The League of David

Splendor of Old

Fr. Jim Tucker, a priest in Northern Virginia, noticed something about B16:  his pallium.  It's an ancient design, probably more common with the first millennium of Christianity than subsequent eras.  I also noticed something about the Pope's vestments from Sunday's ceremony. 

Look at this image:

I saw this image, and I couldn't help but think that there is something ancient about it.   It reminded me of the Gothic sculptures of seated bishops -- usually bishop saints like Ambrose, Augustine, etc -- that adorn cathedral facades.

I use the word "ancient"  because the word generates more respect in our world than words like "old" or "medieval."  And, I think that our postmodern age is so far removed from the civilization of medieval Europe that it appears as exotic as Nineveh or Crete.   

As my Three Readers know, my heart lingers in the Middle Ages.  I've never been to Europe for enjoyment, and so all of my experience with medieval art comes from American museums.  Some of these museums, granted, have incredible collections of medieval art -- The Cloisters, The Walters, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, etc. -- but I can't remember where I have seen sculptures of seated (or enthroned) bishops.  I've torn through my coffee table books and museum guides. I've Googled Augustine and Ambrose and others, and I get close, but the images are not the same.  I can't find one image of an enthroned bishop, but they do exist.  Right?

Regardless, if Fr. Tucker is right, then it says something wondrous about Pope Benedict XVI.   The pleasure of this  Papacy will be in the details.

Remember Earth Day?

Did you know that Earth Day was April 22?  Or was it April 20th?  I forget, but it did happen sometime last week.  Did you do anything for it?  Throw that soda can in the recycling bin?  Take the train to work?  Yeah, neither did I, obviously. 

Earth Day is beginning to look like one of the other manufactured lefty"holidays" like "Bring Your Child/Step-child/Government Ward-To-Work Day."  If it wasn't for the poster in the elevator lobby you'd never know it was a "special" day.  Recently, there were reports that some companies are giving up on the "Take Your Whatever To Work Day."  Good for them.  It serves no point ("Hey, kids, this is my cubicle"), and is a drain on productivity for one full work day.

Earth Day does serve one function, however.  It reminds us that Philistines can be people-hating lunatics.  A running theme for Earth Day festivities seems to be that the Earth's population is exploding.  Natural resources are running out.  Famine and disease are spreading.  The ice caps are melting.  And what we need to do is stop buying products, driving cars, "control" populations and begin to grow our own food, without pesticides, of course.  And don't forget to recycle!  Everything!

Get this from Philistine and "founder,"  Gaylord Nelson:

"Two current environmental issues dramatize this failure of leadership (by the Bush administration)-- energy conservation and population control," said Gaylord Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin, and the founder of Earth Day. It was Nelson who rallied 20 million demonstrators nationwide from his Senate office in Washington to raise awareness about the environment.

Energy conservation and population control both "are critical to the sustainability of our society," Nelson said. "In each case, there is not only a lack of wise national leadership, but (also) an apparent determination to turn back the clock. The surrender to special interests on these two issues makes a mockery of any claim to environmental awareness."

I won't even entertain what this lunatic might describe as population "control," but  I think it's interesting that the environmentalist no longer use the phrase.  They call it "sustainability."   I guess the idea of forced abortions, mandatory sterilization, and euthanasia don't inspire the kind of warm and fuzzy feelings environmentalists love to project.

The one horseman of the Philistine apocalypse that irritates the most is the exploding population myth.  Based on a bunch of hysterical 60s and 70s era books, it's a complete fantasy that animates Philistine's hatred for their fellow man, and specifically, their fellow Americans:

Just as I was getting into my Prius (the hybrid car that makes me vaguely smug) I felt the deep bass vibrations of a stereo booming through the heavy steel of a yellow Hummer. It rolled into the parking lot, top lights lit, and the lights continued to burn as the tall young driver sauntered toward the student union.

You scumbag, I thought. You are the epitome of the problem! How can you drive this monument to American arrogance, this fuel-devouring war machine? Does it make you feel powerful? Why not volunteer for the Army and drive a real Hummer in Fallujah? Did your Daddy give you this? There's no way you paid for it. Does it help you pick up girls? You probably get gentleman's C's and are just marking time till you can take over Daddy's business. Jerk!

Whoa there, I told myself, when my blood pressure fell to near normal. Why does this kid think it's cool to drive this obscene car? Sure, it is one of the worst symbols of our affluent and wasteful culture, but his attitude is probably not much different from most in a country where half of the cars are SUVs, where fuel efficiency is less than it was 25 years ago, where 4 percent of the world's population produces 30 percent of the world's heat-trapping gases, and advertisers appeal to our individualism (you earned it, you deserve it, bigger is better). This kid is simply doing what American culture tells him to do.

I especially like this quote from the editorial page of a Pennsylvania local newspaper :

Human beings are still assaulting the earth. On a sweet spring day with dogwoods in blossom and Carolina wrens cheerfully singing, it's easy to forget that we cannot take our stewardship of the Earth for granted.

It's an "editorial" that looks surprisingly like this "editorial" from another local newspaper in North Carolina.  Do they syndicate editorials?

But, never mind that, it's all total fantasy whether its mass manufactured rhetoric or not.

A simple search at the Census Bureau's International Data Base site shows the stark contrast between reality and Philistine population fantasy:

Not only is the world population tanking, it's tanking in the countries with the most need for people -- the developed world.  Developed countries control a better part of the political, financial, and commercial institutions that "make the world go 'round."  And it's going to affect everything, including poor, feckless Philistines. 

Without people to work in high paying jobs, the lefty environmental groups that depend on private donations are going to have a harder time influencing anyone.  It's in their best interest to see population "replacement" rates at 2.1 or a little more in the countries that give them the most support, like in western Europe. 

Did it ever occur to these fools that they are seeing the aging and inevitable end of their own movements? 

Far be it for me to do anything that even resembles detailed research for this blog.  I offer any willing reader my opinions, not detailed reporting.  There are other blogs for that kind of content.    But someone needs to remind Philistines that -- along with everything else -- their environmental ideology is based entirely on 60's-era fantasies about an earth exploding with population and running out of resources.   As demographic agencies all over the world can prove, it's just not the case. However, they can't seem to give up on the fantasy.

Philistines keep on saying that the Catholic Church needs to evolve with the times.  Why don't they?

A Pope Who Loves St. Augustine

Excellent insight at opinionjournal.com, from Daniel Henninger:

Here are two things you need to know this week about Joseph Ratzinger, a k a Benedict XVI:

He fulfilled the first requisite for being Pope: He looks good in white. And in Germany his book "Salz der Erde" (Salt of the Earth) dislodged Harry Potter as Amazon's No. 1 bestseller.

Something's happening here.

This pope thing has held the world's attention for three weeks now. The interest in these events--the life and thought of John Paul II, his funeral with its sea of earnest young faces, the papal conclave--has stirred something in the public beast beyond idle curiosity at a televised event.

I keep thinking of Joseph Ratzinger's most compelling words the past week. Not the widely quoted reference to a "dictatorship of relativism," however apt. No, the next pope's most haunting words were the refrain of his funeral homily for John Paul: "Follow me."

These of course were not Joseph Ratzinger's words but those of Jesus to Peter, the first pope. But as the Cardinal repeated them in his compelling funeral oration, I took them to mean that he wanted us to follow his thought-line on the life of Karol Wotyla. Follow me.

Read it all.  The fun won't last.

Day and Night

It took less than a week, but two types of opinion and analysis on the new pope have emerged : thoughtful/speculative and whining/hysterical. 

Acquaintances, fans, orthodox theologians and historians, publishing in center-right publications all over the world, have added to the public's understanding of the new pope, his life and works.  Then there are the sworn enemies, godless pundits, and witless whiners, who have taken to plumbing the depths of the worst kind of ignorances -- all with that false air of intellect so characteristic of Philistines.

Two examples (one of each) follow:

Day:  You Have to Love A Pope Who Loves St. Augustine

At the moment, Amazon's U.S. tracking list has 11 Ratzinger books in its top 50 sellers. One of the most interesting explorations of the Ratzinger mind is his memoir "Milestones" from Ignatius Press. It is difficult to obtain it this week, but an excellent summary exists in Rev. Richard John Neuhaus's 1999 review, "Joseph Ratzinger, Christ's Donkey," in his valuable journal First Things at www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9901/public.html.

In that book, Joseph Ratzinger describes how he prefers Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, "whose crystal-clear logic seemed to me to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made." Anyone familiar with Augustine and Aquinas would at least pause to reflect on this remark from a man characterized in the press as an inquisitor, rottweiler, enforcer.

Augustine is the more mystical personality, closer in some ways to the "new age" impulses of our times. In the writings of Augustine, arguably the most complex mind Christianity has produced, the exercise of deep faith carries with it the possibility of what I would call a "high" experience in one's pursuit of and relationship to God. That was the Church of the 5th century. In our time, religion has become freighted with correct politics (the Left) or correct morality (the Right), rather than the substance of one's relationship with God.

I get the impression that Joseph Ratzinger--who reveres the early, transcendent Church Fathers (its "founding fathers")--is at heart more a vibrant 5th-century Christian than a stale 19th-century dogmatist; as conceivably was John Paul II, who often let himself slip into an Upward-directed reverie in public. In short, Benedict XVI looks to be very different from the stolid, authoritarian German described this week in the public prints.

Night:  Comments section at Atrios (excerpts):

Benny the Rat thinks Spain might have a very unfortunate accident if it doesn't toe the Papal line on faggots.

Fuck The Pope, the new Fuck Bush

Anybody see that hilarious picture of Pope Ratzo where he has his hands up by either side of his wizened little face as if to say "nanny nanny boo boo?"

I imagine you'll see about the same compliance rate as, oh, Italian women who eschew contraceptives on account of your head-up-the-ass teachings.

Ease up, gang.  He's an old, bigoted man, frightened by the trembling of pouty lips and taut, firm buttocks.

Awwww, fuck.  Another "people's pope?"  One more fundie to toss on the heap of all the other religious Mullahs.

There isn't an institution in the world as evil and full of shit as the Roman Catholic Church - and I say this knowing full well who Cheney/Bush et al are - It's marvelous that the children of the Hitler youth can grow up to be Pope - there's a symetry there I'm sure those asholes can't see

Crucifixion?  Third door on the left, don't forget your cross.

Pope Benedict: It's wrong to have homosexual relations, unless you work for me, in which case it can get you a promotion and a transfer to Rome.

Would the Catholic Church be less obsessed with sex and engage in less pedophilia if they'd just let their priests get laid?  Sex, sex, sex. You know, if we weren't supposed to do it it wouldn't feel good. These religious fundies need to really find an outlet for their frustration other than dictating hate.

Who scares you more?  Dark Age Catholics, American Fundy Dominionist, or some islamic nutjobs in the middle east?

Speaking of "Liberation Theology," maybe it's time for liberal members of the Catholic faith to liberate themselves from this mess. The new Pope and his gang could give a flying fuck about the reforms of Vatican II and the idea of a more open and tolerant church.

Everyone is yelling at us to not call a full blooded Nazi "a Nazi".  THIS IRRITATES ME TO HELL.

Just another blast of foul smelling wind out of the papal bathroom that will be ignored by the rest of the world.

Trust me, as a failed Lutheran, you don't wanna go there. LCA, ALC, not so bad, pretty progressive as far as Protestant religions go. Missouri & Wisconsin Synod, you're talking taking the express train to the 16th Century.

The LORD who wanted Ratzi the Nazi for the Vatican was the LORD OF THE FLIES.

Now, I know my three readers are going to say that I've only taken the most hideous comments.  I say go and check it out for yourself.  I've left unclaimed more than I was willing to list here.  This is only a drop in a deep bucket of....

Philistine Catholics Run Amok

UPDATE:  Welcome Mere Comments readers!  For a quick summary of my blog and a "best of," go here.

Now for the post:
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Oh my.  It took, what, two or three hours for reality to sink in.  Philistine Catholics all over America are still freaking out over the fact that the cardinals did not elect Andrew Sullivan or one of these fine ladies as the new Pope.  The forums at Daily Kos and other liberal sites are overflowing with the intense bigotry that only open-minded, intelligent Philistines can dish out. 

Anchoress has the best roundup on "Benedict the Polarizing."

Mark Shea also has an excellent roundup of the Philistine catholic response to the election of Benedict XVI, or B16, in the Salon Magazine forum or what he calls "Top 12 Stupid and/or Outright False Statements [in the forum]. Not ranked in any order, as they all deserve to be No. 1."  Among them:

Greeley:
Women -- and not only in the United States -- are very angry at the church. It is no exaggeration to say that many of them, devout Catholics to the core, will tell you they hated John Paul because he hated women.

Segers:
He thinks that Catholic Christianity is the answer. All religious traditions may embody some truth, but somehow Catholics have got more of it.

Sullivan:
He even backs a pre-modern view of the conscience, which holds that you can only have a good conscience if you agree with him.

What must be remembered when you read and hear this crapola is that none of these experts represent anything but fringe and ageing opinion.  They're part of a moribound movement, and this is their last hurrah. 

Fr. Greeley's comments on women are particuarly amusing: "Women -- and not only in the United States -- are very angry at the church. "

Oh yeah, man, like these women.   They're just so deluded, so uninformed.  The secret papal mindchips were in overdrive in St. Peter's the other day.  Can't you see it?!

                    

Father Greeley has been hanging around too many women like these priestesses:

It's over, folks.  Maureen Dowd is right.  The cafeteria is closed. 

Humanities As (Dishonest) Joke

Why don't people take academics and their profession seriously?  It may have something to do with the bullshit they write.  There are wonderful examples of it in Paul Johnson's review of Roger Kimball's new book, Rape of the Masters [Note: I've added the images]:

Kimball illustrates his case by a series of examples that are worth summarizing. Thus, Prof. Keith Moxey, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Art History at Barnard College, argues that all culture must be related to theory and politics. He gives Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights as an example of an artist truckling to the social, economic, and political views of the patrons who paid for it.

<SNIP>

Of Sargent's enchanting and virtuoso pain-ting of The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882), Prof. David M. Lubin, the Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art at Wake Forest University, says it is an unhappy psychodrama fraught with exploitation, anxiety, and tension. He adds, arrogantly, that it does not matter "whether Sargent meant it this way or not."

<SNIP>

Prof. Griselda Pollock, who is at Leeds University, where she is Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, the Centre for Jewish Studies, and Graduate Studies and Research in Feminist Theory, History, and Art—amazing the way these people accumulate titles!—sees Gauguin's works and especially his Spirit of the Dead Watching (a black sleeping nude with dream symbols) as a case of colonialist, masculine, and capitalist exploitation, in addition to being racist and sexist. Manet's Olympia, to which she compares it, is "a representation of the spaces of bourgeois masculinity where working women's bodies are bought and sold.... The painting signifies commodity, capital's penetration of bodies and desires."

Oh, they tell us it's because we're ignorant.  We aren't learned enough to grasp the complexity of the ideas they're communicating. Besides, it's their world, and we're not necessarily invited to join the conversation.   It's the Philistine's only excuse for the inexorable decline of the academic class in the West in general, and America, specifically. 

Please, please, please don't tell me this just the way academics are -- you know, smart and all.  There are dozens of 20th century academics who successfully communicated to an audience broader than their faculty evaluating committees.  This is just cheap and dishonest laziness masquerading as academic insight.  There's nothing worse in the discipline of ideas.

The Philistines' Party

William Voegeli has a wonderful essay in the current issue of the Claremont Review of Books that asks the question that many Philistines simply can't answer:

Do you know where you're going to? 
Do you like the things that life is showing you? 
Where are you going to? 
Do you know?

His major criticism of the today's progressive movement -- particularly embodied in the Democratic party -- is its general lack of substance and direction.  What does it stand for?  What is the movement's goal? 

Liberals have a practical reason why they won't say what they ultimately want, and a theoretical reason why they can't say it. The practical reason is that any usably clear statement of what the welfare state should be would define not only a goal but a limit. Conceding that an outer limit exists, and stipulating a location for it, strengthens the hand of conservatives—with liberals having admitted, finally, that the welfare state can and should do only so much, the argument now, the conservatives will say, is over just how much that is.

Keeping open, permanently, the option for the growth of the welfare state reflects the belief that the roster of human needs and aspirations to which the government should minister is endless. Any attempt to curtail it would be arbitrary and wrong. (In his concession speech after losing to Ronald Reagan in 1984, Walter Mondale listed the groups he had devoted his political career to assisting: "the poor, the unemployed, the elderly, the handicapped, the helpless, and the sad" [emphasis added].)

This gets us to the theoretical reason why liberalism cannot incorporate a limiting principle or embrace an ultimate destination. Given humankind's long history of sorrows, most people would consider securing "abundance and liberty for all," ending poverty and achieving racial justice, a pretty good day's work. For LBJ it was, astoundingly, "just the beginning."

Liberal intellectuals who drew up the blueprint for the Great Society regarded peace, prosperity, and justice as achievements that were not merely modest but troubling. They lived with a strange dread—that if Americans' lives became too comfortable the people would decide that the country had been reformed enough, thank you, even though liberals knew there was still—always—work to be done. In 1943 the National Public Resources Board, which FDR hoped would chart the course for a renewed, enlarged post-war New Deal, advocated the recognition of various welfare rights, including the right to "rest, recreation and adventure." In a speech he gave to the Americans for Democratic Action in 1948, the group's first chairman, Wilson Wyatt, rejected "the view that government's only responsibility is to prevent people from starving or freezing to death. We believe it is the function of government to lift the level of human existence. It is the job of government to widen the chance for development of individual personalities."

Bishop Gene the Preaching Machine

I told you, my Three Readers, that Terry Shiavo's suffering and murder affected me.  Before we all experienced her suffering, I would have called the "Reverend" Gene "the Gay Bishop" Robinson's recent comments a silly gesture of an insecure egoist, but now, they're just appalling:

Bishop Robinson's comments at Planned Parenthood's national leadership conference took aim at traditional interpretations of the Bible.

"We have allowed the Bible to be taken hostage, and it is being wielded by folks who would use it to hit us over the head. We have to take back those Scriptures," he said. "You know, those stories are our stories. I tell this to lesbian folk all the time: The story of freedom in Exodus is our story. ... That's my story, and they can't have it.

"This current administration notwithstanding, the world is not black and white," Bishop Robinson said. "We need to teach people about nuance, about holding things in tension, that this can be true and that can be true, and somewhere between is the right answer. It's a very adult way of living, you know.

"What an unimaginative God it would be if God only put one meaning in any verse of Scripture," he said.

And this:

Bishop Robinson encouraged Planned Parenthood leaders to fight their opposition.  "I know, in the end, that I'm going to heaven, and so are you," he said. "You and I can do this work no matter how hard it gets, because we know we're going home."

Hey!  Kill your kids.  It doesn't matter. You're going to heaven anyway.  It wouldn't be so shocking if it was just this addled mediocrity, but it appears that he's not alone:

The Rev. Ignacio Castuera, a Methodist and Planned Parenthood's national chaplain, said he is trying to increase the size of their clergy network, which currently has 1,400 pastors and clergy.

Working with clergy on the West and East coasts is easy, Mr. Castuera said, "but when you move further into the country it gets harder. ... In the center of the country we have a lot more conservative perspectives on the Bible and sex."

All I can say (from across the Tiber) to Episcopalians who actually believe in God:  I'll pray for you. 

National Philistine Radio

Get Religion has another reason why they should rename National Public Radio, National Philistine Radio:

NPR ombudsman -- ombudsperson? -- Jeffrey A. Dvorkin has posted a very interesting column about listener reactions to the network's coverage of the life and death of Pope John Paul II. He says that hundreds of NPR regulars have written in to protest, saying that there has been too much coverage and that it has been wildly out of balance -- too positive.

Including this example:

Listener Bruce Bradberry expressed a view that many shared:

In your understandable attempt to show respect to beliefs that many of us may not share, I believe you are tending to lose both your objectivity and your vital mission to intellectually question any belief systems. (Your Web page currently shows a link to "The Pope: A Final Tribute.") While I don't wish to see important leaders, or their followers, kicked while they are (permanently) down, I hope that NPR will refrain from patronizing their views quite so generously.

It seems that the NPR's listeners want more nuance:

Many listeners expressed admiration for aspects of the Pope's accomplishments, but there is a hunger for a more journalistic and nuanced approach. They hope that when the College of Cardinals meets in conclave to select the next Pope, NPR will exercise some restraint and refrain from speculation until that puff of white smoke appears.

...and criticism (here called "journalistic"). 

I can almost hear the outrage of a regular NPR listener driving back to their environmental cohousing in Takoma Park:

What?!  The Church doesn't sanction transgendered priestesses and transpecies marriages yet?!  This is an outrage!  NPR should be critical of any institution that isn't open-minded to our zoo-ed brothers and sisters.

You're Kidding Me, Right?

I'm still wondering whether this article is a belated April Fool's joke:

Across the Washington area, thefts of digital music players are rising, police say, putting Scalenghe and others through the emotional trauma of losing something that has become an increasingly important and personal part of their lives. Victims said they felt the thieves got an illicit glimpse at their musical tastes and even their "souls.

It also profiles several other self-abosrbed, infantile young adults devastated by the theft of their cheap electronics equipment.  For all these folks, human connections means practically when measured against their iPods.

The burglar visited every room of Sara Scalenghe's Northwest Washington apartment, stealing an expensive digital camera and a gold necklace passed down from her grandmother. But Scalenghe did not begin seething until she confirmed her biggest fear: Her new iPod had been swiped, too.

Fuck the family heirlooms, where's my iPod?!  It's a perfect example of how narcissism has poisons and blinds the hearts of people who have so much more to live for than themselves.  It gets better, because the report covers several other young Philistines who have confused priorities:

 

Emily Carone, 20, said she, too, felt devastated when she returned to her dorm room at American University on April 4 and realized that her laptop and iPod had been stolen.

Carone had 3,000 songs stored on the player and laptop. Most had been laboriously "ripped" from her CD collection and from other albums borrowed from friends. She had purchased about 50 other songs from Apple's iTunes Web site for 99 cents each, she said.

Carone had plans to fill her iPod's memory capacity  --  about 10,000 songs.

"I wasn't even halfway done," said Carone, a journalism student who also lost some interviews that she had recorded on the player.

A thief struck John Hoctor's Capitol Hill rowhouse March 14, stealing a digital camera, a laptop and an iPod that contained more than 2,000 songs.

Hoctor, 36, recalled how he had spent weeks huddled over the laptop, transferring his CD collection to his computer's hard drive. His collection of music is gone, and it feels as if he lost a friend.

"This relationship with my iPod was built on downloading all the music," he said. "The time and effort of developing a library, it makes you very connected with the library. It took the better part of two months. Now I have to start all over again."

Experts said they are not surprised that victims are reacting so strongly, because people often form special bonds with music.

Experts?  There are iPod experts now?