I'm on the radio tomorrow
I'll be on Lino Rulli’s show, “The Catholic Guy” on The Catholic Channel, Sirius 159 at 5:40 PM ET.
Now I'm off to lunch with Dale Ahlquist, Prez of the Chesterton Society. See you tomorrow!
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Things I Don't Get
I just don't get it when somebody writes:
This is a sentence that seems to me to be so far out of touch with reality it doesn't even rise to the dignity of being wrong. Questions abound. Who are these "too many people"? Who in his five wits remembers John Paul II as a capitalist, much less as a "capitalist and nothing but"? Who could conceivably look at the life of John Paul and *not* see that, yes indeed, there might be something more "complex" about him than "What's good for General Motors is good for America"? Who could compose such a sentence with a straight face?
The answer is, the same person (justifiably anonymous) who can also write, with a straight face:
Yessirree, if there's one thing the Church's pastors are *all* about, it's constantly preaching about abortion and gay marriage in order to curry favor with the GOP.
Quick quiz: how many readers have heard more than one homily against abortion or gay marriage in say, the past three years. More than five? How many readers were oblivious to the fact that the Church feeds the homeless, helps in disaster areas, and has generally been known for statements like "No more war! Never again war!" (to quote capitalist John Paul II).
Meanwhile, another thing I just don't get is how somebody could say that approving of the following list which contains these basically sane ideas:
Stop Renditions to Torture
Abolish Secret Prisons
Hold Abusers Accountable
Hold Fair Trials
Prohibit Abusive Interrogations
Respect the Laws of War
Protect Victims of Persecution From Being Defined As Terrorists
End Indefinite Detention Without Charge
...is "a cheap exercise in moral vanity".
I always thought that saying "we should uphold the Church's teaching on ius in bello" was, like, what Catholics are supposed to do. I got this impression because I was always taught that "We should uphold the Church's teaching on abortion, the family and the sanctity of life" and when I did so, nobody ever told *that* was a cheap exercise in moral vanity. However, as I am learning, much apparently depends on whose ox is being gored.
I just don't get it when somebody writes:
Too many people remember John Paul II as a capitalist and nothing but though he may have been more complex.
This is a sentence that seems to me to be so far out of touch with reality it doesn't even rise to the dignity of being wrong. Questions abound. Who are these "too many people"? Who in his five wits remembers John Paul II as a capitalist, much less as a "capitalist and nothing but"? Who could conceivably look at the life of John Paul and *not* see that, yes indeed, there might be something more "complex" about him than "What's good for General Motors is good for America"? Who could compose such a sentence with a straight face?
The answer is, the same person (justifiably anonymous) who can also write, with a straight face:
This image, carried by the church, through homilies that focus more on tabloid issues of abortion and gay marriage to influence elections, do little to remind the people of the good work that the church does in feeding the homeless, helping in disaster areas and working to solve issues of war.
Yessirree, if there's one thing the Church's pastors are *all* about, it's constantly preaching about abortion and gay marriage in order to curry favor with the GOP.
Quick quiz: how many readers have heard more than one homily against abortion or gay marriage in say, the past three years. More than five? How many readers were oblivious to the fact that the Church feeds the homeless, helps in disaster areas, and has generally been known for statements like "No more war! Never again war!" (to quote capitalist John Paul II).
Meanwhile, another thing I just don't get is how somebody could say that approving of the following list which contains these basically sane ideas:
Stop Renditions to Torture
Abolish Secret Prisons
Hold Abusers Accountable
Hold Fair Trials
Prohibit Abusive Interrogations
Respect the Laws of War
Protect Victims of Persecution From Being Defined As Terrorists
End Indefinite Detention Without Charge
...is "a cheap exercise in moral vanity".
I always thought that saying "we should uphold the Church's teaching on ius in bello" was, like, what Catholics are supposed to do. I got this impression because I was always taught that "We should uphold the Church's teaching on abortion, the family and the sanctity of life" and when I did so, nobody ever told *that* was a cheap exercise in moral vanity. However, as I am learning, much apparently depends on whose ox is being gored.
Some Folk were Wondering How to Help Support the Beloved Cow* on his Militia Immaculata Mission
Here's how:
* See here for further info.
Here's how:
Dear Family, Friends, and Benefactors of the MI –
We write to you to ask for your support and partnership in an evangelization mission to youth for the spring of 2007. We, as members of the MAX-'007 team, feel called to the direct personal interaction of evangelization, we know that there can be no success without your spiritual and material help.
Pope Benedict XVI issued a commission to young people for the year 2007: "Love one another as I have loved you!" [Jn. 13:34]. In response to this commission, the Militia Immaculata, a Vatican approved movement founded by St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, is launching a mission of evangelization for the spring of 2007: MAX-'007.
MAX-'007 is a team of Catholic young adult leaders and Conventual Franciscan priests touring across the United States and Canada to evangelize youth, bringing them closer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ through the sacramental life, formation in the teachings of the Catholic Church, and through the formal act of self-giving recommended by St. Maximilian, the total consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
We are in need of your support, spiritually and materially, for the success of MAX-'007. The projected costs, including food, lodging, transportation and supplies, are estimated at $20,000 (US). We ask that you prayerfully consider a donation to support MAX-'007 as we start our mission to bring the Gospel's message of love to youth. Even more importantly, as much as your material support is appreciated and necessary, your spiritual support is crucial for the success of this sacred mission.
Donations by credit card can be accepted through the MI Youth website, which also includes dates of upcoming MAX-'007 events. Also, check in with the MAX-'007 team on the road for the latest news and photos on the MAX-'007 blog.
Thank you for your help! Please continue to pray for us!
In the Two Hearts,
Shevawn Pearson,
MI Youth National Director
& The MAX-'007 Team
* See here for further info.
A reader writes:
St. Jude, pray for this person. Lord, hear our prayer.
I am asking for as many prayers as I can get for a very close family member who just found out has a "mass" on his brain. Would you please ask your readers to join me in a novena to St. Jude on his behalf.
St. Jude, pray for this person. Lord, hear our prayer.
Speaking of Lenten Creativity
A reader writes:
A reader writes:
This Lent I'm doing something different, and I'm sort of quasi-documenting at this site: Lent for Hillary and Barack. Basically, I'm praying for Democrats who might become President. Especially in regards to the issue of abortion.
I want no credit, in fact, if you post a link, please do not use my name. It won't have advertising, it doesn't offer comments. I offer it in the spirit of getting as many people to lift these prayers up as possible. Seems like a different and possibly productive way to try to impact this tragedy.
A reader writes:
Lovely to hear from you. Yup, there's lots of stuff out there on the liturgical calendar and ways to observe the different sorts of sacred time. During the Lenten season, the best guide is probably to focus on the normal activities at a (healthy) Catholic parish.
Just as Christmas recalls the birth of Christ, so Lent recalls his time in the desert, fasting and preparing for his mission of death and resurrection. In the same way, we are to enter into a time of preparation for the Easter mysteries through the three great means of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The idea is greater detachment from the world, the flesh, and the devil and great *attachment* to God by the power of the Holy Spirit. God, being generous, is pleased by the smallest movements of the will in his direction and will honor whatever you do toward that. There's a lot of room for creativity, but for the newbie, there's also a number of traditional things that can be done with the fambly. For instance, many parishes do a "rice bowl" project where you throw you change through Lent and then take it to Church and they send it off to the poor. Of course, there are other forms of almsgiving than money, such as time and talent. Some parishes have a simple communal meal on Fridays and listen to a Lenten reading or meditation. If you are exploring the Rosary, Lent is a good time to give that a shot (Try my friend Amy Welborn's book Praying the Rosary).
Lent is a spare time, but not a barren one. It is *tonic*, not sad. Indeed, right in the middle of Lent, the priest is bidden to wear rose vestments to remind us that Lent is a joyful time, because the whole point is Easter.
One book you might find useful is "A Continual Feast" by Evelyn Birge Vitz. Catholic faith is profoundly incarnational, and so has a genius for celebrating the faith yummily.
Finally, to get the hang of fasting, I'd stick with the guidelines (very easy) of the American bishops, which are as follows:
The idea behind fasting is not punishment but *sacrifice* (as in "Offer your body a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship" Romans 12). Indeed, virtually the whole Lenten program is laid out in the opening verses of Romans 12:an offering of body, mind, and spirit. If you want to offer spiritual worship, says Paul, offer your body. Seems counter-intuitive if you've been raised to think of fasting as "religion" or "empty ritual" and true spirituality as vaguely disembodied. But Paul sees everything through the lens of the incarnation. When we offer our bodies (and what is more bodily than our appetite) we are offering ourselves, including our spirits, to God.
That, I reckon, is probably enough to get your toes wet this Lent. You might also contact my friend Amy Welborn to see if she's got any other ideas for how to make this a more fruitful Lent for your family. One common Catholic custom is "giving up" something for Lent. Our family has basically given up sugar for Lent, which is both a sacrifice and something we've been needing to do. But here again, creativity is encouraged. The idea, I repeat, is not punishment but something *doable* which will also do somebody some good. Some families fast from TV, others "give up" their normal Sundays to go work in a soup kitchen. There's plenty of options and Amy may have more ideas. The trick is, go slow so you don't put your kids in a state of shock. :)
Blessings on your exploration of Lent!
Recently my husband and I have started exploring the Church Calendar. We are both Protestants but are searching out Catholicism, just to give you a quick back ground. Anyway I am growing very frustrated with local families celebrating Jewish Tradition and not our Christian Traditions. However there is not much out there for us on practical implications of these different Church Seasons. So my question is this. Here we are in the Lental Season, how do we bring this time to life for our kids. Christmas is about Christ's birth. We usually give our kids three gifts each in accordance with how many gifts the Christ child was given. We also attend a special service at church and usually have a big feast. All is focused around His birth. How does this look for the season of Lent? Do you and your family do anything special? Are there any good books on the subject. I saw an advent calendar at our local bookstore is there something like this for Lent?
Searching for Truth,
Lovely to hear from you. Yup, there's lots of stuff out there on the liturgical calendar and ways to observe the different sorts of sacred time. During the Lenten season, the best guide is probably to focus on the normal activities at a (healthy) Catholic parish.
Just as Christmas recalls the birth of Christ, so Lent recalls his time in the desert, fasting and preparing for his mission of death and resurrection. In the same way, we are to enter into a time of preparation for the Easter mysteries through the three great means of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The idea is greater detachment from the world, the flesh, and the devil and great *attachment* to God by the power of the Holy Spirit. God, being generous, is pleased by the smallest movements of the will in his direction and will honor whatever you do toward that. There's a lot of room for creativity, but for the newbie, there's also a number of traditional things that can be done with the fambly. For instance, many parishes do a "rice bowl" project where you throw you change through Lent and then take it to Church and they send it off to the poor. Of course, there are other forms of almsgiving than money, such as time and talent. Some parishes have a simple communal meal on Fridays and listen to a Lenten reading or meditation. If you are exploring the Rosary, Lent is a good time to give that a shot (Try my friend Amy Welborn's book Praying the Rosary).
Lent is a spare time, but not a barren one. It is *tonic*, not sad. Indeed, right in the middle of Lent, the priest is bidden to wear rose vestments to remind us that Lent is a joyful time, because the whole point is Easter.
One book you might find useful is "A Continual Feast" by Evelyn Birge Vitz. Catholic faith is profoundly incarnational, and so has a genius for celebrating the faith yummily.
Finally, to get the hang of fasting, I'd stick with the guidelines (very easy) of the American bishops, which are as follows:
1) Abstinence on all the Fridays of Lent, and on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. No meat may be eaten on days of abstinence.
Catholics 14 years and older are bound to abstain from meat. Invalids, pregnant and nursing mothers are exempt.
2) Fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Fasting means having only one full meal to maintain one's strength. Two smaller, meatless and penitential meals are permitted according to one's needs, but they should not together equal the one full meal. Eating solid foods between meals is not permitted.
Catholics from age 18 through age 59 are bound to fast. Again, invalids, pregnant and nursing mothers are exempt.
3) Friday Abstinence Outside of Lent.
It should be noted that Fridays throughout the year are designated days of penance. The Code of Canon Law states that Friday is a day of abstinence from meat throughout the year. The American Bishops have allowed us to choose a different form of penance rather than abstaining from meat, but there must be some form of penance, for this is the day we commemorate Christ's suffering and death. The bishops stress that "[a]mong the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance...we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat" (Pastoral Statement on Fasting and Abstinence).
The idea behind fasting is not punishment but *sacrifice* (as in "Offer your body a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship" Romans 12). Indeed, virtually the whole Lenten program is laid out in the opening verses of Romans 12:an offering of body, mind, and spirit. If you want to offer spiritual worship, says Paul, offer your body. Seems counter-intuitive if you've been raised to think of fasting as "religion" or "empty ritual" and true spirituality as vaguely disembodied. But Paul sees everything through the lens of the incarnation. When we offer our bodies (and what is more bodily than our appetite) we are offering ourselves, including our spirits, to God.
That, I reckon, is probably enough to get your toes wet this Lent. You might also contact my friend Amy Welborn to see if she's got any other ideas for how to make this a more fruitful Lent for your family. One common Catholic custom is "giving up" something for Lent. Our family has basically given up sugar for Lent, which is both a sacrifice and something we've been needing to do. But here again, creativity is encouraged. The idea, I repeat, is not punishment but something *doable* which will also do somebody some good. Some families fast from TV, others "give up" their normal Sundays to go work in a soup kitchen. There's plenty of options and Amy may have more ideas. The trick is, go slow so you don't put your kids in a state of shock. :)
Blessings on your exploration of Lent!
My Condolences to Dom and Melanie Bettinelli
...who miscarried and can use our prayers. May God grant them peace and consolation in this sad time, through Christ our Lord.
...who miscarried and can use our prayers. May God grant them peace and consolation in this sad time, through Christ our Lord.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Catholic Guilt is Hogwash
How often do people have to see some utterly brazen extrovert on the tube moan about "Catholic guilt" before they wake up and realize, "Waitaminnit! This person wouldn't know guilt if it bit them on the nose!" Here's a priceless piece on Gwen Stefani's "struggle" with "Catholic guilt".
When somebody like Madonna complains about "Catholic guilt" what they mean is, "I resent the feeling my conscience gives me when I blaspheme God." Being angry at this is like being angry at the feeling your fingertips afflict you with when you touch a red hot stove. Most sane people stop touching the stove and go to the sacrament of reconciliation for bandaids and burn ointment. Some people, however, have figured out ways to procure lots of morphine and novocaine so they can go on touching the stove.
I learned to dismiss the Catholic guilt thing before I became a Catholic. I was raised completely outside the Church and I can tell you all about guilt. I suffered from it, not because somebody was "making me feel guilty" but because I *was* guilty. When I met ex-Catholics who hated reconciliation, I felt like I was talking to people from another planet. "You mean, you have a sacrament where you are authoritatively absolved of your sins by the power of Christ and given the power of the Holy Spirit to start all over again? I've been searching for that all my life! What are you? Crazy? You'd turn your back on that for some crap about self-affirmation and Being True to Yourself?"
HT to the Curt Jester for the link
How often do people have to see some utterly brazen extrovert on the tube moan about "Catholic guilt" before they wake up and realize, "Waitaminnit! This person wouldn't know guilt if it bit them on the nose!" Here's a priceless piece on Gwen Stefani's "struggle" with "Catholic guilt".
When somebody like Madonna complains about "Catholic guilt" what they mean is, "I resent the feeling my conscience gives me when I blaspheme God." Being angry at this is like being angry at the feeling your fingertips afflict you with when you touch a red hot stove. Most sane people stop touching the stove and go to the sacrament of reconciliation for bandaids and burn ointment. Some people, however, have figured out ways to procure lots of morphine and novocaine so they can go on touching the stove.
I learned to dismiss the Catholic guilt thing before I became a Catholic. I was raised completely outside the Church and I can tell you all about guilt. I suffered from it, not because somebody was "making me feel guilty" but because I *was* guilty. When I met ex-Catholics who hated reconciliation, I felt like I was talking to people from another planet. "You mean, you have a sacrament where you are authoritatively absolved of your sins by the power of Christ and given the power of the Holy Spirit to start all over again? I've been searching for that all my life! What are you? Crazy? You'd turn your back on that for some crap about self-affirmation and Being True to Yourself?"
HT to the Curt Jester for the link
Bush Derangement Syndrome Mutates
Whatever virus causes Bush Derangement Syndrome seems to have undergone a mutation. In the past, mere mention of Bush's name was sufficient to make lefties fill the air with dire predictions of Martial Law, Enabling Acts, concentration camps and cries of Hitler Redivivus. Normal people have long wondered how such people will react when Bush quietly leaves office on January 20, 2009. We felt bad that an inability to deal with Bush rationally leaves such poor souls reduced to shrieking rants.
However, as American political culture becomes as fissiparous as uranium, the radiation that results from it appears to be creating mutant viruses that are now beginning to infect members of the Right. For example, if you criticize GOP politicos for their failure to provide for the welfare the wounded soldiers they profess to care about, you may suddenly get this sort of utterly deranged response:
The fascinating thing is how the victim of the BDS(2) virus uses exactly the same rhetoric about Bush as the victims of the original virus. The only difference is that the environmental stimulus is slightly different. Originally, the virus was triggered by some mild observation like, "Bush seems like a nice guy" and resulted in torrent of delusional invective against something called "Bushitler". In its mutated form, even the *slightest* criticism of an obvious problem results in an upheaval of auditory hallucination ranging from "Bush is Hitler" "Dems will save us" to "America is worse than Nazi Germany" to "We deserve everything bad that's happened to us."
Sad, really.
Whatever virus causes Bush Derangement Syndrome seems to have undergone a mutation. In the past, mere mention of Bush's name was sufficient to make lefties fill the air with dire predictions of Martial Law, Enabling Acts, concentration camps and cries of Hitler Redivivus. Normal people have long wondered how such people will react when Bush quietly leaves office on January 20, 2009. We felt bad that an inability to deal with Bush rationally leaves such poor souls reduced to shrieking rants.
However, as American political culture becomes as fissiparous as uranium, the radiation that results from it appears to be creating mutant viruses that are now beginning to infect members of the Right. For example, if you criticize GOP politicos for their failure to provide for the welfare the wounded soldiers they profess to care about, you may suddenly get this sort of utterly deranged response:
Certainly, all our wounded and vets deserve the best care money can buy.
Thank Heaven, the glorious new Dem Congress is now in POWER and here to save us!
This (providing for our wounded and vets) huge priority was accomplished in the Glory First 100 Hours. RIGHT??
And, now I get it. I can't believe I've been so dense. What a dope am I!
Bush has done little to end abortion. He failed to appoint enough pro-life in Fed judges. He could have done better to help gov. fund faith based charities. He's done nothing to end the drug problem, illegitimnacy, divorce, promiscuity, the destruction of the family, etc.
And, Bush is worse than Hitler. America is worse than Nazi Germany (should emulate blessed paradises like the Ottoman Empire, Red Cina and USSR). Cheney and Karl Rove pulled off 9/11 so they could start a war to get oil and kill brown people. Bush is tapping the Dixie Chicks phones so he can put them in concentration camps. They're torturing innocent young Qran scholars and using the harvested blood to make barbecue sauce. They put thru tax cuts for the rich so they could cut off welfare and cut public kool teachers' pay.
We deserve everything bad that's ever happended to us.
The fascinating thing is how the victim of the BDS(2) virus uses exactly the same rhetoric about Bush as the victims of the original virus. The only difference is that the environmental stimulus is slightly different. Originally, the virus was triggered by some mild observation like, "Bush seems like a nice guy" and resulted in torrent of delusional invective against something called "Bushitler". In its mutated form, even the *slightest* criticism of an obvious problem results in an upheaval of auditory hallucination ranging from "Bush is Hitler" "Dems will save us" to "America is worse than Nazi Germany" to "We deserve everything bad that's happened to us."
Sad, really.
Weirdly Tin-Eared Interpretation of the Gospel
Attempts to understand the gospel purely in political terms always strike me as just as wrong-headed as attempts to explain human beings in purely physical terms. His kingdom is emphatically not of this world.
By the way, though the blog I link appears to be written by some sort of believer, the general "Paul invented Christianity" project is one often enthusiastically embraced by atheists. When it is, it typically constitutes a particularly pointed illustration of two theses this blog enthusiastically advances.
The first thesis is "If Protestantism represents the triumph of Paul over Peter, then fundamentalism represents the triumph of Paul over Christ."
The second thesis is "Scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist."
The "Paul invented Christianity" school of thought is a typically curious extension of the Fundamentalist itch to scrape away the horrible "accretions" which the Church has allegedly piled on top of the True Original Message of Christ[TM]. Sooner or later, if you give that kind of thinking its head, it will discover that not only did the evil Roman Church utterly distort the original teaching of the apostle Paul, but that Paul utterly distorted the original teaching of Christ. You wind up with some variation on the theme of how Jesus and his Jewish disciples never intended what Paul wound up inventing.
The problem with this notion is that the record completely contradicts it. Contrary to both believing and unbelieving fundamentalists, Paul doesn't wander around like the Lone Ranger, just making up Paulism and declaring it to be "revelation from Christ" without any reference to the teaching of the Twelve. Here's a little passage from my By What Authority?:
Indeed, the principle point that Paul advances in his letters--salvation by grace apart from works of the law--is a point which, according to Acts, was first articulated in *council* by the *first Pope* (Acts 15:11). How this establishes Paul as the true founder of Christianity is beyond me. It looks very much like, in all the essentials, Christianity is founded by, well, Christ.
Attempts to understand the gospel purely in political terms always strike me as just as wrong-headed as attempts to explain human beings in purely physical terms. His kingdom is emphatically not of this world.
By the way, though the blog I link appears to be written by some sort of believer, the general "Paul invented Christianity" project is one often enthusiastically embraced by atheists. When it is, it typically constitutes a particularly pointed illustration of two theses this blog enthusiastically advances.
The first thesis is "If Protestantism represents the triumph of Paul over Peter, then fundamentalism represents the triumph of Paul over Christ."
The second thesis is "Scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist."
The "Paul invented Christianity" school of thought is a typically curious extension of the Fundamentalist itch to scrape away the horrible "accretions" which the Church has allegedly piled on top of the True Original Message of Christ[TM]. Sooner or later, if you give that kind of thinking its head, it will discover that not only did the evil Roman Church utterly distort the original teaching of the apostle Paul, but that Paul utterly distorted the original teaching of Christ. You wind up with some variation on the theme of how Jesus and his Jewish disciples never intended what Paul wound up inventing.
The problem with this notion is that the record completely contradicts it. Contrary to both believing and unbelieving fundamentalists, Paul doesn't wander around like the Lone Ranger, just making up Paulism and declaring it to be "revelation from Christ" without any reference to the teaching of the Twelve. Here's a little passage from my By What Authority?:
After all, didn't Paul say to the Galatians that he did not receive his gospel "from any man, nor was I taught it, rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." Yes. But he said so, not to issue a sweeping denial of any dependence on the teaching of the Twelve, but to deny the claims of certain people that he wasn't really an apostle and didn't really have authority from Christ. To prove this, we need only note that Paul, a few lines later, made certain to have his preaching vetted by the Twelve, "for fear I was running or had run my race in vain." Further, even a cursory reading of the New Testament shows that Paul has no difficulty relying on tons of apostolic Tradition in the form of doxologies, hymns, stories and prayers which he faithfully passes along without blinking an eye. This is why, even though he did not know Christ during his earthly ministry, Paul can nonetheless frequently quote and allude to historical sayings of Christ, facts about his life, trial, death, resurrection and ascension. [Footnote: For example, Paul knows Jesus is a Jew of David's line (Rom. 1:3); that John the Baptist was his forerunner and had disavowed any claim to his own Messiahship (Acts 13:24-25); that his chief disciples were Peter, James and John (Galatians 2:9); that he had predicted his return "like a thief" (1 Thes. 5:4); that he had instituted the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:23-25); that he had been rejected by the Jewish leaders (1 Thes. 2:15), tried under Pontius Pilate (1 Tim. 5:13) and crucified for us (Gal. 3:1); that he was laid in a tomb (Acts 13:29); that he had been raised from the dead and seen by many witnesses (1 Cor. 15:3-8); and that he had ascended (Eph. 4:9-10).] All these data are quite obviously treated by Paul as part of a common deposit of apostolic Tradition to which all Christians are privy, not as things mystically revealed to him on the Damascus Road.
So the mere fact that Christ revealed himself to Paul without any human mediation does not mean Paul was not subsequently instructed in the faith of the Twelve by the Christian community. On the contrary, Paul deliberately "went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days." There he also met James. Then, he spent years cooling his heels in Tarsus and Antioch before he was sent on his first mission. During that time he would have done what Scripture said all newbie Christians did: learning, as Hebrews puts it, the "elementary teachings about Christ" and "instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgement." We forget that Paul was taught, like every other new Christian, that Christ had told the Twelve, "He who listens to you listens to me" (and thus to make no distinction whatever between the Tradition of the apostles and the authoritative revelation of Christ). And forgetting this, we thus forget that Paul often appeals to this Tradition handed down from the Twelve--and that he does so in a way which plainly shows that such Tradition is, for him, "from the Lord."
That is why Paul twice tells the Corinthians that "what I received I passed on to you." What did he receive? Well, in this case, the teaching concerning the events surrounding the Lord's Supper and the Resurrection. From whom did he receive it? "From the Lord," says Paul. Is Paul therefore saying he was given direct, Spirit-infused knowledge of these events?
No. He is saying he was given an apostolic paradosis. For in using the terms "receiving and handing on," Paul is repeating standard rabbinical jargon which means literally, "I am transmitting, without addition or subtraction, a tradition I have been taught." And since "he who listens to the apostles listens to Christ," Paul simply refers to the traditions as "from the Lord" since they are, in fact, the core of what the apostles have, by Christ's authority, drummed into their churches wherever they have gone.
That is why the two gospel stories he relates in 1 Corinthians (of the institution of the Lord's Supper and of the Resurrection) bear such a strong resemblance to other accounts of these events (in the written gospels) which are separated from this epistle by many years and many miles. Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul are drawing on a common paradosis, known to all the churches, which has set the words of the story in a sort of liturgical concrete that admits very little variation. And it is precisely adherence to this common paradosis which Paul commends when he tells the Corinthians:"I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings, just as I passed them on to you."
Indeed, the principle point that Paul advances in his letters--salvation by grace apart from works of the law--is a point which, according to Acts, was first articulated in *council* by the *first Pope* (Acts 15:11). How this establishes Paul as the true founder of Christianity is beyond me. It looks very much like, in all the essentials, Christianity is founded by, well, Christ.
May He Rest in Peace
A reader writes:
May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.
A reader writes:
I thought you should know Fr John Sheley a frequenter of your blog and occasional commentor died on Feb 15th. He was 60 and put out a very good weekly commentary on each Sunday mass readings a week in advance. A very good and holy man with a lively sense of humour. See here.
May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.
Parts of the Catechism We Can Just Ignore
This is one of those squishy, liberal, pollyanna parts of the Catechism we Americans are free to ignore. In fact, most everything the Church has to say in its social teaching is stuff we can laugh off as the product of Euro-weenie utopianism, except for the bits about abortion and gay marriage.
2315 The accumulation of arms strikes many as a paradoxically suitable way of deterring potential adversaries from war. They see it as the most effective means of ensuring peace among nations. This method of deterrence gives rise to strong moral reservations. The arms race does not ensure peace. Far from eliminating the causes of war, it risks aggravating them. Spending enormous sums to produce ever new types of weapons impedes efforts to aid needy populations;111 it thwarts the development of peoples. Over-armament multiplies reasons for conflict and increases the danger of escalation.
2316 The production and the sale of arms affect the common good of nations and of the international community. Hence public authorities have the right and duty to regulate them. The short-term pursuit of private or collective interests cannot legitimate undertakings that promote violence and conflict among nations and compromise the international juridical order.
This is one of those squishy, liberal, pollyanna parts of the Catechism we Americans are free to ignore. In fact, most everything the Church has to say in its social teaching is stuff we can laugh off as the product of Euro-weenie utopianism, except for the bits about abortion and gay marriage.
A reader writes:
Father, please grant your protection and healing to this child of yours and give his family peace and comfort in this hard time. We ask this through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
I just learned that one of my 7th grade Parish Religious Education students, Nick, was taken to the hospital yesterday and had to have surgery today. He is in extremely serious condition (he may die). Please say a prayer for Nick and his family (he is one of six) tonight.
Father, please grant your protection and healing to this child of yours and give his family peace and comfort in this hard time. We ask this through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Sandra Miesel writes:
Father, grant healing to this woman and peace to her family. Grant the doctors skill in their work so that she can experience your healing grace in body, mind, and spirit. Through the prayers of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Luke, we ask your mercy, life and joy for these people through our Lord Jesus Christ.
A friend of my daughter, only 28 years old, is already dealing with serious medical problems from a chonic auto-immune disease, injuries from a fall, and the effects of recent stroke. On 1 March she will undergo brain surgery that will kill, cure, or leave her brain damaged. Please ask the blogosphere to pray for her.
Father, grant healing to this woman and peace to her family. Grant the doctors skill in their work so that she can experience your healing grace in body, mind, and spirit. Through the prayers of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Luke, we ask your mercy, life and joy for these people through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Pro-Abortion Blackshorts on the March!
"Choice" Means Catholic Hospitals Choosing Between Knucking Under to the Culture of Death or Facing Utter Destruction
"Choice" Means Catholic Hospitals Choosing Between Knucking Under to the Culture of Death or Facing Utter Destruction
Oh look. A Shocking Revelation that Shakes Christianity to its Very Foundations (SRTSCTIVF). Again.
So James Cameron has found the ossuary of somebody named "Jesus". For a first century tomb, this is sort of like finding the ossuary of somebody named "Bob". But wait! There's more! The tomb also has ossuaries of people with first century equivalents of "Mary", "John", "Bill", "Susan", and "Jim". And DNA tests reveal... that they are related to each other!
Clearly then, these are the bones of Jesus. Mr. Cameron isn't a) eager to make a quick buck like his archaeologist critics say. Nor is he filled with overweening vainglory at the thought that He, James Cameron, Hath Single-Handedly Defeated the Lord of Hosts. Nope. He's just humble film-maker.
Whenever stuff like this hits the papers, they always call it "controversial" and they always speculate on how Christians are going to cope with this latest SRTSCTIVF. What they never ask is how other cranks with other SRTSCTIVF will cope. After all, we now know so much about Jesus courtesy of these other folk, and yet it's awfully hard to fit it all under one roof. As Anthony Sacramone has pointed out, depending on which Discoverer of the Shocking Truth you talk to:
• Jesus was a woman.
• Jesus was a space alien and is buried in Japan.
• Jesus survived the crucifixion and is buried in Kashmir.
• Jesus was a Buddhist.
• Jesus was a Muslim.
• Jesus was a Mormon.
• Jesus was a magician.
• Jesus was a Gnostic.
• Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman solider.
• Jesus never existed.
• Jesus was never executed.
• Jesus was married and had children.
• Jesus was a social revolutionary when he was not a mere Mediterranean peasant.
• Jesus was an itinerant visionary whose real teachings exist only in distorted, fragmented form.
• Jesus was insane.
Sooner or later, the Discoverers of the True Jesus are going to have to hold some sort of ecumenical council to sort all this out. After all, if Jesus never existed, then it's going to be tough for him to have bones and DNA. Dittos if he was eaten by wild dogs. If he was a woman, than marriage to Mary Magdalene and a huge family gets tough. If he was an alien, then the DNA will be very curious to behold. Sooner or later, some of these guys will need to be ruthlessly excommunicated by the Keepers of the True Anti-Faith.
But I can't for the life of me see why Christians need to do anything other than chuckle.
So James Cameron has found the ossuary of somebody named "Jesus". For a first century tomb, this is sort of like finding the ossuary of somebody named "Bob". But wait! There's more! The tomb also has ossuaries of people with first century equivalents of "Mary", "John", "Bill", "Susan", and "Jim". And DNA tests reveal... that they are related to each other!
Clearly then, these are the bones of Jesus. Mr. Cameron isn't a) eager to make a quick buck like his archaeologist critics say. Nor is he filled with overweening vainglory at the thought that He, James Cameron, Hath Single-Handedly Defeated the Lord of Hosts. Nope. He's just humble film-maker.
Whenever stuff like this hits the papers, they always call it "controversial" and they always speculate on how Christians are going to cope with this latest SRTSCTIVF. What they never ask is how other cranks with other SRTSCTIVF will cope. After all, we now know so much about Jesus courtesy of these other folk, and yet it's awfully hard to fit it all under one roof. As Anthony Sacramone has pointed out, depending on which Discoverer of the Shocking Truth you talk to:
• Jesus was a woman.
• Jesus was a space alien and is buried in Japan.
• Jesus survived the crucifixion and is buried in Kashmir.
• Jesus was a Buddhist.
• Jesus was a Muslim.
• Jesus was a Mormon.
• Jesus was a magician.
• Jesus was a Gnostic.
• Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman solider.
• Jesus never existed.
• Jesus was never executed.
• Jesus was married and had children.
• Jesus was a social revolutionary when he was not a mere Mediterranean peasant.
• Jesus was an itinerant visionary whose real teachings exist only in distorted, fragmented form.
• Jesus was insane.
Sooner or later, the Discoverers of the True Jesus are going to have to hold some sort of ecumenical council to sort all this out. After all, if Jesus never existed, then it's going to be tough for him to have bones and DNA. Dittos if he was eaten by wild dogs. If he was a woman, than marriage to Mary Magdalene and a huge family gets tough. If he was an alien, then the DNA will be very curious to behold. Sooner or later, some of these guys will need to be ruthlessly excommunicated by the Keepers of the True Anti-Faith.
But I can't for the life of me see why Christians need to do anything other than chuckle.
Hey Connecticut! Now There's a Catholic Blog for Youse Guys!
A reader writes:
A reader writes:
We are a Catholic couple living in the Archdiocese of Hartford, CT. Earlier this month we were inspired (if that's the right word) by Hartford's ranking in the Crisis magazine study (as the worst diocese in the U.S.) to start our own blog. It's called The Connecticut Catholic and can be viewed here.
Ten Steps to Restore the United States' Moral Authority
Sounds perfectly sane to me. However, experience has taught me that there are basically two approaches to documents like this. Some will read the docuemnt and evaluate it in light of Catholic teaching. Others will skip the document, read the signatories, and reject it as an artifact from the Wrong Tribe.
Sounds perfectly sane to me. However, experience has taught me that there are basically two approaches to documents like this. Some will read the docuemnt and evaluate it in light of Catholic teaching. Others will skip the document, read the signatories, and reject it as an artifact from the Wrong Tribe.
Jewish State vs. Catholic State
We lost the Papal States and became a better Faith for it. I sometimes wonder if losing the secular state of Israel would really be the end of the world for Judaism. But, of course, much depends on the way in which it is lost. The loss of the Papal States did not involve anybody being shoved into the sea. But since Israelis themselves seem bent on demographic self-annihilation in the service of a sex-and-abortion lifestyle indistinguishable from the west, it may be only a matter of time before we find out the answer to my question. If babies are God's way of saying the world should continue, then contraception and abortion are man's way of saying it should end. A massive military cannot supply what a culture that has abandoned a love of children lacks.
We lost the Papal States and became a better Faith for it. I sometimes wonder if losing the secular state of Israel would really be the end of the world for Judaism. But, of course, much depends on the way in which it is lost. The loss of the Papal States did not involve anybody being shoved into the sea. But since Israelis themselves seem bent on demographic self-annihilation in the service of a sex-and-abortion lifestyle indistinguishable from the west, it may be only a matter of time before we find out the answer to my question. If babies are God's way of saying the world should continue, then contraception and abortion are man's way of saying it should end. A massive military cannot supply what a culture that has abandoned a love of children lacks.
I'm intrigued by the statistics, but dubious of the conclusions
I have this notion that prudence says we should be aware of what is so in formulating our plans for navigating the Real World. So when somebody offers me some sort of hard data like:
....I'm willing to listen. It's a hopeful sign that so many Muslims are, in fact, less willing to approve of violence than I'd thought.
However, I don't for the life of me see how the author gets from that data to his conclusion that "In truth, the common enemy is violence and terrorism, not Muslims any more than Christians or Jews." The impression it leaves is that he is a man who is good at gathering data, but whose personal ideology cripples his ability to understand it. Saying that "violence" and "terrorism" is the common enemy is like saying that bombs or guns or kidnapping are the common enemies. These are not "enemies". They are *means* used by enemies. And the enemies remain persons, not abstractions. From an earthly perspective, the enemies are clear: Radical Islamists. From an ultimate perspective, the enemy remains what it has always been: Powers and principalities and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies (i.e., demons). But it has never been a mere abstraction.
I have this notion that prudence says we should be aware of what is so in formulating our plans for navigating the Real World. So when somebody offers me some sort of hard data like:
only 46 percent of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "never justified," while 24 percent believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified."
Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world's most-populous Muslim countries – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow, the organization I lead, found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are "never justified"; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.
....I'm willing to listen. It's a hopeful sign that so many Muslims are, in fact, less willing to approve of violence than I'd thought.
However, I don't for the life of me see how the author gets from that data to his conclusion that "In truth, the common enemy is violence and terrorism, not Muslims any more than Christians or Jews." The impression it leaves is that he is a man who is good at gathering data, but whose personal ideology cripples his ability to understand it. Saying that "violence" and "terrorism" is the common enemy is like saying that bombs or guns or kidnapping are the common enemies. These are not "enemies". They are *means* used by enemies. And the enemies remain persons, not abstractions. From an earthly perspective, the enemies are clear: Radical Islamists. From an ultimate perspective, the enemy remains what it has always been: Powers and principalities and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies (i.e., demons). But it has never been a mere abstraction.
Next year, the Catholic Blog Awards should inaugurate a new category
"Most Patient"
And they should give it to Dawn Eden, who is admirable in her ability to put up with the phenomenonal Amanda Marcotte.
"Most Patient"
And they should give it to Dawn Eden, who is admirable in her ability to put up with the phenomenonal Amanda Marcotte.
I like it...
But I think I'll keep my own little hobbit hole. It's disguised as a lower middle class suburban cinder block house in order to elude prying paparazzi. It's worked well so far.
But I think I'll keep my own little hobbit hole. It's disguised as a lower middle class suburban cinder block house in order to elude prying paparazzi. It's worked well so far.
A reader writes:
I am a fellow Catholic living in Southern California and I recently came upon your blog. I'm writing to you because over the past year or so I have created and now manage a not-for-profit website that helps people find local charities that accept clothing donations. Here is a link to the site...
http://www.donationscentral.org/
Make sure to read the "About Us" section as it describes the inspiration behind the site. Check it out and if you like it please spread the word! Again, I am not trying to make any money from site but simply hope that it will connect those willing to give with those in need. I look at this website as simply an extension of my faith. Thank you for your time.
"Tough love doesn't refuse to bloody its hands."
In an age when Christians are hearing lots of justifications for "necessary sin" from the manufacturers of culture ("You have to kill it because your life is over if you don't" "Yes, 'torture' is wrong, but we have to do these things in order to survive!"), it's refreshing to see a sane Christian take on what "tough love" really means.
In an age when Christians are hearing lots of justifications for "necessary sin" from the manufacturers of culture ("You have to kill it because your life is over if you don't" "Yes, 'torture' is wrong, but we have to do these things in order to survive!"), it's refreshing to see a sane Christian take on what "tough love" really means.
Fr. Bryce Sibley writes:
Sounds like a fun thing for the male Parousians!
Men - we need to you sign up for this upcoming Men's Conference and to let other men know about it.
Man to Man Men's Conference
Date: Saturday, April 14, 2007
Time: 8:00am - 4:00pm
Location: St. Thomas More High School
Street: 450 E Farrel Road
City: Lafayette, LA
A Conference for men. Guest speakers will include Dr. Alan Keys, Danny Abramowicz, Radiz, and Fr. Bryce Sibley.
For more information, visit www.mantomancc.com. Registration is $35 per person and can be done on-line or by mailing in the form available on the website.
Sounds like a fun thing for the male Parousians!
Monday, February 26, 2007
Planes, Plains and Automobiles
My adventures in travel are finally over! Went to Lubbock, TX this weekend (as noted directly below) and got in with a bit of divine providence (they pulled ten people at random off the plane from Dallas to Lubbock because they were afraid the winds would force them to turn around). Ted Sri and I were not among The Chosen, so we got to go to Lubbock and do the conference as planned.
The people in Lubbock were very kind and generous and treated us very well. The talks went well, but when it was time to go, we discovered that Dallas/Fort Worth had been closed all day Saturday because of winds, so there was no way to get home.
As it turned out, one of the conference organizers is an airline pilot for Delta, so he knows everything there is to know about making airline connections. He figured out a way to get me from Albuquerque to Phoenix to home--if I was willing to ride with one of the conference participants from Lubbock to Albuquerque. I was game, so they booked the hotel for another night and my ride came and got me on Sunday morning (I went to Mass on Saturday evening) and off we went on the 350 mile trek across the storied American Southwest. West Texas is very *very* flat. They grow a lot of cotton there (I saw storage sheds which were basically huge roofs with immense mounds of gray dirty cotton stored under them). Eventually the land began to undulate and you could see the southern end of the Rockies coming up over the horizon (the earth is a big place when you can hide an entire mountain range behind it!).
Pretty soon we were in country that simply begged to be explored for fossils (a dream I've always had). But time was of the essence so we had to blast on by. My driver was a fine young guy named Matt McKinley, who is about to enter the Church and who is trying to learn as much as he can as fast as he can because both relatives and friends are trying to figure out what's wrong with him (and also interested in the Faith at the same time). So we spent a lot of time talking theology. At the same time, I was coming down with a bad cold (always fun when you are traveling). So when we weren't talking I was napping.
Eventually, we hit Albuquerque, stopped at a Denny's for chow (it was about a six hour drive), and he dropped me at the airport. The lovely thing about being Catholics is that there are friends everywhere and I was able to bid goodbye to a new one by the time we parted.
Off to Phoenix, then home, where my sweet Janet was waiting for me. Got in about 11:15 last night, feeling about as run down as I've felt in sometime. So I decided today is a day off.
Well, not quite. My computer decided to die on me on Friday just before I left. So once I slept till 11 AM and could make no more contributions to the ZZZ fund I thought I'd see if I could fix it. Accomplished that mission, and then signed on to update the blog and explain why I'm so scarce today. At which point, Blogger refused to let me on until I updated my blog to the New Improved Version. After trying everything to defeat that, I knuckled under and did the Update Dance. Now I am attempting to not only tell you that I'm exhausted and sick, but also to blog my first post-update entry and see if it works. After this, I will answer some mail and then go back to bed in the hope I feel better tomorrow.
Ciao!
My adventures in travel are finally over! Went to Lubbock, TX this weekend (as noted directly below) and got in with a bit of divine providence (they pulled ten people at random off the plane from Dallas to Lubbock because they were afraid the winds would force them to turn around). Ted Sri and I were not among The Chosen, so we got to go to Lubbock and do the conference as planned.
The people in Lubbock were very kind and generous and treated us very well. The talks went well, but when it was time to go, we discovered that Dallas/Fort Worth had been closed all day Saturday because of winds, so there was no way to get home.
As it turned out, one of the conference organizers is an airline pilot for Delta, so he knows everything there is to know about making airline connections. He figured out a way to get me from Albuquerque to Phoenix to home--if I was willing to ride with one of the conference participants from Lubbock to Albuquerque. I was game, so they booked the hotel for another night and my ride came and got me on Sunday morning (I went to Mass on Saturday evening) and off we went on the 350 mile trek across the storied American Southwest. West Texas is very *very* flat. They grow a lot of cotton there (I saw storage sheds which were basically huge roofs with immense mounds of gray dirty cotton stored under them). Eventually the land began to undulate and you could see the southern end of the Rockies coming up over the horizon (the earth is a big place when you can hide an entire mountain range behind it!).
Pretty soon we were in country that simply begged to be explored for fossils (a dream I've always had). But time was of the essence so we had to blast on by. My driver was a fine young guy named Matt McKinley, who is about to enter the Church and who is trying to learn as much as he can as fast as he can because both relatives and friends are trying to figure out what's wrong with him (and also interested in the Faith at the same time). So we spent a lot of time talking theology. At the same time, I was coming down with a bad cold (always fun when you are traveling). So when we weren't talking I was napping.
Eventually, we hit Albuquerque, stopped at a Denny's for chow (it was about a six hour drive), and he dropped me at the airport. The lovely thing about being Catholics is that there are friends everywhere and I was able to bid goodbye to a new one by the time we parted.
Off to Phoenix, then home, where my sweet Janet was waiting for me. Got in about 11:15 last night, feeling about as run down as I've felt in sometime. So I decided today is a day off.
Well, not quite. My computer decided to die on me on Friday just before I left. So once I slept till 11 AM and could make no more contributions to the ZZZ fund I thought I'd see if I could fix it. Accomplished that mission, and then signed on to update the blog and explain why I'm so scarce today. At which point, Blogger refused to let me on until I updated my blog to the New Improved Version. After trying everything to defeat that, I knuckled under and did the Update Dance. Now I am attempting to not only tell you that I'm exhausted and sick, but also to blog my first post-update entry and see if it works. After this, I will answer some mail and then go back to bed in the hope I feel better tomorrow.
Ciao!
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Hey Lubbock, Texas! I'm headed your way!
February 24 1:00-4:00 PM. Footsteps in Faith Conference. Lubbock Diocesan Center, 420 4th St., Lubbock, TX. Topics: Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did, By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition. Contact: David Powell, 806-239-0804.
It'll be fun, and I even get to see my friend Ted Sri again. We co-authored The Da Vinci Deception.
I fly out tomorrow morning and get home late on Saturday, so I'll see you Monday!
February 24 1:00-4:00 PM. Footsteps in Faith Conference. Lubbock Diocesan Center, 420 4th St., Lubbock, TX. Topics: Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did, By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition. Contact: David Powell, 806-239-0804.
It'll be fun, and I even get to see my friend Ted Sri again. We co-authored The Da Vinci Deception.
I fly out tomorrow morning and get home late on Saturday, so I'll see you Monday!
The GOP: Using our Troops as Human Shields
I despise it when power brokers and captains of cultural engineering treat the men and women who have put their lives on the line for the rest of us as tools and playthings to be treated with contempt. I despise it when lefties do it and I despise it when righties do it.
At present, I particularly despise it when righties do it because the righties in Washington have been running the show for the past six years and have pounded into our heads that they are for the troops and that those who criticize the GOP or the Administration are vehemently suspect of not supporting the troops. Here, for example, is Dick Cheney, fresh from his recent campaign to corrupt military honor by his failed attempt to ram approval of torture down the Pentagon's throat, sounding the typical klaxons about how failure to support the Administration is failure to support the troops. (I'm sorry, but does anybody look at that face and say, "Now *there's* an honest man!")
But here is how the GOP led gov't has taken care of the wounded troops it claims to support.
I'm with Rod on this. If somebody can point me to a charity that helps these guys, that seems like a great way to kick off Lenten almsgiving. In the meantime, I'm really tired of the GOP habit of using our troops as human shields, especially after that WaPo story.
I despise it when power brokers and captains of cultural engineering treat the men and women who have put their lives on the line for the rest of us as tools and playthings to be treated with contempt. I despise it when lefties do it and I despise it when righties do it.
At present, I particularly despise it when righties do it because the righties in Washington have been running the show for the past six years and have pounded into our heads that they are for the troops and that those who criticize the GOP or the Administration are vehemently suspect of not supporting the troops. Here, for example, is Dick Cheney, fresh from his recent campaign to corrupt military honor by his failed attempt to ram approval of torture down the Pentagon's throat, sounding the typical klaxons about how failure to support the Administration is failure to support the troops. (I'm sorry, but does anybody look at that face and say, "Now *there's* an honest man!")
But here is how the GOP led gov't has taken care of the wounded troops it claims to support.
I'm with Rod on this. If somebody can point me to a charity that helps these guys, that seems like a great way to kick off Lenten almsgiving. In the meantime, I'm really tired of the GOP habit of using our troops as human shields, especially after that WaPo story.
Hey St. Louis!
A reader writes:
One important correction. This is not the "traditional" rite. This is the *Tridentine* rite. Why does that matter? Because the Paul VI rite is also "traditional". That is, it is a legitimate expression of the Tradition and not some sort of false Mass or perversion of the Tradition to which the "true" alternative is the Tridentine rite. The Tridentine rite is also an expression of the Tradition, but it does not have exclusive claim to that title.
Just so we're clear.
Enjoy the Mass, y'all!
A reader writes:
There will be a solemn high Mass in the traditional rite at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis on March 7, 2007 at 7pm. This is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas in the traditional calendar. The Mass will be celebrated by a priest of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest. This is pretty big news for St. Louisans, as it will be the first traditional Mass at the Archdiocesan Cathedral in over 35 years.
Archbishop Burke is a strong supporter of the ICKSP, and will ordain two of its candidates to the priesthood, also at the Cathedral, on June 15.
One important correction. This is not the "traditional" rite. This is the *Tridentine* rite. Why does that matter? Because the Paul VI rite is also "traditional". That is, it is a legitimate expression of the Tradition and not some sort of false Mass or perversion of the Tradition to which the "true" alternative is the Tridentine rite. The Tridentine rite is also an expression of the Tradition, but it does not have exclusive claim to that title.
Just so we're clear.
Enjoy the Mass, y'all!
A reader writes:
The book you want is Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries by Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague
We hear of the need for the Baptism in the holy spirit to empower us as Jesus was empowered when John the Baptist baptized him in the River Jordon. How does the Baptism in the Holy Spirit differ from the Sacrament of Confirmation?
The book you want is Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries by Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague
If you Haven't Checked it Out Lately...
There's lots of tasty goodness in every page of Touchstone.
Also, don't forget their fine blog.
There's lots of tasty goodness in every page of Touchstone.
Also, don't forget their fine blog.
Elizabeth Anscombe Was Right
And therefore very inconvenient to the Postmodern Right and its need to "adapt" Just War Theory to suit the needs of the End to Evil crowd.
2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."
"Pre-emptive war is not in the Catechism." - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
And therefore very inconvenient to the Postmodern Right and its need to "adapt" Just War Theory to suit the needs of the End to Evil crowd.
2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."
"Pre-emptive war is not in the Catechism." - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Cautionary Tales
Somebody writes an editorial for the Telegraph cautioning Anglicans eager to escape the Great Anglican Crackup not to over-idealize the Catholic Church. Rod Dreher picks up on this and asks his readers if they have any "Look before you leap" advice to people thinking of joining their various communions, denominations and religious affiliations. He writes me and mentions it as being of possible interest to youse guys. However, he asks that it not degenerate into a "What I Hate About my Fellow [fill in religion affiliation here]" fest but instead asks that we try to stick to serious counsel we would give to anybody looking at converting.
I once wrote a piece for the Siena Institute on what I'd like to see for New Catholics. Since then, other things have occurred to me.
FWIW, the funny thing is that, for somebody who does as much teaching about the Church as I do, my first impulse *is* to tell anybody who says, "I want to be Catholic" to slow down and take a good long look at why. This seems to me to be thoroughly biblical, after all. Jesus said "Count the cost" and on several occasions actually turned away disciple wannabes because they were not ready. He was constantly saying things that tested faith, that outraged, that repulsed. Then he would turn to his disciples and say, "Well, are you leaving too?"
One of the things that often worries me about converts to the Catholic faith, especially from Protestantism, is that some of them seem to me to be still basically Protestant. They are sometimes becoming Catholic, not because they have concluded that the Church is the trustworthy sacrament of redemption given to the world by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, but because they are fed up with Protestantism and are leaving it and joining the Catholic--in *protest*. They determine to be Catholic, not so much in love of the Church, but in anger at something else. So they enter and are disconcerted that the folks at Our Lady of Perpetual Ordinariness are not this haven of saints and scholars, but a bunch of folk whose spiritual life varies wildly. They discover a certain percentage who don't know their faith at all, or who hold political opinions that are very different, or who don't much take the Church's teaching seriously, or who get their spiritual insights from Oprah, or who are devout but superstitious, or who have a Protestant brother in law who has taught them to say "Praise the Lord!" a lot. It's all so... average when the contract the convert had thought God was agreeing to was to give them a safe haven from All That. And so, when some Pope or bishop does something not to their liking, they declare that the Pope or bishop is a modernist (aka "Protestant"), embrace some form of the "Two Churches/Two Magisteria" theory and (either slowly or quickly) start to hive off into some extreme form of what they call "traditionalism" but which is, in fact, yet another kind of Protestantism, albeit one with ultra-Catholic aesthetics.
The main counsel I give anybody coming in to the Church is that "faith" means "you stay." The Catholic Church is and always has been the vessel of salvation for the *world*. That means that most of the people you meet are going to be *ordinary*--like you and me. They are going to have the ordinary tastes, prejudices, mediocrities, failures, and virtues of their time and place. There are, to be sure, great heros and extraordinary people in the Catholic communion. But to expect that as the norm and then be outraged and disappointed when it is not is, I think, great folly and, in the end, great pride. One of the things I came to appreciate very early was the counsel of Uncle Screwtape, who urges Wormwood to keep far from his "patient's" mind the thought, "If I, being what I am, can consider myself in some sense a Christian, then why can't these people next to me in the pew"?
Consequently, though I have been appalled by some of the sins that have been revealed in the ranks of the Church in the past few years, I've never been shocked. What did I expect? They're just sinners like I am, and I know what I'm capable of. In the same way, the stupid and tuneless OCP songs, the suburban Church of Aren't We Fabulous smugness, the Our Lady of Pizza Hut architecture, the True Meaning of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes homilies, and the other stuff that sometimes ails the Church has never been sufficient to put me off. Because they are all just reminders that the Church, thank God, has room for people like me and that this mediocrity and averageness is a sign of the tremendous mercy of God for mediocre folk like myself.
"Well then," it may be asked, "if the Church is so mediocre, then why bother joining her?" To quote Walker Percy, "What else is there?" After all, it is not the Church that is mediocre, but only we, her members. The Church is, curiously, something that exists before she has any members, because it is founded not by us, but by Christ. The Church is the spotless Bride of Christ, made so by the Holy Spirit in the washing with water and the Word. We, her members, are generally nebbishes and schleps. But she is glorious and beautiful, terrible as an army with banners. And in her all the fullness of the deposit of faith subsists, a deposit through which, by the grace of God, I hope one day to be made perfect in love of God and neighbor. But it is not my job to immanentize the eschaton. So I can be more than merely content living in this strange divine sea of a Church, whose members are, like me, stunningly ordinary, but whose soul, the Holy Spirit, is slowly bringing us along "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love." (Ephesians 4:13-16)
Somebody writes an editorial for the Telegraph cautioning Anglicans eager to escape the Great Anglican Crackup not to over-idealize the Catholic Church. Rod Dreher picks up on this and asks his readers if they have any "Look before you leap" advice to people thinking of joining their various communions, denominations and religious affiliations. He writes me and mentions it as being of possible interest to youse guys. However, he asks that it not degenerate into a "What I Hate About my Fellow [fill in religion affiliation here]" fest but instead asks that we try to stick to serious counsel we would give to anybody looking at converting.
I once wrote a piece for the Siena Institute on what I'd like to see for New Catholics. Since then, other things have occurred to me.
FWIW, the funny thing is that, for somebody who does as much teaching about the Church as I do, my first impulse *is* to tell anybody who says, "I want to be Catholic" to slow down and take a good long look at why. This seems to me to be thoroughly biblical, after all. Jesus said "Count the cost" and on several occasions actually turned away disciple wannabes because they were not ready. He was constantly saying things that tested faith, that outraged, that repulsed. Then he would turn to his disciples and say, "Well, are you leaving too?"
One of the things that often worries me about converts to the Catholic faith, especially from Protestantism, is that some of them seem to me to be still basically Protestant. They are sometimes becoming Catholic, not because they have concluded that the Church is the trustworthy sacrament of redemption given to the world by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, but because they are fed up with Protestantism and are leaving it and joining the Catholic--in *protest*. They determine to be Catholic, not so much in love of the Church, but in anger at something else. So they enter and are disconcerted that the folks at Our Lady of Perpetual Ordinariness are not this haven of saints and scholars, but a bunch of folk whose spiritual life varies wildly. They discover a certain percentage who don't know their faith at all, or who hold political opinions that are very different, or who don't much take the Church's teaching seriously, or who get their spiritual insights from Oprah, or who are devout but superstitious, or who have a Protestant brother in law who has taught them to say "Praise the Lord!" a lot. It's all so... average when the contract the convert had thought God was agreeing to was to give them a safe haven from All That. And so, when some Pope or bishop does something not to their liking, they declare that the Pope or bishop is a modernist (aka "Protestant"), embrace some form of the "Two Churches/Two Magisteria" theory and (either slowly or quickly) start to hive off into some extreme form of what they call "traditionalism" but which is, in fact, yet another kind of Protestantism, albeit one with ultra-Catholic aesthetics.
The main counsel I give anybody coming in to the Church is that "faith" means "you stay." The Catholic Church is and always has been the vessel of salvation for the *world*. That means that most of the people you meet are going to be *ordinary*--like you and me. They are going to have the ordinary tastes, prejudices, mediocrities, failures, and virtues of their time and place. There are, to be sure, great heros and extraordinary people in the Catholic communion. But to expect that as the norm and then be outraged and disappointed when it is not is, I think, great folly and, in the end, great pride. One of the things I came to appreciate very early was the counsel of Uncle Screwtape, who urges Wormwood to keep far from his "patient's" mind the thought, "If I, being what I am, can consider myself in some sense a Christian, then why can't these people next to me in the pew"?
Consequently, though I have been appalled by some of the sins that have been revealed in the ranks of the Church in the past few years, I've never been shocked. What did I expect? They're just sinners like I am, and I know what I'm capable of. In the same way, the stupid and tuneless OCP songs, the suburban Church of Aren't We Fabulous smugness, the Our Lady of Pizza Hut architecture, the True Meaning of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes homilies, and the other stuff that sometimes ails the Church has never been sufficient to put me off. Because they are all just reminders that the Church, thank God, has room for people like me and that this mediocrity and averageness is a sign of the tremendous mercy of God for mediocre folk like myself.
"Well then," it may be asked, "if the Church is so mediocre, then why bother joining her?" To quote Walker Percy, "What else is there?" After all, it is not the Church that is mediocre, but only we, her members. The Church is, curiously, something that exists before she has any members, because it is founded not by us, but by Christ. The Church is the spotless Bride of Christ, made so by the Holy Spirit in the washing with water and the Word. We, her members, are generally nebbishes and schleps. But she is glorious and beautiful, terrible as an army with banners. And in her all the fullness of the deposit of faith subsists, a deposit through which, by the grace of God, I hope one day to be made perfect in love of God and neighbor. But it is not my job to immanentize the eschaton. So I can be more than merely content living in this strange divine sea of a Church, whose members are, like me, stunningly ordinary, but whose soul, the Holy Spirit, is slowly bringing us along "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love." (Ephesians 4:13-16)
Nat Hentoff asks, "Is This America?"
Hentoff has earned his stripes as a prolife writer. If you read nothing else today, read this and let it bug you that this is happening in our country. There is no excuse for it. There are no mitigating circumstances and no excuses. This is evil. And I have to believe that what is best in our country will eventually prevail over this cancer on our current political culture.
Hentoff has earned his stripes as a prolife writer. If you read nothing else today, read this and let it bug you that this is happening in our country. There is no excuse for it. There are no mitigating circumstances and no excuses. This is evil. And I have to believe that what is best in our country will eventually prevail over this cancer on our current political culture.
Teresa Tomeo, who has been around the media block...
...has a new book out called Noise that has some handy tips for sifting through and blocking out the subhuman static that passes for news and entertainment. Check it out.
I've met her. Great lady and smart as a whip.
...has a new book out called Noise that has some handy tips for sifting through and blocking out the subhuman static that passes for news and entertainment. Check it out.
I've met her. Great lady and smart as a whip.
Pete Vere Answers Your Kids' Weird Lenten Questions
Speaking of kids, here's a new blog by homeschooled teens called Unrecognized Talent. As the father of a rather gifted teen writer, I, Joe Bob, do hereby say, "Check thou it out."
Speaking of kids, here's a new blog by homeschooled teens called Unrecognized Talent. As the father of a rather gifted teen writer, I, Joe Bob, do hereby say, "Check thou it out."
A reader asks:
The whole "Jesus suffered so we don't have to" variety of the Blab it and Grab it Gospel has, like all heresy, the fatal flaw of being radically out of touch with reality. The next time she gets mad because reality is failing to conform to her theory, you might gently ask, "How's that working for you?" Because, of course, suffering and death are part of life no matter how often she stamps her tiny foot in impotent rage. So she has two choices: she can go on being angry at the world because it doesn't fit her theory, or she can accept the fact that suffering is sometimes part of our dignity in Christ. She has no option of making her theory work because, as has been shown her thousands of times, it doesn't.
If she's the sort of person that needs a Bible verse before she can see the bleedin' obvious, then point her to Romans 5, where Paul talk about suffering producing perserverance, perserverance produces character, and character, hope. Point her to Paul's "filling up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the sake of his Body" (Colossians 1:24). Point out that Paul was no able to hear Epaphroditus in (if memory serves) his letter to the Phillippians, nor could he cure Timothy's stomach ailments. Indeed, Paul himself is afflicted with a "thorn in the flesh" to the glory of God (2 Cor 12). And look at 1 Peter, which is written to console Christians undergoing "fiery trials". And no wonder, for Jesus himself said, "In this world you *will* have tribulations." Indeed, John's account of the Last Supper Discourse (John 13-17) is there basically to strengthen the Church for the trials that are *inherent* in the Christian life.
There are only two choices in this life to suffer with Christ or to suffer without him. There is no "no suffering" option.
By the way, not all charismatics are of the Blab it and Grab it variety. There are many fine charismatic Catholics who are models of holiness and love.
I have an aunt who bought into all that charismatic stuff in the 70's. She took a bible training course via mail and now has a Minister of God certificate. In spite of all her spirit filled hoopla she is so way off base on her Catholicism it isn't funny. One area that needs clarification is her belief about Jesus dying to heal sickness and suffering. She is always running around saying" "By his stripes ye are healed." And then she gets mad about the fact that there is suffering in this world and says that Jesus died to put an end to this. She has no appreciation for penance or mortification. Can you clarify this with me so I can give her something scriptural and solid as to what the church really teaches?
The whole "Jesus suffered so we don't have to" variety of the Blab it and Grab it Gospel has, like all heresy, the fatal flaw of being radically out of touch with reality. The next time she gets mad because reality is failing to conform to her theory, you might gently ask, "How's that working for you?" Because, of course, suffering and death are part of life no matter how often she stamps her tiny foot in impotent rage. So she has two choices: she can go on being angry at the world because it doesn't fit her theory, or she can accept the fact that suffering is sometimes part of our dignity in Christ. She has no option of making her theory work because, as has been shown her thousands of times, it doesn't.
If she's the sort of person that needs a Bible verse before she can see the bleedin' obvious, then point her to Romans 5, where Paul talk about suffering producing perserverance, perserverance produces character, and character, hope. Point her to Paul's "filling up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the sake of his Body" (Colossians 1:24). Point out that Paul was no able to hear Epaphroditus in (if memory serves) his letter to the Phillippians, nor could he cure Timothy's stomach ailments. Indeed, Paul himself is afflicted with a "thorn in the flesh" to the glory of God (2 Cor 12). And look at 1 Peter, which is written to console Christians undergoing "fiery trials". And no wonder, for Jesus himself said, "In this world you *will* have tribulations." Indeed, John's account of the Last Supper Discourse (John 13-17) is there basically to strengthen the Church for the trials that are *inherent* in the Christian life.
There are only two choices in this life to suffer with Christ or to suffer without him. There is no "no suffering" option.
By the way, not all charismatics are of the Blab it and Grab it variety. There are many fine charismatic Catholics who are models of holiness and love.
Speaking of Franciscan-Flavored Apostolates...
Louise writes me from Adelaide in South Australia (a lovely town, by the by):
Louise writes me from Adelaide in South Australia (a lovely town, by the by):
Would you please consider placing this info on your blog? Our friend, Sam Clear, a young Aussie bloke is walking some 18,000km and travelling a total of 29,000km around various parts of the world on a pilgrimage for the unity of all Christians.
His blog is here.
Sam has worked for years in the Youth Mission Team, which goes into schools to present the Gospel afresh. The YMT website is here.
Gnosticism: People Never Tire of it
Guess what! Somebody has discovered Secret Knowledge that will give you whatever you want! Health! Wealth! Miracles! Happiness! They're all yours! And you can know that for a fact because it's in an ad with handsome production values and dramatic music. Also, Oprah says so. All you have to do is fork over some $$$ and the Secret Knowledge will be yours!
No! Really! This time for sure! You *can* have Heaven on Earth! You can be like God, know the difference between good and evil. Because happiness is not a relationship of love with God and neighbor, it's a technique to be mastered!
Guess what! Somebody has discovered Secret Knowledge that will give you whatever you want! Health! Wealth! Miracles! Happiness! They're all yours! And you can know that for a fact because it's in an ad with handsome production values and dramatic music. Also, Oprah says so. All you have to do is fork over some $$$ and the Secret Knowledge will be yours!
No! Really! This time for sure! You *can* have Heaven on Earth! You can be like God, know the difference between good and evil. Because happiness is not a relationship of love with God and neighbor, it's a technique to be mastered!
One More Reason We Love our Cow
"Cow", for them that don't know, is the name our son Matthew has opted to go by for lo these many years. (Yes, there's a story behind it.)
He's a big, friendly, witty, guy who is serious about God, friends, books, pranks and swing dancing. This month, he has been down in Californayeh with the Militia Immaculata (started by St. Maximilien Kolbe), preparing to do a grand tour of the country for the next sixth months as a youth minister at their various youth camps. You find out about it on his droll, yet enthusiastic, blog.
Cow has a totally Franciscan vibe about this whole thing. Questions like "How do you plan to eat?" and "What's your itinerary?" seem to not much vex him. He presumes God's providence (and some planning from the MI folk) will take care of it. He's just trying to be available to do what God wants. And he's not shy about being a mendicant (which is a three dollar word for "beggar"). And so far, that seems to be flying. A sample of our correspondence illustrates:
> Hey Dad,
>
> If I write you a couple beg letters, couple you post them on your blog
> over a couple days? Aside from the old cash monies, we actually are still
> looking for somebody to give us a free car to transport us in our road trip.
> Hahaha! I laugh not really because it's absurd, but because it's going to
> happen and it's going to be a surprise when it does. We've already got one
> free car. The second is already on it's way, we just haven't been told by
> Mary where to find it. *wink*
>
> Talk to you later, Pops. Sorry to be a cliche teenager letter-writer, even
> on a missions trip. "Deare$t Father" and so forth. Ooops.
>
> Be good.
>
> *~ Cow*
>
> --
> "When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings
> at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings
> with legs?"
> ~ G. K. Chesterton
I reply:
> Feel free to bleg away! Send me the letter and I will post it. God go
> with you, kiddo!
>
> I presume you guys are talking with St. Francis about all this? What you
> are doing is very Franciscan!
>
> Dad
and he replies:
Sweet, I'll write something this afternoon, most likely. Thanks.
And yes, there has indeed been much consideration of St. Francis. St. Max
was a Franciscan after all, and so the group spirit and charism is most
assuredly in that same vein of wildly unstoppable love and hurling ourselves
at God's grace. I'm alarmingly comfortable with it so far.
*~ Cow*
----
So while I'm waiting for the email, the phone rings and it's Cow. Mary came through with the second car, no need to bleg. Cow will be back in Washington, but probably won't have time to visit before he blasts off again for six months, riding the winds of Providence on his first mission. We've given him a spot of milk money for the voyage and he's got bit he saved from his Archie McPhee job. We will try to help further as we can. The rest will come as God wills. Tra la! No worries!
How can you not love a guy like that?
"Cow", for them that don't know, is the name our son Matthew has opted to go by for lo these many years. (Yes, there's a story behind it.)
He's a big, friendly, witty, guy who is serious about God, friends, books, pranks and swing dancing. This month, he has been down in Californayeh with the Militia Immaculata (started by St. Maximilien Kolbe), preparing to do a grand tour of the country for the next sixth months as a youth minister at their various youth camps. You find out about it on his droll, yet enthusiastic, blog.
Cow has a totally Franciscan vibe about this whole thing. Questions like "How do you plan to eat?" and "What's your itinerary?" seem to not much vex him. He presumes God's providence (and some planning from the MI folk) will take care of it. He's just trying to be available to do what God wants. And he's not shy about being a mendicant (which is a three dollar word for "beggar"). And so far, that seems to be flying. A sample of our correspondence illustrates:
> Hey Dad,
>
> If I write you a couple beg letters, couple you post them on your blog
> over a couple days? Aside from the old cash monies, we actually are still
> looking for somebody to give us a free car to transport us in our road trip.
> Hahaha! I laugh not really because it's absurd, but because it's going to
> happen and it's going to be a surprise when it does. We've already got one
> free car. The second is already on it's way, we just haven't been told by
> Mary where to find it. *wink*
>
> Talk to you later, Pops. Sorry to be a cliche teenager letter-writer, even
> on a missions trip. "Deare$t Father" and so forth. Ooops.
>
> Be good.
>
> *~ Cow*
>
> --
> "When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings
> at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings
> with legs?"
> ~ G. K. Chesterton
I reply:
> Feel free to bleg away! Send me the letter and I will post it. God go
> with you, kiddo!
>
> I presume you guys are talking with St. Francis about all this? What you
> are doing is very Franciscan!
>
> Dad
and he replies:
Sweet, I'll write something this afternoon, most likely. Thanks.
And yes, there has indeed been much consideration of St. Francis. St. Max
was a Franciscan after all, and so the group spirit and charism is most
assuredly in that same vein of wildly unstoppable love and hurling ourselves
at God's grace. I'm alarmingly comfortable with it so far.
*~ Cow*
----
So while I'm waiting for the email, the phone rings and it's Cow. Mary came through with the second car, no need to bleg. Cow will be back in Washington, but probably won't have time to visit before he blasts off again for six months, riding the winds of Providence on his first mission. We've given him a spot of milk money for the voyage and he's got bit he saved from his Archie McPhee job. We will try to help further as we can. The rest will come as God wills. Tra la! No worries!
How can you not love a guy like that?
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Thanks to my readers for the advice
So far, the most sensible advice has been "disengage". The least sensible have been the pleas to stop "misrepresenting" the excusers and justifiers of torture and prisoner abuse. Here's the sort of thing I find aggravating about that advice. Josiah writes:
I have acknowledged this. Both Fr. Harrison, for instance, and Chris Fotos, for example, apparently have the notion they are guarding something essential to the deposit of faith by making excuses for torture and prisoner abuse. I think this preposterous, but I have acknowledged it.
Similarly, I freely grant that all sin is a disordered form of love. It is the result of pursuing some real good in a wrong way. I believe there is nobody on earth that desires evil for its own sake. I've said that repeatedly. Everybody who advocates an evil course of action (such as torture) does so out of a desire for a good end (for instance, safety for loved ones). Indeed, the only person I have ever met who denies this and says that some people really do choose Evil for its own sake is none other than Victor Morton (in a conversation on the Disputations blog a couple of years ago).
But that said, let's not kid ourselves, shall we? The *main* reason this is even an issue is because the Bush Administration has pushed for and is practicing torture. Nobody was making excuses for it, or writing articles in the right wing press justifying it and laughing it off till it became clear that the Bush Administration was *doing* it and was determined to go on doing it. In previous wars, we have not seen Americans urged to accept and justify torture. In this war, we have. Catholics, to be sure, may contribute specifically theological attempts to justify torture in the interest of "preserving the indefectibility of the Church" as Chris Fotos put it. But what drives the discussion is the need of the Right for justifying Bush policy since the outbreak of the GWOT.
In the same way, one *could* put forward some sort of abstract theological justification for slavery (it was, after all, tolerated by the Apostle Paul). But, oddly, nobody is pouring out elaborate arguments for slavery and declaring that if we do not all accept the defensibility of slavery we are endangering the "indefectibility of the Church." Nobody is saying that the condemnation of slavery by the Church is "slavery phariseeism" or laboring to show that there are situations in which it would be a good thing to reinsitute slavery. We don't find sustained efforts to show that slavery is really quite compatible with Catholic teaching, nor to demonstrate that Dignitatis Humanae or Veritatis Splendor can basically be ignored or discounted in their condemnations of slavery. Why?
Because there is no driving political agenda that has suddenly made excuse-making for slavery a theological premium. Because, in short, the political situation is not imposing itself on the teaching of the Church in such a way as to make some Catholics want to accomodate the Church's teaching to the needs of the powers that be.
So, fine. People are advocating the abuse and, sometimes, the torture of prisoners for a good end. All who advocate for sin do the same. Some even imagine they are protecting the "indefectibility of the Church" as they do it. No doubt the bishop who burnt Joan of Arc argued he was doing the same.
However, the *entire reason* the Church teaches "You shall not do evil that good may come of it" and "Good ends do not justify evil means" is precisely so that we may know that this particular excuse will not hold up before the judgment seat of God.
So far, the most sensible advice has been "disengage". The least sensible have been the pleas to stop "misrepresenting" the excusers and justifiers of torture and prisoner abuse. Here's the sort of thing I find aggravating about that advice. Josiah writes:
I think that, at a minimum, fairly representing people's positions on this matter requires acknowledging that people who support torture do so for reasons other than simply a desire to defend the Bush administration.
The Bible says that we are not to do evil so that good may result. We can oppose torture, and still acknowledge that those who do support it are not doing so out of low or wicked motivations. It's good to want to save American lives, protect national security, and stop terrorism. These are good things. And the vast majority of those who do support torture do so because they think it is necessary to achieve those goods. They're wrong about that (and even if they weren't that wouldn't make it right). But it is this, and not some fanatical devotion to the Bush administration, that motivates them.
I have acknowledged this. Both Fr. Harrison, for instance, and Chris Fotos, for example, apparently have the notion they are guarding something essential to the deposit of faith by making excuses for torture and prisoner abuse. I think this preposterous, but I have acknowledged it.
Similarly, I freely grant that all sin is a disordered form of love. It is the result of pursuing some real good in a wrong way. I believe there is nobody on earth that desires evil for its own sake. I've said that repeatedly. Everybody who advocates an evil course of action (such as torture) does so out of a desire for a good end (for instance, safety for loved ones). Indeed, the only person I have ever met who denies this and says that some people really do choose Evil for its own sake is none other than Victor Morton (in a conversation on the Disputations blog a couple of years ago).
But that said, let's not kid ourselves, shall we? The *main* reason this is even an issue is because the Bush Administration has pushed for and is practicing torture. Nobody was making excuses for it, or writing articles in the right wing press justifying it and laughing it off till it became clear that the Bush Administration was *doing* it and was determined to go on doing it. In previous wars, we have not seen Americans urged to accept and justify torture. In this war, we have. Catholics, to be sure, may contribute specifically theological attempts to justify torture in the interest of "preserving the indefectibility of the Church" as Chris Fotos put it. But what drives the discussion is the need of the Right for justifying Bush policy since the outbreak of the GWOT.
In the same way, one *could* put forward some sort of abstract theological justification for slavery (it was, after all, tolerated by the Apostle Paul). But, oddly, nobody is pouring out elaborate arguments for slavery and declaring that if we do not all accept the defensibility of slavery we are endangering the "indefectibility of the Church." Nobody is saying that the condemnation of slavery by the Church is "slavery phariseeism" or laboring to show that there are situations in which it would be a good thing to reinsitute slavery. We don't find sustained efforts to show that slavery is really quite compatible with Catholic teaching, nor to demonstrate that Dignitatis Humanae or Veritatis Splendor can basically be ignored or discounted in their condemnations of slavery. Why?
Because there is no driving political agenda that has suddenly made excuse-making for slavery a theological premium. Because, in short, the political situation is not imposing itself on the teaching of the Church in such a way as to make some Catholics want to accomodate the Church's teaching to the needs of the powers that be.
So, fine. People are advocating the abuse and, sometimes, the torture of prisoners for a good end. All who advocate for sin do the same. Some even imagine they are protecting the "indefectibility of the Church" as they do it. No doubt the bishop who burnt Joan of Arc argued he was doing the same.
However, the *entire reason* the Church teaches "You shall not do evil that good may come of it" and "Good ends do not justify evil means" is precisely so that we may know that this particular excuse will not hold up before the judgment seat of God.
John Zmirak on Telepathic Pets
My friend used to subject cats to a strict dichotomy:
Either cats are a super-intelligent race of beings sent here to observe our world or... they're just stupid.
I still haven't decided which covers the facts best.
My friend used to subject cats to a strict dichotomy:
Either cats are a super-intelligent race of beings sent here to observe our world or... they're just stupid.
I still haven't decided which covers the facts best.
Iraq Explained!
It's all crystal clear now.
A U.S. Marine squad was marching north of Fallujah when they came upon an Iraqi terrorist, badly injured and unconscious.
On the opposite side of the road was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state.
The Marine was conscious and alert and as first aid was given to both men, the squad leader asked the injured Marine what had happened.
The Marine reported, "I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway here, and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. We saw each other and both took cover in the ditches along the road.
"I yelled to him that Saddam Hussein was a miserable, lowlife scumbag, and he yelled back that Ted Kennedy is a good-for-nothing, fat, left wing liberal drunk."
"So I said that Osama Bin Ladin dresses and acts like a frigid, mean-spirited lesbian! He retaliated by yelling, Oh yeah? Well, so does Hillary Clinton !"
"And, there we were, in the middle of the road, shaking hands, when a truck hit us"
It's all crystal clear now.
Dear Friends of the G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle
It will be hilarious and thought-provoking! Don't miss it!
The Society's board of directors cordially invites you to our next lecture, to be held Wednesday, February 28, 2007, at 7:30 p.m., on the campus of Seattle Pacific University.
G. K. CHESTERTON AND CHRISTIAN HUMANISM
Lecturer: Mr. Dale Ahlquist, President
The American Chesterton Society
"The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being," wrote Chesterton, "almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth." What is the nature of Christian "humanism," if such is the simplest truth about man? The Society is pleased to welcome back our good friend, Mr. Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society, for a discussion of man in the light of the God who became man. A most scintillating lecturer, Mr. Ahlquist is author of G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense and Common Sense 101: Lessons from G. K. Chesterton (both from Ignatius Press), and has hosted two 13-part television series on Chesterton.
The lecture will take place in the Falcon Lounge, Royal Brougham Pavilion, at the corner of W. Nickerson and 3rd Avenue W. For links to a campus map and directions, please see our Events Calendar. As always, pizza and refreshments will be served at the end of the lecture.
Please join us for a delightful evening!
Yours faithfully,
The G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle
It will be hilarious and thought-provoking! Don't miss it!
A reader urges
Check out the 40 Day Journey!
Lent: It's what all the cool people are doing starting tomorrow.
Check out the 40 Day Journey!
Lent: It's what all the cool people are doing starting tomorrow.
TIME Declares the Era of the Religious Right Over
Some of us are old enough to remember other prognostications from the editors of TIME.
And this is the same magazine that was gleefully warning us just the other day about all those sinister pro-lifers running around deceiving people (yet strangely silent on Murder Inc's various shenanigans of deception).
This is not to say I'm an unqualified fan of the "Religious Right". Insofar as the "Religious Right" betrays the gospel for the sake of earthly power, I'm a big opponent of it, just as I am an big opponent of the (tiny and impotent) Religious Left when it sells its soul to defend blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
But what TIME means by the "religious right" is usually "Christians who take seriously the gospel and try to apply it in the public square in ways unapproved by the editors of TIME." And that means the usual pelvic issues. It also means things like public evangelism. Anything that "imposes" those values unapproved by TIME.
Martin Luther King did not "impose values" because he stood for gospel values TIME approves of. Fr. Frank Pavone *does* "impose values" because he stands for gospel values TIME disapproves of. And Alveda King, the outspoken neice of Dr King who says that abortion is the civil rights movement of our time? Well, she doesn't even exist at all, according to TIME, which never tells you anything about her.
That's a little clue about why you should take these "death of Religious Right" stories with a grain of salt. Remember: dock 50 IQ points when the MSM talks about religion.
Has the RR shot itself in the foot? Sure. The failure to seriously critique the Bush Administration in light of Just War, the quasi-idolatry of the Prez
The weird conflation of GOP corporate values and culture with the Kingdom of Heaven
and various other failures have led it to become too closely identified with a particular political agenda and, in particular, with the disastrous conduct of the Administration's War in Iraq and the various Machiavellian machinations of some of the neocons.
On the other hand, most of the so-called "religious right" are, I think, far more sinned against than sinning. They want to worship God, to save babies from being killed, and to live quiet lives of holiness without being forced to confess that gay sex is the greatest thing in the universe. They want their children to be happy, to know the Lord, and to live lives of joy, love and work. And they have been exploited and used by the beltway pros, the Karl Roves, the Dick Cheneys, the various consummate professionals and millionaires who make up the culture of DC and who differ from their consummate professional multimillionaire Democrat opponents, so far as I can make out, primarily in terms of which vast pools of political innocence they prefer to exploit with empty promises and cynical contempt.
However, politics and power is all TIME can see. Which means they still can't see what drives most of the so-called "religious right", which is, at the end of the day, dedication to Jesus Christ, not power politics. Have some sought to seize the One Ring? You bet. But the majority of so-called "conservative Christians" are not about power (any more than their brethren on the religious Left, who largely seem to me to be motivated by gospel values as well, albeit with different priorities--and sometimes better ones--than motivate the Right). And because of this, they aren't going anywhere. They will continue to press for the coming of the kingdom despite current political misfortune because, if they have any sense at all, they already know that what they seek is not achieveable through politics and never will be.
Some of us are old enough to remember other prognostications from the editors of TIME.
And this is the same magazine that was gleefully warning us just the other day about all those sinister pro-lifers running around deceiving people (yet strangely silent on Murder Inc's various shenanigans of deception).
This is not to say I'm an unqualified fan of the "Religious Right". Insofar as the "Religious Right" betrays the gospel for the sake of earthly power, I'm a big opponent of it, just as I am an big opponent of the (tiny and impotent) Religious Left when it sells its soul to defend blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
But what TIME means by the "religious right" is usually "Christians who take seriously the gospel and try to apply it in the public square in ways unapproved by the editors of TIME." And that means the usual pelvic issues. It also means things like public evangelism. Anything that "imposes" those values unapproved by TIME.
Martin Luther King did not "impose values" because he stood for gospel values TIME approves of. Fr. Frank Pavone *does* "impose values" because he stands for gospel values TIME disapproves of. And Alveda King, the outspoken neice of Dr King who says that abortion is the civil rights movement of our time? Well, she doesn't even exist at all, according to TIME, which never tells you anything about her.
That's a little clue about why you should take these "death of Religious Right" stories with a grain of salt. Remember: dock 50 IQ points when the MSM talks about religion.
Has the RR shot itself in the foot? Sure. The failure to seriously critique the Bush Administration in light of Just War, the quasi-idolatry of the Prez
The weird conflation of GOP corporate values and culture with the Kingdom of Heaven
and various other failures have led it to become too closely identified with a particular political agenda and, in particular, with the disastrous conduct of the Administration's War in Iraq and the various Machiavellian machinations of some of the neocons.
On the other hand, most of the so-called "religious right" are, I think, far more sinned against than sinning. They want to worship God, to save babies from being killed, and to live quiet lives of holiness without being forced to confess that gay sex is the greatest thing in the universe. They want their children to be happy, to know the Lord, and to live lives of joy, love and work. And they have been exploited and used by the beltway pros, the Karl Roves, the Dick Cheneys, the various consummate professionals and millionaires who make up the culture of DC and who differ from their consummate professional multimillionaire Democrat opponents, so far as I can make out, primarily in terms of which vast pools of political innocence they prefer to exploit with empty promises and cynical contempt.
However, politics and power is all TIME can see. Which means they still can't see what drives most of the so-called "religious right", which is, at the end of the day, dedication to Jesus Christ, not power politics. Have some sought to seize the One Ring? You bet. But the majority of so-called "conservative Christians" are not about power (any more than their brethren on the religious Left, who largely seem to me to be motivated by gospel values as well, albeit with different priorities--and sometimes better ones--than motivate the Right). And because of this, they aren't going anywhere. They will continue to press for the coming of the kingdom despite current political misfortune because, if they have any sense at all, they already know that what they seek is not achieveable through politics and never will be.
Media Powers and Principalities Lie to us About ESCR vs. Adult Stem Cells
There's gold in them thar cannibalized kids!
And, of course, Satan just hates children. It's the diabolical mirror image of grace. No child is too small to escape the relentless malice of the evil one just as no person is too insignificant for God to direct his complete attention and love to them.
There's gold in them thar cannibalized kids!
And, of course, Satan just hates children. It's the diabolical mirror image of grace. No child is too small to escape the relentless malice of the evil one just as no person is too insignificant for God to direct his complete attention and love to them.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Here's a hopeful sign!
Some of the remaining sane Anglicans may be moving closer toward reunion with Rome.
I wonder what Fr. Peter Wales and my Anglican friends in the Diocese of the Murray in South Australia make of this story. I do hope to share communion with them and with good eggs like Chris Johnson one of these days.
Some of the remaining sane Anglicans may be moving closer toward reunion with Rome.
I wonder what Fr. Peter Wales and my Anglican friends in the Diocese of the Murray in South Australia make of this story. I do hope to share communion with them and with good eggs like Chris Johnson one of these days.
This is a Scream
Gutenberg's Tech Support
HT to my old pal Jim Manney, who is the guy who bought By What Authority for OSV.
Gutenberg's Tech Support
HT to my old pal Jim Manney, who is the guy who bought By What Authority for OSV.
A reader sends along a link to...
The American Religion. It begins:
Such blasphemous piety (or pious blasphemy) has been in the American DNA since long before the founding. Christ spoke of the Church as a "City on Hill". The Puritans applied it to Massachusetts Bay Colony. American conflations of the Church and the American Experiment are a dime a dozen. We've thought nothing of this blasphemous exaltation of the US in our art and rhetoric more times that I could count. Most recently we got Clinton's "New Covenant" and his spectacularly grotesque misquote of Scripture "Eye hath not seen nor ear heart, neither hath it entered into the heart of man... what we can build" (a motto suitable for inscription at on the cornerstone of the Tower of Babel).
But Dubya is just as grotesque. "There is power, wonder-working power!" he declared a few years ago, "...in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people." That, no doubt, is what the hymnist meant to say. But being a primitive, he ascribed such power to the "precious blood of the Lamb" who died for the sins of the world and neglected to undertake bombing campaigns for the healing and redemption of the world via democratic capitalism.
America, for good or ill, will always be a nation of Puritans, whether apostate or faithful. We will always have trouble distinguishing between the American Way and the kingdom of heaven. It's a blasphemy that has inspired some great achievements and a piety that has made us obnoxious as hell sometimes.
The American Religion. It begins:
In the eye of the rotunda of the US Capitol is a huge fresco of _The Apotheosis of Washington_". This blasphemous post-Civil War (1865) schlock depicts the first George ascending to glory as a pagan god, like a divinized Caesar.
Such blasphemous piety (or pious blasphemy) has been in the American DNA since long before the founding. Christ spoke of the Church as a "City on Hill". The Puritans applied it to Massachusetts Bay Colony. American conflations of the Church and the American Experiment are a dime a dozen. We've thought nothing of this blasphemous exaltation of the US in our art and rhetoric more times that I could count. Most recently we got Clinton's "New Covenant" and his spectacularly grotesque misquote of Scripture "Eye hath not seen nor ear heart, neither hath it entered into the heart of man... what we can build" (a motto suitable for inscription at on the cornerstone of the Tower of Babel).
But Dubya is just as grotesque. "There is power, wonder-working power!" he declared a few years ago, "...in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people." That, no doubt, is what the hymnist meant to say. But being a primitive, he ascribed such power to the "precious blood of the Lamb" who died for the sins of the world and neglected to undertake bombing campaigns for the healing and redemption of the world via democratic capitalism.
America, for good or ill, will always be a nation of Puritans, whether apostate or faithful. We will always have trouble distinguishing between the American Way and the kingdom of heaven. It's a blasphemy that has inspired some great achievements and a piety that has made us obnoxious as hell sometimes.
David Palm Responds to Sungenis' Attacks on Roy Schoeman
Here, here, and here.
In the future, I trust Bob will read the book *before* writing the hatchet job on it. It's generally what real Ph.D's do.
Speaking of which, Jacob Michael takes a hard look atWilbur Weed Boxtop Diploma Mill Calamus University, where Mr. Sungenis got his pretend degree.
I only have a BA in English myself. But I have numerous friends with real Ph.D.s who worked their butts off to get them, so it irritates me when quacks with phony degrees cheapen the efforts of my friends by pretending the vending machine-cum-academy that awarded them their piece of paper is anything besides a joke.
Here, here, and here.
In the future, I trust Bob will read the book *before* writing the hatchet job on it. It's generally what real Ph.D's do.
Speaking of which, Jacob Michael takes a hard look at
I only have a BA in English myself. But I have numerous friends with real Ph.D.s who worked their butts off to get them, so it irritates me when quacks with phony degrees cheapen the efforts of my friends by pretending the vending machine-cum-academy that awarded them their piece of paper is anything besides a joke.
A Brit Looks at Our Lady Macbeth
Sure did.
This little incident, the skilfully choreographed exploitation of a human tragedy, the cynically manipulated deployment of public sympathy in service of a personal political end, offered a timely insight into the character of the politician who this week launched the most anticipated presidential election campaign in modern history.
Sure did.
More on Global Warming
It would really help layman like me if the anti-Global Warming Zealots (what? you thought only one side of this controversy imports irrelevant Culture War ideologies into the discussion?) would not cloud the air with ignorant insults directed at Pavel's poetry (he's a fine poet and the world needs more like him) and his alleged "leftist" views (if you only knew how incredibly wrong you are) and stuck to the subject. Likewise, my life would be easier if I didn't have to wade through this kind of reportage every day (which a reader thoughtfully forwards):
My reader adds:
It's tough to know who to listen to.
It would really help layman like me if the anti-Global Warming Zealots (what? you thought only one side of this controversy imports irrelevant Culture War ideologies into the discussion?) would not cloud the air with ignorant insults directed at Pavel's poetry (he's a fine poet and the world needs more like him) and his alleged "leftist" views (if you only knew how incredibly wrong you are) and stuck to the subject. Likewise, my life would be easier if I didn't have to wade through this kind of reportage every day (which a reader thoughtfully forwards):
A hot AP story Reader William Katz alerts us to a classic example of the way the AP reports the news. His case study is Seth Borenstein's "January weather hottest by far." Mr. Katz observes:
We're informed in the first paragraph that last month was "by far the hottest January ever."
We're informed in the second paragraph that they've only been keeping records "since 1880." That's 127 years. Apparently, that's "ever."
The story lists the usual "global warming" horrors.
Then, toward the end, the writer casually informs us that January temperatures in the U.S., presumably the home of environmental original sin, were essentially normal, "ranking only the 49th warmest since 1895."
Oh.
As Gilda Radner used to say: "Never mind."
My reader adds:
Supplementary reading: S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.
It's tough to know who to listen to.
Another Pathetic Icon of the Post-Familial West
"Father" is far too exalted a term for such a creature. "Chromosome donor" is about it. I wonder when they'll invent a Hallmark card for this.
"Father" is far too exalted a term for such a creature. "Chromosome donor" is about it. I wonder when they'll invent a Hallmark card for this.
A Joint Statement By Catholic bloggers of the Dallas area
Go Team!
Is there a phrase more infamous than "Roe versus Wade"?
The principal people involved in this most infamous legal case were from Dallas. "Roe" is a pseudonym for Dallas resident Norma McCorvey. Henry Wade was the Dallas district attorney who filed the original charges in the case.
It all began here - in our home town, where we raise our families, where we go to church, where we live, and love, and learn, and work.
We are three bloggers who also live in the Dallas area. We are deeply committed to ending abortion in this country. To that end, we have committed ourselves to the following: On each First Friday for the next eleven months, we will fast and pray for the intention of ending abortion. This will culminate at the annual Dallas March for Life in January of 2008, where we will join our bishop and the faithful of this city in marching to the courthouse where Roe was originally argued.
We ask anyone reading these words to join us. Fast and pray with us each First Friday, no matter how far removed you are from Dallas, for an end to abortion. We especially ask other Dallas area bloggers and residents to join us, at least in spirit.
We will not win this battle in the courts. We will not win this battle in the media. We will not win this battle in any earthly way. We will only win through prayer, fasting, and devotion to Christ.
It began here. Let it end here.
Jesus, we trust in you.
Mark Windsor - Rafting the Tiber
Julie Davis - Happy Catholic
Laura Hughey - ...and if not...
Go Team!
A reader writes:
Hmmmmm....
Well, on the bright side, when the CfF concluded its most recent Star Chamber deliberations on my fate, they did opt to be clement. So I do owe them that.
I do honestly puzzle over how to respond to people like this. I'm not utterly deaf to the gospel commands to love your enemies. But if I try to make clear that it is their ideas and not them that I loathe, that I regret whatever sins, real or imagined, I have committed against them, I tend to suspect it will be taken either as a lie (which I deeply resent) or as sarcasm. So I sit through Mass yesterday trying to figure out how to react to things like this. On the one hand, I think their various defences of prisoner abuse and so forth are detestable. And my habit, for time out of mind, has been to direct scorn and laughter at things I regard as detestable.
But on the other hand, I am also aware that flippancy hardens the heart and that it's a very fine line between treating evil ideas with contempt and treating human beings with contempt. The problem is, that fine line separates heaven from hell. I don't think I've always been successful at it. But the problem is, I'm not sure what else to do? Just get angry? That's not productive.
I really am at a loss as to how to respond. I'm not used to having enemies. I'm not indifferent to the gospel commands to reconcile, if possible, with them. But I don't even know where to start. I suspect it's a mistake to say that publicly, because if cyberspace has taught me anything, it's that baring your heart publicly is to invite every jerk in the world to use it as a pinata.
But in the spirit of trying to obey yesterday's gospel, I thought I'd give it a try and see if there are any ideas cuz I'm fresh out.
Serious replies only. Insults will instantly render you a Person I Can Do Without, Who Never Will be Missed.
Love your blog. Don't always agree with you on everything but you do a great job.
Have you seen this? Reminds me of trying to get the CfF to argue fairly.
Hmmmmm....
Well, on the bright side, when the CfF concluded its most recent Star Chamber deliberations on my fate, they did opt to be clement. So I do owe them that.
I do honestly puzzle over how to respond to people like this. I'm not utterly deaf to the gospel commands to love your enemies. But if I try to make clear that it is their ideas and not them that I loathe, that I regret whatever sins, real or imagined, I have committed against them, I tend to suspect it will be taken either as a lie (which I deeply resent) or as sarcasm. So I sit through Mass yesterday trying to figure out how to react to things like this. On the one hand, I think their various defences of prisoner abuse and so forth are detestable. And my habit, for time out of mind, has been to direct scorn and laughter at things I regard as detestable.
But on the other hand, I am also aware that flippancy hardens the heart and that it's a very fine line between treating evil ideas with contempt and treating human beings with contempt. The problem is, that fine line separates heaven from hell. I don't think I've always been successful at it. But the problem is, I'm not sure what else to do? Just get angry? That's not productive.
I really am at a loss as to how to respond. I'm not used to having enemies. I'm not indifferent to the gospel commands to reconcile, if possible, with them. But I don't even know where to start. I suspect it's a mistake to say that publicly, because if cyberspace has taught me anything, it's that baring your heart publicly is to invite every jerk in the world to use it as a pinata.
But in the spirit of trying to obey yesterday's gospel, I thought I'd give it a try and see if there are any ideas cuz I'm fresh out.
Serious replies only. Insults will instantly render you a Person I Can Do Without, Who Never Will be Missed.
Amazing Grace Looks like a Pretty Good Film
And I like that they are trying to use it to leverage anti-slavery efforts today. Slavery is one of the many traditions of antiquity that Islam has thoughtfully preserved for the modern world.
And I like that they are trying to use it to leverage anti-slavery efforts today. Slavery is one of the many traditions of antiquity that Islam has thoughtfully preserved for the modern world.
Fr. James Schall, S.J., makes several powerful theological and philosophical points about the spiritual dangers and potential destruction awaiting those legislators and politicians who facilitate abortion
I am continually amazed at Catholics who think that "getting away with what is not precisely, technically, illegal" is tantamount to doing what is right.
I am continually amazed at Catholics who think that "getting away with what is not precisely, technically, illegal" is tantamount to doing what is right.
Late to the Party, But Thanks!
When my enormous team of handlers, agents, toadies and sycophants woke me early Saturday morning to inform me of the Catholic Blog Awards results it took me a minute to take it in. But when I did, I was delighted. As I'd hoped a bunch of new faces got recognition and the older kids on the block who got awards were the ones who I'd hoped would get them. In particular, I was happy to see the Amy and Jimmy get their due in their particular categories, as well as the Whapsters, the Curt Jester and Pontifications. Congrats to all the winners!
Of course, the surprise winner this year was Absolutely Nobody for
Most Informative & Insightful Catholic Blog
Total votes this category: 0
As Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year, I want to be the first to congratulate Mr./Ms. Nobody on their achievement!
I was a bit disappointed that there was no "Most Perpendicular" award despite the strenuous lobbying campaign to which I subjected you all, but (as you can see from the photo of me at the impromptu celebration we held early Saturday morning):
I was very moved and grateful to the kind folks who saw fit to make me First Runner Up for the "Best Political/Social Commentary Catholic Blog". You like me! You really *like* me! And I am pleased to be beaten by The Anchoress, to whom I extend warm congratulations!
This
shall grace my left rail with gratitude to all the kind folk who both honored my blog and who honored my request to honor other folk. Much obliged! Without you there wouldn't be much point to what I do here.
When my enormous team of handlers, agents, toadies and sycophants woke me early Saturday morning to inform me of the Catholic Blog Awards results it took me a minute to take it in. But when I did, I was delighted. As I'd hoped a bunch of new faces got recognition and the older kids on the block who got awards were the ones who I'd hoped would get them. In particular, I was happy to see the Amy and Jimmy get their due in their particular categories, as well as the Whapsters, the Curt Jester and Pontifications. Congrats to all the winners!
Of course, the surprise winner this year was Absolutely Nobody for
Most Informative & Insightful Catholic Blog
Total votes this category: 0
As Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year, I want to be the first to congratulate Mr./Ms. Nobody on their achievement!
I was a bit disappointed that there was no "Most Perpendicular" award despite the strenuous lobbying campaign to which I subjected you all, but (as you can see from the photo of me at the impromptu celebration we held early Saturday morning):
I was very moved and grateful to the kind folks who saw fit to make me First Runner Up for the "Best Political/Social Commentary Catholic Blog". You like me! You really *like* me! And I am pleased to be beaten by The Anchoress, to whom I extend warm congratulations!
This
shall grace my left rail with gratitude to all the kind folk who both honored my blog and who honored my request to honor other folk. Much obliged! Without you there wouldn't be much point to what I do here.
From our "I Blowed it Up Real Good!" Dept.
Which is more destructive?
American Fun?
or French Incompetence?
HTs to Zippy for the first one and to reader Brian for the second!
Which is more destructive?
American Fun?
or French Incompetence?
HTs to Zippy for the first one and to reader Brian for the second!
Thursday, February 15, 2007
I'm outta here till Monday!
If you happen to be in the Raleigh, NC area, I'm coming your way:
February 16-17 Ignited by Truth Catholic Conference. Cardinal Gibbons Catholic High School, 1401 Edwards Mill Road, Raleigh, NC. Topics: Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did, Incarnational Evangelism, Being a Campus Radical. Contact: Ursula Ruiz, 919-878-5181.
Also on the bill will be one of my heros: Peter Kreeft, as well as the excellent Steve Wood and a bunch of other fine folk.
And on Monday, I'll be speaking down in Lakewood (for all you Western Washingtonians):
February 19 6:00 PM. St. John Bosco Church, 10508 112th St. SW, Lakewood, WA 98498-1336. Phone: 253-582-1028. Topic: Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did, Contact: Frederick Palm
If you happen to be in the Raleigh, NC area, I'm coming your way:
February 16-17 Ignited by Truth Catholic Conference. Cardinal Gibbons Catholic High School, 1401 Edwards Mill Road, Raleigh, NC. Topics: Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did, Incarnational Evangelism, Being a Campus Radical. Contact: Ursula Ruiz, 919-878-5181.
Also on the bill will be one of my heros: Peter Kreeft, as well as the excellent Steve Wood and a bunch of other fine folk.
And on Monday, I'll be speaking down in Lakewood (for all you Western Washingtonians):
February 19 6:00 PM. St. John Bosco Church, 10508 112th St. SW, Lakewood, WA 98498-1336. Phone: 253-582-1028. Topic: Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did, Contact: Frederick Palm
On Leading Horses to Water
In the atheism threads below, various folk are reminding me that miracles do not prove the existence of God. Quite so. I have long believed that there is no such thing as an "unanswerable argument". To the statement 2+2=4, you can always find *somebody* for whom "2" is a symbol that does not represent what the rest of us mean by "two" and therefore, to them, 2+2 does not equal 4. That's why the plain common sense of St. Thomas' five ways has never failed to have ingenious critics who can avoid the pretty clear implications. And that is why, as well, I tend to have a very circumspect view of what almost *any* argument for the existence of God, apart from grace, can do. A mere syllogism will not persuade a human being who is bound and determined to not see God that he should make a move toward a relationship with Him (which is what all acts of faith, no matter how small, are). I don't flatter myself that somebody bent on denying the existence of God will change their heart because of any argument I or anyone else could make. That's the Holy Spirit's job. At best, apologetics can help a reasoning mind that is already seeking relationship with God to get past apparent difficulties. It cannot, however, replace the Holy Spirit and *create* the will or the faith necessary to desire God. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
One commenter remarks, "Those of us who believe faith comes first aren't really troubled by the atheist position, frankly." Nor am I troubled by atheism much. I don't think of apologetics as "defending the Faith" because I don't think God needs defending. Indeed, I think one of the many ills troubling the Church is that God has too many defenders and not enough believers: people who fear that God will crumble and fall under the assaults of various foes if they do not ride into battle and protect him. Me: I think He's generally able to hold his own without my coming to his aid. I think of apologetics as a help, not for God, but for people who are seeking God and who just can't find their way because of various problems that seem to suggest the truth about God (i.e, the Catholic Faith) is incompatible with Reason. Some people would *like* to make an approach to God but do not feel they can do so honestly because this or that seeming obstacle to reason is standing in their way. Apologetics does the work of clearing the obstacle out of the way so they can walk down the road toward God. It cannot and must not try to push or drag them down that road though. That has to be up to them.
There is, quite simply, nothiing in the Faith that is contrary to reason. There are things that *transcend* Reason. My argument with AEC has not been an attempt to "prove" God's existence so much as an attempt to say that Materialism is stifling and small and unable to account, even for itself.
AEC's response has been, as you would expect, the claim that it's all about evidence, not about an a priori materialist dogma. So, in response to, "Show me some evidence of the supernatural" I point to, say, Padre Pio or Lourdes (the latter including a scientifically rigorous procedure for examining the cures at Lourdes).
Result: the response is, "I refuse to look at that evidence". At this point, one can point out the inconsistency of the intellect, but beyond that, there's not much you can say at that point, because the problem at that point is now one of the will, not the intellect: the person does not want to consider the evidence they were demanding you provide yesterday.
Does that evidence "prove" God's existence? Not apart from a disposition of the heart to enter into relationship with God, no. We can always concoct junk about "psychic forces" or whatnot to stave off the obvious. The human mind is tremendously resourceful in that way. I merely point out that taken with the many other spokes on the wheel of evidence, it is also possible to conclude that it is quite in accord with Reason, and certainly not contrary to it, to believe that the the Faith is true. But no human being can *make* another believe it.
In the atheism threads below, various folk are reminding me that miracles do not prove the existence of God. Quite so. I have long believed that there is no such thing as an "unanswerable argument". To the statement 2+2=4, you can always find *somebody* for whom "2" is a symbol that does not represent what the rest of us mean by "two" and therefore, to them, 2+2 does not equal 4. That's why the plain common sense of St. Thomas' five ways has never failed to have ingenious critics who can avoid the pretty clear implications. And that is why, as well, I tend to have a very circumspect view of what almost *any* argument for the existence of God, apart from grace, can do. A mere syllogism will not persuade a human being who is bound and determined to not see God that he should make a move toward a relationship with Him (which is what all acts of faith, no matter how small, are). I don't flatter myself that somebody bent on denying the existence of God will change their heart because of any argument I or anyone else could make. That's the Holy Spirit's job. At best, apologetics can help a reasoning mind that is already seeking relationship with God to get past apparent difficulties. It cannot, however, replace the Holy Spirit and *create* the will or the faith necessary to desire God. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
One commenter remarks, "Those of us who believe faith comes first aren't really troubled by the atheist position, frankly." Nor am I troubled by atheism much. I don't think of apologetics as "defending the Faith" because I don't think God needs defending. Indeed, I think one of the many ills troubling the Church is that God has too many defenders and not enough believers: people who fear that God will crumble and fall under the assaults of various foes if they do not ride into battle and protect him. Me: I think He's generally able to hold his own without my coming to his aid. I think of apologetics as a help, not for God, but for people who are seeking God and who just can't find their way because of various problems that seem to suggest the truth about God (i.e, the Catholic Faith) is incompatible with Reason. Some people would *like* to make an approach to God but do not feel they can do so honestly because this or that seeming obstacle to reason is standing in their way. Apologetics does the work of clearing the obstacle out of the way so they can walk down the road toward God. It cannot and must not try to push or drag them down that road though. That has to be up to them.
There is, quite simply, nothiing in the Faith that is contrary to reason. There are things that *transcend* Reason. My argument with AEC has not been an attempt to "prove" God's existence so much as an attempt to say that Materialism is stifling and small and unable to account, even for itself.
AEC's response has been, as you would expect, the claim that it's all about evidence, not about an a priori materialist dogma. So, in response to, "Show me some evidence of the supernatural" I point to, say, Padre Pio or Lourdes (the latter including a scientifically rigorous procedure for examining the cures at Lourdes).
Result: the response is, "I refuse to look at that evidence". At this point, one can point out the inconsistency of the intellect, but beyond that, there's not much you can say at that point, because the problem at that point is now one of the will, not the intellect: the person does not want to consider the evidence they were demanding you provide yesterday.
Does that evidence "prove" God's existence? Not apart from a disposition of the heart to enter into relationship with God, no. We can always concoct junk about "psychic forces" or whatnot to stave off the obvious. The human mind is tremendously resourceful in that way. I merely point out that taken with the many other spokes on the wheel of evidence, it is also possible to conclude that it is quite in accord with Reason, and certainly not contrary to it, to believe that the the Faith is true. But no human being can *make* another believe it.
Why Laymen Like Me Have Trouble Figuring Out Who to Believe with the Whole Global Warming Thang
A reader sends along the following, which was sent to Ellen Goodman after her "Stigmatize the Global Warming Infidels as Equal to Holocaust Denial Nuts and Punish the Heretics!" column:
I'd like to see the documentation on this, particularly the claim about CO2 levels 50 MYA.
A reader sends along the following, which was sent to Ellen Goodman after her "Stigmatize the Global Warming Infidels as Equal to Holocaust Denial Nuts and Punish the Heretics!" column:
Dear Ms. Goodman,
I read your article of February 9, 2007 in the Globe. It frustrates me to see articles like yours. Not because getting an idea wrong is tragic, but because practically everyone is grossly ignorant of the actual process of science, and apparently unaware that once public opinion starts dictating how much money scientific efforts get, the process of genuine science is discarded in favor of some approximation of the worst of sensationalist journalism. Both science and journalism have great value to our society, but that value drops close to zero when either science or journalism tries to sell themselves on the open market to an easily-bored public. And, when an event, or a cycle of events, has a duration significantly longer than a human life, most humans become bored, and both avoid the issue and fail to understand and observe it. If science and journalism are driven by public opinion, both will be blind to long-term changes.
First off, science doesn't PROVE anything, really. The way science works is that people present what they consider to be reasonable theories to explain observed reality, and then everybody else in the field in question tries to prove the theory incorrect. We assume that a theory that stands up against all evidence just might be correct, but that tentative approval awaits only new evidence to disprove the theory. An interesting study can be made of the old, discarded theories, and how our ideas got more and more sophisticated, and presumably closer and closer to the truth over time, by a process much like that of weeding a garden.
Worldwide media have long touted the idea that people are "bad," and are "damaging" this planet. Millions have died in the name of these causes. The latest incarnation of this apparent poorly focused self-loathing is the media event called "Global Warming." Since this movement has proceeded in similar fashion, allow me to start with the conclusions, and work backwards.
The conclusions are that:
1. Earth is warming up.
2. This is a bad thing.
3. People have caused this warming.
4. The mechanism of this warming is an increasing CO2 percentage in the atmosphere.
Naturally, this leads some people to conclude that it is our responsibility to stop "Global Warming," and that we are able to do this. Most of these conclusions can be disproved by scientific examination. As a matter of fact, the information needed to disprove this theory has been reported by journalists on an ongoing basis -- but people don't tend to examine data they receive very carefully, and almost never apply it to other problems of which they are aware. I'm essentially forced to examine data that way, however.
Conclusion #1
The first step in evaluating conclusion #1 is to chart out what we know of the temperature of our beautiful little planet. The first thing I think of is to look back at the historical temperature of the planet, because we cannot know if there is a problem developing unless we know the context. Global temperatures have, it turns out, fluctuated quite a bit throughout history. Since the last Ice Age, the planet has warmed and cooled in a cycle that lasts approximately 1500 years. That is, the planet warms up for a bit over 700 years, and then cools for about the same amount of time. We are approaching the warm peak of such a cycle. So, the historical evidence tends to support conclusion #1.
Conclusion #2
This is the kind of thing scientists tend to avoid, if they can. It calls for a value judgment, and that is not the realm of the scientist. But, mostly, this is a mixed bag. When the planet warms, the planet, as a whole, can (and does) support more life, over a wider area. Vast areas of tundra warm up and become productive of food for animals, which spread further away from the equator, and closer to the poles. On the other hand, there are some areas which become too hot, or too dry, to support the types of life they did previously. If you live in a cold place, global warming probably looks good. If you live in a hot place, not so much. To me, this approach means that conclusion #2 is incorrect; the answer is too complex for a "yes" or "no" answer.
Conclusion #3
We see the warming and cooling cycles of the planet going back many thousands, and even millions of years. Since the Industrial Revolution is less than three hundred years old, it is not possible that humans have caused it. The cause MUST precede the effect. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, ALL of man's carbon usage was of plant materials -- we did not mine coal, nor drill for oil. An additional factor which should be considered is that Mars is also undergoing a period of global warming. Surely, a warming Mars is NOT caused by CO2 in Earth's atmosphere. And, that warming Mars argues strongly that the cause of global warming is not atmospheric at all, since we do not share atmosphere with Mars.
As it turns out, the Sun was once a variable star, fluctuating significantly in output. Over time, it has "quieted down" significantly, much as a ringing bell slowly becomes quieter. Evidence of the Sun's variable nature can be had in the form of the Sunspot Cycle, an approximately eleven-year-long cycle. But, there are longer-termed cycles involved as well, and one of them happens to match the 1500 year global temperature cycle precisely. It appears that our "furnace" runs hotter and cooler, and heats Earth more or less, depending upon it's position in the cycle. Clearly, people are NOT causing global warming.
Conclusion #4
If Earth were a simple system, like a greenhouse, and the atmosphere consisted of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, and nothing more, it would be correct to say that, all other things being equal, the amount of CO2 in the air has a direct effect upon the greenhouse temperature. However, Earth is not a simple system, it is outrageously, magnificently complex. In point of fact, Earth's weather is what is called, in mathematics, a chaotic system. Therefore, simple models will tell us nothing upon which we can rely. Even the addition of methane to the atmosphere throws off the calculations. And, unfortunately, we do not have a very good idea of how methane and carbon dioxide interact, in terms of the greenhouse effect. A chaotic system, like our planet's weather, is by definition unpredictable.
There is great concern because the amount of CO2 in the air is a few percent more than it was three hundred years ago, due to the actions of mankind. However, fifty million years ago, there was TEN TIMES as much CO2 in the air as there is now -- and it was the middle of an Ice Age. Clearly, it is not CO2 that controls the temperature.
Ms. Goodman, if I were to tell you that I would like you to write a story about global warming, which is caused by CO2, and caused by mankind, I'm sure you would. If I gave computer programmers a mathematical model of weather that stated that temperature was directly related to CO2 in the air, and gave them historical data on CO2 emissions, along with future predictions... Well, that is what HAS happened. Programmers have been given clearly false data, and told to make predictions based upon it. "Garbage In, Garbage Out" applies.
There is a great deal of talk about opinion polls of scientists showing massive support for the ideas of "Global Warming." In the first place, reality does not alter to fit opinion polls. Furthermore, if you will take a poll among scientists who have based their careers upon historical weather data, you will find essentially unanimous consent that current media hype about "Global Warming" has nothing to do with reality. But, you had better act fast -- it is becoming clearer to scientists that voicing an opinion contrary to the politically correct one about "Global Warming" is likely to be very dangerous to one's paycheck.
I could go on at considerable (additional) length. But, you are a notoriously bright woman, and are already either thinking about what I've written to this point, or have already rejected it out-of-hand. In either case, my commenting on the location of Roman ruins is likely to do little to alter the course of your thinking. Suffice it to say that reality leaves all sorts of traces. I encourage you to be a great journalist, and swim against the overwhelming current carrying everyone along on this issue. Look at what is REAL, rather than what is popular. In the long run, great journalism has little to do with percentages, and much to do with accuracy. Side with accuracy; among other benefits, that field is less crowded. Thank you for your time.
I'd like to see the documentation on this, particularly the claim about CO2 levels 50 MYA.
Catholics for Cruelty and Stupidity
Here's the ultra condensed version of the CfF fan-based response to the Herrington interview (including responses to the response by sane people):
Today, Phillip returns to explain again how he triumphantly nailed me by showing that not all coercion is torture. What a coup! Hoist on my own petard! Herrington acknowledges that not all coercion is torture!
Phillip:
If you are at all familiar with what I've written in the past, you will know that I have never claimed that all coercive techniques are torture. So you are effectively kicking open a door that has been standing wide open all along and shouting "ah-HA!"
Congrats.
Meanwhile, my point has been that our government has nonetheless sanctioned and ordered torture and prisoner abuse. I have tended to focus on a few documented methods such as waterboarding, strappado and cold cell which have resulted in the deaths of prisoners. I do that because these methods are so extreme that die-hard torture excusers (with the exception of one or two) cannot play the game that you consistently attempt to play, which is to pick some technique which *could* be a form of torture if applied in extreme degrees, and then argue that it's not *always* applied in extreme degree and is therefore not torture. You have consistently chosen to play this "But is [insert ambiguous technique] *always* torture?" game.
I have long since abandoned this game. My point is that the Church doesn't just say "Don't torture". It doesn't even say "Tip-toe as close as you like to torture, just keep it "licit"! It says, "Treat prisoners humanely."
You are still stuck on the old paradigm of trying to figure out exactly how much prisoner abuse you can get away with and still call it "legal." Herrington is basically saying that this way of approaching the matter is "cruel and stupid". So I point out that you are essentially arguing the position of "Catholics for Cruelty and Stupidity".
I think that rather than trying to see how much cruelty and stupidity you can legally, technically, precisely get away with, you should contemplate the fact that a) the Church says we should be humane, not merely abuse prisoners with tactics juuuuuuust short of torture (cold cells that don't *quite* result in hypothermia, music that doesn't *quite* result in ear damage or madness, physical abuse that doesn't *quite* leave bruises or scars). Then we should b) pay attention to Col. Herrington and note that, when you obey God's teaching, you find that you also get good results in intelligence.
Or you can continue doing apologetics for the "licit" tactics you strive to justify that Herrington describes as "cruel and stupid".
Here's the ultra condensed version of the CfF fan-based response to the Herrington interview (including responses to the response by sane people):
Me: Here's an interrogator who says that prisoner abuse is cruel and stupid, albeit not quite torture in every case.
Phillip: So you *admit* that not all coercion is torture!
Me: Right. Some of it is legit. Some is just stupid and cruel.
Phillip: Welllllll.... what a devastating admission! Not all coercion is torture.
Me: That's what I said. In fact, it's what I've always said. Do you really think, however, that cruelty and stupidity, so long as they are "licit" are the goals for either the Church or our intelligence community?
Phillip: Heather *MacDonald* says...
Josiah: I think I will take the word of an experienced interrogator over Heather's.
Phillip: Yes, but *Heather* says that some guys at Gitmo found prisoner abuse to be *not* stupid.
Me: Would that be those interrogators who investigated themselves and found themselves not guilty after the FBI swore they were abusing prisoners by beating them, smashing their head into cell doors, and doing mock baptisms? Dunno why Heather's suddenly the go-to gal for the prisoner abuse crowd.
Phillip: That's it! I'm out of here!
Somebody: "Why can't you be civil like Chris Blosser, Mark?"
Tom: You're mean to *Heather*! Prove your awful calumnies.
Me: Uh, what do you *you* think Phillip meant by appealing to some atheist journalist to a) trump the teaching of the Church the prisoners should be treated humanely and b) trump the testimony of a trained interrogator that prisoner abuse (even if it does not sink to the level of what he'd call "torture") is "cruel and stupid"?
Today, Phillip returns to explain again how he triumphantly nailed me by showing that not all coercion is torture. What a coup! Hoist on my own petard! Herrington acknowledges that not all coercion is torture!
Phillip:
If you are at all familiar with what I've written in the past, you will know that I have never claimed that all coercive techniques are torture. So you are effectively kicking open a door that has been standing wide open all along and shouting "ah-HA!"
Congrats.
Meanwhile, my point has been that our government has nonetheless sanctioned and ordered torture and prisoner abuse. I have tended to focus on a few documented methods such as waterboarding, strappado and cold cell which have resulted in the deaths of prisoners. I do that because these methods are so extreme that die-hard torture excusers (with the exception of one or two) cannot play the game that you consistently attempt to play, which is to pick some technique which *could* be a form of torture if applied in extreme degrees, and then argue that it's not *always* applied in extreme degree and is therefore not torture. You have consistently chosen to play this "But is [insert ambiguous technique] *always* torture?" game.
I have long since abandoned this game. My point is that the Church doesn't just say "Don't torture". It doesn't even say "Tip-toe as close as you like to torture, just keep it "licit"! It says, "Treat prisoners humanely."
You are still stuck on the old paradigm of trying to figure out exactly how much prisoner abuse you can get away with and still call it "legal." Herrington is basically saying that this way of approaching the matter is "cruel and stupid". So I point out that you are essentially arguing the position of "Catholics for Cruelty and Stupidity".
I think that rather than trying to see how much cruelty and stupidity you can legally, technically, precisely get away with, you should contemplate the fact that a) the Church says we should be humane, not merely abuse prisoners with tactics juuuuuuust short of torture (cold cells that don't *quite* result in hypothermia, music that doesn't *quite* result in ear damage or madness, physical abuse that doesn't *quite* leave bruises or scars). Then we should b) pay attention to Col. Herrington and note that, when you obey God's teaching, you find that you also get good results in intelligence.
Or you can continue doing apologetics for the "licit" tactics you strive to justify that Herrington describes as "cruel and stupid".
You Know There's Something Wrong when *Argentina* Has to Instruct our AG About the Wrongness of Torture
Gonzalez' astounding reply: My torture memos were not meant for the public to read.
Iribarne explained to him that the methods used by the Argentine
dictatorship three decades ago led to state terrorism, which the current
government rejected. Fernandez said that Argentina's cooperation had a limit: he
mentioned explicitly Gonzales' famous memos and explained to him the goverment's
disagreement with their substance. He added that the Argentine government is
part of the International Crimes Tribunal and supports the application of the
statute of Rome, which it created, and the Geneva Conventions.
Gonzalez' astounding reply: My torture memos were not meant for the public to read.
Gay Blackshorts on the March!
The anti-Voltaireans continue to declare: "I disagree with every word you say, and I will defend to the death my right to crush and suppress your free speech!"
The anti-Voltaireans continue to declare: "I disagree with every word you say, and I will defend to the death my right to crush and suppress your free speech!"
Semi-Arian Writes Book, Doesn't Know She's Semi-Arian
This landed in my spam mail last night. If you don't want to labor through the whole thing, just read the line I have bold-faced below. It tells you everything you need to know about the cause of the farrago of nonsense that constitutes the rest of the spam. If you are a masochist who wants to see but one example of what happens when you try to read Scripture while studiously ignoring Sacred Tradition, read the rest of the spam:
I'm particularly curious to know who all these Christians are who have been "conditioned" to "see Jesus as the Son of the Trinity". I've never met one in my life. The whole book seems designed to answer notions that are so far out they don't even have the dignity of being wrong.
This landed in my spam mail last night. If you don't want to labor through the whole thing, just read the line I have bold-faced below. It tells you everything you need to know about the cause of the farrago of nonsense that constitutes the rest of the spam. If you are a masochist who wants to see but one example of what happens when you try to read Scripture while studiously ignoring Sacred Tradition, read the rest of the spam:
Hello - I'm wondering if you might enjoy reading a pretty unconventional creative nonfiction book I've written (169 pages), entitled, PIVOT POINT: Is Jesus your God or the SON of your God? It's just leaving the editing phase at Tate Publishing, so I'm guessing the release date will be in April (around Easter). I describe it as a book written by a layperson for laypeople. The book is meant to encourage ordinary people to set aside what they've been taught to believe and re-examine the Bible along with their personal understanding of God. When I did this myself, I would ask a question, then read through the whole New Testament with just that one question in mind, taking notes as I went along. After going through this process many times, something began to take shape that I'd never seen there I believe I've uncovered an element that is missing in today's Christianity, which might explain the widespread trend toward Jesus-Only, 'Jesus is our God' religion.
Fern Holm
Addressing the relevancy and timeliness of this book:
What is missing in today's Christianity?
Fern Holm, author of PIVOT POINT, a creative nonfiction study intended to be the first of a series, believes GOD is missing - or soon will be - unless hearts are turned to the Father.
The widespread trend among Christians toward a Jesus-Only, "Jesus is our God" religion has sidestepped very important point - a pivotal point, in fact. PIVOT POINT nails it down by asking, "Is Jesus your God or the SON of your God?" Many Christians would say He's both.
Tradition teaches that Jesus is the Son of the Trinity. From there, one can extrapolate that - as one of the three Persons of the Trinity - Jesus basically sent Himself to earth, which makes Him both "God" AND "Son of God". According to the unconventional view expressed in PIVOT POINT, both logic and the Bible would have an equally hard time supporting this theology since Jesus is - as logic would tell us - the Son of the Father, and - as Holm reminds the reader of 1 John 4:14 - "the FATHER (not "the Trinity") has sent the Son as Savior of the world".
Does the author deny the divine nature of Christ?
"Not at all! God (also called 'Father'), the "Son of God", and the "Spirit of God" share the same divine (everlasting) nature, but not the same office or function. I have the same human nature as George W. Bush, but that doesn't make me President."
What about the Trinity?
"Yes, there is a Trinity, a 'tri-union', defined even in the Old Testament: "The LORD God and His Spirit have sent ME (the Messiah)" Isaiah 48:16, but it is undeniable, at least to the objective reader, that 'the LORD God' is the Father alone."
So, what happens when people make Jesus their God? Ever heard of the Antichrist? Well, as PIVOT POINT explains it, if you can believe 1 John 2:22, "He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son." "For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ" Jude 1:4. By this standard, there's a whole lot of "Antichrist" going on. and not much worship of the only true God, according to Fern Holm, author of PIVOT POINT.
Summary:
Do you dare to compare popular teachings with scriptural truths? This author did, and it led to evidence of a missing element which, she believes, could set end time events in motion and usher in the return of Christ! PIVOT POINT reveals the absence of the "everlasting gospel" in much of today's evangelism. As Fern Holm sees it, when this gospel of the Father's kingdom is preached - together with the message of salvation through Christ - the resulting synergy will release the prophetic, worldwide outpouring of the Holy Spirit (mankind's final revival). "and then the end will come" Matthew 24:14.
Excerpts from my book, PIVOT POINT:
Is Jesus your God or the SON of your God?
from the Introduction:
"As I took a fresh look at the Bible over the past several years, I was surprised to find that something seems to be missing from the typical Christian gospel as it is preached today, an omission which I believe is also the probable cause of the "Jesus-Only" trend that is gaining ground, and not just in the Oneness Pentecostal churches. I'm not saying the widely-accepted gospel of salvation through Christ is wrong, but that it is incomplete. What we are missing is the inclusion of the "everlasting gospel" of Revelation 14, the one that has always been so: the gospel of the king-dom of God.
Jesus said this gospel of the kingdom of God will be preached in all the world, and then the end will come. An angel preaches the everlasting gospel to every nation in Revelation 14, and then the end does come: Babylon falls! The disciples, after Jesus' resurrection and ascension, preached both "the kingdom of God, and the things concerning Jesus" to the unsaved-something much of today's church is neglecting to do. This imbalance has finally swung theology around to a point where Jesus is no longer the Son, and God is no longer the Father."
Chapter 3:
"The Popular Christian Gospel"
September 11, 2001: The horror of that day and the images we saw as the twin towers fell are permanently imprinted on our brains. It was as unexpected as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, actually more so. At least that attack happened during a world war and targeted a military base. This one came out of nowhere and was meant to kill many thousands of innocent civilians. In the days afterward, we were told the perpetrators performed this atrocity in the name of their God. Then commentators pointed out that Muslims and Christians worship the same God-the God of Abraham, a Jew, is also the God of Ishmael, Abraham's son who birthed the Arab nation.
Christians were aghast at this unwanted association. Christian spokespeople went on television, trying to differentiate between the two religions. Unfortunately, in some cases the terrorist fanatics were seen to represent the entire Muslim faith, which would be similar to linking all Christians with the Crusaders who would plant a Jew in the sand and cut off his head if he didn't confess the name of Jesus Christ. Rather than acknowledging that Jews and Arab Muslims worship the same God and both are in need of the same Savior, Yeshua (Jesus), Christians publicly denied the God of the Muslims, calling him false. The problem became a false God, not false teachings about the true God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and, yes- Ishmael.
"And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation." Gen. 17:20. God also gave, to the Hebrew tribe of Benjamin, Hittite wives from the Arab country of Syria. Later, King David married Bathsheba, also a Hittite, who became the mother of Solomon. Was this a way that God chose to include the descendents of Ishmael in His covenant with Abraham, and to make a place for them in the New Jerusalem of Revelation?
In an attempt to disassociate themselves from the God of the Muslims, Christians began looking for a way to make an absolutely clear distinction. I witnessed its shocking culmination when a man with a world-famous ministry looked at his audience from the TV screen and declared, "'God' is too generic a term. We go around saying 'God this' and 'God that.' People need to know exactly who our God is-that our God is Jesus."
This statement and other public professions like it, seemed to open the way for the local churches, especially the nondenominational or charismatic churches, to come right out and say what they had previously only implied. Wherever I went, whomever I listened to, whatever songs were sung and prayers prayed, the underlying message would often be that Jesus is our God.
This distinction has very effectively eliminated the God of Ishmael from any association with Christianity, but in so doing, I am afraid it has also eliminated the same God as that of Abraham. My concern is that "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers," who "glorified his servant Jesus" (Acts 3:13), "the God of our Fathers" who "raised Jesus" (Acts 5:30), is to be God no longer in the Christian church. Can Christians who say Jesus is their God still stand beside Paul as an adopted child of God and say, "I worship the God of my Fathers"? (Acts 24:14). Did those Jewish fathers worship the coming Messiah as their God? Jesus has been exalted to sit at the right hand of God, and God has given Jesus the position of the great "High Priest." Did Jews traditionally worship the high priest of the temple as their God?
Even before the reaction to 9/11-long before-the evangelistic church at large has preached a gospel that has at least the potential to lead people to Christ alone. Some samples of the gospel message and the recommended prayer of salvation, publicly displayed on the website of each of these organizations, are quoted below.
AFLC: Association of Free Lutheran Congregations:To receive Christ as Lord and Savior right now, you might pray a prayer like this:
"Lord Jesus, I come to You a lost and lonely sinner. I confess that only You can take away the burden of my sins. I believe You died on the cross for all my sins. Come into my life right now. Forgive all my sins. I surrender my life to You and want to receive You as Lord of my life. Please give me the assurance of the Holy Spirit that I belong to You. Amen."
SBC: Southern Baptist Convention: "Salvation"
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, sanctification, and glorification.
Salvation Army:
"Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be."
BGEA: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association:
"Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner and need Your forgiveness. I believe that You died for my sins. I want to turn from my sins. I now invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as Lord and Savior. In Jesus' name. Amen."
TBN: Trinity Broadcast Network:
Prayer of Salvation: "Dear Jesus, I believe in You. I believe You are the Son of God, that You died for my sins, and that You were buried and rose again as written in the Bible. I'm sorry for the things I've done that hurt You. Forgive me for all my sins. Come into my heart, take charge of my life and make me the way You want me to be. With Your ever present help, I renounce all my sinful practices of the past. Cleanse my heart with Your precious blood. Write my name in Your Book of Life. I confess You now as my Lord and Savior. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit. Thank You, Jesus! In Jesus' Name, Amen."
Can you see the total focus on Jesus in each one, even praying to Jesus in Jesus' name? Something is definitely missing in this circular prayer that seems to fold in upon itself. Jesus is "the Way"-not the Destination. An arrow, not a circle. There's a mystery here, one that's begging to be solved. Something is missing, but what is it?
In my own attempt to be a Berean, I think I've come across a possible solution. The answer to this mystery could be contained in what Jesus called, "this gospel of the kingdom of God"-the gospel Jesus says He was sent to preach and did preach, the one to be preached in all the world before the end comes. This gospel was apparently lost somewhere back in history-let's see if we can find it back.
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(End of Chapter Four)This gospel of the Kingdom of God will be preached in all the world-and then the end will come. The everlasting gospel will be preached to all nations-and then Babylon will fall. The everlasting gospel proclaims three things: We are to fear God, give glory to Him, and worship the One who made the heavens and the earth. As you may have seen in this book's addendum, Jesus, as our example and Forerunner, lived the gospel of the "King-dom" of God. He feared, glorified and worshipped the Father, whom He acknowledged as "greater than all," and "greater than I"-and He still calls the Father His God, all the way to the end of the Book. Jesus says, "He who believes AND is baptized will be saved" (Mt 16:16). Whoever believes this gospel of the kingdom of God AND is baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ will be saved from eternal separation from God. This is the gospel of the Father, preached together with the gospel of the Son. Both are necessary for salvation and, ultimately, are inseparable.
Somehow, somewhere in history, there was a separation, and even an elimination, and the repercussions are snowballing as we come closer to the end. Where has it led? What lies ahead? Get ready to consider a very disturbing possibility.
CHAPTER 5:
"Today's Gospel, Today's World"
At a Christian conference held in Jerusalem in 1986, a word from the LORD came forth, which included this devastating prophecy, presumably from the heart of God: "And there will be Christianity without ME." What? Could we possibly have "Christianity" but not have God? I'm afraid it is not only possible, but it is already happening-most blatantly in the "Jesus Only" Oneness Pentecostal churches but even, to a growing degree, throughout much of Christendom.
The incomplete, lopsided gospel we now see so many preach is like a wagon missing a wheel. Many have already jumped off this wagon as they see it veering off the path and careening into a ditch, where Christianity is sitting, stuck in the mire of ineffectiveness. According to the U.S. Center for world missions, the number of people in the world who were "adherents to the Christian religion" in 2000 was at 33% and dropping, despite pockets of phenomenal growth in previously unreached countries, such as China. That same study showed Muslims at 20% and rising, the only established religion which is actually outstripping the world population growth rate.
This alarming trend is even more distressing when you pair it with the fact that so much of the world is hearing the Christian gospel preached-many more people than ever before-but it is believed and received by fewer and fewer. Christians see themselves as certainly being obedient to the call to "go and preach the gospel," but understand they can only present it. It is then up to the Holy Spirit to bring that person's heart to the act of belief, then surrender. If Christians are doing their part, why isn't God, from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds, doing His? Do you think God might be trying to tell us something? How can He bless the sowing of a gospel that has the potential to actually turn people away from Him?
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(Chapter Five, continued)
If the church as a whole (not just the Oneness Pentecostals) is moving toward a Jesus-only, "Jesus is our God" theology, then we need to ask why this is happening. I think, if we dig beneath the surface, we will see its roots in the early Christian creeds, which first correctly made this profession: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord," but later responded to man's inclinations by formulating creeds that proclaimed Father, Son, and Spirit to be equally "God." Making the Persons of the Trinity equal in office and title, as well as nature, effectively removed any distinction between them. It becomes just as fine to worship and pray to the Son if one so chooses. What does it matter? As I've been told, "It's all 'God,' anyway!"
************************************************
The subtitle of this book asks, "Is Jesus your God, or the Son of your God?" If you answered, "He's both!" I'd like you to think that through. We've been conditioned to see Jesus as the Son of the Trinity, and therefore "God" in His own right-but is that what the Bible actually says? Did Jesus, as part of the Trinity, send Himself to earth? No, "The FATHER has sent the Son as Savior of the world" (1 John 4:14); "For GOD so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16); and "Him (Jesus) God has exalted to His right hand to be PRINCE and Savior" (Acts 5:31).
The Prince of heaven, Himself, has told us His Father is the only true God-the eternal King of the king-dom of heaven. Our thinking got off track when someone decided that 'God' equals 'the Trinity', which makes Jesus the Son of the Trinity (basically the Son of Himself!), rather than who He really is: the Son of the FATHER. Can you see how this popular teaching became a pivot point that turned us away from the Father? And put Jesus in the position of God?
I'm particularly curious to know who all these Christians are who have been "conditioned" to "see Jesus as the Son of the Trinity". I've never met one in my life. The whole book seems designed to answer notions that are so far out they don't even have the dignity of being wrong.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Chris Johnson sends along a prayer request from a friend of his:
Father, hear our prayer for Vicky's complete healing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. St. Luke, pray for her. Blessed Mother Mary, pray for her.
I've decided not to post anymore about Vicky's illness on the blog, but there are a few of you who I thought might like an update.
The story so far...
After suddenly starting to lose weight, turning completely yellow and have her abdomen swell to the point where she looks like she's eight months pregnant with twins, we are back into medical nightmare mode. Although they knew that what caused her episode last year was an auto-immune reaction, they never figured out why it happened. As a result, they had to take a shotgun approach to treatment and put her on a tremendous amount of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and steroids. Now the GI doctor believes this may have set off Auto-Immune Hepatitis. She is, as he repeatedly tells us, gravely ill. Her liver is hardly functioning, her thyroid is only going at about 50% of what it should be, her iron levels are off the charts and her coagulation factors are so low that he can't do a liver biopsy for fear that she would bleed to death. On our last visit, he pretty much laid it out for us and said that either she gets better over a period of weeks or thing go downhill quickly. He's given her a 50% chance of making it to a point of where they could start looking at other treatment options ( i.e. liver transplant). We are, to use a cliche, quite literally taking things day by day.
At this point, she is still home, although we are obviously watching her very closely. She's very weak, which is compounded by the fact that she has to make a daily choice between eating and being in horrible pain (further compounded by the fact that they can't give her anything for pain because of the liver). I'm working mostly from home for now since I don't like her to be alone for extended periods of time.
Father, hear our prayer for Vicky's complete healing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. St. Luke, pray for her. Blessed Mother Mary, pray for her.
About that Massacre in Salt Lake City the other day
Was the shooter named
1. Br. Francis?
2. Levi Eckstein?
3. Suleiman?
If you answered "3" you are correct.
If only we could understand what those people at the Mall did to insult Islam, we could understand this.
In the meantime, pay no attention. The press certainly isn't.
Was the shooter named
1. Br. Francis?
2. Levi Eckstein?
3. Suleiman?
If you answered "3" you are correct.
If only we could understand what those people at the Mall did to insult Islam, we could understand this.
In the meantime, pay no attention. The press certainly isn't.
This is the sort of stuff that makes me wonder if the Bushies are ramping up for an attack on Iran next
White House: The Iranian gov't is supplying Iraqi insurgents
General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: There's no evidence the Iranian gov't is supplying Iraqi insurgents
Happily, it's just Tony Snow talking, and as I was informed the other day when he boasted about Bush's approval of ESCR, he doesn't actually represent that views of the Administration, just because he's the Press Secretary.
White House: The Iranian gov't is supplying Iraqi insurgents
General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: There's no evidence the Iranian gov't is supplying Iraqi insurgents
Happily, it's just Tony Snow talking, and as I was informed the other day when he boasted about Bush's approval of ESCR, he doesn't actually represent that views of the Administration, just because he's the Press Secretary.
The Modern Seven Pillars of Iraq
Lt. Col.(P) Craig T.Trebilcock attempts to shout "Get a freakin' clue! Learn something about the people you are 'liberating'!" to the Administration before gloomily concluding:
Two more long years of this stunningly arrogant incompetence.
Lt. Col.(P) Craig T.Trebilcock attempts to shout "Get a freakin' clue! Learn something about the people you are 'liberating'!" to the Administration before gloomily concluding:
Our civilian leadership, desperately seeking to avoid the embarrassment of political defeat in Iraq, proposes to send in its military reserve, calling it “a temporary surge” for political consumption. From a military operational standpoint this will enable us to kick in more doors, kill more bad guys and secure more territory—in the short run. From the strategic political standpoint this will expose the inability of a weak Iraqi government to rule its own people, create more civilian casualties among an already embittered populace and likely become the final straw, rendering open domestic political opposition to our continued military presence in Iraq acceptable to a war-weary citizenry. In the end, by ignoring the cultural and internal political realities of Iraq in favor of a one-dimensional approach based upon military remedies, the civilian leadership of our military will likely win the battle and lose the war.
Two more long years of this stunningly arrogant incompetence.
Too Many Replies on the Atheism Thread!
So I'll just stick with AEC since he's the guy I was responding to initially.
You're welcome!
I get the distinct impression you still have not really understood me. You talk here as though I was initially asserting that reason does not exist, but have since thought better of that position due to your arguments and am now making the "good move" of admitting this.
Please read and pay attention to the following: I HAVE NEVER DENIED THAT REASON EXISTS. THAT WOULD BE SILLY. WHAT I ASSERT IS THAT MATERIALISM DOES A LOUSY JOB OF *ACCOUNTING* FOR REASON, FREEDOM AND MORALITY. IT SIMULTANEOUSLY ASSUMES THEIR EXISTENCE WHILE POSITING A UNIVERSE IN WHICH THEY DO NOT FIT VERY WELL.
Ahem. You continue:
This is a common thread in several posts. There seems to be the notion afoot that Christians believe God to have helped humans "discover" reason, apparently in the pages of Genesis. I chalk this sort of argumentation up to the latent sola scriptura Protestantism that infects American culture. That's the only reason I can see why anybody would regard it as a stunning rebuttal to point out the fact that pagans were capable of reason without ever having heard of the God of Israel.
In fact, of course, everybody knows that Jews and Christians did not invent reason and they do no lay sole claim to it. Reason is as old as humanity.
The telling thing is that you speak of "discovering" reason. You are still laboring under the notion that the existence of reason is something you can prove--from reason. My point is that reason is something closer to an axiom about the human person. We accept it as a fact *without empirical proof*. And that means there is something absolutely crucial in your materialist system that you take on faith.
You're being overly literal. My point remains the same: you are trying to have it both ways. You try to pretend that diverging accounts of the experience of the supernatural (which come from the overwhelming majority of the human race) are unreliable because they diverge (just as accounts of Oswald's death diverge). When it is pointed out that all the witnesses agree that there is something supernatural afoot, you refuse to consider the possibility. And you do so by recourse to an incoherent dogma of materialism.
You write:
There are all sorts of incoherencies here. Your first point means: "Some things that were thought to be supernatural had natural explanations, therefore all the rest do too." Your second point means: "Nature has certain laws, therefore it is impossible that the Legislator of those laws could ever abrogate those laws for his own purposes." Your third point is: "Supernatural events are rare (you do not explain how you know this) therefore evidence for them can be safely dismissed."
Put in plain English, I don't see how any of your points makes sense. They are, though, admirable expressions of a dogmatic refusal to look at the evidence based on your materialist philosophy. The obvious thing to do with any claim of a miracle is to see if materialist explanations do it justice. In many cases, they will. But in many cases (for instance, Lourdes or Padre Pio) the obvious explanation is that we are looking at clear cases of supernatural powers at work. The appeal to "rarity" is bosh. The question, as you say, is evidence. But the question is also our willingness to really face what the evidence is saying. Here's a little passage from a book I've written that deals with, among other things, what Catholics call "private revelation" (those weird little supernatural events God does now and then for our benefit):
You continue:
A remarkably evidence-free claim. Are you familiar with the processes by which the claims of miracles at Lourdes are verified? They are actually quite rigorous. Do you know anything about how claims of miracles are verified in the case of canonizations? Again, pretty darn thorough. Have you ever noticed that people who go around claiming to see Mary water stains and freeway underpasses are seldom welcomed with open arms by the pastors of the Catholic Church. In short, are you aware of the fact that, when it comes to claims of the miraculous, few people are more skeptical than a Catholic bishop or priest?
But I'll see your bet: put your money where your mouth is and do a serious investigation of Lourdes, of the Eucharistic Miracle at Betania, of the long strange career of Padre Pio. Show me you've really looked at the evidence and not simply brushed it off.
No doubt these things play a role. But it is mere a priori materialist dogma to maintain, in advance of the evidence, that a materialist explanation covers everything. Your prejudice is showing.
As a rough rule of thumb, I'd say, "The experience which has no natural explanation."
Right. Which is why you should stop reciting materialist dogmatic creedal statements and go found out if there is anything to the accounts of miracles at Lourdes and at the hands of Padre Pio.
Yes, but the odds generally favor the fact that 99.99% of people are normal, including their accounts of experience of the supernatural.
Feel free to start examining it. There is, as Chesterton said, a choking cataract of testimony in favor of the supernatural. I've limited myself to two fairly prominent points: Lourdes and Padre Pio. Knock yourself out.
So I'll just stick with AEC since he's the guy I was responding to initially.
I thank Mark for his time and effort in taking part in this discussion, but remain unconvinced.
You're welcome!
I am glad that Mark and I agree that reason exists. Asserting that reason doesn't exist would undermine his own position as much as mine, so this is probably a good move. But it is also curious that he thinks reason's existence favors his viewpoint.
I get the distinct impression you still have not really understood me. You talk here as though I was initially asserting that reason does not exist, but have since thought better of that position due to your arguments and am now making the "good move" of admitting this.
Please read and pay attention to the following: I HAVE NEVER DENIED THAT REASON EXISTS. THAT WOULD BE SILLY. WHAT I ASSERT IS THAT MATERIALISM DOES A LOUSY JOB OF *ACCOUNTING* FOR REASON, FREEDOM AND MORALITY. IT SIMULTANEOUSLY ASSUMES THEIR EXISTENCE WHILE POSITING A UNIVERSE IN WHICH THEY DO NOT FIT VERY WELL.
Ahem. You continue:
He seems to have missed (or ignored) the point of my arguments about reason, which was that the existence of reason was discovered without reference to the Abrahamic God by various cultures, and thus has no bearing on the question of that God existing.
This is a common thread in several posts. There seems to be the notion afoot that Christians believe God to have helped humans "discover" reason, apparently in the pages of Genesis. I chalk this sort of argumentation up to the latent sola scriptura Protestantism that infects American culture. That's the only reason I can see why anybody would regard it as a stunning rebuttal to point out the fact that pagans were capable of reason without ever having heard of the God of Israel.
In fact, of course, everybody knows that Jews and Christians did not invent reason and they do no lay sole claim to it. Reason is as old as humanity.
The telling thing is that you speak of "discovering" reason. You are still laboring under the notion that the existence of reason is something you can prove--from reason. My point is that reason is something closer to an axiom about the human person. We accept it as a fact *without empirical proof*. And that means there is something absolutely crucial in your materialist system that you take on faith.
The claim that Jack Ruby shot Oswald is an ordinary claim - a claim about a type of criminal act that has happened, unfortunately, many times - for which there was extraordinary evidence. Mark forgets that in addition to the television viewers, the shooting occurred in the presence of trained police officers, and the murder weapon was recovered at the scene, so there was forensic evidence.
You're being overly literal. My point remains the same: you are trying to have it both ways. You try to pretend that diverging accounts of the experience of the supernatural (which come from the overwhelming majority of the human race) are unreliable because they diverge (just as accounts of Oswald's death diverge). When it is pointed out that all the witnesses agree that there is something supernatural afoot, you refuse to consider the possibility. And you do so by recourse to an incoherent dogma of materialism.
You write:
We regard miracles as extremely unlikely, becuase there have been numerous instances in history of phenomena alleged as miracles that are well understood scentifically now. Further, the miraculous claims contradict the known facts about nature, and the burden of evidence is thus on the theist to demonstrate that some not yet understood natural phenomenon is not the cause before appealing to the supernatural.
So, these miraculous claims, unlike the kind of claims made in criminal cases, are extraordinary claims, and require extraordinary evidence.
There are all sorts of incoherencies here. Your first point means: "Some things that were thought to be supernatural had natural explanations, therefore all the rest do too." Your second point means: "Nature has certain laws, therefore it is impossible that the Legislator of those laws could ever abrogate those laws for his own purposes." Your third point is: "Supernatural events are rare (you do not explain how you know this) therefore evidence for them can be safely dismissed."
Put in plain English, I don't see how any of your points makes sense. They are, though, admirable expressions of a dogmatic refusal to look at the evidence based on your materialist philosophy. The obvious thing to do with any claim of a miracle is to see if materialist explanations do it justice. In many cases, they will. But in many cases (for instance, Lourdes or Padre Pio) the obvious explanation is that we are looking at clear cases of supernatural powers at work. The appeal to "rarity" is bosh. The question, as you say, is evidence. But the question is also our willingness to really face what the evidence is saying. Here's a little passage from a book I've written that deals with, among other things, what Catholics call "private revelation" (those weird little supernatural events God does now and then for our benefit):
Nineteenth century France turned out splendid atheists. There was nothing half-baked about a nineteenth century French atheist. When he left the Catholic faith, he didn't shilly-shally around with Protestantism or the religious methadone treatment called Unitarianism. He went straight for hard-boiled materialism that declared the supernatural to be bunk.
One such hard-boiled atheist was Alexis Carrel, a doctor who, in 1912, won the Nobel prize in Medicine. Raised a Catholic, Carrel eventually rejected all supernatural belief and became a committed atheistic materialist. But he was also a man who believed in investigating facts rather than simply imposing ideology on things. So in 1902, he accompanied a doctor friend to the shrine at Lourdes where, it was said, the Blessed Virgin had appeared to a girl named Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. There were many stories of miraculous cures at the shrine as people washed in or drank from a spring that had been there dug by Bernadette. Carrel, profoundly skeptical, wanted to see for himself. So he boarded a train for Lourdes—and met Marie Bailly.Marie Bailly was born in 1878. Both her father. . . and her mother died of tuberculosis. Of her five siblings only one was free of that disease. She was twenty when she first showed symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis. A year later she was diagnosed with tuberculous meningitis, from which she suddenly recovered when she used Lourdes water. In two more years, in 1901, she came down with tubercular peritonitis. Soon she could not retain food. In March 1902 doctors in Lyons refused to operate on her for fear that she would die on the operating table.
On May 25, 1902, she begged her friends to smuggle her onto a train that carried sick people to Lourdes. She had to be smuggled because, as a rule, such trains were forbidden to carry dying people. The train left Lyons at noon. At two o'clock next morning she was found dying. Carrel was called. He gave her morphine by the light of a kerosene lamp and stayed with her. Three hours later he diagnosed her case as tuberculous peritonitis and said half aloud that she would not arrive in Lourdes alive. The immediate diagnosis at that time largely depended on the procedure known as palpation.
In Lourdes Marie Bailly was examined by several doctors. On May 27 she insisted on being carried to the Grotto, although the doctors were afraid that she would die on the way there. Carrel himself took such a grim view of her condition that he vowed to become a monk if she reached the Grotto alive, a mere quarter of a mile from the hospital.
The rest is medical history. It is found in Dossier 54 of the Archives of the Medical Bureau of Lourdes. The Dossier contains the immediate depositions by three doctors, including Carrel, and Marie Bailly's own account, which she wrote in November and gave to Carrel, who then duly forwarded it to the Medical Bureau in Lourdes.
The highlights of Marie Bailly's own account are as follows: On arriving at the baths adjoining the Grotto, she was not allowed to be immersed. She asked that some water from the baths be poured on her abdomen. It caused her searing pain all over her body. Still she asked for the same again. This time she felt much less pain. When the water was poured on her abdomen the third time, it gave her a very pleasant sensation.
Meanwhile Carrel stood behind her, with a notepad in his hands. He marked the time, the pulse, the facial expression and other clinical details as he witnessed under his very eyes the following: The enormously distended and very hard abdomen began to flatten and within 30 minutes it had completely disappeared. No discharge whatsoever was observed from the body.
She was first carried to the Basilica, then to the Medical Bureau, where she was again examined by several doctors, among them Carrel. In the evening she sat up in her bed and had a dinner without vomiting. Early next morning she got up on her own and was already dressed when Carrel saw her again.
Carrel could not help registering that she was cured. What will you do with your life now? Carrel asked her. I will join the Sisters of Charity to spend my life caring for the sick, was the answer. The next day she boarded the train on her own, and after a 24-hour trip on hard benches, she arrived refreshed in Lyons. There she took the streetcar and went to the family home, where she had to prove that she was Marie Bailly indeed, who only five days earlier had left Lyons in a critical condition.
Carrel continued to take a great interest in her. He asked a psychiatrist to test her every two weeks, which was done for four months. She was regularly tested for traces of tuberculosis. In late November she was declared to be in good health both physically and mentally. In December she entered the novitiate in Paris. Without ever having a relapse she lived the arduous life of a Sister of Charity until 1937, when she died at the age of 58.
Carrel was caught between two worlds. As an atheistic materialist, he didn't want to be identified with what he regarded as the gullible hoi polloi who believed this stunning cure to be a miracle from Heaven. But as an honest man, Carrel simply couldn't ignore what he saw, as many in the French medical establishment insisted he should do. For many years, Carrel tried to distance himself from both groups and tried to ascribe Marie's healing to gobbledygook about "psychic forces" and various other lame naturalistic explanations. But at the end of his life, Carrel finally received the sacraments of the Church and died reconciled to God.
Emile Zola was a contemporary of Carrel's. A famous novelist and literary figure, he too was an atheist and materialist, but unlike Carrel, he was not going to let any facts get in the way of that faith when he visited Lourdes.Zola... accepted with simple faith the unproved and unprovable dogma that the natural world is a closed system, and that supernatural agencies do not exist. Zola's negative faith was proof against the stubborn fact of the two miracles which he himself witnessed at Lourdes, of which the first was the sudden cure of an advanced stage of lupus. Zola describes Marie Lemarchand's condition as he saw her on the way to Lourdes. "It was", writes Zola, "a case of lupus which had preyed upon the unhappy woman's nose and mouth. Ulceration had spread and was hourly spreading and devouring the membrane in its progress. The cartilage of the nose was almost eaten away, the mouth was drawn all on one side by the swollen condition of the upper lip. The whole was a frightful distorted mass of matter and oozing blood." Zola's account is incomplete, for the patient was coughing and spitting blood. The apices of both lungs were affected, and she had sores on her leg. Dr. d'Hombres saw her immediately before and immediately after she entered the bath. "Both her cheeks, the lower part of her nose, and her upper lip were covered with a tuberculous ulcer and secreted matter abundantly. On her return from the baths I at once followed her to the hospital. I recognized her quite well although her face was entirely changed. Instead of the horrible sore I had so lately seen, the surface was red, it is true, but dry and covered with a new skin. The other sores had also dried up in the piscina." The doctors who examined her could find nothing the matter with the lungs, and testified to the presence of the new skin on her face. Zola was there. He had said "I only want to see a cut finger dipped in water and come out healed". "Behold the case of your dreams, M. Zola," said the President, presenting the girl whose hideous disease had made such an impression on the novelist before the cure. "Ah no!" said Zola, "I do not want to look at her. She is still too ugly", alluding to the red color of the new skin. Before he left Lourdes Zola recited his credo to the President of the Medical Bureau. "Were I to see all the sick at Lourdes cured, I would not believe in a miracle."
Roughly speaking, Carrel and Zola represent two basic worldviews: supernaturalism and naturalism. Supernaturalism, the view held by the overwhelming majority of the human race throughout history, says there is Something beyond and outside of nature and that this Something may, from time to time, intervene in nature. Naturalism says the universe of time, space, matter and energy is all there is or ever was or ever will be and there is nothing beyond it. The question that immediately arises when considering stories like these healings at Lourdes is: "Do miracles—intervention in nature by some Power beyond nature—ever really happen?"
A relatively small but significant number of modern people answer this question with Zola's firm negative. This is due, not to "the facts" but to their faith—come hell or high water—in a rigid and unthinking naturalism. The atheistic materialist, like Zola, rejects the possibility of Marian apparitions, divine healing and such things because he rejects the possibility of all supernatural occurrences, no matter what evidence is presented to his senses. The hilarious thing about this is that the atheistic materialist with the invincible immunity to facts in front of his very eyes almost invariably pats himself on the back for his scientific open-mindedness while condemning the supernaturalist as the rigid dogmatist.
You continue:
Theists rarely wish to see their claims subjected to evidence, and resort to the sort of special pleading we see here.
A remarkably evidence-free claim. Are you familiar with the processes by which the claims of miracles at Lourdes are verified? They are actually quite rigorous. Do you know anything about how claims of miracles are verified in the case of canonizations? Again, pretty darn thorough. Have you ever noticed that people who go around claiming to see Mary water stains and freeway underpasses are seldom welcomed with open arms by the pastors of the Catholic Church. In short, are you aware of the fact that, when it comes to claims of the miraculous, few people are more skeptical than a Catholic bishop or priest?
But I'll see your bet: put your money where your mouth is and do a serious investigation of Lourdes, of the Eucharistic Miracle at Betania, of the long strange career of Padre Pio. Show me you've really looked at the evidence and not simply brushed it off.
In addition, Mark dismisses the fact that these alleged supernatural experiences vary wildly across different religious and cultural groups as insignificant. But it isn't. It indicates that there is probably a more parsimonious explanation that is valid across cultures, such as human neurophysiology and psychology.
No doubt these things play a role. But it is mere a priori materialist dogma to maintain, in advance of the evidence, that a materialist explanation covers everything. Your prejudice is showing.
And it indeed leaves the question of "which supernatural experience is valid, if any ?" unaddressed.
As a rough rule of thumb, I'd say, "The experience which has no natural explanation."
"99.99%" of people have probably believed in the existence of trolls, pixies, djinn, ghosts, animistic deities, etc. So what ? The claims are meaningless if not supported by evidence.
Right. Which is why you should stop reciting materialist dogmatic creedal statements and go found out if there is anything to the accounts of miracles at Lourdes and at the hands of Padre Pio.
99.99% of people can indeed be wrong, or ignorant.
Yes, but the odds generally favor the fact that 99.99% of people are normal, including their accounts of experience of the supernatural.
The objective evidence is what matters.
Feel free to start examining it. There is, as Chesterton said, a choking cataract of testimony in favor of the supernatural. I've limited myself to two fairly prominent points: Lourdes and Padre Pio. Knock yourself out.
Refreshing Common Sense from Army Colonel Stuart Herrington
Various money quotes:
So much for "24" and the incredibly overworked Ticking Bomb scenario.
He is, of course, speaking of the military here, before the Pentagon tightened the regs in response to Administration pressure that sought to make it *easier* to order our troops to torture. The military guys behaved honorably in the face of the Administration's despicable machinations and should be praised for it. The CIA is still torturing people at the behest of the Administration.
The interview continues in a funny vein as Hewitt does his level best to play the "Yes, yes, but is it *torture*?" game with a man who is a) not interested in word games and b) actually knows what interrogation is supposed to entail. Varieties of answers include this common refrain:
He gives a clean bill of health to Gitmo (something the FBI might dispute, but I think he's obviously an honest man).
His main point is found here:
Perhaps the biggest "gulf between two worlds" moment takes place in this exchange:
Would that this man (and not this despicable and brutal man who jovially acquiesces to calling waterboarding by the sunny euphemism "dunking") were Vice President.
The whole interview is worth reading. Essentially, it's somebody who knows what he is talking about trying to educate people out of all the "24" agitprop they've seen which has convinced them they know everything there is to know about interrogation.
Bottom line: It turns out the Church is right. Treat prisoners humanely and you will get the intelligence you need as a general rule.
UPDATE: Further reasons to admire Col. Herrington.
Various money quotes:
I think the first piece of advice for anyone who really wants to understand interrogation is to zero out and ignore virtually everything that they’ve ever seen on either television or in Hollywood movies, because that’s not interrogation as we know it, as professional interrogators, at all.
So much for "24" and the incredibly overworked Ticking Bomb scenario.
HH: Does the United States military torture people?
SH: Well, I think if you ask the question has it happened, or have things taken place that are wrong, and that went well over the line, I think the answer is yes, regrettably. Was it a controlled policy, i.e. that what they were doing was something that was sanctioned from on high, my own personal opinion is that some of it was, especially the things that the task force was doing in Iraq with respect to the top fifty of Saddam’s henchmen that they caught, and al Qaeda types. And in some cases, it was just stupid young people with bad leadership and bad skills essentially behaving in an extremely counterproductive and undisciplined fashion, and that’s more what applies to Abu Ghraib.
He is, of course, speaking of the military here, before the Pentagon tightened the regs in response to Administration pressure that sought to make it *easier* to order our troops to torture. The military guys behaved honorably in the face of the Administration's despicable machinations and should be praised for it. The CIA is still torturing people at the behest of the Administration.
The interview continues in a funny vein as Hewitt does his level best to play the "Yes, yes, but is it *torture*?" game with a man who is a) not interested in word games and b) actually knows what interrogation is supposed to entail. Varieties of answers include this common refrain:
SH: No, I don’t think that’s torture. I don’t think that’s torture, but I think it’s stupid.
SH: I never did it, never had to do it. I realize that it’s in the “repertoire” of a lot of people who fancy themselves interrogators in that it breaks down the defenses, the physical and they hope the psychological defenses of a subject. But again, I never had to resort to that stuff in Vietnam, Panama or the Desert.
SH: I don’t think it’s torture, not in the sense of torture as commonly understood, i.e. water boarding, pulling out fingernails, electric shock, and stuff like that. I just think it’s counterproductive and stupid.
SH: I think that’s stupid as well.
SH: Depends on how loud, I guess. I mean, I could conceive of a level of decibels in a speaker right next to someone’s ear which is causing…
SH: …physical pain, and possibly irreversible damage, and I certainly wouldn’t go there.
SH: Cruel and stupid.
He gives a clean bill of health to Gitmo (something the FBI might dispute, but I think he's obviously an honest man).
His main point is found here:
HH: Can we talk a bit about humane exploitation, Col. Herrington?
SH: Sure.
HH: What’s it look like?
SH: Well, you know, it doesn’t look like Abu Ghraib, I can tell you that.
HH: Well, sure, but I think we agree with that. I mean, I don’t think I know of anyone who has endorsed that, and it’s…
SH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, when a guy is captured, he’s stressed, he is frightened, and he’s probably expecting to be mistreated, because in most societies in the world, that’s the way it works. Disarming him psychologically, by treating him in a manner the opposite of what he expects, extending decent, humane treatment to him, showing concern for himself, his needs, being nimble in assessing and evaluating the person, and recognizing that getting information from someone is developmental, i.e. you won’t get information from someone, generally speaking, just by saying okay, I’m the captor, you’re the prisoner, tell me what you know. You earn it. I like to say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed probably didn’t give up a lot of the information that he gave up because somebody started water boarding him and beating him up. Instead, they used a very clever approach, and played to his ego and his psychological need to be recognized as the architect of 9/11, and the guy talked. In all of the successful interrogation projects that I’ve ever had anything to do with, extending fundamentally decent treatment to the detainees, we even used to call them guests. And you know, the guards would salute a prisoner if he was an officer, and we give them good food, and we would tell them it was unconditional, regardless of whether they chose to talk with us or not. And that type of an approach has a very high batting average.
Perhaps the biggest "gulf between two worlds" moment takes place in this exchange:
HH: Col., I’m getting a couple of standard questions. Number one, from pilots who have gone through water boarding training in their survival courses, why do you consider it torture?
SH: Well, water boarding is very much like another technique that was used during the Vietnam War by the Vietnamese, where they put a poncho over the head of the person, and then poured water through the poncho into the mouth, simulating drowning. It’s an inhumane…it’s inhumane treatment, it’s the kind of treatment that is essentially trying to extract information from someone by creating a fear of imminent death, not unlike and analogous to mock executions. We will have made progress in this arena when people realize that the way you get information from someone is to outsmart them, and use guile and stealth and chicanery to trick them into information, or secondarily, and the best way, is to persuade the person that it’s the right thing to do to talk.
HH: Is it effective? Is water boarding effective?
SH: Boy, you know what? I can’t tell you that. I’ve never practiced it. I consider it to be abhorrent, a practice that shouldn’t be practiced by any professional interrogator, and you’re going to have to ask someone other than me. But I, generally speaking, know from experience that when you levy brutality against a person in order to get that person to talk, even if the person hasn’t got anything to say, or doesn’t know what it is that you want, they’ll come up with something to say just to get you to quit doing it.
Would that this man (and not this despicable and brutal man who jovially acquiesces to calling waterboarding by the sunny euphemism "dunking") were Vice President.
The whole interview is worth reading. Essentially, it's somebody who knows what he is talking about trying to educate people out of all the "24" agitprop they've seen which has convinced them they know everything there is to know about interrogation.
Bottom line: It turns out the Church is right. Treat prisoners humanely and you will get the intelligence you need as a general rule.
UPDATE: Further reasons to admire Col. Herrington.
Another Day, Another Reason to Love Kathy Shaidle
Hiring a "campaign blogger" is like hiring a "campaign farter" or setting up a "campaign mosh pit." "Official" bloggers are to real bloggers what the Monkees are to the Beatles, except that's unfair to the Monkees, who actually put out some damn fine recordings. Make that "what Jazzercise is to jazz".
The work of the Shea Seminar continues to yield insights and profundities
Three important contributions from yesterday:
Three important contributions from yesterday:
I welcome Feddie's contribution to the ongoing process of discernment by which the community of the PeopleBlog (the preferred term used by those who have claimed their right to be heard and to exercise their authority as equals and bloggers, thus replacing the monolithic, monocultural, ossified authoritarianism inherent in the First World-oriented, narrowly sectarian, emotionally prescriptive, Romanocentric "Catholic and Enjoying It!" attribution) refine the traditions of the past and, whilst cherishing their historic value, do not make idols and shibboleths of them but with due consideration set aside those which have served a purpose in the past but which no longer speak to the needs of our modern, post-Galileo, neo-Darwinian, 21st century (in the usage of the Common Era; those who do not hew to this usage please adjust the chronology to the timeframe of their choice) world.
The personal relationship with Mark Shea - in whatever manner we choose to grant understanding of that concept - is indeed paramount. However, I must gently demur that it is necessary to, as Feddie puts it, 'walk with him daily'. There are those of us who are differently abled in the podal extremities; we may not all be in a position to claim our legitimate aspirations to ambulation. There are those of us who may, at the time we are participating in the activities of PeopleBlog, be doing so at night.
It would be a crime at this stage to confine ourselves to a narrow, literal, legalistic interpretation of Mark Shea - he is way, he is process, he is event. But there are other blogs and other bloggers who may also be understood to represent way, process and event. We may legitimately acknowledge that indeed we have derived much that evolved from pre-Sheavian sources. This is not a reproach or a denial. This is the glory and the opportunity of PeopleBlog and the Cosmic Shea.
I rejoice that I can affirm that Mark Shea is way – that’s certainly what it means to be on a journey through the comboxes - is truth in the sense of what does it mean to be wholly and fully and completely a blogging being and again, is life - both as bringer of abundant life but also as exemplar. What does it mean to be both fully Mark and fully Shea? So I’m impatient with the narrow understanding, but certainly welcoming of the broader understanding.
(Apologies to our Episcopalian friends - I appear to have been channelling Bishop Jefferts Schori in those last remarks.)
Fuinseoig
02.13.07 - 6:33 pm #
*Knock, knock.
Hi. I was just in the neighborhood, and wanted to give you all this pamphlet. It's about Mark Shea and the Four Sheavian Laws:
1. Mark Shea loves you and has a wonderful plan for your Web Browser.
2. We are all sinful and separated from Mark Shea, and therefore we cannot know or experience Mark Shea's plan for our Web Browser.
3. "Catholic and Enjoying It" is God's only provision (besides the apocryphal www.mark-shea.com) for our sinfulness and separation from Mark Shea. Through it (and the other site) you can know and experience Mark Shea's plan for your Web browser.
4. We must individually receive Mark Shea into our Web Browsers as our personal Blogger; then we can know and experience Mark Shea's love and plan for our Web Browser.
Do you want to get Sheaved? Will you comment with me to receive Mark Shea into your Web Browser?
Kathleen Lundquist Homepage 02.13.07 - 8:35
pm #
And then I looked back and saw that in all the difficult combox battles of my life there was only one set of footprints, and I turned to Mark Shea and and asked why he had abandoned me when I needed him the most. He said "My reader, those are the times I carried you!"
I could be wrong.
Jamie
02.13.07 - 9:04 pm #
A reader writes:
Lord, hear and answer our prayer through your Son Jesus Christ!
I have a special, urgent prayer intention that I would like to pass on to
the readers of CAEI.
My neice, Allison (16), is in the hospital right now awaiting a heart
transplant. We had prayed that her heart could be repaired, but it is not
keeping up with the demands of her body. She has been growing weaker and now
weighs less than my 11-year-old daughter.
Please pray that she and her parents will be comforted by the Holy Spirit,
that they will find an appropriate donor heart at the right time, that God will
guide the hands of the surgeons, and that she will make a complete recovery soon
after the surgery. Pray also that they will have the financial help they need,
not only for the medical bills, but to help make up for a great deal of missed
work.
Please pray also for the soul of the heart donor, whoever that may
be.
Many thanks, and God bless you.
Lord, hear and answer our prayer through your Son Jesus Christ!
Behold! The Awe and Splendor of Sherry Weddell's Great Vocations Rant!
A Rant in Four Parts, being a Tonick Physick for the Aylementes of the Body of Chryst in its Divers Partes, as Pertayning to the Common Dunderheadedness Abroad in These Latter Dayes.
Go ye, Read and Comment!
A Rant in Four Parts, being a Tonick Physick for the Aylementes of the Body of Chryst in its Divers Partes, as Pertayning to the Common Dunderheadedness Abroad in These Latter Dayes.
Go ye, Read and Comment!
All Is Forgiven, Sadie Hawkins!
My latest on Catholic Exchange: for all the lonely people, especially those who had to endure high school without the grace of baptism.
My latest on Catholic Exchange: for all the lonely people, especially those who had to endure high school without the grace of baptism.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
On Asking Mark Shea into your Web Browser as your Personal Blogger
As discussion continue concerning the Mark Shea Event and readers continue to tease apart the Mark of history and the Shea of Faith, Feddie makes a vital point:
I'm glad you mentioned that.
This whole "personal relationship" aspect is one of the many places where the Shea of Faith appears to be informed by other cultic practices borrowed from pre-existent traditions. One source, for instance, suggests that a being named "Andy" was originally thought to seek a "personal relationship" with the devotee. One early hymn reports:
Andy walks with me
Andy talks with me
Andy tells me I am his own!
However, this practice appears to have been co-opted by early Sheavians who grafted onto the more remote and forbidding personality of the Mark of History (always so ready to issue thunderous denunciations of Torture Apologists and Abortionists) the image of the "Good Blogger" who leadeth his readers to funny YouTube videos, who comforteth the confused with Catechism quotes and the afflicted with groaner puns, and seeks, above all, a "personal relationship" through the Holy Sacrament of the Combox.
Of course, we know that comboxes were a common feature of blogging long before the birth of Catholic and Enjoying It. We likewise know that many blogs made use of YouTube, humorous links, and even Catechism citations during the period the Mark of Hisotry was blogging. So much of what Sheavians call "evidence for the existence of Mark Shea" actually demonstrates the exact opposite: that there is virtually *nothing* original to Shea and that the entire cult of "Catholic and Enjoying it" is transparently a derivation that evolved from pre-Sheavian sources and, at best, attributed to the Mark of History a vast number of mythic and legendary qualities he never dreamt of.
As discussion continue concerning the Mark Shea Event and readers continue to tease apart the Mark of history and the Shea of Faith, Feddie makes a vital point:
All this is fine and dandy, but the question I have for all of you is this: Do you have a personal relationship with Mark Shea? Do you walk with him daily?
I'm glad you mentioned that.
This whole "personal relationship" aspect is one of the many places where the Shea of Faith appears to be informed by other cultic practices borrowed from pre-existent traditions. One source, for instance, suggests that a being named "Andy" was originally thought to seek a "personal relationship" with the devotee. One early hymn reports:
Andy walks with me
Andy talks with me
Andy tells me I am his own!
However, this practice appears to have been co-opted by early Sheavians who grafted onto the more remote and forbidding personality of the Mark of History (always so ready to issue thunderous denunciations of Torture Apologists and Abortionists) the image of the "Good Blogger" who leadeth his readers to funny YouTube videos, who comforteth the confused with Catechism quotes and the afflicted with groaner puns, and seeks, above all, a "personal relationship" through the Holy Sacrament of the Combox.
Of course, we know that comboxes were a common feature of blogging long before the birth of Catholic and Enjoying It. We likewise know that many blogs made use of YouTube, humorous links, and even Catechism citations during the period the Mark of Hisotry was blogging. So much of what Sheavians call "evidence for the existence of Mark Shea" actually demonstrates the exact opposite: that there is virtually *nothing* original to Shea and that the entire cult of "Catholic and Enjoying it" is transparently a derivation that evolved from pre-Sheavian sources and, at best, attributed to the Mark of History a vast number of mythic and legendary qualities he never dreamt of.
A reader writes:
Father, we ask that you would grant Nathan complete healing and that you would grant skill to the nurses, doctors and surgeons who will be caring for him. Give peace and strength to his family as well and let all things issue in your glory, O Lord.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reign with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever.
My sister informed me that she knows a woman whose son was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. Today he is going through a procedure called Gamma-knife radiation. It is said to last 12 hours. They aren't sure that it is his last chance from a medical perspective, but since the idea was even stated, it shows the severity of the situation. He is only 18. His name is Nathan Krahling. Prayers have been requested. I know you have a large readership, and if you could post it for prayers all around, I am sure his family - and he - would be thankful.
Father, we ask that you would grant Nathan complete healing and that you would grant skill to the nurses, doctors and surgeons who will be caring for him. Give peace and strength to his family as well and let all things issue in your glory, O Lord.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reign with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever.
I'm with Kathy
For some mysterious reason, my access is denied to the Catholic Blog Awards, so I can't tell for absolute certain that I'm among the 1100 nominations. However, given history, I'm willing to bet I am.
I think I've gotten enough nice wishes from readers and I appreciate it very much. However, now I think other bloggers should be seen and noticed. So, along with Kathy, I'd like to say:
Though, of course, a "Most Perpendicular" category could still tempt me to stay in the running....
For some mysterious reason, my access is denied to the Catholic Blog Awards, so I can't tell for absolute certain that I'm among the 1100 nominations. However, given history, I'm willing to bet I am.
I think I've gotten enough nice wishes from readers and I appreciate it very much. However, now I think other bloggers should be seen and noticed. So, along with Kathy, I'd like to say:
"Thanks muchly to those who nominated me. Now vote for someone who needs the prize more than I do!"
Though, of course, a "Most Perpendicular" category could still tempt me to stay in the running....
This just Screams "Crank Science!"
It also screams "Crank Theology!" I was unaware that the Holy Spirit is a magnetic field. I also wonder what the Voice of God sounds like in a vacuum before the creation of air.
A science student in Kentucky says when the Bible records God spoke, and things were created, that's just what happened, and he can support that with scientific experiments.
"If God spoke everything into existence as the Genesis record proposes, then we should be able to scientifically prove that the construction of everything in the universe begins with a) the Holy Spirit (magnetic field); b) Light (an electric field); and c) that Light can be created by a sonic influence or sound," Samuel J. Hunt writes on his website.
It also screams "Crank Theology!" I was unaware that the Holy Spirit is a magnetic field. I also wonder what the Voice of God sounds like in a vacuum before the creation of air.
North Korea agrees to nuclear disarmament
We'll see if they follow through. If they do, I wonder if this will affect the "Faster Please" crowd and their zeal to attack Iran.
We'll see if they follow through. If they do, I wonder if this will affect the "Faster Please" crowd and their zeal to attack Iran.
A reader writes:
I'll take your word for it. I don't know much about it. Evangelicalism is prone to a certain amount of faddishness and this seems like one more fad to me. I'm skeptical it's really *harmful*. My own suspicion is simply that Catholics would be better off delving into their own tradition than hiving off after this latest bit of ephemera, but I also recognize that sometimes a Rick Warren can induce a Catholic to take a step in faith where a Teresa of Avila can't. People are mysterious critters and there's no accounting for how to scratch where they itch.
Mark, just a comment on A Purpose Driven Life. I think that there is considerable wrong with it, from a Catholic perspective. My brother, who left the faith to become a Baptist when he got married, gave me a copy of A Purpose Driven Life a couple of years ago for Christmas. I started reading it a chapter a day, as it recommends, just to see what it was about. There were multiple things that concerned me.
Some of them are, and I'm being a little vague because it was a while ago that I read it:
Rick Warren never quotes scripture in the book. He paraphrases scripture. He'll say something like, "The Bible says that we should eat cheese sandwiches on the third Thursday of every month." He'd then provide an end note. So, you have to go to the back of the book and look up the end note to find the scripture citation, and then look it up yourself if you wanted to see what the actual quote was. And when you get there, Warren's paraphrase was often quite different than the actual Biblical text. In one instance, I recall him saying that the Bible compared something (I don't remember what) to adultery. When I looked up the citation, it actually comapred it to flirting, or something similar. Now, I was using the New American Bible, but there's a big difference in my mind between flirting and adultery.
Also, there were some assertions he made that, while not strictly un-Christian, in my mind skirted the edge. He talked several times about our duty to love those who were saved. No mention was made, at least in the ten or so chapters that I got through, of loving all those tax collectors and prostitutes in the world. Or me, as I doubt that he would consider my confirmation "being saved". He never says that Christians ought not love the un-saved, but he never says they ought to. It seemed very conspicuous to me by its absence. Maybe I'm paranoid.
Also, also, he has some very weird ideas. At one point, he made the assertion that music didn't exist until the first time it was mentioned in the Bible. I suppose those cheese sandwiches still don't exist, as I can find no mention of them either. He also talked at length about the jobs we would have in heaven, and how we ought to prepare for them. There are going to be leaders in heaven, and followers, and we'd all have assigned tasks.
That's all I can remember off hand, but about every chapter I went through had some kind of problem with it. I can definitely say that it is not consistent with Catholic teaching on several points. Much closer to being consistent with the Left Behind folks. I would be troubled if it were being taught in my diocese.
Just my thoughts. No real objection to your posts. Keep up the good work on reminding everyone on the Church's teaching on torture.
I'll take your word for it. I don't know much about it. Evangelicalism is prone to a certain amount of faddishness and this seems like one more fad to me. I'm skeptical it's really *harmful*. My own suspicion is simply that Catholics would be better off delving into their own tradition than hiving off after this latest bit of ephemera, but I also recognize that sometimes a Rick Warren can induce a Catholic to take a step in faith where a Teresa of Avila can't. People are mysterious critters and there's no accounting for how to scratch where they itch.
A reader writes:
I go to a small rural church that just has two masses on the weekend. As it happens, the one on Sunday morning has music but the one that I go to on Saturday evening is conducted without music. I was speaking with our pastor, and mentioned that I had the wonderful experience of going to a church in which the Our Father was sung a capella and in English in a simple plain fashion with the traditional melody that goes with the Latin Pater Noster. The striking thing about that experience was that *everyone* sung the Our Father - and with gusto. The whole church would resonate with the sound of all of the voices, and resulted in a very prayerful experience.
Well, our pastor thought it would be a good idea to introduce such a practice of singing some of the mass parts at the Saturday evening mass - next Saturday! So, I'm in desperate need of help, since I'm going to be the one leading the song. I'm trying to find audio links or mp3 files to the plain chant versions of the Sanctus, Pater Noster, and Agnus Dei in English and perhaps also in Latin so I can practice them. The second thing I need is to be able to present arguments why the introduction of chanted mass parts (for the lack of a better word) is appropriate to the mass, just in case I'm asked.
Team Edwards Blogger Chick Makes Nixonian Exit
Amanda Marcotte (pictured here using her stage name from her "Ten Cents a Dance" days)
resigns.
Her parting words, in translation: "Bill Donohue won't have Marcotte to kick around anymore!" Classy!
Dunno about the other Team Edwards bigette, but Edwards is already toast. He has the political instincts of a flatworm.
Oh, and Rod Dreher has figured out who Marcotte really is!
Amanda Marcotte (pictured here using her stage name from her "Ten Cents a Dance" days)
resigns.
Her parting words, in translation: "Bill Donohue won't have Marcotte to kick around anymore!" Classy!
Dunno about the other Team Edwards bigette, but Edwards is already toast. He has the political instincts of a flatworm.
Oh, and Rod Dreher has figured out who Marcotte really is!
I think that's a record...
...of the most ways I can be misread in a single day.
1. One guy thinks I'm running a pro-torture Bush Adoration site.
2. One guy thinks I believe we are as bad as terrorists.
3. One guy thinks I have contempt for victims of prison rape.
Just to be clear:
1. I'm not. Try reading my site instead of simply reacting to a post about Team Edwards.
2. I don't. I simply don't believe that "They're worse!" constitutes an excuse for Catholics to sell their souls by giving Caesar carte blanche to legalize torture (which the Bush Administration has, in fact, done). I also think it important for people to realize that the excuse-making for torture springs from the fact that the excuse makers are perfectly aware (though the rest of us may not be) that torture is *still* legal and not simply a little stumble that happened once at Abu Ghraib due to a few "bad apples."
3. I don't. Please re-read what I wrote. The context was as follows: Josiah wrote:
and I replied:
It's really pretty simple. This is a Catholic blog, interested in looking at life from a Catholic perspective.
It probably comes as little news to anybody that I regard the barbarians who perpetrate acts of murder and terror for Mahound's artificial and simplistic religion as Foaming Bronze Age Fanatics. I can say it again a dozen times if you like. I was unaware that we operate on a quota system for registering opinions. I would also like to add that I disagree with Hindus and Buddhists on various points of doctrine and I disapprove of the Nazis on quite a number of points. I trust this is non-controversial and most of my readers are on the same page as me. And if I find my boxes filling up with people who are trying to show me that, say, Nazism or Hinduism or even Islam are totally compatible with Catholic teaching, you can be sure that I will argue with them.
Such people are, in my experience, in short supply at present. However, people who argue strenuously, day and night for years, that torture is compatible with Catholic teaching, that affirming Veritatis Splendor endangers the Church's charism of indefectibility, that rejecting torture is tantamount to abandoning America into the hands of her enemies, that critics of torture only want to destroy American morale and so forth are extremely common in my comboxes. Outside St. Blog's, supporters of torture are even more common. So I feel an obligation to argue with them.
I love my country. I think there has never been anything like the American Experiment. I believe that my country, like myself and my neighbor, is a thing to be loved and appreciated and I marvel at the creativity, greatness and goodness it has called forth from its citizens. It is because I love my country that I will not sit on my hands when something as fundamentally corrupting as the embrace of torture is proposed for its embrace, just as I will not sit on my hands as abortion is declared to be a Good by mere men.
...of the most ways I can be misread in a single day.
1. One guy thinks I'm running a pro-torture Bush Adoration site.
2. One guy thinks I believe we are as bad as terrorists.
3. One guy thinks I have contempt for victims of prison rape.
Just to be clear:
1. I'm not. Try reading my site instead of simply reacting to a post about Team Edwards.
2. I don't. I simply don't believe that "They're worse!" constitutes an excuse for Catholics to sell their souls by giving Caesar carte blanche to legalize torture (which the Bush Administration has, in fact, done). I also think it important for people to realize that the excuse-making for torture springs from the fact that the excuse makers are perfectly aware (though the rest of us may not be) that torture is *still* legal and not simply a little stumble that happened once at Abu Ghraib due to a few "bad apples."
3. I don't. Please re-read what I wrote. The context was as follows: Josiah wrote:
On the subject of haranguing and prisoner abuse, I thought I'd bring to people's attention the following:
http:// corner.nationalreview.com...TcwMzg3ZGIyYjY=
I'm fascinated by the fact that abuses of human rights and civil liberties (real and imagined) tend to worry people a lot more when done in the name of national security than when done out of more pedestrian motives. I have some theories as to why this is so, but whatever the reason, it clearly is so.
and I replied:
I suspect that, more to the point, you won't find many people filling up my comboxes saying, "Defense of prison rape is foundational to protecting the Church's charism of indefectibility." Not too many people will be writing, "What *is* prison rape anyway? Has the Church ever defined it? Why won't Shea ease our baffled minds with a clear definition of prison rape?" And you won't find too many Catholics saying, "Unless we are willing to embrace so-called "prison rape" (whatever *that* is) we may as well kiss all our freedoms good bye and submit to the Mafia right now! I wish all the people who are condemning alleged "prison rape" would show that they actually oppose the CRIME that sends all these people to prison!!! These bleeding hearts have long ago passed from caring about conditions in prison to giving aid and comfort to the enemy in our War on Crime!"
And so forth etc ad nauseam blah blah.
It's really pretty simple. This is a Catholic blog, interested in looking at life from a Catholic perspective.
It probably comes as little news to anybody that I regard the barbarians who perpetrate acts of murder and terror for Mahound's artificial and simplistic religion as Foaming Bronze Age Fanatics. I can say it again a dozen times if you like. I was unaware that we operate on a quota system for registering opinions. I would also like to add that I disagree with Hindus and Buddhists on various points of doctrine and I disapprove of the Nazis on quite a number of points. I trust this is non-controversial and most of my readers are on the same page as me. And if I find my boxes filling up with people who are trying to show me that, say, Nazism or Hinduism or even Islam are totally compatible with Catholic teaching, you can be sure that I will argue with them.
Such people are, in my experience, in short supply at present. However, people who argue strenuously, day and night for years, that torture is compatible with Catholic teaching, that affirming Veritatis Splendor endangers the Church's charism of indefectibility, that rejecting torture is tantamount to abandoning America into the hands of her enemies, that critics of torture only want to destroy American morale and so forth are extremely common in my comboxes. Outside St. Blog's, supporters of torture are even more common. So I feel an obligation to argue with them.
I love my country. I think there has never been anything like the American Experiment. I believe that my country, like myself and my neighbor, is a thing to be loved and appreciated and I marvel at the creativity, greatness and goodness it has called forth from its citizens. It is because I love my country that I will not sit on my hands when something as fundamentally corrupting as the embrace of torture is proposed for its embrace, just as I will not sit on my hands as abortion is declared to be a Good by mere men.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Here's a story with more cultural land mines in it per square foot than almost any other I can think of
So there's this Jewish historian of medieval and Renaissance history at Bar-Ilan University in Israel named Ariel Toaff. His father is Elio Toaff, "the chief rabbi who welcomed Pope John Paul II to Rome's synagogue two decades ago in a historic visit that helped ease Catholic-Jewish relations after centuries of tensions."
He writes a book called "Easter of Blood" or "Bloody Passover" (depending on how you render it out of the Italian) in which he looks at the old medieval charge that Jews mixed the blood of Christian children into the their Passover sacrifices. (This was, if you don't happen to know, a common excuse given for persecutions of Jews during the medieval period). In particular, he focuses on the murder of a two year old boy named Simon in the town of Trento in the 15th century.
Early press accounts made it sound like Toaff thought some sort of small group of Jewish nuts might have actually committed such murders. Toaff has now stated that he does not think this, but that he does think that Jewish confessions to anti-Christian prayers might have helped contribute to the blood libel.
Prominent Italian Jews, including Toaff's father have condemned the book.
Several things, in no particularly order, catch my attention:
The first is Toaff's surprise at the reaction to his book. Me: I'm astonished that he is surprised. What did he suppose the reaction would be?
The second is the conviction that it won't be long before the kooks seize on this book as "proof" that the blood libel is "true" and that the Church has been undermined by those awful ecumaniacs who won't "tell it like it is about the Jews." Here, for instance, is a very different account at Robert Sungenis' site.
The third is the grim humor that derives from the fact that the "confessions" which sent the Jews of Trento to their deaths were, of course, extracted under torture. I look forward to Phillip or some other member of We Really Really Despise Mark Shea.com explaining how this is a) part of the Church's glorious legacy of infallible teaching that must be protected from the contradictions of Veritatis Splendor and Dignitatis Humanae, b) how really, anyway, we don't know that what was done to them was precisely technically exactly *torture* and c) besides it *worked* and got valuable actionable intelligence on the Jews who hated the Italians for their freedom.
Finally, some people have argued, "So what if a little group of Jewish nuts did commit a murder? Does that mean all Jews are implicated?" That's a reasonable point. Christians have had their statistically anomalous Rasputins, John Wilkes Booths and Robert Hanssens, so I suppose Jews could too. There's nothing in the Jewish chromosome structure that makes Jews immune from being nuts or monsters from time to time, I suppose. I merely note that it would be better to have something more than confessions extracted under torture to verify the statistical anomaly, particularly given the tragic use to which the blood libel was put (and is *still* put in the Islamosphere).
So there's this Jewish historian of medieval and Renaissance history at Bar-Ilan University in Israel named Ariel Toaff. His father is Elio Toaff, "the chief rabbi who welcomed Pope John Paul II to Rome's synagogue two decades ago in a historic visit that helped ease Catholic-Jewish relations after centuries of tensions."
He writes a book called "Easter of Blood" or "Bloody Passover" (depending on how you render it out of the Italian) in which he looks at the old medieval charge that Jews mixed the blood of Christian children into the their Passover sacrifices. (This was, if you don't happen to know, a common excuse given for persecutions of Jews during the medieval period). In particular, he focuses on the murder of a two year old boy named Simon in the town of Trento in the 15th century.
Early press accounts made it sound like Toaff thought some sort of small group of Jewish nuts might have actually committed such murders. Toaff has now stated that he does not think this, but that he does think that Jewish confessions to anti-Christian prayers might have helped contribute to the blood libel.
Prominent Italian Jews, including Toaff's father have condemned the book.
Several things, in no particularly order, catch my attention:
The first is Toaff's surprise at the reaction to his book. Me: I'm astonished that he is surprised. What did he suppose the reaction would be?
The second is the conviction that it won't be long before the kooks seize on this book as "proof" that the blood libel is "true" and that the Church has been undermined by those awful ecumaniacs who won't "tell it like it is about the Jews." Here, for instance, is a very different account at Robert Sungenis' site.
The third is the grim humor that derives from the fact that the "confessions" which sent the Jews of Trento to their deaths were, of course, extracted under torture. I look forward to Phillip or some other member of We Really Really Despise Mark Shea.com explaining how this is a) part of the Church's glorious legacy of infallible teaching that must be protected from the contradictions of Veritatis Splendor and Dignitatis Humanae, b) how really, anyway, we don't know that what was done to them was precisely technically exactly *torture* and c) besides it *worked* and got valuable actionable intelligence on the Jews who hated the Italians for their freedom.
Finally, some people have argued, "So what if a little group of Jewish nuts did commit a murder? Does that mean all Jews are implicated?" That's a reasonable point. Christians have had their statistically anomalous Rasputins, John Wilkes Booths and Robert Hanssens, so I suppose Jews could too. There's nothing in the Jewish chromosome structure that makes Jews immune from being nuts or monsters from time to time, I suppose. I merely note that it would be better to have something more than confessions extracted under torture to verify the statistical anomaly, particularly given the tragic use to which the blood libel was put (and is *still* put in the Islamosphere).
NY Times Puzzles Over Why Rwandans, Having Culled the Herd, Could Possibly Want More Filthy Little Brats
Africans: They're so *not* the Upper West Side. What a primitive, backward people they are to cherish children!
Africans: They're so *not* the Upper West Side. What a primitive, backward people they are to cherish children!
A reader writes:
You're welcome!
Hello, my name is Denis Ambrose from Provoking the Must . I'm the Republican finalist in the Political Blogging Scholarship! I'm asking for help from the entire right side of the web to win. I'm a poor grad student at the University of Dallas, earning a Master of Politics. I plan to either pursue a higher degree in Politics, or start teaching at the high school level. Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it's just a bleg about the voting.
Thanks!
You're welcome!
A reader writes from the Archdiocese of Washington DC:
Last week I errantly reported that extraordinary ministers were on their way out at my parish. They are not. They won't wash the vessels, as we know, but they will be there. There was confusion because one of the extraordinary ministers confirmed what my wife thought she heard. We are going to try to move the tabernacle to the center of the alter. The Archbishop has not OK'd this but I get the feeling that Monsignor will get his way. There are some very practical problems doing this without a major renovation of the alter.
Monsignor did have use say the Agnus Dei in Latin today (yeah!).
Portuguese Pro-Aborts Try To Legalize Abortion with Referendum
Nobody shows up to vote, so referendum fails.
Pro-aborts will just legalize it anyway.
That's called "democracy" and "choice", doncha know.
Nobody shows up to vote, so referendum fails.
Pro-aborts will just legalize it anyway.
That's called "democracy" and "choice", doncha know.
Some various replies on the atheism front
The discussion has gotten big and unwieldy, so I have to limit my replies to a few points for the sake of time.
AEC is still talking about the need for proof and evidence, what he doesn't yet seem to get is that he is already accepting on faith the existence and validity of reason. His arguments for reason boil down to saying, "Evidence indicates the reason works". What that means, when you break it down, is "We can infer from the evidence that inference is true." It's a petitio argument.
Again, I'm not interested in proving or disproving reason. I'm interested in pointing out that there are certain things we know before we have ever proven them. So the notion that we cannot believe something apart from empirical evidence is false. We do not "prove" that reason is true. We *see* it. Morever, we know that reasoned thoughts are different that merely "caused" thoughts. We know it to such a degree that we typically used "cause" as an argument against a thought being reasoned ("You say you believe in angels because you saw one. I say your belief was caused by a brain tumor or too many drugs in college or your need for attention.") The trouble is, all our thoughts are caused, not grounded, in a materialist universe. And they are, according to William Provine, unfree. (Of course, why Provine tries to *persuade* people to abandon free will is anybody's guess, but that's the materialist's problem, not mine.)
AEC also tries to have it both ways. One the one hand, he tries the "divide and conquer" trick of saying "There are so many different accounts of God. Who do you believe?" I reply, "It's weird for atheists to argue that *because* 99.9% of the human race claims to believe in and experience the supernatural there is therefore no reason to believe in it. AEC then replies that this is an argumentum ad populorum.
No, it's called "human evidence". The sort we use in trials everyday. 20 (or 20 million) people give testimony that they saw a man shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on TV. But the stories all differ in detail. Do we therefore conclude that Oswald lives? Or that Ruby did not shoot him? No. We take it that there is probably a reality here to which people are responding.
Same with the evidence for the supernatural. The situation of the dogmatic materialist is well described by Chesterton:
In short, to point to the fact that the vast majority of people believe in the supernatural is not an argumentum ad populorum. It is to point to the fact that most people think they have had an *experience* they think of (rightly or wrongly) as supernatural. No doubt many are wrong. Perhaps it was just coincidence that the telegram about the car accident came right after the dream about the car accident. Maybe the voices she heard *were* the result of a brain tumor. But for the materialist *every* account of an encounter with the supernatural is automatically false, not because the evidence has been empirically examined, but because an a priori dogma says that such evidence cannot exist.
I call that sort of thinking "irrational" because it refuses to consider evidence that does not fit some little ideological box. Theism is, broadly speaking, open to the possibility that God might do all sorts of weird things. And when the evidence points to the possibility that he has, the most sensible forms of theism acknowledge that this is where the evidence is, in fact, pointing. Atheism has to come up with lame theories about mass hallucinations and ball lightning to account for things like the Resurrection, the conversion of St. Paul, or the Sun dancing at Fatima. When a woman without pupils is filmed describing all sorts of items she should not be able to see, theists can simply thank God for Padre Pio. Atheists have to torture the evidence until it fits their predetermined conclusions. When a Eucharistic host bleeds human blood in the middle of Mass at Betania and it's captured on a home video, theists can say, "God is free to do as He pleases." Materialists have to strain at extremely lame conspiracy theories.
So no. We are not talking argumentum ad populorum. We talking human evidence of experiences of the supernatural that require the atheist to suppose everybody in the world is stupider than the materialist dogmatist.
Finally, with respect to Katherine's concerns about "divine command" notions, I'm not sure how to answer beyond saying, "It's not about power." To be sure, God is omnipotent, but it's simply not that case that most Christians believe things are right or wrong because the Big Guy Sez So. I think we get closer to the mark with the famous story of William Penn and George Fox, two early Quakers. It was the fashion of the time for gentlemen to wear swords. Penn was worried that this conflicted with Quaker pacificism, so I he went to Fox and sought a command. "How long may I wear my sword?" asked Penn, hoping for an edict.
"As long as you can," said Fox.
Penn soon put down his sword.
The law is given by God to describe himself and his relationship to us. But the paradox of the Law is that it cannot save. Christianity says the law must be written on the heart and it says that most people have it already partly inscribed there. This is why I say materialists tend to be theives when it comes to morality. They borrow from the law all the time.
The discussion has gotten big and unwieldy, so I have to limit my replies to a few points for the sake of time.
AEC is still talking about the need for proof and evidence, what he doesn't yet seem to get is that he is already accepting on faith the existence and validity of reason. His arguments for reason boil down to saying, "Evidence indicates the reason works". What that means, when you break it down, is "We can infer from the evidence that inference is true." It's a petitio argument.
Again, I'm not interested in proving or disproving reason. I'm interested in pointing out that there are certain things we know before we have ever proven them. So the notion that we cannot believe something apart from empirical evidence is false. We do not "prove" that reason is true. We *see* it. Morever, we know that reasoned thoughts are different that merely "caused" thoughts. We know it to such a degree that we typically used "cause" as an argument against a thought being reasoned ("You say you believe in angels because you saw one. I say your belief was caused by a brain tumor or too many drugs in college or your need for attention.") The trouble is, all our thoughts are caused, not grounded, in a materialist universe. And they are, according to William Provine, unfree. (Of course, why Provine tries to *persuade* people to abandon free will is anybody's guess, but that's the materialist's problem, not mine.)
AEC also tries to have it both ways. One the one hand, he tries the "divide and conquer" trick of saying "There are so many different accounts of God. Who do you believe?" I reply, "It's weird for atheists to argue that *because* 99.9% of the human race claims to believe in and experience the supernatural there is therefore no reason to believe in it. AEC then replies that this is an argumentum ad populorum.
No, it's called "human evidence". The sort we use in trials everyday. 20 (or 20 million) people give testimony that they saw a man shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on TV. But the stories all differ in detail. Do we therefore conclude that Oswald lives? Or that Ruby did not shoot him? No. We take it that there is probably a reality here to which people are responding.
Same with the evidence for the supernatural. The situation of the dogmatic materialist is well described by Chesterton:
Any one who likes, therefore, may call my belief in God merely mystical; the phrase is not worth fighting about. But my belief that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America. Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant’s word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant’s word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant’s story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism—the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence—it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, “Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,” they answer, “But mediaevals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say “a peasant saw a ghost,” I am told, “But peasants are so credulous.” If I ask, “Why credulous?” the only answer is—that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland.
In short, to point to the fact that the vast majority of people believe in the supernatural is not an argumentum ad populorum. It is to point to the fact that most people think they have had an *experience* they think of (rightly or wrongly) as supernatural. No doubt many are wrong. Perhaps it was just coincidence that the telegram about the car accident came right after the dream about the car accident. Maybe the voices she heard *were* the result of a brain tumor. But for the materialist *every* account of an encounter with the supernatural is automatically false, not because the evidence has been empirically examined, but because an a priori dogma says that such evidence cannot exist.
I call that sort of thinking "irrational" because it refuses to consider evidence that does not fit some little ideological box. Theism is, broadly speaking, open to the possibility that God might do all sorts of weird things. And when the evidence points to the possibility that he has, the most sensible forms of theism acknowledge that this is where the evidence is, in fact, pointing. Atheism has to come up with lame theories about mass hallucinations and ball lightning to account for things like the Resurrection, the conversion of St. Paul, or the Sun dancing at Fatima. When a woman without pupils is filmed describing all sorts of items she should not be able to see, theists can simply thank God for Padre Pio. Atheists have to torture the evidence until it fits their predetermined conclusions. When a Eucharistic host bleeds human blood in the middle of Mass at Betania and it's captured on a home video, theists can say, "God is free to do as He pleases." Materialists have to strain at extremely lame conspiracy theories.
So no. We are not talking argumentum ad populorum. We talking human evidence of experiences of the supernatural that require the atheist to suppose everybody in the world is stupider than the materialist dogmatist.
Finally, with respect to Katherine's concerns about "divine command" notions, I'm not sure how to answer beyond saying, "It's not about power." To be sure, God is omnipotent, but it's simply not that case that most Christians believe things are right or wrong because the Big Guy Sez So. I think we get closer to the mark with the famous story of William Penn and George Fox, two early Quakers. It was the fashion of the time for gentlemen to wear swords. Penn was worried that this conflicted with Quaker pacificism, so I he went to Fox and sought a command. "How long may I wear my sword?" asked Penn, hoping for an edict.
"As long as you can," said Fox.
Penn soon put down his sword.
The law is given by God to describe himself and his relationship to us. But the paradox of the Law is that it cannot save. Christianity says the law must be written on the heart and it says that most people have it already partly inscribed there. This is why I say materialists tend to be theives when it comes to morality. They borrow from the law all the time.
Readers Speculate about the Meaning of the Mark Shea Event
Do I actually exist? If so, why do I permit typos? How is it possible that I can hear all those different prayers in all those comboxes at once and answer each an every one? Is not "Mark Shea" simply a gestalt reality formed from the hopes and aspirations of readers who spontaneously come together seeking an experience of Sheaness? Do the Mark of history and the Shea of faith really coincide or can scholars peel away the layers of blog material between April 2002 and the present and reach the bedrock Mark who inspired a small band of readers to transform the blogosphere with the Good News of Catholic and Enjoying it?
And what of the Lost Sheavianities? The abortive Smarter Mark Shea sect? What of the dark hints that the Shea of faith conceals malevolent designs so profound that the entire giant edifice may in fact be a colossal hoax? Did Mark actually intend to hand his entire blog over to sacred feminist Amy Welborn, pregnant with his child, only to have sinister and manipulative "fans" turn it into a front for their own Machiavellian agendas?
Readers are invited to dig through the layers of history, myth, legend, a rumor to work out this mystery in the combox.
Do I actually exist? If so, why do I permit typos? How is it possible that I can hear all those different prayers in all those comboxes at once and answer each an every one? Is not "Mark Shea" simply a gestalt reality formed from the hopes and aspirations of readers who spontaneously come together seeking an experience of Sheaness? Do the Mark of history and the Shea of faith really coincide or can scholars peel away the layers of blog material between April 2002 and the present and reach the bedrock Mark who inspired a small band of readers to transform the blogosphere with the Good News of Catholic and Enjoying it?
And what of the Lost Sheavianities? The abortive Smarter Mark Shea sect? What of the dark hints that the Shea of faith conceals malevolent designs so profound that the entire giant edifice may in fact be a colossal hoax? Did Mark actually intend to hand his entire blog over to sacred feminist Amy Welborn, pregnant with his child, only to have sinister and manipulative "fans" turn it into a front for their own Machiavellian agendas?
Readers are invited to dig through the layers of history, myth, legend, a rumor to work out this mystery in the combox.
Things We're not Allowed to Think
There are all sorts of things we're not allowed to think and helpful people are always willing to find more. Recently, Ellen Goodman advocated punishing and penalizing those who doubted global warming. We cannot, of course, think that it would be good to carry a baby to term even if it was conceived in rape. And, it is absolutely forbidden to think that homosexuals can ever change their orientation.
The odd thing, of course, is that nobody knows why people are homosexually oriented. Some people want to claim it's "genetic" but the likelihood of a gene determinining such behavior is not very high. And, if it is genetic, another forbidden thought is that parents can and will abort children with the gene (this is a forbidden thought I actually approve of forbidding).
It's strange to me to hear people say, "We don't know what causes it, but it's impossible to alter." It's even stranger to hear people *denouncing* those who try. There are, after all, all sorts of strong inclinations we struggle to alter ever day. If I simply obeyed my "God-given nature" I would weigh 500 pounds because it turns out that I like to eat. However, I know that my hard-wired appetites are afflicted with concupiscence: the woeful results of original sin. So they are disordered.
One of the cheapest rhetorical tricks in the gay blackshorts rhetorical armory is the misuse of the term "disordered". "So! The Church says I have a disorder!" No. The Church says your appetites (like mine and everybody elses) are disordered. Why they are disordered, the Church doesn't claim to know. But some people are unhappy about the disorder they labor under and hope that it might be possible to heal it through some kind of therapy. I don't know if they are right or not. I have no homosexual inclinations. However, the disordered appetites I *do* struggle with suggest that various people have various degrees of ability to alter their habits and desires. Some of us have all we can do to simply eat enough and no more. Others seem to have the capacity to radically alter their diets and enjoy doing so. Our great advantage is that we are not faced with an immensely powerful social and political coalition urging us to embrace our obesity, to celebrate it, and warning us that any attempt to rein in our appetites or (horrors!) change our preference from carbs to proteins and vegetable will cause a repression that will only explode in weird and twisted forms of behavior.
There are all sorts of things we're not allowed to think and helpful people are always willing to find more. Recently, Ellen Goodman advocated punishing and penalizing those who doubted global warming. We cannot, of course, think that it would be good to carry a baby to term even if it was conceived in rape. And, it is absolutely forbidden to think that homosexuals can ever change their orientation.
The odd thing, of course, is that nobody knows why people are homosexually oriented. Some people want to claim it's "genetic" but the likelihood of a gene determinining such behavior is not very high. And, if it is genetic, another forbidden thought is that parents can and will abort children with the gene (this is a forbidden thought I actually approve of forbidding).
It's strange to me to hear people say, "We don't know what causes it, but it's impossible to alter." It's even stranger to hear people *denouncing* those who try. There are, after all, all sorts of strong inclinations we struggle to alter ever day. If I simply obeyed my "God-given nature" I would weigh 500 pounds because it turns out that I like to eat. However, I know that my hard-wired appetites are afflicted with concupiscence: the woeful results of original sin. So they are disordered.
One of the cheapest rhetorical tricks in the gay blackshorts rhetorical armory is the misuse of the term "disordered". "So! The Church says I have a disorder!" No. The Church says your appetites (like mine and everybody elses) are disordered. Why they are disordered, the Church doesn't claim to know. But some people are unhappy about the disorder they labor under and hope that it might be possible to heal it through some kind of therapy. I don't know if they are right or not. I have no homosexual inclinations. However, the disordered appetites I *do* struggle with suggest that various people have various degrees of ability to alter their habits and desires. Some of us have all we can do to simply eat enough and no more. Others seem to have the capacity to radically alter their diets and enjoy doing so. Our great advantage is that we are not faced with an immensely powerful social and political coalition urging us to embrace our obesity, to celebrate it, and warning us that any attempt to rein in our appetites or (horrors!) change our preference from carbs to proteins and vegetable will cause a repression that will only explode in weird and twisted forms of behavior.