Religion & Media conference at Yale Div

Encouraging to see the alma mater picking up the challenges raised by TPOTC. Hopefully, it won't be just another Mel-bashing, mass mea culpa session.

The crisis in Catholic-Jewish dialogue

I've been more or less brushing off the cries of anti-Semitism regarding TPOTC, especially seeing that there have been no pogroms since its opening. But after reading some Jewish blogs and particularly this article in The New Republic, by Leon Wieseltier, I'm now deeply saddened and troubled. I've come across Wieseltier in the bookstore, skimming through his book Kaddish, which impressed me as an earnest spiritual journey of a secular-minded intellectual struggling to come to grips with the ancient faith of his fathers. It's one thing for the religiously aloof literatii to bash the film with no clue to the theological issues at work, but it's another for religiously sensitive Jews to join in the "mel-edictions."

"In its representation of its Jewish characters, The Passion of the Christ is without any doubt an anti-Semitic movie, and anybody who says otherwise knows nothing, or chooses to know nothing, about the visual history of anti-Semitism, in art and in film."

"The apologetics for The Passion of the Christ must represent an intellectual nadir in contemporary American conservatism. Thoughtful people have been uttering thoughtless words."

When I hear statements like this, I just want to throw up my hands and say, "No, Rodney King, we will never just get along." Is dialogue just a joke? Is its only purpose to impose and enforce a slow death sentence on an orthodox Christology? Why bother explaining the nuances in one's theology when even sincere people only give them the worst possible interpretation? Wieseltier doesn't want to hear any of it. Anyone who finds value in Gibson's film is supportive of anti-Semitism and ignorant of history. Pretty black and white. When these complex, multi-layered issues are reduced to a choice between pluralist heaven and orthodox hell, people will follow their love, like Orpheus, to hell.

"Then there was the argument for timidity. "Jewish denunciations of the movie only increase the likelihood that those who hate us will seize on the movie as an excuse for more hatred," Medved declared. I wonder if he feels the same way about Jewish denunciations of Islamic anti-Semitism. In a journal of the American Enterprise Institute, he warned that "sadly, the battle over the The Passion may indeed provoke more hatred of the Jews." Yet the hatred of the Jews is not simply a response to the Jewish response to the hatred of the Jews. Anti-Semitism is not anti-anti-anti-Semitism."

True, but Medved still has a point. Before articles such as Wieseltier's, I, in good faith, assumed that to appreciate the movie as a profoundly Christian work (but not very intelligible to non-Christians) and to regard Judaism with respect and honor were naturally consistent with each other. Now I'm being told that it's not only inconsistent, but impossible! Who's forcing who into a fight?

To see Catholic scholars and clerics (like my former prof Fr. John Pawlikowski) scramble for cover, desperate to apologize for the movie's violations of dogmatic pluralism, reveals a real crisis in interfaith dialogue. It tells me that all of the work we've done to strengthen bonds of mutual understanding between Catholics and Jews is far from complete. In fact, we've probably taken several wrong turns along the way. There IS an inherent theological anti-Judaism in the New Testament that must be acknowledged and understood as separate from social and political anti-Semitism. If this cannot be discussed, if Christians are required to swallow the equation, Christological supersessionism = anti-Semitism, then dialogue is indeed impossible. Because this seems to be the case, I can't be too hopeful. Sad to see how often we prove Nietzsche's vision of truth as a mere battle of wills.

Pope appoints UChicago alumna

Mary Ann Glendon has been called by JPII to head the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, making her one of the Church's highest ranking lay women. An amazing Maroon and Crimson woman. Orthodox in her faith, yet indomitable in legal scholarship, she embodies the best qualities of lay Catholic activism and the ideals of the encyclical Fides et Ratio. How she has won the respect of liberal, establishment colleagues like Dershowitz and Tribe, despite her strong conservative views, is something of a miracle. Now that's girl-power.

Viva Il Papa!

The old codger lookin pretty swank in his Lenten colors.

On March 14, JPII will pass Pope Leo 13 for duration in office. NY Times article here.

A dieting regimen from Dr. Freddie Nietzsche

This had me rolling. Works for Lent too. Nietzsche as Atkins successor with book titles: Fat is Dead; Beyond Food and Evil; Swiss Steak Zarathustra; Human, All Too Fat a Human. Funny, all too funny.

First Friday of Lent

This is the instructive fast, it teaches the athlete the ways of the contest.
Draw near to it, study, learn to struggle shrewdly.
Behold he instructed us to fast with our mouths and hearts,
Let us not fast from bread and think thoughts
In which the hidden poison of death is hidden.
Let us confess on the fast day the First Born
Who gave us the word of life to meditate on.

Let the scriptures be for us like a mirror, let us see in them our fast
For the Bible discriminates between fasts and prayer.
It chooses one type of fast and rejects another
Some fasters appease God and others anger him.
There is a prayer which is sinful, and another which is the medicine of life
O Lord let us rejoice in our fast
As he rejoiced, my brothers, in his own fast.
--St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Fasting

As Christ rejoiced in his own fast... There's no forced grins or smiles here for St. Ephrem. Joining in Christ's Fast is truly life-giving.

Would you like an orangutan to go with your microchips?

Taiwan cuts a big orangutan trade deal with the Brits. Well, that's one way to get rid of your crappy politicians.

Don't we wish

Read this Catholic's-dream version of Bishop Wilton Gregory's press statement. Remember to pinch yourself--it's fictional, repeat, fictional. I had to kick myself since the candor expressed is what I would practically expect from the sacramental head of Christ's Body. The thing is, a bishop *could* have made such a stirring yet not outlandish statement. So close, yet so far away.

The grotesque and the macabre Passion

Found this pic linked over at GetReligion. Another piece of art history that gives additional "con-text" with which to "read" TPOTC.

Hieronymus Bosch, Christ Carrying Cross, 1490

Why I am the Road Warrior

Bwaahahahaha! I am the Peregrinator. And all from one '93 Honda Civic.



create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide

Financial stewardship

Commonweal has a fine article expressing the need for greater financial disclosure in diocesan and parochial institutions. But David Gibson seems too sanguine in his belief that "Opening the church’s books involves no change in doctrine or theology, and the bishop or pastor would still have the final say on how diocesan or parish funds are spent." Nearly every diocese has its clerical despots who will fight any encroachment on their authority tooth and nail. Nearly every diocese has its Voice of the Faithful types who will take it as an opportunity to expand their agenda into every corner of the Church. It's the byproduct of teaching the "seamless garment" ideal. What Gibson recommends, however necessary, won't pass without a significant rumble in the ecclesiological jungle.

Evangelicals vs. Post-Evangelicals

Battles are brewing over Evangelical "traditionalists" and "postmoderns." Here's one trad dropping a round of bombs. A British postmodern or "emerging church" dude discusses the possibilities of integrating WiFi into church worship here. As the Reformation cycle repeats itself once again. It reminds me how one key difference between Catholic and Evangelical aesthetics is irony, which barely exists in the latter.

When teachers strike...against students!

Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take it" used to be the theme song of youth against the establishment. It becomes the teachers' song when youth become the establishment.

Aesthetics and The Passion

Finally, aesthetics has returned to the center stage of Christian debate, thanks to Mel. A Washington Post art critic has written the first article I've read in a major paper that acknowledges how theology and aesthetics have always been joined at the hip. It drives me nuts how Christians rarely discuss aesthetics as anything more than a matter of taste or style. The article also makes a good case for Counter-Reformation aesthetics.