Our Lady is the boast of humanity but humanity has another boast as well: we are able to receive the Eucharist. Angels adore what we would receive, another case of God blessing the lowly. The pastor at the Dominican church downtown went so far as to smiling to say that they are "jealous". Imagine the archangel Michael being jealous of us! Only God could make that possible.  | Survived another bingo last night and co-worker Kim asked that I give her this blog's URL, so presumably my Sitemeter will feel another tick. She said, and I concur, that she'll never quite get over the sight of bingo players simultaneously taking oxygen while smoking a cigarette (and while operating a dauber). You don't see that every day. Fortunately there were fewer smokers than normal so our odds of devloping bingo-related lung cancer were at least slightly diminished. I promised Kim I'd link to a few prior bingoistic posts, so, in no particular order, here's one, here's another, here's another and another and one more. |
They get on me wanna know Hank
Why do you blog?
Why do write prose?
Why must you post every thought that occurs?
Stop and think it over
Put yourself in my position
If I write poems and blog all night long
It's a family tradition.
When fall is good, it is very good.Dr. Imbert counts 321 stigmatics in whom there is every reason to believe in a Divine action. He believes that others would be found by consulting the libraries of Germany, Spain, and Italy. In this list there are 41 men.Somehow I'm not surprised that there are more women than men stigmatics. Men make up less than thirteen percent of that list. It's always seemed to me that women have a greater natural capacity for holiness given that they understand receptivity to a greater extent and tend to be more sympathetic. Stereotypes, yes, but at the foot of the Cross men were strangely absent, with the exception of John. No wonder he was the disciple Jesus loved. New Advent continues:
The sufferings may be considered the essential part of visible stigmata; the substance of this grace consists of pity for Christ, participation in His sufferings, sorrows, and for the same end--the expiation of the sins unceasingly committed in the world. If the sufferings were absent, the wounds would be but an empty symbol, theatrical representation, conducing to pride.Some background from Louis Bouyer's Introduction to Spirituality:
Another step was taken with St. Peter Damien and his whole era (11th century). The religious soul then came to concentrate on the cross, no longer as the instrument of our liberation or as a testimony of love, but as a particularly impressive example of suffering deliberately accepted, even sought out. New mortifications of a directly punitive character, such as scourgings, came to be practiced in this spirit.Bouyer goes on to describe the greater excellence of an asceticism of compassion to that of reparation.
Thus the way opened out by the Irish monks led, toward the end of the Middle Ages, to an asceticism of compassion. Certain forms of Franciscanism, centered more on the stigmata of St. Francis than on his own spirituality, led in this direction. The theory was formulated clearly for the first time by the Dominican mystic of the fourteenth century, Henry Suso. The objective the ascetic had in view was no longer so much to fight and overcome the power of sin through Christ and by His power; it was rather to suffer with Him, as if to bring some alleviation to His suffering by taking a part of it on oneself.
The beauty and especially the generosity of this ideal are beyond dispute. But it is also beyond dispute that this ideal tended to be formulated in a sentimental context far removed from the sobriety of primitive Christianity or of monasticism, and not in accordance with the lines of a sane theology.
What we have just said is still more true when we go from the asceticism of compassion to that of reparation. This made its appearance in the modern forms of devotion to the Sacred Heart more or less directly inspired by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
They criticize to me that I mix two words that correspond to different concepts: theism and deism. It is truth. The certain thing is that —damn artifices of the rhetoric, that they try to abrillantar to the speech and they do not do more than to grow dark— if the word "theism" were most suitable for the context, the other was lent better to the analogy (Papa/papista = Dios/deÃsta). Fault pisses.And then:
That it cannot or does not have say that "God is over the Good"... it is a thing. To say however that "the religious sphere is over the ethical sphere", is another thing; probably true, or defensible.It's long been my perception that we Christians have more of an obedience problem than Muslims. I wonder if part of it is that, for Muslims, God can command irrationalities and therefore they are less likely to ask, "but is this a good thing?". For suicide bombers there is obedience without love or goodness, but love and goodness are not the point since God is beyond categories. Obedience uber alles. Christians can go to the other extreme and simply make a judgment that no one goes to Hell because God is good, and Goodness would not populate Hell.
 |  |
What is a haiku?
Is it like karaoke?
Thank the Japanese.
___
Flos Carmeli posts
Invites us to versify
haiku mania!
___
Turned off Notre Dame
Far behind Michigan State
Luck of the Irish.
___
Back in the sixties
France gamed the superpowers
One now; it's galling.
___
Zippy for Congress!
No evil of two lessers
Scrupulous Catholic.
___
Last haiku or else
I'll be a monkey's uncle
Blame it on Riddle.
"The method he uses to live with himself is to make a clear and precise argument that this was something that others had done to him and not that he had done to himself,” Leon Panetta said. “Because of his brainpower, he can create a logic for anything. But deep down he would be such a good person if he could just accept the fact that he screwed up and made mistakes, and move on.”
"You know, Walker [Percy] had extremely eclectic taste in popular culture. He was very big on The Incredible Hulk tv show. He and Eudora Welty got into a chat about that once; they were both Hulk followers." --Walker Percy Remembered - by David Harwell
I never ate paste.A worthy epitaph: "I never ate paste."
Kindergarten memories
abound as fall comes.
The paste eater, she
chewed erasers in first grade.
Bad pencil lendee…
Kindergartens too
exist in a fallen world.
In schools and in homes.
 | Frank Rega writes, in Padre Pio and America:Some might say that Padre Pio is now gone. However, in his old age, when people had expressed their apprehensions about his approaching death, Padre Pio would reply gruffly yet playfully:"Silly person, I will be here in your midst, more than before. Come visit my tomb. Before, in order to speak to me, you had to wait. Then, it is I who will be waiting there. Come to my tomb and you will receive more than you did before!"Padre Pio frequently stated, "In the tomb I will be more alive than ever!" And when one of his collaborators ventured the opinion that, with so many persons to pray for, the Padre must simply lump everyone together in one big kettle or cauldron, Padre Pio responded:"In a cauldron is where I am going to throw you! I remember them and I call them one by one, and count their hairs, and then some." |
"My daughters, we must resign ourselves to what we have inherited from our ancestors Adam and Eve. Self-love never dies before we do, but it will accompany us to the tomb. Dear God, my daughters, what unhappiness this is for us poor children of Eve! We must always feel the sensitive assaults of the passions, as long as we are in this miserable exile. But what of it? Should we perhaps become discouraged and renounce the life of heaven? No, most beloved daughters, let us take heart. It is sufficient for us not to consent with our deliberate will; deliberate, firm and sustained."
Some may feel an affinity with his humble beginnings, or be drawn by the wondrous miracle stories, or be fascinated by the stigmata. And how can a 'practical' American not be astounded at the cloistered monk who build one of the greatest hospitals in Europe, in what was then a backward area of southern Italy?
Of recent date, I've been typing in older poetry--poetry from 1980, at present. And I have to admit to being occasionally astounded by a line or two the gleams out from the mass of rubbish that surrounds it. There is some good poetry hidden under the pretension of youth, just waiting to be dug out.That's how I feel about many books, although with the difference that what surrounds the gleams is not rubbish (and it's likely Steven was being hyperbolic anyway). But, for me at least, Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear it Away was worth reading for the ending. There's one chapter in Meehan's Two Towers that resonated in a life-changing way. There are a few paragraphs in Scott Hahn's Rome Sweet Home that had a profound impact back in the '90s when I was finding my way back. A single line or two in a biography of Pope St. Pius X impacted. Those books all contained nuggets that lingered way past the normal "expiration date" of biblio memory.
"That's what we would say," she replied. "But that's not what they think. The Muslims haven't evolved as far as we have. They're 600 years behind us."Cue Fr. Rob's interlocutor's song:
"And we have to point out that what those Muslims think is wrong and is unworthy of God," I said. "It's not OK that they're '600 years behind us.' The civilized world has a right to criticize Islam."
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!
Flannery ÓConnor said it takes to certain kind of stupidity to be to good fiction writer- the kind of stupidity that requires you to stare AT something before you begin to understand it.
Imagining Don Imus Interviewing President of Iran
Imus: "The President of Iran is on the phone. Welcome to the program Mr. President."
POI: "Thank you for having me."
Imus: "So what's the deal? Are you crazy? Are you just plain nuts?"
POI: "What do you mean sir?"
Chuck: "Don--"
Imus: "First, I have to tell you that I see everything in terms of how it'll affect me, and the show...Do you know how hard it is to get comedy material out of a war, if you in fact start one with Israel or America?"
Chuck: "I-man please, you're treating the President of Iran with dis-"
POI: "I will not take such insults from an American pig!"
Imus: "Pig? If America is the Great Satan then don't I at least rate a demon? Or is a pig worse than a demon for you people?"
Bernie: [makes pig noise in background]
POI: "You are lower than cow dung. You are the son of a motherless goat."
Imus: "George Bush and the criminals in his Administration did you the biggest favor any country has ever done for another country by getting rid of your worst enemy, Saddam Hussein, and this is how you want to thank us? By funding that terrorist nightmare Hezbollah and making a-bombs and sending long letters to a man who can't read, and in general making a constant nuisance of yourself? You should be ashamed of yourself you ungrateful bastard! I oughta send David Gregory over there and have him start hounding you at your press conferences instead of Bush at his. Maybe if Gregory stops dancing on The Today Show he'll find the time to open a can of whupass on your ass."
Kristol, Wolfowitz Welcome Neo NeoconThe pop singer Madonna and her antics are pathetic and don't shock me, but I am still surprised by those with decent language skills who are capable of such cluelessness.
ROME, ITALY-- In an elaborate but secret ceremony, members of an American delegation that included Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz showed Pope Benedict the "neocon handshake" and formally accepted him as one of their own...
Ich trage meine Sonnenbrille nachts,Song 2, perhaps a bit easier:
also können ich Dose also ich Sie aufpassen,
dann zu spinnen atmen Ihre Geschichtelinien
und ich trage meine Sonnenbrille nachts,
also können ich Dose also ich die Anblicke
in meinen Augen verfolgen Während sie mich betrügt,
den es meine Sicherheit hat sie erhielt Steuerung von mir schneidet,
ich zu ihr mich drehe und sagen Sie...
OH- Mickey, sind Sie so feinAnd finally, this last song isn't an '80s song but is an old standard and this time isn't in German but Russian!
Sie sind, also fein, brennen Sie meinen Verstand, he Mickey, he Mickey durch
OH- Mickey, sind Sie so fein
Sie sind, also fein, brennen Sie meinen Verstand, he Mickey, he Mickey durch
OH- Mickey, sind Sie so fein
Sie sind, also fein, brennen Sie meinen Verstand, he Mickey... durch
| | |
But I think this is a tough one because how can the Pope apologize when he's, not in every statement but in most statements, infallible?So we got from:
"When the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church..."to:
"he can't apologize because he's infallible in most statements"in one easy jump. But to be misunderstood is to be human. Turnips are never misunderstood. Chesterton wrote:
Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.A refresher link:
Notice that the boundaries of papal infallibility are carefully delineated. And on reflection the limitations make perfect sense. Infallibility does not adhere to the man, else he would be infallible in everything he says. Nor does infallibility adhere to the office, for the same reason. Rather, the gift of infallibility must adhere to the exercise of the office. Note, for example, that a king may write letters to his various officials discussing possible legislation and even give public statements concerning his intentions, but it is only his official promulgations that actually become the law of the land. Similarly, the pope may carry on private correspondence, speak or write as a private teacher, or even make certain public pronouncements without invoking the authority of his office. No one, for example, looks to a book like Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II as an infallible dogmatic pronouncement. It is a product of the pope in his capacity as a private Catholic theologian, not as the Vicar of Christ. And infallibility is not impeccability.Likewise, George (I assume he's a Greek Orthodox Christian) ought have no problem in principle to infallibility:
We should note at the outset that infallibility per se should present no problem to non-Catholic Christians. All Christians who seek to remain faithful to the earliest historical expressions of the Christian faith—such as the Nicene and Athanasian creeds—believe in the principle of infallibility. All believe that God uses fallible and sinful men to communicate His truth infallibly. Evangelical Protestants staunchly defend the notion that God used fallible men to speak His truth in the written Word. So the all-too-common jibes about the impossibility of mere men speaking infallibly or objections that sinful popes cannot possibly be the bearers of God’s infallible truth show a lack of reflection and fairness.
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing."- Fulton J. Sheen
In contrast to their predecessors and their contemporaries, who believed in the immanence of many gods, the ancient Hebrews gave to the world the idea of one transcendent God for all men. On the whole, the Catholic answers as to whether God is transcendent or immanent, whether man should be guided by law or gospel, the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount, the particular or the general calling, and all the other dichotomies that divided the right from the left wing of the Reformation, the Puritans from the Quakers, would have been both, of course - but each in its proper place and proportion. Whereas the Catholic God was transcendent in the tradition of the Old Testament, He was also immanent, according to the doctrine of the real presence at the Mass, as well as at other holy times and places, which were carefully controlled and ritualized by the church.
___
Thus, the Catholic doctrine of limited transcendence and immanence lies between the Calvinist and Quaker alternatives, between Puritan anxiety, on the one hand, and Quaker peace of mind, on the other. The Catholic avoided both the extreme transcendental position of the Calvinists and Puritans (and the danger of emotionally sterile Deism) and the ubiquitous immanence (close to pantheism) of the Quaker position.
The average medieval layman took his imperfection and essential sinfulness for granted and led a more or less satisfying, sacramental religious life, confident of salvation in the hereafter. Sin was no real problem when the sacraments provided a regular cycle of mystical relationships with God. The medieval tendency toward mysticism and emotionalism, then, was closer to the religious values of the Quakers than to those of the Calvinists and Puritans.
Coptic Pope Shenouda III said in published remarks that he didn't hear Benedict's exact words but that "any remarks which offend Islam and Muslims are against the teachings of Christ."Wow. You can't make that up. Surprising also that the Coptic Pope won't even read it in context. Man, if you can't get a fellow Christian leader to read your stuff, who can you? Certainly not the NY Times...
It was certainly not considered necessary that all the books of the New Testament should have been written by members of the Twelve Apostles. How would Paul have crept in? More attractive is the suggestion of Karl Rahner that the books of the New Testament are the foundation documents of the Church, expressing in writing the Church's own self-definition. They are normative in the Church's existence in the exactly same way as the Twelve themselves were orginally normative, representing the authentic oral tradition of Jesus.--The Story of the Bible, Henry Wansbrough
"We dedicate and consecrate the memory of God's benefits with solemnities on solemn appointed days, lest in process of time they might creep into ungrateful and unkind oblivion...Christian people celebrate the memories of martyrs with religious solemnity, both to move themselves to an imitation of their virtues, and that they may be partakers of their merits, helped by their prayers."
I think it's fair to say we now know how elite opinion in the 1930s would have reacted had the Pope condemned Nazism in the terms the world of 2006 requires. He would have been condemned in turn for being dangerously provocative.Another commenter had a good point:
We appease radical Islam today in much the same way we once appeased Nazism. We think now, as we thought then, that it is better not to bait the beast.
The NYT is one of the chief prosecutors in the case against 'Hitler's Pope'. But today, when we have a Pope willing to give a quote, 600 years old, that is sharply critical of those who use violence to spread religion, the NYT goes on the warpath again demanding apologies.
Perhaps we can expect the NYT of 2056, when it has learned that Appeasment 2006 is no more fruitful than Appeasement 1936, to condemn the current Popes for their mealy-mouthedness and for hiding behind criticisms of six centuries vintage.
Three questions for the Times:
1. Has the editorialist actually read the whole speech?
2. If a party believes itself to have been insulted, have they in fact been insulted?
3. Is it now the rule that any discussion of Islam must abjure intellectually provocative statements?
 | From here: This feast dates back to the 12th century. It was especially promoted by the Cistercians and the Servites, so much so that in the 14th and 15th centuries it was widely celebrated throughout the Catholic Church. In 1482 the feast was added to the Missal under the title of "Our Lady of Compassion." Pope Benedict XIII added it to the Roman Calendar in 1727 on the Friday before Palm Sunday. In 1913, Pope Pius X fixed the date on September 15. The title "Our Lady of Sorrows" focuses on Mary's intense suffering during the passion and death of Christ.Elsewhere: It was installed in the liturgical calendar by the local [Cologne, Germany] bishops as an expiatory act, to make reparation to God and to Our Lady for the heresy of iconoclasts who adhered to the errors of Jan Hus. |
Perhaps someone will say: “Had she not known before that he would not die?” Undoubtedly. “Did she not expect him to rise again at once?” Surely. “And still she grieved over her crucified Son?” Intensely. Who are you and what is the source of your wisdom that you are more surprised at the compassion of Mary than at the passion of Mary’s Son? For if he could die in body, could she not die with him in spirit? He died in body through a love greater than anyone had known. She died in spirit through a love unlike any other since his.
The figure in the Gospels does indeed utter in words of almost heart-breaking beauty his pity for our broken hearts. But they are very far from being the only sort of words he utters. Nevertheless they are almost the only kind of words that the Church in its popular imagery ever represents him as uttering. That popular imagery is inspired by a perfectly sound popular instinct. The mass of the poor are broken, and the mass of the people are poor, and for the mass of mankind the main thing is to carry the conviction of the incredible compassion of God."Poor" is a key word above, and by poor I assume he means not just financially poor but spiritually poor. If so, this well connects with what our retreat master recently said in emphasizing the need to really believe God loves us. "All I ask of you is forever to remember Me as loving you," said Father quoting a song. We expect much more of ourselves - after all, that is basic Catechism 101 stuff - and yet how many of us do that well?
The three big killer regimes of the 20th century — Hitler’s Reich, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Mao’s Red China, which slaughtered (at least) 120 million between them — were all stridently secular and anti-religious. So were most of the minor killer-regimes, like Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
It is also significant that the origins of modern genocide are secular. Holy Russia had always permitted a degree of violent anti-Semitism but it was the increasingly secularized czarist state of the 1880s that systematized the pogroms. This was echoed, from about 1909, by the secular Young Turks regime in Turkey, which introduced genocide against the Armenians then and, on a much larger scale, in 1915; this was followed by similar genocide against the Greek minority under the secular dictator Kamal Ataturk. There was a re-echo in Soviet Russia, where Stalin employed race-removal and genocidal policies from the late 1920s...Even the kind of anti-Semitic and anti-white genocide advocated by the present Iranian regime is only superficially Islamic: Its fundamental drive is secular power-politics.
The lesson of the 20th century, in my view, is that humanity, even with religious restraints, is a force for horror as well as progress. Without them, its turpitude knows no bounds. I recall the somber words of the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner: “If ever belief in God disappears, and the image of God is eradicated from human minds, we will become nothing more than incredibly clever apes — and the ultimate fate of humanity will be too horrible to contemplate.”
"That's gotta hurt!" - line from Ham of Bone screenplay
"Just shake it off." - my dad
 | <--not me, but an actor simulating my reaction to being left out. A much, much older actor I might add. Not that there's anything wrong with old age, as many of my best friends are older. |
Elegy for Pluto(Where's Waldo: did you spot the Springsteen lyric above?)
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
we hardly knew ye
when ye were reclassified
to prove that science corrects;
for tis a ‘umble Uriah Heep
most scientists project.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
in that hemi-powered glaze
you now cause Riddle more toil
(his blog has no boil)
proving even distant planets
have their orbits.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
you were small but had panache
a dash of hossenpepper like Bluto
without the hate of Hirohito.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
how could we get to know you?
You were cold, climactically-challenged
visible only in the far reaches of classrooms
to those who sat on the far right side.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
you lacked others' celestial glories
the heat of Mercury, allure of Venus
so often ignored
yet you never demeaned us.
Pluto, sweet Pluto,
they called you a planet
but now they cry null
they've cast you aside
like cheap doggerel.
________________
Digby Baltzell uses the history of Philadelphia and Boston as very real examples of two types of leadership. In Boston, the "Boston Brahmin" elites formed a strong upper class that was not tolerant, certainly, but took responsibility for community life and exercised a tremendous influence on American culture, politics, arts, and science. In Philadelphia, the "Proper Philadelphians" were charming, tolerant--and deeply irresponsible, abandoning any role in governing the city and making it by common agreement the worst run city in the United States. When Philadelphia needed a mover and shaker, it imported some one from outside, like Ben Franklin...I checked out Atwood's other reviews and discovered Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Minister's Wooing. It looks likewise interesting:
Baltzell's final point is that in the wake of the sixties, which he compares to the English civil war (1640-1660) environment that spawned the Quakers and released "a host of self-righteous seekers" on the land," American leadership has moved much closer to the nakedly plutocratic and irresponsible leadership model found in Philadelphia. And along with this change in the upper class has grown egalitarianism, openness to immigrants, cynicism, leadership gridlock, and social tolerance. The irony of communal utopianism producing results exactly opposite of what was intended would not have surprised de Tocqueville, Baltzell's great mentor in sociology.
Mrs. Stowe contrasts the culturally spare and logocentric world of early New England with the visual opulence which she inhabited in genteel America of the mid-nineteenth century. How to relate the insular New England Christianity of her childhood to the Christianity of Raphael, and the great cathedrals of Europe she visited as an adult? This theme is introduced both in her narrative voice (St. Augustine's Enchiridion of Faith, Love, and Hope is cited without name at the novel's turning point) and in the character of Mme de Frontignac, a French aristocratic woman in an unhappy marriage. She introduces the New England matrons to the feminine beauty of France yet finds balm for her wounds in the severe virtues of Protestant New England. Clothe the chaste Protestant New England spirit in a elegant French Catholic gentility, Mrs. Stowe seems to be saying.
The theological groundwork is made more explicit in Oldtown Folks, but briefly, Mrs. Stowe believed that Jonathan Edwards, with his impossibly high standards for Christian life and his revivalist focus on a dramatic conversion experience, knocked the motherly old Puritan consensus exemplified by Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana off kilter and created almost unbearable tensions in many New Englanders.
David Tracey, a contemporary theologian, captures something key to the Catholic spirit in this treatment of "the analogical imagination." The analogical imagination seeks out resemblances, similarities, correspondences, and overlapping truths between apparently disparate realities. It aims at synthesis on the far side of experienced antithesis, it aims at likeness on the far side of unlikeness. Thus human sexuality in marriage is like the union between Christ and his bride the Church. Thus, as Vatican II insisted, the Church is not an alternative to the world but is a sacrament for the world, and even of the world. She is that part of the world aspiring to the world's fulfilment in Christ.
By way of contrast to the analogical sensibility is the dialectical sensibility. Here the emphasis is on either/or, on a justaposing of contraries, and between them a stark choice demanded. Here it is nature or grace, Church or world, reason or faith, Christ or culture. The dialectical disposition has provided history with moments of spiritual and intellectual pyrotechnics in the likes of Martin Luther and, perhaps above all, Soren Kierkegaard. It is not the Catholic spirit.
If one presses the distinction between the analogical and dialectical too far, the ironic outcome is that the argument for the analogical imagination itself becomes dialectical, demanding a stark either/or. The analogical imagination is precisely that, a matter of imagination, a matter of sensibility...It is a matter of finding analogies with hope even in a world that denies hope.
...he also says he wants to further “raise the threshold for paying income tax,” which would shift a greater tax burden onto middle- and upper-income earners.I'm no expert on tax policy, but didn't the Earned Income Tax Credit exempt everyone making under $35,000 a year from federal taxes? Human nature being that we all want something for nothing, paying even a token amount of tax at least ensures that there isn't a huge voter group who can vote themselves benefits without paying any taxes. Personally, I like the flat tax idea if only for the simplifying aspect of it. But if government insists on social engineering, then I think there should be a far greater break for families with multiple children. More tax burden could fall on childless and one-child couples. If the government can support housing (through the mortgage deduction) it can certainly support families.
Huckabee himself risks alienating a significant segment of the Republican Party with his support for President Bush’s controversial guest-worker program, which would grant legal status to illegal aliens.Indeed that is alienating for a reason: it's fine to wave a wand and make everyone here illegally legal, but that no more solves the problem than if the government tried to pay the federal debt by printing more money. Or if someone decided to fix a leaky boat by declaring the water already on board as not water.
YES, I KNOW NOVEMBER
Yes, I know November
The tolling of the bell,
The whispers of the suf'ring souls
From mountain top to dell.
The chilly, gray, damp mornings
The rusting of the leaves,
The whispers of the suf'ring souls
Like moans from one who grieves.
And in the windy noon-time
When clouds fight 'gainst sun's might,
The whispers of the suf'ring souls
Cry, "Sanctuary light!"
So 'fore the red-glassed candle,
Compelled, I go to pray,
The whispers of the suf'ring souls
Plead, "Sacrifice today!"
Now, deep, dark sanctuary
Is lit by candle, bold,
The whispers of the suf'ring souls...
"Your prayers are autumn gold!"
So like the leaves of autumn
I fall to kneeling posture,
The whispers of the suf'ring souls
Beg, "Say a Pater Noster!"
The flicker in the red glass
Burns hotter, now, with Creed.
Oh, yes, I know November!
The month of Hope...souls freed!
Silence is it's own mentor.
__
I think the original sin was not so much that Adam and Eve wanted to be God but that they didn't want to be humans. But God made being human okay. In Genesis God declared his creation "good" and when they didn't get the message he sent Jesus to tell them the same thing. We consider ourselves carnal, and we are - flesh and blood - but then so is God. God became carnal. He shared our human experience.
Often we focus on our need to have faith, hope and love in God. And we do, but do we ever consider how much faith and hope and love God has for us? That he has faith in us, believes we can do it and loves us?
Too often we think of Christ in the manger but how human do we let Him get? It is said that "cleanliness is next to Godliness" but there are poopy diapers...If you were going to save the world would you waste thirty of your thirty-three years on earth? Would you live with your parents and pray and do household tasks and help Joseph with his work? We don't know much of Christ's first thirty years on earth and we don't need to because we live those days. Jesus spent ten times more time at home than he did on mission...Jesus didn't choose suffering, suffering was a consequence of his being true to who He was.
A saint is someone who really believes they are loved by God. Because if you really believe that everything follows.
__
Sometimes we make a decision and it doesn't turn out the way we'd hoped. And we may think that we should've prayed more. But when we consider how Jesus singled out Peter, James and John, groomed them especially among the Twelve, and how when Jesus needed them they could not "wait an hour with him" in the Garden of Gethsamene. Jesus's attitude was not one of independence from anyone but the Father; he expected consolation from his friends and recognized that. He also prayed before choosing the Twelve and yet Judas betrayed him. Did Jesus not pray enough before that decision?
God chooses to need us. Branches need the vine to bear fruit, but the vine also needs the branches. How humble and how proud that can make us! We expect ourselves to be robots, not human, but human is good, it's okay. Jesus often expressed his irritation - "ye of little faith!", "where are the other nine?", "Can you not wait one hour with me!", Jesus was "deeply grieved". He was not afraid of his humanity, of dirty diapers.
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If Derb and Charles want to say that if I’d grown up in some other decent family I’d still be a law-abiding, generally conservative, moderately self-indulgent thirty-something today. Fine (though I’m not so sure). But I would not be me. I might be someone like me. I might be nigh-upon indistinguishable from me according to some brain scan or University of Wisconsin questionnaire. I might like the same foods. But I would not be the repository of what my mother and father taught me. Sure, the easy lessons would be the same. Don’t steal. Be polite. Etc. Parents have a lot of help teaching those lessons. But my father was a unique creature, a peculiar duck, and the world will never see another like him. The suggestion that my personality – my me-ness – would be different in only trivial ways if I’d never known him strikes me as not only baldly absurd but deeply offensive as well. What makes me me, may be trivial to the guys in the lab coats and the social engineers, but that just shows how blind science is to so much that really matters. Science cannot see the poetry in life and because it cannot see it, it says it doesn’t matter much. Science cannot tell a joke, but that doesn’t mean jokes are unimportant things.
Night Call.
I call the cats, they come on bobtail.
I let them wind around my leg for a minute
as it'd be gauche to take them in too soon,
they who must be carried in the house
like dead men or drunkards or brides.
I'm tired and want to go to bed
despite the bright full moon
that shines like a Eucharist host
inside a monstrance of beseeching trees
amidst nine choirs of crickets.
- The Revolt of the Elites, by Christopher Lasch.
A man of the left who became an unclassifiable "left-conservative," Lasch's final book is a devastating critique of the American upper-middle class and the world that it's making. (Ideally to be read in tandem with David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise, which offers a sunnier view of the same phenomenon.)
- The End of History and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama.
Since 9/11 it's fallen into undeserved disrepute, but even if its thesis is eventually disproven (which it hasn't been yet), it's still a brilliant guide to the dilemmas facing Western man at the end of the modern era. (Ideally to be read in tandem with C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man.)
- Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West.
Perhaps the greatest sustained piece of writing produced in the twentieth century, West's travelogue about the Balkans on the eve of the World War II remains (for all its historical inaccuracies) a brilliant testament to the power of the past, and the futility of trying to bury it.
- Modern Times, by Paul Johnson.
The first popular history of the twentieth century that actually told the truth - about Communism, about the West's intellectuals, and about the post-colonial world.
- The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom.
Everyone reads the first half and skips the more-difficult second and third parts, but it's Parts II and III that every conservative should read. The early sections will confirm conservative assumptions; the later sections will (hopefully) challenge them.
Young man, go ahead take a chance
I said, young man, do a liturgical dance
I said, young man, don't look so askance
There's no need to be unhappy...
Young man, there's a place you can go
I said, young man, for Larry, Curley & Moe,
I said, young man, there confusion will sow,
Many ways to have a good time.
It's fun to go to the R-C-I-A.
It's fun to go to the R-C-I-A.
They have everything for a heretic to enjoy,
you can see that we're not being coy...
R-C-I-A,
It's fun to go to the R-C-I-A...
You can find your own truth, you can meet other peeps,
You can believe whatever the hell you feel ...
Young man, are you listening to me?
I said, young man, what's your doctrine to be?
I said, young man, you can believe what you will
But you got to know this one thing:
Every man does it all by himself
I said, young man, 'cuz it's all about us
So just go there, to the RCIA
I'm sure they can help you today.
R-C-I-A,
It's fun to go to the R-C-I-A...
It is better to hearken to the wise man's rebuke than to hearken to the song of fools....and I couldn't help but think Tom of Disputations as the wise man rebuking. :)
Every form of government has its strengths and weaknesses. For democracy, a key theoretical weakness has always been the threat of a “tyranny of the majority.”...In the United States, the elderly are the most likely candidates for the dictator’s role. To begin with, senior citizens are much more politically engaged than the young: Among people aged 75 years and older, more than 66 percent voted in the 2004 election. By contrast, only about 42 percent of people between 18 and 24 went to the polls. Moreover, the AARP — formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons — is one of the most influential lobbying organizations in Washington. In a recent study, it ranked sixth among such groups in terms of money spent, edging out defense giant Northrop Grumman. As our society ages, its considerable influence will only increase.It seems as though societies muddle through though, don't they? For the average conservative, it seems amazing things still function in "socialistic" San Francisco as well as they apparently do.
...And therein lies the challenge. In 2005, 3.6 percent of the population was over 80. In 2050, 8 percent of the population will be. Going forward, two main possibilities present themselves: Either the government will tax the young within an inch of their lives to pay the doctors’ bills of the elderly, or the elderly will become enlightened dictators and ease up on their children and grandchildren. The political gridlock of recent years suggests that the former is the better bet. — KEVIN A. HASSETT
The level of comedic writing makes the "Cheech & Chong" movies seem like Moliere by comparison.Now that's saying something.
The smell of dentist office in the morning...two blue frock-smocked frau's attend to the cleaning, one suctioning what the other sprays... Liking the attention but thinking with Letterman, "it took two people to write this?" A flat-screened CNN hangs from the ceiling showing the primal rural, a baseball field brit-lit green with scores from around the league. Various effluvia float about the office, children's sports pictures--television and shoulder-pads add twenty pounds. "No Tartar!" she announces, meaning no Mongolian steppe-children? No, rather, the hygenist's job was a Volga breeze and I felt as I did when I received my report cards. They'd taken x-rays, like roadside cops, but I'd slowed down in time and they clocked no cavities. Couldn't charge me with anything but called in the Sheriff to make sure. To the receptionist I hurried, lest they change their mind...
Death, Where Is Thy Stingray?
Daredevil crocodile hunter Steve Irwin died doing what he loved. Maybe his death wasn't a tragedy but a lesson in how to live.
By Mary Beth Crain
Reprinted with permission from SoMa: A Review of Religion and Culture.
Steve Irwin, the guy who did all those wild and crazy things with crocodiles and lived to tell about it, met an unexpected end yesterday when he was killed by, of all things, a stingray.
Irwin was known for getting up close and personal with all sorts of deadly creatures. His forte, of course, was the croc, but "I've worked with more dangerous snakes than anyone in the world, and I've never been bitten," he often boasted. And then, more humbly, "It's a gift."
And yet, his gift didn't work on the stingray that punctured his heart.
Irwin's death is a lesson in irony. Irony No. 1: He was filming a documentary entitled "The Ocean's Deadliest," when the ray got him during an off-camera swim. Irony No. 2: The stingray is usually non-aggressive. Irony No. 3: While it's a deadly fish, very few people actually die from its bites. In fact, Irwin was one of only three people in Australia ever to die from a stingray attack.
Was it God's joke on Steve? Just desserts, for a daredevil life? The stingray's revenge, for annoying the creatures of the sea and poking his nose and camera where they didn't belong? Or was it a fitting end, a mercifully quick conclusion to an exuberant if incautious life, staged and executed by nature?
Lots of people expected Irwin to meet his end sooner rather than later. Most, myself included, passed him off as a camera-hungry thrill seeker whose egomania was simply astonishing. He'd wrestle a croc while yelling melodramatic observations like, "I'm being whacked around, facing death at every turn.... Bruises, broken bones, you name it, all in the name of crocodile conservation!" Yeah, right, I'd think. All in the name of Steve Irwin, who'll not only do anything to prove his manhood, but actually has the gall to tell you just how brave he is.
But you know, I don't feel that way anymore. After reading about Irwin, and watching Larry King's 2004 interview with him, which was rebroadcast last night, I have to say that Steve Irwin was a man who lived life to the absolute fullest, and died doing what he loved. Yes, he was crazy, by the average person's standards. Yes, he craved the spotlight. Yes, he tempted the fates. Yes, he was hyper—he'd often been accused of being an adrenaline junkie, and his friend John Stinton, who was with him when he died, admitted that, "One problem Steve had was that he couldn't sit still for five seconds and because the weather was bad today and for the last couple of days, he'd been liked a caged lion because he hadn't really been able to do anything much in the way of filming. So he said, 'Look, I might just go off and shoot some segments,' anything that would keep him moving and his adrenaline going and that's what happened..."
It seemed, on the surface, to be these silly character flaws, and not the stingray, that got him in the end.
Yet the truth of the matter, I now believe, is that Irwin was a man of enormous intensity who sincerely believed that "God put me on this earth for a mission, and that mission is wildlife conservation." He was born to his calling; at the age of eight he was already catching crocs, and he took to animals, and danger, "like a fish to water," as he aptly put it. He knew that he was living on a constant precipice, but, as he said, "I have no fear of losing my life," and "Fear helps me from making mistakes—but I make a lot of mistakes."
Yet Irwin never let fear stand in the way of his love of life. He was out there risking, every day, and learning and growing and, well, living. His death is being called, of course, a tragedy. He was only 44. He was a happy husband and father of two great kids. He was a great conservationist who, had he lived, could have done so much more for wildlife preservation. One of his dreams, for instance, was to use the money he was making from royalties and his famed Australia Zoo to buy large tracts of wilderness land and create wilderness reserves that could never be bought by developers.
But is his death really all that tragic? I know a lot of people who are so afraid of dying that they end up afraid to live. So afraid of failure that they end up failing to try. It makes you ask the question, what's worse? Living an unlived life, or dying a lived one? We know what Irwin's answer would have been....
To me, Steve Irwin's death is a reminder that everybody's life is an enigma, and that we are not here to rate others, only to improve ourselves. I was quick to dismiss Irwin as a numbskull nutcase who got what he deserved—until I looked at myself and realized that I am certainly no paragon of wise living. Something tells me that the ebullient, passionate, adventurous-to-the-end Mr. Irwin was too busy living to pass judgment on how others spent their time. That—and not his risk-taking excesses—could be the real lesson of his death—a lesson we all could learn.
The interesting thing is that we ourselves in the modern age have trouble with it also [Christ's teaching on his Body and Blood]. It was a teaching so disturbing that the Reformation itself rejected altogether this fleshly existence of the Lord. Luther tried to retain it, but did so only in the context of human faith and not in the context of the reality itself.
In the Revised Oxford Annotated Version of the Bible, one of the most responsible, scholarly translations that we have, there is a footnote to this particular text in John's Gospel, and it tells us that Jesus had to have been speaking in spiritual terms because after the Ascension he was no longer bodily present among us.
This is a classic example of taking some sort of doctrinal statement and belief and imposing it on the Word of God. Many Fundamentalists will say "give me just the plain Word of God" but that footnote is an interpretation and an imposition upon the text of a dogmatic position of a Reformation tradition. Because, as a matter of fact, Scripture itself relies on the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew mindset, and the Hebrew conceptual framework, and they do not abstract. There is no mechanism for abstraction in the ancient Hebrew language. We can do that quite easily, as the editors of the Oxford Annotated Bible do it quite easily, because that's part of our Western tradition. We can look at a statue of Mary and we do not have to say that is the Virgin Mary. We can say it brings us to thoughts and reflections upon the mother of God. But in no way, shape or form do we say that that's Mary, yet in the Hebrew tradition that would be Mary. That was the problem with the golden calf - it was not a symbol of an abstract God because they did not abstract. And so when Jesus said, "This is my Flesh, this is my Blood" he is using Hebrew language and concepts. He is a Jew and so are his disciples, and so he has to know what he says. The fact that his listeners walked away from him indicates very clearly that they understood it in the same way. It would not be so offensive to them if in fact it could be abstracted or made symbolic in some way, shape or form.
Warning: What you are about to read has an extremely high snark content by volume.Today the secular press crowns a new pope, Katie Couric, or at least a bishop with the chance to become pope (if she can consistently lead in the ratings). Are you having a coronation party too? Never has so much been made of so little since...well, the Valerie Plame "scandal".
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There is no ascetic effort more difficult, more painful, than the effort to draw close to God, Sophrony tells us.
When we begin to pray, we expend desire and effort. The results are up to God. Real prayer is a gift from God, not the payment for our perspiration.
Ring a ring a Rosie, as the light declines,________________________________________________________________________________
I remember Dublin city in the rare old times
--Dublin In The Rare Olde Times
* - "Jeremiah Converse was born in New Hampshire in 1760. He emigrated with his father to the State of Vermont prior to the Revolutionary war. Before the close of this conflict, he enlisted as a private in the cause of freedom. On one occasion, he, with his company, was sent out as a scouting party to ascertain the strength and position of a marauding band of Indians. They had traveled many miles along the banks of the Muskingum River, when, toward evening of the second day, they found themselves confronted by about four hundred savages, secreted behind fallen timber, trees, underbrush, etc. The deadly fire from the first volley laid half, and more, of their company in the dust. The surviving ones stood bravely the galling fire from their hidden foe, until the Indian war-whoop and rush of savages reminded them that their only safety was in retreat. In this desperate struggle for life, Mr. Converse was pursued by a single warrior, with gun in hand and uplifted tomahawk, ready to inflict the deadly blow. But being out-distanced by his fleeing foe, the savage halted and shot him through the shoulder. His gun instantly dropped from his hand thus made powerless, reeling and benumbed by the shock; but he soon rallied and made good his escape by fording the river and secreting himself in the thick underbrush that grew upon the opposite bank. On the third day, he, with three others, arrived in camp, being all that was left to tell the sad story. His wound disabled him for life, therefore he was soon after discharged from the military service. Re subsequently became a traveling minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church."
PITTSBURGH, PA--Andrew Hallworth is suing himself for custody of his eyes.
"I noticed a fine-figured lady the other day and my eyes lingered upon her and I thought: 'What the heck am I doing? I'm a Christian!'. And given our litigious society where every wrong means a lawsuit, I thought I would sue myself for custody rights."
Mr. Hallworth refuses to settle for weekend visitation, insisting on full custody.
Longtime court watchers say this is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania.
It takes all the effort I can muster not to detest the ice cream man. Here he comes again, frequent as sunburn at a nudist camp, because parents today spoil their kids rotten and the icre cream truck sees a lot of business. Our treats were infrequent and special. This ice cream truck reminds me I’m in an alien land – because this ice cream truck isn’t Mr. Softie. I can’t bring myself to even look at this one’s sign, but I know it’s not Mr. Softee because this one plays some irritating tune that can be heard five city blocks. They say nothing is as good as it is when you’re young, but that is especially true with ice cream trucks!
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I’m torn between the life of the body and the life of the mind. Splitting the difference doesn’t work, but what does is to give the body it’s due first, and then go to the mind. I find the mind works much better after a fully-exercised body, than vice-versa. The body is usually sluggish and sluggardly after a long reading session, which is another reason to always exercise first. This summer day was perfectly improved after a half-hour run and and hour bike ride. On the way back, gentle fatigue began tugging at me, which made the full sun and cooling wind in my face intoxicating. Summer in her fullness is a long bike ride on a cloudless Labourous day weekend.
Some would say that even if [Marian doctrines] were to be proved, they are not essential to the proclamation of the Gospel, and this is true on a certain level. In its essence, the Church proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is our message, our reason for being, the very life of our life. Teaching about Mary is really meant for the initiates, those who have already accepted the Gospel and have committed themselves to Christ and to service in His Church.
This is so because what Mary teaches us about the Incarnation of the Word of God requires that we first accept the Incarnation...By stating that "all generations shall call me blessed," Mary was not vainly contemplating her own uniqueness, but proclaiming the wonder that her life was to manifest God's glorious victory in His Christ for all time. Mary was not a happenstance vessel of God; rather her role in our salvation was prepared from the beginning of the ages. The entire history of Israel - the patriarchs, the psalms, the prophets, the giving of the commandments - converged in young woman who would answer the way all Israel should always have answered, and as we all are expected to answer now: "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord."
But her purpose in salvation history did not end there. She was not cast aside as an article that is no longer useful. Instead her whole being and life would continue to point us without distraction to her Son. At the wedding of Cana we hear her words, "Whatever He says to you, do it" (John 2:5). At her Son's crucifixion, she stands fast to the foot of the Cross, this time pointing not with words but by her refusal to leave His side even in the face of what seemed an impossible nightmare.
It is important to recover the proper veneration of Mary which the apostolic Church has always held, not because Mary is the great exception but, as one theologian has said, because she is the great example.
With modern Catholicism in the United States, where we are heirs of John Calvin's culture-- this is our culture --it's why in the United States when we need a catechetical since we're running short of priests and religious we have to have all these elaborate programs to train teachers and so forth. But in Mexico or Latin America you can just go to your congregation and say, "well you're the catechist, go and witness to the Faith". What's the difference? Well the difference is their culture is Catholic and so their instincts are Catholic. Our culture is not Catholic, it is post-Calvinist Calvinist. The religious part of it no long matters but the consequences of it are still with us and shape the world in which we live.
We've broken down nearly every sexual barrier in society and yet the real criteria of the damned are those who commit this certain category of sexual crime. That becomes behaviourly the greatest crime of all. Where does that come from? When on the other side of coin we've taken the cap off everything -- Planned Parenthood is handing out condoms in junior high school. The hypocrisy that goes along with this is the same kind of hypocrisy that religion got painted with for centuries. Particularly we're all aware of the terrible scandals within the Catholic Church. But you know one of the most brutal instruments of pointing this out to us is the New York Times. And yet in the NY Times book section there is a glowing review of a "beautiful book", they say, of an older man in Ireland introducing two fifteen-year olds to the homosexual life. And isn't this a beautiful love story, they say. What hypocrisy! What hypocrisy. And yet that very notion of hypocrisy that religon always got painted with for its self-righteousness, is now painted in broad strokes in the political arena today. So that whereas before we could tell a Protestant from a Catholic by the way they talked about faith, just like we can tell a Democrat from a Republican by the way they talk about politics, that what has happened - and Weber is absolutely correct, I think - is that somehow or other religion now, now that we've made it, there's no need for religion now.
I think this is what Benedict talks about. Weber said that what begins to happen is that man becomes dominated by acquision and the making of money...And when we face this crisis, which is what Benedict is facing.
Well, one and one is two
Six and two is eight
Come on baby don't ya make me late
Hideyhey
Baby don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Sweet home Chicago
Come on
Baby don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Sweet home Chicago
Six and three is nine
Nine and nine is eighteen
Look there brother baby and see what I've seen
Hidehey
Baby don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Sweet home Chicago
Max Weber wrote:"Modernity has been deserted by the gods, man has chased them away and has rationalized and made calculable and predictable what in an earlier age had seemed governed by chance, but also by feeling and passion and commitment by personal appeal and personal fealty, by grace, and by the ethics of charismatic heroes."Weber looks at modernity at the beginning of the 20th century in a way that is shockingly similar to the commentaries on modernity from Benedict XVI at the beginning of the 21st century.
And one (Weber) looks at it from the point of view of how did religion create this emptiness, and the other (Benedict) acknowledges the emptiness but says how does religion respond now to that emptiness?
Weber said that what created this empty world was Calvin's notion of predestination. If as a matter of fact God has already decided everything that is going to happen in the world, then what's the use? The thing that you really then have to do, Weber said, is to figure out whether you're in or out, whether you are the saved or the damned. You can't do anything about it, Calvin said, and because you can contribute nothing to your salvation, it's already fixed - and as one of the elect you therefore have the obligation in charity to perform your civic duties well. Calvin said the greatest and highest vocation that a person can have is to be conscientious and a good civil magistrate. So that if you have a call to any kind of occupation then you do it well because if you do your pre-determined task well then obviously you are among the elect. And if you are one of the elect then you can rest, as the old Protestant hymn goes, with blessed assurance that you will enter into the kingdom of glory of God. But don't think you have anything to do with it. It's already determined.
Weber calls this inhumane and says it drives man eventually into an incredible loneliness, for they are on their own in the universe and the only security they have is the fulfillment of their vocation, their call, their determined spot in the world and they throw themselves into it, he said, in order to console and give themselves a sense of security that they are saved. What he says this does is it begins to drive the economic machine of Western society. Because if your salvation depends upon you doing what you do to the best of your ability, then if that's how you know you're saved, then the whole notion of the earning of money begins to change. And Weber says in his book Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that the whole notion of the economic structure changed. There was always capitalism but in the Catholic world you earned money for two reasons. One was because of what you could buy with it, and enjoy, and the other was what you could do with it, as a good work, to give it away. And so the whole capitalistic machine of the Middle Ages was for pleasure and charity. But now there is a new seriousness of purpose after the Reformation, according to Weber. Now the acquisition of wealth for the sake of acquiring more wealth becomes the hallmark of modern capitalism. And that it is done not so much to enjoy, because certainly the Puritans were not encouraged to enjoy their wealth, but simply to demonstrate the seriousness with which they pursued their work and therefore to assure thenselves that they were saved.
I kind of think, as I reflect upon all of this, that we in our American society are still culturally Predestinarians. If we were to reflect upon the question of salvation, how many within our church communities, how many within our society, would be concerned about their eternal destiny? Don't we kind of in a sense presume that well, our God is a good God, our God is a merciful God, how can we talk about a God who would not save his people? And so we live with this kind of presumption of universal salvation. That may or may not be true, who knows? That's the whole point - nobody knows. The issue then becomes if we are all predestined to glory then what is our relationship to our future? What is our relationship to eternity? It doesn't depend on us anymore. It's already kind of taken care of. The good, the merciful God will take care of it all. The sense in the Medieval church of striving for salvation, of being a participant in an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ that binds us to Him so closely that our destiny becomes identified with His, but in a kind of freedom where we can break that relationship when we want to - that we don't deal with, or that we must be close and intimate companions with the Lord in order that we might - through our relationship with him - identify with him as person, and enter with him into the destiny of those who are incorporated into the body of Christ. That's not part of the Catholic thought much anymore. The presumption of salvation has undercut that notion tremendously. And the interesting thing is that the great battle and great struggle within our Protestant culture (and this something else Weber says, Protestantism got us there but where we are doesn't need Protestantism anymore; that once you have created the machine we don't need the motivation, the machine takes care of itself), is such that if we look at secular society I think we find the same dynamic in the essence of the political process. The saved and the damned. How do you know if you are on the Left that you are of the elect? This is the source of political correctness. You think the right way, you use the right words. We emphasize that our disposition is crucially important, and so we have hate crimes and hate speech and give adjectives to human sinfulness. But we also have an elect of the right, we absolutize our politics in such a way that we determine a person's righteousness, chosenness, in the political arena. So politics has replaced religion as the determining factor of who is predestined or who has not.
"In its strict and specific acceptation, concupiscence is a desire of the lower appetite contrary to reason." - Catholic Encyclopedia entry
Late in the morning sleep too much
Food and drink can be a crutch
Been drunk all day, can't concentrate
Adam & Eve made a big mistake
Caught me down like a killer shark
It's like a railroad running right through my heart
Jekyll and Hyde the way I behave
Feel like I'm running on an empty gauge
Oh no not again
It hurts so good
I don't understand
Concupisceee-eence
Concupisceee-eence
Concupisceee-eence
Concupisceee-eence
Heart beats silly like a big bass drum
Losing all equilibrium
It's so hard in the middle of the week
The insubordination of man's desires to the dictates of reason is the last thing I need
Oh no not again
It hurts so good
I don't understand
Concupisceee-eence...
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