On America’s Obasm: Even intransigent God-botherers can have a seat at the table if they will simply acknowledge that the God we worship is now seated in the White House and that all his judgements are righteous and true. When the Prince of Peace says partial-birth abortion is okay, [Roman] Catholichospitals must be compelled to provide it, and gay marriage is a glorious sacrament of our civic us-ness (the mainliners, grateful for a social cause to latch onto: ‘We marched with Dr King! We still matter! We do, we do, we do!’) that makes it all fine. The Era of Good Feelings has begun!
Atheism will make the world into a Swedish paradise! Or at least Portland, a capital of SWPLness. Pay no attention to that gulag behind the curtain. I know people who experienced Soviet life including in at least one case the prisons. They are not SWPLs.
Telling off the neocaths. The branch of the Prot right with rosaries, or ‘only heretics whinge about torture so just shut up and vote Republican’.
‘Boffins: men and women are different’, or on evangelising Oprah fans: The Kawfee Tawk crowd are not bad people. They’re just sheep without a shepherd, regurgitating all the fluff they’ve been eating from a diet of TV and the spiritual equivalent of Twinkies. Standard Catholic apologetics (which is overwhelmingly masculine and combative) is a non-starter for reaching such people, who are not looking to what they call “spirituality” for intellectual rigor, but for love, acceptance, and community. No small part of what is wrong with a lot of Catholic apologetics is that the response to that observation will be snort of derision and not an attempt to understand why. The sooner many in the Catholic-apologetics subculture figure out that love and truth are not opposites, the sooner we can proceed with the New Evangelization.
Loyd Grossman is cooler than I thought I know why people think what they do: the voice often seems off course. But having done the transatlantic thing and as an inveterate pasta-sauce fan I admit I rather like him. (Thanks for trying to preserve redundant churches and trying to do something nice with NHS food.) About a year ago he and/or his ad agency took a page from William Shatner selling Priceline and came up with this: bring him in on the joke (awn the jeauke as he’d put it).
When they (parish churches) were built, they were meant to be the centre of the community. They still should be.
When the young Bostonian first came to the UK in 1974, the parish church summed up ‘England’ and ‘Englishness’ to him (who knows what it would be now? ‘X Factor’ and binge drinking probably).
There was something iconic about an English church. Just as in New England, where I grew up, every village was built around its white, wooden meeting house and the village green, so the parish church symbolises the whole history of this country.
Foreign posters for US films Most of these like the ones above are marvellous modern art (lots of frustrated talent seemed to have worked in commercial art in Eastern Europe 25 years ago) but nothing to do with what they’re advertising whilst this Belgian one makes up for lack of skill with imagination and boldness (according to the artist the film is King Kong, Jaws, Titanic and something to do with a big viper!):
Two blocks west of the road I take to and from work and from the default-Irish parish church. It’s a national parish that had a yearly street procession and festival.
St Donatus is the patron of the region in Italy this neighbourhood’s settlers came from.
The Olympics In the age of ESPN and the Web does one need these expensive government-propaganda shows disguised as sport?
The Olympics are virtually always a taxpayer-funded venture. After the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the International Olympic Committee changed the rules to order that all future Olympics be government-run affairs. The IOC is dominated by wealthy European socialists and others who never appreciated the Olympics being run by private organizations, considering that to be “beneath the Olympic ideal” (whatever that is). Now, the IOC is quite happy to have the capitalist television revenues that come from broadcasting the games, but nonetheless the games from now on are socialist affairs, even more than they used to be.
Paul Craig Roberts: Is it time to bail out of the US? How can President Obama even think about fighting wars halfway around the world while California cannot pay its bills, while Americans are being turned out of their homes, while, as Business Week reports, retirees will work throughout their retirement (which assumes that there will be jobs), while careers are being destroyed and stores and factories shuttered?
Speaker Nancy Malthus. On her solution for the economy of chemically sterilising the poor. Since 2006 she has had so much potential to do good, the reason I voted a mostly Democratic ticket for the first time (in a sense two years before Mr Obama went national I did the Obamacon thing as a tactic and found it wanting) and why her party was voted into power, but hasn’t done.
On Jewish interference in RC internal matters. Or the Good Friday furore (which I suspect came from Jews about as observant and knowledgeable as Mrs Pelosi, arguably the most important RC in America, is of her church), part II, only this time it’s not even about theology.
Rumour: RC personal prelature for Anglo-Catholic Continuing church?Continuing means started by former Anglicans; these churches are very small. Another sign Pope Benedict means this restoration business? I’ve met Archbishop Hepworth and have said his church reminds me of Bernard Mary Williams’ in Bishops at Large: a plausible proposal but too small a group, I thought, for Rome to take seriously. From Damian Thompson.
Playing at Buddhism. Utterly predictable. What would be interesting is learning what Japanese, Tibetans, Vietnamese, Thais and other real Buddhists think of this mainline Protestant game, stealing and changing their religion, turning it into a fashion accessory to impress other wealthy whites. The old colonialists are now the SWPL. (I know that, unlike Islam, Buddhism is not necessarily a religion but in Tibet, Vietnam and Thailand it definitely is.) Conservative Bohemian adds: It’s the same type of cultural imperialism as taking Native American rituals and turning them into New Age gimmicks.
One thing that separates the neo- from the paleoconservative is opinion about Russia, the former doing all in his power to reignite the Cold War, the latter welcoming the great country back after its 70-year nightmare.
The radical conservative. Andrew Bacevich, an Obamacon with honour. Forget mainstream conservatism. Please.
25 people at the heart of the meltdown. Steve Trinward adds: The irony here is, she has just about every name correct; the trouble is, her analysis of why is mostly purebred statist BS.
Libertarian realism: neither the New Messiah nor the Antichrist. What we must remember is that BO is a Daley machine politician who made good, what Heinlein called a “business politician.” While such can be a threat to freedom it is entirely possible to somewhat control what deals he is part of and cut our losses. There are in fact goals on the Left’s agenda compatible with libertarianism. Perhaps we can keep BO and his crew sufficiently busy implementing those goals to have time to to do too much harm.
Contraception. Legalise it — people have the right to be wrong and there’s no such thing as consensual crime. But don’t subsidise it. As for modern Orthodox dodges, pinched from modern Protestantism (both liberal and conservative), I believe in Roman Catholic moral theology. (Put another way, if you’re wearing latex or popping pills for what you’re doing you’ve no moral right to do it.) End of discussion.
Just got round to seeing it More. It seems people like it for the wrong reasons though Montana’s speeches about the Communists are wonderful. Compare this to the more or less true story of Blow.
On that creepy Obama pledge. Vanity, thy name is SWPL and who else was reminded of a certain youth organisation whose members pledged themselves not to a people, a constitution (as American presidents and soldiers do) or even a state but the Führer personally?
David Bennett at Per Christum: Catholics practice a self-differentiated ecumenism, which is to say we will work with others when possible, pray together, and work for unity, but we aren’t going to pretend serious differences don’t exist just to achieve some sort of false “feel good” unity, when there really are fundamental differences. Unfortunately, many of the mainlines have taken the view that we should unify first, and ask questions later, which is really not an honest and open form of communication, if you ask me. The latter is a doctrinal position really though it pretends not to be (‘there are no absolutes’, he said absolutely).
Marco Vervoorst: The Catholic Church is bigger than any one experience of her.
As of today, the SSPX bishops are no longer excommunicated. Yes, you heard it here first folks.Pope Benedict’s Catholic revival is real.
The sickest irony amidst the euphoria of the inauguration of America’s first black president is that one of Obama’s very first actions in office will be to ensure that millions more black babies are aborted in Third World countries, with American taxpayers picking up the tab.
There has been so much manufacturing in the last 250 years, that there is virtually no need to buy new things. If everyone in this country were to give to a needy neighbour or a church charity all the bits and pieces of furniture, household goods and clothes and other permanent things they are not using, every man woman and child in this country would be amply provided for.
The above suggestion would ruin the economy.
Which, in turn, and after a period of adjustment that would doubtless involve violence, social and political upheaval and all sorts of unpleasantness, would result in the end in people being much happier.
Russian Orthodoxlocum tenens and possible new patriarch honest about similarities to and differences with RCs Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad is that church’s longtime ecumenical officer. The problems on the ground are the protestantisation in teaching and practice in the Roman Church which Pope Benedict is trying to remedy (and as part of his Catholic revival he may even end the estrangement of the SSPX very soon!); the big theological one which he and I agree seems insurmountable is the scope of the Pope (good man-made rank or God-given office? — not Protestant and secularist anti-Romanism).
To say the complete break with some Protestant groups is because of homosexuality seems not quite right, to give Huw and other mainliners credit. Filter out the yuck factor and you see that it and other surface differences are symptoms of a much deeper one which makes corporate reunion of all the Protestant non-churches, homosexualist and non-, impossible.
Obama’s act: the accent Not to be petty but this got my amateur Henry Higgins’ attention. Some people have very nice acquired or mixed accents that don’t sound phoney because they’re not (but sometimes are accused of being put on). But isn’t being caught faking an accent something usually ridiculed or does he get a free pass because he’s good at it (I agree with Rod Dreher that it helps his speeches) and looks black?
When I found this at Dreher’s yesterday I remembered a word I’d seen Steve Sailer use: ‘black(c)cent’, which doesn’t mean a black American accent but a nicer version of ‘wigger’, for a white person putting on a black accent to sound fashionable. Which is exactly what Mr O is doing. (Like Tony Blair’s Mockney and for a similar political advantage.)
Today he usually has the speech of educated Northern American blacks: just a touch of a unique kind of Southern accent.
That he not only adjusts it for different audiences/code-switches as people do with their real accents but has been recorded turning it on and off (that is, only a few years ago speaking in his ‘white’ real voice) — and sometimes really ‘blacks it up’ going fully Southern as he did to a convention of black clergy — shows it’s not acquired but... an act.
I understand that in the East End of London Cockney is giving way to a kind of Jamaican accent among English-born whites... that is real.
The new gospel. And behold, an actor of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. But the actor said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is inaugurated to you this day in the city of Washington a Savior, who is Barack the Lord.”
In fact, neither Rick Warren nor most evangelicals say homosexuals, feminists, or the variety of people Joe Klein characterises in relationship to abortion, are going to hell. But what Klein wants to do is take the focus off of Jesus. That’s the real issue.
On Mr Obama and his speech: Some of it is obviously evil, such as the telegraphed embrace of cannibalism so that vain Baby Boomers can keep their looks a few more years. Some of it was obviously good, such as the not-so-veiled rejection of the Bush embrace of torture and war crimes so that cowardly Baby Boomers can feel safe. But underneath these cosmetics was a solid and sturdy conviction that America remains a secular messianic (and increasingly alternative) Light to the Nations that promises a better hope for the world than the Kingdom of Christ. Which is why traddies reject classical liberalism. But that’s not what I mean by belonging to the secular right as a libertarian classical liberal. Politics are only a tool not a complete worldview.
What with sin making you extremely stupid and all, I have to wonder if Caesar, now drunk on the wine of leftist hatred of the Church will really be stupid enough to start trying to strangle the whole network of social services provided by the Church, just out of stupid spite. The Church will go on till the end of time somehow or other. But the US is a purely human institution that can easily commit suicide if it decides it is more important to hate and murder the Church than it is to care for the least of these.
RC punditry and the Obama backlash When religion becomes a prop for ideology. More. I’d say of course that the answer is Catholics and the secular (not secularist) right belong together (but I don’t call my politics ‘God’s politics’): don’t get played by culture-warriors, be they under the sickle or the swastika, or their Christian pawns. From Lee Hamilton via Arturo Vásquez.
In defence of Rick Warren There is nothing objectionable in the Our Father to most believers Christian or not and why should a Christian be ashamed to pray in public as such? From Hoosier Musings.
Taki’s Richard Spencer on Mr Obama’s inauguration. This year will be remembered as marking the precipitous and irreversible decline of America as a world power. As suggested by this? To which I’ll add this via Hilary: After the Blair experience there is no excuse for anybody in Britain falling for Obama... the string of Christmas-cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington’s National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Denouncing “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents. Better the mediæval and obviously Catholic ceremony that Elizabeth II had.
Not Switzerland. Some of the world’s most beautiful scenery is in...
False dawn:Justin Raimondo on Mr Obama. The preparations for an Afghan “surge” have been long in the making, and in this arena Obama will take up where Bush left off, and then some.
What is religion? I think Arturo and I have similar answers: it’s really answering to a higher power (whether you believe that’s the triune God or the sun to which you sacrifice people) not ‘spirituality’ in which the supernatural, if it exists, is a sort of concierge or at least a fun way to celebrate yourself. More.
Is Christianity Western? Germanisation? Oh, dear. Reminds me why I don’t read online Orthodox. But of course it’s a valid point. Western Catholicism is obviously related to the Eastern family of churches (Protestantism obviously not) but culturally different to all of them.
Is social conservatism necessary? Good points but I still believe in secular not secularist conservatism. (Often identified as here with Barry Goldwater who once famously told Jerry Falwell to shut up.)
The patron saint of white guilt celebrated in the US this week. A great but flawed man of course, right on war, militarism and nationalism, but posthumously turned into the god figure of a post-Christian religion, albeit one that is parasitic on Christian narratives. Interestingly he shares his birthday with another hero, Robert E. Lee (a great man, paternalistic perhaps by our standards but like many of his class not personally hostile to blacks). One wonders what Lee (who turned down command of the US Army rather than invade Virginia) would think of this.
Manipulating MLK Day. At least today’s big event might remind people it’s not really about building birdhouses (one local private primary school did that yesterday!) or other works not bad in themselves that would have MLK saying ‘WTF?’
Where I’ve been Regular readers have seen that blogging has been slow lately owing to several crises/events including having the heating at Runnemede break down on the coldest night of the season here so far (7 degrees Fahrenheit or about -14 in the new money), working over the weekend at my new job as the education editor, covering a Martin Luther King Day event for children that of course was nothing to do with racial equality, the great migration of this blog’s supporting pages and files from AT&T to Comcast and the latter’s inadvertently wiping out most of my bookmarks in Firefox. (Note: when getting this service and the technician asks you if you want to instal the company’s software say no.)
Unity. On the occasion of the Chair of Unity Octave. When talking of unity Catholics mean it; liberal Protestants don’t. Never trust a Liberal. Always remember, as the slippery bugger looks you straight in the eye, clasps your hand with warm manly sincerity, and assures you on his honour that something-or-other really is the case, that a few decades later (or sooner if it suits him) he’ll sneer at you and say ‘Did I really say that? I think you must have misunderstood me’.
Marian apparitions. The church isn’t nearly as credulous as outsiders think, and the hysteria of the condemned (by the bishop, who has that authority) Medjugorje hoax can find a home in Protestantism.
Is there any good reason why conservatives and liberals, fundamentalist Christians and atheists, family traditionalists and polyamorists, free-marketeers and socialists, can’t just get along, living alongside one another without turning every interaction into mortal combat? Sure there is! That reason is government.
An unreflective man. The West’s road to hell has been paved with good intentions.
More ‘the year ahead’. In the end, the most violent and destructive organization ever conceived — the coercive State — will be ever more widely seen for what it is.
But no-one told these goons. Three teenage girls sent nude, or semi-nude photos of themselves by email to their boyfriends.
Property rights trashed. Instead of taking the trouble of moving to a place where no smoking is permitted by the pool, of which there are plenty, Birke has decided to sue the owner (s).
RIP Ricardo Montalbán A Catholic gentleman and advocate for Hispanic actors who kept his word by driving the brand of car he sold on television, he is perhaps best remembered for his scenery-chewing rôle as ‘Khaaaaaan!’ Coming from Mexico he made a career out of ‘showbiz’s scrambled transmissions about the idea of exotic people’. From Rod Dreher.
Douglas Kmiec’s apologia. The Obamacons are wrong but much of the online RC right is rubbish as is true of online Orthodoxy, online Anglicanism left and right and, I suspect, online anything. I’ll take one Andrew Bacevich over the lot of them.
‘Idolatry is a fascinating study.’ The Left is finally starting to figure out how to exploit religion in the US rather than simply despise it. However, they are learning from the masters in the GOP.
Spirituality not religion, the American ex-Protestant boomer/SWPL faith. “Spirituality” in news speak means “a life connected to the Transcendent in a way which is emotionally tangible to the human participant.” “Religion” means “weird fossilized rituals and dogmas — especially Catholic ones — that have no discernible connection to what journalists think matters.” The notion that “religion” and “spirituality” might overlap seldom occurs to the poor things. “Religion” is externalism. “Spirituality” is gnostic enlightenment.
The Internet-predator scare: stating the sexually obvious is not allowed. Approximately 90% of all “children” on the web don’t receive “solicitations”. Of those who do over 90% receive them from other “children”. Just like most guilty priests aren’t pædos. They’re gay.
On the end of newspapers. Meanwhile in the first week at the new job — one newsroom making two weeklies with a 13-hour Monday and 11-hour Tuesday — I like my old-school editor and managed to collect enough material to put out two 11-page education advertorial sections mostly selling private schools (I didn’t have to make the covers), two local schools pages and one and a half religion pages, and when done with that thoroughly proofread a few news and feature pages.
Proper Anglo-Catholics — the Forward in Faith crowd, not the Vichyite Affirming “Catholics”.
Andrew Burnham’s right (‘ways that allow us to bring our folk with us’). RC national parishes (part of Pope Benedict’s Catholic revival) are their only future in England.
From Damian Thompson who’s also right but no EWTN Pollyanna:
I can understand why many Anglo-Catholics feel queasy at the thought of joining... The RC representatives at the General Synod tend to side with the liberal Anglicans against the Anglo-Catholics.
The old boomers still running things are really Protestants.
The Pope’s got an Augean stable-cleaning to do to make this potential move work. Thompson thinks he’s got the ACs’ back.
Jesus, removed from the apostolic tradition and preaching of the church, almost instantly becomes a mirror and projection of whatever our culture happens to be obsessing over right now. So, for Ahmadinejad, he is the Avenger of Islam Against the West. For many on the Right, he is this guy.
For Morton Smith and those of his ilk, he is Gay Jesus.
This is no small reason why one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church is absolutely necessary. A tired meme of our culture is that Jesus was alright, but the Church has horribly distorted his message so that there is almost no hope of cutting through the thick crust of Churchianity to hear the words of Jesus afresh.
I sometimes suspect almost the exact opposite is true. Ephesians (which is, you know, the Word of God) does not have this extremely low view of the Church as the Obscurer of All That Is Truly Christian.
Instead, Paul says that “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things” is this: “that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:10-11). The Church is the primal sacrament. That’s where you go to encounter Jesus in fullness. Yes, it’s got warts and sinners and all that. But the notion that you can get closer to Jesus by avoiding his Body and listening to whatever cockamamie latest Real Jesus is being proposed by our culture this week is nuts. And that is doubly true for any Real Jesus who gains kneejerk acceptance by your particular circle of friends and influences. The Jesus preached by and present in the Catholic Church is a perpetual smasher of the idols called “Jesus” which are erected by the ideologies, factions and parties of the world to bless whatever insanity they propose or cling to.
1). Start with a preconceived notion (for example, “destructive embryonic research is morally acceptable”), 2.) construct a scenario in which an act that ostensibly affirms the preconceived notion is the only sensible choice, and 3.) whistle past whole chunks of reality to make it work.
One good rule of thumb I’ve discovered over the year is, “The more obviously immoral the act you seek to justify is, the more bizarre and unlikely the hypothetical situation you will concoct to make your preferred monstrous act the the only possible choice.”
And as many of you know, having learnt it from from the big and small screens, you need not worry if you really are surrounded by 27 ninjas; after all in your mind you’re cast as the hero. The ninjas will compliantly dance around you in a threatening manner as you skilfully take them down one at a time.
12:00 AM Permalink
Film I likely won’t see I am by definition unhip (and now that I’m in my 40s can be so without apology) but when I saw this advertised at the cinema I first thought ‘somebody green-lighted it at least two years ago’, before Depression II, with a title (IIRC about 10 years old) pinched from a damnable TV show now gone with a big dollop of its watered-down contemporary ‘Friends’ (re-using writers and actors from each, like a dog returning to his own vomit) and ‘those cute kids and their Interweb’. Very ’90s. Not only is it economically untimely but seems like somebody older than me based it upon his iffy memories of what the kids are into. So even the charms of Drew Barrymore and Scarlett Johansson can’t get me to plonk down a tenner to see it and I don’t think I’ll add it to my Netflix queue in six months.
One effect of the new depression as it sweeps away the jobs and affluence that in part made the lies behind these ‘lifestyles’ popular, perhaps forcing some to grow up as others have said: Joshua notes that Planned Parenthood (brought to you by the father of lies by way of eugenicist/Nazi sympathiser Margaret Sanger: the unfit don’t deserve to live) are cutting their staff.
Our collapsing economy From former US assistant secretary of the treasury (under Reagan) Paul Craig Roberts
The cost of the Bush Regime’s wars, together with the 2009 budget deficit that Bush has bequeathed to Obama, equals half of the accumulated national debt of the United States.
Who is going to lend to a bankrupt government that is ruled by financial crooks, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby? How long will the world finance US aggression that disrupts energy prices, keeps the world on edge, and makes America’s creditors complicit in war crimes?
Obama: Gitmo likely won’t close in first 100 days. Our legal teams are working in consultation with our national-security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do. This could be realistic or weaselling.
We’re not going to spend our way to economic recovery. The Libertarian Party seems to have returned to principles or this is just rhetoric like from the Republicans. (I’m in the LP like Ron Paul but stayed home rather than vote for lite-Republican Bob Barr, after voting for Paul in the primary.)
Frida Berrigan: we arm the world. I’m not a pacifist but sometimes the Christian left are right (on Palestine for example); but as with the right these alliances are always provisional.
Burris: the race card returns? I want to believe the last election meant race is no longer treated as an issue (why would it be in a neutral constitutional republic?) but perhaps the economy merely eclipsed it.
Some jottings about the news
