Scimitar Burns Bible, and ...

To understand this, gentle reader, one needs to engage in studying the model/rival relationship in mimetic theory; what René Girard calls the "problem of the doubles." The rival - in this case, the Scimitar - can barely get the model - in this case, the Christian faith in general and Catholics in particular - even to notice their slight. This in itself it infuriating to the rival. Alas.

Christians don't always follow the high road, but the Holy Spirit makes it an inchoate part of our awareness. What, do you ask, is that? For that, go here.

Praying for 'This Generation'

When our Lord describes his generation, what simile does He use? He says in Luke 7,32:

"To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the market place and calling to one another, `We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.'"

And that was only His generation. Or, was it only His generation? Elsewhere in Matthew 12, 39b-45, He describes the plight of a man who believes he can, on his own, whisk clean his "house" of evil spirits:

"An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nin'eveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here ... "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, `I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.

Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be also with this evil generation."

Gil Bailie posits that what our Lord means by "this generation" is "business as usual" in terms of how culture is always generated among fallen human beings, the taxonomy of which is most clearly spelled out by René Girard's mimetic theory, a worthy tool in the hands of the Church's Magisterium. (For example, cf. especially the work and homiletics of Father Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcap.)

"This generation" is what Satan offers our Lord during His temptations in the wilderness (Mtt 4,8ff).

The staggering thing is to be living and moving and having our being as people who affirm Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church among leaders of nations, industry, and global policy who are plainly and willfully citizens of "this generation." They cannot begin to accept the beliefs of the Church's deposit of faith, the Magisterium, and lordship of Jesus Christ. And so, they are like the cleaner of the evil spirit; like children in the marketplace - all cleaned up and so blindly naive to the realities of Satan in their lives, their thinking, their politics and policies.

Good reason to pray during this season of Lent. Very good reason. And very good reason to join in-arms in Marian chivalry in this godless age in need of the hope and glory our Lord offers.

Prayer Fodder - Chivalry

Keep these words of Russian President Medvedev in mind. The locked mind of the Scimitar is, as Girard describes, firmly located in the culture of the primitive sacred.

This volatile situation in the cultural fabric of our global community should afford us plenty of fodder for prayer, vigilance, practice of the theological virtues, and, of course, chivalry.

UPDATE: Jesuit and Egyptian-born Father Samir Khalil sees hope in the revolutions taking place here.

Rumbling Toward the Caliphate

With such illuminating rhetoric as the following, imams in Afghanistan promulgate the goals of the Scimitar:

Under the weathered blue dome of Kabul's largest mosque, a distinguished preacher, Enayatullah Balegh, pledged support for "any plan that can defeat" foreign military forces in Afghanistan, denouncing what he called "the political power of these children of Jews."

Across town, a firebrand imam named Habibullah was even more blunt.

"Let these jackals leave this country," the preacher, who uses only one name, declared of foreign troops. "Let these brothers of monkeys, gorillas and pigs leave this country."

It should be manifestly clear that while the blinders of secularism make such organs of the MSM as the WaPo see the "unrest" in the nations of the Middle East solely in terms of politics, there is a vast sea of persons of the Scimitar who see it as the beginnings of the Caliphate.

It would be a messy, sloppy, chaotic thing to be sure; a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption of power-driven maniacs. But so long as the Scimitar clings to its scapegoats par excellence - the Jews and downstream cousins the Christians - it will find for a while a unifying factor.

But who will notice the outlines of such a unifying goal, I wonder?

UPDATES: Gee, what a surprise.

* Raymond Ibrahim's analysis here.

Understanding Egypt

I have heard some remarkable blather about the protests in Egypt and Tunis from a priest who should know better than to equate what is going on there with the work of our Lord in the days of His flesh.

This article is an important one. So is this. And for further reference, there is Canetti's Crowds and Power. But ultimately pull down your Things Hidden From the Foundation of the World if you would really understand the protests.

A Waste of Time?

It seems an inevitable question: Since the Scimitar was born in doubling rivalry to the biblical faiths of Judaism and Catholicism, is "dialogue" even a possibility?

The model/rival dynamic is part and parcel of Girard's "primitive sacred" and, indeed, with a fallen humanity. While street rabble continue to receive front page coverage by the NYT, the taxonomy of the mob provided by Girard's mimetic theory lies largely undisturbed, ignored, or misunderstood. (It should be noted well that the Holy Father did not see Fr Cantalamessa's use of Girard as either scandalous or wrong-headed at all.)

The Scimitar poses as an alt-monotheism. In reality, it is a form of paganism, a "primitive sacred," which demands victims for sacrifice. Only when the Holy Paraklete begins to inform, convert, and redeem its members will there be a true opportunity for "dialogue".

Back to the Swamp

Why, do you suppose, this happened? From a mimetic theory viewpoint, it points to the expulsion of a designated and acceptable sacrificial victim - in this case the Christian faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Oddly, the latter alone comprises over a billion human beings, and yet the Gnostic EU overlords (so accurately depicted in C. S. Lewis's prescient book, That Hideous Strength) curiously believe that they can will out of existence belief in Jesus Christ - or, at least out of public discourse - by their hubris-filled chicanery.

It points again not only to human folly and pride; but to the deeply embedded roots of the primitive sacred in our fallen human condition.

Those EU ministers should listen, in my opinion, to a different sort of minister: Rene Girard, an Extraordinary Eucharistic Minister who also happens to be a member of the L'Académie française. His work in mimetic theory not only brings broad understanding to the cultural conflagration upon which the EU is throwing kindling, but is in full submission to the Magisterium of Mother Church.

The more "modern progressives" (sic.) try to out-distance Christian truth, the more their actions show a recrudescence and regression into the pagan swamp that our Lord and His Church succeeded in pulling us out of ... for a time.

Scimitar and Christmas

Let's get this straight: this is offensive, but this isn't. Everybody understand? Pathetic, isn't it (look closely at the descriptors on the Scimitar poster - bile, pure bile).

Incomprehensible blather? Not at all. Understand this: the Scimitar was born in the cauldron of scandal and what René Girard calls the "problem of the doubles" or the reciprocity of the model/rival (model/obstacle, model/mediator). It has continued this mimetic relationship with the faiths of the Bible from its inception to this day.

I do not see a solution to the problem - and recent (unofficial) Catholic prophecies see it growing worse - because the Scimitar, by definition, is dependent on the Judaeo-Christian ethos for its very existence and will, therefore, always feel a deep resentment and humiliation by the existence of the truth of the biblical faiths. Perhaps the Holy Spirit will cause a break-thru of contrition in the hearts of its adherents someday. Or, perhaps our Lady will continue to appear and bring members of the Scimitar to Her.

Let us pray for peace as this Advent draws to a close, and we welcome again the birth of the Prince of Peace and Savior of the sin-filled world.

Why the Atonement - Girard

René Girard

In his book on C. S. Lewis and Ronald Knox, Fr Milton Walsh relates Lewis's skepticism prior to his conversion. Walsh writes:

(Lewis) could not see how the life and death of "Someone Else" two thousand years ago could help us here and now, except as an example: "And the example business, tho' true and important, is not Christianity: right in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and Saint Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed ('propitiation' - 'sacrifice - 'the blood of the Lamb') - expressions which I could only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking" ...

How can the suffering of one person atone for the sins of another? Knox admits that many people consider such an arrangement immoral, and Lewis comments that there ahve been many theological explanations for this core conviction of Christianity, some more valuable than others. (85, 87)

René Girard's unveils humanity's deep, dark secret which he explicates in his "mimetic theory." This secret is that human culture is built squarely upon a "single victim mechanism" and it is the unique work of the Gospel in history to bring an end this secret's satanic reign.

But this foundation of human violence was so vital to the construction and maintenance of human culture - re-enacted each time victims were arbitrarily selected and expelled and/or murdered - that for aeons there was no alternative. The "lamb slain since the foundation of the world" (Rev 13,8) was the default way to manufacture human cultural cohesion; the "lowest common denominator" of human society.

Without gainsaying any teaching of the Catholic Church regarding atonement, Girard showed not so much how our Lord's death brought about salvation, but why it needed to happen. It happened because human sin always - always - takes us back to the same place: the place of expelling the victim and scapegoating violence. The way that God chose to reveal and break the inner workings of our satanic (literally: Satan - Σατάν - "the accuser") method of convening had to be to go to the place our sin always took us - the place of sacrificial violence - and undo Satan's power once and for all.

Realities of Holy War

In light of recent events, far away (and yet not so very) and close to home, it becomes necessary to examine why the Scimitar lends itself in our present-day to extreme violence.

Father James V. Schall, S. J. writes on what is slow to dawn on the non-Scimitar mentality in A Jihadist Conquest.

From a mimetic theory vantage point, it must be noted that the Scimitar carries all the attributes of what René Girard calls "the primitive sacred" - a deity who "on the record" has no problem with the slaughter of the unfaithful, such values that cannot be reformed by anything resembling progressive revelation or newer prophets who speak for a loving, universal Providence like that of the Judeo-Christian God, and promises of paradise to those who do the sacrificing of the unfaithful.

These are the realities of the Scimitar's notion of holy war. As opposed, say, to those of Christian notions of legitimate defense and chivalry.

Primitive Sacred and Oil on the Water

Mark Steyn lets fly with King Barack the Verbose.

One of the most salient and fascinating features of René Girard's mimetic theory is that it dispels the common - and wrong - notions that we humans (a) think for ourselves and (b) left behind all the mumbo-jumbo of our primitive ancestors who did things like ritual sacrifice of first-born children. Wrong on both counts, says mimetic theory.

We are hugely influenced by the desires of others and, therefore, at the whim of those who know this about ourselves and take advantage of it. Think Madison Avenue. Think all those sales flyers that fall out of your Sunday newspaper. Think about going to work, or to a class reunion, or to a dinner party wearing what is hanging in the never-touched recesses of your closet. Why is that? Not because you care what people think, surely.

The Gospel has indeed been hard at work in history freeing us from many of the superstitions of what Girard calls "the primitive sacred." But as the Gospel in general and the teachings of the Catholic Church in particular are abandoned and rejected, the pagan rises again. And one of the most prominent elements of the primitive sacred is the king/priest/shaman figure; i.e., one vested with the aura of the sacred. How that figure accrues this aura and power is important, but for now just realized that the vacuum created by the secular West's rejection of the Christian faith has opened the realm of this sacred human figure once again.

Enter Barack Obama. The adulation and "leg-tingling" of Chris Matthew, the Obots on street corners before the election, the fawning free-ride by the MSM (now showing a few signs of waking up and smelling the coffee grounds) all smack of the mystification of the primitive sacred's legendary divine figure come alive again.

Enter the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill disaster. Nothing seemingly can stop it. Not technology. Not bureaucrats' posturing and grand-standing. And NOT the king/priest/shaman of the Last Self-Help Administration.

His divine status, it would seem, cannot cap this catastrophic act of nature, and, while he is clearly not to blame for it, he clearly cannot do anything to stop it. His post-modern version of the primitive sacred leader - the only alternative to the Church's more realistic understanding of fallen, fallible human nature (even the Pope goes to Confession) - is beginning to look oil-soaked and - hmm - less than divine.

If ever there was a wake-up call from Heaven, in my opinion, this Gulf of Mexico fiasco is one. What shall it be? A modern recrudescence of the primitive sacred? Or a return to sanity in Catholic truth?

Is anyone else asking - or answering - this question?

Religion Abhors a Vacuum

City Journal's Benjamin A. Plotsinsky examines the increasing phenomenon of the leftist progressives' proclivity for falling into what is called, in Girard's mimetic theory terminology, worship and adoration of an "internal mediator:"

(T)he Obama campaign’s ubiquitous logo—the letter O framing a rising sun—would not have surprised the scholar Eric Voegelin. In The Political Religions (1938), Voegelin traced rulers who employed the image of the sun—a symbol of “the radiation of power along a hierarchy of rulers and offices that ranges from God at the top down to the subject at the bottom”—from the pharaoh Akhenaton to Louis XIV and eventually to Hitler.

Read more of The Varieties of Liberal Enthusiasm here.

Tea Parties, Mimetic Rivals, and Hope

From a mimetic theory point of view, it was predictable that the tea party phenomenon occur. With the election to the presidency of the United States of the most leftist, progressivist, pro-abortion, socialist-like, and oligarchical candidate imaginable, there was an inevitability to the rise of the tea party movement.

Some, wrongly, want to accuse the tea party folk of having surreptitious racist motives. This is nearly as Procrustean an accusation as, say, the New Atheists' accusation that anyone who does not view reality like them solely through the empirical method criteria are "dim".

Mimetic theory posits the "problem of the doubles" in all conventional cultural structures. One might assume that a Democrat president in the Oval Office would find his "model/rival" across the aisle in Congress in the form of Republicans. The problem with this assumption is that there is an increasing awareness that in actuality there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. Hence, the inevitability of the tea party phenomenon: a structurally authentic "double" had to arise in the mimetic swirl, and it has.

Is this a good sign? Not really. I place no hopes in the tea party uprisings, at least no hope for it to help bring about a renewed and vital Christendom. At best, it may like Pentheus in Euripides' play The Bacchae, put the clamps on the skid into the sacrificial vortex for a while. The neo-pagan resurgence coupled with the Scimitar's demographic victory in the West seem all too preponderant in force and scope for the largely middle to older-aged tea party folk.

That does not mean, however, there is no hope. Rather, it means that unless you want to have your hopes dashed once again, you had best place hope - and faith and charity - on sources of true transcendence still availing us, even in these darkening ages.

A Chivalrous Alternative

Now we know.

"Anjoum Noorani, 31" writes Damien Thompson, "was the leader of the Foreign Office’s Papal Visit Team which drew up a document suggesting that the Pope should launch his own range of “Benedict” condoms and open an abortion clinic. He’s been moved to “other duties” after he gave authorisation for the memo to be sent to Downing Street and three Whitehall departments."

What seems telling to me is the look on Mr. Noorani's face. He clearly is saying, "So, what do you plan to do about it?"

Tell me I'm projecting.

Like the Scimitar in general, he does not expect a Christian form of fatwa placed upon his head; it's been thousands of years since sanctioned violence was acceptable to biblical peoples.

Ross Douthat recently observed that the Scimitar's recent threat (or promise?) to the creators of "South Park" that they would end up like Theo van Gogh was a reminder that Islam is "just about the only place where we draw any lines at all."

For students of mimetic theory, this means that the Scimitar is very nearly the only enforcer of the anthropologically sacred in the world today. The Christian faith, on the other hand, has to force itself to even consider the possibility of performing legitimate defense and chivalry of any kind: a clear indication that as Chesterton pointed out, the contemporary world is filled with Christian virtues gone mad.

We must find an ennobling and truly chivalrous alternative to playing possum or playing dead to such affronts. It must take into account the real demands of Our Lord who, if you remember, drove and lashed the money-changers from the Temple (Mt 21,12-13), integral participants in the concretization of the sacred. We must wage the kind of holy knighthood that will neither make us blush because of its unwarranted violence nor squirm because we sat on our hands and did nothing.

What is that alternative? That chivalrous alternative? I do not know with precision. The image of Reepicheep swatting Eustace Scrubb (Voyage of the Dawn Treader) with the flat of his sword comes to mind.

But whatever chivalric measures begin to be taken they must wipe that smirk off his face and make his smarmy, self-righteous self think twice about spitting on the Holy Father again.

Who You Going to Trust

Essential reading: Joseph Bottum's Anti-Catholicism, Again - The permanent scandal of the Vatican. He understands the significance of mimetic theory here, because years ago he wrote Girard among the Girardians (1996).

Given the anti-Catholics' presuppositions, their logic is correct. The same way that parents in the ancient world sacrificed their first born to insure having many progeny. The same way the guy next-door blows a trumpet at 6:00 a.m. to insure no elephants will stampede ("Why the heck do you blow that thing every morning?" "So the elephants won't stampede." "THERE ARE NO ELEPHANTS HERE!" "See?")

It's all about who are you going to trust for your epistemology, ontology, anthropology, and soteriology. Who are you going to trust for truth, goodness, and beauty.

Battling to the End

I had an MRI with contrast this evening. While waiting, I read Girard's Battling to the End. Its scope is breathtaking; its depth and perspective vast.

It gives a respite to the evanescent handwringing so common to the internet. I recommend it highly as an antidote to, yet understanding of, the maddening crowd.

Sanity from Down Under

Sydney's Morning Herald writer, Miranda Devine is a straight shooter and clear seer in her Evildoers, not Pope, to blame. (H/t: Father Z) She writes:

The process is not unfamiliar to people who have lived under communist rule when destruction of the church was a goal.

Professor Piotr Jaroszynski from Poland's Catholic University of Lublin has written in the Catholic country's mass newspaper that the offensive against the Pope is recognisable particularly to Poles who lived under communist rule. "It has elements that have been very well planned, rational to the extreme, but at the same time there is a singular hatred for Catholicism hidden under concern for victim."

The struggle against religion has taken the form of a new religion. Its new priests "find their greatest ideological enemies in priests, religious brothers, and sisters. They cannot physically destroy them (as was done in communist countries), so they try other methods."

What is the motive: to destroy the credibility of the strongest moral voice left? Would the world be a better place without the Catholic Church? Without Christianity? That is the end point of this game, which should frighten everyone, whether religious or not.

None feel so righteous as scapegoaters when they have a victim in sight and accused. But the destruction of the Christian faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular, the head of which is the Holy Father, is the goal of these enemies of truth, goodness, and beauty.

Sacrificing the Pope, or, Goodbye NPR

Taking my son to see a movie about vikings and dragon training, I turned on the radio in search of some music worth listening to. The NPR reporter began the clipped, accusatory story about a letter. I turned off the radio, feeling angry.

Regardless of closer readings of each and every outcropping of this poison-pen ivy, and criticism asking simply for normal journalistic standards, it seems that intelligence is no antidote to being stupid about scapegoating and lust for sacrificial victims. (Think Radovan Karadžić.)

Robert Hamerton-Kelly has noted that in modernity, we either increase the number of our victims or the prestige of our victims: genocide or regicide. When the social and psychological tumult grows sufficiently, fallen human nature wants sacrificial victims.

Who has great prestige than the Holy Father? Well ... the left can't sacrifice their King, can they? Not yet at least. So, they want the Holy Father. Driven by their desire for a victim, they will continue to search, hunt, scan, and glean until they find what they feel is sufficient evidence to carry out the ritual. They even have a judge lined up.

Pray for the peace of the Holy Father.

Pray for perseverance in practicing the cardinal virtues (fortitude, justice, temperance, prudence), the theological virtues (faith, hope, charity), empowered by Our Lord's eucharistic grace, joining others who engage in Marian chivalry.

Pray for those anthropologically ignorant smart people who want a victim who is Christ's Vicar, Benedict XVI.

Witnesses in Dark Times

Without a working knowledge of mimetic theory, it is nearly impossible to extricate one's thoughts and feelings from the increasingly shrill accusatory voices in the present sex abuse crisis facing the Catholic Church.

Being a victim makes one more likely to be a victimizer. Violence is extremely mimetic. If you have ever been slapped in the face, what did your hand want to do to the one who slapped you? Too, we have rarely lived in such a litigious age as the present.

It is perfectly understandable, then, that legitimate sufferers of clergy sexual abuse should want, even demand, justice. What this may mean for the Church, however, is extremely conflicting to all who love and legitimately desire to defend Her as the sacramental presence of Our Lord in this world.

How can such strong and overwhelming feelings of the abused be heard, honored, and given justice without huge and destructive damage to the essential sacramental ministry and mission of the Catholic Church? And, of course, championing the cause of the victims of abuse gives those ignorant of anthropological realities the hand-rubbing, gleeful pleasure of victimizing in the name of victims; the only "legitimate" way to engage in violence oneself today.

Let us pray for the Holy Father, practice legitimate defense, and set examples of faith, hope, and charity. If we are called on to be martyrs of the truth, goodness, and beauty of Mother Church, so be it. It may be that we are called to such a vocation precisely for times such as these.

Ultimately it comes down to this: who are you going trust for epistemological, anthropological, theological, and soteriological certainty? I side with Our Lord and His "one holy Catholic and apostolic Church."

Laughable if it weren't so sad

Who are you going to trust?

It would be laughable if it weren't all so ridiculously sad. The MSM gets Fr Cantalamessa's superb analysis wrong - why? Because they latched onto something they thought they heard; namely, a comparison of (a) the continuing vitriolic junkyard-dog attacks on the Holy Father with (b) the nearly everlasting scapegoating of the Jews in world history.

Cantalamessa was correct and, beyond that, did an exquisite job of explicating Girard's mimetic theory. He showed mimetic theory to be a powerful servant and tool for the magisterium of the Church right there in front of God, the Holy Father, and - unfortunately - a selectively listening mainstream media. The MSM was as selective, I will hasten to add, as were the Pharisees were when they followed Our Lord around trying to find evidence for pinning Him to the wall.

Again, for proof read Fr Cantalamessa's homily in full here. See for yourself. Don't listen to the pharisaical, scapegoating, looking-for-trouble MSM.

UPDATE: Jeffrey Tucker's measured comments on all of the above: The Troubles of the Catholic World