Two of the thousands of reasons we here at Chez Shea love our son Matthew
Reason One:
He finds things like this:
Reason Two:
He writes things like this.
What a guy!
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Are you Stinking Rich? Physically Present at Mass from Time to Time?
Then you have what it takes to a Knight of Malta! And the best part is, we don't care what you do or believe! Just show us the money and you're in!
Amy gives the round up and the contact info for those of us who think that merely being rich is not sufficient to get you through the eye of the needle. Indeed, according to some well-informed sources, being rich may actually make it harder to get through.
Then you have what it takes to a Knight of Malta! And the best part is, we don't care what you do or believe! Just show us the money and you're in!
Amy gives the round up and the contact info for those of us who think that merely being rich is not sufficient to get you through the eye of the needle. Indeed, according to some well-informed sources, being rich may actually make it harder to get through.
Hey Western Washingtonians!
I'll be in Snohomish tonight at 7:00 speaking at St. Michael's parish. Here's the basic scoop:
St. Michael parish, 1512 Pine Ave., Snohomish, WA Phone: 360-568-0821 Topic: The Many Sided Gospel. Contact: Carol Byers
Don't miss it if you can!
I'll be in Snohomish tonight at 7:00 speaking at St. Michael's parish. Here's the basic scoop:
St. Michael parish, 1512 Pine Ave., Snohomish, WA Phone: 360-568-0821 Topic: The Many Sided Gospel. Contact: Carol Byers
Don't miss it if you can!
So is it my Patriotic Duty to Frown on This or My Christian Duty to Applaud it?
I opt for the latter because, as I say, I think the main story is about the Church, not about the West (or Islam).
I opt for the latter because, as I say, I think the main story is about the Church, not about the West (or Islam).
From our "Take Off 50 IQ Points Whenever the Press Talks about Religion" File
So some jackass reporter goes around to different churches, lies about various sins and ethical conundrums in the confessional, gets 24 different pieces of advice from 24 priests and then compares them to what he calls the "official teaching" of the Church. Then he writes a "Gotcha" article which proves that priests are not computers dispensing dogmatic formulae, but shepherds who, within their varying abilities and limits, try to mercifully help struggling people do the best they can in living up the admittedly hard ideals of the Faith. Of course, he doesn't realize that's what he proves. He *thinks* he's proving that the Catholic Faith is crap, which shows what a jackass he is.
He also proves that he is a liar and a jerk, not to mention a blasphemer. I generally think it unwise to try to learn the truth about plumbing from liars, much less the truth about something weighty like a religion. I also think it unwise to try to learn the Catholic faith from people who neither understand nor believe it.
If you can read Spanish, the original piece is here in all its hypocritical splendor.
So some jackass reporter goes around to different churches, lies about various sins and ethical conundrums in the confessional, gets 24 different pieces of advice from 24 priests and then compares them to what he calls the "official teaching" of the Church. Then he writes a "Gotcha" article which proves that priests are not computers dispensing dogmatic formulae, but shepherds who, within their varying abilities and limits, try to mercifully help struggling people do the best they can in living up the admittedly hard ideals of the Faith. Of course, he doesn't realize that's what he proves. He *thinks* he's proving that the Catholic Faith is crap, which shows what a jackass he is.
He also proves that he is a liar and a jerk, not to mention a blasphemer. I generally think it unwise to try to learn the truth about plumbing from liars, much less the truth about something weighty like a religion. I also think it unwise to try to learn the Catholic faith from people who neither understand nor believe it.
If you can read Spanish, the original piece is here in all its hypocritical splendor.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker has a podcast!
Speaking of podcasts, here's my podcast of a favorite A.A. Milne poem. I was highly amused this morning when one of our tech guys from CE wrote to say, "The title of Mark's podcast is just a string of nonsense characters! Please fix this ASAP!" :)
Speaking of podcasts, here's my podcast of a favorite A.A. Milne poem. I was highly amused this morning when one of our tech guys from CE wrote to say, "The title of Mark's podcast is just a string of nonsense characters! Please fix this ASAP!" :)
Dave Hartline's Book "The Tide is Turning Toward Catholicism" is a cheery and optomistic assessment of the Church's place in the 21st Century that might persuade some gloomy Catholics to abandon the virtue of despair and embrace the moral sin of Hope
You can watch an interview with Dave on EWTN's "Bookmarks" which will air today at 5:30 PM EST. You can stream the show as it airs here.
You can watch an interview with Dave on EWTN's "Bookmarks" which will air today at 5:30 PM EST. You can stream the show as it airs here.
How I Envy You New Yorkers!
Ceili Rain and the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal! This should be big honkin' fun! Ceili Rain is a blast!
I wonder if Dawn Eden knows about this? It would be right up her alley.
Ceili Rain and the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal! This should be big honkin' fun! Ceili Rain is a blast!
I wonder if Dawn Eden knows about this? It would be right up her alley.
My Latest on Catholic Exchange
Spiritual Pollution, Part 2: in which we learn why God chose the image of "pollution" to exemplify sin.
Spiritual Pollution, Part 2: in which we learn why God chose the image of "pollution" to exemplify sin.
Climate Experts KT Tunstall and Josh Hartnett Give the Earth Ten Years to Live!
I feel a "We are the World" benefit concert coming. Something where 50,000 people come together to emit vast clouds of pot smoke and beer-induced methane into the environment.
I do feel ahead of the curve. Dr. Tunstall says, "Things like not leaving your phone charger in the wall are so simple.” I have no phone to charge, so I am a hero!
I feel a "We are the World" benefit concert coming. Something where 50,000 people come together to emit vast clouds of pot smoke and beer-induced methane into the environment.
I do feel ahead of the curve. Dr. Tunstall says, "Things like not leaving your phone charger in the wall are so simple.” I have no phone to charge, so I am a hero!
The Messiah Sweeps are Getting Crowded Early This Year
Yesterday, it was that Latino guy. Today, Slate magazine investigates whether Barack Obama is, in fact, the Son of God (based on fawning, drooling press accounts of holiness, signs, and wonders).
I can prove he's not the Great I AM because, as the press has catechized us, homosexuality is the source and summit of all that is noble, true, good, and beautiful. Obama's not gay. QED.
Yesterday, it was that Latino guy. Today, Slate magazine investigates whether Barack Obama is, in fact, the Son of God (based on fawning, drooling press accounts of holiness, signs, and wonders).
I can prove he's not the Great I AM because, as the press has catechized us, homosexuality is the source and summit of all that is noble, true, good, and beautiful. Obama's not gay. QED.
By the way, speaking of art, my reader Timothy Jones is a fantastic artist!
Check his stuff out here.
Check his stuff out here.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
"Let's welcome Jesus Christ Man!"
I'm going to hazard a guess that this man is not, in fact, Jesus Christ.
I'm also going to remark on his 100,000 followers: "If men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?
I'm going to hazard a guess that this man is not, in fact, Jesus Christ.
I'm also going to remark on his 100,000 followers: "If men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?
More Scenes From the March That Never Happened
25,000 Non-Persons Get Disappeared Down Memory Hole by Old Media!
25,000 Non-Persons Get Disappeared Down Memory Hole by Old Media!
Check out the Latest StrongBad Email!
Lot of fun little Easter eggs if you scroll your mouse over the text while he's typing.
Lot of fun little Easter eggs if you scroll your mouse over the text while he's typing.
Up until the Bush Administration and it's Apologists Went All Postmodern on Us and Decided that "Torture" and "Prisoner Abuse" and "Outrages Upon Human Dignity" were insoluble Linguistic Conundrums that were far too vague for the human mind to grasp...
...this sort of thing was the remarkably clear and easy-to-understand guideline for how to treat prisoners. You may remark, "Say! This is remarkably close to the language of the Catechism, which does not say: "Torture is a Randian anti-concept which expresses nothing substantive at all, but merely the knee-jerk disapproval of the person uttering it" but instead says:
You'd be right.
...this sort of thing was the remarkably clear and easy-to-understand guideline for how to treat prisoners. You may remark, "Say! This is remarkably close to the language of the Catechism, which does not say: "Torture is a Randian anti-concept which expresses nothing substantive at all, but merely the knee-jerk disapproval of the person uttering it" but instead says:
2313 Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.
You'd be right.
9/11 Conspiracy Theorists = Kooks
I begin to suspect Kathy's right: it's a peculiar form of mental illness.
I begin to suspect Kathy's right: it's a peculiar form of mental illness.
As part of "Be Nice to Jesuits Week" (which I suddenly and surreptitiously started celebrating yesterday, but forgot to tell you)...
...here's a good piece on good Jesuit Cardinal Dulles on what the good Jesuits are all about.
...here's a good piece on good Jesuit Cardinal Dulles on what the good Jesuits are all about.
The moral, silly parents, is to teach your children not to look up to actors as role models
Actors are not the characters they play. It's not complicated.
If your children need role models (and they do) teach them to look up to role models as role models, not actors. Try the saints. There's a lot of them and they are very interesting folk. Also, fictional characters do quite nicely, because they don't finish their gig in the book to return to their third wife, the bottle, and/or their gay lover or their anti-semitic tirades or their nutty Marin County cult.
Actors are not the characters they play. It's not complicated.
If your children need role models (and they do) teach them to look up to role models as role models, not actors. Try the saints. There's a lot of them and they are very interesting folk. Also, fictional characters do quite nicely, because they don't finish their gig in the book to return to their third wife, the bottle, and/or their gay lover or their anti-semitic tirades or their nutty Marin County cult.
Sorry, but I don't buy the hysteria
This smells like a week old fish to me. I've been stampeded once this decade. That's enough.
This smells like a week old fish to me. I've been stampeded once this decade. That's enough.
Some tens of thousands of you claim to have Marched for Life
We all know that's bunk, however, because none of the media reported it. So you either aren't reading this because you don't exist or you are busy writing up bogus accounts of this "March" and doctoring photographs to "document" it, like this guy.
If you are a non-existent person who also did not go to the March for Life that never happened, feel free to talk about it in my combox.
We all know that's bunk, however, because none of the media reported it. So you either aren't reading this because you don't exist or you are busy writing up bogus accounts of this "March" and doctoring photographs to "document" it, like this guy.
If you are a non-existent person who also did not go to the March for Life that never happened, feel free to talk about it in my combox.
"Funny how the presence of a child instantly and irreversibly strips away layers of selfishness."
Julie Lyons reflects on the utter moral derangement of our Manufacturers of Culture as they try out This Year's Latest Disgusting Perversions and smash fresh "taboos" ("That gloriously useful word" - Uncle Screwtape).
She's perfectly right, of course, which is why I cannot think of much to add except "Amen".
The quote above puts me in mind of my recent viewing of "The Children of Men", a bleak, terrifying, depressing, and absolutely necessary film which is an almost miraculous counter-argument against Planned Parenthood and all its works and pomps. It's rated "R" for a reason, but if you can endure it (and it takes some enduring), the sound of children's voices will never be the mere background noise again. An absolutely profound meditation on what children give the world. I wanted to go straight home and hug my kids. What a treasure they are!
Julie Lyons reflects on the utter moral derangement of our Manufacturers of Culture as they try out This Year's Latest Disgusting Perversions and smash fresh "taboos" ("That gloriously useful word" - Uncle Screwtape).
She's perfectly right, of course, which is why I cannot think of much to add except "Amen".
The quote above puts me in mind of my recent viewing of "The Children of Men", a bleak, terrifying, depressing, and absolutely necessary film which is an almost miraculous counter-argument against Planned Parenthood and all its works and pomps. It's rated "R" for a reason, but if you can endure it (and it takes some enduring), the sound of children's voices will never be the mere background noise again. An absolutely profound meditation on what children give the world. I wanted to go straight home and hug my kids. What a treasure they are!
Monday, January 29, 2007
Speaking of Materialist Magicians...
You thought Sam Harris was a hard-headed rationalist? Nope. As a matter of fact, he appears to be a rather soft-headed materialist magician. Apparently all the hardness is in the heart fortified against every religion so long as it is Abrahamic.
You thought Sam Harris was a hard-headed rationalist? Nope. As a matter of fact, he appears to be a rather soft-headed materialist magician. Apparently all the hardness is in the heart fortified against every religion so long as it is Abrahamic.
Next time you have to endure "Anthem" think of this
U2 are fine musicians. They're just not liturgical musicians.
U2 are fine musicians. They're just not liturgical musicians.
Ellen Goodman is a fool
She asks, "More sex leads to less bonding?"
No, Ellen. More sex with multiple semi-anonymous partners leads to less bonding, as any fool but you could see if they weren't blinded by an ideological agenda.
She asks, "More sex leads to less bonding?"
No, Ellen. More sex with multiple semi-anonymous partners leads to less bonding, as any fool but you could see if they weren't blinded by an ideological agenda.
God have mercy on his soul
On the bright side, a very fine Jesuit named Joseph Koterski will be in Seattle next October and the Seattle Chesterton Society hopes to have him come speak to us! We'll keep you posted!
On the bright side, a very fine Jesuit named Joseph Koterski will be in Seattle next October and the Seattle Chesterton Society hopes to have him come speak to us! We'll keep you posted!
Attention Washingtonians!
Two Bills have been introduced into the Washington State Legislature this year, HB1163 and HB1336, which pertain to human embryonic stem cell reseach, to human cloning and to the use of aborted fetal body parts for research. If you go to www1.leg.wa.gov and type in the bills numbers, you can read the full text. The first bill , HB1163, provides funding for stem cell research, highlighting adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells and embryonic germ cells, but doesn't provide funding for stem cells from umbilical cord blood or other sources. Totipotent stem cells have been isolated from testicular biopsies which have almost identical characteristics to embryonic stem cells, except they do not involve the destruction of embryos. This discovery allows the science and truth about embryonic stem cells to be discussed aside from the moral issues, which become so volatile and emotional. Totipotent embryonic or spermatogonial stem cells form fatal tumors in vivo and are not appropriate therapies for patients. Attempts to alter the stem cells so that they do not form fatal tumors have been extremely disappointing, and these altered embryonic stem cells do not then provide any benefit in a disease. Do not become confused when you hear embryonic stem cell proponents describe these tumors as 'non-malignant'. The correct description would be non-metatastic. Although the tumors do not spread to organs throughout the body, they are 100% fatal, and I would be happy to go through the publications from the embryonic stem cell proponents themselves and show anyone this data. The Washington State Legislature has become enamored of the use of embryonic stem cells, as this seems to have become a dividing line between the parties. Contact your representative and tell them that you do not want your tax dollars wasted on embryonic or spermatogonial stem cells which have no clinical potential because they cause fatal tumor formation. In contrast, adult stem cells are being tested in over 50 clinical trials in many diseases. Large, double-blind, randomized and placebo controlled trials have been completed in cardiac disease, and patients treated with these cells have dramatic reductions in mortality and morbidity. Our tax dollars should be used to fund research such as this with adult stem cells, which is leading to treatments for patients right now.
The second bill, HB1336, would make human cloning, called SCNT or somatic cell nuclear transfer, and the use of body parts from aborted fetuses the law and policy of the State of Washington. This is a horrible bill. Please contact your state legislator and tell them to vote no on this bill.
Call 1-800-562-6000 and leave a message for your representative. Call them as soon as possible because these bills may be voted on as early as this week.
Two Bills have been introduced into the Washington State Legislature this year, HB1163 and HB1336, which pertain to human embryonic stem cell reseach, to human cloning and to the use of aborted fetal body parts for research. If you go to www1.leg.wa.gov and type in the bills numbers, you can read the full text. The first bill , HB1163, provides funding for stem cell research, highlighting adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells and embryonic germ cells, but doesn't provide funding for stem cells from umbilical cord blood or other sources. Totipotent stem cells have been isolated from testicular biopsies which have almost identical characteristics to embryonic stem cells, except they do not involve the destruction of embryos. This discovery allows the science and truth about embryonic stem cells to be discussed aside from the moral issues, which become so volatile and emotional. Totipotent embryonic or spermatogonial stem cells form fatal tumors in vivo and are not appropriate therapies for patients. Attempts to alter the stem cells so that they do not form fatal tumors have been extremely disappointing, and these altered embryonic stem cells do not then provide any benefit in a disease. Do not become confused when you hear embryonic stem cell proponents describe these tumors as 'non-malignant'. The correct description would be non-metatastic. Although the tumors do not spread to organs throughout the body, they are 100% fatal, and I would be happy to go through the publications from the embryonic stem cell proponents themselves and show anyone this data. The Washington State Legislature has become enamored of the use of embryonic stem cells, as this seems to have become a dividing line between the parties. Contact your representative and tell them that you do not want your tax dollars wasted on embryonic or spermatogonial stem cells which have no clinical potential because they cause fatal tumor formation. In contrast, adult stem cells are being tested in over 50 clinical trials in many diseases. Large, double-blind, randomized and placebo controlled trials have been completed in cardiac disease, and patients treated with these cells have dramatic reductions in mortality and morbidity. Our tax dollars should be used to fund research such as this with adult stem cells, which is leading to treatments for patients right now.
The second bill, HB1336, would make human cloning, called SCNT or somatic cell nuclear transfer, and the use of body parts from aborted fetuses the law and policy of the State of Washington. This is a horrible bill. Please contact your state legislator and tell them to vote no on this bill.
Call 1-800-562-6000 and leave a message for your representative. Call them as soon as possible because these bills may be voted on as early as this week.
Nobody Does Hypocrisy Quite Like a Dem
With the guys on the Right, you at least get naked appeals to glories of Machiavelli and the brutal world of realpolitik which warn you that they are quite willing to lie if they thing the exigencies of statecraft warrant it. On the Left, you still get this warm stream of rhetoric like baby pee that floods your being with the assurance that *these* are a different breed of multimillionaire than the GOP multimillionaires. These are Men of the People. These care about the Earth!
I remember my uncle (who served in Europe with the State Dept for years) remarking, "The Italians will cheat you, but make you laugh while they do it. The French will cheat you and insult you while they do it." Somehow I'm reminded of that here. The GOP politician cheats you over his pork barrel, but at least respects you enough to say, "Hey! It's a Darwinian world! Grow up!". The Dem politician cheats you and treats you like a child while he does so.
I'm sort of hoping for somebody who doesn't cheat me.
With the guys on the Right, you at least get naked appeals to glories of Machiavelli and the brutal world of realpolitik which warn you that they are quite willing to lie if they thing the exigencies of statecraft warrant it. On the Left, you still get this warm stream of rhetoric like baby pee that floods your being with the assurance that *these* are a different breed of multimillionaire than the GOP multimillionaires. These are Men of the People. These care about the Earth!
I remember my uncle (who served in Europe with the State Dept for years) remarking, "The Italians will cheat you, but make you laugh while they do it. The French will cheat you and insult you while they do it." Somehow I'm reminded of that here. The GOP politician cheats you over his pork barrel, but at least respects you enough to say, "Hey! It's a Darwinian world! Grow up!". The Dem politician cheats you and treats you like a child while he does so.
I'm sort of hoping for somebody who doesn't cheat me.
So last week, 20 bazillion people descend on DC and San Francisco for the Prolife March
In the media, we hear crickets.
This week, Jane Fonda and some other aging narcissists show up in DC to bathe in the glow of old Vietnam memories. Front page of the Seattle Times (and undoubtedly the NY Times).
Now, much as I oppose the war, I can't help but roll my eyes at the hypocrisy of it all. We've 3000 troops in three years in Iraq. We will lose 4000 in 24 hours here at home.
So, to correct the flagrant editorial imbalance, here are some images of the prolife movement that the manufacturers of American culture forbade you to see.
In the media, we hear crickets.
This week, Jane Fonda and some other aging narcissists show up in DC to bathe in the glow of old Vietnam memories. Front page of the Seattle Times (and undoubtedly the NY Times).
Now, much as I oppose the war, I can't help but roll my eyes at the hypocrisy of it all. We've 3000 troops in three years in Iraq. We will lose 4000 in 24 hours here at home.
So, to correct the flagrant editorial imbalance, here are some images of the prolife movement that the manufacturers of American culture forbade you to see.
Your metaphysical/theological ponder for the day
On the outside of the door to heaven there is a sign that says: "Whosoever
will may enter."
On the inside of the door there is another sign that says: "You did not
choose me; I choose you."
On the outside of the door to heaven there is a sign that says: "Whosoever
will may enter."
On the inside of the door there is another sign that says: "You did not
choose me; I choose you."
Or to make the previous comment brief, for a large percentage of our post-Christian world...
This is Why We Fight.
The West is a civilization ripe for chaos (once the temporary props of technology are removed for a bit), followed by a Strong Man who will Bring Order. As a species we are, in the main, three meals away from a willingness to hand over our souls to whoever will make us feel safe. Whether that person will be Antichrist or just another dress rehearsal is anybody's guess. I suspect not *the* Antichrist. All the pieces don't quite seem to be in place yet. But the amazing thing about the human species is our addiction to sin. We keep trying until we get it completely wrong.
This is Why We Fight.
The West is a civilization ripe for chaos (once the temporary props of technology are removed for a bit), followed by a Strong Man who will Bring Order. As a species we are, in the main, three meals away from a willingness to hand over our souls to whoever will make us feel safe. Whether that person will be Antichrist or just another dress rehearsal is anybody's guess. I suspect not *the* Antichrist. All the pieces don't quite seem to be in place yet. But the amazing thing about the human species is our addiction to sin. We keep trying until we get it completely wrong.
Big arguments over at Rod's...
over my speculations on which side in the civilizational struggle is more likely to produce Antichrist.
The funny thing was, in the first three comments on Rod's post we basically got the main lines of reaction:
Unfortunately, most of the reaction fell into the first two categories. The most wonderfully fatuous remark in the first category was:
It sent me into a reverie, thinking back to how much I enjoyed my first encounter with C.S. Lewis' droll sense of humor in Pilgrim's Regress:
Beyond the fatuity of "Darwin Disproves Antichrist" is the broad assumption that (probably due to my monobrow trailer trash Evangelical roots, I am engaging in what more than one poster regarded as "feverish, semi-coherent Left-Behind-type scenarios".
A word or two about the history of my religious opinions is in order here, so as to correct this notion. The particular sect into which I entered when I came to faith in Christ was, in fact, emphatically heterodox when it came to matters like the Second Coming. The reason was the Usual: over-reaction to a previous extreme. The pastor who founded the Church in Spokane (a guy named Brother Ray) had been raised a flat-footed Pentecostal tradition that looked forward to a literal City of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven and--WHAM!--landing on top of the old one. At some point in his adolescence, Brother Ray decided this was preposterous and rejected entirely the doctrine of any Second Coming at all which involved the physical world. The *true* Second Coming, argued Ray, was Pentecost when Jesus came again in spiritual form, etc. The people who first taught me the Faith believed this and I, knowing nothing of historic Christian teaching, accepted it with relief. I had, in fact, always found the Christian doctrine of the Second Coming preposterous (precisely because I had only encountered it in feverish Left Behind-type scenarios). Here, at last, was a Christian group that seemed to explain the "fantasy sci-fi" aspects of the Christian faith in a way that my sophisticated intellect could accept....
...until I began to learn the historic faith (and observe the way the world works) and come to the conclusion, not that Left Behind types were on to something (I still think them cranks) but that the historic Church was on to something when it said that history is going someplace, that the story is driving toward a climax, that good and evil are headed for a final clash that will be different in degree, not in kind, from the clashes we have seen in the past, and that, as a matter of fact, Antichrist is coming but that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.
In short, I discovered that Left Behind scenarios are cartoonish perversions of the ancient Christian faith. So far from it being in my Evangelical blood, believe in the Second Coming has the character of a hard-won point of faith that I believe on the authority of the Church, not because it comes naturally to me at all. So thanks for the psychoanalysis of my vestigial Left Behindism, but you're wrong if you think I'm grafting some weird bit of Evangelicalism into the Catholic faith. It was simply and solely the Catechism and Holy Scripture I was citing in my cogitations, not the text of Left Behind. The Church, not Evangelicalism, made me a believer in the Second Coming and the coming of antichrist.
The other main criticism was from the "How Dare You Criticize the West?" crowd. This was broken down, more or less into two sorts. First, there was the demented foaming and raving of St. Blog's Resident Jingo who somehow detected anti-semitism in my remarks and who then urged Rod not to be hysterical but to adopt his demeanor of calm rationality that calls for the nuking of whole Islamic populations, and the Lidice-style roundup and slaughter of every man, woman and child Muslim in a given New Jersey city.
Second there were the more reasonable questions of people like Bubba, who wanted to know if I'm really saying the West is eviller than the Islamosphere.
In answer: I reply, "No. I'm saying the West is (by grace, not nature) higher than the Islamosphere." And, as C.S. Lewis says, "The higher, the more in danger." The greater the gifts God gives you, the more you have to betray and pervert. A monkey can better--and worse--than a dog. A man can be better--and worse--than a monkey. A man of great genius can be better--and worse--than a stupid man. And an angel can be better--and worse--than a man.
The West has been graced with the enormous gift of being the matrix in which Christianity first grew. It has been given enormous gifts that the Islamic world has, for whatever reason, not received. And so we have much more to betray and pervert, precisely because our civilization is so much greater. It is the Christian West, for instance, that not only conceives the idea of the dignity of the person, but conceives of the very idea of the person. It is the post-Christian West that is now laboring to destroy that idea and reduce the person to a thing in ways that ancient pagans could not imagine (by, for instance, turning the person into a chimera by merging human and animal DNA and seeing what happens).
More to the point, the post-Christian West is, indeed, casting around for ways to deify man. That claim to deity is precisely what lies behind the "dictatorship of relativism" Benedict warns of. The notion that we "create our own reality" has in it the seeds of a claim to deity. At present, we allow a "democracy of self-deification" in which each person is permitted their Personal Truth of the Moment. But we have already seen, in moments of desperation, how the cults of personality behind the great Totalitarians of the 20th Century demand (and get) a willingness of whole peoples to do exactly what some of Rod's comboxers insist could never happen: worship a man as a god. For instance, Roy Schoeman, in his Salvation is From the Jews, notes:
Naw! That could never happen!
So my point is this: the Church teaches the reality of a coming Antichrist.
Indeed, Scripture teaches that many antichrists have already come. We're not talking Emperor Palpatine, shooting electric bolts from his fingers. We're not talking Left Behind, or The Omen. No special effects are necessary. We are talking about a secular messianism that promises heaven on earth in exchange for rejection of Christ. We are also talking about a figure who will, whether he knows it or not, be doing the work of Satan. My own fancy is that he will embody something of what Lewis is getting at when he describes the "Materialist Magician" in his Screwtape Letters:
I think this because it's what we have already seen, for instance, in the fascination the occult held for the alleged materialists of the Nazi and Communist regimes. We see it still in our culture, that rejects the Faith but thinks there is something in spoon bending and spirit channelling.
In short, it's a little late to say that could never happen when we've already seen it happen over and over again and are laboring to make it happen on a bigger scale this time. All that is necessary for Full Scale Performance of what we have already seen in dress rehearsal many times is for technology to make it possible for fewer and fewer people to have decisive control over the lives of more and more people. This has been the tendency of the West since the rise of the nation state and I see no particular reason it should stop in the long haul.
None of that is to say I think Radical Islam is not a huge evil. None of that is to say I think the West is worse than the Islamosphere. There remains great good in the West that is worth fighting for. If it comes to that, there remains some great good in the Islamosphere. Rather, I simply note that when Paul speaks of the final assault on the Church in 2 Thessalonians, he describes the "man of sin" as coming from "apostasy" not as coming from "persecution from without". And he describes him, as I already note, in terms of a man who claims to be God. Good luck finding a Muslim who claims to be Allah. But we in the West have already seen apostates making such claims and followers (sometimes millions of them) eager to follow them.
All of this speculation *is* speculation. I could, of course, be dead wrong. I have no crystal ball and certainly project no concrete scenarios or timelines. I simply record my gut sense that Islam is not going to win this "civilizational struggle". That's the good news.
The bad news is that, if revelation is any guide, I believe something worse will win.
Meanwhile, of course, we Catholics must do what we have always done: fight the Long Defeat. If Christianity teaches anything, it teaches that this world has been subjected to futility (Romans 8). Ulimately, we're all gonna die. Meanwhile, we pray, work, love, build, have babies, and see what God (who is full of surprises) has in store. At the end of the day, we're going to laugh.
over my speculations on which side in the civilizational struggle is more likely to produce Antichrist.
The funny thing was, in the first three comments on Rod's post we basically got the main lines of reaction:
1. People who take the Christian revelation seriously are idiots and crazy.
2. JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! I'M NOT LISTENING! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! PARKINSON'S RIDDLED HYPOCRITE! LOVE AMERICANISM, HATE THE CHURCH! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! ANTI-SEMITE! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO! JINGO!
3. It's an idea worth thinking about at least. Nothing anybody has to commit to here specifically, but it's worth pondering.
Unfortunately, most of the reaction fell into the first two categories. The most wonderfully fatuous remark in the first category was:
Over a hundred and sixty years after the publication of Darwin's Origin, there is no excuse for any educated person to be talking seriously about "the anti-Christ."
It sent me into a reverie, thinking back to how much I enjoyed my first encounter with C.S. Lewis' droll sense of humor in Pilgrim's Regress:
‘And where might you come from, my fine lad?’ said Mr. Enlightenment.
‘From Puritania, sir,’ said John….
‘Puritania! Why, I suppose you have been brought up to be afraid of the Landlord.’
‘Well, I must admit I sometimes do feel rather nervous.’
‘You may make your mind easy, my boy. There is no such person.’
‘There is no Landlord?’
‘There is absolutely no such thing - I might even say no such entity - in existence. There never has been and never will be.’…
‘But how do you know there is no Landlord?’
‘Christopher Columbus, Galileo, the earth is round, invention of printing, gunpowder!’ exclaimed Mr. Enlightenment in such a loud voice that the pony shied.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said John.
‘Eh?’ said Mr. Enlightenment.
‘I didn’t quite understand,’ said John.
‘Why, it’s plain as a pikestaff,’ said the other. ‘Your people in Puritania believe in the Landlord because they have not had the benefits of a scientific training. For example, now, I dare say it would be news to you to hear that the earth was round - round as an orange, my lad!’
‘Well, I don’t know that it would,’ said John, feeling a little disappointed. ‘My father always said it was round.’
‘No, no, my dear boy,’ said Mr. Enlightenment, ‘you must have misunderstood him. It is well known that everyone in Puritania thinks the earth flat. It is not likely that I should be mistaken on such a point. Indeed, it is out of the question….’
Beyond the fatuity of "Darwin Disproves Antichrist" is the broad assumption that (probably due to my monobrow trailer trash Evangelical roots, I am engaging in what more than one poster regarded as "feverish, semi-coherent Left-Behind-type scenarios".
A word or two about the history of my religious opinions is in order here, so as to correct this notion. The particular sect into which I entered when I came to faith in Christ was, in fact, emphatically heterodox when it came to matters like the Second Coming. The reason was the Usual: over-reaction to a previous extreme. The pastor who founded the Church in Spokane (a guy named Brother Ray) had been raised a flat-footed Pentecostal tradition that looked forward to a literal City of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven and--WHAM!--landing on top of the old one. At some point in his adolescence, Brother Ray decided this was preposterous and rejected entirely the doctrine of any Second Coming at all which involved the physical world. The *true* Second Coming, argued Ray, was Pentecost when Jesus came again in spiritual form, etc. The people who first taught me the Faith believed this and I, knowing nothing of historic Christian teaching, accepted it with relief. I had, in fact, always found the Christian doctrine of the Second Coming preposterous (precisely because I had only encountered it in feverish Left Behind-type scenarios). Here, at last, was a Christian group that seemed to explain the "fantasy sci-fi" aspects of the Christian faith in a way that my sophisticated intellect could accept....
...until I began to learn the historic faith (and observe the way the world works) and come to the conclusion, not that Left Behind types were on to something (I still think them cranks) but that the historic Church was on to something when it said that history is going someplace, that the story is driving toward a climax, that good and evil are headed for a final clash that will be different in degree, not in kind, from the clashes we have seen in the past, and that, as a matter of fact, Antichrist is coming but that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.
In short, I discovered that Left Behind scenarios are cartoonish perversions of the ancient Christian faith. So far from it being in my Evangelical blood, believe in the Second Coming has the character of a hard-won point of faith that I believe on the authority of the Church, not because it comes naturally to me at all. So thanks for the psychoanalysis of my vestigial Left Behindism, but you're wrong if you think I'm grafting some weird bit of Evangelicalism into the Catholic faith. It was simply and solely the Catechism and Holy Scripture I was citing in my cogitations, not the text of Left Behind. The Church, not Evangelicalism, made me a believer in the Second Coming and the coming of antichrist.
The other main criticism was from the "How Dare You Criticize the West?" crowd. This was broken down, more or less into two sorts. First, there was the demented foaming and raving of St. Blog's Resident Jingo who somehow detected anti-semitism in my remarks and who then urged Rod not to be hysterical but to adopt his demeanor of calm rationality that calls for the nuking of whole Islamic populations, and the Lidice-style roundup and slaughter of every man, woman and child Muslim in a given New Jersey city.
Second there were the more reasonable questions of people like Bubba, who wanted to know if I'm really saying the West is eviller than the Islamosphere.
In answer: I reply, "No. I'm saying the West is (by grace, not nature) higher than the Islamosphere." And, as C.S. Lewis says, "The higher, the more in danger." The greater the gifts God gives you, the more you have to betray and pervert. A monkey can better--and worse--than a dog. A man can be better--and worse--than a monkey. A man of great genius can be better--and worse--than a stupid man. And an angel can be better--and worse--than a man.
The West has been graced with the enormous gift of being the matrix in which Christianity first grew. It has been given enormous gifts that the Islamic world has, for whatever reason, not received. And so we have much more to betray and pervert, precisely because our civilization is so much greater. It is the Christian West, for instance, that not only conceives the idea of the dignity of the person, but conceives of the very idea of the person. It is the post-Christian West that is now laboring to destroy that idea and reduce the person to a thing in ways that ancient pagans could not imagine (by, for instance, turning the person into a chimera by merging human and animal DNA and seeing what happens).
More to the point, the post-Christian West is, indeed, casting around for ways to deify man. That claim to deity is precisely what lies behind the "dictatorship of relativism" Benedict warns of. The notion that we "create our own reality" has in it the seeds of a claim to deity. At present, we allow a "democracy of self-deification" in which each person is permitted their Personal Truth of the Moment. But we have already seen, in moments of desperation, how the cults of personality behind the great Totalitarians of the 20th Century demand (and get) a willingness of whole peoples to do exactly what some of Rod's comboxers insist could never happen: worship a man as a god. For instance, Roy Schoeman, in his Salvation is From the Jews, notes:
When a Nazi journal asked readers what "the Fuhrer means to them", typical responses included:
"The Fuhrer is the visible personal expression of what in our youth was represented as God."
"I have never felt the Divine Power as near as in the greatness of our Fuhrer."
"What the Fuhrer has given me is not only a political ideology, but also a religion."
"How shall I put in words what I feel for my Fuhrer... I look up to him now as I prayed to God in my childhood..."
"[The Fuhrer] is the bread of which the soul stands in need. I would like to say openly that the high teaching of the Fuhrer is to me a religion, the German religion!"
"Adolf Hitler means the same as the word God means to a fanatical and orthodox Christian."
Naw! That could never happen!
So my point is this: the Church teaches the reality of a coming Antichrist.
675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
676 The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.
677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.
Indeed, Scripture teaches that many antichrists have already come. We're not talking Emperor Palpatine, shooting electric bolts from his fingers. We're not talking Left Behind, or The Omen. No special effects are necessary. We are talking about a secular messianism that promises heaven on earth in exchange for rejection of Christ. We are also talking about a figure who will, whether he knows it or not, be doing the work of Satan. My own fancy is that he will embody something of what Lewis is getting at when he describes the "Materialist Magician" in his Screwtape Letters:
I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The "Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work--the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits"--then the end of the war will be in sight.
I think this because it's what we have already seen, for instance, in the fascination the occult held for the alleged materialists of the Nazi and Communist regimes. We see it still in our culture, that rejects the Faith but thinks there is something in spoon bending and spirit channelling.
In short, it's a little late to say that could never happen when we've already seen it happen over and over again and are laboring to make it happen on a bigger scale this time. All that is necessary for Full Scale Performance of what we have already seen in dress rehearsal many times is for technology to make it possible for fewer and fewer people to have decisive control over the lives of more and more people. This has been the tendency of the West since the rise of the nation state and I see no particular reason it should stop in the long haul.
None of that is to say I think Radical Islam is not a huge evil. None of that is to say I think the West is worse than the Islamosphere. There remains great good in the West that is worth fighting for. If it comes to that, there remains some great good in the Islamosphere. Rather, I simply note that when Paul speaks of the final assault on the Church in 2 Thessalonians, he describes the "man of sin" as coming from "apostasy" not as coming from "persecution from without". And he describes him, as I already note, in terms of a man who claims to be God. Good luck finding a Muslim who claims to be Allah. But we in the West have already seen apostates making such claims and followers (sometimes millions of them) eager to follow them.
All of this speculation *is* speculation. I could, of course, be dead wrong. I have no crystal ball and certainly project no concrete scenarios or timelines. I simply record my gut sense that Islam is not going to win this "civilizational struggle". That's the good news.
The bad news is that, if revelation is any guide, I believe something worse will win.
Meanwhile, of course, we Catholics must do what we have always done: fight the Long Defeat. If Christianity teaches anything, it teaches that this world has been subjected to futility (Romans 8). Ulimately, we're all gonna die. Meanwhile, we pray, work, love, build, have babies, and see what God (who is full of surprises) has in store. At the end of the day, we're going to laugh.
Lady Macbeth Does Her Oprah Imitation
No amount of breezy smiles can get rid of the glitter of cunning hunger for power in those eyes. An archetype of Inside the Beltway phoniness.
No amount of breezy smiles can get rid of the glitter of cunning hunger for power in those eyes. An archetype of Inside the Beltway phoniness.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Wait!
Before I go, I have to show you this comment from my reader Mahsheed, whose blog, I gather, is one of a convert to the Faith from Islam (though I could be wrong and she could just be speaking from the experience of Muslims she knows):
I think this is probably pretty accurate and should be memorized by every Catholic interested in evangelizing Muslims.
Feel free to discuss while I'm gone.
Before I go, I have to show you this comment from my reader Mahsheed, whose blog, I gather, is one of a convert to the Faith from Islam (though I could be wrong and she could just be speaking from the experience of Muslims she knows):
Let me tell you a typical Muslim immigrant experience. He chafes under the restrictions of his Islamic home country. He does not pray or fast (is Muslim in name only--MINO). He finally makes it to America. Once here he experiences the severe culture shock of encountering a permissive sexual society plus the adjustment of living as an outsider (who can blame him--his own culture is very different). And he is envious. What is that secret things that divides his repressive Islamic society from the democratic West? He looks for clues.
Maybe he tries to assimilate, but finds it impossible as some changes would destroy his identity. Like can he allow his daughters to screw around in high school and still consider himself a man?
At no point does he ever discover that the secret of the West's success is Jesus Christ. That their societies are robust and democratic because these are the natural fruits of a Christian world-view. He never sees the third way as there have been no Christians to present it to him. In fact he has taken for granted that everyone he meets is Christian. Where are the Christians? He is not likely to encounter them as they travel in different circles as they have their own schools and universities and are concentrated in the red states and tend not to advertise their beliefs. And when the Muslim attended university what education did he get? Everything he was taught reinforced what he already knew about the evil Church and the crusades and the inquisition and the Dark Ages. He is relentlessly fed liberal PC multicultural victimology claptrap. From the media he encounters the writings of the judas apostate clergymen (what we call liberal Christianity) and is gleefully convinced by their claims. Now he sees that the West with their filthy culture has been the culprit all along. He figured it out.
Whereas before he had idealized Western values as being the key to reforming his home country, now he sees that those Islamic restrictions are all that keep him from total chaos. In his own country he envisioned all sorts of reforms such as more mingling of the sexes etc, now the slippery slope (every reform will lead to chaos) has been firmly entrenched in his mind--he sees where it all will lead.
Thus in a strange land he finds himself clinging to his Islamic identity; he prays and fasts and listens to the imams at the local mosque. Islam is the answer.
Now I ask those of you who deny his humanity, did he ever really stand a chance?
I think this is probably pretty accurate and should be memorized by every Catholic interested in evangelizing Muslims.
Feel free to discuss while I'm gone.
That's it for today!
See you Monday! I'm off to the Great Green North! Hope to see my BC/Northern Washington readers at Redeemer Pacific College tomorrow!
See you Monday! I'm off to the Great Green North! Hope to see my BC/Northern Washington readers at Redeemer Pacific College tomorrow!
I've always thought of Dan Brown as the American Rolf Hochhuth, only with more honesty and integrity
Brown, after all, was just a whore in it for the money and fame. Hochhuth was a whore participating in the deliberate subjugation of a whole people by the Commies.
Brown, after all, was just a whore in it for the money and fame. Hochhuth was a whore participating in the deliberate subjugation of a whole people by the Commies.
Since I'm out of here early today and off to British Columbia...
I offer this little ode from the late lamented Five Iron Frenzy
I offer this little ode from the late lamented Five Iron Frenzy
Welcome to Canada, it's the Maple Leaf State.
Canada, oh Canada it's great!
The people are nice and they speak French too.
If you don't like it, man, you sniff glue.
The Great White North, their kilts are plaid,
Hosers take off, it's not half bad.
I want to be where yaks can run free,
Where Royal Mounties can arrest me.
Let's go to Canada, let's leave today,
Canada, oh, Canada, I Sil Vous Plait.
They've got trees, and mooses, and sled dogs,
Lots of lumber, and lumberjacks, and logs!
We all think it's kind of a drag,
That you have to go there to get milk in a bag.
They say "eh?" instead of "what?" or "duh?"
That's the mighty power of Canada.
I want to be where lemmings run into the sea,
Where the marmosets can attack me.
Let's go to Canada, let's leave today,
Canada, oh, Canada, I Sil Vous Plait.
Let's go to Canada, let's leave today,
Canada, oh, Canada, I Sil Vous Plait.
Please, please, explain to me,
How this all has come to be,
We forgot to mention something here.
Did we say that William Shatner is a native citizen?
And Slurpees made from venison, That's deer.
Let's go to Canada, let's leave today,
Canada, oh, Canada, I Sil Vous Plait.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Prayers Requested for Dale and Heather Price
I'm so sorry, dear friends. May God grant you peace and receive the soul he has created into his bosom, through Christ our Lord.
I'm so sorry, dear friends. May God grant you peace and receive the soul he has created into his bosom, through Christ our Lord.
With some small caveats, I think that's a pretty accurate assessment
And it grieves me to say that. I'm still amazed that the Bush Administration managed to turn the conservative movement from something that distrusts Leviathan into something that, by and large, defends the proposition that the US should be a state where torture is legal, prisoner abuse is just fine, and citizens can be held indefinitely on vague and shifting charges, if it makes us feel safer. If what has been done to Maher Arar, the Ice Man and US citizen Jose Padilla (to cite some tips of the iceberg) had happened on Clinton's watch, the Right would have been (rightly) screaming bloody murder about it. But today: crickets.
And it grieves me to say that. I'm still amazed that the Bush Administration managed to turn the conservative movement from something that distrusts Leviathan into something that, by and large, defends the proposition that the US should be a state where torture is legal, prisoner abuse is just fine, and citizens can be held indefinitely on vague and shifting charges, if it makes us feel safer. If what has been done to Maher Arar, the Ice Man and US citizen Jose Padilla (to cite some tips of the iceberg) had happened on Clinton's watch, the Right would have been (rightly) screaming bloody murder about it. But today: crickets.
Check out Pastoral Del Amor
Somehow I can't help but think StrongBad would find that site name really cool.
Somehow I can't help but think StrongBad would find that site name really cool.
You Know What You Need to Do?
You need to go to England and study St. Thomas More with the University of Dallas.
Hurry though! Deadline for application is February 1.
Come on. You know you want to.
You need to go to England and study St. Thomas More with the University of Dallas.
Hurry though! Deadline for application is February 1.
Come on. You know you want to.
Daniel Kovach writes:
A Blogging Scholarship! If only I were a student! Then I'd have a opportunity to lose!
The Daniel Kovach Scholarship Foundation is giving away $2000 to a political blogger this year.
I would greatly appreciate your help in letting your readers know about this opportunity in order for us to find the best applicants.
The application and additional information are located here:
Last year, the winner of our general Blogging Scholarship was Stephen Yellin, a blogger for The Daily Kos. We now have a separate competition just for political bloggers.
A Blogging Scholarship! If only I were a student! Then I'd have a opportunity to lose!
Fr. Paul Weinberger writes:
Heh!
Today's Dallas Morning News had a wire story about companies in this country which have tainted the rivers with mercury. If industry pollutes, now with the EPA, they must clean it up. It was a short story from the wire services, nothing long or involved.
Recall the demands made on EXXON after the Valdez spilled oil - they had to pay for the cleanup. That eventually was passed on to the people at the pump in higher prices.
When you buy new tires in the USA, there is a charge for recycling the old tires. The same goes for freon in the car's A/C. The charge is passed on to the person buying the tires or the freon.
There is a story in today's news about doctors who believe that the oral contraceptive, also known as "The Pill" needs to be strengthened. Evidently some women are still getting pregnant and they believe that the dosage of "The Pill" must be increased.
What if the companies which manufacture the contraceptive pill had to pass on a surcharge to women who bought oral contraceptive pill for environmental cleanup, awareness would be raised and also tighter restrictions on what goes into our lakes and rivers.
Countless studies have been found that relate how fish and frogs have mutated due to the pill which reaches rivers and lakes through waste water treatment facilities. The female hormones have made the frogs disfigured, some growing extra legs (the French will love this!) and the fish having the equivalent of a sex-change, from male to female.
Our tender planet must be protected. If this is attempted it could put more drag on the pharmaceutical companies. Why are they any different from clear cut coal miners who level whole mountains, clogging streams and rivers with valuable topsoil.
Ecologists need to begin fighting the pharmaceutical companies to clean up their act. This cost which is damaging the water supply must be addressed. We have known about this for years now but no mention is ever made.
Heh!
Yeah, I've noticed that too
Daniel Larison comments on the curious fact that if you say "We should pre-emptively launch a war against Iran because it's in Israel's best interests" you are a political visionary and another Churchill. If you say "We should not pre-emptively launch a war against Iran because it's in Israel's best interests" you are an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist.
I'm not terribly sanguine about expanding the war to Iran. We got stampeded once. I'm less inclined to be stampeded again by hysteria about imminent mushroom clouds.
Daniel Larison comments on the curious fact that if you say "We should pre-emptively launch a war against Iran because it's in Israel's best interests" you are a political visionary and another Churchill. If you say "We should not pre-emptively launch a war against Iran because it's in Israel's best interests" you are an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist.
I'm not terribly sanguine about expanding the war to Iran. We got stampeded once. I'm less inclined to be stampeded again by hysteria about imminent mushroom clouds.
I figured this would happen
Yesterday, I discussed, not so much D'Souza's book (which I haven't read) as the discussion of D'Souza's book. Somehow some folk got the idea I was saying, "If we just act more moral, bin Laden and other Bronze Age Fanatics won't hate us." I'm saying, to mention the most minor point first, that we are crazy if we seriously think we can or should treat Islam as a monolith and declare war on a billion people. That's crazy talk of the craziest jingo sort. And it's also unnecessary. The fact is, the Islamic world is riven by all sorts of fractures. And the fact is, as Benedict is demonstrating in his conversations with various Muslims, that it is possible to make friends with Muslims and find common ground with them. This does not mean that Islam, like Christianity, is not an evangelizing religion dedicated to converting the world. It is. It simply means that not all (or even most) Muslims are dedicated to doing that by nuking New York. There are Muslims like this. The trick, for the West, is to cultivate *that* Islam so that the majority of Muslims regard themselves as having more to benefit from our friendship than from the Bronze Age Fanatics. Or, we can just take this approach, declare Islam a monolith, and simply ridicule anybody who tries to build bridge to decent Muslims as a fool who is trying to make bin Laden like us.
Will such an approach solve the problem of Islam's desire to convert the world? Of course not! But on the whole, I'd prefer an Islam populated by people who say of the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatics:
...than an Islam characterized by bin Laden.
Beyond this however, I have to say that in a certain sense, I'm not particularly addressing America's relationship with the Islamic world at all. That's because, as I said, I don't think the Story is about America (or Islam for that matter). I think it's about Christ and the Church. For me, things matter as they are related to that central drama. One of the patterns I note in the biblical revelation of Christ's Church is the pattern I described yesterday: that the Assyrian is ultimately a rod in the hand of God. He may think he's calling the shots, but actually it's God. So I think the wise approach is to "seek first His Kingdon and His righteousness" rather than spend the bulk of our energy looking for ways to hold on to our sin while still cleverly manipulating politics, science, technology, etc. in order to stave off the consequences of our rejection of God. It seems obvious to me that the post-Christian West is deeply engaged in the latter process and that the result will simply be to make our final self-inflicted judgement (all such dooms are self-inflicted) more complicated and terrible.
However, I also believe that God is rich in mercy and that repentence is possible at any time. I have no particular crystal ball that allows me to see the future with respect to Islam and the West. But we do have a bit of revelation concerning the Church and it gives me hope. I am not as confident as some of my readers that the world is doomed to an Islamic future in saecula saeculorum. That is not to say it is not a source of great evil. It is simply to say that I'm not ready to simply throw in the sponge and say the power of the Christ who conquers death is helpless against the onslaught of Islam. Part of my reason for thinking this is theological: Islam does not seem to me to fit the bill for the final apostasy and the nature of Antichrist. We are, to be sure, absolutely guaranteed that the Church faces a "final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh." (CCC 675).
The question I find myself asking, in light of biblical revelation, is this: which side of the conflict between the post-Christian West and the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatic Islamosphere is far more likely to give us "the lawless one ... the one doomed to perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). Say what you will about Islam, but I don't see it producing that figure in a million years, whereas the West is ripe to give birth to him right now.
That's not to say I *prefer* the Foaming Bronze Age Thugs to win. It's to say that, in my heart, I cannot believe that they will. I think Scripture is true and that the coming of Christ will take place in a world that is apostate and (mark this) seriously ready to deify man, not in a world that never heard the gospel and which regards the deification of man with horror. That description fits the decadent West a lot better than than the Islamic East, so I retain a confidence, if you can call it that, that the winners of this particular "civilizational struggle" will be the post-Christian West, whose cultural and technological masters are laboring even now to create fresh sins that cry out to heaven and terrors that will dwarf Islam's crimes as continue on our post-Christian path toward "the supreme religious deception ... of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh."
When that will come, we don't know. *That* it will come is guaranteed by the word of God. And for my money, it seems much more like to come from a Decadent West triumphant over Islam than from Radical Islam triumphant over the West.
Meanwhile, the counsel of the Church remains the same: trust in Christ and His Church, not in the fortunes of Radical Islam or the Decadent West. Because only Christ and his Church are eternal. Everything else is passing.
Yesterday, I discussed, not so much D'Souza's book (which I haven't read) as the discussion of D'Souza's book. Somehow some folk got the idea I was saying, "If we just act more moral, bin Laden and other Bronze Age Fanatics won't hate us." I'm saying, to mention the most minor point first, that we are crazy if we seriously think we can or should treat Islam as a monolith and declare war on a billion people. That's crazy talk of the craziest jingo sort. And it's also unnecessary. The fact is, the Islamic world is riven by all sorts of fractures. And the fact is, as Benedict is demonstrating in his conversations with various Muslims, that it is possible to make friends with Muslims and find common ground with them. This does not mean that Islam, like Christianity, is not an evangelizing religion dedicated to converting the world. It is. It simply means that not all (or even most) Muslims are dedicated to doing that by nuking New York. There are Muslims like this. The trick, for the West, is to cultivate *that* Islam so that the majority of Muslims regard themselves as having more to benefit from our friendship than from the Bronze Age Fanatics. Or, we can just take this approach, declare Islam a monolith, and simply ridicule anybody who tries to build bridge to decent Muslims as a fool who is trying to make bin Laden like us.
Will such an approach solve the problem of Islam's desire to convert the world? Of course not! But on the whole, I'd prefer an Islam populated by people who say of the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatics:
"These people, ladies and gentleman -- have a good look at them. They actually think if you kill children, if you kill women, you would go to heaven... This is not an ideology. It's a mental illness."
...than an Islam characterized by bin Laden.
Beyond this however, I have to say that in a certain sense, I'm not particularly addressing America's relationship with the Islamic world at all. That's because, as I said, I don't think the Story is about America (or Islam for that matter). I think it's about Christ and the Church. For me, things matter as they are related to that central drama. One of the patterns I note in the biblical revelation of Christ's Church is the pattern I described yesterday: that the Assyrian is ultimately a rod in the hand of God. He may think he's calling the shots, but actually it's God. So I think the wise approach is to "seek first His Kingdon and His righteousness" rather than spend the bulk of our energy looking for ways to hold on to our sin while still cleverly manipulating politics, science, technology, etc. in order to stave off the consequences of our rejection of God. It seems obvious to me that the post-Christian West is deeply engaged in the latter process and that the result will simply be to make our final self-inflicted judgement (all such dooms are self-inflicted) more complicated and terrible.
However, I also believe that God is rich in mercy and that repentence is possible at any time. I have no particular crystal ball that allows me to see the future with respect to Islam and the West. But we do have a bit of revelation concerning the Church and it gives me hope. I am not as confident as some of my readers that the world is doomed to an Islamic future in saecula saeculorum. That is not to say it is not a source of great evil. It is simply to say that I'm not ready to simply throw in the sponge and say the power of the Christ who conquers death is helpless against the onslaught of Islam. Part of my reason for thinking this is theological: Islam does not seem to me to fit the bill for the final apostasy and the nature of Antichrist. We are, to be sure, absolutely guaranteed that the Church faces a "final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh." (CCC 675).
The question I find myself asking, in light of biblical revelation, is this: which side of the conflict between the post-Christian West and the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatic Islamosphere is far more likely to give us "the lawless one ... the one doomed to perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). Say what you will about Islam, but I don't see it producing that figure in a million years, whereas the West is ripe to give birth to him right now.
That's not to say I *prefer* the Foaming Bronze Age Thugs to win. It's to say that, in my heart, I cannot believe that they will. I think Scripture is true and that the coming of Christ will take place in a world that is apostate and (mark this) seriously ready to deify man, not in a world that never heard the gospel and which regards the deification of man with horror. That description fits the decadent West a lot better than than the Islamic East, so I retain a confidence, if you can call it that, that the winners of this particular "civilizational struggle" will be the post-Christian West, whose cultural and technological masters are laboring even now to create fresh sins that cry out to heaven and terrors that will dwarf Islam's crimes as continue on our post-Christian path toward "the supreme religious deception ... of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh."
When that will come, we don't know. *That* it will come is guaranteed by the word of God. And for my money, it seems much more like to come from a Decadent West triumphant over Islam than from Radical Islam triumphant over the West.
Meanwhile, the counsel of the Church remains the same: trust in Christ and His Church, not in the fortunes of Radical Islam or the Decadent West. Because only Christ and his Church are eternal. Everything else is passing.
I didn't know it was possible...
...but I managed to stump my pastor with a question that, as far as he knows, no theologian has ever even speculated about before.
My question: was Mary sacramentally baptized?
I was wondering about it since it seems somewhat analogous to Jesus' baptism. Neither of them *needed* baptism since both were sinless (he by nature and she by grace). But I was just curious if she, like he, might have said (once the sacrament was inaugurated) "Let it be so to fulfil all righteousness." Since baptism is the normative means of salvation and since Mary is the Model Disciple, it seemed to me that a case could be made that she would have submitted to the sacrament.
On the other hand, of course, the fact that there is no tradition whatsoever concerning this argues awfully strongly that she did not. However, I did not know there was no tradition concerning this till I queried my pastor and found out I had inadvertantly proposed a question that, as far as he knows, nobody has proposed before.
On a related note, I was wondering if the apostles were sacramentally baptized or if Jesus' "Receive the Holy Spirit" acted in lieu of sacramental baptism in their case. If so, it would appear that Pentecost was good enough in Mary's case as well. Acts has no record of the apostles being baptized. Rather, they just head out and start baptizing others after Pentecost. So my assumption (now) is that neither Mary nor the Apostles were ever sacramentally baptized (except for the unique case of Paul).
Just thinking out loud. The questions had never occurred to me before.
...but I managed to stump my pastor with a question that, as far as he knows, no theologian has ever even speculated about before.
My question: was Mary sacramentally baptized?
I was wondering about it since it seems somewhat analogous to Jesus' baptism. Neither of them *needed* baptism since both were sinless (he by nature and she by grace). But I was just curious if she, like he, might have said (once the sacrament was inaugurated) "Let it be so to fulfil all righteousness." Since baptism is the normative means of salvation and since Mary is the Model Disciple, it seemed to me that a case could be made that she would have submitted to the sacrament.
On the other hand, of course, the fact that there is no tradition whatsoever concerning this argues awfully strongly that she did not. However, I did not know there was no tradition concerning this till I queried my pastor and found out I had inadvertantly proposed a question that, as far as he knows, nobody has proposed before.
On a related note, I was wondering if the apostles were sacramentally baptized or if Jesus' "Receive the Holy Spirit" acted in lieu of sacramental baptism in their case. If so, it would appear that Pentecost was good enough in Mary's case as well. Acts has no record of the apostles being baptized. Rather, they just head out and start baptizing others after Pentecost. So my assumption (now) is that neither Mary nor the Apostles were ever sacramentally baptized (except for the unique case of Paul).
Just thinking out loud. The questions had never occurred to me before.
A reader asks:
No. As far as I know, emergency baptism is not permissible without the person's consent (if an adult) or the consent of their parents (if a child). Such an act would be a fundamental violation of the person's freedom (if an adult), and of the natural authority of the parent (if a child). With *consent*, it's a different story. However, I doubt very much whether you will be able to persuade your superiors to allow you to ask patients if they or their children would like to have an emergency baptism.
Also, as you yourself note, if you baptize them and they recover, then yes, you would have an obligation to inform them that you baptized them. If they get angry and sue you and the organization you work for, you will have exposed innocent people to harm, as well as violating a pretty clear teaching of the Church.
I would strongly counsel against baptisms without the proper consent.
Update: I stand somewhat corrected. Here's the germane stuff from the Code of Canon Law:
In addition to my emergency medical training I'm also applying for employment with a Fire Department. Soon I will be dealing with the sick and dying as either a fireman or an EMT for a private ambulance company. I'm going to see a lot of death. When people are dying in my ambulance, is it profitable to attempt to baptize them? I imagine that the sacrament would have to be clandestine because even if the customer is unconscious, my partner might find it unseemly and there is potential controversy. If I know there is nothing I can do medically and a victim will die before they reach a trauma surgeon, would the Church approve of an emergency baptism uttered under my breath without the knowledge of my partner or even the customer himself? Could I baptize a conscious customer without their knowledge?
I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks. As of now, my opinion is in favor of emergency baptism attempts. I say attempts because the customer may very well be baptized already. I know the secret baptism of pagan children is not with the mind of the Church right now. My understanding is that baptizing a child who will not be raised in the Church incorporates him into the Body of Christ, making him an attractive target for the demonic because he will not be trained in the use of the Graces provided by the sacraments and he has a long life of opportunities to fall. Emergency death-bed baptisms sidestep this because the customer will probably not have much time to be tempted into mortal sin, especially if he's unconscious. His sins will be completely forgotten, and I will have one more soul in Heaven praying for me to at least scrape by into Purgatory. Over the course of a career, I could make enough advocates in heaven to ensure my presidential suite in our Father's house will have an hot tub waiting for me. Even if the baptism is not valid because one has already occurred, what possible harm could be done? On the off chance I baptize someone and they recover, do I have an obligation to inform them?
No. As far as I know, emergency baptism is not permissible without the person's consent (if an adult) or the consent of their parents (if a child). Such an act would be a fundamental violation of the person's freedom (if an adult), and of the natural authority of the parent (if a child). With *consent*, it's a different story. However, I doubt very much whether you will be able to persuade your superiors to allow you to ask patients if they or their children would like to have an emergency baptism.
Also, as you yourself note, if you baptize them and they recover, then yes, you would have an obligation to inform them that you baptized them. If they get angry and sue you and the organization you work for, you will have exposed innocent people to harm, as well as violating a pretty clear teaching of the Church.
I would strongly counsel against baptisms without the proper consent.
Update: I stand somewhat corrected. Here's the germane stuff from the Code of Canon Law:
Can. 865 §1. For an adult to be baptized, the person must have manifested the intention to receive baptism, have been instructed sufficiently about the truths of the faith and Christian obligations, and have been tested in the Christian life through the catechumenate. The adult is also to be urged to have sorrow for personal sins.
§2. An adult in danger of death can be baptized if, having some knowledge of the principal truths of the faith, the person has manifested in any way at all the intention to receive baptism and promises to observe the commandments of the Christian religion.
Can. 868 §1. For an infant to be baptized licitly:
1/ the parents or at least one of them or the person who legitimately takes their place must consent;
2/ there must be a founded hope that the infant will be brought up in the Catholic religion; if such hope is altogether lacking, the baptism is to be delayed according to the prescripts of particular law after the parents have been advised about the reason.
§2. An infant of Catholic parents or even of non-Catholic parents is baptized licitly in danger of death even against the will of the parents.
"Isn't there something, I dunno, Soviet about using the psychiatric profession to punish those guilty of political crimes?"
Ayup!
Another startling little illustration of the words of the Prophet Chesterton, who observed that when you get rid of the Big Laws you don't get freedom and you don't even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
When you live by the Big Laws, a sin (such as insulting another person) is followed by repentance, sincere purpose of amendment, and forgiveness. When you live by the small laws, mere repentance and sincere purpose of amendment are not enough. You must be ground into the dirt. You must be declared to be sick. You must enter Re-Education Camp. You must take the classes, learn to repeat the mantra with the rest of the class ("Homosexuality is the source and summit of all that is noble, good, true, and worthy of worship!"). And when you are released from Camp, you will be watched closely for any signs of recidivist behavior.
That's called "Freedom from the repressive moralism of the old Christian order."
Ayup!
Another startling little illustration of the words of the Prophet Chesterton, who observed that when you get rid of the Big Laws you don't get freedom and you don't even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
When you live by the Big Laws, a sin (such as insulting another person) is followed by repentance, sincere purpose of amendment, and forgiveness. When you live by the small laws, mere repentance and sincere purpose of amendment are not enough. You must be ground into the dirt. You must be declared to be sick. You must enter Re-Education Camp. You must take the classes, learn to repeat the mantra with the rest of the class ("Homosexuality is the source and summit of all that is noble, good, true, and worthy of worship!"). And when you are released from Camp, you will be watched closely for any signs of recidivist behavior.
That's called "Freedom from the repressive moralism of the old Christian order."
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Just a reminder for those who are in the area
January 26-27, I'm speaking at Redeemer Pacific College in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Topics: Making Senses Out of Scripture; Behold Your Mother; and 101 Reasons Not to Be Catholic.
January 26-27, I'm speaking at Redeemer Pacific College in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Topics: Making Senses Out of Scripture; Behold Your Mother; and 101 Reasons Not to Be Catholic.
Interesting Discussion of Intentional Discipleship
Don't forget to read the combox and see Sherry Weddell's very able rejoinders.
Also, don't forget to check out the Intentional Discipleship blog. See past the Jargon You Are Not Familiar With and recognize the deeply Catholic nature of their thought. You can do it!
PS: Here's another interesting discussion, again with the formidable Sherry Weddell answering the various misperceptions, questions and concerns of the Commonweal readership.
Don't forget to read the combox and see Sherry Weddell's very able rejoinders.
Also, don't forget to check out the Intentional Discipleship blog. See past the Jargon You Are Not Familiar With and recognize the deeply Catholic nature of their thought. You can do it!
PS: Here's another interesting discussion, again with the formidable Sherry Weddell answering the various misperceptions, questions and concerns of the Commonweal readership.
Deacon Speaks Truth to Power, Bishop and Priest Major in Minors
Sure, the deacon was rude. Sure, you don't single out congregants and make a spectacle of them at Mass. Fine. Slap him on the wrist. But do not apologize while not saying one syllable about the mass slaughter of human beings that the representative is, in fact, laboring to create.
The basic Catholic modus operandi should be "Break the Conventions. Keep the Commandments". This is another sample of the Episcopalian ethos that often infects the hierarchy, where mere politess is prized at the expense of focusing on the main issue, the slaughter of innocents.
Sure, the deacon was rude. Sure, you don't single out congregants and make a spectacle of them at Mass. Fine. Slap him on the wrist. But do not apologize while not saying one syllable about the mass slaughter of human beings that the representative is, in fact, laboring to create.
The basic Catholic modus operandi should be "Break the Conventions. Keep the Commandments". This is another sample of the Episcopalian ethos that often infects the hierarchy, where mere politess is prized at the expense of focusing on the main issue, the slaughter of innocents.
I've not read D'Souza's book...
but I've been following the discussion of it a bit and I tend to agree with Kathy Shaidle's assessment: if it's this roundly hated by both sides in the Ideology Wars, there is probably something to it. From what I gather, he's making the perfectly sensible point that we are idiots if we seriously think we can or should go to war with a billion people. He makes the further point that Islam is not a monolith and the smart way to fight Radical Islam is to befriend who can be befriended in non-Radical Islam.
Part of the way to do this, of course, is to examine our own house and see if we've got some repentin' to do. That's essentially the annoying approach the prophets tended to take with Israel. When the Assyrians came into town, the prophets didn't tells Israel that the Assyrians were misunderstood guys who meant well if your properly contextualized the mounds of human heads they liked to construct. But they also didn't blather jingoistic crap about Our Israelite Way of Life Must Be Preserved Against Terrorists Who Hate Our Freedom. They said, "Repent and the Lord will take care of the Rod he has brought against you."
The biggest paradigm shift we face as the last superpower is the assumption that History is About Us. It's not. It's about Christ and the Church. American, like all nation states, is a temporal thing with a lifespan. Insofar as D'Souza is arguing that a post-Christian West has every reason to expect that its culture (currently exploring the outer edges of embryo cannibalism, bestiality and the artistic nuances of child rape, while consolidating earlier victories enshringing sins that cry out to heaven as Fundamental Human Rights) is going to be viewed with utter disgust by the more traditional moralities that still flourish in other parts of the world, he's right. Insofar as he is arguing that the West should repent of the moral freak show it has become if it wishes to make allies with non-radical Muslims of a more traditional moral bent, he's right.
Not having read the book, I can't say for sure, but I suspect that his main argument does not have in view "repentance in order to please God" but repentance in order to save our butts. The latter is a fine place to start. God has accepted many a sinner who started there. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
But it cannot end there. A so-called "spiritual revival" in the West predicated on Being More Moral So As Not to Further Alienate Moderate Muslims is ultimately not a revival but an act. It's better than nothing, but in the end, it's false and will fail because it is not rooted in the love of God. It will suffer from all similar attempts to be saved by law: it will lack grace.
So it requires in the end, what the gospel requires: a serious committment to Christ and his Church. That's why he world, including ideologues both Left and Right, hate it. On the Left and Libertarian fronts, the Andrew Sullivan types gleefully point to any attempt to rebuke the West's culture of Hedonism and the Imperial Autonomous Self as Taliban Christianism. On the Right, the anger is directed toward D'Souza's attempts to be conciliatory toward Muslims.
What is unspoken here is that that Christianity and the great religious traditions of the world generally have natural law in common. Christ did not propound a brand new moral doctrine. He accepted--as children, Eskimos, Muslims, and ancient Jews did--that certain things were normal and other things were not. The Catholic tradition does the same, which is why Pope Benedict can have a fruitful conversation with Muslims and take seriously their moral teachings: because they are typically just the same old expressions of the natural law that undergird the Ten Commandments.
But the post-Christian West has made a radical break with the old natural law and, in fact, denies that there is a natural law. On the Sullivan front, this means that any attempt to assert a moral teaching not suited to the needs of Sullivan's groin is derided as "Christianism". The proof? *Muslims say the same thing!* And so the normal yah yah about theocons and the imminent Christian sharia are trotted out to great effect.
Meanwhile, on the Right, the jingos build up similar blockades between serious Christians and sensible Muslims with lots of "whose side are you on?" rhetoric and simplistic claims that what D'Souza is saying essentially a stupid political quick fix: "all we have to do is put our clothes back on and go back to church and the fanatical jihadists will leave us alone."
I think it's pretty obvious this is not what any thoughtful person would say. But it is a convenient way to dismiss D'Souza. I likewise think it pretty obvious that what any sensible Catholic who considers the problem must really say is that you cannot fight an inflamed spirituality like Radical Islam with the watery anemic spirituality that constitutes, say, Andrew Sullivan's vision of the Faith. What is necessary is a healthy spirituality: one that fully embodies not only a right understanding of God, but a right understanding of Man. In the end, only the Faith revealed by the one who is both fully God and fully man can do that.
At some level, I think many of D'Souza's critics are terrified of that fact.
but I've been following the discussion of it a bit and I tend to agree with Kathy Shaidle's assessment: if it's this roundly hated by both sides in the Ideology Wars, there is probably something to it. From what I gather, he's making the perfectly sensible point that we are idiots if we seriously think we can or should go to war with a billion people. He makes the further point that Islam is not a monolith and the smart way to fight Radical Islam is to befriend who can be befriended in non-Radical Islam.
Part of the way to do this, of course, is to examine our own house and see if we've got some repentin' to do. That's essentially the annoying approach the prophets tended to take with Israel. When the Assyrians came into town, the prophets didn't tells Israel that the Assyrians were misunderstood guys who meant well if your properly contextualized the mounds of human heads they liked to construct. But they also didn't blather jingoistic crap about Our Israelite Way of Life Must Be Preserved Against Terrorists Who Hate Our Freedom. They said, "Repent and the Lord will take care of the Rod he has brought against you."
The biggest paradigm shift we face as the last superpower is the assumption that History is About Us. It's not. It's about Christ and the Church. American, like all nation states, is a temporal thing with a lifespan. Insofar as D'Souza is arguing that a post-Christian West has every reason to expect that its culture (currently exploring the outer edges of embryo cannibalism, bestiality and the artistic nuances of child rape, while consolidating earlier victories enshringing sins that cry out to heaven as Fundamental Human Rights) is going to be viewed with utter disgust by the more traditional moralities that still flourish in other parts of the world, he's right. Insofar as he is arguing that the West should repent of the moral freak show it has become if it wishes to make allies with non-radical Muslims of a more traditional moral bent, he's right.
Not having read the book, I can't say for sure, but I suspect that his main argument does not have in view "repentance in order to please God" but repentance in order to save our butts. The latter is a fine place to start. God has accepted many a sinner who started there. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
But it cannot end there. A so-called "spiritual revival" in the West predicated on Being More Moral So As Not to Further Alienate Moderate Muslims is ultimately not a revival but an act. It's better than nothing, but in the end, it's false and will fail because it is not rooted in the love of God. It will suffer from all similar attempts to be saved by law: it will lack grace.
So it requires in the end, what the gospel requires: a serious committment to Christ and his Church. That's why he world, including ideologues both Left and Right, hate it. On the Left and Libertarian fronts, the Andrew Sullivan types gleefully point to any attempt to rebuke the West's culture of Hedonism and the Imperial Autonomous Self as Taliban Christianism. On the Right, the anger is directed toward D'Souza's attempts to be conciliatory toward Muslims.
What is unspoken here is that that Christianity and the great religious traditions of the world generally have natural law in common. Christ did not propound a brand new moral doctrine. He accepted--as children, Eskimos, Muslims, and ancient Jews did--that certain things were normal and other things were not. The Catholic tradition does the same, which is why Pope Benedict can have a fruitful conversation with Muslims and take seriously their moral teachings: because they are typically just the same old expressions of the natural law that undergird the Ten Commandments.
But the post-Christian West has made a radical break with the old natural law and, in fact, denies that there is a natural law. On the Sullivan front, this means that any attempt to assert a moral teaching not suited to the needs of Sullivan's groin is derided as "Christianism". The proof? *Muslims say the same thing!* And so the normal yah yah about theocons and the imminent Christian sharia are trotted out to great effect.
Meanwhile, on the Right, the jingos build up similar blockades between serious Christians and sensible Muslims with lots of "whose side are you on?" rhetoric and simplistic claims that what D'Souza is saying essentially a stupid political quick fix: "all we have to do is put our clothes back on and go back to church and the fanatical jihadists will leave us alone."
I think it's pretty obvious this is not what any thoughtful person would say. But it is a convenient way to dismiss D'Souza. I likewise think it pretty obvious that what any sensible Catholic who considers the problem must really say is that you cannot fight an inflamed spirituality like Radical Islam with the watery anemic spirituality that constitutes, say, Andrew Sullivan's vision of the Faith. What is necessary is a healthy spirituality: one that fully embodies not only a right understanding of God, but a right understanding of Man. In the end, only the Faith revealed by the one who is both fully God and fully man can do that.
At some level, I think many of D'Souza's critics are terrified of that fact.
In one of the comboxes, a reader mentions Jon Anderson...
"The lyricist for Yes. Whom I like a lot, by the way, although I don't look to him for spiritual guidance anymore...."
Happily for you, your Church is changing!
"The lyricist for Yes. Whom I like a lot, by the way, although I don't look to him for spiritual guidance anymore...."
Happily for you, your Church is changing!
Another Satisfied Reader Writes:
Scandalous propaganda?
The note stated a statistic. I gave my view of the statistic--a statistic that doesn't even break down along party lines. No "rage" (that tiresomely overused word) was involved: just some chills. My point was: generally speaking, I think a Jesuit education is likely to create more Bill Clintons than Abraham Lincolns or JFKs. So sue me.
I'm speaking from rather a lot of experience. One prof I know at a Jesuit institution says they should be sued for consumer fraud when they advertise a "Catholic education". A Jesuit I know thinks the society cannot be pulled back from its rush to the abyss. Another prof relates how the head of the theology dept (along with his colleagues) groaned aloud at the election of Benedict and then declared, "He must have had the dirt on all the cardinals' homosexual antics." I once sat through a graduation at Seattle U (a "Jesuit school in the Catholic tradition") where the benediction consisted of some theologian urging us to pray to "Jesus or Buddha or the Spirit of the Northwest--whatever is comfortable for you." (I can't remember the exact words but this is a close approximation.) This was the same school where, when my friend went to her theology prof looking for Church documents on work, she was told to read Das Kapital. When she pressed further, seeking specifically Catholic teaching and asking about the Documents of Vatican II, the prof told her he had not read them. When she asked if there was anything besides Laborem Excercens (sp?) from John Paul II, the prof snapped, "I refuse to read anything by that man till he ordains women!"
And similar horror stories can be repeated by other graduates of the Insurgency Re-education Camps that call themselves "Jesuit schools in the Catholic tradition". No doubt there are still good Jesuits out there. Joseph Koterski, Robert Spitzer, Joe Fessio, and Mitch Pacwa spring immediately to mind and I've no doubt there are many more. But in the aggregate, I think a Jesuit education, particularly for a politician, is far more likely to turn out slimeballs like Robert Drinan. Hence, the chills up my spine.
Sorry for failing to toe the Prog line. I'm one of those NeoCaths Mike Liccione warned you about. I would as soon give my son a stinking fish as a Jesuit education.
This post is a disgrace, and anti-Jesuit propaganda slams the largest group of priests in the world. Shame. This post and posts like this degrade your usually insightful commentary and are beneath you.
If the Washington Post had such commentary about the number of members of Congress educated in Catholic schools, rageful expressions describing anti-Catholic prejudice would issue forth.
The Jesuits ordained 16 new priests in 2004 (the Archdiocese of Newark and Chicago-not conservative bastions, each ordained 14 priests, New York City ordained 13 men.) In 2005, the 22 Jesuits were ordained. In 2006, 11 priests were ordained. No other order or diocese ordains as many men as this order in the United States.
The Jesuits are one of the strongest orders in the Church.
If in a room of Jesuits, would such an assertion be made?
Perhaps gracious prayer for their spiritual health is their just due, not repetitions of undeserved scandalous propaganda.
Scandalous propaganda?
The note stated a statistic. I gave my view of the statistic--a statistic that doesn't even break down along party lines. No "rage" (that tiresomely overused word) was involved: just some chills. My point was: generally speaking, I think a Jesuit education is likely to create more Bill Clintons than Abraham Lincolns or JFKs. So sue me.
I'm speaking from rather a lot of experience. One prof I know at a Jesuit institution says they should be sued for consumer fraud when they advertise a "Catholic education". A Jesuit I know thinks the society cannot be pulled back from its rush to the abyss. Another prof relates how the head of the theology dept (along with his colleagues) groaned aloud at the election of Benedict and then declared, "He must have had the dirt on all the cardinals' homosexual antics." I once sat through a graduation at Seattle U (a "Jesuit school in the Catholic tradition") where the benediction consisted of some theologian urging us to pray to "Jesus or Buddha or the Spirit of the Northwest--whatever is comfortable for you." (I can't remember the exact words but this is a close approximation.) This was the same school where, when my friend went to her theology prof looking for Church documents on work, she was told to read Das Kapital. When she pressed further, seeking specifically Catholic teaching and asking about the Documents of Vatican II, the prof told her he had not read them. When she asked if there was anything besides Laborem Excercens (sp?) from John Paul II, the prof snapped, "I refuse to read anything by that man till he ordains women!"
And similar horror stories can be repeated by other graduates of the Insurgency Re-education Camps that call themselves "Jesuit schools in the Catholic tradition". No doubt there are still good Jesuits out there. Joseph Koterski, Robert Spitzer, Joe Fessio, and Mitch Pacwa spring immediately to mind and I've no doubt there are many more. But in the aggregate, I think a Jesuit education, particularly for a politician, is far more likely to turn out slimeballs like Robert Drinan. Hence, the chills up my spine.
Sorry for failing to toe the Prog line. I'm one of those NeoCaths Mike Liccione warned you about. I would as soon give my son a stinking fish as a Jesuit education.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Weird
I can publish blog entries, but when I try to view the blog it gives me an HTTP 500 Internal Server Error.
Any ideas?
I can publish blog entries, but when I try to view the blog it gives me an HTTP 500 Internal Server Error.
Any ideas?
The Chattering Classes at Sundance are busy, busy, busy finding new taboos to destroy
Yesterday, bestiality. Today, child rape.
Some will say, "Hey! The film doesn't approve of it."
No. But it *shows* it. And that is the first step toward softening our culture up to it.
Some folk hold a view of the arts that says "If human do it, it's perfectly fine for the artist do it too." But this is, of course, crap. There are things humans do that the good artist will (most certainly) hold up to the mirror of his art. But precisely because he is a good artist the way in which he will do this will not always be by means of graphic depiction. Murder is something we humans do and Shakespeare does not flinch from saying so. But in his most horrible and hellish murder--the murder of Duncan by Macbeth--he makes it more horrible by having it all happen offstage. What we see is not the corpse of Duncan, but the corpse who is Macbeth, grappling with the evil he has done.
This film self-consciously "pushes the envelope" in a way calculated to numb the conscience. When the actor playing Macbeth kills, you are thinking about Macbeth. When the character played by Dakota Fanning is raped, you are thinking, "Dakota Fanning is just a kid, and she is being asked to enter into the mind and soul of a *rape victim* so that I can have $9 of entertainment for a couple of hours?" Naturally the Chattering Classes will be thrilled. They are always thrilled by Transgressive Art. But this is not art. It's just Transgression. Nobody needs to see the rape of 12 year old girl.
If you don't agree with me, ask Steven Spielberg. He's a fine artist who has given the world some of its great films. When he shot Schindler's List, he mentioned that SS guards on the trains to Auschwitz would sometimes tear infants from their mother's breasts, fling them from the moving train, and shoot them like skeet before they hit the ground. It is, as the cretins behind the bestiality film say, "one of the things we humans do." But Spielberg said, quite sanely, that he couldn't show that. He didn't mean the censors would stop him. He meant it would be wrong to directly portray such a horror. There are some things that it is better to suggest then to show.
The Chattering Classes, however, will have their Transgression. God have mercy on them.
Yesterday, bestiality. Today, child rape.
Some will say, "Hey! The film doesn't approve of it."
No. But it *shows* it. And that is the first step toward softening our culture up to it.
Some folk hold a view of the arts that says "If human do it, it's perfectly fine for the artist do it too." But this is, of course, crap. There are things humans do that the good artist will (most certainly) hold up to the mirror of his art. But precisely because he is a good artist the way in which he will do this will not always be by means of graphic depiction. Murder is something we humans do and Shakespeare does not flinch from saying so. But in his most horrible and hellish murder--the murder of Duncan by Macbeth--he makes it more horrible by having it all happen offstage. What we see is not the corpse of Duncan, but the corpse who is Macbeth, grappling with the evil he has done.
This film self-consciously "pushes the envelope" in a way calculated to numb the conscience. When the actor playing Macbeth kills, you are thinking about Macbeth. When the character played by Dakota Fanning is raped, you are thinking, "Dakota Fanning is just a kid, and she is being asked to enter into the mind and soul of a *rape victim* so that I can have $9 of entertainment for a couple of hours?" Naturally the Chattering Classes will be thrilled. They are always thrilled by Transgressive Art. But this is not art. It's just Transgression. Nobody needs to see the rape of 12 year old girl.
If you don't agree with me, ask Steven Spielberg. He's a fine artist who has given the world some of its great films. When he shot Schindler's List, he mentioned that SS guards on the trains to Auschwitz would sometimes tear infants from their mother's breasts, fling them from the moving train, and shoot them like skeet before they hit the ground. It is, as the cretins behind the bestiality film say, "one of the things we humans do." But Spielberg said, quite sanely, that he couldn't show that. He didn't mean the censors would stop him. He meant it would be wrong to directly portray such a horror. There are some things that it is better to suggest then to show.
The Chattering Classes, however, will have their Transgression. God have mercy on them.
A reader asks
Dunno. But since we know for a fact that materialist evolutionism explains absolutely everything (because, as has been previously proven, everything is explicable by materialist evolutionism), it therefore follows that there is a perfectly reasonable all-explaining materialist evolutionary account of this. If you question that for a second you are a complete moron. Crude thoughts such as "Suppose goats are much more like works of art made for the pleasure of God and the delight of Man than they are engineering problems for efficiency experts" will, of course, not even be considered. This is a matter for hard-headed materialist thinkers, not children, poets, buttercup twirlers or (worst of all) believers.
What possible evolutionary advantage could there be in this?
Dunno. But since we know for a fact that materialist evolutionism explains absolutely everything (because, as has been previously proven, everything is explicable by materialist evolutionism), it therefore follows that there is a perfectly reasonable all-explaining materialist evolutionary account of this. If you question that for a second you are a complete moron. Crude thoughts such as "Suppose goats are much more like works of art made for the pleasure of God and the delight of Man than they are engineering problems for efficiency experts" will, of course, not even be considered. This is a matter for hard-headed materialist thinkers, not children, poets, buttercup twirlers or (worst of all) believers.
Dominicans At the March for Life
That was in DC.
My son Matthew managed to make it to the Marches in San Francisco and in Olympia, Washington.
That was in DC.
My son Matthew managed to make it to the Marches in San Francisco and in Olympia, Washington.
Michael Liccione's Sacramentum Vitae: Full of Tasty Goodness
Michael blogs on the taxonomies of Progs, Trads and NeoCaths:
In short, "NeoCath" means "Catholic".
I have accidently been on the receiving end of empirical proof of this having been labeled a NeoCath by both Reactionary and Liberal Dissenters. So I fully concur with Liccione's rough taxonomy. And he's perfectly right, as I noted here, that the main difference between Reactionary and Liberal Dissenters is about whether the Creation of a Brand New Church at Vatican II was a good thing or a bad thing. Those of us who see the same old Church both before and after the Council are such obvious fools that we can be safely dispensed with by experts on the True Faith whose favorite piece of religious art is this:
Michael blogs on the taxonomies of Progs, Trads and NeoCaths:
Before I get to the substance of the matter at issue, allow me to explain the term 'neoCath'. Och is also unlike Catholic bloggers in that he has adopted the vocabulary I use to broadly categorize the divisions in contemporary Catholicism: those between progressives or "progs," traditionalists or "trads," and neoCaths. Progs and trads both believe that the post-Vatican-II Catholic Church is theologically discontinuous with the Church as she existed before. The former group celebrates such imagined discontinuity and wants it further entrenched; the latter laments it and wants it reversed. The "neoCaths," on the other hand, are those who fully embrace Vatican II (hence the 'neo' part) but find no such discontinuity. So, the neoCaths are those who adopt the "hermeneutic of continuity" also adopted by the present and previous popes, both of whom were present and active at Vatican II. We are neither more nor less Catholic than the Pope, and don't think we need to be. In other words, we are Catholic in the only sense that really matters.
In short, "NeoCath" means "Catholic".
I have accidently been on the receiving end of empirical proof of this having been labeled a NeoCath by both Reactionary and Liberal Dissenters. So I fully concur with Liccione's rough taxonomy. And he's perfectly right, as I noted here, that the main difference between Reactionary and Liberal Dissenters is about whether the Creation of a Brand New Church at Vatican II was a good thing or a bad thing. Those of us who see the same old Church both before and after the Council are such obvious fools that we can be safely dispensed with by experts on the True Faith whose favorite piece of religious art is this:
Another Reason to Send your Kid to an Evangelical or Secular School if you can't Homeschool
In her case, I don't think homeschooling would have helped.
On the bright side, she made a documentary called "Friends of God" about American Evangelicals that was, according to a friend, quite fair and even empathetic to its subject.
[Alexandra Pelosi] ... spent her childhood in progressive Catholic schools. "We were taught just to accept people, that was just a given," Pelosi says. "I don't ever remember being told at Convent of the Sacred Heart that gay was wrong. They never even told us there was anything wrong with abortion. They were just choices."
In her case, I don't think homeschooling would have helped.
On the bright side, she made a documentary called "Friends of God" about American Evangelicals that was, according to a friend, quite fair and even empathetic to its subject.
Sadly, my computer is without sound
However, that does not mean that you cannot enjoy the newest Strong Bad email!
Please tell me if it was funny or not. (Sigh!)
However, that does not mean that you cannot enjoy the newest Strong Bad email!
Please tell me if it was funny or not. (Sigh!)
A reader writes:
Generally, the reply to such claims is "Documentation, please?"
Certainly, concubinage has happened (and probably will continue to happen till the Parousia). And it may very well be that Rome (or more likely, the local ordinary) has at times looked the other way. I'm not a historian so I don't know. But the devil is in the details. What does "recently" mean? What does "sanctioned" mean? I am highly skeptical, for instance, that up till Vatican II, Rome said, "Feel free to taka mistress on the QT" to its priests and bishops (which is one perfectly valid way of reading your correspondent's claim. On the other hand, I have no problem believing that Alexander VI had concubines (in fact, we know he did). I also have no problem believing that in times of lawlessness or sketchy ecclesial control, barely literate priests in some remote part of 14th Century Norway saw no problem at all with taking a mistress and the local bishop had other and more important fish to fry than to fuss about that. But that's pretty far from saying "Up until recently concubinage was sanctioned by the Vatican."
Another question: does your correspondent mean priestly concubinage or concubinage in general? IF the latter, a little study of the sacrament of marriage would disabuse him or her of the notion.
Anyway, the quickest response to this and many claims about the Church is "Documentation please?" You'd be astounded at how much pseudo-knowledge people have about the Church.
Greetings, Mark! I'm a long time reader, and came across this dilemma: In chatting with someone over email recently, they came up with the claim, "Up until recently concubinage was sanctioned by the Vatican." I have a couple of questions and would appreciate if you or your readers could take a stab. First, have you heard this claim before? If so, is there a ready location with the appropriate rebuttal? Second, how would you recommend responding to this or similar claims? The guy works where I work, and so laughing in his face and/or calling him names might not be appropriate. I am finding it hard to just ignore the claim, too.
Generally, the reply to such claims is "Documentation, please?"
Certainly, concubinage has happened (and probably will continue to happen till the Parousia). And it may very well be that Rome (or more likely, the local ordinary) has at times looked the other way. I'm not a historian so I don't know. But the devil is in the details. What does "recently" mean? What does "sanctioned" mean? I am highly skeptical, for instance, that up till Vatican II, Rome said, "Feel free to taka mistress on the QT" to its priests and bishops (which is one perfectly valid way of reading your correspondent's claim. On the other hand, I have no problem believing that Alexander VI had concubines (in fact, we know he did). I also have no problem believing that in times of lawlessness or sketchy ecclesial control, barely literate priests in some remote part of 14th Century Norway saw no problem at all with taking a mistress and the local bishop had other and more important fish to fry than to fuss about that. But that's pretty far from saying "Up until recently concubinage was sanctioned by the Vatican."
Another question: does your correspondent mean priestly concubinage or concubinage in general? IF the latter, a little study of the sacrament of marriage would disabuse him or her of the notion.
Anyway, the quickest response to this and many claims about the Church is "Documentation please?" You'd be astounded at how much pseudo-knowledge people have about the Church.
Why Do I think We Really Really Really Despise Rod Dreher.com is an obsessostalker site?
Because I've read Crunchy Cons, critiqued it, read other critiques of Dreher's strengths and weaknesses that seem sound to me, critiqued his reasons for becoming Orthodox, critiqued his various gripes about the Catholic bishops and the Pope--and moved on. I never felt a need to found an entire blog simply and solely devoted to reiterating again and again and again why Crunchy Con thinking is all wrong, to enumerating Rod's faults, to gabbing with fellow Rod despisers about his latest faults, sins, gaffes, and whatnot, to plunging back into his site for fresh reasons to complain about him, and to regroup at my obsessostalker site for a new round of the Same Old Complaints, followed by gleeful speculations in the comboxes of this calibre:
Yessirree. All perfectly normal there. Nothing malicious and creepy about that sort of stuff. They're all about serious intellectual criticism.
I mean, come on! Whole blog entries devoted to kvetching that Rod doesn't like "24", that Rod happens to like this sort of bread, that Rod likes that sort of wine?
"Well, that's because *he* talks about it on *his* blog." Yes. He does. People do tend to talk about things they think, do, and enjoy on their blogs. They sometimes even tend to say, "I think the world would be a better place if more people did these things I love." And yet, for the most part, nobody feels a need to create entire blogs devoted to nothing but ridiculing and refuting these small pleasures and opinions.
The folks at WRRRDRD.com made their point about the problems in Dreher's thinking in about the first three posts of their blog. Dreher has a tendency to let his passions rule his judgment at times. Crunchy Connery can sometimes be an unwarranted elevation of aesthetic choice to moral principle. Dreher is way too hard on the Catholic Church and his reasons for becoming Orthodox are not very coherent. Rod, unlike, say, Kathleen Reilly, can sometimes be tart in his replies to critics. Duly noted. I have noted such things myself when the occasion has warranted it.
But normal people *move on.* Would that the folks at WRRRDRD.com would do likewise. Surely there is *something* else to talk about than the latest way Rod Dreher has made a jackass of himself (as you all agree in your Combox Star Chamber) for failing to like a TV show you like or enjoying bread that you don't enjoy.
Get a life!
Because I've read Crunchy Cons, critiqued it, read other critiques of Dreher's strengths and weaknesses that seem sound to me, critiqued his reasons for becoming Orthodox, critiqued his various gripes about the Catholic bishops and the Pope--and moved on. I never felt a need to found an entire blog simply and solely devoted to reiterating again and again and again why Crunchy Con thinking is all wrong, to enumerating Rod's faults, to gabbing with fellow Rod despisers about his latest faults, sins, gaffes, and whatnot, to plunging back into his site for fresh reasons to complain about him, and to regroup at my obsessostalker site for a new round of the Same Old Complaints, followed by gleeful speculations in the comboxes of this calibre:
demoslider said...
I have my suspicions about Rod Dreher. He seems a little too concerned about some things
10:47 AM
kathleen said...
uh, demo, you're not the only one.
Yessirree. All perfectly normal there. Nothing malicious and creepy about that sort of stuff. They're all about serious intellectual criticism.
I mean, come on! Whole blog entries devoted to kvetching that Rod doesn't like "24", that Rod happens to like this sort of bread, that Rod likes that sort of wine?
"Well, that's because *he* talks about it on *his* blog." Yes. He does. People do tend to talk about things they think, do, and enjoy on their blogs. They sometimes even tend to say, "I think the world would be a better place if more people did these things I love." And yet, for the most part, nobody feels a need to create entire blogs devoted to nothing but ridiculing and refuting these small pleasures and opinions.
The folks at WRRRDRD.com made their point about the problems in Dreher's thinking in about the first three posts of their blog. Dreher has a tendency to let his passions rule his judgment at times. Crunchy Connery can sometimes be an unwarranted elevation of aesthetic choice to moral principle. Dreher is way too hard on the Catholic Church and his reasons for becoming Orthodox are not very coherent. Rod, unlike, say, Kathleen Reilly, can sometimes be tart in his replies to critics. Duly noted. I have noted such things myself when the occasion has warranted it.
But normal people *move on.* Would that the folks at WRRRDRD.com would do likewise. Surely there is *something* else to talk about than the latest way Rod Dreher has made a jackass of himself (as you all agree in your Combox Star Chamber) for failing to like a TV show you like or enjoying bread that you don't enjoy.
Get a life!
Small is Still Beautiful
My friend Joseph Pearce, who writes good books with astounding facility, has written another good book: Small is Still Beautiful. Essentially, he is reiterating Schumacher's (and Chesterton's and the Catholic Church's) point that economics was made for man, not man for economics. He's right of course, and so will be vilified by the various devotees of the Cult of Big who, in various ways, are often reluctant to give the person and the family primacy over power and profit. That's not to say the book is flawless, it's just to say that the people hostile to this sort of thinking have a tendency to dismiss it before they know what the flaws (or virtues) are.
My friend Joseph Pearce, who writes good books with astounding facility, has written another good book: Small is Still Beautiful. Essentially, he is reiterating Schumacher's (and Chesterton's and the Catholic Church's) point that economics was made for man, not man for economics. He's right of course, and so will be vilified by the various devotees of the Cult of Big who, in various ways, are often reluctant to give the person and the family primacy over power and profit. That's not to say the book is flawless, it's just to say that the people hostile to this sort of thinking have a tendency to dismiss it before they know what the flaws (or virtues) are.
A reader writes:
The best critique of the charlatanry of the Jesus Seminar that I know of is Richard B. Hays' "The Corrected Jesus".
In addition, Luke Timothy Johnson (a somewhat more liberal scholar) has done battle with them as well.
Another terrific writer is N.T. Wright. He's not particularly focused on the Jesus Seminar, but he does a fine job of demonstrating the reliability of the New Testament, as well as the case for the deity of Christ and the Resurrection. He is a prolific writer full of tasty goodness and refreshingly free of not-full-of-crapness who stands in stark contrast to the sophistries and bunkum of the Jesus Seminar and the man who used to be John Dominic Crossan.
Finally, there is my own "By What Authority?". It's not a scholarly work (because I am not a scholar). However, it makes use of the work of scholarly critics of the Jesus Seminar and points out some of the deeper issues which the Jesus Seminar and other radical biblical criticism raises (primarily for Protestants) about how we receive the revelation of Christ.
Your most recent article on "The Gospels Ain't Fiction" was very timely. My son is a senior at a Catholic university. He's a scholarly type, majoring in English - and has a slight bent toward progressive, liberal thinking (go figure). But a fine young man. We have overall enjoyed the experience. But in truth, we have been a bit sheltered from the theology department .. until now.
He just started this week a class on the Jesus Seminar. I had no knowledge of the prof, nor the theology department's bent until recently. I am not ignorant on such matters -- and I understand the general faith concerns of many Catholic university settings ... but I'm now being exposed to it "front and center".
I am trying to "catch up" and read more about the seminar and it's underlying "teaching". Over the last week or so I have read some good material:
- Scott Hahn interview with Karl Keating in This Rock, 9/96 "The Politicized Bible"
- Rev. John Meier interview in St. Anthony Messenger 12/97 (The Jesus of faith, the Jesus of History)
- I am now reading a book from Ben Witherington III on the historical Jesus
- and I just read the posts from Michael Rose in his St. Catherine Review and his interviews with Bob Buse - which blasts XU. I need to be a bit careful with Michael, as many see him as possibly too far right ?? - though he writes well and I was enlightened by his work on A Few Good Men.
I also am trying to get the word from the horses' mouth. I read Robert J. Miller's "The Jesus Seminar & Its Critics" from 11/96 (posted on virtualreligion.net I felt marginally better after reading this -- as it seems some data is taken out of context). And I plan to scan some of John Dominic Crossen work as well.
In summary, I would benefit form your insight and I wonder if you have any sources that your are partial to on this subject.
The best critique of the charlatanry of the Jesus Seminar that I know of is Richard B. Hays' "The Corrected Jesus".
In addition, Luke Timothy Johnson (a somewhat more liberal scholar) has done battle with them as well.
Another terrific writer is N.T. Wright. He's not particularly focused on the Jesus Seminar, but he does a fine job of demonstrating the reliability of the New Testament, as well as the case for the deity of Christ and the Resurrection. He is a prolific writer full of tasty goodness and refreshingly free of not-full-of-crapness who stands in stark contrast to the sophistries and bunkum of the Jesus Seminar and the man who used to be John Dominic Crossan.
Finally, there is my own "By What Authority?". It's not a scholarly work (because I am not a scholar). However, it makes use of the work of scholarly critics of the Jesus Seminar and points out some of the deeper issues which the Jesus Seminar and other radical biblical criticism raises (primarily for Protestants) about how we receive the revelation of Christ.
How Not to Win Friends and Influence People
I try to run fairly loose comboxes where people can speak their minds. My basic request is civility. I also try to be honest. That is, I think lying is a sin and I try to tell the truth as best I can. That means that errors I may emit on this blog are due to a) intellectual mistakes on my part (i.e., I got my facts wrong) or b) miscommunication (among other things, my informal tone and tendency to make jokes or hyperbolize are being misread). In point of fact, I think lying a sin and think the charge of lying a very serious one. I do not make it against others unless I think there is serious reason to do so. I tend to assume that it is better to attribute falsehoods to stupidity than malice unless the likelihood of stupidity is so grossly improbably that it becomes preposterous to do so. (Hence my reluctant conclusion that the Prez is lying when he tells us he has never authorized torture: I don't think him so stupid as to not know that cold cells, strappado and waterboarding are not torture.)
Why do I mention this? Because I find that some of my guests have this nasty habit of accusing me lying or dishonesty, often at the drop of a hat. There are few things that will more quickly convince me of *your* malice than that, and thereby persuade me to ban you as a Person I Can Do Without Who Never Will Be Missed.
Cases in point: Readers not totally wrapped up in themselves may have noticed that I posted a great deal yesterday. That's because I was plowing through my voluminous mail after a ten-day sojourn in Alabama. I had mail access in Alabama (via an incredibly slow and tenuous connection). This left me time to a) delete spam at a rate of one email every 4-5 minutes and b) answer absolutely vital emails. It left me time for nothing else. So I had a giant pile of unanswered mail when I returned, much of it blog related. This I dutifully plowed through yesterday (partway anyway)--both blogging stuff and answering private email. I still have more to do today. Occassionally I would glance in through haloscan's main site and respond to a comment or two as well. But mostly I was pushing through the mail.
About mid-afternoon, I began to notice the sound was not working on my computer, so I fussed with that for a while (no dice, gotta call Microsoft). Then, about 4:15, I had to bug out to do have dinner with the Chestertonians here in Seattle. We were hosting David Schindler (who gave a great talk, by the way). That wiped out my evening.
All of which is to say to the utterly self-absorbed: "I have a life and the chances are extremely high that your post, magnificently crushing as it was, was not the center of my existence."
I write this because, as I look in on my comboxes I find the following:
For a moment, I would ask people who write things like this to try the Herculean feat of imagining that it might just be possible there are other things that may account for my failure to respond to them besides intellectual dishonesty, cowardice, and pathetic abstact moralism. I would suggest to them that if they want to engage in a serious conversation they might refrain from the assumption that my life orbits around them and their one-snowflake-in-a-blizzard comment. I would also note that I would take them *way* more seriously if, a) they could quote me correctly and b) when they are answered by various and sundry others before I have time to do so, they had the integrity to say, "Gee. You're right. I didn't think of that." Their failure to do this does tend to shout "I was playing Gotcha, not looking for a serious reply."
I don't much like games of Gotcha. I dislike people who falsely and eagerly charge me with dishonesty. And so, that person is now gone from my comboxes. Don't be like him and you can stay.
Speaking of Gotcha, one of the people to whom I briefly replied yesterday during my long day of Deliberately and Carefully Not Replying to The Center of the Intellectual Universe was a guy who informed me that Abp. Donald Wuerl was my "home-boy". Apparently this reader is angry at Wuerl about not forming some committee or not taking Pelosi over his knee or something. Or to be more precise, he is delighted that Wuerl has, he believes, given him sufficient reason to cling to the contempt he already had for Wuerl before he ever became Abp, which is a different thing.
I have not been following what Wuerl is up to these days. In fact, beyond a few things I know about him (he used to be adjutor bishop here in Seattle and did a good job under very trying circumstances, he's written pretty well, he did a good job in Pittsburgh and was way ahead of the curve in tackling priestly abuse--even petitioning to Rome to make sure a bad priest got booted, and a couple of other good reports about him), I don't follow his career any more than I follow any other bishop's career. (Oh, and Tom Kreitzberg at Disputations--whose judgement I highly esteem--likes him.) So I think him a good guy and deserving of charity, not the instant presuppositions of malice that my reader was making way back in 2005 when he was appointed. But that's about it. Unlike a number of my comboxers, I regard ecclesial politics as a burdensome cross, not as a delightful source of endless gossip, team spirit, and detraction. I don't have this notion that bishops are flawless and have no doubt that Wuerl, like any other bishop, has his sins and flaws. But I have not made it my vocation to cultivate reasons to despise Wuerl. I have said as much repeatedly.
Now the weird thing is that these defenses of Wuerl that I wrote against people who were eager to condemn him sight unseen are prefaced with the following:
Note that last line. The subtext is "You are lying, Mark." And that subtext is, again, the quickest way to make yourself into a Person I Can Do Without, Who Never Will Be Missed.
Here's the thing: I remember perfectly well saying what I said about Wuerl. I thought him a basically good guy then. As far as I can tell, he still is. I thought the Combox Star Chamber proceedings against him nasty and I still do. What I don't get is the notion that Wuerl is my "home-boy". Apparently this reader believes that having respect for a decent man and a bishop is detestable. And because he cannot distinguish having respect for Wuerl from slavish adoration of Wuerl, he supposes I am lying when I express my puzzlement.
I am quite willing to say that I think Wuerl may be making a mistake (if I knew the details of what Wuerl is and is not doing, which I don't). But this particular reader seems to have the notion that if I'm not immediately joining his mob of pitchfork wavers to denounce a man of whom I know mainly good things, then the only explanation is that I am a lickspittle sycophant of Abp. Wuerl and a liar caught in my words. The possibility that I am simply somebody who thinks Wuerl a decent guy who deserves the benefit of the doubt seems not to enter into his thoughts. And so he plays "Gotcha" much as he has played Gotcha before in his ongoing effort to impute intellectual dishonesty to me and earn his wings as a Person I Can Do Without.
Mission accomplished, Billy. I let you back on in the hope you had learned some manners. You're out of here again.
Finally, in addition to false imputations of lying and dishonesty, there is the question of Just Plain Rudeness.
Example: I am not shy about pointing out that I am a Fat Guy. I'm not especially pleased to be a Fat Guy. I am, in fact, trying to do something about becoming a less Fat Guy. I have not blogged on these efforts nor about my various other struggles in this department because I can think of few things more a) boring for the reader and b) likely to invite Combox Star Chamber Members to adjudicate on the state of my soul. Beyond that, I note that my work as a writer is not what you would call "athletic". It involves sitting in a room most of the day. If I do not sit in a room most of the day quietly and unathletically keeping the wolf from the door, my children go hungry at night and I eventually have no room to sit in, which is sub-optimal. Please keep these facts in mind if you feel an urge to write me as a total stranger and inform me that I am a "lazy piece of shit". You will discover that your ignorant piece of free advice, like your right to comment here, is promptly flushed to a place where you Never Will Be Missed.
In conclusion: remember that you are in my comboxes as a guest is in my living room. Refrain from being a Person I Can Do Without and you are welcome to stay and chat. Refuse that request and you will be forced to go find some other blog to infest and (no doubt) enroll yourself for veneration at yet another impromptu Feast of the ASCII Martyrs, unjustly censored by the cruel Mark Shea. Knock yourself out. To me, you will just be another jerk I don't have to put up with.
Of course, if you can show me that you were not being rude (as, for instance, this kind gentleman took the trouble to do (my apologies for misreading you!)), or apologize and show you mean it when you *have* been a jerk, you can always come back.
'Sup to you.
I try to run fairly loose comboxes where people can speak their minds. My basic request is civility. I also try to be honest. That is, I think lying is a sin and I try to tell the truth as best I can. That means that errors I may emit on this blog are due to a) intellectual mistakes on my part (i.e., I got my facts wrong) or b) miscommunication (among other things, my informal tone and tendency to make jokes or hyperbolize are being misread). In point of fact, I think lying a sin and think the charge of lying a very serious one. I do not make it against others unless I think there is serious reason to do so. I tend to assume that it is better to attribute falsehoods to stupidity than malice unless the likelihood of stupidity is so grossly improbably that it becomes preposterous to do so. (Hence my reluctant conclusion that the Prez is lying when he tells us he has never authorized torture: I don't think him so stupid as to not know that cold cells, strappado and waterboarding are not torture.)
Why do I mention this? Because I find that some of my guests have this nasty habit of accusing me lying or dishonesty, often at the drop of a hat. There are few things that will more quickly convince me of *your* malice than that, and thereby persuade me to ban you as a Person I Can Do Without Who Never Will Be Missed.
Cases in point: Readers not totally wrapped up in themselves may have noticed that I posted a great deal yesterday. That's because I was plowing through my voluminous mail after a ten-day sojourn in Alabama. I had mail access in Alabama (via an incredibly slow and tenuous connection). This left me time to a) delete spam at a rate of one email every 4-5 minutes and b) answer absolutely vital emails. It left me time for nothing else. So I had a giant pile of unanswered mail when I returned, much of it blog related. This I dutifully plowed through yesterday (partway anyway)--both blogging stuff and answering private email. I still have more to do today. Occassionally I would glance in through haloscan's main site and respond to a comment or two as well. But mostly I was pushing through the mail.
About mid-afternoon, I began to notice the sound was not working on my computer, so I fussed with that for a while (no dice, gotta call Microsoft). Then, about 4:15, I had to bug out to do have dinner with the Chestertonians here in Seattle. We were hosting David Schindler (who gave a great talk, by the way). That wiped out my evening.
All of which is to say to the utterly self-absorbed: "I have a life and the chances are extremely high that your post, magnificently crushing as it was, was not the center of my existence."
I write this because, as I look in on my comboxes I find the following:
Mark,
My simple question to you was posted at 5:03 p.m. It is now 8:44(cst) where I am and you still have not bothered to answer. And you have responded to others twice.
This is disappointing because I am assuming someone who just accused the GOP of not doing "jack" to stem abortion would have a long list of things they should have done. If not, what else could you possibly be comparing them too.
This is typical of your pathetic abstract moralism.
For a moment, I would ask people who write things like this to try the Herculean feat of imagining that it might just be possible there are other things that may account for my failure to respond to them besides intellectual dishonesty, cowardice, and pathetic abstact moralism. I would suggest to them that if they want to engage in a serious conversation they might refrain from the assumption that my life orbits around them and their one-snowflake-in-a-blizzard comment. I would also note that I would take them *way* more seriously if, a) they could quote me correctly and b) when they are answered by various and sundry others before I have time to do so, they had the integrity to say, "Gee. You're right. I didn't think of that." Their failure to do this does tend to shout "I was playing Gotcha, not looking for a serious reply."
I don't much like games of Gotcha. I dislike people who falsely and eagerly charge me with dishonesty. And so, that person is now gone from my comboxes. Don't be like him and you can stay.
Speaking of Gotcha, one of the people to whom I briefly replied yesterday during my long day of Deliberately and Carefully Not Replying to The Center of the Intellectual Universe was a guy who informed me that Abp. Donald Wuerl was my "home-boy". Apparently this reader is angry at Wuerl about not forming some committee or not taking Pelosi over his knee or something. Or to be more precise, he is delighted that Wuerl has, he believes, given him sufficient reason to cling to the contempt he already had for Wuerl before he ever became Abp, which is a different thing.
I have not been following what Wuerl is up to these days. In fact, beyond a few things I know about him (he used to be adjutor bishop here in Seattle and did a good job under very trying circumstances, he's written pretty well, he did a good job in Pittsburgh and was way ahead of the curve in tackling priestly abuse--even petitioning to Rome to make sure a bad priest got booted, and a couple of other good reports about him), I don't follow his career any more than I follow any other bishop's career. (Oh, and Tom Kreitzberg at Disputations--whose judgement I highly esteem--likes him.) So I think him a good guy and deserving of charity, not the instant presuppositions of malice that my reader was making way back in 2005 when he was appointed. But that's about it. Unlike a number of my comboxers, I regard ecclesial politics as a burdensome cross, not as a delightful source of endless gossip, team spirit, and detraction. I don't have this notion that bishops are flawless and have no doubt that Wuerl, like any other bishop, has his sins and flaws. But I have not made it my vocation to cultivate reasons to despise Wuerl. I have said as much repeatedly.
Now the weird thing is that these defenses of Wuerl that I wrote against people who were eager to condemn him sight unseen are prefaced with the following:
Mark, have you forgotten your rousing defense of "one of the good guys" when the Combox-Cyber-Tribunal-Star-Magisterium expressed reservations of Pope Benedict's manifestly bad appointment of Archbishop Wuerl to the most important diocese in the most important country in the world.
Have you forgotten the vitriol you spewed on those of us who knew it was a lame pick, and your past Wuerl fanboy-ism?
The internet doesn't forget, Mark
Note that last line. The subtext is "You are lying, Mark." And that subtext is, again, the quickest way to make yourself into a Person I Can Do Without, Who Never Will Be Missed.
Here's the thing: I remember perfectly well saying what I said about Wuerl. I thought him a basically good guy then. As far as I can tell, he still is. I thought the Combox Star Chamber proceedings against him nasty and I still do. What I don't get is the notion that Wuerl is my "home-boy". Apparently this reader believes that having respect for a decent man and a bishop is detestable. And because he cannot distinguish having respect for Wuerl from slavish adoration of Wuerl, he supposes I am lying when I express my puzzlement.
I am quite willing to say that I think Wuerl may be making a mistake (if I knew the details of what Wuerl is and is not doing, which I don't). But this particular reader seems to have the notion that if I'm not immediately joining his mob of pitchfork wavers to denounce a man of whom I know mainly good things, then the only explanation is that I am a lickspittle sycophant of Abp. Wuerl and a liar caught in my words. The possibility that I am simply somebody who thinks Wuerl a decent guy who deserves the benefit of the doubt seems not to enter into his thoughts. And so he plays "Gotcha" much as he has played Gotcha before in his ongoing effort to impute intellectual dishonesty to me and earn his wings as a Person I Can Do Without.
Mission accomplished, Billy. I let you back on in the hope you had learned some manners. You're out of here again.
Finally, in addition to false imputations of lying and dishonesty, there is the question of Just Plain Rudeness.
Example: I am not shy about pointing out that I am a Fat Guy. I'm not especially pleased to be a Fat Guy. I am, in fact, trying to do something about becoming a less Fat Guy. I have not blogged on these efforts nor about my various other struggles in this department because I can think of few things more a) boring for the reader and b) likely to invite Combox Star Chamber Members to adjudicate on the state of my soul. Beyond that, I note that my work as a writer is not what you would call "athletic". It involves sitting in a room most of the day. If I do not sit in a room most of the day quietly and unathletically keeping the wolf from the door, my children go hungry at night and I eventually have no room to sit in, which is sub-optimal. Please keep these facts in mind if you feel an urge to write me as a total stranger and inform me that I am a "lazy piece of shit". You will discover that your ignorant piece of free advice, like your right to comment here, is promptly flushed to a place where you Never Will Be Missed.
In conclusion: remember that you are in my comboxes as a guest is in my living room. Refrain from being a Person I Can Do Without and you are welcome to stay and chat. Refuse that request and you will be forced to go find some other blog to infest and (no doubt) enroll yourself for veneration at yet another impromptu Feast of the ASCII Martyrs, unjustly censored by the cruel Mark Shea. Knock yourself out. To me, you will just be another jerk I don't have to put up with.
Of course, if you can show me that you were not being rude (as, for instance, this kind gentleman took the trouble to do (my apologies for misreading you!)), or apologize and show you mean it when you *have* been a jerk, you can always come back.
'Sup to you.
Monday, January 22, 2007
When Chattering Classes Brandish the Word "Taboo"...
...you know that some fresh disgusting thing is about to forcibly normalized for public consumption.
The quaint thing is how the film reviewer seems to seriously believe this is the "last" taboo. Like all pimps for the Next Revolution, such people seem to be wholly unaware of just how far the depraved human mind can go--and eventually will go with the help of professional Perversion Shills like the author of this review.
...you know that some fresh disgusting thing is about to forcibly normalized for public consumption.
The quaint thing is how the film reviewer seems to seriously believe this is the "last" taboo. Like all pimps for the Next Revolution, such people seem to be wholly unaware of just how far the depraved human mind can go--and eventually will go with the help of professional Perversion Shills like the author of this review.
A reader writes:
A fellow Knight of Columbus and pro-lifer is adamant that the abortion statistics used by most pro-life groups, that is, the statistics provided by the US Government, included all abortions. Specifically, he is insistent that the statistics include "spontaneous abortions," meaning, for example, that when a woman miscarries and then gets a D&C afterwards, the government includes that as an abortion. An OB/GYN nurse I know says otherwise, stating that only "induced abortions" are included in the stats.
I've been drilling around at the NIH, CDC and Alan Guttmacher Institute websites (and many others), but can't find anything definitive. Would you mind asking your readers for some help/guidance?
Today is a Day of Penance, by the way
...for the single most evil and despicable decision the Supreme Court has ever made and our nation ever embraced.
God have mercy on us!
...for the single most evil and despicable decision the Supreme Court has ever made and our nation ever embraced.
God have mercy on us!
I can't shake the feeling that belief in Global Warming...
is more like a religious faith with anointed prophets whose revelation is above question than an actual scientific body of facts.
I often get the same sensation from adherents of the All-Explanatory Power of Atheistic Materialist Evolutionism.
is more like a religious faith with anointed prophets whose revelation is above question than an actual scientific body of facts.
I often get the same sensation from adherents of the All-Explanatory Power of Atheistic Materialist Evolutionism.
Gianna Jessen
I had the enormous privilege of meeting this extraordinary woman when I was at EWTN. You can hear the interview with her on "Life on the Rock" here. Look for the 1/18/07 broadcast.
She is a one-woman argument for the entire pro-life cause. And Hell hates her guts, God bless her.
I had the enormous privilege of meeting this extraordinary woman when I was at EWTN. You can hear the interview with her on "Life on the Rock" here. Look for the 1/18/07 broadcast.
She is a one-woman argument for the entire pro-life cause. And Hell hates her guts, God bless her.
The Good News is that the Dems Know Themselves to Be on the Losing Side of the Abortion Question
That means that if the GOP actually pushed for further restrictions on abortion, they could probably get them.
The bad news is that the GOP had five years of unrestricted power and did just a little short of jack--because they don't care about abortion and are only interested in exploiting the pro-life vote. And now, thanks to Mr. Bush's War, that window of opportunity is closed and will be for the forseeable future.
Thanks for phoning it again this year, guys. Mighty nice to know that you are seriously considering a task force to study the question of whether to begin thinking about considering the possibility of starting to forming a committee to do something about abortion.
One Fr. Frank Pavone is worth a thousand GOP politicos.
That means that if the GOP actually pushed for further restrictions on abortion, they could probably get them.
The bad news is that the GOP had five years of unrestricted power and did just a little short of jack--because they don't care about abortion and are only interested in exploiting the pro-life vote. And now, thanks to Mr. Bush's War, that window of opportunity is closed and will be for the forseeable future.
Thanks for phoning it again this year, guys. Mighty nice to know that you are seriously considering a task force to study the question of whether to begin thinking about considering the possibility of starting to forming a committee to do something about abortion.
One Fr. Frank Pavone is worth a thousand GOP politicos.
The Poverty of a Chestertonless culture
The Dalai Lama once observed that "The West will always be Christian." By this he meant that even in it rejection of Christ, the West cannot escape its tendency to think in Christian categories and desire the many colossal goods of the Christian tradition. And so you find Westerners like Richard Gere dabbling in Buddhism, but not to the degree that such fabulously rich people like, give up the Self or anything.
Likewise when neo-pagan conduct the silly charade of reviving the cult of Zeus they can't avoid speaking in Christian categories and referring to the cult as a "faith". Paganism had no particular notion of "faith" in the gods. Indeed, the pagan myths of say, Greece or Sumer are rather emphatic that the gods are not something you'd be wise to place much faith in since they are fickle, erratic, often downright hostile, and profoundly petty. As Chesterton points out much of paganism was closer to a daydream than a "faith." The notion of "faith" doesn't really start to enter into religious experience until the notion of "covenant" enters in. The God of Israel is spoken of as "faithful" because he has made certain promises to Israel. Israel is described as "faithless" or faithful according to how the nation keeps or does not keep the covenant.
But Zeus makes no covenant with man. There is nothing to be "faithful" to. And in neo-paganism, there is not even (at the end of the day) a "faith" in the *existence* of Zeus. Rather, there is simply a sort of silly attempt to re-create something that can no more be recreated than a "faith" in the existence of Santa Claus. It is completely artificial in a way that an actual religious tradition with real adherents is not.
But, of course, the media will go on talking about neo-pagan "faith" because the media, like the rest of the West, will always be Christian, even when it is apostate.
The Dalai Lama once observed that "The West will always be Christian." By this he meant that even in it rejection of Christ, the West cannot escape its tendency to think in Christian categories and desire the many colossal goods of the Christian tradition. And so you find Westerners like Richard Gere dabbling in Buddhism, but not to the degree that such fabulously rich people like, give up the Self or anything.
Likewise when neo-pagan conduct the silly charade of reviving the cult of Zeus they can't avoid speaking in Christian categories and referring to the cult as a "faith". Paganism had no particular notion of "faith" in the gods. Indeed, the pagan myths of say, Greece or Sumer are rather emphatic that the gods are not something you'd be wise to place much faith in since they are fickle, erratic, often downright hostile, and profoundly petty. As Chesterton points out much of paganism was closer to a daydream than a "faith." The notion of "faith" doesn't really start to enter into religious experience until the notion of "covenant" enters in. The God of Israel is spoken of as "faithful" because he has made certain promises to Israel. Israel is described as "faithless" or faithful according to how the nation keeps or does not keep the covenant.
But Zeus makes no covenant with man. There is nothing to be "faithful" to. And in neo-paganism, there is not even (at the end of the day) a "faith" in the *existence* of Zeus. Rather, there is simply a sort of silly attempt to re-create something that can no more be recreated than a "faith" in the existence of Santa Claus. It is completely artificial in a way that an actual religious tradition with real adherents is not.
But, of course, the media will go on talking about neo-pagan "faith" because the media, like the rest of the West, will always be Christian, even when it is apostate.
America-Hating Fools Who Don't Know We're at War Whine about Intrinsic Moral Evil and Try to Conform our Treatment of Prisoners to So-Called "Natural Law" instead of Healthy Realpolitik
It's not torture if the President says it's not. And if somebody dresses up as a Catholic priest and performs mock baptisms on prisoners that's not blasphemy either.
All is well. Trust the State. The State is your friend.
It's not torture if the President says it's not. And if somebody dresses up as a Catholic priest and performs mock baptisms on prisoners that's not blasphemy either.
All is well. Trust the State. The State is your friend.
When Somebody Works that Hard to Butter Me Up, How Can I Say No?
Matthew Mehan writes:
Matthew, in case I don't get time to email you back, I just want you to know that I put your plug on my blog. :)
By the way, you badly need to have a Catholic columnist, blogger and author along on this trip to England. Contact me and I will give you a name I have in mind. And no, it's not "Welborn". I'm thinking of somebody with acting experience (to help with the heavy lifting in the Shakespeare discussions).
Yours in total selfless altruism,
Mark
Matthew Mehan writes:
As you probably remember, I am very interested in Thomas More.
I am hoping you can do me a favor and I can do you a favor in return. I was wondering if you would show your readers the attached ad for the Thomas More in England program: a two credit college course for high-schoolers, rated #2 in the nation by Princeton Review, and taught by Dr. Gerard Wegemer, who is one the handful of top scholars on Thomas More in the world. We travel each day around London and central England and have classes in the afternoon and evening on the Utopia and selected writings of Thomas More. We (I am a teaching assistant on the program) have a wonderful Catholic priest on hand for confession and daily Mass each morning, and we also make a pilgrimage to Canterbury and to the remains of Thomas More both in Dunstan's Church (his head) and in the Tower of London (the rest of him). We see Shakespeare in the Globe and at Stratford and I could go on and on. The application deadline is Feb 1, FYI.
The point being would you point this out to your readers (our target audience if you ask me: politically minded Catholics with a strong intellectual streak--yes, Mark, I am flattering you). Please consider pitching it to your readers for the high-school aged kids. It is an excellent program, and we take very good care of the moral life of the students, not just the intellectual life, while they are with us.
AND, almost more important than the Thomas More in England pitch, which you should feel free to say no to, is the next annual conference for the Center for Thomas More Studies, which is on More's workThe Dialogue Concerning Heresies, which I am reading now. Mark, it is right up your alley; as I have been reading I kept thinking that you would seriously benefit from the book--which just came out in modern English for the first time this December--but also from the conference. It is a masterwork of Catholic apologetics from a great saint who, like you, is coming from a secular point of view with the rights and duties of a lay citizen. Like I said, this is a must book for you.
Now that I feel somewhat dirtied from selling you so hard on these two things, please e-mail me back something friendly and breezy, even if you plan to blow me off on both counts.
Matthew, in case I don't get time to email you back, I just want you to know that I put your plug on my blog. :)
By the way, you badly need to have a Catholic columnist, blogger and author along on this trip to England. Contact me and I will give you a name I have in mind. And no, it's not "Welborn". I'm thinking of somebody with acting experience (to help with the heavy lifting in the Shakespeare discussions).
Yours in total selfless altruism,
Mark
A reader asks:
Two suggestions:
First, watch my comboxes on this thread in case somebody from the Burlington/Williston/Essex, Vermont area is reading and can point you to a good group.
Second, go to Intentional Disciples, the blog of the St. Catherine of Siena Institute and ask somebody there if they have any contacts in the Burlington/Williston/Essex, Vermont area who might be of help.
I was wondering if, at some point in the future, you might use your blog to do me a favor. I am a single thirty-something year old in the New York City area, and I'm a New York native. I've got a really lovely circle of Christian friends here, not to mention my family all round me. My parish has one of those awesome, "Random Lay Groups" that were discussed on your blog not too long ago, and joining that group made a HUGE difference to me when I first started to take my Faith seriously a few years ago in this great unchurched city.
Anyhow, the point of all this is that I am moving to Burlington, Vermont in the next few months, and I've been doing some advance parish scouting, and I don't see anything at any of the Burlington/Williston/Essex Junction parishes like a young(ish) adults group, or random-lay group. It's a little daunting, the thought of moving there and being alone in my Faith for a while.
So that brings me to my favor/question. You've got a wide audience, and I was wondering if any of your readers were from the Burlington area and knew of an orthodox parish where I could join a young(ish) adult group or something like it. I'm not averse to starting one in the Burlington area if I must, but maybe there's one already thriving that just isn't being publicized in all the bulletins and event calendars I've been looking over. All the parish ministries seem very focused on senior citizens and families.
I'm sure I don't need to clarify, but I don't mean a "singles-only" or dating-type group!
Two suggestions:
First, watch my comboxes on this thread in case somebody from the Burlington/Williston/Essex, Vermont area is reading and can point you to a good group.
Second, go to Intentional Disciples, the blog of the St. Catherine of Siena Institute and ask somebody there if they have any contacts in the Burlington/Williston/Essex, Vermont area who might be of help.
A reader writes:
concerning this piece:
Orbit is (relatively) easy. Planet and (what is infinitely more) star colonization is hard. It was this that I was referring to. My hopes are all with Liftport's dream of a space elevator. But I still don't think we will ever be able to colonize even the Moon, much less Mars. And I think the stars are simply out of the question--forever.
My point about Antarctica is simply this: at least there the water and oxygen are free. On Mars, that has to be imported. And Antarctica is tropical compared to Mars. And Mars (unlike, say, the 13 colonies or French Guyana, will *never* be able to function as an independent state, because that requires sending families that are willing to live there forever. It also requires trade: something Martians would be in no position to do. It also requires the promise of very long term political stability on earth, without which the Martian colony perishes for lack of food, medicine, and other imported essentials.
And that's just this solar system. Getting to even the nearest star involves either travel at near light speeds (and therefore kissing earth as you know it goodbye forever since (assuming you can also make a return at near light speeds) the earth you will return to will have aged thousands of years during your trip) or travel at more conventional speeds that mean constructing a ship to house a trans-generational crew who will have to raise children and train them to finish the mission they started. Rotsa ruck finding families to do either of these things, particularly since we don't even know if the nearest star has a habitable planet and all the problems of colonizing Mars are exponentially multiplied by the necessity of a new colony on Alpha Centauri Prime needing things like food, water, shelter and (probably) oxygen.
So, Liftport may well build its space elevator and fling a lot of hardwar into space cheaply. But, at best, I think that will mean a cool space station a la 2001 and, with a huge application of will and resources, a base on the Moon. It may also mean some manned visits (not colonies) to the outer planets and their moons. But beyond that? Pffft! We're never getting off this planet in any permanent way.
Never.
concerning this piece:
I found this paragraph to be interesting.These are not, by the way, religious opinions. They are opinions
based, not on my theological views, but on cold, practical
considerations about things like "what it takes to get there." I'll be
willing to change my opinion when we establish a thriving metropolis in
Antarctica, which is infinitely easier than establishing a serious,
self-supporting colony on Mars or the Moon.
Which was then not followed an explanation of what you meant by 'what it
takes to get there'. Perhaps you were restricted to a word count for
your column?
It's possible you had in mind the cost to get to orbit. That is indeed
a high threshold - but one need not be a barrier to entry. Many
organizations are working on that - we think that reducing the
transaction cost of space access will at the least support a business,
and might even allow settlement and resource exploitation of the rest of
the solar system.
The organization I work for - Liftport - is for example working on the
viability of constructing a space elevator. We don't even know if we
can build one (yet) but the prospect of getting the cost of a pound to
orbit to around $400 is enticing enough to keep us plugging along.
Orbit is (relatively) easy. Planet and (what is infinitely more) star colonization is hard. It was this that I was referring to. My hopes are all with Liftport's dream of a space elevator. But I still don't think we will ever be able to colonize even the Moon, much less Mars. And I think the stars are simply out of the question--forever.
My point about Antarctica is simply this: at least there the water and oxygen are free. On Mars, that has to be imported. And Antarctica is tropical compared to Mars. And Mars (unlike, say, the 13 colonies or French Guyana, will *never* be able to function as an independent state, because that requires sending families that are willing to live there forever. It also requires trade: something Martians would be in no position to do. It also requires the promise of very long term political stability on earth, without which the Martian colony perishes for lack of food, medicine, and other imported essentials.
And that's just this solar system. Getting to even the nearest star involves either travel at near light speeds (and therefore kissing earth as you know it goodbye forever since (assuming you can also make a return at near light speeds) the earth you will return to will have aged thousands of years during your trip) or travel at more conventional speeds that mean constructing a ship to house a trans-generational crew who will have to raise children and train them to finish the mission they started. Rotsa ruck finding families to do either of these things, particularly since we don't even know if the nearest star has a habitable planet and all the problems of colonizing Mars are exponentially multiplied by the necessity of a new colony on Alpha Centauri Prime needing things like food, water, shelter and (probably) oxygen.
So, Liftport may well build its space elevator and fling a lot of hardwar into space cheaply. But, at best, I think that will mean a cool space station a la 2001 and, with a huge application of will and resources, a base on the Moon. It may also mean some manned visits (not colonies) to the outer planets and their moons. But beyond that? Pffft! We're never getting off this planet in any permanent way.
Never.
A reader writes:
The basic mistake your friend is making is in assuming Jesus said things once and only once. As Dorothy L. Sayers pointed out in her fun little essay "A Vote of Thanks to Cyrus" modern folk tend to forget that bible characters were real people and acted that way. Real preachers tend to preach the same message many times. Jesus was no different. The sayings collected in the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain are sayings he uttered again and again in his various sermons around the Holy Land. So it is not the case that "one of the accounts is false." Jesus might well have uttered the same sayings both on a mountain and on a level place.
However, beyond this question of the physical location of these preachments is simply a flat-footed refusal to recognize the way in which the evangelists are communicating their message. It's like complaining that Martin Luther King was a "liar" for saying "I've been to the mountaintop! And I have seen the Promised Land" when he had not physically been to Mount Nebo and seen the Promised Land. In short, it's a silly complaint. The point of the Evangelists (as their audience well understands) is not to engage in some mysterious campaign to deceive people about the physical location of Jesus as he preached (because they all know Jesus preached the same things all over the Holy Land) but to make the theological points I mentioned. The fact that this does not suit the completely alien criteria that a 21st century literalist is imposing on the text means only that the 21st Century literalist needs to learn how a first century evangelist and his audience understood each other.
I am emailing because I have a question for you about your recent Catholic Exchange Article, "The Gospels Ain't Fiction." I found the article educational and enjoyed it so much that I emailed it to a friend of mind whom I thought mind find it just as edifying. This friend was raised in the Church, then fell away for reasons unknown to me, and then began been thinking more about religion for the past year--ever since I prayed an irresistible novena for his conversion ;o). While he respects many aspects of Church teaching, he finds some of them very difficult to accept because they aren't always readily explainable by reason and logic. So, here's the reply I received from him regarding your recent article:Mark is not making sense to me in the article.
I can respect that the Gospels are paraphrased sayings of Jesus and that the editors exercised editorial freedom. The example Mark gives is beyond editorial freedom and represents a manipulation of the truth or "lie": "So when Matthew takes certain sayings of Jesus and informs us that they were said on a mountain, he has a theological purpose: he wants us to understand that Jesus is the New Moses for the Jewish people. Likewise, when Luke's Jesus speaks the same batch of sayings on a level place, he wants us to understand that Jesus is the Son of Man and the Savior of all people who has joined us in our low estate."
Either Jesus said things on a mountain or he said things on a plain. I can understand if they were said on a mountain by Matthew and a hill by Luke. But a mountain and a plain gives rise to a qualitative difference in reported accounts. That can come from a lie or a gradual change over time... either way, the record is false. Jesus was a real man and he gave his sermon on a mountain or a plain, one of the accounts is false. There is no ends that justifies the means. There may be a theological purpose and the accounts may illustrate a point, but that does not
justify misrepresenting the truth of Jesus's acts.
I cannot accept Mark's support of the editorial freedoms of the authors of the Gospels. His arguments do not hold.
The basic mistake your friend is making is in assuming Jesus said things once and only once. As Dorothy L. Sayers pointed out in her fun little essay "A Vote of Thanks to Cyrus" modern folk tend to forget that bible characters were real people and acted that way. Real preachers tend to preach the same message many times. Jesus was no different. The sayings collected in the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain are sayings he uttered again and again in his various sermons around the Holy Land. So it is not the case that "one of the accounts is false." Jesus might well have uttered the same sayings both on a mountain and on a level place.
However, beyond this question of the physical location of these preachments is simply a flat-footed refusal to recognize the way in which the evangelists are communicating their message. It's like complaining that Martin Luther King was a "liar" for saying "I've been to the mountaintop! And I have seen the Promised Land" when he had not physically been to Mount Nebo and seen the Promised Land. In short, it's a silly complaint. The point of the Evangelists (as their audience well understands) is not to engage in some mysterious campaign to deceive people about the physical location of Jesus as he preached (because they all know Jesus preached the same things all over the Holy Land) but to make the theological points I mentioned. The fact that this does not suit the completely alien criteria that a 21st century literalist is imposing on the text means only that the 21st Century literalist needs to learn how a first century evangelist and his audience understood each other.
A reader asks:
Basic reply: "Documentation please?" And no, I'm sorry, but Wikipedia don't cut it.
Someone sent me the following link. Do you know anything about the claims this guy is making?
Thank you in advance for any light you may be able to shed on this.
Basic reply: "Documentation please?" And no, I'm sorry, but Wikipedia don't cut it.
The Netherlands: Front Line of the Last Gasp in the War of Rome vs. Carthage
After a while, it get kind of hard to say with conviction, "Yes! This is a culture that *must* be preserved!"
That said, the reality is that the whole human race looks like this to God, and He did not hesitate to give everything to save us.
As Pavel Chichikov is fond of observing: The Sacrifice was not overkill. Our situation really is that desperate that the sufferings Christ endured were necessary to save us. There are few things uglier than the hideous ingratitude and nihlism of a post-Christian culture.
After a while, it get kind of hard to say with conviction, "Yes! This is a culture that *must* be preserved!"
That said, the reality is that the whole human race looks like this to God, and He did not hesitate to give everything to save us.
As Pavel Chichikov is fond of observing: The Sacrifice was not overkill. Our situation really is that desperate that the sufferings Christ endured were necessary to save us. There are few things uglier than the hideous ingratitude and nihlism of a post-Christian culture.
Great Little Rumination on the Touchstone Blog
I love what Touchstone does: bringing Christians together in a healthy ecumenism that does not gloss over differences, but still recognizes that huge amount we have in common vs. the culture of death.
I love what Touchstone does: bringing Christians together in a healthy ecumenism that does not gloss over differences, but still recognizes that huge amount we have in common vs. the culture of death.
Geyer Thinks Bush Will Expand the War to Iran
So Does Buchanan
Somebody asked what I think of doing that.
To quote Lincoln: "One war at a time."
I expect reaction among the war supporters will range from "Bush will never do that! Thos media panic-mongers are crazy!" to "Bush must do that! Those media-panic mongers are cowards!" If Bush does do it, then the former folk might wind up choosing between saying "All the deeds of the President are righteous, just, and wise. Blessed be the name of the President." or saying, "If Buchanan and Geyer were right here. What if they have been right about other things too." Of course, there are other possible reactions to action (assuming it happens) but I think those two might be prominent ones.
Anyhow, we'll see. Given the way the administration has prosecuted the war so far, I'd like to say they wouldn't do a half-hearted "surge" with inadequate troops and then dramatically expand the war with overstretched resources and make the Middle East spiral even further out of control beyond the wildest dreams of Osama bin Laden, but given the track record, I'm afraid that Bush will do exactly that.
So Does Buchanan
Somebody asked what I think of doing that.
To quote Lincoln: "One war at a time."
I expect reaction among the war supporters will range from "Bush will never do that! Thos media panic-mongers are crazy!" to "Bush must do that! Those media-panic mongers are cowards!" If Bush does do it, then the former folk might wind up choosing between saying "All the deeds of the President are righteous, just, and wise. Blessed be the name of the President." or saying, "If Buchanan and Geyer were right here. What if they have been right about other things too." Of course, there are other possible reactions to action (assuming it happens) but I think those two might be prominent ones.
Anyhow, we'll see. Given the way the administration has prosecuted the war so far, I'd like to say they wouldn't do a half-hearted "surge" with inadequate troops and then dramatically expand the war with overstretched resources and make the Middle East spiral even further out of control beyond the wildest dreams of Osama bin Laden, but given the track record, I'm afraid that Bush will do exactly that.
Victor Lams (St. Blog's Resident Demented Genius)...
has an aunt named Sylvia and she has a friend named Basil and they have a new podcast.
Joe Bob sez, "Check it out."
has an aunt named Sylvia and she has a friend named Basil and they have a new podcast.
Joe Bob sez, "Check it out."
And so television history is in the can and I am back to real life
My sojourn with the Chestertonians was may more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. Dale Ahlquist (who remains trapped in Alabama all alone till sometime this week) is just one of the funniest guys on the planet. Now that we've finished the TV version of "The Surprise", I hope we will go back one day and do one of Chesterton's other plays. There's nothing like a return to acting after 25 years to make you feel the bug bite again. Problem is, of course, that acting eats up your whole life with rehearsals and if you are not a professional, you don't even get paid for all that labor. Unless you are willing to be destitute and single (sub-optimal choices for me and my family) it's not likely to happen until all the kids are on their own. And then I will be playing Grandfather types in local amateur productions.
Still, it was fun trotting out the different British accents (reading Harry Potter aloud has unexpected side benefits) and doing weird things like climbing down chimneys and having swordfights.
For a very detailed and lively account of the last two weeks' antics, check out actor Kevin O'Brien's blog.
My sojourn with the Chestertonians was may more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. Dale Ahlquist (who remains trapped in Alabama all alone till sometime this week) is just one of the funniest guys on the planet. Now that we've finished the TV version of "The Surprise", I hope we will go back one day and do one of Chesterton's other plays. There's nothing like a return to acting after 25 years to make you feel the bug bite again. Problem is, of course, that acting eats up your whole life with rehearsals and if you are not a professional, you don't even get paid for all that labor. Unless you are willing to be destitute and single (sub-optimal choices for me and my family) it's not likely to happen until all the kids are on their own. And then I will be playing Grandfather types in local amateur productions.
Still, it was fun trotting out the different British accents (reading Harry Potter aloud has unexpected side benefits) and doing weird things like climbing down chimneys and having swordfights.
For a very detailed and lively account of the last two weeks' antics, check out actor Kevin O'Brien's blog.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
He May Be a Geocentrist...
but he is still in deep deep space.
In other "Scratch a Rad Trad, Find Somebody Unhealthily Obsessed with Jews" news...
Meanwhile, of course, anti-Catholics use these guys as a springboard for attacking Holy Church.
but he is still in deep deep space.
In other "Scratch a Rad Trad, Find Somebody Unhealthily Obsessed with Jews" news...
Meanwhile, of course, anti-Catholics use these guys as a springboard for attacking Holy Church.
Orwell Lives!
Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., opposes abortion but said he would vote for the [embryonic stem cell research] bill. "I've seen the promise" of embryonic stem cell research, Altmire said. There's no doubt in my mind that a vote for embryonic stem cell research is a pro-life vote."
This Monday Night! Don't Miss it if you Can!
Dear Friends of the G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle,
The Society's board of directors cordially invites you to our next lecture, to be held Monday, January 22, 2007, 7:30 p.m., on the campus of Seattle Pacific University.
POPE BENEDICT XVI:
HIS PERSON AND THE GLOBAL CULTURAL SITUATION
Lecturer: Dr. David L. Schindler
Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology
John Paul II Institute
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.
It is hardly necessary to point out that this past year, 2006, the first full year of Benedict XVI's pontificate, has been an extremely eventful one, frequently dominating secular as well as religious media headlines. It would be difficult to envision a more timely topic for a public lecture than this Pope's view of the global cultural situation, a view scarcely penetrated, much less captured, by today's sound-bite driven journalism.
Professor Schindler has been a friend and colleague of Pope Benedict/Joseph Ratzinger for over twenty years. Since 1982, he has been editor-in-chief of the North American edition of Communio, a federation of journals co-founded by Joseph Ratzinger and other prominent European theologians. Professor Schindler also serves as editor of the series Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (Eerdmans Publishing Company). His most recent book is Heart of the World, Center of the Church (T&T Clark/Eerdmans).
The lecture will take place in the Falcon Lounge, Royal Brougham Pavilion, at the corner of W. Nickerson and 3rd Avenue W. For links to a campus map and directions, please see the Events Calendar at www.seattlechesterton.org.
Please join us for evening dedicated to the person and thought of Pope Benedict XVI.
Yours faithfully,
The G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle
I leave for a few days and Rod Dreher gits hisself in all kinds of hot water by saying "I was a fool to trust this Administration"
So far, the folks at "We Really Really Really Despise Mark Shea.com" have had no comments.
However, the folks at "We Really Really Really Despise Rod Dreher.com" have issued statements to each other reiterating their fundamental loathing of pretty much everything about Rod, including his use of prepositions, that one hair of his that sticks up just so, and that annoying way he dots his "i"s.
So the constructive work of the blogosphere continues.
So far, the folks at "We Really Really Really Despise Mark Shea.com" have had no comments.
However, the folks at "We Really Really Really Despise Rod Dreher.com" have issued statements to each other reiterating their fundamental loathing of pretty much everything about Rod, including his use of prepositions, that one hair of his that sticks up just so, and that annoying way he dots his "i"s.
So the constructive work of the blogosphere continues.
Lady Macbeth Throws Her Hat in the Ring
Revs up the old Clinton Attack and Smear Machine to dig dirt on political rivals.
Revs up the old Clinton Attack and Smear Machine to dig dirt on political rivals.
A reader asks
Here's a terrific book on four apostolic fathers by my pal Rod Bennett called Four Witnesses.
Also, Mike Aquilina has a great little book out designed to introduce moderns to the Fathers called The Fathers of the Church.
That should get him started.
I need to recommend a history of the Church, especially the Patristic period, to a friend in the process of conversion. I promised him that what I recommended would not be chauvinistically Catholic. He doesn't quite know where he is going, but he hangs out mostly with evangelicals, because his girlfriend is one.
He is very smart, but really knows nothing, like nothing at all.
It occurred to me after I made this promise that I also needed to read such a book myself.
Don't say Pelikan--I tried it and just found it assumed way too much previous knowledge and was too dryly written.
Any helpful suggestions?
Here's a terrific book on four apostolic fathers by my pal Rod Bennett called Four Witnesses.
Also, Mike Aquilina has a great little book out designed to introduce moderns to the Fathers called The Fathers of the Church.
That should get him started.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Home again, Home again, jiggety-jig!
I leave in about an hour for home (yay!). I will be back in force on Monday since I won't be back in Seattle till this evening and I'd like to goof off with the fambly tomorrow before leaving for Spokane on Sunday.
Summary: We had a great time here, made a little television history (world premiere television performance of "The Surprise" to be broadcast in about a year), and very much enjoyed each other's company. St. Genesius really came through (and I still hope I get to play him someday!)
See y'all Monday!
I leave in about an hour for home (yay!). I will be back in force on Monday since I won't be back in Seattle till this evening and I'd like to goof off with the fambly tomorrow before leaving for Spokane on Sunday.
Summary: We had a great time here, made a little television history (world premiere television performance of "The Surprise" to be broadcast in about a year), and very much enjoyed each other's company. St. Genesius really came through (and I still hope I get to play him someday!)
See y'all Monday!
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Birmingham, Wednesday
Cold has returned with a snappy bite to it. Rod Bennett spent the day visiting and handed me a copy of his new screenplay called "The Christus Experiment", a lulu of a sci-fi story that I stay up later than I should have reading.
Consequently, I skipped 7AM Mass this morning, leaving Dale and Kevin to feel vastly more holy than me at breakfast. Later, we went to the studio to record some audio. I took three takes. Kevin took one. "It's because you didn't go to Mass this morning," said Ahlquist in his snootiest voice. I showed him though. I went to Mass at noon. Sleeping in *and* beatitude: a winning combination.
Then Chuck Chalberg arrived from Minnesota. He's the faux Chesterton of the "Apostle of Common Sense" series. This afternoon, he and Kevin have been taping various vignettes, including a recreation of part of Chesterton's debate with the woefully outmatched Clarence Darrow (based on transcripts of the debate). I'm pretty much done for the day, so I thought I'd keep you posted and then maybe go read more of Rod's screenplay.
Sorry these posts are so brief and rare. The wireless connection here at Madonna House is very spotty and tenuous. We does our bestest.
I'll be back in earnest on Monday!
Cold has returned with a snappy bite to it. Rod Bennett spent the day visiting and handed me a copy of his new screenplay called "The Christus Experiment", a lulu of a sci-fi story that I stay up later than I should have reading.
Consequently, I skipped 7AM Mass this morning, leaving Dale and Kevin to feel vastly more holy than me at breakfast. Later, we went to the studio to record some audio. I took three takes. Kevin took one. "It's because you didn't go to Mass this morning," said Ahlquist in his snootiest voice. I showed him though. I went to Mass at noon. Sleeping in *and* beatitude: a winning combination.
Then Chuck Chalberg arrived from Minnesota. He's the faux Chesterton of the "Apostle of Common Sense" series. This afternoon, he and Kevin have been taping various vignettes, including a recreation of part of Chesterton's debate with the woefully outmatched Clarence Darrow (based on transcripts of the debate). I'm pretty much done for the day, so I thought I'd keep you posted and then maybe go read more of Rod's screenplay.
Sorry these posts are so brief and rare. The wireless connection here at Madonna House is very spotty and tenuous. We does our bestest.
I'll be back in earnest on Monday!
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Still In Birmingham
Greetings from EWTN. We have been extremely busy the past few days. Hence the slowness to blog. Last week saw the completion of Chesterton's play "The Surprise" (Ahlquist and I got to be Dumb and Dumberer Guards). Dale's family has been here, acting in various roles (Ashley as the Princess, Julian as the King, wife Laura as the stage manager backstage who makes sure our makeup is okay and our wigs on straight. Jeremy Stansbary ("The Author") did "Life on the Rock" on Thursday and got bales of mail from people interested in his theatre ministry (and from at least one person who wanted to know if he was single. Much teasing ensued.
One Sunday we drove out to the huge shrine in Hanceville. Beautiful! And they have an actual castle there--like something out of a fairy story. We also had an adventure trying to find a place to eat. First place: closed. Next place: open but serving bologna and biscuits. Next: Nan's Country Kitchen and Auto Detail Shop. I'd have given anything to eat there but, alas, it too observed the Alabama habit of rolling up the sidewalks on Sunday. We finally found a place--which took two hours to serve lunch. But it was all fun and part of the whole Southern ambience.
Dale spoke to the cloistered nuns (about Chesterton, a subject that he never wearies of) and we got to mosey around the grounds of the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament. Then it was off to home and dinner (seafood that was all fried, all the time).
Monday we were back in the saddle, shooting the Conversion of the Anarchist, as well as one of my Innocent Smith scenes and other short bits. Dave G., a reader from my comboxes, showed up last evening for the broadcast of "The Journey Home" (an interview with Deacon Nathan Allen). We had Dave back to the house and grilled him about his conversion story. Then, before you knew it, the evening was over and people were saying their goodbyes as most of the crowd was up and out at 4:45 AM this morning, leaving just Dale, Kevin and me to shoot two more Innocent Smith scenes.
Rod Bennett drove over from Atlanta in the middle of all this and sat in on the shooting. He took a few pictures and posted them on his website, Tremendous Trifles. Now I'm back at the house, ready for a lovely nap while Dale continues shooting. Tomorrow is my last scene, then I goof off for a day and fly home Friday, thanks be to God!
Greetings from EWTN. We have been extremely busy the past few days. Hence the slowness to blog. Last week saw the completion of Chesterton's play "The Surprise" (Ahlquist and I got to be Dumb and Dumberer Guards). Dale's family has been here, acting in various roles (Ashley as the Princess, Julian as the King, wife Laura as the stage manager backstage who makes sure our makeup is okay and our wigs on straight. Jeremy Stansbary ("The Author") did "Life on the Rock" on Thursday and got bales of mail from people interested in his theatre ministry (and from at least one person who wanted to know if he was single. Much teasing ensued.
One Sunday we drove out to the huge shrine in Hanceville. Beautiful! And they have an actual castle there--like something out of a fairy story. We also had an adventure trying to find a place to eat. First place: closed. Next place: open but serving bologna and biscuits. Next: Nan's Country Kitchen and Auto Detail Shop. I'd have given anything to eat there but, alas, it too observed the Alabama habit of rolling up the sidewalks on Sunday. We finally found a place--which took two hours to serve lunch. But it was all fun and part of the whole Southern ambience.
Dale spoke to the cloistered nuns (about Chesterton, a subject that he never wearies of) and we got to mosey around the grounds of the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament. Then it was off to home and dinner (seafood that was all fried, all the time).
Monday we were back in the saddle, shooting the Conversion of the Anarchist, as well as one of my Innocent Smith scenes and other short bits. Dave G., a reader from my comboxes, showed up last evening for the broadcast of "The Journey Home" (an interview with Deacon Nathan Allen). We had Dave back to the house and grilled him about his conversion story. Then, before you knew it, the evening was over and people were saying their goodbyes as most of the crowd was up and out at 4:45 AM this morning, leaving just Dale, Kevin and me to shoot two more Innocent Smith scenes.
Rod Bennett drove over from Atlanta in the middle of all this and sat in on the shooting. He took a few pictures and posted them on his website, Tremendous Trifles. Now I'm back at the house, ready for a lovely nap while Dale continues shooting. Tomorrow is my last scene, then I goof off for a day and fly home Friday, thanks be to God!
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Saturday in Birmingham
Yesterday we got all of "The Surprise" in the can. This is a bit of television history since it's the first time this play by Chesterton has ever been filmed. So we are very pleased.
Life at EWTN consists more or less of walking up very steep hills. My writer's physique is stiff and sore, but I badly need the exercise, so I'm content.
We are now blasting off to the mall for an exterior shoot. Sorry! I'll write more later!
Yesterday we got all of "The Surprise" in the can. This is a bit of television history since it's the first time this play by Chesterton has ever been filmed. So we are very pleased.
Life at EWTN consists more or less of walking up very steep hills. My writer's physique is stiff and sore, but I badly need the exercise, so I'm content.
We are now blasting off to the mall for an exterior shoot. Sorry! I'll write more later!
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Birmingham, Day 3
Up for 7 AM Mass again and then off to breakfast. Fr. Frank Pavone and Deacon Bill (sort of the second in command here at EWTN) turned up for part of it. Deacon Bill remarked that EWTN has run on a great deal of prayer and sacrifice, especially Mother Angelica's. Then he made the cryptic remark "welcome to the club".
Several of us looked at each other and wondered what forboding thing this might mean. I soon found out: boots.
We cut open my boots to wedge them on my feet and they fit--barely. Thence began the odyssey of suffering that I must offer up for the good of the show. Never have feet so big suffered so much from boots so tight.
The scenes went great and stuff went swiftly on to tape. We did discover that fighting over a wine bottle can lead to impressive stains that require emergency laundry (since the actor has to shoot scenes earlier in the play than the scene in which he got splashed with wine. But aside from that, things went swimmingly and my part in "The Surprise" is now wrapped. Next we shoot scenes from Manalive on Monday and Tuesday. Right now I'm blotto and will go take a napzzzzzzzzzzz.......
Up for 7 AM Mass again and then off to breakfast. Fr. Frank Pavone and Deacon Bill (sort of the second in command here at EWTN) turned up for part of it. Deacon Bill remarked that EWTN has run on a great deal of prayer and sacrifice, especially Mother Angelica's. Then he made the cryptic remark "welcome to the club".
Several of us looked at each other and wondered what forboding thing this might mean. I soon found out: boots.
We cut open my boots to wedge them on my feet and they fit--barely. Thence began the odyssey of suffering that I must offer up for the good of the show. Never have feet so big suffered so much from boots so tight.
The scenes went great and stuff went swiftly on to tape. We did discover that fighting over a wine bottle can lead to impressive stains that require emergency laundry (since the actor has to shoot scenes earlier in the play than the scene in which he got splashed with wine. But aside from that, things went swimmingly and my part in "The Surprise" is now wrapped. Next we shoot scenes from Manalive on Monday and Tuesday. Right now I'm blotto and will go take a napzzzzzzzzzzz.......
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Greetings from Birmingham
Got in last night and met Dale, several members of family (including the unforgettable son Julian, who has committed the entire Conference Room Scene from Star Wars: Episode IV to memory and performed it publicly to the extreme delight of us geeks at a recent Chesterton conference). We had dinner, swapped stories, and cracked each other up. Then we went over a couple of scenes, said the Rosary, and crashed. (I succeeded in driving roommate Julian onto the living room couch with my snoring. So I've achieved at least one thing while I'm here.)
Made 7AM Mass (always a weird experience with the little servo cameras in the corners of the sanctuary (Hi Mom!). Then we had breakfast, wandered around in the rabbit warren that is EWTN studios, found our costumes (my boots need work in order to fit my prodigious calves. Today they are shooting some scenes from "The Surprise". However, I'm not in them, so Kevin O'Brien (The Poet) and I (the Captain of the Guard) went back to Madonna House and worked out our little sword fight, as well as running lines for a Manalive scene.
Now they've gone off to lunch and I will follow momentarily, but I wanted to drop y'all a line and say, "Howdy! Be good, and don't put no beans up your noses while I'm gone!"
More later!
Got in last night and met Dale, several members of family (including the unforgettable son Julian, who has committed the entire Conference Room Scene from Star Wars: Episode IV to memory and performed it publicly to the extreme delight of us geeks at a recent Chesterton conference). We had dinner, swapped stories, and cracked each other up. Then we went over a couple of scenes, said the Rosary, and crashed. (I succeeded in driving roommate Julian onto the living room couch with my snoring. So I've achieved at least one thing while I'm here.)
Made 7AM Mass (always a weird experience with the little servo cameras in the corners of the sanctuary (Hi Mom!). Then we had breakfast, wandered around in the rabbit warren that is EWTN studios, found our costumes (my boots need work in order to fit my prodigious calves. Today they are shooting some scenes from "The Surprise". However, I'm not in them, so Kevin O'Brien (The Poet) and I (the Captain of the Guard) went back to Madonna House and worked out our little sword fight, as well as running lines for a Manalive scene.
Now they've gone off to lunch and I will follow momentarily, but I wanted to drop y'all a line and say, "Howdy! Be good, and don't put no beans up your noses while I'm gone!"
More later!
Monday, January 08, 2007
Before I go....
Fr. Rob thought you might be interested in his homily on The Liturgy as Our Eternal Epiphany.
Fr. Rob thought you might be interested in his homily on The Liturgy as Our Eternal Epiphany.
Since People are Asking
Here's my schedule for this month. If you are in the Spokane area or up in British Columbia, take special note:
Aloha! I'm off to Birmingham tomorrow! Prayers to St. Christopher (or is it Mr. Christopher?) for a safe trip and to St. Genesius for a great performance from all the Chesterton Players would be most appreciated!
Here's my schedule for this month. If you are in the Spokane area or up in British Columbia, take special note:
January 21 11:30 AM St. Mary Presentation Parish, 310 N Main St., Deer Park, WA. Topic: This is My Body. Contact: Stacy Bogar 509-276-2948
4:00 PM Speaking at St. Francis Xavier Parish, 545 E. Providence Ave., Spokane, WA. Topic: 101 Reasons Not to Be Catholic. Contact: Kathy Sharp. Phone: 509-487-1325
January 26-27 Speaking at Redeemer Pacific College in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Topics: Making Senses Out of Scripture; Behold Your Mother; and 101 Reasons Not to Be Catholic. Contact: Tom Hamel.
January 31 7:00 PM St. Michael parish, 1512 Pine Ave., Snohomish, WA Phone: 360-568-0821 Topic: The Many Sided Gospel. Contact: Carol Byers
Aloha! I'm off to Birmingham tomorrow! Prayers to St. Christopher (or is it Mr. Christopher?) for a safe trip and to St. Genesius for a great performance from all the Chesterton Players would be most appreciated!
A reader writes:
My reader then volunteers the following possible reply:
Being as how I am about to get out of Dodge for ten days, I think I will leave this conversation in the capable hands of my readers.
Discuss, class.
A Protestant Christian friend of mine is asking me for reasons that he can give to his non-Christian friend to indicate that premarital sex is wrong. The friend and his now-wife lived together for a number of years, then got married and had a child. I wonder what you all would say. I wonder also if there is some on-line article discussing the matter. Any thoughts?
My reader then volunteers the following possible reply:
Marriage is a social construct. The union of one man and one woman for life and exclusive of others, whilst open to new life, is of the nature of man and God-given and cannot be flouted with impunity, as the state of every society which does flout it shows. The details of how that union takes its social form are socially conditioned. Given the confusion in our society today about marriage, a non-Christian couple who genuinely intend such a union may well be as much as could be expected. A society which virtually calls any union based on affection 'marriage' has not given them any clear signal as to how to effect that union within their society. Nevertheless, that union is not simply a matter of the two persons involved but is a social reality which inevitably and in fundamental ways is society's business. Today, a couple genuinely intending such a union would certainly do best to solemnise it by some form of what is still called 'marriage.' The evidence that many people intuitively feel this is the fact that a couple who are living together will often decide to marry when, and only when, they plan to have children.
But I would love to have some well thought out external reference to give my friend. And if what I have written above is not very accurate in your opinion, I would love to hear your views.
Being as how I am about to get out of Dodge for ten days, I think I will leave this conversation in the capable hands of my readers.
Discuss, class.
O Lord, hear our prayer!
A reader writes:
Loving Father, grant your son Fran the grace of a happy death through Christ our Lord. Give peace to his family and grant that on That Day they may rejoice together with all the angels and saints in your Kingdom.
St. Peregrine, ora pro nobis!
A reader writes:
I am a long-time reader of (and occasional commenter on) your blog. I'd like to request prayers for my fellow parishioner and my future son-in-law's father, Fran Lord. He is dying of liver cancer. His liver has already failed and it's just a matter of time now. Please ask your readers to pray for him, the repose of his soul, and for his sons.
Loving Father, grant your son Fran the grace of a happy death through Christ our Lord. Give peace to his family and grant that on That Day they may rejoice together with all the angels and saints in your Kingdom.
St. Peregrine, ora pro nobis!
The Current Conservative Movement Continues to Pass its Sell-by Date
Exhibit A: Disagree with Sean Hannity and you aren't just disagreeing with Sean Hannity. Nope. You are an Enemy of the State!
I remember, long ago, when guys like Limbaugh criticized the Left for having nothing to offer but fear. How the Right is learning the tricks of those it once criticized.
Exhibit A: Disagree with Sean Hannity and you aren't just disagreeing with Sean Hannity. Nope. You are an Enemy of the State!
I remember, long ago, when guys like Limbaugh criticized the Left for having nothing to offer but fear. How the Right is learning the tricks of those it once criticized.
Another Materialist Struggles to Have it Both Ways
It's like this: either human reason is a partly supernatural phenomenon, kindled by the supernatural power of God, or it is *purely* the result of the irrational interplay of matter and energy. If the former, then you get to keep your outrage at Hitler, but you have to pay the Piper by acknowledging that there is more to reason than mere naturalism can explain. If the latter, then you are safe from the thought that God will judge you, but you will now have to try to suppress your idiotic outrage at evil and sin, because your philosophy will insist that it's all just an illusion and that evil human acts are fundamentally no different than any other concatenation of matter and energy. Your anger will be a statement about your brain chemistry in reaction to particular stimuli. It will mean absolutely nothing about the alleged "wickedness" of the evil doer, because at the end of the day he will be as pre-programmed by matter and energy as the crocodile. Result of theism: sanity. Result of materialism: You have to play stupid mind games with yourself and you are not safe from people who will go on making free choices despite your best efforts to say they don't--including future Hitlers.
It's like this: either human reason is a partly supernatural phenomenon, kindled by the supernatural power of God, or it is *purely* the result of the irrational interplay of matter and energy. If the former, then you get to keep your outrage at Hitler, but you have to pay the Piper by acknowledging that there is more to reason than mere naturalism can explain. If the latter, then you are safe from the thought that God will judge you, but you will now have to try to suppress your idiotic outrage at evil and sin, because your philosophy will insist that it's all just an illusion and that evil human acts are fundamentally no different than any other concatenation of matter and energy. Your anger will be a statement about your brain chemistry in reaction to particular stimuli. It will mean absolutely nothing about the alleged "wickedness" of the evil doer, because at the end of the day he will be as pre-programmed by matter and energy as the crocodile. Result of theism: sanity. Result of materialism: You have to play stupid mind games with yourself and you are not safe from people who will go on making free choices despite your best efforts to say they don't--including future Hitlers.
Here's a Fun Interview with Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society and All Around Great Guy
Speaking of whom, I will be hanging with Dale for the next 10 days starting tomorrow, when I fly off to Birmingham, AL to tape a bunch of scenes at EWTN for his next Chesterton series. I get to play the Captain of the Guard in Chesterton's play "The Surprise" as well as Innocent Smith in three scenes from "Manalive". We are going to have what Catholics refer to as a "blast". I will try and blog a bit from EWTN when I get a chance and some internet access, but expect things to be a bit spottier while I am gone. The DVDs of the series should be available this fall and I shall definitely make them available for sale. Aside from my Emmy-worthy performance, of course, will be all the dry, droll fun of Dale's inimitable speaking style. One of the funniest people I know.
Speaking of whom, I will be hanging with Dale for the next 10 days starting tomorrow, when I fly off to Birmingham, AL to tape a bunch of scenes at EWTN for his next Chesterton series. I get to play the Captain of the Guard in Chesterton's play "The Surprise" as well as Innocent Smith in three scenes from "Manalive". We are going to have what Catholics refer to as a "blast". I will try and blog a bit from EWTN when I get a chance and some internet access, but expect things to be a bit spottier while I am gone. The DVDs of the series should be available this fall and I shall definitely make them available for sale. Aside from my Emmy-worthy performance, of course, will be all the dry, droll fun of Dale's inimitable speaking style. One of the funniest people I know.
Time to Play "Find the Anathema"
Over at HowILoatheMarkSheadon'tyouTorq?
YesIsuredoVictor.WhatdoyouthinkofthelyingMrSheaChris?
Ithinkheistheepitomeofallevil.Yeshecertainlyis!
OntheotherhandPinochetwasagreatman.Yes,butsticktothepoint.Sheaisscum!
Canyoubelievewhathewrotetoday.com there is much excitement over the "anathemas" I hurled last week concerning the execution of Saddam. Those readers with memories shorter than a fruit fly's will remember those stern anathemas, such as when I severed men's souls from the hope of the redeeming grace of God by answering the question "What did you think of the execution?" with, "I think we should listen to our Mother. Unless absolutely necessary, don't execute people. My *opinion* is that it was not absolutely necessary in the case of Saddam, but I recognize others have legit differences with that opinion. I have no problem with that."
Pretty withering self-righteousness that. If you can find something else in what I wrote that constitutes an anathema, please let me know.
Bonus point question:
Here's a thought problem. An interrogator boasts to an FBI investigator that he subjected a prisoner to hours of blasting satanic death metal music, then dressed up as a Catholic priest and performed a mock baptism. A Catholic protests this appalling and blasphemous prisoner abuse and mockery of the sacraments and your sole response to the Catholic is: "You make a false conflation between prisoner abuse and torture."
Are you:
a) Majoring in minors?
b) Spectacularly obtuse?
c) So bent on defending the indefensible that you just don't care anymore how silly your defenses sound?
d) all of the above?
Over at HowILoatheMarkSheadon'tyouTorq?
YesIsuredoVictor.WhatdoyouthinkofthelyingMrSheaChris?
Ithinkheistheepitomeofallevil.Yeshecertainlyis!
OntheotherhandPinochetwasagreatman.Yes,butsticktothepoint.Sheaisscum!
Canyoubelievewhathewrotetoday.com there is much excitement over the "anathemas" I hurled last week concerning the execution of Saddam. Those readers with memories shorter than a fruit fly's will remember those stern anathemas, such as when I severed men's souls from the hope of the redeeming grace of God by answering the question "What did you think of the execution?" with, "I think we should listen to our Mother. Unless absolutely necessary, don't execute people. My *opinion* is that it was not absolutely necessary in the case of Saddam, but I recognize others have legit differences with that opinion. I have no problem with that."
Pretty withering self-righteousness that. If you can find something else in what I wrote that constitutes an anathema, please let me know.
Bonus point question:
Here's a thought problem. An interrogator boasts to an FBI investigator that he subjected a prisoner to hours of blasting satanic death metal music, then dressed up as a Catholic priest and performed a mock baptism. A Catholic protests this appalling and blasphemous prisoner abuse and mockery of the sacraments and your sole response to the Catholic is: "You make a false conflation between prisoner abuse and torture."
Are you:
a) Majoring in minors?
b) Spectacularly obtuse?
c) So bent on defending the indefensible that you just don't care anymore how silly your defenses sound?
d) all of the above?
From our "Rats Leave Sinking Ship" Dept.
"It is difficult to overstate the audacity—and the mendacity—of Ledeen’s claim."
And not just his claim. More attempts to leave Dubya holding the bag.
"It is difficult to overstate the audacity—and the mendacity—of Ledeen’s claim."
And not just his claim. More attempts to leave Dubya holding the bag.
What? You Mean All Nuns aren't Bitter Old Biddies Looking to Crack Knuckles with Rulers?
Another self-justifying Baby Boomer caricature bites the dust.
Another self-justifying Baby Boomer caricature bites the dust.
Catholic Blog Awards!
Remember: Vote for the Mark Shea blog of your choice--but vote!
The Catholic Blog Awards will begin taking nominations on Feb 4 and will end at noon on Feb 9.
Voting will then begin on on Feb 12 and end Feb 16th at noon.
This year we have had a programmer volunteer his time and he will be building a system for us that will require registration and a valid email address to register. Assuming that everything goes as it should, it will all be automated and no results will be displayed until the winners are announced. This will prevent people seeing who is ahead and attempting to rally people to go and vote for them. I think doing this will make things fairer and a true representation of which blogs truly represent.
Feel free to have your readers email suggestions here.
I will be doing some changes to the categories as there were some concerns in the past about redundancy. If you have any suggestions, feel free to email them to me. I know there were some suggestions last year, but I don't remember everything suggested to me.
Thanks
Joshua R. LeBlanc
cyberCatholics.com
Remember: Vote for the Mark Shea blog of your choice--but vote!
Rumblings about a Possible Israeli Nuking of Iran
Professor Bainbridge say, "Ain't gonna happen."
This stuff is above my pay grade. I have no idea what will or won't happen here, but I can't help but be reminded of Norman Angell's The Grand Illusion (copyright 1913) in which he painstakingly proved that there would never be a major continental war between the Great Power of Europe. Why, if that happened, the entire geopolitical and economic infrastructure of Europe would be destroyed, the ruling powers would be ruined, and incalculable forces would be unleashed that could lead to the decimation of all Europe. That would be... insane!
I sure hope Professor Bainbridge is right.
Professor Bainbridge say, "Ain't gonna happen."
This stuff is above my pay grade. I have no idea what will or won't happen here, but I can't help but be reminded of Norman Angell's The Grand Illusion (copyright 1913) in which he painstakingly proved that there would never be a major continental war between the Great Power of Europe. Why, if that happened, the entire geopolitical and economic infrastructure of Europe would be destroyed, the ruling powers would be ruined, and incalculable forces would be unleashed that could lead to the decimation of all Europe. That would be... insane!
I sure hope Professor Bainbridge is right.