Generally sensible reflections from a liberal Catholic.

Uber-liberal Catholic Jcecel3 pens an interesting and - I hate to so this for fear of damaging his reputation - orthodox reflection on chastity. This passage is worth the price of admission:

First, the church teaches that dualism is a heresy. Dualism is the belief that mind and body, or matter and spirit are two separate realities. Many people, including uninformed Catholics, mistakenly believe that Catholicism teaches dualism, but Catholicism teaches the exact opposite. Dualism among those who profess to be Catholics is often expressed in views of the afterlife. If we believe that we become disembodied spirits, or ghosts after we die, we are believing a doctrine that the Church does not teach!

What the Church teaches is that you are your body. The body is spirit in the flesh. The soul is the life-force of the body, and it cannot exist apart from the body. Your body is good and holy, because it is what you are.

When we say the Apostles Creed, we proclaim that we believe in the resurrection of the body. We will not be disembodied spirits in the next life. Our very bodies will be raised to glory. It is true that our bodies will be different in the next life, in a similar manner that an adult body is different from the body of a child. The glorified body probably will not be physically larger, and it may have powers and abilities that are unknown to the body on earth. Yet, the body that dies will be the body that rises!

This is an important point because it touches on the notion that many people have that as long as they feel love, any sexual activity is justified. There is a false sense many people have that all that is important is the spirit of an act, not the physical concrete act in history itself. To this, the Church is saying, you are your body!.

What you do in concrete, fleshly, historical reality is what you are!

I seem to be going through a Gnostic moment. Between reading the Da Vinci Code and The Perfect Heresy, I've been reflecting on the significance that the Gnostic challenge had to orthodoxy. I've come to the conclusion that you really can't understand historical Christianity, and maybe Western Culture, without recognizing what orthodoxy and the West rejected when it rejected Gnosticism.

Gnosticism was dualist. It opposed Spirit to Matter. Spirit was Good; matter was Evil. Orthodoxy rejected all that, both ab initio and through St. Augustine who toyed with Gnosticism. After rejecting Manichian dualism, Augustine affirmed that the created world was Good.

Frankly, I think I've come to realize that this is the big divide between the Catholic worldview and the Protestant one, which posits a world of total depravity rather than one of goodness and seems to want to divorce the spiritual from the material. I recently experienced this Gnostic mindset during an argument I had with my low-church Protestant (aka "Christian") partners who thought that the practice of praying for the intercessions of saints was ridiculous.

"Wait a second," I said, "you ask other people to pray for you all the time."

"Not anyone who is dead," one of them snorted.

Now these two are "Bible Christians" and so certainly could not have forgotten Luke 9:30 -31, what we benighted Papists refer to as the "Transfiguration." What could they therefore have been thinking? Probably, something like a buried assumption that Spirit and Matter are two different things which have no congress with each other, which is simply lightweight Gnosticism. Those who forget old lessons, it seems may simply recreate old errors.

Anyhow, I do recommend JCecil3's essay with the following two caveats. First, I think that he has a confused understanding of the teleology of marriage and sex. Marriage exists to engender and support the good which is children; sex is the sacramental of marriage. Accepting Jcecil3's teleology of sex - something having to do with the "unitive dimension (two becoming one in an act of total self donation)" - begs the question, such as: "Why only 2?" "Why not more than two?" "Why are there two complementary sexes?" and "Why is there this amazing correspondence between Jcecil3's numerical maximum of 'self donation' and the number of complementary sexes?"

Second, as to JCecil3's criticism of priestly celibacy, I tend to side with Mark Shea in believing that's a matter of hiearchical discipline. But that's a matter for a later day.

Former Fresnans in the News.

I just have to give this that home-town slant.

In any event, Powerline deconstructs O'Neils claim - which will reverberate in the wind tunnel of Hollywood and the Media - that G.W. Bush "plotted" the Iraq war.

On the other hand, so what? It's hardly surprising that there was some kind of planning going on. Even Clinton viewed Saddam as a problem. Generally, this kind of thing is considered the prudent precaution of a concerned leader.

No Comment.

From another internet "test" over at Absinthe and Cookies comes a Tarot Card "quiz." My results:

I am The Hierophant The Hierophant often represents learning with experts or knowledgeable teachers. This card also stands for institutions and their values. The Hierophant is a symbol of the need to conform to rules or fixed situations. His appearance in a reading can show that you are struggling with a force that is not innovative, free-spirited or individual. Groups can be enriching or stifling, depending on circumstances. Sometimes we need to follow a program or embrace tradition, other times, we need to trust ourselves. For a full description of your card and other goodies, please visit LearnTarot.com

What tarot card are you? Enter your birthdate. Month: Day: Year:

The Hierophant is the card for the "Pope." That and the description should amuse my nonvirtual friends who read this site.

Ok, spooky, but not rational.

Home Town Pride Alert.

I'm running off to a short cause trial. However, before I go I wanted to pass along what I heard the Fresno City Police Chief report during his speech at my Rotary Club yesterday.

According to the Chief, 80% of all Meth used/sold in America is cooked in California.

Moreover, according to the Chief, 50% of all Meth cooked in California is cooked in - you guessed it - Fresno County.

We're Number One.

On the other hand, it makes you wonder what level of corruption exists in Fresno County as a result of the sheer magnitude of this black market/bootleg economy. I mean, I'd like to think there was some geographic reason for this factoid, but what if we're simply the "Al Capone's Chicago" of the 21st Century?

Later.

Anti-Discrimination Law and Practice.

Lane Core links to a column about prejudice against children and families with children.

Keep in mind that discrimination in housing against families with children is against California law. I think I may know a Bay Area attorney who might be willing to take such cases.

The Insufferable Bill Maher Expands on Things Beyond his Comprehension.

Maher is on the O'Reilly Factor and is calling George W. Bush a "draft dodger." When O'Reilly pointed out that Bush served in the National Guard, Maher explainst that was tantamount to cowardly copping out on military service.

Of course, this is nonsense. National Guard units were called up for service in Korea and Viet Nam. Moreover, there actually were draft dodgers during the Viet Nam War. They went to Canada and were treated as heroes by people like Maher. The ones who went to Viet Nam were viewed as something close to war criminals. Of course, our current war in Iraq is being described by these folks as a war crime, which would make our troops in Iraq war criminals. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Of course, they support our troops.

The Long Lent.

I think I am in agreement with David Morrison's post on the banality of a "simple solution" to the priest abuse problem. Just when I'm tempted to think that a "zero tolerance" approach solves all of our problems, I read something like this post from Secret Agent Man who offers the following insight:

I really don't care if my parish priest is a homosexual. I really don't care if, when he falls from grace, his mind turns to images of teenagers "bonking" in the Vatican gardens. Men need a Redeemer, and our Redeemer died on a Cross while we were yet sinners; we should expect men caught in sin to look grotesque and pathetic, their thoughts to be twisted and violently contorted. Didn't our Redeemer look that way when He died? Didn't He bear our stripes? No, none of that fundamentally bothers me. In fact it seems rather ordinary and shabby, made all the more pathetic by its appearance in public on the Bishop's pornographic little website. Anyone who would really be shocked to his foundation to hear of thoughts and desires like those flitting through the mind of a cleric hasn't spent much time examining his own conscience. Or spent much time in a lawyer's office, for that matter. Spend enough time with men "as they are" and you start realizing that the truly disgusting people are the ones who believe sin's ugliness only disfigures their neighbors.

Wow. To repeat a key passage:

"We should expect men caught in sin to look grotesque and pathetic, their thoughts to be twisted and violently contorted. Didn't our Redeemer look that way when He died?"

Alas, it appears that we have not been called for simple solutions.

On the other hand, I am with Mark Shea in my amazement at the Mystery of Secular Transubstantiation, whereby the scandal of male priests having sex with boys is transformed into a Catholic problem with is source in celibacy and chastity and not a human problem involving homosexuals choosing to sacrifice self-mastery to selfish pleasure.

A Fair Question.

TTAM117 asks a fair question:

The book is silly, but readable. How can you be so sure in your criticism without having read the book?

I think that's a fair question. Let me answer the question with a question. Have you ever noticed in murder mystery movies that if they show you that the protagonist has problems starting the car during the first ten minutes of the movie, that fact will be critical in the last ten minutes? Think of "What lies beneath." When you saw that the cell phone didn't work on the bridge didn't you say to yourself that that would somehow be important later in the movie?

Likewise, in Vampire flicks there are certain rules that have to be followed. Vampires have to seek blood and fear the sunlight. If you have a vampire who can sunbathe and has an unnatural hunger for V8, you have a mess.

The reason is that mystery and vampires involve there own genre and genres have cliches.

The Da Vince Code fits into the "Lost Gospels" genre. This genre has a quite a few recent entries. Think of Stigmata and Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Bart Ehrman's Lost Scriptures offers one account of the so-called lost Gospels. (on the other hand, Philip Jenkins' Hidden Gospels points out that the "Lost Gospels" have been known to scholars for centuries. In fact, the "Gospel of Thomas" - which Stigmata inanely identifies as the "Gospel of St. Thomas" as a proof of its writers lack of interest in a modicum of scholarship - was known to Origen and was described as a Gnostic work.) Then, of course, there's the X-Files amusing Hollywood A.D.

The point is that I'm acquainted with the genre. I've also read the reviews of the Da Vinci Code. These reviews have been confirmed by people who've read the book. I think I have a fair basis on which to conclude that Dan Brown's book posits that (a) Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had children, (b) some "lost" text describes this, (c) a "secret" arm of the Catholic church is willing to murder to keep the secret.

How'd I do? Well, according to the Official Dan Brown website, I'm dead on, which is hardly surprising given the fact that this is virtually the plotline of Stigmata and Hollywood A.D., sans the part about Mary Magdalene. I may be off about the "lost" text, but I deserve credit because clearly the Dan Brown story line traces through Mary Magdalene, who was venerated in Languedoc, the heartland of the Gnostic Cathars. On the other hand, this review identifies the "lost gospels" used by Brown. That these "lost gospels" would find their way into Brown's book was predictable.

Like I said spot the cliches.

My objection with the Da Vinci Code is that these cliches constitute bad cliches that reinforce lamentable ignorance on the part of his readership. I have never said Brown is not a good writer, but the cliches are pernicious.

For example, I'll repeat, the pre-eminence given to Mary Magdalene is a Gnostic theme. But the Gnostic's abhorred sex for the basic reason that sex involved the "vile, evil material world" and could entrap more spirit-stuff. Now, if you're going to write a novel based upon Gnostic suppositions, fairness would suggest that you follow out those suppositions, otherwise you're perpetrating codswallop. I like this review of the obnoxious movie, Stigmata, particular where the author observes about the movie rewriting Catholic dogma:

Now let me say this, no movie is required by law to follow official Catholic teaching as it advances its plot, but once it embraces a feature of Catholicism (stigmata) which depends upon a certain philosophy of the world--God, Jesus as the divine son of God, the miraculous, evil, Satan--internal logic dictates that the movie must move within this world view. Otherwise, the whole plot turns into a pillar of nonsensical salt before our very eyes.

Likewise, no book is required to follow Gnostic dogma, but, jeepers, if you're going to use Gnostic myths and sources to impeach the "official story," doesn't the logic of that proposition require some consistent treatment of Gnosticism. Otherwise, a fair criticism is that the plot of the book "turns into a pillar of nonsensical salt before our very eyes." In other words, a person can argue that Gnostic Gospels provide a truer version of Jesus than the orthodox contemporaries, in which case Jesus didn't marry and have children, or they are precisely the mythmaking fabrication of a small, dissident sect, just like Origen said they were.

Likewise, much of the "lost Gospel" storyline - irrespective of Brown's writing ability - is based on errant nonsense. The best source on this is Philip Jenkins' Hidden Gospels, which should be read by anyone interested in the Da Vinci Code. The best example of the nonsense of the "hiden Gospel" school is the the fact that the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark has not been laughed into non-existence. The Secret Gospel of Mark was "discovered" by Morton Smith in a monastery. Smith claimed that he had discovered handwritten in an 18th Century book a supposed letter from the late second-century church father Clement of Alexandria purporting to describe a different version of Mark - one in which Jesus appears to engage in homosexual activities. Smith took a couple of pictures and promptly thereafter the Secret Gospel of Mark was lost.

Despite the fact that the Secret Gospel of Mark was never seen by any scholar other than Smith, and at best is double or triple hearsay - it was an 18th Century rewrite of a supposed 2d Century letter purportedly describing a third document - it was initially hailed as authentic. Although after Smith died, the word "forgery" started to surface, the Secret Gospel of Mark is still treated as legitmate by some scholars. See for example, this site and this site. This site offers a nice rebuttal.

Beyond bad scholarship, the Da Vinci Code caters to a thread of American populist Anti-Catholicism that goes back to the Know-Nothings. (That whole part about murderous Catholics could have been lifted out of popular works from the early 19th Century.) Interestingly, Dan Brown's next book happens to feature a "Freemason conspiracy," which is delightfully reactionary, conjuring as it does a possible revival of the fortunes of the lately moribund Anti-Masonic Party.

However, to be fair, I've acquired a copy of the Da Vinci Code in an under the table deal at the local Catholic bookstore. I might as well read what I've been criticizing.

As long as I don't have to pay for it.

Science Fiction Movie Review.

Vanguard gives a positive review of the new Phillip K. Dick/Ben Affleck movie, Paycheck.

Speaking of the last flatulent emission from the squalid, vapid, evil, vile, corrupt, naseauting ooze that is Communism.

Arthur Miller shares his version of "My Dinner with Fidel." More later, when I have time but consider this:

Having had a certain amount of experience with Soviet and Eastern European officialdom in the arts, particularly as head of International PEN for four years, I expected to have to do a lot of agreeable nodding in silence to statements manifestly silly if not at times idiotic. Unelected leaders and their outriders are unusually sensitive to contradiction, and the experience of their company can be miserably boring. However, Castro was mythic by this time, and the prospect of an hour or two with him was something to look forward to.

Note the 'nodding in silence?" Silence? Well, of course, this is a liberal in a hurry after all. It wouldn't do to disagree with him.

And also note the "unelected leaders are unusually sensitive to contradiction." Of course, they are. Their "unusual" sensitivity usually results in purges, mass graves and perhaps, what is worse to Miller, "boredom."

But Castro is a mythic figure.

Have you ever noticed how leftist opposition to Communist dictators is always in the past tense. We find out from people like Miller that they this or that Communist dictator was a crashing bore only after such dictator has shuffled off to his reward. Until, then, we hear about how this or that "unusually sensitive" leader is a great Romantic figure.

The Da Vinci Code Again

Amy Welborn offers her insights into the epistemological significance of the Da Vinci Code. Namely, if everyone was reasonable and studious and open to the truth, there would be no concerns. But since everyone is not...

A case in point. Several nights ago, I was at a local evening spot with my partner having a drink with one of the waiters. A waitress came up and subject turned to her reading the Da Vinci Code. It turned out that everyone at the table, except me, had read the book. The general theme was something like "I know it's fiction, but do you think it's true." (To give my partner credit, he acknowledged that it was a page turner but he hadn't been able to finish the last 60 pages.) The waitress was a history major and I pointed out a few historical stupidities in the book.

The good news was that when I returned the next night, the waitress came up and told me that she had concluded that the book was silly. The characters, for example, were supposed to be intelligent people and versed in Da Vinci, but when confronted near the end of the book with supposedly unknown writing, they are completely mystified. The waitress allowed that she didn't consider herself to be a Da Vinci scholar but she recognized backwards writing. She got a mirror and, lo and behold, it was intelligible.

Reason Number 23456 as to why European Culture is taking one last circle around the toilet bowl of history.

According to Aramvirique it's the meticulous attention paid to Bananas.

Too easy. Too true. Too sad.

Via Mark Shea comes this essay on "Why I am a Democrat?" It reads as a parody, but is it? I like this observation:

I am a Democrat because I hold sacred freedom of the press, as well as freedom of the TV and freedom of the movie. Where I draw the line is freedom of the talk radio, and don't even get me started about that damn Internet business.

As with the DU homage to American troops below and the recent Bush is Hitler ad from MoveOn, it hardly seems that anyone needs to parody the left anymore.

Now, obviously, there are some sane and sensible libs out there who must be embarrassed by this deranged output, and for them a word of advice. Dude, take back your party. You need someone to play the William F. Buckley, Jr. role in sending the lunatics - for Reps it was the Birchers and the anti-semites - off to Kamchatka. Of course, that role was to have been played by the Democratic Leadership Council, but that thread apparently played out.

But doesn't it seem that the main thrust of the liberal project is hypocrisy. These are the people who puffed up sexual harassment and used it to abuse Republicans, but lost interest in that project when Bill Clinton engaged the clearest example of a powerful male using his power to objectify and trivialize females. Likewise, the libs have used "sensitivity training" to beat up on anyone who diverges from their preferred position by an inch.

Yet, we have this kind of nonsense.

But, hey, they love the troops.

Adrienne Barbeau and I were Schoolmates.

Yup, we both went to Lafayette Elementary on the corner of Blackstone and Princeton before they tore it down.

Of course, Adrienne went to Lafayette maybe ten or fifteen years before I got there.

And what a filmography? Who can forget Escape from New York or Swamp Thing?

I've just discovered Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death which gets surprisingly strong review for its parody of feminism and sheer camp quality.

Apparently, the insufferable Bill Maher has a role in the film which he'd rather everyone forget.

More People have been killed in the name of Godless Socialism than any other reason.

We here at Lex Communis are virulently anti-communist. There are days when we wish that the corrupt, moribund, dehumanizing, satanic, vile, filthy, murderous, barbaric, selfish, oppressive swamp of fetid, stinking, slimey, oozing, nauseous goo that was Communism hadn't imploded under its own perverse, irrational, enslaving weight just so we would have them to kick around.

Oddly, though, we meet very few people who think the same way. So many of the folk we meet view Communism as an interesting but essentially harmless enterprise, kind of like being a Congregationalist. That's one reason why it has been so nice to find out that there are people on the internet who are sane.

Along that line, please read this essay by Tacitus as a refresher on the evils of Communism.

Blogroll Addition.

OK, that's it. I'm going to have to add John and Belle have a blog to my "The Observatory" section. Belle is reading cheesy science fiction novels while she's recovering from the grip and John seems to be lamenting the demise of the perfectly understandable word "tetralogy" while - get this - offering Gene Wolfe's various tetralogies as providing a lamentably infrequent opportunity to use this functional word. (Did I ever mention that I met Gene Wolfe twenty some-odd years back at Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions bookstore when I was in law school? Actually, I met Ellison there at the same time. Throw in Robert Heinlein and it would have been exactly like being present at the Transfiguration.)

Nerdy, obsessed with words, an encyclopedic knowledge of cheesy science fiction... dammit, these are my kind of people.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all.

By now, I am sure that those of you on the East Coast are in full celebratory mode. Here on the West Coast, we're at the early evening lull before folks start heading out to parties.

I find myself in an unusual situation. For the first time since 1985, I am without the girlfriend/fiance/wife or our children. So, rather than inflict happy party-goers with my morose melancholia, I have decided to hole up with the midnight showing of Lord of the Rings. It should be entertaining and keep me from deep reflection on The Meaning of It All. Moreover, I should end up tomorrow at the gym without a hangover, which will immediately mean that I'm starting off the New Year better than many, many others.

It's been a good year for me. Around August I returned to a five/six day a week exercise regime after too many years of inactivity. I'm now benching over 200 pounds and running a 10 minute mile. Next year it will be more weight and an 8 minute mile. I am also using the 40 minute on the stationary bike to read the many books I've purchased and never found the time to read. I have also been a regular attender of our local small Communio group and formed friendships with truly wonderful people while living a life of the mind which one doesn't find in the workaday world.

Professionally, I end the year better than last year with the satisfaction of, inter alia, being able to secure to a hardworking 45 year old man with a young family and a bad heart an opportunity to provide for his family, and, likewise, to obtain for a fiftyish cancer survivor a way to maintain her health insurance while she recovers, and, in general, the satisfaction of enforcing those laws that give our fellow human beings a modicum of dignity in the workworld. Not a bad bit of ranch work for 2003.

I end the year with happy, healthy children and good friends both in the mundane world and in this virtual world. I thank the Lord of the Internet for the opportunity to take part in the conversation which modern technology has given our fortunate generation. I taken some positions here and elsewhere and sometimes I've been right and sometimes wrong, but, through it all, I've continued to learn and stay mentally alive. Thanks to everyone who participated in my project.

Again, Happy New Year and may all your dreams come true in 2004.

Theodicy.

Christopher at Ratzingerblog uses the earthquake in Iran as a point of departure to reflect on the deep mystery of human suffering caused by natural events in the world. It's an excellent essay and worth reading. Christopher ends with this:

Please pray for the souls of the 25,000 victims of the recent earthquake in the ancient city of Bam, Iran, and the "tens of thousands" of those left homeless. Material support for this and other disasters can be given to the International Response Fund of the American Red Cross.

It's the end of the year. I don't know about you, but if you're self-employed you're probably doing all of the last minute tax stuff. I just sent almost thirty grand to the taxing authorities to make sure that I'm doing my part in the righteous fight for freedom and social justice which is the proud teleological end of my good and true nation.

Nonetheless, an end of year donation to another worthy fighter in the crusade for good, which might also incidentally lessen said citizenship obligations, might be both a prudent and laudable thing to accomplish, say sometime before midnight tonight.

Christopher, thanks for the inspiration.

Just remember when you're pulling the lever in November....

...that this is how the people who support the Dems view the people who are defending your life from being obliterated by a suicidal Islamofascist.

But never forget, they support our troops.

They just think that our troops happen to be a bunch of jack-booted thugs.

Don't Cry for Me, Argenfresno.

Departing Fresno bloggerThe Accidental Jedi and the squeeze whose luring her away from the "pearl of California" visited Ith in Monterey. Said squeeze, Jay Solo, has pictures of the Jedi, Solo - oh, the light finally dawns. Jedi and Solo. Get it? Too cute - Ith and Nin.

I recognize the spot where Ith's picture was taken as near a spot where I got sunburned one vacation. Nothing particularly noteworthy there. As a redhead, I have more such landmarks than there are "George Washington slept here" signs in Virginia or "Bill Clinton slept here" signs slapped on the butts of Washington interns.

Whatever.

A Primer on Gnosticism.

A reader expressed uncertainty on the terms "Gnosticism" and "docetic" used below. I provided a response and have decided to post it here.

Gnosticism comes from the root "gnosis" which you will recognize in "prognosis" and "diagnosis" and means something like "knowledge." The Gnostics were a number of different groups representing a distinct religious attitude through history and across religions. Jews, Christians and Muslims all have had their Gnostics.

Gnosticism has enjoyed a recent rise in popularity among people who have absolutely no idea in what the idea means or implies. The Da Vinci Code is based on Gnostic premises as are all the "recently discovered" gospels like the Gospel of Thomas.

Gnosticism was supposedly based on "secret knowledge." In the Christian case the secret knowledge was that the world and all material things are evil because all of Creation was fabricated by the Evil God, but trapped inside each person - actually inside some people because some people are soulless per the Gnostics - was a little bit of divine essence which was trying to get back to the primordial Godhead. Gnostics disliked sex extremely because sex simply perpetuated evil, evil matter and trapped more bits of divine essence in some people. The way to salvation for Gnostics was to repudiate the material world, not eat things that were derived from sex, abstain from sex and be part of a sacrament of "consolation" from another "perfected" Gnostic.

Although modern proponents of Gnosticism like to laud it as being egalitarian and protofeminist - typically because Gnosticism chief opponent was the vile, evil Catholic Church - you should be able to see from my description a number of disfunctions which precluded it from gaining widespread acceptance. First, it was not egalitarian. It taught that some believers were infinitely better than others, while some didn't have "entrapped spirit-stuff" at all. Catholicism, which said everyone had a soul and was morally equal, was clearly the more liberating, egalitarian and progressive force in this area. (Cf. Paul's admonition that "There is neither jeew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."(Galatians 3:28.))

Likewise, the view that reality - Creation - was illusionary or evil having been created by an Evil God is antithetical to a scientific worldview. Similarly, the idea that sex was evil, although popularly ascribed to Catholicism, is a Gnostic innovation. Both points were rejected by Augustine who had obtained an inside view of Gnostic disfunctions.

I think that Gnosticism would have led to unmitigated anti-semitism. It was a belief of various Gnostic sects that the Creator of the World was the Evil God that had led to the entrapment of god-spirit in vile, foul matter. Alas, for the Jews (and orthodox Christians), they worshipped the Creator God. Once can easily imagine an alternative history where the Jews are defined as worshippers of an Evil God, and the fate of Jews in such a Gnostic Europe would not have been enviable.

Likewise, Stephen O'Shea's book, The Perfect Heresy, describes Gnosticism as "proto-feminist." This strikes me as optimistic editorialization. One thing women in orthodox history had going for them was that one woman - Mary - was the Mother of God. Women in our timeline, therefore, not only had their uses but were essential for salvation history.

The Gnostics would have denied that Mary was the Mother of God. Since God never inhabited the material world, Mary's contribution was entirely irrelevant. The Gnostic version of Christianity would have officially marginalized women more than was the case with orthodox Christianity, and notwithstanding O'Shea's snide aside, the contribution of women to Christian Europe was not insignificant. Can you say, for example, St. Joan of Arc or St. Theresa of Avila? (By the way, doesn't the role of women in European religion decline in Protestant Europe? In many ways, Protestantism exhibits Gnostic tendencies in its separation of the material world from the spiritual world and its doctrine that man is "totally depraved." But this is just a question.)

Further, there's the problem with sex again. One of the more absurd postulates of the Da Vinci Code is that Jesus had children with Mary Magdalene. I can't say this strongly enough - Gnostics despised sex and they viewed the idea of children with official disapproval. Sex was material. It trapped spirit-stuff in matter. Gnostics would no more have had Jesus coupling with Mary Magdalene to produce children, than they would have had him suffer and die on the Cross.

The worst feature of Gnosticism is that it is simon-pure codswallop, a word I ironically picked up from Stephen O'Shea's book on the Cathar Heresy. The best depiction of this disfunction can be found in Augustine's The Confessions, who finally gives up the mythico-nonsense of Gnosticism as simply being lame beyond credulity.

Docetism is a logical outgrowth of Gnosticism. If you postulate that the material world is evil and that the mission of Christ was to provide "secret knowledge," then what do you do about the Incarnation. The answer is that you deny the Incarnation and argue that Christ was never actually there - He was an illusion. He was only a spirit and, therefore, could never suffer and die. Certain of the Gnostic gospels posit a Christ who laughs at His executioners who foolishly think that they are crucifying Him.

Simply put, although there is a definite tendency to remake Gnosticism into a liberating force of progress, the simple fact is that if the Western World had gone Gnostic we would have been mired in an eternity of poverty, hated and ignorance.

OK. Now go and read the happy talk in the Da Vinci Code and dream of the blissful world that would have been if only the proto-feminist, socially progressive forces of Gnosticism had won out over the dreary old Catholic Church.

Jesus the Empowered Social Worker.

[Via Relapsed Catholic.] Yea, I know, more religion. But it is Christmas, after all, and twits everywhere are forcing us to listen to their embarrassing drivel.

Take Howard Dean...please. In any event, here is a fine deconstruction of Howard Dean's approach to religion and politics which is worth reading.

Dean is, of course, currently a Congregationalist. I found the following passage to be interesting and a good explaination of the devolution of the Congregationalists into irrelevance:

I was raised Congregationalist. I know Congregationalism. And Howard Dean, seen through my eyes, is no Congregationalist.

Dean’s own church, the First Congregational Church UCC of Burlington, Vermont, retains the name it began with in 1805 but was taken over years ago by the United Church of Christ (UCC).

For nearly half a century this 1957 “union” of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches has been democratically absorbing the property of local Congregational Churches.

It has done this by mobilizing local Social Gospel liberal activists in a community, persuading them to join the local Congregational Church, and then having these mostly new members demand a vote of the congregation now packed with outsiders over whether to merge with the United Church of Christ.

Such an attempted takeover failed in the Congregational church where I grew up, but not before leftist activists succeeded in voting to transfer the church’s summer camp property to their own breakaway entity. This was entirely legal. It took advantage of small Congregational churches’ democratic nature and vulnerability to vote-packing. Nationwide, this technique apparently has been used (to one degree or another) to gain control of literally thousands of Congregational churches and their property and to convert them into UCC member churches.

Actually, it appears that similar infiltrations of traditional congregations has been practiced in other denominations, sometimes with a purge of the more conservative elements as happened with the ECUSA a few years ago over the issue of ordination of women. And the use of denominational money for leftist agenda items seems to cut across denominational lines.

Online Poll on Gay Marriage.

The American Family Association is running an online poll on gay marriage. The pro-gay side appears to be flooding the poll, so go over there and add your two cents worth.

Some Post-Christmas Cheer.


Mark Steyn has some thoughts on Christmas jingles and how they fashioned the popular conception of Christmas. For example, I didn't realize that the now firmly entrenched "naughty and nice" list that created so much apprehension in the Widget (age 6) and the Wadget (age 5) the day before Christmas was completely unknown until Haven Gillespie wrote:

He's making a list/ Checking it twice/ He's gonna find out/ Who's naughty or nice/ Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.

On the other hand, that makes sense inasmuch as the Christmas we know - the family-friendly, children-oriented holiday - was unknown until the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Previously, Christmas was a kind of Christian Saturnalia, when decent folk were well advised to stay inside. The Puritans banned Christmas not out of a prudish hatred of people having a good time, but out of a reasonable fear of people "having a really good time," which could involve assault, robbery and rape.

On which point, I recommend Steven Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas, which details the evolution of our favorite holiday. It's quite readable and absolutely fascinating in demonstrating that "the past is a different country."

Update: On the other hand, if what Lane Core says is true, then the conventional wisdom which says that the date of Christmas was selected to rival pagan festivals is simply an urban legend.

I'll have to get my partners to translate.

I'm not entirely sure what this Country Store post about Howard Dean "rolling a big fatty" with Osama bin Laden is getting at, but it's sounds, like, "totally bitchin'."

Oh, and you - yes, I mean you - have to check out the John F. Kerry photo linked through this post.

Deep thinking, progessive Episcopalian Bishop again demonstrates allegiance to ancient, absurd worldview.

Washington DC Episcopalian Bishop John Bryson Chain's Christmas Sermon contained this thought:

Some would say that God does not exist, Jesus was a dreamer and that Christmas and Christ's birth and living presence among us has no real hold on the world to change it for the better... but I say it's already happening. And it is a miracle!

And what was God thinking... when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the Law to Moses?

And what was God thinking... when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the sacred Quran to the prophet Muhammad?

And what was God thinking... when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

Get it? Bishop Chain is ratifying the idea that God sent the Archangel Gabriel to dictate the Quan to Mohammed. Mohammed was, of course, the the seal of the prophets and the Quran respectfully describes Jesus Christ as a prophet - really good, perhaps, but inferior to Mohammed. This would seem to conflict with certain of the teachings of Bishop Chain's church.

To be charitable, Bishop Chain may have felt that he was engaged in the great work of Peace. Obviously, Bishop Chain was trying out a variant of the "why can't we all get along" sentiment so popular among progressives who don't feel much allegiance to the side that they are nominally aligned with. He probably felt that if a high ranked prelate equated the Annunciation with the delivery of the Quran to Mohammed, then zealot Muslems would recognize that the Crusades are over and lay down their belts of dynamite.

Besides, it really doesn't cost Bishop Chain anything. Bishop Chain's last sermon to his San Diego flock clearly expressed his belief that the Resurrection was a "nice story," the message of which was more important than the actual event. [Last year, my Communio group had riotously hilarious time of deconstructing the Bishop's Easter Sermon. It really was an unintentionally funny sermon. Windbag pomposity posing as "serious thinking" is always funny.] You can see reverberations of that message in the first observation quoted above, to wit, while some may say that "God does not exist" and "Jesus was a dreamer," Bishop Chain says that the world is changing for the better and it's a miracle. Note, though, that Bishop Chain remains completely silent on the question about God and Jesus that kicked off this passage. For him doctrine is a narrative which changes according to social needs; the real issue is whether some version of the Democratic social and foreign policy agenda are implemented.

The other interesting thing is that Bishop Chain's concession to Islam may not have been much of a concession for him. Bishop Chain is clearly a Gnostic. To him, the question of whether there was a real, living Jesus is of secondary importance to the "Jesus narrative." One variant of Gnositicism was Docetism which posited and illusionary, docetic Christ who never suffered on the Cross because he wasn't there in the first place. Interestingly, Muslims hold to a docetic view of the Crucifixion:

The Quranic teachings is very explicit when it said "The Jews said in boast, we killed the Messiah Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of God" then a quick caveat is added "But they killed him not, nor was he crucified; but it was made to appear so to them. And those who differ therein are full of doubts with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow. For of a surety they killed him not" "Nay, God raised him up unto himself". Quran: 4: 57-58.(emphasis added.)

So, ultimately, there might not be as great a difference between Bishop Chain's Christology and that of Islam.

My one question to my fellow Catholics - Anglican Catholics - is why do you continue to inflict this on yourselves? Apart from the bad, pernicious, diabolic nature of this theology, isn't this just plain embarrassing?

Oh, for the love of ..... sanity.

Check out this page from the Democratic Undeground on George Bush's complicity in the Iran earthquake. To give some DU members credit, they do tell the others to "take the tinfoil off."

More scandalous, and more serious, Moira Breen has been single-handedly chronicling a similar wacky-left effort to erect a politically correct religion into legal supremacy. If this perversion of science and the First Amendment goes unnoticed by the Republicans and Conservatives, then they deserve the title, "the stupid party."

The Day After.

Fantastic Christmas actually. Negotiated a SRO 4:00 PM Mass with the Widget, the Wadget and Boff. Returned home and wrapped presents until mid-night. The brother came over to help and we watched The Thirteenth Warrior and episodes of The Tick while wrapping a gazillion presents. Then, the Widget, the Wadget and Boff were up promptly at 5:30 AM and it was only yelled threats of bloody murder and reprisals from Santa Clause that let me sleep a bit more. The unwrapping of presents and the visiting of the folks were all fantastic.

On to other things. John of John and Belle have a blog has a very interesting discussion on the anti-Tolkienism of fantasy writer China Mieville. I have had Mieville's Perdido Street Station for over a month and except for a few desultory forays into the first pages, it has gone unread. (This happens occasionally. I will have no interest in a book sometimes for years and then, suddenly, rip through it in a matter of days.) I was surprised to find that Mieville is (a) a Marxist and (b) male. Perhaps those bits of information will be enough to jump start my interest in his book.

In any event, if you have an interest in the literary theory of fantasy, go check out John's essay.

Merry Feast of the Incarnation.

Christianity and history are, frankly, inseparable. From the beginning, orthodox Christianity - as distinct from its Gnostic competitors - has affirmed that God entered the world at a distinct time and place and in a distinct person with a distinct history and tradition. From the beginning, therefore, history has been important to orthodox Christianity because history actually happened. Further, events within history are important because they reflect a playing out of God's purpose within His creation, and since God's creation is good, reality is good and true and meaningful.

The orthodox Christian orientation toward truth contrasts dramatically with Gnosticism. Gnostics inherited the traditional pagan view that reality was an illusion or a warped deterioration from the Real. Accordingly, Gnostics denied the reality of the Incarnation on the completely rational view that an infinite unchanging Deity would hardly clothe Himself in decaying changing material substance. Gnostics, therefore, posited an illusionary Christ who had the mere appearance of reality. Playing out the logic of this assumption, Gnostics denied the Crucifixion. Their Docetic Christ never suffered on the Cross.

In fact, it is because of the Gnostic challenge that we have the four Gospels which we have. I recently asked my Mennonite partner, "what do the Gospels have in common?" He unhestitantly answered, "the Resurrection." I smugly pointed out that the shorter version of Mark does not have a Resurrection. Disturbingly, Mark ends with merely an empty tomb, but no Resurrection, at least until some later redactor added something like a Resurrection encounter. (To be fair to my partner, I have not a shred of doubt that he would have gotten the right answer on further reflection.)

In fact, what is common to all four of the Gospels is the Crucifixion. It was important for the early orthodox Christians to affirm that a living and real Jesus truly suffered and died prior to the Resurrection. That was the linchpin that required defending in the first two centuries of Christianity. Also, as I noted to the partner who referred to my Faith as "transitional paganism," the Gospels were selected by the Universal Church from all of the possible competing Gospels - the well-known existence of which forms the "shocking revelation" of the Da Vinci Code - to fit the Tradition. In this area, Tradition preceded Text.

That observation could have been made in Greek for the effect it had on my nondenominational Protestant partner. My further point had a similar lack of impact. That point was that the Da Vinci Code is a challenge only to nondenominational Protestants, and to people influenced by that view, for whom there is no way of distinguishing between the true Canon of Mark and John and the false canon of Thomas and Mary Magdalene. We believe the Gospel of John because it fits the tradition of an Incarnate Jesus and not vice versa.

Gnosticism is alive and well. Its principle exponents include John Shelby Spong and other active Episcopalian Bishops for whom Christian truths - the Resurrection, the Incarnation - is less important than the "narrative" by which early Christians expressed the "Easter experience." Whether Jesus was the Incarnated Lord is not important compared to the story telling genius of the Jewish people who were expressing a truth that could easily be different from the empirical truth of the observable world. For all their posturing as new and radical thinkers, these folks are peddling the same old, tired Gnosticism that was avante gard in 120 A.D.

All of this is by way of introducing the lyrics of a Christmas song I like. The song is "One Small Child" and although it is an example of McWhorter's thesis that modern music is interesting when performed and comparativiely boring in print, the images in the lyrics invite the listener to contemplate all of God's creation focusing in on a single event in Palestine two millenia ago when a small child was born, and, then, to see the unfolding of God's grace from that small - apparently insignificant - real event into all of history.

One Small Child

One small child in a land of a thousand
One small dream of a savior tonight
One small hand reaching out to the starlight
One small savior of love
One small savior of love

One king bringing His gold and His riches
One king ruling an army of might
One king kneeling with incense and candlelight
One king bringing us life
One king bringing us life

See the shepherds kneeling before Him
See the king's on bended knee
See the mother praising the Father
See His tiny eyelids fall

One small child in a land of a thousand
One small dream of a savior tonight
One small hand reaching out to the starlight
One small savior of life
One small savior of life

See the shepherds kneeling before Him
See the king's on bended knee
See the mother praising the Father
See His tiny eyelids fall
(repeat a lot)

See the shepherds
See the kings
See His mother
See His tiny eyelids fall

God loves His Creation, which includes every one of us. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. But before the Resurrection came the Incarnation when God entered history at a precise time and place, specifically a quiet, peaceful and otherwise unremarkable night in Palestine:

“Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

Luke 2:8-12.

Merry Christmas.

Saddam News.

Bill Cork links to a story claiming that Saddam's capture had nothing to do with good intelligence, but, rather, that Saddam was "shopped" to the Kurds by a vengeful tribe and then drugged and left by the Kurds for the Americans to find. Although Bill seems to credit the accuracy of this claim, it is in fact supported only by unnamed sources, including an unnamed former Iraqi intelligence officer. Until further evidence, this claim should be treated with skepticism, particularly in light of the many, many spurious claims that have been made about the American military over the last decades.

On the other hand, that would explain why Saddam came out of the "spider hole" disoriented and why he didn't put up a fight. And, also, why is this a black eye for Americans? Ultimately, locating Saddam was going to require that he be shopped to the Americans. Wasn't that the reason for the really large reward in the first place?

Earthquake Blogging.

Just after the earthquake the Baptist partner was ragging on blogging as a complete waste of time. This gave me an opportunity to pull up Ith's site, which within minutes of the quake had personal stories about the quake from the Coast and links to USGS sites on the earthquake. This allowed me to point out that CBS and Fox and the other mainstream news organizations which had to go through layers of editors wouldn't have comparable information up until the next day. Citizen Smash immediately set himself up as a command post for earthquake related blog posts. Then, later, I found out that Jockularocracy who was in a second floor office about three miles away didn't feel a thing. Jock also has a really nifty graphic of the quake from the USGS. The Boi from Troy also has an extensive list of earthquake blog posts. What's interesting from the post is the correlation between height and effect. Folks in high rise office buildings were feeling the quake down in SoCal, but Kurt didn't feel it in a second floor office in Fresno.

My point is that those of us with this hobby distribute far more interesting, personal and detailed information than civilians can get from the mainstream media. It may be a complete waste of time, but it has its uses. I also know that somewhere out there is a blogging geologist with a post that completely disembowels the quake and offers the best forecast of future quake events, and all this for free.

You can never complain about free ice cream.

Da Vinci Code Again.

My Mennonite partner wandered in to ask me about the historicity of the "Priory of Sion" and the details of Opus Dei. Obviously, he's reading the Da Vinci Code and despite my repeated warning that the "history" of the Da Vinci Code is specious, and despite the repeated acknowledgement the Da Vinci Code is "only fiction," it appears that the Da Vinci Code is spreading its tendrils of misinformation.

So, here is Sandra Meisel's thorough deconstruction of Dan Brown's farrago of deception. Likewise, this review by Aviad Kleinburg, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University seems fairly straightforward. As for Opus De, perhaps they are a truly evil Catholic conspiracy, but here is the homepage for Opus Dei and they don't seem so scary. Yes, they may have a really expensive office building in downtown New York - ooh, scary - and there is some indication in the popular press that some members of Opus Dei may engage in flagellation, which is weird in this day and age to say the least, but whether that claim is true or represents anything more than individual excess has not been shown and is not mentioned by the Opus Dei website.

But, really who cares about the facts? Like the movie Stigmata with its murdering Cardinal - a truly nauseating exercise in ignorance and bigotry - the whole appeal of the Da Vinci Code is based on reinforcing popular bigotry. Thus, even if there isn't a secretive organization of highly disciplined, highly organized Catholic religious zealots - once the Jesuits and now Opus Dei - we all know that such an organization should exist. For are we Americans not the heirs of the Reformation and is Reformation Sunday not the time for the majority of Americans to reflect every year on the dangers that the Papists and their coldly calculating subversive henchmen - once the Jesuits, but now maybe Opus Dei - represent to free and independent Protestants? It probably comes as a surprise for most Americans to realize that the Pilgrims were searching for religious liberty by fleeing from Protestant England and not Catholic Europe.

I found most disturbing the response to my observation that if a popular work purported to provide a fictional account of the truth behind the charge that Jews used the blood of Christian children to leaven Passover matzohs, it would hardly get the front desk of Borders. In contrast, both the local Borders and Barnes & Nobles feature Dan Brown's books at a table near the front door. The response to my observation from the other partner, a Baptist, was variously (a) don't be thin skinned, (b) Brown's book is fiction, (c) Catholicism is transitional paganism anyhow (and I infer that the logical inference from that observation is that some elements of Brown's book might be credible) and (d) even Christians - apparently true Christians and not "transitional pagans" - are unjustly savaged by Al Franken (so apparently slanders against RCs are inconsequential because God's Chosen People - i.e., White Folk from South of the Mason Dixon Line, aka Southern Baptists - are more sorely vexed).

All of which tends to prove my essential point that a strand of Brown's sales appeal is based upon unthinking bigotry. You simply can't make all of those points at the same time and remain coherent. Further, to paraphrase an observation William F. Buckley recently made concerning Ann Coulter, "mischief about the other guy can be fun." If the "transitional pagans" get their panties in a bunch about being described as founded upon a fraud and sustained by murder, who cares?, and, besides, it serves them right.

A truly fictional version of the Da Vinci Code is possible. In fact, Umberto Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum is such a book. I liked Foucalt's Pendulum, which was based on the protagonist's discovery that all of the occult conspiracy theories were true. But Eco wasn't pandering to bigotry - he didn't exploit minor features of other folk's faiths as a vehicle to smear their belief. He played out his fairly preposterous premise to a satisfying resolution.

In short, Eco simply played the "what-if" game of literature. Eco's book asks "what if all the occult conspiracies fantasized by paranoid conspiracy theorists actually existed?" This is a fair game to play in literature. It, however, stops being fair when the game is rigged and the premises of the "what if" question become vehicles for bigotry. I suppose that if I wrote a book asking "what if black people were intellectually suitable only for a condidtion of servitude?," I might fairly be described a racist. And if I wrote a book asking "what if Jews controlled financial institutions and extorted usurious interest from non-Jews?," I might fairly be described an anti-Semite. But Dan Brown writes a book asking "what if Catholics used their power to perpetrate a historical fraud and had an offficial Church organization committed to acts of murder in order to prevent the exposure of that fraud?," and he gets the center kiosk at Borders.

The Baptist partner also accused me of special pleading. He posited that I would not be as concerned if the target of Brown's writing involved the Mormon Church. Actually, I would be. I like to think that I would be outraged at the prospect of the Mormon Church being rerpresented as being involved in systematic murder. Whatever I think about the Mormon Church - or the Methodists or the Baptists - they are not murderers and depicting them as being the breeding ground of murderers would be an unjust slander of all Mormons - or Methodists or Baptists. On the other hand, do I believe that the Mormon Church is founded on exactly the same kind of deceptive history that Brown charges Catholicism - and incidentally, by historical extension, all of Christianity - with? Yes, I do. But the difference is that Mormonism is based on such a deception. Sorry if that is offensive, but my point is that there are in fact historical truths and deceptions.

Dan Brown's book is a form of the latter, which is about all one really needs to know about it.

Update: I'm so insightful, it's scary. Godspy has an excerpt from a U.S. News article on the Da Vinci Code:

US News pins The Da Vinci Code fraud on American-style self-delusion.
"Throughout their history, Americans have repeatedly recast their understanding and image of Jesus to suit their present needs... I knew that many of the things in Brown's book weren't true,’ [a reader] says. 'But I just wanted them to be.'" [US News]

Yup. What he said.

Earthquake!

Exciting little shaking in my fourth story office. I was in a meeting and thought I'd ignore it the first time. By the second set of shaking, I decided it might be a good idea to think about getting to the stairs. The shaking was over before we got there.

Who else felt the shaking?

Exhibit A in the "Catholic Catechesis Sucks File."

Mark Shea links to this study showing the percentage of belief in the Virgin Birth. Note that while 63% of Catholics believe in this core and vital element of doctrine, a rocking 75% of Protestants believe in this concept. Underscoring the bizarre smorgasbord of ideas which is American culture, the poll reveals a rock solid 6% support among Jewish respondents in the idea that Jesus was born of a virgin.

I'm wondering how the Budhist would scored on this question.

By the way, Two Cheers for John Rhys-Davis

I'm sure everyone else has forwarded actor John Rhys-Davis couragous - and common sense - observations supporting Western Civilization. If you've missed it, here's the comments via Armavirique. Note how Rhys-Davis observes that he's aware that he's "burying his career" by making these comments. Quite a commentary on where censorship can be found in our society.

That Jack Chick guy appears to have wigged out.

It's vital to make a decision before you die. Cthulu or Yog Sothoth?

Raw unadulterated Faith will do that to you.

[via Captain Spaulding who recently had a nifty encounter with Mrs. Robinson.]

Girls just wanna have fun.

As Darth Vader observed about Luke Skywalker, "Impressive." Ith has seen Return of the King three times in less than week. I haven't seen it even once as of yet because.... what's the word I'm looking for? ..... ah, yes, that's it....

I have a life.

Worse luck.

Hope to see it soon. Maybe I should just save it for New Years Eve. From a romantic strategy standpoint, that might be my best move since (a) any unattached female there would share common nerd related values with me and (b) I would be way more cool than the other pathetic loser males there who couldn't get a date for New Years either.

Happy Chanukah.

Paul Greenberg explains the meaning of Chanakah.

Chanukah isn't mentioned in the Old Testament. The story of battles and victories has been relegated to the Apocrypha. A mere military victory rates only a secondary place in the canon. It is not celebrated for its own sake but for what it reveals.

A violent confrontation is lifted out of history, and enters the realm of the sacred. A messy little guerrilla war in the dim past of a forgotten empire has become something else, something that partakes of the eternal. For only the spiritual victories last.

Read the column.

Posner on Democracy.

According to Justice Posner, Gay Marriage is a democratic issue and should be decided democratically. I like this passage, particularly in light of the way that the historians prostitued themselves in Lawrence:

Judges like to pretend that their decisions are dictated by "logic," or by an authoritative text or precedent, because it downplays the element of judicial discretion, which worries people. The pretense wears particularly thin in constitutional cases about marriage and sex, because the Constitution does not say anything about these subjects, and the framers of the Constitution, and of the major amendments, in particular the Fourteenth Amendment, which is the principal source of constitutional rights against the states, were not thinking about marriage, sex, homosexuality, or related topics when they drafted these founding documents. (Neither were the ratifiers.)

Hmm. Democracy. It just might work.

A Season of Peace in a Time of War.

Editing my Rotary Club's bulletin, I ran across this Christmas poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I liked it so much that I gave it a page of the bulletin.

Christmas Bells

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The Carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of Peace on earth, good-willl to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The fourth stanza suggests a Civil War provenance for the poem and the reminder that other people in other ages had the same faith that the "the Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail, With peace on earth and good will to men" as we have today.

Incidentally, this version of the poem comes from Santa's Net, which looks like it has some good Christmas-related resources.

Finally, if you have a favorite Christmas poem or site, leave me a link in the comments. I'm looking for a poem for next week's bulletin.

Wicked Men, Beware. You face The Tick.

Your humble blogger has been absent from his self appointed task of blogging on behalf of that harsh mistress we know as Justice because his alter ego has been tied up in that system of Truth and Justice known as a Trial in Madera Superior Court. My two hour trial estimate turned into four days as the self-represented defendants dragged the trial on and on to its inevitable conclusion. Thus is the sweet cream of justice ladled out by the hand of Truth. Thus is villainy's ying frustrated by the sweet yang of Justice.

Now, I have to go collect the fershlugginer judgment.

By the way, in case anyone has noticed the florid use of purple metaphors, I've acquired the DVD release to the short lived - 9 episodes - TV series The Tick, which chronicles the day to day life of a dim bulb superhero. As one review says, you either get it or you don't. I think it's funny and that Patrick Warburton was born to play The Tick. I can see, though, why it didn't make it on mainstream TV.

During trial , I ran into my buddy, the Madera District Attorney. Long story short, Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson are guilty, guilty guilty. I said it was a shame that venue in the Peterson case wasn't moved two counties south to Madera so that Greta von Sustern could freeze her tookus in front of the Madera court house, but that prospect wasn't as enticing to the DA as one might think. Although the idea of Greta and her New York production team schlepping around downtown Madera looking for a place to eat would be worth it. Madera makes Modesto look like Paris.

Mathew18:12

Talk about a counter-cultural rebel, Zell Miller, facing retirement, has moved from a pro-choice to a pro-life position. I think this is the first apostasy I've read about in that direction. I'm sure it will get the same attention that Goldwater's opposite change of position received.

As a cradle Catholic, I, of course, couldn't come up with a biblical alliteration if you spotted me an Evangelist and a two digit number. (I remember one night of Catholic "bible study" when not a one of us had thought to bring a bible.) But Mathew 18:12 seemed fitting:

[12] What is your opinion? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? [13] And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.

The Feast Day of St. John of the Cross.

Lane Core points out that the third Sunday in Advent is the feast day of St. John of the Cross. I recently discovered the beautiful Loreena McKennitt version of Long Dark Night of the Soul. Here's the lyrics:

Upon a darkened night
the flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright
I fled my house while all in quiet rest

Shrouded by the night
and by the secret star I quikly fled
The veil concealed my eyes
while all within lay quiet as the dead

Chorus:
Oh night though was my guide
oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover
to the beloved one
transforming each of them into the other

Upon that misty night
in secrecy, beyond such mortal sight
Without a guide or light
than that which burned so deeply in my heart

That fire t'was led me on
and shone more bright than of the midday sun
To where he waited still
it was a place where no one else could come

(Chorus)

Within my poinding heart
which kept itself entirely for him
He fell into his sleep
beneath the cedars all my love I gave
>From o'er the fortress walls
the wind would brush his hair against his brow
And with its smoothest hand
caressed my every sense it would allow

(Chorus)

I lost myself to him
and laid my face upon my lovers breast
And care and grief grew dim
as in the mornings mist became the light
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair
there they dimmed amongst the lilies fair
there they dimmed amongst the lilies fair

And here is an exegesis on the poem.

People who sound like their 'roids are flaring.

On the Saddam capture, go to Atrios and read the posts and the comments.

My word, it appears that the capture of Saddam is either an awful thing or not very important. Atrios wonders who the American people will "select as the enemy now." After all, it's Americans who do the selecting. Who chose to have Saddam mass murder his own people, support international terrorism and have international terrorists commit mass murder.

The comments are precious also. This comment is just too precious. The comment writer, who had previously been using the failure to capture Saddam as evidence of the failure of American policy, has just had an epiphany that the capture of Saddam really isn't important at all. And he's wondering why he's suffering from cognitive dissonance. The earnestness - the shallow, hypocritical earnestness - appears to be causing him some discomfort.

Let's give them what they want for Xmas - sour grapes for all.

Update: But credit where credit is due. Joe Biden exhibits patriotism.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but there really is a difference between Biden and Gephardt and Lieberman, who apparently understand that love of country implies wanting good for the sake of the country, and the newer version for whom patriotism is either a suspect concept. I am so tired of the banal cliche being put forth by the latter that they are true patriots because they criticize the government as an exercise of democratic freedom. I might give more credit to that bumper sticker concept if I ever saw them have to the courage to criticize their organizations, sacred cows, leaders and interest groups. These people think nothing of implying that America has fabricated an enemy out of Ba'athist Iraq, but I have never heard them criticize a race baiter like Al Sharpton. They cry that America oppresses minorities and "progressives" but sit silently by when abortion protesters are selectively weeded from protests because of their positions and when "hate speech" regulations are used against their ideological opponents.

There is a reason that our rights are rotting away from the inside, but, mercifully, it can't be laid at the feet of people like Biden and Gephardt.

A short summary of modern First Amendment jurisprudence

Via Best of the Web

National Review blogress Kathryn Lopez notes this passage from Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent, which sums matters up nicely:

Who could have imagined that the same Court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography, tobacco advertising, dissemination of illegally intercepted communications, and sexually explicit cable programming, would smile with favor upon a law that cut to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government.

This wonderfully encapsulates the perversity at the heart of contemporary American liberalism: "Free speech," in this view, protects everything except actual political speech. And of course we're all familiar with variants of this argument, such as: Criticizing anti-American speech is censorship, while censoring conservative speech is mere criticism. Or: It's un-American to criticize people who side with America's enemies; indeed, as "dissenters," they are the true patriots. It's mind-boggling that this sort of nonsense gets taken seriously.

And don't forget that in a world of the destruction of families, teens who commit mass murder, deadly sexually transmitted disease and a plague of teenage pregnancies unstaunched by sex education or the removal of taboos on prophylactics, the Boy Scouts are a "hate group" that needs to be marginalized by municipal governments.

It is perverse. The First Amendment wasn't established to protect porn or public subsidies for anti-religious bigotry. It was intended to protect our right to complain about our political rulers and to marshall support prior to elections to throw the rascals out. But we were told that we there was a "slippery slope." We were told that we had to avoid chilling free speech. We were told that we had to protect the pornographers in order to create a wide breathing area for our fragile First Amendment protections.

We've clearly been sold a bill of goods about the necessity of protecting porn and the slippery slope.

Update: Jonah Goldberg is dead right with this observation:

We used to protect core rights by protecting peripheral rights. We'd say, "Sure, you have the right to smear your naked body with chocolate in the middle of Main Street," because we figured, so long as that sort of asininity is protected, our most vital freedoms will surely be secured. But now our freedoms are rotting from the inside out. As Justice Scalia noted in his dissent, the court in the last four years alone has protected such "speech" as kiddy and cable porn, but it now finds direct criticism of politicians during an election to be deserving of regulation.

By the way, where the hell is this much-vaunted blogosphere? If three freshman congressmen from Wisconsin hinted that they wanted to regulate the use of umlauts on the internet in honor of Leif Ericson's birthday, bloggers would be on the steps of Congress up-ending cans of gasoline on themselves in protest at such an infringement on free speech. But here we have all three branches of the government severely restricting independent speech outside of the dinosaurs of Old Media and the relative silence — minus a few noble exceptions (The Volokh conspiracy, Instapundit) — is deafening.

And I say, what the hell is going on with our society? We passively allow the government to regulate speech about the government during the height of political campaigns because the feelings of career politicians might be hurt. We passively allow the government to canonize bullshit post-modernism as a science and not a murmur is heard.

Jonah's correct, our rights are rotting from the inside out.

One of the most respected blogs in the Southwest region of the Nation of Sagebrush.

[Via Chicago Boyz] Here is one of those projects that attempt to divide the United States into smaller "nations." This one divides the US into 10 mini-nations based on voting behavior. This one has some sophistication since it divides the Valley from the rest of California by allocating it to the nation of "Sagebrush which interestingly includes a portion of Maine. When you look at the map you see that Fresno would be one of the larger cities in this new nation, although I guess the logical capitol would be Salt Lake City or Carson City (or Bangor, just to keep things interesting.)

Might be worth considering if we can get rid of El Norte.

The Accidental Jedi Sells Out.

She's leaving the pearl of California for someplace colder. And for a man.

Hah, no one ever leaves Fresno.

She'll be back.

Good luck and best wishes.

Check this out.

This compare and contrast by Mark Shea is a useful device to puncture the "Bush is Hitler" balloon.

Nonetheless, to be clear, while Bush ain't Hitler and Dean ain't Hitler, the comparison - the animated hand gestures and the angry facial expressions - is a trifle chilling.

The Gore Endorsement.

Apart from his "the essential tenet of Judaism is that everyone must make up their own minds about moral truths" gaffe, I sort of like Joe Lieberman. If someone threatened to pull out my fingernails one by one until I voted for a Democrat, he's probably the one I'd vote for. But with the Al Gore endorsement of Howard Dean, poor Joe must figure he's belongs to a party of loons. Classless, shiftless loons, at that.

Here's a transcript of Lieberman's appearance on the Today show where the endorsement was discussed. Lieberman simultaneously does both a "good soldier" routine and nice bit of understated sarcasm. But his basic point is very sound, which goes as follows:

Lauer: Four years ago, Al Gore wanted you to be a heartbeat away from the presidency and now he endorses Howard Dean. What happened?

Lieberman: Well, you would have to ask Al because I’m the same person today that I was when he said those very kind things about me. And when he made the decision, as he told me, to put me in a position to be President in the case of an emergency in a judgment based on his conclusion that the American people would conclude that I was up to that task, so -

So, after an unprecedented attack which killed 3,000 civilians, the answer is to turn away from the (relatively) strong on defense Joe Lieberman to the weak on defense Howard Dean.

What would this guy have been like as President?

God bless the Electoral College system.

The Frontiers of Science- Lysenko in America.

Moira Breen has dug up the latest legislative pork being thrown at a newly casino-enriched class of potential political contributors. This time the political class is prostituting itself to a post-modern view of truth. Apparently, we can no longer refer to purported 10,000 year old "oral" traditions as "nice stories" unrelated to empirical truth. Nope, the political class has taken a leaf from the Communists and the "Socialist Science" that so benefitted Russian agriculture by creating the concept of "Native Science" which is to be given equal weight to "real science." Here's the definition of "Native Science:"

(4) NATIVE SCIENCE- The term `Native science'--

(A) means the oral knowledge of Native Americans gained throughout history by observation and experience;

(B) embodies traditional tribal lifestyles and values;

(C) is based on the fundamental belief of the sanctity of all life;

(D) is guided by principles that include interdependency, reciprocity, and the significance of place;

(E) is a living, spiritual knowledge of the relationships between the land, natural resources, and the environment; and

(F) is transferred from one generation to the next often through oral tradition and practice.

This is, of course, sheer nonsense.

Sheer racist nonsense at that. Ascribing dark and mysterious powers to the heathen has been a standard of racism for centuries -

O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to judgment Day,
Be gentle when 'the heathen' pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!

There is something implicitly racist in the notion that the gentle, interdependent, spiritual natives were able to keep complex historical narratives going back 10,000 years when my forebears historical reckoning going back only one hundred years is that we come from some place in Northern Ireland. Of course, as Westerners we don't have that keen "living, spiritual knowledge of the relationship between the land, natural resources and the environment," having instead to make do with science, history and writing.

What's equally amazing is the utter, dead silence we hear on this subject. Outside of Moira, I have yet to see any real discussion of this subject in the media. And, yet, the idea of Congress legislating the standards of "science" - science that is a complete sell-out to the ideology of post-modernism and diversity at that - may be more threatening to society than the Patriot Act.

A generation of Soviet geneticists - the ones who lived, that is - could verify that point.

What was this skirt smoking?

Sorry - truly sorry - for the patriarchal, neo-sexist headline, but that was my gut reaction - or, if you prefer, authentic emotional response - to the long disquisition provided by Jane Fonda that Lane Core appropriately entitles "V is for Vacuous." It's not entirely clear what Jane is murbling about, but she does offer some unintentionally humorous insights.

Some samples:

.... It's possible that the extreme, neo-conservative version of Patriarchy which makes up our current Executive branch will over-play its hand and cause the house of cards to collapse. We know that this new "preventive war" doctrine will put us on a permanent war footing. We know there can't be guns and butter, right? We learned that with Vietnam.

Having gone through the "radical Jane" phase and the "aerobics Jane" phase and the "religious Jane" phase, Jane appears to be trying on a new role - the "bitter man-hating Jane" phase. Also, note the reference to Viet Nam. For Jane, it's always 1968 in America and "good it was to be alive in those days, but bliss to be young."

We need to really understand the depth and breadth of what a shift to a new, feminine paradigm would mean, how fundamentally central it is to every single other thing in the world. We win, everything wins, including boys, men, and the earth. We have to really understand this and be able to make it concrete for others so they will be able to see what Feminism reall is and see themselves in it.

Groovy, man. Er, woman. Er, woperson.

And, by the way, while we are empowering our inner "V," what will the Islamoterrorist be doing? Shifting their paradigms and grooving to the fundamental centrality of the female principle? Or will they be riding their winged pigs into decadent Western symbols of oppression?

That's why V-Day, The White House Project and their many allies are partnering to hold a national women's convention somewhere in the heartland, next June of 2004.

Sounds good. But what's "V-Day." Valentine's Day? Victory Day was my initial guess, which may show how cemented in phalocentric imaging my paradigm is.

But Jane provides a hint:

Its purpose will be to inspire and mobilize women and vagina-friendly men around the 2004 elections and to build a new movement that will coalesce our energies and forces around a politic of caring.

"Vagina-friendly men." Jane is perhaps referring to "heterosexual men?" Based on my purely unscientific observations, I have yet to meet any "vagina-unfriendly men." Many of the men I know have expressed their "vagina friendliness" often and with great poetry, usually when they are drunk. Why, there's even an entire body of film and literature devoted to the subject.

This convention should just rock if being "vagina friendly" is the criteria. Who knew that being politically progressive was simply a way of scoring?

Jane concludes:

This movement will be a volcano that will erupt in a flow of soft, hot, empathic, breathing, authentic, vagina-friendly, relational lava that will encircle patriarchy and smother it. We will be the flood and we'll be Noah's arc. "V" for Vagina, for vote, for victory.

"A volcano that will erupt in a flow of soft, hot, empathic, breathing authentic, vagina-fiendly, relational lava that will encircle.....?" Is there a message here that I'm missing, and am I supposed to be getting as sweaty as I'm getting? Well, two can play that game and I'm reminded of the late John Belushi movie, The Great Divide, where Belushi's character report on his Rocky Mountain adventure goes something like, "The majestic mountains thrusting upward, ever upward, penetrating the heavens, until a climax of energy spills...."

"V" may be for "vagina, victory and vote," but it can also stand for "vapid, vacant, vacuous and village-idiot."

From the "Being Gay is Genetic and I say so three times so it must be true" File

Relapsed Catholic has a side of the gay is gay story that you won't get in the popular press, the other side being the "GUG" (gay until graduation) approach to sexuality.

I am keenly aware that I may be castigated as a vicious homophobic reactionary for posting this kind of thing. The fact, though, is that I am a good old fashioned John Locke-style, tabula rasa-believing liberal who believes that a core belief of our democratic impulse is the idea that people can escape their assigned social station. If gays are genetically predetermined to be gay, then what about criminals? Or slow learners? Or Communists or Nazis? Does intelligence have a racial basis?

The idea is simply reprehensible and unattractive. And, pace Thomas Kuhn, attractiveness is a hall-mark of a scientific theory's truth.

The other point is that sexual identity is simply too fluid to have a genetic basis. Were the Thebans who spawned the Sacred Bands producing more homosexuals because of some aspect of their chromosomes? Were the Zulus who practiced an institutionalized form of ebophilia? Why are there approximately three times as many male homosexuals as females? Is homosexuality sex linked? Why do more white recruits obtain discharges from the military for homosexual orientation than minorities? Is homosexuality linked to a "racial" chromosome? If it is, it's the only "racial" marker that liberals would ever dream of recognizing.

No, to any person looking that the evidence objectively - and as a Lockean, I'm not - the evidence for a genetically determined basis for homosexual behavior seems extremely weak.

Bizarre? - This is actually something worthwhile on which I reflect routinely.

In what was obviously a politically motivated cheap shot, the British Plain English Campaign gave American Secretary of Defense a "Foot in Mouth award for what the BBC described as a comments "which left observers baffled."

The comment went as follows:

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.

Baffled? If that common-sense observation left a bunch of reporters baffled, the bewilderment speaks volumes about the intellectual acumen of reporters and not about Rumsfield's command of the language.

His point is obvious and true. I know as a trial attorney that there are things I know, what I like to call the "ireducible facts." I plan my analysis around the "irreducible facts." I also know there are things I don't know. Concerning such things, I have to prepare models of analysis and contingency plans for the development of such facts during the actual trial.

What keeps me awake at night, however, are the things I have completely overlooked - Rumsfield's "unknowable unknowns." I don't know what they are, but based on scores of trials I certainly know that they are always there. There is always at least one of these in every trial. The fear that I feel in the pit of my stomach when I stand up to advise the judge that my client is ready to proceed is the fear that my opponent will spring such an "unknown unknowns" on me.

As one develops experience, one limits the universe of this fear. One also learns that the inevitable surprise is usually quite trivial and that a mastery of the facts of the case allows the surprise to become a part of one's theme of the case.

But the fear never goes away.

I kind of like Rumsfield's observation. The fact that anyone would be "bewildered" or "baffled" by the comment simply means that such people have never inhabited the fluid dynamic world of combat - be it military or litigation - where human minds are pitted against each other with the goal of exploiting every possible flaw that the other side makes.

But that's alright. Those people can always write for the BBC.

Back to the Future.

Paul Cella links to Czek President Vaclav Klaus' statement, to wit:

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Europeans are living in a “dream world” of welfare and long vacations and have yet to realize “they are not moving toward some sort of nirvana.” [. . .]

The Czech president remains convinced that “you cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state.”

Kind of reminds one of 1848, when nationalism and liberalism two sides of one coin.