Cassandra has some thoughts on the official Mexican reaction to recent legislation in Arizona.
Our "bully pulpit" president does not like anything Arizona is doing (and not just with immigration), but he's in no position to claim the moral high ground.
In other news about double standards, the Headmistress over at The Common Room has a post full of climate change chicanery.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Dragging Hay Bales and Agendas into Church
Peggy Noonan and Nicholas Kristof want to fix the Catholic Church. With Noonan writing for the Wall Street Journal and Kristof writing for the New York Times, neither columnist needs parchment on a door in a university town to float thesis statements, but both of them should have done more homework before pontificating as they did.
For a column published April 17, Noonan used her coffee-klatch writing style to revisit an essay from 2002 in which she had criticized church leaders up to and including then-pope John Paul II for being out of touch or stupidly careerist (as the cardinals shepherding Catholics in Washington, D.C. and Boston at the time proved to be). Using her eight-year-old column as a launch pad, Noonan suggested that the Vatican needs new blood. Of the men there, she wrote, “they are defensive and they are angry, and they will not turn the church around on their own.”
Well. With respect to the abuse scandals that people are talking about, Pope Benedict has already accepted the resignations of several bishops and pledged to muck out the stables. The pope’s recent meeting with victims of clerical sexual abuse in Malta proved yet again that his instincts, at least, are pastoral rather than defensive. Whatever anger he has seems focused on those priests who betrayed their vows to the detriment of everyone around them. Noonan wrote nothing specifically about the current pope, which is a shame: she ought to remember that the “Panzerkardinal” and “Rottweiler” nicknames that Joseph Ratzinger once wore with more grace than they deserved were given to him by opponents within the church who feared his intelligence and his willingness to emulate You-Know-Who in throwing miscreants out of the temple whenever necessary.
Few things are more frustrating than watching a columnist joust with a straw man. Noonan wants grumpy pastors to step aside for joyful ones, but is there anyone out there who really thinks that angry old priests will turn the church around on their own?
When she’s not pulling straw out of her hair because her own rhetoric knocked her over, Noonan knows as well as anyone else that change in the church has theological implications, which is why devout Catholics usually look to the Holy Spirit for that, rather than to the next crop of pastoral appointments from local bishops. Moreover, tried-and-true prescriptions like “Reform your lives and believe in the gospel” apply to Christians of all ages; the gospel has perennial currency that faded slogans like “Question Authority” do not.
Why would Peggy Noonan –-of all people-- make me reach for my trusty sword? Her writing shades toward sweetness rather than sarcasm, but it can still be muddle-headed. The problem here is twofold. First, as John Haas did an excellent job of showing just last week, Noonan did not acknowledge work that has already been done. Second, she mixed good and bad advice. “Most especially and most immediately,” Noonan wrote at full boil, Church leaders “need to elevate women.” The irony in calling for institutional housecleaning and then describing it as women’s work seems to have flown right over her head.
Beyond that, the ambiguity in her main recommendation seems dishonest. Noonan is not often coy. She could have written that “we” need to elevate women, but instead she wrote that “they” should do that. She has senior clerics in mind, but gave herself wiggle room, because she’s not keen to admit that many women already hold leadership positions in the Church. Noonan also seems uncomfortable with honest conversation about what elevating more women to leadership positions might actually mean. In other words, Noonan concealed her hand, and then overplayed it.
Recall that in 1994, her favorite pope reaffirmed the longstanding teaching that for reasons that cannot be reduced to “patriarchal privilege,” the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood. Noonan remembers that. She also knows that some other Christians think differently, and so she segued from a call for “elevating” women to a less-controversial assurance that any women involved with decision-making in chancery offices would question attempts to transfer priests with a history of abuse.
I like the mama bear imagery that Noonan wants to bank on, but you can transpose that assertion into politics to see how empty it is. Mike Brown and Alberto Gonzales “failed upward,” but so did Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick. And while there are men who must be reckoned conniving and exclusionary, the same could be said about some women.
That brings us to Nicholas Kristof. On April 18, he devoted his New York Times column to a description of the two Catholic churches that he has encountered while searching out grist for his metaphor mill. One Catholic Church is a grassroots organization that comforts people and saves lives around the world, while the other is an old boys’ club with posh digs in Vatican City.
If you’re a nun who drives a Jeep along heavily-rutted roads to visit orphans, Kristof respects you, but if you’re a bishop who “obsesses” over dogma, Kristof won’t give you the time of day -- and this despite the fact that obsessing over dogma of a different kind is part of his job at the best-known bastion of secular materialist journalism.
The dualism here brooks no rebuttal. Priests who want to build condom factories in the Vatican to “save lives” rank in his estimation with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but anyone who thinks “sheepdogs” still have roles to play in what some of us call the "economy of salvation" must be part of the problem.
Kristof claims to admire “a Church that Mary could love,” and he’s pretty sure that the one we have now makes her cry. Even if he’s right, you’d think he'd have more respect for Jewish mothers, especially that one. Yet Kristof treats the mother of Jesus like a hothouse flower. He can’t find the “steel magnolia” in the Infancy narratives, or the Wedding at Cana, or the scene at the foot of the cross where Jesus died. Fresh from auditing one of those Dan Brown classes in How to Make Church History Sound Like a Conspiracy, Kristof ignores Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to cite Gnostic texts (!) and mutter about the allegedly willful mistranslation of the New Testament letter from Paul to the Romans, which of course downplayed the one-and-only mention of a female “apostle” named Junia.
What fresh hell have we here? Saint Paul thanks a woman named Junia in Romans 16:7, alright, but over at Touchstone magazine, where they take their exegesis seriously, I learned from a book review by John Hunwicke that her “apostleship” isn’t the open-and-shut case that Kristof thinks it is. Junia is “well-known among the apostles” in the same way that a later writer might say that “William the Conqueror is well-known among historians.” Moreover, the on-again, off-again controversy over her gender likely owes more to Martin Luther than to any first-team defenders of those Scary Dudes in Rome: “It is probably due to [Luther] that some north European Protestant translations went for ‘Junias’ (masculine), while versions in Spain and Italy, where the dead repressive hand of Romish tyranny had more influence, stayed with ‘Junia’ (feminine),” Hunwicke explains mischeviously. No one seems to have been discomfited by Junia’s gender in Christianity’s first 16 centuries. Egad! It’s another brick in the wall, and another reason to be skeptical of the Nick Kristof theory that early Christian transition from “house churches” to public spaces was bad news for women.
What Noonan and Kristof do not seem to grasp is that church-fixing is something like barn-building. Neither task requires aiming slingshots at old men or appealing to The Feminine Mystique. Mary had the right perspective way back when, at that wedding party where the wine ran out and she looked from her son to the catering staff before telling them to “Do whatever He tells you.”
For a column published April 17, Noonan used her coffee-klatch writing style to revisit an essay from 2002 in which she had criticized church leaders up to and including then-pope John Paul II for being out of touch or stupidly careerist (as the cardinals shepherding Catholics in Washington, D.C. and Boston at the time proved to be). Using her eight-year-old column as a launch pad, Noonan suggested that the Vatican needs new blood. Of the men there, she wrote, “they are defensive and they are angry, and they will not turn the church around on their own.”
Well. With respect to the abuse scandals that people are talking about, Pope Benedict has already accepted the resignations of several bishops and pledged to muck out the stables. The pope’s recent meeting with victims of clerical sexual abuse in Malta proved yet again that his instincts, at least, are pastoral rather than defensive. Whatever anger he has seems focused on those priests who betrayed their vows to the detriment of everyone around them. Noonan wrote nothing specifically about the current pope, which is a shame: she ought to remember that the “Panzerkardinal” and “Rottweiler” nicknames that Joseph Ratzinger once wore with more grace than they deserved were given to him by opponents within the church who feared his intelligence and his willingness to emulate You-Know-Who in throwing miscreants out of the temple whenever necessary.
Few things are more frustrating than watching a columnist joust with a straw man. Noonan wants grumpy pastors to step aside for joyful ones, but is there anyone out there who really thinks that angry old priests will turn the church around on their own?
When she’s not pulling straw out of her hair because her own rhetoric knocked her over, Noonan knows as well as anyone else that change in the church has theological implications, which is why devout Catholics usually look to the Holy Spirit for that, rather than to the next crop of pastoral appointments from local bishops. Moreover, tried-and-true prescriptions like “Reform your lives and believe in the gospel” apply to Christians of all ages; the gospel has perennial currency that faded slogans like “Question Authority” do not.
Why would Peggy Noonan –-of all people-- make me reach for my trusty sword? Her writing shades toward sweetness rather than sarcasm, but it can still be muddle-headed. The problem here is twofold. First, as John Haas did an excellent job of showing just last week, Noonan did not acknowledge work that has already been done. Second, she mixed good and bad advice. “Most especially and most immediately,” Noonan wrote at full boil, Church leaders “need to elevate women.” The irony in calling for institutional housecleaning and then describing it as women’s work seems to have flown right over her head.
Beyond that, the ambiguity in her main recommendation seems dishonest. Noonan is not often coy. She could have written that “we” need to elevate women, but instead she wrote that “they” should do that. She has senior clerics in mind, but gave herself wiggle room, because she’s not keen to admit that many women already hold leadership positions in the Church. Noonan also seems uncomfortable with honest conversation about what elevating more women to leadership positions might actually mean. In other words, Noonan concealed her hand, and then overplayed it.
Recall that in 1994, her favorite pope reaffirmed the longstanding teaching that for reasons that cannot be reduced to “patriarchal privilege,” the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood. Noonan remembers that. She also knows that some other Christians think differently, and so she segued from a call for “elevating” women to a less-controversial assurance that any women involved with decision-making in chancery offices would question attempts to transfer priests with a history of abuse.
I like the mama bear imagery that Noonan wants to bank on, but you can transpose that assertion into politics to see how empty it is. Mike Brown and Alberto Gonzales “failed upward,” but so did Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick. And while there are men who must be reckoned conniving and exclusionary, the same could be said about some women.
That brings us to Nicholas Kristof. On April 18, he devoted his New York Times column to a description of the two Catholic churches that he has encountered while searching out grist for his metaphor mill. One Catholic Church is a grassroots organization that comforts people and saves lives around the world, while the other is an old boys’ club with posh digs in Vatican City.
If you’re a nun who drives a Jeep along heavily-rutted roads to visit orphans, Kristof respects you, but if you’re a bishop who “obsesses” over dogma, Kristof won’t give you the time of day -- and this despite the fact that obsessing over dogma of a different kind is part of his job at the best-known bastion of secular materialist journalism.
The dualism here brooks no rebuttal. Priests who want to build condom factories in the Vatican to “save lives” rank in his estimation with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but anyone who thinks “sheepdogs” still have roles to play in what some of us call the "economy of salvation" must be part of the problem.
Kristof claims to admire “a Church that Mary could love,” and he’s pretty sure that the one we have now makes her cry. Even if he’s right, you’d think he'd have more respect for Jewish mothers, especially that one. Yet Kristof treats the mother of Jesus like a hothouse flower. He can’t find the “steel magnolia” in the Infancy narratives, or the Wedding at Cana, or the scene at the foot of the cross where Jesus died. Fresh from auditing one of those Dan Brown classes in How to Make Church History Sound Like a Conspiracy, Kristof ignores Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to cite Gnostic texts (!) and mutter about the allegedly willful mistranslation of the New Testament letter from Paul to the Romans, which of course downplayed the one-and-only mention of a female “apostle” named Junia.
What fresh hell have we here? Saint Paul thanks a woman named Junia in Romans 16:7, alright, but over at Touchstone magazine, where they take their exegesis seriously, I learned from a book review by John Hunwicke that her “apostleship” isn’t the open-and-shut case that Kristof thinks it is. Junia is “well-known among the apostles” in the same way that a later writer might say that “William the Conqueror is well-known among historians.” Moreover, the on-again, off-again controversy over her gender likely owes more to Martin Luther than to any first-team defenders of those Scary Dudes in Rome: “It is probably due to [Luther] that some north European Protestant translations went for ‘Junias’ (masculine), while versions in Spain and Italy, where the dead repressive hand of Romish tyranny had more influence, stayed with ‘Junia’ (feminine),” Hunwicke explains mischeviously. No one seems to have been discomfited by Junia’s gender in Christianity’s first 16 centuries. Egad! It’s another brick in the wall, and another reason to be skeptical of the Nick Kristof theory that early Christian transition from “house churches” to public spaces was bad news for women.
What Noonan and Kristof do not seem to grasp is that church-fixing is something like barn-building. Neither task requires aiming slingshots at old men or appealing to The Feminine Mystique. Mary had the right perspective way back when, at that wedding party where the wine ran out and she looked from her son to the catering staff before telling them to “Do whatever He tells you.”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Something to ponder
Anthony Esolen:
The Thomistic view of the polis underlies the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, which asserts that communities closest to the issue at hand should be allowed the freedom to tackle it. That is not simply because they do a better job of it, as some conservatives insist. It is because the fullness of community life is essential to our being human...
The question, then, is not simply, "What system will most efficiently deliver health care to the most people?" I do not believe that it will help to nationalize medicine; but that is another issue. The real question is, "What traditions and laws best preserve the liberty of a people, not to do as they please, but to take responsibility for themselves and their communities, so that they will enjoy as fully as possible the human flourishing of the polis?" If we become beholden to the national government for our very health -- let alone for the education of our children -- what will be left for us to do but follow that government along tamely, conceding all matters to its purview?
The Thomistic view of the polis underlies the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, which asserts that communities closest to the issue at hand should be allowed the freedom to tackle it. That is not simply because they do a better job of it, as some conservatives insist. It is because the fullness of community life is essential to our being human...
The question, then, is not simply, "What system will most efficiently deliver health care to the most people?" I do not believe that it will help to nationalize medicine; but that is another issue. The real question is, "What traditions and laws best preserve the liberty of a people, not to do as they please, but to take responsibility for themselves and their communities, so that they will enjoy as fully as possible the human flourishing of the polis?" If we become beholden to the national government for our very health -- let alone for the education of our children -- what will be left for us to do but follow that government along tamely, conceding all matters to its purview?
Monday, April 26, 2010
Gestapo dragnet as supervised by Sergeant Shultz
The Gestapo reference comes from Ace (riffing on a favorite descriptor of the progressives), but the argument we're both noticing is from the mind of Byron York, who says that new law in Arizona will not lead to a rash of "driving while brown" arrests or a wholesale miscarriage of justice because it is not an example of nativism run amok.
I have friends who think otherwise (I'm told there's a Facebook group with a ton of signatures against the new law), but York seems to have the facts on his side. His thesis:
Has anyone actually read the law? Contrary to the talk, it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted measure designed to help law enforcement deal with a serious problem in Arizona. Its authors anticipated criticism and went to great lengths to make sure it is constitutional and will hold up in court. It is the criticism of the law that is over the top, not the law itself.
I have friends who think otherwise (I'm told there's a Facebook group with a ton of signatures against the new law), but York seems to have the facts on his side. His thesis:
Has anyone actually read the law? Contrary to the talk, it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted measure designed to help law enforcement deal with a serious problem in Arizona. Its authors anticipated criticism and went to great lengths to make sure it is constitutional and will hold up in court. It is the criticism of the law that is over the top, not the law itself.
Paging Saint Paul
Fr. Dwight Longenecker explains the non-negotiable "theology of patriarchy," with an assist from Fr. Aidan Nichols and Galatians 4:4:
God the Father's identity is defined and revealed by the fact that He is Father to the Only Begotten Son. Therefore, the fatherhood of God is not a culturally determined and anachronistic fossil from a patriarchal age that we have outgrown. Instead, it is a characteristic at the very heart of the essence of who God is.
Arguments for the ordination of women may be conducted on sentimental, egalitarian, and utilitarian lines, but once they stray over the border into theology, they must come face to face with the innate patriarchy of the Judeo-Christian revelation. A patriarchal element is of the essence of historic Christianity and, no matter how unpopular, is indispensable.
Of course, to assert the primacy of patriarchy is not to condone the abuses of patriarchy -- the abuse of women or the overreach of power-hungry men who use patriarchy to consolidate their control. God the Father sets the example of a servant patriarch who gives all for those in His care.
God the Father's identity is defined and revealed by the fact that He is Father to the Only Begotten Son. Therefore, the fatherhood of God is not a culturally determined and anachronistic fossil from a patriarchal age that we have outgrown. Instead, it is a characteristic at the very heart of the essence of who God is.
Arguments for the ordination of women may be conducted on sentimental, egalitarian, and utilitarian lines, but once they stray over the border into theology, they must come face to face with the innate patriarchy of the Judeo-Christian revelation. A patriarchal element is of the essence of historic Christianity and, no matter how unpopular, is indispensable.
Of course, to assert the primacy of patriarchy is not to condone the abuses of patriarchy -- the abuse of women or the overreach of power-hungry men who use patriarchy to consolidate their control. God the Father sets the example of a servant patriarch who gives all for those in His care.
The power of ideas
If you had recently finished reading Edward Feser's ringing defense of Aristotle and Aquinas, then you might also be inclined toward mashups like this one: A thoughtful look at Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s great dystopian science fiction novel ("sacred shopping list," anyone?) and a blurb on Vatican funding for adult stem cell research from the Anchoress. Those people who continue to bray about conflict between science and religion or lean overmuch on Galileo as a poster boy for what allegedly happens when popes meddle with freedom of inquiry are what Bugs Bunny would have called "maroons." Such folk need to brush up on their history and probably also their philosophy.
Creed and deed
Posts like this one from "Jesus and the Professor" always interest me. Did you ever think of Judaism as a "religion of deed" rather than a "religion of creed," and then wonder what that might imply about the tango in post-Reformation Christian circles between faith and works?
Thanks to Peter Sean for tipping me to the conversation.
Thanks to Peter Sean for tipping me to the conversation.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Did you read Doctor Zero on The Fragile Left?
If you haven't, then please do yourself a favor and hie thee hither. Even if you don't agree with Doc, you can't help but savor phrasing like this:
The early days of the Obama Administration saw captive taxpayers forced to dig up the corpse of General Motors and pump billions of dollars into its dusty veins, for the benefit of union auto workers. The union movement already suffers from declining membership. Every week brings a new outrage against overstressed, under-employed non-union taxpayers. An angry populace may soon be ready to swallow some tough medicine to clean out the infestation of public employee unions bleeding them dry. The political consequences for the Left would be devastating. They love the taste of that taxpayer blood, and they need those compliant union operatives on the streets, pretending to be the liberal version of the Tea Party.
The early days of the Obama Administration saw captive taxpayers forced to dig up the corpse of General Motors and pump billions of dollars into its dusty veins, for the benefit of union auto workers. The union movement already suffers from declining membership. Every week brings a new outrage against overstressed, under-employed non-union taxpayers. An angry populace may soon be ready to swallow some tough medicine to clean out the infestation of public employee unions bleeding them dry. The political consequences for the Left would be devastating. They love the taste of that taxpayer blood, and they need those compliant union operatives on the streets, pretending to be the liberal version of the Tea Party.
If you like Doc's style as much as I do, this essay by Andrew McCarthy about the SEC v. Goldman Sachs bout makes a fine chaser, and a welcome respite from the current round of annoying AARP radio commercials featuring a hokey-sounding band singing about the need for financial regulatory reform (really!).
Monday, April 19, 2010
The Rodney Dangerfield of Martians
"Dad, is it true that Marvin said, 'I'm going to blow up the Earth because it obstructs my view of Venus'?"
"Yes."
"What a psycho!"
"Yes."
"What a psycho!"
The Vizzini Syndrome
Edward Feser does not call it that, but the modern and postmodern rejection of classical philosophy and the Scholastics (take a bow, Thomas Aquinas) who built so brilliantly on it is of a piece with smug Sicilian "genius" Vizzini calling Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle "morons" in The Princess Bride:
"While the early modern philosophers and their contemporary successors quibble over this or that argument of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Co., then, what they really don't like are the conclusions. Admit formal and final causes into the world, and at once you are stuck -- rationally stuck -- with God, the soul, and the natural law. The modern, secular, liberal project becomes a non-starter. So "reason" must be redefined in a way that makes these conclusions impossible, or at least severely weakened. The classical metaphysical categories, especially Aristotelian and Thomistic ones, must be banished from science and philosophy altogether, by fiat. The game must be rigged so that Aristotle and St. Thomas cannot even get onto the field; then, centuries later, the successors of the early moderns, quite pleased with the results of their handiwork and not too concerned with how it was achieved, can pretend that this refusal to even play the game counted as a "victory."
"While the early modern philosophers and their contemporary successors quibble over this or that argument of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Co., then, what they really don't like are the conclusions. Admit formal and final causes into the world, and at once you are stuck -- rationally stuck -- with God, the soul, and the natural law. The modern, secular, liberal project becomes a non-starter. So "reason" must be redefined in a way that makes these conclusions impossible, or at least severely weakened. The classical metaphysical categories, especially Aristotelian and Thomistic ones, must be banished from science and philosophy altogether, by fiat. The game must be rigged so that Aristotle and St. Thomas cannot even get onto the field; then, centuries later, the successors of the early moderns, quite pleased with the results of their handiwork and not too concerned with how it was achieved, can pretend that this refusal to even play the game counted as a "victory."
Philosophy 101
"What makes a human being a rational animal, on the Aristotelian view, is not that he or she actually does or can exercise rationality at some point or other, but rather that an inherent potential for the exercise of rationality is actually in every human organism in a sense in which it is not in a turnip, or a dog, or a skin cell. this is obvious from the fact that a mature and undamaged human being actually reasons, whereas even a mature and undamaged turnip, dog, or skin cell does not and cannot reason. And yet an immature or damaged human being is still a human being, which entails that it has the form of a human being and thus the potentials inherent in that form, whether or not they are ever actualized."
-- Edward Feser at his didactic best in The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.
-- Edward Feser at his didactic best in The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Floats like a butterfly but stings like a bee
This has been used before, but it fits (and we mackerel snappers like parties):
And speaking of Hitler and the church, this archival finding should be more widely known:
NEW YORK, APRIL 16, 2010 (Zenit.org).- An interreligious group trying to discover the facts regarding Pope Pius XII and his efforts to help Jews during World War II has announced the discovery of documents showing how the Church excommunicated Catholics who joined the Nazis.
The New-York based Pave the Way Foundation said that its representative Michael Hesemann found a large series of documents from 1930 to 1933.
The documents indicate that any Catholic who joined the Nazi party, wore the uniform or flew the swastika flag would no longer be able to receive the sacraments.
This policy set three years before Hitler was elected chancellor made clear that the teachings of the Church were incompatible with Nazi ideology.
“The documents clearly show an ideological war between the Catholic Church and National Socialism already in the pre-war decade," Hesemann explained. "The German bishops and the Roman Curia considered the Nazi doctrine not only as incompatible with the Christian faith, but also as hostile to the Church and dangerous to human morals, even more than Communism."
Among the documents is a handwritten letter from a leading member of the Nazis, Hermann Goering, requesting a meeting with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII), which was flatly refused.
There are also documents asking for a removal of the excommunication, which was also denied.
And speaking of Hitler and the church, this archival finding should be more widely known:
NEW YORK, APRIL 16, 2010 (Zenit.org).- An interreligious group trying to discover the facts regarding Pope Pius XII and his efforts to help Jews during World War II has announced the discovery of documents showing how the Church excommunicated Catholics who joined the Nazis.
The New-York based Pave the Way Foundation said that its representative Michael Hesemann found a large series of documents from 1930 to 1933.
The documents indicate that any Catholic who joined the Nazi party, wore the uniform or flew the swastika flag would no longer be able to receive the sacraments.
This policy set three years before Hitler was elected chancellor made clear that the teachings of the Church were incompatible with Nazi ideology.
“The documents clearly show an ideological war between the Catholic Church and National Socialism already in the pre-war decade," Hesemann explained. "The German bishops and the Roman Curia considered the Nazi doctrine not only as incompatible with the Christian faith, but also as hostile to the Church and dangerous to human morals, even more than Communism."
Among the documents is a handwritten letter from a leading member of the Nazis, Hermann Goering, requesting a meeting with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII), which was flatly refused.
There are also documents asking for a removal of the excommunication, which was also denied.
With respect to current events, the Anchoress, of course, is on the case. Damian Thompson summarizes points made by Phil Lawler very nicely. And the blogger at Wolf Howling gets it.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Betcha he never told Linda Ronstadt, either
Perennial California politico Jerry Brown is a self-styled environmentalist who likes to think of himself as a progressive Everyman, but as Laer Pearce shows with an assist from Sacramento columnist Dan Walters, Brown has more oil money than Jed Clampett ever did -- and it's from holdings in Indonesia that date back to the time of that country's military dictatorship, reinforced by personal and decisive influence over the decisions made by California's Air Resources Board.
I used to work close to the refinery in El Segundo, and bop around Playa del Rey, but it was only after reading Laer's essay at the link that I realized what kind of hardball politics has shaped that landscape. No wonder Laer calls it "Crazifornia."
I used to work close to the refinery in El Segundo, and bop around Playa del Rey, but it was only after reading Laer's essay at the link that I realized what kind of hardball politics has shaped that landscape. No wonder Laer calls it "Crazifornia."
Thursday, April 15, 2010
The music in their little heads
Cathleen has been recovering from foot surgery for the past week, and by dint of that circumstance I've had even more time to be regaled by the oddball stories that Thomas and Jane occasionally dream up.
With him the questions typically involve guns and edged weapons. With her, there's less of a pattern.
Jane did have an announcement today.
"Me and Kristen and Lauren are going to form a garage band called 'The Eggplants'," she said. (Kristen and Lauren are sisters who live across the street from us)
"Really?" I was intrigued. "What instrument will you play?" (she takes violin lessons, but apparently that's codger logic rather than kid logic).
"Oh, I won't play anything. We're really making more of a chorus anyway. I'm the purple egg. Kristen is the green plant. And Lauren is the parmesan."
"You know that parmesan is a kind of cheese, right?"
"Of course I know. Lauren will be the parmesan. And the point of 'The Eggplants' is to make fun of the Black-Eyed Peas."
"Why do you want to make fun of the Black-Eyed Peas?"
"Because they're stupid."
"Well, there are a lot of different ways to be stupid. How do you think they're stupid?"
"Every possible way."
"I had no idea."
With him the questions typically involve guns and edged weapons. With her, there's less of a pattern.
Jane did have an announcement today.
"Me and Kristen and Lauren are going to form a garage band called 'The Eggplants'," she said. (Kristen and Lauren are sisters who live across the street from us)
"Really?" I was intrigued. "What instrument will you play?" (she takes violin lessons, but apparently that's codger logic rather than kid logic).
"Oh, I won't play anything. We're really making more of a chorus anyway. I'm the purple egg. Kristen is the green plant. And Lauren is the parmesan."
"You know that parmesan is a kind of cheese, right?"
"Of course I know. Lauren will be the parmesan. And the point of 'The Eggplants' is to make fun of the Black-Eyed Peas."
"Why do you want to make fun of the Black-Eyed Peas?"
"Because they're stupid."
"Well, there are a lot of different ways to be stupid. How do you think they're stupid?"
"Every possible way."
"I had no idea."
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Boy howdy!
(Flow chart created by Tommy Downs of Americans for Prosperity, and filched from Fox News, where Phil Kerpen has more)Re power grabs, see also this from Dick Morris.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Actual perspective in the NYT
Hang on to your hats, kids! But the perspective ain't from Dowd, Friedman, Rich, or Krugman. It's offered by Ross Douthat, writing intelligently (and against all odds) about the relative merits of the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XIV.
Rating popes can be a stupid parlor game (almost as stupid as what Richard Dawkins has lately been threatening to do when the pope visits England in September), but Douthat avoids most of the parlor game pitfalls, and good for him. The "Inside Catholic" bloggers took notice.
UPDATE: Maybe there's hope for the Times after all (albeit not in its standard coverage of anything Christian).
Rating popes can be a stupid parlor game (almost as stupid as what Richard Dawkins has lately been threatening to do when the pope visits England in September), but Douthat avoids most of the parlor game pitfalls, and good for him. The "Inside Catholic" bloggers took notice.
UPDATE: Maybe there's hope for the Times after all (albeit not in its standard coverage of anything Christian).
Sunday, April 11, 2010
But was it really an accident?
Prayers for the Polish people were offered at Mass today. Meanwhile, people better informed than I am have been following the aftermath of the crash that killed most of Poland's potlitical and military leadership in one fell swoop.
What's next is anybody's guess. But what just happened is cause for consternation indeed, as the comments on this post by William Jacobson make clear.
What's next is anybody's guess. But what just happened is cause for consternation indeed, as the comments on this post by William Jacobson make clear.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
The quotable Mister Feser
That would be Edward Feser, using his teaching gig in the philosophy department at Pasadena City College with the same aplomb that P.J. O'Rourke once brandished his own sheepskin from "second-tier" Miami University of Ohio.
Feser came again to my attention while gleefully skewering Mssrs. Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris (aka "The New Atheists") in his 2008 book, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.
The Last Superstition is not for the faint of heart, but (as can be seen even in the pugnacious preface, which itself is worth the price of the book) it's a comprehensive and entertaining beatdown that amply rewards the patient reader.
What Feser calls the "last superstition" is secularism. While taking a sledge hammer to its pseudo-intellectual foundations, he sometimes keeps a martini at hand, and sometimes a Jolt cola (he's good about telling readers when they might want to do the same). One thing made glaringly apparent is that Feser is as impatient with some other apologists for traditional Christian viewpoints as he is with the atheists, but to his credit, he explains why-- he's impatient with anything that lacks intellectual rigor, including so-called "God of the Gaps" arguments.
Here's a taste of his logic and polemical style:
"How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn't want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the history of Western thought."
And later this:
"Here as elsewhere, Aquinas doesn't care, for the purposes of proving God's existence, how the universe got started or even whether it ever did. All that matters is that there are various causes here and now which are here and now directed to certain ends, and the argument is that these couldn't possibly exist at all if there were not a Supreme Intellect here and now ordering them to these ends. And this includes those causes operative in biological evolution. Nor is this a matter of "probability," but of conceptual necessity: it is not just unlikely, but conceptually impossible that there could be genuine final causation without a sustaining intellect."
Finally, one for the road from the old-school philosopher who read the "new atheists" so that the rest of us don't have to:
"If you think this is tedious, try plowing through Dennett's application of the methods of "evolutionary psychology" -- viz. the relentless piling of one sheer speculation upon another for hundreds of pages -- in the attempt to "explain" religion "naturalistically"; or Harris's flaky venture into Eastern meditation, which will leave you aching to get to the end of The End of Faith. If these guys don't believe in purgatory, they should read their own books."
Feser came again to my attention while gleefully skewering Mssrs. Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris (aka "The New Atheists") in his 2008 book, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.
The Last Superstition is not for the faint of heart, but (as can be seen even in the pugnacious preface, which itself is worth the price of the book) it's a comprehensive and entertaining beatdown that amply rewards the patient reader.
What Feser calls the "last superstition" is secularism. While taking a sledge hammer to its pseudo-intellectual foundations, he sometimes keeps a martini at hand, and sometimes a Jolt cola (he's good about telling readers when they might want to do the same). One thing made glaringly apparent is that Feser is as impatient with some other apologists for traditional Christian viewpoints as he is with the atheists, but to his credit, he explains why-- he's impatient with anything that lacks intellectual rigor, including so-called "God of the Gaps" arguments.
Here's a taste of his logic and polemical style:
"How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn't want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the history of Western thought."
And later this:
"Here as elsewhere, Aquinas doesn't care, for the purposes of proving God's existence, how the universe got started or even whether it ever did. All that matters is that there are various causes here and now which are here and now directed to certain ends, and the argument is that these couldn't possibly exist at all if there were not a Supreme Intellect here and now ordering them to these ends. And this includes those causes operative in biological evolution. Nor is this a matter of "probability," but of conceptual necessity: it is not just unlikely, but conceptually impossible that there could be genuine final causation without a sustaining intellect."
Finally, one for the road from the old-school philosopher who read the "new atheists" so that the rest of us don't have to:
"If you think this is tedious, try plowing through Dennett's application of the methods of "evolutionary psychology" -- viz. the relentless piling of one sheer speculation upon another for hundreds of pages -- in the attempt to "explain" religion "naturalistically"; or Harris's flaky venture into Eastern meditation, which will leave you aching to get to the end of The End of Faith. If these guys don't believe in purgatory, they should read their own books."
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Remembering Jaime Escalante
The high school calculus teacher who inspired the movie Stand and Deliver would have been even more successful had he and his supportive principal not been adamantly opposed by the teachers' union, writes Andrew Klavan, in a poignant essay that Bookworm told me about.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Lobbing one over the wall for the pope
Because our "German Shepherd" deserves better than he's gotten from the New York Times.
(April 6: William McGurn of the WSJ agrees with me)
See also: This defense from Ed Koch, ("Many of those in the media who are pounding on the Church and the pope today clearly do it with delight, and some with malice") and this one from George Neumayr ("For an elite drunk on its own enlightenment, the ends will always justify the means against religion."). Plus "Get Religion" corrals the translation question.
UPDATE: This is related only in the sense that religion is involved and it (the story) is equally clueless because another reporter did not do essential "homework."
(April 6: William McGurn of the WSJ agrees with me)
See also: This defense from Ed Koch, ("Many of those in the media who are pounding on the Church and the pope today clearly do it with delight, and some with malice") and this one from George Neumayr ("For an elite drunk on its own enlightenment, the ends will always justify the means against religion."). Plus "Get Religion" corrals the translation question.
UPDATE: This is related only in the sense that religion is involved and it (the story) is equally clueless because another reporter did not do essential "homework."
You picked a fine time to lead us, Barack
This is even better than the old Kenny Rogers tune that it riffs on, and of course you can sing along. Three cheers for Jonathan McWhite:
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Easter Sunday
Mark Shea writes about why one-fourth of each gospel account focuses on a 72-hour period in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.As for the apostles (he says), "What comes across with terrific force in the New Testament is that the testimony has been given by people who tell the truth, even about awkward facts not instantly advantageous to their claims."
Happy Easter!
Postscript: Have you seen this bit on prayer from Jennifer? I also like this from Robin of Berkeley.
Friday, April 02, 2010
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