Get Well Soon.

Lawblogger Stuart Buck is recovering from a pair of strokes, etiology unknown, which has him hospitalized. Stuart is 29 years old with two young children. Give him a hit to wish him well.

"For the Sake of the Nation, this Jesus must die."

I finally saw the Passion on Friday.

I liked the movie. The movie went from the quiet intensity and intense confrontation and foreshadowing of the Agony in the Garden through the utter physical agony of the Passion to the quiet understated triumph of the "empty" tomb. In retrospect, the movie had changes in tempo like a well crafted symphony.

Different scenes have different effects for different people. For me the cut and flashback from Mary's companion washing the blood from the marble floor of the scourging courtyard back to her first meeting with Jesus when she was likewise on her knees reaching out to Jesus as her personal savior from mob who intended to stone her was extremely powerful. The cinematography of Jesus drawing a line in the dust with the dirt and pebbles flying off like boulders was beautiful. Jim Cavaziel's Jesus standing between the mob and the woman while staring calmly at the mob as its members dropped their rocks portrayed a Jesus who could inspire his followers by the power of His example, not just His words. The sorrow expressed by Mary's companion who was clearly reflecting on her inability to help this man who had saved her life was heartwrenching.

The movie was studded with other moments of similar power.

The criticisms levelled at the movie were, in my opinion, unfair distractions. I had read that the Passion was a work of pornographic violence. Some of my friends had told me before I saw the movie that "not a minute goes by without some act of brutality." Frankly, I went into the movie expecting to be overwhelmed by blood and gore.

That simply didn't happen. There were lengthy scenes, particularly at the beginning, without violence. Even during the violent scenes, such as the scourging, there were flashbacks and cuts away from the violence.

As for the violence which was in the Passion, I have mixed feelings. I have never been a fan of "slasher" movies. I cringe and turn away from scenes that are bloody or gruesome. That said, the Passion is no more violent than other movies which were never described as "pornographic" in their violence. Think of Rockie, for example, which featured bone jarring blows and blood flying in all directions and during which Rockie had to "cut" his eyelids. That was as violent a movie from a technical standpoint as the Passion. Likewise, the scene in Die Hard where Bruce Willis runs bare foot through broken glass could easily compete with the scourging scene for gruesomeness.

On the other hand, let's face it, the movie depicts the fact that Jesus was brutalized. He was a victim of torture, not a boxer, not an action hero. That fact, therefore, makes the violence in the Passion more like an exercise in sadism, which it is, and, therefore, socially objectionable.

But isn't that the point of the movie. Wasn't Jesus the Paschal lamb, the suffering servant? Isn't it the case that he was tortured to death in a public display of intimidation by the masters of intimidation, the Roman Empire?

Obviously, he was. I have often reflected on the fact that in my religious tradition, we casually accept the presence of a statue depicting a man being tortured to death! It's a violent, gruesome statue which is found in every Catholic church! And, yet, we treat it as common place. Now that I have children I wonder about the easy acceptance of the Crucifix. My girls run out of the room if the television shows a fight scene. But they stay without comment in a church which has a life size, fully life-like depiction of a human being nailed to wood who is dying a horribly gruesome death.

If the Passion corrects that casual attitude toward the Passion, then it will have done a major service to Christianity.

I thought the claim that the Passion was anti-semitic point was unfair. Certainly, the temple priesthood is a major target of the movie. No one can watch the movie and come away without the opinion that Jesus was shopped to the Romans for political reasons.

But, again, so what? That's the truth presented in the Gospels. Mel Gibson is not the first person to make that point. The lecture I'm listening to by Bart Ehrman on Christianity from Jesus to Constantine makes exactly that point.

Likewise, the depiction of Pilate as something other than the bloodthirsty sole author of Jesus' crucifixion is nothing new. Gibson's Pilate could easily have been taken out of Jesus Christ Superstar. Remember that in Jesus Christ Superstar, Pilate has a dialogue with Jesus where he begs Jesus to speak and is forced to condemn Jesus because of Jesus' obstinacy. ("Die if you want, you misguided martyr.")

Similarly, Gibson offers nothing new in his depiction of the political motivation of the Sanhedrin. In Jesus Christ Superstar, Caiphus declares that he "is law and order" and the Sanhedrin decides that "for the sake of the nation this Jesus must die, must die, must die. For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die."

Finally, when I first saw the scenes of Herod, which had been described as over the top gay bashing, I was reminded of the depiction of Herod in Jesus Christ Superstary with its over the top portrayal of Herod as a foppish, vapid, hedonistic lightweight.

And, yet, no one to my knowledge has ever protested Jesus Christ Superstar as an anti-semitic, anti-gay, whitewash of Pilate.

Frankly, given the similar depictions of Pilate, the Temple and Herod between the Passion and Jesus Christ Superstar, my guess would be that JC Superstar got a pass because (a) there was no third act - no Resurrection - in Superstar and (b) Superstar was intended to offend, not defend, orthodox sensibilities.

I intend to see the Passion again so that I can focus on the movie and not on the unfair controversy that was generated around the movie.

A Woman's Perspective on the Da Vinci Code.

Kathy the Carmelite offers her perspective on the "sacred feminine" claptrap on which the DVC is based.

My Life is Complete.

The trial is going fine. One high point was the 15 minute flaming that the judge gave a potential juror who played the "I can't say whether I'll follow the law when I get deliberations" gambit in order to avoid jury service. We were tempted to make him Alternate Number 3 just to make him sit in court for the next two weeks, but decided discretion was the better part of prudence and cut him loose. It was a nice bit of socratic ass-chewing that the Court inflicted on this dim-bulb.

Incidentally, let me be clear. Jurors are heroes. Jury service is the last bit of conscription that exists in our society. Without the fact that most - underline most - Americans are willing to do their public service, then the legal system we have couldn't exist and we wouldn't live in the kind of society that we want to live in.

Even better, though, was the chance encounter in the cafeteria last week when an attorney came up to Penner to talk about coordinating the testimony of a doctor we were using with the doctor's testimony in a trial this attorney had going. We didn't recognize him, so the man introduced himself as Chris Belli. This led to the fact that Chris is the son of the late Melvin Belli, who is fondly remembered as "The King of Torts."

I told him that I just had to shake the hand of a man whose father played a bit role in Star Trek. In truth, Melvin played the the "Gorgon" aka "the Friendly Angel" in the classic Trek episode of "And a Child shall lead them." As I recall, the Gorgon was an alien who had corrupted a handful of children survivors of a plague on a colony world. The link describes this episode as follows:

Even amongst the most ardent of Trekkies, it’s hard to find anyone willing to defend this utter heap of an episode. Notable only for the fact that it stars attorney Melvin Belli - yes, the one who defended Jack Ruby after the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald - "And the Children Shall Lead" is almost painful to watch as anything but parody material, and even then, it’s just not fun enough to recommend to anyone who isn’t drunk. Unless you’re an utter completist when it comes to “Star Trek”, do yourself a favor and skip this one.

I think that is a pretty accurate summary of the episode.

Chris then pointed out that I would definitely wanted to shake his since he had a role in the same episode, which on reflection I remembered that Melvin's son, "Caesar," did have a role as one of the children corrupted by the "Friendly Angel." I guess he goes by "Chris" when he's trying a case in Fresno.

Well, I thought it was cool.

Jeremiah Denton, who by the way served in Vietnam, on Kerry.

Lane Core has the excerpt.

Who is Richard Clarke?

He's a Clinton holdover who lost his job when Bush decided to fight terrorism.

Orson Scott Card on Gay Marriage.

Science Fiction author Card argues that (a) same sex marriage is no more "marriage" because 4 out of 7 members of the Massachusett's Supreme Court says it is than a cow would have 5 "legs" because they defined "legs" to include tails; (b) no homosexual has ever been denied the civil right to marry; and (c) we are at a point where "democracy" means allowing 4 out of 7 oligarchically selected individuals wearing black robes the power to unilaterally legislate sweeping social changes without the input of the people.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

Next week: why your internal organs can be nationalized. (They're not really yours anymore than the amount of income you are allowed to keep after taxes is yours. Which is why tax cuts are really governmental gifts to the rich.)

Historical Malpractice.

I saw Hidalgo, starring Viggo Mortenson, last week. I thought it was a fair adventure story. It lagged at times and there were some overt instances of political correctness, but on the whole it was generally entertaining.

Of course, it should not be surprising that the "Based on a True Story" claim is a complete fabrication. As the Long Riders Guild observes:

The 1953 musical, "Calamity Jane" starring Doris Day, was "only a movie." Yet the 2004 film "Hidalgo" starring Viggo Mortensen is advertised as being "based on a true story." The difference is that Calamity Jane really did have equestrian adventures, ride in Wyoming, and meet Buffalo Bill Cody - three things no one can prove Frank Hopkins ever did. We should be concerned when a happy-go-lucky Doris Day musical contains more fact than a mislabeled $80 million horse opera.

According to History News Network, even the "Circle of Fire" race is a complete fabrication.

All of this is not to say that the movie isn't worth watching. It is to say that the makers of the movie are doing a disservice to the idea of historical truth by lying about the historical bona fides of their flick.

Steyn on Kerry/

Mark Steyn thinks that John Kerry has dived into political self-caricature too early in the campaign season. Along with describing Kerry's odd anecdote about his favorite pet - a dog he had during his four month stint in Viet Nam which was purportedly named for the enemy - and the odd visit to a sporting goods store where he took the press corps to watch him purchase a jock strap and the many "nuanced" positions on policies that Kerry has taken, Steyn observes:

'His vote against the first Gulf War was, he says, a sign of his support for the first Gulf War. Whereas his vote in favor of the Iraq war was a sign of his opposition to the Iraq war. And his vote against funding America's troops in Iraq is a sign of his support for America's men and women in uniform. On the same principle, I think the best way voters this November can demonstrate their support for John Kerry is by voting against him.

This is supposed to be a close election, but the more one gets to really know Kerry, the more it seems like it threatens to be a blow-out.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Penner and I are in trial all week, but I didn't want to forget this unique "trans-cultured" event when everyone is Irish for a day.

1914 - The Christmas Truce.

Check out this report of this cordial meeting between Jack Chick and Catholic apologist, Jimmy Akins.

Via Relapsed Catholic

Paying the price for Freedom of Conscience.

The irreligious left tries to impose its religious views on everyone else.

Evil in Fresno.

Nine murdered in possible cult mass murder, including children ages one to eight.

Two thoughts.

First, monsters walk among us.

Second, the only time Fresno seems to get national attention is for things that are really embarassing or a murder. Times like this, I wish it was the former, not the latter reason.

Pray for the victims.

Godless Americans in Politics.

I'm watching Ellen Johnson, head of the newly founded "Godless Americans Political Action Committee," which needless to say is getting more free air-time than would a newly founded pro-religious organization. She's advocating that the "godless" should vote their atheistic beliefs. She is very explicit in her evangelization on behalf of "godlessness." In short, her animus against religion is clearly evident. Her program appears to be that "Godly" Americans should have no effective input into the political system on those subjects which are important to them.

It's very clear that every policy position she's taking - no moments of silence in schools, removing "under God" from the pledge, eliminating faith-based initiatives - is identical to that promoted by liberals and the Democrat party.

Would the singular confluence of positions between this group and liberal Democrats provide evidence which would support a finding that liberal Democrats who have identical policy positions share this animus?

If it does, what does this mean under Romer v. Evans? In Romer, the Supreme Court held that the animus of some Colorado voters against homosexuals could be used to support a finding that a state statute precluding homosexuals from being classed as a "protected group" was based on an illegitimate intent to deprive homosexuals from the political process. Is the principle here that Believers can be publicly villified and made the subject of penalties - such as the statute which was upheld in Locke v. Davis - but that homosexuals can't? Was Romer a one time only decision?

Just where is that in the United States Constitution, which does, after all, say something about "free exercise of religion?"

Another point. Why would any "godless" person be so evangelical?

Viva Espana.

God bless Spain. When the other historic European allies of the U.S. decided that cosmopolitan sophistication meant a nuanced perspective on accepting Saddam's oil money and ignoring mass murder, Spain stood by us. One reason for this was explained by a Spanish national leader who observed that if Spain ever needed help, the Spanish knew that America would support Spain, something that Spain couldn't bank on with the European community.

America won't forget 3/11/04. America doesn't forget its friends.

Stop by Jesus Gill's blog and give him a hit on behalf of the solidarity of the civilized world.

Let him know that America doesn't forget its friends, that in the war against the barbarians who murder defenseless civilians, the rest of civilization stands with the people of Spain.

Molly Makes Commonweal.

Opinionated Conservative Catholic Chica gets noticed by Commonweal.

Check it out.

Penner, check this out.

Bill Cork links to this article on the 5th DCA becoming involved in picking and choosing who are the true members of a Lutheran church congregation. Here's a key part of the article:

The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered Free Evangelical Lutheran Cross Church to allow the liberal members back into the congregation. Moreover, the court ruled that, since the church is not owned by an ecclesiastical order or denomination, the members own the church and have property rights along with their membership.

Actually, I think I read the decision last month. Frankly, I was shocked at the extent of judicial interference in church polity. We need to give this one some thought since we have our challenge to the Methodist trust clause currently pending before the 5th DCA.

Totally Cool and did I mention he's from Fresno.

Ith points out that Victor Davis Hanson has a blog.

Because of the good work she did with her son, I'm almost ready to forgive Justice Pauline Hanson for not hiring me for the Fifth DCA.

An E-Mail making the Rounds.

San Francisco Logic

(A scene at City Hall in San Francisco )

"Next."

"Good morning. We want to apply for a marriage license."

"Names?"

"Tim and Jim Jones."

"Jones? Are you related? I see a resemblance."

"Yes, we're brothers."

"Brothers? You can't get married."

"Why not? Aren't you giving marriage licenses to same gender couples?"

"Yes, thousands. But we haven't had any siblings. That's incest!"

"Incest?" No, we are not gay."

"Not gay? Then why do you want to get married?"

"For the financial benefits, of course. And we do love each other. Besides, we don't have any other prospects."

"But we're issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples who've been denied equal protection under the law. If you are not gay, you can get married to a woman."

"Wait a minute. A gay man has the same right to marry a woman as I have. But just because I'm straight doesn't mean I want to marry a woman. I want to marry Jim."

"And I want to marry Tim, Are you going to discriminate against us just because we are not gay?"

"All right, all right. I'll give you your license. Next."

"Hi. We are here to get married."

"Names?"

"John Smith, Jane James, Robert Green, and June Johnson."

"Who wants to marry whom?"

"We all want to marry each other."

"But there are four of you!"

"That's right. You see, we're all bisexual. I love Jane and Robert, Jane loves me and June, June loves Robert and Jane, and Robert loves June and me. All of us getting married together is the only way that we can express our sexual preferences in a marital relationship."

"But we've only been granting licenses to gay and lesbian couples."

"So you're discriminating against bisexuals!"

"No, it's just that, well, the traditional idea of marriage is that it's just for couples."

"Since when are you standing on tradition?"

"Well, I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere."

"Who says? There's no logical reason to limit marriage to couples. The more the better. Besides, we demand our rights! The mayor says the constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. Give us a marriage license!"

"All right, all right. Next."

"Hello, I'd like a marriage license."

"In what names?"

"David Deets."

"And the other man?"

"That's all. I want to marry myself."

"Marry yourself? What do you mean?"

"Well, my psychiatrist says I have a dual personality, so I want to marry the two together. Maybe I can file a joint income-tax return."

"That does it! I quit!! You people are making a mockery of marriage!!"

Hah, that's funny, but so totally unrealistic.

Hold on a second.

What's that?

In France, a live person can marry a corpse?

Well, sure. Why not? The Constitution guarantees the "mystery of life," which is the pursuit of individual happiness and we wouldn't want to discriminate against a class of people who have been historically subjected to the worst discrimination, such as being deprived of the right to vote and marry.

It's the logical next step.

Gertrude Himmelfarb on the Passion.

Gertrude Himmelfarb raises some sobering comments on the Passion. She writes:

Mel Gibson has said that his film is simply a graphic rendition of the historical truth as conveyed in the Gospels. I leave this issue to others. Nor will I dwell on the question of whether a graphic visual representation of a written text -- a text, moreover, that does not contain some of the more memorable and horrific details depicted in the film -- can be said to be truthful to the text. Instead, I will propose a "thought-experiment" or two that may put this film in perspective.

How would we (Gibson and all the rest of us) feel if a Hollywood producer (a Hollywood so notoriously populated by Jews) made a film, in the same "over the edge" spirit vaunted by Gibson, dramatizing another historical event -- the auto-da-fé in Spain in February 1481, for example, in which six men and six women conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity) were tortured and burned alive at the stake, while richly robed prelates triumphally presided over the scene? Such a film, taking its cue from Gibson, might utilize all the devices of violence, sadism and malignity that he has deployed so skillfully, here as in his other films. It might be even more credible, and therefore emotionally powerful, than his because the contemporary as well as scholarly sources are more reliable. The effect would be to make of the auto-da-fé a defining experience in the relations of Jews and Christians.

Or, another thought-experiment: a film of the First Crusade produced by a Muslim. The venerable 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes, in relatively sober terms, the month-long siege culminating in the capture of Jerusalem: "The slaughter was terrible; the blood of the conquered ran down the streets, until men splashed in blood as they rode. At nightfall, sobbing for excess of joy, the crusaders came to the Sepulchre from their treading of the winepress, and put their blood-stained hands together in prayer. So, on that day of July, the First Crusade came to an end." An "over the edge" depiction of this scene would surely be as riveting, bloody and unforgettable as the scene of the Crucifixion, or of the auto da fé or, for that matter, of all too many episodes in our all too bloody history.

What is sauce for the goose. . . .

This is an interesting thought experiment. It appears that the purpose of these over the top scenes would be to suggest a kind of blood guilt ("What is sauce for the goose....") for Christians. Otherwise, what's the point?

Oddly, Himmelfarb suggestion, which is obviously meant as a kind of "hoist by their own petard" suggestion, has some merit. It is an axiom of Christianity that Christians are part of one body. Consequently, all Christians share in the merits or faults of all other Christians. Christians today share in the excesses of the Christian Crusaders in a way that they don't share in the mass extermination of the Christian community of Acre by the Muslems nearly two centuries later. Likewise, Christians share in the excesses of the Inquisition, just as they share in the excesses of the Crusaders at Carcassonne where the slaughter of every Catholic, Jewish and Cathar heretic made the phrase "kill them all and let God sort them out" famous. On the other hand, Christians do not share in the same manner for the pogroms and exterminations that flared up in Muslem Spain during the Reconquista or the expulsion of the Jews from Muslem Spain on the same terms as those of Christian Spain.

Did I mention that slaughters were fairly endemic among all religious groups, not just Christians?

As a thought experiment, would Christians have the right to show in graphic detail the torture and murder of the entire Christian population of Acre? How about the slaughter of the Jewish population of Baghdad under Islam?

Probably not. And here's the odd thing about Himmelfarb's observations, Gibson's version of the Passion comes packaged with an ideological agenda of convincing his audience that their sins caused the Passion. Gibson has said so often enough in a manner consistent with the express teachings of his faith to leach away the claim that he is promoting a medieval claim of "blood guilt."

There seems to be the sad take away from Himmelfarb's comments. While the people she implicitly criticizes as easily manipulated, bigots with a shallow view of the historical facts of the Passion, the seem to have matured to a point where they have a nuanced, complex view of their responsibility for the Passion. On the other hand, Himmelfarb wants to construct a narrative that they, and only they, are also liable for the human evils of history. This latter point fashions, however, is based on a simplistic view of history. Every culture has its share of villains and heroes. It's simply the nature of being human.

The DaVinci Code - I've read the book so you don't have to.

I’ve been intending to put up this post for several months and simply did not get around to it. This essay comparing the different levels of sensitivity to “The Passion of the Christ” and the “Da Vinci Code” (“DVC”), however, provides an opportune moment for reflecting on the DVC.

I am on record as assuming - based on its sale’s performance - that while the DVC would be a scholastically ignorant work purveying a knee-jerk ideology, it would also be well written. After reading the book, I have to issue a mea culpa. The DVC really is poorly written.

Brown employs several literary artifices which are simply amateurish. For example, Brown has perfected the “expository lecture” device. Under this device, some comment or question induces the hero, Robert Langdon, to flash back to some lecture he gave which gives Brown the opportunity to inject some purportedly relevant academic information into the book. Hence, a casual comment about “PHI” leads to a three page disquisition on the Fibonacci Numbers (p. 93 - 97). See this article on Fibonacci Numbers. Now, the point of this disquisition is unclear. Apparently, it’s designed to “Wow” the reader with Brown’s encyclopedic knowledge since Brown rattles off innumerable purported examples of the “Golden Mean.” The Golden Mean really exists, but the problem is that Brown is too lazy to do any serious research to get it right. And he boots what he does write. One thing about Brown's style is that his constant injection of tendentious "scientific" or "literary" or "historical" points, suchs as the throw-away comment about the ratio of male to female bees in every hive in the world being 1.618, raised “red flag” that suggested that Brown was “making shit up”(hereinafter “MSU”), about which more later.

But from a literary style standpoint, this is amateur hour. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Science Fiction comes to recognize the different strategies by which an author can impart technical information without retarding plot development. The cheesiest has to be the “Scullyism,” named after the habit of various writers of the X-Files to have the normally intelligent Dana Scully ask some dense question, just so that Mulder can share the background we have to know. But, really, this kind of device went stale in SF during the 1930s. Moreover, with Brown it’s not clear what the point of the information is, apart from persuading readers that he’s a polymath, which he ain't.

Another amateur stylistic quirk that Brown employs is tying physical appearance to moral status. Thus, Langdon - our hero - is every man’s man. In a two-for-one exhibition of bad literary habits, Brown uses a flashback lecture to describe Langdon’s “captivating presence” and as being “Harrison Ford in Harris Tweed.” (p. 9.) On the other hand, the villains are as physically defective as they're morally impaired. The fact that they’re either albino or crippled led this review to argue that Brown’s book revealed more an open prejudice toward the disabled than it did to Catholicism. Although I think the argument is a stretch, I think that the correspondence course that Brown took on writing must have stressed the idea of developing two-dimensional characters through the use of physical description.

Yet another lame literary device is the “convenient selective stupidity” strategy. Hence, we have the “Papal Bull” Captain Bezu Fache, who has intuited that Langdon is guilty of murder, think nothing of the fact that a cryptographer shows up at the crime scene(!?!) and claims to have a message for his chief suspect from the American embassy.(!?!) (p. 51- 53.) Of course, it could well be the case that French cryptographers have a long-standing tradition of providing answering services for various embassies, but I was skeptical the moment I read this gambit. Strangely, though, Fache, a determined man interested in railroading Langdon, wasn’t.

I think that the most significant literary sin that Brown commits is that he’s simply not a trustworthy author. This really is should be a big deal for everyone who reads for more than to cement developed prejudice. I obviously read a lot of Science Fiction. It is a given in Science Fiction that a writer who promotes bad science is going to get called on it and will lose credibility. Even Alternate History stories have to recognize a “point of departure,” prior to which the history had better be right. As a reader I invest time and money into the writers and their products and if I discern that the writer is too lazy to do decent research, and avoids research through the MSU route, then I’ve got better things to do.

Brown obviously has MSU down to an cottage industry. He’s just lazy. As the post that I linked to on the Golden Mean points out, Brown’s math is wrong. The Golden Mean is an irrational number; it’s not 1.618, or whatever. Bees do not have sex ratios of 1.618 to 1. (Bee genealogy reflects a Fibonacci sequence, but that’s a different matter.) Let's face it when your get dissed by a mathemetician for bad mathematics, you're in bad shape, particularly when you claim that you are the son of a mathemetician. Or is that more MSU?

Brown MSU's everywhere in the DVC. For example, Brown has this passage(p. 41):

She had been shocked to learn that female numeraries were forced to clean the men’s residence halls for no pay while the men were at mass; women slept on hardwood flors, while the men had straw mats; and women were forced to endure additional requirements of corporal mortification...all as added penance for original sin.

As a Science Fiction reader, I have to say that this is both a howler and absolutely inexcusable. As a SF reader, I expect writers to do a modicum of research so that what they sell has some “value added.” I’ve learned history, philosophy, Latin, you name it from Science Fiction because the readers I like, such Heinlein, Zelazny, Dickson, Anderson, etc., had a sense of pride in their work. If they didn’t know a subject, they’d research it.

Never would they have a sentence like “added penance for original sin.” As far as I know, no Catholic has ever done “penance for original sin.” A slight effort at research would prove that original sin is discharged by Baptism. So, just as the concept of “penance for original sin” is a non-starter, the idea of “added penance for original sin” just demonstrates so much more of the writer’s ignorance of the subject.

This is a literary criticism, not a theological point. A howler like that immediately derails the relationship of trust that has to exist between writer and reader. Brown clearly is promoting some kind of agenda, but every writer has some obligation to the reader to research the subject and any research into this subject would have prevented this gross demonstration of ignorance. If Brown had any pride in his subject, that howler would never have seen the light of day.

Another example which jars the teeth of anyone who has done any reading on the history of language is this one (p. 36):

Nowadays, the term pagan had become almost synonymous with devil worship - a gross misconception. The word’s roots actually reached back to the Latin paganus, meaning country-dwellers. “Pagans” were literally unindoctrinated country-folk who clung to the old, rural religions of Nature worship. In fact, so strong was the Church’s fear of those who lived in the rural villes that the once innocuous word for “villagers” - villains - came to mean a wicked soul.

Brown is back to MSU again. The two words cited by Brown for his etymological reflections don't reflect some kind of theological propaganda, they reflect class bias. The etymology of “villain” demonstrates a fairly typical injection of class consciousness into moral schema. Nietzsche made some hay about this fact when he observed that our conception of "good" and "evil" had roots in the fact that the Noble class of Europe appropriated various words such as, well, “noble,” to describe the “good” virtues while leaving the lower classes to become “knaves,”“bastards” and “villains.” None of which had anything to do with the “Church’s fear” of rural pagans, most especially since “villain” dates from the Old French at which point most “villeins” were Christian. Likewise, this "nature religion" that Brown cites would have been unknown to most of the rural country folk of Greece and Italy.

Now these are minor points and I'm picking them out because so many other reviews have hit the major points. Yet, they're significant because they so casual and so unnecessary to the plot of the book. If an author is going to MSU about this trivia, he can't be trusted when it matters.

The bottom line is that Brown is a lazy author.

Beyond that, though, the DVC really is a hateful book. Here’s a couple of passages where the “secret” of the book is revealed (p. 266), smack-dab in the middle of the book just as required in plot writing 101:

”...This kind of infiltration could only have come from the Priory’s oldest enemy.”
Langdon glanced up. ”The Church.”
“Who else? Rome has been seeking th Grail for centuries.”
Sophie was skeptical. “You think the Church killed my grnadfather?”
Teabing replied, “It would not be th first time in history that the Church has killed to protect itself. The documents that accompany the Holy Grail are explosive, and the Church has wanted to destroy them for years.”
Langdon was having trouble buying Teabing’s premise that the Church would blatantly murder people to obtain these documents. Having met the new Pope and many of the cardinals, Lagdon knew that they were deeply spiritual men who would never condone assassination. Regardless of the stakes.”

Ah, yes, the new Pope and his cardinals. They are deeply spiritual men who would never condone assassination. Now, the old Pope and his clergy - i.e., existing Catholicism - those people have no scruples whatsoever.

This is simply bigotry. It’s open. It’s obvious. It’s contained in a best seller. And there has been nowhere near the fraction of concern over this than there has been in sniffing out anti-Semitism in The Passion.

Another passage (p. 266):

Teabing chuckled,. “the ivory towers of Harvard have made you soft, Robert. Yes, the clergy in Rome are blessed with potent faith, and because of this, their beliefs can weather any storm, including documents that contradict everything they hold dear. But what of the rest of the world?...What are those who look at the cruelty of the world and say, where is God today? Those who look at Church scandals and ask, who are these men who claim to speak the truth about Christ and yet lie to cover up the sexual abuse of children by their own priests?” Teabing paused. “What happens to those people, Robert, if persuasive scientific evidence comes out that the Church’s version of the Christ story is inaccurate, and that the greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story every sold.”

So we have a murderous power hungry clergy deluding the great mass of their members. I wonder how the new Pope feels about that?

Among so many other things that Brown writes, his use of the term “sect” to describe the Catholic religious order Opus Dei struck me as odd. Catholics don’t describe the Franciscans, for example, as a “sect.” “Sect” implies someone outside the Church. In fact, According to Catholic theology, a sect is characterized by estrangement from the common biblical-apostolic truth and the central contents of faith. Therefore the Church considers sects always to be tantamount to heresy (c.f. Gal 1:6-12) or schism Either Brown is just being stupid - which is possible - or he’s once again trying to distance actual Catholicism, which he describes as “murderous” and “based on a lie,” from a "better" Catholicism, one that is more flexible about its claims to truth, i.e., a Catholicism that looks more like contemporary Episcopalianism or Methodism.

So, I’ve read the book. It’s hateful. It’s written by a lazy writer. It's an extended exercise in bigotry. Who cares? It’s a best seller.

And in a culture which seems to be getting progressively more hostile to mainstream religion, that may say something very alarming.

The First Against the Wall when the Revolution Comes.

Mark Evanier expresses some fair points about his ambivalence on the Martha Stewart verdict:

If I try to view today's verdict in some sort of positive light...well, I guess it's good to know that rich people can sometimes get convicted in our court system. Still, I'd feel a little better about this if I believed she'd actually broken a law and that it's a law that is applied equally to all.

And I guess I should point out that I don't know that she didn't break a genuine law. I don't know...and neither do a lot of people who are elated at the verdict. They only know how they feel about Martha Stewart, and maybe how they feel about someone "big" getting nailed to the wall.

My initial reaction to the verdict was something like "whoopie" as my normally undetectable populist reflex spasmed from a long period of disuse. Let's face it, there is a class of society - in every town and community - who come to learn that the rules don't apply to them. The system - which is simply other people who are inclined to say "there, but for the grace of God go I" and then add their Grace to God's - acts to pardon offenders who belong to the in-group.

On the other hand, I've never really understood the moral imperatives of insider trading. I understand the ruless and I understand the importance of policing the game, but I find it hard to work up a real sense of disgust for insider trading. It's a violation of the rules and needs to be punished, but it seems more malum prohibitum than malum in se, perhaps because of the consensual element of stock purchases. Somebody, after all, wants to buy the stock.

The question seems to implicate, of all things, an essay I recently read in Baseball and Philosphy. The essay dealt with the issue of cheating in Baseball. The issue is more complex than you might think. Somethings obviously constitute cheating. Sammy Sosa's corked bat, for example. On the other hand, is it cheating to fake a throw in order to tag a runner with a long lead off? What about faking an injury? What about acting like a trapped ball was a legitimate catch? (My quick and uninformed opinion on these questoins are "No," "Yes" and "Maybe," respectively.) Whatever, the ultimate answer, it's hard to work up a heady sense of indignation for the athelete whose skill sets involve faking a catch. Likewise, while I can feel class envy for those who profit from their insider connections, it's hard for me to work up a strong sense of vengeance against someone who apparently obstructed justice in a transaction which was not itself illegal.

Fresno Rules.

Roger Ho points out that Fresnan Bill Jones will be the next Senator from California.

Mud on Mars?????

Voyage to Arcturus notes that NASA is signalling a big announcement tomorrow.

Wouldn't that be cool?

What Part of Freedom of Conscience don't you understand?

You know that nonsense about "separation of Church and State? Forget it. We have an elitist element of society in California hijacking democracy to enforce gay marriages on a dissenting public. Then, the California Supreme Court orders Catholics Charities to offer birth control. At least one Justice saw a problem with the ruling:

Justice Janice Rogers Brown was the lone dissenting judge. Brown wrote that the Legislature's definition of a "religious employer" is too limiting if it excludes faith-based nonprofit groups like Catholic Charities.

"Here we are dealing with an intentional, purposeful intrusion into a religious organization's expression of its religious tenets and sense of mission," Brown wrote. "The government is not accidentally or incidentally interfering with religious practice; it is doing so willfully by making a judgment about what is or is not a religion."

I support Catholic Charities because I assume that it represents my faith tradition and I feel that my charity should be directed in some measure to groups that can "fly the flag," so to speak. I reckon I'm not the only person with such sentiments. By differentiating itself in this way, Catholic Charities can tap resources that other groups can't tap. But, apparently, I should have been giving my charitable dollars to Planned Parenthood or the Sierra Club or whatever group is recognized as morally unobjectionable by the Court.

Although the Court held that Catholic Charities is a "business," it is not in any true sense of the word. It collects money from people like me and although it may dispense its charity to the broad population, it is informed by a distinctive religious ethos. It is a way of performing the corporal acts of mercy called for in the Catholic tradition. Likewise, the Court claimed that Catholic Charities' services to non-Catholics was a factor in removing the Charities from the rubric of religion, but nothing in the corporal acts of mercy limits those acts to Catholics.

Frankly, it's been a bad week for people who think that democracy involves some kind of public involvement and that the protection of minority rights isn't a heads you win, tails I lose proposition.

Update: So, I've been busy and missed the decision in Locke v. Davies. However, last week the Supreme Court of the United States held that it was permissible to discriminate against religion and religious activities. Some despondency in various neighborhoods of Blogville. V.P. Sulik, who was channelling my current attitude last week, writes:

It's Ash Wednesday -- a day that is holy for Christians everywhere, but I always associate it with the Catholic Church, probably because of the practice of attending early Mass or noon Mass and receiving ashes.

The statute in Washington was adopted in large part, if I remember correctly, as a result of anti-Catholic bigotry.

I guess CJ Rehnquist, a nominal Lutheran, is using his well-known wicked sense of humor to stick it to the Catholic in his own way.

But this is a loss for all religions and a loss for the republic.

But, what the hell, the Court doesn't give a fig about us anyway...

Professor Bainbridge has a number of good posts, but tellingly quotes Scalia's dissent:

What next? Will we deny priests and nuns their prescription-drug benefits on the ground that tax-payers? freedom of conscience forbids medicating the clergy at public expense? This may seem fanciful, but recall that France has proposed banning religious attire from schools, invoking interests in secularism no less benign than those the Court embraces today.

Interesting, in light of of the Catholic Charities case, supra.

Stuart Buck thinks that the Locke decision is essentially incoherent.

Professor Wagner says Locke "honks" and to stay tuned for more tantrums.

I know I'm not the only one who thinks that the law and religion game is being played by the following set of rules: Heads - taxpayer's freedom of conscience to object to support of religion - you win, tails - Catholics right to object to being forced to privately subsidize what they view as immorality - I lose.

Oddly, even as a Conservative, I'm beginning to think that a Constitutional amendment may be in order.

Second Thoughts: Ironically, I'm reading sociologist Rodney Stark's One True God as bedtime reading. I'm precisely at the point where Stark is describing the the history of Christian missionary activities. I found one passage I was reading so stunning that I kickstarted the computer to put this post online.

To put Stark's thesis succinctly, once Christendom had broken down into a pluralistic society, the need to compete led to a re-creation of succesful missionary activities for the first time since the Roman Empire. (I recommend the book; Stark makes some good arguments about why feels that Northern Europe was never really Christian.)

This wave of succesful missionizing activities - largely a Nineteenth Century phenomenon - broke down among one group of Christians who had been the first to invest heavily missionary activities because that group began to doubt that they had a unique and valuable product to promote. That group - the mainstream, liberal churches - began to see their missionary purposes as "social work," simply doing good. Predictably, though, people won't sacrifice themselves in the same way when they are merely "doing good" as they will when they believe that they are "spreading the truth" and "saving souls." The net result is that the Evangelical churches who still believed that they were promoting the truth gradually mopped up the floor with the liberals in the mission field.

The mainstream liberal churches apparently still see their charitable works as basically "social work" and not as a form of missionizing. This prompts the following passage from Stark (p. 105):

Hutchison made it clear that his objections to missions had to do only with efforts to spread the gospel; he approved of missions modeled on the Peace Corps. What he failed to grasp, even though efforts by his father and many others to create such missions were complete failures, is what Mother Teresa made clear when a reporter referred to her sisters as social workers: "We are not social workers. We do this for Jesus."

Now, think about the Catholic Charities case. What is the background of the Justices that sit on the California Supreme Court? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised to find a disproportionate representation of "high church Protestants" because "high church Protestants" have always had a disproportionate representation among elite law schools and law firms. Or at the least, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the values of such people are the values of the class that sits on the California Supreme Court.

Per Stark, the values of "high church Protestants" - the mainstream, liberal churches - defines religious charitable work as a form of social work. There's nothing conspiratorial or mysterious about this. That's how they've been raised. That's what they see. That's how they think. They are above such primitive notions as performing corporal acts of mercy while they work out their own salvation in fear and trembling and they project their sophisticated worldview on everyone else.

What they don't see is that the people performing the services really are thinking "we do this for Jesus." In other words, the idea that anyone would really think that charitable work is a religious activity is discounted as an a priori assumption: no one would really believe such nonsense after all. It's not such a long leap from there to the decision in the Catholic Charities case.

Another point which I had in the back of my mind was whether the bias of Supreme Court isn't going to have the effect of strangling a succesful form of charitable work. The implications in Stark's observations are that religious charitable work is more succesful than social work. By relegating religious charity to the same status as "social work" has the California Supreme Court undermined the very thing that has done so much good for so many people?

It really has been a bad week for democracy.