Friday, January 13, 2006
Advice to the Left: Never play the baby card
It's almost as if ideological politics were invented to save us from being bored to death by the law. My high-maintenance dog gets really huffy-puffy when it wants be stroked and patted on the head, and the Left's performance during these Alito hearings remind me of how closely related we are to our canine friends. Alito is in favor of strip-searching 10 yr-old girls! Oh, the horror! But if they voluntarily go on TV to do a strip dance, no problem, that's women's lib, girl-power. No one ever bothers to talk about what a strip-search IS. Yes, it's a potentially dangerous tool of law enforcement, highly susceptible to depraved abuses. But the Left seems to be saying that strip-searching children is a categorical moral evil -- under no circumstances can there be any just cause for searching a child underneath the clothes. Once again, who can really believe the sincerity of pro-choicers when they then turn around to adamantly declare that there ARE circumstances where we can justifiably kill a baby while it's in the process of being born? I'm not saying I approve of Alito's decision in Doe v. Groody, only that the Left is squatting on a very ironic stoop when it attacks Alito on Groody and then champions Stenberg in the same breath.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
They left out Protestantism - 0%
You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.
Are you a heretic? created with QuizFarm.com |
EN: I've been faulted for the 67% Pelagianism. I never batted an eyelid about it because Catholic orthodoxy takes free will and moral agency seriously. Pelagianism became a "hot" heresy only because of the Calvinist appropriation of the late Augustine whose sense of human depravity by that point was getting the better of his moral theology. Beyond that, Pelagius' moral theology wasn't so bad, just his Christology.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
How scientism can make you stupid
Mirror of Justice alerts us to the latest Peter Singer opinion on the Hwang cloning scandal and its supposedly positive value to the pro-embryonic stem cell research movement.
Catholics care about what things are, the "Ding an sich" to which Kantianism wrongly denied us epistemological access. Call it what you want, but a human fertilized egg, even a cloned one, is a human being in the full context of its biology and its natural telos. But it doesn't end there. The Catholic pro-life position is careful to distinguish between what nature does and what we freely do with our moral agency. The quiddity of Hwang's experiments is the intentional and artificial creation of human life by moral indifference towards that life and for the willful purpose of destroying it. That crosses moral lines all over the place, and that's where Catholics object. Singer's piece is off in lalaland if he thinks his rationale even comes close to the Catholic pro-life position.
If it is the uniqueness of human embryos that makes it wrong to destroy them, then there is no compelling reason not to take one cell from an embryo and destroy the remainder of it to obtain stem cells, for the embryo's unique genetic potential would be preserved.Much has been made about the fetishization of potentiality over and against actual postpartum life in the pro-life movement. And there's some truth to that pro-choice argument. But neither potentiality nor genetic uniqueness is by any stretch a cornerstone of a Catholic defense of the dignity of the fetus. What has underwritten Singer's position and what will make it so compelling for many today is the loss of a classical metaphysical understanding of quiddity and formal cause. This is where Cardinal Schoenborn's recent First Things article against Neo-Darwinism is very germane. Singer has to split hairs and build strawmen out of them in order to make this nonsequitur argument which has the logical relevance of Monty Python's "Every Sperm is Sacred."
This possibility highlights the weakness of the argument that abortion, too, is wrong because it destroys a genetically unique human being. By this reasoning, a woman who finds herself pregnant at an inconvenient time could have an abortion, as long as she preserves a single cell from the fetus to ensure that its unique genetic potential is preserved.
But it seems absurd that this should make any difference to the morality of aborting the fetus. If, at a later date, the woman wants to have a child, why should she use the DNA of her earlier, aborted fetus rather than conceiving another fetus in the usual way?
Each fetus - the one she aborts and the one she later conceives through sexual intercourse - has its own unique DNA. In the absence of special reasons, such as a change in sexual partners, there seems to be no reason to prefer the existence of one child to that of the other.
Perhaps the assumption is that, as opponents of abortion sometimes say, the aborted fetus had the genetic potential to become a Beethoven or an Einstein. But, for all we know, it is the next fetus that the woman will conceive, not the one she aborted, that will turn out to be the Beethoven or Einstein. So why prefer one genetic potential over the other?
Once we abandon arguments based on potential, the claim that it is wrong to kill embryos and fetuses must be based on the nature of those entities themselves: that they are actual human beings who already possess the characteristics that make killing wrong.
But because fetuses, at least at the stage of development when most abortions are performed, have yet to develop any kind of consciousness, it seems reasonable to regard ending their lives as much less serious than killing a normal human being. If so, then this is all the more true of embryos.
Catholics care about what things are, the "Ding an sich" to which Kantianism wrongly denied us epistemological access. Call it what you want, but a human fertilized egg, even a cloned one, is a human being in the full context of its biology and its natural telos. But it doesn't end there. The Catholic pro-life position is careful to distinguish between what nature does and what we freely do with our moral agency. The quiddity of Hwang's experiments is the intentional and artificial creation of human life by moral indifference towards that life and for the willful purpose of destroying it. That crosses moral lines all over the place, and that's where Catholics object. Singer's piece is off in lalaland if he thinks his rationale even comes close to the Catholic pro-life position.
Alito & working class virtue
My pick for best Alito line so far:
And after I graduated from high school, I went a full 12 miles down the road — but really to a different world — when I entered Princeton University. A generation earlier I think that somebody from my background probably would not have felt fully comfortable at a college like Princeton, but by the time I graduated from high school things had changed. And this was a time of great intellectual excitement for me, both college and law school opened up new worlds of ideas. But this was back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities, and I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly and I couldn’t help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community.Won me over. I guess I'm a sucker for invocations of working class virtues, especially when it's made by one of the chattering class. The Jon Stewarts among us will, of course, be quick to associate them with racism and misogyny. But that would miss the point. As an angelic Clemenza might say, Leave the bathwater; take the baby. We're not even talking about the Left throwing out the baby with the bathwater; today it's all about throwing out the baby (quite literally) and keeping the bathwater as if it were single-malt. (HT: Catholics in the Public Square for posting the Alito statement.)
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
St. Louis and Portland under the same cloud
Ed Peters' canon law blog has shed some light on the Oregon bankruptcy court decision to reject the Portland Archdiocese's disavowal of ownership of its individual parishes. Very informative:
We love saying proudly the Church is no democracy; but that deal presumes that our leaders remain vigilantly subservient not to the clergy alone but to the virtue and honor code of the Cross and the Eucharist. The extensive absence of moral fiber and spine in the American episcopate has not only diminished public sympathy for the institutional church but has infected the laity with a nihilism that will fester and ooze in ever more open dissent before it heals. It's exactly what Kafka warned us of. Burke's excommunication and the Portland Archdiocese's attempt to now recognize parishes as "juridic persons" both come too little, too late, and too off-target.
Yes, we get the bishops we deserve. But that's just 50% of the equation, especially when that "we" is not democratically defined. Unless we want to institute democratic procedure to the episcopacy (not a good idea), we need to raise lay standards, for it is from lay Catholic families that our priests and bishops come.
- "Under civil law, parish properties across the United States are registered in at least four very different ways (corporation sole, religious corporation, various trust models, and fee simple)."Plus some commentary:
- "Under canon law all parishes are 'juridic persons' (1983 CIC 515)." - In order to sell parish property, dioceses need to gain authorization from Rome for alienations over $ 3,000,000 (1983 CIC 1292).
But let's prescind from law for a moment, and look at this matter common-sensically: exactly how is it just to make individual parishes pay for diocesan (read: episcopal) negligence? Consider: parishes have no say in who will be their pastor (1983 CIC 523), parishioners in many of these cases were themselves the direct victims of priest predators, and now parishes are being told they might have to pay—and pay dearly—for the gross offenses of men over whom they had no control. Does that sound fair?Until someone actually names that alternate "way," the American public will only relish this slow public torture of the institutional Church. Peters is absolutely right about the injustice of making those parishioners whose blood, sweat, and tears built the American Church and those beneficiaries whose blood, sweat, and tears the apostolates are wiping pay for episcopal incompetence. It doesn't really matter how canonically correct Abp. Burke's excommunication action was; the St. Stanislaus rebellion did not occur in a vacuum.
Let there be no mistake: a way should to be found, and I think will be found, to compensate justly the victims of clergy sex abuse. The way will doubtless be painful. Nevertheless, justice cannot be satisfied by shuttering parish churches and schools or by disbanding community service organizations, and it cannot be served by letting stand lower court rulings that could provoke a major Church-State show-down with serious international repercussions.
We love saying proudly the Church is no democracy; but that deal presumes that our leaders remain vigilantly subservient not to the clergy alone but to the virtue and honor code of the Cross and the Eucharist. The extensive absence of moral fiber and spine in the American episcopate has not only diminished public sympathy for the institutional church but has infected the laity with a nihilism that will fester and ooze in ever more open dissent before it heals. It's exactly what Kafka warned us of. Burke's excommunication and the Portland Archdiocese's attempt to now recognize parishes as "juridic persons" both come too little, too late, and too off-target.
Yes, we get the bishops we deserve. But that's just 50% of the equation, especially when that "we" is not democratically defined. Unless we want to institute democratic procedure to the episcopacy (not a good idea), we need to raise lay standards, for it is from lay Catholic families that our priests and bishops come.
Monday, January 02, 2006
NYT on Chinese Koreaphilia
The article focuses on South Korea's role as cultural middleman between China and American consumerist, demotic pop culture. But the freaky part was revelation of "blitzkrieg evangelism" from Korean evangelicals:
Hwang In Choul, 35, a South Korean missionary here, also sees a direct link between South Korea's democratization and its influence in China. After restrictions on travel outside South Korea were lifted in the late 1980's, South Korea's missionary movement grew from several hundred to its current size of 14,000 missionaries. Mr. Hwang, who since 2000 has trained 50 Chinese pastors to proselytize, is among the 1,500 South Korean missionaries evangelizing in China, usually secretly.Show the prosperity-starved Chinese images of humongous stadiums full of happy-clappy-weepy people enjoying the narcissistic fruits of modern spirituality underwritten by mass consumerism, and you'll tap into that frightening collective wellspring that created Mao. On top of all that, show how clean, materially prosperous, and utopian megachurch worship is, and evangelicals will win millions like they are in Latin America. Maybe the Great Commission was never meant to exclude economic and cultural aspirations in toto, but evangelicals have got to stop confusing missions with carpetbagging.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Do you Fugu?
While reading Rod Dreher's review of Chloe Breyer's book The Close, I came across one of those references you realize you're oblivious to but feel you should know: fugu fish. It's a type of poisonous pufferfish or blowfish which has become quite a delicacy for the rich, trend-setting, and suicidal of Japan. You too can risk death from a fish that has enough toxin in it to kill 30 adults for $140 per fish. Yummy. I wonder if it's made an appearance on Iron Chef. The intimate relationship between fugu consumption and Japanese auto and camera production will be the subject of my next book...
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
American Religion is as ever a Tower of Babel
Curious little can of worms GetReligion blogger opened up on newspaper religion correspondents' idiotic comments on the Hanukkah and Christmas calendrical convergence of 2005.
St. Louis Dispatch religion reporter wrote this gem for the Theological Illiteracy file:
This ridiculous crystal ball understanding of Biblical prophecy among Bible fundies and evies for some bizarre reason just won't die, hence the Left Behind and pre-/post-Tribulationist crazes. We can thank Sola Scriptura once again (my favorite theological pinata) for providing us with such nonsense. Be sure to check out the comments section in the GR post; it's chock full of people talking over, through, behind, around (anything but TO) each other.
St. Louis Dispatch religion reporter wrote this gem for the Theological Illiteracy file:
Most scholars today acknowledge that Isaiah was not predicting the birth and death of Christ, but instead was using the suffering servant to talk about God’s relationship with Israel during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century B.C.GetReligion responds:
That last sentence is one of the most preposterous I’ve ever read from a religion reporter. Ever. It’s one thing to attribute the claim to someone — but to substantiate it with an unidentified cabal of “most scholars” is particularly offensive. If, in fact, “most scholars” believe this, perhaps we could learn of the survey where they were asked about their views. Perhaps we could learn what type of scholars they are. Also, perhaps, someone could notify Christendom.This is where GR loses me. I see the usual self-serving elitism in "most scholars," but that's not what's so preposterous about the statement to me. Rather it's that the journalist actually thought he was popping someone's bubble by observing that "Isaiah was not predicting the birth and death of Christ." It's as if most Christians have foolishly hoodwinked themselves into thinking every other statement in the OT was a crystal ball prediction of Jesus. It's so ridiculous a statement -- Wait a minute...hey, oh yeah, there ARE people who butcher Scripture like that." I've been Catholic long enough to forget.
This ridiculous crystal ball understanding of Biblical prophecy among Bible fundies and evies for some bizarre reason just won't die, hence the Left Behind and pre-/post-Tribulationist crazes. We can thank Sola Scriptura once again (my favorite theological pinata) for providing us with such nonsense. Be sure to check out the comments section in the GR post; it's chock full of people talking over, through, behind, around (anything but TO) each other.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
The Church of Public Radio
Sunday night programming on public radio is getting dumber and dumberer. It's as if some liberal NPR exec gave out an order to counter the rise of all those fundamentalist channels infecting the airwaves, sending his underlings scrambling for any "spiritual" voices regardless how inane so long as they mock or condescend over all Christians who actually take Christianity seriously. It's a Unitarian's dream come true.
There's the Infinite Mind from which I just learned that "all experiences of God take place in the brain" and that if scientists could replicate that neurological mechanism, we could "help people" with depression, anxiety, a whole host of mental disorders, and we could have religious experiences on-demand! The expert then reassures us that his research does not challenge religious faith at all, but only enhances it, unless, he's quick to qualify, you're doctrinal in your beliefs.
Then there's the div school dean who was blind enough to proclaim that the real threat of destructive religious extremism ("evil religion" in his book) in this country is to be found in the those fundamentalists who oppose perfectly rational and good stuff like legalized abortion and Roe v. Wade. I guess the destruction of millions of embryonic humans isn't all that destructive. He has the gall of associating Christian fundies with Al Qaeda. He mused that if only Osama abided by the Golden Rule...then he wouldn't be so evil.
Yeah, and if we all spoke Esperanto, we wouldn't need translators. The reason Esperanto failed is the same reason why liberal religion has failed and will fail as a historical force. If only these so-called experts would get their noses out of their Western Enlightenment navels they'd maybe see that their ideas only feed the flames of fundamentalism via the backlash effect. Their smug sentimentalized posturing gilded with the airs of superiority would disgust anyone who takes their faith seriously, including both rational and irrational believers.
Now I can't stand fundamentalism but I have to respect their consistency, tenacity, and their scorn for the two-faced hypocrisy of "liberal" spirituality. I'm with them when they feel the brunt of the puritanical moralisms of the Left, particularly its extremist attitudes on tolerance, inclusivity, relativism, perspectivalism, individualism/collectivism, nonjudgmentalism, anti-establishmentarianism, sexual expressionism, et al. But that's all I share with the Protestant Right in America. Right and left religiosity are invariably flip sides of the same coin of Protestantism to me.
When you separate faith and reason, as Protestantism did, then you're forced to pick sides. The Right picked faith against reason; the Left reason againt faith. It's that simple. The only solution for the West is a return to the synthesis between faith and reason, where for example Catholicism's protest against legal abortion is rooted in natural law, not solely revelation (revelation under Catholicism is never destructive of reason anyway). Only under Protestantism could anyone argue that hostility to abortion is rooted solely in religious belief which is assumed to be independent of reason.
Anyway, there's also Speaking of Faith, which is more of the same "alternative" spiritual cotton candy. It's not enough that Alternative religiosity can point out heroic figures who represent its views. Heroic individuals do not a religion make. A true religion has to organically inspire and unite an entire people regardless of class, education, or ideology. It has to find its roots in something that transcends all those things, and not just in the mind of individuals but in entire communities. The Golden Rule and Tolerancism are not religions in this sense -- by themselves they're just sugary disembodied ideas.
There's the Infinite Mind from which I just learned that "all experiences of God take place in the brain" and that if scientists could replicate that neurological mechanism, we could "help people" with depression, anxiety, a whole host of mental disorders, and we could have religious experiences on-demand! The expert then reassures us that his research does not challenge religious faith at all, but only enhances it, unless, he's quick to qualify, you're doctrinal in your beliefs.
Then there's the div school dean who was blind enough to proclaim that the real threat of destructive religious extremism ("evil religion" in his book) in this country is to be found in the those fundamentalists who oppose perfectly rational and good stuff like legalized abortion and Roe v. Wade. I guess the destruction of millions of embryonic humans isn't all that destructive. He has the gall of associating Christian fundies with Al Qaeda. He mused that if only Osama abided by the Golden Rule...then he wouldn't be so evil.
Yeah, and if we all spoke Esperanto, we wouldn't need translators. The reason Esperanto failed is the same reason why liberal religion has failed and will fail as a historical force. If only these so-called experts would get their noses out of their Western Enlightenment navels they'd maybe see that their ideas only feed the flames of fundamentalism via the backlash effect. Their smug sentimentalized posturing gilded with the airs of superiority would disgust anyone who takes their faith seriously, including both rational and irrational believers.
Now I can't stand fundamentalism but I have to respect their consistency, tenacity, and their scorn for the two-faced hypocrisy of "liberal" spirituality. I'm with them when they feel the brunt of the puritanical moralisms of the Left, particularly its extremist attitudes on tolerance, inclusivity, relativism, perspectivalism, individualism/collectivism, nonjudgmentalism, anti-establishmentarianism, sexual expressionism, et al. But that's all I share with the Protestant Right in America. Right and left religiosity are invariably flip sides of the same coin of Protestantism to me.
When you separate faith and reason, as Protestantism did, then you're forced to pick sides. The Right picked faith against reason; the Left reason againt faith. It's that simple. The only solution for the West is a return to the synthesis between faith and reason, where for example Catholicism's protest against legal abortion is rooted in natural law, not solely revelation (revelation under Catholicism is never destructive of reason anyway). Only under Protestantism could anyone argue that hostility to abortion is rooted solely in religious belief which is assumed to be independent of reason.
Anyway, there's also Speaking of Faith, which is more of the same "alternative" spiritual cotton candy. It's not enough that Alternative religiosity can point out heroic figures who represent its views. Heroic individuals do not a religion make. A true religion has to organically inspire and unite an entire people regardless of class, education, or ideology. It has to find its roots in something that transcends all those things, and not just in the mind of individuals but in entire communities. The Golden Rule and Tolerancism are not religions in this sense -- by themselves they're just sugary disembodied ideas.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
More "War on Christianity"
St. Blog's is abuzz about the DaVinci Code film and sundry attacks on Christianity from mainstream media during this blessed season of peace and hope.
I'd have to say that unyielding whimsy is the best response for Catholics. Anytime anyone mentions The DuhVinci Code with lurid excitement, just say firmly and pointedly, "You know it's fiction, right?" And let it go. If anti-catholic ideology hasn't yet turned their brains to mush, that one-sentence argument is plenty. Cuz, really, the only ones who are getting screwed by this whole craze are the idiots who actually believe Dan Brown to be the David McCullough of church history. Let's not take the bait and script ourselves into the victim role.
The movie may be great visual entertainment, and that's all it would ever be - yet another gripping conspiracy tale to tickle our X-Files bone. Protests, boycotts against the movie and demonizing people who love it just plays into their script, balloons publicity for the flic and multiplies their ticket receipts. DVC doesn't even amount to persecution, not even close. It's problem is not blasphemy or heresy so much as the deceit of fiction-posing-as-truth. If it openly presented itself as doctrine or historical truth, then I'd break out the iron maidens.
The test is the "saint's reaction" test - if you told Mother Teresa about yet another Hollywood production that distorted Christ and the Church, would she pop a gasket and organize a protest or boycott? Or would she just shake her head and go back to tending to her sisters, the poor, and the Blessed Sacrament?
I'd have to say that unyielding whimsy is the best response for Catholics. Anytime anyone mentions The DuhVinci Code with lurid excitement, just say firmly and pointedly, "You know it's fiction, right?" And let it go. If anti-catholic ideology hasn't yet turned their brains to mush, that one-sentence argument is plenty. Cuz, really, the only ones who are getting screwed by this whole craze are the idiots who actually believe Dan Brown to be the David McCullough of church history. Let's not take the bait and script ourselves into the victim role.
The movie may be great visual entertainment, and that's all it would ever be - yet another gripping conspiracy tale to tickle our X-Files bone. Protests, boycotts against the movie and demonizing people who love it just plays into their script, balloons publicity for the flic and multiplies their ticket receipts. DVC doesn't even amount to persecution, not even close. It's problem is not blasphemy or heresy so much as the deceit of fiction-posing-as-truth. If it openly presented itself as doctrine or historical truth, then I'd break out the iron maidens.
The test is the "saint's reaction" test - if you told Mother Teresa about yet another Hollywood production that distorted Christ and the Church, would she pop a gasket and organize a protest or boycott? Or would she just shake her head and go back to tending to her sisters, the poor, and the Blessed Sacrament?
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Sourpuss Andy
Time Mag has named B16 "European Newsmaker of the Year." Yeah, it's probably the most unexciting title to ever be vested on the Pope. In what was otherwise a fine, reserved appreciation of his first 8 months as Pope, the author had to include a silly quote from your favorite and mine, Andrew Sullivan:
After the release of a new Vatican document that would prohibit any person who was openly gay — even if celibate — from becoming a priest, the writer Andrew Sullivan, a gay Catholic, said Benedict "has identified a group of people and said, regardless of how they behave or what they do, they are beneath serving God. It isn't what they do that he is concerned with. It's who they are."No, Sully, Benedict would gently correct you: you're the one who willfully chose to subsume your identity as a person into your sexuality when nothing in Christianity has ever taught that. Benedict believes you are a human person before you're gay, a sinner-saint before God, just like all of us. You want to elevate homosexuality to the level of ontology, which is just philosophically and logically absurd. Benedict simply insists that we are more than our sexuality, far more, and that it's a tragic error to teach otherwise. Too many priests out there are teaching otherwise. That's the wrongful action he's after, not who you are. Next to the man the article describes, Sullivan just keeps stereotyping himself as the ever-petulant high school homecoming queen who got her dress muddy.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
What kind of Catholic am I?
| You scored as Traditional Catholic. You look at the great piety and holiness of the Church before the Second Vatican Council and the decay of belief and practice since then, and see that much of the decline is due to failed reforms based on the "Spirit of the Council". You regret the loss of vast numbers of Religious and Ordained clergy and the widely diverging celebrations of the Mass of Pope Paul VI, which often don't even seem to be Catholic anymore. You are helping to rebuild this past culture in one of the many new Traditional Latin Mass communities or attend Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy. You seek refuge from the world of pornography, recreational drugs, violence, and materialism. You are an articulate, confident, committed, and intelligent Catholic. But do you support legitimate reform of the Church, and are you willing to submit to the directives of the Second Vatican Council? Will you cooperate responsibly with others who are not part of the Traditional community?
What is your style of American Catholicism? created with QuizFarm.com |
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Politics Test - OK Cupid
| You are a Social Conservative (38% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (20% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test |
