As you may have noticed...
I'm a bit scarce today. I'm trying to record a bunch of podcasts, as well as get stuff caught up on email and in the writing department. Something's gotta give, so today it's the blog.
By the way, your prayers would be appreciated. Tomorrow I'm up in Bellingham (about 80 miles north) to be the Catholic Guy for a public school unit on Religions of the World. You don't get many opportunities to talk about the Faith at a public school, so I will endeavor not to blow it, but the help of prayer and the Spirit are all that stand between me and my native screwupishness.
By the way, a general word of thanks to all who respond to the various prayer requests that turn up here. You inspire me with your generosity of spirit. God bless each one of you!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Another Bush Supporter Struggles with Regrets Over the Train Wreck of This Administration
I have only a few quibbles with this. First, because charity believeth all things, I continue to think that it's more accurate to say that a culture of corporate self-delusion probably explains the behavior of the Administration better than the word "lie" does (since that communicates the notion that they knew perfectly well that they would not find WMDs, whereas I think their astonishment was genuine). That said, self-delusion is, after all, a form of lying and the simple fact is, the Bushies were not much interested in views from outside the hothouse that contradicted the Dominant Narrative. So they rashly rushed into a disastrous war, ignoring the common sense point of the Church, that they were assuming grave responsibility. Now that they are thoroughly stuck to the tar baby, they are cooking up stupid ideas like a "war czar" in an effort to distance themselves from their catastrophic incompetence.
Second, though I think there will be a cultural reaction to the hubris of this Administration and that the GOP is basically toast for the foreseeable future, I don't share Rod's dizzying fears about the loss of confidence in the government, just as I did not share Rod's dizzying fears about the loss of confidence in the Church. In the case of the Church, I never knew anybody who was a Catholic because of their faith in the "moral authority of the bishops". People believed in Jesus Christ, or their wife, or some saint, or some other deeply personal connection. That's what motivated them. Almost nobody outside St. Blog's was hanging on the details of ecclesial politics as some sort of "basis" for their faith. In the same way, the visceral forces of love of home unleashed by 9/11 seem to me to still be quite potent. No small part of the disaster of Bush is that he has misdirected these forces into this stupid war of choice. But I can think of few people I know who think that we should just call off the war with Radical Islam on the theory that America is now safe from the Bronze Age Nutjobs. So I don't envision some crazy pacifism. Indeed, the *reason* the troops are admired is that people recognized they *do* stand on a wall and protect us--provided dunderheads at the levers of power don't send them off on damn fool nation-building projects based on the theories of the End to Evil types. I think Americans recognize we are in a serious war with Radical Islam. What they doubt is that the bog of Iraq is advancing our cause in that war.
Finally, I think Rod confuses "excusing" with forgiving. Bush's unjust war and the sins he has committed in laboring to corrupt our political culture are inexcusable. They are not unforgivable. No sin is. A small but vital distinction since so many people conflate excusing and forgiving.
I believe that the Bush administration used 9/11 as a pretext to go to war with Iraq. I believe it decided that Iraq could be turned into a decent country if Saddam were gone, and that a regime change in Iraq would be the catalyst for a positive revolution in the Mideast. I believe the administration knowingly told whatever lies it needed to tell to win over the American people to its policy. I believe our president, for whom I voted twice, is a dishonorable man who will be ill-remembered by history. I find the manifest and catastrophic incompetence forgivable; I find the dishonor and mendacity far less so.Last night I was reading a Robert D. Kaplan essay from the forthcoming issue of The American Interest, an advance copy of which I received ysterday.
Kaplan talks about the warrior class in American life, and how perilous it is to have an Army that is asked to fight for a society that no longer believes in itself -- by which Kaplan means no longer believes there is anything worth fighting for. I don't believe that is America, and neither, it seems, does Kaplan. But it could be America. The blowback of this war on American society will be ferocious, when it gathers full strength. We have lost this war, because in truth, the war was never winnable. And the war wasn't even necessary. In the end, when the full cost of the war comes home, the American people will not forgive Bush this humiliation. But when we come to examine in Congressional hearings -- as we will in the next Democratic administration, most likely -- the lies that were told to justify this war, who can imagine what kind of loss of confidence in American authority that will result?
One very bright spot, pointed out by Kaplan: unlike in the post-Vietnam era, the American people revere and love our soldiers. Kaplan points out that the troops refuse to be seen as victims, and they resent being condescended to as such. So we should refrain. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that we sent the finest men (and women) this country has to fight a war that should never have been fought, in pursuit of a foolish policy built on deception. And now America is poorer and less secure because of it, and the Middle East is a more dangerous place than ever.
I have only a few quibbles with this. First, because charity believeth all things, I continue to think that it's more accurate to say that a culture of corporate self-delusion probably explains the behavior of the Administration better than the word "lie" does (since that communicates the notion that they knew perfectly well that they would not find WMDs, whereas I think their astonishment was genuine). That said, self-delusion is, after all, a form of lying and the simple fact is, the Bushies were not much interested in views from outside the hothouse that contradicted the Dominant Narrative. So they rashly rushed into a disastrous war, ignoring the common sense point of the Church, that they were assuming grave responsibility. Now that they are thoroughly stuck to the tar baby, they are cooking up stupid ideas like a "war czar" in an effort to distance themselves from their catastrophic incompetence.
Second, though I think there will be a cultural reaction to the hubris of this Administration and that the GOP is basically toast for the foreseeable future, I don't share Rod's dizzying fears about the loss of confidence in the government, just as I did not share Rod's dizzying fears about the loss of confidence in the Church. In the case of the Church, I never knew anybody who was a Catholic because of their faith in the "moral authority of the bishops". People believed in Jesus Christ, or their wife, or some saint, or some other deeply personal connection. That's what motivated them. Almost nobody outside St. Blog's was hanging on the details of ecclesial politics as some sort of "basis" for their faith. In the same way, the visceral forces of love of home unleashed by 9/11 seem to me to still be quite potent. No small part of the disaster of Bush is that he has misdirected these forces into this stupid war of choice. But I can think of few people I know who think that we should just call off the war with Radical Islam on the theory that America is now safe from the Bronze Age Nutjobs. So I don't envision some crazy pacifism. Indeed, the *reason* the troops are admired is that people recognized they *do* stand on a wall and protect us--provided dunderheads at the levers of power don't send them off on damn fool nation-building projects based on the theories of the End to Evil types. I think Americans recognize we are in a serious war with Radical Islam. What they doubt is that the bog of Iraq is advancing our cause in that war.
Finally, I think Rod confuses "excusing" with forgiving. Bush's unjust war and the sins he has committed in laboring to corrupt our political culture are inexcusable. They are not unforgivable. No sin is. A small but vital distinction since so many people conflate excusing and forgiving.
Heh!
As the man said: "Like the argument for God's existence from a Bach organ composition, either you get it or you don't."
The only other Calvinist humor I know of is about the predestinarian who tripped and fell down the stairs. Picking himself up, he said, "Well, I'm glad *that's* over with."
As the man said: "Like the argument for God's existence from a Bach organ composition, either you get it or you don't."
The only other Calvinist humor I know of is about the predestinarian who tripped and fell down the stairs. Picking himself up, he said, "Well, I'm glad *that's* over with."
How editorials tell me, "Don't bother reading further."
"I was a loyal church-goer in my youth in the '70s." Then something about the Episcopal church and why I no longer go to Church and "Why did I leave? Silly things really."
I believe that.
"I was a loyal church-goer in my youth in the '70s." Then something about the Episcopal church and why I no longer go to Church and "Why did I leave? Silly things really."
I believe that.
"Benedict, a quintessential realist, will probably be among the few who understand right away that his ruling is not terribly earth-shattering."
The sane John Allen on the motu proprio that means so very much to enthusiasts out at both ends of the bell curve.
The sane John Allen on the motu proprio that means so very much to enthusiasts out at both ends of the bell curve.
The Prophet Chesterton was a Patriot, Not an Imperialist
...which is to say, he loved his country because it was his Home, not because it dominated the homes of everybody else. Indeed, he was such a patriot that he thought people in other homes likely felt much the same way about their home as he felt about his and sympathized with their justified sense of resentment when his own country tried to dominate other homes. This explains his opposition to the Boer War and the English occupation of Ireland (and English imperialism in general), as well as his loathing of the Kaiser.
Chesterton's greatest work of patriotism in fiction is The Napoleon of Notting Hill. You should read it.
If you do not have time to read it, something of the flavor of Chesterton's local patriotism comes through in this lovely paean to Chicago from a true lover of that town. It brings back fond memories of the brief times I have spent in Chicago and, in particular, a fine afternoon I spent at the Field Museum admiring their Egyptian and dinosaur collections. Also, the best yogurt in the world and the Mundelein seminary, as well as Marytown, figure largely in my memories, as well as Loyola U, a talk by Cardinal George, and a fine (Italian IIRC) restaurant.
I love local patriots. I always loved Robert E. Lee because when he said he could not lift his sword against his country, he meant Virginia. I love Willa Cather because in My Antonia, she prefaces the novel with a quote from Vergil and makes it clear, as the novel progresses, that she is trying to do for Nebraska what Vergil did for Rome: sing the glories of her home.
Anybody who loves the home--especially their home--is alright by me. And anybody who truly loves their home appreciates others who love theirs. If they replace true love of home with mere devotion to Bigness, Empire, and Power they don't love even their own home.
Speaking of love of Home, here is a cool book I ran across yesterday which Seattle longtimers will appreciate: Vanishing Seattle.
I miss Jones' Fantastic Museum and the Bubblator.
...which is to say, he loved his country because it was his Home, not because it dominated the homes of everybody else. Indeed, he was such a patriot that he thought people in other homes likely felt much the same way about their home as he felt about his and sympathized with their justified sense of resentment when his own country tried to dominate other homes. This explains his opposition to the Boer War and the English occupation of Ireland (and English imperialism in general), as well as his loathing of the Kaiser.
Chesterton's greatest work of patriotism in fiction is The Napoleon of Notting Hill. You should read it.
If you do not have time to read it, something of the flavor of Chesterton's local patriotism comes through in this lovely paean to Chicago from a true lover of that town. It brings back fond memories of the brief times I have spent in Chicago and, in particular, a fine afternoon I spent at the Field Museum admiring their Egyptian and dinosaur collections. Also, the best yogurt in the world and the Mundelein seminary, as well as Marytown, figure largely in my memories, as well as Loyola U, a talk by Cardinal George, and a fine (Italian IIRC) restaurant.
I love local patriots. I always loved Robert E. Lee because when he said he could not lift his sword against his country, he meant Virginia. I love Willa Cather because in My Antonia, she prefaces the novel with a quote from Vergil and makes it clear, as the novel progresses, that she is trying to do for Nebraska what Vergil did for Rome: sing the glories of her home.
Anybody who loves the home--especially their home--is alright by me. And anybody who truly loves their home appreciates others who love theirs. If they replace true love of home with mere devotion to Bigness, Empire, and Power they don't love even their own home.
Speaking of love of Home, here is a cool book I ran across yesterday which Seattle longtimers will appreciate: Vanishing Seattle.
I miss Jones' Fantastic Museum and the Bubblator.
Flash! Science Discovers Water is Wet, Sky is Blue!
It turns out that when you do the right thing, it is natural to feel good about it. How clever of evolution to encode that into our genes. Remember always the creedal mantra of Francis Crick, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." You must. You simply must.
There's something very odd about Science News trumpeting as a discovery something known by kindergartners and then saying "Such research 'has opened up a new window on what it means to be good,' although many philosophers over recorded history have suggested similar things." What "new windows" on the *meaning* of being good are opened up? The *meaning* of being good is a philosophical, not a scientific question. The menace of the professional scientist who tries to be an amateur philosopher and doesn't even know it is writ large across this story, particularly in this comment fragrant with the residuum of rotting Calvinism:
The dessicated theories of Total Depravity, not any sort of science, lies behind this news flash. Only a complete idiot believes that the impulse to do good and avoid evil is evidence of "superior" moral faculty. For most people, it is evidence of "being human". Meanwhile, Catholics are quite free to suppose that the Creator *of course* made it natural for us to feel pleasure at doing what is right.
It turns out that when you do the right thing, it is natural to feel good about it. How clever of evolution to encode that into our genes. Remember always the creedal mantra of Francis Crick, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." You must. You simply must.
There's something very odd about Science News trumpeting as a discovery something known by kindergartners and then saying "Such research 'has opened up a new window on what it means to be good,' although many philosophers over recorded history have suggested similar things." What "new windows" on the *meaning* of being good are opened up? The *meaning* of being good is a philosophical, not a scientific question. The menace of the professional scientist who tries to be an amateur philosopher and doesn't even know it is writ large across this story, particularly in this comment fragrant with the residuum of rotting Calvinism:
Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.'
The dessicated theories of Total Depravity, not any sort of science, lies behind this news flash. Only a complete idiot believes that the impulse to do good and avoid evil is evidence of "superior" moral faculty. For most people, it is evidence of "being human". Meanwhile, Catholics are quite free to suppose that the Creator *of course* made it natural for us to feel pleasure at doing what is right.
Shocking Proof of Outrageous Military Spending
Just look at the original price and compare to current congressional allocations!
Just look at the original price and compare to current congressional allocations!
A reader writes:
I'm afraid I'm going to pretty useless for this since it's a question that requires training, not only in moral theology, but also in business, econ, and ethics--all of which I lack. My combox commenters may want to give a stab at an answer, but please be aware, reader, that what you get in comboxes can often be the fruits of AIWAK (Any Idiot With a Keyboard) and nothing resembling an informed answer. My suggestion would be to talk to somebody with some expertise in the field. Perhaps a Catholic businessperson of some sort (though I'd shoot for one who is notably Catholic, and not just nominally so).
Sorry I'm not more help!
From my understanding, there's an obligation for an employer to pay a just wage to employees. A just wage isn't merely the agreed-to wage; it must also take into account the needs of the employees. So, if I'm a sole proprietor, I couldn't just pay my employees less than a just wage on the justification that (1) they would agree to it, and (2) it would save me money (and thus improve the profitability of my business).
Let's say, though, that I am an employee myself. In other words, the owner of the sole proprietorship has hired me to manage her business. During my employment, I discover that I could pay employees less than a just wage and noticeably improve profitability. I bring this to the attention to the owner who orders me to cut wages. Can I refuse? Do I have to quit?
Presumably I couldn't simply ignore the owner, i.e., keep the wages the same
without telling the owner, that would be breaching my duties to the owner (which itself would separately be sinful, I assume). I also presumably couldn't simply fail to inform the owner of the opportunity to increase her profits (as advising the owner is part of my obligations as a manager of the business).
If I have to quit in such a situation, would that mean I would have to refuse to seek employment for any employer where I expect to be put in this situation at some time? Wouldn't this substantially limit employment options for practicing Catholics?
This might be especially harsh given that, to my knowledge, most if not all states impose upon officers and directors of corporations a fiduciary duty to the shareholders to maximize the shareholders' returns.
I know that "just following orders" isn't an absolute defense (or even much of one at all). If the owner of an enterprise asks me to assassinate business rivals, I would certainly have to refuse and resign (and inform the authorities). I would also not be able to morally take a position with such an owner if such duties are clearly part of the job description.
Would paying employees just wages be on the same level (i.e., requiring resignation rather breaching it)?
If that's the moral obligations imposed on us, then we are obliged to follow it, regardless of the impact on our job opportunites, of course. I'm just wondering as to your thoughts as to the extent of the obligation to pay just wages, in the context of supervisors of other employees who are not owners of the business enterprise itself.
Thank you very much for your time and thoughts.
I'm afraid I'm going to pretty useless for this since it's a question that requires training, not only in moral theology, but also in business, econ, and ethics--all of which I lack. My combox commenters may want to give a stab at an answer, but please be aware, reader, that what you get in comboxes can often be the fruits of AIWAK (Any Idiot With a Keyboard) and nothing resembling an informed answer. My suggestion would be to talk to somebody with some expertise in the field. Perhaps a Catholic businessperson of some sort (though I'd shoot for one who is notably Catholic, and not just nominally so).
Sorry I'm not more help!
Feddie Hits the Big Time!
Feddie, of the late, lamented Southern Appeal blog writes:
Godspeed, Feddie! I'll say a prayer for you that you get a word in edgewise between the staccatto of Matthews' self-involved monologue with himself. How the guy is able to be passed off as an "interviewer" I will never understand.
Speaking of which, Ramesh Ponnuru has a piece in the latest National Review called "A Singular Issue: Why abortion should doom Giuliani’s campaign" about the disastrous implications of a Rudy nomination for the GOP. He ticks off all the reasons why: Giuliani's support for the barbarism of PBA, his subsequent back-tracking and incoherent butt-covering that wouldn't convince his own grandmother of his sincerity, the simple fact that a Rudy nomination would be a clear sign of total capitulation by the GOP on this question, and the implications for the SCOTUS:
Most of all, Ponnuru makes the point that abortion is a winning issue for the GOP, not a liability as the Mammon First Crowd keeps telling itself. The notion that the GOP would be moving toward the Sane Center by nominating Giuliani is a class example of how sin makes you stupid.
Nice to see these two knights for the dignity of human life making their voices heard in the public square. I hope more Catholics stand up and say a very loud "NO!" to the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.
Feddie, of the late, lamented Southern Appeal blog writes:
I just rec'd a call from Chris Matthews's producer asking me to appear on Hardball tonight. We'll see if it pans out, but I thought I would go ahead and let my friends and former SA readers know of this possibility before I get too busy preparing for the show.
I'll be discussing my latest Internet-related project, a website called "Catholics Against Rudy." The New York Observer recently did a piece on this project, which you can read here.
I hope y'all will tune in. More importantly, I hope I don't make a fool of myself. :)
Godspeed, Feddie! I'll say a prayer for you that you get a word in edgewise between the staccatto of Matthews' self-involved monologue with himself. How the guy is able to be passed off as an "interviewer" I will never understand.
Speaking of which, Ramesh Ponnuru has a piece in the latest National Review called "A Singular Issue: Why abortion should doom Giuliani’s campaign" about the disastrous implications of a Rudy nomination for the GOP. He ticks off all the reasons why: Giuliani's support for the barbarism of PBA, his subsequent back-tracking and incoherent butt-covering that wouldn't convince his own grandmother of his sincerity, the simple fact that a Rudy nomination would be a clear sign of total capitulation by the GOP on this question, and the implications for the SCOTUS:
But Giuliani’s nomination would change everything. By moving the politics of abortion to the left, his nomination would also — regardless of Giuliani’s intentions now — move the politics of judicial confirmations to the left. If the range of acceptable opinions on abortion policy narrowed, so would the range of acceptable opinions on Roe. A nominee who followed the pattern of Samuel Alito, with a history of hostility to Roe and no extravagant shows of respect for it in his confirmation hearings, would seem more extreme than Alito in fact did. If Giuliani nonetheless sent up such a nominee, would he really fight for him if the Democrats chose Roe as the battle line?
And once a nominee made it to the bench? We have reason to think that the justices are exquisitely sensitive to political cues. It has been speculated that the three Republican appointees who wrote the plurality opinion rescuing Roe in 1992 thought they were doing their party a favor; and when the current administration signaled to the justices that it did not want them to abandon racial preferences in university admissions, a decisive number of them seemed to follow the advice fairly closely. Under a President Giuliani, we can expect Justice Kennedy’s pro-Roe inclinations to harden. His own nominees might, on the bench, read the political climate the same way. The message of Giuliani’s nomination on the abortion cases would be simple: The elected branches of government are not interested in a reopening of this question.
Most of all, Ponnuru makes the point that abortion is a winning issue for the GOP, not a liability as the Mammon First Crowd keeps telling itself. The notion that the GOP would be moving toward the Sane Center by nominating Giuliani is a class example of how sin makes you stupid.
Nice to see these two knights for the dignity of human life making their voices heard in the public square. I hope more Catholics stand up and say a very loud "NO!" to the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
200 Million Christians Persecuted Worldwide. Nobody Notices.
One would like to say that this is due entirely to a secular press that doesn't care and one would be very largely right. But it's also due to the fact that, in America, "Christians" are largely recognized as such if they fit the Evangelical template. So, for instance, when the Church gets stomped in Bethlehem or Iraq, those people are just Catholics or some other form or ancient Christianity and they don't count because they happen to be in the way of somebody's eschatological scheme or some plan of the End to Evil types currently setting policy in DC. Still, it's heartening to see this article in the Euro press.
One would like to say that this is due entirely to a secular press that doesn't care and one would be very largely right. But it's also due to the fact that, in America, "Christians" are largely recognized as such if they fit the Evangelical template. So, for instance, when the Church gets stomped in Bethlehem or Iraq, those people are just Catholics or some other form or ancient Christianity and they don't count because they happen to be in the way of somebody's eschatological scheme or some plan of the End to Evil types currently setting policy in DC. Still, it's heartening to see this article in the Euro press.
A suitable poem eminently transposable to Memorial Day during the current situation
The contrast between the courage and sacrificial spirit of our our troops and the Wilsonian/Machiavellian numbskulls who have sent to them into harm's way becomes more tragic and outrageous every day.
Here are some of the faces we have lost forever. Thanks be to God for their sacrifice for us. May they all find eternal rest in His Light:
Meanwhile read, if you can bear it, Andrew Bacevich's lament of loss over a son who died in a war his father courageously opposes. Read first the depths to which some devotees of the Bush cult of personality will sink:
But read as well, Bacevich's awful, but dreadfully resonant-with-reality grasp of how our quasi-representative oligarchy actually functions:
After 9/11, the country needed a Daddy. We looked for somebody to protect us because we felt profoundly unsafe. The Bushies promised to fill the Daddy role. Only you cannot give what you do not have. What we got was what we had before 9/11, a deeply decadent and money-driven political culture on both sides of the aisle that pretty quickly returned like a dog to its own vomit. What did we expect? Saints? We've tried to console ourselves that these guys know what they are doing and care about us.
They don't. They care about money, power, and (when the ocassion calls for it) our vote and how to get it. The care they have for the sacrifices of the people who are dying and suffering on their orders is pretty well summarized by the spectacle of Walter Reed Hospital and other fine VA facilities. The care they have for the troops on the ground is evidenced by the way in which they dragged their feet in providing them with sufficient armor, making *them* pay for it, and the way in which they send them, at this hour, into combat against terrorists we are training and arming ourselves.
Meanwhile, the President who launched this bungled war of choice has shown himself to be God's gift to Al-Quaeda, while his Vice President makes clear that he is a fan oftorture dunking, that he regards the Constitution and the Geneva convention as obstacles, not as protections, and the party which supports their disastrous policies has successfully managed to make "Verschärfte Vernehmung" "enhanced interrogation" (a term coined by the Gestapo) a legal and everyday part of the American approach to war. The main difference is that the Gestapo did not immediately embrace some of the techniques that the Bush Administration has authorized. Don't believe me? Read it for yourself.
Now that the Iraqis we are training are using their new skill sets to kill our troops, I think we are done there. It's time to bring our troops home. Bush's war has failed and there is no point in sacrificing more great young men like Andy Bacevich on the altar of Bush's cult of personality. Our leaders are deeply unworthy of the brave men they send off to die. Eternal gratitude to our troops. Prayers for the souls of the politicians who value them less than an inning of baseball.
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.
But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.
And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England,
They have no graves as yet.
-- G. K. Chesterton
The contrast between the courage and sacrificial spirit of our our troops and the Wilsonian/Machiavellian numbskulls who have sent to them into harm's way becomes more tragic and outrageous every day.
Here are some of the faces we have lost forever. Thanks be to God for their sacrifice for us. May they all find eternal rest in His Light:
Meanwhile read, if you can bear it, Andrew Bacevich's lament of loss over a son who died in a war his father courageously opposes. Read first the depths to which some devotees of the Bush cult of personality will sink:
Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.
But read as well, Bacevich's awful, but dreadfully resonant-with-reality grasp of how our quasi-representative oligarchy actually functions:
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.
Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.
This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.
After 9/11, the country needed a Daddy. We looked for somebody to protect us because we felt profoundly unsafe. The Bushies promised to fill the Daddy role. Only you cannot give what you do not have. What we got was what we had before 9/11, a deeply decadent and money-driven political culture on both sides of the aisle that pretty quickly returned like a dog to its own vomit. What did we expect? Saints? We've tried to console ourselves that these guys know what they are doing and care about us.
They don't. They care about money, power, and (when the ocassion calls for it) our vote and how to get it. The care they have for the sacrifices of the people who are dying and suffering on their orders is pretty well summarized by the spectacle of Walter Reed Hospital and other fine VA facilities. The care they have for the troops on the ground is evidenced by the way in which they dragged their feet in providing them with sufficient armor, making *them* pay for it, and the way in which they send them, at this hour, into combat against terrorists we are training and arming ourselves.
Meanwhile, the President who launched this bungled war of choice has shown himself to be God's gift to Al-Quaeda, while his Vice President makes clear that he is a fan of
Now that the Iraqis we are training are using their new skill sets to kill our troops, I think we are done there. It's time to bring our troops home. Bush's war has failed and there is no point in sacrificing more great young men like Andy Bacevich on the altar of Bush's cult of personality. Our leaders are deeply unworthy of the brave men they send off to die. Eternal gratitude to our troops. Prayers for the souls of the politicians who value them less than an inning of baseball.
Sean Dailey writes:
I'm thankful for Chesterton! Happy Birthday, GK! Only the master could turn write about his own birthday this way (from his Autobiography):
Thought you'd like to let people know that today is G.K. Chesterton's birthday (he'd have been 133 years old today). Some activities to help people celebrate:
- Picnic on the roof.
- Or maybe picnic with a wheel of cheddar and a barrel of rum, with an inn sign for company.
- Pick a sword fight with someone! Throw a rock through the window of your local newspaper!
- Propose to your wife! Knock on your front door and ask to enter, of better yet, break into your house!
- Eat some stilton cheese, drink some wine.
- Compose a song lampooning a local politician.
- BE THANKFUL. Look at everything as if seeing it for the very first time. :-)
I'm thankful for Chesterton! Happy Birthday, GK! Only the master could turn write about his own birthday this way (from his Autobiography):
Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian.
The Beloved Cow Keeps us Apprised of His Movements in His Own Inimitable Fashion
You come away not actually knowing much more about how to plan than when you started, yet with the strange sensation that it will probably all pan out somehow.
Advance apologies to all of Texas as well as Gary, Indiana. No apologies to Detroit since it does, in fact, blow.
You come away not actually knowing much more about how to plan than when you started, yet with the strange sensation that it will probably all pan out somehow.
Advance apologies to all of Texas as well as Gary, Indiana. No apologies to Detroit since it does, in fact, blow.
Our dear daughter-to-be, Tasha, writes:
Tasha, we will certainly keep your family in prayer. Thanks be to God indeed! I must say, this is taking Pentecost a bit far!
I wanted to share this with you, and maybe ask if you could offer some
prayer requests on your blog:
My mother survived a forest fire yesterday. A massive forest fire, actually.
It started mid-afternoon and ate about 130 acres of land around their
California house - right immediately up to their house, in fact. The fire
took everything right up to their doorstep - but the house itself is totally
unscathed. And Mom and Conal are okay. They've been doing a lot of work to
fight back all the weeds, tall grass, and general undergrowth around the
house, and the fire investigator man said that was pretty much the only
reason the house is still there at all. Mom was taking a nap in the
afternoon when she woke to the smell of smoke and the sight of gigantic
flames immediately outside her window. I just can't feel grateful enough
that she's all right. We can say what we will about her choices and her
current lifestyle, but when a fire that has burned for a day and a half and
will probably continue to burn longer still - a fire that nearly destroyed
over a hundred acres of land - comes right up to her door and yet doesn't
even blacken the paint job on the outside of her home, I think it's safe to
say that God has an opinion about whether she lives or dies. I guess she
still has work to do here, yet. Glory be to the Lord that saved my mother.
Tasha, we will certainly keep your family in prayer. Thanks be to God indeed! I must say, this is taking Pentecost a bit far!
Dawn Eden on the Euthanizers of the Human Conscience
The pro-abort approach to the human conscience is like the fool who places his hand on a red hot stove and feels a burning sensation: he solves the problem by numbing the hand with novocaine and leaving it on the stove.
The pro-abort approach to the human conscience is like the fool who places his hand on a red hot stove and feels a burning sensation: he solves the problem by numbing the hand with novocaine and leaving it on the stove.
The Great Thing about Being a Boeing Engineer is that the Toy Planes You Get to Destroy Aren't Toys
Check out the video at the bottom of the story.
Check out the video at the bottom of the story.
Dean Peters frets:
I don't see what's anti-Catholic about pointing out that the Vatican website sucks as a website. I'm sure many a web designer has shaken his or her head at it, especially the Catholic ones.
I'm not anti-Catholic for my critique of the Vatican web site, am i?
Sorry, but about two seconds after I posted this article ... I thought of you and some of our past comiserations over various misraelites who seem to think all Catholics have horns, etc ...
I don't see what's anti-Catholic about pointing out that the Vatican website sucks as a website. I'm sure many a web designer has shaken his or her head at it, especially the Catholic ones.
A reader writes:
My point is not that the Church is responding to the 19th Century Philosophies of Pride, but that the Holy Spirit is. In much the same way, I think the Second Vatican Council was given by the Spirit to fortify her against the various diastrous ideas of postmodernity that would follow the council (which the bishops could not foresee). He can see farther than we can. I think we are looking, in both cases, at divine providence, not human foresight.
I read your article about Marian Devotion in Crisis Magazine.
It has always puzzled me why the Church was moved by the Holy Spirit to promulgate the dogma of the IC in 1854. When I saw your explanation about destructive ideologies of the 19th century, and the IC being a reminder to the human race that they were made in the image and likeness of God, it really made sense to me.
Then I realized, though, there is a problem with your explanation. You bring up Marx, Darwin, and Freud as being representative types of these destructive ideologies, yet none of these men were influential in 1854. Marx's book Das Kapital came out 13 years later; Darwin's book Origin of the Species, 5 years later; and Freud wasn't even born.
Can you explain why you included them?
My point is not that the Church is responding to the 19th Century Philosophies of Pride, but that the Holy Spirit is. In much the same way, I think the Second Vatican Council was given by the Spirit to fortify her against the various diastrous ideas of postmodernity that would follow the council (which the bishops could not foresee). He can see farther than we can. I think we are looking, in both cases, at divine providence, not human foresight.
John Medaille (who I knew years ago on the Free Catholic list) writes:
Congrats, John!
I am proud to announce the publication of my book, The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace, by Continuum International.
The overriding theme of this book is that the original unity of distributive and corrective justice that prevailed in both economics and moral discourse until the 16th and seventeenth centuries was shattered by the rise of an individualistic capitalism that relied on corrective justice (justice in exchange) alone. But an economics that lacks a distributive principle will attain neither equity nor equilibrium and will be inherently unstable and increasingly reliant on both government power (Keynesianism) and consumer credit (usury) to correct the imbalances. Catholic social teaching, by contrast, emphasis a greater equity in the distribution of land and other means of production, and the just wage, and thereby leads more naturally to economic equilibrium and social justice. Finally, the book shows many examples of functioning systems, both large scale and small, that operate on the principles taught by the Church and produce a high degree of both equity and equilibrium.
I am also proud to have two very nice "blurbs."
'In this remarkable book John Médaille succeeds in showing how the more radical elements in Catholic Social teaching can be turned into really practical projects for building an alternative to capitalism. He shows that the key is to alter the culture of the business and the corporation in order to ensure that political and economic purposes, distributive and corrective justice become once again integrated, as classical philosophy and Christian theology alike demand. *The Vocation of business* supplies us at last with some keys for the turning of Christian critique of liberalism into a new from of effective practice.'
John Milbank University of Nottingham
"John Médaille has produced a tour de force - a book that manages to give the reader just enough insight into the various thinkers and subjects treated without overloading the reader and without missing anything important out. The careful yet unequivocal judgement on neoconservatism and the chapter on Distributism are particularly good."
Helen Alford OP, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Angelicum
Congrats, John!
If your murder fails to fall within the template of the MSM, it is unworthy of attention
That's why Mathew Shepard is a martyr symbolizing the Evilness of Everybody Who Fails to Celebrate the Glories of Gay Sex while Jesse Dirkhising is utterly forgettable.
That's why Mathew Shepard is a martyr symbolizing the Evilness of Everybody Who Fails to Celebrate the Glories of Gay Sex while Jesse Dirkhising is utterly forgettable.
Reason to Homeschool #394583759386573040672309475034759345978
Your kid will never has to endure some quack curriculum put together by people who follow a religion cooked up by a hack sci-fi writer whose main apostles are Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
Your kid will never has to endure some quack curriculum put together by people who follow a religion cooked up by a hack sci-fi writer whose main apostles are Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
Only in the American South....
This is the sort of place my pal Rod Bennett would absolutely love. He has a weakness for strange roadside attractions. Indeed, he promises to blog on it, once he has finished his series on "pop typology" (well worth checking out).
This is the sort of place my pal Rod Bennett would absolutely love. He has a weakness for strange roadside attractions. Indeed, he promises to blog on it, once he has finished his series on "pop typology" (well worth checking out).
A reader asks:
St. Dominic's is good. It's the Mother Ship for the Western Dominicans. Also, St. Albert's is the House of Formation in Oakland. Anybody know others?
Could any of your readers recommend a parish and RCIA program in the San Francisco Bay area?
St. Dominic's is good. It's the Mother Ship for the Western Dominicans. Also, St. Albert's is the House of Formation in Oakland. Anybody know others?
For those of you who prayed for and helped my friend, Jerry...
Some good news from his wife, Barbara:
Thanks be to God!
Some good news from his wife, Barbara:
Hi All... As you all know, Jerry has been hanging on for dear life! (And so have I!) The last couple of weeks have been really scary with him almost losing consciousness several times a week and being really, really weak! The doctor has been closely monitoring him and increasing the levels of detoxing medicine to scary levels, as well as changing the detoxing regimen. I have been staying home with him this week to carry out the new regimen, which is to last 7-9 days.
Yesterday Jerry took a long nap and today he seems to have snapped out of it! He is up and around a bit again and has not had any bouts of almost losing consciousness in the last 5 days! Some folks from church came to help us pack today, (we haven't sold the house yet, but since I'm home anyway, I thought we'd get a start), and they said, "Boy, you look better! You look A LOT better!" And he does!
I took Jerry to the doctor today, and the doctor was able to reduce the detox medicines drastically. Thank you for all your prayers! Keep 'em comin'!
Love - Barbara & Jerry
Thanks be to God!
Had a lovely Holiday
Just what the doctor ordered. A bit tired today, but a lot less stressed.
We basically did little of consequence in worldly terms--but much of consequence in spiritual ones. Giving kids (and adults) memories that will feed them throughout their lives is fun work. Also, digging clams and having a chance to talk to God is a great gift. I've been missing Him and it's my own fault.
Biggest event of the trip (aside from Pentecost in the little country church on the Island) was the big clam fry on Sunday night. I made zealous converts of the Warn fambly. Brian, the paterfamilias, found that even his English and Irish ancestry could not keep the food he cooked from tasting scrumptious. Here he is, frying away:
Dorothy (standing next to Brian) was one of the helpers on Team Clam. The production line worked away with me bisecting the clams and washing the sand out of them. Then Alyosha would break the two shells apart and give them to Audrey for distribution to Albert (not pictured) and Dorothy. Here's Audrey, Alyosha, me and a bit of a smashed clammy friend.
Audrey, by the way, is no girly girl, squealing, "Gross!" and running away from harmless (though a bit yukky) clams. She was right in there, breading the clams, and eating them like a linebacker. She will be president of the World Bank someday. Not your shrinking violet type, as the photo somewhat attests.
Of course, being up to my elbows in raw clams somewhat hindered my ability to actually eat them as they were fried. Sometimes, my hunger almost got the best of me:
But Brian would take pity on me (between sharing out clams to all and sundry who walked into camp and sharing the Good News of the Deliciousness of Fried Clams) and spoon feed me to keep up my strength for the many clams that still lay ahead.
The best part was, it's all so simple: a few eggs, a glug of milk in a bowl, beat them, cut the clams in two, dip them in the egg batter, then grind them in some Progresso bread crumbs and fry them (still in the shell), face down on a skillet with hot oil or butter. Voila!
Oh. Wine doesn't hurt either.
The Evaluation Task Force rated this week's camping trip as having met and exceeded Superior Performance Standards for a vacation. The only problematic factor is that the Task Force deemed the vacation "too short" and recommends something twice as long next year. We will be passing our recommendations on to the Supernumerary Committee on Evaluation Task Force Recommendations very soon.
Just what the doctor ordered. A bit tired today, but a lot less stressed.
We basically did little of consequence in worldly terms--but much of consequence in spiritual ones. Giving kids (and adults) memories that will feed them throughout their lives is fun work. Also, digging clams and having a chance to talk to God is a great gift. I've been missing Him and it's my own fault.
Biggest event of the trip (aside from Pentecost in the little country church on the Island) was the big clam fry on Sunday night. I made zealous converts of the Warn fambly. Brian, the paterfamilias, found that even his English and Irish ancestry could not keep the food he cooked from tasting scrumptious. Here he is, frying away:
Dorothy (standing next to Brian) was one of the helpers on Team Clam. The production line worked away with me bisecting the clams and washing the sand out of them. Then Alyosha would break the two shells apart and give them to Audrey for distribution to Albert (not pictured) and Dorothy. Here's Audrey, Alyosha, me and a bit of a smashed clammy friend.
Audrey, by the way, is no girly girl, squealing, "Gross!" and running away from harmless (though a bit yukky) clams. She was right in there, breading the clams, and eating them like a linebacker. She will be president of the World Bank someday. Not your shrinking violet type, as the photo somewhat attests.
Of course, being up to my elbows in raw clams somewhat hindered my ability to actually eat them as they were fried. Sometimes, my hunger almost got the best of me:
But Brian would take pity on me (between sharing out clams to all and sundry who walked into camp and sharing the Good News of the Deliciousness of Fried Clams) and spoon feed me to keep up my strength for the many clams that still lay ahead.
The best part was, it's all so simple: a few eggs, a glug of milk in a bowl, beat them, cut the clams in two, dip them in the egg batter, then grind them in some Progresso bread crumbs and fry them (still in the shell), face down on a skillet with hot oil or butter. Voila!
Oh. Wine doesn't hurt either.
The Evaluation Task Force rated this week's camping trip as having met and exceeded Superior Performance Standards for a vacation. The only problematic factor is that the Task Force deemed the vacation "too short" and recommends something twice as long next year. We will be passing our recommendations on to the Supernumerary Committee on Evaluation Task Force Recommendations very soon.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Because I Hate Bush and Always Vilify Everybody who Disagrees with Me In the Slightest Since I'm Never Willing to Admit I Could Be Wrong...
You cannot possibly be reading what follows:
I did a little cursory reading up on Jerome Corsi and am today much less inclined to take his word for it that this story means what he thinks it means. In addition, reader Seamus, who actually knows something of constitutional law, says I'm fretting about nothing.
Very well. I will take the word of people with competence in the field. I apologize for letting anger at Bush's torture policies get the better of me and cause me to be uncharitable. Mea culpa.
If you happen to be one of those combox commandos who feels the need to say one of the following:
1. Out of the fulness of the heart, the mouth speaks. Clearly your heart is full of sin. You've just admitted it. Why should anybody forgive you?
2. You've sinned before and repented. And yet here you are sinning again. I know Jesus said all that stuff about 70 X 7, but he was just kidding. What he actually meant was "a couple of times" and then give it up because it's clear the guy is not serious. Feel free to call him an impenitent hypocrite who is just asking for enablers to go on enabling him in his sin.
3. Yeah, sure, you *say* "mea culpa" but those are just empty words without deeds! Let's see some practical deeds! Admittedly that's impossible to do in cyberspace where the sole medium is words. But you should have thought of that before you committed a sin in front of critics who have no intention of forgiving you!
...please don't.
Many thanks.
The Management
Now I can go on vacation.
You cannot possibly be reading what follows:
I did a little cursory reading up on Jerome Corsi and am today much less inclined to take his word for it that this story means what he thinks it means. In addition, reader Seamus, who actually knows something of constitutional law, says I'm fretting about nothing.
Very well. I will take the word of people with competence in the field. I apologize for letting anger at Bush's torture policies get the better of me and cause me to be uncharitable. Mea culpa.
If you happen to be one of those combox commandos who feels the need to say one of the following:
1. Out of the fulness of the heart, the mouth speaks. Clearly your heart is full of sin. You've just admitted it. Why should anybody forgive you?
2. You've sinned before and repented. And yet here you are sinning again. I know Jesus said all that stuff about 70 X 7, but he was just kidding. What he actually meant was "a couple of times" and then give it up because it's clear the guy is not serious. Feel free to call him an impenitent hypocrite who is just asking for enablers to go on enabling him in his sin.
3. Yeah, sure, you *say* "mea culpa" but those are just empty words without deeds! Let's see some practical deeds! Admittedly that's impossible to do in cyberspace where the sole medium is words. But you should have thought of that before you committed a sin in front of critics who have no intention of forgiving you!
...please don't.
Many thanks.
The Management
Now I can go on vacation.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Vacation!
A consummation devoutly to be wished!
Chez Shea is about to depart (on Friday) for glorious Lopez Island in the San Juans for our annual Memorial Day Hooptidoo-in-the-Woods at Spencer Spit. We'll be hanging with a bunch of friends and fambly, including some of CAEI's very own combox denizens!
Accordingly, tomorrow will be a combination of trying to get stuff written and sent off and packing so we can leave early, (not to mention a Seattle G.K. Chesterton Society meeting tomorrow night!).
Ergo, look for me back in the blogging saddle on Tuesday!
Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
A consummation devoutly to be wished!
Chez Shea is about to depart (on Friday) for glorious Lopez Island in the San Juans for our annual Memorial Day Hooptidoo-in-the-Woods at Spencer Spit. We'll be hanging with a bunch of friends and fambly, including some of CAEI's very own combox denizens!
Accordingly, tomorrow will be a combination of trying to get stuff written and sent off and packing so we can leave early, (not to mention a Seattle G.K. Chesterton Society meeting tomorrow night!).
Thursday, May 24, 2007, at 7:30 PM in the Falcon Lounge
“Evangelization in China Today: An Unprecedented Moment”
Mr. John Lindblom
China Specialist
Research Associates of America, Washington D.C.
What might the future hold in store for Christianity in China, given a history of missionaries and martyrs, imprisoned bishops and divisions between underground churches and “patriotic associations”? Tonight the Society benefits from the insight and expertise of Mr. John Lindblom, holder of an M.A. in China Studies from the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Mr. Lindblom currently works as a researcher on China for Research Associates of America in Washington, DC.
Ergo, look for me back in the blogging saddle on Tuesday!
Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
Resolved: That the tissue mass known as "Richard Dawkins" shall forthwith be made a host for the endangered species "smallpox"
Should the host tissue mass "Richard Dawkins" survive Phase One of the Aggressive Endangered Species Recovery Program, we propose that it be farmed into Phase Two and made a host for the endangered species "bubonic plague".
Should the host tissue mass "Richard Dawkins" survive Phase One of the Aggressive Endangered Species Recovery Program, we propose that it be farmed into Phase Two and made a host for the endangered species "bubonic plague".
Hail Caesar!
More on Bush Granting Self Power to Grant Self More Power. Here's Jerome Corsi, America-hating Netroot Leftist from that fanatically Left Wing World Net Daily (and co-author of the book by the Swift Boat guys in the 2004 election that help re-elect His Imperial Majesty):
Update: There's a lot less here then meets the eye, it appears. Serves me right for letting my exasperation with the "Hey! Just because a guy dies during CIA interrogation doesn't mean there's evidence for torture and murder. Wouldn't now be a good time to quibble about the meaning of homicide? And let's not forget that the *real* issue is not the murdered man in the photo, but how horribly mean you are to a politician who gave Sean Hannity the distinct impression that torture was just peachy, not to mention your unspeakably awful manners to people who call you a "Torture Pharisee" and have labored for years to make the case for being "anti-anti-torture"." Usual Combox Crowd below--and the seemingly deathless Bush cult of personality for the Supreme Maximum Leader Who Is Incapable of Wrong that it evinces--spill over into my reading of the web. This Administration has plenty to answer for already. But I don't think what Corsi claims is part of it.
More on Bush Granting Self Power to Grant Self More Power. Here's Jerome Corsi, America-hating Netroot Leftist from that fanatically Left Wing World Net Daily (and co-author of the book by the Swift Boat guys in the 2004 election that help re-elect His Imperial Majesty):
President Bush, without so much as issuing a press statement, on May 9 signed a directive that granted near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president.
***
Translated into layman's terms, when the president determines a national emergency has occurred, the president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.
Ironically, the directive sees no contradiction in the assumption of dictatorial powers by the president with the goal of maintaining constitutional continuity through an emergency.
Update: There's a lot less here then meets the eye, it appears. Serves me right for letting my exasperation with the "Hey! Just because a guy dies during CIA interrogation doesn't mean there's evidence for torture and murder. Wouldn't now be a good time to quibble about the meaning of homicide? And let's not forget that the *real* issue is not the murdered man in the photo, but how horribly mean you are to a politician who gave Sean Hannity the distinct impression that torture was just peachy, not to mention your unspeakably awful manners to people who call you a "Torture Pharisee" and have labored for years to make the case for being "anti-anti-torture"." Usual Combox Crowd below--and the seemingly deathless Bush cult of personality for the Supreme Maximum Leader Who Is Incapable of Wrong that it evinces--spill over into my reading of the web. This Administration has plenty to answer for already. But I don't think what Corsi claims is part of it.
Give me strength
Just because a healthy guy died from asphyxiation during interrogation by CIA ops doesn't mean he was tortured to death.
And besides *if* homicide is wrong, then some of my favorite Bible characters may have had character flaws.
Plus, it's not like the guy was tortured to death for *fun*. So that makes it alright. Or "not torture and murder". Or... something.
Plus, Brownback is getting ready to clarify why he could not have said what McCain and Paul had no trouble saying. The check's in the mail any day now. So how about not being so mean just because the guy didn't have the stones to call FoxNewscritters on their Orwellian push for torture?
And another thing, if you don't bring a discussion of Catholic annulments into your discussion of torture, you are a FRAUD, Mr. Shea.
And War is not sinful. Never was. Nothing about war is sinful. No war was ever sinful. After reading that paean of praise to the goodness and greatness of war, I can scarcely see the need for Just war teaching since war was "never" sinful. Ever. Under any circumstance. God loves war. He's the Lord of Hosts you know. So when a pagan says "war is the natural state of man", any *real* Catholic worth his salt knows that "grace perfects nature" and the purpose of Jesus in the world is to turn us into more effective and deadly killing machines for the spread of "western values". War is not a concession to human weakness. It's an ideal, a positive good. It's not an earthly image of our true spiritual warfare with sin, hell, and death. It's an endorsement by God Almighty of our glorious post-Christian civilizational struggle to make the world safe for Democracy, Whiskey and Sex.
I learn so much from my comboxes.
Just because a healthy guy died from asphyxiation during interrogation by CIA ops doesn't mean he was tortured to death.
And besides *if* homicide is wrong, then some of my favorite Bible characters may have had character flaws.
Plus, it's not like the guy was tortured to death for *fun*. So that makes it alright. Or "not torture and murder". Or... something.
Plus, Brownback is getting ready to clarify why he could not have said what McCain and Paul had no trouble saying. The check's in the mail any day now. So how about not being so mean just because the guy didn't have the stones to call FoxNewscritters on their Orwellian push for torture?
And another thing, if you don't bring a discussion of Catholic annulments into your discussion of torture, you are a FRAUD, Mr. Shea.
And War is not sinful. Never was. Nothing about war is sinful. No war was ever sinful. After reading that paean of praise to the goodness and greatness of war, I can scarcely see the need for Just war teaching since war was "never" sinful. Ever. Under any circumstance. God loves war. He's the Lord of Hosts you know. So when a pagan says "war is the natural state of man", any *real* Catholic worth his salt knows that "grace perfects nature" and the purpose of Jesus in the world is to turn us into more effective and deadly killing machines for the spread of "western values". War is not a concession to human weakness. It's an ideal, a positive good. It's not an earthly image of our true spiritual warfare with sin, hell, and death. It's an endorsement by God Almighty of our glorious post-Christian civilizational struggle to make the world safe for Democracy, Whiskey and Sex.
I learn so much from my comboxes.
If all my readers in Southern Washington, Idaho, eastern Oregon, Wyoming, Utah, and Northern Colorado could kindly step aside....
I would like to focus a concentrated beam of gloating directly at Sherry Weddell.
Bzzzzzneenerneenerzzzzzzzzzzzt!
Thank you.
Here in Seattle (or should I say, Lopez Island in the San Juans, where I will be this glorious weekend), the weather is expected to be balmy and beautiful.
I would like to focus a concentrated beam of gloating directly at Sherry Weddell.
Bzzzzzneenerneenerzzzzzzzzzzzt!
Thank you.
Here in Seattle (or should I say, Lopez Island in the San Juans, where I will be this glorious weekend), the weather is expected to be balmy and beautiful.
Sorry I disappeared. I had a speaking gig.
Upon my return and my glance at the comment boxes and the issues that push people's buttons I think I have formulated the blog entry title guaranteed to generate more comments than any other Haloscan thread in history:
"Motu proprio on torturing menstruating women with Latin liturgy expected soon"
Discuss.
Upon my return and my glance at the comment boxes and the issues that push people's buttons I think I have formulated the blog entry title guaranteed to generate more comments than any other Haloscan thread in history:
"Motu proprio on torturing menstruating women with Latin liturgy expected soon"
Discuss.
This
reminds me of this.
The whole "separation of powers" thing is a big drag on efficiency. It's okay for leisurely 18th century landed gentry to talk that way. But we are in a War Like No Other and we need a strong leader who will not be bogged down in red tape about "Congressional approval" or the sterile disputes of theologians about "good" and "evil". Above all we need speed and efficiency in rushing toward any goal the Executive chooses to rush toward or we will all die in searing pain! Fear and terror should be our guiding lights here, not some dusty out-of-date ideas from a bunch of dead guys.
reminds me of this.
The whole "separation of powers" thing is a big drag on efficiency. It's okay for leisurely 18th century landed gentry to talk that way. But we are in a War Like No Other and we need a strong leader who will not be bogged down in red tape about "Congressional approval" or the sterile disputes of theologians about "good" and "evil". Above all we need speed and efficiency in rushing toward any goal the Executive chooses to rush toward or we will all die in searing pain! Fear and terror should be our guiding lights here, not some dusty out-of-date ideas from a bunch of dead guys.
A bold new generation of anesthetized consciences and moral monsters marches out to do battle with innocent babies!
Wow! You can practically hear the swelling orchestral music in this paean of praise for the merchants of death.
Wow! You can practically hear the swelling orchestral music in this paean of praise for the merchants of death.
Cdl. Schonborn defends the highly unpopular proposition that "all things on earth should be ordained to man as to their center and summit."
I would argue that even environmentalists and various imbibers of the Darwinian Mythos who deride this proposition routinely are constantly speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
Oh sure, they *say* things like:
But then they give the game away by talking in the most naked Judeo-Christian terms about our "responsibility" for creation, about the "immorality" of overpopulation and all the rest of it. Nobody talks about the immorality of bacteria colonies that exhaust their own food supply. Nobody talks about the immorality of lampreys that destroy fish populations in the Great Lakes. All the other beings in the great riot of nature just do what they do. We alone are constantly lecturing ourselves on how what we do is "unnatural" not "part of nature". Why, it's almost as though we are rational animals raised by grace to a place of dominion over nature or something.
The main achievement of the environmentalist movement and its philosophical allies in the Darwinian Mythos agitprop arm has been to press down on us all the old Calvinist teaching about human guilt and shame while robbing us of any of the happy bits of the Catholic tradition about man as the crown of creation and a creature specially loved by God. The work is thankless, but at least the pay is low.
I would argue that even environmentalists and various imbibers of the Darwinian Mythos who deride this proposition routinely are constantly speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
Oh sure, they *say* things like:
Some people want to think of humans as the product of a special creation, separate from other living things. I am not among them; I am glad it is not so. I am proud to be part of the riot of nature, to know that the same forces that produced me also produced bees, giant ferns, and microbes that live at the bottom of the sea.
But then they give the game away by talking in the most naked Judeo-Christian terms about our "responsibility" for creation, about the "immorality" of overpopulation and all the rest of it. Nobody talks about the immorality of bacteria colonies that exhaust their own food supply. Nobody talks about the immorality of lampreys that destroy fish populations in the Great Lakes. All the other beings in the great riot of nature just do what they do. We alone are constantly lecturing ourselves on how what we do is "unnatural" not "part of nature". Why, it's almost as though we are rational animals raised by grace to a place of dominion over nature or something.
The main achievement of the environmentalist movement and its philosophical allies in the Darwinian Mythos agitprop arm has been to press down on us all the old Calvinist teaching about human guilt and shame while robbing us of any of the happy bits of the Catholic tradition about man as the crown of creation and a creature specially loved by God. The work is thankless, but at least the pay is low.
A reader writes:
May God grant Margaret healing in body, soul, and spirit through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Regarding your book request, I'd check with Amy Welborn. I'm pretty sure that in her vast corpus of work, she's got something to help you here.
One of my co-workers, Margaret, is in the hospital for very serious heart surgery today. I would be grateful if the readers of CAEI would join me in lifting up this fine, hardworking woman to our Lord in prayer. Thank you.
I also have a co-worker who is curious about Catholicism and has expressed some interest in coming to Mass. Can you or your readers recommend a good, short intro to the Mass--preferably something in booklet or leaflet form, so as not to be too intimidating for a first-time visitor?
May God grant Margaret healing in body, soul, and spirit through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Regarding your book request, I'd check with Amy Welborn. I'm pretty sure that in her vast corpus of work, she's got something to help you here.
"Giuliani is a crucial figure in the conservative movement."
In much the same way as the guy who designed the eternal flame for JFK's grave was a crucial figure in the life of JFK.
The article goes on to question whether Rudy's position on abortion "makes sense". Depends on what you mean. Does it make rational, coherent, moral, or theological sense? Of course not! It's a mass of contradictions and blather.
Does it make political sense? Apparently so. He is the front runner and "conservatives" are willing to accept this two-faced effusion of self-serving lies because, you know, "he's strong on the war" and that, ultimately, is all that really matters. We may be witnessing a grand national reply to Zippy's question: "If you thought you could win a war by aborting a baby, would you do it?" The answer appears to be "Hell yes." That, friends, is consequentialism in chemical purity.
In much the same way as the guy who designed the eternal flame for JFK's grave was a crucial figure in the life of JFK.
The article goes on to question whether Rudy's position on abortion "makes sense". Depends on what you mean. Does it make rational, coherent, moral, or theological sense? Of course not! It's a mass of contradictions and blather.
Does it make political sense? Apparently so. He is the front runner and "conservatives" are willing to accept this two-faced effusion of self-serving lies because, you know, "he's strong on the war" and that, ultimately, is all that really matters. We may be witnessing a grand national reply to Zippy's question: "If you thought you could win a war by aborting a baby, would you do it?" The answer appears to be "Hell yes." That, friends, is consequentialism in chemical purity.
A reader writes:
I don't see anything morally wrong with the use of birth control pills in hormone therapy for a chaste person.
After the recent news on the New Birth control pill that is aimed at preventing menstruation, a couple of friends and I engaged in a conversation about birth control and contraception. I see the complete logic behind not using contraception in the marital context as laid out in §2370 and §2399 or the CCC. However, I can't seem to find anything -- at least not on first glance -- as to why a woman cannot, or should not, take birth control while not married and not engaged in sexual activity. I do know that there are a few women who might need such to regulate their cycles and hormones. I also know there are other ways to regulate hormones than taking birth control.
We tried examining it from the angle that birth control interferes with the natural biological processes of the body; yet, it would seem that something as simple as Advil does the same too.
We couldn't examine it from the angle that she was preventing life, because she was not really engaged in any activity that was promoting life (she wasn't having sex).
We asked if whether or not the risks and dangers associated with taking birth control pill out weigh the benefits. In other words, is it more harmful to take the pill than not to take the pill. Our initial answer was 'yes'. However, some of us in the group felt as if we could not give it a difinitve 'yes' without proper research. Personally, I thought that if anything increased your chances to have a blood clot, stroke, or even death posed to be more harmful than not.
Anyway, can you help shed some light on this subject? I am somewhat confused by it.
I don't see anything morally wrong with the use of birth control pills in hormone therapy for a chaste person.
ta·boo also ta·bu (tə-bōō', tā-) n. pl. ta·boos also ta·bus
1. Whatever disgusting perversion the Manufacturers of Culture in the post-Christian West are just about to try to legitimate.
1. Whatever disgusting perversion the Manufacturers of Culture in the post-Christian West are just about to try to legitimate.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
I remember back when conservatives believed in something called "fiscal responsibility"
The LBJification of the GOP continues apace, courtesy of the fine job this Administation is doing in turning Iraq into the Great Society.
The LBJification of the GOP continues apace, courtesy of the fine job this Administation is doing in turning Iraq into the Great Society.
Just to be clear, this is what virtually the entire field of GOP Candidates and most of the Allegedly Conservative Punditocracy Favors
This man's name was Manadel al-Jamadi. This was done to him by CIA ops using techniques that President Bush assures us are not torture. Evidently the students of what is and is not precisely exactly technically torture made a misstep somewhere and al-Jamadi died as the result of enhanced-interrogation-techniques-that-are-most-certainly-not-torture-or-anything.
You may be wondering what became of his murderers. Funny thing that. Nothing. Not one damn thing. Although the investigation showed homicide, everybody apparently agrees that it was nobody's fault. That stands to reason since, as the President has made clear, we do not torture. Mr al-Jamadi's wilful and impertinent death at the hands of CIA interrogators who were using techniques which remain legal at this very hour was but the most devious attempt by subversives to undermine the system of values that Messrs Bush and Cheney are trying to bring to the backward peoples of the world.
Most unfortunate. But think of all the valuable intelligence that was beaten out of him. True, there is not one mention anywhere that I can find of whether al-Jamadi actually gasped out any useful information with his dying asphyxiated breath. But since virtually all the Republican candidates favor this sort of thing in their Waron (excuse me) for Western Civilization that needn't trouble us. You have to break some eggs to make an omelette. If it *can* be shown that al-Jamadi coughed up something beside blood before he died, it will all have been worth it and fully justifiable. If not, hey! Collateral damage! Who are gonna believe? George Bush and the Rubber Hose Right or your own two eyes?
This man's name was Manadel al-Jamadi. This was done to him by CIA ops using techniques that President Bush assures us are not torture. Evidently the students of what is and is not precisely exactly technically torture made a misstep somewhere and al-Jamadi died as the result of enhanced-interrogation-techniques-that-are-most-certainly-not-torture-or-anything.
You may be wondering what became of his murderers. Funny thing that. Nothing. Not one damn thing. Although the investigation showed homicide, everybody apparently agrees that it was nobody's fault. That stands to reason since, as the President has made clear, we do not torture. Mr al-Jamadi's wilful and impertinent death at the hands of CIA interrogators who were using techniques which remain legal at this very hour was but the most devious attempt by subversives to undermine the system of values that Messrs Bush and Cheney are trying to bring to the backward peoples of the world.
Most unfortunate. But think of all the valuable intelligence that was beaten out of him. True, there is not one mention anywhere that I can find of whether al-Jamadi actually gasped out any useful information with his dying asphyxiated breath. But since virtually all the Republican candidates favor this sort of thing in their War
Reader Christine Meyer Asks That We Remember Moscow Idaho in Our Prayers
Virginia Tech isn't only place to endure gun violence recently.
Virginia Tech isn't only place to endure gun violence recently.
Interesting story about a debate I never heard of
Reagan v. RFK
I wonder whatever became of all the petulant little brats who were in the audience?
Reagan v. RFK
I wonder whatever became of all the petulant little brats who were in the audience?
Reason to Homeschool #39457345983534593865735934873452345434958376539487
Your child will never be urged to have sex with anything bearing a pulse, nor to do drugs. Nor will you be banished from hearing such motivational speakers by cubicle rats who know more than you do about what truly good for your kid.
Your child will never be urged to have sex with anything bearing a pulse, nor to do drugs. Nor will you be banished from hearing such motivational speakers by cubicle rats who know more than you do about what truly good for your kid.
Take your pick
It is only in Christ that man can learn the truth about man. - John Paul II
War is the natural state of man. - Victor Davis Hanson
It is only in Christ that man can learn the truth about man. - John Paul II
War is the natural state of man. - Victor Davis Hanson
Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command has a message for extremely gullible Britons
As we all know, aliens with an urgent message for all mankind can only hack into one English TV station and they just happen to have British accents.
As we all know, aliens with an urgent message for all mankind can only hack into one English TV station and they just happen to have British accents.
Chuck Jones' Strangest Cartoon Ever
Hat tip: Mayerson on Animation, a blog by a professional animator which also has a nifty discussion on the greatness of Disney's Pinocchio.
Hat tip: Mayerson on Animation, a blog by a professional animator which also has a nifty discussion on the greatness of Disney's Pinocchio.
Horrible
Wilsonian secular messianic rubbish, meet Iraq.
And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way. - George W. Bush, Second Inaugural
Wilsonian secular messianic rubbish, meet Iraq.
Pill meant to end periods poised for approval
Welcome to the "What could it hurt?" phase of FDA approval.
We'll have to wait a few years for the "How were we supposed to know?" moment.
I become more and more convinced that the principal fruit of extreme feminism is the complete eradication of all that is identifiably feminine.
Welcome to the "What could it hurt?" phase of FDA approval.
We'll have to wait a few years for the "How were we supposed to know?" moment.
I become more and more convinced that the principal fruit of extreme feminism is the complete eradication of all that is identifiably feminine.
The Erratic A.N. Wilson Review Jesus of Nazareth
For a while Wilson was a conservative Anglican, then a Catholic, then an atheist. These days, he appears to be edging back toward something like an appreciation of, if not a faith in, Christ. I wonder if his inbred conservatism just can't stand the loopiness of the liberal projects attempts to "explain" Jesus. Hard to tell. Anyway, an interesting review (with the requisite number of bonehead "Didn't Paul invent Christianity?" stuff in it that make it acceptable to the British secular press).
For a while Wilson was a conservative Anglican, then a Catholic, then an atheist. These days, he appears to be edging back toward something like an appreciation of, if not a faith in, Christ. I wonder if his inbred conservatism just can't stand the loopiness of the liberal projects attempts to "explain" Jesus. Hard to tell. Anyway, an interesting review (with the requisite number of bonehead "Didn't Paul invent Christianity?" stuff in it that make it acceptable to the British secular press).
Frances Kissling Continues to Uphold the Leftist Cause for Consequentialist Rejection of Catholic Moral Teaching
It's good to see her working together with the Catholic Torture Apologists like Rudy Giuliani to overcome the tedious phariseeism of the Magisterium and create that Truly Big Tent where all American Catholics can join together in rejection of the Church's moral teaching. How could and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity.
It's good to see her working together with the Catholic Torture Apologists like Rudy Giuliani to overcome the tedious phariseeism of the Magisterium and create that Truly Big Tent where all American Catholics can join together in rejection of the Church's moral teaching. How could and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity.
The Coarsening of Culture, Thanks to the Pagan Realpolitik Zealots
In March 2003, Newsweek ran this story. Here's a key point:
The problem is that this philosophy is a pagan philosophy and paganism is deeply mistake about reality. The difficulty is that Ideas Have Consequences. In this case, the wrong idea is that "normal" equals "natural". And because of this, it has been fatally easy for people like Hanson, Cheney and the other brutal incompetents who cheerled and pushed for war to imagine they were being Hard Realistic Men Who Were Facing Evil and not recognize that they were, in fact, pliant ideological men who were choosing to do evil. War is not the "natural" state of man. It is the normal, the common, the regular state of *fallen* man. It is no more a noble ideal than lung cancer or cheating on taxes. Yes, things that cause men to sin are bound to come, says our Lord. But woe to him through whom they come. Cheney's "dark side realism" is the worst sort of hellish fantasy: it not only destroys your soul but, with the typical style of Hell, it gives you *nothing* in return.
Sin is normal. It is never "natural". The confusion on this point, in a land of apostate Puritans like America, is completely understandable. But even understandable confusion can still get you killed if you understandably drive down the freeway the wrong way on a dark night after too many drinks. Cheney has schooled himself in the best pagan philosophy of war courtesy pagan war philosophers like Victor Davis Hanson. The problem is that pagans are only partly right. And where they are wrong, they are disastrously wrong.
In March 2003, Newsweek ran this story. Here's a key point:
Last Fall, the vice president read “An Autumn of War” by Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist who lives on a farm in California. In his book, a collection of columns published online by National Review in the weeks after 9-11, Hanson writes that war is the natural state of mankind. Great leaders understand this, according to Hanson. They are not fooled by utopian visions about world peace; they face evil and deal with it. Cheney told his aides that Hanson’s book reflected his philosophy.
The problem is that this philosophy is a pagan philosophy and paganism is deeply mistake about reality. The difficulty is that Ideas Have Consequences. In this case, the wrong idea is that "normal" equals "natural". And because of this, it has been fatally easy for people like Hanson, Cheney and the other brutal incompetents who cheerled and pushed for war to imagine they were being Hard Realistic Men Who Were Facing Evil and not recognize that they were, in fact, pliant ideological men who were choosing to do evil. War is not the "natural" state of man. It is the normal, the common, the regular state of *fallen* man. It is no more a noble ideal than lung cancer or cheating on taxes. Yes, things that cause men to sin are bound to come, says our Lord. But woe to him through whom they come. Cheney's "dark side realism" is the worst sort of hellish fantasy: it not only destroys your soul but, with the typical style of Hell, it gives you *nothing* in return.
Sin is normal. It is never "natural". The confusion on this point, in a land of apostate Puritans like America, is completely understandable. But even understandable confusion can still get you killed if you understandably drive down the freeway the wrong way on a dark night after too many drinks. Cheney has schooled himself in the best pagan philosophy of war courtesy pagan war philosophers like Victor Davis Hanson. The problem is that pagans are only partly right. And where they are wrong, they are disastrously wrong.
Of all the bad things that George W. Bush has done, the worst by far is this: He made war seem natural and normal to Americans again, he was the instrument of the regression of the American mind.
Patrick O'Hannigan follows Hitchens Debates So I Don't Have to
It appears Hitchens is taking quite a drubbing from Douglas Wilson. This is where the Calvinist tendency to breed for the Purely Rationalist Gene really pays off. Atheists are all about the claim to be motivated by Pure Reason, often (as is the case with Hitchens) when they are manifestly filled with pure unreasoning rage. A Calvinist is often the temperament you want for such arguments. The contrast between the sheer sloppiness and emotionalism that drives arguers like Hitchens (though for Hitchens this tends largely to manifest itself when the subject is religion) and the generally collected way in which a Calvinist will approach the matter can often be tonic. There are still problems, of course, with the Calvinist position. I think presuppositionalism is rubbish and I think sola scriptura is rubbish. But for a good solid argument for plain vanilla theism, I think a Calvinist is often a good person to call on against a fire-breathing rhetorician like Hitchens.
It appears Hitchens is taking quite a drubbing from Douglas Wilson. This is where the Calvinist tendency to breed for the Purely Rationalist Gene really pays off. Atheists are all about the claim to be motivated by Pure Reason, often (as is the case with Hitchens) when they are manifestly filled with pure unreasoning rage. A Calvinist is often the temperament you want for such arguments. The contrast between the sheer sloppiness and emotionalism that drives arguers like Hitchens (though for Hitchens this tends largely to manifest itself when the subject is religion) and the generally collected way in which a Calvinist will approach the matter can often be tonic. There are still problems, of course, with the Calvinist position. I think presuppositionalism is rubbish and I think sola scriptura is rubbish. But for a good solid argument for plain vanilla theism, I think a Calvinist is often a good person to call on against a fire-breathing rhetorician like Hitchens.
Sometimes the Onion is So Subversive it Subverts Even Itself
I realize this is supposed to make prolifers look stupid, but it somehow winds up making enthusiasts for the sacrament of abortion look even stupider. Not sure why that is yet.
I realize this is supposed to make prolifers look stupid, but it somehow winds up making enthusiasts for the sacrament of abortion look even stupider. Not sure why that is yet.
Pete Vere, a dangerously seditious thinker who clearly hates America and wants us to lose the War on Terror, sez:
Our Vice President prefers not to call it "waterboarding". Too Khmer Rougish. He likes to call it "dunking". A little friendly horseplay that calls to mind the watersports of our teen years.
A few determined Torture Apologists will say, "Who you gonna believe? Me or your own two eyes!" Some of those with FoxNews implants will nod when the Torture Apologists flash the Queen of Diamonds and tell them that this is just "enhanced interrogation techniques", "so-called torture". Worse still, with the exception of McCain and Ron Paul, every single candidate in the Republican Augean stable enthusiastically endorse what you are watching (assuming you have the stomach to watch it) and even worse stuff besides. Indeed, not a few of the Torture Enthusiasts are saying that the gravest question facing the Republican Party is whether to allow a beast like Ron Paul to continue to sully the reputation of the GOP by appearing on stage with the upstanding men who want to make America a stronger, more efficient Torture State.
And all this has become a legitimate legal cheerfully endorsed (though euphemistically elided) fact of American life because of George W. Bush.
For those who think that waterboarding is not torture...a video
Our Vice President prefers not to call it "waterboarding". Too Khmer Rougish. He likes to call it "dunking". A little friendly horseplay that calls to mind the watersports of our teen years.
A few determined Torture Apologists will say, "Who you gonna believe? Me or your own two eyes!" Some of those with FoxNews implants will nod when the Torture Apologists flash the Queen of Diamonds and tell them that this is just "enhanced interrogation techniques", "so-called torture". Worse still, with the exception of McCain and Ron Paul, every single candidate in the Republican Augean stable enthusiastically endorse what you are watching (assuming you have the stomach to watch it) and even worse stuff besides. Indeed, not a few of the Torture Enthusiasts are saying that the gravest question facing the Republican Party is whether to allow a beast like Ron Paul to continue to sully the reputation of the GOP by appearing on stage with the upstanding men who want to make America a stronger, more efficient Torture State.
And all this has become a legitimate legal cheerfully endorsed (though euphemistically elided) fact of American life because of George W. Bush.
The Good and Dear Mrs. Nancy Brown...
whose blog is here writes:
Order your copy early by clicking on the link above.
whose blog is here writes:
Dear Friends,
Our Sunday Visitor has just informed me that instead of the original August 15th publication date for The Mystery of Harry Potter: A Catholic Family Guide, they are now in motion to get the book out June 18th. That's less than one month from now.
This means that the first edition will not contain any Book Seven information, but instead will lead readers to an Our Sunday Visitor web site where just as soon as I read Deathly Hallows, my thoughts and comments will be "live"--and will be added to the proposed second edition of the book at some time in the future.
In addition, the extensive and I hope exhaustive bibliography (that means you'll get tired of reading them all ;-)) which didn't fit the page requirements will be on-line at OSV as well.
The Amazon.com page will soon reflect this change, but I wanted you to hear it from me first.
Thank you for your help with this project. Please pray with me that it will be "something beautiful for God" as Mother Teresa would say.
Yours in Christ,
Order your copy early by clicking on the link above.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Hey Seattle! Heads Up! Here's where I'll be speaking tomorrow night!
May 22 7:00 PM. University of Washington Newman Center, 4502 20th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA. Phone: (206) 527-5072. Topic: Behold Your Mother. Email: Liz Nelson
May 22 7:00 PM. University of Washington Newman Center, 4502 20th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA. Phone: (206) 527-5072. Topic: Behold Your Mother. Email: Liz Nelson
So much for Seven Times Seventy
One of the stranger things about cyber-Christianity is the weird attitude that is taken to cyber-apologies. Now and then, I will say something here that I regret. If I don't post an apology, that just shows how hard-hearted to my own sin I truly am. If I do post an apology, then that's I'm just admitting the Evil Within (because as we all know, sin is what defines you, not Christ). And why should a manifest sinner be forgiven. If I take the trouble to say, "No. I mean it or I would not take the trouble to apologize publicly" I'm told that if I really meant it I would "show it in deed, not word".
Um, this is cyber-space. The sole medium in which we work here is words.
What all this really boils down to is that Christ's command to forgive remains the most difficult and scandalous teaching in the entire gospel. Forget seven times seventy. For some people, once is too many times.
One of the stranger things about cyber-Christianity is the weird attitude that is taken to cyber-apologies. Now and then, I will say something here that I regret. If I don't post an apology, that just shows how hard-hearted to my own sin I truly am. If I do post an apology, then that's I'm just admitting the Evil Within (because as we all know, sin is what defines you, not Christ). And why should a manifest sinner be forgiven. If I take the trouble to say, "No. I mean it or I would not take the trouble to apologize publicly" I'm told that if I really meant it I would "show it in deed, not word".
Um, this is cyber-space. The sole medium in which we work here is words.
What all this really boils down to is that Christ's command to forgive remains the most difficult and scandalous teaching in the entire gospel. Forget seven times seventy. For some people, once is too many times.
Blogger Jay Anderson Leads the Charge to Get Brownback to Clearly Renounce and Denounce Torture (including the euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques")
Bravo! I hope that Brownback's Catholic profession of faith will get the Senator to do the right thing.
Bravo! I hope that Brownback's Catholic profession of faith will get the Senator to do the right thing.
How to Spot a Religious Ignoramus in the MSM
Tip #34958734: If they imagine Jerry Falwell "controlled" conservative Christians and could "deliver" their votes to somebody or other, they don't have a freakin' clue.
Sooner or later, the MSM is going to figure out that neither Falwell nor Pat Robertson contolled the conservative Christians. I think both will have to be long dead before it begins to dawn on yer average MSM guy.
Tip #34958734: If they imagine Jerry Falwell "controlled" conservative Christians and could "deliver" their votes to somebody or other, they don't have a freakin' clue.
Sooner or later, the MSM is going to figure out that neither Falwell nor Pat Robertson contolled the conservative Christians. I think both will have to be long dead before it begins to dawn on yer average MSM guy.
Beautiful Cyber-Memorial to Susan Jane Thelma Taylor
Deepest condolence to Binky and family. May eternal light shine on her through Christ our Lord.
Deepest condolence to Binky and family. May eternal light shine on her through Christ our Lord.
The Invaluable N.T. Wright on the New Perspectives on Paul
You may not care about this, but it's really important because it points a way toward healing the breach of the Reformation, as this guy discovered.
You may not care about this, but it's really important because it points a way toward healing the breach of the Reformation, as this guy discovered.
Satanic Ecumenism Proceeds Apace in Canada
Whenever you see mortal enemies join together in weird concord against Christ, you are seeing the odd paradox of the gospel's power to inspire friendships even in hell. Scripture attests this again and again. Pilate and Herod Antipas. The Pharisees and Herodians. The cry "We have no King but Caesar!" Again and again, the enemies of Christ buddy up in preposterous ways because, at some level, they recognize that Jesus is the real enemy of hell.
Whenever you see mortal enemies join together in weird concord against Christ, you are seeing the odd paradox of the gospel's power to inspire friendships even in hell. Scripture attests this again and again. Pilate and Herod Antipas. The Pharisees and Herodians. The cry "We have no King but Caesar!" Again and again, the enemies of Christ buddy up in preposterous ways because, at some level, they recognize that Jesus is the real enemy of hell.
Follow up
Last week, a reader asked me a question and I answered it.
This week, he sends along a rejoinder from a friend:
5. The concept of moral high ground is illusory. We live in the dictatorship of relativism, so our war crimes are okay.
6. They commit war crimes, so our war crimes are okay.
7. Shea condemns war crimes, so our war crimes are okay.
8. I have a fantasy that critics of American war crimes hate America and would condemn us even if we didn't commit war crimes, so our war crimes are okay.
9. Just war teaching is difficult, so our war crimes are okay.
10. Whatever our constitutional authorities say trumps the Law of God, so our war crimes are okay.
11. I have a delusion that Shea has the power to enforce laws against my favorite forms of war crime via international institutions and so subvert the absolute sovereignty of America, so war crimes are okay.
12. "The moral high ground is the ground under our boots at the end of the battle."
Franklin Allen Leib, " The Fire Dream" = "After all, who remembers the Armenians?" - Adolf Hitler
Not to be impolite or anything, but weird delusional rants like this are about what I've come to expect from the Rubber Hose Right.
Last week, a reader asked me a question and I answered it.
This week, he sends along a rejoinder from a friend:
Briefly, his comments are not fair. They amount to "They can, but we mustn't, because we must hold ourselves to a higher standard and occupy the 'moral high ground' at all times." The fact that Shea does not even acknowledge this to be his position makes his comments all the less fair.
The attempt to occupy the moral high ground is as futile as the demand that we do so is hypocritical. We have been assigned the status of "evildoer" by Mr. Shea and his sort, and were assigned this status long before 9/11. Nothing we might do or refrain from doing would change that in their eyes. Mr. Shea has worded his comment to avoid acknowledging this, also.
Spoken by Mr. Shea, the demand that we occupy the moral high ground is nothing more or less than a demand that we abandon the fight because we could not possibly wage it in accordance with his standards. We should follow our own laws as interpreted by our own constitutional authorities and ignore the Mr. Sheas of this earth, slapping them aside as necessary when they attempt to enforce their prejudiced judgment through international institutions.
"The moral high ground is the ground under our boots at the end of the battle."
Franklin Allen Leib, " The Fire Dream"
5. The concept of moral high ground is illusory. We live in the dictatorship of relativism, so our war crimes are okay.
6. They commit war crimes, so our war crimes are okay.
7. Shea condemns war crimes, so our war crimes are okay.
8. I have a fantasy that critics of American war crimes hate America and would condemn us even if we didn't commit war crimes, so our war crimes are okay.
9. Just war teaching is difficult, so our war crimes are okay.
10. Whatever our constitutional authorities say trumps the Law of God, so our war crimes are okay.
11. I have a delusion that Shea has the power to enforce laws against my favorite forms of war crime via international institutions and so subvert the absolute sovereignty of America, so war crimes are okay.
12. "The moral high ground is the ground under our boots at the end of the battle."
Franklin Allen Leib, " The Fire Dream" = "After all, who remembers the Armenians?" - Adolf Hitler
Not to be impolite or anything, but weird delusional rants like this are about what I've come to expect from the Rubber Hose Right.
The Usual Article on the New Atheism
This little piece seems to sum up most of the normal talking points for people excited about the New Atheism. It reminds me, once again, of how dead the Medievals are and of how far we have decline from them in our ability to think clearly and argue reasonably. Permit me to fisk a bit:
These four paragraphs telegraph the bias the author will try to maintain throughout the article. In simple language, they say, "Atheism, which I approve of, is getting more popular, so that means it's true. And theists, by reacting to this popularity, prove that they feel threatened by atheism, not that they think it false and are offering sound arguments against it. Also, theists are emotional ("indignant") so that shows you how shallow and frightened they are. And the fact that they are have a limited number of responses to atheists has nothing to do with the limited number of things atheists have to say, but only with the limited minds of theists.
In this and the following paragraph or so, I will now change from saying that indignance and rage are signs of weak minds with weak arguments to saying that indignance and rage are "provocative" and the mark of True Intelligence. I will also, by the way, head off the first and most obvious point about much of the New Atheism, which is that it is painfully obvious that the New Atheist are indeed fueled by a rage so blinding that they cannot see the thing they hate. I will also attempt to persuade the reader that the central claim constantly made by atheist--the claim to be entirely motivated by cool lucid reason--is true, despite the fact that countless atheists on the web are characterized by cool, lucid language like:
Much of the New Atheism, in fact, sounds like the proverbial man who beats his wife until she admits he's not abusive. This column hopes to get you to just not notice that.
I suppose many believers do. The issue, however, is not what "many believers perceive". The issue is "Does God exist?". And double standards and false claims are not going to get us closer to the answer. So, for instance, simply appealing to the proverbial Dumb Fundamentalist whose every answer to a serious question is "The Bible said it. I believe it. That settles it." is all very well and good if you like to amuse yourself defeating straw men. But it would be really nice if the Bold Iconoclasts of the New Atheism stopped sending Dawkins off to show how much smarter he is than Ted Haggard and Christopher Hitchens to take the field against Kirk Cameron or whoever and instead sent them off to take on some Thomist or somebody serious. It is simply rubbish to say that the Catholic intellectual tradition regards questioning, even of the most elementary truths of the Faith, as "out of bounds". Question, however, some of the hackneyed rhetoric of the New Atheism and you will get a dozen violations of Godwin's Law within a few minutes. You will be simultaneously assured that believers are children who require absolute assurance from their sky god in a world of mystery and ambiguity *and* that the Christian openness to mystery and ambiguity is due to the fact that "they know their beliefs make no sense and despise those who insist on sense." Say that faith is the evidence of things unseen and you will be told that it is indistinguishable from from belief in fairies. Say that the fantastic amount of fine tuning in the universe strongly suggests that You Know Who is behind the whole thing and you will be told (on the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever) that this universe is one of an infinite number of multiverses in which the 10 to the 137 power odds happened to give us our physical laws. Say that the multiverse theory leaves the door open to other "natures" (including angelic realms) and you will be told you believe in fairies again. Say you've seen a miracle or some other sign that strongly suggests the existence of the supernatural and you will be shouted down. Chalk the same occurrences up to "forces" or "energy" or some other Star Trek bogey and you will be thought "rational". Point out that atheism posits a universe of pointlessness and cruelty and you will be told that you are a baby in need of pink and white nursery because you can't face reality. Point out the Christian promise of heaven and you will be told that religion is the source of pointlessness and cruelty and true beauty and is found in contemplating Hubble photos. The problem, in short, is not that there are questions about God, but that, as Daniel Larison points out, atheists tend to be impatient of any answers, including answers to their own contradictory complaints and random heckling.
I don't think atheist *have* to live empty purposeless lives. Many are shallow enough that they can be fulfilled by whatever whiffling activities of mind and body happen to occupy them. I do think that Chesterton's diagnosis of paganism ultimately has to be true of the atheist: that they live in a happy city but a sad cosmos. But modern technology affords us many ways to block out the ultimately futility of live with hobbies, drugs, sex, TV, work and so forth. It is a curious feature of the alleged freethinker that the ultimate thoughts can, by habit, simply be barred from entry to the mind and one can, like Scarlett O'Hara not think about that today and devote all one's attention to the problem of the structure of wasp's leg. Secondary things are *real* things. We do not live in a platonic or gnostic universe where physical things are unimportant. They matter. And so a human being can, after a fashion, have a sort of happiness by living for his coin collection or his chemistry research, or his cooking, sculpture, or insurance business. But there will always be something inside that keeps asking "Why?" Most people do not have the atheist's will to repress such ultimate longing. Even many atheists don't, as former atheists will tell you.
Here we see the standard, "Shut up with the ultimate questions and be satisfied with this one floor universe!" gambit. It depends for its strength on one of the only two rational arguments for atheism that there are or can be:
This, being summed up, is the "Everything works fine by itself, so there's no God" objection.
Of course, this is hard to square with the other big argument of atheism--Everything sucks, so there's no God--which runs something like this (taken from the vomitus of hatred again Daniel Larison cited above):
This is the argument that say, not that the Universe is God, but that the universe is the devil and that proves there's no God. As a rule, atheist rhetoric tends to make up for the difficulties in reconciling these points by asserting them very, very loudly.
What the author fails to grasp is the difference between atheists and atheism. Only a fool would say that an atheist is necessarily immoral, just as only a fool would say that a theist is necessarily moral. People are people and don't live by their own first principles. That said, it is a simple fact (and historically verifiable) that, as Dostoyevsky says, if there is no God then everything is permissible. It is hard enough for theists to live by their own principles. If you adopt a philosophy that says those first principles are an illusion, it doesn't take much imagination to see that you will not live by them (including the most fundamental ones) when you feel you have an especially good excuse for ignoring them. The commies were as aware of the natural law against murder as Moses. But they had long ago been instructed in sufficient materialist atheism to believe (note the word) that such "natural law" was a mere artifact of natural evolutionary and/or socio-economic conditioning. And so, when the time came to murder in numbers that dwarfed Hitler (another good atheist who worshiped the Universe), they suppressed their superstitions about so-called "sacred" human life just as they might suppress their appetite, and killed with abandon.
The problem then, is not that atheists are especially more immoral than theists. Who says theists are particularly moral? "All have sinned..." and all that. The problem is, Ideas have Consequences. Atheists, being largely creatures of custom, settled social order, and convention like most humans, rub along pretty well in the social system that a decaying Christendom has bequeathed them. But they cannot account for most of their moral values and they assume, quite naively, that if they were to start from scratch they would hold the values they hold today. They are like children who think that mother's butter knives are "real" butter knives and have no clue that, for instance, the very premium they put on the self and on free thought are intellectual residue from the Christian tradition, which taught (contra, say, Buddhism) the value of the self and which fostered intellectual inquiry into the working of the universe. They have no notion of the pagan worlds which could see no earthly reason for believing a piece of mysticism like "all people are equal" or "all people should be treated with respect". They take as given ideas which owe everything to the Christian world view and imagine that an atheist world will go on coasting forever and never stop to ask "If I reject the notion of God and soul today, what is to stop me from rejecting the notion that the weak are in any way equal to the strong tomorrow?" And the best part is that all this is done while calling theists "childish".
This is another sample of Thomas' second objection at work. It boils down to saying the natural law is knowable to all, so we don't need to believe that the natural law comes from God. The sleight of hand comes in when "God" is confused with "religion". So the atheist routinely speaks as though Christians believe that nobody had ever heard that murder or theft or adulter were bad until Moses "revealed" this and imagines it a great coup to announce that, in fact, people have always known such things are wrong. Apparently, the people who say these things have never read the story of Cain and Abel. If they had, they would know that this was no news flash to ancient Israel. Nor was it a news flash to Paul, whose entire arraignment of the pagans in Romans 1 makes it clear that the natural law is knowable by everybody and that the failure of the pagans (who never heard of the Ten Commandments) to obey the natural law was blameworthy. In fact, no educated believer says the Ten Commandments revealed the natural law. Rather, the point of the Ten Commandments is that they make clear to Israel who is the author of the natural law which humanity has known for time immemorial. It makes clear that the natural law is not a mere artifact of wind and weather which can be ignored when it inconveniences us, but an iron fact of our being put there by the author of our being.
Being ignorant of this elementary fact makes the author ignorant of another elementary fact, that Jesus's Golden Rule was, in fact, often *not* understood in even the most rudimentary of societies long before it was enunciated by Jesus. That's because the Golden Rule requires grace in order to be understood, much less lived. Judaism articulated the basic norm that all pagan societies, at their best, could attain: love your neighbor, hate your enemy. It's the norm we still basically live by today. Jesus' Golden rule implied love for enemies because it included enemies in the term "neighbor". It remains, apart from grace, an impossible and (for the worldly) ridiculous standard. The notion that anybody--especially an atheist--would aspire to it is a classic example of the way in which atheists live off Christian capital.
It's fine that the guy has enough humility to refuse the sweeping Grand Negative of Atheism. And it's okay, in my book, to not be sure. Lord knows I've spent enough of my life being unsure of Great Metaphysical Questions. But to be unsure and these piddle around the edges of such questions with such a lackadaisical, ill-informed intellectual laziness tends to confirm Daniel Larison's diagnosis of alleged "freethought":
This little piece seems to sum up most of the normal talking points for people excited about the New Atheism. It reminds me, once again, of how dead the Medievals are and of how far we have decline from them in our ability to think clearly and argue reasonably. Permit me to fisk a bit:
Atheism is the "in" thing this spring.
Not since Time magazine's infamous "Is God Dead?" cover in 1966 has non-belief been such a popular topic for debate.
There are currently four major Goddenying books on or about to hit the bestseller lists, including Richard Dawkin's somewhat didactic The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' pointedly scrappy God is Not Great:How Religion Poisons Everything (which was excerpted last week in the National Post).
Not surprisingly, the rising currency of atheism has provoked a flurry of often indignant counter-attacks by believers who seem to draw from a sadly limited arsenal.
These four paragraphs telegraph the bias the author will try to maintain throughout the article. In simple language, they say, "Atheism, which I approve of, is getting more popular, so that means it's true. And theists, by reacting to this popularity, prove that they feel threatened by atheism, not that they think it false and are offering sound arguments against it. Also, theists are emotional ("indignant") so that shows you how shallow and frightened they are. And the fact that they are have a limited number of responses to atheists has nothing to do with the limited number of things atheists have to say, but only with the limited minds of theists.
There is the predictable aspersion that promoters of the faithless are an angry bunch. The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting asserts that atheists "loathe religion too much to plausibly challenge it." This is a popular if somewhat jejune accusation in contemporary discourse. Ascribe a splenetic emotion to your opponent and you can automatically nullify his entire thesis as irrational.
In this and the following paragraph or so, I will now change from saying that indignance and rage are signs of weak minds with weak arguments to saying that indignance and rage are "provocative" and the mark of True Intelligence. I will also, by the way, head off the first and most obvious point about much of the New Atheism, which is that it is painfully obvious that the New Atheist are indeed fueled by a rage so blinding that they cannot see the thing they hate. I will also attempt to persuade the reader that the central claim constantly made by atheist--the claim to be entirely motivated by cool lucid reason--is true, despite the fact that countless atheists on the web are characterized by cool, lucid language like:
"This man is such an utter disgrace to humanity ...
Everything this fundie, this man representing the lowest form and absolute scum of humanity, (excuse my malevolent word selection, but I'm just honestly expressing what I feel about this...) - everything he claims in this despiceful article, can be labeled as an extreme case of faeces originating from male cattle ...
It is idiots like this man who is the largest contributor to all the shit that is in this world.
It's a wonder why natural selection haven't killed this sort of bastards..."
Much of the New Atheism, in fact, sounds like the proverbial man who beats his wife until she admits he's not abusive. This column hopes to get you to just not notice that.
While it's true that the tone of atheist writers is provocative -- and, in Hitchens' case, even mocking -- that's what contrarians do. The larger issue seems to be that many believers perceive the mere questioning of faith as inherently hostile, an attack on what they hold to be most sacred -- and thus out of bounds.
I suppose many believers do. The issue, however, is not what "many believers perceive". The issue is "Does God exist?". And double standards and false claims are not going to get us closer to the answer. So, for instance, simply appealing to the proverbial Dumb Fundamentalist whose every answer to a serious question is "The Bible said it. I believe it. That settles it." is all very well and good if you like to amuse yourself defeating straw men. But it would be really nice if the Bold Iconoclasts of the New Atheism stopped sending Dawkins off to show how much smarter he is than Ted Haggard and Christopher Hitchens to take the field against Kirk Cameron or whoever and instead sent them off to take on some Thomist or somebody serious. It is simply rubbish to say that the Catholic intellectual tradition regards questioning, even of the most elementary truths of the Faith, as "out of bounds". Question, however, some of the hackneyed rhetoric of the New Atheism and you will get a dozen violations of Godwin's Law within a few minutes. You will be simultaneously assured that believers are children who require absolute assurance from their sky god in a world of mystery and ambiguity *and* that the Christian openness to mystery and ambiguity is due to the fact that "they know their beliefs make no sense and despise those who insist on sense." Say that faith is the evidence of things unseen and you will be told that it is indistinguishable from from belief in fairies. Say that the fantastic amount of fine tuning in the universe strongly suggests that You Know Who is behind the whole thing and you will be told (on the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever) that this universe is one of an infinite number of multiverses in which the 10 to the 137 power odds happened to give us our physical laws. Say that the multiverse theory leaves the door open to other "natures" (including angelic realms) and you will be told you believe in fairies again. Say you've seen a miracle or some other sign that strongly suggests the existence of the supernatural and you will be shouted down. Chalk the same occurrences up to "forces" or "energy" or some other Star Trek bogey and you will be thought "rational". Point out that atheism posits a universe of pointlessness and cruelty and you will be told that you are a baby in need of pink and white nursery because you can't face reality. Point out the Christian promise of heaven and you will be told that religion is the source of pointlessness and cruelty and true beauty and is found in contemplating Hubble photos. The problem, in short, is not that there are questions about God, but that, as Daniel Larison points out, atheists tend to be impatient of any answers, including answers to their own contradictory complaints and random heckling.
The next point of attack is to insist that without religion atheists must lead empty, purposeless lives. This is the dominant theme of e-mails I receive from religious leaders and distressed believers whenever I speak of my own lack of faith on my radio show. The assumption is that because Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad or L. Ron Hubbard provide fulfillment to some, those without a God must by definition be vacant vessels.
I don't think atheist *have* to live empty purposeless lives. Many are shallow enough that they can be fulfilled by whatever whiffling activities of mind and body happen to occupy them. I do think that Chesterton's diagnosis of paganism ultimately has to be true of the atheist: that they live in a happy city but a sad cosmos. But modern technology affords us many ways to block out the ultimately futility of live with hobbies, drugs, sex, TV, work and so forth. It is a curious feature of the alleged freethinker that the ultimate thoughts can, by habit, simply be barred from entry to the mind and one can, like Scarlett O'Hara not think about that today and devote all one's attention to the problem of the structure of wasp's leg. Secondary things are *real* things. We do not live in a platonic or gnostic universe where physical things are unimportant. They matter. And so a human being can, after a fashion, have a sort of happiness by living for his coin collection or his chemistry research, or his cooking, sculpture, or insurance business. But there will always be something inside that keeps asking "Why?" Most people do not have the atheist's will to repress such ultimate longing. Even many atheists don't, as former atheists will tell you.
Of course this is untrue. You don't need God to revel in Mozart, the company of family and friends, the enormity of the universe or the Earth around us. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright said "I believe in God, only I call it nature."
Here we see the standard, "Shut up with the ultimate questions and be satisfied with this one floor universe!" gambit. It depends for its strength on one of the only two rational arguments for atheism that there are or can be:
Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
This, being summed up, is the "Everything works fine by itself, so there's no God" objection.
Of course, this is hard to square with the other big argument of atheism--Everything sucks, so there's no God--which runs something like this (taken from the vomitus of hatred again Daniel Larison cited above):
You and your ilk want to claim there is a big lovable sky-daddy who looks after your every need, but you fail to acknowledge that there are starving children all over the world. You want to believe that your invisible superman would save a "cross-shaped" piece of I-beam from the fallen WTC, but would allow 3,000+ to perish in the same buildings, you want to pretend that your imaginary friend answers your prayers, but fail to admit that christers get divorced, get cancer, have car accidents and die at the same rate as atheists, agnostics and the like. Talk about turning a blind eye to the world.
This is the argument that say, not that the Universe is God, but that the universe is the devil and that proves there's no God. As a rule, atheist rhetoric tends to make up for the difficulties in reconciling these points by asserting them very, very loudly.
The most noxious argument against atheism is that without God there is no morality. "Atheism," writes conservative columnist Bruce Walker, "has no objective moral absolute against lying."
His co-religionist Robert Lee Coeyman Jr. -- who somewhat paradoxically calls atheism "Satan's religion" -- asserts "My biggest problem with universalism is that the absence of judgment justifies all actions. There would be no difference between killing my neighbours and feeding the homeless."
This might be a compelling line of reasoning were atheists any more prone to immoral or criminal behaviour than the general population, but that is not the case.
What the author fails to grasp is the difference between atheists and atheism. Only a fool would say that an atheist is necessarily immoral, just as only a fool would say that a theist is necessarily moral. People are people and don't live by their own first principles. That said, it is a simple fact (and historically verifiable) that, as Dostoyevsky says, if there is no God then everything is permissible. It is hard enough for theists to live by their own principles. If you adopt a philosophy that says those first principles are an illusion, it doesn't take much imagination to see that you will not live by them (including the most fundamental ones) when you feel you have an especially good excuse for ignoring them. The commies were as aware of the natural law against murder as Moses. But they had long ago been instructed in sufficient materialist atheism to believe (note the word) that such "natural law" was a mere artifact of natural evolutionary and/or socio-economic conditioning. And so, when the time came to murder in numbers that dwarfed Hitler (another good atheist who worshiped the Universe), they suppressed their superstitions about so-called "sacred" human life just as they might suppress their appetite, and killed with abandon.
The problem then, is not that atheists are especially more immoral than theists. Who says theists are particularly moral? "All have sinned..." and all that. The problem is, Ideas have Consequences. Atheists, being largely creatures of custom, settled social order, and convention like most humans, rub along pretty well in the social system that a decaying Christendom has bequeathed them. But they cannot account for most of their moral values and they assume, quite naively, that if they were to start from scratch they would hold the values they hold today. They are like children who think that mother's butter knives are "real" butter knives and have no clue that, for instance, the very premium they put on the self and on free thought are intellectual residue from the Christian tradition, which taught (contra, say, Buddhism) the value of the self and which fostered intellectual inquiry into the working of the universe. They have no notion of the pagan worlds which could see no earthly reason for believing a piece of mysticism like "all people are equal" or "all people should be treated with respect". They take as given ideas which owe everything to the Christian world view and imagine that an atheist world will go on coasting forever and never stop to ask "If I reject the notion of God and soul today, what is to stop me from rejecting the notion that the weak are in any way equal to the strong tomorrow?" And the best part is that all this is done while calling theists "childish".
It is basic false logic that, because some people derive their morality from religion, Godlessness necessarily produces a moral vacuum.
Toronto social activist June Callwood didn't require the judgment of God or reward of heaven to exist like a secular Mother Teresa (although one of my listeners emailed me after her death to say that she had surely gone to hell for her atheism. Nice.).
One doesn't need Moses and the Ten Commandments to know that murder is wrong. The golden rule was understood in even the most rudimentary of societies long before it was enunciated by Jesus. Morality is not a shopping list of rules handed down from on high; it is the product of reason. It's all the rules about what to wear on your head and whether or not we can eat pigs I don't get.
This is another sample of Thomas' second objection at work. It boils down to saying the natural law is knowable to all, so we don't need to believe that the natural law comes from God. The sleight of hand comes in when "God" is confused with "religion". So the atheist routinely speaks as though Christians believe that nobody had ever heard that murder or theft or adulter were bad until Moses "revealed" this and imagines it a great coup to announce that, in fact, people have always known such things are wrong. Apparently, the people who say these things have never read the story of Cain and Abel. If they had, they would know that this was no news flash to ancient Israel. Nor was it a news flash to Paul, whose entire arraignment of the pagans in Romans 1 makes it clear that the natural law is knowable by everybody and that the failure of the pagans (who never heard of the Ten Commandments) to obey the natural law was blameworthy. In fact, no educated believer says the Ten Commandments revealed the natural law. Rather, the point of the Ten Commandments is that they make clear to Israel who is the author of the natural law which humanity has known for time immemorial. It makes clear that the natural law is not a mere artifact of wind and weather which can be ignored when it inconveniences us, but an iron fact of our being put there by the author of our being.
Being ignorant of this elementary fact makes the author ignorant of another elementary fact, that Jesus's Golden Rule was, in fact, often *not* understood in even the most rudimentary of societies long before it was enunciated by Jesus. That's because the Golden Rule requires grace in order to be understood, much less lived. Judaism articulated the basic norm that all pagan societies, at their best, could attain: love your neighbor, hate your enemy. It's the norm we still basically live by today. Jesus' Golden rule implied love for enemies because it included enemies in the term "neighbor". It remains, apart from grace, an impossible and (for the worldly) ridiculous standard. The notion that anybody--especially an atheist--would aspire to it is a classic example of the way in which atheists live off Christian capital.
Of course even in non-belief there is hairsplitting. Technically I'm not an atheist, although Dawkins would accuse me of intellectual cowardice because I self identify as an agnostic. An atheist asserts there is no God. An agnostic posits that there is no proof of God, but how can we really know? It's a nice Canadian posture because in the event that He does exist I can probably argue my way out of trouble like the good Jesuit trained debater that I am.
Ironically few things interest this agnostic more than faith and practice. I count two ministers in my immediate circle of friends. I think the new Archbishop of Toronto, the delightfully named Tom Collins, is swell and when travelling you can't keep me out of a church.
I just don't have faith. Sorry. Can't fake it. But I'm no more angry, purposeless or immoral than the next guy. And if God invented free will then this is all His fault anyway.
John Moore is host of the drive home show on NewsTalk 1010 Toronto. He can be heard at www.cfrb.com. At least until the rapture.
It's fine that the guy has enough humility to refuse the sweeping Grand Negative of Atheism. And it's okay, in my book, to not be sure. Lord knows I've spent enough of my life being unsure of Great Metaphysical Questions. But to be unsure and these piddle around the edges of such questions with such a lackadaisical, ill-informed intellectual laziness tends to confirm Daniel Larison's diagnosis of alleged "freethought":
The inextricability of religious practice from human experience over the millennia is supposed to be proof that there is nothing true in any of it, as if it were not the remedy for that which ails man or as if it did not provide something that man requires by nature. But, of course, religion is man-made. Men build the temples, write the prayers, organise the rites and offer the oblations and sacrifices. That does not mean that there is no divinely inspired and true religion. It means that it is not always immediately self-evident and clear which is the true religion, and it means that those who have opted for the sterile, sad path of "freethinking," which is simply to inhabit a particularly wearisome set of prejudices, have simply lost patience in trying to discern the truth of the matter. They do not want free inquiry--they want easy inquiry, an inquiry that never leaves one in aporia, but always promises explanation and resolution. The typical freethinker believes that he is at home with uncertainty, and that it is the religious man who is in dire need of certainty, but the opposite is quite obviously true: the freethinker cannot really stand to have loose ends, puzzles or paradoxes. If this, then that is impossible, the freethinker says. The religious man not only assumes that paradox will occur, but he takes the paucity of reason to explain paradox as an indirect confirmation that there are realities that not even reason, as estimable and valuable as it is, can penetrate or comprehend. Freethinking can only desecrate, despoil and ruin. It can create nothing, because it has no vision of the Good, and it will always be judged as wanting on account of this.
God bless our troops
Fine, intelligent, resourceful, good men in a hard, hard place. May the Lord bring them home safely.
Fine, intelligent, resourceful, good men in a hard, hard place. May the Lord bring them home safely.
American Capitalism Looks on Admiringly at the Commie Chinese
"Gee, the great thing about the Commies is that their atheism frees them from the slightest sense of humility before creation. They just plunge right in and say, "There it is, boys! Do whatever you want to it because there will be no reckoning!"
Yes, yes. I'm aware that we've been, very legitimately, playing with genes for thousands of years. I'm even aware that there is a case to be made for glow-in-the-dark mice. The distinction between sin and virtue is that the former treats persons like things and things like persons while the latter treats persons like persons and things like things. But if you think that the juggernaut of "We Can, Therefore We Will!" which lies behind modern biological research and the enormously rich and powerful forces that drive it is remotely interested in such questions, I have a bridge to sell you. Here, supremely, in the next century we are going to see the Seven Basic Elements of the Modern Scientific Establishment--Time, Space, Matter, Energy, Power, Prestige, and Funding--hold absolute sway and concern the laws of God or the dignity of man be cast aside with stunning hubris. I strongly suspect, when it's all over, millions of people will be wailing, "How were we supposed to know?"
"Gee, the great thing about the Commies is that their atheism frees them from the slightest sense of humility before creation. They just plunge right in and say, "There it is, boys! Do whatever you want to it because there will be no reckoning!"
Yes, yes. I'm aware that we've been, very legitimately, playing with genes for thousands of years. I'm even aware that there is a case to be made for glow-in-the-dark mice. The distinction between sin and virtue is that the former treats persons like things and things like persons while the latter treats persons like persons and things like things. But if you think that the juggernaut of "We Can, Therefore We Will!" which lies behind modern biological research and the enormously rich and powerful forces that drive it is remotely interested in such questions, I have a bridge to sell you. Here, supremely, in the next century we are going to see the Seven Basic Elements of the Modern Scientific Establishment--Time, Space, Matter, Energy, Power, Prestige, and Funding--hold absolute sway and concern the laws of God or the dignity of man be cast aside with stunning hubris. I strongly suspect, when it's all over, millions of people will be wailing, "How were we supposed to know?"
Friday, May 18, 2007
Daniel Larison Challenges the Proposition "There Is No God and Dawkins is His Prophet"
Merriment ensues as the self-proclaimed Highly Intelligent Devotees of Reason (aka "Brights") make great strides toward proving that they would not know reason if it knocked them down and sat on them.
Hat tip, Zippy, who also has this blunt and undeniably true diagnosis ofthe Evil Thing the GOP is becoming under the ministrations of the Realpolitik Machiavelli-lovers of the Rubber Hose Right and the End to Evil crowd.
Every so-called Faithful Conservative Catholic who has labored to justify the wicked policies of torture and prisoner abuse of this Administration and to do everything in their power to ignore the Church's clear teaching on consequentialism in the name of "realism", every alleged Serious Catholic who has labeled critics of the Administration's policies a "Torture Pharisee", every chin-puller who has pretended to be unable to tell if waterboarding is torture and who has decried as "extremist" and "fundamentalist proof texters" those who point out the bleedin' obvious about their fake bafflement--all such Catholics richly deserve Catholic Rudy Giuliani for President. Sleep well.
Merriment ensues as the self-proclaimed Highly Intelligent Devotees of Reason (aka "Brights") make great strides toward proving that they would not know reason if it knocked them down and sat on them.
Hat tip, Zippy, who also has this blunt and undeniably true diagnosis ofthe Evil Thing the GOP is becoming under the ministrations of the Realpolitik Machiavelli-lovers of the Rubber Hose Right and the End to Evil crowd.
Giuliani is that rare political combination: moderate ideologically, but not mushy personally. He has the hard edge of an ideologue, but not the rigidity or extremism.So now the definition of ideological moderation is being both pro-abortion and pro-torture. It's a Big Tent and all that.
Every so-called Faithful Conservative Catholic who has labored to justify the wicked policies of torture and prisoner abuse of this Administration and to do everything in their power to ignore the Church's clear teaching on consequentialism in the name of "realism", every alleged Serious Catholic who has labeled critics of the Administration's policies a "Torture Pharisee", every chin-puller who has pretended to be unable to tell if waterboarding is torture and who has decried as "extremist" and "fundamentalist proof texters" those who point out the bleedin' obvious about their fake bafflement--all such Catholics richly deserve Catholic Rudy Giuliani for President. Sleep well.
Smear Ron Paul By Any Means Necessary!
Hey! Why should we be surprised that the Torture Party would engage in ends justify the means tactics?
Hey! Why should we be surprised that the Torture Party would engage in ends justify the means tactics?
Orthodoxy Has its Own Rad Trad Cranks Who Have Utterly Forgotten the Fruits of the Spirit in Their Obsession Over Far Lesser Matters
The besetting sin of the those who are obsessed with Traditionalist dissent (as distinct from the Tradition) tends to be anger rooted in pride. This doesn't seem to be confined to the Catholic communion. The besetting sin of Progressive dissent tends to be lust rooted in pride. Likewise, it is a pan-communion phenomenon.
The besetting sin of the those who are obsessed with Traditionalist dissent (as distinct from the Tradition) tends to be anger rooted in pride. This doesn't seem to be confined to the Catholic communion. The besetting sin of Progressive dissent tends to be lust rooted in pride. Likewise, it is a pan-communion phenomenon.
A reader asks:
1. Some lawyers are unscrupulous, so our war crimes are okay.
2. Other countries do it too, so our war crimes are okay.
3. We typically treat prisoners well, so our war crimes are okay.
4. Our fathers committed war crimes, so our war crimes are okay.
I would appreciate anyones' commentary/opinions/discussion/etc. on the following essays:
"Gitmo's Guerrilla Lawyers" by Debra Burlingame
"Repent, Or Else" by Richard Fernandez
"Por qué me molestas? or Porky me molestas?" by Richard Fernandez
"On dehumanizing the enemy in war and the nature of victory" by "TigerHawk"
1. Some lawyers are unscrupulous, so our war crimes are okay.
2. Other countries do it too, so our war crimes are okay.
3. We typically treat prisoners well, so our war crimes are okay.
4. Our fathers committed war crimes, so our war crimes are okay.
Hey Seattle! Mark Your Calendars!
Dear Friends of the G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle,
The Society's board of directors cordially invites you to our next lecture, to be held Thursday, May 24, 2007, at 7:30 p.m., on the campus of Seattle Pacific University:
"Evangelization in China Today: An Unprecedented Moment"
Mr. John Lindblom
China Specialist
Research Associates of America, Washington D.C.
What might the future hold in store for Christianity in China, given a
history of missionaries and martyrs, imprisoned bishops and divisions between underground churches and "patriotic associations"? On May 24, 2007 the Society benefits from the insight and expertise of Mr. John Lindblom, holder of an M.A. in China Studies from the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Mr. Lindblom currently works as a researcher on China for Research Associates of America in Washington, DC.
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 the Events Calendar here. 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
We prayed for Mr. Edgerton a while back. Here's the update:
FCSN SUPERINTENDENT KYLE EDGERTON RECOVERING FROM LIVER TRANSPLANT SURGERY
May 17, 2007
Kyle Edgerton, Superintendent of the Fargo Catholic Schools Network, underwent liver transplant surgery May 16 and is recovering at a Minneapolis hospital. Mr. Edgerton suffers from Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, an illness which can lead to liver failure.
"We are thankful that Kyle's transplant surgery went well, and we pray that God will strengthen him and his family as he recovers in the weeks ahead," said Msgr. Gregory Schlesselmann, Chairman of the FCSN Board of Directors. "Kyle is looking forward to returning to his office in the fall to kick off his fourth school year with the Fargo Catholic Schools Network. We look forward to that day, as well."
Mr. Edgerton, 41, was named Superintendent of the Fargo Catholic Schools in May 2004. He and his wife, Ruth, have three daughters in Fargo Catholic schools: Corinne, Catherine and Clarice.
"When I spoke with Ruth last night, she asked me to share with everyone that their family has been deeply touched by the generosity and care that countless people have shown them during the past few months," Msgr. Schlesselmann said. "We at the FCSN ask that people continue to keep Kyle and his family in their prayers. We also ask for prayers for the donor, for without the donor's generous gift of self the transplant would not have been possible."
Those wishing to help defray medical expenses for the Edgerton family may send donations to the Kyle Edgerton Family Benefit Fund, c/o Wells Fargo Bank, 406 Main Ave., Fargo, ND 58126.
A reader writes:
Indeed. In Catholic circles, apocalyptic scenarios tend to center around supposed secrets that the Blessed Virgin Mary has given which, with the right decoder ring, will unfold the mysteries of the Three Days of Darkness, the coming Antichrist, the Great Monarch and so forth. Some people functionally put far more stock in what private revelation, whether approved or unapproved, say then in the magisterial teaching of the Church. Indeed, some Catholics regard the magisterial teaching of the Church as the enemy of the True Faith and regard it as fulfilling the dark oracles of their favorite Marian devotion. As I've said repeatedly, it's rubbish that Catholics think Mary is another god. It's all too common, however, for them to think her another Pope.
My own response to all this apocalyptic fooferah from certain Protestants and Catholics is "Same pathologies, different dress." Some people just can't resist the itch to feel they are part of the Inner Ring that Knows the Hidden History of our Time. I'm content with "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Enthusiasts will say, "But Jesus said to read the signs of the times! Can't you see that the smoke of Satan has enter the sanctuary and the Church can no longer be trusted?"
Yes, he did. That's what the Magisterium he founded is for. Try using it instead of taking an offhand remark from the pontificate of Paul VI and raising it to the level of a dogmatic definition. Try learning what "the gates of hell shall not prevail" means. Try learning what "he who listens to you listens to me" means. Try learning what "indefectibility" and "infallibility" mean.
And try learning what "private revelation" means too.
Certain stripes of Protestant, and some Catholics, have been going on about Ezekiel 38 for a very long time. Here's an interesting quote:The warring nations are jealous of America and bitter against her for her neutrality. Americans are snubbed and insulted everywhere in Europe and even in Australia. The best intentions of our President and his own personality are ridiculed--so blind are the poor people in respect to the real issues of the war. Surely things are leading on toward the climax when every man's hand will be against his neighbor and against his brother and when there will be no peace to those who go out or to those who come in.--Ezekiel 38:21; Zechariah 8:10.
Seems pretty current, yes? It was written over 90 years ago by Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, in the November 1, 1915 issue of The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence (Vol. XXXVI, No. 21, p. 323).
The more things change, eh?
Indeed. In Catholic circles, apocalyptic scenarios tend to center around supposed secrets that the Blessed Virgin Mary has given which, with the right decoder ring, will unfold the mysteries of the Three Days of Darkness, the coming Antichrist, the Great Monarch and so forth. Some people functionally put far more stock in what private revelation, whether approved or unapproved, say then in the magisterial teaching of the Church. Indeed, some Catholics regard the magisterial teaching of the Church as the enemy of the True Faith and regard it as fulfilling the dark oracles of their favorite Marian devotion. As I've said repeatedly, it's rubbish that Catholics think Mary is another god. It's all too common, however, for them to think her another Pope.
My own response to all this apocalyptic fooferah from certain Protestants and Catholics is "Same pathologies, different dress." Some people just can't resist the itch to feel they are part of the Inner Ring that Knows the Hidden History of our Time. I'm content with "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Enthusiasts will say, "But Jesus said to read the signs of the times! Can't you see that the smoke of Satan has enter the sanctuary and the Church can no longer be trusted?"
Yes, he did. That's what the Magisterium he founded is for. Try using it instead of taking an offhand remark from the pontificate of Paul VI and raising it to the level of a dogmatic definition. Try learning what "the gates of hell shall not prevail" means. Try learning what "he who listens to you listens to me" means. Try learning what "indefectibility" and "infallibility" mean.
And try learning what "private revelation" means too.
Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To
Anthony DeStefano serves as the executive director of Priests for Life, and also as executive director of Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, a society of Apostolic Life of diocesan rite, located in the diocese of Amarillo, Texas.
He's also the author of a nifty new book called Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To. To relieve suspense I will tell you what they are (and they do not involve Mercedes-Benzes, color TVs, or lotteries:
God, show me that You exist.
God, make me an instrument.
God, outdo me in generosity.
God, get me through this suffering.
God, forgive me.
Give me peace.
God, give me courage.
God, give me wisdom.
God, bring good out of this bad situation.
God, lead me to my destiny.
God always says yes to these prayers (at the proper time) because those are the prayers we universally need him to say yes to. There are other prayers he sometimes says yes to, even including the "God give me 20 bucks" kind, but these are determined by individual situations. There are also prayers God never answers, such as "God, give me Strength Through Evil" but DeStefano isn't writing that book. Instead, he's writing a wise, accessible book about how to pray in accord with the will of God for the basic essentials of life and so find happiness by, as Aristotle said, learning to desire the right things. Check it out.
Anthony DeStefano serves as the executive director of Priests for Life, and also as executive director of Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, a society of Apostolic Life of diocesan rite, located in the diocese of Amarillo, Texas.
He's also the author of a nifty new book called Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To. To relieve suspense I will tell you what they are (and they do not involve Mercedes-Benzes, color TVs, or lotteries:
God, show me that You exist.
God, make me an instrument.
God, outdo me in generosity.
God, get me through this suffering.
God, forgive me.
Give me peace.
God, give me courage.
God, give me wisdom.
God, bring good out of this bad situation.
God, lead me to my destiny.
God always says yes to these prayers (at the proper time) because those are the prayers we universally need him to say yes to. There are other prayers he sometimes says yes to, even including the "God give me 20 bucks" kind, but these are determined by individual situations. There are also prayers God never answers, such as "God, give me Strength Through Evil" but DeStefano isn't writing that book. Instead, he's writing a wise, accessible book about how to pray in accord with the will of God for the basic essentials of life and so find happiness by, as Aristotle said, learning to desire the right things. Check it out.
A reader writes:
It's a relatively new (or more precisely, renewed) issue, so there's not much contemporary stuff that I know of. Plus, I'm not a moral theologian, just a private citizen who got interested in the matter, almost by accident, because I was appalled to see Catholics and conservatives making excuses for it. I use the Church's basic teaching in the Catechism on the Fifth Commandment in discussing the question. Read the whole thing to get the full context.
The basic principle at work is simple: You shall not do evil that good may come of it. Ends do not justify means. Veritatis Splendor (an absolutely vital document here) is specifically arrayed against the consequentialist thinking that tries to argue ends do justify means. Note paragraph 80 and following very carefully. There is no justification for torture. Ever. That is the essential point. Theologically speaking, questions of utility are stricken from discussion just as the utility of murder is not admissible. (Let's face it, sometimes murder "works" too).
Ancillary questions generally have to do with *defining* torture and such questions tend, in the mouths of torture excusers, to be long strings of red herrings. I have offered multiple answers to this fake bafflement and received more fake bafflement in reply (including the preposterous lie that I "won't define torture").
There are four basic replies to the person who pretends to have no idea what torture is (and is therefore conveniently excused--at least in his own mind--from moral responsibility for advocating it: what Tom Kreitzberg calls "making the case for fog"):
1. Try a dictionary
2. Consult the Geneva Conventions
3. Ask a cop. They have regulations which govern their treatment of prisoners.
4. Check the Army Field Manual on how to treat prisoners.
This tends to satisfy people who are asking in order to find out. None of this has, in my experience, satisfied those who are asking in order to keep themselves and everybody else from finding out. They continue to pretend to be baffled about the moral distinction between waterboarding, cold cells, and strappado on the one hand and a cop who handcuffs a crook on the other.
Notably, the Church looks to basic positive principles of Just War and human dignity even more than the elementary proposition "Don't torture". The cardinal mistake that most people who argue about torture tend to make is to waste a bunch of time trying to precisely, technically define where the bright line is between legitimate coercion and torture. The determined fogster loves to erect straw man arguments like "Veritatis Splendor, in its condemnation of physical and mental torture also notes that attempts to 'coerce the spirit' are intrinsically immoral. So you are saying police can't tell criminals to put their hands over their heads and parents can't send their children to bed when they want to stay up late." All such sophistical tommyrot simply ignores the obvious meaning of the Church (verified by a cursory reading of what else the Church says about the powers of government and parents to enforce legitimate coercion). The fact is, there is no such bright line between torture and legitimate coercion, yet we still are capable of making the distinction. The Church does not bother pretending there is such a bright line. Instead, the Church take a different approach and enunciates a basic principle of ius in bello
and therefore commands:
This principle is the basis for the 1983 Army Field Manual, written so that a sixth grader could understand it. It essentially says, "If you'd call it abuse if it were done to you or your buddy, then don't do it." This just the Golden Rule, applied to prisoners.
The thing to remember is that none of this was an issue on September 10, 2001. It is only when the Bushies decided to push as hard as they could to abuse prisoners and to set the Rubber Hose Right punditocracy and their dittohead audience to justifying their policies that the distinction between legitimate coercion and prisoner abuse became an insoluble moral conundrum and the "We face an evil enemy like no other so we must do this" rhetoric was trotted out to justify our consequentialism (as if Nazi, Imperial Japanese and Communists were polite people).
Anyhow, stick with the catechism and the sources it cites. All the building blocks are there.
And thanks for helping lead the charge for reform here! You give me great hope!
Long time reader, first time writer here. I need a little direction and I was hoping you can help. I’m a law student and have to write a law review article for my national security law class. I’m seriously considering addressing the issue of the treatment of enemy combatants from a Catholic viewpoint. I’m a new Catholic though so I need some help finding a good starting point to get a handle on Catholic teachings relating to just war, etc. Any pointers you can provide will be greatly appreciated.
It's a relatively new (or more precisely, renewed) issue, so there's not much contemporary stuff that I know of. Plus, I'm not a moral theologian, just a private citizen who got interested in the matter, almost by accident, because I was appalled to see Catholics and conservatives making excuses for it. I use the Church's basic teaching in the Catechism on the Fifth Commandment in discussing the question. Read the whole thing to get the full context.
The basic principle at work is simple: You shall not do evil that good may come of it. Ends do not justify means. Veritatis Splendor (an absolutely vital document here) is specifically arrayed against the consequentialist thinking that tries to argue ends do justify means. Note paragraph 80 and following very carefully. There is no justification for torture. Ever. That is the essential point. Theologically speaking, questions of utility are stricken from discussion just as the utility of murder is not admissible. (Let's face it, sometimes murder "works" too).
Ancillary questions generally have to do with *defining* torture and such questions tend, in the mouths of torture excusers, to be long strings of red herrings. I have offered multiple answers to this fake bafflement and received more fake bafflement in reply (including the preposterous lie that I "won't define torture").
There are four basic replies to the person who pretends to have no idea what torture is (and is therefore conveniently excused--at least in his own mind--from moral responsibility for advocating it: what Tom Kreitzberg calls "making the case for fog"):
1. Try a dictionary
2. Consult the Geneva Conventions
3. Ask a cop. They have regulations which govern their treatment of prisoners.
4. Check the Army Field Manual on how to treat prisoners.
This tends to satisfy people who are asking in order to find out. None of this has, in my experience, satisfied those who are asking in order to keep themselves and everybody else from finding out. They continue to pretend to be baffled about the moral distinction between waterboarding, cold cells, and strappado on the one hand and a cop who handcuffs a crook on the other.
Notably, the Church looks to basic positive principles of Just War and human dignity even more than the elementary proposition "Don't torture". The cardinal mistake that most people who argue about torture tend to make is to waste a bunch of time trying to precisely, technically define where the bright line is between legitimate coercion and torture. The determined fogster loves to erect straw man arguments like "Veritatis Splendor, in its condemnation of physical and mental torture also notes that attempts to 'coerce the spirit' are intrinsically immoral. So you are saying police can't tell criminals to put their hands over their heads and parents can't send their children to bed when they want to stay up late." All such sophistical tommyrot simply ignores the obvious meaning of the Church (verified by a cursory reading of what else the Church says about the powers of government and parents to enforce legitimate coercion). The fact is, there is no such bright line between torture and legitimate coercion, yet we still are capable of making the distinction. The Church does not bother pretending there is such a bright line. Instead, the Church take a different approach and enunciates a basic principle of ius in bello
2312 The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. "The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties."
and therefore commands:
2313 Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.
This principle is the basis for the 1983 Army Field Manual, written so that a sixth grader could understand it. It essentially says, "If you'd call it abuse if it were done to you or your buddy, then don't do it." This just the Golden Rule, applied to prisoners.
The thing to remember is that none of this was an issue on September 10, 2001. It is only when the Bushies decided to push as hard as they could to abuse prisoners and to set the Rubber Hose Right punditocracy and their dittohead audience to justifying their policies that the distinction between legitimate coercion and prisoner abuse became an insoluble moral conundrum and the "We face an evil enemy like no other so we must do this" rhetoric was trotted out to justify our consequentialism (as if Nazi, Imperial Japanese and Communists were polite people).
Anyhow, stick with the catechism and the sources it cites. All the building blocks are there.
And thanks for helping lead the charge for reform here! You give me great hope!
A reader writes:
I'm willing. And I'm glad you are seeing my point about the dominance of Rubber Hose thought on the mainstream Right. The damage this Administration has done to conservatism is incalculable.
Sometimes I tend to think you overstate the "Rubber Hose Right" phenomenon - not that it bothers me overly because I know it's just part of your general polemical style.
And then I come across something like this:But Giuliani scored again minutes later on another national security issue: the interrogation of captured terrorists. If a terrorist was thought to know about a future attack, how tough should his questioners be? Should they use the same "enhanced interrogation techniques" that worked on al Qaeda leaders? Giuliani endorsed these techniques. Even if they included torture? The interrogators should use "every method they could think of" to save Americans from another attack. Once more, the audience applauded.
Yes, that's not only Rudy beating the "whatever-means-necessary" drum for not just the ticking a-bomb scenario, but even for something a little short of that (a vague "futuire attack"?) so far as I can tell - and Fred Barnes cheering him on. Along with most of the GOP crowd at the debate, seemingly.
It's worth pairing with your posting of the Krulak-Hoar essay in the Post, I think. I scanned your blog but didn't see any evidence you had written on it. But I think it's worth a little bandwidth if you're willing.
I'm willing. And I'm glad you are seeing my point about the dominance of Rubber Hose thought on the mainstream Right. The damage this Administration has done to conservatism is incalculable.
Canadian Reporter Doubles as Episcopalian Homilist
Back in the day, op ed pieces were about news. If the story was about the dropping water level in the Dead Sea and the opportunities this presented archaeologists to verify the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, you focused on that. If you wanted to talk about the draining and pollution of the River Jordan, you did that.
But this reporter wants to do an exegesis of Genesis in order to make sure we are good Episcopalians. That means veering from the subject of the story (the Dead Sea is drying up) to stuff like this:
Uh huh. As Kimberly Hahn once remarked, homosexual gang rape is a particularly acute form of inhospitality.
Back in the day, op ed pieces were about news. If the story was about the dropping water level in the Dead Sea and the opportunities this presented archaeologists to verify the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, you focused on that. If you wanted to talk about the draining and pollution of the River Jordan, you did that.
But this reporter wants to do an exegesis of Genesis in order to make sure we are good Episcopalians. That means veering from the subject of the story (the Dead Sea is drying up) to stuff like this:
Sodomy, though the word comes from the city, may not have been the main problem. The text of Genesis is surprisingly unspecific. The two cities are broadly accused of sin, and the story has more to do with the ancient duty of hospitality to strangers than with any sexual practice.
Uh huh. As Kimberly Hahn once remarked, homosexual gang rape is a particularly acute form of inhospitality.
"Shut up," he explained.
End to Evil Party continues to demonstrate the tendency toward lockstep intellectual diversity that has made the Loony Left such a powerhouse success.
End to Evil Party continues to demonstrate the tendency toward lockstep intellectual diversity that has made the Loony Left such a powerhouse success.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
GOP Slime Machine Throws a Rod
I know this will be astonishing, but the only really serious critic of the Bushies in the GOP field suddenly found himself being slimed as a racist and an anti-semite. My, what a surprise!
Now it appears the comments attributed to him were not, in fact, said by him.
"Beautiful, that Taylor Machine..." - Diz Moore, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
I know this will be astonishing, but the only really serious critic of the Bushies in the GOP field suddenly found himself being slimed as a racist and an anti-semite. My, what a surprise!
Now it appears the comments attributed to him were not, in fact, said by him.
"Beautiful, that Taylor Machine..." - Diz Moore, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Edward R. Murrow is Dead
What interests me about this link is not the story, but the way in which WCBS has completely given up on doing serious journalism and is now simply in the business of bread and circuses:
We will, I am morally certain, be witnessing gladiatorial fights to the death and similar displays of titillating murder against the weak on television, probably before my life is over. Indeed, if things continue as they are, my life may well end in such an arena. Vocal Catholics tended to be prominently figure in such amusements.
What interests me about this link is not the story, but the way in which WCBS has completely given up on doing serious journalism and is now simply in the business of bread and circuses:
Shock Video Exclusive: Sex Attack In N.Y. Church
Suspect Pounces, Victim Stabs Him With Pen Repeatedly
Shock Video Classic: Rat Invasion At KFC
Shock Video Classic: Mugger Punches 101-Year-Old Woman In Face!
We will, I am morally certain, be witnessing gladiatorial fights to the death and similar displays of titillating murder against the weak on television, probably before my life is over. Indeed, if things continue as they are, my life may well end in such an arena. Vocal Catholics tended to be prominently figure in such amusements.
Ross Douthat, as Usual, Is Sane and Sensible
The significance of Ron Paul is not that he has a hope in hell of being president. It's that he represents the unpaid bills of a GOP that has chosen to live in delusion and illusion. Like all revolutionaries, he's got a keen sense of what's wrong. I'm not nearly as confident that he has a keen sense of what is right. Libertarians always tend to be a bit kooky. But his kookiness is far less of a problem to me then the Enforcers of Newthink in the End to Evil Crowd who would ban his voice in the public arena because it shows up the Salvation Through Leviathan By Any Means Necessary guys as the brutal incompetents they are. We've already had one bull of excommunication from them when they shouted down critics of their disastrous adventurism. We don't need more.
Personally, I wish Douthat were on that stage instead of Paul. But being a good man, he's not a politician.
The significance of Ron Paul is not that he has a hope in hell of being president. It's that he represents the unpaid bills of a GOP that has chosen to live in delusion and illusion. Like all revolutionaries, he's got a keen sense of what's wrong. I'm not nearly as confident that he has a keen sense of what is right. Libertarians always tend to be a bit kooky. But his kookiness is far less of a problem to me then the Enforcers of Newthink in the End to Evil Crowd who would ban his voice in the public arena because it shows up the Salvation Through Leviathan By Any Means Necessary guys as the brutal incompetents they are. We've already had one bull of excommunication from them when they shouted down critics of their disastrous adventurism. We don't need more.
Personally, I wish Douthat were on that stage instead of Paul. But being a good man, he's not a politician.
Gonzales Finds New and Fresh Ways to Inspire Disgust with Himself and the with Administration that Specifically Hired and Retains Him for His Most Disgusting Qualities
Someday someone will write the definitive book toting up all the damage that this Administration did to the American Experiment in general and to conservatism in particular. Meanwhile, why is this repellent person still AG?
Someday someone will write the definitive book toting up all the damage that this Administration did to the American Experiment in general and to conservatism in particular. Meanwhile, why is this repellent person still AG?
Questions for Tom Kreitzberg
Your Spongian Law of Theophysical Asininity states:
My question is this: do studies like this illustrate the Law of Theophysical Asininity as well, or have we stumbled on to some sort of corellative Law in the realm of biology? If so, how would you codify this particular bit of asininity? Also, if we are looking at two distinct kinds of theological asininity in physics and biology, do these two corollary principles in two separate disciplines point to an underlying Grand Unified Theory of Asininity that can account for Theological Asininity in all the physical sciences?
I eagerly await your Thomistic analysis of these questions. Please use charts and graphs.
Also, thanks for this happy news and this typically lively, lucid and cheerful meditation.
Your Spongian Law of Theophysical Asininity states:
Whenever a person appeals to quantum physics as the basis for a theological or religious principle, he is making an ass of himself.
My question is this: do studies like this illustrate the Law of Theophysical Asininity as well, or have we stumbled on to some sort of corellative Law in the realm of biology? If so, how would you codify this particular bit of asininity? Also, if we are looking at two distinct kinds of theological asininity in physics and biology, do these two corollary principles in two separate disciplines point to an underlying Grand Unified Theory of Asininity that can account for Theological Asininity in all the physical sciences?
I eagerly await your Thomistic analysis of these questions. Please use charts and graphs.
Also, thanks for this happy news and this typically lively, lucid and cheerful meditation.
Evil Party Tries to Crush Abstinence Education
If we don't encourage teen pregnancy, then both parasitic government apparatchiks who exist in order to facilitate a welfare state *and* parasitic abortionists who exist in order to terminate teen pregnancies will have no human agony to feed on. This is clearly against Evil Party goals and objectives. Plus, teaching abstinence is counter to what all members of the Chattering Class believe about the constitutional right to Imperial Autonomous Selfhood untethered from responsibility for the Common Good.
If you are one of those backward neanderthals who think it a bad thing to crush Abstinence Education and who prefer such archaic ideas as chastity before marriage, click on the link above.
If we don't encourage teen pregnancy, then both parasitic government apparatchiks who exist in order to facilitate a welfare state *and* parasitic abortionists who exist in order to terminate teen pregnancies will have no human agony to feed on. This is clearly against Evil Party goals and objectives. Plus, teaching abstinence is counter to what all members of the Chattering Class believe about the constitutional right to Imperial Autonomous Selfhood untethered from responsibility for the Common Good.
If you are one of those backward neanderthals who think it a bad thing to crush Abstinence Education and who prefer such archaic ideas as chastity before marriage, click on the link above.
So Good to See!
Two courageous soldiers speak truth to the brutal incompetents who have morphed the GOP into the Strength Through Evil Party.
They get one minor fact wrong: Paul, even more than McCain spoke out against the Orwellian "enhanced interrogation" Newspeak of the Torture Party.
But they get the main thing overwhelmingly right:
Please. Read the whole thing. The criminal buffoons who have put this stain on America, and criminal buffoon wannabes of the GOP who hope to continue the policies of this Administration have to be opposed just as much as the criminal buffoons who want to stick scissor in a baby's brain. Indeed, the opposition from Christians must be louder because no serious Christian believes in sticking scissors in a baby's brain, but a depressingly large number have no problem with the Administration's concerted effort to transform the US into a torture state. Both for the sake of simply doing what is right, as well as for the sake of the Church's witness to the world, Catholics must oppose this or bear the name of "political prostitute" just as surely as Catholics for a Free Choice does.
Well done, Messrs. Krulak and Hoar.
Two courageous soldiers speak truth to the brutal incompetents who have morphed the GOP into the Strength Through Evil Party.
They get one minor fact wrong: Paul, even more than McCain spoke out against the Orwellian "enhanced interrogation" Newspeak of the Torture Party.
But they get the main thing overwhelmingly right:
We have served in combat; we understand the reality of fear and the havoc it can wreak if left unchecked or fostered. Fear breeds panic, and it can lead people and nations to act in ways inconsistent with their character.
The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp.
Please. Read the whole thing. The criminal buffoons who have put this stain on America, and criminal buffoon wannabes of the GOP who hope to continue the policies of this Administration have to be opposed just as much as the criminal buffoons who want to stick scissor in a baby's brain. Indeed, the opposition from Christians must be louder because no serious Christian believes in sticking scissors in a baby's brain, but a depressingly large number have no problem with the Administration's concerted effort to transform the US into a torture state. Both for the sake of simply doing what is right, as well as for the sake of the Church's witness to the world, Catholics must oppose this or bear the name of "political prostitute" just as surely as Catholics for a Free Choice does.
Well done, Messrs. Krulak and Hoar.
"[T]he very notion that a politician should have to check with the Vatican before making a pronouncement is scary."
Yes, but since the question is actually about whether the Pope has the right to say who should and should not approach the sacraments of the Church he is responsible to lead, not about what people can say, I fail to see your point.
This is the sort of thing journalists seem to have a macro on their computer to spit out automatically. If only they knew history, or even science fiction. Michael Flynn, author of Eifelheim, has a spirited defense of medievals in the July/august 2007 issue of Analog in which he point out that:
He is arguing that the medieval mind was uniquely able, in the history of the world, to give birth to the scientific revolution. In the course of it he notes that the Medieval mind put such a premium on reason (because of its faith in a God who was reasonable) that they subject their own religious beliefs, as well as everything else, to the use of reason. He notes that western medievals are the people who *gave* us the idea of separation of Church and state among other things such as virtually everything necessary for the birth of the sciences. Oh, and they invented the hospital, the oldest democratic institution in the world (the Dominican Order), the rule of law, and sundry other ideas and institutions that have served to make the West such a prosperous and happy place so that numbskulls like Ms. Blizzard can say ignorant things to a large audience via technology. If the medieval institutions Ms. Blizzard so fears were finally eradicated, it would be a dark and ignorant world ruled almost entirely by force, fear, and superstition.
Yes, but since the question is actually about whether the Pope has the right to say who should and should not approach the sacraments of the Church he is responsible to lead, not about what people can say, I fail to see your point.
What place does a medieval organization like the Vatican have in a modern multicultural society?
This is the sort of thing journalists seem to have a macro on their computer to spit out automatically. If only they knew history, or even science fiction. Michael Flynn, author of Eifelheim, has a spirited defense of medievals in the July/august 2007 issue of Analog in which he point out that:
The late Berkeley chancellor Clark Kerr once said that about eighty-five medieval institutions "still exist today in recognizable forms, with similar functions and with unbroken histories." These include "the Catholic Church, the Parliaments of the Isle of Man, of Iceland, and of Great Britain, several Swiss cantons, and seventy universities."
He is arguing that the medieval mind was uniquely able, in the history of the world, to give birth to the scientific revolution. In the course of it he notes that the Medieval mind put such a premium on reason (because of its faith in a God who was reasonable) that they subject their own religious beliefs, as well as everything else, to the use of reason. He notes that western medievals are the people who *gave* us the idea of separation of Church and state among other things such as virtually everything necessary for the birth of the sciences. Oh, and they invented the hospital, the oldest democratic institution in the world (the Dominican Order), the rule of law, and sundry other ideas and institutions that have served to make the West such a prosperous and happy place so that numbskulls like Ms. Blizzard can say ignorant things to a large audience via technology. If the medieval institutions Ms. Blizzard so fears were finally eradicated, it would be a dark and ignorant world ruled almost entirely by force, fear, and superstition.
Confused Poll Speaks Volumes
The fact that, 150 years after Darwin, a poll by ostensibly educated adults could seriously posit--as mutually exclusive alternatives--the notion that evolution was "guided by God" OR was "through natural selection" says more than I ever could about the philosophical fraud of the Darwin mythos. Until Darwinists face up to the fact that, at a popular level, what the Darwinian project is archetypally involved in doing is making the claim for atheistic naturalism, it will continue to encounter this sort of resistance. It is simply rubbish to say that Darwinists are not typically engaged in this process. Yes, there are those who do not use evolution as a stick to beat theism. But the fact remains that theists are routinely subjected to the idiotic alternatives of things like this poll and then told that if they object to the idiotic alternative they are "against science". It is a feature of modern discourse every day of the week. One can accept common descent and natural selection as explanatory principles in biology without embracing a fraudulent philosophy of naturalism and evolution as the All Explaining Theory of Everything. But as millions of these make clear:
it is bullshit to say that there is no philosphical metaphysic at work here in a huge number of Darwinists that goes far beyond anything science tells us and bears profound enmity to the Christian tradition.
The fact that, 150 years after Darwin, a poll by ostensibly educated adults could seriously posit--as mutually exclusive alternatives--the notion that evolution was "guided by God" OR was "through natural selection" says more than I ever could about the philosophical fraud of the Darwin mythos. Until Darwinists face up to the fact that, at a popular level, what the Darwinian project is archetypally involved in doing is making the claim for atheistic naturalism, it will continue to encounter this sort of resistance. It is simply rubbish to say that Darwinists are not typically engaged in this process. Yes, there are those who do not use evolution as a stick to beat theism. But the fact remains that theists are routinely subjected to the idiotic alternatives of things like this poll and then told that if they object to the idiotic alternative they are "against science". It is a feature of modern discourse every day of the week. One can accept common descent and natural selection as explanatory principles in biology without embracing a fraudulent philosophy of naturalism and evolution as the All Explaining Theory of Everything. But as millions of these make clear:
it is bullshit to say that there is no philosphical metaphysic at work here in a huge number of Darwinists that goes far beyond anything science tells us and bears profound enmity to the Christian tradition.
Shea's Iron Law of Media-Reported Benedictine "Growth"
Whenever the press declares that Pope Benedict has "grown" or undergone a "dramatic change of course" or gone "a long way toward accepting positions he once seemed to reject as head of the Holy Office" this invariably means that Benedict has not, in fact, changed, but that the reporter had no clue whatsoever what Benedict (and often, the Catholic faith) previously thought and is only now discovering his views.
So, for example, when a reporter breathlessly announces:
...one hardly knows where to begin in confronting the sheer Himalayas of ignorance that lie behind such a concatenation of words. One wonders if the man who types such things has ever read the epistle to the Romans. The notion that Luther is the inventor and discoverer of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ is stupefying enough. But the invocation of a dim bulb like Fox and the apparent notion that mysticism and the law are mortal enemies, or that all mysticism is Christian, is just gobsmackingly ignorant. Likewise, the news flash that Jesus taught his disciples that mystical union with God was a good thing, combined with the suggestion that this is news to the leader of a tradition that includes Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross leaves one numb and helpless for words. It's like reading a high school sophomore burst into a chat room discussion on relativity among trained physicists to say, "If you're so smart, then tell me how light can be a particle and wave at the same time. Huh? Huh? Why don't you learn some *real* science? When are you going to admit you are just borrowing the best parts of what Gene Roddenberry told us long ago!"
Saints preserves us from religion reporters. I wonder if Get Religion is following this particular piece.
For a sane and informed take on the Pope's book, go here.
Whenever the press declares that Pope Benedict has "grown" or undergone a "dramatic change of course" or gone "a long way toward accepting positions he once seemed to reject as head of the Holy Office" this invariably means that Benedict has not, in fact, changed, but that the reporter had no clue whatsoever what Benedict (and often, the Catholic faith) previously thought and is only now discovering his views.
So, for example, when a reporter breathlessly announces:
Benedict emphatically sets aside the view that faith amounts to a form of law, and insists that the relationship of the believer to God through Christ defines Christian belief. He does not acknowledge his debt to Martin Luther, but it is palpable. He also says nothing of the priest, Matthew Fox, whom Cardinal Ratzinger silenced for his views on the centrality of the mystical knowledge of God to Catholic teaching. Theology is sometimes a contact sport, and this may be an example of yesterday's heresy becoming today's orthodoxy. A considerable body of non-Catholic biblical scholarship now accepts that Jesus himself taught his disciples mystical union with God, on the basis of the Judaism of his time, so the the position Benedict describes is more widely founded than he indicates.
...one hardly knows where to begin in confronting the sheer Himalayas of ignorance that lie behind such a concatenation of words. One wonders if the man who types such things has ever read the epistle to the Romans. The notion that Luther is the inventor and discoverer of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ is stupefying enough. But the invocation of a dim bulb like Fox and the apparent notion that mysticism and the law are mortal enemies, or that all mysticism is Christian, is just gobsmackingly ignorant. Likewise, the news flash that Jesus taught his disciples that mystical union with God was a good thing, combined with the suggestion that this is news to the leader of a tradition that includes Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross leaves one numb and helpless for words. It's like reading a high school sophomore burst into a chat room discussion on relativity among trained physicists to say, "If you're so smart, then tell me how light can be a particle and wave at the same time. Huh? Huh? Why don't you learn some *real* science? When are you going to admit you are just borrowing the best parts of what Gene Roddenberry told us long ago!"
Saints preserves us from religion reporters. I wonder if Get Religion is following this particular piece.
For a sane and informed take on the Pope's book, go here.
Stupid Party Department of Denial Spokesman Explains the Elections
Uh Huh.
$2,900,000,000,000. How do they keep from laughing when they say these things? Perhaps the fear of inhaling something from the trough as they plunge their snouts in yet again is what prevents it.
"Oh, I don't think the problem was spending," Cole said. "People who argue that
we lost because we weren't true to our base, that's just wrong."
Uh Huh.
$2,900,000,000,000. How do they keep from laughing when they say these things? Perhaps the fear of inhaling something from the trough as they plunge their snouts in yet again is what prevents it.
Another Lifeboat Leaves the Titanic
The hilarious thing is when Kate pauses from lecturing stupid Catholic about the glories of her intelligence and sophistication to upbraid these people for not adhering the "the ancient faith of the Church".
The hilarious thing is when Kate pauses from lecturing stupid Catholic about the glories of her intelligence and sophistication to upbraid these people for not adhering the "the ancient faith of the Church".
You Keep Saying "Baptism of Desire"
I don't think that term means what you think it means.
Here's the deal. When people say, "I'll be there in spirit" it means "I won't be there." When we turn the phrase "baptism of desire" from meaning "A longing to follow Christ thwarted by ignorance or impossible-to-overcome circumstances such as being crucified like the Good Thief" to meaning "Having a warm feeling about baptism, but not wanting to miss 'American Idol' by walking down the street and actually being baptised" then we are no longer talking about what normal people mean by "desire".
If Tony Blair desires to be Catholic, the process is neither difficult nor mysterious. I have not problem with people who wish to take as long as they like exploring the faith. I have great respect for those who want to kick the tires and see if it's true before signing on the dotted line. Count the cost and all that. But "baptism of desire" is not an appropriate term to describe Blair's amorphous relationship with the Church. If he wants to be Catholic, then let him be Catholic. But merely hanging around the Church pretending one is Catholic while refusing to actually join is not "baptism of desire".
I don't think that term means what you think it means.
Here's the deal. When people say, "I'll be there in spirit" it means "I won't be there." When we turn the phrase "baptism of desire" from meaning "A longing to follow Christ thwarted by ignorance or impossible-to-overcome circumstances such as being crucified like the Good Thief" to meaning "Having a warm feeling about baptism, but not wanting to miss 'American Idol' by walking down the street and actually being baptised" then we are no longer talking about what normal people mean by "desire".
If Tony Blair desires to be Catholic, the process is neither difficult nor mysterious. I have not problem with people who wish to take as long as they like exploring the faith. I have great respect for those who want to kick the tires and see if it's true before signing on the dotted line. Count the cost and all that. But "baptism of desire" is not an appropriate term to describe Blair's amorphous relationship with the Church. If he wants to be Catholic, then let him be Catholic. But merely hanging around the Church pretending one is Catholic while refusing to actually join is not "baptism of desire".
UK approves invention of unprecedented new sins
Lucky thing it's the good guys in the civilizational struggle who are doing this or it might tempt the wrath of a righteous God. How lucky that we, who are living at the dawning of the Age of Nefarious, are above that judgment. Not like the truly evil people we are fighting.
Lucky thing it's the good guys in the civilizational struggle who are doing this or it might tempt the wrath of a righteous God. How lucky that we, who are living at the dawning of the Age of Nefarious, are above that judgment. Not like the truly evil people we are fighting.
Hitchens Does His Fred Phelps Impression
When you love, you can see. When you hate, you deliberately shut your eyes.
Falwell was, God knows, a flawed man with a flawed theology. But only the sort of ignorance that comes from raw hatred can look at American Evangelicalism--arguably the most philo-semitic expression of Christianity in the world--and label it anti-semtic. Just this morning I was listening to some lady on the local evangelical radio station interviewing some Jewish author of a book about America, Israel, America's blessing for being pro-Israeli, and Israel as the "fulfillment of biblical prophecy in our time". Andrew Sullivan is, in fact, hyper-ventilating this morning about Evangelical enthusiasm for this strange new dogma in certain Evangelical circles.
The fact is, Hitchens is a man of such profound hatred when it comes to religion (and other selected enemies) that he simply does not see any reason why he should pause for a trifle like death. Indeed, he has a curious habit of publicly kicking the corpses of those he despises. Is that plain speech or simply boorishness rooted in hatred? In this case, I suspect the latter. Falwell was a typical Fundy when it came to Israel and Jews. He had unquestioning support for Israel. He also believed firmly that Jews (and Roman Catholics and everybody else on the planet) needed to ask Jesus Christ into their heart as their personal Lord and savior or they could not be saved. Only a embittered hater of God calls this attitude "Jew hatred". The sane approach is articulated by people like Michael Medved and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who didn't care about Falwell's theological views so long as, at the practical level, he treated Jews and Israel with respect and gave them practical help.
By the way, a word about the strange new dogma among some Evangelicals that current events can be decoded from Ezekiel 38 and following. This is an excellent example of why a Magisterium is so useful and necessary. Not only does it help us know what is essential, it also helps us remain free of what is unessential. Protestantism, in addition to denying real biblical truths, also has a tendency to invent "biblical truths" that do not exist and impose they by means of a sort of cultural pressure via charismatic preacher with a pet theory who, in their own sphere, are granted an infallibility the Pope could never dream of.
A Catholic is, I suppose, free to have a kooky private reading of Ezekiel 38 as a prophecy of the Coming Resurgent Soviet Union and its alliance with Muslims, Communist Chinese and whoever, in a vast battle against Israel. He is not free, however, to go around telling everybody that "this is the clear teaching of the Bible" and demanding it be believed. At least, not in the Church. For the fact is, this kooky theory is emphatically not the clear teaching of the Bible, nor does it have any sanction whatsoever from the Church. Unlike Sullivan, I don't think the Bush Administration's intel meetings are dominated by Fundamentalist preachers exegeting Ezekiel 38 and promising the deliverance of Israel by means of divinely induced plague and slaughter on a biblical scale. But I do think it matters that a significant portion of the American polity drinks in such bizarre theories as God's Revealed Truth, just as I think it matters that Orthodox Jews and kooky Christians in Israel are eagerly excited about the birth of red heifers as a prelude to some zany scheme for destroying the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding the Temple. Ideas have consequences, especially crazy ones. Most crazy idea do no harm. Crazy ideas about Israel, backed by the force of arms, stand a better than average chance of killing millions.
When you love, you can see. When you hate, you deliberately shut your eyes.
Falwell was, God knows, a flawed man with a flawed theology. But only the sort of ignorance that comes from raw hatred can look at American Evangelicalism--arguably the most philo-semitic expression of Christianity in the world--and label it anti-semtic. Just this morning I was listening to some lady on the local evangelical radio station interviewing some Jewish author of a book about America, Israel, America's blessing for being pro-Israeli, and Israel as the "fulfillment of biblical prophecy in our time". Andrew Sullivan is, in fact, hyper-ventilating this morning about Evangelical enthusiasm for this strange new dogma in certain Evangelical circles.
The fact is, Hitchens is a man of such profound hatred when it comes to religion (and other selected enemies) that he simply does not see any reason why he should pause for a trifle like death. Indeed, he has a curious habit of publicly kicking the corpses of those he despises. Is that plain speech or simply boorishness rooted in hatred? In this case, I suspect the latter. Falwell was a typical Fundy when it came to Israel and Jews. He had unquestioning support for Israel. He also believed firmly that Jews (and Roman Catholics and everybody else on the planet) needed to ask Jesus Christ into their heart as their personal Lord and savior or they could not be saved. Only a embittered hater of God calls this attitude "Jew hatred". The sane approach is articulated by people like Michael Medved and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who didn't care about Falwell's theological views so long as, at the practical level, he treated Jews and Israel with respect and gave them practical help.
By the way, a word about the strange new dogma among some Evangelicals that current events can be decoded from Ezekiel 38 and following. This is an excellent example of why a Magisterium is so useful and necessary. Not only does it help us know what is essential, it also helps us remain free of what is unessential. Protestantism, in addition to denying real biblical truths, also has a tendency to invent "biblical truths" that do not exist and impose they by means of a sort of cultural pressure via charismatic preacher with a pet theory who, in their own sphere, are granted an infallibility the Pope could never dream of.
A Catholic is, I suppose, free to have a kooky private reading of Ezekiel 38 as a prophecy of the Coming Resurgent Soviet Union and its alliance with Muslims, Communist Chinese and whoever, in a vast battle against Israel. He is not free, however, to go around telling everybody that "this is the clear teaching of the Bible" and demanding it be believed. At least, not in the Church. For the fact is, this kooky theory is emphatically not the clear teaching of the Bible, nor does it have any sanction whatsoever from the Church. Unlike Sullivan, I don't think the Bush Administration's intel meetings are dominated by Fundamentalist preachers exegeting Ezekiel 38 and promising the deliverance of Israel by means of divinely induced plague and slaughter on a biblical scale. But I do think it matters that a significant portion of the American polity drinks in such bizarre theories as God's Revealed Truth, just as I think it matters that Orthodox Jews and kooky Christians in Israel are eagerly excited about the birth of red heifers as a prelude to some zany scheme for destroying the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding the Temple. Ideas have consequences, especially crazy ones. Most crazy idea do no harm. Crazy ideas about Israel, backed by the force of arms, stand a better than average chance of killing millions.
The Secrets of Screenwriting Revealed
I'm likin' this Joseph Odendahl guy. He's the fellow that is writing and directing Manalive. We've been corresponding about the upcoming shoot in Atlanta and he's been giving me details on his plans.
I mentioned that I wished I knew something about screenwriting. He replied:
One of the things he mentioned is that he basically intends to (very generously) split whatever profits the film happens to make evenly between all the cast and crew.
Feeling whimsical, I wrote back:
Whereupon Joseph writes back:
It's all coming into focus.
I'm likin' this Joseph Odendahl guy. He's the fellow that is writing and directing Manalive. We've been corresponding about the upcoming shoot in Atlanta and he's been giving me details on his plans.
I mentioned that I wished I knew something about screenwriting. He replied:
What's to know? It's like a book, only boring. If you can reduce a flashy turn of phrase to the bare sum of its parts, you could be a screenwriter. There's a reason nobody curls up by the fireplace to read a screenplay. You might just as well read a schematic.
The difference between Chesterton's book and my screenplay is like the difference between standing in St. Peter's Square or hearing a description of it.
One of the things he mentioned is that he basically intends to (very generously) split whatever profits the film happens to make evenly between all the cast and crew.
Feeling whimsical, I wrote back:
I'm already arranging to buy that beachfront property in Southern France. I'm hoping to become a deeply disturbed reclusive crank with theories about pure water and the Trilateral Commission. With the riches from this film I hope to achieve that goal, and more.
Whereupon Joseph writes back:
Here's how it would look in a screenplay . . . You decide which is more fun to read:
FADE IN.
EXT. Beachfront. Southern France. Day.
MARK SHEA, a lone figure, appears deeply disturbed.
On the desk beside him are two documents. The heading on one reads "Trilateral Commission" and on the other "Pure Water."
CUT to medium angle on MARK.
MARK
(Sounding angry)
With my acting money, I can pursue these goals and more.
It's all coming into focus.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Rubber Hose Right Circles the Wagons
Ron Paul walked off with the debate according to World Net Daily.
Reaction: Little Green Footballs bans him from its poll. Can't have the one person who clearly says "enhanced interrogation techniques" is Newspeak be allowed to be seriously considered. There is a lot money and power being threatened by this upstart.
Ron Paul walked off with the debate according to World Net Daily.
Reaction: Little Green Footballs bans him from its poll. Can't have the one person who clearly says "enhanced interrogation techniques" is Newspeak be allowed to be seriously considered. There is a lot money and power being threatened by this upstart.
A reader asks:
Never heard of it.
Anybody?
Could anyone in your organization help me find information about an organization called the traveling team, or the IT Project? My college grandson is soliciting donations, $2000.00, to attend a 7 week course in L.A. this summer. I'm worried that he will be brain washed by this & leave the Catholic faith altogether. His girlfriend is Baptist & he learned about this project at her Christian Challenge club. Is it wrong for Catholics to support this financially? I have many catholic organizations I'd rather support. None of us knows where to find any info other than what is on their website & I feel my grandson doesn't know enough about them either.
Never heard of it.
Anybody?
State Funded Catholic Bashing Entertainment from Soviet Canuckistan
It takes all kinds of courage to face up to the beheading, suicide-bombing, menacing monsters of the Canadian Catholic Church. What is a more ripe subject for contempt than mild-mannered people who are quietly going about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and praying for the dead. I just hope the brave producers of this show are willing to follow it up with more gutsy stuff like this. Here are some future show ideas:
"Losers": Hilarity ensues as wealthy and tanned Toronto teen Brad Jolie decides to set fire to homeless people who come to his door begging for help.
"Feebs": Does anybody really *like* old people? Join Troy McClure as he pushes the envelope and explores the taboos that keep us from saying what we really think about these drooling burdens on society and the so-called "caregivers" who exploit them--and us--with idiotic "compassion for the weak". Laugh along with us as we push an old lady down the stairs and watch her bounce!
"Tards", the laff riot in which the New Crew at the Home show the conservative Old Guard that so-called "mentally disabled" people are not worth the food they eat. Don't miss the Prank of the Week, when Bernie from the Down's Syndrome ward gets set up for True Love--and a hilarious pantsing in from of the whole world!
The Church will survive the idiotic hatred of the post-Christian secular culture of death. The Culture of Death and its cowardly bully boys in the media will not survive its bizarre and suicidal habit of attacking the one institution that does more to hold society together than any other. I wonder what would happen to Canada (or the US) if all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy the Church does were to be suspended for a month. I suspect both nations would implode.
It takes all kinds of courage to face up to the beheading, suicide-bombing, menacing monsters of the Canadian Catholic Church. What is a more ripe subject for contempt than mild-mannered people who are quietly going about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and praying for the dead. I just hope the brave producers of this show are willing to follow it up with more gutsy stuff like this. Here are some future show ideas:
"Losers": Hilarity ensues as wealthy and tanned Toronto teen Brad Jolie decides to set fire to homeless people who come to his door begging for help.
"Feebs": Does anybody really *like* old people? Join Troy McClure as he pushes the envelope and explores the taboos that keep us from saying what we really think about these drooling burdens on society and the so-called "caregivers" who exploit them--and us--with idiotic "compassion for the weak". Laugh along with us as we push an old lady down the stairs and watch her bounce!
"Tards", the laff riot in which the New Crew at the Home show the conservative Old Guard that so-called "mentally disabled" people are not worth the food they eat. Don't miss the Prank of the Week, when Bernie from the Down's Syndrome ward gets set up for True Love--and a hilarious pantsing in from of the whole world!
The Church will survive the idiotic hatred of the post-Christian secular culture of death. The Culture of Death and its cowardly bully boys in the media will not survive its bizarre and suicidal habit of attacking the one institution that does more to hold society together than any other. I wonder what would happen to Canada (or the US) if all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy the Church does were to be suspended for a month. I suspect both nations would implode.
Hey Louisville, KY!
I'll be on WLCR today at 5:00 PM talking to Paul Clemens. Sorry, they don't stream. You'll have to listen on the radio.
I'll be on WLCR today at 5:00 PM talking to Paul Clemens. Sorry, they don't stream. You'll have to listen on the radio.