WaPo - A Study in Contrasts

Compare and contrast: the print version of the WasPo's Metro section has this as a front-page story. Yet it totally dismissed this when it happened under its office windows in January.

On the one hand: 1,000 "irate" students emailing and sending vitriol to Facebook. On the other hand: half a million marchers on the streets of Washington, D. C. The former gets plaudits, back-slaps, and affirmation from the WaPo. The latter - nothing.

Methinks the WaPo is in the business of creating news (and reality?), guiding public opinion, and swaying persons in a non-heavenward direction, all to the drum beat of the spirit of the age and the prince of this world.

Because We Say So

Ever since Jeffrey Burke Satinover unveiled the politicization of the APA , I had a hunch this would happen sooner or later.

If the heresy of progressivism cannot become legal tender, it will become the psychological definer of the terms of discourse and "sanity".

Grace is Sufficient

The greatest temptations I face are self-pity, despair, the panic that robs the good of intellect. Your grace saves me from them, O Lord. It is sufficient.

Today grace taught me right before my chemotherapy treatment that I loathe it because I, too, was raised in a culture that disdains the body in a kind of Gnostic angelism. Walker Percy astutely observed that those caught in this plight make occasional attempts at re-entry by means of bestialism. I thank you, Lord, that you excised that temptation at my Confirmation.

Chemotherapy is a blessed reminder that the body is, is good - imago dei, and that I am no gnostic. Let the chemo always remind me, O Lord.

Calling a Spade a Spade

A little snippet from our (very) early Church fathers:

Once he (Polycarp) was met by Marcion who said to him, "Do you recognize me?" and Polycarp replied, "I recognize you as the firstborn of Satan!"

- Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3.3.4

Gnostic Puer in Chief

As I have said before, we elected a puer to the office of President of the United States. Now, watch him fly.

Interestingly, he's flying ... to extend the olive branch to Hugo Chavez and to Iran's leaders and people.

I don't gainsay I Wun's desire to get along with others on the world stage. But his utter naivete to anthropological realities - the problem of the model/rival doubles, for one - combined with a romantic Gnosticism - if I can think it, educate and/or coerce sufficiently, it can come to pass - is especially worrisome.

What will happen when I Wun's through-the-looking-glass world shatters, as it must? Or, does he truly think he is more than a mere mortal and possesses powers of unifying harmony and prescience that transcend centuries of tribalism, anthropological realities, and millenia of human fallenness?

Time will tell.

Shacking Up with God?

Now the showdown, the hoopla and $160, 000.000 Inauguration notwithstanding. What will the Big Zero do regarding FOCA?

He has met with, wined and dined with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, et al at George's place - impressing Krauthammer no end. But for Catholics who do not care about conservative issues so much as those espoused by the Magisterium of the Church - remember: 'right' and 'left' pigeon holes are secularist and Marxist - the snarky and ridiculous displays of balls and parades (so loved by 'stars' like Bono) mean nothing, absolutely nothing in Heaven's eyes.

By the way, I heard a regrettable 'sermon' this morning - more a dramatic reading - based on The Shack. It was all I could do to remain seated and not bolt from the proceedings, listening to the kind of "Oooh, I've discovered theodicy!" rantings in this regrettable tome. Dante would consider this best-selling phenom at best a "fraud" that will lead many, too many, in the wrong direction.

Gnostic overtones, gender-bending crisis of distinctions making God the Father an African-American mother ('Papa'???), God the Son a Middle Eastern man (okayyyy), and God the Holy Spirit an entity called Sarayu (oooh - I can make up a name!).

The Shack is another publishing bonanza like The Living Bible in the 1960's. Fine. Enjoy. We're in the Money - it must be God’s will.

But what maddens me is the exploitative manipulation. The protagonist, a father whose youngest daughter is abducted, tortured, and murdered (presumably - blood but no body is found) discovers the truth of self-sacrifice and God's supreme vindication in the giving of the Word made flesh, Jesus the Son. Yeah, fine. But what if I don't want to listen to this piece of imagination about an heinous crime laid at God's doorstep? I don't want to go up in your balloon of fiction, your piece of fraud? Do I have a problem? (You must - you don't CARE about a little abused girl?)

See what I mean?

Fine. But once again the non-Catholic world re-invents the wheel, as though the wrenching dilemma of theodicy just came to an author a couple years ago. And, of course, the Church's tradition and faith and language takes a major hit: God the Father becomes a politically correct entity: African-American. Woman. Non-male. Non-white. A-OK. Good to go!

In the midst of the $160M Inauguration and in light of this accurate-of-the-symptomology of the spirit of the age piece of .... fiction, I will go to Mass, imbibe the truth of the Catholic Church, and not succumb to despair.

So there.