Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Are the Elections Decided by Chance?
That's a question being considered by Real Clear Politics: what if elections are governed mostly by chance? My question is whether this is a comforting or a discomforting thought. I may not be the resident pessimist here, but I'm no Pollyanna, either. I also don't take much cheer from reports that the Latino vote won't be swinging Texas in the next twenty years. It will be a sad day when Texas goes blue, and unless some other big states (California, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and/or Florida) become reliably red it will be the final death knoll of the Republican Party. A lot can happen in twenty four years, but most of the signs of the times point to more decadence and slouching towards a new Sodom, or a new Babylon, or even a new old Rome, becoming a civilization (and a culture) in decline; and this is not merely a political (or even a political-economic) observation. Our resident pessimist is a hopeful man, and I try to share that hope, but hope is not for things in this world.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Brainwashing?
A N.I.C.E. neurologist from Oxford's school of hideous strength has proposed treating religious fundamentalism as a mental disorder.
The real question is when we'll find a way to cure people of the brainwashing they receive first in the public school and then (more thoroughly) in the universities.
She told The Times of London: "One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Someone who has for example become radicalized to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance."What she doesn't say, because this will only come later, is that this will then be turned from "child-beaters" and "terrorists" to simple Christians; as in, "those homosexual-hating bigots who refuse to accept gay marriage" and "those misogynistic chauvinists who refuse to support abortion and contraception." Eventually, "free will" becomes the enemy of the servile state, and while this lady does not outright deny the existence of free will, I suspect that she (and much of the rest of her field) has embraced a materialist's conception of man in which there is nor room for will. Right now, it's the child-abusers (the definition will be loosened eventually, when the time is ripe) and the Jihadists (eventually to include anybody who does not swear complete obeisance to Ceaser and his holy academics).
Taylor admits that the scope of what could end up being labelled "fundamentalist" is expansive. She continued: "I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults. I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness. In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm."
The real question is when we'll find a way to cure people of the brainwashing they receive first in the public school and then (more thoroughly) in the universities.
Quick Links: On Bubbles and Bubble-Heads
You'd have to be in a pretty far left bubble to believe the Daily Kos' claim that the media is not liberal. Of course, it is the Daily Kos
we're talking about here, but still. It's not just a matter of what
stories the media does and does not report that shows their bias
(although that is a part of it), but also of the slant they give to the
things they do report. As David Warren noted in his relatively recent column for The Catholic Thing,
that slant is becoming the story, in that where once we could infer the
news from the stories reported by reading between the lines, there is
no longer sufficient content in most "new stories" to do so. They
function as pure propaganda, and it's mostly propaganda for the left.
Speaking of bubbles, a certain Slate writer (Amanda Marcotte, last seen making some rather arrogant--and frankly stupid--claims about pro-life men) has an article which is worthy of Screwtape's machinations. In it we find an argument as to why parents should condone their teens' shacking up in their own bedrooms. The reason I say it's worthy of Screwtape is because it poses a dilemma between pushing children into a hook-up culture through "sneaking around" and simply outright condoning their fornication in the context of providing them a place (their own bedroom) to fornicate safely with their current boy-friend or girlfriend. Does this latter approach teach monogamy? Yes, if one counts serial monogamy, and assuming that the teens in question don't decide to have a menage-a-trois. I smell a false dichotomy, but that would be par for the course for Slate and its ilk.
Speaking of bubbles, a certain Slate writer (Amanda Marcotte, last seen making some rather arrogant--and frankly stupid--claims about pro-life men) has an article which is worthy of Screwtape's machinations. In it we find an argument as to why parents should condone their teens' shacking up in their own bedrooms. The reason I say it's worthy of Screwtape is because it poses a dilemma between pushing children into a hook-up culture through "sneaking around" and simply outright condoning their fornication in the context of providing them a place (their own bedroom) to fornicate safely with their current boy-friend or girlfriend. Does this latter approach teach monogamy? Yes, if one counts serial monogamy, and assuming that the teens in question don't decide to have a menage-a-trois. I smell a false dichotomy, but that would be par for the course for Slate and its ilk.
Quote of the Day: Chesterton on Nietzcshe and Nihilists
I have been re-reading Chesterton's story, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. I had just read the part in which a detective and an actor has infiltrated the anarchist council by playing the part of a nihilist and is telling his part of the story (spoiler alert for those who haven't read it):
I'm not going to turn this into a Nietzsche hate-fest post. I still don't like Nietzsche, and (after having spent a little more time with his writings) haven't found much there to convince me of his greatness as a thinker [1]. Actually, I've only heard/seen three people whom I respect really defend him: two friends who sort of share a name, and one well-respected Thomistic philosopher. The rest have said some nice things about him at times, but have largely said that he has done more harm than good (and a few have had nothing positive to say about him at all). I haven't read anything of his which convinces me otherwise, though I still haven't read enough to say that I am a Nietzsche expert, nor enough for a proper synthesis of his thought.
Suffice it to say that Chesterton's description of Professor de Worms is in fact his caricature of Nietzsche, the man who would not soften his heart and thus suffered a soften head (as Chesterton notes in Orthodoxy). But it is even better than a caricature of Nietzsche, whom a few good thinkers have admired and still more respected: it is a reflection of the many people who wanted to imitate Nietzsche's Nihilism without tempering it with Nietzsche's pessimism, or really his utter despair.
Nietzsche may be received by many today as the prophet of pessimism, or the doctor of despair. On the other hand, de Koninck has argued that Nietzsche did not quite go far enough: he wanted it all, but did not know what it all meant. And thus all that he wanted fell short of everything, just as the superman ultimately fell short of the Son of Man. Many of Nietzsche latter-day followers in turn fall short of his own desires: where he wanted it all yet despaired of getting it all, they start by wanting nothing and then end in despair of getting even that.
Nietzsche almost certainly knew that he would himself fall well short of being the superman--hence his despair and eventual madness. But Nietzsche might be credited for this foresight, since some of his other imitators failed to have this realization. The scholars say that Nietzsche would not have been a Nazi, but there were more than a few Nazis who would style themselves Nietzscheans: they would at the least co-opt some of his ideas for the superman and corrupt them to be a super-race. But the Nazis did not despair of finding their supermen, but rather embraced the idea as a sort of cult, employing every means to obtain that end: from eugenics to executions to "educational" propaganda. For all their optimism in the overman, the Nazis ultimately only succeeded in creating several under-races, in particular the Jews.
It is entirely possible--and here I can only speculate--that Nietzsche realized only too late that the real superman is the saint. Neither Nietsche's superman nor the church's saints can in the end make themselves: though it seems to me that Nietzsche's superman must make himself, whereas the saint must be conscience that it is God Who makes men and transforms them from sinner to saint. Perhaps Nietzsche knew this, and perhaps this is why he ultimately sank further into the madness of despair. In rejecting God he not only lost grace, and truth, and goodness: he also lost his only chance to become a real superman by becoming a saint.
---Footnotes---
[1] This is not to say that I have found nothing at all. I largely disagree with him, but he has a few interesting insights along the way, and (equally as important) a few other insights which others have inferred from him. Also, his attempts at blasphemy make the the modern God-haters pale in comparison. There are also a few places where he seems to go wrong more by way of premise that by conclusion, though of course a bad premise will likely as not result in a wrong conclusion. Thus, he shows us what the world might look like without God and without hope.
"I am in profession an actor, and my name is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian and blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, and sometimes the riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the political refugee. In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great German Nihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did not gather much about him apart from his appearance, which was very disgusting, and which I studied carefully. I understood that he had proved that the destructive principle in the universe is God; hence he insisted on the need for a furious and incessant energy, rending all things in pieces. Energy, he said, was the All. He was lame, short-sighted, and partially paralytic."
I'm not going to turn this into a Nietzsche hate-fest post. I still don't like Nietzsche, and (after having spent a little more time with his writings) haven't found much there to convince me of his greatness as a thinker [1]. Actually, I've only heard/seen three people whom I respect really defend him: two friends who sort of share a name, and one well-respected Thomistic philosopher. The rest have said some nice things about him at times, but have largely said that he has done more harm than good (and a few have had nothing positive to say about him at all). I haven't read anything of his which convinces me otherwise, though I still haven't read enough to say that I am a Nietzsche expert, nor enough for a proper synthesis of his thought.
Suffice it to say that Chesterton's description of Professor de Worms is in fact his caricature of Nietzsche, the man who would not soften his heart and thus suffered a soften head (as Chesterton notes in Orthodoxy). But it is even better than a caricature of Nietzsche, whom a few good thinkers have admired and still more respected: it is a reflection of the many people who wanted to imitate Nietzsche's Nihilism without tempering it with Nietzsche's pessimism, or really his utter despair.
Nietzsche may be received by many today as the prophet of pessimism, or the doctor of despair. On the other hand, de Koninck has argued that Nietzsche did not quite go far enough: he wanted it all, but did not know what it all meant. And thus all that he wanted fell short of everything, just as the superman ultimately fell short of the Son of Man. Many of Nietzsche latter-day followers in turn fall short of his own desires: where he wanted it all yet despaired of getting it all, they start by wanting nothing and then end in despair of getting even that.
Nietzsche almost certainly knew that he would himself fall well short of being the superman--hence his despair and eventual madness. But Nietzsche might be credited for this foresight, since some of his other imitators failed to have this realization. The scholars say that Nietzsche would not have been a Nazi, but there were more than a few Nazis who would style themselves Nietzscheans: they would at the least co-opt some of his ideas for the superman and corrupt them to be a super-race. But the Nazis did not despair of finding their supermen, but rather embraced the idea as a sort of cult, employing every means to obtain that end: from eugenics to executions to "educational" propaganda. For all their optimism in the overman, the Nazis ultimately only succeeded in creating several under-races, in particular the Jews.
It is entirely possible--and here I can only speculate--that Nietzsche realized only too late that the real superman is the saint. Neither Nietsche's superman nor the church's saints can in the end make themselves: though it seems to me that Nietzsche's superman must make himself, whereas the saint must be conscience that it is God Who makes men and transforms them from sinner to saint. Perhaps Nietzsche knew this, and perhaps this is why he ultimately sank further into the madness of despair. In rejecting God he not only lost grace, and truth, and goodness: he also lost his only chance to become a real superman by becoming a saint.
---Footnotes---
[1] This is not to say that I have found nothing at all. I largely disagree with him, but he has a few interesting insights along the way, and (equally as important) a few other insights which others have inferred from him. Also, his attempts at blasphemy make the the modern God-haters pale in comparison. There are also a few places where he seems to go wrong more by way of premise that by conclusion, though of course a bad premise will likely as not result in a wrong conclusion. Thus, he shows us what the world might look like without God and without hope.
Quick Link: This Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Death threats will eventually escalate into actual violence as the homosexualist agenda grows in power. It will become the tyranny of the masses against the minority, and it will be done under the ironic name of "tolerance."
Saturday, August 10, 2013
When Your Worldview Is a Lie
When your whole worldview is a lie, you have to work to suppress the truth. Sometimes you hit rock bottom, at which point you might or might not convert. Other times, you find that Chesterton's adage is true: man can keep on a sort of level of good, but he cannot keep on a level of evil, because that road just goes down and down.
Vocations and Sanctity
As a follow-up to the post the other day about the possibility of Chesterton's being canonized, I should say this. Every person is called to a particular vocation (or set of vocations), and discerning that vocation is the primary job of every person until he knows what his vocation is. Thus, dating is a part of the discernment process for the vocation of marriage (which includes also family life as a mother or father), high school and college is a part of the discernment for vocations later in life (trade school and graduate or professional school ought to imply having already more-or-less discerned the vocation in question).
But this need to discern a vocation also implies that every true vocation [1] is a service to God and/or His Church. To quote from Saint Paul,
Which is to say that there are plenty of lay vocations which fit into the life of the Church, so long as they are performed out of love for both God and Man.
If every true vocation is really necessary for the Church, then that means that every person who enters his vocation and does a good job of it for the glory of God and for the aide of the Church and community is being sanctified through his vocation (by God's grace, of course). Every person who enters a vocation which is his true calling is in effect replying to God's will for his life, so he is also making a sort of prayer of his occupations. He is also therefore receptive of God's grace.
If the Church really does need all vocations, then all vocations come with the possibility of sanctity, provided they are done for God's glory. This means that there must be grace available, not only to priests and religious--the "Fathers" and "Mothers" in the Church--but also to "ordinary" lay mothers and fathers, not to mention to a host of other true callings. That also would imply that people in any of these vocations are called to be saints, not simply by giving up these vocations, but by working to be a saint within everyday life. Thus, for example, in the case of Chesterton, his vocation was to be a husband, a journalist, and a "secular" theologian and "popular" philosopher. In his day as in ours, the Church needed all of these things, and Chesterton embraced these vocations as his own.
That the way in which sanctity is displayed while following these particular callings is different from the way in which a Mother Teresa or a Francis of Assisi made manifest their own sanctity does not take anything away from either Chesterton's own holiness, nor from the Church's own treasury of sanctity. That his life gave testimony in a different way from St Dominic's or Saint Augustine's or Saint Vincent De Paul's or Saint Therese of Lisiux'z does not in the least diminish the witness of any of these saints, but rather complements each and all of them, so that all these different types can bear testimony in his own unique way.
To use an analogy (if one which is a bit cliche), each of these different saints had a different way of giving witness to their faith in, to their hope for, to their love of God, much as a group of blind men might describe an elephant by touch. We are, after all, all of us blind to some extent, seeing at best through a glass darkly (see 1 Corinthians 13:12). That the blind men each describes the elephant differently does not mean they are seeing a different elephant; rather, the elephant's description should be a synthesis of the men's descriptions, though even this will (of course) fall a bit short. The same is true of holiness and sanctity, of the virtues (especially faith, hope, and love), and ultimately of God Himself: the best description we can have comes from a synthesis of the lives of the saints, with a great deal of assistance from revelation (even the blind men working together can't ascertain the elephant's color).
To throw away the blind man's description of the elephant's tail because it does not match the descriptions of the other blind men would be to lose real knowledge about the elephant: the picture would be less complete. Thus, to throw away Chesterton's witness as a saint merely because his life was not the same as a so-called "conventional saint's" is to throw away a little bit of the mystery of holiness [2], to lose a little information about sanctity and service to the Lord. Indeed, it would be to throw away a little bit of genuine knowledge about God. How tragic that would be.
---Footnotes---
[1] I can think of a handful of "false vocations," by which I mean occupations which are not needed by God or the Church: but every one of these vocations involves some form of sin as the primary occupation. Thus, pornographers, prostitutes, abortionists, terrorists, executioners, and other jobs whose purpose is to destroy public morality and/or freedom are false vocations: they do not help the person who chooses these paths to become holy, and put the person against both God and His Church. That is not to say that such people can't find forgiveness or become holy, but a part of this is to leave the sinful occupation behind. Another way of saying this, I suppose, is that no occupations which is sinful by its very nature is a person's true vocation, so a person who chooses such a way of life is therefore also acting against God's will, and therefore rejecting (some or all of) the grace which would otherwise have been made available to that person.
[2] Again, this general argument can't necessarily be stretched limitlessly. There are a great many people who are not saints, and whose lives tell us little if anything which is true about God or the Faith. That is why there is a long process in canonization, including the necessity for two confirmed miracles attributed to the saint in question. Moreover, not every aspect of even a saint's life is necessarily holy (the saints are, after all, sinners too, and fallible to boot). Thus, for example, the canonization of Saint Francis does not mean by necessity that we all should wear brown sack-cloth robes everywhere we go.
But this need to discern a vocation also implies that every true vocation [1] is a service to God and/or His Church. To quote from Saint Paul,
"But all these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink. For the body also is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were the eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God hath set the members every one of them in the body as it hath pleased him. And if they all were one member, where would be the body? But now there are many members indeed, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand: I need not thy help; nor again the head to the feet: I have no need of you. Yea, much more those that seem to be the more feeble members of the body, are more necessary. And such as we think to be the less honourable members of the body, about these we put more abundant honour; and those that are our uncomely parts, have more abundant comeliness. But our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, giving to that which wanted the more abundant honour, That there might be no schism in the body; but the members might be mutually careful one for another" (1 Corinthians 12:11-25).That is to say, there are many gifts and talents, and this is because there are many different vocations among the Church. Not everyone is called to be a priest, or a monk, or a nun. And while those may seem to the positions of honor in the Church, the laity are every bit as important to the life of the Church. To quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
"By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will. . . . It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and maybe to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer" and ""Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being" (CCC 898 and 2392).
Which is to say that there are plenty of lay vocations which fit into the life of the Church, so long as they are performed out of love for both God and Man.
If every true vocation is really necessary for the Church, then that means that every person who enters his vocation and does a good job of it for the glory of God and for the aide of the Church and community is being sanctified through his vocation (by God's grace, of course). Every person who enters a vocation which is his true calling is in effect replying to God's will for his life, so he is also making a sort of prayer of his occupations. He is also therefore receptive of God's grace.
If the Church really does need all vocations, then all vocations come with the possibility of sanctity, provided they are done for God's glory. This means that there must be grace available, not only to priests and religious--the "Fathers" and "Mothers" in the Church--but also to "ordinary" lay mothers and fathers, not to mention to a host of other true callings. That also would imply that people in any of these vocations are called to be saints, not simply by giving up these vocations, but by working to be a saint within everyday life. Thus, for example, in the case of Chesterton, his vocation was to be a husband, a journalist, and a "secular" theologian and "popular" philosopher. In his day as in ours, the Church needed all of these things, and Chesterton embraced these vocations as his own.
That the way in which sanctity is displayed while following these particular callings is different from the way in which a Mother Teresa or a Francis of Assisi made manifest their own sanctity does not take anything away from either Chesterton's own holiness, nor from the Church's own treasury of sanctity. That his life gave testimony in a different way from St Dominic's or Saint Augustine's or Saint Vincent De Paul's or Saint Therese of Lisiux'z does not in the least diminish the witness of any of these saints, but rather complements each and all of them, so that all these different types can bear testimony in his own unique way.
To use an analogy (if one which is a bit cliche), each of these different saints had a different way of giving witness to their faith in, to their hope for, to their love of God, much as a group of blind men might describe an elephant by touch. We are, after all, all of us blind to some extent, seeing at best through a glass darkly (see 1 Corinthians 13:12). That the blind men each describes the elephant differently does not mean they are seeing a different elephant; rather, the elephant's description should be a synthesis of the men's descriptions, though even this will (of course) fall a bit short. The same is true of holiness and sanctity, of the virtues (especially faith, hope, and love), and ultimately of God Himself: the best description we can have comes from a synthesis of the lives of the saints, with a great deal of assistance from revelation (even the blind men working together can't ascertain the elephant's color).
To throw away the blind man's description of the elephant's tail because it does not match the descriptions of the other blind men would be to lose real knowledge about the elephant: the picture would be less complete. Thus, to throw away Chesterton's witness as a saint merely because his life was not the same as a so-called "conventional saint's" is to throw away a little bit of the mystery of holiness [2], to lose a little information about sanctity and service to the Lord. Indeed, it would be to throw away a little bit of genuine knowledge about God. How tragic that would be.
---Footnotes---
[1] I can think of a handful of "false vocations," by which I mean occupations which are not needed by God or the Church: but every one of these vocations involves some form of sin as the primary occupation. Thus, pornographers, prostitutes, abortionists, terrorists, executioners, and other jobs whose purpose is to destroy public morality and/or freedom are false vocations: they do not help the person who chooses these paths to become holy, and put the person against both God and His Church. That is not to say that such people can't find forgiveness or become holy, but a part of this is to leave the sinful occupation behind. Another way of saying this, I suppose, is that no occupations which is sinful by its very nature is a person's true vocation, so a person who chooses such a way of life is therefore also acting against God's will, and therefore rejecting (some or all of) the grace which would otherwise have been made available to that person.
[2] Again, this general argument can't necessarily be stretched limitlessly. There are a great many people who are not saints, and whose lives tell us little if anything which is true about God or the Faith. That is why there is a long process in canonization, including the necessity for two confirmed miracles attributed to the saint in question. Moreover, not every aspect of even a saint's life is necessarily holy (the saints are, after all, sinners too, and fallible to boot). Thus, for example, the canonization of Saint Francis does not mean by necessity that we all should wear brown sack-cloth robes everywhere we go.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Dmitry Agarkov: Brilliant
It's not often that somebody is able to pull one over on the banks and credit card companies by getting them to sign something that they haven't read--but Dmitry Agarkov has apparently managed it:
I've always considered it unfair that the people looking to buy into the services aren't gerneally allowed any real say into the terms of the contract. For them, it's either sign, or don't sing. But when every providers of the services essentially offers the exact same (bad for the potential buyer) terms, what recourse does he buyer have?
A Russian man who decided to write his own small print in a credit card contract has had his changes upheld in court. He's now suing the country's leading online bank for more than 24 million rubles ($727,000) in compensation.
Disappointed by the terms of the unsolicited offer for a credit card from Tinkoff Credit Systems in 2008, a 42-year-old Dmitry Agarkov from the city of Voronezh decided to hand write his own credits terms.
The trick was that Agarkov simply scanned the bank’s document and ‘amended’ the small print with his own terms.
I've always considered it unfair that the people looking to buy into the services aren't gerneally allowed any real say into the terms of the contract. For them, it's either sign, or don't sing. But when every providers of the services essentially offers the exact same (bad for the potential buyer) terms, what recourse does he buyer have?
Monsignor Pope and Mortal Sins
Monsignor Pope has a post about mortal sins, including five biblical lists (which are not by any stretch exhaustive). He notes that the one biggie that gets left of is failure to forgive, though I noticed another really big one: blaspheming the Holy Spirit. He pretty much avoids the Old Testament lists, which is understandable I guess since any reference to the Pentateuch elicits knavish remarks conflating (or really, intentionally muddying the waters) between morality/sins on the one hand and "religious disciplinary practices" (for lack of a better word) on the other. By this I mean that any reference to Deuteronomy or Leviticus gets some knee-jerk response about not weaving a garment of two type of thread, or not planting two crops in one field: anybody with a little common sense can figure out that these latter are symbolic of something else (namely, not practicing idolatry, serving as reminders to turn to God, etc). Still, these are some good lists to consider, since our culture is awash in sins of these kinds (and, frankly, celebrates these sins).
I also appreciated this exchange in the com box, in which someone disingenuously implies that Jesus never said anything about sexual morality, but only against the pharisees who judged others by their sins. The monsignor's reply was both direct and correct and charitable:
I really do wish people would stop kidding themselves about Christ's views of morality. He didn't exactly abolish the Law, nor did He ever say "I'm ok, you're ok, we're all ok except those pharisees." And, as the monsignor shows, Jesus did in fact speak against sinning in general sexual immorality in particular.
I also appreciated this exchange in the com box, in which someone disingenuously implies that Jesus never said anything about sexual morality, but only against the pharisees who judged others by their sins. The monsignor's reply was both direct and correct and charitable:
The quote from Revelation is Jesus Speaking. Further you might take a gander at few things Jesus said on the topic:
Matt 5:27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’e 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.Matthew 15:19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”
Messy enough for you? Please read scripture more carefully. Also avoid false dichotomies such as driving a wedge between what Jesus said or didn’t say from what his appointed apostles said. There is one Holy Spirit.
I really do wish people would stop kidding themselves about Christ's views of morality. He didn't exactly abolish the Law, nor did He ever say "I'm ok, you're ok, we're all ok except those pharisees." And, as the monsignor shows, Jesus did in fact speak against sinning in general sexual immorality in particular.
A Few Good Links (vol 5)/Seven Quick Takes Friday (vol 1)
I have another of my "few good links" posts, and it turns out it's a Friday, and there are seven links--so--what the heck. I can combine two types of post, right?- First up, Jimmy Akin explains what "Judge not lest ye be judged" really means. The key is not moral relativism, it's not failing to admonish sinners, and it's certainly not to avoid making moral judgments. Rather, it's to temper these things with mercy, as an extension of the Golden Rule.
"Obviously, God will judge us. He’s made that perfectly clear in the Bible, and in the teaching of Jesus in particular...it isn’t a question of escaping God’s judgment. It’s a question of how we will be judged...the Golden Rule has divine backing: If we treat others mercifully, God will be merciful to us. But if we treat others unmercifully, God will not be merciful to us...we should treat others the way we want God to treat us—because the way we treat others is how God will treat us."
- Yesterday was Saint Dominic's feast day, hence my post on Sts. Dominic and Francis. Here is a longer post on the same theme:
"The Arians seemed to run the world, and yet Athanasius was willing to stand against the world and in favor of the universal creed. And thanks to the courage of St Athanasius and of a few other good men, we still say "consubstantial" in our creed on Sunday. Dominic--and his contemporary St Francis--faced a different crisis in their time. It was not so sophisticated, though it was widely popular and wildly practiced, this rejection of Truth. The Arians denied first Christ's divinity and only later His humanity; in St Dominic's time, the denial turned against men's humanity; and in today's synthesis of heresy, first it is Christ's divine nature, and then man's human nature."
- One significant problem with Liberation Theology is that it insists on political and economic revolution (including by the priests). Another (related) problem is that it places the welfare of the poor in the hands of this revolution, rather than demanding the harder sacrifice which comes with being truly poor in spirit: namely, actually caring for the poor and living among them, recognizing their dignity, and even serving them. Suffice it to say that while Pope Francis does care about 'social justice" issues, and does especially care for the poor, he does not actually endorse liberation theology, despite what the media will try to make us thing. Hence, his support for the "slum priests" of Argentina is not support for Liberation Theology, but rather for the Church's proper response to it. The slum priests are not proselytizing, but they are perhaps evangelizing--but don't expect the media or the world to appreciate the difference.
- On a related note, there's more to teaching than just the subject matter taught. This is especially true in Catholic education, in which the subject matter should be well-taught, but in which the goal is more than the conveyance of technical knowledge. A good Catholic education should involve good character development, from the inculcation of virtue to the instillment of a sense of wonder in the world which turns to awe in its Creator. We need something more than teachers: we need witnesses.
"We have a dearth of educators witnessing to an authentically Christian life with fidelity, integrity, and zeal. We have far too many educators who simply have a job, or career, as a teacher or administrator at a Catholic school. Too many do not view themselves as evangelists to the young. The sisters, brothers, and priests did. One need only examine the recent brouhaha with the Catholic educators in the flock of Bishop Vasa. Bishop Vasa, in an effort to ensure authentic Catholic education in his diocesan schools, asked all teachers to sign an oath of fidelity to the Church. There was such an outcry that Vasa was forced to relent.
If these teachers were faithful witnesses to the gospel as taught by the Catholic Church they would have signed joyfully. We must reverse this by hiring educators who will enthusiastically and joyfully witness to the Gospel in word and in deed. Pastors, especially, must have care to consider an administrator’s faith life, fidelity to truth, and zeal for evangelization, as more important than certificates and licenses bestowed by the state or about degrees granted by colleges, whether they be state schools or private." - The TOF blog has another takedown of scientism. Some of the usual suspects (Coyne, Pinker) are involved in this one.
"A thing is a union of matter and form, and it is the form that gives the thing its powers. When we see a basketball, we do not see two things, a basketball and a sphere. The sphere just is the form of the basketball. Similarly, an atom of chlorine and an atom of sodium are made of the same matter, the same parts -- protons, neutrons, electrons. What makes one a flammable metal and the other a poisonous gas is the number and arrangement of those parts. The fact that non-physical stuff like number, arrangement, or pattern are crucial for doing natural science does not make them physical things themselves. It's actually the form of which we have knowledge, not the matter."
And also (it's a long post)"The scientific method and the metal detector are instruments, one material the other immaterial, and the point is that an instrument can only detect what it is designed to detect. The trap of scientism is that the wonderful successes of using that particular instrument can fool the user (Science 'Works'!) into believing that there are no aspects of reality other than those which are detectable by his instrument and therefore his instrument is the go-to instrument for any and all 'real' problems."
- Speaking of scientism, Wesley J Smith asks why any mention of ethics in science is "anti-science" (except when it isn't). I don't agree entirely with the Intelligent Design crowd, but they do have my sympathy when this kind of thing pops up:
I was involved in one of those heated internet dustups last week. It started when Hank Campbell, creator of the Science 2.0, accused me of being “anti-science” and “hating biology,” which he claimed I see as a “tool of Lucifer.”
Arguments like this make Coyne and Pinker and the rest seem all the more disingenuous when they claim, in essence, that scientism is just a"boo-word" or an ill-defined boogeyman and not a doctrine actually held by anyone.
“Anti-science”? “Hate biology”? Lucifer? What had I done to spark such emotive language?
I argued against the creation of “three-parent” IVF embryos on ethical and safety grounds. (The father of the child in three-parent IVF would be the man whose sperm fertilized a genetically modified egg containing substances from two women, who would both be biological mothers.) - The Pessimist Blog (no relationship) has an entertaining piece up about how to be outraged on the internet. A lot of their Screwtape-like advice centers around the thought that we should be egocentric and prideful (also wrathful) in all of our online interactions, in particular in the comboxes.
Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Jennifer Fulwiler.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Cult of Anti-Christianity?
Rebecca Hamilton writes some of her observations concerning a variety of anti-Christian commenters on her blog. In a nutshell, many of the commenters use the same tired old arguments, often regurgitated without further thought from Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens.
This tactic is fairly widely used, and not just by Christian-bashers. I've often encountered it by seeing Protestants deploy it against Catholics, for example, though usually not in a hateful-towards-God or generally malicious manner. I've also seen Catholics do something similar to each other, though more rarely (let's face it, she's right that Protestant typically are better at picking and memorizing individual verses or even entire chapters).
Anyhow, this is the kind of thing that a good book on general apologetics should cover, but I almost never see anything about this. The advice that Mrs. Hamilton gives (about figuring out the actual context of the verse and going from there) is about as thorough as I've seen, and it's really not a practical "how to counter this attack" so much as a "a counter to this attack exists if you spend enough time and energy looking for it." People are often lazy, they're not going to put in the energy to defend against this kind of thing; and therefore many people start doubting, and then leaving, without really having thought things through.
And then there's this related issue.
God-is-evil commenters are another large group. They have picked up out-of-context Bible verses and stories, sometimes from Dawkins, but I think mostly from Christian-bashing blogs. They come swooping in here with their Bible verse or story and throw it down with an almost audible There! Take that!
{snip}
These leaders comb the Scriptures looking for stories or single verses that they can manipulate to support their contentions. They studiously overlook the vast bulk of Scripture that abrogates their prejudices so clearly that even they cannot twist it into meaning something else. They then reinterpret their gleanings according to their own malice in order to judge both God and Christians by the obnoxious standards of 21st century self-righteous nihilism.
This whole practice of pulling things out of context and ignoring all scholarship to reframe them according to your propaganda is intellectually bogus. It is not a sign of intelligence, especially since the people who come on this blog to throw these things down are just parroting what someone else has said or written without any real understanding.
I haven’t been trained in dealing with this. So far as I know, nobody has. After all, those of us who follow Christ are more intent on learning what the Bible actually teaches than mining it for gotcha verses and stories to use against God.
This tactic is fairly widely used, and not just by Christian-bashers. I've often encountered it by seeing Protestants deploy it against Catholics, for example, though usually not in a hateful-towards-God or generally malicious manner. I've also seen Catholics do something similar to each other, though more rarely (let's face it, she's right that Protestant typically are better at picking and memorizing individual verses or even entire chapters).
Anyhow, this is the kind of thing that a good book on general apologetics should cover, but I almost never see anything about this. The advice that Mrs. Hamilton gives (about figuring out the actual context of the verse and going from there) is about as thorough as I've seen, and it's really not a practical "how to counter this attack" so much as a "a counter to this attack exists if you spend enough time and energy looking for it." People are often lazy, they're not going to put in the energy to defend against this kind of thing; and therefore many people start doubting, and then leaving, without really having thought things through.
And then there's this related issue.
Francis and Dominic
Pope Francis is a fairly popular pope today, and the saint after whom he took his name is similarly beloved even among the non-believers (save a few very angry atheists, of the sort who also hated Mother Teresa). Something about the simplicity of a man devoted to the poor draws the respect and even at times admiration of people, making him seem more lovable. Oh, there are of course some who don't love him--either the pope or the saint--because of this dedication to the poor. It certainly makes those who are not poor in spirit uncomfortable to see someone who exhibits this beatitude; but on the whole, St Francis is among our most popular saints, and Pope Francis may be one of our most popular popes.
The same cannot, alas, be said for St Francis' contemporary, nor for Pope Francis' predecessor. Both St Dominic and Pope Benedict XVI are in the popular imagination associated with things like the inquisition (which in some cases was dominated by Dominicans, and the successor to which was run by Ratzinger), or the defense of doctrines and dogmas. In particular, those doctrines and dogmas which are found most difficult in their day, and thus which need the greatest defense.
But the dogmas and the doctrines are important, and we ultimately need a Church with a creed and a code as well as a community food pantry. It is because the Church is a shelter against the spiritual storms that she would also provide shelter from physical storms. It is because she sees sacramentally that she also ministers to the poor. She sees that the man who is poor and rag-covered is still a man, and thus is worth more than any riches; that a man who asks for alms is really no worse off than a man who prays that God will grant him his daily bread. Both recognize that they have a need, and both know that they must turn elsewhere for sustenance. The poor man sees this on a merely physical level, but the man who is poor in spirit may see deeper still, that his very existence depends on God's continual act of creation.
The two saints, Dominic and Francis, are indeed complements to one another, just as the two popes. The one focused on the faith which saves, the other on the charity which sanctifies. But that faith does not save when absent from charity--nor do the simple acts of charity suffice to sanctify without the grace which comes through faith. In the time of Sts Francis and Dominic, the world forgot the dignity of man as an ensouled body, and so sound preaching was needed in conjunction with simple poverty to waken the world from its heresy. Today the world is forgotten the dignity of man as an ensouled body, but the remedy remains the same saintly simplicity as then. We need men who are poor in spirit, and who therefore are able to care for the poor; but also we need men who are preachers of the Truth, because only these can truly uplift the spiritual poverty of the age.
Often, if we look closely enough, we will see that the two, the man who enters a life poverty for the sake of the poor is also quietly teaching, and that the man who is preaching the doctrines of the Faith is also humbly embracing poverty. Both are, after all, seeking to serve the same Lord.
The same cannot, alas, be said for St Francis' contemporary, nor for Pope Francis' predecessor. Both St Dominic and Pope Benedict XVI are in the popular imagination associated with things like the inquisition (which in some cases was dominated by Dominicans, and the successor to which was run by Ratzinger), or the defense of doctrines and dogmas. In particular, those doctrines and dogmas which are found most difficult in their day, and thus which need the greatest defense.
But the dogmas and the doctrines are important, and we ultimately need a Church with a creed and a code as well as a community food pantry. It is because the Church is a shelter against the spiritual storms that she would also provide shelter from physical storms. It is because she sees sacramentally that she also ministers to the poor. She sees that the man who is poor and rag-covered is still a man, and thus is worth more than any riches; that a man who asks for alms is really no worse off than a man who prays that God will grant him his daily bread. Both recognize that they have a need, and both know that they must turn elsewhere for sustenance. The poor man sees this on a merely physical level, but the man who is poor in spirit may see deeper still, that his very existence depends on God's continual act of creation.
The two saints, Dominic and Francis, are indeed complements to one another, just as the two popes. The one focused on the faith which saves, the other on the charity which sanctifies. But that faith does not save when absent from charity--nor do the simple acts of charity suffice to sanctify without the grace which comes through faith. In the time of Sts Francis and Dominic, the world forgot the dignity of man as an ensouled body, and so sound preaching was needed in conjunction with simple poverty to waken the world from its heresy. Today the world is forgotten the dignity of man as an ensouled body, but the remedy remains the same saintly simplicity as then. We need men who are poor in spirit, and who therefore are able to care for the poor; but also we need men who are preachers of the Truth, because only these can truly uplift the spiritual poverty of the age.
Often, if we look closely enough, we will see that the two, the man who enters a life poverty for the sake of the poor is also quietly teaching, and that the man who is preaching the doctrines of the Faith is also humbly embracing poverty. Both are, after all, seeking to serve the same Lord.
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