Galileo Galilei's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina is an excellent read.

A favorite passage:

I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth-whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare words signify. Hence in expounding the Bible if one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error. Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and follies. Thus it would be necessary to assign to God feet, hands and eyes, as well as corporeal and human affections, such as anger, repentance, hatred, and sometimes even the forgetting of things past and ignorance of those to come. These propositions uttered by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities, Of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. For the sake of those who deserve to be separated from the herd, it is necessary that wise expositors should produce the true senses of such passages, together with the special reasons for which they were set down in these words. This doctrine is so widespread and so definite with all theologians that it would be superfluous to adduce evidence for it.

It is quite a pity that Counter-reformation paranoia, clerical politics, and no small amount of impolitic aggrandizing generally kept Galileo's work in the dark.

Plaudits to DarwinCatholic and Speculative Catholic for bringing it to my attention.

"I will now let you into a secret. Not only do most voters not have the slightest knowledge of or interest in policy; the majority of politicians do not possess it either."

Alan Watkins, via Kevin Michael Grace's The Ambler

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Business?

As discussed previously, big government is the best friend of big business. Tim Carney gives actual examples of this influence at work:

Wal-Mart made news last month when it called for a raise in the federal minimum wage--something Democrats typically welcome. Despite its reputation for paying slave wages, Wal-Mart on average pays its hourly full-time employees $10.53 per hour, according to the company's website. The current federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour.

So, if minimum wage goes up, Wal-Mart might not pay an extra dime in wages. But Mom 'n Pop corner stores--Wal-Mart's competition--who employ local High School students at or near minimum wage will be in a pickle. The small stores might just have to close their doors, driving even more business to the retail giant--that is if Wal-Mart gets its way in Washington.

And what about evil Phillip Morris? What is it lobbying for on Capitol Hill? Check the company's annual report to find out. The 2005 Altria Group annual report states that the company: "endorsed federal legislation introduced in May 2004 in the Senate and the House of Representatives, known as the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which would have granted the FDA the authority to regulate the design, manufacture and marketing of cigarettes and disclosures of related information."

In other words, Phillip Morris is on Ted Kennedy's side in supporting greater federal regulation of tobacco. This regulation, of course, would be more burdensome to smaller cigarette companies than to Phillip Morris, which controls nearly half of the industry.

Short Story in Six Words

A month or two ago either Matthew Lickona or Terry Teachout (maybe both) were talking about Hemingway's successful reply to a challenge that required him to write a story in six words. Hemingway's answer:

"Baby shoes for sale, never used."

My contribution to the contest:

"Wifey's pregnant, but the vasectomy worked."

An Essay summarizing Gilson's From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again

Class notes from Rev. Wojciech Giertych, OP's class on Fundamental Moral Theology. It is of the same school of thought as Servais Pinckaers, who was featured here long ago.

Yet Another Sex Article

I am getting very sick of "sex talk." Too much theory, not enough practice! St. Paul's admonition "let some things never be spoken of among you" provides a convenient excuse for opting out of the always mildly salacious discussions frequenting the topic.

I suppose such talk is necessary, after all, and I think the Touchstone article by R. V. Young, The Gay Invention is quite useful, concisely covering the linguistic and conceptual history of homosexuality.

A few extracts and commentary:

St. Thomas thus points out that while even simple fornication is “against properly human nature, of which the act of generation is ordered to the appropriate education of children,” sodomy is “against the nature of every animal” because it is not aimed at generation at all.

This finally makes the "against nature" description of such acts make sense. The rationale also applies both against a contracepted act of fornication and a contracepted marital act. Perhaps this means the contemporary adulation of homosexuality is linked on a very deep level to the wide acceptance of contraception, because even married people no longer aim at begetting children in the consumation of their married life. Elsewhere Thomas decribes self-abuse as a sin sometimes called the sin of effeminacy, further revealing a possible deep consistency behind the course the pornoculture is taking.

But in our consequentialist age, who wants to argue against distributing contraceptives to kiddies or the HIV positive because contracepted acts are inherently sodomitical and that unprotected fornication is a "less grave" mortal sin than the "protected" kind? I'd be tempted to make such an argument just to shock. However, the newly-found reverence for sodomy is better explained if one thinks that mainstream America has itself been practicing sodomy even in the marriage bed.

Lest one think this too radical, it has been reported that Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, advised Paul VI that the reasoning behind the condemnation of sodomy collapses upon declaring contraceptives compatible with Christian marriage.

Another conclusion: it seems a contracepted marital act cannot consumate a marriage.

A further point of interest from the article:

The first edition of the OED (1933) lists sporadic usages of “gender” for “sex” from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries, but notes that such usage is “now only jocular.” The second edition (1989) adds this to the entry: “In mod. (esp. feminist) use a euphemism for the sex of a human being, often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes.”

Though there is a way of thinking in merely biological categories that should be avoided, the flight from the biological is getting really ridiculous right now, especially with the advent of transhumanist nutjobs.

Peas in a Pod: The State and The Corporation

I have come across an interesting essay by anarcho-capitalist Roy Childs, Big Business and the Rise of American Statism. I skimmed halfway through until I hit pay dirt.

A few excerpts:

For the Marxists hold that there are fundamentally two opposing “interests” which clash in history: the capitalists and the workers. But what we have seen, essentially, is that the interests (using the word in a journalistic sense) of neither the capitalists nor the workers, so-called, were uniform or clear-cut. The interests of the larger capitalists seemed to coincide, as they saw it, and were clearly opposed to the interests of the smaller capitalists. (However, there were conflicts among the big capitalists, such as between the Morgan and Rockefeller interests during the 1900s, as illustrated in the regimes of Roosevelt and Taft.) The larger capitalists saw regulation as being in their interest, and competition as opposed to it; with the smaller businessmen, the situation was reversed.

[still happening today. See the USDA's upcoming requirement to license all livestock, no matter how small one's flock or herd.]

[...]

In this crucially important era, I have focused on one point: big business was a major source of American statism.

[...]

Big business, then, was behind the existence and curriculum of the public educational system, explicitly to teach young minds to submit and obey, to pay homage to the “corporate liberal” system which the politicians, a multitude of intellectuals and many big businessmen created.

In several ways, this piece dovetails with the distributist critique of the large corporation. Too much capitalism doesn't mean too many capitalists, but too few, and it's in the interests certain folk to make sure there are too few entrepreneurs. Reading the essay, I realized not only does regulation benefit the larger businesses, but they have enough clout to tailor the regulations to their existing business structure, further keeping their compliance costs down while maintaining the appearance of doing something.

I had already realized that public schooling can transfer vocational training costs from business to taxpayers, but Childs provides a few choice quotes from early twentieth-century corporate leaders who supported the move towards compulsory education.

Yet another ID vs. Darwinism Post

Last Sunday, an opinion piece on the current science education kerfuffle, Science and religion face off:
The two really aren't incompatible, was printed in the Denver Post. I was going to send a snide and pithy letter to the editor about it, since snide and pithy letters are the only kind the editor prints, but fortunately the author is a member of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, which has a weblog called Prometheus. (One wonders about the propriety of defending the concordance of science and religion on a site named for a Titan who defied the will of Zeus to bring technology to man.)

So fortunately I could post a fleshed-out list of my concerns with the piece on the thread Tom Yulsman on Religion and Science, which will hopefully receive a reply. I copy most of my comments below:

For what it's worth, I thought the piece was a bit weak. For one, it sometimes treated religion as the practice of engaging in warm and fuzzy thoughts about self and universe, and sometimes as simple deism, the former type of religion being compatible with anything, and the latter being, as pointed out, anathema to most monotheists.

For another, I don't think invoking Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" is credible, since to my knowledge he treated no religion as having any teaching authority. Though at least he didn't engage in the village atheist polemics of Dawkins.

Finally, there is at least one point where science could hypothetically disprove Christianity, namely by finding the body of Jesus of Nazareth. As St. Paul declares, "And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins." (1 Cor 15:17) Certain Christians and atheists think there are more areas where such disproofs could happen, but that's at least the bare minimum arena of possible conflict.

I'm wondering what you make of the way evolution is taught. There is certainly a lot of sloppy teaching in the field. One of my anthropology classes at CU-Boulder engaged in Bonobo hagiography, depicting the oversexed apes as moral exemplars, while the professor habitually proclaimed his existential despair because he believed himself to be in a purposeless universe, and that Darwinism justified his unwelcomed hopelessness.

What's more, there's a certain philosophical anthropology at work in the presentation of evolution. For all its claims to have banished "telos," popular Darwinism treats genetic propagation as the highest good of mankind, and thus lust is portrayed as a positive good rather than a sin. It also tends to deny human agency and, following Darwin, any ontological difference between man and his fellow creatures.

Of course, fanboy that I am, I had to plug my former professor Edward T. Oakes' writings. I did neglect to mention that he's revising the draft of his book on evolutionary theory for Cambridge University Press.

Philosophers Ancient and Modern

The ancient schools of thought—Platonic, Aristotelian, Cynic, Stoic, Epicurean, and Skeptic—commonly drew a distinction between “philosophy,” meaning the moral and spiritual formation of the soul or person , and “discourse about philosophy,” understood as the investigation of the nature of things and the modes of our knowledge of them. This distinction is related to the more familiar categories of practical and speculative philosophy. But whereas late-modern, recent, and contemporary thought has invested greatest effort and talent in the pursuit of speculation—in the form of epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophies of language and logic—the ancients give priority to practice, and, within that, to the cultivation of wisdom and the development of what the Greeks called “untroubledness” (ataraxia).

Much more of the writing of antiquity, the middle ages, and the early modern period belongs to “philosophy” in the sense of the “practice of wisdom” than is now generally recognized. The French historian of philosophy, Pierre Hadot, has argued that the Western idea of spirituality, which we are apt to think of as entirely religious in source, may have originated not in the Desert Fathers of Christianity but in pre-existing philosophical traditions.

John Haldane, What Philosophy Can Do

2005 Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh

Note to aspiring philosophy majors: Don't go into academic philosophy under the impression that it still resembles the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life. Modern philosophy departments implicitly deny the necessity of ethical training for good philosophy, rarely requiring that discipline of self which checks the libido dominandi, among other passions, from compromising one's intellectual inquiries.

The Local Classical Music Scene

Enthused by an Indian Summer of weather and health, I made it down to an exquisite performance of Handel's Messiah, Dublin Version, last Friday at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Littleton. I had no idea of the quality of their music program. They have a choir and chamber orchestra, a baroque orchestra, and a Gregorian schola! In the desert of contemporary church music, they are an oasis of tradition and good talent.

Of related interest, Early Music Colorado

A Monitory Example of the Political Novel Genre

Senator Barbara Boxer has written a bad novel

CU-Boulder Episcopal Chaplain Is Converting to Catholicism

James Cavanagh notes his decision and asks for prayers.

I never met any Episcopalians while at CU, so at most I perhaps only knew him through the annual anti-cult warning given to new students, which most of the chaplains endorsed.

When I first matriculated, CU's Catholic parish was a bit flaky, as are most campus parishes. It has become much more lively since the arrival of FOCUS.

(I am now informed that the Paulists are pulling out of the parish, which is a pity. It was there that I was reintroduced to the practice of confession, and for that I owe those priests something priceless.)

Richard Sternberg on Darwinism and Catholic Theology

Via Our Father's Will Communications, I have come into possession of a recorded talk given by evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, an evolutionary biologist who has been at the center of an academic controversy that has fed into the renascent evolution education debates. See "Attacks on journal editor raise questions about academic freedom and intelligent design" and "Faith, Science and the Persecution of Richard Sternberg" for some background information.

Sternberg's talk, titled "The Theology of the Body and Evolution," is very anti-concordist. I think he overstates the case against Darwinian evolution a bit. Part of the difficulty is that Darwinism is incredibly bound up with village atheism and libertine culture. Sternberg seems uninterested in trying to purify the theory of these elements, though he has no problem with change over time. He does seem a bit more favorable to Intelligent Design than his impartial statements on his website let on, but because he never explains the intriguing school of "process structuralism" in his talk I still don't know exactly where he's coming from.

Sternberg isn't a sophomoric anti-Darwinist. He makes a good list of objections that any people with more concordant views of Darwinism must address. It's a good source for the "videtur quod" section in a Thomistic article.

My notes are a bit sloppy, for which I apologize.

According to Sternberg:

Darwinism is a rejection of created essence, the rebirth of epicurean philosophy.

Claims evolutionism believes in self-contained cosmos. Nature is a self-sufficient explanation...

Notes neo-Darwinian "anti-speciesism," but he claims we can't just dismiss this as metaphysical overreach. Rather, it is based on the axioms of Darwinism itself.
[Not mentioned: Darwin's rejection of any qualitative difference between mankind and his fellow animals]

He describes these axioms as follows:

-Genetic determinism. The organism is epiphenomenal. This concentration on the organism is, perhaps, a hint of what Sternberg's "process structuralism" focuses upon, but he doesn't expand on his eccentric philosophy of biology. [Sed Contra: if genetic determinism is inherent to the theory, and not just an assumption made for the sake of easy research, shouldn't old Newtonian physics, with its clockwork view of the universe, also pose some problems? I would also note Thomas Hobbes' committment to epicureanism, as well as Epicurean influence on classical physics and classical liberalism.]

-Likewise agency, consciousness, free will are illusions. Personality itself is epiphenominal. [Sed Contra: "By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake, a pathetic loser, not one iota less than if I were a card-carrying member of Queer Nation. But I am happy to be that way, and if my genes don’t like it, they can go jump in a lake." -Steven Pinker

-random mutation, natural selection only. There is no room for designer in this picture. Sternberg voices a low opinion of those who try to graft telos onto Darwinian theory.

He quotes Daniel Dennett, Peter Singer: species are "frozen accidents," the human race didn't "have to be..." speciesism... darwinism is universal acid... I do wish he had dealt with more cordial concilators rather than the village atheist brigade.

Gregor Mendel: Anti-Darwinist?
Sternberg claims an actual historical bias against Mendel, and that early evolutionists rejected genetics. He notes Mendel was testing Darwinian theory because he disagreed with it. Mendel's experiments led to his interpretation which is in favor of fixity of species. This is counter to strict Darwinism.

[Catholic Encyclopedia article on Mendel backs this up: Mendel was an anti-darwinian! My science textbooks seemed to have glossed over this fact. I know neo-Darwinism is an attempt to reconcile Darwinism with new genetic discoveries, but I didn't know it had to reinterpret Mendel to do so!]

He expands in q&a:

Darwin was in favor of blended inheiritance, that is, continuous gradual change over time. For Darwin, there are no jumps in nature. This, Sternberg claims, was for anti-theological reasons.

For Mendel, genetics is discrete quantum changes, jumps, and thus counter to evolution simpliciter. I suspect this might be a red herring, but I can't justify my suspicions at the moment.

It is known that Darwin was aware of Mendel, and had a copy of his genetic studies, but Darwin never opened this work. Sternberg claims Darwin had made note of Mendel's theory when it was described in another book, but alludes to some sort of bias and deliberate neglect of Mendel.


Prurient Darwinians' Interests
Evolutionary biology holds that reproduction is the highest good. Evolutionary psychology has recast everything about lust, polygamy, promiscuity, in very significant ways. Lust is a selected-for trait of biological fitness. Sternberg, I think, too readily accepts certain libertine Darwinists' confusion of lust with sexual desire. I suspect this can be recovered in some ways, as Edward T. Oakes did in his essay on Steven Pinker:

This is why in despotic societies, where one male enjoys all the power, women may genuinely prefer to share one wealthy husband than to have the undivided attention of a pauper. But far from being the defense of polygyny that it sounds like, Pinker’s observation leads to the corollary: that egalitarianism and monogamy go together as naturally as despotism does with polygyny. Although he doesn’t quite say so explicitly, Pinker certainly lends credence to the claim of conservatives that democracy and the monogamous nuclear family go together and cannot be sheared off from each other without damage to both.

Sternberg recalls discovering an evolutionary psychology essay on Bill Clinton, claiming he was compelled by genes, very exculpatory attitude. This leads to Sternberg's hilarious story:

"I had a colleague, and I think it was in '92 or '93, who one night knocked on my door around one or two in the morning, he had been thrown out of his house and I wanted to know what he had done, and his wife had thrown him out because he had had relations with a student. And she had found out about this. And so I of course was shocked and amazed and told him "What in the world was going through your mind?"

You can of course be fired for this.

So I sat him down, offered him a beer and said, you know, let's talk this over. And I said "Don't you have any self-control?"

And he argued, made the perfectly good argument: "Look, you're an evolutionary biologist, I'm an evolutionary biologist, and you know this is an evolutionary drive, we're hard wired to copulate. Cut me some slack!"

So my next question was, "Did you use any form of contraception?"

And he said "Are you stupid? Of course I did!"

So here was this guy telling me that his actions were completely out of his control, that he just went through this act like a blind robot programmed by his genes, but yet this blind robot had the forethought to make sure there would be no consequences for his actions."

Future radically open-ended for evolutionary biology, some have spoken of creating different sexes, three, four of them. Sternberg correctly notes that Darwinism holds that "we are still evolving."

He claims that Catholics enamored of Darwinism are unknowingly suffering from cognitive dissonance. That few have addressed the advent of transhumanism certainly lends support to this thesis. However, Sternberg doesn't seem to have read Etienne Gilson's From Darwin to Aristotle and Back Again, which Edward Oakes tells me addresses some of the ontological problems provoked by Darwinian questions.


Sternberg didn't like the set-up of Dover ID design debate. He thinks it was outright young-earth creationism, and too explicitly theological.

He also alludes to dissenting evolutionary biologists being shut up for fear of professional retaliation and media attention in the eighties.

Sternberg notes the "ontological gap" between humans and other animals in Christian theology. Whether he thinks this can be proved "scientifically," he doesn't say.

He also bashes the habitual exaltation of the Bonobos' sex habits. Anybody who takes an anthro class will have come across bonobo hagiography.

He justly bashes the utilitarianism of human relationships in Darwinian thought. This is a very notable criticism. How many "how to catch a guy/gal" articles rely upon the latest sociobiological speculations for filler?

Concluding thoughts: I'm more annoyed at what Sternberg left out than at what he put in. I hold this to be a sign of quality.


Addendum 12/18/2006
Sternberg is in the news again. I will state here that the producer of this CD was receiving investigative calls from the National Center for Science Education in Fall, 2005 about this lecture. I presume this was done in order to dig up dirt on Sternberg.

The Million Dollar Question

"How does the post-Sexual Revolution Democratic Party continue to draw enthusiastic support from the its strongest supporters in abortion-rights groups and university faculty lounges, while also seeking to reach out to the now politically incorrect elements of the old New Deal coalition? Can Democrats please traditional Catholics and Bible Belt populists with words, while pleasing activists on the left with deeds?"

GetReligion

This is closely related to Colorado's gubernatorial campaign which is still only getting under weigh. Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter, the only Democratic candidate currently in the running and a Catholic, has come out and said he would support very stringent limits on abortion were Roe v. Wade to be overturned. This has not endeared him to the party stalwarts, who are frantically searching for other options, but alienated "now politically incorrect elements" like me sure are pulling for him.

Don't Think Foolishly

Courtesy of Edward O. Wilson, something for the bonfire of the cliches:

The revolution in astronomy begun by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543 proved that Earth is not the center of the universe, nor even the center of the solar system. The revolution begun by Darwin was even more humbling: it showed that humanity is not the center of creation, and not its purpose either.

This is incredibly typical space-filling cant. The heavenly bodies in pre-Copernican thought were believed to be composed of "quintessence," the Fifth Element, a substance far purer than puny little Earth with its sad admixture of the four other elements. In the great chain of being, angels are above mankind, not below. Moreover, in the popular imagery of Hell Satan is depicted as being at the center of the earth--and thus at the center of the Ptolmaic universe!

Christian imagery tends to depict man as an incredibly pathetic creature, a "nought" or a worm, dignified only by the grace of God in the Incarnation. "Galileo and Darwin knocked man off his pedestal!" is a ritualistic invocation of the ignoramuses who pride themselves on their false humility. Most ignorant of what they're most assured, indeed. That Wilson depicts man as a creature needing vast amounts of education, science, and technology, not to mention atheism, to become humble indicates a man who has never seriously practiced the hard art of self-examination.

Humorously enough, Wilson then goes on to deprecate people for blind faith. Physician, heal thyself.

How To Evangelize in Ten Words or Less?

The following was provoked by tonight's Theology on Tap lecture, in the form of a letter to our speaker Archbishop Chaput, but I put it here for anybody who wants to comment, since some of this may have been the wine talking:

Hello, Your Excellency!

I was at theology on tap and tried to bring this point up before the crowd, but alas I was the next in line when the last question was taken.

To set up where I’m coming from: Every time I call someone on the phone, I get a “hello” for an answer. Sometimes it’s a happy greeting, sometimes it’s a bored one. Sometimes I even get a computer, who tells me that my call is important as I listen to mind-numbing muzak in the background while waiting for someone to take my call. So imagine my surprise last week when I called up a wonderful Eastern Catholic woman I know, Anastasia Northrop, who answered the phone “Glory to Jesus Christ!”

Truly, I was caught short. First, because I had no set answer myself, not being in the habit of hearing praise of Our Lord over the phone. I suppose “Praise his holy name!” or “Amen!” would have been the right thing to say. Second, this woman’s enthusiasm seemed like that which one could have heard from the lips of a martyr being torn apart by lions.

What I wanted to ask you was: shouldn’t we all be in the habit of greeting all men with the name of Christ on our lips? Had you encouraged me, I fancied I would have challenged my fellow young Catholics to change their home answering machines and voice mailboxes to include the praise of Christ in their message. Indeed, I am hoping that I can habituate myself to answer the phone like the woman whose greeting so shook me, but I don’t want to be the only one, which is why I wanted to get the rest of the crowd to join me.

My inner conservative advises restraint, prudence, caution, but I suspect him of simply being afraid that Jesus will cause me inconvenience and embarrasment. If it was impossible for the apostles to remain silent after what they had seen and heard, why shouldn’t I be able to say just a few words to greet those people who call my own home? For fear I’ll look even crazier than I do already? For fear my using the Lord’s holy name will scare off people from the one who loves them?

There’s an odd custom in our culture where it seems only poor, plump middle-aged black ladies in their Sunday dresses are supposed to openly praise Jesus. Here’s an opportunity, I think, to “break the conventions, keep the comandments” as G.K. Chesterton advised.

I also think we have not done much to counteract the use of the Lord’s name in vain. If people say His name idly and publicly, in the course of the day using it as a curse word without hestating, why don’t Christians say his name with great piety and without such hesitation even more often—and especially in public? Every time I hear His name uttered in vain, I mutter to myself “have mercy on us!,” to try to turn it into a prayer. I’ve never gotten up the nerve to shout it as loudly as those who use his name in vain, though I should. Such action would utterly shatter my habits of privatizing faith, bringing Christ into the world in word as I try to bring Him in deed.

(As an aside, I wonder if I were to call up my own local parish, would I hear Christ praised, or another quotidian “Hello.”)

The comments on evangelization seemed to focus on education, education, education, formation, formation, formation. Though I’m well aware that many Catholics are woefully ignorant of their faith, having been in that position myself not more than eight years past, I think this focus on education as a panacea might be a minor idolatry of our time. At best, it’s misleading. The actions I propose are even simpler than taking a course of study or joining a group, and its habits could have far more impact. You don’t need a catechism class to answer the phone. Even a five year old can do that with the praise of Christ on his lips.

The word “goodbye,” I’m told, is a shortened form of “God be with you.” People can speak all they want about reviving a Catholic culture, but until we can recover the original Christian meaning and use of our own words, I don’t think any such culture will be fully alive and fully evangelistic.

“Open my mouth, O Lord, and my lips will proclaim your Praise.” Even in a weekday conversation, I hope.

So, what do you think? Should I try in this small way to overcome my reticience and linguistic contraception? Wouldn’t this be a form of evangelization we can engage in every day?

I might send a version of this off to the Denver Catholic Register, or perhaps even somebody who pays much-needed money, since I think it would be of vital interest to Catholics. Written letters are another opportunity for me to try to form this secularism-shattering habit, so after thanking you for reading, I conclude:

In Christ,

Kevin Jones

I add that I think this such practices are a good response to the motivational line "If being Christian were against the law, what would be the evidence against you?"


The Archbishop himself replies!

Dear Kevin,

I'm sorry you weren't able to speak last night. If you speak as well
as you write it would have been an articulate expression of your faith.

I don't know how to respond to your e-mail in a brief way without
oversimplifying, but this has to be brief because I'm leaving this morning
for the Bishops' Meeting in Washington, DC. Additionally, I'm not able
to give long responses to the multiple e-mails I receive.

I think there can be various approaches to what you suggest by people
who are firm believers. Some non-believers, and even some people who
are "mildly" Catholic, are irritated by what they perceive as excessive
evangelical external enthusiasm. So I think some people might want to
accommodate that by not wearing the name of Jesus on their sleeves in
such a public way as you suggest. They don't want to turn people off
before they have a chance to speak to them. At the same time, others are
impressed by this kind of external proclamation. Regardless, it's
important for us to wear Jesus not only exteriorly but deelpy in our
hearts. And if that really does happen, then we find ways of externalizing
our praise and adoration and to bring it up in conversation. But
whether it should be the first thing people encounter when they encounter us
is a matter of prudential judgment. And I think people can come down
on both sides of that.

In a culture which is hostile toward public expressions of religion, I
think it's important that we be courageous and clear. But at the same
time I don't think it's necessary to be provocative. It's important to
strongly hold to our rights and to Christian freedom. At the same time
it's not necessary to shove that into the face of others in a way that
causes them to become even more hostile. The whole goal is conversion
to Jesus Christ and giving glory to His Name. What we should do is
work at that with all our heart and strength and not get committed to
particular forms that may not work under certain circumstances. To have
the gentleness of doves and the cleverness of serpents is what Jesus
called his apostles to.

I wouldn't want anything I say here to dampen your enthusiasm. so
please be enthusiastic; but also, if you go the direction you suggest, see
if it works, rather than become committed to it without reflection.

Thanks for your inspiration. I promise my prayers.

May the Lord give you peace.
+cjc

From the Pen of the Ever-Provocative Eugene McCarraher

...At the same time, the political economy of death is the precondition for the emergence of "choice" as the holy grail of our moral culture. It's neither coincidental nor unironical that the word so decisive in the legitimation of corporate hegemony is also pivotal to the defense of abortion. First, both abortion and corporate capitalism are justified in the liberal individualist language of self-ownership and autonomous will. Second, the language of choice obscures and even nullifies the moral substance of the choices made. And third, the alacrity with which "choice" is now invoked is, I suspect, an indication of how meaningless--and therefore how few--our choices have really become. Abortion becomes more conceivable as a practice, not only when sex is utterly divorced from pregnancy, but when the organization of work hampers or precludes the reproductive practices of sex, birth, and child-rearing. If we are going to combat abortion, then I would suggest that we appropriate and transform the language of choice, and argue that abortion is the hallmark of a culture that forces everything to pivot around the accumulation of capital. we must tie abortion to a political economy that controls our work, warps our practices of love, and compensates with the perverse but beguiling enchantments of commodified freedom.

Mammon's Deadly Grin (PDF!) via Holy Ghost Parishoner, linked below.

His essay full of lively rhetoric and not a few declamatory passages, McCarraher goes on to claim that capitalism emphasizes scarcity, and Christianity plenitude. Curiously enough, my political science professor Thad Tecza claimed that Liberalism's attitude was formed by the discovery of the abundance and possibilities Europeans perceived in the New World. This, Tecza thought, lead to deprecations of the poor as stupid, lazy, crazy, or evil.

Vivat Jesus!

The Grand Knight of Denver Council #503[oops, not really, he's actually former GK of an Aurora council), perhaps the best Knights of Columbus hall in Denver, has a weblog: Holy Ghost Parishoner.

This reminds me that I have neglected to link to my own council, whose activities my illness has forced me to neglect. So Spirit of Christ Council #12979 now has a position in my template.

A Cappadocian Gem

I just discovered that Saint Basil the Great wrote a letter to youths On Reading Greek Literature. Long before the Renaissance, in the midst of a persisting polytheistic idolatry, this fourth century bishop emphasized a certain nobility among the pagans and their literature. Though certainly not uncritical, St. Basil's thoughts should be known to every Christian classicist.

An excerpt:

Now to that other life of the Holy Scriptures lead the way, teaching us through mysteries. Yet so long as, by reason of your age, it is impossible for you to understand the depth of the meaning of these, in the meantime, by means of other analogies which are not entirely different, we give, as it were in shadows and reflections, a preliminary training to the eye of the soul, imitating those who perform their drills in military tactics, who after they have gained experience, by means of gymnastic exercises for the arms and dance-steps for the feet, enjoy when it comes to the combat the profit derived from what was done in sport. So we also must consider that a contest, the greatest of all contests, lies before us, for which we must do all things, and, in preparation for it, must strive to the best of our power, and must associate with poets and writers of prose and orators and with all men from whom there is any prospect of benefit with reference to the care of our soul. Therefore, just as dyers prepare by certain treatments whatever material is to receive the dye, and then apply the color, whether it be purple or some other hue, so we also in the same manner must first, if the glory of the good is to abide with us indelible for all time, be instructed by these outside means, and then shall understand the sacred and mystical teachings; and like those who have become accustomed to seeing the reflection of the sun in water, so we shall then direct our eyes to the light itself.

Pieces of Interest in the latest New Atlantis

Francis Bacon's God by Stephen A. McKnight. I had received a rather negative impression of Bacon. Perhaps Thomas Molnar's declamations against the perennial heresy of utopia had prejudiced me against him, or perhaps I had read Eric Voegelin describing him as gnostic. I definitely read Paul Rahe's quite Straussian depiction of the Baconian project as a clandestine effort to rework religion for secular benefit, the taming of the poets by the philosophers.

Apparently Rahe's view derives from the first major twentieth century study of Bacon, Howard B. White's Peace among the Willows, and McKnight delivers significant evidence against this opinion. Bacon's scientific project, it seems, was a fundamentally Christian one. Though one could at first sight catalogue Bacon's friendly attitude towards the hidden knowledge of the ancients as semi-gnostic, his deprecatory attitude towards impure forms of Christianity indicates a more typical Protestant complaint about ecclesial corruption. The wise man of Bensalem, knowing the secrets of the ancients, emphasizes that his people's study is "motivated by piety," holding that "the ability to discover useful information is dependent on reverence and charity."

Try saying that in a contemporary academic department. It's a nice contrast to certain depictions of him which present him as a simple iconoclast dedicated to tearing down what had come before for being idols of the tribe.

Also of interest, a reflection on the greatest myth of the scientific age after Prometheus, good old Frankenstein:

Why does he[Dr. Frankenstein] go on to claim: “No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs”? Hitherto, every father has had to share the glory of human creation with a mother, whose role in bringing the child into existence was at least as great, if not greater. One can see Shelley thinking as a woman in this passage, and calling into question the masculine pride of the scientific creator. Frankenstein acts out a kind of male fantasy—to skip over any natural means of reproduction, to be solely responsible for the creation of his offspring, and thus to be able to claim its total gratitude. In her deepest insight into scientific creativity, Shelley sees its link to a will to power, and a desire to go beyond all conventional and natural limits on human aspiration.

The Scientist and the Poet, Paul A. Cantor

Death Before the Fall?

Speculative Catholic cites some thoughts of Edward T. Oakes on prelapsarian immortality, thoughts I had forgotten or overlooked.

Michael Henry Against Natural Rights

Voegelin diagnosed what he regarded as the Gnostic nature of modernity in the seventeenth-century Puritan "lust for massively possessive experience," an un-Christian libido dominandi for achieving existential security by drawing transcendence into immanence to transform all experience into proofs of divine election. Thomas Hobbes's remedy for the destructive conflicts stirred up by the Puritan drive to possess certainty was an immanently salvific Gnostic civil theology that effectively rejected transcendence and permitted all citizens to have a relationship with the divine only through obedience to the terrifying Absolute Sovereign, the intracosmic "mortal god," who dictated the form of "Christian" worship compulsory for the whole society and prophylactically sealed off the "Christian Commonwealth" against intrusions by transcendence. Because for Hobbes "there was no public truth except the laws of peace and concord in a society," he constructed civil theology as a "peace" in which soulless human beings attain worldly salvation from the imminent fall into non-being through death in the state of nature by suppressing not only the Puritan appropriation of transcendence but also the spiritually ordering power of amor Dei. The enjoyment of the "natural right" to physical self-preservation in a cosmos devoid of divine presence is the substitute for the soul's quest for immortality through participation in divine transcendence.

[...]

Although Arkes makes a strong case for a morally objective understanding of natural rights, there is an even stronger hedonist and relativist interpretation of natural rights that eviscerates the philosophically substantial meaning of human liberty and makes the understanding of freedom in terms of rights rather problematic. Since the civil theology has been reduced to an entirely secularized and immanent version of the Puritan sense of mission, if the public philosophy means that liberty is the possession of rights determined by the citizens' preferences then order is merely the absence of chaos but has no positive content or meaning. It certainly does not involve the participation in a higher truth that is essential for the life of the soul. It is, in fact, little more than the Hobbesian view that society exists simply to maximize earthly gratifications.

In other words, Arkes fails to see that positivism is not an error exogenous to natural rights but is a congenital disorder of the very notion of natural rights. Thus, Arkes's rational, objective interpretation of natural rights is not the whole story because the modern idea of natural rights is heavily contaminated by the secular devotion to progress in the individual's ability to pursue self-interest, which is, in metaphysical terms, a devotion to nothingness. This subordinates the common good to the protection of individual natural rights and the laws become an articulation, not of what actions are right or wrong in themselves or serve to promote the common good, but merely of what rules serve the private individual desires of the majority.

Civil Theology in the Gnostic Age, Michael Henry, Modern Age

Eve Tushnet takes on "Basically Good People"

Miscellaneous Links

Some things cleaned from my bookmarks, yet worthy of record:

On the Uses of Liberal Education As Lite Entertainment For Bored College Students

David L. Schindler on The Problem of Mechanism

A muslim book review of Alisdair MacIntyre's Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

Randian Clinical Psychology

Interview Excerpt, Mary B. Jones, 5/13/93

KJ: How did you feel when FDR died?

MJ: I didn't feel so bad at all. I felt it was about time for him to die. Did Truman replace him?

KJ: Yeah, he did.

MJ: Oh, good. My dad knew him.

KJ: Really?

MJ: Yes, he did. He went to KSU with him. Now, I don't want you to put this down, but he thought Truman was a sissy! But he wasn't a sissy as president. He said what he said and meant it.

An Approximation of a Shadow of a Book Review

Oblivion

David Foster Wallace

DFW was my first introduction to contemporary literary fiction, so I owe him. His nigh-omniscient lexicon and quirky--dare I say, postmodern?--manipulation of literary styles and tropes endeared him to my wide-eyed late teen mind, and his themes on the isolation and emptiness of American life appealed to my loner tendencies. Having finished up his latest collection, I find that his stories which avoid resolution are the most disappointing, while those which aspire to halfway complete the narrative are far more appealing.

My favorites in this collection:

The Soul is Not a Smithy, a man reflects on a childhood incident when a substitute teacher suffers a mental breakdown in front of an elementary school class, intermingled with the narrator's description of the daydream which completely distracted him from the teacher's panicked mind.

Incarnations of Burned Children, a tragic, very short story that pierces straight to the heart.

Another Pioneer, a second-hand discussion of a story involving a preternaturally gifted child in a primitive village whose omniscience eventually destroys his home once he hits puberty.

Good Old Neon, an incredibly successful man, aghast at his own fraudulence yet also the (putative) cliches we repeat to ourselves to get through the day, describes his manipulative actions towards his fellow men which lead up to his suicide.

Here's a particularly striking stream-of-thought passage from his less successful story "Mister Squishy" about a focus-group facilitator who is trying to live with his awareness of his utter ordinariness:

Or maybe that even the mere possibility of expressing any of this childish heartbreak to someone else seemed impossible except in the context of the mystery of true marriage, meaning not just a ceremony and financial merger but a true communion of souls, and Schmidt now lately felt he was coming to understand why the Church all through his childhood catechism and pre-Con referred to it as the Holy Sacrament of Marriage, for it seemed every bit as miraculous and transrational and remote from the possibilities of actual lived life as the crucifixion and resurrection and transubstantiation did, which is to say it appeared not as a goal to expect ever to really reach or achieve but as a kind of navigational star, as in the sky, something high and untouchable and miraculously beautiful in the sort of distant way that reminded you always of how ordinary and unbeautiful and incapable of miracles you your own self were, which was another reason why Schmidt had stopped looking at the sky or going out at night or even usually ever opening the lightproof curtains of his condominium's picture window when he got home at night and instead sat with his satellite TV's channel-changer in his left hand switching rapidly from channel to channel out of fear that something better was going to come on suddenly on another of the cable provider's 220 regular and premium channels and that he was about to miss it, spending three nightly hours this way before it was time to stare with drumming heart at the telephone that wholly unbeknownst to her had Darlene Lilley's home number on Speed dial...

"Every effort was made to encourage the children at the public schools to "think for themselves." When they should have been whipped and taught Greek paradigms, they were set arguing about birth control and nationalization. Their crude little opinions were treated with respect. Preachers in the school chapel week after week entrusted the future to their hands. It is hardly surprising that they were Bolshevik at 18 and bored at 20."

-Evelyn Waugh, via Domenico Bettinelli

All your Hip are Belong to Us

With leisure-time activities of consuming redefined as “rebellion,” two of late-capitalism’s great problems could easily be met: obsolescence found a new and more convincing language, and citizens could symbolically resolve the contradiction between their role as consumers and their role as producers. The countercult style has become a permanent fixture on the American scene, impervious to the angriest assaults of cultural and political cons., because it so conveniently and efficiently transforms the myriad petty tyrannies of econ. Life—all the complaints about conformity, oppression, bureaucracy, meaninglessness, and the disappearance of individualism that became virtually a natl obsession during the ‘50s—into rationales for consuming. No longer would Americans buy to fit in or to impress the Joneses, but to demonstrate that they were wise to the game, to express their revulstion with the artifice and conformity of consumerism. The enthusiastic discovery of the countercult by the branches of Amer. Business studied here marked the consolidation of a new species of hip consumerism, a cultural perpetual motion machine in which disgust with the falseness, shoddiness, and everyday oppressions of consumer society could be enlisted to drive the ever-accellerating wheels of consumption.”

-Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool

Something I'd like Arlen Specter to Say Unthinkingly:

"A woman's right to choose an abortion is as safe as the babe in her mother's womb."

He said what now?

Another admirer was Rosecrans Baldwin, who, along with Andrew Womack, founded The Morning News in Brooklyn in 1999.

"Paul and I met years ago when I wrote him an e-mail saying I liked an article he'd written," Mr. Baldwin said. "He wrote back saying he wanted to rape me. I replied with similar zest and our correspondence has continued similarly."

A Web Geek Takes off his Mask, NYTimes

Since when did rape humor become an ironic badge of hipness?

Rene Descartes: Secret Jesuit Agent

According to the account given in his notebook - no copy of which exists, but which has been reconstructed using contemporary reports - Descartes formulated his philosophy of methodical doubt after a day in a stove-heated room and an ensuing night of extraordinary dreams. Grayling points out that the dreams were remarkably similar to those described in Rosicrucian texts. It is known that Descartes had many acquaintances among the Rosicrucians. Can we be sure that the intrepid rationalist was not a secret intellectual ally of these hermetic thinkers? Grayling thinks it unlikely, and makes the intriguing suggestion that Descartes may have been a spy working in the service of the Jesuits, who formed contacts with the Rosicrucians as part of an intelligence-gathering operation. In the nature of the case, there can be no proof, but it leaves the philosopher looking a surprisingly adventurous figure.

John Gray's Bookshop

An Excellent Summary of Christian Anthropology

Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God covers a vast range of subject matter in a succinct, surprisingly thorough manner. Psychology, bioethics, ecology, and evolutionary theory are all touched upon, though I particularly appreciated this passage on mind and body:

Two themes converge to shape the biblical perspective. In the first place, the whole of man is seen as created in the image of God. This perspective excludes interpretations which locate the imago Dei in one or another aspect of human nature (for example, his upright stature or his intellect) or in one of his qualities or functions (for example, his sexual nature or his domination of the earth). Avoiding both monism and dualism, the Bible presents a vision of the human being in which the spiritual is understood to be a dimension together with the physical, social and historical dimensions of man.

Contemporary academic approaches tend to either dismiss or praise Christian thought as dualistic, so it is nice to see a contrary voice, though I would much like to find some book expanding on this idea at length.

Also of note, an attention-grabbing speculation on the reconciliation of Darwinism with an Aristotelian philosophy of the forms:

In order to maintain the unity of body and soul clearly taught in revelation, the Magisterium adopted the definition of the human soul as forma substantialis (cf. Council of Vienne and the Fifth Lateran Council). Here the Magisterium relied on Thomistic anthropology which, drawing upon the philosophy of Aristotle, understands body and soul as the material and spiritual principles of a single human being. It may be noted that this account is not incompatible with present-day scientific insights. Modern physics has demonstrated that matter in its most elementary particles is purely potential and possesses no tendency toward organization. But the level of organization in the universe, which contains highly organized forms of living and non-living entities, implies the presence of some "information." This line of reasoning suggests a partial analogy between the Aristotelian concept of substantial form and the modern scientific notion of "information." Thus, for example, the DNA of the chromosomes contains the information necessary for matter to be organized according to what is typical of a certain species or individual. Analogically, the substantial form provides to prime matter the information it needs to be organized in a particular way. This analogy should be taken with due caution because metaphysical and spiritual concepts cannot be simply compared with material, biological data.

Stephen Barr recommended this paper in his essay on the Cardinal Shoenborn controversy, The Design of Evolution, as did Chancellor Fran Maier of the Archdiocese of Denver while introducing Richard Weikhart's presentation "From Darwin to Hitler."

Novus Bloggus

Just noticed that Communio and Liberation has a weblog, Cahiers Peguy. It features an excellent short essay on Romeo and Juliet, among many other reflections.

Platonic Ethics doesn't end with the Euthyphro

I've noted my interest in the concept of theosis before , and it seems to have come up yet again. Right Reason takes Simon Blackburn to task for his overly-casual dismissal of Elizabeth Anscombe's ethical writings. Blackburn seems to follow the habit of so many readers of philosophy who treat the Euthyphro dialogue as Plato's last word on the relation between ethics and the divine, while ignoring his other commentaries. Frederick Copleston dilligently summarizes Platonic ethics in his History of Philosophy, a relevant section of which being this one:

Now, happiness must be attained by the pursuit of virtue, which means becoming as like to God as it is possible for man to become. We must become "like the divine so far as we can, and that again is to become righteous with the help of wisdom"(Theatetus 176 b 1-3) "The gods have a care of anyone whose desire is to become just and to be like God, as far as man can attain to the divine likeness, by the pursuit of virtue." (Rep. 613 a 7-b) In The Laws Plato declares that "God is the measure of all things, in a sense far higher than any man, as they say, can hope to be..."

Platonic divinization bears a not insignificant similarity to that concept of theosis especially prominent in Eastern Christianity, not to mention the Christian devotional practices encouraging the imitation of Christ. Indeed, the Catholic Catechism itself quotes St. Gregory of Nyssa: "the goal of the virtuous life is to become like God."(CCC para. 1803, orig. from De Virtutibus)

Most undergraduates never seem to get past the Euthyphro, which is terribly tragic. I do hope Simon Blackburn, an eminent philosopher himself, hasn't set a poor example for them.

"Some of the impurest books, that are extant in any language, are those written by the popish clergy on the subjects matrimony and divorces."
-William Blackstone, Commentaries


I don't doubt that this refers to ethical manuals instructing husbands and wives on their sexual responsibilities towards their spouse.

A Beg for Health Information

If anybody has information about Eosinophilic Esophagitis, its relation to chronic vomiting, chronic fatigue, and prednisone's effects thereon, and this information is not easily found in a lazy googling, please drop me a line.

And please throw me a pity party in the comments. Pity is my drug.

A Comfort Amid Tribulations

Quanto plus afflictionis pro Christo in hoc saeculo, tanto plus gloriae cum Christo in futuro. Arundell
-St. Philip Howard, inscribed on the walls of the Tower of London, June 22, 1587

"The more suffering for Christ in this world, the greater the glory with Christ in the world to come."

The Managerial Class in the Catholic Parish

Yet as the professional middle class’s own self-understanding and self-representation has shifted over the last three decades from staid conformist to breezy rebel-part of the broader corporate cooptation of cultural rebellion that Thomas Frank has dubbed “the conquest of cool”-so the matrices of the laity have shifted from IBM, the Great Society, and the underground church to the Starbucks chain, the consumer dreamland of infinite choice and abundant lifestyles. Most of the sea changes that have transpired in American Catholicism since the midsixties-in liturgy, gender conventions, sexual mores, and priest-laity relations-have been variously initiated, scuttled, or corrupted among the college-trained, technoburban, consumerist enclaves of the flock, and it seems likely that these zones of professional and managerial culture will become only more powerful in the twenty-first century.

-Eugene McCarraher, "Smile When You Say Laity"

Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time.

So says Nicolás Gómez Dávila, apparently a philosopher of an anti-modern, or simply ultra-traditionalist bent. The linked site has many of his aphorisms. Many are very good, but a few are quite bad.

Against the Dictatorship of Polyannas

Amy Welborn declares herself a "Not-Nice Girl":

So most of the time, I am highly rational, understanding and compassionate. But the problem is that there are other times, when that whole shtick just runs out of steam, and more likely, runs right into the wall of people who don’t respond to rationality because they’re blinded by their egos, deafened by their obsession with power and incapable of engaging in rational discussions because they’re either too dumb or too imprisoned by mindless adherence to platitudes disguised as ideology.

Pride Goeth Before, And Cometh After, The Fall

This view [from the web] is spookily godlike. You can switch your gaze of a spot in the world from map to satellite to 3-D just by clicking. Recall the past? It's there. Or listen to the daily complaints and travails of almost anyone who blogs (and doesn't everyone?). I doubt angels have a better view of humanity. Kevin Kelly, We Are the Web

Via Nicholas Carr's brief essay, reminiscent of technoskeptic Cliff Stoll.

FEMA's Theory of the Eternal Return

Source, via askel5

The Modern State: Blind to the Good Life

What characterizes modern political thought is the rejection of the bona vita as a guide to political action. Men either lack such a thing as a natural vocation or at least they disagree about what such a vocation consists in. This makes it necessary to rethink politics, to begin with men as they are and to arrange things in order that those who are divided about the issue of what constitutes the good life will nevertheless live together in peace.


Philippe Beneton, The Languages of the Rights of Man

The essay doesn't present anything terribly new, but it is a quite concise political analysis of the modern predicament.

Also of interest:

True and False Tolerance, also by Beneton

Catholic Social Thought and the American Regime from Gary D. Glenn of the excellent Society of Catholic Social Scientists. Glenn attempts to revive the old interpretation that Locke's thought had some basis in Jesuit political philosophy--albeit only in part. He also notes that Richard Filmer, of Patriarcha fame, was an enemy of the early Jesuits' political philosophy.

Funniest Skull Ever

Aunt Margaret, RIP

She was a great woman, tough as nails and as fun as anyone on earth. The last of my family from the World War II generation.

Dona ei requiem, O domine.

Margaret E. Dwyer, 91, Kansas City, MO, passed away October 7, 2005. Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10 a.m. Monday, October 10, 2005 at St. Peters Church, 6415 Holmes, Kansas City, MO 64131. Interment will be at Calvary Cemetery. Friends may call from 3-5 p.m. Sunday, October 9 at Muehlebach Funeral Home, 6800 Troost, Kansas City, MO where the rosary will be prayed at 4:30 p.m. Memorial contributions may be made to the St. Peters Church Legacy Fund or Catholic Charities, 1112 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64105. Margaret was born July 1, 1914 in Kansas City, MO to William W. and Esther C. (Birmingham) Hale. She was a member of St. Peters Church and retired from the Kansas City Missouri School District after many years of service. Margaret was preceded in death by her brother, William J. Hale and her sister, Mary Bernice Jones. Survivors include her daughters, Margaret Ann Sears, Cincinnati, OH and Patricia Lee Scaglia, Kansas City, MO; grandchildren, John T. Benson, Jr., James P. Benson, Ann B. Shah, Phillip P. Scaglia, and Patricia M. Scaglia; great-grandchildren, Amanda Benson, Meghan Benson, Blake Benson, Amelia Shah, and Aidan Shah; sister-in-law, Mary Catherine Hale and nephews, Montgomery Bruce Jones, William J. Hale, Jr. and Bill Jones. (Arr; Muehlebach Funeral Home, 816-444-2060).

“Two years ago, if somebody had said our soldiers would do these things to detainees and take pictures of it, I would have said that’s a lie,” sighed recently retired General Michael Marchand, who as assistant judge advocate general for the Army was responsible for reforming military training policy in the wake of Abu Ghraib. “What soldiers do, I’m not sure I can guess anymore.”

A sad commentary, evidence that there's many from Generation: Porn in Generation: Kill. From War Pornography, in an article not for the sensitive.

via Kevin Michael Grace

A Somewhat Anti-Catholic and Very Flaky Urban Legend is Loose

An email has been circulating recently referring to a newsletter we supposedly sent out this week titled "If Your Child is a Gothic, Reform Through the Lord". There has been no such letter either sent out by St. Mary's Cathedral or posted on our website. It appears that this is just another fictional email circulating on the web. For verification of the legitimacy of any email, visit http://www.snopes.com. Thank you for visiting our site!

Saint Mary's Cathedral, Colorado Springs

Here's the actual rumor:

If Your Child is a Gothic, Reform Through the Lord!

Listed below are some warning signs to indicate if your child may have gone astray from the Lord. Gothic (or goth) is a very obscure and often dangerous culture that young teenagers are prone to participating in.
The gothic culture leads young, susceptible minds into an imagined world of evil, darkness, and violence. Please seek immediate attention through counselling, prayer, and parental guidance to rid your child of Satan's temptations if five or more of the following are applicable to your child:

-Frequently wears black clothing.
-Wears band and/or rock t-shirts.
-Wears excessive black eye makeup, lipstick or nailpolish.
-Wears any odd, silver jewelry or symbols. Some of these include: reversed crosses, pentagrams, pentacles, ankhs or various other Satanic worshipping symbols.
-Shows an interest in piercings or tattoos.
-Listens to gothic or any other anti-social genres of music. (Marilyn Manson claims to be the anti-Christ, and publicly speaks against the Lord. Please discard any such albums IMMEDIATELY.)
-Associates with other people that dress, act or speak eccentrically.
-Shows a declining interest in wholesome activities, such as: the Bible, prayer, church or sports.
-Shows an increasing interest in death, vampires, magic, the occult, witchcraft or anything else that involves Satan.
-Takes drugs.
-Drinks alcohol.
-Is suicidal and/or depressed.
-Cuts, burns or partakes in any other method of self-mutilation. (This is a Satanic ritual that uses pain to detract from the light of God and His love. Please seek immediate attention for this at your local mental health center.)
-Complains of boredom.
-Sleeps too excessively or too little.
-Is excessively awake during the night.
-Dislikes sunlight or any other form of light. (This pertains to vampires promoting the idea that His light is of no use.)
-Demands an unusual amount of privacy.
-Spends large amounts of time alone.
-Requests time alone and quietness. (This is so that your child may speak to evil sprits through
meditation.)
-Insists on spending time with friends while unaccompanied by an adult.
-Disregards authority figures; teachers, priests, nuns and elders are but a few examples of this.
-Misbehaves at school.
-Misbehaves at home.
-Eats goth-related foods. Count Dracula cereal is an example of this.
-Drinks blood or expresses an interest in drinking blood. (Vampires believe this is how to attain Satan. This act is very
dangerous and should be stopped immediately.)
-Watches cable television or any other corrupted media sources. (Ask your local church for proper programs that your
child may watch.)
-Plays videos games that contains violence or are of a role-playing nature.
-Uses the internet excessively and frequently makes time for the computer.
-Makes Satanic symbols and/or violently shakes head to music.
-Dances to music in a provocative or sexual manner.
-Expresses an interest in sex.
-Masturbates
-Is homosexual and/or bisexual.
-Pursues dangerous cult religions. Such include: Satanism, Scientology, Philosophy, Paganism, Wicca, Hinduism and Buddhism.
-Wears pins, stickers or anything else that contains these various phrases: "I'm so gothic, I'm dead", "woe is me", "I'm a goth".
-Claims to be a goth.

If five or more of these apply to your child, please intervene immediately. The gothic culture is dangerous and Satan thrives within it. If any of these problems persist, enlist your child into your local mental health center.

~St. Mary's Catholic Church

I'd like to know who started this thing. Bishop Sheridan and Bishop Emeritus Hanifen were in the news around election time last year, but I don't think it's likely to be related to this silly thing.

"I am Legion"

“I think God’s sense of economy is very different from our own - so different it’s scary. To him the plight of one vagrant is more important than all the money in the world. And He’ll plunder our treasure to save him.”
WaiterRant reflects on the Gethsemane exorcism and his own demons quite excellently.

via fellow Colorado blogger Christ-Haunted

A Vulgar Authorship Debate

"Who is Bacon?"

"Some chap who's supposed to have written Shakespeare's plays."

"Awfully decent of him."

"I think so."

"Of course, he may have owed Shakespeare some money."

"Well, there is that."

Via Tom's comments at Zadok the Roman, supposedly originally from Wodehouse.

I'll Never Grow Up! Not Me!

Robert McHenry at Tech Central Station has a piquant essay Yes, I'm Definitely Saying Something About Your Mother comparing the oft-demanded Public Sensitivity Tribute to old schoolyard fight rituals:

How many of you have ever been confronted with some variation of the challenge to which the title of this essay is the answer you never dared offer? It's a schoolyard kind of thing, a rite of passage of sorts, perhaps, but certainly a ritualistic performance involving several people. There's the challengee, of course -- you, if you're male and a little, shall we say, averse to rough play. You might be alone, but the odds are you have a couple of like-minded friends with you. Then there's the challenger. You know what he's like without my making you recall the details. Invariably he has some pals with him. This is invariable because what we have is a piece of street theater, and the star needs a sympathetic audience.

So Tough Guy poses to you the question that has no correct answer: "You sayin' something about my mother?" You've probably said nothing at all up to now, hoping to avoid trouble, and so you stammer out "No, no, of course not." [Cue the adrenalin: heartbeat up? Check. Breaths short and shallow? Check. That clammy feeling? Check.] To which the scripted reply is "You calling me a liar?" He advances, you retreat; he perhaps prods you with a forefinger. Despite the physical menace, though, he doesn't want to fight so much as simply to intimidate, and to elicit the moronic leers of his chums; you want only to wake from a nightmare.

via The Japery

Another Miniver Cheevy on the 'Net?

I'm pretty tired of rants against relativism, but this guy is rather endearing:

...There was so much I could say, but she would never hear it, so I saved my breath. And then it hit me--the ultimate fashion would be a t-shirt with "Truth's Beauty" written on it. And there was that girl back in NC. It would look good on her. And we would never sell the shirt, but only ever encourage people to make their own. It would be an open-source fashion project!!

Dante reserved a special place for buzz marketers in hell--they never stood up for the right nor the wrong, good nor bad, but only ever ran with the latest fad. And so it is that Dante had them running after a blank banner in a cirlce, while hornets bit them and worms sucked their blood, as when they were living, they stung others by blogging little cutesy-ttotsey falsehoods, all to suck their cash away, into the beltway.

But just as one cannot deconstruct the Great Books, but only oneself, reality cannot be hacked, but only one's private perception of it. For the truth shall prevail, and thus the buzzters and pomo-elite reality hackers slowly hack their very own souls with each lie they tell, hype, and promote, with each dollar they lust after, with each falsehood they broadcast, until they no longer no right from wrong, good from bad--until they no longer know Truth's Beauty.

I think I came across him before, when he was canvassing for volunteers to put together a Dante's Inferno video game. Quixotic, aesthetically wacky, but sincere.

Let's All Help the Cowboys (Sing the Blues)

By Waylon Jennings

Cowboys they are ladies men all right
They'll love 'em up and talk 'em up all night
But they're lonely when there's nothing else to do
And that's what makes the cowboys sing the blues
He does a little Shakespeare and he sings
He plays the mandolin and other things
He looks for love beauty and IQ
And that's what makes the cowboy sing the blues

Cowboys have to fall in love get hurt and all that bit
Let their hearts hang out so they can write you all a hit
So ladies if they ask you don't refuse
Let's all help the cowboys sing the blues

Cowboys they don't ever understand
This thing between a woman and a man
Until they find the one they always lose
That's what makes the cowboys sing the blues
A cowboy takes his lonely pen in hand
And tries to make somebody understand
But she has ears to hear a different tune
And that's what makes the cowboy sing the blues

Another Lament...

A Lament for Our Lady's Shrine at Walsingham

"In the wrackes of Walsingam
Whom should I chuse
But the Queene of Walsingam
To be guide to my muse?

Then thou Prince of Walsingam
Grant me to frame
Bitter plaintes to rewe thy wronge
Bitter wo for thy name.

Bitter was it oh to see
The seely sheepe
Murdered by the raveninge wolves
While the sheephards did sleep.

Bitter was it oh to vewe
The sacred vyne
While the gardiners plaied all close
Rooted up by the swine.

Bitter, bitter oh to behould
The grasse to growe
Where the walls of Walsingam
So stately did shewe.

Such were the works of Walsingam
While shee did stand
Such are the wrackes as now do shewe
Of that so holy land.

Levell levell with the ground
The towres doe lye
Which with their golden, glitteringe tops
Pearsed once to the skye.

Where weare gates no gates are nowe,
The waies unknowen,
Where the press of peares did passe
While her fame far was blowen.

Oules do scrike where the sweetest himnes
Lately weer songe,
Toades and serpents hold their dennes
Wher the palmers did thronge.

Weepe, weepe O Walsingam,
Whose dayes are nightes,
Blessings turned to blasphemies,
Holy deeds to dispites.

Sinne is wher our Ladie sate,
Heaven turned is to hell,
Satham sittes wher our Lord did swaye,
Walsingam, oh farewell ! "

-Anon. 16th Century Recusant

This poem was published in Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars, an excellent account of the English Reformation

Sensitivity Vigilante objects to 'Philistine'

The End of Satire is at hand. A blog commentor at Matthew Lickona's Godsbody objects to 'philistine', claiming it is a racial slur. See the comments.

A Lamentation for Constantinople

The Last Mass in Hagia Sophia

Anonymous Song of Lamentation
for the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Translated by Richard Stoneman


God rings the bells, earth rings the bells, the sky itself is ringing,
The Holy Wisdom, the great church, is ringing out the message,
Four hundred sounding boards sound out, and two and sixty bells,
For every bell there is a priest, for every priest a deacon.
To the left the emperor is singing, to the right the patriarch,
And all the columns tremble with the thunder of the chant.
And as the emperor began the hymns to the Cherubim,
A voice came down to them from the sky, from the archangel’s mouth:
Cease the Cherubic hymn, and let the sacred objects bow;
Priests, take the holy things away, extinguish all the candles:
God’s Will has made our city now into a Turkish city.
But send a message to the West, and let them send three ships:
The first to take the cross, the second to remove the Gospel,
The third, the finest shall rescue for us our holy altar.
Lest it all to those dogs, and they defile it and dishonour it.
The Holy Virgin was distressed, the very icons wept.
Be calm, beloved lady, be calm and do not weep for them.
Though years, though centuries shall pass, they shall be yours again.

via Basia Me, Catholica Sum

Quomodo Sola Sedet Civitas

Two of the people in my favorite links, Askel5 and Romulus, are residents of New Orleans, and I would be remiss were I to neglect recording their own comments on their home city's woeful situation.

Askel5:
women are in short supply in the city

Romulus:
Especially the right kind of woman. Had a tense conversation yesterday with one of the wrong kind. She was touring my neighborhood yesterday as part of an out of town fire department team, surveying homes "to see when people can be allowed back". That pissed me off, and these state-funded jobsworths had to listen politely while I informed them that at least someone is on to the use of this disaster to engineer a massive state power grab, and how sorry I am that they lend themselves to these abuses cloaked as helping people, that all we need is for the power to come on, and that in a free country people are allowed to assess danger for themselves

[...]

To continue the power-grab riff: the state is peddling hysteria every chance it gets. I stopped by Baptist Hospital also, to see if I could locate my father's cardiologist. The entire multi-block region was cordoned off. The blue-clad rent-a-cop (festooned with cool cop gear, including embroidered patch with the word "International" on it. "Huh?") was of course creepily friendly and polite, but selling his story that the area was so dangerous that "we shouldn't even be out here talking". He was all set up with trailer (generator humming away), sun shaded area, crates of Gatorade and canned food, and the Offlical Line: the air inside the medical office building is so toxic even Federal Professionals don't dare enter (being sold on the story themselves, I don't doubt it), because Mold Kills, you know; that we're surrounded by Deadly Sewer Water (Ed Norton I guess flirted with dangers Ralph and Alice Cramden never suspected), and the entire zone is a toxic biohazard. "You don't really believe that, do you?" was my response; I do believe I actually scored a hit with that, as he admitted that if he feared for his life he probably wouldn't be there either. As I drove off, my last words to him were: "I hope you get to go home real soon."

Source

Romulus records his adventures in evading patrolling helicopters here. He has also resolved that come the next checkpoint, upon being asked if he has any weapons he will reply: "Why, do you think I need one?"

This Guy Deserves a Blog Post

...not to mention a little justice.

The trial of Zhang Shengqi and two other members of the clandestine Catholic Church opened on 16 March 2004 behind closed doors. All three are accused of "divulging state secrets".

Liu Fenggang is accused of carrying out research for a report exposing Chinese government repression of the clandestine Catholic Church. Xu Yonghai is on trial for having printed the report and Zhang Shengqi for undertaking to post it on the Internet and to send it electronically to organisations abroad.


Reporters Without Borders

LifeTeen under Attack

The Rocky, in an article soon to be lost to its unarchived memory hole, discusses a controversy about the Life Teen program for Catholic youth at Light of the World parish.

The article "Doubts aired about Life Teen program" concentrates on concerns about the sexual abuse allegation that has been leveled at the program's Phoenix-based founder, and the money apparently paid to LifeTeen, Inc. for the dubious privilege of running the program.

The article contains something that's news to me:

Life Teen listed $8.4 million in assets in 2003, the most recent year for which records were available.

That's a lot of money.

I despise LifeTeen for its uncritical and blatant pandering to youth culture and the program's insipid rock "Praise" music, the performance of which almost always overshadows the liturgy.

Though aware of the charge against its creator, I hadn't made much of it. I don't know if the concerns about the program's creator are stand-ins for objections to the LifeTeen program itself.

An Anthropological Oddity

The idea of God isn't a supernatural idea. If the idea of God were supernatural, then religion would be true. The idea of God, the idea, the representation of something supernatural is not itself supernatural. If it were, then we [anthropologists] would be out of business.

Dan Sperber

This guy seems to have become stuck while jumping between his fishbowl of human experience and the "outside" scientific perspective. Or, rather, something has stayed stuck to him.

Factchecker in Chapter 9, Please

Apparently Kurt Vonnegut has a new best-selling book out, "A Man without a Country." Looking through the book on Amazon, I find it repeats the same error pointed out here before, where Vonnegut attributes Jesus' words to Confucius, explicitly denying Jesus said them.

To repeat myself: Now thanks to Mr. Vonnegut we have yet another error half-educated people will repeat as Gospel truth.

And then there is California...

Making legislative sausage - the arm-twisting, compromising, backroom-deal-making, back-stabbing - is not for the faint of heart. A particularly nasty incident has been reported in the Sacramento Bee. Earlier this month the state Senate's dictatorial Appropriations Committee chairwoman, Democrat Carole Migden of San Francisco, marched over to the Assembly floor to watch a vote on her bill to add new regulatory requirements for cosmetic manufacturers.

With the bill one vote shy of passage, she went to Republican Guy Houston's desk and pushed the "yes" button so that a vote would be electronically recorded. The normally mild-mannered Assemblyman Bob Huff, the Diamond Bar Republican who sits next to Houston, saw this and had to push Migden's arm away, then undo the vote. Huff told me that Migden's excuse - that she thought the desk was a Democrat's - is bogus. She has a reputation for doing this, he said, and even if it had been a Democrat's desk, a senator has no right to cast a vote in the Assembly chambers.

The ugly truth about Sacramento

Tommy Aquinas on Chance, as applied to Darwinism

I've long been noting the existential despair lurking behind certain proponents of neo-Darwinism. I had one anthropology professor who was inclined to share his despair with the whole lecture hall. He would basically repeat a less poetic version of MacBeth's lament: tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, etc.

Curiously enough, the hard Darwinian commitment to random mutation doesn't translate into a willingness to consider a irrationalist epistemology that adapts by means of random ideas. I once tried to glean Daniel Dennett's opinion on the matter when he lectured on meme theory. Meme theory, with its almost pathological language of infection, dispersion, and so forth, seems to me to be most amenable to irrationalism, but Dennett simply gave the gruff, curt reply that such application was an abuse of the theory.

Anyway, somebody has put together a nice little Thomistic treatise on chance and design in evolutionary philosophy and the philosophy of its major opponents. See A Designer Universe: Chance, Design, and Cosmic Order

Against Education

The Japery has a roundup of some articles reflecting on the ideology of Education. Good old Ivan "Deschooling Society" Illich makes a showing, of course.

Particularly striking is one comment from this piece stating:

Comenius is the patron Saint of those who would transform creation into a classroom and humanity into students. Comenius legacy is the dis-enchantment of the world. The path of Comenius leads us, as Illich has pointed out, to the terrors of a world understood as a yet another device for the use of education and not as a good creation of a creators imaginative and windy engagement with chaos. Creation as a technique or method or as raw material to be used to manufacture the new humanity is the alchemical black magic of such noxious views as Skinnerian behaviourism or the re-education camps of the cultural revolution or even more insidious the liberal Christian view that salvation is won through proper schooling.

Secularization is possibly at work even in the putatively most backward arena of biology, "Creation Science."

An interesting passage from an interview with Illich:

I remember on my next trip to New York going to Princeton to see Jacques Maritain, the philosopher, who was then living there. We had met up in Rome in a seminar and he had become a dear friend and advisor. His imaginative Thomism meant a lot to me. He was then an old man with a face, as Ann Freemantle once said, cut from a stained glass window in Chartres. In 1957, I was now sitting there with him again. He had a teacup in his hand and was shaking when I talked to him about the question which bothered me, that in all his philosophy I didn't find any access to the concept of planning. He asked me if this was an English word for accounting, and I told him no ... if it was for engineering, and I said no ... and then at a certain moment he said to me, "Ah! Je comprends, mon cher ami, maintenant je comprends." Now I finally understand. "C'est une nouvelle espèce du pêche de presomption." Planning is a new variety of the sin of pride.

These pieces also bring to mind a short critique of John Henry Cardinal Newman's philosophy of education, Knowledge for the Sake of Knowledge

The New Edition of The New Pantagruel is out.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927

The flood brought another clever political manipulator to office: legendary Louisiana Gov. Huey Long. Long's populist mandate arose in great measure as a reaction to a huge fissure that the flood created in New Orleans society. As the flood waters started approaching New Orleans, the close-knit cabal of New Orleans bankers who ran Louisiana from their exclusive krewes and clubs decided they were going to save their own skins by dynamiting a levee about 10 miles from the city. They were powerful enough that they didn't even need to do it under the cover of night -- they got the governor to sign an order making the operation legal.

James Carville, Swamp Fever, April 7, 1997

I hadn't heard about this until the catastrophe last week. The exposure of the failures of a system based on plutocratic self-interest, and the rise of a populist politics, all precipitated by a great disaster. Will be on the lookout for any signs of historical recapitulation.


One possible correction to the essay: Carville seems to indicate that Shelby Foote was actually a relative of Walker Percy. I don't think this was the case. As far as I know, he was just a semi-adopted family friend

Yuppies in the Sky

Sung to the tune of Ghost Riders in the Sky

One night as I was walking down Columbus Avenue
The sushi bars were shuttered, and the dark cantina too
I stood there in the darkness as an empty cab rolled by
When all at once I heard the sound of yuppies in the sky

The herd came down Columbus for as far as I could see
The men were wearing polo and the women wore esprit
Each yuppie had a Walkman, and as each one passed me by
I saw their sad expressions and I heard their mournful cry

Condos for sale, Condos to buy, Oh Yuppies in the sky
Condos for sale, Condos to buy, Oh Yuppies in the sky

Written by Tom Paxton

The Storm had a Say, Too.

Mere Comments voices a necessary note against that bad old technotriumphalism in light of the Katrina blame game:

What I find interesting, though, has been the instant, reflexive resort to the belief, and accusation, that SOMEONE IS TO BLAME for this. Someone can and must be held accountable for this vast calamity. This, it seems to me, is a powerful confirmation of something that I have argued in the pages of Touchstone before: that the increase in our mastery over the physical terms of our existence will not make us happier or more content, and may even lead to chronic political and social instability and unease, precisely because of the unsatisfiable expectations it generates.

"It is Sad to Contemplate How Few Politicians are Hanged."

Via Crooks and Liars, a journalist doing his job confronts a Louisiana Senator who is on Public Speaking autopilot--speaking as though she hadn't just lost a few thousand of her people and was simply on another campaign stop:

LANDRIEU: Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts--Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard -- maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating.

COOPER: Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.

And when they hear politicians slap -- you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up.