This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming. What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence - la trahison des clercs - in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right.
We have been here before. In the spring of 1997, to be precise, when a charismatic, young prime minister entered Downing Street, cheered by children bussed in for the occasion waving plastic Union Jacks. A very few of us at that time incurred searing reproaches for denouncing the Great Charlatan (as I have always denominated Tony Blair) and dissenting from the public hysteria. Three times a deluded Britain elected that transparent fraud. Yesterday, when national bankruptcy became a formal reality, we reaped the bitter harvest of the Blair/Brown imposture.
The burnt child, contrary to conventional wisdom, does not fear the fire. After the Blair experience there is no excuse for anybody in Britain falling for Obama. Yet today, in this country, even some of those who remained sane during the emotional spasm of the Diana aberration are pumping the air for Princess Barack. At a time of gross economic and geopolitical instability throughout the Western world, this is beyond irresponsibility.
To anyone who kept his head, 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.
[ ... ]
These are frank, even ungracious, words: they have the one merit that, unlike almost everything else written today about Obama, they will not require to be eaten in the future.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Gerald Warner - Wise Up
A brit writing in the Telegraph states the obvious:
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Greatness of Catholicism
Norman Crypt, Canterbury CathedralH. W. Crocker III (author of the must-read Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church: A 2,000-Year History) writes,
With its divine foundation, sanction, and mission, nothing could be more glorious than the Catholic Church. But, of course, many people -- even many baptized Catholics -- don't see it that way.Yet when the sins of men -- or secular material progress, or our own self-centeredness -- blind us to this, they blind us to everything. The Renaissance, a great Catholic moment, enlightened the world by seeing it afresh with both the light of faith and the light of classical civilization, which was Catholicism's seedbed. So, too, today, if we look on the world through truly Catholic eyes, we will find that the fog lifts, our perspectives grow deeper, and beauty and truth beckon above the puerility of mass popular culture.What's so great about Catholicism? Here are ten things -- in countdown order -- to which one could easily add hundreds of others ...
Read all of H. W. Crocker's "ten great things about Catholicism" in What's So Great about Catholicism? [ht: Spirit Daily]
Only a 55% Majority
One Douglas Todd writing for the Vancouver Sun writes,
Mr. Todd shows an occlusion of epistemological understanding. The 55% of Americans who would not vote for an atheist, though probably incapable of thematizing it this way, are saying that their operating systems are vastly different than that of someone who believes there is no God, and the God revealed in the Christian faith at that. Way different presuppositions, in other words, separate them from atheists. They do not, would not, want a politician in the Oval Office who believes that (a) we're on our own in this maelstrom of cultural upheaval; (b) we got here by a randon, senseless dance of cosmic accidents, culminating in speaking, selling, buying, snarking, brutalizing apes called homo sapiens; and (c) there is no one holding us accountable for our actions; therefore, the ape with the most power, influence, and charisma wins.
Christians believe (a) there is a loving, creating, covenant-making God, revealed most perfectly in Jesus Christ, the "word made flesh" (Jn 1,14); (b) we humans - all of us, except the Incarnation - are "fallen" and therefore absolutely need the grace proffered by God through the Church, particularly in the Sacraments established by Christ; (c) we inevitably return to hubris, violence, and destruction without God's help; and (d) anyone in the Oval Office had better realize our human neediness and God's willingness to help, or else.
No, thank God for the 55% majority who wouldn't vote for an atheist president. I'm rather sorry it is only 55%.
Barack Obama would not have been elected president if he were not Christian. Polls show the vast majority of Americans will only vote for someone who is strongly religious, with the religion of choice being Christian.This typically 'progressive' op/ed writer, thus, does in a few strokes on the keyboard what he accuses the majority of United States citizens of: the bigotry of a particularly ignorant kind.Unlike in Canada, Obama would not have had a chance to get elected president if he'd been an atheist. That's one of the reasons we heard a lot of religious oratory when Obama was inaugurated. The other reason is Obama seems to take seriously his membership in the liberal denomination, The United Church of Christ.
Still, it's off-putting that U.S. polls by Gallup show only 45 per cent of Americans would be willing vote for a presidential candidate who is atheist. When pollsters turned the question around, more than half admitted they would actually refuse to vote for an atheist. I'm not an atheist, but it seems to verge on mass bigotry ...
Mr. Todd shows an occlusion of epistemological understanding. The 55% of Americans who would not vote for an atheist, though probably incapable of thematizing it this way, are saying that their operating systems are vastly different than that of someone who believes there is no God, and the God revealed in the Christian faith at that. Way different presuppositions, in other words, separate them from atheists. They do not, would not, want a politician in the Oval Office who believes that (a) we're on our own in this maelstrom of cultural upheaval; (b) we got here by a randon, senseless dance of cosmic accidents, culminating in speaking, selling, buying, snarking, brutalizing apes called homo sapiens; and (c) there is no one holding us accountable for our actions; therefore, the ape with the most power, influence, and charisma wins.
Christians believe (a) there is a loving, creating, covenant-making God, revealed most perfectly in Jesus Christ, the "word made flesh" (Jn 1,14); (b) we humans - all of us, except the Incarnation - are "fallen" and therefore absolutely need the grace proffered by God through the Church, particularly in the Sacraments established by Christ; (c) we inevitably return to hubris, violence, and destruction without God's help; and (d) anyone in the Oval Office had better realize our human neediness and God's willingness to help, or else.
No, thank God for the 55% majority who wouldn't vote for an atheist president. I'm rather sorry it is only 55%.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Swearing in the Puer
Well, here we go. America, having hitched its wagon to a puer, now gets what it so richly deserves, seeing that we must live with the consequences of our actions and decisions. Wait! Wait! But that is exactly what we wanted to get away with/from by electing the Big O!
Sorry, America. Oh, and by the by, you did know, didn't you, that Hopy Change-Day also brings its shadow, too? No?
The shadow of the puer is the senex (Latin for "old man"), associated with the god Apollo--disciplined, controlled, responsible, rational, ordered. Conversely, the shadow of the senex is the puer, related to Dionysus--unbounded instinct, disorder, intoxication, whimsy. (Marie-Louise von Franz, James Hillman)So, good luck with that four year thing. Remember puers and puellas don't like to be bound, say, by unborn children – such a drag on my freedom. Oh, and one more thing. My guess for today is that the inaugural "Festivity" will play-out nearly all of the sacrificial preparation, frenzy, exorcising scapegoating, and denouement so well explicated by René Girard's mimetic theory. But not on center stage - where the ever-smiling puer holds court - but off stage: at the over-crowded Metro stations, along the edges of the Mall, where lurking self-appointed "priests" of the primitive sacred will feel the call of the old gods of blood and mayhem.
Like all archetypes the puer is bi-polar, exhibiting both a "positive" and an "negative" aspect. The "positive" side of the puer appears as the Divine Child who symbolizes newness, potential for growth, hope for the future. He also foreshadows the hero that he sometimes becomes (e.g. Heracles). The "negative" side is the child-man who refuses to grow up and meet the challenges of life face on, waiting instead for his ship to come in and solve all his problems.
"For the time being one is doing this or that, but whether it is a woman or a job, it is not yet what is really wanted, and there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about.... The one thing dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything whatever."
Monday, January 19, 2009
Alas for the Stragglers
The NYT leads with a video story regarding two "churches" on the same city block in the District of Columbia, coming together to welcome a new president.The cynicism of this pink rag delving into ecclesiology so as to "community organize" through a continuous soft coercion is astonishing. This is an out and out setting of the terms of discourse - who is who and what is what - in regard to the sacred.
Ah, yes. The sacred. Exactly. What the NYT cannot discern is that which men tred on and pay no mind to, the "treasure buried in a field" (Mt 13:44-52 or 13:44-46).
Yet the NYT understands that it is precisely at the intersection of the holy and the profane - the latter being their jurisdiction - that the hearts and souls of fallen mortals are conjoined.
Blessedly, the truth of the Gospel is vouchsafed by the Catholic Church; but alas for the stragglers for whom Catholic truth, faith, and morals are not even considered. Especially tomorrow: Inauguration Day.
Global Cooling - Nothing to Sneeze At
It's time to pray for ... global warming? According to John Tomlinson, you bet.
If you're wondering why North America is starting to resemble nuclear winter, then you missed the news.
At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right.
The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.
Meanwhile, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center released conclusive satellite photos showing that Arctic ice is back to 1979 levels. What's more, measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up 5 percent since 1980.
In other words, during what was supposed to be massive global warming, the biggest chunks of ice on earth grew larger. Just as an aside, do you remember when the hole in the ozone layer was going to melt Antarctica? But don't worry, we're safe now, that was the nineties.
Dr. Kunihiko, Chancellor of Japan's Institute of Science and Technology said this: "CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or the other ... every scientist knows this, but it doesn't pay to say so." Now why would a learned man say such a crazy thing?
Yes We Can
Some theological hope for our dark age of sin and scandal.[ht: Whapping]
Go to the encounter with him in the Blessed Eucharist, go to adore him in the churches, kneeling before the Tabernacle: Jesus will fill you with his love and will reveal to you the thoughts of his Heart. If you listen to him, you will feel ever more deeply the joy of belonging to his Mystical Body, the Church, which is the family of his disciples held close by the bond of unity and love."- Pope Benedict, Message to Dutch Youth
Sunday, January 18, 2009
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.
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.
Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
Charlotte Iserbyt tells how she was trained in the Department of Education to bring over (con) local, state, and national public education leaders through soft coercion regarding sex education and other programs that otherwise would not have entered school systems.
Just a Cup of Jizya Joe
The shock troops of the primitive sacred, those perpetually disgruntled "youths", took time out from their arduous street "protests". It's a requirement; especially after a grueling rally of "righteousness" against Israel's incursion into Gaza. Why not stop in at a Starbucks or two, and loot the place? Everyone's entitled to a bit of a pick-me-up, right? Ah, nothing like a justifiable breaking, entering, and stealing a cup of joe. We're sure Starbucks supports Israel. Somehow. The sons of dogs and pigs.UPDATE: Ah, of course. Starbucks' chief executive is Howard Schultz. A Jew. Not an Israeli. An American Jew. Makes perfect sense.
Poor old England.
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