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Blasting off early tomorrow for the Catholic Scripture Study Conference in Charlotte, NC

I'll be back Monday. Please don't send me news links cuz they'll be old and gray by the time I blog again.

Toodles!
posted by Mark at 4:07 PM

Da Vinci Plagiarism Judge codes Message Into His Decision

I'm likin' this guy.
posted by Mark at 3:02 PM

A reader writes:

Supporters of killing Terri Schiavo generally claimed that she was in a persistant vegetative state and that she had said some years ago that she would not want to live in that condition. (The accuracy of that claim is not relevant to this posting.) Today a hospital in Houston wants to kill Andrea Clark who has said she wants to live. I saw mentions of her case on blogs that included calls for specific actions to try to save her life.

Here are three recent postings, first from April 24:

Then from April 25.

And from today

Since St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital is doing this to save money, maybe they should change their name to the Moloch and Mammon Hospital.

Culture of Death: We just want to honor the patient's wishes. Terri Schiavo wanted to die and those Christian Barbarians tried to force her to go on living against her wishes!

Andrea Clarke: Er, I'd rather not die, please.

Culture of Death: Shut up, you! What? Are you going to go on sponging off hard-working people forever? Why don't you have the good grace to get off the stage and stop sucking up resources? Who cares what you think?
posted by Mark at 2:48 PM

From our Shameless Self-Promotion Department

#1 Catholic Bestseller for May 2006: The Da Vinci Deception

A toast to my co-author Ted Sri and the gang at Ascension Press and CatholicExchange.com!

Oh, and you can get your signed copies right here.
posted by Mark at 2:32 PM

I am a Holy Scholar of the Feline Theocracy. Fear Me.
posted by Mark at 2:31 PM

"There is no way to reconcile Christ's intentions with the slogan that was fashionable a few years ago, "Christ yes, the Church no." The individualist Jesus is a fantasy."

That's why laity who sit gloating about "justice" because the bishop's end of the boat is sinking don't seem to grasp what is going on. There's a Pavlovian response to terms like "institutional Church" because people who hear such phrases think "hierarchy" rather than "the pew I sit in, the food bank that helped me when I was out of work, the drug program that helped my brother-in-law, the hospital that saved my wife's life." At the end of the day, people seem to have this notion that the Church is a sort of disembodied entity and the physical concrete expression of the Church in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy are unrelated to it.

They also seem to have no clue what a "mediating institution" is. It means "all those groups out there that do stuff because its the right and neighborly thing to do and not out of a profit motive". Society is lubricated by such institutions and with out them it will rapidly overheat and seize up. Most of our lives are held together by thousands of small acts of mundane goodness that we don't notice. But we will sure as hell notice it when the Church (that's us, not just the clergy) is no longer able to function in the million ways we take for granted. Some have a romantic view of how Franciscan it will all be when, if they're lucky, the local parish can round up a card table, a paper plate, and some dixie cups and grab a Mass at the local Y. But the reality is: the poor are blessed because they are vulnerable to the predations of the strong and the Lord is their Avenger. If you think the destruction of the Institutional Church will be romantic affair of "getting back to basics", then I suggest you embrace reality and recognize that those who seek to destroy the Institutional Church are not interested in a trimmer, more fit Church. They are interested in stamping the Church out root and branch.

Judging from my comments, not a few will, at this point, assert that only a person who cares nothing for the victims of abuse could say this. That is, of course, patently ridiculous. I believe it is possible to do justice to victims of abuse with fair compensation for their sufferings and punishment for those who have caused that suffering. I even believe it is possible to do justice to victims of abuse without creating millions of *more* victims of a litigious culture that destroys the parishes and dioceses of perfectly innocent people by awarding insanely huge judgments that have as their end, not the common good, but the lining of pockets and the destruction of the Catholic Church. But that will mean we laypeople have to begin to familiarize ourselves with the notion of the Common Good again. And that, in turn, will mean familiarizing ourselves with the notion that we are saved as. a. People and not as a bunch of individuals who are out to get ours or to have a Me and Jesus relationship in which the Church plays no essential part. If we don't understand that, we can't hope to have a clue about why it will matter if the Church--that completely optional appendage to Me and My Jesus--goes away.

Now, as I said yesterday, the Church--the People of God--will not go away. If it survived the catacombs and Stalin and Mao, it can survive Mass at the Y. But when the last physical structure and dime of the Church is auctioned off to feed lawyers (and that, by the way, is what the "institutional Church" means--it doesn't mean the clergy), the ones who suffer will primarily be those whom the Church served: the weakest. With luck, you aren't among them. But the upheaval in our culture when the single most important mediating institution's ability to serve is destroyed in a frenzy of mindless vengeance may reveal some surprises about who is and is not weak.

By the way, getting back to the quotes above, Benedict also had this stunningly countercultural interlude:

But the strongest passages of the catechesis were those in which the pope explained the relationship between the institution of the apostles – twelve in number, like the twelve Jewish tribes – and the people of Israel.

The pope recalled Jesus’ intention “of founding the holy people again.” And then:

“By their mere existence, the twelve – called from different backgrounds – have become a summons to all Israel to conversion and to allow themselves to be reunited in a new covenant, full and perfect accomplishment of the old.”

I can already feel Andrew Sullivan *and* the ADL gearing up for a good ol' bout of hysterics.
posted by Mark at 1:37 PM

Nifty little Bible tool for the Web
posted by Mark at 1:25 PM

A reader asks:

I corresponded with you over a year ago regarding my journey from the Evangelical/Baptist upbringing to Catholocism. My husband served with Keith Green ministries back in the 80's (ouch on the Catholic Chronicles Keith wrote) and we both served in YWAM and various local church ministries. Needless to say, after three years of study and searching, I am more than ready to enter the Catholic Church. My husband, however, is stuck on the perpetual virginity of Mary due to various references to his brothers and sisters in the Bible. Also, he can't discern the primacy of Rome, knowing that the Early Church was spread out and had its roots in Jerusalem. He is also stuck on the split between East and West. These seem to be the source of questioning for him: basic authority issues and Mary. He did listen to your CD's, including the one on Mary, but he is looking for more info on the subject, as to why his Bible says one thing and the Church teaches another. Basically, who changed it and WHEN??

There's a lot here and I can't cover it all. For Papal stuff, I recommend Steve Ray's work such as "Upon This Rock". He's a former Baptist and knows his stuff. Bottom line, the Church doesn't have its roots in Jerusalem. It also doesn't have them in Rome. It has them in Christ, who made Peter the Chief Shepherd, the Strengthener of the Brethren and the Rock upon which he founded the Church.

For the general question of the authority of Sacred Tradition (Both Written and Unwritten) vs. The Bible Alone, I recommend my own By What Authority?.

As to the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, here's another little excerpt from my yet to be published book:

Evangelical Difficulties

Of course, serious Christians recognize that sex belongs in the context of marriage. But that, for Evangelicals, is the problem. For Joseph and Mary were married. So what on earth would have kept them from marital relations? And given that Scripture says Joseph "knew her not until she had borne a son" (Matthew 2:25); repeatedly refers to Jesus' "brothers and sisters" in passages like Mark 6:3 and
Matthew 13:55-56; and records Paul speaking of James as "the Lord's brother" (Galatians 1:19), the natural conclusion for the Evangelical reader is that Mary's Perpetual Virginity is a case where the Church isn't just filling in some scriptural silence with a flight of fancy, but is deliberately and directly contradicting Scripture—probably due to some pathological fascination with celibacy.

The Difficulty with the Evangelical Reading of Scripture

But as we've already seen during our tenure as Evangelical representatives to the Council of Jerusalem in chapter five, it's not enough to show that some Church doctrine seems to be "directly contradicted" by Scripture. Apparent contradictions don't cut the mustard. And the supposed Scriptural evidence for "Mary's other children" is another such apparent contradiction. For there is, in fact, no such evidence. Every text adduced to "prove" Mary had other natural-born children encounters some fatal difficulty when we look closely.

So, for instance, the attempt to find absolute, ironclad proof of sexual relations between Joseph and Mary in Matthew's remark that Joseph "knew her not until she had borne a son" suffers from the fatal ambiguity of the word "until." The whole value of the passage as an argument against Mary's virginity depends on some supposed "rule" that "until" means "the same before, but different afterwards." But if we try to apply this "rule", we wind up with strange results. Thus, Deuteronomy 1:31 tells Israel, "the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place." Does the author really mean to say that God would henceforth not be carrying Israel? Likewise, Deuteronomy 9:7 says, "From the day you left Egypt until you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the Lord." Does the sacred author mean to imply Israel magically stopped being rebellious after that? Or again, John the Baptist "lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel" (Luke 1:80). Does Luke therefore mean to imply that
once John appeared to Israel he never lived in the desert after that? No. Similarly, neither is Matthew saying anything beyond "Mary conceived Jesus in virginity". He is making no implications whatever about any sexual relations between Mary and Joseph.

In the same way, the texts concerning Jesus' brothers and sisters were consistently read by the early Church with the understanding that the Apostles had taught Jesus was the only son of the Blessed Virgin. And once we get past our modern prejudice that "they simply can't mean that," we find to our surprise that they easily can.

Take James. Paul describes him as the "brother of the Lord", but James himself does not. Why not? And even more oddly, Jude describes himself as "a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James" (Jude 1). If Jude is a sibling of Jesus, why does he talk in this weird way?

The answer comes from a close reading of the Gospels. Matthew and Mark name the following as "brothers" of Jesus: James, Joseph (or "Joses" depending on the manuscript), Simon and Judas (i.e., "Jude"). But Matthew 27:56 says that at the cross were Mary Magdalene and "Mary the mother of James and Joseph", whom he significantly calls "the other Mary" (i.e., the Mary who was not Mary the Mother of Jesus). John concurs with this, telling us that "standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene" (John 19:25). In short, James, Jude and their brothers are the children of "the other Mary", the wife of Clopas, not Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

Interestingly, this "other Mary" is described as the Blessed Virgin's "sister". Is it really possible that two siblings were both named Mary? Probably not. Rather it's far more likely they were "sisters" in the same sense Jesus and the other Mary's son, James, were "brothers". That is, they were cousins or some other extended relation. And, indeed, we find Jewish culture could play fast and loose with the terms "brother" and "sister". For instance, Lot, who was the nephew of Abraham (cf. Genesis 11:27-31) is called Abraham's "brother" in Genesis 13:8 and 14:14-16. In the same way, when the Old Testament gets translated into Greek, the Jewish translators do the same thing, rendering "nephew" as "brother" (adelphos).

So the biblical evidence for siblings of Jesus slips steadily away until all that is left is the school of criticism which argues that, since Jesus is called the "firstborn" (Luke 2:7), this implied other children for Mary. But in fact the term "firstborn" was used mainly to express the privileged position of the firstborn whether or not other children were born. That is why a Greek tomb at Tel el Yaoudieh bears this inscription for a mother who died in childbirth: "In the pain of delivering my firstborn child, destiny brought me to the end of life."

Beyond that, all the critic of Perpetual Virginity has left is just the gut sensation that "It's weird for a normal married couple to practice celibacy." And that might be an argument—if Joseph and Mary were a normal married couple and not the parents of the God of Israel.

Mary's Witness to Her Perpetual Virginity

It is no secret that ancient Judaism, like the Church, prized the goods of marriage and family. But Judaism had room for celibacy too, if practiced for religious reasons. The best known example is the rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth. In addition to Him we also have the example of the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 16:1-2), St. Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 7) and St. Philip's "four unmarried daughters, who prophesied." (Acts 21:9). Beyond the record of Scripture, we also find Jewish groups like the Essenes and the Therapeutae, who likewise consecrated themselves to virginity. Consecrated virginity was not unheard of in ancient Judaism.

Indeed, there's even room in ancient Judaism for celibacy within marriage:

Living a celibate life within marriage was not unknown in Jewish tradition. It was told that Moses, who was married, remained continent the rest of his life after the command to abstain from sexual intercourse (Ex 19:15) given in preparation [for the Theophany on Mount Sinai. Likewise,] the seventy elders abstained thereafter from their wives after their call, and so did Eldad and Medad when the spirit of prophecy came upon them; indeed it was said that the prophets became celibate after the Word of the Lord communicated with them (Midrash Exodus Rabbah 19; 46.3; Sifre to Numbers 99 sect. 11; Sifre Zutta 81-82, 203-204; Aboth Rabbi Nathan 9, 39; Tanchuman 111, 46; Tanchumah Zaw 13; 3 Petirot Moshe 72; Shabbath 87a; Pesachim 87b, Babylonian Talmud).

The question, of course, is whether Mary was among those devout Jews who chose to live a life of virginity. And the biblical evidence says, "Yes."

Consider: You are at a bridal shower for a friend and somebody remarks to the bride, "You are going to have such adorable kids!" Everybody laughs, but the bride gapes in astonishment and says, "How shall this be?" At that point, you would begin to notice something unusual about your friend. Because, for a woman who is betrothed to be married, there are only a limited number of explanations for such a reaction. Either nobody has ever explained the birds and the bees to her, and she genuinely has no idea how babies are made and what she's about to sign on for with her husband-to-be—or she has every intention of remaining a virgin after marriage.

The astonishing thing about Mary is that she's astonished. For she too is a woman betrothed. She knows about the birds and the bees. Yet she reacts with amazement at the news that she, a woman betrothed, will bear a son. Notice that the angel does not say "You are pregnant." He says "You will bear a son" (Luke 1:31). This is a promise that has been made to other women in Jewish history such as Sarah, Hannah, and the Shunammite woman (cf. Genesis 18; 1 Samuel 1; and 2 Kings 4). All of them understand the promise to mean, "You and your husband will conceive a child." So why should the same promise astonish Mary, a young woman who also plans to marry—unless she had already decided to remain a virgin throughout her life?

Joseph's Witness to Mary's Perpetual Virginity

The average modern reader of Matthew assumes Joseph disbelieved Mary and wanted to divorce her as an adulteress. Pictures come to the mind very easily of a Mary "pregnant out to there" and fumbling to explain to a skeptical Joseph that, well, it's not the way it looks and there was this angel, you see...

But surprisingly, there's another view of Joseph, one which Scripture supports better than the "Suspicious Joseph" portrait commonly accepted by modernity. In fact, it's a way of viewing Joseph's actions that was shared by such Church Fathers as Jerome, the greatest biblical scholar of antiquity.

Put yourself in Joseph' s shoes. You are a first century Jew, not a 21st-century materialist. Not just God, but angels, the afterlife, miracles, visions, and the whole supernatural world is, for you, as normal and real as daylight and sun on the flowers. Mary is a deeply godly woman you have known extremely well for years whom you both love and trust. She tells you she received a Visitation from an angel, not months after she becomes pregnant, but hours—perhaps minutes—after the angel has departed. She is breathless and astonished. But she's not given to hysteria or tall tales and she's dead serious. She tells you the angel said she would bear a son by the Holy Spirit. She's not "pregnant out to there" when she says this. She just says it. Perhaps she's not even sure she's pregnant, since the angel has given no timetable on when this shall happen. There's no guilt or shame in her eyes. And given all you know of her, the idea of her a) sleeping around (with who? This is a small town!) and b) coming up with this sort of story to cover it up is about as likely as Mother Teresa visiting some secret lover and then trying to cover it up by claiming she was impregnated by aliens. It's simply beyond her character to create such a wild story. So, to your amazement and fear, you find Mary's story is less incredible to you than the proposition of Mary's unchastity.

Especially since that's not all Mary says. She also reports that the angel said her aged cousin Elizabeth is pregnant too. There's been no news from Zechariah and Elizabeth for several months. Then, a few days later, word comes from the Judean hill country: Elizabeth is pregnant despite her advanced age. The hair stands up on the back of your neck. And as weeks and months roll on, you find your beloved Mary is indeed pregnant too. She looks at you with absolutely honest eyes and says, "Remember what I told you about the angel and his message?"

I don't know about you, but if it were me and my wife, I would believe her—and feel deeply unworthy to even be in her presence. Incredible as it sounds, I would find it even more incredible to think that the Janet I've known all these years could be making all that up. I trust her that much. And I think Joseph trusted Mary that much.

Particularly since his behavior signals precisely this. He acts, not like an outraged and betrayed man, but like a man who, as the months progress, feels more and more the crushing weight of his appointed task and the dread of the Holy One in the words Mary relayed to him from the angel:

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;
and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and
he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and of his kingdom there will
be no end." (Luke 1:32-33)

Joseph does not act angry at Mary. And he knows perfectly well there's no danger of public disapproval because the assumption would have been that the child was his. Only Joseph and Mary know that the child is... Whose? That appears to be the question weighing on Joseph. So he contemplates finding some escape hatch, hoping to "send her away quietly" (Matthew 1:19) so that she won't incur the public shame of his "rejection" while he avoids the terrifying burden God is laying on his feeble shoulders.

In the midst of all this turmoil, Joseph then has a dream in which an angel speaks to him. And remember, Joseph believes in dreams, visions, and the like. The dream confirms everything Mary told him: "that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:20-21). But even more than that, the dream attests that Joseph was grappling not with disbelief, but belief—and a profound sense of unworthiness. For the angel in the dream does not say, "Don't suspect Mary of adultery." The angel says, "Do not fear to take Mary your wife" (Matthew 1:20). He addresses Joseph as "son of David," thereby reminding him that the Messiah is to come through David's line. The angel reminds Joseph that this task has been appointed for him by God, despite Joseph's sense of unworthiness.

Now, as we have already seen, it didn't take long for the Jewish mind to discern the connection between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant. For Luke and John it's an incredibly obvious connection because Mary and the Ark were both the dwelling place of the living God among his people. How easy would it have been for Joseph, knowing what he knew, to make the same connection—and to remember what happens to people who touch the Ark without the Lord's permission?

And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there because he put forth his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:6-7).

So, even from a human perspective, it becomes very probable that Joseph would have chosen celibacy in this rather unusual situation. But beyond such negative factors influencing Joseph's thought, it also worth noting that he was a devout Jew who not only feared but loved God. Thus, Joseph might very well have recognized another parallel between his stewardship of Mary and Moses' stewardship of the "Holy of Holies" wherein the Lord dwelt:

Jewish tradition mentions that, although the people had to abstain from sexual relations with their wives for only three days prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai (Ex 19:15), Moses chose to remain continent the rest of his life with the full approval of God. The rabbis explained that this was so because Moses knew that he was appointed to personally commune with God, not only at Mount Sinai but in general throughout the forty years of sojourning in the wilderness. For this reason Moses kept himself "apart from woman," remaining in the sanctity of separation to be at the beck and call of God at all times; they cited God's command to Moses in Deuteronomy 5:28 (Midrash Exodus Rabbah 19:3 and 46.3).[4]

The weight of Scriptural evidence therefore suggests that, from motives of both holy fear (of illicitly touching the New Ark) and of love for God in imitation of Moses, Joseph realized he had been charged with foregoing marital relations in this wonderful and special case. Once again, Scripture winds up reflecting the Tradition preserved by the Church.

John's Witness to Mary's Perpetual Virginity

Another point also deserves mention. Suppose, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Mary did give birth to other children besides Jesus. What, then, are we to make of the fact that Jesus, in His final moments of earthly life, gives Mary into John's care?

When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:26-27)

As Paul makes clear, both Jews and Christians customarily entrusted the care of widows to their own families:

Honor widows who are real widows. If a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn their religious duty to their own family and make some return to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God. She who is a real widow, and is left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day; whereas she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command this, so that they may be without reproach. If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:3-8)

Caring for one's widowed mother was not regarded as some sort of extraordinary or saintly duty, any more than it regarded that way today. It was regarded as one of the things that anybody calling themselves "human" was expected to do.

So, if Mary really had other children, why was she commended into the care of John and not, say, of James "the Lord's brother"? Some will argue Jesus chose John because he was a believer and James was not. But the reality is that John was not much more of a believer than James at this point. Scripture notes John's confusion at the Resurrection—which he neither expected nor believed at first (Mark 16:11)—and Scripture is clear that John had not yet received the Spirit, since the Spirit had not yet been given (John 7:39). Of course, as we know, John came to full faith in Christ shortly thereafter. But then again, so did James (1 Corinthians 15:7). So if James, not to mention all the other supposed "siblings" such as Jude, aren't only believers but siblings of Jesus, why did Jesus entrust Mary to John? The obvious inference is that James, Jude, and the rest were not the Blessed Virgin's children.

The Witness of the Prophets

Given the witness of Mary, Joseph, the Evangelists, and Jesus Himself, it's not surprising to find the early Church Fathers firmly embracing the belief that Mary was ever-virgin. They too recognized the connection between Mary and the Ark, and saw in Mary's Perpetual Virginity something that attends everything else about Jesus' life—the fulfillment of prophecy. This is most notable in the Fathers' reading of the prophet Ezekiel.

Ezekiel lived about 500 years before Christ. In Ezekiel's day, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel had been scattered by the Assyrian Empire (hence the "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel") while the southern "rump" kingdom of Judah had itself been carted off to captivity in Babylon after the destruction of Solomon's Temple. It seemed Israel was doomed to be annihilated, crushed between the hammer of Assyria and the anvil of Babylon.

But then God raised up prophets like Ezekiel to promise that Israel had not been forsaken and that the Almighty would restore her fortunes, return her to her land, send her a Messiah, and use Israel to bless all the nations of the earth, just as He had promised Abraham long ago (Genesis 12:1-3). In Ezekiel's case, this prophetic message included a lengthy vision—recorded in Ezekiel 40-48—describing a restored Temple, a revived land of Israel and a renewed city of Jerusalem.

Now the Temple was indeed rebuilt (cf. Ezra and Nehemiah), but it didn't (and couldn't) look like the Temple of Ezekiel's prophecy. Why? Because in Ezekiel's visionary Temple things like this happen:

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east); and the water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate, and led me round on the outside to the outer gate, that faces toward the east; and the water was coming out on the south side.

Going on eastward with a line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water; and it was ankle-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water; and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water; and it was up to the loins. Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen; it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. And he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen this?"

Then he led me back along the bank of the river. As I went back, I saw upon the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And he said to me, "This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah; and when it enters the stagnant waters of the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes every living creature which swarms will live, and there will be very many fish; for this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes. Fishermen will stand beside the sea; from En-gedi to En-eglaim it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing."(Ezekiel 47:1-12)

There never was (and never will be) a physical Temple with a river flowing out of it. So what is Ezekiel getting at? To find out, we must pay attention to a rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth as He comes to the rebuilt Temple 500 years later to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7).

The Feast of Tabernacles is described in Leviticus 23:33-43 and Deuteronomy 16:13-16 as a commemoration of Israel's living in tents in the wilderness (Leviticus 23:43) and a thanksgiving for Israel's permanent home in the Promised Land. In addition, the Feast also offers thanks for the Temple, the successor of the Mosaic Tabernacle (Exodus 25-31) as a permanent place of worship. Note that both the Tabernacle and the Temple were home to the Ark of the Covenant until the Ark vanished several centuries before Christ's birth.

As Israel wandered in the wilderness during the Exodus, the people suffered from thirst. In answer to their complaints, Moses strikes a rock, from which water flows to quench Israel's thirst (Numbers 20). By Jesus' day this event was commemorated in the Feast of Tabernacles in a curious ritual: Every morning during the Feast, a priest went down to the Pool of Siloam and brought back a golden pitcher of water to the Temple (the successor of Moses' Tabernacle). This water was poured on the altar of holocausts amidst the singing of the "Hallel" (that is, Psalms 112-117) and the joyful sound of musical instruments. Interestingly, this practice became part of the Feast after the rebuilding of the Temple following the Babylonian Exile—that is, after the prophecy of Ezekiel's river flowing from the Temple.

So, during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus announces to the crowd, "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:37-38). As we already know, Jesus uses the image of living water to refer to the Holy Spirit (cf. John 4). Yet curiously, there's no passage in Old Testament Scripture which says, "Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water". What then is Jesus referring to?

He is referring to Ezekiel 47 and following. After all, Jesus has already told us what the true Temple is when he declared, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John 2:19). As John makes crystal clear, "[H]e spoke of the temple of his body" (John 2:21). So Jesus is declaring to all at the Feast of Tabernacles that Ezekiel's vision is not a physical description of a stone building, but a spiritual description of the True Temple, the Body of Christ. For the same reason, John says that Jesus "tabernacled" among us (John 1:14) when he became man. Paul makes the same connection, referring to the mystical Body of Christ as the Temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).

What then is Jesus' point? He is identifying Himself with the Temple of Ezekiel's vision. He is making clear that He is the True Temple and His heart is the Holy of Holies. The waters of the Feast of Tabernacles, the water flowing from the rock of Moses, from the rock on which the visionary Temple of Ezekiel is founded, flows from His heart. The Rock, as Paul makes clear, is Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). And, as we shall see presently, John will make this even clearer as his Gospel reaches its climax.

In other words, the Incarnation is being likened to God coming to dwell in His Temple in majesty. Or rather, the Old Testament moments in which God descended in majesty on the Tabernacle and the Temple in the pillar of cloud (cf. Exodus 40:34-38; 1 Kings 8:10-11) are revealed to be prophetic foreshadows of when God truly came to dwell in His Temple: when the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.

Now the interesting thing, the Fathers noticed, is that Ezekiel speaks directly to this image of the Lord coming in majesty to dwell in His Temple. For the prophet wrote:

Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east; and it was shut. And he said to me, "This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut." (Ezekiel 44:1-2).

In short, the Gate into the Incarnation (i.e., Mary) shall be holy to the Lord and not for any common purpose. And in token of this, the Gate of the Mystical Temple shall be shut to all but the Lord.

As an Evangelical, I had long regarded the reading of Ezekiel 44:1-2 to support Mary's Perpetual Virginity as mere "proof-texting." I thought the Fathers were beginning with this passage and then trying to build a doctrine of Perpetual Virginity on it. But the more I saw how the early Church (including the New Testament authors) linked the Tabernacle, the Temple and the Body of Christ, and the roles of Mary, the Ark, and the gate of Temple, the more I came to realize that the Church's faith in Mary's Perpetual Virginity was not derived from Ezekiel 44:1-2 any more than her faith in the Virgin Birth was derived from Isaiah 7:14. Rather, as with the Virgin Birth, the Perpetual Virginity of Mary happened, and only afterwards did the Church begin to realize that the events of her life, like the events of her Son's, were strangely—one might even say prophetically—foreshadowed in Ezekiel 44:1-2. And so there dawned on me at last the recognition of a real, organic un-manufactured connection between Mary and something the prophet Ezekiel was inspired to see.

The Witness of the Fathers and the Church

Patristic sources who affirm that Mary's Perpetual Virginity was taught by the Apostles include the author of the Protoevangelium of James, Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Athanasius, Epiphanius of Salamis, Jerome, Didymus the Blind, Ambrose of Milan, Pope Siricius I, Augustine, Leporius, Cyril of Alexandria, Pope Leo I, and the dogmatic teaching of Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople. And they're only the beginning. For the entirety of Christian history until roughly the 17th Century, Christians agreed with them—except for two guys.

Those two guys are:

· Tertullian. A fierce North African lawyer and defender of the Faith who lived in the late-second and early-third century. He fell prey to a spiritual disease that sometimes afflicts those who come to love apologetics more than they love Jesus: Tertullian got so intent on building up antibodies against heresy that he eventually contracted a sort of spiritual auto-immune disease and started building antibodies against the Body of Christ itself. Eventually, he abandoned Christianity for Montanism. But along the way, Tertullian wrote some brilliant—and virulent—stuff. He did nothing by halves, and he was no stranger to the deep end when it came to contradicting his opponents. And so, when he encountered Docetists (people who denied Jesus was truly human) Tertullian countered by arguing that not only was Jesus human, but His mother, being herself fully human, must have had a bushel of other kids too! True to form, Tertullian didn't argue this from biblical evidence (because, as we've seen, there isn't any) but from his own polemical needs at the moment. In fact, Tertullian's passionate opposition to Docetism also prompted him to argue that Jesus was ugly! He was an extremist with an axe to grind and a blinding need to win an argument at any cost, not a very reliable witness to the constant faith of other
Christians.

· Helvidius, who lived in the fourth century. He wrote a pamphlet (lost to history) which argued most of the same things Evangelicals argue against Mary's Perpetual Virginity. How does Helvidius know Mary had other kids? He doesn't. He just cites Tertullian and says that it seems to him she must have had them, using all the misreadings of Scripture we have just looked at and discredited.

It's worth noting that when Jerome wrote his famous refutation Against Helvidius in defense of Mary's Perpetual Virginity, his argument was seen by his all contemporaries as completely non-controversial: It was Helvidius who was universally regarded throughout Christendom as the kook. Jerome's view was regarded as simply normal by Christians everywhere. And that remained true right down through the Reformation, whose leading lights such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and even John Wesley, also accepted Mary's Perpetual Virginity as clear and unarguable biblical teaching. Far from "contradicting" Scripture, the dogma of Mary's Perpetual Virginity is at least as well-attested, both biblically and historically, as the dogma of the Trinity.

Hope that helps!
posted by Mark at 12:10 PM

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Grail

Unless you are Sandra Miesel, who knows everything there is to know about medieval arcana.
posted by Mark at 12:06 PM

Am I the only one who finds this to be a weirdly constructed sentence?

"Kopp is charged [under federal law] with obstructing access to an abortion clinic through his slaying of Slepian, a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence."

posted by Mark at 12:01 PM

Evangelical Reader Tom R, Emerging from His Rip Van Winkle Sleep of Centuries, writes below:

Well, Mike, for example, do you believe that your Baptist brother-in-law (everyone who comboxes at CEI has a Baptist brother-in-law) should "suffer the penalties prescribed by law" if he publicly professes that "Mary was a virgin until Jesus was born"? That's from an explicitly infallible statement by a Pope, so there's very little wiggle room to Unam Sanctam-ise that one. So go on, say it loud, say it proud: "My Baptist brother-in-law should go to jail for denying the Perpetual Virginity or the Immaculate Conception."

Allow me to be the first to welcome Tom to the 21st Century and to get him oriented to the realities of life in the Catholic communion as it presently stands. It turns out that that canonical penalities have always been mutable, Tom. And so, as the relationship between Church and state evolved over the centuries, it no longer occurs that the Church hands people over to the secular arm for punishment for canonical offenses. Indeed, while your were sleeping, an important Council was held in the 1960s in which the Church definitively developed its doctrine on the question of religious liberty. It was called the Second Vatican Council.

Tomorrow, we will talk about refrigerators and the internal combustion engine.
posted by Mark at 11:11 AM

CE Triple Threat

My latest, in which we learn that the Church's sexual teaching actually makes sense

Greg Krehbiel being his typically not-full-of-crap and refreshingly clear self

Eric Scheske is learning ever so much from Modern Scientific Research
posted by Mark at 10:05 AM

One Might Also Call it "Suiciding the Church"

...since not a few lay Catholics seem to either not know, nor care, or else to be positively enthused at the prospect that the Great Enema is now morphing into a persecution of the Church that seeks to completely destroy its institutional structures in the pursuit of lining pockets. Do Catholics know--do they care?--that the Church is being singled out for things like exemption from statutes of limitations, just so it can be the more effectively pillaged by lawyers without a care in the world for the common good?

Consider, in a *single year* 1998, the Dept of Justice listed 103,600 cases of sexual abuse in public schools. From 1950 to 2003, there were 10,667 reported cases of clergy sexual abuse. That's 10 times as much in one year as there were in 53 years in the Church. Yet nobody is passing laws singling out teachers for special exemption from ordinary laws. Only Catholics.

Some Catholics appear to be drunk on Avenging Angel juice and simply don't care. But sane laity are damn well going to have to care or the simple fact is this: the pillaging of the Church will not stop until your parish is gone, all the services it provided are gone, schools are gone, orphanages, hospitals, charities, clinics, and the thousand and one other corporal works of mercy are stamped out by a system that sees the chance to make a bundle and doesn't a damn about the poor the Church serves.

The Church itself will survive, of course. But the ruin inflicted on a society that has no clue how dependent it is on the Catholic Church as a mediating institution may mean that our country doesn't survive. The Church has a divine promise of survival. US culture is only as strong as the mortals that comprise it.

Bottom line: Destruction is not reform. Catholics who are sitting there thinking, "Ha! The Church is getting what it deserves!" are, quite simply, candidates for discovering the principle that the measure you give will be the measure you receive. And they are wrong to boot. The Church is the People of God. And the People of God do not deserve to have their patrimony pillaged by greedy lawyers who leave them naked before the power of a persecuting state and powerless to help those members of society even more helpless than they will be once this legal pogrom really gets up its head of steam.

Wake up!
posted by Mark at 9:44 AM

Belated ANZAC Day Greetings to My Friends in Australia and New Zealand

For you Yanks, ANZAC Day honors Australian & NZ Army Corps who died in battle, or from the result of war, from the Boer War, WW 1 & 2, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the latest - an Aussie killed in Iraq the other day.

God bless them for their sacrifice. May it be reckoned to their glory on That Day.
posted by Mark at 8:47 AM

Red State Minions are Not Acting with Proper Deference to Blue State Schools

...and that's a very good thing.
posted by Mark at 8:38 AM

Those Wacky Spanish Socialists

You know, senors y senoras, an unborn baby has a *100%* genetic match with a human being. Do the math.
posted by Mark at 8:20 AM

Court Repeals Free Exercise Clause--For Now

Just testing. It will take successive waves of such decisions to reach up the beach to the SCOTUS. But over the long haul, our cultural elites are laboring toward the day they can stamp out free exercise for Christians.
posted by Mark at 8:18 AM

Another Christian Communion becomes a Whore for the Culture of Death

Why not just fry human embryos up and eat them? That form of tissue harvest is *sure* to help keep people alive and we don't even have to do research to know that.

Despicable.
posted by Mark at 8:10 AM

Another Chance to Do Good to the Least of These

The phrase "least of these" is an awfully dicey one. Our Lord uses it and it's entered common usage through the Bible, but in the context he uses it (contrasting his glorious kingship at the Second Coming with the apparent mundaneness of our little acts of charity) it's fitting. I sometimes wonder if it's appropriate for creatures like me to use, because it could easily be taken to imply that I'm the Star and those people over there are the nameless security guards and extras in the Great Film of Life. If it has that effect, it's just evil to use it.

This seems like one of those questions Disputations should take up. Over to you, Tom.
posted by Mark at 8:00 AM

Thin-Skinned Bronze Age Muslim Thugs Discover the Cyrano Principle

In Cyrano de Bergerac, the following exchange occurs:

THE VISCOUNT:
I'll treat him to. . .one of my quips!. . .See here!. . .
(He goes up to Cyrano, who is watching him, and with a conceited air):
Sir, your nose is. . .hmm. . .it is. . .very big!

CYRANO (gravely):
Very!

THE VISCOUNT (laughing):
Ha!

CYRANO (imperturbably):
Is that all?. . .

THE VISCOUNT:
What do you mean?

CYRANO:
Ah no! young blade! That was a trifle short!
You might have said at least a hundred things
By varying the tone. . .like this, suppose,. . .
Aggressive: 'Sir, if I had such a nose
I'd amputate it!' Friendly: 'When you sup
It must annoy you, dipping in your cup;
You need a drinking-bowl of special shape!'
Descriptive: ''Tis a rock!. . .a peak!. . .a cape!
--A cape, forsooth! 'Tis a peninsular!'
Curious: 'How serves that oblong capsular?
For scissor-sheath? Or pot to hold your ink?'
Gracious: 'You love the little birds, I think?
I see you've managed with a fond research
To find their tiny claws a roomy perch!'
Truculent: 'When you smoke your pipe. . .suppose
That the tobacco-smoke spouts from your nose--
Do not the neighbors, as the fumes rise higher,
Cry terror-struck: "The chimney is afire"?'
Considerate: 'Take care,. . .your head bowed low
By such a weight. . .lest head o'er heels you go!'
Tender: 'Pray get a small umbrella made,
Lest its bright color in the sun should fade!'
Pedantic: 'That beast Aristophanes
Names Hippocamelelephantoles
Must have possessed just such a solid lump
Of flesh and bone, beneath his forehead's bump!'
Cavalier: 'The last fashion, friend, that hook?
To hang your hat on? 'Tis a useful crook!'
Emphatic: 'No wind, O majestic nose,
Can give THEE cold!--save when the mistral blows!'
Dramatic: 'When it bleeds, what a Red Sea!'
Admiring: 'Sign for a perfumery!'
Lyric: 'Is this a conch?. . .a Triton you?'
Simple: 'When is the monument on view?'
Rustic: 'That thing a nose? Marry-come-up!
'Tis a dwarf pumpkin, or a prize turnip!'
Military: 'Point against cavalry!'
Practical: 'Put it in a lottery!
Assuredly 'twould be the biggest prize!'
Or. . .parodying Pyramus' sighs. . .
'Behold the nose that mars the harmony
Of its master's phiz! blushing its treachery!'
--Such, my dear sir, is what you might have said,
Had you of wit or letters the least jot:
But, O most lamentable man!--of wit
You never had an atom, and of letters
You have three letters only!--they spell Ass!
And--had you had the necessary wit,
To serve me all the pleasantries I quote
Before this noble audience. . .e'en so,
You would not have been let to utter one--
Nay, not the half or quarter of such jest!
I take them from myself all in good part,
But not from any other man that breathes!

Briefly stated, then there are three basic principles in life: Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. And never, ever, try to make fun of the ethnic group that has given the world more self-deprecating comic geniuses than anyone else on the planet--especially if your own tribe is bunch of humorless stentorian dorks.
posted by Mark at 7:07 AM

A Common Conservative Evangelical Blunder

This fellow writes:

Easter has become one of the most holy Christian celebrations. However, it is not found anywhere in the Bible. My family celebrates Easter every year. But, we have always maintained a careful awareness of its meaning. I don't believe that most have done this. I believe that knowing the pagan roots of Holy observances is key to maintaining purity in one's worship.

Easter? Most don't even know the origin of the name! Two pagan goddesses were the source. Estere was a pagan fertility goddess and Ishtar (an Old Testament pagan goddess that rose with the sunrise). Female deities, the rabbit and egg have represented pagan fertility celebrations for milleniums.

The problem is obvious. Holy observances that have been leached forward to convert pagans to Christianity many centuries ago have some inherently dangerous undertones. His death and resurrection should be celebrated - but, His supreme sacrifice should be observed everyday, not when the moon is lined-up correctly with the earth (Easter's celebration is ted to the spring equinox - the actual date is set as the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs after the spring equinox). Let the kids enjoy Easter...but, you might consider telling them its just for fun.

Now for some facts:

1. Easter is most certainly found in the Bible. The first one is in all four gospels. I don't know why there is a superstition about marking it with an annual feast but not about marking our birthdays with annual feasts.

2. Re: "I don't believe most have done this." It is characteristic of a certain sort of Conservative Evangelical to really believe that the vast majority of Christians could have no idea what Easter is about. Certainly there are non-Christians with only a passing familiarity with the great feasts of the Church. But Catholics (that is to say, "most Christians") are familiar with them. Indeed, I would bet that even the most clueless Catholic--even an ex-Catholic who says "I was raised Catholic..."--would know that Easter is about the Resurrection of Christ. I also bet that most Catholics would say, "Who?" if you confronted them with the names "Eostre" or "Ishtar". For the Evangelical petrified of pagan defilement, that just proves how brainwashed the pagan Catholics are. For people who give the question a moment's thought, that just proves how fear of pagan defilement addles some Evangelical brains. After all, if you send your kid to learn their Communist catechism for four years and they come out able to tell you nothing about the Bolshevik Revolution or Marx, but everything about George Washington , the chances are pretty high that they haven't gotten a very good brainwashing in Communism. Likewise, if Catholics have no clue about pagan goddesses but can tell you what Easter is about, that probably means you need to re-evaluate the deleterious effects of words like "Easter".

3. Speaking of which, it's true that the name comes from a Germanic fertility goddess (Eostre). It's bunk that the name has anything to do with Ishtar. And the real kicker is, it's only an issue for Germanic language groups. Indeed, even Orthodox English speakers tend to call it by its more traditional name: Pascha.

4. This brings us to the core issue: The "semi-Manichaean hue" of Evangelicalism that Thomas Howard lamented years ago in his brilliant book Evangelical is Not Enough. For some reason, not a few Evangelicals tend to regard Nature as pagan property. So if a pagan uses a bunny or an egg or the dawn as a symbol, then Christians can't use it. It's a silly notion that totally overlooks both the Creation and the Incarnation. God hold the copyright on sunrises, bunnies and eggs, not Eostre. So it's perfectly fine for these obvious symbols of hope and new life to represent, well, Hope and New Life.

5. Next, we encounter a peculiar sample of the classic Protestant either/or habit of mind: "His supreme sacrifice should be observed everyday, not when the moon is lined-up correctly with the earth". Personally, I think both/and is the better approach here. I also think that just as matter and space should be hallowed as the redeemed creatures of the Incarnate God, so time should be thought of as sacred too since God entered into it. So referring to Holy Week (which is, after all, rooted in the biblical concept of Creation Week, as well as God's massive work of self-revelation in the mystery of the covenant with Israel and the Passover) as a mere "time coordinate" ("when the moon is lined-up correctly with the earth") is to overlook something vital in the biblical account.

6. And finally, I'm baffled by the weird conclusion: "...you might consider telling them its just for fun". Or you might consider telling them that this is commemoration of the Great Miracle and a graced time. Are there other graced times? Of course. Are all times graced in a certain sense. Yes.

But lemme ask you this: Jesus was invisibly present with the disciples in the Upper Room the whole time Mary Magdalene was telling them she'd seen Him. You gonna tell there was no difference between that mode of Presence and his visible appearance on Easter? Then don't tell me there aren't specially graced times and places. As C.S. Lewis says somewhere, "The God whom we would not know as present everywhere saved us by becoming local."
posted by Mark at 5:54 AM

Dawn Eden Gets a Threefer on her Blog!

First, she meets an absolutely hilarious pack of Cyber-Sisters .

Second, they do a really fetching impression of the Four Yorkshiremen ("You think *you* had it tough? Why, when *I* was raised Catholic...")

And third, of course, they once again bear out Shea's Sixth Immutable Law of Internet Discourse

It's a classic case of Catholics who look upon the faith as a kind of ethnicity. The faith of Dawn's critic is gone, but the dessicated remains of snobbery remain, as though they somehow had the idea that "her kind" (those damned earnest Evangelicals!) would lower the property value. There goes the neighborhood!

The strange thing is that, like so many ex-Catholics who claim to have left the neighborhood, they continue to linger around, throwing rocks at their old House and spray painting the walls in the middle of the night. They're not obsessed or Christ-haunted or anything though. Nothing's eating them. Nosirree.
posted by Mark at 5:29 AM

The Cultural Imperialism of the Quixotically Wishful

Get Religion points out the absurd flaw at the heart of our Governing and Chattering Class attempts to cope with the hard realities of Islam. The Chattering classes makes their closest approach to reality when they recognize that Islam, like virtually religious traditions, has no magisterium and is therefore subject to wildly differing interpretations from wildly differing imams.

The problem is, both they and the other principal manufacturers of public though--the governing classes--can't bear to really face what that means: which is that several million Muslims really *do* subscribe to or sympathize with the methods and aims of ruthless Bronze Age Fanatics who think nothing at all of murdering whole populations if it furthers their aims for global domination.

Nope. Instead, our Manufacturers of Public Discourse simply contradict themselves and pronounce on what Islam "essentially" is: it's a "religion of peace".

At this point, I seriously doubt most average Americans believe this doublespeak. Repeated beheadings and cartoon riots do have a way of taking the lustre off your reputation for Oriental courtesy and Salaam-filled magnanimity. But then again, one can never under-estimate the capacity of people desperate for comfort to lie to themselves in the pursuit of it.

The smart thing to do would be to clearly acknowledge that Islam is not a religion of peace: it is a religion of intense civil war in which one faction has dreams of defeating and destroying their sane co-religionists and then marching on to destroy and conquer the rest of the world, not unlike the conflict between the sane people and the Bolsheviks. Then we could assist the sane people and not help swell the ranks of the crazies.

But instead we either pretend there are no crazies or we deliberately provoke and insult the sacred beliefs of ordinary Muslims so that they conclude, "The Radicals are right. The Depraved West really does hate all I hold dear." This stupidly suicidal behavior is, well, what you might expect from a culture of death that seems bent on hiring Islam as an assassin to kill it, like some insane millionaire in a noir film. But as a person who dissents from the culture of death, I'd just like to go on record as saying that I would prefer to remain alive and free. The first step for doing so is the virtue of prudence, which means "understanding what is so and ordering our actions accordingly". What is so is that Islam is profoundly divided. For some, it is a religion of peace. For a great many, it is the vehicle for all their basest sins of murder, arrogance, and evil. I hope our Manufacturers of Public Discourse get that through their heads soon.
posted by Mark at 5:08 AM

Here's a chance to help one of the Least of These
posted by Mark at 7:08 PM

Attention J Schoolers!

If you are going to be a successful reporter, you will need to be armed with certain cliches. In the past, terms like "flamboyant" and "homosexual" were stitched together all the time. Now only Dan Brown can get away with that. So who says there's not an upside to the gay rights movement?

But in talking about religion, there is still a wonderful number of opportunity to cobble together whole articles out of tired phrases that don't even have anything to do with reality.

Here's a typical MSM headline:

"Vatican Cracks Down on Devout Catholics in Bus Plunge: Hardliner Pope Takes Rigidly Orthodox Position Against Vehicular Homicide"

Look real hard. See if you can spot cliched writing. Now see if you can think of other samples of cliches when it comes to religion writing. If you can think of more than three, you are probably better qualified to write about the Catholic faith than 90% of the people reporting on it in the MSM today! Feel free to use the combox to list off some weatherbeaten MSM religion cliches.
posted by Mark at 6:37 PM

Good interview with Ramesh Ponnuru on his new book "The Party of Death"

I like the guy a lot. We've corresponded from time to time and he impresses me as having the integrity, not only to stand up for human life against the enthusiasts for its diminishment and extermination in the Evil Party, but also to criticize those on the Right who make excuses for assaults on the dignity of the human person for the Security of the Fatherland. It's good to see a Catholic taking his faith seriously inside the Beltway.

Oh, and before my Lefty readers even start: please note that Ponnuru makes a very clear distinction between the "Party of Death" and the Dem Party. He does state the blindingly obvious *fact* that the Dem Party has allowed itself to be taken over and utterly dominated by the Party of Death, which only a fool could deny what with the robotic devotion of the Dem party to the sacrament of abortion, fetal harvesting, stem cell research, and putting the aged and infirm to death as quickly as possible. The GOP's enthusiasms for torture and capital punishment at least have the thin excuse that they are pursued in some sort of mood of civil defense against real threats (however wretched that excuse is for torture and however fruitless it is for capital punishment). But the Dem Party has been squarely on the side of the murder of perfectly innocent human beings by the millions for over 30 years. Even so, Ponnuru, rather magnanimously in my view, does not claim the Dems and the Party of Death are co-terminous (conscious as he is of the universality of original sin). And (what is most important) he hopes for the day when the Dems and our culture will throw off their enslavement to the party of death. So do I.

It was kind of weird. Recently I was somewhere or other, having just corresponded with him earlier in the day, and I turned on the tube in my hotel room only to see that the poor guy had somehow managed to get dragooned into guesting on Bill Maher's show. It was illiterate raunch and blasphemy from beginning to end with Ponnuru scarcely getting a word in edgewise while Maher and two unidentified sub-humans threw the howling mob hunks of red Catholic meat. I felt for the guy. He must have needed a shower when it was over.
posted by Mark at 5:39 PM

The Whapsters Find Irrefutable Evidence of Time-Travelling United Federation of Planets Spacecraft



Look like that debate has been definitively settled.

Oh, and check out the brilliant summary of What Grownup Catholics Talk about and What the MSM Hears. The title of the blog entry says it all (if you remember your Far Side cartoons).

Remember: the Whapsters are the future. Dick McBrien and similar geezers are the rapidly receding past.
posted by Mark at 5:16 PM

Shea's Sixth Immutable Law of Internet Discourse Receives Further Confirmation

Shea's Sixth Immutable Law of Internet Discourse states: "Whenever any ex-Catholic begins a sentence with "I was raised Catholic and I can tell you that Catholics believe..." what follows will be a farrago of ignorant nonsense." Peter Sean Bradley provides the details on his close encounter with this phenomenon.
posted by Mark at 4:56 PM

Alright! I'm going to get a *root canal* now!

Attitude is everything.
posted by Mark at 12:48 PM

Andrew Sullivan Continues His Quest to Create a Jesus Who Approves of Everything He Does and Who Defends Him from the Big Bad Catholic Church

To that end, he quotes an article that has one truth and an almost perfect storm of lies to support his pre-ordained agenda disguised as a "search". The truth is that, yes, Jesus is not a character anybody would ever have invented. True enough. The thing is, the only reason we know about him (as well as about the horrendous flaws of his disciples) is that the Church had a damn sight more integrity than Andrew Sullivan and told the truth about Jesus (even leaving in uncomfortable sayings like "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" and Peter's denial) rather than create a Jesus that affirmed them in their okayness as Sullivan demands. Imagine Sullivan making sure to record that Jesus once called him "Satan" as Peter made sure it was recorded. Fat chance. As for the rest of this predictable bit of post-Christian pap, allow me to fisk:

If Jesus Christ had not existed, it would almost certainly not have been necessary for the Church to invent someone like him. What does the Church want with a man who plainly despised ritual?

This, unfortunately, is what you get when people know nothing of the New Testament. Jesus was a Jew. he practiced ritual because every Jew practiced ritual. He had no problem celebrating the ritual feasts of the Old Testament (recall that the Last Supper was a Passover). In fact, John builds his whole gospel around the feasts of the Old Testament, relating them to various aspects of the revelation of Christ. Jesus also had not problem with establishing rituals ("Go into all the world, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" "Do this in memory of me.") That's because Jesus was handing on a revelation he intended to last more than a couple of weeks. And the way you do that is through ritual. The author doesn't realize it (they never do) but the swipe at the Church for being "ritualistic" basically is a swipe at Judaism, not Christianity. To be sure, Jesus warned against *empty* ritual--as did the prophets. But against ritual per se he spoke not a word.

Can you imagine the man who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey wanting anything to do with bells and smells and frocks, with gilt and silver and semi-idolatry, and repetitive chants and chorused inanities?

Can you imagine this writer having the slightest acquaintance with the incense, shofars, gold, silver and bronze trimmings of the Tabernacle and the Temple (commanded by God himself) and with the priestly garments given "for beauty and for glory" to the Aaronic high priest as a sign that he was being clothed by God as a sign of God's favor to all Israel? Can you imagine this writer having the slightest clue that the *reason* Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem was that Solomon, the most gorgeous king in Israel's history, had done exactly the same thing a thousand years previously and this was Jesus' way of making clear that he was the rightful heir to throne of David? Can you imagine this writer having the slightest notion that the book of Psalms is *filled* with "repetitive chants and chorused inanities" or, as literate people call them, hymns of praise to God?

The man who said he had come to break up families being paraded as a paradigm of family values?

That the gospel divides families is not something Jesus regards as a blessing, but as a tragedy, like the doctor who says, "I won't lie to you. This is going to hurt." That this writer does not recognize this and ignored Jesus' emphatic teaching about the goodness and indissolubility of marriage between man and woman (Matthew 19), not to mention his blessing on children and his warning against those who harm them (a warning that extends not just to abusive priests but to those who would wantonly destroy their homes through sins like adultery) speaks volumes about the author's hostility to family and nothing about Jesus.

When we consider all those painfully counter-intuitive sayings and parables - the Prodigal Son, the idea that it is no good restraining your actions if your thoughts are bad, the impatience with good works ('the poor always ye have with you') except as a means for personal purification - and when we consider how Jesus keeps saying ... the wrong thing, it becomes even clearer that he must have been real: if Jesus had been a hoax, the Church could have invented someone so much more convenient."

Where to begin? It's bunk to claim that Jesus said it "no good restraining your actions if your thoughts are bad." It's a great good to resist temptation. But it's a great evil to court hatred or lust in your heart. Only you know if you are courting or resisting temptation, but any idiot (except this writer and Andrew Sullivan) knows there's a difference between courting and resisting temptation. As to the "impatience with good works" perhaps a remedial reading of the parable of the sheep and the goats or the parable of the Good Samaritan will help this writer get a sense of what the real Jesus had to say on such matters. The absurd citation of "the poor you have with you always" is as illiterate as the rest of his New Testament exegesis. The point has nothing to do with "personal purification" nor with a general contempt for good works: it's a rather forlorn prophecy of his coming death and a deeply human word of gratitude for somebody who took a little time to notice what he was facing: "She has anointed me in advance for my burial." In the gospel, *everything* orbits around that fact. That the writer does not see this tells me that he thinks like Andrew Sullivan--for whom everything orbits around Andrew Sullivan and what Andrew wants.

That said, I repeat, it is true that the Church would never have invented Jesus. Sadly, however, Andrew and his friend do not draw the logical conclusion from this: that the Jesus the Church preaches is, in fact, the real Jesus. Instead, Andrew and Co. just plow stupidly on, trying to invent a Jesus more to their liking and utterly ignorant of the one the Church's gospels give us.
posted by Mark at 12:16 PM

I'm Likin' this New Canadian Prime Minister More All the Time

Live Long and Prosper.
posted by Mark at 11:25 AM

Orwell in Action

It used to be called "end of life" care. Now it's called "futile" care. With Terri Schiavo, the excuse for murdering her was "the family" (meaning her adulterous husband) "wanted it". Here they don't even have that excuse. The family doesn't want it, but the hospital bean counters want it.

Oh, and big heaps o' thanks to Our Most Pro-Life President Ever for making this possible.
posted by Mark at 11:18 AM

"The recent proceedings at the High Court offered the first clues as to how Dan Brown produced the publishing sensation that is The Da Vinci Code."

If you think you're going to hear anything about Brown's shoddy research, his lame "blame the wife" testimony, or anything about the judge's tart remarks on Brown's vaunted pretensions to impeccable research, give it up. This is a puff piece on how the Great Man does such brilliant work at the "craft of writing". He's like a fine musician, doncha know.

However, on the bright side, the unflagging Sandra Miesel *has* read the court case and will be providing a fine fillet of the Great Fraud for Crisis soon. Should be wicked fun.
posted by Mark at 11:13 AM

Speaking of Rome...

Progressives and Reactionaries are all atwitter because Rome is apparently studying the question of condoms for spouses with AIDS. In an unconscious illustration of the way in which both presumption and despair are the enemies of hope, Progressives are cheering that it's a done deal that "Rome is finally catching up with the 21st century" and Reactionaries are freaking out that Rome is about to betray the Faith.

Sheesh. It's a *study*. And the point of a study is to *learn* something. In this case, the thing being learned and pondered is not "Shall we abandon the Tradition so as to please MTV?" but "Does the principle of double effect apply here?" Progressives, who have no interest in or knowledge the Tradition at all can hardly be expected to have considered this, for the same reason that five year olds can hardly be expected to think like adults. But Reactionaries, who at least *claim* to care about the Tradition, should really be aware that the Church is constantly revisiting old questions. Or did you not know that there was a time when the term "homoousious" was actually condemned by a local council of the Church? That's one of the reasons the Arians argued to reject it at Nicaea. But guess what? The Church revisited the question and accepted the term anyway (along with a different definition of what the term meant).

My point: the reason we have a Magisterium is that the Church is our Teacher as well as our Mother. Most American Catholics, however, think and act exactly like Protestants when some sacred cow of theirs is (they fear) threatened. Instead of waiting to find out what the Church's teachers--who have forgotten more about moral theology than you or I will ever learn--will say, we leap to all sorts of presumptive and despairing conclusions and declare, "Whatever they say, I know what *I* think and I'm not listening to these [Retrograde Neanderthals/Modernist Apostates] (Choose one).

Me: I have not given five seconds' thought to the question of condoms for married spouses with AIDS. Not a problem on my immediate horizon. I'm quite willing to listen to whatever the study (and remember, it's just a study) concludes. If the Church says it meets the criteria of double-effect, that works for me, cuz what do I know about it? Meanwhile, the only person I've run across who's posed a real world problem with this whole matter is Kathy Shaidle, who asks with her native common sense: "If my husband got AIDS by cheating on me, using dirty needles or having sex with a guy last week or last century, why the crap would I want to have sex with him again anyway?"

One real question is worth all the conclusion-leaping presumption and despair in the world.
posted by Mark at 10:49 AM

What exactly *is* the Holy See's View of the Holy Land?

Now you know.

This is a clip and save article for the next time the Holy See says something about the Holy Land. Odds are, it will be a reflection of the basic ideas outlined here.
posted by Mark at 10:47 AM

Virtuous Pagan Shows Himself Open to the Truth

I have much more respect for an honest pagan (having been one myself at one point) than I do for a quisling (pronounced "Kissling") Christian. More power to him! May God continue to guide him to further light.
posted by Mark at 10:40 AM

Chris Blosser does the Total DVC Roundup
posted by Mark at 10:38 AM

But enough of this light and fluffy theology...

Let's talk about scientific studies of why Rice Krispies snap, crackle, and pop.
posted by Mark at 10:37 AM

Speaking of Rod...

He understands what love of country actually means. It means love of country, not love of an abstraction.

And finally, while I am on a Rod-debauch, let me note that it has also occurred to me (actually, it occurred to me ten years ago, when I wrote By What Authority?) that having to do battle with people like the Jesus Seminar and Dan Brown is the penance that anti-Catholic Protestants must do to atone for the various lies they told to justify their anti-Catholicism. Dan Brown is, after all, simply regurgitating the same sort of crap Loraine Boettner did. Except he is making the (perfectly logical) leap from 16th Century Protestantism to 2nd Century Protestantism and saying, "If Christians after the Seven Councils could just decide for themselves who Jesus was and what the faith is, then why couldn't anybody claiming to follow Jesus *always* do that?" Good question.

The Catholic faith has a response. It's called Sacred Tradition and apostolic succession. Evangelicalism's response (judging from my experience in Hollywood last week) is either "Tell people your personal story about how Jesus changed your life" or "What is truth? Let us be open to diversity! 42 million DVC readers can't be wrong!" I have a modicum of respect for the first response. The gospels are, after all, accounts of how Jesus changed people's lives. Personal witness does count for something. But personal witness that is not rooted in the awareness that we are saved *as. a. people* and that the Church is prior to us and not about our personal preference and notions of what the gospel should be is ultimately doomed.

As to the second response, I have basically nothing but contempt for it. It's a naked capitulation to the dictatorship of relativism.

My hope, bolstered by the response of the audience at the Hollywood do, is that most Evangelicals are as dissatisfied with these weak-tea responses as I was and want to have something more solid to underpin their faith. Several people remarked on the fact that they didn't know anything about Church history and that this was why the DVC was so hard for them. They're perfectly right, of course. For many Evangelical, Church history begins with Jesus, pauses with the death of John, enters a vast parenthesis with something about pagans, monks, inquisitors and Mary worshippers, and then resumes with Luther. With a knowledge like that, the DVC does have you as a sitting duck. But be warned: if you learn the history you need to mark Newman's warning:

History is not a creed or a catechism, it gives lessons rather than rules; still no one can mistake its general teaching in this matter, whether he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines and broad masses of colour rise out of the records of the past. They may be dim, they may be incomplete; but they are definite. And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.

And Protestantism has ever felt it so. I do not mean that every writer on the Protestant side has felt it; for it was the fashion at first, at least as a rhetorical argument against Rome, to appeal to past ages, or to some of them; but Protestantism, as a whole, feels it, and has felt it. This is shown in the determination already referred to of dispensing with historical Christianity altogether, and of forming a Christianity from the Bible alone: men never would have put it aside, unless they had despaired of it. It is shown by the long neglect of ecclesiastical history in England, which prevails even in the English Church. {8} Our popular religion scarcely recognizes the fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the Councils of Nicæa and Trent, except as affording one or two passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain prophesies of St. Paul and St. John. It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever Gibbon. To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

6.

And this utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity is a plain fact, whether the latter be regarded in its earlier or in its later centuries. Protestants can as little bear its Ante-nicene as its Post-tridentine period. I have elsewhere observed on this circumstance: "So much must the Protestant grant that, if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial; by a deluge coming in a night, and utterly soaking, rotting, heaving up, and hurrying off every vestige of what it found in the Church, before cock-crowing: so that 'when they rose in the morning' her true seed 'were all dead corpses'—Nay dead and buried—and without grave-stone. 'The waters went over them; there was not one of them left; they sunk like