I will be getting scarce now
I've got stuff to write today, and tomorrow we are having a Family Day which will pretty much keep us busy all day what with visits to the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Flight, and other forms of Kid Adventure offered in guilty compensation for the fact that I will be an Absentee Dad for almost two weeks. It's my farewell to the fambly before I head off to England and Ireland early on Friday morning, where I will be till I get back on Nov. 14. If you happen to be reading Across the Pond and you want to know when I will be in your area of the UK, go here.
I will try to check in as I can from Europe. Till then, you kids don't put no beans up your noses!
Oh! And please don't send me blog links while I'm gone. They will all be fossilized by the time I return.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
One of the ways the world wobbles and calls it "Progress"...
is for zealous youth to get tired of being patronized by condescending adults. This is the dynamic that is playing out as Generation Narcissus gets old and can no longer claim exclusive rights to the "We're the Next Generation and We've Got Somethin' to Say" narrative established by the Monkees and the Spirit of Vatican II. So when the rising generation rediscovers how much got trashed in the Revolution of Grooviness that Failed, they get ticked and are highly likely to push in the opposite direction. Some of that push is healthy as young Catholics labor to be a witness to the Faith instead of listening to Generation Narcissus counsels of despair couched in the soft comfy lies of the dictatorship of relativism.
But the ever-present danger is that the rising generation will push so far in the opposite direction that they will turn the Faith into an iron cold system of laws and shibboleths designed to keep out the impure, the suspect, and insufficiently orthodox--which will breed another reaction in the next generation of fuzzy, squishy thinkers who want nothing to do with orthodoxy. We are a race of drunkards, perpetually climbing back up on he hose and falling off on the other side.
is for zealous youth to get tired of being patronized by condescending adults. This is the dynamic that is playing out as Generation Narcissus gets old and can no longer claim exclusive rights to the "We're the Next Generation and We've Got Somethin' to Say" narrative established by the Monkees and the Spirit of Vatican II. So when the rising generation rediscovers how much got trashed in the Revolution of Grooviness that Failed, they get ticked and are highly likely to push in the opposite direction. Some of that push is healthy as young Catholics labor to be a witness to the Faith instead of listening to Generation Narcissus counsels of despair couched in the soft comfy lies of the dictatorship of relativism.
But the ever-present danger is that the rising generation will push so far in the opposite direction that they will turn the Faith into an iron cold system of laws and shibboleths designed to keep out the impure, the suspect, and insufficiently orthodox--which will breed another reaction in the next generation of fuzzy, squishy thinkers who want nothing to do with orthodoxy. We are a race of drunkards, perpetually climbing back up on he hose and falling off on the other side.
Breck Girl Scratches Out Lady Macbeth's Eyes
The spectacle of John Edwards and Hillary arguing about who is more duplicitous and full of phoney rhetoric is delicious.
As the Bride of the Triangulator continues her claw to the top by saying Anything, the also-rans make the Dem circus fun by weighing in the really heavy issues such as the need for full disclosure about Roswell.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the government policy on terrorism is driven by Bruce Willis action movie scenarios in which ticking time bombs are an ever-present threat, but a state in which Caesar is empwered to detain anybody he likes as an enemy combatant and torture them is a guarantee of our safety. Under this regime, we have already witnessed the corruption of the AG office under the catastrophic Alberto Gonzales. Now we are in the process of checking out the new guy--Michael Mukasey. He tells us he's against torture (hey! everybody in this Administration says that). But he also tells us he's incapable of figuring out whether waterboarding is torture.
The Wall Street Journal (aka Pravda for the Rubber Hose Right) helpfully jumps into the fray at this point and cheerfully informs us that not only is waterboarding not torture, it's probably not even cruel inhuman or degrading. Because, if it were, then the chances of getting another human cipher and sycophant as a rubber stamp for Bush war crimes would be diminished, and we might have to question whether the evil, stupid, sinful, counter-productive policies of the Bush Administration have meant disastrously bad news for America in the war with Radical Islam. and what's more important? That we fight justly and successfully, or that the GOP retain power?
Meanwhile, somebody who actually know more about waterboarding than what they can imagine as they sit in the air-conditioned offices of the Journal writes:
One of the many bullshit arguments used by Bush Torture Apologists (and regurgitated just today by the Isvestia of the Rubber Hose Right) is the attempt to say that *because* we subject our own troops to waterboarding in preparation for the torture techniques inflicted by our enemies, it therefore follows that these are not torture techniques.
Other bullshit arguments include "It's not torture if it doesn't leave a mark" (tell that to a rape victim) or "It's not torture if it doesn't shock the conscience" (translation: hire more sociopaths to do your dirty work. They sleep like a baby after a good day's work with the cold cell or the taser.)
One unfortunate side effect about all this "How close can we tiptoe to mortal sin without crossing the line" bullshit is that it tends to focus on waterboarding as the ne plus ultra of torture--as though nothing could be worse. That's largely because, as a visual culture driven by images on TV and in the movies, waterboarding is a conveniently cinematic form of torture. So the Wall Street Journal and National Review, like the Administration that give them their cues on how to bullshit the public about war crimes, focuses the discussion there in their ongoing effort to sell the Big Lie.
But when you fall for that strategy, it becomes fatally easy for Torture Apologists to then say, "But nobody dies from waterboarding" as though that makes it okay. The point to be made is a) "not dying" is hardly evidence of humane treatment and b) we actually *have* murdered other prisoners using less cinematic techniques.
But, of course, the real point, which nobody is yet addressing, is not "How close can we get to mortal sin without crossing the line?" Nor is it to heed the voice of Satan (as some on the Machiavellian neocon Right urge) when he says, "Sometimes you just have to enter into evil and do things you know to be morally wrong for the Greater Good?"
No, the real question is "How do we treat prisoners humanely and get the intelligence we need?" The fact that we don't believe that's even a question worth considering, and move *immediately* to the insistence that war crimes are a vital part of the President's "toolbox" for fighting the war on terror, shows conclusively that we, as a nation, do't really believe God when he tells us that mortal sin is never justifiable and is always going to harm us.
That's why both parties are so screwed up. The Dems made that decision with Roe and now find themselves led by people who are hollow shells. The Right is embracing mortal sin for similarly consequentialist reasons and will likewise reap the whirlwind.
The spectacle of John Edwards and Hillary arguing about who is more duplicitous and full of phoney rhetoric is delicious.
As the Bride of the Triangulator continues her claw to the top by saying Anything, the also-rans make the Dem circus fun by weighing in the really heavy issues such as the need for full disclosure about Roswell.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the government policy on terrorism is driven by Bruce Willis action movie scenarios in which ticking time bombs are an ever-present threat, but a state in which Caesar is empwered to detain anybody he likes as an enemy combatant and torture them is a guarantee of our safety. Under this regime, we have already witnessed the corruption of the AG office under the catastrophic Alberto Gonzales. Now we are in the process of checking out the new guy--Michael Mukasey. He tells us he's against torture (hey! everybody in this Administration says that). But he also tells us he's incapable of figuring out whether waterboarding is torture.
The Wall Street Journal (aka Pravda for the Rubber Hose Right) helpfully jumps into the fray at this point and cheerfully informs us that not only is waterboarding not torture, it's probably not even cruel inhuman or degrading. Because, if it were, then the chances of getting another human cipher and sycophant as a rubber stamp for Bush war crimes would be diminished, and we might have to question whether the evil, stupid, sinful, counter-productive policies of the Bush Administration have meant disastrously bad news for America in the war with Radical Islam. and what's more important? That we fight justly and successfully, or that the GOP retain power?
Meanwhile, somebody who actually know more about waterboarding than what they can imagine as they sit in the air-conditioned offices of the Journal writes:
As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.
One of the many bullshit arguments used by Bush Torture Apologists (and regurgitated just today by the Isvestia of the Rubber Hose Right) is the attempt to say that *because* we subject our own troops to waterboarding in preparation for the torture techniques inflicted by our enemies, it therefore follows that these are not torture techniques.
Other bullshit arguments include "It's not torture if it doesn't leave a mark" (tell that to a rape victim) or "It's not torture if it doesn't shock the conscience" (translation: hire more sociopaths to do your dirty work. They sleep like a baby after a good day's work with the cold cell or the taser.)
One unfortunate side effect about all this "How close can we tiptoe to mortal sin without crossing the line" bullshit is that it tends to focus on waterboarding as the ne plus ultra of torture--as though nothing could be worse. That's largely because, as a visual culture driven by images on TV and in the movies, waterboarding is a conveniently cinematic form of torture. So the Wall Street Journal and National Review, like the Administration that give them their cues on how to bullshit the public about war crimes, focuses the discussion there in their ongoing effort to sell the Big Lie.
But when you fall for that strategy, it becomes fatally easy for Torture Apologists to then say, "But nobody dies from waterboarding" as though that makes it okay. The point to be made is a) "not dying" is hardly evidence of humane treatment and b) we actually *have* murdered other prisoners using less cinematic techniques.
But, of course, the real point, which nobody is yet addressing, is not "How close can we get to mortal sin without crossing the line?" Nor is it to heed the voice of Satan (as some on the Machiavellian neocon Right urge) when he says, "Sometimes you just have to enter into evil and do things you know to be morally wrong for the Greater Good?"
No, the real question is "How do we treat prisoners humanely and get the intelligence we need?" The fact that we don't believe that's even a question worth considering, and move *immediately* to the insistence that war crimes are a vital part of the President's "toolbox" for fighting the war on terror, shows conclusively that we, as a nation, do't really believe God when he tells us that mortal sin is never justifiable and is always going to harm us.
That's why both parties are so screwed up. The Dems made that decision with Roe and now find themselves led by people who are hollow shells. The Right is embracing mortal sin for similarly consequentialist reasons and will likewise reap the whirlwind.
Murder Inc Gets the Jitters
A reader sends along the following letter received by a 40 Days for Life participant who is on the Planned Parenthood mailing list;
I like it when Planned Parenthood is in crisis. I will like it even better when the Barad-dur at the heart of our civilization crumbles and falls under the hammer blows of Almighty God--as sooner or later it shall.
A reader sends along the following letter received by a 40 Days for Life participant who is on the Planned Parenthood mailing list;
If ever there was a time to increase our prayer efforts, it is now. God is
answering our prayers. Have faith! Look at the way our 40 Days campaign is
effecting Planned Parenthood:*:: Last month,* they tried to keep our clinic closed in Aurora, Illinois.
*:: Last week,* they singled us out for federal de-funding.
*:: This month,* we're in the middle of their "40 Days for Life" protests at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.
*:: Today,* they've got their sights set on making it impossible for many women and families to get reproductive health care — in Kansas, and across the country.
*We need your help. Click here — and thank
you.*
Dear [Name],
It's pouring here at Planned Parenthood.
Specifically, right this minute, it's pouring in Kansas, where a particularly venomous district attorney has just filed 107 baseless charges against Planned Parenthood in court. And today, the anti-choice fringe is asking Congress to suspend $300 million in federal funding for our affiliates' health care services until the case is settled.
Unbelievable. *Please help.*
Today's news comes on the heels of an unprecedented series of attacks on Planned Parenthood.
Last week, the rain fell on us in Washington, DC, where one U.S. senator called us out by name in an amendment that would have limited birth control funding for health centers like ours.
Throughout this month, the anti-choice fringe is showering our clinics with protesters during its "40 Days for Life" campaign, which our own Emily X is documenting in painfully vivid pictures and videos *here*.
And then, there's President Bush's appointment last week of an anti-birth control hardliner to be in charge of U.S. family planning policy. And let's not forget our epic fight in Illinois last month to open our Aurora health center. (Thank you for your support then, too!)
This unprecedented storm — these attacks on Planned Parenthood and the women we serve — are relentless, and are on the move across the country with no signs of stopping.
We've been at this work for more than 90 years, and if there's one thing we've learned, it's when to ask for help. And it's now. *We need your help right now.*
Here's what you should know about Kansas, where we most need your support today:
First, it is especially hard to provide reproductive health care in Kansas, and the people who run our clinics there are among the most committed I've ever met. The opposition they face every day is astounding.
The local district attorney who filed these charges has spent nearly his entire career trying to shut down Planned Parenthood. He hasn't succeeded, nor will he succeed now.
But he is succeeding in turning what's happening in Kansas into a national effort to shut us down. Even worse, he's diverting much-needed resources from serving women to mounting a legal defense. It makes me very angry.
Sometimes we ask you to take action, sometimes to volunteer. *Today, there is only one way to help: with money.*
We need to fight the 107 charges the local district attorney has filed. We need to keep Congress from even considering cutting $300 million in our funding. And we need to do it fast, so that we can shut down this outrageous effort before it gains any more momentum.
You can see and hear more from workers at clinics being targeted by the anti-choice "40 Days for Life" campaign on the *blog* posted by Planned Parenthood employee Emily X. As you may know, it's some tough but inspiring reading. If you have already made your pledge-a-picketer commitment on the blog, thank you — and please forward this email on to a friend.
Emily X has been signing her blog posts like this: *I am Emily X. I am Planned Parenthood.*
You know what? *You are Planned Parenthood, too.*
Thank you for being there for us today. We'll keep you posted about how you can help as this crisis evolves.
Sincerely,
Cecile Richards
President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
I like it when Planned Parenthood is in crisis. I will like it even better when the Barad-dur at the heart of our civilization crumbles and falls under the hammer blows of Almighty God--as sooner or later it shall.
Show Me a Culture that Despises Virginity...
...and I'll show you a culture that despises children.
Hey! But we sure aren't putting them in burkas, so that makes it alright!
Rome or Carthage: pick one, you Christians! No thinking outside the box!
...and I'll show you a culture that despises children.
Hey! But we sure aren't putting them in burkas, so that makes it alright!
Rome or Carthage: pick one, you Christians! No thinking outside the box!
Some Guy Claims to Predict the Future with Cool New Math
Dunno anything about the math. We've been predicting the future with some measure of accuracy since time began. This guy basically claims he can fine tune the accuracy. Maybe so. Maybe not. That will be for be for the specialists to figue out.
Dunno anything about the math. We've been predicting the future with some measure of accuracy since time began. This guy basically claims he can fine tune the accuracy. Maybe so. Maybe not. That will be for be for the specialists to figue out.
Bold Transgressive Artist Commits Arson to Protest the Dogmatic Rigor of the Episcopalian Church
Once civilization is destroyed, "art" consists of rearranging the cinders and bragging about your transgressive courage as you mug little old ladies.
Once civilization is destroyed, "art" consists of rearranging the cinders and bragging about your transgressive courage as you mug little old ladies.
Some Advice to Moderate Muslims
In which your Blog Host suggests that moderate Muslims try some other approach than one that elicits the cry of "Gimme a break!" and makes a couple of suggestions based on Catholic common sense about the virtue of real penitence.
In which your Blog Host suggests that moderate Muslims try some other approach than one that elicits the cry of "Gimme a break!" and makes a couple of suggestions based on Catholic common sense about the virtue of real penitence.
It was Standing Room Only Last Night...
...for Fr. Robert Spitzer's discussion of the Inevitability of a Singularity in Big Bang Cosmology. 207 people showed up, which was a record for the Chesterton Society. So thanks to all who came!
We will try to get a transcript of the talk available soon. And I noticed somebody recording it, so it may wind up as an MP3 somewhere too. That's good, because part of the joy of a Spitzer talk is the sheer verve of the delivery. This is a guy who loves what he does.
Essentially his point was that the evidence is now pointing very strongly to the universe as a creation of You Know Who, and a chronicle of the various ways in which determined folk have been attempting to avoid that conclusion, only to be thrust back to reality by the sheer odds of getting a functional universe that could support life (as in "If you wrote out all the numbers the universe could not contain all the zeros" odds).
Anyway, a fun talk!
...for Fr. Robert Spitzer's discussion of the Inevitability of a Singularity in Big Bang Cosmology. 207 people showed up, which was a record for the Chesterton Society. So thanks to all who came!
We will try to get a transcript of the talk available soon. And I noticed somebody recording it, so it may wind up as an MP3 somewhere too. That's good, because part of the joy of a Spitzer talk is the sheer verve of the delivery. This is a guy who loves what he does.
Essentially his point was that the evidence is now pointing very strongly to the universe as a creation of You Know Who, and a chronicle of the various ways in which determined folk have been attempting to avoid that conclusion, only to be thrust back to reality by the sheer odds of getting a functional universe that could support life (as in "If you wrote out all the numbers the universe could not contain all the zeros" odds).
Anyway, a fun talk!
Jeremy Lott on GOP Groupthink Pigheadedness
If, in the mysterious Providence of a universe where sin makes you stupid, we freely vote ourselves into a Hillary v. Rudy election and then are appalled at the work of our hands, it will be very interesting to see what happens with Ron Paul, because for the first time in living memory it will be an election in which huge numbers of the party faithful in both sides will be stuck with a candidate they despise, as well as an alternative they despise.
Paul will still lose, of course. But the sleazy antics the GOP is engaging in to shut him down and force everybody back on to the reservation of empty suits and demagogic fearmongerers, combined with the ruthlessness of the Clinton machine, will still make a great David and Goliath story. So far, out of the entire sad spectacle of this election cycle, Paul is almost the only candidate for whom I have any respect.
"That may be a foolish approach but it's the one the Republican party and Republican activists have decided to take, and any dissenters are in for considerable trouble."
If, in the mysterious Providence of a universe where sin makes you stupid, we freely vote ourselves into a Hillary v. Rudy election and then are appalled at the work of our hands, it will be very interesting to see what happens with Ron Paul, because for the first time in living memory it will be an election in which huge numbers of the party faithful in both sides will be stuck with a candidate they despise, as well as an alternative they despise.
Paul will still lose, of course. But the sleazy antics the GOP is engaging in to shut him down and force everybody back on to the reservation of empty suits and demagogic fearmongerers, combined with the ruthlessness of the Clinton machine, will still make a great David and Goliath story. So far, out of the entire sad spectacle of this election cycle, Paul is almost the only candidate for whom I have any respect.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Which Dissenters are Correct?
Part Two of my "Tale of Two Covenants" series for the Register, on the relationship of the Old and New Covenants.
Part Two of my "Tale of Two Covenants" series for the Register, on the relationship of the Old and New Covenants.
Abortion: Corrupting Everything It Touches
Latest despicable act: Trying to turn doulas into agents of racist "Just enough of me, way too much of you" population control for all those Latina breeders.
Dawn Eden remarks:
Latest despicable act: Trying to turn doulas into agents of racist "Just enough of me, way too much of you" population control for all those Latina breeders.
Dawn Eden remarks:
Among the issues raised:
-- the targeting of abortion "doulas" to Latina women
-- the discomfort among doulas of having their "pro-life" (as one doula calls it) profession turned towards aiding and abetting abortions
-- the suggestion that women would be helped by "visualizing" their abortions in the same way that women who give birth are helped by visualizing their child going down the birth canal
-- the insinuation that doulas could convince women that abortion will not affect their fertility
-- the reluctance of some abortion advocates to promote a program that would suggest some women are not 100% happy with their abortion experience
-- the acknowledgement that women are often conscious or semiconscious during their abortions (this is ascribed to the women's "choice" -- no mention of the fact that abortion clinics often avoid general anesthesia in order to save money)
-- the references to women's "complicated" feelings on abortion (are these the same women who are so certain about the rightness their decision that they would be insulted by the offer of an ultrasound?)
Polished Post-Anglican Agnostic Hopes that Polished Post-Anglican Agnosticism Can Tut Tut Rabid New Atheists into Decorum
In reality, Dalrymple would be the first one to go before the firing squad if Hitchens had his way. His criticisms are all sound, but at the end of the day, his watery secularism and vague appreciation for "western culture" can't commit to Christ Jesus and him crucified. That's the only thing that will suffice to face the mindless hatred of a Hitchens.
In reality, Dalrymple would be the first one to go before the firing squad if Hitchens had his way. His criticisms are all sound, but at the end of the day, his watery secularism and vague appreciation for "western culture" can't commit to Christ Jesus and him crucified. That's the only thing that will suffice to face the mindless hatred of a Hitchens.
Turns Out When you Have Absolutely No Core Values Except Abortion and the Lust for Power, You Lose Focus and Can't Get Your Act Together
The Dems are a hollow shell of what they once were. And (such is the way of fallen man) the GOP is learning exactly the wrong lesson and embracing the consequentialist Machiavellian secular messianism that destroyed the Dems.
The party that once rejected the consequentialism behind Roe v. Wade used to have at its helm people that said things like this:
What? Not just opposition to torture but to "other inhuman treatment"? Something that looks like an actual attempt to obey the Church's demand that prisoners be treated humanely, and not endless hairsplitting about how we can tiptoe right up to torturing people without technically, legally, precisely having to call it, you know, torture?
Thankfully, those days are gone. Now we have the best ethicist money can buy writing in the Wall Street Journal not only is waterboarding not torture, it isn't even clearly "cruel, inhuman or degrading".
In this, of course, they are simply following the lead of our Vice President who informs us that this is all just "dunking" and our President, who lyingly assures us that "We do not torture".
Somebody needs to send a strongly-worded note to the curators of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia, because they have very rudely displayed this painting
which gives the clear impression that waterboarding was some kind of war crime. That kind of Bush Derangement Syndrome is anti-American.
Maybe the Dems will eventually be able to formulate a coherent sentence about all this. But since they decided over thirty years ago that murdering babies was okay if you did it for the Greater Good, I'm not going to hold my breath. I expect that God will have to let natural consequences play out as the GOP enmeshes itself more deeply in its Faustian bargain. I hope America survives those consequences.
The Dems are a hollow shell of what they once were. And (such is the way of fallen man) the GOP is learning exactly the wrong lesson and embracing the consequentialist Machiavellian secular messianism that destroyed the Dems.
The party that once rejected the consequentialism behind Roe v. Wade used to have at its helm people that said things like this:
"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiations of the Convention [Against Torture]. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today," - President Ronald Reagan, 1988.
What? Not just opposition to torture but to "other inhuman treatment"? Something that looks like an actual attempt to obey the Church's demand that prisoners be treated humanely, and not endless hairsplitting about how we can tiptoe right up to torturing people without technically, legally, precisely having to call it, you know, torture?
Thankfully, those days are gone. Now we have the best ethicist money can buy writing in the Wall Street Journal not only is waterboarding not torture, it isn't even clearly "cruel, inhuman or degrading".
In this, of course, they are simply following the lead of our Vice President who informs us that this is all just "dunking" and our President, who lyingly assures us that "We do not torture".
Somebody needs to send a strongly-worded note to the curators of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia, because they have very rudely displayed this painting
which gives the clear impression that waterboarding was some kind of war crime. That kind of Bush Derangement Syndrome is anti-American.
Maybe the Dems will eventually be able to formulate a coherent sentence about all this. But since they decided over thirty years ago that murdering babies was okay if you did it for the Greater Good, I'm not going to hold my breath. I expect that God will have to let natural consequences play out as the GOP enmeshes itself more deeply in its Faustian bargain. I hope America survives those consequences.
The Future Isn't What it Used to Be
This
reminds me of
this.
The guy at the first link is right. The odd thing about America is that our whole system of government is predicated on a faith in the Fall. That's why we have checks and balances: because nobody can be trusted with too much power. The moment fallen man is given power is the moment he is tempted to forget what the power is for and start using it to acquire more power, no matter what it takes. And, just in case you are wondering, "Does this have dark implications for America since we are the sole superpower on earth?" the answer is "Yes."
The tension in American culture has always been between Jeffersonian cockeyed optimism and Madisonian realism. Our governmental institutions are founded on the belief that you cannot trust people with power. Our culture is founded more and more on faith in The Wisdom of the Common Man. That, by itself, is not a bad balance. But in the 20th century, there have been fewer and fewer Madisonian voices and more and more flatterers. Our entire advertising industry is all about giving you moral permission to indulge yourself because You Deserve It. Religion has, to a large extent, also been co-opted by the flattery industry. God is crazy about you because you That Sort of Chap. Joel Osteen is the Face of American Protestantism. Jonathan Edwards, not so much. Catholics are afflicted with the Church of Aren't We Fabulous where it's always the Feast of St. Narcissus. Our Manufacturers of Culture are constantly playing to our vanity. And a theology of the Fall is highly inconvenient to this project. It's "guilt manipulation". It's "hatriotism". We want to hear about how wonderful we are, how wronged we've been, how much everybody owes us, how powerful we are.
Pavel Chichikov is fond of pointing out that the Sacrifice of Christ was not necessitated because of our failure to use the wrong fork at dinner. Our species is in a desperate plight--even the American members--and Jesus endured nothing less than was absolutely necessary to rescue us from that plight. A culture that forgets it comes of a fallen race is a culture that is doomed to play out out the Fall again. That's why the chipper optimism of The Rev. Carl M. Reinert, S.J., president, The Creighton University circa 1957:
is so blackly funny. There is much that is still good and great in America. But it is preserved, paradoxically, by the Madisonian conviction that Americans, like everybody else, cannot be trusted to be good and great. As we become increasingly a culture that says, "Not to you, not to you, O Lord, but to my name give glory" we become increasingly a culture that calls the inhabitant of this prison "free" and has not the slightest idea how to get her or itself out of the dungeon of the dictatoriship of relativism. So we eat popcorn and watch the train wreck. We boast about her and our Bratz wannabes not wearing burkas as they blaspheme, like that makes it all great and glorious. But the truth is, we don't have any more clue how to escape the prison than she does, because we don't know what's good anymore beyond arbitrary license to do whatever I want--just as long as it doesn't hurt other people I regard as people worthy of not being hurt. God is already well out of that circle, which is why blasphemy is no big deal. But blasphemy always leads to oppression because the culture that today is willing to blaspheme the God who is goodness is tomorrow willing to blaspheme the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the weak and the powerless--and pride itself on its daring "transgressiveness".
This
reminds me of
this.
The guy at the first link is right. The odd thing about America is that our whole system of government is predicated on a faith in the Fall. That's why we have checks and balances: because nobody can be trusted with too much power. The moment fallen man is given power is the moment he is tempted to forget what the power is for and start using it to acquire more power, no matter what it takes. And, just in case you are wondering, "Does this have dark implications for America since we are the sole superpower on earth?" the answer is "Yes."
The tension in American culture has always been between Jeffersonian cockeyed optimism and Madisonian realism. Our governmental institutions are founded on the belief that you cannot trust people with power. Our culture is founded more and more on faith in The Wisdom of the Common Man. That, by itself, is not a bad balance. But in the 20th century, there have been fewer and fewer Madisonian voices and more and more flatterers. Our entire advertising industry is all about giving you moral permission to indulge yourself because You Deserve It. Religion has, to a large extent, also been co-opted by the flattery industry. God is crazy about you because you That Sort of Chap. Joel Osteen is the Face of American Protestantism. Jonathan Edwards, not so much. Catholics are afflicted with the Church of Aren't We Fabulous where it's always the Feast of St. Narcissus. Our Manufacturers of Culture are constantly playing to our vanity. And a theology of the Fall is highly inconvenient to this project. It's "guilt manipulation". It's "hatriotism". We want to hear about how wonderful we are, how wronged we've been, how much everybody owes us, how powerful we are.
Pavel Chichikov is fond of pointing out that the Sacrifice of Christ was not necessitated because of our failure to use the wrong fork at dinner. Our species is in a desperate plight--even the American members--and Jesus endured nothing less than was absolutely necessary to rescue us from that plight. A culture that forgets it comes of a fallen race is a culture that is doomed to play out out the Fall again. That's why the chipper optimism of The Rev. Carl M. Reinert, S.J., president, The Creighton University circa 1957:
Speaking as a clergyman may I dare to predict that after passing through a decade or so of ultra materialistic living we Americans will once again set our sights on things of higher worth and will come to appreciate the greater worth of spiritual values and, though we may find it necessary to defend our position at the cost of many lives, there will stand among us as monuments to our sacred beliefs ancient and new edifices of worship, proclaiming to all who may threaten our borders that it is still God in whom we trust and His Son in whom we find our promise of salvation.
At the turn of the century we will yet be America the beautiful, America the land of progress, America the stronghold of culture -- the United States of America, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
is so blackly funny. There is much that is still good and great in America. But it is preserved, paradoxically, by the Madisonian conviction that Americans, like everybody else, cannot be trusted to be good and great. As we become increasingly a culture that says, "Not to you, not to you, O Lord, but to my name give glory" we become increasingly a culture that calls the inhabitant of this prison "free" and has not the slightest idea how to get her or itself out of the dungeon of the dictatoriship of relativism. So we eat popcorn and watch the train wreck. We boast about her and our Bratz wannabes not wearing burkas as they blaspheme, like that makes it all great and glorious. But the truth is, we don't have any more clue how to escape the prison than she does, because we don't know what's good anymore beyond arbitrary license to do whatever I want--just as long as it doesn't hurt other people I regard as people worthy of not being hurt. God is already well out of that circle, which is why blasphemy is no big deal. But blasphemy always leads to oppression because the culture that today is willing to blaspheme the God who is goodness is tomorrow willing to blaspheme the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the weak and the powerless--and pride itself on its daring "transgressiveness".
Paul Abela, the Development Manager for Campion College in Australia, writes:
Thanks for the note! I am hugely fond of Aussies and Australia and I love that you guys are taking the bull by the horns and creating something good where none exists. Very much in the Aussie spirit! Thanks for your good work!
I have just finished reading your article on the Apostate University which was published in the October edition of Catholic World Report (CWR). Being in Australia, our edition tends to arrive slightly later.
Campion College is the first college of its kind in Australia. We are the first ever Catholic Liberal Arts college in Australia. It was formed by a group of important Australian Catholics who felt, as you felt in your article, that the direction that Catholic Higher education was heading in was simply wrong. You will be pleased to know that our academic staff take an oath to uphold the magisterium of the church and our guiding light is Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
I also thought I would let you know that our President, Father John Fleming is currently in the United States preparing to appear on the EWTN program, Life on the Rock, to talk about both Campion College and World Youth Day which is in Sydney in July 2008. I thought you would be interested in seeing the program which commences at 8 pm Eastern this Thursday, November 1. Sounds like you live on the West coast so that would be 5pm I am assuming?
If you turn to the back cover of the CWR you will see that we have an advertisement there to encourage students from the US to study abroad inan institution which is trying to address the very issue you write about in the CWR.
We are encouraging as many US students to take a study abroad semester in Australia. We are hoping that World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008 will also assist us in our mission. As a small college starting out, we need as much support as we can muster. At the moment we are supported by donations and this will continue but we need to encourage students to attend.
I would also encourage you to find out more about Campion and perhaps it might appear on your blog one day.
God bless
Thanks for the note! I am hugely fond of Aussies and Australia and I love that you guys are taking the bull by the horns and creating something good where none exists. Very much in the Aussie spirit! Thanks for your good work!
Foaming Bronze Age Fanatics Found to Be Foaming Bronze Age Fanatics
Tomorrow, no doubt, the UK press will come out with some "fair and balanced" piece about how Methodist tea and crochet clubs are just as bad, what with all the gossip and all. Living in the Dictatorship of Relativism means always having to maintain the fiction that one Abrahamic religion is much of a muchness with another.
Tomorrow, no doubt, the UK press will come out with some "fair and balanced" piece about how Methodist tea and crochet clubs are just as bad, what with all the gossip and all. Living in the Dictatorship of Relativism means always having to maintain the fiction that one Abrahamic religion is much of a muchness with another.
Chinese Commies Brutally Pave the Way for the Olympics
Commies: As Evil as Ever
Don't forget that a fifth of the world still lives under Commie rule.
Commies: As Evil as Ever
Don't forget that a fifth of the world still lives under Commie rule.
The Beloved Cow Watches a Little Drama Spin Out in His Room
The kid has real promise as a writer. Go here and then here.
By the way, in case you didn't know, this--!?--is called an "interrobang".
The kid has real promise as a writer. Go here and then here.
By the way, in case you didn't know, this--!?--is called an "interrobang".
The Delightful Lint Hatcher writes
For a look at the unique thought processes of this unique and fun thinker, check out They Made Me a Catholic.
The new website, ChristianHalloweenFan.com, is now open for business — just in time (barely) for Halloween. The podcast area still needs some work, but otherwise everything is functional with an emphasis on "fun".
Why ChristianHalloweenFan.com? Well, the Christian anti-Halloween crowd is a small but very vocal group. Their influence via sermons, articles and such has created a sort of anti-Halloween default setting among evangelicals of various denominational stripes — a fact that became all too clear when Halloween fell on Sunday a few years back. Celebrate Halloween on a Sunday? Was that okay? Christians who previously had shrugged at anti-Halloween sentiments and sent the kids out trick-or-treating found themselves in a quandary: they had no real basis for their participation in the holiday. They had never actually wrestled with the cultural undercurrents, had never worried about "what Scripture has to say about Halloween".
So what happened? In my area, middle Georgia, Halloween was moved to Saturday, October 30th! A kind of spell was broken. A commodifying consensus created Free Candy Day. And the next year? Everyone was confused. What day would be Halloween this year? What was most convenient? While we're at it, perhaps it should be during the day. After all, it's safer. Perhaps "scary" costumes should be prohibited. And so on.
On a positive note, this event made plain the fact that Halloween, a.k.a. October 31st, a.k.a. All Hallow's Eve has an intrinsic meaning, a unique magic all its own. A distillation of the fleeting beauty of Autumn and the darker reality of Winter. The charm of one, the sardonic chortle of the other. At any rate, Christians who love Autumn and Halloween found good reasons to stand up and be counted, rather than cede the status quo to the anti-Halloween crowd.
ChristianHalloweenFan.com is a Halloween hub for those Christians (and anyone else really)— a place to celebrate and explore "the reason for the season," as it were.
Here are some features you might want to peruse:
An honest to goodness forum named "Hobnob" for postings of Halloween Memories, Recommended Pop-cultural Spookifiers, News from the Anti-Halloween Scene, etc. (Check out the CHF logo I made! I'm rather proud of it.)
Articles by such luminaries as Dave Canfield, John Morehead, and myself. Rumor has it that a Halloween memoir by Paul Leggett is coming up soon!
Photo Sections on Costumes, Cool Retro Halloween Trinkets, Craftsy Homemade Stuff, Old Halloween Greeting Cards, Ben Cooper Costumes, and more! When you go to the "PHOTOS" page or the "Crafts" page be sure to hit the button that says "Start Slideshow". It is a very cool feature. Made on a Mac, you know.
"Our Spooky Faith" — a photo section which I hope will become a multi-cultural, pan-traditional mixture of church architecture, sacred art, Peter Cushing as Van Helsing movie photos, Day of the Dead moments, etc. The idea is to capture the frisson that should be at the core of such a profoundly, even weirdly supernatural faith as ours. Let's remove Christianity from the ho-hum / been-there-done-that box. Let's return it to what-the-heck-is-that / I-think-it's-a-man-walking-on-water status. Remember the suicidal panic of the Gadarene swine? The dead that rose at the death of Christ and according to Matthew 27:51-53 walked right into Jerusalem and appeared to many people? When's the last time you heard a sermon on that passage? And what about the times when Jesus simply touched the blind to heal them, versus the times he merely spoke, versus the time when he spat in the dirt, made a mud paste, and applied it to the blind man's eye lids? What, I ask you, is up with that?! Such are the weird, unaccommodating details that make us think, "Nobody could have made this up."
That's enough for now. As Dr. Frankenstein said to Fritz when they arrived at the graveyard: "Dig in."
P.S. My book, The Magic Eightball Test: A Christian Defense of Halloween and All Things Spooky, is available at most online booksellers. Just thought I would mention it.
For a look at the unique thought processes of this unique and fun thinker, check out They Made Me a Catholic.
Monday, October 29, 2007
I just can't decide which I like more:
Bizarre Hindi-to-English Misheard Transcription Thriller...
or Filipino Prison Inmate Thriller
Bizarre Hindi-to-English Misheard Transcription Thriller...
or Filipino Prison Inmate Thriller
"And no one - not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments - has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms."
The answer is obvious: let teachers marry and let women be teachers.
The answer is obvious: let teachers marry and let women be teachers.
Speaking of Murder Inc.
Marcel LeJeune has an article being carried by the Catholic News Agency about their lies. Way to go, dude!
Marcel LeJeune has an article being carried by the Catholic News Agency about their lies. Way to go, dude!
Charlotte Simmons writes: "I *Demand* Murder Inc Kill the Inconvenient Offspring of my Drunken Slutty Friends or I'll Stomp My Feet and Have a Fit Because I was Raised with the Conviction That it's All About Me"
or, as it says before translation:
or, as it says before translation:
On a campus where drinking seems to be an essential part of life, at least on the weekends, it would seem obvious that our student health center and Planned Parenthood should be happy to stay open to serve UW students in need of help.
Wicca: Spirituality for People Who Still Live in their Mom's Basement
When I read this:
I think of this guy:
When I read this:
Donald Lewis, who serves as CEO of Witch School International, said it was the other way around.
"They're trying to make us scapegoats," he said as he slipped into the meeting unannounced.
Lewis, a rotund 44-year-old with a silver ponytail and goatee, said he started the online school in 2001 with two friends he met through the neo-pagan community in Chicago. All three were devoted practitioners of Wicca, a controversial movement that, by some estimates, has hundreds of thousands of adherents nationwide.
Five of the school's administrators operate out of a humble, white building with a green awning on Chicago Street, the main strip in downtown Rossville, which looks like an abandoned Hollywood set of a small town. Their office, which consists of five computers, copiers and a fax machine, is in the back of a store that sells silver wands, incense and colored candles wrapped in spells.
A door in the rear leads to the school's library, a musty room overflowing with books such as "The History of Magic and The Occult."
The most popular courses teach students how to become a Wiccan, but the school also provides instruction on other topics, from aromatherapy to zombies. Lewis said more than 190,000 students have participated, most from the U.S., although many live in England, India and other countries. There are different types of paid memberships, including a lifetime one for $99.99.
Lewis said he believes a mother goddess gave birth to the world and can take a variety of forms -- "like Jesus or nature or even Mickey Mouse." He said he believes in reincarnation and communicating with the dead. He said he also believes in magic, and openly calls himself a witch.
I think of this guy:
Pope Benedict Fails to Grasp the Full Implicatins of Living in a Time Where People Think in Sound Bites
In a world where people's analytical skills are so compromised that criticizing a blasphemous Israeli jiggle ad can get you tarred as an enemy of Israel, he really should have foreseen that honoring a bunch of priests who were murdered by Commies could only mean that he is an enthusiastic backer of Francisco Franco.
In a world where people's analytical skills are so compromised that criticizing a blasphemous Israeli jiggle ad can get you tarred as an enemy of Israel, he really should have foreseen that honoring a bunch of priests who were murdered by Commies could only mean that he is an enthusiastic backer of Francisco Franco.
Wicca: Drivel for Narcissists Whose Sacred Text is the Ny Times
Any idiot can worship nature. The greatest pagans of antiquity were and ashamed and puzzled by the problem of nature worship. They knew it was stupid to worship a rock or dung beetle and were embarrased by such ignorant folkways, thought they didn't know quite how to escape the problem. The dimestore pagans of today don't even see that there's a problem.
Any idiot can worship nature. The greatest pagans of antiquity were and ashamed and puzzled by the problem of nature worship. They knew it was stupid to worship a rock or dung beetle and were embarrased by such ignorant folkways, thought they didn't know quite how to escape the problem. The dimestore pagans of today don't even see that there's a problem.
The Thoughtful and Wonderful Aimee Milburn...
writes to tell me of Will Duquette's fascinating story of his decision to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. It's in multiple parts. Do thou check it out.
Will! Welcome!
writes to tell me of Will Duquette's fascinating story of his decision to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. It's in multiple parts. Do thou check it out.
Will! Welcome!
Wow! Two Peter Kreeft Mentions in One Day!
A reader writes:
If you are not familiar with Kreeft's work, do check him out. Delightful!
A reader writes:
I'd like to recommend two excellent CD lecture series by Peter Kreeft. Since they are only sold at Barnes and Noble, it may be that some of your readers who are Kreeft fans are not aware of these series. The first one is,
"Questions of Faith: The Philosophy of Religion" The blurb on it reads, "Is there a God? How can we explain the presence of evil? Do humans, or human souls, live on after death? Is there a hell? Through the ages, mankind has pursued the answers to such questions of faith. In this thought-provoking course, Professor Peter Kreeft examines these enduring questions and presents the most compelling arguments for and against the existence of God, the seeming conflicts between religion and science, and the different truth-claims of the world's most popular religions."
The second one is entitled, "What Would Socrates Do?: History of Moral Thoughts and Ethics"
Both are well worth the reasonable price.
If you are not familiar with Kreeft's work, do check him out. Delightful!
Here's a Reporter in Such a Panic About the Menace of Homeschoolers that he Doesn't even Bother to Talk to One
Just regurgitates some standard issue agitprop from Dumbemdown District and call it good.
Fairly unbalanced.
Just regurgitates some standard issue agitprop from Dumbemdown District and call it good.
Fairly unbalanced.
Hey Western Washington! Mark your Calendars for Tomorrow Night!
Dear Friends of the G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle,
Just a friendly reminder:
The Society's board of directors cordially invites you to the first lecture of the new season, to be held Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at 7:30 p.m., on the campus of Seattle Pacific University:
"The Virtual Inevitability Of A Singularity in Inflationary Model
Universes: Implications for the Creation of the Universe"
Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J.President, Gonzaga University
The Society's beloved friend Fr. Robert Spitzer puts on his physicist hat to speak to us about recent developments in cosmology. Classical Big Bang theory wasaltered significantly by the prospect of universal inflation and a "pre-big-bang quantum cosmological or string condition." Recent work by Borde, Vilenkin, and Guth shows thatmathematical modeling of such universes requires an initial singularity, which in turn implies a creation of the universe by a causative power transcending space-time asymmetry. Fr. Spitzer will discuss the history of this remarkable development and its theological implications.
Fr. Spitzer has been involved in teaching about the intersection of physics, metaphysics, and faith for many years. He is co-founder and director of the Institute for Christian Philosophy and the Natural Sciences at Gonzaga University, and co-organizes an annuallecture series entitled Physics and the God of Abraham. Fr. Spitzer is also founder of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics institute at Georgetown university: a group of physicists, chemists, philosophers and theologians engaged in ongoing discussion of underlying conditions of space, time and energy from physical and philosophical perspectives.
The lecture will take place in the Falcon Lounge, Royal Brougham Pavilion, at the corner of W. Nickerson and 3rd Avenue W. For links to a campus map and directions, please see the Events Calendar at www.seattlechesterton.org. As always, pizza and refreshments will be served at the end of the lecture.
Please join us for a delightful evening!
Yours faithfully,
The G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle
Friday, October 26, 2007
Perhaps the Silliest Thing I've Posted This Week
Hat tip, Mary's Aggies
And a suitable place to say, "See you Monday!"
Oh, by the way, I will be on "The Right Hook" (an Irish radio program) this Monday at about 10:15ish AM Pacific time (that's 5:15ish PM Irish time). If you click the link you can stream the broadcast.
Hat tip, Mary's Aggies
And a suitable place to say, "See you Monday!"
Oh, by the way, I will be on "The Right Hook" (an Irish radio program) this Monday at about 10:15ish AM Pacific time (that's 5:15ish PM Irish time). If you click the link you can stream the broadcast.
Professor Bainbridge Wonders Why We Are So Miserable
Personally, I think it's due, not to the circumstances in which we find ourselves but to the selves we find in our circumstances.
That's why I think "Be Not Afraid" is still the counsel of the Holy Spirit in this hour. One of the consequences of abandoning trust in God is servile fear and all the panic, sin, and stupidity that goes with it. It's all in Leviticus.
That's the great lie and blunder of the Strength Through Evil Project our nation embraced with Roe and is now deepening with Bush's embrace of torture. The reality is that only repentance brings hope and restores courage. Continued and deepened hardness of heart does not confer strength. It just leaves you prey to becoming so afraid that the sound of a driven leaf puts a nation to flight.
Personally, I think it's due, not to the circumstances in which we find ourselves but to the selves we find in our circumstances.
That's why I think "Be Not Afraid" is still the counsel of the Holy Spirit in this hour. One of the consequences of abandoning trust in God is servile fear and all the panic, sin, and stupidity that goes with it. It's all in Leviticus.
That's the great lie and blunder of the Strength Through Evil Project our nation embraced with Roe and is now deepening with Bush's embrace of torture. The reality is that only repentance brings hope and restores courage. Continued and deepened hardness of heart does not confer strength. It just leaves you prey to becoming so afraid that the sound of a driven leaf puts a nation to flight.
A reader writes:
This is not something I've spent much time on, so I don't have a bibliography.
Anyone? Bueller?
My next-door neighbor is a good, solid fella and a well-meaning, albeit fairly new Christian. He's married to a former Catholic, and they attend a non-denom (read: anti-Catholic) church.
He's pretty open to discussing things, and while he's definitely got some screwed up ideas about the Church, it's only because that's what he's been fed by his pastor and his wife. He's hungry for the Truth and loves the Lord, too. IOW, with proper care and feeding, I suspect that this guy will some day be a Catholic.
Anyhow, we were talking the other night around his backyard bonfire. He had literally just returned from a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, and we were simply enjoying the fact that he's back. Our conversation was wide and varied, and eventually ended up about the Church's response to WWII and Hitler. While he didn't know Pope Pius XII by name, clearly he had heard much of the claptrap that stands in for accurate history.
My question for you is, of all the books out there that defend Pius XII, which would you recommend for such a gent? I've been rather enamored with Sister Margherita Marchione's articles in the National Catholic Register about PXII, but I was hoping that you might use your blog to find a more informed opinion than mine, since I've simply read the reviews at Amazon and other venues, and nothing more.
This is not something I've spent much time on, so I don't have a bibliography.
Anyone? Bueller?
Bellarmine University Keeps Evangelizing for Moloch
No doubt it's "in the Catholic tradition". But they did allow Dawn to speak in some closet somewhere, so I guess that makes them "partners in dialogue".
No doubt it's "in the Catholic tradition". But they did allow Dawn to speak in some closet somewhere, so I guess that makes them "partners in dialogue".
James Watson and the Troubled Conscience of Postmodern Culture
As the West continues the project of trying to be happy without God, it imagines it can go on living off of Catholic capital forever. And so it imagines that by chasing James Watson and his crazy eugenism from the field it know which way the future is going.
Me: I think Watson is (barring the repentance of the West) the future. After all, we have make steady progress on any number of fronts in ensuring that, in a private, neat, and efficient way, much of Hitler's dreams of a race improved by the murder of the weak and inconvenient is realized. Eugenics, in temporary eclipse after the war, is now making a great comeback. The Dutch, who ostensibly withstood Hitler, are now pioneers in his dream of offing the lives unworthy of being lived. Throughout the West, it is common wisdom that the Unfit should be terminated before birth and when they get too old and sick to change the Beatles CD.
Beyond that, the dictatorship of relativsm means, at bottom, that the only thing ensuring the claim of "equality" is power since we categorically reject the notion that man is made in the image and likeness of God. And when the temporary truce of peace between different ethnicities and peoples imposed by the rule of law in the US is sundered? The fact is, there's not a thing in the world to stop some bright boy from deciding that Watson is right and [insert undesirable ethnicity here] is "unfit" for survival. As i have repeatedly pointed out, "all men are created equal" is not an empirically verifiable statement. It is a piece of mystical dogma inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition and only that. What Watson has done is take materialist premises that post-modern enemies of Christianity like and follow them to logical conclusions they don't like. The key to defeating Watson' evil eugenicism is to combat, not the conclusions, but the premises.
But that, of course, requires repenting of the entire anti-Christ project. And we in the West never meant it to come to that!
As the West continues the project of trying to be happy without God, it imagines it can go on living off of Catholic capital forever. And so it imagines that by chasing James Watson and his crazy eugenism from the field it know which way the future is going.
Me: I think Watson is (barring the repentance of the West) the future. After all, we have make steady progress on any number of fronts in ensuring that, in a private, neat, and efficient way, much of Hitler's dreams of a race improved by the murder of the weak and inconvenient is realized. Eugenics, in temporary eclipse after the war, is now making a great comeback. The Dutch, who ostensibly withstood Hitler, are now pioneers in his dream of offing the lives unworthy of being lived. Throughout the West, it is common wisdom that the Unfit should be terminated before birth and when they get too old and sick to change the Beatles CD.
Beyond that, the dictatorship of relativsm means, at bottom, that the only thing ensuring the claim of "equality" is power since we categorically reject the notion that man is made in the image and likeness of God. And when the temporary truce of peace between different ethnicities and peoples imposed by the rule of law in the US is sundered? The fact is, there's not a thing in the world to stop some bright boy from deciding that Watson is right and [insert undesirable ethnicity here] is "unfit" for survival. As i have repeatedly pointed out, "all men are created equal" is not an empirically verifiable statement. It is a piece of mystical dogma inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition and only that. What Watson has done is take materialist premises that post-modern enemies of Christianity like and follow them to logical conclusions they don't like. The key to defeating Watson' evil eugenicism is to combat, not the conclusions, but the premises.
But that, of course, requires repenting of the entire anti-Christ project. And we in the West never meant it to come to that!
Any song with the rhyme "We Don't Fancy/Necromancy" has my vote
This is a sort of a concatenation of Catholic Answers Tracts set to music by some guy. The hilarious thing is that I'm sure, within a few weeks, there will be detailed theological analyses of each and every word over at NotRoman.org and the HindenburgSizeEgoistsforCalvinism site. Outraged posts from grim humorless Calvinists filled with zeal for TRVTH will fly around the web pointing out that It's Not Factually Accurate that nobody questioned the canon of Scripture till 1517 blah blah blah.
For a look at the weird hothouse subculture of online apologetics wars, go here.
Hat tip: Love to Be Catholic
This is a sort of a concatenation of Catholic Answers Tracts set to music by some guy. The hilarious thing is that I'm sure, within a few weeks, there will be detailed theological analyses of each and every word over at NotRoman.org and the HindenburgSizeEgoistsforCalvinism site. Outraged posts from grim humorless Calvinists filled with zeal for TRVTH will fly around the web pointing out that It's Not Factually Accurate that nobody questioned the canon of Scripture till 1517 blah blah blah.
For a look at the weird hothouse subculture of online apologetics wars, go here.
Hat tip: Love to Be Catholic
Pete Vere on Phillip Pullman's Atheist Kid Lit Agitprop
Yes, but since WETA is doing the special effects for the films, that means they are "in the tradition of The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia"! Let's go, kids!
Yes, but since WETA is doing the special effects for the films, that means they are "in the tradition of The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia"! Let's go, kids!
Kool-Aid Drinkers and the Seamless Shroud
Yesterday, I ran a brief account of yet another moment of shame from this Administration's reckless embrace of Strength Through War Crimes: the FBI's threats to torture the *family* of a suspected terrorist. The guy confessed--and then it was discovered that he was innocent. As a capper, when the 2nd Circuit Court wrote the opinion on the case, the Bush Administration ordered the opinion redacted so all the torture-threats-to-the-family stuff was taken out (for "national security reasons" doncha know).
Naturally then, one of the Kool-Aid drinkers in my combox writes "it looks like one FBI agent got a little aggressive" and remonstrates with me for citing a ritually impure source for the story.
A little agressive. Right.
It will probably not satisfy the Kool-Aid Drinker, but here is the unredacted 2nd Circuit opinion, free of Bush Administration attempts to cover their tracks.
In other Kool-Aid drinker news, another comboxer writes the latest "My Country: Right or Wrong" response (which, as Chesterton observed, is like saying "My Mother: Drunk or Sober"):
Two lies are at the heart of this post, and I can only hope for the author's sake that he doesn't actually believe them. The first is the "few bad apples" defense. It's hard for me to believe, at this late date, that this particular writer is still unaware that this action is an expression of Administration policy the Executive has fought tooth and nail to preserve. The second, which is far more dangerous for the author if he actually applies it in his own life, is the notion that the only proper response to shame for sin is "to pull up stakes and move out of this befouled land". If he applies that in his own life to his own sins, the only analogous response to grave sin would be suicide.
Me: I'm a Catholic, not a pagan Machiavellian consequentialist. I believe when you (or your country) is involved in grave evil, you strive for repentance and trust in the mercy of God. Part of the evil of embracing a pagan torture ethic is that you radically reject the mercy of God. And if you radically reject the mercy of God, the only response to the realization of your own sinfulness is suicide. That's why Jesus has all those warnings about "the measure you use will be measured to you". A person (or people) who reject the mercy of God for others will find none for themselves, not because God is merciless, but because "to the impure all things are impure" including God. They will flee him as a Monster made in their own image and likeness.
Juli Loesch Wiley is right: the Culture of Death is a Seamless Shroud.
Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy!
Yesterday, I ran a brief account of yet another moment of shame from this Administration's reckless embrace of Strength Through War Crimes: the FBI's threats to torture the *family* of a suspected terrorist. The guy confessed--and then it was discovered that he was innocent. As a capper, when the 2nd Circuit Court wrote the opinion on the case, the Bush Administration ordered the opinion redacted so all the torture-threats-to-the-family stuff was taken out (for "national security reasons" doncha know).
Naturally then, one of the Kool-Aid drinkers in my combox writes "it looks like one FBI agent got a little aggressive" and remonstrates with me for citing a ritually impure source for the story.
A little agressive. Right.
It will probably not satisfy the Kool-Aid Drinker, but here is the unredacted 2nd Circuit opinion, free of Bush Administration attempts to cover their tracks.
In other Kool-Aid drinker news, another comboxer writes the latest "My Country: Right or Wrong" response (which, as Chesterton observed, is like saying "My Mother: Drunk or Sober"):
Shocking. In a country of 300+ million with hundreds of thousands of active soldiers and police you hear of numerous instances of unlawful force and threats, which are subsequently investigated and punished.
I just hope we don't find out next that there are some corrupt judges and police officers on the payroll of organized crime. Mark might have to pull up stakes and move out of this befouled land!
Two lies are at the heart of this post, and I can only hope for the author's sake that he doesn't actually believe them. The first is the "few bad apples" defense. It's hard for me to believe, at this late date, that this particular writer is still unaware that this action is an expression of Administration policy the Executive has fought tooth and nail to preserve. The second, which is far more dangerous for the author if he actually applies it in his own life, is the notion that the only proper response to shame for sin is "to pull up stakes and move out of this befouled land". If he applies that in his own life to his own sins, the only analogous response to grave sin would be suicide.
Me: I'm a Catholic, not a pagan Machiavellian consequentialist. I believe when you (or your country) is involved in grave evil, you strive for repentance and trust in the mercy of God. Part of the evil of embracing a pagan torture ethic is that you radically reject the mercy of God. And if you radically reject the mercy of God, the only response to the realization of your own sinfulness is suicide. That's why Jesus has all those warnings about "the measure you use will be measured to you". A person (or people) who reject the mercy of God for others will find none for themselves, not because God is merciless, but because "to the impure all things are impure" including God. They will flee him as a Monster made in their own image and likeness.
Juli Loesch Wiley is right: the Culture of Death is a Seamless Shroud.
Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy!
The Governator Takes a Big Step Toward Turning California Into Holland
Tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Conform. You must not think of heterosexuality as "normal".
Schwarzenegger will fit in nicely with the Giulianification of the Party.
Tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Conform. You must not think of heterosexuality as "normal".
Schwarzenegger will fit in nicely with the Giulianification of the Party.
Relic Veneration for Leftist Morons
Gotta love the accompanying piece: "Che Guevara‘s ideals lose ground in Cuba"
Please God, I hope so!
I will never fathom the adulation accorded that filthy butcher.
Gotta love the accompanying piece: "Che Guevara‘s ideals lose ground in Cuba"
Please God, I hope so!
I will never fathom the adulation accorded that filthy butcher.
Nerdular Nerdance from the Beloved Cow
Today, my son, you are a Shea.
Dad!:
A list of all the books mentioned in the narative and footnotes of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Cow the Avid
Today, my son, you are a Shea.
Truthers Continue to Win Friends and Influence People
I think Kathy Shaidle is right: a radical inclination to bizarre conspiracy theories is a sort of personality disorder.
I think Kathy Shaidle is right: a radical inclination to bizarre conspiracy theories is a sort of personality disorder.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
I am Ashamed of my Country
The man was found, very embarrassingly to be innocent. Caesar is already hurrying to cover his tracks on this one. No doubt the Rubber Hose right media will comply with the requisite tergiversation, jokes, and accusations of America-hatred aimed at silencing the critics of the liars and war criminals in the Executive branch who tell us "We do not torture".
"My father is 67. My mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When the word ‘torture’ comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just press on one of these knuckles. I couldn’t imagine them doing anything to my sister... [L]et's just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same token, some people who actually could be —might try to get to them and somebody might actually make a connection. I wasn’t going to risk that. I wasn’t going to risk that, so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that’s convincing? And I said okay," - Abdallah Higazy, explaining why he confessed to being a terrorist after the FBI threatened to have his family identified and tortured by the Egyptian authorities.
The man was found, very embarrassingly to be innocent. Caesar is already hurrying to cover his tracks on this one. No doubt the Rubber Hose right media will comply with the requisite tergiversation, jokes, and accusations of America-hatred aimed at silencing the critics of the liars and war criminals in the Executive branch who tell us "We do not torture".
I Soooo Don't Suck! I am Majorly Not-Lame!
This past weekend I spoke at a retreat for students at a Catholic High school in Georgia. I'm always a bit nervous speaking to high schoolers because I basically assume they are a captive audience who thinks the Fat Guy is Boring and Lame. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear from the teacher who organized the talk (on the rather advanced topic of the Four Senses of Scripture):
Note to the puzzled reader: if you want to know what these cryptic references mean, you need to hire me to come speak at your parish, school, conference or gathering on Making Senses Out of Scripture. All will be illuminated!
Zero "that guy was so boring" comments! I feel affirmed in my okayness! It reminds me of that wonderful scene in Hill Street Blues years ago, when Sgt. Belker, filled with gratitude for a kindness the Counselor has done him, exclaims to her, "You're the furthest thing from a hairball there is!"
Since I will soon be addressing a whole school full of Irish 17 and 18 year olds in Newry, Northern Ireland on November 8, I find all this comforting. I shall endeavor to achieve fresh levels of not-lameness.
This past weekend I spoke at a retreat for students at a Catholic High school in Georgia. I'm always a bit nervous speaking to high schoolers because I basically assume they are a captive audience who thinks the Fat Guy is Boring and Lame. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear from the teacher who organized the talk (on the rather advanced topic of the Four Senses of Scripture):
Pretend this email is a professionally-worded thank-you note on our stationery (perhaps one shall arrive in the mail soon) and bask in our appreciation.
As predicted, the students remembered several things from your talk, including, but not limited to:
Gehenna (like Auschwitz) = Hell = metaphor = eschatological
Babylonian baby head-smashing
At least three senses of scripture
Buying a car by walking in between slaughtered game animals
"Luke..." (Vader breath)
Note to the puzzled reader: if you want to know what these cryptic references mean, you need to hire me to come speak at your parish, school, conference or gathering on Making Senses Out of Scripture. All will be illuminated!
I did a follow-up activity with them on Monday and Tuesday in which they had to read selected passages from Scripture and then match them up with cards containing commentary based on one of the four senses - like, you get the card where Paul talks about how "they were baptized into Moses" and you have to match it up with Exodus 14 and identify it as the spiritual sense of scripture. It is great fun to hear the various pronunciations of "eschatological." They did pretty well and I think this is going to "stick."
And, although there were complaints about how the room smelled like mildew, there were zero "that guy was so boring" comments. Believe you me, this is VERY HIGH PRAISE for a guest speaker. Like...unprecedentedly high. (There were also many "I thought it was interesting when he talked about X" comments, but I figured you might understand why the "absence of griping" is an even greater compliment. Since you have encountered teenagers in their native setting).
Zero "that guy was so boring" comments! I feel affirmed in my okayness! It reminds me of that wonderful scene in Hill Street Blues years ago, when Sgt. Belker, filled with gratitude for a kindness the Counselor has done him, exclaims to her, "You're the furthest thing from a hairball there is!"
Since I will soon be addressing a whole school full of Irish 17 and 18 year olds in Newry, Northern Ireland on November 8, I find all this comforting. I shall endeavor to achieve fresh levels of not-lameness.
Fortunately, it's just Christians, so it doesn't matter
Besides, they deserve it. Thus may it be to *all* Christians who fail to get on board with our Grand End to Evil Plans to improve their lives.
Besides, they deserve it. Thus may it be to *all* Christians who fail to get on board with our Grand End to Evil Plans to improve their lives.
Two Minutes with Ramesh Ponnuru
I like that Ponnuru has the intellectual independence to nominate Madison as the worst President. An interesting take.
Also his remark about Bush not being a philosophical man reminds me of the words of the Prophet Chesterton from What's Wrong With the World:
I like that Ponnuru has the intellectual independence to nominate Madison as the worst President. An interesting take.
Also his remark about Bush not being a philosophical man reminds me of the words of the Prophet Chesterton from What's Wrong With the World:
There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man. It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work, you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.
More Things Jesus Never Said
He also never said, "You believe in me because my warm fuzziness inspired you to share your loaves and fishes. Now go forth to all the nations with a cock-and-bull story of 'miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes' as a midrash on this purely naturalistic event. For behold, what could be a greater wonder than that ancient semitic people should show hospitality? As it is written: 'Everybody everywhere is as chintzy as a suburban American is about sharing food. For suburban America is the Measure of All Things.' So sharing food shall be accounted a wonder of God and a great sign."
Readers are encouraged to add more things Jesus never said.
He also never said, "You believe in me because my warm fuzziness inspired you to share your loaves and fishes. Now go forth to all the nations with a cock-and-bull story of 'miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes' as a midrash on this purely naturalistic event. For behold, what could be a greater wonder than that ancient semitic people should show hospitality? As it is written: 'Everybody everywhere is as chintzy as a suburban American is about sharing food. For suburban America is the Measure of All Things.' So sharing food shall be accounted a wonder of God and a great sign."
Readers are encouraged to add more things Jesus never said.
Hitchens Defends Hacks Promoting Nonsense Term
The hacks at FrontPage are promoting something called "Islamofascism Awareness Week". Christopher "I wish there was a hell for the bitch [aka 'Mother Teresa'] to go to" Hitchens (who coined the term "Islamofascism" and immediately became the darling of the secular messianic End to Evil crowd) springs to the defense of his brainchild.
I think the term is rubbish and clouds our thinking about the grave evil of Radical Islam and how to fight it. The surest proof of that is the four years of WWII/Iraq War equivalencies we've had to endure, coupled with all the "if we don't commit war crimes by bayonetting the wounded, they could just grow up to be Hitler" consequentialism which positions itself as the arbiter of True Patriotism and excommunicates conservative critics of this Machiavellian vision as "unpatriotic conservatives" engaged in nothing less than "war against America".
FrontPage has been hip deep in forwarding that particular project and has no hesitation about publishing the work of any useful anti-Catholic who will say anything to advance the Machiavellian Plan. Here, for instance, is a man who has for years been writing in this vein in comboxes all over St. Blog's:
Given that Hitchenesque approach to the Catholic faith, it is only natural that Front Page should repeatedly give such a man a forum to, among other things compare the Vatican's adherence to just war teaching and struggles to maintain the peace to--wouldnchaknowit?--Neville Chamberlain.
The World War II mystique runs very deep with these guys. For them, it's always 1938, every enemy is Hitler, and every critic of their crazy militarism is Chamberlain. No other template will do.
Me: I think we are at war with a real enemy who must be defeated, but that this enemy is not fascistic. Its aims and tactics are different and must be defeated by different means. What those means are I have no clear idea. But the first cardinal virtue is prudence: seeing what is so. You do not see what is so by hiring kill-crazy sociopaths to shout slogans and churn out agitprop. Nor, metaphysically speaking, are you likely to see clearly even earthly things when your principal prophet is, in the most exact biblical definition (Psalm 14) a fool who says in heart "There is no God". In the words of the prophet Chesterton, "It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are." That men like Hitchens and D'Hippolito are the sort of people FrontPage looks to as guides and prophets tells me pretty much all I need to know about the bona fides of "Islamofascism Awareness Week".
The hacks at FrontPage are promoting something called "Islamofascism Awareness Week". Christopher "I wish there was a hell for the bitch [aka 'Mother Teresa'] to go to" Hitchens (who coined the term "Islamofascism" and immediately became the darling of the secular messianic End to Evil crowd) springs to the defense of his brainchild.
I think the term is rubbish and clouds our thinking about the grave evil of Radical Islam and how to fight it. The surest proof of that is the four years of WWII/Iraq War equivalencies we've had to endure, coupled with all the "if we don't commit war crimes by bayonetting the wounded, they could just grow up to be Hitler" consequentialism which positions itself as the arbiter of True Patriotism and excommunicates conservative critics of this Machiavellian vision as "unpatriotic conservatives" engaged in nothing less than "war against America".
FrontPage has been hip deep in forwarding that particular project and has no hesitation about publishing the work of any useful anti-Catholic who will say anything to advance the Machiavellian Plan. Here, for instance, is a man who has for years been writing in this vein in comboxes all over St. Blog's:
if I were pope, there'd be no Vatican bureaucracy. I'd hang all the bastards publicly in St. Peter's Square and let their bodies rot for a week as a public example. Then I'd order all the American bishops to Rome for their "ad limina" visits and do the same.
Given that Hitchenesque approach to the Catholic faith, it is only natural that Front Page should repeatedly give such a man a forum to, among other things compare the Vatican's adherence to just war teaching and struggles to maintain the peace to--wouldnchaknowit?--Neville Chamberlain.
The World War II mystique runs very deep with these guys. For them, it's always 1938, every enemy is Hitler, and every critic of their crazy militarism is Chamberlain. No other template will do.
Me: I think we are at war with a real enemy who must be defeated, but that this enemy is not fascistic. Its aims and tactics are different and must be defeated by different means. What those means are I have no clear idea. But the first cardinal virtue is prudence: seeing what is so. You do not see what is so by hiring kill-crazy sociopaths to shout slogans and churn out agitprop. Nor, metaphysically speaking, are you likely to see clearly even earthly things when your principal prophet is, in the most exact biblical definition (Psalm 14) a fool who says in heart "There is no God". In the words of the prophet Chesterton, "It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are." That men like Hitchens and D'Hippolito are the sort of people FrontPage looks to as guides and prophets tells me pretty much all I need to know about the bona fides of "Islamofascism Awareness Week".
Now That's Bureaucracy!
You gotta love an institution that has filing errors older than the United States.
The 300-page Processus Contra Templarios (Trial against the Templars), measuring more than 2m in width, records the trial of the knights when they were accused of heresy before Pope Clement V between 1307 and 1312.
Also known as the Chinon parchment, the original artefact was discovered in the Vatican's secret archives in 2001 after it had been wrongly catalogued for more than 300 years.
You gotta love an institution that has filing errors older than the United States.
Yes, I Realize the Idea is to Tax Smoking Out of Existence
Nonetheless, government program take on a life of their own and start to *require* the thing they were supposed to be taxing out of existence. Hence:
Nonetheless, government program take on a life of their own and start to *require* the thing they were supposed to be taxing out of existence. Hence:
Moloch is Miffed with Dawn Eden
High praise indeed!
Meanwhile, you go, girl! The scoundrels in charge of the College of the Holy Cross deserve every burning coal you heap on their heads with your integrity.
Not only a Christian but such a Christian—a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss. The little brute. She makes me vomit. She stinks and scalds through the very pages of the dossier. It drives me mad, the way the world has worsened. We'd have had her to the arena in the old days. That's what her sort is made for. Not that she'd do much good there, either. A two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she'd faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile. A cheat every way. Looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and yet has a satirical wit. The sort of creature who'd find ME funny! - Uncle Screwtape
High praise indeed!
Meanwhile, you go, girl! The scoundrels in charge of the College of the Holy Cross deserve every burning coal you heap on their heads with your integrity.
Standard Issue Materialist Nothing Buttery
Your mind is nothing but a concatenation of molecules in the brain. The "source" of your You-ness is not some superstitious claptrap about a "soul" or "spirit". It's--exclusively--the atoms of your body.
Your mind is nothing but a concatenation of molecules in the brain. The "source" of your You-ness is not some superstitious claptrap about a "soul" or "spirit". It's--exclusively--the atoms of your body.
Gay Fascism in Britain
Coming soon to a Western nation near you.
Tolerance is not enough! You. MUST. Approve.
Vincent and Pauline Matherick are devoted foster parents and have cared for almost 30 children throughout the years. Now the British government is taking away their current foster son because the Mathericks refuse to sign new sexual equality regulations. The couple does not want to sign it because it goes against their Christian faith.
Coming soon to a Western nation near you.
Tolerance is not enough! You. MUST. Approve.
Spiritually Starving Children of Shallow Selfish Parents Crave God
You can practically see the train wreck that is to come as the kids become extreme and their dumbbell parents go on babbling about "fun churches" that suit their "lifestyle choices".
The world does not progress. It wobbles. Each generation births a reaction to its sins.
You can practically see the train wreck that is to come as the kids become extreme and their dumbbell parents go on babbling about "fun churches" that suit their "lifestyle choices".
The world does not progress. It wobbles. Each generation births a reaction to its sins.
Scientist to Creationists: Don't Stand so, Don't Stand so, Don't Stand so Close to Me
Interesting article, though one gets the sense that there is more happening here than mere interest in accuracy. It smells very much like an academic trying to make sure he does not lose the respect of his peers. How many scientists feel the obligation to retract 50 year old papers with profuse apologies? “I am deeply embarrassed to have been the originator of such misstatements.” sounds more like the confession of a Show Trial witness than a dispassionate scientific discourse on the Facts.
And, of course, the article include the standard creedal remarks to the effect that Science uses its brain while Religion refuses to do so since it already thinks it knows everything:
People who write this sort of agitprop really need to familiarize themselves with Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. In reality, science (like Catholic faith) clings to certain dogmas. It clings, for instance, to the dogma that the universe is intelligible. It also clings (like Catholic faith) to the dogma that we don't understand everything and are always learning more. The notion that dogma is the forbiddance of thought is the main problem science writers have. It is not the forbiddance of thought: it is the conclusion of thought. Dogma is what you get when you are done thinking a matter through. It would be nice if science writers would trouble themselves to learn what Catholic words mean before using them.
Interesting article, though one gets the sense that there is more happening here than mere interest in accuracy. It smells very much like an academic trying to make sure he does not lose the respect of his peers. How many scientists feel the obligation to retract 50 year old papers with profuse apologies? “I am deeply embarrassed to have been the originator of such misstatements.” sounds more like the confession of a Show Trial witness than a dispassionate scientific discourse on the Facts.
And, of course, the article include the standard creedal remarks to the effect that Science uses its brain while Religion refuses to do so since it already thinks it knows everything:
It is not unusual for scientists to publish papers and, if they discover evidence that challenges them, to announce they were wrong. The idea that all scientific knowledge is provisional, able to be challenged and overturned, is one thing that separates matters of science from matters of faith.
So Dr. Jacobson’s retraction is in “the noblest tradition of science,” Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson’s letter.
His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, “the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction,” and people who “cling to dogma.”
People who write this sort of agitprop really need to familiarize themselves with Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. In reality, science (like Catholic faith) clings to certain dogmas. It clings, for instance, to the dogma that the universe is intelligible. It also clings (like Catholic faith) to the dogma that we don't understand everything and are always learning more. The notion that dogma is the forbiddance of thought is the main problem science writers have. It is not the forbiddance of thought: it is the conclusion of thought. Dogma is what you get when you are done thinking a matter through. It would be nice if science writers would trouble themselves to learn what Catholic words mean before using them.
We're 95! We're 95! We're 95!
I have no idea who did this study, whether it's any good or not, or if it matter one bit. I suspect that, at the end of the day, it's sort of like being ranked the best opera singer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
But hey! One takes one's ad copy where one can find it.
I'd like to thank the Academy...
I have no idea who did this study, whether it's any good or not, or if it matter one bit. I suspect that, at the end of the day, it's sort of like being ranked the best opera singer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
But hey! One takes one's ad copy where one can find it.
I'd like to thank the Academy...
Tom at Disputations Ponders Faith in his Typically Honest Thomistic Way
The only contribution I have to the conversation is something a priest taught me years ago. Faith doesn't mean "explanatory power". Faith means "you stay". That's part of what I admire about Tom. He stays. And he doesn't satisfy himself with glib slogans. He stays when the glib slogans are shown to be glib slogans.
The only contribution I have to the conversation is something a priest taught me years ago. Faith doesn't mean "explanatory power". Faith means "you stay". That's part of what I admire about Tom. He stays. And he doesn't satisfy himself with glib slogans. He stays when the glib slogans are shown to be glib slogans.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Uncle Di responds to the Christopher Hitchens/Elton John Meme about Vatican Responsibility for the Death of Millions
Amos: Andrew darling, as a fellow unlettered sub-Saharan African laborer with limited socio-cultural horizons who is tangled in the throes of ignoble passion, would you consider joining me in an act of unnatural vice before dinner?
Andy: Only too pleased, my dear chap. You realize of course this contravenes every canon of human decency?
Amos: Quite. Would you prefer to bat or bowl?
Andy: The latter, thank you for asking. I say, you don't mind my donning a latex prophylactic device -- having first checked the expiry date and inspected the integrity of the wrapper -- do you? I entertained some Namibian truckers last week who were indefatigably sportifs, and, to be truthful, I don't feel entirely good about my auto-immune system.
Amos: Andrew, how could you even suggest such a thing! You know perfectly well condom use is reprobated by Casti Connubii. I mean it's one thing to damn oneself or expose oneself to a painful death by infection, and quite another to disobey the Holy See. One has one's standards, after all.
Andy: Indeed, indeed! In the transports of lust I momentarily forgot myself, my dear Amos, please believe me. Not to be a bore about it, but you won't mention this prophylactic business to my wife, will you? She's a Free Church Presbyterian and quite impossibly pedantic about adhering to the Vatican line in these matters.
Amos: Wouldn't dream of it, old boy.
Dumbledore!
I don't really have anything more to add. I just was curious to see if the mere mention of his name will spur another 200+ thread, interspersed with protestations about how "I don't really care about these books, but..."
On a somewhat tangential note: thanks to NRO, Andrew Sullivan and all the legions of passionate Potterites for making this the highest traffic week in the history of CAEI. Between Israeli jiggle ads (NRO), my thoughts on torture as an expression of our slavery to servile fear (Sullivan), and Buckbeak Mountain Controversy, I somehow seem to have hit a bunch of national nerves. I don't think I will ever understand the mysterious current of the public conversation.
Anyway, by all means, pull up a chair and stay, all you newbies!
I don't really have anything more to add. I just was curious to see if the mere mention of his name will spur another 200+ thread, interspersed with protestations about how "I don't really care about these books, but..."
On a somewhat tangential note: thanks to NRO, Andrew Sullivan and all the legions of passionate Potterites for making this the highest traffic week in the history of CAEI. Between Israeli jiggle ads (NRO), my thoughts on torture as an expression of our slavery to servile fear (Sullivan), and Buckbeak Mountain Controversy, I somehow seem to have hit a bunch of national nerves. I don't think I will ever understand the mysterious current of the public conversation.
Anyway, by all means, pull up a chair and stay, all you newbies!
A reader wrote me last week:
I saw part of the Frontline piece while I was on the road (not much to do in hotel rooms). Unfortunately, I don't think it's that much of a hatchet job. Cheney seems to me (and I really hate to say this) a very nasty piece of work and quite comfortable with evil. His cheerful lies about "dunking" make this clear. He is a manifest liar on the issue of torture and, all things being impure to the impure, he approaches the war thinking as an evil man thinks: out of servile fear and ready to do great evil in order to win. Indeed, more than ready. He has fought and labored to make bloody *sure* our government can torture people. He has struggle to expand the torture license. The mark of such men is that they fancy themselves "realistic" and "hard". In fact, running from the law of God to do great evil for the salvation of your skin is rank cowardice.
Which explains why they don't revisit the issue at this date: they know they are doing evil. And if you refuse to repent of an evil to which you are committed, the universal response of the human heart is to refuse to look at what you are doing, to cover it up, and to complicate it with more lies, which has been the pattern of this administration when it comes to torture. Sin makes you stupid. And you wind up committing more energy to a project of defending your initial choice to do evil, even at the cost of looking clearly at what actually works. Because then you might have to face the fact that you freely chose to do evil out of your cowardice and not because you are the wonderful person you think you are. As far as I know, only the grace of the Holy Spirit can turn a spiritual dynamic like that around. So Cheney and Co. badly need our prayers, as well as our loyal opposition to the evil policies of this Administration.
We will be paying for this Administration for a long long time. Because (as the popular response to bothabortion choice and torture enhanced interrogation shows, most Americans have no real problem with doing evil that good may come of it, especially when we are afraid. Consequentialism is one of our most popular weaknesses as a people. We are proud to call it "practicality" even when the long run results of our excuses for grave sin are, as they always must be, utterly impractical and disastrous.
Your latest post on torture and the currently serving officer really struck me in two sentences. First, your first sentence commenting on the army officer's quote is the key. Do we believe what God has told us or not? Second, what are we as a nation doing to portray/build/dream a credible ideological apart from Jihad for these folks. Surely Jihad and Wahhabism are false. Then surely we as a nation of idea dreamers can come up with a more appealing ideology to use against them in both the interrogation room and in the battle of ideas. It's sad if best we can do is Britney Spears, a Wal-Mart on every corner and free but crappy health care.
Your piece ties in nicely with the Frontline last night - Cheney's Law. Check it out if you haven't seen it. Unfortunately, it is a typical Frontline piece. Only the choicest quotes are shown and only the most unflattering pictures of Cheney, et al are show behind the damning narrative, etc. Still, it had some good value in explaining the rise of the idea of torture. The show was about Cheney's desire for a strong executive and the pressure for new ways of dealing with "detainees" that Cheney and others expected be justified by the Dpt of Justice and a special office called the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). An attorney at the OLC named John Yoo was responsible for justifying the use of torture very early on and at one point in the Frontline piece he says something like - I have yet to hear credible alternatives from those who don't like what we are doing. Where are they? - or words to that effect.
I can understand that at the time of 9/11 people felt tremendous pressure put on them to do anything they could think of to get back some someone - anyone. I can see how John Yoo - probably Ivy League educated and never having to be aware of Jihad might not have taken a little bit of time in his job to actually talk with interrogators like this army officer. But now that we are 7 years away from that event, I can't understand how people currently in John Yoo's position and others like him at DOJ can't find out what works in interrogation. At least this would remove the pressure being put on them to use these kinds of techniques. It's not the moral argument against torture, but at least they could see that even consequentially the torture idea is from Hell.
Again, keep up the good work.
I saw part of the Frontline piece while I was on the road (not much to do in hotel rooms). Unfortunately, I don't think it's that much of a hatchet job. Cheney seems to me (and I really hate to say this) a very nasty piece of work and quite comfortable with evil. His cheerful lies about "dunking" make this clear. He is a manifest liar on the issue of torture and, all things being impure to the impure, he approaches the war thinking as an evil man thinks: out of servile fear and ready to do great evil in order to win. Indeed, more than ready. He has fought and labored to make bloody *sure* our government can torture people. He has struggle to expand the torture license. The mark of such men is that they fancy themselves "realistic" and "hard". In fact, running from the law of God to do great evil for the salvation of your skin is rank cowardice.
Which explains why they don't revisit the issue at this date: they know they are doing evil. And if you refuse to repent of an evil to which you are committed, the universal response of the human heart is to refuse to look at what you are doing, to cover it up, and to complicate it with more lies, which has been the pattern of this administration when it comes to torture. Sin makes you stupid. And you wind up committing more energy to a project of defending your initial choice to do evil, even at the cost of looking clearly at what actually works. Because then you might have to face the fact that you freely chose to do evil out of your cowardice and not because you are the wonderful person you think you are. As far as I know, only the grace of the Holy Spirit can turn a spiritual dynamic like that around. So Cheney and Co. badly need our prayers, as well as our loyal opposition to the evil policies of this Administration.
We will be paying for this Administration for a long long time. Because (as the popular response to both
General Odom Makes the Case for Pulling Out of Iraq
Basically, this conversation addresses the fourth (and least knowable) point of ius ad bellum criteria:
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
Odom basically argues that we've reached the point where the war is doing more harm than good.
Basically, this conversation addresses the fourth (and least knowable) point of ius ad bellum criteria:
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
Odom basically argues that we've reached the point where the war is doing more harm than good.
A reader writes:
On most moral questions, there never was--ever--a "unified" clergy in terms of one-size-fits-all answers for every moral conundrum. So don't feel too bad about that. It's perfectly normal in the life of the Church.
To answer your question: The Church says that despair is a mortal sin, and that killing an innocent (including one's self) is grave matter. But it does not follow that suicide is proof of despair, nor that the the person committing the act has either full freedom or intellectual understanding of the gravity of the sin. Because of these mitigating factors, the Church makes no pronunciation on the state of any suicide's soul, yet continues to warn that suicide is gravely evil.
Here is the full teaching of the Catechism:
Just so you know, the Catechism can be accessed here:
Hope that helps!
Do you know the Catholic church's stand on suicide? I was always told it was a sin and now it seems some priests are backing away from that and saying people who commit suicide are mentally ill and not held responsible. I get so confused by so many different opinions from priests. There no longer seems to be unified body of clergy.
On most moral questions, there never was--ever--a "unified" clergy in terms of one-size-fits-all answers for every moral conundrum. So don't feel too bad about that. It's perfectly normal in the life of the Church.
To answer your question: The Church says that despair is a mortal sin, and that killing an innocent (including one's self) is grave matter. But it does not follow that suicide is proof of despair, nor that the the person committing the act has either full freedom or intellectual understanding of the gravity of the sin. Because of these mitigating factors, the Church makes no pronunciation on the state of any suicide's soul, yet continues to warn that suicide is gravely evil.
Here is the full teaching of the Catechism:
2281 Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.
2282 If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal. Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law.
Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.
2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.
Just so you know, the Catechism can be accessed here:
Hope that helps!
Alexham Appeals to the Better Angels of Conservative Nature
Here's hoping Mammon and Power-First Conservatism doesn't shout him down as "unrealistic".
Here's hoping Mammon and Power-First Conservatism doesn't shout him down as "unrealistic".
The Good News is Their Next Event has Been Abruptly Moved from Most Holy Redeemer to Some Other Location
I have, like, zero charism in Administration so I'm not gonna try to adjudicate why it's taken so long to give that place the enema it so badly needed (nor am I confident this is anything other than cosmetic due to the heat the Abp. took the other day). I will simply say I'm glad *something* is happening there and doubly glad that Fr. Stephen Meriwether, the ringmaster of this circus, is no longer Chancellor.
Let the Great Enema continue!
I have, like, zero charism in Administration so I'm not gonna try to adjudicate why it's taken so long to give that place the enema it so badly needed (nor am I confident this is anything other than cosmetic due to the heat the Abp. took the other day). I will simply say I'm glad *something* is happening there and doubly glad that Fr. Stephen Meriwether, the ringmaster of this circus, is no longer Chancellor.
Let the Great Enema continue!
Ayup!
The Creative Minority is one funny place. Here's their transcript of the conversation of millions of Latin loves, according to the UN:
That millions of suckers take this scenario seriously is proof positive sin makes you stupid.
The Creative Minority is one funny place. Here's their transcript of the conversation of millions of Latin loves, according to the UN:
Manuela: Jose, you are a very handsome man. I wish to make love to you.
Jose: Si, Manuela. I can feel your desire. You too are a very beautiful woman and I wish to make love to you as well.
Manuela: Jose, just for your informacion, you will be my ninth partner this year. Also, for further consideration, you may wish to know that I never even knew the name of my last three lovers.
Jose: Ay. Thank you Manuela for sharing this critical information. I too have been with many partners of which I have little recollection. This, however, does not dampen my desire for you.
Manuela: Bueno. Since this is our first date, I will let you pick the motel.
Jose: Gracias Manuela, that is very considerate.
Manuela: Jose, on the way to the motel, where we intend to fornicate, do you think that we should pick up some condoms as recommended by the United Nations to prevent the spread of AIDS?
Jose: ¡Ay, caramba! Manuela, do you not know that the Catholic Church prohibits the use of contraception? Manuela, my darling, it has been the consistent teaching of the Popes and the full Magisterium of the Church that the use of contraception is immoral and gravely sinful.
Manuela: Jose, I am aware of this fact. But I just thought that since we are ignoring the Church's consistent and explicit prohibition on sex outside of marriage that we need not adhere to other teachings as well.
Jose: I see your point my darling Manuela. No matter how ridiculous and inconsistent it may seem, the stigma attached to the use of contraception reinforced by the church, forces me to put my life and yours, not to mention the numerous sexual partners I intend to have after you, at risk. I have no choice. That is my final decision.
Manuela: Jose, I understand and respect your decision. I do, however, have one more question. What do we do if I get pregnant?
Jose: Oh, no problemo my little flower. We will just get an abortion.
Manuela: Come to me, my lover!
That millions of suckers take this scenario seriously is proof positive sin makes you stupid.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
"If you hear a thing being accused of being too tall and too short, too red and too green, too bad in one way and too bad also in the opposite way, then you may be sure that it is very good." - G.K. Chesterton
I'm reminded of this when I am told that Harry Potter is, simultaneously, a huge coup for gay agitprop artists in the Culture Wars while gay agitprop artists gripe:
I'm reminded of this when I am told that Harry Potter is, simultaneously, a huge coup for gay agitprop artists in the Culture Wars while gay agitprop artists gripe:
But as far as we know, Dumbledore had not a single fully realized romance in 115 years of life. That's pathetic, and a little creepy. It's also a throwback to an era of pop culture when the only gay characters were those who committed suicide or were murdered. As Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1981) points out, in film after film of the mid-century—Rebel Without a Cause; Rebecca; Suddenly, Last Summer—the gay characters must pay for their existence with death. Like a lisping weakling, Dumbledore is a painfully selfless, celibate, dead gay man, so forgive me if I don't see Rowling's revelation as great progress.
Rudy Giuliani: The Embodiment of What's Wrong with the GOP and AmChurch
He's all about Money Sex and Power. What's not for the Realpolitik Mammon-Conservatives to like?
He's all about Money Sex and Power. What's not for the Realpolitik Mammon-Conservatives to like?
The Lie: This is Supposed to Keep us Safe
And if you don't believe that, it's because you are not a Realist, according to the Realpolitik crowd.
The Truth: Christianity is Realism. Accept no hellish substitutes.
And if you don't believe that, it's because you are not a Realist, according to the Realpolitik crowd.
The Truth: Christianity is Realism. Accept no hellish substitutes.
Because, of course, what is uppermost in the mind of every fornicator is the Teaching of the Magisterium
I wonder how long people will go on buying this preposterous lie.
I wonder how long people will go on buying this preposterous lie.
Planned Parenthood Demonstrates Once Again That If You are Willing to Murder Children, the Likelihood is Rather High that You Will Lie Too
Someday that Barad-Dur in the heart of the Western World will crumble. Someday what Nahum wrote of Nineveh will be fulfilled over all Satan's kingdom of death:
Someday that Barad-Dur in the heart of the Western World will crumble. Someday what Nahum wrote of Nineveh will be fulfilled over all Satan's kingdom of death:
Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and booty--no end to the plunder! The crack of whip, and rumble of wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot! Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end--they stumble over the bodies! And all for the countless harlotries of the harlot, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her harlotries, and peoples with her charms. Behold, I am against you, says the LORD of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame. I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt, and make you a gazingstock. And all who look on you will shrink from you and say, Wasted is Nineveh; who will bemoan her? whence shall I seek comforters for her? Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, and water her wall? Ethiopia was her strength, Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers. Yet she was carried away, she went into captivity; her little ones were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains. You also will be drunken, you will be dazed; you will seek a refuge from the enemy. All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs--if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your foes; fire has devoured your bars. Draw water for the siege, strengthen your forts; go into the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold! There will the fire devour you, the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust, multiply like the grasshopper! You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away. Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences in a day of cold--when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they are. Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them. There is no assuaging your hurt, your wound is grievous. All who hear the news of you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?
Everything you Ever Wanted to Know About Mandaeans
These are basically the people who ignored all that business about Jesus being greater than John the Baptist.
These are basically the people who ignored all that business about Jesus being greater than John the Baptist.
Bleak, but True
A reader writes:
A) Not true of Rowling. There was no evil culture war "plan", I think. Just a novelist watching a character develop (and "watching" is the right word, as anybody who has written fiction will tell you: characters take on a life of their own.)
B) Extremely true of the combox conversation. This is why I think it's so important for Christians to have clearly in their minds the distinction between same sex attraction (which are not sinful) and homosexual acts (which are). Otherwise, it's hard to see how people struggling with homosexual attraction will get any other message than "It's not what you do, it's what you are that's the problem." Dumbledore, so far as we can tell, committed no sin in that department. Christians can acknowledge that. They can also point out (as I tried to do yesterday) that his SSA is, from a literary standpoint, the perfect image of the love of the Same that tempted him to Pureblood racism. It is notable that "love", not sexual attraction, is the term Rowling uses to describe it.
So: can everybody turn it down a few notches? These are not the greatest books of all time. Rowling is neither a true or false prophet. Be aware that persons who are grappling with the Church's teaching on homosexuality are getting a loud and clear message in the comboxes: It doesn't matter whether you live chastely or not, if you are SSA then you are irredeemable. I doubt that's the message anybody intends to send, but it's being sent (and heard) nonetheless.
In the same way, calling somebody a "liar" because he has a different opinion is a sub-optimal response. Chill. Everybody.
Update: Cacciaguida sums things up pretty aptly:
Ayup.
A reader writes:
Anatomy of an Evil Homosexuality-promoting Plan
1) Write an incredibly popular series of books with no homosexuality in them.
2) Announce at a public event that you've always viewed a major character as gay. Say that a relationship already portrayed as superlatively disasterous was the love of his life. Don't even hint at any other gay relationships.
3) Sit back and watch traditional Christians to rain down condemnations against you and your books like never before.
4) Wait for gay activists to point to those condemnations and say, "See? Those Christians who claim to hate the "sin" and love the "sinner" are lying hypocritical bigots. They don't just hate what we do, or even hate us just for what we do: they hate us for who we are. Even if we never had sex they'd still hate us."
5) Cackle wildly.
(Note: I'm certainly not saying this was her plan, but if it were, you guys have played your part masterfully.)
A) Not true of Rowling. There was no evil culture war "plan", I think. Just a novelist watching a character develop (and "watching" is the right word, as anybody who has written fiction will tell you: characters take on a life of their own.)
B) Extremely true of the combox conversation. This is why I think it's so important for Christians to have clearly in their minds the distinction between same sex attraction (which are not sinful) and homosexual acts (which are). Otherwise, it's hard to see how people struggling with homosexual attraction will get any other message than "It's not what you do, it's what you are that's the problem." Dumbledore, so far as we can tell, committed no sin in that department. Christians can acknowledge that. They can also point out (as I tried to do yesterday) that his SSA is, from a literary standpoint, the perfect image of the love of the Same that tempted him to Pureblood racism. It is notable that "love", not sexual attraction, is the term Rowling uses to describe it.
So: can everybody turn it down a few notches? These are not the greatest books of all time. Rowling is neither a true or false prophet. Be aware that persons who are grappling with the Church's teaching on homosexuality are getting a loud and clear message in the comboxes: It doesn't matter whether you live chastely or not, if you are SSA then you are irredeemable. I doubt that's the message anybody intends to send, but it's being sent (and heard) nonetheless.
In the same way, calling somebody a "liar" because he has a different opinion is a sub-optimal response. Chill. Everybody.
Update: Cacciaguida sums things up pretty aptly:
So: our new poster-boy for "gay rights" is a man whose one known experience with gay "smitten"-ness was a moral catastrophe; who practiced celibacy ever after (so far as the canon shows, and nothing else counts), and who exercised extreme, even excessive, caution with regard to the only other boy he may be said to have, in some sense, "loved."
Doesn't sound like "gay rights" to me; sounds like Courage.
Ayup.
A fifth definition
Not that the "What does it mean? I'm sooooooo confuuuuuuused!" crowd will be interested. But in case somebody is actually interested:
Torture apologists can now commence Standard Deconstruction Procedures.
Not that the "What does it mean? I'm sooooooo confuuuuuuused!" crowd will be interested. But in case somebody is actually interested:
Black's Law Dictionary quotes James Heath, who notes "By torture, I mean the infliction of physically founded suffering or the threat immediately to inflict it, where such infliction or threat is intended to elicit, or such infliction is incidental to means adopted to elicit, matter of intelligence or forensic proof and the motive is one of military, civil, or ecclesiastical interest."
Torture apologists can now commence Standard Deconstruction Procedures.
A Tale of Two Covenants, Part 1
In my ongoing quest to baffle extremists, here beginneth my four-part series on what I *actually* think about the relationship between the Old and New Covenants.
And just so you know, this was written last summer and is not a "response" to NRO's recent attempt to whip up the troops against me as an "anti-semite". Indeed, if it is a response to anything, it is a response to the extremists who charge me with being a Judaizer.
Since I'm going off to the UK November 2-14, I may or may not have access to a computer to post the whole series, so be aware that it will come out each Tuesday for the next month, if you are interested.
In my ongoing quest to baffle extremists, here beginneth my four-part series on what I *actually* think about the relationship between the Old and New Covenants.
And just so you know, this was written last summer and is not a "response" to NRO's recent attempt to whip up the troops against me as an "anti-semite". Indeed, if it is a response to anything, it is a response to the extremists who charge me with being a Judaizer.
Since I'm going off to the UK November 2-14, I may or may not have access to a computer to post the whole series, so be aware that it will come out each Tuesday for the next month, if you are interested.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Thanks, Ramesh!
Fair's fair. If the Corner gets a spanking for running something dumb, it gets Attaboys for saying something smart.
Fair's fair. If the Corner gets a spanking for running something dumb, it gets Attaboys for saying something smart.
Dumbledore
Not surprisingly, everybody wants to know what I think of Rowling's big bombshell.
Basically, I was surprised and yet not surprised. I was surprised as a reader of the novels because the thought never occurred to me (nor anybody else) and yet (in the story universe) it makes perfect sense both of his actions and of what Rowling calls the tragedy of his life.
I was *not* surprised that Rowling would not be averse to have a major character with same sex attraction (which is all we really know of Dumbledore and even that is so subtle that it took Rowling spelling it out for us to even see it). Her treatment of Lupin as a sort of metaphor for a gay AIDS victim telegraphs pretty clearly that her views on homosexuality would likely be indistinguishable from most of her contemporaries in Britain. In this, as well, I think John Granger is basically confirmed in his view of Rowling as a post-modern Christian (by all means read the link if you want an intelligent Christian analysis as distinct from the normal yahyah of the media).
Of course, the revelation will have all sorts of implications for how the book should be received. Most of the conversations about the books in the media will exist at the level of gay agitprop (on the one hand) and of various swirls of defensiveness and gloating in the Christian world on the other. For some Christians, this is final confirmation that the books are not Christian at all--Rowling's insistence to the contrary notwithstanding. For others, there is perfectly justifiable sense of disappointment. For some, there is a feeling that they are Trojan Horses, specifically created to undermine and attack the Faith after winning our trust. But the reality is: Rowling's work will defy easy categorization.
Clearly, they remain Christian works, I think. There's simply no other way to categorize the main story line than as something that is completely rooted in faith in the Paschal mystery of Christ's death and resurrection as the Pattern of Reality. And just as clearly, Rowling advocates (through the filter of her post-modern culture) traditional Christian virtues and even praises some distinctly counter-cultural things for a European (like the Weasley's large family). Some Christians will, naturally, point out that homosexuality is not a traditional Christian virtue. True, but (distinguishing a moment between the artist and the art) it hardly seems to look like one in the Potterverse.
Consider: Dumbledore's great tragedy is that he falls in love with Grindlewald in a way that directly reflects (and is bound up with) the racist narcissism that tempts him. He dallies with the notion only those who are the same (Greek: homos) as him--Purebloods--can be worthy. And that is what leads directly to the tragedy of his life. I have no idea if Rowling sees the connection, but I think the connection is certainly there to be made. It exists in the work. That is, as Plato points out, different than saying it exists in the artist because the artist often does not fully comprehend his own work. So I leave room for the possibility that it is a connection Rowling has not consciously made.
Now, I doubt most people will note the connection. The gay community will want to emphasize only that a Great Hero in the Potterverse is Gay, not that his love lies at the root of his self-inflicted tragedy. Many Christians who are unable to distinguish between homosexual attraction (which is not sinful) and homosexual acts (which are) will, in reaction, simply dump the books overboard as gay agitprop. I think this is a mistake.
And finally (and Rowling doesn't make this very easy) most people will not be able to distinguish the art from the artist. This goes for both Harry haters and defenders. I still think the books very good. My esteem for them, as s works of art is undiminished. Indeed, I think (for the reasons given above) that it makes a great deal of sense that Dumbledore's love--and specifically a love of that kind--was his tragedy.
That said, the problem remains that these are books for kids as well as adults. And they will soon be films for kids as well as adults. And you can be quite certain that the larger culture is not going to say any of what I just wrote. It will say that Dumbledore show us that people who indulge in gay sex aren't doing anything wrong. That's a problem we will have to face as Christians.
A good starting place for facing it, it seems to me, is to have a sane appreciation for the books. They are good stories, not sacred scripture. Their author is an artist, not a prophet of God. She does a good job, in my view, of telling the truth about the human condition--not a perfect one. In this, she shares something in common with Plato--who likewise tells us a lot truth and who takes things like pederasty for granted. I would not forbid my kids from reading Plato on that ground (at an appropriate age). Nor, having already read Potter would I now say, "You must now pretend that the joy you found in these books, the characters you came to love, the power you felt in the drama--was all either non-existent or a lie. Never read them again!"
Instead, when the time is appropriate--and it soon will be in our sex-obsessed culture--I will discuss the books with them in light of the church's teaching on things like homosexuality. Surely, if they can cope with an R-rated book like Genesis, I think they will do fine with a PG rated book like Deathly Hallows.
Question for all combox discussants:
According to St. John of the Cross, at the evening of our lives, shall we be judged on (choose one)
A. Our views on Harry Potter
B. Our sexual attractions
C. Our orthodoxy
D. Our love
I'm just sayin'....
Not surprisingly, everybody wants to know what I think of Rowling's big bombshell.
Basically, I was surprised and yet not surprised. I was surprised as a reader of the novels because the thought never occurred to me (nor anybody else) and yet (in the story universe) it makes perfect sense both of his actions and of what Rowling calls the tragedy of his life.
I was *not* surprised that Rowling would not be averse to have a major character with same sex attraction (which is all we really know of Dumbledore and even that is so subtle that it took Rowling spelling it out for us to even see it). Her treatment of Lupin as a sort of metaphor for a gay AIDS victim telegraphs pretty clearly that her views on homosexuality would likely be indistinguishable from most of her contemporaries in Britain. In this, as well, I think John Granger is basically confirmed in his view of Rowling as a post-modern Christian (by all means read the link if you want an intelligent Christian analysis as distinct from the normal yahyah of the media).
Of course, the revelation will have all sorts of implications for how the book should be received. Most of the conversations about the books in the media will exist at the level of gay agitprop (on the one hand) and of various swirls of defensiveness and gloating in the Christian world on the other. For some Christians, this is final confirmation that the books are not Christian at all--Rowling's insistence to the contrary notwithstanding. For others, there is perfectly justifiable sense of disappointment. For some, there is a feeling that they are Trojan Horses, specifically created to undermine and attack the Faith after winning our trust. But the reality is: Rowling's work will defy easy categorization.
Clearly, they remain Christian works, I think. There's simply no other way to categorize the main story line than as something that is completely rooted in faith in the Paschal mystery of Christ's death and resurrection as the Pattern of Reality. And just as clearly, Rowling advocates (through the filter of her post-modern culture) traditional Christian virtues and even praises some distinctly counter-cultural things for a European (like the Weasley's large family). Some Christians will, naturally, point out that homosexuality is not a traditional Christian virtue. True, but (distinguishing a moment between the artist and the art) it hardly seems to look like one in the Potterverse.
Consider: Dumbledore's great tragedy is that he falls in love with Grindlewald in a way that directly reflects (and is bound up with) the racist narcissism that tempts him. He dallies with the notion only those who are the same (Greek: homos) as him--Purebloods--can be worthy. And that is what leads directly to the tragedy of his life. I have no idea if Rowling sees the connection, but I think the connection is certainly there to be made. It exists in the work. That is, as Plato points out, different than saying it exists in the artist because the artist often does not fully comprehend his own work. So I leave room for the possibility that it is a connection Rowling has not consciously made.
Now, I doubt most people will note the connection. The gay community will want to emphasize only that a Great Hero in the Potterverse is Gay, not that his love lies at the root of his self-inflicted tragedy. Many Christians who are unable to distinguish between homosexual attraction (which is not sinful) and homosexual acts (which are) will, in reaction, simply dump the books overboard as gay agitprop. I think this is a mistake.
And finally (and Rowling doesn't make this very easy) most people will not be able to distinguish the art from the artist. This goes for both Harry haters and defenders. I still think the books very good. My esteem for them, as s works of art is undiminished. Indeed, I think (for the reasons given above) that it makes a great deal of sense that Dumbledore's love--and specifically a love of that kind--was his tragedy.
That said, the problem remains that these are books for kids as well as adults. And they will soon be films for kids as well as adults. And you can be quite certain that the larger culture is not going to say any of what I just wrote. It will say that Dumbledore show us that people who indulge in gay sex aren't doing anything wrong. That's a problem we will have to face as Christians.
A good starting place for facing it, it seems to me, is to have a sane appreciation for the books. They are good stories, not sacred scripture. Their author is an artist, not a prophet of God. She does a good job, in my view, of telling the truth about the human condition--not a perfect one. In this, she shares something in common with Plato--who likewise tells us a lot truth and who takes things like pederasty for granted. I would not forbid my kids from reading Plato on that ground (at an appropriate age). Nor, having already read Potter would I now say, "You must now pretend that the joy you found in these books, the characters you came to love, the power you felt in the drama--was all either non-existent or a lie. Never read them again!"
Instead, when the time is appropriate--and it soon will be in our sex-obsessed culture--I will discuss the books with them in light of the church's teaching on things like homosexuality. Surely, if they can cope with an R-rated book like Genesis, I think they will do fine with a PG rated book like Deathly Hallows.
Question for all combox discussants:
According to St. John of the Cross, at the evening of our lives, shall we be judged on (choose one)
A. Our views on Harry Potter
B. Our sexual attractions
C. Our orthodoxy
D. Our love
I'm just sayin'....
If only women could be teachers! If only teachers could marry!
The Church is (rightly) held to a higher standard than public schools. But anybody who could look at this sociological phenomenon and say that it is caused by celibacy, or a male only priesthood, or the Catholic faith itself is either an idiot or an anti-Catholic.
The Church is (rightly) held to a higher standard than public schools. But anybody who could look at this sociological phenomenon and say that it is caused by celibacy, or a male only priesthood, or the Catholic faith itself is either an idiot or an anti-Catholic.
Hey, Friends of the G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle!
The Society's board of directors cordially invites you to the first lecture of the new season, to be held Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at 7:30 p.m., on the campus of Seattle Pacific University:
"The Virtual Inevitability Of A Singularity in Inflationary Model Universes: Implications for the Creation of the Universe"
Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J.
President, Gonzaga University
The Society's beloved friend Fr. Robert Spitzer puts on his physicist hat to speak to us about recent developments in cosmology. Classical Big Bang theory was altered significantly by the prospect of universal inflation and a "pre-big-bang quantum cosmological or string condition." Recent work by Borde, Vilenkin, and Guth shows that mathematical modeling of such universes requires an initial singularity, which in turn implies a creation of the universe by a causative power transcending space-time asymmetry. Fr. Spitzer will discuss the history of this remarkable development and its theological implications.
Fr. Spitzer has been involved in teaching about the intersection of physics, metaphysics, and faith for many years. He is co-founder and director of the Institute for Christian Philosophy and the Natural Sciences at Gonzaga University, and co-organizes an annual lecture series entitled Physics and the God of Abraham. Fr. Spitzer is also founder of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics institute at Georgetown university: a group of physicists, chemists, philosophers and theologians engaged in ongoing discussion of underlying conditions of space, time and energy from physical and philosophical perspectives.
The lecture will take place in the Falcon Lounge, Royal Brougham Pavilion, at the corner of W. Nickerson and 3rd Avenue W. For links to a campus map and directions, please see the Events Calendar at www.seattlechesterton.org. As always, pizza and refreshments will be served at the end of the lecture.
Please join us for a delightful evening!
The Society's board of directors cordially invites you to the first lecture of the new season, to be held Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at 7:30 p.m., on the campus of Seattle Pacific University:
"The Virtual Inevitability Of A Singularity in Inflationary Model Universes: Implications for the Creation of the Universe"
Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J.
President, Gonzaga University
The Society's beloved friend Fr. Robert Spitzer puts on his physicist hat to speak to us about recent developments in cosmology. Classical Big Bang theory was altered significantly by the prospect of universal inflation and a "pre-big-bang quantum cosmological or string condition." Recent work by Borde, Vilenkin, and Guth shows that mathematical modeling of such universes requires an initial singularity, which in turn implies a creation of the universe by a causative power transcending space-time asymmetry. Fr. Spitzer will discuss the history of this remarkable development and its theological implications.
Fr. Spitzer has been involved in teaching about the intersection of physics, metaphysics, and faith for many years. He is co-founder and director of the Institute for Christian Philosophy and the Natural Sciences at Gonzaga University, and co-organizes an annual lecture series entitled Physics and the God of Abraham. Fr. Spitzer is also founder of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics institute at Georgetown university: a group of physicists, chemists, philosophers and theologians engaged in ongoing discussion of underlying conditions of space, time and energy from physical and philosophical perspectives.
The lecture will take place in the Falcon Lounge, Royal Brougham Pavilion, at the corner of W. Nickerson and 3rd Avenue W. For links to a campus map and directions, please see the Events Calendar at www.seattlechesterton.org. As always, pizza and refreshments will be served at the end of the lecture.
Please join us for a delightful evening!
Stephen Colbert: Not Just a Political Messiah
He's also figured out the solution to 500 years of religious upheaval. America needs this man. He will give us Peace and Safety, as the Bible promises. And isn't that what we in the 21st Century West are all about?
He's also figured out the solution to 500 years of religious upheaval. America needs this man. He will give us Peace and Safety, as the Bible promises. And isn't that what we in the 21st Century West are all about?
A reader writes:
I wanted to thank you and all those who prayed for my son Joseph late last week. We heard from the pediatrician this morning and all his scans were negative for any spinal problem. She said that she wants a pediatric dermatologist to examine his unusual birthmark, but added that she didn't think he had anything demanding immediate attention.
Praise be to Jesus for the good news!
Seattle: Land of the White Witch
Where it's always winter and never Christmas--or even Hanukkah.
Just bring back the Christmas trees and menorahs. Sheesh!
Where it's always winter and never Christmas--or even Hanukkah.
Just bring back the Christmas trees and menorahs. Sheesh!
Some Guy Tries to Live the Bible Literally for a Year
It sounds reasonably well-intentioned. The guy's an agnostic who is trying to figure things out. But, of course, it's also absurd. By "the Bible", he clearly means "the Old Testament" without any regard for the New. And by "the Old Testament" he means "my private attempt to recreate a life in accord with Mosaic legislation without out any regard at all for the unique historical, social, and cultural circumstances of the Old Testament."
He did come away with some valuable insights, some of which may prepare him for reading the New Testament. Notably, he seems to have discovered thankfulness (a nice lead in to the Eucharist), the fact thhat the law is primarily a diagnostic tool for discovering our capacity for sin, and the discovery that chastity is a good thing.
Interesting interview.
It sounds reasonably well-intentioned. The guy's an agnostic who is trying to figure things out. But, of course, it's also absurd. By "the Bible", he clearly means "the Old Testament" without any regard for the New. And by "the Old Testament" he means "my private attempt to recreate a life in accord with Mosaic legislation without out any regard at all for the unique historical, social, and cultural circumstances of the Old Testament."
He did come away with some valuable insights, some of which may prepare him for reading the New Testament. Notably, he seems to have discovered thankfulness (a nice lead in to the Eucharist), the fact thhat the law is primarily a diagnostic tool for discovering our capacity for sin, and the discovery that chastity is a good thing.
Interesting interview.
Catholics Against Rudy Continues to Fight the Good Fight
Catholics Against Rudy now has a petition online that supporters can sign to express their public opposition to Rudy Giuliani's candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination:
CAR also has facebook and myspace pages/groups that your readers can join if they so desire.
Catholics Against Rudy now has a petition online that supporters can sign to express their public opposition to Rudy Giuliani's candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination:
CAR also has facebook and myspace pages/groups that your readers can join if they so desire.
A reader writes:
As a general rule, the God western atheists don't believe in is the Christian God and their mockery of same is the demonstration of this point. Blasphemy depends on the sacred as shadow depends on light. "If you don't believe that," says Chesterton, "try thinking blasphemous thought about Loki."
IMPORTANT CAVEAT TO ALL DISCUSSIONS OF BLASPHEMY: As we discovered last week on this blog, if an Israeli blasphemes, it's not blasphemous. And if somebody says, "That was blasphemous" after an Israeli blasphemes, that's not because it was blasphemous, but because the offended person is an anti-semite and is trying to turn Americans against a brave ally. Very important to remember.
It's been quite a while since we've corresponded. I thought you might find a new topic interesting. I've been running a bit of an experiment over at wikipedia (actually several but this is one of the Catholic ones). You find all sorts of out of the way articles on small issues dominated by fans and attempting to pull the thing to a neutral tone is difficult at best. The "Flying Spaghetti Monster" is one such page. I decided to just put in a small section on how, as a formal matter, the entire concept of an alternate God that pulled heavily from Christian art and tradition was blasphemous and not just to the young earth creationists that the idea is supposed to be aiming at.
The amount of resistance to the idea astounded me and so I decided to do a bit of googling and found several clear examples where this isn't just a "lets have fun with the fundies" device but flat out, let's offend christians. From a song denying the existence of Hell to a strange piece of youtube video having FSM deny the existence of the Holy Spirit as an entry into the "blasphemy challenge". Did you even know that there was such a thing as a blasphemy challenge? I've apparently lived a sheltered life.
Now most serious christian thinkers seem to have taken the whole thing as a joke and accepted at face value the reassurances that it's not really aimed at christians in general, just the scientific creationists who think that the Bible is there to teach us about biology. I started out there myself but now I'm not so sure. What do you think?
Plying Spaghett Monster article
The christian blasphemy text is in and out depending on who edited the thing last. Here is the latest version.
==Christian Blasphemy==
Beyond the specific purpose of a parody against christians who believe in teaching intelligent design as science, there are specific attacks on christianity in general that are associated with advocates of the Flying Spaghetti Monsterhttp://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/12/celebrating_christmas_at_the_c.html“Celebrating” Christmas at the “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster”.
Examples include:
*Photoshopping God out and the Flying Spaghetti Monster into reproductions of the famous Sistine Chapel fresco
None of the items on the list have anything to do with refuting the Intelligent Design movement. While opinions on how seriously to take casual blasphemy vary widely within christianity, it's definition is fairly rigorous and without controversy among most mainstream christian denominations.
As a general rule, the God western atheists don't believe in is the Christian God and their mockery of same is the demonstration of this point. Blasphemy depends on the sacred as shadow depends on light. "If you don't believe that," says Chesterton, "try thinking blasphemous thought about Loki."
IMPORTANT CAVEAT TO ALL DISCUSSIONS OF BLASPHEMY: As we discovered last week on this blog, if an Israeli blasphemes, it's not blasphemous. And if somebody says, "That was blasphemous" after an Israeli blasphemes, that's not because it was blasphemous, but because the offended person is an anti-semite and is trying to turn Americans against a brave ally. Very important to remember.
The Blessed Virgin as a Brand Name
One of the dangers the Faith faces once it settles into a culture is that of becoming a kind of ethnicity. The good side of this is seen in the reality that the Faith can really permeate a culture and build up a sort of "capital" as Chesterton observed above. So it becomes "unAmerican" to, say, shoot a man in the back or deny him voting right due to the color of his skin. A "true Englishman" of Chesterton's day would not cheat at cards or insult a lady. But all this is due to the permeation of Christian moral teaching in a culture over time and the pernicious thing is that one can transfer belief in those moral teachings to one's ethnicity instead of attributing them to God. One can also start using God or the saints as flags for one's ethnicity instead of humbling oneself before them as teachers. When this happens, something pernicious is afoot.
One of the dangers the Faith faces once it settles into a culture is that of becoming a kind of ethnicity. The good side of this is seen in the reality that the Faith can really permeate a culture and build up a sort of "capital" as Chesterton observed above. So it becomes "unAmerican" to, say, shoot a man in the back or deny him voting right due to the color of his skin. A "true Englishman" of Chesterton's day would not cheat at cards or insult a lady. But all this is due to the permeation of Christian moral teaching in a culture over time and the pernicious thing is that one can transfer belief in those moral teachings to one's ethnicity instead of attributing them to God. One can also start using God or the saints as flags for one's ethnicity instead of humbling oneself before them as teachers. When this happens, something pernicious is afoot.
The Enlightenment vs. Jihad
Enlightenment values go toe to toe with Bronze Age Thugs in this video which defends the West with slogans from the Age of Relativism. Any sensible person enjoys watching a Bronze Age Thug splutter at being called a Bronze Age Thug--especially by a woman. But in the end, the argument is between inflamed jihadism and a watery relativist who is saying, "Being Western means believing all this god stuff is a bunch of crap and wishing people with religious convictions would leave us alone." There's no There there except "We have really cool toys and you guys don't. I personally don't care about religion and I like religionists who leave me alone." She's a woman well immersed in the post-modern project of trying to have "human rights" while rejecting the only sane metaphysical basis for them. So my happiness at watching her humiliate the Thugs is tinged with sadness over the ultimate hollowness of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment project she is trying to defend.
As it was said by the Prophet Chesterton:
Enlightenment values go toe to toe with Bronze Age Thugs in this video which defends the West with slogans from the Age of Relativism. Any sensible person enjoys watching a Bronze Age Thug splutter at being called a Bronze Age Thug--especially by a woman. But in the end, the argument is between inflamed jihadism and a watery relativist who is saying, "Being Western means believing all this god stuff is a bunch of crap and wishing people with religious convictions would leave us alone." There's no There there except "We have really cool toys and you guys don't. I personally don't care about religion and I like religionists who leave me alone." She's a woman well immersed in the post-modern project of trying to have "human rights" while rejecting the only sane metaphysical basis for them. So my happiness at watching her humiliate the Thugs is tinged with sadness over the ultimate hollowness of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment project she is trying to defend.
As it was said by the Prophet Chesterton:
The fact is this: that the modern world, with its modern movements, is living on its Catholic capital. It is using, and using up, the truths that remain to it out of the old treasury of Christendom; including, of course, many truths known to pagan antiquity but crystallized in Christendom. But it is NOT really starting new enthusiasms of its own. The novelty is a matter of names and labels, like modern advertisement; in almost every other way the novelty is merely negative. It is not starting fresh things that it can really carry on far into the future. On the contrary, it is picking up old things that it cannot carry on at all. For these are the two marks of modern moral ideals. First, that they were borrowed or snatched out of ancient or mediaeval hands. Second, that they wither very quickly in modern hands.
Friday, October 19, 2007
NRO Proves my Point
Whew! Well, the flash crowd from the Potemra link at NRO is subsiding and the 15 Minute Hate (Coward! Anti-semite! Anti-Zionist!) seems to be dying down. In its wake, we have learned that if you criticize a jiggle ad, you are an anti-semite and if you think Israel is a secular nation state and ally who should be treated like any other secular nation state and ally, that is an attempt to drive a wedge between Israel and her supporters. If I say that Australia is also a secular nation state and ally, but not a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, am I likewise poisoning the hearts and minds of Americans against our allies Down Under?
Weird.
Anyway, here's the full, unsanitized-for-your-protection ad. Not Safe For Work.
What you saw yesterday only had mockery of the Blessed Virgin. This has the full megillah, including F bombs, "Holy S---!" and "Holy Jesus!"
Now the amazing thing to me is that, of all the things NRO could be doing, they chose to go to bat for *this*. And not just go to bat for it, but claim that criticism of it is an attempt to "turn us against a brave ally". Because, of course, anything less than uncritical acceptance of anything the Israelis might choose to do--right down to a blasphemous jiggle ad--is endorsement of the idea of pushing Israel into the sea.
This is what I mean about the strange right-wing dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the State of Israel and her preservation from all sin both original and actual.
Had that ad been, say, something broadcast on Saturday Night Live or Bill Maher, K Lo would be linking the latest press release from Shoutin' Bill Donohue and NRO would be lamenting the tacky way in which the media was trashing religion and trying to make Israel look bad. But since it was some chucklehead Israeli put the ad together, then NRO is going to bat for it in accord with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the State of Israel. I didn't point out the blasphemous jiggle ad because I think blasphemous jiggle ads are tacky. Nope, I did it to turn people against a brave ally. Likewise, when I criticized the plan to give contraceptives to 11 year olds up in New England, that's not because I think that's a bad idea. It's because I hate America and I'm trying to foster treason. It's all or nothing at all in the weird new world of Millennial Conservatism.
Here's the deal: there's no need to defend the ad. It doesn't just offend Christians (and presumably Hindus). It offends religious Jews: religious Jews who believe (as I do not) that Israel *is* the fulfilment of prophecy. It's a tacky, blasphemous, gratuitously insulting ad.
The bizarre notion that whatever Israel chooses to do merits uncritical acceptance on pain of being declared an anti-semite or an enemy of Israel is on a collision course with itself if Israel decides that doing a Bill Maher imitation is the best way to market its tourism industry. The American conservative dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the State of Israel is also unlikely to survive its self-collision if it is so brittle that it cannot abide even the teensiest criticism of a blasphemous jiggle ad without hauling out the "enemy of Israel" sledgehammers.
I am amazed that I have to point this out.
Whew! Well, the flash crowd from the Potemra link at NRO is subsiding and the 15 Minute Hate (Coward! Anti-semite! Anti-Zionist!) seems to be dying down. In its wake, we have learned that if you criticize a jiggle ad, you are an anti-semite and if you think Israel is a secular nation state and ally who should be treated like any other secular nation state and ally, that is an attempt to drive a wedge between Israel and her supporters. If I say that Australia is also a secular nation state and ally, but not a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, am I likewise poisoning the hearts and minds of Americans against our allies Down Under?
Weird.
Anyway, here's the full, unsanitized-for-your-protection ad. Not Safe For Work.
What you saw yesterday only had mockery of the Blessed Virgin. This has the full megillah, including F bombs, "Holy S---!" and "Holy Jesus!"
Now the amazing thing to me is that, of all the things NRO could be doing, they chose to go to bat for *this*. And not just go to bat for it, but claim that criticism of it is an attempt to "turn us against a brave ally". Because, of course, anything less than uncritical acceptance of anything the Israelis might choose to do--right down to a blasphemous jiggle ad--is endorsement of the idea of pushing Israel into the sea.
This is what I mean about the strange right-wing dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the State of Israel and her preservation from all sin both original and actual.
Had that ad been, say, something broadcast on Saturday Night Live or Bill Maher, K Lo would be linking the latest press release from Shoutin' Bill Donohue and NRO would be lamenting the tacky way in which the media was trashing religion and trying to make Israel look bad. But since it was some chucklehead Israeli put the ad together, then NRO is going to bat for it in accord with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the State of Israel. I didn't point out the blasphemous jiggle ad because I think blasphemous jiggle ads are tacky. Nope, I did it to turn people against a brave ally. Likewise, when I criticized the plan to give contraceptives to 11 year olds up in New England, that's not because I think that's a bad idea. It's because I hate America and I'm trying to foster treason. It's all or nothing at all in the weird new world of Millennial Conservatism.
Here's the deal: there's no need to defend the ad. It doesn't just offend Christians (and presumably Hindus). It offends religious Jews: religious Jews who believe (as I do not) that Israel *is* the fulfilment of prophecy. It's a tacky, blasphemous, gratuitously insulting ad.
The bizarre notion that whatever Israel chooses to do merits uncritical acceptance on pain of being declared an anti-semite or an enemy of Israel is on a collision course with itself if Israel decides that doing a Bill Maher imitation is the best way to market its tourism industry. The American conservative dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the State of Israel is also unlikely to survive its self-collision if it is so brittle that it cannot abide even the teensiest criticism of a blasphemous jiggle ad without hauling out the "enemy of Israel" sledgehammers.
I am amazed that I have to point this out.
A reader writes:
May God help your friend find the assistance and hope she needs through our Lord Jesus! And may our Lady of Sorrows console her with her tears.
If my reader thinks it appropriate, they may want to ask people in the combox below if they know of any resources that may be of assistance here. But I'll leave that up to the discretion of my reader.
My friend is once again talking about the assisted suicide place and I really think she will do it this time. She's pretty much broke and trying to live on $170 a month, can't get disability, insurance won't cover her meds and her body is totally breaking down with tremors and constant pain and she can't hold food down. I don't think she would qualify for a hospice because she might linger on this way for years and that's not what hospice is for. I can't have her live with me because I will have stairs in the new place and she can't climb stairs and well, her and I wouldn't get along living together. Her family seems to be mostly out of the picture. I don't know what to do and I hate the fact that she thinks that suicide is the only option. If you can send some prayers her way especially for her to get disability that would be wonderful.
May God help your friend find the assistance and hope she needs through our Lord Jesus! And may our Lady of Sorrows console her with her tears.
If my reader thinks it appropriate, they may want to ask people in the combox below if they know of any resources that may be of assistance here. But I'll leave that up to the discretion of my reader.
Some Housekeeping While I'm on the Road
Mike Potemra, after siccing a zillion people on me with a broad suggestion to take me as a prude and the assurance that I am attempting to "drive a wedge" between Evangelicals and Israel, assures me he has the highest regard for the Mother of God. I will take him at his word. I will merely point out that others (like my reader) have a higher regard still and are scandalized at using her as a punchline in a jiggle ad. There was a time when this would have been self-evident at NRO.
Mike is much exercised by my saying the Evangelicals are snookered by the notion that Israel has special privileges. He seems to think I believe Israel has done the snookering. Actually, I think Evangelicals have snookered themselves. They are the ones who concocted the various end-times scenarios which feature the notion that Israel is the fulfilment of prophecy. I don't doubt that, in a certain sense, Israel has a role in the Grand Prophetic Scheme of Things, as do we all. But I see nothing in the Tradition to suggest that we have to take it as Biblical Truth that if you don't support, say, a unified Jerusalem, or a Red Heifer Portent, or the election of so and so to the Prime Ministerial office, then you risk the Wrath of God as Pat Robertson recently announced. I think the conflation of dogmatic prophesying based on a purely human opinion with no standing in the Tradition is pernicious. I don't think it follows from this that the State of Israel should not be supported as any other secular nation state ally should be supported.
Moving on....
To all anti-semitic nuts: Get lost. There is a distinction between the state of Israel and the people of Israel. The people are chosen, the state is not. Learn that distinction. Try reading Nostra Aetate and Romans 9-11. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. I've already had to delete two posts from some kook holding forth on the "Jews are accursed" theme and I will delete any more that come here. To say that *state* of Israel is an ordinary secular nation state is not to say the Jews are rejected by God, nor to say the Old Covenant is abolished by the New (it is transcended, not abolished), nor to say that, because it is secular, the state is illegitimate. Jew-bashers are not welcome here.
To all "Israel is immaculately conceived and preserved from all sin both original and actual" dogmatists: Criticizing a jiggle commercial that mocks the Mother of God is not anti-semitic. Observing that Israel is a secular nation state and not the fulfilment of prophecy is not tantamount to saying "Down with Israel". It's tantamount to saying the many Evangelicals have grafted a completely human tradition onto biblical revelation.
I will be very scarce, but I will be checking in. If nuts from either extreme show up to bitch that I am a Judaizing Enemy of the True Faith or a Rabid Anti-Semite for holding these perfectly sane views, they will be deleted. So how about just not bothering to post?
Mike Potemra, after siccing a zillion people on me with a broad suggestion to take me as a prude and the assurance that I am attempting to "drive a wedge" between Evangelicals and Israel, assures me he has the highest regard for the Mother of God. I will take him at his word. I will merely point out that others (like my reader) have a higher regard still and are scandalized at using her as a punchline in a jiggle ad. There was a time when this would have been self-evident at NRO.
Mike is much exercised by my saying the Evangelicals are snookered by the notion that Israel has special privileges. He seems to think I believe Israel has done the snookering. Actually, I think Evangelicals have snookered themselves. They are the ones who concocted the various end-times scenarios which feature the notion that Israel is the fulfilment of prophecy. I don't doubt that, in a certain sense, Israel has a role in the Grand Prophetic Scheme of Things, as do we all. But I see nothing in the Tradition to suggest that we have to take it as Biblical Truth that if you don't support, say, a unified Jerusalem, or a Red Heifer Portent, or the election of so and so to the Prime Ministerial office, then you risk the Wrath of God as Pat Robertson recently announced. I think the conflation of dogmatic prophesying based on a purely human opinion with no standing in the Tradition is pernicious. I don't think it follows from this that the State of Israel should not be supported as any other secular nation state ally should be supported.
Moving on....
To all anti-semitic nuts: Get lost. There is a distinction between the state of Israel and the people of Israel. The people are chosen, the state is not. Learn that distinction. Try reading Nostra Aetate and Romans 9-11. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. I've already had to delete two posts from some kook holding forth on the "Jews are accursed" theme and I will delete any more that come here. To say that *state* of Israel is an ordinary secular nation state is not to say the Jews are rejected by God, nor to say the Old Covenant is abolished by the New (it is transcended, not abolished), nor to say that, because it is secular, the state is illegitimate. Jew-bashers are not welcome here.
To all "Israel is immaculately conceived and preserved from all sin both original and actual" dogmatists: Criticizing a jiggle commercial that mocks the Mother of God is not anti-semitic. Observing that Israel is a secular nation state and not the fulfilment of prophecy is not tantamount to saying "Down with Israel". It's tantamount to saying the many Evangelicals have grafted a completely human tradition onto biblical revelation.
I will be very scarce, but I will be checking in. If nuts from either extreme show up to bitch that I am a Judaizing Enemy of the True Faith or a Rabid Anti-Semite for holding these perfectly sane views, they will be deleted. So how about just not bothering to post?
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Future Isn't What It Used to Be
My latest on Inside Catholic.
And with that, I'm outta here and off to Atlanta and environs. Back Monday!
My latest on Inside Catholic.
And with that, I'm outta here and off to Atlanta and environs. Back Monday!
Be Not Afraid II
Several people objected to my Be Not Afraid post for various reasons yesterday. HokiePundit, who apparently originated the discussion thought I was making fun of him. Seamus pointed out the analogy I used is flawed (which I grant). Others have other objections.
First things first, my apologies to Hokie for hurting his feelings. It was not my intention. I was running around yesterday and only glanced in to see the discussion was in progress. I didn't pay attention to names, merely to the basic idea being kicked around. So I was not making fun of him (or of anybody else). (I'm not sure why, but when I'm being serious, I often find readers think I'm being either facetious or flippant and when I'm being silly, they take me seriously.) At any rate, I was trying to address something quite serious.
The purpose of my analogy was not to say that hypotheticals about extremely desperate situations are intrinsically sinful. They are, as I say, the basis of a thousand really good stories. Indeed, the Greeks *loved* these sorts of moral conundrum: Do you bury your dead brother in defiance of the king's mortal decree and die as a result or leave him to rot and incur the wrath of the gods? Nor was it to say or suggest that the questions being asked were not asked in good faith. Nor was it to say that temptation to torture is the same sort of temptation as the temptation to sleep with the hot secretary, as though somebody is suggesting it would be fun.
My point was simply this: Temptation is temptation. And temptation *always* looks like a good thing at the time and we can *always* find ways of explaining to ourselves how this temptation is different then the temptations of Those People Over There.
Now the readers of this blog are not, I presume, living in a situation where they are contemplating adultery. But we are living in a situation where we are bombarded continually with another sort of temptation: the temptation to servile fear of death and suffering. All you need to do is click over to Drudge to get the latest terrifying visions of World War III to know that. And when you are tempted to be terrified, you tend to base your thinking on your fears, just as when you are tempted sexually you tend to base your thinking on your desires. That's what concupiscence means. It is the darkened intellect, disordered appetites, and weakened will that results from the fall. As a result, we often don't think clearly, act sensibly, or do the hard thing God demands. That's the human condition. And it's why revelation and grace are necessary.
When we are tempted, we do not help ourselves think clearly by rasping away at a raw nerve that is already overstimulated. Yes, kidnappings happen. Yes, 9/11 happened. Yes, there are desperadoes.
Does it follow from this that our thinking about interrogation and the rights of the human person before the law should be predicated on what we would do in some absolutely desperate hypothetical situation that is less likely than a lightning strike? I submit the answer is no. I further submit that, in a time when the state has *already* arrogated to itself the power to take exactly these desperate measures against anybody the Executive chooses, it is unwise to, as Screwtape says, crowd to that side of the boat that is already nearly gunwale under or run around with fire extinguishers during a flood. We need to concern ourselves far more with limiting the power of the state than we do with what we'd do if somebody locked our son in a box.
And we need to start that converation based, not on our worst fears, but on revelation, which says we have the right to defend ourselves and that prisoners must be treat humanely. *Beginning* a deliberation of the approach to interrogation, not with fundamental facts from revelation about the dignity of the human person, the purpose (and limits) of the state, and the developed teaching concerning the relationship between them is to ignore revelation and allow our fears to dictate our thinking. To then allow those fears to tells us that we are being "realistic" to fantasize about boys in boxes and ticking bombs but unrealistic to draw on the Tradition to formulate our thoughts is, well, to "feed the flesh" to use Pauline language. "The flesh" includes, for Paul, not simply sexual lusts, but things like servile fear as well. We are not to do that. That's my point.
The mark, by the way, of how much our thinking is clouded by "the mind of the flesh" is precisely that we cannot distinguish between the statements "a terrorist attack is likely in the future" and "a ticking time bomb is likely in the future". I have no doubt that we will experience more terrorism in the future. It's been a staple of war since the beginning and will be with us till the parousia. However, as reader Publus said:
Like the fantasy of the ticking time bomb, it is likewise a fantasy that "this is a war like no other" requiring us to abandon outmoded standards of civilized conduct in order to win. Every war presents us with that temptation. The notion that Al Quaeda is an enemy uniquiely wicked (unlike, say Nazis and Communists) is, once again, a function of our own fear-clouded minds, not of reality.
On the other hand, it is not a fantasy, but a fact that the Executive has--right now--the power to declare anybody he likes an illegal combatant and subject them to torture. It is a fact that our government has already tortured at least one person to death. And it is a fact that we are wasting a great deal of time basing our public policy debates on this question--in debates conducted with all the candidates for both parties, based on this fantasy scenario from movies and television and not based on the revelation or even on Madisonian, Jeffersonian, and Constitutional understandings of the limitations of the state and the rights of the human person. We are being stampeded by fear and we are being told that if we do not base our thinking on fear we are being "unrealistic".
This is why I wrote the other day that:
I appreciate the fear that lies behind all this "How far can we go in really desperate situations?" hypothesizing. I really do. I am constitutionally Irish and I feel the temptation every day to imagine The Worst ("What would I do if my wife were killed? Or my children contracted a wasting disease? Or Seattle was nuked? Or the ferry I'm on is sunk by an Al-Quaeda agent? Or a thousand other terrifying things happened?") But I also recognize that such cultivation of fear is sinful. It place me, for the most part, not in the "real world" but in a fantasy. In the real world is God and my duty to my family and my work. This is not speculation on my part. This is the command of the gospel. Jesus specifically forbids us to worry. St. Paul does not command us to constantly rehearse the horrible ways in which we and those we live might suffer (and this was a man who experienced more actual suffering than we ever will). Instead--from jail--he wrote:
Paul says that we must "be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds." (Romans 12). It is significant that, for the world, readiness comes from being afraid, tense, jumping at the rustle of leaves, worried about what horrible thing *might* happen.
For Paul, readiness comes from peace. That's why he tells the Ephesians to let there feet be shod with "the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace" (Ephesians 6).
We start with the revelation, not with servile fear and concupiscence, in thinking about these matters.
Several people objected to my Be Not Afraid post for various reasons yesterday. HokiePundit, who apparently originated the discussion thought I was making fun of him. Seamus pointed out the analogy I used is flawed (which I grant). Others have other objections.
First things first, my apologies to Hokie for hurting his feelings. It was not my intention. I was running around yesterday and only glanced in to see the discussion was in progress. I didn't pay attention to names, merely to the basic idea being kicked around. So I was not making fun of him (or of anybody else). (I'm not sure why, but when I'm being serious, I often find readers think I'm being either facetious or flippant and when I'm being silly, they take me seriously.) At any rate, I was trying to address something quite serious.
The purpose of my analogy was not to say that hypotheticals about extremely desperate situations are intrinsically sinful. They are, as I say, the basis of a thousand really good stories. Indeed, the Greeks *loved* these sorts of moral conundrum: Do you bury your dead brother in defiance of the king's mortal decree and die as a result or leave him to rot and incur the wrath of the gods? Nor was it to say or suggest that the questions being asked were not asked in good faith. Nor was it to say that temptation to torture is the same sort of temptation as the temptation to sleep with the hot secretary, as though somebody is suggesting it would be fun.
My point was simply this: Temptation is temptation. And temptation *always* looks like a good thing at the time and we can *always* find ways of explaining to ourselves how this temptation is different then the temptations of Those People Over There.
Now the readers of this blog are not, I presume, living in a situation where they are contemplating adultery. But we are living in a situation where we are bombarded continually with another sort of temptation: the temptation to servile fear of death and suffering. All you need to do is click over to Drudge to get the latest terrifying visions of World War III to know that. And when you are tempted to be terrified, you tend to base your thinking on your fears, just as when you are tempted sexually you tend to base your thinking on your desires. That's what concupiscence means. It is the darkened intellect, disordered appetites, and weakened will that results from the fall. As a result, we often don't think clearly, act sensibly, or do the hard thing God demands. That's the human condition. And it's why revelation and grace are necessary.
When we are tempted, we do not help ourselves think clearly by rasping away at a raw nerve that is already overstimulated. Yes, kidnappings happen. Yes, 9/11 happened. Yes, there are desperadoes.
Does it follow from this that our thinking about interrogation and the rights of the human person before the law should be predicated on what we would do in some absolutely desperate hypothetical situation that is less likely than a lightning strike? I submit the answer is no. I further submit that, in a time when the state has *already* arrogated to itself the power to take exactly these desperate measures against anybody the Executive chooses, it is unwise to, as Screwtape says, crowd to that side of the boat that is already nearly gunwale under or run around with fire extinguishers during a flood. We need to concern ourselves far more with limiting the power of the state than we do with what we'd do if somebody locked our son in a box.
And we need to start that converation based, not on our worst fears, but on revelation, which says we have the right to defend ourselves and that prisoners must be treat humanely. *Beginning* a deliberation of the approach to interrogation, not with fundamental facts from revelation about the dignity of the human person, the purpose (and limits) of the state, and the developed teaching concerning the relationship between them is to ignore revelation and allow our fears to dictate our thinking. To then allow those fears to tells us that we are being "realistic" to fantasize about boys in boxes and ticking bombs but unrealistic to draw on the Tradition to formulate our thoughts is, well, to "feed the flesh" to use Pauline language. "The flesh" includes, for Paul, not simply sexual lusts, but things like servile fear as well. We are not to do that. That's my point.
The mark, by the way, of how much our thinking is clouded by "the mind of the flesh" is precisely that we cannot distinguish between the statements "a terrorist attack is likely in the future" and "a ticking time bomb is likely in the future". I have no doubt that we will experience more terrorism in the future. It's been a staple of war since the beginning and will be with us till the parousia. However, as reader Publus said:
it is very, very unlikely that
a) A nuclear time bomb will be planted somewhere in the US.
b) We apprehend someone we know knows where it is and/or how to disarm it safely.
c) We really KNOW that they know and don't just suspect it.
and
d) We have sufficient time to get it out of him using torture or other forms of coercion (he'll of course know that he only need hold out for x amount of time) but insufficient time to find another way.
Like the fantasy of the ticking time bomb, it is likewise a fantasy that "this is a war like no other" requiring us to abandon outmoded standards of civilized conduct in order to win. Every war presents us with that temptation. The notion that Al Quaeda is an enemy uniquiely wicked (unlike, say Nazis and Communists) is, once again, a function of our own fear-clouded minds, not of reality.
On the other hand, it is not a fantasy, but a fact that the Executive has--right now--the power to declare anybody he likes an illegal combatant and subject them to torture. It is a fact that our government has already tortured at least one person to death. And it is a fact that we are wasting a great deal of time basing our public policy debates on this question--in debates conducted with all the candidates for both parties, based on this fantasy scenario from movies and television and not based on the revelation or even on Madisonian, Jeffersonian, and Constitutional understandings of the limitations of the state and the rights of the human person. We are being stampeded by fear and we are being told that if we do not base our thinking on fear we are being "unrealistic".
This is why I wrote the other day that:
What lies at the heart of all consequentialist appeals to do grave evil for the greater good is, ultimately, a refusal to trust that God knows what he is talking about. It is the conviction that the Christian revelation is not an insight into the heart of reality, but a sort of idealistic dream that is fun to contemplate in quiet moments and maybe even an "inspiration" in a vague way, but is nonetheless something that hard thinkers and tough-minded men must sweep away when crunch time comes in favor of "realistic" solutions that require us to frankly embrace sin and evil if we hope to live or remain free. In this analysis, the functional belief of the Machiavellian realist is "You shall embrace evil, and evil shall make you free and keep you safe."
The argument of the Christian revelation is that this is, not to put too fine a point on it, a lie from the pit of hell. Because the argument of the Christian revelation is that Christ intends our happiness and knows better than we do what is actually the best way for the human person to realize that. This involves a conception of Christ's commands as something other than impossible ideals or as cruel irrational restrictions on our freedom which we have to obey for no reason other than fear. In short, it involves the idea that the one who created us did so because he wills our happiness and obedience is actually ordered toward life and freedom, not toward our destruction.
I appreciate the fear that lies behind all this "How far can we go in really desperate situations?" hypothesizing. I really do. I am constitutionally Irish and I feel the temptation every day to imagine The Worst ("What would I do if my wife were killed? Or my children contracted a wasting disease? Or Seattle was nuked? Or the ferry I'm on is sunk by an Al-Quaeda agent? Or a thousand other terrifying things happened?") But I also recognize that such cultivation of fear is sinful. It place me, for the most part, not in the "real world" but in a fantasy. In the real world is God and my duty to my family and my work. This is not speculation on my part. This is the command of the gospel. Jesus specifically forbids us to worry. St. Paul does not command us to constantly rehearse the horrible ways in which we and those we live might suffer (and this was a man who experienced more actual suffering than we ever will). Instead--from jail--he wrote:
Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9* What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.
Paul says that we must "be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds." (Romans 12). It is significant that, for the world, readiness comes from being afraid, tense, jumping at the rustle of leaves, worried about what horrible thing *might* happen.
For Paul, readiness comes from peace. That's why he tells the Ephesians to let there feet be shod with "the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace" (Ephesians 6).
We start with the revelation, not with servile fear and concupiscence, in thinking about these matters.
CatholicColbert.com has some very good stuff up
Not only the announcement of my favorite candidacy for '08, but a really interesting look at Colbert's life as a Catholic and a fun interview.
Not only the announcement of my favorite candidacy for '08, but a really interesting look at Colbert's life as a Catholic and a fun interview.
A reader writes:
This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how long American Evangelicals (and even some Catholics) can be snookered by the notion that Israel is something other than a secular nation-state. The Golden Calf appeal to Money Sex and Power evident in the commercial is perfectly representative of typically debased postmodern secular culture and has nothing to do with "fulfillment of prophecy". Israel has the rights and responsibilities of any secular nation-state, but to concoct some notion that it gets special privileges as God's Chosen State is rubbish.
UPDATE: Greetings NRO! I'm not sure why Mike Potemra thinks I am trying to "drive a wedge" between Israel and Evangelicals when I observe that I don't think the state of Israel is the fulfilment of prophecy. Is it *necessary* for Israel to be the fulfilment of prophecy in order to support it? Is saying "Israel is a secular nation state" tantamount to saying "Down with Israel?" I certainly don't think so. America isn't the fulfilment of prophecy and I support and honor her, so I don't see why Christians can't likewise support Israel without having to tell themselves that it is something other than a secular nation-state.
As to rest of what Mike wrote, It's not *terribly* surprising that, as an Evangelical, he was not offended at somebody gasping "Holy Mother of God" in the presence of a pair of world class bazzooms. And much as I appreciate his willingness to be magnanimous about pieties he himself does not observe, I would nonetheless suggest he consider the possibility that, had the commercial instead featured a guy gasping "Jesus F-ing Christ!" at the sight of all that jiggle he might have found it just a bit tasteless--much as pious Catholics find gratuitous mockery of the Mother of God equally tasteless. He might have found it just a bit more tasteless to follow that completely gratuitous bit of nose-pulling with "No wonder they call it the Holy Land."
UPDATE II: Greeting Instapunditites! It is regrettable that Mr. Reynolds cannot read. I don't recall saying that the video was going to hurt Israel's image. Indeed, I expect all that jiggle will do a world of good to their tourism industry. I do recall saying that the video made clear that Israel is basically a secular nation-state like any other and not a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Since, so far as I know, Mr. Reynolds doesn't believe there to be such a thing as fulfilment of biblical prophecy, I'm not sure what the problem is. I do think the video will offend serious Catholics to some degree or other, but I doubt that will mean much in the grand scheme of things as far as what the commerical aims to achieve.
Beyond this, I notice that at least one reader has somehow gotten it into his head that criticism of a jiggle video is tantamount to anti-semitism. Not sure how he did the math on that one and he didn't really show his work, but there you are.
The shock meter is stuck at full tilt.
The Israeli govt wishes to re-image itself using Israeli female soldiers in bikinis. If that isn't tasteless enough (and exploitative to boot), one commercial has two men on the beach exclaiming, "Holy Mother of God," as a babe bends over to pick up a ball. They can't understand what they're saying. That commercial finishes with "ISRAEL No wonder they call it The Holy Land". And it shouldn't garner any good will in the Muslim world (bikinis? Mother of God?). With such a tin ear toward all religious sensibility, no wonder the West is in decline.
This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how long American Evangelicals (and even some Catholics) can be snookered by the notion that Israel is something other than a secular nation-state. The Golden Calf appeal to Money Sex and Power evident in the commercial is perfectly representative of typically debased postmodern secular culture and has nothing to do with "fulfillment of prophecy". Israel has the rights and responsibilities of any secular nation-state, but to concoct some notion that it gets special privileges as God's Chosen State is rubbish.
UPDATE: Greetings NRO! I'm not sure why Mike Potemra thinks I am trying to "drive a wedge" between Israel and Evangelicals when I observe that I don't think the state of Israel is the fulfilment of prophecy. Is it *necessary* for Israel to be the fulfilment of prophecy in order to support it? Is saying "Israel is a secular nation state" tantamount to saying "Down with Israel?" I certainly don't think so. America isn't the fulfilment of prophecy and I support and honor her, so I don't see why Christians can't likewise support Israel without having to tell themselves that it is something other than a secular nation-state.
As to rest of what Mike wrote, It's not *terribly* surprising that, as an Evangelical, he was not offended at somebody gasping "Holy Mother of God" in the presence of a pair of world class bazzooms. And much as I appreciate his willingness to be magnanimous about pieties he himself does not observe, I would nonetheless suggest he consider the possibility that, had the commercial instead featured a guy gasping "Jesus F-ing Christ!" at the sight of all that jiggle he might have found it just a bit tasteless--much as pious Catholics find gratuitous mockery of the Mother of God equally tasteless. He might have found it just a bit more tasteless to follow that completely gratuitous bit of nose-pulling with "No wonder they call it the Holy Land."
UPDATE II: Greeting Instapunditites! It is regrettable that Mr. Reynolds cannot read. I don't recall saying that the video was going to hurt Israel's image. Indeed, I expect all that jiggle will do a world of good to their tourism industry. I do recall saying that the video made clear that Israel is basically a secular nation-state like any other and not a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Since, so far as I know, Mr. Reynolds doesn't believe there to be such a thing as fulfilment of biblical prophecy, I'm not sure what the problem is. I do think the video will offend serious Catholics to some degree or other, but I doubt that will mean much in the grand scheme of things as far as what the commerical aims to achieve.
Beyond this, I notice that at least one reader has somehow gotten it into his head that criticism of a jiggle video is tantamount to anti-semitism. Not sure how he did the math on that one and he didn't really show his work, but there you are.
The New Realism
Translation: He may be a six time Planned Parenthood donor who supports partial birth abortion, ditched two wives, called a press conference to announce his divorce before marrying his doxy, interrupts speeches to imitate mammalian bonding behavior in very weird ways, and dresses in drag, but he *is* supportive of torture and he does constantly remind people that they should be terrified of 9/11 and support the war in Iraq. And since the GOP platform is now entirely about the war, I'm on board with Rudy Giuliani because I'm a realist who bases his voting on multiple viewings of 24! And I really believe his Come to Jesus moment about the Court. No! Really!
A reader writes:
Sin makes you stupid. The exquisite position in which the GOP has now placed itself by rhetoric like Perry's is that that it no longer knows *why* it opposes Hillary. Her dedication to Big Government? And that would distinguish her from Bush how? Her support for the war? She drives her own base crazy with her refusal to back away from Bush's policies in any substantial way, including (at the end of the day) on prisoner abuse. Her zealous dedication to the sacrament of abortion? Rudy's right there with her, despite the BS. His goal, like hers, is "safe, legal, and rare" (meaning "On the one hand, keep it legal; on the other, federally fund it.") Essentially, GOP rhetoric is reduced to simply invoking personal dislike of the woman. On the actual issues, they are striving to imitate her duplicitous and amoral ethos.
People wonder if I want a third party. I'll settle for a second party. Right now the oligarchy party rules from two bases of operation.
He said the war on terrorism is the campaign's overriding issue and Giuliani is best-equipped to lead a country at war.
Translation: He may be a six time Planned Parenthood donor who supports partial birth abortion, ditched two wives, called a press conference to announce his divorce before marrying his doxy, interrupts speeches to imitate mammalian bonding behavior in very weird ways, and dresses in drag, but he *is* supportive of torture and he does constantly remind people that they should be terrified of 9/11 and support the war in Iraq. And since the GOP platform is now entirely about the war, I'm on board with Rudy Giuliani because I'm a realist who bases his voting on multiple viewings of 24! And I really believe his Come to Jesus moment about the Court. No! Really!
A reader writes:
So let me get this straight: it's OK to call Rudy's stance on abortion "one option [I don't] like" but it's a dealbreaker for Hillary or Obama. This falling over this woefully inadequate candidate simply because he's a "Republican" is idiotic.
At what point will the Catholics among us (and any other people who support us) stand up and point out that we hold both *Evangelium vitae* and *Rerum novarum* to be true? And that waterboarding is gravely immoral?
Sin makes you stupid. The exquisite position in which the GOP has now placed itself by rhetoric like Perry's is that that it no longer knows *why* it opposes Hillary. Her dedication to Big Government? And that would distinguish her from Bush how? Her support for the war? She drives her own base crazy with her refusal to back away from Bush's policies in any substantial way, including (at the end of the day) on prisoner abuse. Her zealous dedication to the sacrament of abortion? Rudy's right there with her, despite the BS. His goal, like hers, is "safe, legal, and rare" (meaning "On the one hand, keep it legal; on the other, federally fund it.") Essentially, GOP rhetoric is reduced to simply invoking personal dislike of the woman. On the actual issues, they are striving to imitate her duplicitous and amoral ethos.
People wonder if I want a third party. I'll settle for a second party. Right now the oligarchy party rules from two bases of operation.
The Last of the Darwinian Racists
James Watson has always struck me a sort of classic product of a 19th Century English Scientistic culture. He has the self-assured hubris of that generation which was certain that Science can measure everything and knows everything worth knowing, coupled with the frank and open class consciousness and upper crust contempt for the lower orders that makes him so confident in a lab and so incredibly dangerous in applying what he discovers there to actual human beings.
Ever since Darwin, the dirty little secret that has been on a collision course with western liberalism is the fact that Darwin and many of his disciples took it for granted that the various races of man are simply early stages of speciation that have not had time to play out in history. Here's a little section from my upcoming book on the four Marian dogmas, which looks (in part) at the 19th century project (still very much ongoing as James Watson demonstrates) of basing human dignity on something *other* than the fact that we are creatures in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by Jesus Christ:
Watson stands four-square in this tradition. And though he is currently advocating ideas which are out of fashion, what with little pecadillos like the Holocaust blotting the escutcheon of the Truly Scientific Racist of the 19th Century, it is worth noting that it is, at present, *only* custom and a general instinct, not an actual argument, that our post-Christian culture mounts against him. That's because our post-Christian culture shares most of his assumptions: they just don't like his conclusions. They believe that science, not "Christian mumbo jumbo" is the best way to approach the world. They believe that intelligence is the measure of our dignity (otherwise why abort "defective" babies?).
And so the post-modern world is on a collision course with itself should Watson actually be right (which I don't know) about "test results" (what tests? By whom? under what circumstances? Testing who, exactly?) showing that "blacks" ("Black" like Halle Berry and Tiger Woods?) are "inferior in intelligence" to "whites" ("Whites" like Halle Berry and Tiger Woods?). What is meant by "intelligence". What is meant by inferior?
50 million questions arise from confident statements like Watson's, Darwin's, and Galton's and we are no where near close to discussing them because they occur right at the turbulent boundary of where atheistic materialism and the fragments of the Judeo-Christian still cherished in our culture meet. There was a time when our decision makers paid attention to those who could root "all men are created equal" in a coherent religious and philosophical tradition founded, not on some physical or mental attribute, but on our dignity as creatures made in the image of God. In the Christian tradition it doesn't *matter* what your brainpower is any more than what you musclepower is. You are made in the image of God and Christ died for you. That was the basis of the abolition and civil rights movement.
Having now abandoned that view of the human person with Roe, our elites must now cast around for some other basis of human dignity and many in our culture have settled on "intelligence" as that basis. So "all men are created equal" is reduced to a slogan chanted by the practitioners of Identity Politics and by "equal" we mean "equally intelligent" not "equal in dignity in the eyes of God". That will work just so long as the sloganeers can command headlines. When they can't anymore, what will be left over is the worship of Power. And the 20th Century already provides lots of instruction about what happens when we go that route.
James Watson has always struck me a sort of classic product of a 19th Century English Scientistic culture. He has the self-assured hubris of that generation which was certain that Science can measure everything and knows everything worth knowing, coupled with the frank and open class consciousness and upper crust contempt for the lower orders that makes him so confident in a lab and so incredibly dangerous in applying what he discovers there to actual human beings.
Ever since Darwin, the dirty little secret that has been on a collision course with western liberalism is the fact that Darwin and many of his disciples took it for granted that the various races of man are simply early stages of speciation that have not had time to play out in history. Here's a little section from my upcoming book on the four Marian dogmas, which looks (in part) at the 19th century project (still very much ongoing as James Watson demonstrates) of basing human dignity on something *other* than the fact that we are creatures in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by Jesus Christ:
It will be noted that Schopenhauer's philosophy sounds a great deal like Charles Darwin's in that both insist man is, to quote one classic definition, "the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind." According to Darwin and his many proponents, man was nothing other than the result of a mindless interaction of matter and energy whereby those traits best adapted to survival were passed on while those species which lacked advantageous traits were killed off by natural selection. No loving Creator was involved, just the random accident of matter and energy.
However, it will also be noted that Schopenhauer died in 1860, the year after Darwin published his Origin of Species. So Schopenhauer is not deriving his atheism from some new scientific discovery disproving the existence of a Creator God. Rather, he demonstrates he was living in an age whose elites were already ripe to hear that nature, not God, was the basic principle of our existence. Darwin simply lent (or seemed to lend) scientific credibility to that fundamentally metaphysical judgment. Darwin, more than any other thinker in the 19th century, gave force to the idea that human beings were not creatures made in the image and likeness of God, but were instead simply unusually clever pieces of meat whose brains, heart, and body and soul were as much the result of a series of accidents as the shape of a pig's nose. In the words of his disciple, Ernst Haeckel, the "modern science of evolution has shown that there never was any such creation, but that the universe is eternal and the law of substance all-ruling." Accordingly, "the myth of the conception and birth of Jesus Christ is mere fiction, and is at the same stage of superstition as a hundred other myths of other religions." For, according to Haeckel, when Darwin "shattered the dogma of anthropocentrism" by allegedly showing human beings to be as much a product of chance every other species on earth, he smashed the "boundless presumption of conceited man [that] has misled him into making himself 'the image of God,' claiming an 'eternal life' for his ephemeral personality".
Schopenhauer had a huge influence on a number of philosophers, but perhaps his greatest disciple was Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche too proclaimed the death of God. However, Nietzsche was not content with Schopenhauer's gloomy pessimism. If life was a power struggle, Nietzsche was not content to lose or call it a draw. He wanted to win! Watching a cavalry battalion march past during the Franco-Prussian War, Nietzsche had yet another of the many epiphanies that seemed to characterize 19th century thinkers:I felt for the first time that the strongest and highest Will to Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower.
Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, never doubted for a moment that our origins were the result of chance. However, he did not want to take chances with destiny. Since God was dead, we were on our own. Therefore, may the best man win. So Nietzsche proclaimed the doctrine of the Superman who imposed his will on the world and defined good and evil, not by appeals to some mythical god, but by his own Will to Power. Naturally, he hated Christianity as a "secret instinct of destruction, a principle of calumny, a reductive agent—the beginning of the end—and, for that very reason, the Supreme Danger."
Others shared Nietzsche's dream of a race of Supermen. But they sought to achieve it, not by the Will to Power, but by treating humans like livestock and improving the breed. This school of thought was not an aberration from Darwin's thought but merely an elaboration of it. Darwin himself had made clear thatAt some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [that is, the ones who look the most like savages in structure]... will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope... the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.
And so, at the conclusion of his Descent of Man, he points the way for the European race to become the Master Race or simply (once inferior races have been exterminated) the human race:Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes such care. [Therefore] both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if in any marked degree inferior in body or mind.
Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton could not have agreed more. Concurring with so many leading thinkers that we are creatures who owe our being, not to God, but to a fortuitous collision of matter and energy, Galton built on Darwin's work by founding a new science of human breeding which he called "eugenics". Galton had no truck with the mysticism of the Judeo-Christian tradition (enshrined in documents like the Declaration of Independence) that "all men are created equal":I have no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality.
Galton fancied himself a hard-headed scientific thinker. So he naturally constructed what seemed to him a scientific hierarchy of "grades" by which he rated the various races of homo sapiens. It turned out that Galton rated "Negroes" very low, commenting that "mistakes the Negroes made in their matters were so childish, stupid and simpleton-like, as frequently to make me ashamed of my own species" Happily for Galton, he himself belonged to the superior race of Anglo-Saxons, with its wonderful genetic traits capable of "producing judges, statesmen, commanders, men of literature and science, poets, artists, and divines." And, Galton believed, we must make it our goal to better the race still more by selective breeding and the weeding out of the "unfit". Inferiors, he thought, should be treated "with all kindness" so long as they complied with the demand of their betters for celibacy. But if they dared to breed "such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have forfeited all claims to kindness."
Others had a slightly different view of the State, though not of the human person. Herbert Spencer, for instance, had a more libertarian approach. It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest". He founded the school of thought called "Social Darwinism" which advocated letting nature take its course (without the interference of government or religion) in eliminating the lower types of humanity in favor of the "fit". Many advocates of laissez-faire capitalism agreed with him, seeing the winners in the capitalist system as "fit" and the toiling masses in sweatshops, miserable and hazardous working conditions, and wretched poverty as the losers in nature's colorful pageant of survival. Against backward religious obscurantists who advocated sentimental ideas like "blessed are the poor", Spencer basically championed the notion articulated by an earlier Social Darwinist named Ebenezer Scrooge: "If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Watson stands four-square in this tradition. And though he is currently advocating ideas which are out of fashion, what with little pecadillos like the Holocaust blotting the escutcheon of the Truly Scientific Racist of the 19th Century, it is worth noting that it is, at present, *only* custom and a general instinct, not an actual argument, that our post-Christian culture mounts against him. That's because our post-Christian culture shares most of his assumptions: they just don't like his conclusions. They believe that science, not "Christian mumbo jumbo" is the best way to approach the world. They believe that intelligence is the measure of our dignity (otherwise why abort "defective" babies?).
And so the post-modern world is on a collision course with itself should Watson actually be right (which I don't know) about "test results" (what tests? By whom? under what circumstances? Testing who, exactly?) showing that "blacks" ("Black" like Halle Berry and Tiger Woods?) are "inferior in intelligence" to "whites" ("Whites" like Halle Berry and Tiger Woods?). What is meant by "intelligence". What is meant by inferior?
50 million questions arise from confident statements like Watson's, Darwin's, and Galton's and we are no where near close to discussing them because they occur right at the turbulent boundary of where atheistic materialism and the fragments of the Judeo-Christian still cherished in our culture meet. There was a time when our decision makers paid attention to those who could root "all men are created equal" in a coherent religious and philosophical tradition founded, not on some physical or mental attribute, but on our dignity as creatures made in the image of God. In the Christian tradition it doesn't *matter* what your brainpower is any more than what you musclepower is. You are made in the image of God and Christ died for you. That was the basis of the abolition and civil rights movement.
Having now abandoned that view of the human person with Roe, our elites must now cast around for some other basis of human dignity and many in our culture have settled on "intelligence" as that basis. So "all men are created equal" is reduced to a slogan chanted by the practitioners of Identity Politics and by "equal" we mean "equally intelligent" not "equal in dignity in the eyes of God". That will work just so long as the sloganeers can command headlines. When they can't anymore, what will be left over is the worship of Power. And the 20th Century already provides lots of instruction about what happens when we go that route.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Toldja so!
J.K. Rowling opens up on the gospel according to Harry Potter. John Granger is completely vindicated.
J.K. Rowling opens up on the gospel according to Harry Potter. John Granger is completely vindicated.
Be Not Afraid
I notice in my comboxes that people are playing "What if?" games. It's a happy pastime sometimes. It's the birth of all stories. "What if a little girl rode a tornado to a land beyond the rainbow?" "What if you could travel in time?"
However, it can also be the birth of sin and, in this particular case, I would warn against it, since the topic under discussion is the umpteenth iteration of "Okay, so when *would* it be okay to torture somebody?"
The game works this way: Propose some incredibly unlikely scenario. Your son is kidnapped and buried in a box and you have the guy who did it, but he won't tell you where you kid is. What do you do?
The reason such scenarios are sinful to contemplate, I think, is not because of the story idea itself, but because of the larger cultural context in which such fantasizing occurs.
Let's change the scene. You are from a family of multiple divorce and remarriage. Most of your friends are the same. Your own marriage is a bit rocky and your secretary is hot and sending out the signals that she is available and not terrible concerned about the integrity of the sacrament of marriage.
At this point, do you a) make it clear to the secretary that you are a Catholic and such things are absolutely off-limits and will not take place in this office or b) have long, leisurely lunchtime conversations with friends in which you speculate over and over and over about whether we can really know if our marriage is a valid one, if there is room in the Church's teaching for the concept of open marriage, and what you would do if a nuclear holocaust left you permanently separated from your wife (alive but on another continent) and still bound to try to repopulate the earth with the hot secretary who was one of your few fellow survivors.
An impartial observer would get the sense that there is a certain unhealthy agenda at work here.
In the same way, these preposterous ticking bomb scenarios say very loudly, "We are indulging the spirit of fear." The counsel of the gospel is "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself." Hypotheticals are fun and all, but, when they feed the spirit of fear (meaning not, "Healthy fear of God" but "servile fear of suffering") the wisdom of the saints is, "Crucify them!" Find something else to talk about and Be Not Afraid.
I notice in my comboxes that people are playing "What if?" games. It's a happy pastime sometimes. It's the birth of all stories. "What if a little girl rode a tornado to a land beyond the rainbow?" "What if you could travel in time?"
However, it can also be the birth of sin and, in this particular case, I would warn against it, since the topic under discussion is the umpteenth iteration of "Okay, so when *would* it be okay to torture somebody?"
The game works this way: Propose some incredibly unlikely scenario. Your son is kidnapped and buried in a box and you have the guy who did it, but he won't tell you where you kid is. What do you do?
The reason such scenarios are sinful to contemplate, I think, is not because of the story idea itself, but because of the larger cultural context in which such fantasizing occurs.
Let's change the scene. You are from a family of multiple divorce and remarriage. Most of your friends are the same. Your own marriage is a bit rocky and your secretary is hot and sending out the signals that she is available and not terrible concerned about the integrity of the sacrament of marriage.
At this point, do you a) make it clear to the secretary that you are a Catholic and such things are absolutely off-limits and will not take place in this office or b) have long, leisurely lunchtime conversations with friends in which you speculate over and over and over about whether we can really know if our marriage is a valid one, if there is room in the Church's teaching for the concept of open marriage, and what you would do if a nuclear holocaust left you permanently separated from your wife (alive but on another continent) and still bound to try to repopulate the earth with the hot secretary who was one of your few fellow survivors.
An impartial observer would get the sense that there is a certain unhealthy agenda at work here.
In the same way, these preposterous ticking bomb scenarios say very loudly, "We are indulging the spirit of fear." The counsel of the gospel is "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself." Hypotheticals are fun and all, but, when they feed the spirit of fear (meaning not, "Healthy fear of God" but "servile fear of suffering") the wisdom of the saints is, "Crucify them!" Find something else to talk about and Be Not Afraid.
Movie Reviews for Homeschoolers
Speaking of which, Steve Greydanus really--I mean *really*--doesn't like Elizabeth: The Golden Age
The triumph of the Anglican monarchy over the Church and the people of England is best described, I think, as a the revolt of the rich and powerful against the poor. It is one of the greatest examples of Stockholm Syndrome in history that, at this late date, the consolidation of power, the theft of so much property that had once been common, and the enslavement of so many poor people in the service of the Tudors and their group of toadies should *still* be portrayed by Hollywood as a glorious triumph of liberation.
Imagine if Hillary Clinton, say, should deliberately cultivate a cult of worship by identifying herself with the Blessed Virgin Mary while systematically despoiling hospitals, food banks, and homeless shelters to enrich herself and her cronies. Then imagine the children of the victims of her depredations adoring her for it and telling stories of the monsters who used to share their food and educate their parents. That's more or less the history of post-Elizbethan English Protestantism and this movie continues that marvelous triumph of Big Brother Love.
Speaking of which, Steve Greydanus really--I mean *really*--doesn't like Elizabeth: The Golden Age
The triumph of the Anglican monarchy over the Church and the people of England is best described, I think, as a the revolt of the rich and powerful against the poor. It is one of the greatest examples of Stockholm Syndrome in history that, at this late date, the consolidation of power, the theft of so much property that had once been common, and the enslavement of so many poor people in the service of the Tudors and their group of toadies should *still* be portrayed by Hollywood as a glorious triumph of liberation.
Imagine if Hillary Clinton, say, should deliberately cultivate a cult of worship by identifying herself with the Blessed Virgin Mary while systematically despoiling hospitals, food banks, and homeless shelters to enrich herself and her cronies. Then imagine the children of the victims of her depredations adoring her for it and telling stories of the monsters who used to share their food and educate their parents. That's more or less the history of post-Elizbethan English Protestantism and this movie continues that marvelous triumph of Big Brother Love.