Friday, August 13, 2004
These posts have a little bit of everything, or deal with things that don't furrow the brow. Since they were written by a Catholic, I thought the category title was appropriate. As with the other archives, a bit of the post follows the link to give you a preview of what's inside.
Movie Reviews (2), Category: Rip-Roaring Adventure Films
"Teddy Roosevelt, played to the hilt by Brian Kieth, is the fiery apotheosis of an Awakening America determined to bypass European dithering and assert the inviolability of justice by rescuing the fair widow. Thus are we treated to one of the greatest chest-thumping, flag-waving, heart-pounding scenes in American cinema, as the U.S. Marines land in Tangiers and shame the decadent Europeans by taking the situation well in hand. . . . . .Movie Reviews (3), Category: Man, Morals and Society
Most people I know don't like this movie because it glorifies gangs, lawlessness, and bad manners. They're right, it does all those things. But I watch it as a kind of parable on Romans 2:14 because the gangs, having not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, thereby becoming a law unto themselves. The film's ridiculously over-the-top, glorified depiction of gang life shows these fellows having some attenuated relationship with loyalty, bravery, crude ideas about justice, and even a primitive sort of chivalry. In fact, without those things the story can't happen at all, and yet the whole morality play occurs in a realm that has already declared its secession from civilization and the social order. So I like to think of the characters showing the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another. But then, I'm a really weird person." (Read Whole Entry Here)
"This movie was touted as Oliver Stone's Grand Remonstrance to the Greedy Reagan Years. Fortunately, this is one film where Stone falters in conveying his political message, largely because Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko ("Greed works . . . greed is good") is offset by the forceful Terence Stamp as Sir Lawrence Wildman, a titan of industry who's actually a titan of, uh, industry. Douglas' character represents the worst of capitalism -- his labor produces nothing but ruined companies, paper wealth and usurious riches. Wildman's efforts create employment and goods. The contrast isn't drawn as well as it ought to be, but it's there and it keeps the movie from degenerating entirely into a mindless Leninist passion-play. . . .Movie Reviews (1), Category: Courtroom Drama
Even assuming Hamidou's death isn't Billy's fault, no one who watches the film thinks Billy (who is already clearly guilty of smuggling hashish) ought to be extradited back to Turkey to be tried and punished for his escape. Why is that? Is there a source of law higher than the state, so that we may rebuff Turkey's claim to further punish Billy? If so, where does that law come from? How do we apply it to men like Billy who are obviously guilty, and yet who obviously do not deserve to be treated as he was. (Read Whole Entry Here)
"The movie's explosive ending is preceded by Gavin delivering what is, IMHO, the greatest on-screen jury argument in the history of film. Essentially, showing the film is a wonderful way to begin meetings of Slothaholics Anonymous -- don't ever be afraid of hard scary things, because hard scary things will generally make you closer to the man God wants you to be. . . . .Rush Limbaugh's Sports Soviet Overcome by Counterrevolutionaries
[The film] also shows the attorneys engaging in some, uh, "sharp practice" on occasion: among other scenes we get to see James Stewart "woodsheding" a witness (an old slang term from the days when lawyers used to coach their witnesses in the woodshed behind the courthouse). Stewart gets just about as close as you can get to scripting testimony without being open to indictment or disbarment. The most accurate depiction of a trial on film, IMHO."(Read Whole Entry Here)
"Modern folks are past masters of ‘omnipoliticizing' things; they naturally make yard sales into socially-conscious events, and turn Girl Scout meetings into a Womens' Soviet. Politics, broadly thought of as society's intimate and total involvement with the thoughts and actions of every human being, is the modern person's weird counterpart to the Catholic faith and the Body of Christ. Modern people instinctively politicize everything because they simply can't imagine anything that's not politically symbolic. I don't see much point in joining them in a ‘race to the bottom,' trying to make sure that the Red Girl-Scouts' Soviet is met by the White Tsarist Girls' Legion at the barricades of socially-conscious cookie selling. (Read Whole Entry Here)Interview of SecretAgentMan by the Army of One Blog
"I'm definitely not a libertarian. You can't refuse to employ the power of the community against gross evils like prostitution, slavery, and drug-peddling and obey Christ. But that's what libertarianism, strictly defined, means. Now there are people who use "libertarian" as more or less a synonym for favoring economic freedom and private property, but I'm not using that definition in my answer. I tend to favor Republicans because their fascism is much slower and more haphazard than the Democrats'. . . .The Food Thing
Ahh, but if the Bible were really "all" we had, then our God would be a very cruel God wouldn't He? . . . I should like to go a little further and point out some things which may be very unfamiliar to Protestants. Protestants' experience with divinely-assured truth is bounded by a particular understanding of Scripture which commits them, quite understandably, to identify infallibility only with regard to Scripture and thus as inseparable from other things also identified with Scripture, namely divinity, revelation and inspiration. So I think that when they address papal infallibility they assume, quite naturally but quite incorrectly, that Catholicism regards papal infallibility as an inspired, revelatory act by a divine figure who adds more Scripture to the Gospel.. . . "(Read Whole Entry Here)
"While going through Recipe Goldmine I was reminded of my rules, verified by a good deal of testing, which can help weed out the truly time-wasting recipes from the bewildering array one finds on home-cooking websites. How can you tell whether to make Beef Stroganoff I, II, III, IV . . . XIX, XVIII, or MII? Here are some handy tips that let you know when you should remain calm, keep your hands to your side, and back away slowly. . . .(Read Whole Entry Here)
Transmitted by SecretAgentMan 6:27 PM Hours [+]
Here's a collection of posts about matters Catholic. Topics covered include Traditionalism, Popes, ancient baptisms, Latin in the liturgy, and anything else which isn't primarily historical or political. As with the other archives, a link to each post is followed by a paragraph or so from the post itself to give you a preview.
Pastoral Failures Regarding Homosexuals? Undoubtedly, But Whose Failures?
"We can't expect corporate industrialists to obey the Church and forego exploitative methods of making money if we claim for ourselves the right to disobediently dictate the terms of our own happiness. We can't demand that our governments heed the Church and stop inflicting the death penalty in ways that violate human dignity if we claim an independent right to decide the meaning and purpose of our lives. Sympathy must stop when war is, however tacitly, declared against the Church's ability to rule over us. For a Catholic, indulging fantasies about an individual's superior right to interpret and apply God's teaching about anything, most particularly about ourselves, is not discipleship. It's hypocrisy, and these priests are unintentionally making it into a virtue. By all means, let the Church be held to herself, and her leaders' actions also be measured by her rule. But once we take ‘self-love' and ‘self-respect' as things sufficient in themselves to justify rejection of Church teaching as ‘abusive,' we've turned our backs on God altogether no matter how much we might pat Him on the head occasionally and trot Him out as a metaphor for our own choices."Fr. Pater, the Sex Scandal, and the Dancing Girls of Pius X
"That part of the Church which is in schism with America knows that action against priestly adultery and pedophilia isn't worth taking on terms which do not further the Gospel. ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' Matthew 16:26 (KJV). Yes, there must be punishments for priests who violate the Church by offending her people. But punishment, if it's to be condign, must be consistent with the idea that both offender and victim are infintely priceless and mundanely like ourselves. An environment which seizes on proven sin as a license for unbridled accusations and retribution inflicted without regard to an unflinching and consistent moral appreciation of facts isn't about justice, or the Gospel, or even children. The facts are that Fr. Pater seduced a young girl, playing on the emotional naivete common to young girls, sacrificing the trust we have in Christ's priests on the altar of his own lust. The facts are also that his paramour accepted his embraces for more than a decade, even when she was nineteen, twenty, twenty-four years old. Perhaps, therefore, our first act of justice is to stop thinking that this is a unique, shattering appearance of evil. It's just the repetition of a very old story; you can read it in Genesis, and it will happen again and again until He comes in glory. Because we have a Christian heritage, we find in sin an eschatological metaphor, a figure of the world's ending and the need for a miraculous resurrection. Because we're modern, we completely externalize the metaphor, projecting it onto social arrangements and institutions. We chase a myth, a visible Church where things like this affair are part of a past that has been miraculously shorn away, a past which reappears only in the form of an immoral (or even satanic) abnormality. We stand the whole world on its head, because Christ did not come to protect normality. He came because in this world sin is normality; it's only because of Him that the real abnormality of holiness ever appears in the tired guilty pattern of human existence."Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops
"One of the reasons I find Brownson's essay an appropriate commentary is his explanation of why the outraged and sympathetic shock one sees in so many responses to Bishop Robinson is misplaced. There's nothing particularly abnormal in the ECUSA's decision; Protestants have been flogging the Bible to produce congenial sexual dogmata for half a millennia. Philip of Hesse wanted two wives simultaneously, Henry Tudor wanted six in sequence, and the Reformers were happy to oblige these royal urges with "unchanging, rock-solid" teaching from the perspicacious Word of God. When affluence, a low mortality rate, and a materialistic Zeitgeist combined to make contraception appear as a desirable normalcy the Anglicans were happy to give the bourgeois more "unchanging, rock-solid" Scripture authorizing their use of condoms, ointments, pills, and such other impedimenta to childbearing as might be provided by man's chemical and pharmaceutical ingenuity. When the sexualized impulsiveness of modern society showed that even those precautions would not suffice, and the comfort of bourgeois lives hung in the balance, Bible-believing Christians like the Methodists and Baptists were happy to sound the tocsin of sola scriptura and call for abortion on demand. Now, when the Gospel connection between family, childbearing and sexuality has been thoroughly eroded by centuries Reformed perspicacity, and bourgeois culture again presses for another logical vindication of its sexual appetites, we have homosexual Church-weddings and Officially Gay Bishops. The only shocking thing would have been Bishop Robinson's repudiation."Commentary on the Burbling Church (1)
"It's my belief that men are in a fallen condition and that, even after baptism, the effects of their prior state remain in the form of disordered passions, faulty reasoning, and a general disinclination toward sanctity. Therefore, a Catholic pastorage which tailors its witness to a lowest common-denominator faithfulness will see that common-denominator sink lower, and lower, and ever lower, until all Catholic life becomes utterly two-dimensional, a notional dot on a hypothetical plane, incapable of being seen by one's neighbors or even one's self. Just about every week, my Diocesan newspaper does its best to confirm my opinion by printing something that tries to talk down the high truths of the Church to the level of an Everyman who is, apparently, conceived of as a kind of illiterate Unitarian whose spiritual aspirations are limited to being attentive all the way through the opening prayer at a Kiwanis lunch. The result is the presentation of Catholicism as a pallid, nonsensical thing, an ecclesiastical Marienbad of Silliness where people can languish in tepid baths of utter bafflement, breathe deep the maudlin airs of bourgeois self-conceit, and nourish a febrile sentimentality with whole-grain nothingness. It bothers me. It bothers me because I dislike mediocrity with a special vehemence, since it's a fault to which I am particularly prone. It bothers me since I know people who have left the Church because, frankly, they've come to the incorrect opinion that banality is all the Church can offer a man who seeks his God and Lord. It bothers me that great saints and churchmen are likely being stifled in their cribs, so to speak, by a smothering blanket of burbling thrown over their eyes and ears through the well-intentioned arrogance of an elite that thinks its arcani disciplina can't be shared with the common herd of communicants. Ignorance is strength, you know, so long as it makes everyone else weak. Rather than continue speaking to the newsprint, disturbing my wife and my dog by shouting paragraph numbers from Lamentabili Sane, I'm going to run written commentary on these painfully-obtuse items, a commentary on the Burbling Church.Commentary on the Burbling Church (2)
"I think anyone who doesn't believe that the creation of a human community requires, not one miracle but thousands and thousands of them on a daily basis, knows very little about humans and human communities. I dare say he tends to think that the manicured campus is the ordinary environment of human events; that the polite maneuvering one sees on faculty committees is the human soul's default response to frustration; and that the whole elegant construct of civilization is just the spontaneous manifestation of "right reason" and human nature. He will go on thinking like that until his daughter-in-law shoots herself in the head, driven by guilt because she and he have been making the beast with two backs for nineteen years. Any man can put trousers on an ape, but only God can create the difference between an ape and a man. Unless we subordinate our lives to adoring that miraculous event it won't matter whether we're living the trendy-left romanticism of Relais or the trendy-right decency of Hillsdale College -- our ignorance of the divine mystery will leave us with nothing better to do than sit around and pick nits off each other until our "community" goes up in an explosion of disordered passion.Notes on Traditionalist Views of the Ordinary Magisterium
"Here, as in every other way of life, the Catholic paradigm contradicts the world's -- the world may operate on the assumption that all novelty is betrayal and all error sin, but Catholics must operate on the assumption that novelty is apparent and that even if it is actual, it may be merely error and not wilful disloyalty to "The Faith." The world may turn custody of "The Faith" into a bone of revolutionary contentiousness between a proletarian laity and a capitalist clergy, but Catholicism must grant "The Faith" to all alike within a shared life that cannot be irretrievably sundered -- and must be maintained -- despite anyone's fault. The brute application of The Federalist Papers, and the entire culture of which it is only a part, to the problems and daily maintenance of Church life dispenses with all of this, throwing the victory to the world even as it simultaneously claims a triumph for "The Faith." The law has its place in the Church -- indeed, law is the Church's gift to the world, but the Traditionalist's use of law, like his modern use of "ideology", leaves much to be desired. He gives us a perspective that is rank with the kind of rights-based morality that is poisoning modern life to the point where lawyers have to review holiday cards to ensure they're not "offensive." He makes an aggressive use of law against everything, perpetually suspecting and challenging imminent "violations" of his right to define himself. In other words, he uses the law as a sword against every attempt to require his participation in a shared life without prior guarantees that its future development will please him."Tim Enloe Makes My Head Hurt Again (Reflections on Apologetics and Cross-Confessional Dialogue)
So when you say that "RCs appear to magnify their peculiar doctrine of the Papacy out of all proportion to everything else," you're speaking across confessional lines and I'm entitled to ask "what's everything else?" Does it include the "sola's" rejection of a discrete mediating and magisterial priesthood within the Body of Christ? If it does, then of course one can say that "the Papacy is being magnified out of proportion to everything else." But if "everything else" includes a discrete mediating and magisterial priesthood . . . . you see the problem. Whose idea of "everything else" do we start with? That's one of the reasons I keep saying that the differences between Catholics and Protestants are fundamental, which makes those differences more, not less, difficult to understand. It's not as though we're debating whether priests should be allowed to say the Novus Ordo in Latin. That kind of dispute can be (relatively) easily resolved on a theological level according to existing mutual commitments to identical principles. (The political level is another matter, as it always is). When Catholics and Protestants discuss Christianity, they're pitting so many inconsistent theological / philosophical / cultural "sub-systems" against one another that most of the conversation tends to be rash and dominated by mutual caricatures.Comfortably Numb: Bishop Cawcutt and the Decline of the Catholic Church.
I really don't care if my parish priest is a homosexual. I really don't care if, when he falls from grace, his mind turns to images of teenagers "bonking" in the Vatican gardens. Men need a Redeemer, and our Redeemer died on a Cross while we were yet sinners; we should expect men caught in sin to look grotesque and pathetic, their thoughts to be twisted and violently contorted. Didn't our Redeemer look that way when He died? Didn't He bear our stripes? No, none of that fundamentally bothers me. In fact it seems rather ordinary and shabby, made all the more pathetic by its appearance in public on the Bishop's pornographic little website. Anyone who would really be shocked to his foundation to hear of thoughts and desires like those flitting through the mind of a cleric hasn't spent much time examining his own conscience. Or spent much time in a lawyer's office, for that matter. Spend enough time with men "as they are" and you start realizing that the truly disgusting people are the ones who believe sin's ugliness only disfigures their neighbors.Notes on Traditionalist Critiques of the Theology of the Body
"If the magisterium says something "counterintuitive," it's us who need to stop being "counter" and "intuitive." We ought to refrain from dark muttering about contrary appearances and heterodox suggestions. If we simply must look for heterodoxy under every rock, then when the magisterium says something disagreeable we ought to be more ready to start looking into ourselves rather than into the magisterium. Truly heterodox suggestions may indeed be present, but they always end up being our own and not the magisterium's. The alternative approach is not orthodoxy, but schism."Catholic Un-Answers
"Welcome to Catholic Un-Answers, an apologetics and theology resource for your questions about the Catholic faith. It's time for our ‘Q&Un-A' program, where our staff of catechists and theologians un-answer your questions about Catholicism. Today's question is from Jim Noble. Jim's noticed that Catholic abortion-supporter John Kerry is given communion at every Mass. Jim asks, ‘I am denied communion with my Catholic wife and Catholic children EVERY SUNDAY because I follow the request in the front of the missalette not to receive. Why should I bother?' That's a great question, Jim! Let's hear from our staff! First up is Fr. Chris Coyne of the Archdiocese of Boston, Fr. Coyne? . . . .Latin in the Liturgy: Hooray!!! (With Quibbles)
"The ‘Church which presides in the place of the region of the Romans,' is not, except by passing historical coincidence, the ‘Church which speaks Latin.' When Pope Clement wrote the Corinthians, he gave them many exhortations, told them to do many things; he did not tell them to learn Latin. The language, glorious as it is, evocative of unity as it is, is nonetheless only an external ‘help.' Yes, it would be better if we all had that help, at least sometimes. The breakdown of Latin usage in the Church is a very bad thing, but it doesn't mean we're losing our Catholicism or even the best part of what it means to be Catholic.My Two Cents on the Baptism of Arians
"That a permissible difference exists between orthodoxy and an imperfect conception of orthodoxy is implied by the very teaching that, in order to be valid, the minister of the sacrament must have the intention of doing what the Church does. Christ is the final minister of all the sacraments to everyone; His priests and (in the case of Baptism) lay disciples minister these sacraments as His servants. (See, e.g. Summa, III, a. 64, q. 1). Now, consider the servant whose master tells him to store hay in a loft against the coming winter. If the servant were better educated, more quick of wit, he would know that his master does not wish him to pick up each straw individually and carry it to the loft. Nor would the servant entertain all sorts of silly ideas given to him by equally uneducated (or even wicked) fellow-workers about how each straw must, upon arriving in the loft, be sorted and stacked with other straws according to length. And he would not have listened to their silly or malicious stories about how the hay will be used in the winter time to make gold cloth. But the servant doesn't know all this -- he's ignorant, misinformed, and not particularly acute to begin with -- and so he spends the next fifty days carrying straws up into the loft and sorting them by length. Yet with all this stupidity, error, and departure from the truth, the servant still intends to do what his master is doing -- getting the hay into the loft to be used in the coming winter. So with the sacrament of baptism (or all the sacraments, in their various ways); if the minister knows that he is to baptize with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in order to bring a child into unity with God and His Church, then he has the intention of doing what the Church does even if he has really bad ideas about some of the particulars which follow the event."Baptism Question"
A reader writes: ‘I have a friend that asked me the question, why is it bad to be baptized more than once? I tried to answer logically, and by the good old, *because you can't*, line, but neither worked. I wonder what your answer would be.' Briefly, my answer is . . . . "Butterflies, Traditionalists and Training Wheels
The dialogue, the aggiornamento, sought by the Second Vatican Council is not a radical turning away from the Catholic past. It is a continuation of the aggiornamento sought by every Council and every Pope since the fathers at Nicea began the Church's doctrinal and pastoral dialogue with classical culture. Mr. Johnson may wish to establish a paradigm that describes the old christological controversialists as striving for ‘dogmatic truths about the divine order' rather than ‘focus[ing] on the human person . . . God wants us to be' but, should Mr. Johnson succeed in persuading us otherwise, he will have only harmed both endeavors; we cannot know what kind of human person God wants us to be until we know the kind of human person God became."The Great Kneeling Debate
Shawn McElhinney of Rerum Novarum and myself are engaged in a long, on-again-off-again dialogue about the 2003 amendments to the US-GIRM that changed the posture of Catholics at Mass. Herewith a complete (so far) list of our discussions, together with links to each post. No excerpts are given here; they'd make this directory too long and confusing:
Round OneSecretAgentMan's First Somewhat-Hyperventilating Blog on Kneeling and CommunionRound TwoRerum Novarum's Reply, Part I
Rerum Novarum's Reply, Part II
Rerum Novarum's Reply, Part III
Rerum Novarum's Reply, Part IV
Rerum Novarum's Reply, Part VSecretAgentMan's Essay on the Liceity/Legalism of KneelingRound Three
SecretAgentMan's Essay on the Edification of Kneeling, Part I: Kneeling as Witness
SecretAgentMan's Essay on the Edification of Kneeling, Part II: Kneeling and Private Prayer
SecretAgentMan's Essay on the Edification of Kneeling, Part III: The Politics of Kneeling (NB: This part of the Essay has footnotes to sources used throughout the three parts of the "Edification" essay).SecretAgentMan vs. Rerum Novarum on Communion Posture and the Authority of Bishops, Book II, Part I
SecretAgentMan vs. Rerum Novarum on Communion Posture and the Authority of Bishops, Book II, Part II
SecretAgentMan vs. Rerum Novarum on Communion Posture and the Authority of Bishops, Book II, Part III
SecretAgentMan vs. Rerum Novarum on Communion Posture and the Authority of Bishops, Book II, Epilogue
Transmitted by SecretAgentMan 2:10 PM Hours [+]
Thursday, August 12, 2004
From time to time I yap back, fisk, or enter into a Stream of Consciousness about something in the news, the Church, or the culture. Here's the yapping, fisking, and streaming which are, IMHO, keepers. I quote some of the aformentioned yapping, fisking, or consciousness-streaming to give you a preview.
Salon Magazine on The Passion: Two Pods Down.
"Frighteningly-Organized Christians? Select conservative leaders? Nationwide activity? Bodysnatching Pods from Space? Here I was, thinking only members of the Gibson family could make inflammatory, crack-pot conspiracy statements that can be tied into The Passion. Now we find out that those things are part of the office pool at Salon.com. ‘Hey Cintra, I picked Space Pods for the reason behind Bush invading Iraq! Well you're gonna loose, Camry, because I got Right-Wing Taco Bell Chicken Conspiracy and fifty bucks!' On second thought, Cintra, you'd better leave that Encarta disk plastered to your forehead -- it's the only thing keeping the Frighteningly-Organized Christian Brain-Control Waves from turning your mind into a burrito."Darth Burke to Princess Lassa: "I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing."
"As I see it, there are actually two ways to view this dust-up. One of them is that it's about whether Catholic lawmakers are going to ‘foist' Catholicism on decent Americans. The other is that it's about whether Catholic lawmakers must, in order to be Catholic lawmakers, actually be Catholics. For far too long (beginning with that lying drug-addict who treated women like used tissue-paper -- I mean John F. Kennedy), Bishops have allowed the answer to be an unequivocal ‘Yes,' as in ‘Yes, Canon law requires every Catholic lawmaker, every year and before Easter, to publicly announce why he or she can't conscientiously participate in a St. Patrick's Day Parade that excludes gay-rights organizations.' For the first time since Bishop Bruskewitz's courageous notice to the Catholics in his spiritual charge, another bishop is talking turkey about what it means toWhen Maidens Were Fair and Heresiarchs Boldbetray America by servile obeisance to the Pope in Romeer, be Catholic (sorry, we'll get to that later). So I guess it's not surprising that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sees only one way to phrase the issue -- as a threat to the American people, who are assumed to be allergic to the very idea of talking turkey. Anyhow, what's so wrong with a Roman Catholic Bishop rhetorically holding two fingers together and choking the crap out of a State Senator while saying, ‘I find your lack of faith disturbing'? If a PETA dizz-brain can throw paint on Mrs. Van-Richey's mink coat, surely Burke's entitled to use his episcopal stationary.
Yep, that's how you can tell heresies nowadays -- Satan's addicted to colons. We'll have none of those colon-less titles, thank you, like The Interior Castle, City of God or Lives of the Saints. The only task left for the Holy Office is to determine whether the title is a single-bore heresy (one piece of trendy blather ante-colon, followed by serious-sounding explanatory title) or a double-bore heresy (pieces of trendy blather appended to each side of the colon). A Rejoicing People: Male Castration in the Writings of Hildegard of Bingen is a single-bore heresy. A Church of Love Unbounded: Necrophiliac Priests Tell Their Stories is a double-bore blast of heterodoxy. These bouts of scholarly possession, however, need not be tedious to the layman. Often, playful demons cause theologians to insert oxymorons on one or both sides of the colon. So you get single-barrelled oxymoronic heresies (A Scriptural Garden: Lesbian Exegesis of the Song of Songs), and double-barrelled oxymoronic heresies, like The Church of Peter: Dissenting Catholics Claim their Faith. That's why Bishop Malone's no-doubt self-published autobiography will be titled Vincent Malone: A Shepherd Reflects.Tricky John Sp*ng and the Vatican Website
"It's not the faith of Christianity that's dying, John. It's the life-giving faith of men. And you're helping men die, John, you're urging men to die, because you think growth is a sign of death and, no doubt, think death is a sign of growth. You're a sadly-smiling member of a cultural Sonderkommando, passing out rhetorical towels and philosophical soap to the naked men and women who shuffle, cowed and shivering, past your demonically-assigned station. May God have mercy on you, John, may God have mercy, for otherwise it will have been better for you to have had a millstone fastened around your neck and been cast into the sea."Orthodoxy Comes for an (Arch) Bishop
"We noticed that he kept repeating this thought, his hand never leaving a book titled ICEL Manual of Style. As he spoke, his visage became paler, even translucent . . . . . . . and his voice took on a tinny quality, sounding more distant, as though he were going away . . . . until he was barely visible, lost in the dust motes swirling by the nearby window, his voice faintly echoing from some unfathomably-distant place . . . ."Flinging Pebbles at Vultures
"Thank [ ] for Richard McBrien! Without him, reporting on the Catholic Church would grind to a halt, and news anchors would lose their mouths like Neo did in The Matrix. There wouldn't be a single modern gripe about the Catholic Church -- ranging from complaints about the Church's teachings on sex all the way through complaints about the Church's teachings on sex -- that could be ‘legitimized' by the sight of McBrien's head croaking out the dead pseudo-pieties of 1968. And as usual, McBrien has gotten it wrong. Every person is indispensable -- even the pope. Even this pope, no matter how much some folks would like him to be the pontifical equivalent of Terri Schiavo.""Mister, Can You Spare a Dime for a Prurient Catholic?"
"The hallmark of men who find Catholicism repugnant is not their time, their state in life, or even the merits of their opinions. It is in their arrogance. An arrogance which, in this case, has assumed that something icky and nasty confirms their repugnance, and that it doesn't call on them to wonder whether the nastiness belongs to them and not to what they dislike. Papism says that the bleeding face of the Lord, his torn flesh and lifeless corpse, are beautiful. They are beautiful because they are a divinely-willed token of an infinite regard which makes Mr. Carroll's love of life, and Ms. Matthewes-Greene's wondrous awe at the resurrecting forgiveness of sins, possible."The Dossier Proclaims: "Whack ‘Em All and Let God Sort ‘Em Out Day."
"A little reality check is needed here. It [producing the English translation of the Novus Ordo] was an ‘elaborate consultative process' in exactly the same -- and no greater -- way than getting your nine-year-old into bed without one more drink of water or five more minutes of Spongebob is an ‘elaborate consultative process.' For three decades, the Vatican kept saying, ‘translate this into English' while BCL-ites like Msgr. Fred McManus kept hearing that ‘liturgical development and adaptation would ultimately demand much more by way of creativity. ‘"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
"No, Cardinal McCarrick isn't avidly pro-Democratic as Cardinal Innitzer was pro-Nazi. But the thinking is eerily similar -- an unwillingness to risk the Church's position just to fight an ‘unwinnable' battle contra mundum, a coy piety which shrinks from secular challenges, an eagerness to put a pin in that ‘one little evil' in exchange for so much good . . . . The article's in black. My comments are in blue."The Unbelievably Dumb World of Oliver Stone
"From the intro, we learn that Looking for Fidel is actually a do-over -- Stoney-boy's first version contained so many instances of bootlicking and up-sucking that HBO's viewer focus groups confused it with a documentary by the American Dental Association. So HBO sent him back to Cuba for a ‘harder' look at Fidel. Unfortunately, as the interview shows, the only thing ‘harder' about the second film is the suction applied to Fidel's toe-cap. . . . My stream of consciousness is in blue, everyone else's in black. . . . .The Problem with a Stream of Consciousness Is . . . .ALB: Now, when you were talking to the prisoners who tried to hijack a plane, one told you he was a fisherman, and you said, ‘Why then didn't you take a boat?' Why did you ask that?
OS: Because I'm amazingly stupid. And I was so high!!! It's just dumb luck that I didn't ask ‘why didn't you take the bus?' Well, it seemed to me that if they were familiar with boats, it seemed to be the best way. Da da dee da da duh Da da dee da da duh . . . .
ALB: Did you know that in Cuba there are virtually no boats? The boats that are used for fishermen are tightly controlled. One of the more surreal aspects of Cuba, being the largest island in the Caribbean, is that there are no visible boats.
OS: I see. No, I didn't know that. I'm an Amerikan liberal, and so I don't know jack, really. Except that sometimes Castro's socks fall down and, if you're looking up you can see his leg hair. It's beautiful! Very shiny and soft.
"If [Newsweek columnist Melinda Hennenberger's] got principles, and isn't of making this all up as she goes along, then she has a really interesting take the Pope who is eleven popes before Pius XXIII. She thinks that Pius XII ought to have let Hitler stick around and practice. He'd come around, eventually. After all, he was just going through a less orthodox time in his Catholic life. It had lasted 40 years, but who are we to judge? We can't know what was in Hitler's heart, not really. Why should Hitler or someone in his campaign have sought counsel on Catholic protocol? Pius XII would just have demurred and said, ‘What they do, is really their business and not ours. Obviously, we run the spectrum in the Catholic Church, from people who feel very annoyed with Nazis to brownshirts who scrawl Juden Raus! on shopfronts.' That's the kind of tolerant, non-judgmental, inclusive Church Melinda wants, even if she doesn't realize it because she's too dazzled by this Hitler's ability to do so much good for the country, balancing the budget, providing universal health care, building autobahns, etc. There are people who say Pius XII spoke out against the evil which a powerful politician and his followers represented, and there are people who say Pius XII didn't speak out, or didn't speak out loudly enough. But Melinda Henneberger is the first person I've come across who believes that Pius XII shouldn't have said anything at all.More Stream of Consciousness
"Fran Quigley, executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union for the Abolition of Man, said that posting a biblical verse on a public vehicle such as a fire truck could violate made-up, delusional theories about the constitutional separation of church and state entertained by ICLU members after their fifth toke, when they start imagining that they can channel James Madison. Quigley cited a bong-induced ruling by the federal appeals court in Chicago whose judges, after declaring themselves to be the reincarnation of Benjamin Franklin, Gouvenor Morris, and a 35,000-year-old Atlantean warrior-priestess named Kweeshalarok, held that a city seal could not have a cross on it because the image would associate government with a particular religion. 'Municipalities are free to display the images of aborted babies and pornography on their city seals,' Quigley said, ‘because those are neutral symbols which allow everyone to meet on common ground and celebrate our total enslavement to Satan.'"Another Draft Uncovered . . .
"In time for April 1, the National Catholic Register published a story titled, ‘Bishops Plan to Make New Hymn Rules.' True to the occasion, the story made it clear the Bishops aren't planning to make any rules about anything, and that they are not doing that with all deliberate speed. The Dossier has obtained a draft of the story.[**] Changes from the published version have been indicated by blue text. . . . .Treacy said the hymns in use in the Church since the Second Vatican Council fall into four categories: good, beautiful older hymns from the Catholic tradition, such as ‘Holy God, We Praise Thy Name'; those from the classic Protestant tradition, such as ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God' Isn't anyone concerned about programming people to take Martin Luther's piety as a model for their own by singing the Battle Hymn of the Reformation? ; traditional gospel songs, which make white suburban parishioners feel earthy, close to the people, more real somehow such as ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand'; and those by Catholic and Protestant composers in the junky popular-music style based on soft effeminate pseudo-pop rock, commercialized folk muzak music or Broadway tunes 'Euuuuuuuuu --- uucharist where the substance is really really changed!' and there's always Rogers & Hammerstein's Bali Hai, which can be used just by changing the name to Jesus Christ -- the rest fits right in with modern liturgical music. . . . Don't believe me? Here's the lyrics to Bali Hai:Most people live on a lonely island
Lost in the middle of a foggy sea
Most people long for another island
One where they know they would like to be
Bali Ha'i, may call you.
Any night, any day
In your heart you'll hear it call you
Come away, come away
Bali Ha'i, will whisper
On the wind of the sea
‘Here am I your special island,'
‘Come to me, Come to me' . . . . .
Wrath of Khan, Part 1: The Eugenicists Strike Again!!!
"Driven by both personal and humane concerns, Doug 'Mengele' Melton has produced 17 new lines of genetically-mutilated humans embryonic stem cells, which can, in theory, be coaxed into becoming any type of adult tissue from kidneys to spinal cords. and anything in between -- anything, that is, except the complete adult human bodies they were supposed to have.Letter to the Editor
[Melton believes stem cells should be available to all researchers.]
He isolated the cells from excess people fertilized eggs obtained from Sonderkommandos in vitro fertilization clinics with their owners' permission. 'All the couples were very flattered to be asked,' said Heinrich Eichman, director of the Lebensraum Clinic in Wooster, Massachusetts, where Professor Melton went for most of his untermenschen, ‘Few people recognize just how god-like we are, with our power over life and death. They thought it was nice to be noticed.'‘
"I realize that many parts of our society dislike the Catholic Church. I will not tire you with the Catholic explanation for this phenomenon, which is much more charitable than you might suppose. Suffice it to say that neither you nor your reporters need to describe the Catholic Church as she herself does; simple good manners and a desire for reportorial accuracy would be enough to deter you from such derisive misrepresentations of the faith of nearly one billion people. Ms. Arie and your paper owe an apology to the Church whose tenets you have misrepresented and to the women who were, thereby, derisively described as staying at home and ‘breeding.'"A New **Strain** of Liturgical Thinking: Dossier **Scoops** Spirit Daily
"The Bishop of San Jose, California, has issued a statement implementing temporary changes in Eucharistic celebration due to the flu epidemic. Because the strain this year is especially transmissible, Bishop Patrick J. McGrath is suspending the offering of Communion under both Species and has ordered Communion distributed only on the hands. . . . . The restrictions, however, are only temporary. Bishop McGrath has announced that they will soon be replaced by the Diocese's new Project Wildfire. ‘We're very excited about the project,' said Fr. Charles Dutton, Director of the Diocese's Ministry of Public Outreach, ‘it's going to be a milestone in liturgical sanitation.' According to Wildfire plans released by the Diocese, an extensive rebuilding project will leave each parish Church sitting atop a state-of-the-art, microbiologically-clean Liturgical Environment consisting of a series of ring-shaped levels connected by elevators and an emergency network of ladders in the central shaft called "The Central Core":Another Draft Uncovered
Schematic of Wildfire Liturgical Environment
Persons who wish to attend Mass will progress through five successive types of decontamination, one on each Level. Beginning at Level 1, parishioners will remove their clothes and undergo strip-searching for contaminated personal objects, as well as a complete physical examination, by trained members of the Knights of Columbus."
"Recently, Rev. Donald Trautman, Bishop of Erie was given the Fred McManus award by the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions. The . . . Dossier . . . has obtained a draft of the acceptance speech, which follows. . . . ‘The founders of the American liturgical movement did not give up. They were persons of hope who patiently persevered. We need to imitate the perseverance and courage of these liturgical iconsWhy SecretAgentMan Has Problems Relating to the Mediaexcept we mustn't think about having icons or statues in our Churches, let alone identifiable or visible Tabernacles, because they incite the unwashed to primitive pre-Vatican II understandings of Catholicism -- so perhaps I ought to say ‘these liturgical felt banners'--- . . . Fr. Godfrey'Hootenanny'Diekmann, Fr. Martin Hellriegelwho all of us imitate by handing out copies of the Liber Usualis for parishioners' use at Mass. . . These scholars and pastors who brought the liturgical movement to the United States, and the scores of liturgists wholike medieval monks in the face of barbarian Viking raidshave sustained and kept aliveand continuedthis movement inspire us to endure and persevere and hopemust brush-up my ICEL, because that's only two synonyms: How about ‘endure, persevere, stay the course, continue, and maintain'?. We must continue to teach, teach, teachwhat we say arethe liturgical principles of Vatican IIand ignore, ignore, ignore what the documents of Vatican II would otherwise require us to do.
"The news story is in bold, and my simultaneous thoughts and comments are in blue. . . . In a documentary broadcast on ABC earlier this year, Jackson said he had slept in a bed with many children. ‘When you say bed you're thinking sexual,' he said in the interview. ‘It's not sexual, we're going to sleep. I tuck them in. ... It's very charming, it's very sweet.' (Since I'm talking to and about some Californians, may I suggest that they update a quaint old custom called "tarring and feathering"? Of course, we needn't use such an atavistic term. We could probably satisfy the Sneddonocracy by calling it a "bioethically-sensitive avian/petroleum intervention" -- how about it?)"
Transmitted by SecretAgentMan 10:00 PM Hours [+]
Herewith a compendium of things on various cultural, political, and historical matters that I've posted over the past months. A selection from the post itself is included to give a better idea of the subject.
The Passion, the Jews and the Teaching of Contempt.
"The reinterpretation of the Gospel narrative upon which critics of The Passion have fixed not only their arguments about the film, but also their main hope for charitable dialogue and co-existence between Jews and Christians, is untenable. It requires a selective rejection of the Gospel's historicity and an unseemly anxiety about triumphing in Jesus' divinity which would be fatal to Christianity. It is even contradicted by Nostra Aetate, the magisterial document in which it claims to be grounded. So . . . it must in all seriousness be asked whether Christianity is doomed to live out its life as a filthy religion which sews the seeds of an unholy hatred whenever it worships, prays, or celebrates the saving sacrifice of its God."The Catholic Church and the Nazis, Part 1
"Any reasonable attempt to place historical actions into a moral framework must proceed with a healthy regard for individual human freedom and the uncertainties it causes in every life. This obligation will inevitably disappoint both champions and accusers of the papacy. The champions can't trumpet the publication of Mit Brennender Sorge or Summi Pontificatus as parts of the Church's master plan to avert a known future, and accusers can't complain about the encyclicals' failure to achieve the goals of such a hypothetical plan. What can actually be discussed is a far more limited question -- whether and to what extent, for example, Mit Brennender Sorge was an appropriate or morally-acceptable response to the conditions in Germany in March, 1937. Those conditions do not include an obvious ‘fate' that was ‘awaiting' the Jews, an inevitable second world war, or even the continued vehemence of Nazism's persecution of the Church herself."Note to Jack Cade: ‘First Thing We Do, Is Keep Lawyers in Perspective
"It makes me want to paraphrase that famous line of Brecht's: 'Suppose they gave a Culture of Death, and nobody came?' What could the lawyers do, if a thousand children insisted on praying an Ave before class, and on meeting to read the holy bible during lunch? . . . A 100-page legal brief about Terri Schiavo's "right to die" couldn't defeat a single husbandly word, but it's his lawyers who get our passionate invective as though Michael's ulcerous, silent heart (and the culture that infects it) was just an incidental ornament. Again, I humbly suggest that we Catholics might be failing to appreciate how abnormal our goals really are. We don't want a society where courts keep men from murdering their disabled wives. We want a society where men don't want their disabled wives to die. We don't want a nation governed by right-thinking lawyers. We want a nation of heroes. . . . When we pretend, or seem to pretend, that the vital problem is the antics of a profession whose members act very much like the members of every other profession, following the expected courses of behavior and responding to the predictable incentives of professional advancement, we're doing what we think the "sleazy lawyers" do. We're settling the case, plea bargaining our way out of hardship, compromising with a world that can only recognize what's humanly possible. Maybe that's one reason we hate lawyers so dearly -- we see ourselves in them, and we don't like what we see."Orwell Finds a Metaphor for the Middle Class
"We don't question or complain about the rich, the owners of capital and investment, because we imagine that deep down, they are us, and that someday we will be them. We ape their lifestyle, burdening ourselves with debt beyond our ability to repay, ogling a material banquet we can never really enjoy. We think we're better than the 'working classes,' the men and women who live just as far from Palm Beach and Palm Springs as we do, because the they don't believe that hard work and playing by the rules are all you really need to get a mansion. We are seldom Socialists, would think trade-union membership embarassing, and we work twelve, fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, in law firms, insurance companies, brokerages, and dentist's offices across America. We are snobs. Our careers, professions and degrees don't create one dime of wealth, but they do serve the wealth of others. And we find that rather congenial."Orwell and the Waiters Redux
"A few days ago I posted an excerpt from Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris in which he described the servile fantasy life of Parisian waiters. I said it was a metaphor for the middle class. . . . Thanks, no doubt, to a reference on Mark Shea's 'Catholic and Enjoying It' blog I got some pretty screaming comments about what I'd written. I'd planned to answer then, but got delayed, so I post the answers now."Notes for Catholics Who Can't Tell the Difference Between the Republican National Committee, the Democratic Leadership Council, and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
"The upshot of this or -- if you prefer -- the 'bottom line,' is that regarding a specific form of political, economic, or cultural life as the summum bonum of Catholic teaching is an inauthentic witness to Catholicism. The Church has (dogmatically, I would argue) condemned the proposition that any such form exists. It's one thing to argue that this law, or that cultural aspect, of a society serves Catholic teaching better than alternatives given limiting factors like place, people, or time. But arguing that there is a perfect 'Catholic Constitution,' a perfect 'Catholic real estate economy,' or perfect 'Catholic day-care legislation,' and that our only Catholic duty is to discover and implement them, takes a great deal from Marx and very little from the Magisterium.The Republican Version of a Homosexual-Rights Activist.
"The Republican Party will soon realize that it can simultaneously scream bloody murder over gay marriage while crying crocodile tears about being unable to get an amendment (or a judge) through the Senate, all while a guerilla legal war in state and federal courts ends up legalizing gay marriage across the country. The Republicans have used a similar dodge on the abortion issue for the past quarter-century; they've milked four presidential victories, as well as control of the House and Senate, out of what the Left (for some strange reason) calls "the easily led" Christian voter. The Republican Party will scream bloody murder about gay marriage and get what it really wants, a gust under its wings for the next election cycle, and then it's back to crocodile tears about how terribly awfully impossible it is to have principles that mean something."A Possible Use for Television.
"I've thought of a possible use for television. Here's a fun catechesis game you can play with your older teenagers or young adults. Sit down with them in front of the television set. Make sure you have a copy of the Bible and the Catechism handy, and that a taped episode of Friends, Road Rules, or any episodic show from MTV or the WB network is in the VCR. Play the episode . . . "Thoughts on The Passion
"So yeah, you could say we're a blood cult. I for one am proud of it. I'm sorry it scandalizes weak sisters like Michael Coren. I'm sorry it's too much for a lot of people. But we're a blood cult. We worship Holy Blood. We drink Holy Blood. We adore Holy Blood which is glorious, not only for its other mystical and magnificent divinity, but for the fact that it was shed in torture for our sins and our redemption. As far as I'm concerned anyone who -- like the Romans who crucified Jesus -- is shocked at the gruesome cannibalistic atmosphere they find in all that can go soak themselves in oh-so-spiritual readings of John Chapter 6 and imaginary depictions of Jesus as a cartoon character whose feet never touched the earth. Let them squirm at the idea of God's chest hair matted with sweat, dirt under His nails, rubbing gritty sleep from his eyes. Let them stop their ears at the thought of Him screaming in pain and gasping for breath. We love the God-Man entire. His divinity, His humanity, and everything they did and underwent. We even love His blood, especially His blood. That's why we're a blood cult."Justice Scalia and the Death Penalty
"There is a misconception among American Catholics, Justice Scalia apparently being one of them, to the effect that only ex cathedra pronouncements require the religious submission of the Catholic faithful. This is false. . . . a Catholic layman who is addressed by a papal encyclical must, whether or not it contains an "ex cathedra" definition of dogma, recognize that the document is issued by the immediate jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff and that he is bound to submit to it whether it discusses matters of faith and morals or matters of lesser import. Catholics for a Free Choice make the same mistake as Justice Scalia when they (rightly) argue that Humanae Vitae doesn't qualify as an "ex cathedra statement" and then (wrongly) conclude that the encyclical can therefore be ignored by Catholics whose respectful and thoughtful consideration leaves them with a favorable private opinion about the morality of contraception or abortion."
Tootin' My Own Horn, Sort of (the Newdow Pledge of Allegiance Case
"When I wrote that the Court will [on the Pledge-of-Allegiance case] issue a "ridiculous, self-contradictory and tortured opinion that will reverse the Ninth Circuit's decision while leaving everything else undecided," I had in mind something on the order of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), in which Justice O'Connor swapped her judicial robe and gavel for a mumu and incense before gibbering, 'At the heart of . . . liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.' She -- and the two other judges who smelled the bong smoke -- proceeded to junk the trimester framework which was the centerpiece of Roe on the following grounds: (a) keeping the framework would allow advances in medical science to erode Roe beyond recognition; (b) doing so would allow the states to restrict the number of dead babies produced by Planned Parenthood abortion mills; and (c) since the Court has the power to say that something which was once essential is no longer essential, it should lift itself out of the dilemma by its own bootstraps.We're Shocked, Shocked to Our Foundations, Over Bush's Torture Memos
"Our present Administration is searching for legal justifications for torturing U.S. citizens. So what? Back in Clinton's day, the U.S. Marine Corps conducted a study to find out if Marines would gun down 'U.S. Citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government.' Bobby Kennedy had Martin Luther King's telephones tapped, as well as the phones at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, for reasons of 'national security.' It gets beaten to death, but it's still true that the Nixon administration attempted to illegally affect the conduct of a presidential election. The only thing that really ticks me off about the constant references to Watergate is the same thing that sticks in my craw about how "shocked" everybody is about Donald Rumsfeld's 'the Dog Ate My Constitution' torture memos: This isn't shocking at all. It's business as usual. . . . Using law to evade the law is what governments do. All governments, all the time, everywhere. Hell, even King David used 'national security' to get Uriah killed and sleep with Bathsheba . . . .What It Looks Like When the Center Cannot Hold
"From the day when Mr. Ponytail (our counterpart, perhaps, to the Baptist), rose in the 1992 presidential debates to proclaim that we are 'symbolically the children of the future president,' to this most recent example, the Protovangelium of Alexandra Kerry, the blasphemous divinization of American politics becomes ever more pronounced. It would be good material for a dark comedy if we weren't the most powerful nation since Trajan's day."American Fascism's Possible Future
"You think you can subdue Christ's Church with tax laws, Mr. Clay? How little you know Him. Be our guest, if it must come to that. Revoke our 501(c)(3) status. . . . Send us into poverty, make us social outcasts, fugitives from the state's "righteous" claim to total power. Then blame us for the chaos and suffering that will happen when our hospitals close, our schools shut down, and our charities lock their doors. Nero did it. Why shouldn't his children delight in their inheritance? His modern children will reap the same harvest as their father, increasing our numbers tenfold. When that happens, and we threaten to overwhelm America's new tinpot theocracy, other men will come along and do even harsher things, as they always have, confident that Christ can be got rid of, eager for men to have no king but Caesar."I Support The Troops?
"Just for the record, I have three reasons for opposing the Iraq war. First, I oppose it because I do not think it a just war. Second, I oppose it because my knowledge (however limited it may be) of Catholic theology on the subject of just warfare has not led me to the conclusion that all "just causes" require that war be fought, or fought immediately, or fought by direct recourse to violent arms. Moreover, whether or not the present struggle in Iraq is consistent with Catholic teaching, I think the whole affair is a blunder of nightmarish proportions and should be opposed on that ground alone. So, can I support the troops?"
Transmitted by SecretAgentMan 8:24 PM Hours [+]