Tribute to Father Barron...

...from Michael Potemra at NRO.

I just watched this remarkable tribute to Christopher Hitchens by Fr. Robert Barron, and it confirms to me yet again that Kathryn Lopez is 100 percent correct about Father Barron: He is the most impressive Catholic apologist of our time. Too many Catholic apologists — and the exact same goes for Protestant apologists, and atheist apologists, and what-have-you apologists; it’s the occupational hazard in that line of work — come across as smug tribalists sneering at the lesser people not fortunate enough to be within their circle. Watch this video of Father Barron on Creative Minority Report and you will see why he is so good at apologetics: He is clearly someone who is catholic in the true lower-case-c sense, and infused with love for a (in this instance, one particular) fellow man. I had my problems with Christopher Hitchens — who didn’t? — and Barron mentions some of these issues in the video. But he puts those disagreements in a very realistic context, in what I think is an attempt to see our brother Christopher with God’s eyes. That is what we are called to do even with our outright enemies, never mind people who might say an unkind word about (or to) us now and again. Now there’s a resolution for the New Year: Try to be as charitable with people who disagree with me as Father Barron is in his comments on Hitchens. (One hell of a challenge; but then, so, of course, is Christianity. In fact, it’s the same challenge.) If any e-mailer or comboxer views this as an invitation to put my resolution to the test, let me say, preemptively, to that person: Have a blessed and happy New Year!

Father Barron on New Years Resolutions.

Private Interpretation...

...the Licona-Geisler Controversy grinds on.

Mike Licona's recent book offered an allegorical interpretation of Matthew 27's odd story of the saints rising after the crucifixion.  Evangelical doyen Norm Geisler felt that this was a denial of inerrancy and has been leading a jihad against Licona ever since.  Apologianick offers this summary:

Here is what Geisler has done in the issue.

He has issued a petition behind the scenes for people to vote on about whether Mike is violating Inerrancy or not.

He has been instrumental in causing Mike to lose a job twice, including personally contacting people to warn them about Mike.

He has caused further financial loss to Mike by getting him uninvited from speaking engagements and has done the same to two supporters, Paul Copan and Gary Habermas.

Apologianick also notes:

What I am most concerned with what I see in the blogosphere is unthinking. Now someone has complained that the Geisler video made some people look like drones. In all honesty, when I go to the Geisler Facebook page, a lot of people do a really good job of demonstrating that. For some, it’s simply the case of “Geisler has spoken. The case is closed.”

I honestly wonder if some might take the Mormon hymn of “Praise to the Man” and simply change it from Joseph Smith to Geisler.

In fact, I have a difficulty in some ways with Paul saying he is my fan. I often realize the position that I hold and a lot of people will take what I say very seriously and think “I want you to really study what I tell you.” I often do this trick at work where if someone tells me their birthday, I can tell them what day of the week they were born on. So many customers upon seeing this say “I believe you!” I don’t like that. I want them to check me first. Make sure what I’m saying is true instead of just being willing to believe me immediately.

I fear when I go to Geisler’s page, I see a lot of “yes men.” These are the ones that think “Well Geisler said this in response and that settles the issue.” That is not a position that should be given to any man save Jesus Christ. It should not be given to Geisler. It should not be given to Mike. It should not be given to me. I understand Paul is not doing this with either of us, but are we in danger of following another man instead of Jesus? Do we not remember 1 Corinthians? “I follow Paul. I follow Apollos. I follow Cephas.” It should be for all of us “I follow Christ.” Oh we’d all say we do, but are we following Christ but necessarily through the lens of a mortal man?

This affair is obviously quite serious for Licona. It also serves as a warning to others who might offer theological speculation that would cross Geisler or other powers in the Evangelical world.

But where is "private interpretation" in any of this?  Alister McGrath calls private interpretation "Christianity's Dangerous Idea" and the fountainhead of all modern virtue, but in this dispute we don't see any adherence to this supposedly quintessential Protestant virtue.  What we see are lines drawn in the air enforced by excommunication and people who are following a de facto magisterium of one self-appointed person.

Ironically, this particular fight wouldn't be happening in Catholicism. Catholicism is comfortable with the idea that scripture may be read symbolically as well as historically.  In The Death of the Messiah, Raymond Brown writes:

"When one appreciates the symbolic, poetic, and popular apocalyptic character of the four lines of 27;15b - 52b with the phenomena they describe, they offer no major problem.  They are clearly attached to the death of Jesus on Friday afternoon, when the ominous judgmental tone that precedes the raising of the holy ones."

Does this mean that the saints didn't rise on Friday afternoon?  No, not necessarily, but this approach does permit a diversity of understanding in that it is willingness to accept a tension to exist between symbolic and literal truth.  As Christian Smith observes:

58. Distinguish between formulations of truth and the truths that the formulations express. This step follows from the previous one. For evangelicals, things say what they mean and mean what they say. Lines are drawn, people get clear on where they stand, and clarity and consistency throughout is paramount. That is its literal, either/or, univocal approach at work again. That view also reflects Protestantism’s central emphasis on the word. As Protestant pulpits replaced Catholic altars, as printed Bibles displaced icons and devotional practices, Protestantism made words—discrete written and spoken units of language—the medium for grasping and conveying Christian truth. Correct words, for Protestants—particularly for evangelical rationalists—are therefore nearly themselves sacred, because Christian truth itself is represented directly in the right words.18

Catholics also care very much about right words. But their approach to words is a bit different in a way that turns out to make a big difference. Catholicism, in short, recognizes a gap between words and what the words express or represent. For Protestants, the words are the truth. That is why one must get them exactly right. For Catholics, by contrast, words formulate expressions of truth. There is not in Catholicism a literal, exact, univocal correspondence or identity between words and truth. Much of truth, especially truth that directly concerns God, is in Catholicism a mystery. Ultimately the truth is God. And God is not words.19

So we use words to understand and express those mysteries to the very best of our ability. That is what humans—even those in possession of divine revelation—do. But the words themselves can never fully capture or embody the truth. The words point us to the truth. They are good witnesses to or mediums for expressing truth. But the truth itself does not consist of the assemblages of words.

Smith, Christian (2011-06-09). How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (pp. 104-105). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The willingness to accept this tension is also the willingness to accept mystery.  Christian Smith observes that the antipathy toward mystery is very modern:

For most of Christian history, the material and spiritual world was much more enchanted, thicker with spiritual meaning, and full of greater mystery than modern evangelicalism knows. Modernity suffers a “mystery deficit”—an inability to even conceive of unknowns and realities beyond those accessible to rational understanding. Indeed, that mystery deficit is central to the corrosions of secularization. Evangelicalism participates in that mystery deficit.

Smith, Christian (2011-06-09). How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (p. 36). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Somewhere near Carthage, circa AD 450.

I had the idea formed in my mind before Victor Davis Hanson started writing about it - perhaps from all the reading of St. Augustine that I've done - that living in the Central Valley of California is like living in North Africa in late antiquity. There you had latin-speaking cities surrounded by Berber-speaking hamlets; here we have Enlgish-speaking cities surrounded by Spanish-speaking towns. The vast majority of people from Fresno rarely drive to Mendota and other small towns, but if they did, they would find that Mexico had planted itself within a few dozen miles from their doorstep.

In any event VDH writes:

I am starting to feel as if I am living in a Vandal state, perhaps on the frontier near Carthage around a.d. 530, or in a beleaguered Rome in 455. Here are some updates from the rural area surrounding my farm, taken from about a 30-mile radius. In this take, I am not so much interested in chronicling the flotsam and jetsam as in fathoming whether there is some ideology that drives it.

Last week an ancestral rural school near the Kings River had its large bronze bell stolen. I think it dated from 1911. I have driven by it about 100 times in the 42 years since I got my first license. The bell had endured all those years. Where it is now I don’t know. Does someone just cut up a beautifully crafted bell in some chop yard in rural Fresno County, without a worry about who forged it or why — or why others for a century until now enjoyed its presence?

The city of Fresno is now under siege. Hundreds of street lights are out, their copper wire stripped away. In desperation, workers are now cementing the bases of all the poles — as if the original steel access doors were not necessary to service the wiring. How sad the synergy! Since darkness begets crime, the thieves achieve a twofer: The more copper they steal, the easier under cover of spreading night it is to steal more. Yet do thieves themselves at home with their wives and children not sometimes appreciate light in the darkness? Do they vandalize the street lights in front of their own homes?

In a small town two miles away, the thefts now sound like something out of Edward Gibbon’s bleaker chapters — or maybe George Miller’s Road Warrior, or the Hughes brothers’ more recent The Book of Eli. Hundreds of bronze commemorative plaques were ripped off my town’s public buildings (and with them all record of our ancestors’ public-spiritedness). I guess that is our version of Trotskyization.

The Catholic church was just looted (again) of its bronze and silver icons. Manhole covers are missing (some of the town’s own maintenance staff were arrested for this theft, no less!). The Little League clubhouse was ransacked of its equipment.

In short, all the stuff of civilization — municipal buildings, education, religion, transportation, recreation — seems under assault in the last year by the contemporary forces of barbarism. After several thefts of mail, I ordered a fortified, armored mailbox. I was ecstatic when I saw the fabricator’s Internet ad: On the video, someone with an AK-47 emptied a clip into it; the mail inside was untouched. I gleefully said to myself: “That’s the one for me.” And it has been so far. But I wonder: Do the thieves not like to get their own mail? Do their children not play Little League? Do they not want a priest at their funeral? Would they not like to drive their cars without worrying about holes in the street? Or is their thinking that a rich society can cover for their crimes without their crimes’ ever much affecting them — given that most others still do not act as they do?

And that is one of the mysteries of life - how do thieves and vandals explain themself to themself? Apparently, they feel exexempted from the golden rule, but why should they think themself so privileged?

The other thing about vandals is how much crap they throw into other people's lives for a minute of their pleasure. They can spray-paint or break something in a few seconds, and have themself a laugh, but someone else has to experience the anguish of seeing something they loved ruined, and then spend hours repairing the damages.

And the social cost. If labor can add value to property, then a few seconds of vandalism, or a theft enriching the thief by pennies, can cost everyone else thousands of dollars.

VDH also writes:

I know it is popular to suggest that as we reach our sixties, everything seems “worse,” and, like Horace’s laudatores temporis acti, we damn the present in comparison to the past. Sorry, it just isn’t so. In 1961, 1971, and 1981, city street lights were not systematically de-wired. And the fact that plaques and bells of a century’s pedigree were just now looted attests that they all survived the Great Depression, the punks of the 1950s, and the crime-ridden 1970s.

A couple now in their early 90s lives about three miles away from me on their small farm. I have known them for 50 years; he went to high school with my mother, and she was my Cub Scout leader. They now live alone and have recently been robbed nine, yes, nine, times. He told me he is thinking of putting a sign out at the entrance to his driveway: “Go away! Nothing left! You’ve already taken everything we have.” Would their robbers appreciate someone else doing that to their own grandparents? Do the vandals have locks on their own doors against other vandals?

There is indeed something of the Dark Ages about all this. In the vast rural expanse between the Sierras and the Coast Ranges, and from Sacramento to Bakersfield, our rural homes are like stray sheep outside the herd, without whatever protection is offered by the density of a town. When we leave for a trip or just go into town, the predators swarm.

As you read the rest of VDH's essay on what it's like to live in rural California, you get the sense that the problem is basically that the vandals aren't part of the community, they are treating the community like something they can loot and then return back to where they belong, leaving behind their mess and garbage.

VDH again:

There is, of course, a vague code of silence about who is doing the stealing, although occasionally the most flagrant offenders are caught either by sheriffs or on tape; or, in my typical case, run off only to return successfully at night. In the vast majority of cases, rural central California is being vandalized by gangs of young Mexican nationals or Mexican-Americans — in the latter case, a criminal subset of an otherwise largely successful and increasingly integrated and assimilated near majority of the state’s population. Everyone knows it; everyone keeps quiet about it — even though increasingly the victims are the established local Mexican-American middle class that now runs the city councils of most rural towns and must deal with the costs.

Out here in the Dark Ages we depend instead on truth from the oral tradition, in the manner of Homeric bards. Rural folk offer their stories of woe to help others deter crime, cognizant that official accounts in the media are either incomplete or censored to reflect a sort of Ministry of Truth groupthink.

Poverty, racism, class oppression, an uncaring society, government neglect, exploitation, greed — cite them all endlessly, as our coastal lawmakers, academics, and bureaucrats largely do. But most of these elite groups also seek to live as far away as possible from rural central California, the testing ground where their utopian imaginations become reified for distant others.

The influx of over 11 million illegal aliens has had a sort of ripple effect that is rarely calibrated. Sixty percent of Hispanic males in California are not graduating from high school. Unemployment in rural California runs about 20 percent. There is less fear now of arrest and incarceration, given the bankruptcy of the state, which, of course, is rarely officially connected even in small part to illegal immigration. Perhaps because illegal immigration poses so many mind-boggling challenges (e.g., probably over $20 billion lost to the state in remittances, the undermining of federal law, the prejudice shown against legal immigration applicants, ethnic favoritism as the engine of amnesty, subterfuge on the part of Mexico, vast costs in entitlements and subsidies), talking about it is futile. So most don’t, in fear of accusations of “racism.”

One of the most alarming things about VDH's post is that we aren't hearing this kind of news from local media. It's happening, but as VDH points, out the Ministry of Truth filters out the key points to prevent us from seeing a pattern.

Obviously, distorted information will not permit a democracy to do anything other than form a distorted policy.

The war on Christmas.

Dateline - Lagos, Nigeria:

An explosion ripped through a Catholic church during Christmas Mass near Nigeria's capital Sunday, killing at least 25 people, officials said. A radical Muslim sect waging an increasingly sophisticated sectarian fight claimed the attack and another bombing in the restive city of Jos, as explosions also struck the nation's northeast.

The Christmas Day attacks show the growing national ambition of the sect known as Boko Haram, which is responsible for at least 491 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The assaults come a year after a series of Christmas Eve bombings in Jos claimed by the militants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded.

The first explosion on Sunday struck St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, a town in Niger state close to the capital, Abuja, authorities said. Rescue workers recovered at least 25 bodies from the church and officials continued to tally those wounded in various hospitals, said Slaku Luguard, a coordinator with Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.

His agency already has acknowledged it didn't have enough ambulances immediately on hand to help the wounded. Luguard also said an angry crowd that gathered at the blast site hampered rescue efforts as they refused to allow workers inside.

"We're trying to calm the situation," Luguard said. "There are some angry people around trying to cause problems."

In Jos, a second explosion struck near a Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church, government spokesman Pam Ayuba said. Ayuba said gunmen later opened fire on police guarding the area, killing one police officer. Two other locally made explosives were found in a nearby building and disarmed, he said.

"The military are here on ground and have taken control over the entire place," Ayuba said.

The city of Jos is located on the dividing line between Nigeria's predominantly Christian south and Muslim north. Thousands have died in communal clashes there over the last decade.

Surprisingly entertaining after the 1:30 mark.



And another one -

Peace on Earth...

...from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It was Christmas Eve babe...

In the drunk tank....

How to win an argument - Lesson 12.
"Need to prove something you already believe? Statistics are easy: All you need are two graphs and a leading question."

Art, Beauty and God.

Lawrence Feingold on the role of art and beauty in his conversion:

Prof. Smith loved to have us examine works of art from different periods to compare their distinct view of the human person. For example, he compared a Rembrandt portrait with a work of Abstract Expressionism: Woman # 6 by De Kooning, asking us which we would prefer to have in our room to contemplate on our deathbed. His thesis was that much of modern art was marked by a pervasive dehumanization that no longer manifested the truth of the dignity of the human person made in the image of God. Most of us did not simply agree with him at the time, but his teaching worked as a leaven in me for years.

It became more and more apparent to me that the dehumanization of modern art and architecture was absolutely tied to the progressive loss of Christian faith in society, and its resulting secularization. The great works of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque, were obviously based on Catholic faith, from which they drew their inspiration, in whose service they humbly placed themselves, and apart from which they cannot be understood. The interiority of a Rembrandt portrait, for example, was unthinkable without the Christian view of the immortal soul, made in the image of God, lost in Adam’s Fall, and redeemed by the blood of Christ.

I remember being in the Sistine Chapel shortly before our conversion, admiring the Last Judgment of Michelangelo and thinking how incongruous it was that I as an atheist, together with many other tourists, was admiring the Last Judgment without posing the question of the truth it portrayed. As if the truth of the Last Judgment was irrelevant to the work of art!

Coolest Dad Ever.

From The Onion - "Cool Dad A Terrible Father":

Neighborhood parents are less complimentary. Several have complained about the beer parties that Nesmith allows his eldest son Kevin to host in his basement.

"Boys are gonna drink," Nesmith said when asked about the keg parties. "At least I know they're safe if they're right there in the basement."

Neighbors have said they suspect that Nesmith purchases alcohol for the boys.

"I don't buy Kevin and his friends beer, but I do usually have a tapped keg set up in the basement fridge," Nesmith said. "I don't see what people get so worked up about. If the kids get sick, they can spend the night here. I'm the one who has to deal with a bunch of hungover 13-year-olds."

Added Nesmith: "It's not like it's on a school night, usually."

Kevin's friend Tony Shadid said his parents are among those who complain about Nesmith.

"Mom's always yelling at us to do better in school so we don't turn out like Kevin's dad," Shadid said. "I don't know why. He doesn't look so bad to me. He's got a super-huge stereo and his own room in the basement with posters on the wall and a leather couch."

According to his children, Nesmith leaves the role of disciplinarian to his wife.

Merry Christmas

Amazon Review...

...Christian Smith's "How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps."


I would be very appreciative if you would go here and give me a helpful vote.

A insightful examination of how the way that we look at the world can make a profound difference in what we see.

December 20, 2011

Christian Smith is a sociologist who recently converted from Evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism. This book is principally an account of the causes, phases and processes he went through in making that move.

Because Smith is a sociologist, he organizes his book around the idea of a "paradigm shift" as adumbrated by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. To that end, Smith starts out with a discussion of the worldview that subsists in Evangelical Christianity, then he recounts the many minor, inexplicable discontinuities that he regularly encountered in Evangelical Christianity, then he builds up to the major problems for which he could not find an answer in Evangelical Christianity, and finally he pointed to the paradigm shift which allowed him to see the world through Catholic eyes.

I am a life-long Catholic, and I found it fascinating to hear many of the things I had observed - or seen but couldn't explain - through Smith's Protestant perspective. In this way, Smith's book is a work of ecumenism - bridging a gap that may be more cultural and epistemological than it is theological. I know that I have had many knock-down, drag-out debates that were never resolved; after reading Smith, I realize that because the problem is cultural, it can't be resolved simply by appealing to commonly accepted texts.

For example, I've noticed the following whenever I get told that Catholics won't get to Heaven because of their "misunderstanding" about "justification":

"18. Note your dissatisfaction with the heavily cognitive, often rationalist, nature of much of Protestantism. There is no denying it: Protestantism is a religion of the head. What matters most are holding the right beliefs. And right beliefs are things that reside between one's ears. Having the right cognitions is the essence of Protestantism. So is possessing, professing, and defending the right words. And those words come from and enter into the head as well. True, evangelicalism includes strains of pietism, charismatic tendencies, revivalist emotion, and a love of practical activism that can help counter-balance the heavily cognitive leanings of Protestantism. But in the end, as you well know, what is ultimately important is having the right beliefs, the right ideas, the right words (even if that is in some ways contradicted among the laity by a simultaneous cultural emphasis on the subjectivistic opinions and feelings of individuals when interpreting the Bible, as discussed below in point 25)."

Smith, Christian (2011-06-09). How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (p. 49). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In fact, I recently asked one Evangelical interlocutor if he thought that God gave a test on theology to determine who gets admitted into Heaven.

The flip side is this:

"For most of Christian history, the material and spiritual world was much more enchanted, thicker with spiritual meaning, and full of greater mystery than modern evangelicalism knows. Modernity suffers a "mystery deficit"--an inability to even conceive of unknowns and realities beyond those accessible to rational understanding. Indeed, that mystery deficit is central to the corrosions of secularization. Evangelicalism participates in that mystery deficit."

Smith, Christian (2011-06-09). How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (p. 36). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

And:

"The University of Chicago theologian, David Tracy, provides a language for this Protestant-Catholic difference in thought and imagination in his book, The Analogical Imagination. We might think of the general Protestant mentality as mapping onto what he calls a "dialectical" mentality, versus the more Catholic "analogical" tendency which he contrasts.16 The Catholic priest and sociologist Andrew Greeley writes similarly about "the Catholic Imagination" in his 2001 book by the same title, in which he emphasizes the Catholic instinct for seeing the mysterious in the plain, the sacred in the material, the holy lurking just below the surface of the ordinary. In the kind of analogical imagination toward which you need to now shift, everything is not simply what it is, only and literally that, and nothing else. Rather, our understanding comes from seeing how some things are like other things, how certain symbols point to other realities, how differences and similarities can work together to create coherent, harmonized understandings of reality.

Catholics, therefore, are much friendlier to what (for Protestants) seem like contradictions, to both/and understandings, metaphorical images, symbolic representations, and non-literal readings and interpretations. In some sense, Catholicism is more confident than Protestantism in its understanding of its apprehension, definition, security, and coherence of Christian truth--it has, after all, been working with the same basic approach for two millennia, and it enjoys the Church Magisterium to guard the deposit of faith.17 So Catholicism tends to feel more relaxed and at ease with differences, tensions, metaphors, and ambiguities in its thought and imagination. This is, again, a very different way of thinking, which takes a paradigm shift to acquire. So keep working on and praying about that."

Smith, Christian (2011-06-09). How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (p. 104). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

All of this is tied into this gem of an insight:

"Protestantism itself was a crucial force setting modernity into motion. The birth of Protestantism marks the onset of the early modern period in history. And Protestantism in all of its forms has grown up entirely within the developing modern world. There is no such thing as pre-modern Protestantism. Protestantism has no authentically Protestant references, resources, or formations that predate modernity.

Now, start to suspect that a Christian church tradition that is of modernity will eventually be consumed by modernity and postmodernity. The signs of that are already evident, for those who have the eyes to see them. Begin to wrap your mind around the idea that if the Christian church is to survive modernity it very likely needs to have spiritual, intellectual, theological roots that predate modernity. To be of modernity is to be captive to modernity, not just its ways of life but its basic presuppositions and instinctive outlooks. By this I mean things like autonomous individualism, Enlightenment skepticism, distrust of tradition, moral relativism, consumerist materialism, knee-jerk hostility toward authority, the market's colonization of non-economic spheres of life (such as church), and the domination of mass media, advertising, scientism, and rationalism.

In contrast to Protestantism's position, Catholicism goes back to the very beginning with deep roots in the ancient world. That provides references and resources that enable modern Christians to potentially transcend modernity and so perhaps to resist its corrosive effects."

Smith, Christian (2011-06-09). How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (pp. 67-68). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

By the way, the idea that modernity and Protestantism are twin births from a common cultural moment is not unique to Smith; Alister Mcgrath makes a similar point, albeit in a more upbeat way in Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution--A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First.

Finally, since I have often noticed the tendency of Evangelicals to overuse the word "just" - which I assume is Koine Greek for "We beseech thee, O Lord" - I found this observation worth a chuckle:

"Those around you and maybe you yourself pray with a lot of particular, but by now so-familiar-that-they-usually-go-unnoticed, phrases, such as, "Father God," "we would lift up," "I just have a heart for," "as unto the Lord," "knit our hearts together," "we are convicted," "if it be your will," "pray a `hedge' around," and "in Jesus' name." About 10-20 percent of the words used in the informal prayers of more than a few of the people around you consist of the one word "just"--as in, "Lord, we just ask that you just give us the eyes just to see you, Lord." Your community believes in praying authentic, spontaneous, personal prayers--not rote, ritualistic, formal, dusty, traditional prayers. It once occurred to you, however, that most people's spontaneous, personal prayers sound an awful lot alike. They actually seem to follow standard formats. You yourself wish you could be a better pray-er--and might have some books on your shelf about improving your prayer life--but you usually fall back into your old habits and familiar prayer wordings."

Smith, Christian (2011-06-09). How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (pp. 21-22). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Smith's book will undoubtedly offend sincere Protestants, and to that extent it is performing a "prophetic" function of having people face their shibboleths. It performs the same function for Catholics. Recently, I found myself quoting this bit to a fellow Catholic:

"Do not become Catholic because you think it will give you certainty. Some evangelicals find Catholicism attractive because they think it offers them certainty about Christian beliefs. Previously, they thought an inerrant Bible alone provided certainty. Then they began to see the real problems with that approach, some of which we have noted above. What then to do? Looking to Rome, some decide that the Catholic Church Magisterium provides the epistemic certitude that conservative Protestantism taught them to desire. Catholicism appeals to such people in these cases because it seems to provide that absolute certainty.1

Don't do that. Don't think that way. Establishing certainty is a distinctively modern secular project, not a Christian one. It was Descartes, empiricism, scientism, and the logical positivists who taught us to prioritize and search after an indubitable and universal foundation of certainty in human knowledge (which only fairly recently we have realized actually does not exist). Christ, by contrast, calls us to drop what we want and expect, to believe, and to learn the truth from and follow him. So, do not become Catholic in order to replace a misguided theory about the Bible with a misguided expectation about the Church Magisterium. The main attraction of both of those, of course, is to make people feel more secure about what they think they know. But managing feelings of (in)security is not what Christian faith is about. So don't replace an old foundationalist Protestantism with a new (falsely) foundationalist Catholicism.2"

Smith, Christian (2011-06-09). How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (pp. 151-152). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Amen to that.

This is an insightful book, and it is insightful because it was written by somebody who did the hardwork of honestly thinking about the issues. As such, I highly recommend it.

Taunting Nemesis.

President Downgrade touts himself as the Fourth Best President in the History of the United States.

Here's the video.



Victor Davis Hanson - the Sage of Selma - points out that Nemesis is a real force in human affairs, and one we taunt only if we are fools:

Why didn’t an old cigar-chomping Democratic pro take him aside and warn him about offending Nemesis? She is the dreaded goddess who brings divine retribution in ironic fashion to overweening arrogance.

Or maybe a friend could have whispered to Senator Obama to tone it down when he was merciless in damning the Bush administration for its supposedly slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obama railed that Bush showed “unconscionable ineptitude.” Obama further charged that Bush’s response was “achingly slow,” a result of “passive indifference,” and that his team was rife with “corruption and cronyism.”

Those phrases now apply to Obama himself, as he seems lost amid his own disaster — eerily, in about the same Gulf environs. Adding insult to injury, a recent poll revealed that Louisiana residents thought Bush had done a better job with Katrina than Obama has with BP.

Couldn’t one of Obama’s many handlers have warned him to ignore the media’s tingling-leg gaga worship, or their nonsense that Obama is “a god”?

Didn’t Team Obama ever suspect that such an unhinged press, in the manner of a Greek chorus, could just as easily sour on their prophet once his poll ratings fell as quickly as they had soared?

Couldn’t David Axelrod have admonished his candidate to cut out the creepy stuff about himself and his throng being “the ones we’ve been waiting for”? Why was there a need for all that megalomaniac hocus-pocus about slowing the “rise of the oceans” and healing the planet? Sure enough, Nemesis ensured that instead of Lord Poseidon lowering the seas, Obama is a smoky Hephaestus fouling them up.

Nothing good will come of this, I tell you.

Cool Weather Phenomenon.

Wave clouds over Birmingham.

Been there, done that...

...learned to keep my mouth shut when the teacher was a self-righteous leftist bigot.

Economics teacher bullies Catholic student over homosexuality:

A teacher's decision to promote homosexuality in class rather than teach the approved economics curriculum – and the school district's endorsement of that – soon will be hitting the court docket, as a complaint has been filed by a student subjected to the instructor's "bullying."

Officials with the Thomas More Law Center say they have filed a federal lawsuit against the Howell Public School District in Howell, Mich., and teacher Johnson "Jay" McDowell for punishing and humiliating a student after he responded to McDowell's question about homosexuality with his biblically based perspective.

The case developed, according to the complaint, when McDowell told a student to remove a Confederate flag belt buckle because he was offended by it. Daniel Glowacki, a junior, pointed out the obvious hypocrisy: that the teacher can promote a message that might be offensive to students, but students can't wear clothing that expresses a message that is offensive to the teacher.

The teacher, the head of the school's organized labor union for instructors, asked Glowacki specifically about his feelings on homosexuality, and the student responded that as a Catholic he was offended by the lifestyle choice.

The teacher then ordered Glowacki to leave the classroom under threat of suspension, the complaint states.

Homosexual activists jumped into the fray, hailing McDowell as a hero and blasting Glowacki and his family as "bigots," the law center explains. They called Glowacki's religious beliefs "hate."

"National lesbian TV host Ellen DeGeneres got in on the anti-Glowacki campaign. Daniel even became the subject of a school assembly," the organization reported.

It happened on Oct. 20, 2010, the day McDowell wore a purple homosexual-advocacy "Tyler's Army" T-shirt as part of a campaign promoted by homosexuals to highlight alleged "bullying" of homosexuals.

McDowell went even further to eradicate Christian beliefs from his classroom, asking the rest of the class members after Glowacki was ordered to leave whether they accepted homosexuality, the law center reported. Another student raised his hand and also was ordered out of the classroom.

"In this case, the teacher became the bully, and the students who opposed his homosexual agenda became his victims," the center reported.

Officials with the school district, run by Supt. R.C. Wilson, did not respond to WND's request for comment.

"Rather than teach academic courses that day, McDowell decided to spend the entire day promoting this national pro-homosexual agenda, which included showing his classes a video concerning such 'bullying,'" the law center said.

The lawsuit alleges violations by McDowell and the school of Glowacki's constitutional rights to freedom of speech and equal protection.

Robert Muise, the senior trial counsel handling the case, said, "Homosexual activists, with the willing and complicit support of public school districts and teachers' unions throughout the country, are using our public schools to foist their destructive agenda on our children, thereby creating a hostile learning environment for those students who oppose this agenda on religious and moral grounds. This case is just one example of the pernicious effect these activists are having on our students and in our community. We intend to stop it."

The center's report said, "The school district has promoted the concept that religious opposition to homosexuality is equivalent to bullying, hate speech, and homophobia in order to eradicate such opposition."

Here is the relevant Thomas More website page.

More here.

And here is a copy of the Section 1983 Complaint filed on behalf of Sandra Glowacki, the mother of the minor Glowackis.

Mark Shea counsels an atheist grieved that someone might say something ever so slightly askance about Hitchens...

...to get real.

Mark Shea got a comment, like the one I got by some atheist, bravely defending the notion that their hero's only destiny is to become worm food with the following:

Dude. Hitchens made a career out of insulting people’s memories in the hour of their family’s keenest grief–on national and international television. It was one of his most revolting traits and a living illustration of how courage, unhinged from the other virtues, can be deployed to do great evil–since it takes “courage” (of a sort) to defy healthy social convention and revile somebody’s loved one in the hour of their death.

In contrast, all Douthat did was offer some kind words. So: Cry me a river, wimpy self-absorbed atheist wuss, if a Christian states a) that he believes Hitchens now knows how wrong he was about God and b) does so in a generally kindly piece that tries to say something generous about a man who reviled his most cherished beliefs. Letters like yours just demonstrate that, yes, lots of atheists seem to suffer from some sort of personality disorder that renders them incapable of picking up the normal social and affective cues that normal people normally perceive. Lots of them are also, like you, full of self-pity and boasting that would embarrass a high school sophomore.

That you exhibit this adolescent cluelessness, O Future of Human Evolution, while simultaneously boasting of superior intelligence simply demonstrates yet again that those who worship the intellect seem particularly hampered in using it. Get over yourself.

Have a Merry Star Wars Christmas.

Tim Tebow must lose in order to keep America safe for immigrants, Muslims and gays!

Commentary points out the oikophobia - fear of one's neighbor - that informs a column written by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman in The Jewish Week:

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman’s Tim Tebow is making the rounds today–and not in a good way. The disturbing article, a vicious diatribe against American Christians, has offended not only its Christian targets but also American Jews who have worked hard to produce the gains in Jewish-Christian relations that such attacks threaten to undermine. Here is the most offensive paragraph (which the editors, since this post went up, finally deleted, though the rest of the offensive column remains):

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.

Hammerman, a member of J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet, says he is rooting against Tebow as a New England Patriots fan and as a concerned citizen. He gives the impression he believes that fervently hoping for the public failure of an athlete is appropriate if that athlete is overtly Christian. (While there is nothing wrong with being a Patriots fan, Hammerman does call head coach Bill Belichick a “moral exemplar,” which is a bit much considering Belichick was caught cheating to win games and carried on an affair with a married woman, resulting in the couple’s divorce just after his own. One wonders about Hammerman’s moral judgment.)

But more importantly, Hammerman surely knows that what he writes here is plainspoken bigotry, an affront to a nation of civilized people, insulting to Christians for all the obvious reasons, and is a chillul Hashem as well–a blight on Judaism’s reputation and one of Judaism’s most serious sins.

After given in to his inner oikophobe, and reaping the pushback, Rabbi Hammerman offered this lame apology:

“I have spent my entire career engaged in dialogue with people of all faiths while speaking out passionately against intolerance and extremism. I have the deepest respect for those who are committed to their faith, including Mr. Tebow. I realize the way in which I attempted to make my points was clumsy and inappropriate, calling to mind the kind of intolerance and extremism my article was intended to disparage. I sincerely apologize to Mr. Tebow, his family, the Broncos and Patriots and all those whom I may have offended.”

Mmm...okay...but what about all those "Christians" who Rabbi Hammerman described as just waiting for a catharsis to release their barely restrained desire to re-enact the Kristalnacht?

James Taranto writes:

So the offense was not against Tebow or his family, much less the Broncos and Patriots. Hammerman made a bigoted statement about Christians, or at least an ill-defined subset of Christians--a statement that belies his claim to "have the deepest respect for those who are committed to their faith." Although he apologizes to "all those whom I may have offended," he gives no indication of understanding why his statement was offensive.

Too true.

Just in time for Christmas...

...Atheists disprove the existence of God...

...with a helmet that simulates the "religious experience."

Because, obviously, since we are composites of spirit and body, it is an essential tenet of Christianity that our body never has an effect on our spiritual/mental state, except when we consume alcohol, eat food, watch a sad movie, etc., etc.

Who are these idiots? And why don't they actually read what they are deconstructing? 

And are they doing their studies with public funding?

Another Atheist starts paying the tab.

Kim Jong Il is dead.

We always celebrate the death of tyrants at Lex Communis with a bit of the bubbly.

*Pop*

Kim Jong Il was a nasty work of humanity. North Korea is a nightmare, which could only have been envisioned by a science fiction writer, and which could only have been brought into reality by an atheist Communist.

Secular Americans can only regret that Kim Jong Il didn't receive the justice that his victims deserve. Christians, on the other hand, know that he is paying for the injustice he meted out during his sick, depraved life.

"9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.
10 They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”
11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters,were killed just as they had been."

The demand for justice is divine as well as human. One can hope that somewhere Kim Jong Il repented of his evil as he drew his final breath, but that doesn't mean a free ride to the banquet where his victims sit:

44. To protest against God in the name of justice is not helpful. A world without God is a world without hope (cf. Eph 2:12). Only God can create justice. And faith gives us the certainty that he does so. The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening image? I would say: it is an image that evokes responsibility, an image, therefore, of that fear of which Saint Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has its place in love[35]. God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze to the crucified and risen Christ. Both these things—justice and grace—must be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened.

Spe Salvi.

Election 2012.

Karl Rove spells it out.

Report from Blue State America: Sins that Cry out to Heaven.

Woman burned alive in Brooklyn elevator.

The surveillance video, its images disturbingly clear, ends with a woman being burned alive in the elevator of a Brooklyn apartment building on Saturday.       
But in the beginning, it seemed routine: a man dressed as an exterminator, wearing gloves, with a protective mask perched atop his head and carrying a container on his back, takes the elevator to the fifth floor.       

Sometime later, an older woman carrying groceries took the same ride to the fifth floor.       
Two cameras recording from different positions, one inside the small tiled elevator and another in a hallway, show the doors open and the man with the container approach. The man, who appeared to be in his 40s, first sprays the woman in the face, then douses her methodically from head to toe with what a city official said was an accelerant as she turned and cowered, raising her hands, the grocery bags hanging from her wrists.       
Having cornered the woman in the elevator, the man struggles to light a barbecue lighter. He then ignites a Molotov cocktail — a wine or Champagne bottle filled with accelerant with a rag stuffed in its neck. He retreats and comes back again, spraying more liquid on his victim. And suddenly the silent video goes white with a conflagration in the small space: the woman, on fire.        
Investigators are poring over the footage, a disturbing silent film capturing what is perhaps a singular act of violence: a woman being burned to death.       
The crime took place Saturday afternoon at 203 Underhill Avenue in Prospect Heights. Detectives and fire marshals were reviewing the footage and interviewing neighbors.       
The police identified the victim as Doris Gillespie, 64, and pronounced her dead at the scene. One neighbor said that Ms. Gillespie was a postal worker.

"Insignificant lefty Yale librarian culls stupid lefty "quotable quotes" and has it promoted by stupid left-leaning news aggregator."

*Sheesh*

This is your "must read" for today...

Have I ever steered you wrong?

6 Real Acts of Self-Defense too Awesome for an Action Movie.

I personally am grateful that Our Mother the Government let's us drive.

Frank J. Fleming points out something true and disturbing about the erosion of our rights:

The National Transportation Safety Board wants a complete ban on cellphone use while driving, even on hands-free calls. Some will protest this as yet another government encroachment on freedom, but we should think twice before rocking the boat here.

After all, have you considered how lucky we are that the government lets us drive cars at all?

Imagine if cars hadn’t been around for a century, but instead were just invented today. Is there any way they’d be approved for individual use? It’s an era of bans on incandescent bulbs; if you suggested putting millions of internal-combustion engines out there, you’d get looks like you were Hitler proposing the Final Solution.

Even aside from pollution, the government wouldn’t allow the risks to safety.

“So you’re proposing that people speed around in tons of metal? You must mean only really smart, well-trained people?”

“No. Everyone. Even stupid people.”

“Won’t millions be killed?”

“Oh, no. Not that many. Just a little more than 40,000 a year.”

“And injuries?”

“Oh . . . millions.”

There’s no way that would get approved today.

Driving is basically a grandfathered freedom from back when people cared less about pollution and danger and valued progress and liberty over safety. They had different equations related to human life then: We could lose 10,000 men in a single battle in a war and call it a victory.

We’re talking foolhardy people who eventually sent men to the moon strapped to a giant rocket that had less computational power than it takes to calculate the trajectory of an Angry Bird. Their kids dangled from jungle gyms over pavement.

Face it: We’re just not those people anymore. We don’t do dangerous things where lots of people could be hurt . . . even if they’re really cool and fun ideas.
You can say we value human life more now, but it’s probably more apt to say we’re much sissier.

That’s why we have to be careful with driving, as it’s one of the last really dangerous freedoms we have. Anyone with a car can decide to head out the door and drive cross-country. That’s an extreme freedom our ancestors couldn’t even imagine, and don’t bet it will last.

So just put the cellphone down, place your hands at 10 and 2 and drive as carefully as you can: We don’t want to give government regulators any more ideas about banning driving.

The last liberal in Europe.

Liberalism during the 19th Century was inextricably tied to nationalism.  19th Century liberals understood that individual liberty could not be safeguarded if the individual's nation was not free to determine its own fate.

Daniel Hannan, Member of the European Parliament for South-East England reminds us of that connection in this clip.

A question that should be asked more often...

What the Hell is WRONG with these people? –

Mind-boggling.

You compared to the Earth compared Jupiter compared to the Sun compared to Sirius compared to Aldeberan, etc., etc.

Whoa!

More on "Why I am not a Catholic."

My latest interaction with the defender of Dr. Ruckman's book on
Why I am not a Catholic."

The great thing is that after the onslaught from Mark Shea's blog, my one star review will always be the first review that people see.

Oo-rah!

There is a method to my madness.

First, S. Wilder's post:

In reply to an earlier post on Dec 15, 2011 11:40:37 PM PST
S. Wilder says:
Dr. Ruckman's style is harsh and blatant, but what he's saying concerning the Pope compared to Jesus Christ is true. If the pope is Christ' s substitute on earth, there should be many similarities in their lives. Let' s see:

While on earth, Jesus never controlled great wealth. The pope controls one of the wealthiest corporations in the world.
Jesus dressed like a common man. The pope, on the other hand, is never seen in anything but regal apparel.
Jesus lived in simple surroundings, but the pope views opulence at every turn.
Jesus tirelessly served the multitudes, while the pope travels the world on his private jet, meeting with world leaders from every nation.
Most people eventually rejected and hated Jesus because He told the truth. The pope is worshipped and adored by millions worldwide.
The pope gladly welcomes the praise of men, but Jesus directed all worship to the Father, and said of Himself:

"Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." Mark 10:18

Should popes accept the worship of multitudes? Look how "Pope" Peter reacted when Cornelius tried to worship him:

"And as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him, and fell down at his feet, and worshipped him. But Peter took him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also am a man." Acts 10:25-26

The Catechism claims that:

"The Pope enjoys, by divine institution, supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls" Pg. 246, #937

According to God's Word, the pope is not the head of the true church of Jesus Christ. That position is reserved exclusively for the Lord Jesus:

"For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church..." Ephesians 5:23

Concerning the pope' s title of "Holy Father," Jesus Himself instructed us to:

"...call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." Matthew 23:9

Yet, the pope not only accepts the title "Father," but "Holy Father" as well, a title reserved for God alone:

"Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy..." Revelation 15:4

It is not wise to assume a name reserved for God, for He will not share His glory with anyone:

"I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another..." Isaiah 42:8

Catholic tradition (Matthew 15:3,6) and Scripture ( 2 Timothy 3:15-16) certainly disagree:
Why didn't God tell us in the Bible that He was sending the pope as the Vicar of Christ?
Why does the Bible insist that Jesus is still the head of the church, if He isn't?
Why does the Catholic church want the pope to be the final authority instead of Jesus?
Why does the Catholic church want the pope to be your teacher instead of the Holy Spirit of God?

Follow Catholic tradition if you want to, I'm believing my Bible - "And ye are complete in him (Jesus), which is the head of all principality and power:" Colossians 2:10

"And he (Christ) is the head of the body, the church..." Colossians 1:18

Then, my first response:

Your post: Dec 16, 2011 4:07:26 PM PST
Peter S. Bradley says:
In response to Mr. Wilder's recent post -

1. "Dr. Ruckman's style is harsh and blatant..."

No, Dr. Ruckman's style is that of an ignorant bigot. You are dissembling when you call someone who refers to "wine headed w*ps" and "Communist p*l*cks" and who delights in the pain of a Catholic woman who has seen her husband murdered.

Seriously, what don't you understand about this?

Pretend that you were Italian for just second. Apply the Golden Rule. How would you feel about being called a "wine headed w*p"? Ditto for the rest of his racist screed.

Stop using euphemisms. If you have an ounce of manners, you will denounce Dr. Ruckman's book for what it is.

2. People worship the Pope.

Who does this?

Evidence, please.

3. The Catholic Church as the "world's wealthiest corporation."

Evidence please.

4. Jesus dressed like a common man.

So, you are saying that Jesus will not return as the King?

Are you saying that Jesus is not adorned with a glorious resurrected body?

You have a puzzling theology.

5. "The Pope enjoys, by divine institution, supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls" Pg. 246, #937

Yes, it does and for good reason since Peter was given the keys and the power to bind and loose.

6. "...call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." Matthew 23:9

Take it up with St. Paul who constantly referred to himself as a "father" of his followers.

7. "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church..." Ephesians 5:23

This is very true. But what do you think it meant when Christ gave the keys to Peter?

And why did Christ tell Peter, " Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers"? (Luke 22:31 - 32.)

Hey, maybe Jesus thought it might be nice to have someone who would chiefly represent him with respect to His "pilgrim church on Earth."

Hmm...maybe the reference to the keys is a kind of "typology" referring to Isaiah 22, in which "the key of the house of David" is conferred upon Eliacim, the son of Helcias, as the symbol of plenary authority in the Kingdom of Juda."

Boy, wouldn't it be weird if that was what was meant?

It would almost be like the Catholic Church was carrying out the express desires of Jesus Christ, which, you know, might be, like, a good thing.

It might even make Catholics the real "bible Christians."

Mr. Wilder, I understand that you have issues with the Catholic Church, but, honestly, cutting and pasting boring anti-catholic clichés is probably not the way you should approach the subject of dealing with your issues.
Edit your post:
To insert a product link use the format: [[ASIN:ASIN product-title]] (What's this?)
In response to Mr. Wilder's recent post -

1. "Dr. Ruckman's style is harsh and blatant..."

No, Dr. Ruckman's style is that of an ignorant bigot. You are dissembling when you call someone who refers to "wine headed w*ps" and "Communist p*l*cks" and who delights in the pain of a Catholic woman who has seen her husband murdered.

Seriously, what don't you understand about this?

Pretend that you were Italian for just second. Apply the Golden Rule. How would you feel about being called a "wine headed w*p"? Ditto for the rest of his racist screed.

Stop using euphemisms. If you have an ounce of manners, you will denounce Dr. Ruckman's book for what it is.

2. People worship the Pope.

Who does this?

Evidence, please.

3. The Catholic Church as the "world's wealthiest corporation."

Evidence please.

4. Jesus dressed like a common man.

So, you are saying that Jesus will not return as the King?

Are you saying that Jesus is not adorned with a glorious resurrected body?

You have a puzzling theology.

5. "The Pope enjoys, by divine institution, supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls" Pg. 246, #937

Yes, it does and for good reason since Peter was given the keys and the power to bind and loose.

6. "...call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." Matthew 23:9

Take it up with St. Paul who constantly referred to himself as a "father" of his followers.

7. "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church..." Ephesians 5:23

This is very true. But what do you think it meant when Christ gave the keys to Peter?

And why did Christ tell Peter, " Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers"? (Luke 22:31 - 32.)

Hey, maybe Jesus thought it might be nice to have someone who would chiefly represent him with respect to His "pilgrim church on Earth."

Hmm...maybe the reference to the keys is a kind of "typology" referring to Isaiah 22, in which "the key of the house of David" is conferred upon Eliacim, the son of Helcias, as the symbol of plenary authority in the Kingdom of Juda."

Boy, wouldn't it be weird if that was what was meant?

It would almost be like the Catholic Church was carrying out the express desires of Jesus Christ, which, you know, might be, like, a good thing.

It might even make Catholics the real "bible Christians."

Mr. Wilder, I understand that you have issues with the Catholic Church, but, honestly, cutting and pasting boring anti-catholic clichés is probably not the way you should approach the subject of dealing with your issues.

Then, my second response:

Your post: Dec 16, 2011 4:37:13 PM PST
Peter S. Bradley says:


Mr. Wilder,

Let's take this tack for a moment.

Why are you so obsessed with this issue?

I clearly have a stake in not having my faith defamed. I think that is a reasonable motivation on my part for my responding to you.

But why do you have such a stake in saying such awful things about my faith?

Let's assume that you really believe that the Catholic Church is powerful and evil. Why is that a matter that makes you go out of your way to say things to other people that you know won't be accepted and are insulting?

It's not like any Catholics are going to run over to your house and force you to "worship" the Pope or whatever it is that really makes you afraid of Catholicism.

So, why the energy in insulting other people and defending a book that is a very clear exercise in a neanderthal kind of racist bigotry?

Leftie Populism - a losing movement for losers.

Walter Russell Mead points out a reason that Leftist Populism has a track record of failure:

Today the Gallup Organization has a new poll out that helps explain why leftie populism always looks like a good strategy but never seems to get anybody into the White House. By a significant margin, voters continue — even in the midst of tough economic times and rising economic inequality — to think it is more important to pursue pro-growth policies for the economy than to reduce inequality. According to the poll, 82 percent of those asked said it was either extremely important or very important to “grow and expand the economy”, compared to 46 percent who thought it was extremely or very important to “reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor.” 32 percent think growing the economy is extremely important; only 17 percent feel that way about reducing the income and wealth gap.

This means that even among many liberal or left leaning voters, a pro-growth message will work better than a pro-equality one. But it also means that there is enough pro-equality sentiment out there that in some congressional districts and even states, that message can win. At the national level, however, left populism looks like a loser compared to pro-growth.

Moreover, it appears that hard times may strengthen pro-growth rather than pro-equality sentiment. For the left, it is axiomatic that bad economic times are a period of political opportunity. That’s why the Obama White House saw the economic crisis as a historic, not to be missed opportunity for sweeping back in 2009.

But that perception looks wrong. It may be that equality is like the environment: it is perceived as a luxury good by much of the electorate, something you pursue when you think you can afford it, but something you ditch when you worry about the basics.

In any case, it looks as if 2012 is not going to be the year of Huey Long in American politics. Most voters want jobs and they want growth that will raise the value of their homes and their retirement portfolios more than they want to punish the rich. It will be interesting to see whether the White House, once it reassures the base, will swing back away from equality rhetoric towards the politics of growth. If its own polling agrees with Gallup, we are likely to see the left populists pushed back under the bus well before next November.

A worthless bit of matter previously exhibiting the form of a "slightly more evolved primate" has experienced a catastrophic systems failure and will be assuming a new configuration as worm food.

Christopher Hitchens has died.

Hitchens wrote with style and flourish.  He was confrontational and epically entertaining in his confrontations.

But he was also narrow-minded and ignorant, and smug in his narrow-minded ignorance, such as when he attempted to challenge St. Thomas Aquinas' proof of God in a single paragraph by calling Aquinas' proofs "ontological proofs for the existence of God."  It was clear from that that Hitchens had no idea about the subject; Aquinas was famous for rejecting ontological proofs.

Hitchens was also famous for speaking ill of the dead. His hatchet job on Mother Teresa is one case in point.

From examples like these it was clear that Hitchens' attitude toward religion was formed by some deep pathology, not by reason.  The pathology was probably sexual, as suggested by Hitchens' constant bizarre argument that evolution had permitted human arms - the arms of "evolved primates" - to reach down to the groin.

But for all that, Hitchens had talent, which he misused, and he was made in the image of God and had only slightly less than infinite value.  He now stands before the Creator for judgment, and, so, we pray:

Requiem Aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetuae luceat eis. Requiescant in pace.

Amen.

 

Eternal rest, grant unto our brother, Christopher Hitchens,O Lord

and let perpetual light shine upon him.

       Amen.

China diving?

China is facing its own economic meltdown:

It is hard to obtain good data in China, but something is wrong when the country's Homelink property website can report that new home prices in Beijing fell 35pc in November from the month before. If this is remotely true, the calibrated soft-landing intended by Chinese authorities has gone badly wrong and risks spinning out of control.

The growth of the M2 money supply slumped to 12.7pc in November, the lowest in 10 years. New lending fell 5pc on a month-to-month basis. The central bank has begun to reverse its tightening policy as inflation subsides, cutting the reserve requirement for lenders for the first time since 2008 to ease liquidity strains.

The question is whether the People's Bank can do any better than the US Federal Reserve or Bank of Japan at deflating a credit bubble.

Chinese stocks are flashing warning signs. The Shanghai index has fallen 30pc since May. It is off 60pc from its peak in 2008, almost as much in real terms as Wall Street from 1929 to 1933

And:

"There is so much spare capacity that they will start dumping goods, risking a deflation shock for the rest of the world. It no surpise that China has just imposed tariffs on imports of GM cars. I think it is highly likely that China will devalue the yuan next year, risking a trade war," he said.


China's $3.2 trillion foreign reserves have been falling for three months despite the trade surplus. Hot money is flowing out of the country. "One-way capital inflow or one-way bets on a yuan rise have become history. Our foreign reserves are basically falling every day," said Li Yang, a former central bank rate-setter.

The reserve loss acts as a form of monetary tightening, exactly the opposite of the effect during the boom. The reserves cannot be tapped to prop up China's internal banking system. To do so would mean repatriating the money – now in US Treasuries and European bonds – pushing up the yuan at the worst moment.

The economy is badly out of kilter. Consumption has fallen from 48pc to 36pc of GDP since the late 1990s. Investment has risen to 50pc of GDP. This is off the charts, even by the standards of Japan, Korea or Tawian during their catch-up spurts. Nothing like it has been seen before in modern times.

With 30 million men who can never be married, this could be be very bad.

Occupy Wall Street forces Representative of the Forces of Faceless, Evil Capitalism to Knuckle Under!

Small Cafe shuts down because of 12 straight weeks of being under barricades - lays off 71 workers.

But the important thing is that the kids meant well.

No matter how many lives they destroyed in the process.

Word of the day.

Bespoke - as in a "bespoke suit."

I'll confess that I knew it had nothing to do with " to speak," but a part of me really thought it did have something to do with "to speak."

It is better to light a single candle than curse the dark, so I looked it up, and the answer is....

"U.K. made to order: made to a customer's specifications

"a bespoke suit."

Huh? 

 

Well, maybe it does have something to do with "to speak" in the sense that "to order" involves "to speak."

 

According to the online etymology dictionary -

 

bespoke

"custom or custom-made, made to order," of goods, as distinguished from ready-made, 1755, the same sense found earlier in bespoken (c.1600), pp. of bespeak, in a sense of "to speak for, to arrange beforehand," a sense attested in bespeak from 1580s. Now usually of tailored suits.

Today's exercise in OCD obscurantism comes from this Ann Althouse post on the MSM's trashing of Callista's Gingrich's style, as in -

The cat claws are out for Callista, whose own hyper-manicured claws "are folded neatly over her lap, a posture she frequently assumes." She "assumes her signature rigid stance." If she's in any position, it is — in Daily Beast talk — a position she assumes. Because she's just that kind of person, now, isn't she? So entitled.

"From her perfectly coiffed bob to her bespoke power suits, Callista Gingrich possesses a style that evokes a woman who wants to mirror her husband’s wealth and power — and lacks any singularity." She assumes her rigid position — her stance — next to the man, mirroring him, wearing a version of his suit, lacking any personality of her own. Lacking any "singularity." Are you kidding? She's the most distinctive-looking person on the political scene! The bright colors, the sharp edges, the signature hair.

How ironic if it turns out that the 1970s actually did represent the pinnacle of human rationality.

"Saudi Arabia executes woman convicted of 'sorcery.'"

Good advice for the brave harbingers of the godless world of the future...

..."cowboy up."

Mark Shea writes:

"Atheists who screech like little girls at the sight of a world not to their liking are not going to be very effective Vanguards for the Revolution because, you know, sheesh! What a bunch of sorry pantywaists!

My advice: learn to cope with the fact that, with the exception of brief moments in history when people with major personality disorders who lack normal social and affective abilities take over and impose their will with blood and iron on a prostrate populace, atheists will always comprise a small minority, and even 21%of them are so confused about what “atheism” means they declare that they believe in God. So yeah, there’s a reason you feel like an outsider: you are. As a Catholic who is also an outsider in American culture, my suggestion is: have fun with it. One of the pleasures of outsideriness is that you get to be a subversive weirdo who is as exotic as a Hottentot. You can actually make friends who are fascinated by your counter-cultural lifestyle–that is, unless you are a sullen grouch who files suit and mutters about everybody around you praying. Then, you can just expect to be the unhappy isolated person you will inevitably be."

Father Barron on the Message of Advent.

The Great White North withdraws from ...

...the Big Green Scam.

Canada declares that it is exercising its right to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.

The problem with getting into a digital war of words with someone with OCD is that the discussion never ends.

Fortunately, I'm getting reinforcements.

[Update - the return fire is arriving from Mark Shea's blog. Very cool and a big thank you for the reinforcements.]

My latest defense of my review of "Why I am not a Catholic."

Mr. Finn,

You provided S. Wilder with some very clear and cogent answers to his rant.

Let me observe that dealing with anti-catholic bigots is like playing whack-a-mole: when you respond to one point, they pop up with some other over-done cliche.

So, in the review, I pointed out that Dr. Ruckman repeatedly uses ethnic slurs that we haven't seen since "All in the Family" in the 1970s. S. Wilder tells me I'm "cherry picking." I point out that I'm quoting accurately, but instead of defending Dr. Ruckman, he wants to change ground and talk about Dr. Ruckman's "scholarship." S. Wilder picks as the ground he wants to defend, the ludicrous idea that there were no Catholics in Rome in the First Century. I rebut this point by quoting from a Catholic pope writing in the First Century in terms that are entirely inconsistent with the things that are core to modern Evangelicalism/fundamentalism, e.g., that the earliest church was based on the apostolic succession of bishops. S. Wilder's response is to fire off a screed of cliche anti-catholic tropes that are based on his interpretation of the Bible about Mary and Perpetual Virginity and the Real Presence, none of which have anything to do with Dr. Ruckman's execrably exercise in bigotry.

In short, S. Wilder's argument seems to be, "I think that Catholics are awful people and therefore any slander against them is fair comment, including statements about "wine-headed w*ps" and "Communist p*ll*cks" and the Mother of God working at her "Westinghouse washing machine - and can anyone explain to me what the heck that is supposed to mean, but it sure seems a far cry from "and all generations will call me blessed" (Luke 1:48) - and crowing over the idea of Jackie Kennedy, in emotional shock from seeing the back of her husband's head blown off by a sniper's bullet, with the childish phrase "OOOH RAMA!"

We have not heard a word from Mr. Wilder defending a single quote that I posted directly from Dr. Ruckman's pamphlet.

Now, I'm supposed to respond to every single one of Mr. Wilder's foul balls?

I thank Mr. Finn for stepping into the fray and defending the truth. It's necessary, I think, always and everywhere to respond to slurs of the kind made by Mr. Wilder for the sake of innocents who might read this thread in the future and be deceived by this minor drip in the "Water torture" that is anti-catholic bigotry, with its incessant drip, drip, dripping of falsehoods throughout the culture.

For my part, let me offer a response to some of Mr. Wilder's wild accusations.

But, first, let me point out that Mr. Wilder's accusations are not an argument and they are not grounded in other than his own narrow world view. He quotes from the Bible, but (a) his quotes are often out of context "cherry-picking" and (b) consist of nothing more than his spin - his "private interpretation" - about the meaning of the text. If Mr. Wilder thinks that he can defend Dr. Ruckman by accusing me of "cherry picking," why does he think that he can obligate me to respond to his assertions when he is "cherry picking."

Nonetheless,

1. Bishops. Nothing in scripture requires that a bishop be married. The text quoted by Mr. Wilder says that if a bishop is married, the bishop should have been married no more than once, and if the bishop has children, then children should be well-behaved.

Catholicism does not teach that there is any scriptural requirement that bishops and priests be unmarried. It requires that priests and bishops be unmarried as a regulation and a discipline in light of its experience in dealing with the real world problems of nepotism. That it was recognized from the times of the Apostles as having the right to legislate such rules is seen in the text of Clement that I quoted. The Catholic position would seem to be more consistent with the Bible than is found in many Protestant churches that permit divorced and remarried pastors, or, recently, pastors engaged in active homosexual relationships, whether or those relationships are categorized by the state as "marriage."

2. Historical record of the Catholic Church in Rome. However, my point was that there was a Pope in Rome in the First Century. In the letter of Clement, we see a Pope giving counsel/instruction to the Church in Corinth, while at least one Apostle was alive. That Pope is specifically referring to his authority and the authority of those appointed by the Apostle as coming from the Apostles as part of an Apostolic plan of succession.

3. Perpetual Virginity. Mr. Wilder naively quotes various scriptural sources on the "brothers" of Jesus without thinking the issue through. If he did, he would realize that his argument means that he has to reject the doctrine of the virgin birth to argue that Jesus had "brothers."

Simply put, if the virgin birth is true, Jesus could not have had "brothers." The best he could have had was "step-brothers" or "half-brothers" because Joseph could not have been, and was not, Jesus' natural father. So, under the best case scenario for Mr. Wilder, the term "brother" can not be taken as a literal description of Jesus' relationship to the people who are described as his "brothers," which means that the word "brother" is an inaccurate description of that relationship, and we cannot naively quote from Bible as if the word "brother" answered the question. Quite simply, since "brother" means a relationship where siblings have a common mother and father, people who argue that the use of the term "brother" means that the doctrine of the perptual virginity of Mary is wrong are importing quite a few assumptions into their claim, and swallowing camels and ignoring gnats at the same time.

Mr. Finn points out the linguistic argument. There is a textual argument as well. Go through the narratives and notice that two of Jesus' ostensible "brothers" are in fact identified as the sons of someone other than the Mother of Jesus, also note in the Epistle of Jude that Jude's relationship to one of his brothers is actually identified as being something else.

I think that I have spent enough time for now on Mr. Wilder's screed.