I'm outta here, off to Prague, Oklahoma, and back (briefly) Monday! Don't forget the Tin Cup Rattle!
And a thousand thanks for your kindness and generosity!

Meanwhile, I didn't want to leave before posting this prayer request from a reader:

My grandfather died this evening. My assumption is that he needed conversion. I had a ton of people praying for him and said the chaplet of the Divine Mercy for about 5 hours at his bedside as he was on the way out, and he lasted until the vigil of the Sacred Heart, even though he looked like he was gonna go much sooner, so I have great hope. I'd like for you to put a prayer request out there for him, if possible. In any case, I wish you the best and you're in my prayers.

God of mercy, hear our prayer and grant mercy and eternal rest to this man and strength and consolation to those love him. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen!

Good Day! It's Day 3 of the Quarterly Catholic and Enjoying It! Tin Cup Rattle

Between scrambling to get work done before I head for Prague Oklahoma, I've been laboring to provide you with the curious mix of theological and cultural commentary you've come to expect here, as well as crack you up once or twice. Meanwhile, we Sheas are scraping together this month's allotment of money to slowly pay off our dental bills, do something about the car disaster and continue our Adventures in Trusting Providence in support of five.

Therefore, as you enjoy the convivial atmosphere of the comments boxes and the fruits of my scriptoriariaristic labor, please consider helping us out with a donation. It isn't everywhere you can promulgate your theories, discuss the relationship of Catholic doctrine to ET and holograms, and hear StrongBad sing!

Wouldn't you gasp with hideous sucking sobs of grief if you lost that? Dry your eyes and click on the PayPal button to the left and help CAEI stay on the air and our bills get paid. You can actually, literally, help a Catholic father keep a roof over his kids' heads. Positively Dickensian!

You can either make a straight donation or, if you like to get something for your money (something beyond this blog that you've come to love and depend on, I mean), you can buy my books and tapes (autographed even!). Imagine the happy face of your loved one: "Here dear, it's autographed by the author!" And if you'd rather not do PayPal, feel free to email me and ask for my snailmail address. I'll happily take a check instead.

And take a cue from many other satisfied folk such as Fr. Shane Tharp and have me out to speak (which is what I will be doing from tomorrow till Sunday in Prague, Oklahoma (where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain).

Back on Monday (briefly). I'll be out most of Monday, then back on Tuesday, then gone again from Friday, June 6 until Monday, June 16. Then I'm gone again June 21-22. Your prayers during this crazy month are appreciated!

PS. As a sop while I'm gone, here my latest piece (on Getting Past Clericalism) for InsideCatholic.com. Be sure and check in again tomorrow when they will be running a whole symposium on clericalism featuring a bunch of writers (including yours truly).

Fake Courage, Real Cowardice

In which we examine how culture of death prophets commit real evils in the cowardly fear of imaginary evils.

Scott McClellan

What strikes me about the whole flap with McClellan is how, if you took out McClellan's name and put in, say, Jason Beghe and then took out "Bush Administration" and put in "Church of Scientology", almost all the dynamics and the language of everybody on both sides of the controversy would be indistinguishable. McClellan talks like somebody talks when they are escaping from a cult and his critics sound very much like people who are still defending the cult. Very little is said about whether what he has to say is true. Instead it's all about Loyalty and Being a Traitor.

A reader writes:

Yesterday we receive a rather bizarre letter in the mail from a group identifying itself as "St. Matthew's Churches". They sent something called a "prayer rug" (a piece of paper with the face of Jesus on it - like the Veil of Veronica) and other things smacking of "prosperity gospel" type teaching.

So, out of morbid curiosity, we checked out the website.

Suffice to say we were rather...shocked...to see that the photos of the church, as well as the congregation and the clergy, looked extremely Catholic. Including referring to communion as the Eucharist, a tabernacle, crucifix, and vestments. Which got us wondering: are they really a legit (albeit theologically wacky) group, or are they just an elaborate spoof? If they aren't a scam, Dave thinks they're like the Irvingites (he said you'd know what that means - I haven't a clue).

You've communicated with Dave over the years, so you're probably aware he has a pretty good grasp and awareness about different faiths and organizations. He - who can talk anyone's ear off and has a kitchen junk drawer of a mind - hasn't heard of them, either.

Have any of your readers encountered this group?

Never heard of 'em. They look like a pretty typical non-denom with some Fundy notions. I doubt they are a spoof. Anybody else heard of 'em?

Abp Naumann Answers Various Questions about his Rebuke of Gov. Rebelius

From our "All Religions are Equally Superior to Christianity" file

So this coach in Detroit gets fired, not for anything he did, but because he *knows* a guy who (you may want to sit down for this) dared to evangelize a Muslim.

You read that right. In these United States--right now--you can lose your job merely for associating with people who, like, think Christ is Lord and try to say as much to others. No crime was committed. No public monies abused. No theft. The entire punishable offense consisted of knowing somebody who was too vocal about his Christian beliefs.

I hope this coach sues and wins bigtime. This is religious bigotry pure and simple. It is also an assault on free speech and freedom of association.

Brits Figuring out that Supernature Abhors a Vacuum

The choice is not whether Britain shall inhale after the great atheistic exhalation is done. The choice is only *what* Britain shall inhale. If she will not have the Holy Spirit, she shall surely have Something Else.

If only UN employees could marry! If only women could be UN employees!

Poland is "Anti-Gay" According to Amnesty International

"Anti-gay" means "failing to celebrate homosexuality as the source and summit of all that is noble, good, and right." Anything less than celebration is "bigotry". Right thinking will be rewarded. Wrong-thinking will be punished.

Doing Dr. Tom Curran's "Sound Insight" show today at 8:00 AM PDT

You can stream it here.

Back later, dudes and dudettes!

There's an old saying

When the gospel went to Greece, it became a philosophy.
When it got to Rome, it became an Empire.
When it reached Europe, it became a civilization.
And when it got to America, it became a business.

Behold: How to Know that God is a Salesman!

In which we discover that the Latest Real Jesus is a perfect reflection of all the hopes and aspirations of the Millennial American capitalist soul. The Apotheosis of Willy Loman.

Helping Tornado Victims

A reader writes:

I follow storms as a hobby. Recently in the news tornadoes have captured the headlines. It was just released that the Parkersburg, Iowa tornado was rated an EF5 which is the highest damage designator on the EF scale. I also noticed in my daily reading that a local Catholic Church is accepting donations to help the victims. I pulled this from my blog. If you wouldn't mind spreading the word I would appreciate it.

Parkersburg Tornado Rated EF5

Keep those who have suffered loss in your prayers. If you want to do something to help, you can contact a local Catholic Church who is raising money to assist the victims.

St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Iowa City is collecting monetary donations, Wal-Mart or Target gift cards and canned goods to give to the

St. Patrick's Catholic Church of Parkersburg
421 S. Linn St., P.O. Box 2776
Iowa City, IA 52244

or call 319-337-2856

This parish knows loss. After all their beloved church was destroyed by a tornado on Holy Thursday evening, 2006.

Thanks for the heads up!

More Post-Secularism

Did you ever notice that it's the God of Israel every atheist is busy not believing in? All the energy is spent deconstructing him. But, of course, the human heart goes on longing for him. And so, demonstrating once again that atheism is a temporary pause between exhaling biblical belief and inhaling Something Else, the NY Times does its bit to provide yet another New Age Alternative Spirituality to biblical belief. Today's religion du jour: Mysterious Brain Stimulus.

It's perfect! All the consolations of religious belief--bliss, altered states, effortless mystical joy--with none of those nasty demands for rationality, transcendance, etc. It's an Emergent Religion that comes from ourselves, is created by a Higher Mind Potential and does not threaten us with, well, Judgement.

Now, I don't deny that the woman has had a real experience. The brain is an astounding and mysterious thing. I simply note that preternatural experiences are not *super*natural and they tell us nothing except that, once again, the evidence indicates that human beings are created as chalices awaiting the wine of revelation. Nothing in the woman's experience actually establishes a "new spirituality". It simply establishes that she is, like the rest of us, an empty vessel in need of filling.

This, by the way, is why the Church does not take mystical experience alone as a mark of sanctity. Any idiot and indeed any grave sinner can have a mystical experience. The question is: are you following Christ? If so, then the visions may be a help from him. But they might also be epilepsy, or those mushrooms you ate, or lies from the pit of hell sent by the devil who hath power to assume a pleasing shape. The proof of the pudding is in our ordinary obedience to Christ, not in altered states.

Slick Con Man Gives 10 Reasons Why All Religions Except Self-Worship Are Wrong--Especially Christianity

There's so much mud thrown here, so many lies, so much misinformation, and so much ignorance that it's really more than I have time to do to reply to, even assuming the author was remotely interested in a reply. However, I don't think you can make yourself this ignorant of Christianity without working hard at it. Nothing in this world, not even the Nazis, not even Satan is simply and purely evil. The mark of a sane mind is that it can always find *something* good in the worst things, because creation is fundamentally good. So a Christian theologian can point out that God's goodness always retains a toehold in the greatest sinner, whether human or angelic, because without that toehold the sinner would have neither existence, intelligence, power, or will--which are all goods even when they are profoundly perverted.

This guy can see *nothing* good in Christianity at all. He is searching for--he is bound and determined to find--absolutely nothing good there at all. Even when I was a non-Christian, I would have mistrusted him because I would have known that nothing, and certainly not the Christians I had known, was as utterly depraved as he paints. This is a guy with issues--a living embodiment of the biblial maxim, "To the impure, all things are impure." God help him!

How to Promote Priestly Vocations--in Texas

Deep and Profound Thanks to the Kind and Generous Readers Who Responded to my Crie de Coeur About Our Car Disaster Yesterday

Since prudence dictates it, I think I will take the hint and go ahead and make this next week or so the occasion of the Summer Tin Cup Rattle.

This is the one week each quarter where I ask for some small remuneration for my efforts to provide you with the sort of Catholic content, newsiness, fun, and so forth that is this blog.

Dunno how many new readers I've got, so I'll explain the situation for newcomers (bear with me, old timers). We (that is, the Sheas, nobody else is running this blog) live in narrow financial straits. I am a writer (and sole breadwinner) trying to keep two growing boys and one huge young man fed on a steady income of $461 a month (without dental insurance), plus what I can make from donations here and freelance work both writing and speaking. My wife is the chief homeschooler, as well as a human dynamo in a dozen other tasks. This month our adventure in trusting Providence includes having to get a car repaired (twice), do the new round of dental bills, and meet the bills for various other stuff that is all more expensive to due high gas prices).

So, I'm here to say that I hope you'll not muzzle the ox treading out the ASCII. I appreciate very much the generosity of the folks who responded with gifts and prayers to yesterday's bleat of anguish. I hope that more of you will find time to respond this week and I'm askin' ya, if everybody who has gotten something good from this blog will kick in some bucks on the PayPal button (I'm not shy, be as generous as you can) you'd be supporting my work and keeping our fiscal fat out of the fire as we struggle through another month. I've kept good on my word not to rattle the tin cup between quarters. But this week I'm taking time to say, "If you like what you get here, then please be as generous as you can and help out with the care and feeding of a unique news, opinion, and informations source that you just can't find anyplace else." After all, what other blog combines theological analysis by Russell Shaw with... the latest StrongBad email!!!

Thanks!

Oh, and remember, you can buy my books and tapes!. And if you'd don't trust PayPal, feel free to email me and ask for my snailmail address. I'll happily take a check instead.

Also, consider following in the footsteps of these happy folk who have invited me to come speak for a reasonable honorarium:

May 31 Conference in Prague, OK. Topics: 101 Reasons Not to be Catholic, Making Senses Out of Scripture, This is My Body, Behold Your Mother. Contact: Fr. Shane Tharp.

June 6 Speaking in Reno, Nevada. Topic: 101 Reasons Not to Be Catholic. Email: James Carrico.

June 22 Catholic New Media Celebration, Atlanta, GA.

In Essential Things Unity

In which we learn about the oneness of the Church.

Johannes 10:16: Und ich habe noch andere Schafe, die sind nicht aus diesem Stalle; und dieselben muß ich herführen, und sie werden meine Stimme hören, und wird eine Herde und ein Hirte werden.

The word of the All-Knowing Quantum Field of Intelligence came unto Obama saying, "It is too light a thing that you should be my President to raise up the tribes of America and to restore the preserved of the Blue States; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." Thus says the Zeitgeist, the Redeemer of America and his Holy One, to one deeply hyped, adored by the nations, the servant of rulers: "Politicos shall see and arise; bureaucrats, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Zeigeist, who is hip, the Cool One of America, who has chosen you."

Somehow This Sound Like Somebody's Idea for a Reality TV Show

"The Eucharist Hologram Project"

Shawn McCullough is in the process of obtaining the holographic masters for the creation of eucharistic stickers that can be transported anywhere across the world, due to their small size.

By the way, here's a theological conundrum: if you genuflect before a hologram of the Eucharist, is that idolatry? Is it even possible to have Eucharistic Adoration via some medium such as streaming video since, strictly speaking what you are worshiping is not the Eucharist but a facsimile made of pixels or paper?

Discuss, class.

A reader writes:

I was surfing around this morning and came across your blog (as a history major and enthusiast I thought the discussion on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was great!) and I wanted to pass along to you a project I have been working on because you may find it interesting.

About two years ago I began building a service with a friend of mine called I Live Inspired that delivers inspirational text messages to people. We started it for the drug and alcohol recovery community after Rob, the co-founder, completed treatment. A friend of his began sending him a daily recovery themed text message every morning at the same time and he found that it really helped him develop a routine of positive thinking. He forwarded it to friends and soon there were 50 people asking for it.

Together we set out to build a service that could offer these messages on a larger scale. We also made the decision to expand the content to include other inspired communities and authors. Since we both went to Catholic school (we became friends at Gonzaga College High School in Washington DC about 10 years ago) we knew we wanted to add inspiration and wisdom from Mother Teresa to our list.

After much searching and negotiating we are excited to say that we know are sending out her teachings to people everyday. We also have a 'PowerFull Living from God's Word" community and a "Teachings from the Dalai Lama" community (we actually met him in October after walking 100 miles across Indiana - amazing experience and story in itself!).

Anyway...I thought you might find this a cool service and story and I would love to offer you a free subscription if you wanted to try it out or even review it. The site is www.ILiveInspired.com, if you want to check it out. Keep up the great work Mark - I look forward to reading more.

I never quite know what to make of things like this. I'm rather wary of the notion that there's this fungible cloud of "wisdom" out there that is all equally wise no matter whether it comes from Tibetan Buddhism, a great Christian saint, or whoever. Yes, great pagans have things to teach us (just as St. Thomas what he thinks of Aristotle). But I'm not tremendously convinced that the "inspiration" of the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa are simply two facets of some general fund of "religious wisdom". Perhaps the site avoids this. I dunno.

Scott P. Richert Ponders the Question of the Catholic Citizen's Relationship to America

It's an interesting problem. Chesterton famously noted that America is a nation with the soul of a Church. Citizenship is based, not on belonging to a "nation" as the idea was historically understood (that is, a people with a common culture and language) but by profession of a creed. There are both very good and very sinister possibilities at work in that undertaking (as with all great human undertakings) and the Catholic needs to apply his wits to navigating those possibilities. On the one hand, America puts into practice in the civil realm--in a way that is historically unique--the deeply Catholic vision of a world in which there is "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female". There is much to be said for the American vision of civil equality, for the American love (sung by Walt Whitman so beautifully) of a real Republic of equals where everybody has a crack at making something of themselves. We do not have a classless society (just look at how we anoint Kennedys, movie stars, and ball players as demi-gods). But we have really made a break, and a break for the better in many ways, with the cultures that are often hagridden by stratification. Somebody whose ancestors were pig farmers or shtetel dwellers for centuries really could come here and make a new life for themselves--and they still do.

But, of course, being a creedal nation means that it is possible to incorporate into the Creed things which are flatly contradictory of the real Creed--as that gay marriage is true marriage and must be confessed as such under penalty of law, or that abortion is peachy and must be confessed as such under penalty of being one of those damned pro-lifers. When the American creed and the Creed start to conflict (and this conflict becomes more like as Caesar presumes to be worshipped as a god, then Catholics have to figure out how they will honor Caesar in his rightful perogatives while defying him wisely in his usurpations.

The Ever-Interesting John C. Wright liked Prince Caspian

The Media: Where Busses Always Plunge, Catholics are Always Devout, the Vatican Always Cracks Down and Obama is Always Articulate

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong. - Barack Obama, Articulately Seeing Dead People

H/T: What's Wrong with the World

Raiders of the Lost Franchise

Steve Greydanus has muted praise for the new Indy flick.

Tales of the Unexplained

Mysterious are God's ways. Makes you want to know what happens to this woman next.

Science and Reason Get You as Far as Describing the Concave Surface of the Empty Chalice

The human person comes equipped with a colossal superabundance of attributes that do him no earthly good (longing for transcendance and meaning, love of beauty, a philosophical bent that causes a lot of mischief, a knack for poetry, a radical inability to be content even when his belly is full and he has all the earthly happiness you could possibly want). A cow or ape who manifested these qualities would be the stuff of fairy tale.

The best science and reason can do is mumble something about "complex herd instinct" and "memes". But let's face it: man is a prodigious freak of nature, if purely natural he is. Nothing else in this world comes close and the attempt to make him blend into nature only makes his freakishness more obvious to anybody not blinded by the Darwin Mythos.

Slowly, the sciences and reason are proceeding back to the place St. Thomas was centuries ago: the recognition that only the wine of Christ's revelation can fill the chalice of the human person.

Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests

Four words: garbage in, garbage out.

The medievals had a saying: That which is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.

The Enlightenment though in terms of machines and Newtonian physics and therefore saw everything in terms of machines and Newtonian physics. Therefore, they saw the Ultimate in those terms as well.

Today, we are an age of computers and software and the Darwinian Mythos, so we declare the ultimate to be nothing more than that too.

Basically, the article is just an expression of Latest Real Jesus Thinking. People who are inclined to take such things seriously and feel either threatened by or triumphant about such rubbish should really pause to ask elementary questions like "what does 'religion' mean to the author?" I defy somebody to come up with a definition that could a) possibly cover all the world's religions, and b) be falsifiable.

The weird thing about so much of the current push to treat religion purely as a product of evolution is that the New Atheists can't make up their minds. Is it simply an artefact of wind and weather with no actualy experience of the Supernatural behind it? The whole New Atheist religion demands that this must be so. But at the same time, the New Atheist seethes with moral outrage and yes, rebellion, at *this* particular artefact of wind and weather in a way he does not seethe with rebellious contempt for, say, a crocodile's appetite or a pig's snout. He cannot be restrained from importing thousands of Oughts from the Judeo-Christian tradition into what he claims is a hermetically sealed universe of Is.

Commies Behave Like Commies

Happily, it's just Catholics they are oppressing, so no big deal.

I wonder if the Chinese Church will produce some figure like Karol Wojtila, who will crack the ice with that long slow pressure that despots hate and are powerless to stop.

Dawn Eden, Master of the Great Headline, is Having a Caption Contest

She's having surgery today too, so please keep her in your prayers.

The Future of All Morality in the Post-Christian West

Once you make consent the sole criterion by which to judge all moral acts (and we already have, we are merely working out the details) then there is not a thing in the world (other than mere aesthetics, which have already ruthlessly ruled to be purely subjective) that allows us to say a word against this poor sod. The signal mark of our civilizational disease is that we no longer live in a society that knows how to say this man is both deranged and evil because it cannot give a coherent account of the good use of its sexual faculties.

What comes *after* the attempt to build a civilization simply on the consent of atomized individuals is chaos.

And after that comes the Strong Man promising Order.

A tyranny, says Chesterton, is a tired democracy.

Why Nobody Ever Has to Worry that Call to Action is the Church's Future

The great thing about knowing something about Christian Theology...

...is that when National Geographic goes all Snake Oil Salesman on you with Gospel of Judas junk, you already know what's what and don't even start to fall for it.

Of course, it can be exasperating watching other people fall for it....

Because I Shouldn't Have to Suffer Alone

A reader writes:

I am approaching custody hearings as my divorce process nears an end. I left because of their abuse, but in a no-fault divorce state, no one wants to hear about it, just divide things evenly, shared custody preferred. St. Blog's please pray for God's will here. Hearings end June 25.

Once again, prayer, not improving advice or long-distance soul reading is what is requested. Please offer prayer.

God our Father, hear the prayers of your child for mercy and justice in this difficult time and bring your perfect will to pass through Christ our Lord. Amen.

A reader writes:

I have a friend who is firmly of the opinion that "spirituality is fine, but not organized religion."

He seems willing to engage me on this topic. Have you written anything that could help me? I have tried your Sheavings, but since their titles don't really tell me what it's all about, I have to dip into each one. I admit that this is a fine way to while away an afternoon, but this afternoon is kind of packed. Help? Or if no Shea, do you know of any other source I could go to for help?

I've sort of touched on the whole religion v spirituality trope in various ways over the year.

This may be of help.

So might this.

Generally, it seems to me that the way into the discussion with many postmoderns is to use an analogy they get, like ecology or the complexity of living things. I suspect the desire for formless spirituality is, at bottom, another notion rooted in fear of the incarnation.

The fun never stops

So a couple of weeks ago our car dies. We take it to the shop and the guy says it will cost $300 to fix. The car's 18 years old and gets crappy mileage. So we decide to save the money and get a newer car. I don't know anything about cars and we have very limited funds. I buy a 97 Ford Escort for $1850. It seemed to run well. Turns out to leak oil and water. $500 repair. This weekend, we trade cars with my sister-in-law cuz she has a huge van that can get the whole posse to our Secret Island Redoubt along with all the camping stuff.

We return yesterday to the joyous news that our new car is stuck in Orting (80 miles away) and will not start. The local grease monkey says it will be minimum $300 (probably much more) to make it go. Something about no compression. I don't know jack about cars.

We bought the car to save on gas bills because we live on a financial knife edge. So far my ineptitude has cost us around $2300 and I expect will cost us $3000 before we are done--and for a car that gets somewhat better mileage, kinda.

I'm feeling pretty low now. Every bloody time we think we might get a little ahead financially and actually save a few dimes, something like this happens. I've got creeping numbness in my toes on my right foot from a compressed disk and no health insurance to speak of. We've got a dental bill like Everest and no dental insurance at all. I take one lousy weekend that doesn't demand work and now this.

Vacation is over. Back to the endless steeplechase. Your prayers would be appreciated. Not that much blogging today. I'm trying to keep our family from drowning financially.

No improving advice, please. Also, if you are the sort of person inclined to discern God's Righteous Punishment in such matters, feel free to start your own blog and go all prophetic on me there. If you do it here, I will just exercise my own prophetic insight and discern that you are a jerk who kicks a guy while he's down.

Just prayers please. And if you feel inclined to begin the June Tin Cup Rattle early, I won't complain.

Gay Brownshirts on the March

Now, nobody gay in history has lost his assets, his job or his freedom for writing, teaching and running a business guided by his belief that marriage is a union of any two individuals who love each other. So why do gay activists support limitations on the freedom of speech, the media and religious expression for anyone who disagrees with them?

Because tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Approve.

Still Much to Do!

I have a chapter to edit and two articles to write before we Sheas and Co. head for our Secret Island Redoubt for the weekend. So I gotta jet. However, as a sop for you and salve to my conscience here is some total stranger's visual account of *their* vacation at one of the many Secret Island Redoubts in the Puget Sound area. As you watch it, think of us and, well, be extremely envious.



Back Tuesday! Have a great weekend!

Hey Seattle!

I will be speaking this evening at St. Mark's Parish in Shoreline. We will have a fun time with an interactive discussion about the Blessed Virgin Mary and various related topics. The session will go from 7:00 PM to 8:30.

See you there!

This is Going to Be Soooooo Fun!

Greg Willits writes concerning the June 22 Catholic New Media Conference in Hotlanta:

Just a quick head's up that Jerry Usher from Catholic Answers Live will now be on the schedule for the CNMC. New press release here.

Also, we launched a new video podcast last week you might enjoy. Fr. Leo Patalinghug is a cooking priest, and he'll also be the keynote speaker at the CNMC. Here's a link if you want to take a gander at the first episode.

I also note with satisfaction that Amy Welborn, The Curt Jester, Lino Rulli and a bunch of other fine folk will be there, so I'm totally psyched! Also, I hope to re-connect with my pal Rod Bennett, whose blog you should read cuz he's so fun!

Big fun!

An Ethically Blind Culture Decides to Make Chimeras

Weird Christians who deserve jail for spouting all the Transcendent God stuff against Mammon shout into the wind while the curse of Babel descends on a darkening Western landscape and moral idiots can only hear money talking.

Once you reduce people to unusually clever pieces of meat, why not interbreed them with other animals?

In other news, God apologizes to Sodom. At least their sins were motivated by warm passions like lust and not by the ice cold motive of avarice and pride.

Doing Dr. Tom Curran's "Sound Insight" show at 8:00 AM PDT

You can stream it here.

Haloscan is Being Twitchy today

If your comment disappears, I didn't do it (probably)!

I Don't See Why Not

Modern Technology: Creating Simple Solutions to Complex Problems!

Cautionary Tale

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dirtbag.

The Militia Immaculata Could Use Your Help!

Dear MI Family,

I have recently been informed of three teens who would like to attend the Marytown Summer Teen Retreat from June 28-July 2, but are in need of financial support in order to do so.

All three teens are from Arizona and have been working diligently to raise funds to cover their $700 airfare. However, they are asking for help to cover their registration for camp, which is $185 each.

The retreat is coming up fast! Please help them accomplish this noble goal to spend 5 days learning about their Faith, praying together with their peers, and receiving the solid Catholic formation they need to best respond to Pope Benedict XVI's challenge to youth:

It is from within the Church that you too will find the courage and support to walk the way of the Lord. Nourished by personal prayer, prompted in silence, shaped by the Church’s liturgy you will discover the particular vocation God has for you. Embrace it with joy. You are Christ’s disciples today. Shine his light upon this great city and beyond. Show the world the reason for the hope that resonates within you. Tell others about the truth that sets you free. [Pope Benedict XVI, Meeting with Young People, Yonkers, NY, 2008]

If you are able to help at all please let me know. MI Youth is a non-profit organization and we'd be happy to send you a receipt for tax purposes.

Donations can be made using your credit card or bankcard by clicking on the donate today button here or by mailing a check made out to MI-Youth to:

MI Youth
115 Forfar Dr.
Bella Vista, AR 72715

All for the Immaculate,
Shevawn Pearson
MI Youth Director

They are an excellent apostolate! I heartily endorse them!

Pavel Chichikov Reads More of his Fine Poetry!

Heh!

My good friend Fr. Phil Bloom, who regularly celebrates a Tridentine Rite Mass at Holy Family in Seattle, in accord with Benedict's motu proprio, writes:

Mark, I know that you hate the Tridentine Mass and all those who take part in it. Still, readers of your blog, not corrupted by your blind hatred, might be interested in this website on The Latin Mass at Holy Family Seattle: As further proof of your irrational animosity, I submit the photo you see.

It shows your unwillingness to stand next to me, but insisting that Dawn Eden be between us.

Fr. Phil Bloom

P.S. Since Fr. Sean Raftis, S.J. took the picture, it also provides evidence that the Jesuits are using you like a puppet in their nefarious efforts to corrupt the Church.

Thanks, Padre! Though normally I am part of the Modernist Conspiracy, Dawn's willingness to talk me down from my unthinking lust to strangle you has persuaded me to make an exception in your case and pause in my quest to destroy Truly True Traditional Catholic faith.

I am the Waffle of Life. He who purchases this Waffle will have Faith, Hope, and Change

And they say the Catholic veneration of relics is dead. Nothing could be more human than the desire for a physical connection to someone or something you care about. What we see done in a very minor key here is perfectly natural for humans. That's why the world if filled with mementos, locks of Elvis' hair, keepsakes, and all the bric a brac of remembering. The Incarnation ratifies this human instinct for physical connection. The gathering and veneration of relics is a perfectly rational response to the Incarnation.

Trashing Church Teaching--On the Church's Dime!

America! What a country!

A reader writes:

How about Chicken Soup for the Atheist "Soul"?

It could be filled with all sorts of affirming little Atheist vignettes. Like: "Tomorrow, or next week, or tens years hence, you will die. Everything you are or ever were will return to the dust from which it came. Your name will be forgotten, and it will be as if you never lived. But that's alright, your very existence was an accident anyway, so it really doesn't matter."

Maybe that's what in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, I dunno. Atheism is, of necessity, a cheerless doctrine, but generally the way the adherent makes up for it is by congratulating himself on his "courage": the icy comfort of the prideful.

Now there is much to admire about courage. It's one of the four cardinal virtues (known there as "fortitude"). And we do right to admire those who slog on doing the right thing when all hope seems lost.

The thing is: courage is the last of the cardinal virtues, not the first and they are ordered as they are for a reason. If you value courage above all other virtues, or alone among all the virtues, you can do great evil with it. Himmler highly valued courage. He was forever exhorting his men to be "ice cold" and to face down the fears that kept lesser men from doing what they must do. A perverted courage can, like all perverted virtues, simply make us more out of touch with reality, including the reality of eternal life.

Big Brother is Keeping You Safe

Because Caesar has the right to know all about you and only terrorist with something to hide could object to that.

James Preece Explains the Modern Art in Middleborough Cathedral

James and Ella took me to York when I was in England last November. I kept telling them, "Do you realize you live in England?" but they seemed to be under the impression they lived somewhere ordinary. I tried to get them to see that Seattle is ordinary but England is a magical far off land that positively bristles with literary, religious, cultural and historical meaning. Here in Seattle, when you park your car, you are just parking your car. When you do it in England, you are parking next to the River Ouse where William Cowper drowned himself in despair that he was not one of Calvin's Elect. When you take a walk in Seattle, you're just taking a walk. When you take a walk in York, you are walking past the Tower where the Jews of York committed mass suicide because a mob of locals decided to kill them in 1170. When you turn a corner, there's the house of St. Margaret Clitherow, right in the middle of the Shambles, a genuine medieval street. Go a couple of blocks over, and there's a Roman column from the camp of Constantine, who was sitting *right there* when word came that he had better hie himself back to Rome if he wanted to be Emperor now that the previous Emperor had died.

And there is York Cathedral: one of the most awesome architectural achievements of the High Middle Ages. We have the Space Needle. Cool, in a Jetsons sort of way. But really, it can't hold a candle to York Cathedral. And when you go inside, you can practically trace the history of the West for the past 800 years or so as you watch the various layers of art and architecture build upon one another. The only way you can trace the last 800 year where I live is by counting rings on old growth trees in the Olympic Rain Forest. History, for Washingtonians, means remembering JP Patches, Stan Boreson, Heart, and Microsoft programs that only required 64K.

So my thanks to James and Ella for living in a magical far off land and sharing a little of it with me! If you ever get to Seattle, be sure I will try to extend hospitality to match yours. I still think fondly of that wonderful dinner with your Mum and Dad, Ella. Huh-larious evening!

Update: James writes me:

Thanks for your kind words, but that's Middlesbrough (our local Catholic)
Cathedral... (MS: D'oh! I fixed the entry!)

I hope and pray they never do anything like that to York Minster! But you never know...

I thought of you recently because Ella has been learning archery and she wanted to buy a traditional longbow.. where do you go for longbows? Nottingham of course! Close to Nottingham is the village of Kegworth and we drove there to meet the man who makes the bows. It was a sunny day in a sweet little village and here behind the pub is a little workshop where a man is making longbows the traditional way and I thought, if Mark Shea were here, he would say SEE! You *DO *live in England...

The fambly are very well, baby Leona is huge!

Msgr. Cormac Burke: Reloaded!

On authority in the Church

On the role of laity in the Church

On Family Planning

This Touchstone Essay Touches on the Same Fear of Intellectual Freedom as My Piece in the Register

Only I think it does it way better.

Man with Black Hat Looks at the Question of Autism in Church

I have to believe there has to be something better than a restraining order. These people are part of Christ's flock, fer cryin' out loud!

One of the Strange Disconnects in our Culture

If somebody were to write "Jews have no inherent dignity" or "Black people have no inherent dignity" most people with two brain cells to rub together would recognize that such a claim is "fighting words". Something profoundly evil is being said here and the goal is to dehumanize and destroy.

But if somebody blithely declares that all humans have no dignity, they are simply the most up-to-date and cutting edge paladins of our glorious new breed of reductionist materialists who never tire of saying "That which is not measurable in a test tube does not exist."

I've pointed out before that postmodern culture is on a collision course with itself when it comes to notions of human dignity, equality, etc. The New Atheists and their acolytes are helping to facilitate that train wreck by cutting off the branch they are sitting on. In reducing all reality to time, space, matter, and energy, they inevitably blind themselves to huge spiritual realities. And, of course, the trouble with making yourself stupider than you really are is that you often succeed. You can indeed declare the notion of human dignity "stupid". You can back that up with oodles of observations pointing out that there is zero physical evidence of human dignity, just as there is zero physical evidence of human equality. Both are metaphysical concepts that owe everything to revelation and absolutely nothing to empirical science. Once you get rid of revelation on the theory that only time, space, matter and energy are real, then you inevitably get rid of human dignity and equality too.

Not too long after you do this comes the great freedom to do whatever you feel like doing to those pieces of matter called homo sapiens that happen to be inconvenient to whatever good you happen to accidently decide is most important to you. And when, like Himmler, you get splattered with a bit of brain tissue, you will remind yourself that your physical reaction of nausea is, like your youthful mythical belief in "human dignity" a mere illusory meme wrought by wind and weather and now outmoded by the new demands of the New Order. You will choose to muscle down the gag reflex and remind yourself again that the "dignity" of your victims is a mere phantom created by the Judeo-Christian revelation you have rejected. The *real* thing is the glorious good you are laboring to achieve that will finally create a world of rational order and no longer labor under the superstitious fantasies of "dignity" once tauhgt by ignorant barbarians who believed in unseen realities.

Alaska is Blessed with a Great Woman for a Governor

Freedom is Scary

In which we discuss the disturbing fact that the intellectual and spiritual life of the Church is *far* too unconfining for postmodernity, which to approach life through slogans, ideologies, tribal allegiance, and little systems of order that don't ask us to think too far outside the box.

Post-Atheism

In which we look at what happens *after* atheism is done being the Next Big Thing and humans resume their normal habit of hungering after God.

I've got a ton of stuff to do today since this weekend is the big fambly excursion to our secret Island Paradise Hideout. So toodles for today!

If One Messianic Candidate is Good, Two is Better!

It is deeply unfair that P.J. O'Rourke Did Not Give the Commencement Address When I Graduated

Of course, Pangaea was breaking up at that time and travel was difficult.

Dawn Eden Gives Her Version of Events This Past Weekend So That Future Historians Can Pore Over the Details for Tiny Discrepancies and Conclude, 2000 Years Hence, That Neither of Us Ever Existed

I mean, come on: "Dawn Eden"? Clearly this is a fictional figure created by scribes influenced by the Elohist tradition, something like the woman "Wisdom" in the book of Proverbs. Likewise, "Cow" recalls the sacrificial rights of the Priestly tradition and is not an actual historical personage. There does appear to be a slim historical basis for "Mark Shea", but certainly, as his name suggests, the Shea figure quickly became alloyed with more warlike folks dieties in the imagination of the ancient storytellers and bloggers who swarmed across the Internet in the early 21st Century. Almost nothing definite can be known about him now. The traditional image of him setting at a News Desk undoubtedly springs from his reputation as interest in evangelism and has nothing to do with his ever actually have sat at such a desk.

I wonder how much of what we take for granted now will be explained away by future "scholars"?

Consequentialism and Mass Murder

At 11:02 AM, two-thirds of Japan's Catholics were annihilated. On that day that will live in infamy, more Japanese Christians were slaughtered than had been martyred in four centuries of brutal persecution.

There are plenty of Catholics out there who will labor with might and main to make New Age arguments for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like this guy, for instance.

What do I mean by New Age? Well, what would you make of somebody who tells you, "If you will it to be so, then simply by saying the words, 'I have great wealth!' you will *have* great wealth! But you must strongly will it to be so! What you actually have in your bank or wallet does not matter! It matters only that you say and believe that you have great wealth! Reality is not a thing external to you! You create your own reality!"

I'd call that New Age thinking except that, well, "thinking" is an awfully strong word to give to such rubbish. It's actually the sort of "thinking" that characterizes extremely young children: the demand that simply by saying something loud enough or often enough, the universe will conform to our wishes and be other than what it is.

Tom Kreitzberg sums it up nicely:

A common error is to think that saying something is so makes it so. It's an attitude that one's words or stated intentions define, and if necessary create, objective reality to suit one's will. Acts of type X are sinful, but I don't intend to sin, so I'm not committing an act of type X.

So the New Age "thinker" smashes you on the head and takes your wallet. But while he does so, he says "I don't intend to smash you on the head and take your wallet. I intend, rather, to use the money in your wallet to help pay for dental care for my wife, who badly needs it and it in great pain. I intend good, not evil."

Somehow this fails to persuade you.

But when the Catholic apologist for Hiroshima and Nagasaki looks at the smashed heads of thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians and hears the teaching of the Church that says:

2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."110

He suddenly goes all New Age and says, "We didn't intend to slaughter thousands upon thousands of innocent men, women and children (even though that's just what we did). We intended to do something good such as end the war. So even though we targeted and slaughtered all these people, we did not *really* target and slaughter them because my words create an alternate reality in which the thing we actually did does not exist but the good end we were trying to achieve does."

Shirley MacLaine would be proud!

Reader Patrick Watson writes:

You like to say "Treat prisoners humanely and you won't have to wonder whether you are torturing them or not." It appears from this Washington Post series that the U.S. government can't even get the first part of that equation right. Immigrants held by ICE are routinely deprived of even basic health care. Many have died as a result. The stories are well-documented and ICE isn't denying much of it.

Especially interesting is the practice of injecting powerful psychotropic drugs into detainees who are being deported under escort on commercial airliners. The fact that the people aren't mentally ill and the drugs have serious side effects does not seem to concern anyone in the government.

Anyway, I blogged about it here and here. I thought your readers might be interested. It sounds like Gitmo might actually be a step up from the places ICE runs in the U.S.

This sort of thing is only wrong when Communist regimes do it, Patrick. When the Bush/Cheney people oversee these little chambers of horror they are doing the Tough Stuff it Takes When You are At War.

New Blog!

It's a blog on the Catholic faith and science, called "Deeps of Time" (note the nifty Tolkien reference).

One More Great Video, Then I Gotta Get Stuff Done

A reader writes:

My wife has been blessed with a job offering from our diocese as a youth ministry co-director. The only stipulation is that she earn a master's of theology degree via distance ed as she works. We're having trouble finding a solid Catholic school that offers a distance theology degree. Might you or your readers know any school we could look into?

I think Franciscan University at Steubenville does distance learning. Anybody know of anything else?

Reasonable Questions for our Manichaean-in-Chief

And for Catholic citizens inclined to Manicheeism.

Two Cool and Wholly Unrelated Videos

And Great Multitudes Went Out to Him from All the Surrounding Regions, and Lifting up His Eye to Heaven, He Opened His Mouth and Spake Unto Them Saying...

"Crown me and I will give you Hope!"

Aimee Milburn Rocks the House

Friend of the Blog Aimee Milburn just graduated from the Augustine Institute! Even better: she was the class valedictorian! You go, girl!

Party of Death Eating its Own

Since both parties are now pledging fealty to the Culture of Death in one way or another, I'm thinking about renaming them the Stupid Evil Party and the Evil Stupid party.

Fifty Worst Album Covers

Gene Robinson: St. Narcissus Award-Winner

“Just as surely as Jesus called to his friend Lazarus to ‘Come out!’ of his tomb, Jesus called me to come out of my tomb of guilt and shame, to accept and love that part of me that he already accepted and loved.”

The Exodus story, he said, is “one of the greatest coming-out stories in the history of the world”.

Because everything is all about him all the time.

Dawn Eden's Visit

Well, Dawn has come and gone and we had a jolly time while she was here. I managed to screw up meeting her at the airport and so, when I didn't turn up where she was waiting, she sensibly called Fr. Phil Bloom, who came to her rescue. (Rescuing damsels in distress is par for the course for one of the best priests in Seattle.) Eventually (after getting lost down in Tukwila somewhere) I found my way to Fr. Phil's parish out in West Seattle (Holy Family) and we caught up with each other.

Then it was off to the Chesterton Guest Speaker dinner (a happy custom of the Chesterton Society) where she got a little taste of Seattle seafood cuisine at Anthony's, near Shilshole. After that, we zipped off to Seattle Pacific University and Dawn talked with the crowd from 7:30 till around 9:00. It would have gone longer cuz there were plenty more questions, but the pizza was cooling down and we didn't want to starve the student more than they are normally starved. I thought it went very well and so did Dawn.

Happily, Fr. Sean Raftis (a terrific Jesuit from Seattle University whom I had the pleasure of meeting) was heading south after the gig, so he kindly gave Dawn a ride home.

Next day, we went to lunch (more seafood! yay!) down at Ivar's on the waterfront with Fr. Sean and Fr. Phil. We all got to know each other a bit better (I know Fr. Phil, but didn't know Fr. Steve at all and everybody was still meeting Dawn.)

Then on Saturday, the Beloved Cow and my daughter-in-law Tasha (who is married to Luke, not Cow, lest you get confused) mosied off with me around 9 AM and we took Dawn on the Nickel Tour of Seattle. Nickel Tours are my speciality!

As it happened, out of the various places you can go on a gorgeous May morning in Seattle, Dawn made the sensible choice of the Pike Place Market, which is a good place for getting a huge dose of Seattle culture, as well as your choice of practically any breakfast you could want. She wanted both, so we snagged a baguette and then wandered the Market, watching the fishmongers, and the guys with pet cockatoos, and the jewelry sellers, and the bikers, Goths, duffers, tourists, locals, and everybody in the world savoring a very fine morning.

Dawn and Tasha discovered the Bathroom from Hell, with stall that have only half-doors so that (up aide) they are inconvenient for drug users and (down side) everybody in the world who is female can watch you do your business. Dawn said it was something she'd actually had nightmares about in the past. I don't know what that means. Analyze it as you will.

After that, we met Dave the Cool Bookstore Guy, who explained to us why the Bathrooms from Hell were designed as they were in a sort of strange vaguely Middle Eastern accent. He looked to be of Arab descent and when we asked where he was from he explained he was from mysterious land older than Time Itself. We all said, "Oooooooh!" Then he reverted to the flat tones of Washington and said, "Actually, I'm from Seattle but I suffer from multiple accent disorder." We were impressed.

We wandered down to Golden Age Collectible, where kids transition into libido-driven adolescents without using a clutch (since all the memorabilia was either comics/Star Wars/scifi stuff with a PG rating, or else rather nasty titillation for overblown and hypersexualized adolescent.

After that, the women did girly girl stuff like buy scarves while we looked at various geegaw and trinkets. Then we wandered down to the park north of the Market and took a couple of photos (one of which you see here!)

Then it was time to head back to the house, which we did after the hike up the 45 degree angle hill from the Market to our car.

Jan was having a lovely morning, meanwhile, puttering about the garden while the two younger guys were on Scout campout (a whole 'nother story). When we got back to the house around noon she whipped up a salad (Crab! More seafood! Yay!) and we savored the goodness of it all! We hung around the house till around 2:00 chatting. Dawn had this brainwave for a "Theology on Tap" sort of coffee house which I hope she follows up on. Then, as Dawn had a TV interview with an Australian morning show (Sunday morning in Sydney is 3:00 PM Saturday in Seattle), we prayed for her and drove with her (Tasha, Cow and I) down to the KOMO studio where, as I hoped, they let us all come up to the production booth to watch her shoot her live satellite feed).

The tech guy there was great. He's a Korean (I think)-American named Billy Oh. Long pony tail. Easy-going, friendly, Seattle Art Institute grad who also studied media stuff down in California. He was very interested in the fact that Luke is studying animation and said there were lots of jobs for animators (good to hear!). Dawn did the interview and did very well. It was a friendly interview, but when it was over the Aussie interviewer on the other hand was overheard to say something like, "Oooookayyyyy! Well! Moving right along...."

Heh! Nothing is more delightfully counter-cultural than simply living as a faithful Catholic. You get all the fun of belonging to a subversive counter-insurgency without any of the weird diseases, nasty power grabs, destructive egoism, or bizarre philosophy. In the words of Chesterton: Break the conventions! Keep the Commandments!

Billy was very intrigued by Dawn's presentation (turns out he's Catholic). And since he liked us, he took us round to various other sets in the studio. So we got to take cool pictures like this one (which is sort of the Mission Control Brain Center for KOMO).

Cooler still though, was this.

All in all, a fine weekend!

I'm Mark Shea, reporting from Seattle.

Oh! Billy's a fine photographer, by the way.

Scratch a Rad Trad, Find an Anti-Semite

Not all Traditionalists are Rad Trads. Many are quite lovely people. But I've never met a Rad Trad who wasn't weirdly hostile to Jews. To wit, a reader writes:

Help, please! I've been reading the blog of Jeremiah, a.k.a. Paleocrat, fairly regularly since he was received into the Catholic Church last year. Now I find to my great dismay that he and his chums are quite hostile to Judaism.

I feel a bit out of my depth here (and also have too much work to do to be drawn into this debate right now). I've pointed to Nostra Aetate, which he seems determined to read in a perverse way.

May I beg you to send in some reinforcements?

I command nobody so I have no reinforcements to send. However, I post this on the off chance some readers feel like trying to respond.

Sounds Good to Me

Dear Friends:

Please join us in an interfaith prayer during religious services the weekend of June 6-8 to observe the first full weekend of Torture Awareness Month.

Two months ago, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have banned the use of torture by US intelligence services. We worked hard to win passage of that legislation by both houses of Congress. This June we will publicly recommit ourselves, as people of faith, to continuing the struggle to end US-sponsored torture.

NRCAT is organizing a number of ways that you and your congregation can mark Torture Awareness Month. More than 150 congregations across the country have already committed to displaying a banner as part of our Banners Across America project. By June 1, we will have bumper stickers available for purchase on our website.

In addition, we are collaborating with Rabbis for Human Rights to encourage faith communities to incorporate a Prayer of Recommitment into religious services during the weekend of June 6-8 (and throughout the month). Offering a prayer is a simple but very important way to ask God to help us be faithful in this work, to raise awareness within our congregations and to join our voices with others all across the country. We offer this prayer as our government continues to assert the right to use interrogation tactics that torture other human beings.

As religious people, we must recommit ourselves to the important work of healing the soul of our nation and healing the wounds inflicted on those who have been tortured.

Please plan to join faith communities across the country in this important witness during the weekend of June 6-8.

Sincerely,

Linda Gustitus, President
Rev. Richard Killmer, Executive Director

Fr. Rob Handles Liturgy Stuff So I Don't Have to

Happily fulfilling my belief that liturgy is best left to those competent to do it, the liturgically competent Fr. Rob writes:
I know you're not big into liturgical nitpickiness, but I have a new post up at my blog titled "Beauty, Subjectivism, and Liturgical Music", in which I discuss the tendency to turn liturgy into something subjective, and the contention that one kind of music in the liturgy is as good as any other.

I think this may be of interest to you and your readers - if you like it, please quote it and link it at CAEI!

Also, for your enjoyment, and as a practical illustration of true Catholic cultural renewal, I have a recording up at my blog of the kids at my parish school singing Gloria VIII at a recent school Mass.

My friend Bao Tran writes of his film Bookie:

I'm back in Seattle now after a fun ride at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. We didn't win the Golden Reel Best Short Award, but our screening was packed and a lot of people are now enthusiastic fans of the movie. I want to thank especially those who sent us kind words, well wishes, and congratulations for the nomination.

The next big news is that BOOKIE will be screening this year at the Seattle International Film Festival. We're very excited because SIFF is a huge festival that runs for 25 days where 170 short films have been accepted from 69 countries. What's even better is that most of us are near enough to attend. We are eligible for the Golden Space Needle Audience Award, where YOU get to vote for the best short film of the festival!

So if you're in the Pacific Northwest (or BC), come see it again (or for the first time), and invite all the friends and family that you've been talking the movie up to. The screenings are a ways away in June, but consider it an early notice for you to save the date. I'll be sending some reminder emails as we get closer as well.

When:
Sunday June 8, 2008 9:15PM
Tuesday June 10, 2008 9:15PM

Where:
Harvard Exit Theater
807 E Roy St
Seattle, WA 98102

You can buy tickets online or at the box office (we are playing in front of the feature film "THE END" so you will be buying tickets to that):

--
Persistence of Vision Films
Bookie

Okay. Gotta jet. Lunch with Dawn and Fr. Phil

See youse Monday! Put down that bean!!!!

Commander Craig is On the Air!



Where are the Lost Planet Airmen?

Peter Sean Bradley, Who Practices Law in California, Looks at What's Next

Polygamy is just part of it. Why (says Peter Singer) does "person" have to only refer to a member of the species Homo Sapiens (and who says all homo sapiens are persons).

In the Dictatorship of Relativism, things *must* dissolve into an atomized individualism where things are whatever we say they are. Our sole criteria for a relationship is "mutual consent". Gender doesn't matter. Age will soon not matter (good news for NAMBLA!). Number of participants doesn't matter. Manner in which the relationship is lived out doesn't matter (happy news for the manufacturers of whips and chains). If you feel good about it, then who is anybody to say you are wrong?

So this is simply the next step, not the last one.

Of course, a society cannot function for long as a chaotic mass of atomized individuals. Original sin will see to that. Once the Big Laws have been dissolved in the acid bath of relativism you will get chaos and, after that, the Strong Man with the Small Laws.

A reader writes:

We have some friends we know through my husband's work. We've known them for over a decade. They are not married, but have lived together for about 25 years and they have four children, 3 of whom are now grown up. The "wife" has left her family to go live with a man under additionally scandalous circumstances (a doctor/patient thing). Suffice to say, the family are absolutely devastated. The "husband" - a rugged, Aussie outdoorsy bloke and normally happy-go-lucky - told my husband that he has cried every day for the last nine weeks since she left.

We are in shock and are heart-broken. Not only that, but this is not necessarily a straightforward case of a terrible sin, but the wife's mental health is seriously in question (according to their friend, who is a psychiatrist) so she also may need proper medical treatment and care. She does also need to come to her senses and repent, but the psychiatric issue may need to be addressed as well.

Please, please pray.

Lord, hear our prayer!

That said, I agree with Feddie

Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan: Appeasers

They talked with enemies! They are no better than Neville Chamberlain! It's forever 1939! All our enemies are Hitler!

Political wisdom from our Elected Manichee.

Speaking of which...

Our Robed Masters in California (Republicans all, by the way) have, like Republican appointees Blackmun, Souter, Kennedy and O'Connor delivered themselves of yet another fundamental assault on immemorial human common sense and decided that marriage is whatever the hell they say it is. By the miracle of judicial fiat the notion of marriage as between one man and woman has been found "unconstitutional" (since, as we know, the drafters of the California constitution were absolutely committed to gay marriage in the 1850s, but felt they needed to roll that plan out slowly).

And so, the seventh largest economy in the world begins the "What Could it Hurt?" phase of human history. Only slowly will it dawn on people that the reason a civilization husbands its limited resources to help the essential building block of society--the family--is that those resources are *limited*. Meanwhile, we will be agitpropped into celebrating this Great Leap Forward and critics will be duly mau-maued as enemies of Progress till, a generation or two from now, somebody notices the immense wreckage that will proceed from treating the traditional family as an evil and proposes.... some further stupid idea that will compound the problem, perhaps marriage to animal companions who do not impose their values on us.

The Abortion Industry: Finishing What Hitler Started

Israel, being basically a western secular democracy, is doing what western secular democracies do: destroying its future by aborting itself out of existence. "Choice" culture will inevitably face Israel with the choice between being a Jewish state or being a democracy. I hope they wise up, but it appears that only states in the midst of disastrous population collapse (like Russia) finally get desperate enough to start rewarding marriage and families.

If babies are God's way of saying the world should continue, the abortion/contraceptive culture of the West is our way of saying it should end. Sin is fundamentally suicidal.

New Puritan Reichsministers of Health Lay Plans for Fat Re-Education Camps

Big Brother is coming to do me good! I love Big Brother!

Doug Kmiec is Apparently Denied Communion

If true, I think the guy who denied him communion is way out of line. Canonist Ed Peter thinks so too.

Quick note, then back later

Things went very well yesterday with Dawn's talk. She's a real trooper, speaking well and fielding questions directly after an exhausting flight and a fine dinner in a pool of warm sunshine. If it were me, I'd be lapsing into a coma.

I reckon if you check her blog today, she'll have her version of events at some point.

Meantime, I'm outta here again and will be back in a couple of hours cuz I've got Dr. Tom Curran's radio show "Sound Insight" to do at 8:00 AM PDT. You can stream it here.

80 degrees predicted for this weekend! Winter appears to be over--so far.

Oh! And I'm having lunch with Dawn and good Fr. Phil Bloom round noon. So posting will be a bit spotty today. Ciao, dudes and dudettes! Put thou not beans up thy noses whilst I am a-Maying.

Basically running around today

I've got a bunch of stuff to write/edit today, followed by a trip out to SeaTac to pick up Dawn Eden, ferry her to her digs, hang around with Fr. Bloom, take Dawn to the Seattle Chesterton Society dinner and her talk, ferry her back to her digs (in the distant land of West Seattle, far, far way from my home in the North) and return home weary but pleased with a jorb well done.

All of which is a windy way of saying, "If I don't see you at Chesterton tonight, I'll see you here tomorrow!"

Republicans: Out of Ideas, Out of Gas, Soon to be Out of Office

The self-immolation of the Party of War, Torture, Occasionally Pretending to Care About Human Life, Deeply Caring about Money and Power and Precious Little Else continues. Weirdest part: McCain's opposition to torture is part of what makes him suspicious looking to his highly fractious base. If ever a party was begging for a time in the wilderness till they got a freakin' clue about what America is supposed to mean...

Oh! Wait! It's also the Party of Gas tax holidays! Credit where credit is due!

The Economy Goes South and Sends Postcards from the Edge

"Having a wonderful time. Wish you were."

Two fun books

Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God by Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker

Prediction: After cheering for several years for Dawkins, once he is made mincemeat of in some particularly embarrassing way, or else he self-immolates by doing something extremely bizarre, his former acolytes will, like Communists after the fall of the Soviet Union, simply announce that he wasn't *really* a *true* atheist. I ran into the same thing after publishing By What Authority. I was constantly told that I had never encountered *real* Protestants who *truly* understood sola scriptura, so it was no wonder I had rejected the pathetic watered-down version of bible-based Christianity I had encountered. Now (they promised) they would show me the Real Thing (if I was truly open to grace, of course). When I evinced the same difficulties with their Shiny New Truly Bible-Only Protestantism as I had shown previous editions, I would then be berated for "not getting it" or "being closed to grace" or otherwise uninitiate in the Inner Mysteries. Atheists often seem to me to have this same curious tendency to eat their weakest members for the crime of badly defending incoherent ideas.

Not that it will happen with *this* particular book, I fancy (though I would very much enjoy watching Dawkins go up against the relentless Hahn. That would be hilarious). This book will simply be shouted down. It will be necessary for him to do something particularly weird and insulting and semi-deranged on national TV for the tide to turn. And the way he's going that could happen sooner than you might think. Dawkins is pursuing the course of most vain men: he is surrounding himself with sycophants and starting to believe his opponents are all as stupid as he says they are. That result in embarrassment when you then put yourself in the ring with a heavyweight and show off for the fans.

Speaking of Benjamin Wiker, he's got a new book out too called 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help by Benjamin Wiker. Check out the wonderful cover:



Who could not love that?

Wiker co-authored a very useful book called
Architects of the Culture of Death which I found very useful in my research for Behold Your Mother. Not cheering reading, but invaluable for anybody asking "How in hell did we get here?" The first trick to repenting, after all, is knowing the way back to where you took the wrong turning.

Vancouver Coffee Art

Cool beans!

Kids! Become a Cutting Edge Academic in Seconds with the Postmodern Deconstructionist Thesis Generator!

Create highly regarded and utterly impenetrable works of prose with scarcely a movement of the grey matter! Fool your friends! Bamboozle your students! Impress professors! Commit grave sins against the intellect without feeling a thing!

The Bacon Flow Chart

Yum!

Fear of the Incarnation and Its Discontents

In which we watch a Truly Reformed guy try to herd the cats of Protestantism, all unaware that his real fear is not abandonment of sola scriptura, but of the Incarnation of the Son of God and its sacramental extension through history.

Can you Imagine Actually Reading This Piece of Chloroform in Print?

A One-Man Show? The Construction and Deconstruction of a Patriarchal Image in the Reagan Era: Reading the Audio-Visual Poetics of Miami Vice by John-Paul Trutnau

Race/Class/Gender Deconstructionist BS is, pound for pound, more unreadable (and far less meaningful) than the Tax Code.

The Register on Obama's Unbending Zealotry for Sacrament of Abortion and Infanticide

The man fights to murder children. That's what it comes down to in plain speech. Catholics like Doug Kmiec who make excuses for and defend this are just more consequentists defending intrinsically immoral acts. How do they sleep at night?

Hey Seattle! Dawn Eden's Speaking here tomorrow!

Dear Friends of the Seattle G. K. Chesterton Society,

We wish to remind you of the Society's upcoming meeting this Thursday, May 15. Please see the announcement below.

There are a couple of special details connected with Thursday's meeting to which we call your attention:

First, a NEW LOCATION. The meeting will take place in Room 109, Otto Miller
Hall, on the SPU campus. Otto Miller Hall is directly across Third Avenue from the Pavilion in which we have had our meetings up to now. Please see Building 18 on the campus map that is available here. For any who may forget this
detail, we will endeavor to have both a sign and person directing attendees across the street to Otto Miller Hall!

Second, a CONTENT ADVISORY. The moral fallout of the Sexual Revolution is
an important theme of Miss Eden's presentation. Her presentation has been described as "not graphic, but stark."

If you would plan on bringing children younger than age 18, Miss Eden
respectfully requests that you view the following YouTube clip of her presentation and then decide whether it is appropriate:



Yours faithfully,

The Seattle G. K. Chesterton Society

Thursday, May 15, 2008, at 7:30 PM in Conference Room 109, Otto Miller Hall

"The Girl Who Was Thirsty: How G. K. Chesterton Led Me to Faith"

Dawn Eden
Author, editor and columnist

How did an agnostic, Jewish rock historian, who battled depression while living a dissipated lifestyle among New York's bohemia, become a cheerful Catholic chastity crusader? Dawn Eden, author of The Thrill of the Chaste and winner of the American Chesterton Society's 2007 Outline of Sanity Award, tells how an unexpected encounter with the work of Chesterton introduced her to the thrilling romance of orthodoxy.

Beautiful!



Best part: the age of the people in the video. The future of the Church is so bright I gotta wear shades!

Aside from the Holy Spirit (obviously) I credit John Paul the Great.

Stupid Party Too Stupid to See it Coming

Don't tell me: They are chins up and confident about November. They are the Party of Ideas like the gas tax holiday (Hey! Why not Midnight Basketball while they're at it!).

Boy, is Ronald Reagan dead. Meanwhile, Bush is back to "Vote Republican or you'll all die horribly in searing pain!!!!"

What a bleak election year.

A Tale of Two Covenants, Part Four

In which we conclude the discussion of the relationship between the Old Covenant and the New.

Inside Catholic on the Usual Blah from the Usual Organs of Liberal Blahdom

"Killing Jews isn't the only issue of concern to Germans; there are many other issues as well (Volkwagens, autobahns, the national economy, etc.); and when we weigh all these things together we see that Hitler's German quotient, despite not being perfectly correct on Jews, is much higher than that of any rival political party. And besides, Hitler views Jews as a 'profound moral challenge.'"

The World of Good Keeps Turning!

This is pretty cool!

Tune In to Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) today, Wednesday, May 14th - 8:30am PST / 11:30am EST

Wordnet will be featuring Tom Allen, President of Catholic Exchange and Executive Producer of the award-winning film Champions of Faith: Baseball Edition.

We at Catholic Exchange hail the success of our Supreme Maximum Leader!

Bloggers Unite to Protect Iraqi Christians

One of the many things overlooked by our Grand End to Evil Geostrategists was the extreme likelihood that the Chaldean Church and other Christians would be driven to extinction in Iraq. Some people are taking serious action to help Christians who are inconvenient to the Big Plans of Big Planners.

Making Mincemeat

So this little teapot tempest kicked up in the combox on this entry.

Neocon:

Here is Michael Novak's review of "God Is Not Great."

The disinterested reader can determine what he will about Piatak's intellectual integrity in reducing Novak's review to the headline. The only crime one can convict Novak of is a certain irenicism, of not returning Hitchens' contempt with contempt (though in this respect, Novak follows Mother Teresa herself, whose only known response to Hitchens's first attack on her was "we must pray for him.")

Indeed this excerpt of Novak's about Hitchens's book -- and it's far more representative of the review than than is the one word Piatak mentions -- has more or less been written by Mark Shea, and many others at St. Blogs:

But this time it is a bit disappointing to find so much hostility and so many — unusually many — intellectual missteps in his latest tirade (not his first) against religion, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. For something peculiar happens to Hitchens when he wrestles against God with murderous intent. Hitchens always loses (and may secretly suspect that). Preposterous as this seems, one senses he may fear that one day he will wake up and see it all plainly, right before his eyes. Otherwise, why year after year keep striking another stake in the heart of God?

Piatak:

Yes, neocon, I invite everyone to read Novak's review of Hitchens' book, and then compare that review to my own: http://www.takimag.com/site/arti...itchens_hubris/

You'll have no trouble discerning which reviewer is the neoconservative and which isn't. Hitchens does not deserve all the praise Novak pours on about his courage and stunning intellect, about how he is an exemplar of "moral heroism," about how he is "a public protagonist of solidarity and compassion," about how he is a "brave and good man." Would a "brave and good man" use sexual innuendo in the title of his book attacking Mother Teresa? Would a brave and good man say of Mother Teresa, "I wish there was a hell for the bitch to go to?" Would a "brave and good man" praise Lenin's murderous suppression of the Russian Orthodox Church?

The neocons are carrying water for Hitchens, and vice versa, because both have subordinated everything else in the politics to the absurd goal of spreading democracy in the Mideast by force, a goal that caused Novak to disregard the wise advice of John Paul II on Iraq and a goal that has already cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars and caused the displacement of up to one half of all Iraqi Christians.

Decision: Piatak:

Neocon: The disparity between Tom Piatak's initial criticism of Novak's review and your nuclear response against his "intellectual integrity," coupled with the glaring dishonesty of your defense of Novak -- and equivocation between Mother Teresa's charity and Novak's praise! -- is astonishing and disgusting.

Tom P: Excellent response.

Hagee and Shoutin' Bill Make Nice

Under the 70 X 7 rule, we are, of course, bound to forgive and I do so willingly. The guy's comporting himself better than Wright, I must say.

Meanwhile, Beliefnet has an interview with Shoutin' Bill over here.

Grant Irene Sendler to dwell in eternal light, Lord

Donning a Star of David armband used by the Nazis to mark out Jews, she passed incognito in the ghetto to organise the escape plans.

She was eventually arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and condemned to death.

But members of 20-strong secret organisation managed to bribe a guard so she could escape. She lived for another 65 years.

My apologies for the inflammatory wording of the news article. In keeping with current Administration policy and the usage of the right wing blogosphere, the text should say Sendler was "tortured" not tortured. Torture is not torture anymore but is instead "so-called 'torture'" or "enhanced interrogation", even when you die from it.

Always remember the wisdom of Victor Morton, Chief Catholic Liaison Officer for the Right Wing Blogospheric Ministry of Truth: "The word 'torture' is a classic example of what Ayn Rand called an 'anticoncept' -- meaning a term with no specific referent, except the speaker's disapproval."

It turns out God made everything, not just Catholics

Therefore, if life turns up on other planets, it's not a problem for the Catholic Church. I've never understood how somebody could think that a religious tradition which already accepts the idea of non-human created intelligences (namely, angels and demons) would have a crisis if ET turned up. That's not to say he will. Along with Enrico Fermi, my main question to believers in the Billions of Civilization is "Where is everybody?"

But I think it would be hilarious if ET did turn up, was unfallen, and proceeded to instruct the secularists in search of the ET Eschaton that there is one God, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Alpha Centauri Prime. Of course, if there are unfallen creatures capable of space travel, they would probably, in their divine wisdom, stay far away from us. On the other hand, if ET turns out to be fallen like us and capable of interstellar flight, then I think it would be a fine time to re-read The War of the Worlds.

Alternatively, we could find that ET is here because he is a sort of unfallen pagan who saw a Star in the Gamma Quadrant 2000 of our earth years ago, and he seeks to meet the race Maleldil has so honored that he became one of us.

ET: People of Earth! Our Oyarsa have told us that Maleldil, whom you call in your language by such names as "God" "Dios" Gott" "Dieu" "Allah" and so forth was actually born on your world as a member of your species! We come here full of wonder and seek to know you better. Our Oyarsa have told us not to assume too much from this fact and we shall try not to, but we must say that we eagerly anticipate getting to know you better since your race now stands by virtue of your peculiar relationship to Maleldil, as creatures who are higher than even the Oyarsa themselves!

So please, tell us of the mighty celebrations you held when Maleldil walked among you! Recount for us the worship and honors you crowned him with. Let us hear the wonderful stories of how you welcomed him!

Who among us would want the job of shifting uncomfortably in his seat, coughing, and with burning cheek having to explain to a technologically super-sophisticated alien with the innocence of a saintly child just how our race welcomed God in the flesh? The look of sheer horror on that alien face would be the worst indictment we ever face apart from the face of our Lord himself. Only the power of the Resurrection would over come it. The safest thing to bring with us to any encounter with an unfallen ET would be a Host. For we would have good reason to hope that, being unfallen, he would discern the Lord present there and find the power necessary to forgive us rather than vaporize us on the spot.

Myths about the Middle Ages

The very term "Middle Ages" is agitprop designed by the Generation Narcissus types of the Endarkenment. Here are some fun mythoids:

• The alleged fragments of the True Cross would have added up to a whole forest.
  In a truly obsessive piece of scholarship, Charles Rohault de Fleury's Memoire sur les instruments de la passion de N.-S. J.-C. (Paris, 1870) counted all the alleged fragments and showed they only added up to considerably less than one cross ... more
• Vikings wore helmets with horns
  How would you know Hagar the Horrible was a Viking if he didn't have horns? ... the facts
• An early medieval church council declared (or almost declared) that women have no souls.
  History of the error.
• "In the times of St Thomas it [woman] was considered an essence as certainly defined as the somniferous virtue of the poppy ...St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an imperfect man"
  These claims are made in the introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, one of the founding texts of feminism. Aquinas believes all humans have the same essence. Though not exactly a believer in the equality of men and women, he did not call women imperfect men. details.
• Religious taboos prevented medical dissection of bodies
  Katherine Park's book on late medieval dissection
• The medieval burning of witches.
  Medieval canon law officially did not believe in witches. There were very occasional individual witch trials in the Middle Ages, but the persecution of witches only became a mass phenomenon from around 1500. The height of persecution was in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries ... article; resources.

Speaking of myth-making we've been watching DVD's of the Beeb's Robin Hood series. It's a fun post-modern retelling, mostly because the guy who plays Robin is likeable and the guy who plays the Sheriff of Nottingham is having such a won-der-ful time being evil. Of course, this being the new Millennium, the writers have just about zero capacity to create characters who are remotely believable as actual medievals. Rather, like Kevin Costner's ridiculous costume drama, what you get instead are thoroughly contemporary actors in semi-medieval garb who stand around and spout PC pieties about multiculturalism (one of Robin's Merry Men is a Saracen girl whom he rescued from slavery and who has vast knowledge of chemistry), pacifism (Robin is a disillusioned Crusader) and, of course, wealth redistribution. Marian is this buff chick who knows martial arts. Everybody is impossibly clean, fit, and Euro-sexy. The Church basically does not exist except as the land-grabbing entity who is sending good young men like Robin off to fight in Crusades against Indigenous Peoples. (A nun does turn up once, but she turns out to be a fraud). When religion is mentioned it is basically to catechize the audience in the standard religious vision of contemporary UK Chattering Classes: namely, that all religions are equally superior to Christianity.

Mostly, Robin is a good room temperature UK Labor socialist who is clever and always defeats the cunning but ultimately chopfallen Sheriff by robbing from the rich and giving to the poor without any reference whatsoever to the sorts of ideas or pieties that would have animated an actual medieval. Anybody else seen it?

By the way, I had the great thrill of flying out of Robin Hood Airport near Nottinghamshire this past November when I left England for Ireland. How cool is that?

The Scandal of Healing

My latest for the Register, in which we discover the difference between good and bad scandal.

Catholic Exchange: The Makeover!

Check thou it out!

How to Lie with a Headline

So you are the bishops of England and you've got a moral problem. Scientists of the "Hey! We've got Funding! We *Have* Do it!" school of post-Christian ethic in the UK are champing at the bit to commit brand new sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance by creating human-animal hybrid embryos. A bill legalizing this monstrous evil is submitted. What do you do? Well, the first thing you do is say "most of the procedures covered by the bill should not be licensed under any circumstances. They argue that this is because they violate human rights."

So: you've made clear the manufacturing these hybrid embryos ought never be created in the first place.

But, of course, the Mammon and Power Worshipping Establishment which is begging for the judgement of the Living God extends the middle finger to you and plows ahead. So what about those embryos? What should be done. Well, the Mammon Worshippers just want to make them, screw around with them, and then destroy them. But these are embryos which are human. So being a sensible person, you say "If it's a human, it should be allowed to live. Let mothers be "be allowed to give birth to human-animal hybrids created in the laboratory".

Result: The Ministry of Truth for the Culture of Death promptly issues a headline saying "Human-animal hybrid embryos should be legal says Catholic Church".

An absolute and total lie. It's rare to see Satan being quite so bald-faced in the British press. Usually he's more nuanced. That suggests he's got enought people comfortably numb that he doesn't have to go to the trouble of dressing his lies up in euphemism and tergiversation.

The Purest Neocon

A rather damning indictment of the secular messianic fantasist Christopher Hitchens and his Special Friends:

So where does this lover of Trotsky and hater of God, this despiser of religion and tradition and devotee of “permanent revolution,” this anti-Catholic bigot and reviler of Reagan and John Paul, now find an ideological home? Among the neoconservatives, naturally.

Memo to Caesar: Government Exists to Help the Family not Penalize it for Existing

Pope salutes Israel's anniversary, asks justice for Palestinians

St. Blog's parishioners approve first gesture, offer helpful words of correction and rebuke to the Holy Father on the second.

Einstein is a Textbook Example of What I Mean When I Say that Atheism Tends to be an Interlude between Exhaling Biblical Belief and Inhaling Something Else

His parents were not religious but he attended a Catholic primary school and at the same time received private tuition in Judaism. This prompted what he later called, his "religious paradise of youth", during which he observed religious rules such as not eating pork. This did not last long though and by 12 he was questioning the truth of many biblical stories.

"The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression," he later wrote.

In his later years he referred to a "cosmic religious feeling" that permeated and sustained his scientific work. In 1954, a year before his death, he spoke of wishing to "experience the universe as a single cosmic whole". He was also fond of using religious flourishes, in 1926 declaring that "He [God] does not throw dice" when referring to randomness thrown up by quantum theory.

His position on God has been widely misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheism/religion divide but he always resisted easy stereotyping on the subject.

That's because Einstein's religion, such as it was, was a vague and cloudy thing, the smoke left over after his adolescent spasm of atheism burned down his Jewish faith. That faith was meant to lead, of course, to Christ. That was the point of the Old Testament revelation. But Einstein was denied that and his boyhood faith could not withstand the atheist winds that were blowing in his culture. So he concluded it was a deception. But he could not get past the basic impression of some sort of Mind at work in the universe. So we get the vaguely pantheistic notions that suffuse his work, neither recognizably biblical (except perhaps a reminder of Romans 1:20) nor very satisfying to atheists.

It is worth noting that Einstein was fascinated with the Catholic Church, particularly with the doctrine of transubstantiation. I always hold out hope that his openness to reality was the doorway in by which the Holy Spirit finally saved him.

Resource Hogs Blame Poverty on Church, Brown People

The solution of rich Western elites to poverty is always and everywhere, "Just enough of me. Way too much of you. Cull your herds and buy Pepsi."

The duty of the media (which is owned by the rich Western elites) is to get that message out and the Chicago Tribune does its duty for Massa.

Canadian Muslim Tries to Win Battle of Hearts and Minds Against Bronze Age Morons

God defend the right!

David Brooks Lead the Charge Back to Room Temperature Tapioca Spirituality

Enthusiasm for atheism is, by nature, a temporary fad. Humans are incorrigibly religious. They are not, however, incorrigibly Christian. Our preference, as fallen humans, is some sort of religion that gives us the benefits of belief without stuff like "take up you cross". Atheism tends to wither as a popular movement because it is inhuman. It becomes, as I say, the brief pause between exhaling Christianity and inhaling Something Else.

Brooks is proposing a Something Else. Christians may sigh with relief. At least he's not a hard-boiled atheist. True. But neither was anybody involved in the Crucifixion, or the persecution of the apostles, nor in pagan antiquities persecutions of the Church. The religion of the vague Materialist Magician is not something to celebrate particularly. It may be a first step toward Christ but it can just as easily be a first step toward Moloch. In the words of C.S. Lewis' Ransom, "There's nothing specially fine about being a Spirit. The Devil is a Spirit."

Nice piece on the Church's role in World Diplomacy

If, as will not happen, the Left Behind people were right and the Church were snatched out of the world, I think the whole place would explode within a matter of hours. The myriad ways in which the Church quietly lubricates the wheels of society and silently fosters the growth of social tissue in our fractious world cannot even begin to be estimated. However, sin being fundamentally suicidal, the idiots of the world think the way to Paradise is by destroying the Church.

Germans Hot on the Trail of the Lost Ark

Indy will stop them!

Fr. Timothy Radcliffe Chuckles and Waves of Richard Dawkins as "so 19th Century"

Very true. All the New Atheists seem to have missed the last 150 years. I am often stunned at their antique faith in science and reason as the Ultimate Source of Wisdom.

Scientists Screw Around with Very Small and Defenseless Human Beings--Because They Can

EXCERPT:

No-one is contemplating King's "nightmare" scenario: the creation of genetically-engineered babies. The aim is simply to provide new avenues of research on disease and infertility. It may not work, or create any useful information. But if we don't try, how can we know?

Translation: "Hey! We've got funding! And besides: what could it hurt? Also, we could be talking beaucoup power, prestige and further funding here! So get out of the way for the Progress Express, baby!"

Interesting Story on a Woman Whose Memory is *Too* Good

Most of us are blessed with memories that fade. Her memories don't. I think this would be as terrible as having no memory.

Perhaps the Time Has Come to Revisit Nuclear Energy

Having an entire energy policy based on a bad Jane Fonda movie seems rather unwise.

Looks Like the Pope's Mission was Accomplished

Good to see!

Uber-creepy Euthanasia Enthusiast Creeps Out Even Other Creepy Euthanasia Enthusiasts

The West Continues its Race to the Bottom. The little hiccup in the road for the Culture of Death appears to be that journalists are having a hard time suppressing their natural human horror at these manifestly evil people. Somebody will have to be found to do more puff pieces in order to paint a veneer of Normality (and eventually Heroic Will to Buck the Tide of Popular Opinion) on these odious monsters.

If you are looking for pithy Scripture commentaries for the upcoming Sunday's lectionary readings, look no further.

Tom Piatak on the Bizarre Psychological and Social Abnormality of the Angry Atheist

Loads of fun!

The Exceedingly Strange World of Teen Girl Squad

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Religious enthusiasts see things.

Look. I'm as open as they come to private revelations. I think God can speak not just through miracles, but through any sort of coincidence, natural event or ordinary moment. So I have no problem with somebody seeing the hand of God at work in a window on an insurance building or a grilled cheese sandwich. God's Providence works there too. However, to call these, er, highly dubious exercises in pattern recognition "miraculous" is stretching the word "miracle" a bit further than most English-speakers will go. The ordinary person comes away from stuff like that with the conviction that, for these people "faith" more or less means "self-delusion".

Dale Price is in the hospital

Heather writes:

He woke up with what he thought was indigestion or heartburn but it didn't get better. His first EKG came back fine, but they're keeping him until tomorrow morning (at least) to do a stress test then.

I know you and at least most of your readers are the praying type; that would be great.

Thanks,
Heather Price

Father, we ask your complete healing for Dale through our Lord Jesus. Grant skill to his doctors and peace and patience to his family. Mother Mary pray for you good son, our beloved brother Dale. St. Luke, ora pro nobis!

Surging to Defeat

Andrew Bacevich states some hard truths about our lack of omnipotence. It boils down to this: we don't have sufficient resources to keep up Bush's Indefinite Grand End to Evil Vision Thing. Conclusion:

The choice is one that we can no longer afford to dodge: it’s either less war or more warriors.

That means one of two options:

Option One:

To close the gap between too much war and too few warriors, we must reduce our commitments. That means ending the U.S. combat role in Iraq. It means exerting ourselves, primarily through diplomatic means, to limit the adverse consequences caused by our ill-advised crusade in Iraq. It also means devising a new strategy to address the threat posed by violent Islamic radicalism, to replace the failed strategy of the Freedom Agenda and the Bush Doctrine.

This reformulation of strategy should begin with an explicit abrogation of preventive war. It should include a candid recognition that invading and occupying an Islamic nation in the hope of transforming it qualifies as a fantasy.

Option Two:

When it comes to Iraq, a far more likely prospect is that if the United States insists on continuing its war there, it will get what it wants: the war will continue indefinitely. According to General Petraeus, a counterinsurgency is typically a 10 to 12-year proposition. Given that assessment, and with the “surge” now giving way to a “pause,” U.S. combat operations in Iraq could easily drag on for another five or 10 years. A large-scale U. S. military presence might be required for two or three decades.

In that event, a conflict that already ranks as the second longest in our history will claim the title of longest. Already our second most expensive war, it will become the costliest of all. On one point at least, Donald Rumsfeld will be able to claim vindication: Iraq will indeed have become a “long slog.”

For the United States to pursue this course would qualify as an epic misjudgment. Yet if our political leaders insist on the necessity of fighting this open-ended war, then they owe it to those who have already borne five years of combat to provide some relief.

Bluntly, if the country’s leaders in Washington are unable or unwilling to reduce the number of wars in which U.S. forces are engaged, then surely they ought to increase the number of warriors available to fight them.

If Obama is elected, we may well see Option One. If McCain, we will certainly see Option Two. That means either some sort of draft or some fantastically sweetened incentives to get people to join the All Volunteer Military.

Of course, never underestimate the capacity for politicians to do something stupefyingly stupid like "try to maintain the status quo" with bribes stimulus packages and/or crap about lapel pins. So simple stupid refusal to deal with reality and distraction might be option 3. It's certainly worked for Bush. We'll see.

Truly Reformed[TM] Guy Tries to Herd the Cats of Protestantism

Truly Reformed[TM] Protestantism is a form of Christianity that suits a particular personality type: the sort of person who likes diagrams, neat hand-writing, little lists of facts, mathematical formulae, and a certain kind of anal-retentive precision. In its own limited sphere, Truly Reformed Christianity is handy because its love of diagrams, rigorous logic and TRVTH tends to breed apologist types who are fit foils for the mad men who have lost everything except their reason: namely those who constitute the atheist materialist clique of New Atheists. They can have a jolly time making mincemeat of, say, Christopher Hitchens with relentless machine-like efficiency.

But the thing is: Truly Reformed[TM] Christianity, being a thing of diagrams, formulae and equations is uncomfortable with things like actual lived human experience, mystery, and the fact that the world is incarnate and not a diagram. It doesn't know how to dance. It has no categories for jazz, nonsense poetry or Marian apparitions. When God zigs where the Predictive Model said he should zag, the Truly Reformed[TM] guy has to just go on urging everybody to be more like him, to stop living in the 21st century and return to the 16th, and to stop asking questions which the original Reformed brains declared to be out of bounds. Sadly, most of the human race does not comply, and so a Truly Reformed[TM] guy has to periodically engage in the Sisyphean labor of herding all the Protestant cats back on to the reservation.

Case in point, the pathetic case of Bob De Waay who tries, at this very late date, to get everybody back to taking sola scriptura seriously, because if they don't make that preposterous doctrine the center of their theology, why they are liable to not think exactly as he does and that can lead to all sorts of mischief!

What kinds of mischief? Well, there's all that touchyfeely stuff of Robert Schuller who, in his revolt against a Christianity of Diagrams, constructs a Christianity of Feelings:

“Where the sixteenth-century Reformation returned our focus to sacred Scriptures as the only infallible rule for faith and practice, the new reformation will return our focus to the sacred right of every person to self-esteem! The fact is, the church will never succeed until it satisfies the human being’s hunger for self-value."

Or elsewhere, the Second Reformation is hailed by Rick Warren as something so formless and broad that you don't even have to be Christian to be part of it:

And we've actually created what we call clinic-in-a-box, business-in-a-box, church-in-a-box, and we are using normal people, volunteers. When Jesus sent the disciples – this will be my last point – when Jesus sent the disciples into a village he said, “Find the man of peace.” And he said, “When you find the man of peace you start working with that person, and if they respond to you, you work with them. If they don't, you dust the dust off your shoes; you go to the next village.” Who's the man of peace in any village – or it might be a woman of peace – who has the most respect, they're open and they're influential? They don't have to be a Christian. In fact, they could be a Muslim, but they're open and they're influential and you work with them to attack the five giants. And that's going to bring the second Reformation.

Still another menace to Truly Reformed[TM] thinking is

C. Peter Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation. As I argued in a recent CIC article,14 Wagner sees the presence of apostles who speak authoritatively for God as the key to the church fulfilling her role in the world. He even speaks approvingly of the “apostles” of the Roman Catholic Church. Wagner and the thousands of apostles and prophets in his movement have shown as little regard for sola scriptura as any non Roman Catholic Christian group apart from the Quakers. So their reformation is a de facto repudiation of the Reformation. Their writings and messages show little or no concern for sound, systematic Biblical exegesis.

And, of course, the Emergent Christians are cats that are wildly resistant both to diagrams and to being hereded by the Truly Reformed[TM]. They have as much repugnance for "systematic theology" as the Truly Reformed have zealous love for it.

The Emergent Church and its postmodern theology is noteworthy for being a non-Catholic version of Christianity that forthrightly assaults the type of use of the Bible that characterizes those who hold sola scriptura as the formal principle of their theology. The Emergent Church adherents reject systematic theology, and thus make using the principle impossible. For example, defending the doctrine of the Trinity using Scripture requires being systematic. I have read many Emergent/postmodern books as I write a new book, and each of them attacks systematic theology in some way.

The Emergent Reformation rests on the denial of the validity of foundationalism. Gone are the days when Christians debated the relative merits of evidential and presuppositional apologetics—debates based on the need for a foundation for one’s theology. Either one started with evidence for the authority of Scripture and then used the Bible as the foundation of one’s theology; or one presupposed the Bible as the inerrant foundation. But today both approaches are mocked for their supposed naïveté. To think that one can know what the Bible means in a non-relativistic way is considered a throwback to now dead “modernity.” The Emergent mantra concerning the Bible is “we cannot know, we cannot know, we cannot know.” Furthermore, in their thinking, it is a sign of arrogance to claim to know. For the postmodern theologian, sola scriptura is as dead and buried as a fossilized relic of bygone days.

Also in the Rogue's Gallery: Dallas Willard, a horrible evil man who thinks we could learn something from the early Church:

The cover of the CT article reads, “Lost Secrets of the Ancient Church.” It shows a person with a shovel digging up a Catholic icon. What are these secrets? Besides icons, lectio divina and monasticism are mentioned. Dallas Willard, who is mentioned as a reliable guide for this process, has long directed Christians to monastic practices that he himself admits are not taught in the Bible.15 Willard pioneered the rejection of sola scriptura in practice on the grounds that churches following it are failures. He writes, “All pleasing and doctrinally sound schemes of Christian education, church growth, and spiritual renewal came around at last to this disappointing result. But whose fault was this failure?”16 The “failure,” according to Willard is that, “. . . the gospel preached and the instruction and example given these faithful ones simply do not do justice to the nature of human personality, as embodied, incarnate.”17 So what does this mean? It means that we have failed because our gospel had too little to do with our bodies.

The remedy for “failure” says Willard is to find practices in church history that are proven to work. But are these practices taught in the Bible? Willard admits that they are not by using an argument from silence, based on the phrase “exercise unto godliness” in 1Timothy 4:7. Here is Willard’s interpretation:

“Or [the possibility the phrase was imprecise] does it indicate a precise course of action he [Paul] understood in definite terms, carefully followed himself, and called others to share? Of course it was the latter. So obviously so, for him and the readers of his own day, that he would feel no need to write a book on the disciplines of the spiritual life that explained systematically what he had in mind.”18

But what does this do to sola scriptura? It negates it. In Willard’s theology, the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Biblical writers, forgot to inspire them to write about spiritual disciplines that all Christians need. If this is the case, then we need spiritual practices that were never prescribed in the Bible to obtain godliness.

The conclusion: get away from the Incarnation as fast as you possibly can and return to the Sacred Diagram and Mathematical Concept:

Perhaps the best antidote to rejecting sola scriptura and going back to Rome would be a careful study of the Book of Hebrews. It describes a situation that is analogous to that which evangelicals face today. The Hebrew Christians were considering going back to temple Judaism. Their reasons can be discerned by the admonitions and warnings in Hebrews. The key problem for them was the tangibility of the temple system, and the invisibility of the Christian faith. Just about everything that was offered to them by Christianity was invisible: the High Priest in heaven, the tabernacle in heaven, the once for all shed blood, and the throne of grace. At the end of Hebrews, the author of Hebrews points out that they have come to something better than mount Sinai: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:22-24). All of these things are invisible.

But the life of faith does not require tangible visibility: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). The Roman Catholic Church has tangibility that is unmatched by the evangelical faith, just as temple Judaism had. Why have faith in the once-for-all shed blood of Christ that is unseen when you can have real blood (that of the animals for temple Judaism and the Eucharistic Christ of Catholicism)? Why have the scriptures of the Biblical apostles and prophets who are now in heaven when you can have a real, live apostle and his teaching Magisterium who can continue to speak for God? The similarities to the situation described in Hebrews are striking. Why have only the Scriptures and the other means of grace when the Roman Church has everything from icons to relics to cathedrals to holy water and so many other tangible religious articles and experiences?

I urge my fellow evangelicals to seriously consider the consequences of rejecting sola scriptura as the formal principle of our theology. If my Hebrews analogy is correct, such a rejection is tantamount to apostasy.

The 16th Century rebel with his world of either/or Christianity has to fight a two front war. He must both repudiate his Catholic parents and eat his Protestant children. In this, he is something like my own Generation Narcissus, which thinks wisdom was born and will die with us and which has never tired of talking about how dumb our parents were and how our children don't appreciate our greatness.

The Catholic, with a both/and approach to theology, can affirm what good in the Truly Reformed tradition (there *is* such a thing as truth, revelation is orderly, God is sovereign, predestination is part of reality, etc.) but it can also provide what is missing (namely, the Magisterium and the rest of Sacred Tradition, as well as a certain, 'ow you say, "comfort level" with a much wider variety of human experience, both natural and supernatural). That's why the Catholic can account for why the books of the Bible are the books of the Bible while the Truly Reformed can only blather about "presuppositionalism" and shout at people who ask, "But how do you *know* Ecclesiastes is inspired?"

Dittos for the good things that guys like Schuller Warren et al see and dittos for correcting the crazy imbalances they are blind to). It's why the Church can indeed welcome wisdom when it comes from Muslims like Averroes and even pagans like Aristotle, but does not feel it necessary to "reform" the Church into something utterly formless.The Catholic approach is to be delighted when Willard recognizes the fact that sola scriptura is rubbish (a point I am happy to make extremely clear for doubters) and to urge him to, by all means, avail himself of the wisdom of the saints who read the Bible quite as much as Bob de Waay, but who saw it through different lenses. As long as those lenses have the endorsement of Holy Church, you're on safe ground. The itsy bitsy cramped world of the Truly Reformed[TM] mind has yet to figure out that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in its philosophy. So, for that matter, do the equally cramped worlds of Schuller, Warren and the Emergents. Willard and the Emergents have taken the first step of wisdom: they know that they do not know. The second step of wisdom is to acknowledge that this points us not to an endless Dictatorship of Relativism and agnosticism (which is simply another cramped little intellectual and spiritual trap, but to the fullness of revelation that subsists in the Catholic Church.