Matthew Lickona...

...pens a haiku about the movie A Prairie Home Companion:

Death comes for us all
Keillor sings as she draws near
A jowly stoic.

I saw it and was somewhat disappointed. I'd had high hopes which is always the wrong way to approach a movie. It was full of eye candy, in the sense of being well-photographed and getting a backstage glimpse at the set. Some of the music was good. But that's about it.

Lickona reviews it here, and in another post points us to a Godspy article titled Porn and the Sacred Heart.

Novak on the Trinity.

Beatin' a Dead Horse...

...but manishevitz, what a soap opera. And the 'Piskie bloggers, not unexpectedly, are articulate and witty and full of gallows humor. I'll miss 'em when they're gone. Ruth Geldhill writes from England:

So there will be a desperate, last-minute attempt in the US today to get something past the bishops and deputies that allows Bishop Schori to take her seat on the world Anglican state. Thus, in an extraordinary way, the election of a woman might have actually saved the Anglican Communion from schism. Had it been a man, they might not have cared so much. They really, really want to see Bishop Katharine up there, alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury. And actually, I have to admit, so do I. The thought of real schism happening now is utterly heartbreaking.

Funny if it wasn't also sad. One deputy, a female pastor in New Jersey, wrote that she was ashamed that while there were starving people in the world they were wasting time on resolutions about gay bishops. But if sexuality is minutiae, gender isn't. She writes breathlessly:

The Episcopal Women's Caucus and Integrity held a party last night in honor of Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori, our new Presiding Bishop and Primate. The EWC had buttons made in pink which declare: "It's a girl!"...I woke up yesterday morning, the first day of life in the Anglican Communion with a Primate who is a woman, and noted that the sky had not fallen. Neither had the world changed the rotation of its axis nor was the sun hidden by cloud or eclipse. I do confess that my next thought was this: The Primate of The Episcopal Church is probably just waking up and was, no doubt, beginning to get dressed.

And, she's putting on her bra.

It's a brave new world.

It sounds almost fetishistic. Almost a "divine feminine", a cult of raising up of woman to the divine (and that the author quoted above is a lesbian isn't surprising. Men have been doing the same for years.). Another conventioneer posts a sermon from that new Presiding (bra-wearing) Bishop Elect:

Our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation and we are his children. We are going to have to give up fear.

Our mother Jesus? There's a new one on me. I knew Geldhill would have a field day with that.

The female pastor from New Jersey is hoping for schism. She complains of Canterbury and certainly gets to the heart of the issue:

Ahem . . . . Can you say, ‘magisterium’? It is becoming reality – The Episcopal Church is becoming more and more dominated by the same ‘foreign rule’ that provided the impulse for the first Reformation. Except, of course, that the purple sacristy slipper is on the other foot, as it were. Now it is England that is the “foreign rule” to America, instead of the Britons objecting to Roman rule.

Update: "The Pontificator" comments about "Mother Jesus" on another blog: "I do not see anything objectionable to metaphorically describing Jesus as our mother. It is precisely the fact that the masculine pronoun is retained that makes this kind of metaphorical usage permissible (see Julian of Norwich)."

Faith & Reason & Sex

Regarding the Episcopalian situation, part of the reason I find it so interesting is that it pits those whose belief rests on Scripture in a sort of faith-alone position against those who exercise reason alone and give Revelation short shrift.

God knows that obedience is hard enough for us even when reason alone is invoked (i.e. don't do drugs since they'll wreck your life) or faith alone (i.e. Christ is God). But Catholicism tries to rest on both the faith & reason wings and this is never more clear than in her teachings on sexuality. Once you disconnect sex from procreation it seems contrary to reason to say that masturbation and gay sex are wrong. Is God arbitrary? What principle(s) underlay human sexuality? The Church doesn't scorn God's gift of reason while holding firm to the constant interpretation of Scripture regarding the sinfulness of homosexual acts.

I'm listening to a course on WWI and the instructor says that new technologies changed moralities. The newly invented machine gun was looked upon as a barbarous weapon, something never to be used on so-called "civilized" peoples. And yet we know the rest of the story. It seems the invention of the ever-so-convenient birth control pill has likewise changed moralities.

Another lesson of the Episcopalian Convention is how if the guiding principle of Anglicanism is lex orandi, lex credendi (or "what we pray is what we believe") then it doesn't seem to be working. (An off-the-cuff thought: does this mean the Latin Mass isn't the panacea Traditionalists think it is?) To the extent that Anglicanism's reason for existence is to ignore doctrinal differences (i.e. as a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism) then are the liberals in that church ironically more in keeping with what Anglicanism is about after all?

Interesting National Review Jonah Goldberg Article:

Ever since the dawn of the Progressive Era, conservatives have been fighting progressive assumptions about the role of the state, the nature of justice, and the relevance, if any, of the transcendent to public life. With few exceptions, this argument has been almost entirely on the opposition’s terms.

Consider, for example, the debate about same-sex marriage. Among those already convinced that same-sex marriage should be illegal, invocations of the Bible and natural law are common. But these arguments are useless when it comes to persuading the secular-minded. That’s why Maggie Gallagher, Stanley Kurtz, and others consistently invoke not God’s law but the laws of regression analysis and standard deviation (“deviation” in a strictly statistical sense, of course). These are useful arguments, and it’s good that someone is making them. But the implied assumption seems to be that if numbers and charts demonstrated that same-sex marriages were better for kids than “traditional” ones, conservatives — or at least many of them — would throw in the towel.

Indeed, so steeped are we in progressive assumptions that “traditional” has become a category to be tested and prodded like any other. One can imagine some study with towers of numbers falling in neat columns. One of these appears under the heading “traditional” and stands alongside a dozen others. Whichever category scores the highest, wins.
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Why has this happened? The answer is that we live in a progressive world. If you live in Japan, you’ll be hard-pressed to persuade people of anything if you don’t speak Japanese or understand the culture. Similarly, conservatives must speak the language of progressivism in order to persuade progressives that they are wrong. The danger in this is that you can go native. John Blackthorne in James Clavell’s Shogun becomes more Japanese than many Japanese people. So, too, conservatives can end up more progressive than the progressives.

But what, exactly, do I mean by “progressivism”? Certainly not — or not merely — the tinfoil-hattery that gets called “progressive” on the web and elsewhere. Progressivism has overlapping meanings. It refers both to the generic leftism we associate with the word “progressive” and to the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But both of these senses rely on a more metaphysical meaning. Progressivism was perhaps best summarized by Condorcet’s declaration that there is “a science that can foresee the progress of humankind, direct it, and accelerate it.” Progressivism takes it as a given that mankind, not God, is the pilot of Spaceship Earth. The good is measured in material terms — greater health, greater prosperity, greater comfort — and the social sciences are the disciplines that allow us to engineer society in ways that will maximize the good. Recall that the phrase “social engineering” didn’t start out as an epithet; people once bragged that they were social engineers. Even if the term has fallen into disrepute, the practice is alive and well.

Progressivism was an entirely rational response to the scientific method’s success at what Francis Bacon called “the relief of man’s estate.” Rather than beseeching God for bounty and good fortune and giving thanks when these were received, mankind learned to do for himself. Irrigation replaced rain. Animal husbandry and domestication brought more happiness and prosperity than praying for a good hunting season. Medicine substituted for crossing your fingers that the smallest cut wouldn’t lead to deadly infection. While one occasionally hears sophomoric voices — on the left and the right — opining about the superiority of medieval life or the rapture of living in a “state of nature” with one’s fellow noble savages, few of us are eager to defenestrate dentistry, cable TV, and air conditioning in exchange for such joy. And rightly so.

But there was a considerable downside to the displacement of the Almighty by the trinity of the slide rule, the microchip, and the test tube. Eric Voegelin was among the most alarmed critics of the rising progressive tide. According to Voegelin, you cannot eliminate the religious instinct. “When God is invisible behind the world, the contents of the world will become new gods; when the symbols of transcendent religiosity are banned, new symbols develop from the inner-worldly language of science to take their place.” Translation: When you rely on science and technology to do God’s job, it won’t be long before you worship science as a god. Marxism, the apotheosis of progressivism, purged the divine and replaced it with materialism. For the Marxist, proclaimed Voegelin, “Christ the Redeemer is replaced by the steam engine as the promise of the realm to come.” For many people today, the steam engine has been replaced by the embryonic stem cell as the promise of the realm to come.

Conservatives, or at least a majority of them, retain an admirable opposition to crossing bright lines on “life” issues. The passionate denunciations that this “dogmatism” elicits from liberals are a sign of how fundamental is the progressive faith that we are our own gods. The Left’s rancor also reflects the fact that protection of the unborn is one of the last redoubts of conservative adherence to immutable moral law. Pro-lifers often concede that having an unwanted baby is “bad” for both the baby and the mother in material terms (though it is of course not as bad for the baby as death). They simply say that a higher law applies.

But very few conservatives would dream of making such an argument when it comes to, say, economics. They note that eliminating the “death tax” would be good for “growth,” or for minorities, or for entrepreneurialism. The cuts would pay for themselves, we are assured. But even when conservatives believe that the death tax is not only unwise but unjust (as indeed it is), they recognize that this position simply won’t fly. Indeed, the supply-side school of economics was born of the progressive desire to prove that cutting taxes for the rich would be good for the poor. Why? Because conservatives either accepted or surrendered to the prevailing view that high taxes on the wealthy would be justified if they advanced the common good. As a matter of logic, this view offers no principled reason for the state not to confiscate all wealth if doing so would be beneficial to society (though there are of course pragmatic reasons to think it would not). As a matter of justice, it is no more legitimate to rob a man of nine of his apples for the “public interest” than to take all ten.

Many supply-siders tout John F. Kennedy’s tax cuts — meant to counteract the worst stock-market crash since the Great Depression — as their model. But they were not implemented in the spirit of supply-side economics at all. They were rather a form of Keynesianism, justified in the language of Cold War competition. As H. W. Brands notes, Kennedy was the first president to claim that the government had an obligation to ensure economic growth. It is a sign of how thoroughly conservatism has absorbed progressivism that most of us take JFK’s view for granted. Believing it is the government’s job to ensure growth is tantamount to saying that the government should superintend the economy. A captain need not keep his hand on the tiller every second to remain a captain, and today’s “laissez faire” means “Let it be — until things take a bad turn.” In short, conservatives, too, have accepted that there is a science of human progress.

I offer no solutions here, in part because it is difficult to see exactly where the problems lie. The West may need a new metaphysics to deal with the challenges of modernity. I am not up to the task of crafting one. But conservatives could help that project along by asking themselves more regularly whether they favor something because it is right in itself, or simply because they like its outcome.

I left the Episcopal Convention so grateful to be Catholic. I have a profound sense of sadness as I reflect on the day. I am still digesting all I saw and heard. Make no mistake about it. The folks at the Episcopal Convention, are on the whole, very liberal. As a matter of fact, a part of the convention is even more liberal than Bishop Robinson. The majority of those at the convention would make the National Catholic Reporter’s views seem like that of Spirit Daily in comparison...I only wish those Catholics who disagree with our church could spend some at the Episcopal Convention. I think they would appreciate our Catholic faith, history, diversity, tradition and orthodoxy so much more. I will be praying for our Episcopal friends. They will certainly need many prayers. - David Hartline of "Catholic Report"

We can’t get anywhere with unity unless we figure out the Eucharist. When we come to an agreement on the Eucharist, we will have unity. - Anglican Father Victor King of Liberia, interviewed by David Harline

I feel like one sleepwalking, lost in the cosmos (to steal from my most interesting of recent reads, Walker Percy's book of that title), beset by demons of epistemology in the garden of ontology, wondering whether I really have the will to be a saint, sullen and withdrawn like the child I once was (who preferred the company of his own imagination to that of any other people, and ran around the deserted parts of the playground by himself playing the dinosaur hero). So I haven't exactly been up to writing anything of substance. Trust me, though, I'll be back. All it takes is my next epiphany. - Patrick of Orthonormal Basis

I think one thing that bothers me about ex-gay theology is that it doesn't just say "God CAN do this," but "God WILL do this"--God WILL change your life in this very specific way, removing a temptation, if you want it badly enough. And there's so little help on how to live before that change occurs, too. It just seems like such a setup for failure. - Eve Tushnet

The philosophy department at Notre Dame has about 60 faculty members. In 90 percent of the courses, friends at Notre Dame say, eminently pertinent documents such as the encyclicals Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio are not read and, probably, not even referred to. In the world of academic certification, the philosophy department ranks 13th in the nation. The question persistently asked is not, “How do we create an authentically Catholic philosophy department?” but, “How do we get to a single digit?” - Fr. Neuhaus of "First Things"

Michael told me the other night of a news story he'd read indicating that the more plugged in a young person is, the more anxious and depressed they are. Now, there could be an inverse relationship as well - that the more depressed a kid is, the more they plug in. But as we were talking about it, we decided that the reason might be this - because of computers, text-messaging, cel-phones and God knows what else, young people are never, ever disconnected from their peers. Peers are the center of most kids' lives - they give them the most joy and fitting into that group is the cause of the most anxiety. Before the day of constant communication, there was space to be free of that. Oh, it might still be in your head as you worried about it, but you couldn't constantly be IM'ing or texting about who went where with who and who wasn't included, or worrying about the image that you're presenting. For a lot of young people, that space - the space to really be free and consider yourself apart from anyone else's eyes or ears - has disappeared. No wonder they're tense. - Amy Welborn

We shouldn't be too quick to separate this life from eternal life, since through Baptism our eternal life has already begun. Jesus does promise us comfort and security, not as a reward after we die, but as a gift right now, right here. It's not the material comfort and security we might want, but it is no less real, no less present in our fallen world, for being spiritual. In fact, to the extent comfort and security are subjective measurements of how we perceive ourselves, it doesn't make much difference whether they are based on material or spiritual reasons.The question, then, is to what extent material comfort and security can be sought without interfering with spiritual comfort and security. And the answer, I suppose, was given by Jesus: "Seek first the kingdom of God...." - Tom of Disputations

In 28 years of priesthood, I've been able to celebrate Mass in several other European languages. German has rhythm, Italian has poetry and Spanish is very strong when it's used in the liturgy. Catalan is intimate and French is elegant, but the English we use is impoverished and often trite. Sometimes, the translation is inaccurate and occasionally it's bewildering, such as the Arianism that was slipped unawares into the fixed Preface for the Fourth Eucharist Prayer: "You alone are God, living and true" addressed to the Father. I've been told that there's also quite a bit of Pelagianism in the translations, with the presumption that we get there by our own efforts. We need to sort out this mess and should express our regrets to the Protestant churches which have followed us too closely in altering their own words of worship. - Fr. Ferguson commenting on "Open Book"

If I had grown up heterosexual, I don't know if I would be Catholic today....Throughout my childhood I had a strong sense that something had gone wrong--that I was not only different but broken. I connected this feeling to my sexual orientation, and developed intense shame. This despite being raised in an extraordinarily gay-positive household--I could be misremembering, but I'm not sure I even encountered stigma against homosexuality until I was in junior high. The doctrine of original sin offered a startling and hopeful possibility: Suddenly the thing that made me different, my sexual orientation, was not the focus; my alienation was a distilled version of what every person experiences after the Fall. My orientation was a source of insight, not solely a burden or a political cause. - Eve Tushnet

The Increasingly Joyful Mysteries

Joy knew not man
until the Annunciation
and from Mary Joy found
Elizabeth and John and then
a score of shepherds keeping watch
till Simeon prophesized a wider dispersal
to be fulfilled in the Heavenly Temple.

Tom & George

He calls it justice, which it certainly is, though it could be considered a show of mercy on some of his readers. Others might think it an exercise in prudence, for irritation makes intellectuals irrational, or so Ramesh Ponnuru posits in an artice in National Review concerning George Will's sudden distaste for social conservatives, with Ponnuru pointing out a string of illogicisms in Will's columns:

Will got in another Schiavo shot, describing social conservatives (no sneer quotes this time) as “unchastened by public disgust about their attempt 10 months ago to drag the federal government into the Terri Schiavo tragedy.” But social conservatives didn’t drag the federal government into this tragedy; it was there from the start. The Supreme Court had ruled, in 1990, that all states had to make it possible for a surrogate to direct that a feeding tube be removed from an incapacitated patient. Florida, Schiavo’s home state, never had a choice about whether to comply. Social conservatives were merely trying to contain the damage from that federal intervention.
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Social conservatives often deserve criticism, even sharp criticism, and some of Will’s hits the mark. What fair-minded observer would deny that they can be intolerant, or self-righteous? Will is right to say that too often they play the victim card. They do, sometimes, overreach. Will is probably right to consider both intelligent design and the marriage amendment instances of such overreaching. (I would also point to the insistence, by many social conservatives, that America is in some constitutional sense a “Christian nation.”) Social conservatives, whatever they should be called, can learn from his rebukes. By any sensible reckoning, Will is, even today, a moderate social conservative himself. But lately, when social conservatives are the topic, Will’s reasoning loses its customary intricacy.

How to explain it? I will venture a guess. George Will is the most coolly analytical of commentators. (He is cool even — especially — when he is scorching.) Look closely, however, and it is just possible to see that his thought is being distorted by an emotion. It is a powerful yet underrated emotion: irritation.

Song

In the Byzantine Rite's cycle of readings yesterday's gospel was the calling of Andrew & Simon Peter. And this morning I heard the delightful Sara Evans tune Suds in the Bucket. So I combined them for you (as always, remember what you paid):

They were out fishin', say it was a little past nine
When the Lord pulled up, a white pickup truck
The scribes shoulda seen it comin' - it was only just a matter of time
Plenty old enough, and you can't stop God.
Andrew stuck a note on the screen door "sorry but I got to go"
That was all he wrote, his mamma's heart was broke
That was all he wrote, so the story goes

(Chorus) Now his wife's in the kitchen starin' out the window, scratchin' and a rackin' her brains
How could 38 years just up and walk away?
He left the boat in the water and the bait hangin' out on the line

Now don't you wonder what the preacher's gonna preach about Sunday mornin'
Nothing quite like this has happened here before
Well God must've been a smooth talkin' son of gun
For such a grounded dude to just up and run
Course you can't fence time, and you can't stop God

YEEEHAW!

(3rd chorus) Got his sandals on they're headed to Jerusalem tonight
How could 38 years just up and walk away?
Trouble is a comin' and they say that the night is near
The fisherman is gonna be a saint
'Cuz he left the boat in the water and the bait hangin' on the line...

Various and/or Sundry

So this is how a schism happens. We weren't there in the 11th century when East and West officially went separate ways. We weren't there during the Reformation. We weren't around to watch the Anabaptists get out of Dodge or watch the Mennonites split from the Old Order Amish. But we are watching a train wreck now as the American Episcopalians begin divorce proceedings from the Anglican communion (although admittedly the former comprise a tiny fraction of the latter).

From the Columbus Dispatch:

At least 1,000 people pushed into Trinity Episcopal Church to celebrate the Eucharist and show their support for New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man. His supporters filled the pews, balconies and basement and spilled out onto the S. 3 rd Street sidewalk. They laughed and cried and stood clapping as a teary-eyed Robinson urged them to love those gathered about a mile away in a modest, windowless room at Nationwide Arena.

There, Bishop Peter Beckwith of Springfield, Ill., presided over an intimate service. Although their numbers were small by comparison, roughly 80 people, they sang loudly and held tightly to their convictions.

Re: the phrase "tightly-held convictions" with respect to conservative Episcopalians. "Tight" seems often used in conjunction with conservatives in the media but seems here an adjective very applicable to the progressive Episcopalians, who not only have tightly-held convictions but are not shy about imposing them.
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From a progressive Episcopalian blogger at the Convention here in Columbus:

Yesterday a really cool resolution came before the House of Deputies it called on dioceses and congregations to do education about debt and debt reduction for families and called for February to be designated 'Debt Awareness Month'...We had amendments and amendments to amendments and people were debating the month that should be debt awareness month and someone suggested April instead of February and someone else said we shouldn't pick a month and it was taking a long time. Someone got up and said we should really have September be debt awareness month because that prepares people for Christmas buying and doesn't overlap with Easter. I strongly agree with him and right after he spoke they called for a vote. I ended up voting for the resolution because I think in essence its a good resolution while at the same time thinking February is the wrong month...All in all, I'm excited about debt awareness month and think any month is really a good month to talk about it and every month is essentially debt awareness month.

I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Later she expresses qualms about using her child as prop:

I've been struggling with the idea that Naomi is someone or something that helps me make political points. Many times before and during convention people have told me that Naomi's presence really makes a point (her being here in general, me having her on the floor with me, me bringing her to a committee meeting, me bringing her to a hearing). I decided during morning worship that although I often feel uncomfortable with politicians 'posing' with their kids I could find a balance between using her as a prop and finding a way to be truly me, protect her, and have her presence here with me be the natural thing I think it is and if all that happens to be a political statement then so be it.

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A thought: the Beatitudes begin "Blessed are the poor in spirit" and continue in that sort of third person vein. "Blessed are those who mourn...Blessed are the peacemakers". We may or may not be able to identify ourselves in those categories (which is the source of consternation - Bob Deffinbaugh writes, "I was thinking of the statement Nikita Krushchev made a number of years ago while in the United States, when he said, “I’ll tell you what the difference between Christians and me is, and that is if you slap me on the face, I’ll hit you back so hard your head will fall off.” He was impacted by the Sermon on the Mount. He knew what it said, and he didn’t like it at all. The truth is that the natural man does not like its message. This is not the message one would take to write a best selling book—even a Christian book. The message of the Sermon on the Mount is not one that sells.")

But then the Beatitudes suddenly switch to the first person: "Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake." (emphasis mine). I wonder if this suggests that not all are called to be martyrs in the sense of the verse before ("Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness' sake") but that all Christians will be persecuted in the sense of falsely accused and reproached.
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As Roman Catholics, there is a tendency to think the events at the Episcopalian Convention have nothing to do with us but they are momentous in the sense that we are all affected by each other and by the climate of the culture. Artificial birth control was universally prohibited before the Anglicans, in 1930, okay'd their use. Some thirty years Rome visited the issue and the papal commission apparently approved the Pill, while Pope Paul VI (suprisingly given his generally diffident management style) condemned the practice. I know of Catholics who date their disobedience to the pope to the promulgation of Humane Vitae. So, at the risk of great oversimplication, the actions of the Anglicans in 1930 eventually led to a great deal of our current division in the American church.

Excerpts from Scott Hahn's Scripture Matters:

I propose that St. Thomas [Aquinas] is best understood not simply by looking at his metaphysics, or by studying his appreciation of Aristotle, or by updating him with modern science. Rather, I suggest that St. Thomas is fundamentally a biblical theologian. In fact, many of his biographers tell us that Thomas would have described himself primarily as a teacher of Scripture...Many scholars now are rediscovering the biblical depth of his teachings, and the importance of appropriating the scriptural categories that formed the framework of much of his thought.
_

...Because of sin's blinding effects, the "book" of nature must be translated by the inspired Word of Scripture. Nature, since the fall, cannot be truly understood apart from Scriptures...Apart [from them], not even a genuis as St. Thomas could have made much sense of God's purpose for salvation history...

I'm convinced that many well-meaning people have fastened onto the natural law for the purpose of helping Catholics enter the American public square and discuss morality in a religiously neutral way...[but] fallen human nature is incapable of knowing the natural law with certainty. As St. Thomas teachers, it is only possible with much effort, after a very long time. Only a few will come to know it, and even then with an admixture of error. If we are going to adopt the natural law tradition that our Church teachers, we should not do it with an apologetic strategy of selectivism or minimalism, because the natural law is not something that is non-religious. In drawing from the natural law tradition, we cannot escape religion...St. Thomas, as I understand him, is a consistent and committed theocrat.

Another tidbit from the same book:

But what about the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8)? Notice that Jesus did not condemn her, but neither did He apologize for her public shame. He does not refrain from judgment. Judgment, after all, is a precondition of mercy. Jesus sets her free, but He makes clear that mercy has its price, and that price is the fulfillment of the Law: "Go, and do not sin again." (Jn. 8:11).

More Episcopalian Talk


Fr. Manning's an openly celibate priest

Still hyp-mo-tized by the Episcopalians in town. Heard some of the protagonists and antagonists on Larry King’s show. Three were pro-homosexual sex (including Andrew Sullivan and Bishop Gene Robinson) and three anti-. The anti- folks seemed to track well with their respective religious groups. The Baptist emphasized Scripture (though surprisingly he said that we look to tradition for help in interpreting Scripture). He insinuated gays need not be gay; they can be transformed by the power of grace. Which seemed a Cross-less Christianity though at the same time is indicative of an adamnant faith that refuses to sell God’s power short. The Catholic priest emphasized the positive side: you can be gay and have deep friendships and love – but it just can’t be physical. No sex; a definite cross. He argued from a natural law perspective, how we have to track as closely as we can to the true purpose of sex. Men are made for women and vice-versa. And the third fellow, an Episcopalian priest, basically argued that 2,000 years of Christian tradition can’t be wrong and that Scripture should be the standard against which we measure ourselves rather than the other way around. Sullivan kept insisting that he can’t bear false witness and to deny that he’s gay would be to bear false witness. Absurd, because the priest had that covered. You can be gay, you just can’t make it about sex. And the fact that that is never taken seriously means that despite protestations to the contrary, being gay is about sex. Duh. But that doesn't make their situation less pitiable; they are called to be saints and that many are resisting is not exactly an unfamiliar situation, gay or straight.

A commenter on a blog thread about the King show said that the big elephant in the room that went unmentioned was the Fall and how things aren’t the way they should be after that. It’s interesting that the priest (Fr. Manning) argued from nearly the opposite perspective. That nature is good and that nature intends men be with women for the positive purpose of children.

Sullivan's attitude is symptomatic of modern Christianity in the West, which is the attitude that we’ve already seemingly errored on the side of too much rigor so why not error on the side of too little rigor for awhile? From "masturbation will cause insanity" and "the death penalty for sodomites" to "gay sex is God's will" in one easy ...er...stroke. Reading about Presybterians of the 18th and 19th centuries is illuminating as they are the anti-Sullivans. Back then God took all “ties” – in other words, any doubt about something was settled in favor of the more rigorous fashion. Now not only does man take all ties but more often than not man is taking even what is clearly God’s. The head of the Episcopalian church – the one who promoted Gene Robinson to bishop - argued that we’ve learned so much in the past centuries in the fields of medicine and physics then why not sexuality? But is it really that we have learned so much about sexuality or that we have made it our god because it’s tough enough getting through life without forgoeing pleasures that modern man has come to expect?

The Episcopalian prelate was asked by Larry King to sympathize with Sullivan but surprisingly he tried to one-up Sullivan's victimhood and play one too. He said that he wishes he and other orthodox folk weren’t being marginalized and isolated in the present Episcopalian church. Can we buy that Episcopalianism is as important to the prelate as sex is to Andrew? Maybe we could if we lived in a different age?

CNN kept showing the graphic beneath Gene Robinson referring to him as an “openly gay bishop”. I thought a possible parody be to have a graphic under Fr. Manning that said “openly celibate priest”. It seems in today’s world celibacy is rejected out of hand and is now more courageous than being openly gay.

Judgment Day

White-hot the black-wrought
iron bench off High Street
where I read a Bill Luse novel
to the beat of the sun’s beatlessness.

She splits the sky and renders judgment
strong and hot, visible to all
inescapable astride the 'sphere
plain as the nose on your face.

At home the tomato plants slump
and I look at them sideways and debate
between the tough love of asking their roots to go deeper
and the pity of watering them now.

5K College Reunion Race

I could hear her struggling for breath
“’86” she said,
as in class of ’86,
a year after me.

Life was repeated
for I was a step ahead
though just as breathless.

'08 Prez Campaign

What'll be interesting to watch in the next election is which of the Forces-Which-Determine-Who-Will-Be-Elected will dominate. I think the three forces are:

1) Whiplash Syndrome
2) The Smiler Gets the Worm
3) Authenticity: If you can fake it you can make it

The Three Forces

Generally there is a natural tendency to vote for the person who is least like the last president. Call it a pendulum or "previous occupant fatigue" but this is how we got squeaky-clean outsider like Carter after Nixon and straight-talking Bush after smooth but forked-tongue talking Clinton. This would suggest that Hilary is in a good position because people might be ready for nuance and talking-out-of--both-sides-of-your-mouth again. (As well as someone who can pronounce "nuclear".) This force also favors Hilary in the sense that she's a woman. On the Republican side one could argue that Newt Gingrich could woo voters with his smartness and fluid command of the English language.

The nicest person wins. This theory is that most of the time the more genuinely likeable person wins. (Someone said that if Bill Clinton could've met every voter individually he would've won his elections unaminously.) This would seem to favor John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, John McCain. Test the candidate by forming a mental image of them bonding with Oprah. If you can't really imagine it then they don't have much of a chance of winning.

In post-modernity the hunger for authenticity is so great that it might trump everything else including competency or ideology. Gore in '00 was perceived as non-authentic (recall his dumping his environmental agenda, his consultations with Naomi Wolf about how to dress like an alpha male (if you have to ask...) and the "I invented the internet" attitude). Kerry in '04 was as fake as the day is long. It's difficult to see his "I voted for it before I voted against it" as anything other than subjugating the war to his political ambition. If the Democrats had nominated someone capable of authenticity we might well have had a Democratic president. For '08, John Edwards or Russ Feingold seem well-positioned here since this is Hillary's Achilles' Heel.