It Never Left

It is tempting to think we are past this sort of thing. But we aren't. We have "one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church" comprised of well over a billion people (and growing) that proclaims the truth and reality of the doctrine of Original Sin. So, when we take one last sip of coffee, fold the paper, turn the lock, and head off to work, we don't worry about the statuary at the parish. Or our priest(s). Or how well the ushers might handle the breaking-in of disruptors during either a major feast celebration or even a Saturday evening "There's-that-guy-in-his-bermuda-shorts" Vigil Mass.

What we forget in our daily functional atheism are the anthropological realities that our Lord's Church defines so well in the Catechism; specifically, the symptomology of paganism of all those outside the sphere and protection of our Lord's sacramental "containment system" (if you will allow such a crass way of describing it).

Read through Paganism, parts 1-3. Girard and Satinover give the Church's Magisterium two excellent tools for understanding what we still face; indeed, at a growing rate.

Knox - Clinging to the Golden Calf

MOSES WAS SENT TO deliver his people from bondage, and from a bondage to which they had grown accustomed, so that they loved their fetters, and were constantly turning on him and asking why he could not leave them alone. That was his chief difficulty - they did not want to be set free. And even when they had been set free, and led out into the wilderness, they were always hankering after the luxuries they had enjoyed in Egypt, always murmuring against the rough fare of the desert. While Moses was up in the mountain, the people he had left behind him in the valley made a golden calf and fell to worshipping it, as they had worshipped it in Egypt. All his life he preached to an incredulous race, condemned, for their hardness of heart, to forty years' wandering in the wilderness before they achieved their promised resting-place.

Bernadette was sent to a world in bondage, and to a world which rejoiced in its bondage. Those apparitions of hers took place in the middle of the Victorian age, when mankind, or at any rate, the richer part of mankind, was enjoying material plenty to a degree, I suppose, unexampled before or since. And the presence of material plenty had given rise to a general spirit of materialism; a spirit which loves the good things of this life and is content with the good things of this life, does not know how to enlarge its horizons and think about eternity. She was sent to deliver us from that captivity of thought; to make us forget the idols of our prosperity, and learn afresh the meaning of suffering and the thirst for God. That is what Lourdes is for; that is what Lourdes is about - the miracles are only a by-product. You might have thought that in our day, when prosperity has waned and all of us, or nearly all of us, have to be content with less, we should have needed no longer these divine warnings from the rock of Massabieille. We know that it is not so; we know that in this wilderness of drifting uncertainties, our modern world, we still cling to the old standard of values, still celebrate, with what conviction we may, the worship of the Golden Calf.

- Ronald A. Knox

Moloch and 'Choice'

The connection is obvious, both from the popular idea and from the profound depths of René Girard's mimetic theory: abortion and the satanic.

Spirituality vs. Faith

More evidence that once people stop believing in the revealed deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, they'll believe anything.

And Where Did That Get Them

At least someone is comparing with history in mind. This is a far cry from the usual back-pedaling as soon as one realizes one is getting close to the brink of allowing truth to break in upon one's consciousness: Roman Infanticide, Modern Abortion

Conformity = 'Anything You Want' ?

Too good. My Introduction to Theology prof, Sister Prokes, PhD, would shred Speaker Nancy Pelosi's absurdities with a deft charity. As it is, Father Z does the honors here.

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?

NOT

ABC News reports that a Dutch "Adult Shop" is going to be giving away Pope Condoms. Brilliant.

I mean really. It is truly a proportionate response to the insurmountable and incessant barrage of propaganda coming from the Vatican. You change channels on your television and all you hear is what the Pope and the Vatican has to say about sex and morals (to steal friend and mentor Gil Bailie's schtick).

It is striking a blow for human freedom and dignity. And it makes me proud to be a member of the human race.

Enemies and Friends of the Church

The sum is greater than the parts in the on-going battle of neo-paganism against the Catholic Church. It goes like this. The NYT keeps up its full frontal attacks and insinuations. The "progressivist" secularists' other lap-dog media organ, the WaPo, shines a light on potential targets (read: victims and their training facilities). The vanguard berzerkers begin their first attempts to rout the normal worshipers, the latter having no full appreciation of the lust for the primitive sacred that carries the former into hallowed spaces of our Eucharistic Lord.

The overlords of this scheme, meanwhile, watch from their oligarchical nests, smug in the knowledge that they set the agenda and continue to do so, apparently far removed from the melee.

Understand that this work against God's Church is not unlike that carried out during Lord Cecil's English "reformation" (sic.) and the Mexican Cristiada. The enemies of the Catholic Church want to decimate Her and strike fear and doubt into the hearts of all those whom She wants to help bring to salvation in this life and Eternal Life in the next. Her enemies would have us all join them in their naive utopian pipe dreams and nihilistic relativism. Now is decidedly not the time to buckle.

It is a subtle and well-planned effort. We must be "wise as serpents and as innocent as doves," as Our Lord admonishes us (Mtt 10,16ff). We are in for difficult days; but perseverance will bring its eternal reward. Find strength in numbers of the faithful; pray constantly; receive the sacramental strength and grace of the Holy Eucharist.

Be one in the Lord in Marian chivalry.

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.

Ben Hur, Dad's World, and Ours

As I do odd-jobs today, clearing the deck for my 3-month cancer check tomorrow, I finished without doubt my favorite film about Our Lord from the golden age of cinema, Ben Hur (1959). What I like about it is that it has the Gospel and Our Lord just off center-stage, but indelibly interwoven with the family of the protagonist, Judah Ben Hur. It is the kind of movie that my less than a year deceased United Methodist pastor father loved, because it bolstered his Christian faith at a time when the United States was ostensibly at-one with the biblical faith, morals, and ethos.

I converted to Mother Church nine years ago this summer because I saw that the Protestantism of my father would not, could not, sustain one in the coming storm of Moloch worship, the increasing momentum of jihad of the Scimitar, and the reversion to neo-paganism by the Judeo-Christian rejecting West. (Structurally, all three are symptomatic of Girard's "primitive sacred.")

What studio today would make Ben Hur? Except for loopy Mel's Icon Productions (Passion of the Christ), none would. The tipping point in America has been passed, but it isn't one of "global warming/climate change." It is the Rubicon of rejection of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and him crucified (I Cor 2,2), and we are seeing every day the ramifications of this rejection, from so-called "health care reform," to the Beirut-ization of American towns and cities all around us.

We must not, however, fall into despair. As Monsignor Ronald Knox said, God has used such abandonments and betrayals before to rejuvenate the Church, and He will continue to do so.

Be faithful, vigilant, loving and wise, engaging in Marian chivalry. Stand with the Holy Father, our brothers-in-arms and sisters-in-arms. God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

Colson - Dreadful Worship

Chuck Colson does a bang up job of describing René Girard's concept of the "primitive sacred" without any apparent knowledge of it. Then, he describes the revelatory power of the Gospel's Lord - the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection - the "word made flesh" (Jn 1,14) who destroyed the satanic power of the primitive sacred. Finally, he limns the dreadful filling of the vacuum left by the West's rejection and abandonment of the Gospel.

Read it here.

Truth, Myth, and the Passion Redux

Jimmy Akin dispells the wickedness of the accusers.

Now, peace, be still, and remember what is really going on.

If there is a lesson to learned here it is that each and every time the Gospel in general or, in this case, the Holy Father in particular is made the scapegoat of the howling, ravenous hoard, it is the structural re-enactment of the Passion that set us free from sin and death in the first place.

The Holy Father undoubtedly knows this. Now, pray for him, for the Church this Holy Week, and all whose faith make be shaken by the purveyors of mythological paganism.

Arkes - A Day of Infamy

Hadley Arkes:

Sunday, March 21, 2010 is a day that will live in infamy, or as one wag put it, live in “infirmary.” For that is the day on which the House of Representatives voted into law the national takeover of medical care. At this final moment, the last veil of pretense dropped away, and the “pro-life Democrats” were revealed for what they had always truly been: liberals for whom the protection of the unborn would always be subordinate to the interests of the liberal agenda. But what can one make of a passion for “health care”that is willing to absorb, without a wince of regret, a measure that will encourage more killing of the unborn by the provision of public funding, public endorsement, public promotion?

Read all …

Pagans Want Their Sacrificial Victim

The Scapegoat (1854) - William Holman Hunt

What I have learned from René Girard's mimetic theory is that when there is sufficient social and psychological turmoil, crowds start looking for a scapegoat. From the viewpoint of the Christian faith, we would say this is a primary piece of evidence of the Fall, a common blind spot rooted in our disobedience to the will of God thematized in the Doctrine of Original Sin.

In traditional societies, what Girard calls the "single victimary mechanism" was an extremely economic way of re-establishing peace and harmony in the community. It nearly always only took one victim; "unanimity minus one," as he says. Or, as Caiaphus said in John 11, 50: "Better that one should die than the whole nation be destroyed."

But, as Robert Hamerton-Kelly reminds us, the Gospel has been at work in history for about 2,000 years. We have to perform capital punishment behind prison doors in the wee hours now, lest sympathy for the executed rouse even more turmoil. Gone are the days of a good hangin' in the town square after a picnic and before the fireworks display.

Now, Hamerton-Kelly says, the sacrificial mechanism in fallen humanity tries to work by raising the number of victims, or the prestige of the victim: genocide or regicide.*

Enter our newest attempt at scapegoating; namely, the Holy Father. Ah, the ravenous wolves are circling via the New York Times and other liberal organs. Voices of reason notwithstanding, the ignorant taunts of the mob howl, wanting their victim.

Even if Joseph Ratzinger knew the abusive priest was re-assigned under his jurisdiction, note well that these accusatory voices are (a) illogical insofar as their own liberal, progressivist platform would not call intergeneration same-sex activity a "crime" but merely "alternative lifestyle;" (b) oblique to their own heroes' similar shortcomings. But they want their sacrificial victim.

Problem is, however, the truth does not matter to them. Nor ever does it to the sacrificial mob; whether it is street rabble in Iran or the op/ed offices at 620 Eighth Ave., NY, NY.

They want their sacrificial victim, and the Holy Father has the most prestige.

So far.

UPDATE: Gerald Warner: It's the Pope's turn

*This is so in western cultures influenced by the Gospel. In those not influenced by the Holy Spirit, individuals are still accused and indicted; i.e., "witches", "infidel", etc.

Belloc - The Heart of Culture

Hilaire Belloc wrote:

HOW CATHOLICISM STANDS TODAY is obviously a vital matter both to the man who recognizes it for the salvation of the world, and to the man who regards it as a mortal poison in society. But it is also a vital matter to any neutral observer who has enough history to know that religion is at the root of every culture, and that on the rise and fall of religions the great changes of society have depended ...

The form of any society ultimately depends upon its philosophy, upon its way of looking at the universe, upon its judgment of moral values: that is, in the concrete, upon its religion.

For whether it calls its philosophy by the name of "religion" or no, into what is, in practice, a religion of some kind, the philosophy of any society ultimately falls. The ultimate source of social form is the attitude of the mind; and at the heart of every culture is a creed and code of morals: expressed or taken for granted.

As I have noted before, a society or culture that expels the Judeo-Christian ethos in particular and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church in particular - regardless of its ostensible self-understanding, as per Belloc above - is not a secular society. There never was and never shall be such a human culture. There may be a momentary void created by the expelling, but into such a vacuum will within 2-3 generations or faster come a new form of our human default religion, paganism, replete with all its usual characteristics (cf. the works of Burke Satinover cited in the link).

I repeat: it does not matter how the expellers see themselves or their themes, which nearly always self-grandize; the surreptitious structure of their behavior, programs, and platform always shows the tell-tale signs of paganism, or what Girard calls "the primitive Sacred." Human instincts and human will always are worshiped in their pantheon and end at the place of human sacrifice.

Our "progressivist" leaders chart this course with its obvious Moloch-like characteristic of abortuarial sacrifice, regardless of stainless steel, latex, and clinical euphemisms. Old Testament prophets would spot it and name it in a heart-beat.

Religion indeed resides at the heart of all human cultures. Can the biblical ethos survive before this neo-paganism onslaught? We must first see the malaise, then ora et labora.

Christianity or Catharsis

Crucifixion (1617) - Bruegel

Gil Bailie, founder and President of the Cornerstone Forum has quipped, "The ancient world did not have Christianity; it had catharsis."

This shows his predilection for poetry, diction, and sheer determination to pack as much into as little space as possible. Aristotle described catharsis as the purging of the emotions of pity and fear that are aroused in the viewer of a tragedy. We can readily recall such moments: if we are old enough, the moment we heard President Kennedy had been shot; the riveting scenes of the twin towers afire and collapsing in lower Manhattan.

René Girard's mimetic theory posits catharsis as the denouement of both the founding violence of the primitive sacred and that of ritual, one of the three off-shoots of that same primitive sacred (the other two being prohibition and myth).

So, why does Bailie state Christianity as the alternative to the catharsis? After all, our founding violence entailed the horribly violent crucifixion of the One we call Lord and God (Jn 20,28). Yes, that's the rub. The difference lies in these vital facts: (1) the murder of our supreme Victim, Jesus the Lord, did not "take". The crowds left, it is said, "beating their breasts" (Lk 23,48). The sacrificial quotient fell flat in confusion rather than camaraderie.

(2) Second, as St. Augustine noted, our supreme Victim revealed God's will, even from the cross, teaching us to forgive our tormentors. Again Bailie: "On the cross, we would see them as ravenous wolves; He saw us as lost sheep."

(3) The followers of our supreme Victim met Him again, resurrected. Yes, He could do things like walk through walls as we walk through campfire smoke (this argues for a more substantive resurrected Body, not less), and shared fish with them on the seashore (Jn 21,12). But more importantly, He forgave them their cowardice, abandonment, fear, and denial of Him.

(4) It is for this last reason that the earliest witnesses to the power of Jesus Christ waded right into the same crowd on the day of Pentecost that called for their Master's crucifixion not to slay, seek to avenge and wreak revenge ... but to invite them to repent, be forgiven (as He had forgiven them), and be baptized in the Lord's Name (Acts 2,38).

This is the abysmal chasm between catharsis and Christianity. The former always - always - seeks vengeance and reprisal, calling out its "sacred" duty to the dark gods of blood and mayhem. The latter, though imperfectly by Christians, knows that its touchstone is always - always - to forgive as we have been forgiven, because all of us are sinners.

This Lent, let us ponder these strange mysteries embedded on the one hand in the ways of catharsis still very persistent in our world, and, on the other, the Lord who trudged His lonely path to the hill called Golgotha to - one last time in Bailie's words, "shove a stick in the spokes of the primitive sacred's cathartic mechanism."

When we gather at the Altar of our supreme Victim, we say that God is finally vindicated of all our human violence. He came to be our supreme Victim, to show us, once and for all, the way out of our fallen human ways of death, catharsis, and despair. Deo gratias. +

Making Way for Satan, Mimetically Speaking

Monsignor Charles Pope has an important notion. We need a "new" word for marriage, given the atrocity taking place in our nation's capitol. He suggests, Holy Matrimony.

Oh, and by the by, if you think that this is the end-point, the terminus, of the collapse of social mores that is anthropologically as predictable as fleas on a dog, think again. Those who believe they are engaged in breaking down "unjust" prohibitions of society will not be satisfied until they kick out of the road many, many more. This is to say, if their "alternative lifestyles" feel in any way pinched by these ancestral prohibitions, they will not rest until all hell, literally, breaks loose.

Anthropologically speaking, this break-down of cultural prohibitions is called "sacrificial preparation" (cf. Girard - Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World).

Power vs. Truth, Goodness and Beauty

Does this remind you of this in any way? If you take moment to view the video on Israel, you will see that the shrill lies of its enemies include being "victimized" when, in fact, the underlying motive of the enemies of truth, goodness, and beauty is to victimize. They have learned well that today the only recourse to victimization is claiming either to be victims or to be defending victims.

This, in itself, say, two thousand years ago would have been unheard of. The remnants of the Christian West may not be very conscious, but it does know that our very foundations are rooted in caring for victims ("Lord, when did we see you ...?" - Matthew 25, 31f).

But, as Gil Bailie points out, not only does sin take advantage of the Law, sin also takes advantage of the Gospel. Sorting out motives is very important here. Not unlike that thorny topic of "choice". It is well and good to be "pro-choice"; I, for one, believe firmly in free will as part of what it means to be made imago dei. But "choice" and free will without the slightest adumbration of the higher human motive of seeking to carry out God's will with one's free will is no better than commending a pig for rooting out the juiciest tidbit in the slop for itself.

Choice, like claiming victimhood or defending a victim de jour without recourse to the will of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and sustained by the Magisterium of the the Church, is bound to be selfish, self-centered, power-oriented, and mere ideology.

And in the wake of the embargo on such revealed truth about the will of the biblical God in general and seething hatred of Catholic truth in particular, we are apt to see more and more mere ideology, political agendas, and cargo cult paganism as memory of truth, goodness, and beauty recede.

Israel - Scapegoat

Today, Israel is like Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. That is to say, simply by being, Israel is both a scandal and a lightning rod for animosity. In short, Israel is a scapegoat, with Jews and Judaism as particular objects of persecution and, if possible, sacrifice. And the perpetrators do so with that particular false sense of self-righteousness that all scapegoaters experience.

In anthropological terms, regardless of what people ostensibly call themselves - "monotheists", "righteous", for example - if they resort to human sacrifice to maintain social and psychological cohesion, they are pagans. Pure and simple, pagans.