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Thursday, January 31, 2008
Whatcha Call Yer Basic Lack of Perspective 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... Labels: News of the Weird Why So Many Traditionalists Don't Get Invited to Parties 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 Labels: Rad Trads 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. Labels: Evil Party, EvilCorp The Pacific Northwest According To Jeff Foxworthy 1. You know the state flower (Mildew). Uncannily accurate. Labels: Humor, Inside the Soviet of Washington 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. Labels: Liturgy stuff 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? Labels: Salvation Through Leviathan By Any Means Necessary 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. Labels: Clash of Civilizations Watch 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. Labels: Politics A reader writes: I have a request for your readers, if you don't mind? I'm posting this because, as you folks well know, I just hate Traditionalists. :) Labels: Mailbag 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. Labels: Meditations, Politics 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. Labels: Culture of Death Watch 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.... Labels: Politics A reader writes: A friend of mine has just had her father admitted to hospice. Please pray for them and for her mother. Lord, hear our prayer. If anyone can help my reader, please respond in the combox. Labels: Prayer Requests 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. Labels: Meditations, Praise report Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Rubbish In which we examine the preposterous "assured results of modern thought" so popular among our Chattering Classes. Labels: Catholic Exchange Stuff 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. Labels: Bronze Age Bullies and Media Cowards, Inside Catholic Stuff Your questions, God's answers QUESTION: Can demons possess cats? For more Kreeftian insights, check out this. Labels: Cool Stuff 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. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs, Secular Messianism For some reason they did not depict women in burqas or chadors. Why? Me! Me! Pick me! I know why! Labels: Because Rome Does not Issue Fatwas, Bronze Age Bullies and Media Cowards, The Last Acceptable Prejudice 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. 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. Labels: Politics Catholic British MPs Trying to Do the Right Thing Here's hoping they don't get punished by their countrymen for standing against cloning. Labels: Culture of Death Watch 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. Labels: Consequentialism on Parade, Salvation Through Leviathan By Any Means Necessary 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. Labels: Culture of Death Watch Luke the Nordic Animating Giant writes: 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. 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! Which naturally led me to reply: Coach Z inspires haikus that end with the word Jeeearorarorb! Labels: Fambly 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." Labels: Sin Makes You Stupid 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 Labels: Speaking gigs 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. Labels: Radio 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. Labels: Secular Messianism I'm impressed! The Catholic Blog Awards have a cool-looking press release and everything now! Nominations for the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards Begin 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. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs 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. Labels: Seven Basic Elements Good News! Maureen Wittmann went to the March for Life! And the World of Good keeps on turning! Labels: Good News 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: 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. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs A reader writes: 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. I think you mean this and this. Thanks for your kind words about my work! Labels: Sheavings 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: 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. Labels: Politics 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. Labels: Crime and Punishment Gotta love the Media Hillary and Obama Icy to Each Other (oh! and some guy gives a speech about something) Labels: Politics 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: 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!" 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. Labels: Meditations Monday, January 28, 2008
A Good Time Shall be Had By All! Dear Friends of the G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle, Labels: Chestertoniana Hey! Steve Dillard and All You Catholics Against Rudy! Start polishing the champagne glasses! Mission nearly accomplished! Labels: Politics, Stupid Party 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. Labels: Politics List Gets Short for Hobbit Directors Almost as cool is the news that PJ is making a Tintin film! Labels: At the Movies A reader writes: 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. Labels: Secular Messianism When I wrote: 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. Labels: Salvation Through Leviathan By Any Means Necessary |
