Hmmmm...
This is the most persuasive argument I've seen for McCain yet...
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Whatcha Call Yer Basic Lack of Perspective
Seems the guy is miffed cuz McCain is winning right now.
I wonder what people like this will do if they ever meet *real* evil? More to the point, why should I believe people like this, the *next* time they tell me we are faced with a some world-historical evil and we have to rush off to war right this very second.
Of course, given that McCain himself is so gung-ho about the war...
Over the past month a new Axis of Evil has emerged -- not one based in Damascus, Tehran or Pyongyang -- but instead in Cedar Rapids, Charleston, South Carolina, Derry, New Hampshire and Boca Raton, Florida.
Seems the guy is miffed cuz McCain is winning right now.
I wonder what people like this will do if they ever meet *real* evil? More to the point, why should I believe people like this, the *next* time they tell me we are faced with a some world-historical evil and we have to rush off to war right this very second.
Of course, given that McCain himself is so gung-ho about the war...
Why So Many Traditionalists Don't Get Invited to Parties
A reader writes:
See, this is what I'm talking about when I note the widespread inability of Traditionalists to function outside of the bunker. Traditionalists are going to have to figure out how to be fully Catholic or they are going to disappear, because true Catholic faith evangelizes and, like it or not, this is not evangelizing: this is shouting "Repel boarders" and then pouring boiling oil on the your own archers. Such treatment of (learn this term) BROTHER AND SISTER CATHOLICS is, well, evil and will serve to ensure that Traditionalism dies out in a generation or so. That would be a shame, because they things Traditionalists are fighting for are vital. That's the case almost every time you have a group within the Church imbued with a spirit of factionalism. But that doesn't make the faction any less doomed to suffer declining numbers if they treat Holy Church with such contempt. People tend to avoid such treatment. That's basic common sense: a commodity often lacking among people afflicted with the factional spirit. The Scriptural diagnosis and prescription is this:
A reader writes:
At the March for Life in DC last week, our group (mostly young teens) came across a marcher holding aloft a Crucifix with a big sign: "Latin Mass= Truth; New Mass = Abortion". As I respectfully disagreed with him, he brought up receiving the Eucharist by hand, as if that somehow that had to do with saving unborn children.
See, this is what I'm talking about when I note the widespread inability of Traditionalists to function outside of the bunker. Traditionalists are going to have to figure out how to be fully Catholic or they are going to disappear, because true Catholic faith evangelizes and, like it or not, this is not evangelizing: this is shouting "Repel boarders" and then pouring boiling oil on the your own archers. Such treatment of (learn this term) BROTHER AND SISTER CATHOLICS is, well, evil and will serve to ensure that Traditionalism dies out in a generation or so. That would be a shame, because they things Traditionalists are fighting for are vital. That's the case almost every time you have a group within the Church imbued with a spirit of factionalism. But that doesn't make the faction any less doomed to suffer declining numbers if they treat Holy Church with such contempt. People tend to avoid such treatment. That's basic common sense: a commodity often lacking among people afflicted with the factional spirit. The Scriptural diagnosis and prescription is this:
Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. Galatians 5:19-23
This tells us, not only about Lady Macbeth, but about ABC News
Everybody knows that Lady Macbeth is an unprincipled reptile who will do anything for power and money. Not news. So it should come as no surprise when some detail turns up illustrating this, such as the fact that she sat on the board of WalMart (aka EvilCorp) and said nothing while they stomped on unions for years. No surprise there. The notion that Hillary actually care about the little guy or Democrat party principles if they impair her insatiable lust for power is utterly laughable.
But here's the thing: ABC is breaking this story promptly 16 years after she sat on that board. Why now?
Because for the first time in 16 years, the media have been able to fasten their hopes on somebody else as the flag carrier for the Dem party and they are desperate to get rid of the Clintons. So as the dam breaks, all the stuff the newsies knew about the Clintons but sanitized for our protection starts to get aired. It was inconvenient to discuss Lady Macbeth's callousness toward unions in 1992. Now, however, it will help the Anointed One move further up in the polls. So the story suddenly gets major play. Look for a lot more of this as the MSM tries its best to destroy the Clinton's chokehold on the Dem party.
It's like watching an abused spouse finally screwing up the courage to tell her husband she's leaving. This Tuesday is going to be fascinating to watch.
Everybody knows that Lady Macbeth is an unprincipled reptile who will do anything for power and money. Not news. So it should come as no surprise when some detail turns up illustrating this, such as the fact that she sat on the board of WalMart (aka EvilCorp) and said nothing while they stomped on unions for years. No surprise there. The notion that Hillary actually care about the little guy or Democrat party principles if they impair her insatiable lust for power is utterly laughable.
But here's the thing: ABC is breaking this story promptly 16 years after she sat on that board. Why now?
Because for the first time in 16 years, the media have been able to fasten their hopes on somebody else as the flag carrier for the Dem party and they are desperate to get rid of the Clintons. So as the dam breaks, all the stuff the newsies knew about the Clintons but sanitized for our protection starts to get aired. It was inconvenient to discuss Lady Macbeth's callousness toward unions in 1992. Now, however, it will help the Anointed One move further up in the polls. So the story suddenly gets major play. Look for a lot more of this as the MSM tries its best to destroy the Clinton's chokehold on the Dem party.
It's like watching an abused spouse finally screwing up the courage to tell her husband she's leaving. This Tuesday is going to be fascinating to watch.
The Pacific Northwest According To Jeff Foxworthy
Uncannily accurate.
1. You know the state flower (Mildew).
2. You feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash.
3. Use the statement 'sun break' and know what it means.
4. You know more than 10 ways to order coffee.
5 You know more people who own boats than air conditioners.
6. You feel overdressed wearing a suit to a nice restaurant.
7. You stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the 'WALK' signal.
8. You consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it's not a real mountain.
9. You can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle's Best, and Veneto's.
10. You know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon.
11. You know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Issaquah, Oregon, Yakima and Willamette.
12. You consider swimming an indoor sport.
13. You can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food.
14. In winter, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark while only working eight-hour days.
15. You never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho.
16. You are not fazed by 'Today's forecast: showers followed by rain,' and 'Tomorrow's forecast: rain followed by showers.'
17 You have no concept of humidity without precipitation.
18. You know that Boring is a town in Oregon and not just a state of mind.
19. You can point to at least two volcanoes, even if you cannot see through the cloud cover.
20. You notice, 'The mountain is out' when it is a pretty day and you can actually see it.
21. You put on your shorts when the temperature gets above 50, but still wear your hiking boots and parka.
22. You switch to your sandals when it gets about 60, but keep the socks on.
23. You have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain.
24. You think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists.
25. You buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old ones after such a long time.
26. You measure distance in hours.
27. You often switch from 'heat' to 'a/c' in the same day.
28. You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit under a raincoat.
29. You know all the important seasons: Almost Winter, winter, Still Raining (Spring), Road Construction (Summer), Deer & Elk season (Fall).
30. You actually understood these jokes and will probably forward them.
Uncannily accurate.
It's stories like this that the acronym WTF? was coined for
Understandably, zealots for the Tridentine Mass look at this and cry O Tempora! O Mores! Less understandably there is, how do I put this?, a sort of dark *joy* in such stories for not a few fans of the Tridentine rite. They tend to get passed around on the Trad Internet (like the ubiquitous tales of the dreaded Clown Mass) until they constitute a sort of liturgical bogeyman. Enthusiasts for the Latin Mass often start talking as though such stupid liturgical antics are happening everywhere all the time and that they and they alone stand between the Church and the complete and utter circusization of the Mass. It's a kind of feedback loop. Believing that the Mass is going to hell in a handbasket feeds one's sense that one is the Savior of the Liturgy. Indeed, a slogan that is gaining some currency around the web is "Save the Liturgy. Save the World".
Now I agree 1000% that the Liturgy (and in particular, the Blessed Sacrament) are the absolute center of the universe and of all history. If you want to know What It's All About, look at the Eucharist. That's what everyhing is all about. And I agree that, in the Mystery of God's Providence, the Eucharist has been entrusted into our fragile hands in the same way that Jesus was entrusted into the hands of the Holy Family. We have an obligation to do our best to celebrate the Mass reverently and worthily.
But there is also the danger that we can forget that the Mass is God's before it is ours and can start to regard it as our property. Certainly liturgical abusers are doing this. But "saviors of the liturgy" can forget in their own way as well. They can come to *relish* liturgical abuses and to exaggerate their commonness because,w well, it's rather gratifying to one's pride to be the Savior of the Liturgy. When I entered the Church I heard of the dreaded Clown Mass. But I never ever saw one. Nor have I met anybody who has. I know they happened here and there. But what has come to impress me about the Church is that, what is really and truly common in the Episcopal communion constitutes the outermost end of the bell curve in the Catholic Church. Do nutty things like that German liturgy at the link happen? Yes. Is this the Shape of Things To Come for the Catholic Church? No. This is the last gasp of the Revolution that Wasn't. So work to overcome this loopiness. But don't talk as though this is happening everywhere and it all shows what a big mistake the council was, or how those lowly Novus Ordo types are second class, etc. And try to avoid talking about "saving the liturgy". God doesn't need a Savior. We do.
Update: None of the above is meant to be construed as some sort of slam aimed at Fr. Zuhlsdorf, who has done a fine job, as he should, of teaching and promoting true devotion to the Mass. I have in mind much more these sorts of people, who are convinced that if you aren't a Tridentine Catholic, you are basically the Enemy. I have reservations about the slogan "Save the Liturgy, Save the World". But I have nothing but admiration for the fine work Fr. Zuhlsdorf is doing.
Understandably, zealots for the Tridentine Mass look at this and cry O Tempora! O Mores! Less understandably there is, how do I put this?, a sort of dark *joy* in such stories for not a few fans of the Tridentine rite. They tend to get passed around on the Trad Internet (like the ubiquitous tales of the dreaded Clown Mass) until they constitute a sort of liturgical bogeyman. Enthusiasts for the Latin Mass often start talking as though such stupid liturgical antics are happening everywhere all the time and that they and they alone stand between the Church and the complete and utter circusization of the Mass. It's a kind of feedback loop. Believing that the Mass is going to hell in a handbasket feeds one's sense that one is the Savior of the Liturgy. Indeed, a slogan that is gaining some currency around the web is "Save the Liturgy. Save the World".
Now I agree 1000% that the Liturgy (and in particular, the Blessed Sacrament) are the absolute center of the universe and of all history. If you want to know What It's All About, look at the Eucharist. That's what everyhing is all about. And I agree that, in the Mystery of God's Providence, the Eucharist has been entrusted into our fragile hands in the same way that Jesus was entrusted into the hands of the Holy Family. We have an obligation to do our best to celebrate the Mass reverently and worthily.
But there is also the danger that we can forget that the Mass is God's before it is ours and can start to regard it as our property. Certainly liturgical abusers are doing this. But "saviors of the liturgy" can forget in their own way as well. They can come to *relish* liturgical abuses and to exaggerate their commonness because,w well, it's rather gratifying to one's pride to be the Savior of the Liturgy. When I entered the Church I heard of the dreaded Clown Mass. But I never ever saw one. Nor have I met anybody who has. I know they happened here and there. But what has come to impress me about the Church is that, what is really and truly common in the Episcopal communion constitutes the outermost end of the bell curve in the Catholic Church. Do nutty things like that German liturgy at the link happen? Yes. Is this the Shape of Things To Come for the Catholic Church? No. This is the last gasp of the Revolution that Wasn't. So work to overcome this loopiness. But don't talk as though this is happening everywhere and it all shows what a big mistake the council was, or how those lowly Novus Ordo types are second class, etc. And try to avoid talking about "saving the liturgy". God doesn't need a Savior. We do.
Update: None of the above is meant to be construed as some sort of slam aimed at Fr. Zuhlsdorf, who has done a fine job, as he should, of teaching and promoting true devotion to the Mass. I have in mind much more these sorts of people, who are convinced that if you aren't a Tridentine Catholic, you are basically the Enemy. I have reservations about the slogan "Save the Liturgy, Save the World". But I have nothing but admiration for the fine work Fr. Zuhlsdorf is doing.
King George Decrees the Laws Are For Little People
When you have God on your side in a great civilizational struggle, you must have absolute latitude to do whatever you want whenever you want it to whomever you want. That's called "freedom", you see?
The really amazing thing is that people who call themselves both "Americans" and "conservatives" defend this sort of stuff from our Leader and charge citizens who protest this with "usurping control", "coercion" and even "sedition" when they bleat about it on a blog. Nothing is, to my mind, so clearly redolent of hell as such complete perversion of language. Unbridled executive power = liberty! Citizens exercising free speech = coercive tyranny! Surreal.
And you will note that the Dem candidates have not made much noise about this. Why? Well, if you think we are actually ruled by two parties, that's a mystery. If you think, as I tend to, that we are ruled by a ruling class with mildly different ideological emphases whose main goal is to acquire more power, then it's not a big mystery. The powers Bush has acquired for the Executive will come in very handy for the *next* Executive. Why throw that away by rocking the boat?
When you have God on your side in a great civilizational struggle, you must have absolute latitude to do whatever you want whenever you want it to whomever you want. That's called "freedom", you see?
The really amazing thing is that people who call themselves both "Americans" and "conservatives" defend this sort of stuff from our Leader and charge citizens who protest this with "usurping control", "coercion" and even "sedition" when they bleat about it on a blog. Nothing is, to my mind, so clearly redolent of hell as such complete perversion of language. Unbridled executive power = liberty! Citizens exercising free speech = coercive tyranny! Surreal.
And you will note that the Dem candidates have not made much noise about this. Why? Well, if you think we are actually ruled by two parties, that's a mystery. If you think, as I tend to, that we are ruled by a ruling class with mildly different ideological emphases whose main goal is to acquire more power, then it's not a big mystery. The powers Bush has acquired for the Executive will come in very handy for the *next* Executive. Why throw that away by rocking the boat?
Rowan Williams has been a ninny for a long time...
But now his ninnyhood threatens free speech in Britain. He wants a law against "thoughtless and ... cruel styles of speaking and acting." From the well-meaning attempts of fools to legislate virtue, dear Lord, deliver us.
But now his ninnyhood threatens free speech in Britain. He wants a law against "thoughtless and ... cruel styles of speaking and acting." From the well-meaning attempts of fools to legislate virtue, dear Lord, deliver us.
More Rats Leave the Sinking Ship
The striking thing to me is how Obama, the most liberal member of the Senate, is getting all these fond "I disagree with him about everything, but gee I like the guy" reviews from the Right and rising in the polls in a nation that is supposedly so dominated by the Right. I can't help but conclude that most elections are hugely influenced merely by personality and not by the candidate's actual views on things. There are Dems who agree with Hillary on 9 out of 10 things who will never vote for her because, well, she's Hillary, a repellent Machiavellian narcissist with a husband who doesn't know when to leave the stage. Likewise, on a huge number of issues, most righties would take McCain's views over those of Obama. But they will not vote for McCain because, well, they just don't *like* the guy.
The most interesting election of my lifetime. I think that if the Dems do the smart thing and nominate Obama, he will win, simply because of that. He is, for some mystterious reason, just more likeable than the whole rest of the field. I also think that will probably be disastrous if he does. But it will be, as democracies tend to be, a classic example of our getting the leadership we deserve--as indeed has been the case for sixteen long years.
The striking thing to me is how Obama, the most liberal member of the Senate, is getting all these fond "I disagree with him about everything, but gee I like the guy" reviews from the Right and rising in the polls in a nation that is supposedly so dominated by the Right. I can't help but conclude that most elections are hugely influenced merely by personality and not by the candidate's actual views on things. There are Dems who agree with Hillary on 9 out of 10 things who will never vote for her because, well, she's Hillary, a repellent Machiavellian narcissist with a husband who doesn't know when to leave the stage. Likewise, on a huge number of issues, most righties would take McCain's views over those of Obama. But they will not vote for McCain because, well, they just don't *like* the guy.
The most interesting election of my lifetime. I think that if the Dems do the smart thing and nominate Obama, he will win, simply because of that. He is, for some mystterious reason, just more likeable than the whole rest of the field. I also think that will probably be disastrous if he does. But it will be, as democracies tend to be, a classic example of our getting the leadership we deserve--as indeed has been the case for sixteen long years.
A reader writes:
I'm posting this because, as you folks well know, I just hate Traditionalists. :)
I have a request for your readers, if you don't mind?
Franciscan University of Steubenville has at long last decided to have the Extraordinary Form Mass on campus before the semester is out. However, this being Franciscan, we are in great need of supplies for doing it properly. Prayers will of course be the best anyone can give us, but if anyone is able to make a donation of money or implements and/or vestments that would be crucial.
For those able and willing to send a donation, the address is:
Christ the King Chapel
Franciscan University
1235 University Blvd.
Steubenville, OH 43952
Checks can be made out to ""Christ the King Chapel" with "TLM ONLY" in the memo line. These donations are tax deductable. We are especially in need of the "red book" Missals and cassocks and surplices for servers.
Thanks for your time and trouble! Thanks also in advance to any and all who send prayers and/or donations our way!
I'm posting this because, as you folks well know, I just hate Traditionalists. :)
Israel and Judah
For some reason, I still seem to mystify people in my views on the American political scene. I've had some folks in my comboxes take me for a Righty and others for a Lefty. Here's the key to the mystery: I'm a Catholic.
I think that politics is the art of the possible. I regard political parties as large clumsy mechanisms for trying to enact as much of Catholic social teaching as possible. The moment such parties stand in the way of some fundamental aspect of Catholic social teaching is the moment I drop them like a hot rock and look around for some other means of advancing the Church's teaching. I have absolutely no party loyalty whatsoever and never have. I also endeavor to have as little ideological loyalty as I can possibly manifest, because I regard ideology as almost intrinsically heretical: an aspect of the Church's teachings that is ripped off of the whole and then blown up to absurd proportions almost invariably tends to start to crowd out other aspects of the Church's teaching sooner or later. There can be a long grace period where there doesn't necessarily have to be war between the part and the whole. But when it comes, I am on the side of the whole Catholic teaching rather than on the heretical shred.
So, for instance, the Dems were, for a long time, much more amenable to enacting Catholic social teaching. It was the GOP that had fetes and soirees for Margaret Sanger and sided with the Big Guy against the Little Guy and so forth. Sixty years ago, I would have been a Labor Democrat. But when the Dem party cast itself in with fealty to the sacrament of abortion, they committed suicide in the worship of Moloch and have paid for it ever since. I will *never* support a candidate who favors intrinsic moral evil. The GOP saw the opportunity and became, at least in pretense, the party that opposed abortion and the taking of human life. They also, to a degree, became serious about the Little Guy (though, to their credit, the Dems still have those sympathies too--to a degree).
But the thing is: now *both* parties are increasingly the parties of Leviathan. Dems with their Nanny Statism and "Bush Conservatism" with it's insane combination of Greatness Conservatism (meaning Whack Imperialism combined with Constitution-shredding embraces of torture and militarism) and it Drunken Sailor approach to the national larder.
And living, as wel do, in the land where there are only two sides to every question, I find myself thinking of Israel and Judah. Israel apostatized immediately and completely, embracing the worship of Baal and Moloch and never looking back. Judah apostatized slowly and had its good and bad spells. But the fact is, both apostatized and both eventually paid the piper. The Dems embraced the worship of Moloch 35 years ago and never looked back. The GOP has made a pretense of caring about human life, which kept me voting for them on the off chance they might ocassionally do something. And ocassionally, they have. But now they too have embraced intrinsic moral evil in the dangerous form of granting Caesar the power to torture anybody he likes. Happily, that power has not *yet* been exercised on a wide scale. But the permission is already there and it will take only one or two really big societal crises for the gene to express itself as so-called "conservatives" rally behind Leviathan when he promises to "keep us safe".
So I find that the chances are growing ever slimmer that I can support either party's candidate if they spout the increasingly common party lines in favor of one or both of these intrinsic evils. I'm a Catholic who thinks that when the Church declares something inexcusably evil, it must not be supported with excuses. In my more quixotic moments, I'm even a Catholic who hopes that the state will resume its traditional role of supporting the common good and not merely "not doing grave evil".
Because, at the end of the day, I don't believe that the state or the corporation or the party are what history is about. I believe that the center of Catholic social teaching is the good of the family. All my bleats of protest, whether at the favorite Dem sin of abortion, or the favorite GOP sin of torture, have in view my conviction that both of these evils constitute an enormous peril to the family because they empower something else--whether the individual, the state, or the corporation--to play the tyrant over the good of the family (in addition to being Just Plain Wrong). And I believe that the family matters ultimately because it is the primal human sign of the Blessed Trinity.
That's why I find myself forced to talk about political stuff like torture here: because it is inseparable from my faith as a Catholic. It's also why I find myself at sixes and sevens with any American (or indeed Western) political ideology. In the words of Treebeard, I am not on anybody's side because nobody is on my side. I try to be on the side of Catholic social teaching. But I am aware of no party that views the teaching of the Church as something other than a thing to be exploited when useful and castigated when it stands in the way of their pursuit of the One Ring.
For some reason, I still seem to mystify people in my views on the American political scene. I've had some folks in my comboxes take me for a Righty and others for a Lefty. Here's the key to the mystery: I'm a Catholic.
I think that politics is the art of the possible. I regard political parties as large clumsy mechanisms for trying to enact as much of Catholic social teaching as possible. The moment such parties stand in the way of some fundamental aspect of Catholic social teaching is the moment I drop them like a hot rock and look around for some other means of advancing the Church's teaching. I have absolutely no party loyalty whatsoever and never have. I also endeavor to have as little ideological loyalty as I can possibly manifest, because I regard ideology as almost intrinsically heretical: an aspect of the Church's teachings that is ripped off of the whole and then blown up to absurd proportions almost invariably tends to start to crowd out other aspects of the Church's teaching sooner or later. There can be a long grace period where there doesn't necessarily have to be war between the part and the whole. But when it comes, I am on the side of the whole Catholic teaching rather than on the heretical shred.
So, for instance, the Dems were, for a long time, much more amenable to enacting Catholic social teaching. It was the GOP that had fetes and soirees for Margaret Sanger and sided with the Big Guy against the Little Guy and so forth. Sixty years ago, I would have been a Labor Democrat. But when the Dem party cast itself in with fealty to the sacrament of abortion, they committed suicide in the worship of Moloch and have paid for it ever since. I will *never* support a candidate who favors intrinsic moral evil. The GOP saw the opportunity and became, at least in pretense, the party that opposed abortion and the taking of human life. They also, to a degree, became serious about the Little Guy (though, to their credit, the Dems still have those sympathies too--to a degree).
But the thing is: now *both* parties are increasingly the parties of Leviathan. Dems with their Nanny Statism and "Bush Conservatism" with it's insane combination of Greatness Conservatism (meaning Whack Imperialism combined with Constitution-shredding embraces of torture and militarism) and it Drunken Sailor approach to the national larder.
And living, as wel do, in the land where there are only two sides to every question, I find myself thinking of Israel and Judah. Israel apostatized immediately and completely, embracing the worship of Baal and Moloch and never looking back. Judah apostatized slowly and had its good and bad spells. But the fact is, both apostatized and both eventually paid the piper. The Dems embraced the worship of Moloch 35 years ago and never looked back. The GOP has made a pretense of caring about human life, which kept me voting for them on the off chance they might ocassionally do something. And ocassionally, they have. But now they too have embraced intrinsic moral evil in the dangerous form of granting Caesar the power to torture anybody he likes. Happily, that power has not *yet* been exercised on a wide scale. But the permission is already there and it will take only one or two really big societal crises for the gene to express itself as so-called "conservatives" rally behind Leviathan when he promises to "keep us safe".
So I find that the chances are growing ever slimmer that I can support either party's candidate if they spout the increasingly common party lines in favor of one or both of these intrinsic evils. I'm a Catholic who thinks that when the Church declares something inexcusably evil, it must not be supported with excuses. In my more quixotic moments, I'm even a Catholic who hopes that the state will resume its traditional role of supporting the common good and not merely "not doing grave evil".
Because, at the end of the day, I don't believe that the state or the corporation or the party are what history is about. I believe that the center of Catholic social teaching is the good of the family. All my bleats of protest, whether at the favorite Dem sin of abortion, or the favorite GOP sin of torture, have in view my conviction that both of these evils constitute an enormous peril to the family because they empower something else--whether the individual, the state, or the corporation--to play the tyrant over the good of the family (in addition to being Just Plain Wrong). And I believe that the family matters ultimately because it is the primal human sign of the Blessed Trinity.
That's why I find myself forced to talk about political stuff like torture here: because it is inseparable from my faith as a Catholic. It's also why I find myself at sixes and sevens with any American (or indeed Western) political ideology. In the words of Treebeard, I am not on anybody's side because nobody is on my side. I try to be on the side of Catholic social teaching. But I am aware of no party that views the teaching of the Church as something other than a thing to be exploited when useful and castigated when it stands in the way of their pursuit of the One Ring.
Obama: Save Horses, Kill Babies
It's this kind of clear-headed sense of priorities that has made the American Left the rousing success that it has become.
It's this kind of clear-headed sense of priorities that has made the American Left the rousing success that it has become.
How All Events Do Conspire Against Her
It's not Lady Macbeth's week. From South Carolina and her loss to the Anointed One, to Bill's latest weirdly subversive attempts to support her to the loss of (gulp!) Susan Sarandon's unwavering support! Something not firing on all cylinders when the campaign has to stop talking about Hillary and has to come out with statements like "I can rein in my husband." And meanwhile, Obama, that simple shepherd boy who has been exalted by the hand of the Almighty to a throne over all the Nations, rakes in milions and millions of simple shepherd dollars from simple shepherd zillionaires. Because, like all senators, he is a common man of the people and not some monied guy from inside the beltway beholden to fabulously wealthy interests. He's totally different. No. Really. This time you can trust a Washington pol.
And across the aisle, McCain is making heads explode all over talk radio with endorsements from Nancy Reagan and Ahnuld. Not that either of them are particularly my cup of tea. But everytime this happens, Rush Limbaugh roars something else incoherent about how the Reagan Coalition is not breaking up because, on the contrary, it is fracturing just as he predicted. And that's fun to watch.
Elsewhere, somebody in the Romney camp is apparently getting desperate because now we are dredging up the dirt on McCain (ooh! Big surprise! A guy who was tortured and had his arms broken by the Viet Cong once had some anger issues with Asians. Alert the media.) And Romney is complaining about dirty tricks from McCain too.
And finally, various stars who know nothing run around demonstrating that fact. My personal favorite: the mysterious support Rudy Giuliani had from Jon Voight. Who, I wonder, will be courting the Voight constituency now?
And so it goes....
It's not Lady Macbeth's week. From South Carolina and her loss to the Anointed One, to Bill's latest weirdly subversive attempts to support her to the loss of (gulp!) Susan Sarandon's unwavering support! Something not firing on all cylinders when the campaign has to stop talking about Hillary and has to come out with statements like "I can rein in my husband." And meanwhile, Obama, that simple shepherd boy who has been exalted by the hand of the Almighty to a throne over all the Nations, rakes in milions and millions of simple shepherd dollars from simple shepherd zillionaires. Because, like all senators, he is a common man of the people and not some monied guy from inside the beltway beholden to fabulously wealthy interests. He's totally different. No. Really. This time you can trust a Washington pol.
And across the aisle, McCain is making heads explode all over talk radio with endorsements from Nancy Reagan and Ahnuld. Not that either of them are particularly my cup of tea. But everytime this happens, Rush Limbaugh roars something else incoherent about how the Reagan Coalition is not breaking up because, on the contrary, it is fracturing just as he predicted. And that's fun to watch.
Elsewhere, somebody in the Romney camp is apparently getting desperate because now we are dredging up the dirt on McCain (ooh! Big surprise! A guy who was tortured and had his arms broken by the Viet Cong once had some anger issues with Asians. Alert the media.) And Romney is complaining about dirty tricks from McCain too.
And finally, various stars who know nothing run around demonstrating that fact. My personal favorite: the mysterious support Rudy Giuliani had from Jon Voight. Who, I wonder, will be courting the Voight constituency now?
And so it goes....
A reader writes:
Lord, hear our prayer.
If anyone can help my reader, please respond in the combox.
A friend of mine has just had her father admitted to hospice. Please pray for them and for her mother.
And, also, this friend is suffering from financial crisis as well. Does anyone know of any charities that might help with funeral expenses? (They are in California, if that's any help.)
Lord, hear our prayer.
If anyone can help my reader, please respond in the combox.
Gratitude and Praise
The gospel reading this morning ("To him who has, more will be given. To him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.") has always made a lot of sense to me. Any athlete understands it. Exercise and more muscle is given. Be a couch potato and even what you have will be taken away. And much the same is true in the spiritual life (which is our Lord's point). Virtue leads to more virtue. Indulgence brings fog and dissolution.
What hit me today is that this, and not some absurd divine vanity, is why our Lord calls us to "Praise the Lord" so much. God obviously doesn't need our praise. So why this command?
Because we need the exercise. Praising the perfections of an absolutely good and perfect God is, if you will, a great workout for the soul. The praises are real, not mere empty flatteries because God and his gifts are really good. And the praises build up in us real spiritual muscle because as you praise him, you go "further up and further in" and realize more and more the depths of the Divine Goodness, seeing even more how much you are part of the life of the Blessed Trinity in baptism.
Thanks be to God who gives us such divine workouts in his endless generosity, and who, in his grace makes even our utterly gratuitous thanks which he does not need part of his gift to the world and to us--a vital part of the kingdom and a real agent of change and grace in the world.
The gospel reading this morning ("To him who has, more will be given. To him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.") has always made a lot of sense to me. Any athlete understands it. Exercise and more muscle is given. Be a couch potato and even what you have will be taken away. And much the same is true in the spiritual life (which is our Lord's point). Virtue leads to more virtue. Indulgence brings fog and dissolution.
What hit me today is that this, and not some absurd divine vanity, is why our Lord calls us to "Praise the Lord" so much. God obviously doesn't need our praise. So why this command?
Because we need the exercise. Praising the perfections of an absolutely good and perfect God is, if you will, a great workout for the soul. The praises are real, not mere empty flatteries because God and his gifts are really good. And the praises build up in us real spiritual muscle because as you praise him, you go "further up and further in" and realize more and more the depths of the Divine Goodness, seeing even more how much you are part of the life of the Blessed Trinity in baptism.
Thanks be to God who gives us such divine workouts in his endless generosity, and who, in his grace makes even our utterly gratuitous thanks which he does not need part of his gift to the world and to us--a vital part of the kingdom and a real agent of change and grace in the world.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Rubbish
In which we examine the preposterous "assured results of modern thought" so popular among our Chattering Classes.
In which we examine the preposterous "assured results of modern thought" so popular among our Chattering Classes.
Compensating Cowards
In which we ponder why the MSM spends so much time congratulating itself on its courage in pounding on people who would not hurt a flea.
In which we ponder why the MSM spends so much time congratulating itself on its courage in pounding on people who would not hurt a flea.
Your questions, God's answers
For more Kreeftian insights, check out this.
QUESTION: Can demons possess cats?
PETER KREEFT: Cats need no demons; they are already completely evil.
-- Peter Kreeft, Angels (and Demons), p. 123
For more Kreeftian insights, check out this.
Stephen Bainbridge on McCain's Secular Messianic Worship of America
Bainbridge is quite right to take pause at such reckless and dangerous language. The difficult thing for me, of course, is that so *many* American politicians have always talked that way. It's in our political DNA. The problem is that some politicians seem to have it as a dominant, rather than a recessive, gene. Do I want to roll the dice on McCain. I'm not so sure. At present, I think about the *last* thing America needs is yet another Whitmanesque religious visionary in the White House who feels himself called on a prophetic mission to end tyranny everywhere on earth by the application of violence and a lot of money. I find that, from the standpoint of sheer *temperament* this appears to be no small part of Obama's attraction for many people. He seems to be a man who is inclined to giving things some thought. I think his premisses and conclusions are often catastrophically bad. But I like that there is something in him given to actual thought rather than mere sloganeering (which is about all Bush has with his endless empty cant about redemption through democracy) or calculation (the rigid habit of mind of Lady Macbeth). I keep wishing the guy could have a serious Catholic education worthy of the raw materials he seems to have come equipped with.
What a bleak year.
Bainbridge is quite right to take pause at such reckless and dangerous language. The difficult thing for me, of course, is that so *many* American politicians have always talked that way. It's in our political DNA. The problem is that some politicians seem to have it as a dominant, rather than a recessive, gene. Do I want to roll the dice on McCain. I'm not so sure. At present, I think about the *last* thing America needs is yet another Whitmanesque religious visionary in the White House who feels himself called on a prophetic mission to end tyranny everywhere on earth by the application of violence and a lot of money. I find that, from the standpoint of sheer *temperament* this appears to be no small part of Obama's attraction for many people. He seems to be a man who is inclined to giving things some thought. I think his premisses and conclusions are often catastrophically bad. But I like that there is something in him given to actual thought rather than mere sloganeering (which is about all Bush has with his endless empty cant about redemption through democracy) or calculation (the rigid habit of mind of Lady Macbeth). I keep wishing the guy could have a serious Catholic education worthy of the raw materials he seems to have come equipped with.
What a bleak year.
The Beloved Cow Sends This Along
Cow departs for the east coast and this year's work in Militia Immaculata Youth Camps. Sez he: "I'm living the dream."
Go, cat, go.
Cow departs for the east coast and this year's work in Militia Immaculata Youth Camps. Sez he: "I'm living the dream."
Go, cat, go.
Captain 9/11 Throws His Delegate to McCain
Champagne glass clink to Steve Dillard!
I will take the Catholics Against Rudy sign of the left rail. Mission Accomplished!
Oh, the Breck Girl is out too. I've been wrong before, but I think it's McCain. If the Dems are dumb enough to nominate Lady Macbeth, he's our next Prez. If they go for Obama and the media can keep up the messianic fervor, it could well be Obama next November.
Champagne glass clink to Steve Dillard!
I will take the Catholics Against Rudy sign of the left rail. Mission Accomplished!
Oh, the Breck Girl is out too. I've been wrong before, but I think it's McCain. If the Dems are dumb enough to nominate Lady Macbeth, he's our next Prez. If they go for Obama and the media can keep up the messianic fervor, it could well be Obama next November.
Catholic British MPs Trying to Do the Right Thing
Here's hoping they don't get punished by their countrymen for standing against cloning.
Here's hoping they don't get punished by their countrymen for standing against cloning.
The Crazy Right
It's weird watching the Right reap the whirlwind of the past six years. On the way home from the show this morning, I listened to Rush attempting to put a brave face on his defeat yesterday with the victory of McCain in Florida. It was pretty weird. He kept saying stuff like Reagan conservatism was not dead because everybody keeps claiming Reagan's mantle so things were great but of course McCain is not really a conservative and besides the MSM guys were wrong to say that the Reagan Coalition was breaking up because its not breaking up because as Rush predicted it was fractured.
I kept remembering that line from e.e. cummings: "He spoke, and drank rapidly a glass of water."
Meanwhile, in other symptoms of the vacuum and disarray at the heart of Movement Conservatism in the Age of Bush/Cheney, you get weird Nietzschean displays like this, with people simultaneously berating McCain for being insufficiently pro-life and for refusing to do the full Hitler in Iraq.
Now, I'm not especially sold on McCain as a pro-life guy. I need to read up on the guy. But the idea that an authentic prolifer should be committed to Peace through War Crimes is one of the more insane things that Millennial Conservatism has given the world. It is due directly to the sheeplike attempt by Christian conservatives to justify the actions of Their Man in the White House and is a marvelous example of the way in which Christians on the Right can make themselves Court Prophets of Caesar just as easily as Christians on the Left can. I'm profoundly in disagreement with McCain reputed view that we should be in Iraq for a century if need be. But the notion that the way to avoid that is by going apeshit and ignoring Just War teaching in order to achieve some illusory "quick victory" is counsel straight from hell. It is precisely McCain's resistance to this sort of Nietzschean lunacy on the part of the Saruman Conservatives that has given me what respect I have for him.
It's weird watching the Right reap the whirlwind of the past six years. On the way home from the show this morning, I listened to Rush attempting to put a brave face on his defeat yesterday with the victory of McCain in Florida. It was pretty weird. He kept saying stuff like Reagan conservatism was not dead because everybody keeps claiming Reagan's mantle so things were great but of course McCain is not really a conservative and besides the MSM guys were wrong to say that the Reagan Coalition was breaking up because its not breaking up because as Rush predicted it was fractured.
I kept remembering that line from e.e. cummings: "He spoke, and drank rapidly a glass of water."
Meanwhile, in other symptoms of the vacuum and disarray at the heart of Movement Conservatism in the Age of Bush/Cheney, you get weird Nietzschean displays like this, with people simultaneously berating McCain for being insufficiently pro-life and for refusing to do the full Hitler in Iraq.
Now, I'm not especially sold on McCain as a pro-life guy. I need to read up on the guy. But the idea that an authentic prolifer should be committed to Peace through War Crimes is one of the more insane things that Millennial Conservatism has given the world. It is due directly to the sheeplike attempt by Christian conservatives to justify the actions of Their Man in the White House and is a marvelous example of the way in which Christians on the Right can make themselves Court Prophets of Caesar just as easily as Christians on the Left can. I'm profoundly in disagreement with McCain reputed view that we should be in Iraq for a century if need be. But the notion that the way to avoid that is by going apeshit and ignoring Just War teaching in order to achieve some illusory "quick victory" is counsel straight from hell. It is precisely McCain's resistance to this sort of Nietzschean lunacy on the part of the Saruman Conservatives that has given me what respect I have for him.
I know, I know, it's supposed to be funny
Mostly what strikes me is the poverty of the joke and the curious out of touchness of the writers with actual prolife people:
For starters, I haven't seen the show, so it's *possible* the black lady is actually portrayed as a Catholic. However, I would bet money that she's merely shown as a generic Christian religious person from some vaguely pentecostal Hallelujah Bible Church background. However, because Catholics have all the best religious iconography and that cinematic, such Christians are often incongruous shown hauling out some uber-Catholic piece of Catholic bric-a-brac when, in fact, you would never see such a thing in a real Bible Church. Message: Christians are all alike, an amorphous mob of prolife busybodies.
Second, the portrayal of Jesus, not as the Logos of God, Reason speaking to human reason, but as an arbitrary moral cop issuing rules for the sake of rules. "No abortions!" The notion that there might be some *ground* for such a prohibition never enters the writer's head. Jesus is just barking a line from seventh grade catechism class that the scriptwriter half remembers. The very possibility that an actual rationale might exist for the Church's teaching is dismissed by the joke. The voice of conscience on the greatest issue of our time is reduced to a pesky guilt fly and then shooed away once the gag is over.
The saddest part: this is one of the rare moments in pop culture where something like the teaching of the Church is even permitted into the discussion.
Mostly what strikes me is the poverty of the joke and the curious out of touchness of the writers with actual prolife people:
For starters, I haven't seen the show, so it's *possible* the black lady is actually portrayed as a Catholic. However, I would bet money that she's merely shown as a generic Christian religious person from some vaguely pentecostal Hallelujah Bible Church background. However, because Catholics have all the best religious iconography and that cinematic, such Christians are often incongruous shown hauling out some uber-Catholic piece of Catholic bric-a-brac when, in fact, you would never see such a thing in a real Bible Church. Message: Christians are all alike, an amorphous mob of prolife busybodies.
Second, the portrayal of Jesus, not as the Logos of God, Reason speaking to human reason, but as an arbitrary moral cop issuing rules for the sake of rules. "No abortions!" The notion that there might be some *ground* for such a prohibition never enters the writer's head. Jesus is just barking a line from seventh grade catechism class that the scriptwriter half remembers. The very possibility that an actual rationale might exist for the Church's teaching is dismissed by the joke. The voice of conscience on the greatest issue of our time is reduced to a pesky guilt fly and then shooed away once the gag is over.
The saddest part: this is one of the rare moments in pop culture where something like the teaching of the Church is even permitted into the discussion.
Luke the Nordic Animating Giant writes:
Then, hoist on his own petard, he adds quickly:
Which naturally led me to reply:
Coach Z inspires
haikus that end with the word
Jeeearorarorb!
It seems that terrible gen ed is just an integral part of a good artistic education. Animation went great, but I had about seventeen moments of extreme wince in my English class this morning. See, we've been talking about essays for two whole weeks now, so it's time to move on to poetry. Enough of this brief attempt to think logically and use complete sentances. Lets move on to forced pretentiousness.
"Take the next five minutes to write a haiku," says Professor Griffin, who had to ask the class how to pronounce "iambic pentameter" twice today. Haiku, of course. Start with maximum pretentiousness and work from there. These were my in-class poems.
Five minute haiku
I'll bet money most of these
Will be terrible
This here haiku
is one syllable off
in every line
If you can't pronounce
"iambic pentameter"
Don't teach me English.
I didn't turn in that last one, but I was tempted. And, on a positive note,
I did enjoy the moment where he couldn't give us an example of a limerick
because he couldn't think of any that weren't dirty. I hopped in with an
Edward Gorey classic about murdering midgets and saved the day.
Poetically,
Luke the Bard
Then, hoist on his own petard, he adds quickly:
For a guy whining about people being dumb in relation to English, I need to learn to spell the word "sentence." I cairnt teeven leearn tuh saaay ya werd seentaaaance!
Coachfully,
Z
Which naturally led me to reply:
Coach Z inspires
haikus that end with the word
Jeeearorarorb!
Alice Von Hildebrand dilates on a fact noted by C.S. Lewis in The Magician's Nephew
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."
This evening at 5:30 PM....
I will be at St. Edwards Parish, Shelton, WA. Topic: 101 Reasons Not to Be Catholic. Contact: Fr. Ron Belisle. Phone: (360) 426-6134
I will be at St. Edwards Parish, Shelton, WA. Topic: 101 Reasons Not to Be Catholic. Contact: Fr. Ron Belisle. Phone: (360) 426-6134
Just got back
I've been co-hosting "Sound Insight" with my pal Tom Curran. He's a great guy and I'm going to be doing some "strategic partnering" with him in the future since our work is very congruent: we both are interested in spreading the Catholic faith as laymen. He's a fine teacher and a deeply devoted guy, both to our Lord and to his family (both natural and spiritual).
Look for further developments on that front soon.
I've been co-hosting "Sound Insight" with my pal Tom Curran. He's a great guy and I'm going to be doing some "strategic partnering" with him in the future since our work is very congruent: we both are interested in spreading the Catholic faith as laymen. He's a fine teacher and a deeply devoted guy, both to our Lord and to his family (both natural and spiritual).
Look for further developments on that front soon.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Bush's SOTU
Missed it for more important things (watching A Night at the Opera with my kids). It appears, however, that the President has shown himself even more resistant to reality than the Bourbons, who famously remembered everything and learned nothing. Judging from the rhetoric here, he appears to not even remember everything. He learned the secular messianic script about the miraculous redemptive power of democracy and he's stickin' to it against all the vicissitudes of experience.
Missed it for more important things (watching A Night at the Opera with my kids). It appears, however, that the President has shown himself even more resistant to reality than the Bourbons, who famously remembered everything and learned nothing. Judging from the rhetoric here, he appears to not even remember everything. He learned the secular messianic script about the miraculous redemptive power of democracy and he's stickin' to it against all the vicissitudes of experience.
I'm impressed!
The Catholic Blog Awards have a cool-looking press release and everything now!
I s'pose this is as good a time as any to say, "If I am nominated I will not run. If elected, I will not serve." I'm happy with my little collection of previous Catholic blog award thingies over on the left rail. Please nominate other folks and vote for them. There's lots of new stuff happening out there so give those folks a boost.
The Catholic Blog Awards have a cool-looking press release and everything now!
Nominations for the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards Begin
1/28/2008 - 8:21 PM PST
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA ADVISORY
Catholic PRWire
ABBEVILLE, LA (JANUARY 24, 2008) - cyberCatholics.com is proud to announce that nominations for the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards will soon begin.
Nominations for the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards will open this year at 12:00 Noon CST on Friday, February 15, 2008 and close at 12:00 Noon CST on Friday, February 29, 2008.
Catholics can go here to nominate their favorite blogs in a wide variety of categories.
The Catholic Blog Awards was founded by Joshua LeBlanc and has been sponsored by cyberCatholics.com since its inception in 2004. The mission of the Catholic Blog Awards is to expose the blogosphere to many of the Catholic blogs that otherwise might not find their way into pop Catholic culture. By allowing individuals to vote for the blogs they believe to be the best, recognition is given to the work that bloggers do in giving Glory to God.
I s'pose this is as good a time as any to say, "If I am nominated I will not run. If elected, I will not serve." I'm happy with my little collection of previous Catholic blog award thingies over on the left rail. Please nominate other folks and vote for them. There's lots of new stuff happening out there so give those folks a boost.
SCIENCE!
Just a little reminder that Seven Basic Elements of Contemporary Science are Time, Space, Matter, Energy, Power, Prestige, and Funding. Turns out science is done by members of the species homo sapiens, a race notorious for its inability to stick to the facts.
Just a little reminder that Seven Basic Elements of Contemporary Science are Time, Space, Matter, Energy, Power, Prestige, and Funding. Turns out science is done by members of the species homo sapiens, a race notorious for its inability to stick to the facts.
Interesting Discussion of Liberal Fascism Over at What's Wrong with the World
Maximos notes (about the book) the curious thing I noted about the TV performance:
Like me, Maximos appears empathetic with the basic point that there is, in modern liberalism, a lot of love for fascist ideas and techniques. So, like me, he tends to get frustrated Goldberg's light and cavilier way of arguing his point. It's not that he doesn't want the job done. It's that he wants it done right and doesn't think Goldberg is equal to the task because he's just as postmodern as the people he opposes. It's just that his tribal affiliation is Movement Conservative rather than liberal.
What strikes me, again, is the weird disproportion between the criticism and reaction. Maximos, like me, makes the mild observation that Goldberg seems unserious (he elaborates on this more than I did: I was simply struck by his how his dragging a taste for organic food into a discussion of fascism tends to suggest that Goldberg's approach is not what you'd call rigorous.) For his trouble, he is arraigned with "hating" Goldberg and must laboriously write a confession explaining that this mild critique does not, in fact, imply hatred but merely disagreement. The bad thing is that he must write such a confession, since the whole dynamic tends to confirm most of Bramwell's discussion about Movement Conservatism. The good thing is that almost every word Maximos writes in his apologia pro vita sua stands for what I think too, so I don't have to write it.
Maximos notes (about the book) the curious thing I noted about the TV performance:
He'll intimate that something is hinky, aver that he's not really saying that anything is hinky, and leave the reader with the nonrational sense that that something is just off. A shrewd rhetorical performance, to be certain, though not a style commensurate with the gravity of the subject matter.
Like me, Maximos appears empathetic with the basic point that there is, in modern liberalism, a lot of love for fascist ideas and techniques. So, like me, he tends to get frustrated Goldberg's light and cavilier way of arguing his point. It's not that he doesn't want the job done. It's that he wants it done right and doesn't think Goldberg is equal to the task because he's just as postmodern as the people he opposes. It's just that his tribal affiliation is Movement Conservative rather than liberal.
This is not a discourse of truth and falsity, but of appearances, associations, imagery - the irrational. It is, of course, the irrational pressed into service of Goldberg's construction of mainstream conservatism, as though he were drawing a medieval map, with Ye Hallowed Land of Conservatism in the center, and the territory beyond distinguished by the caption, "Here be Fascists and other Strange Folks." Stated differently, it the sort of discourse in which one engages when one has presupposed the rightness of one's answers, not deigning to argue for them directly, but only indirectly, by means of the opprobrium one casts at different answers. It is a discourse that rejects authority, properly conceived, for if there is to be authority, things must have natures, and the 'science of truth', as it were, is the recognition and explication of these.
What strikes me, again, is the weird disproportion between the criticism and reaction. Maximos, like me, makes the mild observation that Goldberg seems unserious (he elaborates on this more than I did: I was simply struck by his how his dragging a taste for organic food into a discussion of fascism tends to suggest that Goldberg's approach is not what you'd call rigorous.) For his trouble, he is arraigned with "hating" Goldberg and must laboriously write a confession explaining that this mild critique does not, in fact, imply hatred but merely disagreement. The bad thing is that he must write such a confession, since the whole dynamic tends to confirm most of Bramwell's discussion about Movement Conservatism. The good thing is that almost every word Maximos writes in his apologia pro vita sua stands for what I think too, so I don't have to write it.
A reader writes:
I think you mean this and this.
Thanks for your kind words about my work!
I am looking for an article you wrote which is, I think, the best description I have ever read explaining how Catholics are more feminine and Evangelicals more masculine. Where is that article? I read Catholic Exchange and read it there once, printed it out for others to read and want to pass it out to some others, but I can't find it anywhere.
Is that also the same article that explains how we misunderstand each other because we are speaking a different language?
Thanks in advance for all your help. By the way, I look forward to reading each and every article you write on Catholic Exchange.
I think you mean this and this.
Thanks for your kind words about my work!
John McCain and Mitt Romney (pictured below)
...accuse each other of being too liberal.
Meanwhile, in perhaps the funniest sentence written with a straight face that I have read so far this year:
There's more, but just savor that. Bill Clinton. Soiling his legacy. The Left reduced to appealing to Bill Clinton's *honor*.
It will be huh-larious if, after all these years of life in exile due to his selling his soul for the Clinton "legacy", Gore endorses Obama. As a lover of David v. Goliath narratives, I find that irresistible, because I so want the Clintons to finally be exiled from public life and go back to Horndogville where they belong. But as an American, I'd rather have Hillary win the primaries, because she's such a a repellent character I think she'll lose the national elections. At present, I'm leaning toward McCain, not because I particularly want him, but because he appears to be the only person who actually has a shot at the White House who does not advocate some intrinsic moral evil. Not much caring, I can live with. Most GOP candidates don't much care about life issues. But so long as he is not actively driving to make such evils policy I can hold my nose and vote--perhaps. My main difficulty is that I haven't made up my mind about his views on the war and whether I can support that any more.
I was talking to a friend and we were both commiserating. We don't even like McCain much. But once you pare down the field and get rid of all the people who advocate Security Through Evil and Sticking Scissors in Babies Brains, that's about all that's left. What a bleak year politically.
...accuse each other of being too liberal.
Meanwhile, in perhaps the funniest sentence written with a straight face that I have read so far this year:
Washington’s liberal establishment — members of Congress, fundraisers and commentators — has coalesced around the view that Bill Clinton is soiling his legacy...
There's more, but just savor that. Bill Clinton. Soiling his legacy. The Left reduced to appealing to Bill Clinton's *honor*.
It will be huh-larious if, after all these years of life in exile due to his selling his soul for the Clinton "legacy", Gore endorses Obama. As a lover of David v. Goliath narratives, I find that irresistible, because I so want the Clintons to finally be exiled from public life and go back to Horndogville where they belong. But as an American, I'd rather have Hillary win the primaries, because she's such a a repellent character I think she'll lose the national elections. At present, I'm leaning toward McCain, not because I particularly want him, but because he appears to be the only person who actually has a shot at the White House who does not advocate some intrinsic moral evil. Not much caring, I can live with. Most GOP candidates don't much care about life issues. But so long as he is not actively driving to make such evils policy I can hold my nose and vote--perhaps. My main difficulty is that I haven't made up my mind about his views on the war and whether I can support that any more.
I was talking to a friend and we were both commiserating. We don't even like McCain much. But once you pare down the field and get rid of all the people who advocate Security Through Evil and Sticking Scissors in Babies Brains, that's about all that's left. What a bleak year politically.
Moral: John Geoghan Could Have Spared Himself a Lot of Trouble by Quarterbacking for the Huskies
If only UW jocks didn't have to be celibate, none of this would have happened.
If only UW jocks didn't have to be celibate, none of this would have happened.
Pondering Eschatology
The Internet Monk has some interesting Cloverfield-inspired musings about his own attempts to figure out Christians eschatology. He has some of the normal jitters that many of us Christians do in the "What if events turn out to falsify Christ's prophecies" department. So he's puzzling about what happens if something just flat wipes out the human race (alien invasion, plague, asteroid collision). Then what?
Of course, he comes to the question with all the Hal Lindseyesque baggage that many and Evangelical and post-Evangelical has, even if they've said Goodbye to All That. If you've been raised with it, it's a lot of vivid mental furniture that you can't easily leave behind.
That's what interests me, because I was *not* raised with it and when I became a Christian I happened to fall in with believers who completely rejected (and taught me to reject) not just the various Rapture/End Time scenarios that happen to be floating about in our culture, but the very idea of the Second Coming itself as any orthodox Christian normally held. It was "Christian science fiction" I was told. And the reason for this was that there was no need for Christ to return in a body, glorified or not, because "he was done using his body" when he Ascended. The goal of the Christian life was to escape the body and become pure Spirit (didn't Scripture say "*****Now***** the Lord is the Spirit"? So there you are! Therefore the *true* Second Coming had already happened--at Pentecost--when the Lord who is now the Spirit returned. Our job as Christians was to go out and see to it that the glory of the Lord covered the earth as the waters cover the seas until the day we died and also were taken up into the Spirit realm.
Hey! What did I know? I wasn't raised Christian at all, so it seemed plausible to me. But, of course, as time went on I began to realize that this view was a distinct minority view even among Protestants. But it did have one big advantage: it provided a booster shot against the already-incredible-to-me End Times scenarios of Left Behind types. Unfortunately, it also made me a heretic.
So the net result was this: unlike many a Catholic convert from American Protestantism, I did not have to take a weed whacker to the fetid jungle of overgrown End Times mythologies and speculations involving bar codes, the EU, Israel, Red Heifers, Saddam Hussein, Harry Potter, the music of the Beatles, and whatever other current events were being fit into the jigsaw puzzle of ever-changing yet strangely consistent End Times paranoia.
Instead, I had to embrace for the first time, on the authority of Holy Church, the proposition "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end." I had to sign off on teaching like this:
Now, the nice thing about beginning with no belief in the Second Coming and then coming to embrace it is that one's mental attic is clear of a lot of rubbish. I don't need to figure out how events in Iran, advances in microchipping, the birth of a Red Heifer in Israel, and the popularity of Rap Music are going to result in the worldwide reign of Antichrist because I don't have any particular conviction that they will. I have an allergy to all such stuff and the Church, happily, has provided me with no detail end time scenario I must accept in order to be faithful to the revelation.
On the other hand, the Church's teaching does seem to me to constitute a Rock of Offense to our vaguely evolutionary notions that Every Day in Every Way We Will Go on Getting Better and Better and, most especially difficult for me, that the immensely huge and ancient cosmos will be brought to a definitive End in some way that is tied to events on this puny grain of sand.
That is, of course, a difficulty to my imagination and aesthetic sense, not to my reason. I can, reasonably, see that when God becomes man, it is not beyond his power to order cosmic events providentially to track with event here on earth. I can even, with my reason, grant that there is no particular reason why an omnipotent God could not suddenly transfigure the entie cosmos before I type the period at the end of this sentence. With an omnipotent God, anything can happen.
But my imagination cavils anyway. So I mostly leave the "He will come again in glory..." to unfold however God wants to make it unfold and I have no theories at all about how that will happen.
I *am* struck by how much Christian eschatology makes sense on a human scale. I don't know God's plans for the Andromeda galaxy, but I do note that paragraphs 675-677 sure seem to be a prescient analysis of how human affairs have been tending since the moment human beings figured out how to concentrate power in the hands of the powerful. That's one of the reasons I bleat so loudly (and, if revelation is to be trusted, futilely) against the strange suicidal impulse of fallen man to seize for himself the power to play the tyrant while telling himself that he is merely trying to "stay safe" or glorious trying to build the New Jerusalem.
Anyhow, eschatology is properly mysterious when it comes to the details. But I deny that it is mysterious (in the modern sense) when it comes to the Big Picture: Christ will return and all will be well, and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well. One can have the grand metaphysical doubt about whether that is true or not (I sure do from time to time). But when I note how Christ seems to have gotten everything else right so far, that does allay my fears when I read the morning headlines.
The Internet Monk has some interesting Cloverfield-inspired musings about his own attempts to figure out Christians eschatology. He has some of the normal jitters that many of us Christians do in the "What if events turn out to falsify Christ's prophecies" department. So he's puzzling about what happens if something just flat wipes out the human race (alien invasion, plague, asteroid collision). Then what?
Of course, he comes to the question with all the Hal Lindseyesque baggage that many and Evangelical and post-Evangelical has, even if they've said Goodbye to All That. If you've been raised with it, it's a lot of vivid mental furniture that you can't easily leave behind.
That's what interests me, because I was *not* raised with it and when I became a Christian I happened to fall in with believers who completely rejected (and taught me to reject) not just the various Rapture/End Time scenarios that happen to be floating about in our culture, but the very idea of the Second Coming itself as any orthodox Christian normally held. It was "Christian science fiction" I was told. And the reason for this was that there was no need for Christ to return in a body, glorified or not, because "he was done using his body" when he Ascended. The goal of the Christian life was to escape the body and become pure Spirit (didn't Scripture say "*****Now***** the Lord is the Spirit"? So there you are! Therefore the *true* Second Coming had already happened--at Pentecost--when the Lord who is now the Spirit returned. Our job as Christians was to go out and see to it that the glory of the Lord covered the earth as the waters cover the seas until the day we died and also were taken up into the Spirit realm.
Hey! What did I know? I wasn't raised Christian at all, so it seemed plausible to me. But, of course, as time went on I began to realize that this view was a distinct minority view even among Protestants. But it did have one big advantage: it provided a booster shot against the already-incredible-to-me End Times scenarios of Left Behind types. Unfortunately, it also made me a heretic.
So the net result was this: unlike many a Catholic convert from American Protestantism, I did not have to take a weed whacker to the fetid jungle of overgrown End Times mythologies and speculations involving bar codes, the EU, Israel, Red Heifers, Saddam Hussein, Harry Potter, the music of the Beatles, and whatever other current events were being fit into the jigsaw puzzle of ever-changing yet strangely consistent End Times paranoia.
Instead, I had to embrace for the first time, on the authority of Holy Church, the proposition "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end." I had to sign off on teaching like this:
671 Though already present in his Church, Christ's reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled "with power and great glory" by the King's return to earth. This reign is still under attack by the evil powers, even though they have been defeated definitively by Christ's Passover. Until everything is subject to him, "until there be realized new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church, in her sacraments and institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass, and she herself takes her place among the creatures which groan and travail yet and await the revelation of the sons of God."That is why Christians pray, above all in the Eucharist, to hasten Christ's return by saying to him: Marana tha! "Our Lord, come!"
672 Before his Ascension Christ affirmed that the hour had not yet come for the glorious establishment of the messianic kingdom awaited by Israel which, according to the prophets, was to bring all men the definitive order of justice, love and peace. According to the Lord, the present time is the time of the Spirit and of witness, but also a time still marked by "distress" and the trial of evil which does not spare the Church and ushers in the struggles of the last days. It is a time of waiting and watching.
The glorious advent of Christ, the hope of Israel
673 Since the Ascension Christ's coming in glory has been imminent, even though "it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.". This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if both it and the final trial that will precede it are "delayed".
674 The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by "all Israel", for "a hardening has come upon part of Israel" in their "unbelief" toward Jesus. St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old." St. Paul echoes him: "For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?" The "full inclusion" of the Jews in the Messiah's salvation, in the wake of "the full number of the Gentiles", will enable the People of God to achieve "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ", in which "God may be all in all".
The Church's ultimate trial
675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
676 The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.
677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.
* II. TO JUDGE THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
678 Following in the steps of the prophets and John the Baptist, Jesus announced the judgment of the Last Day in his preaching. Then will the conduct of each one and the secrets of hearts be brought to light. Then will the culpable unbelief that counted the offer of God's grace as nothing be condemned. Our attitude to our neighbor will disclose acceptance or refusal of grace and divine love. On the Last Day Jesus will say: "Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."
679 Christ is Lord of eternal life. Full right to pass definitive judgment on the works and hearts of men belongs to him as redeemer of the world. He "acquired" this right by his cross. The Father has given "all judgment to the Son". Yet the Son did not come to judge, but to save and to give the life he has in himself. By rejecting grace in this life, one already judges oneself, receives according to one's works, and can even condemn oneself for all eternity by rejecting the Spirit of love.
IN BRIEF
680 Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church, but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to him. The triumph of Christ's kingdom will not come about without one last assault by the powers of evil.
681 On Judgment Day at the end of the world, Christ will come in glory to achieve the definitive triumph of good over evil which, like the wheat and the tares, have grown up together in the course of history.
682 When he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works, and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace.
Now, the nice thing about beginning with no belief in the Second Coming and then coming to embrace it is that one's mental attic is clear of a lot of rubbish. I don't need to figure out how events in Iran, advances in microchipping, the birth of a Red Heifer in Israel, and the popularity of Rap Music are going to result in the worldwide reign of Antichrist because I don't have any particular conviction that they will. I have an allergy to all such stuff and the Church, happily, has provided me with no detail end time scenario I must accept in order to be faithful to the revelation.
On the other hand, the Church's teaching does seem to me to constitute a Rock of Offense to our vaguely evolutionary notions that Every Day in Every Way We Will Go on Getting Better and Better and, most especially difficult for me, that the immensely huge and ancient cosmos will be brought to a definitive End in some way that is tied to events on this puny grain of sand.
That is, of course, a difficulty to my imagination and aesthetic sense, not to my reason. I can, reasonably, see that when God becomes man, it is not beyond his power to order cosmic events providentially to track with event here on earth. I can even, with my reason, grant that there is no particular reason why an omnipotent God could not suddenly transfigure the entie cosmos before I type the period at the end of this sentence. With an omnipotent God, anything can happen.
But my imagination cavils anyway. So I mostly leave the "He will come again in glory..." to unfold however God wants to make it unfold and I have no theories at all about how that will happen.
I *am* struck by how much Christian eschatology makes sense on a human scale. I don't know God's plans for the Andromeda galaxy, but I do note that paragraphs 675-677 sure seem to be a prescient analysis of how human affairs have been tending since the moment human beings figured out how to concentrate power in the hands of the powerful. That's one of the reasons I bleat so loudly (and, if revelation is to be trusted, futilely) against the strange suicidal impulse of fallen man to seize for himself the power to play the tyrant while telling himself that he is merely trying to "stay safe" or glorious trying to build the New Jerusalem.
Anyhow, eschatology is properly mysterious when it comes to the details. But I deny that it is mysterious (in the modern sense) when it comes to the Big Picture: Christ will return and all will be well, and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well. One can have the grand metaphysical doubt about whether that is true or not (I sure do from time to time). But when I note how Christ seems to have gotten everything else right so far, that does allay my fears when I read the morning headlines.
Monday, January 28, 2008
A Good Time Shall be Had By All!
Dear Friends of the G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle,
The Society's board of directors cordially invites you to the fourth lecture of our 2007-2008 season. A special welcome is in order for the return of our great friend Dale Ahlquist, president of the ACS, on the occasion of this centenary of the publication of Chesterton's most famous apologetical work:
"Paradoxy: One Hundred Years of Chesterton's Orthodoxy"
Mr. Dale Ahlquist
President of the American Chesterton Society
Tuesday, February 5, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
To deny human sin is to close one's eyes to reality; to refuse to accept the finitude of human reason is to go mad. "Man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand," wrote Chesterton. Paradox is one of Chesterton's most important themes and the key to his classic Orthodoxy, published a century ago in 1908 and never out of print since that time. Dale Ahlquist returns to Seattle to explore with us the contemporary implications of Chesterton's great work, perhaps the most famous extended apologetic for Christianity and one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century.
President of the American Chesterton Society, Mr. Ahlquist is also author of G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense (Ignatius Press), and host of a continuing television series of the same name.
The lecture will take place on the campus of Seattle Pacific University, 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
Hey! Steve Dillard and All You Catholics Against Rudy!
Start polishing the champagne glasses! Mission nearly accomplished!
Start polishing the champagne glasses! Mission nearly accomplished!
Somebody Tries to Psychoanalyze Lady Macbeth
I agree, of course, that this power-hungry schemer is a danger to the Republic. The thing is, I keep being struck, as I read the piece, at how much of what the author fears in Hillary is, well, stuff that we've seen in *this* Administration. A character with Daddy Issues who "enact[s] legislation so far reaching and ideologically polarizing as to be a rare turning point in American history." A ruthless Executive who considers himself beyond the rule of law? And what's with the sudden denunciation of Machiavelli? Here, I was told that True Conservatism[TM] embraced Machiavelli as a hard-headed realist. Apparently, that's only true when conservatives do it--to keep you safe, of course. When Clintons do it (for the children, of course), it's back to being amoral political expediency that should frighten us all.
It's a good thing we Americans don't believe in dynastic rule or anything. Otherwise, we might be looking at 24 years of life under two political family dynasties. But that will never happen.
I agree, of course, that this power-hungry schemer is a danger to the Republic. The thing is, I keep being struck, as I read the piece, at how much of what the author fears in Hillary is, well, stuff that we've seen in *this* Administration. A character with Daddy Issues who "enact[s] legislation so far reaching and ideologically polarizing as to be a rare turning point in American history." A ruthless Executive who considers himself beyond the rule of law? And what's with the sudden denunciation of Machiavelli? Here, I was told that True Conservatism[TM] embraced Machiavelli as a hard-headed realist. Apparently, that's only true when conservatives do it--to keep you safe, of course. When Clintons do it (for the children, of course), it's back to being amoral political expediency that should frighten us all.
It's a good thing we Americans don't believe in dynastic rule or anything. Otherwise, we might be looking at 24 years of life under two political family dynasties. But that will never happen.
A reader writes:
This is an understandable confusion. However, I am not making fun of our Lord. I am making fun of the starry-eyed press coverage which really has come close to speaking of Obama in messianic terms.
From imagery:
to word, the press has been ga-ga about the man for months. I am making fun, not of our Lord, but of the bizarre secular messianic halo that surrounds Obama. I think secular messianism *should* be mocked since "the devil, the prowde spirit" who is behind the secular messianic temptation cannot endure it. I would never mock our Lord.
I enjoy vitriol and derision as much as the next fellow, but I am concerned that referring to the candidate Obama as "the Son of God" treads awfully close to taking the Lord's name in vain, however transparently sardonic your writing may be. I am especially concerned about the potential to cause scandal, considering how a blog is apt to attract the particular attention of people who disagree with its writer on just about any subject. It would seem better not to give genuinely irreverent folk an example of mis-application to follow, all the more so given your very sensible writings on Church teaching here and in other places.
This is an understandable confusion. However, I am not making fun of our Lord. I am making fun of the starry-eyed press coverage which really has come close to speaking of Obama in messianic terms.
From imagery:
to word, the press has been ga-ga about the man for months. I am making fun, not of our Lord, but of the bizarre secular messianic halo that surrounds Obama. I think secular messianism *should* be mocked since "the devil, the prowde spirit" who is behind the secular messianic temptation cannot endure it. I would never mock our Lord.
When I wrote:
This was, in part, the sort of thing I had in mind.
If this path is followed by fallen man (and we have loads of historical precedent for betting it will be), the principal option the Giant of Western Civilization has in order to avoid Death by Beirutification is to stop being Goliath and start being Leviathan: a process we in the West give ominous signs of having already begun. That process will also involve heavy investment in technology, as well as the sacrifice of rights for safety. We seem to be very ready to make those sacrifices. And if we do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?
This was, in part, the sort of thing I had in mind.
Now *This* is Liberal Fascism
Dawn Eden continues to chronicle the pro-abort brownshirts and their ongoing campaign to smash free speech in Canada and San Francisco.
It's *because* the threat is real that I think it dumb to cry wolf over dumb stuff like organic food.
Indeed, the the threat is very real as the Left, having rejected human life in the name of "freedom" now follows it's own peculiar interior logic and begins to reject freedom as it casts off all pretenses an shows that the goal, all along, has been the pursuit of power for power's sake. Exhibit A: all of a sudden, "freespeecher" has become a contemptuous epithet. It's a word, like "prolifer" that is suddenly being said with a certain tone of voice, a particular curl of the lip. If words could be touched, Lefties would hold "freespeecher" at arm's length between thumb and index finger--like soiled underwear.
It's kind of a living laboratory demonstration of what Lewis is talking about in The Abolition of Man. As the intellect becomes more corrupt, you eventually reach the place where you give up making sophistical appeals to reason at all. Once you've given up belief that there *is* any such thing as an "I ought" that has transcendent authority, "I want" still remains because it never made any claims to transcendence. And so it just becomes a naked struggle for power. Oh sure, appeals to "freedom of speech" were all well and good when enough people were snookered by pro-choice BS. But when free speech is exercised by prolifers or non-Lefties successfully, it must be stamped out and sneered at. Because, really, it's all about power.
The recourse to naked power to shut up the Truth is, in its little way, a replay of the Crucifixion, which was the ultimate attempt to just pack the truth off to a grave in the name of naked selfish power. The results, in the end, will be the same: resurrection. It's the pattern of the whole Universe because it's the Pattern of the Maker of the Universe.
Dawn Eden continues to chronicle the pro-abort brownshirts and their ongoing campaign to smash free speech in Canada and San Francisco.
It's *because* the threat is real that I think it dumb to cry wolf over dumb stuff like organic food.
Indeed, the the threat is very real as the Left, having rejected human life in the name of "freedom" now follows it's own peculiar interior logic and begins to reject freedom as it casts off all pretenses an shows that the goal, all along, has been the pursuit of power for power's sake. Exhibit A: all of a sudden, "freespeecher" has become a contemptuous epithet. It's a word, like "prolifer" that is suddenly being said with a certain tone of voice, a particular curl of the lip. If words could be touched, Lefties would hold "freespeecher" at arm's length between thumb and index finger--like soiled underwear.
It's kind of a living laboratory demonstration of what Lewis is talking about in The Abolition of Man. As the intellect becomes more corrupt, you eventually reach the place where you give up making sophistical appeals to reason at all. Once you've given up belief that there *is* any such thing as an "I ought" that has transcendent authority, "I want" still remains because it never made any claims to transcendence. And so it just becomes a naked struggle for power. Oh sure, appeals to "freedom of speech" were all well and good when enough people were snookered by pro-choice BS. But when free speech is exercised by prolifers or non-Lefties successfully, it must be stamped out and sneered at. Because, really, it's all about power.
The recourse to naked power to shut up the Truth is, in its little way, a replay of the Crucifixion, which was the ultimate attempt to just pack the truth off to a grave in the name of naked selfish power. The results, in the end, will be the same: resurrection. It's the pattern of the whole Universe because it's the Pattern of the Maker of the Universe.
Bedwetting Sissies Who Don't Understand That You Have the Right to Do Anything in War Oppose Administration Policies on Torture
If you value American honor, you can go here and sign up to be a bedwetting sissy like me. It's a letter supporting legislation to demand that the CIA abide by the Army Field Manual in interrogating prisoners. The legislation is, natch, opposed by the Party of the Rubber Hose Right, which has fought tooth and nail to keep torture safe and legal.
If you value American honor, you can go here and sign up to be a bedwetting sissy like me. It's a letter supporting legislation to demand that the CIA abide by the Army Field Manual in interrogating prisoners. The legislation is, natch, opposed by the Party of the Rubber Hose Right, which has fought tooth and nail to keep torture safe and legal.
Fr. Bob Carr writes:
Some time ago I was driving through New York. I had worked to get some video of the Shrine of The Jesuit Martyrs in Auriesville New York for Canção Nova (New Song) TV in Brazil. I spent the night nearby and was now on my way back.
I passed a group of people who were protesting the abortion clinic. (They prefer the term witnessing). Brazil is in the process of deciding whether to legalize abortion and obviously Canção Nova has a campaign against making abortion legal.
I thought spontaneously to interview the "witnesses" and send the video to CN so they could have an input from the US on what affect abortion had on the country thirty+ years later. I sent the footage to CN.
CN did an English and a Portuguese version of my footage. The English version can be found here:
This was recorded outside the brand new abortion clinic in Schenectady, NY which you cite was blessed by non-Catholic Christian Clergy.
Thought you might be interested in this clash of Christian faiths over the one abortion clinic.
Prayer Requests
Jen Stewart writes:
And another reader writes:
Lord, hear our prayer!
Jen Stewart writes:
To those of you who have been keeping my dad in your prayers:
Against the expectations of the doctor, my dad is continuing to get good results from chemo - his cancer markers have been dropping and he's been gaining strength. He's not going to run a marathon anytime soon -- but he's been doing his radio work (he does voiceover and editing work for a Christian radio station locally, in VA) for a few hours a day, and he's not spending as much time sleeping. This is a big improvement over a few weeks ago, when he was sleeping most of the day and needed one or more of us to help him get from point A to point B anywhere in the house. The doctor has also loosened the restrictions on what he can eat -- he's no longer limited to liquids or pureed food, and his appetite has been steadily improving.
He's done 2 rounds of chemo, and starts the next round week after next. He's done well enough with the last 2 rounds, and has improved enough that I feel okay about going back home to Boston -- I'll be heading back the middle of next week, working from home for the remainder of week (it'll take me that long just to dig myself out of 6 weeks of mail, dust bunnies, and restocking my fridge..haha), and then starting back at the office on February 4.
Thank you EVERYONE for keeping my family in your prayers - my parents also send their thanks. They were very, very touched that so many people were lifting them up in prayer.
And another reader writes:
We're in need of some miracles here.
Please pray for our daughter Sarah, who turned 18 this week, has multiple health problems (allergic reactions since age 3, asthma since age 12, and memory loss---both amnesia from a bike accident at age 8, and the more problematic short-term memory loss of indeterminate origin---the neurologist thinks it's from her allergic response to viruses and is the result of a chemical malfunction in her brain---he also says it will get worse and there is no treatment or way to stall the process). Despite all of this she has good grades in school and is a filmmaker and photographer and is hoping to go to the state university next year to study film.
Since Christmas she has had a major memory drop, headaches and dizziness. When I say "major", she has lost almost all memories of her first three years of high school; she knows people and generally remembers who they are, but not what they are like, and her memories with them are gone or going. We are headed back to the neurologist on the 31st.
We have come very close to losing this child on many occasions, due to anaphylaxis and to one bad asthma episode in particular. We've known for a long time that we could lose her very quickly, but the idea that she may become increasingly and rapidly disabled is more than I can wrap my mind around.
DD is supernaturally cheerful through all of this and continually tells me that I have nothing to worry about. One of the deacons at our parish has known her since she was a baby and says that she is particularly blessed.
At the same time we are dealing with her 19-yr-old brother who has just flunked out of college, hasn't held a job since last July, and moved back home. This young man believes in nothing as far as anyone can tell and is just a lost soul. I think he needs a miracle of grace and conversion much more than his sister needs one of healing.
Anyway, please pray.
Thank you so much.
Lord, hear our prayer!
You're All Going to Die Without Me! Die, I tell you!
Rudy continues on message even when he's talking about something else.
Rudy continues on message even when he's talking about something else.
The Weight of Glory is Chronicling the Strange Battle between Scientology and a Bunch of Internet Vigilantes
It will be interesting to see what happens on February 10.
It will be interesting to see what happens on February 10.
A classic example of the Two Phases of History
1. What could it hurt? 2. How were we supposed to know?
Meanwhile, scientists eager for big bucks inaugurate new "What Could It Hurt?"
Campaign to beat down Catholic Church.
Everything's under control. The Church just hates Progress. What could possibly go wrong?
1. What could it hurt? 2. How were we supposed to know?
Meanwhile, scientists eager for big bucks inaugurate new "What Could It Hurt?"
Campaign to beat down Catholic Church.
Everything's under control. The Church just hates Progress. What could possibly go wrong?
I wonder why the bishops think this need to be done
Grants for Education on Torture
The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), an organization with which the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) works closely, is offering grants of up to $5,000 for nonprofit organizations to undertake programs to educate their constituents and the broader community on the need to abolish torture. Programs can include having seminars, organizing action campaigns on campuses, or gathering social justice leaders to launch a media campaign to raise awareness.
These are one time, short-term grants for projects that must be completed by the end of 2008. Applications are due by February 8, 2008. If you're interested in a possible NRCAT Grant, you can download information and the application cover sheet at www.nrcat.org/storage/nrcat/documents/pdf_rfp.pdf or contact John Humphries, NRCAT Director for Program Coordination, jhumphries@nrcat.org, tel: 860-216-7972.
For information on the position of the USCCB, you will find a number of letters to public officials regarding torture and treatment of detainees on this web page.
Please share this information with people who may be interested in applying for these funds. Thank you.
Lawrence E. Couch
Legislative Policy Coordinator
Department for Social Concerns
Archdiocese of Washington
301-853-5343
Meanwhile, the GOP Continues to Field Candidates Who Do Their Part to Make Sure that Make People Swoon for the Son of God
Here we see the Android downloading instructions from his Programmers for his Synthetic Reagan Subroutines:
Here we see the Android downloading instructions from his Programmers for his Synthetic Reagan Subroutines:
Truly
This
Man
is
the
Son
of
God!
You gotta hand it to the guy. He absolutely pasted Lady Macbeth in SC and the David v. Goliath narrative makes that irresistible. Also, his determination to take the high road against her and the Horndog is most fetching. He really did give a great speech, particularly when compared to, well, virtually all the political oratory to which we have been subjected since the Great Communicator left office. (Can you remember a single line from the entire Clinton Presidency besides "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." or "I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky"? Ne neither. And neither of the Bushes has, um, been noted for their verbal giftedness. So a speech like this (judging from the reviews) hits a lot of people like a drink of cold water in a desert:
Me: I find myself thinking of a poli sci prof I once knew who spoke of the Gomer Pyle Axiom of High and Low Expectations. When expectations are high, then mere competence is a hanging offence. When they are low, then mere competence is treated as oracular genius straight from heaven, just as when Gomer sings and you aren't expecting much, it's sounds like Pavarotti to a lot of people.
Now Obama's no Gomer. But neither is he the figure of semi-Messianic proportions that an increasing number of enthusiasts are melting over. He seems to me a likeable, thoughtful, decent (doubly so, given the crap the Clintons have thrown at him), principled man who has, sadly, embraced some very evil principles, as well as a number of good ones. I think it's the decency most people are reacting to, and when you compare it with the reptilian Machavellianism of the Clintons and so much else that the Beltway Class is, it's such a relief that people swoon they way they do when they get a dose of novocaine after a horrible toothache. It's understandable.
But the guy still is absolutely 110% committed to sticking scissors in a baby's brain. I'm one of those people that can't get past that.
This
Man
is
the
Son
of
God!
You gotta hand it to the guy. He absolutely pasted Lady Macbeth in SC and the David v. Goliath narrative makes that irresistible. Also, his determination to take the high road against her and the Horndog is most fetching. He really did give a great speech, particularly when compared to, well, virtually all the political oratory to which we have been subjected since the Great Communicator left office. (Can you remember a single line from the entire Clinton Presidency besides "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." or "I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky"? Ne neither. And neither of the Bushes has, um, been noted for their verbal giftedness. So a speech like this (judging from the reviews) hits a lot of people like a drink of cold water in a desert:
Me: I find myself thinking of a poli sci prof I once knew who spoke of the Gomer Pyle Axiom of High and Low Expectations. When expectations are high, then mere competence is a hanging offence. When they are low, then mere competence is treated as oracular genius straight from heaven, just as when Gomer sings and you aren't expecting much, it's sounds like Pavarotti to a lot of people.
Now Obama's no Gomer. But neither is he the figure of semi-Messianic proportions that an increasing number of enthusiasts are melting over. He seems to me a likeable, thoughtful, decent (doubly so, given the crap the Clintons have thrown at him), principled man who has, sadly, embraced some very evil principles, as well as a number of good ones. I think it's the decency most people are reacting to, and when you compare it with the reptilian Machavellianism of the Clintons and so much else that the Beltway Class is, it's such a relief that people swoon they way they do when they get a dose of novocaine after a horrible toothache. It's understandable.
But the guy still is absolutely 110% committed to sticking scissors in a baby's brain. I'm one of those people that can't get past that.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Identity Politics I Can Identify With
As Obese Population Rises, More Candidates Courting The Fat Vote
As Obese Population Rises, More Candidates Courting The Fat Vote
A little amusement for the weekend, from my Buffalo Bill cousin Albert (second from the left)
It's uncanny to me how much he looks like my Dad.
It's uncanny to me how much he looks like my Dad.
Efforts Continue to be Made to Explain Why the Islamic World isn't all *That* Backward
It's important to maintain that fiction if you are going to suppor the grand secular lie that Christianity is indistinguishable from Islam. So you make sweeping claims about the oppressiveness of the Church and don't ask why both the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution were born in a Christian cradle while simultaneously saying "Muslims invented chess and algebra once--long ago".
Yes. Very long ago.
Never forget that the savages who committed 9/11 had to steal western tech to do it.
It's important to maintain that fiction if you are going to suppor the grand secular lie that Christianity is indistinguishable from Islam. So you make sweeping claims about the oppressiveness of the Church and don't ask why both the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution were born in a Christian cradle while simultaneously saying "Muslims invented chess and algebra once--long ago".
Yes. Very long ago.
Never forget that the savages who committed 9/11 had to steal western tech to do it.
All Ideologies Do This, Which is Why I Prefer to Try to Think with the Church, which Transcends Ideology
Bramwell is talking about the Postmodern Right, but the same is true of the Left, as those who were sentient during the silly struggles to defend Bill Clinton will recall. Bramwell writes:
Yep. I well remember when the imposition of global democratic revolution on, say, Haiti was ridiculed for turning the military into an instrument of nation-building. ("The job of the military is to kill people and break things," said Rush Limbaugh, "not be an international Meals on Wheels.") But that was when the Clintons were doing it.
Now that Bush has been struck with the Wilsonian vision of a world in which America must be at war until the last enemy of democracy is converted or killed everything has changed. When Bush announces that "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world" and "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one." and "[I]t is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" then all of a sudden it is "conservative" to go abroad, seeking monsters to slay because they might, someday, be a threat to us, or because they are tyrants, or anyway, because it has suddenly become the "concentrated work of generations" to "end tyranny" everywhere in the entire world! Suddenly, it's not Hillary Clinton, but right wingers who are writing books with fantastically hubristic titles like "An End to Evil".
And if you think that's a secular messianic vision of America that is both ridiculous and exceedingly dangerous you suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome and hate America. It you note that the first practical result of such delusions of utopia-imposing godhood is that Caesar has now granted himself the power to play the tyrant by declaring anybody he likes an illegal combatant, detain, and torture them in defiance of the law of God (because, you know, the crisis is so great that it's okay for him to do this since he's the Good Guy), you are a seditious traitor and a friend to terrorists. I think that's crazy.
For similar reasons, I think it's crazy that a single mild observation (i.e, that it was dumb for Jonah Goldberg to say--as he in fact did--that a taste for organic veggies or the notion that humans are part of an organic whole "feeds into Nazism") is castigated as nothing less than "deranged". Goldberg's observation itself was mildly amusing/offensive to my intelligence, but not that big a deal. Mostly I thought it a remarkable piece of chutzpah given NRO's own dalliance with fascist notions via it's Ledeenesque agitprop for war crimes and its casual endorsement of torture.
However, true to Bramwell's observation, a number of Goldberg's defenders in my comboxes and elsewhere could not let that mild critique pass--because NRO is one of the principal organs by which the movement tells them what to believe. And so my mild irritation at a stupid passing remark from Goldberg is suddenly tranmuted, in my comboxes into (you guessed it) "Goldberg Derangement Syndrome". Because anybody and everybody who has any criticism of the author of Liberal Fascism must, perforce, suffer from Goldberg Derangement Syndrome, regardless of what their critique might be. The term has been promulgated through the organ of Rightthink and now the conservative epigones dutifully begin to wield it to repel boarders. If I think Goldberg's stupid remark is stupid because it overlooks a basic principle of Catholic social teaching, I am *exactly* like some rabid guy at the Daily Kos who gibbers and foams at the mere mention of Goldberg's name.
Here's the thing. As I've already noted, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the notion that postmodern liberalism is content to use fascist technique to impose its will. From the thugs who beat up prolifers, to the various samples of gay brownshirt behavior employed by ACT-UP to intimidate and threaten those who do not regard homosexuality as the source and summit of all goodness, to the dextrous use of the state to crush Ungoodthink, I find the left's eagerness to stamp out and oppress unacceptable ideas odious and dangerous.
However, I also think that it is stupid to grab at any parallel between Nazis and people you happen to dislike and say that the people you dislike "feed into Nazism". Goldberg's allergy to greenie and crunchy types is what led him to make the stupid remark that I rolled my eyes at. And in the silly attempt to defend that stupid remark people in my comboxes and elsewhere have made idiots of themselves without realizing that their attempts to defend such silliness are just demonstrations of how prescient Bramwell's critique of ideology is.
This is why I think it is better to approach all such issues from a Catholic, rather than an ideological, perspective. The invitation that always lurks behind "You know, the Nazis thought X was a good thing" is "People who think X must be really really despicable." Everybody knows that and it is disingenuous in the extreme to deny that this is what this sort of rhetoric is aiming at. It's Godwin's Law talk and everybody knows it. So when you turn this sort of rhetoric against some philosophical proposition like "Humans are part of an organic whole" you are clearly inviting the TV audience to conclude that only a fool or a cad could accept such an idea.
In fact, however, the notion that humans are part of an organic whole happens to be part of Catholic teaching. The term, as it applies to our relationship with the rest of the human race is "solidarity". Look it up.
The same principle, when applied to our relationship to the rest of creation is "stewardship". You can look that up too.
Can these ideas be twisted into fascism, or earth worship? Sure! But abusus non tollit usum.
Beginning from "what the Church teaches" is a much sounder basis for coherent thinking than "My tribe hates that other tribe over there and anything that tribe over there likes."
Bramwell is talking about the Postmodern Right, but the same is true of the Left, as those who were sentient during the silly struggles to defend Bill Clinton will recall. Bramwell writes:
First, like Ingsoc, conservatism has a hierarchical structure. Like Orwell’s “Inner Party,” those at the top of the movement have almost perfect freedom to decide what opinions count as official conservatism. The Iraq War furnishes a telling example. In the run-up to the invasion, leading conservatives announced that conservatism now meant spreading global democratic revolution. This forthright radicalism—this embrace of the sanative powers of violence—became quickly accepted as the ineluctable meaning of conservatism in foreign policy. Those who dissented risked ostracism and harsh rebuke. Had conservative leaders instead argued that global democratic revolution would not cure our woes but increase them, the rest of the movement would have accepted this position no less quickly. Millions of conservative epigones believe nothing less than what the movement’s established organs tell them to believe. Rarely does a man recognize, like Winston Smith, his own ideology as such.
Yep. I well remember when the imposition of global democratic revolution on, say, Haiti was ridiculed for turning the military into an instrument of nation-building. ("The job of the military is to kill people and break things," said Rush Limbaugh, "not be an international Meals on Wheels.") But that was when the Clintons were doing it.
Now that Bush has been struck with the Wilsonian vision of a world in which America must be at war until the last enemy of democracy is converted or killed everything has changed. When Bush announces that "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world" and "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one." and "[I]t is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" then all of a sudden it is "conservative" to go abroad, seeking monsters to slay because they might, someday, be a threat to us, or because they are tyrants, or anyway, because it has suddenly become the "concentrated work of generations" to "end tyranny" everywhere in the entire world! Suddenly, it's not Hillary Clinton, but right wingers who are writing books with fantastically hubristic titles like "An End to Evil".
And if you think that's a secular messianic vision of America that is both ridiculous and exceedingly dangerous you suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome and hate America. It you note that the first practical result of such delusions of utopia-imposing godhood is that Caesar has now granted himself the power to play the tyrant by declaring anybody he likes an illegal combatant, detain, and torture them in defiance of the law of God (because, you know, the crisis is so great that it's okay for him to do this since he's the Good Guy), you are a seditious traitor and a friend to terrorists. I think that's crazy.
For similar reasons, I think it's crazy that a single mild observation (i.e, that it was dumb for Jonah Goldberg to say--as he in fact did--that a taste for organic veggies or the notion that humans are part of an organic whole "feeds into Nazism") is castigated as nothing less than "deranged". Goldberg's observation itself was mildly amusing/offensive to my intelligence, but not that big a deal. Mostly I thought it a remarkable piece of chutzpah given NRO's own dalliance with fascist notions via it's Ledeenesque agitprop for war crimes and its casual endorsement of torture.
However, true to Bramwell's observation, a number of Goldberg's defenders in my comboxes and elsewhere could not let that mild critique pass--because NRO is one of the principal organs by which the movement tells them what to believe. And so my mild irritation at a stupid passing remark from Goldberg is suddenly tranmuted, in my comboxes into (you guessed it) "Goldberg Derangement Syndrome". Because anybody and everybody who has any criticism of the author of Liberal Fascism must, perforce, suffer from Goldberg Derangement Syndrome, regardless of what their critique might be. The term has been promulgated through the organ of Rightthink and now the conservative epigones dutifully begin to wield it to repel boarders. If I think Goldberg's stupid remark is stupid because it overlooks a basic principle of Catholic social teaching, I am *exactly* like some rabid guy at the Daily Kos who gibbers and foams at the mere mention of Goldberg's name.
Here's the thing. As I've already noted, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the notion that postmodern liberalism is content to use fascist technique to impose its will. From the thugs who beat up prolifers, to the various samples of gay brownshirt behavior employed by ACT-UP to intimidate and threaten those who do not regard homosexuality as the source and summit of all goodness, to the dextrous use of the state to crush Ungoodthink, I find the left's eagerness to stamp out and oppress unacceptable ideas odious and dangerous.
However, I also think that it is stupid to grab at any parallel between Nazis and people you happen to dislike and say that the people you dislike "feed into Nazism". Goldberg's allergy to greenie and crunchy types is what led him to make the stupid remark that I rolled my eyes at. And in the silly attempt to defend that stupid remark people in my comboxes and elsewhere have made idiots of themselves without realizing that their attempts to defend such silliness are just demonstrations of how prescient Bramwell's critique of ideology is.
This is why I think it is better to approach all such issues from a Catholic, rather than an ideological, perspective. The invitation that always lurks behind "You know, the Nazis thought X was a good thing" is "People who think X must be really really despicable." Everybody knows that and it is disingenuous in the extreme to deny that this is what this sort of rhetoric is aiming at. It's Godwin's Law talk and everybody knows it. So when you turn this sort of rhetoric against some philosophical proposition like "Humans are part of an organic whole" you are clearly inviting the TV audience to conclude that only a fool or a cad could accept such an idea.
In fact, however, the notion that humans are part of an organic whole happens to be part of Catholic teaching. The term, as it applies to our relationship with the rest of the human race is "solidarity". Look it up.
The same principle, when applied to our relationship to the rest of creation is "stewardship". You can look that up too.
Can these ideas be twisted into fascism, or earth worship? Sure! But abusus non tollit usum.
Beginning from "what the Church teaches" is a much sounder basis for coherent thinking than "My tribe hates that other tribe over there and anything that tribe over there likes."
This sounds like a job for Sandra Miesel!
A reader writes:
I'm no historian of the Renaissance, so I'm not much help here.
One odd place to look that I have found fun and usful (because people receive information via fiction more readily than via non-fiction is the work of Michael J. Flynn, who has really done his homework on the enormous diversity and (compared to modernity) hyper-rationality of Medieval though and culture. His Eifelheim is a great, great book and he has also written interesting stuff for Analog.
But, like I say, I'm not much help. My money is on Sandra Miesel to flood you with resources. Anybody else, feel free to chime in.
A reader writes:
First, let me tell you that I love your blog. I'm a fellow convert (from mushy deism), and I really enjoy your clear and fair-minded writing on Catholic and political issues. I know some of the discussions in your comment boxes can get a little disheartening, so I also wanted to remind you that there are lots of readers like me who agree with you on questions of torture, over-simplistic use of the "fascist" label, postmodern "conservatives", and so on. We're a bit shyer and don't comment as often as some of your regulars, but we're with you.
I must confess that I have another reason for writing, as the subject line suggests! I'm a computer science student at the University of British Columbia, just a little up the coast from you. As an elective, I am taking a course on Renaissance Italy. As one might expect, particularly at a secular university, the class is essentially a playing field where student and professor compete to outdo each other in their zealous devotion to the Last Acceptable Prejudice. Today's class, for instance, featured a "mature" student (the irony of this adjective will soon become apparent) rejecting Pope Innocent VIII's admittedly over-the-top denunciation of a humanist thinker as "Typically Catholic -- that is to say, narrow-minded, intolerant of dissent, closed to new ideas," blah, blah, blah. "And I can say this as a Catholic." Of course you can! What would a lapsed Catholic's commentary on the Church be without that exculpatory remark? Another student later claimed that the Church was oppressing all these brave humanistic thinkers because they threatened the Church's CONTROL over people, which is exercised, as we all know, through the imposition of feelings of GUILT. For good measure, he followed it up with an attack on the Sacrament of Reconciliation whose viciousness was not at all tempered by the tenuousness of its relation to the discussion at hand.
Now, I have a background in (political) philosophy and a pretty good understanding of contemporary Catholic apologetics, so I'm not totally at a loss to defend the Faith. But I've realized that my understanding of the Church in the Renaissance period is shallow. In fact, despite my conversion it's still informed almost entirely by what I learned in high school (Inquisition bad, Popes excessive, abuses rampant, etc.). So, I was wondering if you would be so kind as to recommend (or ask your esteemed and brilliant readers to recommend) some good books on the Church in the Renaissance that could help me separate the fact from the fiction, and give me a little ammunition to use in class. Slimmer volumes would be especially welcome, as I'm already pretty loaded down with schoolwork. I have several months in which to firmly entrench myself as the token Catholic crank, and it would be a disservice to my classmates and my God if I failed to do so in the most excellent way possible!
Thank you! And please pray for me and all Catholic students, that we may ably and charitably defend the Faith when it comes under attack in the classroom.
I'm no historian of the Renaissance, so I'm not much help here.
One odd place to look that I have found fun and usful (because people receive information via fiction more readily than via non-fiction is the work of Michael J. Flynn, who has really done his homework on the enormous diversity and (compared to modernity) hyper-rationality of Medieval though and culture. His Eifelheim is a great, great book and he has also written interesting stuff for Analog.
But, like I say, I'm not much help. My money is on Sandra Miesel to flood you with resources. Anybody else, feel free to chime in.
Majerus v. Burke
It turns out that you can't simultaneous trade on your fame to boost abortion and yet claim to be such a nobody that the bishop has no right to deny you communion when you trade on your fame to boost abortion. Stick to playing ball, coach.
It turns out that you can't simultaneous trade on your fame to boost abortion and yet claim to be such a nobody that the bishop has no right to deny you communion when you trade on your fame to boost abortion. Stick to playing ball, coach.
Fred Phelps Auditions for John Gibson's Job at FOX
I've been surprise to hear several readers suggest that my protest over John Gibson's swinishness is somehow tantamount to canonizing Heath Ledger. I don't know nuthin' from Heath Ledger except that he was in a film I enjoyed (A Knight's Tale) and that he seemed like a gifted--and very sad and depressed--guy who died of an overdose. I don't know (or care) if it was suicide. I do know that my Mama raised me to understand that when an innocent man dies in tragic circumstances, you say a prayer for him, remember that his loved ones are in deep pain, try to console them or pray for them, and then move on.
However, the swines of the Postmodern Right (which include not just John Gibson, but every person at FOX News that had the chance to fire that swine the moment he opened his mouth and did not, plus, no doubt, a lot a viewers who squirted Schlitz out their noses laffing at his brilliance) no longer seem to know such basic rules of common decency. That's really new in our culture--a sort of line being crossed.
Oh sure, there have always been slimes who wrote insulting grafitti about the dead on bathroom walls. But to have such subhuman behavior be promoted as "edgy" in Mass Media is a whole 'nother thing. The thing has been creeping into left mass media in the past 20 years. That's to be expected since the left is the natural home of people who want to deconstruct old conventions in the name of Progress.
So, at first, it was swines on the Left (such as the swines at, if memory serves, CBS who hired Christopher Hitchens to provide the swinish color commentary at Mother Teresa's funeral.) But the big claim of the "Traditional Values" Right, of course, was that it stood against such swinish assaults on common decency.
Now that is revealed to be rubbish. The Postmodern Right has learned ever so much from its New Special Friend, Christopher Hitchens on how to deal with ideological enemies. Ledger was in "Brokeback Mountain." FOX's target audience doesn't like that. So the pig that is John Gibson feels perfectly free to target this wretched young man as an ideological enemy in exactly that way that Hitchens targeted Mother Teresa. In very truth, Gibson is no different than this guy:
Except that, instead of posting his little piss-on the-dead fest on YouTube, this particular swine was able to do it on a his own major network show broadcast round the world and be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for it by a major news organization that purports to be the bastion of conservative and even "Judeo-Christian" values, in between hawking his book about the War On Christmas.
FOX may, in response to outrage, get around to disciplining this pig. But it is telling that they have not yet. What that means is that they have no common decency and are simply waiting around to see if they can ride out the storm of public indignation. That says volumes about them. If they don't get a bunch of mail, he stays. And that will say volumes about the postmodern Righties who keep Gibson in clover.
I've been surprise to hear several readers suggest that my protest over John Gibson's swinishness is somehow tantamount to canonizing Heath Ledger. I don't know nuthin' from Heath Ledger except that he was in a film I enjoyed (A Knight's Tale) and that he seemed like a gifted--and very sad and depressed--guy who died of an overdose. I don't know (or care) if it was suicide. I do know that my Mama raised me to understand that when an innocent man dies in tragic circumstances, you say a prayer for him, remember that his loved ones are in deep pain, try to console them or pray for them, and then move on.
However, the swines of the Postmodern Right (which include not just John Gibson, but every person at FOX News that had the chance to fire that swine the moment he opened his mouth and did not, plus, no doubt, a lot a viewers who squirted Schlitz out their noses laffing at his brilliance) no longer seem to know such basic rules of common decency. That's really new in our culture--a sort of line being crossed.
Oh sure, there have always been slimes who wrote insulting grafitti about the dead on bathroom walls. But to have such subhuman behavior be promoted as "edgy" in Mass Media is a whole 'nother thing. The thing has been creeping into left mass media in the past 20 years. That's to be expected since the left is the natural home of people who want to deconstruct old conventions in the name of Progress.
So, at first, it was swines on the Left (such as the swines at, if memory serves, CBS who hired Christopher Hitchens to provide the swinish color commentary at Mother Teresa's funeral.) But the big claim of the "Traditional Values" Right, of course, was that it stood against such swinish assaults on common decency.
Now that is revealed to be rubbish. The Postmodern Right has learned ever so much from its New Special Friend, Christopher Hitchens on how to deal with ideological enemies. Ledger was in "Brokeback Mountain." FOX's target audience doesn't like that. So the pig that is John Gibson feels perfectly free to target this wretched young man as an ideological enemy in exactly that way that Hitchens targeted Mother Teresa. In very truth, Gibson is no different than this guy:
Shouting, "This is YouTube material!" a 27-year-old British man urinated on a dying woman who had collapsed on the street, the BBC and local Hartepool Mail and Northern Echo tell us. He also doused her with a bucket of water and covered her with shaving cream.
The woman, 50-year-old Christine Lakinski, died at the scene of pancreatic failure.
In a sad sign of the times, it was all recorded on a mobile phone.
Except that, instead of posting his little piss-on the-dead fest on YouTube, this particular swine was able to do it on a his own major network show broadcast round the world and be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for it by a major news organization that purports to be the bastion of conservative and even "Judeo-Christian" values, in between hawking his book about the War On Christmas.
FOX may, in response to outrage, get around to disciplining this pig. But it is telling that they have not yet. What that means is that they have no common decency and are simply waiting around to see if they can ride out the storm of public indignation. That says volumes about them. If they don't get a bunch of mail, he stays. And that will say volumes about the postmodern Righties who keep Gibson in clover.
Meanwhile, from the epicenter of the Lib Prot Weirdosphere, the invaluable Chris Johnson continues to chronicle Episcopalian Follies
He writes:
Chris, should the day ever come, I'd be happy to sponsor you. The liturgies are pretty similar. The main difference is that Piskies can afford really good exotic blends of Starbucks coffee during the donut hour, but Catholics tend to go for Folgers or some kind of cheapo coffee crystals. :)
He writes:
The Roman Catholic Church, indeed Christianity itself, faces the most serious threat of its entire existence.
Guess that's why I'm still Anglican, sort of, technically, in a way. Along with idiocy like this.
Our comedy material is just too good. It's getting to a point where I can just link to this stuff and say absolutely nothing at all.
Chris, should the day ever come, I'd be happy to sponsor you. The liturgies are pretty similar. The main difference is that Piskies can afford really good exotic blends of Starbucks coffee during the donut hour, but Catholics tend to go for Folgers or some kind of cheapo coffee crystals. :)
Liberal Mainstream Protestant Clergy Do Their Part to Drive More People Into the Catholic Church
The reader who sent me the link titled it, simply, "Why I became a Catholic."
The reader who sent me the link titled it, simply, "Why I became a Catholic."
The Invaluable Dale Price on the Stale Tribalism that Passes for Conservative Political Discourse in the Media
I love the guy. His family's great too, by the by.
I love the guy. His family's great too, by the by.
Peg Noonan Suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome and Hates America
A shrinking but determined group on the Rubber Hose Right have to keep telling themselves that to fend off the thought that she's speaking the bleedin' obvious.
We now live in an age where "deranged", like "fascist" is a word sprinkled as cheaply as water on all manner of persons and things. However, as the boy who cried wolf discovered, if you keep telling the same lies, pretty soon people shut you out. Then, when the real deranged fascists show up, you can look on in horror as nobody listens to the warnings you have done such a fine job teaching them to ignore.
A shrinking but determined group on the Rubber Hose Right have to keep telling themselves that to fend off the thought that she's speaking the bleedin' obvious.
We now live in an age where "deranged", like "fascist" is a word sprinkled as cheaply as water on all manner of persons and things. However, as the boy who cried wolf discovered, if you keep telling the same lies, pretty soon people shut you out. Then, when the real deranged fascists show up, you can look on in horror as nobody listens to the warnings you have done such a fine job teaching them to ignore.
It's so fun when the press turns against the Clinton Machine
I just have to believe that slimes like this will not fool people again.
I just have to believe that slimes like this will not fool people again.
The Brothers Chaps (Creators of Homestarrunner) Got Interviewed on NPR a While Back
I missed it at the time, but the Internet is where old media information is interred so we can always get it back.
I missed it at the time, but the Internet is where old media information is interred so we can always get it back.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Two little words
In the words of Uncle Screwtape:
Of course, this kind of casual secular messianism is endemic in American politics.
That's no small part of why American politics is such a colossal mess today.
I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn't 'fall out in church' as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn't want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals. - Barack Obama, Christianity Today.
In the words of Uncle Screwtape:
About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist's shop.
Of course, this kind of casual secular messianism is endemic in American politics.
That's no small part of why American politics is such a colossal mess today.
Almost Everything That I am Coming to Loathe About the Post-Modern Right and It's Pseudo-Christian Posturing Summed Up Right Here
The FOX News Blowhard who writes this:
is also the swine who mocks the death of a depressed young man.
I expect this kind of sub-human vileness from odious pagans like Howard Stern.
Despicable.
Update: Fire this swine.
The FOX News Blowhard who writes this:
is also the swine who mocks the death of a depressed young man.
I expect this kind of sub-human vileness from odious pagans like Howard Stern.
Despicable.
Update: Fire this swine.
Bear this Video in Mind When You Contemplate the Bloody Power Struggle Going on Between Lady Macbeth and the Son of God
All of Lady Macbeth's lies and all of the Son of God's protestations of ideological purity center on which of them is more fanatically devoted to making sure as many babies as possible are torn limb from limb, burnt alive in the womb, or put to death by having scissors stuck in their brains as they are born. That is the sole core value, the one non-negotiable, of the Democratic party over the past 30 years.
The GOP doesn't much give a shit about abortion. The Dem party does--fanatically so. That is why they will never have my vote, while a GOP candidate still might if he is merely uninterested but not devoted to extending and increasing abortion as far as he possibly can. But if the GOP follows suit by nominating a candidate who is likewise determined to commit to intrinsic moral evil (whether abortion, torture or (in the rapidly fading Giuliani's case) both, they will likewise lose my vote.
All of Lady Macbeth's lies and all of the Son of God's protestations of ideological purity center on which of them is more fanatically devoted to making sure as many babies as possible are torn limb from limb, burnt alive in the womb, or put to death by having scissors stuck in their brains as they are born. That is the sole core value, the one non-negotiable, of the Democratic party over the past 30 years.
The GOP doesn't much give a shit about abortion. The Dem party does--fanatically so. That is why they will never have my vote, while a GOP candidate still might if he is merely uninterested but not devoted to extending and increasing abortion as far as he possibly can. But if the GOP follows suit by nominating a candidate who is likewise determined to commit to intrinsic moral evil (whether abortion, torture or (in the rapidly fading Giuliani's case) both, they will likewise lose my vote.
The Billary Machine Rolls into Action
All the stuff you remember made your gorge rise the last time these narcissistic schemers were in power? It's all still there. The self-pity. The utter shamelessness. The lies. The corrosive cynicism combined with grotesque Protestant nun rectitude. The willingness to say anything.
There's a passel of headlines over on Drudge this AM, but the one that stands out for me is this:
PAPER: Bill risks tarnishing his global brand...
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me ten thousand times, I should be committed as an imbecile.
The bizarre spectacle of Dems appealing to Bill Clinton's sense of honor--honor! All I can think of by way of explanation is that 50% of the population really does have an IQ below average.
All the stuff you remember made your gorge rise the last time these narcissistic schemers were in power? It's all still there. The self-pity. The utter shamelessness. The lies. The corrosive cynicism combined with grotesque Protestant nun rectitude. The willingness to say anything.
There's a passel of headlines over on Drudge this AM, but the one that stands out for me is this:
PAPER: Bill risks tarnishing his global brand...
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me ten thousand times, I should be committed as an imbecile.
The bizarre spectacle of Dems appealing to Bill Clinton's sense of honor--honor! All I can think of by way of explanation is that 50% of the population really does have an IQ below average.
Reader Franklin Jennings writes:
St. Luke, please pray for Paul that he may find healing and peace through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Sharon's brother Paul is in hospital with an extreme diverticulitis. He'll need a temporary colostomy and probably a bowel resection. Her youngest brother died several years ago from colon cancer discovered while he was in hospital with an extreme diverticulitis, neccessitating a colostomy and resection. So concern and anxiety are heightened by that.
St. Luke, please pray for Paul that he may find healing and peace through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Certainty of Death... Small Chance of Success... What Are we Waiting For?
Hopelessly out of step with Postmodern Millennial America: that's just one of this sites charms.
Hopelessly out of step with Postmodern Millennial America: that's just one of this sites charms.
Fr. Philip Powell, OP, writes:
Done!
Be careful of the Cornish Pixies!
I need a tiny little favor.
My senior/grad theology seminar here at the Univ of Dallas is called "Postmetaphysical theologies." The class has a blogsite called "suppl(e)mental."
A major part of the students' grades hangs on "doing theology" in public. My goal here is to acquaint these budding Catholic theologians with the weirdnesses of reading, writing, and writing about Christian theology for an audience outside the academy.
The theologies we will be covering in the seminar are decidedly non-Catholic, sometimes downright (though never explicitly) anti-Catholic, and represent some of the best contemporary theology out there. My goal here is to introduce my very, very orthodox theologians-to-be to the veritable circus of theological methods, vocabularies, personalities, and schools that push and pull the faith of the Church in both creative and destructive directions.
I see myself as something of a "Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts."
So, would you please link this blog (http://www.supple-mental.blogspot.com)? Maybe give the site (and the students) a little numbers boost.
They will start posting on the 29th and do so regularly until May.
Done!
Be careful of the Cornish Pixies!
Serious Prolifers Once Again Show Up by the Hundred Thousands and Take a Stand for Life
Unserious GOP Pols Once Again Phone it In and Make a Tepid Show of Caring While Keeping Prolifers at Arm's Length
If the exploited get restless, the GOP herder just shout "Hillary! Ooga booga!" and they all crowd back on to the reservation. If they say, "Ron Paul seems to actually be serious about this in a way that most of the rest of the GOP field isn't" they are patted on the head and told to leave politics to people who actually understand things and not to bother their pretty little head about it. It's almost as masterful a job of exploiting their constituents as the Clinton machine's use (and contempt for) the black vote.
Unserious GOP Pols Once Again Phone it In and Make a Tepid Show of Caring While Keeping Prolifers at Arm's Length
If the exploited get restless, the GOP herder just shout "Hillary! Ooga booga!" and they all crowd back on to the reservation. If they say, "Ron Paul seems to actually be serious about this in a way that most of the rest of the GOP field isn't" they are patted on the head and told to leave politics to people who actually understand things and not to bother their pretty little head about it. It's almost as masterful a job of exploiting their constituents as the Clinton machine's use (and contempt for) the black vote.
This could be very good news
Regrowing a heart (or some other damaged organ) with cloning tech would be a wonderful addition to the medical arsenal.
Regrowing a heart (or some other damaged organ) with cloning tech would be a wonderful addition to the medical arsenal.
I'm Deeply Honored!
C.S. Lewis remarks somewhere in a letter to Sheldon Vanauken something to the effect that the astonishing disproportion between the amount of actual work we do in helping others to Christ and the huge impact Christ makes on those who meet him is something like the difference between pulling a trigger and the enormous explosion of smoke and noise that results. I never feel more acutely that conversion is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit than when I see somebody become a believer or a Catholic because of something I said. Mostly, I feel a strong temptation to go hide under the bed, because most of what I say and do is so stupid. Still I'm glad you are at the Table, Jen!
C.S. Lewis remarks somewhere in a letter to Sheldon Vanauken something to the effect that the astonishing disproportion between the amount of actual work we do in helping others to Christ and the huge impact Christ makes on those who meet him is something like the difference between pulling a trigger and the enormous explosion of smoke and noise that results. I never feel more acutely that conversion is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit than when I see somebody become a believer or a Catholic because of something I said. Mostly, I feel a strong temptation to go hide under the bed, because most of what I say and do is so stupid. Still I'm glad you are at the Table, Jen!
For Western Washingtonians of a Certain Age These Words Will Have Great Meaning
For the rest of you: meet one of Seattle's inimitable local heros: Stan Boreson.
Zero-dochus, mucho-crockus, hullaballoozebub!
That's the secret password that we use down at the club
Hey! Zero-dochus, mucho-crockus, hullaballoozebam!
Means now you are a member of KING's TV club with Stan!
For the rest of you: meet one of Seattle's inimitable local heros: Stan Boreson.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
New Discovery Raises Serious Doubts about Existence of Intelligent Life on Third Planet from the Sun
For some reason this story never got into the Postmodern Right's narratives about fascism
Much more worrisome than a taste for tofu.
Much more worrisome than a taste for tofu.
Austin Bramwell Reads Silly Books So I Don't Have To
A couple of days ago I made the mistake of remarking briefly on a dumb comment in the media.
Now, you may be wondering "Isn't that what you do on this blog a lot?"
There, you'd be right. I do do that on this blog a lot. And my readers usually enjoy it--if the remark is directed at a dumb comment by somebody who is not part of their Tribe. But if you criticize a member of the Correct Ideology, it's a whole 'nother story. In my case, I criticized Jonah Goldberg's eminently dumb remark that a taste for organic foods and a notion that humans are part of an organic whole "feeds into Nazism". Any way you slice it, that's stupid.
Ah! But Jonah is One of Us, rejoined several readers. And besides, you haven't read his book, so you have no right to criticize whatever stupid thing he might say on TV.
On the contrary, I have every right to criticize stupid things he says on TV, because I'm not talking about his book, but the stupid thing he said on TV.
The conversation declined from there as Defenders of Ideology showed themselves bent on proving my point that "In the Future, Everybody will Be a Fascist for 15 Minutes". In the end, one zealot for NRO Orthodoxy was reduced to telling a man who lost half his family at Treblinka that if he so much as ventured to say that Goldberg seems a bit callow, then (I kid you not) "you resemble the fascists whose criminal behavior you decry". All class, I must say. If that's the sort of thinking Goldberg's book inspires, then I can see why it's getting hammered.
Of course, it's easy to blame it on the lefty press. However, Austin Bramwell is not a member of the Lefty Press. Indeed, he used to be affiliated with NRO until they decided that conservatism no longer meant things like limited government, respect for the permanent things and opposition to the Nanny State and instead meant global democratic revolution, imposition of a Great Society on the Middle East, Salvation through Leviathan by Any Means Necessary, spending like a drunken sailor, a Permanent State of War Until there is Freedom and Democracy Everywhere, Creative Destruction, Strength Through Evil and various other crazy things that sound more like Trotsky than like anything an actual conservative before Bush might have advocated. Then he bailed and penned his reasons for doing so here.
Now he looks at the silly frippery which Goldberg's appearance on the Daily Show foreshadowed and, sure enough, it's silly.
The thing that bugs me most about this is that I am sympathetic to the argument that postmodern liberalism is inclined to use brownshirt tactics to achieve its ends quite often. I think that argument can be made, not by the ridiculous means Goldberg attempts, but simply by Googling or doing a Lexis search. Hell's bells, the travails of Ezra Levant or the latest story of some prolifer getting beaten up by a prochoice thug makes the case.
But, just like the Trotskyites so many on the Right are coming to resemble, Goldberg doesn't do this. Instead, he opts for the stupid course of calling whatever he doesn't like "fascist." And his defenders follow suit--to the point that they embarrass themselves by telling a man who lost half his family at Treblinka that if he so much as ventured to say that Goldberg seems a bit callow, then "you resemble the fascists whose criminal behavior you decry".
It's a bleak day when the star writer for the flagship of what used to be called "conservatism" writes a book that is the living embodiment of Godwin's Law. Yusta be that dorks on USENET or hacks like Charley Rangel leapt to the reductio ad Hitlerum every time something met with their disapproval. Now it's Standard Operating Procedure for NRO. And all the while, there seems to be no sense of irony among the editorial staff there that, according to K Lo, repugnance at this renders you "not one of us" according to the new improved canons of orthodoxy for the postmodern Right. Postmodern Righties who live in glass houses should not throw reductio ad Hitlerum stones at postmodern Lefties.
A couple of days ago I made the mistake of remarking briefly on a dumb comment in the media.
Now, you may be wondering "Isn't that what you do on this blog a lot?"
There, you'd be right. I do do that on this blog a lot. And my readers usually enjoy it--if the remark is directed at a dumb comment by somebody who is not part of their Tribe. But if you criticize a member of the Correct Ideology, it's a whole 'nother story. In my case, I criticized Jonah Goldberg's eminently dumb remark that a taste for organic foods and a notion that humans are part of an organic whole "feeds into Nazism". Any way you slice it, that's stupid.
Ah! But Jonah is One of Us, rejoined several readers. And besides, you haven't read his book, so you have no right to criticize whatever stupid thing he might say on TV.
On the contrary, I have every right to criticize stupid things he says on TV, because I'm not talking about his book, but the stupid thing he said on TV.
The conversation declined from there as Defenders of Ideology showed themselves bent on proving my point that "In the Future, Everybody will Be a Fascist for 15 Minutes". In the end, one zealot for NRO Orthodoxy was reduced to telling a man who lost half his family at Treblinka that if he so much as ventured to say that Goldberg seems a bit callow, then (I kid you not) "you resemble the fascists whose criminal behavior you decry". All class, I must say. If that's the sort of thinking Goldberg's book inspires, then I can see why it's getting hammered.
Of course, it's easy to blame it on the lefty press. However, Austin Bramwell is not a member of the Lefty Press. Indeed, he used to be affiliated with NRO until they decided that conservatism no longer meant things like limited government, respect for the permanent things and opposition to the Nanny State and instead meant global democratic revolution, imposition of a Great Society on the Middle East, Salvation through Leviathan by Any Means Necessary, spending like a drunken sailor, a Permanent State of War Until there is Freedom and Democracy Everywhere, Creative Destruction, Strength Through Evil and various other crazy things that sound more like Trotsky than like anything an actual conservative before Bush might have advocated. Then he bailed and penned his reasons for doing so here.
Now he looks at the silly frippery which Goldberg's appearance on the Daily Show foreshadowed and, sure enough, it's silly.
The thing that bugs me most about this is that I am sympathetic to the argument that postmodern liberalism is inclined to use brownshirt tactics to achieve its ends quite often. I think that argument can be made, not by the ridiculous means Goldberg attempts, but simply by Googling or doing a Lexis search. Hell's bells, the travails of Ezra Levant or the latest story of some prolifer getting beaten up by a prochoice thug makes the case.
But, just like the Trotskyites so many on the Right are coming to resemble, Goldberg doesn't do this. Instead, he opts for the stupid course of calling whatever he doesn't like "fascist." And his defenders follow suit--to the point that they embarrass themselves by telling a man who lost half his family at Treblinka that if he so much as ventured to say that Goldberg seems a bit callow, then "you resemble the fascists whose criminal behavior you decry".
It's a bleak day when the star writer for the flagship of what used to be called "conservatism" writes a book that is the living embodiment of Godwin's Law. Yusta be that dorks on USENET or hacks like Charley Rangel leapt to the reductio ad Hitlerum every time something met with their disapproval. Now it's Standard Operating Procedure for NRO. And all the while, there seems to be no sense of irony among the editorial staff there that, according to K Lo, repugnance at this renders you "not one of us" according to the new improved canons of orthodoxy for the postmodern Right. Postmodern Righties who live in glass houses should not throw reductio ad Hitlerum stones at postmodern Lefties.
Responses to Various Combox Comments That Caught My Eye
Absolutely true. To note the media's hypocrisy in burying the story is not to say that she shouldn't be forgiven her sin. It is merely to say that hiding or excusing a sin because it's the right *sort* of sin is not the same as forgiving it.
So far as I can see, every passage mentioned above is directed to baptized Jews and says nothing whatsoever about unbaptized Jews. As I say in the conclusion of my series, the Mosaic covenant can and should be transcended by the covenant with Christ (and, in that sense "annulled"). But it cannot simply be dispensed with by unbaptized Jews. It remains binding or both Jesus and Paul make absolutely no sense in their insistence that Christ has not come to abolish but fulfill the Law.
Last things first, let me say that I am gratified to see this reader has made some movement toward a more Catholic position on the question of torture and I congratulate him for doing so. I'm also gratified to see him acknowledge what so many folk in my comboxes and elsewhere don't want to admit: that waterboarding is torture. I'm not going to try to defend myself on the matter of my abrasiveness concerning torture and not some mild horseplay "dunking" as our odious Vice President would have it.
I have no doubt I've been an irritant on the matter and have turned some folk off. I can't really help that much. There's only so many ways I know how to say "This is wrong and excuses for it are rubbish."
In terms of pure logic, I have to add that there is no category in Catholic moral theology for "It's not an intrinsic moral evil when the President orders it." So excusing the mass murder of the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the grounds that Roosevelt and Truman are revered heros in American history doesn't especially persuade me that these war crimes were okay. Similarly, saying the President has a tough job does not seem to me to justify saying, "The President sometimes has to order intrinsically immoral acts to be done and using harsh (but never inaccurate)language to criticize these acts is more upsetting to me than the acts themselves" reveals, I think, disordered priorities. I think we should be more upset that the President has arrogated to himself the power to declare anybody he likes and enemy combatant, detain them as long as he likes, torture them, exempt himself from the law, and destroy evidence of same, than that some guy with a blog bleats in protest against this.
If we should forgive Mel Gibson for his drunken tirade, we should be able to forgive Dana Jacobson for her drunken tirade.
Absolutely true. To note the media's hypocrisy in burying the story is not to say that she shouldn't be forgiven her sin. It is merely to say that hiding or excusing a sin because it's the right *sort* of sin is not the same as forgiving it.
Since Dr. Sungenis is suggesting that Heb 7:18, 8:7, 10:9, 2 Cor 3:14, Col 2:14 do contradict Mr. Shea's “neither revoked nor salvific” argument, it seems that Mr. Shea needs to discuss the verses in question in order avoid contradiction and remain “within the pale of orthodoxy.”
So far as I can see, every passage mentioned above is directed to baptized Jews and says nothing whatsoever about unbaptized Jews. As I say in the conclusion of my series, the Mosaic covenant can and should be transcended by the covenant with Christ (and, in that sense "annulled"). But it cannot simply be dispensed with by unbaptized Jews. It remains binding or both Jesus and Paul make absolutely no sense in their insistence that Christ has not come to abolish but fulfill the Law.
I was one that chastised Mark for his position on torture. I had to step back and think about this because I had read Mark on many other things and admired him. I think the thing that turned me off a little was Mark had seemed to go to the point of assuming that he could judge the thoughts of the President and Vice President and know that they like me had arrived at the positions after a process of looking at how best to protect our country in a time of war. After a lot of thought, I have come to agree with the position that we should not torture and that things like waterboarding are torture. I think I would have arrived here sooner had other language been used and knowing Mark's talent for writing, believe he could have found more persuasive language. The responsibility of the President of the USA and the impact of 9/11 on that person cannot be underestimated. The fact that the intelligence agency had been saying that Iraq was an immediate threat goes back to Clinton days. Hillary has stated from her past experience and from the briefings she received as a member of the armed services committee that there was strong and credible evidence of this threat. I believed then that Bush with this evidence and after 9/11 that to not have demanded complete and free inspections with the threat of war would have been grounds for impeachment if anything had happened. When under the obvious threat of death, Saddam did not reliquish to this full and unfettered access, Bush had no choice.
In times of war, I think most presidents have done something to step over the line. FDR took German and Japaneese Americans and with nothing other than were they lived and natioanility put them in camps for the duration. He obviously lied to the people about not putting our boys into the war in Europe when he was doing everything possible to violate terms of the nutraility act. It was FDR that started the atomic bomb project because he was faced with Hitler possibly getting it. Yet today, most view him as a great president and hero. Truman dropped the atomic bomb not once, but twice. He did so to save American lives that would have been lost in the invasion. Presidents like JFK have made pacts with the Mafia to kill Castro and did have the Vietnam Preisdent killed. The job demands that a president do things based on his best information and in times of war, they bend the rules to win the war. Thus I think the name calling of Bush is not really productive. It seems like one might try to make a point of disagreement, but use the God given talent of writing to do a better and more Christian job of making that point. I decided after much thought to write this post to Mark and also to pray for him. I ask him to ask our Lord in his next prayer for guidance on how best to use his awesome talent more productively and in a more christian way. Mark, your words on torture made me think and God in prayer helped me to find the way. Your name calling and lack of Chritan attitude toward the President almost lost me in this war. I think it was and continues to be less than your talent should be brining to the world on a blog labeled as Catholic.
Last things first, let me say that I am gratified to see this reader has made some movement toward a more Catholic position on the question of torture and I congratulate him for doing so. I'm also gratified to see him acknowledge what so many folk in my comboxes and elsewhere don't want to admit: that waterboarding is torture. I'm not going to try to defend myself on the matter of my abrasiveness concerning torture and not some mild horseplay "dunking" as our odious Vice President would have it.
I have no doubt I've been an irritant on the matter and have turned some folk off. I can't really help that much. There's only so many ways I know how to say "This is wrong and excuses for it are rubbish."
In terms of pure logic, I have to add that there is no category in Catholic moral theology for "It's not an intrinsic moral evil when the President orders it." So excusing the mass murder of the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the grounds that Roosevelt and Truman are revered heros in American history doesn't especially persuade me that these war crimes were okay. Similarly, saying the President has a tough job does not seem to me to justify saying, "The President sometimes has to order intrinsically immoral acts to be done and using harsh (but never inaccurate)language to criticize these acts is more upsetting to me than the acts themselves" reveals, I think, disordered priorities. I think we should be more upset that the President has arrogated to himself the power to declare anybody he likes and enemy combatant, detain them as long as he likes, torture them, exempt himself from the law, and destroy evidence of same, than that some guy with a blog bleats in protest against this.
Gotta Love Abp. Burke
Chris Johnson send the link along and adds:
Chris Johnson send the link along and adds:
It was on the local news here a couple days ago and the only reason I'm passing it along is that I heard on the radio that ESPN's taking it national tonight. Some of the sports talk radio guys here were going ballistic with knowledge of Catholic doctrine and practice that would have to improve in order to be imbecilic.
The Curse of Leviticus
And as for those of you that are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues. They shall stumble over one another, as if to escape a sword, though none pursues; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
Totalitarian Becomes So Muddled by His Simple-Minded Atheism He Thinks He is Libertarian
Kids! See if you can count up on the contradictions and non sequiturs!
Kids! See if you can count up on the contradictions and non sequiturs!
A reader sent me this with the caption "What we're fighting here"
The only problem with that analysis: we're not fighting it:
That's the little rub with all of President Bush's starry-eyed rhetoric about the healing and redeeming power of democracy and the dream of freedom that burns in the breast of every man, woman, and child in the world: It's Wilsonian rubbish, it's not true, and when you act as though it is, you wind up being played for a sucker by Reality. A man is being sentenced to death by a kangaroo court of Bronze Age thugs whose religion is too brittle to endure the slightest criticism. But the people doing the sentencing are not Taliban goons or Al-Quaeda thugs. They are our valiant allies in the Free and Democratic Afghanistan that has freely and democratically chosen to live according to the tenets of a religion of slavery and oppression. That is but one reason the entire neocon secular messianic End to Evil project in the mideast is so utterly loony.
The only problem with that analysis: we're not fighting it:
Rhimullah Samandar, the head of the Kabul-based National Journalists Union of Afghanistan, said Kambaksh had been sentenced to death under Article 130 of the Afghan constitution. That article says that if no law exists regarding an issue than a court's decision should be in accord with Hanafi jurisprudence.
Hanafi is an orthodox school of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence followed in southern and central Asia.
That's the little rub with all of President Bush's starry-eyed rhetoric about the healing and redeeming power of democracy and the dream of freedom that burns in the breast of every man, woman, and child in the world: It's Wilsonian rubbish, it's not true, and when you act as though it is, you wind up being played for a sucker by Reality. A man is being sentenced to death by a kangaroo court of Bronze Age thugs whose religion is too brittle to endure the slightest criticism. But the people doing the sentencing are not Taliban goons or Al-Quaeda thugs. They are our valiant allies in the Free and Democratic Afghanistan that has freely and democratically chosen to live according to the tenets of a religion of slavery and oppression. That is but one reason the entire neocon secular messianic End to Evil project in the mideast is so utterly loony.
The Contempt for Human Life at the Heart of the People's Republic of Maplegrad
However, the spiritual vacuum this betoken is begging for tyranny. Supernature abhors a vacuum. If you will not have God, you will get some form of tyranny or other. We Americans are treading the same path, with a few more delays. If you will not have right and justice as kings in your city, you *will* have pleasure and pain as kings.
However, the spiritual vacuum this betoken is begging for tyranny. Supernature abhors a vacuum. If you will not have God, you will get some form of tyranny or other. We Americans are treading the same path, with a few more delays. If you will not have right and justice as kings in your city, you *will* have pleasure and pain as kings.
The Church of the Jedi
Welsh pagans seem to hover somewhere between tongue-in-cheek and half serious.
Welsh pagans seem to hover somewhere between tongue-in-cheek and half serious.
David Alexander has Astounding News
He writes:
He writes:
If I didn't see it for myself, I wouldn't have believed it. The Washington Post ran a piece on Page A3 (!!!) of today's edition, about the March for Life. It is heavily biased... in favor of the March!
My Latest on Catholic Exchange
In which we meet the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding and discover the wonders that Episcopalian priestettes and Seattle University Jesuits can achieve.
In which we meet the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding and discover the wonders that Episcopalian priestettes and Seattle University Jesuits can achieve.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Vatican Once Again Plays Cassandra as Cloning Agitprop Ramps up "What could it hurt?" Rhetoric
Eventually people will say, "How were we suppose to know? Why didn't the Church speak out against this? It's *their* fault!"
Eventually people will say, "How were we suppose to know? Why didn't the Church speak out against this? It's *their* fault!"
By "Us" He Means "You people who don't think like I do"
The mysteriously-still-thought-a-genius Phillip Pullman on his Malthusian schemes for dealing with untermenschen:
Another pagan ready to sacrifice the weak to appease Gaia. He sure as hell doesn't mean *he* should be eaten to heal the earth or he could make his quietus with a bare bodkin right now. He means people like this should suffer. He's got his, Jack.
“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is, and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!” - A Christmas Carol
The mysteriously-still-thought-a-genius Phillip Pullman on his Malthusian schemes for dealing with untermenschen:
..."This is a crisis as big as war and you couldn't trade your ration book in the wartime. You were allowed three ounces of butter a week, or whatever, and that was it. And this is what it should be like with carbon. None of this carbon trading. We should have a fixed limit and if you use it all up in October, then tough, you shiver for the rest of the year."
..."If the polar bears leapt from the pages of my fiction into reality and saw what was happening," reckons Pullman, "they'd eat us. Eat as many of us as quickly as they possibly could. And good luck to them."
Another pagan ready to sacrifice the weak to appease Gaia. He sure as hell doesn't mean *he* should be eaten to heal the earth or he could make his quietus with a bare bodkin right now. He means people like this should suffer. He's got his, Jack.
“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is, and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!” - A Christmas Carol
My Latest for the Register
In which we discover that it is wisdom to trust in Christ and Holy Church, but folly to trust in Christians.
In which we discover that it is wisdom to trust in Christ and Holy Church, but folly to trust in Christians.
Strange Election
Dems at each others throats, and forced to appeal to... *snerk*... excuse me, I'm trying to compose myself.... the Clintons' sense of.... HONOR! BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Meanwhile, conservative pundits are also ripping each other new ones, with Limbaugh, Medved, Kristol, and Hewitt in a strange circular firing squad.
Oh, and Nader is talking about running again.
Lust for the One Ring does strange things to people. Since it's Tuesday and I'm in the mood for idle betting, today I'll say it will be McCain v. Billary. Tomorrow I'll guess something else.
Dems at each others throats, and forced to appeal to... *snerk*... excuse me, I'm trying to compose myself.... the Clintons' sense of.... HONOR! BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Meanwhile, conservative pundits are also ripping each other new ones, with Limbaugh, Medved, Kristol, and Hewitt in a strange circular firing squad.
Oh, and Nader is talking about running again.
Lust for the One Ring does strange things to people. Since it's Tuesday and I'm in the mood for idle betting, today I'll say it will be McCain v. Billary. Tomorrow I'll guess something else.
The Long-Suffering, but Funny, Chris Johnson Writes:
Take a break, Chris. Go read about Archbishop Milingo. That'll cheer you up. Not all the kooks are Piskies.
How do you make fun of a "church" that obstinately refuses to stop making fun of itself?
Johnson's Third Law of Episcopal Thermodynamics: every joke you make about the Episcopal Church eventually comes true. Back in the day, I used to quip that the United Nations was the TEC Vatican and that eventually the Episcopal religion would require a haj to Turtle Bay of its adherents. I don't make that joke anymore.
Take a break, Chris. Go read about Archbishop Milingo. That'll cheer you up. Not all the kooks are Piskies.
A movement now more concerned with hunting heretics than making converts
Yeah, that would appear to be conservatism under the Thought-Resistant Bush Administration. As a despised heretic myself, I can attest to the reality. I stumbled on it when I wrote (to people I naively assumed cared about the old conservative values of honor, limited government, and fundamental human right) that torture was wrong, even when we do it. I was genuinely surprised to discover that I was in a distinct minority on the right, and that the Right would increasingly marshal its resources to laugh off, shout down, and generally ignore the problem of an Executive who has granted himself the power to declare anyone he likes and illegal combatant, detain them for as long as he likes, torture them, and hide the evidence of all this. Protest this and you suffer from some "derangement" or other.
The only way I see it changing is if (God forbid) Hillary is elected. Suddenly, we'll be hearing all about the illegitimate encroachment of Leviathan on our lives and the dangerous empowerment of the Executive to do whatever she pleases.
Yeah, that would appear to be conservatism under the Thought-Resistant Bush Administration. As a despised heretic myself, I can attest to the reality. I stumbled on it when I wrote (to people I naively assumed cared about the old conservative values of honor, limited government, and fundamental human right) that torture was wrong, even when we do it. I was genuinely surprised to discover that I was in a distinct minority on the right, and that the Right would increasingly marshal its resources to laugh off, shout down, and generally ignore the problem of an Executive who has granted himself the power to declare anyone he likes and illegal combatant, detain them for as long as he likes, torture them, and hide the evidence of all this. Protest this and you suffer from some "derangement" or other.
The only way I see it changing is if (God forbid) Hillary is elected. Suddenly, we'll be hearing all about the illegitimate encroachment of Leviathan on our lives and the dangerous empowerment of the Executive to do whatever she pleases.
First off, "Scott Weatherhogge" is a fantastically Dickensian name
Second, the Supreme Intergalactic Plenipotentiary of the Seattle Chesterton Society passed this along and asked me to tell all y'all about it.
Now you know!
Second, the Supreme Intergalactic Plenipotentiary of the Seattle Chesterton Society passed this along and asked me to tell all y'all about it.
Dear friends and fellows,
How should a classical educator think about math? Do the liberal arts apply, in the final analysis, only to the humanities? Do classical and modern mind sets think differently about mathematics? If so, what are the practical implications of such differences, if any?
Please join the faculty and fellows of New Albion Academy this Friday evening for a simulating conversation on mathematics in education. Andrew Jensen, one of our distinguished faculty members, will present his talk entitled "The liberal arts mind and mathematics". There will be a roundtable discussion after Mr. Jensen's talk in which audience members can participate in asking and answering questions. As always, feel free to invite any of your acquaintances who would be interested in joining us for this discussion. We hope to see this Friday.
Where: Lynnwood Orthodox Presbyterian Church
17711 Spruce Way, Lynnwood, WA 98037
When: Friday, January 25th
Time: 7:30 PM
In Christ,
Scott Weatherhogge
For the faculty of New Albion Academy
Now you know!
Jeffrey Tucker Says It's Time to End Child Labor Laws
Inside Catholic: Something to Offend the Whole Family
I have no big opinions here. It may well be time to end such laws as they have hitherto stood. They are prudential judgements, not holy writ, and (at least in the first world) we no longer live in the era of the sweat shop. However, I can well imagine there could be unforeseen bad consequences in a world where Wal-Mart has lots of power and money and ordinary people have less and less. Comments?
Inside Catholic: Something to Offend the Whole Family
I have no big opinions here. It may well be time to end such laws as they have hitherto stood. They are prudential judgements, not holy writ, and (at least in the first world) we no longer live in the era of the sweat shop. However, I can well imagine there could be unforeseen bad consequences in a world where Wal-Mart has lots of power and money and ordinary people have less and less. Comments?
CAMPUS MINISTRY JOB OPENING
St. Mary's Catholic Center at Texas A&M University, College Station,Texas, is seeking a full-time campus minister, to serve on a team which also includes two full-time diocesan priests, three part-time permanent deacons, four women religious, four other lay campus ministers and two interns. The position is expected to be filled by the summer of 2008. It is open until filled, with review of applications beginning immediately.
St. Mary's is a Campus Ministry Center serving Texas A&M University, which has 45,000 students, about 11,500 of whom are Catholic.
Responsibilities of the position include directing a large RCIA program, young adult catechesis, advising student groups, retreats, coordinating volunteers, campus outreach, some pastoral care and other ministry duties within the pastoral team.
Salary is commensurate with qualifications and experience.
Requirements: Practicing Catholic with a Master's degree in theology or pastoral ministry. Prior Ministry and RCIA / catechesis experience. Willing to work on a team and work flexible hours. Bilingual and campus ministry experience are plusses.
Please send your resume, cover letter, and your date of availability tostart, by March 14, 2008, to:
Marcel LeJeune, Assistant Director of Campus Ministry, St. Mary's Catholic Center, 603 Church Ave, College Station, TX 77840.
E-mail: mlejeune@aggiecatholic.org <mailto:mlejeune@aggiecatholic.org>
Telephone: (979) 846-5717. Fax: (979) 846-4493.
Web site: www.aggiecatholic.org <http://www.aggiecatholic.org/>
Whatcha call yer burnin' coals on the head
Papa Ratzi in the wake of the Sapienza 15 Minute Hate Against Incorrect Thought:
Wonderful!
Papa Ratzi in the wake of the Sapienza 15 Minute Hate Against Incorrect Thought:
The university environment, which for many years was my world, linked for me a love for the seeking of truth, for exchange, for frank and respectful dialogue between differing positions. All this, too, is the mission of the church, charged to faithfully follow Jesus, the Teacher of life, of truth and of love. As a professor, so to say, emeritus, who's encountered many students in his life, I encourage you, dear collegians, to always be respectful of other people's opinions and to seek out, with a free and responsible spirit, the truth and the good. To all and each of you I renew the expression of my gratitude, assuring you of my affection and prayers.
Wonderful!
As though chaos = "diversity" and true diversity is the opposite of unity
Apparently, Jesus was wrong to pray that they may all be one. The New York Times explains it all for you.
Apparently, Jesus was wrong to pray that they may all be one. The New York Times explains it all for you.
Monday, January 21, 2008
No Subtle Knife and No Amber Spyglass, according to John C. Wright
One happy side benefit of the Tanking of the Golden Compass.
In other John C. Wright News: John calls all mankind to the service of a cause I truly believe every human being can support with all his or her heart:
THE NEW SPACE PRINCESS MOVEMENT!
One happy side benefit of the Tanking of the Golden Compass.
In other John C. Wright News: John calls all mankind to the service of a cause I truly believe every human being can support with all his or her heart:
THE NEW SPACE PRINCESS MOVEMENT!
Ezra Levant Blames the Jews
... and, in this case, he's got a point. He's asking of the current part Kafka/part Stalin regime of Thoughtcrime Prevention in Soviet Canuckistan, "How did we get here?" and he writes:
For similar reasons, I oppose all the excusifying being done by the short-sighted Rubber Hose Right on behalf of the Bush/Cheney Regime of Legal Torture, in no small part because it's a classic example of idiots saying "Hey! What could it hurt? This is only being used against Bad Guys! When has it *ever* happened that a North American State has turned against its own citizens and behaved tyrannically? When has some evil precedent in American law been taken as the basis for a further
... and, in this case, he's got a point. He's asking of the current part Kafka/part Stalin regime of Thoughtcrime Prevention in Soviet Canuckistan, "How did we get here?" and he writes:
"A generation ago, illiberal elements in the 'official' Jewish community pressed Canadian governments to introduce laws limiting free speech. The targets of those laws were invariably poor, unorganized, harmless neo-Nazi cranks and conspiracy theorists such as Ernst Zundel and Jim Keegstra — nobodies who were turned into international celebrities when they were prosecuted for their thought crimes.
"But now come Mr. Elmasry and Mr. Soharwardy and their ilk, using the very precedents set by the Canadian Jewish Congress..."
For similar reasons, I oppose all the excusifying being done by the short-sighted Rubber Hose Right on behalf of the Bush/Cheney Regime of Legal Torture, in no small part because it's a classic example of idiots saying "Hey! What could it hurt? This is only being used against Bad Guys! When has it *ever* happened that a North American State has turned against its own citizens and behaved tyrannically? When has some evil precedent in American law been taken as the basis for a further