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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
1 For the leader. A psalm of David,
2 when Nathan the prophet came to him after his affair with Bathsheba.

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.
4 Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me.

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.
6 Against you alone have I sinned; I have done such evil in your sight That you are just in your sentence, blameless when you condemn.

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.
10 Let me hear sounds of joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

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.
12 A clean heart create for me, God; renew in me a steadfast spirit.

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.
14 Restore my joy in your salvation; sustain in me a willing 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.
17 Lord, open my lips; my mouth will proclaim your praise.

"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.
19 My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit; God, do not spurn a broken, humbled heart.

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.
21 Then you will be pleased with proper sacrifice, burnt offerings and holocausts; then bullocks will be offered on your altar.

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.

Many thanks.

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:

"Mary Magdalene
Lover ...
Apostle ...
Goddess.

The Church Fathers
What didn't they want you to know?

The Gnostic Gospels
A faith worth preserving and a truth worth killing for.

RESURRECTION A NOVEL
The most dangerous revelation of all is about to come to light.

This silly stuff just keeps coming. From the author's blog:

The historical material I found for RESURRECTION was radical. I found myself thinking, geez, I could get into some trouble here. But it was all fact -- all out there, for anyone to put together.

Gee, it's deja vu all over again.

Read here about the author's personal life, where she reveals that she (who attended an Episcopal church) was early on influenced by a Catholic babysitter named Carol, who "swam fully clothed" and taught her that "prayers were like checks to get into heaven. The more checks, the better." Later encounters with Catholics came with the Jesuits at Georgetown, where a priest (she claims) answered her many troubling questions with the smug observation: "Sometimes ours is not to question."

Here's the website for the book being advertised, complete with spooky music and Indiana-Jones-style images.

Check out the purple prose in this excerpt from the first chapter, which only a few paragraphs in introduces a sinister priest villain.

The first sentence of the novel:

"As Gemma Bastian left the hospital reluctantly for two days' leave, a flurry of sparrows wrested her eyes from the pavement."

Must have been some rather muscular sparrows. What were her eyes doing on the pavement, anyway? Didn't she know somebody might step on them? And what would sparrows want with her eyes? (Don't go there. Even though Alfred Hitchcock did, and made a lot of money doing it.)

Wanna bet that the odd-sounding "Gemma Bastian" is an anagram for the name of some Gnostic pseudo-scholar?

From the Booklist review (emphasis added):

As Gemma investigates her father's death, she finds herself increasingly drawn into the mysteries that drew him to the land of Isis. The gnostic Gospels he finally discovers before his death reveal to him--and then to Gemma--everything he had been looking for: individual salvation without a church, sexual ecstasy rather than celibacy, Egyptian magic rather than Hebrew morality.

Yeah--who wants to worry about morality and stuff when you can just cast spells on annoying people and turn them into dung beetles?

The gnostic Gospels also accord women a much larger role than the New Testament, identifying Mary Magdalene as Jesus' lover and as the apostle first vouchsafed a vision of the Resurrection. The recovered words of gnostic scripture thus reconnect Gemma with her murdered father--and embolden her in challenging a society long darkened by ecclesiastical conspiracy.

Oh, well, at least this time the ecclesiastical conspiracy doesn't involve albino Opus Dei monks.

From the Publisher's Weekly review:

A faulty sense of period (a character at one point anachronistically calls for "security") and characters and situations straight from romance fiction ("This is the most beautiful part of the horse, and, I think, some women") mix uneasily with fairly sophisticated Bible readings ...

Actually, I suspect that the "Bible readings" here are even more unsophisticated than this crude dialogue. But I do wonder what part of the equine anatomy he (I do hope it's a "he") is talking about. Guess I'll have to buy the book to find out.

That bastion of high culture, PEOPLE Magazine, has hailed it as "an elegantly written thriller." That's all the recommendation I need!

Finally, here's the kicker. (As Dave Barry would say, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.)

The author's name is Tucker MALARKEY.

She's a former researcher/writer for The Washington Post. Sounds about right. And a founding editor of the "literary journal" called Tin House. For writers, apparently, with a tin ear.

Already at # 915 on Amazon.

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.

Another little treasure from Stephen Colbert

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
1 For the leader. A psalm of David,
2 when Nathan the prophet came to him after his affair with Bathsheba.
3 Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness; in your abundant compassion blot out my offense.
4 Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me.
5 For I know my offense; my sin is always before me.
6 Against you alone have I sinned; I have done such evil in your sight That you are just in your sentence, blameless when you condemn.
7 True, I was born guilty, a sinner, even as my mother conceived me.
8 Still, you insist on sincerity of heart; in my inmost being teach me wisdom.
9 Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure; wash me, make me whiter than snow.
10 Let me hear sounds of joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
11 Turn away your face from my sins; blot out all my guilt.
12 A clean heart create for me, God; renew in me a steadfast spirit.
13 Do not drive me from your presence, nor take from me your holy spirit.
14 Restore my joy in your salvation; sustain in me a willing spirit.
15 I will teach the wicked your ways, that sinners may return to you.
16 Rescue me from death, God, my saving God, that my tongue may praise your healing power.
17 Lord, open my lips; my mouth will proclaim your praise.
18 For you do not desire sacrifice; a burnt offering you would not accept.
19 My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit; God, do not spurn a broken, humbled heart.
20 Make Zion prosper in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
21 Then you will be pleased with proper sacrifice, burnt offerings and holocausts; then bullocks will be offered on your altar.

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!

"The witness said the man identified himself as an American Muslim."

What a surprise.

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.

Stephen Colbert Continues to Amaze

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.

The Most Informative Thing I've Read about the Situation in Lebanon

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.

She makes some good points on how the various "Awakenings" in American religious life have had very different outcomes. She makes the case for William Jennings Bryan, as a "fundamentals" Christian who was deeply concerned at the way social Darwinism was hurting the poor of his day- speaking of America's poor as Christ crucified.

She confused me, however, when she tried to defend Calvin's teaching of "total depravity", claiming that the better translation would be "warped" or "distorted". And that Calvin was really just rejecting the Catholic theology on baptism- that baptism erased the consequences of the Fall from the higher functions, so that only the lower functions, particularly sexuality, continued to be affected by it. The author claims that Calvin was asserting in response "No, there is always error in all our thinking and perceiving".

This version of Calvin seems more Catholic than the above description of the Catholic teaching. The confusion on what exactly baptism changes, anecdotally anyway, is that we don't find children who are baptised to be any more loving or well-behaved than non-baptised children- so what higher or lower functions are improved by the Sacrament? Is this language of higher/lower function really a part of the earlier Church's discussions/teachings on baptism?

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

1262 The different effects of Baptism are signified by the perceptible elements of the sacramental rite. Immersion in water symbolizes not only death and purification, but also regeneration and renewal. Thus the two principal effects are purification from sins and new birth in the Holy Spirit.65

For the forgiveness of sins . . .

1263 By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.66 In those who have been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the Kingdom of God, neither Adam's sin, nor personal sin, nor the consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God.

1264 Yet certain temporal consequences of sin remain in the baptized, such as suffering, illness, death, and such frailties inherent in life as weaknesses of character, and so on, as well as an inclination to sin that Tradition calls concupiscence, or metaphorically, "the tinder for sin" (fomes peccati); since concupiscence "is left for us to wrestle with, it cannot harm those who do not consent but manfully resist it by the grace of Jesus Christ."67 Indeed, "an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules."68

"A new creature"

1265 Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte "a new creature," an adopted son of God, who has become a "partaker of the divine nature,"69 member of Christ and co-heir with him,70 and a temple of the Holy Spirit.71

1266 The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification:
- enabling them to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues;
- giving them the power to live and act under the prompting of the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Holy Spirit;
- allowing them to grow in goodness through the moral virtues.
Thus the whole organism of the Christian's supernatural life has its roots in Baptism.

Incorporated into the Church, the Body of Christ

1267 Baptism makes us members of the Body of Christ: "Therefore . . . we are members one of another."72 Baptism incorporates us into the Church. From the baptismal fonts is born the one People of God of the New Covenant, which transcends all the natural or human limits of nations, cultures, races, and sexes: "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body."73

1268 The baptized have become "living stones" to be "built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood."74 By Baptism they share in the priesthood of Christ, in his prophetic and royal mission. They are "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that [they] may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light."75 Baptism gives a share in the common priesthood of all believers.

1269 Having become a member of the Church, the person baptized belongs no longer to himself, but to him who died and rose for us.76 From now on, he is called to be subject to others, to serve them in the communion of the Church, and to "obey and submit" to the Church's leaders,77 holding them in respect and affection.78 Just as Baptism is the source of responsibilities and duties, the baptized person also enjoys rights within the Church: to receive the sacraments, to be nourished with the Word of God and to be sustained by the other spiritual helps of the Church.79

1270 "Reborn as sons of God, [the baptized] must profess before men the faith they have received from God through the Church" and participate in the apostolic and missionary activity of the People of God.80

The sacramental bond of the unity of Christians

1271 Baptism constitutes the foundation of communion among all Christians, including those who are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church: "For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. Justified by faith in Baptism, [they] are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church."81 "Baptism therefore constitutes the sacramental bond of unity existing among all who through it are reborn."82

An indelible spiritual mark . . .

1272 Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, the person baptized is configured to Christ. Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation.83 Given once for all, Baptism cannot be repeated.

1273 Incorporated into the Church by Baptism, the faithful have received the sacramental character that consecrates them for Christian religious worship.84 The baptismal seal enables and commits Christians to serve God by a vital participation in the holy liturgy of the Church and to exercise their baptismal priesthood by the witness of holy lives and practical charity.85

1274 The Holy Spirit has marked us with the seal of the Lord ("Dominicus character") "for the day of redemption."86 "Baptism indeed is the seal of eternal life."87 The faithful Christian who has "kept the seal" until the end, remaining faithful to the demands of his Baptism, will be able to depart this life "marked with the sign of faith,"88 with his baptismal faith, in expectation of the blessed vision of God - the consummation of faith - and in the hope of resurrection.

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

As we discussed in our last lesson, Romans 7:7-25 is an extended meditation on the Christian struggle and constitutes one of the most hotly disputed chapters in the entire Bible. In Romans 7:9, Paul makes the mysterious remark, "I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died." A little further on, he tells us in Romans 7:14, "I am carnal, sold under sin." Given that Paul has just written an extended treatise on the sacrament of baptism in Romans 6 which declares that we are not slaves to sin any longer, this is quite jarring. What can he mean? Who is he talking about? Is he referring to himself (and, by extension, all the non-baptized) before baptism? Is he, by a similar extension, making himself a sort of figure of all Old Testament Israel before Christ? Is he, as some Protestant interpreters say, referring to the "carnal" or backsliding Christian? Is he talking about the typical Christian? At various times and places, Christians from both Catholic and Protestant perspectives have proposed all of these approaches.

Noting that the Church has not offered any dogmatic interpretation of this chapter, we hold that each of these interpretations can be fruitful but that, given what Paul has already said in the previous chapters of Romans, one particular interpretation probably comes closest to Paul's meaning: namely, that Paul is discussing the typical Christian's struggle against concupiscence and using his own struggle as the typical model of what all Christians go through.

Recall, first of all, that Paul has begun this discussion of the Christian struggle with an argument aiming to show that sin, not law, is the source of our troubles. As we saw in our last study, Paul is again arguing with his imaginary Jewish interlocutor and showing that the law, which is itself "holy and just and good" was the instrument whereby sin put him to death. His point, restated in verse 13, is that "sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure." In other words, the law, though it is the occasion of sin, does not make us sin. Our own corrupt and fallen Adamic nature naturally does so before baptism, when we are under the law.

But Paul has just said that the baptized are "not under law but under grace" (Romans 6:14). What then does Paul mean by saying, "I am carnal, sold under sin" (verse 14)? Does the "I" refer to the non-Christian before baptism who is still under the law? Does it refer to the so-called "Carnal Christian", the baptized believer who is indulging a life of wilful sin? Or does it refer to the average Christian?

Reading further, we see Paul expressing a struggle with which all Christians can, at any rate, relate: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (verse 15). Likewise, Paul accurately captures our struggle with the good demands of the law when he says (verse 16) "If I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good". For, of course, if we did not know in our heart of hearts that the law is good we would not feel inner torment when we break it.

Finally comes the crucial clue as to what Paul is talking about: "So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me" (vv. 17-20).

It is as vital to understand what Paul does not mean here as much as what he does mean. Paul does not mean to take back everything he has just said in Romans 6 concerning the regenerative power of baptism or the freedom from sin and our Adamic nature conferred thereby. When he declares to the baptized that "our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin" (Romans 6:6), he means it. So he cannot mean, in Romans 7 that, on second thought, the baptized are still slaves to sin. Similarly, he cannot and does not mean that "the devil makes us do it". Rather, in Paul's crucially important words "it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me" (verse 17). In other words, Paul's "inmost self", the "I" renewed by Christ in baptism really has been freed from original and actual sin. However, even after original sin has been destroyed and the grace of the Trinitarian life has been poured into his heart of the Holy Spirit, Paul finds that, in some sense, sin still "dwells within me" and discovers "another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members." (Verse 20, 23).

This mysterious phenomenon of an inclination to sin which remains even after baptism has taken away original sin is known in Catholic theology as "Concupiscence." Concupiscence is the lingering weakness of will, darkness of intellect, disorder of appetites, and affliction of body which results from original sin, but is not itself a sin. So, for instance, the heroin addict who receives baptism will have all his sins forgiven and original sin wiped away in the sacrament but he will also, barring a miracle, finds that his addiction to heroin remains and must be fought against after baptism. Likewise, very frequently the weaknesses, temptations, angers, fears, and other failings which beset us before baptism continue to do so after baptism. None of these weaknesses are themselves a sin. Rather, they are what Catholic tradition refers to as the "tinder for sin." We find that even in the state of grace there is an inclination to sin against which we must struggle our life long. It afflicts not just the body and not just the sex drive but all the aspects of our being. Snoopiness, gossip, toying with the occult, reluctance to do what is good, forgetfulness of God's will, factionalism, and many other failings are as much manifestations of concupiscence as disordered sexual impulses.

Because it is not sin itself but a mere weakness or inclination toward sin, concupiscence, though it can be lead to actual sin, need not. Indeed, in God's Providence, concupiscence becomes, by the grace of God, the battlefield whereon the moral struggle is fought and we become participants with God in our own perfection and sanctification in Christ. Resistance to concupiscence becomes the occasion of virtue and a means whereby we shall hear from God on Judgement Day, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." This moral struggle is precisely what the book of Revelation refers to when it declares a blessing on "him who conquers" (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26, 3:5, 12, 21, 21:7) and it is exactly what Paul has in mind when he declares that we are "more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37).

Hope that helps.

Greeley Probably Won't Get Condi's Job

Too disloyal. Like Powell.

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.

Catholics to Knights: Get Rid of the Pro-Abort Politicians on your Rolls

Seems reasonable to me.

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?

Bombthrower Shown Not to Be Philosopher

er, yes. But did anybody expect her to be?

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

Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administrationâ?Ts national security and foreign policy agenda.

The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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
term. During his second term, Miss Rice replaced Mr. Powell in the wake of a conclusion by the White House that Mr. Bush required a loyalist to head the State Department and ensure that U.S. foreign policy reflected the president's agenda.

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.

Tenser Demands Credit and Recognition

Yours is the superior geekness.

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.

How I Love Stephen Colbert

Um.

This was apparently done in serious tribute to America's Lady Macbeth



No comment.

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.

Here's a Cheering Piece on How Rhode Island is Getting a Bunch of Priestly Vocations

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?

Coulter: Hmmm, so you consider Wiccans “religious... in the conventional sense”?

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?

Just curious: What percentage of them know which Testament the Book of Job is in?

Beliefnet: Do you think it is persuasive to trudge out long-dead horses such as Willie Horton (1988) or Piltdown Man (1912) and flog them one more time?

The word you're searching for is "dredge," not "trudge."

Beliefnet: You say that the Episcopal Church is "barely even a church." Why?

Because it's become increasingly difficult to distinguish the pronouncements of the Episcopal Church from the latest Madonna video.

Beliefnet: Is it important to you as a woman to be standing up for positions that many people (especially liberals) think are unrepresentative of women: opposing abortion, favoring the death penalty, and so forth?

The answer to any question beginning "Is it important to you as a woman" is: No. It's important to me as a Christian and an American to take the positions I take, but I would hold the same positions if I were a man. And by the way, despite your nearly mystical fascination with polls in earlier questions, you have apparently not brushed up on the abortion polls if you think opposition to abortion is "unrepresentative of women." No matter who takes the poll or how the questions are asked, women almost always oppose abortion more than men do. Abortion is a convenience for men who want to be able to have sex with women without consequence. Women love and protect children. Godless men--like Herod in Jesus' time, the Pharaoh in Moses' time, and Bill Clinton in our time--target babies for destruction.

Beliefnet: As a woman, do you long for that source of great fulfillment for many women: a husband, a family? Or do you see your life's vocation as primarily in the public arena?

As a journalist, do you long to have a sense of decorum? Or do you see your life's vocation as primarily asking strangers utterly inappropriate personal questions?

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?

To believe with all your heart at every moment that God loved a wretch like you so much that he sent his only son to die for your sins. Most of the time, I'm an extraordinarily 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

Icky as it sounds, ***we*** mingled across species in the past, which could help us win evolution wars in the future.

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.

The items that must be proportional are the value of the military objective to be achieved and the human costs (especially civilian costs) required to achieve it. This is emphatically not the same thing as the amount of munitions one side uses versus the munitions for the other side. Or the casualties that one side suffers versus the other side.

To emphasize, the one side of the scale is the value of the military objective to be accomplished. And if you read the good Professor's post, that's exactly what he says there. Plus it's what the Magisterium says. Plus ordinary common sense.

In this case, the Israeli response is easily on the good side of proportionality. Constant bombardment is an immediate threat to the very existence of Israel. Think of it as the 21st century Battle of Britain.

Somehow the people complaining about proportionality haven't come to terms with the fact that the nature of this provocation is fundamentally different and bigger than some suicide nut walking into a pizza parlor. As a fair question Mark, have you?

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?

Anybody Ever Hear of These Guys?

If so, what's the scoop on them?

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):

Krcméry's telling is simultaneously disinterested and passionate. As a medical doctor, he offers a cool and clinical analysis of the techniques employed by the persecutors to induce mental submission, and his techniques in resisting theirs. Then there are the physical tortures: standing for fifty-two hours straight, long exposure to below-freezing temperatures, beatings by drunken interrogators. In dredging up these painful memories, the author is again assailed by the wrenching headaches and backaches he experienced in prison. But, as painful as it is, he believes he must remember: both to witness to God's mercy in upholding his people, and to expose the evil done to them, in hope that it will never be repeated. There is no personal vindictiveness, however. Simply and convincingly, he forgives his enemies.

God help us if we, in our zeal to conduct the war on terror, end up behaving like Stalinists.

PS. One interesting thing that is not mentioned here: Dr. Krcmery survived the psychological tortures, in part, by contemplation of the Gospel of John, which he had completely memorized.

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.

Show me a culture that despises virginity and I'll show you a culture that despises children

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.

Links to his blog above or to the Saint Blog's Parish Directory page will lead folks to donation buttons where they can offer Steve whatever assistance they can manage.

Thank you for your time and help.

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.

Check out the Latest World of Good!

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!"

My Latest on Catholic Exchange

Very Cool Account of Evacuation from Lebanon

From our "Small World" department, it turns out I know the author and her family a bit. Her mom (in the picture) used to babysit our two oldest kids.

Alert the Media: Joe D'Hippolito tells Carrie Tomko to Lighten Up and I Agree with Him

Carrie's resolute determination to be as afraid, suspicious, in love with scandal and paranoid as possible pays off in rich dividends of humorlessness. Fresh from terrified angsting about the sinister implications of a banner she saw in a Church and the dark implications of Catholics who want their parish life to be vibrant, she now divines Things Too Terrible to Describe in a gag site called the John Paul II Quote Generator.

New Homestarrunner Cartoon!

Glory be to God for Dappled Things

...and for their new forums.

Catholic Report Celebrates a Year On Line

Bush's Middle East Democracy Flop

Mark Your Calendars for the Perseid Meteor Shower!

Interesting piece on Western Influences in Taiwanese Culture

We've Failed in Iraq

When the gov't of Iraq declares the breakup of the country "inevitable", I know of no other way to describe it. When Maliki covers this by saying "There is no civil war in Iraq" despite the thousands who have died and continue to die each day, I derive the same sense of comfort and reassurance as when the pilot comes on the intercom and announces there is nothing wrong with the engines of the plane, so just relax. So the "breakup" of Iraq is amicable? All those murders have nothing to do with a civil war?

Once upon a time, Rome told those pushing for war in Iraq, "Those who decide that all peaceful means that international law makes available are exhausted assume a grave responsibility before God, their conscience, and history."

At that time, National Review helpfully explained to Rome that it has "a problem with just war theory today". Back in those halcyon days, it confidently declared that the war was a "last resort". Why? Because (as we were assured) the threat was "imminent":

One becomes exhausted contemplating what the "exhaustion" of peaceful options might mean. Does it involve tighter economic sanctions, a beefed-up inspections regime, an extension of the no-fly zones, the issuing of more U.N. resolutions? All of these strategies have been tried with Iraq — but not, according to war critics, to the point of exhaustion.

After all, they say, there's no evidence of an "imminent attack" against the United States. Yet this view of aggression is closer to the fifth century, in which just-war theory was formulated, than the era of nihilistic rage in which we now live. The new reality is the horrific link between terrorist organizations, rogue states, and weapons of mass destruction. According to the latest CNN poll, 85 percent of Americans believe that Iraq belongs in this demonic inner ring.

Can America respond with force only when an Iraqi missile carrying a chemical weapon is seconds from liftoff? Or only after Saddam has slipped a few liters of anthrax into the hands of al Qaeda allies? If there ever was a time when theology must be "updated" to reflect contemporary facts, this is it.

And so we were stampeded to war by a thousand voiced like the author of that piece, only to find that there were no WMDs seconds from launch and, mirabile dictu, that nobody ever ever said that the threat was "imminent". Right.

So we have now reached the point where I think we have to look at the last just war criterion again, if only to learn from our mistakes. That criterion says that the outcome of the war should cause less harm than the evil the war was to correct. With the Middle East about to go up in flames and our troops stuck trying to keep order in country drowning in a civil war that was a high likelihood when we attacked, I think the answer is plainly "No." Sooner or later, I think we are going to have to withdraw if the peace cannot be kept. Not "should" withdraw, mind you. I still think we owe it to the Iraqis to repair the damage our adventure caused them. But I suspect it's physically impossible for us to do so. Our military is not infinite and our economy not omnipotent. So we will have to cut our losses and go.

But it would be good to at least hear somebody like the author of that NRO piece to say, "I was wrong. I'm sorry."

I've gotten bails of mail about the Israeli/Lebanon War

Rather than link all the links informing that it's all Hezbollah's/Israel's/Lebanon's/Syria's/Hamas'/Iran's/America's fault I will just link to the current USCCB statement, which seems to me to be sensible. Basic take seems to be Hezbollah and their confreres started this by shelling civilians, which is indefensible. Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel does not have the right to kill civilians in return. Seems reasonable to me.

Naturally, there will be those on both sides who will make excuses for violations of ius ad bellum and/or ius in bello, but on the whole the USCCB seems to be hitting the right marks.

I was heartened to hear my parish actually preach solidly on the Pope's call for a day of penance and prayer yesterday. I'm also heartened to look in on my boxes and see an intelligent attempt to grapple with the question of Israel from a theological perspective by Tom Haessler. I'm not sure I buy everything he says. In particular, I remain skeptical that the Church is bound to accept the establishment of the State of Israel as an expression of God's will. I'm acutely aware of previous over-confident claims of "Deus Volt!" with respect to the establishment of Crusader States. One could just as easily make the argument that the establishment of Israel was an attempt to force God's hand and that its eventual failure (God forbid!) will "prove" that. Personally, I'm extremely suspicious of attempts to divine God's will from secular history, particularly secular history that is very much in flux. I'm as skeptical of Christian "Wandering Jew" analyses of history as "Christian Zionist" analyses, not because they have no biblical support, but because they *both* have biblical support, but no particular magisterial support. So I content myself with regarding Israel as a secular state (which is, after all, how it regards itself) and ignoring the confident proclamations of prophets who see the hand of God where I see only the striving of various political factions.

That said, I appreciate the attempt at theology. It seems to me to be the only way to try to navigate here ultimately, particularly since passions so quickly get skewed by the the "Everything Israel Does Is Evil" types vs. those who believe in the Immaculate Conception of the State of Israel and its Preservation from All Sin Both Original and Actual. For the former, all acts of self-defense are simply conquest by another name. For the latter, it is all too easy to find some excuse (and even a condemnation for the victims) when the IDF blows up a convoy of women and children trying to escape some Lebanese village.

For myself, as remote from the events and as ignorant as I am of how the war is being conducted on the ground, I content myself with prayer. It seems like the most practical assistance I can offer to all involved.

Oh, and I can also do this: Urge you to support the humanitarian efforts of Mercy Corps to help the suffering innocents in Lebanon.

More Evidence that Libertarianism is a Philosophy for People With No Children

A reader writes:

Ron Bailey writes a classic "let us do evil that good may result"
apologia for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

His arguments are neither novel nor difficult to counter (don't miss the sneer at "believers"), but two things make this column particularly ludicrous. First, Bailey labels as hypocrites those who always opposed IVF for moral reasons but who later adopted surplus embryos. It obviously has never occurred to him that much of the moral opposition to IVF centers on the creation and subsequent ambiguous status of surplus embryos. If you seek to fix one of the central moral problems with IVF by lovingly adopting human embryos, you're a hypocrite. Wrap your head around that one, if you dare.

Second, it's aways a delight to watch self-identified libertarians championing government funding of research that they like. (Glenn Reynolds is a particularly egregious offender: he receives a government paycheck and he gets misty-eyed over the government space program). A principled libertarian would say "I don't have a moral problem with embryonic stem cell research, but this is exactly why I'm a libertarian. The government shouldn't be spending tax dollars on something that so many taxpayers consider a grave moral evil. Let the private sector handle it." Bailey just confirms what has long been my definition of a libertarian: a man who is absolutely opposed to government intervention in people's lives until it's his ox being gored.

There's a New Book Out on the Rosary

These are meditations based on Pope John Paul II's "On the Most Holy Rosary".

Coulter's Simplistic Rants Generate Liberal Simplistic Rants

The difference is, Coulter knows she's going for a laugh while so many of her critics are in deadly earnest--and just as biblically illiterate.

Case in point, this letter which (for reasons entirely opaque to me) wound up in my mailbox.

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty."

In the 1920's, author Upton Sinclair read the above to a group of Chicago businessmen, saying they were the words of anarchist Emma Goldman. The men were aghast, "That woman should be deported at once." Mr. Sinclair then confessed the passage was from the Bible, the words of the apostle James. If they were shocked, they shouldn't have been. Someone looking for a nice justification for free-wheeling, profit-driven capitalism, won't find one in the Bible. This is why Ms. Ann Coulter, having produced a book with both "Church" and "God," in the title, does not quote from it.

A wise choice on Ann's part. There's nothing in the Bible to comfort a free-marketeer who believes society magically benefits from his wealth, or someone looking for a portrait of Jesus as a moral crusader. Open up the New Testament, and what you actually find is this socialist-sounding claptrap about loving your enemies, and your neighbor as yourself.

I am reminded of a quip a friend of mine made upon returning from Poland. Breathing deeply as he walked through the airport and surveying the headlines in the newsstands, he sighed, "How wonderful to be back in the land where there are only two sides to every question!"

One gets that sense here. It's either capitalism or socialism for Jesus. And if the New Testament radiates a suspicion of the rich (as it obviously does) then "love your enemy" *must* be a socialist sentiment. And, of course, *all* capitalist models are laissez faire. And, of course, Jesus was not a "moral crusader" (by which those on the Left mean "He was not interested in moral issues that interest my ideological opponents. He was only interested in moral issues that interest me. He cared nothing about abortion or homosexuality. But was all about feminism, inclusiveness, and moral relativism." Case in point:

You can imagine poor Ann, realizing this omission - a book supposedly about religion that fails to quote that religion's central text - so she sits down with the Good Book to correct the glitch. What she found probably put her in a sour mood. It turns out that when Jesus came upon a man of means, he didn't chuck him under the chin and praise his entrepreneurial spirit. He told him to give away his wealth. When Jesus came upon people with deviant lifestyles, he didn't turn to the crowd and lecture them about Rome's decaying morals. He took those people into his fold, usually with a snarl or two at the gawkers nearby. Ann Coulter thumbs through her Bible looking for references to Christians trying to pass laws against offensive lifestyles, and finds not a one.

Now it's quite true that Jesus was not a moral crusader in the modern sense. He offered no political program. He sent no disciples on reform missions aimed at political structures. He had no ideology.

But it is sheer ignorance or dishonesty to pretend that Jesus and his apostles had no concept of "lifestyles" that were pleasing to God and "lifestyles" that were offensive to God. Romans 1 puts the boots on the idea that homosexual practice was welcomed into the fold. The Church's universal condemnation of abortion and "pharmakeia" (a code word for abortifacients and contraception) likewise shoots dead the notion that Jesus' acceptance required no repentance. Indeed, the *very first* command of Jesus is "Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is near!" Jesus' sharp words to the Pharisees are precisely aimed at men who believed (much like the apologists for moral relativism today) that they did not *need* to repent of anything and that the suggestion they did was "judgmental". The reason the whores, tax collectors, NASCAR enthusiasts and other white trash that people like the author of this post look down on were welcomed into the fold was not because they were courageously living deviant lifestyles, but because they were willing to say "Have mercy on me, a sinner." One gets the distinct impression that the suggestion that an active homosexual or abortion supporter needs to say these words to Jesus would not come trippingly to the tongue of the author of this email.

How disheartening that must have been for our intrepid commentator. What's more, America's basic tenants, the right to a government that does not encroach on personal freedom, the individual's right to pursue happiness, "let a man live his own life," are not in the Bible. That doesn't mean they're wrong. Not at all. It's just not appropriate to doll them up in church language. I think Thomas and Benjamin and George would agree with me.

Again, a strangely simplistic argument. Haven't read Coulter's book. Maybe she really is spouting doltish libertarianism of the most simplistic variety. But the notion that Scripture is devoid of applicability to the question of the relationship of the state and the individual is deeply ignorant. The entire question in the West arises from profoundly biblical, religious, and theological sources.

This peculiar notion that Scripture somehow envisions a "wall of separation" between the spiritual and the practical plays out in the next paragraphs and pastische of Bible quote--a dazzling display of stunning ignorance:

Now, Ms. Coulter may feel a little uncomfortable roaming around the Good Book to support what she's saying, but me? I got noooo problem with it. The Christian's first religious duty is to help the poor:

Jer. 22:3. Do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor. Also do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in this place.
Is. 58:10. "And if you give yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday.

Luke 12:33. "Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves purses which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, nor moth destroys."

Luke 6:20-21. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

Is. 58:66ff. Is this not the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Mt. 5:42. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

The author can multiply quotes about our duty of a preferential option for the poor till the cows come home, but as long as she maintains that this is evidence of our "first religious duty" she will only be driving home the fact that she misunderstands Scripture as badly as Coulter does (assuming Coulter really believes that our first religious duty is to get rich, which I rather doubt).

In fact, our first religious duty is not to put our fellow man, rich or poor, first at all. It is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Only when this priority is clearly and inviolably established can we rightly order our relationship to our neighbor, whether rich or poor. Do we have a duty to the poor? Absolutely! As Abp. Chaput bluntly puts it, if you neglect the poor you will go to hell. But if you worship the poor (or any creature) you can also go to hell. Because all sin consists of some good that is loved in an inordinate way. Marxism taught us to love the poor to the exclusion of the love of God--and damned many souls in the process. Capitalism has sometimes taught us to love private property to the exclusion of the love of God--with similar eternal results.

The Bible's clear bias towards the poor always comes as a surprise to my non-churchy friends, who've long witnessed the priorities of Christians around them, and assumed the Bible must be a massive tirade against gay marriage and abortion.

This is probably the most explicit statement of the false dichotomy our author is proposing. If you oppose gay marriage and abortion, you hate the poor. If you love the poor, you will also agree that homosexual practice and murder of the unborn is no big deal.

Yes, I'm a wild-eyed liberal, and I go to Bible studies, fairly fundamentalist ones, at that. And contrary to Coulter's book, liberals are not bent on transforming America into some sort of pan-sexual Amsterdam. We don't preach abortion as birth control, nor do we think the ACLU should busy itself with protecting quirky behavior at the expense of common sense. We don't think courts should take over the rightful role of parents, and surprise, surprise, our opposition to the war in Iraq is just as motivated by the death of American soldiers as it is by the death of Iraqis.

Now, this Bible study I go to has its share of Clinton-bashers, as well as a few liberal fellow-travelers like myself. Once the bashing starts, we quietly roll our eyes, and wait to say our piece. Yes, people know I'm liberal, but except for Coulter, no one has ever called me Godless. She's one of the few who seem to think that a belief in science makes you anti-God. Around this nation are many believers in Christ who recognize that fossils show the evolution of species, but not transmigration. There's evidence that indicates changes within a species over time, but not fish to fowl, fowl to mammal and so forth. This is important because Ms. Coulter likes to paint a monolithic portrait of two camps: God-hating evolution-believers in one, and God-fearing creationists in the other. Nothing could be further from the truth.

That Bible study I go to represents a spectrum, where we each place differing emphasis on private vs. public morality. You might say a liberal Christian places more emphasis on decisions made as a society, "We ought not to go to war." "We ought to take care of the poor," whereas a conservative Christian shifts the emphasis to private life, "A woman ought not to have an abortion." "A man ought not sleep with another man." But these are not absolutes. There are plenty conservative Christians who think Bush's policies in Iraq are disastrous (it makes it harder to preach the Gospel abroad), and quite a few liberals who don't appreciate seeing women on TV parade around in their underwear.

As my purpose here is not to defend Coulter (who is essentially a political bomb-thrower, humorist, and polemicist like Tom Paine) I'm not particularly interested in the simplicities she spouts about God-hating evolutionists. One can believe and disbelieve in evolution at little peril to your soul. What interests me here is the standard "there are no absolutes except the ones that suit my ideology" tactic employed here. If it's stupid for Coulter to speak (as is her custom) in absolutist terms about evolution, how much stupider is it for the author of this post to say "You shall not murder" is "not absolute"? How much clearer can Romans 1 be about the immorality of homosex? What part of "Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God" (I Corinthians 6) does she not understand?

Once again, she posits a false dichotomy between "private" and "social" sins. The reality is that rich man who deprives the poor is a "thief" in the Tradition. But so is the one who kills the unborn or sins against nature by homosexual acts. Neither the laissez faire capitalist, nor the lazy moral relativist lefty are safe. Both must, as our Lord says, "Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is near."

Of course there is a division in society, a divide along church and class lines that Coulter's writings help to foster, but it is not a natural one. First, a little background:

Until the beginning of the last century, most Christians believed that redistributing wealth and helping the poor was just as important as personal moral behavior. To turn one's back on the hungry was considered just as much a sin as anything you might do in the bedroom. Struggles against slavery, child labor and unsafe working conditions were all fueled by fiery sermons from the pulpit, complete with all the Bible-thumping and moral certitude that today, we associate with gay-bashing. The fiery revivalist preachers of yesteryear excoriated the rich for neglecting America's growing class of street children, and economic conditions that forced women into prostitution. In early American Christianity, morality and justice were intertwined. In fact, the division that Coulter helps to inflame today, did not exist in the least.

Here, Coulter's critic becomes incoherent. For if, as she claims in order to score a point, Christian moral teaching is a seamless garment of concern for the poor *and* concern for the unborn and sexual purity, then why does she pit the two against each other. She is being disingenuous. An authentically Christian moral argument (like in the Compendium on Catholic Social Teaching) would emphasize our duty to the poor *and* our duty to the unborn and our call to marriage between one man and one woman.

What caused the division was urban migration, but mostly, the Scopes Trial. The attorney that prosecuted the Tennessee science teacher for teaching evolution was William Jennings Bryan, three-times presidential candidate and the greatest orator of his time. A fervent Christian as well as an early believer in a world body to arbitrate disputes, he was appointed Secretary of State under Wilson, but resigned to protest the growing drumbeat to enter WWI. His Cross of Gold speech is considered to be one of America's top oratory masterpieces. Bryan's faith represented the prevailing "pitchfork populism," that put justice and morality on equal footing, and was broadly represented across America.

But when called upon to prosecute Mr. Scopes, Mr. Bryan was clearly past his prime. During the trial, he frequently sounded befuddled. The science was a little above him, and his opponent was the sharp and urbane Clarence Darrow, who was content to let Bryan's ignorance do the talking. The trial, broadcast daily over the newly minted medium of wireless radio to an audience of millions, left a bad taste in people's mouths. Mr. Darrow, with his big-city arrogance and snobbish condescension, appeared to take pleasure in publicly humiliating a great American icon, smirking while a hero twisted in the wind. Mr. Darrow lost that day, won on appeal, but lost the hearts and minds of regular Americans. Pretentious, know-it-all book-learning had bested simple heartland faith. But the Scopes Trial was only battle one of what we now call the Culture Wars.

This person seems to be as fantastically simplistic as Coulter. Does she *really* believe that the Scopes trial almost single-handedly divided Liberal Social Gospel Protestants from those who oppose abortion and gay marriage (two issues that would not arise for 50-75 years after Scopes)?

Today, Coulter's anti-liberal hate-talk is a distraction, because in reality, both sides are working towards the same general goal: a better world to live in, a better place for our kids to grow up in. Ann does not want you to recognize the church schism as a historical misunderstanding, two strains of faith that were once united. For her own reasons, she wants you to see "liberalism" as monolithic, irrational state of mind, hoping you'll disregard everything we say. According to her, all liberals are cut out of the same defective material. Skilled at the time-honored technique common to all hate literature, she de-personifies her target, referring to us liberals as one indistinguishable group. We're all unchurched, unpatriotic, amoral, and never met a government program we didn't like. If you were to download any of the famous works of hate literature, for example, "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," replace "Jews" with "Liberals," the resulting book would seem oddly familiar: One target, one enemy, scheming as one to undermine all the nation holds dear.

Seeing Coulter's books for sale makes you wish humans were born with a built-in crap detector, something inside us that buzzes when commentators use phrases like, "they always," "they never," "they all hate America." At such times, it should kick in: "What do you mean 'all'? Where did you learn that? How many liberals have you really met, sat down and talked to?"

There exists reasonable commentary that suggests American supremacy is not such a horrible thing, just as there are books on my side of the fence that warn of America's conservatism without sounding like some goofy spy novel. One thing's for sure. Our nation is at a crossroads, at a critical juncture deserving of better guidance than Coulter's simplistic rants.

As I say, I'm not particularly here to defend Coulter's book which I haven't read. What I was interested in was the mouthing of various liberal pieties at the expense of actual movements of grey matter. The notion that Jesus and the apostles essentially didn't care what you do, that they were not interested repentance merely in "inclusiveness", that abortion and homosexual acts where matters of indifference to them, that "our first religious duty is to the poor", that Scripture has essentially nothing to say about the relationship of the person to the state--all these brainless pieties are insufficient to any serious engagement with the Tradition. That's not a defense of Coulter. It's a defense of the Tradition from a Coulter-critic who is as simplistic as Coulter. The trouble is, she's not as funny and she's totally unaware that her simplicities are just as much a distortion of the Tradition as the exaggerations that Coulter consciously makes for comic effect.

You knew this would happen

Some chick says she's descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Love the unconsciously ironic title of her book: The Expected One.

"I certainly expect there will be a backlash," said Ms McGowan. "But I have the support of my family and friends and that's what I draw from."

It takes vast reserves of inner strength to cash in on a fad.

Is there no end to the demonic nefariousness of the Catholic Church?

I wonder what these guys make of Ian Paisley?

DePaul: A University in the Apostate Tradition

The University that gives us John Dominic Crossan, one of the heads of the Jesus Seminar and the quack who says that Jesus' body was eaten by wild dogs, also blesses us with an enlightened sexual ethic that is loyal to the Third Vatican Council and, for a special icing on the cake, crushes free speech and thought in the interest of a cowardly PC ethic.

Voice of the Fuddled Completes its Metamorphosis into The Same Old Thing

Dear Members of VOTF from Region 4:

As one of the two (the second position is currently vacant) regional representatives to the National Representative Council, I am seeking input and guidance on a resolution which I have co-sponsored with Mary Collingwood (another Representative to the Council) and Peggie Thorpe, one of the founding members of VOTF (Peggie is also Editor of In The Vineyard - but her sponsorship is as a VOTF member and NOT from her position as Editor).

The resolution calls for a Discussion on the Role of Women in our Church. I would appreciate any comments or opinions each of you might have.

I also would appreciate receiving your "vote" as to whether or not you support this Resolution.

The resolution is below.

Many thanks,

Rich Moriarty - please reply to richmoriarty@cox.net

Colleagues on the National Representative Council,

VOTF leadership has sidelined several issues and subjects over the last four years in an effort to give our mission statement and goals a chance to breathe on their own. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit breathes where it wills, not necessarily paying attention to categories and boundaries when dealing with the life and growth of our Church. Thus, we believe that a VOTF-significant subject that can wait no longer is the status of women in the Catholic Church. Attached please find a resolution for the NRC's consideration, discussion and vote.

The intent of the resolution is to establish a collective voice that would respond to the Church's ancient "spin" on women. It is wide in scope and is constitutive of more than half of the Church's members. Ultimately, we believe this resolution will contribute to the formation of a church that proclaims and lives the reality that both men and women share equal status in the eyes of God; hence, equally recognized within the church "communio."

Critics predict if we extend our focus VOTF will lose ground. The fact is that VOTF will not flourish if it does not evolve. We have considered the negative effect that this resolution might have, but are convinced that such an extension of vision will only illuminate our journey for justice. Pursuing this initiative will provide important opportunities for collaboration with others of like mind, and secure VOTF's position on the map of the Church in the 21st Century.

Rich Moriarty Peggie L. Thorp Mary E.
Collingwood
richmoriarty@cox.net peggie.thorp@verizon.net mecreg6@yahoo.com


RESOLUTION PROPOSAL:

Whereas, our Church is the entire People of God; and

Whereas, VOTF affirms our mission statement (to provide a prayerful voice, attentive to the Spirit, through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church) and third goal (to support structural change within the Catholic Church); and

Whereas, the future of the Faith we are called to sustain is dependent upon a supporting structure inclusive of the voices and talents of all the People of God, and

Whereas, the Gospel message of inclusion is diminished by discrimination against more than half of its total membership; and

Whereas, women are excluded not only from governing positions within the Church's hierarchical structure, but also from many ministerial leadership roles; and

Whereas, the deterrence of future abuses by the hierarchy is dependent on the entire People of God,

THEREFORE, IT IS RESOLVED THAT:

Voice of the Faithful calls for Church-wide discussion on advancing equal access for women to all positions of leadership and ministry within the Catholic Church.

Congratulations to Decent Film's Steven and Suzanne Greydanus!

Nathan has Steve's hair!

Blogger is acting twitchy

I will post as I can, but no guarantees until they get it fixed.

Ross Douthat, a new hero of mine, does the autopsy on the Left's Great Theocracy Scare of '06...

and shows, once again, why they just don't get it when they try to negotiate American religious waters. What an utterly hapless bunch of clueless losers.

When a 747 Engine at Full Thrust Meets a Car, It Can Only End in Tears

...and extreme destructive coolness.

Arlen Specter: Ignoramus and Know-Nothing

Best Quip of the Colloquium

I was in Chicago for a colloquium called "Can You Tell Me What a Parish Is?" It looked at the parish from several different perspectives (canon and civil law, the parish in light of Trinitarian theology, the Parish as a House of Lay Formation for Apostolic Mission, and so forth). One of the participants (a lawyer, naturally) quipped to me during lunch that "Canon law is the suppression of God's love for the good of the Church."

I liked that guy a lot. Very droll and dry.

Oh, and Chicago has great Italian restaurants!

Damon Linker Gets His Paycheck for Shouting "Eeek! Theocrats!"

The whole "theocracy" thing is such a goofy bogeyman. Like "Christianist" it's largely just a swear word disguised as a Deep Thought. Aside from a few Fundamentalist kooks and nutty Catholic monarchist types, I know of nobody who seriously advocates theocracy. But it's a word to conjure with if you're the sort of person who believes Andrew Sullivan has his finger on the pulse of what's really going on among Christians in the public square.

Old Chicago Democrat Survey the Disarray of the Postmodern Dems, Shakes Head

Those who prefer power to truth eventually find they will have neither. Sooner or later, this lesson will be taught to the Right as well. At present, they mistake their good fortune in the face of the Left's intellectual disintegration as a sign of superiority, when many indications suggest that they are simply slightly behind the Left in experiencing the corrosive effects of a postmodern rejection of truth for power that afflicts our whole culture. Hope I'm wrong, but we'll see.

The most useful and constructive thing I can say about the Israel-Lebanon War right now:

Pray and fast!

I imagine folks are expecting me to weigh in with some sort of opinion, but I really don't have one yet. At it's most elementary level, it seems to me plain that Israel has a right to defend itself from attack. Beyond that, all the tertiary issues about what we in the US should do, and whether the war is proportional, and whether ius in bello is being observed, and whether William Kristol and other neocons are war-mongerers untethered from reality, and whether the White House, having screwed up one war, can really be trusted to stampede us into another, and whether this is "our war"--all of that I have not made up my mind about because I distrust the reliability of the information I'm getting and I just don't know enough yet to make a judgment that's worth any thing. Tom Haessler, in my comboxes, still makes a great deal of sense to me.

I remain a total skeptic of the proposition that Israel is anything other than a secular state. I don't buy, and never have bought, the notion that the founding of Israel is the "fulfillment of prophecy". But I think that a secular state has every right to defend itself from thugs who rocket it from across the border. And if Lebanon is unwilling or unable to stop Hezbollah, then it seems to me that Israel has the right to do so. I don't get the complaint that the war was "planned by Israel". Do people imagine that the military is jazz? Do they really suppose that government launch spontaneous wars like a scat solo? Of course it was planned. Armies run on on plans. And Israel has had lots of time and reason to think about what would be an opportune circumstance in which to take out Hezbollah.

The reports that I hear which suggest the Israel is targeting a lot more than Hezbollah concern me, but till I know more, it's hard to say what's going on. Likewise, the eagerness of the War Party leaves me in a skeptical "wait and see" posture, since I've heard their cocksure assurances of swift victory before.

Still, at the end of the day, I basically agree with Rome's (and the G8's) assessment of things--and with her calls for peace, not a widening conflagration.

Reader Tony A Has a New Blog

Now you can argue with him in his very own comboxes!

Startling find!: Ethicists who don't make nuanced excuses for murdering patients

I was beginning to think they're rarer than the passenger pigeon.

Jeremy Lott uses short words and big pictures for pro-death enthusiasts who just don't get it

Speaking of stem cells...

Well done and way to go, Mr. President.

Oh, and gotta love this moment from Kathy Shaidle....

The Religion of Peace Wants to Kill Christian Converts

The amazing thing is that this still news.

Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh Demonstrate Plato's Point

Artists just make art. They don't necessarily understand the art they make. Saruman has taught them nothing--or everything, depending on how you look at it.

Gay Marriage Enables Homosexuals to Pioneer New Ways to Selfishly Damage Children

Ugg. The Holy Spirit Sends Me a Message!

I spend far too much time on this machine, blogging stuff.

And the Word Became JPEG

Interesting art.

A reader writes from Australia, the Happy Land of Upside Down where the Catholics are Bad Anglicans and the Anglicans are Good Catholics:

In the Diocese of Sale, in Australia, the bishop is trying to kick out a devout, Orthodox priest. Father John Speekman cleaned up the parish of Morwell quite a bit, and after the whole case went to the courts in the Vatican, they ruled in favor of Father. Father is still waiting and working in the Diocese of Sydney while his bishop tries to throw him out a second time.

No tampering with children. More like butting heads with a teacher, who complained with the local union who complained to the bishop. Probably over something that should have been more genuinely orthodox.

Anyway. Into The Deep is an attempt by orthodox parishioners to talk about Catholicism and problems plaguing the Church in Australia. It reports that the administrator in what was once Fr. Speekman's parish is undoing everything Speekman had done. There used to be weekly Adoration. He stopped it.

Here is the site, and you can subscribe there.

I told the editors that my diocese had one seminarian five years ago. Today we have 20. Why? Eucharistic Adoration, maybe?

The site above will give you more information on Father Speekman. A good man going through his own purification, I'm afraid.

I do enjoy your site. Your wit is a lovely thing. :) Break it to your wife gently that someone actually praised you for using it.

Speroforum is asking interesting questions

Mark Windsor has a New Blog

Dedicated to helping refugee Episcopalians find a home in the Catholic Church. If you are a refugess Episcopalian or if you know somebody who is, steer this way and Mark will give you the resources (a Catholic/Episcopalian phrase book called "Romish as She is Spoke", a scotch vs. beer comparison chart, clothiers who retailor that Gucci outfit into something that looks more like K-Mart, weening you from golf and extolling the virtues of bowling, etc.)

*Cough* Uh, is this thing on?

Got back in yesterday after a *very* long trip (up at 6 AM, sat on the tarmac at O'Hare for 2.5 hours till the storms cleared and let us take off, 4hr flight). My poor wife and kids didn't get a chance to check the web and see if my flight was delayed, so they wound up hanging around SeaTac till I got there.

Anyway, after all that, I was more inclined to heed the Wisdom of the Children and go swimming in Silver Lake than to hunker down in a room with a keyboard and chatter about stuff. So we did!

And you know what? My kids are getting to be pretty good swimmers! They swam out to the diving dock 30 yards off shore without life vests. That's a big improvement over two weeks ago. We still accompany them every foot of the way, of course. But still, it's a lovely thing for a parent to watch their kids master things like this.

Speaking of which, my kids did their standardized testing for the end of the home school year and they rocked the house. Their strong suits, you will be shocked to hear, lie in the language, reading, vocabulary and other talents suited to the ink-stained wretch (though we gotta work on punctuation and spelling a bit). In general and with a couple of exceptions, they are doing extremely well--a testament to the greatness of my wife, Janet. They're even doing well in math!

Life is sweet when you get to see your kids grow.

What I've Done in Chicago So Far

I spoke at Sacred Heart in Lombard on Friday night, then snagged a ride up to Marytown, where I spoke on Saturday. After I was done, three seminarians (two FSSP guys in full cassock and a guy from Mundelein, which is right next door to Marytown) showed up, introduced themselves, and proceeded to take me to dinner, which was a real treat. Then we got the tour of Mundelein (after a stop at Culvers for the best frozen custard in the universe) and I got into Marytown and crash about 10:30 or so.

Yesterday, they came and got me again and we headed off to Chicago for 12:30 Mass at St. John Cantius, an utterly gorgeous parish. It was extremely hot and I sat there sweating and saying "Ahhh" as the fan periodically turned my way. I struggled to remain conscious and mostly failed due to the heat. (Careful readers will note that the Mass at St. John Cantius is the Tridentine Rite Latin Mass, which will, I hope, put to bed the odd notion that I have some objection to the Tridentine rite.)

After Mass, we headed off to the Field Museum, where I got to check out the King Tut exhibit (gorgeous!) and (just as cool to me) the "Evolving Planet" display of fossils. An extra bonus is the fact that the dinosaur exhibit (impressive in itself) has a series of huge paintings by the marvelous Charles R. Knight. These paintings found their way into my dinosaur books when I was a child and I was *thrilled* to see the originals hanging on the wall of the Field Museum.

After that, it was off to Loyola to have dinner and crash again. Today the "What is a Parish?" colloquium begins.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Blogging will continue to be spotty till I get home Thursday.

You kids don't put no beans up your noses.

Happy Yellow Pig Day!

Islamic Democracy Discovers Useful Rhetorical Tool to Hide its Problems: Blame the Jews

Who could possibly have foreseen that a Muslim democratic politician would blame Jews and Americans to divert the electorate from the shortcomings of the government?

Stephen Colbert: Curiously Subversive of the Standard Media Paradigm

I'm still on the road and writing from Loyola U in Chicago

For all your news needs about the Israeli war, go to Drudge.

For all your arguing-about-the-war needs, the blogosphere provides a wide menu of choices ranging from pro-Israeli to pro-Palestinian. Indeed, the blogosphere is like drinking from a firehose in that regard. Just to arbitrarily focus on one discussion, I recommend Amy's blog, where (once again) Tom Haessler has done my heavy lifting for me by basically giving my views of the question as they stand at present. War being a fluid thing, things may change. But at present Tom pretty well captures my take on stuff.

A culture that recognizes only "consent" as the sole arbiter of morality cannot help going this way

We're next.

Teen Girl Squad!

David Morrison is Back on the Air!

Welcome back, dude!

Very quickly and then I'm gone

A number of people have written to object that Peters and Ledeen, when they counsel that enemy combatants should be "killed, not captured" cannot mean shooting prisoners once they are captured.

Okey doke. Then what *do* they mean? I'm serious. It is not controversial to say that enemy combatants should be killed on the battlefield. Of course they should. Who can disagree with that? It's hardly worth writing an article to say that, in combat, soldiers should be about the business of shooting the enemy. But to then add "not capturing" is to rather obviously change the equation.

How do you implement such a counsel? Well, the only clue Peters and Ledeen give as to *why* enemy combatants should not be captured is not "because they might only be pretending to surrender" (in which case they are still enemy combatants and should rightly and properly be dispatched), but "because they are of no intelligence value and are a nuisance to keep around".

So, in practical terms, how is the counsel "kill, don't capture" implemented? It seems to me there's only two routes you can go: shoot them when they come out with their hands up and before you've technically captured them (like the surrendering troops at Normandy in "Saving Private Ryan") or else, shoot them after a brief interview to determine their intelligence worth but before there's any particular evidence they have been taken captive. But if the stated goal is "kill, don't capture" I simply see no other way to deal with surrenders and abide by the stated goal of Ledeen and Peters to kill, not capture.

If you can imagine some other way to implement "kill, don't capture", please tell me in the combox. Don't tell me how evil I am. Don't tell me how mean I am. Don't tell me how I besmirch the unsullied innocence of two men whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. Just tell me how troops on the ground are supposed to implement a "Don't capture" policy in order to make sure that captures happen "rarely".

Okay, I'm outta here and off to Chicago. Will write when I can.

I'm on Catholic Answers Live Today from 4-5 PDT

You can stream it here.

I'm pretty sure these guys like Pius XII

From our "Picture Worth a Thousand Words" Dept.

Read Ralph Peters

Or just look at this to see what he wants us to do:



Don't forget to contemplate the deep Catholic thought of one of my readers as you gaze at this photo:

"Slaughter" is such a loaded term, sadly typical of how Mark often frames the debate here. Why not "execute"?

The Diseased Spirituality of the Postmodern West is Unequal to the Task of Defeating the Diseased Spirituality of Islam

Only a healthy spirituality--that is, only Christ--can counter a diseased spirituality.

In Chicago July 14-20

Here's my schedule:

July 14 7:00 PM Speaking at Sacred Heart Parish in Lombard, IL. Topic: An Evangelical Discovers the Blessed Virgin Mary
July 15 Speaking in the morning and early afternoon at Marytown, in Libertyville, IL. Topics: The Da Vinci Deception, Why Be Catholic?, Mary: the True Sacred Feminine.
July 17-20 "Can You Tell Me What a Parish Is?" Colloquium at Loyola University, Chicago, IL. I will speak on Wednesday in response to Sherry Weddell.

Blogging will be spotty.

Army Chaplain Bill Cork Weighs in on the Call to Slaughter Prisoners

The simple, astounding, appalling thing is that anybody calling themselves Catholic needs to be reminded of what Cork says.

Somehow this story reminds me of that joke about the three-legged pig who saved the farmer...

...the one that ends "Hey! A pig this clever and brave you don't want to eat all at once."

"Denounce against the Catholic Church represented by a priest"

All your Mass are belong to us.

Hat tip, the inimitable Dawn Eden.

I'm here to help my friend Greg Krehbiel get rid of the last vestiges of his Protestant either/or mindset

Greg declares that mystical experiences "ain't nothing special" and have "nothing" to do with getting closer to God.

You know what he means, of course: that special effects aren't as important as ordinary Christian growth in love, that if you let your fascination with apparitions, miracles, and whatnot get in the way of faith, hope and charity, you are not becoming "more spiritual" and are, in fact, betraying the faith. All true.

But it's not either/or, it's both/and. As a matter of fact, mystical experiences *are* something special, particularly when they come from God. It's an obvious falsehood to say that Paul's mystical experience on the Damascus Road, or the vision of Jesus, Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, or Augustine's "tolle, lege" experience, or Constantine's vision at the Milvian Bridge, or Francis' vision which resulted in his stigmata, or the billion other mystical phenomenona which have constituted the central religious experience of countless lives are "nothing special", do not matter, and have "nothing" to do with the faith lives of their recipients. Just as one example, it is not too much to say that the *entirety* of St. Paul's gospel consists of the attempt to unpack the full meaning of "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"

Yes, ultimately our obedience to the ordinary teaching of Christ and our pursuit of the sanctifying gifts of the Spirit are the main thing. But when God does give special graces, they are not to be sneezed at as "nothing special" or has having "nothing to do with getting us closer to God".

A Long-Expected Party

This evening, a giant horde of kids (mostly homeschooled, from giant, traditionalist-minded Catholics families) will descend on our house for a huge swing dance out on the lawn. My son Matthew (aka "Cow" [don't ask]) learned to swing dance a few years ago (in a class full of cute girls and... him. No fool he.) Now he gets to reap the rich rewards of his charm and dancing abilities.

There will be munchies, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, the Ws, and lot of other music, big green mats for jumping on, running around, general hilarity (possibly including squirt guns), and a lot of excitement for long hours into the night.

I may even give a shot at learning a few swing dance steps. Those who know my general physical ineptitude know what a daring thing this is for me to try. However, you're only young once.

Tom Haessler Does my Heavy Lifting for Me

Attempts to defend Ledeen's and Peters proposals for murder under the rubric "terrorists should be killed, not captured" are found here.

Tom replies:

Eric Johnson thinks that Catholic teaching on capital punishment is only for Western civilized countries. The teaching, that unnecessary capital punishment is morally wrong, is universal. It is not an example of prudential judgment. "Here and now capital punishment is necessary to protect innocent human life" IS an example of a prudential judgement.

He invents for himself a new category of legitimate killing completely unacknowledged in Catholic teaching - killing that is not a just capital punishment infliction and not an example of justified killing in a just war. This new category applies to "uncivilized criminal types" who've decided to use terrorist tactics (unjustified direct attacks on non-combatants). While there are problems with the expression "war on terrorism", the problem is with the third word (a tactic), not the first word. It IS a war. It's conducted by the armed forces of a nation who've been authorized by the highest governmental authority in that nation. And the war is against all sorts of different kinds of insurgents. If TM Lutas is correct in stating that the new field manual on counterinsurgency warfare expresses a policy of preference for capture rather than killing, then even the military repudiates Johnson's immoral tactic. As the Supreme Court made clear, the category of "illegal combatant" does not mean that such individuals are not covered in any way by the Geneva Accords. ANYONE picked up in combat in a war zone is covered, whether they're fighting for a nation state or not.

Two considerations clarify the absurdity of the notion that "uncivilized" combatants forfeit their human right not to be killed when surrendering. First, the states that we're defending have constitutional definitions of religious freedom that would a step down from the religious freedom enjoyed in the former Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it is not wrong to defend Iraqis who've chosen this government that will certainly violate the rights of Muslims who convert to Christianity. Such violations are not examples of "uncivilized" behavior, but of the weakness of any Islamic country anywhere in recognizing certain natural rights. The same thing applies, mutatis mutandis, to the United States. The people of this great nation have the right to be defended against unjust attacks even though the government has refused to protect the rights of millions of unborn children. Or as Saint Thomas insisted, one's basic human rights are not abrogated or forfeited because of sin. Jihadists are not uncivilized savages. This is just rhetoric. They are people who've subscribed to the tenets of a false religion that permits in many instances unjust killing. This false religion in its social expression has given rise to a whole civilization. The civilization itself constitutes a serious threat to the lives and polity of Westerners. But it would be wrong to imagine that adherents of this civilization have no human rights or are just "criminals". Nazism was a return to the barbarism of ancient paganism at its worst. Nevertheless, those who fought for it received all the protections of the Geneva Accords, NOT because Nazism was "civilized", but because it was the right thing to do. The just war theory itself has its roots in Augustine's effort to think through what Roman civilization could do when threatened by barbarism.

One final note. For some reason, people seem to think that I'm objecting to the idea of shooting combatants who use surrender as a ruse de guerre. Obviously, I don't. They deserve what they get and good riddance to them.

No. I'm objecting to the barbaric thesis (advocated by Peters, who is cited with warm approval by Ledeen) that prisoners should be slaughtered. I'm objecting to the barbarism of Ledeen who argues that prisoners should be killed, not because they are still active combatants who only pretend to surrender, but because "Few have serious intelligence value. And, once captured, there's no way to dispose of them."

We have enough Bronze Age barbarians in the Islamosphere. We don't need to seize the One Ring and become our enemy.

A reader asks what I mean by "radTrad"

First, I will tell you what I do not mean. I do not mean "Anybody who prefers the Tridentine rite". I also do not mean anybody who sees something good in the Church before the Council. Nor do I mean anybody who prefers older forms of piety.

By RadTrad I mean (roughly) those who allow their rage about things like the Council, the existence of the modern world, liturgical imperfections, the fact that this is no longer Cleveland 1956, the fact that the Pope says and does things they deem erroneous, and the existence of felt banners, guitars, charismatics, Protestants, von Balthasar, and so forth to trump their love, joy, peace, patience and hope.

Not all who prefer more conservative forms of piety are embittered malcontents at war with faith, hope, and love and filled with a loathing of most of the Body of Christ for its failure to keep everything in stasis at Cleveland 1956. As I have mentioned repeatedly (and people seem not to hear) my son regularly attends the Tridentine Mass at the Josephinum with a number of families who are fine, salt-of-the-earth folk and who manifest the fruits of the Spirit. I suspect many, perhaps most, who prefer older forms of piety are cut from similar cloth.

But every demographic has its fringe (and so many of them seem to congregate in cyberspace). The devotees of the Paul VI rite have their fringe representatives in the persons of fatuous Thinking Catholics[TM] like the feather-brains of St. Joan's. But they no more represent the ordinary life of the average Catholic than Novus Ordo Watch represents the average devotee of older piety.

That said, those who tend toward the polarities of "Thinking Catholic[TM]" vs. "Fortress Catholic[TM]" do tend toward their own peculiar besetting sins. For Thinking Catholics, the besetting sins tend to be caused by thinking with an organ about four feet below the brain. For Fortress Catholics, the problem tends to be caused by thinking with whatever gland it is that causes us to feel anger. Again, not all Traditionalists do this. But when I run in to Traditionalists whose first and primary response to life is rage and despair, combined with a bitter contempt for love and hope as "Kumbaya Catholicism", a restless rankling hunger to condemn others (see, again, Novus Ordo Watch) and a tendency to believe that liturgical perfection, not faith, hope, love and the fruits of the Spirit are the point of the Christian life, then I refer to it as "RadTrad."

I think they should sell it to Golden Online Casinos

Put it next to the Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

Puhleeze

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!"
Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!
Jerusalem, built as a city which is bound firmly together,
to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! "May they prosper who love you!
Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers!"
For my brethren and companions' sake I will say, "Peace be within you!"
For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.

My Latest on Catholic Exchange

I'm gonna be scarce today. To various cranks who shout unrequited challenges in the comboxes about your personal obsessions and take umbrage when I do not drop everything to reply:

Please note that my silence does not indicate a) my terror at addressing the crushing logic of your irrefutable arguments; b) assent to the beliefs of your ideological enemies; c) contempt for all you hold dear; or d) shame at the unforgiveable way I have treated you when I dared to disagree with you and/or your beloved hero(s).

Nope. Though silence sometimes can mean I a) don't read all my comboxes or b) don't think the game is worth the candle answering a crank about, say, the merits of geocentrism, the collected speeches of JPII, or the utter evil of Crunchy Connery and all its pomps and works, *today* it just means I've got a lot to do. Honest.

To the overwhelming majority of you: You know this already and don't have to have me tell you. Carry on!

Michael Ledeen Reliably Suggests that our Troops Should Murder Surrendering Enemy Combatants

That, in the final analysis, can only be what is meant by saying, "terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not captured".

Despicable. Imagine Ledeen writing a piece that said, "Your daughter should sell her virginity to a pimp in order to ensure American security. She'll make an excellent whore and do her nation proud". Would anybody be offended if I suggested that Ledeen's estimation of your daughter is worthy of pistols at dawn?

Yet when Ledeen says, "Your son should commit cold blooded murder of surrendering prisoners in order to keep the quota of captured prisoners down. He'll make an excellent murderer and war criminal and do his nation proud" some of my readers, by some mysterious mental process, somehow decide that my bleat of protest against this insulting estimation of our troops is a sign *I* despise the troops, not Ledeen.

Crisis!

People are out having lives and fun, not watching TV!

Jimmy Akin Finds the Coolest Stuff

He finds a fun piece arguing that Erich von Daniken, the quack who wrote Chariots of the Gods, was (rather like Dan Brown) not even an original quack, since he basically stole ideas from weird fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft.

I've always had a sort of soft spot for Lovecraft. He gave me the creeps in high school with some scary stories, but when I return to him now I always smile at Daniel Handler's remark that "Just as Oscar Wilde noted that ''one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing,'' it's tough to venture into a Lovecraft story with a straight face".

The whole "ancient astronauts" thing seems to have hit its zenith about 30 years ago. Now it's largely the grist of shows like Stargate, not a subject for breathless documentaries of the "Could it Be True?" variety, which I (as a dumb teen) pondered with solemnity. I remember NOVA doing some gleeful debunkings of von Daniken years ago. I also remember coming across stuff he'd written after I passed the High School Sophomore Sophisticate phase and being chagrined at how seriously I'd taken this stuff. I remember at one point reading some passage where he conclude the New Testament was hopelessly useless as a source of data about Christ because one gospel recorded the titulus as "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews" while another renders it "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews". There comes a moment in a man's life when something inside says, "Anybody who could really have a serious difficulty with that is an idiot."

Good times, good times.

Cool, but only if you grew up in Western Washington in the 60s and 70s

I just found out that Joe Towey (Too-ee), who used to produce the "JP Patches" show and who was the hokey Count Dracula on the KIRO 7 Creature Feature on Friday nights (two fixtures of my childhood and adolescence) went to my beloved Blessed Sacrament parish till he died a few years back. His widow still goes there. This is the coolest thing ever. Another sign God has blessed our parish.

I'm gonna go way out on a limb here and guess that the blasts in India were not the work of Andrew Sullivan's dreaded "Christianists"

I stretch credulity even further and say I doubt this was the work of sinister Theocrats inspired by the totalitarian preaching of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.

I'm willing to stake my personal fortune on the wager that crazed Methodists, maniacal Baptists, and Fortress Catholics are all alike innocent of this latest crime of butchery against the innocent. Indeed, I'll bet even the ogres of the Continuing Anglican Church were not behind this latest crime against humanity.

Now: I wonder what religious tradition *is* the seedbed for this latest crime of violence? What conceivable common denominator might tie together this act with similar acts of brutality in the recent past? If you guess correctly, you may well be smarter than the entire Canadian media and the editorial board of the NY Times.

Check out Wash for Life

A reader writes:

I thought you might be interested in blogging about the Wash for Life. They describe the project on their website:

"Youth groups often hold car washes to support a cause. It is a way for them to raise money and to make a public statement about what is important to them.

We are organizing thousands of groups across the nation to hold car washes to benefit their local pregnancy care centers - all on the same day!

By participating in the Wash for Life, youth will help women and children in their own community, while at the same time being united in an event that sends a message to the whole nation, that this generation is pro-life.

Our goal is to have 2000 groups, and to raise a collective total of $1,000,000. We are here to help you get connected, hold your car wash, and change the culture."

Six students/grads from Thomas Aquinas College are working full-time this summer to organize this event.

Thanks for your time, and God bless!

Reason #983457439587354393989734325 to Homeschool

A reader writes:

I am a Canadian University student doing preliminary research for a short philosophy paper (8-10 pages) on the relationship between religious liberty and concepts of equality. Essentially, (I think) that I will argue that when equality is written as public policy and a social good, religious liberty suffers. I think that the examples of Catholic organizations (like Catholic Charities) in the States and Knights of Colombus in Canada will provide sufficent examples. However, this is a more theoretical paper and I am finding it difficult to find articles on point. Therefore, I was wondering if you could post this email on CAEI so that I might obtain some help from your readers. I would appreciate too if the sources where accessable online.

Yours,

Paul Barnes

Feel free to email this guy directly.

Sigh. Why bitter Trads wear me out

I wrote that I try to be no more scrupulous than the Church. For this reason, frankly, I also just. do. not. care about so much that vexes Traditionalist types about the liturgy. If it's reasonably celebrated with reverence, I'm not going to get a twisted bowel if the music sucks or there's a banner in the sanctuary. I'm here to worship God, not go all Nomad and sterilize imperfection.

Naturally, one of my Trad readers responds:

Let's apply this line of reasoning to other venues.

What if you were in a courtroom and the attorneys were in golf shirts and kakis; the judge was wore a tattered tie dyed robe; when the judge entered the baliff shouted "here come da judge, here come da judge, everybody rise 'cause here come da judge"; and the gallery rises and claps and whoops when the judge enters and when ever one of the attorneys makes a good point?

Could justice be achieved under such circumstances? Yes. However, are such surroundings conducive to the "serious" administration of justice? Would such surroundings give us faith in our legal system?

He is performing the standard Trad sleight of hand trick of assuming that aesthetics which displease him are deliberately intended as an insult to God. And so, he drags in the normal BS which portrays those of a different aesthetic, not merely as different, but as openly mocking and contemptuous of God and of the liturgy. Is there a banner in the sanctuary? Well, hell's bells! What's the difference between that and a priest who concludes the rite of consecration with "Over the lips, past the gums, look out stomach, here it comes!" and then jumps up on the altar to shout, "Whee! Look at me!" Non Trad aesthetic sensibilities are *sinful*! What other explanation can there be?

Perhaps such readers might try to find it in their hearts to imagine a musician who badly renders "On Eagle's Wings", not out of a malicious desire to mock God, but out of a desire to serve him with his meager talents. Perhaps they could consider the possibility that the little Filipino prayer group that made the ugly banners for the sanctuary was not deliberately setting out to spit in God's eye and call attention to itself, but was just offering the best they could to God?

Think "Widow's mite". Use your imagination. I know it's awfully hard for many Trads to take love seriously and not simply as a sign of Kumbaya weakness and imperfection which must be sterilized, but try.

Good question

"I do think there are huge differences between string theory and intelligent design. People who are doing string theory are earnest scientists who are trying to come up with ideas that are viable. People who are doing intelligent design aren't doing any of that. But the question is, is it falsifiable? And do we do a disservice to real theories by calling hypotheses or formalisms theories? Is a multiverse — in one form or another — science?"

The answer is "No". But it *does* give a great deal of aid and comfort to atheistic materialist attempts to account for the extreme fine tuning of the universe, so it gets preferential treatment. In fact, there are standard ways in which we check all the time to judge whether a phenomenon is an artifact of intelligence. It's what forensic science does whenever we figure out that a guy was shot and was not simply the unlucky recipient of a micrometeor strike. We have actual data we can look at in rendering judgments about the likelihood of something being a product of Mind.

But we have no data whatsoever with which to posit the existence of an infinite number of other universes that reduce our universe to Nothing Special. No data at all and no possible way of getting such data since other universes are, by definition, inaccessible to us.

But because data like specified complexity are inconvenient to an atheistic materialist project and multiverse hypotheses are extremely convenient to it, we persist in saying silly things like "there are huge differences between string theory and intelligent design". Oh yeah. Huge.

Praise God!

My mom is doing better today. Docs don't know why she crashed, nor why she's doing better, but she is.

Thank you, Lord Jesus!

We're having a "Talitha kumi" moment up here in Seattle.

A reader asks

Is this another case of disobedience to the local bishop ... or does the welfare of innocent children and adherence to the unchanging teachings of the Church re: parents as main educators in teaching of sexual matters to their children (emphasized esp. by JPII) overrule the bishop's actions and admonitions? Are the faithful forbidden from acting against a bishop when he allows error to remain while acting to forbid the truth from being preached? Should the faithful always remain in obedience to a "disobedient" bishop?

I don't know much about the particulars here, but I can see no reason why parents whose children are affected by an education program cannot voice their views on the merits of that program. The Church is not a military dictatorship.

Gotta Love Zippy

A judicious appraisal of How We Got Here. Don't miss his argument with tinfoil hat-wearer Rob in the combox.

An interesting development on the Crunchy Con thread

One of the reasons I think Crunchy Cons is worthy discussing is that, well, so many people's passions get aroused by it. I can't quite put my finger on why. For me, the book, for all it's manifestoness, comes off as exploratory and questioning, not as cocksure of all the answers. However, when you begin a book with a manifesto you do rather open yourself to giving people the impression that you have all the answers, or at least that you are propounding a coherent world view that describes and defines most of your actions.

I'm not convinced that the CC... philosophy? aesthetic? approach to life? is really capable of bearing that much weight yet, largely because I'm not quite sure what it is. That it is *real* seems to me to be without question. That it scratches where not a few people itch also seems to me to be significant. I found, like many readers, that there were places where I was nodding and asking myself "Why *do* I have to subscribe to this particular tribal taboo?" Similarly, in the reaction to the book, I've been struck by the peculiar and irrational hostility that some have for it (exemplified, for me, by that goofy exegesis of Hopkins the other day). But when we move beyond this fuzzy desire to buck tribalisms in favor of the small, local, old and particular and against the Right's newfound infatuation with worldly power at the expense of God and the family, things seem to me to fall apart. It seems to me it's not been thought through enough and may not be think-throughable. My own suspicion is that the wisest thing would be to go straight to the Church's Compendium of Social Teaching and not try to re-invent the wheel. In short, it seems to me that Crunchy Cons is a little klaxon sounding as righty dissents from Catholic social teaching begin to bear malignant fruit in our culture. To that end, it does yeoman service. But the ultimate goal is not a new political philosophy, but simply to return to the Church's social teaching.

Beyond that, what strikes me is the interesting matter of aesthetics in the comboxes. In particular, I'm struck by the fact that, while Dreher's most adamant critics insist that he is elevating mere taste preference to some kind of divine doctrine whereas, to our Lord, they are a matter of indifference, some of my traditionalist-minded readers are quite adamant about aesthetics as a kind of sacred duty.

All tastes are not equal. And the pre-VII Church understood this. One of the great post VII lies has been that music/church decor/etc. are only a matter of taste and don't really matter.

Then we see the reverse snobbery of claiming that they're "just folks" and are satisfied with tacky felt banner and poor guitar music. However, look at the beatiful churches built by our poor immigrant ancestors. They were meant to lift up the human soul. "On Eagles Wings" does not lift up the human. No doubt someone will claim this simply a matter of taste.

To which one observant person replies:

Well, since "tacky" felt banners and "poor" guitar music are judgement calls, then yes, it IS simply a matter of taste.

and is answered with more adamance:

This is pure subjectivism. Felt banners are "tacky" and "On Eagles Wings" is not good music. That's not a matter of taste, but rather of fact.

I'm of at least two (and possibly more) minds on all this. I think what Diane is reacting to is the tendency of (particularly acute among radical traditionalists) to elevate human tradition to the level of divine doctrine. As somebody who has wrestled with scruples in the past (and with Pharisees who tie up heavy burdens and who do not lift a finger to help) I can empathize. As our "Does God approve of mascara and pants?" thread makes clear, I have a deep antipathy to Pharisaic bullies who impose their notions about non-essentials on others. Romans 14 is my watchword on this. I try to be no more scrupulous than the Church. For this reason, frankly, I also just. do. not. care about so much that vexes Traditionalist types about the liturgy. If it's reasonably celebrated with reverence, I'm not going to get a twisted bowel if the music sucks or there's a banner in the sanctuary. I'm here to worship God, not go all Nomad and sterilize imperfection.

On the other hand, I recognize that there is, at the merely human level, such a thing as "aesthetics". I emphasize "at the human level" because it seems to me that, prescinding from making every discussion of taste a matter of spiritual worth, there is still such a thing as good and bad taste. "Dogs Playing Poker" is really not as good a piece of art as the Mona Lisa. I can dislike the Mona Lisa and decorate my house with Dogs Playing Poker and be a saint. But I can't be somebody with good aesthetic judgment.

Good aesthetic judgement matters. Aaron's priestly robes were to be "for beauty and for glory" according to Exodus. We should strive to make our liturgies as beautiful as they can be. But we should also recognize that, at the end of the day, the "weightier matters of the law" are even more important. The moment an inept liturgy or a felt banner or an off-key rendition of "Anthem" (O how I hate that song!) becomes more important than love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, long-suffering, and self-control we've begun to care about secondary things more than primary things. However, within their proper sphere, secondary things matter too and are not merely a matter of complete indifference.

The False Gospel of the Work Ethic

It turns out we're human beings, not human doings.

Update: I decided I was too cryptic here. Before anybody asks, no, I'm not endorsing socialism. I'm basically endorsing Chesterton's remark that revolutionaries generally have a pretty good idea of what's wrong, it's just that they are nuts when it comes to proposing what's right. This guy has his finger on a number of pathologies in a capitalist culture (much as capitalist critics have their finger on the pathologies of socialism).

Personally, I think the Church's social teaching is the way to go.

Immigration and the Curse of the Black Legend

Starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow.

Jeremy Lott to Superman Critics: Get a Life and Lighten Up!

Back in the days when conservatism meant smaller government, protection of the individual from a Leviathan armed with the power to torture and imprison indefinitely, and wariness about giving Caesar the power to spy on his citizens, one definition of conservatism was the "absence of ideology". Back then, it was Lefties for whom every single square inch of life was Political. For the conservative, some things were political, but much of life--the most important parts--were not.

Those days are gone--perhaps forever--as the idiotic hypersensitivity of the putative conservative media continues to search for new and stupid things to take offense at.

I suppose this is what I'm getting at when I'm talking about the weird irrationality of the Crunchy Contras

Does the world really need this sophomoric and sneering attack on Hopkins, simply because it could score a few points (at least for other sophomores) on Rod Dreher? I rather doubt it. The words "rhetorical overkill" come to mind. They also appear to be coming to the mind of the blog owner, who appears to be finally catching on to the fact that there's something odd and a bit disturbing about a blog that's about *nothing* except trashing Crunchy Cons 24/7. I don't really have a big dog in this fight my own self. Rod's a friend. I thought his book was a worthy attempt at get past some of the dumber tribalisms of both Left and Right. It seems to me to be exploring some of the same ground that Peter Kreeft is remarking on here.

It appears to me that Rod's book gives offense for two reasons. One of them I can credit. I think Gilbert Meilander is simply right when he faults Dreher in the following passage:

A strong sense of impatience runs through the pages of Crunchy Cons. Perhaps it is the impatience of the prophet, and, to the degree that it is, one must attempt to learn from it. Still, over the years I have not found the folks who sit in church with me to be as vapid as Dreher seems to think they are. I admit that, on those occasions when for one reason or another I have been at a Catholic Mass, the liturgy (let us not even mention the hymnody) has largely failed to move me.

Still, even as a Lutheran, I would never say (as Dreher does), that “if the only contact a typical American Catholic has with Catholic teaching and thought is what he hears at Mass, he will remain a self-satisfied ignoramus.” I would not say it, in part, because I have watched ordinary bourgeois folk struggle in their different ways to take seriously what happens in the church’s worship. And I would not say it, in part, because, evidently unlike Dreher, I do not suppose they were self-satisfied ignoramuses before coming to church. Nor do I think that “traditional Christian values [make] so little apparent difference in the lives many conservative believers lead.”

Readers of my blog will know that I have crossed swords with Rod in the past on similiar issues. Rod's perpetual frustration and disappointment with ordinary Catholics for being ordinary is something I have criticized in the past. My own experience tells me that that Jesus rather likes ordinary people since he made so many of us. So I do take Meilander's critique as just and set it as one of the faults of the book that it assumes so many ordinary Christians are self-satisfied ignorami (since, in fact, typical American Catholics *do* experience their faith primarily through the liturgy). I can see how offended readers can easily conflate that attitude with everything Crunchy Cons has to say.

But there's something else at work in the critics I find less easy to credit. It is the tribalism I spoke of earlier. If there is sometimes a sense at work in Crunchy Cons that tastes are being raised to sacred ideals, I can only add that Crunchy Cons does a rather nice job of pointing out that many sacred ideals of the Left and Right are, in fact, merely tastes. The conversation that kicked off the book was, after all, quite telling. Somehow, someway, organic veggies and tofu were dubbed "Lefty" and eating them said something about you--at least according to those imbued with the tribal spirit. In the same way, as a non-smoker, I am often amused to listen to Rush Limbaugh talking as though defending Big Tobacco was a noble counter-cultural and meritorious thing. It's not, or course. But somehow Righties have imbibed the notion that the preference for Big Business over Big Government is automatically meritorious, even when that business kills millions around the world.

Where Crunchy Cons seems to me to be at the top of its game (and where its critics seem to me to fall over themselves in increasing silliness) is in the sort of thing exemplified by that ridiculous hatchet job on Hopkins. It's the notion (primarily on the Right, which is where most of the attacks come from) that Dreher's entirely Catholic love of the small, local, old and particular is somehow contemptible. I can't for the life of me see why. The most reasonable critique I've seen in my comboxes says "while I love the idea when it comes from Chesterton, it just annoys me when I read it coming from Rod." This, at least, recognizes that Rod has a point while still struggling to get past the bad taste left in the mouth from the "self-satisfied ignorami" diagnoses of ordinary people that likewise bother me. However, many critiques don't seem to make this attempt. There's a curiously tribal slash and burn approach from not a few critics that puzzles me. I can't help but think that it's partly due to a tribalism that reads attacks on Righty tastes as violations of the Sacred.

I could be wrong. But it does strike me that way quite often.

Wanted: Campus Minister and Liturgical Director

Western Post-Christian Science: Working Hard to Create New Sins that Cry Out to Heaven for Vengeance