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Monday, July 31, 2006
What I Love about Seattle This article is typical of the way Seattle responded to the shootings at the Jewish Federation. A picture in the PI (which I can't find on line) was a lovely shot of a Jewish lady being escorted to Sabbath services by two Muslim friends. Down the street from the Federation, some old guy held a sign which read, "I am a Muslim but today I am a Jew." I'm praying that the American genius for defusing old world conflicts on its own soil will work here. At any rate, it was a beautiful sight. I will be helping a Visitor from an Area Rich in Oklahoma Fundamentalists Infiltrate the Western Dominicans in a Covert Research Mission This October Prayers appreciated as we undertake this extremely dangerous work. The Dominicans used to run the Inquisition, you know. God alone knows what they are capable of when provoked. What's going on the ECUSA's Tombstone Chris Johnson has the scoop on the ECUSA attempt to render itself completely odorless, colorless, tasteless and void of both mass and energy. Fisking King David If David lived today, I have a feeling not a few comboxes would read something like this: Psalm 51 Oh great! Here it comes. A happy clappy hymn from our Fearless Leaders, designed to make all of us hold hands, sing a little ditty, and forget the corruption at work in our "big happy family" at the very highest levels! Count me out! I am outraged at what this supposed "apple of God's eye" has done and no amount of cheery little campfire ditties from the "Psalmist of Israel" is going to make *me* forget the way he has frittered away his moral authority with gross repeated and pre-meditated sin! 3 Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness; in your abundant compassion blot out my offense. This guy, in the cold light of day, commits adultery, deliberately engineers the cold-blooded murder of the husband, uses state funds and our troops to do it, and then thinks that just by saying "I apologize" he's getting a pass? Sorry, but I need more than mere words before he'll get my forgiveness. 5 For I know my offense; my sin is always before me. Again with the Clintonesque lip-biting? And what's with the "against you alone have I sinned"? Apparently this guy doesn't even *think* of the body of Uriah the Hittite, lying dead on the field, the memory of his murder at David's hands an eternal insult to our brave fighting men and to the taxpayers who were forced to fund David's murderous adventures in the boudoir. He doesn't think of the family he destroyed or the woman he violated with his royal power. No, for David, it's all about David. So long as he can appease the Big Guy Upstairs (or feel that he has done so) then it doesn't matter how many of us suckers in Israel he fools with his phony piety. 7 True, I was born guilty, a sinner, even as my mother conceived me. So much for "taking full responsibility". Now he blames his mother for his sins. The guy has no shame at all. Can anyone here say with a straight face that David didn't deliberately intend every last detail of what he did when he stole Uriah's wife, got her pregnant, tried to figure out a way to make it look like Uriah's kid, and failing that, deliberately ordered his abandonment on the battlefield in order to murder him? But because he's the great *David* and not some loser like Saul, some people actually defend this "apology" instead of facing up to what kind of man he *really* is and admitting what is *really* in his heart. How's the Kool-Aid, guys? 8 Still, you insist on sincerity of heart; in my inmost being teach me wisdom. Sure. He "sincerely" apologizes for adultery and murder by blaming his mother and then turns and claims that he's full of "wisdom", courtesy of God Himself. The man is full of himself. 9 Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure; wash me, make me whiter than snow. The typical esoteric ritualistic trust in pagan mumbo-jumbo instead of a really moral life devoted to God. Blather about "hyssop" (used in the empty religious rituals of those who lack a living relationship with God such as I have). The notion that this ritual will, apart from serious repentance, magically "cleanse" him while he goes on blaming his mother for his cruel selfishness. And now, to top it off, he whines that a Just God is "crushing his bones" instead of acknowledging that he himself is to blame for his predicament. And we're supposed to *sing* this narcissistic twaddle in the liturgy? 11 Turn away your face from my sins; blot out all my guilt. The guy commits adultery and murder--pre-meditated and in cold blood. He uses our own troops to do it on taxpayer monies, he *still* is shacking up with Bathsheba, he blames his mother, he sociopathically ignores his sins against everybody but God AND NOW HE EXPECT FORGIVENESS AND A NEW HEART? I think I'm gonna puke. 13 Do not drive me from your presence, nor take from me your holy spirit. Yeah. Like God "drove him" from his presence and he didn't walk away with both eyes open. 15 I will teach the wicked your ways, that sinners may return to you. Like this murderous pervert is who we need teaching our kids Sunday school. What further evidence do we need that our leaders suffer from severe cranial-rectal inversion when it comes to who they regard as "spiritual leaders" in our community? Imagine the *gall* of this jerk presuming to call the rest of us "sinners"! 16 Rescue me from death, God, my saving God, that my tongue may praise your healing power. "Blah, blah, suck up to God and feel sorry for myself, blah blah. 18 For you do not desire sacrifice; a burnt offering you would not accept. Typical "I feel bad, but not bad enough to do something practical about my sins" junk. Apparently, murder and adultery are not worth slaughtering a cow and giving the meat to the poor. No, our leaders are so out of touch that they think "I'm sorry" will do the trick. 20 Make Zion prosper in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Translation: God, make me look good and maybe send some economic prosperity so the stupid subjects will forget what I did and go back to being sheeple! Well, not me. The mask is off the Davidic regime! Now that I know what he's really like I will never trust another word from the so-called "House of David". Apologies are cover-ups and sin is the bottom line. And as for the notion that "God is at work in him"? Ha! Since when has God had anything to do with impenitent adulterers and murderers? But, of course, since our leaders have gone soft on the death penalty this is pretty much what we can expect. In the good old days, David would have been stoned to death. But as it is, he'll probably go down in history as a "David the Great" and his kid (probably a kid by Bathsheba, given our decripit moral state) will be called "Solomon the Wise" or something. I figured it would not take long to have to write a follow-up post on Gibson Watching combox discussions in reaction to an original post always gives me the same sensation as watching fractal crystals grow. You never know what the chaos will yield. Sydney asks (reasonably enough) what I'm talking about in my sudden and strange insistence on distinguishing between what is nature and what is normal. K the C just cuts to the chase and declares that, out of my deep and proven sympathy for RadTrads, I'm just making excuses for Mel cuz I liked his movie (or something). I have more empathy for Sydney's question than for K's mind-reading declarations about my True Intentions. But then, since he knows so much about Gibson's soul, I guess it stands to reason he knows about mine as well. For Sydney, I'm not sure how much more I can add. You write: Mark, you should do a post on "human nature," because frankly I find it impossible to decipher what you mean by it. The best I can figure out is that human nature is perfect and not marred by sin at all, yet also it's "normal" to sin because of the fall. When normal people use the phrase "human nature," they mean it as our tendency to sin. Do you mean it that way, or if it's improper to use the phrase that way? What phrase would you use instead? I mean that man as created and, more importantly, man redeemed is only really knowable through Christ. Sin is quite real (we are not Christian Scientists or some other form of gnostic that denies the reality of sin). Sin is virtually universal (with the exception of the Blessed Virgin and Christ. Sin warps us by darkening our intellects, disordering our appetites, and weakening our will. Even after baptism frees us from original sin, we are still left struggling with these three disorders. This is what the Church means by concupiscence. Sometimes we give in to concupiscence and sin. But never does sin *name* us. It is not Who We Are. Rather, it destroys and distorts who we are. That is not, I repeat, to say that we don't really sin. We do. That's why Gibson's apology was so good. He did not say (as I do not say) that "It was the booze talking." He manfully says, "I said these despicable things." He owns his sins. That's what every sinner should do in confession. But the glory of Christ is that, in owning what we--we ourselves have truly said and done--we are given the Spirit of Christ, who is what a human being truly is. In short, a Christian anthropology has to begin with what Man is as God sees him. And the answer God gives to the question "Who is Man?" is "Jesus Christ". Our anthropologies virtually all attempt to answer that question by looking at what fallen man is doing and then deducing an answer. Fallen man is having a war right now, so "War is the natural state of man" says one pagan. Fallen man shares some physical and social attributes with the brutes, so "Man is a naked ape" says another pagan. Man exchanges good and labor with other men, so "Man is a cog in a vast socio-historical process" says another pagan. And so on. For the Christian, Man is a creature who has undergone death and resurrection and now sits at the right hand of the Father. If you want to know what a human being *truly* is, look at Him. Those members of his body who are still on earth and still undergoing divinization are still capable of sinning and betraying the truth of who they really are. But that is what sin is: a betrayal of who we are, not a revelation of who we are. K the C's mistake is to assume that interior sins such as sins of the mind are revelatory of our nature. They are not. They are betrayals as much as any other sin. Jesus Christ is revelatory of our redeemed nature. I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that I think "it was the booze talking", much less how anybody would think this excuses anything. If you get plastered, you are responsible for getting plastered. If, as you get plastered, you pour out a stream of Jew-hatred, you are responsible for that too. But as anybody of sense will recognize, you are responsible in a different way than if you poured out the same stream of hatred stone cold sober. Both are sins, but they are a different kind of sin. Gibson, in sobriety, repudiated his words. Why? Because he acknowledges, as David acknowledged, that he did what was evil in God's sight. I don't understand how saying clearly, "Gibson did evil" constitutes "making excuses" for him. Nor do I see how regarding Jesus, not sin, as definitive of what constitutes the human person is baffling. I believe that Gibson, having confessed his sin--a real sin, not a "mistake"--is to be forgiven, not because "he meant well" or "it was the booze talking", but because Jesus Christ has died for him, been raised for him, and now sits in the heavenlies and in his mercy raises Gibson up to sit with him. This is the shocking revelation of St. Paul to all the baptized: But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. I have a feeling this post will generate more questions than it answers, but there you are. Universities in Canada Exist to Promote Free and Rational Discussion of How Unutterably Glorious Homosexuality is--and to Crush Those Who Dare to Think Differently Evil ECUSA Empire Condemns Plucky Rebel Alliance Here's hoping the Courageous Eight can find some solace in reunion with us Romans one of these days. Not everywhere is Crazyland, though it looks that way inside the ECUSA hothouse. Puritanism has been defined as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun One of the many fun things out there in this fun and interesting world is the Imaginarium. It's a regular feature of the Cornerstone Festival, a big Jesus-meets-arts-and-culture hooptido that is put on by the Jesus People USA, a sort of Evangelical/Emergent Church outfit that's been doing its thing for 30 some years in Illinois. The Imaginarium has long attracted various Think-Outside-the-Box types, including Rod Bennett and Lint Hatcher. Indeed, Bennett and Hatcher thought so far outside the box that they eventually became Catholics, as well as influencing others (such as my friend Kathie Lundquist and her husband Gary) to do likewise. All these guys still love to go to the Imaginarium and play with ideas. They have a wonderful time. So do all the other folk that come. So, of course, there are fundamentalists out there, terrified of what all this happiness, creativity, interest, and joy could mean. Kathie responds to one such church lady, who appointed herself to go on a "covert mission" and "infiltrate" the Imaginarium (at great risk to herself and loved ones, no doubt) and report back on the nefarious doing. (Just an aside: fundamentalists are often found going on "covert missions" to completely harmless places in order to investigate the supposedly sinister activities of people who would not harm a fly. My own suspicion is that much of this sort of thing is done to achieve the thrill of feeling like a persecuted Christian while not having to actually, like, risk anything.) A reader writes: I would truly appreciate it if you would post this prayer request on your blogs. Tragically, my boss and his wife were killed a few days ago. All of us who worked with and for him are in shock. My boss and his wife had a son who was not at home at the time. He (and their extended family) need prayer right now, most especially. And me and my colleagues. We've lost a friend. I'm so sorry to hear it. May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. And may you all find the grace you need to carry on from here, through Christ our Lord. Team Hoyt Lives John Paul's Teaching on the Dignity of the Human Person Scuse me while I go dry my eyes. Paul Thigpen writes An ad in this morning's NYT email "Today's Headlines" reads: I'm still haunted by the thought of Gemma's eyes on the pavement. Perhaps a coded reference to "His Eye is on the Sparrow"? Sounds like another book that will reek of Class with a capital "K". Oh what the heck! While I'm at it, here's Colbert's take on the goofy defenses of Big Tobacco you hear from the Talk Radio Right. Mel Gibson's Bad Weekend It's a pleasure taking weekends off, if only because it spared me the trouble of having to make snap adjudications of the state of Mel Gibson's soul after his drunken tirade against Jews as so many combox denizens have spent the weekend doing. Perhaps my favorite bit of "Nope. Not good enough. Now let me see him crawl" Christian charity came from this comboxer over on poor Amy's blog: I don't know how I feel about this other than I get tired of people who continue to engage in inappropriate behavior and then expect that an apology will fix it. When I read things like this, I always wonder a) what exactly would satisfy this sort of person; b) if this person has *never* been to confession for the same sin twice and c) if this person has never known *anybody* who struggled with addiction. Thankfully, the vast majority of people (at least on the blogs) seem to have taken Gibson's confession of guilt (a refreshingly manful one free of passive "I'm sorry if I offended anybody" BS and chockful of "I did *this*. It was a *disgrace*" honesty) at face value and forgiven him, as is fitting. The big fart smell hanging in the air, of course, is the content of his tirade: all the swearing at Jews and the anti-semitic ugliness that came pouring out. As a good child of a post-Freudian culture, I was raised to believe that what people say when they are plastered, or insanely angry, or deeply afraid, or otherwise stripped of their normal rational faculties is Who They Really Are. We talk that way all the time. "I thought he was a good man until the mask came off and I saw the ugly Truth". That sort of talk is natural as breathing for us. That's because, in America, everybody is a Calvinist, including the Catholics. We believe that the fall is identical with nature, and therefore believe that when you see a man in sin, you see him as he "really" is. Goodness is the mask, corruption is his nature. I was corrected in this false and heretical belief years ago by my favorite priest in the world, Fr. Michael Sweeney, now president of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. The reality is quite contrary. Sin is the mask. It is not what names us but what makes us anonymous. Sin, because of the fall, is normal. But sin is never "natural". It does not constitute who we are, it *destroys* who we are. It is when the human person takes his place as the redeemed creature God made him that we begin to truly see his face and know his name. And so, to Mel Gibson. Gibson tells us, "I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable." It seems to me that we have a basic choice: to believe revelation or to believe Freud. If you believe Freud, then Gibson is a liar when he says he does not believe what he said, because only the subrational outbursts of the drunk, the panicked, and enraged can be regarded as Truly Revelatory. We must see through the Mask of the "person" supposedly "made in the image of God" to the subrational beast composed of tangled desires, fears, hatreds, and appetites beneath. This is, of course, a measure we would not want anybody to apply to us, considering the horrible things we've caught ourselves thinking in unguarded moments (you know what I mean, don't try to kid me). In our own lives, we are deeply grateful for the fact that nobody, including God, measures us by the chaotic and selfish impulses scrambling around down there in the id, but instead respects us enough to know that it is what we choose that matters. We're even more grateful that they judge us by what we choose when we are at the top of our game. But a good deal of our culture *does* believe Freud, and so for the rest of his days, nothing will wash away from many people's minds that what Gibson (or whoever) says when he is dead drunk, or terrified, or enraged is what he "really" is. On the other hand, there is the view articulated by Fr. Sweeney, which says that, when a man is deep in sin, you are *not* seeing who he really is. Correlative with that view is that when a man sobers up and repudiates what he said and did with horror at his own sins, charity demands that we take him at his word, pretty much as we have to take David at his word in Psalm 51, even though he (without benefit of wine) committed both adultery and murder. I think that's pretty much where any serious Catholic has to land with Gibson. There are lots of corrolary discussions that go with this incident. There's the "What is it with RadTrads and Jews?" thread. (My take: Yes, it would be good if the RadTrad's finally acknowledged that the Church knew what it was doing in Nostra Aetate. One of the worst results of spitting on V2 has been the RadTrad tendency to cling to Jew-hatred as a culturally legitimate option.) There's the "What does this do to our understanding of the Passion?" thread. (In my view, nothing.) There's the "How could a Christian artist do this?" thread. (One word: Caravaggio.). Gibson has always struck me as a man who is wrestling with a great many demons as he struggles to transcend his origins while remaining faithful to his family and the faith they gave him. One of the reasons I respect him is that he chose not to blame any of them, but to blame himself instead. I hope I can make as honest a confession as his the next time I go to see my priest. As the well-known hater of all RadTrads and all their pomps and works that I am, my sincere prayers are with him for a good recovery and for a full experience of the mercy and grace of Christ, as well as for a full reconciliation with the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in union with our Holy Father Benedict XVI. Psalm 51 Good News for Amy Over at her blog, she looks to see how many had to endure the "The twoo miwacle of the woaves and fishes was that Jesus inspired folk to shaaaaare" homilies. I am happy to report that our new priest at Blessed Sacrament, Fr. Bernhard, not only directly tackled this tedious bit of exegesis and showed why it cannot be the point of the text, but then went on and gave a full exegesis showing how John related the Passover to the miracle of the wine at Cana, the multiplication of loaves, and finally the Eucharist. In short, it's not All About Us as Fr. Groovy of the Church of Aren't We Fabulous insists. Instead, it's all about Christ. Oh, what a great new priest we have! Friday, July 28, 2006
Regarding the heretical claim that "War is the natural state of man" Catholics who say, "War is the natural state of man" simply prove the truth of Cardinal George's remark that "In America, everyone is a Calvinist, including the Catholics." The Right is increasingly prone to persuading itself that the adoption of a pagan ethic and anthropology in wartime is not apostasy, but "realism". To that end, it quotes demi-pagans like Hobbes and Victor Davis Hanson blathering about war as the "natural state of man" cuz it sounds cool and philosophical. To such blather, I reply in the words of Paul: See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:8-10) This condemnation includes condemnation of the cool sounding pagan "wisdom" of salvation by war increasingly appealed to by the Deep Thinkers of the Warmonger Right. The natural state of man is union with God, not war. The *normal* state of man is fallen. But though sin is normal, it is not and never has been natural. Calvinism, not Catholic faith, identifies nature with sin. Catholic truth knows that sin destroys, not constitutes, nature. To his credit, Rod backs off the "Proportionality is Madness" Rhetoric He doesn't back off quite far enough, however, since he basically moves from saying "Strike the entire notion of proportionality from Just War teaching" to saying "Strike the entire notion of proportionality from Just War teaching in the case of Israel's war with Lebanon". What he fails to acknowledge is that that somebody, in every war, always says that this war is so special, these circumstances so unique, this foe so wicked, that this or that aspect of Just War teaching can be safely ignored. No. It can't. The fact remains today what it was yesterday. If proportionality can be safely discarded because Israel is oh-so-special or this war is oh-so-unique, then the first and most obvious conclusion is that all of southern Lebanon should immediately be blanketed in mushroom clouds and not one man, woman, or child should be left alive. Sure it's overkill. But since we abandoned proportionality, so what? Obviously, we have *not* abandoned proportionality--including in this war. The question then, is "Is Israel behaving according to a reasonable sense of proportion?" And my answer is, "Beats me." I have no idea what's going on on the ground there. I have no idea how entrenched Hezbollah is in the local population. I do know that Israel has committed war crimes (cf. Sabra and Chatila) in the past. I do know that at least some members of the gov't are making statements which, if indicative of policy, suggest that Israel is basically contemptuous of making a distinction between civilians and combatants. But neither of these things constitute proof of anything disproportionate being done at present, so far as I can see. Bottom line: I have few facts to work with and all the news sources are almost laughably biased either toward an "Israel is utterly evil" or "Israel is immaculately conceived" narrative that makes it awfully hard to tell what's going on. I will say that Rod's posting of Krauthammer does not do much to quiet my worries, since he appears to me to simply be carrying on the excuse-making for eliminating proportionality altogether. Appealing to our nuclear bombings of Japan as a model of war-making and precedent-setting for Israel is.... more or less what I have come to expect from the "Israel is immaculately conceived" wing of biased journalism. In sum, having few facts to work with, I have little to say to the actual situation on the ground in Lebanon. So I limit myself to bleating that the pleas to eliminate inconvenient aspects of Just War teaching will make it impossible to analyze facts when they begin to emerge. I also note that, having been stampeded to war once by an Administration propaganda machine working at full tilt, my motto is now "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I generally urge others to take the same attitude, till some hard facts emerge. Sandra Miesel writes: My husband John is in his last days of life, suffering from a cancerous brain tumor. He's at peace but not in pain. Your prayers for him and our family would be much appreciated at this difficult time. May God grant John continued peace and the grace of a happy death through our Lord Jesus. And may Sandra and her family find strength and consolation through the Holy Spirit. Blessed Virgin, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. I'm so sorry, Sandra. God be with you and yours till that Day when he shall wipe away every tear. A reader writes: I was reading an interesting article in Harper's Magazine, written by Marilynne Robinson taken from the Spring issue of The American Scholar. She writes as a liberal Protestant who takes seriously, Leviticus 19:2's call to be holy, as God is holy. I can't speak to Calvin since I don't come from a Calvinist background. But I can tell you I'm highly skeptical of her stuff about higher/lower functions vis a vis baptism. The Church teaches the following about the effects of baptism: VII. THE GRACE OF BAPTISM In particular, note paragraph 1264, which speaks of concupiscence. The tendency of some Protestants is to confuse concupiscence with sin. It's not. Here's a discussion of concupiscence (and, in particular, Paul's discussion of it in Romans 7) from a Catholic Scripture Study Lesson (#11 in our series on Romans) that I co-authored with Scott Hahn: Concupiscence and the Christian Struggle Hope that helps. There seems to be a little bestiality trial balloon going up among our elites First, there's the piece I linked yesterday. Now the intrepid Dawn Eden finds that Planned Parenthood is also diddling about with this latest chic form of alternative sexuality. Woman Pretends to be Priest The very headline of the piece is a propagandistic lie. How is it "making a stand" to not even have the guts to use your own name when you pretend to be ordained? Because, you know, the War Party has demonstrated such masterful understanding of how to handle the Mideast Dump Condi: Foreign policy conservatives charge State Dept. has hijacked Bush agenda Here's a piece on how the Bushies' masterful understanding of the Middle East has done a masterful job of masterfully alienating the people we were liberating in Iraq. Nonetheless, the key need of the Bush Administration is "loyalty", according to Insight: Miss Rice served as Mr. Bush's national security adviser in his first Yet now Condi too is becoming dangerously "disloyal" and must be replaced lest her view from outside the hothouse disturb the best laid plans of the People Who Really Understand What's Going On with counsels of peace and restraint rather than ever-expanding war and brutal realpolitik that have served us and the people of the Middle East so well so far. Steve Greydanus Really Did Not Like Lady in the Water I have lots of sympathy with what Shyamalan seems to be attempting. His deep belief in eucatastrophe--in the sudden turn to good and redemption despite the fact that life contains real tragedy and loss--is a deeply Christian conviction even if Shyamalan remains only at the fringes of Christian belief (he's from a Hindu family but was educated by Catholics and Episcopalians). Unfortunately, his works is marred by what appears to be a desperate hunger for greatness that seems to get in the way of his doing his work. This film is particularly marred by this tendency, as Greydanus explains. Thursday, July 27, 2006
Prayers please.... ...for a friend whose father is very ill and whose family needs guidance and peace. Many thanks! Shrine Preparing for Fundy Protests Over the Assumption Seems like an evangelization opportunity to me. I prefer hostility to bovine indifference. Why I can't help but love Ann Coulter Beliefnet: What portion of liberals would you say are religious in the more conventional sense of the word: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, even Wiccans? Please. Don't splutter at me that she's a reckless bomb thrower. Of course she is! So was Lenny Bruce, who famously remarked of LBJ "Where's Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him?" But you know what? Bruce could be funny and perceptive, as when he remarked that the Catholic Church is the only "The Church". And Coulter's damn funny and perceptive too. Which is why she drives her ideological opponents crazy. Do I look to her for political wisdom and guidance? Of course not! But I do look at her as a fine political satirist and usually find myself laughing at her remarks, even when I know they are not what you would call accurate policy statements. More here. Oh and I also enjoyed these tidbits: Beliefnet: We've done some polls here at Beliefnet, and a surprising number of Democrats at least say they are religious. Some 61 percent say they pray daily and 72 percent attend worship services once a month or more. How would you explain that? One last observation and then I'm done. As is the custom of journalists who don't quite get the joke, the publication of this interview is larded with quotes designed to get you to perceived Coulter as a holier-than-thou Pharisee. This is easily done because her reckless bomb-throwing "I don't give a shit what my critics think of me" attitude prompts her to make outrageous comments that are a goldmine for this sort of thing. Nonetheless, it is patently obvious to me that the Beliefnet has taken what is a manifestly self-deprecating remark and turned it into a Pharisaic boast. To wit: the email I received from Beliefnet bills the interview this way: "Ann Coulter: 'An Extraordinarily Good Christian'" and both the intro paragraph and the intro to page four of the interview repeats this meme. But when we get to the quote we discover it reads this way: Beliefnet: What does it mean to be a good Christian, and do you consider yourself to be a good Christian? In other words, "Most of the time I believe that I am a wretch for whom God sent his Son to die". Not much of a boast, but the irony is largely lost on the author, who rather plainly dislikes her subject. A lost opportunity, it seems to me, since it would be interesting to get past the persona of political combatant and laff-getter and find out what might be at the core of what appears to be a genuine faith in Christ. Note the Curious Sleight of Hand When Man Mated Monkey Questions abound. In what sense are "pre-humans" "man"? In what sense is something not-human part of "we"? How does the writer slip so easily from saying "pre-humans" and "pre-chimps" mated to saying "human beings and chimpanzees" did? (And, of course, how do they really *know* this?) No matter. Journalists have just found a very convenient excuse for bestiality as another "taboo" (oh, that *useful* word!) slowly begins to come under scrutiny in light of what "we" used to do. Indeed, cross-species sex is not just not harmful! It's a weapon in our evolutionary arsenal! Who but anti-evolutionary pinheads could hold to those old taboos once the light of Science has shown the meaninglessness of such things. In fact, it not only opens up new frontiers in the evolution of post-Christian sexuality, it shows us that glory of a billion dollar industry devoted to creating chimeras! So many vistas open up, thwarted only by "know-nothing anti-evolutionism, with religious fundamentalists occupying the White House, controlling Congress and attempting to distort the teaching of science in our schools". Yessirree, SCIENCE has (by a remarkable feat of prestidigitation) cast down the Judeo-Christian notion that man is made in the image of God. No agenda-driven science journalism here. A reader asks: The Feast of the Assumption is coming up, and I seem to remember that you once (a year or more ago?) posted a video clip of Mary taking off like a rocket, ala Sputnik. Could you re-post the link for the benefit of the faithful and as a "launching point" for discussion? :) I'm having trouble finding that flash cartoon. Anybody have the link? Prayers for Cardinal George of Chicago He seemed under the weather at the recent colloquium I was at in Chicago. Now I know why. May God give skill to his doctors and grant him a speedy recovery and many long years of life and service to his people. St. Peregrine and St. Luke, pray for Cardinal George. Proportionality: What I am and am not Saying A reader writes: I guess we're even because I am suspicious of anything from the Peace Party, and this proportionality business is a perfect case in point. I have made no judgement at all about whether or not Israel's actions are proportional. Many Americans are quite prepared to argue that they are. Others (such as a friend of mine who is on the ground in Lebanon right now helping victims and refugees) are quite prepared to argued that they are not. That's a matter of sifting facts which I have little access to. My quarrel is not with people who want to argue that Israel's response is proportional. My quarrel is with people who want to entirely eliminate "proportionaliity" from Just War doctrine due to some hysterical notion (trotted out in every war) that *this* conflict is so unique and this foe so unlike all others that this or that pillar of just war teaching does not apply. I think, for example, of Rod Dreher's utterly wrong-headed claim that "Proportionality is Madness". The fact is, proportionality is not madness. It's part of sober just war teaching and always has been. It is summed up this way (CCC 2309) 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. What *is* madness is to make a reckless statement like "Proportionality is madness" at precisely the moment when responsible Christians should be trying to think with the mind of Christ and not simply reacting emotionally. It's one thing to say that "false applications or understandings of proportionality are madness". It's quite another to say that proportionality itself can simply be dumped as we hysterically reject the fusty old Church's categories in order to be (once again) stampeded into support for war and for whatever might be done to win that war, no matter how unjust. If, as Rod says, proportionality is madness--if any sense of proportion *at all* is simply crazy, then Israel should blanket all of southern Lebanon with nukes right now. That she does not is testimony to the fact that proportionality is not madness and Israel knows it as well as we do. We can and should argue about *whether* Israel's response is proportional. But we must not simply pre-emptively try to get rid of proportionality as a criterion of just war or we will be the mad men. What disturbs me is what disturbs a commenter yesterday, who summed up the matter much more succinctly than I did: It's interesting how quickly the commentary has shifted from insisting that Israel is acting proportionately to denying the validity of the whole concept of proportionality. When people who argue for war do this, I smell a rat--as though there is no real confidence on their part that the war, closely examined, will meet just war criteria. The longer the Right (including the Christian Right) talks about war, the more persuaded I become that many on the Right are in the process (sometimes uncomfortable and conscience-troubled, sometimes defiant and sarcastic) of embracing the notion that war is justification for a fundamentally pagan ethic of "Do *anything* to win". This seems to me to explain the data better than anything else I can see. What shall it profit a man to gain the whole war and lose his own soul? Wednesday, July 26, 2006
A reader writes: I was rereading a link from First Things, in which they describe the life of Silvestr Krcmery, a political prisoner in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. He is Slovak doctor who was imprisoned by the Communists from 1951 to 1964. Upon rereading the article, I noticed the following paragraph (emphasis mine): Protestantism has been described as the triumph of Paul over Peter and Fundamentalism as the triumph of Paul over Christ In my experience, Calvinism (and Catholic RadTradism) is best described as the triumph of diagrams over persons. Exhibit A: At the seminar, Gerry Matatics used the old analogy that if one is suspending a heavy object in the air by a chain, if one link is weak or bad, the entire object will crash to the ground. I feel similarly about Rome’s denial of the heart of the gospel- sola fide. While Rome may say some nice things about the Gospel, it denies the very heart of the Gospel. The rest of the post reads to me like a train wreck as the two ignorant armies clash by night, comparing and contrasting diagrams to determine whether the "heart" of jazz is a) black marks on white paper or b) a series of frequencies and amplitudes. News to both parties: the heart of the gospel is Jesus Christ, not sola fide and not a bunch of proof-texts ripped bleeding from their context to back up Matatics latest version of Purer-Than-Thou-Protestantism known as sedevacantism. A reader asks: Do you know where I can found out what percentage of Catholics in America believed in the Real Presence in the Eucharist in the year 1965 or thereabouts.....I am trying to compare it to the percentage today which I believe is down to only 30%...I am writing an article for my parish newsletter...thank you Mark and God Bless you. Beats me. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Why the War Party Tends to Inflame My Suspicions, Even When I Sympathize With Them... ...is summarized by the fact that Professor Bainbridge has to argue that the moral law still applies, even when we are at war and that "proportionality" is still a feature of just war teaching. Having had to listen to people making every excuse in the book for torture and apologias for shooting unarmed wounded combatants on *this* blog, I am both sickened (and unsurprised) to find that Bainbridge has to deal with the usual stuff from war enthusiasts on his blog. One gets the distinct impression sometimes that failure to approve the claim "All acts are licit in war" is to earn the vehement suspicion of being a bedwetting old woman from not a few members of the War Party. The Blog Entry for Various Charity Appeals A reader writes: Lots of readers pass through your blog and if you have the time maybe you'd consider giving the guy a plug. His name is Steve Smith and he's a co-contributor of the "Faith of Our Fathers" blog series (Approved Apparitions is one of their 20+ blogs). Steve had a heart attack in May and is without health insurance. As a result he's facing very large medical expenses - something in the neighborhood of $40K. In addition, Catholic Exchange could really use your help. And finally, an old pastor of mine (from my days at Gospel Life Church in Seattle) is suffering from degenerative illness that is badly impacting his family's finances, both because of medical bills and from an impaired ability to work. If you can spare them anything at all, you will be doing the work of the sheep in the parable of the sheep and the goats. They have no on-line facilities for donations, but can take check made out to: Jerry and Barbara Crick 9242 West Virginia Place Lakewood CO 80226 Donation Questions? Email Barb at bjcrick@champmail.com Thanks, y'all! The Great JPII Random Speech Generator Controversy Is the site funny or mean-spirited? Several of my readers are going back and forth about this. I think the answer is plainly, "Yes". It's obvious to me that a quick glance at the site demonstrates pretty clearly that the RadTrad folk at FishEaters despise John Paul (and the Council, and Jews, and the usual menu of obsessions that plague people who love tradition more than they love Christ). I think the JPII Random Speech Generator is full of cheap shots. I also think it's funny. Not riotously funny. Not funny for long. Just "click it once or twice, smile at how it reminds me of some of the beloved man's more impenetrable prose formulations, then move on" funny. I wasn't especially offended by it, but neither was I under any illusion that those who saw the thinly veiled contempt for John Paul were just "thin-skinned neo-Catholics". On the whole, I think those who see the obvious contempt for JPII in the site are reactly honestly to something that is obviously there, while those who try to kid themselves that there is no such contempt present are dishonestly defending the usual pathologies of the RadTrads. I also think that it's better to smile at the (very small) joke and move on than to get too upset about it. MA Judges to Pathetic Believers in Democratic Self-Rule: "Puny mortals! Have your 'vote'. It makes no difference. We, your Robed Masters, are the sole rulers of your insignificant lives!" |
