Be Prepared . . . for random coincidence . . .

OK, this is random . . . stream of consciousness almost . . . but here it is.

My daughter Aña and I spent the afternoon together, and then I accompanied her to her obstetrics appointment. (She is in the first trimester of her first pregnancy.) Aña and her husband Mike had seen (barely) the baby's heartbeat two weeks ago, but today it was very clear. And so it was exciting for both of us. Again, here's the refrigerator art I brought home to put up next to photos of my other grandchildren:

We don't have a name (or a sex) yet.

At lunch we had talked about some friends Aña knows who have succumbed to some of the less healthy cultural forces by which the young are today incessantly bombarded. On the way home, I pulled up behind a car with a "Proud to be the parent of an Eagle Scout" bumper sticker. It took me up short. When do you see bumper stickers like that anymore?

Thinking about the friends Aña had mentioned, and remembering how I, too, had been so duped in many ways by the cultural fashions of the late 60s and 70s, I felt great gratitude welling up in me for the ballast I had prior to the years of my ill-spent youth. I was no more prepared for the naive experiments of the 1960s than anyone else, but by the time I was being fully exposed to them I had been loved by a joyful and religiously devout family, I had received 12 years of Catholic education, I had been an Eagle Scout and a leader in the Scouting program, and I had a law degree.

It is no credit to me that even so weighty a ballast did not prevent me from being blown hither and yon on the currents of social contagion. But it was the memories and the formation that took place in those earlier years that eventually saved me and brought me (all too slowly perhaps) to my senses.

I hadn't thought about Boy Scouts or my Eagle Scout experience literally in years, but thanks to the bumper sticker I was reminded of it. And, wouldn't you know, when I got home I saw on the First Things website (here) Joe Carter's piece on the Boy Scouts.

Writes Carter:

Cultural critic Paul Fussell once wrote that the Boy Scout Handbook is "among the very few remaining popular repositories of something like classical ethics, deriving from Aristotle and Cicero." Indeed, it is literally a vade mecum on virtue ethics. Consider, for example, the Scout oath:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Sir Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts in Great Britain, wrote of his decision to make such a thing is lifework:

Thousands of boys and young men, pale, narrow-chested, hunched-up, miserable specimens, smoking endless cigarettes, numbers of them betting, all of them learning to be hysterical as they groan or cheer in panic unison with their neighbors — the worst sound of all being the hysterical scream of laughter that greets any little trip or fall of a player. One wonders whether this can be the same nation which had gained for itself the reputation of being a stolid, pipe-sucking manhood, unmoved by panic or excitement, and reliable in the tightest of places. Get the lads away from this — teach them to be manly.

This passage is strewn with things to make postmodern secularists wince, but I for one am deeply grateful for what Sir Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts did for me, and when I look around I see a world of young people who could benefit from something like it today. I can only hope that Aña and Mike's new baby will grow up in a world where such things are available.

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 6

Source: Imitatio

Europe on Trial for Its Life

Geert Wilders quoting the Qur'an and the jihadists who cite it
as a mandate for violence against "infidels."

The Islamic scholar Robert Spencer, himself pilloried by the politically correct for speaking inconvenient truths, has this to say about the Amsterdam trial of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders:

It is not exaggerating to say that the Geert Wilders trial is a defining moment in the history of Western civilization. One would have to go back centuries to find a court case with as much significance for the future course of the free world. If the farrago of “hate” charges against Wilders stick, and he is convicted, it will herald the end of the freedom of speech in the West, as a precedent will have been set that other Western nations (urged on by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is the organization most responsible for the global assault on free speech) will be certain to follow. The era of enlightenment and the understanding that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights will be definitively drawing to a close, and a new darkness will descend over Europe and the free world in general. For once the precedent is established that a man can be jailed and destroyed for offending a privileged class, the idea that every human being has rights that cannot be infringed will be damaged beyond repair.

And even if Wilders prevails, enough damage has been done already. The Dutch law (and there are others like it in other Western countries) that stipulates that someone can actually be tried and jailed for offending another person will remain on the books. Other trials will follow. The law will be used by the governing elites who developed it in order to maintain their power and silence independent and dissenting voices.

Read Spencer's piece here.

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 5

Source: Imitatio

Like Dominos . . .

The stories of Westerners surrendering their freedoms -- the freedom of speech, of religion, of free association, and so on -- in the face of intimidation by ideologues of sundry sorts are now so prevalent that it is easy to get the feeling that, unless something is done to reverse the trend, in very short order we will cease to be the culture that gave these freedoms to the world.

Professor Barry Rubin is exercised, as he should be, by the cancellation of yet another scholarly address, rationalized by the fear that it might offend (in this case, as in many others) certain Muslims.

Jake Witzenfeld, president of Cambridge University's Israel Society, canceled a talk by Benny Morris, an Israeli scholar, apologizing for any "unintended offense." "I decided to cancel for fear of the Israel Society being portrayed as a mouthpiece of Islamophobia," he said. "We understand that whilst Professor Benny Morris' contribution to history is highly respectable and significant, his personal views are, regrettably, deeply offensive to many....”

Mr. Witzenfeld should resign his position immediately since by leading a pro-Israel group he will no doubt be portrayed as all sorts of slanderous things and give offense to people. After all, the existence of Israel itself is “offensive” to many Muslims and others, which is not a reason for wiping it out, presumably. As Witzenfeld might know, pro-Israel groups have been banned on British campuses before and perhaps this is what he fears.

As for giving offense, his cowardice offends me, if that's his criterion for making decisions. Hopefully, someone less fearful can be found to head the society.

How many of these stories will we have to read before we realize that the culture that raised before the world the banner of freedom is busily rolling it up out of pure, undisguised cowardice? Rubin continues:

But what is most shocking about this travesty is Witzenfield's phrase “being portrayed as.” In other words, the mere fear that someone might claim that you are racist or Islamophobic—even if you know you aren’t and even if you know the speaker isn’t--is now a cause to refuse to hear a speaker or discuss an idea in the United Kingdom. Following the Witzenfield rule, any serious discussion of Middle East politics, terrorism, religion, and lots of other subjects should be banned since there are definitely those who will portray opinions they don't like as hateful, offensive, and racist (even if they have nothing to do with race).

What does the kind of behavior evidenced at Cambridge--and many other recent examples can be cited-- do but turn slander into a very effective weapon, indeed an irresistible weapon. Now if Muslims or leftists or antisemites or anti-Americans don’t like someone or something they can just attack him or her or it—even proving the accusations have some basis in truth is not important—and destroy their ability to speak to an audience.

This began with the refusal to admit Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, to the United Kingdom and it is spreading to the point where the basic rights taken for granted by people living in democratic societies are now in jeopardy, at least in Western Europe. Wilders himself is now on trial in the Netherlands for using his right of speech. . . .

Cliche though it is, Edmund Burke's admonition hasn't lost any of its pertinence: All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Today we have learned to rationalize our cowardice with rhetorically vacuous platitudes. Our children and grandchildren will pay the price for our timidity.

The Death of Free Speech

Apropos the post below and earlier posts, here and here, there is a National Review online symposium on the Dutch trial of Geert Wilders, which is worth reading in its entirety. It includes this quick overview by Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:

Pretty much all you need to know about the prosecution of the controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders was summed up in a single (if run-on) sentence attributed to the ... prosecution service of the Dutch Ministry of Justice.

In response to Wilders’s request to bring in witnesses to establish the veracity of the opinions that got him in trouble with the law, that body issued this statement on January 17: “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.”

In other words, the prosecutors believe that the truth is not a defense in the Netherlands, nor perhaps elsewhere in Europe — a continent that appears no longer to have the will to defend its values, culture, and civilization. Very sad.

As René Girard argues, the real struggle in our world is not between violence and peace; it is between violence and truth. All attempts to avoid the former by silencing the latter will end in catastrophe.

The Tolerance Vigilantes again . . .

Kathryn Jean Lopez has this in her National Review article today:

Pres. Barack Obama’s nominee for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a Georgetown University professor named Chai Feldblum, wrote in 2006 that “just as we do not tolerate private racial beliefs that adversely affect African-Americans in the commercial arena, even if such beliefs are based on religious views, we should similarly not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] people.” Feldblum believes that there is a “zero-sum game” being played between religious freedom and the homosexual activists, in which “a gain for one side necessarily entails a corresponding loss for the other side.” Religious liberty, in Feldblum’s estimation, must give.

Feldblum is all-too-typical of the dogmatic leftists and intolerant homosexual activists that the current president has been so cavalierly appointing, people eager to use power to silence those who disagree with them.

Welcome to Nuremberg 2010

This from the Fars News Agency:

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei stressed that the Zionist regime is moving on a precipice towards demise and it will soon experience annihilation.

The word he used, and has so often used, is annihilation. It is a word that the Israelis know how to parse better than others.

"I am very optimistic about the future of Palestine and believe that Israel is moving on the precipice of wane and demise, and God willing its annihilation is for sure," Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement Ramadan Abdullah Shallah here in Tehran.

So how is the the president's soft diplomacy working out?

Thanks to Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit.

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 4

Source: Imitatio

"Populist Constitutionalism"

In an article that more or less echoes the concerns that Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn expressed in the video below, Larrey Anderson offers what he sees as the essential core principle at the heart of the Tea Party Movement. Anderson writes:

The tea parties are a unique populist movement and moment in American history. There is no charismatic leader of the movement. The tea parties have more grass roots movers, shakers, and members, than any populist movement ever seen in our country. So what makes it so different from previous populist political factions?

His answer:

So what makes the tea parties different? I have attended several local tea party gatherings (and addressed a couple of them). There is one document that is ubiquitous at these events: the Constitution for the United States of America. People hand out copies of the Constitution like hors d'oeuvres that are served at ... a de rigueur tea party.

As Dr. Arnn insisted, the return to constitutional principles is essential if the experiment in political freedom is to continue on a sound footing. Those who are quick to label the so-called Tea Party Movement as some kind of know-nothing right-wing lunatic fringe are missing the point. Again Anderson:

At one tea party, I helped a women lug a couple of cardboard boxes filled with pocket-sized copies of the Constitution into the hotel conference room. We sat the boxes on a folding table next to the dais for the speakers. "I only bought a thousand copies. You think that will be enough?" she asked me.

I smiled. "Enough for today..." I started to reply.

"Excuse me," a man interrupted us. He carried another box full of copies of the Constitution and set his box on the table next to her two boxes. He opened his box and began handing out the Constitution to the people who were filing into the meeting room. "Plenty," I told the woman and we laughed.

"Populist Constitutionalism" - that's what the tea parties are all about. Love and respect for the Constitution is driving the movement. Sharing the document, and then discussing the meaning, purpose, and the ideas of the Constitution, that is the process that is taking place as a result of this love and respect.

Anderson's article is here.

I smell an apple pie baking . . .

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a video of the "pro-life ad" of Tim Tebow and his mother Pam.



Morrissey has this to say:

Just remember that this was the commercial that infuriated feminists . . . The ad, which created a firestorm of controversy, shockingly depicts a mother proud of her son, who “almost didn’t make it into this world,” and even more horrifyingly notes that “I love him.” Next thing you know, Super Bowl ads will talk about apple pie, hot dogs, and the American flag. It’s a slippery slope, I tell you . . .

The ad links to the "The Tebow Story" on the Focus on the Family website.

Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth . . .

NewsBusters has the latest ratings for the top three cable news networks, and it appears that viewers are abandoning the Pom-Pom outlets at an extraordinary speed. The hemorrhaging is greatest among the critical 25-54 year-old viewers. The explanation typically offered for this by the organizations and personalities who are losing viewers is -- more or less -- that people are too stupid to know what's good for them. But I'm not altogether sure that this explains the situation.

I'm constitutionally (if you'll forgive the use of that loaded term) wary of "popular movements." But so too am I wary of Pravda journalists who turn their backs on stories unflattering to the establishment they did so much to empower, stories which would have been trumpets to the heavens had they shown conservative politicians or movements in a bad light.

Where Everybody is Somebody . . .

A SUNDAY MORNING THOUGHT:

I was in Worcester, Massachusetts the other day, and I drove by a store-front Christian church of an apparently Pentecostal sort. The sign announced it to be a place "where Jesus makes everybody somebody." I have to say, I liked the sign and a little involuntary prayer of gratitude arose on behalf of the people who, in their own way, serve Christ in that place.

For a more sophisticated version of that same sentiment, here is what the young Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in the year of his entry into the Catholic Church to his friend Ernest Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's grandson: "I think that the trivialness of life is, and personally to each one, ought to be seen to be, done away with by the Incarnation."

For what it's worth, Hopkins wrote to that same friend:

Beware of doing what I once thought I could do, adopt an enlightened Christianity ... This fatal state of mind leads to infidelity, if consistently and logically developed. The great aid to belief and object of belief is the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Religion without that is sombre, dangerous, illogical, with what it is -- not to speak of its grand consistency and certainty -- loveable. Hold that and you will gain all Catholic truth.

Quoted: Lucy Beckett, "In the Light of Christ"

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 3

Source: Imitatio

Dr. Larry Arnn - Hillsdale College

Don't miss this:

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 2

Source: Imitatio

The Hollywood Bubble

In his City Journal article entitled "Culture v. Reality: Can You Spot the Difference," Andrew Klavan makes some very good points about the world as seen through the eyes of Hollywood, including this:

In reality, anthropological studies have shown that primitive societies are even more violent than civilized ones. Primitive life is pretty miserable in general, with no protection against drought or famine, no medicine—so that even the simplest diseases can be deadly—and no equality for women, who have zero defense against pregnancy or oppression.

Now let’s look at the culture. In films such as Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, and now Avatar—which are really all the same film—a civilized man enters primitive society and finds its values far superior to his own. The collectivist natives are peaceful, the women are treated with respect, and ancient forms of medicine work as well as modern ones.

Spot the difference? Right! In reality, it’s civilization, democracy, capitalism, and technology that give us greater health, equality, and happiness. So when you go to see Avatar and enjoy its special effects and 3-D imagery, just think to yourself, wow, we’d never have anything as cool as that if we lived like the Indians. I mean, they never even invented the wheel!

Hey, and speaking of Avatar, it not only celebrates being at one with the sacred Earth, but portrays U.S. soldiers as evil sadists out to destroy native peoples. Can you spot the difference between Avatar and, say, Haiti, where our old pal the sacred Earth slaughtered innocent people by the thousands and the U.S. military turned out in a massive rescue effort?

But in our culture, the U.S. military is always evil, housewives are always desperate, corporations are always corrupt, and poverty is always the fault of wealthy people’s greed. Can you spot the difference between those assumptions and reality?

Is he wrong about this? If not, is it any wonder that children exposed to this "culture," and indoctrinated by "history" books like that written by Howard Zinn, are contemptuous of the civilization that has lavished so many material blessings on them but has lately fed their spirits nothing but resentment?

Dearborn, Michigan

Within a few minutes of posting the blog post just below this one, this video from Sunlit Uplands appeared in the queue of my blog subscriptions.

Judge for yourself.

When Free Speech is Ruled Hate Speech

"I admire Michel Serres' effort to avoid polemic, and I acknowledge the fact that truth cannot emerge from it. But I have to say that, personally, polemic does not trouble me much. If I am treated polemically I will respond accordingly. It is true that it is a phenomenon of doubles, but I think it preferable to total silence." -- René Girard

I, too, would prefer gentile expressions of political and moral disagreement, but if someone yelling "fire!" gives the impression of being emotionally overwrought, it may be because their is actually a fire. So it is that I offer this video by the former British comedian and internet cultural commentator, Pat Condell. In the stifled politically correct atmosphere that is so prevalent today, Condell will seem shocking. In comparison with the lively give-and-take that once characterized western political discourse, however, he's indignation wouldn't be at all out of the ordinary. However you may react to his indignant rhetoric, the argument he makes, in my view, is sound.



If the West's hard-won principle of free speech existed only to protect the politically popular, it would be the political equivalent of falling off a log. The principle is important precisely because it protects against the imposition of the kind of speech-codes which usher in tyranny.

Hat Tip: Brussels Journal

Mapping America . . .

I'm passing on something from my friend Pat Fagan. The gist of the study is this:

Adults in always-intact marriages who attend religious services at least weekly are the least likely to report that they sometimes drink too much alcohol.

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 1

More on Antisemitism and Jews in Europe

Bat Ye'or delivered an address at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at a conference on Antisemitism, multiculturalism, and ethnic identity. Her talk was entitled "From Europe to Eurabia." What is at stake is the loss of Europe as the culture we have known as "Europe," and the ramifications of its cultural surrender throughout the world.

The audio isn't the highest quality and, due to YouTube limitations, the talk cuts off at 10 minutes, but it is worth the effort to hear what she has to say. The text of her address included this:

Allow me to go a little further into the themes of this cultural jihad within multiculturalism. Through the myth of Andalusia, Islam tries to prove its historical, cultural and demographical legitimacy in Europe. Several European leaders have affirmed that Islam is at home in Europe and that it is at the root of European culture. Thus, it can legitimately impose itself, invoking multiculturalism in the education system - as the Obin Report pointed out for France (2004) - and in the European legal and cultural spheres with the introduction of shari'a principles, as well as of Islamic customs and political ethics, under the mantle of multiculturalism.

For Muslim leaders, multiculturalism in Europe was a fundamental requirement in the Euro-Arab agreements governing immigration, for it allows Muslim immigrants to not integrate and to protect them "from the aberrations, the mores and thinking of non-Muslims" - as called for by Mohammed al-Tohami at the second Islamic Conference, at Lahore in February 1974. Multiculturalism encourages the coexistence of parallel communities that will never integrate, thus replicating the Ottoman millets or the conditions of Islamic colonization after its conquest of non-Muslim peoples. Multiculturalism and nationalism are polar concepts. The modern fight against European nationalisms within the inter-European scenes - for the integration of Europe - allowed millions of Muslim immigrants to import their culture to Europe and establish it on an equal footing, using two fundamental arguments: the Andalusian myth and an Islamic origin of European culture.

As far as Israel is concerned the purpose of the cultural jihad waged in Western academia is to replace Israel by Palestine on the cultural and theological levels. It develops around a few main themes: the non-existence of Judeo-Christianity; the Islamization of Christian theology through the Muslim Jesus; the return to a Christian replacement theology whereby Palestine replaces Israel; the crucifixion of Palestine by an Israel born in blood and sin; the transfer of Jewish history to the Palestinians; and the Nazification of Israel. [...]

To conclude, I would say that the new antisemitism is situated at the geostrategic level in the Euro-Arab war against Israel. Its themes belong to traditional European Judeophobia, but integrated into the context and ideology of Islamic jihad. That is why the new Judeophobia bears within it the destruction of the West, of its institutions, its culture and its soul.

Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

P.S. on the subject of Antisemitism

Thanks to my Australian friend Peter Quinlan, I have been reminded of a poem I once quoted regularly. It is apropos of the issue of Jew-hatred that I brought up in an earlier post.

So here are a few excerpted lines from W. H. Auden's Diaspora:

How he survived them they could never understand . . .
No worlds they drove him from were ever big enough . . .
And he fulfilled the role for which he was designed:
On heat with fear, he drew their terrors to him,
And was a godsend to the lowest of mankind,

Till there was no place left where they could still pursue him
Except that exile which he called his race.
But, envying him even that, they plunged right through him
Into a land of mirrors without time or space,
And all they had to strike now was the human face.

Beyond Parody, Beyond Satire

Jean-Léon Gérôme's "Thumbs Down"

The Washington Post reports on a "a new, faux-reality Web-based docudrama featuring actors trying to decide whether to have an abortion."

The idea for the "show," which launches Monday, was inspired, of all things, by Barack Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame University last year. When the president said he wanted "to find ways to communicate about a workable solution to the problem of unintended pregnancies," executive producer Dominic Iocco conceived "Bump." . . .

In the end, self-selecting strangers will become as a thousand Caesars, offering a thumbs up or down on the unborn. That some might struggle with their decision on behalf of the voiceless is some consolation. Otherwise, even in the faux world of a not-quite reality show, presenting such a profoundly personal and literally life-altering conflict as interactive entertainment is disturbing and slightly creepy.

Every attempt to treat abortion as a rational, moral "choice" exposes its heartlessness the more. Again, as Christ said: "For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light." Eventually, the issue will be as clear as it was for the spectators in Jean-Léon Gérôme's painting above. The Christian revelation is not a recipe for improving the world; it is the revelation of the truth. Its effect is to clear away the obfuscations that allow us to become complicit with evil without being fully and morally conscious of what we're doing.

Those who wince at this latest effort to treat abortion as the moral equivalent of a budget battle or a death penalty debate or the prudential decision about the use of military force might want to keep Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins in your prayers. For he and his administration provided the platform for the deeply disingenuous presidential address that provided the creators of this series with the impetus to produce it.

The Journalists have become the story . . .

Regardless of where you place yourself on the political spectrum, can anyone any longer deny the leftist bias in most of what I have taken to calling the Pom-Pom media? This story from FoundingBloggers has a wonderfully apt title: "Eye (Don't) Witness News." When journalistic standards are violated so brazenly, can anyone wonder why the public is turning away from the old mainstream media so quickly and in such numbers? I have blogged on this here and here and, earlier today, here, but this FoundingBloggers video points to yet another of the egregious violations of journalistic standards that are becoming so predictable.

I have to share this . . .

Robert Spencer has been doing what journalists used to do for years, and he has incurred the wrath of those to whom the journalists have kowtowed. Given all that, he's hasn't had time to be a stand-up comedian. But his post today -- Groundhog Day -- is both funny (because of the video clip from the movie by that name) and poignant (because of what he adds). I can't resist sharing it.

Here it is:

And now here is today's Jihad Watch news:

1. Some jihadis somewhere will blow something up and kill some people.
2. In their public statements they will quote Qur'an, invoke Muhammad, and explain that they did it all to advance Islam.
3. Mainstream media stories about the attack will never mention Islam, or Jihad, and will speculate about the desperate poverty and political oppression that led this group to carry out this attack.
4. Obama will lament this "tragedy," call the attackers "isolated extremists," and announce a new U.S. aid package for the area they come from, again without ever mentioning Islam or jihad.
5. I will post the attackers' public statements here at Jihad Watch.
6. Leftist and Islamic supremacist groups will see #5 and call me an Islamophobe and a bigot, without ever taking notice of #2.

Tune in again tomorrow, when:

1. Some jihadis somewhere will blow something up and kill some people.
2. In their public statements they will quote Qur'an, invoke Muhammad, and explain that they did it all to advance Islam.
3. Mainstream media stories about the attack will never mention Islam, or Jihad, and will speculate about the desperate poverty and political oppression that led this group to carry out this attack.
4. Obama will lament this "tragedy," call the attackers "isolated extremists," and announce a new U.S. aid package for the area they come from, again without ever mentioning Islam or jihad.
5. I will post the attackers' public statements here at Jihad Watch.
6. Leftist and Islamic supremacist groups will see #5 and call me an Islamophobe and a bigot, without ever taking notice of #2.

It's Groundhog Day!

Source here.

Reaching Across the Wall

Fr. Vincent Nagle used to live down the road from me in Attleboro, Massachusetts. I can't remember how we were put in touch, but while he was in New England we tried several times to get together but never manged to do so. He was most solicitous, however, during Liz's illness and after her death. He soon was sent to Rome and we lost contact. We only met for the first time a few months ago at the home of a mutual friend when both Fr. Vincent and I were in San Francisco.

What a joyful and faithful man he is. If you would like to be drawn into his faith and joy, there is a YouTube video here which is a wonderful tribute to Fr. Vincent and his work in the Holy Land.

Welcome to the New Europe

Jews are fleeing the Swedish city of Malmö.

Whatever else it might describe, the haunting phrase "the mystery of iniquity" has a special pertinence in the case of Antisemitism. What we might call Jewish exceptionalism in this regard is glaringly obvious. However ubiquitous are the forms of irrational hatred and prejudice, it is the Jews -- when they are available -- who have borne the special brunt of man's inhumanity to man. In this, our elders in biblical faith continue to be a tragic bellweather of resentment and rage. For when resentments begin to overwhelm the "restraining power" [katéchon, 1 Thessalonians 2:7] of laws and institutions, antisemitism creeps out of hiding and begins to toy with rhetorical feints designed to give it moral legitimacy.

Reports Avi Yellin for Arutz Sheva:

Violent anti-Semitism has become increasingly commonplace in Sweden’s southern city of Malmö, leading many Jewish residents to leave out of fear for their safety. “Threats against Jews have increased steadily in Malmö in recent years and many young Jewish families are choosing to leave the city,” said Fredrik Sieradzki of the Jewish Community of Malmö. . . .

Jewish cemeteries and synagogues have been repeatedly defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, and a chapel at another Jewish burial site in Malmö was firebombed last January during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. . . .

In addition to its small community of roughly 700 Jews, Malmö is home to a growing Muslim population. However, local Jews insist that the majority of anti-Jewish sentiment, although certainly existent in the Muslim community, is coming from local Swedes.

Sieradzki says that the attitudes of Malmö politicians, especially Social Democrat city council chair Ilmar Reepalu, have allowed anti-Semitism to fester. “He’s demonstrated extreme ignorance when it comes to our problems,” Sieradzki explained. “It’s shameful and regrettable that such a powerful politician could be so ignorant about the threats we face.

Sieradzki admitted his pessimism about the future of the Jewish community in Malmö, saying that there needs to be a “complete change in attitude” among the city’s politicians if the situation is going to improve. “These issues need to be taken seriously,” he said, advocating for dialogue between politicians, Islamic groups and the Jewish community. “But right now many Jews in Malmö are really concerned about the situation here and don’t believe they have a future here.”

This is what the descent into a hellish chaos looks like in its early stages. Will the Europeans be able to turn from this abyss before it reaches the tipping point?

Hat Tip: Jim Hoft

Maybe I missed my calling . . .

I have had a very poor training in music, but as a young boy I imagined how wonderful it would be to be a symphony conductor, to be able to perform the subtle little gestures that would help bring harmony to an orchestra of gifted musicians. Given my musical limitations, I later turned my unrealistic fantasy to tap dancing, and I even gave it a try, until my daughter (whom I coaxed into taking lessons with me) gave up on it.

Seeing this video -- which I love -- makes me realize how much I would have enjoyed being a traffic cop in Pittsburgh. God bless people like Vic Cianca. If only we could each bring this kind of joy into our work and our daily lives.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Nobody directed traffic like Vic Cianca.

During 38 years as a traffic cop, Cianca's combination of dance moves, genuflections and exaggerated facial expressions made him a Pittsburgh — indeed, national — icon when "Candid Camera" creator Allen Funt got permission to secretly film him while directing traffic Downtown, then aired the graceful and often hilarious scenes in a 1964 episode.

Victor S. Cianca Sr. of Brookline died Sunday morning, weeks after suffering a heart attack, his family said. He was 92. . . .

His son, the Rev. Vic Cianca, vicar general of Assyrian Church of the East, said his dad's unique style of using his whole body to direct traffic came naturally.

"We're Italian, and we're very Catholic," he said. "Dad would always make the sign of the cross whenever there was a problem. He'd do the same thing while directing traffic."

In 1999, Vic Cianca made a return appearance directing traffic on Fourth Avenue, Downtown. "He really added something to the background of Pittsburgh. He was an icon and everybody knew who he was. He was a real Pittsburgher," said former Mayor Sophie Masloff. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

What an inspiration. May he rest in peace.

Hat Tip: Patrick Archbold at Creative Minority Report

A Sunday Reflection . . .

Thanks to Hans Urs von Balthasar, we have a new subtitle for this blog. In von Balthasar's book on the German theologian Romano Guardini, he points out that Guardini felt it to be the responsibility of the laity in the Church to minister to the world precisely by "healing the schizophrenic division between worldliness and piety." Now there is a task worthy of our efforts. Thus our new theme:

Healing the Schizophrenic Division
Between Worldliness and Piety

Those who have attended any of my talks on the mystery of the person have heard me quote Guardini to the effect that: "The knowledge of what it means to be a person is inextricably bound up with the Faith of Christianity. An affirmation and a cultivation of the personal can endure for a time perhaps after Faith has been extinguished, but gradually they too will be lost."

Von Balthasar quotes that same passage -- in a slightly different English translation -- but he also quotes something I have not seen in the available English translations of Guardini before, something just as audacious:

"Nonbelievers are incapable of properly administering the world."

What! That sounds like the Taliban. But, wait, hear Guardini out:

Forces that would be strong enough to keep one's power in check derive neither from science nor from technology. They do not emerge from the autonomous ethics of a specific individual or from the sovereign wisdom of the State. . . . The truly salvific possibilities lie in the consciences of human beings who are connected to God in a living way.

Note: what's crucial and what Christians should bring to the task of administering the world -- as J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings shows -- is the capacity to resist the lure and seduction of power. This, Guardini argues, is what Christ teaches his disciples to do. To the extent that we have been made immune to the appeal of power, we can, perhaps, help heal the schizophrenic division between worldliness and piety.

Bogeyman, Scapegoat or Straw Man?

Barack Obama
Community Organizer and Saul Alinsky follower

Robert Smith had a piece on the State of the Union speech which I share -- not I hasten to say -- vindictively, but rather for Smith's recognition of what several other writers have recognized. It is what those of us influenced by Girard would likely call "scapegoating," but which in the president's case is often simply conjuring a straw-man he can then rhetorically dispatch in order (he hopes) to turn his audience's dissatisfaction toward something other than his own political blunders.

As Girard often points out, scapegoating only works with all its original power in societies which don't have the concept of scapegoating. But ours does. So these political feints are far more recognizable for what they are.

Writes Smith:

And like any faltering Democratic pol, the president took the easier and lower road of bashing a bogeyman: financial institutions. . . .

There's nothing like inciting witch-burnings and stonings of bankers and investment execs to distract the public from the complete failure that the empty-suited Mr. Obama is. Appealing to people's primal appetites for revenge, resentment, and envy is, according to the time-honored formula, a sure way for the president and Democrats to move the heat from them to whatever handy victims they can find -- as in the past, doctors and pharmaceutical companies, but never parasitical trial attorneys. . . .

Mr. Obama may gain some quick traction and a modest bump from raising his club and landing it squarely on the heads of bankers and Wall-Streeters, but the benefit can't last. Why? Because it won't do a darned thing to put people back to work or give them the sense of security that their jobs are staying. Banker-bashing won't pay anyone's bills. Americans will end up seeing the president's shenanigans as a useless, if temporarily amusing, reprise of A Clockwork Orange, where delinquent youths vented their rage over their failings on the adults.

The reason this won't work is the same reason that these same ruses won't work when used by the political right: the Christian revelation of them -- while capable of being temporarily overridden by momentary political passions -- has crippled their power to produce sustainable forms of social solidarity.

One caution: when such things fail, they tend to rebound on those who resorted to them. As most know, and as my last blog post suggests, I have long been deeply skeptical of our current president's ideological bias, intellectual narrowness, inexperience, preening self-referentiality, and moral depth, but if his presidency implodes, we will need to turn our attention to fixing what's broken and not indulge ourselves in recriminations.

Photo credit: New English Review

The Czars now begin to make sense . . .

This from Mona Charen's piece in the National Review about the State of the Union address:

Obama is a conviction politician. Raised in a left-wing cocoon, he has never given evidence of being anything other than a true-believing left-liberal. Describing his college experience in The Audacity of Hope, he writes: “I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.” Sounds like a list of his czars.

The Super(PRO)Bowl

As everyone knows by now, the college football star Tim Tebow will appear in a 30-second pro-life Superbowl ad, to the howls of pro-abortion feminists. This from the New York Times story:

A national coalition of women's groups called on CBS on Monday to scrap its plan to broadcast an ad during the Super Bowl featuring college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, which critics say is likely to convey an anti-abortion message.

"An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year - an event designed to bring Americans together," said Jehmu Greene, president of the New York-based Women's Media Center.

The center was coordinating the protest with backing from the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority and other groups.

An ad that divides . . . Let's see: some people favor hiring professionals to kill babies in the wombs of their mothers and others regard that "procedure" as both morally unthinkable and as an insult to the feminine principles which the "feminist" movement claims to be furthering. Is that a division caused by the latter group? What about the division between what has been an inarguable moral principle of Judaism and Christianity and the cultures they have spawned for thousands of years and moral novelties invented a very few years ago?

The slave owners insisted that the abolitionists were the sowers of division, that they should cease interfering with what seemed to them a workable status quo. So did the racists in the middle of the 20th century. Those looking back in shame on the Roe-v-Wade abortion regime will see how its defenders turned to the same tired arguments, no doubt because they were losing the debate on the moral substance and had nowhere else to turn.

My Two New Grandchildren

Aren't they beautiful!

My son Hunt and his wife Yuni's third child.
My daughter Aña and her husband Mike's first child.


August and September due date respectively.

Consensus is that so far they resemble their grandfather!
All hope that they outgrow the likeness and soon begin to
take after one or another of their parents.

The Tolerance Vigilantes at it again . . .

The California Catholic Daily reports:

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists are seeking to oust an elderly Prop. 8 supporter from a theater board whose eleven members must be approved by the City Council. The Oakland City Council is expected to vote on the issue.

Lorenzo Hoopes, 96, has volunteered for decades with Paramount Theatre of the Arts and has been a member of its board of directors for twenty years.. Hoopes has a long career in public service and civic involvement, having served on the Oakland school board for 17 years and as the president of Oakland’s Latter Day Saints temple for many years.

Ordinarily, Hoopes’ reappointment to the theater board would be routine. But these are not normal circumstances, according to gay leaders, because Hoopes donated $26,000 to the Prop. 8 campaign to preserve traditional marriage. In a statement to the Oakland Tribune, gay activist Michael Colbruno said that, in light of the ongoing federal Prop. 8 trial across the bay, Hoopes’ reappointment is “so insulting. It’s so typical that the gay community in Oakland is being run over by a bus. If this were San Francisco, there would be 300 people in the streets.”

Gay activists may get their wish. Because of the intense opposition, city council president Jane Brunner expressed doubts that the Council would re-appoint Hoopes. One councilmember, Larry Reid, disagrees with Hoopes on Prop. 8 but felt he should be reappointed, stating, “This is America. No matter how controversial the issue is, someone like him should be appointed based on his ability to serve and based on his past contributions to the city.”

Fellow Paramount board members expressed support of Hoopes, but only on condition of anonymity for fear of the backlash from gay activists.

Stop and think: the members of the board who support one of their own -- who happens to have a view of marriage that has been unchallenged for millennia -- dare not publicly support him for fear of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender thugs who might take revenge on them for doing so. Welcome to the world of tolerance.

Source: California Catholic Daily

Wyoming Catholic College

John Mortensen and his family

I am proud to say that I have known the people who founded Wyoming Catholic College for many years, long before its Lander, Wyoming campus opened for students. I have visited Wyoming regularly over the years, and spoken at the college. I will be giving a retreat for the students during Holy Week this year. So I feel some of the pride that the students and faculty of the college feel about the award the Vatican has bestowed on Dr. John Mortensen, associate professor of theology and philosophy at the college. On my last visit to the college, I had the privilege of sitting in on a philosophy class that John taught. The sight of John and his lovely family receiving an award from Benedict XVI warms the heart.

If you or someone you know has high school age children and pondering where these children might be given the finest possible liberal arts education, look into Wyoming Catholic College. It is a remarkable place.

The State of the Union Speaker

"What was on display last night," writes Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, "was a man of unsurpassed self-righteousness engaged in constant self-justification."

No child left a child . . .

You guessed it: According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation young people are so sheltered and naive about sexuality that major programs need urgently to be launched (and paid for by some else) giving children all the latest "services they need and want, unconstrained by psychological, attitudinal, cultural or social factors."

Writes C-Fam's Samantha Singson:

In its new report "Stand and Deliver," the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) is demanding that governments, religious institutions and society at large provide "comprehensive sexuality education" for children as young as ten years old.

In a foreword, Bert Koenders of the Development Cooperation of the Netherlands, which helped fund the publication, asserts that, "Young people have the right to be fully informed about sexuality and to have access to contraceptives and other services. These rights are enshrined in various internationally agreed human rights convention and treaties, but – unfortunately – they are still not universally respected."

According to IPPF, as "young people are sexual beings," it should be self-evident that "sexuality education promotes individual well-being and the advancement of broader societal and public health goals." IPPF argues that "comprehensive sexuality education" must be mandatory in school, and governments must also ensure that this education is delivered to those young people who are out of school.

All this, of course, because parents -- burdened no doubt by "psychological, attitudinal, cultural or social factors" -- cannot be trusted to provide the full range of options that their 10-year-old children so desperately need. Again Singson:

IPPF targets religion and religious groups as one of the main barriers to adolescent access to sexuality education and sexual and reproductive "services." IPPF criticizes that many religious teachings "deny the pleasurable and positive aspects of sex and limited guidelines for sexual education often focus on abstinence before marriage," which IPPF claims has been ineffective in many settings.

Those who still labor under the illusion that "sex education" is about human biology and reproduction have not been paying attention. The assault on sexual morality is aggressive and unapologetic.

AIDS and teenage pregnancy still serve as the boiler-plate excuses for these programs which -- by destroying traditional forms of sexual morality -- compound both the crises they ostensibly exist to ameliorate. I'm sorry to say it, but for IPPF, AIDS and teenage pregnancy are gifts that just keep on giving.

Source: C-Fam

Chris Matthew is FINALLY post-racial

Chris Matthews, the Pom-Pom journalist famous for the tingle in his leg he experienced when listening to candidate Obama's eloquence, seemed just as enthralled by the State of the Union address.
Matthews said:

“…I was trying to think about who he was tonight. And, it’s interesting he is post-racial, by all appearances. You know I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know he’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and passed so much history in just a year a year or two. It’s something we don’t even think about. I was watching, I say, wait a minute, he’s an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people. And here he is President of the United States, and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight.”

It seems to me this is very telling. As we have seen, it is the "white guilt" liberals who are obsessed with race, and who so easily accuse their political opponents of racism. They are not nearly as post-racial as they seem to believe. I somehow managed to "completely forget" the color of Barack Obama's skin the moment he emerged on the national scene. I would eagerly and happily vote for a person of color in a heartbeat, provided I agreed with his or her political principles. But I would hope never to let the color of a person's skin determine my support.

Many of us were long ago able to look at Barack Obama without obsessing over the color of his skin, but Chris Matthews seems only recently to have acquired that ability, which explains a lot. So blinded by fashionable post-racial racial-bias were the doyens of elite liberalism that not even the emergence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story and others managed to interrupt their political catatonia.

We can safely say that we have become a post-racial society when we elect a person of color without the aid of either the reflexive and near universal support of those of the same ethnic or racial background or the liberal "white guilt" fixated on the skin color that it professes to have transcended. Which, under present circumstances, more or less means that we will be post-racial when we elect a pro-life conservative black man or woman. I hope it happens in my lifetime, and I'm beginning to think it might.

"to make man feel the want of it..."

I often ask myself, and I am sometimes asked by my friends, why I allow myself to be distracted by the passing lunacies of the present age. Why not rise above them as best one can? Well, I have my moments when rising above them seems both possible and morally justified, but it is in the midst of these sundry delusions that we must find our way and, as best we can, be light to those even more encumbered by the spirit of the age -- from which, by the grace of God, we have managed a small degree of liberation.

So I found the following Samuel Taylor Coleridge observation helpful:

“Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may safely trust to its own Evidence -- remembering only the express declaration of Christ himself: ‘No man cometh to me, unless the Father leadeth him!’”

To which one can only add another of Jesus’ “hard sayings,” namely: “Without me you can do nothing.”

So, when I lament this or that peril with which we are now faced, my principle reason for doing so is not to "gloat over the wrongdoing of others" (as St. Paul put it) but rather to "make man feel the want of [Christianity]," to rouse us to the grim reality of a world even more forgetful of Christianity than we are today.

The Lame Street Media

Same story I've trying telling. It's high time we adjusted anything the Pom-Pom media says -- especially about the "culture wars" issues.

In today's Gospel reading at Mass we have this:

"nothing is secret except to come to light.
Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear."

And so it is:

CNN goes the way of all Pom-Pom media

If you need proof, here it is. This is so utterly laughable; it is a wonder that it was done with a straight face.



I attended the March for Life. I arrived for the march early and stayed for the whole thing, walking the entire route of the march. Based on what I saw and what veteran marchers told me, I would estimate the Pro-Life crowd to have been between 300,000 and half a million. At no time did I see ONE SINGLE pro-abortion or "pro-choice" sign or marcher. I expected to see some counter-marchers and demonstrators, and I'm sure there must have been some, but there simply could not have been many, for I was looking for them and couldn't find them. But, of course, CNN sent its reporters out to see nothing else.

Tim Tebow and his mockers

In his coverage of the liberal outcry about the Tim Tebow pro-life ad that will air during the Superbowl, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has an update on the anti-natal and anti-life ideology that has been historically intertwined with liberal and "progressive" movements for the last century.

Progressives have a history in genocidal movements and have a history of hiding this fact.
Founding Bloggers reported:

When the Progressive movement in this country gained steam in the early twentieth century, they spawned the genocidal Eugenic movement which directly led to the Holocaust. That’s not an exaggeration either. American Progressives worked DIRECTLY with the Nazis in their quest for race purity.

Progressives own the Holocaust, a fact they conveniently ignore today. Funny how they make a big stink about everyone else owning up to their history, but when it comes to them, they are exempt from their own rules.

And, of course, abortion was seen as one way for progressives to get rid of the undesirables.

Progressives don’t want you to know Tim Tebow’s story and they don’t want you to know their history. That’s part of their game.

These heartless progressives owe Tim Tebow and his mother an apology.

Diogenes Uncensored . . .

Let's see, now: Who would you expect to find participating in the annual March for Life?

Take your time with the answer. The mass media has had 36 years to ponder the question; you can take 36 seconds, at least.

Are you ready? The correct answer is: pro-lifers!

Did you have it right? Then give yourself a Pulitzer, or something, because the mass media didn't do so well.

Consider the Newsweek contributor who wondered why most March for Life participants seem to oppose abortion. The same columnist also made the preposterous claim that few young women participate in the March-- a claim that can be refuted by anyone with a camera, or anyone who attends the event. Shaking his head in disbelief at the Newsweek piece, Joseph Lawler of the American Spectator commented:

But I am still wrestling with the idea that A) it's possible that there's someone out there-- anywhere-- that does not understand that pro-choice feminists are not participating in the March for Life and B) that Newsweek chose this person to write about today's protests.

It's astonishing for sure, Joe; I'll grant you that. But didn't you learn at the Lawler family dinner table that when it comes to the abortion issue, the major media outlets are as thoroughly lost as you would be if you woke up tomorrow morning on the planet Zork? They don't know the language, don't know the people, don't know the history, don't know anything. The Newsweek pundit was not alone. There was also Rick Sanchez, reporting for CNN:

As far as we can tell, following this protest on this day, the bulk of the protesters that we have seen here.... seem to be anti-abortion activists. We've seen more pro-life signs...

Gee, d'ya think? The people who participate in the March for Life are mostly in favor of... life? Who'da known?

Source here.