More business heading our way....Methodists reverse decision to defrock a "self-avowed practicing homosexual" minister.

[Via Bill Cork.]

According to this Houston Chronicle article, a UMC church panel has reversed the decision to suspend Beth Stroud, a UMC minister who admitted to having an ongoing lesbian relationship:

The United Methodist Church reversed itself today, deciding to reinstate a lesbian minister who was defrocked after revealing her relationship with another woman.

A church panel voted 8-1 to set aside an earlier decision to defrock Irene "Beth" Stroud for violating the church's ban on openly gay clergy.

Stroud had been found guilty of violating the Book of Discipline in December of 2004 by a 12-1 vote, and a 7-6 vote had determined that the appropriate penalty was removing her ministerial credentials. (The link I've provided is to the Institute on Religion and Democracy, whose founder recently died at a tragically young age.) The determination that Stroud had violated the Book of Discipline should have been a foregone conclusion. Stroud had preached a "coming out" sermon to her congregation in April of 2003 and her story eventually found its way onto public television.

The problem is that the Book of Discipline is actually clear in this matter. The UMC's Book of Discipline spells out the UMC's democratically-ascertained understanding of suitability of a "self-avowed practicing homosexual" to serve as a UMC minister as follows:

¶304.3

While persons set apart by the Church for ordained ministry are subject to all the frailties of the human condition and the pressures of society, they are required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world. Since the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals1 are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.
1. "Self-avowed practicing homosexual" is understood to mean that a person openly acknowledges to a bishop, district superintendent, district committee of ordained ministry, board of ordained ministry, or clergy session that the person is a practicing homosexual. See Judicial Council Decisions 702, 708, 722, 725, 764, 844.

The text seems clear enough. But the UMC Appellate decision played the old result-oriented game of finding ambiguities and imprecisions in the statutory language to justify reversal. Specifically, the court found that the terms "practicing homosexual" and "status" were not defined, and so, well, they didn't have to engage in the normal gap filling that happens in statutory language because, after all, it's the language we all use every day. Moreover, Stroud seemed painfully clear in her sermon that she was proud to confess to being a "practicing homosexual."

After all, what part of "you're not supposed to be a UMC minister who tells her parishioners that it is morally acceptable to have sex outside of marriage" didn't the appeals panel understand?

Not to worry, though, if the UMC's delegates rise to the bait and offer definitions for "practicing homosexual", another court will randomly pick a word in the definition to find ambiguity and imprecision. The game could go on into the next century.

It really is an old game - set the bar high enough and you can paralyze the system through semantic overload. I've seen the UMC play this kind of game of "straining at gnats and swallowing camels" before, which is why state courts that defer to the interpretations of church bodies under a "quasi-hiearchy" theory are allowing their property and corporations law to be turned into silly putty. For example, the kinds of semantic niceties are never invoked when it's a "conservative" minister under the guns of a liberal superintendant. In those cases, the powers that be have declared "there is another more basic and fundamental covenant that has precedence over" the will of the General Conference." (See also this letter from UMC ministers reprimanded for objecting to violations of the Book of Discipline.)

The ability of the "progressive" elements in Methodism to "game" the democratically-ascertained rules of the UMC in the name of a truth higher than the Book of Discipline has led to renewed concerns about a UMC schism. (I was tempted to say a "Methodist schism", but there are, in fact, other Methodist denominations.) Wesley Blog captures the frustration of the "conservatives" who don't want to go into schism but can't get the "progressives" to play by the rules:

Never mind that 70% of the 2004 General Conference delegates were against ordaining practicing homosexuals. That doesn't matter when you've got the courts in your hip pocket. In a way I guess some on the left see this as fair. After all, conservatives can pass all the laws they want as long as liberals can play dirty and ignore those laws (justifying themselves with, ironically, the law).

Let me say that there are liberals I respect and who have shaped some of my opinions in the past. These are the liberals who remind me that faith is action as well as having good theology when I go off on one of my orthodoxy rants. These are the liberals who read this blog regularly, disagree like gentlemen (sorry ladies...couldn't think of a gender accurate word that captured the meaning I was looking for there), and who keep me from going over to the schism camp myself.

But these aren't the same kind of liberals who were on this appeals committee. Real liberals don't win their battles on technicalities. Real liberals don't use any means necessary to achieve an end. Real liberals value honor and integrity over some sleazy judicial victory like the one that went down today...

Apparently, in this UMC action we can see the virus of judicial activism, which devalues the meaning of texts and undermines the integrity of democratic processes.

The IRD's UMC Action Project appears to be confident that this "ill-reasoned, obtuse and tortured attempt to avoid applying the plain, unequivocal meaning of the Scriptures and church law" by "the fading voice of a declining, elite minority within United Methodism that is still enthralled by the failed, revisionist theologies of the last century” will be overturned by the UMC's highest court.

Sin City - A Review.

[Via Lane Core.]

I saw Sin City a few weeks ago. The Fresno Bee review gave it an "A." Somewhere during the three decapitations, the dozen maimings and the dismemberment of a living person - albeit an evil living person - so that he could be left for wolf food, I stopped enjoying the cinematic experience.

My sentiments are captured in this review at Junkyard Blog, who wonders where the protests are. After all a movie last year was excoriated for its violence.

I noticed the same thing and recalled that Donald Munro, the Fresno Bee movie reviewer, went out of his way to bemoan the violence in the Passion of the Christ and to give it a "C+".

Here's the opening paragraphs from Munro's review of The Passion:

After the last liter of blood has congealed, the last bit of skin flayed into pulp, the last shoulder ripped from its socket and the last nail pounded with a gurgle into an outstretched palm, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" leaves room for a little love and salvation.

A little.

The overwhelming effect, however, is unrelenting violence.

But, for the same reviewer, beheadings and maimings for no purpose other than entertainment merits an "A", perhaps because Sin City either kept out that creepy religious element or depicted a religious figure as one of the cardboard cut-out unqualifiedly evil villains.

A Dangerous Radical - "Why the Pope isn't Catholic".

[Via Ut Unum Sint.]

This Tikkun essay argues that Ratzinger is a dangerously unhinged left-wing Augustinian who is part of the ongoing liquidation of the Thomist tradition.

It's an interesting essay, but, honestly, I hadn't understood that Thomism was in such dire straights - in fact, Fides et Ratio endorsed the continuing vitality of Thomist thought.

Creepy! Creepy! Creepy!

My reaction goes to show that I am clearly a post-V2 papist - i.e, culturally a Protestant.

Anyhow Amy Welborn links to this fascinating in a "you can't look away from the train-wreck" site that discusses - and has pictures of - the phenomenon of incorruptible saints.

*Shudder* Come on, now, the perfectly preserved head of Saint Catherine of Siena would have that effect on anyone born after 1215.

April 29, 1975.

[Via Captain Spaulding.]

Hubert Van Es - the photographer of that famous picture of the helicopter evacuating civilians from the "roof of the American embassy" - has an essay in the New York Times about the fall of Saigon.

Red Star over Hollywood.

My partner and I have been arguing for 20 years about whether there were Communists in Hollywood during the "Red Scare" era. Looks like I win.

In the long, competitive dive to reach the depths of the "most victimized" group status, this has to be very near the bottom.

Bill Cork links to a post where American-Turks in Washington D.C. chose the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide to protest that "3 million Turks were killed by Armenians and Greeks."

Actually, there is a historical consistency here. It was the case that the Turks feared that the Christian Armenian population might be a "fifth column" in favor of the Russians that helped to spark the Genocide. That fear, however, was sheer racist paranoia, which did not justify the murder of an entire people, including innocent women and children. Moreover, this this site argues that the 3 million dead Turks figure comes from total Turkish fatalities during World War I.

The Armenians have been pressing for official Turkish recognition of the Genocide. I've generally felt that that pressure was misguided since the Turkish government today is not the Turkish government of 1919. However, in light of this recent nonsense in Washington D.C., I think the Armenians have a point.

PSA

In light of the bride-to-be disappearance in Georgia - and what we all suspect will be its tragic denoument - Tom Smith offers some very practical tips on self defense.

These kinds of tips circulate the internet at times like this, but the occasional refresher course can't hurt anyone.

Update: Good news - she was found alive and unhurt in New Mexico. She lit out because of "cold feet."

Bad news - media celebrity and the embarrasment of the poor fellow who wanted to marry her and who loved her enough to organize a huge manhunt with media exposure in order to find her.

A different kind of life.

Uchi-deshi is a blog by someone who is reflecting on his experience as an uchi-deshi, which is a live-in student at an aikido dojo.

Gas Prices Forcing Hamas Suicide Bombers Into Carpools.

"Every car will project the passion of twenty martyrs," say leaders.

The Horror! The Horror!

Dale Price shares a passion with me - absolute, unremitting hatred of "the Bratz," which is apparently shared with James Lileks.

Is there a father of pre-adolescent daughters anywhere who cannot identify with the following scenario?

I froze. The Bratz are now Baby Mommaz. Yes, the hooker-in-training dolls have children. Bratz are the main reason I do not keep a supply of bricks around the house, because everytime the commercials come on I wish to pitch something kiln-fired through the screen so hard it beans the toy exec who greenlighted these hootchie toys. The Baby Bratz are as bad as you can imagine: “Bottles with Bling.” Judas on a stick, why not just refit the Bratz so they have Real Oozing Gonorreal Flow Action?

I just hate the Bratz and will not let my daughters - the Widget, the Wadget and Boff - anywhere near those "how to be a skank in twelve easy steps" ideals of modern commercial culture.

Dale Price adds:

I hate Bratz. I hate them with a visceral passion. I stab the remote when the commercials come on. I am appalled by the fact they are ridiculously huge sellers. I'm sure the manufacturers would express shock that they are perceived as offering "pimp culture," and would coo that their products are simply harmless dolls for a new generation.

To which I offer the following rebuttal lifted from Cicero:

"Bullshit."

Ha! The Widget, the Wadgett and Boff know that to get anywhere near the Bratz is to pull the string on the claymore mine of Papa's observations about the Bratz' provenance and likely destination.

And don't even get me started on the "Tattoo Barbie" that Boff received from some imbecile on her 5th birthday!

Crack Down!

V.P. Sulik wonders why there hasn't been more interest about the crackdown on dissent in the Catholic church - the Anglican Catholic church.

That's enough for me - give him the job.

Captain Spaulding links to an op-ed piece by Thomas M. Boyd, a former aid to John Bolton, on how John Bolton got the "Zionism is racism" UN resolution repealed.

Guilt by Accusation, Part 2.

Domenico Bettinelli links to Canon Lawyer Ed Peters, who thinks that the claims that Pope Benedict obstructed sex abuse claims when he was a Cardinal. The charge focuses on a "secret letter," which Peters points out has been on the Vatican website for months, which extends the statute of limitations under Canon law. The suggestion has been that this is a device for sealing these accusations away from civil authorities, but, obviously, the complainants can go to civil authorities if they choose anyhow, so that seems like a lame way of concealing crimes.

Bondage of the Will.

I just know that post title is going to attract some undesirable traffic.

Anyhow, Jared at Measure of My Days is blogging his way through the diatribe between Erasmus and Luther on freedom of the will. (Back in those days, "diatribe" had a kinder and gentler connotation.)

I'm still going through a Luther phase. I have just finished Professor Cary's lecture series on Luther: Gospel, Law and Reformation from the Teaching Company, which I recommend without reservation. Professor Cary has that rare ability to sympathetically describe what Luther was attempting to do on his own terms, while retaining sufficient distance to describe where things may have gone wrong. I thought so much of the series that I dropped Professor Cary a note telling him how much I appreciated his course.

One point Professor Cary makes is that a key part of Luther's project was a quest for certainty. This quest for certainty can be seen in the way in which Luther absolutely abuses his opponents - such as poor Erasmus. Early on in the Bondage of the Will Luther tells Erasmus that he has delayed in responding to Erasmus' work because it is such drivel he couldn't conjure sufficient interest to work on a response. Since I had just read and appreciated Erasmus's "Diatribe", I thought that Luther's assessment was a bit "over the top." But, apparently, that kind of thing was part of Luther's usual rhetorical strategy and he is far harsher to others, including Ulrich Zwingli.

If you have an interest in that kind of thing, go check out Jared's blog.

Can Pharmacists Refuse to Fill Prescriptions?

The Legal Affairs "Debate Club" sponsors a discussion of that issue between David Boaz (Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute and author of Libertarianism: A Primer) and Judy Waxman (Vice President and Director of Health and Reproductive Rights at the National Women's Law Center).

Bear-Flag Round-up.

Go to Calblog and find out what the gang has been up to.

Guilt by Accusation.

It was an era, like that in America during the 1950s, when a mere accusation could doom a man or woman, and when justice often became secondary to saving face.

From a review of The Crucible.

Remember the 1950's. It was a scary time when the mere accusation - accurate though it might have been - that a person had belonged to a subsersive organization dedicated to enslaving America could lead to actual congressional investigations. In our enlightened times, we know that McCarthyism was wrong. We would never allow that kind of thing to happen today.

Well, the 1950s have nothing on Andrew Sullivan who has the founder of the "ultra-conservative" Legionares of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, all but convicted of child abuse based upon the allegations against him. Sullivan finds the decision of the Vatican to re-open the investigation into the charges of Father Maciel dispositive because Cardinal Ratzinger had previously "stonewalled" the investigation. So, while the previous "stonewalling" was no indication of innocence, the investigation convicts Father Maciel of the charges.

Bad stuff, indeed. Further, the political implications run deep. Father Maciel was a friend of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Moreover, Sullivan argues that Father Maciel's reputed behavior is entirely consistent with the Catholic church's stand on sexuality:

The personal connection to Maciel is crucial - and Maciel is also integral to the new ultra-conservative establishment. His running a gay teen sex abuse ring was not encouraged by liberal theological deviation (as it might have been elsewhere). It was old-style Catholic sex abuse: highly conservative closeted gay priests, psychologically crippled by decades of self-loathing and struggle against their homosexual orientation, acting out their stunted sexual development by abusing their clerical power over younger men and boys.

Sullivan clearly convicts Father Maciel of "running a "gay teen sex abuse ring."

What was missing from his post were any details, so I did some basic web research. Father Maciel is 84 years old. Juan Vaca and his fellow accusers are in their mid-sixties. Id. The allegations all date from the 1950s, when the accusers were "teenage seminarians."Id. It also appears that the accusers remained as Legion priests throughout the '60s and '70s. For example, this article identifies Juan Vaca as "Fr Juan Vaca, a priest in Bishop McCann's diocese," whereas other articles refer to him as a "professor of psychology at Mercy College. Why is that significant? I have no idea, except that if the victims remained priests the story lacks that "and they lost their faith" element that seems to be buried in the subtext of these stories. It also seems to square with Father Maciel's contention that he remained on good terms with his accusers until well after the alleged abuse.

On the other hand, Father Maciel claims that he has letters of thanks and commendations from his accusers, dating from the 1960's and 1970s. This release from a Legion web-site claims that the accusers had made previous accusations about Maciel, which involved charges of drug use and rebellion against the Holy See, which charges would have been "better suited" for the period . The Legion release claims that these charges were extensively investigated and repudiated. The site carries what it claims is a "repudiation," or recantation, of sex-abuse charges by one of the accusers.

Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things offered his opinion that the charges were without merit. He also observed:

Recall the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in explanation of the Eighth Commandment:

Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:

- of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;

- of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another's fault and failings to persons who did not know them;

- of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.

So where does that leave us?

Who knows? For heaven's sake, the actions are alleged to have occurred 50 to 60 years ago and were made when Father Maciel was well into his late 70s.

But there is a reason for the statute of limitations. Memories grow stale; evidence is lost. Defendants become old and frail and weak. If I were asked to decide whether this matter deserved an investigation, I'd be inclined to think that justice might be best served by honoring the statute of limitations.

Moreover, it is immoral to publish the conclusion that Father Maciel "ran a gay teenage sex abuse ring." Since there seems to be evidence on both sides, and since the investigation has not concluded, offering that opinion as fact - however much Sullivan and others with a political or theological axe to grind feel it advances their positions - is base calumny. In the interest of not engaging in detraction, calumny or rash judgment, I'd definitely honor Father Neuhaus' insight and not insinuate that an elderly man committed morally disordered acts over 50 years ago.

A Cautionary Tale.

Nikolai Tehin, once a prominent San Francisco attorney, has been sentenced to 14 years of federal prison time - which in the federal system means serving fourteen years - for bilking many around $2 million from his clients' settlement funds.

Leaving aside the breach of trust and faith, Tehin couldn't have chosen to victimize more vulnerable clients:

Some of his victims were disabled children whose families had hired Tehin to represent them in medical malpractice suits. Others were farmworkers and impoverished tenants who had retained him to settle a case with their landlord over deplorable conditions at their Napa apartment complex, Vintage Ranch.

According to this post, Tehin's embezzlement showed a unique callousness to his suffering clients:

His victims included twin babies suffering from cystic fibrosis. Court records show Tehin embezzled $682,154 he was supposed to hold in trust for their medical expenses. The brain-damaged infant boy never received his money either.

I had a case against Tehin years ago, when I was just beginning to try cases. Tehin has something of a reputation, but what it was based on I could never pin down. He was soft-spoken and well-mannered, but even then he seemed to enjoy flaunting his material success. I had no idea that he was a Russian immigrant who had "toiled as a farm laborer," according to the San Francisco Daily Journal (4/20/05); that part of his background was apparently not something Tehin wanted to flaunt. I came away from our case with no strong opinion on Tehin either way.

I certainly would not have believed him to have been the kind of man who would deprive a brain-damaged infant of the necessities of life. That kind of monster should really be someone you can spot across the room, don't you think? That kind of monster certainly shouldn't be soft-spoken and well-mannered.

Tehin's lawyer says of the sentence that "[t]his is the most severe sentence I've ever received from a federal court judge."

Good. Perhaps, it will give Tehin time to achieve a true repentance, because when he gets out, at the age of 70, that may be all he has left.

From the "Really Cool Things You Can Find on the Internet" File.

The 12/13 Man Illusion.

This comes from The Greater Nomadic Council, who has a link to a definitive answer.

Check it out.

Amy Welborn responds to Maureen Dowd.

Go read it; it's worth it.

I particularly like this observation:

But maybe I just don't get it. I've got a Master's degree in religion, I've taught school, and I've written a slew of books. I value understanding, knowledge, research and the truth. I am loathe to open my mouth and opine about anything unless I really have looked into it. There's a couple of reasons for that: first, I like to be based in reality. Secondly: I don't like looking stupid.

As a trial attorney, I use expert witnesses. I've noticed that there comes a time in the life of some - many - experts when they stop being experts and start being paid whores. These experts adopt the adversarial ethos, where the only truth is what a jury ultimately decides. They learn that the "trick" is that they have to repeat the phrase "this is my opinion" and they have to believe for that moment that what they are saying is their "opinion," not that it is a fact or the truth.

These experts seem to lose any shame whatsoever, because, after all, opinions are opinions. These experts have long since lost the fear of looking stupid.

In this way, they seem to have recreated the spirit of Gorgias.

Frankly, such experts are dangerous. I hire these people to bring truth to the case, and it does me no good to see my expert demolished by some fact or truth he neglected to consider because it didn't fit his opinion.

By the way, isn't it ironic that MoDo in her great wealth of historical knowledge picked 1937 as the date that Pope Benedict XVI purportedly wants to return the Roman Catholic church to?

I mean what a backward, benighted, medieval era that must sound to MoDo. I'm sure she's not reflecting that that was the year that Pius XI issued Mit Brennender Sorge in German to the German people to advise them that their rulers were anti-christian racists.

Lest We Forget.

Caltechgirl posts on another bit of "forgotten history" - the Armenian Genocide.

The Armenian Genocide opened a century that history will remember as the century of mass murder. While other state porjects of extermination set the records for sheer volume, the importance of the Armenian Genocide as the event that opened the door into the unthinkable can be seen by Hitler's observation, "Who remembers the Armenians?"

Caltechgirl is from Fresno. If you're from Fresno, or from Boston or Los Angeles, I reckon, and you're of a certain age, you will have known people who lived through this opening act of a blood stained century.

Update: Through a Technorati link, I found this interesting blog post that starts with the observation that the Armenian Genocide has fallen into a lacunae in the modern mind to the history of Armenia to the author's sole interaction with someone of Armenian heritage, who the author claims was the last Armenian in Singapore.

When I support a 'pitiless enforcer of grim orthodoxy' I expect to get a 'pitiless enforcer of grim orthodoxy'...

Not this guy.

This is no way to run a reign of merciless terror. I guess the gay concentration camps are totally out of the question?

[Via Relapsed Catholic]

Ecumenism Alert.

According to my Episcopalian insider, Ratzinger has something of an affinity for the dissident Episcopalians in the Anglican Communion Network. Midwest Conservative Journal has a post on why the Archbishop of Canterbury might have reasons for concern.

Ponzi.

I'm listening to Michael Zukoff, author of Ponzi's Scheme : The True Story of a Financial Legend, on C-SPAN2.

Zukoff is doing a good job of presenting Ponzi as a good intentioned man who simple dream was to create wealth for himself and his investors. For example, Zukoff points out that while the usual agenda for a scam is to "take the money and run", Ponzi didn't have the "and run" part mapped out. Likewise, Zukoff suggests that Ponzi started "robbing Peter to pay Paul" because he hadn't quite figured out how to turn International Postal Reply Coupons. (This site provides details on the nature and history of the Ponzi scheme.) Finally, poor Ponzi was brought down when the Boston Post publishes an article on the implausibiity of the scheme.

It is always fascinating to get the actual background on the events that make up our cultural background. We use the phrase "ponzi scheme" all the time without thinking about the actual person immortalized in the phrase.

However, listening to Zukoff humanizes Ponzi, I reflected that I'd heard the same story on the several occasions that I've been involved in pursuing similar schemes. The perpretators never have a plant to run - they just don't. Pathetically, they believe their own stories, notwithstanding that they know they can't pull it off. But on some level, the perpetrators of Ponzi schemes are salespeople, and as salespeople, they are optimists. They think that they can pull "it" off, if just given more time and people just let them continue to sell.

Also, when the scheme unravels, as it always must, the fault never lies with the perpetrator. It always lies with someone asking questions and thereby "slandering" or "defaming" the perpetrator. Unfortunately, many of the investors buy into the perpetrator's story and put the blame on the person who pointed out that the emperor actually has no clothes.

More on the ambivalent relationship between German Catholics and the Nazis.

Back in June of 2002, First Things published a critique of Daniel Goldhagen's indictment of Pius XII actions during World War II. The article is useful for correcting the conventional wisdom, which people like Matthew Foxe presuppose when they speculate about the young Ratzinger's affinity for Nazism. For example, the author, Ronald Rychlak, observes in response to Goldhagen's claim that the "great majority" of Catholic military chaplains "weighed in on the side of the perpetrators, condoning and blessing their crimes" that, to the contrary:

Catholic clergy were among the first people in Germany to recognize the threat posed by the Nazis. In 1930, the bishops of Berlin and Westphalia condemned the Nazis in pastoral letters. In the spring of 1931, the Bavarian bishops also condemned National Socialism and described it as heretical and incompatible with Catholic teaching. Similar statements were made by bishops in Cologne, Paderborn, and the upper Rhine.

The report from the Nuremberg prosecutor’s office outlines dozens of cases where Catholic priests were persecuted due to their opposition to the Nazis. It also shows that the Nazis took steps to silence the Church

Again, this claim shouldn't be entirely surprising, because it squares with other bits of information, such as Nazi strength in the Protestant north, the historic strength of the Catholic Center Party, the history of state repression of Catholic institutions, which should have institutionalized a cultural suspicion about state power (and, in fact,the the Catholic Center Party grows out of opposition to Bismarck's Kulturkampf), the subsequent publication of Mit Brennender Sorge and the subsequent repression of Catholic institutions by the Nazis.

The point is not that Catholics or Catholicism constituted a stead-fast anti-nazi opposition. The simple fact is that no one came out of the nightmare years of the Nazi era covered with glory. Every group had collaborators and murderers - for example, Hitler started out life as an Austrian Catholic - but the charge that German Catholics, such as the young Ratzinger, had a special affinity to Nazism isn't supported by the actual history.

No one came out of the Nazi era covered with glory, but there were heroes. For example, I think Pius XI deserves some recognition for being the only international figure willing to use his official office to speak to the Germans and tell them that their Nazi rulers were evil. Also, the people who smuggled his encyclical into Germany, secretly published it and distributed it to German priests deserve some recognition. Finally, the priests themselves who read the encyclical to German Catholics must have recognized that they were doing so in the face of some substantial personal risk for themselves and their parishioners. They also deserve some due recognition.

America's oldest debutante turns her vast intellect on new pontiff.

Maureen Dowd writes a column loaded with misinformation and appeals to traditional bigotries. For example, in comparing Pope Benedict with Vice President Cheney, Dowd writes:

The two, from rural, conservative parts of their countries, want to turn back the clock and exorcise New Age silliness. Mr. Cheney wants to dismantle the New Deal and go back to 1937. Pope Benedict XVI wants to dismantle Vatican II and go back to 1397. As a scholar, his specialty was "patristics," the study of the key thinkers in the first eight centuries of the church.

I assume the gratuitous non-sequitur reference to "patristics" was to invoke the words "patriarch" and "patriarchal" in the minds of her readers, in order to elicit a knee-jerk spasm of self-righteous indignation againts the patriarchal pontiff. (One can almost see the alliteration forming in Dowd's mind.) Otherwise what was the point of this observation? It just hangs there, unconnected to any other point.

On the other hand, the charge that Pope Benedict wants to dismantle Vatican II is errant nonsense. In truth there are people who want to dismantle Vatican II, but the the hint for Dowd is that they spend a lot of time talking about how much they hate the Novus Ordo, which was implemented after Vatican II. For example, the people behind Novus Ordo Watch are not shy about how much they hate Vatican II and how they despise Pope Benedict and every other Pope going back to Pius XII.

Truly, if Dowd was manufacturing automobiles, she would be looking at a huge product recall.

Then, there is this:

They are both old hands at operating in secrecy and using the levers of power for ideological advantage. They want to enlist Catholics in the conservative cause, turning confession boxes into ballot boxes with the threat that a vote for a liberal Democrat could lead to eternal damnation.

Hmm...."operating in secrecy", "using the levers of power", "turning confessional boxes into ballot boxes" and threats of "eternal damnation"... there is nothing in paragraph that couldn't have been found in an anti-papist tract from the Know-Nothings of the Nineteenth Century or in an anti-jesuit tract from Elizabethan England.

Finally, Dowd has clear issues with the separation of church and state. She is positively offended that a private religious organization might set its own standards for the receipt of its sacraments or that it might offer moral teachings that diverge from the style book of the New York Times:

Cardinal Ratzinger did not shrink from advising American bishops in the last presidential election on bringing Catholic elected officials to heel. He warned that Catholics who deliberately voted for a candidate because of a pro-choice position were guilty of cooperating in evil, and unworthy to receive communion. Vote Democratic and lose your soul. "Panzerkardinal," as he was known, definitely isn't a man who could read Mario Cuomo's Notre Dame speech urging that pro-choice politicians be allowed in the tent and say, "He's got a point."

Of course, it's a sign of the intellectual collapse of the liberal project, that Dowd is unable to hold for a bare second the idea that voting for a politician because he supports the killing of humans might actually be immoral. Presumably, if pressed, Dowd would concede that there is something something noxious about a voter voting for a Nazi because of the Nazi policy on liquidating Jews and Gypsies, but there is no sign of any such intellectual activity in her column.

Cliff May at NRO charitably assumes that the column was a parody written by a staffer while Dowd was on vacation.

Neat Stuff Alert.

Doing a periodic IMDB update on my cousin, Dan Bradley, I learned that he was the stunt coordinator for Spider Man 2, Donnie Darko, Adaptation, Prophecy and Being John Malkovich. Aside from Spider Man 2, those are some fairly weird movies. He was also the "second unit director" for Spiderman 2, Adaptation and the Bourne Supremacy. (Also Monkeybone, but I'd prefer not to talk about that one, thank you very much.)

He's developed quite the career after starting in that mega-sci-fi hit,Battle Beyond the Stars as an uncredited stunt guy.

An Episcopalian priest fellow Rotarian predicted that ecumenism was doomed if Ratzinger were elevated ...

And he couldn't have been more right.

Episcopal priest Rev. Dr. Matthew Foxe goes absolutely bug -nuts about papist fascism. I mean this stuff is deeply insulting, not to say deeply disturbed. For example, Foxe insinuates that John Paul II was a CIA plant, that a mysterious cabal of Cardinals were involved in the murder of John Paul I and aska whether Benedict wants to "put gays in concentration camps like Hitler did?" This is the text where Foxe makes the spurious claim that Ratzinger's Bavaria was where "Hitler was most admired" and "where he received his first votes."

Now the sad thing about the smear about Ratzinger's purported Nazi background is that it provides an easy excuse for people not want their "narrow dogmas" challenged. For example, I have had something of long discussion with someone at Mark Byron's blog on the subject of whether Ratzinger hates gays and whether he favors discrimination against gays etc. The truth is that Ratzinger's imprimator is found on the Catechism, which says at para. 2358:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. [They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial.] This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.

This statement - authorized and literally subscribed to by the "pitiless enforcer of orthodoxy" - is orthodox and in no way resembles the charges that are being laid against Pope Benedict by Foxe and others. Alas, it is perhaps convenient for some to prefer a straw man to the truth.

Incidentally, here is Midwest Conservative Journal's response to Foxe.

Enjoy.

Placing events in context is critical for understanding history.

I have yet to see any discussion of the impact of Mit Brennender Sorge on the future pontiff's attitudes to Nazism. There is some discussion of the veiled insinuation that if Ratzinger was from Bavaria, he must be a Nazi sympathizer on some level. For example, Episcopalian blogger Titusonenine responds to whackazoid Mathew Foxe's detractions about Cardinal Ratzinger's purported "Nazi-symp" tendencies by noting that Zionist organizations give it no credence. (Foxe also makes the specious claim that the Nazi party's power base was in Catholic Bavaria.)

But Mit Brennender Sorge, which one would think would have some impact on the mind of young, devout Catholic, gets no mention.

Anyhow, here is a page from the Holocaust Project that provides a timeline for 1937. If you look at it, you can see that in the midst of escalating anti-semitic violence, there are these entries:

1937 March 14 A papal encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow) is published, dealing with the condition of the Catholic Church in Germany and condemning Nazi racism.

1937 March 21 Mit brennender Sorge, is read from the pulpits of all Catholic Churches in Germany on Palm Sunday. It has been smuggled into Germany, secretly printed and distributed by messenger throughout the nation. "With deep anxiety and with ever-growing dismay" Pius XI says he has watched the tribulations of the Catholic Church in Germany. The Concordat of 1933 is now being openly violated, and the conscience of the faithful oppressed as never before. True belief in God, the Pope declares, is irreconcilable with the deification of earthly values such as race, people or the state. Important as these are in the natural order, they can never be the ultimate norm of all things. Belief in a national God or a national religion, similarly is a grave error. The God of Christianity cannot be imprisoned "within the frontiers of a single people, within the pedigree of one single race." (Lewy)

1937 March 21 The Polish Senate passes a law making it illegal for Jews to manufacture, distribute or sell Catholic religious materials.

1937 March 22 The Gestapo confiscates all copies of the Pope's encyclical it can find. Twelve print shops are soon closed and dispossessed without compensation for having printed the encyclical letter. Strong protests are lodged with the bishops and the Vatican. (Lewy)

In the litany of horrific events in 1937, when everything seemed to be smoothly heading in the Nazi direction, the entries about Mit Brennender Sorge - constituting a unique opposition to the Nazi regime - are rather surprising.

This site describes relationships between the Nazis and Catholics, including this somewhat modern angle:

The immorality trials sought to destroy the reputations of Catholic religious. Priests, monks and nuns were accused of "perverted and immoral" lifestyles. The secret police set innumerable traps. The New York Times carried a report in May 1936 describing priests who had been summoned on sick calls to hotel rooms. Waiting in the rooms would be photographers. When the priest entered, the "caller" would turn out to be a prostitute, planted by the Gestapo. Photographs would later be produced in court as irrefutable evidence of corruption.

One notorious trial in 1936 concerned the Franciscans of the Rhineland town of Waldbreitbach. This trial was widely publicized and parents were warned in sanctimoniously penned editorials not to allow their children to enter Catholic schools. Even children themselves were encouraged to read the lurid trial accounts. In several cities, newspaper stands were purposely lowered so youngsters could read salacious and pornographic stories accompanied by cartoons in the pages of Der Sturmer (the newspaper controlled by Julius Streicher, notorious anti-Semite and anti-Catholic).

This article describes Pope Benedict as believing that "the Catholic Church was the bulwark against the Nazi regime, serving as "a citadel of truth and righteousness against the realm of atheism and deceit", which is not entirely an unreasonable position in light of historic events.

The Titusonenine post quotes Mathhew Foxe as claiming that Nazis initially swept to success in Bavaria, which could be a muddle-headed reference to the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. On the other hand, according to this precis of a book review from the American Historical Review, the real Nazi power breakthrough was in the Protestant north:

Heilbronner argues that as early as 1930, the Nazis won above-average votes in a number of Catholic communities in the region. The author gives the Nazi Party little credit for its success. The party achieved its first major electoral breakthrough in 1928 in northern, rural Protestant districts, but it did not establish itself in the Black Forest region until that year. He suggests that the Nazi electoral advance after 1928 was possible because of the erosion of the Catholic milieu, which began before 1914. By 1930, Heilbronner claims, barely half of the region's population belonged to that milieu. According to the author, long-term economic changes, combined with the collapse of "the entire Black Forest industrial economy" (p.25) between 1930 and 1932, further undermined Catholic and anticlerical bourgeois milieus. . . .

This might be explained by the fact that the Catholic Center Party had its power base in the south. The Catholic Center Party finished a distant third in the 1932 election, but with enough deputies to be considered as a coalition partner with the Nazis. (Of course, the Nazis eventually betrayed and liquidated the Center Party.)

By the way, here is a really complex site with heavy-duty mathematics and colored maps that - I think - show that Nazi strength (such as it was, since they never received a majority) lay in the Protestant north. (In the Catholic south, on the other hand, the issue gets obscured by factors involving, oddly, inheritance laws.)

I am not going to pretend to be real familiar with history of Weimar Germanty, but it strikes me as clear negligence to discuss Ratzinger's relationship to Nazism without knowing anything about this part of German history.

If anybody knows any information about the actual impact of Mit Brennender Sorge on the Germans of the time, please let me know.

Alasdair MacIntyre Cage-match.

It appears that the Marxist-turned-Thomistic philisopher Alasdair MacIntrye may become the essential philosopher to be able to name drop in during the reign of Pope Benedict. Here is George Weigel's thoughts on MacIntyre's observation that modernity needs a new Saint Benedict to re-christianize our culture. Aramvirique expands on this notion.

On the other hand, Brad Short, argues that MacIntyre ought not be held up as authoritative because MacIntyre's basic philosophy involves a hostility to the Enlightenment on which American constitutional values are based. Here is another post by Short, where Chris Burgwald weighs in on the pro-MacIntyre side.

I am not entirely sure about MacIntyre's hostility to the entirety of the Enlightenment. I am currently reading MacIntyre's Whose Justice? Which Rationality? There is a long section on the Scottish Enlightenment that I haven't reached, so I just don't know. I know that MacIntyre has some persuasive criticisms of modernity, which I've incorporated into some of the posts on this blog, but, hey, MacIntyre is Scottish; certainly he has something positive to say about David Hume.

By the way, here is a review by an Islamic publication of "Whose Justice? Which Rationality" that opens with the observation that "[t]his is an important book, a book with which Muslims, in particular, need to become acquainted."

Interesting.

Now for something totally weird!

Dale Price declares that the prophecies of Malachy are "starting to weird him out."

The "prophecies" are one of those Nostrodamus-type read-whatever-you-want-into-the-cryptic-prose deals. This Wikipedia entry suggests that the Malachy prophecy are an early Modern era forgery (i.e., from the 16th Century.) The Malachy prophecy purports to predict future popes by assigning them cryptic slogans. For example, John Paul II was purportedly De labore solis. The pope after John Paul II was to be the "glory of the olive." The next pope will be the last pope and will be associated with the name of "Peter the Roman."

OK, here's where it gets weird. Last week at the RC bookstore, one of the younger guys who is very knowledgeabe about this kind of thing was saying how weird it would be if an Eastern rite cardinal was selected because his rite's customary garb looked like that of the religious order purportedly predicted by the "glory of the olive" motif.

The religious order that was indicated, according to my friend, were the Benedictines.

(Cue Twilight Zone theme.)

Well, obviously if he's German, he must be a former Nazi.

There is some back and forth in the media about the level of Pope Benedict's involvement in the compulsory Hitler Youth organization. For example, here is Professor Bainbridge's dissection of another blog's analysis of the Pope's statements about his background.

You can bet what will be missing from any of this discussion, however, is the existence of the deeply ambivalent relationship that existed between German Catholicism and the German state. For example, no sooner had the German state been formed under the Protestant Hohenzollerns than Bismarck instituted in the 1870s the "Kulturkampf" designed to strengthen the Prussian state at the expense of Catholic institutions and traditions. I've always suspected that history played a crucial role in the Vatican's decision to sign the Concordat with Hitler. The goal of the Concordat was to secure autonomy for Church institutions, which included such things as the press and publications, so that there would be no replay of the Kulturkampf.

Of course the Nazis violated the Concordat, and that violation was one of the factors leading to the enclyclical Mit Brennender Sorge. Mit Brennender Sorge was read from German pulpits on Palm Sunday in 1937 and told the German people that Nazism was anti-christian.

Ratzinger was 10 years old at the time. He lived in the traditional Catholic area of Bavaria. This Wikipedia entry describes his family as anti-nazi and has his Ratzinger's father retiring from the police in 1937.

I don't know if the Pope heard Mit Brennender Sorge read out in church, but there is no reason to think that he and his family did not hear it on Palm Sunday in 1937 or that the message of the encyclical was not part of experiences that formed the future Pope's outlook on fascism, the State and the relationship between Church and State. Certainly, that experience would be a piece of the puzzle for explaining his willingness to desert from the German army.

Needless to say, I doubt that you will find any discussion of Mit Brennender Sorge in the mainstream media since that historical event has been consigned to the "memory hole" of the modern outlook, which apparently demands that Pius XII be complicit with the Nazi regime.

Observations about the conventional American wisdom concerning the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

Several times tonight, as I was at various social gatherings, I heard lapsed Catholics and non-catholics say that the election of Ratzinger was essentially a mistake because the Catholic Church had to fix the problems with (1) celibacy of clergy, (2) birth control and (3) ordination of women.

Each and every time, the confident proponents of these notions was absolutely dumbfounded when I pointed out from my definite knowledge as an attorney for dissident Methodist and Presbyterian churches that while the Methodists, the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians have seen membership collapses, the RCC in America has grown faster than the overall population growth. They were speechless at that idea that the formula for moving to irrevelance was to (1) have married clergy, (2) accept birth control, and (3) ordain women.

Let's accept for the sake of argument that there is absolutely no theological reason for the Catholic Church's conservative positions on these issues, but isn't it ironic that the road to decline seems to involve adopting those very position?

Apparently, the media hadn't furnished that data to the average American. It seemed cruel to point out the facts in the face of such firm conventional superstition.

Share the Joy!

Here is the Curt Jester's post on Benedict XVI.

Oops!

By the way, the real Pope is Pius XIII.

Thanks to the Daily Prescott for the "straight skippy."

The New Pope Website.

I've been distracted for the last week with jury trial preparation and I didn't get around to less pressing things than looking like an unprepared poltroon in front of a roomful of people. (But the trial was continued, so that experience will have to wait.)

Anyhow, for all your New Pope questions go to the New Pope blog.

Or to the Ratzinger Fan Club, assuming his server didn't short out with the traffic spike.

More Pope Benedict Commentary.

Jimmy Akins on "Ratz."

It's Ratzinger!

The Corner is reporting that Ratzinger has been elected as Pope Benedict XVI.

Christopher Blosser's site - the Ratzinger Fan Club - has been slammed and no one is getting through.

And I thought I was joking about Blosser's site being the "unofficial site of the next pontificate."

Res Publica hit two out of three of his predictions, although technically you're not supposed to wager on papal elections. If Res had accurately predicted the name, I would have started to wonder about insider information.

My only regret is not getting the mug with Cardinal Ratzinger's picture and the inscription "Cardinal Ratzinger - putting the smackdown on heresy since 1979." My friend Jeff has one of those and it should be a real collector's item. (I think I'll order one through Blosser's site once all the newbies leave.)

Be not afraid - the Church is in good hands.

"Marriage and the Limits of Contract."

Jennifer Roback Morse offers an essay on a very important subject.

This post at Right Reason develops the idea that there are really two forms of libertarianism: one which assumes that natural rights may distribute obligations and rights among people and the other which assumes that the only legitimate source of rights and obligations is consent.

Orson Scott Card on "Whose life is worth living?"

Catholics in the Public Square links to this powerful column about troubling issues raised by the "death with dignity" mindset. He also shares a profoundly personal testimony on the subject:

I suppose that my son Charlie Ben, who spoke very few words in his life and could not sit or stand or feed himself for all seventeen of his years -- I suppose that under this new system of killing "for their own good," I, as his parent, could have decided to stop feeding him and let him die.

But no. Isn't this odd? Just because we were able to use a spoon and a tippy-cup to get food into his body, it would have been criminal negligence and I would have been convicted -- rightly -- of murder.

Fortunately, such an act never crossed my mind during his lifetime, and, if it had, would have been met with shame and loathing. So he had all seventeen of the years his body gave him. He was often happy, but sometimes sad and frustrated. He was cut off from certain kinds of relationships, yet he managed to bring joy and understanding to many people whose lives he touched.

Most emphatically, it was a life worth living.

Read the whole thing.

By the way, Card's "odd" observation that the morality of letting his son starve to death turned on whether a sippy cup could deliver food and water is seconded by CodeBlueBlog. Dr. Boyle makes the point that the swallowing reflex has nothing to do with intelligence. Some people have psv, or whatever, and can swallow and some can't. But the argument is that it's the brain state that determines whether someone can have medical treatment suspended, hence all of the focus was on Terry Schiavo's brain state.

But, oddly, if Terry could have received food from a sippy cup, it would have been murder to deny her food and water. Yet, her brain state would have been no different. So, the decision to starve/dehydrate her was not because of her putative psv, it was because of her swallowing reflex, which has no necessary bearing on the "quality" of her life that was presented as the reason for killing her; if someone said something they wanted to die because they lacked the swallowing reflex, we'd fix the problem, not starve them to death.

As CodeBlueBlog points out, it's dicy to base a person's moral rights on irrelevant involuntary reflexes:

What the courts have done is to pick one reflexive neural pathway and decide that this is the critical and key determinant of life and death.

The mistake that has been made – the knot that is being undone – is in centering this legal and ethical decision around the swallowing reflex. Because, the case can now be made that other similar reflexes may similarly be exploited.

Namely, I am thinking of micturation. Urination. Peeing.

Urinating is more akin to swallowing than swallowing is to breathing or heart beating. The urinary bladder fills with liquid and thus stimulates neuroreceptors in the bladder wall that in turn leads to the urination reflex.

Would "pro-death" advocates have been sanguine if the treatment was the decatherization of Terry so that she could die of a ruptured bladder? I somehow don't think so, but I haven't been very good at gauging levels of compassion recently.

In another post, CodeBlueBlog observes:

My original issue was the feeding tube. I did not -- and still do not --understand how food and water came under the rubric of life support in the same category as intubation, forced breathing, and cardiac pacing. The best analogy I can use is the Foley catheter (tube through the urethra into the urinary bladder to allow urine to drain). If you are going to remove food, then why allow patients to urinate?

As a physician, I strongly object to actuating death. That is not what I was trained to do, and if society decides that is what it wants, I would propose some different professionals be assigned the duty to pull these tubes when the law orders it. For me, as a physician, it is an act that is inimical to all the reasons I went into the health care field.

Thank heaven that some doctors are still questioning the direction their profession is heading.

Lost Writings Recovered.

Infrared technology may allow lost works of ancient writers to be rediscovered.

Amazing.

"Odious,""massively orthodox," and a "fascist."

Cardinal Ratzinger is hated by the all the right sorts of folk.

Ratzinger in the lead!

According to Michael Novak at the Corner.

An Episcopalian priest in my Rotary Club shared with me that if Ratzinger became Pope, then the Archibishop of Canterbury could just pack it in because that would be the end of ecumenism.

That was an interesting point, but I wanted to know why he thought that ecumenism had any viability in light of the Anglican communion's decision to ordain practicing homosexual bishops.

John Stossel on global warming.

John Stossel is called names for basing column on fact that "global warming" has raised global temperature 1 degree in last century.

Been there. Done that.

Orson Scott Card on John Paul the Great.

When a Mormon science fiction writer mourns a pope's passing, you know calling him "the Great" is not an overstatement. Per Card:

He gave a name to the complex of "modern" changes that embraced sin and favored destruction of civilized values and civilizing institutions. "The Culture of Death," he called it, and he was right.

Somebody needed to say it, but who dared, who was listened to, until he spoke?

John Paul II was a protector. He was Beowulf standing up to the dragon. He died with the battle unwon, but he helped us find our own courage to stand with him, and to continue standing, even without him.

Card also nails the landing in his observations about the "big tent" ecumenism of, say, the modern Methodists and John Paul's ecumenism:

The real division in Christianity today - and in other religions too, I might add - is between the churches and congregations and individuals who are accommodating themselves to the new secularity, abandoning doctrines and commandments in the process, and those that believe that God still requires us to live by faith and by obedience to his commandments, now as much as ever.

Here is one simple truth, borne out by statistics over many decades and generations: The religions that demand of their members some real and rational degree of sacrifice, obedience, and adherence to faith are growing stronger and stronger; while the ones that say, in effect, that you can do what you want and God doesn't expect much of us anymore, except to be vaguely nice - they are losing members rapidly.

Because if it doesn't matter what you do, then why would you bother to belong?

If open hearts, minds and doors are all that matter, then join the Sierra Club or a 12 Step Program.

Read Card's column.

All Luther, all the time.

In the spirit of ecumenism, and to shore up my lamentable ignorance about the Sixteenth Century, I picked up Professor Cary's lectures on "Luther: Gospel, Law, and Reformation>"

Four lectures into the series, I think I'm more than willing to recommend this course. Professor Cary is an ecumenical Protestant who seems able to communicate the mental and intellectual world that Luther was inhabiting. I like his lecture style, which is engaging and intimate. Moreover, Cary approaches the subject with equal measures of sympathy and criticism, which is an essential perspective in dealing with controversial historical figures.

To augment the lectures I rented "Luther" starring Joseph Fiennes as the Augustinian monk who sparked the Reformation. Shortly into the movie I started noticing some definite departures from the history of Professor Cary's lecture. According to Cary, as late as 1516, Luther was constructing a particularly self-hating theology, where Christians were to embrace their own damnation as their just due. That phase seems to have been omitted from the film. Certainly many things had to be cut for the sake of drama and time-constraints, but this version of Luther makes him seems to be a product of the late Twentieth Century. As Christianity Today notes:

All of this is fair enough, though the theme does become wearing. In one impassioned sermon, Luther takes aim at the villain Tetzel, who emotionally blackmails his audiences by unfurling crude paintings of hell and then offering to help them buy their relatives' way out of eternal agony. Tetzel's problem, Luther insists, is that his God is too mean.

"I, too, saw God as sentencing sinners to death in hell," Luther preaches. "But I was wrong."

Oops. In a major film for a diverse viewing public that sees nothing but an oppressive, hypocritical church, this '90s approach may indeed serve the producers' religious motives. But God's sovereignty seems to have receded a little too much here. And one wonders, if this was really all the Reformation was about, why would anyone have objected? Why didn't all the Catholics just get on board, singing Kumbaya?

Likewise, the scene where Luther reacts against a lecture which defines Greek Christians as being condemned to Hell because they do not follow the "Roman bishop." But, if I recall correctly, Luther was not shy about condemning virtually everyone in Christendom to Hell if they didn't accept his gospel.

But as this review points out one can expect only so much from a film. If it sparks curiosity in the subject, such is probably the best that we can hope for.

Incidentally, here is Dave Armstrong's perpsective on the movie.

Mark Steyn on JP II.

Steyn "gets" Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae.

It is simply amazing that the language, themes and "memes" of the writings of John Paul II - dense and impenetrable as they are - are percolating through society, and seeping into the literary/journalistic class. Consider, for example, the fact that the phrase "culture of life" was used by the press and the President in discussing the Terry Schiavo case. In that same vein, consider Larry Kudlow's tribute to Veritatis Splendor as playing a vital role in his own recovery of human dignity and capacity (because there is nothing less dignified than an addiction.) A parallel might be found in the way that the Enlightenment was popularized by philosophes, such as Voltaire and Diderot, in the Eighteenth Century. It was really the philosophes who made the scientific worldview of the Enlightenment accessible to the average European and central to European culture.

It is really to early to tell, but I wonder if the writings of John Paul II could play much the same role for the next millenia that Augustine's played for the first.

John Paul the Great

W. Sulik links to Richard John Neuhaus's analysis as to why John Paul deserves to be called "the Great."

I thought it would be interesting to look at the other two "greats" - Leo and Gregory.

Gregory the Great faced off the Lombards (who were the eventual winners of the Byzantine/Gothic Wars and a formidable barbarian power before finally deflating and giving their name to "Lombardy"), enforced celibacy, evangelized England and became one of the four great Latin doctors of the church (along with Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome.) He was born in 540 and died in 604, so his life fills the gap between Justinian (circa 520s) and Mohammed (circa 620s). Gregory was determined to be a saint and was given the sobriquet "the Great" by popular acclamation.

Leo the Great earns his sobriquet largely because of his political accomplishments, principally facing down Attila the Hun. He was pope between 440 and 461. Catholic Encyclopedia discusses the plethora of heresies that Leo dealt with during his reign.

A lack of strong state support seems to make for great popes. Leo's reign which ends in 461, predates by less than two decades the deposition of the last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus in 476. The Roman state was obviously in a paltry state during Leo's reign or he would never have been in a position that he was the logical choice to face down Attila. (Obviously, we have to give some credit to Aetius, who with his Arian Gothic allies, was able to deal Attila something of a set-back at Chalons.

Likewise, Justinian's reconquest of Italy between 540 and 555 resulted in a sufficient weakening of Italian strength that the Lombards were able to change the complexion of northern Italy.

Mr. Sulik also links to the go-to blog for the next month - the Papabile blog.

By the way, the Trivial Pursuit answer to "whose reigns were longer than John Paul II's?" is Peter (30 to 64/67) and Pius IX (1846 - 1878).

John Paul, The Philosopher Pope.

Right Reason invites commenters to provide their reflections on JP II's philosophical and historical significance.

Can you say "phenomonology?"

Maybe you can say it, but do you know what it means?

I don't either.

In other news, on Scarborough Country I just heard Doris Kearns Goodwin laud John Paul II for apologizing for the fact that the Catholic Church didn't do enough during the Holocaust.

Huh?

Didn't happen. The apology didn't happen because the claim isn't true, but isn't it interesting that a supposedly solid historian can unashamedly recount this modern urban legend to a national audience. (But lets not worry about the Da Vince Code because "it's only fiction.")

Pat Buchanan stood up for the historical record by uttering the unpopular thought that Pius XII saved more Jewish lives than any other single person. While occasionally I feel that Pat could use a good shot of salad dressing, this is one time that this neo-conservative feels that Pat deserves a rousing "atta boy."

Personal Reflection on the Pope.

Chris Burgwald offers his personal recollection on Pope John Paul II.

Salvifici Doloris - suffering, compassion and solidarity.

The parable of the Good Samaritan belongs to the Gospel of suffering. For it indicates what the relationship of each of us must be towards our suffering neighbour. We are not allowed to "pass by on the other side" indifferently; we must "stop" beside him. Everyone who stops beside the suffering of another person, whatever form it may take, is a Good Samaritan. This stopping does not mean curiosity but availability. It is like the opening of a certain interior disposition of the heart, which also has an emotional expression of its own. The name "Good Samaritan" fits every individual who is sensitive to the sufferings of others, who "is moved" by the misfortune of another. If Christ, who knows the interior of man, emphasizes this compassion, this means that it is important for our whole attitude to others' suffering. Therefore one must cultivate this sensitivity of heart, which bears witness to compassion towards a suffering person. Some times this compassion remains the only or principal expression of our love for and solidarity with the sufferer.

The solidarity of the world in remembering the life of John Paul II is certainly remarkable. Not so many years ago, the idea of lowering flags for the death of the Roman pontiff, or of the President attending a pope's funeral, would have been simply unthinkable in a nation founded by the heirs of the Reformation. (Link via Bill Cork.) Obviously, the world has changed for the better over the last thirty years and this moment of grief is an opportunity for humanity to cultivate the common humanity that John Paul II taught in Salvifici Doloris.

On a personal level, I'd like to thank non-Catholic bloggers Rick at Unspun, Midwest Conservative Journal and Ith at Absinthe and Cookies for their kind words of sympathy.

For a quick link to St. Blog's posts containing personal reflections, go to Dominic Bettinelli's site or Against the Grain.

I Grieve.

It was only one hour ago
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
is just the way that we are tied in
But there's no one home
I grieve...... for you
You leave....... me
So hard to move on
Still loving what's gone
They say life carries on.

Despite the long death watch, the news that Pope John Paul II had finally passed on left me feeling a deep emptiness, a pressing joyless weight. Something important has left my world. I was so fortunate to have lived when this great and good man lived. I think about the world at the time of his election. It was an awful world. I remember that it was divided between a free world and a human life despising tyranny. It was was poised on the brink of nuclear disaster. It knew that the values of faith and freedom would soon and inevitably capitulate to the "winds of history," which meant a pragmatic and aggressive kind of materialistic reductionism.

Into this world came an unknown Pole who had matured in a culture that claimed that his people were fit to be nothing but slaves, either for the "master race" or for the "master class." This man shouldn't even have been Pope. He was elected after the one-month reign of John Paul I. Perhaps the fact that he became Pope by accident was the reason his first statement Urbi et Orbi was "be not afraid."

On a personal level, I and many Catholics, both cradle and convert, have been fortified and drawn deeper into our faith through the example of this man. If this brave, intelligent and holy man could believe in the many things that the world deems foolish, then there must be something to those beliefs after all.

Now he leaves us, and the world is completely different. We don't fear nuclear annihilation or what seemed like the inevitable triumph of Marxism. Along the way he taught us "the culture of life" and "the theology of the body" and "the domestic church" and "faith and reason" and "the gospel of life" and that "man was created for freedom."

So, I share the sentiments of John Allen, who Amy Welborn quotes as saying:

Allen responded that even though he had known it was coming, there was still, at the moment he heard the news, a feeling of sadness, a void, an unmistakable knowledge that something - someone important was gone from his life.

But those feelings must be wrong. They are too self-focused. David Morrison must have it right when he borrows from the Mass that "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it."

Let us remember and pray for Pope John Paul II the Great and may he enjoy the rest he so richly deserves.

Update: President Bush has ordered flags to be flown at half-mast at all federal public building.

From the "Great Moments in Tolerance and Freedom of Speech" file.

Mithradites at the Ombudsgod notes that this week alone three conservative speakers - Kristol, Coulter and Buchanan - were assaulted or shouted down during talks at various college campuses around the country. (Incidentally, here is a link to the AP story on the Buchanan incident.)

Is the motto of college leftists "free speech for me, but not for thee?"