic taste. I suspect that if I were properly introduced, I could find the charm even of hip hop. But I haven't been, so I find it irritating doggerel, largely. But then, I also loathe opera. So what do I know?

Part of the Church's task is to be open to human creativity in all its forms. One of the forms human musical creativity has taken in post-modernity is hip hop, just as one of the forms of creativity it took 200 years ago was opera. Some hip hop is written by artists who are nasty pieces of work. So, for that matter, is opera (cf. Wagner and Verdi, who were not exactly good Catholics). But the Church still leaves the door open to what is happening in the arts.

One could go on and on about this. A few years ago, people were freaking out about JPII watching some break dancers perform, or some (by Euro standards) scantily clad African women singing at some concert. The notion behind this, of course, is that "Catholic" = "European". It does not. I sometimes suspect JPII took just a little glee in destroying that notion.

This does not mean "Non-European" = "Automatically Good". It does, however, mean that Catholics have to be more careful about separating their aesthetics from their theological judgments. The Vatican has repeatedly played host to artists who depict casual sex, incest, suicide, murder, adultery, and fornication--right there in full view of the Pope. But because those artists were performing "Hamlet" we say that's okay--as we should. But when another aesthetic is in play, we can suddenly start hunting around for "bad words" with no consideration of other factors. I'd just as soon let the Vatican continue to play host to a wide range of the arts. That means some of it will be lousy. That's what happens when you permit human creativity. But creatitivity is better than sterility nonetheless.

Good For Abp. O'Malley!

Krauthammer Pleads for Hard Cases to Make Law

Another member of the Rubber Hose Right speaks out for Torture. The usual arguments are used: namely, that human rights should apply only to those legally recognized as human (which excludes terrorists and unborn babies) and, of course, our old friend, the "Ticking Bomb scenario" is trotted out in order to blot out reason and fill you with fear and the sense that if you don't approve of torture RIGHT NOW you are, 'ow you say?, full of "pieties" and should be ranked among the self-righteous bed-wetting "Torture Pharisees" whose high-minded and fruity-smelling principles leave them unacquainted with the practical-minded and coarse realpolitik facts on the ground that must be faced and embraced if we are to win this War.

Once our inner Bruce Willis having been appealed to, he then goes on to berate that old sentimentalist John McCain for trying to deprive these United States of the power to piss away our principles and become a truly competitive terror state in the family of nations.

Another despicable day's work for another torture whore in the right wing punditocracy.

Meanwhile, David Luban speaks truth to the Bushies and their apologists for torture out in the world of the Rubber Hose Right.

Update: Fr. Neuhaus weighs in on Krauthammer for the benefit of the reading impaired.

Basic similarity between McCain and Krauthammer: both say "Under extreme circumstances, torture will occur."

Basic difference between McCain and Krauthammer: McCain still thinks that's bad. Krauthammer and his fellow excuse-makers for torture plead for us to get over our "squeamishness" and "torture phariseeism".

Neuhaus doesn't address the inherent implausibility of the ticking bomb scenario, but that's grist for another conversation. As I say, the real question is not "What do we do if there's a ticking bomb?" The real question is "How do we justify repeated pleas for torture aimed at making the public more pliant to the abuse of basic human rights when we have already seen that what is needed is vigilance *against* such abuse, not temptation to commit more of it."

Neuhaus is on the money in his conclusion:

McCain is right: The United States should be on record as banning “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of prisoners. The meaning of each of those terms will inevitably be disputed, as will the case-by-case application of the principle. But again, abusus non tollit usus.

By the way, do read the comments below. You'll learn so much. Betcha didn't know opposition to excuse-making for torture is a manifestion of "black, diabolical Pride."

Sheesh!

Dave Pawlak is back in the Blogosphere--Complete with a New Bride!

Robots Debate ID

Interesting piece on Greg and Suzanne Wolfe, two of my local heroes in the Seattle Catholic Community

I owe a debt to Greg because he agreed to publish my first book, This is My Body, way back in his Christendom Press days. But more than that, he's one of the most interesting and creative thinkers about art and faith there is. His marriage with Suzanne is a little icon of the way in which I hope the stupid divisions between Left and Right in the Church can be transcended with the help of the Spirit and a modicum of imagination on our part.

Suzanne, by the by, will be speaking at the Seattle Chesterton Society on Thursday, January 19 at 7:30 PM, Falcon Lounge, Seattle Pacific University.

She will be doing Readings from her recent novel, Unveiling, a winner of the Christianity Today Award of Merit for Fiction for 2005. Centered on a young woman’s restoration of a mysterious medieval painting in a church in Rome, Unveiling brings the ancient city of Rome to life and reveals a courageous woman coming to terms with a tragic past. The author is executive editor of Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion.

Scott Adams Continues to Annoy by Believing in Evolution But Failing to Genuflect Properly

It reminds me of those weird controversies in Russian sects about whether you should cross yourself with two fingers or three. That Adams believes in evolution is. not. good enough! He must ask *no* questions at *all* or face the ferocious wrath of the High Priesthood to whom alone the Sacred Mysteries are entrusted!

That's "encouragement of critical thought" doncha know.

The Whimsical John Zmirak Interviewed While Wearing Astronaut Suit

I think it's some kind of penance for Bad Catholics or something.

Speaking of Christmas

Pal o'the Blog Kathie Lundquist has a new album out: "Light in Our Darkness: Music for Advent and Christmas". If you are looking for a lovely Christmas present, I recommend this one.

For All my "Small is Beautiful/Wal-Mart is Evil/Support the Small Craftsman and Businessman" Readers...

A reader writes:

Hi Everyone,

Most of you know me, and for those who don't: I am a really nice guy. I am writing to ask for your help. As most of you know, I make fine hardwood specialties and outdoor furniture at my shop here in Port Townsend. In an attempt to sell my products nationwide, I have created a website with a shopping cart and credit card acceptance.

I am asking for your help in two ways:

1) Check out www.whybuyplastic.com (my dad actually made the site - so blame him if it's no good!)

2) Forward this email to as many of your friends as possible (and encourage them to do the same). As you know, web advertising is very expensive and my business is not yet able to raise funds at that level.

Any help that you can offer is most appreciated.

Joshua Lee
Port Townsend, WA

Worth checking out for Christmas.

I figure any blog run by somebody called "Cletus Huckleberry" is worth a mention

What Pro-Choice Folk Stand For

At the Name of Jesus, Every Member of the Chattering Classes Shall Cringe...

Relapsed Catholic provides the perfect capper to Barb Nicolosi's story about the civil war in the Disney marketing department concerning Narnia. Barb relayed a tale last summer about the pagan in the Disney marketing dept freaking out at the thought that the film would be identified as Christian, while the Christians were saying the film should be advertised to its natural fan base. The suits were consulted and the verdict came down from on high to the pagans: "Sorry guys, but we're going for the Passion dollars on this one."

Crude, but then, that's Hollywood.

However, as if to prove Michael Medved's point that Hollywood is not ruled by economics but by other powers, the marketing blitz for Narnia begins and, wouldncha know it, the Disney shock troops and the cast are all getting cold feet and looking around desperately for ways to pretend that the Narnia stories are not deeply Christian stories by a deeply Christian writer. Reminds of that hilarious moment on the DVD commentary for The Two Towers when Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, and Sean Astin all solemnly agree (as the Battle of Helm's Deep is raging on screen and we are all looking forward to the complete annihilation of the Orc army) that this is really a deeply anti-war film.

Medved thinks Hollywood is really dominated by fashion and ideology and not money. I think that's a bit like saying a car is really controlled by the steering wheel: it's true, but not true enough. The question is: who's holding the steering wheel and I think Ephesians 6 is a more complete--albeit mysterious--explanation.

It's funny. For a long time, I used to think it oddly primitive when I read biblical remarks to the effect that the mere Name of Jesus could make the devils afraid. And yet, as I (or is it the world?) gets older, I find the odd spectacle of the world literally afraid to speak of You Know Who (no, not Voldemort). I begin to suspect a weisenheimer like me doesn't know everything after all.

Happy Thanksgiving, One and All!

However, before I go, let these words of the brilliant and profound SecretAgentMan stand for mine, particularly since I seem to baffle so many people who are puzzled about my attitude toward these great United States:

As the day nears, and preparations leave me little time to write, let me just say that I thank God for allowing me to be part of the United States of America. There are so many things to cherish in this country. I, like other patriots, spend more time and ascii being vexed at her flaws. But even those flaws are mostly the excesses of her virtues:
I love America's pragmatism, but not her amorality;

I love her undauntable courage, but not her fickle wrath;

I love America's enthusiasm for the individual, not her cawing maelstrom of egotism;

I love her speedy power, but not her heedless arrogance;

I love America's optimism, but not her vanity;

I love her free and easy ways, but not her licentious indifference . . . .

I love her.

And I thank God that my life is forever written into her story, however small my thread may be. I could not imagine my life as an English life, or a story from the subcontinent or the vast reaches of Asia. I am an American in my bones and in my blood. Uproot me, and I would die from pining.

God bless the United States of America. I would rather be a citizen of the United States of America than a king or noble in any other country. Good Russians or Thais will feel no slight, for they, too, are justly proud of their homelands, and will never be chagrined at the destiny of their births. But the cathedral of the nations spreads God's design across many colors and forms. And so I taste a light that Europe or Africa will never know, and shout with joy.

My quarrels with America are the quarrels of a lover. But my love for America is the deeper thing. God bless my native land, from which I too take bone, marrow, and blood. There has never been anything like you in the history of the world and you will be talked about and remembered with wonder, admiration, and regret at your loss 10,000 years after you are gone.

Back on Monday! Have a splendid weekend!

David Morrison Deconstructs the Usual Rhetoric From A Usual Suspect Concerning Rome's New Instruction on Admission to the Priesthood

Cold, clear common sense from a guy who knows whereof he speaks.

My Latest at the Register

For Those Who Are Wondering Where Rock Solid Went

It's on hiatus for the nonce while we get the "radio" show up and running. Our resources are limited and we can only do one thing at a time at present.

Pardon our mess while we try to get our various projects off the ground!

The Interesting Part of This Story...

is not that Usual Suspects like Crossan are trotted out. It's that orthodox Christians (even Scott Hahn) are given a place at the media table.

When Antichrist Comes, He Will Have a Perky Spokeswoman Like Katie Couric

By then, we'll be watching "America's Funniest Executions" and sniggering over madcap videos of the hilarious faces children make when they are hanged with piano wire. Sarah Silverman will provide the thigh-slapping background commentary.

Katie paves the way for the culture of the Blasphemous Nihlistic Thrill with this whimsical little piece on cadaver "art".

China, of course, assures us that these are not made from dissidents. And who could ever doubt them. On with the whimsical comments, Katie!

From our "'Shut Up!' He Explained" Department

Cartoonist Scott Adams of "Dilbert" fame makes the mistake of trying to have a discussion about Evolution and ID on his blog. Despite the fact that he makes it clear he believes in evolution, he is hastily smacked-down by one of the Guardians of Festung Darwin in his too-eager zeal to protect the Faith Truly Scientific Thought. The oddness of this does not escape a mind trained to find humor in human foibles.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/11/intelligent_des_1.html
http://wittingshire.blogspot.com/2005/11/more-fallout-from-dilbert-bloggers-id.html

Once again, we are faced with the peculiar spectacle of people terrified that the Forces of Reactionary Obscurantism will Keep People from Thinking Scientifically and Oh-So-Critically, yet who themselves shout down even their own allies if the slightest deviation from Dogmatic Orthodoxy is perceived. It really does resemble a religious faith acting at its very worst.

My Latest on Catholic Exchange

Amy Welborn is Awesome

Practically everything that has to be said about the Big Document from Rome is in her post today.

The Tortured Logic of Abortion in a Nutshell

Here's a story about some abortion protesters who decided it would be a good idea to horrify little kids with images of aborted babies--at a Christmas Parade no less! Appalling, of course.

At the same time, there's something about the language of the editorial that is so Freudianly self-accusing that you have to wonder about the editorial writer. The thing crawls with guilty clues that the author's conscience is screaming from vasty deeps somewhere under a heavy suppressing lid:

Under the guise of "protecting" children, they actually exposed them to the worst sort of violent pornographic images.

So you are aware that abortion is violent and pornographic?
The protesters are bad because they "decided their rights were more important than their responsibilities." Hel-LO?

"The protesters were within their rights. But just because it is their right, that does not make it right."

As fine a summary of the pro-life critique of "abortion is legal and that settles it" argument as you could ask for.

We're sure that if you asked the protesters, they would have said they were doing it for the children.

Rather like the compassion of people who demand abortion so that every child is a "planned and wanted child".

If that is true, why expose children to graphically violent images that they cannot understand? Would these same protesters take their own little babies to an R-rated slasher flick, or have a family movie night with porn?

I quite agree. But I think that even worse than subjecting to children to *images* of violence is subjecting them to violence itself. What happens to victims in a slasher film is nothing compared to what happens to children in an abortion.

We seriously doubt it. In fact, they would rightly brand someone who did a bad parent, ignoring the fact that they have just done the same thing for everybody else's children.

One could scarcely ask for a clearer expression of the guilty demons lurking in the pro-choice subconscious that simultaneously expresses zeal for the sacrament of abortion and yet wishes to be perceived as Doing All "For the Children".

We are also disturbed that they would use children as a political tool.

Thanks, Hillary.

The rest of the editorial, I agree with. These kinds of tactics change no minds and accomplish nothing but a sort of masturbatory expression of anger on the part of protesters who aren't really interested in persuasion and who are, in fact, deeply counter-productive. For this reason, I abhor what they do. But the weird thing about our culture is that it is often far more upset by image than by reality. The WaPo prints a story about torture in secret CIA facilities and William Bennett is upset, not that the torture happened, but that it was reported. A bunch of protesters shock a crowd with images of what is occurring every day down the street in the Planned Parenthood clinic, and the Guardians of Our National Discourse in the press are far more upset by the image than by the reality.

Except, perhaps, somewhere deep down under that suppressive lid--where something is screaming to be let out and manifests itself in rather creepy ways on editorial pages from time to time.

Unleash the Power of the Blog!

A reader writes:

Hi. A reader who is familiar with your blog (and saw the posts here:

http://thesiclecell.blogspot.com/2005/11/as-sincere-thank-you-to-those-utterly.html

and here:

http://ravingatheist.com/archives/2005/11/way_back_when.php

emailed me your contact information and suggested that I write you and ask you if you would consider posting this need on your blog.

The mother is 16 weeks pregnant now, has pregnancy related issues that are causing her to miss work, is falling way behind on bills, and she thinks abortion could be a better alternative to losing her house, etc. I am trying to assure her that she will not lose her home and constantly trying to scrape together enough donations to back this assurance up.

She goes back and forth about abortion and I feel the situation is all the more crucial because of that.

We are all aware of Internet concerns, but this is not a scam. Dr. Beverly McMillan (very famously pro-life) has been working with the mother and can confirm that this is a real crisis pregnancy.

At any rate, please contact me (Ashli, of the SICLE Cell) if you need more information.

If you would like to post this need, please direct donors to this address:

New Philadelphia Presbyterian Church
P.O. Box 344
Quincy, Florida 32351

Have donors clearly mark the funds: Crisis Pregnancy Ministry. All donations are tax deductible and will go from our church directly to the mother's mortgage company.

Thank you so much for considering this.

Ashli McCall

Non-Catholic Christians See the Common Sense of Rome's Instruction

Andrew Sullivan, on the other hand, calls this "one of the darkest hours in the church's recent history" (because, of course, it's all about him) and is reduced to catty sotto voce suggestions about Benedict's own sexual orientation.

THE POPE AND PRADA: Have you seen those fabulous Prada red shoes? He looks like Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz. And his ditching of the historical tailors that have historically dressed popes? The pontiff has even taken to wearing Gucci sunglasses, and padded quilt jackets. And his personal assistant looks like a GQ model. Absolutely fabulous.
- 4:36:00 PM

Nothing like reasoned discourse.

Haven't heard any bleats of panic or cries of "Betrayal" on the Right yet. But the day is young.

Fr. Rob on What Bp. Weigand's Options Are

Bloggerel at Korrectiv!

Jeffrey Overstreet Conducts Us to This Year's Annual Harry Potter Smackdown

The Christian Paladins Against Potter: Making Sure the Church is Perceived as an Island of Irrelevance in an Ocean of Despair

Here's Something I Don't Get

Rome says they will release the document nobody has seen on Nov. 29. Yet here, apparently, it is.

Well, if it's an accurate story, it's about what I expected.

The Expected Blah Blah Begins Afresh

The Document Nobody Has Seen produces fresh burblings about a "purge"--as though a few priests contemptuous of their vows would be just the thing to enliven the priesthood.

No Doubt He Was Speaking in His Capacity as Bishop of Rome

I bet you didn't know this about Pavel Chichikov, St. Blog's Poet Laureate

Peter, do you love me?

Yes, Lord! You know that I love you!

Then try experiments on my rats.

Once again, the Document Nobody Has Actually Seen is Revealed (Allegedly) in the Press

If the report is accurate, it sound like there aren't any surprises. No sexually active priests, whatever their orientation. If you've demonstrated a lived commitment to the teaching of the Church for three years, you might have a shot at the priesthood, whatever your orientation.

Sounds about right, and so it will make everybody on the fringes angry.

Katelyn Sills on HMS Radio Today

Katelyn Sills will be on Heart Mind and Strength Radio today. Bishop Conlon of Steubenville and Mark Shea will also do ther regular segments. Those who are interested can tune in live at www.avemariaradio.net or download the podcast which will be posted tomorrow on the www.exceptionalmarriages.com podcast page.

Despicable

I always thought caring for the fatherless was a Catholic value. Apparently, the principal thinks middle class respectability is a Catholic value.

If only Mom had gotten an abortion, then she could get a job at Loretto High
School.

From the Sentimental Misanthropes at PETA



No doubt these people would have stern words for Christians who crudely manipulate small children by frightening them with tales of hellfire and brimstone.

Oh, it also turns out fish feel pain. Two thoughts immediately come to mind. First, when are they going to petition sharks, barracudas and lamprey eels to politely desist from their exploitive and pain-inducing behaviors?

Second, allow me to introduce PETA to Planned Parenthood. There are other organism besides fish that feel pain--at surprisingly young ages.

What is it...

with the Chinese?

Homestarrunner Gets You in the Autumnal Mood

The Floating Amorphous Grievance Cloud

Fr. Dale Fushek, founder of Life Teen was arrested on various charges of the Usual Stuff. Amy reported on this yesterday, but the interesting thing for me was the discussion in the comboxes, which very quickly wound up having almost nothing to do with Fushek (his guilt is, in true combox fashion, a foregone conclusion) and everything to do with everybody's grievances about other stuff. Fushek, whose manifest crime makes him unworthy of even ascertaining whether it actually occurred, is of course only protesting his innocence because that's what liars do. And this miserable liar is the founder of the criminal organization LifeTeen, which has offended the sensibilities of countless traditional-minded pietists. LifeTeen therefore both adds to Fushek's obvious guilt and derives from his disgusting perversions that we don't have to be troubled to prove all the faults of its Founder. Never mind the fact that LifeTeen has, in fact, kept many teen in Church and helped them grow in their understanding of the Paschal Mystery. The simple fact is, we can all agree that LifeTeen is evil--like Fushek. And this, of course, goes to show that it's all been going to hell in a handbasket ever since the dreaded "Novus Ordo" was promulgated.

Those of you not obsessed with liturgical politics may at this point wonder how we got from a man charged (not convicted--except in comboxes) of crimes to the proposition that only a return to the Tridentine rite will solve all the ills of the Church (becausee, you know, these things never happened before 1970).

Me too. I'm wondering about that a lot. So was Amy, who finally shut down the thread, remarking, "Well, this is an example of a post I probably shouldn't have opened for comments. There's really not so much to say, so of course it ends up being about Novus Ordo v. Tridentine. So..."

Beyond saying, "If he's guilty, may he be punished and laicized accordingly. If he's not, may God vindicate his faithful servant swiftly" I don't see what else needs said.

CDC Apparently Classifies Pregnancy as a Disease

I'm sure glad our great civilization displays this attitude toward children. If evil barbarians like Muslims did it, it could lead to millions of abortions and a deeply perverted family life.

Hello Murtha, Hello Fadda

Fr. Rob writes:

I left a comment to this effect on your blog - but I have to disagree with you about Jean Schmidt's remarks that "cowards cut and run."

The remark about "cowards cut and run, Marines don't" was written by a Marine colonel, addressed to Rep. Murtha, who is an ex-Marine. It was addressed from one Marine to another, reminding him of his duty. It seemed to me (and to a couple of Marine friends of mine) to be more of a "hey buddy, you ought to know better" remark than an accusation.

The fact is that Murtha was _always_ against the war. Now he appears to have joined the "cut and run" Democrats. And the fact is that withdrawal - especially now, when it appears that we are close to turning the tide in Iraq - would be a cowardly course of action.

Murtha may be a pro-lifer and a veteran, but that hardly means that he can't be wrong about our course in Iraq.

Pax,

Fr. Rob

Sorry, padre, but I disagree with you this time. So, for that matter, does Rep. Schmidt and President Bush, who both basically said that the attack on Murtha's courage was a low blow. Otherwise, Schmidt would not have apologized for it and Bush would not have made immediate moves to distance himself from it.

No, the fact is this: nobody held a gun to Schmidt's head and forced her to read this letter. She chose to do it because she thought she had a golden "Brave Boys in Blue vs. Craven Desk Jockey" moment. However, after she impugned Murtha's courage, she discovered to her horror and embarrassment that she was insulting a Marine and a decorated vet. To her credit, she apologized. But let us not pretend she had nothing to apologize for.

It is *not* a foregone conclusion that somebody who thinks we've done about all the good we can in Iraq is a coward. I myself disagree with those who think we should pull out now. But I can respect somebody who argues that with the establishment of an Iraqi gov't, we should have an eye on handing the country back to the Iraqis, particularly since our first duty is to our own troops. Immediately labeling such a person a "coward" seems to me (and President Bush and, belatedly, the gaffe-prone Ms. Schmidt) rather inflammatory and destructive of fruitful public discourse.

Eerily familiar

So many memories of blog threads over the years....

Good times. Good times.

Sarah Silverman, the Frisson of Blasphemy and the Prophet Lewis

Here's another doting piece on Sarah Silverman, who regularly transgresses "taboos" doncha know.

Now I have no beef against transgressing taboos per se. One of the chief functions of true humor is to free us to laugh at things that really are ridiculous. It is the right and duty of a free human being to have the guts to laugh at things which powerful people tell us are deadly serious. This is one of the reasons you read on this blog of Gay Brownshirts on the March: because I refuse to be bossed into genuflecting to glory and greatness of gay sex. In the same way, the resurgent Puritanism of the PC movement begged for (and got) the lampooning it richly deserved. For these taboos, I have nothing but sniggering chuckles, and I salute the fertile minds of the lampooners.

But it is easy for clever and shallow people to leap from the proper service of humor and satire to the assumption that *everything* is worthy of ridicule. That is one of the highways to psychological and spiritual destruction and one of the cars speeding down it at highest velocity is being driven by Sarah Silverman. Her method is fairly simple: mock people in wheelchairs and then garner accolades for transgressing another "taboo". It's the cheap thrill that members of the Chattering Class seek because they have deadened the nerve that enables them to feel real joy. And, of course, if you say something like, "But it's wrong to make disable people an object of ridicule" you are condemned as humorless.

I reject the notion that Silverman is really trying to make a point about our ill treatment of the disabled or the various other targets of her humor. She is basically about getting an audience to say, "Can she really say that?" and about helping that audience reach the point where they are comfortable--where they congratulate themselves--about laughing at essentially cruel and blasphemous things.

By "blasphemy" I don't particularly mean insults to God (though this is part of her stck and trade). I mean "perverse pleasure in insulting what is understood to be good". We can only blaspheme what is sacred. If you don't believe that, said Chesterton, try blaspheming Loki. Silverman's blasphemies of God show that she's aware God is still sacred. But her audience is largely composed of people who don't believe in God, but who do believe in the tired gods of PC Puritanism and weary stoic duties of Doing the Right Thing in Order to Preserve Liberal Credentials. Sooner or later, devotion to that god gets tiring. Silverman invites the Faithful to become comfortable with the idea of (tentatively at first, but with growing "courage") severing even these attenuated ties with common humanity--to take pleasure in laughing at an aborted baby, to find freedom in mocking the disabled, to savor the cruelty of inflicting pain on another. She mocks, not evil, but goodness.

Uncle Screwtape warns of this deadly cult of flippancy, of course:

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

Everything is clearly going very well. Am specially glad to hear that the two new friends have now made him acquainted with their whole set. All these, as I find from the record office, are thoroughly reliable people; steady, consistent scoffers and worldlings who without any spectacular crimes are progressing quietly and comfortably towards our Father's house. You speak of their being great laughers. I trust this does not mean that you are under the impression that laughter as such is always in our favour. The point is worth some attention.

I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven—a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.

Fun is closely related to Joy—a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.

The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field. I am not thinking primarily of indecent or bawdy humour, which, though much relied upon by second-rate tempters, is often disappointing in its results. The truth is that humans are pretty clearly divided on this matter into two classes. There are some to whom "no passion is as serious as lust" and for whom an indecent story ceases to produce lasciviousness precisely in so far as it becomes funny: there are others in whom laughter and lust are excited at the same moment and by the same things. The first sort joke about sex because it gives rise to many incongruities: the second cultivate incongruities because they afford a pretext for talking about sex. If your man is of the first type, bawdy humour will not help you—I shall never forget the hours which I wasted (hours to me of unbearable tedium) with one of my early patients in bars and smoking-rooms before I learned this rule. Find out which group the patient belongs to—and see that he does not find out.

The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their "sense of humour" so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer "mean" but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as "Puritanical" or as betraying a "lack of humour".

But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

Cinephiles Go Boldly into 100 Spiritually Significant Films

Jeffrey Overstreet, the film critic for Christianity Today, provides a juicy list of tasty filmic goodness that constitutes the perfect Christmas list for the Christian film buff nearest you.

Pete Vere Thinks There is Recourse to Canon Law for Katelyn Sills

My Frank Capra fantasy: She wins the right to return to school and the Jackboot-in-Sensible-Shoes nun who runs the joint is compelled to walk her onto campus personally, whereupon she turns to woman and says, "Thanks, but I prefer not." and promptly departs for the new school she has enrolled in.

What Some Evangelism-Minded Catholics are Doing In Tandem with the Narnia Film

From the people who brought you A Guide to the Passion.

How do you participate without intervening?

Amy succinctly sums up the bafflement of ordinary people as guys like Coyne emit bafflegab in the teeth of some of Cdl. Schoenborn's rather commonsense observations.

This week's film recommendation

Babette's Feast. A glorious little film about food, regret, saying yes to life, and sacrifice. If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so. If you have, you already know how great it is and probably want to see it again.

I think it's too early to talk about leaving Iraq

As a believer in the "You Broke It, You Buy It" doctrine, I think we owe it to the Iraqis to help them get on their feet. As one Vatican guy remarked, however the baby was conceived, it's here now and we have an obligation to take care of it. So I disagree with Rep. Murtha that we should be pulling out of Iraq.

At the same time, I think Stupid Party loudmouths like Jean Schmidt (who called the former Marine combat vet a "coward") should pay close attention to guys like Rod Dreher when they warn that this kind of chickenhawk tactic will only make them look despicable.

Murtha, speaking of courage, is also one of the rare Dems out there with a 100% pro-life voting record. It will take some doing for the Bushies to get me to trust them more than him.

Country Club Repub Danforth Portrays ESC Research as "Pro-Life"

Eek! I've been Memed!

I confess that...

I have a guilty taste for "The Mummy" franchise.

I like to eat anything that comes from the ocean--except raw oysters. Vile.

I'm way too fat and I'm trying to do something about that. Prayers appreciated.

I'm a complete sports illiterate. I can feed off of others' enthusiasm for sports and root for the home team in the spirit of the thing. But the idea of sitting down and watching a ball game for the fun of it by myself is simply not in the Shea DNA.

I have a modified fear of heights. Tall buildings can make me woozy, but airplanes don't. Go figure.

When I was 5, I once called a girl "Mon cherie!" Then I ran in the house and hid under the bed. Ah, Suzie Boyd, love of my life.

I was a bit of a late starter with girls. It took me till past the fifth grade to figure out that the way to telegraph your deep affection for the Limpid-Eyed She was not to sneak up behind her and shove her as hard as you could.

I used to write a column for our high school paper called "Teetering on the Brink". I don't know what that means about me.

When President Kennedy was assassinated, my chief memory is of my anger over the cancellation of all cartoons for the weekend.

I actually had a beagle named "Snoopy" (Yes, I was a "Peanuts" geek).

I once shook hands with Jimmah Carter.

I was an extra in "The Changeling" starring George C. Scott. Spent a long afternoon shooting a scene that lasts about 20 seconds in the finished cut.

I can clean and gut a trout in about 30 seconds.

I went to high school with Greg Strom, who starred in the first Passion Play ever performed in Jerusalem.

I used to let friends sneak over to my house during summer break in high school and eat Cocoa Puffs after my parents had gone to bed.

I once played the entire supporting cast (seven characters) in a play called "Bullshot Crummond". One of the jolliest parts I ever had as a theatre major.

Okay. I'm tagging Tom at Disputations.

Thanks be to God!

Tim Drake writes:

I want to take this opportunity to thank you (and your readers) for your prayers. Thankfully, Elena was finally released from the hospital yesterday afternoon (Christ the King), after four nights in the hospital. Apparently, a virus had attacked her lungs. That, along with a touch of asthma, was making it very difficult for her to breathe. Her oxygen saturation levels had dropped to the 80s and weren't improving very quickly. They wouldn't release her until she had an evening where the levels remained above 92. She's home and we're all happy to be together as a family again. She'll remain on medication over the next week and will go back into the doctor in a couple of days for a follow-up visit. We have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!

Thank you again for your prayers.

I love happy endings! Praised be the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

Reform Jews Direct Fashionable Outrage Against Phantoms

Apparently forgetting that a huge number of Evangelicals believe in the immaculate conception of the state of Israel and its preservation from all sin both original and actual, Reform Jews are once again greatly exercised about some phantom called the Religious Right that, according to liberal dogma, claims a "monopoly on God", despite the fact that enormous numbers of Evangelicals are absolutely fascinated by Judaism and deeply in love with the Jewish people.

Some people just can't take "yes" for an answer.

Rabbi Lapin is right. A lot of these guys worship liberalism. They wouldn't recognize a friend of the Jewish people if he kissed him and begged for his daughter's hand in marriage. I think it was Podhoretz who said that the great danger Jews face today is not that Christians want to kill them. It's that Christians want to marry them, thereby endangering the Jewish patrimony in a whole new way.

On the other hand...

A reader writes:

This is I believe the first solid info on waterboarding. (Sullivan's generally great on this but I wouldn't assume "pouring water on" means waterboarding--it might or might not.) But with this one there's no doubt. And it was authorized by high levels at the CIA, which almost certainly means by the WH.

When this kind of slime is happening in China...

I must say I was proud of Dubya for doing this.

A reader writes:

I caught your grousing this morning on your blog regarding your perceived lack of credentials to be able to comment on something [John Kerry]as complex and nuanced[/John Kerry] as torture. I regret I find myself in the same position as you. I do not have a juris doctorate, or a Ph.D. in moral theology to be able to substantiate my opinions either. In the end, all I have to go on is an instinct about what I believe to be right and wrong.

I'd like to attempt to correct at least some of this with an education in theology and such. I am concerned that the only place I would be able to get the appropriate training in matters of theology, canon law, philosophy and related matters is in a seminary. Even though I do not seek ordination, I believe I would be inadmissible. The only other avenues open to me are the expensive Catholic universities who seem of late to delight in heresy and the even more dismal secular institutions.

I thought that since you already have at least one of your sons in college that you may have done a lot of this type of research for yourself. I am hoping that you will find it in your heart to enable my own sloth and provide me with some of the findings of your hard-earned study.

On the general question of whether you can attend classes at a seminary if you are not seeking ordination, I am ignorant. Aside from the distraction which "civilians" might create for guys in formation, I can think of no particular reason seminaries could not open their doors to everybody. But that's just me. I'd ask the seminary you are interested in.

As to schools where you could get a reliable Catholic education and not the carob-for-chocolate "Education in the Catholic [or worse, Jesuit] tradition" I know of a few, but my knowledge is very limited and does not include good seminaries. Franciscan U at Steubenville has a good theology and Scripture program, of course. Dunno if they offer a Masters. Thomas Aquinas College will teach you to think with their Great Books approach. However, Great Books schools tend to have the weakness of neglecting modernity (though this may not be the case at TAC, I dunno). From what I understand Ave Maria is putting a good program together, but then again, I haven't been following it carefully. If you live near Oakland, CA, the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology is excellent. You can Google all these places for details.

My priestly readers can tell you more about the seminary end of things. I'm sorry I'm not more help. My eldest is at community college right now and his interests run more toward the arts (music and graphic design) than theology. So I don't reall know all that much. I myself am (as I often make clear) an amateur with no formal education in theology. Don't ever mistake me for a scholar.

More Information, Less Humanity

Ybothr?

The Fascinating Thing about This Piece...

...is that it is published in the Seattle Pacific University (i.e., Evangelical) student newspaper and not in the Seattle University (allegedly Catholic) student newspaper.

Catholics need to make themselves acutely aware of the fact that some of their fiercest defenders from Know-Nothing yokels like the Mars Hill pastor are other Evangelicals, embarrassed by the crude bigotry of members of their own tradition. The author of this piece does yeoman work in trying to get across to members of her own tribe that Catholics are, in fact, Christian. She's not spot on in every detail. But she's basically on the side of the angels and (mark this) she's not alone in the rising generation of post-Evangelical Christians who no longer see the point to keeping the fires of the 16th Century burning as they face a world in which Catholics and Protestants have far more in common with each other than they have with an increasing depraved and empty post-Christian culture. I salute my sister in Christ, Amanda Lengyel.

Update: It turns out Amanda is Catholic. However, my main point still stands since her editorial is published in the SPU school paper and was brought to my attention by Jeffrey Overstreet, the Evangelical film critic for the very Evangelical Christianity today. Jeff leads the charge against the wahooism of Pastor Driscoll on his blog.

It's tempting to show up at Mars Hill Church some fine Sunday morning or Wednesday night with "alternative views" and see what happens. I note the pastor spewing the garbage is (you just knew it) "raised Catholic". No doubt he was "devout" too. Weren't they all?

If you Have Not Checked out the New Pantagruel, You Really Should

Don, My Faithful Kiwi Reader, writes:

May I ask a favour of you and all the co-conspirators who are a part of Catholic & Enjoying it. My dad was put into hospital yesterday. He is 93 yrs old and until recently was enjoying a reasonably active life - getting out to his shed with his wood lathe and turning up clock faces and bowls, potting round in the garden etc. But he has of late been becoming increasingly short of breath and energy. He has carried an injury since WW2 to his back - not a wound, but an injury /accident he recieved from throwing around ammunition cases - he was in the NZ 27th Machine Gun Battallion attached to the NZ 28th Maori Battallion and saw action in 1944 up the Adriatic Coast of Italy at Rimini, Faenza and those parts. Upon his return home on a hospital ship in 1945 he was used in experimental spinal surgery, and was in hospital for about 18 months. He has never been able to work without a back brace ever since and has had a degree of manageable pain for 60 years now.

A couple on months ago he had to have his medication stepped up to help with the pain, then he began to lose weight quite quickly, with resultant energy and appetite loss, and increasing shortness of breath. The medicos tell us he had a slight heart attack within the last week or so. His speech has become a bit slurred, and upon waking in the mornings and after a nap halucinates a little, then becomes lucid and coherent again. My sister syas he is talking to the angels - many a true word said in jest. We are hoping that that he can come out of hospital this Saturday for Mum's 87th. Birthday and then come home; that is, if he lives that long. My 2 brothers and I have signed a non-resuscitation order with the hospital - you know that bunch - keep 'em all alive at all costs. But Dad knows he is dying and is quite prepared for death. Last Thursday Fr. Joe Stack anointed him and gave him Eucharist. I have told Fr. Joe and Fr. Gerard Boyce to be in the starting blocks for an any-time call to administer the Apostolic Blessing for Dad.

So my request for all you good Catholics and others throughout the world of St.Blogs to remember my Dad, Arthur Beckett in your prayers - that he may be given comfort in his last days and at the hour of his death, and that he may br greeted by Our Lord Jesus Christ and Mary His Blesed Mother, and all the Angels and Saints when his spirit leaves this mortal coil; when he will also be greeted by his daughter - my little sister Lynda who died at age 2 in 1952 of encaphalitis - our own family Saint.

Thanks Mark, and God Bless you.

May our Father hear and answer your prayers for your Dad exceedingly abundantly beyond what you can think or ask in Christ Jesus our Lord. And may he remember Lynda with love in That Day through our Lord Jesus.

ADL Continues to Spit in the Eye of the Most Devoted Christian Friends Jews Have

Orthodox Jews with the sense God gave a goose tear their hair out at the imbecility of their co-religionists.

Heh Heh!

Katelyn Sills, as I had hoped, is turning out not to be the passive wimp that the Jackboots in Habit at Loretto had hoped. The transparent falsehood of their draconian treatment of her just continues to lie there and stink while she raises bloody hell about it.

They're going to regret what they've done. I don't think they realize yet who they are dealing with. I think she's going to turn out to be a very formidable young woman.

A pretty good survey of Godstuff on the Web in First Things

Sadly, no mention of this blog, but we must manfully face the crushing blows life sends our way. On the bright side, Amy gets a mention.

Oh, and Jody Bottum's jolly "Reading by Osmosis" is now up!

Mmmmmkay

Somebody writes me:

The sword of Christ is no longer wielded at your site. The sword of Christ separates the sin from the sinner. The only blade able to cut that deep in our world is the movie Mulholland Drive. Mulholland Drive is the ring of power (the pride of words and letters) going up in flames. David Lynch is the Ringbearer of our world. How dull is everything else in comparison.

Duly noted.

Tim Drake asks Prayers for His Daughter

He writes:

I just spent the last 2 hours at the hospital. Unfortunately, Elena isn't
improving. In fact, her coloring was far worse today. Her oxygen levels just
aren't increasing. Obviously, Mary and I are rather worried. It looks like
she'll be staying in the hospital a third night.

We certainly would welcome the prayers wherever you can summon them.

Really tired. Going to bed.

Back later.

Fat Guy with Off-Center Tie Mugs for Camera Next to Nice Man

Brad Haas is just a real sweet guy. We've corresponded in the past, so it was a pleasure to finally meet him!

Fr. Bryce Sibley is on the air!

Matthew Mehan Praises Gold Diggers

I'm of this certain age that will forever associate "Golddiggers" with the gyrating bimbo dancers on the the Dean Martin Show. They basically bopped around as Quintessential Hot 60s Chicks in gold lame and miniskirts and false eyelashes that vaguely recalled Venus flytraps while Dean leered at them drunkenly and crooned ballads or upbeat groovier tunes.

I don't know what that means about me, but there you are.

Play Anti-Catholic Bingo!

The geniuses at Speculative Catholic have found a new way to turn lemons into lemonade! The next time somebody attacks your faith, just tick off the excuse ("I was horrified to discover that Catholics call priest 'father'!") on your snazzy



When you fill out the card, shout "Bingo!" people will look at you strangely, but you'll feel a warm sense of accomplishment.

Fr. Philip Neri Does What Dominicans Do Best: Homilies

My only torture post today

Ex-CIA chief not keen on Cheney

Disputations slowly and inexorably slices and dices incoherent remarks on torture by first showing Linda Chavez to be an apologist for virtual lawlessness in warfare and second, pointing out (in his comboxes) the peculiar incoherence of some on my blog who simultaneously seem to be saying, "Of course I'm against torture, and how dare you insinuate otherwise!" while also saying, "You know, not all torture is immoral."

By the way, a huge shout out of THANK YOU! for all the people who responded to my informal poll. You really helped me to get a better sense of perspective on this conversation and I deeply appreciate it! Much obliged!

Well, I'm back

Had a lovely time out in Seward, NE. Spoke at St. Vincent de Paul parish and had a jolly time. Got a chance to visit the FSSP seminary in Denton and enjoy a lovely leisurely lunch with their patristic prof, a Frenchman who knows (as the French do) how to enjoy a lovely leisurely lunch, including splitting a bottle of wine between us, which made the day go by ever-so-pleasantly.

It turns out that my host for the seminary visit, John Pepino, went the University of Washington back in the 80s and went to my beloved parish, Blessed Sacrament. He knew one of our priests, Fr. Joseph Fulton, of blessed memory. So we had a lot to talk about.

Some of my readers may be dumbfounded at the thought that I went to a seminary with strongly Traditionalist affinities. That's because some of my reader have never really believed me when I say that I have no problem with Traddie piety. I only have problems with Traddies who piety overwhelms their unity with the Catholic Church (much as I have a problem with Lefty Catholics whose personal views overwhelm their unity with the Catholic Church). John and I had a fine afternoon and enjoyed each other's company very much!

I'm off to see Nebraska!

Land of Willa Cather and My Antonia and O Pioneers!

See you Friday!

And while I'm gone, I expect every one of you to put as many beans as you possibly can up your noses!

Just be sure they're gone before I get back.

The beans, I mean. Not the noses.

Can we agree that this is wrong?

A large amount of effort is expended in my comboxes trying to figure out how exactly we can parse the difference between torture and legitimate coercive techniques. I agree there is a need to do this since "put your hands over your head" and "squat for 12 hours are both vaguely called "stress positions". One is legitimate, the other ain't.

My beef is not with that conversation. It is with apologists for torture (like the Wall Street Journal) attempting to re-define torture out of existence while simultaneously attempting to tar their critics as namby-pamby moralizers. The sleight-of-hand is achieved by pretending to face squarely The Real World[TM] while tarring opponents of torture as aging hippies who believe that an earnest chorus of Kumbaya will soften the hardest terrorist's heart and create a sunshiny world where we are all Free to Be You and Me.

In fact, however, it is the Torture Apologist who guiding the reader into an Action Adventure fantasy. The Action Adventure Fantasy places us in a little room with Bruce Willis and his rubber hose. Strapped to a chair is the snarling subhuman Muslim who knows the exact location of The Bomb. So do we, the audience. It's directly beneath the Stage where Adorable Orphans are singing "God Bless America" to raise money for the less fortunate. If we don't say Yes to Bruce's desire to do the following, we are dooming, not just those little orphans, but all of New York to a mushroom cloud:

From Sullivan's blog:

An emailer thinks I am under-estimating the horrors of the technique backed
by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Wall Street Journal:

If anything, the now
standard description of water-boarding understates the cruelty of the method.
Those who were subjected to this method by South American security forces report
that "they had been held under water until they had in fact begun to drown and
lost consciousness, only to be revived by their torturers and submerged again.
It is one of their worst memories" (Jennifer Harbury, 'Truth, Torture, and the American Way," pp. 15-16). As you
note, the French used it in Algeria (there is a vivid depiction in the movie
"The Battle of Algiers"). The United States used it heavily in the Philippines a
hundred years ago; they called it "the water cure." The person who probably
knows the most about this is Darius Rejali, a professor at Reed College and
author of a new history of torture, soon to be published by Princeton University
Press.

Marty Lederman discusses the depraved, Orwellian editorial at the Wall
Street Journal here. We do, in fact, have a documented case of the tactic. I
discussed it earlier this year in reviewing the Schmidt Report. That Pentagon
report confirmed that at Gitmo, one detainee was subjected to the following:

He was kept awake for 18 - 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 consecutive days, he
was forced to wear bras and thongs on his head, he was prevented from praying,
he was forced to crawl around on a dog leash to perform dog tricks, he was told
his mother and sister were whores, he was subjected to extensive "cavity
searches" (after 160 days in solitary confinement) and then "on seventeen
ocasions, between 13 Dec 02 and 14 Jan 03, interrogators, during interrogations,
poured water over the subject."

The latter is a polite word for "water-boarding."
Later in the report, we are informed that this technique was deployed
"regularly" as a "control measure." All this was "legally permissible under the
existing guidance." Medical doctors were on hand to ensure that the victim
didn't die. Water-boarding, in other words, is a specific technique directly
authorized by Rumsfeld, described in the Schmidt Report, under the John Yoo
rules, as legally permissible even for POWs under the Geneva Conventions. The
Schmidt Report described this treatment as "humane." It is very important to focus on the specifics of
what this president has authorized. When he says "We do not torture," he means
that this technique is not "torture". A technique used by South American
dictators is fine by Bush. This from a president who had the chutzpah to respond
to Abu Ghraib by saying that the abuses did not reflect America's values. He was
right. They reflect his administration's.
-
9:18:00 PM

See, now here's the thing: The Real World is not like the Bruce Willis scenario. In the real world, torture is not a hypothetical thing. It's the real thing. The unreal thing is the Ticking Bomb scenario. It virtually never happens. What *has* happened is that we are already water-boarding prisoners. And because we are already doing it, the Wall Street Journal has to find a way to re-define it as "not torture". Meanwhile, readers on this blog ask if we can "whack 'em with rulers" and call people who have moral difficulties with this "Torture Pharisees".

And, if all else fails, I'm told that since the information comes by way of Sullivan, it therefore does not count.

So, I repeat: I would rather people be asking how we can avoid torture rather than asking how close we can tiptoe up to the line and not step over into torture. Why? Because a truly Realistic assessment of the moral danger we face is not predicated on the mythical ticking bomb scenario. It's predicated on the documented fact that we have *already* fallen into torture all too easily.

This is why I find the WSJ editorial to be so utterly filthy and blood-stained.

An Informal Poll

One of the things I find it difficult to gauge is how much my comboxes reflect The Wisdom of the Voter vs. how much they reflect whatever a vocal minority happens to be passionate about.

I've been intrigued by the amount of passionate opposition the torture threads have engendered and it's made me curious as to whether I'm hearing the General Will in my comboxes or just a noisy minority I irritate. I honestly can't tell.

Given that I have 6,000 to 7,000 pageviews a day on this blog, my assumption is that there are a lot more people reading here than commenting.

So my request is this: If your name is *not* Victor, Sydney, Pavo, Donald, JMK or the couple of others who escape me at the moment and, in particular, if you don't normally comment, I'd appreciate your input on the whole torture conversation. You don't have to leave your name and email, just your opinion.

To give my question focus, I will pull out this recent editorial from the Wall Street Journal. My frank opinion is that it is an execrable piece of filthy agitprop for Strength Through Torture whose final paragraph is so cowardly it doesn't have the guts to name what it is calling for ("aggressive interrogation" my ass). But then you knew that. What I want to know, from folks who have not already weighed in multiple times, is whether you would basically agree with that assessment or if you think the writer makes a lot of sense.

One request. I'm not asking for you guys to argue or persuade in this thread. I will likewise refrain. I'm simply trying to get a rough sense of where the "Silent Majority" of my readers come down on something like this editorial.

Fr. Rob Hopes the Stupid Party Shows Some Testicular Fortitude

StrongBad Is Space CaptainFace

The Haunted Ex-Christian Conscience

On my other website, I have a guest book. Every now and then I look into it to see who's been by. Today, I find a *huge* entry on 12 Step Recovery from Christianity (anonymous, of course), which concludes:

As you take your last step towards spritual freedom you commit yourself to spreading the good news of salvation to other cult members. With having broken the chains of Christianity you now have the knowledge in hand that can benefit persons lost in the madness of Christian illusion. Furthermore, you make a promise to never use your former relgion to frighten others into falling prey to the Jesus-Cult. This means no further ministering of any sort, only that of recovery. You can now think clearly about life; forever free from the enslaving and hateful doctrine of Christian dogma.

One of the odd things I notice with ex-Catholics (and a fortiori with ex-Christians) is the curious way in which they obsessively declare their non-obsession with the thing they have allegedly left behind. I don't know how many times I've run into ex-Catholics who then spend all their time hanging around on Catholic lists, talking about how free they are from the domination of Rome and how they never spend all their time completely focused on the errors of the Catholic Church anymore (lovingly detail in this 400 MB document they have available for download to anybody who is interested) and how, since Jesus freed them by the power of his Spirit, their lives are no longer held in thrall to the Catholics because they are free free free!

Similarly, there's something awfully strange about somebody going to all the trouble to fill up the guest book of a total stranger with a huge ignorant screed that must have taken and hour or so to write, just to ridicule ideas I do not hold and then to declare once again that he is Free Free Free! One does not really get the impression that Christianity has loosed its grip on his mind much. Rather, one once again gets the impression that the old adage "Scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist" is true as ever.

This week's favorite film

The Court Jester.

I have a weakness for old Errol Flynn movies, as well as all those knights in armor productions from the 50s. And I think Danny Kaye is one of the most under-rated comic geniuses of the 20th Century. So what could be better than The Court Jester. My little guys love it and immediately memorized about half the patter, songs, and word play. I've seen the movie a dozen times and there are still gags that make me laugh out loud, plus throwaway lines that are just so odd they still crack me up ("Discretion is for popinjays and cockatoos!") Danny Kaye switches so effortlessly from Master Swordsman to shrieking buffoon that it's hard to believe he's the same guy.

And who knew Glynis Johns could be such a knock-out and Basil Rathbone have such perfect timing as a straight man (a difficult job when playing off somebody as crammed with protean energy as Kaye)?

Well worth renting if you've never seen it.

Generation Narcissus Speaks

NEW YORK -- Look around a crowd, and you'll see that lots of middle-aged
men are losing their hair. As baby boomers, they have every right to
demand, "What is science doing about this?"

Whaddaya wanna bet on the numbers of people who would demand Embryonic Stem Cells and fetal harvesting if they thought it would save them from baldness.

Boomers: The First Generation in the History of the World to Conceive of a Right to Hair that Trumps the Right to Life.

Since People Asked...

Here's a bunch of letters to Crisis concerning Dave Curp's slavery article--and Curp's responses to them.

Some people are asking why I'm not replying with tender-loving care to each and every person who wants to argue with me about torture. The answer is simple: there's just one of me. There's lots of you. Many of you are asking me things I've already replied to multiple times ("Define 'torture'!" My reply: "I've always found the dictionary helpful.") Many others are asking me to perform prodigies of legal reasoning and definition (despite the well-known fact I am not a lawyer), acquire a Ph.D in moral theology, and/or demonstrate my deep knowledge of classified Bush Administration literature before I comment on how WaPo and WSJ articles strike me. And some are now doing me the favor of essentially calling me a moralistic Pharisee for saying that the news I'm seeing regarding our actions and the agitprop I'm reading trying to justify torture bothers me rather a lot. The general conclusion seems to be that if I remark on the news and don't answer all my critics one by one in detail, I am running and hiding from tough-minded people who are exposing me for the poseur I am.

Okay. Whatever. The reality is: I have several big writing projects which are consuming my time. When I can slip some commentary in the cracks (note the time-stamp on this blog entry) I do. That commentary, when it comes, is commentary from somebody with no legal training, no expertise in moral theology, and no inside scoop on the inner workings of the Bush Administration. All I know is what I read in the papers. But mostly, there's only so much of me to go around. So I will continue to be fairly sparse for the time being.

Speaking of which, I gotta get to bed! More to do tomorrow! I will try to blog something, but I'm going to Chesterton tomorrow night and then I'm outta here Wednesday to Friday, to speak at St. Vincent de Paul parish in Seward, NE.

Secular Fundamentalist Brownshirts on the march

Hard to choose

Does this go in the "Sin Makes you Stupid" file or the "SMACTDVAISYACTDC" file?

This one, on the other hand is definitely "Sin Makes You Stupid" material, I think. Though a strong case can be made for "SMACTDVAISYACTDC" too.

Stunning

If you have clear skies where you are and can spare time to throw on some warm clothes, it's worth going outside and seeing the world blanketed in full moonlight. As an extra bonus, Mars is visible as a bright red jewel in the sky next to the Moon.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is thy name in all the earth!
Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the mouth of babes and infants,
thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars which thou hast established;
what is man that thou art mindful of him,
and the son of man that thou dost care for him?
Yet thou hast made him little less than God,
and dost crown him with glory and honor.
Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the sea.
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is thy name in all the earth!

The Next Meeting of the Seattle G.K. Chesterton Society is Tuesday, November 15 at 7:30 PM, Weter Hall 201, Seattle Pacific University

Dr. Alberto Ferreiro, Seattle Pacific University, Department of History, "The Crusades: Myths and Realities."

An examination of eight common myths about the Crusades by a professor specializing in the history of early and medieval Christianity. This talk promises to clear up a number of the misunderstandings about the Middle Ages current in today’s society.

See you there!

Not very many members of St. Blog's have once been Muslims

Albertus Minimus was.

Barb Nicolosi Interviewed Godspy Again!

Another Christ-tinged Holiday Goes Down the Memory Hole

It's not Thanksgiving! It's the Fall Feast!

Giving thanks, you see, is disempowering because it places the locus of your personal center of action in the hands of another. This is very dangerous to Pride, the central virtue of PC culture.

CAEI Friend John Farrell Begs to Differ With Me About ID

As I hope I've made clear, I'm not sold on anybody scenario of How It All Got Here. My personal suspicion is that we will never really know. I accept the basic scenario of development over millions of years. No problem here with the basic testimony of the fossil record. No problem with the genetic similarities, etc.

However, in a world where God is so rude as to become man and multiply loaves and fishes, I don't share the confidence that all history, human or natural, is explicable simply in terms of the inexorable rollout of physical laws. When I look at nature, I see what Paul saw, testimony to the work of God. For the life of me, I don't see why calling this "intelligent design" is such a big problem.

John Mallon is Great

Why I have trouble with "Trust us"

CIA: Trust Us

Forbes: But You Guys Hid Evidence of Torture

US: Hey! Let's Keep our Options Open!

WSJ: Waterboarding? Heck! It's not Even Close to Torture!

Next up: Paul Begala on the Clinton Administration "Oral Sex? Not Even Close to Sex!"

Hubris

To be clever is not to be wise.

Chapter 6 of By What Authority

It's beginning to appear that this book, written in 1996, is just now reaching the moment where it is addressing contemporary culture. First, it was the NY Times' bafflement over the ambiguous Bible. Now, it's the looming question of the "taboo" ("Oh what a *useful* word!" - Uncle Screwtape) against polygamy.

Riddle me this

When a writer writes the following:

It's nothing new for the scientific enterprise to be shaped by the society that underwrites it. From Galileo to recombinant DNA researchers, from the Manhattan Project to the Human Genome Project, we have a long tradition of scientists responding to ethical or religious guidelines that might be in conflict with their own methods and goals.

The give-and-take keeps the whole enterprise honest. Indeed, the science itself sometimes benefits: When animal rights activists in the 1970s pushed for better experimental conditions for lab animals, for example, the scientific results were more accurate because the animals were less stressed.

But the latest developments in human embryonic stem cell research are different. Investigators are now designing their experiments specifically to accommodate the concerns of their critics. And allowing activists to call the scientific shots is more than unprecedented -- it's backward. It twists the very essence of scientific experiments -- that they're designed to consider scientific questions.

Is he

a) Heinrich Himmler, writing to tell critics to stop interfering with the Pure Science being conducted by immersing camp inmates in vats of freezing water in the search for a hypothermia cure for Reich pilots dying in the English Channel?, or

b) an apologist for open season on stem cells and emybryonic research?

People eager to create some distance from Himmler will tell you that the hypothermia experiments were "bad science" with worthless results. As far as "worthless results", they were nothing of the sort, as physiologist Robert Pozos, an expert in hypothermia pointed out. The data they retrieved were quite useful. Indeed, they were exactly what the WaPo piece is calling for: hard science completely severed from ethical concerns (aka "untwisted science").

I wonder if my readers fretting about Catholic "deontological heresies" will defend this happy consequence of the Nazis' rough and tumble methods for achieving deeply humanitarian goals.

While I'm at it...

Since I've expressed my jitters about Alito, I think I owe it to him to note this as well.

Cardinals of Pope John Pail Kick the Bucket

Too delightful to resist this delectable sample of English as She is Spoke.

I'm booked up till Monday evening. Talk to you then!

Something Appropriately Autumnal from Gerard Manley Hopkins

Spring and Fall
To a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Allow Me to Introduce You to a Very Good Historian and a Very Dear Friend:

T. David Curp, who teaches history at Ohio University, has recently published two pieces for Crisis.

The first, called A Necessary Bondage?: When the Church Endorsed Slavery, takes a look at the Church's ambiguous relationship with that ancient institution and makes a judicious assessment of the merits and failings of the Catholic role in the history of slavery.

The second: War Without End: A Brief History of the Muslim Conquests looks at the way in which jihad was lived out, particularly in the early centuries of Islam.

Dave's a dear friend and, in fact, the godfather of our third son. Don't ever ask him a foolish question like, "What do you know about Poland?" unless you have a couple of days to kill.

The New York Times Publishes the "Gosh! The Bible is Ambiguous!" AgitProp in 2005

I'd be happy to send the baffled journalist a copy of By What Authority? which deals with just this issue in some depth.

Finally, a reading of Scripture more tortured than the "Cawwing and Shawwing" Interpretation of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes

A reader writes:

I heard a new interpretation of the Parable of the Talents that I'd like your opinion about. Here's some background information that I think is relevant to the story:

We have an "Authorized Lay Preacher" in our church who gives a homily (and I call it a homily because that's what it is even though our priest will insist that it is a "reflection") every second Sunday of the month. She is a well-spoken Sister of Mercy and I give her credit for her ability to present Scripture in a very accessible manner. However, she has an agenda that is difficult to miss when
she is preaching. Take today's reading from Matthew about the Parable of the Talents. She started her homily by saying that "yes, traditionally, this reading has been interpreted as God's invitation to use the gifts given to each of us and to return them with increase to the Lord." She also acknowledged that tradtional interpretation equates the "master" in the parable as God, and that the master was pleased with the first two servants, but not so much with the third. Now, here is where things get fun. She informs us that while this parable (particularly the end in which we hear of the master's frustration with the man who buried his talent) is difficult to hear in our modern day, it can be interpreted differently which is what many of our protestant and catholic biblical scholars are doing.

What's the new interpretation? Why, in this parable, we don't know FOR SURE that Jesus is even talking about the Kingdom of God. In fact, the "master" in this parable could very well be representative of oppressive, wealthy landowners of Jesus' day (or big oil in our day - and yes, she said "big oil") and not God. Further, we don't know FOR SURE how the first two servants increased their talents.
They could have used unethical means, skimmed of the top, charged interest from others...The third servant, by hiding his treasure, may have refused to participate in the evil practices employed by the other two servants and that by hiding his talent, was showing far more courage (she suggested that the parable be renamed "the Parable of the Whistleblower").

Now. I'm not against looking at Scripture in new ways. But her claims about this particular parable just seem....far-fetched? First of all, doesn't this interpretation fall completely out of context when compared to previous readings in Matthew? Second, what about "traditional interpretation?" Is it now obsolete? Third, while this may make for an interesting dialogue in a classroom setting, is the Liturgy of the Word the place to propose such an unorthodox interpretation? I mean, today is Stewardship Sunday but we got no message about being Good Stewards. My husband is tempted to say to our priest (since we are in the middle of a diocesan annual appeal) that he'll just bury his talents :).

Finally, while I thought "this is just more of Sr. B's agenda," I went home to do a google search on "modern interpretations on the Parable of the Talents." I found the following:

John Dominic Crossan carries the discussion a step further. "Rohrbaugh concluded that 'Jesus' peasant hearers would almost certainly have assumed [the parable] was a warning to the rich about their exploitation of the weak. Is it possible that there were right?' But Rohrbaugh reasoned that Jesus' audience included not just peasants but others as well. That is surely correct. Even if Jesus' audience were composed primarily of peasants, it would not have been exclusively so. And even among peasants, there would be diversity of outlook.... If an audience contained others as
well as peasants and if 'the elitist reading is bad news for peasants' while 'the peasant reading is bad news for masters'..., would not audience debate have been inevitable-and also intentional on Jesus' part...? ..the function of Jesus' parables about the kingdom of God was to create debate about justice, to raise consciousness about oppression, to ask how God would run this world if God sat on Caesar's throne, and to do all that through internal transformation rather than external domination. Parables were the ethical mode of education upward rather than indoctrination downward. They lured the audience into self-education. And education is, first, foremost, and always, about knowing your options. Parables were the special pedagogy of Jesus' kingdom of God." [10]

In the context of Matthew, this parable clearly is not about profit, abilities, sharing wealth, or the like. It is about how to behave in the period before the soon and sudden coming of the Messiah. Minimally, the story, using the scenario of the rapacious, greedy rich and their world, tells the audience not to be lazy or useless persons." [11] If heaven is like the parable's description, it is a merciless, graceless environment, hardly the abode of the one who loved the world enough to give his only Son.

John Dominic Crossan, "The Parables of Jesus," Interpretation, July 2002, pp. 252-253. Rohrbaugh's study is, "A Peasant Reading of the Parable of the Talents/Pounds: A Text of Terror?" Biblical Theology Bulletin 23(1993) 32-39.

I don't know, Mark. I always liked this parable because of it's simplicity. Take the gifts God has given you, use them to build His Kingdom on earth, and return them with increase to the Lord. I never saw this as an anti-capitalist manifesto.

Once again, the Prophet Chesterton speaks in answer to a guy like Crossan (who insists, let us recall, that the corpse of Jesus was devoured by wild dogs--an image that tells us much more about the secret desires of Crossan than it does about the biblical text):

The one real objection to the Christian religion is simply that it is one religion. The world is a big place, full of very different kinds of people. Christianity (it may reasonably be said) is one thing confined to one kind of people; it began in Palestine, it has practically stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed with this argument in my youth, and I was much drawn towards the doctrine often preached in Ethical Societies—I mean the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church of all humanity rounded on the omnipresence of the human conscience. Creeds, it was said, divided men; but at least morals united them. The soul might seek the strangest and most remote lands and ages and still find essential ethical common sense. It might find Confucius under Eastern trees, and he would be writing “Thou shalt not steal.” It might decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on the most primeval desert, and the meaning when deciphered would be “Little boys should tell the truth.” I believed this doctrine of the brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense, and I believe it still—with other things. And I was thoroughly annoyed with Christianity for suggesting (as I supposed) that whole ages and empires of men had utterly escaped this light of justice and reason. But then I found an astonishing thing. I found that the very people who said that mankind was one church from Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. If I asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we needed none, for men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed in their universal customs and ideals. But if I mildly pointed out that one of men’s universal customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages. I found it was their daily taunt against Christianity that it was the light of one people and had left all others to die in the dark. But I also found that it was their special boast for themselves that science and progress were the discovery of one people, and that all other peoples had died in the dark. Their chief insult to Christianity was actually their chief compliment to themselves, and there seemed to be a strange unfairness about all their relative insistence on the two things. When considering some pagan or agnostic, we were to remember that all men had one religion; when considering some mystic or spiritualist, we were only to consider what absurd religions some men had. We could trust the ethics of Epictetus, because ethics had never changed. We must not trust the ethics of Bossuet, because ethics had changed. They changed in two hundred years, but not in two thousand.

An elitist academic like Crossan claims to speak for the peasant. But when nearly two thousand years of peasants presents him with the normative interpretation of the text, that we should use our gifts and not squander them, Crossan (who has not only squandered but prostituted his own considerable intellectual gifts in a vain attack on the Faith) suddenly turns on the peasants and tells them their common sense reading of the text is not cleverly Marxist enough.

My own inclination is to read these silly new interpretations of the Parable of the Talents as the reflection of a guilty conscience.

Anybody else get a whack homily like this?

From our bulging "What Could it Hurt?/How Was I Supposed to Know?" files