.يا رب يسوع المسيح ابن اللّه الحيّ إرحمني أنا الخاطئ
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Church design flaw From an e-mail circle:
“When Bob Hart gets all the right sort of Anglicans together, then what?”
Then Bob will have fulfilled a dream of restoring (i.e. hitting reset to) the Episcopal Church of his childhood in all its “comprehensiveness,” but pre-’60s and ’70s craziness. Of course, Bob’s “restoration” Episcopalianism will be identically flawed and, therefore, due to repeat that very same ’60s and ’70s craziness in short order.
Yuppers.
Now I have nothing against Fr Hart personally and defend his religion as standing in the tradition of Bishop Grafton, perfectly respectable. I just don’t agree with it so I’m not a member and here’s why.
Unlike Roger Sterling I’m a WWII revisionist (and admire the old-school ways of the Japanese delegation; would trading with the empire been less abhorrent than with Red China today?) but this is still exciting. Here’s to the greatest generation. Magnificent ship too. Its sister, the New Jersey, is, like it, now a museum, docked on the Delaware River here (in Camden — either security or maintenance is good because I’ve not seen it tagged yet).
Behind MacArthur are Jonathan Wainwright, the American general FDR ordered him to leave behind in the Philippines, who spent the war as a POW, and the British general in charge at Singapore who I think spent the war the same way.
MacArthur ruled Japan for the next six years.
The war didn’t end really until 1952 when the countries signed a treaty; occupation officially ended then but the soldiers are still there. Japan’s essentially a US protectorate.
Background: FDR left the admiral at Pearl Harbor, Husband Kimmel, in the dark about the attack so he got the blame (FDR provoked the Japanese, who were no choirboys but no matter, to sucker the country into the war); in Manila MacArthur was ambushed too, losing all his planes on the ground, but got away with it. He was connected, the government’s man (but according to William Manchester admirably old-school personally), and not a bad general (winning in the Pacific with the least possible US casualties), until his luck ran out in Korea. Interestingly the year he died, 1964, he said ‘I am a total disbeliever in war’ and asked LBJ not to go to war in Vietnam (he thought it was unwinnable like for the French in ’54).
Pro-peace ≠ anti-military. The America Firsters, God love them, were all for a top-notch one to guard the coast.
President Obama needs to stop lying. In his speech, he repeated the ridiculous and false claim that the U.S. combat mission is over in Iraq. He seems to think that if he keeps talking about the war in a nice way, then the war isn’t really happening.
Unfortunately, even though President Obama is the one person on Earth with the authority to withdraw the U.S. military from Iraq, he has chosen instead to keep over 50,000 troops there, risking their lives, and bleeding American taxpayers.
The Republicans in Congress are just as bad. They have consistently failed to own up to the terrible financial impact of these wars, all the while claiming that they want to cut government. They want to nit-pick Obama’s past statements about the war, but in fact they should be showering him with praise for doing exactly what they want.
This war has been a shameful failure from the beginning. But even if the U.S. military could impose a sustainable modern democracy on Iraq, it would in no way be worth the hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of American lives, lost in the process. The Bush-Obama War in Iraq has done nothing to safeguard the rights of Americans — on the contrary, it has probably made Americans less safe, and certainly poorer.
The purpose of the U.S. armed forces is to defend the territory of the United States, not to re-engineer foreign societies.
Contrary to his rhetoric before being elected, the president has proven himself to be shockingly pro-war. In addition to sustaining the American war presence in Iraq, he has greatly escalated the War in Afghanistan. Just like his predecessor, Obama believes that government force is the answer to everything.
The Libertarian Party platform states under “3.3 International Affairs”: “American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world. Our foreign policy should emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements. We would end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military and economic aid.”
Pop-Orthodox apologetics Guest post: Barsanuphius Jones by way of AMM in my comboxes
The important thing is knowing the EO Church is caring and loving in its theology. It’s a relationship. Western Christendom is rigid and legalistic, and everything in the West is all the same from the Quakers to the SSPX because they all share the same heritage and assumptions.
The church is totally conciliar and always has been. Everyone participates fully in every liturgy, because it’s the work of the people. All language used in the liturgy has always been the current, spoken language of the local people (unlike the West).
Fasting is a joy. I look forward to it. Why can’t there be more fasting?
Foreigners don’t understand Orthodoxy and should not control any aspect of the church.
On the libertarian/conservative alliance, which Murray Rothbard thought viable and desirable (common cause with people like Pat Buchanan), thinking that the fall of Communism would make conservatives come to their senses and back to their small-government, America First roots. He was wrong.
Not an ‘anti-racist’ like there should be no ‘hate crimes’, just the same boring old laws against assault and battery, theft, murder etc. that apply to straight white men. The other is lily-gilding swipple moral grandstanding/showing off.
Paul Craig Roberts: death by globalism. Of course a libertarian would say protectionism’s not the answer either. As for the safety net, like IIRC Ron Paul I’d meet the left halfway for now and use the peace dividend from shutting down the wars and empire to fund the government one but gradually wean people off it. Christians must do the corporal works of mercy but the political means is open. (So a socialist is dead wrong but can be a perfectly good Catholic.)
Soldiers private contractors: the Iraq/Afghanistan fakeroo, Obama’s ‘mission accomplished’ or his Vietnamisation.
Three from Dr Tighe: ‘Journey to Orthodoxy’ stories and the clichés therein. From ‘Return to Rila’here. Barsanuphius Jones and his buddies. At one time, these stories were something of a cottage industry in Orthodox circles. It’s like reading a Robert Ludlum novel — the names change but the format stays the same, cranked out over and over. It’s a lot like my allergy to hearing people talk about fasting. Rather like the Ned Flanders who thinks he can write a new Screwtape. The Confessions or Apologia if Flanders wrote it, with enough exotica to prove his un-Romanness. (Phron-diddly-onema!) Stick around for the sequel, Atheist Burnout or Allahu Akbar!
I personally feel the incredulity at our enthusiasm for communion with Rome reveals a deep anti-Catholic prejudice on their part and that the constant attacks are evidence of a latent insecurity concerning their own conclusions.
Yes. People who were a pain in the ass about women priests and standing in the way of women bishops and gay weddings are leaving so why the sour grapes, Protestants?
Stop tearing her down with self-pitying bleating...
I agree! The point of simply leaving really.
Maureen Lash: Anti-Catholicism is one of the most enduring facets of the British folk memory.
The granolas are the spiritual sons of the Roundheads.
Will Rome’s Traditionalists really be pleased to see us?
Sure, after an explanation requiring about 20-30 seconds that these aren’t Cranmerian Protestants but at least quasi-trad would-be RCs as orthodox as they are. No, the real enemy are what Damian Thompson calls the Magic Circle, the leftover old people in charge of RCs locally: mainline wannabes. They don’t want a bunch of classy, embarrassingly Catholic people coming in.
What I do find rather sad though is that it looks as if the real reason behind those wanting to swim the Tiber is the ordination of women bishops, not that wanting actually wanting to be part of the Roman Catholic faith.
It’s much more and deeper than the clergywomen, Phoebe, although clergywomen are a sign of Anglicanism’s root difference with Catholicism (for Anglicans everything’s changeable by fiat or vote). See above. Those wanting to swim now didn’t want to be under hostile local authorities who’d force them to give up being Catholic, or ironically Anglicanism’s semi-congregationalism, not a high sort of church authority, has left such parishes in relative peace until now, which would not have been so under the Magic Circle clergy. But now Ratz is Pope and has a young following, and the Magic Circle aren’t getting any younger.
How would the ordinariate be in any real sense ‘Anglican’?
It wouldn’t. It would be anglican, anglo-catholic, with cultural things from hymns to coffee hour (an institution utterly foreign to the American RC experience old or new), like the cultural reasons there are still official ethnic national parishes (the ordinariate: national parishes with clout™), and maybe a disciplinary one (ordaining the married at least among converts). What Father says.
Not to dwell on Anglicanism...
I too hope that the Eastern Churches will come into full communion and there is new and exciting progress in this direction, as was shown by the Holy Father’s visit to Cyprus. There is also a great deal of progress in relations with Moscow.
Sure. But I don’t see how! Cyprus was just a state visit and the Russians have a chip on their shoulder about the Ukrainian Catholic Church resurfacing heroically from underground 20 years ago and taking back the parish churches the Soviets stole from them 60 years ago and gave to the Orthodox, Moscow’s stock excuse for not talking. Then again the issue I link to is insurmountable.
Good one from Maureen not about religion but passive-aggression: My rudeness is direct, hers feline.
Freddie Mac has a chief diversity officer Oh, joy unbounded. Now this may sound good — sort of a cop to make sure people aren’t denied equal opportunity because of race (denying individual liberty) — but chances are what it really means is more racial spoils/quotas, or the opposite of fair race-blindness: the government forcing banks to lend money to people who simply are bad risks no matter what colour they are, which partly caused this depression. BTW she gave a thousand smackers to Obama’s campaign. From (minus his racial remarks) Steve Sailer.
Serious alcoholism, interestingly, did not become a social problem until we learned how to distil spirits: the Gin Craze in 18th-century London was the world’s first epidemic of destructive drinking.
The fashion among addiction specialists in the last couple of decades has been to use any hint of dependence as evidence of “the disease of addiction”. Dependence isn’t easy to define, however; nor are addiction or alcoholism. Heavy dependence on beer, wine or (especially) spirits is a dreadful affliction. But the attempt to turn alcoholism or any other compulsion into a disease is controversial. There’s no true diagnostic test for addiction, as there is for cancer, HIV or diabetes. The disease model ultimately reflects our determination to pathologise behaviour.
Orthocath’s back. Sympathetic to both sides of the Adriatic.
But Menologion’s down. Or at least it seems so. If you see it come back on this page, please let me know. Update:Switched to a not-as-good menologion from Russia. Back!
When a Catholic, from the Pope on down to the parish tea lady, says “the Church teaches...” they mean “it is objectively true that...” In other words, neither the Pope, nor the parish tea lady has any more power to change it than they have the power to change the rate at which gravity makes things fall down. Right, everything isn’t subject to change by vote.
Standards of speech. David Mitchell understands much of my job: editing people who think ‘adding an extra syllable makes them sound like Jeeves’. Or as Matt Groening puts it, ‘buzzwords dumb people use to sound important’, bullsh*t Paul Fussell’s called more than once (Class, Bad).
From LRC Amidst the usual good stuff about not printing more money:
Was JFK a hero after all? Given his America First roots etc., anything’s possible. I forget where I first read it but the story goes when a new president is sworn in, some shadowy power types take him into a room, show him the Zapruder film and ask ‘Any questions?’
College gets an F. Revalorizing the trades. From Camille Paglia, who teaches at a college and whom I’ve met. Not always right of course but smart and funny; her speaking style is to shoot from the hip or talk first, think later.
On different ex-Anglican and ex-anglican groups merging into the ordinariates. Yes. As I wrote in my comboxes earlier, to be fair to those in TAC who thought it would be corporate reunion, I don’t dislike the idea of doing to the ACA what the Antiochians did with the ex-Evangelical Orthodox Church and what they’re doing now with ex-Charismatic Episcopal parishes: have the ordinary come round and reconfirm and reordain everybody; voilà, an American ordinariate ready-made, right out of the box! The problems are most ACA parishes won’t go along with their priests into the ordinariate; they’re typical Continuers not interested in being Roman Catholics (believing instead in their version of anglicanism). That and many of them and at least some of the clergy are in irregular marriages (divorced and remarried), the same reason some people convert (including some of them, years ago) to Episcopalianism.
The other modern: Newman-beatification altar. My sort of naysaying comment: not my style really but I don’t hate it. This well could have been planned and built in the early ’60s. NLM’s series on ‘The Other Modern’ nails this: it doesn’t have to be pastiche Gothic or bogus baroque to be orthodox. All the good liturgical-movement principles and practice are here: prominent altar, ciborium/baldacchino, cathedra... It would work if, as in 1960, they meant to do the old Mass in it. But of course they won’t so it’ll stink. So The Anglo-Catholic and Damian Thompson are right after all: it’s the Magic Circle (British Modernist RCs, ‘British AmChurch’) sticking it to Benedict.
The prayer candle. More of the folk religion Arturo champions. It could simply be that Lady Gaga like Madonna whom she apes (I like ‘Bad Romance’ but ‘Alejandro’, the song whose video is causing all the outrage, is like ‘La Isla Bonita’ or even Ace of Base; feh) is an apostate Catholic grabbing whatever is familiar, but the writer has a point: the people making fun of this are only badly disguising their need for it and that they really like it.
Such self-conscious indifference is just an act. Literally.
In fact, homo religiosus longs to infuse every aspect of our lives, including the minutiae (and not-so-minutiae) of mundane daily existence, with spiritual significance and divine influences. Human beings have always chosen to adorn our homes, our bodies, our highways and byways and alleyways, our public spaces and private places, our shops and farms and government buildings, etc, with religious icons, idols, representations, logos, ornaments, signs, symbols and so forth. These representations range from the huge, elaborate and unimaginably costly: such as magnificent works of fine art made with gold and precious jewels; to the humble, almost unnoticeable, and downright cheap: such as the lowly Prayer Candle.
And if, in these modern times, we feel the need to feign coolness as we express this basic urge to surround ourselves with religious bricolage, well, I guess it’s better than nothing.
As a very different singer-songwriter put it:
Everybody needs a place to rest Everybody wants to have a home Don’t make no difference what nobody says Ain’t nobody like to be alone
Everybody’s got a hungry heart...
As I like to say I’m north of Arturo and south of the intégristes who want a confessional state but like both not modern. Doctrine does matter but so does the people’s devotion. Sometimes superstition — abusing votive candles to try to cast spells essentially — is just that and a problem with promoting it is it’s just as relativistic as the Modernists whose belief in nothing is really a claim of absolute power over everything.
And yeah, sometimes it’s just fun to scare Protestants.
If you take the time to watch some of the congressional hearings in Washington or read about the doings of individual members of Congress, you end up shaking your head in disbelief. One such example of idiocy in action was the outrageous hectoring of the esteemed General Petraeus by a member of Congress by the name of Gabrielle Giffords. The gentlewoman asked the general just what he was going to do to put more emphasis on less environmentally damaging methods on the battlefield. She suggested that perhaps stabbing or clubbing enemy forces would minimize the carbon output in theaters of war. Clearly she never trained for combat.
Popular non sequiturs. Like ‘the Pope’s fallible but he has the power to make all the changes we want’.
For somebody who styles himself a “Protestant apologist” to maintain, with a straight face, that the Eastern churches were more or less a collection of storefront churches with KJV preachin’, big hair, overhead projectors and no, absolutely no, sacraments, smells or bells until Rome infected them... that’s just milk-out-the-nose funny. It was sort of the other way round, Stuart Koehl told me. Around the nadir of the Dark Ages, when the Diocese of Rome itself seemed about to go under (corruption and irreligion), France came to the rescue. There was the Cluniac reform (St Bernard: the monks saved Western civilisation) and the terse, austere Roman Rite (why the collects are often so curt) got a transfusion from the more flowery Gallican Rite, a Latin but non-Roman one, which in turn had been influenced by the Eastern rites. That seems to explain the family resemblance of the Tridentine Mass (only a slightly edited mediæval Mass) and the Eastern liturgies (the Byzantine reached its final form in the late Middle Ages like the Roman).
College isn’t for everyone. Paul Fussell, himself a university lecturer, called this 30 years ago: with the best or not intentions, ripping off the proles. Or just like circa 1940, only about 14 per cent of American kids go to college. Most of the rest go to things simply called colleges. A solution: Walmart University. Same or better schooling, lower price because of lower overhead and ‘no bull’.
Some jottings about the news
blog info
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