The road not taken

This morning I saw a Facebook post from my good friend StacyTrasancos:

Judging from the scene in my kitchen this morning, you’d never believe I used to dress in smart business clothes, march through labs where people did exactly what I told them to do, and sit in a quiet and tidy office solving complex problems.  Motherhood can be overwhelming — and sticky — at times.  Sigh.

I could just picture her in sweats, her hair put up carelessly with a comb and two or three pins, trying to exercise some calm and pull order out of chaos as five children noisily and messily ate their breakfasts, perhaps while swabbing up some spilled milk and scooping some free-range Cap’n Crunch off the counter.

But I can also picture the smile she had when she posted that thought.  This is the kind of moment Stacy will reflect upon as her children cross stages to receive diplomas, as they step nervously up church aisles to be wedded, as they themselves try to wrestle some kind of calm out of their own kids’ anarchy while Grandma looks on fondly.  And Time will embroider the scene in threads of gold and silver for her to carry through the rest of her days.

And so I couldn’t help but remember the final stanza of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.[1]

Hurt feelings a “human rights violation”?

“Chick-fil-A faces vandalism, ‘human rights violation’ complaints for defending marriage”

Almost as soon as I read the LifeSiteNews headline, I had to double-check the story.  I knew about the vandalism at the Torrance, Calif., unit, but … human rights violation complaints? Are you freakin’ kidding me?  I simply could not believe it — no, no, LSN had to be exaggerating something, or simply reporting one of the many bogus bits of information that spread like Captain Trips throughout the ‘Net (remember last year, when Jon Bon Jovi died in that New York hotel room — oh, waitaminnit, no he didn’t!).  Nobody could possibly be that petty and hysterical!

But no, the Civil Rights Agenda’s own website confirms the action, reporting sadly that “Chick-fil-A’s ‘intolerant corporate culture’ violates the Illinois Human Rights Act, which prohibits a ‘public accommodation’ from making protected classes ‘unwelcome, objectionable or unacceptable.’”  To get to the story, you have to click on a Photoshopped picture of a Chick-fil-A sign whose marquee proclaims, “YOU & YOUR GAY FAMILY ARE OBJECTIONABLE & UNACCEPTABLE”; the caption sullenly informs you, “Our lawyers are making us say: the above graphic is obviously a parody and what we believe LGBTQ folks see when they look at a Chick-fil-A sign.”

Not only will this story not die a natural death, it doesn’t appear even to be suffering a summer cold.  Could this be the year the left goes so far over the top that they lose all credibility even among those they purport to champion?

Some cold water for your chicken sandwich and waffle fries

Here it is, August 1, and the anti-Chick-fil-A crusade has reached “epic fail” proportions.  Far from hurting Dan Cathy through his pocketbook, the threatened boycott has generated the Atlanta-based QSR (and owner/CEO Cathy) millions of dollars of extra business plus new regular customers, assuring that the boycott will continue to generate revenue even after Mike Huckabee’s anti-boycott fades into memory.

The British Submarine Service used to have a saying: “Never mind your enemies; watch out for your friends.”  That was because a number of subs had been lost at sea when they were struck by surface ships from their own fleets.  Boston mayor Dan Menino and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel did the pro-SSM marriage cause more harm than good by their over-the-top threats to ratchet their zoning and permit laws against the chicken chain.  While other cities have joined the witch-hunt, the ACLU (mirabile dictu) has fired their own shot across the various cities’ bows:  barring Chick-fil-A over the personal views of its owner is an “open and shut” discrimination case.  The Boston Globe and the Chicago Sun-Times, neither of which qualifies as a right-wing paper, have both criticized their local leaders for their threats of repressive tactics, and even AndrewSullivan wrote a we’re-better-than-that piece for the Daily Beast [reposted to his blog on The Dish].  Put simply, the “ban Chick-fil-A” movement will die faster than Huckabee’s candidacy did.

What we’re seeing is an authentically liberal backlash against a budding ersatz-liberal totalitarianism.  However, we have to wonder if the backlash has enough staying power to open up space for traditional-marriage supporters to be heard.  The kids may eat the chicken, but will they listen to us after they’ve munched the last waffle fry?

Mumbles Menino chokes on “Jesus chicken”

Once again, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy is at the center of a hoopla concerning things he said — or, rather, things people have pretty much lied about him saying — concerning gay marriage.  Reports the unbiased, completely non-partisan Trudy Ring of the neutral SheWired.com:

If Mayor Thomas Menino (pictured) has his way, Chick-fil-A may be banned in Boston.

The fast-food chain, which has donated to antigay causes and whose executives this week admitted to antigay stances while saying the company doesn’t discriminate, is looking for locations in the city.  One is near the famous Freedom Trail, a series of historic sites connected to the American Revolution.  But Menino says that area, or any location in Boston, isn’t appropriate for a business with such policies.

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston,” Menino told the Boston Herald yesterday.  “You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population.  We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion. … That’s the Freedom Trail.  That’s where it all started right here.  And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.”

Menino said Chick-fil-A will find it “very difficult” to get licenses in Boston unless it changes its policies, and he plans to send a letter to the company’s headquarters in Atlanta “telling them my feelings on the matter.”

It has yet to be established that Chick-fil-A discriminates against anyone in their employment or business practices.  No one has been denied employment or fired because of homosexuality; no one has been denied purchase or hospitality because of their sexual preference.  But because Cathy and his family support traditional marriage and family values, Menino wants to economically discriminate against Chick-fil-A.

This is where I came in, almost exactly a year and a half ago.  And the same film is still running.

Matthew 6:7: Vain repetition or babble?

The early teen years are a time when charming misinformation is passed on from kid to kid with the solemn, easy assurance of time-tested wisdom.  “Schnauzer” is a dirty word in German.  The F-word is an acronym meaning “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” (in fact, that became a Van Halen album title towards the end of the Sammy Hagar era).  And KISS, the name of the rock supergroup, stands for “Knights In Satan’s Service”.

Eventually we learn better.  Schnauzer, in fact, comes from Schnauze, meaning “snout”.  Although the actual root of the f-bomb is uncertain, enough cognates abound in the Germanic languages that it most likely comes to us from a common Indo-European stem through Anglo-Saxon.  And, according to Wikipedia, guitarist and founding member Paul Stanley first suggested the name “Kiss” when original drummer Peter Criss mentioned that he’d been in a band named Lips; at one point, founding bassist Gene Simmons claimed it stood for the old rule about sales pitches: “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”

And yet, though we tell ourselves (and each other) that there’s nothing so stupid or counterfactual people won’t believe it if you repeat it often enough, in the main we fail to erect mental checkpoints where new data can wait for validation before they’re added to our lists of “everybody knows that” truths.  I’m sure most of us have listened or read as some blowhard confidently preceded some assertion of patent folly with the words, “Science has proven that ….”  Usually, this means one of three things:

• “Some recent study/experiment, using dubious methods and/or inappropriate measures, claims that …;” or
• “Although this theory can’t be tested under our current technical limitations, some scientists take it for granted that …;” or
• “Famous Scientist says that ….”  (Because, of course, Scientists never get stuff wrong, or speak on subjects about which they know bubkes.)

A queer reflection

And all men kill the thing they love, 

By all let this be heard, 

Some do it with a bitter look, 

Some with a flattering word, 

The coward does it with a kiss, 

The brave man with a sword! 

—Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

Before it’s anything else, the culture war is a word war.  A war of words; a war over words. 

In a sense, control over the language is control over thought: if you have the ability to impose your preferred words and definitions on the rest of the culture, you can control how things are said and, eventually, what is said.  No-no words become no-no thoughts, which become no-no attitudes, values and beliefs.

This is certainly true of the battle against same-sex marriage.  Consider the three theologians who accused Cdl. Timothy Dolan and the USCCB of “misrepresenting Catholic teaching”: former priest Daniel Maguire of Marquette told The Beast, “The bishops will stand with Dolan and the US Catholic Conference, but on this issue, they are in moral schism since most in the Church have moved on [to] a more humane view on the rights of those whom God has made gay.”[*]  A little later, writer Matthew DeLuca tells us that the most recent Gallup polling data says 51 percent of Catholics said gay marriage should be legal.  Which brings up the obvious question: When did 51% become “most”?

More important is what’s happening to the word marriage itself.  DB of Omnia Vincit Veritas puts the matter bluntly:

To be sure, it would be nice if everyone in the world understood and accepted the true meaning of marriage, but …, sadly, the trend is moving toward fewer and fewer people accepting the true and more traditional meaning of marriage.  As a result, the lone term marriage is also no longer being used as a shorthand for true marriage by much of the world.  This is the reality that we must confront and overcome; not simply whine about a misappropriated shorthand and all that goes with it.

A gay saint? Why not?

Over on Patheos, The Blogger Who Must Not Be Named has written a thoughtful, thorough and not-too-incendiary piece about Perry Lorenzo, the late director of education for the Seattle Opera, a gay man of his acquaintance whom he admired and respected as a fellow Catholic.  Indeed, the title is, “A Gay Man I Consider a Saint”.

After you read that, take up Pat Archbold’s defense of the Blogger, who made it quite clear that he didn’t know whether Lorenzo was continent and didn’t really care either: “Not my business. That’s between him and God.” Saith Patrick:

Some of the negative reactions to Mark’s piece bug me. Some people pointed out that the man in question lived with another man. How could Mark point out the holiness of a man who may have [] been actively gay? Scandal! I think some of this reaction is profoundly unfair. Why is it that we treat same sex attraction so much differently than other struggles? Sin is sin.

Would Mark have received the same reaction if he had written the same words about a man who did amazing things for and because of his faith but who also struggled with alcoholism? No, people would try to assume the best, praise what he did well, and hope that he died in friendship with the Lord. They wouldn’t be filling up comboxes with reported bar sightings as everyone would find that extremely rude. But somehow if someone struggles with same-sex attraction it is ok to be rude?

The timing of these posts is excellent, because my last post ended on a more strident, pugnacious note than I would have otherwise preferred.  Because I want to make it clear that Jesus’ love does embrace homosexuals … just not the way Andrew Sullivan would prefer.

What would Jesus say?

Aww, isn't Jesus so cute!

A friend of mine posted the editorial cartoon to your left on Facebook.  I guess it’s not enough to insist that, where my faith and my Church are concerned, I do in fact have a sense of humor.  So let me point out what’s really funny about the cartoon: the nun is wearing a habit.  Definitely not representative of the LCWR.

To be effective at manipulation, you want to keep things simple.  So rather than portray the nun in an ugly pantsuit (far more common), you dress her in the almost-forgotten habit, just as you draw Papa Bene as if he were being cast for the next installment of Grumpy Old Men.  Then, to really demonstrate how shallow your theology is, you draw Christ the Lord as a cute little koala bear of a man with a smiley face, looking nothing at all like someone who could open up a can of whip-ass on moneychangers in the Temple (Jn 2:14-16) or condemn Chorazin and Bethsaida to a fate worse than Tyre and Sidon (Mt 11:21-22).

Of course the cartoon is meant to be ironic, in the sense that it supposedly demonstrates an incongruity or inconsistency in Catholic teaching.  After all, nowhere in any of the Gospels does Jesus say anything about homosexuality — good, bad or indifferent.  So isn’t the Catholic Church concerned with preserving his teachings over all others?

Just like young boys at a matinee movie showing like to supply “dialogue” (i.e., wisecracks, burps and other noises) to fill the gaps in the script, so people like to answer the question, “What Would Jesus Do?”, with all sorts of self-serving mishegoss.  Especially if the Gospels can’t contradict them with a direct quote.  Who cares what Ss. Paul, Peter, John and those other losers said?  Jesus didn’t say it!

Staying on message

Schadenfreude f (genitive Schadenfreude, no plural)

1.   Malicious enjoyment derived from observing someone else’s misfortune.

2.   Satisfaction derived when an individual has misfortune for disregarding rules or conventions.

Donald R. McClarey admits to having enjoyed the dismay and melodramatic anger with which various people, writing in the National Catholic Fishwrap, have reacted to the announcement that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has called for a reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.  Certainly, Father Z has a talent for fisking, although the self-righteous blather of Sr. Joan Chittister and Jamie Manson is almost self-parody, so I can’t grudge McClarey for enjoying it.

For me, though, if there’s any satisfaction in the news, it’s sour.  Again with the fake-pious, self-serving portrayal of the LCWR nuns as tireless, holy workers for the poor and oppressed; again with the villainous, even libellous portrayal of the bishops as an evil patriarchy bent on keeping them down, keeping them intellectually enslaved. 

• “The Absolute Monarchy of the Roman Republican Church is ALIVE and not so well.”
• “By all means, let us stifle all independent thinking in the Holy Roman Catholic Church.  How dare ‘these women’ help the poor, comfort the marginalized, and worst of all, use their brains. They should absolutely let the holy men of the church do all their thinking and talking for them.”
• “The rich and powerful bishops are riding high on the backs of the poor, with no one to stop them.”
• “Have [the hierarchical types] checked their calendars?  Do they know this is the 21st century, when all the issues of NETWORK are crying out for action?”

Sigh.  Any more tropes you care to regurgitate? 

A simple loaded question

Stacy Trasancos wrote an excellent post, “Quiddity for Atheists”, on the difference between being and essence and how it relates to demonstrations of God’s existence.  As happens frequently on comboxes everywhere, the discussion went into several different rabbit holes.  Near the end, alanl64 dug this one out:

How was it decided what in the bible was to be followed to the letter and what is to be interpreted. i.e not eating shrimp, wearing mixed fabric or working on the sabbath are not followed literally (amongst many others) but acting on ones gay desires is? [N.B.: I’ve left alanl64’s spelling and punctuation intact.]

A little later, he rephrases the question:

Who is the authority that tells you what in the bible is to be read as literal and what is to be read as figurative? Simple question really.

A simple question … but a loaded question nevertheless, because it’s obvious the answer alanl64 is looking for is, “Flawed, error-prone, changeable humans make those decisions.”  Thus does he sign off:

… I don’t have any interest in if the catholic church changes the way they read the bible.  Not my place to expect the church to change.  I am just comforted to know that it is possible of change, it has changed, and it is decided not by god, but by humans.  Makes a lot more sense now.

Slam dunk, right?  Except that you have to make several assumptions to get to his conclusion.  Such as the assumption that once you introduce humans into the equation God is shut completely out of it, His Will eternally frustrated by idiots with their own agendas.  There’s also the small problem of proving from a rather ho-hum general truth that any specific example bears that truth out; for example, it doesn’t follow from the observation, “People make mistakes,” that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is just such an error.