Ratzinger redux

A definition of "belief," from a discussion of the Latin phrase "credo" that opens the Apostle's Creed, as found in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity:

"Belief operates on a completely different plane from that of 'making' and 'makability.' Essentially, it is entrusting oneself to that which has not been made by oneself and never could be made and which precisely in this way supports and makes possible all our making."

More, on why we need church:

"The difference in religious gifts that divides men into 'prophets' and hearers forces men into speaking to and for one another. The program of the early Augustine, 'God and the soul -- nothing else,' is impracticable; and it is also unchristian. Ultimately religion is not to be found in the solitary path of the mystic, but only in the community of proclaiming and hearing. Man's conversation with God and men's conversation with one another are mutually necessary and interdependent."

When history is watered down or ignored

Joe Sobran, writing some time ago but still sounding current today:

"Liberal diatribes against “McCarthyism” leave out the crucial fact that American Christians felt deeply betrayed by the outcome of World War II, when our “Soviet ally” won control of a huge section of Christian Europe, just as Pius XII had feared it would. The war began when the Soviets and Germans had invaded Catholic Poland; it ended with Roosevelt’s turning Poland over to “Uncle Joe” Stalin’s tender mercies. It took the leadership of a Polish Pope, John Paul II, to win back Poland’s freedom.

Yet the young pass through our entire educational system without being taught what the Christian perspective was, and is, or how it has shaped the great events of history. Few of them know that many of the authors of the Constitution were clergymen; fewer still realize that the separation of church and state applied only to the federal government, not to the states. (The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” leaving the states free to do so.)

Like Soviet history, American history has been rewritten, with inconvenient facts deleted. In both countries, the “progressive” forces have subverted their subjects’ sense of the past. "

Wrapping up a Marian month

Good stuff from Grooveshark:



Re May devotionals, I like this perspective from Genevieve Kineke:

"Sweet songs and flowers should never mask the strength behind the smile. Mary met sin head-on so that her children might be spared. The heart of the Church is sacrificial love and blood poured out, which should never be confused with sentimental trifles."

For more on the Catholic attitude toward Mary, see Duns Scotus via Mark Shea in my back catalog.

The difference-maker

Have you heard the one about the "great peace among religions, which recognize each other as different ways of reflecting the one Eternal Being"?

It's likely to be voiced by well-meaning people who drive cars with bumper stickers that bend a handful of disparate religious symbols into the word "Coexist."

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger heard that one, too, even before becoming Pope Benedict XVI. In the preface to the new (2000) edition of his classic Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger described the problem with that relativist outlook (emphasis in the quote below is mine):

"Instead of being the man who is God, Christ becomes the one who has experienced God in a special way. He is an enlightened one and therein is no longer fundamentally different from other enlightened individuals, for instance, Buddha. But in such an interpretation, the figure of Jesus loses its inner logic. It is torn out of the historical setting in which it is anchored and forced into a scheme of things that is alien to it. Buddha -- and in this he is comparable to Socrates -- directs the attention of his disciples away from himself: his own person does not matter, but only the path he has pointed out. Someone who finds the way can forget Buddha. But with Jesus, what matters is precisely his Person, Christ himself. When he says 'I am he,' we hear the tones of the 'I AM' on Mount Horeb. The way consists precisely in following him, for 'I am the way, the truth, and the life' (Jn 14:6). He himself is the way, and there is no way independent of him, on which he would no longer matter."

The life of Reilly

I think he listens to CDs all day.

Alas, poor Yogi, he sits and mopes...

Shakespearean baseball, as forwarded to me by my friend Mr. Bill:

Why I worry more now about that kid

Thomas was waiting for me to say goodnight to him, and had covered all of himself with a blanket.

Our bedtime ritual often involves wrestling, so I leaned hard on the spot where his kidney would be.

"Oooof," he said. "Get your hands off me, lard!"

"Lard?" I asked. "That doesn't make any sense! Lard is gooey. I'm not gooey."

"Okay, " he conceded, poking his head above the blanket. "But your hands are like catchers' mitts."

"Catchers' mitts are cool."

"That's what you say, Lard!" he said, giggling.

"Hey, you've violating the Scout Law," I said, poking him with a finger while he ducked a good night kiss. "A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, COURTEOUS, KIND, OBEDIENT, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent."

"What does 'reverent' mean again?"

"You know what it means. 'Attentive to God.' Speaking of which, disrespect violates one of the Ten Commandments, too. The one about honoring your father and mother."

"So?"

"So don't do it."

"Hey, the Bible doesn't say HOW to honor your father and mother. -- Ha!," he said, pleased with himself.
"Loophole! I found a loophole!"

"There are no loopholes in the Ten Commandments!"

"Yes there are, Dad, and I found one! Ha ha! Loophole!" I leaned on him again. "Oooof!"

Esolen on outlook

Not since Thomas Howard retired has a Catholic academic written this poetically:

The world sees the unwanted -- the orphan lying alone at night, the old man alone and losing his mind -- and wishes in pity to ease their pain by ushering them out of our way. We see our saints of loneliness, Charles de Foucauld, Benoit Labre, and that unknown soldier named in our prayers, the Most Abandoned Soul in Purgatory. The world dispenses anodynes for grief, but we take grief in, and make up in ourselves what is lacking, as St. Paul says, in the suffering of Christ. The world sells fun, and we look for joy, what Dante called the "laughter of the universe."

The world has weekends, and we have holy days. The world prepares us to be food for worms; the Church invites us to the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Different words for the same tune

Guess who the subject of this New York Times profile is:

"[His] approach to almost all issues – foreign or domestic – is pragmatic and nonideological. He is internationalist, multilateralist and moderate. He has supported abortion rights and affirmative action."

You're thinking it's Barack Obama, right?

Actually, the quote is in a profile of Colin Powell.

The citation comes from a Mark Steyn column that also has a bon mot or two like this:

So supporting "internationalism," "multilateralism," abortion and racial quotas means you're "moderate" and "nonideological"? And anyone who feels differently is an extreme ideologue? Absolutely. The aim of a large swath of the Left is not to win the debate but to get it canceled before it starts.

Malkin for three

Not Evgeny Malkin, the Russian who plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins, but the conservative columnist Michelle, who has had it with "selective elevation of hardship-as-primary qualification" in nominees for the Supreme Court. She shoots and scores.

Instapundit and The Anchoress already have link roundups for commentary about Sonia Sotomayor; Neo-Neocon is also her typical thoughful self on this subject, and Dave Kopel is admirably concise.

And speaking of memorials...

Wlady Pleszczynski remembers long-time American Spectator columnist Lawrence Henry, and affectingly describes Henry's recent memorial service for the rest of us.

Hook of the year so far

Alasdair Palmer is a writer at the top of his craft:

"President Obama is charismatic, graceful and reasonable. Dick Cheney is a maniac. So when they disagree, as they did very publicly last week, about America's strategy for the "war on terror", there can only ever be one winner. Who would side with the snarling Mr Cheney? He advocates targeted assassination, indefinite detention without trial, rendition and torture – policies that are, as President Obama insists, "inconsistent with American values".

Or are they? Mr Cheney claims that President Obama is "harming America" by dismantling the Bush administration's policies on terror. But the strange thing is that, in fact, Mr Obama is not dismantling them. To an amazing extent, he has followed them."

Gerald Warner also writes well, and in more deadpan British style, where sarcasm goes down easy and then starts a slow burn. Writing about the news that the first lady of France, Carla Bruni, has criticized Pope Benedict's reaffirmation of church teaching that condom use is an exceedingly poor way to fight AIDS relative to chastity and abstinence, Warner observes:

"Now Catholics know how Anglicans felt when Newman fled the coop. "I think the Church should evolve on this issue," said Bruni, echoing the words of the Rev Tony Blair on a similar issue not long ago. So there is unanimity within the Airhead Tendency: evolution is the answer - Darwinian Catholicism.

Even from a secular viewpoint, if we did not have the wise words of Carla Bruni to guide us we might have lent credence to the Catholic abstinence campaign in Uganda which reduced the 18 per cent HIV infection rate among adults in 1992 to 5 per cent in 2007. Without Bruni, we might be tempted to listen to uninformed commentators such as the director of the AIDS Prevention Center at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies who said: "The best evidence we have supports the Pope's comments."

An aha! moment in Catholic apologetics?

I was thinking about the Road to Emmaus story in Luke 24:13-31, and found myself unexpectedly relating that account to a comment made by an acquaintance in the notes for her own Bible study course.

We both believe in the value of devotional reading that supplements the study of Scripture, but as an evangelical protestant (Baptist or Presbyterian would be my guess), she's adamant about how any non-Scriptural book in her devotional reading stack still has to be "chock full of Scripture."

This makes perfect sense, given the venerable assumption that the primary means through which any Christian encounters Jesus is the Bible. "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ," as Saint Jerome said with typical pith.

My acquaintance would agree with that.

But Jerome and I have a "Catholic advantage" in also being able to affirm the real presence of Christ in the eucharist as an article of faith, and that's where the Emmaus story hit me in ways that it had not before.

Recall that while walking shortly after the Resurrection with two disciples who did not recognize Him, Jesus, "beginning with Moses and all the prophets," explained to them "the Scriptures that referred to Him." The disciples blessed by that conversation would later say, "Were not our hearts burning when he opened the Scriptures to us?"

Here's the thing I have newfound appreciation for: In spite of that instruction from the Master on a seven-mile walk to the village, it wasn't until "the breaking of the bread" that "their eyes were opened" and they recognized Jesus.

Sola scriptura can't square that circle. There they were, with the best teacher in the world literally giving them chapter and verse from God's own word, but they didn't or couldn't connect the dots until they stopped to eat in precisely the fashion that Jesus had commanded when he said "Do this in memory of Me."

I'm certain other people have had that insight, but it's new to me, and whether born of inspiration or derivative of long-forgotten reading, I wanted to capture the thought.

Spring basketball

I like the thunderhead building in the sky behind the boys while they play casual one-on-one basketball.

A first affirmative constructive

Dick Cheney's speech today didn't rise to Zell Miller levels of stemwinding, and morally speaking, its emphasis on utilititarianism remains problematic, but it was solid.

"American values" as codified in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights provided Cheney with a bass beat for the whole thing, and while you could say that he misplayed parts of that values argument, the allusions themselves are refreshing in an Age of Dialogue (and allegedly "surgical" policy-making), when values-based objections to anything sound retro and invite condescension from the cool kids.

A favorite nugget that Cheney got exactly right:

"When they talk about interrogations, [President Obama] and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future."

In an amusing instance of the apple not falling far from the tree, Dick Cheney's daughter Liz is unusually articulate (link is to Ace, so it includes juvenile humor) in describing the problem that that Obama administration now has with metaphor (my words, not hers).

Liz talks about the "middle ground" fallacy, without actually calling "middle ground" what it is: a conceit much beloved by community organizers, professional arbitrators, and Congresscritters too long in office.

POSTSCRIPT: More comparative reax can be found here and here. Tom Maguire's take is entertaining. And as everybody has pointed out, the Cheney speech must be considered in light of what President Obama said on the same subject on the same day, only minutes before.

I linked the president's remarks at "cool kids" above, but then found Orrin Judd had a transcript also, and the allusion in his post title to Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" anthem strikes me as an inspired bit of satire. I'm also consoled by fact that some of the Brits get it: "One of his favourite techniques is the false opposition," as James Delingpole notes at the link.

That pernicious phrase

Anthony Esolen on the problem with doing a happy dance when President Barack Obama suggests that we can all "work together to reduce unwanted pregnancies." Here's the nub of his argument:

Except in the case of rape, there are no "unintended pregnancies," none. There are plenty of women who do not want to be pregnant, and plenty of men who do not want them to be pregnant, but in all those cases the pregnancies are the results of intentional actions that have pregnancy as their perfectly natural and perfectly predictable consequence. Contraception does not change the nature of the act itself; indeed, it makes the actors more keenly aware that they are doing what makes babies, since otherwise they would not go so far out of their way (donning or inserting into the body uncomfortable devices, or flooding the system with pregnancy-mimicking hormones) to thwart the body's natural functions. The "problem" in the case of Sexual Roulette is not that the body fails, but that it succeeds.

So the pregnancies are the result of intention. The problem is that the children are not wanted, and that is a very different thing. For the question we should immediately ask is not, "How do we dispose of this child we do not want?" but "What is wrong with us that we do not want this child?"

I suspect that Anthony Esolen is familiar with Mother Teresa's quip that saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers.

On a related note, there's this from Jay Homnick:

"The minute one accepts there are two points of view and people of good will can arrive at one or the other after fair deliberation, we are already debased as a culture. The point is simple and not open to debate: we cannot allow live human beings to be killed, babies with heartbeats and nerve endings and brain waves. The cradle of civilization is not meant to be a coffin.

We must respect the other side in this sensitive, finely wrought debate? We must appreciate the agonizing process of working out the subtle arguments? Sorry, Mister President, count me out. I do not respect people who kill babies, nor do I respect people who think the state -- patron of brokerages, car dealerships, parking spaces and broadcast rights -- has no business stopping people from such killing."

UPDATE: It turns out that appeals from the Obama administration to "common ground" are less than they seem, because reducing the number of abortions is not one of the president's policy goals; his people want to reduce the "need" for abortions. The unquantifiable formula is eerily similar to self-congratulation about jobs "saved or created."

Any questions?

Maybe this is what "liberal" members of Congress mean when they threaten to take "further steps" against a hedge fund manager who objects to the arbitrary rewriting of mortgage contracts by the federal government.

It's no wonder states are more likely to assert their own sovereignty now than at any time since "The Late Unpleasantness" of 1861 to 1865, and Randy Barnett's proposed "Bill of Federalism" is still being talked about even as Federalism version 1.0 takes it on the chin.

As Ron Bailey and others have been saying, "mandates cost money."

Father Z on a tear

Just in case you missed this roman candle of a post, I've excerpted some of it:

Neither President, Jenkins nor Obama, needed to say much of substance. And they didn’t. All they had to do to vindicate the inevitable rightness of their agendas was to sound reasonable.

Fr. Jenkins, throbbing with emotion after these weeks of persecution, cuddled the students and their adorers, inviting them into his sufferings. President Obama, wise realist, offered astonishing insight.

For example, you surely noted his stunning admission that the two sides in the abortion debate -– wait for it –- have irreconcilable differences!

In the final analysis we heard various expressions of "can’t we all just get along" even as we were being told to "shut up" [about which, more here].

A great goal has been held up for us. Gaze with wonder upon the new calf. Our new goal is dialogue. Common ground is our promised land. There we will find healing from divisions and lots more talk. Endless dialogue and then more dialogue. Our side might not be able to say very much, but that is neither here nor there. It’s the goal of dialogue which is important.

But this dialogue must not be allowed to become mean-spirited. Forefend! We must not "demonize" – a favorite new word –- anyone with their past records or the Church’s clear principles about the sanctity of human life.

In an era when emotion trumps reason, facts are just plain mean.

We're in a cultural pickle, writes Father Zuhlsdorf (with considerably more eloquence). And the fix -- not surprising to anyone who follows his blog -- is liturgical:

"I think that to save the world we must save the liturgy. "

See also his posts about Roman politics and Archbishop Chaput's take on the situation (which impressed even Hugh Hewitt).

Standing by the Bridge

Southern California troubadour Dave Morrison sings one of his signature songs in the YouTube clip below. The lyrics are thoughtful and the music is catchy, but what I like best about the song is the comparatively loose fit between those things.

This is not a tightly-wrapped performance of the kind you'd get from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, although I think it's fair to say that Mr. Morrison (whom I discovered through Mark Humphreys) and Mr. Petty both pay homage to Bob Dylan and The Byrds.

Against the conspiracy theorists

Few people write as well about the early church as George Sim Johnston. Motivated in part by a desire to respond to the pseudo-historical stylings of Mr. Dan Brown, Johnston shoehorned a little bit of everything, including the role of women, the centrality of the Eucharist, and the impetus for clarifying a canon of Scriptural books, into this elegant essay about the decidedly Catholic character of early Christianity:

"We live in a sea of false historiography, and so it is worth asking: What exactly happened during the first centuries of Christianity? How did a small band of believers, starting out in a despised outpost of the Roman Empire, end up the dominant institution of the Mediterranean world? What was "primitive Christianity"? John Henry Newman became a Catholic in the course of answering that question. History, he said, is the enemy of Protestantism. It is also the enemy of the newly vigorous anti-Catholicism that circulates among our cultural elites."

[snip]

"The early Church was not only hierarchical, it was liturgical and sacramental. But it was above all Eucharistic. St. Ignatius, in his letter to the church at Smyrna, attacks local heretics who "abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of Our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins...." By the year 150, when St. Justin Martyr described the Sunday liturgy in some detail, all the principal elements of the Mass are in place: Scriptural readings, prayers of intercession, offertory, Eucharistic prayer, and communion. There was no need back then to remind the faithful that Sunday Mass attendance was obligatory, since they regarded the liturgy as absolutely central to their lives as Christians. It would not have occurred to them to forgo Sunday Mass for a brunch date or ballgame."

[snip]

"Even though the four Gospel writers differ markedly from one another and have diverse agendas -- Matthew is proselytizing his fellow Jews, Luke is fact-gathering for Gentile converts, Mark relates Peter's version of events, John is responding to heresies that deny the Incarnation -- the striking thing is how strong, consistent, and identifiable the personality of Christ is in all four books. C. S. Lewis remarks that in all the world's narrative literature, there are three personalities you can identify immediately if given a random and even partial quotation: Plato's Socrates, Boswell's Johnson, and Jesus Christ of the Gospels.."

The whole essay is a gem, and time reading it is time well-spent.

POSTSCRIPT: While thinking in historical terms, don't miss this analysis of the pope's trip to Israel from Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein-- and thanks to Peter Sean Bradley for calling my attention to it. Bradley also has a great clip of Fr. Robert Barron filleting Angels and Demons.

Unfinished but inspiring anyhow

Monsignor William Kerr had a stroke midway through his last sermon, and died in the hospital shortly afterward. The sermon is unfinished in the same sense that Schubert wrote an Unfinished Symphony. Fortunately, we have a transcription of what Kerr did say before going on to glory.

Please read Damian Thompson's account for what is likely to be a profoundly inspiring experience on several levels.

The butler in the parlor with a candlestick?

Time magazine really needs a clue or two in its religious issues coverage, says Damian Thompson.

He's right, of course.

If you want to follow the Notre Dame commencement thing, Thomas Peters is a much better bet than any "mainstream" U.S. news source.

POSTSCRIPT: Writing after the graduation speech and awarding of the honorary degree, James Taranto makes a point that President Obama -- he of the alleged fondness for "fair-minded" dialog-- has been reluctant to admit (emphasis mine):

"Political compromise is the way in which democratic governance produces policies to approximate such wide-ranging views. But the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions, has severely restricted the space available for political compromise. Obama's position--that Roe should remain the law of the land--is one of irreconciliation."

All the pretty horsies

I didn't watch the Kentucky Derby, and I'll probably miss the Preakness, too.

But I grew up reading Walter Farley, appreciate the prose of Cormac McCarthy, lived briefly with cousins-in-law who work horse tracks in California, and still think Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit ranks as one of the best nonfiction books ever.

So it was a joy to here trainer Bob Baffert describing a horse from another stable in this Preakness preview:

Like everyone else, Baffert thinks Rachel Alexandra is the horse to beat.

"She's extraordinary," he said. "She's very dangerous in here. She has a lot of speed, a beautiful way of moving, she's fluid, she just skips over the ground, a great athlete.

"What is really scary is that [Kentucky Derby winner] Calvin Borel says she's the best horse he has ever ridden and that he's never turned her loose. I just hope Calvin's got a short memory. If he's right, then we're all in trouble."

POSTSCRIPT: I got to see the race, after all (pics from Fox Sports here; pic with this post was taken by Lloyd Fox of The Baltimore Sun).

Way to go, Rachel Alexandra! And Borel sure knows horses! Former jockey and current NBC reporter Donna Brothers made me laugh when she said of the winning filly right before the race that "I like her because she runs like a girl."

Bill Dwye wrote a nice profile on Borel, and the New York Post published a fine race recap. I also like the Baltimore Sun's story because that paper's Sandra McKee let Borel talk about his race strategy.

UPDATE, September 9: Neither horse nor rider is a flash in the pan.

Credit where credit is due

Because the AP is confused, but the Anchoress is not.

Playing with loaded dice

What does the president have against Samoans?
Against American steel workers?
Against the rules of accounting?
Against nuclear security administration?
Against people who do not think abortion belongs in the "good" or "tough but necessary" columns of any moral spreadsheet?

No wonder Stephen Green now writes, "Welcome to the Banana States of America."

About that movie premiere

Sure, Brad Miner is piling on when he writes things like:

"A student objects to the notion that Christianity is some re-purposed sun cult, and [Dan Brown book and movie protagonist] Langdon quips that the faith is a mishmash of all sorts of things. For instance:

“The practice of ‘god-eating’ – some of you know it better as Holy Communion – was borrowed from the Aztecs.”

Say . . . what? Your village idiot knows Communion was instituted at the Crucifixion-eve Seder, which is to say a few decades shy of 1,500 years before the conquistador followers of Jesus encountered residents of Mesoamerica.

Were Dan Brown being paid $1000 for every teeth-grinding banality, instance of unintended hilarity, and egregious error in A&D, he’d be a billionaire."

...but then "Angels and Demons" deserves the rugby scrum it's been getting from people who know history or grammar or anything about the rudiments of researching a novel.

Great hockey writing

The Carolina Hurricanes have given the Boston Bruins more of a playoff series than most observers thought they would. Regardless of how the series finishes after tonight's winner-take-all game seven, I've enjoyed Sarah Kwak's recaps for Sports Illustrated.

Hockey is such a fluid and fast-moving sport that writing about it presents special challenges. The 'Canes vs. Bruins series apparently went to the SI writer who drew the short straw, because Allan Muir's coverage of the Capitals vs. Penguins series seems to have been given more space, but Kwak takes a back seat to nobody in describing the rhythms of the rink.

Here's a sample of her work, culled from two recent articles:

April 29: "Sports writers often talk about their ugh moments, when something happens late in a game, with a deadline closing in, and it requires a rewrite of the story. Well, Tuesday's showdown at the Prudential Center was a bang-your-head-on-your-keyboard kind of moment."

May 4: "Boston is far more offensively potent than the Devils, so [Carolina goaltender Cam] Ward will certainly be tested by a team that rolls four well-rounded lines. Carolina, which tends to use a three-line system, leans on its top six for offense."

and from that same piece:

"X-Factor for Carolina: Ray Whitney. It may come as a surprise that Whitney -- not Staal -- led the Hurricanes in scoring this season with 77 points and is tied with him at seven postseason points apiece, tops on the team. The 17-year veteran is the calm in Carolina's storm, and if he and Staal continue to click, they will give the Bruins trouble."

The curmudgeonly and the irenic

I'm not sure that George Neumayr's title riff on My Left Foot works as well as he wanted it to, but his spirited defense of Carrie Prejean, his grudging admiration for Donald Trump, and his weariness with the likes of Rembert Weakland (whose all-too-appropriate name could have come right out of a Charles Dickens novel) make for an entertaining read that goes well when paired with Elizabeth Scalia's "cautionary tale for Christians."

Alternative energy sources are overrated

Jon Basil Utley doesn't quite make the case, but he does a great job of outlining it, and explaining why the Obama administration has been snookered in this area.

The art of conviction

The Carolina Cannonball and "Queen of Catholic Eye Candy" quotes a certain archbishop to very good effect, while adding some fine art to the mix. Great stuff.

It's no wonder her blog name is Latin for "flourish." I'm betting the lady has a fondness for Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks and Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary. She probably also sashays into and out of rooms in true Southern fashion.

And she's still accepting votes in all Cannonball award categories including "Best Catholic Political Blog That is Not the American Papist," where I continue to lose badly to the Anchoress, even though Anchoress moved her site to the occasionally cranky server at First Things.

You can vote once a day, though. I'm just sayin'.

And since there should be a point to punning about "the art of conviction," I continue to be inspired by a pope who knows more than a bit about both art and conviction. Some take a dimmer but still reasonable view.

Cultural rather than political

Joseph Bottum explains the fight over Notre Dame's intention to award an honorary law degree to a president who shouldn't get one from that particular university (UPDATE: It would have been wiser for Notre Dame to take the same "no honorary degree for you" approach that Arizona State University did).

This is Bottum's thesis, but the whole essay pays dividends to attentive readers (original link above goes to a version in the Weekly Standard, but the piece is also at First Things):

Politics has very little to do with the mess. This isn't a fight about who won the last presidential election and how he's going to deal with abortion. It's a fight about culture--the culture of American Catholicism, and how Notre Dame, still living in a 1970s Catholic world, has suddenly awakened to find itself out of date.

The role of culture is what Fr. Jenkins at Notre Dame and many other presidents of Catholic colleges don't quite get, and their lack of culture is what makes them sometimes seem so un-Catholic--though the charge befuddles them whenever it is made. As perhaps it ought. They know very well that they are Catholics: They go to Mass, and they pray, and their faith is real, and their theology is sophisticated, and what right has a bunch of other Catholics to run around accusing them of failing to be Catholic?

But, in fact, they live in a different world from most American Catholics. Opposition to abortion doesn't stand at the center of Catholic theology. It doesn't even stand at the center of Catholic faith. It does stand, however, at the center of Catholic culture in this country. Opposition to abortion is the signpost at the intersection of Catholicism and American public life. And those who--by inclination or politics--fail to grasp this fact will all eventually find themselves in the situation that Fr. Jenkins has now created for himself. Culturally out of touch, they rail that the antagonism must derive from politics. But it doesn't. It derives from the sense of the faithful that abortion is important. It derives from the feeling of many ordinary Catholics that the Church ought to stand for something in public life--and that something is opposition to abortion.

Nice Deb also has good stuff up about this subject, including a link to a video message from Fr. John Corapi.

Amy Welborn agrees with Joseph Bottum:

Of course, bringing the word "politics" into a religion discussion is a tactic used to immediately discredit the other side. You know that right? It doesn't matter if the assertion is true or not, if secular political considerations are actually a controlling factor in decisions or discourse. To accuse someone, especially a bishop, of "playing politics" is to render their position suspect.We have seen this for years in the discussions of abortion-rights-supporting politicians and the Eucharist. (The few) bishops who have stated that their understanding of canon law moves them to declare that abortion-rights supporting Catholic politicians have cut themselves off from the Eucharist are accused of "politicizing the Eucharist." Which never made any sense to me. If a bishop said, "You're a Democrat. You can't receive Communion." That's politicizing the Eucharist. But focusing on a position and support for organizations that provide and promote abortion is not about politics. It's about moral issues that do happen to have a political dimension.

It's the same with Obama and Notre Dame. Is the criticism being leveled because Obama is a Democrat? No.

First. The accusation is faulty because it presumes American bishops are naturally sympathetic to the GOP. Anyone who is familiar with the American episcopacy knows how laughable an assertion this is, not only historically, but in the present as well. Secondly, does anyone really think that if Rudolph Giulani or Arnold Schwarzenneger were invited to serve in the same role, that those protesting Obama's role would be either silent or cheering?

The outcry might not be *as great* because neither of those guys are president (thank God) elected in a just-completed, very contentious election in which abortion was a prime issue. But it would be there.

Remembering the chain of command

Three different items in this theological and churchly thread, but they're all related to each other:

First, had Fr. John Jenkins of Notre Dame consulted with his local bishop as he should have, the muddle-headed decision to honor President Obama with a degree might never have been made. From a letter sent last month by Bishop D'Arcy:

"As I have said in a recent interview and which I have said to Father Jenkins, it would be one thing to bring the president here for a discussion on healthcare or immigration, and no person of goodwill could rightly oppose this. We have here, however, the granting of an honorary degree of law to someone whose activities both as president and previously, have been altogether supportive of laws against the dignity of the human person yet to be born."

Second, this look at underlying issues from a seminarian named Brian Graebe lends context to the ongoing fracas both within the churrch and outside it:

"In a time when the distinction between can and should has become increasingly blurred, and when fundamental moral norms are under unprecedented attack, the principle of intrinsic evil requires and deserves a staunch defense. The threat of utilitarianism is hardly new; after all, it was the calculating Caiaphas who asserted it was better for one man to die than the whole nation to perish. In the face of public demand for expediency and results—with little or no regard for what seem to be ethical niceties—the pressure of pragmatism can test the purest of consciences. At times the price for holding fast to these absolutes can be very high indeed. But ours is not to count the cost. For these moral norms are not our own; rather, they point always beyond us to a law that we did not invent, a law that we cannot change."

Last but not least, the the pope is currently in the Middle East to witness to truth like that (as well as to show again his regard for the Jewish people), and--as Spengler notes after reading Sandro Magister-- this trip was made even against the wishes of some Vatican diplomats.

It's funny how a pope whom some observers thought would fill a "caretaker" role after the long pontificate of John Paul II has revealed himself to be an even more daring gambler than his illustrious predecessor. Truth and its defense are not at issue-- the church remains essentially conservative, as of course it must.

But Benedict has taken huge pastoral risks more than once (with the Regensburg Address, with strong support for the Mass in Latin as an option that the Second Vatican Council never meant to denigrate, with the olive branch to members of the Society of Saint Pius X, with this trip to the Holy Land-- and those are just the episodes off the top of my head).

The man whom progressive Catholics once scorned as "God's Rottweiler" is more than just a respected professor, a fine pianist, a passionate teacher, a prolific writer, and a friend of cats -- he's a courageous vicar of Christ who knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

Empathy in the air

Empathy has been more in the news than it usually is, thanks mainly (but not exclusively!) to the fact that the Obama administration wants to manacle that capacity into the chain gang of criteria that it's putting together as a test for the next nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Quin Hilyer is among the people discomfited by that development. Although not against empathy per se (who would be?), Hilyer knows well that emphasizing it in legal settings is dangerous (recall that Slimy John Edwards made his fortune as a lawyer doing just that).

Hilyer has a powerful essay on the subject of empathy up today. The call for empathy in Supreme Court justices, he writes, "is not only wrong; it's unlawful, indeed anarchic, and it utterly trashes the entire American tradition of equal procedural treatment under the law."

Art at New Wineskins points out that the Obamanian insistence on empathy at any cost is not new, and (per one of Thomas Sowell's classic works of social and cultural analysis) must be understood as a defining characteristic of any self-consciously "progressive" outlook.

I count myself among those who think that empathy should be distinct from law. When journalists give empathy too much rein, reputations get hurt (here's looking at you, Giuseppe Fiorentino). But when empathy mixes with law, people sometimes die.

Empathetic judges always mean well, yet overweening faith in the soundness of their personal moral compasses eventually leaves little room for daylight between a judge and a vigilante. The tyranny of good intentions feeds on misplaced empathy.

Where empathy comes into its own as a capacity worth celebrating for walking a mile in someone else's shoes is in the "helping professions" like nursing and physical therapy (I'd like to add ministers to that list, but among Christians, at least, ministerial fondness for empathy is too frequently misused by pastors who lunge for Saint Paul's "I have been all things to all people for the sake of Christ" at the slightest criticism. Wherever 1 Corinthians 9:20 becomes a favorite shield, seeds of empathy can germinate into monster plants of "cultural engagement" that become harbingers of surrender to the prevailing ethos, and bode ill for anyone unfamiliar with the plot of Little Shop of Horrors.)

Another place where empathy may be welcomed without reservation is among musicians generally and songwriters in particular.

John Prine, Dave Morrison, Mark Humphreys, Martha Bassett, and the songwriting team of Jeff Berkley and Calman Hart all have empathy in spades, even though only one of those artists (Prine) can claim to be anything like a household name.

The ever-luminous Patty Griffin has empathy, too-- and can't you just tell, looking at the photo of her in mid-song at a concert in New York City's "Artists' Den"?

Like mac and cheese or meatloaf

I'm glad some ten-year-old girls still read books like these.

In a related vein, the well-traveled Bill Croke knows something about comfort food and its equivalents.

Remember the memory hole

Belmont Club and Kate of SDA write perceptively about "Air Force None" and the publicity photos that the public will never get to see.

By itself, that story is little more than a squib. But coupled with federal control of the OnStar system in GM vehicles, the misguided quest for empathy in whichever judge will be tapped to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, and Homeland Security playing three-card Monte with embarrassing documents, it's part of the same worrisome slide into Big Brotherism that inspiring nonconformists like Claire Wolfe have been warning about for years.

We live in interesting times. Under President Obama, the trend toward "all-government, all the time" is accelerating.

In need of professional help?

I "blame" this on Julie, who first recommended Sir Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" novels to me:

We had our first big thunderstorm of the season earlier tonight. After an hour of near-constant thunder and lightning, with our bigger dog pretending to a bravery she didn't feel, our smaller dog beside herself with worry, and both children impressed by sheets of rain moving down the street, I kept thinking of a line from Pratchett:

"The gods love atheists. Atheists give them something to aim at."

Taking the debate on the road

Some Cinco de Mayo fireworks: Fr. Richard McBrien (about whom, more here) is tired of hearing about abortion as an "intrinsic evil," because that's the crown jewel in the Notre Dame-did-wrong-to-promise-Obama-an-honorary-degree argument, so he went after "certain types of Catholics" who allegedly give capital punishment and war a pass. The professors at Mirror of Justice have been discussing his column (good stuff here and here).

I'm the kind of Catholic whom Fr. McBrien apparently scorns. Fresh off writing about some of this myself, I read McBrien's latest column (what else is a lunch break for?) and thought it relied too much on straw men (Fr. Z would probably agree: "For McBrien there is the huge mushy mass of Catholics and there is a radical right wing fringe, a small minority. They are cranks, not important… unless they get control of something.")

Professor Perry at MoJ graciously asked for and received permision to post my email to him about McBrien's latest essay.

I wish I'd proofread the email message before hitting "send," but in spite of its obvious weaknesses, it's still a useful snapshot of an ongoing argument.

POSTSCRIPT: The ever-cogent Fr. Edward T. Oakes has related thoughts about the ND controversy based on The Audacity of Hope, but says nothing about whether he thinks that book is more or less trustworthy than Dreams from My Father, or whether President Obama's vaunted attention to empathy bodes well or ill.

Thanks to a Crescat reader

Some kind soul nominated The Paragraph Farm for a Cannonball award as "Best Catholic Political Blog That is Not The American Papist."

It's a strong field, and I'll probably lose to The Anchoress by the time voting concludes on May 23, but I appreciate the nomination very much.

Defending the genius of Mozart

You wouldn't think Mozart needed any defenders, but David "Bobos in Paradise" Brooks takes breezy criticism to new lows in suggesting that what made him great was not genius per se, but simple willingness to work hard at performing and composing music. Fortunately, Charlie at the link won't put up with that.

What Brooks does not acknowledge is the bumper-sticker limitation of summarizing new research into genius as "it's not who you are, it's what you do."

Both matter.

UPDATED, May 6: See also "Quantum Mechanical Mozart"

Revisiting the Commencement controversy with lance in hand

I do not know whether my guardian angel (whom I should acknowledge more often even privately) takes special interest in my blogging, but I'm grateful for the fact that Lacy Dodd and I were writing about the Notre Dame commencement controversy at approximately the same time, because our views dovetail neatly.

Her poignant essay graces the pixels of First Things. Mine can be found in today's American Spectator Online.

POSTSCRIPT: See also Mark Shea's deconstruction of "custom" for the benefit of WaPo columnist Ken Woodward.

A Dan Brown encore: Brownian motion?

Slublog carps that Dan Brown is ready to "inflict" a new book on America, and that seems exactly the right verb.

From s stylistic point of view-- Putting aside its willingness to play fast and loose with art history, church history, and any other kind of history, let's not forget how awful The Da Vinci Code actually was and is.

Geoffrey Pullum assessed its craftsmanship this way:

Brown's writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad. In some passages scarcely a word or phrase seems to have been carefully selected or compared with alternatives. I slogged through 454 pages of this syntactic swill, and it never gets much better. Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International, and airline magazines are thin, and two-month-old Hollywood drivel on a small screen hanging two seats in front of my row did not appeal, that's why. And why did I keep the book instead of dropping it into a Heathrow trash bin? Because it seemed to me to be such a fund of lessons in how not to write.

Another Dan Brown book, Angels and Demons, got big-budget movie treatment, as you probably know, seeing as how the film's May 15 release has been flogged in pixels all over the Web for weeks now.

That book, Pullum says, is even more badly written. "I'm sorry, but this man is simply not competent to write prose for public consumption," Pullum asserts, and he's got reams of evidence to support that verdict (e.g., of Dan Brown's Digital Fortress, he opines: "to call this novel formulaic is an insult to the beauty and diversity of formulae.")

Carl Olsen agrees with Geoffrey Pullum about Brown's weaknesses as a novelist, but Olsen has lately busied himself with the thankless task that Amy Welborn did a few years ago, namely, documenting the laughable limits of Brown's "research."

In Angels and Demons, Brown's hero marvels at “Michaelangelo’s famed spiral staircase leading to the Muséo Vaticano . . .” (ch. 31)," but Michelangelo didn't build that staircase, as Olsen points out: "The Vatican Museums are correctly known in Italian as Musei Vaticani, and the staircase was designed in 1932 by Giuseppe Momo, personal architect of Pope Pius XI."

Still the hits just keep on coming, because Brown also claims that Winston Churchill was Catholic (ha!) and that Copernicus was murdered by the church (double ha!)

John C. Wright (who knows fiction when he sees it) and Father Z. (who knows fact) strive entertainingly to answer the question "Just How Stupid is Angels and Demons, Anyway?" Comments on their posts are fun, too.

I especially like this comment left for Father Z:

But Father! My Bene Gesserit mother always taught me to regard Paul Muad’Dib Atreides as the Kwisatz Haderach!

Julie at Happy Catholic would probably chortle at that comment, too.

Musical witness

Alison Krauss and Union Station sing Ron Block's gorgeous gospel ballad, "A Living Prayer," on The Tonight Show:



If you like that as much as I do, you'll also like Alison's rendition of "On Heaven's Bright Shore" from a few years back (it was one of the standout pieces on her Two Highways album).