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Friday, November 30, 2007
Michael Liccione Could Really Use Our Help Right Now If you scroll down his blog you will find his Amazon tip jar on the right rail. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs Wow! When Evangelicals ask me why the Church keeps holding up Mary alongside Christ, the best answer I can think of is this: There's one thing that even Jesus cannot do. He cannot show us what a disciple of Jesus looks like. Only a disciple of Jesus can do that. That is exactly what Benedict does at the end of his encyclical. It's easy to say, after this great discourse on Hope, "Looks great on paper. But has anybody ever actually been able to live this?" The Pope's answer is "Here's how it played out in the first disciple's life. It can play ot in our lives that way too": So we cry to her: Holy Mary, you belonged to the humble and great souls of Israel who, like Simeon, were “looking for the consolation of Israel” (Lk 2:25) and hoping, like Anna, “for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Lk 2:38). Your life was thoroughly imbued with the sacred scriptures of Israel which spoke of hope, of the promise made to Abraham and his descendants (cf. Lk 1:55). In this way we can appreciate the holy fear that overcame you when the angel of the Lord appeared to you and told you that you would give birth to the One who was the hope of Israel, the One awaited by the world. Through you, through your “yes”, the hope of the ages became reality, entering this world and its history. You bowed low before the greatness of this task and gave your consent: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). When you hastened with holy joy across the mountains of Judea to see your cousin Elizabeth, you became the image of the Church to come, which carries the hope of the world in her womb across the mountains of history. But alongside the joy which, with your Magnificat, you proclaimed in word and song for all the centuries to hear, you also knew the dark sayings of the prophets about the suffering of the servant of God in this world. Shining over his birth in the stable at Bethlehem, there were angels in splendour who brought the good news to the shepherds, but at the same time the lowliness of God in this world was all too palpable. The old man Simeon spoke to you of the sword which would pierce your soul (cf. Lk 2:35), of the sign of contradiction that your Son would be in this world. Then, when Jesus began his public ministry, you had to step aside, so that a new family could grow, the family which it was his mission to establish and which would be made up of those who heard his word and kept it (cf. Lk 11:27f). Notwithstanding the great joy that marked the beginning of Jesus's ministry, in the synagogue of Nazareth you must already have experienced the truth of the saying about the “sign of contradiction” (cf. Lk 4:28ff). In this way you saw the growing power of hostility and rejection which built up around Jesus until the hour of the Cross, when you had to look upon the Saviour of the world, the heir of David, the Son of God dying like a failure, exposed to mockery, between criminals. Then you received the word of Jesus: “Woman, behold, your Son!” (Jn 19:26). From the Cross you received a new mission. From the Cross you became a mother in a new way: the mother of all those who believe in your Son Jesus and wish to follow him. The sword of sorrow pierced your heart. Did hope die? Did the world remain definitively without light, and life without purpose? At that moment, deep down, you probably listened again to the word spoken by the angel in answer to your fear at the time of the Annunciation: “Do not be afraid, Mary!” (Lk 1:30). How many times had the Lord, your Son, said the same thing to his disciples: do not be afraid! In your heart, you heard this word again during the night of Golgotha. Before the hour of his betrayal he had said to his disciples: “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14:27). “Do not be afraid, Mary!” In that hour at Nazareth the angel had also said to you: “Of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:33). Could it have ended before it began? No, at the foot of the Cross, on the strength of Jesus's own word, you became the mother of believers. In this faith, which even in the darkness of Holy Saturday bore the certitude of hope, you made your way towards Easter morning. The joy of the Resurrection touched your heart and united you in a new way to the disciples, destined to become the family of Jesus through faith. In this way you were in the midst of the community of believers, who in the days following the Ascension prayed with one voice for the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14) and then received that gift on the day of Pentecost. The “Kingdom” of Jesus was not as might have been imagined. It began in that hour, and of this “Kingdom” there will be no end. Thus you remain in the midst of the disciples as their Mother, as the Mother of hope. Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us and guide us on our way! It's really really easy to forget that Calvary was not just a sacrifice for Christ. Mary lost everything that day--and still had hope. Apropos this, here are three other little meditations excerpted from my chapter on the Holy Rosary in Behold Your Mother: The Agony in the Garden And now, rather than gild the lily any further, let me urge you to read Spe Salvi, which is far more worthwhile than anything I might prattle about here. See you Monday! Live in Hope! Labels: Behold Your Mother Yes! Our brilliant Pope writes: The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world. This sums up everything I've been trying to say about both the danger of atheism *and* of the recent adoption of Machiavellian cynicism (aka "practical atheism") by the Rubber Hose Right that dares to call itself "Christian" while defending Salvation through Leviathan by Any Means Necessary. The moment you start to ignore God and take matters into your own hands to Fix Things, you begin to create a world without Hope. It won't work for Phillip Pullman and Christopher Hitchens, it hasn't worked for the Abortion Will Create a World of Wanted Children Crowd and it won't work for the Rubber Hose Right. The promise of Heaven on Earth *always* delivers Hell on Earth. Labels: Consequentialism on Parade Compare and Contrast Here's an article illustrating once again the fact that a culture of death is a culture of fear: It was revealed last week that firefighters are being trained to not only keep an eye out for illegal materials in the course of their duties, but even to report back any expression of discontent with the government. Meanwhile, here is the astounding vision of a life that is based, not on ever-mounting terror about the future, but on Hope. God help me choose the latter and oppose the ever more insistent voices in our culture, coming from all sides, that the only way to get on in this world is through the embrace of dog eat dog, kill or be killed, relentless, unremitting appeals to more and ever more fear. I've only read part of the encyclical, but I am struck by the Pope's emphasis on the "performative" aspect of the gospel of Hope. The basic idea is that words don't just carry information. Sometimes they *do* things. "With this ring, I thee wed" *does* something. "I declare war" *does* something. In the same way, the words we speak, whether of hope or despair, do things. I'm still getting my mind around that. But there's something to it. Labels: A Culture of Death is a Culture of Fear, Theology Thursday, November 29, 2007
It's funny because it's true Rep. Gary Nelson (R-CT) Introduces The Gary Nelson Personal Pay Raise Bill Proposed (Classified) Bill Will Defend Against Flesh-Eating (Classified) Fear is one of the great tools of the demagogue. Sooner or later, it is the healthy response of a free people to laugh at it. Yes, I'm aware that Islamists want to kill us. Somebody has always wanted to kill us. But I think my reader right when he points out that In the last six months, the federal government has arrogated to itself,in violation of the constitution, the right to search your records without a warrant, designate you (at the sole discretion of the President and his flunkies) a terrorist, arrest you, hold you incommunicado, torture you, and kill you, all without recourse to any court, judge, jury or lawyer. I despise the multi-national corporations too, but right now our problem is a wildly out of control federal government, taking away our rights as free-born Americans. We have to navigate between the Scylla of Islamism and the Charybdis of pissing away the Constitution (not to mention our obedience to Christ who teaches, through Holy Church, that you must not do evil that good may come of it). At present, I'm more worried about an out-of-control executive and a gutless Congress and dozing fat dumb and happy public than I am about the next terror attack (and I'm still worried about that too). As long as we remain a culture of death, we will remain a culture of fear, not choosing to live in love or obedience to God, but being herded about by different terrors. We will flee from the terrorist into the arms of an increasingly overbearing State, or from the overbearing State in an anarchy of indulgence, weakness and, in the end, vulnerability to terrorist attack. Ignore God and that is the inevitable lesson of history. Only the gospel can make us free in the end. Labels: A Culture of Death is a Culture of Fear Padre Pio's Practical Ecumenism Orthodox woman with terminal lung cancer spend two weeks praying before an icon of the saint. The cancer is gone. Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth. Labels: Cool Stuff, Ecumenism Lifesite News Seems to Have Patterned Itself on Jimmy Swaggart Here's a little snippet somebody sent me about another popular piece of fiction (ET: The Extra-Terrestial) that everybody--except the loudmouth denunciatory Christians who should have known better--understood: Many found religious parallels to the life of Jesus Christ. English professor Al Millar published a pamphlet "E.T. - You're More Than A Movie Star", which compared E.T. to Jesus. It compared the alien's glowing heart, with some imagery of Christ, as well as his ability to heal, his persecution from authorities and eventual death and resurrection before ascending into the heavens.[9] Stanley Kauffman dubbed the film "The Gospel According to St. Steven".[33] Universal Studios stepped up the appeal to the Christian market, with a poster reminiscent of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, and a logo saying "Peace." Spielberg said he did not intend the film to be a religious parable, joking, "If I ever went to my mother and said, 'Mom, I've made this movie that's a Christian parable', what do you think she'd say? She has a kosher restaurant on Pico and Doheny in Los Angeles."[32] In contrast, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart denounced E.T. as "a beast from Hell", and accused Spielberg of being "an agent of Satan."[34]I remember reading a story at the time the film came out, which pointed out that Melissa Matheson, the screenwriter, had pointed out the parallel between ET and the gospel and that Spielberg had been surprised. He hadn't noticed them. No reason he should, since he's Jewish. But it's another example of Overstreet's point about the "inesapability of the gospel." If Jesus is the Truth, then he will inevitably find his way into stories insofar as those stories try to tell the truth. The storyteller may or may not see it. Often the artist does not understand his own art, as Plato noted long ago. But the connection will be there. The artist may or may not being trying to connect that truth of his art to the truth of Christ. Matheson understood the connection and it was conscious for her. Spielberg didn't see it, but he is an honest artist and so the truth of Christ was present in the work, if not in his intentions. Sometimes, like Rowling, the attempt is being made to deliberately connect Christ with the work. Sometimes, as with Pullman, a thorough attempt is being made to tell lies. But since "every knee shall bow" no attempt to block out the truth of Christ can ever be complete. That's no credit to the liar though. Labels: At the Movies, Harry Potter, Pullman Happy News! The Catholic Channel (Sirius 159) will be airing a special, 2 hour broadcast of Heart Mind and Strength--Weekend Edition with Dr. Gregory and Lisa Popcak this Saturday (12/1) from 2-4pm Eastern. Labels: PSA Very insightful Baptism by Torture One of the more tired attempts to justify torture has been the canard that "the Church used to approve of it, so that means the Church dogmatically declared it okay, so that means that when the Church says (today) that torture is intrinisically immoral it either does not mean that, or it is contradicting previous dogma". The goal here, as ever, is not to think clearly, but to say any damned thing in order to justify *this* damned thing. Here's the reality: the Church did indeed, a totally non-infallible prudential judgement, accept the common cultural assumption that torture was justifiable. It also accepted, at one time, the common cultural assumption that Slavery was the Way Things Are (and had been, literally since the dawn of human civilization). This means... absolutely nothing in terms of understanding how the Church insight into the nature and dignity of the human person has deepened. The time came where the Church came to see that slavery was incompatible with human dignity (indeed, the seeds of that are already in the letter to Philemon with Paul's strong hint that Onesimus should be freed) and in the unforgettable condemnation of Babylon the Great in Revelation as the greedy merchants weep: "Alas! alas! thou great city, thou mighty city, Babylon! In one hour has thy judgment come." And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo any more, cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls. There has always been an inner dynamic in Christianity that is fundamentally hostile to slavery, even when socio-economic forces revived it during the Renaissance after its long sleep in medieval Europe. And Christianity eventually killed it again--in Christian lands. In the same way, torture is as old as mankind and Christianity was born in world that accepted it. Indeed, it's Lord is, after all, a torture victim. And for that reason, it has also always had an inner dynamic that is fundamentally hostile to torture even when the whole culture took it as a fact of life. Christians can never quite get away from the fact that their Lord was tortured and murdered for all the reasons given by ever regime as the legitimating claim for torture: he was dangerous to the peace of the state. It is better for one person to be tortured and murdered than for the whole people to suffer or die. He subverts the security of the state with radical claims. He claims to bring, not peace, but a sword. All this rhetoric is *always* trotted out to justify the abuse of the human person. Man, being fallen, often is deserving of such rhetoric. There *are* people who mean to harm the peace of the state. There are real enemies whose radical ideas intend evil. And yet, at the core of it, Christianity brings into the world the insistence that even the guilty and evil man is one for whom Christ died and the state does not having unlimited rights to cruelty merely because of this fact. The long and the short of it is that the Church (thank God) eventually concludes that it was *wrong* in its prudential judgements about the use of torture, just as it was wrong to acquiesce to the use of slaves. Now that this judgement has, so to speak ratcheted forward, it will never ratchet back. So attempt to overturn a development of doctrine in Veritatis Splendor 80 by appealing to past practice is much of a muchness with the attempt to say "Irenaeus never spoke of Jesus as "one in being with the Father" so we don't have listen to the Council of Nicaea. Erroneous prudential judgements of our fathers do not trump the developed teaching of the Church. Labels: Theology VA GOP Requires Loyalty Oath ... to "the eventual GOP ticket". Translation: Pro-lifers, bend over. You'll take what we give you and you'll like it. Every serious Republican in the great state of Virginia should tell the GOP to go to hell. This is the act of a desperate party that knows it has fielded a bunch of losers and is trying to keep prolifers on the reservation should Rudy or one of the other empty suits win the pennant. I remember when conservatism was about things like life and liberty, not loyalty oaths designed for force prolifers to vote for six time Planned Parenthood donors. Labels: Stupid Party Nitwit Pete Vere Responds to Phillip Pullman Don't forget to check out his and nitwit Sandra Miesel's fine analysis of Pullman's poison in Pied Piper of Atheism. Labels: Pullman Murder Inc. Continues Its Work of Evil For the truth about Planned Parenthood, check out these American Life League links: Protect Your Children - exposing Planned Parenthood's war on childhood innocence Sign ALL's petition to end tax funding for Planned Parenthood. Get the Wednesday STOPP Report. Labels: Culture of Death Watch, PSA The Wonderful Dawn Eden writes: On November 13, with the help of co-organizer Mary Rose Rybak (managing editor of The New Atlantis), I fulfilled my dream of assembling a panel of the literary world's "chastity all-stars." You go, girl! Continue to speak truth to our sexually deranged culture. Labels: Culture of Life, Doings on Other Blogs Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Who Could Not Be Charmed by This? This whole campaign is straight out of a Frank Capra film. Labels: Politics By the way, that reminds me... Reader Tim Shipe writes to his fellow Floridians: Dear Pro-Life Supporters, I have zero interest in party loyalty. A candidate who aims to enact the Church's teaching about the dignity of human life is good enough for me. Go, Tim! Labels: Culture of Life Obama Strategist is Also Architect of Voice of the Fuddled Marshall Ganz, a 'volunteer' for the Campaign of Barack Obama has been referred to by some in the campaign as an 'architect' of its strategy. Ganz was an early architect of the 'Voice of the Faithful' an organization which calls for radical restructuring of the Catholic church. Have I mentioned that between the liars, stumblebums and the assassins of the Faith that crowd the US political field, Ron Paul looks better every day? "Certainty of death... small chance of success... what are we waiting for?" - Gimli Labels: Politics When They Stand Up, We'll Stand Down Remember that lie? Here's the facts: the U.S. will babysit the Shiite-dominated Al-Maliki regime indefinitely in return for giving U.S. entrepreneurs first crack at Iraq’s riches. That's what "5. Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq." means. Investors invest to turn a profit, not to do charity. We're there for good. And it was all about oil after all. I really didn't think that all this time. I thought the Bushies were at least deluded idealists in love with the secular messianic dream of Freedom. I'm a sucker. Next: Iran. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan... Labels: Lies Damned Lies and Statistics, War Sounds Worthy of Support A reader writes: As a long-time reader of your blog, I know you're fond of showing us 57483920208574362850942482745 reasons to homeschool, but I thought you might like to see (and show your readers) at least one (independent) Catholic school that is getting it right. God bless your work in the Vineyard! Labels: PSA 2007 Technology Innovation Winners What clever creatures we are! How marvelous God has given us such unparalleled creativity. I wonder if angels are creative too? And if so, what would they create? I think I *may* have just asked a question that St. Thomas never asked. Labels: Cool Stuff For those who are interested... Fr. Robert Spitzer's recent talk to the Seattle Chesterton Society "The Virtual Inevitability Of A Singularity in Inflationary Model Universes: Implications for the Creation of the Universe" can now be read here and heard here. And don't forget our next Chesterton Event this Thursday, November 29, 2007, at 7:30 PM in the Falcon Lounge at Seattle Pacific University: “Pope John Paul II's Historic Pilgrimage to Poland, June 1979” Felak is a first-rate speaker. Don't miss him if you can! Labels: Chestertoniana, Science Speaking of Jeffrey Overstreet... He writes well, in his book Through a Screen Darkly on the "inescapability of the gospel". This is the fact, illustrated by everybody from Caiaphas (who unwittingly prophesied the truth that it was better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish) to Phillip Pullman (who tries to kill God and winds up killing only a senile tyrant of his own imagining and portraying self-sacrificial love as a Very Good Thing) that any storyteller trying to tell a decent story will sooner or later have to speak the truth and so end up paying tribute to Christ since "every knee shall bow". In short, you can't get away from Christ, because he really is the Truth and the moment you drop your guard, he finds a way in. Because of this principle of reality, useful idiots like Donna Frietas try to say that Pullman is "really" trying to write a deeply religous story and that there is nothing anti-God or anti-Catholic about His Dark Materials. This is, I repeat, exactly like saying that Judas and Caiaphas were great disciples of Jesus because their betrayal and condemnation of Jesus turned out well. If I write a carefully constructed calumny of your mother and call her a whore, I doubt you'd say, "Since my mother is obviously *not* a whore, it is plain that he cannot be speaking of my mother." That is what attempts to rehabilitate His Dark Materials come down to. The basic claim of Freitas is, "Pullman condemns, not the God of Christianity, but a malevolent selfish tyrannical being who acts more like Satan than the God of Scripture." Yes, and he identifies that being as... the God of Scripture: Yahweh, the Father, etc. He means to blaspheme *that* God. The fact that his blasphemy necessarily forces him to attribute evil to God (and therefore to describe what does not, in fact, exist) does not exonerate him, any more than the fact that Judas' betrayal led to the Resurrection means that Judas "meant well". In the Harry Potter novels, Christian elements and images are found everywhere, because the author had every intention of telling a fundamentally Christian story. She was trying, for all her faults as a writer or philosopher, to cooperate with grace. In His Dark Materials, Christian elements creep in only because Pullman could not successfully block out the light of Christ completely, despite his best efforts to do so. By way of analogy, Satan cannot rid himself of his own being, intelligence and will (all gifts of God and testimonies to His glory) without ceasing to be altogether. This hardly means that Satan "means well". Evil is *always* parasitic on good and must always, to some degree, pay tribute to it. Pullman's evil work is no exception. That does not mitigate the fact that it is evil. Labels: Pullman A reader writes: Mark, haven't seen any info about this on any of St. Blogs type sites...do you know anything about it? Trailer looks interesting... Never heard of it. Sorry! You might ask Jeffrey Overstreet. Labels: At the Movies Humans are puny and insignificant and do not matter at all in vastness of the cosmos! Oh! And they should also feel guilty because, just by observing the universe, they are shortening its lifespan. There are moments when I find myself wondering how many myths of the religion of Scientism people will uncritically accept before, like the cow in the Far Side cartoon, they realize to their horror they've been eating grass. It's as though philosophers of science caught a virus from Calvinism. First, we should mock and belittle humans for their "arrogant" presumption that they are creatures made in the image and likeness of God. We should put them in their place as the puny accidents of nature they are, having no more value or signficance than anything else in nature. Then, having established their insignficance, we should heap guilt on them for abusing their cosmic powers to shorten the lifespan of the universe itself! And all this is based on the preposterous claim that merely *looking* at something alters it. Yes, I'm aware this is a sacred tenet of the worship of Scientism which is part of the gospel of quantum physics. I'm afraid I still think it's rubbish. I'm reminded again of Dale Ahlquist's remark that future generations will look back and say, "That's the sort of credulous nonsense that could *only* have been believed in the 20th and 21st centuries." Labels: News of the Weird My Latest on Catholic Exchange In which we learn again why the Magisterium is so valuable. Labels: Catholic Exchange Stuff Tuesday, November 27, 2007
A Christian Approach to Purity In which we learn that "Be Not Afraid" is still a good idea for the Catholic who actually want to live as an apostle in the world and not just huddle in a safe ghetto. Labels: National Catholic Register Stuff You know what he's trying to say, but still.... Chesterton remarks in the Everlasting Man: One of my first journalistic adventures, or misadventures, concerned a comment on Grant Allen, who had written a book about the Evolution of the Idea of God. I happened to remark that it would be much more interesting if God wrote a book about the evolution of the idea of Grant Allen. And I remember that the editor objected to my remark on the ground that it was blasphemous; which naturally amused me not a little. For the joke of it was, of course, that it never occurred to him to notice the title of the book itself, which really was blasphemous; for it was, when translated into English, 'I will show you how this nonsensical notion that there is a God grew up among men.' My remark was strictly pious and proper; confessing the divine purpose even in its most seemingly dark or meaningless manifestations. In that hour I learned many things, including the fact that there is something purely acoustic in much of that agnostic sort of reverence. The editor had not seen the point, because in the title of the book the long word came at the beginning and the short word at the end; whereas in my comment the short word came at the beginning and gave him a sort of shock. I have noticed that if you put a word like God into the same sentence with a word like dog, these abrupt and angular words affect people like pistol-shots. Whether you say that God made the dog or the dog made God does not seem to matter; that is only one of the sterile disputations of the too subtle theologians. I am reminded of this when I read the following from one of our GOP candidates, a Christian no less: Well, let’s remember that all law establishes morality. That’s what law does. The law of speeding is saying that it’s immoral to go at 85 miles an hour. The morality is that we have established a 65-mile-an-hour limit. So that’s what all law does: It establishes that it is wrong for me to murder you. ~Mike Huckabee I *think* this wins the prize for Stupidest Thing Said by a Candidate This Month, perhap This Year. Here's the thing: law does not establish morality. Morality is the basis of law. To say "law establishes morality" is to say "If the State says it's good, then it is." This particular moral theory was tried out with some vigor in places like Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR, and Mao's China. It didn't pan out. More recently Law Established Abortion as a Good Thing. Does Mr. Huckabee agree? Huckabee means well, of course. Stumblebum politicians usually do. He's trying to say that law is (or is supposed to be) rooted in the Good, including the Common Good. But that's not what he said. He was trying to parrot "values talk" but his carelessness (not to say recklessness) has lead him to say the exact opposite of what a Christian would actually say. Now, I'm one of those picky people who thinks this matters. Because I'm one of those picky people who believe it's rather important for a statesman and a crafter of laws to actually know what the hell they are talking about since the laws they make are composed of words--words that mean things. I don't expect Lady Macbeth or Giuliani to be honest enough to care about the relationship of law and morality and I don't expect most of the rest of the field on either side to much care. But a Christian who consciously runs and flaunts his Christian faith should really have some clue what he's talking about. Otherwise, he winds up saying demented things like "law establishes morality". And such demented ideas can have grave consequences. Labels: News of the Weird, Politics A reader writes: Welcome back to the states. Glad your tour was a success. Fun reading your experiences those weeks. Thanks! Glad to be back! Re: your question on the Passion. The best source I know on the physical sufferings of Christ is A Doctor at Calvary. As to your last question, I'm not sure what you mean. For what it's worth, here's my little meditation on this particular Luminous Mystery, from my forthcoming Behold Your Mother trilogy. This will be in chapter two (on the Holy Rosary) of book three: The Mystery of Mary: The Baptism of the Lord Labels: Behold Your Mother, Book recommendations Phillip Pullman: Lying Weasel Supported by Other Lying Weasels “In the current Newsweek, Pullman lashes out at me saying, ‘To regard it [his storytelling] as this Donohue man has said—that I’m a militant atheist, and my intention is to convert people—how the hell does he know that?’ That’s easy—I just quote him: ‘I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.’ I am simply astonished at how many people think "It's just a story" is a sufficient evidence that a thing is not toxic. Appoarently modern people have no clue about how they themselves form and pass on culture and its deepest beliefs and guiding principles. They seriously believe that a culture is formed by reading the bankbook or memorizing the latest news on arsenic levels in Japanese water supplies as related by the Six O'Clock News? We become who we are largely through the stories we tell and hear. And this is especially true of children. Pullman, the filthy liar, knows this better than anybody. Indeed, his entire purpose, like Satan's in Paradise Lost, is to say "Evil be thou my good" and to assert that the Wrong Side own the war in heaven between God and Satan. The irony of this is that, philosophically speaking, he is an atheist materialist. However, when he tries to express this philosophy in story form, he is forced to do so by creating a sort of gnostic myth--because, as Jeffery Overstreet points out--the gospel is inescapable. Pullman *wants* to say that God does not exist. he winds up saying that God does exist--and is evil. All this is bound up with Pullman's typically Euro obsession with pelvic issues. I suspect there is a profound truth in this. There are not real atheists, I begin to suspect. There are only those who worship God and those who worship a creature. And the more they attempt to do that with a will, the closer they come to worshipping the Father of Lies. But then, in the conclusion of his trilogy, we find this strangely confused climax: In Pullman’s telling, the fate of all creation hinges, not on some difficult choice between good and evil, but merely on the moment when Will and Lyra first kiss. Somehow (and in the 1,100 pages of the trilogy there is nothing that suggests why this is of literally cosmic significance), after this kiss—and that’s as far as they go—the Dust that had been flowing out of the universe flows back in, and an age of peace and love is suddenly possible. Because these two young teenagers are basically innocent, as the shifting of their daemons reveals, their innocent love is supposed to show that sex and things of the flesh are very good, when properly ordered. Pullman mistakenly attacks Christian asceticism when he really is rejecting only heretical Manicheism. Some useful idiots, like Donna Frietas, claim that since Pullman winds up attacking Manichaeaism, not Christian belief, he really means well. That's rather like saying "Since God brought the Resurrection out of Jesus' betrayal and crucifixion, Judas Iscariot meant well. It's rubbish. The fact that Pullman is such a profound liar that he cannot keep his own lies straight does not exonerate him. Like the Father of Lies for whom he openly pleads, he is a living demonstration that sin makes you stupid (even when it leaves you the gifts of cleverness to complicate your own damnation). Yes, it's quite true that Pullman's foolish notiong that sex=sin is dumb. Yes, it's true that he winds up putting his characters through a Christ-like act of self-sacrifice and self-denial. Milton's Satan likewise regards himself as Noble for the suffering his rebellion leads to. Pride talks that way. And Pullman is preaching the gospel of Pride. That he cannot keep out reflections of the gospel is no credit to him, for he is bent on trying. Labels: Atheism So the Jew, the Protestant, and the Catholic all go to the Ron Paul Rally... ...and the GOP Powers-That-Be realize to their horror that it's no joke. Heh! I love all the sleazy maneuvering our elites keep pulling to try to keep people from acknowledging his existence. My favorite was a couple of weeks ago, when there was some straw poll in Nevada and Paul won by a large margin. The headline: "Romney loses straw poll". Reminds me of the old Soviet joke after a car race between the US and the USSR which the American won. The Pravda headline: "Glorious Soviet Car Places Second in International Competition -- Americans Next to Last." Labels: Politics Turning Appalachia Into Mordor ...and Appalachians into serfs and slaves. Capitalism at its ugliest. The gospel has succeeded in taming the purely human syste called capitalism to a degree, which is why it has never fully reached the Sauron-like potential for destruction that communism, with its focused animus toward religion, was able to achieve. But it is worth remembering that it was the ravages of 19th and 20th century capitalism that inspired Tolkien's visions of Mordor. It is also worth remembering that capitalism has no divine guarantee that it will not metastasize into a cancer that tries to destroy the religious body upon which it feeds, as communism did. What is happening in Appalachia is one possible outcome to the story of the purely human system called capitalism. It is what happens when fallen men encounter people weaker than themselves. Should capitalism manage to create a society in which most of the wealth and power is in the hands of a few (and that is, after all, the goal of the capitalist, to acquire as much capital as he can), it is virtually certain that (apart from grace) this scenario will be writ large, because even capitalists are fallen. At present, there is enough competition to keep this from happening and |
