Weimar Germany is back

Ethan Haas Was Right!

A satisfyingly Mystifying site that makes me wonder what is going to happen tomorrow.

This

reminds me of this:

Choose the City Where the Spice Girls Play Next

I'm thinking' "Baghdad". Or maybe Calcutta.

Here's a genuinely happy story out of Iraq

Our troops are such good guys.

Cynical Politicians Pretend to Care About Honorable Military Hero They Destroyed

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets' blood.' Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets; now fill up what your ancestors measured out! You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna?

You know, there is something... what?

Weirdly creepy?

Passive-aggressive?

Soft totalitarian?

I'm not sure what... about this



I agree with this blogger. I'd much prefer the image of a Defense Ministry with lions and eagles and claw and arrow and other pointy nasty aggressive stuff than this image that says, "We're going to Mother you even if we have to envelop the whole world in our soft--yet inexorable--embrace. I much prefer being ruled over by tyrants and cronies to being ruled over by People Who Want to Do Me Good. The tyrant's greed can be sated and his vigilance dulled by surfeit. But the Nanny Statist who wants to Do Me Good is urged by his conscience to tyranny. And he never sleeps.

No. I don't think Japan is on the brink of world domination. I just think the art is creepy. And art says something. Here, for example, is the uber creepy (and somewhat prophetic) art cooked up in the early days of the Homeland Security department:



Long gone, sadly, is the old gif file with the moving eyeball peeking through the keyhole in an American flag. (I kid you not!). I wish I could find it again. It was priceless. Big Brother will keep you safe!

When I Went to Australia in 2004...

I discover it was the happy land of upside down where the Catholics were bad Anglicans and the Anglicans were good Catholics. One of the good Catholic Anglicans I met was Marco Vervoorst, who recently decided to just go ahead and finish the job by becoming Catholic. He's got a new blog!. Welcome into full communion, mate!

Memo to Kurds: Don't Trust Presidents Named Bush

Unbelievable. And yet, not unbelievable. Not any more.

Interesting Quote

I would like to ask in all seriousness whether Protestantism can be a real answer to anyone for whom Catholicism has never been a real question – whether we still have any real business with the church of the Reformation if in the meantime we have left alone the counterpart with which it struggled. And I would like to issue a warning of the unhappy awakening which might some day follow such detachment. Those who know Catholicism even a little know how deceptive its remoteness and strangeness are, how uncannily close to us it really is, how urgent and vital the questions it puts to us are, and how inherently impossible is the possibility of not listening seriously to those questions once they have been heard. - Karl Barth

A perfectly reasonable question. The attempt to locate Protestantism as something besides a reaction to the Catholic faith is ultimately doomed. Of course, that is not *all* Protestantism is. In the intervening five centuries it has gone on to create its own culture, make its own theological discoveries (of truths which are properly part of the Catholic tradition since there is no new revelation). But before it is an attempt to return to the myth of the "pure" New Testament Church, it is an attempt to get rid of the Catholic Church: to exaggerate whatever Catholic truths it prefers, abandon whatever Catholic truth it happens to dislike and add whatever human traditions it wants to add to the deposit of faith. At the end of the day, it must perpetually define itself as "not Catholic" in order to exist--even when it insists it is Catholic--as the ECUSA does while it jettisons one piece of Catholic teaching after another. The moment that protest ends is the moment the Protestant has no reason left not to become Catholic.

John Brown's Blog Ain't a-Mould'rin' in the Grave

He writes:

I wanted to let you know about my website, Companion of Jesus, where I just began a series of web videos on Ignatian/Jesuit spirituality, history and contemporary Jesuits. I hope you take a second to look at it.

And, of course, if you mention it on your blog you will make Saint Ignatius happy on his feast day ;)

Happy BDay, St. Iggy! You're not Dominican, but you're still okay in my book.

New Blog!

Sonitus Sanctus is rapidly making a
collected archive of all the great Catholic multimedia from around the internet.

I hope he's right

A reader asks:

Do you know of any mp3s or podcasts out there of the rosary (in English or Spanish or Latin, for that matter)?

Beats me. Anyone?

Interesting piece on a bit of a revival in Ireland

Happily, not everybody in Ireland is rushing to ditch their Catholic heritage.

Harry Potter and the Question of Scandal

Here are two related letters that fell in my box today:

10 years ago I saw you speak at the Defending the Faith Conference and I have enjoyed your books. I noticed that like your good friend Nancy Cartentier Brown your a Harry Potter Fan and I had a question for you about it.

I have had a few debates with people about the books. I have not read Nancy's book about HP in detail but have used some of the arguments in her book along with Connie Neal and John Granger.

The center of the debates wove around the fact that HP might lead kids to a real interest in real witchcraft. This was the view of one person I know who when working in youth ministry, knew teens that studied real wickin after reading HP. This person has seen some of the films. The other person was in deliverance ministry.

I came to the conclusion that HP might be an occasion for sin for some people and for those people I would gladly give up reading them. But then again their are people who read them who won't join a coven and I feel as if I can use the books as discussion starters about a Christian world view.

I feel a little bit torn up as to what my attitude should be. I was wondering if you have listen to a tape series called 'The Trouble With Harry by Matthew Arnold? He is a ex-new-ager, occult member who is now a catholic apologist. He is sound and solid and I saw his tape and read about it and wondering if you knew anything about it.

As I have a scrupulous mind set, and tend to dwell on these topics too long I plan on not listening to it but am curious about what you might think about the tape or any of the topics I brought up.

If you time to answer that would be cool.

Thanks for your contribution to Mother Church!

followed by another reader who writes:

I ordered a Harry Potter book on eBay yesterday and realized afterward that the seller's other items are occult books. I'm just wanting to know if I should be weary of receiving such a book (I'm not sure if there can be some spiritual harm attached to it, being in the hands of such a shady seller). I'd like to keep the book when I get it, if there's nothing to worry about, since the version I got is collectable and worth money. On the other hand, I don't want damning objects in my home. Anyway, I hope I'm just being superstitious, and would appreciate any advice.

I think both these letters touch on something very similar to a pastoral problem that faced the apostle Paul: the problem of eating meat.

The difficulty in antiquity was that, if you lived in an urban area and wanted to have a nice meat dish for dinner, the market you bought it at usually got a large supply of slaughter animals from the local temple to Zeus or Artemis or Whoever. That meant you were eating meat which had been ritually dedicated to the worship of a pagan god.

This left Christians with exceptionally tender conscience stuck in a quandary: Could you ever eat meat? If you did so, where you somehow participating in pagan worship and defiling yourself? That is what the second post seems to be reflecting. The mere fact that Harry Potter books are *handled* by somebody who is involved in the occult.

Paul (and Jesus') answer is clear: don't worry about it. Objects do not damn. Sins damn. Meat that was dedicated to Zeus is meat. If you thank God for it and eat it, you are thanking God, not Zeus. If you thank God for Harry Potter books and they contain no evil ideas that urge you to imitate evil, then mere contact with people who do advocate evil ideas will not "contaminate" them with some sort of malign spiritual power.

Similarly, the adage "the abuse does not negate the use" is the apt response to the issues raised by the first letter. Yes, there are people who will use Harry Potter as a springboard for involvement in the occult. Likewise, there are idiots who will use the Lord of the Rings as the basis for involvement in divination and tarot reading. As they say, build an idiot-proof system and they'll build a better idiot. Nothing in this world, including Scripture, is proof against the impulse of some people to turn it to stupid ends. But as my friend Greg Krehbiel has remarked, if somebody seriously turns Harry Potter into an excuse for involvement in the occult, that's a comment, not on Harry Potter, but on the quality of catechesis in that person's life. The key is to have a serious gospel to present--and Harry is becoming more and more obviously about the fact that Rowling is giving us a very sly representation of the gospel. So she's an ally, not an enemy.

All that said: it is important to remember Paul's basic advice in all such matters of conscience, which is the law of charity. Paul is adamant that meat cannot defile you. He knows this because his Master taught it. So he insists that those with tender consciences must *not* sit in judgment of those who eat (which is why I insist that Harry Haters must not sit in judgement of those who read the books). At the same time, Paul also insists that those who have the freedom of the gospel not use it to create scandal for their brethren.

"Scandal" is a misunderstood word. Most people conflate with "hurt feelings". That's not what it means. Paul couldn't care less if somebody's feelings are hurt that Gentiles don't have to be circumcised. Indeed, he goes out of his way to hurt the feelings of Galatians who are trying to impose their narrow vision on the Gentile believers and tells them he wishes they'd go the whole way and castrate themselves.

No, for Paul, "scandal" means "tempting somebody to violate their own conscience". That's the key to eating meat in Paul's letters and to my attitude to Harry Potter Issues. When some Harry Hater clucks his tongue and tells me I'm going to hell and demands I stop speaking well of the books, I laugh in his face. He's got no business trying to dominate my conscience with his scruples. But if, say, some kid felt *tempted* to read the books (innocent as the books are) against the wishes of his parents and felt that, by doing so, he was deliberately doing a wicked thing, I would be guilty of "scandal" in the Pauline sense. That's why Paul could fight fiercely against the circumcision party, yet had Timothy circumcised before going to Jerusalem. He was obeying the law of charity. It's why I make free with my view that Harry is a fine set of books, yet would never read them in front of my nieces and nephews who have been raised to think that to read them is to open a portal to hell. I don't want to tempt them to violate their conscience by disobeying Mom and Dad.

Read Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8. These instructions are the common sense Charter of Charity and Liberty in Catholic Pastoral Matters since they were written. Virtually everything the Church has to say about disputable non-essentials from Harry Potter to smoking to dancing to playing card to going to movies (all issues of conscience for various Catholics at various times) is in these chapters. Or if you like the short form, "In essential things: unity; in doubtful things: liberty. In all things, charity."

A reader writes:

Our daughter left the Church when she married and is not trying to find fault with everything involved in the faith.

She says that the Sabbath is Saturday not Sunday because Jesus was Jewish and that is the day they celebrate.

Can you please help me to find the correct words to explain this to her? I want to make sure I say it properly so she is not able to argue about it.

This is the saddest thing I have ever been through and need help making sure I don't mess it up.

Thank you very much.

Here are some resources that discuss this:

Ultimately this, like many questions, comes down to the question of the authority of Sacred Tradition in governing the way we read the Bible. Invariably, what Protestants are doing is not, as they imagine, getting rid of Tradition and reading the Bible without it, but substituting some man-made Tradition that consists of patches and fragments of the Catholic tradition stitched together with various human traditions that have been elevated to divine status.

The proof of this is seen in the fact that Protestants constantly rely on Sacred Tradition to tell them what books belong in the Bible. It is seen in fact that while they complain that the word "Purgatory" is not in the Bible, they do not complain that the word "Bible" is not in the Bible.

The reason for the Sabbath change is straightforward. The Sabbath was a sign of the Old Covenant. But Jesus has brought a New Covenant and a New Priesthood. So the Church began observing the Sabbath on the day of his resurrection, which established that covenant. You can already see it reflected in Revelation, when John says, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day" (meaning "I was at Mass. It was Sunday").

Can the Church really celebrate a new Sabbath? Yes. Jesus told the apostles "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven." The Church, with apostolic authority, recognized the truth of the New Covenant Jesus had established and hallow the day of his Resurrection as the New Sabbath. Indeed, Jesus *is* the Sabbath rest of God. The day is ultimately just a sign to remind of that fact.

All that said, your prayers and your love will be most important of all in bringing your daughter back one of these days. Many times people leave the Church out of hurt or out of love for somebody whose beliefs forces them to feel they must choose. If that is the case with your girl, then love, at least as much as argument, will be vital in restoring her faith. Trust that God is in control, and means to turn this trial into something good for all of you. God bless you for your faithful love to Him and to her!

Birds of a Feather

Interesting Continuation of the Discussion on Friendship Happening at Disputations

The Sort of Feminist That Even Makes Me Want to Be Libertarian

Alternatively, it could be that some parents are just criminal idiots.

Oregon is Too Dangerous a Place to Have This Close to Washington. I say we cut it adrift and float it a safe distance into the Pacific

Not their citizens, their rulers. Here is one insane story of Zero Tolerance Idiocy gone wild.

Franz Jagerstatter, Who Failed to Appreciate the Doctrine of Creative Destruction for the Greater Good, Will be Beatified

A reader writes:

I lost my job about a month ago and I have no idea what I'm going to do. I'd been unhappy in the position for a long time, and my performance had dwindled to a level that was unacceptable. It was my fault and no one else's. I have to take responsibility for that. I had wanted to leave, but not like this. I'm trained as a librarian, and I have one resume out for a job right now, but I feel pretty out of touch with what's been going on in the profession--in other words, doubtful about my employability. I have a disability and some other health issues, so health insurance is a serious concern for me. My health insurance from my previous job expires in a couple of days, but I've applied to have it extended under the COBRA law. If anybody out there needs a good writer/editor/researcher type guy, let me know. I happen to know one who's available at reasonable rates :)

Please pray that God will bring me through this and lead me to where He wants me to be, doing what He wants me to be doing.

May God grant you a new job and the provision you need to do his will through our Lord Jesus!

Speaking of Orwellian Language...

The Church would lost without actively homosexual priests, according to Gene Robinson. He's also the guy who said "Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the Church and Scripture does not necessarily make it wrong."

Whenever I get to feeling down about the Catholic communion, I reflect upon the fact that what is mainstream in the ECUSA still constitutes an isolated example, way out at the end of the bell curve, in the Catholic communion.

This seems to fit the historical pattern. When a lunatic enthusiasm sweeps over the culture at large, it get reflected in muted form in the Church. When Calvinism was all the rage outside the Church, Jansenism made inroads inside the Church. But the promise of Jesus was that the Church would drink poison and live. Jansenism did not defeat the Church but did manage to produce some saints with rigorist tendencies that were tamed by the Holy Spirit. These days, the lunacies of PC culture are represented in undiluted form in the ECUSA. Those lunacies are not absent from the catholic communion, but once again the Church appears to be turning the bitter water to sweet. I doubt we will live to see the end of that particular historical process, but I have no doubt that when the absurdities of the ECUSA are dust, the Church will still be here and will continue to decline endorsing Mr. Robinson's theories. The trick, of course, will be to persuade seminaries and bishops to actually live by their own teaching.

Very Beautiful Combination of Technology and Art

Peruse Pavel's Poetry Podcast, Pal

A reader writes:

Respectfully, Steve is in the recent combox is right. This stuff matters.

This whole thing is about 40 years left-clericalism, now offset by lay empowerment as the engine of renewal and restoration.

You have apparantly been blessed with being spared, in your parish, and in you life, the worst of the liturgy wars of the last 40 years.

So have we, in my parish, and in this archdiocese (Toronto).

Notwithstanding, my Knights of Columbus council has taken the lead in restoring First Friday:

* We booked and paid for, a year in advance, the 5:30 Mass on the 1st Friday of each month for the intention of Knights of Columbus. The entrance hymn, sang a capela if necessary is always, repeat, always the unexpurgated, 100-proof, non-inclusive version of "Faith of Our Fathers."
* The "Knights Mass" is now followed by:
* Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament with O Salutaris in Latin)
* Recitation of the Rosary (not Aunt Bridget mumbling her beads, but The Thinking Man's Rosary - aka The Scriptural readings preceding each Mystery)
* Chanting of the Salve Regina and the Litany of Loretto (in Latin)
* Holy Hour of silence,
* concluding with Benediction (Tantum Ergo in Latin).
* Latterly, the head of music ministry himself, who serves as the organist at the Sunday 12:30 Mass, started attending First Friday and now voluntarily provides organ accompaniment.

We started this on our own last year as a follow up to the Year of the Eucharist. During the Year of the Eucharist, our parish restored Benediction after a hiatus of 40 years (presumeably arm twisted by the Archdiocese). (parenthetically, read your Bible: David had to restore veneration of the Ark of the Covenent, which had lapsed during the reign of Saul, and King Josiah had to restore the Passover itself after what seems to have been a lapse of a couple of centuries.)

At the end of that year, a nun "pastoral associate" noted the end of the Year of The Eucharist, and, referring to Benediction, sneeringly announced in the parish bulletin that "this arrangement" i.e. Benediction, would be discontinued. That aroused me and my brother Knights out of our crypto-liberal apathy and lethargy, and we took command. This nun has since left her order, although still on the parish payroll as a "parish associate", in charge of RCIA. Neither she, nor another nun who works at the parish, nor the otherwise solid and orthodox priests and friars assigned to our parish stay around for the Rosary. On one occasion, I conscripted one of the Friars to join us and lead a decade of the Rosary, and he left immediately after his decade was done. ("Liturgical minimalism in the "Spirit of Vat II??).

It is now up to us in the pews. By means of your blog, I call on all Brother Knights at parish level to "just do it" :
* Today First Friday restored
* Tomorrow, a renewed Liturgy on Sunday morning.

Finally - be good post-Modernists - learn how to
* deconstruct the Liberal Pseudo-Catholic narrative - aggressively, analytically and, above all, playfully;
* replace it with our own narrative. First step - nomenclature: in all discourse from now on, replace the term of reference Tridentine Mass" with "The Mass of Blessed John XXIII", or "The 1962 Missal" (ergo "nothing less than the "Mass of Vatican II" itself.

Again, please note: we are not "lay theologians". We are working men, business men, family men, men of affairs, men of the city and of the market place - who now chant together in (very, extremely) Basic Latin - and we find (usually I despise the word) community.

Pass the word to the troops. We in the pews can make it happen. We are empowered. Peter has spoken.

I don't have a problem with any of this.

I must be a bad communicator or something. I have no problem with attempts to remedy liturgical abuse. I have no problem with people who want Eucharistic adoration getting it. Adoring the Eucharist is the greatest single thing a human being can do in their life. Why would I be opposed to that?

My beef is with something else--actually, a couple of something Elses. I have a problem with the tendency of some lovers of the Latin Mass to speak as though a reverently celebrated Paul VI Mass is second class--as are those who celebrate it. I also have a problem with those who get so caught up in Liturgy Wars that they forget the purpose of the Liturgy, which is gratitude, not bitterness, frustration, party spirit, and pickiness.

You are quite wrong to say that I have been spared Liturgy Wars. On the contrary, I am a refugee. Remember? I live in the Archdiocese of Seattle. I entered the Church during the tenure of Abp. Raymond Hunthausen. I can tell you all about crappy liturgies, stupid homilies, heretical junk from the pulpit and the altar, and all the rest of it. Why do you think I sought out a place where the Mass was celebrated well and the Faith was taught after several years at the Church of St Narcissus, Apostle to the Self-Actualized? However, I am also a survivor of some Extremely Nasty Trads at our parish who made it extremely clear (by means of everything from ridiculous antics during the Liturgy itself, to smear campaigns against holy priests, to threats of physical violence against parishioners, which made extremely clear that those who worshipped in the Paul VI rite were not only second class, but enemies of the True Mass[TM]. A more embittered, nasty, ugly face of the Catholic faith I have never met. It put me off for good on the notion that the cure for what ails the Church is more and more laypeople obsessing over the quest for the Perfect Liturgy.

So: knock yourself out in aiming to reform the celebration of Mass. I have nothing against that per se. But I think that a lot of this stuff is tending toward unhealthy factionalism--at least in the discussions I see in cyberspace. My *hope* is that, granted better access to the Latin Mass, people who want it will finally be content. My fear is that, as happened with several folk at Blessed Sacrament, they will form an embittered nucleus of malcontents who will look a gift horse in the mouth, form a Church-within-a-Church and simply train their rage on their brothers and sisters with renewed energy. I really hope that the motto of many Latin Mass folk doesn't become "It's payback time!" But my personal experience with some (though certainly not all) of these folk gives me several reasons for fearing that it could be a significant issue in the coming years. If so, it's going to be the task of the kindly and decent Latin Mass folk to reign in that element.

Meanwhile, I'm going to continue worshipping God in the Paul VI rite. For the life of me, I don't see why that should be a problem.

My Airline Hell Story is Featured in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

I hope I don't wind up testifying before Congress or something. Still, it was satisfying to be able to make AA's bunker mentality a public issue. What's the fun of being a writer if you can't do something like this now and then.

I agree that there is no place where humans are that the gospel should not be

At the same time, I think that there is something fundamentally pathetic and inhuman about the attempt to "create community" as a virtual character. So I do agree that Christians ought to evangelize Second Life. But I think it is a mission that has more the character of the Harrowing of Hell than of a glorious founding of a new apostolic work.

New Blog!

Elizabeth is fresh out of college and is working in the pro-life vineyard! Check out her blog!

Reader Christine Thanks You for Your Prayers

Thanks be to God for a successful surgery!

Great
Big
Debate
at
Vox
Nova

It's still too early for me to care very much about Presidential candidates. So far, Ron Paul is my front runner for the Doomed Quixotic ticket. A great spoiler. Not *too* kooky. No advocacy of intrinsic moral evil that I'm aware of. And with enough positives that I would not feel ashamed to look God and my kids in the eye for having voted for him (as I now feel about Bush and would certainly have felt about Kerry). But the season is young and nobody ever lost money underestimating the integrity of a politician. The rumpus over Thompson as the Potential Savior of the GOP seems to me to be premature. But I freely admit I'm not paying all that much attention. So what do I know?

God Bless Valiant Priests!

It takes a remarkable charism to do this kind of work. God bless him and the flock he shepherds.

"We have a potential presidential candidate who noted to a friend that if he won the presidency the quality of his life would go down, not up."

Millennial American Democracy increasingly consists of the agreed-upon fiction that the lower orders choose "representative government" from among a small class of oligarchs with fewer and fewer living connections to them. Sooner or later, it tends to occur to such oligarchs that this elaborate kabuki--conducted purely to pacify the hoi polloi's need to feel included--is an annoying infringement on their time.

The Always Insightful and Brilliant Sherry Weddell on the Network of Friendship That Changed France

I grow in conviction that this discussion of Church-as-Family and Church-as-Company-of-Friends is of enormous consequence for the future of the Church. Here are two of the most important notes I've gotten in my comboxes in many moons. First, Colleen writes:

This meditation cut really close to the bone. I have been attending Mass exclusively for nearly 10 years in a variety of communities in 4 different states. I have never had a member introduce himself to me, never been greeted by any parishoner (except at the obligatory "peace" which, I think, we all dread), never had the priest say hello or ask me my name on the way out.

The contrast with my evangelical experience could hardly be sharper, for all the reasons y'all have alluded to. There is no going back, I don't think, but I cannot bring myself to swim the Tiber. I need community, need people who share my beliefs that I can actually talk to about them, face to face. But they are not there.

Then Patty says:

Thank you. I don't usually take up valuable space in your comments but I couldn't help myself. Your post hit the nail on the head for me. For several weeks, I have been struggling with the very issue you raise in your post.

I am an infant baptised Catholic with no upbringing in the church, with a significant chip on my shoulder about misperceptions of the church for many years. Through a series of (almost mystic-ish) events last year, I found my way back to Rome at age 38. Eventually I enrolled in a local RCIA program and was confirmed this past Easter Vigil.

At first I was thankful when RCIA ended because I felt like I was only getting the "straw house" version of Catholicism and I longed for a study that was deeper, but over the months I have come to see that I had it really good in RCIA despite its flaws because it was the closest thing to community I was going to find in the parish. So, I, being a proactive, face the problem head on kinda gal, sought out info and visited some other parishes and have found basically the same experiences. Once out of the "newbie" Catholic status of the RCIA class, no one seemed to care if I was there or not. No priest or parishioner has ever spoken to me, not even at post-Mass attempts at social community. I have a deep passion for the Faith and it troubles me greatly to see parishioners imitating Disney automatrons, all smiles and motion, but without soul or feeling. Being still in my Catholic "toddler" phase, I can't help but wonder if this is what it really is to be Catholic? (I pray it is not.) It makes me sad and causes me great anxiety over whether my faith is strong enough to prevail over this sense of indifference I perceive. I try to stay fulfilled with my independent study of the Faith, but having no one with whom I can discuss what I am learning, no spiritual guidance from either the clergy or the lay community, makes me wonder if I am just blundering along like the proverbial bull in the Vatican shop.

I live very close to metro St Louis, which from what I hear is supposedly known for its rich Catholic tradition and (IMHO)we have a most awesome leader in Archbishop Burke. But what we lack is a sense of community especially for those of us that have graduated from that age group that is the focus of the campus life ministies and who are without family and are not yet ready to slip into our dotage. Being so newly formed myself, I'm not sure if I am the right person to just inniatate some sort of group, but I surely wish that there was something I could do about the problem since I am fairly confident I am not the only person in the area that feels this way.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Many blessings to you and to all the other fellow readers out there.

As a number of people note, there are various lay ecclesial communities such as Communion and Liberation (which I urge everybody to check out). These are small, but growing (something you can help). If you can access one, you should. At the same time, as Sherry notes:

The lay movements are great but they are only accessible to less than 1% of lay Catholics in the US.

Evangelicals do not expect "para-church" oganization to carry the whole "evangelization-formation-fellowship" burden. In the evangelical world, local churches and para-church organizations all make it a priority and the result is a lot of synergy and re-affirmation all over the evangelical world.

It is both impossible and contrary to the teaching of the Church to make lay movements carry the whole burden. All that ensures is that 99% of Catholics will never know "the pursuit of God in the company of friends".

So am I saying, "Give up."?

On the contrary, I'm saying it is nonetheless possible, even in very daunting circumstances (such as being an Evangelical convert to the Church in the Archdiocese of Seattle during the tenure of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in the late 1980s) to find and/or create a really nourishing lay Catholic community.

As Sherry writes:

[W]e can do something about it. Mark has written about exactly this before in his blog as we have over at Intentional Disciples.We can take steps ourselves to offer more at the local level - as we did in Seattle with the Nameless Lay Group.

That little charter would be a fine working document for attempting to repeat the experiment we tried--and succeeded with--at Blessed Sacrament.

In addition, I would strongly recommend joining the discussion at the Intentional Disciples blog and checking out some of the essays on the Catherine of Siena Institute's (thoroughly orthodox and wonderfully creative) vision of the Parish as a House of Lay Formation.

Things don't have to remain as they are. Indeed, I am more and more convinced that they will not and that change for the better is already under way. God is still building his Church in our time.

I gotta run, but I hope all y'all will continue the discussion. This is really important stuff.

The Greatest Threat to the Catholic Church is Catholicity

That appears to be the thesis here.

Me: My profound lack of interest in liturgical obsessions extends to those who think that this gesture of kindness on the part of the Pope is somehow a menace. The Mass is the Mass is the Mass. If the Church approves it, it's good enough for me. Any Mass where I get to receive our Lord is a gift for rejoicing in, not an ocassion for invoking our Inner Anton Ego and criticizing. Eucharist: It Means "Thanksgiving".

The Beeb Might Actually Do Some Real Worthwhile Religious Journalism

Operative word: "might". We'll see. It could well devolve into the usual "Dominicans: Monsters of the Inquisition" agitprop.

Rising Generation of Women Reclaiming Their Dignity

Screwtape's Ministry of Information Responds.

Greeley's an odd duck, partly a Yellow Dog Dem and Partly and Old Labor Catholic Who Still Understand the Basics of the Faith

Here he is, giving a pretty sound response to the Usual Complaints. Key sentence: "Catholics do not believe in their bishops or priests. They believe in God, of whom the Church is a sacrament."

Apostolic succession is secure. The Magisterium is secure. The Sacraments are secure. Those are guarantees from the Spirit. What we need are bishops who are also saints.

But, of course, that means that *we* need to be saints since every bishop is born and raised a layman. And we never really meant it to come to *that* now, did we?

Last Sunday, the German Protestant Church's religious cult specialist called Tom Cruise the "Goebbels of Scientology."

I've never understood the appeal. The whole thing just looks like, well, a big dumb science fiction novel by a bad science fiction writer.

More Voices Raised from Responsible Folk Opposed to the Administration's Vile Orwellian Bullshit

Last Friday, the White House issued an executive order attempting to "interpret" Common Article 3 with respect to a controversial CIA interrogation program. The order declares that the CIA program "fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3," provided that its interrogation techniques do not violate existing federal statutes (prohibiting such things as torture, mutilation or maiming) and do not constitute "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency."

In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not "done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual" -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse."

I can no longer see any good reason why Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and the other schemers and enablers behind this policy could not be convicted of war crimes in the (impossible) event that they were ever tried. Won't happen of course. But committed by any other nation on any of our people and that is exactly what this filth would be called.

Urgent Prayer Request!

Sts. Luke and Peregrine pray for her! Grant her doctors skill, her body and soul healing, and her family strength and peace through Christ our Lord, Father.

Charleston Ordains the Biggest Batch of Priests Since 1956

Shout outs to soon-to-be Fr. Michael Cassabon from the House of Cow!

The Science of Duh in the Age of "Religion Poisons Everything"

Thanks, Evangelical Outpost! I appreciate it!

Speaking of Friendship

John Paul seems to have grokked that youth were seeking community via friendship as the old ties of ethnicity and neighborhood which undergird the parish were being eaten away. His World Youth Days were a major effort to help foster that, and they are starting to see a harvest.

Pope Says a Bunch of Sensible Stuff That Will Make A Bunch of Extremists Mad

First, he says the whole "creation vs. evolution" debate is crap, which it is. This will irritate both nutty creationists and dogmatic materialists.

Then he reiterates the age old Catholic respect for nature, using a metaphor which will surely get the underwear of wingnuts worried about the Romish New Age Conspiracy into a very tight bunch:

“This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness ... than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive,”

One can already hear the shrieks from the wingnutosphere as Benedict is indicted for paganism, for worshipping the Earth as a god, etc.

Just you wait and see.

I had an English friend who immensely enjoyed websites that took some manifestly absurd proposition and then threw vast intellectual resources at trying to defend it against all the assaults of common sense

He would have loved this:

Here's the Catechism saying, just about as clearly as can possibly be said that "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."

Now, here is the fantastically verbose Rerum Novarum, slaughtering trillions of electrons to make the extremely long-winded case for why that plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face teaching does not apply to us when we nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Masterpieces of sophistry. And that's just two posts. There's even more where that came from.

A really beautiful reflection on Friendship from Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa

I've been reflecting a lot on friendship the last few days, so this is timely for me. I particularly like this:

It is a mutual attraction and deep understanding between two people, but it does not have a sexual component as does conjugal love. It is a union of two souls, not two bodies. In this sense the ancients said that friendship is to have "one soul in two bodies." It can be a stronger bond than that of family. Family consists in having the same blood in one's veins. In friendship one has the same tastes, ideals, interests.

It is essential to friendship that it is founded on a common search for the good and the true.

I had dinner the other night with Fr. Bernhard Blankenhorn, my pastor, and another friend of mine. In the course of the conversation, we discussed various things, including the different ways in which cradles and converts relate to the Church.

This led on to other reflections. One thing I got thinking about was the way in which Evangelicals seem to be so good at creating community and Catholics so lousy at it. I'm sorry, but I've never chalked that up (as cradles are wont to do) as simply and solely (or even primarily) due to some supposed Evangelical "emotionalism" that stands in negative contrast to the Deep Maturity of Catholics. This excuse may satisfy Catholics in profound denial over the intense loneliness many Catholics feel, but it remains an excuse. The fact is many parishes are crappy at giving their members a living experience of the love of Christ.

What got me thinking is that I am very grateful because I *have* been given a living experience of the love of Christ, both as a Protestant and as a Catholic. That experience has taken place, since entering the Church, largely at Blessed Sacrament parish.

It's odd really. The parish we went to before Blessed Sacrament was a classic suburban parish, with the trendy nun and the priest who peppered his homilies with all sort of chummy stories and dumbed-down theology. It was chockablock with "community-building" efforts and multicultural this and Aren't We Fabulous That. And it was a deeply lonely place if you didn't happen to belong to the families who had been part of the parish since it was built.

Then we went to Blessed Sacrament, where the focus was on the Dominican charism of praising, blessing, and preaching. In other words, it was a parish that was seeking first the kingdom, not Trying To Be a Vibrant Parish. And we thrived.

Part of it, I think, is that the parish is, like everything in the Catholic tradition, rooted in a "grace perfecting nature" mode of thought. Parishes presume a pre-existing human community with some stability: the village, town or polis where people are born, live and die and everybody knows each other. With that sort of natural soil you can get a parish which builds on the natural familial relationship to the divine familial relationship of the Body of Christ.

But what happens when the parish is placed in a culture like ours that is profoundly mobile and transitory. The soil gets pretty thin. And the attempt to fix the problem often results in things like my old parish: lots of plastic bonhomie and fake glad-handing of the "We are Community!" variety. Real communities don't have to organize rallies to remind people that They Are Community. They are too busy living the communal life, which is about something else and not about itself. The surest way to destroy communal life is to try to make it be about communal life, just as the surest way to kill any hope of conversation is to stare into somebody's eyes and say, "Let's have a really good talk" and the surest way to induce illness is to obsess over your health. Healthy community is a by-product of a life lived toward some other end. And the end toward which the Church is supposed to living is God, not itself.

So what about Evangelicals then? Why do they do so much better? Well, they do and they don't. At their best, Evangelicals are freed by not needing to follow a parish model. They do not need to build an ecclesial community on the paradigm of a family, so they often wind up building communities that instead specialize in friendship, which is another form of love. Partly this has to do with the congregational nature of Evangelical communities. Catholic communities tend to be like block parties. Protestant ones tend to be about bringing like-minded people together around a particular set of ideas. That can be fractious, but it can also produce close friendships as people with a common vision speak the essential words, "You too? I though I was the only one!"

Friendship can be a love every bit as intense as eros in some ways. Indeed, in our sex-soaked culture it is often identified with eros. And that, in turn, hampers friendships from happening, because there is a sotto voce fear that a close friendship will be identified as somehow homosexual. But real friendship has nothing to do with sex. It is, as Fr. Cantalamessa says, "a union of two souls, not two bodies". To have known true friendship, even once, leaves a mark of gratitude on the heart that cannot be erased.

That's why I've been thinking about my experience at Blessed S. God graced me with so many different experiences of love there. Familial love. Real experiences of friendship. Even fatherly love through a priest who had a profound impact on me.

I'm still sorting it out. But I think this experience of Church as family and the experience of the Church via friendship is very important. I will have to give it more thought.

I don't know why, but this cracked me up



Caution: a bit of bad language.

Hat tip, Darth Beckman

Another Oligarch Wants to Rule Us

Yet another rich guy has theories about how to make the rest of us behave. If you want a Nurse-in-Chief, he's your guy.

The Culture That Despises Virginity Feels Increasingly Free to Despise Children

Selfish brats come in all ages.

Heckuva Job, Gonzo!

What's wrong with this Administration, summed up in a four word headline. Loyalty uber alles.

Another Myth Debunked

So much for my big Reparations Campaign.

From our Worthy Cause Files

Dear Friend of Catholic Exchange,

Catholic Exchange is six years old and growing fast. Our shoes have holes in the soles, our socks are clean but they won't stay up, and our limbs need some muscle!

MAJOR LEAGUE

Thanks to all of you who have supported Catholic Exchange during this our Sixth Birthday Appeal. In six short years we've entered the major leagues of evangelization. Because of you we can boast one of the best Catholic websites in the world with over a million visits each month. (Well, okay the Vatican website is more important -- but we have more pictures on ours). CatholicExchange.com gets over a million visits per month, and we receive a steady stream of "Thank Yous!" from our viewers, with stories of marriages restored, family members brought back to the Sacraments, and new Catholics who have discovered and grown in the Faith thanks to the information they encounter on our website every day. Can you join our team of champions and help us continue to develop and expand this valuable Catholic media resource? It's secure and easy, just click here .

CHAMPIONS ALL

We love Pope Benedict and recognize him as a true champion of the Faith. But when was the last time the Vatican produced a hit sports movie that proclaims the Catholic faith with the crack of the bat? As vital and indispensable as our clergy are, some things are the right and proper office of the laity. Last month, I was blessed to be able to show our new film, Champions of Faith: Baseball Edition, to an audience of over 70 bishops at the US Bishops annual meeting. (What a privilege!) As the movie unspooled before that august audience, I was indescribably thankful that the Good Lord had allowed us to produce such a wonderful, faithful, entertaining, Catholic film. When the credits rolled these hardworking and often under-appreciated shepherds broke into the kind of impassioned applause that indicated to me that Catholic Exchange had produced a world-class evangelization tool, which will draw hearts of all ages to Jesus Christ, the source and summit of our faith. Bishop after bishop told me that his flock needs to see Champions of Faith and hear its message. I was overjoyed. But YOU should be thrilled because YOU helped make the project possible. You are Champions all! Do the wave!

NEW BATS NEEDED

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If you have not yet made a contribution to our appeal, could you please click here and do so now? We still need an additional $80,000 this month so we can continue producing uniquely effective media with the strong but simple message that the Church is alive and offers the only answer to the world’s hunger for truth and hope.

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Granted, the gifts bestowed by the Holy Spirit are a lot more important than what we can give you. But we’re happy to give you something valuable anyway in exchange for your birthday offering. Please join our work with a gift of $50 or more, and we'll send you a special first-edition copy of the Champions of Faith DVD!

For anyone who gives $200 or more, we will send you the best-selling Catholic book of the year, Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth, in which our Holy Father reaffirms the Church's faith in Christ as true God, true Man and our divine Redeemer. This new masterpiece of spiritual reflection is perfect summer reading for either the beach or the chapel.

My message is simple: We need your help now to continue our work of evangelization, work the laity definitely needs to be doing. If you’ve already helped us this year, could you click here and offer another gift at this time? If you have never given to Catholic Exchange, or if it’s been a while, could you join us in our work for the Church? Thank you again for your generosity and your prayers.

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Nothing Brings out the Khristian Kook Konspiracy Mongers like Harry

For a rebuttal of this nonsense, I give you the invaluable Nick Milne.

1. It is worth noting that the site hosting this article hosts others proposing elaborate Jesuit conspiracies aimed at the destruction of America.

2. Furthermore: the Great Flood was (in part) a result of the cloning aspirations of Atlantis. Also: the Vatican "invented Islam." I could go on all day. Note that I mention these things without comment.

3. The first paragraph of the article in question is riddled with self-delusion and, for lack of a better word, lying. The author most definitely was not "able to invoke the powers of the 'controlling unknown' and fly upon the night winds transcending the astral plane." In addition to being a matter of complete fraud, the sentence is rambling nonsense. Perhaps the author is trying to be poetic about this, but it is not working very well.

4. The dubious fact of the 1960's being the era in which witchcraft was "just starting to come out of the broom closet" and the admitted fact that J.K. Rowling was born in that time period are stated as though connected in some way. What is being implied here?

5. The citation of "fundamental Christianity" as the basis of these complaints must also be noted.

6. "Illuministic conspirators" are referred to with a casualness unbecoming of the concept.

7. "The Sound of Silence," by Simon and Garfunkel, is cited as "an occult song" and apparently a component of the "Luciferan conspiracy." The absurdity of this beggars the mind.

8. The author's status as "a former witch" is held up as a badge of authority to back the declaration that the Harry Potter books are "training manuals for the occult." Is "a former witch" as reputable a source on these matters as "a former Christian" would be on what the Bible says about things?

9. The charge that the books have taught "a generation of children" to "think, speak, dress and act like witches" is utter balderdash. The books are, first of all, notable for their staunch refusal to suggest higher powers, dark or otherwise, which might be invoked or supplicated for the purposes of magic; they could more justifiably be accused of atheism than occultism. Because of this lack, it is simply incredible that the books could inculcate in anyone, children or otherwise, the sort of perpetually numinous regard for energies and spirits that is the lifeblood of witchcraft.

So, "thinking like witches" is out, but what of the rest? "Speaking like witches" is similarly dubious, if there's no change in thought process to occasion it. The languange of witchcraft is notoriously stupid, in any event, having no real basis behind it and being wholly unsuited to describing anything in the real world anyway. If the books have motivated any concrete action in their readers, we might imagine it to be along the lines of a hopeless bellow of "accio saltshaker!" when that vessel seemed so very far away, with no expectation of success and every intention of comedy. Only in the area of "dress" could the claim be made, if only on one night every few years (and never again, now that the books are finished), and in much the same spirit as one would attend a fancy dress party. One wonders what "dress like witches" even means, really, as robes and the like have been and are standard and wholly innocent garments in countless cultures.

10. A list of words from the books is provided, ostensibly because they are "names of real devils or demons." Included among them are "Draco," the Latin word for "dragon;" "Erised," which is "Desire" spelled backwards; "Slytherin," which is doggerel. The pagan provenance of "Circe" and "Hermes" is undeniable, it's true, and one could strain to object to the similarity between "Erised" and "Eris," but one would be wrong in doing so. The article, unsurprisingly, provides not the slightest shred of evidence that these nonsensical words are "the names of real devils or demons."

11. The "titles of the books" are denounced as being obvious indications of satanism and the antichrist. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (which isn't even the book's real title, but whatever) is denounced as "a real give away." Why a "Chamber of Secrets" is expressly and irredeemably Satanic is not explained, but the title is denounced anyway; and, presumably, the devilish nature of "The Prisoner of Azkaban" follows on the suggestion that Azkaban is "a real devil or demon" rather than a prison for characters the book unhesitatingly and accurately describes as evil, the name of which is derivative of both "Alcatraz" and "Arkham." "The Goblet of Fire," as a title, is not discussed.

12. The author slips into the idiom of Star Wars, somehow, claiming that sabbats and esbats conclude with the solemn utterance of "May the Force be with you." It is not mentioned that at no time in the series are the phrases "Blessed be" or "May the Force be with you" ever uttered (I can barely keep from laughing); indeed, no sabbats or esbats are conducted at all.

13. It is claimed that "high level witches" believe there are "seven satanic princes, and that the seventh, which is assigned to Christians, has no name." No sources are provided for this claim, nor why "high level witches" believe this. This leads quite naturally into the issue of Voldemort being "he who must not be named." One would think that someone who understood that even the name of Christ has power would understand the reasoning behind this as well, but apparently not.

14. The following is copied from the article without comment: "These books were taken into homes everywhere with a real evil spirit following each copy to curse those homes. July 8th was also the 18th day (three sixes in numerology 666) from the witches' sabat of midsummer. July 8th was also the 13th day from the signing of the United Religions Charter in San Francisco."

15. "Children as young as kindergarten are being introduced to human sacrifice, the sucking of blood from dead animals, and possession by spirit beings." All of which, and worse, may be found in the Word of God. The world is often a very gruesome and marvelous place.

16. "But is it just fantasy literature like Snow White and Cinderella? In the Harry Potter video, cult expert Caryl Matrisciana points out that in the older stories, evil never prevails. There are no absolutes in his world. What is right depends on the situation." I'd like to think that this opinion would change after having read the final three books, but somehow I doubt that it would.

17. A list of "tools today's witches and pagans use" is provided. Curiously, it includes "supernatural imagination" and "spiritual concentration." What on earth?

18. The final paragraph is utterly baffling in light of the first. The first sets up the author as one who knows that witchcraft is real, and, what is more, has done it. The last paragraph takes the Harry Potter books to task for suggesting (they don't, but whatever) that... witchcraft is real, and that people can do it! Which is it?

I wholeheartedly condemn this sourceless, anonymous, ridiculous, useless article. The website from which it originally came is no better, I regret; on it you will find spirited assaults on C.S. Lewis (his brilliant explanation of natural law is dismissed as "totally unchristian" because he happens to use the word "Tao" for the purposes of brevity), Christmas (pagan origins OH NOES!!1), and so on.

Once more with feeling: nobody says you have to read or like the books. However, when Khristians insist on telling stupid lies, believing stupid rubbish, and slandering perfectly innocent people because they enjoy the books (not to mention slandering Rowling, who appears to be a perfectly decent human being and a sister in Christ, they are no longer merely having a disagreement about literary taste: they are bearing false witness against their brothers and sisters and committing a sin.

Why is it that ignorance and arrogance always seem to be located on the same gene?

Not Something You See Everyday

A reader writes:

Here is something I thought your readers might enjoy.

It's a DIY recording I made of the Schubert Ave Maria at Aspendos in Turkey. The acoustics in this almostly perfectly preserved Roman theater are nothing short of amazing -- a singer's dream. There was no amplification, no digital manipulation, and the only microphone was the little pinhole one on my three-year old digital camera. Notice too that the kind young woman from Kazakhstan who held my camera for me was halfway up the theater steps.

Very cool! Thanks!

People Can Be So Kind and Wonderful

A reader writes:

I'm very sorry to be reading about your misfortune and the subsequent mishandling by my company in dealing with your misplaced and damaged luggage. I am a pilot for American Airlines and I do my best from the vantage point of the cockpit to provide our customers with the best travel possible. I find nothing more frustrating than to watch other people in my company, either from poor company policy or from sheer ineptitude let a customer down. Many of us understand that it is the paying customer and not "The Company" that pays our check and we do our best, at times working against the system to simply get the job done. The corporate culture at a juggernaut as large as ours can cause me to wonder if we are actually in a service industry and not here to serve ourselves. I'm fortunate that as the captain I can often cut through the bureaucracy and insist that something be done right. There's nothing an agent likes to hear more than "don't worry, I'll take the delay" from a captain.

I wish I had some pull to be of help to you with your damaged luggage but I can assure you that my wife and I will continue to purchase your work. My wife and I and our 3 children joined the Catholic church 4 years ago thanks to people such as yourself. The short story is that we read our way, over a 3 year period, to the Church and we continue to be blessed by talented writers and their love for their Catholic faith. I hope someday I might have the privilege to give you better service than you've received in the past. Please remember as you ply your talents as a writer that many of us at American Airlines do try everyday to use our talents to deliver a great product.

I always look forward to your column in NCR and commentary offered through your blog. Keep up the great work.

Thanks so much for your kind note. It is very true that, though a corporation has no soul, the people who work for it do. I realize you don't set the policies and I very much appreciate your taking time to send such a thoughtful and kind note. God bless you!

Speaking of Mitt Romney's many lucrative contributions to the Family Values of the Nation

The New York Times reports that a study by the Federal Bureau of Prisons says there is a "startlingly high" correlation between child pornography and the sexual abuse of children.

Related studies also show that the sky is blue, that bears defecate in the woods, and that 2+2=4.

Kathy Shaidle Notes An Obvious Fact About Lickspittle Chattering Class Cowards Who Make Excuses for Mohammed While Lecturing Christians on the Need to Appreciate "Piss Christ"

I'm all for modern Americans having a little historical perspective. The constant surprise of ignorant postmoderns over the fact that our ancestors did not think like the dimwits on "The View" is a source of amusement and frustration for anybody who wants to have a grownup conversation about virtually any event before the publication of the Da Vinci Code.

At the same time, our culture's genius for getting spiritual matters wrong usually means that while we all demand Bronze Age figures like Abraham conform completely to suburban conventions or be judged unworthy of our respect, we bend over backwards to excuse semi-civilized barbarians like Mohammed as men of their time.

The Prophet Chesterton discusses this weird double standard--and the way in which Our Lord flummoxes it--in the Everlasting Man:

Take, for instance, the case of marriage and the relations of the sexes. It might very well have been true that a Galilean teacher taught things natural to a Galilean environment, but it is not. It might rationally be expected that a man in the time of Tiberius would have advanced a view conditioned by the time of Tiberius; but he did not. What he advanced was something quite different; something very difficult; but something no more difficult now than it was then. When, for instance, Mahomet made his polygamous compromise we may reasonably say that it was conditioned by a polygamous society. When he allowed a man four wives he was really doing something suited to the circumstances, which might have been less suited to other circumstances. Nobody will pretend that the four wives were like the four winds, something seemingly a part of the order of nature; nobody will say that the figure four was written forever in stars, upon the sky. But neither will anyone say that the figure four is an inconceivable ideal; that it is beyond the power of the mind of man to count up to four; or to count the number of his wives and see whether it amounts to four. It is a practical compromise carrying with it the character of a particular society. If Mahomet had been born in Acton in the nineteenth century, we may well doubt whether he would instantly have filled that suburb with harems of four wives apiece. As he was born in Arabia in the sixth century, he did in his conjugal arrangements suggest the conditions of Arabia in the sixth century. But Christ in his view of marriage does not in the least suggest the conditions of Palestine in the first century. He does not suggest anything at all except the sacramental view of marriage as developed long afterwards by the Catholic Church. It was quite as difficult for people then as for people now. It was much more puzzling to people then than to people now. Jews and Romans and Greeks did not believe and did not even understand enough to disbelieve, the mystical idea that the man and the woman had become one sacramental substance.

We may think it an incredible or impossible ideal; but we cannot think it any more incredible or impossible than they would have thought it. In other words, whatever else is true it is not true that the controversy has been altered by time. Whatever else is true, it is emphatically not true that the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth were suitable to his time, but are no longer suitable to our time. Exactly how suitable they were to his time is perhaps suggested in the end of his story. The same truth might be stated in another way by saying that if the story be regarded as merely human and historical, it is extraordinary how very little there is in the recorded words of Christ that ties him at all to his own time. I do not mean the details of a period, which even a man of the period knows to be passing. I mean the fundamentals which even the wisest man often vaguely assumes to be eternal. For instance, Aristotle was perhaps the wisest and most wide-minded man who ever lived. He founded himself entirely upon fundamentals, which have been generally found to remain rational and solid through all social and historical changes. Still, he lived in a world in which it was thought as natural to have slaves as to have children. And therefore he did permit himself a serious recognition of a difference between slaves and free men. Christ as much as Aristotle lived in a world that took slavery for granted. He did not particularly denounce slavery. He started a movement that could exist in a world with slavery. But he started a movement that could exist in a world without slavery. He never used a phrase that made his philosophy depend even upon the very existence of the social order in which he lived. He spoke as one conscious that everything was ephemeral, including the things that Aristotle thought eternal. By that time the Roman Empire had come to be merely the orbis terrarum, another name for the world. But he never made his morality dependent on the existence of the Roman Empire or even on the existence of the world. 'Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.'

The truth is that, when critics have spoken of the local limitations of the Galilean, it has always been a case of the local limitations of the critics.

I'm a Victim!

You probably thought I was fat because I eat too much and don't get enough exercise. WRONG!

I'm fat because of you people! I expect a full apology in my comboxes!

By the way, I've dropped 30 pounds and I'm working on dropping more.

What a Surprise. Gonzales lies again

Why is this incompetent lickspittle sycophant still AG? Oh. Wait. He's still AG *because* he's a lickspittle sycophant. In a system that prizes loyalty over competence as the highest conceivable good, that's how it goes.

Am I the Only Person Who Thinks This is Sophistical?

Try as I might, I can't shake the impressioin that this is an elaborate piece of sophistry designed to excuse Romney from profiteering off porn and bullshitting us about "family values"?

I can buy the "in a heavily interconnected economy nobody's skirts's are
lily white" bit. I'm not much moved by the demand that every time I buy a can of corn, I have to have a complete memorized index of every financial investment and charity supported by Safeway, and must refrain from buying said can of corn if it turns out that Safeway is a Planned Parenthood donor. I think this is an impossible demand in a global economy.

What I don't buy is that Romney can't be blamed for staying in his job of providing gobs of porn to lots of people, making bushels of money off it, and then pretending to care about family values. If I buy a can of corn from Safeway without fretting myself overmuch about every conceivable way Safeway might parse my dollar, that's one thing. If I'm President of Safeway and either actively oversee, or passively acquiesce, while Safeway adopts a policy of marketing rat poison as baby food--and make tons of cash on the deal, I think there's a rather marked difference. If I then use my millions to run for President on the Pure Food Party Platform, it seems to me that this would be a major case of chutzpah.

The Posture-Pedic Homily

Sometimes the homilist is bound and determined to make the text say whatever the personal obsession of the homilist demands it say. I well recall a homily by some PC Seattle priest for whom Everything was All About Racism. Turns out that when Jesus told the Syro-Phoenician woman that he should not give to the dogs what is meant for the children, he was struggling to overcome his own sins of racism.

Kevin O'Brien was subjected to a recent sample of this sort of will to bend the text to the homilist's personal obsessions. It turns out that when Jesus said "Mary has chosen the better way" what he *really* meant was Martha's way was just as good as Mary's and that contemplation and discipleship are, well... alright I guess, but that we really need to get cracking and support the "Building Church While Building a Church" pet project of the FutureChurch Regime.

Especially delicious is that it is out of the mouths of babes that the essential insight into the nature of the homily is spoken. Well done, Colin! You're a smart kid!

Another Protestant Has a Grown-up Reaction to the Fact the Pope is Catholic

Good to see. If only the MSM could follow suit.

The Invaluable John Farrell Makes an Interesting Point About the Recent New Yorker Cover

This Should Keep Everybody Chatting All Afternoon

Rod Dreher, Daniel Larison and Professor Bainbridge agree and disagree with each other about the musical question: "How Has the Iraq War Changed Your Views?"

I'm interested in that notion of a "trustworthy government" among conservatives. I *think* it boils down to the reality that conservatives (or at least neocons) trust the government in the form of the military, but not in the form of the post office.

I'm not sure why. Part of it seems to be the endless WWII nostalgia which view all wars through that lens. Part of it is that the crazed secular messianic ideologues of "creative destruction" who have grafted some of their old leftist believes in the power of raw force to heal and redeem on to their new schemes for a Greater America. Part of it is terror of the alternative: the thought that Bush and Co just have no clue how to fight the War on Radical Islam and don't know what they are doing. America needed a Father after 9/11, somebody who would hold us and tell us he was going to make sure the Bad Men never did that to us again. We were so traumatized we just sobbed and fell into his arms. And I'm sure Mr. Bush meant it when he made those promises.

But the fact is, government is never to be fully trusted and Mr. Bush has given us multiple reasons why. This is not an "anti-American" thing to say. It's as American as apple pie, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan. The state is medicine, not food. It is our rather unreliable Guardian Servant (when it hasn't been drinking and whoring to much) and it can be badgered into doing something like the right thing--now and then. But it cannot be trusted and it is not and never has been our Father.

Anyway, it's an interesting three way argument.

Speaking of Catholics Against Rudy...

Possibly the most depressing thing I've read this week are these words:

(interrupted by applause)

Why? Because they say everything there is to say about the the way in which alleged "conservatism" has bankrupted itself.

Here is a man who will completely sell the farm on every matter from Abortion
to Embryonic Stem Cell Research to Euthanasia to Same-Sex Marriage.

Yet because--not "in spite of"--*because* he declares his enthusiasm for torture (when invited by the FOX Torture Cheerleader to do so), alleged conservatives cheer wildly.

Of course, being a politician he talks double-talk, just as he does on abortion.

I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of. It shouldn’t be torture, but every method they can think of –

MR. HUME: Water-boarding?

MR. GIULIANI: — and I would — and I would — well, I’d say every method they could think of, and I would support them in doing that

It's at this point that the crowd (or perhaps the more accurate term is "mob") cheers wildly. So what if we have to make a few sacrifices in the "essential principles" department? Rudy promises us Peace and Security, just as the Bible says! That's Real Practical Statesmanship. All this abstract Catholic crap about the "dignity of the human person" is for Euro-weenies. We're at war, dammit! We have to be as evil as our enemy if we expect to win! And besides, Rudy specifically said "It's shouldn't be torture" and we believe that, just as we believe him when he gives to Planned Parenthood six times and then says we can trust him on abortion. And besides, waterboarding isn't torture. It's just dunking, as the Vice President says. We know that because the President says we don't torture. And besides, it works.

The only person to call all this tergiversation and bullshit "Orwellian" is also the main person, in the new Bizarro GOP, to be marginalized as the crazy uncle in the attic. Happily, he appears to be unphased, and is becoming an increasing threat to the Power Brokers. He'll never win, of course, but I hope he does a fine job as an instrument of chastisement for a party that badly needs to be spanked. Indeed, he might well deliver a spanking to both parties. My hope, however, is that the GOP might learn from the spanking. I'm skeptical the Dems are capable of learning anything any more. More's the pity. We need at least two parties, not one oligarchy.

Catholics Against Rudy Needs Your Help!

I wonder if Victor Lams is still reading this blog. He'd be great for this! Hmmm... "Robots Against Rudy"....

A reader writes:

I'm wondering if you could recommend an introduction/primer on the natural law. I'd like to know more about it, but don't know where to start reading.

I'd recommend What We Can't Not Know: A Guide and Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law by J. Budziszewski. Very clear, fine writer.

The World of Good Keeps Turning!

When I Was a Teenager I Listened to a Quack and Read Two Crappy Books

That's why I'm an atheist today! Because who could possibly be wiser than me when I was a teenager! I've never looked back!

It's remarkable how many Brights combine a complete faith in their vast psychological maturity with an absolute and complete trust in choices and decisions they made when they were sophomores in high school.

That could explain why they are becoming such whiners.

Mr. Whatcott Discovers the Phenomenon of Satanic Ecumenism

“I can't figure out why the homosexuals I ran into are on the side of the Muslims,” Mr. Whatcott wrote on the Web site. “After all, Muslims who practice Sharia law tend to advocate beheading homosexuals.”

For this common sense remark, the Gauleiters of Goodthink at the Canadian Human Rights Commission are greatly exercised.

Can't help Mr. Whatcott with the legal business. But I can perhaps help him to ponder the spiritual dimensions of the increasingly weird alliances being forged as our culture turns against the gospel.

Meanwhile, John Pacheco responds to this latest bit of soft totalitarianism from the Compassion Gestapo.

From the State That Gave you Terri Schiavo

Florida: The Land of Rightful Murder and Wrongful Birth

Missouri Hesitates to Get Cracking on the Baby Cannibalization Program

Pro-Murder Forces urge greater numbness to basic humanity.

Greater Love Hath No Man Than This

"This is the Body of Mother Earth. Do not eat this--in memory of Her."

Wimp Pleads for Understanding from Implacable Foe

"Today's atheist polemics ignore the main insight of the anthropology of religion—that religion is not primarily about God, but about the human need for the sacred."

Translation: "Okay! Fine! Yes! All that stuff about God is delusional crap. But a lot of us *need* that baby bottle! So stop being so mean and leave us alone! Besides, religious people can be pretty nice if you get to know us! Really. So just go away!"

For a more robust reply than drivel about religion really being about "our need for the sacred" see Tom Piatak's ballsy replies to the amazing ignorance of Christopher Hitchens.

News flash: Religion--at least in the West--is primarily about God. Certainly it involves the reality of our response to him. But the main thing is that it is a *response* to God, not a mere invention of man.

Bai MacFarlane Takes the Bishops to Task

Once again, my ignorance of canonical jurisprudence in matters involving marriage leaves me in absolutely no position to intelligently comment. However, I post it for those who are interested in such matters.

This is Bittersweet

A thoughtful gesture from the corporate giants of the Star Wars phenom.

A reader writes:

I went to this speaking event Friday (20th) in Oak Park (just outside Chicago) after it was publicized on Relevant Radio with Dr. Moynihan talking about Benedict XVI's spiritual vision (see the description here: ). Well, to my dismay and shock and disappointment and other feelings I'm not able to describe yet, *they* decided to change the focus and topic of this night since the Holy Father just released the Motu Proprio. What I didn't know was that this was all put on by SSPX. Up til then I thought they were more of a myth, sneeking in the shadows. A couple others (who left after the first talk) were as shocked as I was at some of the things being said and speculated upon. Dr. Moynihan never crossed the line, but during Q & A it took him at least 5 minutes of speculation and jibber jabber before admitting that the novus order Mass was valid, probably. The priest who gave the second talk did cross the line a few times, and even expressed spoke of how they had a mission to save us from sin! It was so scandalizing because 90% of his talk on virtue and spirituality was great and edifying, but pride, arrogance, and disturbing similarity to a fundie me-and-Jesus-and-me are the only authority constituted the other 10%.

I'm emailing you just in case you've never experienced explicit remarks by SSPX, and if you'd like to know their response to the Motu Prorio. I recorded the night on my mp3 player in 2 .wav files that I could send you if you'd like. If not, I'd love to hear your remarks and thoughts about this. I really didn't and still don't have much interest in SSPX, but I am now painfully aware that they do exist, love the church (when it agrees with them), and how hard and long this journey of unification will be for a group like this that is so close to us. It showed me how difficult ecumenism is/will be across the board and I have much more respect for the pastoral efforts of JPII and B16.

Thanks much for your work and I'm looking forward to your new book(s?) coming out on Mary.

I can't really comment since I wasn't there and know nothing about Dr. Moynihan. Certainly, I've experience the "Paul VI worshippers are Second Class Catholic" treatment. But I have no way of knowing whether you misheard what was being said at this particular talk. Perhaps other readers were there who can supply more light. I thank you for the offer of the sound files, but I'm up to my eyebrows in work. If the talk is what you describe, then it will do my soul no good to listen. If it's not... well, I've got lots of other sources of good food for the soul and no time to read or listen to it either. At any rate, I'm sorry you had such an unpleasant evening. Unpleasantness and Rad Trads are like peas and carrots, I'm afraid.

Discovering Wales

My latest on Catholic Exchange.

Bush Keeps Torture Legal While Pretending to Do Something About It

Ron Paul rightly describes this sort of thing as "Orwellian". He's perfectly right.

Another Former Bush Supporter Gets Unnerved by the President's Weird Mysticism

The Pharisaic Approach to Purity

Over at Jimmy's blog, the discussion of Harry Potter proceeds apace, with the inevitable appearance of the Harry Haters who, not content with not wanting to read the books (which is their perfect right), also bound and determined to arraign Rowling as an evil person and those who enjoy the books as dupes and/or traitors to the Pure Faith, etc. ad nauseam. One comment in particular stands out for me as nicely summing up the failure of a particular sort of approach to the Faith, which is really not faith in the Catholic sense at all, but is more like Phariseeism:

One drop of poison in a clear glass of water still poisons the whole glass.

One drop of anything not authentically Catholic poisons the whole glass.

The thing is that since almost everything is poisoned these days, you have to go for the one that won't kill you and still get rid of your thirst.

But then, that accomplishes the purpose of those books.

Give your thirst for true beauty and splendor a glass of poisoned water.

Pharisees get something of a bad rap. For most people, the term conjures the Inquisitorial Hypocrite. But that's not what I'm getting at here. The Pharisees, at their best, were people who were trying to remain faithful to the law of Moses as best they could. The problem was that the law of Moses could make no one holy. It could merely say, "This is defiling". Consequently, Pharisees constructed a vast system of protections against all the defiling things in the world. It was the best they could do, and they became proud of their achievement. They were great men and good men--and they knew it.

The problem came when Jesus brought a higher revelation and a higher law: one that was capable of actually overcoming defilement. It was a classic case of paradigm shift. The Pharisees had invested their entire being in mastering the paradigm created by the law of Moses. Suddenly, Jesus appeared on the scene saying, "I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. The New law he proposed is summed up in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).

Now for those that don't happen to know, Matthew very carefully constructs his gospel to make this point clear. Bookended with the infancy and passion narratives, Matthew consists of five books composed of a narrative and discourse section. That's because there are five books of Moses. When Jesus propounds the New Law, he does it on a mountain, like Moses. And when he comes down from the Mountain (in the transition from discourse to narrative in Matthew 8, he proceeds to encounter one person after another who, under the Old Law, was defiling. Here's a little discussion of that point from the Catholic Scripture Study lesson on Matthew 8:

The Conquest of Sin and the Beginning of Pharisaic Opposition

It is notable that the very first miracle of healing recorded by Matthew is that of a leper. What is even more notable is the method Jesus chose to perform this miracle. He could have said, "Be healed!" and that would have been enough (as he showed when he healed the centurion's servant (8:5-13). But instead Jesus does something very deliberate and significant: he touches the leper (8:3).

Now under the old covenant, such an action was regarded as defiling. Touching a leper meant you were ritually defiled and could not go up to the Temple to worship. It meant you had to go through a whole week of purification. Uncleanness, sin, and defilement were understood to be more powerful influences than cleanness, sanctity, and purity. In the old covenant, sin was the superior power. When someone afflicted with some ritual uncleanness that symbolizes sin touched someone who was clean, the "flow" of power went in one direction only: the clean person was defiled but the unclean person was not sanctified.

However, when Jesus touched the leper something astounding happened: the leper became clean and Jesus was not defiled. The flow of power was, for the first time, reversed.

But not everyone can see this. For the Pharisees have learned the right lesson but drawn the wrong conclusion from the law of Moses. Under the old law, ritual defilement was intended as a kind of sign or shadow. It was meant to show us in our pride that we could not, by our own strength and power, keep ourselves clean from sin. The power of sin is greater than our power of sanctity. So the Pharisees understand sanctity in only one way: separation. Indeed, the word "Pharisee" comes from the Hebrew term meaning "separate". They reasoned that if the power of sin is greater than our power of sanctity then the solution was to separate themselves from all that was unclean and even all that had touched what was unclean. In short, they apply to their personal lives a ritual code that was originally intended only for the Temple. They attempt to keep themselves as pure as the priests serving in the Temple. And so they separate themselves from the Gentiles, from touching the dead and dying, from lepers, and from menstruating women. They are right to see in these ritual prohibitions an image or sign of lifelessness. But they are wrong to conclude that by separating themselves they can avoid the sin which ritual uncleanness signifies. And so in an ironic way, they take the mirror of ritual uncleanness that God has given them in the Mosaic Law, and instead of seeing in it an image of their own uncleanness and defilement by sin, the turn it around and say to those around them, "See how unclean you are!"

Naturally then, when Jesus appears on the scene, they simply do not know what to do with him and are motivated by their pride to misunderstand him. Jesus, in Matthew 8, turns the Pharisaic understanding of the law on its head. He touches lepers and they are healed (8:1 4), receives Gentiles and they receive faith (8:5-13), consorts with demon-possessed people in a cemetery and they are restored (8:28-31), and, in the next chapter, permits the touch of a menstruating woman and she's healed (9:18-22), touches the dead and she is raised (9:25), and eats with tax collectors and sinners and makes them saints (9:9-13). Yet, in all this, they see only the ritual defilement, not the revolutionary reversal in the flow of power. For, as Jesus points out elsewhere, pride has blinded them (John 9:35-41). They are so certain they are clean they cannot say, "Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean." And so they miss the crucial lesson that the time for separation is past. In Israel's childhood, separation from uncleanness and sin was necessary just as it is necessary for us to keep our children from "bad influences" lest they become imitators. But with the dawn of the power of the Kingdom of Heaven, it is the bad influences that are to be conquered with good ones, sin that is to be conquered with virtue, and death that is to be conquered with life.

So what does this have to do with Harry Potter?

Well, the funny thing about the gospel is how often, in the history of the Church, the Church has fulfilled Jesus promise, "if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them" (Mark 16:18). The Church has drunk from all sorts of pagan wells, ranging from Plato and Aristotle, to the various ways in which Norse, German, Druidic, Roman, Indian, and other forms of pagan culture have been baptised and turned to the service of Christ. The Pharisaic approach is to reject--as the Pharisees rejected Christ--the possibility that he really holds power over the devil. It is a mentality that never considers the opposite possibility: namely, that Christ has power to conquer what defiled us under the old law and turn it to his glory.

Think about it: it must drive the devil freakin' *nuts* to see imagery that has long been his property now being co-opted by this insidious Rowling person and turned to the service of Christ, inspiring people with Christ-like models of love and self-sacrifice and with a story of divine grace and mercy that clearly draws on the Christian tradition. I think God must be laughing his head off at this consummate work of jiu-jitsu. To have even the image of the *witch* bow the knee to Christ. Old Scratch must be mighty frustrated. If only Christian Harry haters could figure that out.

Commie Thugs Still Don't Like the Catholic Church

When Did Pravda Transform Itself from Stolid Soviet Propaganda Toilet Paper into Bizarro Quack Fleet Street Junk Tabloid?

Love the Hollow Earth stuff. Did you know that the Nazis actually mounted scientific expeditions in the attempt to find the Hollow Earth portal? When it didn't lead to the death of millions, the Nazi fascination with junk science and quasi-occult quackery was quite entertaining.

Attention: New Victorians!

Read and learn from the Prophet Chesterton:

To-day this is the way the world is going, if there is any such thing. But in fact there is no such thing. A Catholic perhaps should have seen it from the first; but many a Catholic has only seen it in a flash at the last. There is no way the world is going. There never was. The world is not going anywhere, in the sense of the old optimist progressives, or even of the old pessimist reactionaries. It is not going to the Brave New World which Mr. Aldous Huxley described with detestation, any more than to the New Utopia which Mr. H. G. Wells described with delight. The world is what the saints and the prophets saw it was; it is not merely getting better or merely getting worse; there is one thing that the world does; it wobbles. Left to itself, it does not get anywhere; though if helped by real reformers of the right religion and philosophy, it may get better in many respects, and sometimes for considerable periods. But in itself it is not a progress; it is not even a process; it is the fashion of this world that passeth away. Life in itself is not a ladder; it is a see-saw.

I'm happy to see the New Vics rejecting the insanity of their parents. But if they merely embrace a reaction, they will simply invent a new insanity, just as their parents did in reaction to their parents. You can't build a life on protest. Only by rooting your life in the goodness of God and not merely in reaction to the badness of man can you find real happiness.

Mr. Hitchens, with all due deference, and hoping you won't mind if I ask, but, well, how is it that you are just so *right* about everything? I mean, you're just so perfect! How do you do it?

This is an interview? Sheesh! Talk about a puff piece!

Since Rod is Repeating His Point

I will repeat my Counterpoint.

The Catholic Faith: Is There Any Question Too Hard for It?

A friend of mine used to insist that the surest sign a cultural trend was a spent force was when Evangelicals started making cheap knock offs

Now somebody's trying some sort of Christianized Harry Potteresque thingie. Argh.

"Quick, Barry! Hit him with the Okily Dokily Blessing!" shouted Don. Meanwhile, Hollie Lou was throwing Bible verse after Bible verse at the oncoming secular Humanist, who was bearing down on her, his glittering eye filled with malice as he raised his D&D spell book and prepared to finish her with the terrible cry "Darwinus Contra Deus!" spell.

On the bright side, the article does report that James Dobson continues to have a lot of common sense.

Christian parenting guru James Dobson has praised the Potter books. Catholic News Service, an entity of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has put them on its list of recommended children's books.

Here at Chez Shea, we are enjoying the last book quite a bit. I will be driving my daughter-in-law nuts because she has already raced through to the end while I am reading it aloud to the fambly (gives me a chance to practice my English dialects and is just a lot more fun besides). Now she want to talk about it. No can do, probably for a couple of weeks.

Muuuuwahahaha!

Sherry Not-Weddell (aka "Sherry the Greater", aka "Sherry Curp") Find an Interesting Men's Ministry

Canada: Our Berkeley Head Shop to the North!

I believe every word of this article. Why is the Church not addressing this crisis? What are they hiding?

A Hap Hap Happy Faith!

Euro media continues to give Islam the lickspittle treatment.

Indiana Jones Was a Scientist Too!

These people

...need to read this.

A Jewish Perspective on Julian the Apostate

Understandable. What is not comprehensible to me is the Protestant Christian who, condemning the Catholic Church as essentially a grand attempt to achieve salvation through the law instead of grace, then commits vast resources of prayer and treasure to.... the rebuilding of the Temple and the re-institution of Mosaic sacrifice! Have these people never read the epistle to the Hebrews? Is Romans not in their Bible?

The Denouement of my Airline Hell Story

After submitting a) a fax request for reimbursement, b) an online request wanting to know what happened to my fax request, c) another online request wanting to know what happened to my previous fax request and online query, and an article about my experience of airline hell to various folk in the Dallas media (American Airlines headquarters is in the DFW area) I suddenly heard back from American Airlines when the Dallas press contacted them wanting to know if they were really this contemptuous of the customer. AA promised to get right on it.

That was last week. This week they called back. Short story: they don't care. They don't have to. They will not reimburse me for the water-soaked damaged goods (except for the damaged luggage: $40). They will, however, put 25,000 miles in my account (basically a free round trip during the off season, worth roughly one quarter the financial harm they caused our family). But I'm out the money for the water-soaked merchandise and the sales on materials they never delivered to my speaking gig.

Basically, their policy is to reimburse you for inexpensive personal stuff and to assume no liability for more expensive stuff. In short, screw you. So, I'm out the $1280 in damaged goods, lost sales, and tons of time wasted trying to break through the Customer Relations Bunker. And I'm one of the lucky ones. Pity the poor slob who doesn't happen to be a professional writer with contacts in the media who can threaten to make their contempt for the customer a public issue.

On the bright side: as Garrison Keillor says, "Nothing bad ever happens to a writer. It's all just material." I think I will write up my experience with American Airlines on behalf of all the other poor slobs who have been shafted by them.

I hold absolutely no brief for Fred Thompson

...but I do not see why it should matter to adherents of a faith that believes in repentance and change if he once worked as an abortion-rights lobbyist.

I hear Saul of Tarsus had a pretty nasty past too.

Converts and Cradles

I was talking with a friend the other day. He's a fellow convert who (as is common with us) was wondering why on earth Catholics who don't believe much of what the Church teaches stay. He was greatly puzzled about the tendency (especially here in Seattle) of many life-long Catholics to remain quite proudly Catholic despite the fact that much of what the Church insists we must believe as Catholics is something they flatly reject in favor or what the latest Oprahism is on the tube. Equally mysterious, both during this pontificate and the last one, is the common tendency of many Catholics--usually cradle Catholics--to say all sorts of rubbish about the teaching of the Pope (he's "reactionary" doncha know), yet to go on treating him as a beloved figure. For many of us converts, it's a weird and disorienting experience.

I think, after giving it a lot of consideration, that much of the disconnect comes from the fact that converts tend take very seriously the experience of the Faith in its dimension as a Body of Doctrine. When you become a Catholic as an adult, you are required to give full and honest assent, before God Almighty Himself, to the proposition: "I believe all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims is revealed by God." Evangelical converts especially feel the weight of that proposition and, as a general rule, make damn sure they can say it in good conscience before they are received into the Church. If you cannot say it in good conscience then (we strongly believe) you should not lie to God.

But nobody ever asks cradle Catholics to make that solemn commitment. The principle experience of the Church for cradle Catholics is as Family. Oh sure, there are those little rituals we do now and then, when we are asked if we realio-trulio believe the Creed and so forth. But that's just one of those things the family does--like saluting the flag. The main thing, however, is that we are family. And in a family, you can disagree with the Old Man about stuff, but you'd never dream of saying you weren't part of the family anymore.

It seems to me that both of these experiences of Church are valid as far as they go. Those who experience the Church as Body of Doctrine have their strong and weak points. Strong points include the fact that they take very seriously what the Church actually teaches and are willing to sacrifice their own opinion if it contradicts the Church. Weak points include a troubling zeal to purge the Church of the Impure. Similarly, for those who perceive the Church as Family there is the very strong point that they will go to the mat to make room for the catholicity of the Church. But there is also the very weak point that they often do not have a clue what the Church teaches because "Catholic" is more like an ethnicity than a revelation.

And revelation is the key here, for both parties. Ultimately the Catholic faith is about a living relationship with God the Father, through our Lord Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit and the sacrament of the Church. Too often we tend to want to avoid that uncomfortable close encounter by replacing God with doctrine or with our perceptions of family. All creatures which take the place of God are idols for destruction. Set in their proper place and ordered toward the praise of God and the glory of his saints, all creatures--including right doctrine and the love of family--are sacraments by which God gives his life to us and, through us, to the world.

Tolerance is not Enough. You. MUST. Approve!

Hate crimes legislation is crap.

Tales of the Unexplained

Rod Dreher talks about the phenomenon of dowsing. I've never seen it, but I remember meeting a man who swore by it. Dunno what to make of it myself. Odd.

Women Challenging the Pro-Abortion Feminist Old Guard

A reader asks:

What does one say to a young person with a perfect storm of painful, incapacitating, and soon to be fatal health problems when that individual announces plans for legal assisted suicide? Without recourse to Catholic theology, how does one argue against such a course beyong "Please don't do that"? The person planning the suicide is driven by the need to be in charge of the process and get it over with rather than waiting for the inevitable. The person is clearly depressed, is nearly destitute because of the health issues but doesn't want to take outside help. No, the doctors aren't wrong about the gravity of the condition. So what response would the blogsphere suggest? "Wait for a miracle" won't cut it either.

Discuss, class.

Mazeltov, Rabbi!

Another rabbi comes to the defense of Christians against the machinations of the ACLU.

Well.... yes.... But, well, Newton was kind of, well, a *crank*

Good physicist and mathematician. But his theological musings were lunacy of the first order even in his time. However, they were anti-popish lunacy, and so acceptable to the Chattering Classes of his time. The Chattering Classes of our time have advanced to the cultured despising of all religions. Now they think a crank like Sam Harris is the bee's knees. Same train, just further down the line.

Pope Fails to See Glories of Creative Destruction

The Sort of Harry Potter Criticism I Can Respect

Jimmy Akin takes issue with Harry on literary grounds. He just doesn't think the writing is very good. I can respect that (though I disagree with it). It's altogether appropriate and fitting to come at Harry as a work of fiction and art and weigh it from that perspective. What drives me buggy (and what Jimmy doesn't do) is the inveterate attempt to look for occult conspiracies in the books. Nancy Brown has a very funny little bit on her blog

Some people respond to Harry Potter as if it had this frontispiece, similar to DVC.

FACT: All of the spells, potions, charms, hexes and descriptions about witchcraft are ACCURATE, FACTUAL and REAL. All of the historical information, the occult references, the neo-paganism is actually as it is in the real world.
or something like that. Instead, the book starts with the "fact" that it's found in the fiction section of the library or book store.

Fiction means it's a story. And some people don't seem to understand what that is. Although the children I know do.

I constantly get warnings from people who say things like "J.K.Rowling carefully researches her spells and potions. Her books contain ocultic elements in current use by real witches. If the Potterverse is nothing but fun fantasy, why doesn't Rowling make up the spells and potions herself? The Potter stories function in the real world as handbooks for sorcery."

This bothers me for several reasons. First, how do these critics know so much about what "real" witches do. My extremely strong inclination is to think they have no idea what "real" witches do and are relaying second-hand junk they read in some article by a quack "authority" on the occult.

Second, it seems to me obvious that they are engaging therefore in casual slander of Rowling, who has said repeatedly that she doesn't believe in magic. Contrary to the alleged expertise of the critics, it is manifestly obvious that her supposed "real" spells are simple Latin doggerel. "Legilimens" just means "read the mind". "Stupefy" means, well, stupefy. "Petrificus totalus" means "completely stiff". Get a stick, point it at somebody and say these magic words. I guarantee nothing will happen in the Real World. That's because magic is not real. Same with the allegedly "accurate" potions. Nobody has succeeded in making a potion that will make you look like a cat, even accidently. Nor is there anything like a glass sphere for holding memories or any of the rest of the furniture of Rowlings imaginative world. Shout the Cruciatus curse at the top of your lungs and it may well do your soul some damage if you mean it, but it will not cause the slightest twinge in your intended victim. And Rowling means to make exceedingly clear that the sort of person who would even attempt such a thing is mortally wicked. It's just that she doesn't think such things happen in the Real World.

What she does mean to get across is that, in any world, the key to life and happiness is not power to control people and events, but love and self-sacrifice. She is, in fact, very careful to bring to repeatedly subject her hero to the pattern of the Paschal mystery. He repeatedly is forced to confront evil, to make a choice for good, to go into the heart of the earth (think "Christ in the tomb") to reach the limits of his own resources, to reach for the help of grace, to undergo an image of death, and to be saved with the help of a figure out of the European tradition that represents Christ (the Philosopher's stone that transmute lead into gold as Christ transmutes the mortal into the immortal, the sword of Gryffindor shaped like a cross, the stag, etc.) and finally to experience a kind of resurrection and exaltation.

Rowling has, in fact, said that she is a Christian, but that she does not make too much noise about this lest it give away the climax of her series.

I think Christians who have attacked Rowling on these grounds have done her a grave injustice and have badly misread her books. It's one thing to criticize them, as Jimmy does, on their literary merits. But to see them as part of some sinister anti-Christian conspiracy, to credit every half-baked rumor about Rowling, and to deliberately choose, on the flimsiest and silliest evidence to smear her as a hater of God is, I think, odious.

If you want to get a general sense of what is next on the Cultural Agenda of our Ruling Elites....

Just watch the media for the word "taboo".

Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker explores "taboo" questions and ideas:

Here's some of the ones he mentions:

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?

Were the events in the Bible fictitious -- not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires?

Has the state of the environment improved in the last 50 years?

Do most victims of sexual abuse suffer no lifelong damage?

Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape?

Do men have an innate tendency to rape?

Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence?

Are suicide terrorists well-educated, mentally healthy and morally driven?

Would the incidence of rape go down if prostitution were legalized?

Do African-American men have higher levels of testosterone, on average, than white men?

Is morality just a product of the evolution of our brains, with no inherent reality?

Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized?

Is homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease?

Would it be consistent with our moral principles to give parents the option of euthanizing newborns with birth defects that would consign them to a life of pain and disability?

Do parents have any effect on the character or intelligence of their children?

Have religions killed a greater proportion of people than Nazism?

Would damage from terrorism be reduced if the police could torture suspects in special circumstances?

Would Africa have a better chance of rising out of poverty if it hosted more polluting industries or accepted Europe's nuclear waste?

Is the average intelligence of Western nations declining because duller people are having more children than smarter people?

Would unwanted children be better off if there were a market in adoption rights, with babies going to the highest bidder?

Would lives be saved if we instituted a free market in organs for transplantation?

Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children?

Some of these "taboos" are taboo only to PC types and academics. Some are taboo only in the sense that the question is phrased so stupidly as to be unintelligible. Some are taboo because they should be taboo to all morally sane people. And some are taboo only in Mr. Pinker's imagination. For examply, anybody who seriously believes that it is an act of courage to question the historicity of the Bible is living in a dream world. It's only a project that is about 200 years old or so. Sheesh!

Your weekly Pavel Poetry

Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, it's the....

Motu Proprio contact database. It is an effort to put those seeking to have the Tridentine Mass in their area in contact with like-minded locals, to the end of forming the "stable communities" which the Holy Father mentions in Summorum Pontificum.

Victory! Europe Has Seen the Triumph of Secularism! Christianity is comatose!

The thing is Europe is incurably sad. Something in the Plan doesn't seem to be working. Here's hoping Europe wakes up from the bad dream and returns to the Faith.

...and faith can mean nothing without God

Hey! See you in Colorado Springs in August!

I'll also be in Amarillo, Sacramento, the Atlanta area, and in Britain and Ireland this fall. If you are curious if I'll be in your area, just check my calendar. I keep it updated.

Bush: I have never authorized torture and besides I'm quitting authorizing it now

Small print: Of course, as Decider, I still get to decide what torture is. Basically, whatever I authorize is not torture. That should clear things up. Now pipe down.

Meanwhile, Evangelicals start to jump ship.

Where the Catherine of Siena Institute Came from and What We Were Trying to Do

I still believe all of this:

Our Vision:
That we would be a Catholic community that nurtures the faith and gifts of lay Catholics, enabling them to become effective, committed disciples of Jesus Christ who have discerned and are living out their God-given mission in life.

Our Values:

1. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to have a living, growing, love relationship with God.

2. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be excited Christian activists.

3. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be knowledgeable about their faith, the Scriptures, the doctrinal and moral teachings of the church, and the history of the Church.

4. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to know what their charisms of service are and to be using them effectively in the fulfillment of their vocation or call in life.

5. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to know that they have a vocation/mission in life (primarily in the secular world) given to them by God. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be actively engaged in discerning and living this vocation.

6. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to have the fellowship of other committed lay Catholics available to them, to encourage, nurture, and discern as they attempt to follow Jesus.

7. It is NORMAL for the local parish to function consciously as a house of formation for lay Catholics which enables and empowers lay Catholics to do #1-6 above.

A reader writes:

I wanted to let you know that I found your recent article on the state of the Catholic Church on Catholic Exchange very interesting. Actually, as a revert to the faith for five years now, I have struggled with this issue because I have such a great, and growing by the day, relationship with our Lord, that when I see others take the faith for granted or sin at will without thinking about it, it drives me nuts. Your article at least shows that you see this too, but try not to let it get you down and understand that this is part of who we are as humans, unfortunate as it is, but true.

With that in mind though, I guess I have a couple issues that may or may not be something you could expand upon. Why does the Church leadership not use Mt. 18 if that is a role designated to her. Some of this sin that goes on, keeping it in context of what you describe in your letter, is just ridiculous for not being addressed. I am referring to the openness of some to intentionally rebel against Church teaching in a lot of ways and not quiet about it (e.g. contraception, abortion supporters, gay rights, etc.).

Also, my wife, non-Catholic, sees so much of the sin and although intrigued with the Church, just does not see a true spirit in so many Catholics because of the massive sins. One incident that is very close to us in a family friend entering the Church while living with her then-fiancee, and now leaving the Church to marry another guy, who is divorced, and living with him. Living by example means a lot as the Church is always saying to us laity to "preach the Gospel at all time- if necessary, use words." Obviously, because of her lack of fruit, one would have to say that she unlikely did not have the Spirit of Christ in her then and now as the Catechism explains (CCC 837 ). Any thoughts on this issue?

The Church's task is the salvation of the entire human race. It's a huge job. If the Church started kicking out (just to name the criteria you happened to mention) everybody who has problems with her teaching on contraception, abortion and homosexuality, that would essentially mean the expulsion of most of the people in the Western world the Church is trying to save. If she tightened up more and also kicked out, say, everybody who rejects her social teaching on just war, the use of torture, and the obligations of the state and the market to provide for the common good, that would get rid another large number.

The Church is not designed to be a reducing valve whose job is to keep out the unworthy. It is the Great Net, as Jesus describes it, designed to catch all the fish, good and bad. They don't get sorted till the End. Excommunication is, and has always been, as radical and as rare as amputation.

As to your friend, she retains free will. It's just not the case that her failure (or the failure of any Catholic) means that the Church is false. It doesn't even mean that your friend did not have the Spirit of Christ. You and I have no idea what psychological or emotional issues might be driving her choices. In all such situations, Christ says to us, "What is that to thee? Follow thou me." Our job is not to use the sins of Catholics as an excuse for ignoring the gospel, but to obey Christ. He will be her Judge, not us.

Mary's Aggies on the New Vatican City State Website

I agree with David Morrison

What's being overlooked about the discernment process is that it's a discernment process, not a machine. I've long believed that mere Same Sex Attraction is not, by itself, a sufficient disqualifier for the priesthood. Indeed, I think the Church is losing an opportunity here because what the gay community and the world desperately need to see model is a man with SSA who models a faithful life of discipleship. Such people do exist, as David Morrison's example eloquently attests. I think it's a mistake and an injustice for the discernment process to bar men like Morrison or Belgau, who fidelity to the Church's teaching is tested and proven, from the chance to model the graces they have received in a pastoral way. This is, unfortunately one of the many effect of the The Situation. Institutions tend to clamp down unjustly when, in the past, they were unjustly lax.

I haven't seen "Bella"

But a reader is enthusiastic and sends along this article on the film.

It's not my fault!

Chris Johnson keeps sending me these links, and so help me, they are funny!

So Depressing

Unfortunately, Captain Kirk, there are Kobayashi Maru scenarios.

A reader writes:

Mark, you have some sort of weird voodoo powers. I am appointing you head Juju Man of St. Blog's.

As if on cue, Glenn Reynolds yesterday approvingly excerpted a law review article discussing the problem of deriving Ought from Is, thus siding with Ramesh Ponnuru (!) over Andrew Sullivan** in the Ought/Is debate.

A portion of the article:

That does not mean, of course, that God exists, or existing, bothers to
evaluate your activities. He may not, literally or figuratively, give a
damn. It is just that if He does exist (whether or not He cares), as an
intellectual matter your problem of normative grounding would be solved. No
more would ethical imperatives consist merely of human beliefs, intuited in
privacy, perhaps validated by wide sharing or whatever, but just mortal
opinions nonetheless. A belief in God and His will would solve the Gödel
problem and would avoid the necessary defeat visited on any attempt to
validate a system from within itself.

Reynolds:

"The older I get, the more profound this seems."

Somewhat-nominal Presbyterian Glenn Reynolds may be discerning his way
towards a closer relationship with Christ. Prayers are in order, I believe.

**There's surely a worthy further discussion of how Sullivan is attempting
to derive Ought without God. Sullivan, of course, is torn: he has faith in
Christ, but he doesn't like some of God's laws. It appears that he figures
that if he can create an equally valid moral code without God, then he
doesn't have to follow God's code. I'm going to take a wild guess here and
speculate that the principal difference between God's law and Sullivan's law
is their respective treatment of homosexuality. But I could be wrong.

My Awesome Dumb Luck Powers are in full fettle. Reynolds is on to something of course, not because of my juju, but because there is only one conceivable way to derive Ought from Is: through a God who is both Lawgiver* and Creator. You are, of course, right that what flummoxes Sullivan's utterly confused attempts to think about this is that he doesn't like part of what God has to say. None of us does. However, every attempt to create a theory of morality without God or with only the bits of moral teaching we like is doomed to failure in the end.

Let us indeed pray for Reynolds, who seems to be getting it.

*The trick about "law" of course is that it is ultimately analogical language. The Law is a sort of image of Christ. It shows us who Christ is, but it cannot make us like him (see the Epistle to the Romans). So the goal is not the Law. Rather, the goal of the law is to lead us to Christ. Salvation does not come from Following the Rules. Nor are The Rules greater than God. Rather, salvation comes from union with the Blessed Trinity through Christ, who makes us into creatures whose life is qualitatively like his own--and therefore more and more perfectly expressive of what the law describes: namely, perfect love of God and neighbor.

I wrote a little editorial on the CDF document for the Seattle PI

A Public Service Announcement from Fr. Robert Carr

Now you know!

The great mystery is why Dale Price is frittering away his life making good money as a lawyer when he could be living near the edge of poverty as a writer like me

More Fisking Greatness from the Master.

Ross Douthat on Our President's Messianic Delusions

When a calm, measured soul like Ross Douthat starts to lose patience, you know you've made some serious blunders.

There's a follow up here.

For all your infallibility needs!

Aimee Milburn has a nice piece on infallibility.

My own take on infallibility is here and here.

More on "You Cannot Derive 'Ought' from 'is'"

A reader writes:

I just finished reading a fascinating piece from Touchstone magazine written by J. Budziszewski, whose writing I'm certain you know.

About 1/3 of the way into the article, J.B. makes a very powerful case FORthe "logical fallacy" of positing an "ought" from an "is", specifically regarding the purpose of human sexual powers. I point this out only because I know you sometimes use this philosophical argument to point out the flawed reasoning behind atheistic writers like Dawkins and Hitchens. As a conservative Catholic young man, I agree with you completely on your stands against their atheism, but I found it powerful to read someone like J. Budziszewski, an orthodox Catholic and philosophical whiz by any measure, essentially proving that the ought from is positing is not necessarily a logical fallacy at all, and indeed the disputation of that line of thinking is essential to supporting aspects of the Natural Law concerning human sexuality.

In any event, not wishing to argue with you or ruffle feathers, but rather wishing to warn you that one line of argumentation you sometimes use against radical atheists may not be able to stand on its own. Not being the most philosophically-inclined soul around, I would be interested to hear your take/reaction to his line of reasoning and whether or not it conflicts with your own vis-a-vis the aggressive atheist authors.

Budziszewski is great and I, of course, agree with him. But then, I believe in natural law and a sacramental universe whose Telos is God. Atheist reject all these things. They are not part of the "Is" that they mean when they are talking about what sort of universe they live in. Instead, the atheist universe is one in which the only conceivable meaning or purpose is one which we arbitrarily assign to it. And our arbitrary act is, itself, simply the product of wind and weather which is ultimately no more significant than any other mere physical event (and all events are mere physical events in a materialist universe). In such a universe, you cannot derive Ought from Is because there is no God there who is, at once, Lawgiver and Creator. The "moral law" is just a fantasy projected on the flux of matter and energy by some deluded relatives of the chimp, much as the zodiac is a projection on some random arrangements of balls of hydrogen. God is the only way to make the connection of Ought and Is. Atheists exclude him in their theory (though they often exploit the connection between Creation and Law in their rhetoric just as they often exploit the idea of God as Telos in their constant appeals to evolution "designing" this and that organism to achieve some end that the organism could not possibly seek on its own. "X parasite was doing this to bees, *so* the bee evolved Y trait to defeat the parasite." From a theistic perspective, all this sounds like somebody complimenting the stereo speakers for being brilliant composers.

Cindy Sheehan Wears Out Her Welcome

She has outlived her usefulness to the Daily Kos.

English Children Found to Be Human

What is so heartening about the questions below is that they show again that the impulse to seek answers to such things is ineradicable from the human soul. This is the healthy paganism of childhood that is as instinctive to the human person as the physical desire of an infant to suckle. All normal people ask such questions because all people are made by God to desire union with him. What is depressing is that the English education is more or less designed to stamp out, extirpate, and/or direct the seeker to false answers to these questions. It is so successful that English parents said these questions are "unanswerable".

The research among 1,500 parents and children aged eight to 12 was carried out by publishers Dorling Kindersley for its Eyewitness Guides for youngsters. It showed that children are asking their parents about the origin of God, life after death, the creation of the universe.

Twenty questions parents said were unanswerable.

1.Does God exist?

2.Has God got a beard?

3.Is there life after death?

4.If God made us who made God?

5.What does God look like?

6.Why is the world here?

7.Who created God?

8.Why are people bad to each other?

9.Why are we here? Am I real or is this just a dream?

10.If God is everywhere why do we have to go to church to see him?

11.Why can't we ring God up?

12.Why does Easter change its dates each year?

13.Why is God all around us?

14.Why is there a world?

15.Why is there so much war in the world?

16.Why do we have wars?

17.Why do I believe in one God while my Hindu friend believes in lots and is my God the same as my Jewish friends?

18.Do you know why Jesus wept?

19.Who made the universe?

20.Does God have a mum?

As a Catholic, I think I will have a go at this:

1.Yes.

2.Yes, God the Son has a beard. God the Father has no body.

3.Yes. Jesus Christ rose from the dead and promised that we would be with him in his Father's house to live eternally.

4.No one made God. He is self-existent from all eternity.

5.God looks like Jesus Christ. If you have seen him, you have seen the Father, says Jesus.

6.The world is here because it was God's good pleasure to make it. Most of all it was his good pleasure to make *you*, whom he has had in his heart since before the beginning of the world. You were invited into existence so that you and he and all his saints could be happy forever with him in heaven.

7.No one created God. God is the Creator. Everything you see around you is made of "creature stuff", so it's natural to think that everything that is (including God) is also made of "creature stuff". But God is not "made" of anything. God is "eternal stuff". Creatures "have" being that they borrow temporarily from God. God *is* Being.

8.People are bad to each other because they love themselves more than they love God or other people. When you do that, and other people or God get in the way of something you want, you hurt the other people and God to get it. It's called "sin".

9.You are here (and you are very real) because God loves you so much he made you especially for himself (and for us who also love you no matter what, forever and ever). You are here to get to know God, to learn to love him and live out his life in this world so that you can get ready for the perfect happiness of heaven. Jesus is your teacher and helper through his Church, the sacraments, and through the people you love and are loved by.

10.Mom and I always love you no matter where you are, but it's better when we can give you a hug and a kiss and enjoy talking with you. Church is where God talks to us through the Bible. Sacraments are the kisses of God. And the liturgy is the way we learn how to exercise our bodies and souls so that we can go out stronger to meet God in the world and serve him in people.

11.You can. It's called "prayer".

12.Jesus was crucified on the eve of the Passover, a Jewish feast that falls on the first full moon after the beginning of Spring. Easter just follows that same calendar.

13.Because God is infinite. You can't put him in a box.

14.There is a world because God loves beauty and he loves to create, like an artist. He is so full of creativity that no one creature can express everything about him. So he created zillions of things.

15.Because people are hungry for the happiness of God, but they don't want to put themselves after God. So they try to steal that happiness by beating up their neighbors. If that sounds crazy, it's because it is. Sin is basically crazy.

16.See above.

17.You believe in one God because you are blessed to live in a place where the Good News was accepted and took root. The Good News was that God everybody has been looking for had become the man Jesus Christ, died for our sins, and rose from the dead so that we could defeat sin and death. Everybody in the world is seeking him (which is why you are asking these questions). But because we are also limited and (especially because our thinking gets gummed up by sin) people have lost track of him and sometimes tried to make up stories about "gods" who are more like Big People with Magic Powers. Storytelling is a great thing, and even some of the stories reflect some real truths about the real God. But if people start believing the stories to be true, it can cause a lot of problems. That's why God said not to believe in any God but him.

He said that to the Jewish people, who were the first people that he revealed himself to. They are still his special people today. Most Jews don't believe that Jesus (who is himself a Jew) is also God. But though they don't believe in him (often because Christians have been very mean to them), God is still faithful to the covenant (that means "agreement") he made with them and he promises that one day they will realize that Jesus is who he says he is. Till then, we are to love our Jewish friends because they are sort of like our Older Brothers and Sisters since they were the first to hear the word of God.

18.He wept because he was angry at death. He was so angry that he fought it and beat it so that we could live forever.

19.God.

20.Yes. Her name is Mary.

Fr. Rob Johansen Asks the Musical Question...

"Why Doesn't the Pope Do Something About Bad Bishops?"

More discussion of this can be found here.

Technological Messianism

Glenn Reynolds is the blogosphere's resident libertarian transhumanist. We owe him a debt for leading the charge in making the blogosphere an important counterweight to the Usual Stuff from the mainstream media. But Catholics should also proceed with caution. He has the naive faith of an 18th Century Enlightenment philosophe that science is a straight line onward and upward and he can't wait to become the first Borg. Of course, being a libertarian he doesn't want the collective part. In fact, he has (borrowing a riff from the Christian tradition) a faith in the triumph of the Little Guy, along with a deep belief that liberation will come, not through the gospel, but through technology.

He is certainly right that technology has made it possible for the little guy to exert more power than ever before. The blogosphere is Exhibit A, as Dan Rather will tell you. Anybody with a computer can now, if he likes, be a one-man publishing house, radio station, and TV cable company. As somebody who likes free speech, I think that's a good thing.

However, there is another side that Reynolds tends to overlook: original sin. It's the parable of Forbidden Planet: technology liberates the Little Guy to follow hiw Inner Beast and allow Everything to be expressed. It would be nice if the human race were all Jeffersonian Yeoman Farmers who simply wanted to brew beer, play rock and roll, and talk about liberty through technology. However, if even a small percentage of us are, say, inclined to use technology to destroy the World Trade Center, technology makes it easier and easier and easier for small numbers of us to do just that. What Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini could not have done with all the marshalled power of three mighty nation-states, a small handful of men were able to do six years ago because a vast technological endowment had empowered these soi-disant "Davids" to slay "Goliath".

Indeed, it is probably not a very hard thing to imagine that virtually every terrorist and nutjob will, in his own self-description, regard himself as a brave David standing up to the Goliath of [insert pet radical cause here: animal rights/American imperialism/the Zionist Menace/Rain Forest Destruction, English Cooking etc.] In every case, technology will allow a smaller and smaller group that perceives itself as outnumbered and outgunned to inflict greater and greater violence on more and more vast numbers of innocent people--and pat itself on the back for its courage and cunning in outwitting the Giant.

So far as I can see, the principal option the Giant has is to stop being Goliath and start being Leviathan: a process we have already begun. That process will also involve heavy investment in technology, as well as the sacrifice of rights for safety. We seem to be very ready to make those sacrifices, given our eagerness comfort with allowing the Executive the power to detain anybody he likes, for as long as he likes, and subject them to whatever torture he likes. And if we do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?

So I think Reynolds' Salvation Through Technology schema will, like all such false hopes, fall on hard times that will shock and surprise anybody who has forgotten the doctrine of the fall. Fallen man is always the Gen. George McClellan of the Cosmic Battle. The devil can reliably say of him what Porter Alexander, an artillerist in Robert E. Lee’s army said of General McClellan after the devastating Union slaughter at Antietam's pyrrhic victory: namely, that though he brought his greatly superior forces to fight, “he brought himself also.”

This is not to say we will be ultimately defeated. It is to say that only through death to that fallen Man and resurrection in Christ can we win that Battle. With fallen man, even our triumphs are defeats. With Christ, even our defeats are triumphs.

If only figure skater coaches could marry...

My Pal Elias Crim has a Great Piece on Catholic Exchange Today

Nobody Would be Happier Than Me to See Cdl. Mahony Go

...but it's not gonna happen. Why not? Two reasons: First, from all appearances, the standing policy of Rome is not to micromanage particular Churches (meaning "local dioceses and archdioceses") unless the bishop is directly involved in the abuse of victims. That's why O'Connell was removed but bishops who merely shuffled or covered up abusers are still there. This would appear to be partly due to Ut Unum Sint, which goes a long way toward articulating a role for the Pope as "first among equals" and not as an Innocent III Christian Caesar who treats all other bishops as flunkey and middle management. Rod Dreher's fantasy that the Pope could remove the American Episcopacy with "the stroke of a pen" was always fantasy.

The Pope can remove bishops for malfeasance, but this leads to the second point, namely that if we laypeople (who do after all own all the guns, run all the courts, and hold the keys to all the jails) do not see fit to, you know, convict Mahony of anything, then it becomes sort of problematic for the Pope (who is supposed be even more merciful than the courts) to just kick him out.

So, self-serving yutz though he is, Mahony will not be going anywhere, I'm afraid. I don't like that too much. But I'm not especially surprised. But since, on the whole, I prefer my Church merciful rather than vengeful, I'll live with it.