Requiescat in Pace + 9/11

”How are they down – how have they fallen down.”
{h/t: Fr. John Zuhlsdorf}

Beautiful to the Eye

Girl with a Pearl Earring (ca. 1665) - Johannes Vermeer

In an effort to rise above the fray, let us rest our eyes for a moment. Ah. There, that's better, isn't it? No talk of lipstick or any other such absurd drivel.

May I recommend that besides not letting the turkeys get you down, you find a DVD copy of Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) to view; not for the opportunity feel inordinate passions toward Scarlett Johansson, who plays Griet, Vermeer's servant and model; nor for the melodrama that made Tracy Chevalier's book by that title a minor bestseller. But because director Peter Webber makes nearly every scene exquisitely beautiful in and of itself.

Films like this come along once in a blue moon, like, say, Diva (1981). You cherish it not for the plot, the characters, the dialog, or the cleverness; you love it because it is beautiful to the eye.

Scimitar Religion, Christian Faith

The Bible is, as friend and mentor Gil Bailie has said,

... an anthropological encyclopedia. The {unvarnished} story it tells is the story of we humans trying to awaken from primitive religion, and to come to know the God of love. And it tells us the whole thing. It tells us the journey we’ve been on, and we see ourselves slowly extricating ourselves from primitive religion and “one step forward and two steps back” sometimes. It’s all there.

So it is certainly possible to find verses in the Bible that speak of sacred violence against enemies, you bet. And it's equally certain that if you go to certain places in Indiana you will chance upon paint-ball militia types who want to keep these elements of human nature's worst elements firmly ensconced in their sacred writs.

But the vast majority of Christianities world-wide have come to an unwritten but firmly agreed upon stance that progressive revelation shows our antennae were turned away from the spirit of the living God and toward our baser instincts and passions in those passages. Or, as Pascal said somewhere, you can always prove the Bible wrong but only by invoking the Bible.

Trouble is, there is a billion-strong religion in the world - some say a totalitarian system - which I call the Scimitar, that hasn't the providence to see its more violent passages as changing. At all. Not one wit.

For a lean article that seems measured and cool, I suggest that of Dr. Sami Alrabaa, a practitioner of the Scimitar religion.

The fact that he risks publishing a reformist tract gives one hope. Perhaps the biblical spirit can help swing people of goodwill toward a peaceful co-existence. We are, after all, on the same divide as monotheists. Perhaps we can one day agree to point our antennae in the same direction and receive the same Signal.

Why the World Despises Us

... and why political parties either try to co-opt the Catholic Church or demean her teachings:

(W)hen people act together in community, resentment of their ideas can fester into hatred of who they are. The reason is simple. It's usually easy to ignore individuals, but communities are another matter. When organized and focused communities - like the Catholic Church - are pressing for what they believe, they are much stronger and much harder to ignore than are individuals.

What many critics dislike most about the Catholic Church is not her message, which they can always to dismiss, but her institutional coherence in pursuing her message, which is much harder to push aside. And yet the church is neither a religious version of General Motors nor a "political" organism; the political consequences of her message are a by-product of her moral teachings ...

The church engages the world in two ways: through the life of each individual believer and through the common action of believers working together. Every Christian life, and every choice in every Christian life, matters. There's no special headquarters staff that handles the action side of the Gospel. That task belongs to all of us. (41-42)

So says Archbishop Charles Chaput in his best-selling book, Render Unto Caesar. I cannot recommend it highly enough, so I will continue to post splendid excerpts from it.

I leave you with one last, brief quotation from him: "...the Catholic Church in the United States makes an ideal target for critics of religion in the public square because we're larger and better organized than most other Christian communities. And thanks to habits of mind created by the "old" anti-Catholicism, Catholics are easy to caricature" (41).

It is that "old" anti-Catholicism that blinds people in the West to their indebtedness to and need for the Catholic Church today and her bastion of truth, goodness, and beauty amid the rising tide of neo-paganism and the Scimitar.

Quacked & Cooked

Forgive the abruptness, but the reason I left the wasteland of the phenomenon in the West called "Protestantism" was that I yearned for epistemological certainty. Or, the words of a fellow convert, Arnold Lunn, "I was tired of being my own pope."

The question came down to: Who are you going to trust to tell the truth? Someone within this cultural "hall of (smoke and) mirrors," or someone who, historically, with credentials that hail from beyond human funny business?

The honorable Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi need to realize that if something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably IS a duck. That is, if they want to step away from the teachings of the Catholic Church it is within the purview of their free will, being as they are made imago dei. But they are NOT being Catholic, by definition.

In fact, they are being Protestants. They see the individual conscience as a final arbiter of truth, and this is, in fact, heresy.

Who Threw That One

Occasionally, even our own psyche will work against us when we seek to be disingenuous. Was it a case of "the truth will out?" Or simply an unconscious slip of the tongue? Whichever, the One did not help quell the rumors of his Scimitar loyalties.

About it, BHO stated, "These guys love to throw a rock and hide their hand." Ah, but what if your own hand did the throwing?

A Elbereth, Gilthoniel

Silivren penna míriel!

J. R. R. Tolkien did not hide the connexion between his brain-daughter, Galadriel, and Our Lady, whose Nativity we celebrate this day.

Abp Chaput and Fr Z Not Biden Their Time

The invaluable Father John Zuhlsdorf posts on Archbishop Charles Chaput's response to the flawed moral reasoning of some Catholic public servants. Like Joe Biden's muddled moral thinking on Meet the Press.

DC Chancelor Implements Plan (Zyklon) B

Chancellor Michelle Rhee culls the herd. High standardized test scores or else; or, teachers as victim-fodder. Has Ms. Rhee tried reteaching the teachers? Never happened. It's quicker and dirtier to get rid of the deadwood, corporation template. Nothing succeeds like success.

If Catholic education ever comes to this, shame on us and I'm outta here. Ciao. Sayonara. Arrivederci. Auf Wiedersehen. Good riddance.

Sikh and Ye Shall Find (Bias @ BBC)

Sikhs and Hindus accuse the BBC of biased favoritism toward the Scimitar. Perish the thought! No!

Paris - Attacks on Jewish Students

All the more reason for legitimate defense and chivalry.

Brownback - The Catholic Vote

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, fellow convert, speaks to the issue of the critical Catholic vote in this year's presidential election.

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Birth of the Virgin Mary (1661) - Esteban Murillo

For more on this feast, visit Women for Faith & Family.

Internal Mediator Critique

James T. Harris turns to G. K. Chesterton to chide Ms. O. Winfrey and others who see BHO as a messiah for our time. Or, just because you know how to rake in advertiser revenue as a daytime television celebrity doesn't mean you know a hawk from a handsaw.

Rabbis & Bishops Defend Marriage

A lengthy excerpt, yes, but one that is vital to read. My comments appear after it.

ROCKVILLE CENTRE, New York, SEPT. 5, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Marriage should be protected as a relationship between a man and a woman, affirm Jewish and Catholic leaders.

Rabbis and bishops joined in affirming their common beliefs regarding marriage in a joint statement titled "Created in the Divine Image." The statement was signed by Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld of Young Israel Synagogue in Kew Gardens Hills, New York, and Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, with other Catholic and Jewish leaders

The bishops and rabbis affirm "our shared commitment to the ordinance of God, the Almighty One, who created man and woman in the divine image so that they might share as male and female, as helpmates and equals, in the procreation of children and the building up of society."

In June, California became the second U.S. state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The governor of New York earlier this year instructed authorities in his state to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in states or countries where the unions are legal.

Not discrimination

The Catholic-Jewish statement contests the claim that refusing to recognize same-sex unions as marriage is discrimination against homosexuals.

"We recognize that all persons share equally in the dignity of human nature and are entitled to have that human dignity protected, but this does not justify the creation of a new definition for a term whose traditional meaning is of critical importance to the furtherance of a fundamental societal interest," they said.

The statement continues: "God's design for the continuance of human life, as seen in the natural order, as well as in the Bible, clearly revolves around the union of male and female, first as husband and wife, and then as parents. A unique goal of marriage, which is reproduction and the raising of families, exists apart from that of same sex unions, which cannot equally participate in this essential function."

The rabbis and bishops affirmed that a legal classification of private relationships between people of the same gender "dilutes the special standing of marriage between a man and a woman."

"Since the future of every society depends upon its ability to reproduce itself according to this natural order and to have its young people reared in a stable environment, it is the duty of the state to protect the traditional place of marriage and the family for the good of society," the religious leaders added. "While others have the freedom to disagree with us, we hope that even those outside of our common religious traditions will recognize that we speak from the truth of human nature itself which is consistent with both reason and the moral life.

* * *

This group of rabbis and bishops clearly understands the fragile nature of prohibitions and their role in the present cultural "crisis of distinctions." The proponents of chaotic antinomianism - a.k.a. the gnostic myth of unbridled "I can and must do anything I can think to do" - are slaves to the overarching power of the primitive sacred's false transcendence. It only feels like freedom.

The difference between an Al-Qaeda terrorist and a western hedonistic pansexualist is negligible.

Read more here