The League of David

Drop the bomb, please

This is a couple of months old, but it's still funny.  Catholic Philistines decry the inevtiable decimation of the priestly ranks if the Church actually does say no mas to gay cliques, pink palaces, and the various forms of deception and blackmail that seem to be the fruits of such a dysfunctional mindset.  They warn ominously of empty sancturies, crowded pews, and dogs and cats sleeping together if the nuclear option is used and honor is restored to the priesthood.

Diogenes at Off the Record had this response:

For the sake of argument, let's accept the predictions of the Cassandras at their direst face value, viz., that eliminating gay priests would empty the rectories. Further, let's pretend that we, the faithful, had a say in the matter. Finally, let's oversimplify by reducing the options to two:

Plan A. The Status Quo: Priestly formation -- and parish life generally -- continues as it has been and is presently.

Plan B. The Nuclear Option: After the holocaust, only one priest remains per diocese. For the next fifteen years (i.e., until the effects of the reform kick in), you have to drive 35 miles every Sunday and Holy Day to an outdoor football stadium, where you have a bad view of a valid and licit Mass served by unbuggered altar boys, and hear a scarcely audible but orthodox homily, delivered by an ancient priest in a nearly unintelligible Vietnamese accent.

As for your sunny Uncle D, not only would he go for Plan B like a shot, he'd give almost anything to be able to make the choice in the first place.
 

Bomb's away.

What's Going on Here?

Check out these folks....

They're:

1.  Involved in an office team-building exercise that's gotten way out of hand
2.  Preparing the human sacrifice for the altar
3.  About to play a game of  "Marco Polo"
4.  A group of Philistines

Answer

Hard Choices

The World's Most Depressing Blog says it like it is:

Don't Delay, Convert Today

Why would he say this?  Jesus, Philistine-style, of course:

Of course, there are still many differences between us. Yet Christians who have been to Pagan meetings, or who have spent long, warm hours around a log fire deep in conversation with their Pagan friends, enjoying good beer and good food, have come to understand that, despite the differences, there can be a meeting of the heart and the spirit that transcends the differences of belief. This meeting of the spirit points to something beyond us both: something that we share and honour in common.

It is that ‘something’ that I want to reach towards, to explore. It is an elusive thing, an agreement of the soul, a recognition of something profoundly sacred that both the Christian and the Pagan can sense. It is calling us from a place that is deeper than our differences, and is stronger and sweeter than our fears.

It speaks to us not through doctrine, but through the smell of rich earth after the rain, through the sharp cold of the frost, through the taste of good beer and the warmth of wood smoke and open fires. It is about sacredness itself – the recognition of deity in nature; of the sacredness of human living that we hold in common. It is the Green Man who surrounds us with the imagery of spirit within nature – the spirit that is common to both Christianity and Paganism, and which Jesus affirms by the title he chose for himself. But more of that a little later.

Sigh!  I don't know who to blame for this.  Any ideas.  Hey, let's blame Joseph Campbell!

Who's this?

Check out this guy...
He's...

1.  Your fourth grade art teacher
2.  A bagger at the local food co-op
3.  A Philistine
4.  A Roman Catholic priest

Answer.

Que the ominous music

The International Herald Tribune had a total MSM freak out this week when -- after Italians didn't bother voting for supporting the manufacture and exploitation of human beings -- the editors decided to blame the Catholic Church, and its evil German ruler:

"But the separation of church and state is a vital part of a real democracy. Democracy guarantees the right of every religion to preach its values and beliefs. It does not grant churches the right to dangerously tamper with democracy to impose their rules on everyone else."

I said at PapaRatziPost what I'd say here:

There is something particularly ominous in this deeply confused and reconstructed idea of "separation of church and state." Apparently, IHT editors believe that it means churches shouldn't have any public role at all. People shouldn't vote their conscience. And that the church shouldn't be telling people to vote their conscience. Or, in this case, not to vote at all.

Apparently, IHT editors believe that the separation means obliteration, and anything less than voting the way media Philistines tell you to vote, and it becomes "dangerous."

Pope Benedict has his work cut out for him, if this is the standard media response to anything that even smacks of religion in Europe.

Holy Papal Smackdown!

Cardinal Ratzinger gave the Philistines one last zinger before his life changed, and the response to his essay is typical Philistine.   For the anniversary of the Normandy invasion, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote an essay defending the Christian character of Western European civilization and a defense of reason as it was known in Europe for several thousands years in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "In Search of Freedom; Against Reason Fallen Ill and Religion Abused."  For balance, the newspaper had a Philistine respond.

The Cardinal:

God or the divine can make for the absolutizing of one’s own power, one’s own interests. But there are pathologies of reason totally disconnected from God.  One would probably denominate Hitler as irrational.  But the great explicators and executors of Marxism understood themselves very much as construction engineers, redesigning the world in accordance with reason. Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this pathology of reason is Pol Pot, where the barbarity of such a reconstruction of the world makes its most direct appearance.  But the evolution of intellect in the West, also, inclines ever more toward the destructive pathologies of reason.  Was not the atom bomb already an overstepping of the frontier, where reason instead of being a constructive power, sought its potency in its capacity to destroy?

When reason, now with the investigation into the genetic code, snatches at the roots of life, ever more does it tend to see human being, not any longer as the gift of God (or of Nature), but as a product to be made.  Man is “made,” and what man can make, he can also destroy.  In all this is the concept of reason made ever flatter. Only what is verifiable, or to be more exact, falsifiable, counts as rational; reason reduces itself to what can be confirmed by an experiment.  The entire domain of the moral and the religious, belongs then to the realm of the “subjective” - it falls outside of common reason altogether. One no longer sees that as tragic for religion - each one finds his own - which means that religion is seen as a kind of subjective ornament, providing a possibly useful kind of motivation.  But in the domain of the moral, one seeks to be better.

Reason fallen ill and religion abused, meet in the same result. To a reason fallen ill, all recognition of definitively valid values, all that stands on the truth capacity of reason, appears finally as fundamentalism.  All that remains is reason’s dissolution, its deconstruction, as, for example, Jacques Derrida has set it out for us. He has “deconstructed” hospitality, democracy, the state and finally, the concept of terrorism, only to stand in horror in the face of the events of September 11th.  A form of reason that can acknowledge only itself and the empirical conscience paralyzes and dismembers itself.

The Philistine, in response, whines, sighs, obsfugates, defends Marxism and throws out scare quotes with all the acumen of the late Philosopher Frog and his American toadies:

Ultimately, however, it is not the “clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam that is the Pontiff’s primary focus. It is instead the growing “pathological” embrace of either “reason” or “religion,” and the need to restore a proper balance between the two: more secular reason in the Orient and more religious faith in the Occident. On first blush, therefore, his article exhibits a reasonableness that is difficult to deny. What results, however, is an abstract stance that considers the existence of too much fanaticism and repression as essentially equivalent with the existence of too much tolerance and freedom. The fear of the Pontiff is that in the West the “good” is becoming subordinated to the “useful” and that the more truth becomes identified with objectivity, and the testability of scientific claims, the more morality and religion will turn into matters of purely “subjective” belief or opinion. Such is the legacy of scientific rationality or, better, a form of uncritical positivism that has often been conflated with Enlightenment philosophy. Thus, while His Holiness does not explicitly use the term, he sees “enlightenment fundamentalism” as the principal danger to western societies.

The argument of the Pope shows an impressive debt to the thinking of contrasting philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Max Horkheimer. No less than they, however, the Pontiff forgets the way in which the unfettered ability of science to question authority was historically intertwined with the emergence of political democracy. No less than they, he is also mistaken in suggesting that (neo-) positivism, which now teaches the importance of falsifiability, implies merely the rule of the majority (Mehrheitsprinzip) rather than – precisely because truth is deemed provisional – the rights of the minority to contest received opinions. For just this reason, most major positivist philosophers were political liberals while the attack on positivism became a telling characteristic of all totalitarian regimes. Also, in the same vein, it is interesting that the nineteenth century socialist parties formally identified with a “positivistic,” “deterministic,” and  “scientific” Marxism should have produced the first mass democratic organizations in Europe, the most enthusiastic supporters of the interwar republics, and the most principled opponents of communist and fascist totalitarianism.

Make sense?  No?  It's not supposed to.  Which is why, in the long run, God has the better hand.

No Room for Philistines - Not Anymore

At some point last week my head was going to explode.  It's taken me this long to get to this because it's taken me this long to stop being annoyed at it.  I have to keep on reminding myself that E.J. Dionne makes a lot of money doing what he does for the Philistine, er, Washington Post.   Thus, he should have something worth saying, right?

I'll blame his recent opinion piece -- "No room for dissent?" -- on his Catholic "faith" on the fact that he is a Baby Boomer Philistine, and  can't help but turn every single possible social, political, cultural or economic issue into a statement of his own needs and wants.

On the Sunday after Pope Benedict XVI was elected, I attended Mass at a parish whose pastor I like and respect,  even if we have rather different political views.

You're a flaming liberal opinion writer.  He's a Roman Catholic priest.  I would hope  he has "different political views."

Since it was not my regular parish, I hadn't seen him for a while. So we greeted each other warmly and, in light of our new pope's strongly conservative views, closer to my friend's than mine, I asked him: "Please pray for us liberals." He laughed and assured me that I had nothing to worry about. Pope Benedict was now head of the entire church, he said, and knew he had a task different from his old one as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the guardian of church orthodoxy.

Philistines always say that conservatives see the world in black and white, but here Dionne admits that he's concerned about the new pope because o his "strongly conservative views."  Scary, huh?

I appreciated my friend's openness. After all, he could have said it was time for my kind of Catholic to join the Episcopal Church across the street.

Actually, the priest should have suggested Dionne join the Episcopal Church across the street.  It would get him going in the right direction considering that he barely knows, or cares to know, his faith.  But I have to admit, Dionne does have enough political acumen for the obvious:

But I suggested that because Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict, is a person of integrity, I did not expect him to shelve his old self quite so easily.

Que the ominous music suggesting some sort of McCarthyistic campaign

Not long after, word came that the Rev. Tom Reese had been forced to resign as the editor of America magazine, the Jesuit weekly, at the end of a process begun under then-Cardinal Ratzinger. It seems that Reese was too willing to invite Catholics to his pages who did not agree with the totality of the Vatican's views.

Ah, yes.  Those inconvenient "Vatican views."  In the la-la world according to Philistine Dionne a Roman Catholic does not necessarily have to accept the teachings of the Catholic Church authority in Rome.  They should be able to follow anyone, right?  The Dalai Lama.  Lao Tzu.  Mohammed.  Andrew Sullivan.

Whenever an authority asserts itself against the interests of Philistines, they whine and claim some form of McCarthyism.

Not, mind you, that he didn't give top billing to the official view. Cardinal Ratzinger himself once wrote for Reese's magazine. But Father Tom, a moderate by temperament, was a bit too willing to broaden the community of discourse.

No, he was willing to accommodate consistent non-Catholic opinion on a whole host of issues that appear obvious to most practicing and sincere Catholics.  I'm not quite sure why Philistines -- reading liberal Catholic magazines -- believe that reading articles on the same issues over and over again over four decades is somehow going to make things change.  At some point boomer Philistines need to look around and notice that they're old, and they're few, and that this is happening for a reason.  Philistines believe they're smarter than the vast Unwashed of America.  Why can't they think critically of their own stagnant world view?

Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner, made his own assessment. A couple of weeks ago he resigned from the board of trustees at the Jesuit-run Fairfield University and refused to accept an honorary degree from Sacred Heart University to protest what happened to Reese. "I'm really worried that some Catholic organizations, especially universities, are at some risk," Vincent told a local newspaper, according to the Associated Press. "How can you call yourself a university without free debate?"

This is great!  Now, if only all the other Challenged Catholics protested the way Fay Vincent did, then we'd be able to guide the Church in America down a straighter path.  As it is, there are thousands of these so-called Catholic lay leaders who neither believe nor act out their Catholic faith.  Their leadership has been a decades-long abomination, and has brought many diocese to their knees.  It's time for a little house cleaning.  If that means a few of the rats and roaches leave of their own free will, then...Great!   The fewer the better.

I have very little charity for Challenged Catholics.  They practice a me-centered religion that only makes room for the universal truths that don't cramp their style.  It has left the faith in severely degraded state and some of its weakest members opened to terrible predation.  The anything-goes atmosphere that Mr. Dionne so loves, lead to the freakish and horrible depravities well-documented in articles like Mary Eberstadt's "The Elephant in the Sacristy." 

Again, I must ask the question: if you're not going to accept Catholic faith why bother being Catholic?  If you cringe every time you step into a pew, if you "cross your fingers" at some point during the Profession of Faith, if you sigh when the priest mentions abortion or gay marriage, why bother?  Why put yourself through it?  Go find a church that makes you feel happy during service.  Go to a church that doesn't irritate your brittle, aging self-esteem.

Now there's a case to be made that those who don't like what's happening always have the option of, well, crossing the street to another church, or another magazine.

There's that acumen for the obvious again.

The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, once a liberal Lutheran pastor and now a conservative Catholic priest, makes a forceful case for clear boundaries. Writing in the Boston Globe, Neuhaus argued that because America is "a Catholic magazine in the service of the church and its mission," it has a special obligation to uphold orthodoxy as defined by the pope. That's especially true, he said, on "publicly controversial questions such as the moral understanding of homosexuality, same-sex marriage and the exploitation of embryonic stem cells."

Again, Dionne is either confused or willfully playing ignorant.  Neither is an excuse for separating Church teaching from the Church.  Using phrases such as "as defined by the pope" are rhetorical shortcuts that help Challenged Catholics like Dionne make an excuse for continuing to practice a religion they no longer believe. 

"On such questions, the church has clearly defined positions," Neuhaus wrote. "The practice of America suggested to some the magazine's neutrality or hostility to the church's teaching. Not surprisingly, they asked of the magazine, 'Whose side are you on?' " That last question is a good one, relevant to all traditions and not just to Catholics. I answer it differently from Neuhaus not only because I failed to see hostility toward the church in Reese's magazine, but also because I think we see tradition differently.

I'm guessing that Challenged Catholics see tradition as the old stuff in the church that doesn't make them feel uncomfortable.

The Catholics Reese's magazine spoke to, and often for, are loyal to their tradition but also understand, as the philosopher Michael Walzer has put it, that "traditions are sites for arguments." Traditions stay alive by nurturing a spirit that is at once loving and critical. If every question is kept open, there are no answers. But if too many questions are closed, the answers the tradition offers become steadily less compelling, less fresh and less persuasive.

Dionne answers to his own doubts when he says "If every question is kept open, there are no answers."  But he doesn't take the argument in the next logical step:  answers have finality.  A question can be answered with precision.  (As a professional librarian I've answered thousands.)  The responsibility falls on the one receiving the answer to make a decision whether he wants to accept it.  If the answer is no, then he should move on.

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead," wrote the great religious historian Jaroslav Pelikan. "Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Father Reese stands for a living faith serene enough to argue with itself. I worry that's why he was asked to leave his post.

The problem isn't a faith "serene enough to argue with itself."  It's with a faith turned so inward on itself that it doesn't know when to shut up.  At some point, the issues of the moment need to be addressed, leaders then need to lead.  They need to make decisions, and then they need to move on.  For the past forty years, the Catholic Church has been constantly seeking answers to dead questions such as abortion, drawing its gaze further and further inward.  It's left it ill-prepared and on the defensive against the rising tide of social, political and religious forces hostile to its very existence. 

John Paul II lead the Church away from this poisonous narcissism, clarifying Church teaching on a whole range of issues that cramp the style of Challenged Catholics all over the world.   These aren't John Paul II's teachings; they're Church teachings.  At some point Challenged Catholics like Mr. Dionne also need to be make a decision.  Do they continue to practice a faith they obviously don't accept, or do they finally follow their conscience and find peace where they were meant to be?

 

I Don't Know Where I Found This..

but it's cute.

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:
==========================================

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. 

JP II's Legacy

Something happened tonight that hasn't happened in a very long time.  My sleepy urban parish church --  St Michael the Archangel in Silver Spring -- got a kick in the pants.  It was the active spirit of Pope John Paul II, speaking through a young deacon whose name I do not know.

He brought Church teaching to a crowded 7 PM -- "last chance" -- mass.   With heartfelt conviction he called Terri Shiavo's murder what it was.  Without irony he drew a direct connection between the suffering of Terri, the suffering of the Pope, and the dying man on the cross.  He dared the congregation to see Christ's suffering as the doorway to divine mercy not something to be sneered at.

Some people -- mostly women -- couldn't take it, and made a point of walking out in a huff during the homily.   I couldn't let that go unanswered.   When he finished I began to clap, and thankfully, a good number of people followed me. 

In the seven years I have listened to homilies at St. Michael's, with a few exceptions, I've never heard any of the priests directly address a topical issue like Shiavo's murder.  They often address important issues -- salvation, redemption, forgiveness -- but they delicately avoid discussing Church teaching on the issues of the day.   Tonight was a stunning change, and for many, it was unwelcome.  There were many in the congregation who didn't want hear about the Terri's or the Pope's suffering, and they didn't want to hear  about their own hypocrisy in the face of that suffering.

They were expecting the usual emotional bromides about changing our hearts, and how much Jesus loves us.  Tonight they got a kick in the pants. 

John Paul was alive tonight at St, Michael's. The young man who spoke so courageously was one of the new generation of Church men: traditional, courageous, unapologetic.   He was willing to push back on a social elite that has no need to see its style cramped by that suffering Jew on the Cross. 

It was John Paul's lasting gift to this sleepy urban community.

“Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”  -- Flannery O'Connor