NYT: Trump Stole the Left’s License to BS

I must apologize — I thought I’d written my last political commentary. But when I read Casey William’s April 17 New York Times think piece, “Has Trump Stolen Philosophy’s Critical Tools?”, my first impression was, “This is either very subtle satire or the most blatant exposition of cognitive dissonance ever.” The problem: Williams desperately wants to call Pres. Donald Trump a liar.

We’re used to this pattern by now: The president dresses up useful lies as “alternative facts” and decries uncomfortable realities as “fake news.” Stoking conservative passion and liberal fury, Trump stirs up confusion about the veracity of settled knowledge and, through sheer assertion, elevates belief to the status of truth.

Trump’s playbook should be familiar to any student of critical theory and philosophy. It often feels like Trump has stolen our ideas and weaponized them.

However, the very critical tools upon which the academic left has become dependent for intellectual life-support forbids appealing to objective reality to back the claim that Trump lies. After all, if there is such a thing as an objective reality, we can’t know it for certain. The left has their facts, and Trump has his. Under postmodern critique, pace Daniel P. Moynihan,[*] the right to one’s own opinion is the right to one’s own facts.

La Civiltà Cattolica and the “Spirit of the Age”

Rev. Antonio Spadaro, SJ. (Photo: Magyar Kurír.)

Brace yourselves. Once again, someone in the Vatican has challenged Church doctrine in a way that implicates Pope Francis, on an issue about which he has already spoken — women’s ordination to the priesthood. (Surprise, surprise, the culprit is a Jesuit.) Arguably, the last pope to have total control over his staff was St. Gregory the Great. Certainly, it’s dubious whether any pope since Pius XII has had a curia and bureaucracy that were all striving to the same end. But even the most doughty of papal defenders must occasionally find himself irritated by Francis’ seeming unwillingness to ride herd on the Vatican administration.

This is Where We Came In …

On Tuesday, February 7, Sandro Magister reported on an article published in the Italian Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, written by Fr. Giancarlo Pani, SJ. Titled “La Donna e il Diacono,” Magister claims that in the article, “Fr. Pani calmly rips to shreds the ‘last clear word’ — meaning the flat no — that John Paul II spoke against women’s priesthood.”

Yawn, you say; haven’t we seen this movie before, during the reigns of Benedict XVI and St. John Paul himself? Ah, says Magister, but this is different! You see, the Holy See inspects and authorizes every line it publishes! Plus, the editor is none other than papal confidant Fr. Antonio Spadaro, and Fr. Pani is not only a deputy editor but his closest colleague!

And Francis is the first “not to limit himself to what is already known, but wants to delve into a complex and relevant field, so that it may be the Spirit who guides the Church,” concludes La Civiltà Cattolica, evidently with the pope’s imprimatur.

The first rule in dealing with news from the Vatican: Not everybody in the Vatican is on the same page. In fact, going off-script is almost an intramural sport. Most bureaucracies have functionaries whose agendas differ from the person supposedly in charge of the mess. The Vatican differs only in that the subversion is more rampant and sometimes more blatant. Since Pius XII, the popes have as often had to work against the bureaucracy as with it. Nobody should assume that anybody in the Holy See does anything unusual with the full knowledge of the Pope, or even with the minimum knowledge of the next person up the food chain.

The Chittister Challenge 2: Supply, Demand, and the “Culture of Life”

On Saturday, January 28, Joe Heschmeyer published an essay, “Seven Answers to the ‘Pro-Lifers are just Pro-Birth’ Argument,” in his blog Shameless Popery. The essay offers rebuttals to a meme featuring the quote from Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, that I wrote of a couple of years ago. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Joe, who is a student at the Pontifical American College in Vatican City (and, I believe, should be coming up on his transitional diaconate this year). I earnestly commend the essay to your attention; it’s very well balanced in its treatment of the argument.

Supply and Demand

However, Joe’s essay did prompt me to do a little more drilling on the subject, to embrace a little more of the political context in which the argument arises. The recent elections brought to the surface a long-standing tension between two different camps within the pro-life movement, camps which I will for brevity’s sake call the supply-side and demand-side branches. While the meme Joe dissects arose in a pro-abortion context, the quote has also had currency among demand-side pro-lifers.

The supply-side pro-life camp, which we could also call the first-wave movement, is mostly concerned with the legality of abortion and euthanasia, along with some related issues such as assisted suicide, cloning, IVF, and contraception. Politically, they tend to be older and more conservative or right-wing libertarian. As Joe rightly points out, conservatives are more likely to donate time and money to support charitable causes than are liberals, so it’s not like they’re stingy. However, precisely because their politics are more conservative, their view of the scope of “pro-life” is, for want of a more charitable word, narrower. They highly resist the importation of other issues, such as Syrian refugees or undocumented immigrants, into the pro-life purview and refuse the creation of government intervention programs. Because their concern is mostly with the legal and political mechanisms permitting the “death industry” to exist, one can say they seek to shut off the supply.

By contrast, the demand-side camp or second-wave movement tends to be younger, as well as more moderate to liberal in their politics though less willing to affiliate with either party or identify with either ideology. The demand-siders recognize that economic and social issues often drive the choice for death; by addressing those issues, they seek to reduce the demand. For this reason, they’re more likely to support government intervention and more willing to pay the taxes required to support the efforts. The pro-life movement as a whole is concerned with what Vice-President Mike Pence called “[society’s] most vulnerable, the aged, the infirm, the disabled, and the unborn.” The second-wave movement, influenced by the consistent life ethic articulated most notably by Cdl. Joseph Bernardin and in St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, extends its recognition of vulnerability to immigrants, refugees, the homeless, and other socially marginalized people.[*]

Doing Wrong By the Country: The “Lesser Evil” Vote

I’m sick to death of this election. The most distressing aspect of this election cycle is that it’s revealed the extent to which American Catholics, particularly those of a conservative bent, have embraced utilitarianism. For some, it’s a half-hearted utilitarianism — “Oh, we have a lot of qualms about our candidate, but we’ll manfully swallow them to prevent The Evil Candidate from being elected” — but it’s utilitarianism nonetheless.

A Priest Endorses Utilitarianism

Nothing so forcefully illustrates this as the final paragraph of this op-ed from the Wall Street Journal by James Freeman, “Doesn’t Clinton Embarrass the Democrats?”:

Voters who wish to reject the Clintonization of America’s governing institutions have a choice on Nov. 8. They can feel good about themselves by writing in the name of a third-party candidate. Or they can do right by the country by selecting the only person who can stop the Clintons: a very flawed candidate named Donald Trump.

Not only is the argument utilitarian, it sneers at third-party/write-in voters as vain fools voting their self-images. Ad hominem much? The kicker: the paragraph had been posted on Facebook by a priest whose name I shall not mention … and who ought to know better than that.

That Freeman and the WSJ would be for Trump is no surprise. Remarking on the last debate, Freeman comments, “Mr. Trump, for his part, deviates from many Republicans on trade and immigration but has otherwise embraced a growth agenda of lower taxes and regulatory relief for an economy that sorely needs it.” In other words, Freeman and (by extension) the Journal believe the only cure for our current economic doldrums is a hair of the dog that bit us in 2007.

Timothy Egan and the Reverent Subject of Sex

Timothy Egan. (Photo: Barry Wong.)

The last few days, I’ve been focused on the hyperventilating by Catholic radical traditionalists over Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’ overlong summation of the work of the last two Synods on the Family. The reactions from the left were, for the most part, entirely predictable — some despaired because it didn’t go as far as they thought it should, while others rejoiced because they thought it went farther than it did. Of the latter category, we have Timothy Egan of the New York Times, who penned what Phil Lawler has called “surely ... the dumbest column published on the topic.”

“Sex was Dirty”

Egan, Lawler states, “rolls out the stale complaints of the 1970s about the Bad Old Church, opening and closing his column with citations from the late comedian George Carlin. The reader will look in vain for references to any other authority. Nor is there evidence that Egan has paid attention to Catholic writers who have reflected on the Church’s approach to human sexuality more recently, and just maybe more profoundly, than Carlin—such as, just for example, St. John Paul II.”

Actually, Egan does worse than go without authoritative references: he cites the Baltimore Catechism in such a way that it appears to support the tropes.

Sex was dirty. Sex was shameful. Sex was unnatural. Thinking about it was wrong. Premeditation itself was a sin, and so was flirting. Sex had one purpose: procreation, the joyless act of breeding. “The sixth commandment forbids all impurity and immodesty in words, looks and actions,” was admonition No. 256 in the Baltimore Catechism, the standard text used to teach the faith from 1885 to the late 1960s.
No. 256 [sic; the actual answer number is 257] also warned about the dangers of “sinful curiosity, bad companions, drinking, immodest dress and indecent books, plays and motion pictures.” If that sounds now like the dynamics of a good dinner party, you can also see this pope joining the fun at the table.

In my post on Amoris Laetitia, I spoke of the distinction the Church makes between the doctoral (“What do we teach?”) and the pastoral (“How do we integrate this teaching into parish life?”). The same kind of distinction ought to be observed between doctrine and indoctrination: religious formation, also known as catechesis. What the Catholic Church teaches is one thing; what Tim Egan and George Carlin “learned”, however, is another thing entirely, and may not be entirely their fault for not paying attention in class.

Progressive fundamentalism and gay wedding cakes

On July 17 on the Patheos blog Unfundamentalist Christians, a blog dedicated to repackaging Christianity for greater feminist and LGBT friendliness, guest contributor April Kelsey’s bio proclaims her goal to be “to put the final nail in fundamentalist Christianity”. Well, everyone should have a goal in life, although it’s far more probable that progressive Christians like Kelsey will cease to be Christians even in name long before fundamentalist Christians cease to be fundamentalist.

However, Kelsey is unaware that she, too, is a fundamentalist, albeit one who skews her reading of the Bible leftward rather than to the right. Indeed, the last line of her post “Your ‘Deeply-Held Belief’ Isn’t Biblical” — “… [I]f it isn’t in the Bible, I don’t have to believe it” — is the most common expression of one of the “two pillars” of Christian fundamentalism: sola scriptura, “only Scripture”.[*] I too would like to see the end of Christian fundamentalism, because I’d like to see the end of Christian disunity, which sola scriptura helps to propagate.

Now, if you want to stop being a fundamentalist, you have to reject sola scriptura (and there are many reasons you should do so). There are really only three ways to accomplish this. One is to stop being Christian altogether. The second is to regard the Bible as fallible and make Christ your ideological sock puppet, like Jimmy Carter. The third is to become Catholic, or at least Eastern Orthodox, and let the apostolic tradition guide your understanding of Scripture. Whichever way you do it, you can’t say, “I only believe what I read in the Bible,” and still pretend you’re not a fundamentalist. Fundamentalist does not equal politically conservative.

Murphy’s Law and Jesus in Hell

Okay, if we’re all done laughing about #SalonChristianitySecrets ….

The problem with clickbait headlines is that, all too often, they don’t entice you to read the story. Rather, they become the story. More often than not, the link is shared with other people, to be ridiculed or praised whether anyone actually reads the copy or not; their joy and outrage is sparked solely by the one or two deliberately misleading lines at the top of the page. Not even the lede gets a glance. Moreover, if someone does read the copy, their understanding is front-loaded by the headline, giving false strength to weak evidence and arguments.

Such was the case with Ed Simon’s “Jesus went to hell: The Christian history churches would rather not acknowledge”. Contrary to Simcha Fisher’s impatient dismissal in her National Catholic Register blog, Simon did do some research on Jesus’ descent to Sheol, and showed some understanding of the teaching. Knowing the teaching, however, isn’t the same as knowing the divisions in modern Christian culture. It’s here that Simon trips up in his analysis, leading himself to the theme from which someone at Salon derived the title, in all its conspiracy-theorist awkwardness … and to all the hoo-hahs of the Twitterverse.

(My two favorites: “BREAKING: Jesus flipped tables in a fit of rage one time. IS THIS YOUR CHRIST?” and “‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’ #JesusMicroaggressions”)

For my own part, I suspect Simon is a Christian, even possibly one of an Eastern Orthodox communion. However, I suspect that he was raised in the West, and therefore infected by the materialism and reductionism in our culture. Certain aspects of Christianity strike him as weird because he expects everything to be rational, which no reasonable person would expect. The simplest, most readily-available cure for such an odd view of the world is to consult the many permutations of Murphy’s Law.

Pope Francis, Humanae Vitae, and Margery Eagen’s devastating fallacies—UPDATED ALREADY?

Filipinos at Pope Francis’ Mass in Manila, Jan. 18.
(Photo: AFP/Ted Aljibe.)

You would think that a writer billed as a “spirituality columnist” for a website that professes to cover “all things Catholic” would have some familiarity with Catholic teaching, especially the most controversial doctrines. However, Margery Eagen, writing for Crux, talks about Pope Francis’ recent speech at the Mall of Asia as though her only knowledge of Catholicism came from Planned Parenthood.

Although he has not lived it himself, I had thought [Pope Francis] understood something about good people living real lives in real marriages. I had thought he even understood something about the beauty of sex in marriage, the need for sex in marriage.

I was wrong.

In the United States, his words will have little practical impact. Most Catholic women have used birth control for decades. There are no more families with 12 and 14 kids in the Sunday morning pews. But his words do reveal a heartbreakingly backward perspective: that the highest calling of married women is sacrificing all to rear children, as many as come along, no matter those women’s talents or skills or dreams.

These aren’t the words of a person who’s well-educated in Catholic doctrine, let alone someone who should be discussing Catholic spirituality. These are the words of a journalist content to work with the straw-man “Catholic beliefs” constructed for her by second-wave feminism, the kind of nonsense which led Elizabeth Dias at TIME to write that “the mainstream media has nearly no understanding of the Church.”

In fact, Francis’ words reveal no such chauvinist nonsense. To be sure, he offered a doughty defense of the goodness of family and childrearing against “ideological colonization”, a branch of “cultural imperialism”. Eagen’s criticism presents us with the kind of false dilemma demagogues love: you’re either for contraception or you’re against women working outside the home.

Pope Francis, Islam and jihad

A troubling passage in Evangelii Gaudium

Andrew Bieszad, a scholar on Islam, seems to believe Pope Francis is teaching error — or, at least, opiniones intolerata — about the “Ishmaelites”:

For Islamic scholars, there is a statement in the apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, which is particularly troubling:

Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence. (p. 253)

As the situation in the Middle East escalates, and the violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) spills rivers of innocent Christian blood, this statement seems incongruous with reality.

From Bieszad’s perspective, Francis is apparently taking an attitude not taken by our forefathers in the faith; to assert this, Bieszad not only quotes the defiance spoken by a big handful of martyrs, but also theological heavyweight Saints John Damascene, Thomas Aquinas, and Alphonse Ligouri, not to mention latter-day hero Hilaire Belloc. If Bieszad doesn’t go so far as to call the pope a heretic, he does manage to imply that Francis is both wrong and a Neville Chamberlain-type appeaser.

The funny thing, though, is that the Islamic scholar doesn’t directly dispute Francis’ assertion, “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence,” with any citation of the Koran or mainstream Islamic scholars. Rather, he seems content to let the juxtaposition of Francis’ words and ISIS’ deeds do the work for him.

Another funny thing: When I began writing about eleven years ago, I was initially writing to defend the Catholic faith against the slanders and misunderstandings of Protestants and non-believers. Now, I spend an increasing amount of time correcting fellow Catholics. And thereby hangs a point.

Pope Francis and the libertarians

Cdl. Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga.

So far up to this point, I’ve been deafened by the lack of libertarian reaction to Cdl. Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga’s keynote speech at Catholic University of America’s conference on Catholicism and libertarianism. After all, it’s been more than forty-eight hours since Religion News Service’s David Gibson and Church whisperer Rocco Palmo broke the story.

Perhaps there’s some confusion among the ranks; as Kevin and Teresa Rice explain in Catholibertarian, “As it is uncommon to find two Libertarians who agree on very much, there is a wide room for difference of opinion and degree of commitment to at least the latter part of this composite.” Is what Cdl. Rodríguez condemned something that at least three out of four self-described libertarians assert?

Or perhaps libertarians and other conservatives have just stopped listening to the Church on economic matters. Cdl. Rodríguez cited an article in the National Catholic Fishwrap by Michael Sean Winters, who further references the ineffable Fr. John Zuhlsdorf: “I wonder how many people are still listening to [Pope Francis] seriously on this issue …. It comes across as naive, out of step with history.” This extract, partial and out-of-context as it is, is gentler than the nutty thrown by John Moody of FOX News:

By appearing to sanction what amounts to forced redistribution, Francis grievously exceeded his authority and became what amounts to a robe-wearing politician. He also exposed his Church, one of the wealthiest institutions in the world [one of the most pernicious myths in Western history], to inevitable charges of hypocrisy. And he put himself in a position of having to back up his frothy talk with ruinous action.

As I’ve noted in The Impractical Catholic, political progressives aren’t the only Americans who practice “cafeteria Catholicism”; not all conservatives and libertarians are above doctrinal cherry-picking.

“Mere Catholicism” vs. Real Catholicism™

Which one is the Real Catholic™?

The Circular Catholic Firing Squad found more bullets this last week. *sigh*

It appears that a Popular Catholic Blogger (whom I will not identify) called BS in the combox of another Not-So-Popular Catholic Blogger (ditto). After some vicious squabbling in NSPCB’s combox and on PCB’s Facebook page, joined in by other Well-Known Catholic Bloggers, NSPCB left the field of bloggery in a huff — or, per Groucho, in a minute and a huff — calling down divine retribution on all those who had the gall to correct him for their lack of charity.

In reference to this shindy, Scott Eric Alt commented on Facebook, “Pride is the most dangerous of sins because it is the least correctible — the very nature of the sin makes its victim feel himself to be above correction. The adulteress wept, and the Pharisee sneered.” Whether because of pride or narcissism or a particularly nasty combination of both, it’s very tempting for a Catholic blogger (Your Humble Blogger included) to make him/herself and his tribe the point of reference for Real Catholicism™.

The problem isn’t that there’s no normative or “mere” Catholicism, with distinct borders that define it as well as distinguish it from not-Catholicism. The first problem is that, while the Greek root katholikos means “universal”, Real Catholicism™ tries to make that universe smaller; it becomes more concerned with kicking “fake Catholics” to the curb than with correcting error or instructing the unknowing. The second problem is that, because Catholics are split politically by our god-awful culture wars, political language confuses and pollutes the competing monologues (very little real dialogue takes place). For example, see Hilary White’s diatribe in The Remnant  of a couple years ago, in which she condescendingly equates “neo-Catholicism” (almost-but-not-quite Real Catholicism™) with political progressivism. (EEK! RUN AWAY!)

Catholic Pharisees and the sin of rash judgment

The most dreaded implement of the Internet Inquisition:
the comfy chair. (© 1970 Python (Monty) Pictures, Ltd.)

That the accusations came in on a post dedicated to shoring up the tradition of worshiping on Sunday was bizarre as the accusations themselves. Said Kelly Lexy:

You seem to be an adherent to the Novus Ordo sectarian community. That is bad news. That means you are pro-abortion and a supporter of the engagers of the Sin of Sodom. …

One must say that you are obstinate. You are familiar with the sedevacante position [Indeed I am, especially with its similarity in flaws to Protestantism]. You have a familiarity concerning the heresies of the post-Vatican II claimants to the papacy. Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation: the heretics you promote reject this Dogma. …

If you’re at all familiar with my writings of the last five years plus, the statement that I am “pro-abortion and a supporter of the engagers of the Sin of Sodom” must have had you howling with either rage or laughter. The bit about baptism is a bit trickier; let me just content myself for now with saying that this is willful misinterpretation of Pope Francis’ words on the part of Ms. Lexy.[1]

When I denied her charge and told her she’d committed the sin of rash judgment, she doubled down on it: “Your false religion recognizes pro-abortion politicians as having a  good standing. Your false religion celebrates the sodomites since you have sodomite ‘masses.’ You are therefore pro-sodomite and pro-abortion since you are in communion with this evil and all such persons. You are an apostate.”

Not even Bernardo Gui — the real Bernardo Gui, not the cardboard-cutout antagonist of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose — would have brought me to trial under such specious reasoning. In any event, since the inquisition is defunct and has been for a very long time (even in Spain), I’m not worried about an auto-da-fé just yet.

Three cosmic historical errors—UPDATED

Hypatia of Alexandria: astronomer, mathematician,
philosopher ... martyr of Science?

Yesterday morning (3/20/14) I shared on Facebook a link to Artur Rosman’s CosmosTheInLost post, “Walker Percy on the College Dorm Arguments of Sagan and deGrasse Tyson”. Rosman reprints an extensive footnote by Percy in the latter’s book Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (New York: Picador, 2000), in which he bemoans the “unmalicious, even innocent, scientism” of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey. Neil deGrasse Tyson comes into the matter because of his reboot of the Cosmos miniseries, which includes Sagan’s highly-defective history of scientific development illustrated in cartoons (how appropriate!) by Seth MacFarlane.

One of my best friends, a Methodist, didn’t see the problem:

Being a fan of both of these men (Sagan and Tyson) and a fan of the original and the new one, I don’t understand the need to find an anti-theistic agenda in the productions. These men have made careers in astrophysics and increase the wonderment that is our world. The production value is huge and the entertainment value is bigger still. Am I so different from the supposed slack jawed, numb skull, UFC watching set that are supposedly changed in mindset with a show like this? My beliefs are not changed by the fact that this show grabs my attention and entertains me with all matters of the universe.

The problem isn’t an anti-theist agenda in the productions. Rather, the problem is in the perceived need to strip Christians and Christianity of all contributions to scientific development, and to add distortions of history in support of the “Christians hate science” trope. Three stand out in the Cosmos series, two of which Sagan elided together: 1) The murder of Hypatia; 2) the destruction of the Library of Alexandria; and 3) the death of Giordano Bruno.

Of judgment, sheep and Fred Phelps' passing—UPDATED

Fred Phelps, Sr. preaching at Westboro Baptist.

Yesterday, I happened to remember a chorus from Part II of Händel’s Messiah, “All we like sheep”, which is taken from Isaiah 53:6 KJV: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And it occurred to me that people who use the image of sheep to illustrate people who blindly follow leaders know less of sheep than I do ... and I don’t know much at all, at all. (Sorry; on St. Patrick’s Day I tend to slip into a stage-Irish accent.)

Contrary to the image, sheep have minds of their own. They wander all over as they graze. The shepherd’s task is to keep the flock together, and to protect them from predators. The task is made easier by dogs who have been bred to chase livestock back into herds (they make really good pets for children, too). Nevertheless, the shepherd’s life is hardly that of Riley — er, one of ease and contentment; when they’re not on the move trying to get the sheep from one pasture to another, they’re on watch for wolves.

So it is with Catholic and Orthodox bishops: The true picture of Church history is neither the triumphalist Whig history of millions of devoted faithful marching shoulder-to-shoulder in the wake of inspired leaders nor the hideous dystopian myth of cruel tyrants tormenting anyone who showed signs of intellectual independence. Rather, it’s the story of mostly ordinary men — some saints, some knaves, some fools, all limited by the very fact of their humanity — trying not only to spread the Gospel message but also to protect to the best of their knowledge and ability its integrity against threats both real and imagined.

The Catholic Circular Firing Squad, V. 3.0: Wherein Your Humble Blogger throws a spittle-flecked nutty—UPDATED

For those of you who missed it: Yesterday, Rorate Coeli, a traditionalist-oriented blog with which I’ve had issues before, broke a story screaming that Bishop Michael F. Olson, the newly-installed young bishop of Fort Worth (my home diocese), had rescinded Fisher More College’s permission to celebrate the Mass in the Extraordinary Form (aka the Tridentine Latin Mass, Mass of Paul V, or Vetus Ordo).

As RC presented the matter, the rescission was a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky. They printed a letter which Bp. Olson had sent to Michael King, FMC’s president, corralled a source called the Canon Law Centre to opine against Bp. Olson’s actions, then spent the rest of the news speculating how it could fit in with Pope Francis’ plan to abrogate Summorum Pontificum and destroy the Latin Mass forever. (Yeah, it’s that bad.)

Well, I followed the story all afternoon and evening yesterday, and all morning today (3/4/2014). You can read everything I learned on The Impractical Catholic; suffice it to say that RC didn’t check their facts or do any really serious inquiry into matters at Fisher More; they simply ran with a “bishop bashes TLM” story because it fit their “Francis Hates the Latin Mass” frame.

However, the Fisher More administration, particularly in the person of Pres. King, allegedly has begun to stray into schismatic territory, coming within an ace of sedevacantism. No less a person than Dr. Taylor Marshall, former chancellor and philosophy professor at Fisher More, also accuses King et al. of fiduciary mismanagement. It now appears someone at Fisher More — perhaps King? — played RC to make the bishop look bad and (perhaps) create traditionalist pressure to reverse himself.

The war to end all wars

Western front, 1915-1916. (Source: U.S. Military Academy.)

Over on The American Catholic, DarwinCatholic has posted an interesting article on an ongoing reassessment of World War I. The American Catholic has a lot of posts on American history that don’t even begin to reference Christ, the Church or anything specifically Catholic, so I don’t feel so bad about calling this blog a Catholic blog.

The main thrust of Darwin’s post is that post-war revisionism struck early and hard. Most of us who learned anything about the war in school learned that it was a horrendous waste of life, as idiot generals and field marshals hurled frontal attack after useless frontal attack in an obscene homage to Napoleon’s tactics; why, such attacks had become outdated by the end of the American Civil War!

Of course, now that I read this, I realize that the Civil War never dealt with front lines that extend hundreds of miles; with one end fused to the English Channel and the other to the Swiss Alps, the Western front didn’t permit flanking attacks. Just the sheer number of soldiers by itself changed the way the war had to be fought.

The generals of the war, Darwin points out, knew very well Napoleonic tactics wouldn’t work. The problem was finding something that would work. Both sides were fairly evenly matched for inventiveness; as soon as one side found a possible solution, the other side would develop a counter. For instance, gas worked for the Germans only until the French and English started producing their own gas masks. The art of war had to be not just changed but reinvented altogether.

But did the war have to be fought at all?

Gender differences and feminist sexism

Back in November, Deacon Greg Kandra reprinted a list that was making the rounds of “10 reasons why men shouldn’t be ordained”. In essence, it’s a list of stereotypes flipped against men rather than women. “I have to admit,” Kandra chuckled, “this made me laugh.”

As well it should; it’s a light, airy tongue-in-cheek exercise conducted in the demolition of a straw man. Which didn’t stop SisterLisa at Soul Liberty Faith from using it, along with another satirical list written by Victoria Pynchon at Forbes, to create a patronizing “there, there, you poor widdle babies” post on male ecclesial leadership. The essence of her argument is this: Conservative men don’t want women priests and deacons because they’re insecure.

Men who are insecure in their pants tend to puff up their ego with brutish verbiage with their self proclaimed titles and they belittle those around them. Their childish behavior reveals the fear they suffer from and perhaps it’s time they openly admit their brokenness so they can find healing. In this era of women theologians and justice seekers these men will rise louder and more brutal in their effort to keep women oppressed. The more fervent women are in putting their collective foot down about abuse, oppression, and equality the greater path we pave for women and children world wide. …

So perhaps we should be in prayer for our insecure brothers who rail against women in leadership. It just might make a difference for them to know we understand their insecurities and will hold them up in prayer. ... So when you see men like these … just pat them on the back and let them know it’s all going to be okay. We still need men in the world and there’s no hidden agenda to minimize their gender or belittle their sexuality.

The sacramentality of oaths

Dean Obeidallah is apparently one of those people who believe that, if you say “separation of church and state” over and over long enough, the “free exercise” clause will disappear from the First Amendment. Just read his latest post on CNN.com if you don’t believe me.

Obeidallah, if you’ll remember, is the guy who accused Rick Santorum of wishing to impose a “Christian Sharia” with such overwrought language that I almost forgot he’s a comedian — or at least he’s been billed as a comedian. This post is more lucid and more thoughtful than the Santorum nutty — perhaps he’s finally getting the hang of this mug’s game — so we can and should do him the courtesy of taking him seriously.

Obeidallah doesn’t believe Pres. Obama should use any Bible, let alone two when he swears in for the second time. He points out, quite correctly, that Article IV prohibits the government from imposing religious tests for public office or trust. He points out, again most correctly, that Theodore Roosevelt and John Q. Adams did not use Bibles at their own oaths of office. 

For the record, I’ll provide the information Obeidallah was lacking about TR’s motives: like Adams, Roosevelt believed in a fairly strict construction of the “establishment clause”, going so far as to try to have “In God We Trust” stricken from our money. Also for the record, both Roosevelt and Adams were devout, churchgoing mainline Protestants.

“Some will argue,” Obeidallah writes, “that swearing on the Bible ensures the president adheres to his oath. But let’s be honest: We have seen presidents and other elected officials swear to uphold the laws of our country with their hands on a Bible and go on to break many laws and ethical rules. It comes down to the person’s moral code, not a 30-second oath.”

Presumptions and the first law of general ignorance

As I sit here typing on my computer, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the wealth of knowledge and benefits science has brought us.  In fact, it’s so easy that we have to a great extent forgotten the appalling depths of our ignorance.

How can I say that?  Very simple: the quantity of unknowns in the universe is by definition unknowable.  This gives us Layne’s First Law of General Ignorance: We don’t know how much we don’t know.  If we know, then, that the extent of our ignorance is unknowable, we know that at least one thing is unknowable.  But we don’t know if there’s anything else that Man cannot comprehend or will not be able to comprehend at some future date.  Therefore, the corollary to the First Law: We don’t know how much we can’t know.

Got a headache yet?

Most thought systems have to start with at least some assumptions that neither need nor admit of proof.  For instance, you can’t get anywhere in plane geometry if you don’t accept that “a line is the shortest distance between two points”, or in algebra if a² = b² + c² is merely an opinion.  Likewise, reason has a fundamental assumption that “a thing cannot both be and not-be at the same time and in the same manner”.

Why can’t we take atheism as self-evidential?  This seems to be the answer the New Atheist prefers, given that philosophers since Socrates have known that it’s impossible to prove that something does not exist.  In law, we take it as a necessary presumption of justice that a person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty.  Are there not situations in which we can safely presume that a theory is false until proven true?

C. S. Lewis, memes and logical positivism

Liturgically, the Christmas season is still five weeks and change away; we’re not even into Advent yet.  Alas, we’re governed by the marketing calendar, which begins to push us to buy for one holiday before the previous holiday is spent.  The leaves down here in north-central Texas just turned to fall colors yesterday, and the Muzak is already cranking out “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”

This is also the time of year when American Atheists begin grunting out steaming mounds of “Bah! Humbug!” on the seemingly forgotten religious aspect of the season. 

I’ve written before on some of the problems the atheist must overcome before he can truly claim his position is rational, let alone based on scientific fact.  Largely the problems are philosophical in nature; the error lies not in the structure of the argument but in the initial assumptions.  Ultimately, if your foundation is nothing but sand, it doesn’t matter how well you build the superstructure — it will fall, and great will be the fall of it (cf. Mt 7:26-27).

But the New Atheist is, for the most part, not a philosopher.  In fact, more often than not he rejects formal philosophy, as it seemingly consists of people speculating without adequate basis in verifiable fact; as one person put it to me, it’s “just a bunch of people’s subjective opinions”.  That this demand for verifiable fact is itself a philosophical position — logical positivism — and as such suffers from self-referential incoherence[1] is an irony that passes him by.