Quote: Rhetorical Education and Citizenship

"Consider the audience of an orator like Lincoln: even if his audience consisted of simple farmers, these farmers would have been exposed regularly to examples of oratory modeled on great orations of the past. County fairs often featured Ciceronian orations extolling the virtues of American agriculture; even country preachers modeled themselves on the sermons of great Protestant divines; eloquent, structured toasts and speeches were expected features of public events. American culture at the time of Lincoln, in other words, was one in which the average citizen encountered regularly acts of rhetoric that demonstrated sustained logic in elegant, gripping language, held up to the standards of great Western orators."

So writes Dr Sean Lewis on the blog for Wyoming Catholic College, concerning the decline of Rhetoric in the West. This is turn reminds me of a conversation which I had a few years ago with a good friend of mine, Mr Stephen Cheney. We had been discussing the relative decline of the art of homiletics (specifically), when he mentioned a style of homily which was once in wider use, but which has seemingly gone by the wayside. There was a time once when the preacher might on occasion choose not to write his own homily, but rather to present the homily of somebody else, a sort of "great homilies" approach.

Sometimes Fr Dullwind really does have a very good homily which truly illumines this week's readings, or at least a well-thought-out sermon which can somehow be tied into them. There are certainly more than a few priests who take great pride in their homilies, meaning that they put great effort into researching the material for a good homily, and then crafting an excellent oration which glorifies God and edifies the congregation. However, more often than not Fr Dullwind is the type who puts together maybe a half dozen such homilies during the year, and then the remainder are "self-help motivational talks or cutesy stories littered with bad jokes...little more than funny anecdotes poorly strung together."

Must Fr Dullwind prepare his own homily each week from scratch? Can he not look back to some of the great orators of the past, the homilists whose sermons shook the world, the preachers whose preaching can still be presented today fresh an edifying as it was hundreds or even thousands of years ago? Can he not present a homily from Saint Augustine, or St John Chrysostom, or even the commentary of St Jerome? Or, turning from the Church Fathers, can he not find anything from Saint Thomas Aquinas, or Saint Vincent Ferrer, or Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman?

Perhaps he can. Or perhaps we have lost the ability to follow such sermons to the lethargy which has beset our society in its rhetorical slumber. Nevertheless, I can't help but think that in looking to these great preachers of the past, we may help raise if but a little the discourse of the present. We may also find that the Faithful are more well-catechized as a result.

Ignitum Today

Normally, I would have written a new post for Virtuous Pla.net yesterday. However, the site has been migrating to its new home--there was apparently a kerfuffle with some other group by the same name--and so has been under construction. I guess it gives me more time to work on the post in question, which is a sort of clarification. Said post is essentially done, though I've been discussing it with a friend to make sure the clarification really makes sense and isn't missing anything. We'll see.

In any case, what was previously VirtuousPla.net is moving, and there will be new posts when it's finished. All of the posts which I previously wrote for VirtuousPla.net have also migrated. This means that there are a lot of broken links, both on this site and on the new site site (namely, anything which began with "http://virtuouspla.net" no longer works). I'll fix the links when we officially "re-launch," I guess.

On the up side, this is a pretty busy next couple of weeks for me. I guess this is pretty good timing in that sense. Silver lining and all that.

TMM: There Are Some Questions

There are some questions whose answers I'm really not that interested in. This is not to say that I think the questions (or even the answers) are worthless: only to note that they value they will have for me is exceeded by the cost of obtaining those answers. I can hear some objections, especially in the context of a bit of performance art (note to self: use sparingly). Bad timing as this is, it's not meant to be related to that.

Actually, it's a statement of priority. There are three basic questions which I think must have priority over all others: what should I believe, what should I desire, and what should I do? These are lifelong questions, and they are the ones which really matter most, not only for me but for everybody*. There are other questions which are also important: "how do I know that my answers are correct?", for example. There are personal questions such as "who should I marry?" (I've already answered this question, of course), which might be important to me or to my family and close friends.

And then there are other questions, which may be interesting but whose answers don't much matter in the long run. "What is the damage-threshold of a gold-plated mirror at 873 nm?" is fairly important to me in that I need to know the answer to decide whether or not to buy a gold-plated mirror for my Raman laser system. "How does stimulated Raman scattering work?" is also fairly important to me, given that this is a part of my job. It's also a very interesting question, especially for the AMO affectionado; the political science major, however, couldn't care less, and he's no worse off for not knowing.

The knowledge would, of course, be worth attaining if it could be done "free": no time commitment, no financial cost, no risk to health, the knowledge doesn't displace some more "important" knowledge. But even knowledge is rarely so cheap: it is at the least a time investment. Some answers are not worth the investment, at least not intrinsically (that is, in the same sense as the three basic questions).

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* "What is the meaning of life" might be classed as a part of these three questions.

Sympathy for the Devil

I've posted a follow-up to my last Virtuous Pla.net post. It can be read here. Excerpt:

My last post on this site was my take on why not to read Nietzsche. I received a few comments which partially agreed with me but questioned whether is was a little presumptuous to say that there is nothing of value in Nietzsche–perhaps even a little cynical (ironic, no?). I probably should have mentioned that the last post was part of a sort of “internal debate” and that it would be followed by a second part, which would be in defense of wasting time on Nietzsche [1]. This is that brief defense.

Before I get too carried away, I would like to make a few preliminary notes. First, there will necessarily be some contradictions between this post and the last. It is, after all, a sort of debate, albeit an interior one. Second, there are some assumptions made explicit in my last post and the comments therein which still apply here. Namely, that Nietzsche shouldn’t be read at the expense of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas (at the very least), and that what he has to say is for the most part not true and not good (that is, the central tenets of his philosophy are neither good nor true) [2]. Third, I am here addressing Nietzsche but I think a lot of what I say here could pertain to other “great books” as well (I am thinking of Marx, Rousseau, Hegel, Kant…). Finally, I am writing for the young Catholic everyman who wants to be well-rounded, not necessarily for the professional philosopher.

With that in mind, there are some reasons to read Nietzsche. A number of them are already mentioned in the comments to my last post, so I will not rehash all of these, but rather will focus on a few reasons which come to my mind.

Read the rest on the Virtous Pla.net site.

Also, this didn't really have any place in either of the last two posts on Nietzsche, but here is a excerpt from Henri Cardinal De Lubac's The Drama of Atheist Humanism:

Deep is sadness,
Joy deeper than affliction.
Sadness says: pass on and die!
But all joy wants eternity,
Wants deep, deep eternity! [Zarathustra]

Between this 'deep eternity' that all joy wants and the height 'of sexual instinct, of rapture, of cruelty,' into which the Dionysiac trance plunges ["Dionysos philosophos"], the ring of 'becoming and return' has not effected a unity. This 'nuptial ring' has remained a beautiful symbol--a beautiful, powerless symbol [Zarathustra].

Nietzsche does not admit this. But his work cries it out. It contradicts the solution it lays hold of. It shows its gaping faults. 'I must persist in my dream under pain of perishing.' This is a terrifying admission, for what he called his pearl at the time could have become his salvation, while it is his attachment to an impossible dream that to the contrary will end up leading him to his doom. He who by his demand for sincerity allies himself to the highest of souls has ended up showing a suspicious interest in the idea of the 'sacred lie.' He who smelled out so subtly and flogged so harshly the unconscious hypocrisies of others, he it is who has become in the final analysis, not a masked man, but the man of the mask, almost, as it were, a theoretician of the self-indulgent, obstinate illusion, an adorer of a fiction that he knows quite well in the depths of his heart to be a fiction [Die frohliche Wissenschraft]. He pretended to create what he could not help suffering...Zarathustra is 'a Wagnerian work' [Andler, vol. 6, p. 59]. This poem in which he wished to mimic the Gospel is, despite so many beauties, painfully theatrical. One feels that there is a thirst for purity and authenticity in it, but at the same time something inflated and falsely solemn that betrays something counterfeit. And at the very same time that he feels sorry for Pascal as a victim of Christianity, Nietzsche is very close to admitting that he is a victim of his anti-Christian dream--his lie.

_____

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on The Act of Contrition

I understand "contrition" means "to feel remorse or guilt," but what does the "act" of contrition mean? Is it to confess your wrongdoing?

"O my God! I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life" (Traditional form of the Act of Contrition as found in the Baltimore Catechism no. 3 and the Penny Catechism). [see footnote 1]

When we talk about an "act," we often mean something which we do—an action. Thus, an "act of kindness" means something which we have done for somebody else out of kindness. But now think about this again: an "act" of kindness is often thought of as "small." An act of mercy is certainly something small which we've done, or we might call it rather a "work" of mercy. Thus, instructing the ignorant is a work of spiritual mercy, or feeding the hungry a corporal work of mercy; they take effort and commitment. Raising children is a "work" of love—but merely kissing your child goodnight is by contrast an "act" of love.


Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

VP: Waisting Time With Nietzsche

“There is no university if Plato is not read, even if it is called a university. Students who go to a university never having read Plato or Aristotle or Augustine or Aquinas, among other, are really wasting most of their time and money. Without those thinkers, and also the Bible, they will not have a clue as to what it is all about.

And I am not necessarily an advocate of what are called ‘great books,’ not that I am against reading them, however defined. My Another sort of Learning, in fact, was written because the great books are not adequate, even though they are ‘great.’ I agree with Leo Strauss and Frederick Wilhelmsen, both of whom remarked that the great books contradict each other. They can and often do lead to skepticism. Likewise, I agree with Plato in The Republic when he warns us of exposing students to great things too early, before they have lived long enough to recognize what is indeed great.”

My mind returns to this passage from the Jesuit Fr James’ Schall’s The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking whenever it is suggested to me that I ought to read the works of Friedrich Nietzsche or Karl Marx or Immanuel Kant (to pick just three “great” works). This is not to say that I utterly disapprove of “Great Books” programs, which if done well would indubitably lead to a better formal education than the one which I received.

Read the rest on the Virtuous Pla.net site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 16): Aristotle and Augustine and Anselm Oh My! Pascal, Too.

--1--

My last post on Virtuous Planet IgnitumToday--My Second Best Reason to Believe in God--has generated a bit of criticism. I somewhat expected that, though a lot of it misses the mark entirely, giving me the impression that quite a few people misunderstood the post. I generally appreciate constructive criticism, and can even sometimes tolerate destructive criticism. However, I would prefer that people who criticize do so while understanding my meaning. Based on the emails, facebook comments, and comments on the post itself, nobody save possibly Mr Nathanael Blake actually did understand my post, and even his comment makes me suspect otherwise. So, here are some comments, explanations, and hopefully clarifications.

--2--

The best reason to believe in something is because it is true–which I stated in my post. Arguments which seek to demonstrate or prove that God exists are thus arguments about the truth of God’s existence. There is more than one such argument, whatever may be those arguments’ merits or demerits. These would all be classed under “my best reason to believe in God.” The next best reason to believe something is because it is good. This is more a reason to desire that a thing be true, and (in the absence of evidence either way) to order your life in the hope that it might be true.  For what it’s worth, the third best reason to believe something is because it is beautiful. Note well that the second best reason is subordinate to the best, and the third best to the second best. This means that if God does not exist and we know that God does not exist without a shadow of doubt (a thing which even some atheists do not claim), then the fact that God is good does not make Him exist. I never claimed that it did, contra some commentators

--3--

Aside from citing Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Mr Nathanael Blake states that "Combining Anselm (who begs the question) with a definition of hell simply produces a horde of question-begging street urchins." Of course, my discussion doesn't rest on whether or not Saint Anselm is right. It rests on four propositions: that happiness comes from enjoying the good in proportion to the greatness of the good (Aristotle); that sorrow and wretchedness come from the converse of that, that is, from losing or failing to obtain that which is good (Augustine); that God Is the greatest good (definition employed by Saint Anselm); and that hell is that where the greatest possible sorrow exists (pick your source). If these four things are true, then it necessarily follows that we are in Hell right now (though we may not yet know it).

--4--

For more discussion concerning Saint Anselm's Ontological Argument, I would recommend Professor Edward Feser's post, fittingly titled Anselm's Ontological Argument. He also has a post concerning Professor Alvin Plantinga's version. Now, I know that this argument isn't air-tight. For crying out loud, even Saint Thomas Aquinas rejected it! I pass this along, for two reasons. The first is that Dr Feser points out just where the actual question-begging occur. Here is his conclusion:

"The lesson is not that Anselm’s argument is unsound so much as that it presupposes knowledge (i.e. of God’s essence) that we cannot have. Moreover, the idea that reason points us to the existence of that than which there can be nothing greater is something Aquinas himself endorses as long as it is developed in an a posteriori fashion, as it is in Aquinas’s Fourth Way." 

The second is that he also has a good comment about the three ways in which people approach this argument.

--5--

This point is not especially relevant to the argument either way. The differences between Hell as "this life without God" (let's call this "Earth-Hell") and as the next life without God (let's call this "Gehenna-Hell") are threefold. First, in Earth-Hell we cannot have absolute certainty. Even some atheists admit this, as when Professor Dawkins et al. chose as their bus ad campaign "There is probably no God" (my emphasis). In Gehenna-Hell, we will have absolute certainty. Second, Earth-Hell is temporary; Gehenna-Hell is not. Third, we may pursue other good in Earth-Hell, but there is no good (or goods) in Gehenna-Hell. Fourth might be the existence of hellfire in Gehenna-Hell, though there are other forms of suffering in Earth-Hell, too.

--6--

This brings me to Pascal's Wager. The Wager is, after all, not a proof that God exists, nor is it presented as one, either by me or by Blaise Pascal himself. Rather, it is a sort of bet which begins with the assumption that we don't know enough either way to conclude that God does or does not exist. The best reason (truth) comes up a coin-toss, not in that the truth itself is a coin toss but rather in that our knowledge of it is one. We lack certainty, and thus assume that God could exist or He couldn't. Yet we still have to decide one way or another, and we still have to live one way or another. There are four possibilities, based on whether God exists or not and whether we pick correctly or not. If God does exist, then we go to either Heaven (we picked correctly) or Gehenna-Hell (we picked incorrectly); if God does not exist, then picking either way does not much matter in the long run. My article does not exactly follow Pascal's wager, though someone told me that it was akin to upping the ante on this cosmic bet, though this was not exactly my intention. Rather, we should desire that God exist for the sake of our ultimate and final happiness; but desiring that a thing is so does not make it so. On the other hand, if we don't have absolute epistemological certitude that God does not exist, then we should live according to the desire that He does. This is Pascal's point, I think.

--7--

The common objection to Pascal's Wager as an argument qua wager is that it seems to rely on a particular conception of God, namely, that it bets on the Christian God as opposed to the pagan gods, for example. The counterargument of the atheists is, in other words, that since some other gods may exist, therefore we should live as if no God or gods exist. Probably the right question to ask is whether or not the Christian God is or could be GCNBT. Since I'm already running fairly long for a set of "quick" takes, I'll let Mr John Zmirak field the question; or, since he is my go-to blogging philosopher, I'll refer the interested reader to Dr Edward Feser's post addressing the "one god further" objection (and his follow-up post); his posts about God, Man, and Classical Theism is also pertinent.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on Blaspheming the Holy Spirit (part 2)

This is a continuation of my discussion of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which is the one unforgivable sin (Matthew 12:31-32). In the previous part, I explained what it means to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. There are two meanings (at least) for this passage, the one being literal—that is, lying about God—and then a "practical" meaning, which is that there are six ways in which we can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. I left off by noting that the first four (despair, presumption, resisting/impugning the truth, and spiritual envy) lead to the last two (to obstinacy and, finally, to impenitence), and that these sins are ultimately unforgivable. This gives rise to a new question: why are these sins unforgivable?

To answer the question about what blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is, I turned to the end of the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry about the Holy Spirit. I would like to begin here by returning there:

The sins against the Holy Ghost are said to be unpardonable, but the meaning of this assertion will vary very much according to which of the three explanations given above is accepted. As to final impenitence it is absolute; and this is easily understood, for even God cannot pardon where there is no repentance, and the moment of death is the fatal instant after which no mortal sin is remitted. It was because St. Augustine considered Christ's words to imply absolute unpardonableness that he held the sin against the Holy Ghost to be solely final impenitence. In the other two explanations, according to St. Thomas, the sin against the Holy Ghost is remiss-able — not absolutely and always, but inasmuch as (considered in itself) it has not the claims and extenuating circumstance, inclining towards a pardon, that might be alleged in the case of sins of weakness and ignorance. He who, from pure and deliberate malice, refuses to recognize the manifest work of God, or rejects the necessary means of salvation, acts exactly like a sick man who not only refuses all medicine and all food, but who does all in his power to increase his illness, and whose malady becomes incurable, due to his own action. It is true, that in either case, God could, by a miracle, overcome the evil; He could, by His omnipotent intervention, either nullify the natural causes of bodily death, or radically change the will of the stubborn sinner; but such intervention is not in accordance with His ordinary providence; and if he allows the secondary causes to act, if He offers the free human will of ordinary but sufficient grace, who shall seek cause of complaint? In a word, the irremissableness of the sins against the Holy Ghost is exclusively on the part of the sinner, on account of the sinner's act.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

VP: My Second Best Reason to Believe in God

Some weeks I’m really not into writing long introductions to my pieces, so let’s get to it shall we: If God does not exist, then what follows is not that Hell does not exist, but rather that we already live there. Sure, we may not be shivering away in the ninth circle of Hell–though I suppose if we were, somebody would find a way to pin it on climate change–while having the endure the torment of Lucifer gnawing the flesh off of Judas and sucking the blood from Brutus. Nevertheless, the idea of merely being in the first circle of Hell is not exactly my idea of warmth and comfort.

Usually people don’t necessarily associate the lack of God as being “Hell” at any level, other than to note in passing that suffering does exist here as it must surely exist in Hell (albeit perhaps to a lesser degree). However, the first and greatest torment of Hell is precisely this loss of the beatific vision, this absence of God. Here is Dante’s own description of the first circle of Hell–the “limbo” in which we find ourselves if there is no God:

Read the rest on the Virtuous Pla.net Ignitum Today blogs.


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I should here add a little announcement: I anticipate that my blogging activities will probably be lighter for the next few weeks. The semester is wrapping up slowly, and I have a daunting number of tasks to finish before it does. I suspect that there will be little time for me to do much in the way of writing between now and early December (we'll see how the Thanksgiving break goes), between the workload and life in general. I hope to keep up with the RCIA question box (Nicene Guys) at the least, and hopefully also a regular post for VP. No guarantees for anything else.

CAT: Education, Propaganda, and Virtue

Today on the VirtuousPla.net Ignitum Today blogs, my co-blogger Miss Anna Williams discusses the relationship between education and virtue. In summary: being more educated does not make a person more virtuous. I agree with her assessment if we take education to mean "getting a higher degree" and all of the learning which goes with it. But learning is not the same thing as education. A truly well-rounded education is one in which a person learns (strengthening the intellect) but also attempts to inculcate virtue (strengthens the will)...Propaganda--unworthy of the name "education"--can thwart us in our attempt to become virtuous, be it by convincing us that some things are virtuous which are not (and vice versa), or by alternatively convincing us that we ought not be virtuous.

Read the whole thing on the Catholic America Today blog.

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on Blaspheming the Holy Spirit (part 1)

This isn't so much a question placed in the question box as a question which was brought up, briefly discussed, but never really resolved during our session about the Saints and Purgatory. What does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32)?

"Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come" (Matthew 12:31-32).

Given that we are told that blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the one unforgivable sin, it makes sense that we should want to know exactly what this means so that we can avoid doing it. I recall that a few years ago, there was this big atheist movement on YouTube in which people would make videos of themselves "blaspheming" the Holy Spirit, presumably as a way of saying "not only am I not a Christian now, but I intend to seal as not one ever, because I will sin in such a way that even should I be convinced that Christianity is true, it will be useless to me: I will have sinned so that I can not be forgiven." The videos were mostly of people saying bad things about the Holy Spirit: that He wasn't real, that He wasn't God, that He wasn't good but rather was evil etc.

There is some irony to be found in these videos. The folks involved wanted to be guilty of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and in a sense they are—but not for the reason that they believe. Sure, speaking ill of the Holy Spirit is a form of blasphemy, and especially attributing to God something which comes from Satan, or to Satan something which comes from God, is a very serious form of blasphemy. It most definitely can lead to scandal—deliberate confusion of people on a spiritual level. This is in and of itself bad (see Matthew 18:6, Luke 17:2, and Mark 9:42). This alone is a very grave sin.

There's something worse than this...

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

VP: Spiritual Battles in a Spiritual War

In his book The Total Money Makeover, finance adviser Mr Dave Ramsey describes a method for not only getting out of debt, but also then saving up for your children’s college fund and your own retirement fund. In reading his plan, I notice that he doesn’t begin with: take all available money and start paying off your debts. Rather, the first step in his plan is for you to save up $1000 as a short-term emergency fund. The idea behind the plan is that accidents and emergencies happen, and when they do it is best to have some cash on hand so that you do not need to tack out more debt to deal with them. The goal is to eliminate debt, so that also means eliminating possible (that is, emergency) sources of new debt first. This idea of a short-term emergency fund is not unique to Mr Ramsey, but is in fact widespread [1].

What the system recommended by Mr Ramsey does, in other words, is take into account both the long-term goals and the short-term obstacles, and then it gives solutions for achieving the one and overcoming the others. This seems to me to be sensible advice both for personal/household financial planning and for the larger economic planning on our country’s part, though unfortunately neither the average family nor our country’s government ever seem to take both into consideration [2]. However, since I’m not an economist, this isn’t going to be an economic policy post, nor a financial advice one. For the former I would recommend Thomas Sowell, F.A. Hayek, or Henry Hazlitt, and for the latter Dave Ramsey; but my in-expertise combined with my writer’s block means that drawing all of this out would suck up a little too much time and would yield a poor product in return. On the other hand, there is another topic which I think could use a similar approach and which would involve a bit less time-suckage on my end–even if the end-product is little improved over an economics post.

In thinking over this principle of long-term plans and short-term contingencies, had a bit of an epiphany, at least one for me. It may have been a the kind of epiphany which leads to my realizing something that an ordinary person has long known based on common sense, much like Mr Ramsey’s advice is rather commonsensical. Well, at least there wouldn’t be as much time-suckage in writing such a post, so here goes: this principle which I have said is a financial principle is really a moral principle. We cannot win the spiritual war in our own lives if we lose every battle along the way.

Read the rest on the Virtuous Pla.net blogs.

On Two Movements

My friend Mr Nathanael Blake has a couple of short posts concerning the push for "gay marriage" and how a part of it's purpose--arguably it's main (if not sole) purpose--is to be used to strip Christians of our civil liberties. They're worth a read, as is the brief exchange in the com boxes of the first post. I was originally not going to write anything more about these here--I find nothing really to disagree with in either, and did not originally have much in particular to add, either. I did, however, originally pass the latter post along via facebook, which had the unsurprising result of garnering a comment in opposition:

"To coach it in terms of an issue about which we have had a longer time to consider, I guess it comes down to whether we want to allow black people to sit at the counter or not. Half a century ago the nation came to a decision that we did not want to be a civilization where the powerful were allowed to mercilessly bully the minority under the dubious guise of liberty. Ironically enough, the Civil Rights movement was waged AGAINST practices like those exhibited by the B&B owners. There is childishness in the linked article [that is in Mr Blake's post], and someone is accruing quite a civility deficit, but I do not believe it is the party the author tries to make it out to be.

If this were actually a religious organization I would probably take a different stand, we have a right to whatever personal bigotry we wish to cling to in our private lives, as evidenced by the continued existence of organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. But, if a business wants to refuse to sell a gun to a Klan member, seat a black person, host a homosexual, or elect a Catholic CEO; due specifically to that status, then there is a problem."

Yes, the homosexualist movement would like to pretend that they are exactly paralleling the old civil rights movement*. This means that we necessarily must try to paint anyone who dissents as being every bit as bigoted and backwards as the old white supremacists, and that THEY. MUST. BE. PUNISHED! Therefore, the bed and breakfast which refuses to host a "gay marriage" must be punished, and lawsuits must be brought to bear. Their conscience rights must be trampled under the boots of progress marching inexorably forth into the future.


There are any number of problems with this comparison between the civil rights movement and the homosexualist movement. Without getting into the entire argument as to whether or not the homosexual lifestyle is right or wrong, free-will choice or predestined by genetics or environment, I can think of a few other places where the two movements deviate from one another.

First, how did each movement go about achieving its goals? I can think of a grand total of three lawsuits involving the civil rights movement spanning over a half a century. These challenged either standing laws (Plessy v Ferguson), or the board of education (Brown v Board of Education, Cummings v Board of Education) for a school district: which is a public entity providing a rather public good. It is true that in the former, there were private business involved--but these were governed by state laws mandating segregation. In the case of the latter, a school board (and school district) is a public entity, not a private business. For the homosexualists, it's all about lawsuits. Are you a photographer who refuses to work at a gay civil union service? Lawsuit. Are you a baker who won't bake cakes for a reception at such a service? Lawsuit. Are you a bed and breakfast owner who refused to host any part of the service? Lawsuit. Are you a clerk who had an authorized assistant sign the state marriage license? Lawsuit.


Second, aside from the fact that they are rather lawsuit-happy, we see that the homosexualists are anything but peaceful on other fronts, too. For example, there was plenty of violence in California against Proposition 8 supporters. I for one am having difficulty imagining the leaders of the civil rights movement engaging activities such as beating the bus driver who asked Rosa Parks to give up her seat; and the sit-ins at various businesses hardly involved vandalizing the place. And, as mentioned above, the folks who engaged in the sit-ins did not then run out and sue their target businesses if service was refused them.

Third, there is a bit of the "Tolerance is not enough. You. Must. Participate." to the homosexualist movement. Are you a firefighter in San Diego? Well, be ready to drive around (and be sexually harassed at the least) at the next gay pride parade. Are you a teacher? Well, be prepared to give a mandatory lesson on the glory and goodness of gay sex. Are you a pastor? Well, in spite of my friend's comment about this being limited to businesses and not Churches, be prepared to be forced into performing gay weddings at your church. Are you a religious organization who provides adoption services? Well, be prepared to either place with homosexual couples--or to close your doors.

Right or wrong, the homosexualist movement does not parallel the civil rights movement--and does not deserve the comparisons it draws to that movement. The civil rights leaders insisted on tolerance, respect, touching hearts and minds, and peaceful demonstration; on working against institutions, it is true, but on doing so peacefully, an attempt to change or heal the institutions. The homosexualist movement doesn't give a damn about tolerance, or for that matter about respect. They're not out to change hearts and minds, they're out to demand immediate compliance. They don't want to work to peacefully change institutions, though of course if some of their demands will be met peacefully they'll take victory that way; rather, they want to crush any opposition, even the faintest whisper of an object; they want to destroy institutions, and from their rather malicious lawsuits, they are more than happy to ruin individuals as well. This is not to mention that they have already succeeded in ruining more than a few lives, and have done so in a rather callous manner.

---Footnotes---
* All of which ignores the original points in Mr Blake's article. The first is that this movement is less about rights and equality than about bullying Christians and ultimately creating a system of legal persecution. This can be seen by the simple fact that a photographer's refusal to work at a "gay marriage" ceremony does not in the least prevent that ceremony from going forward. Get over it and get a different photographer. Ditto for the B&B, the baker, etc. The second point is the actual childishness and petty hypocrisy of the left on this issue. The first post pointed out that the left is not the least bit interested in saving marriages--they're the driving force behind a number of projects and proposals which have made it easier to destroy, ruin, or otherwise end a marriage; and they have done little more than oppose any efforts to actually make divorce more difficult to obtain, or for that matter any other method which might help marriages to last and to be successful. In the second post, he ties in with the OWS crowd and others on the left who complain about the soullessness (and immorality) of businesses--all while the left punishes any business whose owners seem to care about the wrong things besides profits, in particular morality.


---Updates---
Catholic Vote's Mr Thomas Peters expresses some more thoughts on this, which are in agreement with my own (albeit from a slightly different angle).

Seven Quick Takes (v 15): Seven Quick Links for RCIA

This week is going to be a little different with the quick takes. Two or three of the RCIA candidates and catechumens have been asking me for a while for a list of my favorites blogs. So, this week's quick takes will be a few of my favorite blogs (and similar) sites which I think could be and/or will be helpful for converts.

--1--

My first pick is the National Catholic Register blogs. They have put together a stellar cast over the years, most (all?) of whom also have their own private blogs elsewhere. I would especially recommend Mr Mark Shea (who writes with a goofy and rather winsome style), Mr Jimmy Akin (whose prose is generally very clear and thorough) and Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler (who is smart, humorous, and also quite gracious), but the entire group is good.

--2--

While on the subject of group blogs, I would also recommend Virtuous Pla.net. There are quite a few talented young writers there, and posts have covered everything from philosophy and theology to culture (including specifically Catholic culture). Your humble servant also contributes a (usually) hebdomadal post, but I would actually recommend quite a few others who write there first: Mr Brent Stubbs, Fr Ryan Ehrlenbush, Mr Marc Barnes, the Three Bright Maidens, Mr Nathan Kennedy, Mrs Jennifer Mazzara... Most of the VP contributors also list their own personal blogs on the "meet us" page. I especially also read the blog of Dr Stacy Trasancos.

Update: Two things here. 1) The site is now IGNITUM TODAY, and 2) the cast of writers has changed a bit since I wrote this. I try to keep an up-to-date list of the writers' blogs in my links on the left side of this blog, under the IGNITUM TODAY NETWORK links. Some of the writers, such as Nathan Kennedy, have stopped writing entirely (for now). Others, like Fr Ehrlenbush and Mr Barnes are still writing, but on their own sites. Look 'em up! There are a number of other talented writers will writing for IGNITUM TODAY, and a few of the old standbys are still there.

--3--

The blogs for the Archdiocese of Washington are in general good. Monsignor Charles Pope is especially good, as his writing style is clear and pastoral, and often also very insightful. I suspect that he gives some very good homilies for whichever parish is lucky enough enough to have him.

--4--

There are several sites which are not so much blogs with advice as blogs which collect links to good, useful, or interesting posts. The New Advent site which is put together by Mr Kevin Knight is the best of those; he's also done us all the great favor of compiling online such things as the Douay-Rheims Bible, the Summa Theologica, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and some of the writing of the Church Fathers (though I'm not sure whether a candidate or catechumen will necessarily find these useful now).

--5--

It's not technically a blog, but the Catholic Answers website is a veritable treasure trove for anyone who is coming into the Church or is otherwise interested in apologetics. They have a team of apologists (which includes a few folks I've introduced above) who have answered probably thousands of short questions, they have compiled a number of tracts on any number of doctrines and practices of the Church, and the even have a forum for discussion. This is, incidentally, the first site that I turned to when I became interested in apologetics. I can think of a few other non-blog sites which are worthy of recommendation (Dr Peter Kreeft's site and Fr Robert Baron's Word on Fire spring immediately to mind), but for a convert (or anyone else interested in Catholic apologetics), I can think of no better single-stop site than Mr Karl Keating's Catholic Answers site.

--6--

The Aggie Catholics blog, which is mostly run by Mr Marcel Lejeune, is also very candidate/catechumen-friendly. Actually, of all these sites I've listed so far, this one seems to me to be the most heavy on Q&A posts--and his answers are always very good. They're also usually more succinct than my answers (which is not hard to do, but still...), so those who have questions and don't want to read a lengthy 3-4 page tract in response might look to see if he's answered your question before, and if not perhaps drop him a line.

--7--

There are a lot of other great websites out there. The list of links by the side of my blog will take you to some of them, and following the links from New Advent (or from Mr Tito Edward's Pulp.it, or sometimes Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler's links blog, etc) will generally point you to them. However, I wanted to limit myself to 7 blogs. And since Catholic Answers isn't technically a blog, that leaves leaves me with at least a couple possible selections. I would recommend Dr Scott Hahn and Mr Frank Weather's "Why I Am Catholic." These two men--like so many others on this list--are also converts. Scott Hahn's books in particular are excellent, and I think that they would be very beneficial not only to most if not all converts but also to most if not all cradle Catholics. And Frank Weather's site is just plain inspiring.

Take 7 Update: And here is another reason why Frank Weather's blog rocks.


-----
Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Nicene Guys: God, Love, and Desire

"For surely anyone's love will grow feebler and cooler towards one whom, as he supposes, he will have to leave, whose truth and wisdom he will have to reject, and that after he has come to the full knowledge of them, according to his capacity, in the perfection of felicity. No one can love a human friend with loyalty if he knows that in the future he will be his enemy" (City of God, Book XII, Chapter 21). 

The last couple of weeks, I've been discussing happiness as it relates to the good, and the good as it relates to love. This week, I would like to discuss love is it relates to God. So far, I've given a basic definition for happiness—namely that our lives are only truly happy if we spend them in pursuit of the Good, meaning that we pursue our greatest goods first and our other lesser goods only when these do not hinder our pursuit of the greater goods. Moreover, to love somebody means to desire that person's greatest happiness, which in turn means desiring that that person pursue and acquire or attain his highest goods. As for these goods, the highest goods of man are to know (or understand) and to love, but the greatest, perfect, and supreme Good is God. In other words, man should aspire to final union with God, even though this is achieved only after this life; but he should also attempt to love others, and to pursue not only knowledge about God, but also the so-called "secular" knowledge (e.g. Natural philosophy, science, etc).

Saint Anselm, in formulating his famous ontological argument, noted that God is defined as "that than which greater cannot be thought" ("GCNBT"). As I mentioned in the first part of this series,

In other words, this is what (or Who) God is, by definition (and regardless of whether or not St Anselm's proof itself holds), and it can be nicely combined with Divine Simplicity (the two seem to be naturally intertwined in the thought of St Augustine, for example), which is a tenet of Classical Theism and of the Catholic Faith. In other words, when a faithful Catholic refers to God, he is referring to GCNBT, whether or not St Anselm's argument works. In other words, whether He exists or not, God is the greatest Good of which we can conceive.

 It therefore follows that the greatest happiness of which we can think is to be with God or in Him. In other words, eternal life in heaven is the total fulfillment of the greatest happiness which we can conceive. There cannot, even in principle, be either a greater happiness than this nor a greater sorrow than to lose this eternal life. If atheism is true, then we are already in Hell, because there cannot, even in principle, be a greater sadness and sorrow than to lose or fail to obtain eternal life with God.

There is a corollary to this which I did not draw out before.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

Some Hump Day Drollery

This week's Friday quick takes are being dedicated to something else (you'll see on Friday), so here are a few sundry things which I would otherwise have put there.

--1--
What does an Australian call his friend from Prague? "Czech mate."

--2--
My wife and I made the Daily Texan comics today--as characters! My critiques: my wife's hair is more of a auburn-brown than blonde, and also I've gone as Leonardo (though not this year!), but never Michelangelo.

There is some back-story to this comic, which I shared with my two classes. My wife and I went over to her voice student's house for Halloween. He made us a very good dinner, and shared his scotch with me (that definitely counts as a treat), and we handed out candy to trick-or-treaters. Now, on the way over, we passed by a little girl who we saw from the back had what appeared to be butterfly wings on. My wife made one of those "Oh, how cute!!!" comments, and on we drove. A few hours later, the same little girl made it to our friend's house and my wife made another "Oh, how sweet!!!" comment as we opened the door. She then held the bowl of candy down for the girl, who grabbed several candy-bars and m-and-m packages out of it. Her dad, who was right behind her, said, "Tell them what you are, honey."
"I'm a stwawberwy fairwy."
Good thing my wife didn't actually say what she had been thinking: "What an adorable butterfly!"

Bonus: the little girl then counted out the candies that she had taken for Becca on her fingers.

--3--
There is anther trick-or-treater story worth sharing. The doorbell rang, and my wife got up to answer it. She slowly crossed the room to the door while motioning for me to get the candy for her. She opened the door and there were two very sheepish-looking middle school girls on the threshold. One was looking just to the left of the doorbell and apparently reading something, while the other was standing back awkwardly. "Yes?" my wife asked.
"Um, what does 'no soliciting' mean?" the girl in front replied.
"It means no door-to-door salespeople, don't come here to try and sell anything."
"Oh. Um, trick or treat?" she said, while still looking quite sheepish.

--4--
Speaking of role reversals, here is my thought of bad cooking (which in my family is really only inflicted by me):
There are lots of starving people in the world--who would turn down this meal.

--5--
I did end up making it to the JPII Life Center benefit banquet. Oddly enough, I ended up sitting next to the mother and father of some of Becca's music students. They in turn recognized not only Becca as the music teacher, but also me as the guy who gave that talk about physics at Saint Dominic Savio's, where their oldest daughter is enrolled. We had a pleasant conversation before dinner, which was largely about being a lay Dominican. Afterwards, Becca and I were stopped by a second set of her students' parents. These actually had a background in engineering (the mother, in Mechanical, the father in Biomedical); our conversation was a bit more about physics research.

And to cap of the night, I caught Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler, who was with a friend. Oddly enough, the conversation with turned a bit towards...being a Dominican and a physicist. I was laughing a little about the role reversal involved in her introduction of me to her friend as "I read his blog."

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on Welcoming Unrepentant Sinners into the Church

Would a practicing homosexual be welcomed into the Church? Would a practicing thief be welcomed into the Church? Would a practicing idolator be welcomed into the Church?

I'd first like to re-phrase the question to get to the gist of it, then return to these three specifics. "Would a practicing and unrepentant sinner be welcomed into the Church?"

There are several ways in which we can welcome a person. We can, for example, invite him to come attend Mass with us or invite him to an outing (say, a Church picnic). One need not be a Catholic to do either of these things, nor really to recognize them as forms of being made welcome.

There is another form of welcome, which is "would this person who is unrepentant of his grave sins be welcome to receive the sacraments?" The answer to this questions is "no, he would not." As pertaining to the sacraments in general, this is because the Church tries to respect where a person is on his faith journey, whether he himself does or not.


Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.