Links Round-Up 6/30/10

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

--J.R.R. Tolkien
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The New York Times has a story which asks if children should continue to have best friends.

But increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should a child really have a best friend?....But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.

A more honest way of saying this is that people are harder to control when they rely on close friends than when they rely on a mass of pre-picked "playmates" to form their social cohort. Groups are often easier to control than individuals, and the "experts" are all-too-often more about controlling than helping, though they must achieve the former under the guise of the latter. Hell's Bible asks if children should continue to have best friends. The "experts" say no. I question why we still listen to these so-called "experts.

Tip of the derby cap to Mr Michael Flynn.
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With a tip of my derby cap to Darius of Echoes in Eternity, Mr Douglas Wilson takes Mr Jim Wallis to task over his--well, his general lack of understanding of how governments work. I'm not much of a subscriber to libertarian philosophy (Christian or otherwise), but they sure do like to use barbs in their arguments:

When employers rip off their employees, the righteous prince will be right there, and will enforce the demands of justice (Jas. 5:4). But when an economic illiterate demands that we destroy an inner city with minimum wage laws and rent control, what charge shall we bring against him? For my part, I would charge him with not hating evil, with not loving good, and with not maintaining justice in the courts.

Christian liberals need to get it into their heads that the prophet Amos never said, "And thou shalt be sure to maintain your charitable niceness pure and undefiled with the pixie dust of good intentions."...let us translate what Wallis is actually saying on the theological level. He is arguing that compassion cannot survive apart from coercion. Compassion comes out of the barrel of a gun. The demands of compassion require that we threaten a lot of people with hard time in chokey if they don't fork it over now. Wallis is a theocrat, as am I. But his vision of theocracy has a lot more guns, jails, and fines in it than mine does. How many guns and jails do we need? I don't know -- how far did we fall short on the compassion index this year?

Ouch.
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Returning to more Catholic circles, Fr Dwight Longenecker has a post about the necessity of both Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis.

What is therefore required for evangelization is word and action. People want to see lives transformed, but they also need to hear why and how they have been transformed. Combined with this emphasis on word and action, it is also vital to have another pair in balance: orthodoxy and orthopraxis--that is right belief and right action. Orthodoxy without orthopraxis is dull theology. Orthopraxis without orthodoxy is a religion of sentimentality, subjectivism and good works.

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On the topic of contrasts, Mr Matthew Archbold has a post up about the differences between Catholic Reform and Protestant Reform. A fitting subtitle would be: "Why there are 36,000 Protestant denominations/sects/etc but only One Catholic Church."

When rebuffed by the pope, Saint Francis could have appealed to Sacred Scripture, showing this his pattern of life was poor and lowly like that of Christ. He might even have contrasted his own "biblical life" against the extravagance of the Papal court. Francis may even have rightly rebuked the abbots, bishops, and cardinals for lacking evangelical witness. Instead, Francis followed the path of Christ. He allowed himself to be misunderstood and maligned, knowing that God would bring about his vindication...and God always does.

Contrast Saint Francis to Martin Luther. Luther did not visit Rome for confirmation of his cause, nor did he respect the structures of the Church. In fact, Cardinal Cajetan met privately with Luther and explained how Luther might modify his message so that Cajetan could have it approved by the Roman Curia. If Luther had moved more slowly and charitably, he may have become "Saint" Martin Luther.

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Red Cardigan has a sadly humorous post (sad, because it's true; humorous, for the same reason) about the "Guidelines of Vatican II." I especially liked this line before the actual "guidelines" are laid out:

I can't help but wonder whether there aren't a significant number of progressive Catholics who really do believe in the "Guidelines of Vatican II," (formerly known as the "Spirit of Vatican II," until someone pointed out that believing in "spirits" was so Council of Constantinople I)

As for the actual guidelines, I liked numbers 1 and 4 the most. There is one guideline conspicuously missing, though closely linked to number 3:

Non dignitatum sacerdotalis The priest is just another member of the community, and ought not be accorded any respect. Moreover, neither priest nor monk nor nun ought to dress in a particularly dignified manner. All religious habits are hereby replaced with large floppy name tags (to be worn during important events such as conferences).
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Mr Marcel LeJeune has a list of 35 saints names rarely picked for confirmation. This gives me a whole new set of name ideas, much to my wife's chagrin.
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Mrs Christine Odone has an opinion piece in the Telegraph about the European Court of Human Right's ban on "religious symbols" in the classroom. The ban is patently ridiculous, especially in countries such as Italy in which the crucifix is a regular fixture in most classes:

For today’s Italians, though, it’s no laughing matter. The crucifix in the classroom risks provoking a rupture with a European bureaucracy my compatriots have come to see as invasive and intolerant.The government is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn its judgement last year that religious symbols in schools are an infringement of human rights. The crucifix, that symbol of a supreme self-sacrifice, is supposedly unacceptable in a European culture that allows schoolchildren to download homophobic rap lyrics, watch sexist (and in Italy, semi-pornographic) TV programmes, indulge in crass consumerist competitions over designer trainers, sunglasses and iPhones.

Even the most hedonistic Italians realise that tolerance for porn but not for a crucifix is wrong. The government’s appeal today sticks up two fingers to a court of so-called human rights that does not recognise the right to religious expression. Italians reject the anti-Christian culture that has infiltrated this court, and beyond it, the EU.

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The Wizard Knight Dulogy: A Sort-of Review

I just finished reading Gene Wolfe's "The Wizard Knight" (the books are fittingly named The Knight and The Wizard). Since this was my introduction to Gene Wolfe's works, I can't really say how they stack up against his others, though I hear that his "New Sun," "Short Sun," and "Long Sun" series are excellent. My main though after finishing reading "The Wizard Knight" is that Mr Wolfe tried to do too much. Had this been a tetralogy, it would have been excellent.

Unfortunately, he tried to fit 4 books' worth of material into two books, and thus left some things needlessly unresolved. Others were resolved, but all-too-hastily. The first book of the pair, The Knight, was actually quite well written (as was the first half of the second book, for that matter), but the series suffers from the hurried pace of the last half of The Wizard.

Mr Wolfe creates not just a fantasy-world, but an entire mythology for that world, and a fairly good one at that. His fantasy universe is set in a world of seven levels, with the story set primarily in the middle (fourth) level of Mythgathr, with frequent visits to the fifth level of Aelfrice. The highest level, Elysion, is mentioned only as the home of "The Most High God," and while not explicitly a major part of the story, it is nevertheless in the background through much of the story. The same may be said of the second level, Kleos, though the hero meets two of the inhabitants of that level.

There are several story arcs presented here, all set up splendidly in the first book. There is the conflict between the Aelfs of Aelfrice and their creator, Khulili, who the hero promises to fight. There is the role of Setr, a dragon of the second level (Muspel) as a liberator and ruler of some of the Aelf in their fight against Khulili, and his desire to conquer and rule not only Aelfrice but also Mythgathr. There is the struggle in Mythgathr between the peoples of Celidon and the Frost Giants to the north, a mirror of the struggle in Skai (the fourth world) between the Overcyns and the Giants of Old Winter and Night. There is the equally dangerous--and perhaps more imminent--struggle between the people of Celidon and the Osterlings from the east, cannibals who eat the flesh of their victims to become more human. And then there is the loyalty of our hero to his love, the Aelf queen Disiri, a loyalty tried by many a maiden throughout his adventures.

Our hero, Able of the High Heart, is a young teenager transported magically from America into this world in the beginning of the first book, who is magically transformed into an adult and knighted by Queen Disiri. He is sent on a quest to claim his magic sword from a dragon, and to prove himself worthy of the honor of knighthood. By the close of the first book, many of these adventures have begun to unfold, and the story is filled with intrigue.

Unfortunately, the second book continues to add to these adventures rather than making an attempt to resolve any of the old ones. By midway through the second book, Sir Able is leading a retreat from the Frost Giants. He has not seen his beloved Disiri since the middle of the last book, and has all but forgotten about the Osterlings. The reader is reminded of Khulili and Setr only by the frequent appearances of two fire-Aelf maidens who have been bound to his service by the same Setr. The cast of characters at this point has grown so large that when some begin to die, the reader is left to muse as to whether or not this was because the author was having difficulty keeping track of all of them.

Alas! Some of the plots are left unresolved. For example, at one pint the king of the Frost Giants is stabbed, and then later murdered. Able alludes to having some idea who did it, and though this mystery is in the center of the story for about the middle third of the second book, it is never explicitly resolved (the closest is his confrontation with sir Garvaon). He only seems to deny that it was any of the really obvious suspects. The hurried pace might be better explained by Sir Able's very rapid trip to the lowest level, Niflheim. There, he comes face-to-face with the devil of that world's myth, but then inexplicably is released when the entire level begins to self-destruct (for lack of a better term).

To be fair, the end of the book left open the possibility of a sequel, but f a sequel is planned then why hurry through so much plot material in so little space to end the book? Sir Able confronts Khulili, the problem with Setr is then resolved, war is waged and then ended with the Osterlings, Sir Able is jailed by the King of Celidon (Arnthor), intrigues and plots between the king's wife and his sister abound, the Valfatehr's wicked son comes to tempt Sir Able, and a prophecy involving the leader of the Osterlings is brought forth and then unraveled in the space of 200 pages.

In spite of the hasty ending and the questions left unresolved, the story Mr Wolfe tells is a good one. His mythology especially was well-done--just enough explanation to draw the reader in, and yet enough is left unsaid to remain veiled in the mystery which surrounds any good myth. His characters are believeable (for the most part), especially the central ones. Sir Able in particular undergoes quite a bit of development, though some of this is "off-stage" between the two books, and the story itself is riveting.
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And for those who just like numbers and ratings, I would give The Knight an 8.5/10 (which is like an A-), but The Wizard gets a 7/10 (more like a B-).

Links Round-Up: 6/28/10

Well, I'm back, and me and the new missus are starting to settle in. However, I'm not sure I'll be able to post as frequently as before, for a while anyways. In any case, this post is dedicated to my best man, a certain other groomsman, and the photographer from our wedding, who apparently spent countless hours texting my cell phone on the honeymoon night. Luckily, I was smart enough to turn said phone off for the duration of the honeymoon weekend, and so didn't receive said messages until we were about to head back to Austin.
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Ring on, ring on sweet Liberty Bell
For peace on earth, good will to men.
A story true, ye kindly tell,
From Bunker Hill down to Argonne.


Excerpted from Liberty Bell, by Mr J.P Dunn
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With a tip of the fedora to Mr Matthew Anderson, here is one of the awesomest wildlife videos I've seen in a long time:

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While on the "nature is cool" subject, Fr John Zulsdorf has a post about how the people in Pompeii died during the A.D. 79 eruption of Vesuvius. Excerpt:

That "pugilistic attitude" bit is the appearance that the victim was fighting for his or life, but which actually occurs as a side effect of being cooked very quickly (or drying out more slowly in some cases). Everyone was killed and their bodies frozen in the position they were in at that time of instant death, plus a small bit of involuntary perimortem spasm. They were not suffocated, they were not killed by being blasted with an explosive force that knocked them down. They were cooked in situ.

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On a lighter note, Fr Zuhlsdorf also has a great joke about the old father-son-shared-car experience.
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On the subject of "lighthearted" (though not any less true in a satirical manner), Mr Matthew Archbold has posted one of the most honest campaign videos ever made.
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Mr Jeff Miller draws an analogy between the Death Star and the Culture of Death. Not sure which I'd rather face, given the choice, but our task in reality is to fight the Culture of Death. It is worth reiterating here that while abortion is the preeminent issue against which we must fight, it is not the only issue.
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Speaking of the Culture of Death and preeminent moral issues, Zenit has a two-part interview about pornography. Tip of the fedora to Mr Marcel LeJeune on this one; Mr Lejeune also has some posts of his own on the subject.
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Watch out! Those vuvuzelas can be dangerous.
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Since I mentioned the wedding at the beginning of this post, I should post links to the pictures which our photographer took, since not all of my readers have facebook. Here they are. Enjoy!
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Hard Anti-Catholicism vs Soft Anti-Catholicism

On Monday, I posted on my blog a distinction which ought to be made between anti-Catholicism and counter-Catholicism. I ended on a kind note towards the counter-Catholics--many of whom are my friends--but before that had this to say about the anti-Catholic crowd:

Compare this to the anti-Catholic bigot and his line of argument. It relies as much on insult and mocking as anything. He'll blaspheme the Eucharist, hurl verses out of context trying to "prove" that the Church is the "Whore of Babylon," scoff at the clergy and any number of doctrines and practices. Often he will not wait for an answer. For him, any stick is fine so long as it can be used to beat the Church. His arguments are generally dilatory or sophistical in nature, with little interest in getting to the truth of the matter or seeing the Church as anything other than the tool of the anti-Christ.

He relies on Mr Jack Chick and Mr Lorraine Boettner to (mis)inform them about what the Church really teaches. He lives inside an impenetrable wall through which neither reason nor logic and facts concerning the Church can reach. Aside from Chick and Boettner, there are a few very good examples; Mr James White of alpha-omega ministries; really, any program which targets specifically active Catholics for "conversion to Christianity" is likely run by anti-Catholics; this website is another great example (which started the conversation). Charity may be extended to all of these folks--some believe (albeit falsely) that they are acting in charity--and God knows they need it, but they have made themselves outright enemies of the Church. The only other things which may be offered is prayer and witness in action.

I should address a few loose ends from these remarks. There is hope even for the anti-Catholic crowd, if only a glimmer. However, even the distinction between counter-Catholics and anti-Catholics doesn't go quite far enough, because there are two broad groups of folks who fit into the anti-Catholic crowd. I will call these two categories "hard anti-Catholicism" and "soft anti-Catholicism." There are myriad small distinctions between them, but I will be writing more broadly today.

Read the rest at the Nicene Guys Site.

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If you enjoyed this post, here are some other similar posts which I have written:
Jimmy Akin on Anti-Catholicism (Quote of the Day)
Anti-Catholicism and Salvation
Anti-Catholic vs Counter-Catholic
What Happens to Non-Christians When They Die: A Speculative Reflection
Homogeneity in Heaven and Hell?
Monsignor Charles Pope and Mr Harry Knox (Quote of the Day)

Links Round-Up 6-16-10

Today's poem-excerpt is one of Mr T.S. Eliot's more crass ones. Apparently, he didn't like his critics* much:

Ladies who think me unduly vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out "this stuff is too stiff for us" -
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannons fumiferous
Engines vaporous - all this will pass;
Quite innocent - "he only wants to make shiver us."
For Christ's sake stick it up your ---.

And when thyself with silver foot shalt pass
Among the Theories scattered on the grass
Take up my good intentions with the rest
And then for Christ's sake stick them up your ---.

--T.S. Eliot, The Triumph of Bulls**t.

*The "Ladies" in his poem are reportedly some editorial critics of his who held up some of his work.
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There is hard anti-Catholicism, and then there is soft anti-Catholicism; then there is the kind which appears in Hollywood and the Media. However, the media's version sometimes backfires, and so the latest round has been pulled.
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With a tip of the derby cap to Mr Mark Shea, there is a bit of good news in the world: another abortion mill closes. This one, ironically, because the "Alabama health inspectors find problems."
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Th recent problems faced by the abortion industry may be why they are turning the one tactic left to them: quashing freedom of speech.
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Speaking of the invaluable Mr Shea, he has some comments about Dr Stephen Hawkings' latest pontifications concerning science and religion (all emphases mine):

Two things are funny about this. First, is the suggestion that “religion” (and by that, members of the UK Chattering classes typically mean “Christianity and especially popery”) doesn’t “work”. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. It’s true that religion doesn’t “work” if you are trying to use it to determine how many beans are in jar, or determine the velocity of an unladen European swallow, or analyze the composition of the sun. But then again, science doesn’t work very well at helping people answer questions like “What’s the point of it all?” This is particularly true of Hawking’s brand of scientism which says, as Hawking does, that human life is utterly insignificant—like he knows this by looking through a telescope or crunching a bunch of numbers. The sleight of hand substitution of a shallow philosophical nihlism for “Science” simply points to the fact that another thing science doesn’t do well is prepare you to deal with metaphysical questions. Indeed, people who turn it into the only way of treating with reality tend to be like the guy with the hammer who treats everything like a nail or the guy who lost his contact lens at the bar but insists on searching under the lampost because its the only place that that has light. The weird insistence of our Chattering Classes that Science is somehow just about to “defeat” religion is pure superstition, based on absolutely no observation at all and clung to out of pure mindless devotion to group cohesion among members of our Chattering Classes. If there is any narrative that is being spectacularly disproven by demographics, it is the narrative of the triumph of secular western Europe. That does not prove “religion” (whatever that vague amorphous term means) to be true. But it does mean that anybody who claims to live purely by empirical observation is kidding himself if he thinks England’s future is going to be dominated by atheistic materialists.

Read the rest of it.
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And at the risk of of satur-SHEA-tion, Mr Shea also has a piece up about Tradition. His book on the subject is also well worth the read.

One basic rule of thumb to understand in Catholic/Protestant conversations is that it is not the case that Catholics rely on Sacred Tradition and Protestants don’t. Rather, Catholics (and, by this, I mean “educated Catholics speaking out of the Magisterial teaching of the Church”) rely on Sacred Tradition and know they do, while Protestants rely on (parts) of Sacred Tradition and (usually) don’t know they do....However, in those places where Protestantism attempts to reject Catholic Sacred Tradition, the narrative suddenly and wrenchingly changes. Suddenly, the demand is made for nothing less than an explicit proof text from the Bible. It works like this:

1. If a thing is condemned by the Church, but permitted by the Protestant (say, gay marriage) the demand is for an explicit text forbidding it (“Show me where Jesus said one word about not allowing gay marriage! That’s just the Church imposing its purely human ideas on what Jesus came to say.”).
2. Conversely, if a thing is allowed by the Church but condemned by the Protestant, the demand is for an explicit text commanding it. So, for instance, we get demands like, “Where in the Bible do you find anyone asking us to pray to dead people? That’s just the Church imposing it’s purely human ideas on what Jesus came to say.”

Note how the terms of the argument shift to suit the “Heads I win, tails the Church loses” agenda. It’s no longer good enough to say (as the Protestant generally does when, for instance, arguing for the divinity of the Holy Spirit), “Here are biblical passages which, taken together, point to the reality that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person even though there is no text that says ‘The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity’.”

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Ms Sherry Wedell of the Saint Catherine of Siena Institute has a short post up about "discovering" as opposed to "returning to" Catholicism:

The irony is that most young Traditional Catholics are essentially becoming Traditionalist in exactly the same manner as the majority of young adults raised without a faith are choosing a faith, and evangelicals like me become Catholic, and the much larger number of young Catholics are becoming "nones". As converts, voluntarily, out of personal choice. As an exercise in discernment, discovery, self-definition, and self-determination....most young adults who were raised Catholic don't experience choosing to practice the faith as "coming back" to something inherited from their parents at all. They experience it as a pioneer or convert does, discovering a new and amazing land for the first time.

We'd be smarter to call these younger seekers "discovering" Catholics rather than "returning" Catholics. Because it is a difference that makes all the difference in how they approach the faith and what they ask of us.

This is spot on. Although I'm a cradle Catholic, a have in some ways a closer mentality to that of a convert who is "discovering" the Faith then one raised in it (though my parents did raise me in it, and indeed did a fairly good job of it). This may in part be because the vast majority of my friends (including all of my roommates) in college were Protestants, and most were in fact envangelical Protestants. Thus, although I never had a conversion per se, I did experience what Mr Mark Shea (again!) refers to as "the moment of crisis" which leads to an assent to the Faith.
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Today's offbeat and somewhat humorous link come from Mr Matthew Archbold:

A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria after making a rude gesture at a group of Hell's Angels motorcycle gang members, hurling a puppy at them and then escaping on a stolen bulldozer.

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Mr Marcel Lejeune responds to Ms Dawn Eden's critique of Mr Christopher West's presentation of Pope John Paul II's "Theology of the Body." I will, however, join the others in noting that the ALL CAPS comments leave my ears ringing after reading everything.

UPDATE: the ALL CAPS has been fixed. That must have been a bummer to go through, but my thanks to him for taking the time!
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Mr Patrick Madrid has a great piece about images/icons/statues, (particularly statues). I'm still laughing at the joke, even if I've heard it before:

When I arrived one evening at a suburban Chicago parish to conduct an apologetics seminar, I noticed a life-sized statue of Our Lady of Fatima on the rectory lawn. Kneeling before that statue were three smaller statues of Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta – the children to whom Our Lady appeared. Their statues were kneeling in prayer, heads bowed before the larger statue.

Turning to my colleague in the car, I joked, “What a great religion Catholicism is. Not only can we worship statues, but our statues can worship statues.” We chuckled at the absurdity of the thought.

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Mrs Erin Manning ponders the question: "Is divorce contagious?" Upon reflection, she answers in the negative:

I'd guess that what really happens is that like-minded couples tend to be friends, and that families also tend to be composed of at least some like-minded people. Thus, a Catholic couple who takes their wedding vows very, very seriously and would never consider divorce is unlikely to be affected by divorces in the Protestant extended family of one of the spouses; a Protestant couple who believes in "covenant marriage" and seeks ways to work out conflict that don't involve the divorce courts is unlikely to be thrown into divorce-planning by a friend who is unhappy in his or her marriage, etc....I bet that this study could be reworked to show that some people think marriages ought to be permanent, others think it can be temporary, and that there aren't as many close friendships between these two groups as one might think. Thus, the divorces in the second group only remind others in that same group that they never really expected the marriage to last, and maybe it's time they explored other options...

Divorce, then, isn't really contagious. But the cultural rot formed by the sexual revolution has bred stagnant pools of spiritual corruption from which infection is freely drunk by plenty of people who see only glittering water, and are oblivious to the rotting sewage which drifts in mortiferous gobs to spread its pestilence abroad.

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Saturday is the Big Day, so I probably won't be posting much else until some time next week. It may take some time to settle into our new life together. However, I hate for the last note in what may be my last post before my wedding to end on the topic of divorce, so I'll add one more: a collection of quotes from G.K. Chesterton, some about love and marriage. And just for memory's sake, a return to my four-part engagement story.
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Anti-Catholic vs Counter-Catholic

Some days ago, I made a comment on my facebook status about a quote from an anti-Catholic site, and my rebuttals (one somewhat charitable, one deliberately not so) to anti-Catholicism in general and that site in particular. A brief discussion with my friend Mr Shawn Nelson followed:

[Mr Shawn Nelson]: Agreeing to disagree and being civil about our differences is definitely a difficult and yet important part of Christian brotherhood. I've been thinking on the issue of the importance of individual conviction and ran into Romans 14, great chapter from Paul encouraging us to keep our own convictions while not looking down on or thinking poorly of other's for their convictions or if they think they have a lot more freedom than you think you have. Of course then you have to wonder how far that extends, it's a good line of thought.

[Me]: I tend to try very hard not to look down on people. However, when I encounter rank anti-Catholicism--especially from somebody claiming to be a Christian--my blood boils. Let's just say that I quoted from the "nice" part of the site in question; there's certainly space for reasonably agreeing to disagree. This guy wasn't content with that, and it was more annoying that the link was sent to me by someones else. I think, though, that it's best to put it out of my mind.

[Mr Shawn]: Well there's two sides to this here coin. So many of your statuses, including your reply to him, are "rank anti-protestant". (Caveat, i'm not defending this guy, he sounds like a scoffer.) Now you may say you are just stating your beliefs. What if I started making my daily statuses taking bold Protestant stances? They'd be almost mirror posts to yours, but you might get mad, and I really value your friendship, so I don't. No matter how much we disagree on this or that, we are brothers and friends and believe the same core. It's tough, [I] wrestle with these relationship-meets-conviction all the time in regards to politics, in filmmaking I heavily rely on the collaboration with extremely liberal people.

This has got me thinking (or musing, as the case may be), an in more ways than one. The problem I've encountered, an particularly amongst my fellow Catholics (but I've observed it more broadly amongst fellow Christians writ large), is to cry "anti-Catholic" (or anti-Christian) at the slightest challenge to our faith. I may have engaged in this a little myself, but I generally try not to, because I do not like to be guilty of needlessly being the "boy who cried wolf." Not all attacks on the Faith are necessarily anti-Catholic, and more properly not all people who attack the Faith can fairly be called "anti-Catholic bigots" (a term which I have not, at least, applied to many of my Protestant friends).

At the same time there are plenty of arguments made against Catholicism--just as there are many more made against Protestantism, or atheism, or whichever "ism" you prefer--which are meant to "disprove" it, if not in an urgent nor condemnatory manner. These arguments deserve a class or category: I would call them "contra-Catholic," but I see that Mr Dave Armstrong has already assigned that label to what he calls "quasi-anti-Catholicism."

Therefore, I propose a new (to my knowledge) term: "counter-Catholicism" (equally: counter-Protestantism, counter-Christian, etc). The counter-Catholic argument is the reasonable argument, made generally by the "Catholic-friendly" Protestants (as my friend Mr Nathanael Blake calls himself, among others). The distinction deserves to be made.

What would I call counter-Catholicism? Well, for example, see the two discussions Mr Blake and I had concerning the saints and concerning the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady. Neither of these descended into accusations of how Catholics are just pagans, and not real Christians; or that all Catholics must convert to becoming fundamentalist/evangelical/Baptist/Reformed/Other Protestant denomination/sect members or be condemned to hellfire. If our conversation was at times a bit "harsh"-sounding, it never plummeted to these levels. There is a world of difference, for example, between claiming that it doesn't make sense for Our Lady's hymen to be preserved intact during the birth of Christ, and saying that Catholics follow a wholly false religion, the Harlot of Hell and the Whore of Babylon, which shall doom us all to eternal damnation. He hinted at paganism in practice, but never once that the Church attempted to replace God with the cult of the saints.

Another aspect of the counter-Catholic types is that they are actually able to see the good in the Church (just as we ought to be able to see the good things accomplished by Protestants and even atheists). They are not blinded by their hatred of the Church, they don't propagandize against her, and even though they don't necessarily want to join her, neither do they don't relish the thought of her utter destruction. Moreover, if there is a hint of frustration at differences of opinion, or of different starting assumptions, lines of reasoning, and leaps of logic, then there is also at least some mutual respect between the two parties.

Compare this to the anti-Catholic bigot and his line of argument. It relies as much on insult and mocking as anything. He'll blaspheme the Eucharist, hurl verses out of context trying to "prove" that the Church is the "Whore of Babylon," scoff at the clergy and any number of doctrines and practices. Often he will not wait for an answer. For him, any stick is fine so long as it can be used to beat the Church. His arguments are generally dilatory or sophistical in nature, with little interest in getting to the truth of the matter or seeing the Church as anything other than the tool of the anti-Christ.

He relies on Mr Jack Chick and Mr Lorraine Boettner to (mis)inform them about what the Church really teaches. He lives inside an impenetrable wall through which neither reason nor logic and facts concerning the Church can reach. Aside from Chick and Boettner, there are a few very good examples; Mr James White of alpha-omega ministries; really, any program which targets specifically active Catholics for "conversion to Christianity" is likely run by anti-Catholics; this website is another great example (which started the conversation). Charity may be extended to all of these folks--some believe (albeit falsely) that they are acting in charity--and God knows they need it, but they have made themselves outright enemies of the Church. The only other things which may be offered is prayer and witness in action.

The counter-Catholics, on the other hand, can be downright pleasant, and if they make attempts to convert you it is at least in the name of Christian unity and not any innate hostility towards the Church. Some even want to join the Church, but are held back by one or another doctrinal obstacles (usually the Marian doctrines, the authority and infallibility of the Church, and/or the Eucharist), and it is fitting to pray that they will someday overcome these obstacles. In the meantime, they are at the least allies in many aspects, and their arguments are generally both honest and charitable, and deserve honest and charitable responses.

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If you enjoyed this post, here are some other similar posts which I have written:
Jimmy Akin on Anti-Catholicism (Quote of the Day)
Anti-Catholicism and Salvation
Hard Anti-Catholicism vs Soft Anti-Catholicism
What Happens to Non-Christians When They Die: A Speculative Reflection
Homogeneity in Heaven and Hell?
Monsignor Charles Pope and Mr Harry Knox (Quote of the Day)
Perpetual Apologetics 
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Return to Equus nom Veritas home.

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Review of "By What Authority?"

A longtime bone of contention between Catholics and other Christians is the role which Tradition ought to play in forming the doctrines of our faith. Is Tradition authoritative--is it a complementary branch of revelation, a necessary part of our faith which ought to inform the way which we read Scripture? Or is it merely a set of man-made customs--"the traditions of men"--against which we are warned, a distraction from the true revelation found only in Scripture? Mr Mark Shea delves into these questions and more in his book, By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition.

The book is part apologetic, part conversion autobiography, as it recounts first a problem poses to Mr Shea by modernity, and then his subsequent "discovery" of Tradition as the answer to the questions posed by modernists. He begins by setting the stage: as a devout evangelical, he was bothered by the questions raised by modernity with regard to his faith. Whether it's Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong, the Jesus seminar, or the neo-Arians, he was finding that his evangelical upbringing offered little in the way of an effective response against these modernist challengers.

To be fair, he was able to answer the basic questions posed against his faith by these challengers. For example, a modified version of C.S. Lewis' "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" argument was enough to convince him that these demythologizers were wrong--except that it hinged on the reliability of the witnesses testifying to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Another way of phrasing this question is, why trust that the canon of the Bible is correct:

For we whom you call "modernists" prefer to be called "realists." We know that your view of Jesus depends entirely on the claim of mere human beings that your canon of Scripture and no other has the "true story" of Jesus....We know that your traditional canon of Scripture was compiled, not by an angel, but by a slow, fumbling, and thoroughly human Church hierarchy in a series of varying "canons" which not only ruthlessly excluded alternative accounts such as [the Gospel of] Thomas but also sometimes excluded books such as Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation, and sometimes included books like Apocalypse of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, and various deuterocanonical works....Further, this traditional Church, in addition to formulating the shape of your traditional Bible about three hundred years after the death of the apostles, also declared to be certain truths which even you regard as human tradition. Or have you forgotten about purgatory, devotions to Mary...prayer to the saints, veneration of relics, icons and statues, the Sacrifice of the Mass, adoration of the Eucharist as the True Body and Blood of Christ...."So then," asked the little voice of modernism in my head, "Why precisely do you accept the present canon of biblical books as something other than human tradition?"

Answering this definitively requires authority beyond the Bible, as Mr Shea discovered. To be sure, his Evangelical friends, elders, and teachers all suggested any number of means of getting around Tradition as the final solution: inner witness of the Spirit, Quotations by Christ or the Apostles, congruence with the rest of Scripture; he even searched Scripture itself to see if it provided a written means of determining the canon, all to no avail. Both Christ and the Apostles are silent on the matter of the Bible ultimate content; as for the other three methods, there are problems with each. Both Christ and the Apostles quote directly or at the least allude to an number of books which are not contain din the Protestant canon, be they deuterocanonical texts like Wisdom, apocryphal books like Enoch and The Assumption of Moses, or even pagan poets. On the other hand, there is often difficulty reconciling one text with another (see, for example, the "cursing Psalms as opposed to Christ's plain commandment to "Love thy enemies."), and there are plenty of text which do not "feel" inspired upon reading. Mr Shea even goes so far as to cite Ecclesiastes as failing all three "tests."

Though I was confused about how I, as an individual, could know what was and wasn't Scripture, I was by no means prepared to start redefining the canon based on my ignorance and confusion. After all, I had reasoned, the canon of Scripture had survived in relatively good shape for two thousand years, give or take a few deuterocanonicals. The glue which bound the canon together, though invisible to my eye, seemed to work tolerably well....Therefore, I realized, one of two things necessarily followed: either, as modernism said, the canon of Scripture was a merely human tradition or else God must have ordained somesort of revelation outside of Scriptureas teh means by which we could know what Scripture was. There was no third option.

That thing which defined the canon, which bound it together, which transmitted it through the years, was nothing more or less than Tradition. But is it reasonable to embrace Tradition--indeed can a faithful Christian do so? In a word, yes. As evidence, Mr Shea notes that not only do the Old and New Testament writers rely on Tradition, so does Christ Himself. Moreover, modern day Evangelicals also rely on Tradition, to some extent at least. He cites five examples of this: the Canon of the Bible (necessarily determined before Sola Scriptura can be appllied), the pro-life cause (underlying Evangelical ethics), opposition to polygamy, the doctrine of the Trinity (the very heart of Christianity), and the closure of public revelation.

From here, Mr Shea was forced at last to confront the question posed earlier, and which re-asserted itself.

But I also realized that what's sauce for teh goose is sauce for teh gander. If we Evangelicals could hold a Big T extra-biblical Tradition like the canon of Scripture or the closure of public revelation to be revelation handed down from the apostles, why did I automatically assume that Clement's, Ignatius', and Ireneaus's extra-biblical traditions were anti-biblical?....I began to think about the post-apostolic Fathers and their extra-biblical traditions.

At my Church we had believed (without giving it a great deal of thought) that these Catholic-sounding doctrines and others like them were the result of paganism creeping into the Church after the apostles had died.

Indeed, why were these men and others like them who clung to Tradition so willing to die for Christ? They were all-too-willing to oppose the modern pagans of the day--e.g. by resisting the pagan culture which permitted and at times promoted polygamy, by refusing to worship the pagans' gods, etc.--and after all the canon of Scripture was faithfully preserved by these very same men.In the end, the "pagan creep" theory looks like bunk. Mr Shea then found himself with two choices, in the end:

The big "T" stuff cannot be altered without striking at the very heart of the Faith....According to Catholic belief, the very doctrines which irk most Protestants (such as purgatory, the Assumption of Mary, the infallibility of the Pope, and so forth) are doctrines which cannot be set aside since they are squarely located under big "T" heading by the Catholic Church and are therefore immovable features of Sacred Tradition--the very same Tradition which tells us what is and is not in our Bible and does so in a coherent voice of authority sounding down the centuries through a line of bishops leading inexorably back to Jesus Christ himself. In other words, I was obliged to either:
1. Find out if the whole Catholic Tradition was truly coherent; or,
2. Arbitrarily reject the bits I was uncomfortable with, but simultaneously exploit Catholic Tradition's authority (where it was useful against modernism)--all the while hoping that both Evangelicals and modernists (not to mention the Holy Spirit) would not laugh at my wholesale inconsistency.

I chose the first route. In so doing I discovered...that, in the final analysis, there is not a single solitary aspect of Catholic Sacred Tradition from the Immaculate Conception to the Eucharistic Real Presence to purgatory to indulgences to prayers to the saints to the Papacy to infallibility to the Assumption of Mary that is anti-biblical.

Mr Shea has written a fine apologetic, a book which is both readable and worth reading. His chapter on the "pagan creep theory" of Catholic Tradition alone is worth the cost of the book, though it is in a sense an extension of the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument applied to the Church fathers. I would recommend this book, first to undercatechized Catholics who need to know more about their faith, second to well-catechized Catholics who love a good conversion story. Third, I would recommend it to Protestants (especially evangelicals), because the chapter concerning the Evangelical embrace of sertain parts of Tradition may prove to be eye-opening; and finally, to Mormons who argue that the Church established by Jesus Christ failed until it was re-established by their prophet 1800 years later. I might summarize Mr Shea's conversion, as told by this story, in the words of fellow convert Professor Peter Kreeft: the reason to become Catholic is to be the very best evangelical Protestant possible.

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If you like this post and want to read more, here are some related posts:
Disorientation: A Review in Four Parts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)
A Short Review of The Third Testament

A Sort of Review of Chesterton's Heretics
Love and Responsibility (Book Review)
The Gargoyle Code: A More Substantive Review
A Halfway-Review of The Faith of Our Fathers (Book Review)

Review of The Meaning of Tradition

Links Round-Up 6/10/10

With mercury we measure pain
as we measure the heat of bodies and air;
but this is not how to discover our limits--
you think you are the center of things.
If you could only grasp that you are not:
the center is He,
and He, too, finds no love---
why don't you see?
The human heart--what is it for?
Cosmic temperature. Heart. Mercury.

--The Future Pope John Paul II, "Girl Disappointed in Love"
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With a tip of my derby cap to Mr Mark Shea, an irony of the latest effigy-burnings by the Mohammedans in Afghanistan: while the effigies are of the Pope, the organizations against which the Mohammedans are ostensibly protesting are both Protestant.

This story tells us that they do — Pope Effigy Burned By Afghans Over Proselytizing Claims. It is American Church World Service and Norwegian Church Aid, two Protestant outfits, at the center of the controversy. As baptized believers, these folks are subject to the "supreme and universal primacy, both of honour and of jurisdiction," of the Vicar of Christ, even they themselves do not recognize it.

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Monsignor Charles Pope gives two contrasting views of the Church: cruise ship or battleship? I, for one, am proud to declare myself a member of the Church Militant. Or to paraphrase C.S. Lewis (from Mere Christianity, I think), going to church is like listening in on the secret transmission from God, to receive our marching orders in the spiritual battle of which we are all participants.
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Ever wonder how you can be a better blog commenter? Mr Matthew Warner has some advice.
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The age-old question that just won't die, even knowing that the answer can't change: Why can't women be priests" (A more grammatically correct and precise form: Why can't the Church ordain womyn as priestettes?). Now Mr Marcel Lejeune fields this question. He also tackles the other two questions which have been bandied about, and which like the "women priests" question have had their rotting corpses dug back up from the grave in "response" to the sexual abuse crisis:

Women can't be men and men can't be women. True equality doesn't come from what we "do". True equality comes from who we are. Yet, men and women have different functions and abilities. we are created to compliment one another and still we are equal.

I can't bear children, yet I am equal to women.
Women can't be priests, yet they are equal to men.

So, our equality must not be based in how we function or what we can "do". It is based in something much deeper - being created in the image of God. It is based in our human nature. For more on this topic, you can read my article on true equality (pdf).

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While I hardly consider Israel to be entirely blameless in the whole "middle-East debacle," I tend to side with them more so than with the Mohammedans they're fighting against. This is especially true given that the media seems to be incapable of just reporting the news in this matter a truthful, straightforward, and unadulterated manner (tip of the derby: Fr Philip Neri Powell, OP). On the other hand, while Israel may be the military allies of the West, they are no allies of Christendom in the culture wars
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Speaking of abortion-by-gunfire, Mr Matthew Archbold has this tragic story to add. This, in Pennsylvania, United States, where abortion is "legal and safe," and more-or-less unrestricted in this case.
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Nine days and counting until the Big Day.

Quote of the Day: Discovering Versus Exploring

"Though I had discovered Sacred Tradition (if you can discover something the Catholic Church has known for two thousand years) I was only scratching the surface in exploring it. All the aspects of Sacred Tradition I had thus far painstakingly unearthed were merely a sort of doctrinal footprint left by the living Body in intimate union with the living Christ. Such footprints were indeed sure and certain marks of the Faith, but the Faith itself consisted, not merely in doctrinal pronouncements, or even in the Scriptures, inspired and inerrant though they be, but in everything the apostles handed on."
--Mr Mark Shea, By What Authority? (emphasis in original)

I've been re-reading through Mr Mark Shea's "By What Authority?" with the plans of eventually writing a review of it (whether this happens before the Big Day, after it, or never, remains to be seen). During my preliminary skimming, this particular passage stood out to me, that there is a difference between discovering a thing and truly exploring it. A number of my friends of Protestant backgrounds--converts, hold-outs, and people who have no interest in Catholicism either way--have at varying times told me that they recognized the authority of Tradition, but not its content.

They have, in other words, discovered (and even recognized) Tradition, but not really explored it. Thus they are willing to accept the "Traditional" canon of the Bible (plus or minus a deuterocanonical book) as being authoritative, but not really willing to give credence much else in Tradition. With Chesterton--and with myself, and really the whole Church--they recognize that in the final measure, the canon is either determinied by an authoritative Tradition, and thus is definitively set, or that it remains open today. While this latter position is more readily associated with the liberals of modernity--see, for example, the Jesus Seminar, who prefer to add and remove books or even whole passages as they see fit--there are also more coservative Protestants who have come to the same conclusion (hey, they're only following the lead of Martin Luther).

This is the logical conclusion of a rejection of the authority of Tradition in this matter. It is followed by both those who want to detroy Christiainity--or at the least "demythologize" it--and by more well-meaning Christains who are honestly trying to understand Scripture in the best way they can. I recall my former rommate, for example, arguing that the epistle of James is not really inspired--he couldn't reconcile teh passages concerning works with the epistles of Saint Paul--and he was by no means alone in this conclusion; Luther rejected this as an "epistle of straw," and more than a few (though certainly not all!) Protestants today agree with that assessment.

The canon is not the only part of Tradition which is accepted by a large number of Protestants. Mr Shea outline several other doctrines which they by-and-large accept: the doctrine of the Trinity, the sanctity of life of the pre-born, a rejection polygamy, and even an acceptance the historical creeds as important elements of the Christian faith. These things are all quite well-atested, but there are plenty of other "Catholic" doctrines which find strong attestation in Tradition (and sometimes scripture) which are generally rejected by Protestants--both the Catholic-friendly variety and the anti-Catholic crowd. These include the well-attested doctrines of the Eucharist, of the bishops as successors to the apostles, or of the Sacraments.

My question, for my Protestant friends, and for the converts to Catholicism from Protestantism, is why some doctrines and not the others? I can understand, for example, a rejection of some of the more obscure points of Tradition (e.g. Mr Nathanael Blake's questioning the specific point about Our Lady's hymen remaining intact during the birth of Christ): things which are only weakly attested to by Tradition and Scripture and which were more obviously defined by Church authority. But things like the Eucharist, the role of the bishops (broadly speaking, as successors to the apostles, with or without the infallible teaching authority thrown in), the Sacraments? What is lacking in Tradition as evidence for these things which is not lacking in the case of the canon, or the doctrine of the Trinity, or the rejection of polygamy?

I may have more to say about this later, but I am out of time for today.

Nicene Guys Feed: Catholic Schools and Catholic Education

There are a number of challenges facing Catholic schools in the 21st century, some unique and others age-old. One seeming minor challenge which will become a major challenge is brought to light by two cases, one in the Denver Archdiocese and the other in the Boston Archdiocese: both involve the children of same-sex couples. These two cases were handled similarly by the school's administrators (in one case, the children will be allowed to complete this year, but not to enroll next year; in the other, the child is denied enrollment altogether), though differently by the bishops of those two dioceses. His Excellency Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, has stood behind the decision of Sacred Heart of Jesus School, stating (emphases mine) that

The policies of our Catholic school system exist to protect all parties involved, including the children of homosexual couples and the couples themselves. Our schools are meant to be “partners in faith” with parents. If parents don’t respect the beliefs of the Church, or live in a manner that openly rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very difficult, if not impossible. It also places unfair stress on the children, who find themselves caught in the middle, and on their teachers, who have an obligation to teach the authentic faith of the Church.

Read the rest at the Nicene Guys website.

Links Round-Up 6/8/10

BANISH'D the House of sacred rest,
Amid a thoughtless throng,
At length I heard its creed confess'd,
And knelt the saints among.

Artless his strain and unadorn'd,
Who spoke Christ's message there;
But what at home I might have scorn'd,
Now charm'd my famish'd ear.

Lord, grant me this abiding grace,
Thy Word and sons to know;
To pierce the veil on Moses' face,
Although his speech be slow.

--Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, "Behind the Veil"
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Filed under "things which would not surprise me if true": this article from The Onion. This is pretty much the only way that the tobacco industry can regain any modicum of respect from the elite in general and the eco-Left in particular.
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Mr Marcel Lejeune has a post summarizing spiritual maturity; hint, it's not a spirits-free spirituality. With that said, I too have a ways further to go yet in becoming "spiritually mature," so I do not say this by way of condemnation.
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He's back from his vacation, and wasting no time: Mr Mark Shea has short piece on Dr P.Z. Meyers and "evangelical atheism."

P.Z. Myers appears to be ready to believe anything. He believes the US is on the verge of becoming a theocratic fascist dictatorship. And he believes Agora to be sound history, hook, line and sinker. Which, of course, means his disciples and herd of Independent Rational Minds in the comboxes will believe exactly the same thing.

Meanwhile, an atheist who actually seems to use his intellect instead of merely worshipping it has done the heavy lifting of actually learning about the historical claims of Agora. Shorter take: it's a film made to confirm religion haters in their prejudices, not to impart actual information about what occurred.

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Something just doesn't sit right about the explanations concerning the Bishop who was murdered in Turkey. Perhaps it was a case of Mohammedan violence, after all. Father John Zuhlsdorf is beginning to think so, too.
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Speaking of the enemies of the Church, Fr John Zuhlsdorf fisks the AP's article on another set of enemies of the Faith: those who seek to destroy the Church from within. The enemies from within may have a longer history (collectively), but Islam has a far more honorable history (which is not to say that they have lived up to the whole "religion of peace" thing).
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On the other hand, just because Mahound was and is the most honorable external enemy of Christendom does not make the "religion of peace' a friend. It is not good for the citizens of what once was Christendom to simply surrender to our enemy on the pretext of not being Christendom anymore.
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Mr Matthew Archbold presents the end of actual racism (which mean the beginning of contrived artificial racism). Of course, this is nothing new.
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Mr Patrick Archbold, on the other hand, is about as shocked as I am that there are any "traditionalist" Anglicans left:

Out of the UK comes news that at a meeting of the Anglican House of Bishops in May, they voted for the first time to allow divorced bishops.

The only question I have is, what took them so long? What I mean to say is that in a ‘church’ that has formally abandoned the indissolubility of marriage (a point on which Jesus was fairly unambiguous), that this day was surely to come.

The Anglican traditionalists are shocked and disappointed. For my part, I am shocked and disappointed that there are still traditionalists adhering to the Anglican Communion....So I ask my Anglican friends to do us all a favor and to cut to the chase and approve divorced and re-married lesbian Bishops. C’mon, you know you want to. Just do it now so all the so called traditionalists in the Anglican Church can either swim the Tiber or admit that they aren’t really ‘traditionalists’ after all.

My advice is that they take the Pope up on his offer pronto because after all, what do you buy as a wedding gift for a lesbian bishop on her second marriage? They are just so impossible to shop for.

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Mr Paul Cat discusses the logical consequences of embracing contraception (this time, by mandating that it be covered by health insurances policies):

Part of the contraceptive mentality is "I can't and won't get pregnant while contracepting". This assumption is WRONG. It leads adults to have the juvenile assumption of teenagers who believe themselves to be invincible in regards to fertility, sex, and pregnancy, which is "It won't happen to me." Contraception decreases the chances of pregnancy but there still is always that chance. By not eliminating the chances of of pregnancy and perpetuating the uberman mentality results in more unplanned pregnancies. One only needs to visit parts of Africa where contraception is distributed like candy on Halloween to see that children are still being born by using contraception and AIDS is still being spread.

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Parting thought for the day: sometimes, it would be nice if ctrl + z worked in real life.
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Links Round-Up: 6/7/10

The Enemy desires a reason for his minions
To renew their persecutions of the Faith,
Rarely does he look in vain for willing accomplices:
There are many men who are cruel,
Who are callous, many who torture and murder--
They love not their fellow men.

Excerpted from my latest, "Hope".
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Mr Patrick Archbold wants to send a peace boat (full of aide, of course) to Mecca, and another one full of aide from Arizona and Guatemalans to Mexico. I like naming the one to Mecca the SS Lepanto, but the SS Poitiers-Tours, the SS Crusader, would work just as well (maybe it could be a flotilla?), and perhaps the SS Alamo could be sent to Mexico. Here's my cold-hearted summary of the incident involving the first flotilla. Mr Ross Douthat also gives an interesting assessment of the situation, with some historical background.
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Speaking of historical background, Mr Mark Shea fisks through Mr Glenn Beck's strange on-air comments concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls, Emperor Constantine, and the Nicene Council. Welcome back, Mr Shea!
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Switching gears, the Austin Police Department had a gun buyback event this weekend. I'm surprised that the NRA hasn't commented on this yet. From the Dallas Daily News:

"This is not about trying to diminish someone's Second Amendment right, and it's not about us telling people they shouldn't own a gun," [Austin Police Chief]Acevedo said. "This program is for people who are too old to operate a gun or for people who no longer wish to have a gun in their home."

Of the 13 homicides in Austin this year, at least seven involved guns....Most of the guns will be destroyed.

I have mixed feelings on this one, and lean towards the skeptical, even if the goals are exactly what the APD is claiming. Maybe if this was a "broken guns only" buy-back (it's not). Even supposing that the APD's goals are not to reduce the number of guns in private hands, it sets a precedent which can easily be used by someone else who does have that goal. On the other hand, there are probably plenty of people who really didn't have any way to get rid of their guns, and who really did view this as a service. I'm not sure that this justifies having the government run a gun buy-back, though.
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On to a completely different topic--sports!--there are many rumblings of PAC-10 expansion, which could include Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Colorado (or Baylor). My two cents (ha!): The PAC-10 should go for UT, Texas A&M, OSU, OU, TCU, and either Boise State (better team) or Colorado (more $); or alternativy, Boise State, Utah, BYU, and TCU (which would keep the PAC-10 more-or-less contiguous). Of these programs, UT and Colorado are probably the "best fits" as far as culture go, and adding this set would probably make the most financial sense. It would probably also completely screw the Big-12 and the Mountain West (perhaps the remnants could form their own "super-conference").
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That's about it for me today: I'm going to be busy for the next couple of weeks, so expect fewer (and/or maybe shorter) posts.

Cold-Hearted Convservative: Israel Edition

I may be a cold-hearted conservative for saying this, but here goes. Why send a second ship to challenge the Israeli blockade of the Hamas Terrorists poor Palestinian victims in the Gaza strip? Because the first set of blockade runners were successful beyond their wildest dreams. Their mission was accomplished:

Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of Israel, is blacklisted in the United States and the European Union as a terrorist group....Ismail Haniya, the Hamas premier, said yesterday that the aid activists trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza had emerged the victors.

“The strategy of the enemy has failed and the strategy of patience has won in Gaza today,” he said in a sermon at the weekly Muslim prayers in Gaza City.

“Your message has reached its target. Your aid has reached its target, you have broken the political and media siege, and you will be a cause for the lifting of the economic siege of Gaza,” he said.

On the one hand, I agree with those who have stated that the death of the human shields loss of human life is tragic. On the other hand, I think these two videos offer the most concise version of my general reaction to the whole thing. First, actual footage of the blockade runner.



Second, a concise statement of the positions of the two parties:


Finally, this has caused Israel to threaten retaliation, which is good for nobody:

Links Round-Up: 6/4/10

Full of hope I climbed the day
while hunting the game of love,
and soared so high, high above
that I at last caught my prey.

--Saint John of the Cross, excerpted from "Full of Hope I Climbed the Day"
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With that poem in mind, let's look at the dreary news of today's stories. First, Mr Thomas Peters has more commentary concerning the possible partnership between Ave Maria University and Jackson Labs.

Jackson Labs has admitted itself that it can not rule out that this new facility will be used to conduct embryo-destructive research. This is not surprising, considering Jackson labs takes credit for discovering and perfecting technologies to facilitate in vitro fertilization and the freezing of embryos – both of which the Catholic Church strongly opposes....Ave Maria has always proclaimed itself to be a proudly Catholic institution. Proudly Catholic institutions don’t look the other way when human life and dignity might be destroyed through their choices.

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On a related note, Mr Matthew Archbold has another piece about why it's not really about "choice":

A British abortion organization is opening up a chain of abortion clinics in China, you know the land of forced abortions. And you thought all those pro-aborts were actually pro-choice?....Sadly, according to the article, some in England seem most upset by the fact that MSI receives millions in taxpayer funds and they're wondering why their money is being used to abort Chinese babies when it could be so much better spent on killing little English babies.

As an aside, one of the commenters on that post rightly points out that the Abortion Mill in question is named after Nazi sympathizers and eugenicist (these things go hand-in-hand) Mari Stopes.
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With a tip of my derby cap to Deacon Greg Kandra, the Archbishop of the archdiocese of the US Armed Forces opposes changes to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. This isn't a big surprise: this policy is not a perfect solution to the problems involved, but there are some solutions which are worse (e.g. barring gays entirely, or alternatively forcing the Catholic, Evangelical, etc chaplains to pretend that there is nothing wrong with this, or worse, to withdraw from the military).

“Catholic chaplains must show compassion for persons with a homosexual orientation, but can never condone—even silently—homosexual behavior,” he wrote, voicing concern that a change in policy might negatively affect the role of the chaplain in the pulpit, the classroom, the barracks and the office.

He noted that Catholic chaplains cannot accept or bless same-sex unions and no restrictions on the teaching of Catholic morality can be accepted.

The archbishop questioned whether the change would mean that homosexuals are authorized to engage in activities considered immoral by the Catholic Church and many other religious groups. He pointed out that morality has an effect on unit cohesion and overall morale....Changes to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are potentially “enormous and overwhelming,” he added. “Nothing should be changed until there is certainty that morale will not suffer. Sacrificing the moral beliefs of individuals or their living conditions to respond to merely political considerations is neither just nor prudent especially for the armed forces at a time of war.”

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In somewhat related news, Mr Scott Alessi has an article up for Our Sunday Visitor which discusses the cases of those Catholic schools who have begun denying enrollment to the children of gay parents. This is a pretty complex issue, and if time permits I may revisit it myself. On the one hand, the schools are limiting their ability to evangelize and catechize such children; on the other hand, they are faced with the problem of either hurting the children psychologically or simply ignoring the issue: neither of which is acceptable. There is (on a related note) also the possibility that the presence of such children will weaken the schools' abilities to effectively catechize and/or evangelize, but this is a broader and more general issue.

Father Roger Landry, a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., who has served in several parishes that operate parochial schools, told OSV that while he doesn’t favor an absolute policy that would never allow a child of same-sex parents to attend a Catholic school, in most cases it could lead to a “moral and spiritual schizophrenia” for a child to learn that their parents are living in discord with the Church’s teaching.

“If a child is going to be getting contradictory messages on something that is very important, generally a young child is not going to have the capacity to reconcile both of those,” Father Landry said. “Even though we earnestly desire to bring the child to Christ, we don’t want to confuse the child in the formative years so much that the future of the child may be hurt by that.”

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One more on this theme: Mrs Erin Manning gives me one more reason to continue not eating at McDonalds':

McDonald's has apparently produced a gay-themed TV ad in France....In America, of course, McDonald's is marketed as a family-friendly, child-welcoming restaurant. A commercial winking at the idea of a father's cluelessness regarding his homosexual teenage son's dating adventures would probably not fly here, given McDonald's market in this country. But that's one of the things I hate about huge multinational corporations--they can play the game of being all things to all people, and show ads with mothers, fathers, and small children in this country, and gay-friendly ads France, without apparently seeing any contradiction between the two. [emphasis mine]

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On a more theological note, Mr Marcel Lejeune has fielded a question about predestination (and free will) which is worth reading. He does a good job of both outlining the positions and then answering the question (with an assist from Ludwig Ott).

God wants us all to be saved and yet some choose not to accept this invitation. Ultimately, there are several different theological answers that have arisen in order to try and figure it all out.

The Catholic Church allows for several answers, because we ultimately don't know for sure.

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The Acts of the Apostasy is quickly becoming one of my go-to blogs for a good laugh (the other one being The Curt Jester). Today's exhibit: "The Annual Progressive Catholyc Spelling Bee." Who says that orthodoxy has to be dull?
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It may be a bit late for "The Mary Month of May," but my friend Mr Daniel Bui, a fairly recent convert, has an article on his blog about St Mary as The Mother of God:

Let’s start in March 26, 1998. I was only eleven years old. My sister Tammy and I were at St. Luke’s hospital. My little sister was about to be born that night. Tammy and I were in the waiting room. There was a Hispanic couple there. Being arrogant as I probably am today, I asked them if they were Catholics. They affirmed so. Then I went to challenge them on the doctrine of Mary being the Mother of God. Boy, would you look at that, an eleven year old boy thinks he knows more than the whole two-thousand year old Catholic Church, thinks Catholics are in error for saying that God has a mother. The Hispanic couple was polite. They tried to explain that Mary is the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God, therefore, Mary is the mother of God. My eleven-year-old mind could not understand it. How can a human give birth to God? God is eternal, Mary isn’t.

I look forward to reading part 2.
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On another level of apologetics, Ms Ruth Jonnakuti of Christian.com posed this general challenge to all of the Catholics:

What Rock is Jesus talking about when he said
Mat 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of **** shall not prevail against it....Making a Bible doctrine on 1 single verse taken out of the context it was in leads to error....Catholics [use this verse] to justify the Popes Rule....The rock Jesus is pointing to and talking about is to do with what he had just said to Peter. The Father in heaven had revealed to Peter by the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ or Messiah of Israel. Jesus tells Peter that he did not learn this truth with his head but from God to his heart!! This is a divine revelation.

This is good as far as it goes, but since Ms Jonnakuti asks for more context, it is worth giving some background. This is done nicely by Fr Stanley L Jaki in his book "And On This Rock: Witness of One Land and Two Covenants." It is also summarized nicely here.
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On another note, with thanks to Mr Stefan Kirchner, here is a bit of good apologetics by a fellow Catholic, drawing from Chesterton. Question: why be Catholic. Answer: because it's true.
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The Zippy Catholic has this nice gem to ponder in closing:

Every now and then, someone suggests that my understanding of what is morally permissible is that it - what is morally permissible - is more narrow than what the Church explicitly requires.

That is absolutely true....because what is morally permissible is in fact more narrow than what the Church explicitly requires.

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