Against The Grain

Pope Benedict and the SSPX

2012-05-14T07:58:00.002-04:00

The U.S. District of the Society of St. Pius X has asked Catholics to join in a special Novena starting May 8 (tomorrow) and ending May 16. According to the SSPX, “[t]he intention of this novena will be that the Holy Ghost may give the graces of light and strength to the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, and to the Superior General of the Society, Bishop Fellay.” The Novena consists of reciting the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus and the Memorare prayer to the Blessed Virgin. A full text of both prayers, along with a note explaining the purpose of the Novena, is available online here.

As La Stampa's Andrea Tornielli ("Vatican Insider") reports, "The week ahead is going to be crucial for relations between Rome and the Society of St. Pius X". This Wednesday, Cardinals and bishop members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will discuss the response to the doctrinal preamble sent last 17 April by the Fraternity’s superior, Bishop Bernard Fellay.

This is a delicate moment, particularly after the publication on the Web of the letters exchanged between Fellay and three other Lefebvrian bishops, which Vatican Insider reported on last Thursday. Fellay has been leading negotiations with the Holy See and is prepared to accept Benedict XVI’s proposal; the three bishops, however, are not.
But the words used by Mgr. Fellay in his response to his fellow brothers Tissyer de Mallerais, de Gallareta and Williamson, illustrate the decisive role Benedict XVI has played in the process. “The Pope – Fellay wrote in the confidential letter he sent in response to the criticisms – told us that the eagerness to legalise our status for the good of the Church was at the heart of his pontificate; he also said he knew it would be easier for him and for us to leave the situation as it is at the moment. The willingness he has expressed is therefore determined and fair.”

A Roundup of Recent Events

Traditionalist leader says group could divide over unity with Rome, by Francis Rocca (Catholic News Service) 5/11/12. The leader of a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics spoke in unusually hopeful terms about a possible reconciliation with Rome, but acknowledged significant internal resistance to such a move, which he said might lead to the group splitting apart.
Lefebvrians: The internal battle Following the exchange of letters addressed to the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X in recent weeks, three bishops have expressed their opposition to the agreement. 05/10/2012:
A website has reported on the letters exchanged a month ago between bishops Tissier de Mallerays, Alfonso de Gallareta, Richard Williamson and the leader of the Society of St. Pius X, Bernard Fellay. The letter which the three bishops sent Fellay on 7 April contains a final appeal asking the superior not to sign the doctrinal preamble or accept the agreement proposed by the Holy See. As readers will recall, the agreement aims to assign the Lefebvrians a personal prelature.
Letter of the General Council of the Society of Saint Pius X Rorate Caeli 5/11/12. A translation of the internal letter sent by Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX /SSPX), and the other two members of the General Council, First Assistant Fr. Niklaus Pfluger and Second Assistant Fr. Alain-Marc Nély, on April 14, 2012.
Some historical context: Abp. Lefebvre recalls his July 14, 1987, meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger. Rorate Caeli 5/13/12:
In his long sermon, given one year after the first Assisi meeting took place (Oct. 1986), Abp. Lefebvre summarized the problem and expounded with greater detail the July 14, 1987, meeting with the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger, that he had already presented partially in other occasions, including a conference for a priestly retreat held on September 4. In this sermon, he expands and completes the general thoughts regarding negotiations and the relationship of Traditional Catholics and the Supreme Pontiff in the post-conciliar reality.
Important: Fr. Pfluger speaks on recent developments Fr. Niklaus Pfluger, FSSPX, is the First Assistant of the Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) gives account of the most recent developments.

Democrats, meet Gianna Jessen.

2012-05-08T07:30:00.000-04:00

Planned Parenthood Celebration Jolted by Abortion Survivor, by Ted Harvey (2006):

I was leaving the House chambers for the weekend when our Democrat speaker of the House announced that the coming Monday would be the final day of this year's General Assembly. He went on to state that there were still numerous resolutions on the calendar which we would need to be addressed prior to the summer adjournment. Interestingly, he specifically mentioned that one of the resolutions we would be hearing was being carried by the House Majority Leader Alice Madden, honoring the 90th anniversary of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.
As a strong pro-life legislator I was disgusted by the idea that we would pass a resolution honoring this 90-year legacy of genocide. I drove home that night wondering what I could say that might pierce the darkness during the debate on this heinous resolution. ...

(HT: Mark Shea).

(In a Denver Post story on the 2006 incident, we learn that Ted Harvey received a rebuke on the House Floor for his introduction of Jessen, and the head of the Planned Parenthood sniffed, "There's no statistical evidence that cerebral palsy has been caused by failed abortions." Missing the more important point that Jessen wouldn't even be alive today had the execution been carried out to completion.

Ted Harvey would go on to be elected to the Colorado State Senate in 2006, and re-elected in 2010.

Gianna Jensen.

Stalin? -- REALLY?

2012-05-07T01:43:00.001-04:00

Visiting the political blog Zombie's latest photographic coverage and commentary of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests in OWS-Oakland and similar demonstrations across the nation, I'm struck by the myriad t-shirts sporting images of Communist icons -- of course, there is the ubiquitous Che Guevera, but these days even Stalin, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh are making quite the comeback. That kids would find such figures worth emulating and adoring is a testimony to their historical ignorance.

Michael Voris' interview with E. Michael Jones

2012-05-01T02:35:00.002-04:00

Paul Zummo and Mark Shea draw out attention to Catholic apologist Michael Voris's recent interview with E. Michael Jones (CultureWars.com).

I would describe the first 30 minutes of the video, being Jones' description of the sexual revolution within the Catholic Church (and Catholic academica) in the 1970's, as fairly conventional -- not to say that we shouldn't be outraged, but rather that such an understanding of ecclesial history is shared by mainstream orthodox Catholics across the board.

It is in the middle of the video, however, where Voris engages Jones in a discussion of the premise of his book, The Revolutionary Jew, that they starts to venture into controversy:

32:15: Jones takes a stand against anti-semitism: "Antisemitism is very clear; every Catholic has to take a stand against antisemitism. Antisemitism says that the Jew cannot be trusted, is an evil person because of his RACIAL inheritance, because he's got bad DNA."

Well, yes. I would say that's one kind of anti-semitism, narrowly construed. But thus defined, it leaves the field wide open for Jew-hatred and animosity of a non-racial variety.

Thus, having excused himself from "anti-semitism", Jones is free to dispense his views on an Iranian television show peddling the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and charging Jews with harvesting organs of Gentiles; can dismiss Judaism in general as possessing "“a particularly malignant spirit", assert in a Culture Wars article that

"the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews was a reaction to Jewish Messianism (in the form of Bolshevism) every bit as much as the Chmielnicki pogroms flowed from the excesses of the Jewish tax farmers in the Ukraine"

and otherwise carry on his campaign against "Jewish modernity" (which he equates with 21st century civilization, since behind every modern-day vice, you'll find a Jew).

But of course, this can't be "anti-semitism, in any shape or form" -- because Jones doesn't harbor a shred of racial animosity towards the Jews. (As to other non-racial forms of anti-semitism, a reading of Fr. Edward Flannery's The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism may be educational).

32:37: Jones describes his position as "the traditional teaching of the Church" -- when Jesus Christ came to this earth, he came for one group of people: the Jews, who collectively had to make a decision: to accept him as the Messiah, or not. The Jews who accepted Jesus Christ as the Messiah now constitute the Catholic Church; the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ are known as "Jews" -- and in so rejecting Jesus Christ, rejected logos, or "the order of the universe", including the social order, and thus becoming revolutionaries, confirming said decision by choosing Barrabas over Christ. . . . and so the history of the world, is the history of the descendants of the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ vs. the Catholic Church (i.e., the Jews who received Jesus Christ).

This ongoing historical battle -- of The Jews vs. The Church -- is the same hermeneutic you'll encounter in the likes of Fr. Denis Fahey, Fr. Charles Coughlin, SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson, down to Robert Sungenis. All of whom will be quite certain to deny that they espouse antisemitism, "in any shape or form."

Those of us all too familar with the implosion of the apologetic ministry of Robert Sungenis will agree: this is dangerous "intellectual" territory.

And it only gets stranger as the video progresses:

34:50 Jones moves on to address the contemporary episcopal landscape -- the sexual revolutionaries (Bernadin, Weakland) have been defeated, only to be replaced by an even more devious menace: neocon bishops. What happened? -- Under the papacy of John Paul II, says Jones, the church was co-opted by the anti-communist crusade. "the Pope and Ronald Reagan made an alliance", Communism was defeated, and the result was America's elevation to a global superpower, a super-entity, "the paradigm of the state the Church wants to support."

By way of illustration, Jones refers to the "Americanist" Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia and his appreciation of John Courtney Murray, "the architect of running up the white flag [of surrender]." Little did we know, but Fr. Murray, Henry Luce and the CIA were complicit in a "black operation . . . whose purpose was to cripple the Catholic Church." A covert operation which has apparently achieved its propaganda victory right up to the papacy itself, "occupying the mind of [Pope Benedict XVI] and he doesn't even know it".

44:50 Here Voris cites a historical meeting at Hyannisport, MA in 1964 -- where the Kennedy family assembled to receive coaching by liberal Catholic advisors and college professors on how to accept and promote abortion "with a clear conscience." For a description of the meeting, see Anne Hendershott's How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma (Wall Street Journal January 2, 2009).

At this point in the video, Voris incorrectly alleges Fr. Murray as "one of THE GUYS at the meeting" with the Kennedys -- he wasn't. Furthermore, although Murry is credited as providing inspiration to the Hynnisport Colloquium (Murray "distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue"), Murray himself was reportedly perturbed by Kennedy’s attempt to sever any connections between one’s religious and political creeds. “To make religion merely a private matter,” Murray argued, “was idiocy.” (See: JFK's Houston Speech at 50: Three Views, by George J. Marlin. The Catholic Thing 9/9/10).

If there's one thing I've gathered from reading Murray, it's that he is often appropriated by both ends of the Catholic political spectrum -- and what Murray actually countenanced in his lifetime should be distinguished from speculation of what liberal Catholics like to imagine he would have, or might have, endorsed. (In What would John Courtney Murray say? On abortion & euthanasia Commonweal October 1994, Todd David Whitmore responds to attempts to marshal Murray as an advocate of abortion and contraception).

Voris closes with a recommendation to visit "CultureWars.com, and read everything on it."

Paul Ryan and Catholic Social Teaching (Roundup)

2012-04-29T17:44:00.001-04:00

In articles, interviews and addresses, U.S. Representative Paul Ryan is defending -- not without controversy -- his 2013 budget proposal (see "The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal") as an application of Catholic social teaching, inspired by his Catholic faith.

In an April 10 interview with CBN News, Ryan responded:

To me, the principle of subsidiarity, which is really federalism, meaning government closest to the people governs best, having a civil society of the principal of solidarity where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that’s how we advance the common good. By not having big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.
Those principles are very very important, and the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenants of Catholic social teaching, means don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life. Help people get out of poverty out onto life of independence.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. , Chairman of the House Budget Committee speaks to a meeting of the Wisconsin Faith & Freedom Coalition. 3/31/12. Source: AP

The U.S. Bishops Conference conveyed their thoughts on the FY2013 Budget and spending bills, which in their words "repeated and reinforced the bishops’ ongoing call to create a “circle of protection” around poor and vulnerable people and programs that meet their basic needs and protect their lives and dignity.":

Bishops Blaire [chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development] and Pates reaffirmed the “moral criteria to guide these difficult budget decisions” outlined in their March 6 budget letter:
1.Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.
2.A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.
3.Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times…
Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs.
In April 16 and April 17 letters to the House Agriculture Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee addressing cuts required by the budget resolution, Bishop Blaire said “The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.”

Marc Thiessen defended the congressman from "a bishop’s unjust attack" (Washington Post, 4/23/12) along with (Fr. Robert Sirico (of the Acton Institute) -- the latter, however, disagreeting with Ryan's equasion of subsidiarity with federalism.

This past week, U.S. Represenative Paul Ryan further presented his case in a column for the National Catholic Register: Applying Our Enduring Truths to Our Defining Challenge, April 25, 2012):

As a congressman and Catholic layman, I am persuaded that Catholic social truths are in accord with the “self-evident truths” our Founders bequeathed to us in the founding ideas of America: independence, limited government and the dignity and freedom of every human person. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, I am tasked with applying these enduring principles to the urgent social problems of our time: an economy that is not providing enough opportunities for our citizens, a safety net that is failing our most vulnerable populations, and a crushing burden of debt that is threatening our children and grandchildren with a diminished future. ... [read more]

On April 26th, Paul Ryan gave a lecture at Georgetown University, entitled "America's Enduring Promise", in which he once again addressed the challenge of America's exploding federal debt, which he characterized as "the overarching threat to our society today":

The Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has charged that governments, communities, and individuals running up high debt levels are “living at the expense of future generations” and “living in untruth.”
We in this country still have a window of time before a debt-fueled economic crisis becomes inevitable. We can still take control before our own needy suffer the fate of Greece. How we do this is a question for prudential judgment, about which people of good will can differ.
If there was ever a time for serious but respectful discussion, among Catholics as well as those who don’t share our faith, that time is now.

Ryan's appearance at Georgetown was prefaced by a scathing letter from some 80 members of the faculty irate over his alleged "continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget plan that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few." An organized protest of Ryan on the actual day of the event was distinguished by a notable lack of participation.

Further Coverage and Commentary

Catholic Social Teaching and the Ryan Budget, by Thomas V. Berg and James C. Capretta May 11, 2012. The Public Discourse "Paul Ryan’s budget plan does not violate principles of Catholic social teaching; it is one prudent application of them."
The Ryan Lecture, by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. (The Catholic World Report: "Sojourns with Schall", 5/1/12).
The heart of the Ryan Lecture was an awareness that we have reached a crossroads. Either we can finally give up and call on a government ever-more willing to control more and more of our lives, or we can begin to return power to individuals and other units of society. We need to face the fact that our greatest political problem today is a government that no longer sees itself as limited and bound to principles protecting religion, economics, the poor, and the vast majority who are willing and capable of helping themselves—if they are allowed to do so.
Rep. Paul Ryan's Whittington Lecture, by Rick Garnett (Mirror of Justice 4/26/12):
Because -- like most of those who have criticized the Ryan budget -- I actually don't know everything about it, or everything about its implications, or everything about the soundness of its empirical premises and predictions, I don't presume to endorse it uncritically or dismiss it out of hand. It does seem to me, though, that Ryan is entirely right (a) to challenge the so-tired idea that Catholic Social Teaching maps neatly onto the social-welfare, spending, and taxation proposals and priorities of the Democratic Party (just as "subsidiarity" is not merely "devolution" or "small government," "solidarity" and "community" are not Catholic baptisms of statism and bureaucracy) and (b) to insist that those charged with authority in the political community are morally obligated to address the challenge of our "debt-fueled economic crisis." As he says, of course, "how we do this is a question for prudential judgment, about which people of good will can differ." There is, however, nothing Catholic about election-oriented complacency (see, e.g., the Senate's indifference to its obligation to pass a budget at some point) in the face of mounting debt, the weight of which can only crush the hopes and opportunities of young people, children, and future generations. Ryan critics who stop at criticism, without at least proposing, for consideration and debate, feasible changes in course that they plausibly and in good faith believe would respond to the challenges he identifies, are not, in my view, serious.
Ryan vs. Georgetown: The gentleman from Wisconsin teaches a lesson in Catholic social doctrine, by George Weigel. National Review April 26, 2012:
Paul Ryan knows that Catholic social doctrine is not some sort of doughnut machine that plops out ready-made answers to complex questions of public policy. There is no — repeat, no — direct line from the principles of Catholic social doctrine to judgments on levels of WIC funding, food-stamp funding, or Pell Grant funding, three issues on which the Georgetown faculty claims moral certainty when the relevant mode of moral analysis is prudential judgment. Ryan knows that and is prepared to explain why that’s the case. That willingness, plus Ryan’s refusal to concede the moral high ground to the Catholic Left in the public-policy debate, plus the intelligence, good humor, and conviction he brings to these arguments, helps explain why he’s the Catholic Left’s worst nightmare. The Catholic Left recognizes that; and thus, predictably, things have turned chippy, even ugly.
... What Ryan has in fact done is to follow Benedict XVI and push the subsidiarity-solidarity debate forward, suggesting that there is a kind of moral and political space where solidarity — the moral imperative to live responsibly with and for others — and subsidiarity — the anti-totalitarian, pro-civil-society principle of Catholic social doctrine — intersect. At that broad intersection, there are no obvious answers to public-policy questions, and especially to budgetary questions. But there is prudential judgment: the weighing of risks and benefits; the calculus of probable consequences; the fitting of ends to appropriate means.
More on Paul Ryan and Catholic Social Teaching (First Things "First Thoughts", April 26, 2012). Joseph Knippenberg examines the Georgetown faculty's criticisms of Ryan, and excerpts from Ryan's address that might be taken as a response.
Paul Ryan and the Angry Catholic Left, by R.R. Reno. First Things "On The Square" 4/30/12. Russel Reno responds to the Georgetown letter of protest organized by Fr. Thomas J. Reese, SJ.

The "Path to Prosperity" Budget - Introduction. See Part I: America's two futures, visualized ; Part II: Saving Medicare, Visualized and Part III: Steps to Pro-Growth Tax Reform

Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand

An item of controversy is Paul Ryan's appreciation -- liberal critics might say naive adoration -- of Russian-American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, advocater of individualism, laissez-faire capitalism, and rational and ethical egoism (a philosophy she called "Objectivism.").

Ryan dismissed the "urban legend" that he is an "Ayn Rand devotee." (Ryan Shrugged April 26, 2012):

“I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them,” Ryan says. “They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman,” a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. “But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist.”
“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

Against this, Ryan's critics point to his remarks in a Ryan Campaign Video:

'It's that kind of thinking, that kind of writing, that is sorely needed right now. I would think that right now a lot of people would observe that we are living in an Ayn Rand novel metaphorically speaking. More to the point is this. The issue that is under assault, the attack on democratic capitalism, on individualism and freedom in America, is an attack on the moral foundation of America.
In Ayn Rand more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and this to me is what matters most. It is not enough to say that President Obama's taxes are too big, or the health care plan does not work for this or that policy reason. It is the morality of what is occurring right now and how it offends the morality of individuals working toward their own free will to produce, to achieve, to succeed that is under attack. And is that which I think Ayn Rand would be commenting on which we need that kind of comment more and more than ever.'

As well as several other quotes from Ryan's past:

Ryan told Insight on the News on May 24, 1999, that the books he most often rereads are "The Bible, Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged."
In a 2003 interview with the Weekly Standard, Ryan revealed: "I give out Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well... I try to make my interns read it."
According to the Milwaukee-Wisconin Journal Sentinel, Ryan has stated: "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand".
In a Reason.com tribute to Ayn Rand, Ryan asserted "Ayn Rand does the best job of making the moral case for democratic capitalism better than anybody else. [Italics mine]."

In fairness to Ryan's critics, the above quotes does call into question Ryan's distancing of Ayn Rand as an author he read "when I was young"; indeed it seems that Rand's distinction between individualism vs. collectivism continues to exercise a significant role in Ryan's worldview. Likewise, it strikes me as something of a feat to laud Ayn Rand as simultaneously "doing the best job of making the moral case for democratic capitalism" and denouncing her philosophy as "atheistic and antithetical to my worldview." Surely "the morality of capitalism" has better defenders?

That said, it should also be acknowledged that one needn't embrace Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy to sympathize with her concerns over the state's encroachment on human initiative and human liberty. It is also not difficult to see how our economic crisis -- and the actions taken by the Obama administration in response -- provoked comparisons to Atlas Shrugged and contribute to the ressurgence of interest in its author.

Charles Colson (1931-2012)

2012-04-24T01:37:00.000-04:00

Remembrances

"God's Man" by Emily Beltz (World Magazine)
Evangelical Leader Chuck Colson Dead at 80 The infamous convicted Nixon adviser became famous for prison reform, evangelical-Catholic dialogue, and his Christian worldview. Christianity Today 4/21/12.
The Legacy of Prisoner 23226 Twenty-six years after leaving prison, Charles Colson has become one of America's most significant social reformers. Christianity Today 07/09/01.
Colson’s Life and Legacy, a National Review symposium. Cal Thomas, George Weigel, Bill Bennett, Charlotte Allen, Tony Perkins, and others remember Chuck Colson. 4/23/12.
Charles Colson found freedom in prison, by Michael Gerson. Washington Post 4/22/12:
Many wondered at Chuck’s sudden conversion to Christianity. He seemed to wonder at it himself. He spent each day that followed, for nearly 40 years, dazzled by his own implausible redemption. It is the reason he never hedged or hesitated in describing his relationship with Jesus Christ. Chuck was possessed, not by some cause, but by someone.
Chuck Colson and American foreign policy, by Will Inboden. Foreign Policy 4/23/12:
Colson emerged in the 1980s as a leading thinker on Christian participation in politics and policy. His 1989 book Kingdoms in Conflict sought to recover the Augustinian tradition and make it accessible to American evangelicals, who continued to be susceptible to erratic swings between pietistic withdrawal from the world and triumphalist political crusades. Instead Colson argued for a thoughtful participation in politics that sought to achieve proximate goods, while respecting pluralism and not conflating the earthly realm with the eternal realm. . . .
Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the State Department offices of International Religious Freedom, Trafficking in Persons, Global Aids Coordinator, Special Envoy for Sudan, and North Korea Human Rights would not exist today without Colson's work in generating support for their creation.
A Catholic Appreciation of Chuck Colson, Rev. Thomas G. Guarino. First Things "On The Square" 05/01/12.

Reading Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism'

2012-04-11T02:12:00.004-04:00

It is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion, but not necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not bullying. But it is definitely totalitarian–or 'holistic,' if you prefer–in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outer appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists. Liberals place their faith in priestly experts who know better, who plan, exhort, badger, and scold. They try to use science to discredit traditional notions of religion and faith, but they speak the language of pluralism and spirituality to defend 'nontraditional' beliefs. Just as with classical fascism, liberal fascists speak of a 'Third Way' between right and left where all good things go together and all hard choices are 'false choices.'
The idea that there are no hard choices–that is, choices between competing goods–is religious and totalitarian because it assumes that all good things are fundamentally compatible. The conservative or classical liberal vision understands that life is unfair, that man is flawed, and that the only perfect society, the only real Utopia, waits for us in the next life. [p. 14]
* * *
"Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as politial and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned to its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism." [p. 23]

If not for the subtitle, readers unfamiliar with the author might be tempted to dismiss this as yet another piece of superfluous "conservative" fluff churned out by Ann Coulter. Don't be fooled. In Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, National Review Jonah Goldberg embarks on a 400+ page political and intellectual history of American liberalism -- contending that what we know as modern "liberalism" is the direct offspring of twentieth century progressivism, which in turn shares intellectual roots with European fascism. That what we typically consider fascism or Nazism -- "nationalist, racist, militaristic, expansionist" -- took the form of American Progressivism (or "Christian socialism") in the United States: "a softer form of totalitarianism that, while still nationalistic, and militarist in its crusading forms and outlook, was more in keeping with American culture."

According to Goldberg, "liberalism is operationally uninterested in its own intellectual history." Liberal Fascism's chief merit, I've found, is in its specific attention to these oft-neglected periods (and lessons) of history. He starts with an examination of Mussollini and National Socialism (making a compelling case that they are distinctly ideologically leftist in nature), and revealing how their social programs were greatly admired by liberal intellectuals across the ocean, and later influenced the militarization of America under the administration of Woodrow Wilson (which in turn later inspired Roosevelt's "New Deal").

Along the way, the reader is introduced to a number of lively figures from American history: the science fiction author H.G. Wells (anticipating Golberg's title in his sincere appeal for "a Liberal Fascisti, for Enlightened Nazis"); Herbert Croly, founder of The New Republic; the populist radio priest Fr. Charles Coughlin and Senator Huey "The Kingfish" Long of Lousiana; Hugh "Iron Pants" Johnson, head of FDR's National Recovery Administration, waging war against the Great Depression with militaristic fervor and compelling every family to "buy now under the Blue Eagle" and Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who "hitched the racist-eugenic campaign to sexual pleasure and female liberation" in her objective to better the race by "weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives." (Goldberg's chapter "Liberal Racism: The Eugenic Ghost in the Fascist Machine" is a welcome corrective to the liberal whitewash of history).

In the latter part of the book, Goldberg takes on the myth of the "right wing corporation" (examining the charge that "big business" is joined to the right); the liberal (mis)appropriation of John F. Kennedy; the radical egalitarism of Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village, the social activism of Saul Alinsky and Rabbi Michael Lerner's "politics of meaning." Not surprisingly, he devotes a final chapter to discussing how conservatives can fall prey to the totalitarian temptation (citing as examples the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush and the paleoconservative popularism of Pat Buchanan).

Goldberg resists the charge that he is equating "liberal fascism" with Nazism, that being the former necessarily leads to the other, or that liberals are sympathetic to the genocidal crimes of Stalin or the Jewish holocaust. Nonetheless, "it is no less accurate to assume that fascism simply the ideology of Jewish genocide." He does not dispute that liberals have "the best of intentions" in their push for a modern Europanized welfare state -- but is legitimately concerned that "a Europanized America will not only stop being America; there's no reason to believe it would stop at merely being Europanized."

"Perhaps the gravest threat is that we are losing sight of where politics begins and ends," says Goldberg. "In a society where government is supposed to do everything "good" that makes "pragmatic" sense, in a society where the refusal to validate someone's self-esteem borders on a hate-crime, in a society where the personal is political, there is a constant danger that one cult or another will be imbued with political power."

Meditating on the third temptation of Jesus, our own Pope Benedict cautioned against the marriage of Christian faith to the exercise of temporal political power:

... The Kingdom of Christ was not expected to take the form of a political kingdom and its splendour. The powerlessness of faith, the early powerlessness of Jesus Christ, was to be given the helping hand of political and military might. The temptation to use power to secure the faith has arisen again and again in varied forms throughout the centuries, and again and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power. The struggle for the freedom of the Church, the struggle to avoid identifying Jesus' Kingdom with any political structure, is one that has to be fought century after century. For the fusion of faith and political power comes at a price: faith becomes the servant of power and must bend to its criteria. [Jesus of Nazareth, p. 41]

Elsie A. Blosser (1926-2012)

2012-04-09T22:43:00.004-04:00

As I packed to visit my in-laws this Saturday, knowing that she had been sick for a while, I had some kind of premonition -- a stronge sense that we would be hearing the news shortly. And it seems most fitting for her to pass on a glorious Easter morning -- knowing how much she loved Grandpa, trusting in the hope of the Resurrection, the thought of them reunited.

RIP, Grandma Elsie. I will never forget your gentle spirit, your love of nature (the hummingbirds in the garden in particular), and of course your faithful holiday baking of your 'monster cookies' for your grandchildren.

Elsie Arlene Blosser was born April 6, 1922 in rural Parnell, Iowa the daughter of Albert and Leah (Yoder) Zook. She received her Bachelors Degree from Goshen College and received her Masters Degree from the University of Iowa. She taught second grade at Elkhart City Schools in Elkhart, Indiana for 9 years, and then moved to Iowa City where she taught preschool for seven years. She then moved to Wellman where she taught Kindergarten from 1964-1984 at Wellman Elementary. She was a member of the Wellman Mennonite Church where she taught Sunday School and Bible School, she served as Sunday School Superintendent and served on many committees.
On August 7, 1984 she was united in marriage to Eugene Blosser in Wellman. They traveled from coast to coast in the Untied States, they also visited Germany, China and Japan. Elsie volunteered at the Crowded Closet and delivered meals to the homebound. Elsie died on Sunday, April 8, 2012 at Parkview Manor in Wellman at the age of 90 years. Elsie is survived by a step son - Phil Blosser of Michigan; two step daughters - Rachel Derstine of Schwenksville, PA; Meiko Blosser of Seattle, WA; four nephews - Mel Bender of Kalona; Carl Bender of Wellman; Loran Bender of Cedar Rapids; Doug Bender of Willard, MO; and three nieces - Pat Bender of Iowa City; Rita Watkins of Arvada, CO; and Jane Clark of Iowa.
Elsie was preceded in death by her parents, her husband Eugene; two brothers Allen and Floyd Zook; and a sister Velma Bender. Funeral Services will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, at the Wellman Mennonite Church in Wellman. Pastor Nathan Ramer will officiate. Burial will be in the West Union Cemetery.

Steyn on Santorum

2012-03-24T13:04:00.001-04:00

Let's take it as read that Rick Santorum is weird. After all, he believes in the sanctity of life, the primacy of the family, the traditional socio-religious understanding of a transcendent purpose to human existence. Once upon a time, back in the mists of, ooh, the mid–20th century, all these things were, if not entirely universal, sufficiently mainstream as to be barely worthy of discussion. Now they're not. Isn't the fact that conventional morality is now "weird" itself deeply weird? The instant weirdification of ideas taken for granted for millennia is surely mega-weird — unless you think that our generation is possessed of wisdom unique to human history. In which case, why are we broke?
Look, I get the problem with a Santorum candidacy. And I get why he seems weird to Swedes and Aussies, and even Americans. If you're surfing a news bulletin en route from Glee to Modern Family, Santorum must seem off-the-charts weird, like a monochrome episode that's been implausibly colorized from a show too old even for TV Land reruns. It would be healthier to thrash these questions out in the culture, in the movies and novels and pop songs. But Hollywood has taken sides, and the Right has mostly retreated from the field. And somebody has to talk about these things somewhere or other. Our fiscal crisis is not some unfortunate bookkeeping accident that a bit of recalibration by a savvy technocrat can fix. In the United States as in Greece, it is a reflection of the character of a people. The problem isn't that Rick Santorum's weird, but that a government of record-breaking brokeness already busting through its newest debt-ceiling increase even as it announces bazillions in new spending is entirely normal.

-- Mark Steyn on Rick Santorum.

Pope Benedict's Journty to Mexico and Cuba

2012-03-18T20:47:00.002-04:00

From the Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club, a special blog dedicated to exclusive roundups of news and commentary on Pope Benedict's Apostolic Journey to Mexico and Cuba March 23-29, 2012.

"I have no ancestors of that gifted people"

2012-03-09T22:55:00.003-05:00

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, 1938, responding to Rütten & Loening, a Berlin-based publishing house keen to translate the The Hobbit for the German market -- but demanded proof of Tolkien's Aryan descent. (HT: Letters of Note).

A question.

2012-02-29T09:32:00.010-05:00

In an article for Slate.com, a mother -- herself born with and survivor of a physical disability -- expresses the wish that her son, stricken with an incurable disease, had never been born:

If I had known Ronan had Tay-Sachs ... I would have found out what the disease meant for my then unborn child; I would have talked to parents who are raising (and burying) children with this disease, and then I would have had an abortion. Without question and without regret, although this would have been a different kind of loss to mourn and would by no means have been a cavalier or uncomplicated, heartless decision. I'm so grateful that Ronan is my child. I also wish he'd never been born; no person should suffer in this way—daily seizures, blindness, lack of movement, inability to swallow, a devastated brain—with no hope for a cure.

(Emily Rapp: Rick Santorum and prenatal testing: I would have saved my son from his suffering Slate.com. February 27, 2012.

* * *

In Australia, Academic philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva have written a peer-reviewed paper, published in a journal of "medical ethics", advocating the murder of newly born babies, substituting for infanticide the kinder, gentler euphemism, "after-birth abortion". They assert that:

“If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.”

Source: “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” is in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

* * *

There was something in the confluence of those two news items in recent days that brought to mind a passage from That Strange Divine Sea: Reflections on Being a Catholic by Christopher Derrick, which -- so aptly capturing "the Catholic perspective" contra that of the "modern world" -- floored me upon reading it as an inquiring agnostic in college, and sticks with me to this day:

Human existence always involves suffering, and this can sometimes be bitter indeed, inescapable too: the life of man can certainly be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." But with the first words of the Bible in mind, in the first words of the Creed as well, we believe in the goodness of the Creator, and we therefore see all human existence and in fact all 'being' as an absolute and unquantifiable good. . . . it makes no sense at all to speak of some point (of poverty or cancer or whatever) beyond which life simply isn't worth living.
This is the first principle and paradox of the Faith. It can be stated apothegmatically. It is not a good thing to be diseased and starving. But it is a good thing to be, even when diseased and starving.
A dear and terrible principle, and it's what divides the Church from the world most centrally -- most crucially.
A more specific picture will throw it into sharper relief, and (if considered carefully) may help you to decide which side you're really on.
Imagine a young girl who lives alone in a tar-paper shack, in some frightful shanty town on the outskirts of the big city in -- say -- Latin America. She lives, of course, by prostitution; and eventually she has a baby whom she cannot feed. The big jets go fuming up from the airport nearby, tight-packed with steaks and martinis for the Beautiful People -- that is, for you and me. But there's little for this girl to eat, so she has no milk; and in any case, the baby has inherited some of her diseases. So he looks out, briefly and with unfocused eyes, upon God's world, and then he curls up and dies. His mother borrows a spade, buries him somewhere, and goes back to work.
As you know, I am not being fanciful or morbid in outlining such a story: things of that sort happen all the time and in many places.
Was it a bad thing for that bay to die? It was an abomination, a blot on the entire human conscience: if you and I have any share in the responsibility for it, we must fear the Lord's anger.
But was it a bad thing for that baby to live?

Chaput: "God will demand an accounting"

2012-02-28T23:23:00.003-05:00

The American Jesuit scholar Father John Courtney Murray once said that “Anyone who really believes in God must set God, and the truth of God, above all other considerations.” (4)
Here’s what that means. Catholic public officials who take God seriously cannot support laws that attack human dignity without lying to themselves, misleading others and abusing the faith of their fellow Catholics. God will demand an accounting. Catholic doctors who take God seriously cannot do procedures, prescribe drugs or support health policies that attack the sanctity of unborn children or the elderly; or that undermine the dignity of human sexuality and the family. God will demand an accounting. And Catholic citizens who take God seriously cannot claim to love their Church, and then ignore her counsel on vital public issues that shape our nation’s life. God will demand an accounting. As individuals, we can claim to believe whatever we want. We can posture, and rationalize our choices, and make alibis with each other all day long—but no excuse for our lack of honesty and zeal will work with the God who made us. God knows our hearts better than we do. If we don’t conform our hearts and actions to the faith we claim to believe, we’re only fooling ourselves.
We live in a culture where our marketers and entertainment media compulsively mislead us about the sustainability of youth; the indignity of old age; the avoidance of suffering; the denial of death; the nature of real beauty; the impermanence of every human love; the oppressiveness of children and family; the silliness of virtue; and the cynicism of religious faith. It’s a culture of fantasy, selfishness, sexual confusion and illness that we’ve brought upon ourselves. And we’ve done it by misusing the freedom that other—and greater—generations than our own worked for, bled for and bequeathed to our safe-keeping.
What have we done with that freedom? In whose service do we use it now?
John Courtney Murray is most often remembered for his work at Vatican II on the issue of religious liberty, and for his great defense of American democracy in his book, We Hold These Truths. Murray believed deeply in the ideas and moral principles of the American experiment. He saw in the roots of the American Revolution the unique conditions for a mature people to exercise their freedom through intelligent public discourse, mutual cooperation and laws inspired by right moral character. He argued that—at its best—American democracy is not only compatible with the Catholic faith, but congenial to it.
But he had a caveat. It’s the caveat that George Washington implied in his Farewell Address, and that Charles Carroll – the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence—mentions in his own writings. In order to work, America depends as a nation on a moral people shaped by their religious faith, and in a particular way, by the Christian faith. Without that living faith, animating its people and informing its public life, America becomes something alien and hostile to the very ideals it was founded on.
This is why the same Father Murray who revered the best ideals of the American experiment could also write that “Our American culture, as it exists, is actually the quintessence of all that is decadent in the culture of the Western Christian world. It would seem to be erected on the triple denial that has corrupted Western culture at its roots: the denial of metaphysical reality, of the primacy of the spiritual over the material, [and] of the social over the individual . . . Its most striking characteristic is its profound materialism . . . It has given citizens everything to live for and nothing to die for. And its achievement may be summed up thus: It has gained a continent and lost its own soul.”(5)
Catholics need to wake up from the illusion that the America we now live in – not the America of our nostalgia or imagination or best ideals, but the real America we live in here and now – is somehow friendly to our faith. What we’re watching emerge in this country is a new kind of paganism, an atheism with air-conditioning and digital TV. And it is neither tolerant nor morally neutral.
As the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb observed more than a decade ago, “What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated and even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnormal has been normalized.” But even more importantly, she added, “As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant. The kind of family that has been regarded for centuries as natural and moral – the ‘bourgeois’ family as it is invidiously called – is now seen as pathological” and exclusionary, concealing the worst forms of psychic and physical oppression.(6)
My point is this: Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Excerpt, “A Thread for Weaving Joy”
Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life. January 22, 2012. Washington, D.C.
(HT: Wheat & Weeds; Stand Firm).

Megadeth for Santorum!

2012-02-17T20:00:00.005-05:00

David Mustaine, the frontman for thrash-metallers Megadeth just came out in favor of the Republicans in the 2012 race:

"I'm just hoping that whatever is in the White House next year is a Republican. I can't bear to watch what's happened to our great country. Everybody's got their head in the sand. Everybody in the industry is like, 'Oh, Obama's doing such a great job...' I don't think so. Not from what I see.
"Looking at the Republican candidates, I've got to tell you, I was floored the other day to see that Mitt Romney's five boys have a $100 million trust fund. Where does a guy make that much money? So there's some questions there. And watching Newt Gingrich, I was pretty excited for a while, but now he's just gone back to being that person that everybody said he was – that angry little man. I still like him, but I don't think I'd vote for him.
"Ron Paul… you know, I heard somebody say he was like insecticide – 98 percent of it's inert gases, but it's the two percent that's left that will kill you. What that means is that he'll make total sense for a while, and then he'll say something so way out that it negates everything else. ...

"Earlier in the election, I was completely oblivious as to who Rick Santorum was, but when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn't gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney's done against Newt Gingrich, and then the volume at which Newt has gone back at Romney… You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I'm hoping that if it does come down to it, we'll see a Republican in the White House... and that it's Rick Santorum."

Mustaine's always been something of an enigma in heavy metal. Heralded as one of the top 100 metal guitarists in the world, he was kicked out of Metallica in the 80's for being a 'mean drunk' (hard to do, given Metallica's penchant for imbibing), tried the "7 steps" program but found it a distraction and decided to head straight for God in a Pascalian wager:

"Looking up at the cross, I said six simple words, ‘What have I got to lose?’ Afterwards my whole life has changed. It’s been hard, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. Rather go my whole life believing that there is a God and find out there isn't than live my whole life thinking there isn't a God and then find out, when I die, that there is."

Politically he's very conservative -- almost "fringe-right" (his album Endgame was influenced by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones). In 2011, he called President Obama "the most divisive president we've ever had. I've never, in my 50 years of being alive, listened to an American president try and turn one class of people against another class of people."

Recommended

Megadeth: Rust in Peace [1990]

Obama's "Compromise" on the HHS Mandate

2012-02-10T23:53:00.004-05:00

In what the New York Times asserts is an attempt to appease his liberal Catholic supporters, President Obama announced Friday his decision to "soften" a rule requiring religious-affiliated organizations to pay for insurance plans that offer free birth control: "rather than requiring religiously affiliated charities and universities to pay for contraceptives for their employees, the cost would be shifted to health insurance companies."

Following an initial statement expressing a reservation of judgement, the Catholic Bishops of America have released a second response, again voicing their grave concerns and reiterating their call to repeal the mandate:

... stepping away from the particulars, we note that today's proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions. In a nation dedicated to religious liberty as its first and founding principle, we should not be limited to negotiating within these parameters. The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.

Rocco Palmo (Whispers in the Loggia) has the scoop of the evening with an internal briefing within the USCCB, a "a heavily bulked-up version of a second public response".

Related

Dale Price (Dyspeptic Mutterings) thinks that the proposed "compromise" deserves the Cleveland Browns Reply.
And according to Andrew McCarthy (NOR): "the Justice Department used to call this sort of thing fraud:
In the scenario addressed by the Obama administration’s cockamamie “compromise,” religious organization employer (call it “A”) wishes to purchase health insurance from B insurance company for C, its employees, but not cover birth-control services that violate A’s religious principles and that the First Amendment protects A from having to subsidize.
Obama is telling A that it can pay B and that the payments will not cover birth control services for C; he is then telling B to cover the birth-control services for C — but only because A is making the payments. A is thus deceived by Obama’s representations into paying B for C’s birth-control services.
That is fraud. If you tried to pull something like it, federal agents and attorneys would investigate and prosecute you.

“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

2012-01-21T12:49:00.005-05:00

Most healthcare plans will be required to cover birth control [including abortafacients] without charging co-pays or deductibles starting Aug. 1, the Obama administration announced Friday.
The final regulation retains the approach federal health officials proposed last summer, despite the deluge of complaints from religious groups and congressional Republicans that has poured in since then. Churches, synagogues and other houses of worship are exempt from the requirement, but religious-affiliated hospitals and universities only get a one-year delay and must comply by Aug. 1, 2013.

Carl Olson (Ignatius Press has a roundup of reactions from the Catholic hierarchy -- including that of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York.

Related

How to Lie with Statistics, Example Umpteen Lydia McGrew (What's Wrong With The World) on the statistical meme presently going around to the effect that "98% of Catholic women use birth control."
White House Misrepresents Its Own Contraceptive Mandate (02/03/12) - The Obama administration, to justify its widely criticized mandate for contraception and sterilization coverage in private health plans, has posted a set of false and misleading claims on the White House blog (“Health Reform, Preventive Services, and Religious Institutions,” February 1). Each White House claim is quoted with a response from the Catholic Bishops.
"Phoney War Redux" - Noting that the HHS initiative "is being led by a nominal Catholic, Kathleen Sebelius" Dale Price asserts:
The next step is clear--Sebelius has to be excommunicated. Let me repeat: she must be excommunicated. Counseled beforehand, of course. But if she persists, excommunicated. There is no dancing around the fact any more.
Suing Sebelius The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Belmont Abbey College in its lawsuit against the secretary of HHS over this mandated conscience violation. (National Review)
The Pope's alarming message on American religious freedom, by Phil Lawler. (Catholic Culture): "Is it humiliating for American political leaders to read that Pope Benedict sees an erosion of religious freedom in our country? It should be."

Samuel Gregg - on "Liberalism"

2012-01-16T23:13:00.006-05:00

... The task of realizing the basic goods, however, need not always occur in a context of opposition to the temporal institutions in place. Catholics are certainly bound to oppose what the theologian Thomas Dubay describes as the dogmas of materialism: “the primacy of pleasure, the invalidity of metaphysics, . . , the relativity of morality . . . the denial of freedom.” Insofar as liberal modernity embraces these ideas or seeks to isolate man from all those unchosen aspects of himself that are, in fact, prerequisites to his freedom, Catholics must never hesitate to demonstrate their unreasonableness. The idea that man is nothing more than a conglomerate of passions and that human fulfillment consists of merely satisfying as many of those passions as possible in a short period of time, must be resisted and refuted over and over again. This need not, however, mean that those institutions commonly regarded as “liberal” -- the market, the rule of law, a constitutionally limited State, a flourishing set of civil associations -- should be considered inherently flawed by Catholics.
The liberalism that is wanting is a set of claims about the human person rather than its institutional associations. In part, this book has sought to show how such institutions can be grounded in a vision that avoids the common liberal reliance upon utilitarian assumptions. The task of achieving such a synthesis is nothing less than a civilizational mission that Catholics are in a unique position to foster.
By definition, this mission involves Catholics establishing themselves equidistant between those who hold that all was darkness before 1789, and those who believe that nothing but darkness has followed after 1789. The inability of some Catholics to do so has relegated them to the irrelevance of romantic nostalgia or the triviality of aping secular modernity. Until such tendencies are overcome, the ability of Catholics to contribute to the project of ordered liberty will continue to languish in the realm of possibility rather than of actuality. And this is important, for ultimately it is the free choices of many acting persons for this project that will bring about its realization rather than the decisions of governments.

Samuel Gregg, On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society

On a related note

"Americanism" (Ius Honorarium)

Reading Accomplished in 2011 - A Look Back

2012-01-09T00:12:00.012-05:00

2011 was the year I rediscovered reading. Not that I hadn't ever abandoned reading prior to this year -- rather, since the birth of my first son in 2007 and immersing myself in parenthood, not to mention my job, and the perpetual distractions of blogging and "being online", I found it more and more difficult to settle down and simply lose myself in a good book. And so in 2011 one of the things I resolved was to simply read more books.

Credit in part goes to my wife's surprise purchase of an Amazon Kindle for my birthday (or was it Christmas?). She already had one, and despite her earnest recommendations I stubbornly held out -- proclaiming my preference "for real books." In the end, she won me over.

Not that I enjoy the familiar heft of a "real" book at home, but the Kindle does provide the remarkable ability to tote around a virtual library on a device no bigger than a tablet (hence the name, I suppose). This makes it emininently practical for getting a few pages read on a crowded bus or subway, standing in line at the grocery, in the waiting room for our pediatrician, or simply taking a stroll. Particularly as I have a tendency to read big books, it was that capacity alone which provided an edge.

And so a brief rundown of what I've managed to accomplish in the past year, along with some brief thoughts about each one (and/or their author). If any of my readers wish to discuss any of these at length, feel free to do so in the combox, or email me (blostopher [at] gmail.com]. Second to reading books I enjoy conversing about them. Likewise, I'm always open to your recommendations!

Books Finished

Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI, by Tracey Rowland. (Oxford UP, 2009) -- one of the best single-volume introductions/overviews to the thought of our Holy Father. Second only to Fr. Aidan Nichols OP.
After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism, by Fergus Kerr and A Short History of Thomism, by Romanus Cessario. Kerr provides an excellent survey of contemporary Thomistic scholarship, lending valuable insight as well into various controversies (neo-scholasticism of Garrigou-Lagrange vs. that of Henri de Lubac, SJ). Cessario is shorter -- broader in its historical scope but less in depth, however it compliments the other.
On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society, by Dr. Samuel Gregg. "What does it mean to be free? Is freedom worth more than mens' lives? Why should man be free? What, if any, legitmate responsibilities accompany freedom?" -- A critique of the positions of Bentham, Mill, Rawls and Hayek by a self-idenified "Catholic Whig" of The Acton Institute, whose own position is informed by the likes of Burke, Tocqueville, Ropke, and the Thomist John Finnis. I skimmed this once in 2003, but failed then to fully appreciate then Gregg's revealing criticism of the inherent utilitarianism of Hayek. Gregg packs a lot into 120 pages -- on rival philosophies of liberty, liberty and law, the role of the family, the role and limits of the state -- but his analysis is lucid and engaging. It's precisely the kind of book I wish I had at my disposal back in college.
Art and Intellect in Philosophy of Etienne Gilson, by Francesca Aran Murphy (Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy). I found this to be a very fascinating "intellectual biography" of the French Thomist Etienne Gilson -- you can read Murphy's introduction in full here; a critical-yet-appreciative review of her book here (Theological Studies 2006). Murphy's substantial discussion of Gilson's writings compelled me to pick up Reason and Revelation in Middle Ages (a fairly quick read) and to make my way through, howbeit more slowly, Gilson's Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas).
Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II (Routledge Radical Orthodoxy), by Tracey Rowland. I blogged my mixed impressions of the book at some length here (5/22/11).
Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII, by Charles R. Gallagher. A study of U.S.-Vatican diplomacy through the life of the enigmatic figure of Joseph P. Hurley, an American priest of the Diocese of Cleveland, who through a series of events became the first American to serve in the office of Vatican Secretary of State under Cardinal Ottaviani, and by 1936 was the main conduit to the pope on affairs in the United States. (See "Vested in Red, White and Blue", Thomas J. Burns' detailed review on Amazon.com). Harboring anti-semitic views in his early years, Hurley evolved to become an outspoken critic of (what he perceived to be) the "soft" wartime policy of Pope Pius XII, asserting that "communism has now ceded its primacy to national socialism" as a threat and charging "the very basis of the Roman Catholic faith" compelled Catholics to challenge the "orgies of extermination" against the Jews.
Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, by Thomas Woods Jr. For the non-economically minded (like me), an accessible analysis of the collapse of the financial market and fingering government manipulation of the money supply via the Fed as the primary instigator. Meltdown ala straightfoward introduction to the Austrian economics business cycle theory. I'm generally not a a fan of Ron Paul, but I agree with his assessment that Woods "introduces the layman to a range of subjects that have been excluded from our national discussion for much too long ... This book is an indispensable conduit of these critical ideas."
Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life, by Colin Duriez. There is no better example of "filial impiety" than Frankie Schaeffer's continuous besmirching of his father, Reformed Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984; on that note, see Os Guiness' review of Frankie's first book: Fathers and Sons Christianity Today). Schaeffer also played a significant role in the spiritual formation of my parents, who spent time at the original L'Abri in Switzerland -- so I had a personal interest in learning more about his life and thought. Duriez' biography, drawing on a wealth of oral history, personal interviews, offers a rounded portrayal which, while not shirking from presenting Francis' human weaknesses, effectively conveys why so many today appreciate his Christian witness and ministry.
Ten Philosophical Mistakes. Mortimer J. Adler dropped out of high school to become a journalist; he discovered the works of Aristotle, John Locke, St. Thomas Aquinas on his own -- going on to study at Columbia University, but failed to graduate due to his flunking the swimming test. He went on to receive an honorary degree from Columbia, founded the Great Books of the Western World program in 1952. Born a nonobservant Jew, he became an Episcopalian in 1984 and crossed the Tiber in 1998. He published a number of popular works aimed at making philosophy accessible to the common man (Ex. Aristotle for Everybody). Whenever I return to Adler, I am reminded what a pleasure it is to read somebody imbued with so much common sense.
Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers, by Alan D. Schrift. An 80 page chronological overview of French philosophy supplemented by a hundred page bibliography of French philsophy in English translation. I enjoyed the chapters on existentialism and phenomonology -- subsequent chapters on 'Structuralism' and 'Post-Structuralism' a beneficial reminder of why they don't occupy my 'to read' list. Nonetheless this book would serve as a useful resource.
Indulging in some light entertainment, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks; Day by Day Armageddon, by J.L. Bourne, I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson (the original 1954 novel) and Zone One by Colson Whitehead. Sense a theme? -- Of these I would particularly recommend the latter. Zone One is less a zombie thriller than a meditation on pre-and-post-apocolyptic American culture through the eyes of a "sweeper", clearing lower Manhattan of the undead as humanity rises from the ashes. Whitehead is an accomplished New York novelist in his own right, and I expect most zombie fans may take umbrage at his attempt at the genre -- but I enjoyed it.
A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin. Dubbed "The American Tolkein" by Time (although the characters and universes of the two couldn't be more different), this was my first foray into the author's work, spurred by the HBO adaptation of the first novel. Lev Grossman described his work thus:
What really distinguishes Martin, and what marks him as a major force for evolution in fantasy, is his refusal to embrace a vision of the world as a Manichaean struggle between Good and Evil. Tolkien's work has enormous imaginative force, but you have to go elsewhere for moral complexity. Martin's wars are multifaceted and ambiguous, as are the men and women who wage them and the gods who watch them and chortle, and somehow that makes them mean more. A Feast for Crows isn't pretty elves against gnarly orcs. It's men and women slugging it out in the muck, for money and power and lust and love.
Grossman underestimates Tolkien and the moral depth of his characters, resisting (ex. Galadriel) or succumbing to (ex. Boromir) the temptations of power, of which the ring was a conduit. And while Martin's universe lacks the overarching moral clarity of Tolkien (he is, at least according to this report, a lapsed Catholic) certain characters may nonetheless be admired for their virtue. And the Christian reader might appreciate the author's inclination to demonstrate redeeming qualities in the most unlikeable of characters.

Books in Process

I have oft mentioned my tendency to pick up and read more than one book at time. A brief list of those I'm still making my way through:

Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration by Pope Benedict XVI. (Revisiting the first volume in preparation for the second).
Jesus the Christ by Walter Cardinal Kasper. A reprint from 1977. See his review by Avery Dulles (Theology Today July 1978).
Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians by Fergus Kerr. Theological profiles of Chenu, Congar, Schillebeeckx, de Lubac, Rahner, Lonergan, Balthasar, Kung, Wojtyla, Ratzinger -- tempting, is it not? Some good introductions, providing a indication of whose original works are worth pursuing).
A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq, ed. by Thomas Cushman. Contributions by recognizable names such as Christopher Hitchens, Paul Berman, Roger Scruton and Tony Blair. Others are lesser known, such as Mient Jan Faber (Secretary-General of the Interchurch Peace Council, Netherlands -- dismissed from his post for dissenting from the organization's opposition to military intervention).

Related

"The Best Books I Read in 2011..." | Ignatius Press Authors, Editors, and Friends | January 3, 2012
Books Read, 2011 Wheat & Weeds

Joe Carter takes on the Front Porch Republic

2012-01-08T01:21:00.001-05:00

For those who are endlessly entertained by such:

Who Gets To Be the Czar of Aesthetic Consumption? Joe Carter. First Things 11/18/11.
Who Gets To Be The Czar of Human Evolution? Jerry Salyer. Front Porch Republic 1/5/12.
Monarchists to the Left of Me, Socialists to the Right, Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle with You Liberals Joe Carter. First Things 1/6/12

Thank you.

2012-01-02T23:31:00.000-05:00

In December of 2010 I found myself in a rough patch, financially speaking. I asked for help, and some -- hopefully still reading this blog -- were gracious enough either to lend a helping hand, purchase some books via Amazon.com, commission web-or-blog design work or donate to cover the hosting for the Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club.

As we enter into a new year I would like to convey again my sincere gratitude and appreciation. Frankly, this blog and various related web projects would probably not be around today if it weren't for you. (And finding myself to be better off, I look for opportunities to return the favor).

"The King in Yellow"

2012-01-02T11:52:00.003-05:00

What a pleasant surprise. I've discovered that one of my musical experiments -- the song 'fracture' from the 'decline' EP -- was incorporated by another artist into their work, as background to a reading of "The Repairer of Reputations", from The King in Yellow, by Robert William Chambers.

Free download of 'The King in Yellow' edited and mixed by Thomas Jude Barclay Morrison (the track starts around the 45:30 minute mark and extends to 52:30).
More about the Librivox Project (for which the reading was a part - "making all public domain books available as free audio books").
More about apophatic (under which I meddle with sound) here; get the 'decline' EP here or from amazon.com.
More about Robert William Chambers (1865-1933):
"... His most famous, and perhaps most meritorious, effort is 'The King in Yellow', an 1895 collection of weird short stories, connected by the theme of the fictitious drama The King in Yellow, which drives those who read it insane."

2011-12-26T23:45:00.001-05:00

"The only threat the Church can and must fear is the sin of her members."

Pope Benedict XVI

Ius Honorarium

2011-12-26T23:42:00.002-05:00

Not-so-new blog but just recently discovered -- Ius Honorarium -- by a Catholic-turned-"professed agnostic, then atheist" - turned Orthodox (for seven years) - and finally, a revert to the Catholic faith. Interests include Orthodox-Catholic relations, "traditionalists", Leo Strauss, St. Thomas Aquinas / Thomist philosophy, Catholic social thought, political philosophy, Michael Burleigh (English historian), etc. -- truly, a blog I could read for hours.

"Arab Spring" to "Christian Winter"

2011-12-25T23:01:00.003-05:00

Islamists kill dozens in Nigeria Christmas bombs Islamist militants set off bombs across Nigeria on Christmas Day - three targeting churches including one that killed at least 27 people - raising fears that they are trying to ignite sectarian civil war.
Muslim Persecution of Christians: November 2011 by Raymond Ibrahim. Hudson New York. December 21, 2011

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T05:02:00.001-05:00